Pod Insights The Louis Theroux Podcast S8 EP3: Andrew Callaghan on the ‘cancelverse’, lizard people, and whether he’s being sued by Melania Trump About this episode In this episode, Louis speaks with gonzo journalist and fellow gangly documentarian Andrew Callaghan. The pair discuss Andrew’s life after cancellation, whether lizard people run the world, and his legal issues with Melania Trump.
Warnings: Strong language and adult themes.
Links/Attachments:
Film: This Place Rules (2022) - HBO
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23950956/
Video: Flat Earth Conference (2020) - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H110vCGvTmM
Video: Minneapolis Protest (2021) - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZPeD2miyF8
Film: Dear Kelly (2025)
https://www.dearkellyfilm.com/
Video: Hunter Biden Returns (2025) - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4WCtYDtgbM
Song: Because I Got High, Afroman (2000)
https://open.spotify.com/track/0rRboI6IRuGx56Dq3UdYY4
Article: A Full Guide the sexual misconduct allegations against YouTuber Andrew Callaghan (2022) - NPR
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/20/1149748975/a-full-guide-to-the-sexual-misconduct-allegations-against-youtuber-andrew-callag
Video: In Response (2022) - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQt3TgIo5e8
Video: Clavicular Interview (2026) - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_6mni6k0Zw
Video: Nick Shirley Interview (2026) - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IrMqA3fVO0
TV Show: Da Ali G Show - Ali G Interviews Donald Trump (2003) - HBO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lau6sqyRku0
Film: The Settlers (2023) - BBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002bm1y
Article: Trolls for Trump (2016) - The New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/trolls-for-trump
If you've been affected by the topics discussed in this episode, visit spotify.com/resources.
Credits:
Producer: Millie Chu
Assistant Producer: Maisie Williams
Production Manager: Francesca Bassett
Music: Miguel D’Oliveira
Audio Mixer: Tom Guest
Video Mixer: Scott Edwards
Executive Producer: Arron Fellows
A Mindhouse Studios Production for Spotify
www.mindhouse.co.uk
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript 16,952 words · 2 speakers
0:05 Speaker 00 Hello and welcome to the Louis Theroux podcast.
0:17 Speaker 00 In this episode, I'm joined by American gonzo journalist and YouTube sensation Andrew Callaghan. For those of you who aren't familiar with Andrew's work, he is the creator and host of independent journalism platform Channel 5, which boasts 3.5 million followers on YouTube, not to be confused with the UK's Channel 5. Alongside high-profile interviews with Hunter Biden, Clovicular and Shia LaBeouf, Andrew presents episodes roaming around the streets of America, attending NRA conferences and joining spring breakers on Miami Beach, and many other things. You may even have seen him without realising it.
0:59 Speaker 00 He used to wear a comedy big suit with a flappy tie with Channel 5 on it, and the hair was sometimes wild and unruly, often holding a tiny little microphone in the style of certain YouTube documentary makers.
1:16 Speaker 00 And at the beginning, a bit like my good self, it was a little more mickety-taking, satirical, enjoying the comedy of people with strange beliefs, and then he matured, and specifically there was a pivot point where he was covering the George Floyd uprising or riots, whatever you want to call them, in 2020. And we talk about how he got more serious and the journey that he's been on. He went on to direct This Place Rules for HBO, a documentary about the January 6th Capitol riot, and more recently Dear Kelly, a film that investigates the life of a conspiracy theorist and traces his background and beliefs.
1:58 Speaker 00 It's a conscious attempt to not just hang out with and enjoy the weirdness of a guy who's gone down the conspiracy rabbit hole, but also engage with it emotionally, understand what's motivating him and others to find meaning in conspiratorial content.
2:18 Speaker 00 In 2023, two women came forward with allegations against Andrew of sexual misconduct, leading to him taking time away from his work. After a nine-month hiatus, Andrew returned to filmmaking in late 2023. We discuss this in the chat. We discuss Infowars, the far-right news outlet and conspiracy propagandist platform created by Alex Jones. Not the UK's one-show Alex Jones, but the one in America talks like this, kind of. Not really. My interest in sitting down with Andrew was, well, it goes back a couple of years at least, and has to do with the overlap in the kinds of stories
2:58 Speaker 00 we cover. And Andrew's obviously a creature of a different generation of documentary makers and content creators, different platforms, YouTube, whereas I was a BBC and network TV in America creation. But we are interested in similar sorts of things. We recorded this conversation in May at Spotify HQ. Andrew had just flown in and lost his luggage, so he had to pop down to TK Maxx en route to the studio, hence the high-vis look for people watching on Spotify.
3:34 Speaker 00 A quick warning: this conversation contains some strong language and adult themes. All that, as well as much else besides, coming up.
4:00 Speaker 00 Here we are in the flesh.
4:02 Speaker 01 I know. Thanks so much for having me. I would say you're a big inspiration.
4:05 Speaker 00 Thank you. And it hasn't escaped my attention that in at least a couple of interviews that I've seen that you gave, you've shouted me out, you've given me props.
4:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's a specific listening style where you're just giving people enough to keep going. And it's not so much like you're being over-affirmational, because that freaks people out, too. Like, if you're like, "Yeah, hell yeah!" But you're not making them feel dumb. So you're giving them the patience and the space to keep going. That's something I learned from you. I call it the toddler nod. You go like this.
4:33 Speaker 01 It's the most slight head movement that you do that just keeps people talking to where you think they're done and then they just keep going and they give you like the best sound bite after a couple of different nod sessions.
4:43 Speaker 00 You're making it sound so technical and I don't even, this is gonna get like shop talk, but that's fine. Like, I do have a couple of things that I impart, you know, it's not rocket science, but one of them is, is just, and I don't know if you do this, is just that people perform themselves when you're interviewing them and that's fine. Like, you kind of want their performed self, whoever it may be. But what you also notice, you want to sort of get outside of that a bit and if you say to someone, "Okay, we're gonna get a few wide shots," and the mood changes and the person you're interviewing, they kind of relax and they sort of think they're off. They know they're being videoed, they know they're on mic, but the vibe changes and you might even say like, "Was that okay?"
5:27 Speaker 00 Or they might say that, or you go like, "How do you feel?" And you get a very different energy.
5:32 Speaker 01 So even if they know they're wearing a lav microphone and they can see a boom, if the cameraman retreats, gets a wide shot.
5:37 Speaker 00 Yeah, some part of them thinks the interview is over.
5:40 Speaker 01 In the traditional sense.
5:41 Speaker 00 In the traditional sense. It's not like they think they're off mic, it's just that they think the formal part of the interview is done and now they can maybe be a bit more themselves.
5:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, so it's not a hot mic moment, but it's like, sometimes the decompression ritual causes them to say like, how they really feel.
5:55 Speaker 00 Yeah, and it kind of allows you to, um, commentate on the interview or revisit whatever the thing that you perhaps feel was the most interesting part. You go like, "That thing you said about, um, you know, you did once meet the lizard people. Did you really mean that?" And you could, you could, you know, like, you can dip your voice down a bit.
6:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:18 Speaker 00 And it can be more, "Did you really mean that?"
6:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:20 Speaker 00 And they go like, "Yeah, yeah, and he was, he was nine feet tall and he was completely green." You know what I mean?
6:27 Speaker 01 That's a pretty good American accent.
6:28 Speaker 00 Yeah, um, anyway, listen, we're gonna talk about what you do.
6:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:33 Speaker 00 We're gonna geek out.
6:34 Speaker 01 Let's do it, man.
6:34 Speaker 00 On, uh, on journalism. We're also gonna talk a little bit about, um, some allegations that were made against you. I hope you're okay with that.
6:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, we can talk about it later.
6:43 Speaker 00 Um, let's talk about, for those who don't know your work, uh... How do you describe what you do?
6:50 Speaker 01 I would say it's just gonzo journalism, you know, maybe not in the literary Hunter S. Thompson sense, but it's independent journalism, interview-based content creation. The New York Times and The Atlantic and stuff, they won't use the word journalist to describe me. They would say RV YouTuber.
7:05 Speaker 00 Really?
7:06 Speaker 01 I like that one because even though I'm not that, it sounds great, like, you know, checking out new RV parks and amenities and libraries and dumping wasted spots.
7:14 Speaker 00 You used to travel around in an RV.
7:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, but journalist would be the word that I would use.
7:19 Speaker 00 So the New York Times, you think that's a style that that literally is it would be part of their style manuals, like, we can't actually call him a journalist?
7:26 Speaker 01 I think that the American press establishment is very hostile toward those who didn't come up inside of it. It's unfortunate because we actually have no problem with them. You know, I went to school for journalism, like, I graduated in 2019. I planned to work at like a traditional newsroom because I love like the grind. I love waking up and picking up the phone and getting out there and following the beat. But the industry was in freefall and collapse. And I think even between 2015, when I started college in 2019, I think the newspaper industry had gone from like $82 billion a year to like 12, like frozen yogurt makes more money than press did at that time. And so naturally, we have the option of either working at like a mainstream press outlet, if we're lucky, for 45K a year, or we can just move into RVs, travel around the country, work freelance, start creating content, do things a different way.
8:11 Speaker 01 So like, there's no beef. It's frustrating that even sometimes I feel like some of the fans, like I'll make a dope video and they'll be like, mainstream media could never, like, even on a Hunter Biden interview, the top comment's like, CNN's gonna shit their pants when they see this. I'm just like, there's no problems. The door was just closed by the time we wanted it to open.
8:31 Speaker 00 Well, you did say CNN is out to get me.
8:34 Speaker 01 When did I say that?
8:36 Speaker 00 Um, I don't know.
8:38 Speaker 01 I don't think I would have said that so directly.
8:40 Speaker 00 Maybe that was just like a thumbnail.
8:42 Speaker 01 Uh, that's definitely a thumbnail.
8:43 Speaker 00 Was it a Donald Lemon thing?
8:45 Speaker 01 Oh, that was a crazy experience, yeah. I mean, that was probably my most negative experience I've ever had with a media outlet before. That was during the HBO film promotion. They, it was weird because they had booked me this press tour.
8:57 Speaker 00 Because we should say like at a certain point. You got this movie deal.
9:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:01 Speaker 00 You worked with Tim Heidecker and Jonah Hill.
9:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
9:05 Speaker 00 Were they very involved or just sort of?
9:07 Speaker 01 No. I mean, with, you know, rounds of notes. They were involved in getting it sold, especially as soon as Jonah Hill came on. A24 bought it immediately. But yeah, like I had been given this weird media training by some people at HBO. Like I had to sign an NDA, but I'm just gonna break it. And they were just telling me like how to respond if they asked me about Trump or if they asked me about the upcoming revolution or misinformation. They're like teaching me how to pivot. All this weird stuff that I like, I thought didn't actually happen. It was like a media black box of like 30 suits on Zoom were telling me how to respond to questions. So I go on CNN and they told me like, hey, Don Lemon's gonna ask you about your life, the movie, all that stuff. So I get on there, Don Lemon, like this is live, immediately goes like, what can you tell us about Enrique Tarrio's mental state leading up to January 6? And I was like, for one-
9:52 Speaker 00 Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, right?
9:55 Speaker 01 Yeah. Who I was, I still had an active relationship with the Proud Boys because I was still covering the Proud Boys. Not to mention they were involved in ongoing criminal litigation. So like, he's basically asking me to like snitch on someone that I'm actively working with at the time. So I just responded, I was like, it's not so much about, you know, individual people involved in men's groups. It's about the mainstream media system, the 24 hour news cycle, the divisive nature of the media and how it divides people into like perfect consumer groups to make sure no change happens. And I mentioned like CNN is also complicit in that. I don't know, I was just like upset because I, you know, looking back, maybe I shouldn't have called out CNN on CNN. But I was just in the moment, I was like so burnt out from touring. And then pretty much as soon as that wrapped up, my handler at HBO had assigned me, was like panicking, she's like checking her phone, whatever. I'm like, what's going on? She's like, Time Warner C-suite is furious. I'm like, what's Time Warner C-suite?
10:40 Speaker 01 And she was like, oh, well, the same people who own HBO own CNN. And like, they're just mad as fuck, like you're going against protocol. You weren't supposed to do that. And so they didn't book me any more press appearances after that.
10:51 Speaker 00 For real?
10:52 Speaker 01 Yeah. So I'm not saying CNN is out to get me. I'm not like a red pilled, like anti-mainstream media, escape the matrix guy.
10:58 Speaker 00 The UK audience may not know Don Lemon was at that time a CNN anchor, right? What was he trying to get from you?
11:05 Speaker 01 I don't know. I think that liberal mainstream media has this weird thing where they wanna make me seem conservative. It's very strange. Like I went on, this also was never aired, but I went on NPR and it was again supposed to be a- Premiere for my movie in Boston on January 5th, 2023. And she asked me, she said, how do you
11:24 Speaker 00 The interview that's it went semi viral, right? Was this the one where
11:27 Speaker 01 It went semi viral because a fan filmed it. They refused to air it.
11:31 Speaker 00 Really?
11:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, and she asked me, how do you think the Sandy Hook families would feel about you platforming one of the most despicable people in history? Not knowing that the Sandy Hook lawyer, the one who represents the families, Mark Bankston, was like a huge fan of the film. The families loved that scene.
11:45 Speaker 00 Yeah, this was, this was the segment that you'd done with Alex Jones, right?
11:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, where we're like working out, like with our shirts off, like it was
11:53 Speaker 00 I was gonna talk to you about that one because it is, it is an amazing
11:55 Speaker 01 Thank you.
11:56 Speaker 00 And you see Alex Jones in, in all his modes, like you, he comes on, let's get this right. He comes on and he says, I did the Sandy Hook killing. I normally could do him better than that.
12:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:09 Speaker 00 I created cancer, hair loss, gingivitis and acne.
12:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:13 Speaker 00 So he's kind of leaning in to the media caricature of him. I created cancer, which would be one thing, but he just keeps going and going.
12:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:22 Speaker 00 Which leaves you in a weird position. But then he backs down, he goes like, I, I, of course I didn't create cancer. But he's kind of making a point, yeah, make me a bogeyman. I don't care.
12:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:32 Speaker 00 But then I think the bit when you were interviewed by NPR, she brings up the fact that there's a scene where you're working out with him.
12:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:38 Speaker 00 And he's, what is he drinking?
12:39 Speaker 01 Jameson, a half gallon of Jameson, which is a popular American whiskey. Or it might be Irish, oh my God.
12:45 Speaker 00 Yeah, I think it is Irish.
12:46 Speaker 01 Okay, people in the UK know what Jameson is. He was drinking
12:48 Speaker 00 He was drinking whiskey.
12:49 Speaker 01 And the point was to highlight the absurdity of Infowars. And even though these people were instrumental in ramping people up for January 6th, behind the scenes, this is how they're living. They're in the sort of like goofy, sort of semi alcoholic prankster state. And it was very deliberate and it was on purpose. And at that time
13:04 Speaker 00 And I could see like it was funny, it was surreal. I could see why some people might have an issue with it, like
13:10 Speaker 01 The problem was at that point, and I'm sure now they don't feel this way. Liberal mainstream media, and I mean anti leftist, you know, liberal establishment media. They thought that by limiting problematic viewpoints from being platformed, that would somehow subvert the rise of fascism and far right ideology in the US. They thought that if you could censor people and send them into different, on different platforms like Rumble and Gab, or if you could stop people like Alex Jones from having a platform, you know, in these major studio films and documentaries, that somehow their power would go away. And evidently, that didn't work. It actually made people, might have been a smaller focus group, but they became twice as militant on smaller platforms. And now they are back, Elon Musk bought X, and now they're back to their previous level
13:52 Speaker 01 of influence, if not more. So I think at the time, they thought that I was part of the problem for giving a platform to people. But at the same time, those same people thought that I was like a liberal agitator who was sent there to make them look bad. So I was put between a rock and a hard place, where conservative outlets and pundits thought that I was like a liberal tool of the establishment, and then liberals thought that I was like a sort of cozying up to the right. Even now, when Variety wrote about Dear Kelly, which is about a man broken down by economic factors who found the far right as a comforting place, they wrote like, "Andrew's piece of MAGA apologia seeks to humanize those who want the destruction of our democracy."
14:30 Speaker 00 Really?
14:30 Speaker 01 Yeah. So it's, I don't know why they keep doing it. I had an interview recently, I'm not gonna say the outlet, but they were again asking me if I hang out with Enrique Tarrio. They're still on this beat of like, "You say that you're a progressive, but I saw you hanging out with For Giato Blow in Miami," which is a MAGA rapper. And I'm like, "Yeah, man." Like, I'm a journalist. I hang out with people to get them comfortable enough to interview them sometimes. Or just to meet them, you know? Not that I'm like, just hanging out with them for that purpose, but, you know, you know how it is. In the field, sometimes you get lunch or coffee with someone who you fundamentally disagree with, and it's part of the, I guess, discovery process. And that's my legal term to describe it.
15:03 Speaker 00 Yeah. Uh, I think that regarding the NPR interview, it felt a little bit odd. And, um, and I could see you were offended. It was clear you were offended, right?
15:13 Speaker 01 Well, you know that it was supposed to be a premiere.
15:14 Speaker 00 No, I didn't know that.
15:16 Speaker 01 It was a premiere, and she wouldn't shake my hand backstage, because she was like, "I don't know whose hand you've shaken." So it was just...
15:22 Speaker 00 Before?
15:24 Speaker 01 So it was really just like, what is happening? And especially that coming after the CNN interview? I was like, okay, these people don't have my back anymore.
15:30 Speaker 00 You have, I've got, I've got five key episodes of All Gas No Breaks. You came, this was before Channel 5, right?
15:36 Speaker 01 Yes. It's, All Gas No Breaks is back.
15:40 Speaker 00 We bought it back. There was a, there was a corporate fallout. You lost the label.
15:44 Speaker 01 Yes, lost the label.
15:45 Speaker 00 And then you got it back.
15:47 Speaker 01 Yep.
15:48 Speaker 00 Jan 2020, pre-COVID, the Flat Earth Conference.
15:52 Speaker 01 Yes.
15:53 Speaker 00 Seven million views.
15:54 Speaker 01 Really? It's a lot.
15:55 Speaker 00 Yeah. It's very short. It's like, what, eight, nine minutes?
15:57 Speaker 01 That's one of my favorite videos.
15:58 Speaker 00 It's a classic. It's a great place to start.
16:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
16:02 Speaker 00 How would you describe it?
16:03 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's a, it's a Flat Earth Conference. It's people who believe the earth is flat. Uh, they, they.
16:07 Speaker 00 How did you find out about it?
16:08 Speaker 01 Uh, I was at the raid of Area 51, which was 90% content creators and 10% lost souls. One of the lost souls was like a divorced dad who was like, I'm going in there, man. He's like, I don't give a fuck what they do to me.
16:19 Speaker 00 What year was that?
16:19 Speaker 01 2019.
16:20 Speaker 00 Did anyone actually cross the, the?
16:23 Speaker 01 This fucking guy, sorry. This guy that I met, the divorced dad, he was like drinking these alien themed Bud Lights in his RV and he's like, I'm a deadbeat man. He's like, I'm worthless. If I'm gonna go down for something, it's gonna be getting the truth about the aliens. Yeah. So he gave me the info about the Flat Earth Conference.
16:38 Speaker 00 Well, how far into Area 51 did he get?
16:41 Speaker 01 When you get close to the perimeter fence, they have a weapon that makes your body tingle.
16:45 Speaker 00 Stop it.
16:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's what he told me. He said.
16:47 Speaker 00 It's not out of the question, is it? That could exist, couldn't it?
16:51 Speaker 01 He said that his body started tingling like he was like getting a fever and a flu at the same time. And that cutouts of army men were like coming out of the sand, like, you know, imagine a toy soldier, but real life. And they had fake gun sounds. So I was being shot at and as he's getting closer to the fence. Well, he is a Flat Earther, but the Flat Earth Conference was.
17:10 Speaker 00 Do you think there are UFOs at Area 51?
17:12 Speaker 01 No.
17:12 Speaker 00 No. So carry on.
17:14 Speaker 01 So I get there and the first question they asked me when I get into the courtyard is, are you guys globe tards? You know, which is a person who believes in a spherical earth. I said, no, man. I can't stand those guys.
17:26 Speaker 00 Did you?
17:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:29 Speaker 00 Why did you say that?
17:31 Speaker 01 Cause I had to get a press pass.
17:32 Speaker 00 Right, but if you'd said, I, I'm not sure.
17:35 Speaker 01 Oh, I would have never been allowed in.
17:37 Speaker 00 Really? They really hate the conventional scientific.
17:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, cause they think those are people who fall for NASA propaganda. And I flat earther say, you can't spell Satan without NASA, which is phonetically true.
17:49 Speaker 00 So go on.
17:50 Speaker 01 So everyone that I met there was a lost soul of some form. Looking back now at the Flat Earth Conference, I realized that it was kind of like, um,
17:58 Speaker 01 it sort of foreshadowed the kind of lost souls that would be dragged together during COVID with isolation and like the amount of misinformation that was distributed online. But everybody there had essentially lost their livelihood in some way. There was one cancelled tattooer there named Watson Atkinson, who had been like cancelled for being handsy with a client in Brooklyn or something. And, you know, he was living in his RV and he was a newly converted flat earther. One of the guys wearing a truth shirt or just the word truth on it. His car had truth on the side of it. He was, uh, disinvited from his family Thanksgiving because of his belief in different, you know, Onunaki style theories. There was comedian Owen Benjamin was headlining and he had just been fired from Hollywood and kicked off of SNL, I believe it was for anti Semitic tweets. So.
18:39 Speaker 00 Rings a bell.
18:40 Speaker 01 But everybody at the Flat Earth Conference was sort of dejected.
18:43 Speaker 00 Been through a crisis.
18:44 Speaker 01 Been through a personal crisis.
18:45 Speaker 00 A bit like Jan 6?
18:46 Speaker 01 Exactly like January 6. They were people who had been dejected in some way. And for whatever reason, they felt like the world was a play, a battle between good and evil and that they were on the good side of spiritual warfare. There's no, no accountability to be taken. They're just like, I, I got fucked over because I'm the good guy and the world's ran by bad guys and we're going to figure out who these bad guys are together. And they were looking for community because they had lost theirs and community that validates their version of events.
19:12 Speaker 00 A lot of them rap to quite a high standard.
19:14 Speaker 01 Everybody raps.
19:15 Speaker 00 What, what was that all about? I mean, even though it's like a nine minute segment, it's almost like a rap musical.
19:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, there was.
19:21 Speaker 00 There's two or three raps in it.
19:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:23 Speaker 00 Do you remember any of the rap?
19:24 Speaker 01 Of course. Earth is flat, Jack, Flat Earth in a flap, Jack. We bout to black flag, globus get your backpack. Asmus a exo distant flap upon my snapback, some shit like that.
19:35 Speaker 00 You used to rap?
19:36 Speaker 01 I still do.
19:36 Speaker 00 Do you?
19:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, I rap in Spanish. My Spanish name is Andres. I just recorded my first song recently, so I'm going to start my Spanish rap career as soon as I get back.
19:45 Speaker 00 Why not English?
19:46 Speaker 01 Well, because there's enough English rappers and I rapped in English in high school. But, you know, to me, it sounds crazy, but it was.
19:53 Speaker 00 Spit some of your old bars?
19:55 Speaker 01 I don't have feet marks this bit.
19:56 Speaker 00 Well, you must remember some from back in the day.
19:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:59 Speaker 00 Go on.
20:00 Speaker 01 Okay, okay, okay. I'll do this because we're on a Louis Theroux podcast. Well, shall I share the lyrics that got me kicked out of high school?
20:05 Speaker 00 Yeah.
20:06 Speaker 01 Okay. Backdooring these hoes on my white goon shit with a bagged up zip in my North Face vest.
20:13 Speaker 00 That's it?
20:14 Speaker 01 I've got. I've got more. I've got more. Let me think of a couple. Um, living lavish, I'm a savage, but I tend to hide it. When you're a Seattle wide client, you gotta keep it solid. I keep a goddess off the molly while I'm driving. Baskylus, anaconda, Hermione.
20:31 Speaker 00 It's very good. It's nice, but you're just saying them. You're not performing them.
20:35 Speaker 01 I've lost it, but I'll get it back. I'll get it back.
20:38 Speaker 00 Do you know what I mean? I would need a beat. I didn't feel like you were owning the lyrics.
20:42 Speaker 01 Well, I don't, I don't, you know, I don't have the same vibe anymore as I did when I was a high school graffiti writer and, and, and rapper. But the rapping was journalism, believe it or not. You know, I was rapping about the shit that I was doing, exploring the city, sneaking out at nighttime, talking to bums all night, drinking twisted teas, catching tags, climbing on bridges and stuff.
20:59 Speaker 00 It's good stuff. Uh, that was Flat Earth Conference. It's crazy. So strange.
21:07 Speaker 01 It was a great time.
21:07 Speaker 00 Does it get, do you think it would be an obstacle to like, like for a while you're getting good content. You're like, this is great.
21:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:15 Speaker 00 And let's get another one. And this is going to be amazing. And then you would be talking to them and thinking, actually, I don't think I could be friends with you because this would get in the way.
21:24 Speaker 01 I'm down to be friends with everybody and I don't think that it would get in the way, but there would reach a point where I would have to establish my opinion. You know, like if I was with a flat earther and the cameras are off, we're getting a beer or something, kicking it. Within 20 minutes, it'd be irresponsible for me to not be like, hey dude, I don't believe in the Flat Earth. I believe in the spherical.
21:44 Speaker 00 So you didn't, did you not level with them while you were filming?
21:46 Speaker 01 I would relate to questioning authority and questioning narratives, but I wouldn't be like, I'm a flat earther, man. Let's do an interview. Cause that would just be too duplicitous for me, especially nowadays with streaming culture. Everything's live. You can't really do what you used to do.
22:01 Speaker 00 There's one of the guys who's wearing a hat and you're going, "Flat gang."
22:03 Speaker 01 Flat gang, yeah.
22:04 Speaker 00 Flat gang.
22:05 Speaker 01 That's a Chief Keef reference because if you're familiar with the Chicago drill artist, Chief Keef, started in 2013 or 2011, actually, he would take these ecstasy pills called flats. Ecstasy is very popular in O Block and in South Chicago. People don't know that, but those guys take ecstasy all day. I think it could have to do with PTSD, but it's also a good for staying alert and being up. And it's not like cocaine where you have to use it every 30 minutes. You can take a flat, pressed ecstasy pill like a blue dolphin and be up for like eight hours, having a great time. Never taken one, but that's just my observation. So Chief Keef would say, "Flat gang." And he would say, "I don't pop X, I pop flats." So, "Flat gang" is a Chief Keef reference. But I used it and I added this thing to level with the Flat Earthers.
22:43 Speaker 00 It was funny.
22:43 Speaker 01 Thank you.
22:44 Speaker 00 That's seven million views. Minneapolis protest.
22:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
22:48 Speaker 00 That was a big moment.
22:50 Speaker 01 That was the moment.
22:51 Speaker 00 How was that the moment?
22:52 Speaker 01 It changed my entire brand from a comedy platform and a satirical interview show to a serious journalistic outlet, because I was providing a service that mainstream outlets weren't allowed to.
23:02 Speaker 00 Why couldn't the mainstream journalists?
23:05 Speaker 01 Well, there was two things. One, it was still COVID and they had protocols where they couldn't talk to people. They had to keep a large physical distance, like they had all this weird, like, testing protocols and stuff. And in the moment, it was happening then and now, like, Kmart is on fire. You know, we don't have time to get a COVID test and get insurance approval to take our gear out there. And I just think that they didn't-
23:29 Speaker 00 We should make clear, because it could be ambiguous. This was June 2020, it was at the height of the George Floyd-
23:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:35 Speaker 00 -uprising.
23:35 Speaker 01 I was in Minneapolis, in South Minneapolis, during the riots, three days after George Floyd was murdered. And, yeah, I also just think that they didn't want to, they didn't want the perspective of the protesters. You know, there was, there was the perspective that was critical of the protesters. And then there was centrist coverage that just acknowledged the fact that there was shit on fire. But nobody was asking people at the riots in Minnesota, "Why are you doing this? What experiences have you had in your life that makes you feel like it's worth it to burn down Lake Street where you presumably live?" And so that was an interesting time. And I felt like what I was doing wasn't particularly special. I was just with my friends who happened to be from Minnesota. Interviews, filmed for like a half an hour, went home, edited it. I never saw a reaction like that before. I mean, people were like, oh, my God.
24:17 Speaker 01 I was so nervous when I saw you covering this because I was like, is he gonna make fun of the protesters? Like he did at the Flat Earth Conference or at Talladega? And people were stoked on it.
24:25 Speaker 00 Because the protesters were presenting cogent narratives for what had brought them to the
24:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:30 Speaker 00 to the thing.
24:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, and the opening line is like, always gonna be in my head. I said, what are you doing out here? He pointed at the fire and he goes, everybody feel like that. Everybody feel like that. Is this the right thing to do? No, but this is how people are actually feeling and everything is inevitable. And that was just crazy. This is a guy with like can of gasoline in his hand, who just burned down Kmart or Autozone or something. And I just felt like, wow, like, even though it wasn't like the most complex set of words, it perfectly summed up.
25:03 Speaker 00 There's a kind of poetry in it. What do you think everything is inevitable means?
25:07 Speaker 01 That the boiling point would have been reached regardless. And the the George Floyd incident being captured on video the way it was, was just an inevitable point of how of what was happening already in some of these communities, whether it was on camera or off camera, they just needed a a jump off point to point to something so direct and horrific like that to be like, this is why we're upset. We're hitting the streets.
25:31 Speaker 00 And so how did that change things for you?
25:33 Speaker 01 Those words were like the beginning of my my new career. It just enabled me to be taken more seriously in the field, gave me interview access to different people and it just changed how people thought of all gas no brakes. And it also soured the relationship with the parent company, doing things media. They wanted me to mostly film party content and capture coverage of, you know, people yelling slogans like, show me your butthole, so they could put it on merchandise and sell it on their platforms. So it kind of just changed things for the better and the worse, depending on how you look at it.
26:01 Speaker 00 And you'd been, were you on a salary at that time?
26:03 Speaker 01 Yeah, forty five K a year.
26:06 Speaker 00 Just to be that guy for a second, a lot of the conservative or right wing commentators were like, hey, how come the mainstream media was sort of sympathetic to like protest and violence in the case of the George Floyd riots, but then they had a big problem with Jan six?
26:24 Speaker 01 Well, for one, they actually weren't sympathetic to the George Floyd riots. Biden and Harris were like condemning violence the whole time. That's a false narrative. Additionally, a lot of people were charged and convicted of crimes related to the George Floyd riots, like my friend Dylan from Minneapolis, who was just in the third precinct precinct when it was burning down. He had to spend three and a half years in prison in Leavenworth. You know, so like people did get convicted. There's still people in jail from the riots. I mean, there was probably more immunity than I guess would have been afforded in like 92 with the LA riots. I don't know. I can't think of a comparative tool, but.
26:58 Speaker 00 No, well, if you compared it with Jan six, you'd be Enrique Tarrio got like 30 years.
27:03 Speaker 01 I think, I mean, first of all, I just want to say the January six convictions were ridiculous. The fact that you're giving people that amount of time when they were encouraged to do what they did by the most powerful political party in the country, who essentially controls their loyal media outlets like Fox, and no one's being charged except for the individual soldiers on the front line, not all the people who made millions of dollars, you know, harvesting their anger, turning it into clicks for money, you know, it was unfair. I mean, Trump should have been charged for it. All those people, Sidney Powell should have been charged for it. General Flynn should have been charged, not, you know, Dave from Nebraska, who's just like, has no friends and has been like smoking like 40% weed and listening to these fringe
27:47 Speaker 01 podcasts every day for six months straight and his communities in collapse. All small businesses in his town have closed. He has no friends anymore. He can't go out, drink with his buddies. All third spaces that were already dwindling have gone away. And now he's like, what's my purpose in life? To defeat the forces of evil that are causing all these unrelated problems. They were treated horribly, man, and it's only made them double down.
28:07 Speaker 00 Right. A lot of them have been since pardoned.
28:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:11 Speaker 00 And I think they're looking for compensation now.
28:14 Speaker 01 Yeah. I mean, the prison system is horrible in the United States. It's awful. I mean, regardless of if you're a, you know, Q and on January sixer or a, you know, wrongfully convicted person in Louisiana. It's not rehabilitative. The recidivism rate is ridiculous. The conditions are horrific. You've seen so much of this.
28:29 Speaker 00 Sure.
28:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:30 Speaker 00 Uh, but I also want to ask you about, because we were gonna do this last week. And then it was like, oh, I can't leave now because I've got a lawsuit and I have to raise a million dollars.
28:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty much like, the higher I've grown in profile, the more I've become a target for financial exploitation. And especially because we're totally independent. We don't have like a, like a major newspaper, despite, you know, maybe a lack of success or funding. We'll have lawyers on retainer to defend their journalists. But if we make a documentary about a powerful person, then they could just jam us up in civil court. We have to file the anti-slap motion. We have to do all these like, free speech protection things, but they're very costly because you don't get a public defender in civil court like you do if you're charged with a crime in the US. So we got sued for wiretapping last week, which is violation of the Federal Wiretap Act. Never happened, but we platformed a guy who has like a vendetta against a private lender named Bill Joyner. Bill Joyner is the guy who sued us.
29:23 Speaker 00 Kelly J. Patriot. Okay, this was part of your 2025 film Dear Kelly.
29:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:27 Speaker 00 In which you had a Jan 6, uh, is he QAnon or?
29:31 Speaker 01 I would say QAnon adjacent. I mean, I don't like to put people in that bucket because the people who espouse some of these beliefs don't even necessarily follow Q or follow Q drops. But they believe all of the QAnon tenants.
29:41 Speaker 00 So that I would just say that, yeah, that Q was allegedly like a high up civil servant, some big wig inside the, um, inside the deep state who was onside with Trump and the idea of some massive disclosure project.
29:56 Speaker 01 It was supposed to be a military whistleblower within the deep state who was exposing the truth about the elite cabal of satanic pedophiles at the top. Who are secretly running things, but Trump's one of the good guys.
30:07 Speaker 00 Trafficking infants.
30:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, but in this world, Trump is one of the good guys and he's supposed to purge the swamp of the deep state, drain the swamp of the deep state, basically. So Q was leaking stuff on QAnon.pub, which is like a random open source website about the upcoming storm. And the storm was supposed to be that like Trump would essentially put all the evil deep state people in jail, like Hillary Clinton. He'd go into Air Force One in the sky. And while he's up there making the plays from the ether, the world would be purified of satanic spirits. So January 6th was supposed to be the storm. So everyone who stormed the Capitol was like expecting that to be like the one-two play. Yeah, so they were very confused when they got arrested. And like, it took like years for that confusion to wear off. Some of them are still like, alright, when's the storm coming?
30:52 Speaker 00 Just for the general audience, they were doing so-called Q drops. Basically, they were uploading to 8chan, right?
30:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
30:59 Speaker 00 These kind of cryptic messages purporting to be from Q saying things. It was very sort of being there, sort of Peter Sellers thing, where it's like, "The garden shall be weeded, but the water will be truth." And people were like, "Oh, that..." And then something would happen.
31:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:14 Speaker 00 That's what they were talking about.
31:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think that it was.
31:17 Speaker 00 It would have been better if I had a real example.
31:19 Speaker 01 I think, I mean, that's pretty accurate. But sometimes it would just be like an Aerosmith instrumental with like an American flag gif. And it would be like, "Tomorrow." And then some random shit would happen tomorrow and they'd be like, "That's what Q was talking about."
31:31 Speaker 00 Yeah. It was one of those stories that comes along and feels like this is very symptomatic of the times we live in. The first thing to reflect on is that Trump came to the presidency as the kind of conspiracy president, right? He rode conspiracy narratives into the White House, right the way back from like the Bertha Gate stuff. When he was talking about Obama actually was African and didn't have a birth certificate and shouldn't be president. And that was like, that was way before 2016, wasn't it?
31:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:00 Speaker 00 And then subsequently felt like he was a beneficiary of various conspiracy narratives. As sort of seen as disruptor in chief, right?
32:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:09 Speaker 00 And it was amazing how he kind of rode both the sort of establishment horse and then also almost like quasi-new age UFO believing horse, right?
32:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, he was able to unite every kind of skeptical person.
32:24 Speaker 00 Why do you think those kind of crystal UFO turbo-new age David Icke-ish people were susceptible to the Trump phenomenon?
32:33 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, I think it's good to have a healthy amount of skepticism as to like the elite crest of society who's running the world.
32:39 Speaker 00 They bought the anti-elite narrative.
32:41 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, it's good to have an anti-elite narrative. And I personally believe that QAnon was like a psyop to distract people from like the reality of some of like the new Epstein disclosure stuff that we're seeing.
32:51 Speaker 00 They know who Q is.
32:53 Speaker 01 There's a few, there's a few theories. Some people think it's Ron or Jeremy Watkins.
32:57 Speaker 00 That's what I'm talking about. It's a father and son team.
33:00 Speaker 01 But I think that retrospectively, like. QAnon analysis now has to be like looked at with the Epstein file releases at the same time because that ended up being true and that was one of the core tenets of QAnon. So it wasn't complete bullshit, but it was 80% bullshit, which makes you wonder, why is that 20% truth being lumped in with like Flat Earth and lizards and chemtrails and 5G towers controlling your mind and making you a communist?
33:24 Speaker 00 If it was a psyop, who would be doing it?
33:28 Speaker 01 Uh, people associated with Epstein, intelligence trying to move the target and basically drown the entire thing in just unbelievable bullshit so that you associate the word, you associate Epstein with Flat Earth. It works pretty well.
33:40 Speaker 00 Do you believe that?
33:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, 100%.
33:42 Speaker 00 Really? I'm very normie.
33:44 Speaker 01 The file releases-
33:45 Speaker 00 I genuinely think I'm gonna get cancelled probably for this. That's so overused. I'm gonna get cancelled. Shut up Louis. But um, I might surprise people by saying, I think Epstein probably did kill himself. That's how normie I am.
33:59 Speaker 01 Come on, man.
34:00 Speaker 00 I'm serious.
34:01 Speaker 01 Because of the shame of the whole situation.
34:02 Speaker 00 He was at the end of the road. He doesn't want to be in prison for 20 years.
34:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, it's, there is a possibility.
34:07 Speaker 00 It's not that weird. Like, well, that's an unbelievable scenario. Or that if he was killed, which again, I don't tend to believe, but that he was killed by some rando, not on the orders of the deep state.
34:19 Speaker 01 Like you think some like pedo smasher in jail was like-
34:22 Speaker 00 It happens all the time.
34:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, but MDC where he was locked up is pretty extreme as far as the surveillance goes. Like you think some like Peckerwood or Mexican mafia member could have got to him like Miami Mega Jail style?
34:32 Speaker 00 You get a lot of, you know this, you get a lot of points in jail for, for killing a pedo.
34:35 Speaker 01 I have seen a couple of pedo podcasters on YouTube. That's an explosive genre right now, too.
34:39 Speaker 00 Uh, pedo catchers?
34:40 Speaker 01 Yes.
34:41 Speaker 00 Yes, not pedo podcasters.
34:42 Speaker 01 Is that what I said?
34:44 Speaker 00 Yeah.
34:45 Speaker 01 No, pedo podcasters are not doing well.
34:47 Speaker 00 That would be very niche.
34:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's very niche.
34:49 Speaker 00 Um, I'll leave that, I'll leave that to you.
34:50 Speaker 01 Okay.
34:51 Speaker 00 Um, uh-
34:53 Speaker 01 Pedo podcasters, they're booming right now.
34:56 Speaker 00 So you think, I'm not trying to pin you down.
34:58 Speaker 01 You can.
34:59 Speaker 00 If there was a psy op, it would be associates of Epstein. Are you going to give names? Like, do you have people in mind?
35:06 Speaker 01 Um, yeah, Trump.
35:08 Speaker 00 You think Trump?
35:09 Speaker 01 Bannon. I mean, everybody that was named in the files, pretty much like all the tech oligarchs right now that are buying up mainstream press outlets, Ellison, Andreessen, Bezos, Musk. That's why when I talk about QAnon, like, we can talk about like the sensational elements, which were obviously the majority of it. But now you look at it a bit differently with the full Epstein file release, even in, even in its redacted form. And you're like, okay, there actually was some nuggets of truth in there. So why was the misinformation promoted so hard? It's almost impossible to look at outside that prism now comparatively to right after January 6.
35:39 Speaker 00 I'm gonna gently push back, and you, you might be deeper in it than, than I am. My take on it is that Epstein is a crystallization of a form of abuse that if not routine, is not that, except in scale, right? Of course, scale, but not that uncommon at elite levels of power. And that across the board, you have VIP, uh, people in different fields, business, other, you know, whether it's Jimmy Savile, or Mohamed El Fayed, or Harvey Weinstein, or most recently Cesar Chavez, the civil rights leader.
36:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:12 Speaker 00 They've all used their positions of power and privilege to satiate their, like, kind of deviant sexual interests. So rather than seeing it as a conspiracy, I would see it as just the way in which people get corrupted, especially men, not exclusively, but overwhelmingly, and prey upon the women that they get access to and the girls.
36:35 Speaker 01 Well, I think both things can be true, right? If you have an elite crest of people with unchecked power who are using that to take advantage of people because they know that they have the infrastructure to do so with impunity, maybe those people would have some kind of organization so that they could protect each other. But I'm, I'm open to it not being a conspiracy. I think that would be great if there wasn't, you know, an elite, you know, pedophile blackmail network. But I said, like, there's too many unanswered questions now.
36:56 Speaker 00 Yeah.
36:57 Speaker 01 You know, but like I said, with the full disclosure, I think it should be pretty easy to figure out. But I know that a lot of times with conspiratorial thinking, you kind of want, like, the truth to be as extreme as possible to justify the amount of research you're putting in. So I'm not like a full time Epstein researcher.
37:11 Speaker 00 It would be, it would be kind of awesome if they were lizards. Like, just if you remove the moral dimension, it would be, you know, obviously horrific. But can you, what would be more amazing, like, holy shit, Alex Jones and David Icke were right. They actually are shape shifting reptoids. I did not see that coming.
37:28 Speaker 01 That'd be a pretty good, like, um, that'd be one of the best moments in history. Handycam footage of lizards in a room.
37:34 Speaker 00 Um, are you being sued by Melania?
37:36 Speaker 01 No, that she threatened to sue.
37:38 Speaker 00 Fill the listeners in and the viewers on what that was all about.
37:42 Speaker 01 So I interviewed Hunter Biden. You know, that was a pretty prolific interview. Thank you. And he was like-
37:48 Speaker 00 For about six hours.
37:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was quite an interview. It was very long. And then he, uh, he basically insinuated in the podcast that, um, Epstein introduced Melania to Trump through some modeling contract. And that was a claim that was made by biographer Michael Wolff, who knew Epstein quite well. If you believe him, I'm not quite sure. He's being sued as well. He's taken some of the statements back as a result of legal pressure.
38:07 Speaker 00 Michael Wolff has?
38:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, because, I mean, they're, they threatened to sue, so backing up. So I published this claim that Hunter Biden made.
38:13 Speaker 00 And we should say for legal reasons at this point that Melania Trump denies that she was introduced to Trump.
38:20 Speaker 01 I don't know if true or not. I just talk to people. I let people mostly say what they want unless too extreme or I don't have the amount of information to push back. But I let them say it.
38:27 Speaker 00 And there is a picture of them together, right?
38:29 Speaker 01 Yes.
38:30 Speaker 00 There's a photo of Donald, Melania and Epstein, I think.
38:34 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah, so she sues him-
38:36 Speaker 00 Anything other than they were in a room together?
38:37 Speaker 01 So she sends him a legal demand letter saying, if you don't get Andrew Callaghan to remove your interview from YouTube, I'm gonna sue you for $1 billion and name Andrew Callaghan as a plaintiff for whatever the word is.
38:49 Speaker 00 What did that feel like when you got that letter?
38:51 Speaker 01 Awesome.
38:52 Speaker 00 I bet.
38:53 Speaker 01 It was epic. I'm like, oh my God, the first lady wants to kind of sue me in a sense, in a sense, for a billion dollars. You know, I was just living in an RV four years prior, outside of Flagstaff, Indiana.
39:03 Speaker 00 You felt like you'd made it.
39:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, dude, it's awesome. You know, there's little moments like that, like this moment where you're like, damn. I'm not even thirty yet. I'm getting to do some pretty cool stuff.
39:12 Speaker 00 I'm thinking of suing is is a classic kind of completely meaningless statement. I'm thinking of suing, you know, like.
39:21 Speaker 01 But it was a cease and desist.
39:23 Speaker 00 It was, okay.
39:24 Speaker 01 Which to me is like one, it's, you familiar?
39:26 Speaker 00 Not really.
39:27 Speaker 01 A cease and desist is basically a lawsuit threat. And it says, if you don't cease distributing the problematic clip, we will sue you. So it's pretty much like giving you a chance to pull things down before you file.
39:37 Speaker 00 So it has some standing.
39:38 Speaker 01 Kind of, yeah, but it's typically like a doom and gloom letter like from a bully lawyer. I never fold to any cease and desist letters typically. Cause I'm, cause I like, I do the Afro Man thing, where I weaponize the Streisand Effect. Because when people sue you.
39:51 Speaker 00 Afro Man thing. Afro Man, whose big hit was because I got high, which was a banger.
39:56 Speaker 01 Thank you. I don't know why I said thank you. I'm not the, just as an American, thank you for appreciating our, our culture. People say we have no culture, look at Afro.
40:04 Speaker 00 Exactly.
40:05 Speaker 01 So the Streisand Effect, you know, is when you're, when you're getting sued by someone or they want to bully you with paperwork, you just publicize it on your own platforms. We're blessed to have that opportunity and that, you know, ability.
40:14 Speaker 00 So that's what you did with the Melania letter?
40:16 Speaker 01 That's what I do with every legal threat now.
40:18 Speaker 00 So what happens next with Melania?
40:19 Speaker 01 Nothing. She just, I mean, she issued like a unprovoked public statement in the White House recently that was like, by the way, Epstein did not introduce me to my husband.
40:28 Speaker 00 Yeah.
40:28 Speaker 01 I met him on.
40:28 Speaker 00 Out of nowhere. And that, that was kind of perfect too, in a way.
40:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
40:32 Speaker 00 It was so random. Everyone's saying this thing and, and it's not true. Like, oh, wait, wait, what are they saying?
40:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
40:38 Speaker 00 That was a Streisand.
40:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
40:39 Speaker 00 Effect, big time.
40:41 Speaker 01 Oh, the Streisand Effect. I've, I've been misusing that term.
40:43 Speaker 00 Okay. That's why I was confused.
40:46 Speaker 01 Oh, sorry. I don't, I, I've just heard people say the Streisand Effect.
40:49 Speaker 00 The Streisand Effect is when Barbra Streisand tried to remove, Google Maps had pictures of her house and she said, I want you to remove them. She kicked up a fuss and as a result, everyone looked at the pictures of her house. It's when you try and suppress something and draw attention to it instead.
41:05 Speaker 01 So it would be like if I went online and was like, anyone saying I'm gay?
41:08 Speaker 00 Yeah, please stop saying I'm a pedophile. Who was saying that? Wait, you're what?
41:14 Speaker 01 Okay, I guess.
41:14 Speaker 00 No, I'm not. So that's my point.
41:16 Speaker 01 The way that I was using it is whenever somebody tries to bully you into silence, you basically publicize the fact that they are bullying you into silence. We'll come up with a new term for it.
41:24 Speaker 00 That's the. I think that might be judo.
41:28 Speaker 01 The judo effect.
41:29 Speaker 00 I think so. That's where you use someone's strength as their weakness. They come at you and then you sidestep and throw them. So their strength becomes a disadvantage.
41:39 Speaker 01 And it works for us because half of like the legal bullies like don't know the media game and like the way content creation works now. So in their head, they're like, this guy's gonna get a letter and it's gonna scare the fuck out of him. They don't know that you will publicize it and then that will, in a sense, lead them to back off because they don't want the bad PR. Because nobody wants bad PR. Actually, that's maybe not true.
41:56 Speaker 00 That's not true at all.
41:57 Speaker 01 Maybe the streamers clavicular wants bad PR.
42:00 Speaker 00 That is such a normie. That's a very 2010 take.
42:03 Speaker 01 That was my time.
42:07 Speaker 00 When did that change?
42:08 Speaker 01 I think that the rise of like the just attention economy, doom scrolling content, the collapse of attention span. And just now, now that everybody wants to be a content creator and there's no jobs, people look at it like, even if people are hating on me or saying bad things about me, at least they're talking about me. It boosts my SEO. I can turn this into an opportunity to make money and get exposure.
42:27 Speaker 00 Exactly. Rage baiting, trigger coating.
42:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:31 Speaker 00 Even like Nick Fuentes, who sort of used a lot of those techniques. Because I was gonna say, well, you might still not want to play with the idea that you're actually an abuser or a pedophile. But Nick Fuentes has actually started selling, I think, and suddenly wearing Jeffrey Epstein branded shirts.
42:46 Speaker 01 Yeah. He's also said before that like Epstein was epic and wasn't a pedophile.
42:50 Speaker 00 Yeah.
42:50 Speaker 01 I mean, I think that the thing about rage baiting is whenever you rage bait, even if people are mad, they're talking about you, which gives you room for like a redemption arc or like some sort of other thing that you can do.
42:59 Speaker 00 There's a Mike Cernovich, I'm sure he didn't come up with it, but he was sort of Manosphere before Manosphere was a thing. In the sort of 2015, 16 era, I think. And his thing was like, uh, conflict creates attention, attention creates, I don't know, you can monetize it, I guess. But you've got to start with conflict, provoke outrage.
43:22 Speaker 01 I think that's especially true if you don't have a marketable skill or like a talent to present to the world. For us, like, I think people appreciate the documentaries, so I don't think we need to create some kind of beef. We don't have to call people out or, you know, I don't have to squirt lime juice into my eyes and run naked through shopping malls.
43:36 Speaker 00 We hope, but we'll do that if we absolutely have to. So I think we came up doing stuff like that, maybe.
43:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, we're.
43:43 Speaker 00 You know what I mean? Like, I think I wouldn't strip off for a documentary now. It would feel a bit like I was. Trying too hard.
43:51 Speaker 01 Well, I mean.
43:52 Speaker 00 Back in the day, I did do that.
43:53 Speaker 01 I think your earliest work had like a sprinkle of more satire in it than it does now.
43:57 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
43:58 Speaker 01 And my early work had more like, I don't want to say like more of a pompous attitude, but I would definitely like look into the camera like Jim from The Office. And I would definitely apply crash zooms to people. And it felt like the people were sometimes the butt of the joke, and that's changed.
44:37 Speaker 00 Let's talk about what happened.
44:38 Speaker 01 Okay.
44:39 Speaker 00 You ready?
44:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, dude, I'm down to talk about anything.
44:42 Speaker 00 Okay, so, right, 2022, your movie comes out on HBO.
44:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
44:47 Speaker 00 This place rules. It's excellent. It kind of turbocharged what you'd been doing, knitted it into a narrative. It felt more prestige, but every bit as crazy, like you did a great job with it. And then, not long after, a few weeks later, on TikTok, I think, a woman makes a serious allegation of feeling that her, I guess her safety was violated, that she felt violated. The quote was, "I told him no. I told him I wasn't interested. He did eventually get consent because he wore me down."
45:17 Speaker 01 It's not true.
45:19 Speaker 00 And another woman said that he attempted to put his hands down my pants and I was fighting him during this. And then there were a few others, and then there was a more serious one.
45:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
45:30 Speaker 00 Later, where two women.
45:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
45:31 Speaker 00 Said that they actually felt their consent had been violated.
45:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
45:37 Speaker 00 You did a statement, you said, you acknowledged that they might have, they might have felt pressure. Was that the phrase?
45:43 Speaker 01 I mean, it's hard to even look back at that public statement, because, I mean, to be in that moment, you know, within, I think, a four-day period, you lose all of your support, you know, you get dropped from your agency, lose every sponsor, your best friends evaporate. Your DMs on Instagram have like tens of thousands of messages. And half of them say, you know, kill yourself, you're a piece of shit. And the other half just say, take accountability. And so I didn't feel that what was going on made any sense. Certainly didn't match up with my lived experience of what they were talking about. But I wanted to do the right thing. You don't ever want to be someone who's hurt somebody. And you just want to try to move forward and analyze the situation after the fact. Figure out how to avoid ever making someone feel that way again.
46:27 Speaker 01 So I recorded that statement because I felt like it was the right thing to do. Now it's hard to say because it gets like brought up all the time. And people say, oh, you admitted to it. But I just tried to do what I could to do the right thing and took some time off.
46:41 Speaker 00 There are like, it kind of, there's a certain template.
46:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
46:46 Speaker 00 And I'm not comparing it in terms of how serious it was. Truthfully, I don't know.
46:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
46:51 Speaker 00 But it felt like it didn't meet, uh, evidently either didn't meet or didn't reach the criminal standard. Right. So it was in this area of, uh, some women are saying they felt violated. And a guy saying that it wasn't like that. What I guess the question would be, if you're in the middle of that. Cause it's not clear to me what accountability necessarily looks like. If the statement you gave felt to me, I'm obviously a man, I bring a certain lens to it. Felt to me like the beginning of accountability.
47:20 Speaker 01 I mean, I definitely spent the next six months like in recovery in different kinds of situations. Making amends with people that I feel like needed to be made amends with, you know, privately. Cause accountability looks like, um, making amends with an individual. Not necessarily advocating for yourself to a bunch of supporters who have never met you in real life. I mean, they probably want a level of it, but I mean, what happened behind the scenes leading up to the, the first allegations is something that I've been trying to figure out where and how to talk about. The initial accuser sent me a message eight minutes before the film came out. Asking for a portion of my fat HBO check to assist with therapy. And from what I know now, what I've learned since then, that was trying to get me on the hook for, for more.
48:06 Speaker 01 So, um, it's hard to want to take accountability when you know that that happened and there's not much clarification on it, you know? But I would like to know more, you know, but I'm not sure how to reopen that without bringing back all those feelings.
48:21 Speaker 00 Is there a takeaway for you, like?
48:23 Speaker 01 So many. I think the biggest mistake that I made was engaging romantically and sexually with fans. I was 22 years old, living on the road. And what I would do when I got to a new town, and I had just gotten famous online. And I would go to a new town, I'd post my location.
48:39 Speaker 00 You were literally living in an RV at this time?
48:42 Speaker 01 Yeah. And so what I would do, out of loneliness or desire for companionship and, you know, experience, I'd go to a new town, post my location, like, who wants to hang out? Sometimes I'd post a bar location, and 250 fans would show up. And it was like my birthday every night for years. But I think that the power dynamic at play was something I didn't realize was happening. I never have seen myself as like a famous person. I still really don't. But I was engaging with like, I was hooking up with fans all the time, for years.
49:08 Speaker 00 Really?
49:09 Speaker 01 And I think that, like, there were situations that I felt like were all good. Where, you know, someone may have looked back and feel like they wouldn't have done that if I wasn't who I was. Or they, you know, looked up to me in some way and they felt like they didn't want to let me down. And I probably should have been more considerate of that. I think so. Date more intentionally, not rush to hook up on the first date. And just don't hook up with fans if you're a 22-year-old internet celebrity.
49:35 Speaker 00 What do you call that time? Like, would you call it being cancelled or?
49:39 Speaker 01 I don't know, man. It's hard to say because my audience is bigger now than it was then.
49:44 Speaker 00 What happened with your movie?
49:46 Speaker 01 It's still online.
49:47 Speaker 00 Where is it? I couldn't find it.
49:48 Speaker 01 On HBO, but not in the UK. They halted it, they halted distribution for international.
49:52 Speaker 00 For that reason?
49:52 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
49:53 Speaker 00 You were considered a tarnished brand?
49:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was radioactive.
49:57 Speaker 00 Did you get messages from your collaborators?
50:01 Speaker 01 No. Nothing. You know, when I got the financial request, you know, from the person, I told the collaborators. And they said, "We got your back." I showed them all the text messages, including one from right afterward. She said she had a good time. This is four years before the text was sent to me asking for money. And I showed that to them, and they were like, "We got your back. We've seen the texts. It's gonna be totally fine. We'll handle this." My agent said the same thing. But when shit hit the fan, and when the press picked it up, um, yeah, they all disappeared overnight. There was no parting words, no tough love, just a total evaporation of everyone that I worked with.
50:35 Speaker 00 How did you feel about that?
50:37 Speaker 01 Terrible.
50:38 Speaker 00 What would you have done in their position?
50:39 Speaker 01 I can't speak for anybody else, but I probably would have maybe called me and expressed how they felt, or maybe asked some clarifying questions because I had the information that they were probably looking for. They just didn't want to hear it from me. And because of the scale of it, I can't blame people for protecting their reputations over wanting to reach out to me. But I don't know. I do know that the collaborators knew about all that stuff beforehand. It's hard for me to feel sympathy for someone who's acting blindsided when they're addressing the public when that's not the truth of what was happening behind the scenes. I don't know. Like, I try not to be salty about it because at the end of the day, it was blown up on a massive scale, specifically by the press. So, you know, that was like my first moment ever being covered. That was like the first time my
51:24 Speaker 01 name was ever said in most of these outlets: NBC, Rolling Stone, Reuters, Chinese outlets. Across the country, I've seen people talk about it in Singapore on the news, newscasters, people who didn't even know I existed. So that was the film rollout. I think a lot of people felt like their friendship with me wasn't worth, you know, what it would mean to have to publicly defend me in a moment like this. Most of the people since then, except for one, have reached out to me post-comeback and been like, "I'm sorry. I panicked. I choked."
51:55 Speaker 00 Really?
51:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, almost all of them. Yeah. But that's now in retrospect, where it's not dangerous to be my friend.
52:03 Speaker 00 Apparently Infowars reached out.
52:07 Speaker 01 Yeah. Infowars offered me a job a week later. That's what people don't understand about cancellation and cancel culture.
52:14 Speaker 00 Yeah.
52:15 Speaker 01 Is that it's not the end of your career. It's the beginning of a new one. If you double down and make yourself into a free speech warrior that was silenced by the machine and kind of enter that sphere, you can make double the money. You can just keep killing it. It's not the end.
52:30 Speaker 01 That's what the cancellation machine, which is like the press apparatus gets wrong. Look at Russell Brand. I mean, now it's a little harder, but there's so, there's so many instances of people who.
52:39 Speaker 00 Go on.
52:40 Speaker 01 Dave Chappelle, I mean, there's like so many people who, especially now, where people are like a little different than they used to be in regards to like controversy.
52:48 Speaker 00 We jokingly call it the cancel verse, that you pass through the, you know, whatever that barrier is.
52:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
52:55 Speaker 00 And you emerge on the other side and, and there's Russell and I don't mean to trivialize it.
53:00 Speaker 01 No, no.
53:01 Speaker 00 But, um, and you go to Mar-a-Lago and you can chill with Eric Trump, right?
53:05 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I'm really happy that I didn't take that route because I think the Infowars thing is a good example of how possible it would have been. You know, cause they look at people who are going through that experience and they're like, I know that you've lost your friends. You're in a fight or flight state. Come, you know, into the arms of the right and they'll take care of you and they'll make you feel, you make you feel seen again. And half the time when people are in that spot, they just want to be made to feel like they matter.
53:30 Speaker 00 You did have a little chemistry with Alex Jones.
53:33 Speaker 01 Thank you, man.
53:34 Speaker 00 Didn't you though?
53:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, he's pretty easy to get along with unless you're like.
53:37 Speaker 00 He would have loved to have you in his stable.
53:39 Speaker 01 Absolutely. It would have been perfect because I would have been like the, uh, the, the kid who like came up through liberal media and got spit out. Cause the left eats their own and now look at him. Now he's a real truth seeker, but he had to go through that to see things clearly. Now he knows who the good guys are and he's on our team.
53:55 Speaker 00 That, that would have been the red pill.
53:57 Speaker 01 Could have taken it.
53:58 Speaker 00 Did you see things any differently afterwards?
54:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, absolutely.
54:02 Speaker 00 In what way?
54:03 Speaker 01 I mean, I just, uh, don't like to be around people as much as I used to. I'm very careful about who I spend time with. Um, I definitely don't want to work with any studios. That's for sure.
54:12 Speaker 00 Why not?
54:12 Speaker 01 Because, you know, it just makes you for one, a target for financial exploitation. And two, it makes it so there's people around you who can control, um, your success and like your trajectory in life. Like if I produced Dear Kelly and I release Dear Kelly and someone's upset about it and they figure out a way to put pressure on me. I'm not going to take it down. I'm not going to denounce myself, but if you work with others, that opens up, you know, the ability for people to fold on you. You know, and being a journalist, you piss people off.
54:41 Speaker 00 So when you made Dear Kelly, how did you make that one then?
54:45 Speaker 01 I just edited it myself out of an office in Las Vegas, my first office off the old Fremont Strip. Put it out on, you know, DearKellyFilm.com. And yeah, like it was the one of the highest grossing independent self distributed films documentaries ever.
54:59 Speaker 00 How did you distribute it?
55:00 Speaker 01 Just on the website.
55:01 Speaker 00 Really?
55:02 Speaker 01 Paywall, yeah. And it did more in revenue and numbers than This Place Rules.
55:06 Speaker 00 Should we talk numbers?
55:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, sure. It got 75,000 rentals in the first two months.
55:12 Speaker 00 What is that in money terms?
55:14 Speaker 01 That times 5.55 plus a dollar 52 processing fee. So they could ended up with merchandise and lifetime purchases around a million dollars.
55:24 Speaker 00 Wow.
55:24 Speaker 01 So it was cool. But I don't have any salt toward anyone who jumped off and left me hanging because what do you expect people to do? But yeah, I see the world very differently. I mean, I wish I could explain more about what I know was going on behind the scenes because it's like just very dark, but I just don't want to open that wound, you know?
55:44 Speaker 00 Really?
55:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
55:45 Speaker 00 So then you come back and in fact,
55:49 Speaker 00 as you said, like you've been doing some great work, like documentaries and
55:55 Speaker 00 interviews, you scored like Hunter Biden.
55:57 Speaker 01 Got him.
55:58 Speaker 00 And then recently, Clavicular, you interviewed.
56:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
56:01 Speaker 00 And he seemed to get annoyed with you.
56:02 Speaker 01 I just don't like the guy. He was a fucking asshole, man, like straight up. He was so just like negative and I was trying to give him the time of day to like, I wasn't setting him up for any kind of gotcha moment.
56:12 Speaker 00 It didn't feel that you were. It felt like he got annoyed and then you got annoyed that he was annoyed.
56:18 Speaker 01 Well, just at the end, he's like, this is a shitty interview.
56:20 Speaker 00 You said this shitty interview. You haven't asked me any questions about looks maxing. And in fact, you had asked him quite a bit.
56:25 Speaker 01 What he was trying to.
56:26 Speaker 00 It felt like you weren't annoyed till the end. You didn't start it annoyed, did you?
56:30 Speaker 01 No, I started it like, I mean, I was weirded out because he wouldn't look at anybody in the eye. I think he's maybe autistic.
56:34 Speaker 00 He's on the spectrum, right?
56:35 Speaker 01 And yeah, it was weird because, you know, he realized that he was kind of losing control of the interview. So he first went for like an ad hominem attack, being like, you're a shitty interviewer. And then at the end, he asked me like, are you, are you secure with everything about yourself? His goal was to get me to profess some kind of. Personal insecurity so he could gain control of the narrative in the interview and give me
56:54 Speaker 00 Say he's a looks max. Does everyone know who he is? Do you think the normies?
56:58 Speaker 01 No, uh, Clavicular aka Braden Peters is a 22 year old New Jersey man who is one of the most popular streamers on a platform called Kick and he promotes looks maxing which involves peptide injections, botox.
57:10 Speaker 00 You've gone into a different mode.
57:12 Speaker 01 Well, I'm just trying to explain to people. He believes in non FDA, non CDC approved methods of improving your physique uh to to be more attractive to women, not necessarily to have sex with them, but to raise your your value and your ROI on life.
57:27 Speaker 00 That was his brand, but he was a streamer and then he went viral with his streaming content.
57:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
57:32 Speaker 00 Um, so he sort of took over that, whatever the place in the culture that, whether it was Sneko or Andrew Tate, in a matter of months, he just blew up.
57:41 Speaker 01 And it's important to note that Clavicular discovered looks maxing on incel forums during COVID. That's basically the most important thing of it. He was in lockdown during puberty, during which, in a moment of isolation, confusion and hormonal rage, found uh on incel forums, PSL forums, found out about this look, uh, pick up artist hate, slut hate and looks maxing, which is the three uh tiers of the incel community. And so he found about looks maxing because he was insecure about his acne and his his face and his uh I guess bone structure and muscle mass. Also, he DM'd me to collaborate, just put that, I didn't mention that in the interview because I just wanted to maintain amicable dynamics, but like it was him who hit me up to to do the interview. He DM'd me out of nowhere. I was like, yo, what up? And like asked
58:23 Speaker 01 for a number. So he knew who I was, like, even even though he pretended he's like, you're from Channel 5, right? Channel 5, Fort Lauderdale? You guys are part of the mainstream media. And I explained like, no, this it's a joke. We're not Channel 5. We're all gas, no brakes, reframed as Channel 5. And he was like, holy semantics, man. It's the same shit to me. So yeah, he was just playing dumb. It's, I'm sure there's some pick up artist style like code word for what he was doing, similar to nagging.
58:49 Speaker 00 Some kind of nagging thing.
58:50 Speaker 01 Pretending you don't know who someone is. I'm sure there's a term for it. They've got a term for every type of uh manipulation technique.
58:57 Speaker 00 How did it end afterwards?
58:59 Speaker 01 I just left.
59:00 Speaker 00 More recently, you did, Nick Shirley?
59:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
59:05 Speaker 00 Tell the people who Nick Shirley is.
59:07 Speaker 01 Nick Shirley is a content creator who used to be a Mormon missionary in Chile. So he went to go convert people in the slums of Santiago to join the Latter Day Saints for a small signup fee. And then he came back immediately and began making some prank content. And then after Elon Musk bought Twitter and you could make content that was political in nature and you wouldn't be algorithmically suppressed for producing politically divisive content. He began shooting content along the border, essentially trying to monetize domestic divisions and profit content-wise from eroding the social cohesion of the US by producing fear-mongering content about every oppressed demographic you can possibly think of, whether it be
59:49 Speaker 01 immigrants, liberals, gay people, whoever it is. And he was recently really signal boosted shortly after the first Epstein file drop when he was, I guess, dispatched after getting tipped off by a congressman, a conservative congressman or senator in Minnesota. And he was accusing and allegedly exposing the Somali community in Minneapolis for perpetrating daycare fraud. Couple of days after his video went viral, after being signal boosted and shared by Elon Musk and J.D. Vance, the feds move in. ICE began Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis shortly after his piece kind of had turned the country against the city as a whole. And that's kind of the purpose of a lot of his reporting. Like, he was just in Cuba asking people about the horrors of communism.
1:00:33 Speaker 01 And, you know, where Shirley goes, sweeps follow. So I expect them to get...
1:00:38 Speaker 00 Immigration sweeps, really?
1:00:39 Speaker 01 Everywhere.
1:00:40 Speaker 00 It seemed a legit story in the sense that, well, The New York Times did a follow-up coverage where they're like, actually, there was systematic abuse of the system in Minneapolis.
1:00:50 Speaker 01 You know, I'm just saying, like, it's, of course, there probably was a problem with, you know, a small community in Minnesota taking money from the federal government and not using it how they were supposed to. But why is this report being boosted? You know? You have to ask those questions and you have to look at things sequentially when you're looking at any Nick Shirley piece because he's wrapped up and tied in with the GOP.
1:01:10 Speaker 00 It's interesting because I think you make a good point, which is that a lot of times, I mean, sometimes it's an outright lie, like the idea that in Springfield, the immigrants were eating pets. I mean, that's a lie, but sometimes it's just something that's, as you say, been amplified.
1:01:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:01:25 Speaker 00 And strategically deployed, weaponized as a pretext for driving policy.
1:01:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, they'll seize an anecdotal story and just absolutely coverage blast it from Nick Shirley to Fox News to everybody else. Like, do I think Nick Shirley is inherently a bad hateful person? No, I don't think so. He's a 21 or 22 year old kid who I met when he was filming his first YouTube video at the Turning Point USA conference in 2023, groomed and put into a world that he's not even aware of why it was created, if that makes sense.
1:01:57 Speaker 00 Really?
1:01:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, these sort of algorithmic like worlds and the world of reactionary right wing street content, like I was there for the genesis of it, which really was like the the anti lockdown era. That's when you saw the first non GOP like street political influencers on the conservative side of things, when MAGA formed as a market group.
1:02:19 Speaker 00 Streamers or YouTubers?
1:02:21 Speaker 01 I mean, back then, this is before streaming really took over like it has now. I think it was YouTubers, Instagram content creators, but even smaller stuff like on Kick and Gab and Rumble and Parler and Truth Social. That was that was the first era where you saw like, I guess, Trumpers and stuff like going into Portland to like interview Antifa where they're masked up undercover. That's when you saw like videos about like the collapse of San Francisco or the the fall of England really start to. Be produced by the top dogs, like the Tommy Robinsons of the world. And then also people under that who are seeing that it's an effective way to make money. All this is connected to the housing and affordability crisis in the US.
1:03:06 Speaker 01 Why there's so many content creators following the lead of kind of the influential ones is because there's no opportunities. You know, you're looking at people have three or four roommates. They're living in these like post gentrified AI robot neighborhoods. People are miserable. Community collapse has gotten to a point now where only 19% of people are a part of an in-person community. People have no friends, they're lonely, and they have no way to make money. So you see these content creators making a living for themselves, following the lead of cats in Springfield, you know, Haitians eating cats, not the cats themselves, migrant gangs taking over Aurora, Colorado, or fraud in Minnesota, which it was more true than the others. Or, you know, Portlanders, you know, on May Day, wearing black block, throwing, you know,
1:03:51 Speaker 01 water balloons full of piss at cops, all these things.
1:03:55 Speaker 00 Going back to your point about divisive content and being controlled by deliberately enticing misleading or overemphasized stories. It was pre 2016, it was Facebook originally, wasn't it? And that term fake news originally was talking about, they find a photo of people putting pieces of paper in a dumpster and they say, I found evidence of a massive cover up and troll farms in Eastern Europe, I think, were putting up fake content. And then it was Trump then adopted the term fake news and sort of judoed it back on
1:04:29 Speaker 01 Totally.
1:04:30 Speaker 00 The guys who'd come up with it.
1:04:31 Speaker 01 Judo effect.
1:04:32 Speaker 00 Judo effect, big time. Would you interview Trump? Have you tried?
1:04:36 Speaker 01 I would, but I don't think he would do it.
1:04:38 Speaker 00 What about Bannon?
1:04:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, I would. I'd interview almost anybody. But if it's someone that I knows up to no good, that would change the level of research required. You know, I'd want to make sure that I came in swinging and didn't give him a softball. Not swinging, but swinging in the Louis Theroux sense.
1:04:52 Speaker 00 Thank you.
1:04:53 Speaker 01 You know what I mean? Like, well, they don't even-
1:04:55 Speaker 00 My sense is taking your clothes off and saying you want to party.
1:04:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, but you can swing and that, you know, I've obviously learned from you a lot, like, without them knowing it, which is crucial.
1:05:04 Speaker 00 Um, thank you.
1:05:05 Speaker 01 You're sort of the opposite of Piers Morgan.
1:05:07 Speaker 00 What would you ask Trump?
1:05:09 Speaker 01 That's a really good question, man. So many things. But I don't know.
1:05:15 Speaker 00 He's so good in interviews. It's very rare that someone gets the better of him.
1:05:23 Speaker 00 Yeah, famously, Sacha Baron Cohen interviewed him as Ali G and Trump kind of rumbled him.
1:05:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, the ice cream glove segment.
1:05:30 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:05:31 Speaker 01 You remember that? That was, people say that's the only person that he could control.
1:05:34 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:05:34 Speaker 01 I'm sure there's been others.
1:05:35 Speaker 00 He says like, I've got a business idea for you. What's the, what does everyone love? What's the most popular thing in the whole world? What does Trump say?
1:05:43 Speaker 01 Music.
1:05:43 Speaker 00 Music. It's a good answer.
1:05:46 Speaker 01 So good. I still think about that one. I'm like, God damn.
1:05:49 Speaker 00 And then he goes, no, it's ice cream. And I've invented an ice cream that doesn't melt. And then Trump's like, okay, I gotta be, you know, a little busy. I need to go and do something.
1:05:58 Speaker 01 Yeah. I think that if I were to document Trump, I'd want like a day at Mar-a-Lago. You know, like the lifestyle, the country club lifestyle and just the surreal nature of being in Palm Beach and like, you know, setting up like a little, Iran war workstation in the basement. And just having your buddies who are like the FBI and National Security Director is like pulling up and you're like coming off the golf course with an iced tea or a Diet Pepsi. And you're like, all right, fellas, what are we getting into today? I, I think less so than what he would actually say to me. The atmosphere of that situation and scene are, or what I would find most interesting to capture.
1:06:31 Speaker 00 My thing used to be that he's like one of those people who, he's so self-contained, almost like a black hole that you sort of need to see the distorting effect. Like, like astronomer, you sort of need to observe the distorting effect it has on the bodies around it in order to chart its power and its gravity. And so I would interview Melania, maybe with Trump there. And I'd just ask her questions and then sort of kind of see what was happening between them.
1:06:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, Baron could be pretty good, too.
1:06:59 Speaker 00 Baron would be better.
1:07:00 Speaker 01 You could follow Baron around NYU, kind of like you did Fred Phillips' daughter.
1:07:04 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:07:05 Speaker 01 You know?
1:07:07 Speaker 00 You'd be like, you'd need a ladder. He's like seven feet tall.
1:07:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:07:10 Speaker 00 So where, so where we are now, it's, there's been this strange fragmentation of the MAGA movement, right?
1:07:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:07:17 Speaker 00 It feels like, from my perspective, having unleashed divisive content, whether through the algorithms, you know, call it free speech, call it amplification of division.
1:07:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:07:31 Speaker 00 Then this final boss taboo of antisemitism.
1:07:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:07:36 Speaker 00 Suddenly Maga was like, oh, well, that one's not okay. Like, we're okay with demonizing immigrants and we're okay with, you know, misogyny and homophobia. But suddenly there's a split and some people want to keep going and they embrace full antisemitism.
1:07:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:07:51 Speaker 00 And I looked at this in my manosphere doc. And then others are like, no, no, no, this is where we stop. We're holding this line.
1:07:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:07:58 Speaker 00 It feels like it's probably the end of the Trump movement, maybe the Trump era because of that, at least partly because of that.
1:08:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think that Trump has lost the Gen Z and younger, right? You know, they're totally anti-Zionist, borderline antisemitic in every way because they can't see nuance in anything. And yeah, so.
1:08:17 Speaker 00 Definitely antisemitic.
1:08:19 Speaker 01 Certainly, and that's a big problem too. But I think that the only real Trump supporters would be young Zionist, the dwindling Ben Shapiro audience probably, and then just boomers who just are kind of stuck in their ways.
1:08:30 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's been interesting. It's been interesting. I read a thing about how Ben Shapiro's ratings have really created.
1:08:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, because of Israel.
1:08:38 Speaker 00 Because of his unstinting support for Israel and that now these young right wing Republicans who were rooting for Trump and now they like Fuentes, a lot of them like Nick Fuentes. And they're very skeptical of the support for Israel.
1:08:54 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, yeah, but it's, I try not to be cynical here, but so many of those people just don't care about Palestine. They just recognize that the tides were shifting against Israel.
1:09:02 Speaker 00 They don't care about Palestine at all.
1:09:04 Speaker 01 So they're just like, all right, cool. Let me take this moment to sort of seem righteous, you know, and be like, oh, look at these, you know, babies in Gaza. By the way, Jews suck ass. And you can tell this from doing a hook, line and sinker type of deal where they don't care. They just know that getting people in with the empathy card is going to allow them to spread that stuff. And it's very disappointing.
1:09:23 Speaker 00 Are you thinking of anyone specific?
1:09:24 Speaker 01 All of those guys you just mentioned.
1:09:26 Speaker 00 Right, but I only mentioned Fuentes, I think.
1:09:28 Speaker 01 Anybody in that sphere.
1:09:29 Speaker 00 You think Tucker Carlson?
1:09:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, oh my god, he's just late to the party. Tucker Carlson is the ultimate propaganda descriptor. You know, he is the face of Fox News's disinformation campaign for seven, eight years straight. And even before then, he is like the final boss of reactionary politics. And him becoming like a main-based podcaster just shows that the independent establishment is the new corporate establishment. Because his news network, TCN, you know what their slogan is? Corporate media is dead. If you ever hear Tucker Carlson saying that, best believe it's not. You know what I mean? And so he just, I think, realized at some point, oh, you know what? Like, if I don't turn on Israel, I'm probably gonna lose most of my, you know, support base. And so he just realized that I gotta start being like, let's ask questions.
1:10:13 Speaker 01 They're attacking Christians in Jerusalem, which makes me think as an American, I don't wanna support these people. You know?
1:10:19 Speaker 00 Is he trying to say you're one step ahead of the right-wing herd by finding a new demon? It's like, it's getting old, it's a bit like having a new hit, we need a new tune. So it's getting old just bashing on immigrants or the elites in the US. So now we have to turn it up a notch and explicitly call out Israel and, and, uh, it's a new frontier of divisiveness?
1:10:40 Speaker 01 I mean, I think that for one, Fuentes was hammering him. On, because after October 7th, Tucker spent maybe a year and, you know, 10 days or something being like, you know, Hamas is no different than Al Qaeda, they must be eliminated for the progress of the West, they're holding society back. You wanna be gay there? Good luck. You know, and so I think that now, public tide has shifted so much and that he has to take that stance. I think, like I said, he'll be, he'll, he'll love Vance when Vance runs.
1:11:09 Speaker 00 But he hates Vance, doesn't he?
1:11:11 Speaker 01 He won't hate Vance when Vance makes small.
1:11:12 Speaker 00 Or they're friends, I can't remember.
1:11:13 Speaker 01 They're friends. I mean, I just think it's popular to hate Trump right now, but like I said, these people's perspectives change all the time. I can't tell you how many right-wing commentators are like, I'm turning on Trump, you're going too far, dude, you're Epstein's friend. You suck. And then a couple of weeks later, you know, he does some type of thing, like a ICE raid or something. And they're just like, yeah, deport them all, clean the city up, we got too many, too many illegal aliens, they're poisoning the well, great replacement. They, they read the comment sections, they sort of gauge public opinion and they follow public opinion.
1:11:42 Speaker 00 How, how's your, I feel like we covered a lot.
1:11:45 Speaker 01 I have unlimited time.
1:11:46 Speaker 00 Jesus, fucking hell, got me.
1:11:51 Speaker 00 You gave up the RV lifestyle.
1:11:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:11:54 Speaker 00 Why?
1:11:56 Speaker 01 Um.
1:11:56 Speaker 00 Too, was it just too itinerant?
1:11:58 Speaker 01 Well, I had to move to LA to sign the deal for the HBO film and they didn't have an editing staff. Tim and Eric didn't. They had a couple of people, but I had to really be there in Burbank all the time to edit. And then, I don't know, it was just too transitory and then obviously getting in trouble later in time, cancellation wise, made me feel like I don't want to be back out there engaging with random people all the time. You don't know what their agenda is. So it was a mix of a few things. I still take little road trips, but I'm very like, you know, deliberate now.
1:12:23 Speaker 00 I've heard you say though, that you miss the, the road trip days, like the fully, the fully kind of um.
1:12:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, I do. I miss being.
1:12:29 Speaker 00 Life days.
1:12:30 Speaker 01 I miss being young and um, not so cynical about people and full of adventure and, you know, just not, not having gone through various experiences that have affected my outlook for the worse. I miss being naive and not being so successful. I miss not being recognized everywhere. I have some anger toward my younger self for trying so hard to succeed at a young age. I don't understand why I was so hell bent as a nineteen, twenty year old to like succeed and like do everything and work every day and go everywhere and meet everyone. I wish I would have committed to a more slow growth, you know? Oh, yeah.
1:13:00 Speaker 00 Were you very driven?
1:13:01 Speaker 01 Extremely, and I still am. But I'm like, why did I want this so bad?
1:13:04 Speaker 00 What was behind that?
1:13:05 Speaker 01 I have no idea.
1:13:06 Speaker 00 What did your parents do?
1:13:07 Speaker 01 Um.
1:13:08 Speaker 00 When you were growing up?
1:13:09 Speaker 01 Well, they divorced when I was twelve and my dad, like before then, I think he was a salesman. And then after that, he like refused to work for anybody. So he was just flipping MacBooks on Craigslist, doing some landscaping work for people. Yep.
1:13:21 Speaker 00 And your mom?
1:13:22 Speaker 01 She was a hotel concierge.
1:13:25 Speaker 00 Right.
1:13:25 Speaker 01 So, uh, yeah.
1:13:26 Speaker 00 Were you financially secure?
1:13:27 Speaker 01 No. But I mean, I wasn't poor, but we would have to switch apartments every, every time the lease was up. So I lived in like maybe twenty houses throughout my life before turning eighteen. And then once Amazon moved their corporate headquarters to Seattle when I was a sophomore in high school, they basically bulldozed the city to build like cheaply constructed apartments for their workers. And after that, the rent doubled, if not tripled. So my dad, my dad had to move to like a trailer park in the boonies. My mom had to downsize to a studio apartment. And so there's definitely a financial motive, you know, where I'm like, I gotta succeed to put on for them. Like I bought my mom a house or not bought, but I'm renting her a really nice place in Santa Monica on the beach. And then I bought a dive bar for my dad to run in Seattle.
1:14:08 Speaker 00 Were you a good student?
1:14:09 Speaker 01 No. I know, I knew what I wanted to do. I always wanted to like be a journalist and be, I, I always wanted to be outside where things were happening. I wanted to be on the front lines of news events and journalism, as Hunter S. Thompson said, was just a ticket to ride. You know, it was just a way of getting everywhere I wanted to be, because it's, you know, that's what the job entails. You get to meet all kinds of people. So I just wanted to pull up, be active, be outside. And anything that was inside, being made to do math homework as like a sixteen year old who just wants to like be kicking it downtown, have new conversations every day, wasn't something I really cared for.
1:14:41 Speaker 00 You've talked about having a medical condition.
1:14:44 Speaker 01 Yes, sort of.
1:14:45 Speaker 00 What's it called?
1:14:46 Speaker 01 Uh, HPPD, hallucinogen persisting perception disorder. So that just came from frying my brain on shrooms when I was like fourteen, you know?
1:14:55 Speaker 00 You must have had a lot of shrooms.
1:14:57 Speaker 01 No, it actually, you know, that's a common response. It wasn't the dosage, it was how young I was. I probably ate a half an eighth of shrooms of Liberty Caps, which is a regular amount of shrooms to take. But you're not supposed to take psychedelics until your brain has developed.
1:15:10 Speaker 00 And describe what happened.
1:15:11 Speaker 01 So right now, if I'm looking around at you, I see visual snow everywhere, right now, in my entire visual field.
1:15:18 Speaker 00 Still?
1:15:18 Speaker 01 Like a, like a TV screen with static.
1:15:20 Speaker 00 Really?
1:15:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:15:20 Speaker 00 Is it a problem?
1:15:21 Speaker 01 No, because I've had it for longer than I've not had it now. Actually, I'm twenty nine now, so I got it when I was fourteen, so I'm not fifteen.
1:15:27 Speaker 00 It's not diminishing?
1:15:28 Speaker 01 No, but you forget about it because it's just been so much time. So I don't, I don't even really think about it anymore. But at the time, certainly for the five, six year period after, it was like, every day was like a nightmare. Because I'm like, when is it going to go away? Trying everything I could to make it go away, all these experimental tools and different medicines online, this had worked. I would have been susceptible to like any kind of new age medical misinformation at that time. But thankfully, that hadn't fully formed like it had today, that industry, information economy. But yeah, definitely alcohol. That's why I started drinking so much as a young person, because that was what helped the most.
1:16:01 Speaker 00 Okay.
1:16:01 Speaker 01 Around fifteen, just, you know, stopped smoking weed and just would drink after school.
1:16:05 Speaker 00 Do you still drink?
1:16:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:16:08 Speaker 00 You know, we were talking a lot about the streaming culture and this sort of new media landscape we inhabit, right? And, you know, I made a documentary about the manosphere, so I've observed it, you know, at ground level, but what I haven't really observed is how it works, you know, in the offices of the corporate tech barons and, and, you know, the decision makers who actually tweak the algorithms, right? And I'm just wondering whether, because it's not visual, right? And it's a hard story to tell. It's a kind of story about sterile offices and plausible seeming business people, right?
1:16:50 Speaker 00 But I guess my question would be, how do you hold those people to account? And how can you, how can we? And I suppose further to that, do you have a sense of how we create a space or a culture in which, you know, free speech is allowed, but division isn't amplified, and, you know, whether that's even meaningful? Because there's sort of two ways of looking at it, or more than two, and it's hard to figure out a way through.
1:17:17 Speaker 01 Especially because any attempt to suppress information or censor information allows that person to take on a sort of David and Goliath attitude, which Judo effect makes their information spread twice as far. I tend to think that we're doomed in the short term and that our future generations will have to learn from the mistakes of the previous ones. But we, and me specifically, are also the first generation to grow up totally inundated by digital media. We are the alpha generation, the test generation for what it's like to have someone spend their whole life with digital devices, phones, computers, et cetera. So I think that if you consider that every generation for the next 500 or 5,000 will also have access to the same tools, the mistakes that we've made as a generation, Gen Z and,
1:18:02 Speaker 01 I mean, everything that comes after it, Gen Alpha is probably going to be even worse, will inform the way future generations interact with technology.
1:18:10 Speaker 00 The thing is, our neuro circuitry doesn't change. We are, we have this evolutionary endowment. That's adapted to, you know, the conditions of millennia ago. You know, same reason we eat too much fat and sugar is like, oh, we we thought I would get plenty of that because you won't get it again, thinking that we're just hunting caribou out on the savannah. Do you know what I mean?
1:18:32 Speaker 01 I didn't know that, but it makes sense.
1:18:33 Speaker 00 Yeah, so I don't think you can hunt caribou on the savannah. I think caribou are reindeer and they live in northern Canada.
1:18:39 Speaker 01 I think the metaphor is effective regardless of species.
1:18:42 Speaker 00 OK, thank you. And so information wise, you know, we're easily distractable. So it will be, we'll have to be proactive, like we'll literally have to. I will, will we make it illegal to have phones? Will they have government guys going into, I need to see your algorithms, sir? Because we've had reports that they're all, you know what I mean?
1:19:00 Speaker 01 Maybe it'll be something like Siesta in Spain, where it's not enforced necessarily by like the boot of the authority figure, but it's like, it's just a social thing like, OK, it's it's it's after five P M.
1:19:11 Speaker 00 It's like, there's a family over there and they they have phones after four o'clock. Like, they're weird. Do you know what I mean?
1:19:16 Speaker 01 Totally. Social taboo enforcement. Well, but also, you know, I I have a theory that when, so Gen Alpha, which is the current fifteen year olds, sixteen year olds supposedly have like the lowest literacy rate. They're not even doing homework because of chat G P T. They don't read. They are essentially slaves to the tablets and the phones. iPad kids are now reaching voting age. I think that in a similar way, where Gen X hates cable T V because their baby boomer parents are essentially overdosing on N C I S reruns all the time. I think Gen Alpha's kids will see the digital device as something that took their parents away from them and something that disabled their maternal and paternal figures from being present in their lives. And I think the anti tech generation will be those raised by parents who were too distracted by it to care about them.
1:20:01 Speaker 01 So I would just imagine twenty fifty, maybe we'll have hope.
1:20:05 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:20:05 Speaker 01 But it would be insane for me to be optimistic in the short term. I mean, it's it's fun as an exercise and I always, I fall into it sometimes like this is, you know, we're gonna have a watershed moment. Oh, my God, we have the songbird of a generation here is gonna shepherd us into a new era. But we don't have a figure like that. We're done for now, but humanity isn't done. We just need. To be more careful in the future. And to rethink how we interact with each other, especially online.
1:20:30 Speaker 00 Dude, I feel like we could, um, we could go for another two hours, but that's not the format. But thank you for coming by.
1:20:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, man. What's, what's going on tonight?
1:20:40 Speaker 00 Uh, tonight I've got a screening of my documentary, The Settlers at the Frontline Club. You're welcome to come along if you're around.
1:20:47 Speaker 01 I would love to.
1:21:01 Speaker 00 And we're back. Thank you for watching or listening wherever you get your podcasts. Some housekeeping. The quote I attributed to Mike Cernovich, the Manosphere influencer. I got it slightly wrong. It was conflict is attention, attention is influence. It's a kind of rubric for hacking the internet. Get the conflict, then you get the attention, then you get the influence. He's profiled in the New, in a great New Yorker piece in 2016 by Andrew Morantz. So check that out. Maybe we'll link to it. Some legal notes. Okay. Are you ready?
1:21:44 Speaker 00 Donald Trump denied responsibility for his supporters storming of the US Capitol and said his remarks before the siege were, quote, "totally appropriate." He was acquitted of an impeachment charge that he incited a mob to storm the Capitol in 2021. Okay, Donald, if you're listening, you never know. It's not impossible. It's unlikely. Baron would be more likely. Even that seems quite unlikely. Regarding the first, welcome to the chat, Baron. Hi Baron, come on the pod. Regarding the first allegation made against Andrew in 2023, the alleged victim sent Andrew a message offering him an opportunity to, quote, "contribute to the massive amounts
1:22:27 Speaker 00 of therapy bills I have accrued due to the night you coerced me," end quote. She stated that this is the only time she brought up the idea of him reimbursing her in their conversations together. The alleged victim maintains that Andrew knew how she felt about the incident months before she posted it on TikTok. If you've been affected by the topics discussed in this episode, Spotify do have a website for information and resources. Visit spotify.com/resources.
1:22:55 Speaker 00 Okay, that's it for this week apart from the credits. The producer was Millie Chu, the assistant producer was Maisie Williams, the production manager was Francesca Bassett, the music in this series was by Miguel de Oliveira. The executive producer was Aaron Fellows. This is a Mindhouse Studios production for Spotify.
Previous S8 EP2: Marco Pierre White discusses his rift with Gordon Ramsay, retiring from cooking, and having lunch with Margaret Thatcher Next S8 EP4: Cara Delevingne discusses getting sober, engagement rumours, and being Karl Lagerfeld's muse Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated