The Lie that Ruined a Generation - Brett Cooper (4K)

Brett Cooper is a political commentator, an actor and a YouTuber. It's revolutionary to say that you want to get married young and build a family in the modern world. But why? Is the choice between being co-opted by capitalism or conned by the patriarchy? Surely there must be a better solution for men and women. Expect to learn how Brett feels about getting married at 23, why the modern dating landscape is such a mess, how both men and women can find & build a lasting relationship, why Brett hates pickleball, how she felt about Candace Owens' Daily Wire drama, Gen Z's opinion on motherhood, what it's like working in Hollywood as a young girl and much more… - 00:00 Brett’s Marriage 06:13 Current State of Dating Advice 20:08 Brett's Advice to Attract a Good Woman 26:06 What is Gen-Z’s Opinion of Motherhood? 33:22 The Body Positivity Movement in 2024 42:12 Why is Gen-Z So Cynical? 51:45 Why Young Girls Are Self-Harming 54:26 Brett’s Experiences as a Child Actor in Hollywood 1:07:19 Disney's Hiring Discrimination 1:11:33 Tucker Carlson's Move to Independent Media 1:15:48 How Did Brett’s Show Get Started? 1:22:42 Reacting to Candace vs Daily Wire Drama 1:29:35 How Brett Chooses What to Talk About 1:37:54 Working With Ben Shapiro 1:41:54 Why Brett Keeps Her Personal Life Private 1:52:21 Being in a Relationship With a Unique Dynamic 1:58:21 How to Deal With Being Socially Awkward When Young 2:05:20 What is Brett's Daily Routine? 2:14:32 The Role of Faith in Brett’s Life 2:24:12 Can Understanding Heal Political Division? 2:35:48 How Brett Remains Upbeat & Positive 2:41:15 Where to Find Brett - Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT flavours with your first box at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get a 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom (use code MW20) Get up to 20% discount on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get a 20% discount on your first order from Maui Nui Venison by going to https://mauinuivenison.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

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

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  You got married?

• 0:01Speaker 01

  I did.

• 0:01Chris Williamson?

  How's that been?

• 0:02Speaker 01

  It's the best thing I've ever done. Seriously, it's we got married on um March 30th this year, so very recently. And best day of my life, best decision. Obviously, it's like a baby marriage. It's very new.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  But it's been amazing. I'm grateful for him. I'm grateful for the institution of marriage. It's just, yeah, it's been wonderful.

• 0:25Chris Williamson?

  Getting married at 22 is a pretty radical thing to do for someone with a career.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Yes, it is. It is, it was um. It's interesting. I have always known I wanted to be married. I've always known that I wanted to be a mother. You know, I had a career in Hollywood. I was a child actor for 10 plus years.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  And I remember I had a conversation with my best friend at the time. We were walking through Burbank. I think I was like 15 years old and we were talking about our dreams and hopes. And she had just, you know, she was pinned for a new series and she was like, this is all I've ever wanted. And we were talking about all of that. And I brought up a concern that I had had basically since I started in this industry and started working with adults. Because that's one of the cool things and also something that gets very dicey in Hollywood is that you're working with adults constantly. For me and my experience, it ended up working out very well because I was exposed to people who were much more successful than I was. Were further along in their careers. I got to see how they were operating, how they balanced their career and family and marriage. And I did not like what I saw.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  And so like in the back of my mind, I was like, I know that I want to be the type of mother that my mom is. Where she walked away from her career and she dedicated every fiber of her being to being a mother. That was her career. It was like, you know, very, very intentional. I'm going to raise the best human beings possible. I wanted to be that engaged. And I saw the mothers that I worked with on shows, the fathers. I saw the 35 year old series regulars on Netflix who were still living in condos with four other roommates, who couldn't afford to buy a house or support a family in Los Angeles. So in my teen years, I was just like, this is not, this isn't compatible. This isn't what I want. And I had been like wrestling with that. And so in this conversation with my friend.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  I said, you know, that isn't really, at the end of the day, what I want. What I want is to be a wife and a mother. And I never like actually expressed that to her, even though she was one of my best friends. And she whipped her head around and was like, you are willing to give up your career for that? I didn't even say that. I had not insinuated it. I was just saying, you know, at the end of the day, that's what I want. She was like, you're willing to walk away from everything and sacrifice it will never be as successful because that's what you want. She was like, I'm not willing to do that. And so it's kind of like the people who wanted to be married and wanted to be mothers didn't want it enough.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  And that those choices, those personal choices weren't valid. And so that had always been what I had heard. And I was undeterred, obviously. And so, yes, it is pretty radical. But even in this industry of like being in media, being more on the right, I still heard it, still heard it from conservatives of like, you're on the up and up. Are you sure you want to do that? From people that are pro family and pro marriage. I was like, oh, this really is radical.

• 3:01Chris Williamson?

  It's crazy, the reality distorting, warping sense of success. That success is so rare and it's so celebrated that anybody that gets even the tightest little bit of it, even people who are ostensibly pro family would say, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, don't let go of the more important thing, which is the success and the status.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's, it was a wake up call for sure. But again, I knew that that is what I wanted. I knew that I had found the person that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. My parents did not have a good marriage. So this was, it wasn't something that I grew up idolizing or wanting. That wasn't an example that, you know, I didn't want to be married because of my parents, because I had seen how wonderful it was.

• 3:46Chris Williamson?

  Almost in spite of it.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Yes. Because I knew that it was the foundation of your life and it could make or break your life. Because I saw friends with incredible, incredible parents who were deeply in love and the way that their children turned out and the way that their home operated, the way that.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Each of those individual successes, the husband and the wife, were propelled because of how good their marriage was and how that could work. And then I saw my parents on the other end, and you know, they love them both, but they picked poorly. They're not compatible. They're much better as friends. They are still friends today. I think they're much better friends now and they get along much better. But I do believe that they held each other back in what they wanted to accomplish because they had very different ideas of where they wanted to take our family, what they wanted to do career-wise. It's just their base values. I mean, even when they voted, they would, you know, ax each other out every single time. And that says a lot. And so I saw my mother struggle. I saw my father struggle. I saw them butt heads and know that that held both of them back. And so that was so important to me from the get-go of like, number one, it has to be the right

• 4:49Speaker 01

  person. But I think it was more important for me to get married young. I actually think it was a good thing for me to get married at this point in my career because I am, it has been like a rocket ship and it's been very destabilizing at points. And that's been my rock. The relationship, him, and now this marriage. It's like, that's what I get to come home to. That's the one thing that matters. All of this, it's awesome. It's cool. I love it. I love that I get to make a difference. I love that I get to talk to people every day. But at the end of the day, I come home to him and that's what grounds me so that I can go do everything else.

• 5:23Chris Williamson?

  Are you going to be prepared to let go of this then, when the time comes?

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:26Chris Williamson?

  How's that gonna feel?

• 5:28Speaker 01

  It's gonna be hard, but I'm also so excited about it. Like, I'm already, like, those have been conversations that I've been having since the beginning of like, I want this brand to grow with me. I want my show and my content to grow with me. So that when that time comes, when I'm ready to have children, when I'm taking a step back, you know, I want to homeschool my kids. When I'm dedicating that time to that, I need, I want to be able to take my audience and this community along with me.

• 5:53Chris Williamson?

  The maternity section from the comments section.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  There you go. Exactly. And so I want it to be something that we're building towards, not that it's like a goodbye, like this is the end.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  But yeah, I think it'll be hard because, you know, I'm used to this now. But again, it's, I've never wanted anything more. I'm so excited about it.

• 6:12Chris Williamson?

  How would you categorize the state of dating advice for young people at the moment?

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Terrible. It's awful. It's a treacherous landscape. It is just barren. One thing that I've been talking a lot about on the show, and I would actually love to hear your thoughts on this because we've talked about dating here and there.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  I just don't think my generation knows how. Like, I was never taught how to date. My first dating experiences were on dating apps, which is wild. And so I hear about young men not wanting to approach women. And obviously, there's the Me Too movement. There's a lot of concerns about rejection. Women are now saying, by and large, they want to be approached. But obviously, so many women are just like, oh, that's creepy, whatever. It's very confusing. There are nuances in dating and approaching women and starting relationships that you kind of have to just learn. And my generation, I don't think we've ever had to do that. I mean, again, like, I went to UCLA, was 18, but I went in as a junior. And I joined a sorority because I wanted to have, like, the all-American traditional experience.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Wanted to do something traditional for once in my life. And right after I rushed the sorority and got in, I was sitting in a room with my big. And she was like-

• 7:24Chris Williamson?

  Your what?

• 7:25Speaker 01

  My big. Do you know what that is?

• 7:26Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Okay, so in Greek, in Greek life, you have, like, bigs and littles. So I was somebody's little. So when I joined the sorority, there was somebody who had already joined a year prior.

• 7:35Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  And they, like, usher you in, or your mentor, your friend. Yeah, bigs and littles. So I was with my big.

• 7:41Chris Williamson?

  We're on the same page, yep.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Yes. And fraternity has had that as well. Anyway, I was sitting with her in her room, and they were shocked that I had never been on Tinder, that I had never dated before. They were shocked that I was a virgin. I mean, it was just like, huh, like, this is insane. How could you? And I mean, and I found out later on, I mean, these girls had had, you know, multiple abortions and were very, very sexually and, you know, relationship-wise ahead of me. And I had not thought anything of it up until this point because I hadn't been around it. And I just kind of stayed in my own bubble. And they're like, well, you gotta get on Tinder. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta do it. And there's no hazing allowed at UCLA, especially not in sororities. But they kind of made a joke and they're like, this is, you're gonna be, you're hazing. You need to get on dating apps. And you're, this is how you're gonna date. And it was so weird.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  The boy that I dated in college, like my high school, or not high school, my college boyfriend, met on Hinge. Like, that was how I dated. That's how everyone around me dated. And so when I hear, you know, people online, when I'm reading in the comment section, like, I don't know how to approach somebody. I'm so nervous. Girls not knowing how to respond. It's because we've completely lost that. It's not their fault. It's because they've just gone online. You're sliding into DMs. You're swiping right and left, and that's an addictive game in and of itself. And so then, now we're seeing, you know, droves of people leaving dating apps, especially with everything that like Bumble did. Bumble had a huge loss when they did their ridiculous rebrand. Most idiotic thing they've ever done. People wanting to be off the apps, but not knowing how to date outside of them.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  So it really is, it's abysmal for a lot of reasons, but especially that is what I've been thinking about recently.

• 9:14Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I, I had this idea of mutually assured deception, which I think is what a lot of people have. They're so scared of opening up because one of the worst things that you can be is gullible and naive in dating. You know, there's something kind of cool about being aloof and a bit sardonic and a bit standoffish. You know, I'm too good for this. There's no way that you could hurt me. Yeah, you know, it's sort of easy come, easy go. But I think that that is just a suboptimal solution to a suboptimal problem. Like, that is someone trying to reverse engineer the dating environment into their preferences as opposed to doing it the other way around. So, yeah, you have two people, neither of whom are prepared to open up fully in case they get hurt, both of whom are terrified of being hurt and both of whom just never show themselves to the other person.

• 9:58Chris Williamson?

  So, yeah, I think that's a big concern. And then When it comes to the approaching thing and the being in real life, it's always been that way. Like, the reason that the guy that founded CBT, founded CBT was to overcome his approach anxiety for women. That was originally what it was designed for. So this has happened for as long as time has been around. The difference now, I think, is that any small psychological challenge becomes pathologized and becomes laid at the feet of the modern world. So this is because of Tinder. This is because of online dating. It's like, what if this was just endemic to being a guy?

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:32Chris Williamson?

  That approaching a woman is going to be scary and always going to be scary. And maybe the difference now is that you're just a bit less socially adept. You haven't spent that much more time out and about. You don't have robust social networks. You don't really know as many people, that kind of a thing.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 10:45Chris Williamson?

  And what it feels like from the inside is, oh, my God, if only it was 50 years ago, this would have been super easy, which actually takes a lot of agency away from you, which would have been, it was going to be hard then in 1960.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  It was always going to be hard.

• 10:58Chris Williamson?

  Precisely. And you can overcome it.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  The conditions are different.

• 11:01Chris Williamson?

  Correct.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  The conditions are different and you have to acknowledge that. But that should not be the reason why you turn inward and just say, never mind, I'm giving it up because there is no hope. There were always going to be problems. There was always going to be hurdles that you had to overcome with dating. Dating is not easy. It's not fun. Nobody likes, you know, opening up, you know, and being very vulnerable. And you're like, stab me in the heart if you don't like me. And nobody likes that. But if you acknowledge that and understand that, you know, the risk could come with just an incredible reward and an incredible payoff. But you do have to take responsibility and you do have to take those steps. I also think, for women especially, and by and larger, having, you know, they're setting these insane standards and very, very, very, very superficial standards. I mean, you see it on social media. There was that whole trend of like, you know, I want a guy in finance who's 6'5", blue eyes, did you see that?

• 11:46Speaker 01

  She likes, wrote this whole song about it.

• 11:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's a joke, but it's not. Because they've, they have this image in their mind of what kind of guy they want. And I think they see a lot of relationships on social media. They see men on social media. You know, this is going to be the guy that's available to me. When you look at those numbers of, you know, the percentage for both men and women, of men who are whatever height they want, make, you know, six figures plus, are single, are not overweight. Or between this age bracket.

• 12:17Chris Williamson?

  Surrounding error, yeah.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the same goes for women of like, you know, if you want a woman who is not on the left, is not on any kind of antidepressants, was, you know, a certain weight.

• 12:28Chris Williamson?

  I love the fact that, I love the fact that the equivalent for women of a guy being six foot, earned six figures with a six pack is not on antidepressants and not on the left.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Yes, not obese. I mean, and again, tiny. And obviously, I'm not saying have no standards, the bar is, you know, on the floor. But you also have to meet people where they are and you also have to

• 12:51Speaker 01

  know what you're bringing to the table. And be aware of like, what you will be able to get, basically, like, what is the mutually, what am I trying to say here? To figure out the right way to phrase this.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  It's like, who is your equal partner in the dating marketplace?

• 13:05Chris Williamson?

  Do you think that there's a case for settling in that case?

• 13:10Speaker 01

  I don't think, I don't think of it as settling. I think of it as being,

• 13:15Speaker 01

  again, aware of what your options are and what you're bringing to the table. Like, I talk to women all the time and, you know, I want this, I want this, I want this. What are you bringing? Like, are you, are you the type of woman that these men are going to go for? Are you the high value woman? I kind of hate those terms, but, you know, the high value woman, the high value man. If you aren't going to the gym, if you aren't taking care of yourself, if you, you know, don't like children, if you only care about your career and you don't want to, you know, if you hate the patriarchy, I don't want to support a man, I don't want to care about a man, and you want a provider man who is, you know, fit, in shape, cares about his health, that's not going to match up. He's not going to go for you. And so then, if you're not seeing what you want in the dating landscape, that I'd say, like, put it on yourself then. What can you do to level yourself up?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  If you don't like the options that are available to you, what can you do to put yourself in a situation where you're going to meet those types of people? And be on their level. Number one, that just makes you a better human being because you're bettering yourself. But then again, it's putting the agency back on themselves of like, you have the opportunity to make the change.

• 14:14Chris Williamson?

  Well, that's a very radical message, I think, to give to women. It's kind of radical to give to men because at the moment, there's a lot of sort of despondency and cynicism and melancholy on both sides, but especially for women. There's a, an insight that I learned a couple of years ago that personal development for men and personal development for women are completely inverted. So, men are told that the world is immutable and you are mutable. So, you have to wrap yourself up and change yourself in order to fit around the world. And women are told that the world is mutable and you are immutable. You are perfect as you are and it's the world's problem that you need to change. And to me, that's massively patronizing. But the other reason is that it doesn't actually allow, it doesn't empower women to change

• 14:56Chris Williamson?

  because they think if there's any problem out there in the world, it's because of the world and not because of me. So if you're today then say, the reason that you are not getting the kind of guy that you want is maybe your fault. Maybe there's something you could do to get yourself up to that. No, no, no, you should love yourself as you are. Queen, you're already a ten, he doesn't deserve you.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Drives me up a wall.

• 15:16Chris Williamson?

  Well, the, the main problem with it is that there is a small cohort of women for whom growth mindset and improving themselves has been drilled into them. And they're just going to run away and pick up all of the good guys. Because there's such a small number of them out there and the rest of them have been dazzled by this shitty culture.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  And that's one of the reasons why I, you know, didn't want to put dating on hold just because of my career. And it's interesting, so my mom and I talked a lot about this. She always said, you know, don't date until you're 30. She was, you know.

• 15:45Chris Williamson?

  She had you at like 38, right?

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yeah. And 42, I think. And, um, and that was kind of a joke, but not a joke. And what she meant by that was know yourself before you get married. She did not mean that in that, you know, you need to have the perfect career, the perfect house, the perfect job, which I think is such a lie because it's much more fulfilling to build that and get to that point with your significant other. But that was kind of the running joke in our family. And then when I graduated college, moved to Nashville, we started seeing the world change, just gender dynamics. I think she, her eyes really woke up, or not woke up, her eyes really opened to all of that and seeing that, you know, dating was not the same as when she was dating. The world's stability was just not the same.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  And so when I, you know, left Idaho and moved to Nashville, she was like, you need to find your person. She was like, because the world is not stable.

• 16:36Chris Williamson?

  Wait till you turn on, god damn it.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so she was saying, you know, this has to be a priority because the good ones are going to get picked up. They probably are being. And, you know, it's great, you know, focus on your career, but the women that are out there knowing that they're going to need a partner, because the world is getting increasingly unstable, because we don't know what's happening, you know, in politics, in, you know, whether there's going to be some apocalypse, she's very much a propper. And then also just in terms of values, like those are the ones that are going to be snatched up from the get go. And she was like, don't put that on hold. She was like, I'm sorry that I told you, don't date until you're 30, but that needs, your mindset needs to change about that. And I'm so glad that she did.

• 17:13Chris Williamson?

  Where did you meet your husband?

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Uh, through work.

• 17:16Chris Williamson?

  Wow. Who knew? Daily Wire?

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Always said I would never do it. He, oh, yeah, we both were like, we'll never do this. Both of us were like, never date at work. And it was something, I mean, I don't know, it's like, it sounds so woo woo, but literally he walked in, I looked at him and I was like, that one. I don't know why, didn't know anything about him. Something about the way that he carried himself. He's super confident in a very

• 17:41Speaker 01

  open and engaging way, not a cocky way. I had always gone for very arrogant and cocky guys in the past, because I felt like that is what I needed, because I thought that other men were going to be, and boys at that time in college, were going to be intimidated by me and my success, my intelligence, and the fact that I, you know, graduated college at 19 years old. Like, that was just, I was like, that's what I needed. And then I met him, and it was so solid. There was no insecurities. He was so comfortable in his own skin, was not intimidated whatsoever. So caring, so open, just literally just the way that he carried himself. And then got to know him and realized that, um, we grew up five miles apart. He went to high school with my brothers. His photo had been in my brother's four-year

• 18:25Speaker 01

  books we have in my mom's office for the last 15 years. And I had no idea when I met him, or like laid eyes on him. Um, and so I've said this before, but falling in love with him and marrying him has felt so much like going home, because it's like I have that tie to.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Our hometown, it was a town when a lot of pretty dysfunctional things happened in my family when my brothers passed away. And that's where we were living when that happened. And so I've kind of had a complicated relationship. It's Chattanooga here in Tennessee. But all the pieces just kind of came together and it was so easy. I mean, I think I knew within like two weeks of going out with him, I was like, this is who I'm going to marry. This is it.

• 19:05Chris Williamson?

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• 20:06Chris Williamson?

  What advice would you give to guys who want to attract and find a good woman?

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Work on yourself for sure. Be constantly improving, both in terms of your career, your intelligence and the way that you think about the world, your, the physical shape that you're in. That says so much to women. And I know that a lot of women kind of look at that in a superficial way, but I look at that as like you are truly prepared to protect. You're willing to go to bat for me, for our future children. You care about my health more than I care about my health. That was a huge thing that I had to get over. He was like, you are going to go to the gym. You are going to take these supplements.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  A leader, being able to be assertive and take initiative is huge. I also think, and this is the complicated one that I'm talking about on the show, is understanding the nuances in dating. Women are very confusing, which sucks, but we are. And there's like very little like emotional things that we do. But being able to understand if a woman is actually interested and knowing how to carry on a conversation before you even ask her out, that's key to just getting in the door. Of being able to create a connection over something that's not dating and over your interest in her, whether it's, you know, physical or you just think she's an interesting person, just seeing if that connection is even there and kind of playing that dating game, that back and forth, that sets you up for success in more ways than one.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Like that is, I feel like has a much higher batting average than just, you know, going up and saying, you know, can I have your number and hoping that it works out. But laying that groundwork, just so that you know if she's actually interested. I think that also makes the fear of rejection a little easier because you actually will know, hopefully, if she's interested in what the response.

• 21:58Chris Williamson?

  You've got like pre-selection somehow.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 21:59Chris Williamson?

  Well, I think a lot of, a lot of the time about the advantage of being around women and one of the problems of remote work being that people are interacting less. So low stakes interaction with women is a really great way for guys to overcome their approach anxiety. Because if you're not looking for any outcome, what can you lose that? It's the barista. She is literally paid to give you your coffee. So if you can say one extra sentence, it sounds so stupid. It's the same problem as if you need to go to the gym, just do 10 pushups a day. Because it starts so small that people think, well, what's the fucking point? Like, look, I'm not, I'm not Andrew Tate with a Bugatti. Like, what's, what's the point in me trying to do this? So, but that is literally the only way that you can get there.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Yes, you have to take that step. You have to show up at a location in person where there will be women, whether it is your, you know, whether it is a group workout class.

• 22:51Chris Williamson?

  Pickleball.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  There you go. I have a problem with pickleball, though.

• 22:54Chris Williamson?

  What? Come on, okay, here we go. First disagreement.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  I, I did an episode about this. I got reamed in the comments.

• 23:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, well, rightly so.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, well. The problem that I had and that sparked this episode is I went to a farmer's market in Nashville. There was a tennis court next door to the farmer's market. It was all men playing pickleball. I'm sorry, it was the gayest thing I've ever seen. And not in it was because it was all, it was so, oh my gosh, I was like, play tennis. Anyway, but I also think that was just the demographic in that part of Nashville. And I looked at that and I was like, you go like to a boxing gym, something. Anyway.

• 23:30Chris Williamson?

  Short denim shorts, cutoffs?

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, the shortest shorts are matchable.

• 23:33Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Like they, well, they like they went to Lululemon, got the five inch and then had them tailored.

• 23:37Chris Williamson?

  This is, this is liberating for men. This is what we want to do. This is what we want to do. Yeah. Like, you know that?

• 23:43Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 23:43Chris Williamson?

  You know those things like, I wonder if he's thinking about me?

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:46Chris Williamson?

  And then it cuts to what the guy's actually doing and it's him high fiving with his homies with his top off in three and shorts. This is what guys want to do. Stop fucking oppressing us.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  I'm so sorry.

• 23:53Chris Williamson?

  The patriarchy is coming back around through pickleball.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  I'm so glad.

• 23:56Chris Williamson?

  Thank you.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  I'll shut down the matriarchy. Well, no, and I learned my lesson from that.

• 24:00Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  I still don't, I don't really enjoy pickleball. I played tennis growing up and so I, that also probably feeds into my feelings about it, but still. Going to some, like playing pickleball with people, showing up to those leagues, joining in Nashville at Centennial Park. They always do soccer and softball and volleyball during the summer. You can just join these rec leagues. Go do that.

• 24:22Chris Williamson?

  Have you seen this ascendancy of like 5K runs, run clubs?

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think that's, I think run clubs are basically a. They're a dating organization masquerading as a fitness pursuit.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I could see that.

• 24:35Chris Williamson?

  That's what it is because no one goes to the run club for the running bit. I've seen these things. People walk half of them.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:40Chris Williamson?

  But everybody's got their brand new Sorkany or New Balance, whatever. Exactly. Yeah. And tiny pair of shorts and they get to run along and sweaty and see if the other, oh, like he's that guy from last week again.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:51Chris Williamson?

  So.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Again, and that's okay. What you just said, that guy from last week, that is also key. Repeatedly going to the same place with the same group of people. And again, laying that groundwork.

• 25:00Chris Williamson?

  Stalking.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. I need you to stalk now. But the low stakes environment where you are having to. Grow a relationship over, say, six weeks of like, you're going to this run club every single week. You meet a girl, oh, you banter, whatever, you run along, talk to somebody else. The next week she's there. Pick up the conversation. Just being able to.

• 25:22Chris Williamson?

  It's wild that this is revolutionary.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  I know.

• 25:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I know.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Again, but that goes back to my point of.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  My generation just has not had to do that.

• 25:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  And it's all been so digital and then mix in with our, you know, our social skills just have been totally warped by the digital age and COVID didn't help at all. And I mean, the majority of my college experience was online. So when people talk about, oh, you learn to date in college. People who graduated around my year in 21, nope.

• 25:51Chris Williamson?

  Learn to date online.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:52Chris Williamson?

  While at college.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Yes. In your Zoom class, like, oh, this guy's kind of cute. Let me do like my like private Zoom message.

• 25:58Chris Williamson?

  Do a breakout.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. They're like, oh, yeah, the guy in my Zoom, you know, breakout of my business class when we're working on our accounting, whatever. Like that's, those were the options.

• 26:06Chris Williamson?

  There's a current big pushback against women having kids as well. Even me, who doesn't use TikTok, saw that girl with a list.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:14Chris Williamson?

  Thing. She printed off 350 reasons about why not to have a child. What is the opinion on motherhood among Gen Z at the moment?

• 26:24Speaker 01

  It's interesting. Do you see that study that said that it's over half of women do believe that motherhood is just as or more important than a career? Just from a couple of weeks ago, but they will not, these are not conservatives. These are just normal women. They don't want to brand themselves as conservatives. They want to get married. They believe the hookup culture is bad and they believe that motherhood is important. And so I think deep down, because these are biological instincts. I do believe that women have those urges and want that. I think that it is the culture coming in very heavy handedly with the most absurd reasons not to, like the list, which is just 365 examples of fear mongering.

• 27:06Chris Williamson?

  Can't wear cute heels anymore. Got to Mish brunch brunch with the girls.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Yes. And it's like, some of them, I'll read and be like, oh, like that part of giving birth does not sound fun, but the end result is worth it and I don't care because I want to have a child. But a huge portion of them are, oh, your clothes don't fit properly. And, oh, I might not be able to go back to my career. You, you want to go back and sit in a cubicle? When you could have this like beautiful, amazing child that you've created with the love of your life and you're worried about going back and working for the man, like I thought you hated the patriarchy. Does not make sense. Um, but no, there is a lot of fear mongering.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  There are more women than people think that are waking up. I was actually planning an episode for next week about this. There have been an influx of women, just on my social media alone, speaking out about cultural issues, social issues, political issues, talking about voting for Trump. These are not political accounts. These are random influencers, just girls on their, you know, private, personal social medias, talking about the things that Biden is doing in regards to Title IX, the transgender issue, that they have been completely woken up, realizing, oh, I don't actually want this anymore. Mix that in with the women that are in their 30s, they get made fun of constantly on X for crying in their car about the fact that they can't meet a guy because they prioritize their career over dating. And then they just get ripped to shreds when people

• 28:23Speaker 01

  on the right, which I think is so problematic. They are struggling.

• 28:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I mean, this kind of self owns, uh, you know, as you said before, people on the right that are supposed to be pro-family saying, but you're going to give up your career. You just managed to find your success. This is one of the sort of real areas, I think, of failure, especially for the right, supposed to be the ones that are rational. We position ourselves up against these, you know, super emotional fucking people on the left. You go, dude, you've just taken the piss out of a woman who is the realization that you've said that they're going to have. What do you want? Do you want it to create a time machine and go back in time? That's evidently not going to happen. And someone opens up to give the message as opposed to going, see this stupid broad, she shouldn't have listened to blah, blah, blah. You go, okay, it's a cautionary tale. Yes. But there's a human on the other side of that.

• 29:10Chris Williamson?

  It's so dehumanizing. This is why I'm so bored with most of politics and sort of culture war stuff, because everybody sees everyone as a political football of some kind that they can either kick away from them or sort of grab and bring onto their team. Perfect example of this. Remember when Nicki Minaj went anti-vax for a couple of weeks? And the right was like, Nicki, come on. I'm like, Nicki Minaj? Are we being serious? But oh, there's this brief sort of sliver where their talking point coincides with my desire to push this particular narrative.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you hold on and you're like, I'll ignore everything else. And it's, you know, and I'm somebody, obviously, that reacts to culture. I talk about the news. You know, that is something that I would talk about on the show. But it's like, you, you walk a fine line of acknowledging that this is interesting. You know, sure, that's cool. That's, you know, one thing that I agree with Nicki Minaj on. But you don't have to suddenly absolve her of every other value that she's ever had that I disagree with. And I think that's the real problem. Like, you can say, oh, that's cool. I don't agree with the rest of the things that you're doing, but that's interesting. I wonder how she got to that point. That's what's interesting to me.

• 30:14Chris Williamson?

  Correct.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  And then looking at the reaction, and obviously, I mean, it's called the comment section. That's what I do. But seeing how the internet responds to it, that's also the interesting part. I don't need to adopt her. I don't need her to suddenly come over to my side. Um, so yeah, I completely agree with that. And I think that that response to women does not help us at all. That response to women who are, you know, 31, single, desperately need help finding somebody. The response is, yeah, the response is not screw you. Oh, boo hoo. The response is, no, there is, there will still be somebody out there for you. I believe that. If you, you know, realign your priorities, if you do put yourself out there, if you become open and you're willing to be vulnerable.

• 30:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  I do believe in that wholeheartedly. But then you use that as a, again, the cautionary tale, like you said, of like, young women, this is what could have, this is what we warned. This is what feminism said you wouldn't care about. You won't care when you're 31 and you have no kids and you've frozen your eggs and you, you know, you're working for the man and you have some corporate career. It won't matter. Obviously, it does.

• 31:12Chris Williamson?

  That being said, I have this idea that normalizing, uh, the gift of IVF egg, embryo freezing, or at least like egg freezing at 21, would be one of the best things that you could do.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:24Chris Williamson?

  I think that instead of giving a girl a fancy trip to Tulum with her and her friends, or a nice watch, or whatever, I don't know what American families do, but like, 21 tends to be like a big

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:34Chris Williamson?

  And getting your eggs frozen is not cheap.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:37Chris Williamson?

  But imagine just that insurance policy, just in case something happens. I think that would be a good way to look at stuff. But yeah, I, uh, so is it your belief that we are seeing a kind of quiet revolution of young women beginning to see the importance of motherhood and sort of long-term relationship? Is this a pushback against casual sex, against hookup culture? Is this tied in with the conservative movement, or is this totally separate? Is it just siloed off onto dating?

• 32:04Speaker 01

  I think that you can smush them together if you want. Um, and I think that there is a lot of overlap, but I don't think that this is a lot of them and suddenly being like, you know, I'm conservative, I'm gonna vote for Trump, I'm ready to be a trad wife, give me my, you know, frolicking sundress. That's not what it is. It's women.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Being intelligent and having self-awareness and looking at the world around them and going, this doesn't sit right. I don't know if that's going to translate into votes. I would love it to translate into votes because I think that the world needs some literal, you know, political redirection. But I do think that it speaks volumes about our culture and the lies that women have been told. It's not just about their relationships and dating and motherhood, but women are also having a really rude awakening about our health. I mean, birth control is such a huge topic right now. Our health, our OB-GYNs who have gaslit so many women for years at this point about their health, about our hormones. I think that there's just a, in general, women are looking around going, oh, my gosh, what we've been told and fed for the last 20, 30 years. None of this makes sense. We need to take

• 33:04Speaker 01

  a step back and reevaluate. And we're seeing this in real time. And some of it, you know, is even happening on the right because a lot of women on the right are, you know, waking up to Big Pharma and, you know, their health. It's happening in every single political pocket. But I, it's just very, very cool. And I'm glad that it's happening.

• 33:21Chris Williamson?

  There was a TikTok I saw earlier on, an obese woman who diagnosed herself based on Gray's Anatomy.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  I watched that earlier. Yeah.

• 33:27Chris Williamson?

  Got angry with a doctor that she thought was safe.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:30Chris Williamson?

  Because the doctor suggested that the woman lose weight. The woman asked her to not talk about BMI because of its history as a tool of eugenics, racism, and colonialism, and I'm indigenous.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Yes. It's pretty great. Did you hear, that was actually in my episode today that I filmed before coming here.

• 33:46Chris Williamson?

  God damn it.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  And I, well, it's great.

• 33:47Chris Williamson?

  You've been slip streaming me on the same story.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  The thing, okay, the thing that is, I looped it in with the fat beach day that happened in New York.

• 33:56Chris Williamson?

  What's that?

• 33:56Speaker 01

  The weekend. So obviously, body positivity movement, they need to be accepted. We have not accepted them enough. We have not meant to need enough. They needed to have their own beach day together so that they could encourage more acceptance. So that happened in New York on Saturday.

• 34:11Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Literally just a bunch of fat people. They went to the beach. And I said this on the show where I said, if this was like an interest group, if there's those people that were coming together with a common shared experience, there you go.

• 34:22Chris Williamson?

  Star Wars.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  If they were coming together because these are people that are trying to lose weight, and they need, they are, you know, they have one health problem, they need camaraderie, they want support. That would be one thing. That's great. I believe that it's wonderful to find people that you, you know, share things with, things that you're going through. That community is a more, just in general, I think our society is lost. Community. But that's not what this is. This is a bunch of, there was like fat New York City models who went, literally taking their tops off, posing on the beach. I was like, no, this is not about you wanting support and being healthier. This is literally you fueling your own narcissism and a desire for attention. And I think that they are flailing right now because I've seen a ton of new body positivity movement,

• 35:05Speaker 01

  TikToks popping up over the past couple of weeks because they're losing their hold. With Ozempic, with people waking up just about their health in general, people are losing weight rapidly. There was a really interesting interview from the CEO and head buyers of a lot of different women's clothing companies and retail stores. And they were saying, we've never seen in the last 15 years, we have not seen so many smalls, extra smalls sold. And they're begging for smaller sizes, like they're now going down to like triple zero, which has not happened in the last 15 years. And just back in COVID, they were saying, we need, you know, size 16, 18, 24. I think the average size of an American woman clothing size was an 18, 16 last year. And now to see that shift.

• 35:45Chris Williamson?

  Not going to be for long.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Apparently not.

• 35:47Chris Williamson?

  I mean, talking about intersectionality, the environmental movement should be happy about people losing weight. Think about how much less material is being used, how much less stitching, the freight amount, the weight that you need to use to transport that across the world.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  If only the social justice movement could get on the same page and have some consistency. They might actually do some, they might do some good.

• 36:06Chris Williamson?

  So I had Johann Hari on the show and he's written this new book, Magic Pill, about Ozempic. And the most interesting stuff that I found are all the economic impacts downstream. So airline companies predicting lower fuel costs because of a lighter populace. All of the confectionery companies, Ben & Jerry's are trying to dial in their margins because they know that the sales volume is going to go through the floor. Hip and knee replacement companies, way fewer of those because people are less. And this was, this was the wildest one. Jewellers using less gold for fat fingers. So the amount of people that have had to pay to go into jewellers to get their rings adjusted because their fingers have grown. But I, I really think you're onto something here with the sort of Ozempic meets body positivity challenge. So for a long time, being obese.

• 36:52Chris Williamson?

  Or being overweight was seen as an identity.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:55Chris Williamson?

  And I think that if people can't lose weight, even though they try, if they can't get what they want, they need to teach us themselves to want what they can get.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:03Chris Williamson?

  Which is being a little bit bigger.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:05Chris Williamson?

  And saying, well, actually, there's no bearing that weight has on health, et cetera, et cetera. The problem now is if you've got-

• 37:09Speaker 01

  And they put it on you and say, actually, you're the problem.

• 37:12Chris Williamson?

  Correct.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  And it's not that they can't lose the weight, whatever. Yes.

• 37:15Chris Williamson?

  Plane seats or whatever. Problem being, if you can basically bestow on anybody that's got the right medical insurance or 200 bucks a month, if you can bestow on them weight loss to whatever level that they want, you just increase the Ozempic dose and you can dial in your weight to whatever it is that you want. It makes being obese much more of an obvious lifestyle choice. And it really lowers the status, I think, of being overweight.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:40Chris Williamson?

  When it becomes convenient and easy to be-

• 37:43Speaker 01

  To lose weight.

• 37:43Chris Williamson?

  Thin. Yeah, it becomes-

• 37:44Speaker 01

  And deep down, that is what people want. I don't, I don't, I truly don't believe that people want to be obese. I don't believe that people want to be unhealthy. I mean, why, why? Again, it's like, travel is so complicated, all the other, you know, health problems that come with it, the knee replacements, you know, the difficulty just existing in society, which, again, I think a lot of people dunk on folks that are overweight and just make fun of them. I'm like, they are struggling. Like, life that way is not great. It isn't designed for them. I don't think it's decided needs to bend a knee and change airline seat sizes and make, you know, all the bathrooms bigger. There was that one video where the one was like, I need hotel hallways to be bigger for me. I'm like, no, okay.

• 38:21Chris Williamson?

  How fucking wide was she?

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:22Chris Williamson?

  Jesus.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Huge.

• 38:23Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  It's like, that doesn't need to change. But I still do believe that, you know, obviously, they are human beings. They're deserving of empathy.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  But deep down, they don't want that. And again, they, like you said, they only adopted this because it was like, I can't have this. So I'm going to become really, really passionate and really enraged and make it a you problem because I'm not going to take responsibility. But again, now that there is this opportunity- And this innovation that they can easily grasp onto, obviously they're going to trickle over here.

• 38:50Chris Williamson?

  Well, we saw what happened to Adele when Adele lost weight and she was completely castigated, thrown out of the big, big girls' club, whatever it was, as if it was some sort of a middle finger, as if, as if her being bigger was like a show of fealty, like flying a particular flag for some group.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  I think so many feminists want other women to be ugly and miserable.

• 39:11Chris Williamson?

  There's an amazing Bill Burr bit where he says, chicks, if you could only support the WNBA the same way that you support a fat chick that's gained weight and is no longer a threat to you.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:24Chris Williamson?

  They'd be doing more numbers than the NBA.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:25Chris Williamson?

  And it's so true. I have this, you've nailed it, that I think the body positivity movement is highly motivated for women to encourage their friends to eat themselves out of their competition in the dating market. So you have intrasexual competition, competition between women, and a lot of, quite rightly, girls go, that's fucking, of course I don't think that. And it's like, no, you don't consciously think that.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  No, it's subconscious.

• 39:47Chris Williamson?

  Precisely.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  Women are terrible to each other. That's kind of just a.

• 39:51Chris Williamson?

  Well, most slut shaming comes from women.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 39:53Chris Williamson?

  Most of the beauty standards come from women.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  And it's so irritating when women turn the beauty standards on men. And they'll say, oh, the patriarchy made me do this. You know, I have all of these body image issues because of what men have told me, what man has told you that he wants you to, you know, get plastic surgery on your eyelids. That's a new big plastic surgery thing that's popping up in America. Or if you have like hooded eyelids, you get them like sliced and cut and resown. You know, you have these crazy caterpillar eyelashes on your eyes. You're getting filler everywhere. You're doing all of this. It's not for men.

• 40:24Chris Williamson?

  You are aware that guys have no idea what you're talking about.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:26Chris Williamson?

  They don't know the difference between an LV bag and one that's from Target.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  And that's why they don't care and they don't know. They're doing it for women. Women are encouraging it. They're seeing it on social media. It's like that's you cannot blame that on men. You cannot blame the, you know, insane things, you know, how much money you're spending on your nails and your eyelashes and your fake tans on men. That's other women encouraging you to do that.

• 40:49Chris Williamson?

  I saw you throw my alumni organization, Love Island, under the bus recently.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  I did.

• 40:55Chris Williamson?

  I can't believe that you would do that.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  What was your experience? How were the women all fillered up?

• 41:00Chris Williamson?

  Uh, it was, so I went on nine years ago. So it was less bad back then, but there has been a couple of sort of transformation. They did an all-stars thing. So they brought people that had been on previous seasons back on. And there was a few, and you basically got to compare then until now. And I thought, you know, some of the girls that run my season had had a bit of work done. And you compare to now, and they look like brats dolls. And, you know, these stories have gone super. And I feel for these chicks that have been like, I don't know, it's kind of like being gaslit by fucking culture into believing that this is the thing that they need to do. I don't know.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Preventative botox is now the thing in the States. I don't know if it is in the UK.

• 41:36Chris Williamson?

  What is that?

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Where women my age and younger, starting at like 20 years old, are getting botox to keep themselves from getting wrinkles in the future.

• 41:43Chris Williamson?

  Does it work?

• 41:43Speaker 01

  No, it's absurd. And any good esthetician and dermatologist is going to say you literally do not need that, but they're making money off of it. And so there's a whole like social media campaign for it, you know, start getting your preventative botox here, just a couple of injections here and there. Make sure you don't get, you know, crow's feet. At like my age, it's like, no, those aren't wrinkles. Those are like your dimples. Those are just your normal like lines over your eyebrows, but it's all.

• 42:07Chris Williamson?

  For the girls that are listening, guys don't notice. Like, we don't know. We're not doing it for us. We don't know. We don't know what's going on. So one of the other trends that I've noticed is kind of generalized cynicism. And you spend a lot of time in the comments section. A lot of people in your audience are Gen Z. Why are Gen Z so despondent? Why is there such generalized cynicism? Is that true? Is that just what we see rise to the surface? What's the kind of cultural temperature at the moment for Gen Z?

• 42:31Speaker 01

  I think that there is a lot of cynicism. I think that it can be kind of politically divided. I think Gen Z on the left is a lot more cynical. But I think that also just goes back to people on the left, especially young people on the left. It's fueled by this, you know, desire for victimhood. There's no good in the world. I shouldn't have children because, you know, the world is going to go up in flames and there's going to be no earth anymore. And I don't want to populate the earth. I don't want to bring a child into the world. I mean, it's, it is very, very cynical. On the right, social people that are, you know, more driven by their faith, there's a lot of hope and a lot of encouragement. I also don't think that they really bog themselves down with that kind of cynicism. But for just making a generalized statement,

• 43:17Speaker 01

  every generation has gone through hard things. And so I think that it is not honest and kind of irresponsible to say, oh, well, Gen Z has like, has really had it tough because of COVID. And they were born, you know, post nine 11 and the world changed and, um, you know, and then Trump came in and there was so much, I was like, there's, we weren't alive during polio and, you know, we don't have any actual wars that we are physically like our men are not being drafted right now. Maybe they will be. I don't know. They're trying to get women drafted. But right now, things are okay. Like, we are better off than we have ever been in the history of the world. We are richer, we are healthier, we are happier by and large. And so I don't think it's correct to say the Gen Z has been through more. I think we've been through different things.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  The digital age, we are the first generation that was raised fully online. We are more exposed to seeing things around the world. No generation before us has had this much of an unbridled access to the problems consuming other countries and other societies. So maybe it's a little bit of like, you know, we don't have that innocence is bliss. Um, COVID obviously was very, very difficult for my generation. And I think that sent them on a spiral because obviously, or already we were, you know, our socialization was not up to stuff compared to older generations just because of the digital age. COVID only made that worse. So again, I don't think that we are worse off. We are just dealing with something different that no other generation has had to encounter before. And I think that they wear that kind of as a chip on their shoulder as well. Like,

• 44:47Speaker 01

  you don't get it. You don't get it. And it's like, well, no, we, we understand. We can point to the reasons why. But still, take a step back and see that the world is better than it has ever been before. You have more opportunities than you've ever had. Obviously, there are problems. There will always be problems. That's life. Like, as a human being, you are always going to have hurdles. It's kind of the name of the game. And I think that Gen Z is putting themselves, has put themselves in this situation where it's like any of those hurdles. It's like, I'm out. It's triggering. I now have depression, anxiety, I need to be, you know, medicated. There's no point in living anymore. It's like they are, they're just thrown in the towel.

• 45:23Chris Williamson?

  It's easy, I think, for People who aren't from that generation to look at it and say, well, look, this is just online. These are terminally online people. There's nothing to worry about. This isn't a problem. It's just a problem on the internet. But I looked at some stats recently that said the average amount of time that an American spends asleep is six hours and 15 minutes. And their total screen time per day is eight hours. So they're on screens for more than they are asleep. The virtual world is more real than the real world.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 45:49Chris Williamson?

  So that is for you to say, this is just online. It's like you have got the bar stool upside down. It's online is life. That is life for these people. So yeah, I think being sort of disparaging of it, it's just not going to get people anywhere. And if you don't want to sound like a boomer that's completely out of touch, that is not the solution. Saying, ah, it's just online. You're right. You evidently don't get what's going on.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  That's why you have to meet them where they are and meet them online. And that's why I think, you know, I've had people ask me before, you know, you were raised with no TV, which I was. I didn't have a TV in my house until I had one at one point in my college years, but never used it, didn't have cable, didn't have Netflix. I got one when I moved in with my husband because he watches sports. I was like, okay, now I have a TV. But I was very offline, didn't have a phone for many, many years, just had a flip phone when I was in high school. Like I was very, very detached. My mom was very involved with my social media usage as a young person. And people will say, well, Brett, that was your experience. You advocate for that. You advocate for people to get offline, touch grass is what I say, to have that balance to go be involved in the real world. And yet you're online and you're in the comments section. It's like, well, yeah, that's where you have to meet them.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  And the best thing that I can do, in my opinion, is

• 47:02Speaker 01

  talk about things that are, you know, terminally online and talk about these online issues, but give them a framework so that they can dissect them intelligently and have self-awareness. I think the worst thing is that if you're spending that amount of time online, which everybody is, also for my generation, our work is online, our school is online, dating is online. If you want to be involved, you do kind of have to be online as a young adult.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  The worst thing to do is just to be in that online world on social media and not be thinking about it, not be conscious about what you're consuming. So if I can give them a framework of, so this is alluding to this, this social media trend that sounds really dumb. It's on TikTok. It's a ridiculous thing. This is indicative of X, Y, and Z that's happening in our culture that is probably fed from this. If I can give them kind of like, ah, I see where that's coming from. So they're not just blindly consuming it.

• 47:46Chris Williamson?

  How persuasive do you find that to be?

• 47:48Speaker 01

  Very.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  I think it's changed a lot of minds.

• 47:52Chris Williamson?

  I think one of the problems people have is that it's pointless me even engaging with a discussion with these people because I feel like they're a lost hope. I feel like there's

• 48:00Speaker 01

  I don't believe that.

• 48:00Chris Williamson?

  You know, there's a lot of people that I think would look at Gen Z and just say, fuckin', chalk it up as a loss, swing and a miss. Let's get on to Gen Alpha, maybe we can do better with them.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I, I mean, Gen Z men are becoming more right wing than ever, are waking up about a lot of things. I'm seeing this with young women. That's not, you know, they're not becoming more right wing, but I do think that they're waking up to a lot of the lies, again, the lies that they've been told, the lies of our culture of feminism.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  I also think Gen Z, you can just see the way that they're already critiquing millennials and wanting to be different. So, Gen Alpha, I don't know if you've seen, like, the Sephora tweens. Okay, so millennials are very into gentle parenting. And gentle parenting, as it should be described in the actual definition, I don't have a problem with, of, you know, being engaged with your children's emotional life, leveling with them, not just, you know, pointing a finger, disciplining with no explanation, kindness, you know, again, meeting them at their level.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  But it has become something that is more of a, I guess, a doormat situation where it enables

• 49:05Chris Williamson?

  Pliable parents that do whatever.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Um, it enables laziness. Oh, I'm a gentle parent. No, you're not.

• 49:09Chris Williamson?

  Pliable parenting.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Yes. Uh, their children walk all over them. And then they're the iPad kids. Gen Alpha is the iPad kids. And so, Gen Z is now in the workforce. They are preschool teachers. They're kindergarten teachers. They are working at Sephora and they see Gen Alpha come in and have no respect for anyone that's older than them. They're walking around buying drunk elephant retinol products to put on their 12-year-old skin because they've just seen it on social media and there, nobody in their life, no adult in their life is saying, hey, you're 12 years old. Retinol is for when you're 35. Don't buy that. Um, destroying testers. It's all of these videos of tweens. Tween girls, you know, stealing makeup, destroying the test displays.

• 49:47Chris Williamson?

  Why is Sephora fucking ground zero for this?

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Because they watch beauty influencers.

• 49:52Chris Williamson?

  And they all shop at Sephora? Fantastic.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  And so now there's all of these, like, 12, 13-year-old, like, little beauty influencers. They're like, hi, come see my Sephora haul. Do my, do my makeup for school. I was like, oh my gosh, when I was 12 years old, I was making, like, little mix music videos in my pool, like my drained pool in the wintertime and never posted them. God forbid that ever made its way onto the internet because it was for our enjoyment, not for clicks and not for social media. But these young people, because they've been raised online.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  That is their fun is like becoming an influencer and posting themselves online. So they watch these beauty influencers, they go to Sephora, they buy this makeup. But Gen Z is interacting with them on a daily basis and they are saying, we don't want to raise kids like that. We don't want to be the millennials.

• 50:31Chris Williamson?

  In other news, this episode is brought to you by Nomadic. Last year I went on a tour across the UK, USA and Dubai, and I didn't check a single bag because hold luggage is a psyop meant to keep you poor and late. In fact, I never need to check bags anymore at all, thanks to Nomadic. This is the best backpack in history. Everybody that I've got to try it has had their life revolutionized by it. And they make the most functional, durable and innovative backpacks and luggage that I've ever used. Their 20 litre travel pack, which is this sucker right here, is an absolute game changer. The amount of thought that they've put into every pouch and zipper is incredible. They're beautifully designed and not over engineered and will literally last you a lifetime with their lifetime guarantee. So this is the final backpack that you'll ever need to buy.

• 51:14Chris Williamson?

  Best of all, you can return or exchange any product within 30 days. So if you buy your new bag, try it and don't like it, they will just give you your money back. Right now you can get a 20% discount by going to the link in the show notes below or heading to nomatic.com/modernwisdom and using the code MW20 at checkout. That's nomatic.com/modernwisdom and MW20 at checkout. What's the next one? Gen beta? That's gonna suck.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 51:39Chris Williamson?

  If you're, if you're the, what generation were you? I was the beta generation. I found this, since 2009, more than twice as many 15 to 19 year old girls and young women have been admitted to the ER for self harm behaviors in the US. Even more shocking, five times more 10 to 14 year old girls were admitted to the ER for self harm in 2022 than in 2009. That's five times more families taking their fourth to ninth grade daughters to the hospital because they have intentionally harmed themselves.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  It's awful.

• 52:06Chris Williamson?

  Where's this coming from?

• 52:09Speaker 01

  A lot of it, social media. Um, I said something recently on a show because I covered a woman who got a lot of flack on TikTok for talking about her strict rules with her children, where she does not allow them to take their phones into their bedrooms. They have time limits on their social media apps. Most ridiculous thing was they have to tell her where they're going to go before they go, so that she knows where they are. And Paris is like, oh, my gosh, you're a stalker. It's like, no, you want to know where your 15 year old daughter is going to be. Anyway, I talked about her and I basically said, in terms of social media, point me to one study that says that social media is good for young adults, for young women specifically. There is not one. There's not one that even says it is fine. It is all detrimental.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Um, and so I think that plays a huge part in it, again, because of what they're seeing and the peer pressure online and the standards that they're setting for themselves that they now want to try to adopt because they see this influencer doing this. They see this person, you know, in Bali on a beach with their hot boyfriend and they don't have that and they'll never be that. They see, you know, these now 13 year old little girl influencers who are going to press events and getting PR packages. Like, it's starting so, so young. And women are very susceptible to that. Puberty as woman is one of the worst things you will ever go through. You feel, you feel like the most ugly duckling on planet earth. I was so ugly. It was terrible because I sprouted, I would say, earlier, but I still

• 53:33Speaker 01

  had a baby face and I had a bowl cut and I was like five, six, um, already was, you know, super tall.

• 53:40Chris Williamson?

  Hey, you guys.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Yes, I was, it was so weird and it was so awkward. No boys liked me. And you feel so insecure. And then that being heightened by social media, by COVID and having to live online, I think it's just a perfect storm. Um, it also doesn't help that social media has almost encouraged having a mental illness in a lot of ways.

• 54:06Chris Williamson?

  Glorified that pathology.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Yes. And Jordan has talked a lot about, you know, social contagion. I think that is absolutely real. It is the cool thing to be depressed. It is a badge of honor to have anxiety and be dealing with it. And the more that they engage with that and tell themselves that they are, obviously, you're going to become that. Um, again, it's just a perfect storm.

• 54:25Chris Williamson?

  You worked in Hollywood as a child actor.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:29Chris Williamson?

  What did you make about the recent news on Nickelodeon and Quiet on Set and all of that?

• 54:35Speaker 01

  None of it surprises me at all. I feel very, very lucky because I had a great experience. But I had a fantastic experience because I had a mother that was literally a shark. Who was so, I just cannot say enough good things about her. Who was so engaged in every part of my upbringing and my career. Not as a momager, but as a mother. Someone who knew that this industry had the reputation that it did. She already knew about the casting couch. She knew about child actors and the drug usage and the scandals. She was not interested in me doing any of that.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  But I loved it. Like I lived for performing. That's all I wanted to do. And so she saw that in me and wanted to be able to support that. And I've seen a lot of comments, actually, of people saying, you know, if your mom knew these things about the industry. Why did she let you move to LA to audition? Why did she take you to New York so that you could go audition for Broadway shows? I just want to take this opportunity to answer it. My brother died when I was five years old. He was 17. He was an artist, super, super creative. And up until that point, my mom had kind of tried

• 55:44Speaker 01

  not to put my brothers in a box, but she was like, you know, it was a more of a one size fits all parenting approach.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  My brother who died is a twin. And so she kind of put the twins together and she was dealing with her failing marriage with my father and that kind of took priority over the kids.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  And after he died, she made a conscious decision with me that she was going to completely change that. She was like, I'm not going to prioritize this marriage that is, you know, there is no future. Really, she had already kind of decided, both of them had decided that. I'm going to put this child first. And then one thing that she said is, you know, if I knew that David was going to die at 17 years old. And he had all of these ambitions and things that he wanted to accomplish, what would I have done to make sure that he got those opportunities? That he got to enjoy every aspect of that?

• 56:32Speaker 01

  And so that's why we did it because she saw that I loved it. I came alive when I was onstage.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  A lot of things in my family, I think, really shut me down. Losing my brother at a young age, my parents' relationship obviously took a major turn for the worse after he died. My brothers really kind of went off the deep end in a lot of ways as well. I became very

• 56:54Speaker 01

  closed off, suppressed. I would literally like hide in kitchen cabinets when people would come over because I didn't want to speak. That all went away when I got onstage and was performing. And so she wanted to keep that up as much as possible because that was my one outlet. So that's kind of the backstory of how I ended up there. And why she was willing to put me in those situations and also why she was so willing to protect me. So then back to the point. I knew all of that. Growing up, I knew that it was happening. I had experiences, nothing like what was discussed on.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  Why am I blanking?

• 57:29Chris Williamson?

  Quiet on set.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  Quiet on set. I was about to say After Dark. Quiet on set.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  You know, Jeanette McCurdy wrote her fantastic book, I'm Glad My Mom Died, about her very abusive mother, momager, and her experience with Dan Schneider. She didn't name in her book, which she just called him the Creator, obviously for legal reasons.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  So when I read her book, I remember getting to the end of her book, literally just like crying because I was like.

• 57:50Chris Williamson?

  Did you ever interact with Dan Schneider?

• 57:52Speaker 01

  No, I auditioned for some of his projects. I don't know if I was ever in the room with him. I mean, it was literally, he was so prolific in Hollywood still at the time when I was coming up that at least once a week there would be, I could probably go back in my old email now and, you know, Untitled Dan Schneider Project, Untitled Dan Schneider Project. My mom already knew about that reputation. It was so commonplace that he was a creep. But I think I might have auditioned for a couple of them, but she drew a line in the sand and said, that guy's a weirdo. She's not going out for any of those projects. She's not going to go work at Nickelodeon. I desperately wanted to be on the modern iteration of Boy Meets World, which is called Girl Meets World, which obviously catapulted Rowan Blanchard and Sabrina Carpenter to fame. I desperately wanted it. And so I like fought with my mom. I was like, please let me go out for this. Please let me go out for this.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  She did not want me on Disney Channel, did not want me on Nickelodeon because she knew that those children's networks were so filled with creeps. And I ended up doing. One children's show at a different network. And that is where my bad experience was. And it's so predictable because it's the men who choose to work with children, with young girls.

• 58:57Chris Williamson?

  What happened?

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Um, it was after the show had ended. And I actually, I told the story with Jordan and I got a call from my mom. She was like, you missed an important component of the story. So I can actually share that here.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  It was the writer on the show. And he had wanted to connect with me and another girl who were on the show. And, you know, he was always writing new things and I'm going to create another show. In Hollywood, it's very normal, you know, oh, let's go have coffee or lunch with this, you know, person who could get you this next job. It's always like, what's going to get me the next job? So they had reached out, he had reached out to this girl who was a co-star on the show with me, was a very, very good friend of mine at the time. And her mom reached out to mine. I think he had mentioned something about, oh, I'd love to see Brett as well. So her mom reached out to mine and said, hey, you know, Brett's friend is going to go meet up with this guy. Would Brett like to go and connect with him? And, you know, it'd be great. He wants to see her. And so we ended up going to the Griffith Observatory.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  And this woman told my mom, you know, I'm going to be with them the entire time. I'm going to watch them. Don't worry, I'll be the parent in the room. My mom said, okay, great. Last time she ever trusted anybody in that regard. And so my mom dropped me off. I went up there. Her mother was nowhere in sight. Watched from the car, basically. Walked around the Griffith Observatory. This man immediately launches into his lesbian fantasies that he has with me and this other girl at 14 years old. Again, the creator and writer of a children's show. And I get immediately very, very weirded out.

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  You know, we're walking, there's this part in the Griffith Observatory where you can go and you see what your weight would be if you're out, you know, on the moon or in space. And so we went and like stood on this and he looked at my friend and said, I want to know how much you weigh with your clothes off. It's like stuff like that. And so then we finally got out of the museum. He's told us about our lesbian fantasies, whatever. We're walking back towards the restaurant and he sticks his hand in our back pockets, like as he's walking like this. And I immediately am just like, get off of me. My friend shoots me a look like, "Don't screw this up for me." Like, "Don't say anything." So I don't, so we just keep walking. Get back to the car. Whatever. I immediately, you know, dropped off at my house. I talked to my mom. "This is so weird. I never want to be around this man again. This was so uncomfortable, so creepy." My mom calls her mom. Her mom admits that she knew. That's why she wanted me there, because I would be a buffer.

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  She said, "Oh, you know, we know that he's weird. We've gotten very weird vibes. I didn't want her to be alone with him, so we wanted Brett to be there." So she knew. But she was so desperate to have her daughter, and her daughter was so desperate, I don't know if it was coming from her or coming from her mother, to be in this room and not rock the boat because she desperately wanted a new show, a new audition, a new job, that she was willing to take it and be in that space and then put another child in that situation. And that was normal. And this guy would show up to, he was very enmeshed in my friend group for a long time because he just worked with all these young people, would show up to teenage birthday parties. Where maybe like, you know, an acting teacher or somebody would drop by and drop a present.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  "Hey, happy birthday, you know, whoever your name is, have a great party," whatever. This guy would come, stay until 2:00 a.m. with 16 and 17-year-olds, who are obviously like getting drunk and getting high, whatever teenage actors are doing.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Painted portraits of child actors was a whole thing on his social media. It was just very, very weird.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  It's nothing compared to what so many have been through. But even in my limited experience, even with a mother that was so, so careful, that I still had that. And I think that,

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  I was in an interesting position because I, I loved acting and I loved my career and I loved working, but my mom had done a very good job.

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  Kind of saying, you know, this is not your whole identity. This isn't your whole life. You never have to do anything that you're not comfortable with. Like, acting is fun. It should always be fun. It should be a hobby. You should never cross any lines that you're not willing to cross for that. And I don't think that was instilled in my peers. So like my friend who was, you know, shot me that death stare. Don't you like, don't say anything about him touching my butt. And this man groping a 14 year old, 15 year old, I think she was a year older than me. I didn't have that. I didn't care. Like, who cares if he doesn't like me?

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  And again, my mom knew all of this going into it. She put me in self-defense against sexual assault. Women's self-defense against sexual assault. Starting at age 11 or 12, I was fighting, literally in like rape scenarios, date rape situations, would do that twice a week, was in private lessons, did that for probably seven years. And I think that was a huge part of it. Martial arts are just, I think, so important for both men and women, but especially young girls, I think it's so underrated because the confidence that I had because of that, because I knew how to defend myself, because one of the first things that you learn is how to say no and how to use your voice and understanding that where you're being touched, that's not right. I had that and she didn't.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  And I don't, and that's why I was, you know, put in those classes. My mom was like, you're going into rooms with people that I don't know. You know, you're being brought in by a casting director to go into a room for 15 minutes and do a scene. I have no idea what they're doing to you in there. You need to know, again, what is appropriate and what's not.

• 1:04:24Chris Williamson?

  Interesting, this sort of line that is kind of similar to helicopter parenting, but done in a empowered, safe way that's aiming to try and give you as much independence and security as possible.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  It was the, it was the foundation that was more of a, not a helicopter, but like, I'm going to be very, very careful so that then you can go out and do whatever you want.

• 1:04:43Chris Williamson?

  But it's, you know, similar to the flirting and how to detect whether or not someone likes you. It's the subtle differences, it's the deftness, right? It's the nuance that's really, really important in how you do this. The wildest thing about that story is the complicity of both the girl and the mother.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  And did not care. When they were called on it, yeah, oh, sorry.

• 1:05:05Chris Williamson?

  So it's just kind of the, the price of doing business.

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  And there's a lot of that in Hollywood that I think that's one of the reasons why I've made, you know, conscious decision when I was in college that I was like, I just don't think, I don't think this is for me because there is, there's a big price. You, they ask for your everything. They ask for you to be complicit in whatever they want to do. They ask for you to give up your life and your stability and your control over your personal life. I mean, you know, at the drop of a hat, you know, you need to fly to Vancouver and shoot this and you know, whatever. They don't care about your personal life, which is fine. It's an industry. They need to, you know, film things when they need to film things and where they need to film things. But I was not a person that was willing to give all of that. I was also not willing to sacrifice my values. This kind of goes

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  back to the politics stuff. I would get scripts constantly. I would look at the characters that I'm playing. I would read the script in its entirety if I was, you know, got a movie script. And I would kind of, I would sit down and I would dissect, what are they trying to tell audiences with this story? And I would deeply disagree with it. I would hate what my character was being used to convey. And you have no control over that because you're just a shell. That's your job.

• 1:06:14Chris Williamson?

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• 1:06:59Chris Williamson?

  it for 30 days, and if you do not like it, they will give you your money back. You can get up to a 20% discount site-wide by going to the link in the show notes below or heading to livemomentous.com/mordenwisdom using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.com/mordenwisdom and modern wisdom.

• 1:07:18Chris Williamson?

  A checkout. Did you see that Disney Vice President, Senior Vice President man talking about how we often don't hire white people for roles?

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 1:07:26Chris Williamson?

  And there was a mixed race guy that wasn't black enough?

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:31Chris Williamson?

  I mean, that blows my mind as well. It's like, how many-

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  You see that, I saw that all the time. Like when, I don't know when this really started to pick up. It wasn't in 2020 with BLM. It was before, I think it started a couple of years before that, really. But before that, you would get breakdowns. It would be, you know, brunette, white, around 12 years old, this is the role. It always, you know, at this point, starting maybe in 2018, very consistently, it became ethnically ambiguous, can be mixed.

• 1:07:59Chris Williamson?

  Ethnically ambiguous.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  Yes. They were looking for people to check those boxes rather than writing characters just because they fit the story or because they're interesting characters. It was, you know, they were writing these characters, but we don't really care who it is. We need you to check that box. And I saw that on the production side of it as well. I was basically working in my dream job when I was in college because I had made that decision. I don't really know if I want to act anymore. I want to go into production. I always said I like wanted to run a movie studio one day. So I was working at a Oscar winning production company. They did very, their whole thing was character driven stories and very, very compelling. They wanted to leave audiences changed, but they weren't like hit you over the head, social justice, or, you know, nonprofit

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  style films. These were very, very good standalone films that just at the tail end, they cared that they were making audiences a little bit better. I loved that. And so I was working for them in college and worked for them throughout 2020. When BLM hit, my job, which had been receiving scripts, doing a breakdown kind of of like before the executives read it, I would go through and write a synopsis of the script that I had received, talk about some of the key characters. What do you learn from this script? Would you recommend this? Would you recommend this be pushed on through this executive? And so that was like the first person that- Scripts came to it, company.

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  My job changed from "look for good, character-driven stories," again, that leave audiences changed, that are moving the needle in some capacity. It wasn't for political things, it was for like, making humanity better, that these stories will be used for good.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  It became changed to "we need you to find a Native American protagonist movie ASAP. We don't have enough black people in this movie. We need to ax however percentage of our slate," because it wasn't diverse enough. So I saw that as an actor a few years prior, and then I saw that on the tail end of like, "this isn't real anymore. These aren't authentic stories you're telling. You are literally at every part of this industry, molding, shaping, adapting, tinkering with to fit these quotas and these agendas."

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  And I was just out. Because the reason I wanted to be an actor, the reason I wanted to be in Hollywood is because I love stories. I love seeing humanity at its worst and its best. I love being able to sit and relate to somebody who I obviously have no connection to, who might not even be real, but see myself in them. As an actor, I love that, of being able to put myself in somebody else's shoes and process things that might be going on in my personal life in a unique way, because I get to act them, and it's safer, because it's not Brett having to do that, it's this character that I'm playing. All of it was so real and genuine, and suddenly, like, the rub was, you know, pulled out of my eyes. I was like, "no, it's all perfectly designed."

• 1:10:50Chris Williamson?

  It blows my mind how well Hollywood has managed to faceplant consistently over the last few years. They just do not seem to be able to understand. There was some Star Wars actress that responded on a late-night show saying, "we don't want white people watching our show in any case."

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  Did you see her anti-white song that she released?

• 1:11:10Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  She did that on Juneteenth, and it was a, you can pull it up, it's on her Instagram. And it was about racism, and how she's oppressed and all of this stuff, and she's mixed. Like, if you Google her name, it's only photos of her and her white father.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  And she's singing about not liking white people, and how white people hate black people. And it's just, like, doesn't make sense.

• 1:11:32Chris Williamson?

  Speaking of going from mainstream media across to independent media, what'd you make of Tucker Carlson's move?

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  I thought it was great. I think he turned something that, you know, could have been like career ending. I don't, I obviously don't know the details of what happened, but um, thinking that he was fired, I mean, he could have taken that as like, okay, you know, I'm done. He has become more famous and more culturally relevant since. I mean, the amount of places that I see him now on social media, in real life, doing his tour, the amount of people that I see in random comment sections on social media, where like fan edits are made of him, where it's like him talking about masculinity and family and all these guys in the comments being like, oh, I used to always hate him. I thought he was such a boomer and I like, I can't get enough of him. Like,

• 1:12:21Chris Williamson?

  Tucker Carlson's leading the Hope Call movement.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, truly. I, his um, thing that he said with Charlie Kirk years ago, and it's ingrained in my mind, it's probably one of the reasons why I got married young, but he was like, get married too young, have more children than you can afford. Um, that's how he starts that. And somebody, he did an interview recently and somebody asked him about that again and said, you know, do you still stand by that? Do you think this is still something that people need to hear? And he just gave the most incredible answer about, you know, freedom comes with responsibility and taking responsibility, you know, becoming a father, becoming a husband. You know, it, it changes you in ways that you cannot even describe. He was like, if you think you can't do it the moment that you have a child, no, it's not that you can do it, it's you have to do it. And how empowering that is. And reading the comments of all of

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  these men being like, I can't wait to be a dad. This is so true. I never thought I would relate to Tucker Carlson. It's great. It's crazy. And so I think it's great. I think that he was kind of stuck in a, he was stuck in a certain Fox News brand. So I, it's great.

• 1:13:21Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. When you watch Fox now, sort of in comparison with the pivot that Tucker's made, it feels very slow and sort of pedestrian and lumbering. Uh, we both got a lot of friends that still do commentary for them, but it's just, I don't know, that old style of TV production for cultural commentary, political commentary and stuff like that. Just, I think it's, I mean, is this what you think the future is going to be? Are we going to see more independent creators coming out of mainstream?

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  I think that's how it should be.

• 1:13:49Chris Williamson?

  Mainstream media dead, in your opinion? Or dying? How quickly? How slowly?

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  Quickly, but I think now they've realized how it started to happen. And so they're kind of like playing catch up of, oh, I need to, you know, fix this. I need to do this better. We need to keep up with the times. But I think it happened faster than they could have expected. So I think they looked back and went, oh, we are being left in the dust. So I think they're trying to adapt, but I do think that the future is independent creators. I think that it's people starting podcasts like yours and just getting on YouTube and saying, no, this is what I think, this is what I believe. Again, like I said, the women on TikTok who just have personal accounts, like 3,000 followers, who just post their shopping hauls, saying, I am done voting this way. Trump derangement syndrome is cringe. It's lame. Don't do that anymore. And they get millions of views. It's just people speaking from the heart, which is very, very cool.

• 1:14:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I wonder, I think a big part of it, we had Andrew Huberman's little foray with the mainstream media a couple of months ago.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  They're so funny.

• 1:14:49Chris Williamson?

  So many of those situations, I think, are ostensibly what it's supposed to be is something that's newsworthy, talking about an individual or what they're getting up to. But behind the scenes, what I think it is, is a slowly dying medium, death rattling and kind of grasping at, we're going to use the popularity of this side of the aisle to actually generate clicks on our side of the aisle.

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:14Chris Williamson?

  And, you know, you can have as much criticism as you want, and rightly so, about the lack of media standards, you know, we're not, you're not beholden, and neither am I to the same kind of publishing standards, maybe the fact checking standards that you would have to, to be able to get onto a TV organization. But on the flip side, the TV organizations, the only way that they can get clicks, for the most part now, is talking about stuff that's happening independently.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:39Chris Williamson?

  Like when Don Lemon has decided to make the pivot.

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:42Chris Williamson?

  You know, like that, I mean, he's the final horseman of the apocalypse. He's got to be. So.

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  Could write about it.

• 1:15:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Why did you not do this independently? Why do this daily? Why? You could have, you're the star of the show. It's a, I've seen your setup. It's. Uh, how would you say lean, lean? Complementarily, it's it's lean.

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:00Chris Williamson?

  You know, it's like not, it's not super extravagant. It's no more complex than it needs to be. Why didn't you do your thing on your own?

• 1:16:06Speaker 01

  I was very out of my element. I didn't think I could. I think, and I don't know if I, I'll be confident. I think I could have figured it out, obviously. I'm a smart person.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  I was very, very nervous. I've changed a lot in the last two years, just on my confidence in speaking about culture and politics. Um, I've gotten to understand social media a lot more. I really had no idea what I was getting into. I had just kind of jumped ship from Hollywood because I had moved from acting to, oh, I want to go into production. Oh, I don't like that either. So I studied for the LSAT and I applied to law school and got into law school. And then the week of my orientation went, oh, nope, this isn't for me. I'm not supposed to be an attorney. I don't want to do this. And then was literally working as a waitress and writing articles for Foundation for Economic Education and helping YAL with their Young Americans for Liberty, with their copywriting for their development team, their fundraising team.

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  And I was just, I desperately wanted to be with a group of people that was moving the needle in meaningful ways. I didn't know how I wanted to do that. And so I had started a little Instagram. It had maybe, I think I had racked it up to 5,000 followers. But every time I posted, I was still like, I still had that, I guess, like post Hollywood syndrome of if I post this, my career is going to go away. My agents are going to, you know, drop me. Nobody's ever going to hire me again, even though I had decided, I don't really think this is for me. I was still petrified. Didn't know what my future held. Had no idea if I would just go into writing and become some kind of journalist, if I would end up wanting to go to law school later on, literally had no idea.

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  Was working at this wine bar steakhouse in Boise, Idaho. And the social video team at Daily Wire saw one of my videos that I made for Young Americans for Liberty. And they liked me and DM'd me and said, you know, we love what you're doing. You have a unique angle and a unique voice. Obviously you are camera trained, you're media trained. We'd love to talk with you about producing a show. And I think a lot of people assume that.

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  You know, I came in and Daily Wire already had this like put together show and they're like, here, we just needed to cast a girl to be the, you know, young, right wing girl to get all the guys. Like, that's often a critique that I get. Um, I actually have a pilot that I did independently that I wanted to shop around, but was kind of too scared to and to talk to some other political organizations that is, that pilot is comment section. It has the memes, it has the comments. Um, it had what I wanted to communicate and articulate. And so they had a similar idea, but we brought it together. We worked on it and molded it for three months before we released the show. And that's what I, I needed. You know, I felt like I needed that support system. They gave me the opportunity, um, the resources, the team, which is great.

• 1:18:51Speaker 01

  So I think that I could have done it independently. Emotionally and confidence wise, I was not there yet. I was still absolutely terrified. And I had no idea what I was like, I don't know if this is gonna work for months. It's like, I'm gonna get fired. They're not gonna like the show. This is gonna be a success. And then it took off like a rocket. I was like, oh, okay. I guess that I've like, I've got something that's worth saying.

• 1:19:12Chris Williamson?

  What do you think it was? Why do you think anyone cared?

• 1:19:17Speaker 01

  I think it was a combination of a few things. I think that my generation,

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  I think I filled a niche online, on YouTube specifically, that I knew that I wanted to fill, that I had experienced not having. So one thing that I had vocalized many times now is I'm not like a, I'm not the Trump intern, you know, Rhino Republican, you know, the girls in their, you know, beautiful pencil skirts or their perfectly blown out hair. I'm also not like the badass huntresses that live in Montana and like live on their father's ranches and, you know, are super MAGA and super awesome. And I'm like, I'm obsessed with both of them. I think that they both bring, you know, really interesting, you know, discourse and they're unique individuals and all that. But I was just normal. I was like, I have these values and I have opinions that feel very counterculture

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  and I'm not seeing that represented anywhere. Like, where's just the normal girl that thinks that all of this is insane?

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  And as simple as that, I think that I filled that niche. I also think that I brought humor to a side of the internet and a political corner of the internet that often doesn't have a lot of humor. I try to approach things with levity and hope and positivity and obviously like strike hard when it's needed and drive a point home. But also it's like, if you're not laughing, you're crying. Like you might as well look at the world and go, no, this is absurd. Let's actually laugh at this because this is so dumb. Like the fat beach day. You have to laugh at that. You have to. It's like, it would not be fun for me and it's not fun for anybody. You're like, they're ruining the world. This is so disgusting, whatever. You have to go, this is literally absurd. Like, why are they? And I, that was, I didn't, I also didn't see that anywhere.

• 1:20:57Speaker 01

  You know, I watched, um, you know, I listened to everybody at the Daily Wire, you know, Matt specifically and Michael I was obsessed with before I came to the Daily Wire. But it was very newsy and it was very serious. Um, and their fathers, we need to, you know, protect, you know, this society, need to change things. It was like, I want to have fun, which sounds so silly, but I wanted, I wanted somebody to speak to me on my level and not make me feel like the world was going to end every five minutes, but truly be able to make fun of it. So I also think that's how it's continued to grow is because the humor and the positivity has reached people across the aisle who might not be right wing, but have common sense and realize this is dumb.

• 1:21:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:41Speaker 01

  What's happening is absurd.

• 1:21:42Chris Williamson?

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• 1:22:42Chris Williamson?

  The Daily Wire guys can be lightning rods for drama. It feels like Matt Walsh is in the news every other week for something that he's said. You are very good friends with Candace. And then Candace falls out with Ben, and then Candace falls out with DW, and then Candace drags DW for the entirety of the first week of her new show. Is it

• 1:23:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:02Chris Williamson?

  hard to focus on work when you're embroiled in drama like that, when it's kind of happening all around you?

• 1:23:09Speaker 01

  It is. I think that's why it's so important just to, you know, I try to stay in my lane. I try to stay in, you know, keep my priorities straight in that I want to create good content. I want to, you know, reach people across the aisle. I want to empower young women and make them feel seen. I want to encourage young men. It's like that. Those are the things that I care about and that I want to do. I don't want to be deterred.

• 1:23:30Chris Williamson?

  You can't fully divorce yourself from the

• 1:23:32Speaker 01

  No, you can't.

• 1:23:33Chris Williamson?

  atmosphere. You walk into work and it's just, it's like

• 1:23:35Speaker 01

  It's tense. Yeah.

• 1:23:35Chris Williamson?

  fucking war zone.

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so that's, but that had to be my focus. And so I think that is the first step in that. Yeah. I mean, everybody's kind of watched this whole fallout happen. It's not a secret, obviously. It's difficult because I know all of these figures personally on a level that most people on the internet don't know. I know Jeremy in a way, you know, I know the Jeremy that's not the God King. I know him that's not the CEO. I really got to know him well when we were shooting Pendragon and I, you know, got to see him in his element, you know, singing and directing and, you know, producing this project that he's wanted to produce for 30 years. And that was, you know, genuinely amazing. And our relationship really developed there.

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  But I also know Candace as a friend. She has been one of the most gracious mentors that I've ever had in this industry, who has been such a guiding light, has been an incredible friend. She and George, you know, have welcomed me into their home time and time again, resources, connections. I think a lot of people look at her. And see her as, you know, obviously she's like a firebrand and she's, you know, ready to go punch and fight. She's a genuinely just a very sweet person and a wonderful friend. And so I know both of these parties. I know the personal side of it. I don't know the professional details.

• 1:24:56Chris Williamson?

  Is it difficult to navigate that, though?

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:24:58Chris Williamson?

  You know, you've got to show up and be the bubbly, pretty girl talking about the thing and oh, the New York beach day or whatever, but in the back of your mind, you've got, I'm in the midst of some fucking marital drama, that weird professional marital thing.

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  In a much bigger sense, you know, you have two friends, they're dating and they break up. And it's like, how are you going to navigate?

• 1:25:21Chris Williamson?

  We're still embroiled in all of the friend groups that overlap.

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, no, it is. I, it's just tense. And, and it sucks because I think that, you know, Daily Wire is doing incredible things. Ben is doing incredible things. Candace is amazing. She's the best at what she does. She's incredible. And it sucks that we weren't, you know, that it wasn't going to be able to be together forever, that we weren't, you know, going to be the band of brothers. I think that she'll go off and do great things. I think Daily Wire will go off and do great things. And that's kind of just where I have to sit. And again, I can't get into the details because I don't know the details. I'm not in the C suite. I don't know any of the legal things. And so I really just have to think of them as, you know, you know, these are people that have been hurt.

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  They're hurting because the relationship has fallen apart. I think a lot of people online don't see that side of it. It's like, these are friends. That's really, really hard to navigate.

• 1:26:18Chris Williamson?

  Well, that's one of the problems, I think. It's very rare because people show up just to see the equivalent independent creative thing that they're used to with news. You know, the, the guy that does the six o'clock news doesn't talk about the production problems that are going on behind the scenes. Or the fact that our internet just recently went down. So we've actually had to get some local storage because the server, like, no, just tell me the fucking news.

• 1:26:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:39Chris Williamson?

  Right. So there's a level of slickness and polish and professionalism that I think most people expect when they watch any kind of content. That changes if you're Sam Sulek and you're just videoing yourself. And do you know what that is?

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:26:49Chris Williamson?

  Right. Okay. Brilliant.

• 1:26:53Chris Williamson?

  It changes if you're him, but for the most part, you see an organization like you guys and there's still kind of some rules that have been ported across from mainstream media. But the thing that people don't Realize that I think might be useful even to kind of open the doors a little bit more for everyone is there's a whole side of operation going on behind the scenes. You know, there's runners and a team and a guy that handles hard drives and there's a dude that does the thumbnails and the uploads and sometimes they don't work. And sometimes, you know, you're on holiday and the internet's down or whatever the fuck's going on. And the reason that that feels a bit icky, at least to me, to talk about is that it feels like you're molesting the process. It's supposed to be this sort of seamless brain to mouth to internet thing. This is the whole reason that

• 1:27:36Chris Williamson?

  everyone went to independent media in the first place. It's unencumbered. It's just, you know, thoughts and takes and all the rest of it. And this is why we went here and didn't go, we don't want the polish. I don't need the fancy lights. I don't need the rest of the stuff. You go, yeah, but like structurally, this shit needs to go from this to screen that you're watching on. And there's a process in between. And that means that there's contracts and there's employment law and there's negotiations.

• 1:27:59Speaker 01

  And there's human beings. There are human beings you have personal relationships with. And that makes it very, very complicated. Yeah, I think that's a great point. And a lot of people don't get to see.

• 1:28:09Chris Williamson?

  I mean, we saw this, absolutely saw this with Steven Crowder and DW, like the entire, you know, the skirt was lifted up. There was no pants on underneath. Like, everything got revealed to the world there. So, yeah, you see, um, I don't know, it's interesting.

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  And again, that was a very personal relationship. I mean, he was a longtime friend of Jeremy and Ben's. And so that was not just, ooh, pointing fingers at Daily Wire and then snapping back at Crowder and then all of that. I mean, these were longtime friends. It was a relationship that was broken.

• 1:28:36Chris Williamson?

  It's really interesting, like, to see what's happened to Crowder over the last year. Like, a lot of people seem to have sort of turned his ex-co-host, a couple of ex-co-hosts.

• 1:28:47Speaker 01

  I don't really know what's going on with that.

• 1:28:49Chris Williamson?

  I haven't been, I didn't.

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  I saw a tweet about it today. I know that there's some update, some lawsuit, a second lawsuit. I don't know. But.

• 1:28:54Chris Williamson?

  I don't know. Yeah, it's. The more that you kind of get involved in that, the less the people actually take you legitimately. I think it's a good idea to try and stay clear of that as much as possible. And yeah, people can either come to you for the content or they can come to you for the drama about your content.

• 1:29:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:10Chris Williamson?

  You don't really get to pick one of the two, like Destiny had a massive problem with this, I think, over the last year. That people stopped coming to it for his content and just started coming to him to find out what car crash he was fighting with this week. Like, who is it that he's going up against and what's going on with his love life? And what's that thing that just happened over there? You go, dude.

• 1:29:25Speaker 01

  It's a great point.

• 1:29:25Chris Williamson?

  Fair play, but you you don't really get to have it both ways. You either get to talk about the thing you're talking about or people get to talk about you. And you don't really get to do both.

• 1:29:34Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:29:34Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. How do you decide what you want to talk about on the show?

• 1:29:38Speaker 01

  I go on social media. That's really the the crux of it. I spend a lot of time online and, you know, pretty chronically online, which is hard. So you need to have balance in your life. But I go through TikTok, Twitter, Instagram. I see what's trending. A lot of times the things that I'm really interested in, and I feel like the episodes that, you know, these often don't do the best, but they're the ones that I'm like, oh, I want people to see these. I'm really interested in is connecting the connecting the dots about kind of the underbelly of social media. So this isn't like, oh, a celebrity did this. This isn't the Justin Timberlake got a DUI story, which I'll obviously cover and talk about, but the things that I love.

• 1:30:23Speaker 01

  Is I think I touched on this a little earlier of like, okay, these trends are popping up on social media. They're not mega, mega viral, but a lot of women are talking about this. A lot of men are doing this. I'm seeing this commonality in the comment section. Why? So let me show you this and then let's tie it into here's an article about this from five years ago. When did this start? What does that mean for our future on social media? How can I break this down and explain it to you? So those are my favorite episodes to do. I think people find those interesting because it's almost like a little video essay of like, hey, here's what's going on in the Gen Z, you know, the underbelly of TikTok. That does mean, though, that I have to, I have to be in that.

• 1:30:56Chris Williamson?

  Crawl through the muck and the mire and the feces.

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  I have to find the, like, if you saw my messages to myself on TikTok, like, when you send yourself messages to, like, say them, that's how I say things, oh, my gosh, you would think that I was just absolutely manic. But I see something, and I've gotten good at it at this point, of, like, that's unique, and I'll send it to myself. And then three days later, oh, I'm seeing it again. I knew that that was something. Boom, boom, boom. And then a week later, when I have a slate of things, I'm like, like, scrolling up through my messages to myself, boom, I knew it, I saved it. Like, I, I can connect these dots. So it's a lot of digging online. And then sometimes, you know, like the Justin Timberlake story, oh, let's talk about, you know, the fall of celebrity and what that means for his marriage, and why is his wife on all of these talk shows talking about how she really doesn't like that he's on this tour, and he really needs to rest

• 1:31:43Speaker 01

  with his. It's like, okay, so what's going on there? Like, is he not an active participating father? What's going on? So like tying those together? And then, of course, there's the more political current events type news that I don't do often, because I think that-

• 1:31:58Chris Williamson?

  It seems like you've leaned away. You've, I've heard you say that you're actively becoming less and less interested in politics.

• 1:32:02Speaker 01

  I'm more interested in culture and how that feeds into politics. So rather than talking about Biden said X, Y, Z, I would rather talk about a cultural issue and then kind of tie it into things that are happening. So it's like, you know, I'm seeing this online, people aren't buying houses, Gen Z is crying online because of their financial instability. Oh, let's talk about the economy and what you voted for. I would rather kind of circumvent it and go that way, rather than go, here's a video about Biden's economy and the Federal Reserve and how they're effing us all over.

• 1:32:31Chris Williamson?

  I think it definitely triggers some sort of antibody responses from people if you open up with the politics side. Because, oh, if you're not on my side, then you're on the other side, which means that I don't get to listen to what you're going to say. Do you ever get sort of fatigued or exhausted having to do the newsworthy, trend-worthy stuff? I know that you're an earnest person. It seems like you want to make things that matter. I don't know how many people are going to go back in six months and watch Justin Timberlake's DUI or James Charles learning to sing.

• 1:33:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:33:00Chris Williamson?

  I know that that's kind of, are you worried about how evergreen and how much sort of gameplay click newsworthy stuff versus I want to make a body of work that over time I look back on and go, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, made value, added value?

• 1:33:15Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm very concerned with that. And that's why- Over time, that was not the case at first. It was very current events. I mean, you can go back to my first videos. And there are very, very few of them that I would say have stood the test of time. They're not evergreen. Very, very newsy. And I intentionally moved away from that. It was actually kind of by accident. Because I rarely skip a day of comment section. I would rather pre-record and have things going out, just because with, for people who don't know, like the YouTube algorithm, you need to be posting at a certain rate. You don't want to screw up your algorithm. And so I would rather put in the work a week before I go on vacation and film at least one episode in advance, or one episode every day. I usually do two.

• 1:33:54Speaker 01

  And post those and get those up. And so when I was doing those, those can't be current events. I can't be talking about what Biden said or what celebrity, you know, did XYZ. So I have to be thinking, okay, what is something that is actually relevant that is going on right now? That's kind of where that structure came from. Of how can I take something that is sort of going on, that's bubbling, that's not a, ooh, I have five minutes to talk about this and get those million clicks and views. But I can bring it into a broader conversation. So that's, it accidentally happened. I went, oh, I love this. This is so much more meaningful to me than having a dunk on a lib on a random Wednesday that nobody, you know, a hundred thousand people. Are going to watch it in the first, you know, four hours and then it's just going to go away because. Every other person on the right has talked about it and there's something else, you know, Biden's pooped his pants and now they're talking about that, whatever it is.

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  And so it all kind of happened accidentally. And so now I. Kind of strike a balance because I do two shows a day. It's a lot of content. And those all can't be, just at the volume that we're doing, those all can't be evergreen. That's like, I would not be able to sustain that.

• 1:34:53Chris Williamson?

  There's not enough philosophy to do 14 shows. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  There's not, and I don't think I have enough time as one individual to be in the underbelly of TikTok. Draining substance from the most disgusting social media platform. Yes, literally, that's me. Like, please give me something. And so I mix them up. And so, you know, I'll do, oh, you know, here's three episodes about, you know, these things that have happened in the news. And then here's three others that I think are much more substantial. And there are things, interestingly, that I've been surprised by. Where I've done something that's more newsy and I look back and it's like, how does this have four million views now? But something else has come up, like this person is back in the news, they go back, they find the video. So it sometimes can surprise you. But.

• 1:35:40Speaker 01

  I want to add substance to some of the most vapid and superficial things online. Like if I can do that, then I'm doing my job right. If I can take a Justin Timberlake story that I like, I told my husband, I was going to talk about this. He was like, Brett, that is the most idiotic story. Like, why are you going to talk about this? I don't want to hear about Justin Timberlake. And I'll often run my stories by him. He was like, this is so dumb. And then the episode did really well and he listened to it. He was like, yeah, you actually had a great take that was so interesting about their marriage. I'm like, if I've, you know, gotten you to change your mind about it, if I can pull some substance to spark a conversation about marriage and parental priorities. And even just, you know, for five seconds about, oh, my God, it's 2024. Call a freaking Uber. Don't drive drunk. I shouldn't have to say that.

• 1:36:23Speaker 01

  But if I can say that to some of the 18 year olds that watch me, then I've done something right.

• 1:36:28Chris Williamson?

  There's an idea from internet marketing, which is sell people what they want, teach them what they need.

• 1:36:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:33Chris Williamson?

  And it's kind of the same in content creation, which is sort of like click for the rage, stay for the insights. And, uh, you know, it's unfortunate that there's a game that needs to be played.

• 1:36:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:41Chris Williamson?

  But I think striking the balance is very important. You know, we're consciously thinking about, uh, like de limbically hijacking the channel. Not that it really is that much at all, but that's something that I'm always thinking about. Like, how, how can I get, how can I strike the balance between making sure that the numbers are there? That this important guest or message or whatever gets out to the requisite number of people, but also do it in a way that doesn't feel cheap or tacky. Uh, and, you know, there's a, an it there. And the bottom line for any audience member that doesn't like the direction that a channel is going in, in terms of the way that they frame stuff, if it's the content, then that's a bigger problem. The way that they frame it, it's like, dude, creators just make what you click on.

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:20Chris Williamson?

  You know, like if you don't like it, click on something else.

• 1:37:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that goes back to meeting people where they are. And it's like, if my, if the strategy of starting with, you know, what people want to click on, what they're interested in, and then, like you said, getting into what they need to hear, that's not working, I would, you know, change the strategy. But my generation does want to know what's on TikTok. They want to know what this influencer did that's so insane. They want to know, like, whether this viral woman on TikTok is actually like an absent mother or if she's real. They want to know what Justin Timberlake did. And so they're going to click on that. So it's like, why wouldn't I start with that and bring them in and meet them where they are?

• 1:37:53Chris Williamson?

  What have you learned since working with Ben?

• 1:37:56Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh. Ben is.

• 1:38:00Speaker 01

  I've never met anybody who was so good at absorbing information and then bringing it out to the masses. Like there is, I cannot comprehend, like if you, you know, something that the Supreme Court does, um, something that Biden does, you know, politics can be very muddy to a lot of people, how legislation actually works. Like in my, you know, people love Ben for a lot of different reasons. The reason why I loved him when I was coming up and started listening to him was because he made it digestible. He brought it to normal people and said, here, let me tell you what's actually going on. Let me break it down for you. And he can do that in, you know, five seconds. And that is so admirable. And I think

• 1:38:39Speaker 01

  that that critical thinking and his ability to dissect it is such a great skill. He also works harder than anybody I know. I mean, he is like constantly improving, constantly writing books. It's like I was in Miami with him and back last summer. And, you know, he comes in and he does the show and he'll like begrudgingly do the social media things that his team wants him to do. And then immediately he's going into an interview. He's flying here to meet with this person. You know, in his off time, he's writing three new books. And oh, I want to go, you know, create this venture. I'm going to call Jeremy about doing this thing. And he does it all between the hours that his kids are at school. And he said to me, my kids don't know that I work. They, my work does not infringe upon my time

• 1:39:20Speaker 01

  with them. I drop them off, I pick them up, and then I spend time with them and I put them to bed and then maybe I'll write some more. But I mean, he is so dialed in, works out right in the middle of the day. It's a well-oiled machine, his whole operation down there in Boca. It's fully intentional, condensed, which I think is very easy for this job. And that's something that I'm working on and something that Jordan and I kind of talked about of, you know, in this transition into, you know, being a wife, wanting to be a mother, what is that going to look like? How are you, you know, going to be able to do that? This job, it, it feeds out into your personal life. It feeds out into, you know, this is not a nine to five. Not that it's easier or harder. It's just very, very different. Um, it's not something that you can just leave at home. Like I'm, again, I'm

• 1:40:05Speaker 01

  constantly online. I'm constantly searching for stories. If I'm out just at the grocery store, I might be, you know, off the clock. People know who I am. They're going to come up and they're going to talk to me. I'm very aware of who I am and what I represent. Um, and that's always on. Like the only place that's off is like when I'm at home with my husband and my dogs. I'm like, I can just like, that ends. And so I think that Ben has done a very good job. Of setting those boundaries. And I think, you know, especially for younger creators and people coming up, like that is a skill that you have to learn. Those are lines you have to draw in the sand and it's difficult to do that. Boundaries are so hard.

• 1:40:37Chris Williamson?

  I don't know anything about his family. I know he's got eighty five children or something and his wife's a doctor and beyond that, I don't know anything. I think that purposely making your private life boring or just opaque at the very least is a really, really good strategy. Same for Rogan. I know he's got daughters and a wife and a golden retriever. And beyond that, I don't know what they're studying, whether they're at school, what the wife does for work. You know, I don't know any of those things. And yeah, I mean, Mary Harrington has got this idea of a digital hijab where she basically says there's certain areas of yourself that you should keep from the internet. And it definitely seems like Ben has worked very hard, given the amount of scrutiny and the amount of people that have got a problem with

• 1:41:19Chris Williamson?

  it. Agree with him or disagree with him. But I think that if someone wants to keep their private life private, that should be something which is respected.

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very hard to do. I mean, it's like the, what do they call it? The Streisand effect, where the harder you try to keep something private, the more public it will become, which is, but I think he's done a very good job of it. While also not like, this is a secret, nobody like, nobody know what I'm doing.

• 1:41:43Chris Williamson?

  Which creates its own kind of sort of desire.

• 1:41:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just, nope, this is what I do. I go home. I don't talk about it. I got a lot of flack for keeping my relationship private for as long as I did, because I did not.

• 1:41:54Chris Williamson?

  Why did you get flack about it?

• 1:41:55Speaker 01

  People were, they felt like they were owed information about my dating life, I think.

• 1:41:59Chris Williamson?

  Meanwhile, Alex Cooper is able to get in a long term relationship whilst talking about the virtue of casual sex for four years, gets married, says that the proposal was brilliant in a rose garden, got down on one knee. And there's just this wake of hundreds of thousands of girls who've been like

• 1:42:14Speaker 01

  It's insane.

• 1:42:15Chris Williamson?

  conned by this. She never got the requisite sort of call to arms that I think was needed for that. Like this chick who's been the forefront of a big, like one of her first few episodes is about the glug glug five thousand, like some blowjob like episode. Meanwhile, she is secretly having a relationship that turns into an engagement that turns into a marriage. And it's so beautiful. And I really, really feel, you know, What the fuck was all of that?

• 1:42:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:43Chris Williamson?

  What was this part of the work that you just did? And that was one of the bits where I thought, you know, you want to talk about female privilege? No one called her to account.

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:42:50Chris Williamson?

  For that, no one.

• 1:42:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think that's, not people put me in the same camp as that, but I think that they probably felt-

• 1:42:59Chris Williamson?

  All of those episodes about blowjobs that you just keep on doing.

• 1:43:01Speaker 01

  I, exactly.

• 1:43:02Chris Williamson?

  You won't shut up about them.

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, all my, you know, I hook up gold raps.

• 1:43:08Speaker 01

  So I understand that they, you know, it's the internet. My generation, influencers in my generation, they give a lot of their private life. They're, they have a lot of access to us. And I made sure that when I started the show, when I created the channel, I didn't, you know, I was drawing a line in the sand with parts of my life and parts of my personal life. I didn't want to obviously get access to everything. But I wanted them to know who I was as an individual outside of just me sitting in front of a microphone. I think that's really, really important, especially if you're trying to bring people over from the other side, being able to level with them. Um, so I'm not just a face on a screen. I'm a, you know, a human being who's going through what you're going through. And I wanted to make sure that I did that. But there were also parts of my life that I wanted to keep private. And so, you know, I only said that I was with somebody when keep or post.

• 1:43:52Speaker 01

  And I, you know, posted a photo of our engagement. It was like, well, now this is real. And I had a lot of people, you know, I still have memes on my, anytime I post on Instagram, it's men still posting like-

• 1:44:02Chris Williamson?

  It's over, boys.

• 1:44:03Speaker 01

  She's gone, yes. Um, it's kind of become a-

• 1:44:06Chris Williamson?

  The it's over, boys, uh, like trend was so good. Sneako was so upset.

• 1:44:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was funny. It was good. But, um, so I understand that they felt like they had access to me. And then there was such a significant part of my life that I didn't share, but it was very intentional.

• 1:44:23Chris Williamson?

  It's also not central to your content.

• 1:44:24Speaker 01

  No, exactly. And I didn't, and contrary to what Alex Cooper was doing, I wasn't saying, you know, don't have a serious relationship, don't get married all the while. I'm like, he, he, he, here I am. I'm gonna trick you all and get married. I also wasn't, I think this might be- Kind of where that hurt came in was that I believe that there were men out there who watched my content that felt like maybe they had a chance, or it's like this was the ideal. Um, I don't see those comments. I don't want to say that without being like, ooh, tooting my own horn. It's just kind of, that's, that's what I saw and I've been told that. Um, as I think they felt betrayed in that regard of like, she let us, you know, but I never intentionally did that. Like I never said, oh, you know, you could have a chance to date me if you wanted

• 1:45:05Speaker 01

  to. It was just like, you kind of, you know, you had this idea of me. Um, but I'm very, very glad that I kept it private. I think it's very difficult to date and have a relationship when you're a public figure. It's very hard to kind of pick and choose what stays private. And as we were talking about at the beginning with dating, it's hard. It's even harder when you're a public figure and when you don't really have any experience doing this and you know, you're meeting somebody in person for the first time.

• 1:45:29Chris Williamson?

  My first time being famous too.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, and it's just, you know, there was not a roadmap for that.

• 1:45:36Chris Williamson?

  But there's a, there's an equivalent, I think, for everyone. You know, it doesn't matter whether you're in some ivory tower behind Ben Key's production door, talking, talking to a few million people, or you're just a normal person with 3,000 followers on Instagram. If you start posting a lot about your relationship, other people will become invested in it in a way that it disorganizes and it skews the way that you see yourself and there's expectations.

• 1:46:00Speaker 01

  And the priorities. It's very, like, I, I mean, the people who are just dating in relationships and start these like relationship TikToks, there's a

• 1:46:08Chris Williamson?

  What's that?

• 1:46:10Speaker 01

  Like they're couple TikToks, like they have joint accounts.

• 1:46:12Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  And they do like relationship content and not like, here's how to get a good man a date. It's just like, we're doing couples trends and this is us going our day to day lives. Like there's one, there was a big breakup recently on TikTok. I think her name is Tiana. His name is Corey or Cody. He's an NFL player. They just got engaged, but people have been able to track their entire relationship on TikTok. And they always do, you know, trends. She's at every NFL game. They were like, ooh, you know, the TikTok it couple. They broke up right after they got engaged. Nobody knows what happened. Drama. The, I mean, TikTok blew up for days and are now attacking him, attacking her, what happened, saying, making up all these lies, saying that he was an abuser or actually he cheated on her. So now she has to come on and say, that didn't happen. Sometimes relationships just fall apart, but now you have literally

• 1:46:57Speaker 01

  millions upon millions of people. Deep diving, what happened? I mean, I do that because you brought me into your life and now I see.

• 1:47:04Chris Williamson?

  I'm invested.

• 1:47:04Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:47:05Chris Williamson?

  You can't tell me to not be invested.

• 1:47:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:07Chris Williamson?

  Watch what we're doing, but now stop watching what we're doing.

• 1:47:09Speaker 01

  There was a guy.

• 1:47:10Chris Williamson?

  Care about what we're doing, but now stop caring.

• 1:47:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was a guy made a video about this and he was like, if you're going to be in a public relationship and, you know, get us invested. If you break up, we deserve to know why, because otherwise we're gonna go dig. And I was like, I agree with that, like you say, but um, I agree, but then I'm also like the person that's on the other side of the camera. I'm like, I don't want to do that.

• 1:47:27Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:27Speaker 01

  So that's why you do have to be very careful about like, what, what door am I going to open up? So I like slightly opened it up when we got engaged based on his comfort level and he kind of wanted to like tiptoe. He's very, very private, does not want to be on camera, does not care. Um, that's one of the things I love most about him is he does not care that I'm some public figure. When we started dating, he would intentionally never watch my show, never. And I've always been like, huh, like, don't you want to, do you like the show? Like, do you support me? And he was like, no, I don't want to think of you as the girl on the screen. I want to get to know Brett that I go on dates with, you know, who I get to spend time with off of, you know, off camera. Another thing that he said that I just thought was so, I'm so glad I did this. He was like, I want to make sure that we can hold a conversation and talk about things that you haven't just talked about on your show.

• 1:48:10Speaker 01

  He was like, it would have been so easy for me just to watch your show and we go on a dinner date later that night and go, oh, so you were talking about, you know, X, Y, Z, and you did another episode about that. What did you think? Like, that was just kind of a crutch. He was like, I wanted to make sure that.

• 1:48:22Chris Williamson?

  His prep for the date was watching your episode?

• 1:48:24Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, like I'm gonna get ready. And so he never watched it.

• 1:48:27Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:48:27Speaker 01

  Um, and I'm so grateful for that. And so he, you know, you know, I don't, he never set out to like date a public figure or want to be with one. And so I wanted to be very careful and respectable, like respectful to him and what he wants and what he's getting into by being with me. And so then by cracking that open, I saw the Streisand effect, you know, in real time. Cause I hadn't shown his face, I hadn't talked about him, had not said his name, anything about him, just said, you know, fell in love with this guy, love him to death, I'm getting married, did an episode about it on comment section where I just said, you know, this has happened. This is why I kept it private. I intend to keep it, you know, private moving forward. Oh my God, they just latched in. It was like the internet detectives just went, they found out who he was within two months. Had found.

• 1:49:13Speaker 01

  Yes, and it was not like, oh, here's his LinkedIn with his photo that I think is like, you know, he looks so handsome, whatever. It was like photos of him as a sophomore in college, dressed up as a hot dog at some frat party. And here he is like dancing on stage when he's the best man at his friend's wedding. He's definitely had a couple beers and he's like on stage dancing and they're like, oh, look at this, you know, whatever. They immediately found it, found his family, created stories about him. There were so many Reddit posts of like, you know, well, he's gonna destroy our life if I know these kinds of guys. And they knew nothing about him. And so at that point, we had a conversation, I talked with the guys on my security team, because at that point, I was genuinely concerned because they had found out so much about him. And we made the decision together. I was like, I would rather

• 1:49:57Speaker 01

  be ahead of this. And, you know, you're the person that I love, and I want to protect you, and I want to, you know, kind of present you to the world, which sounds so weird. And it's so odd that, you know, you kind of have to think about that. And I did. And so when we got married, my friends who run the Conservator, which is just an amazing digital magazine, kind of trying to be the alternative to Teen Vogue and Seventeen. And I mean, honestly, even not even Teen Vogue, just Vogue, they do really, really high caliber stuff. The girls who run that are good friends of mine. And so I asked them, you know, will you cover the wedding? Because I know people are going to be interested. They're going to have questions about, you know, what dress to do, where would he do, whatever. And they're going to want to know about him. And I want this to be done in a very tasteful way that represents our

• 1:50:38Speaker 01

  values and what we wanted this day to commemorate and why we did our wedding the way that we did, and then share information about him, just so that it's like, it's settled, basically. So it's out there, no more Stripes and Effect, nobody digging.

• 1:50:54Chris Williamson?

  So interesting that there's this sort of sweet spot between not enough information, not enough means that people are going to go digging. Too much information means that they start to get invested. And there's this weird habitable Goldilocks zone in the middle.

• 1:51:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just have to stay there.

• 1:51:06Chris Williamson?

  It's enough to be satisfying and not so much that it's no longer boring.

• 1:51:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:51:10Chris Williamson?

  And, uh, yeah, I mean, it must be interesting as well, uh, having the power dynamic the other way, you know, typically it's guy out front, famous, famous man with like, you know, sort of humble wife at home type thing. And

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  It's varied, yeah.

• 1:51:26Chris Williamson?

  This one's the other way around.

• 1:51:28Speaker 01

  I think it's

• 1:51:31Speaker 01

  It's an interesting dynamic, but it's not weird and it hasn't been a problem. And I think a lot of people assume that it is. And also I talk about, you know, traditional gender roles and trad. And so people look at me and they're like, well, you don't have that because you work and your husband's not in front of the camera. Doesn't mean he doesn't work like he, you know, owns his own business. He's very successful. He's just private.

• 1:51:52Speaker 01

  But just because I'm out front and he's not like our relationship at home. Again, separating the Brett online from the Brett that goes home to him every night. Like, that's very traditional. Like, he's still the head of our household. Like, I still, I mean, revere and respect him, trust him to lead me and lead our family.

• 1:52:10Speaker 01

  It's traditional in that sense, and that I think is more important than having him, you know, be the more superficial figure in like an image, like aesthetic of a traditional.

• 1:52:18Chris Williamson?

  What have you learned, or given the fact that you've got two women for every one man completing a four year US college degree by 2030? You've got women out earning men in their twenties as well. What have you learned about navigating, even if he is professionally successful on his own? There is a odd sort of turning of the polarity in some ways. What advice have you got for guys and girls that are trying to date or be married in a situation where part of the power dynamic has changed a little bit more?

• 1:52:50Speaker 01

  Again, I think it goes back to basic respect and who you are when you leave your jobs at the door. And that you do need to leave your work at the door.

• 1:52:59Speaker 01

  I think that you should be, for women, you should be looking for a man who can provide, not just like, oh, he can buy me all the fancy things that, you know, I want, whatever. That he can emotionally provide and that he's stable. I also think women are less willing these days, and this sounds bad, maybe you have a better way to say it, but like a man in progress.

• 1:53:21Chris Williamson?

  Under construction.

• 1:53:23Speaker 01

  Under construction, yes. And there's all of those stats about, you know, women mature faster than men. And so if you're marrying or dating somebody around your age. You know, it's quite common for a woman to be a little bit ahead, even just mature wise, maturity wise. Um, so I think have grace and understanding and, you know, pick somebody who is ambitious and who is willing to take big swings for you. Um, and for men, you know, be willing to show that. Like if there's a type of woman, again, that you want, it's like, what can you do to get to that level? Even if you're not there yet, that shouldn't stop you. It's like be willing, be bold at a young age when you don't have any other responsibilities. You don't have to live in a certain place. You're not having to provide for a family yet.

• 1:54:04Speaker 01

  Like what risks, you know, calculated risks can you take for a major, major payoff? You know, what can you do to set yourself up for success? Like this is the time to, you know, start a business, be bold. Don't just be like the cog in the machine. If you want something more like that's the time to do it and then prove to this woman or this partner, um, if it's, you know, if you're a girl, that, um, that you have those abilities, I guess, and that ambition.

• 1:54:29Chris Williamson?

  That's what a lot of women, I think, are signaling off is a man's capacity for growth.

• 1:54:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:35Chris Williamson?

  If that wasn't the case, why would the starving artist guitarist that sleeps on his friend's couch be attractive?

• 1:54:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:42Chris Williamson?

  Well, the reason that he's attractive is that he's kind of like a penny stock, but I see his talent. And I see his artistic ability. And, you know, the ruthless thing, I think, for professionally successful women is that that same talent is not valued by guys.

• 1:54:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:57Chris Williamson?

  You know, but she might become a really successful businesswoman in future. It's like, ah, you know, the 21 year old barista from Starbucks that's a bit more agreeable and emotionally stable wins every time. So I think, yeah, educating guys and girls on what the other side is looking for.

• 1:55:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:55:15Chris Williamson?

  Um, I've been talking a lot about women cultivating receptiveness. So.

• 1:55:20Speaker 01

  That's so good. Yep.

• 1:55:21Chris Williamson?

  So, uh, you know, in sort of the aristocracy era in Britain, ladies would drop a handkerchief in front of a man that they sort of wanted to come. It's like, look, I know that you might have approach anxiety and are kind of stupid. Uh, like here's the least subtle cue that I can give.

• 1:55:38Speaker 01

  Again, going back to, we don't know how to do it, men and women. Like I remember my mom called up one of my friends who was just having a hell of a time dating. And this is one of the reasons, this is one of the stories that I tell where men are like, you know, women don't want us, there's no good women. I'm like, they're my friends, they're out there. They also don't know what they're doing.

• 1:55:56Chris Williamson?

  Have you considered doing a matchmaking service?

• 1:55:58Speaker 01

  I would love to. I don't know how to do it, but we're thinking about it.

• 1:56:00Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:56:00Speaker 01

  Putting something together.

• 1:56:01Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:56:02Speaker 01

  Um, I actually really started thinking about that when Jordan came to Bridgestone here. And I had all of these young people coming up to me because all of the Daily Wire folks went. And so we were walking through Bridgestone and so all of these young people, I was like, there, there are thousands of you here, all of you young men in your Jordan Peterson suits. And all of these girls here, I know that you're single. I was like, how can I get you to meet? I was like, oh, my gosh, you're here in this one opportunity. Please go find each other.

• 1:56:25Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:56:26Speaker 01

  Um, oh, gosh, where was I going with that?

• 1:56:29Chris Williamson?

  Your friend, your friend that was having a nightmare.

• 1:56:31Speaker 01

  Um, my mom called her and said, you need to, like, do you know how to flirt? Do you know how to, because she was like, no, but like, I go on these dates and they don't kiss me and I, or like, they don't move forward and he doesn't text me after, like, what am I doing? Again, she's super cute. She's really smart, comes from a great family, great values, you know, very agreeable, but we learn.

• 1:56:49Chris Williamson?

  Give him a number.

• 1:56:49Speaker 01

  Dates, yeah. On dates, she would just like sit at the opposite, like, end of the table, don't touch, nothing. And she was like, well, I don't want to be promiscuous. My mom was like, it is not promiscuous to brush his shoulder, to like, oh, scoot over a little closer. Don't sit on the opposite end of the table. If he's trying to show you on your phone, go over to the other side of the table and sit next to him. Like, why? She was like, oh, I'm so scared. I didn't know that that's what I had to do.

• 1:57:09Chris Williamson?

  Chicks need to learn keno escalation. They should have done some pick apart history.

• 1:57:11Speaker 01

  Yes. Um, so, yeah, again, it's on both sides. There's a lot to learn. The hankering of one is great. And also what you said about, you know, the agreeable barista at Starbucks, if you're, if she makes eye contact, if she's sweet, if she flirts, if she shows a genuine interest in you, like, that's what men are going to be interested in.

• 1:57:29Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:57:30Speaker 01

  Not the girl boss who's so focused on like, oh, I've, you know, made this much money and I've done this. And I'm, you know, I'm getting my bag. I was gonna be like, ooh, that's.

• 1:57:37Chris Williamson?

  Scary, intimidating.

• 1:57:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:57:39Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. I mean, you know, in a post Me Too world as well, I think it's important for girls to realize that.

• 1:57:45Chris Williamson?

  If no meant no previously,

• 1:57:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:47Chris Williamson?

  Anything that isn't a fuck yeah is a run away from me as fast as possible.

• 1:57:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:51Chris Williamson?

  So, you know, there's still a like carryover, latent carryover from why men love bitches, treat him like you don't like him. That world of playing hard to get.

• 1:58:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:04Chris Williamson?

  But playing hard to get now from a girl to a guy, for the guy is just perceived as. Yeah, exactly. Like this is a headline waiting to happen.

• 1:58:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:12Chris Williamson?

  So I think everyone just re-centering their expectations.

• 1:58:18Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:58:18Chris Williamson?

  Is probably a really good place to start.

• 1:58:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree.

• 1:58:21Chris Williamson?

  I've heard you say that you were socially awkward as a kid.

• 1:58:24Speaker 01

  Oh, socially awkward.

• 1:58:26Chris Williamson?

  Is there an advantage to being a little weird when you're younger?

• 1:58:30Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I, that's kind of one of my rebuttals to people saying, you know, oh, don't homeschool your kids because they're going to turn out weird. They're not going to be normal. Look at the normal kids these days. Do you really want your kids to turn out like that? To be like gender confused, hooking up with people on drugs, mentally ill, illiterate? No, I would much rather be a little bit of an oddball. I was not like, I was never socially weird in that I, I shouldn't say never.

• 1:59:01Speaker 01

  After my brother died, really struggled with being social, working through all of that, which is very, very difficult. Performing really got me out of my shell. Again, like I came alive being on stage. After that, I became the weird homeschooled musical theater horse girl. I had literally every stereotype stacked against me, humanly possible. I actually asked my husband about that and I said, if you had told your private school lacrosse playing self at 15 years old that you're going to end up marrying, again, the homeschooled theater kid horse girl, what would he have said? He was like, you, I mean, I would have been horrified.

• 1:59:38Speaker 01

  So I was weird in that regard. I always marched to the beat of my own drum. I was, once I got, you know, through all of my social, I don't want to call it anxiety, but just my trepidation.

• 1:59:49Chris Williamson?

  Awkwardness.

• 1:59:50Speaker 01

  Yes, after my brother died, and that was more so environmental rather than, you know, me not being social and being shy.

• 1:59:59Speaker 01

  Once I made it through that, my social awkwardness was just that I was, you know, unique. I could, you know, I can talk to a tree. I've never met a stranger, even from, you know, a young age, starting at like eight years old. And that was one of the benefits of, one of the benefits of being in Hollywood and working from a young age. I don't think it needs to be in Hollywood, but making sure that young people are working and have some kind of responsibility. Um, so that they interact with adults, they interact with people that are older than them. I think one of the biggest drawbacks of the traditional school system is that students will interact with their teachers. They'll have a one-off, you know, adult in the room, but the majority of people that they interact with on a daily basis are all their peers.

• 2:00:37Chris Williamson?

  Kids learn from kids.

• 2:00:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it is not only just in their same age bracket, but it is from the same school system, the same county, the same neighborhood. Or if you're at a private school, it's still the same town, same background, the same crop of more affluent kids that are going to this private school. With homeschooling, I had the complete opposite experience. You know, I would go and I would, you know, take ballet classes and I would meet, you know, girls and from every different part of Tennessee. And then I was in LA and I was, you know, you know, had progressed more. So I was dancing with people that were five, six years older than me and had to interact with them. I had to hold my own. When I was working as an actor, you know, you are working with adult directors, writers, producers, people who are playing your parents. They aren't really looking at you as a kid because you are an employee.

• 2:01:20Chris Williamson?

  Step up.

• 2:01:20Speaker 01

  You're being hired to do, yes. It's like, no, we're not playing your games. It's like, you're here to work, know your lines. That responsibility is huge. Um, you know, also when I was homeschooling, like I was in gymnastics. So then I was with a different set of people. I did my tennis, not pickleball. And was at my tennis camp with a bunch of other students. I, you know, my parents went to two different churches, going back to their incompatibility. But I would, you know, have two different groups of people at churches. My mom was very, very, very engaged in philanthropy and working with nonprofits. And so I would go with her and I would, you know, volunteer with her, contribute, be around people from vastly different backgrounds. I mean, like every Christmas, we would adopt a different homeless shelter in Chattanooga. And so not only was I interacting with, oh, the other

• 2:02:05Speaker 01

  kids whose parents are able to afford gymnastics or dance, but it was like, no, I'm around, you know, the children of the women at the Matter Women Shelter and being able to hold a conversation and empathize. So I was, I was weird. But I was very, very social and more socially advanced than my peers.

• 2:02:22Chris Williamson?

  What would be your advice to someone who's suffering with a bit of social anxiety, or maybe a parent of a child who's got social anxiety and wants to become better socially? As patient zero for, I couldn't communicate particularly well for a little while.

• 2:02:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:36Chris Williamson?

  If stepping out and doing pantomime isn't the solution.

• 2:02:40Speaker 01

  If you don't want to go do an improv class.

• 2:02:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:44Speaker 01

  I feel like this isn't a good answer, and so let me know what you think. But you just have to start. It's kind of like, again, going back to the dating, going back to working out. You do 10 pushups a day. It's like, again, if you are at Starbucks, can you say an extra two words to the barista? Perfect example you gave. Doesn't have to be for the, it doesn't need to be a means to an end for dating. It can just be to get yourself, you know, comfortable. Jordan talks about this all the time of exposure therapy. Do exposure therapy for yourself. That actually became a huge trend on TikTok, funnily enough, of people saying, I have a problem with rejection. And so they would do, a few different creators did this. And so they would put themselves into a situation where they were going to get rejected every single day. Going into Walmart, hey, could I go into the back room and just look around?

• 2:03:29Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:03:30Chris Williamson?

  There's a, if you Google 100 days of rejection.

• 2:03:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:03:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. 100, 100 days of rejection is 10 years old now, but it's, ask for a free coffee. Ask a person on the street if they'll give you a hundred bucks.

• 2:03:40Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:03:41Chris Williamson?

  They're just randomly ever escalating things. But yeah, I mean, overcoming rejection, overcoming that fear, I think by purposefully putting yourself into it. And it's the same as the low stakes conversation.

• 2:03:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:53Chris Williamson?

  That we were talking about earlier on, that when you don't care about the outcome, it makes going into it, the, the stakes are way lower. There's no pressure because you didn't expect this to go well. And then they're not going to give you a free coffee, but maybe they'll give you a discount, or maybe they won't laugh at you, or maybe you won't die, they won't call the police.

• 2:04:07Speaker 01

  That's the biggest thing. That's the biggest thing is like you have survived that. You had that interaction, you were okay, nothing in your life fell apart. You can, you know, move forward. And it's, it's also a habit. Like I am, I'm a better, more confident person when I'm doing the show every single day. When I am sitting in front of a camera, having to articulate myself, having to interact with people. If I am in a rut, like I don't think I could ever like take a full month off and never, you know, do the show. Like I always need to be doing something, writing, working, you know. Engaging my brain in some capacity because you just turn inwards and even like the most social of us, I'm very extroverted. I literally talk for a living, but if I take away the

• 2:04:50Speaker 01

  structure of having to show up every day and do this and put myself out there. Like if I come back, if I've taken, when we were shooting Pendragon in Budapest, there were a couple of weeks when I did not do the show because I was, um, I was on Pendragon. We were, you know, flying back and forth between Hungary and Italy and you know, you will not be able to film for this amount of days. And I came back and I was like, oh, I don't, feels clunky. How do I say this? Cause I was so, even though I was communicating and I was working, I was saying somebody else's lines.

• 2:05:16Chris Williamson?

  Different rhythm.

• 2:05:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:17Chris Williamson?

  What does a, what does a typical day look like for you?

• 2:05:21Speaker 01

  So I wake up around 5:45 and um, I have one of those like hatch alarm, like sunset alarm clocks, which I love. So it eases me into the morning. Um, get up. On weekdays, I don't often eat breakfast, which is a problem and I should work on that. And it's usually like a quick grab and go. Once I get to the office to keep us stocked up, which is great. Um, but I get in the car. I have a long commute now. I try to beat traffic. I also like the solace of coming into the office when nobody else is there and just being able to fully focus on the show.

• 2:05:56Chris Williamson?

  What time do you get in?

• 2:05:58Speaker 01

  Usually end up getting there at anywhere between 7:20 and 7:45. And then I don't film the show until 9:30. And it used to be that Matt Walsh would get there before I do. Now I think he has an office at home, um, that he can like go into, but it was kind of his private zone. You know, he has six kids and he was like, I need to be able to get up in the morning and just fully, both of us write the bulk of our show in the morning before, um, we go. I think Ben does it the night before. Michael, I think does it the night before, but Matt and I, I think perform best when it's

• 2:06:28Chris Williamson?

  Fresh.

• 2:06:29Speaker 01

  Yes. Um, and even if I've written a book of it the night before, like I'll often do the outline. I have the story in place. I would say 95% of the time. I know what I'm going to be talking about, but I come in and it's like the finishing touches. Is there anything new?

• 2:06:41Chris Williamson?

  What does that look like? Is this a Google Doc?

• 2:06:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:43Chris Williamson?

  Is this, and it's outlines, it's bullet points, it's notes and links?

• 2:06:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I start with bullet points and links. Um, go through all the stories. I'll often pull comments first, cause I don't want to be in the habit of

• 2:06:57Speaker 01

  Picking and choosing the comments to shape the story. And sometimes I will do that. And it's like, I want to prove a point like, okay, this is happening. Here's an example of somebody saying this. But for the most part, I want the actual comment section to drive the narrative. And then off of that, I'll like bounce off. Here's this, let's pull this in. Start with the story, go find the comments, put it in a Google Doc. Links, comments, here's the extra context that I'm going to bring in. And then I usually go through. And at the beginning, it's like, here's my thesis statement and my conclusion. That's what I start with. It's like, I was an English major in college. It's like writing an essay, but as a script. And so I know what I want to get across. And then I take the content that I've pulled into the Google Doc and I'm kind of like work it. So like, does this make sense going here?

• 2:07:42Speaker 01

  Or should I hit this point first? And then it makes, you know, it's stronger to bring this in later. It's all story structuring. Again, like an essay is, does, you know, this paragraph come first? It's the, you know, what we all learn in high school of like, you have the hamburger with your two buns and you've got the meat in the middle.

• 2:07:58Speaker 01

  And then I fill it out and some episodes are more written out than others. If there are ones that there's a lot of technicalities, if I'm talking about a lot of data, if it's a more sensitive issue. I don't want to waste time in the studio going like, oh, you know, What is that thing? Yes. Hey, Reagan, can you go check this? Can you pull this data? Oh, I didn't like how I said this. I want to make sure like if it's, you know, sensitive, like I just did one about

• 2:08:23Speaker 01

  Instagram's latest scandal that Wall Street Journal did a report on where Instagram, I mean, it's just the worst meta is the worst for children to be on. A new report from Wall Street Journal just came out and said that not only are people under the age of 18 fed sexual content, they are fed more sexual content than adults on the platform. If you have a like under 18 account, if you say you're 13, 14 years old, you are fed a higher percentage of sexual content than adults. They know this, their internal reports say this. Wall Street Journal found it and then it was corroborated by, by internal employees. Met up time and time again is saying, you know, we're protecting kids, we're protecting kids. A year ago in 2023, I did an episode, literally almost a year to the day.

• 2:09:06Speaker 01

  Another Wall Street report, Wall Street Journal report came out again about Instagram, that their algorithm was helping connect a ring of pedophiles. And that they were pushing child porn through and that they were they were doing nothing about it. And so meta comes out constantly, you know, nobody under the age of 16 gets fed sexual content. This never happens. We have systems in place. They don't. Like they're being sued by the AG in New Mexico for this exact thing. They've gone, you know, before Congress to deal with this. So anyway, it's a very, very

• 2:09:33Chris Williamson?

  Got to get it right.

• 2:09:34Speaker 01

  Yes. And it's an intense subject matter, not just because I want to get it right, but also because I know that I have a younger audience. I know that I have parents to watch with their kids. The innocence of children is so vitally important to me. And I think that it is something that our society has just completely forgotten about and doesn't seem to care about.

• 2:09:53Chris Williamson?

  Do you swear? I've ever heard you swear.

• 2:09:54Speaker 01

  Oh, I do. Yeah.

• 2:09:55Chris Williamson?

  Do you?

• 2:09:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, my mother wishes I didn't, but I do.

• 2:10:01Chris Williamson?

  All right. So you've got that 9:30, 9:45 recorded the show.

• 2:10:05Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. So I put all that together. It depends on the episode, whether it's more written out than others. So again, like that one was, you know, I want to make sure I'm hitting every single thing. I want to make sure I'm saying this and I'm, I don't want to waste my words. I would rather speak less and make sure that it is very specific. So I'm not going to just improv it. At the beginning of comment section, when we first started the show, I had no script. I would just pull topics and it would, it was just me riffing. Took a long time. It was cool. And I think I'm glad that I started that way because it got me into a better habit of can I think on my feet? Can I speak on my feet? But now I want to make sure that it's very, I'm punching when I speak. Um, so I work on that for an hour. I put the finishing touches on there. Um, adapt the story if need be, if some new development has happened overnight, because a lot of things happen at night on

• 2:10:50Speaker 01

  the internet, because that's when people are awake, not sleeping, spending those extra two hours on the internet. Uh, and then I go into hair and makeup and do that for about an hour and then go into the show at 9:30. And then we film anywhere from 9:30 to 11. And then after that, it really depends on.

• 2:11:09Chris Williamson?

  And that's both segments?

• 2:11:10Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:11:11Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 2:11:11Speaker 01

  We have to do them back to back. And then we'll do reactions that go on YouTube Shorts. Um, I'll have, you know, a social team come in and they'll say, hey, you know, you have, you know, you keep being tagged in this video on TikTok. Do you want to stitch it and react to it? So they'll like put a phone in front of me and I'm like, oh, okay, this is crazy. And then I, you know, react to it. Um, I'll also take that time if I have social media things that I want to do independently. I usually do that right after the show. And then after that, it really depends on, you know, do you have meetings? You have to meet with your team about a new video that you're doing, a new off the clock video or a strategy meeting. Do you have to meet, you know, PR about this? Or do you need to go talk with Jeremy about Pendragon? Do I have a live stream for on Daily Wire? We do all access lives just to see if you're a member.

• 2:11:53Speaker 01

  Then you get to come to a live stream with us and, you know, unbridled access, all access. Um, so after that 11 o'clock hour, it's very up in the air. And so some days I'm done and I get to go home and, you know, work on the farm and work on the script for the next day. And some days I'm, you know, down in Nashville until 6:00 PM, working on whatever it is that they need me to do.

• 2:12:15Chris Williamson?

  How much time are you caught up doing admin, operation, stuff, emails, back and forth, Slack, any of that bullshit?

• 2:12:22Speaker 01

  It used to be a lot more not, not very much anymore. Uh, my admin stuff is more so high level things with my team of strategy. Let's pitch this, let's try this, could we get this person? It's usually me communicating to them what I want. And then they're like, all right, we'll go and execute it or talking with ad sales. But I really want this brand. Can we adapt this? Can we do this? Can we figure out a way to fit them in? Um, and so it's very creative, cool stuff.

• 2:12:47Chris Williamson?

  And what's an evening look like?

• 2:12:49Speaker 01

  Um, go home. I usually cook dinner for Alex and I, and we will work on projects that we have at the house. So we, you know, just bought this farm and so, you know, he's out every day building fences, mending things. Um, we should eat in more, but we.

• 2:13:09Speaker 01

  We love going out to eat and my producer actually lives very close to me and so we spend a lot of time with her and her husband, which I love. Um, so we have a, you know, a pretty vibrant social life. I try to get a workout in before I leave Nashville. Again, just so that everything, both of us do, Alex tries to get it done before I get home. So he kind of knows like, all right, this is a long day for you. Like, can I go work out at five instead of three or whatever? So we try to get all of that stuff done so that when we get home, it's just like, we actually have time together. Um, yeah, it really depends on the day.

• 2:13:43Chris Williamson?

  What time's bedtime if you're getting up at 5:45?

• 2:13:46Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh, I would love it to be like 8:30. By 8:30, you can't get me out of the house. It is rare if it's like, Brett, you want to go out and go, I mean, a couple of weeks ago, my friends were like, let's go line dancing and we got there at nine and it was like, oh, guys, this is really, this is a stretch, especially now, living farther away. It's like, it's now, I'm, you know, I've got an hour drive back home from this place, but usually around 8:30 or nine, Brett is moisturized with her tallow. She is in her pajamas. She is in bed, either reading, working on the show. Do not move her, do not touch her. She's not getting out to go to dinner anytime past 8:30. Um, and then usually like actually asleep by 10 or 11, but I am like in the confines of my home by 8:30 and don't, that's like a sacred time.

• 2:14:32Chris Williamson?

  I haven't heard you talk about faith all that much. What's, how big of a role does that play in your life?

• 2:14:39Speaker 01

  It grows by the day, which kind of surprises me, actually. That was not something that I expected. Um, my father is Episcopalian and so, you know, he loves high church.

• 2:14:52Chris Williamson?

  I don't know what that is. That sounds like the diet that people wear where they only eat fish.

• 2:14:56Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, Episcopalian, yes, very similar. The way that it is often described in, you know, colloquial terms is like Catholic light. It is, it has become sadly, and much to his sadness, of very, very progressive denomination. Like, if you're driving around Nashville and you see pride flags and trans flags, it's probably the Episcopians with their female priests. Um, so he is very, very Episcopalian. My mom has kind of wavered in her faith.

• 2:15:24Speaker 01

  No real denomination. Um, and we went to like a very hippie dippy church. I would go back and forth between very structured, high church. And then she went to a church called Unity and it was like, there were Christians there, there were um, Jewish people there, people who were Buddhists. I mean, you just went there and you basically prayed and um, they would read from the Bible. It was just, it was very, very super hippie. Um, and I saw, growing up, spending a significant portion of my childhood in Tennessee, I saw very stereotypical southern Christians, which I hate saying, but I saw people that made their faith more of an identity and a badge of honor than something they actually believed and were walking.

• 2:16:08Speaker 01

  I saw a lot of hypocrisy, especially in my extended family of people who I was told are the, you know, they are the best Christians. Like they, you know, really walk their faith. I was like, then why are you, how do you treat our family like this? And why, why do you act like this? And so I kind of left that behind when we, uh, when my mom and I moved to Los Angeles, which we went back and forth. I would spend half the year with her there, half the year with my dad at home. That kind of all fell apart. We never really went to church there. But one friend in Hollywood, growing up, you know, in this, my like child actor friend group. One, also from the South, was a Christian. He was the only one that didn't have his faith stomped out of him. Who stayed very consistent, who walked the walk every single day.

• 2:16:51Speaker 01

  And he started bringing me to church with him when I was about 16 years old. There was a lot going on with my, um, my family, my parents divorce was in full swing at that point. I have a brother that's schizophrenic. And he was homeless at the time and I was like taking care of him. At 16. Um, it was a lot of,

• 2:17:11Speaker 01

  a lot of stress. And I had started doing therapy at that time, which was helpful in some ways. But this friend of mine was like, you need something else. And so I'm going to take, whether you like it or not, we're going to go to church on Sunday mornings. And I would sit in some of these sermons and just like ball. Not understanding what was being told to me. I didn't understand the context of what they were talking, because I had never read the Bible. In full, like, you know, I'd been in Sunday school, but I never sat down. I had never done the work. And would just be like, I just. I'm missing something. And even then, I didn't like fully take the step. But that was kind of always in the back of my head. And then went to college, there was no religious anything, no faith at UCLA,

• 2:17:56Speaker 01

  at least in my world, and very little in Hollywood, obviously. And came to Nashville and was again, just, ugh, like, I'm back in the place that left such a bad taste in my mouth about faith and Christianity specifically. Um, but I dipped my toe back in the water and I've made it more of a, an integral part of my life. It is humbling in so many ways because it's such a journey. There's so much that I think that I have to learn and so many literal like leaps of faith that you have to take. Um, I think, you know, a lot of people talk about, you know, the husband is the head of the household.

• 2:18:37Speaker 01

  You look to him, I think it's been really wonderful that Alex was taking that we were on a similar journey of, you know, he was raised in a denomination that he wasn't really like, I don't know if I'm going to stick with this. And so when we started dating, he was on a similar, like, I'm going to find what I believe, where I land, I'm going to find good people. And so it was very easy to slip into that and go, you know, I can trust you, follow you, we're on this together. So that's kind of still where I am. I went through, I did some RCIA, which is the education that you go through to convert to Catholicism, because I was really, really interested in Catholicism. It seems very akin to the Episcopalian church that I would go to with my father. I love the structure, love the high church, without the wokeness, obviously,

• 2:19:20Speaker 01

  and the kind of compromising on their values and what the Bible says and what the church believes. Um, and I put that on pause when I went to Budapest and haven't fully started that up again.

• 2:19:33Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 2:19:34Speaker 01

  And I'm not really sure where I land, that I'm still really interested in Catholicism, but I don't think I'm at a point yet in my education where I can, you know, make that leap to say, I'm gonna, this is what I'm going to be. I'm, you know, I'm going to continue this, um, and be confirmed.

• 2:19:51Speaker 01

  And it's also kind of going back to what we were talking about, about having a public and a personal life. Faith is something that very, you know, people have a lot of opinions on. People are obviously very concerned with you coming to faith. There's a lot of, you know, it's wonderful and, you know, we're praying for you. You know, we want you to come over here. They care a lot, and I think it all comes from a good place. But it is so personal. And when you're on your own journey and you're taking it step by step and you're exploring all of these different things, you're kind of unlearning the stuff that you learned as a child and the things that you saw and the impressions that you had of faith. It's very personal and I also never want to jump on my platform and be like, I learned this today about Catholicism and I'm doing that. I don't, I know nothing.

• 2:20:35Speaker 01

  I am truly a student right now. And so that might make some people uncomfortable because it's like, we want to know, we want, you know, it's like, you'll know when you know, and I'll know when I know.

• 2:20:46Chris Williamson?

  There's a big Christian revival happening at the moment.

• 2:20:48Speaker 01

  Yes, for sure.

• 2:20:49Chris Williamson?

  Which I think you'll have probably been tracking as well. So many people, I mean, Russell Brand recently got baptized.

• 2:20:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20:54Chris Williamson?

  Uh, Jordan is being much more open about his faith. Constantine Kissin's talking about it a lot. Tucker Carlson went full creationist mode.

• 2:21:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:01Chris Williamson?

  You know, there's varying degrees of, of belief. And, uh, yeah, I, I wonder whether, what's that, um, you'll know this, that Latin mass thing that loads of young people are going to.

• 2:21:11Speaker 01

  Yes, yep.

• 2:21:12Chris Williamson?

  Uh, whether the entire thing, unless you speak Latin.

• 2:21:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:15Chris Williamson?

  You're not going to be able to understand any of it. So it's evident that there is this sort of odd horseshoeing back around, you know, atheism.

• 2:21:21Speaker 01

  I credit all of that to Michael Knowles. I mean, every day, I mean, the reason why I wanted to explore Catholicism was because I loved Michael so much. It was like, you make this sound so incredible. He is just amazing. Um, and he goes to Latin Mass every Sunday. That's where you'll find him. Um, but yeah, no, there is a, I mean, there literally is a revival. There were revivals at, um, Southern schools in 2023 that just kept popping up of, you know, people traveling from all over the country because there was just something going on in these rooms and people were, you know, singing and worshiping for like five days on end. You know, just being like called to this, like, I'm not even a Christian and I, you know, I need to, I need to be here. I'm going to drive to Alabama to be at this revival.

• 2:22:00Chris Williamson?

  Um, is this happening on TikTok? Is this a Gen Z thing? How much is this broken through?

• 2:22:05Speaker 01

  It's in Christian sects it has broken through. It isn't like a TikTok like trend to have a revival. It was, you know, Events happening at college campuses and workshops that were happening and they just never stopped and they just grew and grew and grew beyond the school, beyond the student body, people traveling. So I think it is not just the celebrities searching, it's not just these public figures. It's also, I think that, I think that kind of goes back to the cynicism that we were talking about with Gen Z of, you know, they've put their faith in politicians, they've put their faith in celebrities, they've put their faith in the environment and climate and they have started to worship this planet and, you

• 2:22:49Speaker 01

  know, rather than a god, kind of turned that into a god. And that hasn't panned out and that hasn't been fulfilling, obviously. And it only leads to more doom and gloom. And I think they look at the world around them and they go, what am I living for? Like, what is, what's the purpose? What am I being guided by? What principles do I have?

• 2:23:06Chris Williamson?

  Especially when family is being derogated, you don't need to have children, just-

• 2:23:09Speaker 01

  You're just floating.

• 2:23:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Work like your father and have sex like your brother, you'll be fine.

• 2:23:14Speaker 01

  And you, um, and they're being, you know, bopped around to different current things. Like, that's all that, you know, I'm, I'm living for this social issue. I'm living for this now because this is now trendy. There's nothing tethering so many young people. And so I'm, I would guess that that's a big, I mean, that was for me as well. And I'm not, you know, being bounced around to the current thing. But I think having a pretty tumultuous childhood, being at a pretty tumultuous industry where every day I'm, you know, have to keep up with things, stay on top of it. I see a lot of really disturbing, terrible things about the internet. Some things I choose to cover, some things I don't, about like horrific child predators, the way that our, you know, big tech organizations are

• 2:23:57Speaker 01

  promoting this, the insane stuff that's happening on the left. I'm in that on a day-to-day basis. And being able to have something else that's, you know, guiding you and moving you forward, something that is bigger than yourself. I mean, it's, it's so important.

• 2:24:09Chris Williamson?

  Family and faith is a degree of stability then.

• 2:24:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:12Chris Williamson?

  There's a study that I wanted to teach you about, which is kind of related to this. So this is probably one of the coolest studies that I've learned about this year. So it's called the ties that blind, misperceptions of the opponent fringe and the miscalibration of political contempt. So one of the reasons that there is a lot of political polarization is that most sides dislike their opponents for beliefs that they don't hold.

• 2:24:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:35Chris Williamson?

  And this obviously fuels an awful lot because it sounds more extreme.

• 2:24:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:40Chris Williamson?

  And there's an interesting stat that out party hate has emerged as a stronger force than in party love. So around about 2012, it was Obama 2012, people said that they disliked their opponents more than they liked their own side. So much of politics is kind of a, it's a protest vote.

• 2:24:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:24:58Chris Williamson?

  Against something that they aren't. And it's six stages that they found of how people progress through this. So the first one is that both sides exaggerate the other side's extreme views.

• 2:25:10Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 2:25:11Chris Williamson?

  So people on the left assume that all people on the right are racists that want police officers that shoot black people to have fewer consequences. And all people on the right assume that people on the left want everybody to get an abortion and for everyone to be trans.

• 2:25:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:25Chris Williamson?

  And to have a weak military. And when you actually poll both sides, that's not the case. That most people hold very moderate views and most people on both sides would agree with the other side. So most people on the left want to have a strong military and most people on the right are fine with gay guys getting married. This is what's called false polarization. So it's polarization that is assumed but inaccurate.

• 2:25:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:50Chris Williamson?

  So you have this first stage, which is extreme views that are inaccurate. Second point is that this leads to disliking of the other side. Makes sense. If you believe that this person has a false interpretation, you judge them as this crazy extremist. Not true, inaccurate, right? So you have extremism that's inaccurate, leading to disliking. And then disliking leads to avoidance.

• 2:26:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:13Chris Williamson?

  And the avoidance bit's really interesting because this, never interacting with someone who holds different views to you, because you assume they're going to be really extreme, they're not, causes you to never actually have your inaccurate assumptions correction corrected, right?

• 2:26:26Speaker 01

  And it just snowballs.

• 2:26:27Chris Williamson?

  Correct. Yeah. So you're less likely to. Share a taxi with them, shake hands with them, have your son or daughter marry them. I think two thirds of left-leaning parents would fear their son or daughter marrying a Republican. Like, so you just have this huge divergence and obviously being unwilling to have a conversation with a political rival means that your inaccuracies are never going to be corrected. And then what this also causes is both sides being reluctant to criticize their own side's extreme views.

• 2:26:57Speaker 01

  That's so, yeah.

• 2:26:58Chris Williamson?

  So if you misperceive how common your own side's extreme views are, no, not that many people think that children should take hormone blockers at eight years old. Or no, not that many people believe that you should ban abortions for all reasons across the entire United States or whatever it might be. It's like, no, they are there and the assumption that they're not. Another part is there's a an incentive to not appear disloyal.

• 2:27:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:27:23Chris Williamson?

  And I guess their hatred and fear of the other side galvanizes them to maybe kind of turn a little bit of a blind eye to what's going on. So that's the fourth stage. Fifth stage is that, well, one question would be, how is this fueled? And partisan media does fuel this quite a lot because it doesn't show a balanced perspective by design. You know, 50 years ago, if there's two news stations, you need to just deliver to everybody. But now when you can pick and choose your own custom-designed news station because you're competing with 200 others, including independent creators, you can find the exact story or the exact niche that you can speak to. Yeah, precisely.

• 2:28:03Speaker 01

  It's like what you were saying about, you know, with big mainstream media now, their fodder is the other side. They're not creating news, creating culture. They are, you know, and not even talking about their own sides. It is, you know, what is this insane person doing? That literally is the fodder for media.

• 2:28:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. And then final one, political polarization leads to greater acceptance of unethical tactics. So if you suspect that the other side is doing something which is unspeakable, then you're like, ah, yeah, but you know, look at what they did. Turn a blind eye to the protest or the riot or the whatever it is that someone does. And yeah, I, I just think this like vicious cycle of increasingly anti-democratic.

• 2:28:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:28:49Chris Williamson?

  Uncaring behavior gets explained an awful lot. And the beautiful thing that I like about this particular study is that it all comes from one genesis, which is a misunderstanding of the other side's extreme beliefs. If you can correct that, everything downstream from that gets fixed. Now, that's not easy. It's not a small thing to do, but I do think that if you have a more delicate or nuanced take about things, that trying to be a reasonable voice, it actually, to me, that sort of emboldened me that a lot of the time I'll, I'll get criticized for being like so bigoted from the left that I'm a misogynist and so cooked from the right.

• 2:29:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:28Chris Williamson?

  That I'm a soy boy.

• 2:29:29Speaker 01

  You can't win.

• 2:29:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. But threading the needle like that, to me, I think that shows that if you can continue to show the best of both sides and why there's degrees of agreement, that, well, that's actually doing a lot of good. So yeah, that was the, the ties, the blind was one of the best studies I've found recently.

• 2:29:45Speaker 01

  I think that that's something that I think about a lot and kind of going back to, you know, when you asked, why do you think that the show was successful? And I talked about humor of being able to just point out to normal people that are sitting at home going, man, both of you people, like both sides are just really insane. Like you are, there's a lot of chaos happening and being able to find humor and common sense through it. That's kind of my touchstone is always finding that versus just always picking a side.

• 2:30:14Chris Williamson?

  Have you found since moving to Daily Wire, obviously there's degrees of purity within the organization? Have you felt the temptation or, you know, the, the need to socially adhere to guys that are further right than you? Obviously you've got these people that are so, you respect them, they're ambassadors, they've got all of this success and they're kind of your boss or at least your colleague. Is that something you've been conscious of where trying to hold on to you, to anchor you as opposed to getting pulled further right?

• 2:30:44Speaker 01

  I think I did at first, just because I was so nervous and I didn't want to screw up the.

• 2:30:49Chris Williamson?

  Starry eyed?

• 2:30:50Speaker 01

  Yes. And, you know, they're so incredible, all this stuff, and they are, and I, you know, one of the great things about, you know, the people that I work with is, you know, I disagree with Matt on some things, I disagree with Michael on some things, I disagree with Jeremy and Ben, you know? But we all have common values that we are tethered to, and I mathfully respect the work that they all do. And I know that they feel the same with me. So we have that baseline. But definitely, when I started, I was like, ah, you know, I need to thread the needle. Not that I was saying things that I didn't believe, but I was like, no, I'm going to be a little more political. And I want to, you know, hit on these things. And I'm going to talk about Biden saying this and, you know, this and lean in more, I guess. And as time has gone on, and I've become far more comfortable and confident

• 2:31:34Speaker 01

  in my voice, and also, learning firsthand what you just talked about in that study of, oh, you know, maybe some of these, not that these takes, but the way that I'm speaking about this issue, maybe that's not the most productive or healthy way.

• 2:31:48Chris Williamson?

  Contributing to the problem a little bit, yeah.

• 2:31:50Speaker 01

  And is there a way that I can thread the needle, not dilute my values or what I want to say, but articulate it in a way and bring in both sides so that I'm not alienating people? So that I am, because my goal is, number one, to make people, you know, who share my values, who were me five years ago, not feel insane or alone. Like, you know, looking around the world going, nobody at my school thinks the way that I do, I feel crazy. So no, you're not. There are other people, you know, I have four million subscribers. We're all here. We agree. And then also, reaching to the other side and saying, you know, we're also not crazy. Like, there are things we'll be able to agree upon.

• 2:32:32Chris Williamson?

  Putting forward the best, most acceptable version of this, the most reasonable.

• 2:32:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:32:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I mean, so few people have been convinced of anything by being patronized or mocked.

• 2:32:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:43Chris Williamson?

  Right. There's this idea of the soft signal of effectiveness, which is basically, if you really care about convincing the other side of anything that you believe in, you'd actually take the opportunity to dial back the vitriol.

• 2:32:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:55Chris Williamson?

  And that's a price that you need to pay because you think, this is fucking insane, these people and blah, blah. Okay, if you actually care about changing minds and you understand an iota of how human psychology works, you're not going to try and make them feel stupid or insane. You're actually going to dial that down and say, look, let me bring you along for the ride. Here's a couple of ideas that I think are really, really important. And here's a gentle way to deliver it to you. And I'm aware that it's not as sexy as being a flame wielding, truth telling firebrand. But I think that it changes minds more effectively.

• 2:33:25Speaker 01

  It does. It's more palatable. And you know, I love Ben and I love facts, you know, don't care about your feelings. And that's true, but also a lot of people's feelings don't care about your facts. And if you can't reach them at that emotional level, especially with my generation who is, oh my gosh, so emotional, so emotional. If you can't meet them there and touch those emotions and give them a reason to give a crap about what you're talking about, you will not change Gen Z's mind. You will not.

• 2:33:54Chris Williamson?

  I put this in my newsletter today. Stories don't care about your statistics.

• 2:33:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33:58Chris Williamson?

  In a controlled experiment, researchers documented a pronounced story statistic gap in memory. The average impact of statistics on beliefs fades by 73% over the course of a day. The impact of a story fades by only 32%. So in short, people's beliefs are more durably impacted by stories and statistics, which has a huge implication for how voters' beliefs can be more easily swayed during upcoming elections.

• 2:34:20Speaker 01

  That's so good. I completely agree. And that's, again, going back to you were asking, yeah, how do you structure the show? How do you decide what you're going to hit? It's like, if I'm talking about these social issues, these TikTok trends, whatever. If you watch the show, there's a lot of the time when I'm, you know, I start with a celebrity TikTok, whatever, here's the social thing that's happening. Let's back this up with some facts, knowing that that's not going to be what people remember. But in the moment, my goal is to go, hey, it's not just this random person. It's not whatever. Here are the things to back it up. And then we go back into the story that is much more emotionally compelling, that made me interested in it in the first place, because I didn't get interested in this story or this, you know, current event that's happening because of the facts and because, I mean, yes, the facts, but because of the stats and the fact that, you know.

• 2:35:05Chris Williamson?

  There's an emotional connection.

• 2:35:06Speaker 01

  Yes. It's like, I was not interested in the story about Meta surveying sexual content to teens because they are, you know, the very minute stats of, you know, 2.7 times more likely, whatever. That was not the reason why I was invested. The headline of, you know, they are feeding this to children. They are not pulling back. There are solutions in place, ways that they could mitigate this, and they are choosing not to. And children are now at risk and 13-year-old girls are getting unsolicited dick pics. They are seeing OnlyFans models within three minutes of going on Instagram, just creating an account, within three to 20 minutes. That is what drew me in. And then when I get down in the article, I'm like, oh my gosh, these stats are literally insane. But as you just saw, I don't remember the actual stats of what it is.

• 2:35:49Chris Williamson?

  How do you remain upbeat, given that that's your disposition, but that's also the way that you presumably want to live as well? You don't want to be dour, but there's generalized cynicism amongst your generation. There's also an awful lot of very disempowering and scary stories you cover. What is your process for remaining positive, some and hopeful for the future that you wish more people knew?

• 2:36:18Speaker 01

  I believe that there is a future worth saving. Again, going back to what I said about with all of our problems, with all the cynicism, we still do live in objectively the best time in all of history, the most advanced, again, the most healthy, the richest.

• 2:36:35Speaker 01

  Just remembering that, I think, is a perspective shift. I think that there's a lot to live for. There's a lot in my personal life that I'm very excited about. The news and current events in this show, such a small percentage of who I am and what I think about on a daily basis. If you calculated the amount that I think about having babies, oh, my God, it would completely outweigh, you know, the TikTok trends that I think about. And I also think that being such a priority to me and being something that I'm so interested in, I mean, having children is the most hopeful action that you can do. You're saying like, I believe that there's a world for you. I believe that you can change the world for a better place. I believe that I have the power to help mold and shape the next generation. That is an insanely hopeful thing. So the fact that that's such, you know, an important thing in my life is something that I'm so excited to do.

• 2:37:21Speaker 01

  I think that continues to drive me. I also know

• 2:37:29Speaker 01

  that a lot of our own problems and a lot of the problems that we face are our own doing.

• 2:37:38Speaker 01

  You know, the only thing that I can really control in the world when I'm doing these stories and when we're absorbing social media and current events, like you can't control what's happening in the world. You can control your response, though. And I would rather respond in a way that is productive, that is empowered, that is not doom and gloom. Goes back to the, you know, the dating stuff of, yeah, it's a frickin' mess. And people don't understand the nuances and online dating is absolutely like out of this world dumb. And it's addictive and these apps are designed to keep you on them and they want to keep you single. Like, that's all a mess. You can't control that. You can control how you operate within that world. You can control the way that you respond to these news articles. And always putting it back on yourself and your personal responsibility and the fact that you control all of that.

• 2:38:22Speaker 01

  You control what goes on in your home, in your private space. That makes life worth living to me. That makes life exciting. That makes me, you know, every day want to get up and produce a great show and want to change minds. Because I can control that. I can do that. I don't have to just sit and wallow, oh, my generation's so screwed. They're lazy. They're terrible. It's like, okay, let me, let me try to change that because obviously I made a change in my personal life. I went from literally not speaking and being so awkward. And I almost did not take the job at Daily Wire because I was so scared. I didn't even want to send in my tape. They're like, hey, could you react to a couple of stories just so we can see how you are on camera with some of these? I almost did not send it in. I had recorded it. And I was petrified. I was like, I'm not good enough. I'm not, I just don't want to, I'm, this is too big of a fight.

• 2:39:06Speaker 01

  I don't want to get out there. I'm not ready yet. Took my mom literally yelling at my face. Saying this one, this opportunity will never come again. Stop being a wimp. Like, get your act together.

• 2:39:17Chris Williamson?

  I want to meet your mom.

• 2:39:18Speaker 01

  She's insane. She's amazing.

• 2:39:19Chris Williamson?

  She sounds great.

• 2:39:20Speaker 01

  She's perfect. Um, and I mean, and a lot of it comes from the way that she raised us. I mean, radical personal responsibility. And I think people see responsibility and personal responsibility and, you know, accountability for your, yourself and your actions as very daunting. And uncomfortable, and it is, but it's also the most freeing thing that you'll do for yourself. If you realize that your life is your fault, there's something that Candace always says, "Your life is your fault." You will be so much happier, you will be so much more empowered because suddenly you have all of the options in front of you. And if you choose to not take that risk, to not go after that girl, not go after the job, not speak to that person, it is your fault. And so you can either be really pissed at yourself and have a lot of regrets, or you can say, "I at least, I swung for the fences

• 2:40:04Speaker 01

  and I did it." And that can be huge life things in terms of your career and marriage and all of that, but can also be just the way that you wake up in the morning and approach the world. I also think that humor is so underrated and because of the dilution of comedy, I think that we have lost the art of laughing at the absurd. And so I've loved bringing that back in a lot of ways and allowing people to have like a safe space where they can laugh at this stuff, no matter what side of the political aisle you're on. And that makes it more fun and enjoyable because I get excited to get up every day and crack jokes and hopefully make people laugh. So yeah, it's all of that. But I'm a very hopeful

• 2:40:44Speaker 01

  person. I'm a very positive person. I'm not like a, I wouldn't say I'm like a starry-eyed, rainbows and unicorns. I'm still a realist, but I know that there are certain things that are in all of our control. And at the end of the day, if you're coming home and you hate your life, there's probably things you can do to make it better. And I'd rather like always live in that space. I'm constantly going, what can I do to make this situation better? If I'm unhappy, what do I need to fix? What do I need to do? Again, so empowering.

• 2:41:14Chris Williamson?

  Hell yeah, Brett Cooper. I appreciate you. Let's bring this one into land. Where do people go? They want to check out all of the things you did. And what can they expect? What's coming up next?

• 2:41:22Speaker 01

  So you can find me at the comment section with Brett Cooper on YouTube. We also just launched on Spotify, which was crazy.

• 2:41:28Chris Williamson?

  Congratulations.

• 2:41:29Speaker 01

  Thank you. We now have video and audio on Spotify. So you can find us there. You can find me on literally every social media platform. I am in the underbelly of all of them. And we have a lot of exciting things coming up. I dipped my toe back into acting with Daily Wire, which has been a really enjoyable experience. It's been fun to work with people who actually share my values, who I trust, kind of like we were talking about, you know, not wanting to be a shell for somebody's message that you don't agree with. It's like, I feel like I'm, you know, doing something that I care about and telling a story that I love. And so Pendragon was an amazing experience. That'll be coming out. I don't know when, but hopefully soon. I know that they're working on it. It's an amazing story. Obviously, we announced Snow White. That's in the works. We have launched, you know, we've taken some big swings at the company. You know,

• 2:42:12Speaker 01

  we just launched Birchum. I'm in a lot of the Ben Key productions. They keep me busy and excited to see, just in a general sense, the brand of Brett Cooper, which is so weird to think of yourself as a brand, obviously, which I know, you know, it's so weird to like, look at yourself. But I think what people can expect is that there will be growth as I continue to grow. And that's what I'm excited about, to continue taking them along with me so that it's, you know, they know that I am, I'm not just the girl behind the camera. I'm like, I'm a malleable human being that's growing alongside all of you. And I'm excited to see how that impacts the show and my work and all of it.

• 2:42:47Chris Williamson?

  Damn right. I appreciate you. Thank you.

• 2:42:49Speaker 01

  I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me.