Closing Thoughts and Housekeeping

Hello and welcome to the Louis Thux podcast In this episode, I'm joined by American Gonzo journalist and YouTube sensation Andrew Callahghan. For those of you who aren't familiar with Andrew's work, he is the creator and host of independent journalism platform Channel five boasts three point five million followers on YouTube to be confused with The UK's channel five Alongside high profile interviews with Hunter Biden, Clavicula and Cia Le Beu, Andrew presents episodes roaming around the streets of America, attending NRA conferences and joining spring brereakers on Miami Beach and many other things. You may even have seen him without realizing it He used to wear a comedy bigig suit Flappy tie with channel five on it And the hair was sometimes wild and unruly often holding a tiny little microphone in the style of certain YouTube documentary makers. Um And at the beginning, a bit like my good self, it was a little more Mickey 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 twenty twenty. and we talk about how he got more serious and the journey that he's been on He went on to direct Thisis Place Rules for HBO, a documentary about the january sixth Capital riot. And more recently, Dear Kelly, a film that investigates the life of a conspiracy theorist. and traces his background and beliefs It's a conscious attempt to just hang out with and enjoy the weirdness of guy who's gone down the conspiracy rabbit hole, but also engage with it Eotionally, understand what's motivating him and others to find meaning in conspiratorial content In twenty twenty three, 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 twenty twenty three We discussed 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 we cover. and Andrew's obviously a creature of a different generation Oh documentary makers and content creators, different platforms, YouTube whereas I was a BBC Network TV in America U creation We are interested in in similar sorts of things We recorded this conversation in May at Spotify HQ. Andrew had just flown in and lost his luggage So we had to pop down to TK Max en route to the studio Hence the high vis look for people watching on Spotify AQuick warning, this conversation contains some strong language and adult themes, all that, as well as much else besides Coming up This episode is brought to you by Shopify When you're starting a new venture, support is everything. Which is why you should lean on Shopify to design an eye catching website that reaches customers ultimate business partner built in support system And you don't have to be a design pro to make an awesome online store that matches your brand There's hundreds of templates for you to use Shopify even has commerce experts to help you out so you can stress less and start growing S why businesses like Gymhark Continue to trust Shopify. signign up for your one dollar per month trial today at Sopify. com slash Louis L O U I S That's shopify d. com slash Louis Here we are in the flesh. I know. Thankks so much for having me. I would say you're a big inspiration. Thank you. And it hasn't escaped my attention that in a at least a couple of interviews that I've seen that you gave, shouted me out. You've given me props. 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 ' that freaks people out too. L you'd be 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. As something I learned from you, I call it the toddler nod. You go like this It's 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 soundbite after a couple different nod sessions. You're making it sound so technical and I don't even This is going 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 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. L you kind of want their performed self, whoever it may be. What you also notice is you want to sort of Get outside of that a bit and if you say to someone, okay, we're going to get a few wide shots. Mm any mood changes and the person you're interviewing They've how to relax and they sort of think they're off. They know they're being videoed, they know they're on mic The vibe changes and you might even say like, was that okay? orr they might say that? or you go like, how do you feel? And you get a very different energy So even if they know they're wearing a lve microphone and they can see a boom the Cameran retreats, gets a wide shot. Yeah part of them thinks the interview is over. in the traditional sense. In the traditional sense. It's not like they think they're off the 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. 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. And it kind of allows you to Commentate on the interview or revisit whatever the thing that you perhaps feel was the most interesting part of your life. That thing you said about 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 Yeah and it can be more Did you really mean that? Yeah. And they go like Yeah, ye. and it was he was nine feet tall and he was completely green. you know what I mean? That's a pretty good American. Anyway, listen, we're going to talk about what you do. We're going to geek out. Lets do on journalism. We're also going to talk a little bit about some allegations that were made against you. I hope you're okay with. can Let's talk about For those who don't know your work How do you describe What you do? 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. So they would say RV YouTuber. Really? I like that one because even though I'm not thatad, it sounds great. like you know, checking out new RV parks and amenities and libraries and dumping You used to travel around in an army. Yeah But journalists would be the word that I would use. So the New York Times, do you think that's a style they literally it would be part of their style manuals like we can't actually call ajourn. 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 twenty nineteen. I plan 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. I think even between twenty fifteen when I started college in twenty nineteen The newspaper industry had gone from like eighty two billion dollars a year to like twelve. 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 forty five K a year Or we can just move into RV's, travel around the country, work freelance, start creating content, do things a different way 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 comments 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 Well, you did say CNN is out to get me. When did I say that Um I don't know. I don't think I would have said that so directly. Maybe that was just like a thumbnail That's definitely a thum. We did a donon Lemon thing 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. because we should say like at a certain point You got this movie deal. went you worked with im Pide Deer and Jonah Hill. Yeah b Were they very involved or just No just sort of. I mean, you know, rounds of notes. They were involved in getting it sold, especially as soon as Jonah Hill came on. A twenty four bought it immediately. But yeah, like I had been given this weird media training by Some people at HBO are like I to assign 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 like I thought didn't actually happen. It was like a media black box of like thirty 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 going ask you about your life, the movie, all that stuff. So I get on there, Don Lemmon like this is live imediately goes like, what can you tell us about Enrique Tario's mental state leading up to january sixth And I was like for one, Rick Torio, the leader of the Proud Boys. Yeah, right Wh was I still had an active relationship with the Proud Boys because I was still covering the Proud boys, notot 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 individual people involved in men's groups. It's about the mainstream media system, the twenty four hour news cycle, the divisive nature of the media, and how it divides people into perfect consumer groups to make sure no change happens. And I mentioned CNN's also complicit in that. I don't know, I was just like upset because you know looking back, maybe I shouldn't have called out CNN on CN, 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 that my handler that HBI had assigned me panic. She's like checking her phone, whatever. I'm like, what's going on? She's like Time Warner C Seet is furious. I'm like, what's timee Warner, C sweet? And she was like, Oh, well, the same people who own HBO on CNN 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 moreore press appearances after that For real Yeah. So I'm not saying CNN's out to get me. I'm not like a reed pilled like anti mainstream media, escape the Matrix vybe. UK audience may not know Joon Lemmon was at that time a CNN anchor, right? What was he trying to get from you I don't know. I think that liberal mainstream media has this weird thing where they want to make me seem conservative It's very strange Like I went on this this also was never aired, but I went on NPR and it was again supposed to be a u preremiere for my movie in Boston. on january fifth, twenty twenty three And she asked me, she said, how do you the interview that it went semi viral, right? Was this the one where it went semi viral because a fan filmed it They they refus toir it Really? 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 loveved that scene. Yeah, this was the segment that you'd done with Alex Jones, right? Yeah, where we're like working out like with our shirts off, like it was I was going to talk to you about that one because it is an amazing. And You see Alex Jones in in all his modes. like you see he comes on, let's get this right. He comes on and he says, I did the Sandy Hook killing. Nbody could do him better than that Yeah I created cancer, hair loss, gingivitis, and acne Yeah 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. Yeah Leaves you in a weird position But then he backs down and he goes like, of course I didn't create cancer, but he's kind of making a point. Yeah, makeake me a bogeyman. I don't care. Yeah. But then I think the bit when you're interviewed by NPR, she brings up the fact that there's a scene where you're working out with him Yeah. and he what is he drinking? Jamon. half gallon of Jameson, which is a popular American whiskey, or it might be Irish, o my Godd. I think it is Irish. Okay P peopleople in the UK know what Jameson is. He was drinking. was drinking whiskey. And the point was to highlight the absurdity of infoWars. And even though these people were instrumental in ramping people up for january sixth 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 I could see like it was funny, it was surreal. I could see why some people might have an issue with it. 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 on different platforms like Rumble and Gab, or if you could stop people like Alex Jones from having a platform, 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 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 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 MGa apologia seeks to humanize those who want the destruction of our democracy. Really? Yeah. So I don't know why they keep doing it. at an interview recently. I'm not to say the outlet, but they were again asking me if I hang out with Enrique Tario, they're still on this beat of like You say that you're a progressive, but I saw you hanging out with F Gi Ao Blow in Miami, which is a MagGa 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. orr just to meet them. you know, notot that I'm like just hanging out with them for that purpose, but You know, you know 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 That's my legal term describe it. Yeah. I think Regarding the NPR interview, it felt a little bit odd. and I could see you were off it was clear you were offended, right? Well you know that it was supposed to be a premiere? It I didnt know that. 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 yeah So it was really just like, what is happening? And especially that coming after the CNA interview, I was like, okay, these people don't have my back anymore You have I've got five key episodes of All Gas No Baks. You This was before Channel five, right? Yes. It All Gas No Braaks is back We b it back. There was a corporate fallout. You lost the label. Yes. Lost the label. And then you got it back. Yep Jan twenty twenty. pre COVID. The Flat Earth Conference. Yes. seeven million views. Really? It's a lot. It's very short, It's like what, eight nine minutes. That's one of my favorite videos. It's a classic. It's a great place to start Yeah How would you describe it? Yeah, it's a flat Eth conference. It's people who believe the Earth is flat. How did you find out about it? I was at the raid of Area fifty one Which was ninety percent content creators and ten percent 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 gonna give a fuck what they What was that? twenty nineteen Did anyone actually Tust the best fucking guy. This guy that I met the divorced dad, who was like drinking these alien themed bud lightights in his RV and he's like, I'm a dead bead man. He's like, I'm worthless. If I'm gonna go down for some, it's gonna be getting the truth about the aliens Yeah. So he gave me the info about the flighter' cover. Well, how far into area fifty one did he get When you get close to the perimeter fence, they have a weapon that makes your body tingle Yeah, that's what he told me He said it's not out of the question, is it That could exist, couldn't it? He said that his body started tingling like he was like getting a fever and a flu at the same time. and the 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 he was being shot at and as he' getting closer belie? Well, he is a flat earer But the flightder of the conference was Do recommend There are UFO's at area fifty one? No So carry on So I get there and the first question they ask me when I get into the courtyard is, are you guys globbe tards? you know, which is a person who believes in a spheric Earth. I said, No, man I can't stand those guys. Did you? Yeah Why did you say that because I had to get a press pass Right But if you'd said I'm not sure I would have never been allowed yet. Really? They really hate the conventional scientific Yeah. because they think those are people who fall for NASA propaganda. and as flatwrthers say you can't spell Satan without NASA, which is fonetically true So go on. So everyone that I met there was a lost soul of some form Looking back now atler the conference, I realized there was kind of like a 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 canceled tattooer there named Watson Atkinson, who had been like canceled 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 eararer 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 a D disinvited from his family Thanksgiving because of his belief in different you know Aunaki 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 rings a bell. But everybody at the Flat Eth confference was sort of dejectedisis been through a personal crisis A bit like Jan six. Exactly like Dannerary six They were people who had been dejected in some way. For whatever reason, they felt like the world was a battle between good and evil and they were on the good side of spiritual warfare. There's no accountability to be taken. They're just like, 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 community that validates their version of events. A lot of them rap to quite a high standard. Everybody raps. What was that all about? I mean, even though it's like a nine minute segment, it's almost like a rap musical. Yeah, yeah, there mean there' two or three raps in it Do you remember any of the rhyme? Of course Earth is flat jacked, flouatter than a flapjacked We about to black flag. Globers get your backpack As musa exXo distant flap up on my snap backag. Some shit like that. You used to rap. I still do. Do you? Yeah, I rap in Spanish. My spare's 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. Why not English? Well because there's enough English rappers. And I rapped in English in high school But you know, to me, this sounds crazy, but it was spit some of your old bars? I don't have any marks been. you must remember some from back in the day. Yeah. Go on. Okay, okay okay, I'll do this because Rart on Lutherow podcast. Well shall I share the lyrics that got kicked out of high school? Yeah. o storing these hose on my white goon shit with a bagged up zip in my north face vest That's it. I've I've got more. I've got more. I've got more. Let me think of a couple Liv in lavish, I'm a savage, but I tend to hide it. When you're a Seattle wide client, you got toa keep it solid I keep a goddess off the Mlly while I'm driving. Bascalus, Anaconda, Hermione It's very good. It's nice, but you're just saying them, you're not performing them. I've lost it. But I'll get it back I'll get it back. You know what I mean? I I didn't feel like you were owning the lyrics. Well dont dont you know, I don't have the same vibe anymore as I did when I was a high school gffiti writer wrapper But the rarapping 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 It's good stuff. That was a flat Earth conference So strange. It was a great. Does it get Do you think it would be an obstacle to it like For a while, you're getting good content, you're like, this is great. Yeah And let's get another one and this is going to be amazing. and then You would be talking to them and thinking A, I don't think I could be friends with you because this would get in the way 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 twenty minutes, it'd be irresponsible for me to not be like, Hey, dude I don't believe in the flat earth Ive my did you not level with them while you were filming? 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. because that would just be too duplicitous for me Especially nowadays with streaming culture, everything's live. you can't really do what she used to do There's one of the guys he'saring hat and you got flat gang. Flat gang. Yeah. fl gang. That's a Chief Kief reference, because if you're familiar with the Chicago drill artist, Chief Kief started in twenty thirteen or twenty eleven actually, he would take these ecasy pills called flats Ecstasy is very popular in OBlock 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 thirty minutes. You can take a flat pressed ecstasy pill like a blue dolphin and be up for like eight hours, having a great time. N taken one, but that's just my observation. So Chief Keeef would say flat gang And he would say, I' pop X, I pop flax. So Flat Gang is a chief keef reference But I used it and I added this thing to level with the flyerers It was funny. Thank you. That's seven million views. Minneapolis protest. Yeah That was a big moment. That was the moment How was that the moment? It changed my entire brand from a comedy platform and a satirical interview show to a serious journalistic outlet. I was providing a service that mainstream outlets weren't allowed to. Why couldn't the mainstream journalists? Well, there was two things. 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 KR 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 should make clear because it could be ambiguous. This was june twenty twenty, was at the height of the George Floyd Yeah rising. It 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 to they didn't want the perspective of the protesterors. You know there was the perspective that was critical of the protesterors. And then there was centrus 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 happen to be from Minnesota do the interviews, filmed for like half an hour, wentent home, edited it I had never saw a reaction like that before. I mean, people were like, oh my God, I was so nervous when I saw you covering this because I was like, is he going to make fun of the protesterors? Like he did at the Fat Earth conference or at Taladeega? and people were stoked on it. because the protest is presenting cogent narratives for what had brought them to the Yeah to the thing. Yeah. And that opening line is like always going to be in my head I said, What are you doing out here point at the fire, and he goes, Ebody feel like that Everybody feel like that. Is this the right thing to do? No. This is how people are actually feeling. and everything is inevitable And I 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, perfectly summed up. There's a kind of poetry in it. When do you think everything is inevitable means that the boiling point would have been reached regardless. And the George Floyd incident being captured on video the way it was was just An inevitable point of how what was happening already in some of these communities, whether it was on camera or off camera, they just needed 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 hit in the streets And so how did that change things for you? Those words were like the beginning of my new career. It just enabled me to be taken more seriously in the field, gave me interview access to different people It just changed how people thought of all gas no breaks, 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 know people yelling slogans like show me your butth hole 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 how you look at it. And you' been were you on a salary at that time? Yeah, forty five k K a year Just to be that guy for a second. A lot of the conservative or right wing comommentators were like, hey, how come The mainstream media was sort of sympathetic to protest and violence in the case of the George Floyd riots, but then they had a big problem with Jan six 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. L like my friend Dylan from Minneapolis, who was just in the third 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 ' ninety two with the LA riots. I don't know. I can't think of a comparative tool No, well if you compaarered it with Jan six you'd be Enriqui Tario got like I think I mean, first of all, I know I said p 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, notot 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 all Sidney Palace should have been charged for it. General Flyn should have been charged. not Dave from Nebraska who's just like has no friends and has been like smoking like forty percent weed and listening to these Finge podcasts every day for six months straight and his communities in collapse. All small businesses in his town have closed He's no friends anymore. You can't gohead 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 horbly man, and it's only made them double down Right. A lot of them have been since pardoned Yeah. and and I think they're looking for compensation now 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, Qanon january sixth or a you know, wrongfully convicted person in Louisiana It's not rehabilitative. The recidism rate is ridiculous. The conditions are horrific. I mean you've seen so much this. For sure. Yeah U But I also want to ask you about because we were going to do this last week And then it was like, Ohh, I can't leave now because I've got a lawsuit and I have to raise a million dollars. Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty much like the higher I've grown in profile, the more I 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 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 thenen 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. neverever happened, but we platformed a guy who has like a vendetta against a private lender named Bill Joyer Bill Joiners is the guy who sued. Kelly J Patreon. part of your twenty twenty five film dear Kelly. Yeah. in which you had a Jan six Is he Q and on on? I would say Q and on 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 Q andon tenants. So I would just say that yeah that Qgh was allegedly like a high up. Civil servant, some bigig wig ins the inside the deep state who was on side with Trump and the idea of some massive disclosure project. 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 guysking infants. 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 Q andon. 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 sixth was supposed to be the storm. So everyone who stormed the capapitol 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 were still like, all right, when's the storm coming Just for the general ofiew say, they were doing so called queue drops. Bically they were uploading to H chan, right? Yeah these kind of Cryptic messages purporting to be from Q saying things. It was very sort of being this or Peter Seller's thing where it' like, the garden shall be weeded, but the water will be truth. And people were like, Oh that and then something would happen. Yeah. that's what they were talking about. Yeah. I think that it was be been better if I had a real example. I think I mean, that's pretty accurate But sometimes it would just be like a 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 It was one of those stories that comes along and feels like this is very symptomatic of 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. I was talking about Obama actually was African and didn't have a birth certificate and shouldn't be president. And that was That was way before twenty sixteen, wasn't it? Yeah And then sububsequently felt like he was a beneficiary of various conspiracy narratives It's sort of seen as disruptor in chief, right? Yeah. And it was amazing how he kind of rode both a sort of establishment horse and then also almost like It quas a new age UFO believing horse, right? Yeah, I mean, he was able to unite every kind of skeptical person. Why do you think those kind of crystal UFO Turbo New age, David Eichish, people were susceptible to the Trump phenomenon. 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. They bought the anti elite narrative. Well, I mean, it's good to have anti elite narrative Yeah. And I personally believe that Qanon was like a scciop to distract people from like the reality of some of new Epstein disclosure stuff that we're seeing. They know who Q is. There's There's a few theories. someome people think it's Ron or Jeremy Watkins. That's what I'm talking about. They father and son team. But I think that retrospectively like Qing on analysis now has to be like looked at with the Epstane file releases at the same time because that ended up being true. And that was one of the core tenets of Q andon So it wasn't compleomplete bullshit, but it was eighty percent bullshit, whichich makes you wonder why is that twenty percent truth being lumped in with like flat earth and lizards and chem trarails and five G towers controlling your mind and making you a communist If it was a S op Who would be doing it peopleeople 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 epsteam with flatter earth. It works pretty. believe that? Yeah, hundred percent. Really? Well I mean I'm very normy The file really genuinely think I'm going to get cancelled probably for this. That's so overused. I'm gonna get cancellled. Sut up, De. But I might surprise people by saying I think Epstein probably did kill himself. That's how normal I am. C on. I'm because of the shame of the whole situation. He was at the end of the road. He doesn't want to be in prison for twenty years. Yeah, I mean, there is a possibility 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 it was killed by some rando, not on the orders of Like you think some like pedo smasher in jail was like guy gu dirty Yeah, but MDC where he was locked up is pretty extreme as far as the surveillance goes. like you think some like Tuckerwood or Mexic mafia member could have got to him like Miami Meg. a lot of You know this. You get a lot of points in jail for killing a pedo. I have seen a couple of pedo podcasters on YouTube. That's an explosive genre right now, too pedo catchers. Yes. Yes, not pedo podcasters. Is that what I said? Yeah. No, pedo podcasters not doing very niche. Yeah, that's very niche. pedo catch. I'll leave that to you Okay Uh They're booming right now. So you think I'm not trying to pin you down againain If there was a Sci op, it would be Associates of Epstein. Are you going to give names? Like do you have people in mind? Um yeah, Trump You think Trump 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, Andrereson, Bezos, Musk. That's why when I talk about QNon, we can talk about 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 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 prison now comparatively to write after January six. I'm going to gently push back and you might be deeper in it than I am. My take on it is that Epstein is a crystallization of a form of abuse If not routine is not that. Except in scale, right? off course scale but not that uncommon at elite levels of power. And across the board, you have VIP people in different fields business otherwise you know whether it's Jimmy Savill or Mohammed Al Fayed or Harvey Weinstein or most recently Cesar Chavez, the civil rights leader They've all used their positions of power and privilege to Sat to that 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 especially men form notot exclusively but overwhelmingly And prey upon the women that they get access to and the girls. Well I think both things can be true, Rid. 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 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. Yeah. you know, But like I said, with a 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 Yeah So I'm not like a full time Epstein researcher, but would be it would be kind of awesome if they were lizards. like just if you remove the moral dimension, it would be, obviously horrific. But can you what would be more amazing? like Holy shit. Alex Jones and David Ike were right. They actually are shapeshifting reptoids. I did not see that coming. That'd be a pretty good like That'd be one of the best moments in history. handandicam footage of lizards in our room U Are you being sued by Melania? No, that she threatened to sue. Well actually the listeners in and the viewers on what that was all about. So I interviewed Hunter Biden. You know, that was a pretty prolific interview. Thank you. And he was like for about six hours. Yeah, it was quite an interview It was very long And then he basically insinuated in the podcast that Epstein introduced Melania to Trum through some modeling contract. And that was a claim that was made by biographer Michael Wolf, who knew have seen 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. Michael Wolf has? Yeah, because I mean they threatened to sue so backing up So I published this claim that Hunter Biden made. And we should say for legal reasons at this point that Melania Trump denies that she was introduced I don't know if tr' 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 And there is a picture of them together, right? Yes. There's a photo of So Aonalold, Melania and Epstein, I think yeah Yeah, so she anything other than they were in a room together. So she sends him a legal demand letter saying, if you don't get Andrew Callahghan to remove your interview from YouTube I'm going sue you for one billion dollars and name Andrew Callahghan as a plaintiff for whatever the word is. What did that feel like when you got that letter? Awesome It was epic. I'm like, o 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 in Indianaelt like Youud'd made it. Yeah, dude, it's awesome You know,'s little moments like that. likeike this moment where you're like, Dam I'm not even thirty yet I'm getting to do some pretty cool stuff. I'm thinking of suing is is a classic kind of complepletely meaningless statement I'm thinking of suing, you know, like it was a cease and desist It was okay, whichich to me is like one you familiar Not really. 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 filestanding. It's kind of ye, but it's typically like a doom and gloom letter like from a bully lawyer I never fold tiny cease and desist letters typically because'm because like I do the Afan thing, where I weaponize the Sticeand effect. Because when people su the Aran thing Every man whos bigak it was because I got high, which was a banger. than you I don't know why I said, thank you. I' as an American, thank you for appreciating our culture. People say we have no culture, look at that from. Exactly. So the Stryand effect, you know, is 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 ability. So that's what you did with the Millennia letter. That's what I do with every legal threat now So what happens next with Melania? Nothing. She just, I mean, she issued like an unprovoked public statement in the White House recently that was like, by the way, Epstein did not say to my husband. Yeah. I met him that was kind of perfect too in a way. Yeah. It was so, everyveryone's saying this thing and it's not true. like wait, wait what are they saying? Yeah That was a stisened Yeah, that big time Oh, the Streiceand effect, I've been misusing that term Okay That was why I was confused. I sorry. I don't I've just heard people say the Streisand effect. The Streisand effect is when Barbara Streisen tried to remove Google Maps had pictures of her house and she said, I want you to remove them And She she kicked up a fuss. and as a result, everyone looked at the pictures of her house When you try to suppress something and draw attention to it instead. So it would be like if I went online and was like, anyyone' saying I'm gay? Yeah I'm. Stop saying I'm pedophile. who' saying that? you' what? Okay, I gu I'm not. That's my point. 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 I think that might be Judo The Judo effect I think so. that's where you use someone's strength as their weakness. they come at you and then you sidestep Yeah throw them. So their strength becomes a disadvantage too. And it works for us because half of like theillgal 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 going to get a letter and it's going to 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's not true at all. the streamers Cavicular on. That is such a normy. That's a very twenty ten take. That was my My time. When did that change? 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. Exactly ragebaiting, trigger coating. Yeah, even like Nick Fuentz who sort of used a lot of those techniques because I was going to say, well, you might still not want to play with the idea that you're actually an abuser or a paedophile, but Nick Fuentz is actually selling, I think, and certainly wearing Jeffrey Epstein branded sh. Yeah. He's also said before that like Epstein was epic and wasn't a pedophile. Yeah. I mean, I think the thing about ragebaiting is whenever you ragebait, 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 There's a Mike Cerovich, I'm sure he didn't come up with it, but he was sort of Manisphere before Manisphere was a thing In the sort of twenty fifteen, sixteen era, I think And his thing was like, a conflict tention, attention creates I don't know you can monetize it, I guess. but you've got to stop with the conflict provrooke outrage. 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 sirt lime juice into my eyes and run naked through shopping malls We hope, but we'll do that if we absolutely have to So I think we came up doing stuff like that, maybe. Yeah, I mean, we're 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. Well, I mean back in the day I did do that. I think your earliest work had like a sprinkle of more satire in it than it does now. And my early work had more like I don't want to say like a more of a ous attitude, but I would definitely look into the camera like Jim from the office and I would definitely apply crash zooms to people and it felt like the people are sometimes the butt of the joke and that's changed. This episode is brought to you by Shopify When you're starting a new venture, support is everything Which is why you should lean on Shopify tools to design an eye catching website reaches customers y is the ultimate business partner built in support system And you don't have to be a design pro to make an awesome online store that matches your brand There's hundreds of templates for you to use Fi even has commerce experts to help you out so you can stress less and start growing See why businesses like Gyms Shark Continue to trust Shopify. Sign up for your one dollar per month trial today at shhopify. com slash Louis L O U I S That's shhopify d. com slash Louis Let's talk about what happened. Okay. You ready? Yeah, do that. I'm down to talk about anything. Okay. so right, twenty twenty two, your movie comes out on HBO. Yeah, yeah. this place rules. It's excellent Turbocharged what you'd been doing, knitted it into a narrative. it felt more prestige, but every bit is crazy. like you did a great job with it And then not long or a few weeks later on TikTok, I think a woman makes a serious allegation of feeling Um, that have 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. Is that true And another woman said that He attempted to put his hands down my pants and I was fighting him during this and then A few others and then there was a more serious one Yeah later where two women ye said that they actually felt their consent had been violated Um, You did a statement. You said you acknowledged that they might have felt pressure. Was that the phrase? 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 hfs just say, takeake accountability And so I didn't feel that what was going on made any sense certainly didn't match up with my live 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. I record that statement because I felt 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, Ohh, you admitted to it. but I just tried to do what I could to do the right thing and took some time off There are kind of there's a certain template. Yeah And I'm not comparing in terms of how serious it was trruthfully I don't know. Yeah. But it felt like it didn't meet evidently either didn't meet or didn't reach the criminal standard, right? So it was in this area of Um 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 Beuse 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. 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 amend privately because accountability looks like making amends with an individual Not necessarily. advocating for yourself to a bunch of supporters who've 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 and what I've learned since then, that was trying to get me on the hook for more. So 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. Is there a takeaway for you like many? I think the biggest mistake that I made was engaging romantically and sexually with fans I was twenty two years old living on the road. And what I would do when I got to a new town, I had just gotten famous online. and I would go to a new town. I'd post my location. You were literally living in an RV at this time. And so what I would do out of loneliness or desire for companionship and know experperience. I go to a new town post my location, like who wants to hang out? Sometimes I post a bar location two hundred and fifty 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 years Really? 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 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 considerative 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 twenty two year old internet celebrity Uh, What do you call that time? Like would you call it being canceled or I don't know, man, it's hard to say because my audience is bigger now than it was then. What happened with your movie? It's still online. Where is it? I couldn't find it On HBO, but not in the UK.alt They halted distribution for international. For that reason you were considered a tarnished brand. Yeah, it was radioactive. Did you get messages from your collaborators? 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 after where 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 going to be totally fine. We'll handle this. My agent said the same thing. But when she hit the fan and when the press picked it up, yeah, they all disappeared overnight. There was no parting words, no tough love, just a total evaporation of everyone that I worked with How did you feel about that? Terrible What would you have done in that position? 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. L 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 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, peoplee 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 come back and been like, I'm sorry. I panicked, I choked. Really? yeah. almost all of them But that's now in retrospect where it's not dangerous to be my friend. Apparently infoWars reached out. Yeah, Info worords arent for me a job a week later That's what people don't understand about cancellation and cancel culture. Yeah. 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 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 many instances of people who G on Dan Chaelle, 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. We jokingly call it the cancel verse that you pass through the, you know, whatever that barrier is Yeah and you emerge on the other side and And there's Russell, and I don't mean to trivialize it. No, no. But And you go to Mar a Lago and you can chill with Eric Trump. right? 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, because 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 know, into the arms of the right and they'll take care of you and they'll you 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 You did have a little chemistry with Alex Jones. Thank you, man. Did't you though? Yeah, he's pretty easy to get along with. unless you're like I would have loved to have you in his stabable Absolutely. It would have been perfect because I would have been like the kid who like came up through liberal media and got spit out because 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 That would have been the red pill could have taken it Did you see things any differently afterwards? Yeah In what way? I mean, I just only to be around people as much as I used to be very careful about who I spend time with. I definitely don't want to work with any studios That's for sure. Why not? 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 your success and like your trajectory in life Like if I produce Deer Kelly and I rele Steer 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 vald on you. you know, and being a journalist You piss people off So when you made dear Kelly How did you make that one then? I just edited it myself out of an office in Las Vegas, my first office off the old Fremont strip, putut it out on, you know. Dear Kellyfilm. com and yeah, like it was one of the highest grossing independent self distributed films of documentaries ever. How did you distribute it? Just on the website. Really? Paywall, yeah. And it did more in revenue in numbers than this place gls Should we talk numbers? Yeah, sure It got seventy five thousand rentals in the first two months. What is that in money terms, that times five fifty five plus a dollar fifty twoents processing fee So they could ended up with merchandise and lifetime purchases around a million dollars 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? Really? Yeah. So then you come back and in fact As you said, like you've been doing some great work like documentaries and Interviews You scored like Hunter Biden. Got him. And then recently Clavicular, you interviewed Yeah. And he seemed to get annoyed with you. 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 dayat to, like, I wasn't setting him up for any kind of gotchy moment. It didn't feel that you were. It felt like he got annoyed And then you got annoyed that he was annoyed. Well, just at the end he's like this a shitty interview. this shy interview. youven' ask me any questions about looks, maxing. And in fact, you had asked him quite a bit. What he was trying Like you weren't annoyed ttill the end. You didn't start it annoyed, didid you? No I started it, like, I mean, I was weried out because he wouldn't look at anybody in the eye. maybe on the spectum 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 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. So he's a looks, Mat. Does everyone know who he is? do you think? The Normi? No Clavicular, AK Bradden Peters is a twenty two year old New Jersey man who is one of the most popular streamers on a platform called Kick And he promotes Lsmaxing, which involves peptide injections, Botide you go to a different mode? Well, I'm just trying to explain to people He believes in non FDA non CDC approved methods of improving your physique to be more attractive to women, not necessarily to have sex with them, but to raise your value and your ROI life. That was his brand, but he was a streamer and then he went viral with his streaming content. So he sort of took over that whatever the place in the culture that Whether it was Sneako or Andrew Tate, in a matter of months, he just blew up. And it's important to note that Cavicular discovered Lxmaxing on in cell forums during COVID That's basically the most important thing of it in lockdown during puberty. during which in a moment of isolation confusion and hormonal rage found on NL forms, PSL forms. out about this Pick up artist hate, slut hate and looks ny Which is the three tiers of the incel community And so he found out about Lookx Max in because he was insecure about his acne and his face and his I guess bone structure and muscle mass. Also, he DMmed me to collaborate. just put. 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 do the interview. He damMed me out of nowere I was like, yo, what up? And like asked for a number. So he knew who I was. Even though he pretended he's like, you're from Channel F five, right? Channel five Fort Lauderdale. You guys are part of the mainstream media. And I explained like, no, it's a joke. We're not channel five We all gas no breaks, reframed as general life. And he was like, Holy semantics, man, it's the same shit to me So he was just playing dumb. It's I'm sure there's some picku up artist style like code word for what he was doing similar to nagging. S kind of nagging 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 manipulation techniqu How did it end afterwards I just left More recently You did Nick Shirley, who is Tell the people who Nick Shirley is. 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 these Latter dayay Saints for a small sign up 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 U. S by producing fearmongering content about every oppressed demographic that you can possibly think of, whether it be immigrants, liberals, gay people, whoever it is And he was recently really slem boosted shortly after the first Epstein file drop when he was I guess dispatched after getting tipped off by congressman, a conservative congressman or senator in Minnesota. and he was accusing and allegedly exposing the Somali community in Minneapolis for perpetrating day carecare fraud A couple of days after his video went viral after being signal boosted and shared by Elon Musk and JD Vance, the Feds move in IC began operation Metrosurge in Minneapolis shortly after his peiece 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. you know, where Shirley goes, sweeps follow So I expect themation sweeps really seemed a legit story in the sense that New York Times did a follow up coverage with that actually there was systematic abuse of of the system in Minneapolis You know, I'm just saying like it' of course there probably was a problem with you know a small community in Minnesota taking money from the federal goverment and not using it how they were supposed to. But why is this report being boosted? you have to ask those questions and you have to look at things sequentially when you're looking at any N Sly piece because he's wrapped up and tied in with the GOP. So 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 feel the immigrants were eating pets. I mean that's a lie. But sometimes it's just something that's as you say, been amplified Yeah and strategically deployed weaponized as a pretext for driving policy. Yeah, they'll se is an anecdotal story and just absolutely coverage blast it from Nick Shirley to Fox News to everybody else Do I think Nick Shirley is inherently a bad, hateful person? No think so He's a twenty one or twenty two year old kid who I met when he was filming his first YouTube video at the Turny Point USA confonference in twenty twenty three groomed and put into a world he's not even aware of why it was created. if that makes sense. Yeah, these sort of algorithmic like worlds and the world of reactionary right wing street content, L 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 Streamers or YouTubers? 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 Rumble and parlor and truth social You know, 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 mased up undercover. That's when you saw like u video is about like the collapse of San Francisco or the fall of England really start to 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. 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. peopleeople are miserable community collapse has gotten to a point now where only nineteen percent 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 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 Auroma Colorado or fraud. in Minnesota, which was more true than the others, or, you know Portlanders, you know, on Mayay Wearing black box Throwing You know W waterater balloons full of paceic cs, all these things Going back to your point about divisive content and being controlled by deliberately enticing, misleading or overe emphasized stories. It was pre twenty sixteen. 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 control farms in Eastern Europe, I think putting up fake content. and then it was Trump then adopted the term fake news and sort of Judoed it back on totally. The guys who'd come up with it. Judo effect. Judo effect, bigig time. Would you interview Trump, have you tried? I would, but I don't think he would do it What about Bannon? Yeah, 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 know, I'd want to make sure that I came in swinging and didn't give them a softball Not swinging, but swinging in the Louuther Ro sense. Thank you. You know what I mean? Liket My sense is taking your clothes off and saying you want to party. Yeah. But you can swing and you know, I've obviously learned from you a lot, like without them knowing it which is crucial U Thank you. You're far the opposite of appears Morgan What would you ask Trump That's a really good question, man So many things But I don't know. that he's so good at interviews ' very rare that someone gets the better of him Uh Yeah, famously U Sasha Baron Cohen interviewed him as Alie G and Trump kind of rumbled him Yeah ice cream gloves say. Yeah. You remember that? That was people say that's the only person that he could control. Yeah. I'm sure there's been 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? music music Good ants are so good. I still think about that one. I'm like, God, dadn. He was then that one. 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 got be you know, a little busy, I need to go and do something. Yeah. I think that if I were to document Trump, I'd want like a day at Marl 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 I ran war workstation in the basement and just having your buddies who are The FBI and National Security director is like pulling up and you're like coming off the golf course with an ice tea or aiet peepsi and you're like, All right, fellowas, what are we getting into today I think less so than what he would actually say to me, the atmosphere of that situation and scene or what I would find most interesting to capture My thing used to be that he's like one of those people who 's so self contained almost like a black hole that you sort of need to see the distorting effect, like an 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, mayaybe with Trump there And I just ask her questions and then sort of kind of see what was happening between them Yeah, Baron could be pretty good too You kind of you could follow Barnd around NYU kind of like you did the Fred Philips daughter. Yeah, you know. You'd be like you need a ladder. He's like seven feet tall. Yeah. So we Where we are now, there's been this strange fragmentation of the MGa movement, right? Yeah. It feels like from my perspective, having unleashed divisive content, whether through the algorithms You don't call it free speech call it amplification of division Yeah And then this final boss taboo of anti Semitism, suddenly MagGa was like, o, well, that one's not okay. L we're okay with demonizing immigrants and we're okay with you know, misogyny and homophobia, but suuddenly there's a split Some people want to keep going and they embrace full anti Semitism. 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 feeleels like it's probably the end of movement maybe the Trump era because of that, att least partly because of that. Yeah, I think that Trump has lost the G Z and younger, right You know, they're totally anti Zionist borderline anti Semitic in every way because they can't see nuance in anything. And yeah, so definitely antiemitic. certainly. and that's a big problem too. But I think that The only Trump supporters would be young Zionists, the dwindling Ben Shapiro audience, probably. and then just boomers who just are kind of stuck in their ways. Yeah, it's been interesting. I read a thing about how Ben Shapiro's ratings have Yeah really created. Yeah, because of Israel. I mean because of his unstinting support for Israel and that now these young right wing Republicans who were rooting for Trump And now they like Fuentz, a lot of them like Fuentz and they're very skeptical of support for Israel? Well, I mean, yeah, but it's I try not have to be cynical here, but so many of those people just don't care about Palestine They just recognized that the tides were shifting against Israel about Palestine at all? 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. B the way Jews suck ass. And you can tell this for 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. you anyone specific all of those guys you just mentioned Right. But I only mentioned Fwinters, I think. Anybody in that sphere. You think Tucker Carlson? Yeah, o my Godd. he's just late to the party. Tucker Carlson is the ultimate Ppaga scriptter. You know, he is the face of Fox News' 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 Well, you know what? Like if I don't turn on Israel, I'm probably gonna lose most of my support base. And so just realized that I gott to start being like, let's ask questions. They're attacking Christians in Jerusalem, which makes me think as an American, I don't want to support these people. You know, Is you trying to say you one step ahead of the right wing herd by finding a new demon. It's like it's getting 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 It a new frontier of divisiveness. I mean, I think that for one, Fuentes was hammering him because after october seventh, Tucker spent maybe a year in, you know, ten days or something being like, you know, Hamas is no different than Al Qaeda. They must be eliminated for the progress of the West or holding society back. You want to be gay there? Good luck. You know, And so I think that now ide has shifted so much and that he has to take that stance. Um I think like I said, he'll be a he'll love Vance when Vance runs But he hates He won't hate Vance when Vance makes friends a carm 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 goingone too far dude, you Epstein's friend. You suck. And then a couple weeks later, you know, he does some type of thing like a Iice raid or something and they're just like, Yeahah, de pour them all. clean the city up. We got many too many illegal aliens' poison in the well. Great replacement. They read the comment sections, they sort of gauge public opinion and they follow public opinion How is your I feel gl we covered a lot trans. I have unlimited time Jesus Um You gave up the RV lifestyle Why U was it just two itinerary? Well, I had to move to L.A to sign the deal for the HBO film and they didn't have an editing staff. Tim Eric didn't. They had a couple 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 Ccellation 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's a mix of a few things. I still take little road trips, but I'm very like, you know, deliberate now Heard you say though that you miss the road trip days, like the fully the fully kind of Yeah, I do. I miss my life days. I miss being young and not so cynical about people and full of adventure and you know, just not not having gone through various experiences of affective 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 hellbent as a nineteen twenty year old to like succeed and do everything and work every day and go everywhere and meet everyone. I wish I would have committed to a more slow growth Oh ye are you very driven? Extremely and I still am. But I'm like, why did I want this so? What was behind that? I have no idea. What did your parents do? When you were growing up? Well they divorced when I was twelve and my dad, like before that I think he was a salesman. And then after that, he like refused to work for anybody. So he was just flipping Mac books on Craigslist Doing some landscaping work in Seattle. Yep. G to your mom She was a hotel Ccierers So you financially secure 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 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 got to 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 in the beach And then I bought a die bar for my dad to run in Seattle Were you a good student? No. I knew what I wanted to do. I always wanted to like be a journalist and 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 becausecause 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 thing that was inside being made to do math homework as like a sixteen year old who just wants to like be kicking at downtown, having new conversations every day. W wasasn't something I really cared for. You've talked about having a medical condition, yes. Sort of. What's it called U HPPD, hallucinogen persisting perception disorder. So that just came from frying my brain on shrooms when I was like fourteen You know, You must have had a lot of shrooms. 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 shrims of Liberty Cps, which is a regular amount of shrims to take But you're not supposed to take psychedelics until your brain has developed describe what happened So right now, if I'm looking around at you, I see visual snow everywhere right now and my entire visual field. Still like a TV screen with stand.. Is it a problem? No, because I've had it for longer than I've. ot had it now. Actually, I'm twenty nine now, so I got it when I was fourteen,. It's not diminishing. But you forget about it because it's just spend so much time. So 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 they had worked. I would have been susceptible to like any kind of new age medical misinfo at that time. But thankfully that hadn't fully formed like it had today. that industry, information economy. ye Deinitely alcohol. That's why I started drinking so much as a young person. becausecause that was what helped the most Around fifteen, just, you know, stopped smoking weed and just would drink after school. Do you still drink? Yeah 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 Mosphere, so I've observed it you know, at ground level, but what I haven't really observed It's how it works, you know in the offices of the corporate barons 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 U, sterile offices and pllausible seeming Business people, right But I guess my question would be How do you hold those people to account? And 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 two ways of looking at it or more than two And it's hard to figure out a way through 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 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 toottally 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 five hundred or five thousand will also have access to the same tools, The mistakes that we've made as a generation, Gen Z and mean everything that comes after it, Gen Alpha is probably going to be even worse will inform the way future generations interact with technology The thing is our neuro circuitry doesn't change really we have this evolutionary endowment. that's adapted to you know, the conditions of millennia ago, you know, same reason we Too much fat and sugar is like we thought Ill get plenty of that because you won't get it again thinking that we'rere just hunting caribou out on the Savannah. Do you know what I mean? I didn't know that it makes sense. Yeah. I don't think you can hunt Caribou in the savanah. I think Caribou are reindeer and they live in Northern Canada. I think the metaphor is effective regardless of species. Okay, 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 Will we make it illegal to have phones? Wellill they have government guys going into I need to see your algorithms, sir, because we've had reports that they're you know what I mean? 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, okay, it's after five PM. It family over there and they have phones after four o'clock. likeike they're weird. Do you know what I mean? Like tootally. Social type of enforcement. Well but also, you know, I have a theory that when so J Alpha. which is the current fifteen year old, sixteen year olds, supppposedly have like the lowest literacy rate. They're not even doing homework because of chat GPT 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 GenX hates cable TV because their baby boomer parents are essentially overdosing on NCIS rebruns all the time I think Jen 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 are were too distracted by it to care about them So I would just imagine twenty fifty Maybe love hope. 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 going to have a watershed moment. Oh my God. we have the songbird of a generation here is going to shepher us into an era We don't have a figure like that We're done for now But humanity isn't done We just need be more careful in the future to rethink how we interact with each other, especially online. Dude, I feel like we could We could go for another two hours, but that's not the format But thank you for coming by. Yeah, man What's going on tonight U tonight I've got a screening of my documentary The setettlers at the Frontline Club. You're welcome to come along if you're around. I would love to. And we're back Thank you for watching or listening wherever you get your podcasts. U some housekeeping The quote I attributed to Mike Serovich. The manosphere influence I got it slightly wrong. It was confflict 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 U He's profiled in the in a great New Yorker piece in twenty sixteen by Andrew Morantz So check that out, mayaybe we'll link to it Some legal notes Okay Are you ready 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 capapitol in twenty twenty one. Okay, Donald, if you're listening You'd never know, it's not impossible. It's unlikely. Baron would be more likely. even that seems quQuite unlikely Regarding the first out, welcome to the chat, Baron. Hi Baron. Come on the pod Regarding the first allegation made against Andrew in twenty twenty three The alleged victim sent Andrew a message offering him an opportunity to quote contribute to the massive amounts of therapy bills I have accrued due to the night you coerced me endnd 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 dot com slash resources Okay. That's it for this week apart from 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 Di Oolivera. The executive producer was Aaron Fellows. This is a Mindhouse stududios production for Spotify business partner in support system And you don't have to be a design pro to make an awesome online store is your brand Hundreds of templates for you to use. Shopify even has commerce experts to help you out so you can stress less rowing see why businesses like Gymhark Continue to trust Shopify. signign up for your one dollar per month trial today at Sopify. com Lash Louis L O U I S That's shhopify d. com slash Louis