The Lie that Ruined a Generation - Brett Cooper (4K)

you got married I did how's that been it's the best thing I've ever done seriously it's it's we got married on um March 30th of this year so very recently and best day of my life best decision obviously it's like a baby marriage it's very new um but it's been amazing I'm grateful for him I'm grateful for the institution of marriage it's just yeah it's been wonderful getting married at 22 is a pretty radical thing to do for someone with a career yes it is it is it was um it's interesting I have always known I wanted to be married I've always known that I wanted to be a mother you know I had a career in Hollywood I was a child actor for 10 plus years and I remember had a conversation with my best friend of the time we were walking through Burbank I think I was like 15 years old and we were talking about our dreams and hopes and she had just you know she was pinned for a new series and she was like this is all I've ever wanted we were talking about all that and I brought up a concern that I had had basically since I started in this industry and started working with adults because that's one of the cool things and also something that gets very dicey in Hollywood is that you were working with adults constantly for me and my experience it ended up working out very well because I was exposed to people who were much more successful than I was were further along in their careers I got to see how they were operating how they balanced their career and family and marriage and I did not like what I saw and so like in the back of my mind I was like I know that I want to be the type of mother that my mom is where she walked away from her career and she dedicated every fiber of her being to being a mother that was her career it was like you know very very intentional I'm going to raise the best human beings possible I wanted to be that engaged and I saw the mothers that I worked with on shows the fathers I saw the 35-year-old series regulars on Netflix who were still living in condos with four other roommates who couldn't afford to buy a house or support a family in Los Angeles so in my teen years I was like this is not this isn't compatible this isn't what I want and i' had been like wrestling with that and so in this conversation with my friend I said you know that isn't really at the end of the day what I want what I want is to be a wife and a mother and I never like actually expressed that to her even though she was one of my best friends and she turn whipped her head around and was like you are willing to give up your career for that I didn't even say that I had not insinuated it I was just saying you know at the end of the day that's what I want she was like you're willing to walk away from everything and sacrifice it will never be a successful because that's what you want she was like I'm not willing to do that and so it's kind of like the people who wanted to be married and wanted to be mothers didn't want it enough um and that those choices those personal choices weren't valid and so that that had always been what I had heard and I was undeterred obviously and so yes it is pretty radical but even in this industry of like being in media being more on the right I still heard it still heard it from conservatives of like you're on the up and up are you sure you want to do that from people that are pro family and pro marriage I was like oh this really is radical it's crazy the reality distorting warping sense of success that success is so rare and it's so celebrated that anybody that gets even the tightest little bit of it even people who are ostensibly Pro family would say yeah yeah but like don't let go of the more important thing which is the success and the status yeah it's it was a wakeup call for sure but again I I knew that that is what I wanted I knew that I had found the person that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with um my parents did not have a good marriage so this was it wasn't something that I grew up idolizing or wanting that wasn't an example that you know I didn't want to be married because of my parents because I had seen how wonderful it was almost in spite of it yes because I knew that it was the foundation of your life and it could make or break your life because I saw friends with incredible incredible parents who were deeply in love in the way that their children turned out and the way their home operated the way that each of those individual successes the husband and the wife were propelled because of how good their marriage was and how that could work and then I saw my parents on the other end and you know they love them both but they picked poorly they're not compatible they're much better as friends they are still friends today I think they're much better friends now and they get along much better but I do believe that they held each other back in what they wanted to accomplish because they had very different ideas of where they wanted to take take our family what they wanted to do career-wise just their base values I mean even when they voted they would you know ask each other out every single time uh and that says a lot and so I saw my mother's struggle I saw my father struggle I saw them butt heads and know that that held both of them back and so that was so important to me from the get-go of like number one it has to be the right person but I think it was more important for me to get married young I actually think it was a good thing for me to get married at this point in my career because I am it has been like a rocket ship and it's been very destabilizing at points and that's been my rock the relationship him and now this marriage it's like that's what I get to come home to that's the one thing that matters all of this it's awesome it's cool I love it I love that I get to make a difference I love that I get to talk to people every day but at the end of the day I I come home to him and that's what grounds me so that I can go do everything else are you going to be prepared to let go of this then when the time comes yeah how's that going to feel it's going to be hard but I'm also so excited about it like I'm already like those have been conversations that I've been having since the beginning of like I want this brand to grow with me I want my show and my content to grow with me so that when that time comes when I'm ready to have children when I'm taking a step back you know I want a homeschool my kids um when I'm dedicating that time to that I need I want to be able to take my audience in this community along with me the maternity section from the comment section there you go exactly um and so I want it to be something that we're building toward words not that it's like a goodbye like this is the end um but yeah I think it'll be hard because you know I'm used to this now but again it's I've never wanted anything more and I'm so excited about it how would you categorize the state of dating advice for young people at the moment terrible it's awful uh it's a treacherous landscape it is just Barren um one thing that I've been talking a lot about on the show and I would actually love to hear your thoughts on this because we've talked about dating here and there um I just don't think my generation knows how like I was never taught how to date my first dating experiences were on dating apps which is wild and so I hear about young men not wanting to approach women and obviously there's the me too movement there's a lot of concerns about rejection women are now saying by and large they want to be approached but obviously so many women are just like oh that's creepy whatever it's very confusing there are nuances in dating and approaching women and relationships that you kind of have to just learn and my generation I don't think we've ever had to do that I mean again like I went to UCLA was 18 but I went in as a junior and I joined a sorority because I wanted to have like the All-American traditional experience wanted to do something traditional for once in my life and right after I rushed the sorority and got in I was sitting in a room with my big and she was like you what my big do you know what that is no okay so in Greek in Greek life you have like big and Littles so I was somebody's little so when I joined the sority there was somebody who was who had already joined a year prior and they like Usher you in or your Mentor your friend yeah bigs and little with my big we're on the same page yep yes um and fraternities have that as well anyway I was sitting with her in her room and they were shocked that I had never been on Tinder that I had never dated before they were shocked that I was a virgin I mean it was just like like this is insane how could you and I mean and I found out later on I mean these girls had had you know multiple abortions and were very very sexually and you know relationship wise ahead of me and I had not thought anything of it up until this point because I hadn't been around it and I just kind of stayed in my own bubble um and they're like well you got to get on Tinder you got to you got to do it and there's no hazing allowed at UCLA there's especially not in sororities but they kind of made a joke and they're like this is you're going to be your hazing you need to get on dating apps this is how you're going to date and it was so weird um the boy that I dated in college like my high school not high school my college boyfriend met on hinge like that was how I dated that's how everyone around me dated and so when I hear you know people online when I'm reading in the comment section like I don't know how to approach somebody I'm so nervous girls not knowing how to respond it's because we've completely lost that it's not their fault it's because they've just gone online you're sliding into DMS you're swiping right and left and that's an addictive game in and of itself and so then now we're seeing you know droves of people leaving dating apps especially with everything that like Bumble did Bumble had a huge loss and they did their ridiculous Rebrand most idiotic thing they've ever done um people wanting to be off the apps but not knowing how to date outside of them so it really is it's abysmal for a lot of reasons but especially that is what I've been thinking about recently yeah I I had this idea of mutually assured deception which I think is what a lot of people have they're so scared of opening up because one of the worst things that you can be is gullible and naive in dating you know there's something kind of cool about being aloof and a bit sardonic and a bit standoffish you know I'm too good for this there's no way that you could hurt me yeah you know it's sort of easy come easy go but I think that that is just a suboptimal solution to a suboptimal problem like that is someone trying to reverse engineer the dating environment into their preferences as opposed to doing it the other way around so yeah you have two people neither of whom are prepared to open up fully in case they get hurt both of whom are terrified of being hurt and both of whom just never show themselves to the other person correct so yeah I think uh that's a big concern and then when it comes to the approaching thing and the the being in real life it's always been that way like the reason that the guy that founded CBT founded CBT was to overcome his approach anxiety for women that was originally what it was designed for so this has happened for as long as time has been around the difference now I think is that any small psychological challenge becomes pathologized and becomes laid at the feet of the modern world so this is because of Tinder this is because of online dating it's like what if this was just endemic to being a guy that approaching a woman is going to be scary and always going to be scary and maybe the difference now is that you're just a bit less socially Adept you haven't spent that much more time out and about you don't have robust social networks you don't really know as many people that kind of a thing and what it feels like from the inside is oh my God if only it was 50 years ago this would have been super easy which actually takes a lot of agency away from you which would have been it was going to be hard then in 1960 going to be precisely the conditions are different the conditions are different and you have to acknowledge that but that should not be the reason why you turn inward and just say never mind I'm giving it up because there is no hope there were always going to be problems there was always going to be hurdles that you had to overcome with dating dating is not easy it's not fun nobody likes you know opening up you know and being very vulnerable and you're like stab me in the heart if you don't like me I nobody likes that but if you acknowledge that and understand that you know the risk could come with just an incredible reward and an incredible payoff but you do have to take responsibility and you do have to take those steps I also think for women especially women by and large are having you know they're setting these insane standards and very very very very superficial standards I mean you see it on social media there was that whole trend of like you know I want a guy in finance who's 65 blue eyes did you see that she like wrote this whole song about it yeah yeah yeah yeah and it's a joke but it's not because they've they have this image in their mind of what kind of guy they want and I think they see a lot of relationships on social media they see men on social media you know this is going to be the guy that's available to me when you look at those numbers of you know the percentage for both men and women of men who are whatever height they want make you know six figures plus are single are not overweight or between this age bracket the rounding era yeah yeah and the same goes for women of like you know if you want a woman who is not on the left is not on any kind of um anti-depressants who you know a certain weight that one I love the fact that I love the fact that the equivalent for women of a guy being 6 foot and six figures with a six pack is not an anti depressant and not on the left yes not obese I mean and again tiny and obviously I'm not saying have no standards the bar is you know on the floor but you also have to meet people where they are and you also have to know what you're bringing to the table and be aware of like what you will be able to get basically like what is the mutually what am I trying to say here figure out the right way to phrase this it's like who is your equal partner in the dating Marketplace do you think that does a case the settling in that case I don't think I don't think of it as settling I think of it as being again aware of what your options are and what you're bringing to the table like I talk to women all the time and you know I want this I want this I want this what are you bringing like are you are you the type of woman that these men are going to go for are you the high value woman I kind of hate those terms but you know the high value woman the high value man if you aren't going to the gym if you aren't taking care of yourself if you you know don't like children if you only care about your career and you don't want to you know if you hate the patri I don't want to support a man I don't want to care about a man and you want a provider man who is you know fit in shape cares about his health that's not going to match up he's not going to go for you and so then if you're not seeing what you want in the dating landscape that I say like put it on yourself then what can you do to level yourself up if you don't like options that are available to you what can you do to put yourself in the situation where you're going to meet those types of people and be on their level number one that just makes you a better human being because you're bettering yourself but then again it's putting the agency back on themselves of like you have the opportunity to make the change and better that's a very radical message I think to give to women it's kind of radical to give to men because at the moment there's a lot of sort of despondency and cynicism and and Melancholy on both sides but especially for women there's a an Insight that I learned a couple of years ago that personal development for men and personal development for women are completely uh inverted so men are told that the world is immutable and you are mutable so you have to wrap yourself up and change yourself in order to fit around the world and women are told that the world is mutable and you are immutable you are perfect as you are and it's the world's problem that you need to change and to me that's massively patronizing but the other reason is that it doesn't actually allow it doesn't um Empower women to change because they think if there's any problem out there in the world it's because of the world and not because of me so if you're today then say the reason that you are not getting the kind of guy that you want is maybe your fault maybe there's something you could do to get yourself up to that no no no you should love yourself as you are queen you're already a 10 he doesn't deserve you drives me up a wall well the pro the main problem with it is that there is a small cohort of women for whom growth mindset and improving themselves has been drilled into them and they're just going to run away and pick up all of the good guys because there's such a small number of out there and the rest of them have being by sh and that's one of the reasons why I you know didn't want to put dating on hold just because of my career and it's interesting so my mom and I talked a lot about this she always said you know don't date until you're 30 she was you know she had you at like 38 right yes and 42 I think and um and that was kind of a joke but not a joke and what she meant by that was know yourself before you get married um she did not mean that in that you know you need to have the perfect career the perfect house the perfect job which I think is such a lie because it's much more fulfilling to build that and get to that point with your significant other but that was kind of the running joke in our family and then when I graduated college moved to Nashville we started seeing the world change just gender Dynamics I think she her eyes really woke up or not woke up her eyes really opened to all of that and seeing that you know dating was not the same as when she was dating um the world stability was just not the same and so when I you know left Idaho and moved to nationville she was like you need to find your person she was like because the world is not stable God damn it yeah and she so she was saying you know this has to be a priority because the good ones are going to get picked up they probably are being and you know it's great you know focus on your career but the women that are out there knowing that they're going to need a partner because the world is getting increasingly unstable because we don't know what's happening you know in politics in know whether there's going to be some apocalypse she's very much a prepper um and then also just in terms of values like those are the ones that are going to be snatched up from the get-go and she was like don't put that on hold she was like I'm sorry that I told you don't date until you're 30 but that needs your mindset needs to change about that and I'm so glad that she did why did you meet your husband uh through work wow who knew DA wire yeah always said I would never do it he yeah we both were like we'll never do this both of us were like never date at work and it was something I mean I don't know it's like sounds so woo woo but literally he walked in I looked at him and I was like that one I don't know why didn't know anything about him something about the way that he carried himself he's super confident in a very open and engaging way not a cocky way I had always gone for very arrogant and cocky guys in the past because I felt like that is what I needed CU I thought that other men were going to be and boys at that time in college were going to be intimidated by me and my success and my intelligence and the fact that I you know graduated college at 19 years old like that was just I was like that's what I needed and then I met him and it was so solid there was no insecurities he was so comfortable in his own skin was not intimidated whatsoever um so caring so open just literally just the way that he carried himself and then got to know him and realized that um we grew up five miles apart he went to high school with my brothers his photo had been in my brother's four year books we have in my mom's office for the last 15 years and I had no idea when I met him or like laid eyes on him um and so I've said this before but falling in love with him and marrying him has felt so much like going home because it's like I have that tie to our hometown um it was a town when a lot of pretty dysfunctional things happened in my family one of my brothers passed away that's where we were living when that happened and so I've kind of had a complicated relationship it's Chattanooga here in Tennessee um but all the pieces just kind of came together and it was so easy I mean I think I knew within like two weeks of going out with him I was like that's is this who I'm going to marry this is it we'll get back to talking to Brett in one minute but first I need to tell you about element stop having coffee first thing in the morning your adenosine system that caffeine act on isn't even active for the first 90 minutes of the day but your adrenal system is and salt acts on your adrenal system each sachet of element contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium potassium and magnesium that will help to regulate appetite curb cravings and improve brain function you might not actually be that tired you might not need more caffeine throughout the day you might just be dehydrated and proper hydration is not just about having sufficient water in your body it's about having enough electrolytes to help your body use those fluids best of all there is a no BS no questions asked refund policy so you can buy this box try them all and if you don't like it they'll give you your money back and you don't even need to return it that's how confident they are that you love it right now you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box by going to the link in the show notes below or heading to drink LM nt.com slod wisdom that's drink LM nt.com slod wisdom what advice would you give to guys who want to attract and find a good woman work on yourself for sure be constantly improving um both in terms of your career your intelligence and the way that you think about the world your the physical shape that you're in that says so much to women and I know that a lot of women kind of look at that in a superficial way but I look at that as like you are truly prepared to protect um you're willing to go to bat for me for our future children you care about my health more than I care about my health that was a huge thing that I had to get over he was like you are going to go to the gym you are going to take these supplements um a leader um being able to be assertive and take initiative is huge I also think and this is is the complicated one that I've been talking about on the show is understanding the nuances in dating women are very confusing which is it sucks but we are and there's like very little like emotional things that we do but being able to understand if a woman is actually interested and knowing how to carry on a conversation before you even ask her out that's key to just getting in the door of being able to create a connection over something that's not dating and over your interest in her whether it's you know physical or you just think she's an interesting person just seeing if that connection is even there and kind of playing that dating game that back and forth that sets you up for success in more ways than one like that is I I feel like has a much higher batting average than just you know going up and saying you know can I have your number and hoping that it works out but laying that groundwork just so that you know if she's actually interested um I think that also makes the fear of rejection a little easier because you actually will know hopefully if she's interested in what the respon think a lot [Music] of theage ofen and one of the problems of remote work being that people are interacting less so low stakes interaction with women is a really great way for guys to overcome their approach anxiety because if you're not looking for any outcome what can you lose at it's the Barista she is literally paid to give you your coffee so if you can say one extra sentence it sounds so stupid it's the same problem as if you need to go to the gym just do 10 push-ups a day because it starts so small that people think well what's the [ __ ] point like look I I'm not I'm not Andrew tap with a Bugatti um like what's the what's the point in me trying to do this so but that is literally the only way that you can get there and you have to take that step you have to show up at a location in person where there will be women whether it is your you know whether it is a group workout class pickle bow there you go I have a problem with pickle ball though what come on okay here we go first disagreement I I didn't episod about this I got reamed in the comments yeah well rightly so yeah well the problem that I had and that it sparked this episode is I went to a farmers market in Nashville there was a tennis court next door to the farmers market it was all men playing pickle ball I'm sorry it was the gayest thing I've ever seen and not and it was because it was all it was oh my gosh I was like play tennis anyway but I also think that was just the demographic in that part of Nashville and I looked at that and I was like you go like to a boxing gym something anyway short denim shorts cut offs yeah the shortest shorts imaginable fantastic like they I well they like they went to lul and got the five in and then hadam Taylor this is this is liberating for men this is what we want to do this is what we want to do yeah like you know that you know those things like I wonder if he's thinking about me and then it cuts what the guy's actually doing and it's him high-fiving with his homies with his top off in three and shorts this is what guys want to do stop [ __ ] oppressing us I'm so sorry the patriarchy is coming back around through pickle ball I'm so glad thank you I'll shut down the matriarchy well no and I learned my lesson from that I still don't I don't really enjoy pickle ball I play tennis growing up and so I that also probably feeds into my feelings about it but still going to some like playing pickle ball with people showing up to those leagues joining in Nashville at Centennial Park they always do soccer and softball and volleyball during the summer you can just join these wck leagues go do that have you seen this uh ascendency of uh like 5K runs run clubs yes yeah I think that's I think run clubs are basically a they're a dating organization masquerading as a fitness Pursuit yeah I could see that that's what it is because no one goes to the Run club for the running bit I've seen these things people walk half of them but everybody's got their brand new sany or New Balance exactly yeah and Tiny pair of shorts and they get to run along and sweaty and see if the other oh like he's that guy from last week again yeah so again and that's okay what you just said that guy from last week that is also key repeatedly going to the same place with the same group of people and again laying that groundw work yes exactly I need you to stalk no um but the low stakes environment where you are having to grow a relationship over say six weeks of like you're going to this run Club every single week you meet a girl oh you banter whatever you run along talk to somebody else the next week she's there pick up the conversation just being able to it's wild that this is revolutionary I know yeah I know again but that goes back to my point of my My Generation just has not had to do that yeah and it's all been so digital and then mixed in with our you know our social skills just have been totally warped by the digital age and Co didn't help at all and I mean the majority of my college experience was online so when people talk about oh you learned to date in college people who graduated around my year in 21 nope learn to date online yeah while College yes in your Zoom class like oh this guy's kind of cute let me do like my like private Zoom break yeah like oh yeah the guy in my zoom you know break out in my business class when we're working on our accounting whatever like that's those are the options there's a current big push back against women having kids as well even me who doesn't use Tik Tok saw that girl with a list oh thing she printed off 350 reasons about why not to have a child what is the opinion on motherhood among jenzi at the moment it's interesting do you see that study that said that it's over half of women do believe that motherhood is just as or more important than a career just from a couple of weeks ago but they will not these are not conservatives these are just normal women they don't want to Brand themselves as conservatives they want to get married they believe that hookup culture is bad and they believe the motherhood is important and so I think deep down because these are biological instincts I do believe that women have those urges and want that I think that it is the culture coming in very heavy-handedly with the most absurd reasons not to like the list which is just 365 examples of fearmonger can't wear cute heels anymore got to Mish Brun brunch with the girls yes and it's like some of them I'll read and be like oh like that part of giving birth does not sound fun but the end result is worth it and I don't care because I want to have a child but a huge portion of them are oh your clothes don't fit properly and oh I might not be able to go back to my career you you want to go back and sit in a cubicle when you could have this like beautiful amazing child that you've created with the love of your life and you're worried about going back and working for the man like I thought you hated the patriarchy does not make sense um but no there is a lot of fearmongering um there are more women than people think that are waking up that I was actually planning an episode for next week about this there have been an influx of women just on my social media alone speaking out about cultural issues social issues political issues talking about voting for Trump um these are not political accounts these are random influencers just girls on their you know private personal social medias talking about the things that Biden is doing in regards to Title 9 the transgender issue that they have been completely woken up realizing oh I don't actually want this anymore mix that in with the women that are in their 30s they get made fun of constantly on X for crying in their car about the fact that they can't meet a guy because they prioritize their career over dating and then they just get ripped to shreds my people on the right which I think is so problematic they are struggling this kind of self-own uh you know as you said before people on the right that supposed to be Pro family saying but you're going to give up your career you just managed to find your success this is one of the sort of real uh areas I think of failure especially for the right supposed to be the ones that are rational we position ourselves up against these you know super emotional [ __ ] people on the left go dude you've just taken the piss out of a woman who is the realization that you've said that they're going to have what do you want do you wanted to create a time machine and go back in time that's evidently not going to happen someone opens up to give the message as opposed to going see this stupid broad she shouldn't have listened to blah blah blah you go okay is a CAU retail yes but there's a human on the other side of that it's so dehumanizing so much this is why I'm so bored with most of politics and sort of culture War stuff because everybody sees everyone as a political football of some kind that they can either kick away from them or sort of grab and bring onto their team perfect example of this remember when Nicki Minaj went antiva C and the right was like Niki come I'm like Niki are we being serious but oh there's this brief sort ofli where their talking point coincides with my desire to push this particular narrative yeah and you hold on and you're like I'll ignore everything else and it's you know and I'm somebody obviously that reacts to culture I talk about the news you know that is something that I would talk about on the show but it's like you you walk a fine line of acknowledging that this is interesting you know sure that's cool that's you know one thing that I agree with Nicki Minaj on but you don't have to suddenly absolve her of every other value that she's ever had that I disagree with and I think that's the real problem like you can say oh that's cool I don't agree with the rest of the things that you're doing but that's interesting I wonder how she got to that point that's what's interesting to me and then looking at the reaction and obviously I mean it's called the comment section that's what I do but seeing how the internet responds to it that's also the interesting part I don't need to adopt her I don't need her to suddenly come over to my side um so yeah I completely agree with that and I think that that response to women does not help us at all that response to women who are you know 31 single desperately need help finding somebody the response is yeah the response is not screw you oh boohoo the response is no there is there will still be somebody out there for you I believe that if you you know realign your priorities if you do put yourself out there if you become open and you're willing to be vulnerable yeah I do believe in that wholeheartedly but then you use that as a again the cautionary tale like said of like young women this is what could have this is what we warned this is what feminism said you wouldn't care about you won't care when you're 31 and you have no kids and you've frozen your eggs and you you know you're working for the man and you have some corporate career it won't matter obviously it does that being said I have this idea that normalizing uh the gift of IVF egg embryo freezing or at least like egg freezing at 21 would be one of the best things that you could do I think that instead of giving a girl a fancy trip to tum with her and her friends or a nice watch or whatever I don't know what American families do but like 21 tends to be like a big and getting your egg Frozen is not cheap yeah but imagine just that insurance policy just in case something happens I think that would be a good way to look at stuff but yeah I uh so is it your belief that we are seeing a kind of quiet revolution of young women beginning to see the importance of motherhood and sort of long-term relationship is this a push back against casual sex against hookup culture is this tied in with the conservative movement or is this totally separate is it just siloed off on dating I think that you can smush them together if you want um and I think that there is a lot of overlap but I don't think that this is a lot of women suddenly being like you know I'm conservative I'm going to vote for Trump I'm ready to be a TRD wife give me my you know frolicking sundress that's not what it is it's women being intelligent and having selfawareness and looking at the world around them and going this doesn't sit right I don't know if that's going to translate into votes I would love it to translate into votes because I think that the world needs some literal you know political redirection but I do think that it speaks volumes about our culture and the lies that women have been told not just about their relationships and dating and motherhood but women are also having a really rude awakening about our health I mean birth control is such a huge topic right now our health are OBGYNs who have gaslit so many women for years at this point about their health about our hormones I think that there's just a in general women are looking around going oh my gosh what we've been told and fed for the last 20 30 years none of this makes sense we need to take a step back and reevaluate and think we're seeing this in real time and some of it you know is even happening on the right because a lot of women on the right are you know waking up to Big Pharma and you know their health so it's it's happening in every single political pocket but I it's just very very cool and I'm glad that it's happening there was a a Tik Tok I saw earlier on an obese woman who diagnosed herself based on Gray's Anatomy I watched that earlier yeah angry with the doctor that she thought was safe because the doctor suggested that the woman lose weight the woman asked her to not talk about BMI because of its history as a tool of eugenics racism and colonialism and I'm indigenous yes it's pretty great did you hear um that was actually in my episode today that I filmed before coming here God damn it and I I F slip streaming me on the same story but the thing okay the thing that is looped it in with the fat Beach day that happened in New York the weekend so so obviously body positivity movement they need to be accepted we have not accepted them enough we have not me to KNE enough they needed to have their own Beach day together so that they could encourage more acceptance so that happened in New York on Saturday so it literally just a bunch of fat people they went to the beach and I said this on the show where I said if this was like an interest groupe if this was people that were coming together with a common shared exper there you go Star Wars if they were coming together because these are people that are trying to lose weight and they need they are you know they have one health problem they need camaraderie they want support that would be one thing that's great I believe that it's wonderful to find people that you you know share things with things that you're going through that Community is important just in general I think our society is lost Community but that's not what this is this is a bunch of there was like fat New York City models who went literally taking their tops off posing on the beach I was like no this is not about you wanting support and being healthier this is literally you in your own narcissism and a desire for attention and I think that they are flailing right now because I've seen a ton of new body positivity movement uh Tik toks popping up over the past couple of weeks because they're losing their hold with OIC with people waking up just about their health in general people are losing weight rapidly there was a really interesting interview from the CEO um and head buyers of a lot of different uh women's clothing companies and retail stores and they were saying we've never seen in the last 15 years we have not seen so many Smalls extra Smalls sold and they're begging for smaller sizes like they're now going down to like triple Zer which has not happened in the last 15 years and just back in Co they were saying we need you know size 16 18 24 I think the average size of an American woman clothing size was an 18 16 last year and now to see that sh not going to be for long apparently not I mean talking about intersectionality the environmental movement should be happy about people losing weight think about how much less material is being used how much less stitching the freight amount the the weight that you need to use to transport AC the world if only the social justice movement could get on the same page and have some consistency they might actually do some they might do some good so I had Johan Harry on the show and he's written this new book magic pill about asmic and the most interesting stuff that I found are all the economic impacts Downstream so uh airline companies predicting lower fuel costs because of a lighter populace all of The Confectionary companies Ben and Jerry's are trying to dial in uh their margins because they know that the sales volume is going to go through floor uh hip and knee replacement companies way fewer of those because people are less and this was this was the wildest one Jewelers using less gold for fat fingers so the amount of people that have had to pay to go into Jewelers to get their Rings adjusted because their fingers have grown but I I really think you're on something here with the sort of OIC Meets Body positivity challenge so for a long time being obese or being overweight was seen as an identity and I think that if people can't lose weight even though they try if they can't get what they want they need to teach themselves to want what they can get which is being a little bit bigger and saying well actually there's no bearing that weight has on health etc etc the problem now is if you they put it on you and say actually you're the problem correct and it's we need to change the size of weight whatever plane seats or whatever problem being if you can basically bestow on anybody that's got The Right medical insurance or 200 bucks a month if you can bestow on them weight loss to whatever level that they want you just increase the OIC dial youright whatever it want ites being Obe more of an obvious lifestyle choice and it really lowers the status I think of being overweight when it becomes convenient and easy to be to lose weight then yeah it it becomes and deep down that is what people want I don't I don't I truly don't believe that people want to be obese I don't believe that people want to be unhealthy I mean why why again it's like travel is so complicated all the other you know health problems that come with it the knee Replacements you know the difficulty just existing in society which again I think a lot of people dunk on folks that are overweight and just make fun of them I'm like they are struggling like life that way is not great it isn't designed for them I don't think that Dey needs to bend a knee and change airline seat sizes and make you know all the bathrooms bigger there was that one video where the one was like I need um hotel hallways to be bigger for me I'm like no okay how [ __ ] wide was she Jesus huge wow it's like that doesn't need to change but I still do believe that you know obviously they are human beings they're deserving of empathy um but te family don't want that and again they like you said they only adopted this because it was like I can't have this so I'm going to become really really passionate and really enraged and make it a you problem because I'm not going to take responsibility but again now that there is this opportunity and this Innovation that they can easily grasp on to obviously they're going to trickle over here well we saw what happened to Adele when Adele lost weight and she was completely castigated thrown out of the big big girls club whatever uh as if it was some sort of a middle finger as if as if her being bigger was like a a show of falty like flying a particular flag for some many feminists want other women to be ugly and miserable there's a amazing Bill burit where he says uh chicks if you could only support the WNBA the same way that you support a fat chick that's gained weight and is no longer a threat to you yeah they'd be doing more numbers than the NBA and it's so true I have this you you've nailed it that I think the body positivity movement is highly motivated for women to encourage their friends to eat themselves out of their competition in the dating market so you have intersexual competition competition between women and a lot of quite rightly girls go that's [ __ ] dis of course I don't think that and it's like no you don't consciously think that no it's subconscious precisely women are terrible to each other that's kind of just a mostut shaming comes from women most of the beauty standards come from women and it's so irritating when women turn the beauty standards on men and they'll say oh the patriarchy made me do this you know I have all of these body image issues because of what men have told me what man has told you that he wants you to you know get plastic surgery on your eyelids that's a new big plastic surgery thing that's popping up in America where if you have like hooded eye um eyelids you get them like sliced and cut and reone you know you have these crazy caterpillar eyelashes on your eyes you're getting filler everywhere you're doing all of this it's not for men you are aware that guys have no idea what you're talking about they don't know the difference between an LV bag and one that's from Target point and that's point they don't care and they don't know they're doing it for women women are encouraging it they're seeing it on social media and it's like that's you cannot blame that on men you cannot blame the you know insane things you know how much money you're spending on your nails and your eyelashes and your fake tans on men that's other women encouraging you to do that I saw you throw my alumni organization love Island under the bus recently I did I can't believe what was your experience how were were the women all filled up uh it was so I went on N years ago so it was less bad back then but there has been a couple of sort of transformation they did an Allstars thing so they brought people that had been on previous Seasons back on and there was a few and you basically got to compare then until now and I thought you know some of the girls that run my season had had a bit of work done and you compare to now and they look like Bratz dolls and you know these stories have gone super and I I feel for these chicks that have been like I don't it's kind of like being gaslit by [ __ ] culture into believing that this is the thing that they need to do I don't know um preventative Botox is now the thing in the states I don't know if it is in the UK what is that where women my age and younger starting at like 20 years old are getting Botox to keep themselves from getting wrinkles in the future no it's absurd and any good aesthetician and dermatologist is going to say you literally do not need that but they're making money off of it and so there's a whole like social media campaign for it you know start getting your preventative Botox here just a couple of injections here and there make sure you don't get you know crows feet at like my age it's like no those aren't wrinkles those are like your dimples those are just your normal like lines over your eyebrows but it's all for the girls that are listening guys don't notice like we don't know we not doing it for us we don't know we don't know what's going on so one of the other trends that I've noticed is kind of generalized cynicism and you spend a lot of time in the comments section A lot of people in your audience are gen Z why are jenzi so despondent why is there such generalized cynicism is that true is that just what we see to the surface what what's the kind of cultural temperature at the moment for jenz I think that there is a lot of cynicism I think that it can be kind of politically divided I think jenzi on the left is a lot more cynical um but I think that also just goes back to people on the left especially young people on the left um it's fueled by this you know desire for victimhood there's no good in the world I shouldn't have children because you know the world is going to go up in flames and there's going to be no Earth anymore and I don't want to populate the Earth I don't want to bring a child into the world I mean it's it is very very cynical on the right espcially people that are you know more driven by their faith there's a a lot of Hope and a lot of encouragement I also don't think that they really bog themselves down with that kind of cynicism but for just making a generalized statement every generation has gone through hard things and so I think that it is not honest and kind of irresponsible to say oh well gen Z is like is really had it tough because of covid and know they were born you know post 911 and the world changed and um you know and then Trump came in and there was so much I was like there's we weren't alive during polio and you know we don't have any actual Wars that we are physically like our men are not being drafted right now maybe they will be I don't know they're trying to get women drafted um but right now things are okay like we are better off than we have ever been in the history of the world we are richer we are healthier we are happier by and large and so I don't think it's correct to say the Gen Z has been through more I think we've been through different things the digital age we are the first generation that was raised fully online we are more exposed to seeing things around the world no generation before us has had this much of an unbridled access to the problems consuming other countries and other societies so maybe it's a little bit of like you know we don't have that innocence is bliss um Co obviously was very very difficult for my generation and I think that sent them on a cuz obviously or already we were you know our socialization was not up to stuff compared to older Generations just because of the digital age Co only made that worse so again I don't think that we are worse off we are just dealing with something different that no other generation has had to encounter before and I think that they wear that kind of as a chip on their shoulder as well like you don't get it you don't get it it's like well we we understand we can point to the reasons why but still take a step back and see that the world is better than it has ever been before you have more opportunities than you've ever had obviously there are problems there will always be problems that's life like as a human being you are always going to have hurdles it's kind of the name of the game and I think that jenz is putting themsel has put themselves in the situation where it's like any of those hurdles it's like I'm out it's triggering I now have depression anxiety I need to be you know medicated there's no point in living anymore it's like they are they've just thrown in the towel it's easy I think for people who aren't from that generation to look at it and say well look this is just online these are terminally online people there's nothing to worry about uh this isn't a problem it's just a problem on the internet but I looked at some stats recently that said the average amount of time that an American spends asleep is 6 hours and 15 minutes and their total screen time per day is eight hours so they're on screens for more than they are asleep yeah the virtual world is more real than the real world correct so that is to for you to say this is just online it's like you have got the bar stool upside down it online is life that is life for these people so yeah I think being sort of disparaging of it is just not going to get get people anywhere and if you don't want to sound like a boomer that's completely out of touch that is not the solution saying ah it's just online go right you don't you evidently don't get why you have to meet them where they are and meet them online and that's why I think you know I've had people ask me before you know you were raised with no TV which I was I didn't have a TV in my house until I had one at one one point in my college Years but never used it didn't have cable didn't have Netflix I got one when I moved in with my husband because he watches Sports I was like okay now I have a TV but I was very offline didn't have a phone for many many years just had a flip phone when I was in high school like I was very very detached my mom was very involved with my social media usage as a young person and people will say well Brett that was your experience you advocate for that you advocate for people to get offline touch grass is what I say to have that balance to go be involved in the real world and yet you're online and you're in the comment section it's like well yeah that's where you have to to meet them mhm and the best thing that I can do in my opinion is talk about things that are you know terminally online and talk about these online issues but give them a framework so that they can dissect them intelligently and have self-awareness I think the worst thing is that if you're spending that amount of time online which everybody is also for my generation our work is online our school is online dating is online if you want to be involved you do kind of have to be online as a young adult the worst thing to do is just to be in that online world on social media and not be thinking about it and not be conscious about what you're consuming so if I can give them a framework of so this is alluding to this this social media Trend that sounds really dumb that's on Tik Tok it's a ridiculous thing this is indicative of X Y and Z that's happening in our culture that is probably fed from this if I can give them kind of like a ah I see where that's coming from so they're not just blindly consuming it how persuasive do you find that to be very I think it's changed a lot of mind I think one of the problems people have is that it's pointless me even engaging with a discussion with these people because I feel like they're a lost hope I feel like's you know there's a lot of people that I think would look at jenz and just say [ __ ] choke it up as a loss swing in a Miss let's get on to gen Alpha maybe we can do better with them I don't think so I I mean gen Z men are becoming more rightwing than ever are waking up about a lot of things I'm seeing this with young women that's not you know they're not becoming more right-wing but I do think that they're waking up to a lot of the lies again the lies that they've been told the lies of our culture of feminism um I also think gen Z you can just see the way that they're already critiquing Millennials and wanting to be different so gen Alpha I don't if you've seen like the Sephora twins okay so Millennials are very into gentle parenting and gentle parenting as it should be described in the actual definition I don't have a problem with of you know being engaged with your children's emotional life leveling with them not just you know pointing a finger disciplining with no explanation kindness you know again meeting them at their level um but it has become something that is more of a I guess a doormat situation where it en parents do whatever um it enables laziness oh I'm a gentle parent no you're not parting yes uh their children walk all over them and then they're the iPad kids gen Alpha is the iPad kids and so gen Z is now in the workforce they are Preschool teachers they're kindergarten teachers they are working at Sephora and they see Jen Alpha come in and have no respect for anyone that's older than them they're walking around buying drunk elephant retinol products to put on their 12-year-old skin because they've just seen it on social media and there nobody in their life no adult in their life is saying hey you're 12 years old retinol is for when you're 35 don't buy that um destroying testers it's all of these videos of tween tween girls you know stealing makeup destroying the test displays why is Sephora [ __ ] Ground Zero for this because they watch Beauty influencers and they all shop at Sephora fantastic and so now there's all of these like 12 13y old like little beauty influencers they're like hi come see my Sephora haul do do my makeup for school I was like oh my gosh when I was 12 years old I was making like Little Mix music videos in my pool like my drained pool in the winter time and never posted them God forbid that ever made its way onto the internet because it was for our enjoyment not for clicks and not for social media but these young people because they've been raised online that is their fun is like becoming an influencer and posting themselves online so they watch these Beauty influencers they go to Sephora they buy this makeup but jenzie is interacting with them on a daily basis and they are saying we don't want to raise kids like that we don't want to be the Millennials in other news this episode is brought to you by nomatic last year I went on a tour across the UK USA and Dubai and I didn't check a single bag because hold luggage is a scop meant to keep you poor and late in fact I never need to check bags anymore at all thanks to ntic this is the best backpack in history everybody that I've got to try it has had their life revolutionized by it and they make the most functional durable and innovative backpacks and Luggage that I've ever used their 20 L travel pack which is this sucker right here is an absolute GameChanger the amount of thought that they've put into every pouch and zipper is incredible they're beautifully designed and not over engineered and will literally last you a lifetime with their lifetime guarantee so this is the final backpack the 11 need to buy best of all you can return or exchange any product within 30 days so if you buy a new bag try it and don't like it they will just give you your money back right now you can get a 20% discount by going to the link in the show notes below or heading to nomatic /od wisdom and using the code mw20 a checkout that's Nom matic.com wisdom and mw20 a checkout what's the next one gen beta that's going to suck probably if you're if you're the what what generation were you I was the beater generation how much does that suck I've found this since 2009 more than twice as many 15 to 19y old girls and young women have been admitted to the ER for self harm behaviors in the US even more shocking five times more 10 to 14y old girls were admitted to the ER for self harm in 2022 than in 2009 that's five times more families taking their fourth to ninth grade daughters to the hospital because they have intentionally harmed themselves it's awful where's this coming from a lot of it social media um I said something recently on a show because I covered a woman who got a lot of flak on Tik Tok for talking about her strict rules with her children where she does not allow them to take their phones into their bedrooms they have time limits on their social media apps most ridiculous thing was they have to tell her where they're going to go before they go so that she knows where they are and parents are like oh my gosh you're a stalker it's like no you want to know where your 15-year-old daughter is going to be anyway I talked about her and I basically said in terms of social media point me to one study that says that social media is good for young adults for young women specifically there is not one there's not one that even says it is fine it is all detrimental um and so I think that plays a huge part in it again because of what they're seeing and the peer pressure online and the standards that they're setting for themselves that they now want to try to adopt because they see this influencer doing this they see this person you know in Bali on a beach with their hot boyfriend and they don't have that and they'll never be that they see you know these now 13-year-old little girl influencers who are going to press events and getting PR packages like it's starting so so young and women are very susceptible to that puberty as woman is one of the worst things you will ever go through you feel you feel like most ugly duckling on planet Earth I was so ugly it was terrible because I sprouted I would say earlier but I still had a baby face and I had a bull cut and I was like five six um already was you know super tall hey you guys yes I was it was so weird and it was so awkward no boys liked me and you feel so insecure and then that being heightened by social media by covid and having to live online I think it's just a perfect storm um it also doesn't help that social media has almost encouraged having a mental illness in a lot of ways and glorified that pathology yes and Jordan has talked a lot about you know social contagion I think that is absolutely real it is the cool thing to be depressed it is a badge of honor to have anxiety and be dealing with it and the more that they engage with that and tell themselves that they are obviously you're going to become that um again it's just a perfect storm you worked in Hollywood as a child actor yes what did you make about the recent news on Nickelodeon and quiet onset and all of that none of it surprises me at all I feel very very lucky because I had a great experience but I had a fantastic experience because I had a mother that was literally a shark who was so I I just cannot say enough good things about her who was so engaged in every part of my upbringing and my career not as a momager but as a mother so someone who knew that this industry had the reputation that it did she already knew about the casting couch she knew about child actors and the drug usage and the scandals she was not interested in me doing any of that um but I loved it like I lived for performing that's all I wanted to do um and so she saw that in me and wanted to be able to support that and I've seen a lot of comments actually of people saying you know if your mom knew these things about the industry why did she let you move to LA to audition why did she take you to New York so that you could go audition for Broadway shows um I just want to take that this opportunity to answer it my brother died when I was 5 years old he was 17 he was an artist super super creative and up until that point my mom had kind of tried not to put my brothers in a a box but she was like you know it was a more of a one-size fits-all parenting approach um my brother who died is a twin and so she kind of put the twins together and she was dealing with her failing marriage with my father and that kind of took priority over the kids and after he died she made a conscious decision with me that she was going to completely change that she was like I'm not going to prioritize this marriage that is you know there is no future really she had already kind of decided both of them had decided that I'm going to put this child first and then one thing that she said is you know if I knew that David was going to die at 17 years old and he had all of these Ambitions and things that he wanted to accomplish what would I have done to make sure that he got those opportunities that he got to enjoy every aspect of that and so that's why we did it because she saw that I loved it I came alive when I was on stage um a lot of things in my family I think really shut me down losing my brother at a young age my parents relationship obviously took a major turn for the worse after he died my brothers really kind of went off the deep end and a lot of ways as well I became very closed off suppressed I would literally like hide in kitchen cabinets and people would come over because I didn't want to speak that all went away when I got on stage and was performing and so she wanted to keep that up as much as possible because that was my one Outlet so anyway that's kind of the back story of how I ended up there and why she was willing to put me in those situations and also why she was so willing to protect me um so then back to the point I knew all of that growing up I knew that it was happening I had experiences nothing like what was discussed on um my I bling quite onet I was about to say after dark quiet on set um you know Janette MCC wrote her fantastic book uh I'm glad my mom died about her very abusive mother Mader and her experience with Dan Schneider she didn't name in her book but she just called him the Creator obviously for legal reasons um so when I read her book I remember getting to the end of her book literally just like crying because I was did you ever interact with Dan Schneider no I auditioned for some of his projects I don't know if I was ever in the room with him I mean it was literally he was so prolific in Hollywood still at the time when I was coming up that at least once a week there would be I could probably go back in my old email now and you know Untitled Dan Sher project Untitled Daner project my mom already knew about that reputation it was so commonplace that he was a creep that I think I might have auditioned for a couple of them but she drew a line in the sand and said that guy's a weirdo she's not going out for any of those projects she's not going to go work at Nickelodeon I desperately wanted to be on the modern iteration of Boy Meets World which is called girl meates World um which obviously catapulted Rowan Blanchard and Serena Carpenter to fame desperately wanted it and so I like fought with my mom I was like please let me go out for this please let me go out for this she did not want me on Disney Channel did not want me on Nickelodeon because she knew that those children's networks were so filled with creeps and I ended up doing one children's show at a different network and that is where my bad experience was and it's so predictable because it's The Men Who choose to work with children with young girls what happened um it was after the show had ended and I actually I told the story with Jordan and I got a call from my mom she was like you missed an important component of the story so I can actually share that here um it was the writer on the show and he had wanted to connect with me and another girl who were on the show and you know he was always writing new things and I'm going to create another show in Hollywood it's very normal you know oh let's go have coffee your lunch with this you know person who could get you this next job it's always like what's going to get me that next job so they had reached out he had reached out to this girl who was the co-star on the show with me was a very very good friend of mine at the time and her mom reached out to mine I think he had mentioned something about oh I'd love to see Brett as well so her mom reached out to mine and said hey you know Brett's friend is going to go meet up with this guy would Brett like to go and connect with him and you know it would be great he wants to see her and so we ended up going to the grith Observatory and this woman told my mom you know I'm going to be with them the entire time I'm going to watch them don't worry I'll be the parent in the room my mom said okay great last time she ever trusted anybody in that regard and so my Mom dropped me off I went up there her mother was nowhere in sight watched from the car basically walked around the griffth observatory this man immediately launches into his lesbian fantasies that he has with me and this other girl at 14 years old again the Creator and writer of a children's show and I get immediately very very weirded out um you know we're walking there's this part in The gri Observatory where you can go and you see what your weight would be if you're out you know on the moon or in space and so we went and like stood on this and he looked at my friend and said I want to know how much you weigh with your clothes off it's like stuff like that and so then we finally got out of the museum he's told us about our lesbian fantasies whatever we're walking back towards the restaurant and he sticks his hand in our back pockets like as he's walking like this and I immediately I'm just like AB get off me my friend shoots me a look like don't screw this up for me like don't say anything so I don't so we just keep walking get back to the car whatever I immediately you know dropped off at my house I talked to my mom this is so weird I never want to be around this man again this was so uncomfortable so creepy my mom calls her mom her mom admits that she knew that's why she wanted me there because I would be a buffer she said oh you know we know that he's weird we've gotten very weird Vibes I didn't want her to be alone with him so we wanted Brett to be there so she knew but she was so desperate to have her daughter and her daughter was so desperate I don't know if it was coming from her or coming from her mother to be in this room and not rock the boat because she desperately wanted a new show a new audition a new job that she was willing to take it and be in that space and then put another child in that situation and that that was normal and this guy would show up to he was very imesh in my friend group for a long time because he just worked with all these young people would show up to teenage birthday parties where maybe like you know an acting teacher or somebody would drop by and drop a present hey happy birthday you know whoever your name is have a great party whatever this guy would come stay until 2 am. with 16 and 17 year olds who are obviously like getting drunk and getting high whatever teenage actors are doing painted portraits of child actors was a whole thing on his social media I was just very very weird um and that it's nothing compared to what so many have been through but even in my limited experience even with a mother that was so so careful that I still had that and I think that um I was in an interesting position because I I loved acting and I loved my career and I loved working but my mom had done a very good job kind of saying you know this is not your whole identity this isn't your whole life you never have to do anything you're not comfortable with like acting is fun it should always be fun it should be a hobby you should never cross any lines that you're not willing to cross for that and I don't think that was instilled in my peers so like my friend who was you know shot me that death stair don't you like don't say anything about him touching my butt this man groping a 14-year-old 15y old I think she was a year older than me um I didn't have that I didn't care like who cares if he doesn't like me um and again my mom knew all of this going into it she put me in self-defense um against sexual assault women self-defense against sexual assault starting at age 11 or 12 I was fighting literally in like rape scenarios date rape situations would do that twice a week was in private lessons did that for probably seven years and I think that was a huge part of it martial arts are just I think so important for both men and women but especially young girls I think it's so underrated because because the confidence that I had because of that because I knew how to defend myself because one of the first things that you learn is how to say no and how to use your voice and understanding that where you're being touched that's not right um I had that and she didn't and I don't and that's why I was you know put in those classes my mom was like you're going into rooms with people that I don't know you know you're being brought in by a casting director to go into a room for 15 minutes and do a scene I have no idea what they're doing to you in there you need to know again what is appropriate and what's not is interesting this sort of line that is kind of similar to helicopter parenting but done in a empowered safe way that's aiming to try and give you as much Independence and security as possible it was the it was the foundation that was more of a not a helicopter but like I'm going to be very very careful so that then you can go out and do whatever you want I know you know similar to the flirting and how to detect whether or not someone likes you it's the subtle differences it's the the deafness right it's the Nuance that that's really really important in how you do this the wildest about that story is the complicity of both the girl and the mother in did not care when they were called on it yeah oh sorry just kind of the price of doing business yeah and there's a lot of that in Hollywood that I think that's one of the reasons why I made you know a conscious decision when I was in college that I was like I just don't think I don't think this is for me because there is there's a big price you they ask for your everything they ask for you to be licit in whatever they want to do they ask for you to give up your life and your stability and your control over your personal life I mean you know at the drop of a hat you know you need to fly to Vancouver and shoot this and you whatever they don't care about your personal life which is fine it's an industry they need to you know film things when they need to film things and where they need to film things but I was not a person that was willing to give all of that I was also not willing to sacrifice my values this kind of goes back to the politics stuff I would get scripts constantly I look at the characters that I'm playing I would read the the script in its entirety if I was you know got a movie script and I would kind of I would sit down and I would dissect what are they trying to tell audiences with this story and I would deeply disagree with it I would hate what my character was being used to convey and you have no control over that because you're just a shell that's your job we'll get back to talking to Brett in one minute but first I need to tell you about momentus trust really is everything when it comes to supplements a lot of Brands may say that they're top quality but few can actually prove it which is why I partnered with momentus they make the highest quality supplements on the planet unparalleled with their testing and I've fallen in love with their way isolate protein powder each batch is exclusively sourced from EU Dairy Farmers whose 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see that I saw that all the time like when I don't know when this really started to pick up it wasn't in 2020 with BLM it was before I think it started a couple of years before that really but before that you would get breakdowns it would be you know brunette white around 12 years old this is the role it always you know at this point starting maybe in 2018 very consistently it became ethnically ambiguous can be mixed we ethnically ambiguous yes they were looking for people to check those boxes rather than writing characters just because they fit the story or because they're interesting characters it was you know they were writing these characters but we don't really care who it is we we need you to check that box and I saw that on the production side of it as well I was basically working in my dream job when I was in college cuz I had made that decision I don't really know if I want to act anymore I want to go into production I always said I like wanted to run a movie studio day so I was working at a Oscar winning production company and they did very their whole thing was character-driven stories and very very compelling they wanted to leave audiences changed but they weren't like hit you over the head social justice or you know nonprofit style films these were very very good Standalone films that just at the tail end they cared that they were making audiences a little bit better I loved that and so I was working for them in college and worked for them throughout 2020 when BLM hit my job which had been receiving scripts doing a breakdown kind of of like before the executives Reddit I would go through and write a synopsis of the script that I had received talk about some of the key characters what do you learn from this script would you recommend this would you recommend this be pushed on through this executive and so that was like the first person that scripts came to with the company my job changed from look for good character-driven stories again that leave audiences changed that are moving the needle in some capacity it's it wasn't for political things it was for like making Humanity better that these stories will be used for good um it became changed to we need you to find a Native American protagonist movie ASAP we don't have enough black people in this movie we need to ask however percentage of our slate because it wasn't diverse enough so I saw that as an actor a few years prior and then I saw that on the tail end of like this is isn't real anymore these aren't authentic stories you're telling you are literally at every part of this industry molding shaping adapting tinkering with to fit these quotas and these agendas and I was I was just out I was like because the reason I wanted to be an actor the reason I wanted to be in Hollywood is because I love stories I love seeing Humanity at its worst and its best I love being able to sit and relate to somebody who I obviously have no connection to who might not even be real but see myself in them as an actor I love that of being able to put myself in somebody else's shoes and process things might be going on in my personal life in a unique way because I get to act them and it's safer because it's not Brett having to do that it's this character that I'm playing all of it was so real and genuine and suddenly like the rug was you know pulled out of my eyes I was like no it's all it's all perfectly designed and it blows my mind how well Hollywood has managed to face PL consistently the last few years they just do not seem to be able to understand there was some Star Wars actress that was that responded on a late night show saying we don't want white people watching our show in any case M did you see her um her anti- white song that she released no she did that on June teeth and it was a um you can pull it up it's on her Instagram and it was it's about racism and how she's oppressed and all of this stuff and she's mixed like if you Google her name it's only photos of her and her white father and she's singing about not liking white people and how white people hate black people and it's just like does it make sense speaking of going from mainstream media across to Independent Media what' you make of Tucker Carlson's move I thought it was great I think he turned something that you know could have been like career ending I don't I obviously don't know the details of what happened but um thinking that he was fired I mean he could have taken that as is like okay you know I'm done he has become more famous and more culturally relevant since I mean the amount of places that I see him now on social media in real life doing his tour the amount of people that I see in random comment sections on social media where like fan edits are made of him where it's like him talking about masculinity and family and all these guys in the comments being like Oh I used to always hate him I thought he was such a boomer and I like I can't get enough of him like tuck Carlson's leading the Hope call movement yeah truly I his um thing that he said with Charlie Kirk years ago and it's ingrained in my mind it's probably one of the reasons why I got married young but he was like Get Married Too Young have more children than you can afford um that's how he starts that and somebody he did an interview recently and somebody asked him about that again and said you know do you still stand by that do you think this is still something that people need to hear and he just gave the most incredible answer about you know Freedom comes with responsibility and taking responsibility you know becoming a father becoming a husband you know it changes you in ways that you cannot even describe he was like if you think you can't do it the moment that you have a child no it's not that you can do it you have to do it and how empowering that is and reading the comments of all of these men being like I can't wait to be a dad this is so true I never thought I would relate to Tucker Carlson it's it's crazy and so I I think it's great I think that he was kind of stuck in a he was stuck in a certain Fox News brand so I it's great yeah when you watch Fox Now sort of in comparison with the pivot that tuck has made it feels very slow and sort of pedestrian and lumbering uh we both got a lot of friends that still do commentary for them but it's just I don't know that old style of TV production for cultural commentary political commentary and stuff like that just I think it's I mean is this what you think the future is going to be are we going to see more independent creators coming out of mainstream that's how it should be mainstream media dead in your opinion or dying how quickly how slowly quickly but I think now they've realized how it started to happen and so they're kind of like playing catchup of oh I need to you know fix this I need to do this better we need to keep up with the times but I think it happened faster than they could have expected so I think they looked back and went oh we are being left in the dust so I think they're trying to adapt but I do think that the future is independent creators I think that it's people starting podcasts like yours and just getting on YouTube and saying know this is what I think this is what I believe again like I said the women on Tik Tok who just have personal accounts like 3,000 followers who just post their shopping Halls saying I am done voting this way Trump derangement syndrome is cringe it's lame don't do that anymore and they get millions of views it's it's just people speaking from the heart which is very very cool yeah I wonder I think a big part of it we had Andrew huan's little foray with the mainstream media a couple of months ago so funny so many of those situations I think are ostensibly what it's supposed to be is something that's newsworthy talking about an individual or what they're getting up to but behind the scenes what I think it is is a slowly dying medium death rattling and kind of grasping at we're going to use the popularity of this side of the aisle to actually generate clicks on our side of the aisle and you know you can have as much criticism as you want and rightly so about the lack of media standards you know we're not you're not beholden and neither am I to the same kind of publishing standards maybe the factchecking standards that you would have to to be able to get onto a a TV organization but on the flip side the TV organizations the only way that they can get clicks for the most part now is talking about stuff that's happening independently yeah like when Don Lemon has decided to make the pivot yeah you know like that I mean he's the final Horseman of the Apocalypse he's got to be so could WR about it yeah why did you not do this independently why do this with daily y you could have you're you're the star of the show it's a I've seen your setup it's it uh how would you say lean lean complimentarily it's it's lean you know it's like not it's not super uh extravagant it's no more complex than it needs to be why didn't you do your thing on your own I was very out of my element I didn't think I could I think and I don't know if I I'll be confident I think I could have figured it out obviously I'm a smart person um I was very very nervous I've changed a lot in the last two years just on my confidence in speaking about culture and politics um I've gotten to understand social media a lot more I really had no idea what I was getting into I had just kind of jump ship from Hollywood because I moved from acting to oh I want to go into production uh I don't like that either so I studied for the elsat and I applied to law school and got into law school and then the week of my orientation went oh nope this isn't for me I'm not supposed to be an attorney I don't want to do this and then was literally working as a waitress and writing articles for foundation for economic education and helping yal with their Young Americans for Liberty with their copywriting for their development team their fundraising team and I was just I desperately wanted to be with a group of people that was moving the needle in meaningful ways I didn't know how I wanted to do that and so I had started a little Instagram it had maybe I think IID racked it up to 5,000 followers but every time I posted I was still like I still had that I guess like post Hollywood syndrome of if I post this my career is going to go away my agents are going to you know drop me nobody's ever going to hire me again even though I had decided I don't really think this is for me I was still petrified didn't know what my future held had no idea if I would just go into writing and become some kind of journalist if I would end up wanting to go to law school later on literally had no idea was working at this wine bar Steakhouse in Boise Idaho and the social video team at Daily wire saw one of my videos that I made for young American Americans for Liberty and they liked me and dm' me and said you know we love what you're doing you have a unique angle and a unique voice obviously you are camera trained you're media trained we'd love to talk with you about producing a show and I think a lot of people assume that you know I came in and dily W already had this like put together show and they're like here we just needed to cast a girl to be the you know young right-wing girl to get all the guys like that's often a critique that I get um but I actually have a pilot that I did independently that I wanted to drop around but was kind of too scared to and a talk to some other political organizations that is that pilot is comment section it has the memes it has the comments um it had what I wanted to communicate and articulate and so they had a similar idea but we brought it together we worked on it and molded it for three months before we released the show and that's what I I needed you know I felt like I needed that support system they gave me the opportunity um the resources the team which is great so I think that I could have done it independently emotionally and confidence-wise I was not there yet I was still absolutely terrified and I had no idea what I was like I don't know this is going to work for months day I was like I'm going to get fired they're not going to like the show this is going to be a success and then it took off like a rocket I was like oh okay I guess that I've like I've got something that's worth saying what do you think it was why do you think anyone cared I think it was a combination of a few things I think that my generation I think I filled a niche online on YouTube specifically that I knew that I wanted to F that I had experienced not having so one thing that I have vocalized many times now is I'm not like a I'm not the Trump intern you know Rhino Republican you know the girls in their you know beautiful pencil skirts or their perfectly blown out hair I'm also not like the badass huntresses that live in Montana and like live on their father's ranches and you know are super Maga and super awesome and I'm like I'm obsessed with both of them and I think that they both bring you know really interesting you know discourse and they Unique Individuals and all that but I was just normal I was like I have these values and I have opinions that feel very counterculture I'm not seeing that represented anywhere like where's just the normal girl that thinks that all of this is insane um and I as simple as that I think that I I filled that Niche I also think that I brought humor to a side of the inter inter and a political corner of the internet that often doesn't have a lot of humor I try to approach things with levity and hope and positivity and obviously like strike hard when it's needed and drive a point home but also it's like if you're not laughing you're crying like you might as well look at the world and go no this is absurd let's actually laugh at this because this is so dumb like the fat Beach day you have to laugh at that you have to it's like it would not be fun for me and it's not done for anybody be like they're ruining the world this is so disgusting whatever you have to go this literally absurd like why are they and I that was I didn't I also didn't see that anywhere you know I watched um you know I listened to everybody at the daily wire you know Matt specifically and Michael I was obsessed with before I came to the Daily wire but it was very newsy and it was very serious um and they're fathers we need to you know protect you know this Society we need to change things it was like I want to have fun which sounds so silly but I wanted I wanted somebody to speak to me on my level and not make me feel like the world was going to end every 5 minutes but truly be able to make fun of it so I also think that's how it's continued to grow is because the humor and the positivity has reached people across the aisle who might not be right-wing but have common sense and realize this is dumb yeah in other news this episode is brought to you by Maui Nei venison Maui Nei venison brings the healthiest red meat on the planet directly to your door it tastes incredible it's not too gamey and it is super easy to cook plus because I'm always traveling their venison Stakes make it incredibly easy to avoid all of the horrible airport food and hit my protein goals and feel good about doing it not only do they provide the most nutrient-dense and protein dense red meat on the planet they're the only stress-free 100% wild harvested red meat available I first heard about Maui Nei from people like Tim Ferris and Andrew hubman and Peter AA and I love the fact that I'm able to support such an incredible company run by a husband and wife co-founder so you can get the healthiest red meat on the planet delivered directly to your door by going to the link in the show notes below and get 20% off your first order by going to Mau ven. wisdom and using the code modern wisdom a checkout that's M aui Nu venison docomond wisdom and modern wisdom a checkout the daily y guys can be lightning rods for drama it feels like Matt Walsh is in the news every other week for something that he said you were are very good friends with Candace and then falls out with Ben and then Candice falls out with DW and then Candice drags DW for the entirety of the first week of her new show is it yeah hard to focus on work when you're embroiled in drama like that when it's kind of happening all around you it is um I think that's why it's so important just to you know I try to stay in my Lane I try to stay in you know keep my priorities straight and that I want to create good con content I want to you know Reach people across the aisle I want to empower Young women and make them feel seen I want to encourage young men it's like that those are the things that I care about and that I want to do and I don't want to be deterred you can't fully divorce yourself from the atmosphere you walk into work and it's just it's like a [ __ ] war zone yeah and so it's but that had to be my focus and so I think that is the first step in that um yeah I mean everybody's kind of watched this whole Fallout happen it's not a secret obviously um it's difficult because I know all of these figures personally on a that most people on the internet don't know I know Jeremy in a way you know I know the Jeremy that's not the god king I know him that's not the CEO I really got to know him well when we were shooting pen dragon and I you know got to see him in his element you know singing and directing and you know producing this project that he's wanted to produce for 30 years and that was you know genuinely amazing and our relationship really developed there but I also know Candace as a friend she has been one of the most gracious mentors that I've ever had in this industry who has been such a Guiding Light has been an incredible friend she and George you know have welcomed me into their home time and time again resources connections um I think a lot of people look at her and see her as you know obviously she's like a fire brand and she's you know ready to go punch and fight she's a genuinely just a very sweet person and a wonderful friend and so I know both of these parties I know the personal side of it I don't know the professional TS H um is it difficult to navigate that though like you know you've got to show up and be the bubbly pretty girl talking about the thing and oh the New York Beach day or whatever but in the back of your mind you've got I'm in the midst of some [ __ ] marital drama that weird professional in a much bigger sense you know you have two friends they're dating and they break up and it's like how are you going to navigate them you're still embroiled in all of the friend groups that overlap yes yeah no it is I I it's just tense and um and it sucks because I think that you know dily wire is doing incredible things Ben is doing incredible things Candace is amazing she's the best at what she does she's incredible um and it sucks that we weren't you know that it wasn't going to be able to be together forever that we weren you know going to be the Band of Brothers um I think that she'll go off and do great things I think daily wire will go off and do great things and that's kind of just where I have to sit and again I can't get into the details because I don't know the details I'm not in the sea Suite I don't know any of the legal things uh and so I really just have to think of them as you know you know these are people that have been hurt they're hurting because the relationship has fallen apart I think a lot of people online don't see that side of it it's like these are friends that's really really hard to navigate that's one of the problems I think it's very rare because people show up just to see the equivalent independent Creator thing that they used to with news you know the the the guy that does the six o'clock news doesn't talk about the production problems that are going on behind the scenes or the fact that our internet just recently went down so we've actually had to get some local storage because the Ser like no just tell me the [ __ ] news right so there's a level of slickness and polish and professionalism that I think most people expect when they watch any kind of content that changes if you're Sam suck and you're just videoing yourself in Juni know that is right okay Brant uh uh it changes if you're but for the most part you see an organization like you guys and there's still kind of some rules that have been ported across from mainstream media but the thing that people don't realize or that I think might be useful even to kind of open the doors a little bit more for everyone is there's a whole side of operation going on behind the scenes you know there's Runners and and a team and a guy that handles hard drives and there's a dude that does the thumbnails and the uploads and sometimes they don't work and sometimes you know you're on holiday and the internet's down or whatever the [ __ ] going and reasy at least is that it like you're mesed to be this sort of seamless brain to mouth to internet thing this is the whole reason that everyone went to Independent Media in the first place it's unencumbered it's just you know thoughts and takes and all the rest of it and this is why we went here and didn't go we don't want the Polish I don't need the fancy lights I don't need the rest of the stuff we go yeah but like structurally this [ __ ] needs to go from this to screen that you're watching on and there's a process in between and that means that there's contracts and there's employment law and there's negotiations beings corre there are human beings you have personal relationships with and that it makes it very very complicated so yeah I think that's a a great point and a lot of people don't get to see I mean we saw this absolutely saw this with Steven Crowder and DW like the entire you know the skirt was lifted up there was no pants on underneath like everything got revealed to the world there so yeah you see um I don't know it's interesting and again that was a very personal relationship I mean he was a longtime friend of Jeremy and Ben and so that was not just ooh pointing finger fingers at Daily wire and then snapping back at Crowder and then all of that I mean these were longtime friends that was a relationship that was broken it's really interesting like to see uh what's happened to Crowder over the last year like a lot of people seem to have sort of turned his ex co-host a couple ex coost I don't really know what's going on I didn't I saw a tweet about it today I know that there's some update some lawsuit a second lawsuit I don't know but I don't know yeah it's the more that you kind of get involved in that the less the people actually take you legitimately I think it's a good idea to try and stay clear of that as much as possible and uh yeah people can either come to you for the content they can come to you for the drama about your content you don't really get to pick one of the two like Destiny had a massive problem with this I think over the last year that people stopped coming to him for his content and just started coming to him to find out what car crash he was fighting with this week like who is it that he's going up against and what's going on with his love life and what's that thing that just happened over there you go dude fair play but you you don't really get to have it both ways you either get to talk about the thing you're talking about or people get to talk about you and you don't really get to do both correct yeah how do you decide what you want to talk about on the show I go on social media that's really the the grux of it I spend a lot of time online I'm you know pretty chronically online which is hard you need to have balance in your life um but I go through Tik Tok twittter Instagram I see what's trending a lot of times the things that I'm really interested in and I feel like the episodes that you know these often don't do the best but they're the ones that I'm like oh I want people to see these I'm really interested in is connecting the connecting the dots about kind of the underbelly of social media so this isn't like oh a celebrity did this this isn't the Justin Timber like got a DUI story which I'll obviously cover and talk about but the things that I love is I think I touched on a little earlier of like okay these Trends are popping up on social media they're not mega mega viral but a lot of women are talking about this a lot of men are doing this I'm seeing this commonality in the comment section why so let me show you this and then let's tie it into here's an article about this from five years ago when did this start what does that mean for our future on social media how can I break this down and explain it to you so those are my favorite episodes to do and I think people find those interesting because it's almost like a little video essay of like hey here's what's going on in the genen Z you know the underbelly of Tik Tok that does mean though that I have to I have to be in that craw through the muck and the Meer and the feces I have to find the like if you saw my messages to myself on Tik Tok like when you send yourself messages to like say them that's how I say things oh my gosh you would think that I was just absolutely manic but I see something and I've Gotten Good at it at this point of like that's unique and I'll send it to myself and then three days later oh I'm seeing it again I knew that that was something boom boom boom and then a week later when I have a slate of things I'm like like scrolling up through my messages to myself boom I knew knew what I saved it like I I can connect these dots so it's a lot of digging online and then sometimes you know like the Justin Timberlake story oh let's talk about you know the fall of celebrity and what that means for his marriage and why is his wife on all these talk shows talking about how she really doesn't like that he's on this tour and he really needs to rest with his it's like okay so what's going on there like is he not an active participating father what's going on so like tying those together and then of course there's the more political offense type news that I don't do often because I it seems like you've leaned away you I've heard you say that you're actively becoming less and less interested in politics I'm more interested in culture and how that feeds into politics so rather than talking about Biden said XYZ I would rather talk about a cultural issue and then kind of tie it into things that are happening so it's like you know I'm seeing this online people aren't buying houses jenz is crying online because of their financial instability oh let's talk about the economy and what you voted for I would rather kind of circumvent it and go that way rather than go here's a video about Biden's economy and the Federal Reserve and how they're effing us all over I think it definitely triggers some sort of antibody responses from people if you open up with the politics side because oh if you're not on my side then you're on the other side which means that I don't get to listen to what you're going to say do you ever get sort of fatigued or exhausted having to do the newsworthy trend worthy stuff I know that you're an Earnest person it seems like you want to make things that matter yeah I don't know how many people are going to go back in six months and watch just in timberlakes DUI or James Charles learning to sing yes like I know that that's kind of are you worried about how Evergreen and how much sort of gameplay click newsworthy stuff versus I want to make a body of work that over time I look back on and go meaningful meaningful meaningful made value added value oh I'm very concerned with that and that's why over time that was not the case at first it was very current events I mean you can go back to my first videos and very very few of them that I would say have stood the test of time they're not Evergreen very very newsy and I intentionally moved away from that it was actually kind of by accident because I rarely skip a day of comment section I would rather pre-record and have things going out just because with for people who don't know like the YouTube algorithm you need to be posting at a certain rate you don't want to screw up your algorithm and so I would rather put in the work a week before I go on vacation and film at least one episode in advance or one episode every day I usually do two um and post those and get those up and so when I was doing those those can't be current events I can't be talking about what Biden said or what celebrity you know did XYZ so I have to be thinking okay what is something that is actually relevant that is going on right now that's kind of where that structure came from of how can I take something that is sort of going on that's bubbling that's not a o I have five minutes to talk about this and get those million clicks and Views but I can bring it into a broader conversation so that's it accidentally happened oh I love this this is so much more meaningful to me than having a dunk on a lib on a random Wednesday that nobody you know 100,000 people are going to watch it in the first you know four hours and then it's just going to go away because every other person on the ride has talked about it and there's something else you know Biden's pooped his pants and now they're talking about that whatever it is and so it all kind of happened accidentally and so now I kind of strike a balance because I do two shows a day it's a lot of content and those all can't be just at the volume that we're doing those all can't be Evergreen that's like I would not be able to sustain that not enough philosophy to do 14 shows yeah yeah yeah there's not I don't think I have enough time as one individual to be in the underbelly of Tik Tok draining substance from the most disgusting social media platform yes literally that's me um like please give me something um and so I I mix them up and so you know I'll do oh you know here's three episodes about you know these things that have happened in the news and then here's three others that I think are much more substantial and there are things interestingly that I've been surprised by where I've done something that's more newsy and I look back and it's like how does this have 4 million views now but something else has come up like this person is back in the news they go back they find the video so it sometimes can surprise you but I want to add substance to some of the most vapid and superficial things online like if I can do that then I'm doing my job right if I can take a Justin Timberlake story that I like I told my husband I was going to talk about this he was like but that is the most idiotic story like like why are you going to talk about this I don't want to hear about Justin Timber like and I'll often run my stories by him he's like this is so dumb and then the episode did really well and he listened to it he was like yeah you actually had a great take that was so interesting about their marriage I'm like that if I've you know gotten you to change your mind about it if I can pull some substance to spark a conversation about marriage and parental priorities and even just you know for five seconds about oh my God it's 2024 call a freaking Uber don't drive drunk I shouldn't have to say that but if I can say that to some of the 18-year-olds to watch me then I've done something right there's an idea from internet marketing which is uh sell people what they want teach them what they need and it's kind of the same in content creation which is sort of like click for the rage stay for the insights and uh you know it's unfortunate that there's a game that needs to be played but I think striking the balance is very important you know we're consciously thinking about uh like deally hijacking the channel not that it really is that much at all but that's something that I'm always thinking about like how how can I get how can I strike the balance between making sure that the numbers are there that this important guest or message or Whatever Gets Out to the requisite number of people but also do it in a way that doesn't feel cheap or tacky uh and you know there's a an ick that and the bottom line for any audience member that doesn't like the direction that a channel is going in in terms of the way that they frame stuff if it's the content then that's a bigger problem the way that they frame it it's like dude Crea is just make what you click on yeah you know like if you don't like it click on something else yeah that goes back to people where they are and it's like if my if the strategy of starting with you know what people want to click on what they're interested in and then like you said getting into what they need to hear if that stopped working I would you know change the strategy but my generation does want to know what's on Tik Tok they want to know what this influencer did that's so insane they want to know like whether this viral woman on Tik Tok is actually like an absent mother or if she's real they want to know what Justin Timberlake did and so they're going to click on that so it's like why wouldn't I start with that and bring them in and meet them where they are what have you learned since working with Ben oh gosh Ben is I've never met anybody who was so good at absorbing information and then bringing it out to the masses like there is I cannot comprehend like if you there you know something that the Supreme Court does um something that Biden does you know politics can be very muddy to a lot of people how legislation actually works like in my you know love Ben for a lot of different reasons the reason why I loved him when I was coming up and started listening to him was because he made it digestible he brought it to normal people and said here let me tell you what's actually going on let me break it down for you and he can do that in you know 5 seconds and that is so admirable and I think that that critical thinking and his ability to dissect it is such a great skill he also works harder than anybody I know I mean he is like constantly improving constantly writing books it's like I was in Miami with him um back last summer and you know he comes in and he does the show and he'll like begrudgingly do the social media things that his team wants him to do and then immediately he's going into an interview he's flying here to meet with this person you know in his off time he's writing three new books and oh I want to go you know create dis Venture I'm going to call Jeremy about doing this thing and he does it all between the hours that his kids were at school and he said to me my kids don't know that I work they my work does not infringe upon my time with them I drop them off I pick them up and then I spend time with them and I put them to bed and then maybe I'll write some more but I mean he is so dialed in works out right in the middle of the day it's a well-oiled machine his whole operation down there in boka fully intentional condensed which I think it is very easy for this job and that's something that I'm working on and something that Jordan and I kind of talked about of you know in this transition into you know being a wife wanting to be a mother what is that going to look like how are you you know going to be able to do that this job it it Feeds out into your personal life it feeds doubt into you know this is not a 9 to5 not that it's easier or harder it's just very very different um it's not something that you can just leave at home like I'm again I'm constantly online I'm constantly searching for stories if I'm out just at the grocery store I might be you know off the clock people know who I am they're going to come up and they're going to talk to me I'm very aware of who I am and what I represent um and that's always on like the only place that's off is like when I'm at home with my husband and my dogs I'm like I can just like that ends and so I think that Ben has done a very good job of setting those boundaries and I think you know especially for younger creators and people coming up like that is a skill that you have to learn those are lines you have to draw in the sand and it's difficult to do that boundaries are so hard I don't know anything about his I know he's got 85 children or something and his wife's a doctor and beyond that I don't know anything I think that purposefully making a private life boring or just opaque at the very least uh is a really really good strategy same for Rogan now he's got daughters and a wife and a Golden Retriever and beyond that I don't know what they're studying whether they're at school what the wife does for work you know I don't know any of those things and yeah I mean Mary Harrington has got this idea of a digital hijab where she basically says there's certain areas of yourself that you should keep from the internet and it definitely seems like Ben has uh worked very hard given the amount of scrutiny and the amount of people that have got a problem with him agree with them or disagree with him but I think that if someone wants to keep their private life private that should be something which is respected yeah which it's very hard to do I mean it's like the um what they call it the Stan effect where the harder you try to keep something private the more public it will become which is but I think he's done a very good job of it well also not like this is a secret nobody like nobody know what I'm doing which creates its own kind of sort of Desire yeah it's just Noe this is what I do I go home I don't talk about it um I got a lot of flack for keeping my relationship private for as long as I did cuz I did why did you get Flack about it people they felt like they were owed information about my dating life I think meanwhile Alex Cooper is able to get in a long-term relationship whil talking about the virtue of casual sex for four years gets married says that the proposal was brilliant in a Rose Garden got down on one knee and there's just this wake of hundreds of thousands of girls who've been like it's insane conned by this she never got uh the requisite sort of Call to Arms that I think was needed for that like this chick who's been the Forefront of a big kind like one of her first few episodes is about the glug glug 5000 like some [ __ ] like episode uh meanwhile she is secretly having a relationship that turns into an engagement that turns into a marriage and it's so beautiful and I really really feel you're like what the [ __ ] was all of that what was this part of the work that you just did and that was one of the bits where I thought you know you want to talk about female privilege no one called her to account no for that no one yeah and I think that's not people put me in the same camp as that but I think that they they probably felt all of those episodes about blowj jobs that you just keep on doing Exon shut yeah I know all my you know I hook up gold episodes um so I understand that they you know it's the internet My Generation influencers in my generation they give a lot of their private life they they have a lot of access to us and I made sure that when I started the show when I created the Channel I didn't you know I was drawing a Line in the Sand with parts of my life and parts of my personal life I didn't want to obviously get access to everything but I wanted them to know who I was as an individual outside of just me sitting in front of a microphone I think that's really really important especially if you're trying to bring people over from the other side being able to level with them um so I'm not just a face on a screen I'm a you know a human being who's going through what you're going through and I wanted to make sure that I did that but there were also parts of my life that I wanted to keep private and so you know I only said that I was with somebody when he proposed and I you know posted a photo of our engagement I was like well now this is real and I had a lot of people you know I still have memes on my anytime I post on Instagram it's men still posting like she's gone yes um it's kind of become a the it's over boys uh like Trend was so good sneo so upset yeah it was funny it was good but um so I understand that they felt like they had access to me and then there was such a significant part of my life that I didn't share but it was very intentional it's also not Central to your content no exactly and I didn't and contrary to what Alex Cooper was doing I wasn't saying you know don't have a serious relationship don't get married all the while I'm like he here I am like I'm going to Tri you all and get married I also wasn't and I think this might be kind of where that hurt came in was that I believe that there were men out there who watched my content that felt like maybe they had a chance or it's like this was the ideal um and I would see those comments I don't want to say that without being like o toting my own horn it's just kind of that's it's what I saw and I've been told thatt um that's I think they felt betrayed in that regard of like she let us you know but I never never intentionally did that like I never said oh you know you could have a chance to date me if you wanted to it was just like you kind of you know you had this idea of me um but I'm very very glad that I kept it private I think it's very difficult to date and have a relationship when you're a public figure it's very hard to kind of pick and choose what stays private and as we were talking about at the beginning with dating it's hard it's even harder when you're a public figure and when you don't really have any experience doing this and you know you're meeting somebody in person for the first time my first time being famous too yeah yeah exactly um and it's just you know there was not a road map for that but there's there's an equivalent I think for everyone you know it doesn't matter whether you're in some Ivory Tower behind Ben Key's production door talking talking to a few million people or you're just a normal person with 3,000 followers on Instagram if you start posting a lot about your relationship other people will become invested in it in a way that it disorganizes and it skews the way that you see yourself and there expectations this priorities it's very like I I mean the people who are just dating in relationships and start these like relationship Tik toks there's a what's up like they're couple Tik toks like they have joint accounts and they do like relationship content and not like here's how to get a good man a date it's just like we're doing couple strands and this is us going our day-to-day lives like there's one there's a big breakup recently on Tik Tok I think her name is is Tiana his name is Corey or Cody he's an NFL player they just got engaged but people have been able to track their entire relationship on Tik Tok and they always do you know Trends she's at every NFL game they were like o you know the Tik Tok it couple they broke up right after they got engaged nobody knows what happened drama the I mean Tik Tok blew up for days and are now attacking him attacking her what happened saying making up all these lies saying that he was an abuser or actually he Che on her so now she has to come on and say that didn't happen sometimes relationships just fall apart but now you have literally millions about millions of people deep diving what happened I mean I do that cuz like you brought me into your life and now I see invested I know I'm can't tell you to not be invested watch what we're doing but now stop watching what we're doing there was a guy about what we're doing but now stop car yeah there was a guy who made a video about this and he was like if you're going to be in a public relationship and you know get us invested if you break up we deserve to know why because otherwise we're going to go dig and I was like I agree with that like just say but um I agree but then I'm also like the person that's on the other side of the camera I'm like I don't want to do that so that's why you do have to be very careful about like what what door am I going to open up so I like slightly opened it up when we got engaged based on his comfort level and he kind of wanted to like tiptoe he's very very private does not want to be on camera does not care um that's one of the things I love most about him is he does not care that I'm some public figure when we started dating he would intentionally never watch my show never and I would always be like like don't you want to do you like the show like do you support me and he was like no I don't want to think of you as the girl on the screen I want to get to know Brett that I go on dates with you know who I get to spend time with off of you know off camera another thing that he said that I just thought was so I'm so glad he did this he was like I want to make sure that we can hold a conversation and talk about things that you haven't just talked about on your show he was like it would have been so easy for me just to watch your show and we go on a dinner date later that night and go oh so you were talking about you know XYZ and you did another episode about that what did you think like that was just kind of a crutch I was like I wanted to make sure that just prep for the dat was watching your episode yes yeah like I'm going to get ready so he never watched it um and I'm so grateful for that and so he you know you know I don't think he never set out to like date a public figure or want to be with one and so I wanted to be very careful and respectful like respectful to him and what he wants and what he's getting into by being with me and so then by cracking that door open I saw the staran effect you know in real time cuz I hadn't shown his face I hadn't talked about him had not said his name anything about him just said you know fell in love with this guy love him to death I'm getting married did an episode about it on comment section where I just said you know this is happened this is why I kept it private I intend to keep it you know private moving forward oh my God they just latched in it was like the internet detectives just went they found out who he was within two months and found yes and it was not like oh here's his Linked In with his photo that I think is like you know he looks so handsome whatever it was like photos of him as a sophomore in College dressed up as a hot dog at some frat party and here he is like dancing on stage when he's the best man at his friend's wedding he's definitely had a couple beers and he's like on stage dancing and they were like oh look at this you know whatever they immediately found him found his family created stories about him there were so many Reddit posts of like you know well he's going to destroy your life I know these kinds of guys and they knew nothing about him and so at that point we had a conversation talk with the guys on my security team because at that point I was genuinely concerned because they had found out so much about him and we made the decision together I was like I would rather be ahead of this and you know you're the person that I love and I want to protect you and I want to you know kind of present you to the world which sounds so weird and it's so odd that you know you kind have to think about that and I did and so when we got married my friends who run the conservator which is just an amazing digital magazine um kind of trying to be the alternative to Teen Vogue and 17 and I mean honestly even not even teen vog just Vogue they do really really high caliber stuff the girls who run that are good friends of mine and so I asked them you know will you cover the wedding cuz I know people are going to be interested they're going to have questions about you know what dress did he wear what he do whatever they're want to know about him and I want this to be done in a very tasteful way that represents our values and what we wanted this day to commemorate and why we did our wedding the way that we did and then share information about him just so that it's like it's settled basically so it's out there no more stri an effect digging um so interesting that there's this sort of Sweet Spot between not enough information not enough means that people are going to go digging too much information means they start to get invested and there's this weird habitable goldilock zone in the middle stay there it's enough to be satisfying and not so much that it's no longer boring yes and uh yeah I mean it must be interesting as well uh having the power Dynamic the other way you know typically it's guy out front famous famous man with like you know sort of humble wife at home type thing and it's very yeah this one's the other way around I think it's it's an interesting Dynamic but it's not weird and it hasn't been a problem and I think a lot of people assume that it is and also I talk about you know traditional gender roles and Trad and so people look at me and they're like well you don't have that because you work and your husband's not in front of the camera doesn't mean he doesn't work like he you know owns his own business he's very successful he's just private um but just because I'm out front and he's not like our relationship at home again separating the Brett online from the Brett that goes home to him every night like that's very traditional like he's still the head of our household like I still I mean Revere and respect him trust him to Lead Me And Lead our family um it's traditional in that sense and that I think is more important than having him you know be the more superficial figure in like an image like aesthetic of a traditional what have you learned or given the fact that you've got two two women for every one man completing a four us college degree by 2030 you've got women out earning men in their 20s as well uh what have you learned about navigating even if he is professionally successful on his own there is a a odd sort of turning of the polarity in some ways what advice have you got for uh guys and girls that are trying to date or be married in a situation where part of the power Dynamic has changed a little bit more again I think it goes back to basic respect in who you are when you leave your jobs at the door and that you do need to leave your work at the door um I think that you should be for women you should be looking for a man who can provide not just like oh he can buy me all the fancy things that you know I want or whatever that he can emotionally provide and that he's stable I also think women are less willing these days and this sounds bad maybe you have a better way to say it but like a man in progress mhm um construction under constru yes and there's all of those stats about you know women mature faster than men and so if you're marrying or dating somebody around your age you know it's quite common for a woman to be a little bit ahead even just mature wise maturity wise um so I think have Grace and understanding and you know pick somebody who is ambitious and who is willing to take big swings for you um and for men you know be willing to show that like if there's a type of woman again that you want is it's like what can you do to get to that level even if you're not there yet that shouldn't stop you it's like be willing be bold at a young age when you don't have any other responsibilities you don't have to live in a certain place you're not having to provide for a family yet like what risks you know calculated risks can you take for a major major payoff you know what can you do to set yourself up for Success like this is the time to you know start a business be bold don't just be like the Cog in the machine if you want something more like that's the time to do it and then prove to this woman or this partner um if it's you know if you're a girl that um that you have those abilities I guess and that ambition that's what a lot of women I think are signaling off is a man's capacity for growth yeah if that wasn't the case why would the starving artist guitarist that sleeps on his friend's couch be attractive well the reason that he's attractive is that he's kind of like a penny stalk but I see his talent and I see his artistic ability and you know the ruthless thing I think for professionally successful women is that that same Talent is not valued by guys you know the but she might become a really successful businesswoman in future it's like you know the 21y old Barista from Starbucks that's a bit more agreeable and emotionally stable wins every time so I think yeah educating guys and girls on what the other side is looking for yes um I've been talking a lot about women cultivating receptiveness so oh that's so good yep so uh you know in sort of the aristocracy era in Britain ladies would drop a handkerchief in front of a man that they sort of wanted to come it's like look I know that you might have approach anxiety and they kind of stupid uh like here's the least subtle cue that I can give again going back to we don't know how to do it men and women like I remember my mom called up one of my friends who was just having a hell of a time dating and this is one of the reasons this one of the stories that I tell where men are like you know women don't want us there's no good women I'm like they're my friends they're out there they also don't know what they're doing and consider doing a matchmaking service I would love to I don't know how to do it but we're thinking about it putting something together um I actually really started thinking about that when Jordan came to Bridgestone here and I had all of these young people coming up to me because all the daily wire folks went and so we were walking through Bridgestone and so all of these young people I was like there are there are thousands of you here all of you young men in your Jordan Peterson suits and all of these girls here I know that you're single I was like how can I get you to meet I was like oh my gosh you're here in this one opportunity please go find each other um oh gosh where was I going with that your friend your friend was having a nightmare um my mom called her and said you need to like do you know how to flirt do you know how to because she was like no but like I go on these dates and they don't kiss me and I or like they don't move forward he doesn't text me after like what am I doing and again she's super cute she's really smart comes with great family great values you know very agreeable but we learn that on dates yeah on dates she would just like sit at the opposite like end of the table don't touch nothing and she was like well I don't want to be promiscuous my mom was like it is not promiscuous to brush his shoulder to like oh scoot over a little closer don't sit on the opposite end of the table if he's trying to show you on your phone go over to the other side of the table and sit next to him like why she was like oh I'm so scar I didn't know that that's what I had CH need to learn Kino escalation they should have done some pick aarty stream yes um so yeah again it's on both sides there's a lot to learn the handkerchief one is great and also what you said about you know the agreeable Barista at Starbucks if you're if she makes eye contact if she's sweet if she flirts if she shows a genuine interest in you like that's what men are going to be interested in mhm not the girl boss who's so focused on like oh I've you know made this much money and I've done this and I'm you know getting my bag gonna be like oh that's scary intimidating yes yeah I mean you know in a post me to world as well I think it's important for girls to realize that if no meant no previously anything that isn't a [ __ ] yeah is a run away from me as fast as possible so you know there's still a like carryover latent carryover from why men love [ __ ] treat him like you don't like him that world of playing hard to get but playing hard to get now from a girl to a guy for the guy is just perceived as yeah exactly like this a this is a headline waiting to happen so I think everyone just re centering their expectations correct is probably a really good place to start yeah I agree I've heard you say say that you were socially awkward as a kid oh so socially awkward is there an advantage to being a little weird when you're younger absolutely I that's kind of one of my rebuttal to people saying you know oh don't homeschool your kids because they're going to turn out weird they're not going to be normal look at the normal kids these days do you really want your kids to turn out like that to be like gender confused hooking up with people on drugs mentally ill illiterate no I would much rather a little bit of an oddball I was not like I was never socially weird and that I I shouldn't say never after my brother died really struggled with being social working through all of that just very very difficult performing really got me out of my shell again like I came alive being on stage um after that I became the weird homeschooled musical theater horse girl I had literally every series type stacked against me humanly possible I actually asked my husband about that and I said if you had told your private school lacrosse playing self at 15 years old you're going to end up marrying again the homeschooled theater kid horse girl what would you have said he was like you I mean I would have been horrified um so I was weird in that regard I always marched the Beat of My Own Drum I was once I got you know through all of my social I don't want to call it anxiety but just my trepidation after yes after my brother died and that was more so environmental rather than you know me not being social and being shy um once I made it through that my social awkwardness was just that I was you know unique I could you know I can talk to a tree I've never met a stranger even from you know a young age TR like eight years old I think that was one of the benefits of one of the benefits of being in Hollywood and working from a young age I don't think it needs to be in Hollywood but making sure that young people are working and have some kind of responsibility uh is so that they interact with adults they interact with people that are older than them I think one of the biggest drawbacks of the traditional school system is that students will interact with their teachers they'll have a one-off you know adult in the room but the majority of people that they interact with on a daily basis are all their peers kids learn from kids yeah and it is not only just in their same age bracket but it is from the same school system the same county the same neighborhood or if you're at a private school still the same town same background the same crop of more fluent kids that are going to this private school with homeschooling I had the complete opposite experience you know I would go and I would you know take ballet classes and I would meet you know girls and from every different part of Tennessee and then I was in LA and I was you know you know had progressed more so I was dancing with people that were five six years older than me and had to interact with them and had to hold my own when I was working as an actor you know you are working with adult directors writers producers people who are applying your parents they aren't really looking at you as a kid because you are an employee you being hired to do yes it's like no we're not playing your games it's like you're here to work know your lines that responsibility is huge um you know also when I was homeschooling like I was in gymnastics so then I was with a different set of people I did my tennis not pickle ball and was at my tennis camp with a bunch of other students I you know my parents went to two different churches going back to their incompatibility but I would you know have two different groups of people at churches my mom was very very very engaged in philanthropy and working with nonprofits and I would go with her and I would you know volunteer with her contribute be around people from vastly different backgrounds I mean like every Christmas we would adopt um a different homeless shelter in Chattanooga and so Not only was I interacting with oh the other kids whose parents are able to afford gymnastics or dance but it was like no I'm around you know the children of the women at the B women shelter and being able to hold a conversation and empathize so I was I was weird but I was very very social and more socially advanced than my peers in that what would be your advice to someone who's suffering with a bit of social anxiety or maybe a parent of a child who's got social anxiety and wants to become better socially as patient zero for I couldn't communicate particularly well for a little while yeah uh if stepping out and doing pantomime isn't the solution you don't want to go do an improv class um I feel like this isn't a good answer and so let me know what you think but you just have to start it's kind of like again going back to the data going back to working out you do 10 push-ups a day it's like again if you are at Starbucks can you say an extra two words to the Barista perfect example you gave doesn't have to be for the um it doesn't need to be a means to an end for dating it can just be to get yourself you know comfortable Jordan talks about this all the time of exposure therapy do exposure therapy for yourself that actually became a huge trend on Tik to funnily enough of people saying I have a problem with rejection and so they would do a few different creators did this and so they would put themselves into a situation where they were going to get rejected every single day going into Walmart hey can I go into the back room and just look around no there's a if you Google 100 days of rejection yes yeah 100 days of rejection is 10 years old now but it's ask for a free coffee uh ask a person on the street if they'll give you a 100 bucks they just random ever escalating things but yeah I mean overcoming rejection overcoming that fear I think by purposefully putting herself into it and it's the same as the low stakes conversation that we were talking about earlier on that when you don't care about the outcome it makes going into it that the stakes are way lower there's no pressure because you didn't expect this to go well and they're not going to give you a free coffee but maybe they'll give you a discount or maybe they won't laugh at you or maybe you won't die they won't call the police biggest thing that's the biggest thing is like you have survived that you had that interaction you were okay nothing in your life fell apart you can you know move forward um and it's it's also a habit like I am I'm a better more confident person when I'm doing the show every single day when I am sitting in front of a camera having to articulate myself having to interact with people if I in rut like I don't think I could ever like take a full month off and never you know do the show like I always need to be doing something writing working you know engaging my brain in some capacity because you just turn inwards and even like the most social of us I'm very extroverted I literally talk for a living but if I take away the structure of having show up every day and do this and put myself out there like if I come back if I've taken when we were shooting pend dragon in Bast there were a couple of weeks when I did not do the show because I was um I was on pen Dragon we were you know flying back and forth was being Hungary and Italy and you know you will not be able to film for this amount of days and I came back and I was like oh I don't feels clunky how do I say this because I was so even though I was communicating and I was working I was saying somebody else different rythm yeah I was what does a what does a typical day look like for you so I wake up around 5:45 and um I have one of those like hatch alarm like Sunset alarm clocks which I love so it eases me into the morning um I get up on weekday I don't often eat breakfast which is a problem and I should work on that and it's usually like a quick grab and go once I get to the office to keep us stocked up which is great um but I get in the car I have a long commute now I try to beat traffic I also like the Solace of coming into the office when nobody else is there and just being able to fully focus on the show time you get in usually end up getting there at anywhere between 7:20 and 7:45 and then I don't film the show until 9:30 and it used to be that Matt Walsh would get there before I do now I think he has an office at home um that he can like go into but it was kind of his private Zone you know he has six kids so he was like I need to be able to get up in the morning and just fully both of us write the bulk of our show in the morning before um we go I think Ben does it the night before Michael I think does it the night before but Matt and I I think perform best when it's fresh yes um and even if I've written a book of it the night before like I'll often do the outline I have the story in place I would say 95% of the time I know what I'm going to be talking about but I come in and it's like the finishing touches is there anything what does that look like is this a Google doc is this and it's outlines it's bullet points it's not so I start with bullet points and links um go through all the stories I'll often pull comments first cuz I don't want to be in the habit of picking and choosing the comments to shape the story and sometimes I will do that and it's like I want to prove a point like okay this is happening here's an example of somebody saying this but for the most part I want the actual comment section to drive the narrative and then off of that I'll like bounce off here's this let's pull this in start with the story go find the comments put it in a Google doc um links comments here's the extra contexts that I'm going to bring in and then I usually go through and at the beginning it's like here's my thesis statement and my conclusion that's what I start with it's I was an English major in college it's like writing an essay but it's a script um and so I know what I want to get across and then I take the content that I've pulled into the Google Doc and I'm kind of like work it so like does this make sense going here or should I hit this point first and then it makes you know it's stronger to bring this in later it's all story structuring um again like an essay is does you know this paragraph come first it's the you know what we all learn in high school of like you have the hamburger with your two buns and you've got the the meat in the middle um and then I fill it out and some episodes are more written out than others if there are ones that there's a lot of technicalities if I'm talking about a lot of data if it's a more sensitive issue I don't want to waste time in the studio going like oh you know what is that thing yes hey rean can you go check this can you pull this data um oh I didn't like how I said this I want to make sure like if it's you know sensitive like I just did one about um Instagram's latest Scandal That Wall Street Journal um did a report on where Instagram I mean it's just the worst meta is the worst for children to be on a new report from Wall Street Journal um just came out and said that not only are people under the age of 18 fed sexual content they are fed more sexual content than adults on the platform if you have a like under 18 account if you say you're 13 14 years old you are fed a higher percentage of sexual content than adults they know this their internal Reports say this wal stre Journal found it and then it was corroborated by um by internal employees met up time and time again is saying you know we're protecting kids we're protecting kids a year ago in 2023 I did an episode literally almost a year to the day another Wall Street report Wall Street Journal report came out again about Instagram that their algorithm was helping connect a ring of pedophiles and that they were pushing child forign and that they were they were doing nothing about it and So Meta comes out constantly you know nobody under the age of 16 gets fed sexual content this never happens we have systems in place they don't like they're being sued by the AG in New Mexico for this exact thing they've gone you know before Congress to deal with this so anyway it's a very very got to get it right yes and it's an intense subject matter not just because I want to get it right but also because I know that I have a younger audience I know that I have parents at watch with their kids the innocence of children is so vitally important to me and I think that it is something that our society has just completely for Forten about and doesn't seem to care about you swear I've ever heard you swear oh I do yeah do you yeah um my mother wishes I didn't but I do um all right so you've got that 9:30 9:45 record the show yes yeah so I put all that together depends on the episode whether it's more written out than other so again like that one was you know I want to make sure I'm hitting every single thing I want to make sure I'm saying this and I'm I don't want to waste my words I would rather speak less and make sure that it is very specific so I'm not going to just improv it at the beginning of comment section when we first started the show I had no script I would just pull topics and it would it was just me riffing took a long time it was cool and I think I'm glad that I started that way because it got me into a better habit of can I think on my feet can I speak on my feet but now I want to make sure that it's very I'm punching when I speak um so I work on that for an hour I put the finishing touches on there um adapt the story if need be if some new development has happened overnight because a lot of things happen at night on the internet because that's when people people are awake not sleeping spending those extra two hours on the internet uh and then I go into hair and makeup and do that for about an hour and then go into the show at 9:30 and then we film anywhere from 9:30 to 11: and then after that it really depends on and that's both segments yep have to do them back toback and then we'll do reactions that go on YouTube shorts um I'll have you know a social team come in and they'll say Hey you know you have you know you keep being tagged in this video on Tik Tok do you want to stitch it and react to it so like put a phone in front of me and I'm like oh okay this is crazy and then I you know react to it um I'll also take that time if I have social media things that I want to do independently I usually do that right after the show and then after that it really depends on you know do you have meetings do you have to meet with your team about a new video that you're doing a new off the-clock video or strategy meeting do you have to meet you know PR about this or do you need to go talk with Jeremy about pen Dragon do I have a live stream for on daily wire we do all access Liv just you're a member then you get to come to a live stream with us and you know unbal access all access um so after that 11 o'clock hour it's very up in the air and so some days I'm done and I get to go home and you know work on the farm and work on the script for the next day and some days I'm you know down in Nashville until 6: p.m. working on whatever it is that they need how much time you caught up doing admin operation stuff emails back and forth slack any of that [ __ ] used to be a lot more not not very much anymore um my admin stuff is more so highle things with my team of strategy let's pitch this let's try this could we get this person it's usually me communicating to them what I want and then they're like all right we'll go and execute it or talking with ad sales about I really want this brand can we adapt this can we do this can we figure out a way to fit them in um and so it's very creative cool stuff and what's an evening look like um go home I I usually cook dinner for Alex and I and we will work on projects that we have at the house so we you know just bought this farm and so you know he's out every day building fences mending things um we should eat in more but we we love going out to eat and my producer actually lives very close to me and so we spend a lot of time with her and her husband which I love um so we have a you know a pretty vibrant social life I try to get a workout in before I leave Nashville again just so that everything both of us do Alex tries to get it done before I get home so he kind of knows like all right this this a long day for you like can I go work out at 5: instead of three or whatever so we try to get all of that stuff done so that when we get home it's just like we actually have time together um yeah it really depends on the day what time is bedtime if you're getting up at 5:45 oh gosh I would love it to be like 8:30 by 8:30 you can't get me out of the house it is rare if it's like bri you want to go out and go I mean a couple weeks ago my friends are like let's go line dancing and we got there at 9: and it was like oh go this is this is really this is a stretch especially now living farther away it's like it's now I'm you know I've got an hour drive back home from this place but usually around 8:30 or 9 Brett is moisturized with her Tallow she is in her pajamas she is in bed either reading working on the show do not move her do not touch her she's not getting out to go to dinner anytime past 8:30 um and then usually like actually asleep by 10 or 11: but I am like in the confines of my home by 8:30 I don't that's like a sacred time I haven't heard you talk about faith all that much what's how big of a role does that play in your life it grows by the day which kind of surprises me actually that was not something that I expected um my father is Episcopalian and so you know he loves High church I don't know what that is that sounds like the diet that people where they only eat fish oh yes pescatarian yes very similar the way that it is often described in you know colloquial terms is like Catholic light it is it has become sadly and much to his sadness a very very Progressive denomination like if you're driving around Nashville and you see pride flags and trans Flags it's probably the episcopalians with their female priests um so he is very very Episcopalian my mom has kind of wavered in her faith no real denomination um and we went to like a very hippie dippy church I would go back and forth between very structured High church and then she went to a church called unity and it was like there were Christians there there were um Jewish people there people who were Buddhists I mean you just went there and you basically prayed and um they would read from the Bible it just it was very very super hippie um and I saw growing up spending a significant portion of my childhood in Tennessee I saw very stereotypical Southern Christians which I hate saying but I saw people that made their faith more of an identity and a badge of honor than something they actually believed and were walking I saw a lot of hypocrisy especially in my extended family of people who I was told are the you know they are the best Christians like they you know really walk their faith I was like why are you why do you treat our family like this and why why do you act like this and so I kind of left that behind when we uh my mom and I moved to Los Angeles which we went back and forth I would spend half the year with her there half the year with my dad at home that kind of all fell apart we never really went to church there but one friend in Hollywood growing up as you know in this my like child actor friend group one also from the south was a Christian he was the only one that didn't have his faith stomped out of him who stayed very consistent who walked the walk every single day and he started bringing me to church with him when I was about 16 years old there was a lot going on with my um my family my parents divorce was in full swing at that point I have a brother that's schizophrenic and he was homeless at the time and I was like taking care of him at 16 um it was a lot of a lot of stress and I had started doing therapy at that time which was helpful in some ways but this friend of mine was like you need something else and so I'm going to take whether you like it or not we're going to go to church on Sunday mornings and I would sit in some of these sermons and just like ball not understanding what was being told to me I didn't understand the context of what they were talking because I had never read the Bible in full like I you know I'd been in Sunday school but I never sat down I had never done the work and would just be like I just I'm missing something and even then I didn't like fully take the step but that was kind of always in the back of my head and then went to college there was no religious anything no faith at UCLA at least in my world and very little in Hollywood obviously and came to Nashville and was again just like I'm back in the place that left such a bad taste in my mouth about faith and Christianity specifically um but I dipped my toe back in the water and I've made it more of a an integral part of my life it is humbling in so many ways because it's such a journey there's so much that I think that I have to learn and so many literal like leaps of faith that you have to take um I think you know a lot of people talk about you know the husband is the head of the household you look to him I think it's been really wonderful that Alex was taking that we were on a similar journey of you know he was raised in a denomination that he wasn't really like I don't know if I'm going to stick with this and so when we started dating he was on a similar like I'm going to find what I believe where I land I'm going to find good people and so it's was very easy to slip into that and go you know I can trust you follow you or on this together so that's kind of still where I am I went through I did some rcia which is the education that you go through to convert to Catholicism because I was really really interested in Catholicism it seems very akin to the Episcopalian Church that I would go to with my father I love the structure love the high Church without the wokeness obviously and the kind of compromising on their values and what the Bible says and what the church believes um and I put that on pause when I went to Budapest and haven't fully started that up again and I'm not really sure where I land that I'm still really interested in Catholicism but I don't think I'm at a point yet in my education where I can you know make that leap to say I'm going to this is what I'm going to be I'm you know I'm going to continue this um and be confirmed and it's also kind of going back to what we were talking about about having a public and a personal life Faith is something that very you know people have a lot of opinions on people are obviously very concerned with you coming to Faith there's a lot of you know you know it's wonderful and you know we're praying for you you know we want you to come over here they care a lot and I think it all comes from a good place but it is so personal and when you're on your own journey and you're taking it step by step and you're exploring all these different things you're kind of unlearning the stuff that you unlearned as a child and the things that you saw and The Impressions that you had of Faith it's very personal and I also never want to jump on my platform and be like I learned this today about Catholicism and I'm doing that I don't I know nothing I am truly a student right now and so that might make some people uncomfortable because it's like we want to know we want you know but it's like you'll know when you know and I'll know when I know there's a big Christian Revival happening at the moment which I think you'll have probably been tracking as as well so many people I mean Russell Brand recently got baptized uh Jordan is being much more open about his faith Constantin kissing's talking about it a lot Tucker Carlson went full creationist mode you know there's varying degrees of of uh belief and uh yeah I I wonder whether what's that um you'll know this that Latin Mass thing that loads of young people are going to yes yep uh where the entire thing unless you speak Latin you're not going to be able to understand any of it so it's evident that there is this sort of odd horses shoing back you know atheism I credit all of that to Michael nlls I mean every I mean the reason why I wanted to explore Catholicism was because I loved Michael so much he like you make this sound so incredible he is just amazing um and he goes to Latin Mass every Sunday that's where you'll find him um but yeah no there is a I mean there literally is a Revival there were revivals at um Southern schools in 2023 that just kep popping up of you know people traveling from all over the country because there was just something going on in these rooms and people were you know singing and worshiping for like five days on end people just being like called to this like I'm not even a Christian and I you know I need to I need to be here I'm going to drive to Alabama to be at this revival um is this happening on Tik Tok is this a gen Z thing how much is this broken through it's in Christian sex it has broken through it isn't like a Tik Tock like Trend to have a Revival it was you know events happening at college campuses and worships that were happening and they just never stopped and they just grew and grew and grew beyond the school beyond the student body you people traveling um so I think it is not just the celebrities searching it's not just these public Figures it's also I think that I think that kind of goes back to the cynicism that we were talking about with j z of you know they've put their faith in politicians they've put their faith in celebrities they've put their faith in the environment and climate and they've started to worship this planet and you know rather than a god I've turned that into a God and that hasn't panned out and that hasn't been fulfilling obviously and it only leads to more Doom and Gloom and I think they look at the world around them and they go what Am I Living For like what is what's the purpose what am I being Guided by what principles do I when family is being derated you don't need to have children just you're just floating yeah work like your father and have sex like your brother you'll be fine and you um and they're being you know bopped around to different current things like that's all that you know I'm I'm living for this social issue I'm living for this now because this is now trendy there's nothing tethering so many young people and so I'm I would guess that that's a big that I mean that was for me as well and I'm not you know being bounced around to the current thing but I think having a pretty tumultuous childhood being in a pretty tumultuous industry where every day I'm you know have to keep up with things stay on top of it I see a lot of really disturbing terrible things about the inter internet some things I choose to cover some things I don't about like horrific child Predators the way that our you know big Tech organizations are promoting this the insane stuff that's happening on the left I'm in that on a day-to-day basis and being able to have something else that's you know guiding you and moving you forward something that is bigger than yourself I mean it's it's so important family and faith is a degree of stability then yeah there's a study that I wanted to teach you about which is kind of related to this so this is probably one of the coolest studies that I've learned about this year so it's called the ti that blind misperceptions of the opponent Fringe and the miscalibration of political contempt so one of the reasons that there is a lot of political polarization is that most sides dislike their opponents for beliefs that they don't hold yeah and this obviously fuels an awful lot because it sounds more extreme and there's an interesting stat that outp party hate has emerged as a stronger Force than in party love so around about 2012 it was Obama 2012 uh people said that they disliked their opponents more than they like their own side so much of politics is kind of a to protest vote Yes against something that they aren't and it's six stages that they found of how people progress through this so the first one is that both sides exaggerate The Other side's Extreme views for sure so people on the left assume that all people on the right are racists that want police officers that shoot black people to have fewer consequences and all people on the right assume that people on the left want everybody to get an abortion and for everyone to be trans and to have a a weak military and when you actually poll both sides that's not the case that most people hold very moderate views and most uh people on both sides would agree with the other side so most people on the left want to have a strong military and most people on the right are fine with gay guys getting married this is what's called false polarization so it's polarization that is assumed but inaccurate this first stage which is Extreme views that are inaccurate second point is that this leads to disliking of the other side makes sense if you believe that this person has a false interpretation you judge them as this crazy extremist not true inaccurate right so you have extremism that's inaccurate leading to disliking and then disliking leads to avoidance the avoidance bits really interesting because this never interacting with someone who holds different views to you because you assume they're be really extreme they're not causes you to never actually have your inaccurate assumptions correct corrected right and just snowballs correct yeah so uh you're less likely to share a taxi with them shake hands with them have your son or daughter marry them I think uh twoth thirs of left-leaning parents would fear their son or daughter marrying a republican like so you just have this huge Divergence and obviously being unwilling to have a conversation with a political rival means that your inaccuracies are never going to be corrected and then what this also causes is both sides being reluctant to criticize their own Sid's extreme views that's so yeah so if you misperceive how common your own side side's extreme views are no not that many people think that children should take horon blockers at 8 years old or no not that many people believe that you should ban abortions for all reasons across the entire United States or whatever it might be it's like no they they are there and the assumption that they're not uh another part is there's a an incentive to not appear disloyal Y and I guess their hatred and fear of the other side galvanizes them to maybe kind of turn a little bit of a blind eye to what's going on so that's the fourth stage fifth stage is that well one question would be how is this fueled and partisan media does fuel this quite a lot because it doesn't show a balanced perspective by Design you know 50 years ago if there's two news stations you need to just deliver to everybody but now when you can pick and choose your own custom designed news station because you're competing with 200 others including independent creators you can find the exact story or the exact Niche that you can speak to yeah precisely it's like what you were saying about you know with big mainstream media now their fod is the other side they're not creating news creating culture they are you know and not even talking about their own sides it is you know what is this insane person doing that literally is the fod for yeah and then final one political polarization leads to Greater acceptance of unethical tactics so if you suspect that the other side is doing something which is unspeakable then you're like ah yeah but you know look at what they did turn a blind eye to the protest or the riot or the whatever it is that someone does and yeah I I just think this like vicious cycle of increasingly anti-democratic yeah uncare in behavior um gets explained an awful lot and the beautiful thing that I like about this particular study is that it all comes from one Genesis which is a misunderstanding of The Other side's Extreme beliefs if you can correct that everything Downstream from that gets fixed now that's not easy it's not a small thing to do but I do think that if you have a a more delicate or Nuance take about things that trying to be a reasonable voice it actually to me that uh sort of bed me that a lot of the time I'll I'll get criticized for being like so bigoted from the left that I'm a misogynist and so cucked from the right that I'm a soy boy you can't win yeah but threading the needle like that to me I think that shows that if you can continue to show the best of both sides and where there's degrees of agreement that well that's actually doing a lot of good um so yeah that was the the ties the blind um was one of the best studies I've found recently I think that that's something that I think about a lot and kind of going back to you know when you asked why do you think that the show was successful and I talked about humor of being able to just point out to normal people that are sitting at home going man both of you people like both sides are just really insane like you are there's a lot of chaos happening in being able to find humor and Common Sense through it that's kind of my Touchstone is always finding that versus just always picking aide have you found since moving to daily wire obviously there's uh degrees of um purity the organiz have you uh felt the Temptation or you know the the need to socially adhere to guys that are further right than you obviously you've got these people that so you respect them they're ambassadors they've got all of this success and kind of your boss or at least your colleague is that something you've been conscious of where trying to hold on to you to Anchor you as opposed to getting pulled further right I think I did at first just because I was so nervous I didn't want to screw up the yes and you know they're so incredible all this stuff and they are and I you know one of the great things about you know the people that I work with is you know I disagree with Matt on some things I disagree with Michael on some things I disagree with Jeremy and Ben you know but we all have common values that we are Tethered to and I mathul respect the work that they all do um and I know that they feel the same with me so we have that Baseline but definitely when I started I was like ah you know I need to thread the needle not that I was saying things that I didn't believe Bel I was like I'm going to be a little more political and I want to you know hit on these things and I'm going to talk about Biden saying this and you know this and um lean in more I guess and as time has gone on and I've become far more comfortable and confident in my voice and also learning firsthand what you just talked about in that study of oh you know maybe some of these not that these takes but the way that I'm speaking about this issue maybe that's not the most productive or contributing to the problem a little bit and is there a way that I can thread the needle not dilute my values or what I want to say but articulate it in a way and bring in both sides so that I'm not alienating people so that I because my goal is number one to make people you know who share my values who were me 5 years ago not feel insane or alone like you know looking around the world going nobody at my school thinks the way that I do I feel crazy say no you're not there are other people you know I have 4 million subscribers we're all here um we agree and then also reaching to the other side and say you know we're we're also not crazy like there are things we'll be able to agree upon putting forward the best most acceptable version of this the most reasonable yeah I mean so few people have been convinced of anything by being patronized or mocked right there's this idea of the soft signal of Effectiveness which is basically if you really care about convincing the other side of anything that you believe in you'd actually take the opportunity to dial back the vitriol yeah and that's a price that you need to pay because you think this is [ __ ] insane these people and blah blah okay if you actually care about changing minds and you understand an iota of how human psychology works you're not going to try and make them feel stupid or insane you're actually going to dial that down and say look let me bring you along for the ride here's a couple of ideas that I think are really really important and here's a gentle way to deliver it to you and I'm aware that it's not as sexy as being a flame wielding truth telling fire brand but I think that it changes Minds more effectively it does it's more palatable um and you know I I love Ven and I love facts you know don't care about your feelings and that's true but also a lot of people's feelings don't care about your facts and if you can't reach them at that emotional level especially with my generation who is oh my gosh so emotional so emotional if you can't meet them there and touch those emotions and give them a reason to give a crap about what you're talking about you will not change jz's mind you will not I put this in my newsletter today stories don't care about your statistics yeah in a controlled experiment researchers documented a pronounced story statistic Gap in memory the average impact of statistics on beliefs Fades by 73% over the course of a day the impact of a story Fades by only 32% so in short people's beliefs are more durably impacted by stories and statistics which has a huge implication for how voters beliefs can be more easily swayed during upcoming elections that's so good I completely agree and that's again going back to you were asking yeah how do you structure the show how do you decide what you're going to hit it's like if I'm talking about these social issues these Tik Tok Trends whatever if you watch the show there's a lot of the time when I'm you know I start with a celebrity uh Tik Tok whatever here's the social thing that's happening let's back this up with some facts knowing that that's not going to be what people remember but in the moment my goal is to go hey it's not just this random person it's not whatever hear the things to back it up and then we go back into the story that is much more emotionally compelling that made me interested in it in the first place cuz I didn't get interested in this story or this you know current event that's happening because of the facts and because I mean yes the facts but because of the stats and the fact that you know there an emotional connection yes it's like I was not interested in the story about meta serving sexual content to teens because they are you know the very minute stats of you know 2.7 times more likely whatever that would is not the reason why I was invested the headline of you know they are feeding this to children they are not pulling back there are solutions in place ways that they could mitigate this and they're choosing not to and children are now at risk and 13-year-old girls are getting unsolicited dickpics they are seeing only fans models within three minutes of going on Instagram just creating an account within three to 20 minutes that is what drew me in and then when I get down in the article I'm like oh my gosh these stats are literally insane but as you just saw I don't remember the actual stats of what it is how do you remain upbeat given that that's your disposition but that's also the way that you presumably want to live as well you don't want to be da but there's generalized cynicism amongst your generation there's also an awful lot of uh very disempowering and scary stories that you cover what is your process for remaining positive sum and hopeful for the future that you wish more people knew I believe that there a future worth saving again going back to what I said about with all of our problems with all the cism we still do live in objectively the best time in all of history the most advanced again the most healthy the richest just remembering that I think as a perspective shift I think that there's a lot to live for there's a lot in my personal life that I'm very excited about the news and current events in this show is such a small percentage of who I am and what I think about on a daily basis if you calculated the amount that I think about having babies oh my God it would completely outweigh you know the Tik Tok trends that I think about and I also think that being such a priority to me and being something that I'm so interested in I mean having children is the most hopeful action that you can do you're saying like I believe that there's a world for you I believe that you can change the world for a better place I believe that I have the power to help mold and shape the Next Generation that is insanely hopeful thing so the fact that that's such you know an important thing in my life is something that I'm so excited to do um I think that continues to drive me I also know that a lot of our own problems and a lot of the problems we Face are our own doing um you know the only thing that I can really control in the world when I'm doing these stories and when we're absorbing social media and current events like you can't control what's happening in the world you can control your response though and I would rather respond in a way that is productive that is empowered that is not Doom and Gloom goes back to the you know the dating stuff of yeah it's a freaking mess and people don't understand the nuances and online dating is absolutely like out of this world dumb and it's addictive and these apps are designed to keep you on them and they want to keep you single like that's all a mess you can't control that you can control how you operate within that world you can control the way that you respond to these news articles and always putting it back on yourself and your personal responsibility and the fact that you control all of that you control what goes on in your home and your private space that makes life worth living to me that makes life exciting that me makes me you know every day want to get up and produce a great show and want to change Minds CU I can control that I can do that I don't have to just sit and wallow go oh my generation's so screwed they're lazy they're terrible it's like okay let me let me try to change that because obviously I made a change in my personal life I went from literally not speaking and being so awkward and I almost did not take the job at Daily wire because I was so scared I didn't even want to send in my tape they're like hey could you react to a couple of stories just so we can see how you are on camera with some of these I almost did not send it in I had recorded it and I was petrified I was like I'm not good enough I'm not I just don't want to I'm this is too big of a fight I don't want to get out there I'm not ready yet took my mom literally yelling at my face saying this will this opportunity will never come again stop being a wimp like get your act together I want to meet your M she's insane she's amazing she sounds great she's perfect um and a lot of it comes from the way that she raised us I mean radical personal responsibility and I think people see responsibility and personal responsibility and you know accountability for your yourself and your actions as very daunting and uncomfortable and it is but it's also the most freeing thing that you'll do for yourself if you realize that your life is your fault which something the Candace always says your life is your fault you will be so much happier you will be so much more empowered because suddenly you have all of the options in front of you and if you choose to not take that risk to not go after that girl not go after the job not speak to that person it is your fault and so you can either be really pissed at yourself and have a lot of regrets or you can say I at least I you know I swung for the fences and I did it um and that can be huge life things in terms of your career and marriage and all of that but can also be just the way that you wake up in the morning and approach the world um I also think that you know humor is so underrated and because of the dilution of Comedy I think that we have lost the art of laughing at the Absurd and so I've Loved bringing that back in a lot of ways and allowing people to have like a a safe space where they can laugh at this stuff no matter what side of the political aisle you're on and that makes it more fun and enjoyable because I get excited to get up every day and crack jokes and hopefully make people laugh um so yeah it's all of that but I'm a very hopeful person I'm a very positive person um I'm not like a I wouldn't say I'm like a star-eyed rainbows and unicorns I'm still a realist but I know that there are certain things that are in all of our control and at the end of the day if you're coming home and you hate your life there's probably things you can do to make it better and I'd rather like always live in that space I'm constantly going what can I do to make this situation better if I'm unhappy what do I need to fix what do I need to do again so empowering hell yeah Brett Cooper hell yeah I appreciate you let's bring this one into land go they want to check out all of the things you and what can they expect what's coming up next uh so we you can find me at the comment section with Brett Cooper on YouTube We also just launched on Spotify which was crazy congratulations thank you we now have video and audio on Spotify uh so you can find us there you can find me on literally every social media platform I am in the underbelly of all of them and we have a lot of exciting things coming up I have dipped my toe back into acting with daily wire which has been a really enjoyable experience it's been fun to work with people who actually share my values who I trust kind of like we were talking about you know not wanting to be a shell for somebody's message that you don't agree with it's like I feel like I'm you know doing something that I care about and telling a story that I love and so pen Dragon was an amazing experience that'll be coming out I don't know when but hopefully soon I know that they're working on it it's an amazing story obviously we announced Snow White that's in the works we' have launched you know we've taken some big swings at the company you know we just launched birchum I'm in a lot of the Ben key Productions they keep me busy and excited to see just in a general sense the brand of Brett Cooper which is so weird to think of yourself as a brand obviously which I know you know it's so weird to like look at yourself but I think what people can expect is that there will be growth as I continue to grow and that's what I'm excited about to continue taking them along with me so that it's you know they know that I am I'm not just the girl behind the camera I'm like I'm I'm a malleable human being that's growing alongside all of you and I'm excited to see how that impacts the show and my work and all of it damn right I appreciate you thank I'm glad to be here thanks for having me thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode you will love my full length three-hour long conversation with the one and only Jordan Peterson right here go on press it