#995 - Jon Ronson

[0] Three, two, one.

[1] John Ronson, welcome back.

[2] Joe, it's good to be back.

[3] It's good to see you again.

[4] It's very good to be back.

[5] What's happening, man?

[6] How you've been?

[7] I've been good.

[8] You've been floating around this neighborhood.

[9] Yeah, I've spent a year on porn sets.

[10] Just research.

[11] Just research.

[12] It did.

[13] It was a lot.

[14] My wife did say to me once or twice, do you really have to go to another porn set?

[15] I've just finished making a series for all.

[16] audible called the butterfly effect and the flap of the butterfly's wings, which I'm tracing throughout the series, is this young man called Fabian, who's like a tech nerd in Brussels, and he has the idea to get rich from giving the world free porn, so free streaming porn.

[17] So the series is about the kind of tech takeover of porn in the valley.

[18] Doesn't he know that that's already real?

[19] Free porn's everywhere.

[20] Yeah, no, that was back in the day.

[21] I was like in the 90s.

[22] Oh.

[23] So Fabian gave the world porn hub.

[24] Okay.

[25] So it's fiction.

[26] No, no, this is all true.

[27] So, okay, let me go back.

[28] Okay.

[29] So in the 90s, this kid called Fabian would like, Fabian Tillman, so a young boy in Brussels, like a tech nerd, would like go on compi serve and swap porn password.

[30] So get porn for free, which is how people got porn for free back in the 90s.

[31] and then he had like a sort of eureka moment which is I can I can give the world YouTube for porn So he bought up this fledgling company in Montreal called it was called MAMCEF at the time It was run by these two brothers up in Montreal And they had just invented Porn Hub Fabian bought up Porn Hub And then kind of overnight single -handedly took over the value that it's an extraordinary story this massive flow of money went from where we are now in the valley a community of people who were making pretty good money from porn the money just flowed into Fabian's pocket because what Fabian did was well look if you're a pornster and you go to a bank and say can I have a checking account do you say a porn star or a pornster a porn?

[32] Well I said a porn star, but actually there aren't really many porn stars anymore.

[33] If you're a porn person and you go to a bank and you say, can I have a checking account, the bank manager will usually say no, because you're in porn, which means you're disreputable.

[34] Really?

[35] Yes.

[36] Wait a minute.

[37] People like Stoyer have written about this a lot about how they found it really hard to get mortgages, how they found it how to get checking accounts.

[38] But checking accounts, that seems unlikely.

[39] I mean, I would believe that maybe mortgages, they would think that your business is fairly unstable.

[40] That kind of makes sense as far as an investment's concern.

[41] And also the idea that other people, other customers might not like the idea that their high street bank is being shared with somebody who's in porn.

[42] Really?

[43] Yeah, it's called Reputational Risk.

[44] Wow, that seems really dumb to me. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't make any sense at all.

[45] Right, well, sure.

[46] But Fabium was making money from running a site that dealt in the, in piracy.

[47] So basically, fans would upload porn illegally onto Porn Hub.

[48] So Fabium was running a site that was filled with pirated content.

[49] Fabian went to a bank to say, I want to expand.

[50] But because he wasn't ostensibly a porn person, he was a tech person who was deemed to be respectable, this bank gave him a $362 million loan to expand.

[51] to build an empire based in part on the handling of stolen porn.

[52] So we went to the valley who were already kind of paranoid that all their porn was being stolen and put up onto Porn Hub.

[53] And he bought up all the, you know, loads of companies at cut price.

[54] Right.

[55] Because the companies were like panicking and wanted to sell.

[56] And suddenly Fabian just single -handedly like took over porn.

[57] So I want to, and nobody cares about that.

[58] Nobody was thinking about the consequences of that because Fabian was giving the world what they wanted.

[59] which was free porn.

[60] But I was really curious to know, like, well, what were the consequences?

[61] Let me pause there.

[62] You said no one cares about it.

[63] But a lot of people did.

[64] It was a huge issue.

[65] And there was a lot of, like, moral debate around.

[66] About whether streaming porn.

[67] Well, you know, there's a lot of the girls that were in porn that were really pissed off because they weren't making any money anymore.

[68] And there was a lot of social media posts about it, imploring people to stop using these sites, which no one listened to.

[69] Exactly.

[70] I mean, porn people came.

[71] But, you know, porn consumers didn't care.

[72] Well, it was an interesting tech, like a moral tech debate that was going on for a while.

[73] But the debate is lost.

[74] I mean, there was a, it's really interesting because there was a guy who lived down the street from me. And he was a big -time porn producer.

[75] And I actually knew him from my jujitsu class.

[76] And he was a real high -rolling sort of character.

[77] Like, he always had this beautiful Mercedes -Benz.

[78] And he wore these really big watches and a lot of, you know, fancy.

[79] clothes and he was just making just tons of money and he had this beautiful house and he was just this baller character and then it all dried up it all dried up quick yeah it went it all went into phabian's pocket he lost his house his house got repossessed yeah and fabian got so rich because of this like because the money went from your friend's pocket into fabian's pocket fabian got so rich but how's he getting rich off of free streaming so the ads is that what it is partly because of ads but because of ads but Partly because he bought up the paid sites as well.

[80] So, you know, because the paid sites were, like, panicking because they were losing all their money to piracy.

[81] So we just bought up everything.

[82] So he brought up the competition.

[83] He bought up Red Tube.

[84] He bought up U -Porn.

[85] So he brought up all the competition to porn have.

[86] But he also bought loads of paid sites, including like Playboy TV.

[87] So your friend got so poor that his house got repossessed.

[88] Fabian got so rich that he installed in his house an aquarium that was so big that a diver.

[89] had to come every week and dive in and clean the coral reef.

[90] Wow.

[91] You know you're doing well when you get your own diver.

[92] That's weird.

[93] Yeah.

[94] So, yeah, you're right.

[95] Porn people cared a lot, but the outside world didn't care.

[96] Because, you know, the outside world doesn't care when music's getting pirated.

[97] So they show us hell don't care when it's porn.

[98] Well, they care a little bit about the music thing, but the porn thing got almost no traction.

[99] And when the porn industry, essentially, for the most, part collapsed, or at least there was a massive amount of loss.

[100] There was no talk about like some sort of a bailout or anything silly like that.

[101] I was like, no, that industry's gone.

[102] Right, exactly.

[103] Many other industries were bailed out.

[104] And when you look at their headquarters up in Montreal, the company that owned porn, but it's not porny, it's techie.

[105] So you're walking.

[106] Fabian actually said to me quite tellingly, he said, yeah, he said it was amazing.

[107] You wouldn't even know that we were in porn unless you went to the wrong floor.

[108] Now, he seems like a guy who's well aware of his crime.

[109] Yeah, I mean, Fabian would say, if it wasn't me, it would be somebody else.

[110] What does that mean?

[111] That sounds like a good thing to say after you kill somebody.

[112] And he'd say it's progress.

[113] You'd call it progress.

[114] But he's a criminal.

[115] I mean, it's essentially he's lucky that he's dealing in pirated stuff.

[116] Right?

[117] The one time Fabian got annoyed with me, He was quite game.

[118] Like I wanted to interview him and then I wanted to travel to the valley to look at the consequences and trace consequence through to consequence.

[119] Like, where would I end up if I just...

[120] Because I think people don't think about consequences on the internet that much.

[121] They want to just, you know, destroy somebody and then carry on with their day.

[122] So I want to tell a story about consequences.

[123] The only time Fabian got annoyed with me was when either me or Mike Quasor director said to him, you know, you uploaded pirated porn.

[124] And he said, I didn't.

[125] I have never uploaded pirated porn.

[126] I offer a service in which of the people can upload pirated porn.

[127] And if they tell us to take it down, we'll take it down.

[128] But they have to find it.

[129] And also, there's so much fucking free porn on porn.

[130] Yeah.

[131] That it's like cutting down a forest with a butter knife.

[132] It's impossible to, you know, you can, you can say, take down my pirated porn.

[133] They'll say, okay, sorry, fine.

[134] But then there's like a million other people's free porn up there anyway um yeah so uh actually it's funny i don't by the way what i'm about to say shouldn't be construed as me saying that i think that fabian is a psychopath because i don't but that thing about not taking responsibility for your own actions i just remembered i wrote a book a few years ago about psychopaths called the psychopath test and a psychopathic trait is that like if somebody kills somebody in a bar they would say well it's his fault for looking at me funny so failure to accept responsibility for own actions is one of the the 20 items on the psychopath.

[135] Do you think that he's a psychopath or do you think it's some sort of a convenient neglecting of a certain responsibility for what happened?

[136] I don't think Fabian, that was very much a tangential thing because I don't think Fabian is a psychopath at all.

[137] But I think that tech people have created a sort of amoral bubble around themselves.

[138] I talked to the head of Pornhub's mobile division.

[139] So if you've ever watch, he's called Brandon.

[140] If you've ever watched a porn hub on your mobile, you have Brandon to thank.

[141] And I said to Brandon, Brandon said like we never, like 99 % of porn hub employees never set foot on a porn set.

[142] And he said that's good because, you know, we're designing, you know, we're search engine people where, you know, we don't want to say it would be sort of unpleasant to set foot on a porn set.

[143] It would be sort of intimidating and unpleasant.

[144] And I said, well, maybe it would have been good if more pornhood people did set foot on porn sets because you would be able to see the negative consequences of your business plan.

[145] And Brendan went, their livelihood, which again is a very techy thing to say, right?

[146] Because it's all about progress.

[147] Their livelihood?

[148] What does you mean by that?

[149] Like, okay, now you want to talk about their livelihood.

[150] Their livelihood, the people.

[151] But, I mean, they're essentially like a content provider that's not paying for any content.

[152] Yeah.

[153] And yeah.

[154] So, yeah, I just remember the guy called David Lowry, who's a, who's a, he's interested in kind of piracy issue in music.

[155] And he said when we look back on the dystopian movies of the 1930s, when, you know, machines would take over, like Metropolis or something.

[156] Like the moral of the film, like the climax of the film, is when the people, the humans, defeat, say, you know, we're not going to live in a world run by machines, we're going to defeat the machines and human morality will take over.

[157] But now that machines are ruling the world, instead of us defeating the machines, we are adapting our morality to fit in with the machine's capability.

[158] So because it is easy to pirate, instead of saying, let's not pirate, we're just adapting our morality and saying, okay, we can watch pirated porn, it's fine.

[159] Yeah, but it's not as simple as pirating, because pirating.

[160] is what everybody does on, you know, when they're sharing it through message boards or, you know, what have you.

[161] That's sort of pirating, right, when they're uploading it to these websites and servers and stuff.

[162] But what he's doing is massively profiting off of other people's work.

[163] It's a little bit of a more of a gray area.

[164] Yeah, I'd say so.

[165] He's not even gray.

[166] It's kind of dark.

[167] Well, he certainly profited hugely from other people pirating, you know, their first.

[168] favorite porn films onto his site.

[169] Has he been sued?

[170] He got arrested for tax evasion, and that's how he got out of the business eventually, but I think that all got, that all got solved.

[171] I'm not sure if he ever got sued, because if somebody said to him, if somebody said to him, like, take down my, you know, Bad Babysitters Volume 2 is mine.

[172] I say that because I was actually on the set of Bad Babysitters, volume 2.

[173] He'd say, oh, sure, yeah, sorry, of course, and it would go down.

[174] But then maybe somebody else would put it up later that day.

[175] And it didn't matter because everything else was free.

[176] I'll tell you one amazing consequence of all of this, though.

[177] So what I wanted to do in this Audible series, The Butterfly Effect, was to kind of trace the consequences of this.

[178] Like, you know, what was the tornadoes that were being created?

[179] And one amazing consequence is, like, Fabian surrounded himself with tech wizards, like people who knew how the internet worked, including a lot of search engine people.

[180] So instead of making porn films like they made in the 90s, this porn director, Mike Quasar, said to me that the first film he ever made back in the 90s was called Women of Influence.

[181] Now all the porn films have to be easily searchable.

[182] It's like a kind of arms race of search engine optimization, like to get yourself up the Google rankings.

[183] So all the porn films in the voice, Valley.

[184] I aren't called women of influence because how do you search for that?

[185] They're, they basically see what the most popular search terms are and then make films based on that.

[186] So Mike Quazzo was telling me this on the set of the film he was shooting that day, which was stepdaughter cheerleader Orgy.

[187] So I said to, it was just around the corner from here.

[188] So I said to Mike, so they're, because I thought about like women of influence versus is stepdaughter cheerleader Audrey.

[189] Look, I haven't seen women of influence.

[190] So for all I know, the moral of women of influence is that women shouldn't have influence.

[191] But my guess is that women of influence is a more kind of holistic porn film than stepdaughter cheerleader orgy.

[192] So I said to Mike, are there any people in the valley who, like, can't get work because they're just not a keyword?

[193] And Mike went, yeah.

[194] Like every adult porn actress now between the ages of 23 and 29 can't get work because they're not a teen and they're not a milf.

[195] They're like in this sort of fallow period between teen and milf when they're just attractive and just attractive isn't a searchable term.

[196] So if you're not a teen and you're not a milf, if you're like a 26 -year -old adult film actress, you can't get work, you just have to like, well, I said to Mike, what do you do?

[197] Do you just like sit there until you like become a milf and become employable again?

[198] And the answer is they have to find other ways to make money.

[199] So escorting is going through the roof in the valley.

[200] Yeah, because of the tech, because of people like Fabian, because of the tech takeover of porn, escorting's going through the roof.

[201] But also another thing that's going through the roof is this kind of weirdly adorable world of bespoke porn.

[202] Yeah, and that's what the article, what was the publication, who published?

[203] that article?

[204] It was the Guardian.

[205] I did like a written version of one of the episodes of the show.

[206] I just stumbled upon it, you know, knowing that you were going to be here.

[207] I didn't even know you wrote it.

[208] I was reading it.

[209] And as I was reading it, I was like, oh, John wrote this.

[210] Right.

[211] Isn't it what an amazing, did you know about this world?

[212] No. And you're right in porn land here, right in the valley.

[213] So yeah, it's a pretty hidden world.

[214] So fascinating.

[215] Explain what it is.

[216] Like, people literally will request some of the most bizarre things.

[217] Yeah.

[218] And these people will make custom films based on their weird kinks.

[219] Just for them, like a team of professional porn people, because the valley is suffering so much because of porn hub and so on.

[220] Wow.

[221] We'll make an entire porn film just for you.

[222] Now, how much is something like this cost?

[223] Like, say if you want to make a film about girls wearing mutant ninja turtle outfits who kick guys in the balls.

[224] Like, that's entirely possible, right?

[225] Yeah.

[226] Oh, yeah, anything's possible.

[227] But that sounds like something that might actually sell.

[228] Oh, yeah.

[229] Oh, yeah.

[230] They, like a couple of thousand dollars.

[231] That's it?

[232] Yeah.

[233] Cobble grand?

[234] Yeah.

[235] Wow.

[236] I got so obsessed with the world of bespoke porn because it was such a fascinating window into people's inner lives.

[237] Yeah.

[238] Like one of the first ones I saw was a condiments video.

[239] Like ketchup and relish and stuff like that.

[240] So it's a woman sitting in a in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, like a child's paddling pool, and out of shot, one of the bespoke poem producers is pouring industrial -sized tubs of condiments on her head, like ketchup, mustard.

[241] And what's...

[242] And the woman's like trying to...

[243] You know, she's like gay, so she's going, oh, it's so cold and slimy.

[244] And stuff like that.

[245] Anyway, the guy who commissioned this video, the producers knew one thing about him.

[246] He's a restaurateur who deals with condiments every day.

[247] Oh, how weird.

[248] Yeah, and has to, you know, presumably avoid situations like that happening in his restaurant.

[249] So he just sits around thinking, like, as, like, customers just hitting down, oh, I look, they'll squirt her with some mayonnaise, just lather her up with ketchup.

[250] Or maybe it's stress.

[251] Maybe it's like, oh, my God, if this tub of mayonnaise falls on the floor.

[252] Right, right, right, right.

[253] Like, we're all fucked.

[254] We get sued, yeah.

[255] Yeah, we're doomed.

[256] And, like, there'd be, like, the cleaning pill.

[257] And maybe it's like, and maybe he's like, and maybe he's.

[258] His release is to do this.

[259] Wow.

[260] Another one was a Norwegian man, has spent 40 years amassing of a very valuable stamp collection.

[261] And his bespoke porn film was to send his stamp collection to the valley where three naked porn women would destroy his stamp collection.

[262] Whoa.

[263] Yes, there you go, there's a steel for me. Yeah.

[264] How much is this stamp collection worth?

[265] Well, it turns out because we managed to track down Stamps Man and he talked to us after a lot of persuasion.

[266] And he's got 10 books of stamps.

[267] And once a year he sends one to a custom producer.

[268] So he does it once a year.

[269] So that's his thing.

[270] Yeah.

[271] It turns out it's because he grew up in Iceland where stamp collecting was a very popular hobby at the time in like the 70s and the 80s.

[272] Stamp collecting was big.

[273] So he became like an obsessive stamp collector.

[274] The stamp shop owners would say, oh, if you buy this stamp, it's going to be very valuable in 20 years.

[275] But then came the internet and it like killed off the stamp it killed off stamp collecting as a hobby.

[276] Really?

[277] Yeah, nerds apparently felt like other things to be interested in and, you know, the thrill of the chase just wasn't there anymore.

[278] Like you can easily buy it.

[279] Yeah.

[280] So anyway, So his stamps lost all of their value, the stamp stores closed down, that kind of collegiate atmosphere of fellow stamp collectors just vanished.

[281] He began to, like, you know, regret his life choices of, like, spending all of that time and money collecting stamps.

[282] He began to feel depressed and isolated, so he went to see a psychiatrist who told him that stamp collecting is a ridiculous hobby because it isolates him.

[283] so now he pays porn people to destroy his stamps.

[284] The psychiatrist told him that a hobby is ridiculous.

[285] Yeah, according to him, I mean, I never talked to the psychiatrist, but according to him, yeah, he said that stamp collecting is a ridiculous hobby.

[286] That seems like a ridiculous thing for a psychologist to say.

[287] Sounds like a, yeah, bad psychologist.

[288] Yeah, if someone enjoys it, if you have all your ducks in a row and everything's firing on all cylinders, but you really truly enjoy stamps, who's to tell you there's something wrong with that?

[289] Well, the only, I mean, one good thing that came out of it was he really enriched the imaginations of the people in the valley.

[290] And also my imagination, too.

[291] I mean, Stamps Man, because all the custom producers talk, you know, and Stamps Man was such a mystery to them all.

[292] So, you know, so at least he destroys the stamps now in a way that's beneficial to him.

[293] God, that's so weird.

[294] Yeah, it's so weird.

[295] Isn't it amazing?

[296] But it's all weird, right?

[297] Well, it's also quite sad.

[298] Dan and Riannon, who made one of the stamps videos, called us just as we were finishing our series.

[299] And Riannon was in tears.

[300] And they just had a request.

[301] And the request was for a guy, a guy wanted a porn woman to sit cross -legged on the floor, fully clothed, and say into the camera, you are loved.

[302] Things may be bad now, but they won't.

[303] always be and suicide is not the answer yeah so then they thought what do we do so they told him they'd make the video for him and they could shoot it really soon and he didn't he didn't respond so they made it anyway and we were there to record it and it was very it made me realise just how kind of delightful the bespoke porn world is because they were so eager to help him.

[304] Yeah, to help this guy.

[305] Did he kill himself?

[306] We don't know.

[307] They made the video for him.

[308] The woman, the porn star Riley, was saying into the camera, you know, I have thought about dying too, but I came out of that hole, you know, and I came back stronger, and now I can see all the good in the world, and Riley was crying, and Rihanna, the producer was crying, and they sent the video to the guy, and we don't know.

[309] You know, it's interesting.

[310] there's quite a few porn stars on Twitter that have, like, you know, really, like, kind of motivational Twitter feeds.

[311] Like, they say nice things.

[312] They say positive things.

[313] They seem like healthy people.

[314] And if you separate the fact that they have sex on film for a living, take that out of the mix.

[315] And what you have is, like, looks like your average person who's trying to do better in this world and is sharing positive things that they find that gives, them inspiration and moves them along in a certain way.

[316] But then you add the sex thing and for whatever reason, we have this weird hang up about sex.

[317] It's because we're all fucked up.

[318] I talked to this girl called Dakota, who was part of a radical honesty group.

[319] A radical honesty group?

[320] Have you come across radical honesty?

[321] No, I don't think so.

[322] You would love it.

[323] I might be in one.

[324] I don't even know it.

[325] What's a radical honesty group?

[326] Okay, well the first time I ever heard about radical honesty was my friend Starly Kine, the podcaster, who went on a radical honesty group.

[327] And one of the things you have to do is all really...

[328] She's on a podcast?

[329] Yeah, she does a podcast called Mystery Show.

[330] She used to be on This American Life.

[331] Okay.

[332] Anyway, so she went to a radical honesty group where you have to be like radically honest to each other.

[333] So at Howard, it starts, I've been to one as well.

[334] It starts with everybody sitting in a circle and they have to confess to the room a secret about themselves that they'd never told anyone.

[335] So the one that Starley went to, the first guy said, my secret is that I haven't paid taxes in 10 years.

[336] And so everyone went, oh, all right.

[337] And then the next guy said, my secret is that I killed a man. Yeah, he said, I was in a truck.

[338] I was driving a truck, and I kicked the passenger out of the truck, and he fell onto the road and he got run over and I got away with it and nobody knows that it was murder so then the next person in the circle went my secrets are pretty disappointing compared to that she said I suppose I can tell you that I have sex with my cat so then the murderer kind of put his hand up and said That's disgusting He said, can I add something to my...

[339] You should be ashamed of yourself.

[340] No, it's quite the opposite.

[341] He said, could I add something to my secret?

[342] He said, I also have sex with my cat.

[343] So anyway, yeah.

[344] He had a one -upper.

[345] Yeah, he had to be the best secret in the room.

[346] He might be a bullshit artist, huh?

[347] It's possible.

[348] Yeah, that's part of the problem with those...

[349] I should say, by the way, I met Brad Blanton, the guy who runs these radical honesty groups, and I asked him whether Starly's story, was true and he said yes the way she described that circle is what happened so I was at this radical honesty group in this church school in New Orleans and this girl called Dakota said that her secret was that she was she's like this young church girl she said her secret was that she watched poem so I said what did you you know what do you watch it on and she said porn of course because this is how like every child in the world learns about sex these days And I said, did you ever get so into it that you would like learn their names?

[350] You'd say, oh, there's James Dean.

[351] And she said, no, no, no, she kind of laughed.

[352] And she said, no, I never learnt their names.

[353] It's like when you kill a deer, you don't name it because then you can't eat it.

[354] So this is what the porn people are up against, right?

[355] It's this shame of the viewer.

[356] It's like in that hypocrisy lies exploitation, which is why somebody like Fabian can come in and get a $300 million loan and take over porn.

[357] It's because we don't want to think about it because it makes us feel bad about ourselves.

[358] But that sort of thing, but her issue is like churchgoing plus female, whereas men, they have very specific tastes and they tend to gravitate towards very specific porn stars.

[359] Like one of the things that I've noticed that really popular porn stars will have, like, gigantic numbers on like social media, Twitter or Instagram, like upwards of a million, you know, and maybe more.

[360] Like, and so they obviously have like a following, you know?

[361] Yeah.

[362] You know, you said that a lot of porn women on Twitter are kind of a positive and a good of interventional messages.

[363] One of the reasons why that is, I met this porn woman called Macy May, who was, like, really depressed.

[364] Another of Fabian's consequences is that, like, kids grow up on porn hub these days.

[365] so there's no longer the kind of outlaw status about coming to the valley to do porn that they used to be in like the 80s and 90s.

[366] Now, you know, the valley's like flooded with women who, you know, they turn 18, they watch porn, they think that looks cool and then they come to the valley.

[367] And a negative consequence of that is that they get work for like a couple of weeks.

[368] And then, you know, there's loads more women off the bus.

[369] And so the producers don't need to employ them anymore.

[370] So there's a massive turnaround.

[371] They get work for a few weeks and then it's over.

[372] So I met this.

[373] this woman called Macy May, who was in that funk.

[374] Like she came in May, throughout May she was working.

[375] I met her in July, and the worker just dried up.

[376] And she was like venting on Twitter.

[377] But then she stopped venting.

[378] And then all of her tweets were like, I'm so happy, it's such a beautiful day.

[379] And I said, why did you stop venting on Twitter?

[380] And she said, well, a bunch of porn producers told me it looked bad for my brand.

[381] Like, you know, they don't, you know, I'm, they don't want a sort of miserable poor person saying, I'm not getting work today.

[382] They want a porn person who says, here's a picture of my butt.

[383] Yeah.

[384] And isn't that unhealthy, right?

[385] That this is what we've turned Twitter into.

[386] We've turned it into this thing when we're not allowed to be ourselves or to tell the truth about ourselves.

[387] Well, in this particular example, maybe.

[388] But, I mean, I think it's inherently, for whatever reason, in my estimation and in many others, A depressing business.

[389] I don't, yeah, and I don't know why.

[390] I mean, for a lot of people, the idea of a young girl going into porn is depressing.

[391] You know, like I have daughters.

[392] The idea of my daughter's going into porn is very depressing.

[393] You know, but I've met porn stars that seem nice.

[394] They seem happy.

[395] So, I mean, but why is it that it's everybody wants to have sex, but if you have sex on film.

[396] Yeah.

[397] And everybody gets to watch, the shame.

[398] Yeah, yeah.

[399] It's a weird little side effect of our civilization.

[400] It's the shame coming in from the outside looking in.

[401] There's no shame.

[402] When I was on the set of stepdaughter cheerleader Orgy, which was quite close to where we are now, probably like a mile away from here, but up in the hills.

[403] And it was a kind of familial bubble.

[404] Like everyone was being nice to each other.

[405] Everyone was happy.

[406] But Mike, the director, needed to get an assistant.

[407] establishing shots of the cheerleaders arriving home from cheerleader practice.

[408] So we went outside.

[409] They were wearing their cheerleader outfits.

[410] And some teenagers had gotten onto what was happening that a porn film was being shot, like up on a nearby hill.

[411] And they were like cat -calling and hissing and sort of mocking these girls.

[412] And for the first time, not just the girls, but the cameraman, the director, everybody suddenly felt like self -conscious.

[413] And the girls were like, you know, sort of try to back down their skirts.

[414] So until the mocking outsiders came along, it was healthy and shame -free.

[415] But as soon as an outsider started hissing at them, it became shameful.

[416] And I think that's porn for you.

[417] Like most of the problems that porn people face are stigma from the outside, not from the community itself, which tends to be quite respectful.

[418] And the people that were mocking them, first of all, they're young, right?

[419] Teenagers.

[420] And second of all, they're probably thinking.

[421] of it in terms of like almost like they're online yeah yeah i mean like one of the things about online is there's no consequences for what you're saying and then people have no problem shitting on people we couldn't see them we could only hear them i was looking up and i couldn't see them right because they were up on like a ridge above the house uh yes it's just like online it's almost like being anonymous yeah yeah i mean anonymous people online it's the behavior is very bizarre because like sometimes I'll see people's comments whether it's to me or to somebody else and they're so fucking vicious and nasty over nothing just over nothing over nothing yeah you know someone's movie that they did or some album that they did or whatever it was and just shitting all over every aspect of their person just almost just to try to get them to hurt the way they're hurting you know that's almost what it seems like it's like you're just like you're just like like super angry, bitter person.

[422] It's just, life is just throwing rocks at them everywhere they go.

[423] And every chance they get to throw a rock back, they do.

[424] Like that Randy Newman's song, I just want you to hurt like I do.

[425] Yeah, I'd say there's certainly an element of that.

[426] There's also an element of what the right call, what's that phrase at the right use all the time, virtue signaling, which I don't like using that phrase because it's so been kind of adopted by the sort of, you know, white nationalists.

[427] But that's different, right?

[428] But it exists, you know.

[429] Virtue signaling is absolutely real.

[430] I see it all the time.

[431] I see it all the time.

[432] It's usually like really, really weak men.

[433] You know, they're like trying really hard to court the favor of women and they're not attractive and they're not desirable.

[434] And so they try really hard to be allies.

[435] Yeah.

[436] The last time I was here, I'd just gone through all of that as a result of my public shaming book coming out.

[437] Oh, yeah.

[438] And like a sort of small group of people decided to sort of try and angry at you, John Hanson.

[439] Yeah.

[440] Wrong think.

[441] You were guilty of wrong think.

[442] Yeah.

[443] I just read a story this morning in Vulture about the young adult world where this book came out called, let me see if I can find it, called the Black Witch.

[444] And it's a liberal book, it's a young adult book that's a liberal.

[445] book.

[446] It's a progressive book, but it contains racist characters.

[447] So a blogger took some of the quotes that the racist characters said in the book.

[448] This voucher article quotes it.

[449] And took the amount of context.

[450] Yeah.

[451] Page 163, the Celts are not a pure race like us.

[452] They're more accepting of intermarriage.

[453] And because of this, they're hopelessly mixed.

[454] So that's a quote from the book.

[455] And then the blog wrote underneath, yes, you read that with your own two eyes.

[456] this is one of the times my jaw dropped in horror, and I had to walk away from this book.

[457] So then...

[458] How noble.

[459] So then, like, hundreds and hundreds of people, like, powered in on the book, and then Kirkus gave this book a good review, and then people powered in on Kirkus.

[460] It was Kirkus.

[461] Kirkus is like this industry.

[462] It's like, when you write a book, one of the first reviews you get is from Kirkus.

[463] It's like, it's an industry.

[464] Spell that word?

[465] K -I -R -K -U -S.

[466] Oh, okay.

[467] And if you get, like, a starred Kirkus review, it's like a big...

[468] deal.

[469] And so they powed in on Kirkus for giving it a good review.

[470] But I noticed two things happened as a result of this.

[471] One was actually it didn't seem to affect the book's success.

[472] The book is doing well like on Amazon and people actually read the book.

[473] I'm offended by it.

[474] And the same thing happened with my book.

[475] So you've been publicly shamed like the kind of, you know, people trying to turn against the book.

[476] It didn't.

[477] Well, the numbers are so small.

[478] The numbers of twats that are actually out there beating the bushes.

[479] for this stuff.

[480] I mean, you're talking about, you know, a few thousand people at a whatever or a few hundred maybe even very vocal.

[481] Yeah.

[482] And if there's anyone particularly upset at you, it might just be, there's many instances where people are attacked by one person and that person assumes multiple identities online.

[483] I had a buddy mine who was dealing with someone who was doing that.

[484] Yeah.

[485] It's just, it's real common.

[486] Like they're just, for whatever reason, just single you out.

[487] Maybe you wrote something that, you know, they found personally offensive or But the thing that drives me crazy about that, about this taking out of context, this character who's a racist character, is we're talking about fiction.

[488] And if fiction, if you can't portray realistic humans, I mean, there are a racist.

[489] But how come you're allowed to make a fictional character about a murderer or about, you know, some sort of, you know, Nazi type character or something along those lines?

[490] How come that's okay?

[491] I mean, these are like, you know, these, I think, are kind of young kids because this is the YA world.

[492] And, you know, they're not thinking of a young adult.

[493] It's a type of publishing.

[494] And, you know, they're not thinking it through.

[495] They're not thinking this.

[496] Well, they're just seeing an opportunity to be outraged.

[497] You know, the expression, recreational outrage.

[498] Yeah.

[499] So, but the other thing that happened as a result of this.

[500] So the book itself apparently isn't being particularly negatively affected, even though the outrage was, was huge.

[501] Probably helps it.

[502] Possibly.

[503] But the journalist from this Vulture article interviewed publishers who basically are saying that we're telling our authors, you know, it's having a chilling effect on novels.

[504] It's like we're telling our authors like don't put in like if the author's white, don't try and put in a person of colour as a cat.

[505] It's just it's not worth it.

[506] You know, just don't do it.

[507] So actually these new rules, these are new rules.

[508] A few years, you know, I just wrote this, I've been writing movies lately and and I always try and put in characters of color and because I think okay you know maybe a director will kind of ignore it but if I put that into a screenplay then there's a good chance that a person of color is going to get offered you know a role but now suddenly I'm being told like that's not that's not good I shouldn't do that well you're being told you shouldn't do that because you need to stay in your lane.

[509] Yeah, well, I'm not being told it, but I'm reading these articles where I read that novelists are being told.

[510] Right, but this is a different situation.

[511] You're not talking about an offensive character.

[512] You should probably clarify that.

[513] Oh, yeah, no, of course.

[514] Yeah, no, what you're talking about is someone's telling you not to do or maybe you shouldn't do a person of color in your screenplay because that's not your place.

[515] Yeah, writers are being told, according to this vulture article that I read today, writers are being told not to do it.

[516] And, of course, not like...

[517] Right, that's a different thing.

[518] It could easily be misconstrued.

[519] I didn't want to let anybody take you out of context there.

[520] Right.

[521] Yeah.

[522] No, of course.

[523] And that feels like a very new rule.

[524] It is.

[525] Yeah.

[526] Well, it's just, again, it's just the left is turning on itself.

[527] I mean, there are people that are turning on them.

[528] So you cannot be progressive enough.

[529] There is no one out there that's progressive enough.

[530] And so there's always going to be someone to find some fault in some thing that you do, particularly if you're doing fiction that portrays, realistic scenarios that could easily exist in any city in any, you know, civilization on earth.

[531] Yeah, and I noticed when, you know, because I was covering all of this for a couple of years and I was writing, so you've been publicly shamed.

[532] And I noticed like every time somebody like Justine Sacco got got got on the internet, Breitbart, Info Wars, Malou Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson, Alex Jones, you know, they would propagandize the hell out of this stuff.

[533] And this was in the run -up to Trump getting a, And I kind of up thinking that the left eating itself is part of the reason why we've got Trump now.

[534] Yeah, they fucked up for sure.

[535] They became unreasonable.

[536] I mean, there's a meme that's going out there that I've seen on many, many different places on Instagram and Twitter and stuff that says this kind of shit is why I got elected and it's Trump like pointing at the camera.

[537] And I think it's true.

[538] Yeah, it's 100 % true.

[539] People are fed up.

[540] I mean, they're fed up and they've, you know, they're fed up.

[541] They didn't realize what the consequences are.

[542] You know, what's really fascinating is I saw this article today where it was talking about America, it was on CNN, about Americans, like, in general, like everyone polls, does not like the fact that Trump tweets.

[543] It was some crazy number of people to think that he should stop tweeting.

[544] But one of the things that got him elected is the fact that he tweets, so people enjoyed it.

[545] Like, here's a guy who's fighting back, and he's not scared.

[546] hit back with personal insults and like we'd never seen that before from someone running for president like this was stunning yeah you know but then he became president and everybody's like well he'll surely uh let that go once he's in the office because that's not presidential but he used a expression you know i forget the expression was something like it's modern presidential to tweet yeah yeah modern presidential yeah yeah i remember the very first talk I ever did for, so you've been publicly shamed, there was this woman in the front row, this kind of elderly lady, this was at the bookshop Santa Cruz, and she was like pointedly shaking her head in disagreement with everything that I was saying.

[547] And then when it came to the Q &A, I said, like I said, I haven't got any questions, and she went, and she said, I said, okay, and she said, if you play, she said, if you play with the Twitter toy, then it's your fault if you get burned.

[548] And what I said to her, was like, you know, its influences beyond Twitter.

[549] Like, Twitter is infecting the culture and it infected everything.

[550] What began on Twitter, a new type of discourse and a new way of seeing each other, infected politics, culture, the mainstream media, it's infected everything.

[551] In the same way that I wonder whether Fabian ever sort of feels a bit guilty about some of the consequences of his business plan.

[552] I wonder whether some of the Twitter executives ever feel guilty about what they've done.

[553] Well, they certainly feel like they have some sort of responsibility, which is why they're silencing certain people.

[554] And I don't know if shadow banning is real, but there's all this talk of people being shadow banned.

[555] And then a lot of people have had their account suspended.

[556] Yeah, so they are doing a bitter stuff now.

[557] I was a member, Megan, from the Westboro Baptist Church, Megan Phelps, who's a friend of mine and she...

[558] Oh, she came on your show.

[559] Yeah, she was great.

[560] She was amazing.

[561] She's so great.

[562] Fascinating that someone who came from such a horrible, regressive environment became just like fascinating, really intelligent, really well -spoken, sensitive person.

[563] You know what?

[564] I think Megan would say if she was sitting here, because I kind of said that to her one time.

[565] And she said it sort of goes to show that, you know, for all their sort of hateful beliefs, my parents were good parents.

[566] Like they gave me this positive stuff as well as the next.

[567] Wow, isn't that amazing?

[568] She can't even talk to them anymore.

[569] Yeah, well, they won't talk to her.

[570] They won't talk to her.

[571] I think she went up to them at a picket of David Bowie's memorials.

[572] They wouldn't talk to her.

[573] They wouldn't lock her in the eye.

[574] That's so crazy.

[575] Anyway, she was on the phone to Twitter one time, she told me, because they love it.

[576] I mean, Twitter love her because she sort of got talking to liberals on Twitter, and that's what persuaded her out of the Westboro Baptist Church.

[577] So for Twitter, that's like the best story in the world.

[578] So she was talking to Twitter, she told me, and they wanted her to do a talk.

[579] And she said, oh, you know she'd do a talk as well?

[580] John Ronson.

[581] And she said Twitter went quiet on the phone.

[582] So they're upset at you in some way?

[583] I think they're upset at me for basically pointing out what a, you know, how we're all toddlers crawling towards a gun on Twitter.

[584] But it's not all people.

[585] I mean, what you're pointing out some of the issues that many other people have seen.

[586] I mean, this is not, I don't think what you're saying is controversial at all.

[587] You're just astute.

[588] I don't think so.

[589] That story I read about Justin Sacco a few years ago and about how, you know, the woman who tweeted going to Africa, hope I don't get AIDS, just kidding, I'm white.

[590] And then when she was asleep.

[591] L .O .L. Yeah.

[592] And then when she was asleep on a plane, you know, thinking she'd made a smart kind of South Parky and joke mocking her own privilege.

[593] Like everyone united to destroy her.

[594] And she was fired.

[595] Fired.

[596] By the time she landed.

[597] Yeah.

[598] And, you know, everyone from like Miss. And misogynistic trolls through to social justice people, all united to destroy this.

[599] But, you know, she upset everyone for, and, yeah, so that I think that story became pretty powerful at the time.

[600] And I think it probably affected Twitter's business for a while.

[601] People got too scared to go on Twitter.

[602] So I think that's probably, are they annoyed?

[603] I don't think it dropped their business off at all.

[604] Oh, I think it did.

[605] I think people started to think, like, it may have recovered now, but I think people started to think, fuck, if Twitter's not fun, And, you know, what's the point of us being on here?

[606] You think just from the Justine Sacco, one racist joke that she got fired for, you think that really had an overall effect on Twitter use?

[607] I think, well, what happened was my book got extracted in the New York Times, and it was that story, and that story kind of went crazy viral.

[608] It really spoke, it kind of spoke to people's like deep fears, that story.

[609] Well, deep fears, they might get drunk and Papa Xanax and say something really.

[610] stupid do the same shit and wake up in africa fired yeah exactly and and and i think that that kind of probably affected twitter i don't think it did i think they need to relax i think all that stuff just makes people interested and then makes more people sign up and i just i don't boy i don't see that at all if they were upset at you over that that's pretty preposterous i i wonder i've given i gave talks uh facebook and google you're upset they won't give you a talk well i'm just what's going on Well, I'm curious.

[611] I'm curious.

[612] I mean, of course I'm curious.

[613] Well, you have to sit before their Orwellian counsel, and maybe they'll go over every word that you're about to say and allow.

[614] What is their trust and verify counsel?

[615] Oh, gosh.

[616] What the fuck is that called?

[617] Yeah.

[618] They have some people on that that are ridiculous social justice warriors, proven attention whores, people that are dishonest.

[619] They're just not, they're not honest people, and they're part of this whole thing where their business is getting attention and being a victim.

[620] Yeah.

[621] And exploiting it to the end.

[622] And to agree.

[623] I mean, that's a bunch of people that are on that thing.

[624] That's what they do.

[625] I do think, like, if you're going to address harassment on social media, you have to accept that it comes from both sides.

[626] It comes on the right to the left.

[627] It comes on the left to the right.

[628] It comes from the misogynists to feminists.

[629] It comes from feminists.

[630] You also have to define what is harassment and what is criticism.

[631] Now, if you have ideas in the open marketplace of ideas and you have ideas that people think are profoundly ridiculous, they're allowed to mock your ideas.

[632] That is not harassment.

[633] I just think that that is someone shitting on you.

[634] Yeah.

[635] And you put yourself out there.

[636] I mean, especially someone who's, look, you're not, these people, a lot of them, they're not singers, they're not authors, they're not musicians, they're not comics, they're not producing anything other than their words, right?

[637] So if someone doesn't like your words and they shit on your words, like that, what else do you expect?

[638] Yeah.

[639] I noticed that there was some kind of gaslighting going on on the left.

[640] Like everyone would agree, the sort of world that I come from, like the Guardian and the left, like everyone would agree that if a gang of misogynists sort of gang up on a particular feminist writer and basically harass her until she goes offline, everyone agrees that's bad and it is bad.

[641] It is bad.

[642] Yeah.

[643] But when the mirror image of that is happening, right people pretend it doesn't it people just pretend it's not happening right when someone goes after someone on the right even if it's a woman like you know a perfect example of that was no feminist stood up to defend um Sarah Palin like there's no one I mean you never heard that when Bill Maher was calling her a cunt and all these different people were were mocking her and no one was stepping up and saying hey that's a woman that's a mother you know that's someone's someone's mom like leave her alone have some respect for women, if you're a woman and you're a conservative, like, you might as well be a monster, right?

[644] There was undoubtedly sort of, well, it's cognitive dissonance, right?

[645] Like when somebody's being harassed, they don't want to then see themselves as doing the same thing to a group of people that they don't like.

[646] Well, it's very easy to think of someone who is opposed to your point of view or thinks of things completely different as another.

[647] You don't even think of them as a person.

[648] I noticed that happened to me, you know.

[649] An editor said that they wanted to run a series of articles about bullying on the internet and wanted me to, like, you know, contribute to the series.

[650] And they said they wanted it to all be about how women are being bullied by men.

[651] And I said, you know, I've no doubt that that happens a lot.

[652] And it's presumably disproportionate, like women are bullied by men more than other groups are bullied.

[653] You know, that could well be true.

[654] But if the series of article is only about women being bullied by men, and, you know, it legitimizes certain types of bullying.

[655] Like when the left pile in on somebody, like Justin Sacco, it's going to legitimize, you know, if it's that partial, it's going to legitimize certain types of bullying.

[656] And the editor, when I said that to her kind of rolled her eyes, as if to say, well, you would think that.

[657] Oh, wow.

[658] Yeah.

[659] But, you know, it's true.

[660] It's true.

[661] And, you know, the problem's not going to go away until we...

[662] Yeah, they're hypocrites.

[663] I mean, that's essentially what's going on.

[664] It's just people don't want to be nice.

[665] They think that there's power in shaming.

[666] And they think, I mean, I've had multiple conversations with people online that think there is good in shaming people.

[667] I'm like, well, you're saying that because you're hiding behind a keyboard and it's a free shot.

[668] But if you had to sit down with that person in front of them and talk to them face -to -face and feel the social consequences.

[669] Right.

[670] It reminds me actually a moment I was telling you about what are the consequences.

[671] that I look at in the butterfly effect about the tech takeover of porn is that if you're a 25 -year -old adult actress, you can't get work now because you're in this sort of hinterland between teen and milf.

[672] And I think that's not just porn, that's the internet.

[673] Like on social media, you know, if you're a kind of loud, aggressively authoritarian person on the left or a loud, aggressively authoritarian person on the right, you're like the teen or the milf.

[674] Like those of us in the middle are these people who are more interested in people talking to each other and they don't, you know, don't want to like scream, we want to like listen and understand.

[675] We're like the 25 -year -old adult film actress that can't get work.

[676] Well, people don't like nuanced points of view.

[677] And they also don't like people that are willing to talk to anybody.

[678] You know, I've had so many people call me some sort of a right -wing monster.

[679] And I'm like, well, let's go over what makes a right -wing monster.

[680] What is right -wing?

[681] I support gay marriage.

[682] I support universal health care.

[683] I'm absolutely in favor if it could work.

[684] I don't know if it would work, of universal basic income.

[685] Like, where does it, where do I become right wing?

[686] Like, where does it go?

[687] I'm anti -war.

[688] Like, where do I become right -wing?

[689] Well, I don't...

[690] In politics, as in porn, everything now has to be kind of keyword searchable.

[691] So everybody has to fall into some sort of niche.

[692] And if you're not doing it yourself, then someone else is going to do it for you.

[693] Yeah, but even when you're saying that, like, you don't.

[694] That's not real.

[695] Like, you don't have to.

[696] You don't have to fall into those categories.

[697] It's just be easier for people to categorize.

[698] you if you did fall into those categories.

[699] I'm sure I have some points of view that people would consider conservative.

[700] And I have many more points of view that most people would consider to be liberal.

[701] But it's very convenient, especially when you look like me, and I look like a meathead, it's easy to say that I'm some meathead conservative or a right winger or something along those lines.

[702] But I'm way more likely to vote for someone on the left than I am for someone on the right.

[703] Because I think the people on the right in general are more suppressive, especially socially and culturally.

[704] And I think that's where the real issues lie.

[705] When you look at what Obama did, yeah, on the right, when you look at what Obama did in office in terms of like what he did as far as drones, about freedom of the press and going on after whistleblowers and like, God, a lot of that was very right, very right wing.

[706] If you looked at in terms of actual real consequences of him being the president, a lot of it was very right wing.

[707] But when you look at in terms of like support for gay marriage and, you know, and passing the Affordable Care Act and all these different, a lot of that stuff was a very left wing.

[708] Now, I don't know if the Affordable Care Act was good because a lot of small businesses, that doctors with small offices hated it and thought it was absolutely horrible and killed their business.

[709] I don't know who's right about that because I don't, obviously, I don't have to deal with that.

[710] that.

[711] It's a controversial subject.

[712] But the idea behind it, I liked.

[713] I liked the idea that we would have some sort of universal health care because I think the idea of someone being too poor to get health care in this incredible country, like if we're going to pay, if our taxes are going to go to anything, God damn, doesn't it, shouldn't it go to caring for our neighbors and our fellow humans?

[714] Like that seems to me to be a no -brainer.

[715] Yeah.

[716] And that's probably a pretty left -wing idea.

[717] I got a ton of those.

[718] But it's easy to call me a right -wing.

[719] for whatever reason.

[720] I find that fascinating that people do not like a nuanced or not only that they it's not that they don't like it is that they find it extremely easy to categorize you and sort of a negative caricature.

[721] Yeah.

[722] I got a question.

[723] Can I just like totally change the subject for a second?

[724] We have Alex Jones in common because I'm years ago snuck into Bohemian Grove with Alex.

[725] What year did that?

[726] Was that?

[727] That was like the, when he did it in like the late 90s or 2000?

[728] You were with him on that.

[729] That's right.

[730] Ninety nine.

[731] Did we talk about that the last time you were here?

[732] We did talk about it last time.

[733] But I, since I saw you last, I rekindled my relationship with Alex as a means of trying to get inside the Trump world, which didn't go, didn't go great.

[734] It didn't go well?

[735] What happened?

[736] Not that well.

[737] Well, I think I annoyed Alex a little bit.

[738] Oh, what'd you do?

[739] I basically said Alex shouldn't have political sway.

[740] You told him that?

[741] Well, I wrote it in a story about him.

[742] I went to the RNC and I sort of, you know, got back in with Alex and spent a little bit time hanging around with him and Roger Stone and so on and got really interested in the kind of dynamics of how Alex and Trump communicate to each other.

[743] But I'm wondering, you've seen Alex more recently than I have.

[744] Well, Alex has been my friend since 1998.

[745] I was at his custody trial not long ago, and you were bought up.

[746] You were brought up evidence.

[747] He was smoking pot on my show.

[748] He was smoking pot.

[749] Well, I'm just testing it.

[750] See George Soros makes the weed stronger.

[751] That's what he said.

[752] He said that in his custody trial.

[753] Yeah, that's exactly what he said.

[754] He said he tests it once a year.

[755] Just because he's weird because he's alarmed.

[756] He's like, I'm always there when that happens.

[757] I mean, I mean, come on, man. What's really funny is we drank whiskey.

[758] see you on the show too and no one gives you shit about that that's way more destructive it's the pot whatever the self -reflective yeah you know paranoia inducing marijuana it's a real problem but i now wonder so he says that trump called him just after the election to sort of thank him and i'm inclined to believe that's true because i don't think that's the kind of thing that Alex would lie about but have you got any have you come to any conclusion about whether there is a connection between Alex and Trump now because I'm beginning to think Maybe the other just isn't anymore.

[759] But maybe, but I could be wrong.

[760] That's a good question.

[761] I don't know.

[762] I mean, first of all, I don't see how Trump can have a connection with that many people.

[763] I feel like the job of being the president has got to be so insanely demanding the idea that he's taken a few moments out of his day.

[764] He's got his feet up on the chair with a laptop and he's on infowars .com.

[765] He's like, God damn, I've got to call Alex and find out what the fuck's going on with this child slavery thing on Mars.

[766] Alex, where are these slaves?

[767] Tell me where.

[768] We're on Mars.

[769] I think it benefits everyone to think that Alex, because it makes Trump look bad.

[770] Yeah.

[771] So it benefits people on the left to say that Alex is connected to Trump.

[772] Yeah.

[773] It kind of benefits Alex, I think, for people to think it too because it aggrandizes him.

[774] Well, it helps him in a way.

[775] I mean, it's like the people that...

[776] There's a bunch of people that enjoy Alex, right?

[777] So, some of them enjoy it for the theater.

[778] There's a theater element of it all, you know?

[779] I mean, and it's all doom and gloom and then some of it, some people enjoy it because like Bohemian Grove, occasionally he's correct.

[780] Like, Bohemian Grove is a real mind -fucked.

[781] And you see all these super -rich people wearing robes burning and effigy, yeah.

[782] I was in the crowd with all the old men of wealth and power.

[783] Did that freak you out?

[784] You see those people?

[785] One thing freaked me out.

[786] Like Alex came out of our Bohemian Grove night with a varying interpretation of what we witnessed.

[787] My interpretation is basically, with one caveat, I'm about to caveat this.

[788] My interpretation was that it's just like fucking, you know, skull and bones or some sort of Harvard club.

[789] But those are all creepy, right?

[790] Yeah.

[791] And they want to, there does seem to be amongst the American ruling elites, there does seem to be a proclivity.

[792] for ritual.

[793] Yeah.

[794] Maybe amongst the British elites as well, I'm not sure.

[795] But that's in itself psychologically interesting.

[796] I think secrets too.

[797] Right.

[798] So it's like why.

[799] So that is interesting.

[800] Like why, even if the ritual at Bohemian Grove, you know, and I would contend that contrary to what Alex implied, they weren't actually sacrificing a child.

[801] No, he didn't say they were sacrificing a child.

[802] Did he say it at some point in time?

[803] In this video, yeah.

[804] It could be real.

[805] It could be real.

[806] Could be real, ladies and gentlemen.

[807] Could be real.

[808] He probably was so jazzed up that they were actually dressed up like monks with the hoods and they have the Mollock, the owl guy.

[809] When he was actually there, I mean, that probably ramped up his love of conspiracy.

[810] Oh, so much.

[811] It could solve three or 400%.

[812] It was hilarious.

[813] Because, you know, we went in separately to, because Alex got it into his head that maybe I was part of the Bohemian Grove plots.

[814] Oh, you're like deep, deep inside.

[815] Yeah, like the wicked man that I was like luring him in.

[816] he would be the one sacrificed in the belly of the owl.

[817] Oh, no. So he went in separately to me. He went in via the undergrowth.

[818] And I went up the drive.

[819] I just went up the drive where it gave the security guard a kind of, I roll the world wave.

[820] And then we went in there.

[821] That's all you had to do?

[822] Yeah, yeah.

[823] I mean, probably not now.

[824] Security guards.

[825] God, that's so often the case.

[826] It's like the White House.

[827] And then we saw Alex and Mike Hanson, who was his producer at the time, walking, like, towards us.

[828] And I was with this local lawyer who would, who would.

[829] who we talked up with.

[830] And I was like, hey, you know, Alex, Mike, how are you doing?

[831] And they were like, keep walking.

[832] There's cameras in the trees.

[833] There's owls everywhere.

[834] And then there's owls?

[835] Yes.

[836] So you felt like the owls were cameras?

[837] They got it into their heads that the owls at Bohemian Grove, the owl motifs at Bohemian Grove, was indicative of the fact that it was like Mollock, the owl god.

[838] Yeah.

[839] And it was like some sort of satanic.

[840] But actually, I would say that, the reason why there's all those owls, because I saw, like, stuffed owls in display cabinets and so on.

[841] But I think it's like, I think it's an owl sanctuary.

[842] So, I mean, but anyway, but I want to, but.

[843] So why do they stuff them then?

[844] Well, some owl sanctuary.

[845] I mean, I presume it died of natural causes.

[846] Oh, they miss it?

[847] Shitty fucking sanctuary, if they kill it, then stuff it.

[848] So it's sort of like Norman Bates' mom and psycho, stuffer?

[849] But what was odd that night?

[850] was one thing that the oddest moment and this is where I will this is where my memory of the night does tally with Alex is is that for whatever reason the people in the crowd were really into this ceremony like there was a sort of they were really fired up by it like some I remember this old guy walked up to me before it started and said are your first timer and I went yeah and oh you're going to love it you're going to love it's like burn him burn him or something along those lines and it did make me think like and then I looked behind and there was Alex and Mike wide -eyed looking like they were in the belly of the beast and then there's all these old preppy men like wide -eyed they were really into it too I felt like the only sane person in the entire Redwood Forest I was like the only person was thinking it's just fucking ridiculous it is ridiculous but but they were into it it was that moment it was that moment a revelation actually that then led me to write the book that I wrote after that book, which was The Manistair at Goats, which was about, you know, soldiers trying to kill goats just by staying at them.

[851] Because I did, because I remember like, I remember thinking, I was actually, I was in Belfast, I was giving a talk about my book, Them, which is where I talk about all of that stuff.

[852] And somebody said, okay, so I know what you think of it.

[853] This woman in the audience said, I know what you think, I know you think, this is like ridiculous.

[854] And I know that Alex Jones thinks it's evil, but what about the people in the crowd?

[855] What were they thinking about it?

[856] And I thought that's a really good question.

[857] So that's what led me to write a book about like a rational thought in powerful places, which is what led me to write most of her goes.

[858] Now, when you're there and you see that there really is this giant stone owl and they really do have this bundle of sticks that they're burning and everyone really is wearing these robes.

[859] I mean, part of you had to be like, how many of these fucking things are going on that we haven't infiltrated?

[860] Well, yeah, that's true.

[861] Look at that.

[862] There's a photo of it there.

[863] This is real.

[864] I mean, they really do have a giant owl, and they really do burn some sort of a sacrifice in front of this owl.

[865] And there's the speakers that are...

[866] There's at one point, this is a lesser documented part of the ritual.

[867] At one point, there's a guy in leaf -covered Leidenhausen appears in like a stage cut out of the redwood tree and starts singing this kind of elegy to nature.

[868] Like, oh, trees, oh, I don't know, leaves.

[869] So that's how it starts.

[870] That's before the men in robes turn up.

[871] So it's like some weird pagan nature ritual.

[872] Covered later.

[873] How much would you give to be in one of those skull and bones meetings?

[874] See if they actually, like, film each other sucking dicks or something.

[875] There's just something that goes on where they have like something over those guys, supposedly.

[876] That's like the conspiracy theory.

[877] They make them engage in gay sex.

[878] I do believe these things happen for a reason.

[879] Like, you know, skull and bones exist for a reason.

[880] Well, they have something over you.

[881] It could be that, or it could be just this weird sense, this weird sort of psychological need that people, like Ivy League people, feel they need to, like, have a sense of superiority.

[882] And one way to do that is to kind of create these secret rituals to give them a sense of, like, you know, grandeur over the people.

[883] That's possible.

[884] Now, a guy like Alex Jones stumbles upon something like that or infiltrates it and finds out it is real.

[885] I mean, that is justifying to such an enormous, enormous level.

[886] Yeah, but Alex, but here's my truck with Alex and all of this, is that it wasn't like, for Alex, all the fucking crazy shit that we saw that night wasn't enough.

[887] Like he had to, like, turn it up to 11.

[888] Of course.

[889] Yeah, and implied that we had possibly witnessed an actual human sacrifice.

[890] Of course, but that's standard.

[891] That's standard Alex Jones 101.

[892] But it shouldn't be standard.

[893] It shouldn't be, but, I mean, think about all of the exaggerations that take place in the media, whether it's on the left or the right, there's just rampant exaggerations.

[894] Well, it's funny you should say that.

[895] So did you watch Alex being interviewed by Megan Kelly?

[896] Yes, I did.

[897] Yeah, well, that made me laugh.

[898] You know, they phoned me a couple of days before the broadcast, Megan Kelly's people, because they were panicking.

[899] Do you remember there was like a lot of criticism they were getting for having them in the first place?

[900] Yeah.

[901] So they called me up and they basically wanted me to give them as much evidence.

[902] as I could, that proved that Alex and Trump were, you know, aligned and they were talked to each other and so on.

[903] Called you?

[904] Why?

[905] Because you went to Bohemian Grove with them?

[906] I went to Bohemian Grove.

[907] But then I also brought out this little Kindle single last summer called the elephant in the room in which I'm trying to trace like the relationship between Alex and Trump via Rochester.

[908] It's kind of interesting stuff.

[909] So I answered the questions as best as I could, but I don't know that much about exactly how often Trump and Alex talk to each other.

[910] Yeah, I don't know either.

[911] Yeah, I had to know.

[912] I'm not really that interested in it.

[913] As odd as it is.

[914] Like, I have a very fucked up relationship with Alex in that.

[915] He's actually my friend.

[916] And so when I see him, it's like, what's up, man?

[917] What he doing?

[918] I give him a hug.

[919] And people go, oh, he's a monster.

[920] How can you be friends with him and this and that?

[921] Like, I don't know.

[922] I just base it on my interactions with him.

[923] And does he say fucked up things?

[924] The most disturbing thing that I didn't even know when he did the podcast, I didn't know that he was a sandy hook denier right so apparently he's backed off that since uh being confronted by the facts and and there was a horrible article that i read about a father who was actually a conspiracy theorist until his son was killed in sandy hook and then he got death threats for lying and presumably from info wars yeah and that was so just so sad yeah that's just so horrible people look for fucking conspiracies in everything and I don't know what it is.

[925] I have friends that have this issue.

[926] I don't understand it.

[927] Things that can be easily explained, they look for a conspiracy.

[928] Anything that happens in the news, there's got to be a different story.

[929] Like sometimes shit just happens.

[930] And when that shit happens, the news has a story.

[931] It doesn't always have to be some sort of nefarious plot but these people also think that the government is filled with idiots.

[932] Well, I'm sorry, but you can't have both ways.

[933] You can't have a bunch of incompetent fuckheads who pull off the perfect fake world where everything you see is some sort of an elaborate played out scheme in order to manipulate you and to either buying this or voting for that.

[934] There's a weird inclination that people have to not just some conspiracy theories, but almost everything to think everything is part of some crazy plot.

[935] I'm not sure I understand it.

[936] What you said about like, you know, biases and untruths and, like, across the media on the left and right, reminded me of the Megan Kelly thing.

[937] So, you know, so they phoned me up obviously in a bit of a panic because they were getting, like, so much criticism.

[938] Right.

[939] And then they re -edited the show, like, frantically just before it went out.

[940] Re -edited it?

[941] Yeah, apparently.

[942] What did they change?

[943] Well, I don't know, but what I do know is, like, you, I saw the final product.

[944] And the final product was basically Megan Kelly, like, looking incredibly poised, saying, you know, you're always.

[945] wrong, Alex, you're wrong about this, and then it would cut to Alex going, and then it would cut back to Megan.

[946] So all they did was like, Alex had his most sweaty and stuttery.

[947] And then Megan Kelly at her most poised and perfect.

[948] Well, did you hear the Alex Jones audio, the leaked audio that he released?

[949] Yes.

[950] Where they were sort of buttering him up and conning him.

[951] Yeah, Alex's the father.

[952] Yeah.

[953] Personally, I was saying, I'm not here to make a hit piece.

[954] I just want to know the real you.

[955] Although they did re -edit So I wonder what the original Program would have been like Because they felt forced to basically By him Yeah well they felt forced by Like the people pushing back against them doing it Both Yeah To then put out this shitty You know 10 minutes I was in Megan Kelly's corner I would have told her First of all Don't ever go to NBC Listen here's the deal Like you made your bones As an ice princess on this conservative network.

[956] And do you think they're just going to accept you at NBC?

[957] People are going to resent you.

[958] They're going to hate you.

[959] Like, you're the lady that chastise people for saying that Santa Claus potentially wasn't white.

[960] Remember that?

[961] I don't remember that.

[962] Oh, my God.

[963] It was some thing where there was people talking about Santa Claus being black.

[964] And I'll never forget it because she was on TV going, you know, listen, Santa Claus is white.

[965] And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about?

[966] Santa Claus isn't really, you crazy bitch.

[967] You can't say Santa Claus is white more than you can say cat in the hat is red.

[968] They're not real things.

[969] You can decide that the cat in the hat in the book is always white.

[970] Okay, yeah, you're right.

[971] Good point.

[972] But is he black?

[973] Is he white?

[974] What is the cat in hat?

[975] He's got a hat is red and white.

[976] What color is he, though?

[977] Hmm.

[978] I think he's black, right?

[979] Is he?

[980] Okay.

[981] It's not important, but what's important is that, like, her whole thing was being this spokesperson, this ultra -hot spokesperson for the conservative movement, but also being someone who's ruthlessly smart and articulate and capable of shutting down these stammering liberals that dare go and question her narrative.

[982] And then all of a sudden she's on NBC.

[983] Like, you can't do that.

[984] That's a terrible move.

[985] They're not going to accept you.

[986] This is not going to work.

[987] And the ratings have been horrendous.

[988] And now she's, and now they pulled the show.

[989] They pulled the show early.

[990] But it just goes to show like, you know, we rightly attack people like InfoWars for spreading, you know, outright lies.

[991] Yes.

[992] But we, on the left, like Megan Kelly, editing that segment to make it look like she was poised and perfect.

[993] And all Alex does is stammer and sweat.

[994] Well, it's a very hard, very hard sell saying that Megan Kelly's on the left.

[995] She's on the left now?

[996] Well, I mean, like the mainstream.

[997] Right.

[998] the mainstream, so the mainstream has its own tricks.

[999] It's like it's not an outright lie like Alex would do, but that, you know, panicky, selective editing is a lie of its own.

[1000] I would have imagined that like during the interview between Alex and Megyn Kelly, Alex would have said some things that were, you know, eloquent or a sentence without a stammer and a swear.

[1001] I'm sure.

[1002] Yeah, I'm sure.

[1003] It's a life of its own.

[1004] Well, here's also the problem.

[1005] Having any sort of a conversation about any sort of difficult subject and stuffing it into seven minutes or whatever it is is ridiculous.

[1006] Yeah.

[1007] It's an ancient way of communicating.

[1008] And now that we have the internet and Alex is shown with his own show, you know, that he can go and rant about something and, you know, for 15 minutes or whatever it is.

[1009] Like, with no limitations of restrictions, like, it's a better way to communicate.

[1010] And one of the things that I wanted to do when I had Alex on the podcast is I wanted people to see.

[1011] the Alex that I know because there's no other way to see him like that I wanted to get him drunk I wanted to get him high and I wanted to have him talk and my friend Eddie who's just so into conspiracies he kind of fucked some of it because he's just so into chem trails and proving that chem trails are real right but it was good overall because it's like he was Alex is so crazy that even Eddie was like what yeah there was a couple moments where Eddie turned to look at Alex and goes what the fuck like what he's talking about interdimensional child molesters and it's i wanted people to see him the way i see him he's a fun guy that i like hanging out with do i think that he has a lot of influence yeah do i think he says things that he definitely shouldn't say of course especially the sandy hook stuff i mean i think this inclination to always look towards conspiracy is is is is dangerous it's harmful yeah yeah it's it's it's dangerous in that people are easily led and if you get people thinking that everything is a conspiracy, the real problem is, they don't know what the fuck a conspiracy actually is when it's in front of them and it's real.

[1012] And there's a ton of them that are real.

[1013] So when you're crying wolf around every corner and then all of a sudden you turn a corner like, holy shit, that's a real wolf.

[1014] No one is listening.

[1015] Sure.

[1016] I agree.

[1017] That's my frustration with Alex, too, is that he has a conspiracy template and whatever real world event happens, he had shoe horns into this kind of simplistic template.

[1018] Yeah.

[1019] Yeah.

[1020] He's got some crazy ideas about Mars.

[1021] There's base, or no, was it the moon?

[1022] There's bases on the moon that they're going to all the time.

[1023] Is that what he's saying?

[1024] He's got some crazy moon thing.

[1025] Like he thinks that they, well, they went on the moon.

[1026] The problem is what they found up there.

[1027] Like he's got, like, the goat spider hybrid that he talks about is true, though.

[1028] He doesn't express it very well.

[1029] Right.

[1030] But I learned this when I was right in the Manistair at Goats all of those years ago, that they really were like, they really were.

[1031] mixing up spider silk with goat milk creating some kind of Alex Jones reveals the truth about animal human hybrids and the moon landing The real problem Give us some Give us some volume here because Alex We're bleeding from your face left Yes And they're like oh we're scared You're so mean it's like Kathy Griffin Simulating murdering Trump And then Trump says You ought to be ashamed of yourself And she's like How dare you?

[1032] You broke me You talked at me I'm a victim.

[1033] Pause right there.

[1034] And the left's run.

[1035] I agree with him 100 % on that.

[1036] I felt like that was so preposterous.

[1037] And I like Kathy as a person.

[1038] I've met her a hundred times.

[1039] She's always sweet.

[1040] Oh, okay.

[1041] She's always sweet.

[1042] But when she was saying that he's a bully and he broke me and I was like, oh, my God, you held up a photo of his headless body that his children could have seen, or his, not his headless body, his head separated from his body, that his children could.

[1043] have seen like is that look what is that like that's that's it's so it's ineffective it didn't and then for her to say that like he broke her he's a bully like all he did was say it was horrible yeah like that he's targeting her it's like this this whole like professional victim thing that people enjoy they enjoy like taking on the role with such they have such like energy they put to being the victim.

[1044] It's just, God, you shouldn't hold up pictures of people's heads, okay?

[1045] If you don't like them, I mean, especially like in this day and age when there's people that actually cut people's heads off and, I mean, show them on camera.

[1046] I mean, this is fucking crazy.

[1047] Yeah, yeah.

[1048] You know, by the way, speaking of cutting people's heads off and showing them on camera, around the time that I was hanging out with Alex at Bohemian Grove, I was also hanging out documenting this Islamic militant called Oma Bakri Mohammed who was the head of this group in Britain called Al -Mu Hadjaroon and a bunch of his people are the ones who now drive vans into pedestrians and it makes me realize that all of the people with the kind of craziest and most pernicious ideas that I hung out within the 90s rose to the top and influenced their worlds including out well I'd say you know Alex I don't think Alex should have political sway.

[1049] Well, maybe he's right about these animal -human hybrids.

[1050] Go back to that, please.

[1051] We need to find out what's happening on the moon.

[1052] There was also...

[1053] Did you turn off of it?

[1054] Go back to it.

[1055] What'd you do?

[1056] Fonding around...

[1057] Fomining war.

[1058] Fomining violence.

[1059] Fomining death.

[1060] Out of all their mess -mouth reporters.

[1061] He broke me. Looks like the Day of the Dead on CNN.

[1062] Just like Kathy Griffin.

[1063] I guess that's the look.

[1064] That's the look.

[1065] for and then they freak out and go you called me irresponsible you said that I was a bad person I've been crushed by you you're a bully it's a bunch of corporate special interest that had their foot or their knee on our neck and now they don't 100 % got us on the ground and they're just flipping out okay stop pause how the fuck did he go from Kathy Griffin who's a comedian who did a gag that she thought was going to get her attention to backfire to there are a bunch of corporate special interests who've had their knee on our neck like what so how the fuck is Kathy Griffin got her knee on anybody's neck like she's not a corporation she's not a special interest she's a fucking comic I know her you can can that conspiracy instantaneously you're looking for the part we talked about the moon looking ahead to see what this human animal hybrid here's the thing I agree with you that he has too much influence over some people.

[1066] But I disagree in that I don't think any of that should be taken seriously.

[1067] Like what he just said should not be taken seriously, right?

[1068] Sure.

[1069] I mean, none of this would matter if there wasn't just the possibility that Trump believes this stuff.

[1070] Although, I'll tell you what I would say.

[1071] Last summer, when I was, I wrote this block, The Elephant in the room, trying to trace just how it works.

[1072] Like I'll expire, Roger Stone, meeting Trump and so on.

[1073] I discovered one really interesting thing, which is this is something Alex didn't like.

[1074] Alex did say to me when I was writing this book, you could write whatever you want, I don't care.

[1075] But that turned out to not be entirely true.

[1076] There were things that he did care about that I wrote.

[1077] And one of them was, I talked to Glenn Beck.

[1078] And he told me the story, this is before Trump was elected.

[1079] He told me this story about how Trump invited him to Mara Lago around the time that Trump was deciding to stand and he phoned Glenn Beck, even though they were both at Mara Lago, Trump was in one room and Glenn Beck was in the other and Trump phoned Glenn Beck and said, I think you have like, you know, you're so influential, you're so great, you know, you're great, you've got such influence, you can unite the Tea Party and the mainstream Republicans, and Glenn Beck thought, you know, oh, fuck you, I know what you're doing here.

[1080] You know, you're playing me. I've been down this road a million times.

[1081] And then Trump did the same thing to Alex.

[1082] He phoned Alex and said, you know, you have so much influence.

[1083] You're so amazing.

[1084] And Alex bought it.

[1085] Is this according to Glenn Beck?

[1086] No, no. I spoke to both of them.

[1087] I mean...

[1088] But you didn't speak to Trump.

[1089] I didn't speak to Trump, but I spoke to both Glenn Beck and Alex.

[1090] Right, but you don't know that Glenn Buck really did get that phone call from Trump, right?

[1091] Well, Glenn Beck told me that.

[1092] Right.

[1093] So either Glenn Beck was saying the truth of three.

[1094] Glenn Beck has said some pretty ridiculous shit himself.

[1095] And it became a Mormon at the age of like 50.

[1096] Well, I only have Glenn Beck.

[1097] Did you read the book?

[1098] So, but I do think like...

[1099] That's convenient.

[1100] Like, if it's right, it's convenient.

[1101] It makes it look interesting.

[1102] Although, well, I mean, it's what Glenn Beck told me. I only have his word for that story.

[1103] But, I mean, you don't really know, right?

[1104] Well, I mean, Glenn Beck told me that I believe that if Donald Trump called up Alex and said you were so influential and you're amazing and Alex go Well, thank you, Mr. President.

[1105] We're going to do our best to keep you in office and fight against the tyranny And all these fucking people out there That think they're going to stop us He's I mean, that's who he is You can get him riled up That's who he is But I do think that Alex As a kind of bit of a neo fight in all of this Because nobody had taken him that seriously before nobody in positions of power had taken him that seriously.

[1106] Yeah, but here's a deal.

[1107] I suppose what I'm saying is I think Trump played Alex and Alex was played.

[1108] You might be right.

[1109] But if Trump turned on Alex and said, you know, Info Wars is a bunch of losers, a bunch of this and that, Alex would, he would turn it around again and he would go after Trump.

[1110] Like he would.

[1111] Oh, Alex was really smart.

[1112] Like Alex, right from the beginning, said, like, you know, I'm with Trump until Trump does something, you know, that I don't like it.

[1113] Then I'll drop him like a hot potato.

[1114] So Alex was very smart.

[1115] Like, Alex always gave him, like, gave himself a sort of parachute out of this relationship.

[1116] So I think Trump played Alex and Alex was a bit too gullible and believed Trump's slick talk.

[1117] Now, but Alex was also smart and gave himself an out whenever he wanted the out.

[1118] Alex is goddamn entertaining.

[1119] Like, that alone is fucking entertaining.

[1120] Especially for me, a person, I'm not going to be influenced by these things that he says.

[1121] But one thing that I have been influenced is by him uncovering some things that are real conspiracies, one of them being agent provocateurs that they used to disrupt peaceful protests.

[1122] This was something that I didn't know was a standard tactic by the military and by certain politicians.

[1123] And what they do is they will hire these people, I don't know what branch of the military, what they do.

[1124] but they will hire these people.

[1125] And this has been confirmed by people that I know that are like special operators.

[1126] They take these masked guys and say if they have some peaceful protest.

[1127] The big one was the World Trade Organization.

[1128] Remember that protest?

[1129] Yeah.

[1130] And these guys with masks and government issue boots came in, started smashing windows, lighting things on fire.

[1131] And that gave them an excuse to come in and break up this riot where it had, been a peaceful protest where they couldn't stop the peaceful protest.

[1132] So now they break up these riots that they've created themselves, start arresting people left and right.

[1133] Then they put up a no protest zone.

[1134] This is all documented.

[1135] What the fuck did you just do?

[1136] Jamie's like, we need some dance music here.

[1137] This video has music on it, apparently.

[1138] With Alex.

[1139] But see, this is, I mean, he documented this and has been documented by many people since then and even in legitimate circles like it was a big factor in the occupy Wall Street movement the Occupy Wall Street movement was infiltrated ad nauseum by people from whatever branch of government whoever the fuck they were but yeah what they did was they they cause chaos and then it give them an excuse to arrest him and then in the world trade organization thing Alex detailed like with news reports independent news reports, how those people were not arrested.

[1140] And they were all negotiated their freedom.

[1141] They all held up in a house somewhere, and then they got them out of there as soon as everybody kind of like forgot about it all.

[1142] And then they set up a no protest zone.

[1143] And the no protest zone was fascinating because there's a lot of people that disagreed with the policies of the World Trade Organization.

[1144] And these people were going to work with a pin on a backpacker or a jacket that said WTO and had a line through it.

[1145] the police told them they could not go through with the pin on they could not go to work with a pin on that had a line through the word WTO like they opposed the WTO this is a no protest zone wow that's Alex Jones showed that so as wacky as he might be about alien babies that are coming from another dimension that are here to steal your soul and make you vote libertarian like he he might be wrong about a lot of shit but he also he's got the balls to expose a lot of crazy shit that people didn't talk about.

[1146] Yeah.

[1147] It reminds me of a time I went to Aryan Nations just before it closed down.

[1148] Do you remember Aryan Nations in Idaho?

[1149] Oh, they had that, that was like near Boisier, right?

[1150] Yeah.

[1151] Curderlane.

[1152] They had like some crazy camp.

[1153] Oh, Cordillane.

[1154] That's right.

[1155] Caudillane.

[1156] Which is gorgeous.

[1157] It's crazy.

[1158] Yeah.

[1159] That's that crazy lake up there they have.

[1160] Yes.

[1161] Beautiful.

[1162] So I was making a documentary about Randy Weaver about Ruby Ridge.

[1163] And I was spending a lot of time with Randy's daughter, Rachel, who I liked a lot.

[1164] Anyway, part of the reason why the whole Ruby Ridge escalation happened was because Randy Weaver gone to...

[1165] A lot of people don't know that story.

[1166] Well, I tell the story.

[1167] Yeah.

[1168] So it was a family of white separatists, Randy and Vicky and their children, Sarah and Rachel and a boy whose name have forgotten people will be...

[1169] It'll come to me. Anyway, so they moved to Idaho, early conspiracy theorists.

[1170] They moved to Idaho to a cabin on top of a hill, a place called Ruby Creek.

[1171] Anyway, Randy and Vicky used to go to Aryan Nations for their picnics and barbecues, but they weren't, and this is a kind of pivotal point, they weren't as crazy as the people at Aryan nations.

[1172] They weren't white supremacists, but they were sort of fellow travelers, but not quite as crazy.

[1173] So Airy Nations was infiltrated, like all white supremacist groups, by lots of federal agents, and they saw Randy and thought they could work with him.

[1174] So they said to Randy, you know, will he be an informant for us?

[1175] And Randy said, no. So then they sent in this guy and asked Randy to soar off a shotgun, a quarter of an inch below the legal limit.

[1176] So Randy sort off the shotgun for this guy.

[1177] and then they said, we're federal agents, you just committed a felony, you're going to go to prison unless you become an informant for us against Aryan nations.

[1178] And Randy, being a kind of hot -headed idiot, said, no, fuck off.

[1179] I made a big show of saying, no, fuck off.

[1180] So they went back to their cabins.

[1181] They went back to the cabin, and a warrant was issued for Randy's arrest, and Randy didn't turn up to court.

[1182] So now the U .S. Marshals are like hiding in the bushes, looking at Randy's cabin.

[1183] Randy arms his kids, his tiny little kids, you know, so they're patrolling up and down outside the cabin with these guns.

[1184] They were becoming increasingly paranoid, thinking they were being watched from the bushes, and they were being watched from the bushes.

[1185] CCTV cameras and U .S. Marshals.

[1186] Anyway, one day the U .S. Marshals got too close to the cabin, and one of Randy's dogs started barking and the kid, Randy's son, came out, 12 -year -old kid and looked much younger, looked like 8 years old, came out with a gun and gunfire happened.

[1187] The US Marshals shot the little boy, nearly shot his arm off and he turned around and tried to run back to the cabin shouting dad and the US Marshals shot him in the back and killed him and they killed the dog and one US Marshal was killed and there's debate as to whether it was either Randy's son or a family friend or whether it was friendly fire or not so they got the son's body and put him in the cabin and the next day this FBI shot shooter called Alon Horriucci turned up.

[1188] So the FBI surrounded the cabin.

[1189] U .S. Marshal had been killed.

[1190] There were tanks.

[1191] There were hundreds of troops.

[1192] This was like in the Clinton 90s when the Cold War was kind of dying and they needed a new enemy.

[1193] And so the new enemy that week was Randy Weaver in his family.

[1194] So Vicky Weaver was holding their baby, Elishaba, in the doorway of the cabin and the sharpshooter shot Vicky through the face and killed her and then they pulled Vicky's body into the cabin and a Randy was shot as well but survived and a siege ensued have lasted about two weeks of the kids inside the cabin the FBI outside of the cabin it ended up ending peacefully Bo Greitz who was a big kind of militia hero turned up and sort of helped to stop it from happening, to, you know, helped, you know, to get Randy out of the cabin.

[1195] And in the end, the daughters each got a million dollars each in compensation.

[1196] And it all kind of faded away.

[1197] So I was making a documentary about all of this.

[1198] And I went to Aryan Nations because I thought I can just turn up and say, I'm friends with Randy Weaver and they'd let me in.

[1199] So I turned up and immediately all of these skinheads surrounded me and started asking me what my genealogy was because they thought correctly that I'm a Jew.

[1200] So I said, what's my genealogy?

[1201] That was the word they used.

[1202] What's your genealogy?

[1203] So I said, I said, I'm Church of England.

[1204] And one of the Nazis, their Aryan nations, made a joke and said something like, oh, Church of England, like you're the guys who, blah, blah, made some kind of joke.

[1205] And the skinhead sort of drifted away from me. and I've always thought that the guy who alleviated the situation was maybe an undercover agent who was like calming things down and protecting me. It's always crossed my knowing how infiltrated those groups always are, just like the video that you showed, knowing how infiltrated those groups are.

[1206] Do they know how infiltrated they are?

[1207] They must do, right?

[1208] That's got to be so weird.

[1209] I know.

[1210] I know, they must do.

[1211] Because they were like infiltrated to fuck.

[1212] I mean, all of them were.

[1213] Yeah, well, that's one thing the federal government does good.

[1214] They infiltrate, like the mob.

[1215] They're always getting people to wear wires.

[1216] Right.

[1217] They're good at that.

[1218] Jamie, you wearing a wire?

[1219] Oh, I forget, we're alive.

[1220] There's no need.

[1221] Yeah.

[1222] So I think, I think they protect me in that moment when I could have had the shit kicked out of me. You think so?

[1223] Yeah.

[1224] They found out you were Jewish?

[1225] Yeah.

[1226] Well, because I, I mean, I'm obviously fucking Jewish.

[1227] No, not necessarily.

[1228] Do you think?

[1229] Yeah, people don't know anything.

[1230] And they think all English people.

[1231] people look like you right it was my own stupid fault i drove up the drive past all the signs that said no jews turned back no as as they surrounded me i did think to myself like if i get beaten up now it's my own stupid fault the jew thing is so weird because it's a race and it's also religion it's a weird one yeah you know it's weird right yeah because you're european but you're also jewish but which is a religion.

[1232] So if you're a European atheist, are you still a Jew?

[1233] Yeah.

[1234] Well, I mean, I am basically.

[1235] I remember when I was actually when I was with Omar Bakri, the Islamic fundamentalist, and he outed me as a Jew at his jihad training camp.

[1236] He did?

[1237] Yes.

[1238] Son of a bitch.

[1239] In a place called Crawley, which is near Gatwick Airport.

[1240] How rude.

[1241] He said to me, look at me with the infidel John, who is a Jew.

[1242] And they all went, oh.

[1243] Wow.

[1244] I said, surely it's better.

[1245] to be a Jew than an atheist.

[1246] And I heard someone in the crowd go, no, it isn't.

[1247] The thing that really surprises me about that exchange is that I am an atheist.

[1248] So of all the places where I would choose for the first time in my life to kind of exert my Jewishness.

[1249] Right, right, right.

[1250] I chose a fucking jihad training camp.

[1251] Like, what self -defeiting?

[1252] Did you have second thoughts about that one?

[1253] Like, were you in the midst of those people going, what the fuck am I playing with here?

[1254] Yes.

[1255] Although quite quickly.

[1256] um this the tension dissipated and i remember like a bunch of these young radical Islamists all started asking me like what what it was like to be a jew they were like treating me like a kind of tropical fish you'd find what a babies taste like and i i remember leaving that jihad training camp that day thinking i'd done some sterling work in bringing together communities like and you really believe that well i thought i believed it till like you know 9 -11 oh wow don't believe it anymore and omas people were like people in that room at that scout hut went on to become suicide bombers and to kill people and to drive fans into people it was a different world before 9 -11 though the fear of jihadis was much much much less prevalent yeah i made this funny i made this film called tommar tola i spent a year with omabakhri and it was a kind of comic film about his attempts to like you know, he said he wouldn't rest until he saw the flag of Islam flying over Downing Street.

[1257] So we made this sort of almost comic film about his sort of blundering attempts to create like Sharia Law in Britain.

[1258] And the joke of the film is that, oh, this is never going to work.

[1259] And it was kind of, you know, some of this ideas were ridiculous.

[1260] Like at one point he had these 5 ,000 black balloons carrying the call to war on these little, like, they were like leaflets like attached to these balloons.

[1261] with like slogans like Islam is the future of Britain and they were going to like fly over London and land wherever but they hadn't properly calculated like the weight ratio so all these fucking balloons are like let them off and they all just like stayed on the floor so all year they were like failing at doing everything but yeah but then like this was like 96 and then five years later 9 -11 happened and now Omar's in prison in Beirut for inciting terrorism and a lot of Omar's people became terrorists.

[1262] True.

[1263] John Ronson, you've been around.

[1264] I've been around the block.

[1265] I have seen some shit.

[1266] So when was the last time you were in Alex's presence?

[1267] Does texting count?

[1268] No. Have you been around him since Bohemian Grove?

[1269] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[1270] I went to visit Info Wars last summer, last August.

[1271] And what did you think of him, like knowing him in the late 90s, when you guys went to Bohemian Grove together, and knowing him now.

[1272] Well, I mean, his operation has expanded, like, massively.

[1273] Oh, yeah.

[1274] Yeah, when I knew Alex in the 90s, Info Wars was a spare bedroom in his house with Choo Choo Choo Train wallpaper, like little trains, and an Impasse Strikes Back poster.

[1275] And it was Alex, Mike Hansen, Alex's girlfriend, And they always called it violet, but her real name's Kelly.

[1276] I said to her, because I went to the custody hearing for a couple of days.

[1277] Oh, so I saw him then.

[1278] I went to the custody hearing because I was just curious.

[1279] Right.

[1280] And I said to it, like, the last time I saw the two of you, you were, like, kissing and telling each other how much you loved each other.

[1281] And then, like, 16 years passes, and it's the worst, like, divorce that Texas has ever known.

[1282] Is it?

[1283] That's what divorce lawyers were saying, like.

[1284] How's it the worst?

[1285] Oh, they just, because it went national?

[1286] And they just hated each other so much I mean they hate each other I say Like yeah And now Alex has got a staff of like 75 people You know with like these giant Hangers for his supplements His male vitality supplements Have you ever seen the video Of when Joey Diaz and me are in Alex's studio And Joey realizes that it's on the internet So because it's on the internet he could say whatever he wants so we go we go live and uh Alex goes uh well actually from here on out we're on the internet so you can kind of say whatever you want but try to keep it clean and the look of for Joey Diaz it was like the cat who saw the canary and realized that the cage was open and he's and so he's telling some story about smuggling weed through the airport listen to this it's time to listen to your bullshit congressman or your bullshit governor or even a bullshit president and he's kicking you with that same four shit that they give you every four fucking years and you still vote for the fucking Momo and then you get mad, think about me saying the word fuck.

[1287] With that, I'm out of here.

[1288] I gotta smoke a signal.

[1289] Hold on a minute.

[1290] We're making some very solid points.

[1291] Don't do the no, I know.

[1292] Joey, you get it.

[1293] But then you're just to let the American public know that every four years they buy the same shit they've been buying every four years and the same people with their Harvard articulation and how they don't curse and they're Christians and they have a family.

[1294] And these are the same people that shove it up your fucking ass.

[1295] every year.

[1296] The one thing that you get about me is, I'll say fuck, but I will not fucking rob you.

[1297] If I need some, I'll ask you like a man. I know, you're gonna have.

[1298] Hey, hey, go fuck yourself, you caught.

[1299] Hold on, hold on one second.

[1300] Take a joke, take a shuttle.

[1301] Joey Diaz, Facebook, Twitter, check yourself before you wreck yourself.

[1302] Big dicks in your ass up.

[1303] Get out of here.

[1304] You're in trouble.

[1305] I think I'm power, this is, I'm throwing.

[1306] All right, all right.

[1307] Listen, stay black because that's the most important.

[1308] Okay, okay.

[1309] He made Alex speechless.

[1310] He's the funniest man that's ever lived.

[1311] Do you think Alex regrets all of this?

[1312] No!

[1313] Alex is great.

[1314] I have a good time with Alex.

[1315] I'm telling you.

[1316] No, when I say all of this, I mean, do you think Alex regrets the fact that the, you know, that the spotlight is on him in a kind of unprecedented way?

[1317] Do you think he doesn't?

[1318] No. You don't think a part of him is, like, stressed out by us?

[1319] Honestly, he's fine.

[1320] I've never met a guy in my life that has more teflon when it comes to stress.

[1321] It's like, well, I've been kind of stressed out lately, but I go to the gym and feel fine.

[1322] Had a cheeseburger.

[1323] Probably shouldn't have that shit.

[1324] Trying to stick to my diet, but it's hard.

[1325] He doesn't give a fuck, man. He's a weird guy.

[1326] Like, he's got a very unusual constitution.

[1327] You know what I bet did stress them out, though?

[1328] There was a couple of, like, pending lawsuits, like Chabarnie and...

[1329] Chabarnie, what does it mean?

[1330] Chibarney, the yogurt people.

[1331] The yogurt?

[1332] He was consumed by yogurt people?

[1333] Yeah, he got into trouble.

[1334] With Chabani, because he said they were, like, importing rapists.

[1335] Oh, yeah.

[1336] And, of course, he got into trouble with the pizza restaurant, and I would bet you.

[1337] I mean, Pizza Gate, that shit.

[1338] InfoWars, Alex Jones, apologizes for saying Chabani supports migrant rapists.

[1339] He didn't even really say that.

[1340] Oh, Jesus Christ.

[1341] Yeah, he did.

[1342] He's so fucking crazy.

[1343] And I would guarantee you that that's, I'd guarantee you that that.

[1344] and the Pizza Gate stuff properly stressed about because I think both of those were risking his like entire operation.

[1345] Okay, let me tell you something.

[1346] It might stress you out.

[1347] Like if it was you and you were being sued by Shabani, you'd probably be freaking out.

[1348] You'd be like, I've clearly made a horrible mistake.

[1349] I need to come clean and I need to apologize.

[1350] I'm so paranoid that I freak out if I eat a Chabani guava and think I'm like, fuck, this is the most disgusting thing I've ever eaten.

[1351] My threshold for getting like panicky and stressed out is very low.

[1352] That's incredible, considering you're in a jihadi camp.

[1353] Yeah, I know.

[1354] I often wonder why I put myself in these things so dangerous situations.

[1355] Maybe that's why it's so compelling when you do.

[1356] Hmm.

[1357] But Alex, you think, doesn't know.

[1358] Right.

[1359] No, I know him, man. He's a different dude.

[1360] Right.

[1361] You know, like, he's got a, like, there's a, I don't agree with a lot of the stuff.

[1362] He says, just like, I don't agree with a lot of stuff my friend Eddie says.

[1363] But I love the both of them.

[1364] it's weird man and I get it I get people saying that he's got too much influence and he does you know but my take is like if you really think there's fucking alien bases on the moon and that there's child slaves on Mars fucking shame on you shame on you you know I think the deeper and the more crazy he goes the better his show is the more it's entertaining I I mean I'm a bad person for that I don't think I am though yeah you got me wondering like why why I put myself in dangerous situations when I'm such a panicking about it?

[1365] A little bit.

[1366] Maybe it's because people have anxiety disorders are quite good when it comes to actual, like, difficult situations because we've rehearsed it so many times.

[1367] Like we panic unnecessarily so often that when something really worth panicking comes along, we actually handle it really well.

[1368] Well, let me ask you, has there ever been a situation where you were confronted with an idea and you're like, you know what, that one is too dangerous?

[1369] I'm not doing that Yeah When I was writing the menisteric goats The menisteric goats was about this kind of secret unit In the 80s of like Soldiers who were trying to like walk through walls And become invisible and kills Was that remote viewing as well Yeah remote viewing was like they were different But there was like an overlap I met a bunch of those guys Right I bet you did When I was doing that sci -fi show Right like Joe McMonagull and Ed Dames Do you remember them?

[1370] Ed Dames I met with him Oh okay yeah He was talking to me about how they found you know, various bad people using this weird stuff and I was like, hmm, yeah.

[1371] Oh, yeah, no, so I met all of those people too.

[1372] Remote viewing sounds like really exciting, but, you know, psychic spies in the military.

[1373] But it turns out that actually their lives were quite shit because they were like, because basically they sat in the fucking room all day trying to like psychically sketch for like 20 years.

[1374] They never saw any action.

[1375] It's not come out of my nose.

[1376] One of them told me that because they were black up because they didn't officially exist.

[1377] They had no coffee machine.

[1378] They had to, like, bring their own coffee into work every day because they couldn't, like, justify it.

[1379] Also, the room that they were in was really, like, bad because they couldn't get it repaired because they didn't exist.

[1380] Right.

[1381] Yeah.

[1382] So their lives were quite shit.

[1383] So I tell you how I came to this story.

[1384] So that was out.

[1385] This guy called Jim Schnabler had written this book called Remote Viewers, which kind of, you know, uncovered all of that stuff.

[1386] And there was this magician called Ray Hyman, who was like a skeptic.

[1387] I think he's dead now.

[1388] The CIA bought him in to assess the remote viewing program to see whether they should keep it going or close it down.

[1389] And Ray Hyman said it was kind of nonsense.

[1390] And so that helped them, the CIA closed down the unit.

[1391] So I met Ray Hyman, and I just happened to say to him, it's like one of those questions that kind of changes your life.

[1392] I said to him, like, so when you were like in the military, like sniffing around with the remote viewers, did you happen to notice like anything else going on?

[1393] And he went, yeah, he said there was this general called Stubblebine who thought he could like burst clouds with his mind.

[1394] And there was this lieutenant colonel called Channon who thought that he could like, you know, train soldiers to like fast for a month.

[1395] And so I had these like two names, Stubblebine and Shannon and the whole Minister of Goat stuff, which wasn't out in the open, all came out.

[1396] It was amazing that they were trying to kill goats just by staring at them.

[1397] So, yeah.

[1398] Yeah, so they had like, I met this guy who was like part of the goat staying program.

[1399] And they had like, this is all at Fort Bragg.

[1400] I had a trip around Fort Bragg one time.

[1401] And I said to them, like, so where's goat lab?

[1402] And they went, you're not supposed to know about goat lab?

[1403] Yeah.

[1404] So they had like, at one point they had like 30 goats in a room.

[1405] And they were all staring at goat number 16.

[1406] They all had numbers on there.

[1407] And goat number 17 fell over, which I suppose is collateral damage.

[1408] I mean, I would argue that if he stare at a goat long enough, it's going to fall over.

[1409] I mean, everything's going to fall over eventually.

[1410] I'm sorry, I was drinking water when I was laughing.

[1411] Okay, sorry.

[1412] So the goat really did fall over and die?

[1413] Well, no. Oh, well, Guy severely.

[1414] So we tracked down the goat stare at a. This is to, he now runs a dance studio in our.

[1415] Ohio, the Sovelli dance and martial arts studio.

[1416] Jesus Christ.

[1417] Yeah, so we tracked him down.

[1418] I said to him on the phone, said, do you still ever like kill goats just by staring at them?

[1419] And he went with a matter of fact, just last week, I killed my hamster just by staring at him.

[1420] Hamsters lived in be like three days old.

[1421] He said, he said he called it on video.

[1422] And I said, well, can we come and watch the video?

[1423] So we went.

[1424] He said, okay.

[1425] So we flew to Ohio to meet Guy Sivelli.

[1426] The whole time his son was filming me. Like the whole time I was there, he was filming me. So eventually, like, he admitted, like, why they were filming me. And it was that he was worried that I might be al -Qaeda, like, trying to learn...

[1427] How to stare at people and kill him?

[1428] Yes.

[1429] So he was, like, filming me just in case.

[1430] So he really believed it?

[1431] Totally.

[1432] So, well, this video, did it show him staring at a hamster and it does?

[1433] I saw the video of the hamster staring.

[1434] I should tell you, by the way, that the moment when I think I've pinpointed the moment when they worked out that I wasn't al -Qaeda.

[1435] And it was because it turns out that Guy Sevelli's daughter is in the movie Chicago, like as one of the dancers.

[1436] And so I kind of shrieked.

[1437] Oh, I know shrieked.

[1438] Oh, I love Catherine Zeta Jones.

[1439] And I think like they all kind of relaxed.

[1440] I think even like an out, even like a kind of deep cover Al -Qaeda operative wouldn't think to go that effeminate.

[1441] So, yeah, so then they showed me the hamster video.

[1442] It's a hamster.

[1443] I'm sure this is on YouTube, by the way.

[1444] I'm sure you can find this.

[1445] If you typed in, I don't know, John Ronson, hamster, crazy rulers of the world, Guy Sevelli or something.

[1446] So, like, he's like, so the hamster's, like, running around in its wheel, and that guy's off camera, like, staring at the hamster.

[1447] And then finally the hamster gets off the wheel, and it's like all the sawdust.

[1448] And then the hamster light drops, like, stops moving, drops down and stops moving amid the sawdust.

[1449] So I'm like, whoa.

[1450] And then the hamster gets up again and the video ends.

[1451] So I was like, that's not dead.

[1452] Like, a guy said, You flew all the way to Ohio to see a video over hamster.

[1453] Yeah.

[1454] So a guy said, yeah.

[1455] Yeah, yeah, my wife, my wife told me, like, not to, my wife said, don't show them the part where the hamster dies.

[1456] So, what?

[1457] Yeah, in case I was like a bleeding heart liberal and I was like, yeah.

[1458] His wife told him to not show you the video that you flew all the way the fuck to Ohio to see.

[1459] Well, I think it's possible that the hamster just doesn't die.

[1460] No way, bro.

[1461] But it's true, the guy showed me like a whole point.

[1462] Is that him?

[1463] Yeah, that's Guy Sevelia.

[1464] Full screen, please.

[1465] You need to put a Guisevelli in mind Hey, what happens when you've got a guest He's on for three hours and they want to use the bathroom?

[1466] Just go ahead and use the bathroom, go ahead.

[1467] Can you cover for me?

[1468] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1469] We'll turn the volume on here.

[1470] Oh, he's doing some fake martial arts too.

[1471] Oh, this is hilarious.

[1472] Oh, you don't understand.

[1473] This is my favorite stuff, John Ronson.

[1474] Look at this.

[1475] This is my favorite stuff.

[1476] It's all like pokes.

[1477] Triangle of Death.

[1478] Oh, it's called the Triangle of Death.

[1479] Yeah.

[1480] Oh, go back to you.

[1481] Oh, go back to that.

[1482] I need to watch that again.

[1483] This is hilarious.

[1484] This is a crudal artery.

[1485] Ooh, the artery.

[1486] And there is the...

[1487] Esophagus.

[1488] Airway.

[1489] Yeah.

[1490] The ABC approach of helping a person or hurting a person.

[1491] They need a clear airway.

[1492] They need to be able to breathe.

[1493] Mm. And they need...

[1494] Have circulation of blood through their body.

[1495] Pause that for a second.

[1496] What's one thing about bullshit artists is they always like use these real...

[1497] technical terms like especially martial arts bullshit artists they always talk about like uh like medical terms that they're like disrupting the the nerve the vagus nerve that goes to the brain and the this is your c6 c7 your cervical disc and i'm going to attack the cervical disc through the carotid artery they're like it's almost like they learn all these technical terms to sort of make their horseshit look more palatable uh in order to live in the poison hand technique poison hands although I'm not showing you how to strike to penetrate the skin of which we have a way to do that what please don't show anybody sir with your flabby grandma arms he's gonna watch he's gonna show you oh boy how's he alive it's just the end part is my favorite where he does like the fucking karate stands behind find the guy's back.

[1498] You say, your tap.

[1499] And look at the end part.

[1500] A little limp hand to the back.

[1501] Oh, that guy's wonderful.

[1502] I don't know why, man. I don't know why, but this stuff gives me so much pleasure.

[1503] I enjoy fake martial arts videos more than almost anything.

[1504] Almost as much as hold this beer, the Twitter account, that I fucking...

[1505] Every two days, to retweet one because I find a good new one I don't know why he's got new stuff oh what's he gonna do mind development oh mind development striking techniques let me see this let me see this the guy's coming close he's touching him he's about to touch him what the fuck with that the guy's about to touch him You can do whatever has to be done to protect, not hurt.

[1506] You can hear this?

[1507] Is that the demand?

[1508] No, no, no, no, he's got this.

[1509] Hold on.

[1510] Play that back.

[1511] Get it back.

[1512] Development of the mind.

[1513] So you know, you know the shit better than me, right?

[1514] Oh, yeah, I certainly do.

[1515] This is your bread and butter.

[1516] This is, well, this is something I've been doing more than I've been doing anything in my whole life.

[1517] This is the first real exercise towards that goal.

[1518] You gotta see this It's so fucking stupid So he's the goat stuff And he's just gonna punch A watermelon Oh you're crazy bro Oh it's solid Oh no way That's impenetrable That's basically a brick wall He's gonna use his fingers One two Oh it broke his hand son You broke your hand kid He's the first guy You didn't mark the death touch He went right through that watermelon bro I would let that guy do that to me I'd be like okay fuck the watermelon dude let me tighten up my stomach oh yeah I've seen these I've seen this stuff yeah this is guy doing military stuff right this is this is deep this is menistered it's not really military but he's wearing a military out oh hey I do know that guy like went to Fort Bragg and did the goat stuff like he showed me documentation see this right here listen man I used to do this look at that's a stupid He picked his leg up when he's doing it.

[1519] Oh, this is hilarious.

[1520] This guy's going to do with his fingertips.

[1521] Hi -ya!

[1522] My hair right through.

[1523] Here's the thing.

[1524] When I was a kid, like real young, we used to do these demonstrations.

[1525] When I was like 15.

[1526] Right.

[1527] When we would open up a new school, we'd do these demonstrations.

[1528] And it was the only time we ever broke boards.

[1529] We fucking never broke boards.

[1530] Because it's really easy to do.

[1531] Yes.

[1532] It looks harder than it.

[1533] It's like walking on hot coals, right?

[1534] But it's way easier than walking on hot coals.

[1535] Right.

[1536] Because those things, first of all, the way they're cut is with the grain is, like the grain is going in a manner.

[1537] What's the way we describe it?

[1538] It's like if you're holding something up, the grain is actually going in the way that you want it to break.

[1539] So you're breaking it with the grain.

[1540] You literally can do with your fingers.

[1541] Like I could, you could take, and those are thin pieces of wood too.

[1542] You can take this piece of, if this pad was a wood, you would just.

[1543] go like this with two fingers and just go snap and it would break.

[1544] Right.

[1545] Briggs like nothing.

[1546] I was 15.

[1547] And we would do these karate kicks and punches and stuff and they always broke.

[1548] They always broke.

[1549] They're so easy to break.

[1550] So here's a question and what does it say about like special forces at Fort Bragg that they would bring guy in to do these?

[1551] They brought that guy in?

[1552] Well I mean it wasn't like I don't believe it was like a sanction from the very top.

[1553] But he certainly went to Fort Bragg and stared at goats.

[1554] He stared at goats at Fort Bragg.

[1555] Well, they probably just grabbed whatever dummies they could find.

[1556] Like, get some dude who's willing to stare at a goat.

[1557] Like, there's a lot of people, though.

[1558] Here's one thing that is a fact.

[1559] There's a lot of people, particularly in the 80s and the 90s, before the ultimate fighting championship came around, there was a lot of fake martial arts out there, a lot.

[1560] I know people that were teaching fake martial arts that got into the military, they got into the police.

[1561] I knew the guy who was deep in the police force, and he had four.

[1562] fake martial arts like his martial arts were fucking completely useless and it tallies with the like u .s. military credo of like thinking out of the box like if we don't try this stuff nobody else will try this stuff what's going on here they're blurring look how the easy it is to break that his special forces oh they're special special ops okay so yeah there you go and they were killing goats con tau i've never even heard of that one can yeah that's guy saveli's thing but you know Then General Stubblebine, General Stubberbine, who I'm sure would have been a fan of this show because he was a big fan of Alex's and so on.

[1563] So he was like head of Army intelligence.

[1564] He had 16 ,000 soldiers under his command, and he, like, totally believed in all of this stuff.

[1565] He believed in that stuff?

[1566] Oh, yeah.

[1567] What that guy was doing?

[1568] General Stubblebine would, when he was head of Army intelligence in Arlington, would try and walk through his wall.

[1569] Because he told me one time.

[1570] He said like, he said, What is the atom mostly made up of space?

[1571] What is the wall mostly made up of atoms?

[1572] I mean, to me, the key wordiness is mostly.

[1573] Mostly is a big part of that, bro.

[1574] So he would, like, stand up from behind his desk and, like, you know, basically run into it.

[1575] So you should have asked him, what's an atom bomb made up, you fucking idiot?

[1576] He said, let me show you a video.

[1577] He said he would, like, bruise his nose trying to walk through his wall.

[1578] He said, fortunately, he was going through a messy divorce at the time.

[1579] So, like, other people in his office just assumed it was like, you know.

[1580] His wife beat him up?

[1581] Yeah, his wife beat him up.

[1582] But in fact, he was trying to like...

[1583] She's probably, I'm going to get away from this wall -walking asshole.

[1584] He was trying to merge the spaces between his atoms and the walls atoms, but he just kept pumping his nose.

[1585] Yeah, yeah, this is, this is, yeah, this was fun.

[1586] This is my couple of years.

[1587] When I did that sci -fi show, we did a whole segment on remote viewing, and we actually had a guy who claimed to be a successful remote viewer.

[1588] and we set up this location and asked him, me and DJ Grothy.

[1589] Oh, yeah.

[1590] Yeah, who's a skeptic.

[1591] Yeah.

[1592] Very nice guy.

[1593] And, you know, DJ was just as accurate, just guessing, as this guy was.

[1594] Yeah, I think actually, now that I think about it, I think DJ was more accurate.

[1595] Hmm.

[1596] You know, the kind of dark secret of the remote viewing world.

[1597] I mean, I can't, you can't sort of totally blame the remote viewers for this.

[1598] But so the remote viewing.

[1599] unit at Fort Meade got declassified and shut down.

[1600] So a lot of these remote viewers then set up their own training centres, including Ed Dames in, I don't know, maybe in Vegas, or some were not far from me. So Ed Dames had this student called...

[1601] Macneedo.

[1602] What was his name?

[1603] There was a woman called Court Me, and then there was his other student.

[1604] I've forgotten her names.

[1605] Anyway, but they would then, so Ed Dames taught them remote viewing these two people who would then go on the Art Bell show and it became like, you know, regular guests on the Art Bell show.

[1606] And they're the ones, these two of Ed Dames and students, they're the ones who basically announced on the art bell show that the Hale -Bop comet had a companion object in its tail.

[1607] They'd remote viewed the Halebop comet that was about to pass over the earth had a companion object in its tail.

[1608] They'd remote -viewed the its tail and listening to the art bell show was the heavens gate group so they decided that that was the spaceship they were waiting for yes so they all killed themselves to get on the spaceship prudence calabesey and another guy whose name i forgot good lord yeah so that's a sort of weird butterfly effect that's hilarious yeah that whole thing was such a it's amazing what people want to believe Now, this, when it goes back to conspiracy theorists or whether it's the remote viewers or even someone who would watch that guy's karate videos and think that he's really doing death touches, he's talking about he has a method of going through the skin that attack the organs, like, oh, yeah, he told me all of that stuff.

[1609] Oh, he showed me a photograph of, well, actually, he accidentally showed me a photograph of him karate chopping a goat at Fort Rock.

[1610] He said, oh, you weren't supposed to see that one.

[1611] Yeah, he did the death touch on a goat.

[1612] A lot of...

[1613] Well, you could fuck a goat up if you hit it in the right spot.

[1614] Yeah, a lot of indignities were meted out to goats in the U .S. military.

[1615] Goats are actually pretty tough, though, now that I think about it, I bet you probably couldn't kill a goat with a karate chop.

[1616] Right.

[1617] I mean, you don't have to really hit it hard in the right spot, like in their neck.

[1618] Is it true?

[1619] In the movie adaptation of my book, The Ministerate Goats, there's a kind of...

[1620] bit of comedy where somebody thinks that they fell victim to the death touch, but it happened like years later.

[1621] Like 25 years ago, he was given the death touch and now he's dying from it 25 years later.

[1622] Was that in the movie?

[1623] Yeah, that was in the movie.

[1624] Is it true in like the death touch world in the dim black world?

[1625] Is it true that some people think like you can touch them now?

[1626] And that's that was the moment.

[1627] That's the moment.

[1628] That movie was great.

[1629] Yeah.

[1630] Yeah, so that's the moment.

[1631] Well found.

[1632] So is it true in the death touch world that people think he can do the dim back on someone and they die years later of seemingly natural causes?

[1633] I'm sure that someone who believes that for sure.

[1634] Yeah.

[1635] Yeah.

[1636] I mean, if you see that guy that was just having, did you see that guy who did all the crazy stuff and the guy falls down?

[1637] You might have missed it.

[1638] Yeah.

[1639] But that's the movie.

[1640] That's the movie based.

[1641] Oh, oh, you mean in the loo?

[1642] Yeah, the other guy.

[1643] Right.

[1644] He does all this...

[1645] Thank you for using an English word, by the way.

[1646] For you.

[1647] He does all these crazy, like, fake karate moves.

[1648] Slop, slap, slap, slap.

[1649] Right.

[1650] And they slaps them in the back.

[1651] Yeah.

[1652] Yeah, there's people that believe all kinds of crazy stuff.

[1653] Well, you know, he definitely inspired the characters in the Minnesota Goats movie.

[1654] Have you ever seen what happens when one of these fake Death Touch guys fights a real fighter?

[1655] No, do they kind of get the shit kicks out of them?

[1656] Oh, it's horrific.

[1657] There's a few of them.

[1658] Right.

[1659] And these guys just don't seem to learn.

[1660] One of them that was a real.

[1661] recently in China was so poorly received that the guy who was the MMA fighter had to go into hiding because he beat the living fuck out of this guy in like 10 seconds like the guy came out and did all this crazy stuff and the guy just smashes him in the face MMA style and his kung fu was no good this day watch this so you get the young guy in orange shoes who's like a legit fighter and then the other guy who is this silly death touch guy dressed up like he's in a different century and like watch how this goes down because it's it's horrible because this guy on the left with the orange sneakers on is a real trained fighter and this other guy has a real belief in this system that he's been practicing under and he has no idea that it's horseshit and the way he finds out that it's horseshit is on YouTube.

[1662] I mean, he literally finds out in this moment that what he's, I mean, he probably believed it.

[1663] He probably believed that what he does is actually real and effective.

[1664] So check this out.

[1665] It's horrible.

[1666] They get together, blah, blah, blah.

[1667] They go over what you're supposed to do or whatever.

[1668] And they, uh, I don't know if they make them shake hands.

[1669] Yep, they shake hands.

[1670] And then they go back.

[1671] And then they get the party started.

[1672] And it takes 10 seconds.

[1673] here we go ready set go there goes so this guy's like literally doing like some movie stuff and the boom the mma guy just starts teeing off boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom that's a wrap it's horrible oh i mean it literally lasts once he engages them in the last 10 seconds but that's because one of them is doing an actual martial art and the other guy is practicing nonsense and he's probably practiced that nonsense his whole life and he thought it was real there's another one where there's an old man and that's even harder to watch because this old man gets kicked in the face and you just go oh Jesus Christ like this guy this is horrible and he looks like legitimately like let's watch what he does back up to the beginning so he bet $5 ,000 check this out like he look he what he thinks he can do he claimed a 200 and oh record look he's not even touching these people they just go flying it's like they're a part of a cult you know so they move at him and he really firmly believes that he can do this look he's like manipulating them like he's a puppet master it's so crazy so this guy is so he's so like hypnotized by his own bullshit that he decides so this is like a come right that's Well, he's, I don't know.

[1674] See, here's the thing, because he actually makes a real fight with a real trained martial artist.

[1675] So he might, he may very well have been in on it himself.

[1676] I mean, not in on it, I mean, what I mean is he might have been taken by his own bullshit.

[1677] He might have actually believed it.

[1678] So now he's going to fight an actual.

[1679] A young, actual martial artist.

[1680] And so he's got this crazy idea that he's just going to like give that guy.

[1681] the hex and the guy's going to go flying through the air like the other guy was teaching but this kid just sort of circles them for a few seconds and then just like that other video beats the holy fuck out of him inside of about 10 seconds just zoom off until they engage yeah it's like here it goes see he's like doing this craziness and the the young martial artist just grabs them punches them kicks him and he's like you see he's like he's holding his face he's like he's like he's holding his face like what the fuck and the young guy is really nice look he's like you okay you want to keep going and he's holding his mouth look the young guy like literally says look does he want to keep going let's stop let's stop his guy's bleeding out of his nose and so he says keep going he says i'm fine and so he gets his hands up because this time it's going to work this time i'm going to hit him with the full voodoo and this kid just blam blam blam blam and then this kick boom that's that's where it gets horrific.

[1682] And that guy was probably like 60.

[1683] It's not a good time to get kicked in the face.

[1684] You know, in the military, I'm remembering, I don't think about the minister at goats that much because it was so long ago, but now I'm remembering some of the other stuff that they were doing.

[1685] And there was a lot of weaponry stuff, you know?

[1686] There was the, there was the prophet hologram.

[1687] All of this sort of came from the central well of like, you know, 80s, believe.

[1688] Profit hologram?

[1689] Yeah.

[1690] That they would, um, they never like got it off.

[1691] the ground, but what they were trying to do was have a hologram of Allah that they would project over an enemy capital.

[1692] And Allah would basically say whatever the U .S. military wanted him to say, like, the Americans aren't that bad.

[1693] God bless President Bush.

[1694] They had a race -specific stink bomb, which again, they never managed to get off the ground.

[1695] What about the gay bomb?

[1696] They had the gay bomb.

[1697] That was real.

[1698] Yeah.

[1699] They literally were engineering some sort of a. a chemical warfare device that would turn men homosexual.

[1700] Yeah, and what's less known about it is that they were also trying to do a halitosis bomb so that you'd turn the enemy gay.

[1701] And then he gave him bad breath.

[1702] Yeah, he gave him bad breath.

[1703] And it'd be so freaked out that the Americans would have come in and win.

[1704] Wow, they would just have shame all around.

[1705] Yeah.

[1706] They had attack bees that would again just attack the enemy.

[1707] None of these things got off the ground, I don't think.

[1708] Well, I guess it's sort of like writing.

[1709] comedy.

[1710] You throw a lot of shit against the wall and only like one -tenth of it sticks.

[1711] Yeah.

[1712] Like, uh, and some things did stick, right?

[1713] I mean, the, the, the, the, the taser came from the military, I believe.

[1714] But that seems totally reasonable, though.

[1715] Everybody knows you can get electrocuted and figure out a way to get a large charge and a small device.

[1716] Yeah.

[1717] And then there was all those kind of weird, hour old, howural techniques that they would do at Guantanamo and Abu Abu Ghra.

[1718] Aral, I probably said it wrong.

[1719] Yeah.

[1720] Where they would like, play, exactly, try and play subliminal sounds.

[1721] Right.

[1722] They'd blast, like, Metallica at people, but laced into Metallica would be these, like, subliminal sounds that would try and, like, hypnotize people.

[1723] Do you remember when they used to do that in movie theaters?

[1724] Hungry, eat popcorn.

[1725] They'd have, like, subliminal images that would, like, in between, like, screens.

[1726] Yes, it's like one, one frame.

[1727] Has ever been shown that that actually worked?

[1728] That works.

[1729] I'm not sure that it ever worked in the...

[1730] I met this guy.

[1731] Oh, my God.

[1732] I just remembered.

[1733] So I met this guy called Jamal Al Harith, who had been released from Guantanamo, and he was telling me about all of this stuff.

[1734] He was in Guantanamo for like two years, and then he got released, and he was telling me about the stuff.

[1735] He said they played him an entire CD of a Fleetwood Mac covers band at normal, in Guantanamo, at normal volume.

[1736] Those guys were just fucking winging it, man. Well, I said to him, they just winged it.

[1737] I said what was going on, he's that.

[1738] don't know um i said like were they doing it to be nice maybe they thought you were a fan right want to make it more pleasant he said it was guantanamo they weren't trying to be nice anyway so i interviewed jamal alhara he was telling me about all of this weird shit and a few months ago he goes and fucking joins ISIS and blows himself up somewhere this guy the fleetwood mac cover band guy yeah wow so when they arrested him and brought him to guantanamo bay was he innocent of those charges?

[1739] Well, he certainly convinced everybody that he was and in fact Tony Blair got involved and helped get him out of Guantanamo.

[1740] Wow.

[1741] And he went on to be a jihadi.

[1742] What I don't know, but I'd be very curious to find out is exactly the question that you just posed.

[1743] Like was he always a jihadi?

[1744] Or did the experience of being in Guantanamo somehow like years later helped to turn him into a jihadi?

[1745] I don't know the answer to him.

[1746] Well, you kind of think if you're an innocent person and for two years they take away your freedom yeah and they make you listen to a fleetwood mac cover band you're probably you're like i can't get over that man right it's stained it's stained my soul yeah i have no idea but i met this guy very personable young man i met him at a hotel in manchester wow which is where i interviewed him for the men's state go and where did he kill himself i can't remember can you can you kill other people as well uh jama i don't know jama al hirth also heartbreakingly from around that time.

[1747] Omar Bakri, who was the guy, the jihadist, I made a film about his son.

[1748] He had this really sweet little kid.

[1749] This son, Muhammad, who was really scared that, like, his father might get hurt because he was, like, so public and open.

[1750] And he were, like, confide in us that, you know, he was scared that his father would get hurt.

[1751] Fucking two years ago, joins, his son, joins ISIS, tries to leave ISIS.

[1752] So ISIS kill him.

[1753] Oh, I know.

[1754] All these people.

[1755] People I knew 20 years ago, I'll tell you all the worse.

[1756] Here we go.

[1757] Jamala has been killed, really carried out to suicide carbon in Iraqi Army Base.

[1758] Yeah.

[1759] Jesus Christ.

[1760] Yeah.

[1761] I know, I know.

[1762] What does that feel like when you hear that, that you knew someone that became a suicide bomb?

[1763] I was, I was, well, Jamal, I just met that one time.

[1764] But still, you knew him.

[1765] Well, I met him that one time.

[1766] But I had someone on my podcast, it turned out to be.

[1767] be a suicide bomber.

[1768] Well, you did?

[1769] Who?

[1770] No, you?

[1771] I did.

[1772] You mean if?

[1773] No, no. I thought you were saying I did and I didn't know.

[1774] No. Shit, you're going to tell me something?

[1775] I thought you were saying that you did.

[1776] No, well, I did have a guy in my podcast that almost beat a woman to death after he was on, and now he's in jail for life.

[1777] Shit.

[1778] It was a very public story.

[1779] He's a M. A .m. A .m. He's a man, John Copenhaver.

[1780] Right.

[1781] And he apparently fed. this girl he was dating, but they broke up.

[1782] He found her in bed with another man and went up beating him and beating her, like half to death, like ruptured her liver, broke her ribs, smashed her face, broke her teeth.

[1783] Horrific, horrific.

[1784] And she was here with him when he visited.

[1785] Do you think it was steroids?

[1786] Do you think it was psychopathy?

[1787] All the above.

[1788] I think steroids probably played a factor.

[1789] traumatic brain injury probably paid a factor I think that's what they say about Chris Benoit right that it was making traumatic brain injury it's a huge factor because these guys they get hit in the head so many times and no one can tell you when it's going to go bad no one knows it varies like you might be able to take a hundred punches for me it might be 30 you know no one knows it doesn't it doesn't really make sense yeah and you don't know what they're absorbing in training versus what happens in actual fights and, you know, and what the effect it has on one person is very different, the effect it has on another person.

[1790] Also, how much time is in between these beatings that they've received?

[1791] Are they receiving them on a regular basis?

[1792] Does it change them, like, instantaneously?

[1793] I know far too many people that have experienced a lot of shots to the head where it's completely changed who they are.

[1794] Right, right.

[1795] But this guy was troubled to begin with.

[1796] I mean, he saw his father die, beaten up by cops.

[1797] Wasn't that the story?

[1798] I think that was a story.

[1799] Something fucked up, experienced at a very young age.

[1800] I wonder whether, you know, I wrote this book called The Psychopath Test.

[1801] And I met a martial arts guy once.

[1802] I got into like a road rage instance with this guy.

[1803] And I had like, my son was one at the time.

[1804] And he like leapt out of the car.

[1805] And I said, my son's in the car.

[1806] And he said, I don't give a. fuck about your son.

[1807] And afterwards, when I looked at the psychopath test, I always remembered this guy as being like, I wonder whether he was a psychopath.

[1808] I wonder whether, like, given that one of the items on the psychopath checklist is, like, grandiose sense of self -worth.

[1809] I wonder whether the mixed martial artist world, given that, you know, whether it sort of attracts psychopaths.

[1810] Well, it certainly attracts people that aren't opposed to violence, right?

[1811] Because they're engaging in violence.

[1812] And it also attracts people that are just like they might have been BMX riders or skateboarders or skydivers.

[1813] They love the extreme danger aspect of it.

[1814] They're thrill seekers.

[1815] And the way I described mixed martial arts is high -level problem solving with dire physical consequences.

[1816] And that's really essentially what it is.

[1817] And these guys are attracted to these extreme experiences.

[1818] So some of them are very pleasant people.

[1819] Some of them are very nice.

[1820] Like, for instance, Mighty Mouse, it's probably the best power for pound fighter ever.

[1821] If you met him, you would never know he's the best fighter in the world.

[1822] He's the sweetest guy.

[1823] He's so normal, very articulate, easy to talk to.

[1824] It doesn't get hit a lot either, though.

[1825] He's so slick and smart, and the way he fights is so clever.

[1826] But some of them get hit a lot.

[1827] And, you know, now that we're knowing more and more essentially every day about the effects of traumatic brain injuries and concussions and you're seeing more and more of these stories of football players doing crazy things and I'm sure you saw that recent study where they tested 111 football players and they found 110 of them had traumatic brain injuries.

[1828] Wow.

[1829] Well, I know that that's what they said about Chris Benoit.

[1830] Maybe that's why he...

[1831] Oh yeah, for sure.

[1832] Those guys get it, for sure.

[1833] And people will say, well, that's fake wrestling.

[1834] Listen, man, there's nothing fake about what those guys go through.

[1835] They might be choreograph.

[1836] They might have a bunch of things that they're doing, but these guys are body slamming each other and throwing each other through the air and landing on each other and hitting each other with elbows.

[1837] That is 100 % real.

[1838] And they suffer.

[1839] And you have to be tough to do that.

[1840] They are experiencing some severe pain.

[1841] I remember a day.

[1842] Chris Benoit's brain forensic exam consistent with numerous brain injuries, CTE, which is found in all regions.

[1843] of his brain, chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

[1844] You know, I wrote a piece about Chris Benoit for The Guardian and when it came out at 1 o 'clock in the morning the press officer for WWE phoned me up and yelled at me. Yield at you?

[1845] One in the morning.

[1846] And said what?

[1847] Like I tricked them into like spending time backstage at WWE when I was only interested in Chris Benoit you know.

[1848] Was this, did you write the, did you go backstage before?

[1849] he killed people?

[1850] No, it was afterwards.

[1851] Oh.

[1852] You tricked them?

[1853] I don't think I'd trick them.

[1854] How the fuck could they think that you were going to put a positive spin on someone murdering their family?

[1855] Exactly.

[1856] I think they thought I was going to put less emphasis on Chris Benoit and more emphasis on, you know, the nice things about wrestling.

[1857] No, Jesus Christ.

[1858] But they knew you were going to put some emphasis on it, right?

[1859] Yeah.

[1860] Well, I was asking lots of questions.

[1861] So they must have known.

[1862] Yeah.

[1863] Speaking of nice people, by the way.

[1864] My porn people, it was probably the loveliest year of my working lives, hanging out with the porn people.

[1865] Yeah, they were delightful.

[1866] Did you feel like you got all that work done?

[1867] Like, maybe, I don't know, a couple days.

[1868] Like, why did you have?

[1869] We did a lot of digging.

[1870] Well, I wanted to, you know.

[1871] A lot of digging.

[1872] It sounded like dicking with your accent, didn't it?

[1873] We did a lot of dicking.

[1874] I didn't know.

[1875] I'm sure.

[1876] Let me explain yourself.

[1877] I'm just joking.

[1878] I, uh, no, it was, it was tracing the butterfly effect of Fabian's business plan on their world.

[1879] Yeah.

[1880] It was such a kind of interesting exercise, you know, to try and, like, work at, like, what's the furthest ripple I could find?

[1881] Like, what, like, you know, so Fabian has this idea about giving the world free porn, and then that leads to that, and that leads to that, and that leads to that, and like, where, what's the furthest I could find, the furthest consequence.

[1882] and it was such a sort of fun exercise, coupled with the fact that being around porn people was a little bit like being at a Broadway show backstage, you know, these like, you know, theatre people.

[1883] So coupled with all of that, and the fact that I was in L .A. And I got to, like, hang out in L .A. It was a really fun, yeah.

[1884] Can I tell you, by the way, like one of the strangest consequences that I can address.

[1885] So this, you know, like pretty much every child in the world gets to learn about sex through pornhood.

[1886] these days.

[1887] Pornhub is sex education for like every 12 -year -old in the world.

[1888] I'm sure.

[1889] Yeah.

[1890] Because their parents probably don't get around talking about it in time.

[1891] Exactly.

[1892] It's like, you know, I think when we were growing up maybe, I don't know, 14 was probably maybe about the age that we started like seeing ripped out pages of Playboy and bridges and so on.

[1893] For me, it was 12.

[1894] We would find them in the woods.

[1895] Okay.

[1896] I have a whole bit on it in my act.

[1897] Yeah?

[1898] That's, yeah, about finding perversion.

[1899] Right.

[1900] This true story, I literally didn't know about perversion until I found a fucked up magazine in the woods.

[1901] Right.

[1902] What was the magazine?

[1903] It was like a, I think it was called foot action or something like that.

[1904] Right.

[1905] It's very strange.

[1906] But here's what's weird.

[1907] That kids today, if you give them a phone, like, I mean, what age do kids get a phone?

[1908] Like some kids get a phone at like 10 or 9.

[1909] You're essentially giving them porn.

[1910] Yeah, you're giving them every awfulness.

[1911] that you're giving them ISIS -beheading videos.

[1912] You're giving them that.

[1913] Yeah.

[1914] So anyway, so I was really interesting in like, so what are the consequences of this of like 12 -year -old kids learning about sex through Pornhub?

[1915] And I found this terrible consequence in Oklahoma.

[1916] So this was a boy called Nathan with autism.

[1917] So he was like an awkward kid with autism, trying to like chat up a girl but didn't know how to do it.

[1918] So he thought like the smartest, you know, he thought, you know, He thought he should text her lines of dialogue that he'd heard in porn films.

[1919] So he texted her.

[1920] First, he texted her a bunch of hentai porn photographs, and she didn't respond.

[1921] So I said, if she'd responded, what would you have done?

[1922] He said, I would have stopped.

[1923] Like if she said, can you stop sending me these?

[1924] What would you have done?

[1925] He said, I would have stopped sending them.

[1926] I just assumed she was busy.

[1927] So then he texted her a line of dialogue that he heard in a porn film.

[1928] and it was, I want to bend you over and rape you from behind.

[1929] So he is now on the sex offender's registry for 25 years, which means he has to live in a house right at the edge of town because he has to be 2 ,000 feet away from parks and daycare centres.

[1930] He can't go anywhere where children go, so he can't go to football games, basketball games.

[1931] He can't go to the park.

[1932] How old was he?

[1933] He was 17 and a half, I think, something like that, maybe 18.

[1934] But kids as young as 8 years old are on the Sex Offenders Registry in the United States.

[1935] Eight?

[1936] Eight years old, I had no idea.

[1937] Boys and girls, by the way.

[1938] Like if you play, there's this little boy, they were like playing this game where they'd take their clothes off in the dark and then put their clothes back on quickly, like a bunch of 9 -year -old kids or something.

[1939] This one kid kept his clothes off when they turned the light.

[1940] on the girl complained to her parents and this boy is on the sex offender's register.

[1941] Jesus Christ.

[1942] Yeah.

[1943] So you can't, like if it's so with Nathan.

[1944] First of all, where the fuck were the parents?

[1945] Right.

[1946] You know, unsurprisingly, it's like I think this kid was a foster kid.

[1947] So there's already like the sort of stigma attached to him.

[1948] Yeah, the shadow of stigma.

[1949] Oh.

[1950] Nathan's a kid with autism.

[1951] So I said to this woman who like defends children on the sex offender's.

[1952] registry, I said to her, like, so, you know, why, why doesn't the judge just say this is ridiculous and throw it out of court?

[1953] And she said, you know, there's this kind of prevailing view that, A, it's better to protect, you know, it's better to err on the side of caution.

[1954] But also, there's this prevailing view that if a kid starts acting sexually weird at the age of 10, that's a kind of precursor for them being sexually weird when they're an adult.

[1955] Maybe, but maybe not.

[1956] Yeah, exactly.

[1957] I mean, I'm sure it's true in certain cases, but I'm sure it's not true.

[1958] But the consequences of sentencing a kid like that are so extreme.

[1959] Like, you should probably have a real understanding of what's going on with a kid.

[1960] Yeah.

[1961] And if he's autistic and he doesn't know what the fuck to do and he's confused and he...

[1962] Yeah.

[1963] Well, Nathan, so he read me like his book.

[1964] He needs to like fill out this sex offender's book like at therapy.

[1965] And so he was like reading me the kid.

[1966] How old is he now?

[1967] I think he's like about 20.

[1968] He's going to be on the sex offender registry for the next 23 years.

[1969] No, what is it like talking to him?

[1970] Does he understand the consequences of what went down?

[1971] Yeah.

[1972] He says it's like being permanently grounded.

[1973] He was reading me the questions and answers from the sex offenders book.

[1974] So it's questions like, have you ever had a sexual situation in which urine or feces was involved?

[1975] And his answer was like, no. And there were questions like, you know, have you ever had sex with animals?

[1976] and his question was like, no. And then the last question was, when was the last time you had sex with somebody?

[1977] And his answer was still a virgin.

[1978] Oh, my God.

[1979] A virgin on the sex offenders registry.

[1980] Wow.

[1981] I mean, of course, you can understand why the girl was scared and told her parents, and the parents told the police.

[1982] Like, you can tell you understand it from the other point of view.

[1983] Oh, 100%.

[1984] Yeah.

[1985] But, you know, I mean, what a butterfly effect that is.

[1986] Yeah.

[1987] And I'm not, of course.

[1988] I'm not saying any of this is Fabian's fault.

[1989] is all unintended.

[1990] No, that's not.

[1991] That's just access to sex and porn.

[1992] And, you know, the other thing that's weird is that porn, for the most part, I mean, other than this bespoke porn, which is very specific, but porn, there's, like, levels to the depravity that never existed before.

[1993] Yeah, because everything's keyword searchable.

[1994] This is like, this is what happens when you let tech people run the world.

[1995] But it's also ramping up.

[1996] It's also people get tired of just people kiss.

[1997] singing and then having sex.

[1998] And so then it's like, I want to watch a guy tie a girl up.

[1999] Oh, I want to watch a guy spit in a girl's mouth.

[2000] I want to watch her get smacked around.

[2001] And then it gets weirder and gagging and all the this is, you know.

[2002] Yeah, exactly.

[2003] So that's one consequence of the ubiquity of like, you know, free porn and just the sheer volume of free porn.

[2004] Yeah, you got to stand out with extreme content in some way.

[2005] But the other thing is all these search engine people are sort of looking at what's being searched for the most.

[2006] What is number one?

[2007] Well, I tell you what, I tell you what's like a room.

[2008] I don't know if it's number one, but I tell you what's really, like, way at the top.

[2009] It's anything to do with, like, step sisters, stepbrothers, stepfathers, stepdaughters.

[2010] Really?

[2011] Stepmoms?

[2012] Incest porn is basically, it's basically.

[2013] But it's not real incest.

[2014] It's like you get away with it.

[2015] But actually, when I was on the set of stepdaughter cheerleader, Audrey, poor Mike Quasar, the director, like there was a bit of dialogue like these guys were like saying, I think your stepdaughter is sexy.

[2016] But they kept on getting it wrong.

[2017] And I was saying, I think your daughter is sexy.

[2018] Mike's going, stepdaughter.

[2019] Like back behind the camera, it's going, stepdaughter!

[2020] That's hilarious.

[2021] We don't want to be too fucked up here, people.

[2022] Step.

[2023] Keyword step.

[2024] All right, take one.

[2025] These are great people.

[2026] My porn people were great people.

[2027] Well, that's nice.

[2028] You know, and that sort of shatters some of the stereotypes of people about porn, that the people are sleazy and uncans.

[2029] and doing coke and smacking each other.

[2030] This show, if I may blow my own trumpet.

[2031] Please do.

[2032] Which I learned on the set of, blow my own trumpet.

[2033] I did a little bit from the butterfly effect on stage at the Ace Hotel down in Los Angeles, here in Los Angeles.

[2034] And we invited a bunch of our porn people along.

[2035] And they said to us afterwards, like 25 years of being in.

[2036] porn, we were the first mainstream people to come along and not treat them as like, you know, ingredients in our pre -existing ideology.

[2037] So not pitying them or attacking them, just treating them on a level as a fellow human being.

[2038] And isn't that kind of nuts that that's rare in porn?

[2039] Because we all feel as mainstream journalists, we feel these kind of societal pressures to, in some way, attack them.

[2040] You know, they're to be pitiful.

[2041] there to be hated, you know.

[2042] I think you also have to establish that your own, whether it's moral superiority or good taste, that you don't approve of this.

[2043] You're not one of those people.

[2044] Exactly, yeah.

[2045] I'm not even a connoisseur of this work.

[2046] Right, exactly.

[2047] I made my excuses and left.

[2048] That was, you know, yeah.

[2049] And that means, you know, because of our hypocrisy, they get exploited.

[2050] So that's why I wanted to do this.

[2051] this show.

[2052] I'm sorry that I sort of bought it back.

[2053] No, no worries.

[2054] Full circle, but that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this show.

[2055] When I first moved to California, I was on this sitcom called News Radio, and one of the guys who was a writer on news radio was a writer for porn films on the side.

[2056] And what it was was it didn't really pay much, but it gave him access to the girls and let him meet these girls.

[2057] And he was kind of a nebishy, sort of dorky guy.

[2058] And he had never been around like a real bombshell girl that was willing to have sex with him before.

[2059] So all of a sudden he's having sex with these porn stars but they get to have sex with these guys on set and it was like some of this weird thing that like this was his girlfriend but she would go to work and get the shit fucked out of her by a bunch of different guys and how did he feel about that this is what the straw that broke the camel's back um he was having dinner with her and she's like god i'm so tired i had to do an anal scene all day today and he was like what like he was out they were out to dinner and he like he in his mind he was able to put that barrier up and what she does is just work it's fine you know we're gonna go to dinner and have a wonderful time candlelight fine wine some amazing food i'm in love with her she's amazing handle it nope she was she was tired she's complaining about take it in the ass all day right and he's like check please let's get out of here so they split up i got another one it wasn't my friend but it was a friend of a friend who told me this story that uh this guy was dating this girl and you know just the same thing's like hey you know It's what she does for a living, no big deal.

[2060] And he read her contract.

[2061] And he goes, what's airtight?

[2062] And airtight is a dick in every hole.

[2063] And he's like, check please.

[2064] This is it.

[2065] I can't do this.

[2066] I can't.

[2067] So the guy, the first guy, though, took me to a set.

[2068] And this is like in 94.

[2069] Okay, so this was the pre -keyword pre -Fabian day.

[2070] Pre -internet, and they were all rich.

[2071] Everybody was rich.

[2072] And the porn stars were like real stars.

[2073] It was Janine and Jill Kelly, who were a very famous porn star.

[2074] It was a lesbian scene, and there was a cartoon character, a comic book character.

[2075] This woman wrote, and she came to life, and they were having a lesbian scene together.

[2076] But it was really weird because, like, she knew that we were watching.

[2077] And so there was like this air of theatrical enthusiasm that was very forced.

[2078] Like they would do the scenes.

[2079] She'd be like, I love my job.

[2080] I love my job.

[2081] My job is amazing.

[2082] And I look at my friend at the time.

[2083] And I was like, hmm.

[2084] I don't know about if I'm buying all this.

[2085] I was like, this just seems weird.

[2086] I remember Mike Quayser saying to me on my first porn set, this director we kind of embedded ourselves with said to me, you'll find that there's a wisp of darkness.

[2087] Everybody who does this for a living.

[2088] Yeah.

[2089] A wisp of darkness.

[2090] But that's what's fascinating.

[2091] Like, why?

[2092] What, it's, like, it's illogical if you look at it on paper.

[2093] It's like everyone who is healthy, whose body functions correctly, enjoys sexual relations.

[2094] Whether it's straight sex or gay sex or whatever the fuck it is, people like to be touched.

[2095] It's part of being a person.

[2096] Why is it so shameful when other people are?

[2097] people get to watch.

[2098] And why does it devastate people when they find out that their loved one had done something on film that others can see?

[2099] And when they leave porn, this is another consequence of Fabian that I look at in the show, is that when they leave porn, it's much more likely that, you know, they leave porn, they go to a different part of America, they start a new life, it's much more likely that they'll be noticed than in the 90s.

[2100] Like in the 90s, for an ex -porn style to be outed, someone would have to go to like a DVD shop and like, right.

[2101] These days, everybody, you know, just watch his 20 porn films for five seconds each until they find the one that, you know, they want to jack off to.

[2102] So it's much more likely that a former porn star will be spotted and outed and as a consequence fired.

[2103] Like I was talking to this guy called Dale Rutter.

[2104] His poor name is Dale DeBone.

[2105] And he got a job as a nurse in a hospital and human resources called him in and said to him, are you Dale DeBone?

[2106] He said, yeah, and said, we have to fire you because, like, if any patient says you even, like, looked at her the wrong way, like they would win in a court.

[2107] Yeah.

[2108] So poor Dole.

[2109] And Dale said that his recognizability has gone up massively since Porn Hub and free porn came along.

[2110] Yeah, he shouldn't be mad at the people to recognize him.

[2111] Yeah.

[2112] You're a pervert.

[2113] Yeah.

[2114] I'm just doing a job, you fuck.

[2115] There was a woman who got arrested, not arrested rather fired um she was a school teacher and uh they turned it turned out that in the 90s or something like that she had done porn and she was like really well respected very uh loved school teacher and then one of the kids in school figured it out right started telling everybody next thing you know kids are getting on line yeah and watching the teacher and she lost her job and she was like really really respected and loved and then you know we don't love you anymore you used to fuck Yeah, I know.

[2116] It's baffling, you know, even in these sort of sex -positive, more sex -positive kind of anti -slut -shaming times, there's still a massive amount of stigma.

[2117] Yeah, but that's not real.

[2118] Yeah.

[2119] Well, it's a bubble.

[2120] It's a small bubble that most of the world doesn't share.

[2121] Well, that's the other thing.

[2122] It's like, what about other countries?

[2123] Like, is this stigma attached to, wasn't there, like, in Italy, a former porn star who ran for Parliament or something like that?

[2124] And then started going out with, oh, fuck, the artist, Jeff Coons.

[2125] I don't know who he is.

[2126] Oh, he's like a big, like, famous sort of pop artist.

[2127] Oh, okay.

[2128] And I think they were having a relationship.

[2129] And yeah, she, yeah, she went for Britain.

[2130] Britain is still all that stigma, I'm sure.

[2131] Yeah.

[2132] No, Italy, they've got it.

[2133] Italy doesn't give a fuck.

[2134] Yeah, don't give a fuck.

[2135] They're a little wild over there.

[2136] Yeah.

[2137] Yeah, I mean, I would wonder, like, what countries are the most accepting of former adult stars.

[2138] adult is another my favorite term adult you know it's like urban you know when you say urban you just say black people Jesus Christ adult say porn just say porn the adult industry like what do you mean the industry of people who are grown up like what do you tell you gotta play stupid like what adults as opposed to what the children industry the fuck you're saying it's just a weird term well I hope so I hope the butterfly effect because it's so just, it just shows them to be just, you know, just like the best of us, ordinary, sweet, fucked up, nice, you know, mixtures of...

[2139] And they are, they're just people.

[2140] I hope it will do its bit.

[2141] Yeah.

[2142] Do you think I should go now?

[2143] Do you think you should go now?

[2144] Have you said enough?

[2145] What do you think?

[2146] I think it was great.

[2147] We had a great talk.

[2148] This would be a good way to end it.

[2149] I enjoyed it very much.

[2150] I'm going to meet my family and I've got to run.

[2151] and have a walk.

[2152] Oh, that's a good place.

[2153] Yes.

[2154] You do that all the time?

[2155] Yes.

[2156] It's a good spot.

[2157] I got to win in every day when I'm in Los Angeles.

[2158] Oh, beautiful.

[2159] So it was such a pleasure to talk to you again.

[2160] Always a pleasure, John.

[2161] Let's do it again, for sure.

[2162] I would love to come in.

[2163] Thank you very much.

[2164] Thank you.

[2165] And tell people how they can find your stuff.

[2166] Okay, so this new series is called the butterfly effect, and it's on Audible.

[2167] Audible.

[2168] I'm big fan of Audible.

[2169] I love Audible.

[2170] I love Audible.

[2171] They're amazing.

[2172] There you go.

[2173] Here's the Butterfly Effect.

[2174] The biggest collection of audio entertainment on the entire.

[2175] internet.

[2176] And look at that star rating.

[2177] Beautiful.

[2178] Look at you, you savage.

[2179] So that's my new, and my Twitter thing is just that John Ronson and.

[2180] J -O -M.

[2181] Ronson.

[2182] Yeah, and the other things I just wrote this, co -wrote this movie called Oak Joe, which is on Netflix, about a giant pig.

[2183] That's on Netflix.

[2184] Beautiful.

[2185] Yeah.

[2186] John Ronson, ladies and gentlemen.

[2187] Thank you, brother.

[2188] Thank you.

[2189] Yay.