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July 20, 2023 - On Brand

02:42:51

OB #9 - Rainn Wilson

Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute from The Office) sits down with Russell to discuss spiritual revolution, and it's both terrible and incredibly stupid. 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 Brands Show with my co-host Lauren B. Hi, I'm Lauren B., and I have no idea what today's episode will be about.
	Ha ha ha, I hold all the cards.
	Lauren, what is your bright spot this week?
	Oh, what's awakening my wonder this week?
	We're gonna have to go with something else, but I'm trying.
	I'm trying.
	It's really stupid.
	So we just discovered the Internet Archive, like all the movies on the Internet Archive.
	Right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	(laughs)
	I was like getting really bummed.
	We were trying to find, especially like old sci-fi movies.
	A lot of them were like on HBO Max or like Criterion or something.
	It was like kind of, they're either everywhere or nowhere.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And yeah, we just watched Forbidden Planet.
	I've officially met Robbie the Robot for the first time for real.
	Is that the Leslie Nielsen one?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Oh, great.
	Great.
	Yeah, as he's pretty despicable as a hero.
	Like comic, you know, he's 50s despicable.
	He's now despicable, he's 50s charming.
	Everyone forgets he starred as a dramatic actor.
	Oh yeah, sure.
	Well, right.
	And he doesn't look much like Leslie Nielsen.
	And it was great.
	It looked incredible, it was really fun.
	But yeah, we found it on archive.org.
	And I've been trying to find options.
	So the writer's strike and all that kind of stuff, they haven't called for a boycott yet.
	No, no, no.
	I'm trying to work around.
	I used to be real good at stealing TV and I'm just not anymore.
	Even though Mike still calls me his little hacker when I set up Chromecast.
	That's like that's that's the hacking level.
	That's your hacking credential.
	Yes.
	That's that's yeah, that's he's like my little hacker.
	I'm like, I set up the TV, baby.
	OK, but yeah, so that's that's really fun.
	And if you're not watching movies.
	Or all your favorite cartoons from when you were a kid on archive.org.
	What are you doing?
	I'm honestly, I feel dumb for me.
	I'm a little annoyed at everyone else that didn't just sit me down and say this.
	So this is my PSA.
	Look at this thing.
	Right.
	It's like my PSA for anyone that maybe isn't confident about finding stuff on the internet to watch or enjoy.
	There's literally a treasure trove.
	There's some really cool shit out there, there's some really cool shit out there.
	And at the moment, I saw Neil Gaiman say this, but the best thing you can do for the writer's strike and everything else is actually watch as much fucking content as you can and kind of add perceived value to it.
	Because the worst thing that could happen is that the executives or whatever are able to turn around and say, oh no, this thing that you did is only worth this amount.
	Well, they lie about that anyway.
	Oh, yeah, well, yeah, there's also that.
	But someone has the number somewhere.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, exactly.
	But you know, I'll take Neil Gaiman's word for it.
	Agreed.
	At this stage, you know, he would know.
	Yeah, totally.
	He's done a lot of media stuff.
	So, you know.
	Right, and even just to be prepared for the advent that they want a boycott.
	I think that and, you know, we're old.
	We got DVDs still, so hey.
	Yeah, no, I'm fickle.
	If someone gave me a reason to cancel my Netflix subscription, I absolutely would.
	Especially if there was actually a moral reason.
	Hell yeah, let's go.
	That's where I'm at, right.
	So, what's awakening your wonder?
	What's your bright spot today?
	I'm not sold on this.
	I'm not either.
	I think I'm illustrating that it's harder than you think to come up with a cute little quippy thing.
	Yeah, it is.
	It's also on brand, I guess.
	Yeah, I see what you did there.
	It's also hard to come up with bright spots.
	So I was thinking about this.
	I've been thinking about this pretty much all day.
	Harder than you think also sometimes!
	Because technically my bright spot was like, well, I'm kind of dumb.
	That's my bright spot.
	I got less dumb.
	You wouldn't think that one of the things, that it would be so hard just to be like, what's made me happy in this last week?
	That's not just fucking mundane everyday life.
	Right.
	But no, one thing that has tickled me over this last week is spam.
	And by that I mean... Yes, yes, yes!
	I mean, our podcast specific spam.
	Anyone who hasn't started a podcast before is probably unaware that there's a very specific type of spam that you get through emails because you have an email address associated with the RSS feed.
	Spammers and shitheads in general or people who want a grift or whatever will find your email through that and send you stuff that is specifically to do with podcasting.
	So we've had a few good ones this week.
	Well, I'm very familiar because my partner and I are both artists online.
	We have an online presence, so we get this shit.
	Yeah, right, exactly.
	I'm barely familiar.
	I really enjoy the podcast ones.
	It is a different animal.
	It's hilarious, right?
	So there was one that was like, oh yeah, we found your podcast through blah blah blah and we'd really like to help you out.
	Come on to this platform.
	I didn't bother clicking any links because you never know.
	Come on to this platform and we'll you know blah blah blah and and let me know if there's if there's anything I can do to help with your podcast and I was like Well, here's our patreon link.
	That'd be tremendous.
	Thank you And I did get a response the guy was like, oh, yeah Yeah, I'll check that out, thanks.
	And nothing from there.
	And then there was another one that was supposed to be some kind of podcast statistics site, of which there are a legion.
	But it was like, oh, your podcast is doing really well in Algeria.
	And I read it and I was like, what the fuck?
	And I was like, this is bizarre.
	And yeah, they want you to click the link to go to the platform to check out your stats or whatever.
	But oh yeah, your podcast is doing really well in Algeria, which then made me have to go and check our actual analytics.
	And I've discovered we have approximately two Algerian listeners.
	That's more than I thought.
	No, I wasn't expecting any.
	The Invenitos?
	Nope.
	Different.
	I don't know.
	Don't know?
	Algerian listeners, send us an email.
	It's theonbrandpod at gmail.com.
	That'd be great.
	But hi, also.
	But yeah, that was hilarious to me.
	And the final one, which I think arrived today, which tickled me... I almost sent you a screenshot of this!
	I know exactly what you're gonna say!
	Yeah, no, it's one that has... So they've claimed that they've emailed us before and they definitely haven't.
	They've just made the email look like they've emailed us before.
	And they've started it with, Hi Russell.
	I was like, oh no, no, no, no.
	You have grossly misunderstood who we are and what we do.
	Yeah, I just looked down on my phone and saw the notification.
	Hey, Russell!
	I'm like, oh, sick.
	I can't wait.
	I can't wait until we have a little gallery of these just for our own entertainment.
	If he doesn't speak on social media, we'll get those kind of spam emails.
	Yeah, no, exactly.
	And you know, I enjoy a good Nigerian Prince scam as it is, you know, I enjoy that shit.
	As much as the next guy!
	Yeah, yeah, sure.
	You know, and yeah, there are, oh God, the ones I keep getting at the moment in my personal email are all like, we have hacked and taken control of your entire system.
	You know, we know what porn you've been looking at and blah, blah, blah.
	We have 500 pictures of the underside of your dick and you need to give us $1,000 or we'll blow up your house.
	Yeah, totally.
	At that point, I'm just like, okay, show the world my dick.
	I don't, I don't really care.
	That's fine.
	Go for it.
	You know, it's, it's like, it's going to be, it's a waste of time.
	Yeah, no it's fine.
	There's so many dicks.
	Exactly, exactly.
	So yeah, but Spam is my bright spot.
	I've thoroughly enjoyed that.
	It was so... I was gonna bring it up!
	I'm so glad!
	The Hey Russells really just took the cake for me.
	It was so fun.
	Cracked me up, cracked me up.
	Right, so we have a show to do, but First, we should thank some of our new patrons.
	Yes!
	First up, Mark Lindley.
	You are now an awakening wonder.
	You are indeed an awakening wonder.
	Thank you very much, Mark.
	Thank you, Mark.
	Mark also sent a nice message through Patreon as well.
	Hello, hello again.
	Oh, sweet.
	In fact, oh, hi, Mark.
	Hi, Mark.
	Yeah, oh hi Mark!
	Hey doggie!
	For anyone who's not seen The Room, watch The Room, preferably with about 15 of your friends because it's hilarious!
	Anyway, next up, Rush76, you are now an Awakening Wonder.
	You are indeed an Awakening Wonder.
	Thank you very much Rush!
	Johnny Sidebar, you are now an Awakening Wonder.
	You are indeed an Awakening Wonder.
	Great name.
	Thank you so much.
	Thank you very much.
	And Asher, you are now an Awakening wonder.
	You are indeed an Awakening wonder.
	Thank you very much.
	Asher, thank you.
	And finally, we have someone who has donated on an elevated tier.
	Sir Alex Vaughan, thank you so so much for your amazing support.
	We are still yet to name this tier and I really fucking need to finish this.
	Lauren, we may need to brainstorm this.
	I know.
	Over the next week.
	Suggestions from the audience as to what the hell this tier should be called are welcome.
	I don't know if someone wants to set up a thread in the subreddit on brand underscore pod.
	Or comment at all this stuff.
	Just tell us what you think.
	We'll be lurking somewhere.
	We usually are.
	We try.
	I think honestly it gets a little easier every week.
	Getting a little better at it every week.
	Having a subreddit makes life a lot easier.
	It's becoming more of a reflex.
	But yeah, the subreddit is definitely helpful.
	And yeah, once we've got it together, we will give you each the proper dues with a longer drop and space them out so there's only one of you per episode and make you all nice and special.
	Because we really do appreciate it.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	Well, and I do have a bit of a mental block about finding things that are cute.
	Cute, fun, quippy things from the show, because it feels a little like choosing my own nickname, which is, to me, extremely gauche.
	I know what I think is funny.
	I want to know what you think is funny or good, or if you end up saying it to yourself.
	That has way more value than just me.
	The kid who shows up at school and is like, hey everyone, call me Max Fire from now on.
	You're like, Oh, I only answered Raptor!
	Gah!
	Yeah, that guy.
	Do you know what?
	I'd be fine with that.
	If someone was like, I'm Raptor, I'd be like, yes, you fucking are Raptor.
	Yes!
	Go!
	Yeah, I'm a Raptor.
	Okay, Raptor.
	Pass me the salt, Raptor.
	No, I'd be 100% on board.
	I'd be screeching across the room at this person.
	That would be great.
	Well, either way they'd regret it.
	That's the thing.
	And so that's what makes me feel weird.
	And so I don't, I mean, and I get that that's like a, that's a me thing.
	Yeah, maybe.
	My immediate acceptance might come across as malicious compliance, but I'm actually just entirely on board.
	Like, yes, you are a fucking raptor, let's go!
	Yeah, as far as some things here, I think that, and also even just listening to the podcast versus participating in it, wow, is it different.
	Wow, is it a whole different, a whole new world.
	So, something that will resonate, I don't know, I'm way more interested, I'm less interested in what I think.
	I already get to say what I think.
	I want to know what y'all think.
	Yeah, we have to listen to what we have to say all the fucking time.
	Too much.
	It's a mess in here.
	Sick of hearing this person talk!
	So we, speaking of which, we're going to listen to someone else talk because we have a voice message once again from our boy Rob Barron.
	Rob Barron has sent us another one, you know, and if anyone wants to send us a voice message there's a link in the Spotify episodes, but also you can just email us a recording, you know, we'll listen to that.
	And I think Rob has a point that you're going to appreciate, Lauren.
	Tucker coming for Brutalist Architecture has pissed me off so much.
	I love Brutalist Architecture.
	I think when it's done well and paired with green spaces, it's absolutely gorgeous.
	It just is.
	It's not about how it looks, but it can look gorgeous, but also it's about Like, utilitarianism and a deeply compassionate society, where before only a few people are allowed luxury, everyone must have necessity?
	Like, you can't live in this great fancy mansion until literally every person has access to the very basics they need to survive?
	That is the very epitome of a decent, well-run society to me, and that's what brutalism is to me?
	Absolutely disgusting.
	I hate Tucker.
	Love that finish.
	I was nodding ferociously.
	Thank you.
	Yes, absolutely.
	And yeah, I think that I do stand by like, things are ugly and gross now because we invented plastic.
	Vinyl, whatever, you know, sighting.
	If you can cut corners on architecture, then they will.
	And that makes for bad buildings.
	And the fact that that came up at all in that conversation and was talked about in such a brain-dead way.
	Rob, thank you.
	Thank you.
	I feel sane.
	I probably appreciate you.
	I had to include that because I knew that you would appreciate the insights there.
	Yeah, for sure.
	If you ever have an occasion to send me flowers, don't comment on architecture instead.
	I appreciate it way more.
	That's fantastic.
	I love it.
	Incredible.
	And if anyone wants to support us and what we do, become an Awakening wonder, or even donate on a higher tier, head to patreon.com on brand and you will have our eternal gratitude.
	As a patron, you will also get a shout out on the show and access to our patron only show Off Brand, where we talk about pretty much anything but Russell Brand.
	And please note that while you can easily listen to our audio version anyway, 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 too.
	So, I am going to preface this week's episode by saying this isn't what I intended to cover.
	What I intended to cover is in fact coming next week, and it's taking me a little bit longer than planned, reasons for which will become clear.
	But in the meantime, we have a little bit of a surprise guest and we're going to go back to April of this year, 2023.
	I believe in Bran's home in Los Angeles rather than his UK studio.
	So let's just get into it.
	Hello and welcome to Stay Free with Russell Brand.
	As you know, every Friday we do an in-depth interview with a radical thinker, a fantastic entertainer, a brilliant philosopher, able to take us beyond establishment narratives and into the netherworld of the constant imagination.
	And today is an extraordinary and special day.
	The first 10 minutes of this you can watch wherever you're watching it now, but after that it will be only live on Rumble.
	That we may speak freely.
	Not in order to create division, but in order to create unity.
	If you're not a member of our Locals community yet, join now by pressing that red button and you can join the chat and ask us questions as some people will be doing later.
	Thank you for joining us and now it's time for me to Introduce our very special, beautiful, magnificent guest.
	It's Rainn Wilson.
	Rainn Wilson is, as you know, this person.
	I mean, he's from the office.
	He's been in a bunch of movies.
	Transformers.
	That one where he was a rocker.
	The rocker?
	You remember the rocker?
	Yeah, the one where you were a rocker.
	Yeah, you didn't see it, though.
	Yes, I did.
	No one saw it.
	I was on a plane.
	Oh, okay.
	Fair enough.
	That's right.
	We have Rainn Wilson, most famously known as Dwight Schrute from The Office.
	He's here to promote his book, Soul Boom, Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution.
	I read Rainn's book in preparation for this episode and while an easy and fairly entertaining read, honestly, it's not it's not bad.
	I didn't find it pleasant and funny.
	Yeah, no, no, no.
	He's, you know, I.
	I hesitate to say he's not a shithead, just in case there are things that I'm unaware of, but from everything I could find I wouldn't put him necessarily entirely in that box.
	There are a couple of troubling things that come up in this episode that we will see, but in general I'm going to put him in the box of okay.
	Mostly okay.
	Yeah, there are caveats to that, which we'll get to later.
	But yeah, I read the book.
	My only real issue with it was that I didn't find it got into any particular amount of detail as to why we need a spiritual revolution as opposed to any other kind of revolution, or what said spiritual revolution would specifically look like.
	You know, it's just kind of vague.
	We need this.
	Why?
	I have some theories as to why he would avoid those topics.
	They seem challenging.
	Yeah, it's difficult.
	I think that's mostly why.
	Somewhat frustratingly, I found he articulated his views in a much clearer and more concise manner during this interview than his actual book.
	Yeah, which is, yeah, I don't know.
	Oh, and the other thing he said in the book that annoyed me was, there was a bit where he was talking about how actors are like kind of shamans when they're kind of, you know, up close, like on a stage or whatever.
	And there's that kind of otherworldly kind of experience.
	He asserts that the actors in that scenario are better than, I think he put it, musicians reciting notes off a page.
	What?
	Yeah, and I was just like, oh, fuck you, buddy.
	I mean, you're actors reciting words off a page.
	Yeah.
	And it's also both.
	I think both is the answer.
	Like, yes, that can be transcended, but music, even interpretations of classical music, you know, it's... I don't know.
	I don't think he understands music that well compared to acting, you know.
	Ranking the arts is a sticky wicket.
	Stupid fucking thing to do.
	It's a stupid thing to do.
	It doesn't make any amount of sense.
	The whole nature of music is that it's completely ethereal.
	It provokes things in you that you can't describe with words.
	Anyway, yeah, that's a side thing that pissed me off a little bit.
	So, one thing going into this that I didn't know about Rain was that he is a follower of the Baha'i faith.
	Raised as, yeah, he was raised Baha'i, in fact, which is fairly unusual.
	And that's where we're going to kick off this conversation.
	Oh, we are Baha'is, we're a member of the Baha'i faith, not Baha'ists necessarily, but you were very close.
	Can I point out at this early juncture that wasn't Saddam Hussein in that faith?
	Saddam Hussein was not in that faith.
	What was he though?
	I feel like he was a Baha'i, you're just trying to extract him.
	I don't know what he was, I'm sure he was a Muslim.
	Isn't he like a Middle Eastern Sufi-ist type thing?
	There's a lot that I love about this clip, but my favourite thing is absolutely that neither of them have a fucking clue what Faith Saddam Hussein was, and they're both willing to argue their points despite that ignorance.
	Neither of them have a clue, and they're both like, no, no, yes, no.
	Not off to a great start.
	In any case, the point goes to Rainn Wilson in this case.
	Saddam Hussein was a Muslim and adhered to an eccentric interpretation of Islam that Ba'athist intellectuals developed in the mid-20th century.
	I believe Russell got Ba'athism and Baha'ism confused, which is nothing short of worrying for someone who has supposedly studied Baha'ism.
	But yeah, Ba'athism, for anyone wondering, is an Arab nationalist ideology promoting the creation of a unified Arab state in the Middle East, though Saddam's specific views differed quite a bit from traditional Ba'athism.
	Now, Baha'ism has a lot of things I agree with on the surface, as it rejects the notions of racism, sexism, and nationalism, but I tend to judge most religions based on what's prohibited, so let's take a little look at that list.
	Backbiting and gossiping are prohibited and denounced.
	Drinking and selling alcohol is forbidden.
	Participation in partisan politics is forbidden.
	Interesting one.
	Begging is forbidden as a profession, which is a bit fucked.
	And sexual intercourse is only permitted between a husband and a wife.
	So as a result, premarital, extramarital, and homosexual intercourse are all forbidden.
	There it is.
	Found it!
	The Baha'i Faith does state that gay people shouldn't be persecuted or discriminated against, but then it directly discriminates against them itself, so that point is fucking null and void.
	So yeah, bit about that.
	There's a loophole that religions like to play with, unless it's that weird.
	Anyway, Yeah, I think the Baha'i faith wouldn't like that metaphor.
	There's an exception that religions like to espouse.
	No holes, aha!
	Oh man, I'm starting off.
	You can do it, you can do it.
	Where, oh well, we love gay people.
	If they don't do gay things, if they cannot be gay outside of their own person and have to be tortured on the inside for their whole lives and then they're great, that's not good enough.
	Not by a damn sight.
	That's still discriminating against gay people.
	It's just pretending that you're not.
	It's an asterisk that not enough people acknowledge, and they can get away with a lot of bullshit in an argument by saying, like, no, we love gay people, asterisk, but they don't talk about the asterisk.
	And the asterisk is like, oh, well, they just can't live a full life.
	Even though they are, even if a sect will acknowledge like, yeah, gay people are part of the rich tapestry of what humans come out to be, and it's part of God's plan, blah, blah, blah.
	But they just shouldn't be, like, doing gay things, have gay thoughts, feelings, or actions in their whole lives.
	Yeah, exactly.
	That's not a good asterisk.
	No, no.
	As someone who has struggled with their own existence and identity for a long fucking time, I can tell you it's not good for your mental health.
	Just an observation from my personal experience.
	Now, the conversation kicks off in the direction of Rain's book, and based on the end of this clip, I was concerned where the rest of this interview was going to go.
	Okay.
	The book is called Soul Boom and even in that title I'm able to evaluate that likely you approach the subject of spirituality with a kind of congeniality and accessibility because I suppose spirituality has come to be regarded as either esoteric or divisive or phatic and imitative.
	Part of the challenge I think of, let's call them for the sake of simplicity, new age takes on spirituality is they sometimes feel traditionless Rootless, individualistic and selfish.
	What is it about the Baha'i faith and the manner of discussion of spirituality in your book, Soul Boom, that prevents it from being just another tool to help us fit in with systemic thinking and just individualism?
	That is such a perfectly formulated question.
	I can't even believe it.
	And you're so fucking articulate.
	It makes me sick.
	I made the question up.
	I know.
	No, you just write it.
	That hits it exactly on the head.
	So.
	Hmm.
	Yeah, I'm a little grossed out by anyone fawning over brand at this stage.
	But maybe it's because we're too close to the subject to be able to see what other people see in him.
	I think that's part of it.
	I fully acknowledge that's part of it.
	I'll acknowledge that he is articulate when he's collected his thoughts enough for them to go down a single path.
	I wouldn't say that question was especially articulate.
	I thought it was a little bit all over the shop, but there we go.
	Yeah, but if you're being flattered, everything sounds better.
	And I imagine we're in for some flattery.
	We're going to go into flattery territory on both sides.
	There is definitely a bit more of that.
	And there are a couple of things that come up that are surprising, but yeah, definitely some more flattery.
	In any case, let's get into Rain's answer properly.
	Essentially, my thesis is that in humanity's current distaste for organized religion, we have thrown the spiritual baby out with the kind of religious bathwater.
	So at the center of all great religious thought are a couple of key essential points that humanity has lost track of.
	These are some essential elements of any spiritual tradition, universal spiritual tradition, it doesn't matter, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, that humanity needs to move forward because we're on the verge of destruction.
	Yeah, so he's, to start with, he's talking perennialism here, the idea that all religions and philosophies ultimately follow the same universal truth, and that is a Baha'ist thing as well.
	But yeah, this is also something that Brown's on board with, even if he himself is a Christian zealot.
	What Rain has just said is essentially the thesis of his book.
	Everything is fucked, we're going down a dark path as a species, spirituality is the answer.
	I wholeheartedly disagree and we'll get into why a little bit later but first I thought let's just let Rain finish his thought and then go in an unexpected direction.
	So you talk a lot about revolution in the book and the subtitle on your pod and online and the subtitle of the book is like why we need a spiritual revolution because and you've been a Honestly, you've been a great inspiration to me over the years, and I watch all of your stuff, I've listened to so many of your interviews, and because I feel like we're kindred spirits, me perhaps in a somewhat smaller, gentler way, i.e.
	my narcissism is not quite as unchecked as yours.
	I'm not checking mine.
	Good.
	I didn't even know it was there.
	I don't even know really what you mean.
	I was looking at my reflection while you were saying that and thinking, soon I'm going to say some things that are going to be really brilliant.
	This noise coming from this man will soon stop and it'll be back to where things are meant to be.
	And I will be able to hold for it.
	So yeah, Reign giving Russell a little shit there.
	It's something that happens a couple of times in this interview and it's something I immensely enjoy.
	Mostly because all of Bran's interviewees that I've seen have kissed his ass the entire time.
	And there is some ass kissing, as we've seen, but Reign doesn't seem entirely blind to the reality of Russell and what he does.
	Which is refreshing, in terms of guests on this show.
	Poor Game respects Game.
	Like, that's another, like, I see you... Well, and I'm also not mad at somebody who's, like, setting him up for a bit.
	That's, like, what people hear the music of comedy, like, that's what that felt like, which is charming, but also disarming for people that are trying to point out that there are problems.
	Yes, there is definitely a little bit of that, but I have the advantage of having seen the rest of the interview, so I'm aware of the additional context.
	But yeah, absolutely, in terms of people in the comedy universe being able to play off each other, there is definitely an element of that.
	But yeah, as a side note, I know Brand was joking about his narcissism being unchecked, but to follow on from what you've said previously, when someone tells you who they are, believe them.
	Unless it's Tucker Carlson, that guy can get fucked.
	Well he does in his own way, it's just more obscure.
	Well no, he says, I'm not a racist, and then says the most racist shit imaginable.
	Well that's the thing, you listen to the whole thing and you're like, oh no, you're a massive racist.
	And you're willing to lie to my face about it.
	That's the concept of your character.
	Maybe that's the problem.
	No one has addressed Tucker Carlson in the correct scale.
	He's always like, no, I'm not a racist.
	I'm a massive racist.
	Get it right.
	Jesus.
	No, you're a racist and a liar.
	That's what you just did.
	That's what told me that about that person.
	Because if you listen to the whole package of the thing that he says, his paragraph is fucking racist.
	The sentence is just a lie, so he's a racist liar.
	Yes.
	The good old twofer.
	Yeah.
	So in this next clip, Reign reiterates the thesis of his book, while Russell takes the loudest drink of water known to man.
	Oh no.
	But in all seriousness, because you posit your arguments, your beliefs, your discussions around this idea
	that we need to not just tweak extremely broken systems.
	We need to rethink the entire system itself.
	And so my thesis is that we can do that and we need to do that by using spiritual tools.
	Oh God.
	That made me need to pee a little bit.
	Why is-- [LAUGHTER]
	Why is the sound of the water pouring as loud as Rainn Wilson speaking?
	Like, what the fuck are the sound crew doing?
	So, if you can't see this, both Rainn and Russell are wearing lavalier microphones, the ones that attach to your clothing, so I don't understand the necessity of clearly using the room audio instead of the lavs.
	Real fucking professional show going on here.
	Real top-notch.
	It does sound like they're in a cave of steel.
	It's insane!
	Yeah, I just, I don't get it.
	I don't understand.
	Something must have happened.
	Someone fucked up somewhere.
	And yeah, the audio for this is notably shitter than usual.
	Mike the pitcher of water, for whatever reason that we can't possibly understand.
	I think the microphone that they've used must be attached to the camera, to the main camera.
	And so between, for anyone not able to see it, between the camera and Russell and Rain is the picture of water on a little table, etc.
	So that's actually closer to the microphone than Rain Wilson is, so it'll pick it up more.
	That's my theory anyway, but yeah, ridiculous.
	Well thank you, audiophile coroner.
	Yes, sorry, I can't I can't help it when I hear shit like that I'm like come on, you know, and I know I'm I'm not one to talk We've had audio issues on this very fucking show, but you know, we work on it and we fix it and we We're just making it work.
	We don't have a production crew.
	We're not in a house in Hollywood Hills like they are right now.
	I think my apartment is too small and cluttered to even make that kind of reverb sound.
	We don't have the same resources that they do.
	No, different problems.
	So next up, Rain finishes his thought about spiritual tools being the answer, pivoting into being against partisan politics, and Russell just pretty much outright ignores everything he says.
	Maybe a little bit more than, I hate to say political tools, because I don't, because politics is really about the balance of power, so really Good solid spiritual tools will correct the balance of power, but not through partisanship.
	So there's a lot more to it than that.
	That sounds like a beautiful and necessary and important book.
	I was thinking in a way, Rain, that politics is functional, rudimentary, and about ...organization and logistics.
	At least it ought to be.
	But you need to underwrite your vision with some sort of ideology.
	And even in a secular culture, you still require recourse to ideas that legitimize the direction that you as a political movement or one as a political individual is claiming to be the correct direction for the society that you're claiming the right to organize.
	So we have a bit of a bramble there, which doesn't mean anything yet.
	It becomes a bit clearer later on.
	But notice how he just completely didn't acknowledge a single word of what Rain had said.
	That sounds like a beautiful and necessary and important book before going where he wanted to go.
	It's such a broad statement of flattery.
	Rain could have said literally anything.
	Instead of listening to it or engaging with it, Brian could just trot that phrase out and move on to whatever he wanted to say.
	Well, because he kind of disagreed.
	Like, that was just a roundabout, I disagree.
	Like, really?
	It seems like that's what I'm trying to get at.
	Yeah, there are other points that they disagree on that will come up.
	Yeah, I heard some little red flags in his answer that was like, oh no.
	Certainly red flags for Russell anyway.
	That's what I'm saying.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So yeah, that was just another example of Brand's shoddy interview skills.
	But mostly I just find it, I find it rude.
	Rude, Russell, rude.
	Yeah, but great.
	If you want to be rude, steal that.
	Use it.
	Take it.
	Because it seems nice.
	If you need to bulk up your rude arsenal, listener, like if your boss sucks, use that.
	Well, yeah, yeah.
	That sounds like a beautiful and necessary and important thing to say.
	Yeah.
	Thank you so much for that point.
	Yeah.
	You can sound affirmative while saying nothing.
	Again, malicious compliance.
	So in the next clip, it's not audible through the amazing audio experience that we have, but Russell can hear some noise upstairs in his house.
	Who is in our house?
	Because there shouldn't be anybody upstairs.
	I'm the only person here.
	My children are out.
	That was like a heavy-footed individual.
	That's Fauci.
	That's Fauci!
	He's up there.
	He's claiming royalties for something he'd probably never even come up with himself.
	Fauci!
	Get down from there.
	You're time-wasting.
	So I had to double check this, but Rainn Wilson is neither anti-vax nor against Fauci, and he doesn't fall into the Covid conspiracy stuff, which leads me to believe he's taking the piss out of Russell here.
	That's what I thought, yeah.
	Yeah, I think there's a little, yeah, you're always banging on about Fauci, you know, so that's nice.
	You know, like I said, you know, I'm not willing to Yeah, there are issues with Reign that are going to crop up in just a minute.
	But yeah, there are definitely elements of him and his presentation that I do enjoy in this interview.
	And someone willing to give a little bit of shit to Brand is really...
	I really do appreciate that.
	So much ass-kissing in all of the interviews.
	You are kind of grasping it.
	It's like you're stretching this little bit of okay feeling that Reign's giving you.
	You're milking it for all it's worth.
	Genuinely, it's such a rarity.
	I know.
	I'm like, oh my god, there's someone on here who's not a complete piece of shit.
	That's incredible.
	A little bit of a piece of shit.
	Because all I hear is knocking the sharp corners off of somebody and whitewashing and kind of pleasanting up a person who has very problematic views.
	This to me is churching up Russell Brand's whole deal by throwing Dwight Schrute at it.
	I don't like that.
	I also, I can be quite...
	I can jump to some conclusions, but those conclusions can be right.
	And this is one of those things where I'm like, you're kind of making it sound nicer than it is.
	You're making him sound nicer than he is.
	Ultimately, I think if Rain took actual issue with Russell, he wouldn't be on the show at all.
	Exactly.
	Is the ultimate answer.
	But for me, who wades through a lot of this dickhead's interviews, It is pleasant to see someone give him even a modicum of pushback on something.
	I get it.
	I totally get it.
	You have to listen to it either way.
	You can't just turn it off so I completely understand.
	He's okay for this show, right?
	Which is a heavy asterisk to put on the end of that.
	Yeah, it's Russell adjusted.
	Yes, right, exactly.
	So remember how we were pretty shocked that Brand advocates for a Christian theocracy and believes that secularism is the downfall of society?
	Turns out he was actually signaling it a little while before we got to him.
	I think it's interesting that you say that the tools that are required are spiritual ones.
	I agree with you entirely because Materialism and rationalism, I think, have taken us as far as they can take us.
	But this is the way we can organize our resources on this planet if we extract ourselves from our true nature.
	All of us know that within us there's the sensation of the body, there's the awareness of the thoughts, but there is something else which you might regard as your spirit.
	Your spirit requires nurture.
	direction. And when I try to organize my own life simply around logistics,
	relationships, objectives, I come unstuck pretty quick.
	That's where I found spirituality. I kept that clip in mostly because Russell's
	belief in a theocracy is one of those threads that I would like to find the
	origin of.
	We now know it for sure, it goes as far back as April of this year, and in our future coverage, when we decide to delve into the past properly, I imagine we'll find it goes back a lot further than that.
	At the moment, my guess is for when everything turned is probably around 2018.
	That's my guess at the moment, but we'll see.
	We will get to it.
	So in this next clip, we discover a few things.
	Well, can I say one thing?
	Um, using relationships as his example of what's not enough to manage the stresses of the world.
	That sounds like a you problem, buddy.
	Mm-hmm.
	Because really, that's what, like, as far as spiritualism, like, that's community, communing and understanding and support is the part of religion that supports you through tough times and tough feelings.
	And you can get that from relationships with your, you know, friends and family.
	And that's okay.
	So relationships not being enough sounds I don't know.
	Does it sound divorced?
	I don't know.
	It sounds like a little you problem, Russ.
	You know?
	Yeah, no.
	It doesn't sound... That's what pricked my ear anyway.
	Relationships are not good enough?
	Okay.
	He's coming at it with a very specific thing in mind that we will get into in this next clip, actually.
	And it's something we discover that Raine and Russell have in common.
	So I grew up a member of the Baha'i Faith.
	It was a beautiful faith tradition.
	I needed to leave it because much like yourself, I wanted to go explore the wide wonderful world of drugs and alcohol and sex in New York City when I was 20 years old and went off to acting school.
	So we share that as well.
	I love your recovery book too.
	I'm in recovery myself and a very important part of my spiritual journey comes from that 12-step tradition.
	There it is.
	So the 12-step program.
	Now things are making a touch more sense as to how these two individuals seem to be coming from a very similar perspective, albeit aiming in ever so slightly different directions.
	It's important to note that the first chapter of Bran's book, Recovery, about his recovery from and continued battle with addiction, That first chapter is about the 12-step program.
	He then bases the rest of the book on his own interpretation of those 12 steps.
	He advocates for any addicts to find their nearest 12-step program and submit themselves to it.
	I'd like to actually read the 12 steps, as most people have never actually heard them.
	So... 1.
	We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.
	Okay.
	2.
	Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
	3.
	Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
	Four, made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
	Five, admitted to God, ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
	Six, were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
	That sounds fucking ridiculous.
	Seven, humbly asked Him, with a capital H, to remove our shortcomings.
	8.
	Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
	9.
	Made direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others.
	10.
	Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
	11.
	Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
	And 12, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we try to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
	So, there we go, 12 steps, and over half of them are about God.
	Well, and there are versions of the 12 steps that have replaced higher power, that doesn't really, like, there's no magic words.
	Changing the spell does not take God out of it if magic is implied for it to work.
	There are different versions of it, but I think you would be hard-pressed to put together a secular version of that.
	I'm sure they exist somewhere.
	But yeah, 12 Steps and over half of them are about God.
	My biggest issue with this is that it takes addicts who are in crisis and preys on their vulnerability to convert them to religion.
	A buddy of mine in the UK has been going through recovery lately and confirmed that he was presented with the 12-step stuff, but he avoided it because of the religious components.
	To which I say, good instincts.
	Well, the complaint in America is that People can be sentenced by the court to enter a 12-step program and compelled by the state to basically go to Bible study.
	And maybe it's not Bible study in the scripture sense, but it's Bible study in the talking about God sense and how God is the only answer.
	Yeah.
	the problem. And if you don't do it, you don't, you continue to be on parole or you don't get
	out of jail. That is a massive issue. And it's really like what drives me crazy about the
	discourse TM is that people are like, Oh, it's fine. It's whatever.
	But like, our government is imposing this on people, and that is not how our government is supposed to work.
	And you don't know about the impact until you actually hear from someone who is impacted by it.
	And anyone being like, trying to hand wave because like, oh, atheists are boring, blah, blah, blah.
	And you're complaining about nothing.
	No, you're not.
	It has a serious impact on people.
	It hurts people every day.
	Mm-hmm.
	People can be mandated to do it over here as well.
	The huge distinction being that over here we have Christianity written into our laws.
	You expressly have separation of church and state written into yours.
	So, you know, there's almost...
	Either way, it's completely fucking immoral, but there's more of an argument that could be made over here that would be, you know, at least legal.
	Yeah, there isn't like supposed federal protection against being compelled to participate in religion.
	Right, exactly.
	So yeah, the whole thing to me, I don't know.
	I'm not a fan, is how I'll put it gently.
	There have got to be better systems out there than something that was cooked up in the 40s.
	Yeah.
	So yeah, next up, Rain ever so slightly pisses Russell off, I think without realising it.
	I'll preface this by saying that Rain opens his book by talking about his two favourite shows growing up, which were Star Trek and Kung Fu.
	The Star Trek side of it is that humanity itself is on a spiritual journey.
	And one of the things that we've thrown out is the possibility that We need to think of ourselves as global citizens, as world citizens, as human citizens, rather, that we are all seven billion of us inhabiting this planet.
	And how do we move forward?
	And how do we help make the world a better place?
	How do we solve racism?
	How do we solve income inequality?
	How do we solve these essential questions?
	Because they're not going to be solvable, Russell, through politics.
	It doesn't matter what candidate.
	A little bit more ignoring in there.
	He's just picked up a pen and is just writing.
	That's when Rainn said, Russell?
	Russell, I'm not done.
	Put down the notebook.
	But it doesn't matter what candidate he says to Russell, whose next moves immediately after this were, hey, let's get RFK Jr.
	on the show again, or let's get Rand Paul on.
	So these ideas of globalism are directly at odds with what Brandt says about, you know, developing small local isolationist communities, which is why he's holding his tongue here and just starts doodling, I'm presuming.
	This issue will come up again later in the interview so we won't delve too much into it now but on its surface it seems like this would be a big point of contention between the two of them.
	Wow, gee, wow, wow, wow.
	I know.
	So in this next clip Rain says something, this is one of the problematic things, he says something really fucking stupid.
	We can get Biden out of there.
	We can get Trump out of there.
	We'll get, you know, I remember back in the day when Barack Obama was elected, all of my liberal, secular friends were like, oh my God, thank God racism has been solved.
	Barack Obama is the president.
	And in a lot of ways, he was a very good president.
	In a lot of ways, It was just business as usual.
	And a lot of big business.
	And a lot of drone strikes.
	Illegal drone strikes.
	And a lot of, you know, monitoring.
	And it was just the same old, same old.
	And racism actually spiked and got worse after he was... So the system itself is broken.
	Why?
	What do you think?
	What do you think may happen?
	Magic?
	Wishes?
	Oh, it's in the water.
	It just showed up one day.
	What?
	Uh-huh.
	So, I don't know anyone or have heard of anyone who was saying racism is solved now around Obama's first election to the presidency.
	Thank you!
	Jesus Christ!
	I was quite young and also in a different country, but I've only ever seen people saying we don't have racism anymore, we had a black president, when they're about to say something racist or have said something racist.
	Those are the only people I've heard saying that.
	The general perspective at the time, as I understand it, was very much one of, finally, and this is a huge leap forward, which, symbolically, it was.
	As for Raine's points about Obama being a mixed bag of a president, sure, I can agree with that.
	I would, however, like to remind him of the immense pressure he was under as the first black president.
	He had to be squeaky clean and be able to back up anything he said or did, or else he would be partially responsible for the setback of his entire race.
	As it was, the Republican side just made shit up instead, claiming Obama was a Muslim born in Kenya, etc, etc.
	And finally, when it comes to racism getting worse after Obama, no shit, Captain Obvious.
	A huge portion of the country I hated having a black president, let alone for two terms, and the knee-jerk response was Donald Trump and literal Nazi rallies.
	In fact, I'm going to read a couple of... I don't usually do this, but I'm going to read a couple of comments from Rumble which were under this video.
	Oh boy.
	So, quote, you can't ignore the racism that Obama stoked is the most liked comment on the page.
	Oh gross!
	It gets worse.
	Quote, I would like someone to name one accomplishment of President Obama that benefited Americans.
	Name one.
	That's the third highest.
	A little further down, quote, Obama was the biggest racist president who ever held the office.
	A thieving punk who went against so much in our constitution.
	A thieving punk, right?
	Fuck.
	And we have the worst one, so a little bit further down still.
	And I'm going to preface this with a content warning because it's a tough read in the home of free speech.
	So skip ahead, you know, 10-20 seconds or so if you don't want to hear something gross.
	But here it is in all caps, quote, B.S.
	B.S.
	B.S.
	Obama was a terrible queer paedophile who did not do one good thing for our country.
	He and his tranny wife undermined America for failure and with Biden carried on paedophilia under the Capitol.
	Under?
	Under the Capitol?
	Under the Capitol, apparently.
	Some kind of basement, I don't fucking know.
	Oh yeah!
	A dumb, right?
	Deep underground base or whatever.
	Yeah.
	Maybe that's what they mean by deep state.
	Literal deep state.
	So yeah, you're correct, Rainn.
	Racism wasn't solved overnight and you're talking to someone who promotes the stoking of white fear by platforming people like Tucker Carlson.
	Yeah, and also, while we're on the comments section, there was exactly one comment with five likes which said, what's up with the audio, Russell?
	Which I really enjoyed.
	I felt seen.
	Right?
	Yeah, that's funny.
	Because also, very different experience in both producing a podcast and even just listening to them.
	That would have been a bigger problem.
	I mean, okay, Thank you for having a place to call attention to the fact that no one ever said—I'm older, I was there, and I remember it quite well—and no one said that electing Obama fixed racism.
	No, that would be an incredibly stupid thing to say.
	That was a recurring joke on Party Down that Roman was like, oh, it's post-racial.
	Like, he was the asshole, the butt of a joke, making that claim at the time.
	That's, and I, it drives me up the wall to hear anyone rewrite history in that way.
	I had guilt for voting for a person we thought he might get killed.
	And I felt a little bit of guilt, like, oh, I set this guy up to be assassinated.
	I helped him.
	And there was a little bit of that feeling of like, he might die.
	I remember the bulletproof glass.
	I remember that.
	That being a big fucking deal.
	That doesn't sound like solving racism to me!
	Or did the comments, friendly?
	Yeah, no.
	Yes, exactly.
	I was like, oh dear, that's... It's outrageous!
	This is why I stay out of the fucking comments section, Jesus Christ.
	The further I scroll, the worse it got.
	I'm sorry, no.
	As far as, I didn't need to know that it existed.
	I'm sure Rumble has a place to say things, and I don't want to...
	Oh man.
	Yeah, I would have been very, very curious to see what the locals chat said specifically.
	I don't think I can access it.
	Maybe I can.
	Can they post images?
	Oh God, I don't want to know.
	I don't want to know.
	Why am I asking?
	Lauren, shut up.
	I don't think so, but let's hope not because it would just be a sea of dick pics with these people.
	Next up, Rain comes for, well, a couple of my friends and some of yours.
	So when we talk about the spiritual journey, you talked about New Ageism earlier and it's something that really rankles me because there is an essential selfishness at the center of kind of New Age, treacly, It's a spiritual path, which is like, I like this yoga class, I like this crystal, I like this meditation, I like this Instagram of the day, this roomy quote that hangs on my wall, and this makes me feel peace, and this makes me feel serenity, and I'm going to leave it at that.
	No, peace, personal peace and serenity is important.
	A yoga class is important.
	Meditation, a nice roomy quote, those are all important.
	But if it stops there, it's narcissism.
	If it stops there, it's self-serving.
	So how do we take that, this dance between the Kung Fu and the Star Trek, this dance between our personal spiritual journey, and then we take that out into the world.
	We're of service to others.
	We seek to heal, to transform, to build community.
	Okay.
	At the grassroots.
	So what he's saying here is that the spiritualism stuff needs to move into service to others and humanity in order not to be narcissistic.
	To which I say, perhaps these things that make people feel at peace are a very fucking necessary mental health practice, and practicing self-care in that respect is incredibly important.
	Further, just because someone's not contributing in service of spirituality does not mean that these people are inherently selfish or narcissistic, and it does not mean that they don't serve others in a different way.
	One of my closest friends, who's big into a lot of the more aesthetic spiritual stuff, is the cornerstone of any friendship group she has.
	Helping people through crises, lending an ear, giving advice, and just generally being there for people.
	And she devotes a lot of her time doing so, you know.
	She's one of the people that I could call, and at the drop of a hat, I knew she'd fucking be here.
	So yeah, fuck off with your assumptions about people, Reign.
	You don't know shit.
	Well, here's my thing with New Age beliefs, because... There's more.
	Yeah, right.
	That person that is your... There's more, they're gonna keep talking?
	Or... No, no, no, no, no.
	More to... New Ageism is bigger than what he's covering.
	Well, but also the issue I have with New Ageism, and it's specifically the lucrative cult-making milieu that happened, you know, in the, like, late 70s, 80s idea.
	Is that, and what was specifically preached, is that if you take care of yourself and meditate and do all these, if you follow the steps of the guru, that will fix the world.
	Period.
	End of thought.
	End of sentence.
	That is a horrible, horrible thing.
	But that belief is also underlying so many claims.
	And it's funny, when you hear it in a documentary about how crazy Scientology is, because they have the same belief system, that you're like, well, that sounds nuts.
	But it's also reflected.
	Theosophy preached is like, you have to fix yourself, which, good.
	Take care of yourself, 100%.
	That's not the end all.
	That was the idea, is that if we all fix ourselves, then the world will just magically, whoopsie poopsie, be perfect.
	But we all have to buy the same book from one guy to learn how to meditate the right way, and then everything will be fixed.
	Which is fucking absurd.
	It's commercialism.
	And commercialism is extremely effective.
	Oh god, yeah.
	I would say there's a distinction, it's an obvious one, between the people who are kind of following the cult-like, following it to that extent, compared to the more casual interactions with New Age stuff.
	And my interpretation of what Rainn was saying was he takes more of an issue with the casual people rather than the people who actually believe that fixing themselves is going to fix the world.
	Potentially, yeah.
	But I could be wrong.
	It also like it changes it's it is so individual that it's it's difficult to know and it's also even difficult to know what you're being convinced of in the moment and like what you're you know like that's that's the other thing about like whenever we're talking about um Russell saying the other day it's like he was making all of these like We need to fix this and this and this and we need to, you know, solve this and we'll get together and do that and there's all of these, and I'm being vague because what he says is vague, this, that, the other, but like do it all right this time and everyone's good and perfect and on the same page and then
	We'll have the revolution that we want.
	And then whenever you actually ask them, like, well, what do you want people to do?
	Oh, don't vote.
	That was period.
	Don't vote.
	And to me, a lot of like new age is like, we need to fix this, that and the other.
	Oh, you sound like feel good and like good vibes only.
	And then, oh, well, what's your solution?
	Person, people that are preaching this or giving your TED talk or whatever the fuck.
	And they're like, oh, you should, thoughts and prayers.
	You should meditate on that, and then everything will get fixed.
	If we all just meditate, that'll fix the whole planet.
	Wealth disparity, pollution, you know, like, climate change.
	We all just need to have super duper good vibes, and then it'll get fixed.
	That's actually what people are saying.
	If you let them, if you, basically, and even what this, what you and I are doing right now is we are letting Russell actually, well, to some degree, We are letting him peter out to his own conclusion, which is, join my locals channel.
	Like, that's the only solution.
	He's like, don't vote, join my locals channel.
	And then we can get together and fix the world.
	It's interesting that you bring up the, you know, they're just leading towards meditate on it and that'll fix the world, because that will be coming up.
	Yeah.
	However, first, in this next clip, Rain says something else that's a little bit fucking stupid.
	Again, it doesn't really matter who... If... Russell.
	Yes?
	Listen to me.
	I was listening anyway.
	I know you were listening.
	You were wrapped.
	Listen.
	Our entire system, both political and economic, is based on the worst aspects of humanity.
	It's based on contest, competition, and aggression, and one-upsmanship, and individuality.
	They're all based on that.
	That's how capitalism is based.
	And that's how partisan Politics is also based.
	So as long as we're in that system, we're headed toward a self-destructive end.
	We're headed towards climate disaster and all kinds of, I talk about all the different global pandemics in the book besides COVID.
	But, you know, racism, materialism, you mentioned.
	There's so many other nationalism, militarism.
	These are all the real global pandemics.
	But if we want to really cure them, if we want to address them, we have to go to the roots.
	And the roots of that is our personal Transformation as a, I'm sorry to go back to this stupid analogy, but going back to our inner Kwai Chang Cain, and then how do we spread that in the world?
	How do we build something new?
	Because if we just keep protesting, It's not going to lead to anything.
	And we're in a culture of protest right now where we see injustice.
	We're like, injustice!
	And we see a terrible politician.
	We're like, that politician sucks.
	And we see this terrible bill that's been passed.
	Like this legislation is terrible.
	What are we building?
	ALICE So, uh, Rain touched on nationalism for a brief moment there, which, we've established Russell expressly advocates, and he will later in this episode.
	KATE Russell wants ethnostates!
	He's all about nationalism!
	We'll get to that further down the line.
	Kwai Chang Cain is the protagonist of Kung Fu, for anyone wondering, and he would routinely reel off bastardised versions of Eastern philosophy just after kicking someone's ass, you know.
	As to his main point here, he's saying that protest doesn't work and never changes anything, to which I say...
	Um, protests sometimes achieve the goal they're aiming at, but often if the decision is left up to legislators, for instance, they just go ahead with whatever they're doing anyway because they don't give a fuck.
	However, what protest does achieve, regardless of whether it's successful, is shaping the national or even global conversation Drawing attention to the issues at hand and drawing enough awareness that regular people are talking about it and legislators do end up eventually doing something about these problems.
	You needn't look any further than the Black Lives Matter protests to see just how effective protest can be.
	That was, I believe, the biggest global protest in history.
	Yes.
	Even then, if you look at the biggest protest in this country specifically, in the UK, it was the Iraq War protest in 2003, which didn't prevent the UK from joining the invasion of Iraq, thank you Tony fucking Blair, but it absolutely did raise awareness and help shape public opinion that the war was a bad thing, which is tremendously valuable and very effective.
	Yeah, and also, potentially, those protesters that get involved and organize their communities, that's the other thing, like, yeah, protest on its own is a demonstration, but demonstrating and organizing That's when you get up like there rains kind of using the word the wrong way.
	Demonstrating is the is is what I think he means because protesting is demonstrating plus.
	Organization.
	So you were organizing your community to actually fight on more than just one front.
	Because showing up and being angry is absolutely a very important part.
	But then even within the group that is protesting and is organizing and is demonstrating, that's where do you think that the politicians that could possibly fix anything or community leaders that can fix anything are going to come from?
	Or be inspired to do something by Yeah.
	What he was saying was that, you know, we live in a culture of protest, which doesn't work and doesn't achieve anything.
	So what we need to do is kind of dig deep inside ourselves and find the spirituality within ourselves and then put that out into the world.
	Somehow, he doesn't actually specify how.
	and that will change the system and protest won't.
	Yeah, there's that magic meditation antenna.
	There's one of those classic, do the thing, do the thing, question mark, profit.
	Oh, underpants gnomes!
	Yeah, underpinning both of these people's theories there's a massive question mark that they are unable to answer.
	Which maybe they shouldn't have to because they're actors!
	Yeah, maybe.
	Maybe they shouldn't be discussing it in the first place because, like you say.
	So let's get into Russell's response anyway.
	That's a wonderful way of framing it.
	In a sense, what needs to be rejected is the entire perspective that we're presented with and the successive administrations in your country, America, that you've described.
	Are enough to illustrate the futility of a system that ultimately serves the same, what we generally call elite interests, regardless of what set of politicians claim to be representing what particular ideology.
	And the quantitative easing measures that took place in 2008 and the bailing out of the banks and the failure to prosecute anyone for the financial travesties in that era demonstrated that ultimately when it came to it, what you were left with was rhetoric and aesthetics.
	And I feel that the Amplification of the culture at war is to mask the fact that the distinctions when it comes to the maneuvering and administering of power are too similar to warrant debate.
	So the necessary amplification of the small differences is a requirement to legitimize the entire conversation.
	Ah, so the manufactured culture war is to provide cover for nefarious shit and distract people.
	I completely agree with that.
	And so I have to ask, Russell, why you're engaging with it?
	You are one of the worst people for engaging in the culture war and actively promote and platform the worst proponents of it.
	You had Tucker Carlson on your show, for fuck's sake, and spent your entire time with your head up his ass.
	Don't go telling me, oh, the culture war is a bad thing, when you're platforming people like that.
	you outrageous hypocrite.
	That just is baffling. Yeah, that's exactly, I was, I agree completely. I was just thinking like,
	okay, you're participating in this little game that has completely replaced any semblance of
	even like, Americans don't understand what politics are, what civics are.
	Basic civics are.
	Because politics has been replaced, and maybe it always was a populatory contest, I don't know, but like, because the thing is, is like, it has been ever since I've been alive, and so I can't speak to the experience before I was here, all I know is history.
	And it's difficult to know the individual experience of your average person.
	Cause you only, you know, history is written by people that are in charge.
	So I don't know how it felt to the individual degree, but what I see is a popularity contest that has completely usurped politics.
	And so we just, uh, again, we're, we're going back in the movie catalog.
	We just watched the running man.
	Um, which was wonderful and fun.
	The scene where Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger are fighting, I had this deep root of existential dread.
	I'm like, these are governors.
	These are both governors.
	These are people who have had a lot of power.
	Okay, but what does that say about us?
	And I know exactly what it says about us.
	And I'm not coming for them.
	I'm not coming for the movie.
	I'm not coming for anything.
	I want to use that as an illustration of the problem that the popularity contest is not politics and these two actors are doing the same thing.
	You can't tell me that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura, two very different candidates by the way, but whatever, I can't get into that, but!
	Yeah, yeah.
	You're telling me those are the most capable people in the entire state to run the government?
	Of course not.
	Yeah, no, no, no, no.
	So these guys are, that's where they're like, they're holding this water and they're dumping it into the pot of popularity contest actively while bitching about it.
	And that's fucking rich, rich.
	Yes, yeah, no, I completely agree.
	And I will also say, with regards to whether it's always been a popularity contest, I do feel like that's gotten worse over the last decade or so.
	I do feel like we've taken a massive fucking slide.
	Well, media, in the way that it has developed, I mean, it has changed the game completely.
	You know, the Nixon-JFK thing, kind of like, That's where people usually tend to acknowledge that as a point in history that kind of changed the game for politics.
	That's what I'm saying.
	I don't know what it was like before a television.
	I imagine things took a drastic turn the moment that the printed image came to the fore.
	Same thing.
	Yeah, totally.
	Yeah, and for me, personally, you know, I've told you this before, I kind of first started engaging with American politics around the 2012 election, you know, watching the debates, etc.
	And what I remember from that compared to anything that's happened since is that the debates were actually Mostly about policy.
	I remember that.
	I remember there were a lot of fucking issues with Mitt Romney and there was some backbiting going back and forth, but mostly it was about the policies and getting into the nitty gritty of shit and whether it'll work, etc.
	etc.
	Nowadays, not a fucking chance.
	Yeah, we're not even close.
	We're not even close.
	No, no.
	There's been such a drastic decline in the actual conversations happening, even between the politicians.
	It's insane.
	Which is something you can take advantage of when your entire citizenry has no, like, you don't educate them on civics.
	You don't educate them on how the system works.
	Oh, fuck yeah.
	Some might argue that that is the plan.
	I'm not one to engage in conspiracy theories generally, but yeah.
	We can see how it would benefit.
	Yeah, it doesn't look great.
	Not great!
	Not great!
	Next up, Russell misappropriates Bill Hicks, of all people.
	I liked it that you said that, that we fetishize the aesthetic, we fetishize superficial ideological components, not that cultural or racial issues are not important.
	Of course they do, they lead back to great, great exploitation, that's evident and plain.
	But I like it, but when the choice is so reductive, I'm reminded of that.
	Bill Hicks used to do a bit of saying, like, when there was a debate about whether or not to have women priests, he said, yeah, have women priests, have one with He's got two dicks, I might go see that one.
	But I prefer to deal with the voice of limitless love that's accessible to all of us.
	Gotta run, there's a voice calling me.
	Why are we accepting that paradigm?
	And the only way out of that is through spirituality.
	According to Russell, the only way out of anything is spirituality.
	So when I heard that, I was like, that doesn't sound like Bill Hicks to me.
	That didn't quite catch my ear in the right way to be like Bill Hicks.
	So I want to play the actual clip of Bill Hicks' stand up here to give a more accurate picture of what was actually said.
	People ask me what I think about that woman priest thing, you know.
	What, a woman priest?
	Women priest?
	Great.
	Great, you know.
	Now it's priest of both sexes I don't listen to.
	Fuck, I don't care.
	Have a hermaphrodite one.
	I don't fucking care.
	Have one with three dicks and eight titties.
	I don't... I don't... You know, have one with gills and a trunk.
	That would be cool.
	I might... I might go see that, you know, but...
	You know, I appreciate your quaint traditions and superstitions.
	I, on the other hand, am an evolved being who deals solely with the source of light which exists in all of our hearts.
	That middleman thing, it's wacky and I appreciate it.
	Gotta run, there's a voice a-calling me.
	Right, so quite different to Bran's presentation of things, and much funnier, incidentally, when you actually see it.
	So, you know, Bill Hicks was one of the most prominent atheists of his time, and it's pretty hilarious to me that Russell would misinterpret Bill's take on spirituality and beliefs For the record, Hicks was an agnostic atheist, specifically, and most people's interpretation of his whole light-within-us thing was mostly a metaphor for the positive potential of humanity, etc.
	etc.
	A different Hicks quote is, "...all your beliefs, they're just that.
	They're nothing.
	They're how you were taught and raised.
	That doesn't make them real."
	Either way, Brand was grossly misrepresenting Hicks, whether he realizes it or not, and I didn't want to let that stand.
	Well, I think that it's telling in specifically the way that he misremembered and mischaracterized it coming back up.
	Yeah, very interesting, you know, how little of his perspectives are based in reality.
	And it's, you know, whether he knows that or not is the eternal question that we have.
	Because I don't think he's aware of that one, for sure.
	I mean, where's the incentive to tell the difference?
	There is none.
	No, no, exactly.
	Who's pushing back?
	Us?
	What are we gonna do?
	This?
	Make a podcast about it?
	Well, okay.
	We're throwing all we got!
	Turns out, doing our best!
	But yeah, you know, I mean, he's internally bending the world to his will, to his perspective, because that's just, yeah, it serves him.
	Yeah, I just, that was a fairly random aside, but I just wanted to include that.
	I think that that was the best insertion of, yeah, totally.
	Because it's not just- Best insertion of Bill Hicks so far.
	I was trying to not say that because I'm unaware of the double entendres that I've been saying all day.
	But yeah, I'm trying.
	I think Higgs would approve.
	Does it make it less aware of me to say?
	I'm trying to look out for myself here.
	Yeah, no, I, uh, yeah, okay.
	Well, it does make me wonder, and I mean, you know, like, whenever Stephen Colbert became like a big deal, and then all the, like, right wing guys were like, oh yeah, I love, like, What are you hearing?
	What are you hearing?
	Yeah it's it's yeah I um with the religious stuff and Hicks especially because you know he yeah he he would spend hours like taking the piss out of that um you know and and yeah and uh with with the Colbert thing it's like okay you don't understand that this is satire do you that's that's that's what's happened yeah and it's like you can't engage in reality like at that you're like well You know what?
	I don't have tools in this arsenal because we're on a different planet.
	We're playing different sports.
	I show up with a baseball and a glove and you're on the ice waiting to play hockey.
	I don't know, man.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And yeah, it's the pigeon playing chess metaphor, isn't it?
	Exactly.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Even better.
	Yes, that.
	So next we'll get into Russell's thoughts on comedy, which possibly explain why, despite his timing and chops, he is often bad at it.
	I feel like comedy comes from sort of a continual awareness that the reality we operate within is secondary and that there is another ulterior reality, that that's what we allude to.
	What I feel, one of the things that defines comedy for me, Rainn, is that it is the ability to continually go,
	"This isn't real.
	"I've been taking my life seriously.
	"I'm worried about my children.
	"I'm worried about my future.
	"I'm worried about my job and people."
	But in comedy, you connect with a deeper truth somewhere in this aperture between the nihilism
	that the infinite and the eternal suggest and a deep, profound, yet somehow ineffable meaning
	that can only be felt in love.
	To avoid the piety that that could induce, you can approach it with comedy,
	that there is a playful beauty.
	It sucks already.
	So comedy alludes to there being a secondary reality?
	This does explain a lot.
	I wanted to clarify, for hopefully the final time, my position on Brand as a comedian.
	I believe he has an impressively quick wit, solid timing, and his mind can often go to the right places to poke fun at stuff at the drop of a hat.
	This is what I mean when I say he has chops.
	He has the framework required for a comedian to be good.
	One that simply, you know, it doesn't simply appear overnight.
	The problem is, as we saw with the trailer to his recent special Brandemic, which we will get to when we meet that Patreon stretch goal, it's the writing that he's bad at.
	Arm him with someone else's material, a critique that has been levelled at Brand early on in his career by the way, And he can be magnificently funny, but when it comes to writing his own stuff, he either goes into conspiracy theories, rambles, or goes into pure old dick jokes while presenting himself as the next George Carlin.
	I do feel like his basis of what comedy is might explain why he's so bad at the writing part.
	I'm not sure.
	That's exactly what I heard.
	That's exactly what I heard.
	Because what I hear, okay, so I do get a little fascinated with comedians talking about comedy.
	There's a lot of parallels with art and honing your craft.
	Always an interesting conversation, for sure.
	Yeah, and what I hear comedians that are successful say is practice is what makes comedy good.
	But also, as an observer of comedy, Putting a magnifying glass to very real life and pointing out the absurdity in very real life, extremely rooted in reality, is what is enjoyable to me.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I completely agree.
	I think that is the opposite of what Russell is saying.
	The opposite of what he's saying.
	Yeah, yeah, no, exactly.
	But comedy, I think the best comedy, at least from my perspective, is rooted in ugly and uncomfortable truths and making them funny.
	And that shit's not easy.
	Common humanity!
	Yeah, exactly!
	Like, pointing out the common humanity and the common experience that we all have and we all need to lighten up because we all do shit wrong.
	And none of us are perfect, and none of us have it great.
	You know, like, nobody's just cruising along having a great time.
	We are all dealing with something, or we have all dealt with something, and if we're honest about it, that can bring us closer to our humanity.
	That, to me, is what is impactful and important about comedy.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	So literally the opposite.
	I think that Russell just doesn't like working very hard, and he's figured out a way to not have to, and frankly, if that was it, I wouldn't be mad.
	I'd be like, Secure your bag.
	Get your coin, girl.
	Do what you gotta do to keep a roof over your head.
	Let someone else write your show.
	That's fine.
	I don't give a fuck.
	I don't give a fuck.
	Let someone else do it.
	Someone else who is better than you.
	Good for you!
	Do that, Russell.
	It would be much better.
	We would all appreciate it a lot.
	I know there's picket lines full of people that would love to get paid fairly and well to write for- Do it!
	Let's do that.
	Yep.
	100%.
	100%.
	Get other people to do it.
	Good lord.
	I was going to say something, but I've completely forgotten what it was.
	Let's do it.
	Come on.
	We got it.
	Next one.
	It's gone.
	They're going to say more awful shit.
	So let's... Yep.
	Timer.
	Oh, definitely.
	No, no, that's... You've seen the show before then.
	Yeah!
	I don't know, you know?
	Picking up a vibe.
	It's subtle, but... So in this next clip, Russell reasserts his Christianity while also taking the mask off just a little.
	And you talk about reading the Bhagavad Gita and the characterisation of Krishna versus a character like... not character, Jesus Christ!
	Like, you know, Christ's real.
	Not coming on here to say there ain't a Jesus.
	I like Jesus.
	I love Jesus.
	I'm trying to be him for a while, but there's some demands.
	You've got the hair, right?
	That's as far as I've got really, because self-sacrifice and being a living manifestation of the divide.
	You've washed the feet of many a prostitute.
	Sometimes it's part of the contract.
	As a matter of fact, right?
	Yeah, so Russell's festival in Wales, Community, that took place this last weekend, FYI.
	As far as I can tell, a bunch of people mostly came together to give him and his friends money and listen to Russell shout down a microphone.
	Truly, if you look at literally any of the posts on social media or YouTube videos, it appears mostly to be a weekend where everyone comes together to worship at the altar of Russell Brand.
	It may seem like a joke that he's trying to be the next Jesus, but that's the type of following he's cultivating.
	Get it?
	Cultivating?
	Yeah.
	So, me think the lady doth protest too much in this clip is what I'm getting at.
	Yeah.
	So, something that they said earlier this week on the Conspiratoriality Podcast, which is Excellent resource.
	That it's not a leap to jump from political analysis to cultic analysis.
	As in this very situation.
	And the first rule that they've done a lot of, they have a lot of personal experience, they've done a lot of research.
	So I'm quoting from what their larger point, you know, they're making young spirituality, right?
	The first rule of cultic dynamics is the leader lies specifically about the outside world and his own powers to change it.
	Subscribe to my local channel.
	So that creates a network of recruitment Of people whose anxieties are being exploited and appealed to, and then the leader is promising salvation through lying about how to solve the world's problems.
	And if you put a bunch of people in a room and make them feel really good and included and important and, you know, make them feel nice about it, that reinforces The leadership and their hold that they have on doling out the relief that people will feel when they are in their presence and when they hear them speak and are told these solutions that are not going to work because the leader has generated a worldview that is inaccurate.
	Yes, yeah, exactly.
	It is nothing short of worrying.
	I would like to, because he's done this for the last couple of years, I would like to next year actually go.
	If our Patreon donations get to the point of being able to attend this thing, I would like to.
	Oh, I insist.
	I would like to go.
	Yeah, you're doing it.
	From a purely curious perspective, if nothing else, I get the feeling I would hate every waking second of being there.
	But you hate this too, so it does matter.
	You gotta do it.
	That's true, but the difference there is that I can hate this privately.
	I can hate this in the comfort of my own home and no one has to see how much I hate it.
	And I don't have to interact with the people who I hate who are doing this.
	Whereas I think if I went to community, I have to interact with those people.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	If they're doing a fucking prayer circle or whatever, I can't just sit on the edge going, no, thank you.
	I've got to join in in that shit at some point.
	Otherwise, my cover is blown.
	So, you know, it's... I mean, if Jake Rokitansky can not shit his pants.
	Yeah, yeah.
	You can manage it.
	Yeah, no, absolutely.
	You can manage it.
	If they can do it, you can do it.
	I'm not saying I can't do it.
	There's a thing that happens in Chicago.
	Oh, I will be tortured.
	Great is a word to use.
	Miserable, but I'll do it.
	In the event that our Patreon gets to the point where we could pay for your flights to come over here, you can come too!
	We can both fucking suffer.
	No, right!
	Yeah, I mean, listen, that's a double-edged sword for me, because no, I don't want to do it, but I will if the resources are there.
	Yeah, of course it will, and I'll hate it.
	I wouldn't...
	If it's possible, I will make you.
	No, it would just be miserable, but we would do it.
	It would suck for both of us.
	We would do it in a second!
	We'd be in a tent in Wales, in the rain, with these fucking people.
	The only possible upside I can see is that it's in Hay-on-Wye, which is a great place for bookshops.
	They have the book festival there every year and it's fantastic.
	So yeah, you know that would be the only upswing is that we're, well, we're in Wales and we go to Hay-On-Wyde.
	Do we take Crystal Skulls and out-weird everyone else so they leave us alone?
	That's, you know what, that's a, that's, it sounds like a fun solution because Peepshow told me it's a fun solution,
	but it probably would bring too much attention on us.
	Because also, like, part of the reason that the QAA folks can't go anymore, or like Will Summer got kicked out of QAnon rallies, is because they started to recognize him.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So I guess we can't bring Crystal Skulls.
	That, and also, having looked at a fair bit of the social media stuff, I don't think you can out-weird these people.
	I don't think it's possible.
	I think they would be 100% into it.
	They'd be like, fuck yeah, Crystal Skulls!
	Let me do a dance and drink blood out of one of them.
	Let's find out.
	The content!
	Fuck knows.
	That kind of sounds like a hoot.
	Okay.
	No, no, no, no, no, I promise you, I promise you it looks awful.
	It looks genuinely horrendous.
	By all means, go have a look.
	I think it's like Community by Russell or something is on Instagram, some shit like that.
	Well, yeah, I've seen a fair, I mean, it's all pretty.
	Samey to me at this point because a lot of that kind of wooey stuff, but yeah, it's more like He invokes cancel culture a lot more which is really strange, but Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that'll be that'll be coming up soon in our show.
	Um So next let's get into why Russell believes it's a spiritual revolution that's required and not any other kind.
	If they have in them that spirit, if they have love in them, that we will feel the resonance of that.
	This is why I think it is no small thing to posit that the solution to our problems must of course be spiritual, that it's not going to be organisational.
	There are great tomes, great genres of political writing about this is how we organise it economically, this is how we organise it geopolitically, militarily.
	But unless there is a shift in the consciousness of our kind, then it will reorganize like iron filings back to that template, the way it's reiterated itself through empire, successive empires have conformed to the same paradigm.
	Okay, so his argument here seems to be that because the system of capitalism we have now is so entrenched into our society, subscribe to my locals channel by the way, the only way to resolve it is spirituality.
	Okay, so What exactly would spirituality achieve in taking down capitalism?
	How would that work?
	Is the idea that everyone becomes so kind and loving that we just dismantle the thing of our own accord?
	Is that the idea?
	CEOs just start tearing their own company apart and giving the pieces to their employees.
	How does he think this will actually work?
	Does he think that capitalism is separate from religion?
	Like, I don't know.
	And not that they're fundamentally intertwined and prop each other up?
	Does he not see that at all?
	Has there not been any religion in capitalism Up until this point, what planet does he live on?
	In God we trust is on the money.
	I use that as an example to make a point.
	Obviously, it's more complicated.
	What?
	I'm trying to be nice.
	I don't know how.
	I'm learning.
	I'm trying to be nice. I don't know how.
	(laughs)
	I'm learning.
	Yeah, these two things should not be intertwined.
	That's, I think that's a reasonable position.
	But they are.
	They are. - Astoundingly.
	Irrefutably.
	I don't think Russell or Rain are particularly on planet Earth when it comes to this perspective.
	It's bonkers.
	And annoyingly we don't get any further into it as Rain has a bit of a stupid comparison to make.
	Brand clearly gets bored while Rain is talking, so he just decides to start writing shit on his pad and nodding occasionally.
	You could take Marxism as an example, like essentially at the root of Marxism is how do we heal these incredible income inequality that is holding billions of people back and causing them to suffer?
	Well, let's create an organization in which the resources are spread out among humanity, but If that isn't the need in the human heart to share, then having an administration say, you must give up this beautiful Hollywood Hills house and this couch and you must give it to him.
	And you must work as a janitor, then if that's coming from above, then you're not going to feel connected to that.
	So Marxism at its heart, seeking to remedy a big problem in the world is fantastic.
	It has so many great ideas inherent in it.
	But again, this has to bubble up from the ground up.
	Oh man, that's a real beautiful metaphor.
	I feel that.
	Of course you do!
	You feel the notepad you've been scribbling on, on your lap.
	That's what the sounds are, by the way, to listen to.
	You hear the little rustling.
	We got our first paper rustles.
	Oh God, there's some good ones as well.
	Really?
	That is the real benefit of this terrible audio situation, is that the audio listeners can hear, like there's active Foley work going on, basically.
	So you don't even need to watch this one as much.
	You can hear it all.
	You can hear when he stops paying attention.
	And it was whenever Rainn Wilson suggested there be wealth Redistribution.
	Well, well, kind of, kind of.
	Kind of is right.
	Kind of.
	Because I'd refute the idea that Marxism ever truly had its day.
	I mean, Lenin took it in his own direction.
	And then after that, Stalin completely fucked it up.
	So in any case, there's a lot of writing to suggest Marxism wouldn't apply particularly well 100 years later.
	So it doesn't especially matter now.
	But Listen, theory is great.
	Theory is great to work out ideas, but like, not but, period.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	It sounds like.
	So what Rainn Wilson just laid out was the state taking your luxuries away.
	And Russell, that's when Russell was like, I'm the fuck out.
	I'm out.
	Out if I've thou.
	But what they want, what they're saying they want is for people to spontaneously do that themselves.
	That's what Rainn is saying, yeah.
	He's saying that it's a problem when someone else tells you to do it, but people should be doing this of their own volition, out of kindness and servitude.
	Okay, you first.
	Oh, you're not doing it?
	Well, there's a little bit of that!
	Little bit of that!
	That's what Russell says at you!
	Like, that's the thing, is like, y'all motherfuckers say this all day, but you just pointed out the big fuck-off house that you're in.
	In Hollywood Hills!
	Um, you know, they're, uh, yeah, these people are not fucking poor.
	You first!
	You first!
	Have at it!
	Oh, wait, you're not doing it?
	Crazy!
	Why?
	Why do you think that is?
	Like, come on!
	Put your money where your mouth is, boys.
	And you know, both of them have charities.
	They both have non-profits, you know, and they would argue, yeah, well, I do this.
	No, come on.
	Come on.
	Not enough.
	Not enough.
	Or just don't tell other people to do it and then not do it yourself.
	I don't even care about it.
	Like, whatever.
	Like, take a second and look at yourself and look at your own behavior.
	Oh, I don't think Russell wants to do that.
	I think he wants to look at a piece of paper instead of listen to his little friend.
	I think that's what he wants to do.
	He wants to look at a piece of paper and a mirror.
	If the paper were reflective, that would be helpful.
	Oh my god.
	Can you imagine?
	Get him a mirror and, you know, a dry wipe pen.
	He'll be there all day.
	Picking out stray nose hairs instead of listening to Rain, who's sitting right next to him on a couch.
	Oh god.
	Okay man, okay.
	So this thought about Marxism does continue and next Russell, he at least acknowledges some of the horrors Christianity has caused.
	You know like, yeah that Marxism starts with the idea of sharing and like ends up with We're gonna kill all these people!
	And like Christianity is, we are all one!
	We're building this cathedral and killing all these people!
	Stop getting to kill all these people as the outcome!
	Okay, so I'm not especially Marxist and I can't claim to have read all of the literature surrounding it, but I'm quite sure that the whole killing people thing came less from Marx and more from Stalin.
	When powerful people take hold of an ideology and use it as a weapon, they can do terrible things, much like many religious leaders over the centuries.
	That fact doesn't seem to be taken into consideration when throwing out their whole spiritualist revolution concept, What happens when a powerful shithead inevitably starts using religiosity for nefarious means?
	Hmm.
	Because that would happen.
	What book has more kill people in it?
	Tell me.
	We can compare.
	You can look it up.
	Lots of these people deserve to be murdered.
	Either God does it or we'll sign off on it.
	Yeah, you put the writings of Karl Marx next to the Bible and Marx wins.
	In terms of fewer people killed.
	That's just a baby brain thing to say.
	That's crazy.
	But also, he's equating Marxism with totalitarianism, which is not at all the same thing.
	Yeah, no, the supposed ideology and then what a fucking authoritarian government actually ends up doing are two entirely different things.
	That drives me nuts.
	So from here they waffle a fair bit and end up settling on the subject of the City of London, dear to my heart.
	Russell is complaining that there's an ugly building he doesn't like being built on Tottenham Court Road.
	Here, thankfully, rain surprised me.
	For viewers, keep a close eye on Russell's face as rain elaborates.
	London and I think London is the new Rome in a way and it has that layer upon layer of beautiful kind of human evolution.
	Yes, I suppose, but it feels to me very much that what we are witnessing now is a sort of an ongoing centralizing entity imposing from above, this time masked in globalism, this time using the rhetoric of equality, fairness.
	Yeah, but I want to challenge you on that a little bit because I understand and I've heard a lot of your talking about like the World Economic Forum and whatnot.
	And I certainly am not a big fan of billionaires getting together and coming up with policies that supposedly benefit the little man.
	That's not what I'm talking about.
	But we have to be careful when saying that globalism is the enemy because ultimately we do want to be global.
	Ultimately we do want and that doesn't mean like A one world government that's authoritarianism.
	That's not what we're talking about.
	But ultimately, we have to be one human species on a planet.
	And that's going to take us away from nationalism.
	We're like, I was born in Ecuador.
	Ecuador is amazing.
	Ecuador forever.
	God bless Ecuador.
	I will die for Ecuador or Belgium or Mongolia or insert whatever country you want.
	So we've come back to globalism and Brand is pissed.
	They cut away from him entirely.
	I know why.
	I'm slightly annoyed he cut Russell off there, specifically as Russell was about to rail against things being in the name of equality and fairness, which would have interested me.
	I mean, okay!
	Alright, man!
	You just said it!
	Again!
	I agree entirely with Rainn Wilson on this subject of globalization and pretty much everything he just said, by the way.
	But yeah, keep an eye on fucking Bran's face here.
	Also, like, globalization's already happened.
	We need to stop pretending that it's gonna happen.
	It has happened, and we need to deal with it.
	The internet and social media have achieved that, pretty much.
	Manufacturing anything.
	Listen, we are in a global marketplace, which is how any society actually relates to each other is through commerce, for real.
	In a practical sense.
	I think we're definitely more connected than we used to be because we've had a global marketplace for centuries, but it's only now that I can, if I'm interested, I can see the viewpoints of people in Lagos or wherever.
	Absolutely, you're absolutely right.
	At the drop of a hat.
	It looked like Brand was smiling at the end there, but this is just a little bit off topic.
	You know how, you know, there's a distinction between humans smiling and when apes bare their teeth and it looks like a smile but actually it's an aggression thing?
	That's what I felt like was happening there.
	That wasn't a smile.
	That was a I'm going to eat your face.
	Well, at first globalization goes like, okay, one boat getting stuck in one canal has International repercussions.
	That's a thing that happens.
	We need to deal with the reality, and we just don't.
	There's a whole lot of people pretending it's not real.
	There's also why I use recycled materials for everything, so I don't need to worry about supply chain problems.
	End of the day, I can still make the bullshit I want to make.
	Yes.
	I don't trust these motherfuckers.
	Yeah.
	No, nor should we.
	So let's let Rain finish his thought where he accuses Brand of neglecting his greater spiritual work.
	And again, watchers, please just keep an eye on Russell's face.
	So how do we, because this, like everything, these conversations have become so like black and white and so simplistic and you have like globalists versus anti-globalists versus like How do we have a global transformation on this heart level here, but also with 7 billion of us so that we are global?
	And that's a different kind of globalism.
	So if we're shouting anti-globalist epithets from every belfry, then we're kind of neglecting our greater work.
	What do you mean?
	So yeah, Rain just like poked him in the chest there.
	Well, just like a little tap on his heart area.
	Little tap, and I thought Brand was going to go for him.
	I really did.
	He's going to swing.
	He's going to swing.
	Also, that's my sister.
	I make that face.
	And I know what I feel like on the inside when I make that face.
	And it's unpleasant.
	I know.
	I get it.
	I see it.
	I feel bad right now.
	I'm sorry.
	Mostly Mike.
	Anybody else who's been on the receiving end of that face.
	There was a series of faces just like, I know those faces.
	So Rainn Wilson there is outright calling Brand on his shit and Brand does not like it.
	That is for sure.
	It is definitely watching, watching some, now that we know more about, we have a much better background than what, two months ago.
	And because Wilson also doesn't have the background we do.
	No, no, this is it.
	So Reign's hoving into this territory that we're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, turn back.
	Don't do it.
	Danger, danger, danger.
	No, no, no, no.
	Like, I hope that you, yeah, right?
	I think that there is an awareness, because, you know, Reigns said he's a big fan of Russell's content, etc, etc.
	But I don't think he realizes just how much he's going to piss Russell off with what he's saying.
	I don't think he realizes to the extent that that is going to really... Russell's also not dumb.
	He's going to try to hide, which, listen, again, I see that struggle.
	hiding a feeling.
	Ha!
	It's only five wishes.
	You kidding me?
	So...
	But like he's, he's hoving it like, we know that it's danger territory,
	but it's because you have to reel me back every episode I fill in for Russell.
	When I'm watching this content and I'm like, oh, well that can't be right.
	It's gotta be better and nicer than that.
	He doesn't mean it.
	Rainn is just listening to it and filling in the blank to give Russell a benefit of the doubt and doesn't have you to stop and pause and remind them.
	Actually, that's not what he's saying.
	You're filling in and your brain makes excuses for this person.
	Yeah, that's true.
	That's true.
	I imagine Rainn Wilson's interpretation of Bran's content is probably less critical.
	Less critical, yes.
	Let's put it that way.
	So, Russell's response to this is a full-on bramble, clocking in at over four minutes, and I'm going to spare you listeners the trouble of having to deal with it.
	But basically, Brand lays out his idea of having small isolationist communities with local democracies again, you know, in response to, you know, globalism is the answer.
	No, it's not!
	He's like, I'm going to ignore what you just said completely.
	Pretty much.
	Because that's what people do and they're like anti-global, like it's already here.
	Yeah.
	So he's going to carry on with the, what is it, shouting anti-globalist epithets from the belfry, as Rainn Wilson put it.
	And he comes out of it saying this.
	I think people have gotten sick of being told what to think and how to feel by people who don't have their best interests at heart, and I think that globalism has become a great example of that.
	So I'm going to start a channel on Rumble where I tell people what to think and how to vote!
	I only suggest how to think and how to vote.
	So, solid pushback there.
	People are sick of being told what to do.
	Well, yeah.
	Reign has said some stupid shit, but he at least can see pretty much straight through a lot of the propagandizing.
	You know, whether he examines all of it is a different question, but still, that's nice that someone calls him on a little bit of the hypocrisy, even if it's only just a little bit.
	I don't even think it's necessarily stupid.
	I mean, I think it might be less informed and, like, idealistic.
	I was a little, you know, a little spacey and not that grounded in practicality.
	Oh no, neither of them are that.
	We're talking to millionaires.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Neither of them are practical.
	Right.
	So yeah.
	So in this next clip, Rain wants to talk more about partisanship, but gets derailed by Bran's attempt at comedy.
	I talk about one of the great evils of the world being partisanship.
	Do you know how much money are spent on political ads?
	I don't have the figure in front of me, but in the United States, it's in the billions and billions of dollars just in advertising for candidates.
	Think about what you had a little bit of a burp and it was a little bit foul.
	What did you have this morning?
	It was a little foul.
	I've just been eating my own cum all morning.
	It's the only thing I can keep down.
	I hope that's your second strike.
	[laughter]
	Um, that wasn't common.
	It was more like tuna.
	I don't eat that.
	I'm a vegan.
	I had tofu, scramble, and then, of course, the cum.
	The cum.
	I chill it!
	I'm not an animal!
	Do you eat it with a tiny spoon?
	No, a tiny little spoon.
	Like a caviar?
	Like a blini?
	It takes ages, though, because there's plenty of cum.
	Vegan blini.
	See what I mean when I say he's bad at the writing part?
	I mean, it's just gross.
	Even Rain, someone who has worked a lot in improvisational comedy, was a little bit stunned by that for a second.
	Yeah, that's true!
	Of all people!
	Of all people!
	Rain Wilson!
	Rainn Wilson in improvisational comedy on The Office and fucking wherever else, you know, spent years doing this and even he was like, what the fuck do I say to this?
	Yeah, my God.
	Is that the British version of Michael Scarron always having a gun?
	Like, bringing out a gun and like, stop!
	It'll all shoot!
	Like, that's the stopping of the improv.
	Like, Americans will pull out a gun and that'll end the improv, but like, British don't have guns, so they pull out a cum.
	I eat my own cum and that stops the improv.
	I mean, I will say it's equally effective.
	I don't feel like that would have made it into an episode of The Office, either the British or the US one.
	I think we're putting our finger on why Russell doesn't get as much work as he might like.
	Um, God, yeah, I hate it when he does that.
	Honestly, yeah, he's fine.
	like honestly well yeah yeah he's working he's fine um i i yeah i i honestly i hate it when he
	goes when he goes into this kind of just the the the grossest most puerile thing he can think of
	I just, I don't know.
	It's so incredibly cringeworthy and not in a funny way.
	You know, I'm a fan of peep show and shows like that that are actual funny, cringe stuff.
	And this is just, oh god, no, don't do that.
	Even stop Dwiggett in his tracks.
	You did it!
	Good job, bunny, you did it.
	You win.
	You win at gross.
	Yes.
	Yes, he fucking does.
	Now we're going to get back to partisanship and what Rainn Wilson is proposing that we do instead.
	The Baha'i Faith is democratically elected.
	So here we are in the city of Los Angeles.
	There's no clergy in the Baha'i Faith.
	There's no priests or monks or gurus or anything like that.
	So it's all democratically elected.
	So every year the Baha'is of Los Angeles gather together and they vote for nine people called the Local Spiritual Assembly that will govern the affairs of the Baha'is of Los Angeles.
	It's very much like a 12-step meeting.
	It's like loving servants of the community.
	How do we do this?
	Is there campaigning?
	No, not allowed.
	There's no yard signs.
	There's no, you should vote for Bob.
	He's the best and wisest Baha'i.
	It is prayerful and meditative and you are asked, you're given a list of everyone who lives in Los Angeles And you're asked to write down the nine names of those who you think bring the best service-oriented outlook, the best spiritual maturity to their jobs to be humble servants of the Baha'is and the communities of Los Angeles.
	So, campaigning isn't allowed in the Baha'i elections.
	Okay, great.
	That's pretty much fine when dealing with a tiny amount of people and you know literally everyone in that community, which is likely to be the case here.
	How is that supposed to work on a larger scale?
	We have 67 million people here in the UK, about 50 million of which are above voting age and therefore eligible to stand for elections.
	So I'm supposed to know all of them?
	I mean there are 650 members of parliament and I damn sure don't know most of their names or beliefs, let alone know them personally.
	The reality is the only way for me to find out about what these people stand for and believe is them campaigning!
	Like, you want to talk taking money out of politics and ending partisanship?
	Sure, I'm all for those conversations, but this particular quirk only works out in tiny communities, and so painting it as the answer to the problems with our democracy and society at large is fanciful at best.
	That's exactly what I heard in the last Eclipse as well.
	And also if Russell, because yeah, absolutely take money out of, like, take money out of politics.
	Yes.
	Absolutely.
	Today.
	Right now.
	Yeah.
	It is so inherent to the corruption in the system.
	It's such an obvious, like, It's such an obvious problem.
	It's almost too obvious to even see because it's so obvious.
	It's right there in your face.
	Money.
	Ruins.
	Politics.
	Duh.
	Right?
	I will say it does work slightly differently here in terms of campaigning.
	Oh man.
	Oh man.
	No, don't get me wrong.
	It still doesn't work very fucking well.
	Sure.
	But we're at least supposed to have a limit on campaign spending between the two parties.
	There's supposed to be one.
	Oh, we did!
	In the last several elections, the Tories have ignored that and broken the rules anyway, and they just get fined a small amount, and they're fine with it.
	Which is fucking great.
	That's working out well.
	And because they're the ones in power, that whole thing is not going to get changed.
	But also, that would not help Russell a bit.
	Who is on his show?
	Political candidates, if they didn't have to garner, like if they weren't all competing in a popularity contest, where would his money come from?
	He has not one iota of motivation to insist or even suggest that money should come out of politics, which is something that he does talk around but doesn't actually say.
	He says invisible hand or whatever.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it.
	And all of Russell's coverage, every week at the moment, is about the fucking elections.
	You think he wants to get rid of campaigning?
	Not a chance.
	Not a single fucking chance.
	Not even a little bit.
	No.
	Oh my god.
	Again, Reign's like, oh, you're gonna agree with me, right?
	No, no he's not.
	Well, that's the interesting thing.
	He doesn't outright disagree.
	But that's on purpose.
	He doesn't outright disagree.
	Exactly.
	Russell is quite happy to kind of nod along with it because appearing as though he agrees with these things serves his interests, makes him appear left-wing, makes him appear anti-capitalist, etc, etc.
	So Rainn Wilson goes a little bit further with this concept in the next clip.
	Now this goes on also on a national level, this also goes on on a global level.
	So there's no money spent, there's no narcissism, there's no one-upsmanship, there's none of the worst qualities of humanity expended, and you simply have servants, you know, servants of the community. What do they
	call it in the Twelve-Step Program, in the Twelve Traditions?
	Our leaders are trusted servants. They do not govern.
	They do not govern. So could you do that in a town?
	So I would be mighty curious to see those lists of people and which ones get elected in the Baha'i Faith.
	Because surely you can't know everyone on the list nationally and globally, right?
	So you're left with a list of people where most you don't know and some you do know, either personally or through name recognition.
	So you vote for the one with the highest name recognition that you like, or at the very least someone you know personally who you think would be good at it.
	Or you trust someone else's opinion who tells you.
	Right.
	So it would seem to me that the likelihood of this system, the most likely outcome, is that the most famous Baha'i are the ones who get elected.
	That seems to be the probable end point there.
	Also, did you see how Russell rattled off the 12-step dogma there?
	That was a little bit creepy to me, a little bit cultish.
	I don't know, maybe I'm overreacting, but it was just, you know.
	our servants. Okay, okay. That's that's definitely ingrained somewhere in you. Anyway,
	rain finalizes his thought on this in the next clip. Okay, Omaha, Nebraska decides that it's
	had enough of partisanship, bickering, backstabbing backroom deals.
	Yeah.
	Moneyed interests clawing their way to the top.
	And they say, let's do the same thing.
	We're all going to gather at the local Omaha Stadium.
	We're going to elect nine trusted service servants or 11 or 7 or 5 or 27 or however many from the town itself that will devote a year or two years or five years to the service of the community.
	And we're going to do this Maybe not prayerfully, but meditatively.
	And could you not do that?
	Could that happen in a small town?
	When you think about it in a very small town, a town of 500, you think like, oh, that might be able to happen.
	And then, well, could it happen in a town of 5,000?
	Could it happen in a town of 50,000?
	And maybe this something like that Might start to shift to what you're talking about, that grassroots-ish-ness that we need to achieve a globalism through a grassroots kind of path.
	Maybe something like that?
	Omaha, Nebraska has 487,000 people in it.
	We're gonna need a big stadium for this election.
	And again, how the fuck am I supposed to know who to vote for in terms of either a person's ideology or their qualifications out of that many people when there's no campaigning?
	How's that gonna work, Reign?
	Just wondering.
	I also like meditatively prayerfully.
	I know, I know.
	That plays into what you were saying about, you know, meditation being the answer to the thing.
	It's like, oh, fuck off.
	Well, one, yes, I told you.
	Yes, points on the board.
	I told you.
	Points on the board.
	Meditate on who to vote for when you don't know any of the people.
	How?
	Yeah, no, you don't need meditation.
	You need people to pitch their ideas.
	That's what a campaign should be.
	That's the intent of a campaign.
	Here are the things I stand for.
	That's what it's supposed to be.
	That's what it's supposed to be.
	And could be.
	We absolutely could do it.
	We just won't.
	But meditation is great for a lot of people and is wonderful.
	A lot of tools that can help Any number of, like you said, words are just not with me today.
	Mental health as tools for mental health and for focus.
	I could probably do it a little more, frankly.
	Maybe nouns would be working better for me today.
	But meditation has also been found to reinforce your existing beliefs And not actually help you grow or learn, but instead create a one person echo chamber for yourself, which if you think that you can think your way to a group solution better than the group deciding the solution together, that's a problem.
	That's the problem!
	That's a terrible idea.
	You are not going to grow by looking inward.
	That does inherently not work.
	You cannot make decisions for the collective by just thinking more by yourself.
	That's an absurd, that's honestly Different variants of that problem exist on all levels in all of our lives.
	That's how monarchies work.
	We just need to listen to each other more.
	Monarchies and dictatorships.
	That's how those work.
	Those people look inward and say, this is what we're doing now.
	And everyone goes, oh fuck.
	They pray to God and God tells them what they should do.
	Ask all of fucking history about it.
	Exactly.
	Yeah.
	God or the Pope, who is supposed to be the voice of God.
	Yeah, your magic spell tells you what to do.
	I'm a little peeved.
	I'm slightly peeved.
	So Rainn Wilson takes inspiration from the Baha'i faith.
	Fair enough.
	Russell, on the other hand, seems to take inspiration from the rainforest.
	What I feel, Rain, if we're going to reorganize civilization, is that you should emulate anthropology, that typically a primate tribe will split around 70 to 100 chimps.
	They split and form two tribes.
	They can't create hierarchies and organization at that number.
	So it feels like there is nothing in our evolutionary history that would suggest that a good idea would be to centralise power to the tune of 300 million people.
	And in fact, the only people that benefit from aggregation on that scale, I would contest, are the top strata of that society.
	Now people make the free market trickle-down economics argument continually.
	That is what has underwritten late capitalism for at least the last 50 years.
	But my feeling is that people that benefit mostly from the aggregation of populations are the people that are the top of those populations.
	That tends to be how it works.
	What I reckon is that what you described is quite beautiful in the Baha'i Faith.
	The position of leadership itself is stripped of its glamour.
	It's stripped of its prestige.
	They're not necessarily of honour.
	Honour is a necessity, I might argue.
	So we're getting a little closer to pinning down Russell's ideas of how big our community should be.
	70 to 100 people is about where we should be, apparently, if we are anything like primates.
	I'd be very curious to know what his solution would be in dealing with the population growing.
	Like, would he have to exile people?
	How would that go?
	In any case, he's right about the top strata of society benefiting the most from our current system, but that's not an issue of scale, that's an issue of capitalism.
	A system, by the way, that he's not talking about removing when setting up these little communities he's advocating for.
	Which then opens the door to, well, how are all of these communities going to function economically?
	Surely some will have massive manufacturing capabilities, others will have no food growing capacity, there are all sorts of problems that would crop up, and so they'd all presumably have to trade with one another, and quite probably still have some sort of centralised administrative body overseeing the whole country to prevent any of these tiny communities from dying of malnutrition or disease.
	I mean, there's just so much, so much that is just so, so fucking stupid about this idea.
	Looking at the question mark before the solution is a real problem for, I agree completely, is a real problem for Russell.
	My god, I'm not even looking at this under a microscope.
	I'm looking at this from a fucking bird's eye view and it is incredibly stupid, the things that he is saying.
	I agree completely.
	So next, Rain suggests we do something different to what we have now, but I have a sneaking suspicion he's actually just talking about something we already do.
	And in this case, in the local spiritual assembly of the Baha'is, and let's say the local governing assembly of Omaha, individually they don't have power.
	They only collectively have power.
	When they gather and they make a decision, they have a quorum, that has power.
	So it's not like someone who's elected in Omaha walks down the street, I know it's idealistic.
	I know there's a lot of eye rolls.
	I get it.
	But you know what?
	We're blowing ourselves up and we're fucking up the planet.
	So let's try something different!
	Tell me, how much power does a single senator or congressperson have on their own?
	Because over here, a single MP for the most part has fuck all in the way of individual power.
	So it's fair to say most of democracy already operates in this way.
	It's just he's wanting perhaps Perhaps to remove the idea of party leaders, which I'm also not terribly convinced about, to be perfectly honest, because you kind of need that a little bit.
	Well, so individual Congress people or whatever, individual politicians, depending on who you are, like Joe Manchin or something.
	With the exception of governors, because that's a different fucking story.
	No, yeah, I'm talking about Congress.
	It depends because of the way that the bodies are structured, but I would argue that there's
	very, like, basically we could have fixed a lot of these problems, but we just didn't.
	So yeah, there could be a much more equitable distribution of power.
	And that would be great.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	But this all feels very, like, I Dream of Jeannie, like, I'm gonna, like, cross my arms and, and boop, and then, like, okay.
	Sure.
	And also, like, yeah, let's, let's picture a better world, a different world, something that we actually, that would be more equitable and more just to work towards, but just Just criticizing the thing that we have now and imagining something totally different, the space in between those two ideas is where anything is going to get done.
	How to get from A to B. Yeah.
	And that doesn't seem to be much of a topic of conversation between these two people.
	Doesn't seem like it!
	No, I agree.
	I agree.
	Within the democracies that we have yet, like swing votes like Manchin, etc.
	are, that's where the only kind of concept really, I would say, of individual power for these specific politicians actually lies.
	In terms of kind of power, power?
	Like, no, the power is as a collective, as a party.
	It's, well, supposed to be.
	The way it was set out was supposed to be the power of ideas, was how it was supposed to be.
	The more people agree on the single idea, that's the idea that gets pushed forward.
	And then, you know, partisan politics happened, etc, etc, etc.
	So, you know, we already have that system, Rainn.
	It's flawed.
	Of course it's fucking flawed.
	But it already exists.
	It's already there.
	It'd be easier to make it work if there wasn't so much investment in the fucking popularity contest that they're participating in right now.
	Yes, yeah, and I think by the sound of it Rainn Wilson would agree with that.
	But then still keep participating in the system?
	Well, there is that.
	And he does dunk on Republicans fairly often on Twitter as well, so he does participate in some of it.
	But also, you know, How can you not, I guess?
	I don't know.
	You can't disengage.
	I'm not going to criticise him too much.
	Sure, sure, sure.
	But yeah, there is still the element of, okay, put your money where your mouth is.
	So in the next clip, we learn that Rainn Wilson still believes that Russell Brand is left-wing.
	And there will be Sturm and Drang and opposition to these ideas because finally ideas are being put forth that will affect the intentions and capacities of the health.
	I think it's important to understand that a lot of people on the political left view social change as not being organized.
	It needs, and I'm not saying that you're saying this, but that it's small groups You know, on a farm somewhere and just doing what they like.
	And the fact is, is that we need organization as well.
	Organization gets a bad name and I'm not talking about authoritarianism.
	You can be organized and not authoritarian.
	But we do need to, the other side is very, very, very well organized.
	And to think that we're going to affect some kind of global change in the inequalities and the systems that you're talking about by being kind of loose coalition, loose disorganized coalitions.
	That's that's a fairy tale that I roll my eyes at.
	I don't know who the fuck he's listening to that's saying that social change doesn't need to be organised.
	All I have ever heard from anyone, especially in the last few years, is the exact opposite.
	Organised social change is what's led to massive protests from left-wing organisations.
	Like, sure, a bunch of us want to go and live in communes away from established society because people fundamentally suck.
	But if you think those same people don't want to engage with fixing or reinventing a broken system, you're not asking the right questions.
	Yeah, I'd rather stay!
	I'd rather stay and everyone be taken care of.
	And justice!
	To actually be equal.
	Like, that's... I'd rather that!
	Also, so... I didn't make a noise, but my face... I was very... I was taken quite aback.
	That's when Al laughed, isn't it?
	I was taken quite aback.
	Yep.
	Yep.
	I could not agree more.
	Uh-huh.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah.
	At the end there, he says, the other side is very, very, very well organised.
	And he's referring specifically to the right-wing here.
	And he's saying that to Russell Brand.
	Russell Brand, who promotes Russia, Tucker Carlson, Trump, anti-vax nonsense, and a whole cavalcade of right-wing ideologies.
	I know Rain said he watches or listens to a lot of Russell's stuff, but I do seriously wonder how much he's engaged with lately before having this conversation.
	I don't, I think that his brain has filled in what it wants in the gaps that Russell leaves intentionally.
	Because yeah, honestly, like if I didn't have a better idea, again, I don't know that I would be nearly as well equipped if I wasn't working on this and had someone saying like, oh, no, no, no, you're making excuses.
	You're making excuses unintentionally, like automatically my brain makes excuses.
	That's what I'm hearing.
	That's the way our brains work.
	We look for patterns and we fill in the blanks.
	That's literally the way our brain is designed.
	I say designed, that's just the best word I could think of at the time.
	I do not believe that we were designed by anything.
	Pooped out!
	You're looking for pooped out.
	Next up, Brand puts a name to some of his beliefs, which is interesting.
	So how do we do that?
	I don't have the answer, but I do know that in seeking these kind of changes that you're talking about, you're talking about anarcho-capitalism, anarcho-socialism, what is it?
	Anarcho-syndicalism.
	We have to think in a larger sense to have a systematic organization behind that that spreads virally and is transformative because otherwise they will just keep winning because they're so much better organized than we are.
	They are so much better organized than we are.
	Notice that.
	So anarcho-syndicalism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and thus control influence in broader society.
	So Essentially, it promotes direct action by the working class to abolish the capitalist order, including the state, and to establish in its place a social order based on the workers.
	Much like Marxism, it has a fundamental problem of being over a century old, and so the ideas within don't fit that well with how society has changed.
	There's another problem, that anarcho-syndicalism is used as the butt of a joke in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which Brand has referenced multiple times before, so it is difficult to know if he's taking the piss or just naming things off the top of his head.
	I've observed that when we're listening to him and I'm like, oh, he thinks he's an anarcho-syndicalist.
	Right, right, right.
	I've heard that as like, oh, that's what he says.
	But he says a lot of things.
	He says a lot of things.
	That idea is a cute, is a cute idea for him to sit up on a shelf and admire.
	Yeah. Like a crystal skull, perhaps.
	I think the reality... It's a fun little tchotchke that he can carry around, but not actually believe... No, no, because it doesn't fit with any of the other things that he says or believes.
	He names it and references it, but any of the other content that he produces, any of the other ideas he has doesn't fit into that system.
	Antithetical, yeah.
	Pretty much.
	Pretty much.
	So in the next clip, Rainn signs off the interview by once again advocating for globalism.
	And you talked about tribalism before and I'll say also too that we just need to, you know, at first we started with a family in a cave and then it was like a couple of families in a valley and then it was like 27 families in a little town and and our tribes grew and then it's like Ecuador and Belgium and our tribes grew to that.
	We have to view our tribe in a much larger context as well.
	I'm not sure how to do that, but we're a human tribe sharing a planet that's hurtling through space, like Buckminster Fuller said.
	And so whatever happens in this grassroots, systematic, organized way has to include the beautiful, loving, our beautiful human being tribe on this planet.
	That is a beautiful way to wrap up this conversation.
	Thank you, Ray.
	I suspect Brand had truly had enough of it by that point.
	It was like, you know what?
	Fuck it.
	End of interview.
	We're done.
	I'm not going into globalism again. I mean, okay, the thing is, and what like,
	what I do, I'm searching my mind for what we're getting out of this,
	and in like a critical active way, not just like, yeah, let's expose what's going on.
	But I think this is a great way to hear how this conversation can go in your own life.
	Listen to the points, like the pressure points and how someone can obscure their beliefs Or just going along to get along.
	Like, I think that there's value in what's not being said or what's being ignored and pretended.
	Like there's a lot of Russell, like just saying enough to get by.
	And I think there's value in that because we can't, we do not have the luxury of ignoring these problems anymore.
	We don't.
	You know, like maintaining the status quo is not working and we need to make a change.
	And so hearing these status quo warriors like Russell Brand, like aggressively talking a good talk.
	In the right context, so he can still work in Hollywood, he can still have friends that are important and famous.
	Yes.
	Yeah, yeah.
	is actually a serious social problem.
	Yes.
	'Cause we can't let this stuff keep, we can't let the shit slide.
	And it is really difficult for you and I specifically to outline and dissect such subtle behavior.
	Yeah, that is one of the fundamental differences in what we're dealing with here with brand
	compared to most other propagandists.
	It's so fucking hard to pin him down.
	It's trying to hit an eel with a pitchfork.
	You'll get him if you're lucky.
	With immense amounts of practice.
	Because he's a slippery fucker and because a lot of it is subtle, a lot of it is inferred.
	I have one more clip to play, purely out of spite.
	Let us know in the chat how you think we should reorganise the planet and its resources.
	What new systems should be introduced?
	Is it Baha'ism?
	Is it the kind of anarchic principles as exemplified within 12-step programmes?
	How do you ever confront globalist corporate power without the support of the state?
	How do you remilitarise?
	How do you demilitarise?
	How do you confront corruption and hypocrisy in all its many forms?
	I do a podcast.
	That's how I confront corruption and hypocrisy, Russell.
	I do a podcast about you doing those very things.
	Ah, there we go.
	That felt better.
	So I can only handle so many rhetorical questions... But you didn't say it in the chat!
	...before I have to answer one of them.
	I didn't know that's true.
	So it doesn't matter, you didn't pay to get in the locals chat and say that.
	Yep, so Russell or a member of his team never saw it, which, you know... The notion that they didn't...
	The illusion of closeness to the guru.
	Oh.
	Man, oh man.
	This is yucky.
	This is yucky behavior.
	I'm yucked out.
	Yes!
	Yeah, there's plenty of that.
	All he has to do is- Like, really?
	That whole thing, and he's like, get in the locals chat and just everyone knock your heads together for my amusement.
	Like, come on, dude.
	How do you think we should fix society?
	Fuck you now, come on.
	But that's the point of this kind of content, is to feel like you've done something active.
	Honestly, that's the point of our content to kind of, like, I don't want people to take that away from our content.
	I want people to feel more informed, more educated, maybe feel a sense of, like, camaraderie.
	If you're the only one in your life that feels crazy because you think this is wrong, like, I have very clear, like, Intention.
	And there's just no intention here other than just funnel everyone's anxieties and fears into his revenue stream.
	Which is exactly what Alex Jones does.
	Yes, yeah, absolutely.
	It's Tucker Carlson.
	It's what all of them do.
	That is their economy.
	That's what they've built.
	that is the their economy that that's that's that's what they've built that's the that's
	the right wing grifter ecosystem you know that they that they entrap people in.
	And when it comes to this show, I hope at the very least you learn something about Russell Brand.
	And somewhere in that, our conversations around the stuff that they're discussing will be interesting.
	I hope that you feel like someone is here to support and give you tools when you have to run into this shit, because you will.
	Absolutely.
	That's it.
	Increasingly more often.
	Right, exactly!
	Rubber is hitting the road, and as a person who's had to stand up for myself in hostile territory quite a bit, it's lonely and painful and scary and difficult.
	It sucks that we can sound the same.
	I can be next to this person and our content strikes that, like, makes the same chemicals shoot out of your brain.
	I hate that.
	I hate it.
	Yes, it's difficult for us.
	I wasn't going to bring this up, but we were accused of being grifters this last week by some chuckle fuck on the internet.
	We were accused of being grifters for sharing our content in a subreddit.
	It's such a weird thing because so much of our kind of setup and system is the same as Russell's, right?
	In that we're asking listeners to subscribe to our Patreon, he's asking listeners and viewers to subscribe to his locals.
	And we have this conversation early on that The fundamental difference that and and it's it's what is the most important difference between us and him is that we are doing so honestly you know and and and we we are we are not lying to you we are not presenting you know misinformation or any of that we we are
	Doing as honest a job as we can and asking for donations where possible.
	Here's the thing about the donations, right?
	And here's how I see it.
	As a listener of podcasts, which I spend way more time doing than I'm talking, is I can't afford to pay for every single show that I
	listen to all the time.
	That's my situation.
	And what also all the podcasts that I listen to is like, like they understand, like, hey, if you can't afford it, I
	get it.
	There are other people that have resources that...
	that make it possible.
	We have to give up huge chunks of our lives, time, energy, into making this thing.
	We are operating at a loss.
	If we are ever in the black, it will be a miracle.
	Also, we'll find more stuff to do.
	So, and that's us.
	Like we're always gonna find more crap to do.
	So even covering that, that's our problem.
	But we can do this because of a collective support.
	and trying our very best.
	Also, we're never going to put pertinent information behind a paywall.
	No, no, not once.
	We refuse from the jump.
	I'm very upset about this little grift accusation because they also just made a bunch of shit up because they couldn't be bothered.
	It's either through laziness or malice.
	Made a bunch of lies.
	And whipped a few people into a little froth over it, which makes me, as a person who was raised by old biker wolves, very angry because I'm a little testy about lying and name-calling in a situation that I cannot address in person.
	Yeah, it was a tough situation.
	So these same fucking idiots then reported the post as spam, despite it being perfectly relevant to that subreddit.
	And then the fucking mods took forever dicking about with it, so it was down for like two days and lost all traction, etc.
	or engagement, which is a...
	Which is a shame because... Well then it also showed us posts that had nothing to do with that.
	Yeah, the mods were also completely full of shit.
	There is that.
	You're thrown down.
	Okay.
	I am.
	No, no.
	I got pissed off during that conversation.
	I don't get pissed off very often.
	And you know what?
	Fuckheads coming out of the woodwork to throw shit at us.
	We kind of expect that, right?
	For various reasons, you know.
	But the mods, like, there's a higher standard there.
	I expect a little bit more and they did not fucking deliver.
	Let's put it gently.
	But yeah, anyway.
	I didn't think that we were going to talk about that.
	I didn't know that we were going to be cranky on Maine.
	It came up organically, so there we go.
	But here's the point, I think.
	It's a shame.
	Patreon, right?
	Any kind of project.
	First of all, every Patreon that me or my partner that we support, I'm proud.
	I'm proud and I love it that I can support them.
	I can support those projects.
	And I know we're paying for someone who can't afford it to have access because we're operating at a loss.
	And we can only do that for so long.
	That's scary.
	And it's hard.
	Yeah.
	And so the notion who I'm.
	I'm so hot.
	I'm so hot.
	I am, but like, I'm, I'm, guys, I'm doing great.
	If this was an anger management course, I'd be graduating right now.
	I'm doing good.
	Al knows!
	They heard me before the record.
	I was a lot more fiery.
	And so, and I feel like I need to keep it on the, but here's the thing.
	We don't, I don't want your trust today.
	I don't want you to trust me today.
	I've never had the luxury of being anonymous on the internet just because that's the, I'm 39.
	That's the way that I've, I've either been tattooing.
	I played roller derby from the time that the internet was a thing.
	And I just, I can't, I don't have time to, Oh, here we go.
	another fake person. That's just not my life. So much of my life is analog. I just haven't
	had that luxury, so I never really got around to it. So I've always had to just be consistent
	and honest. Oh, here we go. Okay. Right. And so I don't want you to trust me because I'm
	here talking to you and maybe you like hearing me talk to you. Good. I'm glad.
	I want to earn your trust as a process of being consistent and honest and doing what I say I'm gonna do and meaning what I say I'm going to mean.
	I want to build that over time and earn it.
	Yeah.
	This is it.
	I'll say the fundamental difference between us or any kind of anti-propaganda podcast, the fundamental difference between us and Russell Brand or any of these fuckheads is that We are operating in good faith, they are operating in bad faith.
	That is the crux of it.
	And again, as Lauren has just said, the only way to know that is through time, is through building up a trust.
	You know, us being able to do right by you, the listeners, and by ourselves, by our own morality, by facts, and by what reality is, compared to the things that people like Russell Brand say.
	Yeah, and even regarding that, like, I don't necessarily, like, this is a thing, like, there are creative projects that are mine.
	This does not feel like that.
	Obviously, it's a collaborative.
	Also, I'm not in charge of the research and that stuff, which is a challenge to my own ego and mental process in and of itself, which honestly, I've already grown quite a bit and I'm excited about it.
	The idea that we are in... First of all, I see us as part of a network of other podcasts and other content
	that are just trying to do something good and right.
	Yeah. - And to have, like there is no one podcast to rule them all.
	We're just doing what we can to help.
	I don't think that we're gonna take anybody down.
	I don't think we're gonna do anything massive.
	I genuinely don't.
	Because when you're almost 40 and you were born in 1984 and you're living today, hope went out the window a long time ago.
	Hope flew the fucking coop, but when Hope leaves, what you're left with is your character.
	Your character and your conviction to do the right thing.
	So that shows up and lets you continue to operate and do something, which is better than nothing, to help in this project of exposing disinformation.
	I completely agree.
	I know that this is our thing, but it doesn't feel like it's just that.
	One of the things that I truly love about doing this podcast is that the work feels valuable.
	It feels valuable to society.
	You know, to people as a whole, to be able to raise awareness of this shit is something that I really think is important.
	I think anti-propaganda in general is one of the most important things to society right now, especially.
	And so, no, it doesn't feel like it's just us, it's just me, it's just, you know, any of that.
	I see us as stewards.
	We are stewards of a thing.
	Like we're stewards of this project, not necessarily, it's just because we're visible.
	Also, like, I think that we agree, like, we can take some heat and like, we're fine.
	Like we're, you know, we're grown, we're used to it, we're fine.
	So being, because being in the public face of something is as difficult as it might be like fun.
	What I know is that, and also I've tried to do a lot of things in my life that have been helpful and made an impact and sometimes It just shits the bed, and then you're like, well, I'm back to square one over and over.
	Sometimes that happens.
	That may happen now.
	Maybe we're overreacting.
	Maybe Russell Brand will never make a negative impact on society ever, and it'll peter out, and then we'll have no reason.
	At least we tried.
	I know what's coming in the next episodes, so I'm gonna say I think you're probably wrong on that score.
	Okay, well, but, you know, benefit of the doubt, maybe we're overreacting.
	But at least we fucking tried.
	At least we're doing something.
	And at least y'all are listening.
	And educating yourselves and understanding you're not alone.
	and because I don't harbor any illusions about what we can do. I really do. I'm...
	All you have left as a human being is your character and what you believe is right.
	[BLANK_AUDIO]
	And this is like, I have an opportunity to, honestly, like I have a lot of talents and gifts that feel antique and rusty and broken and they don't really work for stuff anymore.
	But I'm determined to retrofit the skills and talents I have to this project because I believe in it.
	Yeah, me too.
	I want other people to have hope.
	I don't.
	I love it that you do.
	I really want you to.
	But hope isn't the only reason.
	Knowing the right thing is okay and you don't need God to tell you what's right.
	You don't need anything else.
	That thread is kind of lost.
	I get where you were going.
	Me too, by the way.
	In terms of having a very specific set of weird skills that can oddly apply to this situation, very much the same.
	Anyway, I think for now that brings us to the close of this show and we'll move to off-brand for patrons where we can talk a little bit of shit.
	Yeah, you're right, you're right.
	And we'll chat.
	I feel like you kind of did, which, frankly, I'm here for.
	Yeah, well, you know, it came up so we dealt with it.
	Well, and it sucks!
	Like, it sucks and... It sucks, yeah.
	And people can be dicks, and that's that.
	But in the meantime, until next week, you can find us on social media.
	In most places it's at the onbrandpod.
	And we have a subreddit now, which is cool, and that's onbrand underscore pod.
	And you can email us, that's...
	Well, sorry, it's theonbrandpod at gmail.com, isn't it?
	And Patreon, it starts at two bucks, and we don't have more stuff for more money.
	Well, it actually starts at one.
	You can just give us money, but for a shout out, to be an awakening wonder, it's at least two.
	Yeah, so if you want to listen to off-brand or whatever, it's... I don't know how we will... Like, you can't purchase more of?
	anything necessarily for more money but like this that which also kind of speaks to us not wanting to make a racket yes yeah no we're not we're not we're not grifters um even if we're accused of being so Reasonable because we just we want you to be involved and we like it and we're learning how to like round up all the comments into one place.
	But Russell keeps getting emails that are emails so y'all just have to drop them out.
	Hi Russell.
	I love it.
	I'll keep the audience updated as we get more.
	But yeah, we're... God, is there anything else that I'm missing?
	I always feel like there's something I forget at the end of this.
	Oh!
	Our own individual socials!
	I always forget that.
	So I'm at elworthofficial and Lauren is at made.by.lauren.b And yeah, you can find us on Reddit, Instagram...
	Other places.
	Blue Sky has been kind of fun.
	Blue Sky!
	Do you know what?
	I have not looked at that even once.
	And we have a scantily updated Twitter as well.
	Oh yeah, no, don't have a list of updates yet.
	We're doing our best.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I'm on there usually just looking at other people's shit at the moment.
	Anyway, that brings us to a close.
	Thank you very much for listening and we'll see you next week.

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