#186 Brett Cooper - The Real Reason She Left The Daily Wire

Brett Cooper is a conservative commentator, actress, and digital media personality best known for her sharp wit and cultural commentary. She first gained national attention as the host of The Comments Section with The Daily Wire, where she dissected viral content and offered her take on pop culture, politics, and current events. With a background in theater and acting, Cooper brought a unique blend of performance and insight to her online presence, quickly amassing a large following among Gen Z audiences. In 2025, Cooper launched The Brett Cooper Show, an independent platform where she continues to deliver her signature commentary with an even bolder and more personal voice. Her show covers a wide range of topics—from politics and entertainment to lifestyle and social issues—always with a focus on authenticity and intellectual independence. As she expands her media presence, Cooper remains a rising voice in the conservative movement, connecting with a new generation through her unapologetic take on the modern world. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD https://patriotmobile.com/srs | 972-PATRIOT https://cozyearth.com/srs https://ziprecruiter.com/srs https://roka.com - USE CODE "SRS" https://tryarmra.com/srs https://identityguard.com/srs https://boncharge.com/srs This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. Brett Cooper Links: Social Links - https://linktr.ee/imbrettcooper Website - https://brettcooper.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Mr. President? My company tore me of the explosion on our rig.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 0:38Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 0:40Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 0:43Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 0:46Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stall, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:53Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:54Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 1:04Shawn Ryan?

  Brett Cooper. Welcome to the show.

• 1:07Speaker 06

  Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

• 1:08Shawn Ryan?

  I'm happy you're here. We've got a lot to dive into. You ready?

• 1:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:13Shawn Ryan?

  Anything off the table?

• 1:14Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:15Shawn Ryan?

  All right, all right. How's it going, independent?

• 1:18Speaker 06

  It's awesome. I'm having a ton of fun.

• 1:20Shawn Ryan?

  Are you?

• 1:21Speaker 06

  It's very freeing.

• 1:22Shawn Ryan?

  Is it more challenging than you thought it would be?

• 1:25Speaker 06

  Um, yes and no. I think I was surprised about the things that have challenged me. Because I knew going into it that there was a lot that I didn't know that other people had managed and that I didn't have a hand on. And that was one thing that I never really loved, was that I didn't completely have a hold and a sense of everything that was going on in terms of my career and brand. So we're to talk about yourself as like a brand, but sort of how it ends up being. Um, so it's been really nice to dive into that. But of course, there's a learning curve with that. But it's been very freeing.

• 2:02Shawn Ryan?

  Well, we'll dive into that later. But I just want to say, man, like, I am... You're 23 years old, right?

• 2:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:10Shawn Ryan?

  Very sharp 23 year old and um I just have a ton of respect for you. I don't I don't dabble with the Gen Zers much. I don't get the opportunity, but you know, I've been I've been stalking you for a little bit. Sounds kind of creepy, but but now like, you know, I I saw, you know, obviously, the transition from Daily Wire and kind of disappeared for a minute and you pop back up and like you got spunk in your step. You're just you're crushing it, man. And it's really like, I got a ton of respect for people that can walk away from, you know, something where everything was handed to you. Maybe not handed to you, but I mean, everything was taken care of over there.

• 2:52Shawn Ryan?

  Now, like, you're tackling this thing head on, and it's tough, man. It's it's a tough business. And I just want to say you're you're doing amazing. And and like, I just I wish the best for you. Like, it's really cool to watch your journey. But um

• 3:09Speaker 06

  It's been rewarding thus far.

• 3:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, you came out with a big bang. And that's that's cool. Everybody starts off with a introduction here. So Brett Cooper, you're a conservative and cultural commentator who has captivated audiences with your sharp insights and relatable perspective. You're a former actress who brings a unique blend of entertainment and politics into your audience. During your nearly three year tenure at the Daily at the Daily Wire, you amassed 4.5 million subscribers as the host of the comments section with Brett Cooper. You're the host of the Brett Cooper Show now, where you tackle current events, cultural issues, and personal stories. You've attracted over a

• 3:54Shawn Ryan?

  million subscribers in just one month. You're the voice you are a voice for Gen Z, challenging the status quo and sparking conversations on topics often overlooked by the mainstream media. And you live on a farm here in Tennessee with your husband, and your your one year anniversary is next week, correct? Congratulations. Congratulations. So

• 4:18Shawn Ryan?

  I want to do a life story on you.

• 4:20Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 4:21Shawn Ryan?

  I know there's a lot there, especially for a 23 year old, man. You've been through, you've been through it. And there's a lot of depth that I don't think, I don't think you've really gone in depth on a lot of this stuff on other podcasts, so.

• 4:33Speaker 06

  Very rare.

• 4:34Shawn Ryan?

  I want to be the one. I want to be the one that gets it.

• 4:37Speaker 06

  That's what my husband said last night as we were leaving dinner with you guys. He was like, this is the podcast to talk about that stuff. And I was like, I know. What'll be good?

• 4:45Shawn Ryan?

  Are you, are you nervous?

• 4:46Speaker 06

  No, not at all. I love talking about this stuff.

• 4:48Shawn Ryan?

  You think you're gonna get emotional?

• 4:49Speaker 06

  Probably.

• 4:50Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man.

• 4:52Speaker 06

  I cry easily.

• 4:54Shawn Ryan?

  It's like a therapy session.

• 4:55Speaker 06

  I know. And I loved therapy. People rag on therapy a lot, especially on the right. And I sort of do when I think people like, overuse it.

• 5:03Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:04Speaker 06

  It was incredible for me. And I like.

• 5:06Shawn Ryan?

  When did you start therapy?

• 5:08Speaker 06

  I was like 14.

• 5:09Shawn Ryan?

  14 years old?

• 5:10Speaker 06

  A lot of shit going on.

• 5:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I know, man.

• 5:12Speaker 06

  To work through it. But no, but I, I think that's the thing that, not to go completely off topic, but it, there was a time in my life when I needed it, when there was so much going on that I couldn't comprehend and I, I didn't have the tools to navigate through. And so that's why I sought out help. And I went through a few different therapists trying to find somebody. And I found somebody who was, yes, very empathetic and would listen, but with solutions focused of like, this is how you navigate this. This is what you need to say to this person. How do we, how do we better your communications? You can get what you need in this very, very chaotic family structure that you're living in. Like, it was very, it was giving me the tools I needed, so I didn't need to go forever.

• 5:55Speaker 06

  Like I got through that period and I got to a point where I was like, I don't need to go, trauma dump every Thursday afternoon. So I haven't been back. And I've wondered if there was like.

• 6:05Shawn Ryan?

  You don't go today?

• 6:06Speaker 06

  Mm-mm.

• 6:07Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 6:07Speaker 06

  Yeah. Last year I thought I might need to.

• 6:11Shawn Ryan?

  I think I need to. I've been kicking around the idea of going back. I haven't been in probably. Seven years, I think.

• 6:18Speaker 06

  Yeah. If you find a good person, again, somebody that's not an enabler, which I think is hard to find. You look up like therapists in Nashville, the first person that pops up is like, the person who is in Matt Walsh's What Is a Woman? And you're like, oh, fuck. Like, you're not who I want to talk to. But, um, if you find, again, a good person that is focused on providing you tools so that you can make your life better, because they can't change your life for you.

• 6:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:42Speaker 06

  But if they help you break down the things that are in your way, the things that are out of your control, that give you a set of tools, you can move forward, that's an incredible, whether that's a therapist, or a life coach, or just a mentor, in your personal life, in your church, everybody should have something like that.

• 6:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you know, a lot of times, I think people just break it down themselves.

• 7:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 7:02Shawn Ryan?

  You know, just hearing yourself talk, you realize how insane you are, and, uh, and work through a lot of those issues yourself. But, yeah, I think about going back, I mean, with the, with the rise of the show, and, you know, just a lot of people coming at you, it's, it can be enraging.

• 7:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 7:20Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, and that's something I'm kind of working through, but you dealt with that at a young age, and I want to talk about that later, too.

• 7:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, sounds good.

• 7:27Shawn Ryan?

  So, but, we have a couple of things to knock out here, so have a Patreon account.

• 7:32Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 7:32Shawn Ryan?

  You know that.

• 7:33Speaker 06

  I do.

• 7:33Shawn Ryan?

  Where's your subscription network?

• 7:35Speaker 06

  Uh, we have, we have our own.

• 7:36Shawn Ryan?

  Cooper.com?

• 7:37Speaker 06

  No, it's called Cooper Confidential.

• 7:38Shawn Ryan?

  Cooper Confidential, nice.

• 7:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 7:41Shawn Ryan?

  What do you do on there?

• 7:43Speaker 06

  I do a weekly advice video. Do you remember like Dear Abby in the newspaper?

• 7:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yes.

• 7:47Speaker 06

  I was obsessed with Dear Abby. And, so I have people send in questions, because a lot of the times when I get emails from people, it's like, I'm having trouble figuring out something in a relationship, or with college, or, I know that you've dealt with this with your brother or your parents, could you help me through this? So it's like these long, long questions, that I've never really had the avenue to answer before, because I can't just email people back all day long, even though I would love to. So... We open up the question portal every week and people send in their questions and then I answer them in just like a casual video. We just kind of work through them together. So we do that and then we have ad free episodes. And then like a monthly subscriber only newsletter. That's much more personal stuff.

• 8:28Shawn Ryan?

  Nice, nice. Well, this is from John Wallace.

• 8:33Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 8:34Shawn Ryan?

  Could you comment on the current state of conservative politics now that the new administration is actively making changes and disrupting the liberal agenda? Then there's a follow on. Is there more unity? Or is there behind the scenes drama and power grabs occurring?

• 8:50Speaker 06

  Oh gosh, unfortunately, I think it's the latter.

• 8:54Speaker 06

  Because I think that was actually my first episode that I did on the new show was sort of about that. I think that we are being very sore winners, unfortunately. I think the right is so used to losing. And we talk about a victim mentality all the time of, you know, the left victimizes themselves. But we've been in a culture, it's like the perfect culture for nonprofits where it's like, the left's getting us, donate now, whatever. Like, we've just been in that mindset that I think now that we've won in such a massive way and we've won culturally, I think everything, everybody was just like, we don't even know how to function. So I have a lot of hope. I'm really excited about almost everything that Trump is doing and his cabinet is doing. I love the people involved. I love RFK Junior. I'm a massive fan of Tulsi. She, I know her, you know, as you know her in our personal

• 9:38Speaker 06

  lives. I just think that she is one of the most like magnificent people. Like, he's surrounded himself with excellent individuals. Feels very different than 2016. So in terms of the administration, I feel really, really strongly in a positive way. But in terms of like, this weird industry of like, right wing commentators and whatever, like, you go on X, I'm like, can you like, can everybody just like chill?

• 9:58Shawn Ryan?

  It's crazy over there.

• 9:59Speaker 06

  Um, so I think when you get out of like, there's a lot of X that does feel like the real world, but I'm also like, moms in Minnesota aren't like caring about this stuff. Like, random people just like trying to get through life and hoping that gas prices are going to go down. Like, they're not seeing our infighting. So, um, I, so I think it's a, it's a double edged sword of, I feel a lot of hope in terms of where politics are going. And I hope that the right can get their act together and start or stop like pointing fingers and.

• 10:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it'd be great to see a little unity. I mean, people are just so far apart nowadays, you know, but, but I think a lot of people are exhausted from it, too.

• 10:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 10:43Shawn Ryan?

  I know I am.

• 10:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 10:45Shawn Ryan?

  I'm so fucking tired of politics.

• 10:47Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 10:47Shawn Ryan?

  I can't even.

• 10:49Speaker 06

  I think people in this world are, I think, just normal voters are. I think it's just been, it's probably one of the reasons why he won, is people are just like, I can't do this anymore. Like, I don't care what you're gonna say about me. Like, I just want my life to be better.

• 11:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:03Speaker 06

  So I think that that part, again, with normal people, I think that there has been some unity.

• 11:08Shawn Ryan?

  I hope the pendulum just like starts slowing down a little bit here.

• 11:12Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 11:12Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I think maybe, hopefully, you know, hopefully, everybody's learned some lessons.

• 11:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 11:19Shawn Ryan?

  And maybe we don't need to go so fucking extreme.

• 11:22Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:22Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, yeah, that would be amazing, but probably way off, but probably wishful thinking, but, but, uh, so, everybody gets a gift.

• 11:32Speaker 06

  Oh, I'm so excited about this.

• 11:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:37Shawn Ryan?

  There they are.

• 11:38Speaker 06

  Oh, my gosh.

• 11:40Shawn Ryan?

  The magnificent Vigilance Elite gummy bears, legal in all 50 states, made here in the USA.

• 11:45Speaker 06

  I can't wait. I'm so bummed because I wanted to bring you a gift because I know that you give people your gummy bears, so I gave you your gift last night. So for anybody watching, I gave Sean, uh, some of our chicken eggs and one of our duck eggs.

• 11:59Shawn Ryan?

  We ate those this morning. We didn't eat the duck egg yet.

• 12:01Speaker 06

  I know, that one's special.

• 12:02Shawn Ryan?

  Well, we did.

• 12:03Speaker 06

  You have like a special omelet for that or something.

• 12:05Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. Thank you for those. Did you?

• 12:09Shawn Ryan?

  I'm just gonna say it, so.

• 12:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 12:11Shawn Ryan?

  You got this cookie idea.

• 12:13Speaker 06

  I know.

• 12:13Shawn Ryan?

  You gotta do it, man.

• 12:14Speaker 06

  I know.

• 12:15Shawn Ryan?

  You gotta do it.

• 12:16Speaker 06

  I desperately wanna have cookie company.

• 12:19Shawn Ryan?

  Would crush it. It would crush. People love food, man.

• 12:22Speaker 06

  I know.

• 12:22Shawn Ryan?

  You gotta do it.

• 12:23Speaker 06

  I love, I love food. I mean, it's like the, yeah.

• 12:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, your husband was telling us at dinner last night, you're like the cookie monster over there. Six cookies in one sitting. Amazing.

• 12:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 12:34Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, all right, so let's, let's dig in. You ready?

• 12:38Speaker 06

  Let's do it.

• 12:38Shawn Ryan?

  So you grew up in Chattanooga, right?

• 12:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, we moved around a lot, but I call Chattanooga, I split my hometown, depending on how I'm feeling about it, between LA and Chattanooga, but. I was born on an island in Washington State called Orcas Island off the coast of um, it's in the San Juans, so out past Bellingham. Um, and my family just randomly moved and my brothers had gone to summer camp there for many years. And I think that's one of those places where you're either seeking something or you're hiding from something, basically, and I think my family was, my parents' marriage was never really strong. My dad was very unhappy and they just needed to like escape. So they went to like the tiniest island possible. It was like idyllic. Um, in hopes that that would fix things. And so that's how we kind of ended up there.

• 13:25Speaker 06

  So they were there for 10 years. My brothers are 12 and 14 years older than me. So I was born at the tail end of that stint and I think then they kind of outgrew it. And my brothers were, the education system wasn't great on the island and my mom had tried to homeschool them because she had homeschooled, she ended up homeschooling me, but I think every kid is different and homeschooling just wasn't.

• 13:44Shawn Ryan?

  Why were your parents not happy?

• 13:47Speaker 06

  They're very different people, incredibly different people. They were friends and uh, my mom had a previous marriage. So my brothers and I have different dads and he died of brain cancer when they were very, very young. So I think.

• 13:59Shawn Ryan?

  Your, your brother's dads, your brother's dad died of brain cancer when they were very young.

• 14:04Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:05Shawn Ryan?

  How young?

• 14:07Speaker 06

  Like three and five, maybe?

• 14:09Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 14:10Speaker 06

  Yeah. It was really, it was, so we have my oldest brother Chase and then two twins. So my mom had tiny children and a terminally ill husband flying back and forth between Mayo Clinic. It was awful.

• 14:23Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 14:24Speaker 06

  Um, I think his brain cancer made their marriage very hard as well. Because everything obviously just flips. Um, and so he passed away and my mom is chronically efficient, I would say. And she was like, well, I. You know, my sons need a father and I don't want to be alone. And she had known my dad in college and they were good friends and he's, he's a wonderful guy. He's very sweet. But they're very different people. And they dated for a short amount of time and it was always long distance because he was in North Carolina and she was in California, which is where she and her first husband and the boys lived. And so they didn't spend a ton

• 15:03Speaker 06

  of time together. I think it was very like rose colored glasses. And um, it just wasn't from the get go. I don't think it was right. They're very different people. I think they would have been much happier with different, you know, my mom's very headstrong, very dominant personality, super very, very similar. And I think that she needed somebody who could stand up to her and combat that. It's like when I met Alex, who was my husband, it was like I'd finally met somebody who was like a sparring partner of mine, who wouldn't like put me in my place because that sounds bad, but who was willing to like push back and go, no, you are in the wrong here. And here's how you could be better. And I could do this, like I was so used to being able to do that with other people

• 15:44Speaker 06

  and to have somebody who was not going to be a pushover, basically. Um, and would be willing to debate things with me and discuss really like heavy and interesting subjects and wasn't intimidated by me in the slightest. And I don't think that was my dad. He needed somebody a lot softer, I think. And my mom needed somebody who was probably more dominant. And so I think it was just always very out of luck. Like we talk about, you know, masculine and feminine traits and finding that in a marriage and a relationship. I think they were always off balance. So it was not great from the start, I don't think.

• 16:21Shawn Ryan?

  Your father wanted you aborted.

• 16:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 16:23Shawn Ryan?

  Correct?

• 16:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 16:25Shawn Ryan?

  When did you find that out?

• 16:26Speaker 06

  Oh, gosh. Uh, probably when I was 15 or 16. 16.

• 16:35Shawn Ryan?

  How did that come up?

• 16:37Speaker 06

  We, um, I was living in LA, was a child actor. Everybody there was super pro-choice. I think I had been on some set and everybody was like wearing their Bernie pins or whatever, or pro-choice. And I just like very innocently asked my mom, I was like, what, like, could we just like talk through this issue? She was super, I think that's why my brothers and I ended up the way that we did. Like, my oldest brother and I are very, very principled in our values and very comfortable, like, speaking about them openly. Cause it was like the dinner table and just like even being in the car with our mom was like, debate was accepted. The hard conversations were not to be shied away from. Whether it was things that were going on in our family or things going on in the world, it was like, no, let's break these out together. She's a very like introspective.

• 17:21Speaker 06

  She's not academic, but she's incredibly intellectual. And so that was just a normal thing. So I was like, let's talk, like, I don't, let's talk about abortion. Like, I don't, I don't understand, like, what are these two sides of the coin? Like, I just didn't understand the issue. And so we started talking about that, you know, it was just like over the course of a few months. And I think that she had kind of weighed whether to bring that up. But that was what really changed her mind permanently about abortion was when my dad came to her. I was like, I don't want a child. Like, their marriage was already not great. It was an accident. Um, I don't think he really got along with my brothers very well. And it was just like, I don't want this child.

• 18:02Shawn Ryan?

  So you, so you're living in LA, the abortion topic comes up, you, you bring it up to your mom. And I mean, how did she bring that up to you?

• 18:11Speaker 06

  I don't even remember. But it was probably something that was very straightforward. She doesn't mince words. She's not somebody who is a, I guess, soft or like who brings anything in.

• 18:22Shawn Ryan?

  Very matter of fact.

• 18:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's just like this happened. And she had always been, in her mind, she was like,

• 18:31Speaker 06

  I think she was more pro-life, but kind of understood the pro-choice argument in terms of like government overreach and you know, it is woman's body. And then what was actually an issue that she had to decide and was put in front of her. And I think that completely she had to reanalyze the issue from a much more personal perspective. And I think she basically said to my dad, she was like, if you want this so badly, you go make the appointment. And he couldn't bring himself to do it.

• 19:00Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 19:01Speaker 06

  He couldn't even, it was just like such a, like a threat, basically like, I don't want the, he just wanted her to go do it.

• 19:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:06Speaker 06

  She was like, I'm not. And that was, it was all like.

• 19:10Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, how did you, do you remember like her telling you?

• 19:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, but it also didn't surprise me because I knew my dad. My dad and I never had a great relationship. It was just kind of like, okay, yeah.

• 19:21Shawn Ryan?

  How about today?

• 19:22Speaker 06

  Much better.

• 19:23Shawn Ryan?

  Have you ever asked him about it?

• 19:25Speaker 06

  No.

• 19:26Shawn Ryan?

  Will you?

• 19:27Speaker 00

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid and risked 350,000 Virginians healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig. On October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 20:08Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 20:14Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You're stalled, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 20:22Speaker 04

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17 and a minute without parent.

• 20:28Speaker 06

  Maybe one day I've talked about having him on the show and break, like trying to break through a lot of different things. I have a lot more, um, a lot more empathy for him as I've gotten older and I understand him more. Because I think that I.

• 20:46Speaker 06

  Saw him for his faults in my parents' marriage.

• 20:51Speaker 06

  Which they were, you know, they both had their faults, but

• 20:56Speaker 06

  outside of that marriage, I think I saw a broken man who was just not the right relationship. He'd had a really hard family life growing up.

• 21:05Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think he'll watch this?

• 21:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, probably. He watches everything.

• 21:09Shawn Ryan?

  Well, that'll probably strike up some questions.

• 21:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, for sure. Like I had done a, I think he watched the video I did with Ray Lynn where we talked about this and we sang together because she has a song about her mom almost aborting her. So I believe he watched that, but.

• 21:23Shawn Ryan?

  And it's never come up?

• 21:24Speaker 06

  Mm-mm.

• 21:25Shawn Ryan?

  How often do you talk to him?

• 21:27Speaker 06

  Every month or so.

• 21:31Speaker 06

  I definitely still have some boundaries up for sure.

• 21:33Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:34Speaker 06

  And I think he does as well. But I think in

• 21:40Speaker 06

  one of the greatest parts of growing up is seeing your parents as humans. With their own childhood, their own baggage. God, learning so much about, like, I knew what my mom had gone through as a mother of losing a husband. One of my brothers died at seventeen years old. Going through a really, really bitter divorce and being in a very unhappy marriage.

• 22:02Speaker 06

  One of my other brother now has schizophrenia. I mean, she's just been like hit after hit. Her like joke is like, was like Genghis Khan and like before her life, like what happened? Um, but seeing that, but then understanding things from her family and her past of like, you see this full human being that as a kid, you don't you can't comprehend. And I think I got to start seeing that at a younger age because of her honesty and her transparency. Um, and even her honesty about my dad of things that he wouldn't bring up, but of her comfort in being able to say

• 22:36Speaker 06

  X, Y, Z happened. It's not really my story to tell, but you know, this happened with your grandfather and your dad. And he went through that. And being able to like see that, you know, seventeen, eighteen years old was like, oh, God, okay. So this was not the right marriage. This was a hard childhood. And this is somebody who has really been lost. I don't think has ever found like true fulfillment.

• 22:59Speaker 06

  And I look at him and I'm just like, I'm sorry, give you a hug, basically. And it's really helped our relationship. And the other thing too that I never expected was

• 23:10Speaker 06

  Marrying Alex and bringing somebody into my life who didn't carry the baggage and the weight of growing up in this environment and didn't experience the heartbreaks and didn't experience feeling let down, didn't experience growing up in the shadow of schizophrenia and death and divorce and was able to look at my dad as just a human and who was able to find him so endearing and funny and kind. And then being able to see him through my husband's lens of like picking up the phone every time he calls and being like, hi, I just talked to Mike.

• 23:45Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 23:46Speaker 06

  And that's made me so much better.

• 23:49Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it's, it's, it's pretty amazing. You know, I want to dive into all of it, but it does sound like you had a really tough childhood and, and, um, you know, a lot of the stuff we spoke about at dinner last night. I mean, you know, a lot of people don't get out of that, you know, it just carries on from generation to generation to generation and, and somehow, you know, you broke through it. You're obviously a very strong woman. But what, what did your, what did your parents do? What did your mom do?

• 24:16Speaker 06

  She was a stay at home mom.

• 24:18Shawn Ryan?

  She was a stay at home mom?

• 24:19Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:19Shawn Ryan?

  And your dad?

• 24:20Speaker 06

  He works in finance, like, and not finance in any kind of like, like really cool or, you know, very, well, like he was a, like a banker at a local bank in Chattanooga, doing like nonprofit stuff. And I don't think that's ever what he wanted to do. He was good at it.

• 24:37Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:39Speaker 06

  But I think that he, there was, he would have been a great professor. He's super academic, very esoteric. So I think that's probably also, you know, there's such a lesson in, and I learned a lot from watching him. There's such a lesson in that of, you don't, you don't have to like love everything about what you do, but if you don't find a sort of fulfillment and passion in some sort of your life to fill that void and to fill that cup, you're always going to be searching and you're always going to feel lost and you're always going to, you know, substitute it with other things and other vices. And so I think there's often people kind of like joke about the cliche of like, do what you love. But it's like, if you don't have some kind of like, if you don't feel

• 25:23Speaker 06

  like what you're doing is important. Or like it speaks to some part of you and you can't identify that. And you have to find it in some other part of your life. And if you don't have both, I think that's what I watched with him where there was like, it wasn't in his career, it wasn't in his personal life, he wasn't happy in his marriage. Our family was a mess.

• 25:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, trapped.

• 25:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 25:47Shawn Ryan?

  What were you into as a kid?

• 25:48Speaker 06

  Everything. I basically did everything because I was homeschooled. So I was, had the time to do so many things. So I was obviously into theater and I was a dancer. So I did ballet, was a competitive gymnast, did community theater singing lessons. Was super weird and outdoors. I was like the home, like homeschool kid that was like sitting under the tree, like looking at leaves and like digging holes with my hands. And we lived on like five acres, 10 acres in Chattanooga. Um, had a save the earth club in like second grade. And because I was homeschooled, there was like nobody in it. It was just me and like one other friend. Um, uh, my whole family sails very randomly. Like my dad grew up in North Carolina, so he would sail. And then when we lived on the west coast, Arkansas, my brothers learned how to sail. And so I would go on the Tennessee river and our like

• 26:34Speaker 06

  tiny little like boat club thing where they would have, uh, tiny little, you know, like kid sailboats and, um, opties is what they're called. So I would sail. I rock climbed Chattanooga's huge rock climbing town.

• 26:47Shawn Ryan?

  How much did you guys bounce around?

• 26:49Speaker 06

  Hmm. So we went from Washington to Chattanooga. And then when I started acting, we bounced around.

• 26:57Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 26:58Speaker 06

  And so I was like, I just fell in love with it. And my mom was very against it, but I also think she saw kind of an out, like a way to escape her life in a way. My brother had just died and, um, I saw an emotional outlet that gave me the ability to be creative and escape my life and what was going on and the intensity of that and gave me a creative outlet. And I just kept wanting to do more. I was like, I would, I would go on like, I wasn't allowed to have a computer, but I would go on her like desktop and be like, Annie, like auditions nearby and be like, there's one happening like an hour away. I want to go do this musical. And so we would go audition. My mom would drive me like an hour plus to rehearsals and to shows.

• 27:41Speaker 06

  And then I was like, I think I want to be on Broadway. And so I wrote a letter to a manager in New York and was like, I want to be Jane Banks and Mary Poppins. And I'll like, I will fly up to meet you and do an audition. And then you'll help me get this role. I was just super motivated. And I think she saw kind of an escape. But she also, after my brother David died, her perspective as a parent changed where she was like, if I had known that David only had 17 years.

• 28:10Speaker 06

  What would I have said yes to? And obviously not give in to your child's every whims, but if there was something he loved more than anything. What would I have done?

• 28:17Shawn Ryan?

  Let's rewind a little bit.

• 28:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 28:18Shawn Ryan?

  Before we get into the acting. So Boo from Washington to Chattanooga. How, how much older were your brothers than you?

• 28:26Speaker 06

  12 and 14 years.

• 28:27Shawn Ryan?

  12 and 14 years. Were you close with them? Are you close with them?

• 28:32Speaker 06

  Yeah. I was never super close to my oldest brother Chase. Because when I was born, he was already going off to boarding school. He knew he wanted to be um in the military. So he went to the Marine Military Academy in Texas. Cause the Marines don't have a college, but they have a high school. So he did that and then basically spent the next four years working to get into a service academy and got into all of them. Um, and chose the Air Force Academy. So he was, and he spent every summer, you know, at the summer programs, at the Naval Academy, at Air Force. At West Point, got his pilot's license at like 15 years old. So he was super incredibly motivated, knew what he wanted to do with his life. So he was kind of out of the house by the time that I was born. So I didn't get to know him as well as a kid. I think I was probably around

• 29:16Speaker 06

  15 years old when we really started getting close. When all the stuff, like we can talk about later, that happened with my older brother, my other brother. We really got close then. But Reed and David are the twins. And so I grew up with them and was super close.

• 29:29Shawn Ryan?

  Super close. 12 years older and you guys are super close.

• 29:32Speaker 06

  Yeah. And David died at, because we were all living together. So like when I think about my childhood. You know, David died when I was five years old. So I don't have a ton of memories, unfortunately. But it was just like me and Reed and my mom. That's a surviving twin.

• 29:49Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of stuff were you experiencing in home with your mom and your dad?

• 29:54Speaker 06

  I unfortunately didn't know anything different. Like, it was icy.

• 30:00Speaker 06

  I never saw any affection. There was a lot of disdain for each other. We lived in a big house. It was like very long. It would be like on opposite ends of it, basically. And to their credit, I think that they tried. And they tried for me, and especially after David died and my brother Reed really started struggling. I think that the damage after that was irreparable after losing a child.

• 30:27Speaker 06

  But they did try in their own ways. But it was like, I'm so grateful that I'm here and I wouldn't change if the world, but it was, it's like I look at that as like, that was probably a marriage that never should have happened, just because they're so, so different. Like, and it's not like a different, like, complimentary way. Like, it's just, like, you are just... And there's a lot of affection there. You spend 20-plus years with someone because they were married for a long time. And they got through the divorce. And they're friendly now.

• 30:57Shawn Ryan?

  How old were you when they got divorced?

• 30:59Speaker 06

  Fifteen.

• 31:00Shawn Ryan?

  Fifteen?

• 31:01Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm. And that's when I had emancipated myself as well.

• 31:04Shawn Ryan?

  We'll get there.

• 31:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 31:04Shawn Ryan?

  We'll get there. Let's go back.

• 31:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 31:06Shawn Ryan?

  So your brother dies...

• 31:08Speaker 06

  At five.

• 31:09Shawn Ryan?

  At age five.

• 31:10Speaker 06

  I'm age five, he's seventeen.

• 31:13Speaker 06

  He dies on a... They went to a school in Chattanooga. They were on the rowing team. They were both super athletic, very artistic. I mean, they were like the most well-rounded guys. They're both brilliant. Incredibly artistically talented. Like, I can't even... I have my own creative talents, but like, I can't draw for crap. And they were both, I mean, brilliant. But also brilliant at math. Like, my brother Reed had a perfect SAT score. I mean, just so well-rounded, incredibly athletic. They were on the rowing team. Just good guys. And out of nowhere, David had a cardiac arrest and fell off the rowing machine. Right in front of Reed.

• 31:56Speaker 06

  So they're seventeen-year-old, identical twins. They never had that, like, separation. That, like, psychologically, twins have to go through. And if you're not a twin, like, I don't even think I can understand what that feels like. But I've talked to enough twins now. I've talked to Reed, you know?

• 32:14Speaker 06

  Seventeen, I think this is the, we're going into the eighteenth year since David has died. So he's now been gone longer than he was here.

• 32:24Speaker 06

  And I've spent enough time talking with Reed throughout that period of like, they had never, they were still one person. They had done everything together. And he watched his brother die in front of him. There were no defibrillators in the gym. There was nothing anybody could do. He was basically dead on sight. And it was Valentine's Day in 2007.

• 32:45Speaker 06

  And yeah, it was.

• 32:48Speaker 06

  I mean, that changes a family forever.

• 32:52Speaker 06

  And it's, there were so many different, it's like a, grief is such a patchwork, like a quilt, in my opinion, because everybody's perspective and journey is different. My mom's journey was completely different than my dad's. You know, this is not my dad's biological son. He never adopted my brothers. They had a lot of, it was very tense. Like the week before David died, they had a huge, my dad and David had a huge blowout.

• 33:21Speaker 06

  David even went to my mom that week and was like, why are you still in this marriage? Like, this doesn't work. I think she had a ton of regret over that.

• 33:32Speaker 06

  And he, so my dad's journey was completely different. I think he's, but it, just because he wasn't their biological father, I mean, he had spent fourteen years with them. It was very different than my mother's. Reed's journey as an identical twin was completely different, something that none of us could ever understand. My elder brother Chase had a completely different journey that I don't even think I really know much about. He's very, he's military. He's like, closed case done. And he was far away at the time he was in college. Then mine was completely different than anybody else's because I didn't know him. I did, like, I have these memories of things we would do together and we would wake up

• 34:15Speaker 06

  on Saturdays and he would make me waffles and we'd go like, ride in the car together and that kind of thing.

• 34:21Speaker 06

  But you, my grief was like,

• 34:26Speaker 06

  growing up and everybody has all of these memories with this person and you don't.

• 34:32Shawn Ryan?

  Do you remember how you found out?

• 34:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, so it was Valentine's Day.

• 34:40Speaker 06

  I got a phone call from the school. And again, that's like, uh, my mom was so, I truly think it's one of the best things she's ever done. In terms of raising us, she was so honest. There was no hiding anything. Which I think in the world of helicopter parenting and trying to protect your kids and kind of putting them in this glass box. Like, that's become very abnormal and people would look at our life and be like, why would you not shield them from this? But I'm very glad that she didn't. But it was just like, looked at me and went, David's collapsed. We need to go to the, like, put down your Valentines. That you were maybe, we were like, having a Valentine's Day party. And we have to go. And I remember getting in the car and I had like, the Valentine that I had made David. And I was just like, five years old and holding it.

• 35:28Speaker 06

  Oh God, I haven't talked about this in so long. Um.

• 35:37Speaker 06

  So I watched all of it.

• 35:40Speaker 06

  We got to the school.

• 35:43Speaker 06

  As who's being put in the ambulance?

• 35:56Speaker 06

  We went to the hospital and, um.

• 36:01Speaker 06

  I had like a nurse take me out as they were, you know, talking about what was going on and they had no idea what happened. I was wearing lime green clogs and I remember, cause it was, we were there until very late. I was walking through the halls of the hospital. I could hear my, like, Hannah Anderson clogs, like, clop through the hospital hallways.

• 36:20Speaker 06

  It's like funny, the things that you remember.

• 36:23Speaker 06

  And they were in like a very dark, purply room.

• 36:29Speaker 06

  And, um, I had no idea what happened. They think it's some kind of like, like epigenetics of something, you know, environmental happened. Genuinely no idea at the time. Nothing came with the autopsy. We all immediately, especially Reed, you know, we came to Nashville and went to Vanderbilt. They have one of the best pediatric, um, cardiology programs in the country, probably the best.

• 36:56Speaker 06

  They, I mean, hundreds of tests to figure out, you know, was there any risk for Reed? And there was nothing.

• 37:04Speaker 06

  Nothing.

• 37:06Speaker 06

  And um, David always drank Red Bulls in the morning. He would drink like two Red Bulls a day. He would drink one on the way to school. My mom would always kind of like, "David, he probably shouldn't drink that." And he would be, "Mom, everybody's drinking them." But she just said, there was like a gut feeling of, "I don't think this is good for you." And she asked the doctor at the time, like, "Do you think this is like his caffeine intake?" Like, what, like, there's no, we have no answers. What could have happened for a completely fit, no chronic illness, no history of anything, collapse and die within 15 minutes? When you have an identical twin brother standing here with no problems? Who still to this day doesn't have any problems?

• 37:52Speaker 06

  Never had any scares or anything. Um,

• 37:56Speaker 06

  and she was like, "Could it have been, you know, let's talk about what he..." My mom was very matter of fact of like, "Let's figure it out." Like, "What happened? We need to, you know, obviously like, prevent this from happening." Um, to any of the other kids. She brought up the Red Bull and they like laughed at her. And last year, a study came out that over like, from the last 10 years about the cardiac effects of drinks like Red Bull.

• 38:20Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 38:23Speaker 06

  And so that's just like one thing, but again, you have no, they threw around something called long QT, which is a rhythmic condition, which I actually, I go in for like EKGs and testing, we all do. Like, I don't know if Chase still does, but um, every five years or so, we'd go in and I'd get routine testing and they noticed something a few years ago. So I came back up to Vanderbilt, we did all of that, but it was nothing worth really addressing. But I monitor my caffeine intake for that reason. I kind of always, I look for like defibrillators and rooms at gyms and that kind of stuff. Um, but nothing serious, but that long QT, that was just kind of a shot in the dark of like, "Maybe it was that?" And that can be just spurred by environmental things. So,

• 39:08Speaker 06

  yeah, that's completely out of the blue.

• 39:11Shawn Ryan?

  What did the Valentine's Day?

• 39:13Speaker 06

  I think it was just Happy Valentine's Day, like, "Love Brett, to David with a little heart." It was a lollipop. It was one of those ones you get at the store where you have the little note that like sticks up on it. I still have it.

• 39:26Shawn Ryan?

  You still have it?

• 39:27Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:30Speaker 06

  That little book that I made him after that, my mom was

• 39:34Speaker 06

  and she's so intentional about everything. And she faces it head on. Which I think when you were in the fog of grief, I look back and I'm like, wow, you did this. But if she knew even at that time that like my experience was going to be so different than everybody else's. And so she, you know, put all these little papers together and made a booklet and she was like, I want you to draw out your favorite memories with David. She knew I would forgot them. So I have this whole little book of like my terrible stick figure drawings of, you know, going skiing and, you know, making waffles in the morning and I would love when, you know, David would be like in the car with me and he would like play float ride or whatever. Like, so I have all those written down.

• 40:18Speaker 06

  Um, and she has those in her house that I can go back and look at, but I'm very like,

• 40:24Speaker 06

  she knew even at that point that it was going to be a very different journey for all of us. And I think that she handled mine very, very well. And I, you know, she ended up running a grief organization for many years called Compassionate Friends. Which if anybody out there has experienced, um, the death of a child or sibling is an incredible organization that is just about the death of a child. There wasn't a chapter in Tennessee region, and so she created one and ran it. And through that I met kids that had been in a very similar situation as me where they lost somebody that was older than them.

• 41:00Speaker 06

  And again, it's so weird because you grow up and you watch your family struggle and you, you know, you hit every Christmas and every anniversary and it's your, you know, no, Christmas was never the same in our house. Like you can't, holidays after losing somebody so close to you will always feel.

• 41:20Speaker 06

  Just empty. Um, this goes like, this is a deep cut. I was like an English major, but Alfred Lord Tennyson is a very famous English poet. And he has a very, very long poem. It's basically a book called In Memoriam that tracks his experience through grief after losing his best friend. And I remember I read it in college and I was just like, hit, because I'd never heard anybody show the waves of grief over like the course of, you know, 10 years of like, and there was these moments each year that he would cover in the poem about holidays and Christmas specifically. Well, like there's something about those

• 42:03Speaker 06

  days that are so, you know, they're about family and about community and about coming together in love. And how can you do that when you've lost somebody that's so important?

• 42:13Speaker 06

  And I'm just seeing that was like, okay, it's not abnormal. What my family is feeling and having that community through that organization was really helpful. And through that I met other kids, like I said, who had lost siblings that were older than them because you you grew up in the shadow of grief, which changes your childhood forever. You grew up desperately wanting to have the memories that everybody else does of like, you got 17 years with them. I got five. You know, three of which I have no concept of any memory. Um, one of which he was at a boarding school. So it's like, maybe I got one year. And then you feel kind of stupid because it's like, should this even impact me? I was five years old. But it completely changes the trajectory of your family and your life.

• 43:01Speaker 06

  And then I was, I, I was literally, I almost said subconsciously, but it was much more tangible than that. I didn't think I was going to live beyond.

• 43:12Speaker 06

  Seventeen years in one week, because that was when he died.

• 43:15Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 43:15Speaker 06

  His birthday was February 7th. He died February 14th. Because you you idolize this person, and I've talked to people who have lost parents at a young age and who have lost older siblings.

• 43:29Speaker 06

  And I had, you know, 12 years of still looking up to him. He was still my older brother.

• 43:34Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it's it's not just one year, though. You know what I mean? I mean, even though you don't have a memory of the first 30 years, I mean, it's there.

• 43:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 43:43Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I I see it with my kids.

• 43:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 43:46Shawn Ryan?

  You know, one and three, and I see my youngest, you know, totally infatuated with my three-year-old. And, I mean, so there's still that, there's that bond, you know, that's that's

• 43:58Speaker 06

  It's real.

• 43:58Shawn Ryan?

  forming every minute of every day.

• 44:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 44:01Shawn Ryan?

  She doesn't want to do anything that her brother's not doing.

• 44:04Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 44:04Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, and so, well, you don't have a memory of it. It's, the psyche's in there.

• 44:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 44:11Shawn Ryan?

  It's ingrained.

• 44:13Speaker 06

  And it's hard to rationalize that when you feel ridiculous.

• 44:18Speaker 06

  But it's like that bomb, that idolization that you see with your daughter and your son of, like, you just keep having that. And I was like, I want to go do the things that he did, and I want to be as smart as he was, and I want to be as good of a person as he was. And then you get to that point, and I didn't, like, see a life beyond 17 in a week. And I remember it was, my birthday's October 12th. I had midterms. It was a week after that. And I had, like, an English midterm, and then it was like my second year of community college. I had a Spanish midterm later in the afternoon, so I was sitting in the parking garage in my car, sobbing.

• 44:58Speaker 06

  Because I had, like, made it.

• 45:02Speaker 06

  I felt so guilty.

• 45:04Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 45:07Shawn Ryan?

  What age did you start thinking then? What age did you start thinking you wouldn't make it past seventeen?

• 45:14Speaker 06

  Probably like tween. Here's when I really started to

• 45:18Speaker 06

  be able to think critically about the entire experience. And as it got closer, then it was like

• 45:27Speaker 06

  like genuinely, it felt like such a betrayal.

• 45:30Shawn Ryan?

  A betrayal?

• 45:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, of him of like, how did, how did I get here? Like, why am I?

• 45:38Speaker 06

  How do I get to live longer than you?

• 45:41Speaker 06

  Especially when you idolize somebody for so many years. Like you're much better person than I was. It's like you deserve so much more and why am I here? But that's also like on the flip side, it's such a fire under your ass. Of like, I always say, I feel like I'm living for two people.

• 45:59Speaker 06

  Because there were, he had such big dreams.

• 46:03Speaker 06

  Like he was so smart, he was so creative.

• 46:06Speaker 06

  It's like I never want to waste an opportunity. So my mom gave so much to me and pushed so hard to for me to pursue the things that I loved that would, you know, make me better, happier, more fulfilled.

• 46:22Shawn Ryan?

  Does that turn you into an overachiever?

• 46:24Speaker 06

  Sure. Yeah.

• 46:26Shawn Ryan?

  We're doing pretty damn good.

• 46:27Speaker 06

  I know, yeah. I don't even think about it as overachieving. It's just like, just don't stop.

• 46:32Shawn Ryan?

  Push it to the limit?

• 46:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 46:34Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, you know, we have a, you know, this is a huge veteran audience and um lot of kids, you know, that have lost parents, lost siblings.

• 46:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 46:44Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, what advice do you have for them?

• 46:48Shawn Ryan?

  Especially the young kids.

• 46:53Shawn Ryan?

  I've seen it.

• 46:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 46:54Shawn Ryan?

  I've seen, I've seen my friends die and I've seen their five-year-olds show up to the casket with an American flag over it. They don't know what's going on.

• 47:04Speaker 06

  No.

• 47:08Speaker 06

  I think.

• 47:10Shawn Ryan?

  Or maybe they do.

• 47:12Speaker 06

  You know. But I don't think you understand the magnitude of it until later. You understand the magnitude because they're gone. But I you, as you get older, you realize

• 47:24Speaker 06

  the magnitude of what that means for the rest of your life and what you'll carry. So I think that would kind of be the advice is just know it will never go away.

• 47:31Speaker 06

  And that's not, that doesn't have to be a bad thing. It's just like, I think people think of like, oh, you're grieving. You're mourning and we would have, you know, family, friends, and even people in our family.

• 47:42Speaker 06

  Who would say just like, literally somebody in our family told my mom. It's been 10 years, why aren't you over it?

• 47:51Speaker 06

  But you'll never be over it. And you can choose

• 47:57Speaker 06

  to let that cripple you, or you can choose to let it fuel you.

• 48:01Speaker 06

  You can choose to let it determine your life in a really negative

• 48:08Speaker 06

  way where you are constantly living in the shadow of this, or you can make a choice to live a life that's great in spite of it and in honor of them. Which I think is the decision that I made pretty clearly at a very young age. Like, I remember at like 11 years old, being like, I'm doing this for me and David.

• 48:27Speaker 06

  And be very clear about it.

• 48:30Speaker 06

  Um, and I was probably like a chronically self-aware kid, which is very abnormal, but

• 48:37Speaker 06

  you have to, you make a very conscious choice. Because it's been 17 years and I still, on the anniversary of his death, was like, sitting in the bank parking lot, just like

• 48:48Speaker 06

  crying a couple of weeks ago.

• 48:52Speaker 06

  But it's also really special because you have the opportunity to never let

• 49:00Speaker 06

  somebody's legacy go away.

• 49:05Speaker 06

  Be able to like speak their name and share their stories for your benefit, but for other people's benefit as well. Um. And so, yeah, it will never, it will, grief will change over the years. It will feel less all-consuming.

• 49:21Speaker 06

  You might go, you know, when you're in the thick of it, I think.

• 49:26Speaker 06

  My mom would say she never felt like there would be a day that she could get through without it consuming her. She can now.

• 49:33Speaker 06

  She thinks about him every single day. It drives so much of what she does. Drives the fact that she's never given up on my brother Reed, who struggles so much.

• 49:46Speaker 06

  But, um. It changes and it does get easier and you learn how to cope with it better.

• 49:53Speaker 06

  But it'll always be there and so you should try to look for the beauty in it. And the other thing that she always said to me, starting from when I was very young. Is that.

• 50:03Speaker 06

  You know. Grief wouldn't exist if we didn't love so deeply.

• 50:10Speaker 06

  And that's a blessing. That you got to love.

• 50:17Speaker 06

  It's kind of like it, you know, it's love that doesn't have anywhere to go anymore. So now you can choose where you're going to put it and what you're going to do with it.

• 50:25Shawn Ryan?

  Do you believe in God?

• 50:27Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 50:30Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think your brother's watching over you?

• 50:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 50:34Speaker 06

  I think of every time I see a cardinal. Do you know the idea with red birds that they're?

• 50:38Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, I know.

• 50:41Speaker 06

  When I drive out of our house, we live in the middle of, you know. The backwoods. There's one spot. I'm driving out on this dirt road. And every single day without fail, even in like the season when cardinals should not be there, drives right in front of my car.

• 51:00Shawn Ryan?

  How does that make you feel?

• 51:01Speaker 06

  Incredible. And it wasn't there all the time.

• 51:06Speaker 06

  Didn't see him a lot. Say hey, because I literally, I'm just like, yeah, that's David.

• 51:11Speaker 06

  It started this summer. I was really going through a hard time. Felt very lost.

• 51:19Speaker 06

  Was really questioning if what I was doing was right. And some, you know, career decisions that I was gonna be making. And that's when I started seeing him and I haven't gotten a day without seeing him since.

• 51:29Shawn Ryan?

  And what did that tell you?

• 51:31Speaker 06

  That I'm doing okay.

• 51:32Shawn Ryan?

  Laid into your gut?

• 51:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 51:36Speaker 06

  We did all sorts of, my mom visited mediums. Right after, I mean, I haven't done that and I kind of want to, but she's like, she did, she went to multiple mediums, like

• 51:45Speaker 06

  one in New York where you don't tell them or even his assistant, like who you are or anything about you and you go to this hotel room.

• 51:55Speaker 06

  And he would just like sit there, just like talking about it. It was so weird. And both her first husband and David popped up.

• 52:04Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 52:05Speaker 06

  Yeah. And we're like, there's a seventeen year old young man here who wants to speak to you. I mean, it was like,

• 52:15Speaker 06

  I was actually just thinking about this meeting the other day. I was Googling, trying to see if I could find him and he does my mom the name, because I would love to go.

• 52:22Speaker 06

  Just do this, but yeah, she was able to speak to Dawn, her first husband, hear from him. She had a miscarriage between the between the boys, I think, and I'm pretty sure they did one of the medium things that baby came in.

• 52:34Speaker 06

  Said something.

• 52:35Shawn Ryan?

  You know, the light's just dim behind you twice.

• 52:38Speaker 06

  I saw it.

• 52:41Speaker 06

  I believe in all that stuff.

• 52:43Shawn Ryan?

  Me too.

• 52:45Shawn Ryan?

  I know it's real, man. There's not a there's not a doubt in my mind.

• 52:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 52:55Speaker 06

  Which also is another part of this that can be very special. Again, it's all like, it's something that's really hard to hear and it's hard to implement, but it is about perspective at the end of the day. If you can think of it as, "I will let this drive me. I will be a better person in spite of this. I will live for both you and me and I will make you proud. I will know that you're always around me." Like, that's pretty cool.

• 53:19Shawn Ryan?

  It is. Do you think he's there right now?

• 53:22Speaker 06

  Absolutely. I think, I'm so like selfish, but I'm like, he doesn't go day without being with me. Yeah. He's got a bunch of people to bounce around with, but I'm like, no, here.

• 53:33Shawn Ryan?

  You're the baby.

• 53:34Speaker 06

  I know. Exactly. I need to send him over to my other brother, though. You need to go help him.

• 53:41Shawn Ryan?

  We'll talk about that in a minute.

• 53:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 53:43Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a quick break.

• 53:44Speaker 06

  Sounds good.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company informed me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd, causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 53:57Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 53:58Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 54:04Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped going? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 54:08Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 54:11Speaker 04

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 54:22Speaker 07

  Ally here with cash when you need it. Like when your stylist just did the most. Fresh cut and zero cash. Don't be in... Ally has 75,000 fee-free ATMs nationwide, so you're never without cash. Ally Bank Member FDIC.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company informed me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd, causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 54:48Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 54:54Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped going? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 55:02Speaker 04

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 55:12Shawn Ryan?

  Alright, so we're back from the break. Yeah, the medium stuff?

• 55:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 55:16Shawn Ryan?

  Have you ever heard of the Long Island medium? I think that's what they call her.

• 55:21Speaker 06

  Yes, yeah. Wasn't she on some reality shows?

• 55:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I think she's been on a ton of stuff.

• 55:26Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 55:27Shawn Ryan?

  But, my wife's, uh, my wife's family had some crazy stuff happen with that. They went to, I guess they do like a show.

• 55:36Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 55:37Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, it sounded like it was pretty intimate. And, um, without getting too into detail about her family, she had, she had some family members that, um, they lost their dad.

• 55:52Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 55:53Shawn Ryan?

  And, they went to this, they went to this medium. It's kinda like, you know, just entertainment.

• 55:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 56:00Shawn Ryan?

  And, you know, she was like, "Oh", the medium was like, "Oh, you know, I'm getting this", and all these people raised their hand, like, "No, it's not you", "Oh, like, they're saying this", and all these other people raised their hand, and it's like, "No, it's not you", and, she said,

• 56:22Shawn Ryan?

  "They know that you go in the closet and spray your dad's old cologne",

• 56:30Shawn Ryan?

  "in total privacy", "to remember him", and her family member just started like, crying immediately. And then, you know, and then there was a little bit more. I can't remember the rest of it, but it's like, man, that stuff is wild.

• 56:47Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 56:48Shawn Ryan?

  You know?

• 56:50Speaker 06

  Have you seen the, um, telepathy tapes?

• 56:53Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 56:54Speaker 06

  I'll have to ask, um, the team downstairs about it, but there's a, I'll butcher the explanation, but, it is, um, it's a podcast that's been blowing up, and it focuses on, um, non-verbal people with autism.

• 57:12Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 57:12Speaker 06

  And, just telepathy and all of that, and not just being able to communicate, but, like, being in separate rooms. And like, this person will have like, a ball or something, and, they'll have this person in the other room, and it's like, "So what are they looking at?", and it's like, "Purple ball",

• 57:29Shawn Ryan?

  This stuff's crazy, man.

• 57:30Speaker 06

  It's just all like...

• 57:32Shawn Ryan?

  It's like some type of connected consciousness.

• 57:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 57:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:36Speaker 06

  The brain is like... There's so much we don't know, and I think that cannot be

• 57:44Speaker 06

  fully explained and probably never will be explained, and that's probably, you know, faith.

• 57:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm with you. You know, it's like, I just, I don't think any

• 57:59Shawn Ryan?

  I don't think that we are aware of our full capability, you know, I've I've delved into the subject several times with the psychic type stuff and the remote viewers and stuff like that. And I think that's a fascinating subject and, you know, there's of course, there's everybody else who claims it and which is just complete bullshit, but, but

• 58:24Shawn Ryan?

  yeah, I think that the, the human mind is capable of so much more than we can even fathom.

• 58:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 58:31Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and it's, I think it's been dubbed down just from century to century to century and the, and what we are today, but, but I mean, and, and a lot of those guys talk about it, you know, like how, how they think that it may have happened. But yeah, and, and I use, I mean, I just

• 58:52Shawn Ryan?

  in a weird way, I use that in business and what I'm doing and there are no fucking limits. You know, and, and like, we're just capable of so much. And we put these false limitations on ourselves and, and trap ourselves in these little prisons.

• 59:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 59:10Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and, and it, and a lot of people, we all suffer from it somewhat, right? But some a lot more than others. But we just, anyways, yeah, I just, I think that we are capable of so much more than what we're doing. And if you can wrap your head around that and start to realize there are no limitations, then.

• 59:34Shawn Ryan?

  Amazing things can be accomplished. And you're doing that, by the way. So, congratulations. But, let's lighten it up a little bit.

• 59:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 59:44Shawn Ryan?

  So you moved to California, you start getting into acting.

• 59:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I, um...

• 59:49Shawn Ryan?

  At least I think that's lightening up. I don't know how you feel about California.

• 59:52Speaker 06

  No, no, California is fine. No, I spent so, I've spent ten years of my life there. It's like I think of my childhood in Chattanooga and that is where the most formative things in my entire life happened. You know, it's where I lost my brother. I mean, it's just like, that's rooted there in so many ways. Um, but I, my adolescence was spent in LA. And my mom was born there and my, they had lived in California prior to me being born. They lived in Northern California, so in a lot of ways for her, it was just, you know, going back home. Um, yeah, I started.

• 1:00:28Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, that had to be a culture shock, right?

• 1:00:30Speaker 06

  Oh, completely.

• 1:00:31Shawn Ryan?

  Going from Chattanooga, Tennessee.

• 1:00:32Speaker 06

  I hated it.

• 1:00:34Shawn Ryan?

  To LA. You hated LA?

• 1:00:35Speaker 06

  Well, I loved what I was doing. Because I, I didn't ever think of acting as a job. I didn't think of it as a job until I was like fifteen and started, you know, just going into college and had to start thinking of it as like a career and a job. And then I was like, oh, I don't know. It was just fun. Again, it was like, you go through something so intense as a small child and you have nowhere to put that emotion and to have something that allowed me to, you know, walk around in somebody else's shoes and to kind of safely express things I didn't feel comfortable expressing in our home. Like, I would, after my brother died, I would hide in cabinets.

• 1:01:13Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 1:01:13Speaker 06

  Like I would go in the kitchen cupboard and like shut the door. There was like a cabinet in our house in North Chattanooga where I would do it. There was a house, uh, cabinet in, uh, on Signal Mountain where I would do it and I would lock my, like I was just shut down. And acting gave me the

• 1:01:28Shawn Ryan?

  Well, hold on. Why would you go on the cabinet?

• 1:01:31Speaker 06

  I was just wanted to be alone. It was safer.

• 1:01:35Shawn Ryan?

  You felt safer then?

• 1:01:35Speaker 06

  It was like I could be somewhere that was like my own space. There's like,

• 1:01:41Speaker 06

  I mean, I still do that sometimes.

• 1:01:43Shawn Ryan?

  You still lock yourself on the cabinet?

• 1:01:44Speaker 06

  Not in a, not in a cupboard, but like there was a day I was working on the show and I just felt so like, like last week I felt so overwhelmed. And it was like every noise in the house was just like

• 1:01:57Speaker 06

  too much. And I went and I literally sat in my dark closet, closed the door, didn't turn the light on and just finished writing the show. And I was like, I just have to be. You just kind of like turn stuff off. And I think I felt that at a very young age of there was so much noise. Emotional noise. There was my brother, there was my mom and dad grieving individually and fighting and a lot of change. And I felt like I didn't have something of my own. Um, and it being a small confined space just felt like that pressure of like, this is safe. And acting gave me the ability to, I guess, be big.

• 1:02:39Speaker 06

  To like express things in a way that I wasn't able to express. Like I, my mom would always say, like, I would go on stage and become like an animal. Like I would just like light up. I loved being able to not be Brett.

• 1:02:53Speaker 06

  And be somebody else and experience their experiences. That's why I love doing things on stage and, you know, I went, I love theater. Theater is my first love, I would say. And I ended up going to LA and the reason why I went to LA is because if you're under 18 and you want to be on Broadway, there are height limits. You can't be taller than five feet. Most of the time. And I was super tall. I grew like a string bean. So the manager that I had written a letter to at eight years old, saying I want to be on Broadway was like, you can go home to Chattanooga and you can just keep doing regional theater and maybe audition for a show here and there, or you can go to LA if you want to keep acting. Because you are five foot two, you're eleven years old, and you're not going to be hired for anything. You've got seven years to kill, basically.

• 1:03:37Speaker 06

  Because they won't. And the reason for that is when you're at the very back of the house on stage, they want you to look significantly smaller than the adults on stage. There can be no confusion about whether you are an adult or whether you are a child on screen or on stage. So it makes sense. But that was heartbreaking for me because I, all I wanted to do is be on Broadway. It was like-

• 1:03:59Shawn Ryan?

  At eight years old, you knew you wanted to be on Broadway?

• 1:04:01Speaker 06

  Oh, yes. I was like, that's what I want to do. We would go see Broadway shows. It would like come through Atlanta. We would drive up and see them. I was like, that is what I want to do.

• 1:04:09Shawn Ryan?

  Would you act just as an eight-year-old, just playing around?

• 1:04:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, so yeah.

• 1:04:13Shawn Ryan?

  What would you do?

• 1:04:15Speaker 06

  I would act out things in our front yard. I was constantly writing stories. And the funny thing is, I, we went and saw theater. We didn't have television in our house. We had ATV and I was allowed, we were talking about this last night, I was allowed to watch The Andy Griffith Show and I Love Lucy. And that was all. So it wasn't like I was watching movies and TV shows, like I want to be on Disney Channel or whatever it was. But I just, I read constantly. I love stories. At the end of the day, what drives me more than anything in like this career still today in acting is a love of story, is understanding why people do the things that they do, how stories change us. I've been personally positively impacted by stories, whether they be through literature or on stage or on film of seeing yourself in a character, or being able to put yourself in their shoes, and that being

• 1:05:00Speaker 06

  an incredibly transformative experience. Um, for me, politics is storytelling because it's all about human nature. I think that's why I am interested in it because it's, you know, it's reality TV, it's a, you know, Shakespeare tragedy, whatever, depending on the day. Those can kind of be interchanged a bit. But it is about story. And I love every day getting on my show and being able to tell a story and bring people in and weave that together and take them along on this journey and have a beginning, middle, and end, and hopefully leave them changed at the end. And like have them think about something in a different light or feel something through me telling this story. And that's why I loved acting. So I didn't, you know, eleven years old,

• 1:05:43Speaker 06

  I didn't care if it was on stage or on film. I was like, I just want to tell stories. I just want to act.

• 1:05:48Shawn Ryan?

  So it was both a hobby and an escape?

• 1:05:51Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:05:53Speaker 06

  I don't think I could have like said that at 10 years old. I was just like.

• 1:05:56Shawn Ryan?

  You didn't realize it was an escape?

• 1:05:57Speaker 06

  I was just like, I love to act.

• 1:06:00Shawn Ryan?

  When did you realize it was an escape?

• 1:06:03Speaker 06

  I think a lot of things clicked for me around 13 years old, 13, 14. It's when

• 1:06:11Speaker 06

  stuff really took off with my parents. Divorce got messy. It's when my brother Reed had his first psychotic break. It was when I think I just became a lot more self-aware as all of those things were happening. And I think that's when I kind of realized like, oh, this is why I love it.

• 1:06:29Speaker 06

  Because I'm not me. And that was also like, starting to do things on camera for like this, whatever industry I've ended up in of like this like cultural commentary, whatever it is. It was so weird for me because I was, I was just being Brett. Being Brett was very hard. It was the reason why I never sang in public. My first professional job actually was singing. First time I was ever paid was to be in the Atlanta Symphony Opera's production of Lava M. I'm a classically trained singer. I've been doing it the longest out of any of these things, just because I was in like choir when I was younger. And to this day, I am petrified of singing in public.

• 1:07:08Speaker 06

  Because it's, it's me. Like I can sing in a musical. And I can be a character and I'm on this ride of, you know, whatever character I'm playing of, you know, getting through the entire show, beginning, middle and end. I'm not Brett, I'm this person. But if you ask me to get up on stage and just sing you a song, it is like I have like stripped down. And I might be better at it now that I've gotten so comfortable of like, I'm sitting here, I'm just being Brett. Streamed to millions of people. It's like, you know, I have however many billions of views over the last three years. So I've gotten more comfortable with it. But I spent over 10 years avoiding just being Brett and being a character because it helped me.

• 1:07:50Speaker 06

  I think that helped me understand me more.

• 1:07:52Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think you still have a lot of walls up?

• 1:07:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, for sure. I've gotten, I mean, I would have never cried in front of you

• 1:08:00Speaker 06

  five, six years ago. I remember the first time that I ever cried in front of somebody. I was sitting in the Burbank Public Library, sitting outside in the grass, having a picnic with one of my good friends at the time in LA. And something had happened with my brother. And that was the first time I ever cried in front of somebody that was not my mom. Like even like showing any kind of emotion in that regard. Terrified of letting people in.

• 1:08:25Speaker 06

  Could not like, I felt like I'd been burned enough by my dad. I couldn't let him in. I'm like, he wanted to let me in either.

• 1:08:33Speaker 06

  Um.

• 1:08:35Speaker 06

  I was just like.

• 1:08:37Speaker 06

  I was really having a hard time, uh. Processing things.

• 1:08:44Shawn Ryan?

  Have you ever thought about psychedelics?

• 1:08:46Speaker 06

  No, I'm terrified.

• 1:08:48Shawn Ryan?

  Why?

• 1:08:49Speaker 06

  Things that could go wrong.

• 1:08:51Shawn Ryan?

  What could go wrong?

• 1:08:53Speaker 06

  My brother is. I don't think my brother did them well. But I look at my brother, who has basically tried every single drug in the book. And didn't do anything that was intentional or for healing.

• 1:09:06Speaker 06

  And so I think I've, my impression has been tainted by that. But we were even were like talking last night of like. Maybe that would be good for him to go do something that is intentional and tailored for.

• 1:09:18Speaker 06

  Healing, um.

• 1:09:19Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe it would be good for you.

• 1:09:20Speaker 06

  I know. What I did do though was, um, you ever heard of EMDR?

• 1:09:26Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:28Speaker 06

  And that was kind of the, and that's not even close to psychedelics, but that was probably the most transformative thing I ever did in therapy.

• 1:09:36Speaker 06

  I don't think I, and that was like, I wouldn't be able to be here having this conversation with you. Without that. Of like tapping into things that I had.

• 1:09:47Speaker 06

  Never even considered processing.

• 1:09:52Speaker 06

  Or thinking about the way that they impacted me and my childhood. And there were so many things that I had forgotten that in doing that therapy.

• 1:10:00Speaker 06

  And I did multiple different kinds. I did the rapid eye movement, which is harder for me. What ended up really working are the eggs that they like put in your hands that are little vibrating things and you hold them and they go.

• 1:10:10Speaker 06

  And that was super. I mean, it was like, I locked in immediately. And it was like floodgates, floodgates of. Everything I watched and saw and. Even things were relatively recent that I was, you know. It was going on with my. Brother and his schizophrenia of stuff that I just didn't consider, didn't time. It was like so normal to me at that point.

• 1:10:35Speaker 06

  So that was.

• 1:10:36Shawn Ryan?

  The thing about psychedelics is the walls completely come down.

• 1:10:39Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:40Shawn Ryan?

  And.

• 1:10:40Speaker 06

  Scary.

• 1:10:42Shawn Ryan?

  It is. Until you do it.

• 1:10:45Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:47Shawn Ryan?

  But they can, they completely. Come down.

• 1:10:53Shawn Ryan?

  And there's aspects of yourself that you never realized were there. You, you find out who you are.

• 1:10:59Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:59Shawn Ryan?

  And because the walls come down and some of the walls, I think, at least with myself, you know, I didn't, you don't even realize certain walls are up because they've been up so damn long.

• 1:11:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:11:10Shawn Ryan?

  And then when they completely.

• 1:11:13Shawn Ryan?

  Go away.

• 1:11:14Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:17Shawn Ryan?

  You find a lot of things out about yourself.

• 1:11:21Shawn Ryan?

  Might be something to look into, maybe not. I don't know.

• 1:11:24Speaker 06

  You could go with my brother.

• 1:11:25Shawn Ryan?

  Would I?

• 1:11:26Speaker 06

  I said, no, I could go with my brother.

• 1:11:30Shawn Ryan?

  That could be really good.

• 1:11:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:11:32Shawn Ryan?

  That could be really good.

• 1:11:34Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:35Shawn Ryan?

  Did we talk about this on your show? Can't remember.

• 1:11:38Speaker 06

  I don't think so.

• 1:11:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I did it.

• 1:11:43Shawn Ryan?

  And.

• 1:11:48Shawn Ryan?

  I didn't realize I had all these walls up and. It just changed, it, it changed the entire trajectory of my life.

• 1:11:57Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:57Shawn Ryan?

  And it was already, it was going like this, but with my family, with my wife, with my son at the time, you know, I didn't have my daughter yet and it helped me be in the, more in the moment. It helped me be more open with my wife. It took a lot of the fear. That I didn't even realize I had.

• 1:12:20Shawn Ryan?

  Business wise.

• 1:12:21Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:22Shawn Ryan?

  And. Then my business went straight up.

• 1:12:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:12:26Shawn Ryan?

  Because I realized I wasn't beholden to anybody.

• 1:12:29Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:29Shawn Ryan?

  And. All the fears of.

• 1:12:35Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you know the fears, the fears of being in the limelight and in having millions of people following you and feeling beholden to an audience. I mean, all of that shit went away. It all fucking went away, man. And I'm just, I'm a huge proponent of it. I've seen so many people turn their lives around with get rid of addictions, anxieties, depression, um, post-traumatic stress, all that kind of stuff, man. Like the walls come down in your life trajectory. Just it's you find out who you are and you lean into that. And it, it, it also kind of reassures that your intuition is pretty much right on the money.

• 1:13:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:13:21Shawn Ryan?

  But, yeah.

• 1:13:23Speaker 06

  Probably good with, I don't think I'm somebody that's super anxious, but there is a perfectionism that is ingrained in me. I think when you, um, then I really, I mean, even yesterday on Alex's and my drive to dinner, I was just like, I don't even know what set it off, but

• 1:13:48Speaker 06

  I'm such a, my entire childhood between David's death and my parents divorce and

• 1:13:58Speaker 06

  my dad is somebody that, um, desperately wanted to please and could never really please. And there was so much going on that I was constantly a peacemaker. And I, it's ironic that I do what I do, but I, rocking the boat in my personal life is incredibly difficult. I can stand up to people in business. I've done really hard things when it comes to career and business. I've taken a lot of risks. I put myself out there, but when it comes to like my personal life, there are like little minute things of where I feel like I'm going to let somebody down and disappoint them. But I'm, I allow myself to be a doormat because I'm so terrified of the repercussions of not being too loud of being, and again, I think that goes back to acting of like,

• 1:14:42Speaker 06

  it gave me the opportunity to be big.

• 1:14:46Speaker 06

  To be a hundred percent me, even though I was like playing another character. I went from being in this house where I felt like I had to be in this like, I'd put myself in this cupboard. Make myself small. So because everybody else was dealing with much bigger things. I was like, I remember thinking that as a kid, like I'm. Whatever I'm going through, it's not as important. And I was aware enough of that. And I just desperately wanted to keep the peace. It was like, if I can fix. This situation, if I can just keep people. Like together and happy and. Like we can just walk on eggshells. We can get through this and. Maybe they won't fight. Maybe he won't drink. Maybe Reed won't do X, Y, Z.

• 1:15:26Speaker 06

  And I think I still carry that. And it's this, it's so ironic because I get online and I. Especially three years ago, when I was first starting to share things were very controversial. I think now I. It's more culturally acceptable to talk about what we talk about and what I do on the show. But three years ago. It's like ironic that I have so, I carry so much weight and anxiety in my personal life. Like I. And that's why Alex, I'm so like. He's the greatest man. Of, I could not. Like let him be angry at me. Not even be angry, but just to like, oh, right. Like I. Was petrified. I couldn't like.

• 1:16:08Speaker 06

  I don't even know how to describe it. Like I didn't even want to take them like one misstep. I think. Another person would have seen that and kind of rolled with it and been like, great. She's gonna do whatever I want. And he looked at that and he was like. That is inhibited. That's like a problem that you can't even, that you burst into tears and are hysterically crying. At the thought of disappointing me over. You burned chicken for dinner? And I was just like. Because I was this person that I respected and loved so much already, early on in our relationship. And I was like, you're just another person I can't let down. I can't let you down. He was like, it's a chicken. It's like, if you can't even. And that's probably the thing that my mom and looking at our relationship.

• 1:16:51Speaker 06

  Has had like the most gratitude for. Alex for helping me with is. Standing up for myself in family, in work. I don't think I would have done. Anything I did. In the last 12 months without him.

• 1:17:08Speaker 06

  I don't think I would be as confident in my family and navigating the relationships and

• 1:17:16Speaker 06

  anything in my personal life without having that person who looked at me and went, that's really not normal. Like, what happened to you to make you think

• 1:17:25Speaker 06

  that this is so? But I still, like, I've gotten a lot better, but I still will just, like, be set off. I had another, like, chicken incident the other day where I opened a package of chicken and it was mislabeled. And I was like, had this recipe that I was making for dinner. And I thought it was one kind of chicken and I opened it up and it wasn't. And I was just like, it's like, oh no, it's all gonna be ruined. And I like threw the package of chicken and I was like, oh my God. And so when he came home from the gym and he was like, what the hell have I, like, walked into? And I was like, you're gonna like me dis- disappointed. Um, and then it was like five minutes later, I was like, oh, I'm doing it again, aren't I?

• 1:17:59Speaker 06

  Lights just flickered. Um, and you hear that and you're like, and you, but I'm in like the most loving, supportive relationship with the most like, he's so even tempered. It's one of the things that I love most about, he's like unflappable.

• 1:18:16Speaker 06

  He is like had the most normal, healthy family. They're incre- I love my in-laws. And he met this girl who was like,

• 1:18:26Speaker 06

  has been through all of this stuff and he's, you know, absolutely undeterred and is so steady. And never looked at it as like, you're broken, you're whatever. It's just like, this is,

• 1:18:39Speaker 06

  like, your life will be better for you. Anyway, so that's probably what I would.

• 1:18:43Shawn Ryan?

  It's interesting.

• 1:18:44Speaker 06

  Help me with that.

• 1:18:45Shawn Ryan?

  Cause you're overconfident. You know what I mean? Maybe not overconfident, you're very confident. The Brett Cooper that we all know is very confident.

• 1:18:53Speaker 06

  Oh, incredibly. There's like nothing I can't do in my mind.

• 1:18:55Shawn Ryan?

  Then behind the scenes, you're very self-conscious.

• 1:18:58Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:19:00Speaker 06

  Which I feel like to an extent is like a healthy balance because I not the way that it manifests in like my very personal life where I still am having to that's such like a weird lefty like psychological term but like unlearning those things but I'm having to let go of that because I'm not in a relationship or an environment where that's going to hurt me anymore or I'm going to feel any repercussions for that. I don't need to keep a boat steady anymore and I still like will have moments where I feel that. Um, so that part of it isn't healthy and I know that. But I do think there's something to be said for when I go to work, when I turn on the camera, when I'm talking about the things that I care about that I know are good for people that I believe in, that

• 1:19:41Speaker 06

  I believe in truth, that my voice doesn't waver, that I have lofty goals for myself, that I think about my brother, I'm willing to live for both of us. I want to do all these things. I'm never going to say no to an opportunity. I'm going to take a huge risk. And then, but I also go home and I know that I'm like, I'm not really the shit. I'm not the most important person in the world. I don't think that I am. I'm not in it for fame or power or money, whatever it is. I genuinely love what I do. I love telling stories. So I think there's an aspect of it that's, I think probably has helped me a little bit, but the self-conscious aspect of it certainly doesn't.

• 1:20:22Shawn Ryan?

  You're a wise woman, man. I'm being serious, especially for 23 years old, but just in general, you're very wise. And, you know, it's, it's super impressive to me that that's how you've taken your brother's death is living for him. And I think this is something we talk about so much, uh, right here because we talk about a lot of loss because my background and a lot of the guests' background being military, special operations.

• 1:20:55Shawn Ryan?

  It's just part of it. And

• 1:20:57Speaker 06

  It's powerful. I'm not the only person who comes on here and breaks down and cries. It's you have a

• 1:21:04Speaker 06

  something in this room.

• 1:21:05Shawn Ryan?

  Well, the thing is, a lot of people will take death and they will they'll take the loss of a loved one and it will debilitate their entire existence, you know, and when people ask me for advice on, you know, how to deal with loss, or I ask a guess on how to deal with loss, to include you at 23, having been through it at five, I mean, it's like, that's how you have to look at it. That's how you that's how you have to look at it. Do you think that person would want to watch you suffer?

• 1:21:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:21:43Shawn Ryan?

  And mourn and, and

• 1:21:47Shawn Ryan?

  and ruin your entire life out of grief?

• 1:21:50Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:21:50Shawn Ryan?

  And no, man, that's not what they would want. They would want you to win. They would want you to live your life to the fullest. And so I think it's just amazing that you've already figured that out. And it sounded like you figured it out a long time ago. And so

• 1:22:06Speaker 06

  I don't know how.

• 1:22:07Shawn Ryan?

  Good for you.

• 1:22:07Speaker 06

  It shocks me.

• 1:22:09Shawn Ryan?

  Intuition, man.

• 1:22:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:22:11Shawn Ryan?

  Powerful.

• 1:22:12Speaker 06

  It's very, it's genuinely thinking back and now looking at kids that I meet that were, you know, this age and looking at young people and knowing that at 12, 13 years old, I was tangibly thinking I'm going to break a cycle. That's weird. So, I mean, it's powerful, but it's like, I was thinking that already.

• 1:22:31Shawn Ryan?

  It's not normal.

• 1:22:33Speaker 06

  No. It shouldn't be weird. That should be, I wish that for any young person that's, you know, I haven't, I didn't have the worst childhood in the world. I had something that was very abnormal and it was very hard. But I know that there are a lot of kids that have gone through far worse things and very different things. And we've all had our own different walks of life and I think that there are some of us that see, again, that see that as fuel and that are given the gift of being able to be like chronically self-aware or just aware of your situations to have that like bold moment. But I was articulating that in my mind and to other people. I remember talking to my like Sunday school teacher at a young age

• 1:23:16Speaker 06

  and being like, I will not replicate what I've seen.

• 1:23:24Speaker 06

  There was so much unhappiness. And so much.

• 1:23:31Speaker 06

  My parents were both brilliant individuals. And that marriage held them back. In. A magnitude of ways. And there was so much unhappiness. Already.

• 1:23:43Speaker 06

  And then adding in my brother's death, death. Adding in. You know. Schizophrenic diagnosis, adding in my father's. Major depressive disorder. Adding in. Suicide attempts. Into our family. It was like, I'm not, I'm going to do everything I can. Because I knew. There's more to life than that.

• 1:24:12Shawn Ryan?

  Did you go through? Family suicide attempts at a young age, or is this later on?

• 1:24:16Speaker 06

  No, so.

• 1:24:17Shawn Ryan?

  Did you know that?

• 1:24:18Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:24:20Shawn Ryan?

  What was the first one?

• 1:24:28Speaker 06

  Twelve, thirteen, that like those years. Shit went down, basically. Um. Yeah, my dad.

• 1:24:41Speaker 06

  There was a lot leading up to that.

• 1:24:45Speaker 06

  Um.

• 1:24:48Speaker 06

  Of threats of it and. My mom had dealt with that. That was something she didn't share. I think she was right to. I don't think it's my right to. Even share that here and talk about his family. That was very personal.

• 1:25:04Speaker 06

  And they worked, they, she.

• 1:25:07Speaker 06

  Fought those battles in private. It was a heavyweight to carry.

• 1:25:12Speaker 06

  And then, yeah, around.

• 1:25:16Speaker 06

  I was twelve, thirteen.

• 1:25:19Speaker 06

  It was, there wasn't any hiding it. It was in front of us and.

• 1:25:24Speaker 06

  Not. You know, physically, but it was, we were involved. I was driving around Chattanooga with. My brother Reed at three AM looking for him. Standing on the Chattanooga walking bridge, wondering if he had jumped. Because we had no idea where he went. We knew he was somewhere.

• 1:25:43Shawn Ryan?

  Jeez.

• 1:25:46Speaker 06

  So there's

• 1:25:50Speaker 06

  incredible unhappiness.

• 1:25:52Shawn Ryan?

  This was common?

• 1:25:54Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm. That was the only time that

• 1:25:58Speaker 06

  I think a step was taken and that I was

• 1:26:02Speaker 06

  that my brother and I were involved and brought into the kind of the circle of it.

• 1:26:09Shawn Ryan?

  Where did you find him?

• 1:26:10Speaker 06

  He came home.

• 1:26:16Shawn Ryan?

  How did you know it was a suicide attempt?

• 1:26:19Speaker 06

  Gave us postcards as he walked out the door.

• 1:26:27Shawn Ryan?

  He gave everybody a postcard?

• 1:26:31Speaker 06

  I couldn't really understand it and we put the pieces together and um

• 1:26:36Speaker 06

  they're very ominous.

• 1:26:39Speaker 06

  And I uh, you know how I was telling you at dinner last night that I had a Nancy Drew fixation and I would go? I busted my brother's high school party and that kind of thing and I, anyway, we were given these um, I guess I went back into Nancy Drew mode. Given these postcards.

• 1:26:58Speaker 06

  And um, I was like, something's not right. My mom was super confused. Reid and I were watching some movie on the couch. He walked out of his office, gave us a postcard. Gave my mom a postcard.

• 1:27:13Speaker 06

  And left, didn't say a word.

• 1:27:18Speaker 06

  And again, I was just like, something's not right. I started looking around the house and I found a

• 1:27:23Speaker 06

  manila envelope with a suicide note.

• 1:27:29Speaker 06

  On his bedside table.

• 1:27:31Speaker 06

  With ever all of his information, will, testament. And I brought that into my mom and we called the police.

• 1:27:40Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:27:45Speaker 06

  I'm so grateful he didn't do it.

• 1:27:56Shawn Ryan?

  What was it like when he came home?

• 1:28:00Speaker 06

  I ignored him. I was so angry.

• 1:28:07Speaker 06

  I don't think he wanted to see us, anyway. We went straight to my mom.

• 1:28:14Speaker 06

  And then, looking back, I don't know.

• 1:28:20Speaker 06

  I ignored him because I was so hurt and I just went into my room. I don't even know the right... You don't know how to handle that until thirteen years old.

• 1:28:29Speaker 06

  I don't know if what I did was right, but I really shut him out after the fact. And we already had, even at that young age, we were like... Because I'm so much like my mom.

• 1:28:39Speaker 06

  And I've often wondered if he saw that and kind of resented it because they had so many problems. And he wanted me to be something that she wasn't and that I wasn't. There was already a lot of anger there and a lot of hurt. I didn't let down a lot.

• 1:28:59Speaker 06

  He wasn't super involved.

• 1:29:02Speaker 06

  And that was when...

• 1:29:05Speaker 06

  I started asking questions. I think I was probably thirteen, I need to get my dates right. Because that kind of led into that whole period of... All the curtains were pulled back. And that's when I learned about... His family. And everything he had gone through, and suddenly it all made sense.

• 1:29:24Speaker 06

  And even with understanding that and going through the process of learning it over those years after the fact...

• 1:29:32Speaker 06

  I was, it was like...

• 1:29:35Speaker 06

  It was just really hurtful.

• 1:29:42Speaker 06

  But I often wonder, again, what's the best way to... As a kid, what do you do?

• 1:29:49Speaker 06

  I felt so much guilt. And like, did I... Should I have, you know? That goes into the whole doormat kind of thing. Should I just have... Tried more? Should I have been what he wanted? Should I not have?

• 1:30:01Speaker 06

  Should I have kept the peace more? Is there anything I could have done that I caused any of this?

• 1:30:07Speaker 06

  Because there was so much anger. And then I was so hurt... That he would have attempted to do such a thing.

• 1:30:16Speaker 06

  Um, and it really made things hard after that.

• 1:30:24Shawn Ryan?

  Where do you go from there as a family?

• 1:30:26Speaker 06

  Divorce.

• 1:30:29Speaker 06

  I had him blocked for a long time.

• 1:30:33Speaker 06

  But you gotta look back and I... Was that right? But I mean, it was like fireworks and I just couldn't.

• 1:30:43Speaker 06

  That's when I went into therapy around that time.

• 1:30:47Speaker 06

  Then that, I had, you know, was living in California still. I would spend six months at home, six months in California.

• 1:30:54Speaker 06

  He stopped coming out to visit. My, um, brother was full schizophrenia, in and out of hospitals, homeless. There was so much going on and I just...

• 1:31:05Speaker 06

  I had to shut everything out.

• 1:31:12Speaker 06

  But it took a long, again, it's like...

• 1:31:17Speaker 06

  In a way, moving back to Nashville or moving back to Tennessee

• 1:31:24Speaker 06

  is what I needed in a lot of ways. I needed to meet Alex. I think I needed to be closer to my dad. I needed to leave my mom. I'd spent basically every waking moment with her. We were probably a little too connected. I think there was some co-defendants that we needed to let go of because we had been through shit together.

• 1:31:44Speaker 06

  It was like me and her.

• 1:31:47Speaker 06

  Through suicide and divorce and schizophrenia and death and an acting career, like living in a tiny LA apartment. And I think that I needed to literally move across the country and unwind some of that.

• 1:32:04Speaker 06

  And she knows this and I feel comfortable saying it, but I became a spouse to her.

• 1:32:10Speaker 06

  She was super lonely, as you would be. And I took on a lot of that weight for her. And I wouldn't change that, because she really needed it. But I had to get here and separate. And it gave me the chance to connect with my dad as an adult in a way that I hadn't been able to with a lot of just like, I'm gonna let it go.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 1:32:45Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 1:32:46Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 1:32:50Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:32:52Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 1:32:57Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:33:00Speaker 04

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 1:33:01Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not admitted without parent.

• 1:33:08Speaker 08

  It's me, the.

• 1:33:11Speaker 08

  We don't need the jingle twice. Stop it. This is about vacation inflation and how Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights, and rental cars.

• 1:33:23Speaker 08

  Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app.

• 1:33:29Speaker 08

  Fine. No one deals more deals than. Please stop. Touche. Priceline.

• 1:33:36Shawn Ryan?

  How did you reconnect with him? I mean, after all that.

• 1:33:40Speaker 06

  It was very clunky.

• 1:33:42Shawn Ryan?

  What was the initial, I mean?

• 1:33:45Speaker 06

  I told him that I was moving back and he drove up to Nashville to help me move into my first rental house. It was so uncomfortable. I was so, we were both so awkward.

• 1:33:55Shawn Ryan?

  How long had it been since you'd seen him?

• 1:33:57Speaker 06

  Couple of years.

• 1:33:59Shawn Ryan?

  How long had it been since you'd talked to him?

• 1:34:04Speaker 06

  A while.

• 1:34:08Speaker 06

  Yeah. It was very hard. It still is. I don't think I'm, I think I could be a lot better. Still.

• 1:34:20Speaker 06

  I think now I have let go of

• 1:34:26Speaker 06

  expectations that I don't think will ever be met.

• 1:34:33Speaker 06

  And now I look at him and look at our family and it's like, right, so we're all here. This is the, my mom would always say, she says this in terms of family and emotions and politics and philosophy, but in order to assess anything, you have to look at your current reality. Can't think of idealism, of what you hope people would be like, what you hope the world would be like, of what a politician you would love for them to do, of what you hope somebody would do in your life. You have to look at things as they are and go from there. And I think I'm at a point now where I look at him, I look at our family and I'm like, this is where we're fricking at. This is what we've gone through. There's no changing that.

• 1:35:15Speaker 06

  I'm 23 years old now. I don't

• 1:35:18Speaker 06

  you have no financial power over me. You have no anything. And it's like, I have to look at you as a human being who has been hurt.

• 1:35:29Speaker 06

  Who struggled so much, who I probably hurt. And you hurt me.

• 1:35:36Speaker 06

  And just go from there.

• 1:35:39Speaker 06

  Because the last thing I want to do is spend the next, you know. And even when we were really struggling and we didn't talk, that wasn't what I wanted. It's what I felt like I needed. I think I needed to block a lot of stuff out and just assess everything. Um.

• 1:36:00Speaker 06

  But I didn't see that as being healthy or right.

• 1:36:04Speaker 06

  And I don't want to live a life of regret of I pushed somebody away that needed me.

• 1:36:11Speaker 06

  And I'm at a point now where I think I'm grown enough, I'm mature enough, I have my ducks in a row.

• 1:36:17Speaker 06

  That we can have an adult relationship.

• 1:36:22Speaker 06

  And not have the kind of father.

• 1:36:27Speaker 06

  Father daughter, like it's never.

• 1:36:30Speaker 06

  It's never been us, it never will be us. But I love him.

• 1:36:34Speaker 06

  I want the best for him.

• 1:36:38Speaker 06

  He's given a lot, especially recently, to my brother who really struggles. He really showed up for him in a way that

• 1:36:47Speaker 06

  genuinely took me by surprise.

• 1:36:50Speaker 06

  Which was incredibly, like, I think, healing in a way. Is that you're putting somebody else first and you're giving a lot.

• 1:36:59Shawn Ryan?

  As awkward as it was, did it feel good that he was there?

• 1:37:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:37:04Speaker 06

  You want your dad to show up.

• 1:37:09Shawn Ryan?

  What was the conversation?

• 1:37:12Speaker 06

  I think it was nothing of substance. It was like, where do you want your couch?

• 1:37:17Speaker 06

  And I'll help you move this in and that kind of thing and we'll. He lived in Nashville when he was really young and actually the neighborhood that I first lived in was like two blocks over from where their little house was. So that was funny. We talked about that.

• 1:37:37Speaker 06

  He watches the show.

• 1:37:41Shawn Ryan?

  He does?

• 1:37:41Speaker 06

  And that was really special.

• 1:37:43Shawn Ryan?

  Did he tell you that?

• 1:37:44Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm. Took a while. But he did and he was.

• 1:37:51Speaker 06

  I don't know. Hearing that somebody's proud of you when you've always wanted to hear that.

• 1:37:57Speaker 06

  Doesn't matter how late it is, still feels good.

• 1:38:01Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet he's very proud of you.

• 1:38:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:38:11Speaker 06

  And I think he's doing a lot better.

• 1:38:16Speaker 06

  Again, the most important thing I've learned from that there's always something that you can learn from these situations. They kill you or they

• 1:38:26Speaker 06

  make you better and smarter and more introspective, but

• 1:38:30Speaker 06

  a lot about what works and doesn't work in a marriage. Finding compatibility and then I think with him, the most important thing is finding purpose.

• 1:38:38Speaker 06

  You have to find something that drives you.

• 1:38:42Speaker 06

  Because a life without isn't very, very lonely.

• 1:38:51Speaker 06

  You have to get over yourself to pour into people. And get over your own bullshit. And I think having a career or something that drives you, helps you kind of get out of your own head and your own issues. And I think it was just a domino effect of all of that and a bad marriage and all that. So it's Yeah, it's funny because I was sometimes I was reading a Reddit post at one point, somebody had sent me about me. And it was like, does Brad have daddy issues? Like, I had no idea. It's like, I guess she's like, become, you know, she speaks about it in a way that is like, she's learned from it. And that's that's what I always I would never say I have daddy. I think I have family issues.

• 1:39:36Speaker 06

  I think as all of us do, I think we all have things that impacted our childhood. And it was really helpful for me to hear stories like this. You know, I love coming of age novels. And I love family drama. And I think the reason why I loved it and hearing, you know, stories spoken in this way because it made me feel less crazy. It's like, nobody's family is perfect. Even meeting my husband of like outside perfect family, they all love each other. I was so stressed the first day I met his parents. I was like, I don't even know how to operate. And like a function, people love each other. You all are like functioning, you're all productive members of society. This is great.

• 1:40:21Speaker 06

  And then you beat him, and you're like, oh, now you've all got your you've got your shit too. Everybody's going through something. They have no idea the weight people carry.

• 1:40:31Shawn Ryan?

  What's something you would want your dad to know about you? What would you want to tell him?

• 1:40:43Speaker 06

  I'd want to tell him that I forgive him.

• 1:40:50Speaker 06

  And

• 1:40:59Speaker 06

  That I desperately wanted to make him happy.

• 1:41:03Speaker 06

  I think he spent a lot of our,

• 1:41:08Speaker 06

  you know, my time growing up with him, butting heads, and being in totally different realities, kind of, of like, we were just in totally different planes of existence. They're like ships in the night are,

• 1:41:21Speaker 06

  and it was rare.

• 1:41:24Speaker 06

  At a very young age, we had a great relationship. You know, my earliest memories are being in the hiking backpack you might have one with your kids where they like sit above your head and picking wild blueberries and blackberries on Orcas Island. And you would do warm milk and poetry. And we would sit in front of the fire and he would warm up milk and he would have like coffee or tea. And he would read out loud to me. The reason why I love stories is because of him.

• 1:41:48Speaker 06

  And I think when I became older and more headstrong and we went through my brother's death and just so much changed, that changed our relationship dramatically.

• 1:41:59Speaker 06

  But I've never stopped loving him. And we fought constantly. And a lot of it was rooted in, I'm just trying to make you happy.

• 1:42:09Shawn Ryan?

  I would love to hear that.

• 1:42:15Shawn Ryan?

  You want to go to California now?

• 1:42:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:42:18Shawn Ryan?

  Let's do it.

• 1:42:18Speaker 06

  Nice.

• 1:42:20Shawn Ryan?

  So you got to California?

• 1:42:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, was acting.

• 1:42:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, I love, I love it.

• 1:42:28Speaker 06

  There's very few things that I love as much as acting. Again, it goes back to story. It goes back to storytelling and escape.

• 1:42:36Speaker 06

  Industry is not for me.

• 1:42:39Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, you got into it, so you got into it by writing letters as an eight-year-old.

• 1:42:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, and painting pictures. Really ugly pictures. I wrote a letter to a manager who was representing a ton of kids on Broadway, said, I want to be Jane Banks, Mary Poppins. They were on Broadway at the time. And I drew a picture of myself onstage. My mom helped me make little velvet curtains that went on the poster board. And it was me, and my face, I had a bowl cut. Bangs, my bowl, my bowl cut. In the Jane Banks costume on a stage. And I sent it to him. And he had that up on his wall for like 10 years, however long I was working with him. He was like, nobody has ever, like, this was so wild. Nobody's ever done this. But I knew what I wanted. I was like, I want to figure out how to make this happen. And I found him by watching YouTube videos

• 1:43:26Speaker 06

  of interviews with young people that were on Broadway, of these like, you know, eight to 15 year olds. I started putting the pieces together. I was like, he's in all of these videos. He represents all of these people.

• 1:43:39Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:43:40Speaker 06

  Yeah. Um, I was in it. It's like that Always Sunny meme where he has the, I was like putting all the pieces together. People talk about that with conspiracy theories. I was like, how do I get on Broadway? Um, yeah, and I

• 1:43:55Speaker 06

  I just, I chased it. And my mom was like, I don't want to take you to LA. This sounds awful. I begged, I begged, I begged, begged. And so we would try it here and there. We would do like three months at the beginning of the year, which is called pilot season, when all the shows are getting greenlit. And then we'd go home for the summer and then we'd come back in what's called episodic season, when all the shows that are working, they're running and you have guest stars and recurring roles and that kind of thing. And would audition for those. And, you know, it's funny, all the hate comments that I get from people, they'll usually go back to acting. They're like, oh, you're a failed, like D-list actor. It's like, yeah, I didn't become, you know, Zendaya or whatever. Um,

• 1:44:38Speaker 06

  but I worked consistently. Like I was able to cover an apartment. I put money away to be able to buy a car at 16 and help with myself through college. And, uh, you know, paid for my acting classes. Like my parents didn't just give me my money to just like go spend at a young age. It was put into an account. There's, you know, Coogan accounts where the state takes 15% that I received when I became 18. Um, and, uh, we put all of that back into acting. So acting classes, improv classes, dance classes. She never wanted me to feel like it was a job. Or like I was benefiting it, you know, from it. Cause like,

• 1:45:19Speaker 06

  what 10 year old should be making tens of thousands of dollars for kind of TV shows? That's a mind fuck.

• 1:45:24Shawn Ryan?

  And you emancipated yourself at 15?

• 1:45:27Speaker 06

  15, yeah.

• 1:45:29Speaker 06

  And that was for a myriad of reasons. It was.

• 1:45:32Speaker 06

  Family was the root of it. Because my parents divorce was incredibly hostile and went on for a long time. And it got to the point that I was being used as a pawn. Of um, I was fifteen years old and there was like, if you give me custody, I'll give you your money back. Or whatever it is and you know, my dad was like, you need to come back to Tennessee and live with me and it was just like I became used in that way and um, didn't like the feeling and I don't think my mom liked it. That wasn't how she wanted to end that marriage.

• 1:46:14Speaker 06

  And again, I think my dad felt really out of control.

• 1:46:18Speaker 06

  And I just wanted to remove myself from the equation. I was like, you don't get to use me in this. So that was a big part of it because I was, you know, I was working. I was working as an actor. I was about to graduate. Um, about to graduate high school. I had a full-time job at Trader Joe's because I always worked outside of acting to make sure I had, you know, fun money because I didn't use any of my acting money. That was all just in other accounts. So if I wanted to go hang out with a friend or buy a dress or whatever, I had to, you know, babysit and go work at Trader Joe's, whatever it was.

• 1:46:53Speaker 06

  I could cover, you know, living in an apartment with a roommate and um,

• 1:46:58Shawn Ryan?

  How do you find a roommate at age fifteen?

• 1:47:01Speaker 06

  I had a good friend of the family from Atlanta, like at a summer camp that I had gone to and she was a couple of years older and she was moving out to LA right around the time that I had emancipated myself. So she moved into the apartment that my mom and I had shared. And um, so I emancipated myself. Another big part was my brother's psychosis was really hard. He was um,

• 1:47:26Speaker 06

  It got pretty violent. And

• 1:47:32Speaker 06

  my mom was kind of torn in a million different directions of the divorce was happening in Tennessee. I was in LA. My brother was in LA. Because he had had been bounced around and struggled and went to India for three years to find himself and again, did every drug in the book and came back just

• 1:47:50Speaker 06

  completely different. And really did not get along with my dad. They had a huge falling out. He came out to LA and just continued to struggle. So he was homeless at the time. And

• 1:48:03Speaker 06

  I had some concerns with like that sounds bad saying it out loud, but like CPS. Oh, I didn't want. Like it was, it was not a good environment.

• 1:48:16Speaker 06

  And I was in therapy at the time and they were just like again, you know, this isn't normal, like

• 1:48:22Speaker 06

  the person that lives in the bedroom next to you having, you know, hearing voices and having a psychotic break and

• 1:48:29Speaker 06

  knives pulled and chasing through streets and, you know, he

• 1:48:37Speaker 06

  when somebody is going through psychosis, they are not the person that you know. And they don't see you

• 1:48:44Speaker 06

  as your sister or as their sister or their mother. They treat you differently.

• 1:48:50Speaker 06

  And they would think of you as a girlfriend, an enemy or whatever, whatever was happening. Can't control it.

• 1:49:00Speaker 06

  And I just felt like I had all of this autonomy. I had so much control in one part of my life. I was like, I have a career, I guess, because I've been acting and I make money, but I'm I'm about to go to college. I was about to turn, it was the summer before I turned 16.

• 1:49:19Speaker 06

  I'd graduated high school, had this like, worked the, you know, 6 a.m. shift at Trader Joe's every day, worked 6 to 2. And I'm basically like this adult, and yet, you know, I couldn't go work on set without my mom. When you're under 18, for good reason, your parents have to be within eyesight, near shot. And at the time, I was working on that TV show, Heathers, and they had planned a second season that was going to be shooting internationally. And that was in the middle of all of this. And I was like, how am I gonna get, how am I gonna be able to work and do this when there's a war happening in Tennessee that

• 1:49:58Speaker 06

  my mom has to handle, when there is a different kind of battle here with her other child that she has to manage? And I was just bounced in between it. And I think that there's part of me that hears me saying that, and is like, that's so selfish to be like, I'm just gonna remove myself from it. But I had the means to do that. I think it made it easier on everyone, too, of like, there was a weight lifted off of my mom, because there was just so much legality of, again, if anything ever happened with my brother and I. Wow. And if I got wrapped into this custody thing, when I was like, on the cusp of adulthood

• 1:50:41Speaker 06

  and was making strides, again, was about to start college. And so it was not contested. I didn't go to court and bring my family in, be like, I hate all of you, I'm leaving. It was just like, I even had a conversation with my dad, it was a hard conversation. But I had a conversation with both of them, and they were both very in support of it. And I was like, I can't be in the middle of this battle. I've done it for too long. And I'm not leaving you. I'm not saying I don't want to be around you. I'm not saying I don't want to be in this family. But clearly, you have crap that you need to work through. I don't want to even say it's crap. It was heavy, heavy things in their lives.

• 1:51:27Speaker 06

  And I just need to be let go. And it was a very, you know, it's not a, it's not something I suggest. I wouldn't go around and say, oh, you're having a hard time. Just go emancipate yourself. Like I was, it was a very unique situation. It's a very heavy thing. Um, my oldest brother, that's when we got really close, had to be brought into it as like an advocate. And, you know, if everything failed and fell apart and I couldn't make money anymore, I was gonna go, you know, live with him or he was like, I'll come out to California and I'll take care of you. But I just, it was literally like two coasts, these, these like battles. And both of my parents, I think, acknowledged when they were confronted with it, that it was like, we are putting you in the center of things that you, you know, your future at this age, when so much is about to open up for you,

• 1:52:11Speaker 06

  shouldn't be dictated by what's going on here. And it really, in a lot of ways, it didn't change how we navigated our family. Like, I was still super close to my mom. When their divorce was finalized, she moved back to California. She bought a home, moved back in. My brother would, you know, come in and out, depending on when he was in a hospital, when he was homeless. I saw my brother constantly. He was homeless in Pasadena for years and I would go out and find him. I was telling you last night, he, uh, he loves fine cheeses. And so I would go and take him to Whole Foods and with his like shopping cart of things and would buy him the things that he wanted. I would go like literally like find him in the park,

• 1:52:55Speaker 06

  wherever he was. Um, so it's, it's a very like, it's a, it was a nuanced thing. I didn't say, screw you. I don't want to be in this family anymore. I'm never gonna speak to you. It was, I need to be legally released from the liabilities of being in this mess, of being taken from you and put into a system at 15 years old because of things that are going on that I don't want to say I could have handled, but that I felt, I mean, I'd been going through it for a while and I could have, you know, I was able to remove myself from the situation in many ways. Um, but through CPS and stuff with my brother and, you know, I don't want the liability of your divorce and this being messy

• 1:53:36Speaker 06

  and a, a judge dictating where I go and what I do, when this is your war and I'm paying for my own life. Man. And I'm graduating high school at 15 years old and you're about to tell me.

• 1:53:56Speaker 06

  That everything, that now, you know, my life could be because of my brother or because of a divorce.

• 1:54:06Speaker 06

  So it just, it protected, you know, it removed the, um, the protections of being a minor that for me ended up, I think, were more of a danger in that. Not a danger, but that were, it was gonna make things very difficult.

• 1:54:22Speaker 06

  So it was a, I think it was a very important thing, but I don't, I don't recommend it. It's very severe.

• 1:54:33Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, do you hear yourself right now?

• 1:54:35Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:54:36Shawn Ryan?

  In, at fifteen?

• 1:54:38Speaker 06

  It's crazy.

• 1:54:39Shawn Ryan?

  With everything you've been through, you graduate high school, you emancipate yourself, you have a full-time job at Trader Joe's and a full-time acting career, and you're caring for your schizophrenic brother.

• 1:54:50Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, for that summer when I emancipated myself, he was homeless, he was refusing to take meds. My mom had kicked him out, you know, before that, and I emancipated myself, and she went home to deal with the divorce and to divide their assets and help my dad sell the house because he had to move out, and her going back there, I think, helped make it less contentious. It was really hard when they were apart. So she had to go handle that and kind of close that chapter. And, um, so it was just me and Reed.

• 1:55:25Speaker 06

  And some days it was funny and go sit with him and his dudes in their shopping cart. There's a, uh, there's the main street in Pasadena, California. There's a place called Earth Cafe for anybody who lives in LA. And then across the street, there's a church, and then there's like a shopping strip mall. There's an alley, and that's where he slept with a couple of other guys, all with their shopping carts. And so, yeah, I would go, bring him like a little gift bag, like here's some water, like I'm not, I haven't given up on you.

• 1:56:01Speaker 06

  And sometimes it was funny and just like I was with him and some days he would be,

• 1:56:08Speaker 06

  you know, passed out in front of the Target. Me not knowing whether it was an overdose, whether it was heat stroke, because it was, you know, August in Southern California.

• 1:56:18Speaker 06

  Uh, getting calls from people in his homeless community that had little flip phones saying, and I, one of my, my community college was in Pasadena. So I just so happened to,

• 1:56:30Speaker 06

  that was not really intentional, but I went to Pasadena City College for a lot of my community college classes, that and Santa Monica College, but, yeah, I would get calls when I was leaving school from his best homeless friend, Jason, being like, Reed really needs you, and I would have to go find him and,

• 1:56:49Speaker 06

  yeah, there was one time when he was, um,

• 1:56:53Speaker 06

  high on something,

• 1:56:56Speaker 06

  pretty, I'm pretty sure it was meth,

• 1:56:59Speaker 06

  and was sitting on top of the rubble of a recently demolished house, saying that he was Jesus. And nobody could get him down.

• 1:57:13Speaker 06

  And so when you talk about grief,

• 1:57:17Speaker 06

  again, in like talking to people and saying, you know, what advice do you have, grief isn't just about death.

• 1:57:24Speaker 06

  I grieved my brother David. I grieved

• 1:57:28Speaker 06

  the life that I didn't have with him.

• 1:57:31Speaker 06

  I grieved his actual existence. And I grieved my brother Reed because he's nowhere near the person that I grew up with.

• 1:57:40Speaker 06

  I don't know if he ever will be. Like, I was sitting with him last week at visitation hours at his psych hospital.

• 1:57:48Speaker 06

  I see it in his eyes, and he has this like, he has a twinkle that he's always had. And he's very,

• 1:58:00Speaker 06

  he's very smirky. He's always been very mischievous. Everybody loves him.

• 1:58:06Speaker 06

  Like even just like sitting in the little like cafeteria and watching nurses and people walk by and they're all like, "Oh, you're Reed's sister." Like, "We love Reed."

• 1:58:15Speaker 06

  But he's, there's a lot of him that's gone.

• 1:58:21Speaker 06

  He doesn't speak anymore. Sometime in the last three years, he stopped speaking. So when he's out of the hospital and he has his phone, he will communicate through text or he'll write something in his notes app. And show me. Um, in the hospital, he doesn't have his phone, um, especially in an involuntary hold.

• 1:58:41Speaker 06

  Um, so he has a little notepad. And so we, you know, sat for an hour, talking and writing things back and forth.

• 1:58:50Speaker 06

  Um, but I've had to, I think,

• 1:58:55Speaker 06

  let go of the hope that he'll be

• 1:59:00Speaker 06

  who I knew as a kid. I don't think that's fully gone. There's always part of me that's like, what if?

• 1:59:07Speaker 06

  If he did psychedelics? If he woke up one day and said, I'm gonna make, I'm gonna change my diet, I'm gonna change my lifestyle? And this is the thing that's so infuriating is our medical system basically sets people like my brother up to fail.

• 1:59:22Speaker 06

  And it's this endless cycle where

• 1:59:27Speaker 06

  without his meds, he's a danger

• 1:59:32Speaker 06

  to society.

• 1:59:35Speaker 06

  But with the meds, they're debilitating.

• 1:59:39Speaker 06

  And he's so unhappy. And they pump him, you know, through.

• 1:59:46Speaker 06

  It's so dehumanizing.

• 1:59:50Speaker 06

  Or he's like pinned down and injected.

• 2:00:00Speaker 06

  And they cause, you know, paralysis and tremors and, you know, whatever it may be, some of them really scary, had cardiac effects with, you know, our history was so scary.

• 2:00:14Speaker 06

  And nobody ever talks about diet or lifestyle or other options.

• 2:00:19Speaker 06

  He was in an involuntary hold in Idaho for almost three years.

• 2:00:26Speaker 06

  I didn't see him for three years.

• 2:00:30Speaker 06

  He stopped speaking somewhere in there, which I don't blame him. These places are not, they're not like pretty rehab places. There aren't places like that.

• 2:00:40Speaker 06

  There isn't a place where he can go. Like live safely in like a nice assisted living rehab. If there is, somebody should let me know. Um, they're like really shitty halfway houses or psych facilities. Or you can't leave.

• 2:00:55Speaker 06

  Where you have no rights. So I don't blame him for shutting down. But you're put on these meds because you can't function without them. And you're given the crappiest food. And I was so angry just like last month. And I'm his guardian, by the way, that was another thing we dealt with last year of, um, we had to fight for so many years, my mom did, to get information about him. And he would be arrested, taken to hospitals. We have no idea where he is. He would be switched from doctor to doctor to doctor. Literally like trying to chase him down to get information, not in like a, we need you back. But if like, how could we help you? We don't even know where you, where you are. Um, and so we finally were approved guardianship and

• 2:01:39Speaker 06

  Reed knows, and I think he was, um, happy that it was me. Um, but he trusts me a lot, which I'm really grateful for. But, um, though he was released from this involuntary hold, and he was put into, he had a halfway house and seemed to be doing better.

• 2:01:57Speaker 06

  But, you know, I was talking to my mom and it was in Idaho, it was in Boise. He only got to Tennessee recently. It was a whole other situation. He had kind of accidentally got here. Um, I had to think it maybe it was a God thing because my mom and I had been talking. It's like, it'd be really great if he could get close to you. And he just went missing one day and showed up in Tennessee. So worked out. But, um,

• 2:02:19Speaker 06

  the point being, he was there for three years.

• 2:02:24Speaker 06

  He stopped speaking.

• 2:02:27Speaker 06

  And there were no changes to his diet. He was fed the worst food. It's hospital food. I was in visiting hours last week and we were given like crappy cartons of milk and like Teddy Gramps.

• 2:02:39Speaker 06

  And all these studies are coming out about, you know, the effects of carb and carbs and sugar on the brain of the, this has been happening for years of, you know,

• 2:02:48Speaker 06

  keto diets being instrumental in keeping schizophrenia at bay. And we have people that have

• 2:02:56Speaker 06

  literally removed the voices from, their brains have been able to now they live totally normal lives, are in relationships, are getting married by living a very, very strict lifestyle and diet.

• 2:03:12Speaker 06

  And no doctor has encouraged that. And it's such a missed opportunity. It's like, he was there for three years and he came out worse?

• 2:03:21Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 2:03:22Speaker 06

  And now we're back to square one and it's this awful cycle of,

• 2:03:27Speaker 06

  again, of course he's getting worse. Like you go into these places, I've been visiting him for years at various different hospitals. It's awful. It's prison.

• 2:03:35Speaker 06

  It's maximum security. Of like, in order to go back and visit him, I go through like mazes of hallways and doors and keys and whatever. And I have to, I can't even bring him like

• 2:03:48Speaker 06

  socks. Like you're not allowed to bring anything in because they could harm themselves. Like he's, it's

• 2:03:55Speaker 06

  like, again, I look at him, I'm like, no wonder you stopped speaking.

• 2:04:00Speaker 06

  But what other option is there? And we've brought him home. He's lived with me. He's lived with my mom. He's lived on the farm. He's tried everything.

• 2:04:10Speaker 06

  And it's just a constant cycle of meds, off meds, jail, hospital, out. Meds, off meds.

• 2:04:20Speaker 06

  And I don't know if that'll

• 2:04:24Speaker 06

  no idea if that'll change. But you kind of have to find peace with the fact that maybe that's just again, going back to like, this is the reality.

• 2:04:32Speaker 06

  And I'm it's not what I hope for him. It's not what I hope for our family, but I've, you know, found peace in that.

• 2:04:41Speaker 06

  And I want him to know that

• 2:04:44Speaker 06

  I'm never not going to be there.

• 2:04:49Speaker 06

  Like even if it's three years, if you end up in Tennessee in your first week in an involuntary hold, I'll be there.

• 2:05:01Speaker 06

  And I think he, um,

• 2:05:04Speaker 06

  he feels a lot of shame.

• 2:05:08Speaker 06

  Because we went through hell together. And I've seen a lot of things that I think he never wanted me to see. He's done things to me that I think he's incredibly embarrassed of.

• 2:05:21Speaker 06

  And we like, don't really talk about it.

• 2:05:25Speaker 06

  But I've tried to let him know as many times as possible without getting into it, that it's like, I know it's not you.

• 2:05:33Speaker 06

  I'm still gonna show up.

• 2:05:36Speaker 06

  And it's even harder for my mom. But with, you know,

• 2:05:41Speaker 06

  I don't want to put words in her mouth, but I think that

• 2:05:45Speaker 06

  it would be very easy for her to let go. Um, easier.

• 2:05:51Speaker 06

  And just to say, you, you know, you're not trying to make any changes in your life. You are taking advantage of us. You don't want to use the time when you were on meds and you're doing better to try to change something in your lifestyle to do anything. You would refuse therapy. Like, you would only go to therapy if I went with him. So we did that for a while together. But I had to go with him. Um,

• 2:06:19Speaker 06

  and I think that, you know, my oldest brother has always advocated more of like, let him go. If he wants to do a shit ton of drugs. If he wants to go be crazy and not accept help, let him go be crazy. You can't control that. And I think my mom is like, I'm not a parent and I don't know what that feels like, but she already lost one.

• 2:06:45Speaker 06

  So she's tried to let go. She's done it a ton of times of like, get out of the house. Like, if you're gonna act this way, go be homeless, because you can't do this under my roof, which you should have done.

• 2:06:58Speaker 06

  And I give her so much credit for, ten years later,

• 2:07:03Speaker 06

  she shows up.

• 2:07:06Speaker 06

  She's got a halfway house and he needs a new set of clothes and a new, you know, bedroom, because he has a little room in his halfway house. She goes and gets it.

• 2:07:17Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, Brad.

• 2:07:24Shawn Ryan?

  How do you stay so strong?

• 2:07:31Speaker 06

  I don't know.

• 2:07:35Speaker 06

  I think there's a

• 2:07:44Speaker 06

  not a beauty, but there's a it's kind of an advantage to this going on for my whole life, basically.

• 2:07:53Speaker 06

  To where I don't see this as some catastrophe every time something happens. Which seems like a really fucked up thing to say.

• 2:08:01Speaker 06

  But it's like, at this point, it's like, okay, that's life. I'll handle it. I don't have to say it's normal. Because it's not.

• 2:08:12Speaker 06

  My family's not normal. My relationship with my brother is far from what I would hope or want.

• 2:08:21Speaker 06

  But I think I learned really, really early on that life is messy.

• 2:08:27Speaker 06

  And I think it's hard learning that as a kid, but I also I wouldn't be me without it. I think I went through

• 2:08:36Speaker 06

  hit after hit after hit, and they were all very different.

• 2:08:40Speaker 06

  Men are just saying, okay, I'm gonna pick up the pieces and I'm gonna keep going. What can I learn from each of these things?

• 2:08:47Shawn Ryan?

  When's the last time you offloaded like this?

• 2:08:50Speaker 06

  My gosh.

• 2:08:55Speaker 06

  A while.

• 2:08:56Shawn Ryan?

  Have you ever?

• 2:08:57Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:09:00Shawn Ryan?

  How's it feel?

• 2:09:01Speaker 06

  It feels really good.

• 2:09:04Speaker 06

  I think I did, um

• 2:09:08Speaker 06

  earlier on in being with Alex of there was so much I had to share.

• 2:09:14Speaker 06

  And in the back of my mind, I was always kind of like I'm just gonna scare you off.

• 2:09:22Speaker 06

  Um, but it didn't.

• 2:09:25Speaker 06

  I, uh, shared a lot of it in therapy. Again, that therapist in LA, I credit her so much. I wasn't able to verbalize any of it. So much of it hadn't happened at that point, but I was not able to even

• 2:09:42Speaker 06

  break down what I felt, because it felt just so

• 2:09:47Speaker 06

  commonplace for me.

• 2:09:52Speaker 06

  So it's been in different periods. I don't make a habit of carrying around open wounds and baggage. I don't think that that's the healthiest thing, but I think it

• 2:10:03Speaker 06

  you can't go through life suppressing.

• 2:10:07Speaker 06

  And I think that both Reed and my dad

• 2:10:11Speaker 06

  suppressed a ton.

• 2:10:16Speaker 06

  And so I think that while I might not offload in this capacity, especially not in a public capacity frequently, it's probably the only time I've ever done it publicly. I'm not afraid of it in the slightest. I would rather it be out there. I would rather be

• 2:10:32Speaker 06

  vocalizing it and processing it. And even if I'm not speaking to someone about it,

• 2:10:38Speaker 06

  I'm never not thinking about this stuff. It's all very like, you know, in my face, especially with my brother. Um, it was never something that I was able to hide from it, like in the moment I was able to process it. And I think about it constantly. I think about what life will be like. In five years, I think about when my parents pass away and if Reed is still here, what is that going to look like?

• 2:11:01Speaker 06

  I think about our family and how if, you know, if things haven't changed, how will I care for you? What do you need?

• 2:11:09Speaker 06

  I think about my dad and I think about repairing that and moving forward from that.

• 2:11:15Speaker 06

  I think about trying to, you know, protect my mom and make her life easier because she spent so much of her life fighting and rebuilding and things being crushed. And so these are all things that I consider and by default, then I process everything.

• 2:11:32Speaker 06

  Because I've seen what happens when you

• 2:11:35Speaker 06

  run from the things that have hurt you or the things you can't control in your life.

• 2:11:41Speaker 06

  I think my brother,

• 2:11:45Speaker 06

  I think a lot of his

• 2:11:49Speaker 06

  Situation, I never want to call it like a problem or...

• 2:11:55Speaker 06

  But you know, when David died, he was 17 years old. He went to an all-boys school. It's not really in the environment that you are vulnerable and you process grief, especially when it's so public.

• 2:12:07Speaker 06

  You refuse therapy. You'll tell my mom, "I cried once, I don't care anymore. I'm over it."

• 2:12:15Speaker 06

  And then you get, you know, 10 years down the line and we're sitting together and he is, has now struggled with drugs and addiction and alcohol. And is hearing voices.

• 2:12:28Speaker 06

  And he finally says, like, "I think about him every single day."

• 2:12:33Speaker 06

  They were talking last night, but he, um,

• 2:12:37Speaker 06

  kind of looks like Jesus in a lot of ways. Like, he, like, keeps his hair super long and stringy. He's super skinny, he's really tall. Like 6'4". He has a huge beard.

• 2:12:48Speaker 06

  And I would always be like, "Please, Reed, please shave it, it's so ugly." It's like scraggly, you'd call it his, like, flavor saver. I was like, "Oh, it's so disgusting." And there was one point where we were having this conversation, now my sweater's getting all over my hands, um...

• 2:13:04Speaker 06

  And he was like, "I look in the mirror and I see him."

• 2:13:09Speaker 06

  He walks through life with this person that he

• 2:13:14Speaker 06

  is permanently intertwined with. And who is not here anymore, who he sees every single time he looks in the mirror.

• 2:13:24Speaker 06

  And so I think that, you know, again, I've watched

• 2:13:30Speaker 06

  what happens when you don't process things. When you don't put in the work initially to

• 2:13:37Speaker 06

  go through the motions and feel, you know, the depths of what pain you need to feel.

• 2:13:44Speaker 06

  And how you're going to learn from it. And repair and rebuild. I've seen my dad

• 2:13:52Speaker 06

  run from his family and his past and replicate mistakes that his father made.

• 2:13:58Speaker 06

  And refuse to speak about it.

• 2:14:02Speaker 06

  And I think that there's a lot, um, like my mom did that a lot, too. Because she felt like she had to.

• 2:14:10Speaker 06

  Because she had other kids and she had a husband that was struggling.

• 2:14:15Speaker 06

  That was suicidal.

• 2:14:17Speaker 06

  And so she just kept going.

• 2:14:21Speaker 06

  And I watched all of that. I was like, I'm not going to be that.

• 2:14:27Shawn Ryan?

  How did Alex handle this, your husband?

• 2:14:31Speaker 06

  Like a champ.

• 2:14:34Speaker 06

  His, um,

• 2:14:38Speaker 06

  his mother-in-law, or my mother-in-law, who I adore. I think she was more concerned than he was. She was like, oh, this girl's kind of like, she's got a lot of stuff.

• 2:14:49Speaker 06

  Love you, Des. I know you're going to listen to this. She's going to be like crying the entire. She cries more than I do. Just saying something, but, um,

• 2:14:56Speaker 06

  I know he's, I mean, it's, it's truly like remarkable. He is completely unfazed and unflappable. And not that he doesn't care. He feels very, very deeply. And I think rather than looking at me and seeing something that was, you know, oh, you're, you know, damaged goods. You have all these problems. It was like,

• 2:15:17Speaker 06

  I don't want to put words in his mouth, but in the way that I feel, it's like he stepped in and was like, I can create a bubble around you that's safe.

• 2:15:26Speaker 06

  And I've never had somebody

• 2:15:30Speaker 06

  who is as stable.

• 2:15:34Speaker 06

  Who, like, can take hits and redirect. And I can. But I think I'm, you know, been through a ton. I'm, you know,

• 2:15:46Speaker 06

  emotional.

• 2:15:49Speaker 06

  And, um,

• 2:15:51Shawn Ryan?

  Is he the first ability that you've found in life?

• 2:15:59Speaker 06

  It's the purest form. My mom was very stable. I mean, a constant. But she's your mom. She's gonna be there.

• 2:16:11Speaker 06

  I found stability in external factors like school. I threw myself into academics. I had my like, high school transcript put on my wall because I was so proud of it because I could control that. And that was stable.

• 2:16:25Speaker 06

  But I say that it's pure because he doesn't have to be here. He didn't have to choose me.

• 2:16:34Speaker 06

  And he did. And he's unwavering.

• 2:16:40Speaker 06

  And

• 2:16:42Speaker 06

  I have some incredible friends who have, you know, have seen me through a lot of these seasons, who have been very stable, who have been very gracious and have

• 2:16:55Speaker 06

  you know, I've introduced them to things that are definitely out of their element through my family and have stuck with me. But it's very different when you you know, fall in love and marry somebody.

• 2:17:07Shawn Ryan?

  How's it feel to lean into that?

• 2:17:09Speaker 06

  Oh, it's incredible. I've never felt safer. I've never felt more feminine.

• 2:17:15Speaker 06

  I'm a very capable person. Like, I've navigated a lot. Built a career, you know, independently as a kid.

• 2:17:25Speaker 06

  I I've lived alone. I've traveled. Like, I've done a lot. And I met him. I was like, I don't have to carry everything.

• 2:17:36Speaker 06

  I don't have to put all the pieces together by myself.

• 2:17:38Shawn Ryan?

  How'd you guys meet?

• 2:17:40Speaker 06

  Through Daily Wire.

• 2:17:41Shawn Ryan?

  How, though?

• 2:17:43Speaker 06

  He, uh, walked in for his second interview. And I think his first one was over the phone. And I was the first person that he saw at Daily Wire. And apparently, I was scowling at him. And he walked in. He was like, oof, I don't know who that, I didn't have a show yet. I didn't have anything. And he was like, that girl is like, we're gonna be enemies. In his very Alex voice, which you now know of, like, very sarcastic and funny. Um. And in my mind, I was like, who is this? It just like something clicked. I was like, that, that's somebody. And then, at the time, I didn't have an office, like in a cubicle, and they put his cubicle directly in the row behind me. And this man has the like, most explosive, boisterous laugh. And there's like a pause when he's like telling a joke,

• 2:18:28Speaker 06

  and then it just, it like, I mean, you can hear it. If he was downstairs right now, and all this soundproofing, you could hear echoing through the halls. And it is like, the most captivating, endearing thing. But I would just hear him, and he would be right behind me. And I would just find myself turning around like, who is this person? And he kind of reminds me of my brother in a little way. Like, he has this like twinkle in his eye, and he's really spunky, and he's really, really smart, and he's interested in a million different things. And again, I could just like, no matter where he was in this huge office, I could hear, I was like, that's Alex, and he's laughing. So then I was trying to look him up, because I'm a girl. I was like, I'm stuck, this guy, who is this? And I was told like,

• 2:19:11Speaker 06

  don't shit where you eat, don't like, whatever. But I was something about it, I was like, who is this? And I could only find him on LinkedIn. And I didn't have like a, I think I'd like forgot my password, I couldn't log in, so I could only see like part of his profile. And I like scrolled all the way down, and I saw Chattanooga, Tennessee, and my brother's high school. And he went to high school with him.

• 2:19:35Speaker 06

  And it was like,

• 2:19:39Speaker 06

  and then I would see him going and getting water. He drinks more water than any person I've ever met in my entire life. Which I were very different, because I like dehydrate myself on a daily basis. And so I would go like, position myself by the water cooler.

• 2:19:56Speaker 06

  And there was one day where he was walking through, and he was getting water. So I don't remember what comment I made, but I sparked up a conversation. I was like, I desperately have to like, how do I bring up Chattanooga? Like, how do I? And somehow it came up, and I was like, oh, you're from Chattanooga. Like, I wasn't gonna say, I was like stalking you on LinkedIn. And then I think I ended up like talking with him in the break room for like two hours that day. I didn't even know what I was supposed to be doing. I don't know what he was supposed to be doing. But I was just like, I think that's my person. He felt the same way, and he like,

• 2:20:26Shawn Ryan?

  Right off the bat.

• 2:20:27Speaker 06

  I was just like, there's something.

• 2:20:31Speaker 06

  And um, he's always said he felt really similar and wavered back and forth because he was always like, "I'm never gonna date somebody that I work with, that's crazy." And he had a conversation with his mom and she was like, "Don't do it, what if you break up with her? What if it's awful, like, she started the show?" And he was like, "If I ask her and she says yes, we're not breaking up, like, that's it." Like, I think that's, I think she's it. And asked me out in the parking lot. I was like, shitting my pants, I was like, "Oh my god." Uh, and then I went on one date and it was, we like shut down the restaurant, went to Lockland Table and eat Snashville. And I mean, it was like, they hadn't closed for like an hour, I had no idea. Um, he's great.

• 2:21:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was just, I was like instantaneous. And I went home for Christmas that year and I went into my brother's yearbooks that have been in my mom's desk for fifteen years. And this picture was right there. And I would sit in her office because I wanted to see my brothers and all of their friends. I would flip through, like, while she was working, I'd flip through the yearbooks. They're called the facebooks. I would see all the pictures of the boys, I would find my brothers. I had no idea that he was in there.

• 2:21:45Shawn Ryan?

  Did he know him?

• 2:21:47Speaker 06

  I knew his little sister, we'd had playdates. And um, he's just a few years older than me and we always lived like five miles away from each other and had no idea. I was really good friends with his other younger, his younger brother's best friend. And our moms had mutual really good friends and never crossed paths.

• 2:22:08Shawn Ryan?

  Did he know your brothers?

• 2:22:10Speaker 06

  Uh-uh. He knew of David, I think. David has a memorial statue at Macaulay and uh, I think David died the year he was an incoming freshman, but it rocked the school, obviously, in a big way and we had that statue put in, it's this big flame, it's like the eternal flame that's still there and at the school. So he knew that, but he didn't know them personally, they were three years older than him.

• 2:22:40Shawn Ryan?

  How long did you guys date before he got married?

• 2:22:42Speaker 06

  A year and a half.

• 2:22:43Shawn Ryan?

  How did he propose?

• 2:22:45Speaker 06

  He, I was in Budapest filming Pendragon for Daily Wire and we had been out there. He planned on coming with me. And he was training for a triathlon and he tore his ACL and his MCL. And had to get surgery like the week that I was leaving. But so he couldn't get on a plane, he had all this recovery, he was like locked up and all this stuff, so. In his mind, he had just bought a ring, he was like, how the hell am I gonna propose? I can't even like bend my knee, I, what am I gonna do? I can barely walk. And so unfortunately, but also fortunately, I was in Budapest alone for like eight weeks, I think. And

• 2:23:27Speaker 06

  I think that was a really good test in a lot of ways, because we were an ocean apart, an entire time zone apart. And it kind of reminded me. I was like, oh yeah, I can survive alone, like I'm not with a person, but I want him. And that was a good reminder. Because I was like, I don't I don't need you at every moment of every day, even though we spend so much time together, but

• 2:23:51Speaker 06

  I want you here, I want you in every aspect of my life, which was, I already knew that I wanted to marry him, but that was just kind of a nice

• 2:23:58Speaker 06

  I don't know, confirmation. Uh, and then he flew out and he spent like two months in Budapest and then went home for he had a client that needed to be, he needed to be in person. Um, yeah, he flew out and proposed like the second day that he got there. And he proposed at Fisherman's Bastion in Budapest, which is like the, right outside of the Buddha Castle. Um,

• 2:24:27Speaker 06

  I had an inkling, but I had no idea. I was sweating profusely. He was so nervous. He made me walk from my apartment all the way across Budapest, over this huge walking bridge, because he thought it would be so romantic to walk at like sunset. And we had to hike all the way up to the bastion, I was like, huh. And then we got up there and I was like, oh, what's happening? Because I saw on his Apple Watch, something popped up and photographer was like, I'm, I'm at the spot. I was like, oh God. So then I started having like heart palpitations. Because I was sweating, I was like hiking up these like stairs, I was like, I'm not getting proposed to. I'm dripping in sweat, I had to like take off my jacket. And he was like trying to get me to like go where the sunset was, where he had like picked out the spot, and I was like, I have to go water, I have to go water. And then there were so many people there and apparently he'd gone the night before and

• 2:25:12Speaker 06

  it was empty and he had like walked around with all the, and he had talked to like the causeiers at the nicest hotels Budapest was like, if you're going to propose, where do you propose Budapest? And while I was on set the day before, he had like scoped out all these locations and apparently at sunset the night before, nobody was there. Everybody was there that night. Everybody. And I am like, I guess it goes back to the thing of like, I'm on camera 24/7, but not 24/7, but I don't like detention in my like normal life. And so I was like, oh my God, does he not know me well enough to know that I don't want to be proposed to in front of that whatever. So I get my water and I'm like stressing, oh my God, it's happening. Come around this corner, we're walking down these stairs and there's a violinist. I'm like, oh, fuck, hell. It's like, oh, there's a violin, there's a show, what's going on? Like, I do not want the romantic gestures.

• 2:25:57Speaker 06

  And it wasn't for me, it was just this violinist was just there, like busking. And there was like, I don't know, this sounds so bad or racist or whatever, but there were like four Asian tour groups that were there that night and they all had selfie sticks and they were all there. And I was like so overwhelmed and I looked over at him and he was like, oh, so stressful. And thankfully, we're at this spot where he had picked out, it was like, it kind of ended up being out of the way, but I was walking down and I was like, please God, don't have this person serenade me like in front of all these people. We just walked past the violin. So then it ended up like, we got to this point, but I had like amped up over this like 45 minute endeavor of getting here. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. And then it was totally normal. It was just like in a really sweet spot and

• 2:26:40Speaker 06

  you could see the whole bash and you could see the entire city. Um, now he proposed there and then we spent the next eight weeks in going between Budapest and Italy where we were filming the show. It was great. And then we got home end of December, it was like day before Christmas, I got home from Budapest and then started planning our wedding in January and got married, March 30th. So three months.

• 2:27:02Shawn Ryan?

  Where'd you guys get married?

• 2:27:04Speaker 06

  The venue at Birchwood. My best friend owns it. So it was down in Franklin, or past here, Franklin, like Columbia, wherever it is. But yeah, it's pretty cool.

• 2:27:17Shawn Ryan?

  One year next week.

• 2:27:19Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:27:20Shawn Ryan?

  Congratulations.

• 2:27:21Speaker 06

  Thanks. It's been awesome.

• 2:27:22Shawn Ryan?

  Sounds like it.

• 2:27:23Speaker 06

  Yeah. I've seen so many people, I don't know your experience with this, but I always say like the first year is the hardest.

• 2:27:31Speaker 06

  And it was hard, but not because of him. It was hard just because we had things going on. I had work things. He left the corporate world and started a whole new business. We took a huge risk and bought this farm that definitely couldn't afford at the moment, but we were like, we desperately want this. So we just like, we're planning a wedding and doing that. We were like, basically like flat broke after we got married. We had just bought this, you know, all this land and put a wedding together. And he was starting a business. And then I had a huge work transition and I had family things and it was, there was just a lot of things we had to go through and deal and build. And he was the easiest part.

• 2:28:16Shawn Ryan?

  Did your family go to the wedding?

• 2:28:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:28:20Speaker 06

  Reed wasn't able to be there.

• 2:28:23Speaker 06

  It really sucked, but.

• 2:28:25Shawn Ryan?

  Did your family like him?

• 2:28:26Speaker 06

  They love him. My dad loves him. My brother Chase loves him. My mom loves him. They said I was talking more than I do there on the phone at like midnight, talking about chickens and what kind of eggs the chickens are laying and all that kind of stuff. They love, I'm terrified of birds and they love the birds. But yeah, they get along really well.

• 2:28:46Shawn Ryan?

  I'm happy for you, Brett.

• 2:28:47Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 2:28:48Shawn Ryan?

  He's an amazing guy.

• 2:28:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, he's great.

• 2:28:51Shawn Ryan?

  With the little I know, you know what I mean? From last night and, and going up to your place, but really happy person. I can see it.

• 2:29:01Speaker 06

  He's very joyful.

• 2:29:02Shawn Ryan?

  You picked good.

• 2:29:03Speaker 06

  I know. I'm proud of myself. I broke a cycle.

• 2:29:07Shawn Ryan?

  You should be.

• 2:29:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:29:08Shawn Ryan?

  But let's take another quick break.

• 2:29:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, sounds good.

• 2:29:14Shawn Ryan?

  I'd like to invite you to gain access to an exclusive experience on Vigilance Elite Patreon. Our patrons are the driving force behind the success of this show and their support allows us to keep doing what we do. Depending on the tier you choose, you'll get access to benefits like behind the scenes footage before each interview, early access to episodes, end of the month live Zoom calls with me, exclusive merch and more. Join us and become a patron starting at just $5 a month by visiting patreon.com/vigilanceelite. That's patreon.com/vigilanceelite.

• 2:29:55Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes and leave the Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through, and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show.

• 2:30:16Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Brett and Cookie?

• 2:30:19Speaker 06

  Cookie.

• 2:30:20Shawn Ryan?

  Cookie was born when?

• 2:30:22Speaker 06

  Eight weeks ago.

• 2:30:23Shawn Ryan?

  Eight weeks ago?

• 2:30:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, we got her last night, so she had to make an appearance.

• 2:30:29Shawn Ryan?

  There she is.

• 2:30:30Speaker 06

  In all her glory.

• 2:30:31Shawn Ryan?

  Cute as hell.

• 2:30:33Speaker 06

  Alex wanted me to not say that we had gotten a puppy last night when he gave me the gummy bears, be like, "Actually, I brought you." Heard your wife really wanted a dog.

• 2:30:41Shawn Ryan?

  She does, man. She's got puppy fever. She should be in here to beat Cookie.

• 2:30:47Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:30:49Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, so let's move back into acting. So we got...

• 2:30:54Speaker 06

  We've rerouted about 10 times.

• 2:30:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, we went down some rabbit holes, and it's been amazing.

• 2:31:00Shawn Ryan?

  But, so, you started... Where did you start kind of getting into political commentary? You worked for... You were at PragerU for a little bit, right?

• 2:31:10Speaker 06

  Yes, so it was 2020. I was at UCLA and, um,

• 2:31:18Speaker 06

  I lost basically all my friends due to politics. I think it's a very common story that a lot of people have... I know Cookie, been through. Especially young people, and in 2020 where I didn't really say anything that was,

• 2:31:37Speaker 06

  "Is this not gonna work, Cookie?

• 2:31:40Speaker 06

  You don't want to hear about me being canceled?"

• 2:31:45Speaker 06

  I think she might distract.

• 2:31:48Speaker 06

  I'm gonna get Alex. Alex, come up and get her. I don't think you like this.

• 2:31:53Shawn Ryan?

  So Cookie's not, uh, she's a little camera shy. He's a little camera shy.

• 2:31:56Speaker 06

  No, she.

• 2:31:57Shawn Ryan?

  She.

• 2:31:58Speaker 06

  Don't misgender my dog.

• 2:31:59Shawn Ryan?

  My bad.

• 2:31:59Speaker 06

  I know.

• 2:32:00Shawn Ryan?

  I'm sorry.

• 2:32:01Speaker 06

  No, she's camera shy. Um...

• 2:32:05Speaker 06

  Funny, our other Saint Bernard, I brought her and did a live stream with her right after we got her on, I was still doing comment section. She fell asleep on the desk and was just like, oh.

• 2:32:15Speaker 06

  She's a lot more chill. Um, no, I.

• 2:32:21Speaker 06

  There was so much political unrest, obviously, through COVID and we had, we're getting into midterms.

• 2:32:29Speaker 06

  Just past the midterms and.

• 2:32:33Speaker 06

  George Floyd and BLM, and I never intended to make a political statement. I just kind of realized that things were.

• 2:32:44Speaker 06

  There wasn't as much love and tolerance as I thought there was. And I knew that most of my friends thought differently than I did. I was in a very liberal industry. I was still acting when I was at UCLA. And I knew, you know, people would walk around with their, I'm with her pins. I had really good friends, you know, during 2016 election that literally had like, I'm with her painted on their nails and all this stuff. So I knew that I had different opinions. I just never brought it up. I didn't think that it was for a workplace. I was also very young. I didn't vote in the 2016 election.

• 2:33:15Speaker 06

  And, um, I think it was still kind of.

• 2:33:19Speaker 06

  I knew what my values were, what my principles were, but I didn't really understand how that translated to politics and current events. And I kind of had to learn that and came to a head in 2020. And, um.

• 2:33:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, I literally did nothing other than saying, I'm.

• 2:33:36Speaker 06

  I'm not a registered Democrat. That's what you said? And I'm not voting for Bernie or Biden in the midterms. And there was already some unrest because one of my best friends at the time, my big in my sorority, actually. She was voting for Biden because Bernie was too extreme for her. She even got flak. Like, how could you do that? It's like some establishment politician. He's a shill, all of this stuff. So she got a ton of hate. And then I come in here.

• 2:34:05Speaker 06

  Then it's like, yeah, I'm not voting for either of them.

• 2:34:09Speaker 06

  And things started to change then and it wasn't like, you're canceled, we hate you. But it was a lot of vitriol, a lot of questioning.

• 2:34:19Speaker 06

  I had Communist Manifestos chucked at my head. I walked into a party, literally had one, hey Brett, like fucking read this. Literally found it me when I walked into a party. People knew that, you know, my family from the South, my dad's whole family, like going back in our lineage, like, I could be like a Daughters of the Revolution. I have a, you know, direct line back to a revolutionary soldier. Deep, deep roots in the South, in North Carolina. And my grandmother was raised on a tobacco farm. Very poor. And we were just talking about family and history and they heard that and they were like, so you owned slaves. And so then, like drunkenly at parties, they would say, yeah, Brett's like, they're a racist friend from Tennessee. Her family owned slaves.

• 2:35:05Speaker 06

  Just things like that.

• 2:35:05Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 2:35:06Speaker 06

  Yes. And it's got more and more heated and I was supposed to live with this whole group of friends going into my senior year.

• 2:35:14Shawn Ryan?

  And this all came just because you said you weren't going to vote for Biden or Bernie?

• 2:35:18Speaker 06

  That's it.

• 2:35:19Shawn Ryan?

  No mention of anything else?

• 2:35:20Speaker 06

  No. I think they understood it and we had a conversation later and I was like, I mean, yeah. At the time, I wasn't like gung ho for Trump, but I wasn't anti him. I was just like, yeah, I'll vote for Trump. He's our president now and he's doing a good job. He's the Republican. What he says makes sense. I was never thrown off by any of the media hit pieces or things that he said. I was just like, he's just like an abrasive guy. He's an entertainer.

• 2:35:48Speaker 06

  It was like totally normal. I was like, okay. And my mom was very, and I was, you know, living at home, going to school. So we would talk about politics a lot and she was never his biggest fan.

• 2:36:00Speaker 06

  But voted for him and really respected the fact that he was a businessman. And that made total sense. My brain was like, yeah, why would I not want somebody who has run businesses and built empires to run our country? That makes total sense. Like it's him or these people that have been in government for 50 years and have done jack shit. It just moved so clear in my head, didn't even think of it being majorly controversial, especially when I knew.

• 2:36:28Speaker 06

  That my friends and I had differences and we had never, like, I respected them. I accepted that we had different, it was just so, I just hadn't been faced with that yet. And then suddenly it all flipped. And then after COVID, you know, everybody had gone home and we were in these group chats. We would be on Zoom together, we'd hang out, you know, in that weird twilight zone of playing like games over Zoom and have hangouts and whatever it was. Me in all these group chats. And they would, you know, say things like, you know, we're road tripping to the beach. It was like June of 2020. These friends like getting out of their homes in Chicago and going to South Carolina so they could go to the beach whilst simultaneously shitting on Republicans. Being like, yeah, we just saw like an idiot with a Trump flag on out of his car. My dad said that if we had hit him, he wouldn't have given a shit.

• 2:37:14Speaker 06

  Like that kind of stuff. And I'm like in the group chat and you're saying that to me. Like, I hope we just run over all these Trump supporters. Knowing that I was in there. And I was still just like, oh, it's fine.

• 2:37:25Shawn Ryan?

  It was like an indirect shot.

• 2:37:26Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:37:27Shawn Ryan?

  At you.

• 2:37:28Speaker 06

  And I went along with it. I was like, oh, it's okay. Like, they still love me, we're still friends, I'm still in the group chat, we're still gonna live together. And my brother Chase, you know, I wasn't really listening to my mom. And she called him. And I was like, I think you need to talk to Brett, this is weird. And he called me and he was like, you know, those aren't friends. You're about to go live in like a tiny two bedroom Westwood, Westwood apartment with these four people.

• 2:37:53Speaker 06

  And they can't even respect you for having a different opinion when you've spent the last two and a half years not bringing anything up, not, not starting fights, loving them, caring for them, being supportive. That's not what friendship's about.

• 2:38:07Speaker 06

  And, um, that's kind of when it clicked. And so I've told him I, you know, it had really reached a head where it was like, we were, it had gotten less indirect. And I had a conversation with like each of them individually. I was like, we're going into this election. I, can I trust that we're all gonna be friends after this? And it was like, oh. And I'm like, oh, it was just very, very intense. Maybe you should look this after all. I was like, maybe I shouldn't.

• 2:38:37Speaker 06

  That was around the time we got, you know, my sorority basically like turned fricking upside down during BLM and girls were getting called out and kicked out of the sorority because they racially profiled people because there was a guy who, um, UCLA is a very public campus. It's not closed off. It's in the city. Sorority Row is just in a Westwood neighborhood. So anybody can walk up and there was a couple of guys that were coming in and breaking into the sorority houses and trying to attack young women. One of them was black. And they were trying to find this guy. And so one of the girls had seen a man who was an exact description, wearing the exact hoodie, walking suspiciously around campus and wrote in our group chat, "I think I saw him. I'm going to send it to the police." And it was a black guy.

• 2:39:20Speaker 06

  And she got absolutely tarred and feathered for racially profiling.

• 2:39:23Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:39:24Speaker 06

  Like publicly in this group chat of like, I don't remember her name, Becca, whatever it was of like, "You, this is so disgraceful. You really need to check your privileges." She was like called in front of the board. I was watching all this transpire. Like, have we lost our ever-loving minds? There's a man who's breaking into sorority houses. And this has been going on for months at this point. And the campus was like sort of shutting down, but some people still lived on campus. It was like a ghost town. And like these houses were being broken into. And this girl was absolutely like destroyed in front of everybody. And then there was all this stuff of like, well, we as like the Panhellenic Council and you know, Capa Delta has me to make a BLM statement. I was like, we're a fucking UCLA sorority.

• 2:40:10Speaker 06

  And then Capa Delta, like the head chapter made a statement that wasn't good enough. And then that was super messy. And Amy Coney Barrett was a Capa Delta. And so right after all the BLM stuff, when she was nominated, Capa Delta, the head, you know, chapter made a statement, as they should have, saying, "This is now our most, you know, successful alum. She's going to the Supreme Court." They had to apologize for celebrating because she was anti-women's rights. It was a mess. And then the thing that I was just like, I'm done with all of this. I had just said, okay, no, I'm not going to live in this apartment. But I was like, maybe I'll stick it out in this sorority. Like the last year, why not? Maybe there's, because I kept thinking, if campus reopened.

• 2:40:56Speaker 06

  It was nice to have like a place to go and study and activities to go do. I was like, I might as well, I'm already paid. And they sent out, the house manager, mom, person, sent out a letter talking about the election, telling us all that she hoped we voted correctly. And we voted for women's rights. And that we didn't forget that there was a man in office that was going to take all of that away from us and that she, you know, being older than us, knew all of this. And was wiser and that she helped that we showed up and voted correctly. I was like, I can't frickin' deal with this. I mean, it's just like.

• 2:41:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:34Speaker 06

  So then I, that was at the end of 2020, like going into the fall semester. So I basically just disconnected from everything, which honestly was like the greatest gift I could have been given. Cause I think, it wasn't a bad thing, but I'd gotten really engaged in UCLA life over that year and a half. Cause I'd gone to community college and I transferred into UCLA as a junior. And had joined the sorority, had gone to the football games, had gone to the parties, had met people, was going to live on campus, all of that. And COVID just pulled me out of it. And recalibrated me in a lot of ways. Where I had to become very intentional about my values and my principles and the people that I was surrounding myself with. I became super lonely because the world was shut down and my family was one of the only ones that was like, yeah, sure, let's go to Yosemite.

• 2:42:19Speaker 06

  And my brother's going to like fly across the country and come vacation with us. I'm going to go outside and not wear a mask. I was still working at Trader Joe's. So I was with people 24/7. And I didn't get sick. I was fine. I was like, what's happening? Like the world moves on. I was able to focus on where I wanted my career to go. Cause I was at that point where I was looking at the, you know, the Hollywood industry. And I'd already kind of at that moment, thought that maybe acting wasn't for me. I thought I didn't love it. But I hated the, the way that the industry operates. It was like, I looked around at the people who I considered mentors, who were older than me in the industry. And I did not like the lives that they were leading.

• 2:43:02Shawn Ryan?

  Why? What about it?

• 2:43:04Speaker 06

  They had no control.

• 2:43:07Shawn Ryan?

  Control over what?

• 2:43:08Speaker 06

  Their own personal lives. I mean, it was like a good friend of mine was on a probably one of the most famous TV shows of the last 20 years. It was a lead role. Had to live out of state for months at a time. Husband stayed home and raised the kids, barely saw them.

• 2:43:26Speaker 06

  Kids went off to boarding school. She was not engaged.

• 2:43:31Speaker 06

  You know, friends of mine who were in their 30s, who I would be on TV shows with, they would, you know, we'd work together, they'd go on and they'd, you know, be a series regular on a Netflix show and they'd be 30 something living in a town home with four other adults. Cause they couldn't afford their own home.

• 2:43:43Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:43:44Speaker 06

  People who didn't see their kids. And the thing is, even at a young age, I did not like the fact that every part of my being was just a tool for you to use. Like, you have an audition at 2pm today, you have to be there at this time. Turn your entire life upside down. If you book it, you're flying to Vancouver tomorrow for four months. And it was hard as a kid too, cause you were I loved it so much, but you would have friends book a job and it would be one of your best friends and they'd literally move to Vancouver for however many months or years, cause they were shooting a show.

• 2:44:21Speaker 06

  Or you had to go to Arizona or Texas where people are so few things actually film in LA these days. And go abroad.

• 2:44:29Speaker 06

  And

• 2:44:33Speaker 06

  I thought about what I really wanted in life and I wanted to be a mom. I wanted to get married. I wanted to have a family. And I really wanted to, this probably is, you know, now knowing what you know about my family and talking about this, where I had a lack of control. I don't think I was the right person to just hand that over. Where it's like, you tell me

• 2:44:55Speaker 06

  where to be. At any point, like it could just be for an audition in Santa Monica at 5pm that's really annoying to get to, or it's I'm moving abroad for however many months. I'm gonna be away from my whole community, family, whatever it is. But also, you tell me, you know, dye your hair. You're not skinny enough. You're not fat enough. You need to, you know, you're just a shell for somebody. Which is a really beautiful part of acting, and it's one of the reasons why I fell in love with it. But it got to a point where it, when it, when I started to think about it instead of a hobby and an escape, and I thought about it as a career, I was like, I don't, I don't think this works for me. And I didn't like

• 2:45:40Speaker 06

  the fact I didn't have control over the projects that I did, because I was in no position, I was a working actor, but I was in no position to like pick and choose my projects, obviously. I just did, I went where the work was. I didn't like that, I hated the characters in almost every script I was sent. I just, like, they were bad people. Like the stories that I was, you know, being put in to tell, I would go and audition for these roles and be like, what is like, what is society getting from these stories? They're so awful. Like, all these characters, they're, they're bad people. I'm putting like filth into the world. So that was really hard. I felt just like such a values disconnect.

• 2:46:24Speaker 06

  I just felt trapped. And so then I thought, okay, maybe I'll go work in production. I could change things. I could go be a producer. I could go tell stories. Then I worked at, it was kind of like my dream job, honestly, at the time. I took this production company that I massively respected the work that they were doing. It was very story first and character first. It was like big budget, independent films. Like, they weren't going through any huge studios. And was working for them in 2020 because I'd already kind of been thinking through all of this while I was in college that, you know, I'm answering myself at 15, we've already kind of like gone through that. So I was making my own money, paying for my life. And now it'd be, had become a job. And so I had a couple of years to think about that. And I was working at this production company in 2020, happened,

• 2:47:07Speaker 06

  George Floyd happened, and my job changed from receiving scripts and passing them on to the producer on the basis of, or the production team on the basis of It being really good characters and good people that would leave an audience changed and a story that was worth telling because it, the whole idea of this production company and what I was supposed to seek out was that at the end of the film, you were better in some way.

• 2:47:32Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:47:33Speaker 06

  It's not hitting you over the head with Bible. It's not like this is a feel-good, whatever. It was just at the end of it, something's been sparked in you. And there's good people in it who are complex, who are broken, who you see heal.

• 2:47:46Shawn Ryan?

  You're pumping good into the world.

• 2:47:49Speaker 06

  Yeah. And it changed from that to, we have way too many white stories. I need you to find me a Native American story right now. We don't have any trans stories. We're going to be attacked. Go find it. So it became identity first. I was like, oh, God, like, so I can't even, you know, I'm an entry-level person. I can't even change it from here. So I felt very lost there. And so I did finish out my time at UCLA. Again, I'm very, you know, find the good in everything. Find, you know, the lesson that you're going to learn in this experience. What good thing can you take from it? The good thing that COVID gave me was that it removed me from all those environments. It took acting away. It took production. Like, the whole industry basically shut down. UCLA shut down.

• 2:48:34Speaker 06

  My social life sorority, everything went away. And I just dove into studying what I believed in and trying to build something for myself. So I did a business program at UC Berkeley's grad school for business, Haas School of Business, which is where you, as an undergrad, could go and basically get a condensed, like, MBA. And so I did that, which I would have never had the time to do, but I was able to do it because it was remote. I did what every, you know, English major who's confused about her future would do. And I studied for the LSAT. I took the LSAT. I was like, I'll go to law school. And at that time, I was super engaged in politics. I was like, I'll go be a two-way lawyer. I'll go into constitutional law. I'd been shooting for years with my brother. I felt like the world was under attack.

• 2:49:19Speaker 06

  Like, I had no idea what was happening. My mom, you know, was a prepper. I'd become a prepper, and I was like, I'll go into two-way law. And then I was like, what the hell am I doing? Like, I shouldn't be a lawyer. I hate, like, I don't want to go read contracts for the rest of my life. Um, and I had talked with some constitutional liars and they were like, there's too many lawyers right now because there's too many grad schools because it's, there's a financial incentive for universities to create grad programs. Because the government gives, or the government gives subsidized limitless loans for grad school. So they, that's why grad programs for lesbian dance theory, that's a joke we all make.

• 2:49:55Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. I didn't know that.

• 2:49:57Speaker 06

  Because you don't have to have the financial incentive to be able to make money after, have a job afterwards. You have limitless loans. So every university and their mother created a law school. And you can see in like times of recession, lawyers spike. Because people can't get jobs, they just go back to grad school, they get a student loan. It's happening right now.

• 2:50:19Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 2:50:20Speaker 06

  And so I had talked to some lawyers and a mentor of mine who worked at the Foundation for Economic Education, I kind of missed the chapter, but I'll go back. But I was writing for the Foundation of Economic Education.

• 2:50:30Speaker 06

  She knew that I was going to go to law school, her name's Hannah Cox, people have probably seen her on Twitter. And she kind of, she gave me an assignment and she said, I want you to, I told her about this conversation that I'd had with these constitutional liars who were like, I don't think this is, this isn't what it's cracked up to be, and I think that your skills are better used elsewhere. Like, if you want to do advocacy, you can do everything that we're doing except signing the briefs. Do you need to go put your life and career on hold when you're already engaged with, you know, in that year? When everything shut down, when I had no friends, that I found community at PragerU. And I was like, I'm an actor, I can do things on camera, I can help produce things, you want me to make social media videos for you? So I have nothing to lose at this point. I'll go be an outward, you know, conservative. So I started making videos that way and made videos for Young Americans for Liberty and got hired there and was obviously an English major.

• 2:51:15Shawn Ryan?

  What age were you when you got jumped into PragerU?

• 2:51:19Speaker 06

  Eighteen.

• 2:51:20Shawn Ryan?

  Eighteen?

• 2:51:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:51:24Shawn Ryan?

  And you found them?

• 2:51:25Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm. I reached out. They brought me into their office and had a whole tour.

• 2:51:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, their head of PR now, her name is Sabrina. She was running PragerForce, which was their student program, which is still, I think, an incredible program. She knew that I was in LA and I had joined PragerForce to just try to like meet people and they would do monthly like Zoom calls for like all the lonely, you know, teenage conservatives around the country. And she was like, oh, you're in LA, you should come into the office. And I really like all of this. I give a ton of credit to her. Because she brought me in and she said, I think that you could have a real voice. Like, could we, what can we offer you? Would you like to do videos for us? Can we give you resources? Like here, we can all, you know, love to be friends with you. Like she gave me a community. And she really helped put me in the right direction and said, I think you could do something here.

• 2:52:14Speaker 06

  I had never even thought of it. I was like, commentary? Like, what do you mean? Um, and so everything spiraled from there and started working at, you know, doing videos for Young Americans for Liberty and got a job there and got a fellowship. I was a Hazlitt Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education and was writing for them. Because I had a writing background through school. Um, had gone to like, you know, the TPUSA events, just became engaged purely out of a utilitarian, you know, standpoint of I just, I needed a community. I felt so lonely. I never thought like, I'm gonna go be a right wing influencer. This is gonna be like, I'm going to go do commentary. I just wanted people.

• 2:52:53Speaker 06

  Um, and I thought I had, you know, a unique skill set that it was kind of missing on the young right. Like there were no younger voices. Will Witt at PragerU was the only one. And so she started making videos here and there and grew an Instagram page from zero to like 7,000. But yeah, I was still thinking, I'll go to law school and I'll just go do constitutional law. Like, that's how I'll make a difference. And Hannah Cox at Fee said, she gave me a writing assignment. She said, I want you to go, tell me why there are so many lawyers. Like, okay. And then tell me the economic ramifications of that. And how the government has screwed with the free market in that regard. That'd be a great assignment. And I did that and I was like, holy shit, I can't go to law school.

• 2:53:35Shawn Ryan?

  Did you hear, did you ever hear from your, uh, your old sorority friends?

• 2:53:39Speaker 06

  Uh-uh. Well, I, not my friends.

• 2:53:44Speaker 06

  But I've heard from girls who were in my sorority at the same time, who knew me, who like, three years later, were like, you probably don't remember me, but we were in Capitols, we were in the same pledge class, we were like, you know, pledge class after me. And I wish I had known you at school, because it was so alienating. We just, I mean, we couldn't find each other.

• 2:54:01Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:54:02Speaker 06

  Um, yeah, I don't really have, so I have a couple of friends from UCLA, but they weren't from my time there.

• 2:54:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, gotcha.

• 2:54:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, but that's how it all kind of started. So I withdrew from law school my, uh, the day of my orientation. It's like, it's not for me. It was after that writing assignment, after all those conversations, I was like, I'm not gonna do this. I was living in Idaho with my mom, because I had, she, after the divorce, and when COVID happened, she was like, this is the sign, I need to get out. You know, you don't need me anymore. I had applied for, you know, law school at UCLA, at Pepperdine, Loyola Marymount. And then she had said that she wanted to go to Idaho. So I was like, I'll apply for University of Idaho, why not? And they had a dual JD MBA program, which I was really interested in. So rather than three years, it'd be four years, so I'd get an MBA and a JD.

• 2:54:52Speaker 06

  Um, so I got into that, and she bought this farm sight unseen in Idaho, instead of getting the hell out of California. I don't want to be, you know, carded for a vaccine, I don't want to wear a mask. So, left, my brother left. We, it was my brother Reed, he was doing really well at the time, and we all moved to Idaho, and Reed and I got a little duplex. And I quit Trader Joe's in LA, and I came to Idaho, and I was writing for Fee and doing all these like conservative nonprofit stuff. Was working as a waitress at a steakhouse in Boise, which was such a fun job. People like crap on serving. I had a hell of a time serving. I loved that. Um.

• 2:55:31Speaker 06

  And, yeah, I, so I withdrew, had this whole plan ahead of me. I was like, I'll go to University of Idaho, because I didn't want to be in California either. And our whole family's here now and I withdrew and my mom looked at me and she said, "You have to figure out what you're gonna do with your life." Like you can't just, are you just gonna live in Idaho and be, you know, a waitress? Like, you need to come up with a plan. And so I got a permanent role at Young Americans for Liberty, being their marketing strategist. And I did social media for them, I did copywriting for their development team, which in the nonprofit sphere is, you know, sending out emails for development is fundraising. So, brand campaigns for them. And I had like a big girl salary to the time I thought was like, "I'm making a lot of money."

• 2:56:15Speaker 06

  It's like more than my, you know, minimum wage at Trader Joe's. And although Trader Joe's actually pays very well, we're a great company. Um, if you need a job, it's the best place to work, oh, hands down. But, um...

• 2:56:27Shawn Ryan?

  I'll keep that in mind.

• 2:56:28Speaker 06

  Oh yeah, if everything goes to hell, we'll both be back there. I'll be in the box stocking the milk again. That was my favorite job.

• 2:56:34Shawn Ryan?

  (laughing)

• 2:56:35Speaker 06

  And, um, yeah, so I kept doing that and then randomly got a DM from Daily Wire who said, "We're looking to start a show with the on person. We love your social media and what you're doing." And so I took some meetings with them, they sent me some videos to react to, just to like hear me on camera and... It was, I told you this at dinner last night, but I haven't shared this publicly. My brother's most recent, well now it's second most recent psychotic break happened the week that I was offered the job with Daily Wire. It's like December of 21.

• 2:57:15Speaker 06

  I was really weighing a lot of things and I was petrified to take this job because as I've kind of, you know, set the scene for you, my mom and I were super intertwined. There was a lot of weight to carry. I felt like we were, things were good for the first time, like she was happy, she bought this farm that she's always, she'd always wanted to have a farm, forever. My dad never wanted her, first husband never wanted her to have a farm. And, um... I was happy, you know, I was living with Reed. Reed was doing great. He's even talking about going back to school. And it just felt like things were humming and I had a, I had a job. Where I was, I felt like I was making a difference and I thought I'll just meet like a nice guy in Idaho.

• 2:57:56Speaker 06

  And I'll live near my mom and well, I'll buy a farm soon and you know, I had horses at her property and it was all normal and I was like, I can't leave this. And she had had a pretty hard conversation with it where she basically grabbed me by the neck. Cause I didn't even like, I was petrified to even take the call with Daily Wire. And send in a tape. Cause I was like, I just like. I was so out of the game. I hadn't auditioned in so long. Cause I hadn't been acting in a couple of years and I felt like that was behind me. And it's such a testament, I think to like risk taking and betting on yourself is habitual. I don't think that's something that is ingrained in most people. Certainly not in me. It's like a practice that I like every couple of years. I gotta, I just did it a couple of months ago. You have to take a leap. And shake something up and challenge yourself.

• 2:58:41Speaker 06

  If something isn't right, you just. You have to do it. And I was definitely at a. A stall in my life. I didn't, I just, you know, I was a waitress. I was withdrawing from law school. I was working this marketing job, but. You know, it was remote. So I was working as well, whatever it was. But I was comfortable. And with acting. The beautiful thing about it is that you get told no 90% of the time. From a really young age, I had learned how to get rejected. I didn't care. It was like, you know, 12 years old, I would go in and you bare your soul to somebody and you're performing, you're singing, whatever it is. And they go, okay, thank you. And you walk out the door and you, 90% of the time, you never hear anything from them. So if you're somebody who likes like gratification and that kind of thing. To be an actor that's not some kind of celebrity, it's really hard.

• 2:59:27Speaker 06

  Like it does, that just doesn't work that way because most of the time they don't give a shit about you. Like they, you don't hear anything. From anybody. They don't say, it was really great. We're going a different direction. You maybe hear that 1% of the time. You just go in and you, so that was like such a. Crucial part of my growing up and I hadn't done that in two years. So this felt like a huge risk. I was getting, you know, having to like sort of audition for this and send in a tape. They, obviously. They're gonna have a show with you. They wanna see. What are this girl's values beyond, you know, social media? What can she do in a longer format? Cause I basically only done TikToks and that kind of thing. And, um.

• 3:00:00Speaker 06

  I based, I got up to the deadline and I was like not gonna send in a video. And I went over to house and I was like bitching and moaning about it and saying, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I just want to stay here, gonna be in Idaho. And she grabbed me by the neck and she said, I don't care. My mom rarely swears. She was like, I don't give a fuck. If you decide not to take this job or do whatever, but if you stand in front of me and say you're not even gonna try,

• 3:00:23Speaker 06

  then I'm incredibly disappointed in you. And hearing her saying she was, I was like, okay. Because that's like, she is the person, like I want to please her the most. We've been through everything together. I respect her so much. I was like, if she's saying that. And she was like, you're, then you're not the person that I know that I raised you to be.

• 3:00:40Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:00:40Speaker 06

  Who took every risk, who put yourself out there constantly, that went on stage, was an animal, that tried everything. That would go in, that has, you know, for the last, you know, it was eight years at that point, 10 years, really. Yeah, I was 18, so it was 10 years, a decade of auditioning and being on stage. And, you know, being, you know, rejected and getting up and trying again, even if you never got a role and you're gonna stand in front of me and say you're not even gonna try.

• 3:01:05Speaker 06

  And I was like, you are right. So I went home, I recorded it, and I got the job. And then I had to decide whether, and then she was like, if you don't want to take it, you don't want to take it. That's a once in a lifetime, like, they weren't gonna come back and ask me in a year, oh, you still want to do a show? They would have found somebody else, like, on social media to do a show with. And the part that I had talked to you about last night is that I was trying to decide whether I wanted to uproot my life and do this and leave and start this whole new thing. And I could tell in my brother's eyes that something was not hap, like, not right.

• 3:01:36Speaker 06

  He was on his meds, he wasn't taking drugs. Voices is very clean, city, Idaho's, very buttoned up. We lived in a very, like, in the outskirts, he had no access to anything. And he just started to crack. They just, the drugs just weren't working anymore. And you can always tell when he's kind of, when you hear, when he's hearing the voices. Because when you're having a conversation with him, if you've had a conversation with anybody that has schizophrenia, they're talking to you, but they're also talking with the voices that they hear and they're telling them how to respond to them. So our conversations really slowed down. He started to get more unstable.

• 3:02:10Speaker 06

  And it was like two days before I had to make my decision about whether I was gonna leave and do this, take this job. And he asked me to come downstairs and I walked down to his apartment, which was under my house, or our house, I had a little apartment upstairs, he had one downstairs. And he looked at me and he gave me this purple crystal that I still have. He put it in my hand and he said, "You need to go to Nashville, it's your destiny."

• 3:02:35Speaker 06

  I was like, "What do you mean?" And he was like, "You have to promise me that you're gonna go.

• 3:02:41Speaker 06

  You have to go." I was like, "For this job?" He was like, "You must move, you must be there." And he was like, "They're telling me that you have to go." And in my mind, I was like, "Okay, your voices have told you like some crazy things, like we have spent the last 10 years, like I don't even know, I don't wanna know if I wanna trust these voices." And he was like, "I'm telling you, this is your destiny, you must go."

• 3:03:03Speaker 06

  I was like, "Okay, well, whatever." And I woke up the next morning and he was gone.

• 3:03:08Speaker 06

  And he had a full psychotic break and the police found him. It was in December, out on a bench in the cold. Completely in a full psychotic state. And that was the last sort of coherent conversation we had was him telling me to go.

• 3:03:23Speaker 06

  I take that stuff seriously, like...

• 3:03:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:27Speaker 06

  But I knew that I probably should go and I knew that it was a great opportunity and it was risky, it was scary, I was gonna be alone. But I also knew that I was gonna be working with a lot of people in this world that I respected, I mean, I'd been listening to, you know, Matt Walsh and Michael and Candace and Ben.

• 3:03:44Shawn Ryan?

  You'd heard them all before.

• 3:03:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, in the last couple of years, I'd listened, yeah. Huge deal.

• 3:03:51Speaker 06

  And I knew more than anything that what I would get from it, even if things didn't work out, even if a show didn't tick off, even if they never, you know, if we never developed a show, if it never got greenlit, whatever it was, that I had the opportunity to work with people who were better than me at what I was doing. Who were principled, who were great at what they did.

• 3:04:12Speaker 06

  And even not in like this weird industry, but who just seemed like good people. And I got there and those individuals, like, I'll always say this, but, you know, you hear Matt Walsh online, that's who he is in real life.

• 3:04:26Speaker 06

  Like Michael Knowles, he walks the walk.

• 3:04:30Speaker 06

  Like I had to, it was like crazy, you know, Jordan Peterson, I'm doing my show and he was like, I want to meet the internet girl. And he's like walking in and wants me and I, but I get to have these, he was like, you do the TikToks, right? The Youtubes.

• 3:04:42Shawn Ryan?

  The TikToks and the Youtubes.

• 3:04:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly. Um, and so in my, in my mind, like I knew that it was a huge deal, but I was petrified and again, I was comfortable. And I said, okay, screw it. I'm going to go do it.

• 3:04:54Shawn Ryan?

  They brought you on to do a show?

• 3:04:56Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:04:57Shawn Ryan?

  And so walking in there for the first time, I mean, how, how often was it that you were listening to them? I mean, was it?

• 3:05:04Speaker 06

  Pretty frequently, yeah.

• 3:05:05Shawn Ryan?

  You were listening to them all, all the time?

• 3:05:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:05:08Shawn Ryan?

  And so you walk in and there's?

• 3:05:09Speaker 06

  I mean, Ben at like 15 years old, when I was, we had that conversation about abortion and I learned that my dad wanted to abort me. Like when I was looking up, you know, information, it was his debates that came up.

• 3:05:21Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:05:23Speaker 06

  It was like, you know, him at college campuses.

• 3:05:28Speaker 06

  You know?

• 3:05:30Speaker 06

  I love listening to Michael.

• 3:05:33Speaker 06

  Michael, uh, made me think about God in a way that I hadn't in a really long time. I just kind of shut off from that, especially living in LA. That's the most secular place you can be, especially in Hollywood. So these were people that meant something to me. And, you know, still do, became very good friends and mentors and will always be grateful for that. And.

• 3:05:58Shawn Ryan?

  Were they all there when you walked in the door?

• 3:06:01Speaker 06

  No, Jordan wasn't there yet and it took me a while to meet them because, you know, I was in development for the show. So it's like, I was brought on to do the show, but I was like, social media content creator. And then we took a few months to do the show. So when the show launched, that's when I really got to know them. And they were like, oh, you're legit, you're, they gave you a show.

• 3:06:19Shawn Ryan?

  How was it meeting Candace for the first time?

• 3:06:22Speaker 06

  Terrifying.

• 3:06:24Speaker 06

  She's like, so I had met her, I'd gone to mass. And she was, you know, George is Catholic. And she had not converted at that time, but I knew, like, she sort of knew who I was, and she filmed in a different part of the studio than I did, so I didn't really cross paths with her. And her husband, George, was like, it's so funny if you know him, but he loves YouTube. So he would watch my show and be like, Hannah, this is the girl at Daily Wire. And she's like, I haven't even met her. Like, who is this? And then I accidentally parked next to her at mass one Sunday. And this is like the Michael Knowles effect of like, I need to go to mass, I need to get my life together, whatever it was. And I was like, oh my God, Hannah's here. And then I saw George look over at me and apparently he was like, that's the girl at Daily Wire. And that was like the first time she'd ever like

• 3:07:10Speaker 06

  seen me in person. And then she was in the office like a couple of weeks later and officially met me. But she's one of those people. We were talking about this downstairs, that she is this like firecracker of personality. And you like see her on screen, like, oh my God, like, I don't even know what to expect about this person. And she is one of the warmest individuals. She's incredibly charismatic. She's incredibly loyal. And I would, you know, hear things around the office of like, oh, Hannah's over there, like Hannah's walking in. And it was like, everybody like revered her and kind of feared her. And she just comes up and gives you like a huge hug. So, yeah, that was really special. And Matt, you know, I think the first time he ever like really officially met me was when his team was like, you gotta go on her show to promote something that he was doing or help her promote her show. And we just had a ton of fun and

• 3:07:55Shawn Ryan?

  So it was welcoming right off the bat?

• 3:07:57Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:07:57Shawn Ryan?

  Were you, I mean, how did it feel walking in there, starting a show with the people you like? I don't know if you'd call them idols, but you know, people that you look up to in the industry. And I mean, now you're right there with them.

• 3:08:10Speaker 06

  That was a fish out of water for sure. Imposter syndrome. But also, you know, you were, I'm very overconfident. So there was some imposter syndrome, but it was like, yeah, I can do this. I can talk to a camera. I have opinions and I don't waver in what I believe and

• 3:08:28Speaker 06

  I have fun telling stories. And that's what I got to do every day. That's what I still get to do. Is like what I loved about acting, what I loved about working at that production company and searching for stories at the end of the day

• 3:08:40Speaker 06

  was telling stories with interesting characters and with interesting meaning that leave people changed.

• 3:08:47Speaker 06

  That leave you thinking about something in a different light. That make you feel something.

• 3:08:53Speaker 06

  And I got to do that every single day. And it was a really nice marrying of all the things that I loved. So I wasn't acting and there's always a part of me that's like, you know, I love that, loving on stage. Um, I'm doing my tour in the next couple of months, which I'm so excited about because I love being out. Like I love feeding off of an audience and this is like the whole, I love entertaining and I love telling stories in that medium. So I was able to kind of like mesh together all the things that I cared about. And it was not the career that I ever expected for myself. But I think it's really beautiful because you, if you follow the things, like if you find the, if you find the core of why you love what you love.

• 3:09:35Speaker 06

  Cause it's usually a lot deeper than what you think. It's not the superficial, like I like this job because of X, Y, Z. But it's like, why does that fill your cup? Is it the people? Is it the things that you accomplish? Is it the feeling that you're making it, whatever it might be? Is it the storytelling aspect? Is it the solving of a problem? Whatever it may be. And if you can't do what you, you know, dreamed of as a kid or, you know, spent 10 years of your life in LA like I did, thinking like, yeah, I'll just go be an actor forever and work in this industry. I'm totally content and fulfilled now with what I'm doing. Because the meat of why I loved all of that, I get to do every day. And I get to do it now, especially being independent, I get to do it and I'm in the driver's seat.

• 3:10:19Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:10:20Speaker 06

  I get to decide, you know, who I work with. And I can, you know, honestly tell my audience that if I'm sitting down with somebody, if I'm collaborating with somebody, if I'm partnering with somebody, it's because I want to. It's because I trust them.

• 3:10:34Shawn Ryan?

  How did you, before we get into independent? How did you guys come up with the concept? How did, how did you come up with the comment section?

• 3:10:43Speaker 06

  So it was a funny story because there were two different sides of it. But I had had the idea for a very similar show that I pitched to PragerU actually. And it was like a quippy, funny, I literally, I still have the pilot actually. And it's me in my LA apartment. I've got my leg up on the chair because that was my whole thing at the beginning of comment section. Like I always had my leg up and I was going through news stories from a more like right wing, common sense perspective. And I even read some comments and I had all the funny memes and edits in there and I edited it myself in iMovie. And my purpose of that was.

• 3:11:18Speaker 06

  It was, you know, trifold, I think. Um, cause one, I didn't feel like there was enough content on this side of the aisle that was short form that would reach my generation. Cause we have the, you know, attention span of a pea. And that was why I added in all the edits and the memes and the sound effects, which is a lot of YouTubers doing at that at the time. I was a big fan of this girl named Emma Chamberlain, who had blown up on YouTube, you know, over the past 10 years or so. And she always had really funny edits and sound effects and it would keep me just captivated in these videos. And I also felt like there wasn't anybody that was like me, speaking to young people. Like, like I said, Will Witt was the only one. I had a lot of people that I would find on YouTube and, you know, I would listen to Dennis

• 3:12:02Speaker 06

  sometimes and he would pop up on my YouTube feed or Michael and, you know, Ben and Candice. I was like consuming her stuff during BLM, all of her live streams and her rants and all of that. But there wasn't anybody that was, there wasn't anybody who was young or just like an average girl.

• 3:12:23Speaker 06

  Like the young women that I saw were like the Trump admin interns and they're like pencil skirts or like the Fox News women. Or they were like the, you know, the hunters in Montana. And I wasn't either of those. I was like, I'm just kind of a, I don't know, I'm not, I'm just sort of in the middle. I'm just, don't want to really be preached at, but there's a lot of stuff going on in the world that doesn't make sense and it's chaotic and I'm losing friends and I feel alienated and lonely. And if I feel this way, then I know other people do. So maybe I could do something about it.

• 3:12:52Shawn Ryan?

  Was it all you?

• 3:12:53Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:12:54Shawn Ryan?

  You came up with it all?

• 3:12:55Speaker 06

  Well, so that was my side of it. And so I had this pilot pitched and so Mondelewire approached me. I was like, actually I had this idea for a show and they have a, obviously a very strict pitch policy, as anybody does in entertainment. They were like, actually we can't, if you pitched it somewhere else, like we can't accept your pitch or I haven't hired yet. And so we were just sitting in this Zoom meeting and they're like, this is our idea. You know, it'll be a short form show. We want, you know, really funny edits and memes and you'll read comments. I was like, this is like, this is perfect. This was like the meeting of the minds. And it was so cool. And I think people assume, and I've said this before, that it was like the suits there that were going, we need to reach the young people. It was like the entire show was created by people that were around my age. They were all newly graduated. I think the oldest was like 24.

• 3:13:37Speaker 06

  So it was created by, out of necessity for the content that we wanted to consume, made by us, for people our age. And so we had, they got the green light to hire me, even though I don't think the suits knew, you know, why I was being hired, but they were like, okay, you know, try it out. And somehow got it greenlit, even though the execs were like, we don't really, we don't understand the show, but if you think it's gonna, just try. So we had no money, tiny budget, you know, I was in the back of a studio that was shared by two other people, had like a little tiny corner, we had no paid ads, nothing, no marketing machine, they were just like, see if anybody watches. And it was just really, really, it was perfect, because the people that we were working with, we just had like, that's how you kind of know that something's hopefully gonna work and that you've created something great, when it's like, we've all felt this need for something

• 3:14:22Speaker 06

  that's very similar. We all came together and had already been thinking about this, it was like, this has gotta be magic. And they brought the comment section, like the name, they had already had the name, and they had tried the concept with another young woman who'd worked there previously, and what they brought to it was having it be driven by comments. Of like, that's a unique, you know, kind of value add of, don't just talk about your values and opinions, but like, what are normal people on the internet saying? I was like, that's a great addition. So, they contributed that part, and we developed it for three months. And then launched it in, I think, end of February or March in 2022. And in the back corner of that tiny studio with no money, no paid ads, nobody really paying attention, we hit a million in four months.

• 3:15:04Shawn Ryan?

  You hit a million in four months?

• 3:15:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:15:07Shawn Ryan?

  You amassed 4.5 million in three years?

• 3:15:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:15:13Speaker 06

  It was a rocket ship. We were the fastest growing show, and on, you know, the right, we were one of the top three fastest growing YouTube channels on all of YouTube.

• 3:15:22Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:15:23Speaker 06

  Again, no money, no anything. I mean, we had money, we had support, you know, they gave us like $10,000, $20,000 to buy the cameras and build, you know, a set, and get like the headphones, the mic and all of that stuff. But it was, a lot of it was organic, of people just sharing it.

• 3:15:39Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:15:40Speaker 06

  Seeing.

• 3:15:40Shawn Ryan?

  So they gave you a $10,000 budget, and you created a 4.5 million viewership?

• 3:15:46Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:15:48Shawn Ryan?

  That's fucking insane.

• 3:15:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:15:50Shawn Ryan?

  In three years. How did that rank against the other shows?

• 3:15:56Speaker 06

  We, um, Ben always had significantly more. I helped paste.

• 3:16:01Shawn Ryan?

  A lot of them.

• 3:16:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:16:04Shawn Ryan?

  Any jealousy?

• 3:16:05Speaker 06

  No, I don't think so.

• 3:16:07Shawn Ryan?

  Felt good.

• 3:16:07Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, I was just like shocked as anybody. I was like, I don't even know how. It's like, this is wild. Um. No, and I'm so, and I like, I think about, you know, my brother saying that and all of these things that have now happened since then, and I'm.

• 3:16:24Speaker 06

  I'm really, really grateful for the shot that they gave me. And, um. And I had great people, you know, that core team who launched the show with me. That was like dream team. And we were, I was so much synergy.

• 3:16:40Speaker 06

  And it made me like, doing that show every day, we did 10 episodes a week, sometimes more, but two episodes a day.

• 3:16:46Speaker 06

  It made me so much better in basically every aspect of my life. I did comfortable being Brett on camera, not being behind a role, kind of like we talked about very early on.

• 3:16:57Speaker 06

  I became incredibly articulate in my beliefs. I became unwavering. I think I became less of a people pleaser in my work because I had to go on camera every day and share what I thought. And I was getting death threats and being called a transphobe and a racist and whatever. You're a POS.

• 3:17:12Shawn Ryan?

  Did that bother you?

• 3:17:14Speaker 06

  Not really, actually. Cause I felt so strongly about what I believed and I felt like what I was doing was important.

• 3:17:23Speaker 06

  Cause I would meet people in person. I think that was really, really helpful who were my age or around my age who said like, thank you for saying what I'm too afraid to say. Or what I like, I felt. And I felt crazy for thinking this. And you make me feel like I'm not as alone.

• 3:17:39Speaker 06

  Especially young women who came up to me and said that. Because it was, it was all born out of, out of purpose of me feeling that exact same way.

• 3:17:48Shawn Ryan?

  Did that start happening immediately?

• 3:17:50Speaker 06

  Pretty soon after, yeah. It was very weird. But thankfully, because I'd been in acting, my mom was very proactive in conversations like that. Because she was like, at any moment, any of these auditions, you know, I was auditioning for things like Wolverine and, or Disney Channel, whatever, these things that, you know, if I had actually booked any of those, my life would have blown up in an instant. We watched that happen on a regular basis, people that I knew was in acting classes with. So we had lengthy conversations about fame and influence growing up. Because my mom was like, you could walk away from acting in a moment, I wouldn't care. Because I would believe that what you learned was important and you had a great time doing it. You have no pressure to do this. But if this is what you are going to be doing,

• 3:18:30Speaker 06

  and you're auditioning for these huge things that could literally change your entire world, you need to know what fame is. And you need to have such a secure sense of self and understand that the reason why you have that and why you would have the money and the power and the influence is because of those people. So you better not act like a piece of shit, basically.

• 3:18:52Shawn Ryan?

  Good advice.

• 3:18:52Speaker 06

  And you can't compromise that. And it was like, that was from a young age. Because again, you never know, you could have booked something and then suddenly you're on some show every week and everybody knows who you are. So it was very proactive. And that, you know, when I left to move to Nashville, she had the same conversation with me again. She was like, I don't know if they're ever going to make a show with you. I don't know if you're going to become some well-known person. Don't forget everything that you've, we've talked about over the last 10 years. Because it's still applicable. And I didn't.

• 3:19:20Shawn Ryan?

  She was right.

• 3:19:21Speaker 06

  Yeah. And it happened really fast. So I think I was prepared. But I remember the first time I was like, actually recognized in public, I was in my pajamas at Costco. And I was like, maybe I shouldn't wear my pajamas out in public anymore. Maybe that's not the best thing to do. Yeah.

• 3:19:35Shawn Ryan?

  What did the execs think? I made a million in four months?

• 3:19:38Speaker 06

  It was like shocking.

• 3:19:40Shawn Ryan?

  What were they saying to you?

• 3:19:41Speaker 06

  Well, they brought us into a meeting. And, uh, I think one of the masked, like, turned to somebody on my team and was like, so how much money did we put like behind this? Like, how many paid ads? And he was like, none. Nothing. And they were just like, okay.

• 3:20:02Speaker 06

  Like, I guess, let's just keep going.

• 3:20:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:20:08Speaker 06

  But I just tried to, like, stay in my lane and keep going. I was undeterred. I was like, this is a rocket ship. Let's just keep going.

• 3:20:19Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, with that kind of success and that amount of time, I mean, that's damn near unheard of.

• 3:20:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:20:25Shawn Ryan?

  What was, what was your motivation to go independent?

• 3:20:30Shawn Ryan?

  When did that pop into your head?

• 3:20:35Speaker 06

  I was ready for something different.

• 3:20:37Shawn Ryan?

  You just wanted a new challenge, or?

• 3:20:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think, um,

• 3:20:46Speaker 06

  I, um,

• 3:20:52Speaker 06

  you know, we've covered a lot of different things. And there have been different moments in my life where I had to make kind of like a

• 3:21:00Speaker 06

  a decision that was like, you know, that leap of faith and that risk.

• 3:21:05Speaker 06

  And I hadn't taken one in a while. And I felt very complacent and I was good at what I was doing and I was doing it every single day and we were making a difference. And I was in a very good rhythm. But I had gotten

• 3:21:21Speaker 06

  complacent.

• 3:21:23Shawn Ryan?

  Was it freedom?

• 3:21:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:21:26Shawn Ryan?

  You wanted more freedom?

• 3:21:27Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:21:29Shawn Ryan?

  What was the final straw?

• 3:21:34Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, almost nobody would give that up.

• 3:21:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:21:38Shawn Ryan?

  And start from scratch. And that's why I respect you so much.

• 3:21:42Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm. No, it was terrifying. I had to, you know, Alex and I had a conversation many, because it was not like a, like, this is a lot of thinking and praying and analyzing and

• 3:21:57Speaker 06

  we looked at each other and we're just kind of like, are you willing to, or we

• 3:22:02Speaker 06

  basically willing to lose everything and start from scratch?

• 3:22:06Speaker 06

  Because again, we had, you know, Alex had just started his own business. We had bought this farm that was like, a stretch, but we really wanted it.

• 3:22:16Speaker 06

  And I was like, I could leave and it could

• 3:22:23Speaker 06

  could backfire on me immediately. Nobody could care. Maybe I wouldn't make any money, maybe I would have no anything and I basically just had to decide like,

• 3:22:36Speaker 06

  does that matter to me?

• 3:22:38Speaker 06

  And it didn't.

• 3:22:40Shawn Ryan?

  And it worked.

• 3:22:41Speaker 06

  Yeah. And it wasn't because I was like, uh, yeah.

• 3:22:44Shawn Ryan?

  A million subs in one month when you launched your new show.

• 3:22:47Speaker 06

  Yeah. It was very

• 3:22:50Speaker 06

  humbling and gratifying. I was like, okay.

• 3:22:53Speaker 06

  But it was, I mean, it's terrifying and I literally like, our conversation was like, are we willing, my mom had just decided to move to Nashville. I was like, are we willing to like, go move back in with her? And like, literally start over.

• 3:23:06Speaker 06

  If like, you're funding our life now, Alex, and I can't help at all and I'm making no money. Like, if all of it went away, and at the end of the day, like, I don't really care about being famous. Like, it comes with what I do, but I would be very, I would be just as happy

• 3:23:24Speaker 06

  if I was telling stories in a different capacity. Again, it's finding the root of what you love to do and then applying it. I don't need this to survive. I don't crave it. I do it because I love sharing stories with people. I love hopefully making them think differently about the world. I love making people feel like they're not alone in whatever they're going through, whether that's like,

• 3:23:49Speaker 06

  on my subscription platform where we do our Dear Brett series and I'm able to talk to people. Like, I had a girl last week,

• 3:23:56Speaker 06

  you know, talk to me about, you know, she has a grandfather with dementia who is, you know, forgetting who she is and has gotten violent and is like, how do you, how do you go through that? Like, how do you still love somebody and be there, but protect yourself and know that?

• 3:24:10Speaker 06

  You know, that isn't the person that you know anymore. I got to talk about my brother, which I don't often get to do. And it's like I've had so much crap happen in 23 years. It's like, I hope that I can make somebody's life a little better if they haven't experienced this and they're now going through it for the first time. I hope I can make you feel less crazy about the world and feel less alone. But I don't have to have 4 million or a million subs to do that. Like, that, that isn't why I do this. I could go work, I could go back to Trader Joe's, I'd be happy.

• 3:24:44Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you just described the why.

• 3:24:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:24:46Shawn Ryan?

  And you definitely, you hit it. And you seem very fulfilled.

• 3:24:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:24:51Shawn Ryan?

  That's good to see. Not a lot of people have that, man.

• 3:24:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:24:54Shawn Ryan?

  Not a lot of people feel fulfilled in what they're doing.

• 3:24:57Speaker 06

  Yeah. And that was the first step to freedom of being like, I'm okay if this

• 3:25:06Speaker 06

  doesn't work and I'm willing to, I'm in the fight to make that happen.

• 3:25:12Shawn Ryan?

  When you left, your maid of honor, best friend, was it Reagan? Is that her name? Took over the comments section. How did that feel?

• 3:25:26Speaker 06

  Friendships are hard.

• 3:25:29Shawn Ryan?

  Are you guys still friends?

• 3:25:32Speaker 06

  I would say so.

• 3:25:38Shawn Ryan?

  Would you like to still be friends?

• 3:25:41Speaker 06

  Of course.

• 3:25:45Speaker 06

  I talked about that, actually, in another Dear Brett thing. Adult friendships are really hard. You always think it's gonna get easier. Kind of just gets harder. And with more people knowing who you are and...

• 3:26:02Speaker 06

  Having influence and having eyes on you. Then you kind of question people's motives in being friends with you and it's kind of like a hard knowing how to meet people and so I'm I'm like loyal to a maybe a fault. But I like

• 3:26:20Shawn Ryan?

  Do you feel that she was disloyal and taken the role?

• 3:26:23Speaker 06

  No, she can do. She's an adult. She's she and this is what I will always stand by. You have to make the decision that is good for you and your family. I did that and she did that.

• 3:26:35Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think the friendship fell apart?

• 3:26:38Shawn Ryan?

  If you wish her the best of success.

• 3:26:50Speaker 06

  Friendships are hard.

• 3:26:54Shawn Ryan?

  Do you want to say anything to her?

• 3:27:05Speaker 06

  Hmm, that's a difficult question.

• 3:27:14Speaker 06

  But at the end of the day, I do. I wish you success and I wish you well.

• 3:27:22Speaker 06

  And I hope that she chases the things that she wants and I never wish that, you know, to not work for anybody.

• 3:27:33Speaker 06

  But I mean that genuinely. I have people I, you know, there have been so many people that have come in and out of my life over the years.

• 3:27:43Speaker 06

  And I think that it's important to let go.

• 3:27:49Speaker 06

  Can't control everything. You know, you might like to.

• 3:27:53Speaker 06

  People make their own decisions.

• 3:27:57Speaker 06

  Sometimes it hurts.

• 3:27:59Speaker 06

  But at the end of the day,

• 3:28:02Speaker 06

  everybody's figuring it out.

• 3:28:05Speaker 06

  And we make choices, we live with choices, we do what we believe is best for us and our goals and our dreams.

• 3:28:17Speaker 06

  See ya.

• 3:28:18Shawn Ryan?

  Good for you.

• 3:28:21Speaker 06

  That's a healthier way to

• 3:28:26Speaker 06

  handle it.

• 3:28:28Shawn Ryan?

  Good for you.

• 3:28:33Shawn Ryan?

  How long was it after you left The Daily Wire that you started it?

• 3:28:38Speaker 06

  Um, my last day was December 10th. And I think we started the show at the end of January, I believe.

• 3:28:48Speaker 06

  It was a good rest period. I had a lot, a lot to consider and recalibrate and reflect on.

• 3:28:57Speaker 06

  And it seemed a lot longer in the moment because you go from to silence. It was really nice.

• 3:29:06Speaker 06

  And I had to think about a lot of the things that we've just spoken about. And I had already been thinking about that for months leading up to that.

• 3:29:12Speaker 06

  Of the why and the how.

• 3:29:16Speaker 06

  And what can I build and how can I produce it in a way that is

• 3:29:21Speaker 06

  authentic, that is meaningful, that doesn't compromise values?

• 3:29:27Speaker 06

  And I wanted to do right by people. I care so deeply about this audience and this community that I've built and I, I know that they trust me.

• 3:29:40Speaker 06

  And I care for them and I wouldn't have what I have today. I mean, they've changed my life in a myriad of ways. Where it's like having this community of people that tunes in and watches you. It makes me better. It makes me articulate. It makes me have more integrity with myself. Like they hold me to high standards and encourage me to continue holding myself to high standards. I think about the impact that I'm having in the world on a much broader scale.

• 3:30:09Speaker 06

  I want to make sure I am being consistent with what I say on screen and what I'm doing in my personal life. And if I'm saying

• 3:30:19Speaker 06

  I believe in independent voices and freedom. And doing what you believe in and standing strong in that. I have to do the same and I can't. Like, it just forces you to go, like, I think if you are a person with integrity and you have eyes on you and you're speaking about that, I don't know how you can not do that behind the scenes. I just like, I can't comprehend that. And so I think it was really good, you know, I spent months thinking of like, what is the best way, what does this next chapter look like? And there was a lot that I wanted to consider in terms of, you know,

• 3:31:04Speaker 06

  Alex is in my life and I do want to be a mom and that's the thing that I've dreamt about for my entire childhood and, you know, life and now and how can I build a life and a career where I get to do what I love, but I get to be the kind of mother that I want to be? And have the kind of balance that I hope to have. And again, it like, if it didn't work, if nobody cared, I would be fine, like, I would, you know, having babies, working a job, being with my family, being with people that I love. And I'd be as like, exciting as some of the stuff that I get to do, but it's, that's like, really good life. And at the end of the day, that's what I think about.

• 3:31:46Speaker 06

  And I now have the freedom to build that.

• 3:31:51Shawn Ryan?

  What are you thinking about having kids?

• 3:31:53Speaker 06

  I hope as soon as possible.

• 3:31:56Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 3:31:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:31:57Shawn Ryan?

  Good for you.

• 3:31:58Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:31:58Shawn Ryan?

  How will you balance it all?

• 3:32:01Speaker 06

  Um, I think I put myself in a very good position over the last couple of months of thinking of, you know, having that in mind of I have.

• 3:32:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, I've scaled back a ton. And which I think has made me better, actually, and probably made me better on camera in what I do. But I'm building a life and putting something in place. And Alex actually has taken on a much bigger role because he's in advertising. So he actually handles a lot of that side of the work for me. And he manages a lot of the business side of it, which is he's much better at it than I am, which is great. Where I have a lot more free time than I ever, you know, kind of expect. And so I look at that and I'm like, this is, is obviously how I want to fill that time. And I think I actually just recently did an episode about this because there's this whole idea that, you know, started in the eighties of women being able to have it all. You should have it all and, you know, be this girl boss.

• 3:33:00Speaker 06

  And it's ironic that they said have it all because they never intended children to be included in that. But women thought that they were. And so they would go work their, you know, nine to five jobs and climb the corporate ladder and be like, how do I, now I can't, like, I can't have it all. I'm, you know, camel's bringing at both ends. And so, you know, I'm not there yet. I don't know exactly how on a day to day basis that will be managed, but I know that I'll be saying no to things. And life is prioritizing things based on the stage of life that you're in. And if we weren't planning on having kids, if that was in my future, I would probably be building a very different career.

• 3:33:44Speaker 06

  Maybe I wouldn't have, you know, taken a shot to try to go build something myself, but it was important to me to be able to say, I want to have the freedom to say no. And not have to go be, it's the same thing with, you know, with acting of, I want to be in control and know that I can be the kind of wife that I want to be and the kind of daughter that I want to be and the kind of mother that I want to be. And it's a real privilege and a blessing that I'm working on building that and I still got to do what I love. But I probably, I probably won't do it.

• 3:34:24Speaker 06

  I don't know, like, the analogy that I made on my show is that, like, yes, a woman can have like eight children and go and have, you know, be a partner at a law firm, X, Y, Z, but she definitely won't be the, you know, super engaged homeschool mom that drives her kids to like every single appointment and thing that, you know, a mom that prioritizes being at home would. And that mom that homeschools all of her kids, she might have a part-time job, she might have, you know, so many of the mothers that I know, um, do work, but they have built a career and a life that allows them to be the mother that they want to be. And so they have, you know, like, I think about my mom, she didn't work, but she ran

• 3:35:06Speaker 06

  organizations and she would write for the newspaper and she would, um, teach cooking classes out of our house, just because there were so many things that she, as a person, just enjoyed and wanted to share with people and would do things here and there to keep herself engaged. And it was so impressive, I think, to my brothers and I to see this woman who was so engaged and so dedicated to the career of being a mother of building and nurturing productive, intelligent members of society. But she had so many interests and she built so many different things and she was so impressive and she brought us along with all of it. And so she gave up a corporate career. She was in textbook publishing, she was working at WWE Norton, she walked away from that. She could have had a totally, and I asked her about that growing up, like, do you regret

• 3:35:51Speaker 06

  that? She was like, well, I often think about what it would have been like if I had stayed in the, you know, the more commonplace path of pursuing that, you know, I'm going to go be the partner at the law firm, I'm going to go be the president of publishing, I'm going to go run this real estate agency. She worked in real estate later on. Um, she was like, but at the end of the day, that wasn't what drove me. And so I found other ways to be fulfilled and build things. And she built incredible things. She ran that incredible organization. She ran a cooking school when my brothers were younger, but it was like out of her house. So I like have always thought about that and knowing that my career might look different

• 3:36:31Speaker 06

  than a woman who decides to have a, you know, full-time man or not have kids. And I never want to shame women for doing that because every person is on their own path, but no individual man or woman can have it all. We talked about that when you came on of-

• 3:36:49Speaker 06

  You know, you give and you take.

• 3:36:53Speaker 06

  And there are times when I've been so ingrained in work and I've had to scale back and I just know that it'll be about prioritizing what is important at that moment and building something where I can give to my family in the way that I want to give.

• 3:37:12Shawn Ryan?

  There's not a lot of people doing it.

• 3:37:14Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:37:15Shawn Ryan?

  You're in a very unique position here and I mean, who will you look to for advice?

• 3:37:22Shawn Ryan?

  Especially with the mom stuff.

• 3:37:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:37:24Shawn Ryan?

  Business stuff. I mean, Candace seems to manage it all.

• 3:37:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, Candace says, and they keep it all in-house, which is wonderful. And, you know, she and George run everything together, which was really the, I loved watching that and I looked at Alex and I was like, I want that. I don't want to, I don't want to offload this to anybody else anymore. Like, I trust you. I don't trust a lot of people. I trust you. And let's do this together. And he, through helping me build this, gives me the, he's giving me and our family the freedom to be able to go, you know, have a farm, have a bunch of kids by, you know, this is not what he, it's like sort of in line with some of the work that he does, but he's taken on a huge bulk of it, which I'm so grateful for.

• 3:38:09Speaker 06

  Uh, but yeah, for sure her. And then the other one is, um, Liz Wheeler. She's incredible.

• 3:38:17Speaker 06

  And she is, uh, she's a mom. She has two kids. She's at TheBlaze. She has a podcast. And her husband works and she is the most dedicated mother. And she, you know, when she's doing her show for an hour and a half during the day, her husband is with their kids. And then for the rest of the day, she is like, they're never out of her sight.

• 3:38:41Speaker 06

  And yeah, and they go wherever she goes. And like if you hire Liz for a speaking engagement, if you had her on your show, she would be, she would have her kids there.

• 3:38:52Speaker 06

  And if she can't have them there, she says no.

• 3:38:55Speaker 06

  And if it means missing out on something, she says no. And we had a long conversation about this actually last year. And she was like, you have to put yourself in a situation where you have the freedom to do that. And if that's the kind of mother that you want to be, if you still, if you feel called to this vocation to do this work, you have to be able to set those boundaries.

• 3:39:15Speaker 06

  Because otherwise, you're going to be pushed around, you're going to be told what to do. And she's set just an incredible example. And I don't know if she talks about that often. She talked about it in a speech. She was given an award recently, and I went and saw her talking. So she talked about that. But I don't know if she's talked about it very publicly. But she's been a wonderful resource and inspiration in that regard. They'll have staff. You know, they

• 3:39:42Speaker 06

  you know, have family that comes and helps. And that's their support. Which, you know, my mom, a saint. I was leaving Idaho, she's like selling the stream farm, and she's coming here to be in Nebraska. She was like, I want to be here.

• 3:39:57Speaker 06

  And you know, Alex's family is here, and we're going to be this village because she didn't have that.

• 3:40:04Speaker 06

  And that was really, really hard on her. And she didn't have that kind of, you know, and her husband was dying of brain cancer. She had nobody nearby to, you know, care for my three brothers when she had to go to the Mayo Clinic for three days at a time or anything like that. And she was like, I'm going to give you the support that I never had. We're going to do this. I'm going to be down the street from you. And if you're busy and you're doing a show and there's this opportunity that you don't want to give up, I never want you to feel like

• 3:40:33Speaker 06

  you have to say no. Like, you will have to, because you'll, you'll be prioritizing things. But I'm going to be there. I'm going to support you.

• 3:40:40Speaker 06

  And that was, you know, Liz has done it with her family. And so she is like,

• 3:40:46Speaker 06

  she's really, really wonderful.

• 3:40:49Speaker 06

  She deserves a lot more cred than

• 3:40:51Shawn Ryan?

  That's cool, man.

• 3:40:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, she's great. She's super consistent, too. She is like a firecracker.

• 3:40:55Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet she is.

• 3:40:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, and a very good mother. So yeah, it's what it's it's a weird industry.

• 3:41:03Speaker 06

  And it's a unique situation, but it's also not because every family is thinking about this. I think this is a thing that women think about all the time when they get to this point in life and how you are going to balance it and what you're going to prioritize. And I think that society has like become very skewed where for so many years, like starting when my mom was having kids, I mean, she was absolutely crapped on for choosing to not work. I was like, this is so embarrassing. You're giving up your entire career. How could you do this? Like, you're just a mom. You're just a mom. And then we just went so far in that one direction. And then now on the right, I see like if you go on like right wing Twitter and I get called like, you know, Ali Beth Suckles Wheeler and I Candace,

• 3:41:46Speaker 06

  we get called like undercover feminists because we actually have a job and we work. And it's like, I sit in front of a freaking camera and I like talk about the things that I care about like a couple of times a week. And then I go outside and I like birth cows and take care of chickens and cook dinner and, you know, write about things that I care about. I want to write a book this year. I'm like, I'm going to go do that. But it's like, it's really not that big of a deal. So now I feel like the pendulum has shifted in this other direction where there's so many women and Ali Beth and I talked about this very recently, where it's like there's normal women who are balancing it all. And then this like, economy especially, it's rare for family to be able to live off of

• 3:42:30Speaker 06

  when it comes. I don't think it's comfortable for a lot of people. So now we have these people on the right that are, you know, sitting on their high horses saying, that's so embarrassing. You're a terrible husband. If your wife has a job, you're a terrible woman if you don't give it up or whatever it is. If you have a side hustle. It's like for the entirety of history, women have worked and contributed to their families. That's, you know, I quoted, you know, Proverbs 31 in that episode where I did where, you know, she contributes to her community and she's engaged and she works in the fields to, you know, bring food.

• 3:43:06Speaker 06

  It was like when we, you know, when we were in agricultural society, women were engaged in the family businesses. You read, you know, Jane Austen stories, they worked in the dress shops. Like it was, it was always a very specific class where the women didn't work. And I mean, like the 1950s where there was that period of like the house. I put even that was like a very middle class, upper class idea. And I feel like now on the right, we've glamorized that to the point where so many people have now looked at women and been like, well, you're an embarrassment. If you work, that's feminism running through your veins. I'm like, actually, I think it's just.

• 3:43:38Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody's got an opinion.

• 3:43:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:43:40Shawn Ryan?

  And you're at a level where a lot of people want to drag you down.

• 3:43:42Speaker 06

  Oh, of course.

• 3:43:43Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, you know, being independent, it's kind of like being a free agent. Everybody wants a piece. Everybody wants what you have.

• 3:43:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:43:54Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody wants to consume you. All the sharks are after you. How do you?

• 3:44:01Shawn Ryan?

  And I know that's happening to you from conversations we've had offline. And so what I am curious about is how do you?

• 3:44:09Shawn Ryan?

  How do you know who to trust? How do you know who's not full of shit?

• 3:44:14Shawn Ryan?

  Especially in this industry. Everybody's full of shit.

• 3:44:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:44:20Shawn Ryan?

  Have you found anybody that's not?

• 3:44:22Speaker 06

  I have.

• 3:44:23Shawn Ryan?

  You got a great team around you.

• 3:44:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, I have a great team. Um, many of whom I've worked with for a while or worked with at the beginning of starting all of this. And, um, I think keeping it small is key for me right now. Keep a lot of it in-house. I've had tons of requests and offers to outsource to XYZ. And I'll never say that there isn't a time where I would consider like, okay, maybe I could work with this person or build something with this person or do a collaboration. But right now I'm at such a, like we're, we're just building this as this tiny little team and it's working and it's humming. And I'm learning so much.

• 3:45:05Speaker 06

  And I trust every single person that I interact with on a daily basis that they have, you know, that they are a person of integrity, that I trust them, that they have my best interests at heart, that we have a shared vision for what I want to accomplish with every video that I put out in the world. I want to make sure that every single thing that I do matters and that I'm not just doing something for views or for clicks or because it'll be a means to some end, but that it's like I'm sharing something that is important and they get that. And so we're, you know, and they push me in the ways that I should be pushed, question things that need to be questioned. Like we have hard conversations

• 3:45:46Speaker 06

  of like, okay, you want to do this, but why? Like the why is like we keep hammering back to there should be a reason for every single move that I make or video that I put out. And so right now it's just, it's people that I, it's funny to say, how do you know who to trust? It's just I, it's a very tiny group.

• 3:46:11Shawn Ryan?

  Small pool.

• 3:46:12Speaker 06

  Yeah. And, um, and I think it takes spending more time learning about the opportunities and the options and not jumping into anything too quickly. And I also think building something that I'm proud of, that can stand on two legs where, you know, there's a lot of freedom in not needing somebody else. And I feel like I'm in a very, very, very fortunate and lucky position where right now I, I can say no to things. I'm very honored. I'm grateful. But I can do it on my own. And I don't want to expand this bubble and invite people into

• 3:46:56Speaker 06

  now, again, start telling me who to be, where to go, how to do what I do, who I don't know intimately. Cause it's a very, um, and we've talked about this too off camera, but it's a weird situation when it's a brand, but it's you.

• 3:47:17Speaker 06

  If you hand the reins off, you know, to somebody else and you lose control. And it's like, I don't like what you're doing to my brand, but that's me as a person.

• 3:47:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:47:27Speaker 06

  And if I don't have control over that, like at the end of the day, I have to live with myself and look in the mirror.

• 3:47:33Speaker 06

  And so I want to make sure that,

• 3:47:37Speaker 06

  you know, again, it's like the business of self here and the business of personality or whatever it is.

• 3:47:45Speaker 06

  So you just have to constantly thinking about that.

• 3:47:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:47:48Speaker 06

  Which also, you know, it's important for the audience. It's important for what you're building, but also as a human being.

• 3:47:55Speaker 06

  Like, again, when I go to sleep tonight, when I look at my husband, I have to feel like I'm being consistent. I have to know that I'm having integrity with myself, with an audience.

• 3:48:06Speaker 06

  And feel really good about that because it's so public.

• 3:48:09Shawn Ryan?

  Good. Good.

• 3:48:13Shawn Ryan?

  What do you see it developing into?

• 3:48:16Speaker 06

  I don't know. I'm excited. What is the cookie company? We talked about that earlier.

• 3:48:20Shawn Ryan?

  You gotta do the cookies.

• 3:48:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:48:22Shawn Ryan?

  You've gotta do the cookies.

• 3:48:23Speaker 06

  I'm excited.

• 3:48:24Shawn Ryan?

  I'll be your best customer.

• 3:48:26Speaker 06

  Sounds good.

• 3:48:26Shawn Ryan?

  Guarantee it.

• 3:48:27Speaker 06

  I have a subscription.

• 3:48:27Shawn Ryan?

  And my wife. But.

• 3:48:31Speaker 06

  No, I'm not sure. And that's kind of the exciting thing. I think that you have to be nimble and flexible and

• 3:48:41Speaker 06

  you know, my life is going to change. And when I get older, I'm going to be, you know, hopefully be a mom and

• 3:48:47Speaker 06

  have other things happening in my life. And I think you have to be adept and nimble and I'm going to let that be the driving force and then everything, you know, we'll have to work around that and still build something that I'm proud of and I don't know, like I really, it's such a

• 3:49:04Speaker 06

  I want to build something big that's meaningful, but I don't have an image in mind of what that is. I just want to be able to continue sharing goodness and entertaining people. Like I genuinely, I love telling stories. I love making people laugh. I love making them feel like I'm an entertainer at heart, which is so weird to say in this whole world, but it's like I I do love making people feel something. I love sitting in the audience and watching something that moves me to tears. I love watching a great film. I love reading a book that I can't put down because it's completely changed the way that I've thought about the world. And I love being able to do that.

• 3:49:46Speaker 06

  And so I don't know the, you know, the avenues that that'll take me down, but I think if I keep that as the forefront, I'm sure I'll have a great time.

• 3:49:57Shawn Ryan?

  Build the foundation, stay true to yourself and just be open, man.

• 3:50:01Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 3:50:02Shawn Ryan?

  But Brett,

• 3:50:07Shawn Ryan?

  amazing interview. And, um, I mean, I don't know if you ever think about this, you know, but, um, if you don't, you might want to, but just think about all the people, you know, that you've,

• 3:50:21Shawn Ryan?

  you've influenced and I mean, you're an inspiration, you know, I mean, at 23 years old, you've already built a hell of a legacy.

• 3:50:28Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:50:29Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, and you're making it okay for people to talk about what they believe in, no matter what that is. And, um, you're a pioneer that takes a lot of courage. So congratulations.

• 3:50:42Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 3:50:42Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, you inspire me.

• 3:50:45Speaker 06

  I'm grateful.

• 3:50:45Shawn Ryan?

  It's really cool. So.

• 3:50:48Speaker 06

  Well, you're paving a path of your own and you were asking about people that I look up to. I mean, you are like, I hope all of your viewers know and I think they, you guys do, but it's, you are the real deal.

• 3:51:02Speaker 06

  And like who you are, sitting across from me, being on camera, doing your interviews, that is who

• 3:51:08Speaker 06

  you are. And you are like a steadfast example of integrity and consistency. That I think especially in this weird political world, doesn't exist. That's also like in every industry, in Hollywood and entertainment, there's so many people when it comes to this world of having influence and

• 3:51:29Speaker 06

  it's pretty great. It's very special.

• 3:51:31Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. Thank you. Well, Brett, I wish you the best of success.

• 3:51:36Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 3:51:38Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.