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Feb. 29, 2024 - On Brand

02:17:24

OB #45 - 'Brandemic' w/Eli Bosnick & Jordan Holmes

We got together with two very funny people, Eli Bosnick and Jordan Holmes, to dissect Russell's decidedly unfunny comedy special. Big thanks to Eli and Jordan for joining us, and to our patrons for making it happen! Support us on Patreon! - patreon.com/OnBrand Buy a magnet! - wesellactualgold

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	This is propaganda live.
	I only suggest how to take him out of the boat.
	Extraordinary cultural moment.
	Already iconic.
	Already iconic.
	We love you.
	You're welcome here.
	Where did this guy come from?
	It looks like he's been doing it for ages.
	He's very confident.
	Plainly, and this is a matter now of fact and record, I'm right wing.
	I feel that Christ may have had a better vision.
	Is this misinformation or is Vivek Ramaswamy in the lavatory?
	That's sort of like a poem.
	Is this Eminem?
	Man, if we didn't come together in that stream, I'm assuming it was just the Pete.
	Now these are the kind of conversations I think that the legacy media can no longer compete with.
	Win win win win win win win This is On Brand, a podcast where we discuss the ideas and antics of one Russell Brand.
	I'm Al Worth and each week I go through an episode of Brand Show with my co-host Lauren B. And it's me, Lauren B. And I have no idea what we will be covering today, asterisk, but I know it's usually not so great.
	Yeah, it's almost invariably bad, which is why we usually do the good thing before the bad thing, but we've got two good things waiting in the wings, so I'd best hurry and introduce them.
	Because this, ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between and beyond, is our very special episode covering Russell's last comedy special, Brandemic.
	It's entirely because of our most excellent patrons who hit a stretch goal enabling us to do this show.
	So no specific patron shoutouts this week.
	Instead, a shoutout to all of our subscribed patrons, Awakening Wonders, members of the Invisible Hand, or the Obfuscating Cloud.
	Thank you so much, and we do love you.
	You're wonderful, thank you!
	Absolutely.
	And if anyone wants to support us in 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 OffBrand, where we discuss anything but Russell Brand.
	This last week we had a fun conversation about Elon Musk and his beef with Matt Taibbi.
	Both hilarious and delicious.
	Well, and everything else.
	There was so much.
	We could barely fit it in.
	Yes, yes.
	The epic list of Elon's failures just being rolled out.
	Like, oh, this is fun.
	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're listening in the Spotify app, the video should come up there too.
	So, we had best introduce our very special guests for this very special show.
	And first up, we have the co-host of the Knowledge Fight podcast, author of The Quiet Part Loud, occasional advocate for white genocide, and lover of many animated shows, Jordan Holmes!
	Jordan, welcome to the show!
	Hello!
	This is the sound of my voice.
	This is the sound of your voice.
	Pleasing it is.
	Welcome.
	That was one of the most British intros I've ever heard.
	There was so many words.
	I want to lead a revolution against you.
	Like, that's how... I want to kill King George.
	Like, right now, you're so British, I have to... as an American.
	Like, I won't be allowed back in your country, is my point.
	You live near a river, just get some tea and throw it.
	You know, just hurl it at the nearest body of water.
	Somebody's got to.
	Yeah, yeah, somebody should.
	And also we have the co-host of Godawful Movies, Dear Old Dad, Citation Needed, Scathing Atheist, Skeptocrat, and D&D Minus, a man who believes monogamy is slavery and is also probably the most sexually active magician alive today, Eli Bosnick!
	Eli, welcome!
	Hey, hey, just because I held that as a philosophy doesn't mean anyone's willing to fuck me, okay?
	That's very important.
	This is a theory only.
	No praxis in my non-monogamy.
	I did theoretically wonder as well if like magicians are one, you know, because it's like nerds, people don't realize nerds like to fuck, you know, whether it was like that kind of, you know, that kind of crossover.
	I think we've had a cultural unders- I think we've amended the cultural understanding.
	Maybe, maybe.
	A little.
	Maybe, yeah.
	I think we're getting it a little.
	Just every interaction with a magician, myself included, is like, I watch a person go, this interaction's no longer worth it, right?
	Like, you're talking, and someone's like, I'm a magician, and you're like, maybe if I just keep talking or change the subject, he won't do a trick, but they start, they start, there's no stopping us, right?
	There's no stopping us.
	Then you're holding a card like a child at a birthday party, and you want anything, just a button to push that's like, hey, seven lashes, and you get to leave the conversation, and you're like, set it up, baby, absolutely.
	Wrong.
	I fucking love close-up magic.
	That shit's amazing.
	And when we were together, I did no magic for you, Jordan.
	See, this is how I failed you.
	I failed you as a man and as a friend.
	We had multiple meals and I didn't do one magic trick for Jordan.
	And a potential lover.
	Let's be real here.
	I leaned in for lots of kisses.
	Jordan can confirm.
	Polite, but firm.
	QED next year, you bring the cards, I'm bringing the whippy.
	You conjure, I'll fuck you.
	Those are the rules.
	You gotta conjure, though.
	You can't conjure.
	If you're not conjuring fucking cards out of shit, then fuck you.
	I absolutely can conjure!
	I mean, I won't fuck you.
	Does it have to be constant throughout?
	Does he have to keep performing as it goes?
	Nope, just at the end.
	Doves fly out.
	Just that card spring thing all over the lower back.
	God, that was free!
	That was free.
	It was beautiful.
	I feel like prestidigitation could be a whole new euphemism in this context.
	It's just vague enough.
	I'm carding!
	I'm gonna Kadabra!
	Come Dabra?
	Is Come Dabra better?
	Jordan, let's do notes.
	Come Dabra?
	Let's punch this out.
	Can't flub it the first time.
	There's no going back.
	Jordan, I need your help!
	This is live!
	I'm never live!
	Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.
	Either fish swim or they die.
	I don't give a shit.
	Let me drown!
	Real quick before we get into it.
	Jordan and Eli, what are your pronouns, by the by?
	My pronouns are he, him.
	Great.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I'll take he, him.
	Cool, cool.
	Yeah, whatever.
	Mine are they, them.
	Lauren?
	She they.
	Sometimes he.
	Just don't call me late for dinner.
	Now my introduction may have been intentionally a little bit obtuse but there's another reason that you've both been invited onto the show for this one specifically and that's the fact that you have both spent a long ass time writing and performing comedy.
	And while myself and Lauren are perfectly capable of holding Russell to his usual bullshit, I did want to bring in some folks who know more about the art form of comedy than we might, to be able to dissect his chops and performance in this special, while we can also deal with any, shall we say, outright lies and propaganda that may come up within.
	So we'll start with you, Jordan.
	What's your experience in the comedy profession?
	Like, you spent a long time doing stand-up, right?
	Yeah, oh man, I wish you guys could get Cat Williams.
	He'd be way better.
	He'd tell you all the books he read.
	He'd probably, yeah, he'd be like, man, you know where Brand got his start?
	Up my ass.
	I'm fucking down!
	Oh man.
	God damn.
	I sell out more tickets than Russell Brand as air!
	No, how long have I been, I did stand up for about a decade, and I was good for, Oh, so I did stand up for about a decade, and now we're here.
	That's the story.
	That's about it.
	Yeah.
	That is entirely fair.
	And I think, you know, I think the pandemic kind of, that brought a lot of people's kind of creative things into a different direction, let's put it that way.
	If only I had that excuse, Al.
	If only I had that excuse.
	I mean, yeah.
	Yeah, it's not like the pandemic ended and people were like, oh man, Jordan, you gotta get back out there.
	No one called.
	No one was like, oh, we need a spot to fill.
	Nope, not one person.
	That's when you just belligerently show up and do it out of spite.
	That's what you should do.
	The Andrew Dice Clay approach.
	Yeah, right.
	I mean, it worked for him, clearly.
	I was picturing standing on desks in an Oh Captain, My Captain moment.
	Everyone, tear the pages out of your program.
	We don't have those.
	It's a comedy club.
	I'm fucked.
	One of my favorite acts, and it was just one bit, is this incredible comedian.
	Her name was Shanice LeClaire.
	And she would go up, and this was open mic scene, New York City, 2010, 2011.
	And I still think she should be the most famous person in the world.
	She would go up And she would try to start a USA chant.
	And that was most of her 10-minute set.
	And it was the funniest thing.
	If someone didn't do it, she'd be like, wait, stop, stop, stop.
	That guy wasn't doing it.
	You're going to start.
	It was brilliant.
	It was absolutely brilliant.
	I hope she's out there still trying to start a USA chant.
	I mean, it's impressive what genuinely funny people can make funny, I think.
	So Eli, what are your professional experiences with comedy?
	Where do they come in?
	So I was an amateur comedian for years.
	I was a professional for, I think, only about a year.
	Um, probably even a little bit less than that because I started to go out on tour.
	It's going to be such a lovey-dovey thing.
	I started to go out on tour, but then I fell in love with my wife and realized I didn't want comedian life.
	I wanted to hang out with this girl I had met back in New York City.
	Um, at the same time, my sort of safety job, my day job fell through, um, in a case of Toy store espionage, and two of my co-workers, they invited me to join them on their podcast, and that is what I have been doing ever since.
	But yeah, my stand-up experience was limited to about a year in the tri-state area, but I was in that pay-your-dues phase, and then I was like, what if instead I sit in a basement and make fun of Ray Comfort?
	And so that's what I do!
	That's what I do now.
	It's an easier gig.
	Tapped out, yeah.
	Absolutely.
	I haven't seen the inside of a red roof inn for years.
	It's great.
	All right, that gives us a solid grounding, I think, as to why you're both here.
	Before we get into our first clip, I do have to ask, what do you guys think of the name of the special?
	Brandemic, right?
	Good name?
	I mean, Birdemic was a good name.
	Yep.
	Brandemic.
	Uh, that sounds more like, uh, Coca-Cola and Pepsi and Nike are all, like, stampeding at me.
	Ooh!
	Like, I'm being attacked by the concept of Paris Hilton's reality TV career.
	Like, I don't like it.
	No.
	No, no, no.
	I'm against it.
	Paris Hilton specifically, great pull because she's trying to make the word sliving work.
	No, I don't know.
	That's the worst combo.
	I haven't heard of Paris Hilton since Nicole Richie was still alive.
	Yeah.
	Is Nicole Richie dead?
	Apparently, I've been saying everyone's dead recently.
	People keep correcting me.
	They're like, oh no, that guy's not dead.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	I have no idea.
	I have no idea.
	Nicole Richie is shrouding his cat at this point, both alive and dead, in the moment of recording this show.
	Well, I feel like, then I apologize for bringing her back into your existence.
	She may remain dead in your world.
	That's totally fine.
	Yeah, I have no idea.
	That's the most embarrassing word combo I've ever heard.
	Paris Hilton is still doing stuff.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Trying to make Sliving, she named a podcast that Slaying and Living, Sliving, and everyone's like, stop.
	You hate to see when someone famous does a podcast, because it's how you live.
	That's always a bummer, right?
	Because someone's always like, oh, did you hear about Noxymixbeatemupperson?
	And you're like, please don't say what he said on his podcast.
	Please don't.
	And they're like, so on his podcast!
	And you're like, oh no!
	How much higher on the iTunes charts than me is it?
	Oh god, 700 slots!
	Oh no!
	No, no, no, the guys from Scrubs are friends.
	Oh, yes, yes, yes.
	They're friends, so they talk.
	About the show that they were on.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Oh, dear.
	Funny if they turned out to be white supremacists, too.
	Yeah, no, Zach Brown is mostly talking.
	Give them 10 years and a diminished amount of popularity, they'll lean.
	They'll jump right into the fucking omega brain pills, yeah.
	Donald Faison hates black people.
	Yeah, to me Brandemic does kind of paint the picture of like Russell being the virus slowly killing us off, you know, and there may be some merit to that idea.
	Yeah.
	I think, you know, interspersed with the other people in his field, in the milieu, you know, I'm like, ah!
	Societally, maybe a little bit.
	Like when people tell you who they are, listen to them.
	That's kind of the brand.
	Exactly.
	Yeah.
	I see.
	The other thing I wanted to ask before this clip is when there's a global event or really event of any kind, there's a bit of a time limit set as to how long you're able to cover it in a comedy set and still have it be funny for most things anyway.
	When do you suppose pandemic based comedy kind of fell off and kind of lost its relevance?
	That's a tough question.
	Wait, what?
	Pandemic-based comedy?
	Pandemic-based?
	I didn't even realize this was a genre that we should have been capitalizing on.
	Jordan, did you do a COVID special that I missed out on?
	Honestly, I was just thinking, I used to do a lot of history jokes, and I was like, wait, did I do something about the flu in 1917?
	Did I do that?
	When does pandemic-based comedy go bad?
	And I think the answer is never.
	I think it's always fucking funny.
	Evergreen.
	I think if you're not wearing, if you go on stage and you're not wearing a Plague Doctor mask, you're not doing comedy.
	That's the truth.
	I mean, we've all seen Jeff Dunham do Myron the Mumps.
	I mean, it's one of his best characters.
	One of his best.
	When I think stand-up comedy, I think two things.
	One, I think Jeff Dunham.
	And I think Jordan agrees with me on that.
	And the second one is refer to the first one?
	Refer to the first one, yeah, exactly.
	Oh, wow.
	Real Dunham head over here.
	I don't like to tell stories out of turn, but Jordan was just constantly saying, I love Jeff Dunham.
	The entire time we were getting ready for the show, he was reciting his bits word for word.
	No, no, no, you don't understand.
	Again, I'm from the actual comedy.
	I go deep into it.
	There was a guy named Taylor, fuck, I don't even remember his last name.
	There was a dude named Taylor who had 10 times the racist puppets.
	He had a sumo wrestler and he did the voice.
	You better believe he did the voice.
	You better believe he picked out every stereotype he could find about who?
	Not Japanese people.
	Why?
	Just because it's a sumo wrestler and that's their culture?
	No!
	I mean, the excuse to do the sumo stance on stage.
	Comedy gold.
	Nope.
	Sat on his lap.
	He was not a good ventriloquist.
	So edgy.
	Did he at least get the puppet to do it?
	Also, he played the piano, my friends.
	That's right.
	He was a double threat.
	Just doing all the bits except for jokes.
	Bad ventriloquist.
	Terrible keyboardist.
	And he's not funny.
	That's a man who's a double threat.
	I was just picturing a guy with a puppet on his hand just banging it on a piano.
	And that was his ass.
	And I'm back in.
	I would watch that.
	I will say that the best, so I did host an open mic very briefly and the best thing about hosting an open mic back in the day, Jordan tell me if you ever got to experience this, is there are funny people and there are not funny people and there are people in between but the best moment of every open mic is a guy gets up Who has very clearly been told by everyone in his life, you gotta do stand up.
	You're so funny.
	He's always cracking us up at the off.
	So he shows up in his blue shirt with his matching blue tie.
	And he, you got to watch him live on stage, realize he's not funny.
	And everyone in his life was just being nice to him.
	He'd be like wrecked him.
	And you could just hear the Donnie Darko music just echoing in his head, and he just went, thank you, and walk off the stage.
	It's beautiful.
	It's beautiful.
	It's like watching an angel die once on a Thursday once a month.
	As the less experienced person in the group, I felt a little attacked from maybe my own brain, is when you said rectum, and I had like a Roger Rabbit response, and I had to stop myself like, no, no, it's a bit, don't actually finish the You were damn near killed him.
	I was almost damn near killed him.
	You were the audience that guy needed.
	He'd be touring the states now.
	There are two things from the movie Black Sheep.
	That's the place where most people of our generation remember Rectum Damn Near Killed Him from, is the non sequitur from Black Sheep.
	But the one that I love, the one that I love the most is when Chris Farley gets high with the Rastafarian band, and then he's walking out on stage giving the speech, he turns and looks over at them, and he's like, oh yeah yeah yeah!
	And he just goes, KILL WHITEY!
	He's great.
	And it's like, it's one of the truly great moments in like, 90s cinema!
	How about you?
	How about you?
	That's perfect.
	Again, occasional advocate for white genocide, Jordan Holmes.
	Carrying on Chris Farley's legacy.
	I say that about Jordan all the time.
	I wouldn't be too wrong.
	Back to the pandemic stuff, my money would say that Bo Burnham, that was the peak.
	Bo Burnham releasing Inside was like, that was the peak of this specific thing we all went through.
	And after that, it was like, okay, well, this guy did it, and the rest of us have six months to get everything out, and then we all collectively try and fucking move on with our lives, because we're kind of done talking about it.
	With that in mind, Do any of you know when Brandemic was released?
	When it actually came out?
	Last year?
	I'll have you know that in order to watch it before this glorious event, I went to his Moments page to try and find the past.
	By the way, if you have not been to Russell Brand's Moments page, I don't know what moments are.
	So if you can't do a live show, right, and StreamYard is too complex for you, you join this thing called Moments, right?
	Which just, oh, you can choke on the startup money as you say moments.com, right?
	But it's basically like you take your live show and they'll air it live while you're doing it and charge people a lesser ticket price.
	But they let you obviously design your page and Russell Brands is like, find me Mr. Policeman levels of crazy.
	It is a thing of beauty.
	Like Myspace kind of level stuff.
	Yes, exactly.
	Now we're talking.
	But even less content on there, somehow.
	Yeah, Brandemic was initially a Rumble slash Locals exclusive in the March of 2023, before coming out on Moments and then being released to the wider world in June of 2023.
	Last year, right?
	So it actually came out around when we first started doing this show, which It feels a little bit late.
	I was going to throw a guess out there, and I thought it was late.
	And I was like, 2022?
	Are we still doing What's the Deal with Masks?
	Yeah, he filmed it in the September of 2022, which again, already feels late.
	I'm like, you know, we started in early 2020.
	I'm like, I don't know.
	I don't know.
	There's still a lot to be mined from the pandemic.
	I think, you know, stuff like, it was the Jews, you know, it's like really funny stuff that's out there.
	Super funny that could be done at any time.
	Really.
	It's universal.
	Universal.
	Especially on Rumble.
	Timeless.
	Completely timeless.
	Yeah, really from the jump, I do think that we're starting with a bad premise, but we'll see if he can salvage it.
	And I do firmly believe that when a comedian is presenting a filmed comedy special, there are two crucial initial elements to start with.
	There's the opening five, which has to be tight as fuck to make sure people keep watching, or at least interesting.
	And even before that, there's the introduction before the comedian hits the stage, which accordingly sets the tone for the whole show.
	There are a number of things to think about there, right?
	You know, how bombastic do you want it to be?
	Do you include your name in lights?
	What choice of music do you go for?
	Do you show the excited audience and all that?
	Do you include any footage of your opening act?
	There are a whole host of decisions and choices to be made, but let's see what Russell has gone with.
	It feels like he's been released from some kind of prison situation
	on an agreement that he gets to do this special.
	Oh, he's got a mug.
	That's a lot of candles.
	Jordan, you always lit a candle before your sets, right?
	I mean, here's the thing, alright?
	Here's how we can do this.
	Do you want me to get into this as a stand-up?
	Because deep down, all stand-ups are truly neutral, if it's funny.
	Yeah, like I'm sorry, but I bet there was a Nazi comic, and if he had one good joke, every comedian in the world would be like, shit, I wish somebody else had written that.
	That's a good bit.
	Sorry.
	Maybe we'll do that in a non-German accent.
	Maybe I can figure that out.
	Can I do it without the hand gesture?
	No, the hand gesture's the punch.
	You gotta do the hand gesture.
	Absolutely.
	You gotta heil.
	If you want to get the ha-has, you know, that kind of thing.
	Can we make it Italian?
	That's still kind of fair game.
	Can we go Italian with it?
	There's nothing there.
	Carlos Mencia was in.
	He saw it the other night.
	He's doing a Mexican version of it now.
	Makes no fucking sense.
	Robin Williams stole it straight up.
	Now it's in a new movie he's in.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	So anyway, so this isn't a terrible opening.
	This is a minimalist entrance.
	It's not too far different from Chris Rock in the early thousands.
	But, I mean, this kind of thing came to style in the late 2010s and moved on forward with your Sarah Silverman opening bits and then your Louis C.K.
	And that never went out of style.
	You know, that lasted forever.
	And so some of those, I think appropriately, comedians all agree, have gotten a little out of control, right?
	So in a lot of ways, this is actually something I appreciate more than some of the really annoying ones that are otherwise done by very funny people.
	Like hiring a stuntman to do backflips in their outfit, and then they cut, and then it's like, okay, that's a little much.
	I mean, Tom Segura had one that was pretty annoying, but at least it was short.
	There is something to be said for brevity, I think.
	It's huge.
	I'll tell you what, just not wearing out your welcome goes a long way.
	Why do we think he lit a candle?
	I thought he'd address it!
	No.
	No, no, no.
	He doesn't bring it up.
	Tell me why!
	No, no.
	Vibes?
	I don't know.
	It's a ritualistic thing?
	I don't know.
	Why does he have a box of tissues on the stage?
	I do not know the answers to any of these questions.
	For listeners, what we just saw was Russell with a mug in his hand arriving in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes-Benz, surrounded by staff, walking from the back entrance of the venue to the stage, and he then lit a candle.
	All soundtracks to Vivaldi, of all things.
	Which I think is a choice.
	If nothing else, it seems very grandiose, but also glaringly at odds with the special as a whole, but maybe that was the point.
	It is possible that Russell thought Vivaldi would be funny as a contrast to his coming material, but the problem that I have is that he is such a narcissist that it's very likely he would view himself in grand enough terms to warrant Vivaldi playing as he enters any building whatsoever.
	So to me, it comes off entirely differently.
	But he also, he lights the candle with stand-up energy, right?
	That's what's weird, right?
	Like if you came out and you were like, bing, single bell, and you light a candle, I get it.
	You're setting a tone, but he's doing like a, who's drinking tonight energy while he lights the candle.
	That is exactly.
	Zero seconds in, I feel like he's going to do a like, what do you do for work?
	Who fucking cares bit while he lights his incense dower.
	That's on stage!
	It's on stage!
	It seems out of place.
	That's why I'm like, is this a bit?
	Tell me why this is, it just, it seems totally out of place.
	It's like, it's like, this is my vibe.
	It's like a different post on Instagram that's like, I'm going to light this candle.
	And then now here's like, that's, it's not really setting the tone.
	It's like when a thirst trap account does a memoriam post for their dad.
	That's what it feels like.
	I'm going to let you in on a secret on how most of these are filmed, though.
	And this might be an issue that I think could be interesting to find out.
	So most of these specials are filmed over one or two nights, and they usually do two to four shows, and then they edit them together.
	So it's entirely possible that this opening was the best kind of walkthrough opening they had.
	Then he did do a joke about the candle on the first show and it bombed so terribly that they cut it out.
	And now we just are left with this candle and a question.
	Yeah.
	You know, these things are possible.
	Yeah.
	Maybe, maybe.
	Based on some of the editing of this show, I am genuinely not sure whether he did more than one night.
	Because there are moments where it will cut and he's reusing footage of him looking at the audience and clearly gesticulating in a way that is incongruous with the things he's saying.
	So I actually don't know if he did more than one night in this case.
	But yeah, the other crucial part that I mentioned is the opening bit, right, the first five.
	It has to be, you know, tight, intriguing, something.
	And I've got the first few minutes here in which we learn, firstly, that predictably Russell was late turning up to his own show before we leap headlong into some pandemic stuff.
	And I dare say I'm probably about to make all of you agree with Russell Brand for a minute.
	I'm so happy to be with you.
	I love you.
	I love your city.
	I love you lot already.
	I love you.
	We're going to have such a lovely night.
	Thanks for coming.
	Sorry I'm late.
	Sorry for doing a show at six o'clock and then turning up late for it.
	It's annoying, isn't it, to have a show at six o'clock?
	Who does a show at six o'clock in the evening?
	Yeah, me.
	That's who does a show at six o'clock.
	Don't drink.
	Don't take drugs.
	Won't be hanging around to have sex with anyone.
	Might as well go home and go to bed.
	It's been a weird couple of years.
	Let's track it for a bit.
	Let's try to remember, if we can, the beginning bit of the pandemic.
	Try and remember this, if you can, because I don't know, maybe I dreamt it.
	The beginning bit, it was, like, really nice.
	And, like, the weather was all lovely.
	It was about a month where it was, like, a free holiday.
	And it was absolutely fantastic.
	And I don't know if I dreamt this or not, but I feel like all animals were, like, coming into the town.
	Like, squirrels in waistcoats at the garage and stuff.
	Like, nature re-emerged triumphant and I thought, this is going to be beautiful.
	This is an opportunity for us to review the way we organise society.
	This is an attempt to connect with one another.
	After all, isn't the point of these lockdowns the sanctity of life?
	We acknowledge that all life is sacred and we must do everything we can to protect one another.
	This is a brilliant re-evaluation.
	That spirit didn't last that long, did it?
	I started to feel a bit divisive, a bit manipulative, a bit weary.
	Do you remember the various stations on the cross of our march towards where we stand today?
	What about the bit, like, do you remember, like, the first time, for example, that you heard the word furlough?
	Do you remember that, when you heard furlough?
	It's just, you've never heard that before, have you, furlough?
	What the fuck's furlough?
	What's that, an agricultural term?
	Something you do with your brow?
	No!
	What furlough is, is in the case of most jobs, it don't matter if you don't fucking know it.
	Okay, so you see furlough and furrow.
	Furrow your brow.
	That's the closest to a joke.
	Your brow is similar in tone and angle.
	I got it.
	No, no, no.
	I'm catching up here.
	Okay.
	I thought our entire system was predicated on the need for labor, the requirement for us to work.
	I thought our system was held together with our toil.
	I'm sorry, did I interrupt one of his jokes?
	It's fine.
	Is anybody mad that they can't?
	I'm deeply upset.
	They had to go to work throughout the pandemic.
	Oh, I understand.
	So they would be the most important and therefore most highly paid jobs.
	No!
	They're the worst paid jobs!
	Woo!
	Fucking hell!
	Fantastic system you've got there.
	Don't go tinkering with that.
	Don't go fucking with the details on something that refined.
	Don't mess with that thing.
	Do you remember there was a bit where, like, I feel like this happened in London.
	I don't know if I'm doing it.
	In London, they went like, right, there's a pandemic.
	You can't have homeless people anymore.
	They'll cough everywhere.
	Put them all in hostels and hotels.
	Get them all in there.
	Wait, could you have done that at any time?
	Yeah, we could do that whenever we want.
	We could just put them all up in hotels and hostels.
	Why couldn't or shouldn't we have done that anyway?
	Oh, the pandemic's over.
	Go and fucking get back out there.
	Cut where you're fucking lying!
	What an interesting set of values!
	(audience laughing)
	They seem to have evolved over time.
	Okay, so that's one of the worst things that happens to comics.
	And it happens to, it doesn't require bad political beliefs, but eventually, I mean it's important to have them, but eventually you get into clapture.
	You know, you forget that people are supposed to laugh and like laugh, and instead you get into claps.
	You get like the applause break, which is the emptiness of being not a comedian.
	Then you're just a talk person.
	Yeah.
	Like he's giving a shitty TED talk on, I don't know, badness?
	Economies?
	Yeah.
	I don't know if any of you saw.
	This is just the beginning of that.
	I don't know if any of you saw the new Ricky Gervais special, but it's a perfect example.
	I made fun of that on a different podcast, which is why I watched it.
	And it is all clapter.
	It's the craziest audience reactions you've ever heard, because he doesn't tell any jokes, right?
	So the entire time they're just like, yeah, I also hate them.
	And this is what we're watching Brand sink gently into.
	Well, that's kind of what made my blood run... I don't normally watch stuff before the episode, but I saw some of the clips that Al sent me, and it made my blood run cold, because I'm like, well, he is still setting up a joke.
	Like, there's still bits.
	It's not just listing groups you hate, which is very easy to kind of...
	Consider in like, well, they were jokes earlier in his career, and they're not jokes anymore.
	So like Jim Brewer or Rob Snyder, the other guys whose brains have been melting during the pandemic, especially like Jim Brewer, it's just, I hate this person.
	Wild, raucous.
	Oh, yeah, great.
	There's nary a joke to be found, and it's almost like telling that Russell can still kind of charm his way with the crowd in a way that's a little more proficient than just listing and hating.
	And that's kind of what we talk about on the main show, is the problem of he's better at packaging the same Well, you gotta understand that Ricky Gervais is not a stand-up.
	He was never a stand-up comedian before he got famous.
	Sinbad had the best quote about it, of just like, you're funnier when you ride the bus.
	Uh because when you when you get rich and when you get an audience you can have stuff where it is like it is not about your writing at all anymore so much as it is the rhythm and the music is comforting to people like I've watched I watched I worked a week with uh Eddie Brill I want to say uh and he was he was you know he was fired from the Letterman Show for being a gigantic sexist.
	Who would have guessed?
	Comedian in the 80s?
	What?
	What are you talking about?
	What are you talking about?
	You mean that wasn't why he was hired?
	Right, right, right.
	But those, he's one of those guys who was such a professional, who was so good at just the act of stand-up comedy, that like I didn't, I swear to you, I was like constantly and so closely listening like, are you gonna tell a joke?
	And then it's like, it's an hour later, he's killed.
	People are coming up to him like, you're so funny.
	And I'm like, I swear to God, I do not understand what is happening.
	And he was taking his son on tour with him.
	And his son is a terrible standup.
	And he was like, I don't understand how he does it.
	It was mystifying.
	But there is a certain amount of music that people will just respond to in a very specific way.
	If it has the timing and the rhythm of it, then people will almost as a reflex.
	If it sounds like stand-up, people will sometimes laugh just because that's where they're supposed to.
	They're obligated to laugh, you know?
	Like, oh, that's kind of where it's supposed to go.
	I will say Russell does spend more of this getting applause than we would probably like.
	As for the content of what he was saying, the actual substance, like, he's right.
	The way society is structured within our system of extreme capitalism is completely fucked, which was probably best exemplified by us in the UK as a nation suddenly being able to afford to house the houseless during the pandemic, and then as soon as it was considered safe again, those people were kicked back onto the streets.
	Whoa, whoa, whoa, that was true?
	You guys actually did that?
	Oh yeah!
	We did that, we did that.
	You guys are so British!
	Which I think is almost worse than just saying, no, fuck you, stay there.
	Because we'll give you a taste of what we could do.
	We could do this all the time.
	We're not going to fuck off back into the wilderness.
	And we did that like the funding had dried up by the winter of 2020.
	So we actually returned these people to houselessness just before the winter when there was still no vaccine, by the way.
	Oh, no.
	Yeah, here's how British the pandemic reaction was.
	The British announced when they were no longer clapping for the medical workers, right?
	In America, we just let it peter off.
	In England- We had our fun.
	You got on your one channel, your one TV channel, and you were like, that's enough of that now.
	They haven't done a very good job.
	We went to Toronto in the middle of the lockdowns, whenever it was like, Oh, we're open again.
	This'll never go south.
	So there was the few weeks where everything didn't go south and then it did.
	And we were in Toronto and it was like, ah, these $2,000 monthly payments.
	And I was like, what are you fucking talking about?
	Hold on.
	We got $1,400 half one time.
	Yep.
	You are out of your minds.
	Now, I do want to address, to you guys and to any newer listeners, the feeling of agreeing with Russell Brand on anything might feel a little bit jarring at first, because Russell is absolutely an alt-right misogynistic Christian zealot who traffics in bigoted conspiracy theories for profit, but often his packaging of these conspiracy theories is wrapped in some kind of broader truth.
	And that's what we're seeing here.
	Myself and Lauren will often find ourselves agreeing with him up to the point where he says, and that's because of the vaccines!
	Or, and that's why Trump is great!
	Or, the more likely, and that's why you should give me money!
	It's the hard left turn.
	Yes, yes.
	Right at the end.
	Right at the end.
	It's always coming.
	Now, it's one of the things that makes him a different breed of propagandist in that kind of regard, compared to a lot of people who are just so kind of obvious about their views.
	He's a slippery little fish.
	Now, as mentioned, it was September 22 this was filmed, which was just as Russell had started up his show, Stay Free with Russell Brand, which we cover.
	Accordingly, it's probably not as conspiracy-laden as a present-day special of his might be, though conspiracies do come up.
	First, however, Russell has a bit about taking LSD that by the end evokes a very specific kind of right-wing comic to me.
	I ruin drugs.
	I mean, I love drugs, but I explode it.
	With sheer enthusiasm.
	I was too keen.
	Right, come on then, let's get the talk out, let's go!
	Fucking calm down with drugs, I've been around ages, you're fucking ruining it.
	The drugs was different when I was little, because it was like, I used to take LSD, which was on bits of paper, acid as it was known then, and the paper would have little pictures on it, like a smiley face, or a penguin, it was so innocuous and friendly, encouraging actually, harmless, fun, which is what it seemed like for a potential interdimensional experience.
	I don't have the right personality for orally consumed hallucinogens.
	Because I am greedy, and I'm impulsive, and I am impatient.
	That's a deadly combination.
	Like, you know, because I'll take one and go, well, that's had no impact.
	I'm fucking... That's had no impact on me.
	I'm so strong.
	I'm fucking next level, mate.
	I'm Jimi Hendrix.
	I'm Keith Moon.
	I'm a fucking interdimensional shamanic being.
	I'm a scientist.
	I'm Aldous Huxley.
	Give me another one of those things.
	Then I'll take another one, right, a few minutes later, and still nothing.
	So in about three minutes, like, oh, give me another one of those.
	Nothing.
	and then like 45 minutes later in the privacy of my little mind
	hello russell who are you
	I'm the acid.
	Which acid are you?
	I'm the first, I see.
	[laughter]
	[gibberish]
	Hello!
	Ah!
	I desecond that.
	[Mumbling]
	The third acid is beyond all linguistic and syntactic models
	Dealing directly with the consciousness that underwrites all reality
	The preeminent force, the first vibration The word, the big bang
	The glory, the abiding unity of all things Don't do that at a bus stop in Greece!
	laughter applause
	sigh Um, from a technical perspective, this one annoys me.
	Um, because like, it's a lazy, you know, it's a lazy premise, but he's got something to work with there, right?
	You know?
	Sets it up quite well, and I feel like it's going alright, right up until after, I'm the first acid, and after that point we just, vaguely racist impression time, word salad, and the punchline turns out to be, don't do drugs at a bus stop.
	Like, it feels like a waste, there could have been something there, am I wrong?
	Here's my question, right?
	Because these guys usually have writers, right?
	It depends on the performer, but especially the sort of hacky stadium folks tend to have a team.
	And in my imagination right now, Russell has a team, and he did the voice of the second acid.
	What do you think happened in that room that it ended up on stage?
	Did everyone leave and he was like, oh that joke was so good, I'm gonna keep it forever!
	Or did some underpaid alternate universe Jordan or Eli be like, oh that's great man!
	Good job sir!
	I'm going to go do another bump in the bathroom and you're going to hear what sounds like crying, but that is not what that is.
	It doesn't strike me as far as like, you know, we're going to get to other jokes that are much more tedious.
	This seems like a pretty solid, just like a regular old bit and nothing really, there isn't, It's nothing to write home about, necessarily, but it seems very innocuous to me.
	You know, I was listening to it, and I was wondering if any British people were funny, and then the first thing that came up, the first thought I had, So the first thought I had was Dylan Mourne, but he's Irish, so I think you guys are out.
	Maybe the problem was stand-up comedy was never for you.
	You had writing, that was good, that lasted a while whenever people could read.
	Yeah, then you had a total of six episodes, seasons, and then it was over.
	That was the end.
	You could have 11 to 12 episodes of a show and that was the end of British humor, I believe.
	That may be what we're proving right now.
	Stephen Moffat set up a really big twist for British humour, but then it never happened.
	Now we've got Ricky Gervais.
	This is trouble.
	This is troublesome.
	You have 12 episodes of funny and then it's over.
	Russell Brinkley, next doctor.
	Oh, fuck me.
	God, can you imagine?
	Just to bring all those people complaining about it being woke into, you know.
	Oh, well, we'll give them one.
	Have a sex offender.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I mean, I will say I'm Welsh, so, you know, we have some great comedians.
	You know, the English, however, yeah, there's an argument to be made, but I think the Welsh, the Scottish, and the Irish have some great ones.
	Maybe it's something about, you know, the historically oppressed peoples.
	Hannah Gadsby!
	Hannah Gadsby's great.
	Who?
	What?
	Nanette.
	No.
	Oh, is she the one who did the... Oh, no.
	Come on, guys.
	Come on.
	Stop this.
	Stop this.
	We can all move past it.
	Come on.
	No, no, no.
	It was very funny.
	It was very funny.
	She's very funny.
	She makes me laugh out loud.
	Out loud, you say?
	Very funny.
	Oh, wow.
	Whenever I watch the TV, I was like, hmm, this is hilarious.
	Jesus Christ.
	I'm just going to move on.
	Jordan's here for truth.
	The newspapers think they're funny.
	I expect nothing less.
	Jordan's not here to fucking lie to us.
	He just happens to be right 90% of the time.
	Yeah, but he... Jordan Hennigan's special was hilarious.
	I believe him.
	He was.
	He was very funny.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, I do think it's worth pointing out that, yeah, Russell has been sober for just shy of 20 years at the time of filming this special.
	Allegedly.
	And, like, what does, you know, is there nothing more recent that he could have brought to the table?
	Like, this is at the very least comedy from 20 years ago for him, you know.
	What cat's sober anymore?
	Is that all drugs?
	I don't know if ketamine counts, because I can take that as a therapy in Chicago.
	That's true.
	Mind blown, baby.
	They send you some headphones.
	That's interesting.
	And then mushrooms are fucking completely legal in Canada.
	What is sober anymore?
	I guess.
	Well, yeah, I guess, you know, raw dog in reality, as it were, you know, which which nobody wants to do.
	But here we all are.
	I guess it depends on the quantities, I suppose.
	I suppose.
	You know, I think there's.
	All right.
	All right.
	So abuse is what we're talking about.
	Al coming out against antidepressants, everybody.
	Wow.
	Did you all hear that?
	I heard that.
	I feel too good.
	Fuck no.
	Fuck no.
	No, no, no.
	Yeah, we.
	Hal says never get medical treatment of any kind.
	That's what they said.
	Their words, not mine.
	Yeah, yeah, 100%.
	100%.
	Don't go see doctors, everybody.
	Go see a Reiki specialist.
	Yeah.
	Let's just get your energy checked.
	God, I mean, you know, it's only cancer.
	Now, we continue the drugs chat, actually, a little bit here in this next clip.
	What this is, is this is my personality.
	This is me trying my best to fit in.
	This is all I've got.
	This is the best I've got to offer.
	So people think that maybe now, because it's been so long, that I can take things like ayahuasca, the spiritual drugs, the wellness drugs.
	If you don't know, it's like people take it like it's a sort of a tea that's made from a couple of plants you can take in sort of usually Central and South American countries that you take under the tutelage of a shaman.
	You know, and like people tell me that, oh, maybe you could take that because it's like, you know, it's not like a drug.
	It's not addictive.
	Do you know what drug addiction actually is?
	I fucking will get addicted to it.
	No, you wouldn't get addicted to that.
	You take it in a jungle with a shaman.
	That's fucking brilliant!
	I'd love that.
	I'm not going to not get addicted to something just because there's a token nearby.
	That's an enticement.
	Nah.
	Nah, mate.
	You wouldn't get addicted to ayahuasca.
	In fact, they use that in treatment to get people off of drugs.
	I'm off drugs!
	I can't get off off drugs!
	That's back on drugs!
	That's basic maths.
	See, I like that a little bit, right?
	Just that little segment, concise, funny, you know, good stuff.
	And it should have ended there, I think.
	I think that should have been like, move on.
	It did not, however, end there.
	You wouldn't get addicted to it, it makes you be sick.
	All drugs make you be sick if you do them properly, don't they?
	If you commit to them.
	That's a necessary part of it.
	Booze makes you be sick.
	Weed makes you be sick.
	Coke makes you be sick if you fucking commit to it.
	If you take drugs like a fucking adult, if you're willing to push through the various thresholds where a lot of people bail out, or fucking hell, my heart feels funny, I think I'm dying.
	Push through that.
	Grow up.
	Fucking ruining my evening.
	Get on with it.
	Take drugs like a fucking adult.
	I think he's actually dying.
	He's alright.
	Just tip that in his nose.
	Keep him going.
	He's more alive than he's ever been before, is what he fucking is.
	Thanks to mention.
	Being six, not an obstacle drug use, I'm like a dog.
	I sick it up and I lick it up, on with the show.
	Oh, that's so offensive.
	Sick it up and lick it up.
	Oh no, not sick it up and lick it up.
	Have you ever looked out your fucking window at how this country's being run?
	Don't mind sick it up and lick it up.
	I know what you get up to.
	Don't pretend to be offended.
	I know what you do at 3am, you lot.
	They pretend to be fucking normal with me.
	I know you.
	I know who you are.
	And I know who I am.
	And I know who comes to see me.
	I don't need an advertising agency to tell me about the demographic.
	It's mentally ill people.
	That's who I am.
	on the page insane that I'm mentally ill. (audience cheers)
	(audience cheers)
	(audience cheers)
	Fuck you, nope, not.
	That's a weird, so that, I don't know, Jordan, you might have the actual term of that.
	I call that riding the room, right?
	Which is where a joke gets a reaction, and then you sit with the room and you talk with the room.
	I've literally never seen anyone ride the room like that.
	That was, I was like, oh, this is a weird, oh, this is a weird, oh, he's doing a, why a female masturbation mime?
	Like there's so many follow-ups about, The choice is made.
	I mean, I don't know.
	I mean, I guess I guess here's the I don't think most comedians are funny, generally speaking.
	Like I'd like at any given point in time, I think there are genuinely only three funny comedians.
	Like right now, there's Maria Bamford, Kyle Kinane and The end.
	That's kind of where I come to stand up from.
	And so I don't think that's funny, which is a problem for a lot of people.
	As a stand-up comedian, I would be like, here's what you should do to punch up those jokes.
	Get rid of them.
	Kill them.
	But I don't Is there something more offensive that I'm missing?
	I don't understand exactly why or what I'm supposed to be offended by.
	Is sick it up and lick it up more of a disgusting thing where you guys are from?
	He's rhyming more gross to you.
	I think it's gross.
	I don't think it's particularly offensive.
	I just think it's a bit gross.
	Yes, it was weird.
	And it kind of felt like how the, like the Ricky Gervais special was very like, aren't you so offended?
	See, that's what I don't understand.
	I don't understand that whole part of things.
	Right.
	Like there are, there are comedians out there who say genuinely controversial stuff, which is confusing to right wingers.
	Cause the things they say are the opposite of controversial, right?
	They're just virtual.
	Yeah, there's nothing more controversial than supporting the status quo.
	They're specifically pandering.
	They're pandering to time a hundred years ago.
	So when they celebrate it in moments like this, it's so bizarre to me because you do want your comedians to question what you think.
	You brought up Bro Burnham earlier, and I think Burnham does a really beautiful job of that.
	I have other conversations around Burnham and the ethos of Burnham, the ethos of Inside especially, the fact that, like, that's his pool house.
	And I think the kids who watch that under the age of 18 should understand that he did in fact leave the pool.
	It's fine.
	You know what?
	We're not here to talk about that.
	I'm glad that everyone's well.
	The point is that when these right-wing comedians pretend that they've somehow really pushed through a barrier or challenged the status quo, does he imagine no one's ever talked about dogs eating vomit?
	Right?
	And then, and why does he double down on that with, again, like, jerk-off gesture, maybe, the female jerk-off gesture is such a weird choice to challenge your own- No, I approve of that.
	Oh, really?
	Okay.
	I approve of that.
	There you go.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	All right.
	Jerk-off, everybody does the jerk-off.
	Everybody does it.
	No one does the- Everybody's fake masturbating.
	DJ Diddlesworth.
	I think there's, I think there's always a good, there's always a good, like, equal opportunity for, the problem, the problem, I think, is the act out.
	It makes you feel like, You really don't know quite what's going on down there.
	Yeah.
	You know, that's kind of, that's more the issue.
	I'm bummed that this isn't going to translate to the audio medium so much because the act out gets very like weird and like it goes into Gallagher territory and the face and the Like, as far as writing the room, it's when you're only smashing watermelons.
	He smashes a vagina with a giant hammer, everybody.
	You can't see it, but it happens.
	Very intense.
	Imagine a more German form of pornography, I think, is the way to look at that.
	Al, can you just send me that clip for my own personal use later?
	I just want Jordan saying that as my cell phone ring, in case he ever returns my calls.
	Yeah, yeah, so yeah, the simulating female masturbation.
	And then sniffing his hand, you know, it's okay.
	And then licking it?
	It was intense.
	It goes to a really fucking weird place.
	I don't know, I'm fine with that.
	You're all a bunch of fucking prudes.
	I don't like this.
	I don't like this.
	I don't like being the...
	Yeah, okay, that's fine.
	You find it gross, but I find nothing wrong with this bit other than it is not funny.
	If it was funny, we might have gone along with it.
	That is fair.
	I mean, that's kind of the issue here, is that he's just not doing a very good job I don't see anything wrong so far with the bits other than, like, I mean, you know, we should do some punch-up.
	Like, we can get in there.
	I think there's a lot to be said about, like, cutting out most of Russell Brand talking and then listening to some of that Vivaldi.
	I think that's really good.
	Comedy special.
	Punch it up into a Vivaldi concert.
	I love this.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah!
	Now we're talking.
	Get some musicians in.
	Maybe light some more candles.
	He can do that.
	Yeah, if it's all candles, it's one of those ones they do at the church in New York.
	What if we just lose the part where he lights the candle?
	Now we're talking.
	What about if we lose the part where he walks onto the stage?
	I think we're getting somewhere.
	Just a still shot on the candle.
	We'll call it John Cage's 41 minutes and 38 seconds.
	Yes!
	As a specific 41 minute and 38 second candle with Russell's face on it.
	I think that's about how long he can do.
	That's about how long I would give him.
	I'd give him about 41 minutes.
	From here we start getting into the meat of the special, but first we do have a little bit of emotional manipulation to solidify getting the audience on side.
	This was a testing time for us.
	I just want to, like, just by show of hands, just get, like, capture this.
	This is beautiful.
	If, over the last couple of years, there were moments where you felt you were mentally ill, I want you to put your hand up and leave it up.
	If you felt depressed, if you felt anxious, if you felt... Put them up and leave them up.
	Don't be afraid.
	I'm not going to judge you.
	I'm not going to come over.
	If you felt you were drinking too much, if you were wanking too much... Yeah, on two hands.
	That's well done, sir.
	Yeah, put your hands up and leave them up.
	If these conditions... Right!
	That's crazy.
	Look around, everyone.
	Everyone went fucking mental.
	We don't have to pretend no more.
	And we've got to, yeah, yeah, give yourselves a round of applause for coping with the craziness.
	I want to do that.
	I want to do that so bad.
	That's so much better than who's drinking.
	I just got engaged out the door.
	Who has felt alone since the pandemic is my new warm-up.
	Jordan, is that good?
	Can I do that if I open for you?
	Go for it.
	Absolutely.
	Go to town.
	Oh dear.
	This was filmed in front of 700 people in Liverpool, which is my neck of the woods at the moment actually.
	Just a side note, his 2013 special Messiah Complex was filmed in front of 3,600 people.
	The one after that in 2018 was in front of 1,268 people and this one was in front of 700.
	It's not a great trajectory and Russell is not the type to want to play smaller rooms for the fun of it.
	That is not his style.
	He would be doing stadiums if he could.
	The more people applauding him, the better.
	But to get back to the clip, what Russell is actually doing here is functionally very similar to what he does on his show.
	Like, he will constantly poll and engage with his audience to achieve confirmation bias, for one thing, and to make them feel connected to him personally.
	Now, on the show, the fun thing is it'll usually take the form of, Is Hillary Clinton good or is Hillary Clinton bad?
	Press one for good, two for bad.
	And then legion of twos flood the chat.
	You know, it also makes them feel like, you know, part of the show.
	And in this case, what he just did was badger the audience and keep listing things off until every single person had their hand raised.
	That was a cold read of cold reads.
	That turned into a piping hot read where like, oh literally everyone has to be included in this moment.
	I'm gonna keep saying things until every single person has their hand up.
	Now, here's where you're in trouble, right?
	So, the issue here isn't that he did that.
	That is the MC's job, alright?
	When I open a show, I'm coming out here and the general rule of thumb, right, is I want three bouts of full audience applause for whatever reason I can get it.
	Whose birthday is it?
	That guy?
	Everybody clap for that guy.
	I want everybody getting used to clapping.
	Right?
	If you're the headliner, though, that means either that your emcee and your opener did such a terrible job that you have to start all over from the beginning, getting the audience on your side, or you have nothing.
	You're empty.
	You have... Like, I worked with... One of my favorite weekends ever was with Lonnie Love.
	Uh, because she just did not do her job at all.
	She only did about a half hour.
	The last five minutes rehearsing in the theme from The Bodyguard.
	Like, it was amazing.
	The first 15 minutes she did were just, who's celebrating birthdays?
	Like, as an emcee, I already done did that.
	And she's all, she's back down doing like, let's celebrate these birthdays again.
	That is the level of laziness that people should aspire to.
	She got paid so much money.
	Yeah.
	He starts taking tickets to start selling refreshments.
	So, so this is, this is absolutely nakedly emotionally manipulative, but that's what you're doing when you're running a show, right?
	This is a level of quality situation.
	Like your MC should be, Should be the one who has to fall on his sword not getting laughs because he's busy making the show better.
	This is something that I'm angry about!
	Let me tell you something about the kids these days!
	They don't know how to host a goddamn show!
	They don't know how to warm up a crowd, dammit!
	They don't!
	I'm telling you!
	I'm praying to get a magician out here because I know he'll at least ask for applause when the trick is done!
	That's all I'm saying!
	There's a lot to be said.
	I don't actually know whether he had an opening act or an emcee, to be perfectly honest, and his show was at six o'clock, and I get the feeling like he actually hit the stage at, well, I mean, he was late, but, you know, whatever time past six o'clock.
	I'm not convinced he had anyone doing that, so maybe that's what you're picking up on.
	Yeah, I mean, no, if he was Lauryn Hill late, we'd be in a different story, but it seems like he was just regular late.
	Yeah, Guns N' Roses, you know, it's that kind of situation.
	That's exactly where I was going.
	Lauryn Hill, that famous band member from Guns N' Roses.
	Oh, Axl Rose showing up very late and then wearing, as a St.
	Louisan, it's really fun, wearing a St.
	Louis sucks shirt because he showed up late and everybody got mad.
	It was a double down that was pretty incredible.
	Yeah, he's notorious.
	Also, like, well, don't be proud of... I don't care for music, so... Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't understand.
	I will say, if Lauryn Hill joined Guns N' Roses, I would be more likely to listen.
	That sounds incredible.
	Yeah!
	Yeah, we're about to go wandering down the COVID conspiracy pathway, and I will say this whole bit that we're about to cover is the main one used in the trailers for this special.
	So, this is the big chunk.
	It's the flagship, right?
	Now, it's been a weird couple of years, let's face it.
	It's been quite divisive, it's been confusing, we've lost a lot of trust in government, we've lost a lot of trust in one another.
	This is a time, I believe, for unity, an opportunity to look at things that unite us, rather than divide us.
	Let's take this opportunity to have an objective look, from a new perspective, at the events of the pandemic, that we may better understand them, and perhaps better understand each other.
	This is the COVID-19 time.
	Excuse me, no, I would like to leave now.
	No, thank you.
	I was here for a comedy show.
	Sorry, sir.
	Comedy, please?
	Patients in Wuhan are infected with a new form of coronavirus.
	I remember that bit.
	I remember thinking, who gives a fucking shit?
	Wuhan?
	I've never even fucking heard of it.
	What is fucking Wuhan?
	Tell me when it gets to a bit of China I'm fucking heard of.
	Then I might start caring.
	But Beijing?
	What's that?
	Wuhan?
	Have you ever heard of Wuhan before?
	Has it ever been mentioned?
	Wuhan Lab?
	What's that?
	Wu-Tang Clan Tribute Band?
	Fuck!
	I'm not interested.
	It's another country.
	I do not give a fuck.
	But then do you remember on the news when they start wearing them asthmatic suits and like wearing them space suits that they put on at the end of E.T.
	when they come and get E.T.
	off Elliot.
	They fucking leave E.T.
	with Elliot.
	They're meant to be together.
	They're fucking soul bonded.
	Leave him alone.
	No, no.
	Look at E.T.
	All chalky white down by the river.
	We gotta rescue him.
	Use government snide motherfuckers.
	Leave them two together.
	Why won't you let them live?
	I've got sidetracks.
	It's not about E.T.
	Okay, um all right you gotta go with there's there's two options and here's you gotta go with woohoo or who ham those that you miss that is unacceptable yeah and then to just do rants for a while but that Like, ranting is fine.
	The momentum is great.
	He's got that performance aspect down, but you have to land the plane, man.
	You gotta punch at the end.
	It's just disgusting whenever it fizzles out.
	Fizzled out!
	Gross!
	You're not going to enjoy the rest of this show, Jordan.
	I'm shocked at that.
	I'm shocked at that.
	Jordan, thoughts on picking up paper?
	The, like, I haven't memorized this part of the show.
	There's a time and a place for it.
	There's always a good time for, like, if you're reading text messages, there's always a good time to bring out your phone.
	It's usually smart to have it memorized, but, you know, you've got your phone so you can use it.
	Papers, papers are tough in 2024 or in the, you know, late stages.
	Maybe in the early 2000s, you can have, you know, you have your notebook, like Janine, you know, you got your Dana Goulds and stuff.
	But boy, nowadays, that's like, that's, that's hacky shit, man.
	You needed paper to remember that in January of 2020, Copen started.
	See, now, but here's the other thing.
	That's also the opportunity, though, to go over the top.
	If you brought out a newspaper, that's a solid bit.
	There you go!
	Boom!
	You've got the gigantic newspaper.
	You're already on the stand, Mike.
	You hold it up over the stand.
	You hide the mic.
	You read into it.
	What you've got written on there is like, keep going, buddy.
	You're great.
	You know?
	Yeah!
	Yeah, yeah.
	So, you know, we already get a little bit of gentle xenophobia out the gate, and from there he starts making fun of Australians and the French, and through his telling of it he's satirizing xenophobia, but in reality he's just engaging in it, acknowledging that it's xenophobic does not, you know, negate the xenophobia.
	So, jokes about Australians all living in a penal colony, jokes about the French being sexually promiscuous and, you know, this is Britain so we hate the French, blah blah blah blah blah.
	And then we finally get back on track.
	Now, what I've done just then, that's called xenophobia.
	That is the needless and pointless suspicion of other nations based on spurious and pointless data.
	Divisive way of looking at the world.
	Very stupid, unless done humorously.
	But at the beginning of the pandemic, you will recall that xenophobia was very much in play.
	And it took the form, an interesting form, I'd say, of a simple prefix.
	A simple prefix was where we was introduced to xenophobia during the pandemic.
	I noticed it first with the use of the word wet.
	In front of the word market.
	Because who don't fucking love a market?
	A market is a place of great joy and pleasure, isn't it?
	The market.
	Oh, down the market.
	What's your favourite market?
	You've got fucking good markets in Liverpool, haven't you?
	Love it down the market.
	Go down the market.
	I'm from Essex.
	We love the fucking market.
	The market's like a fucking outdoor cathedral.
	It's a bazaar, it's a souk, it's a place of trading, it's a place of life.
	Going down the market, pair of Gola trainers, 20 quid down the fucking market.
	Love it.
	Fucking fruit and veg stand, geese are doing this with a brown paper bag.
	Twiddling that round.
	Fucking hell, you're a working class hero, mate.
	Will you be my new dad?
	I fucking love that, don't you?
	Market, joyful place.
	But if you put the word wet in front of the word market... Eugh!
	What the fucking hell's going on down there?
	What is a wet market?
	That sounds disgusting!
	Yeah.
	You know where this coronavirus come from, don't you?
	Down the fucking wet market.
	Now that's what's caused it.
	No, they're down the wet market.
	They're different than us over there.
	They've got fucking wet markets.
	What do you eat?
	Domino's, Burger King, McDonald's, Fish and Chips, stuff like that?
	Not these fuckers.
	They're down the wet market eating bats all covered in cum.
	Guzzling it down.
	Crunching up little bat heads with all cum coming down their neck, guzzling it, smoking a fag whilst squatting, eating a bat, all covered in... It's gonna cause a fucking pandemic, isn't it?
	If you're eating a fucking bat, all smothered in cum, bat wing going in your mouth like that, down there, guzzling it down the wet market, all slop and gunk all over the floor, fucking all bat cum dribbling down you, it's gonna cause a fucking coronavirus pandemic.
	That's where it's fucking come from, them dirty parts down the fucking wet market.
	Yeah, but... What?
	But...
	What?! !
	Well it's just over here the Wuhan Institute of Virology where they're doing gain of function research
	on bat coronaviruses Woo um yeah that clip was a lot
	Question, what is this, the guy doing, what is that?
	Can you tell me what that is?
	So, if you buy fresh produce at a market, over here there will be a brown paper bag that they put it in and they'll twist it and like spin it round so it kind of, you know, seals the bag slightly in the brown paper bag.
	That's all that is.
	Thank you.
	Alright, I was really lost in the weeds on that bit.
	Alright, there we go.
	I don't get why they were covered in cum.
	Did I miss a part?
	Is it something to do with the paper bag?
	Crunchy, crunchy bats covered in cum.
	Yeah, that's, it's, it's...
	Really?
	I don't get why they were covered in cum.
	Did I miss part?
	Did I miss a part?
	Is it something to do with the paper bag?
	Does that...
	Why were they covered in cum?
	Is he jerking you off while he does the paper bag?
	You have to tell us.
	I'm not against the being covered in cum edition.
	You know, that as a tech, I just don't understand why it's there.
	I think that's supposed to be a reference to the joke that, oh, someone must have fucked a bat and therefore that created the pandemic.
	That's what it was!
	Did he mention it though earlier?
	No, he doesn't bring it up.
	No, he doesn't bring it up at all.
	He doesn't bring it up at all.
	I don't know, there was a South Park episode, you know, where that was the premise?
	I don't know!
	I don't know!
	I don't know.
	That's as much as we get from him, anyway.
	I'll tell you what.
	I remember 2004, and everybody in the comedy community thought Dane Cook was a genius.
	And let me tell you something.
	This is a... well, this is a Dane Cook!
	Yeah, this is a Dane Cook.
	Yes, 100%.
	That was exactly what I got to.
	Is he going to take off his shirt at the end and tell us to suck his back?
	No, he might as well have done the predator bit, you know, the like, you know, yeah, that one's good.
	I want that!
	Yeah, yeah, I get it.
	And the humping his stool a lot for way too long.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	There's no bad time to hump a stool.
	That's been going on since the Catskills, baby!
	Forgive the pun, but it would at least be on-brand for this guy, wouldn't it?
	Sure.
	It would fit.
	Russell does actually have a tendency to come back to cum-related jokes whenever he can.
	If you'll remember, Lauren, in his interview with Rainn Wilson, Rainn commented on Russell's breath, and after a brief pause, Russell responded that he'd been eating his own cum.
	As a for instance.
	It is like a fixation.
	It also went on!
	Way too long!
	And it felt very out of place, so at least that's consistent.
	There's Dwight from The Office, right?
	Yes, correct.
	Now, I know he's in a religion, but I don't know anything about it, so I have no jokes.
	Just to be safe.
	I'm really worried about being like, the Baha'is, am I right?
	So your response to Baha'i is, Baha'i.
	There you go.
	Thank you for jumping on that grenade.
	All day, all day.
	It's right there in front of you.
	I just don't want to get the tweet that's like actually the massacre of the Baha'is that began in Last week in Peru, and you're like, oh, I just didn't know the word.
	I mean, here's the problem, Baha.
	You got to raise your profile if you don't want us to make fun of you, right?
	That's the rule.
	Like we used to make fun of Scientology, and now we're all a little afraid.
	That's right.
	They raise their profile.
	Because I want to be Tom Cruise.
	Absolutely.
	They're definitely trying.
	Rainn Wilson was one of the more palatable things that we've had to cover.
	A couple of troubling moments, but mostly more reasonable than any of Russell's other guests, for the most part.
	Well, it's a progression, too, because when he recorded this, there is still very much a contrast with what he's actually saying today, right now, is Miles away from even this claim is like more vague than I'm assuming we're going into a debunk of this kind of claim.
	Yeah, yeah, I will.
	Miles away from where he's at now.
	It's very true.
	It's far less overt at this stage in time.
	Yeah.
	The Wuhan Institute of Virology wasn't engaging in gain-of-function research, meaning they weren't developing bioweapons, and while the jury is still unfortunately out on the precise origin of COVID-19, the science still points to it having originated at that wet market in Wuhan, as the first many, many cases of COVID-19 were traced back to there.
	We have covered this before on our show, in the episode Brand, Rand, Iran, and Wuhan, but Russell is a huge proponent of the Chinese lab leak conspiracy theory, Which strikes me as somewhat ironic, given that he just went on a whole thing about how xenophobia is stupid, before promoting an inherently xenophobic conspiracy theory that has led to violence and discrimination against Chinese people worldwide.
	And that was a weird misdirect, because to me, it felt like the joke was about the xenophobia that was a problem, and I was like, valid point, yes.
	Like, to call it a wet market, we have those, they're called seafood markets.
	It's not that weird, that othering Like, if he just would've landed the xenophobia's bad bit, I think it'd be way less problematic than, oh, we're gonna usher in a whole extra layer of xenophobia that's actually been much worse?
	Well, I think the joke just works better backwards.
	I think the joke works better backwards because the joke works better if you start with saying like, oh, so here's what we're getting.
	The news is telling us that there is a virus lab.
	Oh, that's totally it.
	100% going to be there.
	They do what?
	That's totally where it comes from.
	Then you switch over to the wet market and now you've got something where you can take Well, is mundane.
	See, like, that's the problem with the point of view on the humor is that they're looking at the wrong thing as mundane.
	You know, he's looking at the wet market as the mundanity and the viral lab as the interesting part.
	Whereas in comedy, what is a viral lab?
	Oh, these doctors and nerds are doing stuff.
	Like, fuck that.
	That's not funny.
	You throw them away.
	They're boring.
	And then you move into people fucking bats in the wet market.
	That makes sense.
	And then you can go into the, oh, what I just did was xenophobia, it's stupid, blah, blah, blah.
	Yeah, yeah, that works perfectly.
	100%.
	Russell, if you're watching, like, take some fucking notes.
	Jordan just gets a writer's credit on something.
	It is, like, the longer I go on, the more I'm like, maybe the only thing I'm actually good at is punch-up.
	Nobody pays me for it.
	I do punch-up for free, and nobody, it's terrible.
	Yeah, we'll keep an eye on the credits to Russell's next special.
	So most of the clip that I just played is actually on YouTube, which did surprise me given the content, but crucially it does cut off right there, but the bit is not finished.
	When they're deliberately making bat coronaviruses more infectious?
	I mean, it's a bit of a coincidence, isn't it, that there is a Wuhan Institute of Virology where they're making bat coronaviruses more infectious and that is the place where this pandemic started?
	Is it more than just a coincidence?
	Listen!
	They've got bats.
	They are fucking smothered in cum.
	They've got these little bamboo cages with these fucking armadillo things in them and they ain't got a shell on.
	They're fucking eating that as well.
	Slimy little fucking fish with their eyes on.
	They're guzzling that down.
	There's cum going down their necks.
	They're crunching up the little bat.
	There's all foaming bat cum all coming out of their fucking mouth.
	There's spunk fucking everywhere up the wall.
	They're skidding about in that stuff.
	See, here we go.
	Now you're just preaching.
	This is where jokes lose.
	Like, you're weak now.
	where our part of American firm are proven to invest, where the files from January 2019 were mysteriously deleted.
	See, here we go.
	Isn't it at least worth considering if even by accident it's possible
	that there was some sort of accident at the laboratory?
	This is where jokes lose, like you're weak now.
	You've lost.
	Listen!
	(audience laughing)
	Am I fucking spunk on a fucking TV show?
	He lands it on his opinion.
	It's not a joke.
	His opinion's not a joke.
	Right.
	So that's January?
	That's where he lands it. He lands it on his opinion. It's not a joke.
	His opinion's not a joke. Right.
	So that's January?
	Oh for fuck's sake.
	Seems very pleased with himself.
	(sucking)
	It's just kind of the hacky stuff.
	That's kind of the trend I was in.
	Like, oh, I've heard this before.
	And I think that that's part of getting maybe a lazy way to get an audience on your side is like, well, you've probably heard this joke in some form before.
	And you think it's funny.
	So we're going to put it back.
	And this is more of a trend I saw throughout the Special.
	And I was hoping that, you know, like maybe you guys could nail down kind of where the jokes have come from before, but also it could just be memes that hit.
	No, I mean, this is a traditional format.
	This is, this is kind of like, um, I would say the earliest proponent of this was kind of Sam Kennison, you know, when he would, yeah.
	When he would go on these kinds of rants, you would get the feeling, you know, you would know that man was a former preacher.
	That dude fucking preached, you know?
	And so the humor for him didn't come from his spectacular writing.
	It came from the dynamics.
	Yeah.
	So when you're doing this kind of thing, the problem is he's over-relying on, come to do a lot of work.
	As far as humor is concerned, which is weak, you need to add a little bit more variety.
	And something that, again, you have to misdirect.
	You have to get people off of what they're used to, you know?
	And so, it's just a weak version of that, you know?
	It's like everything he's doing is real hack.
	It's just hack shit.
	This is trash.
	It seems like, I felt like, I've heard all of this before, and I feel like if you can put You know, like a certain point of view, a conspiratorial point of view, into the lens of like, this is the rhythm of a joke.
	And then it gives people like, oh, this is when I'm excited.
	I'm hearing, you know, like, this guy's saying what we're all thinking.
	And then we can have this kind of exuberant moment together when really he's just saying, listen, which means you know, when to laugh and react.
	Right, right, right.
	Okay, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And again, it's very clearly an applause cue, not a laugh cue, right?
	Because how much comedy to make you forget science isn't, it's not a joke, it's not a surprise, it's also not recognizable, right?
	The audience is, and this is what we see with a lot of right-wing humor, right?
	Is that it is now, instead of jokes having setups and punchlines for the right more often, They have outrage and your opinion.
	It's a call-and-response.
	Yeah, it's call-and-response.
	Right.
	They're more revivalists than, you know... A lot of crossover in their audience.
	That actually adds up.
	Absolutely.
	Adds up and, oh no.
	I mean, the funniest and most talented performers of their day, you know, the people who sold out live was Marjo.
	That kind of stuff, so...
	Uh, it makes, it makes sense.
	There's a tradition.
	It's just hard because, you know, we, we think of them as standup comedians because they call themselves that.
	Uh, but you, you know, the fruits bear.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So the reason he says, you know, so that's January is because yeah, he is taking us, um, on his timeline of COVID-19.
	And well, I say that he's more just kind of using these as, as jumping off points.
	Um, because like, can anyone guess, or does anyone remember, um, you know, how far we get from January 2020?
	February!
	Slightly further than that, but not far off.
	The last one is May 2020.
	That's how far we get in his, in his COVID-19 timeline.
	He needs a paper to get to May?! !
	Yes, he does.
	Why?
	Good question.
	Good question.
	I would ask him if I could.
	Yeah, he makes a whole big thing of this.
	Oh, the whole DARPA thing was just straight bullshit, by the way.
	Someone was playing make-em-ups.
	Russell Parrott on his then YouTube channel, and you can tell how little he understands it because he described DARPA as an American firm.
	But for the record, DARPA funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology was discontinued in 2018.
	Anyway, for better or for worse.
	They'd already made the most contagious Bat Pirates.
	That's it.
	They'd already bottled the bat cum.
	And that's where we go from there.
	So for better or for worse, the next clip to me feels like vintage Russell Brand stand-up comedy.
	Time for February now.
	February.
	The trickster month.
	I am February.
	Do I have 28 days?
	Or 29?
	I am Febry!
	Pancake day?
	Valentine's day?
	Once every four?
	Marry me mister, marry me mister, switch it around we shall!
	For I am Febry!
	Try and spell me!
	Februaral?
	Februaral?
	Is that how you spell it?
	Wow.
	I feel like I'm 15 again watching that and what I don't fully understand is why he felt the need to dedicate a whole bit to the month of February and ending in how it's spelled.
	Like, I try to view creative endeavours with an editor's lens and I just don't understand how this bit made it to the final product, you know?
	In that writer's room, that hypothetical writer's room, why did this bit survive?
	Well, I mean, a lot of the times if you've got a well-written... Okay, so one of the things Chris Rock used to do before he got too famous was he would do, you know, sets at the Underground or something like that.
	Where he's not performing.
	He's doing just Chris Rock talking, you know?
	And so he would deliver all of his material that he'd written out, and if it can get a laugh without him being Chris Rock at it, then he knows that he's got something that, when he adds Chris Rocking at it, it's going to be elevated to something, you know, truly amazing.
	So a lot of guys who maybe forget the first part, can can think oh if I if I just if I sell it hard enough and it's not it's believe me it's not the first time I've seen somebody as long as you just sell it that fucking hard there's a subset of the world that's like you know what desperation truly is funny and that is the most desperate saying I've seen danced that was desperate performance you know
	And this is coming from somebody who's done... I used to sing D'Angelo on stage, believe me.
	I know Desperate, all right?
	Yeah, but did you have a team of writers that were working with you?
	Oh, no.
	Even worse.
	That's all homegrown.
	Well, he does the... We'll see.
	I would pay to see it.
	Yeah, there's a frantic marionette for listeners that aren't watching.
	That's how he ends his bits.
	That's kind of his...
	The cue to transition is like, and yeah, there's just more kind of marionetting.
	The gesture physicality kind of situation.
	Yeah.
	And again, as someone who watched the whole special, one of the things that really strikes you that you don't come across in the clips is that every joke ends with the most manic act out.
	No matter how small the bit, even when there's not a bit, right?
	Every bit ends with him doing some insane, like, jangle-jangle dance to celebrate the end of him saying a sentence.
	Like, it just feels... I did it.
	It feels exhausting.
	Yeah.
	It feels... I'm exhausted as an audience member, like, a third of the way into this thing, and he still does it every time.
	Yeah, I got it, at least from the clips, and that's exactly what I'm saying.
	This is the tedious part.
	This is the part that the audience is like, I'm into this, and yay, and we're reacting.
	But just watching it, you're like, well, I've got to wait through this to get to the next part.
	Okay.
	And it's still happening.
	I don't know if you guys ever had this privilege, nay, this honor.
	Did you see Jeff Foxworthy ever do You Might Be a Redneck after that was his established bit?
	Like on TV?
	On TV, or local, I don't know.
	He probably came to England, right, and did it there.
	It probably wouldn't make sense for him to do it in England.
	That was an era.
	Yeah, he did that bit towards the end of that bit As though he had been sentenced to it.
	And that is what it looks like when Russell Brand physically, you can see him be like, all right, Russell, here we go.
	Time to dance the dance.
	You're reaching a colon or a pyramid.
	He only know the last words of my sentence!
	Every time.
	It's just a lot.
	It's a lot.
	I'm hearing all of you are jaded and you should be more grateful that performers exist.
	That's what I'm hearing.
	I'm hearing that we have danced too much for you, and that as a whole, we need to remove ourselves.
	You've gotten too much.
	We need to go back to when Catskills comedy was enough for people, you know?
	You just walk out on stage, I'm Danny!
	I'm Fred!
	And that would be it!
	That was it!
	That was the whole act!
	That's all you needed!
	A little bit of a banjo, a little bit of a soft shoe, and that is funny, okay?
	So we got a moratorium.
	None of you get well-written jokes until you can enjoy the easy stuff again, all right?
	I've been feeling that.
	I feel like we're under that punishment already.
	Here's my problem.
	Here's what I'm learning here, is I've had to work too hard my entire life to be funny, and this is what I could have done.
	This is what you could have done?
	That dude's famous.
	He's been in fucking movies.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I just like it when you yell.
	I think you could have just yelled.
	The old bits.
	Yeah, yeah.
	You'd be a multi-multi-millionaire like the man on stage.
	There we go.
	Well, Jordan is a multi-millionaire.
	We all know that.
	Well, this is very true.
	I am a negative thousandaire!
	Just a negative thousandaire.
	Oh, you must be rich.
	No, I mean, I've gotten my student loans down into the tens of thousands and I'm feeling pretty proud.
	There it is!
	Mid to late 30s!
	So to preface what's coming next, there's a fitness guy here in the UK called Joe Wicks.
	He was already doing well, but when the pandemic hit, he started doing a YouTube show called P.E.
	with Joe to try and keep kids active during lockdown.
	I'm sorry, what?
	What is wrong with you people?
	Have fun!
	His own TV show and an MBE awarded to him by the royal family. There's nothing particularly nefarious about yeah
	We have a royal family, yeah, I think that's that's kind of been the room from the beginning not for long
	Ah, fingers fucking crossed.
	Um, yeah, there's nothing particularly nefarious about Joe Wicks that I'm aware of, but he's got long curly hair and a bit of a beard and looks a bit like a much more conventionally attractive and younger Russell, which is where we come in on this clip.
	March!
	Joe Wicks.
	Now, Joe Wicks is difficult for me.
	Joe Wicks, the nation's PE teacher, presents me with a lot of challenges because I look a lot like him.
	I'd look a lot like him if I hadn't spent my 20s smoking crack and heroin.
	For me, looking at Joe Wicks is like looking into a sarcastic mirror.
	Something's in, she's gotta dance.
	Mm-hmm.
	Is that what a mirror does?
	He's a lovely bloke, he's one of your own.
	But it causes me a lot of problems.
	I'm going round his house, as a matter of fact, to do some of that Wim Hof stuff.
	You know Wim Hof?
	So I'm going to stop this here because, and I don't want to make this too much of a digression, but are either of you particularly familiar with who Wim Hof is?
	The Iceman?
	and he's asked to do an ice bath in Joe Wicks' garden.
	So I'm gonna stop this here 'cause I don't wanna make this too much of a digression,
	but- - Breathing's not magic.
	Are either of you particularly familiar with who Wim Hof is, the Iceman?
	No, he's- - Only one Iceman, baby.
	(everyone laughs)
	You all know it, come on.
	Val Kilmer, Val Kilmer.
	I like Wim Hof because Wim Hof is like a new cutting edge pseudoscience
	that hasn't quite, it's only for your friend whose divorce
	was a little too hard on him, right?
	And it's so casually worked in.
	We spend all our time being like, fucking crystals in Reiki, am I right?
	And then you're having lunch with someone for an hour before they're like, I've been practicing breathing.
	And you're like, oh fuck, you got me!
	You got me!
	Breathing in ice baths.
	You're like, okay, we've never had these before.
	Okay.
	Well, he also manages to make ice baths really expensive.
	It's a simple thing that they figured out how to make it highfalutin and more expensive to even access.
	Well, because, I mean, money, right?
	So, Russell loves Wim Hof, and Russell has a festival in Wales every year called Community, and Wim Hof was one of last year's headliners as well as one of 2024's headliners as well.
	He's the Metallica of the Straight Edge Hippie Wellness Festivals, it would seem.
	The main thing that Wim Hof advocates is ice baths and breathing exercises, Which on their own are completely fine, and there are some suggested health benefits to doing both of those things.
	The problem arises when not only is Wim Hof claiming that his specific way of doing these things can cure cancer, but he's been instructing people to do both of them at the same time, which includes holding your breath for a really long period while partially submerged in freezing water.
	There are videos of Russell specifically doing those breathing exercises while sat in an ice bath and This can lead to what's called shallow water blackout where the person doing the breathing exercises Unexpectedly loses consciousness and then drowns and the death toll thus far is up to at least 15 people last I checked There are pending lawsuits against the guy But he's making millions from his Wim Hof method in combination with a pyramid scheme slash cult he's got going on on the side And here all we get from Russell is, ah, he's a crazy Dutch guy who wants to take us to new planes of consciousness.
	And, well, the problem is he keeps taking people to new planes of unconsciousness and then death.
	But, okay, let's work him into the stand-up, everybody.
	This is his packaging, too, where it's like, isn't he a cute old magic man?
	And then encourages more people to do the thing that's like, yeah, I guess you can get really high if you almost die.
	I mean, it wouldn't be the first time that I've almost died to get really high.
	Yeah, I was gonna say.
	Tale as old as time, really.
	Have you heard of Wim Hof and icebathing before this beautiful moment?
	How much money for you to icebath in Wim Hof?
	I still genuinely don't understand what it is I'm supposed to be doing.
	I'm supposed to just get into an ice bath and hold my breath?
	Yeah, and you just hyperventilate for a little bit.
	That's fine.
	I don't know.
	Of all the things that people do, like, my bar is so fucking low now.
	Like, my bar is like...
	You're not chopping off your own foot or someone else's hand.
	And it can be someone else's foot.
	That's how low the bar is.
	You can't fuck with somebody else's hand.
	They need that.
	It's a low bar.
	So if all you're doing is getting people into ice baths, fucking go to it.
	Fire.
	Fine, but your name is Wim Hof, change it!
	I keep thinking like Wimmy Hof and I'm like, ah, that's so close!
	Anyway, that's a little bit of an aside, but I didn't want that to go unaddressed.
	But let's get back to Russell's feelings on Joe Wicks, and it gets a little bit weird.
	I don't... I don't like socialising.
	I can do this.
	I can, like, talk to 700 fucking nutters in Liverpool, or one mentally ill junkie, one-on-one.
	That's it.
	Ten people, dinner party.
	Oh, Jesus Christ.
	I fucking hate it.
	Don't you?
	Don't you panic at a dinner party?
	Aren't you nervous of small talk?
	Oh, shit, small talk.
	What do you even say?
	Petrol!
	Like, don't know what you're supposed to do.
	So, if I go round Joe Wicks' one, there's the small talk at the door.
	Fucking hate the small talk.
	Then there's the bit where I go in his house and I've got to go, you know, you don't have to compliment people in their house, innit?
	"Oh, this is my house."
	"Well done, Joe Wicks. Well done, well done. You're not poor anymore. Nice work. Well done, son."
	Then there'll be the bit where I have to go in the garden and there's the ice bath, right?
	And then obviously we've got to do it in our pants, innit?
	An ice bath.
	You can't do it in your fucking pants.
	You're gonna have to get in there, in your pants.
	There'll be a bit, won't there, where I'm in my pants and Joe Wicks is in his pants.
	And then there's gonna have to be the bit where I have to go, "Oh, Joe, look at your body."
	Aren't you so beautiful?
	Look at your gorgeous body.
	You have to do it.
	It's like an obligation.
	You can't just ignore it, can you?
	Can you?
	You've got to mention it.
	You've got to go for all of the facets.
	Ooh, look at your body, Joe.
	Ooh, isn't it nice what you've done?
	Well, I've decided I'm not fucking doing that bit.
	I've decided when it gets to that bit, I'm just going to look over there at some trees or whatever for that whole bit and just talk about nature till it's over.
	What are they, Joe?
	Conifers?
	All year round.
	Miracle, isn't it?
	Where does the intelligence come from?
	Where does the fractal design come from?
	Amazing.
	Miracle, really, Joe.
	I'm not looking, Joe!
	I'm not looking at your perfect pecs.
	Or your little jelly-top nipples.
	Or your abs.
	Your six-pack.
	They look like that caterpillar cake that can get in a think-safe way.
	You know that caterpillar cake?
	Ridgeback caterpillar cake.
	Not looking, Joe, at those lines, that one line that side, one line that side, going in your pants.
	The cum gutters.
	He likes Rick and Morty, too.
	I'm so mad about this.
	I have a personal issue with this because I wrote a bit in... You're still gonna die, Joe!
	I wrote a bit in 2010, all right?
	And it was about D'Angelo.
	This is my D'Angelo bit.
	I did a D'Angelo bit for probably a good six years.
	Right?
	And it talks about the untitled How Does It Feel music video, which is him essentially, you know, being the sexiest man alive, right?
	Now, Russell is doing the whole gay panic version of it, so he's trying to push people into thinking that it's strange for him to be physically attracted to D'Angelo.
	But for me, the joke is so much like, fuck yeah, I'm into it, right?
	And once everybody else noticed, like, the punchline is essentially is that those muscles right there are a runway to a great dick, you know?
	Like, that's what it is.
	And then people started saying cum gutters, which is fucking terrible.
	Rick and Morty.
	It's terrible.
	It is genuinely not interesting.
	It's a terrible phrase.
	It uses the K sound wrong, and then the two Ts are awful.
	It is awful.
	I hate it, I hate it so much.
	That, cum gutters, and when anybody uses the word badly, I fucking lose my goddamn mind.
	If you use the word badly, you're wrong.
	You're wrong!
	I badly disagree.
	You're poorly speaking!
	I watched this right after I had seen Pete Holmes' new special, I Am Not For Everyone, and what I think is really interesting is- Oh my god, he doesn't have a new special, does he?
	He does!
	No.
	Oh God.
	Pete Holmes has a really good version of this joke about his friend Kumail Nanjiani.
	And so you get a beautiful contrast in comedy lesson, right?
	Which is like, Pete has something to say about his own body and his own experience of being loved and lovable.
	And Russell's just like, can you imagine what if I wanted to fuck this guy?
	Yeah, I can't help but feel that when the question, are the straights okay, is asked, it's clips like this that us queer folk are usually pointing at.
	Like, there's something, there's something going on underneath this.
	It doesn't seem that relatable.
	Like, oh, you're both in your underwear in like a really famous hot guy's backyard and it's hard to look at him.
	Happens to me all the time, Lauren.
	It's just me then, I guess.
	I met Jordan at QED, don't you understand, Lauren?
	Oh, I forgot.
	You're right.
	I'm out of pocket.
	It's been a long time since I've been shirtless in public.
	But then I said cum gutters and he uppercutted me and I fell asleep.
	God dammit.
	I'm so sorry.
	It's just so terrible.
	To be fair, they were the city cum gutters.
	They weren't the lines on a human.
	They were... Manchester has city cum gutters, everyone.
	Oh yeah, it was necessary.
	There's just so much come.
	We're going to move on a touch and get back to some actual pandemic talk.
	So you guys all had the clapping for key workers thing during the pandemic.
	That wasn't just a British thing.
	And you know, Russell has some points to make.
	I love the NHS.
	Any NHS staff, key workers, teachers in here tonight?
	People that work in the fire service?
	Hello!
	Love them.
	Fantastic people.
	But I didn't like the clap for carers, and I didn't like the clap for carers from the beginning because I thought it was too much like Blue Peter.
	Like, you know, too imposed.
	I don't want to be all like, oh, I liked Radiohead before you'd even heard of them.
	No, no, it's not like that.
	It's just I thought something sly was going on.
	You know, I love the NHS, but I feel like if you love the NHS, how about giving people that work for the NHS a proper fucking pay rise?
	How about treating them with respect?
	How about not slyly vulcanising the NHS?
	Let's give it up for the troops.
	Let's give it up for the troops, everybody.
	You know what, while we're here, let's give it up for the troops.
	No, look, if you really love the NHS, every Thursday, 8pm, go out on your doorstep and clap your hands.
	And if you're really into them, you can take some pots and pans out as well.
	I should have the desired effect.
	The reason I didn't like Clap For Carers is because, do you remember on the news, on the mainstream news, they would flash around and show the other people doing it?
	Like, there's Boris Johnson doing Clap For Carers.
	There's Charles and Camilla outside their house doing... I've never fucking forgiven her, have you, Camilla?
	but every time I see her I'm like Diana you thought the pandemic material was over
	If you love the NHS, act like you love the NHS.
	Don't just use it when it's convenient to rally support.
	Then sack staff, not pay them properly and treat them like shit.
	That's what I'm saying.
	Run for office.
	I'm at a comedy show!
	Comedy show!
	Clap, clap, clap.
	Still?
	Okay.
	Wow.
	Dude.
	Jordan, we're working too hard.
	We're working too hard on our podcasts.
	We should just be... I don't even have to pick a movie next week.
	I could just be like, hey everybody, how about a little something for trans rights?
	And then I pause, because I assume everyone will be clapping at home.
	Yeah, yeah.
	We're working too hard!
	I remember there was a time, there was a legitimate time where bookers were occasionally pairing with these like data people about laughs per minute and so they would legitimately go like they would go through your clip and they'd be like you need to average eight laughs per minute otherwise you're not good enough to work at this club or stuff like that.
	Wow.
	And yeah and I mean you know like Honestly, for young comics, there's a part of me that says, that's not a terrible thing.
	You know, not everybody has the ability of Dana Gould to draw a bit out for three and a half minutes for one punch.
	You know, like, it better be a good punch.
	That kind of thing.
	Yeah.
	But yeah, the laughs per minute here is low.
	It's low!
	Whoa!
	Lots of applause per minute, though.
	That's getting pretty high.
	I think there's something to be said about, like, if I were British, maybe some of this would be funnier.
	I think there's something within still being mad about Princess Di.
	I think it's long enough now that it can come back to be funny as, like, really?
	You're still mad about Princess Di?
	I think there's a way to do that.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I think that there would be a way to make that funny.
	It's just not what's happening here, unfortunately.
	No, no, no.
	It has to be specific.
	Like, it has to be a specific way that Camilla is responsible for Princess Di, right?
	So like, oh, that is Camilla, you know, can't brother that flat tire, you know, like that something along those lines.
	Or it's like you're implying that she directly killed her.
	Yeah, or I was gonna say later you have like a shot of the Queen and it's like, I still haven't forgiven her, there's paparazzi that drove a car into the or- and then it's like a callback bit.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	That works.
	Yeah, there's a way to do it, but actually yeah, this is just a 25 year old bit.
	I mean, honestly, sometimes I've made the joke that I'm still mad about Princess Diana.
	I'll be at home with my wife, we'll be watching some British shit and I'll be like, ah, they killed her!
	But in a comedy special that you wrote ahead of time on purpose, it feels a little like, guys, in the middle of it, I'd love to read you a tweet that I thought was great, just so you know.
	Oh no, that was Ricky Gervais' special.
	Lauren, you're getting your right wingers confused.
	So I do, to bring it back, I do completely agree with Russell's sentiments, especially about having a fondness for the NHS.
	It was a Welshman who pioneered the NHS, so I do feel possibly even more weird nationalistic pride in that institution than most British people.
	And Russell says he loves it too, which does make it strange to me that he doesn't seem to want any Americans to have that same system.
	Because his political alliances are alt-right, and it's fundamentally people on the left trying to get some form of socialised medicine in the States, any sort of progress or conversation that happens, either from Biden's government or left-wing politicians in general, and Russell is immediately shitting on it.
	Either saying that it's a lie, or, hey, this thing doesn't really change anything functionally, we need complete systemic overhaul instead.
	Except in Russell's view, it's a binary decision.
	Either you change the whole thing or you don't do anything at all.
	And complete systemic overhaul seems pretty tricky, so I guess we've just got to stick to the current system that we've got and not change anything for now.
	Okay, good.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	What I'm pointing out is hypocrisy in service of profit, and it's something I do literally every week on our show.
	And good lord, do I wish hypocrisy mattered to the right wing.
	It's an inconsistent system, right?
	People tried really hard on those movies, Eli.
	I was like, alright, well I guess I'm done then!
	I think it's a fundamental misunderstanding of what hypocrisy is, because...
	They're just lying.
	You know?
	In order to be a hypocrite, you would have to believe one thing and then behave in the complete opposite manner.
	Whereas I can just tell you that I... I can tell you anything, you know?
	But I'm not being a hypocrite because I'm behaving the way I believe.
	I'm lying to you.
	Yeah.
	You know, like that's kind of the thing that I've seen throughout my entire life is the idea that everybody is like, oh, well, you know, like Jon Stewart, you know, like that whole era of pointing out Republicans say one thing and do another.
	Oh, my God.
	Remember when people gave a fuck?
	Yeah.
	That was hilarious.
	That was hilarious.
	I'm shitting my pants remembering that people were like, yeah, you get him, Jon Stewart.
	Amazing.
	Yeah.
	But yeah, like that was because people thought that it mattered what they, they thought that they believed what they were saying, which is hilarious.
	Like you can't be a hypocrite if you're just lying to people.
	Yeah.
	I liked Dan's line from his talk at QED.
	Dan said, the first thing you need to know about Alex Jones is that he's a liar.
	The second thing you need to know about Alex Jones is that he's a liar.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Like it's just, it's just, they're not telling the truth.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So we're gonna skip ahead to the final parts of the special, and Eli, both you and I have young kids, right?
	My daughter April is three, and how old is Max now, actually?
	Almost four, yeah, through two three-year-olds.
	Cool, cool, okay.
	So I think we're both pretty aware that raising kids isn't, and probably shouldn't be, an easy thing to do.
	That said, some of Russell's perspectives on being a parent are, shall we say, less than positive.
	I'm in a family.
	That in itself is a system, that in itself is an institution, that in itself is a challenge and I'll leave you with this thought and this story because like most of you I went camping in lockdown, right?
	Did you go camping?
	You had to go fucking camping.
	Once you've got kids you might as well go camping because your holidays are going to be shit anyway, ain't it?
	Because your kids will fucking ruin your holiday like they ruin everything else.
	I know.
	That's what they do.
	They don't let you be happy.
	All you've done by going on holiday is you've given up your tools that you can control those little fuckers with.
	All the things I swore I would never do as a parent.
	Like, is there any greater disjunct than the disjunct between who you say you're going to be as a parent before you have them fuckers, and then who you are as a parent once they show up.
	Me, this is me before kids.
	Oh, parents won't let their kids look at screens.
	That ain't right, is it?
	You should not let your children look at screens.
	No, that's the devil's lantern, that.
	Manipulation.
	I'm not fucking letting our kids watch screens.
	No, when we have children, I will entertain them with folk tales from around the world.
	Come learn of the indigenous spirits, come thee.
	When I have kids, I won't give them chocolate nor sugar.
	What?
	The brown and white, the smack and cracker baby world.
	Fuck that.
	Now I've got them I'm like I'll stick Netflix on and give it a fucking rollo will ya?
	That's not a bad bit.
	That's not a bad bit.
	There's a couple of weak spots in it.
	The first weak spot being folktales.
	You can go so much weirder and more specific with that, and that would really improve the joke quite a bit.
	Because folktales, how far away is that from just reading them a book, you know?
	You've got to go with something truly like, when I'm a parent, I'll go even More over the top.
	I'll make water slides for you and that's what we'll do.
	Every day we'll go from the top floor to the bottom floor on a water slide, you know?
	That's the way you escalate that to the point where it kind of improves your humor.
	I mean, as far as, yeah... This bit has been done so much.
	The thing that's different about Russell doing this bit, and I thought about it a lot because it's the last thing of the special and I thought about it a lot, is like...
	When good comedians do this bit, and I don't know if anyone's seen Berbiglia's new special, Old Man in the Pool, where he talks about sort of coming into the love of parenthood.
	There's a lot in the early, especially early in that special and in the last one, the new one, which is a confusing sentence to say, about the difficulties of parenthood, especially from your first person perspective.
	But what you need to pepper any of this with is the joy of parenting, the love you have for your kids, and Russell never does that.
	Like, he just talks with great disdain about a child.
	There's space for that.
	I think there's meta bit, right?
	Like if it's like, but of course, right?
	You don't have to, I'm not saying you have to break the bit on stage and be like, I would never say this, but you just, I need a wink, right?
	I need a moment with us where you're like, right?
	Well, this is something that comes up in the show that's, that is, I just assume maybe, and this is me filling in the gaps, which is another thing that we talk about all the time is like, I'm giving the benefit of the doubt.
	Like, Oh, just, uh, somewhere off, off camera, he said really nice things about his kids and that he likes them.
	One of the nights he said he likes his kids.
	Yeah!
	And they just didn't make the cut.
	They picked this one.
	There is an ongoing thesis within our show that Russell does kind of hate his kids a little bit
	and he's not a particularly great parent.
	Like, this is possibly best exemplified by him proudly
	telling media outlets that his wife won't let him be alone with their kids for 24 hours.
	For numerous reasons I think she has good instincts
	Um, and the only times he ever brings up his kids on his show is to complain about them, despite the fact that it's his wife doing almost all of the work without the help of a nanny, by the way, taking care of, at this point, a 7-year-old, 6-year-old, and now a 6- to 8-month-old baby.
	But yeah, you've got kids.
	This is tough for me because my problem here is that he had kids, not that he's a terrible father.
	You guys can give a shit, but I hate children.
	I really, like, genuinely hate them.
	I think that might have been his problem too.
	I think that maybe you're identifying an issue that he's not too fond of.
	George, imagine having three kids at this point and this might be your special.
	Imagine having another white kid in this country.
	Like, oh, we're running out!
	They're all being grape replaced.
	So my problem is, my problem is just like, you know, don't have them.
	Because the hard part about the comic telling you about his kids bit, you know, you've got, you've got, I can't begin to describe the number of examples of the like, I'll never have kids, you know, Patton Oswalt's Journey from I'll never have kids, you know, etc.
	That whole thing.
	Or you've got, you know, you go back further and you've got like your Tim Allen in the 90s doing like, hey, kids are stupid.
	You know, like that kind of thing.
	So there is a spot for like a relentlessly shitty father.
	Well, Cosby was on the other hand, the guy who was like, I love my kids so much.
	Here's the fun stuff that we can all share.
	Kids are weird.
	You know, that kind of thing.
	But there's plenty of guys who are like, I fucking hate children.
	One of my, oh my god, one of my friends, Matt Elfring, he used to do this character called Teddy Beers, and he was, you know, he never became anything more than just, you know, at a comic we would do open mics together, and we would just sit in the back and write jokes for Teddy Beers that are just non-stop, like his catchphrase is, I need another beers, and it would just be the most relentlessly dark, Like, oh, my son Chip, my son Chip, I call him that because he needs to lay off the chocolate chips, that fat fuck.
	Oh, I need another beers.
	Like, it would be just that.
	We love this.
	We love this.
	It was so funny.
	When are you suing?
	You can't actually do that.
	You can't do that on stage.
	But as far as comic bits in the back, that's about as good as it gets.
	The what if I did a character that was this bit is the hardest I have ever laughed with any comedian.
	Anytime we can get into the dumb- like, that's the thing about comics is as much as we appreciate well-crafted bits, the dumber I can get with other comics, like, the more times we can figure out different ways to convince the other person to say poop, it is never not funny.
	It's just how it is.
	Well, that's the fun that feels like is missing from conservative comedy, right?
	Like, is the community.
	They're not funny.
	They're not funny.
	Well, because again, humor is, to put it shortly, empathy plus surprise most of the time, right?
	And if you have no empathy, you just never say anything recognizable at the end of your joke.
	The end of your joke is, There's a lab in Wuhan funded by the American Institute of Music or whatever the fuck you said it was.
	Yeah, I mean, the fundamental aspect of becoming a good comic is developing a point of view.
	And in order to develop a point of view, you have to understand many different types of point of view along the way in order to just figure out which one's yours.
	You know, by determining what you aren't, you gain your own point of view.
	Everybody starts out with, like, you know, oh, that person's just doing Hedberg.
	Or that person's just doing this.
	Or that person's just doing Dane fucking Cook.
	And if you're any good, over time, you know, you become who you are.
	As opposed to, you know, very few people have ever walked on stage and had their point of view intact.
	And the ones who have, I've met several of them, and I want them all to die.
	They're brilliant, genius, level people.
	Larry the cable guy.
	No, like Josh Johnson.
	Josh Johnson in Chicago was like fucking 1920 and he walked up at an open mic and you're like, shit, this guy's funny.
	This guy's fucking funny and I hate him.
	And now he's, you know, now he's on TV and shit.
	And he doesn't remember my name.
	That's how funny he is!
	The friend who was so funny it hurt.
	That's a beautiful experience of comic-dom.
	Because we're all human offstage, right?
	And like, if you get into a good scene, you make the right friends, it's actually a pretty chill time.
	And like, everyone's joking around.
	They're like, hey, here's Mitch.
	And you're like, huh, Mitch chose to wear a button-down shirt.
	And then Mitch just goes up there.
	And you're just like, fuck, Mitch is just talking.
	It's Salieri watching Mozart.
	He's just taking dictation from God.
	There's no, you're much better than cooking and I am.
	Yeah, there are just, it's just, it's one of the, it's one of my favorite art forms just because it is always ephemeral.
	You know, it is, despite the fact that people think you write out these jokes, every single performance is disposed.
	You know, it happens and then it's gone.
	Uh, and that's just one of the things that's beautiful about stand-up is you can, you know, everybody, uh, I think it was Emo Phillips.
	Emo Phillips' bit was always just the best, uh, which is like, uh, you can, I'm not gonna do Emo Phillips' voice.
	How dare you?
	Dude, yeah!
	So, if you come to stand-up comedy, you know that you could be watching it at home.
	But that is like choosing incest over dating.
	One is more convenient.
	And it's just brilliant.
	Yeah, it's brilliant.
	I'm glad you did the voice.
	I am so glad you committed.
	It's been a while.
	I haven't done the emo voice in a long time.
	God, I love that voice.
	Neither is emo.
	Oh, he can still pull it out.
	He's out there.
	He can still pull it out.
	Home movies, man.
	That's the...
	Now we get to Russell talking about his style of parenthood, and what is the closing chunk of the show?
	Mostly, I think, because of my belief in what I call avant-garde parenting.
	Yeah?
	Avant-garde parenting.
	Because I can't do normal parenting.
	You know, normal parenting, bedtime, dinnertime.
	That's fucking exhausting, that shit, anyway.
	They don't want to cooperate.
	Fuck it.
	This is my policy.
	Let them roam free.
	Glamour, I'm free!
	That's what I've done.
	She fucked off.
	It's not on holiday, actually.
	She went for a massage.
	She's only gone an hour and a half, but things got so heavy so quick.
	Because I'm doing avant-garde parenting.
	Let them roam free.
	They'll wear themselves out.
	They'll soon burn themselves out.
	But they don't fucking burn themselves out, do they?
	They get stronger like some sort of Nikolai Tesla machine that generates more power through its own motion.
	I'm getting fucking burned out.
	I'm freaking out.
	Oh shit, shit, they're getting stronger, they're getting stronger.
	Fuck!
	I need a new strategy!
	New strategy!
	Abort!
	Abort!
	Come right... Okay, kids!
	Bed!
	Right?
	One extreme to the other.
	That's me.
	Bed!
	Come on!
	You're free!
	You're free!
	Express yourselves!
	Yeah, you're free!
	Right, get a fucking bed, you bastards!
	And it ain't how my wife does bedtime either.
	My wife does it with like a lavender spritz, like on their pillow, and like stories about like mice and all that kind of shit.
	Me, it's like a mugging.
	She's like, Bam!
	Bed!
	Get in that bed!
	Go to bed!
	They don't fancy a little kip, do they, you kids?
	They don't fancy going gently into that good night, do they?
	Like they've got really strong... How does someone so little got such fucking strong beliefs about anything?
	They're like fucking ISIS against bedtime, aren't they?
	Where you fucking going to bed?
	Where's that written down?
	They don't fancy it.
	Go to fucking bed!
	Go to bed!
	I mean, they won't have it.
	What else is in their fucking Quran of little bastards?
	These little fuckers.
	They don't like a line in their socks, do they?
	Like a seam in their... Ah!
	There's a line in my sock!
	There's a line!
	They don't like a label in their clothes, do they?
	Ah, it's a label!
	It's a label!
	Cut it out!
	Don't cut it out!
	They don't like you to have a drawstring in a hoodie, do they?
	Like, if you've got a toggle in a hoodie, they pull that fucker right out of there, don't they?
	And when I come down to their level in a supermarket to show what a good pair and I'm, hey, what's going on?
	What are your feelings?
	Your feelings?
	They always fucking lean into me and knock me on my fucking arse!
	For most of all, they don't like bedtime!
	Go and sleep!
	Go and fucking sleep!
	Sleep's what I have instead of orgasm now!
	Sleep is the best thing in my life!
	Why do you think I'm doing shows at six o'clock in the fucking evening?! !
	Another applause break.
	Those are the least favorite bits.
	Those are my least favorite bits.
	Just the jokes that are like, this thing I didn't have to do is funny.
	You know, like, oh, can you believe I'm wearing this shirt?
	Like, yeah, you put the fucking shirt on specifically so you could tell an audience, look at me wearing this shirt.
	Fuck you.
	You're a loser.
	You're a red shirt.
	I have a blue shirt.
	Oh, isn't it funny that I'm doing a show at 6 p.m.?
	No, you're just doing a show.
	Disgusts me.
	Those and if you don't know who I'm talking about in your friend group, it's you.
	Those are the two forms of joke that I hate.
	I hate those so much.
	And I said that to one of my friends, and then he He did that bit later on the season.
	Oh, yay to see it.
	I'm like a complete asshole.
	Nice.
	Nice.
	No, that's on him.
	You gotta stop someone.
	If someone's describing a bit they hate and you have that bit, you have to go, there's a fire, there's a fire.
	And then when they stop talking, you go, sorry, you were about to say you didn't like a bit I do.
	Nope.
	Here's what you do.
	Here's what you do.
	You look him dead in the eye and you go, it works.
	It works.
	Now, I'm willing to entertain the possibility of the things that Russell has just said being hyperbolic or probably made up, but they do feel a little bit specific and real to me, and the whole thing is just kind of a lot, but the bit that does strike me as particularly interesting is how quickly he says he goes from being all about people's freedom and expression to suddenly engaging in authoritarianism.
	Like, in the back of my mind I was like, well, at least he's consistent.
	You know?
	At least that's a through line.
	Freedom for everyone.
	I mean me.
	Freedom for me.
	Yeah, me first.
	It's me first and then everybody else.
	We'll get to you, don't worry.
	My freedom is paramount and then your freedom comes into play.
	I know this is the end, but I wanna say one of the weirdest experiences of watching this special, and knowing about Russell Brand and everything that's going on with him, and having listened to a couple episodes of your show, is like, if this was, insert name of actor or comedian who I kind of like here, right?
	I'd be like, eh, I watched a comedy special, which is what I do most of the time when I watch comedy, is I'm like, the comedy went in here, and then out there, and now it's over.
	Right?
	But it's because this guy is so dangerous and malicious that all of these, like, tiny moments just take on these much, much darker tones.
	It's like the stuff you see with Ricky Gervais in his new special, but, like, not on purpose, right?
	Ricky pauses to be like, hey, just a reminder, actually a pretty dangerous person with some really bad opinions and using my powers for evil.
	But Russell Brand is like completely unaware of it.
	It's like watching old episodes of Home Improvement and being like, that guy was threatening people over Coke deals.
	Like that's what it feels like watching this.
	Yeah, I think there's a little bit of like, Here's what's hard about this, compared to analyzing his bullshit show, right?
	As a comic, there is something about the kayfabe that got broken within the last five years, where when you have whatever comic, who was it that was in the New Yorker or something, and they were like, he wasn't telling the truth about his life!
	And it's like, oh my God.
	Is that the standard we were supposed to be held to this whole time?
	Because guys, I have got bad news for you.
	I have got seriously bad news for you.
	A lot of that stuff didn't even happen to anyone.
	Like, amazing.
	So there's a part of me that's like, I get why people in real life now, you know, watch like a Gadsby special and they're like, it's good that this is real, you know, like a good for you.
	But it's comedy.
	I'm not expecting, they're not supposed to be doing things.
	It's jokes.
	It's supposed to be funny.
	And if it's not funny, then that's my big issue.
	Well, that was kind of my concern going into this is we can't necessarily bring the same analysis that we do on the show where he's like, this is the fucking Oh, you're pretending to be the news, and that's what you're telling people, but these are bits.
	It's stand-up comedy.
	It's not a documentary of your life.
	Yeah, that's a very good point.
	There is an element of, because we're in this space, Here's what you're allowed to do.
	We can contextually say, this is not to be taken seriously, right?
	But if you're doing your YouTube show where you're telling people about what the truth is, then you've muddled that ambiguity to the point where it's unacceptable.
	You know, you can't be funny anymore.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And then on his show, he will then lean on the fact that, oh, I'm a comedian.
	I do comedy.
	You can't take anything I say seriously.
	And it's like, well, that's very intentional.
	The cop out.
	Yeah.
	Well, and I think that what Eli said about like the...
	Noticing there's no love for the kids underneath it, I assume it's happening off stage, you can't unsee that, and I think, in a way that, what I was hearing is Russell saying, my kids drive me crazy.
	When I hear comedians that you can hear the love in it, it's like, I love my kids so much, I feel crazy, and I'm gonna, like, Kurt Bronner, I think, is very, like, talks about parenting a lot, and is very kind to his children, and is analyzing his experience of parenting, not just saying, my kids are terrible.
	That's how it feels different, I think, to me.
	At least here.
	It's so interesting.
	It's so interesting because you're absolutely right.
	You've nailed that.
	But at the same time, I exist as a fan of the history of comedy, too.
	And while you're talking, in my head, Richard Pryor is just beating the shit out of his children.
	Right, like I'm telling you, I put that barrier.
	They're in the fucking hospital and everyone going, You are the funniest fucker alive!
	Like, you know, there's a part of that social mireille that is... That's the gray area, I think, though, you know?
	I think that's the gray area we're talking about.
	There's something that speaks to the sinister nature of Russell himself, I think, wrapped up in that, as to how we perceive what's happening.
	And with that in mind, I do have one last quick clip before I let you wonderful people go.
	and it does kind of speak to how Russell feels about his kids, I think.
	[Applause]
	I'm negotiating with them right now.
	Lie down, come on, lie down.
	I'm getting more tired and a bit panicked and that, you know, when you're getting tired.
	Right, lie down, lie down.
	You know, like, they're getting cleverer and that now, so they can spot when you say something stupid.
	They'll go, right, lie nicely!
	Cos they're putting their legs up and everything, energy in their legs.
	You can't sleep if you've got energy in your body.
	Lie nicely.
	What do you mean, lie nicely?
	Just lie in a nice style!
	And I got angry!
	And I said something that I regret saying, something that I shouldn't have said.
	But you know it's fucking like if you've raised children.
	You know, when they take you to the fucking edge, don't they?
	They push you hard.
	When you feel like you're all getting tired and they're getting more awake.
	When you're all burning out and they're burning brighter, you're all getting weaker, they're getting stronger.
	Who among you has not at least considered saying, go to sleep right now or I will burn your fucking unicorn.
	What type of holiday is it?
	Camping holiday.
	I've got paraffin blocks, I've got long matches.
	He won't do it.
	He's only joking.
	He won't really do it.
	Oh, won't I?
	You've only known me four fucking years.
	You think this is the real me?
	I'm fucking crazy.
	You've been in my life four years.
	And for two of those years, I was pretending to be nice because we're all locked in the same fucking house.
	Let go of fucking bed.
	People of Liverpool, thank you very much.
	Good night!
	That was the cab!
	That was the closer, that was it.
	The closer is you've only known me for four years, that's the punch.
	Yeah.
	He went on, you tried to tag it, and that I've seen, you can't tell, I can't tell you how many times I've seen the tag that I swear works.
	I swear this tag works.
	Listen, I know it didn't work this time, but I swear it worked.
	No, look, you haven't been at the shows!
	You haven't been there!
	I swear the tag worked!
	Yeah, that one's definitely there.
	See, I let the applause run there just to illustrate how that dude was not leaving that stage until he got his standing ovation.
	It's like, I'm going to fucking wait.
	It's your special.
	That's unfair.
	That's unfair.
	I reject that criticism wholeheartedly.
	You stand up there, you soak up your fucking applause, and you have your only good day.
	Do you know what it's like to be a comedian?
	Do you know what it's fucking like?
	Do you know how many good days we get?
	None!
	Not zero!
	We get an hour!
	Nah, I'm a musician.
	I get a standing ovation by reflex for most people, which I think is equally fucking weird and problematic, but there we go.
	I gotta earn every applause.
	I gotta learn guitar.
	Oh, I thought you were gonna go the other track.
	Oh, no.
	No, here's the real issue with the special, because as far as whatever he's saying, these are all Lesser versions of everybody else's joke.
	This is like a mishmash of the past 20 years.
	It's almost like a remix of a comedy over the past 20 years.
	And it's just weak.
	There's no addition to it.
	There's nothing that is an element of uniqueness to Russell Brand.
	And even like that idea of this is brand.
	This is a Russell brand.
	A name is supposed to have something that is unique about him.
	He's just doing rant comedy.
	It's just the same rant comedy that I've seen from anybody.
	He doesn't even have like a unique personal element to it.
	He's supposed to be the guy who used to do a shit ton of drugs.
	Tell me fun stuff about that, right?
	Yeah?
	Fair.
	Fair.
	Well, Jordan, Eli, thank you so much for coming on with us today.
	Thanks for having us!
	Where can people find your respective shows and works and whatnot?
	And is there anything specific that you want to plug?
	Whoever wants to go first.
	Sure, mine's the easiest.
	We're at knowledgefight.com and plug.
	You would plug your live shows, but they've all sold out, so there we go.
	Are you guys still touring?
	We're doing a new one.
	We just booked our East Coast tour, so yeah, that's all.
	Are you going to come visit and come say hi in New Jersey?
	Oh no, we're in New York.
	We're in NYC on the 17th, so stop in.
	Yeah!
	I'd sold out, but I'll stand outside.
	We got space to walk people in through the back, I promise.
	There it is!
	Just clapping from behind the curtains.
	And Eli, where do people find you?
	Godawful Movies, Dear Old Dads, The Scathing Atheist, The Skeptocrat, D&D, minus wherever you get your podcasts.
	Awesome.
	Oh, and do you know what?
	I do have another question, actually.
	Both of you have enormous back catalogs with your shows.
	Like, where do you tell people to begin with those?
	Like, if it's a new listener.
	Easier for Jordan than it is for me!
	I mean, it is significantly easier because I just say, don't, don't.
	Sorry.
	We stopped trying to get new listeners once we hit 700.
	We were like, you know what?
	It's too far.
	Too far gone.
	Nobody's like, oh, the 14th season of Cheers is the one that's the best to start with.
	Shut the fuck up.
	It's over.
	You either like Cheers or you don't.
	I'll tell you what, you go back.
	You start listening in episode one.
	You called me in 11 years when you're gone.
	Exactly.
	Start with the newest episode of anything that I've ever been on and then work backwards until you feel like you might not like me anymore and then stop.
	You must stop there.
	It's very important that you stop there.
	Don't go all the way back and try to work your way forward to the likable now.
	No, that's the worst mistake you can make!
	Yeah, I struggle with this show to be honest.
	I usually just tell people to like pick a name that they recognize.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	Pick someone that you especially hate that we've had to cover.
	That's usually the way in.
	All right.
	Well, thank you very much.
	And that is our show.
	Lauren, do you have any plugs this week?
	As a matter of fact, I do.
	I'll be doing a new inventory shrine drop.
	I kind of had to focus on consignment for the holiday season.
	Not stressful at all.
	Everything was fine.
	And anyway, so now I finally kind of got to a place where I'm making all, I've got piles and piles.
	Of new shrines that are on their way.
	Everybody liked Anthony Bourdain.
	Anthony Bourdain, okay.
	And Dolly, of course.
	Dolly, yeah.
	So that's gonna be March 24th, brand new.
	It'll be on my socials, which is right there under me.
	So yeah, that's a plug.
	Awesome.
	Things have finally sorted out.
	Very cool.
	Very cool.
	I'll have new cool art to buy.
	Absolutely, and you can check out Lauren's shop.
	There's a link in the description to buy a magnet of this show, because we sell real-life gold, everybody!
	That magnet right there that is being held up to the camera of our logo, surrounded by actual real-life gold, unlike some of these people.
	And you can get one of those and go and check out the rest of Lauren's shop as well.
	And yeah, March 24th.
	Awesome.
	Cool.
	It's a better world to have more shrines in it, in my opinion, to the likes of Dolly Parton.
	Obviously, I'm biased.
	Well, well.
	And I get that there's a lot of hubbub about, like, oh, you're posting stuff right now.
	I'm like, I know, but it's all in consignment, probably already been sold.
	I still have pictures of it.
	Oh, God.
	So that's where the big date of the drop of like, you're going to get previews until then.
	And I'm actually finally getting back in the swing of posting stuff.
	So you get to see all the types of things until the big day.
	So I'll be there on that date.
	Very, very exciting.
	I am looking forward to seeing all of them.
	And if you want to support us, yeah, right?
	And if you want to support us in what we do, head to patreon.com slash onbrand.
	We would love to have you.
	And if you want to get in touch, it's theonbrandpod at gmail.com.
	We will get back to you at some point.
	And if you're on Facebook, come join the group.
	We've got On Brand Awakening Wonders, some lovely people in there.
	If you prefer more anonymous online situations, go to Reddit.
	We have a subreddit with some wonderful people over there.
	It's onbrand underscore pod.
	All of our socials should be at the on-brand part, except for where they're not.
	Just look for the logo, everybody.
	And personal socials, I'm at alworthofficial and Lauren is at may.by.lauren.b.
	That's me!
	Yeah!
	Patrons, we will see you later in the week for some off-brand good times, and the rest of you, we'll see you next week!
	Okay, thank you very much for sticking with us!
	So much!
	Yes, and obviously a big, big thank you to Jordan and Eli for joining us.
	So cool.
	So much fun.
	So much fun.
	All right.
	We love you, everybody, and we'll see you soon.
	Bye!
	Bye!
	That's not win-win-win.
	That's lie-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie.

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