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Nov. 2, 2023 - On Brand

02:40:39

OB #27 - Strawman Polling

Russell interviews Neil Oliver, minimises LGBTQ+ issues yet again, and somehow manages to make his show even more insufferable due to a change in production. Support us on Patreon! - patreon.com/OnBrand Facebook Group Link - On Brand Awakening Wonders

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	This is On Brand, a podcast where we discuss the ideas and antics of one Russell Brand.
	I'm Al Werth, and each week I go through an episode of Brand's Show with my co-host Lauren B. That's me!
	I'm Lauren B. And I... It's literally my job to have no idea what we're about to get into on this episode.
	But I'm on the back foot.
	It's probably gonna be shitty.
	It's gonna be bad.
	Probably gonna be bad.
	Which is why we do the good thing before the bad thing.
	So Lauren, what is your good thing before the bad thing this week?
	So we're gonna, we're really looking on the bright side for mine this week.
	It's a stretch, isn't it?
	It's been a rough one.
	It's been a rough one, but we did get out of the house for about an hour for a Halloween party that was very, very fun, dressed up as I feel like the costumes could probably- I figured out a better way to do it a little late.
	Anyone that makes stuff, you know what I mean.
	I figure out after I've already made a thing and thought about it a little bit, I'm like, I could use the window caulking that I have.
	For this instead, because Mike and I were both dressed up as a Mrs. Doubtfire.
	So basically, so we could just do that all night.
	And I feel like this is going to be a staple costume, not a one time.
	And the masks came off like a little more Norman Bates.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Unfortunately, but yeah.
	But people knew exactly where we were when we walked in the door, so it wasn't terrible.
	Perfect, okay, good.
	I feel like, if this is your intention, the sign of a good Halloween costume is if you can't stop laughing the whole time you're putting it on.
	I feel like that's the indicator that you've done something correct here.
	See, I'm the total opposite of you when it comes to Halloween costumes.
	I am so lazy.
	I wore a onesie one year and put some makeup on and I was a rocket raccoon.
	Literally like a rocket raccoon onesie and just the black and white makeup.
	I have many times just thrown on a pirate hat and been like, well, I'm a pirate.
	I already look like one.
	Here's the thing, I've done those too.
	I very rarely have the time, and even the incentive.
	We've been talking about this stupid, hello!
	It's the pie face, specifically, Mrs. Doubtfire.
	Even though I did have the tartan skirt and then the burn tits underneath my blue robe.
	It's pretty, really funny.
	And yeah, and if Mike was not, his back wasn't injured and he was already like, it was rough to even get dressed.
	So he didn't get to also have the burn titties look, but I'm gonna, I will make it happen.
	Yeah, costumes are kind of a thing.
	Everyone's self-care looks different, honestly.
	That's true.
	That's true.
	One year I had like, you know, one of those kind of bobble hats with the ear flappies.
	I had one of those with like a seal face on it.
	So I just wore that.
	And if anyone asked who I am, I would start singing Kiss from a Rose.
	Because I'm seal!
	Oh yeah, we know.
	Literally everyone knows this song.
	Yep.
	And it's stuck in everyone's head.
	Thanks, man.
	It's one of the best songs ever written.
	You're welcome.
	That's a take.
	It is!
	It's fantastic.
	It's a really good song.
	Seal has some bangers, I will say that.
	You start going through the Seal back catalogue, holy shit.
	There is a tune.
	Genuinely.
	Genuinely.
	We're moving on.
	Yep.
	Seal.
	Great.
	So we're going to keep it pumping, Queen.
	Let's go.
	So my issue is I don't, I rarely give the time for myself.
	Yeah.
	Actually, yeah, because I'm so obstinate.
	I'm either here to fucking knock it out of the park.
	And I will look like the thing that I'm gonna, that I want to be.
	Yeah.
	And it's going to be fucking serious or I'm not doing it.
	And also like if you do the, you know, I did Halloween events, you know, Halloween time events that were not about me and getting dressed up for a number of years.
	So there's a really great way to not do it.
	Um, But I do think, honestly, I'm being a little hard on myself with how the mask came out because that's my personality.
	It's a personality flaw that I know that I have and I can't manage.
	But it looks pretty hilarious.
	And the wigs were fucking perfect.
	Oh my God.
	Terrifying.
	But also could be Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan in a pinch.
	I know, right?
	Options.
	So what's your other thing?
	My good thing before the bad thing this week is the live stream we did of the Rugby World Cup.
	That was the other thing.
	The Rugby World Cup Final.
	Yeah, that was a candidate for me.
	I was disappointed in the result of the match.
	That was a bummer, but you know what?
	It was a good match.
	It was exciting.
	There were definitely moments where you really didn't know who was going to win it.
	I learned so much about rugby, even though I mostly didn't see like half of it
	because of technical difficulties.
	So we, you know, we tried YouTube, we got fucking copyright struck there, tried Twitch,
	we got a good 20 minutes out of Twitch and then got struck there.
	And then we tried like Facebook groups and we got struck there as well.
	And then eventually we were like, ah, fuck it.
	And eventually- - We broke the rules a lot.
	Yeah, we really were.
	We were pushing the envelope.
	Not super great.
	Not really in a way that I can advocate, but it's what we did.
	I'd like to never do that again.
	I just wanted to hang out with some cool people and watch the- that's all I wanted to do, goddammit.
	I wanted to make you guys teach me about rugby a little bit.
	I was interested.
	Well, you learned a lot.
	I really did.
	I really did.
	What we ended up having to do was like the few patrons that were left and had managed to follow us the entire time.
	God love them.
	Actual saints.
	Yes.
	Actual religious saints.
	Yeah, we managed to invite them in into our platform as guests.
	And if you check out the recent Off-Brand episode, that's what that is.
	It's a couple of hours of The very tail end of the rugby and chatting with them.
	Tail end, see what you did there.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Bucky's onesie over there.
	Yeah, no, it was really cool.
	You know, the whole thing start to finish ended up being just shy of six hours.
	It was how long we were doing that.
	Oh, I know.
	Yeah, yeah.
	But two of those hours are available off-brand now, which is, yeah.
	It's really cool.
	We had a really fun conversation.
	It was really, really nice.
	Yeah, and why I say tail end is because I was having my own technical difficulties and I ended up using my phone because my laptop had a moment that I'm not thrilled about, but it's working now, so that's good.
	I was concerned.
	But yeah, my laptop was like, no, no, we're doing too much stuff.
	I'm gonna, I'm gonna have a, I'm gonna seize up and apparently there were several moments where I froze in a way that was particularly silly and one of the, I was just legitimately, I wasn't necessarily dressing up, I do appreciate that I have the accoutrement of the spooky season to hand at any given moment.
	But I was really just cold and so I put on my like my Bucky's like the truck stop I have like a onesie that you get to that that is the Bucky Beaver and I was showing off my The whole costume because it's a whole thing and there's also a beaver tail that I put my butt in front of my camera and showed off the beaver tail and that was apparently what froze and I didn't know until my computer caught up
	And then I heard everyone laughing about it, so... Yeah, it's there, it's there.
	We also had a couple of good audio freezes where you were just repeating the same phrase over- It's incredibly weird!
	Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, over and over again.
	And I'm so glad that it came through on the recorded audio, and I'm just there going, What the fuck is happening?
	It was both fun and wildly stressful.
	It was so good to meet everybody.
	We chose then to be like our first time doing a test run of streaming a thing, which probably isn't sensible in hindsight.
	Constantly breaking copyrights across several platforms.
	So many things we should have done, but anyway.
	It does mean that we can kind of properly look at hopefully streaming something for patrons in the near future.
	Whether it'll be this show, whether it'll be off-brand, I'm not sure, but we can We can figure a thing out, we can do a thing.
	A regular livestream.
	Man, it was nice.
	It was, like, pretty fucking super.
	It was so much fun.
	It was so much fun.
	And it was, you know, even before we invited people in to talk, it was super fun just having the chat there and being able to interact with everyone and all of that.
	That was really nice.
	I thought it would be more overwhelming, and maybe... I'm sure, like, big streams that are, like, crazy, I can't... that would be... I don't know if I could keep track of everybody in a way that felt fair.
	I think I just had to be grasping at straws, but it was really nice.
	Like, it was more manageable.
	We were manageable than I thought it would be.
	It was really fun.
	And it's nice to get to know y'all.
	But then I suppose at that point, that's why these people have producers, isn't it?
	To be able to actually...
	Filter that stuff through.
	Employees and shit.
	That makes sense.
	Crazy.
	I say that, but Russell's just got the chat just sat there staring at him the whole time, so I don't know.
	It's not the beacon of professionalism, really, so.
	I will say, I have no interest in critiquing technical difficulties for at least a while.
	I feel wool raw about it, frankly.
	Well... It is a completely different situation.
	I was gonna say, you may be disappointed with today's show in that case, but we'll see.
	We shall see.
	My reactions will be measured, I think.
	So, we have a show to deal with, but first we should thank some new patrons, and we have just the one this week, so... Self Archaeology, you are now an awakening wonder.
	You are indeed an awakening wonder.
	Hey, Self Archaeology!
	Hey, thank you so much!
	Excellent name, thank you very much.
	If anyone wants to support us and what we do, become an Awakening Wanderer, join the Invisible Hand, or donate on an elevated tier, head to patreon.com slash onbrand and you will have our eternal gratitude.
	It's this which allows us to be editorially independent and ad-free.
	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 anywhere you can find podcasts, you can also watch us on YouTube, or if you listen in the Spotify app, the video should come up there too.
	Hi, YouTubers.
	There might be more of you because of last week's show.
	Last week, I didn't mention this to you, Lauren.
	Last week's show got a whole bunch of traction, and Well, see, I used Russell Brown's name in the title of the episode, and I think we're learning that that might be a mistake, because all of Russell Brown's people came to watch that video and did not like what they found.
	Here's the thing, I've seen a smattering of the comments, and they didn't watch a minute.
	There are maybe two of them that watched a little bit, but most of them are just... Enough to have ammunition, which is not absorbing the material with a curious open mind.
	No, as your cult leader says you should, so maybe consider that.
	I don't know.
	Sometimes I like to know where those people are.
	I'm like, all right, that's you.
	That's what you're doing.
	Fair to say a good chunk of them are just generally abusive and derogatory.
	So, you know, if you want a crash course in what Russell's followers are up to, then I guess check out the comments section of our last episode, because, hoo boy!
	But also, they're our employees, because they boosted our posts!
	They're all employees of the week!
	Yeah, exactly.
	Great job!
	I mean, thanks for the engagement, I guess.
	I don't know.
	Yeah, sure!
	Go ahead.
	Yeah, be abusive and intellectually dishonest.
	All right, fine.
	Yeah, I mean, listen, that doesn't rest on my conscience.
	That does not sully my soul to go around saying shit like that in the world.
	No, no, no.
	I'll do that.
	I don't think I spotted a genuine critique anywhere in there, to be honest.
	I'd be so curious.
	By all means, go take a look.
	No, no, no.
	I mean, of a critique that's, like, legitimate.
	Oh, right, yeah.
	I'd be so interested to engage in that conversation.
	That unicorn conversation that I can't... Boy.
	I sure don't think it's gonna happen.
	I don't know, the critiques were stuff like, oh, they're mad that they don't have Russell on with his counterpoints.
	I was like, yeah, we're just really mad that Russell's not on.
	I'm furious.
	Yeah, so upset.
	Okay.
	Yeah, we have a couple of developments for our show as well, by the way, for patrons specifically.
	Namely that one, there is a neat chat function in the Patreon app, if you download it, whereby we can all have a direct messaging group of just patrons, which is cool.
	That's super cool!
	It's awesome, so download the Patreon app, and there should be a chat there awaiting of just patrons, which is really cool, that's awesome.
	And it saves fucking around with a Discord or anything like that, to just be able to have that all in one place, that is cool.
	So if you feel like it, download the app and let's get to talking.
	And it's fairly straightforward as well, while we're still a smaller community, you know, so let's enjoy it while we can.
	Because again, if it gets to the point of being in the thousands at any stage, like that's going to become unmanageable.
	Also, we have a new Facebook group.
	I kind of created it in a rush to try and fix the live stream.
	You kind of?
	It was an immediate emergency.
	That's exactly what I did.
	There's no kind of about it.
	That's exactly what I did.
	It's called On Brand Awakening Wonders, so if you want to join a community to do with the podcast but aren't particularly into Reddit, which I get, then come over and join the Facebook group instead.
	We're there and we will try and be good and active in the future.
	I don't think there's like 15, 16 members or something so far.
	We look forward to seeing more of you.
	It was a very pants-on-fire moment.
	It was a very like... 100%.
	100%.
	It was as sky as... like, I gotta do this right now!
	Yes, it was like, oh god, we need to find a way to do this.
	Let's try a private Facebook group.
	But now we have it!
	Will they take it down there?
	Yeah, they took it down there.
	But hey, we have the group, so fuck it.
	So yeah, come and join us there.
	That'll be cool.
	All right, so I wanted to get back to on-air Brand after a week of checking behind the scenes, and there have been a few developments in the way they're doing things production-wise.
	The first clip, which is Brand introducing the show, gives something of an example.
	Hello there, you Awakening Wanderers.
	Thanks for joining me for Stay Free with Russell Brand today.
	We've got an amazing show.
	Firstly, we've got a wonderful German Shepherd in the building.
	That's always enjoyable.
	We've got an amazing guest coming up.
	Neil Oliver is going to be joining us.
	Do you know Neil Oliver?
	Let me know in the chat.
	Do you know him, guys, in the locals chat?
	Do you know him in the Rumble chat?
	You're aware of him?
	We've got a fantastic take on the legacy media's ongoing advocacy for war, where continually they platform people, pundits I suppose you'd say, with military-industrial complex ties without mentioning them.
	You're going to love this, right?
	They bring people out and go, this person used to work for the Obama administration.
	He's a diplomat and an expert on bringing about peace.
	Then with investigation, you discover they've got ties to Boeing or Raytheon or Lockheed Martin.
	In short, the legacy media are showcasing People with MIC, military industrial complex ties, and you're presenting them as experts.
	No wonder war is escalating when you take the opinions of people that benefit from war and present it as news.
	What is the function of the legacy media?
	Let me know in the chat right now.
	If you think it's to convey information, press one.
	If you think it's to amplify the intentions of the establishment, press two.
	Let's see them.
	And I see you lot in the old rumble chat.
	Let's see a little bit more love in there between one another.
	We want diversity of opinion.
	So the biggest difference in production is that Stay Free With Russell Brand have ditched their previous model of pre-recording, then editing, then streaming that edit to Rumble, and are now instead live streaming to both Locals and Rumble at the same time.
	They're doing it live!
	This would help explain why Brand is now offering more content to his local subscribers, because previously the only way to access a livestreamed version of his show was to join the locals channel, right?
	So that was like the exclusive thing before, whereas now he's like, fuck I gotta give him something new!
	This does, of course, mean that now Russell has both the locals and the Rumble Chat on the go at the same time.
	The Rumble Chat, which is easily accessible to anyone who creates an account, no paywall, no nothing.
	So really anyone, anyone could spoof an account and go on there and say whatever they wanted.
	Or just watch.
	So wait, it's the chat and they get the live stream for free, but other people pay for the same thing?
	Is that what you're saying?
	Well, it is live-streamed to locals as well, and they are paying people, but I think the idea is that's no longer an exclusive feature of being part of the locals' community anymore.
	Which, I don't know, I'd be kind of annoyed about.
	I'd be fucking mad!
	I'd be fucking mad!
	Why am I paying for something that's... He's doing Bible readings instead, so you know, this is what you get.
	Like additional... like you have to pay for the Bible readings?
	The most ubiquitous book on earth?
	That's additional content?
	Okay, so the chat and livestream is now available, and then he's trying to chase after the content.
	He's got the Rumble one in front of him as well.
	Which he only ever used to have the locals one, so that's interesting.
	And yeah, so anyone, any listener who wanted to could go on there and spoof an account and say whatever they wanted.
	That's all I'm going to say, though I will point out... That's all you're going to incite!
	I will also point out that having been present in Russell's streams, both to Rumble and YouTube, there's a weird quirk where the word rapist is censored on the Rumble chat, but not on YouTube.
	It's a mystery as to how I figured that out, but very curious for the home of free speech, that one.
	Yeah.
	They censor it on the Rumble one, on the Rumble chat, if someone's typing it in all caps.
	But not on the YouTube.
	I thought YouTube was supposed to be all censorship.
	I mean, I bet Grape can just get around it.
	That's how they're doing it on TikTok.
	Anyway.
	Yeah, I think I just ended up saying something else.
	Who's to say?
	Anyway, that's as far as I'll go in basically inciting people to do something.
	Anyway, the effect of him having access to both livestream chats is that Now he's made a habit of constantly polling the audience, which we are going to see a lot of today, and they are always ridiculous questions.
	I don't think I've coined this term, but I actually couldn't find anything of it anywhere else, really.
	I'm calling them straw man polls.
	Like, so it's a straw man argument in a straw poll.
	In a straw man argument.
	Right, but that makes perfect sense as the natural progression of, like, he makes the question, like, he phrases his quote-unquote questions to quote-unquote learn stuff in such a way that it is so... I've never heard... It points at the answer every single time.
	It's not a leading question, you are being led by the nose with the question-slash-statement he's making.
	Yes, absolutely.
	So yeah, the result of this is just consistently a chorus of people agreeing with Russell's point of view, which he then uses to validate his position.
	And a good example of this would be, is Hillary Clinton good or is Hillary Clinton bad?
	Put G in the chat for good, B in the chat for bad!
	And of course, Russell already knows the answer his audience is going to give.
	Plus, it has the added benefit of driving engagement to his show, which will get more viewers.
	It's actually a pretty savvy move, though I will say it gets to be fucking annoying after a while.
	They usually are.
	That's like, that's like a move that they, they absolutely, so from what my experience, you know, I've been making art and putting it on the internet for in a mercantile sense for, I don't know, a million years, like my entire adult life in some form or fashion.
	And so all of the, All the blogs and the advice is about engagement.
	So like, these are all like pretty worn out, like very standard, you know, like tag to comments, you know, tag somebody, blah, blah, blah, which like, it's like it's other stuff, right?
	It's like, yeah, these calls to action that like, Which I mean, hey everyone, by all means, do that with our show, please, but also, I'm not gonna be like, meh, do this!
	It's just a double-edged sword.
	Like, listen, if you have a friend that wants to buy a thing that I put on my Instagram and you wanna tag them, that's like, pretty dope.
	I'm cool with that, and that's just like, nice.
	It's like a nice thing!
	Um, but also that's the way that he's targeting like it's it's this like this this very specific There is something about like, I have a much harder time in my own teeny weeny little personal experience, just this little, you know, this egg cup of experience versus this gigantic amount that he's got of like, it's a lot harder to get people to engage when you're saying like, tell me your feelings on this subject and leaving it broad.
	Versus like, vote on the feelings on this subject, good or bad.
	Man, it's a lot easier to just put a one or a two.
	Good idea.
	Hey, these are four different options for this image, and tell me which one you like.
	And if you just say, tell me which one you like and why, you're going to get way less, because it's also just like kind of a pain.
	But if you're like, Uh, here's options one, two, three, and four.
	Tell me which one you like the most.
	And then you get a bunch of threes, and you're like, okay, that's the colorway I like.
	Great job, everybody.
	Go team!
	And break!
	You know, like, and it's just like a genuinely nice, helpful thing, and it's like an actual conversation.
	It's so much easier to get engaged.
	That's like part of the quote unquote strategy is making a call to action as simple and seamless as possible because the app don't know no better and is going to give you is going to reward your engagement anyway.
	I've gotta say, simple is probably the correct word.
	Another smaller technical thing is that this episode for listeners, by the way, has been filmed, because you can't see this, listeners, it's been filmed in 60 frames per second as opposed to 30 frames per second like it was.
	I don't know if it'll come through on the video, our video or not, because there's a noticeable frame rate drop when I'm sharing the screen.
	Can't really fix that, but yeah, I did find that somewhat interesting because I'm a nerd.
	Now, before we continue, do you know who Neil Oliver is?
	Sounds vaguely familiar, but there's like a lot of famous people I thought of that have one of their names.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I wonder if he might recognize his face when we see him, but we'll deal with him when he comes up a bit later and I'll explain who he is then.
	But let's say for now, I'm quite sure there is something that is going to really piss you off specifically.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, to the first order of business, which is about a guy that Russell, he's really not into, I'm honest.
	You'll love this.
	MSNBC have been reporting on a Trump slip-up.
	Did you see this speech?
	There was a fantastic speech that Trump did, beautiful speech, beautiful speech, where he accidentally said that Viktor Orban was the leader of Turkey instead of Hungary.
	Of course, it's Erdogan, isn't it, is the leader of Turkey.
	Now, MSNBC fall upon this Ravenous and hungry.
	They show their hands with stories like this.
	They show their hands.
	They even in it go, do you see?
	Oh, they would have gone crazy if Biden had done this.
	What they don't show is that just a few seconds later, Trump corrects himself.
	Sorry.
	I mean, he's actually, it's hungry, not Turkey.
	They don't mention that.
	So in a sense, you can watch propaganda in real time.
	And in a minute, we'll be showing you some of Biden's ongoing extraordinary gaffes, like a handshake that lasts forever.
	And you'll love this as well.
	Hillary Clinton barricading live.
	It's extraordinary to see Hillary again.
	I ain't watched all of it yet, but if you don't want to watch it, let me know because we've got a whole host of wide and maddening variety of options.
	We'll start, though, by showing you MSNBC reporting on Trump.
	We're at 5,000 at the moment on the Rumble stream.
	If we get to 20,000, you can choose what you want to see marched out here.
	Do you want to see Gareth Roy as usual?
	Or do you want to see... I mean, you've seen a dog.
	I don't know what else we can drag out here for you.
	I don't know who we can present to you people.
	Let's have a look at the Trump slip-up, but then let's see how it's reported on.
	It's brilliant.
	You'll love this.
	Oh God, it's like, it's almost self-awareness that you can see propaganda in real time.
	By the way, look at what we're going to show you about Joe Biden.
	That's the thing though, that is a relatable, like he's guiding the audience by the nose and he's also like, It's that kind of, if he's almost self-aware, ooh, it hits a lot more real, you know?
	It's more realer.
	I don't know.
	It's more relatable.
	I don't know if it's self-aware or just completely oblivious.
	I don't know.
	So he's decided to spend 10 minutes defending Trump yet again.
	Wonderful.
	But here we also have another thing that Russell's decided to start doing, which is once there's a high enough viewer count, he lets the audience decide what they want to see.
	This is a new consistent feature of the show.
	Nine times out of ten it ends up being Gareth Roy, which is really funny, and he's appropriately grumpy about the prospect.
	Like, he gets dragged into frame with his, like, producer cans still on.
	He has to answer questions about where he is, to which he has to say, oh, I'm behind the camera now, I'm doing this, sounding really salty about it, and then he shuffles off back to his dark corner of the studio.
	Like, I'm actually in support of this, if only to see Gareth getting progressively more annoyed about it.
	Well, but it's also, yes, and that's another engagement driver of like- Yeah, oh no, for sure, for sure.
	It's definitely just like, let's bring as many people as we possibly can.
	That's the whole, that's a lot of this shit.
	It's self-promotion.
	Also, 20,000 from 5,000 when your show's already started?
	That's a lot, bruh.
	That's a lot.
	Big, big, big chunk, yeah.
	That's a swing.
	Yeah.
	I mean, that to me is more, it's more naked, like, well, we're making y'all work.
	You are working for me now.
	Yeah, I don't think I've seen him hit 20.
	I've seen him hit 10, I know that.
	But yeah, I don't recall seeing a 20, but hey, you know.
	Anything to get Gareth Roy being grumpy in front of a camera, at some point I might just make a supercut of that, because it is really funny.
	I support that.
	So let's take a look at this Trump story which Russell is so incensed about.
	I can't wait to hear what actually happened, because that was obviously bullshit.
	Obviously bullshit!
	Yeah, it's interesting.
	If you remember in the very first clip, he asked his audience, do the legacy media exist to convey information or to amplify propaganda?
	And here we get the response.
	Victor Orban.
	Did anyone ever hear of him?
	He's probably like one of the strongest leaders anywhere in the world.
	He's the leader of, right?
	He's the leader of Turkey.
	Okay, right, so that's the mistake he's made.
	But look at this, look at the joy of this.
	Look at what's behind it.
	The legacy media yet pretend that what they're doing is conveying information.
	But what they're doing, as you know, because you all press too, they're amplifying propaganda, right?
	Except he isn't.
	He's a bit hungry.
	Oh, God.
	Oh, no.
	It's a different country.
	Oh, I'm so exhausted.
	It's almost as if that mistake is worse than a democracy that's way off track being run by a near-cadaver.
	If we hadn't had a new tsunami today, I might have lived with that.
	That was Donald Trump today praising Viktor Orban, the authoritarian leader of Hungary, not Turkey.
	Of course, when you pal around with the world's autocrats, it's easy to mix them up, I guess.
	Sometimes I think when they criticize like Trump's personality, it's a kind of envy.
	You know, like he's got a sort of ease, conviviality, congeniality, humor, and wit that they envy.
	They try and be funny, they try and be jingoistic, they try and be bombastic, but they just don't do it as well.
	Now I've been on this show, do you remember that?
	When I was on that show Morning Joe?
	Look at the piety, the judgment.
	Look at how they even say, oh, if Biden did this, they'd be falling upon it, while they themselves never report.
	Like, will they later on on MSNBC cover the moment where Joe Biden does a 20-minute handshake with a scientist that looks like he's about to push her over the edge?
	Hold on, of course.
	Maybe he's never even visited Turkey.
	I don't know.
	Maybe the leader of Hungary has visited.
	If that were Joe Biden, they'd be running wall-to-wall on certain networks with medical experts describing what was happening here and why he needed help and why he should probably step off the stage.
	Right?
	Do you see?
	They're actually sort of meta-commenting on what they themselves do.
	It's what you do.
	It's what you're doing.
	It's what you're doing right now.
	I'm watching this person.
	Also, listen, I've seen enough MSNBC clips where they're being fucking rotten and smug, and I'm like, you are actively harming the cause you claim to care about.
	Fucking knock it off.
	I'm in that camp.
	all fucking day, but- - That is perfectly fine to criticize.
	This dude whipping rocks at the glass house as hard as he possibly can is fucking shocking.
	Exactly. And also- - How is it the best use of your time?
	I will say that, you know, fucking Magoo looking guy before had a point.
	It's like, yeah, if this was Biden, then yeah, they'd be fucking running it wall to wall.
	They absolutely would have done, and please don't try and pretend otherwise.
	They absolutely would have.
	So, you know, having a little bit of, ha, see, he fucks up too, is, you know, I think it's fair they don't need to be as fucking smug about it, but just be like, by the way, this guy's a dickhead.
	Anyway, so yeah, but they're just jealous of Trump.
	Everyone wants to be Trump.
	That is so stupid.
	Straight up, they don't like him.
	They don't like him.
	No, no.
	It's your right as a fucking American to not like somebody.
	That's, like, that's... as a red-blooded American to very obviously dislike someone.
	Do I think that they handled that great?
	No!
	I'm trying to think of people who I would want to be less than Trump, and there aren't many.
	I'm struggling, right?
	And also, he's near the end of his life as well, which has another fucking effect on it, because yeah, I have to remind Russell, he's only a few years younger than Biden, he's what, 77 still?
	Possibly 78?
	77?
	I don't know, who cares.
	Old!
	Fucking old.
	Couple, two, three.
	Two old to be president, I think is fair.
	Both of them are too old to be president, get them out of there.
	Yeah!
	Both!
	All of them, yeah.
	Stop it.
	The thing that really strikes me about this is that rather than being over any big story or legal issue Trump's facing, this is a case of, the legacy media were mean to Daddy, and so he has to spend 10 minutes whining about it.
	Like, it's something of an escalation of brands' Trump coverage, where we've moved from the relevant to the downright petty.
	I don't think that bodes well for the future.
	I really don't.
	I don't give a flying shit.
	Fuck what the misspeaking was.
	I don't care.
	Who Trump was talking about.
	That is a bigger fucking concern.
	That's my problem.
	I'm concerned with that.
	That's my issue.
	That's what I want to talk about in my news.
	Yeah, the fact that he loves both Orban and Erdogan, in fact.
	Any dictator, and he is in there.
	He's like, oh yeah, these dictators, God, they're really strong, aren't they?
	Yeah, like, oh, he mailed me a solid gold gun.
	He's my favorite now.
	I'm positive that there is at least some version of that going on, and I can't trust that person to...
	I'm mad at everybody.
	I am mad at MSNBC.
	I don't know if you go back more into it, but if the MSNBC clip was like, here's why we are concerned that Trump is talking about... I mean, she did say that it was a dictator that he was talking about, and I would hope that they expand... Yeah, like an autocratic... I would hope they would expand on that and not a misspeaking.
	In terms of...
	In terms of mourning Joe, I don't know.
	I didn't bother to find the rest of the clip.
	I also don't care.
	But yeah, there is almost an element, I think, with Trump where he wants all of his friends to basically be Bond villains.
	You know, like the old school 60s ones, you know, the real fucking weird stereotypes.
	Because those are the people that will say whatever nice sounding thing to his face and he buys it because he's motivated to buy it, and he likes presents.
	He gives shitty presents, which is a funny part of the actual presents, he's kind of hilarious, but he likes presents!
	But also, we all like presents.
	That is fine.
	That should not be your decision as a world leader to be swayed by presents and hollow compliments.
	You shouldn't be able to be swayed by that.
	That's disqualifying quality to me.
	No, no, no, you absolutely shouldn't.
	I'm just, I can't get out of my head that time where, I can't remember who was coming to dinner at the White House, but it was like a bunch of people and he just, he ordered McDonald's.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I think that was a college, it was a college sport.
	Oh, I nearly died.
	I nearly, I nearly died.
	Well, it doesn't even, like, there's like... World's cheapest man!
	They don't necessarily, it doesn't come to... I mean, honestly, that's a man treating people like he wants to be treated.
	I'm not even mad at that.
	True.
	I mean, yeah, he does love fast food, that is true.
	Yeah, he loves McDonald's, so he thinks people want McDonald's.
	Like, that's just like a, that's a simple man.
	If that was the problem, That's adorable.
	Oh yeah, if that was the biggest problem, I'd be fine with Trump, but that's way not the biggest problem.
	That's the thing, all the stuff that straight up, even most of the center or fake fucking... I have almost all of the same As far as, like, the heading of my essay on the things that I dislike about the mainstream media and I have serious issues with are almost identical to Russell, but then the body of the actual essay is fucking entirely different.
	It's so frustrating to hear, and also to hear it echoed back in comments from clear Russell fans and people are just buying his bullshit.
	Like, Y'all are being misled and it's so, like, you can complain, like, just scooch a little bit over into reality and you can complain all you fucking want!
	If that's what you want to do!
	Just, like, complain about the fucking right thing that actually mattered!
	Complain about something that's actually happening and we can have a conversation.
	Right.
	I have a feeling this might be a thing that's going to be upset.
	Speaking of which, in terms of dealing with what's actually happening rather than what you're saying is happening, let's take a little look at this handshake that Bran's been talking about.
	And Lauren, I don't think it's going to take you very long to understand what's going on here.
	Whose personality is better suited to bringing about peace?
	Do you think it's Trump, or do you think it's this guy?
	Now, to give Joe Biden his credit, he certainly can shake hands well, but maybe a little bit too long.
	Tell me if you think he overdoes it with his handshake, and tell me, like, I want you to say now, at the point where you think he should have let go of the hand.
	Let's have a look at this.
	I think he's given an award to a scientist, a neurologist, I think.
	Have a look at this.
	The National Medal of Science is being presented to Huda Akil.
	That's long enough.
	Already now.
	This is we're in excess handshake territory.
	...of the University of Michigan for pioneering contributions to our understanding of the brain biology of emotions.
	Her seminal discoveries of the molecular neural... Bet she's making some molecular neural discoveries right now.
	Will you please let go of my hair?
	Oh yeah, she looks so uncomfortable, doesn't she?
	Is this smiling?
	Oh my god, Russell, knock it off!
	Behavioral mechanisms of pain, substance abuse, and depression have helped identify novel targets.
	Lotta you're saying now. Now! He should have let go by now.
	Join us over on Rumble. Not you, Lot, you awakened wonders.
	Press the red button if you want to become an awakened wonder and support our work so that we can continue to
	develop and grow this movement.
	Here on Stay Free, we point out the problem.
	There, with the awakened wonder community and locals, we are moving towards solutions.
	Joe Bison on stage.
	He's still shaking hands!
	for treatments strengthening our nation's public health including the fight to end the opioid epidemic
	And this is where we've now entered an extraordinary time I believe where everything has become politicized
	laughter It was a fucking photo op!
	It was a fucking photo op!
	People were taking pictures, obviously.
	Obviously!
	Russell Brand, of all people, this motherfucker has been on red carpets.
	When people, like, if you don't see the flashes of a camera and you don't see the, like, around it, people that are standing on red carpets and getting their picture taken look fucking crazy.
	They look crazy.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	So you are absolutely correct.
	This man, Russell, just got done mocking Joe Biden for what was obviously a photo op, in which he needs to be photographed shaking hands with the person receiving the award that's being given.
	It looks awkward and uncomfortable because it is, but it's also standard practice to stand and pose for a good while to make sure the photographers get a good shot.
	Biden most likely does this at least once a day.
	Anyway, Russell just got, like, mocking him for it, and then has the gall to say, oh, isn't it extraordinary that everything is politicized these days?
	And if it wasn't so obviously an attempt to change the subject, I would commend him for his self-awareness, but no.
	He's done it!
	He's done it!
	Look at this thing I'm doing by politicizing a handshake, isn't it remarkable?
	You've been on a fucking red carpet and you've stood on the place that you're supposed to stand until you're done!
	I'm sure he has had pictures taken of him giving an award or receiving an award that look exactly like what we've just seen.
	There's going to be one somewhere, somehow.
	Like, red carpet's what I'm thinking of because it is honestly, like, hilarious to see people, like, especially when an outfit needs to be photographed a certain way to, like, look really good.
	People look fucking nuts.
	People look nuts!
	Yeah, for sure.
	For sure.
	There are tons of red carpet photos of him, yeah.
	Russell makes a crazy face on a red carpet.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's a face that I have caught myself making before and your eyes look buggy and it's not good.
	I gotta not do it.
	But I see him do it and I'm like, oh girl, yeah, it's tough.
	Tough out there.
	Also, did you like the straw man pole at the beginning?
	Who's better, Trump or Biden?
	Whose personality is more, like, your personality will bring about peace?
	Better for bringing peace.
	Fucking do what now?
	The guy who openly shouted about raining fire and fury on North Korea or Joe Biden.
	Which is it gonna be?
	Your personality, it has nothing to- I mean, yeah, your disposition for negotiation could have a factor.
	Like, you just think that Trump's- Out of the deal, baby, out of the deal.
	Yeah, Trump's riz is gonna bring peace?
	That's fucking insane.
	That's so stupid.
	Well, that's what Trump says.
	That's what Trump says, so therefore it must be true.
	One phone call, I'll answer one phone call, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Yeah, he says a lot of things.
	Yeah, one phone call saying, we are withdrawing support to Ukraine.
	Good luck!
	One phone call saying, good luck, sucker!
	That's it!
	That might end it.
	I don't think it would, but it might.
	This is nuts, dude.
	The thing is, I don't watch it, so I don't know how much Trump cover has been happening, but it was like a surprise when we first covered it.
	It was!
	It's becoming much, much, much more frequent.
	He's not good at it!
	There's other people out there that are doing a better job at his grit!
	I do feel like I have had fewer people telling me that Russell isn't into Trump.
	These days, which is good, because when we first started, that's what I got a lot of.
	He doesn't like Trump, really.
	Okay.
	So next, and this might be topical as it's just after Halloween, a talking point of brands is raised from the dead.
	The WHO are on the very precipice of being able to impose a global treaty that will mean your country, if it's a member of the WHO, will have to give 5% of its health budget to the WHO, and that your country will have to obey their legislation when it comes to masks.
	Lockdowns, vaccines in the event and some would say the inevitable event of another pandemic.
	Here is the WHO director general complaining that the spread of misinformation undermines faith in our institutions.
	But what's really undermining the faith in institutions?
	Is it misinformation or is it corruption?
	Press M if it's misinformation.
	Press C if it's corruption.
	But also we saw a lack of coordination between nations and between health actors.
	And the politicization of science and the undermining of faith in our institutions from the spread of misinformation.
	Whether it's in the Rumble chat right now or in the Awakened Wonder Locals chat, there's naught but the letter C raining down endlessly.
	What vitamin you need, though, is vitamin D, not C, although, you know, that would perhaps be a little too scientific for the WHO.
	How are you feeling about this WHO treaty?
	Do you want to grant more power to I swear to God, I have not just gone through and exclusively cut clips where he's polling the audience.
	show should plan, oh excuse me I don't know why the word plan came out of my mouth, in the next
	pandemic should be able to impose their legislation. Yes or no? Just a Y or an N is all that's required.
	Dude! I swear to god I have not just gone through and exclusively cut clips where he's polling the
	audience. It just genuinely happens with this level of frequency. Do you see what I mean about
	it being fucking annoying?
	This is exhausting.
	And I know that he's exhausting.
	I know, I know, I know.
	Listener, I know, but this is fucking, this is nuts.
	It's a lot.
	And what, like having the raw feed is even worse because you just, you get blindsided by it just fucking every, every five seconds.
	And I mean, this, this is twice in like a minute and a half.
	And like, he, he basically just asked, am I the problem or are they the problem?
	Is it misinformation?
	I'm such a fucking asshole!
	If somebody I liked was making me parrot back what they wanted over and over, I'm out!
	I wouldn't like them anymore!
	I'm out!
	I'd be like, I have stopped liking you, stop doing that!
	It's fucking irritating.
	My emergency meter in my brain of like, no, no, no, no, no, is the false dichotomy between, what, misinformation or corruption.
	Baby, it's both.
	It's both.
	That's not a binary.
	And the thing is, that is an incredibly complex Thought?
	To force?
	That's like a culty fucking manipulation tactic, is to create a false dichotomy like that.
	I will say the specific example given of the guy at the WHO saying like, hey, misinformation is a big problem that we need to deal with.
	Yeah, I guess that's true.
	Especially around, you know, COVID.
	Yeah, but...
	He asked that question and he posed those two options as though they are mutually exclusive before he played the clip.
	Yes, no, no, he still did that.
	Yeah, no, no, no, true.
	You know what I mean?
	So he's setting it up.
	He's training.
	This sounds like the videos of people that have dogs and they have the little buttons and they can say, walk, outside, hungry.
	That's how this feels.
	Yeah, yeah, I mean... I feel, this is crazy.
	Maybe his audience should go for a walk, and stop them from watching the fucking show.
	No shit!
	But like, but you know what I mean, like, he's obviously, like, conditioning people!
	Yeah, it's not, it's really not great.
	And yeah, so he's back on the whole WHO being able to take over sovereign countries thing, which we covered in our WHO episode a while ago, And, yeah, that's not what's happening.
	It was a proposed amendment from one country out of 300-and-something proposed amendments total, and there's no way it gets left in because it would be crazy and no country would sign it.
	And even then, the WHO doesn't have any mechanism of punishment for people not following their rules other than possibly ejection from the WHO, but I'm not even sure that they actually can do that.
	I don't know.
	And apparently, yeah, the WHO are planning pandemics, according to Russell's fast and loose playing with the YouTube Community Guidelines.
	Oh, how did plan come out of my mouth?
	I mean pandemic!
	Okay, okay, buddy.
	Fuck me.
	So next, we have something of a definition for the new ethos of Stay Free with Russell Brand.
	Let me know what you want to see when we come off YouTube.
	The skyrocketing demand for panic rooms.
	It's an interesting story.
	Everybody's in a state of total panic and people want panic rooms and safe rooms and stuff like that.
	Or would you like to see Dr. Drew discussing myocarditis?
	First, one for panic rooms, two for Dr. Drew.
	Let me know as well.
	Uh, how you feel about this, uh, Hillary Clinton shouting match?
	We just started to watch this.
	And let me know, too, if you want to see, uh, I'm wondering whether we should go straight to Neil Oliver, or whether or not we should show our here's the news.
	But I'll ask you that in, uh, a little second.
	I just want to make sure you guys are in absolute control of what we're doing.
	You work for me now.
	Right?
	You are his employees.
	This is a production meeting and he doesn't have to make the fucking decisions.
	Yeah, so firstly and most obviously- Ever got a boss like that?
	I fucking bet you have.
	I bet a lot of you have.
	They pretend that you have control and you're in charge and really you just got to do all the fucking work.
	That's exactly what he's doing right here.
	Well, yeah.
	So firstly, and most obviously, this is Panda City.
	I don't mean the cute black and white bears.
	He is pandering to his audience to the most extreme degree at this stage.
	Not just checking the echo chamber with constant polling, but actively letting them decide how the show goes.
	Or rather, That's how he's making it appear.
	He makes it seem like he has dozens of options that he's ready to fire out at any minute in a minute example of democracy.
	In reality, exactly all of what they've planned is going to be aired, they've just apparently stopped giving a shit about the order in which it happens.
	It's just going to lead to a badly thought out show, almost invariably, which is what happens with this one.
	It goes opening fluff, choice of one or two stories, then the Neil Oliver interview, then the other story that's completely unrelated to anything before or after, then the editorial, and then it just abruptly cuts to credits.
	There's no flow, there's no narrative, and no thought has gone into it because it's just a bunch of people smashing one of two options in a chat box.
	This is miserable.
	So the show is just bad.
	Yeah, so that's where we're at for now.
	I'm hoping this changes.
	This also feels like fucking begging.
	Oh yeah, it's real, it's real.
	It's really desperate.
	Grabbing fans by the ankles and shaking their lunch money out of their pockets.
	Like, I need that from you right now.
	I'm not into it, and it makes presenting the show to our audience harder, because listening to the constant questions is fucking insufferable!
	It's also insulting to your intelligence!
	It's a lot!
	I mean, don't get me wrong, the questions themselves are hilarious, but oh my god, it's annoying.
	So I've mentioned a few times that Russell is really focused on Hillary Clinton at the moment, seemingly out of the blue, he never used to really give a shit about her, and in the next story we get a taste of it.
	To give context, Hillary is speaking at the Institute of Global Politics at Columbia University, And she is the chair of the Faculty Advisory Board for the IGP.
	It was formed in September, and the other day, as part of their inaugural summit, they held a panel, one out of many panels, to discuss the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations.
	And then this happened.
	What you want is regionalised, decentralised politics, federalism, maximum amount of democracy, not an elite establishment I know you're not sorry, that's the point!
	power and introducing authoritarianism wherever possible by introducing crisis
	wherever possible so people are in a total state of fear and dread and unable
	to think straight. I know you're not sorry that's the point.
	Okay so I swear at this point like he's just got those lines down to the point
	of not even having to think about it anymore.
	Like, he just rattles it off as a reflex, because this place has the word global in the name.
	As though if we all did live in the tiny theocratic ethnostates he wants with his maximum democracy, however that looks, somehow we wouldn't still have global problems to solve.
	Anyway.
	We can't uncomplicate our society.
	Well, apparently we can't.
	We just need to focus, right, on the hundred people around us.
	The hundred people closest to us, right?
	We all focus on our own little hundred and then the world is fine, right?
	That's how that works, Lauren.
	God.
	And movies.
	And I'm sure there will be no conflict or tension or anything ever again.
	And when he moves to Bali with their loose extradition, or no extradition treaty, then they'll be like, why are all these Balinese people here?
	This is weird, and it might be a problem.
	Yeah, I don't like that.
	They are not white enough for me.
	Yeah, right?
	Like, I want my white ethnostate enclave in Bali!
	Yeah, it's almost like he's, I don't know, pro-colonization at this point.
	Yeah, that was the bone I had to pick last week, so...
	This guy yelling at Hillary is calling her a hypocrite without, I would say, a particularly good reason in this specific case.
	I think there are other reasons that you can call her that.
	He's telling her to denounce Joe Biden for his hundred billion dollar bill sending money to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.
	For so many reasons.
	Good luck with that one, buddy.
	But my main question is, if you're mad at Joe Biden, why aren't you yelling at Joe Biden?
	Why show up to Hillary?
	She's just having a talk with some people.
	I mean, I'm really interested as to what anything like what this body, the IGP had, like, do
	they have enforcement?
	Like do they have like enforcement capabilities with any kind of teeth?
	Nah.
	No, no, no.
	It's a thing at a university.
	I think they're there to promote certain issues within global politics.
	And not to say that that is not its own problem.
	Not to say that isn't its own problem, because I don't fucking agree with her either.
	And I don't agree with how she goes about pretty much fucking anything.
	Obviously, you can hear from the salt in my voice that I have my own bones to pick, but like...
	I think we all do with Hillary Clinton, but I would like them to... And genuinely, we have seen the problem with, like, these, you know, we've all had to see in the past few weeks that, you know, strongly worded letters and suggestions from international consensus bodies really don't amount to a hill of beans when they sure should.
	Like, it's the same thing with, like, Russell, the WHO, like, dude!
	They can just, like, it's been proven all over the place, and they're just gonna get ignored!
	And there are no consequences!
	That's a problem!
	Yeah, but now they're gonna be able to take over your country and vaccine passports and that!
	I don't know enough about the organization necessarily to speak to it really.
	It's relatively new to me.
	It was only formed in September, it's not really found its feet in any kind of meaningful way yet.
	The guy who's doing the yelling is called Robert Castle, and he seems to have ingratiated himself with a small group of Twitter people who show up to panel events or speeches to heckle whoever's speaking.
	There's like a little group that just likes to show up and do that, and they have a lot of Twitter followers because of it.
	Castle is a self-described independent researcher, disillusioned optimist and journalist, and he has a substack, so I guess that means it must be true.
	Regardless, he is far from done with yelling at Hillary Clinton.
	If you want to have a conversation, you're welcome to come talk to me afterwards.
	You can sit here.
	Okay, right.
	You're gonna wait for me, right?
	I will wait for you, and I will listen to you, and I will respond to you.
	I do not believe you.
	Respectfully, I do not believe you.
	And the fact of the matter is that the American people's voice are what need to be heard.
	Yeah, they are being heard.
	Because our president is not speaking for the American people, and neither are you.
	Well, that's your opinion.
	That's your opinion.
	Yes, that's my opinion.
	P for protester, H for Hillary in the chat.
	And do you remember being given a vote on how to escalate and fund the military-industrial complex and their clear agenda?
	P if you were the protester, H if you were Hillary.
	Well then sit down, we've heard your opinion.
	Thank you very much.
	Now we're going to turn to people who are on the front lines of working on behalf of Get into the basket of deplorables!
	There is so much pee in the chat that the Democrats will tell you that it's raining down on Donald Trump from a Russian sex worker and try and create a hoax out of it!
	You're so fucking boring.
	God, Russell, shut up!
	Also, a hoax has to be proven to be false, and with this one it's still up in the air.
	Who cares?
	I know, I know.
	The other thing about Russell constantly strawman polling his audience is it doesn't half take up a lot of time.
	Like, if he gave half a shit, there could be a lot to talk about here.
	Namely, why, according to this protester, Joe Biden isn't speaking on behalf of the American people, despite having won the election to be president and, you know, won the majority.
	Yeah, the majority, not just the Electoral College, in fact.
	Yes, exactly, exactly, right.
	Like what Hillary Clinton won was the popular vote.
	Yes, yeah, yeah.
	You and I could have a fairly interesting discussion about that, and the issues with representative democracy, for instance, which are fucking inherent, right?
	In a system, especially with two parties, you know, the...
	The person who is up there in charge is never going to fully represent your views.
	Absolutely fucking not.
	That's a problem.
	That's a problem of some kind.
	There's a lot that could be discussed here.
	And like, Russell could have had a fucking field day.
	He could have taken a pop at Hillary and found out whether she actually did stay to talk to this guy or not.
	And as far as I'm aware, she didn't.
	Though, given the direction it goes, I'm not entirely going to blame her on that score.
	In any case, Russell could have taken this ball and run with it, flinging shit at every left-wing politician that's been within a mile of the White House, but instead we get P for Protester, H for Hillary, and I was like, oh my god.
	Put some effort in.
	And the yelling person.
	The yelling for clout person first of all you're yelling for clout because she said I'll talk to you and then if you actually cared about having a conversation or advocating for what you wanted to advocate for and then if she snubbed if you if she said I will talk to you afterwards and you said.
	Okay, let's do it.
	He's not accomplishing more by not doing that, but it's less sensational.
	Like this is so like this is clout chasing and like this is that's the fucking Twitter
	clout only.
	Yeah.
	You can do like if you want to do both you can do both because if you want to get your
	word out there you do have to juice the algorithm whatever way sincere or not.
	But like this guy obviously is like gonna just keep screaming and then doesn't know
	what free speech means at all.
	Because again that's not just I'm free to say whatever I want to anyone else with no
	ramifications.
	That's not what that is.
	That's not what free speech means.
	As protected by the Constitution.
	That's just not the definition of free speech.
	That guy wants to fucking yell at people however much he wants and then he doesn't want consequences.
	That's not protected by the Constitution, nor should it be.
	That's insane.
	Compared to his peers, he's also bad at it.
	So I watched a few of the other people that are like him, who are actively promoting this guy at this point, which is weird.
	But they will actually show up to heckle the actual person who they have critiques of, and then start saying things that are uncomfortable to that person.
	That's what they're doing.
	Whereas this is like, Oh, denounce Joe Biden!
	Okay.
	And then there's this kind of... End of thought.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, pretty much.
	And then he just, I mean, there's one point, I didn't cut this clip, but he starts getting very, he starts getting squeaky.
	He's too animated.
	He gets overexcited.
	Yeah, he seemed kind of off.
	Because just saying, exercising, I will exercise my free speech.
	Yeah, exercise your free speech in a Denny's, my guy.
	See how it goes for you.
	He gets to be a little bit much.
	But this is inciting!
	He was generating a situation where he can say he's being persecuted when he's just screaming in a room!
	That's just what you're doing.
	The one thing that I can commend Hillary for is being incredibly obstinate and to maliciously comply.
	So if she says, oh, I will talk to you after this, you better fucking believe she would.
	I do believe her.
	I know he doesn't, but I'm like, oh no, she'll show up.
	And if he cares at all about the causes that he is claiming he cares about, that's a conversation that he would want to have.
	But he He knows that's too rich for his blood, so he's out!
	Like, she called his bluff!
	That should've been it!
	Yeah, that should've been it, and then, I don't know, he could've filmed his conversation with her or something, I'm sure she would've been fine with that.
	Or saying she was gonna meet with me and then she didn't!
	Like, that's your other gotcha!
	She definitely would've.
	That's the thing, man.
	Politicking is the one thing this woman can do.
	And that's exactly what she's doing.
	She's also argumentative as fuck, so I'm pretty sure she would show up.
	Yeah!
	So, in this next clip, Russell kind of shows his true colors.
	You are from Uganda and Uganda's 2023... Did she just say, you are Uganda?
	Wow.
	I must visit Uganda this year.
	Well, I'm here.
	Anti-homosexuality act criminalizes LGBT conduct in Uganda.
	That's really amazing because there's a much more immediate problem than LGBTQ plus problems in Uganda.
	Why are you funding these wars?
	Where's our democracy, man?
	Never mind all that.
	Let's get back to what's going on in Uganda.
	So, Uganda is another one of those countries where if I go there I could be imprisoned or killed for who I am.
	Homosexuality has been illegal in Uganda since colonial times, but in recent years there have been attempts to further criminalize and persecute the LGBTQ community, namely in the form of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, Also infamously known as the Kill the Gays Bill, it called for the death penalty for certain homosexual acts and life imprisonment for others.
	While the most extreme measures of the bill were eventually dropped, the proposal itself amplified hostilities against the LGBTQ plus community.
	In 2014, a revised version of the bill was signed into law, mandating life imprisonment for quote, aggravated homosexuality.
	Due to international pressure and concerns over human rights violations, the law was annulled later that year by the Constitutional Court of Uganda on procedural grounds.
	However, the damage had already been done, with many LGBTQ plus Ugandans facing increased violence, discrimination and ostracization.
	There is obviously a broader societal hostility towards the LGBTQ plus community in Uganda.
	Many Ugandans believe that homosexuality is un-African and a form of Western cultural imperialism.
	I do wish they would apply that same lens as to why Uganda is overwhelmingly Christian while it wasn't prior to 1877 and being colonized by the British.
	But I guess that one doesn't make them feel as icky.
	In any case, the hostility towards the LGBTQ plus community in Uganda has led to mob violence, discrimination in employment and housing, and widespread social stigma.
	According to Russell, the shit that this guy is yelling about is way more important than any of that.
	Oh my god.
	Sorry.
	So I try to keep abreast of what's happening as much as you can, because here's the thing.
	There are atrocities kind of littered about the place, and it's very difficult.
	Listeners, please, please, please, please, please keep an eye on what is happening to LGBTQ plus people in just a select few... Around the world.
	Well, it is around the world, but there are African countries where this is a fucking massive, dangerous, terrifying problem.
	It's not just there, it is all over the world and it is increasing.
	Saudi Arabia, we've mentioned that one before.
	For me, in my brain, because I brought up, you know, like, oh well this is also how this country treats gay people, and it might sound like a non-sequitur if I'm just saying that, but my personal rubric is that's a litmus test for how human rights are going generally.
	In a country, and how civil rights are being treated.
	Because being able to exist while being different is a civil right.
	It's how we live in a civil society.
	And of course, Russell doesn't give a flying shit-fuck about being fair to anyone because he wants a Christo-fascist ethnostate.
	And so, okay, Russ, are you gonna allow gay people to also be murdered?
	If that's what your friends want to do?
	Or is it your own ethnostate means you don't need to worry about that happening somewhere else in the country?
	If he's one of 100 people and the other 99 want to murder the gays, then I guess he would allow that in his conception of things?
	Not only do I agree, I think that there's excellent examples of, like, in the chat, Kill gays, don't kill gays, K for kill, D for don't.
	Obviously, generating truth by consensus or moral by consensus or facts by consensus is not how shit works.
	But I mean, Unfortunately, that is how our media landscape often works, which is fucking- it's atrocious, and the fact that he's encouraging it and conditioning people to it is bananas.
	It's really fucking upsetting.
	Yes, it is.
	So who is the guy that Hillary Clinton is trying to talk to while being screamed at?
	His name is Frank Mugisha.
	He's an internationally recognized human rights activist and a vocal advocate for LGBTQ plus rights in Uganda, literally risking his life to do so.
	He came out to his brother at 14, and rather than hide himself away, he became an outspoken advocate for the rights and dignity of LGBTQ plus individuals in Uganda.
	In the early 2000s, he co-founded Sexual Minorities Uganda, or SMUG, the acronym could do with some workshopping, but still.
	I say co-founded.
	The person he co-founded it with was brutally beaten to death for being gay, so he's the last one that's there.
	Through Smug and other platforms, Mugisha has campaigned against the severe discriminatory laws and societal prejudices faced by LGBTQ plus Ugandans.
	He's been arrested on multiple occasions for his advocacy and faces death threats on a daily basis.
	His courage and activism have not gone unnoticed, which is good.
	He has been honored with multiple awards, including the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in 2011.
	That's the original Robert F. Kennedy, not his loser son who was named after him.
	Um, in summary, Frank Mugisha is a courageous badass who puts his life on the line every day to defend those who can't defend themselves, and this chucklehead is deciding to scream over Mugisha's chance to speak to a significant audience.
	Shame on Russell, and shame on this fucking Joker for doing that.
	That's insane.
	That, like, because also, like- When you start to learn about the context, it's like, oh shit.
	I mean, the thing is, is I kind of make an assumption at this point because also after, you know, a couple of weeks back watching Russell be like, Oh, you guys are being way too upset about a bunch of kids being stolen.
	Kids are kind of terrible.
	I'm a parent.
	That's how I feel.
	They're kind of a pain in the ass.
	You should just give them away.
	So I'm not like shocked.
	But it's fucking shameful.
	Obviously this is a thing I care a lot about.
	To me it's a litmus test that even if you think you don't know any gay people in your life and you are not gay yourself and you never have You live an entirely straight existence.
	I guarantee one of those straight people is gay.
	One of those straight people is gay.
	You can have a completely straight existence and think that none of this ever affects you, but even just using the way, like using as a litmus test the way that a national, like The way a governing body, the way that the governing body either refuses to protect or actively discriminates against the queer community, that is a litmus test for a much, like, that's like the tip of an iceberg and the part that's underneath the water is a much larger problem.
	Use that as a way to gauge how much we should trust a certain, like, what, you know, what the, A political leader is saying and talking about or like use that as as a gauge and understanding how maybe some of the geopolitics is adding up it can help you understand how countries are relating to each other.
	Um, say, for other, like, uh, strategic military reasons.
	Like, there's a lot there.
	Yeah.
	A lot there.
	I, I, I, completely.
	Um, so, when I kind of, when I first laid eyes on this clip, I, I kind of, I kind of thought, I don't know, Institute of Global Politics, Hillary Clinton having a panel, I don't know, it's about, I don't know, maybe some kind of international law, maybe some military thing, I don't know.
	Because he's yelling at her about what she's doing now being a warmongering speech, and she shouldn't be doing it, and blah blah blah.
	And then, when Uganda came up, I was like, huh.
	No, I know about the issues in Uganda.
	That doesn't track with the things that I thought were being discussed here.
	Let me just have a little look at the guest list.
	So also on the panel are Michelle Bachelet, the former president of Chile, who had previously been held prisoner and tortured during the regime of Augusto Pinochet.
	After her presidency, she became the first executive director for UN Women, an organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, from 2010 to 2013.
	She was later appointed the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, which I think she still is.
	Fair fucking play.
	Human rights, check.
	Two.
	There's also Maria Ressa, a former CNN bureau chief for Manila and then Jakarta, and senior vice president at ABS-CBN News, who later founded her own news site called Rappler.
	Rappler is well known in the Philippines for being vocally critical of the Duterte regime, and consequently she's been arrested many, many times And faced several counts of trumped up charges against her for tax evasion, cyber libel, and allegations concerning foreign ownership of media.
	She's an incredible person.
	There's a lot of like... Yeah, she was Time Person of the Year in 2018, and with good reason, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 alongside Dmitry Muratov for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression in the Philippines and Russia, respectively.
	And yeah, you're not wrong.
	Incredible.
	Yeah, there's documentaries out there I highly recommend.
	I mean, if these other folks that I know less about, I'm interested.
	I'm gonna look into it now.
	This is it, right?
	That stage is seemingly full.
	Yeah, 3 for 3 on massive human rights efforts being made.
	Huge deal, huge deal.
	Like, the stage is seemingly full of serious people who do serious things, making significant personal sacrifices, which makes Russell's perspective in the next clip all the more gross.
	Please just let us discuss Uganda!
	Every person on this stage has risked their life, their income, their reputation.
	Will you please just let us discuss Uganda?
	I mean, Uganda is an interesting nation, but plainly, this is not the way the conversation
	is going.
	... their careers.
	What have you done other than stand up and give blood?
	I need you to- I need you to- I report my weapons and these women's weapons-
	What was she saying there?
	What have you done?
	What have you done?
	Stand up and voice your- This is disgusting.
	How dare you do free speech at Hillary!
	Get into your basket of deplorables and do what you're told!
	This is liberalism!
	This is what liberalism... Put this mask on!
	You are at risk!
	You're not two meters apart!
	Here, this will make you feel better!
	Extraordinary stuff.
	Okay, listen.
	You lot want to see the myocarditis clip.
	Of course you want to see the myocarditis clip.
	I'm hurt.
	My feelings are hurt.
	Obviously Russell has no idea what's going on in Uganda.
	And no interest.
	I'm sorry, I'm really upset.
	That's outrageous!
	No, no, no, you've every reason to be.
	All right!
	Bring it together!
	Stating the obvious.
	No, no, it's okay.
	You're allowed a second, right?
	This is really gross.
	Stating the obvious.
	This woman here, she said nothing about masks or COVID whatsoever.
	He just jumped into that spiel because he didn't actually know anything about who these people on stage are.
	So, for the record, the lady shouting back at the screamy guy is called Alida Black.
	She's a historian, professor, editor, and human rights activist, best known for her work on Eleanor Roosevelt and women's rights.
	She might best be described as a historical activist, utilizing her understanding and knowledge of history to further the causes of gender equality and human rights advocacy.
	I do also think that this is one of the rare instances, based upon who's on that stage, where she is completely correct in saying, well, who the fuck are you?
	My bigger problem, however, is still, why here?
	Like, it has to be the worst possible place to scream about Joe Biden's foreign aid bill, and interrupting the conversation between these people is grossly inappropriate.
	So I'm entirely willing to call Robert Castle an arsehole for doing this.
	His views can be perfectly valid and he has every right to express them, but doing so here in this way makes him an absolute prick.
	It's just like, yeah, I mean this woman is like...
	We're trying to get, like, we need less gay people being tortured and murdered.
	That's our little meeting today is about that.
	And if this dude, again, gave a single solitary shit about the issues that he purports to care about and is paying lip service to, this would not be the room that he would start this in.
	If anything, He would be making complaints toward funding that goes to any country that also persecutes gay people.
	If you want to be mad about that, or also just gender equality.
	And let's make it perfectly fucking clear that gender equality, feminism, and gay rights, gay liberation, and protection of every stripe and spectrum of that person are completely connected, are inextricably linked.
	And need to be discussed in totality.
	It's a fucking French plait of issues, is what it is.
	French braid.
	Yeah, this is the conversation.
	I know what a plait is.
	I watch the British baking show.
	So... I'm kidding.
	I'm a nerd.
	You know I know because I'm a nerd.
	I think it is just more commonly known as French braid.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	It's a braid.
	You don't need to, thank you for the listeners, but you don't need to clarify for me.
	I'm so fascinated with medieval basket weaving.
	Anyway, listen, I'm sorry.
	I needed a break because this is fucking rough.
	I'm upset and mad, but this woman could not be more in the right.
	I'm upset and mad, but like this woman could not be more like in the right.
	And like the fact that the word Uganda doesn't even make like, it's not even that.
	[BLANK_AUDIO]
	Russell is saying the word like, oh, Uganda sounds like a nice place.
	That means you have no fucking clue what is going on.
	It's an interesting country.
	Shut up.
	It's unbelievable.
	And he's actively mocking people for wanting to discuss it.
	And it's like, no, no, no.
	There are fucking issues here that really need to be dealt with.
	Yeah, there's severe humanitarian crises that need to be addressed and need to be halted immediately.
	Yep.
	Also, I do want to say, Russell, if you're gonna need to field questions to Gareth Roy anyway, then you might as well fucking have him on the show!
	Like, at least we'd be able to hear him clearly and he might know something about what's happening in the clips.
	That's why he needs Gareth, because he doesn't have a clue!
	Like, at least when Gareth was sat there at the table, he could be like, ah, so what's happening here then, Gareth?
	And Gareth would at least- Gareth could have also scooted him away from saying this shit!
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Because I bet Gareth knows more like, mm-mm, Ixnay on the Uganda, yeah, nope, that one doesn't work in Pick Latin, but you know what I mean.
	I get what you mean.
	Yeah, yeah, no, no, completely, completely.
	Right.
	Yeah, so it's all just completely horrible, thankfully.
	Oh, God.
	Thankfully, we're gonna move away from this topic.
	Let's go!
	Next up, we have heard that Russell's Transitions... Sorry.
	We have heard Russell's Transitions from YouTube to Rumble, you know, going Rumble exclusive.
	We've heard those before, but this one is a little bit more excitable than usual.
	Okay, so Joy, if you're on YouTube, ta-ta for now.
	See you in a minute, and we're going to look at Dr. Drew.
	Let us know.
	Are we off YouTube now?
	We're gone, guys.
	See you later, YouTube.
	We have to wait a while, because if I accidentally say something that WHO wouldn't like, we get in a lot of trouble.
	So get over here right now.
	We're going to talk about Dr. Drew discussing recent American Heart Association journal reports, 50% of young men with myocarditis after jab had permanent Can I say it yet?
	Are we off YouTube?
	Still can't say it.
	Still can't say it.
	Clear!
	Heart damage!
	Bloody!
	Bloody!
	My heart can't die!
	It's them jabs cause my heart can't die!
	Why can't we say this?
	Why are we not free to tell the truth?
	Become an awakened wonder.
	Join us.
	It's enough commenting on the problems.
	You can see what the problem is and the problem is that we're waging war around the world.
	We're waging war against one another when if we were smart Just for a second, we would recognise we have more in common with one another than we do with the establishment elites that pull the strings, guide, govern and control us.
	Just a reminder yet again that Russell Brand is amongst the 0.01% of the wealthiest people on the planet, and that's a conservative estimate.
	He is the elite.
	Anyway, according to the British Heart Foundation, incidents of myocarditis after being given the Pfizer-slash-BioNTech vaccine are less than 1 in 100,000.
	For the Moderna vaccine, it was 14 reports for every million doses.
	So it is incredibly rare.
	Still not great, but incredibly rare.
	And it is only with those two examples that other types of vaccine work in a different way and so don't have the same issue.
	Yeah, how much, how, how many, what, what are the outcomes for people that have gotten COVID repeatedly from myocarditis?
	Oh, that's a good question.
	That's a good question.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Cause there does seem to be a high incidence of like, cause when, when Googling this issue, one thing that kind of comes up pretty frequently is, oh, you know, post COVID myocarditis.
	That's that's a really, really common thing.
	Common thing, as well as, you know, constant respiratory problems and all kinds of other issues.
	Sometimes people won't know until it's much later that they have gotten lasting damage from COVID.
	It's fucking shocking.
	OK, I need to get the chip off my shoulder for this.
	No, no, no, it's OK.
	It's OK.
	Anyway, Russell's audience wanted to see the myocarditis clip, and so the myocarditis clip they will see.
	Or will they?
	Okay, guys.
	Okay, let's have a look at Dr. Drew on myocarditis, which apparently is a side effect of a certain little very popular injection that had a good PR campaign not long ago.
	They saved lives in the Middle East and in this country safe rooms are now becoming popular.
	Never mind safe rooms, you're not getting no safe rooms.
	Democracy works.
	There must have been some faulty voting machines on this end, let me tell you.
	It's more common than we thought.
	People are like, well it's mild, it's mild, it's no big deal, it's self-limited, blah blah.
	Look, in my world, throughout my entire career, 40-year career, myocarditis is a medical emergency.
	It's a dire problem.
	A publication just came out five days ago in Circulation, a major cardiology journal, An excellent study and it showed, it took my breath away, I didn't know why it wasn't headline news.
	It's a large study and it showed that... Well no, it's not headline news, it's sensitive.
	About approximately half of the young males that got myocarditis had permanent heart damage.
	Yep.
	Permanent.
	That means that we don't know what percentage are going to be disabled by this as they get older, are going to develop heart failure, are going to need cardiac transplants, some of them.
	Oh my god.
	Breathtaking, this study, and why it wasn't a big headline.
	I've sort of centered around a little bit because I don't understand why people aren't reacting to it.
	So in a 27-year-old male, the illness is a nothing.
	So the vaccine is all risk.
	Why the push?
	Why are we pushing?
	And I think, put your legal head on for a second, that universities are going to be in big trouble for having mandated young people to get that vaccine.
	Because people are going to get sick, they're going to have long-term consequences, and they should sue those schools for having forced them to take a medical intervention.
	There you go, just another aspect of this unfolding drama that seems to lead more and more to censorship and centralized control.
	Good God.
	So yeah, I mean, oh, we don't know what percentage of people, I mean, if it's half of the percentage that I've just said, which again, I don't believe, because that doesn't match up with the statistics that I've seen.
	Tell me how we know it's the vaccine?
	Then I will listen.
	How do we know it's the vaccine?
	Because people were still getting COVID before the vaccine, after the vaccine, albeit considerably more mild, all the time.
	How do we know?
	ALICE Myocarditis is a notoriously tricky thing to kind of spot and deal with, in general, as well.
	Yeah, there are so many issues with what this guy is saying.
	And yeah, I think the percentage would be naught point naught naught naught something.
	It would be vanishingly small, that's the number that you're looking for, buddy.
	You don't want to say it out loud, because it kind of...
	It goes against the point you're trying to make here.
	So yeah, that was an edited clip of Dr. Drew on Megyn Kelly's show.
	Though I didn't particularly find the edits to change the intent of Dr. Drew.
	I just thought it was badly edited.
	He's fear-mongering in a blatantly dishonest way, trying to insinuate that myocarditis is an issue that just no one's taking seriously, and the reality is that, like, the majority of the incredibly rare cases of this happening are very mild, and what's called self-limiting, which he mentioned, which is kind of where the body just kind of deals with it, heals itself and moves on.
	Regardless, any cases of it are supposed to be reported, and any cases where it becomes more severe are considered to be very serious and are treated with the utmost care.
	But that is incredibly rare.
	The idea that anyone's blasé about heart conditions, however, is complete shit.
	Anyway, Russell seems to be dealing with the consequences of doing it live, on a separate note.
	A little tough. Stack issues.
	But also for those of us that have been listening to a lot of misinformation over the past several
	years, we know more about VAERS data than we ever needed or wanted to.
	Good God. So especially rhetoric and this kind of specific kind of medical disinformation often relies on VAERS
	data, which is reported incidents, not corroborated, not proven incidents.
	It's a form you can fill out and send off to the database.
	That's it.
	So if you think that that's a rigorous information that you can glean fastidious scientific data from, honey, I don't know what to tell you.
	It's been manipulated.
	And the VAERS system is useful, and there is a place for it.
	It's being misused.
	Yeah.
	Fucking Dr. Drew, of all people, should fucking know better.
	I know that he's off the deep end these days, but that's not right.
	That's not right.
	I'm not being funny, but I'm not gonna take statistics from a guy who says that, oh yeah, people should be suing their universities.
	I'm just like, that's an absurd argument to try and make here.
	Just be quiet.
	Be quiet and go away, Dr. Drew, and Megyn Kelly.
	Tell me how you prove it!
	Both of you can go away, that's perfectly fine.
	Yeah, tell me, show your work!
	Tell me how you think that this is... Where's a little bit of that?
	Where's the cause?
	Or is it a correlate?
	Come on!
	Like, is it correlated or is it causation?
	Show your work, please!
	What are we doing here?
	What are we doing here?
	Yeah.
	So, we now move on to Russell's guest, Neil Oliver, finally, and here is his introduction onto the show.
	Please welcome from GB News, my new friend and potential sort of doppelganger cousin in a pastoral wonderland, Neil Oliver.
	Thanks for joining us, Neil.
	The audio in here, I can't hear Neil.
	I don't know if you're muted, mate, but I can't hear you in here.
	There we go.
	Can you hear me now?
	I can, but I can also do your side of the conversation.
	Oh, hello.
	Yeah, well, what is Russell?
	We're at a point, a crisis.
	You've got a lovely little in Scottish accent.
	Ugh, so close to it being a smooth transition.
	I'm not complaining about that.
	I abstain.
	It's funny.
	So, by the looks of the video, I think dear Neil here, he had himself muted.
	Amazing that it's been three years, nearly four, and we still need to tell each other to unmute ourselves.
	And we did that just last week, didn't we?
	I was going to say.
	But then again... I'm not touching that.
	We are a merry band of two running things on a shoestring, not a multi-million dollar operation with a large production crew, because that's what Russell has, and this was an avoidable problem.
	Yeah, so let's get to Russell's first question for Neil Oliver, and I want you to see... I do recognize him, by the way.
	You do recognize him?
	Do you know where from at all?
	No, I don't remember.
	No, right.
	All right, all right.
	Distant fragments, yeah.
	Interesting.
	I want to see if you can guess the thing that he was best known for prior to being a shithead on GB News, which is sort of our badly done equivalent of Fox.
	Neil, mate, can you tell us, why do you think people are unable to appropriately respond to what seems to be a kind of omnicrisis, an all-immersive, total surrounding nightmare?
	Why are people not able to face it?
	What is it, Neil?
	I think, in essence, it's too big for a lot of people to contemplate.
	I think to embrace the scale of the problem involves people being prepared to set aside the way they've perceived the world, the way they've understood the relationship with the state, the way they've understood the role of science and the obligations that the institutions have towards us, that symbiotic relationship that's supposed to be there.
	And because it's too much, many, many people who have a great deal of their sense of self invested in, you know, that they believe that they understand, they believe they've read enough, they believe they're in control of the facts and the data, and to contemplate that they might have had it wrong, that they might have been duped, fooled, tricked.
	It's too much.
	And, you know, there are, well, there's historical, not exactly historical precedent, but when it came to, when the ships of Europe were encountering the New World.
	No!
	And it's partly apocryphal, but the story goes that when, say, Columbus's ships appeared in the Americas or when Captain Cook's Endeavour arrived in Australia, there are various stories that circulate that the indigenous people didn't even look up At the arrival of these enormous ships.
	Now, it all comes really from a diary entry by Joseph Banks, probably Cook's botanist, but nonetheless the idea that's pushed is that it was too much for them to take on and so they simply pretended that the ships weren't there.
	Now, apocryphal or not, I think it's illustrative of the idea that sometimes something is too big for people to be willing to comprehend it and I think Perhaps counter to the way you might think, it's the cleverest people, the people who consider themselves the most educated and the most experienced and the wisest, that struggle to allow for the possibility that they might have to rethink their understanding of society, even of reality.
	Yes, it's an incredible invitation and a terrifying one to have a personal awakening induced of that scale, Neil.
	This motherfucker's saying this today, now?
	Okay, it took every fiber of my being not to just tump the whole, tump every electronic on my table over.
	That's too, ow, that's too much.
	I think I'm done.
	I think the podcast is over.
	I said there was something that would piss you off specifically.
	It's not even, I'm not even mad.
	This is hilarious.
	This guy's an idiot.
	Like, this is a dumb thing to say.
	So this is the guy.
	When the ship showed up and the natives couldn't even see it because they couldn't comprehend it, this is that guy?
	Or he's invoking that weird thing that somebody said and what the bleep do we know?
	Yes, yes.
	Yes, now.
	So, to me, when I heard this, I thought, that sounds pretty dog-whistly.
	Just a teensy little bit racist.
	So, I thought I'd look into it.
	Yes, it's also extremely racist.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	That which is known as the invisible ship's myth.
	It's true that botanist Joseph Banks, who travelled with Captain Cook, wrote about the natives of Botany Bay not being particularly interested in the HMS Endeavour, his massive 106-foot ship, to the point of seeming almost annoyed about it.
	Banks says that while he was surprised the ship did not receive more attention from a distance, when they came a bit closer they were confronted by armed men.
	Safe to say, I think they noticed it.
	I think they saw it!
	This passage is also preceded by his observation that ten people had gone up a hill to see the ship better, and contrary to the myth, there was no reason to think that the natives did not see the ship, apart from Banks' surprise at their reception from afar.
	Not only that, but there is an inherent, specifically colonial arrogance to believe that this was the first time the citizens of Botany Bay in Australia had ever seen a ship.
	Because that's what that's based on!
	Wait, so he's, was he using that example, the fake example that did never happen?
	Yes.
	Was he using that as an example of like, this is what people thought this because the botanist wrote it and it was actually, turns out it was an No, no.
	He's saying this is a thing that happened, and that is like all of these intelligent people not being able to understand that they've been duped today.
	It's the same thing.
	Fucked.
	That's crazy.
	Oh, brother.
	His larger point seems to be that the most intelligent people are the least likely to realize that they're being duped, to which I say, prove it.
	Sounds like bullshit to me, so prove it, Neil Oliver.
	Give me evidence, any kind of evidence, that demonstrates your point, and it can't be a racist old wives' tale.
	I've come back around.
	This is Christmas and my birthday all in one.
	Oh, it's like a, it's like a, it's like a hot fudge sundae.
	It's like a banana split that this motherfucker said that thing to day right now in 2023, man.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Regardless of whether he believes it or can prove it, this is a somewhat subtle repackaging of anti-intellectualism at its core.
	Where the like of Trump would be more like, oh, these dumb nerdy scientists, what do they know?
	This is much more, oh no, they're just too clever, too arrogant to possibly believe that they've been had, but it achieves the same result of being like, intelligent people, bad.
	Yep.
	Yep.
	So here is a little bit about Neil Oliver.
	He is a Scottish, did you guess it, television presenter, historian, archaeologist and author, best known for his work on documentaries such as BBC's Coast series.
	Um, yeah.
	So, I mostly previously knew him as, yeah, like a history documentary-ish kind of presenter.
	That kind of guy.
	He'd show up pretty regularly and do history stuff.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I'm remembering now.
	Yep, yep.
	This is why, because you like the BBC and you like history, so I did wonder whether you might know him.
	And maybe you have seen something.
	He didn't used to have the beard, so maybe that's throwing you.
	No, like, I remember he's like, he looks kind of like, like, yeah, no, he's, um, he reminds me of other people, but I absolutely remember.
	Yeah.
	He reminds me of Ian McShane specifically, um, like, especially with the beard.
	Um, but, uh, but yeah, his, his statements and opinions have drawn attention and stirred much debate, particularly due to a perceived turn towards conservative views in recent years.
	Neil Oliver initially pursued a career in journalism after studying at the University of Glasgow.
	However, his interest soon shifted towards archaeology and history.
	This transition led him to work on archaeological digs and subsequently to present history-themed television programs.
	Oliver's affable style, combined with his passion for history and the landscapes he explored, quickly made him a recognisable figure on British television.
	In 2014, he was a vocal opponent of Scottish independence at the time of the referendum on Scottish independence.
	Since then, he has been sliding more and more loudly to the right, being a vocal critic of cancel culture and the woke movement, whatever that is, and being an anti-vaxxer and COVID conspiracy theorist.
	He even said he wouldn't let his wife or their three teenage children get vaccinated against
	COVID.
	He wouldn't let them.
	Yeah, let them.
	Okay.
	In 2021, Neil Oliver joined GB News, which, yeah, kind of a British Fox News.
	It's shit.
	He also spends a good chunk of his time whinging about globalists and the New World Order.
	I wonder where we've heard that before.
	You're on the fucking news, dude!
	On GB News.
	Big news channel.
	Yeah, he's so insistent on it, in fact, that he has posted Nazi imagery to his Twitter, painting Bill Gates as one of the scientists at Auschwitz, but holding a Covid vaccine.
	The guy's a real fucking dickbag, regardless how pleasant he tries to come across.
	He does sound extremely pleasant.
	Incredibly pleasant.
	It's a trick!
	It's a trick!
	His backdrop, there's fucking ferns and nice pictures of what looks like a flying whale or something.
	Is he a Gojira fan?
	I don't know.
	The whole scene and sound and all of it looks very, very pleasant.
	And I imagine he's somewhere on a fucking cliff face in Scotland, you know, and Fucking bet he is.
	Sitting on a big fucking pile of money out in the middle of nowhere, comfortable as fuck, making the rest of our lives miserable.
	Awesome.
	You are also the elite, sir.
	You are also the problem.
	These two dudes are the fucking problem.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is, that is, I mean, I'm glad you've cottoned on to that so quickly, but it does mean that... You're playing to my biases though, you know better!
	The rest of this might not be any easier to watch because of discovering that.
	So, how does Russell feel- It's gonna make me cry, we've already done that, so... I don't think so.
	Maybe with laughter.
	We shall see.
	So how does Russell feel about this little analogy that the clever people are actually stupid people?
	I love your use of that, albeit potentially apocryphal tale, that what's appearing on the horizon of our life is so inconceivably large, so extraordinary, and represents such a disruption.
	Now, unless you're sort of a cynical and sceptical person, and I know many of our AwakendWonders and many of our friends in the Rumble chat are, you know, my default position towards authority, Neil, is I don't trust authority.
	That meant that for a while I was considered sort of a left-wing person.
	Because I don't trust authority and my natural alliances used to be on the left.
	It seems now that a lot of people think I'm a conspiracy theorist or a right-wing, but really my position hasn't changed.
	Why?
	I don't trust authority now.
	Why?
	It's not me that's changed, it's the world that's changed.
	Sure thing, buddy.
	Let's leave out the fact that you used to rail against capitalism and point out the problem of climate change on a regular basis while now they are glaringly absent in your coverage.
	Let's also leave out that you spend all of your time platforming people on the right who coincidentally are usually among the wealthiest and most privileged of society while also being the most outwardly hateful towards minority groups, which is something you never used to do 10 years ago.
	Or, of course, that you spend every single week shitting on left-wing politicians and promoting Trump and RFK Jr.
	Let's just leave all of that out and then maybe.
	I do love, I'll be it apocryphal is a really fun way to say not true.
	I was gonna say, it's doing a lot of work that phrase, isn't it?
	I'm stealing that!
	Like, I'll be it apocryphal, fucking straight up not a true thing?
	Haha!
	It's a fable, friend!
	It's a silly story!
	Oh man.
	Alright.
	Next, we learn about another horrifying interview that Russell has done before getting into a familiar narrative.
	I had a conversation with Jordan Peterson the other day, which will be available on Locals in a couple of days, actually, and you'll love it.
	And I talked about, you know, this is obviously a very well-worn idea, the idea that in a secular or post-religious order, the role of God or the organizing principle is taken by the state.
	So to sort of disavow the state becomes a kind of heresy.
	Earlier we showed a clip where we talked about the politicization of COVID, wearing masks, being a badge of honor, getting booster shots, almost like some kind of pharmaceutical communion, like some ongoing doubling down on your allegiance to a particular ideology.
	Do you think that part of the reason people can't have a real reckoning around the pandemic era and what it has revealed, authoritarianism, a desire for surveillance, a tendency towards censorship, a plain aim to control people that was just inconceivable prior to its start, do you think it's because a kind of religious sense has been grafted onto the public political consciousness, Neil?
	Yeah, I do.
	I think experience of looking back at the last few hundred years seems to suggest that in doing away with God, in doing away with religiosity and ridicule and setting aside faith in the West... Still a Christian country in the UK.
	...has not been helpful.
	And I think it's demonstrable by the fact that... Legally Christian.
	Into the space left behind by religion is pooled some other zombie parasitic replacement for faith in the transcendent.
	You know, I think it's undeniable that many people, perhaps most people, have a sense of the transcendent, however they might express it.
	You know, the thirst that from the soul doth rise, doth ask a drink divine, said the poet.
	And where true religion is taken away, something else takes its place.
	And I think we saw during the Covid debacle, I think we saw a religiosity around the way all of it was pushed.
	And so you had a dress code.
	You had people having to wear face masks because that was part of the appearance that enabled people to demonstrate that they were good people.
	I am wearing a mask because I am one of the good guys.
	When it came to the products that were pushed as vaccines, it was almost like taking communion.
	It was like an ersatz, Eucharist, where people didn't just take the vaccine, they wanted to be seen to take those products.
	And so they were posting pictures of themselves receiving the injection and showing their vaccination cards and all of the rest of it.
	There were good scientists and bad scientists, which is a replacement for the priests and the heretics.
	But there was undoubtedly a religiosity about it, and I think it demonstrated that in the absence of faith, in the absence of religion, something else, something less worthy and something ultimately less helpful gets pulled into the void.
	Yeah, science is less helpful.
	They took so long to say the same thing twice.
	Yeah, yeah.
	What two pompous pieces of shit.
	Pretty much.
	The accusation that it's a religious, oh, I don't know, man.
	All right, this is all fucking hitting my brain.
	No, no, it is difficult to make incisive commentary on something so obviously fucking stupid.
	I'll give it a go.
	Well, listen.
	It's not so subtle like, it's your turn, I guess.
	Like, I have so many things to say and to the point where it's everything is jamming through the door at the same time and we're just stuck.
	That's so much stupid shit.
	All of it's incredibly dumb.
	That is part of the problem.
	The religiosity that they're commenting on is actually just most of society agreeing on something, which is albeit a rarity.
	And bear in mind, of course, that both Russell and this guy, Neil Oliver, rode out COVID in the UK, not in the Wild West where you live.
	Over here, we as a population took it pretty seriously following lockdown procedures, wearing masks and getting our jabs when we were alerted to them being ready.
	The reason we all agreed to do all of this is because we had a literal plague ravaging the country.
	We still didn't know that much about it.
	But we did know that you could be asymptomatic and still contagious, meaning you could very easily give COVID-19 to someone with a compromised immune system, or more likely the elderly, specifically your elderly, your grandparents or whatever else.
	Like the whole Matt Hancock thing saying, don't kill your gran.
	It may seem tactless, but ultimately it was a fair point.
	And so we as a country masked up and did what we needed to do to protect the most vulnerable to COVID-19 in our society.
	It's not religiosity, it's not science taking the place of religion, as Russell was trying to say, it's just a reasonable response to a public health crisis.
	It's caring about your fellow humans, which, frankly, has jack-nor-shit to do with Christianity.
	It happens to be in the same room sometimes, but that is an individual choice.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And in terms of having pictures of you just getting the vaccine or whatever else, it's because you're happy and you're proud.
	It means like, holy shit, maybe this nightmare is ending at some point soon.
	But also normalizing it.
	Yes, that was a real thing that people made an effort to do because they cared.
	No, absolutely.
	It's a celebration.
	It's a celebration of like, hey, maybe- Oh my god, we were so excited.
	Yeah, we were so excited.
	It was such a big deal.
	And then we felt like crap for a day, like you do when you get vaccinated.
	And then we ended up getting COVID and had a way easier time than the people that I saw
	had to go through COVID. Also, before the jab.
	And a lot of us did lose our grandparents or did lose our great aunts or did lose family members.
	That happened anyway.
	And friends that we care about deeply.
	I don't know anyone in America that wasn't touched by that.
	I certainly was.
	Yeah.
	I think even over here, and the death toll was much, much lower, but I know people who died, and I dare say I think pretty much everyone in this country does, you know?
	And here they are just fucking minimising all this shit.
	I bet they fucking don't.
	I bet they fucking don't.
	I bet they do, and they just think, oh, it's a hoax or something else.
	I don't know.
	It's just complete fucking dishonesty.
	Or they just don't care about other people dying.
	Or there's that!
	Because this was also at the same time where Russell was actively informing his audience how to ignore COVID restrictions in order to get to his comedy shows.
	So we know where he lands on the issue.
	Oh, man.
	That's a no from me, dawg.
	Absolute garbage.
	So, Neil Oliver is not quite done, but he does pivot to one of his more frequent talking points.
	And it's why what was enshrined in trial by jury in Magna Carta was that it ultimately came down to the individual.
	So that rather than majority verdicts in the original juries, if you had someone being tried and let's say 11 of the 12 said guilty, but one man, one person said not guilty, then the judgment of that jury was not guilty.
	So that it enshrined in the importance of trial by jury that ultimately it was the conscience of the individual that carried the weight.
	Now that's a fundamentally important concept.
	You see it again in 1776 in the Declaration of Independence in the United States.
	It's careful, the founding fathers were careful once again to remind themselves and the society they were trying to build that it's not about the majority necessarily.
	Ultimately it's about the individual conscience It's the thinking individual that makes all the difference.
	That's why there is a danger, actually, in allowing always for a majority verdict, or waiting for a democratic decision, as we've been tricked as a population into a consensus of false belief that the majority is always right.
	Because if the last few years have shown us anything at all, it's that on the contrary, it's often, possibly always, a minority, a determined, honest, passionate minority that is actually able to stand in the face of the majority and say, this is wrong.
	There is a better way, there's an alternative way.
	And it's minorities and indeed ultimately the individuals down through history that have made the difference, that have changed the course of society and civilization.
	And we need periodically to be reminded of that and to remind each other of that, because we are a forgetful species.
	Neil, that's such a beautiful appraisal of the role of the individual and the potential of the individual that seems both arcane and progressive simultaneously, a kind of principle that we might organize around And I think you're right that the assumption that the majority by virtue of the cargo carried in the mass are correct is again and again demonstrated to be untrue and your example of the last three years is indeed a good one.
	It's me, isn't it?
	I'm the individual who's changing everything.
	Yeah, great man theory.
	Good job, girl.
	Seriously.
	You can hear exactly what Russell's thinking.
	I mean, and Neil Oliver, so now that I'm listening to him and watching, I'm like, I do absolutely remember watching, honestly.
	I'm sure you've seen something.
	Not my favorites.
	No, no.
	I have a list.
	I have a list of favorite history presenters.
	He isn't anywhere near it.
	I always found him very light on the information.
	But anyway, Karen.
	Yeah, I was like, okay, this is a travel documentary.
	That's a very pretty place, thank you.
	But yeah, I'm sorry, but this is embarrassing.
	To speak about... The notion that the Magna Carta enshrined rights for all, Sir!
	I'm sorry, sir!
	What?!
	Yeah, and for the record, his conception of how jury trials initially started, I couldn't verify that at all.
	That's not real.
	That's not.
	If anyone knows better than me, I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I couldn't find that.
	That sounded like some make-em-ups.
	It is.
	What I do find interesting here is that Neil Oliver should basically just move to the USA if this is the jury system that he wants, right?
	Because, like, in the US there is by and large a need for a unanimous decision from a jury and if one can't be reached then a mistrial will occur and sometimes it'll, you know, It depends on the crime.
	That's usually for capital crimes, and that is a home jury, and then you go back to the drawing board.
	It's not- the one person- Being able to suddenly decide that someone's innocent.
	He's saying that that goes down on the books as not guilty.
	Fucking what?
	I know, it is crazy.
	Maybe I'm not understanding it because I've never seen that point be made before, and I'm too dumb to understand a new concept like that.
	Maybe, maybe.
	We're both just a little bit too dumb.
	Yeah, I'd say the U.S.
	has a closer system to that than the U.K.
	does, because in the U.K., if there's just one dissenting vote, then the judge can just accept a majority decision if they want to.
	However, if there are two or more dissenting voices, then it's a hung jury, which will Often lead to a new trial with a new jury.
	But the U.S., in terms of laws across the board, and it's different in civil cases and that kind of thing, but Generally speaking, there is way heavier a focus on a unanimous decision from the jury.
	Compared to over here, anyway.
	So, hey, Neil Oliver, fuck off to America, please.
	We don't want you here anymore.
	Sorry about bench trials, by the way.
	Go and be Scottish over there.
	People eat it up, that's true.
	Yeah, right.
	I do want to circle back to his idea here that the majority is usually wrong.
	So he just said that if the last three years is anything to go by, the determined, honest, passionate minority is able to stand in the face of the majority and say, this is wrong, there's a better way.
	I mean, he's very clearly referring to COVID-19 here, but I am curious how far he would take that.
	Like, is he on the side of the Jan 6th seditionists?
	And where does he land on Brexit?
	Like, the majority voted for it, so surely he'd be against Brexit, right?
	Ah, no.
	No.
	He's pro-Brexit.
	He talks of sovereignty and the need to make your own decisions, and then in the next breath complains about the Scottish independence movement.
	Basically, he's a massive fucking hypocrite who seems to shift with the winds of his conservative audience, and Russell is eating that shit up.
	Yeah, because they're two spoiled rich babies.
	Exactly!
	From one rich hypocrite to another, like they must be best friends, honestly.
	Both long-haired, roughly hair around the same length, both beaded, you know.
	BBC gave him fucking way too much money.
	Yeah, in both cases.
	And made them monsters?
	Yep.
	Yeah, pretty much.
	Pretty much.
	I don't know if Neil Oliver is the same degree of monster as Russell.
	Oh, right, right, right.
	Asterisk.
	You're right.
	I forgot my place for a second.
	I forgot where we were.
	Well, well, I mean, he might be.
	I don't know.
	I just, I haven't, I haven't, I haven't seen anything to indicate that, but who knows?
	Well, we don't need to even speculate, really.
	It's not like... No, no, no.
	I think that's right.
	I bet he's fine.
	Probably.
	I bet he's fine.
	And if not, Channel 4, get on it.
	But I'd imagine there'd already be Smoke Horse and Fire might be, so.
	I would assume.
	I didn't Google that specifically.
	Maybe I need to start doing that with all of his guests.
	Just every single one.
	Is this a problem?
	Yeah.
	But his pull on social media and everything is much smaller than Russell's, so I guess less of a monster in that way, I suppose.
	But then again, he is on GB News, so eh.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	Just awful.
	I see them both sitting on piles of money.
	Yeah, pretty much.
	Winding like rich little baby boys.
	That's enough to be upset.
	There's a lot of money just in the backdrop to their individual rooms, just on its own.
	Y'all know why you don't see the whole house behind me?
	Reasons.
	Me too, me too.
	This is as good as I've got.
	We're not playing this game.
	I've got a wall and a keyboard.
	And some plants.
	He has a lovely home.
	Money, baby.
	He hired someone to clean that room for this interview.
	They both do.
	The interior of Russell's house is gorgeous as well.
	It motherfuckin' better be, frankly.
	Well, yeah, it's a fuckin' six-bedroom cottage or whatever.
	Son of a bitch.
	Okay, I'm not.
	No, no, let's go.
	I feel like, after a certain number of bedrooms, you shouldn't be allowed to call it a cottage.
	That's just my opinion.
	Like a science kind of aspect.
	Listen, we're not litigating cottages, let's keep doing it.
	I know, okay.
	I know, we need to take respite where we can, but let's-
	Cottaging is a very separate thing as well.
	Yeah, but yeah, all just terrible fucking views from these people.
	Speaking of which, we are about to get another more harmful one.
	A lot of people have an instinct to be led and they really just want freedom from freedom,
	'cause freedom can be an onerous responsibility.
	And yes, we tell each other that we live in a materialist society, a consumerist society.
	Say whatever you want!
	And we've also given each other, I would say, a completely false idea of what happiness is.
	You know, people have increasingly been led to believe that happiness is abundance.
	You know, some is good, more is better and too much is just right.
	That the more stuff you can acquire, the more food you can eat, the more white goods you can have, the more mobile phones, the more cars and all of the rest of it is the route to happiness.
	And that is the antithesis of happiness, really.
	You know, so many people out there want medicated, they want to be given a pill to take away their dissatisfaction and they tell themselves that they're depressed and that they need all sorts of medical help because they're not happy.
	And it's because we've been miseducated about what happiness actually is.
	And that's a really serious consideration.
	I would say that happiness should really be something that we notice because it stands out in comparison to the rest of the texture of daily life that comes with ups and downs and sadness and challenge and adversity and all of the rest of it.
	And the moments when the sun unexpectedly or not breaks through the clouds, that's happiness.
	And that's how you can appreciate being happy.
	But it's only one of the textures of being human and alive.
	Okay, so many people out there want to be given medication for their depression and they need all sorts of medical help, you know, to treat their depression, but really they just need a bit of perspective and fewer material things.
	They just need to look at the sun breaking through the clouds and remember that the rest of the time we're supposed to be miserable.
	Now look, I know you're having some serious suicidal ideation and intrusive thoughts going on, but have you seen the sun breaking through that cloud?
	Don't you feel better?
	I know that you have a debilitating medical problem that might be able to be fixed if anyone gave a single solitary shit, or if you could afford it, but instead you're in a medieval wheelbarrow of pain.
	Turn that frown upside down, sunshine, and just take a look at a cloud.
	Why are you so sad?
	Look at the god rays coming through.
	Isn't that nice?
	Isn't that pretty?
	Don't you feel better?
	And the rest of the time, I know the rest, that you feel fine looking at the cloud, and then as soon as you look away from the cloud, you feel miserable the entire rest of the time.
	Don't worry, it's all just a big tapestry of textures that we're supposed to feel bad and shit.
	This motherfucker doesn't have anything to be upset about.
	This motherfucker ain't got nothing to be sad about because he's got money and he's comfortable.
	Yeah, I don't think I would be sad in his position either.
	I don't know that I would.
	I really don't.
	I mean, you know, other than fucking, you know, chemical imbalances in the brain and all that.
	But like, yeah, because of that, go fuck yourself, Neil Oliver, you absolute piece of shit.
	Minimizing and belittling actual, very real mental health conditions.
	That's not even real, dude.
	Absolute garbage.
	It's worth saying that this is incredibly common.
	This is not something that, like, Russell has said similar things.
	Russell has said similar things.
	Oh, the amount of rich idiots I have had to listen to say this.
	Yep.
	Being a clueless fucking turd, bothering other people with their dumb ideas.
	Memes of it online, you know, as to like, oh, this is an antidepressant, you know, a picture of a pill bottle and then a picture of a forest.
	This is an antidepressant.
	Fuck off.
	Just fuck the fuck off and then keep on fucking off once you think you're finished because I want nothing to do with anyone who fucking shares that kind of meme.
	Get the fuck out of here.
	Also like, are you helping forests?
	Are you like super into helping people access forests and protecting forests?
	Making urban spaces more green.
	Anything?
	And speaking of people fucking the fuck off, I am done with this guy.
	We are done with Neil Oliver.
	No more Neil.
	He's fucking awful and a disgrace to the Scottish people and the Celts on a wider basis.
	I mentioned that there was an editorial shoved in after this interview and so that's what we'll take a quick look at here in this next clip.
	The horrific and escalating conflict in the Middle East continues to claim more human lives.
	So who do the legacy media turn to to get an unbiased perspective on that?
	Those patriots who have undisclosed ties to the military-industrial complex who will profit from this war.
	The audio is terrible.
	It's constantly clipping, and that's not on our end, that's on Russell's end.
	This entire editorial is just absolute shit.
	So I got a feeling of déjà vu when I first saw this.
	Because it's an issue that we've already covered, because so has Russell.
	Only this time he spends a full half an hour talking about it.
	He spends half an hour talking about people who work or have worked for arms companies or defense-adjacent companies appearing on the news to give commentary on war.
	Of course, they are usually introduced by the very real former government titles they had, like, you know, former Secretary of Defense or General blah blah blah, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, whatever.
	We've been over this before, and where we landed was wanting anyone with any vested interest in anything having it declared clearly and properly in a show attempting to present information.
	Boy, wouldn't it be lovely to take a look at Russell's financial position, but then again, you don't need to with Here, buy this satellite phone and have some field of greens while you buy it, and also buy some gold because life is scary!
	Subscribe to my local's channel.
	Yeah, subscribe to my local's channel.
	His financial interests seem blatantly obvious to you and I, but Do you know, it's never actually made clear on his show that Russell earns money with every sale made by his audience.
	Because most of the things that he advertises are affiliate deals using Russell's specific code.
	And at no point does he say, hey, you buy this thing and I get a cut up to 40% if we make enough sales.
	He never mentions that.
	Yeah, but nobody does.
	I don't... Well, no, but you would think for someone who was... Because of his position... Because of his position on this, he should be like up front and like, oh no, I am profiting off of you doing that thing and I am now... I'm telling you to do this thing because I am also making money off it.
	That's why I'm doing this.
	If he's going to take issue with other people not theoretically not doing that, then he should probably apply the same thing to himself.
	Yeah, that's true.
	Well, and I will say that, like, I'm not entirely sure which direction to take it, but I am working on a little project for the listeners that was requested for going into at least, like, a little bit on how this affiliate marketing stuff, like, it's hard to find, like, Tangible dollars and cents, but if y'all tolerate some estimations and some, I think I can kind of figure it out because I've, I don't know, man, I've been around retail my entire life.
	Like, you know, through my family and then also, you know, with my own experience, so.
	I'm very curious.
	I hope I can nail stuff down, but if nothing else, nail stuff down specifically about Russell or companies that sponsor people like Russell and what the back end actually looks like and what the profit versions actually look like, I'll try.
	But if not, even just shedding some light on the system I think would be really helpful.
	Because most folks don't ever have to worry about this shit.
	It sucks.
	It's annoying.
	Even just discussing the mechanisms of how it works, I think, is helpful.
	Because it is tough to find numbers in a system that is intentionally opaque.
	You know, that is really rough going.
	And believe me, I feel you.
	Yeah.
	Well, and it's allowed to be opaque when it really shouldn't be.
	Yeah, no, no, for sure.
	Especially, yeah.
	I feel the same way about Rumble.
	Right!
	And locals and all of that.
	I did set us up with a locals channel the other day, I don't know if you saw that in our inbox.
	I did.
	I got the notification, yeah.
	On brand now has a locals channel because there's a part of me that kind of thinks, well, you know, if we're gonna be kind of activists about this, we need to be in every single space that he's in.
	The hornet nest kicking part?
	Okay, let's get to this thing.
	Come on, let's get to this thing.
	I just wanted to mention it, that it's in the works.
	No guarantees on the results, when or where, but it's in the works.
	Well, we're not going to get too much into this bit, because I'm abso-fucking-lutely not covering half an hour of him chatting shit about this, because also most of it is just him talking at a camera.
	There is really not that much else, and it is agonizing to watch.
	But in this last clip of our show, I did want to take a quick gander at what he's using as a source and the examples being provided.
	The damning examples of people not stating their interests clearly enough.
	At no point did MSNBC mention that Bash, who served as Chief of Staff at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Department of Defense in the Obama Administration, leads a consulting firm that has reportedly worked for defense contracting giant Raytheon, which supplies missiles for Israel's Iron Dome defense system.
	Remember, if you have a strong affiliation to Israel, If you are Israeli, if you are Jewish, I am not saying that you don't have the right to your emotional experience right now.
	Who the hell am I to comment on that?
	Where I do feel qualified to pontificate is should Jeremy Bash, former CIA head, current member of consulting firm that reportedly works with Raytheon, be pretending to be, well not even neutral.
	Offering advocacy without declaring profiteering, which I think if you take away your personal alliances has informed almost every conflict in the last hundred years and perhaps is the primary motivation for all wars.
	Okay.
	The primary motivation for all wars in the last hundred years is profiteering and the sales of weaponry.
	I feel like Hitler had other reasons he wanted to go to war that rhyme with schmenicide, but Russell disagrees, apparently.
	And also, I don't understand why he feels qualified to pontificate on this, because he's certainly fucking not.
	I had hope.
	When he said what I said.
	I was like, who the hell am I?
	That should be the end of your show.
	That should be the end of your show.
	You can pontificate on the desperation of human suffering that we're all watching and how difficult it is and how desperate we feel.
	That's all real.
	This is like, I'm sorry.
	Is there...
	Did he just find out about pundits on cable news like yesterday?
	Can you Google the guy?
	Yeah, we've covered this before for this exact reason.
	So the damning evidence against Jeremy Bash from Jacobin, that is of course the source that we are looking at yet again.
	...is that Jeremy Bash was formerly the CIA Chief of Staff during the Obama administration and then Chief of Staff of the DoD, and then founded Beacon Global Strategies after he left government, which is a strategic advisory firm specializing in international policy, defense, cyber, intelligence, and homeland security.
	They reportedly did some consultancy for Raytheon once.
	That sounds all like incredibly public information that's readily available.
	Incredibly public and incredibly boring.
	He also became a national security analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, commenting on intelligence and security issues.
	And yeah, I mean, he sounds fairly qualified for the job.
	It just sounds like, because I'm trying to figure out the actual complaint here is that he's somehow like obfuscating His pedigree, which I'm not fond of!
	Like, obviously that's not great, but like... So when he's introduced on MSNBC, or NBC, it will usually be in the context of, oh yeah, Chief of Staff for the CIA during the Obama administration, or whatever, or the Department of Defense.
	They don't normally mention Beacon Global Strategies, which is his problem here.
	He thinks that they should be brought up, and oh yes, they did some consultancy for Raytheon once as well.
	That should apparently also be brought up.
	You had me at CIA, man!
	You don't need to go further!
	They say that bit.
	The real question here is whether his perspectives, Jeremy Bash's perspectives, can be considered as profiteering and trying to basically say, ah yes, more weapons, that's the answer.
	Which, I don't think they can.
	Everything I've found seems to largely be an informed intelligence perspective, which, yes, does make me feel kinda gross that that exists, but it's not unusually sinister in any way.
	It's not like trying to be like, oh yeah, they just need more missiles, yeah, that's the problem.
	I mean, if you're like saying, like, mucky mucka mucky mucks for a while in the CIA, I already know about ya.
	I don't like, saying that you now are in a consultancy firm, okay, also that?
	Like, that's already, like, you should take that with the greatest salt that you should.
	Like, it's our, I mean, I don't know.
	I mean, Russell, this is just, it feels so- You get told.
	You get told very up front who the guy is.
	It just seems like, especially Jacob and this stuff is like weak tea.
	Like, you know what I mean?
	At best.
	I have no idea whether Jeremy Bash owns stock in arms companies or not, though at this point it feels like half the world does, and Russell himself has even said that it makes financial sense to do so.
	I do know that Bash never had any such stocks while in government, but he's now a private citizen and is free to do what he wants these days.
	I do know that there is no concrete evidence that Bash is making money from the success of arms companies.
	In fact, one might argue that an especially successful arms company wouldn't need to hire a consultancy firm in the first place, but hey.
	All of this is to say is that, as you've pointed out, there's a bit of reaching going on, which gets progressively more reachy as Russell's half an hour editorial goes on, and I honestly don't have time for that shit.
	I really don't.
	Also, the audio is fucking terrible and I'm determined to protect our listeners from as much of that as possible.
	But I mean, just, yeah, we've heard it.
	And I'm, listen, if you're new, welcome.
	Thank you.
	Appreciate you.
	I hope that to some degree you can, like, fill in the gaps and also we have other episodes that you can listen to him prattle on about, like, really not a lot.
	It's just, it's very thin gruel.
	Like, yeah, I have a problem with, you know, Raytheon guys being in charge of stuff.
	Sure.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And?
	And!
	Like, yeah, okay.
	Don't we all?
	Who the fuck do you talk to?
	Who do you hang out with, homie?
	Come on.
	So, how this has made me feel, this particular episode and what we've covered, beyond being, if anybody can see this, wildly aware, more than ever, of how badly I need to cut my bangs.
	Rest assured, I've been getting stabbed in the eye.
	I'm tired of recording, so I've just been like a little kid over here messing with things.
	Licking your head around.
	But right.
	So like what I'm getting is like Russell had some of this.
	Maybe I think honestly, I think that he's missing Gareth in the conversation with him because it just seems like He's taking a picture of a famous person or like, you know, he's taking a picture of like Hillary Clinton and like drawing a mustache on her and like a booger coming out of her nose and like, does Hillary look silly?
	Oh, with the booger coming out of her nose.
	Oh, you've got so many boogers, Hillary.
	Like it's very that.
	What do you think?
	Does she look silly or does she look great?
	What do you think?
	Yeah.
	Put it in the chat.
	S for silly.
	Exactly, exactly.
	Put how many more boogers you want me to put on her face!
	That's being generous to his coverage.
	It's just like, look at this stupid face on this stupid person.
	Don't we hate him?
	How many numbers do you hate him from one to five?
	Like, bud!
	You're the fucking waste of time!
	It absolutely is!
	The only purpose of serving is to condition his fucking audience!
	That's literally it!
	He spent like six or seven minutes dealing with that fucking guy screaming at Hillary Clinton, and not once did he actually bring up the issue that the guy was screaming about.
	He didn't bring up the fucking Israel-Ukraine thing.
	He was just taking the piss and then be like, what do you think in the chat?
	And that was it.
	And he was just saying protester, not even saying the guy's name.
	He said the guy's name.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Crack reporting!
	I looked it up.
	It wasn't particularly hard to find, to be honest.
	It's just embarrassing to watch an adult man spend his time this way.
	He's got no clue what the Institute of Global Politics is.
	He's got no clue who the people were on that stage.
	He's got no clue about Uganda.
	I hope he's got no clue about Uganda.
	If he does know, then that is way, way worse.
	That's disgusting.
	Yeah, that's way, way worse.
	Cool.
	All options are bad.
	Great.
	Uh, yeah.
	So that's the thing is like, honestly, it's all terrible.
	Um, yeah, that's like, that's welcome.
	I'm glad you're here.
	I'm sorry.
	So, but that's the idea that like the only thing, like the only purpose any of this content to me is serving is to condition his audience to push a push the, like, Hungry.
	Outside.
	Hungry.
	Outside.
	Button.
	You know, like, walk.
	Button.
	It's like conditioning to, like, make binaries out of very complex topics, which is what that is.
	It's an oversimplification.
	You are creating a reality that is oversimple to bind these people together so that whenever they have to go outside of your Infosphere, nothing makes sense.
	Because life is not a binary, the news is not a binary, and global politics is not a fucking binary.
	It's just like, and to see like, Whoa, which yeller do you like?
	Voting on which yelling person you like without listening to anything they've actually said is all conditioning and manipulation.
	I don't see any other purpose being served here.
	It's gross!
	No, I mean, to use his example, do you think he's conveying information or do you think he's amplifying propaganda?
	C for conveying information.
	conveying information. A, A, A, A, P, A, P, A, P. And not just, listen, if y'all want,
	if y'all want a YouTube show of me doodling boogers on Hillary Clinton, baby, I'll give it
	to you. But I'm not going to call it news. I'm not going to call it news. Yeah, yeah.
	The Hill Dog Booger Show?
	Yes!
	Am I gonna have a farting fucking bird that calls it the news?
	No!
	No, no.
	Though, I mean, a farting bird wouldn't just on its own on the Hillary Clinton booger show, you know?
	Yeah.
	Let's do it.
	It's a more appropriate space for that bird to be in, I would say.
	No fucking shit.
	I am worried about subjects in the future that anyone, any self-respecting person who even like says
	they care about the news in the world.
	I'm worried that he'll just keep stumbling into things like Ukrainian children being stolen from
	their homes and a hundred thousand children or, you know, people be like gay people being tortured
	and murdered in Uganda. And it's like kind of fine, but government says, okay, have at it.
	I'm afraid he's going to keep hoving into these areas that I think Gareth to a degree
	is going to like scooches him out, like sheepdogs him into a different pen.
	Yeah, a little bit.
	Because Gareth has an understanding of what the source material is, because he's the one choosing and finding the stories, he can at least be like, oh no, no, it's about this, let's not mock this specific thing right this second.
	Yeah, he's plugged into the conservative talking points.
	We don't want to seem too distasteful, so we'll not mock the genocide that's happening in Ukraine at the moment.
	In pick a place.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Yeah, right.
	Whereas Russell just wants to talk about O'Grady-es all the time.
	Yeah, he just goes freewheeling through it all.
	Which looks like talking about his followers being great, by the way.
	It's pandering, and it's manipulation.
	Having seen this, I'm more concerned than I was for the people who only get their news from Russell Brand.
	I'm like, at this stage, what fucking news was presented?
	Like, barely any information was given.
	At all.
	I don't understand how- Walk.
	Yeah.
	Hungry.
	Walk.
	Hungry.
	That's it.
	That's what they're getting.
	Yeah, he spent the whole time polling the fucking audience.
	That was it.
	That's not news.
	And he wasn't polling.
	That's not discussion.
	That's not analysis.
	He was guiding them and he wanted one answer.
	No, it was straw man polling.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Those were the most loaded-ass questions.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	They were loaded, covered, and smothered.
	They were ready, like, there was one response that you needed to give.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And I mean, that's one of the things that is amongst our YouTube comments, you know, is people saying, like, oh yeah, he's so much of a cult leader, the way he asks for people's opinions on things all the time.
	I'm like, is that what you think he's doing?
	Is that what you think he's doing?
	Okay.
	Listen, we have an open door, open invitation.
	You are more than welcome to engage with the material and comment on it as you see fit.
	On the material.
	Comment as you see fit.
	Yeah.
	There's a little Easter egg for you.
	So my dad told me a story about when he was in college and his instructions for taking a test and it was worth a lot for a grade.
	Taking a test and the instructions were you have to read through the whole test first My dad's old, so I know this is a real story.
	You have to read through all the questions, and then start the test.
	Him and his buddy, who would learn Latin names of shit for fun, I'm a legacy nerd, this doesn't come out of nowhere, and he read all the questions, and at the end of the test it says, You are done, get up and walk out.
	Yep.
	And you know who doesn't read the whole, like, doesn't follow the directions.
	Yep.
	I wish I had a moment where I'm like, hey commenter, if you think that you're engaging, Like, write the word Pequod, because you made it this far.
	Just comment, call me Ishmael, to prove that you actually listened to the fucking shit that we said.
	Something.
	Well, we had someone complaining about last week's show, they were talking about Jim Jones, and I was like, I haven't responded to it, but in the back of my head I'm like, we talked about him for like 10 minutes.
	Like, we brought this up, you don't need to bring this up, we brought this up.
	I don't want to necessarily, like, yeah, the comments that are also confident, just confident, being like, I'm arguing against you, like, you did not listen to, like, you obviously just didn't watch it.
	And that is all a product of this fucking guy and the rigor that he promotes in his audience.
	Yeah, which is, oh, which Screamy guy you like?
	Yes or no?
	Check the box.
	But yeah, you know what?
	I say fucking put Russell in the name of every single video because it's hilarious at this point.
	You're the best employee we have this week if you want to come and say some silly bullshit that means literally nothing compared, like, in reference to what we've actually talked about.
	But hey, listener, I appreciate you.
	If you want to say the real thing that you think and feel, Please do!
	Fucking do it!
	That'd be great!
	We'll engage with that.
	We'll engage with that.
	Oh man, I'm a little stressed these days.
	I can't promise much.
	I might reply in three weeks.
	Beware.
	We'll get there.
	But I mean it.
	I mean it and I care about you and I appreciate you.
	But, like, it's just, again, An internet comment engaging honestly with the material as presented is just is a unicorn is like so fucking rare it just it's so rare it's moving like I don't know it's just like it's such a shame that like we do and
	As illustrated by our livestream.
	The internet has really fun, cool, interesting conversations that we can have.
	The comments from our actual listeners are great and usually interesting or supportive.
	There's almost always something relevant to the things we have said in the show.
	I've learned a ton!
	Yes, yeah.
	We can have interesting conversations and we can learn from each other.
	So like let's do that maybe?
	Yeah I would say as well I think there's an issue that Russell's style of content does not, I think it does not engender people to engage with a two to three hour podcast.
	You know what I mean?
	I feel like he's- Maybe if we give him a button to hit every two minutes, then they'll be into it.
	A button to hit every two minutes?
	We can jangle some keys, maybe?
	I don't know, there's something.
	I don't know, Russell's style is very key-jangly to me.
	Anyway, that's our show, everyone.
	If you want to support us and what we do, please go to patreon.comslashonbrand, we would be very very grateful.
	Seriously, everybody, I want to play that Invisible Hand drop again.
	I'm right-wing!
	If you want to get in touch, drop us an email.
	It's theonbrandpod at gmail.com.
	We'd love to hear from you.
	There is a subreddit.
	It's onbrand underscore pod.
	And there is also now a Facebook group, which is On Brand Awakening Wonders.
	Come and join us there as well.
	I'll add the link.
	That'd be cool.
	Yes.
	We'll add the link to the YouTube stuff.
	Yes, we should probably link the thing.
	That's well done.
	Didn't even cross my mind.
	See, that's how good I am at this shit.
	Socials!
	We are the on-brand pod at most places except for Twitter where it is different, but you can find us.
	We're fine.
	Look for the artwork.
	Look for the artwork.
	It's easy to spot.
	Same with the Facebook group as well.
	It's easy to spot.
	You see, you see that guy's mug.
	Big letters.
	Yep.
	Yeah.
	Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair.
	Yeah.
	Yep.
	All right.
	Yeah.
	Do we have a plug?
	So I do have plugs because I do make stuff and these are very cool.
	There's only two of these like little weirdo stuffies.
	I call them stuffies because like you can put them on a shelf on their art or you can take a nap on them because they're soft.
	So Mike drew and printed this and then I sewed them up into things that you can get.
	And Grabadelanya is the next big event that we have coming.
	It is Sunday, November 19th, 10 to 4 p.m.
	at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago.
	It's like the coolest.
	It's like one of the coolest events all year.
	We absolutely love it.
	And I don't actually feel qualified to talk about what's going on in Palestine and what's happening to people in Gaza right now.
	The only thing that I know that people are asking for is keeping the conversation going and And specifically asking your representatives to advocate for a ceasefire.
	I know my representative has signed on and has already done what they can, but that's actually how a representative government works, is that you have We know the people that are in charge of the thing and you need to harass them until they behave in a way that reflects the desires of their constituency.
	If you are a constituent, Get on it.
	There's like email lists.
	There's call lists.
	It's very easy to find.
	That's the only thing that I would beg people to at least try to get attention from your representatives who can actually do something about it.
	For sure, and I think with any of this stuff, time breeds complacency, so let's try not to be complacent, I guess.
	And that gets harder as it goes on.
	And it's really hard.
	Yeah, especially when it's something that's horrifying to deal with, much like the Ukraine war.
	I think people don't want to have to engage with that as much anymore, and I don't blame ya, I really don't.
	We have to, because it's horrible and it's happening.
	So there we are.
	Well, yeah, asking for a ceasefire, I think, is the first thing, is the step that needs to be taken immediately.
	And that's what we can do in our, you know, personal lives.
	It's hard because, like, if the governments, yeah, if the governments are like, oh, I don't know, I just got to keep giving them money, then, you know, donations even to a degree, it's like we're trying to counteract This just giant gob of money that is going to an apartheid state.
	And what we need to do is stop.
	We need to like, get the brakes on it.
	It's literally awful.
	There needs to be some kind of intervention somehow, somewhere.
	Absolutely.
	And the only people that can come from is you.
	So yeah, make your voice heard.
	You can do the thing.
	Oh yeah, and personal socials.
	I'm at alworthofficial and Lauren is at made.by.lauren.b.
	You can find us in places.
	Predominantly Instagram, but also some other places.
	All right, well we shall return next week.
	We love you very much.
	Thank you for visiting with us this week.
	Thank you for for joining us on this god garbage fucking show honestly really just really bad like you would think it would be better being all like it's just worse it's I don't I like it less but his numbers are going up yes oh yeah like I honestly like that's it's hard for me to internalize that as a notion yeah yeah the show is getting actively worse with every passing week and yet his numbers are growing Exponentially.
	So thank you so much listeners, viewers for being here.
	Yep.
	I'm worried.
	Yep.
	And I, um, I'm sorry you're also now you get to be worried with me.
	And I know that it seems insane that people would like this and be into it and it would be growing, but that's just the state of things.
	And we have to accept that as a reality.
	Hey, I mean, I mean, you could be forgiven for thinking that about this podcast, to be honest.
	It's insane that people like this, but here we are.
	We are very grateful.
	We are very grateful that you are here.
	So yeah.
	Thank you, everyone.
	Take care of each other.
	Take care of yourselves.
	And have a great weekend.
	We'll see what the fuck is in store next week.
	I haven't had a look at the Jordan Peterson interview yet.
	As I mentioned, it is a couple of hours of Kermit the Frog, and I just... I don't... My problem with him is that they just talk without ever saying anything, and I'm just like, what are you doing?
	What is this waffly bullshit?
	Well, if we don't even know we're going to cover it, don't even stress.
	I'm gonna watch it, and we'll see.
	I'm sorry.
	If it's anything like the last one, then it'll be a complete fucking nothing burger and we'll focus on something else, but yeah.
	Fingers crossed it's just complete bullshit.
	Or we cover it, because both those dudes are trying to juice each other's numbers with coverage and with exposure.
	Oh, it's true, it's true.
	Jordan Peterson's a giant piece of shit, and he's a problem that needs dealing with, but yeah, we'll see what comes up in the conversation anyway.
	But this week, we're good.
	No more bummer.
	Bummer over.
	You're free.
	You are free from bummers.
	All right, see you next week, everybody.
	We love you.

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