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June 29, 2023 - On Brand

03:30:42

OB #6 - Brand, Rand, Iran and Wuhan

This episode Russell and Gareth assert that Fauci and Gates literally caused the pandemic, and Russell does some mental gymnastics to provide cover for Trump. Support us on Patreon! - patreon.com/onbrand

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	This is On Brand, a podcast where we discuss the ideas and antics of one Russell Brand.
	I'm Al Worth, and each week I go through an episode of Brand's show with my co-host Lauren B. Hi, that's me, I'm Lauren B., and I don't know what's coming, but I'll find out!
	Yep, lucky you.
	Lauren, what is your bright spot this week?
	Oh boy.
	My bright spot is actually... I'm going to piggyback on a previous bright spot.
	There's a lot of very gay programming on Hulu for Pride Month.
	Drag Me to Dinner is, it's like a, it's kind of a fake competition show where two sets of drag queens, they throw opposing parties.
	So it's like a cooking show and like a party planning show.
	It's just, it's a fun comedy improv thing, really.
	It's just like drag queens that are good at hosting drag nights.
	Um, you know, I mean, obviously, like, you know, RuPaul Drag Race, like, alums and whatever, but they have other drag queens, just like popular drag queens on as well.
	And it's hilarious.
	I'm on board.
	It's so funny.
	So if you have any interest whatsoever, and you have Hulu, which is fairly cheap, it's Accessible!
	So there are 10 episodes and we like we had to pace ourselves because we liked it so much we were gonna like burn through a bunch of episodes so we were like okay we're gonna and the first episode is Jinx Monsoon and Bendelicrem oh gosh who was on the other side?
	I mean, it's on the internet.
	I would say a number of you have already had it advertised to you on your social media, if your algorithm is anything like mine.
	The Jinx and Dayla holiday specials, they've been working with Hulu for a while, and they're so funny.
	Everything Bendelic Krem, every word she says is just a treasure.
	There was this moment in Untucked on her season of Drag Race and I She's so naturally funny that she, there was some like, you know, some prompt and she was reading off a card and there was an item in a drawer and she was reading like, oh and what's in this drawer?
	And that's how I say drawer.
	In my head.
	Forever.
	It's adorable.
	Okay, I mean that, if you go by how it's spelt, I can't disagree.
	It was the most offhanded, like, and if you watch any of her stuff, there's a ton of it.
	Her drag is amazing.
	I've seen her perform.
	It's incredible.
	She does this like evolution of man burlesque routine that is spectacular.
	They're so good.
	Like basically everybody is as good as you could possibly imagine and they just Drag queens kind of usually get hung out to dry as far as entertainment goes.
	They're like, okay, well, you do drag, so you can show up in a full beat, fully done, and you deal with all your own bullshit that normally people get paid for on a regular TV show or YouTube show or whatever, and so they just have to show up and Basically they're like, well, deal with this.
	When normally you would find out like what you were covering, how long you were going to be there, you know, have, have roles kind of laid out for actors, comedians, that kind of thing.
	But they're just like, they just kind of get thrown into whatever.
	So they don't always look so great in entertainment.
	Like drag Queens are kind of working with whatever they've got in front of them.
	Um, And actually setting them up to succeed can kind of be an afterthought, but this show is spectacular.
	There's a fantastic drag king, Murray Hill, who hosts the show, and I love drag king representation, and especially because, like, His character is very, like, Tony Clifton, cheesy 70s guy, and it's just transcendent.
	I absolutely love it.
	Highly recommend.
	What's your bright spot?
	Oh, I've been...
	That's a loaded question right now.
	It's a loaded question right now because we've just had some imminent technical difficulties.
	It's really bad.
	I've just spent 20 minutes staring at an audio screen going, what the fuck is wrong with you?
	Because my audio drivers decided to just randomly update and then in order to get anything to work, because it deleted the old ones, I had to then restart the laptop and then everything's been Fucking mess, but we did it.
	We're here.
	We're coming from a bit of a dim place to a bright spot.
	Yeah, so we're gonna hit on the bright spot.
	I'm gonna go with One Piece.
	I think it's gonna be my bright spot for the moment.
	You heard of One Piece?
	You familiar with it?
	No, it's an anime.
	It's an anime about pirates.
	It was at one point the biggest one in Japan.
	I think it's kind of fallen down to like third or fourth place or something at the moment.
	But it's one of the longest running animes as well.
	It's been going since like the 90s.
	What?
	That's crazy!
	Oh yeah, and it's nowhere near done.
	It's up to like...
	I don't think it's hit a thousand yet, but it's around there.
	I'm catching up at the moment because I went through a stage... I've been watching this show since I was 12.
	So yeah, quite a while.
	you know so so yeah quite a while um you know we're talking many many thousands of hours i
	imagine spent Because up to like episode 500, I think around that kind of period, I will have seen each of those episodes at least three times for sure.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And they're like 20 minutes long, you know.
	So just, I don't know.
	Someone do the math and tell me how many hours of my life I've spent watching One Piece, because it's a lot.
	Wow!
	It's a lot.
	What does the name have to do with pirates?
	Help me.
	Because, so it's a fictional kind of universe, etc.
	with several different oceans.
	And at the end of the main one, which is what I say in the main one, like the kind of the most dangerous one is called the Grand Line.
	And at the end of that, upon his execution stand, the Pirate King, Gold D. Roger, he shouted out to everyone, like, go and find it, I left it all there, wealth, power, fame, fortune, all of that, I left it all there at the end of the Grand Line on this island called Raftel.
	And that is One Piece.
	Like, what he left there.
	And it's been like 50 years or whatever, or however long.
	Nah, I think it's like 20 years since his execution.
	Something.
	It's been a long time anyway, and no one's found it yet.
	It's set off the golden age of piracy.
	So that's what One Piece is, you know, and whoever gets it becomes the next pirate king is the idea.
	Oh, a sword in the stone kind of situation.
	Yeah, yeah, kind of, kind of.
	But the deal is, in order to get to that point, you have to be the most powerful human being in the world at that stage, basically.
	There's cool shit.
	There's powers that people have by eating these things called devil fruits that give you weird, different kinds of powers and stuff.
	The main character, Luffy, he's made of rubber.
	That's kind of his power.
	Which sounds not very useful, but he's like a rubber.
	No, I used to watch the X-Men cartoon.
	I get it.
	I don't remember the stretchy guy's name, but I remember what he looked like, and he was very effective.
	Yeah, so you know, he can stretch and do shit.
	And pirates!
	Pirates!
	That's a great theme!
	It's really cool.
	I've been enjoying it a lot lately because I spent a long while, kind of every time I catch up with where it is in present day I stop listening, stop watching like present day episodes for a good couple of years so that I can properly like binge it.
	Um, so I've just been going through a good couple of hundred episodes recently, just, you know, well, yeah, when I get the time, just like, right, I'm gonna sit here and just go through it, and it's so good.
	It's so rewarding.
	Well, we're, yeah, we're saving up, uh, Righteous Gemstones episodes right now to, one, not spend that much money, because, but also, uh, it's just more fun that way.
	I don't want to wait!
	I just want to watch it all!
	I love a good binge watch.
	And One Piece as a show as well, it just gives me all the feelings.
	There are moments I find it inspiring and badass.
	I think it's probably the show that's made me cry the most often.
	That's for sure.
	There are certain emotional points that it hits on where I'm just like, oh god!
	Every third or fourth episode I'll probably be bawling at something.
	There are certain arcs, certain pivotal moments where I will properly ugly cry while watching it.
	Every time.
	It doesn't matter that I know that it's coming.
	It's just done so well.
	Yeah, I think we all have stuff like that.
	And if you don't, I recommend it.
	I think a good heaving cry at narrative, like, fictional entertainment is A Bomb to the Soul.
	Yeah, no, it's great.
	It's great.
	You work through your emotions through fictional characters rather than having to deal with yourself.
	Yeah, it softens the blow.
	You spend all day dealing with that, you know.
	Anyway, we have a show to do.
	Yes, it is awesome.
	I'll be learning about anime things.
	That's what I'm realizing, because I don't know anything about it.
	I will say, it's a long show.
	A thousand episodes or whatever so far.
	And intimidating.
	We're going to be at at least 1500 before the thing is finished.
	It's like a soap opera, right?
	The amount of content is crazy.
	Kind of, but with a much more consistent narrative throughout.
	It's pretty impressive.
	And you get callbacks in the 800th episode or whatever to something that happened in fucking episode 56 or something.
	And you're just like, Okay.
	It's impressive in that respect.
	But yeah, anyone who wants to get into it, just start at the beginning and see where it goes.
	I'd recommend working your way through the first 20 or 30, probably, just to see whether... The other thing is the tone shifts every now and then.
	I don't know.
	It takes a minute to find its feet, I think.
	But yeah, super into it.
	Nice.
	Anyway, we have a show to do.
	That's fun!
	Cool.
	But first I think we should thank some new patrons.
	Yeah!
	We have a couple this week.
	So first up, that's the one I wanted.
	Runza, you are now an awakening wonder.
	You are indeed an awakening wonder.
	Thank you, that was also, Runezar also gave us a Blue Sky invite, so thank you so much!
	Oh, dope, okay, okay, I'm done.
	That makes sense.
	I may be posting, I really hope so.
	Thank you so much!
	Yes, thank you for both of those things.
	Awesome.
	And our second one, Bembo, son of Blebembo, you are now an Awakening wonder.
	You are indeed an awakening wonder.
	Thank you, Bembo, son of Blebembo.
	I actually understand that reference.
	Did you get that reference?
	It is also a painfully obscure reference to Readers of Questionable Content, the webcomic.
	That is from the artist, Jeff Jacques, went off on kind of a tangent.
	For a period of like four or five strips, maybe five years ago or something.
	So yeah, that was a pull for me, but I do actually get that reference.
	That's so fun!
	So there we go.
	I love that.
	I don't need to know the reference to enjoy just the obscure thing that people get into.
	I think it's fantastic.
	It's also just Great yeah and excellent webcomic.
	Yeah he just did a couple of random strips about this kind of barbarian kind of guy going around chopping stuff up.
	Oh it's pretty great.
	Love to see it.
	But yeah thank you very much and if anyone wants to support us and what we do become an Awakening Wanderer or even donate on a higher tier head to patreon.com on brand and you will have our eternal Gratitude.
	It's a big deal for us and allows us to buy things like food and shelter.
	Oh, and please note that while you can easily listen to our audio version anywhere, you can find podcasts, you can also watch us on YouTube, or if you listen in the Spotify app, the video should come up there.
	Two.
	Now, let's get into this proper.
	When we posted the Dawkins episode, episode four, I had one of Brand's followers push back saying that Brand wasn't a Christian.
	He was just a spiritualist pushing for a slightly vaguer form of theocracy.
	Well, random Brand follower, this clip is for you.
	Hello there you Awakening Wonders, it's Thursday and as yet Jesus Christ has not returned to Earth.
	But we need you Jesus!
	Come back, let us know in the chat and comments if our Lord Jesus has made himself clear, plain to you through some sort of apparition.
	Doesn't count if it's in toast, doesn't count if it's in the cloud.
	One actual Jesus incarnate emanating light to change the world because we need it.
	Jesus Christ must rise again according to uh Russell.
	Spiritualist indeed.
	That also was so absurd.
	It sounds like a joke.
	It sounds like a joke if you don't understand his underlying beliefs.
	That's the thing.
	I feel like had I Had we not covered the Dawkins episode when we did, we were really lucky that came along when it did, to be honest.
	Lucky is a funny word to say, but sure.
	No, I know, I know.
	I'm being silly.
	But it would have framed things so differently, whereas now I see this and I'm like, oh no, he means that.
	That's actually, he's saying the things that he means to say.
	Okay, that's pretty much the most that we'll get of that in this episode.
	But yeah, he definitely means that.
	Yeah.
	But we've also noticed a trend for me as I'm the person that's, you know, it's hitting me in real time.
	I keep making excuses in my head.
	for what Russell is saying like I'm noticing it that like I'm filling in gaps that are left open that are he leaves these vagaries and I'm like oh well he's kidding because it's so silly it's it's trying to I know he's not like No, no, I know, I know.
	I was there, I saw it!
	Trying to rationalize it and trying to kind of explain it away.
	And it's something that I do when I'm looking at the clips and when I'm cutting them and everything.
	And especially when I'm researching, I'm like, is he saying that?
	I have to second guess myself like 15 times before I'm like, no, he's definitely fucking saying that, isn't he?
	Yeah.
	I'm the person who will preach like when people tell you who they are, believe them.
	I absolutely, that rule has served me so well in my life, but my brain doesn't want to!
	Yeah, oh god, there's just, there's, he's a lot, he's a lot, you know, he even makes us doubt ourselves, you know, so it's a wonder that his actual followers, you know, struggle, you know, it's no great shock, is it?
	Next up, Rand introduces the topics of today's episodes, and boy, there are some shit-gates, shit-gates?
	Shit-takes, right out the gate.
	Do them Trump documents show an intention to invade Iran?
	Is Rand Paul ratcheting it up a little bit, gal?
	Is he ratcheting it up a bit?
	He certainly is.
	Oh, no, you didn't, Rand.
	You didn't just go there in Bill Gates' world, did you?
	I certainly did.
	Rand goes to Gates land because a lot of people aren't willing to start saying in public Bill Gates and Fauci were costly contributors to the pandemic.
	It's Thursday, you tell us in the chat right now, what do you think the role of Bill Gates was in the pandemic?
	What do you think Fauci's influence was?
	Benign or malign?
	Yeah, so Bill Gates and Fauci were costly contributors to the pandemic, apparently.
	We'll be getting into that in just a minute.
	Yeah, you excited?
	You excited about today's show?
	No!
	Also, the way that he speaks is already super confusing.
	Like, puts my ADD into overdrive.
	But I'm not!
	Listen, I will turn this podcast around right now if he's doing Rand, Brand, and Land.
	Little device.
	I'm out.
	I'm out.
	Trapdoor.
	Shoomp.
	I'm done.
	Dang it.
	Unfortunately, we might have to touch on some rand.
	I'm very sorry about that.
	But in the next clip, it would seem Russell is a touch confused that he is that he no longer does the same things that he did when he was a child.
	Say you're- you- for all I know, you're watching this on Twitch.
	For all I know, you're extraterrestrial nation watching this in the future.
	You got it out when them pods people used to do.
	Don't do that so much now, do we?
	No.
	Like pods for the future.
	They were always doing that when I was a kid.
	We're gonna bury this in a pod for the future.
	Now, we ain't got a future!
	If you've got something, don't put it in a pod.
	Sell it!
	Sell it before the Mad Max apocalypse times are upon you-ly!
	So I checked with my niece and nephews, and the filling a box full of stuff and burying it for the future is absolutely something kids still do.
	Honestly, no idea why.
	It seems fairly baffling when you look at it objectively.
	But my issue here is that Bran seems to think that because he's not done something recently, it therefore stopped happening.
	You know, he's like, oh, I haven't done that in a while.
	It's like, well, no, you're like fucking 40 years old or whatever.
	Do you know what?
	Do you know what?
	I don't know his specific age.
	I should actually look that up.
	If we're the same age, again, I'll turn this fucking podcast around.
	I'm going to do that right now.
	The weirdest part, of course, is that he has children as well.
	So it's like 40.
	He's 48.
	There we go.
	There we go.
	That stands to reason.
	Yeah, he has kids.
	So it's like, well, surely, surely you.
	I don't know.
	You would know this.
	You would know this.
	It's fun!
	It does feel a little outdated as like a fun project because we all have the internet in our pocket now so we can just see what the newspaper said 50 years ago but I mean when I was a kid P.S.
	I'm 39, just so everybody knows when I was a kid.
	Yeah, time capsules were super cool!
	It was like a really neat little fun thing.
	Also, if you're gonna invoke Mad Max in my home, it's the Puck Eclipse.
	Thank you.
	I'm not obsessed with those movies.
	I don't know what you're talking about.
	put that in my fucking time capsule anyway. All right. Yeah, yeah, you know what culturally
	relevant. Next up as intimated in the introduction, Brand has a new political hero.
	So, uh, yeah, um, hold on a minute. I've got some really vital and important points to make.
	Rand Paul!
	Rand Paul!
	We want Rand Paul on this show.
	If you know Rand, or if you are Rand, look at yourself now.
	Oh yeah, I am Rand.
	If you are Rand, come on!
	Come on, and we want to talk to you about this stuff, because even though he's a Republican, isn't he?
	Yep.
	and then they have some shares in some sort of pharmaceutical company.
	Oh we won't get into that.
	It's not as bad as other people's.
	I like we what like because I think he's a good independent political voice and if there's going
	to be change within the system it's going to come from alliances from people from the left
	and the right that are willing to challenge establishment authority and
	Rand Paul is willing to do that. I like his hair it's like a baby's hair.
	What the f- laughter
	Are you f*cking kidding me bro?
	laughter Sure about that?
	He's a he's a republican isn't he?
	You sure about that?
	It's not as bad as other people's.
	Gareth Roy, we won't get into that.
	We won't get into that.
	It's pharmaceutical.
	Some incredibly obvious double standards.
	Some incredibly obvious double standards coming to the fore.
	Had they been talking about someone on the left who had shares in a pharmaceutical company, we wouldn't be able to Pay them to shut the fuck up about it.
	It turns out it's not Rand himself who had shares, but his wife, who on February 26th 2020 bought shares in Gilead Sciences who make antiviral drugs to treat COVID-19.
	So just before, you know, the world's tried to end.
	So good time to invest, I'll give her that.
	The Senate, however, has a 45-day reporting deadline for financial disclosures like this, but Rand was a little bit late by about 15 months.
	Rand Paul, if anyone's wondering or doesn't know who he is, he's the son of longtime Republican politician Ron Paul.
	Yeah, another wonderful shithead.
	Rand self-describes as a constitutional conservative and supporter of the Tea Party movement.
	He's pro-legalisation of marijuana, pro-immigration, at least for a Republican, and pro-criminal justice reform.
	On war, Rand is mostly reasonable, but the Ukraine have him on a list of politicians who promote Russian propaganda, likely partially due to him preventing a vote on a $40 billion spending bill for aid to Ukraine during the 2022 Russian invasion, and partially that he's also stated that Biden provoked Russia by advocating for Ukraine's entrance into NATO.
	Oh my god.
	So that's where that comment from Instagram came from, some joker.
	Okay.
	There we go.
	Got it!
	Anti-war pro-Russia, right?
	Seems to be a theme emerging here.
	Rand is anti-abortion rights, anti-vax and anti-LGBTQ+, asserting that gay marriage, quote, offends him and a lot of other people and that there is a crisis that allows people to think that there would be some other sorts of marriage.
	He's also compared gender reassignment surgery to genital mutilation.
	On term limits in November 2019, Rand Paul signed a pledge to support a constitutional amendment to limit senators to two terms.
	In 2022, he was elected for his third term in the U.S.
	Senate.
	So Rand Paul is a bit of a mixed bag, but I'd say he errs on the side of shithead, personally.
	Maybe I've been exposed to a little more Rand Paul.
	I'm sure I have.
	You don't live in my country.
	Definitely more than me.
	Over the years.
	Yeah.
	And I've studiously tried to avoid him.
	Yeah.
	Grade A piece of shit.
	Absolutely.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Grade A piece of shit.
	And also to say you're anti-war.
	This is the thing that has come up a couple of times and it makes me fucking furious because anti-want to pay for this war Because you're on the side of Russia, is not anti-war.
	Being anti-war is being anti-aggression.
	Yeah, he's also anti-war with China, which, like, fucking so.
	Yeah, of course.
	Yeah, but I'm not sure.
	He was anti the Iraq wars and all of that.
	And he did try and do a thing to immediately bring back all of the troops within the space of like a year.
	I think he tried to do that a few years ago and it failed.
	Well, you can also try to do that and know that it's not actually gonna happen
	and then it just looks good on your resume.
	There is also that, which I imagine is probably the case.
	But you know, he's seemingly anti-several wars, but yeah, definitely still pro-Russia.
	But also inconsistent!
	So the thing is, we don't know.
	We don't know.
	I've heard this guy say all kinds of shit.
	There is that as well.
	Next up, Russell decides to fire some shots at Obama.
	You are not going to believe this video that we're going to bring you when you see the powerful boogieing on down while you were locked up in your home.
	But there's no room for any systemic change.
	Everything's fine.
	Just keep voting.
	Just keep handing over your tax money.
	Barack Obama, he ain't handing over his income tax.
	He's getting advice on how to avoid laws that he helped pass.
	It took me a minute to find this story that Brian's on about.
	He kind of mentions it in passing and doesn't circle back to it at any point, but I thought it was worth looking into and I got curious.
	The story comes from independent journalist Lee Fang, and it was then picked up by the New York Post.
	Fang has been described as liberal and progressive in the past, and he's worked for outlets such as The Nation and The Intercept.
	But when looking at his independent substack, all I can seem to find is fuel for right-wing narratives, namely in the form of anti-Ukraine, anti-immigration, and anti-democratic party stories.
	To give an idea of the slant of Fang's article, here's a couple of quotes.
	Barack Obama campaigned extensively during his presidency to eliminate the carried interest
	loophole, a tax strategy that allows billionaire investors to evade ordinary income taxes.
	However, since leaving the presidency, Obama has employed a similar tax strategy to potentially
	only pay capital gains taxes for the services he has provided to private business interests.
	Obama pushed multiple times during his presidency to eliminate the carried interest loophole, which he condemned as a giveaway to the super-rich.
	If certain monetization events occur, such as the sale of NBA Africa, the income Obama receives from the partnership will only be taxed at capital gains, a rate of 20%.
	Ordinary business income generated from the deal would be taxed as income.
	So, what the story actually is about is that Barack Obama has a deal with NBA Africa, specifically as a strategic partner.
	In a July 2021 press release, the NBA announced that Obama will have a minority equity stake in the new venture, while he helps advance the league's social responsibility efforts across the continent.
	Now, here's the sticky bit.
	The only evidence that this is a profit equity deal comes from Fang himself.
	Quote, according to private information I obtained, the deal is structured as a profit interest share.
	That's it?
	Is that the only reference?
	Or like, citation?
	Yes, the entire thing relies on this guy Fang being an honest actor, which given the content of his sub stack, I very seriously doubt.
	But here's the thing, even if it is true, a press release from Obama's office very clearly states
	"The former president intends to use proceeds from the MBA Africa venture to fund Obama Foundation
	youth and leadership programs across Africa." Basically it's disingenuous bullshit from start
	to finish. So like- Even if Obama does make any money off it, it's going back into his own fucking charity.
	It's completely nonsense.
	Yeah, we know how charity funding works.
	We know that.
	Also, this throwing of stones, the glass house and throwing of stones at other charities is a theme that we've been noticing with Russell.
	Yeah, I do wonder.
	He does have a habit of telling on himself, and I'm wondering if that's kind of what's going on there.
	Well, maybe we don't know.
	We don't know about his own charity, but he's really pretty awful.
	He makes a lot of accusations towards charities, and he has one.
	Yes, it's definitely... I'm working on it, let's put it that way.
	We don't get to choose what comes up either in these episodes, you know?
	We deal with what we can.
	Also, I'm not being funny, but talking about evading... well, it's not even evading tax, it's trying to find tax loopholes and shit.
	It's just the way people pay taxes in this country.
	This guy who is talking is a multi-multi-multi-millionaire!
	Are we expected to believe that he has never once, like, you know, put his bloody assets in some offshore account or whatever the fuck else?
	Like, has some business registered in Panama?
	I don't know.
	Sure.
	Or just follows laws in a way that benefits them disproportionately than poor people.
	That's the problem with the tax code!
	I bet he's got a couple!
	Yeah!
	And they can figure it out.
	Yeah, a hundred percent.
	So it's just complete hypocritical nonsense.
	That's unreal.
	Yeah, no, it's glass houses, right?
	Just fucking calm it down.
	Calm it down a bit, Russell.
	It's your show!
	You don't have to do that!
	You can come for corporations and like it's not really the same, we all have, you know, like it's not your own backyard that you're accusing of misconduct.
	Though, I mean, stay free media, you know, that's his LTD, that's his limited liability company.
	Sure, sure, sure.
	Next we get into a clip of Rand Paul on Fox News.
	But we all know that Communist China covered it up initially.
	How are you going to get the truth now?
	They won't even allow an investigation into the Wuhan lab.
	Yeah, it's not easy and they haven't been forthcoming.
	I think the only way to convince them is that it won't all be about blaming them because we participated in funding this.
	The blame equally should go not only to Chinese authorities, but to Anthony Fauci and all those who advocated for this.
	But there has to be a reassessment.
	Look, Bill Gates has been over there recently.
	Bill Gates is the largest funder of trying to find these viruses in remote caves and bring them to big cities.
	So what happened in China is they... Beautiful way of framing it.
	It's part of what gain-of-function research requires, finding novel viruses that, as yet, haven't made an interspecial jump, experimenting with them in order, supposedly, apparently, and most plainly and overtly, in order to create a vaccine for a disease that doesn't exist yet, just if some stories are to be believed.
	I'm talking about Schellenberger's recent revelations on this show that the Wuhan, uh, the, the, sorry, why did I call it the Wuhan virus?
	The coronavirus!
	began in the Wuhan Institute of Virology which I think is in...
	China.
	Yes, that's where it is.
	A little bit of a Freudian slip there.
	Oh, what have I caught?
	The Wuhan virus.
	Maybe, uh, maybe because some people keep calling it the China virus.
	Yeah, fuck.
	Okay.
	Um, can you tell I've had a lot to research in this episode?
	Yeah!
	It's, uh...
	And it's also, that was a very Jennifer Coolidge, yeah, I just gave out, that's good for me.
	Yeah!
	Okay, for real though, like, I, the zoonotic diseases issue really gets under my skin because the way that we, factory farms are so unsafe, the way that they are operated, it is such a problem that is not getting fixed.
	I, uh, yeah.
	And manipulate the information as a cudgel in their weird little culture war makes me fucking furious.
	There's more.
	Because it's a... there's a... great.
	Cool.
	There's more.
	Right.
	So.
	Bill Gates has been over there recently in remote caves finding diseases and bringing them back to big cities.
	Shut up.
	Shut up.
	Jesus fucking Christ.
	So we'll get to that in a second as there's a lot to unpack from this last clip, right?
	So.
	Rand Paul is talking about gain-of-function research being funded by the National Institute of Health via a lab in Wuhan.
	In short, gain-of-function research is messing with viruses and bacteria and shit like that and mutating them intentionally to better understand them with the aim of creating vaccines and medicines.
	Usually it will be to increase transmissibility in some way.
	So mutating a SARS virus to transmit from humans to rats or something for instance.
	Assuming it previously didn't do that.
	And then examining which part of the genome was mutated in order to understand it with a view of can these viruses infect people?
	How likely would they be to mutate in order to do that?
	And hey, let's get a catalogue of these viruses out there so we can deal with them if they come up.
	It feels a little bit risky, but as long as a lab is dealing with these things responsibly, it's fine.
	And particularly important when dealing with rapidly spreading diseases.
	Amusingly, in the USA, gain-of-function research had a moratorium imposed on it for a stretch between, I think, 2014 and 2017.
	Because the labs couldn't be trusted.
	Not even because of this specific type of research, but less dangerous stuff.
	Someone injected a chicken with the wrong strain of influenza.
	There were incidents of not properly deactivating anthrax samples.
	And a discovery of unlogged smallpox samples.
	Oh no!
	Can you imagine these same people fucking with diseases?
	Escalated!
	Yeah, nah.
	Well, I hope you can imagine it, because yeah, the moratorium was lifted in 2017.
	Let's hope these labs received some serious training in those few years.
	The lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been dealing with SARS research for decades, particularly as the 2003 outbreak did considerable harm in China, but the research they do does not intentionally increase transmissibility.
	Which is not to say that something like that couldn't occur unintentionally, because of course it could.
	Mutations are mutations.
	You know, you can't always predict them.
	Either way, at this stage the lab leak theory is still unfounded, and COVID-19 being zoonotic, meaning spreading from animals to humans, seems much more likely.
	For reference, COVID-19 has a 96% similarity to a variant of SARS found in bats in 2012.
	Also, according to Dr. Stanley Perlman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa, who studies coronaviruses and is a pediatric infectious disease physician, it would be impossible to take such a virus and make the kind of changes required to turn it into SARS-CoV-2 in a lab.
	one would need a virus that's 99.9% similar and even then only in theory it might work.
	Yeah. So now on to what brands... I know, I know, I know, I know.
	I went from zero to furious and I'm still just maxed out.
	Because, we've known this, there has been someone reporting this the whole time.
	Yeah, every day.
	Every fucking day.
	If these people, these people being the propagandists and the misinformation, disinfo agents that are out there like Russell Brand, if you care about a lab leak, how about you get up in arms about the situations that capitalism and deregulation That are making the situations where zoonotic diseases can mutate naturally in our world, worry about that.
	That's much less profitable to the outrage and racism cycle that his audience engages in.
	Yeah, and we'd have to look past China.
	Because there are situations in every factory farm in America Yeah, just look on your own front fucking doorstep.
	We have problems in this country.
	Fewer than the US, because we are more heavily regulated, but still.
	Now, on to what Brand was saying about Michael Schellenberger's supposed revelations about the origins of COVID-19.
	Schellenberger has a substack called Public which seems to focus on censorship, COVID and conspiracy theories.
	There's a piece on there co-authored with Matt Taibbi saying that they have US government sources stating that the first people sickened by COVID-19 were scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
	The piece asserts that these three scientists were the patients zero, that COVID-19 originated at the WIV, Wuhan Institute of Virology, and that gain-of-function research was being undertaken, which is what caused the thing to happen in the first place, according to them.
	From everything I can tell, it's complete horseshit and conjecture from dishonest actors with no editorial standards and a huge axe to grind.
	Really, it highlights what is probably the biggest problem with independent journalism.
	Particularly independent investigative journalism posted to the internet, which is that the person writing it is also the editor.
	Meaning, when it comes to something being sourced, double-sourced, or confirmed, they basically don't have to do that unless there's a risk of someone suing them.
	The only time they can be forced to give up a source is when a judge in a court compels them to do so, and even then they can refuse, and they'll then be found in contempt of court, do some jail time, and end up an eternal martyr to the right wing.
	Or just pay a fine.
	Let's be real.
	All of that.
	But in order to do that, they'd have to admit that it was bullshit.
	And I don't think... Well, I'd say in lieu of jail time.
	Because, I mean, what we've learned from Alex Jones is you can just not participate in vast chunks of the legal process.
	True.
	And sometimes come out on top.
	Not in these instances, but in previous instances.
	True.
	Come out with a slap on the wrist.
	Was he found in contempt of court?
	I know his lawyer was, wasn't he?
	It's hard to keep those straight.
	And whether or not he should have been in contempt, like he did, he was in contempt, but not necessarily charged.
	I'm just thinking about previous lawsuits where Alex just was given the benefit of the doubt, question mark?
	Yeah, yeah, for sure.
	And there's also, you know, you've got the question of kind of civil suits versus... Of criminal, absolutely.
	Yeah.
	And there's that aspect.
	But yeah, generally... Suffice to say, it's complicated, and there's not a lot of oversight.
	Who knew law is hard?
	Being found in contempt of court usually involves some jail time, I think.
	But yeah, there are variables.
	There always are.
	Sure, sure, sure, sure.
	Yeah, anyway, in this case it's incredibly unlikely that Schellenberger and Taibbi would be sued, so they can make up as many US government officials as they like with literally no pushback from an editorial staff and no consequences for lying.
	Obviously I can't guarantee that they're just making this up, but with these individuals being the same purveyors of lies, half-truths, spin and conjecture as our boy Russell Brand, let's just say the odds are ever in favour of this being bullshit.
	Again, biggest problem here is that we're having to take their word for it and at present no one can yet concretely disprove their supposed sources, meaning they just get to spread this nonsense as far and wide as they like with remarkably little pushback.
	I'm so mad.
	Yeah, it's a real fucking issue.
	I'm sorry I'm being redundant.
	It's still true.
	That is something that I do want to point out.
	Other podcasts that point this out as well, and I think it's valid, there are journalistic standards.
	There are fact checkers.
	There are facts that exist in the world that are correct.
	and can be checked and verified.
	There's a system, there's rubric.
	So there's kind of this, there's an idea that's been bouncing around the internet,
	you know, as soon as like kind of cute, 'cause QAnon, the posts made by QAnon,
	that's supposed to be a government informant.
	How are we not?
	Exactly.
	So how are we not?
	I mean, that's basically, it's as robust of a reference.
	If Schellenberger and Taibbi are still just saying a government agent official.
	Yeah, just US government officials, you know, who have said, oh, yeah, it's 100% them.
	They were definitely the first, you know, and Yeah, there's no one that's gonna sit there and argue with it.
	Like, the most I've seen from the places that were covering this story was, obviously, you know, they're anonymous so we can't be 100% sure.
	But, it's like, oh, fuck off.
	The saving grace is that, you know, most most sane media outlets haven't covered this at all.
	So that's that's something.
	But yeah, obviously, it's still it's still going to get thousands upon thousands of people.
	Yeah.
	And there are unnamed sources in legitimate journalism all the time for a number of reasons.
	Oh, yeah.
	That doesn't mean that they still have to be that someone behind the scenes Is still fact checking and is double checking and making sure that that source isn't the like you can't just have.
	I mean, it's you're basically saying I saw a random tweet and to be fair.
	OK, this isn't fair.
	I'm just pointing out that the disinfo agent.
	Stochastic terrorist ilk.
	Hmm.
	Takes the WHO or the CDC, they will cherry pick information just as easily from them when they want it as a random tweet or a movie they saw.
	The reality and the validity has very little to do with getting mentioned and getting thrown into the pot when they're cooking up their little stew.
	Yeah, no, no, they don't really seem to care much about how respectable the source is, you know, how trustworthy the source is, let's put it that way.
	Keep that in mind, everybody!
	Yeah, this next clip takes a bit of a weird turn.
	And so, if Fauci, of course, because under Barack Obama, gain-of-function research was banned in the United States, so they transferred it to a little old place, you might have heard of it, called Wuhan.
	And indeed, it seems that Bill Gates, and we can't prove this, and we've got to be careful about this, especially on YouTube, Rand Paul is saying, and we've got no reason to doubt him, I don't think, that Bill Gates is the number one... He's funding it.
	That's what he's saying.
	Certainly, he significantly funds the WHO.
	88% of its total philanthropic donations come from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
	Certainly, Bill Gates set up the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation.
	$750 million, he put into that.
	For the first part of his life, it was all paper clips and windows, wasn't it?
	It was all about, he helped us in a much more mercantile and observably profitable way.
	Now, Bill Gates' help has moved in a much more diffuse And yet still helpful forms, mostly medicines, isn't it?
	So that at the end there, I wondered if it was sarcasm, but it seems like they're both genuinely saying like, oh yeah, Bill Gates is good and helping us with medicine.
	It doesn't have the presentation of sarcasm for me.
	And I'm British, I know sarcasm very fucking well.
	And that didn't feel... It's a weird take for a show that spends a good chunk of its time demonising the man.
	And look, for the record, I am not going to defend Bill Gates at any point.
	My only job is to make sure that critiques levelled at him and others like him have some basis in fact and not in conspiracy theories.
	But that was a really weird turn.
	The WHO funding statistic is misleading.
	As we went through in the last episode, the Gates Foundation provides 6.9% of the WHO's total funding.
	My favourite part of that clip though was definitely We can't prove this, but Rand Paul is saying this, and we have no reason to doubt him.
	That was outrageous.
	Also, 6%.
	I remember, I was like, uh-huh.
	Mental note, we're going to cover that.
	I already have ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
	Never mind the fact that in that very same clip that Russell is playing, Rand Paul is lying.
	Before I forget, this whole thing about Bill Gates funding gain-of-function research in China is completely unfounded nonsense.
	There is literally no evidence of it anywhere.
	Rand Paul just seems to like saying it.
	He keeps saying it without presenting any evidence or citation or anything.
	Uh, the most specific Rand Paul has gotten about it is saying that Gates funds the WHO more than some countries do, therefore that's suspicious.
	Um, were I Bill Gates, I would sue the living fuck out of this man.
	Uh, what Rand Paul was about to say just prior to Bran cutting off the clip...
	Oh my god.
	was that Bill Gates is the largest funder of trying to find viruses in caves
	and bringing them to big cities.
	And then what happened in China is they went eight to 10 hours south of Wuhan,
	two to 300 feet deep into a cave, found viruses and took them back to a city of 15 million.
	Rand Paul, in that interview, said that Bill Gates was the cause of the pandemic
	with literally zero evidence.
	Oh my God.
	Oh my God. - Yeah.
	Yeah.
	(bells chiming)
	Fucking incredible.
	Well, at least he's in the government.
	Great.
	Yeah.
	And at least, you know, like he's on fucking Fox News and shit.
	At least he's being platformed.
	That's great.
	And his hair is terrible.
	I'm sorry.
	Like a baby's hair, apparently.
	And if anyone has that hair, has a hairstyle similar.
	No one has that hair.
	Good for you.
	You know what?
	If you do rock it in style, that's fine.
	But you aren't in Congress.
	Just cut it shorter, man.
	It's hard enough to hear insane bullshit out of someone that looks really professional, but like, Yeah.
	To hear it from, like, the guy that, like, also kind of looks like the sassy barista?
	Like, I don't know.
	I mean, he's 60.
	He's 60 years old.
	Goddammit, man.
	You're grown.
	You're grown, my dude.
	Supposedly.
	Sorry about commenting on appearance, but it's just distracting.
	It's distracting for me every time I see a clip of him saying something.
	It is distracting, and it does look a bit silly-ass, but you know, you can't control your hair.
	But maybe, I don't know, Boris Johnson always messes up his hair deliberately, so I wonder if it's a similar thing.
	Growing it out is like, if it's your hot boy summer, that's one thing.
	And I will trust you with a latte!
	That's a Hot Boy Summer haircut.
	Rock it, do your do, that's fine.
	The fact that he's saying such unserious things with an unserious hairdo, but has real dire consequences for the country...
	Has very genuine power.
	Is what is alarming.
	That's the hard part for me.
	Yup.
	Yup.
	I do not disagree.
	So Rand Paul says that Gates caused the pandemic.
	Gareth Roy believes it was someone else.
	But if you look at it in terms of like the cause of the pandemic, we now know because of Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi, that the NIH, who Fauci was a head of, funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan that led to patient zeros and then potentially the start of this pandemic.
	So it was Fauci who did it!
	Ah, that was fucking predictable, eh?
	Again, the NIH doesn't fund gain-of-function research.
	That's just bullshit.
	So, yeah, there we go.
	We've got our two guys.
	Next up, as mentioned, Rand Paul makes his assertion about Gates.
	Eight to ten hours south of Wuhan, two to three hundred feet deep into a cave, found viruses and took them back to a city of 15 million.
	There are many, many scientists who think that Bill Gates is wrong in funding this, that our government's wrong, that the Chinese government...
	Bill Gates?
	Sue this motherfucker!
	He's saying that you're solely responsible, or at the very least culpable, for the entire fucking pandemic.
	It's astonishing.
	I don't understand why he's- And the clip is on Fox News.
	Right!
	I would say the importance of recent legal actions towards Alex Jones and Fox News The importance is not even necessarily the result in and of themselves, but the precedent.
	It has not been set before.
	We're in a system of common law.
	We know that we can, all of us understand, there can be consequences where there was not previously precedent for consequences.
	Significant consequences.
	So do it!
	Guy with money!
	Yes, I agree!
	Yeah, it's like, you can afford to sue the fuck out of this guy.
	Just do it!
	I'm not suing anybody!
	But you can!
	No, we can't afford to.
	In this next clip, Brand once again wants a referendum for literally everything.
	Do you think?
	Do you agree with Rand Paul?
	Do you want that kind of research done?
	It seems to me that it's the very kind of topic that should be exposed to the searing heat of democracy.
	Do you want gain-of-function research or do you want bureaucrats and billionaires deciding that you want gain-of-function research, funding it, potentially profiting from it, even though it sounds risky and potentially that risk has already been realised in the last three years?
	Let me know in the chat where you stand on that and is this a matter for an evolved democracy?
	Christ, how slow would our society be if we followed his ideas?
	Literally every decision would require an immediate referendum.
	It's also socialism.
	The way that socialist organisations function As this is maybe it's off topic or maybe it's a tangent but the way that say a like a worker owned co-op of some kind when there are big decisions everyone gets a vote.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And I'm not sure if we could get Russell Brand to say that he is a socialist.
	I don't think so either.
	I don't think he would say that because it has a very different meaning, as we've discussed before in America, to what the actual meaning of the word is.
	Yeah, I'm searching for the edges of where his, like, because he says so many left-sounding things and anti-sounding anti-capitalist things, but I want to find the edges of, I mean, not even just practicality, like, Where are his solutions?
	What does he think is gonna happen?
	Doesn't provide any, never has, never will.
	Absolutely never will.
	That's not his remit at all.
	He just wants to say, we need change!
	Give me money!
	And that's pretty much his gig.
	Yeah, pay to join my chat so you can yell at it with other A hundred percent.
	So you can be awoken.
	Again, I do not trust the public to be well informed on complex issues, especially when they're being informed by shitheads like this one.
	Ultimately, that's what's going to happen in a situation where there is much more immediate democracy.
	You're going to get people like this fucking spreading bullshit.
	Yeah, if there were no money in politics, if you could not purchase attention, if you couldn't purchase attention of the public, Man, that may be more fair.
	I know how much people actually vote in this country.
	The numbers are shockingly low.
	Can you imagine what the voting numbers would be?
	Say there was like a referendum every week.
	Jesus Christ.
	Even if it came through to an app on your phone, right?
	Can you imagine how shit the numbers would be within weeks?
	The first couple, it would be a novelty and then everyone would get fucking bored.
	I really don't think about it.
	It'd be awful.
	Or it'd become like next door.
	It'd be some kind of awful.
	I don't know.
	I mean, because the local politics and petty squabbles really Yes, his entire ideology is completely fucking absurd.
	I just, the thing, oh okay, man oh man, it's just so absurd.
	Yes.
	It's so absurd.
	His entire ideology is completely fucking absurd.
	Next, uh, Brown makes a bizarre comparison before a bit of self-aggrandizing.
	And isn't this the very kind of idea that should be scrutinized?
	Let me know in the chat because I'm genuinely interested if you're like, no, we've got to have our precious gain-of-function research.
	It's not the NFL, it's not the Premier League, it's not like part of our culture that we just can't give up, is it?
	It's not the MTV Awards, which we all know is where the great presenters shine most brightly, don't we?
	We do know that.
	I've always agreed to that.
	Yeah, for anyone wondering what he's on, that's where he got his start.
	Russell Brand was an MTV presenter at one point.
	So, because something isn't an inherent part of our culture, like various forms of football obviously are, We should be content to do away with it, apparently.
	Taking this argument to its logical conclusion leaves us with only the parts of society which have a rich tradition literally denying any and all societal progress.
	But also, the part he's missing here is that the purpose of actual gain-of-function research, the actual thing that happens, not what we've just been talking about, Yeah.
	is medical in nature.
	And I would say that we have a pretty fucking significant history of medical research.
	Especially over the last couple of centuries.
	Yeah.
	So, there we go. It is part of our culture.
	Fuck you, Brand.
	Oh my god.
	Sigh Okay.
	It's not part of our culture like football.
	Shut up.
	It really, you know, I come to these episodes and obviously I'm, you know, I'm coming in cold.
	Don't know what's going on.
	And I think sometimes they're going to be subjects that don't make me as angry.
	The yoke's on me, friends!
	Oh, you sweet summer child, you.
	I apparently just fell off the turnip truck!
	I bumped my noggin!
	Speaking of stories that are going to cause you rage, next up, brand pivots to what will be our main story of this episode.
	Isn't it interesting as well the way these issues are continually framed it reminds me of a story that we're going to be doing in a little bit and of course everyone's covering Trump and the secret boxes.
	People talk about oh why has Trump got those boxes but isn't the more important subject what is in the boxes if there's plans for a war then that's the story really.
	You can already see how this is gonna play out uh It's okay, we've gone from rage to hysteria, that's fine.
	It's cool, it's cool, it's cool.
	So Brand is about to spend the rest of this episode providing cover for Donald Trump with some fantastically obvious whataboutism and obfuscation.
	So the technical difficulties that happened before the record kind of unlocked the slumber party laughing inside of me, where it's just like, oh no, this is like, because, because what I was watching was Owl went silent on my end of my headphones.
	But I could clearly see you saying the words, what the fuck, over and over, and it was so funny.
	And I'm sorry, I was laughing at, I was laughing with, I don't know where it was.
	But it's that little kid trying to be quiet and go to sleep laughter that just...
	It's fair.
	There are some things in this world that are objectively funny no matter the context.
	One of my personal favorites is the sound of someone either in the dark or in another room hurting themselves.
	So you just hear this Ow!
	It's just like, that's funny.
	That's just funny.
	No matter what.
	No matter what.
	Especially if you've been here like, yeah, that's great.
	That is always going to be funny.
	Right, so.
	So yeah, it's a coping mechanism.
	It is what it is.
	It's necessary, I think, for this show.
	So before we get into Trump, though, Gareth Roy wants to go back to COVID.
	I think another important point about this is that you know highlighting Bill Gates and Fauci might seem a bit like well is it really just those two and it can maybe feel a bit like well you know you can't just in you can't just blame two people but we know if Michael Schellenberg was correct that Fauci was involved through the NIH in the funding of this in Wuhan that could have led to the whole pandemic starting we know that both of those were involved in the explanation of it They were sending emails that were redacted and uncovered by Jimmy Tobias of The Intercept and other journalists who found that they were, in terms of the proximal origins theory, encouraging this idea that this started in a wet market.
	So the proximal origin paper is one of the most read papers in the history of science.
	Basically saying COVID-19 was not constructed in and then leaked from a laboratory.
	Instead highlighting the likelihood of it being zoonotic.
	This piece from The Intercept, written by Jimmy Tobias, has what I can only assume is a willful misunderstanding of how science works.
	Namely, in the very early days of the pandemic, Fauci and several other leading virologists sent emails back and forth debating the potential of COVID-19 being a lab-created virus.
	After much discussion, they decided to attempt to disprove the lab leak theory.
	Which is responsible.
	That's the responsible thing to do and that's what they did.
	But the way that Jimmy Tobias frames it, it's as though the scientists would do everything they could to find another explanation.
	The reality, however, is that attempting to disprove something following the proper scientific method either leads to disproving the theory Or not!
	They would have been fine with either outcome.
	The results would have been the same had they been attempting to disprove the theory that COVID-19 came from animals.
	The results would have been the same either way.
	I would also like to point out that this piece from The Intercept is based on a series of emails and calls gained from a specific FOIA request and by no means shows the full picture of conversations had surrounding this issue Or the writing of the Proximal Origin paper itself.
	But, according to Gareth Roy and Russell Brand, this is to be taken as the gospel truth that it was some big cover-up.
	It's a little bit frustrating.
	A little.
	Just a touch.
	Just a touch.
	So next up we have a little bit more playing with fire here.
	Well they were themselves discussing the possibility that it had a clinical origin and closing down that line of inquiry perhaps precisely because gain-of-function research is risky and are we now experiencing those risks and how irresponsible those that have conducted it have been.
	It shouldn't perhaps be happening in the first place.
	We also know obviously that the last part of that is that they were both involved in the pandemic response.
	Fauci obviously few His role, which we all know about, and Bill Gates through to the WHO and Carvey.
	He was all over the TV when he fought you, every ten minutes telling you to put this on and take that off and stand over there.
	I love that he couldn't name Fauci's job.
	That's my favourite bit of that.
	Through his role, which we all know about.
	So his role, Gareth, was Chief Medical Advisor to the President of the United States.
	Is it a huge wonder that he was on television a lot advising people what to do when a pandemic is ravaging the country?
	There's a weirder perspective here, that because Fauci and Gates had something to do with the pandemic response, they are therefore responsible for its creation?
	It's another truly bizarre take which I would like to apply to other walks of life.
	So, bear with me here, right.
	Firefighters, right, Lauren?
	Firefighters.
	Have you noticed that they always seem to show up when there's a fire?
	There's always a fire when these people are... Well, I reckon maybe it's because it's them that's starting the fires, and then they put the fire out to cover up their misdeeds, and they get paid for it!
	Or, or, right?
	Doctors, right?
	You ever noticed whenever there's a doctor around there's loads of sick people?
	Loads of sick people around doctors!
	All the bloody... It's clear to me that doctors are spending their time intentionally making the populace sick and then treating them to cover up what they've done.
	My dog is going berserk.
	It's alright buddy.
	I think we're all in agreement that this is a very frustrating subject.
	I agree.
	I hear it.
	He was dreaming.
	Oh, that's cute.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I would have made a joke about the police in the US making crimes, etc.
	But it feels like there's a deeper truth to that one.
	Well, also, whenever you were mentioning firefighters and stuff, I was like, well, there was the one guy, but he got convicted of all the arsons.
	Back in the very start of US history, there were the competing fire gangs, weren't there, basically, that would start fires.
	Yeah, but they weren't covering up their crimes.
	No, they weren't trying to cover anything up.
	They were like, yep, we did it, now pay us.
	Pay us to put it out, you bastards.
	It was extortion, it was totally different.
	Yeah, that's a completely different thing.
	Oh, God.
	But yeah, it's just a fucking weird thing.
	Because you're there dealing with the aftermath and the explanation of it, therefore you started it?
	It's just bizarre.
	They put this line of this kind of type of thinking.
	We've seen it already, too.
	My nerves feel calmed, somehow, by noticing the patterns, at least.
	The complete fucking backwards gymnastics going on here.
	It's much like the thinking on how charity works, you know?
	Right, yes, exactly.
	It's incredibly stupid.
	It's baby brain!
	But we know that it's a trend.
	So, this next clip illustrates just how little Brand knows about the stories he's covering.
	What he's about to show is a clip from Fox News on The Bottom Line with Dagen and Duffy.
	Instead, Russell thinks there's one guy called Dagen Duffy.
	Let's have a look at this story.
	This is a mad-looking news story called The Bottom Line with Dagen Duffy.
	He's a bloody good broadcaster.
	Actually, I don't know which one's Dagen Duffy.
	Is it him or her?
	Who cares?
	They're both nuts.
	I don't know if you've seen them before.
	Have a look at them.
	Your personal data is up for sale, and... I like it, baby!
	See, that sounds like Cher in that Bubble Voice song.
	Yeah, a bit like that.
	If I could turn back time... Yeah, what's the other one?
	The more modern one that should be?
	Can't break free... That one.
	Godly.
	Oh, I wish I had... Hold on a sec.
	Wait, it's worth it.
	This'll be good.
	I can't break free... Wasn't worth it, wasn't worth it.
	No, it was not.
	That was embarrassing.
	Was that supposed to be Cher?
	Yeah, yeah.
	So my other thing is like, when you're talking about that song, why the fuck would you pick I Can't Break Free as the line rather than the anthemic chorus?
	Right?
	It's just baffling.
	There are so many things about this man that vex me, but that's pretty high up on the list, of course.
	To be fair, I have since found out through recording this podcast, which you all get a catalogue of all my experience and practice.
	In this very feed.
	And I can tell you that sometimes your brain doesn't really give you what you want.
	As I learned when I was looking at a clip from The Exorcist and I called it The Shining and I was like, wait, what did I say?
	Huh?
	Your brain will give you weird stuff.
	My background on my computer is the carpet from The Shining.
	I love that movie.
	I have a visual aid.
	I made masks.
	I forced Mike to print fabric with the shiny carpet.
	It was, I had it to hand.
	I like the moment.
	I will point out at this stage, Lauren, exactly no one has given you shit for getting that wrong for all of five seconds.
	I don't care about anyone else's opinion.
	But what I'm saying is, it's an excellent illustration.
	I'm going to hate it till I'm dead that I said that.
	It's no one else's business how much I don't like myself sometimes.
	Do you know what?
	I get the feeling that Russell doesn't have that problem.
	I wish you would!
	But that's the thing.
	You don't always have the words that you need.
	I don't want to come at somebody for that who's riffing.
	You know what I mean?
	Like off the cuff.
	Because we all make mistakes.
	As a musician, I'm going to come at him.
	I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to judge him for that one.
	I am going to judge him for that one.
	And I think that we can choose the hills that we would like to, to, to stake our, our, our little flags.
	That's totally fine.
	I don't want, like, I just, because I made the mistake, I made mistakes myself, but then I take it seriously and correct it.
	Yeah, this is the thing.
	I don't think Russell is keeping himself up at night, you know, kind of thinking, oh, I'm gonna hate myself forever for saying that.
	I don't think that's an issue that this man has.
	And I'd like to draw attention to the parallel as people that care about being honest.
	And there's people who don't.
	Yeah, that seems to be how the world is divided, pretty much.
	I will waggle fabric at the camera to prove a point if I need to, and I'm fine with that.
	I'm fine with that about myself as a human being.
	For the listeners, that's what I did.
	Let's get into what Dagan and Duffy are talking about.
	Old Dagan Duffy?
	Yeah, old Dagan Duffy.
	Let's get back to the news.
	It's being bought by spy agencies at the federal government.
	A report released by the Director of National Intelligence reveals that US intel, military and federal law enforcement agencies are buying and selling personal information.
	So they're buying it from them, probably.
	They're buying it from Fox, MSNBC, CNN.
	These people are not your friends.
	So this story they're covering is true.
	U.S.
	intelligence agencies are buying personal data from private companies because said data is commercially available to literally anyone with basically no oversight.
	Were I someone with a show about staying free, that would probably be my focus.
	That literally anyone, including intelligence agencies from other countries, can purchase data about you.
	Instead, these fucking idiots spend ten minutes talking about how the mainstream media are bad because they're some of the companies that engage in collecting and selling data.
	They could agitate for regulation and reform, get people to write to their representatives, something, anything, they have millions of followers, but no!
	Instead they just decide to dunk on the mainstream media because it's easy and it suits their narrative.
	Thank you.
	That's what keeps just the blinking light in my head that just keeps saying regulations.
	What you want is regulations and oversight.
	Yes.
	That's what you keep asking for.
	I cannot nod my head any harder than that.
	But you're pretending you're not, right?
	Yes!
	It's ridiculous.
	It is ridiculous at this stage.
	That's what you want!
	Because, and I can tell you as a completely deregulated country, it's gone real shitty.
	Because when you have regulations, you have to prove that you can follow the regulations
	and the regulations were replaced.
	Well, the regulations were removed.
	And the argument was that, not the argument was, What we were left with is, oh, well, you can still sue companies if they do something wrong, instead of having to prove that they can operate safely and effectively.
	Then it's left to the consumers and to citizens to sue companies that get to do whatever the fuck they want.
	We have to pay for it.
	We have to prove it in court, which is massively more difficult, more time consuming, more money, more everything.
	It fucks everything up.
	Yeah, I mean, I've got to say, being in a more heavily regulated country than yours, it's much better.
	It's not perfect, but it's definitely better.
	Yeah, we have found that out just through happenstance and random text messages.
	We've already found out quite a few things in that regard.
	And that's what drives me absolutely nuts about the deregulation conversation, because we aren't paying less for our government.
	No.
	No.
	We aren't getting a deal because they stopped doing their jobs!
	Yeah, no, no.
	And as well, my prediction post-Brexit is that that is what's going to slowly happen to the UK.
	We're going to slide into being the US with no oversight.
	Because the thing is, one of the big reasons that people wanted to leave the EU was to get away from EU regulations.
	That's so stupid.
	Yeah, completely backwards.
	It's the fault of the propagandists.
	I've eaten food outside of the US!
	The food at a 7-Eleven in Copenhagen is amazing compared to the crap that we get.
	Like, it's just, like, it's not the same everywhere.
	It's actually different.
	Like, life is actually a lot nicer.
	Food especially.
	Yeah.
	It's very obvious.
	Food and wages.
	Google it.
	Just give it a give it a joojle and you'll find out yourself.
	Yeah, I mean, don't use the UK as an example, I'll say that, because we're in our own kind of different kind of hell over here, but there are definitely still some things that are better.
	Yeah, y'all are in a transition period to what we do, which is, I'm sorry, that's awful.
	Yeah, I don't like any of what's happened in the UK since at least 2010.
	Anyway.
	Next up, Brand has some weird thoughts on how culture works.
	There's Terrence McKenna, the great, late Terrence McKenna, that psychonaut, that ethnobotanist, that genius of the plant mind would say, the culture is not your friend.
	Of course the culture generates magnificent things, it created Jimi Hendrix, it created David Bowie, it created John Updike, it created thousands of geniuses, it created you and me together right now.
	But, ultimately, what is the function of the culture?
	It is to contain you, condition you, to conform you, to institutionalise you, and to make you passive.
	So, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, and John Updike exist to conform you, institutionalize you, and make you passive?
	I mean... I'm living proof that's wrong.
	Surely, surely those things that make up the culture represent the supposed purpose of the culture, right?
	So, when we look at the heroes of any specific age, it's a reflection of society during that time.
	But, I don't know, according to Brand, I don't know, Hendrix was a globalist?
	Like, wait.
	That's why he died.
	That's why he died, he rebelled.
	So maybe Bowie was a globalist, right?
	He lived to a decent-ish age, you know?
	Quite sure Bowie would have told Russell Brand to fuck off, that argument is guaranteed.
	I would have loved to see that.
	So would Jimi Hendrix, frankly.
	Yeah, abso-fucking-lutely.
	But you know what?
	I don't even need them to say it.
	You know what?
	It's implied, it's fine.
	But yeah, weird perspective and weird quote there from Terrence McKenna, who was an enormous advocate for everyone taking LSD.
	You know, I don't disagree with the principle, but I'm probably not going to take political advice from the guy.
	You know, that's pretty, he literally spent his entire life advocating for that, for legalization and for everyone to do it, which, fair enough.
	I mean, be careful.
	Yeah.
	I'd say I'd say mostly sure.
	I'm on board with like the legalization and the make commonplace all that kind of stuff.
	But also if you have certain mental health predispositions, you need to be careful.
	So, trip responsibly.
	Trip responsibly, and maybe not, like, all the fucking time, you know, because that can cause problems.
	Diminishing returns!
	It's just not practical.
	Like, if you want to get, like, really fucked up, then, like, you know... With psychedelics especially, that's a different beastie, you know, because of how it affects your brain.
	Oh, dear.
	Just terrible, terrible taste.
	That did not make any sense.
	Like that was just just words.
	It was just words he threw into a bag and shook.
	John Updike of Run Rabbit fame.
	You know, he exists to conform you.
	Anyway, in this next clip, Brand wants to cover something that is too hot for YouTube.
	It's too controversial and critical towards the powers that be.
	So he can't possibly talk about it until he's solely on Rumble.
	In fact, he's going to start a revolution.
	Now listen, we're going to leave you now on YouTube or Twitch or Twitter or SoShowBot or HandClap or TruthSocial, whoever the hell you're watching this, to show you what you've long believed.
	Now you're going to want to click on the link.
	Click that link in the description to join us on the home of Free Speech Baby, which is Rumble, to have a look at exactly what part It's too explosive!
	powerful were conducting while they were telling you to sit down, mask up and shut up before you
	coronavirused lovely old grandma. Look at what they were doing in the background of their parties.
	You can see their signs saying stand two meters apart while they're agadoing and boogieing on down in a conga of
	absolute deception and treachery.
	Join us only on Rumble. We cannot show you this stuff. It's too explosive. It's gonna, it's gonna incite revolution
	this. It's gonna incite revolution.
	I told you.
	I told you that you'd Insight Revolution.
	Join us right now on Rumble.
	Are we off yet, Cal?
	Because I'm... I don't... Are we off?
	Are we off?
	Are we safe?
	Are we safe?
	Right, okay.
	So, for anyone out of the loop, during Christmas 2020, Christmas was essentially cancelled in this country, as everywhere was in a pretty tight lockdown.
	Boris Johnson and his government of cronies, on the other hand, were holding Christmas parties, cheese and wine lunches, and generally ignoring all of the laws they were enforcing on the rest of the country.
	It wasn't just at Christmas.
	On April 17th, the Queen was forced to sit by herself at her husband's funeral and not be anywhere near her own family.
	The night before, Boris and his ilk held a party with drinking and dancing for departing spin doctor James Slack.
	Um so just fucking example of the hypocrisy you know and it was like I'm not a big fan of the monarchy but it was heartbreaking to have to see the queen sat on her own at her husband of fucking however many decades funeral it was just outstandingly poor taste.
	I mean that's still just that's just an old lady like yeah no she was she was like the country's grandmother I will say you know she she'd been around that fucking long It's still just elder abuse.
	It's just not nice.
	It was disgusting.
	It was disgusting to see that kind of contrast.
	The lack of responsibility and just the blatant not giving a fuck.
	I can understand and I get why Russell would be covering it.
	I feel like this is a well-worn news item.
	Well so, this is what I'm going to get into because Bran believes that criticism of this behaviour and criticism of the former Prime Minister is too hot for YouTube.
	So here's a clip that is regrettably on the Telegraph's YouTube channel and it's Labour MP Jess Phillips talking in Parliament about Boris Johnson and his parties.
	And I did steal this clip from YouTube by the way.
	So there were people in our country Who listened to Boris Johnson talking on the television.
	They took away from him what the rules were as the primary message giver in the pandemic.
	They understood the rules and it cost them their lives in a completely different way to that that has been discussed so far.
	The idea that Boris Johnson didn't understand the regulations I mean, it's a cracking defence on his part, I have to say, because it basically means he's too stupid.
	He's either lying or he's thick.
	As somebody said, somebody wasn't mutually exclusive earlier.
	I think that's the case in this instance as well.
	Those two things are not mutually exclusive.
	Zing!
	Yeah, she's got some spectacular points.
	I don't mind Jess Phillips.
	I would like to point out that Partygate, as it's called, is what finally ended Boris Johnson's political career as an MP.
	The findings of an investigation into all of these parties is what caused him to resign, hopefully never to return.
	Consequently, criticism of Boris Johnson and his behaviour can be found within seconds of simply googling his name on YouTube, social media, the news, fucking everywhere.
	But when Brand covers it, oh it's just too hot, it's going to incite a revolution!
	Fucking charlatan.
	We're going to skip the rest of the coverage on it because it's just these two idiots taking the piss out of two of Boris Johnson's aides for about seven or eight minutes and I have no time for that.
	And I don't think it's necessarily reasonable to cut it, but I'm so bored with this story at this point, because I just get to be reminded of how... I mean, first of all, it's just like, it's a party.
	Fine.
	And then, and like, it's not fine.
	It's bad.
	But there isn't a lot more to say about it.
	No.
	Yeah, they broke the rules.
	The rules were thoroughly broken.
	This was bad.
	Done.
	Yeah.
	Was bad.
	Was bad.
	Should be punished.
	Okay.
	Was bad.
	Did happen.
	Done.
	Fuck off.
	Everyone who did bad, fuck off.
	But also, it just is this stark, painful reminder of how little enforcement or any type of accountability happened in my country.
	So it's a little unrelatable.
	Little unrelatable.
	No, I get that.
	In a disappointing way.
	And it's just like, oh, I'm extra disappointed.
	Cool.
	Things having consequences in your country doesn't happen that often either.
	So, you know, I do get it.
	To rich people, no.
	No, not to politicians or the rich and powerful, of which Boris Johnson is both.
	Ask the parking ticket I got for being in the wrong place for like a minute and a half last week.
	Yeah.
	Plenty of consequences.
	Don't get me into parking.
	Like, anything that's not a percentage of income is just... Yeah, it's something that the rich just don't give a fuck about.
	Anyway, anyway, anyway.
	It's why... Where was it?
	Finland, I think.
	I can't remember which country.
	One of those countries has speeding fines, etc.
	done on percentage of income.
	So if you've got, it's incredible.
	I think it was, I don't know, a couple of years ago that people have been fined hundreds of thousands.
	For speeding and it's just wonderful.
	It makes sense.
	That's actually a deterrent.
	Way better sense.
	It didn't even occur to me.
	I'm like, I'm just poor.
	I'm a poor person.
	So I think, I have poor brain where I'm like, wow, that would be amazing.
	But yeah, there's no incentive for rich people to not do whatever bullshit they want to do.
	I have known.
	Because a fine is just a fee.
	That's it.
	I have known people, like rich people, with their cars, just park anywhere because they don't give a fuck about the fine, because they're like, oh, that's just how much parking is, is how they consider that.
	Parking is that 50 quid fine or whatever.
	That's just what that is.
	I've parked on Double Yellows, I'll be there for six hours.
	Eh, 50 quid.
	Eh.
	That's just the way they consider it.
	They do put that in reality shows on the BBC too.
	It's kind of entertaining.
	Like the, you know, the hotel, like any kind of like service industry, like, this is what the inside of a cruise ship looks like.
	Let's see what everyone does and how many pallets of mangoes we need.
	But also that kind of like, when someone parks their, you know, their Lamborghini A Kimbo in front of a very fancy place and everyone just has to freak out about it.
	So I do, at least it's visible.
	You can see it because it's not here.
	Yeah.
	I mean, no one's addressing the problem, but everyone's kind of aware of it at least.
	So next, Brand introduces his editorial piece about Trump and his boxes.
	Now though, another story that helps us to understand the ways in which the brinkmanship of media narrativisation operates.
	We are in the midst of a great scandal where there is an attempt to indict Trump, presumably to prevent Trump running again, on the basis of his possession of boxes of secret documents.
	But what is in those boxes?
	Apparently, As we heard yesterday, golf shoes and golf shirts and golf memorabilia.
	That's part of it.
	But also, potentially and perhaps more interestingly, although equally interestingly, plans to invade Iran, which seems extraordinary.
	Here's the news.
	No, here's the fucking news.
	Okay, so first up, apparently this is only a big story because the media are trying to stop Trump from running again, supposedly.
	If shit like that worked, he would have never gotten off the ground in 2016.
	The outrage has only ever fed into his success, except in cases like this, where this is legally actionable shit.
	In terms of golf shoes etc being in the boxes if anyone missed it that was part of Trump's defense.
	He said that the boxes of classified intelligence were mixed in with his personal belongings and that he had to go through every single one before giving them back just to make sure his stuff wasn't left in there and he'd just been too busy since his presidency ended three years ago.
	So there's that.
	And I'm gonna use...
	I'm gonna use a phrase that served me well in my previous career as a tattoo artist or just doing art stuff still generally is that your lack of preparation is not my emergency.
	Just because you didn't sort your shit does not mean you get to break the rules.
	No, no.
	That is not how it works.
	It's an astonishing attempt at an excuse.
	It's very dumb and also probably a lie.
	Probably a lie.
	It's definitely a lie.
	It's definitely a lie.
	All my golf shit's in there, you know.
	Shut up.
	We'll get into the Iran war situation in just a minute but first let's hear Russell's opening salvo into the editorial
	What's in the boxes Stop talking about the fact that he's got boxes!
	What's in the boxes?
	Is it plans for a war with Iran?
	What's in the box?
	We live in a world where people will censor Trump's post-arraignment speech.
	Also, we're fetishizing the fact that Trump has got these boxes.
	How dare he take those boxes?
	It's a transgression.
	It's awful.
	We can't have the contents of those boxes revealed.
	Why?
	That would give the Russians or the Chinese or whoever we are supposed to hate this week a terrible advantage in their ongoing potential perennial war against us.
	Or is there a possibility?
	And just let me know in the comments if you agree.
	But contained within Trump's boxes are plans for a war against Iran.
	Has been alleged in some quarters.
	If that's true, that's more important and indeed chimes quite nicely with the previous revelations under Cheney, Bush et al.
	There was a global imperialist plan for the next American century to invade Iraq.
	Done.
	Afghanistan.
	Done.
	North Korea.
	Working on it.
	And Iran.
	Let me know in the comments where you stand on this story.
	So, this relates to a larger conspiracy about taking over certain countries the US doesn't particularly like, including North Korea, apparently.
	Yeah, what?
	He seems to be a little bit preoccupied with North Korea, because as far as I'm aware, there's nothing new on that front, really, but he keeps bringing it up.
	Yeah, I only hear it coming from, like, you know, right-wing, like, pundit folks.
	Which, I mean, kind of a bummer, you know?
	It's not going anywhere.
	We should be more concerned, but there's not a lot we can do.
	I wish there was progress being made, but yeah, it seems to be the status quo is carrying on as far as I'm aware.
	What could the US possibly want from North Korea?
	Because that's why we war.
	It's because we watched it.
	There's nothing to take.
	Why would we do it?
	Listen, that's conspiracy talk.
	A conspiracy theorist can get on board with me and that idea that there's motivations for the U.S.
	to execute military aggression because they want shit.
	What do they want?
	It's been proven many times past.
	Yeah, exactly.
	From invading North Korea, I don't know what would be achieved there, particularly.
	I'm not entirely against deposing the regime that's there, just for the record.
	Sure, but we're not going to do it because it might be helpful.
	That's not why we do No, no, it's not altruistic, let's put it that way.
	So in this next clip, Bran gets into MSNBC's decision not to show a Trump speech, as it would essentially be platforming lies and bullshit.
	But Russell has a different view.
	Now tonight, after his arraignment on federal felony charges, he's speaking again, this time to an audience of his supporters that's gathered for a campaign fundraiser tonight at his golf club and summer home in New Jersey.
	We knew heading into this that he was planning to make these remarks.
	We are prepared for his pre-fundraiser remarks tonight to again be essentially a Trump campaign speech.
	Because of that, we do not intend to carry these remarks live.
	I can't.
	We cannot trust you to judge Trump for yourself.
	It's mad, isn't it?
	What do they say about Trump?
	This guy is so alluring.
	If you hear him, it's going to blow your mind.
	I mean, it's pretty funny and stuff, but I think I can sort of, like, keep a clear head.
	I'm not, like, going all doe-eyed and giddy.
	Ah!
	Tell me what to do, boss!
	Ah, he's too alluring, he's too appealing, he's just too good for MSNBC to trust their audience.
	Or Trump's a compulsive liar who will use any and every opportunity to campaign, including the hundreds of times he violated the Hatch Act.
	One of the brand followers asserted to me that Russell doesn't like Trump whatsoever And, well, I've gotta say, this coverage begs to fucking differ, and you will see from the tone of the rest of this as well.
	Also, uh, didn't have to go out of my way, heard the speech so many times.
	The arraignment speech, yeah, the post-arraignment speech.
	It was everywhere.
	It was everywhere.
	The clips were everywhere.
	So yeah, MSNBC.
	Decided to use journalistic rigor, because those are real rules that exist, to not platform lies.
	And it wasn't even, we're never going to play this, it was we're not going to carry these remarks live because we cannot trust that he is not just going to use this to campaign.
	We are going to wait and see what he says and then we're going to cover that, like the actual relevant portions of it, at a later date.
	And legitimately, they're not going to give up on the ratings that pay off for cable news networks and Trump.
	They don't want to give that up.
	I'd say that's also bad.
	No one's looking great here, but not in the way that Russell is saying.
	No, no, but I still think it's fair to not platform the bullshit.
	I think that's a good decision that everyone should do, and they should just be like, this person's talking shit, we're just never going to platform it when they're talking shit.
	And I think that's the way that should be.
	It's not the way it is, but it's the way it should be.
	Or we do, for a purpose.
	Mmm, uh, exactly.
	Um, next up, uh, Bran just straight up talks some shit at a camera.
	It's extraordinary, isn't it?
	Because we know that MSNBC's attitude to censorship fluctuates.
	They were very happy to carry certain messages around the vaccines, which have since been plainly, objectively, scientifically disproven.
	You know how they covered Russiagate, the idea that Trump, who they're plainly obsessed with, was peed on and that he essentially was an agent for Russian interests.
	That's been disproven.
	It was never credible and they were happy to carry that all the time.
	This is just entirely bullshit.
	He doesn't specify which vaccine messaging he says was false, but my guess is it's the whole doesn't prevent transmission thing again.
	And Russiagate, as it was known, was vindicated by the actual investigations into Trump's Russia ties.
	We still can't guarantee that Trump likes getting peed on, but hey, we don't kink shame on this podcast, so whatever.
	Yeah, I don't care.
	Yeah, I don't give a fuck.
	Do what you do.
	I don't care.
	I definitely don't want to see it.
	There was like a hot minute there.
	Good God, no.
	There was a possible tape.
	Yeah, I was like, oh no.
	That's the last thing I ever want to see.
	I don't want to hear it.
	I don't want to like...
	No, no, no.
	If that ever comes to the fore, whoever discovers it should seal it in concrete and dump it in the North Sea.
	That's what should happen to that thing.
	If you make me deal with that reality, I'm going to be more mad at the person that puts it in front of me.
	I don't care about knowing whether it happened.
	If it's like, oh yes, he likes getting pissed on, good for him.
	I don't care.
	I just don't want any more information than that.
	Thank you very much.
	I just want the workers to get paid.
	That too.
	The pissers and the cleaners.
	Yeah, the cleaners especially because that's a tough gig.
	Often the workers are the cleaners as well, you know, there is that.
	I just, like, compensate for their time and effort.
	That better be a big ol' tip.
	That's all I'm saying, really.
	Otherwise, I fucking don't care.
	Like, I don't fucking care.
	I care about real crimes that fuck up our country.
	I could not give less of a shit about the pee thing.
	I'm irritated that I ever had to think about it.
	Do not care.
	I'm quite sure I know people who enjoy getting peed on and more power to them.
	Oh I definitely do!
	Great friend, wonderful.
	So fucking what?
	Yeah, and listen, I get to be an old square and y'all get to do whatever.
	It sounds exhausting to me, but that's me.
	I'm tired.
	Yeah, I think that's a running theme.
	We are tired.
	We are tired of this.
	Pour one out for me while you're at it!
	I appreciate the sentiment.
	P1 out for you!
	Thank you!
	I put that out there and you picked it up.
	It's called friendship.
	I could make another P joke but I'm not going to.
	We need to move on, we need to move on.
	We need to move on, we need to move on.
	So next, brand doesn't like it when people ignore the facts, apparently.
	So when Maddow talks about the responsibility of the media to convey truthful information,
	it's just isn't it the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard?
	Is there anyone now, alive, that thinks that the mainstream media isn't essentially there to amplify their preferred perspective and ignore information that contradicts it?
	That's what they do, isn't it?
	If they're right-leaning, they'll amplify Republican messaging.
	If they're left-leaning, they'll amplify Democratic messaging.
	If you're Russell Brand, you'll throw shit at a wall and see what makes the most money and work out what's from there.
	I've got to say, given that my entire purpose in this show is finding swaths of information that Russell intentionally ignores in order to push his narratives, this is just a little bit fucking rich.
	Yeah!
	Rich!
	Oh my god.
	White rich!
	Yep, just ridiculous.
	And next, I don't think Brand quite understands the horrors of slavery.
	No one will amplify this message.
	You cannot trust either of those parties.
	They're both owned by corporate interests that are globalist in their nature.
	If you don't demand decentralised democracy, your lives and the lives of your children will be a form of mediated penury and slavery.
	Uh, given that Andrew Tate, who Russell has previously endorsed on his show, was convicted of human trafficking just last week, one would think that he might want to avoid the slavery narratives for a bit.
	Um, apparently not.
	Uh, equating our modern existence to slavery is also just ignorant beyond belief, and minimizes the abject horror so many people, especially people of color, had to go through.
	It's outrageous.
	Also isn't- I agree completely.
	And isn't decentralized democracy anarchy?
	Wouldn't that be technically what he's advocating for?
	Um, I think he means it more on... He calls himself like an anarcho-syndicalist or something, right?
	I guess I'm... Oh, who the fuck knows what he calls himself these days.
	Right, I know, but... I think what he more advocates for is more kind of like local, it being like on a smaller scale.
	Basically, as I've said, he just doesn't trust anything when it gets to a certain size.
	I don't know how his system would work.
	Again, he's never made it clear and never will.
	Also, having 6 million followers on YouTube doesn't sound very decentralized to me.
	I don't know.
	What do I know?
	No, I mean his following.
	He's kind of building a cult.
	That's kind of what he's getting at.
	That's why he makes sure that there is plenty of distrust in anyone and anything that isn't him.
	Yeah, I didn't mean to gloss over the comparison to slavery.
	It's just fucking nuts.
	It's just fucking nuts.
	Completely crazy.
	The biggest problem with big business backing both major parties is that they're globalist in nature.
	Like, I know we've discussed the antisemitism around the word globalist before, but I'm really starting to feel a hard J coming on here.
	I really, I think it's, I think it's under there somewhere.
	And we switched to Rumble, right?
	Oh yeah, we're well on Rumble.
	We've been on Rumble a while.
	So Rumble, all right, so I do want to clarify, so He starts on YouTube, which is- he named the other platforms that they also disseminate that to, and then you click the link and then you can go- so you can view on Rumble for free.
	Yep.
	Correct?
	But if you pay- I don't pay for this.
	No, okay.
	Oh, I figured.
	But you pay for the chat.
	And the chat locals.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So so when you when you're on locals, you can see the when you're on paid locals, you can see the live stream and you get access to the chat and got all the comments on things, et cetera, et cetera.
	Yeah.
	I was just curious.
	It's like, I mean, I don't use rumble for good reasons that are probably pretty obvious.
	But yeah, I just I what I just wonder what's behind a paywall and what isn't and what I figured.
	I figured.
	I just wanted to clarify.
	Also, for the listeners, if they don't... Yeah, this is still free.
	Obviously, the first 15 minutes are on Rumble as well.
	Yeah, it's... Okay, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
	That's annoying.
	Okay.
	Yes, yes, yes, it is.
	I mean, we're fine.
	Whatever.
	But yeah, I can definitely feel like there's some underlying anti-Semitism, I think, just kind of...
	Just poking his little head out every now and then.
	And that's why I was asking you about Rumble, because it's like, well, that's where all bets are off.
	Okay.
	Well, the thing is, yeah, Rumble being the quote, home of free speech, it means it's the place where you can say Nazi shit and no one bats an eyelid.
	That's what that actually means.
	You start going around the dark corners of Rumble and fucking hell, I don't want to.
	Do not recommend.
	I don't need that.
	Brand tells on himself a little more in this next clip.
	As we have said before in these circumstances, there is a cost to us as a news organization to knowingly broadcast untrue things.
	The idea that the media is responsible and conveys information on the basis of its veracity is simply untrue.
	It conveys information that is expedient.
	The objective is, use Trump to increase views, but not so much Trump that the Democrats don't win the next election.
	We want the Democrats to win because, you know, Rachel Maddow, who I keep telling you I think is a nice person, who I actually like, appears at Lockheed Martin funded events.
	The world has gone all unusual.
	In the 1980s, would it have been plausible that a military industrial complex company like Lockheed Martin, who make missiles that blow up kids, could sponsor gay pride?
	Because the idea behind the LGBTQ plus Okay, hold, hold, hold.
	I can see the rage.
	I can see the rage.
	Um, right.
	Yeah, there's a lot.
	Reminder, we're supposed to be- Reminder, we're supposed to be talking about Donald Trump and his boxes here.
	What we've gone on to is gay pride.
	Right, so.
	Also, first up, the only reason I can pretty much guarantee that Brand is platforming and covering Trump on his show is to generate views and appeal to his base audience.
	I also can't think of anyone who conveys information that is expedient but untrue more than Russell Brand.
	Unlike most other right-wing shitheads, Brand really does find anything and everything and throw it out there, which is why our show averages about three hours at the moment.
	Unlike comparable podcasts, because I just have so much shit to delve through.
	We're working on it.
	We're working on it, everybody.
	As for Rachel Maddow attending Lockheed Martin sponsored events, she attended Pride.
	There was a Pride March in Washington DC that was at least partially funded by Lockheed Martin, who apparently consider themselves a progressive and diverse employer.
	We could get into why that shouldn't be happening and the inherent problems with the corporatization of Pride, but we would be here for a full fucking day and it would mostly just be you and I screaming.
	For now, however, let's just say that Lockheed Martin sponsored a Pride march and Rachel Maddow is some kind of evil because she attended, supposedly.
	As if she has any fucking control over who sponsors things.
	Yeah, is she gonna not go to Pride?
	Because Lockheed Martin sponsored it?
	Fuck off.
	It's a sponsor.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
	A sponsor.
	I would just like to specifically repeat what he said, that we want the Democrats to win because Rachel Maddow appears at Lockheed Martin events.
	I've got to say, painting Lockheed Martin events is shocking.
	It's great.
	It's fucking shocking.
	And we want the Democrats to win because Rachel Maddow appears at Lockheed Martin events.
	So it's painting Lockheed Martin as a company that the left wing supports.
	It's a complete bullshit.
	B distracts from how much the Republican Party fucking loves wars, the military and the Second Amendment and C Is actually a little bit of stroke of fucking genius there.
	I've got to say that that is that is that is a nice diversionary like fucking what about this?
	We can give it up to the Somali pirates.
	Yeah, no, I completely agree.
	It's a it's a good I'm judging from how furious I am because in the last two last few clips, we've invoked slavery and gay liberation.
	Yeah, and we've done so in defense of Donald Trump.
	Un-fucking-real!
	There was almost no more gay pride at all!
	Gay pride in the 80s?
	Sir, that didn't exist.
	That was still protests.
	It was not a Right.
	Pride is a protest.
	Yeah, and at the end of the day, it's absolutely a fucking protest.
	And there was plenty to protest in the 80s specifically.
	How dare you?
	Oh my god, I'm hot.
	I'm so mad.
	I can't.
	Ahh!
	And do you know how you can tell that it's still a protest?
	It's because of how uncomfortable it makes so many people.
	So in this next... Just go and you'll see.
	You'll see how people... Most people are amazing.
	And yeah, I have a huge problem with like corporate rainbow washing, retail rainbow washing.
	Obviously it's bad, but capitalism is putting these people on the right side of history, and if Lockheed Martin is pressured to provide the same services and the same access to their LGBTQ employees that they do to the straight ones, because that's just the right thing to do, Fine!
	Fine!
	Yeah, there are some positive outcomes because of shit like this.
	You know, it's not because they want to fucking do it, it's because it's kind of a necessary part of their existence at this stage.
	Yeah, it's just capitalism has reacted and if you think that the people, like, if you think the left isn't taking them to task, you're crazy!
	You're not paying attention!
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, no, no.
	It's willfully misguiding his audience.
	So in this next clip, Russell does something a little bit sneaky.
	And yet, MSNBC and CNN are willing to platform pundits to speak about war, in particular the Ukraine-Russia conflict, that have ties to Lockheed Martin and Raytheon without declaring their credentials.
	You know this is a very common phenomenon.
	They're presented as military experts.
	Well, I think there should be a war.
	And why do you think there's a war?
	Because I sell stuff that goes through the roof in wars.
	And when I say go through the roof, I mean it goes through the roof, into the living room, blows up a whole wedding party.
	Many of the retired military leaders employed by networks like MSNBC as paid contributors have secondary affiliations that are rarely, if ever mentioned, leaving viewers in the dark about whose interests they're promoting.
	None of the leading networks makes a regular practice of announcing its military analyst financial ties to the Pentagon, connections that could color their on-air comments.
	During its Ukraine coverage, MSNBC failed to include disclosures when the network invited on former Homeland Security expert Jay Johnson, who serves on the board of directors at Lockheed Martin, the world's biggest defense contractor.
	I'll remind you this is a story about Donald Trump and his boxes.
	So for audio listeners, that last part about MSNBC failing to include disclosures came from a different source to the initial section stating that none of the leading networks were properly disclosing their military commentators connections.
	That was done so without saying a word about it.
	That first article being covered is from the Washington Post, published in January 2020.
	I can't find any stories or coverage about this since, at least not from any reputable media sources.
	So I don't know whether the situation remains the same or not, though my guess would probably be nothing's changed.
	Either way, real current events here.
	The second story is from Jacobin, a mostly left-leaning publication, but I have noticed a real pro-Russia trend going on throughout their site, which is a little bit worrying.
	The article spends a length of time insinuating that the reason the US is involved in the Ukraine conflict is to make these companies lots of money and basically ignores the humanitarian aspect.
	Oh, and it was published in April 2022.
	So, again, not like his team are desperately hunting down anything they can find that'll support their narrative or anything.
	I will say, as someone who is largely pacifist, I agree with the thrust of the argument that anyone who comes on the news should have their financial ties revealed up front.
	And I'd like that to include politicians, business people, celebrities, everyone, as it could absolutely colour the commentary of every single one.
	So, I'd like to take it a step further than Russell here, but then I wonder whether he'd want his financial ties examined, you know?
	Yeah, there are complaints that I have that are completely valid are wrapped up in this.
	But, what the fuck are we talking about?
	Donald Trump and his boxes!
	Yeah, like Donald Trump, was Rachel Maddow in one of the boxes?
	Was the jack-o-lantern in one of the boxes?
	I don't understand.
	It would be a story.
	What the fucking point is it?
	Rachel Maddow, held hostage by Trump.
	Stuffed into a box.
	That's a reality show I'd watch.
	But I love trash.
	Sorry.
	But like that, but truly like the, the, it's one thing to watch a bramble, you know, like
	the five minute bramble.
	That's one thing.
	But the fact that this is a produced segment with, like, clips of... Yeah.
	Yeah, this has been edited.
	...and images, yeah, that are quoting sources that are cited.
	Mm-hmm.
	Mm-hmm.
	A bit tightly quoted, but still cited.
	And they happened, and that's a thing.
	What are we talking about?
	Like y'all, this isn't a random, you know, it's not a bramble.
	This is an edited video and it's like, what the fuck are y'all talking about?
	It's just, what?
	I'd love to know how this ties in.
	I'd love to.
	We'll see how he lands it in a minute.
	That groan, I'm going to translate as, no you wouldn't.
	No, you're not going to enjoy this.
	So what Russell has just... Oh, no, sorry.
	Hang on.
	I'm reading the wrong thing here.
	Yeah.
	Next up, Brand misses the point.
	This military-industrial complex agenda becomes significant again when you contemplate what's in the boxes.
	Stop focusing on Trump and how bad or crazy or brilliant and fantastic you believe him to be and figure out what is in there.
	Because there is at least one fairly legitimate claim that plans for an American war against Iran is in those boxes.
	So you will be able to observe, perhaps over the coming months, how agitation with Iran begins, escalates, until it's necessary because of humanitarian crises to go to Iran.
	I feel like we've seen this playbook before.
	So what Russell has just asserted is that there's a very high likelihood that in amongst the boxes upon boxes of documents Trump clung onto, there is a classified document detailing a potential invasion plan into Iran.
	The point that Brand is willfully dodging around here is that if that is the case, Trump shouldn't have that document.
	No.
	It is illegal for him to have any classified documents.
	And while he claims he declassified everything in the rest of the boxes, I seriously fucking doubt it.
	And Trump especially shouldn't have that document if he's then going to wave it around in front of civilians who have never had any right to lay eyes on it, which there is a recording of him doing.
	Uh-huh.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that's exac- I was like, the recording was like...
	Again, it's been everywhere.
	There's so much coverage of this and it's been everywhere.
	Okay.
	Yep.
	Also, I don't know, man.
	There's plans.
	Somebody's got plans to open a Cold Stone Creamery franchise.
	Are we gonna do it?
	I don't know.
	We'll get to that in a second.
	We're going to open a Cold Stone, is that the business plan?
	Yeah, we're going into ice cream.
	I mean, the thing is, but at the same time, like... The on-brand ice cream shop!
	Oh man, I, uh, yeah, I, I... Ugh, we already ate ice cream.
	I don't need that in my life.
	Oh yeah, no, the, um, the...
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Important question.
	What's your favorite flavor of ice cream?
	Oh god, don't make me choose between my children.
	Okay, you can have two or three if you need.
	So, I did just recently have Superman, which was like... What the fuck is Superman?
	That's not a flavor of ice cream!
	Well, all my really favorite little kid flavors of ice cream probably aren't legal in the UK, because they're brightly colored.
	Well, yeah, but we have, you know, we have the thing that it's supposed to be flavoured like, at least over here.
	Oh, this isn't real.
	No, this is food science entirely.
	This is better living in the industry.
	Superman flavoured.
	You know, just like a man in a blender is what it would say.
	Just Superman in a blender.
	It's liquified man.
	I think it was, it's three different flavors.
	One of them is like, there's like blue birthday, there's like birthday cake.
	There's already like a blue birthday cake flavor that's already kind of not real.
	It's like blue raspberry isn't really raspberry.
	It's just a sweet flavor that we've concocted in a lab.
	So you extrapolate that to the blue.
	It's like blue moon is sometimes referred to as the flavor of ice cream, but they put that in with something else.
	It's like all it's all really.
	I just got embarrassed.
	My embarrassment just caught up with me.
	I started talking and I had a lag on the humiliation train because I'm a fucking adult.
	You're an adult in love with Superman ice cream and Blue Moon.
	Hey, I'm not gonna judge.
	It's like three different little kid flavors jammed together and they just call it Superman.
	I'm not gonna judge.
	Chemicals can be delicious.
	I know!
	That's my current fave right now.
	Yeah, what's your favorite?
	We have, like, unicorn-flavored ice cream and shit here.
	It's a thing.
	Probably less brightly.
	I bet you can't see the colors when you turn the lights off, unlike you.
	No, I was gonna say, ours are a bit more probably reasonable for human consumption.
	Yeah, in terms of favorite flavors, out of the cheap ones, I don't mind like a banana ice cream actually.
	There's something about that artificial banana flavor that does things for me.
	But in terms of my all-time favorite, I'm gonna have to go with strawberry.
	Strawberry ice cream.
	Yeah, that's our go-to.
	Totally.
	Especially the really nice ones with proper chunks of strawberry in them.
	I'm deeply, deeply disappointed that over the last few years, Thorntons have stopped doing ice cream.
	They've removed themselves from the high street.
	They're a chocolate manufacturer.
	I don't know if you get them over in the U.S.
	That's a gas station here.
	Oh, okay, right.
	No, no, they do incredible chocolate, but in their shops they also did amazing ice cream and their strawberry flavor was the best in the entire country.
	It had like these Fucking chunks of strawberry in there like it was it was sweet, but not too sweet, and it was ah and then yeah Man, I miss that place.
	I do miss that that was like a that was like a once every few months treat, and it's gone oh You are, your face is so wistfully not wanting to keep listening to Russell Brand right now.
	No, I want a Thornton's ice cream, that's what I want!
	I know!
	It's very obvious!
	Which is charming!
	Oh, that's great.
	Yeah, I know.
	Oh, that was good.
	Yeah.
	Oh, and do you know what I really like about it?
	I am curious what the answer would have been worse right now.
	Yeah, well, I really like a coffee ice cream as well.
	Coffee ice cream is great.
	If it's done right.
	Yeah, that's true.
	That's true.
	You can get ones that are like way too artificial and horrendous.
	But a good coffee ice cream, a good coffee ice cream is great.
	Exquisite.
	Absolutely.
	Right.
	So let's get back to what this fucking chuckle fuck is talking about.
	So in the next clip, Bran starts talking about war pundits while Rachel Maddow is still talking about not showing Trump's speech.
	So he's intentionally mis-contextualizing what she's saying and he insinuates that Trump is anti-war.
	We are here to bring you the news.
	It hurts our ability to do that.
	We can't advocate for war if people keep saying war is bad and kills children.
	So we're just gonna get people on that work for Lockheed Martin who won't talk about that.
	If we live broadcast what we fully expect in advance to be a litany of lies and false accusations no matter who says them.
	No matter who says them!
	Oh my god!
	Hunter Biden laptop!
	Hunter Biden laptop!
	Let me know in the comments which thing that CNN and MSNBC have ignored is agitating you most in that moment. AHHHHH!
	(laughing)
	I'm not... I'm not getting into the whole Hunter Biden laptop thing. It's a one...
	It's a wild goose chase in a field of bullshit and I've got no interest in covering it.
	Yeah, and 500 podcasts have covered it.
	Do you need a link?
	I'll send you all of them.
	I guarantee you.
	You can go anywhere else.
	All of them say nothing, because there's fucking nothing to talk about, because it's all just horse shit.
	Oh my god, thank you, Jesus Christ.
	I just realized what I said, and it could go two totally different ways.
	I mean, reasonable coverage of the Hunpine Laptop, because I'm sure there's like a bunch of QAnon psychopaths.
	Oh yeah, oh yeah.
	I didn't mean that, oh my god.
	But yeah, I just, the subject has been done to death, which is basically, it's a nothing burger.
	They won't fucking shut up about it.
	And I don't want to talk about it, I am so tired of it.
	I'm so tired of it.
	I don't give a fuck.
	I do not care.
	Also that.
	Yeah, let's move on from that.
	Next up, Brandy uses his news show to rail against advertising in news media.
	We can't fund this without adverts from Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Norfolk Grumman.
	I just want to say, sometimes it's worth having a war, just to see how good their missiles are.
	Oh the way... All over, it doesn't matter if it blows up.
	Try not to think too much about that.
	Enjoy this bit.
	Don't worry, they're just like us.
	Don't think about that.
	No, it's not for them.
	It's for probably some other sort of company, which I pray don't benefit from wars.
	Harvard Health Review researched why people take supplements.
	The top response was hope.
	They hope, these poor bastards, vitamin and mineral supplements will help overcome a lifetime of poor diet and exercise, and they hope they might offset family health issues.
	Oh wait!
	He's done it again.
	Oh my god.
	Yeah, so mid-roll ad in the middle of an editorial for the same company, if you notice.
	So, annoyingly, I couldn't find anything to suggest that they profit from wars.
	However... However, what I did find... Oh, A for effort!
	I'm happy you tried!
	Yeah, I looked into it.
	Which is not to say that they don't, because I don't have their financial records.
	They're a private company, not a public company.
	I can't see any of that shit, so they might.
	Also, we don't know where their investments are.
	Yeah, definitely possible.
	They're based in Texas, you know, and the CEO, I think, on his About page, he loves the United States and he loves capitalism.
	He wrote that about himself.
	Like, okay.
	Exits and checks out, yes.
	Yeah.
	What I did find, however, is that Brickhouse Nutrition, who make Field of Greens, have an affiliate program, which I'm quite sure is what Stay Free with Russell Brand is signed up to.
	For the record, literally anyone can apply, have a bunch of ready-to-go media assets given to you, and get an amount of commission for each sale, which varies depending on how much you sell.
	Anything over 10,000 sales gives you 25% commission, which is huge when considering Field of Green's retails for just shy of $70.
	For one tub, which is 30 servings.
	what amount of wine for a month? For one tub which is 30 servings.
	Right, so that's $70 for 30 servings. So yeah, like say a month.
	Given Russell's 1.2 million followers on Rumble alone, I imagine his figures are looking pretty fucking great around now.
	You know, you start to do a bit of maths there.
	I can't imagine how cheap the stuff in the tub is.
	I can't even imagine.
	To manufacture?
	I don't know.
	As I said last time, it's literally just like powdered vegetables and fruits.
	If you're lucky!
	Well, that's what it says it is.
	Maybe a couple of bugs in there because the US is great.
	Yeah, the rat content is no more than 3%.
	We're the US.
	Yeah, I think insects was like 10% or something like that.
	It was a lot higher.
	So yeah, when you start to extrapolate like... The bug eating!
	Okay, but like the bug eating narratives that we're also hearing from right now.
	Yeah, it's true.
	It's like, you're already eating them.
	I wouldn't worry.
	You're fine.
	Yeah, when you start to extrapolate the maths from that, so you know, over 10,000 sales, anything above that point gives you 25% commission.
	You know, he's got 1.2 million followers.
	I don't know what kind of conversion rate he's got, how many people actually click through and buy the thing, but you know.
	Right.
	And there's no way we can know.
	No, no, it's not possible.
	Man.
	It's not possible for us to find out.
	There is something kind of great about being too poor to be grifted.
	In this particular way.
	Obviously, we are all susceptible and we all have our things that can get to us, but not this one.
	Yeah.
	But even if you take 1% of his followers on Rumble, a conversion rate of 1%, which is fucking low, that still puts him above the 10,000.
	And I think that would put him at, that's like $150,000 or something like that.
	And who knows?
	They may very well give him some kind of promotional rate because they can to keep him.
	There may be that as well.
	What I'm slightly suspicious of is that what I think has happened is that they found this deal, they found this affiliate program, and were like, hey, 25% is a big fucking cut.
	And decided, right, we're going to hammer on that.
	And, you know, signed up for this affiliate program.
	And I wonder how much of an awareness Field of Greens has.
	You know, because I don't think Field of Greens or Brickhouse Who Make It approached him for advertising.
	I don't think that's what's going on here because the the stuff that he like the the link and everything and and the you know his his personalized URL etc for this it comes along with the affiliate program you know so I mmm yeah I wonder I wonder whether he's just kind of found this and I'm gonna make some money rather than it being you know an official advertising thing like with like with Manscaped for instance which I I think might speak to why we're seeing this for a second time, because normally his advertisers kind of switch out quite a bit.
	But I'm wondering if he's like, wow, 25%, I can make some fucking money here.
	Well, but also if they're like, hey, this is going well, let's give you 35, let's give you 40.
	To keep him, to say it more.
	The thing is, this is all speculation.
	Yeah, this is it.
	This is it.
	This is just based on what I could find.
	But yeah, it's all definitely a little bit interesting.
	Also, let's just talk, I mean, okay.
	Nope.
	I can't talk about the supplement industry.
	Nope.
	Not gonna do it.
	We do not have time.
	Sorry.
	Nope.
	I'm sure we will get into that.
	Want to, can't.
	Yeah, yeah.
	But yeah, the reason, the other reason that I don't think that this is, you know, kind of paid advertising from Field of Greens is the way that the actual advert itself is constructed is very brandian.
	It's very, you know, he's not reading copy, you know, and he's not kind of Riffing on bullshit.
	He even makes a claim that... God, I can't remember exactly what the fuck it was, but there's no evidence to suggest that multivitamins make you any healthier.
	He says that at the start of the advert.
	There's no evidence to suggest that multivitamins are actually good for you or work.
	And he says that there's no evidence to suggest that they're any better than a placebo, is what he says.
	And then later he cites a study that showed that out of two sets of people, the ones taking multivitamins and the ones taking the placebo, their health wasn't markedly different.
	And it's like, well, OK, but maybe there are more factors to this than that for a start.
	Yeah, also, you know, there are more factors to health than that.
	Also, let's look into the actual fucking study itself that you're showing off here.
	Yeah, in regard to health studies, I'd encourage any listeners that want to know, we don't have to go into it, listen to Maintenance Phase.
	Maintenance Phase is an amazing podcast that covers, like, even stuff that you thought was common knowledge, settled science, Old hat, stuff we all think about, we all know, is complete bullshit.
	So, we don't necessarily have to cover that.
	Do I want to rant and rave about the supplement industry?
	Sure.
	Am I?
	No.
	I'm sure we will.
	It wouldn't shock me if this guy goes down that route on his own at some point when he smells the money.
	But we'll see.
	And that's the point, really.
	He's making money coming and going.
	And that's what is relevant.
	He's early on the propaganda train.
	He's not quite gotten himself settled to set up manufacturing and shit like that yet.
	Or just vanity labelling as it probably will be.
	So next up we see the shabby outro to this ad that's just been shoved into the middle of the editorial again.
	And Russell says he's not right wing.
	That's BrickHouseRussell.com promo code brand.
	This is by Branko Markitic, the great left-wing writer writing in the left-wing organization Jacobin.
	So if you're a person who's like traditionally Republican or right-wing or libertarian or independent, let me know in the comments.
	Listen to this.
	This is from the left.
	This is one of the things like with me.
	Oh, he's a conspiracy theorist.
	He's right-wing.
	I'm not.
	Yes, you fucking are!
	So the article he's about to get into is, again, from Jacobin, which, as previously mentioned, is mostly left-wing but has some troubling takes on Russia.
	Branko Markatic, on the other hand, well, he's got plenty of pieces for Jacobin, but every fifth story or so is about how the US shouldn't be in Ukraine.
	I've covered this a little before, but in the case of this war where Russia have invaded a sovereign nation, being anti-interventionist is being pro-Russia.
	It winds up with the same conclusion, which is Putin just blatantly taking a country which isn't his.
	Markitich also spends a lot of time attacking the left from the left, which I take moderate issue with when the left keeps eating itself and the right keeps galvanizing, especially in a fucking election year, etc.
	Almost forgot about this.
	Remember in our first episode, the whole thing about the CIA supposedly being complicit in 9-11, the Don Canestraro, all that shit?
	Markitic wrote a piece about it, saying it was disgraceful that the, quote, establishment, unquote, wasn't covering it.
	In case anyone's forgotten, the thrust of that investigation was based entirely on anonymous sources talking shit, mostly one anonymous source talking shit, and not providing any actual evidence at any stage.
	So that's the quality of journalist that we're working with here.
	Marge Noyce is all I've got. You nailed it.
	I'm just...
	Oh, it's the left. It's a left-wing piece from the left.
	Fuck off.
	It is difficult because the left, the big tent party, is so many of us.
	us.
	And we do have diverse opinions, and it is very difficult to maintain, in my own human body brain person, the idea that, yes, I also don't want to tear apart my own contingent, the left, and I don't want to go after people that are on my same side.
	But the left are the only ones that want any real accountability.
	At this point, he does also conflate liberals and left.
	And that's not the same thing.
	Yeah, yeah, does that every so often as well.
	They're very interchangeable phrases that I've noticed that throughout his coverage.
	The one thing, he's not stupid.
	He very deliberately will Mention ideas next to each other and glide through them very fluidly, but you can't really pin them down because they're two separate sentences.
	Yeah, no.
	Oh, don't conflate those two ideas that I just said in succession.
	That's your fault, not mine.
	Well, absolutely.
	And the whole problem with Russell Brand and the way that he formulates his content and the way that he structures the things that he says is that it's very difficult to pin him down as having said something.
	Yep.
	It's very rare that he will just make an outright statement unless it's something that's very vague and generic.
	Or he'll say it goofy and then say it's a joke!
	Or that.
	There is also that.
	Can't forget that he is a comedian.
	Next up, Brown just kind of bullshits a little bit more.
	Yes, in a detail that's been almost entirely glossed over, central to this case are a set of secret government plans for attacking Iran.
	Other than as a pure factual matter, or to stress how recklessly Trump treated classified information, this has been little remarked upon.
	Just for a moment, think about that.
	Like, what we're focusing on is, Trump took them boxes, that's bad, it's classified information.
	Okay, full stop.
	What's in the boxes?
	Oh, we're gonna have a war with Iran.
	Do you want a war with Iran?
	Well, actually, no.
	I don't see how that's going to help at all.
	Well, we'll just keep telling you stuff until you do want a war with Iran.
	It's good, because of independent media like this, and because of Branko Markadic's writing, we're able to tell you now, and in fact, you'll be able to watch this unfold.
	You'll be able to see, like, you'll watch the mainstream media.
	Iran are bastards now!
	We can watch it unfold in real time.
	That's why they're trying to shut down stuff like this, obviously.
	So, fun little thing that I'd like to point out.
	We haven't seen the Iran document yet, if we ever will, because knowing Donald Trump, he's probably eaten it or something.
	Plans for an invasion are not the same thing as declaring war.
	The American military has had plans for invading any and all countries with whom it might have some conflict with over the last hundred years, including the United Kingdom and Canada, for fuck's sake.
	Now, I'm by no means saying I agree with the notion of going to war with Iran, not by a long shot, but I am not going to shit on the military for being adequately prepared in the unlikely event that it occurs.
	Stuff like this is literally their job.
	Also, Brand and his crew have spelt Markitic's name incorrectly here.
	There's no K, there should be a C. Sorry, that was kind of unrelated, but that was annoying me.
	Yeah, the Cold Stone Creamery franchise plans.
	Are we going to make one?
	Yeah.
	No.
	Are the plans there?
	They're available.
	Well, I think what we've established so far is that if you and I set up an ice cream shop, it's going to be baller.
	laughter It's true!
	Uh, yeah, no, the, um, the...
	I'm, a real, very real fear is being played on in my guts.
	Right now, from this person.
	Mm-hmm.
	And it's because I've had to spend my entire adult life afraid of a war that we will go to.
	Not even, I mean, it's not really a war because you technically can't declare war without the consent of Congress.
	Fuck it, that's even complicated.
	I don't fucking know.
	We didn't want war the first time.
	Enough Americans did that it happened.
	No one I know, no one from my affiliations, My class solidarity, my peer groups, were all terrified of going to war and wanted nothing to do with it.
	And the threat of expansionist war has been present with me my entire adult life.
	It's fucking awful.
	And to be manipulated in this way makes me angry at him.
	Because there's no solutions.
	It's all speculation.
	Right?
	Like what, what proof is there that these are like, he's saying what's in the box.
	We don't know.
	I'm guessing.
	How guessing is that?
	Like, how is it like, is there like, there's no address.
	Yep.
	I mean, for reference, in this country as well, with going into that war back in the early 2000s, that's what led to what was at the time the largest protest that ever took place in the UK.
	Because we didn't fucking want it either.
	That's what taught me from the time I was a teenager is what taught me that no matter how much protesting and how many voices that we raise against whatever the Whatever bee has gotten in the U.S.
	industrial military's complex, the bee in that bonnet will not be stopped, regardless of what the citizens do.
	Now, I can't believe that.
	I can't completely believe that, but that's the fear, and that's my really fucking awful lived experience, is exactly that.
	And I just want to point out that him playing on those fears and our lived experience is exactly what makes, partially what makes you and I, in another kind of fucking timeline, his potential audience.
	Had you and I not fallen into kind of learning about Disinformation and propaganda and that kind of stuff.
	Had you and I gone down different paths, we could definitely have been this fuckhead's audience.
	Because, as we've said, on the surface he's saying things we agree with.
	Yeah, we don't want a war in the Middle East.
	Of course we don't.
	We never did.
	But yeah.
	And I think our little, our pathetic little teenage arms or whatever, you know, like, Would shake our little fists and nothing fucking mattered.
	Yeah.
	You know, like, oh, occupy all that stuff.
	It's like, oh, cool.
	We can all be like every person I know.
	I don't know.
	It's not even.
	I'm overwhelmed because I've been emotionally manipulated.
	Yeah, no, exactly.
	Yeah, it was.
	Yeah.
	Fucking George Bush and Tony Blair should both be tried in the Hague for war crimes.
	That's just that's just the fucking be all and end all of it.
	And anyone wants to beg to differ, come at me.
	Right.
	That's the stance of this podcast.
	Thank you.
	A hundred percent.
	Next up, we are going to rewrite some history on Trump.
	The issue stems from Trump's apparent frustration with what he claimed was a false narrative being pushed by the press that after losing the 2020 election under the advice of then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
	You're always going on about Benjamin Netanyahu.
	Let it go Lin, you're never going to meet him.
	Who was briefly removed from power before returning last November and the coterie of Iran hawks he'd surrounded himself with, Trump was dangerously close to ordering strikes on Iran that could have triggered full-scale war and had to be talked down from it by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.
	According to the indictment in a recorded interview Trump gave at his New Jersey golf club in July 2021 to a writer and publisher working on an upcoming book, the former president maintained the reality of the situation was the exact Opposite!
	That it was Milley and the Pentagon who were pushing for an attack on Iran, on a reluctant Trump, and that the classified documents he kept were proof of this.
	That sounds very Trumpy to me, doesn't it, lad?
	I'm keeping those boxes.
	Couldn't fucking resist putting the Alan Partridge thing in there.
	I know 100% that they thought that was hilarious.
	The keeping the boxes bit does sound very like Trump, especially as that's literally what he did.
	Bitch!
	I beg to differ on the reasons for doing so.
	We have a bit of he said she said going on here where it's one person's word against another's, but what this boils down to is whether to trust the word of General Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or the word of Donald Trump.
	So, trust a respected general or a pathological liar?
	General Milley says that Trump wanted to invade Iran.
	Trump says it was Milley who wanted to invade Iran and that Trump was dead against it.
	Yeah, and tell me of those two individuals, who wanted to nuke a hurricane?
	Yeah.
	I'm just, I'm pointing out a pattern of behavior, that's all.
	Oh yeah, I mean, I think quick to anger is a fair description of Trump's general demeanour.
	Rash decision making.
	Impractical, rash decision making.
	Yeah, so to illustrate the situation properly, we need to hark our minds back to November 2020 all the way to January 2021, right?
	So that little limbo period of time where Trump had lost the election but embraced the notion that the election was stolen to the extent that his followers attempted an armed fucking coup of the country on January 6th.
	Before this... I was like, what day of January?
	Yeah, right, exactly.
	So before this, there was a very real concern that Trump would seize upon his Reichstag moment, as Millie called it, and either try to use the military on the streets of America to prevent the legitimate peaceful transfer of power, Or, go to war with Iran, as there were conversations regarding the Iranian nuclear program at the time, and potential for a war between Iran and the Islamic Republic.
	Therefore, kind of clinging on to power under the guise of, no, no, no, it's a state of emergency, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Literally following the House of Cards plot lines.
	Yeah, it's a bit much.
	I'd like to further point out that these concerns about the Iran nuclear deal only arose because Trump decided to withdraw from it.
	The Iran nuclear deal is in place to slowly prevent Iran from being able to create nuclear weapons while still allowing them to have nuclear power.
	Had Trump not done that, this wouldn't have happened in the first place.
	In any case, Trump and his cabinet spent months having repeated meetings about attacking Iran, according to the New Yorker.
	When asked why they were so insistent upon attacking Iran, then Vice President Mike Pence said, because they're evil.
	Thankfully on January 3rd a meeting was held in which it was made clear that it was too late to attack Iran and would basically be too expensive and Trump agreed to back down.
	Now what I'm about to say is complete conjecture and I have no way of backing it up but I think the plans to invade Iran that Trump is clinging on to are plans that he made the military draw up From this period where he was pushing to attack Iran and somehow stay in power.
	I'm nodding.
	I'm nodding, everybody.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	So yeah, it's a lot of just rewriting history and painting Donald Trump as anti-war, which people keep saying at the moment, and I don't understand why.
	It just makes me... That's another thing.
	It's like, I'm just being pranked.
	Am I being pranked?
	I feel like I'm being pranked.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Someone's going to... Ashton Kutcher's pranked is exactly what's happening.
	Cause what?
	What?
	And I say nuke a hurricane, um, just like as a goofy example, but there were real examples.
	Like this guy, absolutely like hostile, like hostile aggression type, like to his own end and not paying his bills or like the two things he's ever done in his whole life.
	Fire and Fury was the quote towards North Korea, right?
	You know, like, fuck off.
	Fuck off was the anti-war.
	He would have loved a war.
	He would have loved a war because it would have allowed him to be the big man.
	And also it would have... Can you imagine how much money his kids would have made with a war?
	fortune and it would have galvanized his base and probably carried him through to a second
	fucking term. That's why he wanted a war. Yep. And he, yeah, you know, he absolutely would have
	like, had he been able to start a war a bit earlier, it would have gone, Oh no, you need to
	keep me. And you know, I started this thing. I want to finish it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	And that would have worked because it has before. Anybody wants to tell me about being,
	about somebody being anti-war, oh you better have receipts, and
	And using just the phrase, the common understanding of the phrase that we all have of anti-war, how you and I understand probably how we feel about it, anti-aggression.
	Not anti-certain wars, but not others.
	Yes, yes, yes.
	Exactly.
	Anti-aggression 100%.
	Which is where the important distinction lies with the Ukraine situation.
	Exactly.
	Because being anti-war is being pro-Russia's war part of it.
	In these situations.
	I'm not anti-defensive like fucking situations like when when the Polish fought back when fucking Hitler invaded I'm not I'm not gonna criticize them for that it's like no you were being invaded of course you're supposed to fight back that's that's what's supposed to happen anyway so so yeah that's that's that's my position on the situation that we've that we've covered the whole Iran fucking thing but Russell here is very clearly taking Trump at his word Specifically, Trump showed them a pages-long set of plans for attacking Iran that he said were independently drawn up by the military and presented to him.
	Sir, we've got these plans for attacking Iran.
	Why?
	Good for business!
	I'll keep that.
	While the Washington Post's Philip Rucker and Carol Leonig's book, I Alone Can Fix It, alleges that Milley told a confidant that he viewed preventing war with Iran before the 2021 inauguration as one of his missions, it also depicts Milley as one of the advisers urging on Trump's drone assassination of Iranian Quds Force commander General Qasem Soleimani.
	New York Times reporter Peter Baker's own reporting on that assassination at the time didn't depict Millie in the best light, as he justified the reckless strike on the basis of reportedly vague intelligence about threats that actually didn't come to pass.
	Oh, it's probably gonna be some attack.
	Oh no, what should we do?
	I don't know, go to Wolverine?
	Where's them attacks?
	I don't know about them now.
	Sorry, I forgot about that.
	Yes, let's just believe what Trump says.
	So the assassination that Brand is talking about here of General Qasem Soleimani is widely considered a breach of international law as it was supposedly done to prevent an imminent attack, the claim of which was later walked back into being a much more vague to prevent future attacks.
	However, the Quds Force, which Qasem Soleimani led, has been designated a terrorist organisation by Canada, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the US.
	Soleimani himself was sanctioned by the United Nations and the European Union and was on US terror watch lists.
	Those things are by no means perfect, but I do think it's fair to say this chap wasn't the best of people.
	Again, shouldn't have been murdered, but also I do get it.
	And if that doesn't... nakedly antagonistic.
	Yes, there is that.
	Again, yeah.
	So much yelling in this room that week, I can tell you.
	This thing, this assassination that happened, was in January 2020, and here Brand is trying to insinuate that despite it being three years and one government later, this information could be used now.
	It's complete spin.
	Complete spin and nonsense.
	You're right.
	I stopped even thinking about that.
	Okay.
	Yeah, no, no.
	He's trying to say, oh, this is what they're going to use.
	This is what they're going to use.
	It's like, no, no, no.
	This was a while ago.
	This is a while ago.
	It's still bad, but a while ago.
	A while ago.
	What a turd.
	Yup.
	In a word.
	In a word.
	Yeah.
	Next, we've got some bad writing.
	So let's keep going.
	All right.
	Cool.
	Yeah.
	Let's go.
	Next, we've got some bad writing from Branko Markicich.
	This comes in the midst of years of ratcheting up tensions between not just Iran and the United States, but maybe more dangerously, Iran and Israel.
	Yeah, that doesn't sound good.
	The latter's government has been pushing the Biden administration to take a more aggressive posture toward Iran for years.
	Pressure that has been ratcheted up under Netanyahu's current hardline government, which has carried out its own strikes inside Iran and done several major and threatening joint exercises with the US military, including one just last week.
	Oh no, it's this again, isn't it?
	That's why it always starts.
	We're just doing this military exercise.
	Is it above someone else's airspace?
	Yeah, it's above their airspace.
	They always say stuff like, a Chinese warship got in our way.
	Where were ya?
	China?
	Hey!
	One of our drones got knocked down by Russians.
	Where were ya?
	Russia, stop bothering people in their own countries and then saying it's their fault!
	Oh, I agree though.
	I do agree with that.
	Well, this is it, right?
	I don't agree with where I'm coming from!
	So, the military exercises taking place weren't in Iranian territory, so there's that.
	I do somewhat agree with his point with that aside, and would love for Russian planes to stop waltzing into British airspace as a for instance, because they do that on a surprisingly regular basis.
	It's not great.
	It's not great, but it's not an issue with Iran at present.
	So I don't know.
	Yeah.
	Again, I love my, I don't want my tax dollars to pay for a military base.
	Like military bases all over the world for no good fucking reason.
	There's no good fucking reason for it!
	Other than just we're the bullies of the planet!
	Not for ones in, like, Germany.
	I don't understand that.
	Guess what?
	Everyone I knew... I grew up close to Air Force Base, and most people I knew, yeah, they hung out in Germany and told me how cool it was to be a kid in Germany.
	And I'm like, hmm, sounds great.
	This place sucks.
	Thanks.
	Yeah, what are we doing?
	What the fuck are we doing, America?
	I'm sorry my we's are not being very specific.
	This isn't we, America.
	I'm working on it, guys.
	It's tough.
	To be fair, we, America, we, this podcast, we, Russell Brand's fucking show, all of them are fair.
	What the fuck are we doing?
	Look at this.
	Look at this shit.
	Look at all of this.
	Americans never even think about the fact, like, what other, like, Do we have countries that have military bases here?
	How do you think that would go over?
	Not great.
	I don't feel like most Americans would appreciate that very much.
	Just a hunch that I have.
	Don't even think about it.
	No.
	No we do not.
	Next up, Russell wants to protect us from Tim Pool.
	More recently, the Discord leaks of Pentagon intelligence revealed that the CIA itself doesn't know how serious Israel is about its threats to attack.
	Even so, the White House has signalled it would approve of whatever Israel decides to do, even if Israel ends up sparking a regional war or even drags the United States into the fray.
	The existence of US war plans for Iran suggests it wouldn't take much for Israeli attacks to draw the United States into yet another disastrous war, particularly if Iran retaliates, particularly if it winds up killing Americans in the process, whether intentionally or not.
	If I had plans here to smash up Tim Pool's studio, like, would you think, oh, I wonder if, like, they're gonna smash up Tim Pool's...
	I've gotta say, someone should protect us from Tim Pool.
	you that! You should even have been looking in that box my Tim Pool smash up his studio plans!
	That's between me to your fascist conspiracy theorist pig!
	Go and smash up Tim Pool's studio!
	We're doing this to protect you from Tim Pool! I've got to say someone should protect us from
	Tim Pool. He's a gateway Nazi and I find it eternally shocking that the white supremacist
	man-baby is 38 years old! Did you know that? 38!
	Did you see that... I look good for 39 compared to that guy.
	Geez.
	Yeah, and he still acts like a fucking child.
	Did you see that Emma Vigeland of the Majority Report went on Tim Poole's show the other day, by the way?
	What?
	No, I did not see that.
	Yeah, the Majority Report and Young Turks.
	She's one of those as well, actually.
	Yeah, no, went on Tim Poole's show and spent about two hours there with Tim Poole just talking complete bollocks and screaming at her, where she is having to like, she is very much talking in calm, neutral tones, you know, and it just, it really shows him up.
	But what was interesting About it was, you know, obviously Emma Vigeland kind of spends a lot of time just debunking and dunking on Tim Poole and his nonsense.
	Yeah.
	But what's interesting is the reaction.
	When I went looking for the video, you find lots of reaction videos and uniformly there were left-wing ones saying, oh, Emma Vigeland destroys Tim Poole and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	And then on the other side, Tim Poole destroyed Emma Vigeland.
	And I'm like, ah, fucking hell, here we go.
	We got nowhere.
	We got exactly nowhere.
	There was no point in any of this.
	I'm not going to recommend watching it, but it does highlight how much of a piece of shit Tim Poole is, especially when he's got a woman opposite him who knows her stuff.
	He really does not fucking like it one bit.
	Oh, I bet.
	Well, here's the thing.
	I saw... He accuses her of being a pedophile as well, so that's great.
	Welp.
	Welp.
	Yep.
	There it is.
	Yep.
	Yeah, I... I... Yep.
	Alright.
	There's a lot.
	I know, yeah.
	I mean, it's... And I feel bad for mentioning how he looks.
	It's just because everything else is so obvious.
	I don't know.
	I just...
	I just find it weird that he acts like a fucking contrarian 12 year old or whatever, but he's a grown man supposedly.
	I don't know if you've met grown men lately, but big fucking babies like all the time.
	Yeah, they're not in a good place, are they?
	No, the patriarchy hates everyone.
	The patriarchy punishes everyone, not just women.
	And don't ever forget it.
	And it's not just men that are agents of the patriarchy.
	Yep.
	A hundred and ten percent.
	So back to the actual information of the thing.
	So I found no evidence that the White House has signaled it would approve of following whatever Israel decides to do, including having a war.
	Markitich doesn't cite a source or provide evidence for this claim whatsoever.
	And the closest thing I could find was Biden saying that the US is not seeking conflict with Iran, but that the US will forcefully protect their people, which Yeah, okay.
	So Markitich is just bullshitting here.
	Also, these invasion plans, you know, as per my suspicions, I think will have been drawn up during Trump's time.
	Well, they will have been drawn up during Trump's time as president, no matter what.
	They're in Trump's boxes!
	Whether he ordered them or not, they will have been drawn up during Trump's time as president.
	There is currently no evidence to suggest that there are any invasion plans that have been drawn up under Joe Biden.
	And I could imagine that what was true in terms of military intelligence three years ago is probably not true now.
	So new plans would be required, but we have no evidence of any imminent Anything.
	You know, these are all things that are fucking old, that could not be used.
	None of it.
	Yeah.
	So, in the next clip, things... Let's just say they escalate just a little bit.
	Any such war would be a calamity, not just for innocent Iranians.
	Who cares about them?
	But around the world, further destabilising oil prices and adding to the economic havoc from the war in Ukraine has already caused much secondary human suffering while potentially creating the conditions for a much bigger and more dangerous confrontation.
	Iran's deepening alliance with Russia, after all, could draw Moscow into the war, turning the country into the second front of a global proxy battle between two nuclear superpowers, the United States and Russia, while adding a third nuclear power, Israel, into the volatile mix.
	Woohoo!
	Do you know what this situation needs?
	Diplomacy?
	Ongoing negotiations?
	Clear, cool heads and a willingness to look at humanity and the spiritual world as a whole?
	Yes, yes, all of that.
	But also, Israel and their nuclear weapons!
	Notice here how we've gone from Trump's boxes and him keeping classified information to, hey, doesn't Israel suck?
	Now, criticism of Israel is not inherently anti-Semitic, but packaged with the rest of Brand's content, I'm really feeling that hard J coming on here.
	Like, I can feel it under there somewhere.
	Also, this Markitich, he seems to think that we're about to have World War 3, which I think is a bit of a bananas perspective, and he takes it even further by bringing nuclear weapons into the mix.
	It's a blatant fear-mongering distraction tactic for Bran to shove all of this into the editorial, even painting Trump as the good guy for keeping the classified information.
	Oh, he's done it to protect us all, great.
	Fucking sense!
	I know.
	I know.
	Slight aside here as well, but I really hate Bran's American accent.
	He's just bad at it.
	You're an actor.
	You're an actor for fuck's sake.
	And a comedian.
	Work on your act or stop doing it.
	Those are your two options.
	Okay, but he clearly doesn't.
	He has no reason to.
	He's got nothing but positive reinforcement for just phoning it the fuck in, day after day.
	So fine.
	Fine.
	He's not going to improve.
	He doesn't have to.
	Well, but that's why my accent of brand, whenever I choose to use it, can be as shitty as I want.
	Well, also, you know, it's fun to kind of exaggerate his ridiculous, you know, kind of Cockney Essex, kind of can't quite decide where he's from, you know.
	What are those?
	Yeah, like he's just wandering around with a wheelbarrow full of eels, you know?
	That's it.
	That's a way to get a whole Mighty Boosh episode playing in my head at once, is invoking Victorian eels?
	Okay!
	Eels up inside ya!
	Oh god, I love The Mighty Boosh.
	It's so good!
	Fantastic show.
	Okay, okay, we gotta stay on task because we are desperately trying to not keep listening to this.
	Well, well, well, there is a brand connection because The Mighty Boosh, you know, with, um, fucking, oh, what's his name?
	Yes, Noel Fielding, thank you.
	You know, Noel Fielding is in the Mighty Boo.
	She was also on the Big Fat Quiz of the Year with Russell Brand.
	You know, they were the goth detectives, et cetera, et cetera.
	I know that was a lot of people's entry point into enjoying Russell Brand's content.
	That's true.
	I have personally always felt that Noel Fielding was the better of the two.
	But yeah, so there is a connection.
	It's funny!
	It is on YouTube.
	It's free.
	Go watch it.
	It is funny.
	It is good.
	It's hilarious.
	Yeah, it is weird to watch old content of Russell Brand and how he used to be.
	It's also a trend, like it's been happening all over the place.
	You know, Jim Brewer, Rob Schneider, these guys that I quoted in the fourth grade.
	Yeah, Rob Schneider.
	I saw a piece of his stand-up recently and it was about the hiring practices at one of the plane companies.
	They were having a focus on diversity in their hiring practices and he was like, Oh, well shouldn't you have a focus on who's the best pilot?
	It's like, oh, fuck off.
	It was, yeah, it was flight attendants, and... Was it flight attendants?
	It was flight attendants, and they were trying to... basically, yeah, I think it was... Mike mentioned this to me, and I think it was somewhere on Reddit, somebody was talking about, like, this joke... I mean, it's a joke.
	You know, debunking a joke, what are you gonna do?
	But, like, it's completely wrong, because Rob Schneider was saying, oh, well, they should just have the most qualified person.
	Like what they were talking about is that they train.
	All like you don't know what he was saying was that you have to you should hire people with the most experience when that's literally not what they were talking about in this press release.
	It was that they train their flight attendants and then assign those flight attendants.
	So it was it was a priority because obviously someone had found There was inequity in who was being assigned from those programs.
	Inherent biases, et cetera, et cetera.
	Yeah.
	So well done, Rob Schneider.
	Totally reasonable.
	You suck in two ways now.
	Well done.
	Yeah, it's also not funny.
	It's also three ways.
	Yeah, yeah.
	There are many ways in which Rob Schneider sucks these days.
	Oh, God.
	So anyway, yeah, here comes a bit more bullshit.
	We're not nearly there yet, but it's incumbent on all peace-loving people in the United States to work now proactively to stop this scenario from coming to pass, not just to ensure the past year's rhetoric about illegal wars, imperialism, human rights and international law isn't mere, hollow, cynical posturing, but to prevent even more needless death and suffering.
	Unfortunately, what seems like collective disinterest in the US-Israeli march to war in the press and otherwise doesn't bode well for these efforts.
	So it's not disinterest.
	It's that all the sane, non-alarmist journalists on the planet know it's not a likelihood by any stretch of the imagination.
	I have to admit, this whole thing is a story I'd like to dig deeper into because there's a lot of history and complicated politics to go into here, but we straight up do not have the time to cover all of it.
	Also, it doesn't seem like that's what the story's actually about.
	No, 100%.
	Like, for our purposes, the most important aspect is understanding, one, that it's fear-mongering, and two, how and why Brand is using it.
	This entire editorial has been about providing cover for Trump and painting him in a good light.
	If anyone in your life tells you that Russell Brand doesn't like Trump, show them this segment of our show, as even if Brand doesn't personally like Trump, he will go to great lengths to protect, defend, and provide cover for him.
	Right, so using these, like, feels like, since these quotations from this article are so shoehorned in, it's Russell Brand is using the hashtags of yoga pants and yoga butt to get more eyeballs on his unrelated, you know, picture of his dinner that he put on Instagram.
	Like, Right yeah yeah yeah you just want you just want the attention for one thing but you're gonna say something else yeah bait and switch and uh I'm sorry and this is from the the quote from the article calling out hollow cynical posturing
	Wow.
	Like, of anyone who's hollowly, cynically posturing, it's fucking Russell Brand right now.
	That's crazy.
	You ain't gotta say that part.
	No, and yet, here we are.
	He does.
	Yeah, he keeps doing that.
	So our next clip, thankfully, brings us to the end of this editorial.
	So why are MSNBC in this instance in the form of Rachel Maddow saying, we can't show you Donald Trump.
	It's too dangerous.
	We have a news organization, have a responsibility.
	Trump could swear, he could say something crazy and maybe even amusing that'll make you like him too much.
	Is that a more significant That's a significant priority than bringing on people that have financial ties to Lockheed Martin and Raytheon to advocate for and agitate for war with China over Taiwan, with Russia in a proxy war in my view over Ukraine and potentially Iran over as yet to be determined issue that they'll just make up.
	What could have more negative impact on your life, on the planet?
	Is it wars with faraway lands that are frankly none of our goddamn business?
	Or is it the easy charisma of Donald Trump and his ability to somehow reach people and make them believe that he might be part of the solution?
	So what you clearly have is a mainstream media that wants just enough Trump to keep us interested but not enough Trump to take away votes from their war-loving, hypocritical, censoring, surveilling, lying affiliates In Washington.
	If they cared about dangerous information, they wouldn't put on shields for the military-industrial complex and call it the news.
	But that's just what I think.
	Let me know what you think in the chat.
	See you in a second.
	He's gone hard to protect Trump here.
	He's going for it.
	I feel a little bit dirty having watched that, to be perfectly honest.
	I don't really have any other commentary other than that.
	It's just gross shit-flinging in service of providing cover.
	It feels like, in light of everything else we've discussed, this is just more evidence of his Hypocrisy.
	It's crazy.
	And yeah, wars that are none of our business.
	Sorry.
	I mean, yeah, okay.
	Yeah, I don't want a Raytheon dude in the cabinet either.
	Like yeah, yes, mad about all kinds of stuff, mad about all kinds of things.
	But even just like the putting, like the referencing of the Raytheon and the Lockheed Martin when they were, he was basically calling DC Pride, like a Lockheed Martin event.
	Event, yeah.
	I don't like that at all.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I think my feelings on the whole editorial can be summed up as, fuck off, Russell.
	Like, just fuck off.
	Yeah, well, this is all railing against mainstream media.
	Who the complaint over and over again from Russell and people like Russell is that the mainstream media is lying to you.
	The mainstream media isn't telling the truth.
	They're not putting the truth on TV for you to see.
	And when the mainstream media says, hey, this is probably going to be a bunch of lies.
	I don't want to put it on TV because it's lies.
	Now he's also mad.
	Mm-hmm.
	I'm glad you brought that up because NextUp Brand tells us why we shouldn't trust the media.
	You can watch these conversations absolutely live.
	I might be talking to Eckhart Tolle, I might be talking to Vandana Shiva, I might be talking to Jordan Peterson or RFK or Marianne Williamson.
	And if you want to join us live, you can by becoming a member of the Locals Community.
	Just press the red button on your screen now and sign up.
	You'll also get access to weekly meditations and a whole host of other valuable assets that bring you deeper into this community.
	Because I believe that independent media has a role to play beyond conveying information.
	Let's face it, the mainstream media is curating information and creating propaganda.
	[laughter
	[laughter
	Excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor.
	The balls on this man!
	I had to keep that clip in just for the sheer cojones of him saying that.
	Also, the unsettling idea of bringing people deeper into a community.
	I'm like, oh, that's, that's, that's worrying.
	That's, that's, yeah.
	Come further into my little cult.
	That's tough.
	Come further down the rabbit hole.
	Yeah, he's just saying that.
	And he can.
	Yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Fuck it.
	Oh, they make propaganda.
	Fuck off.
	Unreal.
	Oh, God.
	So we.
	Yeah.
	At what point can he be?
	I am so curious.
	Like, at what point can he be sued?
	What can he be sued for?
	You know, like.
	How far is it going to have to go?
	I think, yeah, I don't know.
	I don't know.
	I think Fauci might have a case, possibly, given some of their prior content as well.
	I think there's probably something in there that they've said.
	I mean, Gareth Roy was before insinuating that Fauci was responsible for the entire pandemic.
	Yeah, and do UK laws apply or do US laws apply?
	I'm just curious.
	I am not a law-talking person.
	Yeah, if a law-talking listener knows what would apply, share it.
	I'm curious.
	And I don't know enough to even know where to start.
	I've studied a bit of law, but yeah, haven't gotten that far.
	I'm not a lawyer.
	I'm not sure in terms of the jurisdiction.
	It seems like a great area.
	I'm not sure where it would be tried and or why.
	Hmm.
	Yeah.
	It would behoove him to be under the jurisdiction of American laws versus UK laws.
	I know that much.
	But beyond that, I don't know what would actually apply.
	So yeah, law talking listeners, definitely.
	Like, if you know, tell us.
	If any of you Awakening Wonders out there have an idea, just drop us a line.
	You can get in touch with us at theonbrownpod at gmail.com or comment on YouTube or whatever, etc.
	DM us, our thingies are on the screen.
	Yeah, what the fuck was I saying?
	That's the question.
	Doesn't matter.
	Brand introduces his guest in this next clip.
	And did you remember that we had a guest?
	I think they were mentioned at the very top of the episode, I'm not sure.
	Might have been, might not, but here we go.
	So independent media has to become a movement.
	We have to create an axis where spirituality, activism, personal and collective awakening
	all alloy into a glorious new, I'm going to say obelisk rather than phallus, of change
	and transition and I'm very excited to meet one participant in that, in some ways very
	much a child of lockdown, it's Adrian Mishler, better known as Yoga with Adrian.
	Yeah, so we have a yoga instructor coming on here, which is odd.
	The main reason, like, there are a few reasons that I wanted to keep kind of this stuff in, but it does illustrate how Brand kind of wants to walk that guru kind of line, you know, bringing the New Age stuff into his content.
	So, child of lockdown is an interesting thing to say here.
	Prior to COVID, Yoga With Adrienne's channel was hanging around the 200,000 subscriber mark, which is nothing to sneeze at.
	I'd kill for those numbers.
	But once everyone was locked in their houses looking for meaningful ways to exercise and help their mental health, her views and subscriber count exploded.
	She is now up around 12 million subscribers, so a little bit more.
	Yeah.
	What's interesting about this is that obviously Brand was dead against the lockdowns and hates anything and everything associated with them, but is perfectly happy platforming someone who seriously benefited from the lockdowns happening.
	It's a little bit confusing.
	Agreed.
	That pricked my ear as well.
	I was like, huh.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, a little bit weird.
	So next we have Yoga with Adrienne.
	I don't have a huge interest in covering this, so we're not going to cover much of it, because it's mostly just kind of her talking.
	I found her really boring, to be honest, to watch.
	Which, you know what, fine, you're a yoga instructor, you're not supposed to be, like, you know, super fucking on it and engaging.
	Yeah, the problem is that yoga instructors think that they're doctors and virologists and researchers now, like, getting a little big for your bridges is the problem.
	There is that.
	I can't, I can't speak to that with Adrienne specifically.
	Oh, sure, sure, sure.
	I'm talking about, you're right, I was making a generalization.
	She's got a lot of content, so you never know.
	But yeah, this content does raise a few points.
	I guess more accurately, there is a problem with many yoga instructors.
	Yes.
	Yes, yeah.
	Well, well, well.
	Vibes and potentially money.
	for no other reason than vibes. And causing, in some cases, lots of harm.
	Yes. Vibes and potentially money.
	But yeah, there are just a couple of points here that I would like to discuss.
	I don't see yoga as a sort of ancillary to the New Age movement that can sometimes seem,
	well, by its very nature, somewhat traditionless and rootless.
	I see it as a way to cultivate a different type of awareness, conquering the constant, caroming inner activity, the endless and nagging thoughts that sometimes won't leave me alone.
	Bit dark there.
	Because it's so vague, it's a little hard to dissect what they're saying here, but the suggestion at least seems to be Christian yoga, I think?
	Which sounds, one, fundamentally contradictory with itself, and two, fucking terrible.
	I can't think of anything less relaxing or less mindful than that book or the wrathful god contained therein.
	I don't feel like Christianity and yoga marry up that well as an exercise.
	Literally not at all.
	You can do both.
	Absolutely do both.
	That's perfectly fine.
	You do you.
	But I don't think they mix.
	And no one asked for that.
	Literally no one asked for that.
	Unless you have an agenda that you're pushing.
	I'd like to refer our listeners a couple of episodes back to when Russell Brand was asserting that we should all live in a Christian theocracy.
	And I've got to admit, you know, doing it through a yoga kind of environment, it's a good tactic.
	It's a good tactic.
	It would get people, you know, you can say all kinds of shit in that environment because that's only a couple of steps away from meditation.
	I don't like this one bit.
	It's not great.
	It's really not great.
	Right.
	So the next clip I'm going to play, it's a palate cleanser for specifically for the people watching.
	Listeners, I'll explain to you what it is in a second.
	I think now is the time to stop being afraid of talking about the spirituality in the way I feel compelled to.
	For so many years, I wanted to make this practice, and I still continue to want to make this practice accessible, but I wanted it to be so inclusive, so easy to drop in for so many different types of people over the world, that I was very careful about the way I included the spirituality.
	And I think since 2020, 2021, I kind of, yeah, I'm like, no, this practice is deeply rooted in spirituality.
	It makes sense to come back to that and remind people of that.
	People need spirituality now because the material world and its institutions are beginning to fail people.
	I don't mean that nature is failing people, but it's become plain in the last few years that we're in some seismic shift.
	It's the end of a particular era, the birth of something new.
	Sorry, that was not the palate cleanser.
	I just played the wrong clip there.
	You certainly did not cleanse the palate.
	I think I got ahead of myself in my notes as well.
	I'm fucking shocked at what she said.
	That's insane.
	See what I mean, right?
	So yeah, I think I got ahead of myself in my notes.
	Christian yoga, right?
	This is what's being asserted here.
	I think I included the clip just before because it was Russell being sad and it's more evidence of his poor mental health situation.
	And I somehow forgot to write that in my notes.
	But yeah.
	Christian yoga.
	And Adrienne seems to be on board with the concept.
	A little bit disconcerting.
	That's outrageous.
	And the notion that, like, yoga... Okay, so she's saying that she's trying to not talk about her Christianity or the cultural religious practices that yoga came from.
	Yeah, and she's made a very concerted effort to keep spirituality and religion out of her content so that it's as inclusive as possible.
	So is she keeping Christianity out or is she keeping yoga out?
	She has been.
	She has been keeping Christianity and religion and spirituality out of her yoga content in order for it to be as accessible as possible and as inclusive as possible, but she is now, now that she's up to fucking 12 million subscribers, deciding, hey, you know what?
	I'm gonna start putting a little bit of that in.
	But she's putting in Christianity, is what you're saying.
	That's what I heard.
	Like I said, it's a little bit vague, but yeah, we seem to be going down that road a little bit.
	I don't know in what form she'll put that in.
	Maybe it'll be just super vague stuff, I don't know.
	I'm not going to ascribe malice to this woman when I can't guarantee it, because she's not, as far as I'm aware, as much of a shithead as Russell Brand.
	I'll hedge my bets.
	Well, I just also, listen, if you don't want, like, just teach Pilates.
	I don't know, like, if you, like, okay, so, in full disclosure, like, I've been in and out of yoga classes since I was 17, and it's part of, like, There is a spiritual practice in it.
	I've never been in a class that doesn't at least talk about the spiritual practice of it.
	Because that's the whole thing.
	That's the deal.
	Yeah, it's part of the situation.
	Like I said, I've not gone down to actually watch her content, because I have pretty much zero interest in it.
	Yeah, sure, sure, sure.
	But, yeah, I imagine, I think the way that she would cover it more is probably just, you know, form and function, and I don't know if they throw some meditation in there without the spiritual elements.
	Yeah, well, I guess, like, growing up, like, and, you know, being around fundamentalist Christianity, like, growing up, You know the uh the attacks the like Harry you know like parents want to burn Harry Potter books there was oh yeah there were also attacks on like yoga because it's a non-christian religious tradition that's where it came from is that it's evil and satanic and demonic yeah
	So, you call it stretching, and you can still do all the moves if you want, if you're a Christian, because one weird trick can fix things if you believe in magic.
	So that, like, it's just really frustrating to me to... I mean, the thing is, is like, there's a really...
	There's a ton of, like, really horrible stories that are completely intertwined in yoga in America and the way that it proliferated.
	I don't know.
	Like, Russell Brand was saying something about how it's not connected to the New Age, which is insane to say.
	Well, he was saying that the New Age movement is, by its nature, rootless and traditionless, is what he said.
	That's dumb.
	I can't.
	It is.
	It is incredibly dumb.
	It's incredibly stupid.
	For a guy who has studied religions, it's fucking stupid.
	I'm just trying to figure out where they're coming from and where they're trying to go, because it's so vague.
	Yeah, exactly, exactly.
	And I'm not going to ascribe malice to Yoga with Adrienne here, but I am going to ascribe malice to Russell Brand.
	I know exactly what he fucking wants.
	It's whether Adrienne is then picking it up and whether she follows through.
	I don't know.
	I imagine she'll be back at some point.
	So I'm going to get around to actually playing that palate cleanser and hope that this is the right clip.
	Happy to hear it.
	Yes, it is.
	Carry on our conversation, Adrian, with your permission, on local.
	So if you're watching us on Rumble, press the red button and join us now.
	I see your Benji, who is compliantly on that mat, almost like a chimpanzee from Mary Chipperfield Circus.
	Doubtless whooped into shape by a life of constant cruelty.
	And now my dog Bear is going to join us.
	We let Bear in the studio.
	We're going to do yoga, not only with Adrienne, but with our recalcitrant hounds.
	Here comes Bear.
	Let's look at Bear.
	Come in here mate.
	There he is.
	Look at that.
	There's Bear will be joining us for yoga.
	So it'll be me, Adrian, Benji and Bear.
	Join us on Locals in addition to yoga with Adrian plus our canine accomplices.
	Listeners, just imagine a beautiful German Shepherd-type dog strolling into a studio, and you're there.
	He's lovely.
	He looks so cute.
	It's your dog named Bear!
	It's a bear.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Big and fluffy.
	His owner sucks, but he's just adorable.
	It's not Bear's fault.
	It's not Bear's fault at all.
	He seems so chilled.
	But yeah, I thought that was just cute.
	That's lovely.
	You know what?
	If I'm choosing clips, I'm going to keep the dog.
	So we have our final clip of this show now, where Brand displays how he sort of forgot to hire Adrienne for an event.
	As well as my live festival community, which you should be coming to, Adrienne, in all honesty.
	Between the 14th and 17th of July, hay on white.
	What are you doing?
	Where are you right now?
	I'm in Washington State, so out of the Texas heat, you know, I'm from Austin, and I am in Washington State, and it's a beautiful, drizzly morning here.
	Come England, we'll pay ya to be a community!
	So it's, uh, yeah, just completely, completely overlooked, like, oh yeah, fuck, should've, uh, should've invited you to this thing I'm doing.
	Your lack of preparation is not my emergency.
	I was very like, yeah, it's nice here.
	Leave me alone.
	Why?
	Why would you?
	Yeah, right.
	Why would you not invite the fucking, you know, 12 million subscriber count YouTube sensation that is this that is Yoga with Adrienne to this thing a little bit sooner?
	I mean, this this festival is on July 14th.
	Like, does he not think she's already booked up?
	Fucking, and I seriously doubt that he'd be willing to pay her rates
	'cause I imagine she does not show up to--
	I know.
	(laughing)
	She's doing you a solid, Holmes.
	She's doing fine.
	Yeah.
	(laughing)
	I mean, she does kinda, she is really good at doing that like,
	that like placid look of like, sure thing, friend.
	Oh, absolutely. - And I think you're saying--
	Absolutely, there are a few moments like that in the interview where--
	I'm looking at her, I may have actually even watched one of her videos
	'cause for a while I had like a hand injury and I had to like work around it.
	And so I, yeah, like there's, you know, yoga.
	It's great.
	Stretching's great.
	But there's a lot of... Yoga's fine.
	You know, orientalizing traditions for mass consumption in America.
	It's like, it's a problem.
	It's really complicated.
	So... Yes, yes.
	And that was before the pastel QAnon thing happened.
	So it's just really...
	Complicated.
	Yeah, if you subscribe to her, maybe let her know that it's not cool to be on Russell Brand's show.
	These are the people influencers can be reasoned with.
	They're just people.
	Yeah.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	Fuck that.
	about it, like enough of her like followers and listeners say something like, Hey, did
	you know that Russell Brand's actually really problematic and he jammed you into the same
	episode as like, simping for Trump? Maybe she wouldn't be thrilled. I don't know. I
	don't know. And also I can't imagine she's got the time to watch his daily content. Like
	we don't like I've barely I've barely got the time to watch his content.
	As I said to you before we started the show, this guy does an hour daily.
	We cover an hour a week.
	We're covering a fifth of his content and I have to fucking figure out which one is the most important one to cover somehow.
	Some weeks are easier than others.
	I don't want to watch an RFK interview.
	Sure, sure, sure.
	I don't want to watch an RFK interview.
	We're gonna have to.
	I know we're gonna have to.
	I just don't want to.
	Just so listeners know, behind the scenes, I know, like, it doesn't feel good to antagonize your buddy, but I'm really concerned about RFK Jr.
	and the giantics The antics out and about already are crazy.
	RFK, Cornel West as well, we need to get into him because he announced his candidacy for president on Russell Brand's fucking show.
	I did not know that!
	Yeah!
	Even when Cornel West announces his run, I did not, I didn't know that it was on Russell Brand!
	Did it on Stay Free with Russell Brand!
	No idea.
	I had no idea.
	I mean, I know that because I'm kind of trying to avoid Russell Brand, but like, I heard about the Cornel West thing from several different sources, and no one said that it was on Russell Brand's show.
	I just, I, I'm, I'm so, I'm angry and thankful.
	I'm angkful.
	You're angkful?
	Oh, fuck.
	Yes.
	about Russell Brand, because I wasn't paying attention and I think you even, you know, like
	the impetus for this whole show was like, you're like, I'm gonna check out what he's doing.
	Oh no, I have found trouble. Yeah. Yes. And so like, and it isn't, you know, like Russell Brand
	is not as famous in America yet. Not yet.
	Well, yeah, yeah.
	I mean, he's still pretty fucking famous.
	Absolutely, absolutely.
	Over here he's very much household name.
	And, you know, like, when... I forgot to mention up top, but one of the big things that does help this podcast is, you know, like, telling a friend, etc.
	You know, kind of spreading the word.
	That's a huge part of how things like this gain traction.
	One of the things that I would do if I were a listener was just ask someone who's close to you, like, oh, you know, what do you think of Russell Brand?
	And see what they say.
	Because anytime that I have mentioned to anyone that I am doing a podcast about Russell Brand, the first thing they have said is, oh, I really like him, he's great!
	That's the first thing that I have heard from every single person, which is fucking worrying.
	Yeah.
	I then have to explain.
	Oh, oh, dear.
	No, you shouldn't.
	No, no, no.
	He's he's gone on a bit of a turn, shall we say.
	Yeah.
	And as Americans, obviously, I like the thing is, I knew that he was getting his fingers in the in the 2024 campaign pie. I had no idea to what extent and I'm fucking
	concerned and I'm gonna make you do it and I'm not gonna like it either. No one's gonna like it.
	We gotta just like, eat the vegetables and it's gonna suck.
	Right, exactly.
	So far there are definitely interviews with RFK, Cornel West and Marianne Williamson. Fucking joy.
	Yeah, there's more to come, I'm not- I'm not sure when his kind of big hitters are going to come around.
	You know, the ones that he mentioned.
	You know, we've had Dawkins.
	I'm waiting for Roger Waters.
	I'm curious about that one.
	Elon Musk as well.
	Yeah, I'm all mighty curious when that's going to happen.
	Well, also, I mean, Jordan Peterson, it's going to happen eventually.
	I know.
	God, I cannot stand that fucking man.
	Him and Ben Shapiro, for very different reasons.
	I just detest both of them.
	Okay, we're just having a bitch fest.
	We could bitch all day.
	But I do want to reiterate that, like, you know, Telling people that you think might be interested is something that we don't know about.
	We'll never know.
	We can't measure it.
	And so there's a, you know, if there's one blog post, there's a million on how to grow your blah, blah and bleep blue and do this thing and that.
	And, um, I do like to know how to grow my blah, blah.
	Absolutely.
	Um, absolutely.
	But the idea that like, I don't know, in my personal life, People that come to me and tell me, oh my god, this podcast is awesome.
	Or, you know, like...
	I just, it's, it's, those are the podcasts and then the friends that I can make connections with.
	And then we know what each other's talking about.
	Like that's what happened with maintenance phase.
	Friend of mine just like DM me on Instagram was like, Oh man, I love this.
	You'll love it too.
	Okay, great.
	Sweet.
	And they were right.
	And maintenance phase, we'll never know about that.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, no, absolutely.
	It's not something you can advertise to get clicks on your blog.
	But it's something that I almost told you about the other day, Al, but like this is years ago that we were at a bar.
	It was me and Mike and a friend of ours.
	And we're just like, you know, crusty old punks.
	And we were in this like sportsy sports sports bar in Lansing, Michigan.
	And there was, and it was like a big bar and it was super loud and I just randomly, I'm getting drinks and I talk to the bartender and I just make some like Off-handed, like, silly little quippy atheist comment.
	And it's so obvious that this guy is surrounded by, like, Christian fundamentalist horror in America, and, like, and was so frustrated with that, he's like, and just, like, Dove it the chance to talk to another atheist.
	And it was super exciting.
	And I was like, Oh, I listen to these podcasts and I'm going to just like, Hey, hand me some receipt paper.
	And I'm writing stuff down.
	But what that looks like for my partner.
	Who's standing far enough like 10 feet away or 5 feet away from me in a loud bar.
	It just looks like I'm giving this dude my phone number straight up.
	Oh yeah, let's go for it.
	Mike looks over and he knows me and he's like, oh she's giving him homework.
	I think that's how it works, and that to me is the coolest thing, and what we want to do is try to offer something that's accessible and digestible and worth telling your friends about again.
	Yeah, if you like the show, I think it's a love language of its own kind, I think.
	Bring people into the shit that you really enjoy and care about.
	And I know a few of you definitely are in that camp.
	We've had some wonderful comments.
	I forgot to mention this to you, Lauren, but people have said that we are their favourite podcast.
	That's a thing that's happened.
	That's insane, isn't it?
	My mind was blown by this.
	That's like a sentence that just shot through my head.
	In one ear and out the other.
	That's very kind.
	I don't believe you.
	I believe you.
	I believe you.
	But yeah, my sense of self does not.
	It's amazing.
	Yeah, no, that's not on you.
	That's not on you.
	Yeah, my mind was pretty blown by that.
	I don't know what to do with that information, you know?
	But it's cool.
	It's really, really cool.
	It's really cool.
	I love that.
	And yeah, I'm excited.
	I'm excited at making shorter Maybe more accessible episodes, but also diving into more content.
	I don't know what it's going to look like.
	I'm excited to find out.
	And I think it's cool as shit that people are coming along.
	And, um, yeah, like YouTube is a great way to, you can find it.
	It's, we're easy to find.
	We can, you can find us most places, even if we're not posting a lot on socials yet.
	The On Brand Pod.
	And leave a comment on YouTube, email us theombrampod at gmail.com.
	I mean, yeah, it's, uh, the interaction is like, it's been great.
	Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's real nice talking to, to the listeners in the audience.
	It's, it's really cool.
	And somebody even mentioned ICP and like brought it up in the acknowledgement somewhere.
	Brought up the ICP thing, which was extremely cool and fun.
	And I do wanna, I have a little corrections corner myself.
	Oh shit, yeah, I forgot about this.
	Right.
	And I, being from Southern Illinois.
	This is a very important correction.
	It's important for me.
	I want our Juggalo listeners to feel seen.
	And it was not, it wasn't, the first gathering was not in Carbondale.
	And in fact, nothing was ever in Carbondale, but Cave in Rock.
	Is also in Illinois about an hour south and it was like 2007.
	Oh, what I do need everyone to know is that I said stuff about ICP on the podcast last week, got it wrong, told you my partner would get it right, and guess what?
	As soon as that podcast dropped, he bounded into the bedroom the next morning, was like, you're wrong about this, and I'm going to tell you exactly what, and was also DMing me with the hell about ICP, yes, like I thought.
	So I was corrected.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I immediately got a message from Mike, which is great.
	I was literally, from the time it was posted, I was like, I wonder how long it's going to take.
	I was like, even accounting for time differences, I think it was stupid o'clock in the morning with you guys as well.
	And I was like, oh, okay.
	Totally.
	And that's how I woke up that morning.
	So that's how much I give a shit about trying to be accurate.
	I think it's really fun.
	And I love it that like, I don't know.
	I hope y'all feel seen and heard and included.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	We deeply appreciate all of you.
	And yeah, if anyone wants to donate financially to what we do, that'd be awesome because we're both poor, starving artists.
	So that's patreon.com slash on brand and, you know, become an Awakening wonder or an as-yet-to-be-named tier because we still need to figure those out.
	I think we're getting there.
	There are things in the works.
	I've definitely got enough content for drops, that's for sure.
	There's some great shit that I've cut out for drops.
	Can we do plugs?
	Is it plug time?
	Yeah, sure.
	I don't have anything, but you plug away!
	Oh, I do too much stuff.
	So this weekend, if you're in Chicago, here's the thing.
	Chicago has the worst air quality.
	This is actually an indoor event, so that's a good thing.
	But Chicago has the worst air quality in the world right now?
	The Canadian wildfires got us and there is a NASCAR race on the street downtown the same weekend, which will contribute to the pollution even more.
	So that's a great idea that we have.
	Sensible.
	Sensible.
	If you're, if you're on the North side, you don't want to come down.
	Oh, I get it.
	Um, and that's fine.
	But yeah, if you're in Chicago, uh, on the 1st, so it's this coming Saturday, July 1st from 6 to 10 p.m., there's an event at the Eco Collective, um, The name of the event is called Ritual Rhythms.
	I was fired!
	It's cool.
	Rainbow Rhythms.
	It will be very Rainbow Rhythms.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	And it's at the, so the event space is at 2042 West 21st Street in Chicago.
	I'll put links somewhere and you can find me on Instagram and find the information.
	It's at the Eco Collective, which I didn't know where it was.
	It's right like a block and a half away from the National Museum of Mexican Art, which is a really rad place and we do events there whenever we can.
	So, super cool place.
	And yes, there will be... the thing is, like, woo or no woo, I don't know, people dancing with fire is like usually pretty sweet.
	And yeah, the vendor market's free.
	There's no admission, you just come by.
	It, like, it does kind of awaken something in you, doesn't it?
	Just like fucking fire and music and dancing.
	You're like, ah, this is, there is something.
	There is, there is a, yeah.
	It's always a, oh yeah, and so right, oh, I actually brought these with me.
	I've been making magnets.
	I have a bunch of Pride-themed Protect Trans Lives, Violet Tchotchke Saying No, Anti-Terror Club.
	I like the non-binary ones.
	Those are great.
	I might have to steal one of those.
	Queer Has Always Been Here is a thing, because it makes me really fucking mad.
	Just like the queer erasure from history is absolutely fucking absurd.
	Oh yeah, you know, you get the same-sex couples that were just friends for 40 years and, you know, lived together and shared a bed.
	You're like, okay, they were friends.
	There was a reason I was super stoked on Alexander the Great when I was like, a kid.
	Like, listen.
	Except this is brand new.
	It's chemical in the water.
	Yeah, exactly.
	He had some real close friends, that guy.
	Okay, I think... I think we're good!
	Yeah, I think we've said everything.
	I think.
	I think.
	I fucking hope so!
	We don't have a website yet, but we've done socials.
	Theonbrandpod for most things.
	Email us.
	Theonbrandpod at gmail.com.
	And otherwise, have a great... well, it'll be Thursday when this comes out, so great weekend, I guess.
	Yeah.
	Absolutely.
	Yeah have a nice time and next week I am not here but we're gonna work on putting a little bit of content together to kind of fill that space to make sure you're not completely deprived of your on-brand experience.
	I know you would all suffer so we'll do a thing.
	And this can be your favorite podcast.
	I just, I don't know that I'll ever be able to internalize that.
	I'm just baffled by that decision, but thank you.
	That's really lovely.
	You're too good for us, frankly, I think.
	I'm in agreement.
	Okay, well, thank you for listening and goodbye!

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