The People v. MrBeast [TEASER]

We made 3 legal podcasters watch Mr. Beast and now they think he’s the antichrist. If you're not a Patreon member, you're not hearing every episode! To get exclusive Patreon-only episodes, discounts on merch, access to our Slack community, and more, join at patreon.com/fivefourpod. 5-4 is presented by Prologue Projects. This episode was produced by Alli Rodgers. Leon Neyfakh provides editorial support. Our website was designed by Peter Murphy. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips NY, and our theme song is by Spatial Relations. Transcriptions of each episode are available at fivefourpod.com Follow the show at @fivefourpod on most platforms. On BlueSky, find Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social, Michael @fleerultra.bsky.social, and Rhiannon @aywarhiannon.bsky.social. Our Sponsors: * Check out Mint Mobile and use my code mintmobile.com/fivefour for a great deal: https://www.mintmobile.com * Check out Quince and use my code FIVEFOUR for a great deal: https://www.quince.com Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

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

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Hey, everyone. This is Leon from Prologue Projects. On this week's subscriber-only episode of Five to Four, Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael are talking about the biggest star on YouTube, Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast is a content creator who is all about breaking records. And he may now have broken one he didn't want: most famous YouTuber to be sued for sexual harassment, workplace gender bias, and violating the Family and Medical Leave Act. This is Five to Four, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court, and this week only, Mr. Beast, will suck.

• 0:39Peter Shamshiri?

  Welcome to Five to Four, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have destroyed our civil rights, like Jeff Bezos destroying the Washington Post.

• 0:47Michael Liroff?

  Hmm.

• 0:48Peter Shamshiri?

  I'm Peter. I'm here with Michael.

• 0:50Michael Liroff?

  Hey, everybody.

• 0:51Peter Shamshiri?

  And Rhiannon.

• 0:53Speaker 03

  Hey. There's a real bad Washington Post podcast. Are we blaming Jeff Bezos for that?

• 0:58Michael Liroff?

  Oh, it's embarrassing.

• 0:59Peter Shamshiri?

  We are, yeah. Obviously, the Post is collapsing subscriber-wise anyway, but they have launched a podcast, or a series of podcasts, perhaps, and some clips have been circulating. And their metrics are unreal. You couldn't do this badly if you tried. The podcast has a Blue Sky account with eight followers, or at least it had eight followers yesterday. It might be a little more. How is that even possible?

• 1:30Speaker 03

  You were just saying some stats, Michael. You were scrolling through the YouTube videos?

• 1:33Michael Liroff?

  Yeah, the YouTube videos, their view counts are like, their best videos are like 600 views. They had one that was like 83 views in a month.

• 1:42Peter Shamshiri?

  83 views. It was about birthright citizenship, which should be...

• 1:48Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 1:49Peter Shamshiri?

  That should be relatively topical and hot. 85, 83 views?

• 1:56Peter Shamshiri?

  How, how is it possible to get views that low when you have the Washington Post's resources? What's going on at the fucking Post, dude? If you like, it's just one link somewhere on the Washington Post website to their podcast should get you more than 83 views. Yeah.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  To say nothing of what it looks like, you know, like everybody's doing the video thing, us included, a little more. But you look at the video, Ali, producer Ali sent us some screenshots. I'm looking at four white men in whatever the downgrade to like a Brooks Brothers without the jacket outfit. Every single one of them, can't tell them apart, can't tell them from Adam. And the lighting is horrible. There's these big random windows.

• 2:44Peter Shamshiri?

  There's huge windows behind them, which.

• 2:46Speaker 03

  They look like they're in the shittiest office space.

• 2:48Peter Shamshiri?

  This is like the first thing you learn if you're on a video, no windows behind you, because it fucks up your lighting, you're backlit. And also, yeah, it looks like they're in a hotel conference room, like the business center at the Hilton. You know what I mean?

• 3:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:01Peter Shamshiri?

  God, it looks like shit.

• 3:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:03Peter Shamshiri?

  How are you getting lapped by the New York Times that badly in like the roundtable podcast space?

• 3:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, very bizarre.

• 3:11Peter Shamshiri?

  And substantively, this podcast is like a bunch of center-right white folks or something like that's like sort of free press style.

• 3:20Michael Liroff?

  Right. Like sort of right-wing stuff trying to package itself as like sensible centrism or even left of center thought.

• 3:29Peter Shamshiri?

  Just a few common sense people.

• 3:32Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 3:33Peter Shamshiri?

  Who just agree with the Republican Party about stuff, you know?

• 3:37Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 3:38Peter Shamshiri?

  I'm going to read you some video titles, okay? Here we go. Weed isn't as harmless as you think.

• 3:47Peter Shamshiri?

  289 views, the last we checked.

• 3:53Speaker 03

  Ridiculous, pathetic.

• 3:56Peter Shamshiri?

  What the media got wrong during COVID, 282 views. By the way, the things that they think the media got wrong are like, you should be worried about COVID. That's sort of, they're not worried about people dying of COVID.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:11Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 4:13Peter Shamshiri?

  Debunking the rich aren't paying their fair share.

• 4:17Michael Liroff?

  Hmm.

• 4:19Peter Shamshiri?

  418 views, a 33% increase.

• 4:26Peter Shamshiri?

  It's their hottest video yet, folks.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  California- It's just rage bait, so that makes sense.

• 4:33Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah. Californians get free diapers, but at what cost?

• 4:38Michael Liroff?

  Dun dun dun.

• 4:40Speaker 03

  This one was ridiculous. I don't, for your mental health's sake, dear listener, don't click into that one.

• 4:46Peter Shamshiri?

  It's just a short video, so I watched it and that conservatives think they're blowing your mind with like, but taxpayers have to pay for it. Hey folks, if you want to hear the rest of this episode, you're going to have to subscribe. This episode is one of our premium Patreon only episodes. Membership starts at just five bucks a month. If you want to hear the rest, join us at patreon.com/54pod. That's 54pod all spelled out. Members get a bunch of stuff. Not only do you get access to the premium episodes, but access to subscriber only events, discounts on merch. And at the $10 a month level, you get bigger discounts on merch and membership in the incredibly rowdy 54 Slack. So again, that's patreon.com/54pod, 54pod all spelled out. Become a member today.