Introducing 'Rabbit Hole'

[0] Earlier today on the Daily, we played the introduction of our new series, Rabbit Home.

[1] Now, episode one.

[2] Take a spin now you're in with the techno set.

[3] You're going surfing on the internet.

[4] It's another day in the life of the Jamiesons.

[5] Maybe a family a little bit like yours.

[6] Except it's not really just another day.

[7] Today's the day I'm taking my family surfing around the world on the internet.

[8] It's cool.

[9] That's finally installed the internet on our home computer.

[10] I can surf the net anytime.

[11] Test test way.

[12] Is this a state line?

[13] I just saw the West Virginia Welcome Center.

[14] Wild, wonderful West Virginia with Jim Justice.

[15] Well, the governor's name is Jim Justice.

[16] I feel like the campaign signs like make themselves.

[17] Vote justice.

[18] Okay, so just like tell me the story and I'll poke you along the way.

[19] Okay.

[20] This is our accent here.

[21] So last year.

[22] You and I hopped in a car.

[23] Can you just in the time we have here?

[24] Can you just tell me like, what are, like, what are you?

[25] What are you up to today, and what are you hoping to find out?

[26] To meet this guy.

[27] His story is really interesting.

[28] So he says that he was radicalized through YouTube videos and spent several years and becoming progressively more extreme in his politics.

[29] After this shooting in New Zealand last March, there was a lot of talk about online radicalization.

[30] The shooter was a white nationalist who clearly, spent a lot of time in far -right internet communities.

[31] I've been looking for a good case study of how it happens to just one person, what that path looks like.

[32] And I kept hearing over and over again from sources I was talking to in this world.

[33] Like, you have to look at YouTube.

[34] There are elements of it that seem very familiar to me and some that don't seem so familiar.

[35] So we're going to have them walk us through it.

[36] This is just missed our turn.

[37] I was so excited about this that I was.

[38] I missed my turn.

[39] So we drove down to West Virginia where he lives.

[40] Hey, how's it going?

[41] All right, great.

[42] He's standing right there.

[43] He's on his headphones.

[44] Big smile.

[45] Nice to meet you guys.

[46] Hi.

[47] Andy.

[48] This is Andy.

[49] I'm going to stick a microphone around you.

[50] That's fine.

[51] He's got a gorilla's t -shirt on.

[52] He says hi and brings us into his friend's house.

[53] Hi, I'm Kevin.

[54] Nice to meet you.

[55] Thank you for letting us crash your house here.

[56] And the first thing he does is...

[57] I'm going to just sit this over here.

[58] Can you describe what it is that you're setting down?

[59] A Glock 43.

[60] Pull out his gun.

[61] Is that the first time you've had a gun?

[62] I've liked firearms my whole life.

[63] I'm not against firearms.

[64] But yeah, that's...

[65] I've always been like, well, I don't really need one.

[66] But then the day after I got death threats, went out and bought one.

[67] Oh, man. I'll probably never have to use it.

[68] These guys usually just, like, send SWAT teams to your house and shit like that.

[69] But, you know, it's just to be safe.

[70] Yeah.

[71] Where should we sit?

[72] Where's the best place for us to...

[73] Eventually, we go over, we sit on the couch.

[74] Give me a little test here?

[75] Oh, sure.

[76] Testing, one, two, three.

[77] Do you're going.

[78] And he starts telling what begins, like, a pretty relatable and familiar story.

[79] So, can you just start, like, tell us your name and how old you are?

[80] Yeah, my name's Caleb Kane.

[81] I'm 26 years old.

[82] I was born in Florida, but I grew up here in West Virginia.

[83] When did you move to West Virginia?

[84] My mother had me with some...

[85] man that I never met and then she like immediately left Florida I guess I don't know all the details there he had kind of a rough childhood as he describes it got raised by my grandparents didn't really have a lot of friends what were you like as a kid um really shy and nerdy picked on on the bus didn't really feel like you fit in going to high school was hell I hated it I saw everybody's conformist like a lot of teenagers he got really into video games so Zelda was a big one donkey Kong and then he discovered freshman year of high school is when whenever I got high -speed internet.

[86] The internet.

[87] I don't know what I would have done without the internet.

[88] This thing is awesome.

[89] It was like an escape.

[90] And the internet is a revolution for him, because finally, that's when I started playing a lot of online video games.

[91] Oh shit, in the window of house.

[92] We're lonely.

[93] He finds people who are like him.

[94] People all over the country, all over the world.

[95] Oh, that was so good, man. Oh, nice.

[96] I met a lot of friends.

[97] He grew up so quickly.

[98] And he develops this new routine, where, like, every day, he comes home from school, gets on his computer.

[99] All of Duty, too.

[100] Plays a bunch of video games.

[101] And then, later at night, I'd turn on YouTube.

[102] He goes on YouTube.

[103] And YouTube at the time, it was mostly viral videos and comedy sketches.

[104] This was, like, you know, early, early YouTube.

[105] You need to relax.

[106] Stay up all night and watch, like.

[107] and bust up laughing.

[108] If Caleb didn't feel like he fit in in high school, in his sort of physical surroundings, and the categories are.

[109] YouTube was the place that he felt most at home.

[110] You're speaking to be very deeply here.

[111] Yeah, exactly.

[112] I experienced this too.

[113] Like, I was not cool in high school, and I remember the internet kind of being a place that you would go to, like, escape.

[114] Yeah.

[115] And it was sort of nicer than your, your real life in some cases.

[116] You're right.

[117] It was nicer back then.

[118] Were you political at the time?

[119] Political in like a very surface -level sense, right?

[120] Like anti -authority and like, you know, most of my politics as a teenager came from like Dead Kennedys.

[121] And this is Michael Moore.

[122] I am here to make a citizen's arrest.

[123] Michael Moore documentaries, and that influenced me a lot.

[124] I mean, I wish that CNN and the other mainstream media would just for once tell the truth.

[125] truth about what's going on in this country whether it's so there was very much that that punk rock influence inside of me he also got really into these new atheist videos when i say that i think religion poisons everything i remember watching like christopher hitchins on youtube i mean to say it infects us in our most basic integrity you'd get old uploads for me what matters is the truth of like a richard dawkins speech there is nothing special about the bible oh i remember these videos They felt like kind of scandalous at the time.

[126] Right.

[127] They felt subversive.

[128] They felt like watching people say the uncomfortable thing.

[129] God is good and loving and just, and he wanted to guide us morally with a book.

[130] Why give us a book that supports slavery?

[131] By today's standards, obviously, like, this is extremely tame.

[132] But at the time, like, this was pretty edgy stuff.

[133] So this would have been like early Obama years, right?

[134] Yeah, early Obama years.

[135] Did you like Obama or what did you feel about him?

[136] I liked him.

[137] I didn't know much about him because I didn't look into actual politics, so I didn't know what he was doing.

[138] But yeah, I liked him.

[139] I thought, yeah, we have a black president.

[140] That's cool.

[141] Like, you know, first black president making progress.

[142] What year was it that you went to college?

[143] And then he goes off to college.

[144] And college, like, just doesn't really take for him.

[145] I wanted to go and do like an environmental major.

[146] and I didn't have a good time.

[147] Most of the time I'd stay in my room.

[148] Even on nice days when people were out on the quad throwing frisbee's, I'd sit in my room and play video games.

[149] And then there was also some embarrassing moment where I got in a fight with this kid on campus and kind of got laughed off of campus.

[150] And that night, I freaking left.

[151] Because I wasn't going to class anyway.

[152] And I just withdrew from my classes and I left.

[153] And I came back to West Virginia.

[154] So he moves back into his grandparents and there, like, he doesn't have much to do.

[155] doesn't have a job.

[156] He doesn't really have a direction.

[157] Just me in a room and a bed.

[158] He spent a lot of time.

[159] Slept a lot.

[160] Feeling depressed.

[161] Sit in my basement and just be like so freaking down.

[162] At one point, he even loses his gaming computer.

[163] My gaming computer got stolen, by the way, which really fucking drove me up a wall.

[164] And so now I didn't even have video games.

[165] Now I have a crappy little computer that can hardly run anything.

[166] But it can run YouTube.

[167] Whoa, that's a full rainbow.

[168] And so now he's in his...

[169] early 20s, he's living his grandparents' house.

[170] And he feels like at this time in his life, when he should be, like, finding his way, should be starting a career and thinking about having a family.

[171] Instead, he's just watching YouTube.

[172] All we know is how little we know.

[173] And then...

[174] The human brain is a network of approximately 100 billion neurons.

[175] I found a document called God is in the neurons.

[176] When we grow up, our moral and ethical compass is almost entirely forged by our environment.

[177] About like cognitive dissonance and like how you can fall into patterns of behavior and since you have neuroplasticity, that you can get out of those patterns of behavior.

[178] When we are self -aware, we can alter misplaced emotions because we control the thoughts that cause them.

[179] So I got in this mindset of, oh, my brain is just like this tool that I can shape into whatever I want.

[180] And then he stumbles into this emerging, wing of YouTube and so I started just going through self -help content self -help videos what dream or vision do you want to turn into reality all of our success and failure in life comes from a little decision cheesy stuff to be honest with you the process of conditioning ourselves actually feels incredible like Tony Robbins and stuff every mind possesses the potential to be utterly free of all the Zen Buddhism stuff we want to change our consciousness they're like people with advice specifically for You continue to do those same behaviors that keep you from making the change.

[181] Guys like Caleb.

[182] And then...

[183] To be truly free.

[184] It's both very easy and very hard.

[185] I found Steph.

[186] But we can only be kept in the cages we refuse to see.

[187] So Stefan Molinu is this Canadian libertarian, formerly a historian and an entrepreneur.

[188] And then he sort of became like a podcaster guy.

[189] Good.

[190] Good morning, everybody.

[191] It's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.

[192] I hope that you're doing very well.

[193] Steph just was in the sidebar one day, and I clicked on it.

[194] You really have to open the often iron -bound doors of your heart.

[195] When YouTube, sort of early in its life, removed its 15 -minute limit on how long videos could be, he just started pumping out our two -hour -long shows called Free Domain Radio.

[196] The approach that we take at Free Domain Radio, the sort of philosophical, Socratic approach that we take, can be very, very helpful for you.

[197] Where he would expound on philosophical ideas.

[198] Philosophy is the all discipline.

[199] It covers everything.

[200] And that's why, to me, it is the most exciting and fundamental.

[201] And Stefan Molyneux is telling him things that, you know, make him feel better.

[202] He's saying this depression that you're going through, it's not permanent.

[203] Things will get better.

[204] And that a lot of the disillusionment and pain that young men like Caleb are facing is not actually their fault.

[205] From the perspective of a young man, to take a brief look at society, It's the fault of society.

[206] I mean, you get, of course, on -demand pornography.

[207] You get video games that are unbelievably realistic, absorbing, and addictive.

[208] And what else do they have to look forward to?

[209] Well, they can get themselves involved in higher education and graduate an average of $25 ,000 in debt to a job market that is pretty stagnant or declining.

[210] You've seen real wages.

[211] He finds a lot of what he's saying pretty sensible.

[212] The college students are damn right to be depressed.

[213] Their society is unsustainable because nobody's.

[214] asking the fundamental questions about why the society is the way it is, why things are so bad.

[215] I was like, yeah, yeah, that's true.

[216] And he's not just talking at people.

[217] He invites people to send him questions.

[218] I have had a number of requests to do a podcast on how to meet a nice girl because there are a lot of people out there.

[219] He invites them into his life.

[220] He would talk about how he grew up.

[221] I was interested in morality from a very early age.

[222] I was physically, emotionally, and mentally abused.

[223] And he's talked about how he was so much better now.

[224] I have consistently said, if you have problems with your parents, talk to a therapist.

[225] And he had went to therapy, and his life had improved.

[226] Before we met, Christina had spent quite some time working on herself.

[227] And he had a wife who would come on stream with him.

[228] It struggled with the previous relationship.

[229] He has his wife on his channel, and they talk about their life together.

[230] Watching my daughter learn how to make jokes, finding out what is funny for her, what is not funny for her, Why?

[231] Like, I just, I want to kiss her hair all day, just because that's, you know, I say, I must kiss your brain.

[232] Talks about how much he loves his daughter.

[233] I was like, I want all that stuff.

[234] I want a family like that.

[235] Why?

[236] Because that's what I want in my whole life.

[237] I just wanted a stable family.

[238] And I thought, well, if I just keep watching more and more, I'll be like stuff.

[239] Hi, everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.

[240] Hi, everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux.

[241] Hi, it's Defend Maloney.

[242] Hi, everybody.

[243] It's Defend Maloney.

[244] I hope you're doing very much.

[245] And for Caleb.

[246] You got a happiness without responsibility.

[247] Stefan Malinu, his voice.

[248] and his videos become a source of stability for him.

[249] There are very specific things that people need to do to be happy.

[250] And Caleb says that all this stuff that he's watching on YouTube, like, it's actually helping.

[251] He started working at Dairy Clean.

[252] He gets a new job.

[253] And then I started, like, getting over a lot of my social anxiety because now I'm forced to interact with people, and I'm also hanging out with all these high school kids.

[254] He starts to feel like things are picking up for him, finally.

[255] And after that, I mean, it was just more and more of that.

[256] So the problem is not that we don't know how to think.

[257] I was pretty much always on YouTube.

[258] He's watching not only like the self -help stuff from Stefan Molyneux.

[259] He starts getting pretty into Joe Rogan.

[260] Joe Rogan.

[261] He is the man. The biggest podcast, YouTube talk show guy that there is on the internet.

[262] Thank you very much for coming by, man. This is cool as fuck.

[263] But back then was just starting to experiment with, uploading his interviews to YouTube.

[264] Anthony Bourdain is with us, ladies and gentlemen.

[265] He just keeps watching and watching and watching.

[266] And watching.

[267] If I wasn't at work, any single moment that I had, I was watching YouTube videos.

[268] This is episode 500.

[269] Probably at that point, 10, 12, 13, 14, 40.

[270] 14 hours a day.

[271] I sound like a crazy person, but that's what I would do.

[272] And when Caleb talks about watching YouTube videos during this period in his life, he talks about experiencing this as the sensation of falling.

[273] But the thing that he doesn't even really know to think about is that on the other side of his screen, there's a force that's pulling him in.

[274] and that force has to do with a French guy named Guillaume.

[275] Guillaume, hello, this is Kevin.

[276] Hey, how are you?

[277] Doing well, how are you?

[278] Great.

[279] Who, even though they've never met...

[280] So, yeah, I think everything is ready here.