An Unfiltered Conversation with Andrew Callaghan: Money, Greed, & Getting Cancelled | Channel 5 News

how do you describe to people what you do I'm a journalist and documentary filmmaker I guess it's pretty you know straightforward in my eyes I'm going keep it 55 straight the microphone is kind of like a magnet for people who just want to say something already everything's popping out here yes Theona is with us so what type of people do you not get along with I get along with everybody hit the far right with the feminist left you don't feel like like slip through me I invented cancer and how do you bring back balance to that it's impossible the responsibility here kind of lies on the consumer too there's nothing fake about CNN once you stop believing that journalists are unbiased understand the spectrum of media bias and be a responsible consumer it'll work itself out sometimes the truth hurts so what does it taught you about human nature just from your experience meeting so many people that most people are good but money corrupts always everything bad that I've seen happen is because someone is trying to either get money out of somebody or get someone selected how much was the [Music] settlement Andrew Callahan thank you so much for coming on the ice coffee hour I'm a huge fan I really enjoy your videos my favorite was the 55th Street one Chad Hanks was incredible shout out to Chad Hanks free crit ma ice coffee hour we're here thank you so much man so how do you describe to people what you do uh I guess I'm a journalist and documentary filmmaker I guess it's pretty you know straightforward in my eyes what would you say is the most memorable interview that you've done ever in my whole life damn it's it's hard to choose but probably the the Vegas tunnels series or the Vegas tunnels video the hour and a half long one was probably the most impactful in recent memory what made it so impactful just the amount of time that I spent down there getting to know those people trying to help them find IDs what I learned about their recovery industry and you know all that in general throughout the process yeah it seems like that's almost like a I don't want to say a trendy thing but I see I see quite a few people now going down to the Vegas tunnels and it seems to be like people will use that as a way to like boost content or viewership there's definitely a a dark side of YouTube That's all about like homeless journalism sometimes at its worst it's clickbait being like holy look at these people they live in squala that's so horrible why' the Democrats do this then the other other other end is like I'm going to humanize this poor amazing person you know what I'm saying so there's a broad spectrum of empathy versus ridicule all under the clickbait umbrella tried to like at least insert myself into that situation and actually help them get IDs and figure out like what tangible steps I could take to make a real impact ultimately I'm not sure if it actually did help I'm not going to you know stand like I'm the most righteous YouTube documentary filmmaker in history I don't know if Glenn who I filmed is still in the tunnels or not but I'm hoping he'd you know link back up with his sister and got out of there yeah could you for people who haven't seen that could you explain who that is Glenn lives in the tunnels how did he get in the tunnels oh actually we don't know I don't know he was a bouncer on Fremont Street you know you know where the corner where you have Hogs and heers and you have the gold nugget surrounded by that giant screen on top where there's people in the circles doing busking he used to be a doorman right there and then he started smoking and then ended up underground so why do people live in the tunnels like what is the Allure of these tunnels well for one uh it's about 10 degrees cooler than the surface of of Las Vegas it's obviously a hot Mojave Desert City and secondly Las Vegas Metro just relentlessly uh relentlessly harasses homeless people with vagrancy citations so it's a place to avoid being given a ticket taken to jail that kind of thing yeah and would you say it's an overall like better or worse place to live on average for a homeless person in the tunnels or like maybe on the streets of LA oh definitely better because there's a community different tunnels have like tunnel leaders like it's Fallout New Vegas and they basically control what goes in and out so for the tunnels can anybody go and join like if they're well I mean but like I don't think anyone's like yo what's yes I mean if you if you're homeless if you're homeless there's also different tunnels with different levels of like uh regulation for example if you go to some of the tunnels that are further up Northtown you know past old old Vegas you know like by the missions those tunnels are pretty unregulated right you can do you can do but the the tunnels where everyone films the YouTube videos are South Strip in between the Rio and Caesar's Palace under there they don't even like do it's just like that kind of stuff and the big thing with that my understanding is from seeing some of these videos is that it's hard to get an ID without an address and if they're homeless they need an ID but they need an address to get the ID so they're stuck it's a vicious cycle for sure do what do you think the solution is to that well I mean if you're homeless you can get someone to let you put uh their address on their on the ID which worked for Glenn so Glenn's address is actually my cameraman Larry Susan's house in Vegas so he's constantly getting citations under Glenn's name oh wow uh that's one solution a lot of the times different uh nonprofits and foundations will let you use their company address as your home address like help of Southern Nevada lets people in the tunnels put that as their as their home address so sometimes it's offered why wouldn't they just lie and just put an address on there and then ma check the mail I think that you have to show an address and like two pieces of mail you guys know how hard it is to get your ID at the DMV like I have gone and I have a house I've gone five times in a row it's like you got to show like a utility or like a bank statement or like something with it on there it's like stealing the Declaration of Independence that's how it feels you know what I mean it's so complex and what percentage of the people living these tunnels would you say are happy that they're living in the tunnels versus like no I want to get out of here I'm motivated to make a change for my life I could exist here forever 100% of them are base level unhappy at least like unfulfilled but the the amount of people that are willing to put in the effort and like you know step up from that state of humiliation is a pretty a pretty low metric like you got to think like with our generation there's kind of a romanticization to a certain extent of homelessness like van life you know living outside to a certain extent with that generation people in their mid-50s and stuff who grew up during Reagan with like the toxic positivity and like pick up by your bootstraps mentality for them being homeless is the ultimate humiliation like they are failures the average uh age of a homeless man in America is 54 years old you know what I mean so that's the age where you're expected to have two or three kids have a Leave it to Beaver style pick it fence existence so they're coming from a whole different level of shame that our generation isn't really adjusted to where did your interest in journalism start um well I've always like liked talking to people I grew up in downtown seatt in between Seattle and Philadelphia but always in the inner city so I just grew up talking to people all the time but I had a high school teacher named Calvin Shaw who was my journalism teacher and he kind of like would let me leave school for hours at a time to go report on stuff in Seattle like the Occupy Movement hang out with jug investigate the Silk Road you know the guy who just got freed the dark webs drug service and he was just like a really positive role model and so he encouraged me to go to college for journalism went to school in New Orleans kind of just took off from there when did you realize you could turn it into a business probably like uh during all gastal breaks which was uh owned by a parent company called doing things media and we started just uh making a patreon to to host extended cuts of certain scenes the actual situation where I realized how lucrative journalism could be was again in Las Vegas not at the tunnels but at the AVN Expo which is like a pornography event for whatever reason we thought it'd be a funny idea to interview people in the midst of an adult video shoot so like interview people during it and like hey what's up what's your favorite Disney movie like stupid stupid like juvenile I was 21 years old right so they were in in the middle of engage like the ACT engaging in Intercourse yes how how how did you get in that room the male porn star is named Shawn Lawless from Fort Lauderdale he was a fan of all gas no breaks and his friend kendri Cox they were planning on doing a scene he was like dude I love your videos I loved Area 51 and burning man like you want to film with us and I pitched him the concept and he was like sure that's never been done before as soon as we even indicated that we were doing that like obviously everyone was like where can I find it where can I find it and then Reed who's the CEO of doing things was like we should make patreon and pay wallet so people can pay five bucks a month if they want to see this uncut scene dude like 20,000 people signed up overnight people are weird I don't know why you know how the internet is and so that was the first scene where I was like Jesus you know people are willing to uh pay extra for things you can't see on the surface net obviously we didn't recreate that particular scene again but it worked in the future with like other interviews especially during 2020 during the censorship when obviously YouTube would take certain stuff down like Q andon rallies Flat Earth conference I couldn't fix on the surface net WoW or obviously not the surface net but the the public big four so if you were to explain this all gas no brakes thing maybe how you got into it what that was like for you in like just like a minute or two how would you how would you do it well all gas no breaks was the name of a Zen that I wrote when I was a teenager about hitchhiking across the US it was like a book maybe like 60 Pages short stories about my experiences I didn't go on that trip to write a book but I wrote it about two years later because I wanted to like you know have something to show for my four years in in college yeah so I made that and then simultaneously I started to show in New New Orleans called quarter confessions which was like drunk Bourbon Street tourist interviews it was like taxi cab confessions inspired uh party Street show so that caught the eye of a company called doing things media who wanted to basically invest in a TV show or a digital web series and so I pitched all gas snow breaks and the book and quarter confessions kind of combining to where it was like a hitchhiking traveling interview show out of New Orleans but across the country the hitchhiking concept didn't really like work that well like it initially was supposed to be like every interview subject is somebody that picks me up on the side of the road but like it just didn't really work like it was just a the technical needs were just awkward you know it's kind of hard to film somebody in the car so we ended up just making it like a a roving Series going from Festival to Convention to political rally and so on that was all gas was it safe hitchhiking yeah it's pretty safe I mean what was your first experience like where did you decide that like today is going to be the day I'm just going to be picked up by a random person well I got really into like a hobo culture know like stick and bindle railroad culture and also like the the traveling hippie culture of the 60s so I was like reading a bunch of those books like Jack kowak style stuff I never read on the road but like similar stuff like this guy Ed burn had a book called vagabonding in America that was about how to make money as a traveling hitchhiker across the US by doing like day jobs so obviously you can't really work day jobs anymore like that's old that's all dead and gone like under the table work and mopping floors is out but hitchhiking I you know I figured that it was still doable to some capacity and in some capacity and this dude David Cho who's an artist he had a show on Vice called Thumbs Up America and I was like oh if this guy can do it and he went from Alaska to Tijuana in like two weeks I was like if he can do it I I can definitely do it so I started off just going from New Orleans to Seattle where I grew up and just going from there and back up and down the West Coast all the time how long does it take to get picked up because I've tried hitchhiking one time and I was out there for probably like six to eight hours it was me and maybe this is different if I'm with someone but I was with my friend and it just didn't work finally someone did pick us up yeah and then he like dropped us off at a gas station said he would be right back and then left damn that's up that happened to me one time we paid him too you paid him how much 20 bucks he he said he well he said he would drive us it wasn't far he said he would drive us it was about an hour and then he drove us like 15 minutes went to a gas stage like I have to run a really quick errand I'll be right back where in the country was this this was in mosqu mosqu Nevada yeah okay where the lived Steven Paddock maybe there's If he if he existed this yeah this anyways yeah it really depends what state you're in like certain states have a a hitchhiker traveler culture like on the west coast if you're trying to take the 101 from like Washington down the Oregon coast bro you're good you can get picked up the whole way Colorado you're good New Mexico maybe but then you go to certain States like Arizona and Nevada Second Amendment like my property peep ass States you know what I mean like you're not going to have much luck uh the southern us is the hardest place to hitchhike though you know Louisiana Alabama Mississippi I don't know I just I have no clue what type of person picks somebody up because I feel like there's an element of risk that the person you're picking up once they're in the car with you kind of difficult to get him out and then there's that awkwardness it's either migrant workers who think you're trying to travel for work um like Christian fundamentalists who are like trying to do the right thing and like spread the word of God or maybe they have a kid who's addicted to drugs and they think you're addicted to drugs and the third most common person is just people who never shut the up you know what I mean they just need to listen yeah yeah they see you and they're like oh my God I'm going to tell them about everything you know what I mean and that most of most hitchhiking is just someone talking about themselves what's the craziest thing you've heard uh well you know how they have um in Utah they have Mormons who have like eight or nine wives I got picked up by a pharmacist in Utah who unfortunately or I guess fortunately for me broke Hippa law and told me about all the different prescriptions that this dude's W wives were having picking up every day and she said yeah so she took care of all of the prescriptions for all of his nine wives and she just said that like they're all taking like Prozac Xanax kopin oxycotton like every day and they're just like living in this drug fueled uh depressive uh polygamous whoa do you think that's just because they're really unhappy or because they're like this is more of a recreational sort of like I'm living my life it's got to be option one I think monogamy is the way to go I think uh polygamy is fundamentally like against human nature interesting yeah I don't think I could ever hke I think I would just be terrified and I don't like small talk okay that's going to be the biggest thing I mean that's the biggest danger but now really quick before we go into that are you looking to cut some cost and improve your business's bottom line well if so the best business operators have turned to our sponsor ramp to help them cut down on wasteful spending and improve their Finance operations ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket with ramp spend policies are built into the card to control spending before it even happens it automatically collects and categorizes receipts so you'll never have to chase them down again plus rampid forces compliance by flagging violations and locking cards for non-compliance so basically if Graham wanted to use the ice coffee hour card to go buy himself some coral for his reef aquarium he'll be flagged and his account will be locked ramp also helps streamline your entire Financial workflow from expense reporting vendor payments and reimbursements all in one place and businesses save an average of 5% in their first year using ramp not to mention you could get2 $50 when you join all you got to do is go to ramp.com with the link Down Below in the description ramp.com rm.com the link Down Below in the description cards issued by Sutton Bank member FDIC terms and conditions apply thank you so much RAM for sponsoring this podcast and now let's get back to the episode so in terms of the content production you have a very unique style do you on purpose make it seem like lower production quality how like what extent do you go to because well if you look at if you look at the older videos like you said you use iMovie and you use like the most generic iMovie transitions like really kind of like like explosion effect this and that like what extent do you go to or is it has it changed over time I mean I like to think the production value has gotten like a little bit higher back in the day the only thing that we did that was deliberate is we tried to get the oldest digital camera we could find me and my old camera guy called it big Camy it was this giant ass vintage camera that we got off this old cub man in Miami for like 50 bucks or something like that and uh a lot of the old videos like uh Area 51 raid Flat Earth conference Midwest furfest those are all shot on that like massive cheap camera did you ever run into production issues because you're using some like old outdated piece ofip that's why we stopped doing it like like just even transferring footage I imagine yeah because the worst part about being a journalist is file management like everything's fun in the field but it's just you and a computer and a bunch of multi-ports and hard drives and Premiere keeps crashing and you're losing power the Wi-Fi sucks like that sucks so when you have a a hilarious looking camera but every you know 10 minutes of footage is like a half a terabyte because it's taking up so much space like those kind of problems you have to figure out how to work around yeah I always thought that it was very intentional to use like lowquality Style just so it feels more realistic yeah probably that I mean it's also just like you know most of the trendy 4K cameras to me just like are just lame like the Blackmagic Cinema Camera like that's just just too high quality there's a certain extent where you know if things look too cinematic it doesn't feel very journalistic it just seems a little like countercultural which is always kind of a little invogue like you know well I'll tell you the the big like the scheme the ultimate hack here is to make sure the audio quality is perfect and keep the video as vintage as possible I agree cuz there's nothing cool about bad audio and so it's like but you canot trick the viewer but you can give the viewer that like cool vintage experience by giving them a clean audio track and more experimental lowii cameras but if you give him like on the reverse end high quality video with low quality audio you're out of there that's like the most amateur ever so for all gas no breaks how do they approach you and what was that email yeah and what was the pitch uh hey you know we liked quarter confessions what do you think about uh you know making a show for our Network or you know you can produce it you can direct it you can edit it and then we'll distribute it for you and then they got all monetization rights for that yeah so how it started off is like they I negotiated a salary I think it was 45k a year which coming out of college is pretty sick and an RV which cost like 20K so I had my dad pick up the RV after I convinced them to let me buy it they gave me the salary I just hired my friends and that was that and how much were you making before then nothing oh I was actually working as a door man at a seafood restaurant in New Orleans called bourbon house so I was making a you know uh 500 bucks a week which is pretty solid that's really good yeah and then how long were you with all gas no breakes before a Fallout year and a half year and a half but I'm actually on good terms with all those guys now so what ended up happening my understanding was that you know from hearing you is that there was a disagreement and they just fired you I mean this is a classic story I think that I learned a lot from this situation I think they did too as a company because from what I've heard with their new shows like they have a new show called No Cap on God and they pay that dude super fairly and he seems to be having a great time so I I guarantee you that like they learned a lot and so did I but what ended up happening is that the show became wildly successful more successful than we possibly could have anticipated we're talking about like bringing in merch drops bringing in million dollars per merch drop type you know what I mean I'm still receiving something like 20% of profit split and a 45k salary so it's kind of disheartening when you see a million coming in a month and you're making you know less than you know 250,000 yeah I mean ideally I would have negotiated with them you know but I asked for 50% and I I basically said if you don't give me 50% which seems fair to me I'm going to I'm going to quit and they thought you were replaceable yeah that was their their miscalculation and mine was creating such like a hard ultimatum that made it almost impossible for us to negotiate what would you have done differently in hindsight um I mean nothing that's just generally my cardinal rule for I was 22 years old I probably you know would have tried a more peaceful negotiation process but at the same time their mistake I think was bigger than mine in thinking that I was totally replaceable like they literally thought I remember they told one of the perspective hosts like hey we have a bunch of Connections in the comedy world like Andrew is just glorified m stand we can find somebody else little did they know when that situation was made public the fans turn on the whole company but that's what happens when you have these like corporate focus groups who are kind of like think that they're running when really the artists actually run yeah you really can't replace a personality I've noticed it's one of those things where people subscribe and watch for that person it's less about the content like if if someone replaced you on your channel but everything else is the same most people just wouldn't watch I feel like I watch just as much for you I do the content itself but on the other hand too you can have me and then if I introduce a host as an extension of our apparatus and people know that I'm still involved everybody's on board like right now we're having you know hosts from across the world from Mexico New Zealand Australia Israel everywhere and they're doing interviews and but it's under sort of our blessing so nobody's upset it's more like when you replace somebody they feel like they're being personally uh you know what do you look for in a person because I saw your Tiana video and I thought he was a fantastic interviewer awesome almost similar to you in a way like like there's there's something just different about him that just seemed like oh it's like the same brand yeah how do you find people and what do you look for shout out to beanie I mean I just found him cuz he was my friend but I look for just people who are genuinely curious open-minded uh charismatic without being overbearing just people who are good listeners and know how to ask intelligent questions and also understand that like when you're in the field even if you know something you have to understand the viewer doesn't so you can ask Bas you should ask basic questions like when I went to a Comm March 3 days ago or 4 days ago I know what communism is I'm not going to go in there swing in like I'm the smartest guy like what do you think about post capitalist lend inist Theory no you don't want to do that you have to assume the viewer doesn't know and you have to ask them for those who don't know what is communism so it's a person that's both charismatic and can be an avatar for the for the every man at the same time yeah how much do you have to put your ego aside to interview someone and let them take the spotlight oh for me it's just second nature I like people when people talk I like doing podcasts with you guys but I prefer listening really yeah generally yeah you learn more I mean yeah so did you have some sort of like interviewing and crash course that you gave to beanie that taught him how to do it or like any of these people like there certain guy like tips and guides that you provide to these people I think the cool thing now is that like they've watched enough channel five and all G breaks to where they're like oh this is kind of the vibe I should go for yeah so when you do some of these interviews I noticed a lot of people will confess things or just be very open what for you is really stood out from somebody that you were surprised they were talking about this I mean probably if you want to talk about the movie I'm not sure if we're there yet we're backing up a little bit definitely if you look at dear Kelly I was surprised that he divulged his entire life story about his home and family collapsing after a foreclosure you know it's little stuff like that that you're like wow I can't believe this guy just got that personal in 30 seconds but I think that the the microphone is kind of like a magnet for people who just want to say something already like people say how do you get people to say all this stuff I'm like dude they just see the microphone and and a lot of a lot of people are waiting to say what they have to say they just need a place to do it so one thing I saw recently your screener of dear Kelly that's right new movie on the way second feature film now available www. dear Kelly film.com L Bel it was actually incredible it was one of the it was it was one of the few videos that's over an hour long that captivated me the entire way through thank you could you explain what this is and the importance of who Kelly is because I remember seeing Kelly years ago on your channel oh yeah so Kelly's first introduction to Channel 5 lore was at the White lives matter rally in 2021 where he boldly approached an army of hostiles with four Flags in hand and proclaimed Kobe Bryant was assassinated by the clintons and was shortly after attacked by a mob of antifa super soldiers that interaction began a 4-year filming Journey with over 300 hours of footage that I had to whittle down to 90 minutes wherein we kind of dissect Kelly's beliefs figure out what caused him to jump down the rabbit hole from a caring loving father of three to a Kobe Bryant conspiracy theorist and uh we kind of document that process try different solutions to try and help him get over and get out of that you know toxic feedback loop and then eventually we sit down with his family and work out a solution to help him at least uh put family before politics it's not a movie trying to convert someone to like a liberal or something it's more about a separating and and prioritizing family he's definitely extreme but hearing his story all the way through I have to think to myself this this can't be a surprise I've seen not to that degree but people similar to him that just talk nonstop and they embellish 90% of everything they say to me it just seems like this is a personality trait that was not just a flip of a switch archetype that a lot of people share this is probably who he has been since a he was a kid and it just kind of snowballed from there yeah what do you think about that I mean it's interesting because part of the reason that many people have resonated with the film they've said it's cuz they have a dad or an uncle or someone in their family that's similar to Kelly and while beliefs are relatively extreme and he's like definitely out there in terms of like his physical Antics there's still a lot of people who are on the same page as him and so it's sort of a movie about that type of psychology but on the on the element of like has he been like that since a kid I think that Kelly's always had a heroic self-narrative and that's one of the subtexts of this movie in general is self-narrative versus reality being able to own up to mistakes and acknowledge where you did in fact get over at the same time and developing a non-binary worldview you know what I'm saying mean like not like becoming nonbinary but to where it's like it's not black and white it's not a spiritual war between good and evil but for Kelly it is and when the thing happened with the home foreclosure he was given to Boogeyman and given a battle which ended up merging with a greater spiritual battle in the country for the for the White House so people that appeared to be that like quote unquote so far gone do you think there ever is changing course and what would it take for someone like that because I've had experiences in my own life as well where you have someone and you just continue to say the same thing over it save money don't do this learn a budget and then they can be 20 and then by the time they're 40 like nothing's changed and then they're you know they need someone over here to be able to provide Finance to funding for their own life and then they grow into their 70s 80s and this can happen over and over again and it seems like you can kind of tell when they're too far gone but is there anything that actually can be done like what I've honestly thought about it a lot in the movie we tried mediation we tried so many different things I really don't know like I'm I'm only 27 you know I'm still kind of learning how people are and you know I've I haven't had a lot of friends you know grow past 30 yet most of my friends are young so I'm curious to see how certain habits and behavior patterns will carry themselves out throughout someone's life when they get to be in their 50s and their parents and [ __ ] like like my friends who drink a lot I don't know if they're still going to be drinking you know seven drinks a day when they're a grandfather I got to say you slow down I've seen a lot of people who are like big pot users who drink all the time just get smashed I would say almost all of it stopped yeah around 30 give or take and people just kind of but part of it just like they kind of grew out of it or they feel old I've heard it also yeah like it it makes you feel different as your body ages like when you when I heard from a lot of people that smoked a lot of pot like when they're younger it like makes you feel good and then when you get older for some reason anxiety starts happening and it never happened when you're younger same as like getting drunk like hangovers start happening when you get older it's just responsibility people have responsibilities and you know you have payment and stuff it's like and then it's not worth it a CG I think for Kelly as far as the long-term solution I think it would be something like Psychotherapy just time is also the most effective thing to heal I mean it's it's an old cliche phrase but time does heal and things over time do change for people that get radicalized where did they get their information from uh it's interesting because I left that part out of the movie because I wanted it to be more applicable to to to the lives of different people you know so I I I didn't want someone to watch it and be like Oh Kelly consumed this and my dad consumed info War so I can't relate but how Kelly's favorite program and the one that kind of sent him in that direction was a obscure uh satellite radio channel based out of Missouri called BS FM that has a show on it called scottt mccabes Patriot Street Fighter and it's like have you ever listened to a have you seen Hotel Rwanda before yeah you know you know they have HW Power Radio that's like good morning tootsies time to kill the Cockroaches that's what it sounds like but it's like good morning brother are you ready to go get whoop some antifa ass out there today put your boots on let's roll it's not like neonazi programming but it's like it's more like just go kick some ass it's like a WWE uh I don't know crossover but that's what he listened to so from what I heard from his daughter he would smoke weed lay down in bed and just Scot maccabe in both ears and just get pumped up with the for Banger do you think there's something about his mind his predisposition to like really resonate with that or like why why do some people attach to those sort of things so much I mean he's a hard worker and everything that he had done in life he did to the fullest I mean he achieved the American dream that is very rare nowadays which is class Mobility it's promised to you especially with the you know hyper positivity of the ran 80s that he grew up in of like pick yourself up by the bootstraps he did that he went from a mobile home in in Iowa I believe it was to living in an upscale lagona Hills like idic Southern California uh culdesac so that's rare he did that you know what I mean and he got the law degree he he got the house he got all that [ __ ] and before that he was like a football star so this is a kind of high achieving guy which only further serves the self mythology so when he hears that there's a spiritual war going on he's like you know what if there's a war going on I'm going to be on the front lines I'm going to be the quarterback this is my fight you know wow you spoke on a podcast about the importance of empathy in getting people to open up how do you how do you find the right like I guess line and empathy to be able to have these sorts of discussions with people I just think I am empathetic you know and I think people can pick up on it you know like if if I see somebody struggling in any way and they're talking to me like I feel like they can just pick up like oh this guy's actually wants to hear me out I'm not just looking to slam dunk on them or make some kind of political point now how often does someone say something that you're like I don't really think you should say that all time and how do you how do you balance that because on the one hand they are coming up on their Free Will talking to you exposing something but on the other hand I see some of these people on Tik Tok where I'm like you are smashed drunk oh yeah committing to like cheating on your husband and having like five SS and you're bragging about this with your girlfriends there's no way that's a good idea I mean I don't do [ __ ] like that anymore but it's sad because I know that I sort of created the party strip interview model and that's the thing that I'm I'm most ashamed about is you know I was in Scottdale the other day just visiting some some friends you know Scottsdale Arizona and I'm walking on this party strip where there's like shitfaced college kids walking down the street you know what I mean yelling they don't know what they're doing they're just kids and then you have four men on the street dead sober interviewers asking everybody what's your body count what's the freakiest [ __ ] you ever done is have you ever cheated on your girl can y'all trade phones you know where I'm like bro that's up there should be some kind of like uh penalty for that like you're creating a digital footprint for these people that's going to up their career and trajectory why would you want to do something like that for me in quarter confessions this is New Orleans bro like it's that's a place where anything goes like most of the people in cter confessions they're just New Orleans ass people people who like they're already an open book man they're they're down there but you got these college kids who are going to go on to like live corporate lives and work in the white collar industry they might lose their job 10 years from now yeah I don't think people realize just the severity of that I think it will eventually be an issue when someone loses their job someone like has you know something terrible happens because they were inebriated couldn't necessarily consent to like having their interview out there in that capacity um I I think it's going to hit a a sticking point at at some level yeah well it technically actually is illegal you know it all goes back to a court case with Girls Gone Wild in like the late '90s you know they filmed some girls in in Daytona Beach Florida who flashed the camera and they did sign uh you know release forms but they actually won like millions in court saying that release forms passed to certain level of inebriation are actually void so technically all these body count people even like the HW Tua girl she could sue that dude if she can prove it or blood alcohol content was in like well I have a feeling at some point they're going to have to do a breathalyzer on camera and be like if you're under .08 we could interview you if you're above that like we can't use the foot imagine you're foot you're a kid right you're a kid 30 years from now right and you're like you we're young we got to see pictures of our parents like through you know cute pictures of them our parents at their wedding and [ __ ] these kids are going to have videos of their mom and dad talking about like eating ass you know what I mean and that's not cool how did you come up with with the idea did you see that working and no I saw it was the show taxi cab confessions yeah you know what I mean it was just interesting how it past a certain hour if you have genuine conversations you get a sort of window into the soul and there was a lot of genuine conversations in cter confessions you know what I mean conversations about heartbreak life loss all that stuff did happen it wasn't just incest confessions but even so it was more ingest even when it was incest because it's it's the South people are just having fun how often does someone say something to you where you can't Heir it all the time and do you not you I don't he it no no no and where do you draw the line um if some I'm trying to think what's the last thing that somebody said that I couldn't Heir I haven't really sought out people who were like in a party environment in probably like four years I'm trying to think what's the last party video that I did oh I did Hemingway days in Key West and there was just old guys saying weird [ __ ] and I was like I'm not going to put this in how much do you cut out though where it's for the benefit of the person oh always you're making that Jud me yeah you if you're a a reasonable level-headed person you know when to cut somebody off unless you're just trying to ruin their life which some people look at as good content I feel like people just don't go out expecting that they could potentially like the HW Tua girl like become a national meme especially in a bad way I'm going to push back on this in a way I mean I agree with you I prefer not to be randomly filmed but if you are in public there is no privacy I don't think there's any room for privacy if you were in public doing something but it's different with the digital age versus just like being in public where like stuff won't spread to like hundreds of millions of people over it's also like public privacy is is not in terms of surveillance yeah on every street corner there is a camera filming you but on every street corner there's not a guy being like would you rather eat ass or suck toes would you have a homeless dude or let someone run train on your mom you know what I mean like that [ __ ] is like it's horrible like I remember uh yeah the Scott Ste thing it's almost like dudes with no game that's kind of what they do I could see that but I but I do think that there's a level where if you are in a public space you have to present yourself in a way where you wouldn't want to be embarrassed that's true and sure you could be accosted by a guy coming yo would you eat ass would you yeah but if you don't give the reaction but no one is going to go out in public with that consideration until we have like thousands of people on One Street like trying to interview it's like okay I'm just not you know what Ian also dude like I've been drunk and embarrassed myself in public I've thrown up I've fallen down I've almost gotten into a fight a couple times when I was in college you know what I mean I embarrassed myself enough with like there being 30 people around me and we have such an extreme like shame and guilt culture in America that like if if all of a sudden removed from that environment you have 100,000 people being like damn that girl's a hoe or like damn that dude's a [ __ ] you know what I mean that's a whole different level because you have people who don't even go out you have like puritanical people who see anyone drinking and they're like ah you're a piece of [ __ ] on the podcast we talk a ton about how to grow your wealth but there's a question that is just as crucial what happens if you're not around to protect it what happens to your family your home your future well don't wait for the unexpected with our sponsor Select Quote you can secure your family's Financial Future No Matter What tomorrow brings Select Quote is one of America's leading Insurance Brokers with nearly 40 years of experience helping over 2 million customers find over $700 billion in coverage since 1985 other life insurance brokers offer impersonal one-size fits-all policies that may cost you more and cover you less while select quotes licensed insurance agents work for you to tailor a life insurance policy for your individual needs in as little as 15 minutes and did you know the more life insurance coverage you need the more likely you are to overpay for it well 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them and they'll go away when obviously Trump just won so evidently the policy of don't platform a problematic person and they'll just gradually sort of spin out into Oblivion doesn't happen I think that we should be encouraging more conversations across the political spectrum and if these so-called progressives want to move forward with like a a post Trump reality they have to factor in what factors caused these people to be like that in the first place like Kelly you know because you can't ignore that there's 77 million people many of whom are workingclass non-privileged American people who voted for Trump so it's like let's figure that out instead of you know dividing people among lines of like Oh you talked to Alex Jones you must support fascism but that being said I wouldn't interview like the clan I wouldn't interview like neo-nazis I wouldn't pick a white supremacist group from obscurity and give them the chance to recruit via my platform interesting so you're saying people that already have some sort of a platform that's everybody knows who Alex Jones is so if I talk to Alex Jones no one's gonna be like wow this guy seems cool but if I were to take some dude like you know like Orange County white power and like made them these huge icons and let millions of people see what they're about that would absolutely increase their numbers so what about someone like Andrew Tate I would talk to Andrew Tate I think it's an interesting he's an interesting guy I think it's interesting I'd be curious to know why so many like young dudes like turned away from Progressive ideologies altogether and turned toward the manosphere it's obviously happened and uh I have an idea as to why you know what's your idea why I just think that identity politics have really made people feel excluded especially young dudes not just white and and made made to feel like their Val their ideas don't matter because they're too high on the privilege hierarchy and I think that class politics have been toally uh you know erased by people who are obsessing over identity [ __ ] and that's why you have so many people being like you know what [ __ ] all this [ __ ] I don't want to care about anyone if if I don't matter as much as the next person then I'm tapping out because I think that would be a really interesting conversation is you talking with him I just feel like you'd be able to I don't know take it somewhere where a lot of other people haven't been able to do and there's no denying the impact that he's made absolutely like I mean you know hundreds of millions of people skyrocketing to the level of Fame he was you know arguably like one of the most recognizable people in the United States quite a bit and the and the question why never really gets talked about you have like Publications that are compromised like CNN and Bloomberg being like why so many young sexist white men gravitating toward this piece of [ __ ] and it's just literally just perpetuating the exact same thing it's just like proving that agenda it's it's definitely interesting I'm curious about the mano's fear in general you know and like why it's seen as being so baa a care about people and [ __ ] it would be fascinating if you had a video where you talked with like all of those guys in the video and got down to like the nitty-gritty yeah because one thing too is like I'm not like a easily offended person and I don't police people speech really either and there's this conception that like a lot of people think that I'm like super soft because I'm not conservative like some of those manosphere dudes like oh this [ __ ] liberal dude is like scared to say [ __ ] you know what I mean stuff like that where I'm like bro it's it's deeper than that like I think that everyone needs to be incorporated into every conversation pretty much unless there's such a small vocal minority that their perspective doesn't represent a lot of people we definitely have to draw that line constantly on our podcast and I would probably a on the side of like yeah you know like whatever we can have on anyone but Graham definitely is a little bit more disciplined in terms of this part of me worries that there there are certain people if we have them on just us having them on is a level to a certain extent of endorsement yeah and I personally I love to talk to people who I'm just curious about and I'm not the type where I really want to like push back on things and disagree that's not fun for me I'm just more inquisitive I'm very curious about certain people and and why they believe the things that they do acoss yeah if you don't push back then it's like okay well just me talking to you it's almost seen as me it's an endorsement yeah I I just think it depends how shitty the person actually is you know what I mean like if someone like for example Alex Jones made a mistake when he talked about the Sandy Hook situation in the way that he did right but you know I think he's been dragged Enough by the media about it I think he's talked about it a million times if I'm going to sit down with him again I'm going to be curious about other things so there's also the problem of when you plat form some somebody problematic you have to continuously reinforce your own morality and be like hey uh I know we're having a great conversation but um what you said was [ __ ] up what are they supposed to say to that that's not know yeah it's just a continual oh yeah you're right right so it's like if I was to speak to Enrique tario again who just got free to storm the capital you know what I mean I would definitely bring up that I think January 6 is wrong that's a pretty major plot point but I'd be more curious about life after being released not continuously dragging someone in the mud for a mistake that they made even if it landed them in jail so for some of these people I've noticed you go and they like black out their faces and they like put on the sunglasses they wear the gloves how do you find these people how do they trust you not to show their identity because basically they're exposing themselves on camera to you and you could very easily just be like all right guys we got them yeah and then like police store them in how do you navigate that one thing that's interesting and you can if you look at like Tommy G or Buckingham's work is you you'll see that even the most [ __ ] up hardened criminals with like no conscience with like 100 bodies they still want clout they still want attention that is as uh important to them as profit especially in the US like when it comes to the cartel they don't want attention they're not trying to be on anybody's Vlog but American gangsters you know they they rap too they do all kinds of different [ __ ] so the Tran brothers were like oh [ __ ] I'm trying to be in a channel five video you know what I me so it was seeing almost like a flax to be yeah yeah it's for sure a flex because even if you're you're like covered in a shyy and you have gloves on your and your voice is distorted you can still tell your homeboy like look I got you know 5 million views like [ __ ] know who I am are they worried about any legal consequences like is there any way that you know if they blur out the face and distort the voice it like it could be traced back to them or I think that they're already taking they're already taking so many risks by like importing the precursors and actually cooking Tran that when it comes to like a YouTube channel it's not like on the top of the the rank ranking list for like most sketchy situations for getting caught you know do you ever a fear for your life of being in like one of those positions where you know you have a guy who's like you know strapped with weapons like at any moment if he feels like he's being threatened I fear for my life after do that makees sense when I watch the footage I think holy [ __ ] I could have died right there but in the moment I'm so focused on doing the interview that I'm like ah it's going to be fine then I rewatch it and I'm like dude what if a rival drug dealer came and shot that place up or like what if the cops decided to knock on the door and raid it and they decided to have a shootout with the cops the cop and I'm wearing plain clothes I didn't have a sudon they'd probably kill me too do you ever have any precautions of like a bulletproof vest or like no I should start though probably did you see I think his name is Arab and he went to Haiti and he got kidnapped by like the barbecue gang Arab is crazy yeah yeah I I saw him with the Taliban recently too in Afghanistan he's like hanging out with the Taliban the president of Haiti was assassinated by us-backed Colombian mercenaries and the the power vacuum created in PTO Prince specifically allowed gangs to take control of the city so like each neighborhood in all the Haitian major cities is controlled by a bunch of different street gangs who are competing for territory the the mo the kind of MVP of the Haitian gang war right now is a guy named Jimmy cherizer AKA barbecue aab was on the way to interview barbecue and I think his fixer which is a term for like someone who sets up an interview for money I think the fixer got him kidnapped somehow for ransom and then he was basically kidnapped for like a couple weeks yeah honestly bro I don't know if it was real really I don't know dude like maybe it's good video I mean look bro no hate on Arab great video however my initial thought was like no way yeah that would be interesting yeah who knows just the pacing of it he's he was like hope nothing goes wrong and next thing you know it's like he's kidnapped like it's pretty good marketing for and then it was payal too just my thought it was payal it almost got me too yeah exact exactly you know what that's a great point I mean I'm I'm just not familiar with this but but as but hearing through this I mean yeah I don't see [ __ ] I got kid to learn more go to my patreon I kind of did that with the border patrol though so I'm not going to you know be what did you do with them I got arrested by the border patrol and I basically talked about my experience and I hired a 3D graphic animator to recreate my experience in the migrant Detention Facility and I pay all that but I pay all that so I could pay back the Department of Homeland Security because they charged me $10,000 why did you do that was it just a doc my mom she that's the first thing she said when I got out of jail why did you do that why why did you need to specifically do that why couldn't you I don't know dude it's that about making but like I feel like we're we're we have a line of like you know being trafficking yourself versus talking to other people who have had their experiences or talking to the people themselves a lot of those major risks I was like on Hiatus in a super depressive state so I was already like ready to die and so a lot of those risks that I took I was like you know what I'm if I'm going to die I'll die in the field I would never hop The Border again like that where do you think this risk-taking Behavior comes from because you certainly Put Yourself In Harm's Way multiple times like I wouldn't have the courage to or or the desire to do I would say even a tenth of what you do or put myself in those situations where something could happen I'm trying to look back and think I mean I grew up writing graffiti in Seattle climbing on freeway signs and [ __ ] so probably some of that those adrenaline impulses work to my advantage now do you think that Legacy journalism is probably on its way out because I see a lot of people using Twitter or using other sort of like citizen journalist stuff it's on its way out and it's being replaced by a worse machine and what is that just algorithms no algorithmic clickbait uh all these journalists who are like masquerading as like independent reporters who are just like literally following the exact following the exact same incentive structure of the mainstream media outrage clickbait thumbnails false light selective interviewing manipula it's just it's crazy you know what if anything it actually could be worse it is worse because at least to defend Legacy Media they have to verify what they say to at least a certain degree and they have liability in what they say but some dude on YouTube 100 followers can say whatever they want to and they have nothing to lose because outrage sells more you know what I mean anger sells more and so for Channel 5 we try to lock walk that fine line between creating engagement because people like the journalism and employing just enough shock to get people to click which is hard but it's even worse now especially like most journalists today it's just vox pop and what that refers to I read it on Wikipedia one time it's you just get people's reactions to what's already happening so it's not you know what I'm saying so if you hear that there's people eating cats and dogs in Springfield Ohio if you're one of these new journalists you will go there and and get people to say that because it feeds something that's already circulating on the algorithm and you you basically Harvest algorithmic engagement to get revenue for yourself so I don't know what I don't know how that's worse than like you know Fox News doing punditry and creating fear with like putting videos on repeat crime it's kind of I don't like how easy it is for misinformation to spread that for me is the the most difficult part and it's hard sometimes to even find the truth like you saw the picture speaking of the eating cats and dogs but there's the guy holding the the goose and the story was that this guy like killed this goose and is going to eat it which is legal the truth was that uh this was on the side of the road it was roadkill and it was being moved the narrative became he killed it to eat it and he's not from the country mhm but like the the way that spreads and people just run with it it's [ __ ] crazy it's nuts do you feel like we are actually more divided or do you feel like it's algorithms pushing that we are more digitally divided but people are more apathetic and lazy than ever in 2020 people were both digitally and physically divided you had the antivaxx rallies popping off you had reopen California reopen Arizona that [ __ ] was popping and you had the George Floyd mobilizations chop in Seattle you had Portland going crazy city was on fire now same level of division if not worse but everybody's inside and how do you bring balance to that how do you try to cuz I feel like just as as someone who's also on YouTube like you you almost can't Pander to the middle no it's just it's got to be one side or the other to an extreme and the more extreme you get the more financially rewarded you are I think that the the the responsibility here kind of lies on the consumer too like first off as as a consumer you have to recognize that nobody's unbiased there's no news Outlet that's unbiased everybody who is Works in journalism is conditioned by the way they grew up the formative experiences they had like for me you know I lost a lot of friends to police brutality early in life in Seattle you know three or four and uh so when the George Floyd murder happened I was instantaneously sort of triggered and on the side of the protesters because of my own experiences so obviously my coverage leaned a little bit left if I was from uh you know Cedar Rapids or the middle of Iowa and my dad was the sheriff and he was saving kittens from trees and I grew up in a small town I might be like what the [ __ ] cops are awesome this is a bad egg but don't take this out on the cops so the point being is that you can't escape the way that you grew up so as a as a consumer you have to realize oh I'm going to listen to TCO Carlson right now I know he I know that he leans right I'm going to listen to Andrew right now and I know that he leans a little bit left which is true and so it's once you stop believing that journalists are unbiased understand the spectrum of media bias and be a responsible consumer it'll work itself out you can't expect the journalists themselves to give you the truth at this point because they never did what would you say is the most common way that people get radicalized well there's a lot of people asked me when they watched dear Kelly they said why don't you do a video about you know a leftist or liberal version of Kelly and I would say that there's two types of radicalization there's conservative radicalization which I think is caused by core need collapse you had a perfect life like I was saying and everything falls apart and you want to go back to how things were and so you latch on to this idea of this nebulous force of evil that took that perfect life from you and that blends perfectly with like the conspiracy framework which also points to this like nameless faceless just bad spiritual Cosmic demonic Force that's like working tirelessly every day to steal everything from the red-blooded American Patriot on the other side what I would call liberal radicalization I don't think is actually powered by need collapse but actually needs being over fulfilled and that creating like an extreme guilt complex that gives a lot of privileged people this complex of like I feel so bad for how good my life is so I'm going to dedicate my life to overcompensating for that by doing a variety of weird things like uh becoming a have you heard of a POC body shield in Portland Oregon in 2020 there was a white Anarchist who would go around and they would ask black people say hey can I walk you to work can I walk you to the bus stop to to be a body shield for you so I'll put my body in front of you if a policeman tries to kill you would people take them up on that no they'd like get the [ __ ] away from me you know what I mean but then how does that not wake someone up from the trans there and of like they like oh you're indoctrinated by the system I understand that's so patronizing though that but that is the equivalent so like we say liberalism is about a utopian future conservative is about a mythologized past and so those are two types of radicalization that manifest themselves in different ways so when you see the past you see what I'm saying yeah you know what I think it is people love to have a common enemy and there's nothing that brings you together with another person and we both dislike that person right just having that I think is one of those bonding experience for whatever reason at AE level that people really latch on to that and when there's when there's a bad guy and a good guy and it's very clear my gosh you could form a great connection with someone over that yeah and the the interesting thing about why conservatives have been able to mobilize so much is because if you go to a trump rally you'll have an iasa drinking Bitcoin libertarian who smokes weed five times a day standing right next to an Evangelical Christian pro-life protester who believes that marijuana was created by the devil to like get white women to have interracial children and they will be they have huge disagreements but as long as they're for the common cause and the collective interest is getting Trump elected they're like on the same team on the left the individualism is so high and there's so much infighting and tearing down of each other that you you'd be lucky to even have a group of five people on the same page when it comes to liberals you know because they're so obsessed with their identity and where they're placed on the hierarchy of privilege and making and holding space for people who have less that can't even they can't even uh form have you seen Matt Walsh's M icist documentary that's kind of similar to what you did on the other way around the tone was a little bit different but it's it's similar where he's going in similar to you when you say that when you interview someone you need to kind of just like silently nod that's like the best way that you draw out more from them uh and that was kind of the idea of him infiltrating these like you know like I don't even know what you would call them but like groups of people that critical race Theory focus groups know how dude how it's a white guilt Reading Club I don't know how Matt Walsh found that like white guilt processing center that [ __ ] was crazy like I didn't even know that kind of thing existed I mean I'm sure it was filmed in Portland or something so probably that sounds yeah yeah as a seattleite it was filmed in Portland what are your favorite things on the left and the right and what have you seen to be the best like middle of the aisle reporting my favorite thing about conservatives is that they are in favor of free speech and they're against social media censorship my favorite thing about the left and liberals is that they they they seem for the most part to genuinely care about people do you think the right does not care about people or that they care less well it's different because the the conservatism is based upon a celebration of the past right and that past is also mythical America being Great America always had horrible problems the left and the progressive Liberals are based upon a utopian future they say things are really bad now but they're going to be really good if we Implement these new ideas but they both can agree that things suck right now the difference is one is based upon the mythology of the past the other believes in the mythology of like a future and so I think I do think conservatives care about people but they they they care about the people who embody the tenants of like the the Lost past of America so when they see migrants they don't give a [ __ ] about them because they're like dude what the hell we want things to be like they were these I don't care about these guys but liberals they they hate the the people of the past they see all white people like oh you're [ __ ] I can't wait till you die bro you know they want Kid Rock to die and they want to open the borders up wow I've never heard it uh SP I thought that was articulated actually perfectly very few people I feel like can describe both sides in seemingly as accurate as you yeah I would have no disagreements with that and then in terms of where you consume your media where do you get it from the left versus the right and who does it well in the middle oh I mean as far as the middle if you want to get balanced reporting it's going to be like Associated Press like legitimately boring press bullet bulletins with no pictures that just tell you like what the weather is how many people died you know what's going on like you know just actual mathematics that's what real news is it's not it's not entertaining it's just what happened that day if you want to get good news from the right I don't know probably the best entertaining news from the right is like podcasts you know what I mean like conservative podcasters are pretty hilarious like uh Sean Ryan's funny you know what I mean and then on the left I don't know I feel like I'm always inundated by leftist media as it is so it just comes to me naturally I have to seek out the conservative [ __ ] though yeah so I've seen a lot of conspiracies on your channel as well I'm curious which ones do you think have the most credibility well the real conspiracies are happening in front of us right now Trump electing the Deep State you know him campaigning against the Democratic bureaucracy and then now assembling a private Council of tech oligarchs uh the late 60s Co inel Pro the FBI systematically infiltrating and discrediting uh all leftist and workers mobilizations that that shit's real okay so what do you think he's doing with like Jeff Bezos Elon and Mark uh creating a monopoly on information you know social media and what's the benefit for them for them they get to be you know in good graces of the president tax breaks stuff like that and what do you think the outcome is going to be from something like that uh just a a prot trump reality marginalization of people who are against Trump but of course it's all about making sure people are as poor as possible in general so that's kind of and what does that do if people are as poor as possible uh it allows the profit yields to be higher for the people who are you know busting unions and making sure that uh the minimum wage stays low so do you tend because I don't know necessarily about like Bezos and Zuckerberg and stuff like that but when I see Elon or at least when I saw him in the past obviously recently he's definitely gone a lot more political and opinionated but in the past I tend to believe he was a goodfaith individual trying to like and not saying what I believe or don't believe now but what do you think about like his past versus his current I thought he was tight back in the day I was like going to Mars the idea of an electric car that's great you know what I mean but now you know I don't [ __ ] with him at all I mean actually I'm not that I'm really not not even that against Trump I just don't like Elon Musk and he's not even from here that's the biggest problem why is that a big problem because he's from South Africa and he's come here coming here and complaining about immigrants he's got all his [ __ ] to say and you know what I mean he's just stiring up problems create you look at look at X right now it's nothing but like a complete 247 freakout Echo chamber it's just it's it's a problem when someone's complaining about foreign influence they themselves are from an apartheid state come here everything is an echo chamber though like I go on Reddit and it's extremely left yeah like very left I go on Twitter I would say it's 7 it's probably 7030 heavily leans right I go on Facebook and it's just like the the same people that I know they're just still complaining to this day for the last 10 years and they have not stopped at least on Twitter or X like you get somewhat of a balance whereas anywhere else you just didn't have that and that's why I really like that is the one positive thing he's done and Community not I like Community I didn't even know about that I'll look into it I mean it's just I have a just gut reaction to a lot of the people he follows and reposts you know provocators from the Pacific Northwest like Jonathan Cho Andy no just people like that who are literally like their whole platform is based upon like compiling footage of like migrant crime and like videos of like black dudes like punching old ladies in the face and like posting them every single day to make people think that there's some kind of like you know extreme crime wave happening and just create moral panic and outrage I see things like during uh the inauguration how when Trump was like talking about oh yeah we're going to end up going to Mars and you see Elon and he has like genuine excitement so I do believe that he's a goodfaith individual in so far as like he wants to do the things that he claims he wants to do definitely and he's going to advance you know right-wing causes across the world I mean the problem really is if you look at Jeff Bezos the real working people story isn't told about Amazon Jeff Bezos and Amazon destroyed Seattle where I grew up that he convinced this the city of Seattle and the state of Washington to give him full tax breaks to basically bulldoze all of Seattle Capitol Hill Belltown Pioneer Square Downtown almost all of it was torn down to build Amazon uh offices and and and poorly constructed apartment buildings for their workers who have an average stay of 36 months before they get transferred elsewhere so already there's a problem after during Co they figured out they could make just as much money having remote work as the norm so all these Office Buildings became vacant landlords wouldn't stop building these apartment buildings the the cost of living has remained the same and the rent cost since pre pandemic times the real estate blocks won't budge and Amazon is almost pulled out of the city entirely so what we have now is the highest homelessness rate in history yet almost every Amazon apartment building and office is totally vacant almost abandoned for sale on the market nobody wants to buy and then you have people turning around now and saying look at this Democratic Leadership look at the filth they're allowing in the streets when these people can't even afford there's no sros they can't even afford to live anywhere and then all the businesses are shut down there's no Commerce it's a ghost town downtown Seattle and then those same people that film stuff in downtown Seattle right and oh look at this homeless guy setting a fire look at this liberal Progressive policy those are the people who feed Elon Musk who is a tech oligarch the information that he uses to push conservative votes now my understanding with that with Amazon is that they bring so much money and tax into an area that they have this wayway to be able to negotiate that down just because the volumes are so big but they can pull out whenever they want and that's what they did with Seattle and San Francisco that's why San Francisco why did they pull out of Seattle in San Francisco because they figured out they could make so much more money not having to maintain these Office Buildings and they can have remote work and zoom be the norm because during Co when they shut the the offices down they realized that productivity and and economic yield and out output was the same without having to pay the overhead of having HR and having these people maintain these Office Buildings so they realized we don't need to move all of our employees to Seattle we can just have them stay where they're from so did that cause people to go homeless though no basically what I'm saying is they tore down all the affordable housing units to build these expensive uh new apartment buildings to accommodate the income levels of the Amazon workers and the landlords after Bezos pulled out wouldn't budge cuz they had to pay back the Contracting cost of building these spots so now you have in in San Francisco they have they have built Tech skyscrapers that are 36 floors three floors are open they have built apartment buildings they expected to fill with Amazon employees in San Francisco and Seattle where now nobody lives because they figured out who the hell would lived there by choice well here's the thing then eventually it falls back in the bank or the lender or or whoever invested in this because I'll tell you as as a real estate person if your overhead cost is let's just say on a building like that a million dollars a month you can't afford to rent it out for less than your overhead cost so they're probably just keeping it vacant hope hopefully you know that eventually they'll rent it out at that price but if they don't that then they either need to sell take a loss investors take a hit the banks take a hit I think that's coming right yeah and the but before they took a hit I mean the people of Seattle took a hit like we lost all of our big coffee shops that had been there for you know decades all these cultural Staples the factors that actually made it attractive the cultural capital the cultural appeal that's gone and we can't even afford to live there almost everybody that I graduated with 1819 could not afford to live in the city of Seattle after graduation from high school they had to live with their parents they had to go to the shitty south suburbs and it's it's yet to repopulate and so it's unfortunate because that's the real city of the that's the real situation on the ground in cities like San Francisco that are becoming like Detroit 2.0's because of the tech pullout and we don't see it now but you're going to see it 20 years you're going to have these empty skyscrapers and you you already see like a Lords and peasant style class structure in these cities and it's because of tech It's seems to me yeah I would say Tech and the internet has certainly perpetuated that but also that people are realizing they don't need to live in large cities anymore and a lot of people are relocating or working remotely and so you are seeing like hey the people that could afford to live in those areas have a lot of money and the people that don't yeah are moving elsewhere I don't blame I don't blame the tech workers a lot of people want to take it out on the tech Bros and [ __ ] that's [ __ ] I mean dude a lot of tech is a valuable service there's a lot of great people who work in the technology industry and if they can choose between taking their fat Amazon paycheck and moving to Texas and Idaho or Montana and getting a beautiful like Farm versus living in an apartment in San Francisco or Seattle where they're already being faced with hostility for being like an outsider you know what they're going to pick you know but the problem is is that you know it's just a it's just a it's like a self-eating snake when you invest so much in something and you pull out and all of a sudden you have these same Tech billionaires blaming the progressive policy makers for allowing the Decay it's crazy so how do you think this is going to play out like over the next 10 years I think that you said it the best way I think there's going to be a sub a suburban and Rural Revival among people in our generation I think there's less people than ever who want to live in these inner cities they're overpriced the the the homeless situation is out of control they're not safe people want to live more pastoral lives it's the opposite of what's happening in Mexico where you have everybody moving from the rural centers to the cities I mean even people now like it's kind of crazy I have inner city friends that I grew up with my whole life who are talking about farms and learning how to you know Homestead and [ __ ] that's the future that people want you know cuz who wants to pay even if you're over even in this area like Venice it's so expensive and for what the city doesn't do anything with the taxes yeah there's something romantic about the idea that you could be completely self-sustained and be off the grid you know just have solar cook your food in the backyard you don't really need no HOA no nothing like that property taxes that's a big that's a big one man every year they raise the property taxes it goes up you know a few thousand dollar yeah for prop I got to learn more about that [ __ ] cuz I'm looking to buy my first home pretty soon you know I'm getting to that I'm going to talk you out of that pretty soon yeah so you think that there's no state in America where it's a good investment to buy a home I think well okay let let's preface this if you find a good deal then you find a good deal but generally speaking it's getting more to be on the side of the spectrum of like needle and a hay stack than it is like okay you just kind of buy a house you'll be okay so if we want to talk about buying a home we'll talk about Buy buying a home I think it's a great idea to buy a home if number one you could afford it safely assuming your income goes down and a worst case scenario we get a recession something now your income goes down by you know 30% you could still afford the home a home that's a good deal because at a right price everything makes sense to buy okay so it's a good deal and you plan on staying there for probably at least 10 to 20 years okay then I think then I think it makes sense there's a great thing it's called The New York Times rent versus buy calculator and what that is you could you could type in like your opportunity cost of investing in the stock market instead how much rents go up how much property taxes go up your insurance maintenance repairs things like this add up yeah like even if this house were paid off completely paid off it would be about 45 Grand a year just to maintain it so oh because you have no landlord I didn't even think about that with no landlord you have to acquire PE you have to pay people to do [ __ ] that you would call your landlord about correct oh man but there's a lot but but it's but it's property taxes gotcha it's maintenance it's Insurance yeah I was talking to a buddy yesterday he pay $60,000 a year in property insurance because his property is located in the Hillside and it's just a fire risk so his insurance went from what used to be like six grand a year 500 bucks a month which is a lot to $60,000 a year and then you think to yourself okay $60,000 a year and then you pay on top of that another $30,000 a year for property tax another $10,000 a year for repairs now you're at $100,000 a year not even counting your mortgage we're in hell so you could rent an identical home for let's call it $8,000 a month M and and by the way these are highend Los Angeles prices so the average person can be like eight grand a month but but you could but you could rent a home for cheaper than it is to buy so I would say for the average person let's say you're starting a family you want to settle down in an area you could you could comfortably afford the home you want to live there for the next 20 years I think it could be a great idea to buy a house lock yourself in and and there's a a mental peace of mind that you get by owning a house and not having a land that's what I'm looking for so we'll Circle back in two years and we'll have a more a better conversation cuz now I'm not going to buy the thing is yeah that was it yeah he's smart here's the thing he said words I don't know so I believe all it is is this I look at the numbers I I'm very logical like I I I have connections to houses but the the the amount of money I spend on it would would over overturn that so when I look at the numbers and I think oh I could I could buy this great house for for numbers here for a million do that's going to cost me $8,000 a month in overhead or I could rent an identical house for 3700 and I could save the difference and invest it and I have no money down I'm not logged into this house if the roof breaks I don't have to fix it I have no responsibility and I can pick up a move anytime without any closing cost I'd rather pay the rent yeah when that buying becomes equal or when I think that hey I could fix it up it's a great deal and I'm going to come into 100,000 equity and I could do then I'll buy but until the numbers make sense like I would be a renter like I'm I'm not you know well I am so I'll just keep it going yeah so that's that's that's my argument hell yeah as uh as a real estate investor like I wish I could as a landlord people people comments like he'll comment that like oh a landlord wants more people to rent go figure yeah but the thing is is like they don't realize like I'm not buying anything new and whether or not you rent your buy makes no difference to me they said the same thing when I used to work as a real estate agent I was telling people in like from 2016 to 2020 when I was a real estate agent I was telling people it's a great time to buy now is the time to buy and everyone's oh because he's a real estate agent he sell us and I was telling people ref financer mortgage estate agent Rachel if you're watching this thank you for helping me secure my beautiful home shout out Rachel hey Rachel so anyway so but it's I have but it makes no difference like I'm not taking on new clients and so it's like hey whether you buy or like sell or rent it that makes zero difference to me makes zero difference if you rent or buy I just I want you to save money and that just gives me a feeling of personal satisfaction If people could save money and invest that's it hell yeah so that's my that's my rant for [ __ ] yeah yeah but you know what before we go into that if you're on your own business you know there's no better sound than hearing and if you want to hear a bunch more then it's time to get started with today's sponsor Shopify Shopify is home to the number one checkout on the planet with way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going for for example Shopify is a service called shopay that allows their customers to save their email address shipping information billing and payment instructions and that boost conversions by up to 50% and if you're into growing your business your Commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web in your store in their feed and everywhere in between all in all nobody's selling better than Shopify so if you're ready to upgrade your business sign up for a $1 trial period at shopify.com all lowercase again that is shopify.com all lowercase shopify.com thank you so much to Shopify for sponsoring this episode and back to the podcast now while we're on that topic you got to ask yourself what makes a leader stand out it's not just about taking charge but about setting new standards and embracing bold moves so if you lead by example and live with passion then our sponsor the Range Rover Sport is made for you every model of the Range Rover Sport offers a unique blend of dynamic sophistication and sporting luxury it's where refined Elegance meets visceral power with focused on-road performance and world-renowned off-road capability this vehicle Rises to every occasion experience the Adaptive off-road cruise control that adjust to your terrain and dynamic air suspension for Superior agility and Control Plus adaptive Dynamics ensures smooth composed handling by minimizing unwanted body movements for those who Elevate their desires and lead by example the Range Rover Sport is more than a luxury vehicle it's a statement Discover it today at landro Rover usa.com again that's landroverusa.com with the link Down Below in the description thank you so much Range Rover support for sponsoring this episode and now let's get back to the podcast so I'm curious when it comes to finances like how do you structure your business where does the money come from so probably 80% of the income comes directly from patreon so we have I think probably like 50,000 patrons or no maybe like 30,000 patrons and they all pay $5 a month for exclusive un censored access to like extended cuts of the episodes early release behind the scenes footage and just like stuff that we can't post elsewhere with that money we have a team of four editors one senior production manager one pre-production manager and office assistant so we're like six or seven deep right now we also have an office in the Valley now so we have an office it's all fans supported and then we also have different companies where we do sponsored ad reads for them like notably ground news and sometimes nordvpn so they pay a pretty good amount of money for a 90c ad read and certain you know more safe videos more successful videos and uh that also Keeps the Lights On how much do you make from ad Revenue in videos like this like uh 20k that's more than I would I would have expected per video yeah yeah I would have expected a lot less I mean your videos get a lot of views cpms would have been lower CU sometimes we'll talk about like edgy your subjects and instantly our cpms just crash on the podcast for like what I would think is like we're very mild um but certain things uh like we were talking to a Navy SEAL guy and that just completely got shut down why the [ __ ] is that shout out to the veterans yeah well he was talking about some pretty gruesome he was illustrating very graphic okay things that he saw in Iraq um well I mean now it's like in Burma oh they're doing Special Ops so no he's it's complicated but yeah he's doing it like as a citizen not actually for the government oh he's like a mercenary yeah holy [ __ ] yeah wow it's great story but YouTube didn't like what uh you know it was probably just because of the graphic nature and it was a bit it's hard to hear and there might have been an audience out there who hears this yeah and they don't want to have that go into their mind which I understand it was tough for me to hear too yeah okay so you're making good money like are you saving investing it what are you doing yeah I just don't you know I support my mom I got her a house out here on the West Side me and my dad I I gave him the investment to open up a sports bar in Seattle called last call which is in Fremont Ballard so he's been running that by himself he's killing it up there and the Eagles just won so if you're going to go to the Super Bowl to party anywhere and you're an Eagles fan go to my dad's bar in Fremont uh yeah I mean I'm I take care of everybody around me you know take care of my dogs U my my GF uh as far as saving money yeah I have a bunch saved so I have like an investment manager who's like oh you have a financial adviser I got a financial adviser and he put like a million away in stocks and [ __ ] stocks you know do you pay attention to what's going on or no do you have any idea what it's at right now yeah no he he calls me once a month and and he's like we're doing good and I'm like thank you his name's Jonathan any other invest what about cryptocurrency no no no no I can't I don't know anything about it but obviously you guys do so you you put money in a so you have money in a savings account you put a hundred or $1 million into an investment account some guy's managing that yep you don't know what that exactly is no but I do know that it goes up like two or 3% every time which is sick every month uh no every quarter D 3% a qu well depends if that's well no it really uh 2% yeah yeah it it depends when that time frame is because the S&P is up 24% the last year so we got to see if he's underperforming the index and what he has you in he might have you in something too safe yeah he he asked me do I want low medium or high risk and I said medium risk it would be interesting to see exactly what what he's done for you yeah I'm excited I want to get more into it it's just I don't know if it's like I have math class trauma or something but when someone starts saying [ __ ] I'm just like I got to get out of here you know he'll be like you want me to break down what's going on I'm like no no no I didn't do my homework you know what I mean but yeah is money important to you yeah like in terms of what because it seems as though it's not based off of some of the things we've discussed it's important because it makes it so my mom doesn't have to work and I can get airbnbs for my grandma and just take care of stuff you know what I mean I just like taking care of people I don't need money I'm cool to live in the RV but you know everyone around me likes nice for things like my mom's kind of bougie you know she wants to go to Paris and [ __ ] my girl also you know she wants to go to Jamaica so I'm taking her next week so it's about other people if I had it my way I'd probably live in the RV still and you know not make any money or just enough to keep it moving but you know I don't really have finer tastes or anything tastes you know like go to restaurants still eat out of like Panda Express obviously but you know uh yeah I don't need money but I like taking care of people that's it who do you feel like is the most misunderstood from the people that you talk to probably the fures man the FES are chill as [ __ ] the FES are so cool I thought they all were attracted to animals before I met them that's kind of what I think yeah no they're not why do they have such a bad rep uh it kind of looks scary especially because they're all adults you know if they're little kids and it was like a kid subculture but it's like an adult subculture and there is a sexual component okay why do people get drawn to FES because they have they're on the Spectrum a lot of them are you know what I mean and for people who have a hard time making eye contact and they love animals it provides like a childish way to like be able to express yourself without the awkwardness of eye contact is you know common in most interactions so for furries is it something where they just go to a convention and they wear the outfit or is it they just wear the outfit at all times I don't know that's a really good question yeah there's actually a big furry antifa crossover when I was at an antifa protest in Portland someone's like dude I haven't seen you since furfest so I think these are people who enjoy costuming and I don't think they wear the furry all the time I think they have furry meetups I've seen them here at Venice Beach I've seen him at at parks in downtown I think FES are like probably 3070 30 being furred out 70 regular what do you mean furred out wearing a fur suit all times 30% of the time they're very hot too the fur suits like okay like temperature yeah yeah I thought you meant the people that too so what type of people do you not get along with [ __ ] dude nobody I get along with everybody has it always been the case yeah yeah ever since you're a okay I don't like bullies yeah you know but other than that you know there's not really many there's not bully adults why do you think you could relate to so many people ah man just growing up around a lot of people bro my mom dude she took me to the library when I was young she introduce me to people at the library she'd also make me give out cookies to the homeless people in the subway system in Philly oh wow yeah did that provide you with maybe a different perspective yeah probably trained me to not be freaked out by homeless people yeah you know what what's what's interesting my my earliest experience with a homeless person growing up in La was at Venice Beach yeah it's a very positive experience believe it or not what happened I caught a butterfly as a just kid I I must have been like first or second grade no really I caught a butterfly and I wanted to put it in like a container or something like this and I think I just like walked up to like there was there was a homeless couple and it must have been 50s or 60s and I walked up and like they I think they asked me like hey what do you have in your hand i'm like it's a butterfly I'm looking for a container I think that's why I was looking for a container and I went up to him and uh she was like hold on I'll be right back and I think she went through the trash and like gave me a container and I put the butterfly in the container so I could look at the butterfly and it was a really just they were normal people just a couple but then the teacher was like oh my God what are you doing you get away from those freaks something like that but I just remember them being really really really kind nice and they just seem like people who were down on their luck yeah definitely what percentage of people do you feel like fall into that camp versus people who have severe mental issues I think it's about it depends where at like I mean every homeless Community is a little bit different even here in La at Venice Beach a lot of it is voluntary homelessness they might live in a van they chill at the uh at the at the beach all day by the skate park there's some Mental Illness but it's mostly like the culture like the folk culture of of being homeless it's thing in New Orleans it's mostly voluntary homeless gutter punks who are into like train hopping and there's different subcultures among the among the homeless if you go to downtown Skid Row that is mostly mental health issues most people living down there nobody would ever choose that because they want to you know it's it's not by the ocean a lot of people get ran out of Venice and have to go downtown you know so there's certain levels of community policing amongst homeless encampments like in the tunnels or you know even in U in La yeah what has been the most effective policy that actually combats homelessness because it seems like no place has been able to figure it out you've spent so much time around these people if you just forced them into certain homes into Rehabilitation Facilities would that actually solve the issue the problem is homeless can be tackled on a city level with mental health treatment and housing however that's if you take the homeless community that exists and don't add any anybody else to it the problem is right now you have while simultaneously you have harm reduction sites and safe injection sites opening up in California you also have other states and even counties in Oregon and Washington who are criminalizing homelessness and threatening to take people to jail take away their right to vote all that [ __ ] if they are caught homeless more than three times with a vagrancy loss so I think one was called the Grants Pass law but in Idaho it's illegal to be homeless in Montana it's illegal to be homeless on all these states so what they're what they're doing on purpose is creating mass migrations to California so you got homeless people from everywhere else in the country flocking to San Francisco because they can't be homeless elsewhere you have one time I was in Austin Texas and I saw the police buy Greyhound bus tickets to send hundreds of homeless people to Portland Oregon because they have Services there so you take something that starts off maybe positive where you might be able to see some change and it gets overwhelmed by the sheer number of homeless vagrants and then before you know the system's being taken advantage of you don't know where people are coming from you know so there is there is a way to solve homelessness on a small scale but there's no solving Skid Row I mean maybe there is but it's definitely not going to be through voluntary Outreach programs do you think the harm reduction facilities are working or do you think it just attracts more people to go to those specific location it does both that's the problem you see what I'm saying it works if you have a community of addicts who are living in a place where they're already from there and they're overdosing and this is making it so they have access to like a treatment center or clean needles so they don't get AIDS or sepsis or heepsy but all of the sudden word word travels fast on the streets so you got people in Salt Lake City where they don't have a harm reduction facility being I'm like oh [ __ ] we can get free [ __ ] crack pipes in SF they're on that first bus the country is big but it's not that big I mean word especially along the frontier on the west past the Rockies [ __ ] travels really fast I've always felt like homelessness should be somewhat of a federal issue because you have people from around the country that do flock usually to California because of the weather because of the treat yeah and because of the treatment you know now some people could argue well California's providing these you know certain things and of course they're going there so California's got to deal with it but you know when Las Vegas is solution to homelessness as far as I'm aware is simply we'll get you a bus ticket anywhere yeah and they just say all right California now you're getting people from other states that just migrate to California because it's illegal there be interesting if California just says all right well it's illegal here too right are they going to go to another state where it's not like I feel like it's got it's got to be solved from such a big level that's what's fascinating is California is absorbing the problems of other states and being blamed for it simultaneously and I'm not saying that Gavin Nome has you know the best policies but he also shut down the safe injection site in San Francisco which was the actual Progressive policy model which said don't just give them the crack pipes and [ __ ] make it so they can only used in this specific radius that's enclosed and watched by security so they don't leave [ __ ] on the streets that was the they don't want that see what I'm saying it's all deliberate and the these Progressive liberals not leftists who enact stuff like oh let's make a harm reduction Center yet they reject a safe injection site which would actually protect the kids from you know related problems that gets vetoed so they fold to conservative pressure too I really think it's all one machine I don't even think that there's any major differences between political parties yeah are you ever concerned that your style of interview misrepresents the group that you're after sometimes but I really don't misrepresent people sometimes people just say dumb [ __ ] and I put it out there and then the comments say mean things about them and then that group gets mad at me and they're like dude you're making us look bad what the [ __ ] you picked the craziest person in the crowd I'm like no I didn't I don't pick anyone crazy it's just you know it's they pick you right exactly but no I mean I try my best but I like I said I have inherent bias I have inherent biases yeah I would think that like if you interview 10 people just knowing the YouTube algorithm one's a little nutty like that's the one that generally just from like the business perspective you got to pick that one exactly people love characters I didn't start that what was the most like uh I would say like negative surprise uh we we went to a an event called the alpha Con in Salt Lake City where it was like this alpha male Meetup and then they decided we were to Beta on the first day and just kicked us out that was pretty whack wait so there's an alpha male meet up was called Alpha con yeah but that sounds like the least Al like it seems like a true Alpha wouldn't even go to an alpha a true Alpha would never go to Alpha con but obviously it's a guy selling like ,000 tickets you know what I mean it's like one of those male bonding boot camps being an alpha person what do you what do you what do you think are some of your biggest insecurities uh [ __ ] just getting betrayed by my homeboy you know what I mean and just having uh people constantly near me plotting against me and plotting all my downfall it's pretty do do you do you feel like that that's happening it always happens it always happens why does happen I don't know man it's called sidekick syndrome it's I deal with it every time what I've never heard of this I've never heard of this Jack the sidekick I'm kidding I've never heard of this either sidekick syndrome is when you are the guy and people love you and you're receiving an outpouring of recognition and credibility and clout and fame and the person closest to you who you share your innermost thoughts with develops uh resentment and jealousy and feels like they're more important than they are often times they'll present an ultimatum to try to get you out of your position they'll talk [ __ ] about you behind your back they'll just create the like anti- boss sort of like hater culture they'll just you know look for ways to make fun of you and and and get get over on you so that if you ever do fall for some reason they know exactly what their exit strategy is has this happened to you A lot it happened to me four times it always happens four times okay I have a theory this is my gut response and tell me if you thought I'm sure you've thought about this but like maybe because you are so open and non-judgmental that you kind of don't really have some sort of like net or filter in terms of who can enter your life because like I love talking to everybody I love you know learning from everybody and that kind of lets these people bottom of the barrel people yeah I just I trust everybody I see the best in people and I have a hard time accepting that there are shitty people out there you know what I mean that's one thing I asked my mom I was like did you always know that people were so shitty and you just didn't tell me and she was like yeah I I was nurtured by my mom with a very positive outlook you know even when I when someone's being shitty I I I say to myself oh you're just acting out of character like deep down you're a good person and part of growing up and why it's been so sad is you know I've just had to accept that there is evil that's real or there is at least people who place place their own self-interest so high above other people that they're willing to do horrible things and uh yeah it's just I've seen it time and time again with my inner circle just turning on me all the time how do you pick your inner circle I don't have one anymore I just have employees and my mom and my girl how did you in the past how would that come up child childhood bonds no way that's interes they childhood bonds for me are one of the things is like it just seems though like nothing could break that no fame fame and money will destroy everything what are the signs like where does it start you don't know until [ __ ] hits the fan you don't know who likes you and who hates you until no one likes you makees sense yeah you don't know until you've gone through a personal or career crisis you have no idea who actually [ __ ] with you until public favor is against you or a public opinion pivots against you then you'll see you'll be surprised it's like you go broke you lose something major and you lose your stability the people who you thought were like your your top [ __ ] they're gone and it's people you never even expected to actually have your best interest at heart but there's no way to tell until things are going bad was this all because of the one instance like a year and a half ago no it's that's one the cancellation was one but it's happened multiple times it's happened with contractual disputes it always happens it could be about a number of things but the the the everything falling apart and me having to rebuild by myself always happens it's going to happen again it's gonna keep happening until my situation is perfect or until I'm until I make such good choices that these things can't happen how severe does something have to go down for people to turn on you could it be a small thing or like is there it doesn't have to be like you know someone dying but I mean a contractual dispute an intellectual property dispute a public Scandal those are the kinds of things that make the house of cards fall and why do you think people are are so just like want to stay away from that or like turn their back like what makes them in what in which in which of the three situations in anything well with the contractual dispute they they figure I don't want to pay this guy we can replace him with uh a scandal they say people think this guy's a piece of [ __ ] I don't want to be associated with him and with intellectual property it's I did more than that [ __ ] I should own that so do you do you think there are still lasting effects from the quote unquote Scandal that you were in of course there is for for those that don't I mean we don't really have to explain it it doesn't bother me sure like give a little synopis on I mean I don't really want to go like too into it to the point where I'm explaining it but pretty much you know before the HBO film came out there was this person who had been like you know trying to essentially cancel me online for two years straight who I had she has problems that we may had made up I only hooked up with her one time when I was a kid everything was totally consensual and normal uh But as time went on she sort of started saying hey looking back I felt more pressured to agree than I realized at the time you know I was warped by your Fame all this [ __ ] you know what I mean and then 8 minutes before the film comes out she texts me and you know tries to bait me into sending her a large cash settlement for the um for from my fat HBO check how much was the settlement so it doesn't so it's illegal to tell somebody hey I'm going to I'm going to make allegations about you I'm going to tell people things about you that didn't happen if you unless you pay me however what you can do is you can bait someone into giving you therapy money money for your troubles you can use that and then and have a lawyer take it on that lawyer can then take you to civil court and say you need to settle or we're going to leak this information so that's how you legally extort someone you get you you take them at a time where they're most vulnerable so maybe 8 minutes before a movie comes out before they go on stage for a big Premiere or something like that and you say hey remember me the person who tried to cancel you three times I saw that you have a movie on HBO um I need some money or not not I need some money if you feel if you feel like giving me money here's my ven though is what it said right so I already know what's going on I knew I knew the I knew the lawyer I knew before that even happened that the lawyer was involved I was like [ __ ] well ordinarily I'm a good person and I'm not against the idea of like paying restitution to someone you like actually hurt or something you know what I mean but with this situation that was not what happened and so I would say 5 to seven days after not paying uh a press release was sent out to every you know single news Outlet in the country damn near Rolling Stone NBC CNN NPR Fox News uh with the formalized version of of what this person was saying which wasn't true and uh you know that kind of spread like wildfire obviously I've got you know some more people piled on and every person that I worked with at the time mostly just immediately jump [ __ ] and what are some of the lasting effects of that in terms of Industry [ __ ] I mean just me having to uh do things uh kind of start from start from scratch I mean the actual comeback itself which was nine months after that cancellation was uh was very difficult how did you mentally get through that keep working how do you find the motivation to work I love this [ __ ] I would die for the the cause I love in this is what I live for so you know and I had been during that period so I'm like all right once your mind is already sort of accepted that like you know I don't know how to explain it that you might die or something you're like all right well what are the options am I going to die or am I going to keep living and doing this yeah and that's just kind of what took over and with the Relentless pursuit of reporting and not letting myself get Kelly pilled and you know get upset about the the Deep State or the Matrix and just being like you know what I'm not going to read too much into this charged it to the game move forward got into a monogamous relationship not meeting up with fans hardworking did that have any transformative like fundamental beliefs for you or would you say it kind of just like hey look just keep my head down keep working and push through this I mean the the the part that [ __ ] me up was just the fact that I had been close with so many people who didn't even call me to ask hey dude what's going on I see you have a movie coming out and you're being you know blitzed by the Press not just on social media but by actual news outlets and that was like that was pretty hard just to watch that happen the part that [ __ ] me up even more than that though was like the kind of rewriting of the past of like who I was if that makes sense like so they went back into like your old actions and like oh look at this for example like I was actually in good standing at that time in every community that I was a part of and everywhere that I had lived here Seattle wherever I had lived everybody I had a good reputation but then once that happened people started rewriting like oh he's actually like known for this kind of thing it was just it's being absorb because after the initial articles came out everything was believed cuz it was like oh you know but yeah nothing came out until the Articles came out except for that one thing you know what I'm saying so the Articles come out and the other things follow and people are like oh well if multiple people are saying something about you it has to be true like as if multiple people can't lie I've noticed so many comments that someone could comment and make something up that's completely false yeah but for whatever reason they oh oh what they'll do is they'll like their own comment a few times so it gets boosted to the top and then everyone's like oh my gosh I had no idea about that oh wow if something has like 10 likes that's like a ton of credibility but but that's their credibility and it's completely false but people just say oh I know know he he does this whoa but they believe it as just a comment and yeah the more likes it gets the more credibility it gets but people don't realize that people just like top comments just to continue to like them yeah I mean people like their own comments with like 20 accounts and that's all it takes it's definitely crazy looking back to think like that I did get through that situation you know just because like I had been gas lit so bad into myself believing that there was something wrong with me you know what I mean like when you are people are constantly like you're receiving like a hundred death threats a day thousands and thousands of messages of hate mail every single day for months and months and months you just sort of you look at yourself and you're like oh I'm a piece of [ __ ] you know what I mean like I I'm just a worthless person you know and that's just kind of what happens and to be able to like not to put the hater blockers on and just do what I'm actually good at doing and not waste time like clapping back at people was the hardest part because I'm literally seeing things about myself that have no basis in reality online submitted anonymously anonymously with no information or evidence and it's being reported by actual news Publications which if you were weak-minded you might think was a conspiracy against you but I understand that that's the way that things go so when you were at the lowest possible Point what were the actual steps that you took to get yourself out [ __ ] I mean the first thing was sobriety therapy 12-step meetings joining like fellowships of people mostly male fellowships who had you know in one way or another ruined their whole life whether it was a fault of their own or external external factor or a mix of both so there was that um also just like really got into a relationship quickly tried to be like the best partner I could I never had a like serious girlfriend before the Hiatus so just learning about what that lifestyle is like spending a lot of time with family um just trying to stay off the internet um remembering the good times and uh I don't know I I I literally have no idea how I made it through I mean I'm not trying to sound like probably a day to time yeah like I was just holding on for dear life and then all of a sudden one day the Seas just parted and I was back doing my thing but I feel like I still haven't really taken a breath since I received that text message you know cuz that was just like the moment where I was like here it is the thing that everyone warned you about it's happening you either lose all your money or you lose your reputation because the settlement would have had an NDA how has that affected the relationship you have with your current girlfriend it's awesome because she got with me when I had nothing going on so she definitely likes me how did you guys mean we met at a [ __ ] 12ep meeting but I'm saying she definitely isn't that the place you're not supposed to meet people at yeah but thankfully we're not in it anymore okay but like you know she uh was able to get a real authentic relationship with her because it's like all right everybody [ __ ] hates me even her friends are like why are you dating that guy he's a piece of [ __ ] you know what I mean and so it's like if you like me then I know that you got my back what was so special about her I don't know she's just awesome dude we're coming up on a 2-year anniversary we're about to go to Jamaica her name is Jamaica she was just sick man you know she helped me uh understand like at first when it happened despite the postering and the apology of like thank you I'm a piece of [ __ ] I was actually extremely getting red pilled you know I was getting red pilled as [ __ ] you know what I mean I was I was like I mean as as as one would in that situation privately you know I'm walking around the house talking about the Deep State like I almost that's part of why the movie Dear Kelly was so cathartic to make I'm running around the house being like and this I was I was connecting the dots that didn't even exist I was like you know I bet you Jonah Hill probably told TMZ to tell the girl you know like just crazy [ __ ] and she was just like help me slow down and actually look at the way that I was living and she was like how did you expect this not to happen I was like what do you mean she's like look at your life you've been going out every night hooking up with randos since you were 21 and you're 25 she's like you expected to just live this way and continue to rise in Fame at this rate and she told me and I believe her that I would have died from drugs from partying from an accident from something you know I believe that do you believe that everything happens for a reason sometimes but I mean I'm not the kind of guy who just tries to be all hyper positive and look for a silver lining and everything those kind those dudes kind of weird me out too that's you know I do I I try to look for a cuz I'm just thinking like hey a negative situation as bad as it is it is what it is it is put it like this if you're a fighter you can make a positive out of a negative situation but there is negative situations where I can't be like damn bro I'm happy that happened because look what happened no you could never be happy something happened but at least you could figure out okay this did happen I can't change that what could I learn from this and how can I improve going forward where is there's got to be some takeaway whether it's like I appreciate life more I'm more grateful every day I could bring a more positive like there's something that you could take I would like to think from most situations yeah I mean I would agree with that entirely I mean especially what Jamaica helped me do as far as the Silver Lining has helped me realize that like two things can be true it is possible I'm trying to think of better language but to to have to be [ __ ] up and get [ __ ] over at the same time it is possible to be living irresponsibly and then come into contact with someone who doesn't care about your life sees you as a bag and takes advantage of that both of those things are problems it's not just I'm this perfect dude and all of a sudden this evil person came around and did this to me and it's not as simple as like I'm a you know I'm a piece of [ __ ] and they were just getting what's theirs there is a middle ground in a lot of situations and that's and that's an accountability you you actually need to take with yourself not with the internet not with going online and being like I've learned through this experience no that's something you have to really digest and own as you live your life is that if I was behaving in a responsible adult Manner and living like a normal person that wouldn't have happened I wouldn't have ever had a cancellation if I was just living a normal person's life and not living on The Fringe In in an RV and hanging hanging out with fans every single day I probably wouldn't have ever had a situation like that but I was and so now I'm not what do you think is an a valid criticism of yourself um that I have extremely bad Judgment of people that I have extremely just I I'm good at making people open up and people people open up to me naturally but I I didn't have a filter for uh people who just had all types of [ __ ] going on man I mean I was I don't think people understand how public facing I really was I lived in an RV for three and a half years and I switch cities almost every 3 days and everywhere I would go I'd post my location I would meet up with a whole new group of strangers almost every single time so I probably like I mean evidently if you live that way for a long period of time there's be a significant trail of scorn that you leave because you can't do everything perfectly you can't have a perfect interaction every time you live like that you know I think that was partying too hard I think I was just spending time with people who I barely knew and yeah probably like re reveling in the fame a little bit you know to to to to seek out fans everywhere you go is nice to combat loneliness but it's not a healthy way to live your life so so what does it taught you about human nature that most people are good but money corrupts always at what level does money corrupt is there like a dollar amount where people kind of get a little nuts I mean I think that it it just I don't want to sound like I'm a a crazy Marxist or something but like where there's drastic inequality whether that's inequality in attention through fame or just money and [ __ ] like bad things happen everything bad that I've seen happen is because someone is trying to either get money out of somebody or get someone else elected I'm curious any of the friends that you lost during that really low point in your life did did any of those relationships get repaired over time yeah they got repaired but I'm not be honest with you bro I'm not interested in really repairing a lot of them you know if you wouldn't pick up the phone for me when I was do I don't want to hang out with you you know I mean I can meet you and say hey man how's it going it's all good but no we can't break bread like that and that's not a spite thing that's just I'm a smart person I'm like I you if somebody shows you how they are you got to believe them are you able to forgive those people yeah and how do you do that just yeah just forgiving it's fine I'm not I don't have I don't hold any grudges I'm just not trying to hang out with them you know what I mean I'm not I don't wake I want to wake up every day like that [ __ ] didn't call me back it sounds like it's more so that people are doing that out of fear and self-preservation you but if you could call me and just say you know I'm scared I have to do this versus I mean like it's an uncomfortable conversation to have with somebody that I think is easier for someone who's afraid not to do that I get that would be the nice thing to do what about media training going through that what do they teach you in that and how do you approach situations differently because of that they tried to teach me like how to have non-confrontational conversations and you know not mess up and I actually looked at everything they told me and I did the opposite what do they te like how do you have a non they sent me one for this I have a publicist that set this up they sent me one for this what' they say just like my work Bridges uh human empathy across political lines and I'm very grateful to provide a platform to real humans it's like a way to get views on that's what they want next what they want is there a way to do it effectively though in such a way where you know maybe you you're asked a hard ball question you're able to like navigate it like I I've noticed Trump is a great example where someone could ask him straight up a yes or no question and my gosh his responses are so good at not answering the question but then finding something else like a different question to answer yeah is that is that media training or is that just like a technique or I'm capable of answering any question that's why I'm excited to do more off-the-cuff podcasts like this I'm I'm able to answer even critical questions I like critical questions it's more fun for me than someone just doing like a glazing interview who's just like how is your how is your journalism so dope I want to go on some like Steven Crowder type platforms you know what I mean like really you guys were great too because you guys push back as well in a healthy way but most Hollywood platforms don't push back so when they Media train you they're they're like almost training you to do like a you know what's a tennis think voling training you like hey I love the movie thank you so much I'm so happy to be here with variety you know what I mean and just like what inspires you real human stories how careful are you of what you say now just in general I don't care I mean I'll just say how I feel you know and uh I I I know now that if I say how I feel I'll never have those problems again because I have nothing to hide from a lot of people who cater their speech and they carefully craft words they're running from things I I didn't have anything to hide from then and I don't now not waiting for something to come out I'm not sitting around being like Oh my God I have to minimize this dude no you know but uh yes that's kind of my new model I'm just going to say however I feel interes you know see I I admire that because I myself I'm very careful about what I say and I purposely like there's a side of me that you'll see on camera but then there's a side of me that like you know I'm I'm free to joke around and you know I'll swear every now and then but when I'm on camera you know I I like to be someone who's like hey you tune on with with your kids and I'm not going to swear or say like you know dirty jokes or stuff like that but yeah I mean you know it's just uh that's why I'm glad you guys asked about it because I go on these platforms and they're scared to ask about the controversy a couple years ago because they think like oh I want to you know I want to be in this guy's good graces I don't want to make him uncomfortable but it's like I'm dying to talk about that kind of [ __ ] you know and I understand why people don't want to you know harsh to mellow but that's the reality yeah I really appre appreciate the level of transparency that you have towards this and I'm curious if you approach every public facing interview or podast that you do with this level of just like no filters talking completely as yourself and you have nothing to hide like will that actually end up yielding better results in terms of like a business perspective or a views perspective or like a more cult like following perspective cuz that's kind of what seemed like Andrew Tate was doing when he was just like saying whatever he wanted to say no holds like he never held back anything and a lot of people now like they still do these things and they just throw out some crumbs but they don't actually like fully embody themselves on on on interviews and I feel like you're absolutely doing that it's FAS yeah and and I'm just so curious like if you do something like this like what can now stop you because you're independently hosting your own things like you're not beholden to some sort of like you know parent company or Corporation or you know like channel it's it's all up to yeah it's pretty tight I mean that's that's the plan is just to start saying [ __ ] you know but I'm also not going to be a provocator too I'm not going to be like oh the views are pretty bad today let me go freak out on live stream about some [ __ ] you know I'm not going to I don't want to monetize that situation you know what I mean like a lot of people would and be like what really happened like bro that [ __ ] was horrible dudee that was the worst experience of my entire life I'm trying to move on yeah you know it doesn't mean I don't want to talk about it but you know I I need to figure out a way to get the truth about that situation out there without stirring [ __ ] back up and I'm not sure how to do that because it's like the last thing I've said about it until now you know was like me me you know basically like a deer in headlights apologizing just basically desperate for anyone to just give me an ounce of uh sympathy or or or understanding cuz I was so uh eclipsed by all this [ __ ] and inundated by this stuff it was almost hard to even explain what was happening you know cuz it felt so surreal it's like you see one thing about yourself that you know isn't true and you see two and then three you can't correct them all and if you do what am I going to look like uh you know now there's uh one two Tik toks and two Anonymous things and what am I going to do and I going to break these all down and give them more exposure and publicity the problem with that is if you correct one more come out because then you could correct those and you give them attention and then more people have an incentive to say oh well uh he responded to all these let me say something too maybe he responds to me living just yeah and you know part part of me does blame myself in a lot of ways though for the kinds of people that I surrounded myself with leading up to that situation you know I thought that you had to be an actual piece of [ __ ] to get canceled I didn't realize you could be someone like me and that could still happen to you I didn't realize it just took someone H having enough scorn and enough of a financial incentive to say something to you I didn't know it was it was that simple so uh you know if I was to look at some of the people that I was surrounding with surrounded with some of the live streamers some of the producers they all have a trajectory and a they all have a track record rather of dropping people in a heartbeat when [ __ ] like that happens so you kind of alluded to like you you want to wait a little bit to then talk about it more to then excoriate like all of these people who have I have evidence and receipts for every single thing that I'm talking about you know what I mean it's just a matter of I'm doing very well right now right views are coming in performance is good my mom's happy it was a very hard year for her as well obviously all the people around me was a lot of emotional labor for them to support me as well why would I go to war with all these people at the same time you know I know that that's what the fans want they want me to show all these these back and forths but like at at what cost and at what risk like just to get more people aware about that situation my unsolicited advice is just keep doing what you're doing and and make great content you know but it's just crazy to like see people out there like pretending you never existed who like lied to get get you out the picture all do you read comments now yeah I read every comment are you gonna read comments on this video probably prob probably they're probably respond to them I hope I feel like we're having a good conversation so I think it's going to be overall positive you guys made me feel like it's chill to speak freely oh yeah 100% and our audience say 90 7% is positive maybe you have you always have the 3% though and it really is is usually on the guest or something that I say that's out of touch yeah it's it's one dumb one of those people think you're dumb I don't think you're dumb bro thanks by the way Jack you might need this magic mind I honestly really do yesterday I drove all the way from Mammoth Lakes to Los Angeles and it was like a s and 1 half hour car drive yeah now for those who are unfamiliar with this by the way they sent us these to try out and I'm absolutely obsessed with them they're magic mind shots and basically what they do is they help you focus they boost mental productivity and every single podcast by the way I have one of these before filming they taste delicious they help just improve I would say just my cognitive functions like I find myself just being able to focus a little bit better just be a little bit more attentive what do you think Jack I think so too I'm off very little sleep so that obviously is going to help throughout the show loves also one thing he does he takes them everywhere because they're small enough where you can take them through TSA so we'll go on our trips and it's just a little bit of a caffeine boost gives you a little bit more mental acuity and Clarity helps a timeon so yeah honestly that was a it was a mistake actually bringing it through TSA I completely forgot that I had like three in my backpack they got through and I was so glad that I had them at the place because I couldn't get a coffee in the morning so I just down one of those worked amazing if you guys are interested they do have a discount link Down Below in the description they've helped sponsor this podcast they make all the traveling we do completely worth it it's awesome thank you so much magic mind for being a part of this really appreciate it but yeah if you guys are interested the link is down below than yeah yeah so I'm curious when it comes to the documentary dear Kelly how much did that cost I'm going to go ahead and say $300,000 300 Grand whoa is that a lot or a little I mean when I hear $300,000 for a YouTube I I think a lot so but I I get it was four years of work yeah that's what I was thinking editing probably 10000 ,000 in total cuz you know it was 350 hours of footage so we had me we had two different editors we had to digitize like all this VHS footage from the Johnson family yeah true that took a while uh and then actual promotion we probably put like maybe 50k into promotion what is the promotion wheat pasting we got a billboard outside of Vegas right by Sloan in between Prim and Sloan on the left side of the freeway right when you hit that bend by on the way to Vegas yeah I'll see that today yeah it's by Jean it says Dear Kelly film.com screaming now on the left side is that effective I feel like you're just doing an Instagram it's not effective but it's just fun you know and it's sick marketing we have a commercial coming out where we like taking pictures in front of the dear Kelly film sign but who's paying for it like you're paying for this yeah I'm paying for it how much does the billboard cost again it's really cheap dude it's like 900 bucks a week 900 a week for a do you want to get a billboard I I want to get middle of the Mojave here you want to waste money is it on the 15 freeway yeah dude for $900 a week yeah that's actually I mean that's pretty lucrative billboard business yeah what are they booked out in advance no dude nobody wants to promote it's to be fair it's very far from Las Vegas it's probably like a 15minute drive it's like when you make that right where the Starbucks is at how you get to good Springs past the prison right it's right there by the prison okay it's it's not very uh it's also not facing the side of the freeway you're driving on so it's the cheapest billboard spot there is but either way and then did you look by the way into how much some of the other Billboards are yeah they're more expensive how much are they yeah they're probably like three grand a week three grand a week but if you're I mean the closer you get to the Vegas trip like I see the ones for all the buffets or the the shows that must I mean that must tell you something yeah but usually they have like five in a row that's like Buffet here MGM $32 Lobster and it's like five of them in a row me South Point can afford five Billboards you you probably could too you know what I mean that's gaming that is true that's that's the thing but back to the budget of the movie and then I had to pay like 200,000 fighting this lawsuit in court against Bill Joiner so in total wait wait wait what's this if at the very end of the movie you'll see there's a defamation lawsuit that I'm fighting right now I can't talk too much about it I might talk about it in the future but right now either way I'm upstream or Downstream I don't know what you call it in money terminology but I'm I'm in the red I was in the red but I'm getting into the to the green now because of the sales so dear Kelly made a 100,000 opening weekend $100,000 where where was it streaming film.com stream now it's up we're up to like 35,000 independent rentals W so like it's going up so like I'm about 50k away from paying back the legal the the project itself but now the defamation lawsuit so so Kelly's arch nemesis is Bill yes bill is a lender in Orange County correct Bill thought that the whole movie was a hitpiece about him and his lending practices I'm pretty sure he thought that I was espousing Kelly J Patriots beliefs okay so he sued in advance of the movie releasing with the expectation that it's going to be about him I think okay the lawsuit includes various claims that aren't real such as a violation of the federal wiretap act never did that stalking emotional distress stuff like that okay where are you in that lawsuit because defamation is one of those things hard to prove expensive to fight so we just filed an anti-s slap motion because it's a federal court case it's a federal court so we're still waiting on the judge but she dismissed oral argument so like I guess that either to me if they dismiss oral argument that means like she's kind of made up her mind she's 91 I think the judg is but her clerks are a bit younger so I'm hoping that they have the media wherewithal to figure out that this is not in fact 91y judge uh think she's actually in her 80s not 91 she's older but she uh sided with Netflix once in a in an anti-s slap motion so I have good High Hopes yeah I'm just so bitter when it comes to you know that whole system like I said because I know how expensive it could be I think civil court should almost be abolished that's I'm sure there's a some kind of like reason for it but most of the time dude it's like what is money GNA do a lot of the proceeds don't even usually go to the victims lawyer lawyers are the ones who are making the vast majority of the money yeah it's [ __ ] crazy I've heard also a lot of the times it's too complicated to actually give it out especially if there's multiple victims that they all collectively agree to give it to some sort of f like uh charity or some sort of like other thing MH isn't that crazy like we're just talking about all these recurring themes like a civil court Shakedown s [ __ ] contractual disputes friends abandoning you like that's what people don't see about success you got you got to have a strong art appreciate the transparency with everything and honestly such an honor to have you on the show I mean I've watched a lot of your videos especially over the years so it's not like a recent thing plenty of years back and it's it's so cool to meet you for me chat Hanks great video 55th Street that was one of my favorite where do you keep in touch with yeah yeah I talk to K ma all the time really yeah he's locked up he'll be out next year what do you get uh probation violation typical revolving door firearm possession okay but chat's free he's actually a Gold Gym pretty close by I just seen him on Instagram really he's been getting swole good for him respect Jen that is so cool my gosh well thank you so much f for making it over really appreciate it apprciate till next time and whoa guys if you want to check out Dear Kelly it'll be linked Down Below in the description www. dear Kelly film.com I recommend it I watched it I got pulled away from my housemates they wanted me for something and I just couldn't wait to go back and continue watching it Absolut I actually really enjoyed it Mo desert is is talking about it right it's the hottest thing in the Mojave and make sure by the way subscribe if you're not already subscribed our analytic show that only 50% of you are subscribed so that means viewer who's not subscribed that's the weakest [ __ ] it's free it's totally free to do and it really helps out our Channel okay guys thank you very much till next time and hit the like button