⏰ BE HERE AT 12PM PT / 3PM EST / 8PM GMT ⏰Show more A reflective end-of-year show where weI look back at the moments that defined the year — the cultural flashpoints, political shocks, spiritual questions, and personal reckonings that shaped the conversation. It’s a chance to step out of the daily news cycle, connect the dots, and ask what this year has revealed about power, freedom, fear, faith, and where we might be heading next.
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Ladies and gentlemen, Russell Brand trying to bring real journalism to the American people.
Hello there, you awakening wonders.
Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
It's a Christmas special and we're doing things a little differently.
I'm joined by Shoot Me Straight, Eddie Gallagher and Dave Fields.
Eddie, thanks for coming, man.
Thanks for having us on.
Thank you.
Thank you, Taylor.
Yeah, this is it.
It's a special Christmas time.
In England, we would say mistletoe and wine.
We would rejoice.
We would celebrate a Victorian-style Christmas.
I don't know what you do out here in the Redneck Riviera.
And to look at you, I mean, you're all pretty red.
No, you've got that nerd techno thing, somewhat redneck in.
Somewhat, I try to be.
Altman redneck.
You're very redneck today.
Dave's is a new nerd look.
Sometimes he switches between multiple looks.
Depending on what day it is.
This is true.
This is true.
Is it that we're going to just review the year today and look at, like you guys, with your podcast, Shoot Me Straight, which I actually, by the way, Dave, hear you use in normal conversation?
I heard you like just now.
Me and Dave are both recovering drug addicts.
And I heard Dave just say, I was chatting to a drug addict friend on the phone.
And you said to him, like, I'm just going to shoot straight.
Honestly, it's going to be like, you know, you're talking about, oh, he actually uses his podcast name in conversation.
And I suppose for you, shoot me straight means ask direct questions.
For you, it potentially means fire a missile of some description.
Not at me, though.
Preferably not.
Shoot that straight.
So like, I thought we were going to talk about like, I think what we're going to talk about is the year.
We were picking up, I suppose, Eddie, when we were chatting a minute ago, we're just following up from like when you have something like a trial, a literal trial in both of our cases at points hanging over you.
You have to learn to live kind of differently.
And even when I think about 2026, I think, oh, that's the year I'm having the trial, Juda 2026, London, trial, Crown Court, numerous charges.
It's like, so for me, 2026, I'm looking forward to having that trial and by God's grace, getting it out of the way for, you know, whatever happens.
But 2025 has been a bit defined by radical changes in my life.
I didn't think that the way things were going, I was not going to be a person that drove a Ford 150 truck, carried a cult firearm, wore most of the time baseball caps.
I mean, I've become sort of a redneck by default.
Well, you are because you're living in the redneck Riviera.
So eventually you can try to combat it as much as you can, but it'll sink in.
I was trying to think maybe I could just wear bowler hats and pinstripes and really sort of lean into my Englishness.
But actually, like, you know, I've changed.
Carnivore, Christian, gun owner.
I mean, the whole thing's radically altered.
So this year, I think like that, what I'd love to do, let me know in the comments and chat what you consider to be the high points and highlights of 2025.
Remember, we'll only be accessible on YouTube for a little while.
Remember, we'll only be accessible next for a little while.
Right.
Okay.
These are some things.
And I want you to pay attention, Eddie and Dave and Jake.
And I'll just lead through these and tell me which ones of these stories feel like you want to settle naturally upon them.
Trump becomes president.
I mean, it seems like that's been going on for a long while.
Pope Leo becomes Pope.
California fires.
Floods in Texas.
Terribly sad.
Doge is formed.
RFK Jr. becomes Secretary of Health.
Justin Trudeau resigns.
Then Jake, who's compiled this list, has, I think, put too many Katy Perry stories.
Justin Trudeau resigns.
Katy Perry goes into space.
Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau are dating.
I just want to know, is it a result of her going to space that sort of triggered all this?
She went to space.
Trudeau resigns.
She comes back from space.
Her and Trudeau get together.
Interesting.
We put our reporter on that.
We would send Joe to space to Katy Perry's house.
Don't send Joe within 200 feet of any Katy Perry-related stuff or anywhere.
Joe, we've got to keep Joe very, very safe.
He's not a person you want to put into conflict zones.
We've got to look after that guy.
And Dave, the other topic on here, other than these numerous Katy Perry and related stories, are Ice Raids, Candace Owens, UK marches on immigration, Charlie Kirk, God rest his cell, assassination, Erica Kirk, Candice, and then a terrible list of celebrity deaths.
A surprising and terrible list of deaths.
Merry Christmas.
Mistletoe and wine.
Ah, season's green.
Deck the halls.
Everyone's dead now.
I am, you know, I suppose, like in real time right now, I'm warming up to go to turning point.
And I'm wondering if Candace Owens and Erica Kirk will have had their powwow prior to that.
And isn't it interesting that in this sort of ultra right-wing space, as it's regarded at least, it's two females that have become the preeminent figures in this defining moment.
What I mean to say is like a lot of the cultural ephemera of the woke era feels like it's falling apart and falling away.
I think we're entering into a really unusual new time.
And I think that 2026 is going to be significant because I think people will be looking naturally forward to the post-Trump era, looking naturally forward to what politics outside of nationalism look like.
Where's the culture going to go?
I mean, it feels like we're in a really unusual space where, unless there's like radical change, the tension between decentralization and centralization could spill into mayhem, mayhem, at any moment.
That's why I keep myself super clear at the near end of it.
I mean, I've done so much of this, but I'm feeling pretty sharp, guys.
I do that every morning.
You're on it?
Yeah.
Do you want to try this particular brand straight down the gullet?
I'll try.
Is it uh, I felt comfortable frying that?
Oh, it's the real deal.
Yes, good straight from the smurf.
Look at Eddie with well-practiced ease, straight down the gullet.
Yeah, if you had some of this one, Dave, get in on it, Dave.
Come on, Dave.
I'm also going to pay attention to how you receive the drops to see if it seems see if you take it very familiar.
This person's taking a lot of shots in the face or not.
That's why he's got the glasses on.
Don't get any teeth, Dave.
They're Bakaki shields.
That's a Bukaki.
It's disgusting, isn't it, Dave?
It's disgusting, but you watch the mental clarity over the course of the day.
Somebody said it was delicious the other day.
It's not bad.
You've tried a couple of different versions.
I'm one.
I feel like too much.
Oh, right.
Because you're too busy down to Carlson's product.
You've tried a bunch of mouth pouch versions of these.
Yeah.
That's the best one.
You're right.
Of all the methylene blues available, our reborn, tryreborn.com methylene blue is by far and away the greatest and the best.
There's no competition.
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So they taste bad, like the other ones taste.
Oh, sometimes they're so bad.
I mean, that one doesn't taste bad.
It's all right.
It's just got some sort of flavor.
Yeah, I usually put it in the water and put like 20 drops in water and then swig it.
Yeah, just straight up neat like that.
I don't know when that started or why.
I think I did it because if you don't do it without water, then my teeth, everything turn blue.
But what if you go bypass the Nash's?
Yeah, well, that's you do it right.
You've got to do it right.
You've got to hit the gullet hard.
Have you tried to dry shoot colostrum?
That's that's a new trend.
We just started.
We've been dry shooting colostrum straight off the blade.
Mouthful to colostrum.
Chopping up colostrum lines and taking them down.
It doesn't taste very nice.
Like it's like licking.
It doesn't taste good if you put it in liquid either.
There's no way around it.
Yeah.
Just got to go for it.
Just go for it.
But it's good for you.
We're looking after the vehicle.
We're looking after the vehicle.
Which of these stories meant.
I think.
Well, I was with you with Charlie Kirk's assassination when we found out.
I mean, if you started there, we were here.
We were here at the studio.
What?
Yeah.
That day was just, it was a little strange.
You were, it's just sinking in.
Well, yeah, it was so crazy because I was doing a podcast with Dave Rubin.
And when they showed the, when I first saw the footage of it, when I like, because with the era we live in, you immediately have to ask, is that legit?
So when I saw that, now there's so many areas to unpack with that assassination.
Of course, it could take the whole show.
Because firstly, I didn't, this is what I've learned.
I think the dead Charlie Kirk or posthumous Charlie Kirk to honor him is like a different object to living Charlie Kirk.
I never, like when people said like someone will have assassinated him beyond the person it was claimed, I, in all honesty, thought, well, why?
What's the influence and power that Charlie Kirk has that would warrant someone wanting his life to end?
In the subsequent period, I've become more open to it.
And certainly, even without engaging police, without conspiracy theories, just the thing that sort of made me most question, well, firstly, anytime that anyone gets shot, it's never a lone gunman.
It's never a lone gunman.
It can't, it's never a lone gunman.
And then it would be obviously beneficial to get your insights on this.
Like, it just seems to me implausible that anyone that's not extremely competent and experienced would be able to take and get a shot like that, dismantle a rifle and disappear into a crowd unless they had.
I mean, if I was to do that, if I was going to go and kill someone, find a site where I've got a good eye line, get a shot off, get rid of it, unpack it, I think I would need a little bit of training.
I think he put it back together too.
Like the gun, took it apart, put it back together, allegedly.
Yeah, was it with a screwdriver or something?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't mean, how far was that shot again?
I think 150?
Yeah.
So I think for people 150 is not far.
And you don't have to be so highly trained to hit.
It's not far.
No, not with a rifle.
I mean, I get from my perspective, no.
As a sniper, that is not even, that's not even like a sniper shot.
That's just a basic marksman shot that you should be able to hit.
So to give you, in terms like in the Marine Corps, everybody's a rifleman.
So everybody has to call on the range.
But you have Marines that don't, their specific job is not to carry a gun.
It's not to go into war.
They do sort of the background stuff, but they are still required to go to the range once or twice a year to qualify.
And they make shots up to 500 yards.
These are people that don't use rifles, barely any, but they are still qualifying with that rifle and able to hit their target.
So when you come down to 150 yards, no, it does not take a qualified marksman to hit that shot.
But I will say with the planning and the disassembly, reassembly of the rifle, even picking a spot ahead of time to go shoot from, that definitely takes some training.
I mean, even to disassemble a gun takes some training.
If you were given those data points, like someone is going to kill a high-profile public figure in a public space from a rooftop with this type of rifle, at this type of distance, what profile emerges in your mind of the person?
And is it like a 22 year old guy who lives with a furry and he's queer and stuff and is into trans issues?
That's the problem i'm having.
Yeah, I mean that doesn't that?
Uh, whatever that that doesn't fit the profile of what you are thinking of right uh, some transgender furry is going to go out there and, you know, disassemble or reassemble a rifle, pick a spot to shoot a guy from.
But I would also say that's not out of the realm of a possibility because you could just go right, he's going to be doing a turn.
Yeah, event in the Utah.
Yeah, maybe he took that rifle.
He's like hey, i'm going to go practice real quick.
Um, 150 yards boom, got it.
I'm good to go, the gun sighted in, and i'm going to go take my chances.
I will say, you know just the, the act of doing that um, of getting up there lining up those sights on Charlie and taking that shot um, I mean, if it's his first time, which it sounds like it was his first time shooting somebody.
That's a huge, that's a huge moment right, because i'm sure he was nervous.
Um, you know the whole crowd's there he's getting ready to do this thing, which he might have had that thing dialed in.
He was aiming for the chest and maybe broke a little high or aiming for the face, but i'll tell you, as a sniper, I don't yeah, I never aim for the head or face.
It's, that's you're gonna.
That's too much of a margin of error for you to miss.
I mean, I would just center, mass it uh, in the chest.
So I mean he could have easily broke that shot, you know, because he was nervous and it hit up there in the neck.
So there's the technical attempts to understand it, and then there's the cultural impact of it yeah, and there's the tendency now to question everything.
And what's interesting for me, I suppose, oh man see, if you can get on this, it's pretty crazy.
The internet is like a massive consciousness, like or at least it's a matter like it's got the qualities of intelligence you know, like there's lots of, and it's got content.
It's sort of like an externalized brain and externalized consciousness.
You can go on there for pornography.
I'm talking about online visual content mostly.
Just if you confine it to that, because I know you have, dave of sort of a more vast and deep understanding of what i'm talking about.
But say, if you were to say you know, on your phone you can click and watch or engage with a variety of content.
I'm saying that's like having a shared brain that everyone has access to.
I'm wondering if what we might find in the work of mythologists like Joseph Campbell, the American academic who, through his brilliant work, notably Hero of a Thousand Faces, pointed out, building on the work of Carl Jung,
that myths from Africa, Iceland, UK, Celtic world, whatever, Native Americans had similar themes and ideas that were recurrent and indicate either some mass diaspora where there was like a centralised group and the...
the stories all must have spread out from, or there's something in the human mind that creates the same stories wherever you go in the world.
Wherever there's like characters like the trickster or the king or the miser or whatever, the princess, all these characters crop up wherever you go in the world.
It's a weird thing.
That's my first point.
That's the establishing principle.
The second principle is that now that the internet is like one vast brain, it's almost like archetypes are being formed in internet spaces.
And I think that Candace Owens is like almost a living archetype.
And it's interesting to me that she's a black woman.
That, like, that in Jungian terms, the idea of the feminine and blackness, and I know blackness is a sort of a cultural term as well as a sort of a racial one.
And I'm sort of calling on the idea of a kind of Jungian appraisal of that idea right now, i.e., this woman is bringing up a lot of unconscious material.
People don't want to talk about the things I felt most uneasy about when I went around the house was knowing that I had a turning point thing coming down the pipe.
Was, well, I'm not really comfortable.
You know, Erica Kirk is a grieving widow.
I'm not comfortable with the idea that Erica Kirk's involved.
Sort of find it difficult to accept that Turning Point might be involved.
And I think there's enough margin in something like ongoing investigation means people have to keep their mouth shut about certain stuff.
And that, you know, to provide, I don't want to say cover, but reasonable limitations around how Turning Point a members are turning point are behaving, right?
So I don't automatically think turning point we're involved in it.
However, though, it does seem like with any public event these days, that the first thing you're told might not be the truth.
And I think that's most of the time because I think when stuff like this happens, you know, Charlie Kirk's death or name any other traumatic event where someone was shot, you know, everybody, I think we're in a society now where everybody wants to be first, first with the breaking news, first with the breaking story.
And we used to blame mainstream media.
We used to be like, this is, you know, mainstream media is fake news.
They're trying to come out with headlines right off the bat without getting the whole truth.
That was, I think, one of the biggest complaints that the American public had after a while, after finding out that they weren't reporting the truth.
So then people broke off and they started their own independence, right?
But I think because some, and this is just from my perspective, seeing all these independents, you know, having their own channels, I feel like it's just back to the same.
It's like everybody is now trying to be the first to come out with whatever breaking news or what they think really happened.
And since people stop listening to mainstream media, they're listening to these independent channels trying to get their news from.
But I think the people with the independent channels have to be very careful not to fall in the same trap that mainstream media did, which is, oh, we have to be first so we get more clicks, more likes, more views, and everything like that, which is how we come to these, you know, where we're at now, where nobody can trust anybody.
Everyone's like, well, how do I know you're telling the truth when this person is saying this?
Like Candace Owens is saying Turning Point USA might be involved.
So I'm going to go listen to her.
And then you have Erica Kirk or whoever else combating that and being like, no, we're not involved.
So it just becomes this whole thing when in reality, nobody is giving it time to settle, to actually find out exactly what happened.
And I can tell you through going, you're going through it too, Russell, and from what I went through, it takes a long time for investigations to come out with like, hey, here is everything.
But we are so impatient as a country.
It's like, we want it now.
And if you don't give it to us now, then we're going to come up with our own conclusions.
Then we're going to start forming our own opinions, our own ideas of what actually happened.
And so what that causes is a huge distrust in everything because people you have followers that listen to you, but it's like at the end of the day, a couple months later, the truth can be laid out by the FBI or CIA and be like, hey, this is what we've concluded.
Here is everything.
But I think that people are just impatient with them coming out.
And there is also a distrust in them as well, which they've done to themselves.
You know, they're not, they've proven to not be a trustworthy source at times.
But at the same time, I would say we can't just blanket statement and be like, oh, everything the FBI and CIA does is corrupt.
There are good people that work there.
There are good people that try and do, trying to do the right thing.
But I think they've developed a reputation for themselves over the years where people are impatient with them.
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Yes, there is the reputational aspect.
I mean, like, do come in used to as well.
But what I've started to feel is what is the French expression is raised on d'être.
What is the purpose, the meaning, the reason for existence of the FBI and CIA?
And say this year, another big story is the, obviously, the Epstein files.
I mean, we'll get to Katie's Perry in space and get to that.
But like, like with the Epstein files, what I feel the function of that object, I'm trying to look at things these days as sort of like, as, you know, objectively, which means sort of, although that's impossible, of course, I try and look at things as an object, i.e., with no disrespect to Charlie Kirk, God rest his soul.
What is the object of Charlie Kirk's death doing in the culture?
What is it causing?
What is it creating?
You see political exploitation.
You see hysterical condemnation.
You see people sort of like being inappropriate and saying crazy stuff about it.
You see, you know, like you see, create the object when you drop it into the pool of public consciousness creates so much madness.
Well, I think the object of the Epstein files, like if you was, if it was just a rock that you could sort of understand, that rock has gone into the system.
And I think what it means is everyone now thinks that deep state agencies are fundamentally corrupt, fundamentally.
And if you think that's not that new, that probably begins with like mocking birding, MK Ultra, assassinations of the 60s.
But now has reached such a point of saturation because of immediate communication that people, most, I don't know most people, because I don't know most people, but just looking at the world, it seems to me that in general, people think, well, the Epstein file shows that loads and loads of high-profile people, whether that's celebrities or more significantly, political figures, have been sexually compromised so that they can be controlled.
And that's a standardized tactic of many people believe, like Mossad, CIA, and that someone like Epstein is an asset for that.
And because that story's been so back and forth and no one's been able to, you know, now we have videos of Kash Patel sort of going, yeah, it's all going to be released.
And Dan Bolgina, oh, it's all going to be released.
And Trump, yeah, it's all going to be released.
That pan Bond is on my desk right now and then it doesn't happen.
I think it compounds it indeed right, I think you're right to counsel for patience, that we should be patient, because you know, like saying, just the Charlie Kirk Incidence, there's children and a wife and anything, you know, there's all these things, but none of us are aware of our unconscious biases and I think that what the Charlie, the uh, the Epstein thing has done, as sort of It's the first time in the Post-Trump era that the deep state thing came to a pinnacle again.
Before Trump, everything could be in a basket.
Like, you know what the Democrats are.
They're all corrupt.
It's all bullshit.
They're pretending to be nice.
They're pretending to care about race.
They don't really.
They just want imperial global control and they're bringing it about in this variety of ways, pandemics, whatever.
And now it's like, oh, fuck, this is still happening with Trump.
So it's like, so I think like we're living in this, again, things are coming so fast.
And now we have to appraise it and understand it so quickly that it's for me, for me, actually, what it's done is it's made my Christianity.
Like if you, if the culture is moving so fast, if the culture is so unreliable, if the institutions that we used to look to, media, governmental, for something to rely on are all just collapsing and imploding, where do you go?
Who can take it?
Only the Lord.
That's where it's kind of thrown me.
Yeah, when you see all these stories lined up and reflected on 2025, I think for the right or the conservative, you go, we got our guy in power and look who he's brought in.
He's got Kash Patel.
He's got all these new.
Then you realize they can't do anything either.
So now it's on the other side going, is just the system in general, no matter who's leading it, so corrupt because it's operating on a non-biblical standard that no matter who's in charge, I feel like it just makes you completely lose hope in the system, which you should ultimately, and turn your eyes towards Jesus.
Well, yeah.
I think people, you know, when, like you said, when Trump got elected and got put back into office, there are these Trumponians, you know, the hardcore right that are like, everything's going to be good now.
And that's where I think people just set themselves up for disappointment because it's like, if you are depending on one man, a human being who's just like you and I, that you think that he is going to change dramatically the course of, you know, how this country's going and your life's going to somehow be a lot better because he's in office.
You are mistakenly wrong.
It's the only thing, person, not a person, the only entity that you can trust in is God himself.
That's why you go to him for the truth.
That's why you go to him every time you are confused, frustrated, or whatever is going on in your life.
He is the only one who can solve that for you.
But if you are, if that is, if you're putting that on another human being, then yeah, you're going to be left disappointed in the end.
And that's not just with Trump.
That's with anybody.
You know?
Me, that's what we've gone, Dave.
No, we've been doing that for a long time.
I mean, look at the Israelites.
They say, oh, no, no, no, we need a king.
We need a king.
And had to put a king in charge and then look to the king to take care of them.
That didn't turn out very well in a lot of circumstances.
You're blaming the Jews for this.
I knew it.
Dave is such an anti-Semite.
I've been thinking that the first component is to deny the existence of God, is to sort of say there is no God.
That's what the state does in general.
I mean, in a way.
Because they want you dependent on them.
Yeah.
Well, like a God.
Yeah.
And they say things that got layered out.
I've started to notice more and more that they want you to be like universal basic income, that sort of like financial dependency.
I can see that idea is being touted and promoted.
Then there's this kind of like we want they want us reliant on them for morality and for ethics, for direction, what's right and wrong and what's possible and what's not possible.
And they play God in a variety of ways culturally.
And now in my country, the UK, there's facial recognition technology being introduced simultaneous to digital ID and discussions of CBDC.
So there'll be, and there's Bill Gates, funded some research through the WHO that talks about a centralized set of data so that in one place, your health data and vaccination status, your economic status, and your ID, ethnographic data will be all stored.
And if that's tied to your finances, that's dangerous.
Because isn't China doing that?
It's dangerous.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's super dangerous.
And they'll do digital currency where they can take away your banking account.
Like, oh, I don't like what you said.
I don't like what you said on your last podcast, Russell.
Guess what?
You're cut off from your bank until you apologize or you do something that we want.
Yeah, you can't travel and you can't access these facilities and resources.
And decentralization.
I got a question about that just in the UK in general, because I think from America, we're watching from afar, I think, watching the UK collapse.
Are most people over in the UK on board with what's going on?
Or I mean, is there people fighting back to be like, hey, we don't want this?
People are fighting back, but because the culture is so fractured, the fight back is fragmented because there's been years of sort of embedding cultural differences.
And because even the level of cohesion that would come if there was a meaningful trade union movement, once industries got moved out of the UK to, you know, say India or subcontinent or whatever, that cohesion that existed because everyone was members of sort of like coal mining unions or truck driver unions or whatever unions were dominant, that's gone.
And now the UK, because of mass migration, there's a lot of disparity there.
There's a lot of disparity and conflict around migration and in my country, Islam.
So people are, it seems to me that there's a lot of cynicism, scepticism, doubt in the UK about what's happening.
But there's what they've done is they've created the good preconditions by making the population very disparate, cynical of one another.
I mean, it was that dude, I'm blanking on his name, Dave Smith, actually, that said, at the beginning, he said, the Occupy movement was one of the early movements that came out of online communication.
So around 2008, people were protesting in the post-financial collapse era, protesting against the corruption of financial institutions and banks that seemingly deliberately brought about the collapse of the economy so they could benefit from it.
The Occupy movement was cross-cultural.
Like right-wing people were in it, left-wing people were in it.
Anyone was in it.
Dave Smith observed that that was the point that woke ism and identity politics really got promoted.
Now, that idea has been in the culture for a while.
It used to be called political correctness.
People say, oh, it's political correctness gone mad.
You can't even use the word black anymore.
And there is definitely, obviously, an argument for ensuring that minority groups or vulnerable communities or call them what you were will are not subject to hateful speech from the dominant population.
But that idea has clearly gone wrong because people don't know how to assess a country like Japan, where people generally want a stable population, or a country like Ireland, which isn't a former colonial power that's got really strong views on migration and big problems with migration.
So it's all really, really falling apart.
And in my country, yeah, you can tell there's a right-wing fashion, a right-wing kind of resistance movement built around Tommy Robinson.
He's very focused on Islam.
Then there's people that are like sort of into conspiracy and stuff that will be into David Icke.
Then there's a kind of a post-COVID movement where there are political figures that are like, wait, we were lied to in COVID.
Shit, man.
Then vaccines didn't work.
The lockdowns were a lie.
How politicians were partying throughout that?
Why are they still not revealing the number of vaccine-related deaths?
You know, a lot of information is getting sat on.
So there is this latent, nascent resistance, but it's not organized.
And it's difficult for it to be organized in a country that's so disparate.
And I would think, and I believe in fact, that that points to the solution.
When the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan, like said, the medium is the message, he meant in that time, well, it's mass media, it's television.
The message is the medium.
Like whatever you watch it on, that's the message.
And in those days, a few people could control all print media.
A few people could control all broadcast television.
It was a very cohesive, tight group you could control, other than like renegade journalists here or there with a Watergate or an Iran contra or whatever.
You could control information.
Now, everyone's a journalist.
Everyone is Babylon.
Like it's the Tower of Babel is over.
It's craziness.
Anyone can communicate anytime.
The positives of that are, I think things are moving really quickly.
But the point I want to make is, see what happened to media.
Media collapsed.
It couldn't compete in this environment.
Like, you know, some of them will find ways through subscription or whatever.
New York Times will probably survive.
Maybe the BBC in some form will survive.
But the next phase, which I think people already know but are trying to prevent happening, is politics starts to reflect it.
Politics starts to reflect.
Wait, wait.
In the same way that you wouldn't just have Fox versus MSNBC, because now you've got thousands of bespoke media outlets.
Why would you not have a politics that reflects smaller units of sovereignty, which is what America was set up for anyway?
And I think it's a matter of very short time before people are able to go, we should have decentralized control over our state, over our town, over our community, that the principle should be localization and individual sovereignty.
That should be the principle.
And when that principle has to come up against corporatism, global commerce, mass bureaucracy, that principle should win.
That ends in an instant cultural wars because it's like your community over there, yeah, run it all, woke, run it all however you want.
Run yours Muslim, do what you want.
But we're going to run our community.
And then you can have national consensus on big subjects, migration, what kind of military force you want to keep, what kind of infrastructure is needed.
And if that conversation ever gets out, think how quickly the idea can spread.
And then who the fuck wants to have a couple of hundred people in Congress or Westminster Parliament?
So I think even though in Britain it's disparate and desperate and sometimes seems totally hopeless, especially for someone facing a rape trial just while they're getting ready to get rid of juries, thankfully not in rape trials actually, but rape or sentences that hold trials that hold big potential jail sentences.
You know, the hope I see in it is they're trying to keep down something that if enough people start thinking that way, like looking for our connection instead of our differences, then I think there could be successive radical changes.
Yeah, I mean, I see that point.
I also, you know, just the way my brain works, I can see from that decentralized command or that, you know, having decentralized government or like, hey, you do your thing over there.
We're going to do ours over here.
I can also see that going pretty wrong as well, where eventually one group is going to expand into the other group's land.
Because that's what's happened once.
That's just the nature of things.
Yeah, right.
So then what's going to happen then?
What are the rules?
Like, hey, you're not allowed to come on our land or you're not, you have to follow our rules.
So again, I just, I'm like, what it all comes down to to me, man, is, you know, if you don't, if you have God in your life and if you don't treat others the way that you want to be treated, then there's always going to be an issue.
And I think that there's plenty of people that don't have God in their life, but they're not, they think they're leading a good life.
They think they're good people.
But when it comes down to it, when there's conflict that arises, they have nowhere to go.
And people that do follow God will go to him and be like, what is the right thing to do here?
Right.
I want to treat, I love thy neighbor, right?
That's one of the commandments.
So I think if you don't have that outlook, then I can see it going terribly wrong.
And I've been to countries where, yes, you see like even Afghanistan, Iraq, they live in that sort of that already.
There are just, they live in their little tribal area.
But guess what?
They're at war with the tribe that's two miles down the road.
They never see each other, but they go to war over that guy stole my goat or that guy's uncle took, you know, something from us a long time ago.
And that, that feud is there.
And so they are constantly combating each other on that.
And it's just to us as Americans, when we go over there and we figure this out, we're like, what the heck is going on here?
How can you guys live like this?
Because we live under, we follow under one command, right?
It kind of sounds refreshing.
It's like fighting your neighbor over a goat.
Get back to some local wars again.
Gangs of New York.
Yeah.
I mean, that's how our country was formed.
I know.
I was thinking about the UK.
I mean, that's right.
You had the lords.
You had these little sections that were some people were just, some people were unjust.
Then it kind of goes wrong.
I guess the king is that just takes too much power.
And that's why it's become what it was.
And then it makes me think about our favorite movie, The Patriot.
Nice.
It's a phenomenal movie.
It's a good movie.
It's a good movie.
America's based on that.
What do you think for the UK to rise up again?
Would they?
Could they?
Well, I think, firstly, stop insulting England.
Secondly, I think that, you know, it is interesting to think of how does a nation expand and contract and ultimately implode and fail.
Like, because I see Tucker on something the other day and he was asking, why did Britain, it was on Piers Morgan, like, why don't, aren't British people mad that the First World War and Second World War essentially bankrupted that nation and drove it into decline?
And obviously, there's no sort of clear, it's been on my mind since I heard him say that.
And I thought, what is the stain on the national character of a fallen empire?
I suppose in a way, maybe it's a slightly bogus premise because in the same way that the vast, vast, vast majority of ordinary Americans are in no way benefiting from American global domination.
So yeah, like I think that you're right, boy.
But how could they even, if they wanted to, in the UK, revolt?
They won't be able to.
England, I think that our, like, this is what I heard, you know, obviously I've thought about English power, British power a lot because I'm from there.
And I saw someone, it might have been Candice Ammonis talking to someone like Piers Morgan, actually, that while British power globally and economically has completely imploded after those wars, it's a deep power.
It's like it runs deep, deep.
Families, aristocracy, institutions, like the idea of overthrowing all of that in the UK, it's sort of hard.
Like Britain has a good, like, it seems like it's a very, it's very good at absorbing and redirecting dissent in the UK.
It's good at absorbing it and redirecting it and protecting it.
I mean, the very even the, even the, whatchamacallit, that you'll have a holiday where they celebrate the dude who tried to overthrow it.
Good old guy, Fawkes.
Yeah.
Celebrate him by burning him.
Yeah, you're right.
By burning a dissenter, a Catholic dissenter.
And yeah, Britain's good somehow at maintaining it.
But you know, like in Bulgaria, like about a week ago in Bulgaria, there was a general strike across the population and the whole government had to resign.
And I know we sort of think of like Balkan countries and little countries as not being sort of comparable to long-established former imperial powers.
But actually, I do think that's what all this is about.
I think there are going to be big revolutions in coming years.
In a way, there have been already.
Like what's happened in your country?
God, it's not that long ago since Russia, the Russian, French, and American revolutions aren't that long ago, really.
None of them are that long.
Like there's that famous some kind of quip.
How did the French Revolution?
Oh, was the French Revolution a good thing?
Someone's saying, you know, it was too early to say.
Like, you know, that's one of the things that people, you know, some sort of quip or whatever.
Anyway, I just feel like because things are getting so fast now, change is happening so quickly.
I feel like you could see in the same way as Napster collapsed an entire record industry and the record industry had to reformulate.
You could see it.
And what's happening as we were discussing in media, you could see it happening in politics now.
It did happen a bit.
Like in Europe, some like new parties came from nowhere into ascendancy.
A political party called Podemos won in Spain.
Spain is not like, you know, UK, Germany, France, but it's still a significant nation.
And then Bepe Grillo in Italy.
And even like Zelensky increasingly does look like he was always a puppet, always, and it was always a bit of a scam.
But like you're seeing new political movements forming and getting in power very quickly.
El Salvador, like you would tell Salvador, did you see?
Did you feel that?
What they're, I know what they're trying to do to talk about all the changes of it.
Did you feel that when you went there?
Like something's happening here from an outside.
Yeah.
You can feel that something's happening there, but it does feel also pretty colonial.
Like you feel like they've worked out in El Salvador that there's a branding opportunity through Bitcoin and stuff like that.
And if Costa Rica can create this Pura Vida thing, what's the El Salvadorian equivalent of it?
I think it's really good leadership.
It is pretty amazing to take to change a country from like that kind of murder rate to what they've achieved in El Salvador.
It's really, really impressive and unbelievable in a way.
But those changes always come at cost.
You're building super jails and banging up gangs and arresting and jailing people without trial and all of that.
Yeah.
It does come with a cost.
I mean, I think, and that's where I think some people need to look at it that way, where, you know, you look at El Salvador and how, you know, the change that's happened, like you just said, right?
But those were some extreme, there's extreme measures we're taken to have that change.
And so we, I know on the list, like ICE, right?
Yeah.
It's, that's an extreme measure going on right now to combat all the illegal immigrants that were let in over the past four years.
But it's also a controversial extreme measure, right?
And I have my thoughts on it.
I think it's a necessary, I guess, a necessary evil at times, because I do think while there are, you know, criminals, gang members, whatever else that have come into this country illegally, yes, get them out.
Like we need to disperse of all of them, especially the ones bringing the drugs in the country, the ones doing all the child trafficking, all that.
But at the same time, we all know that there are hardworking illegal immigrants that have been here, that have made a life here that honestly do more for this country than a normal citizen does a lot of the times.
And then you see large groups of them getting deported.
Where that's where you're like, okay, where do we draw the line?
And I think that's where it becomes controversial with a lot of people.
But at the same time, I do understand it's an extreme measure.
And if you want extreme change, an extreme measure is needed at times.
It's hard, isn't it?
I mean, there was a mandate.
What you can, no one can say is that Trump weren't elected on a mandate to address illegal immigration.
People voted for that.
So then when you see it, but like, you know, you can't say that it was clandestine or it wasn't what we voted for.
Yeah, whereas the Epstein files, you can say, hold on, you told us we were getting those folks.
But, you know, they did say we're going to deal with the problem of migration.
And I was reminded, of course, of when Joe Rogan played that clip of Hillary Clinton in around 2000 and maybe eight, maybe a little earlier, talking about migration.
She's like, if you are, you should be rounded up and kicked out of the country.
You should be, if you want to stay, you have to get in line.
You have to take a test.
You have to pay your back taxes.
You know, like she was to the right of him.
So, and as Joe Rogan said, in response to that clip, it just shows you that it's all bollocks.
Yeah, well, that was back in the day when Hillary actually thought that she could win on just the votes of the American people.
That's how the Democrats thought they could win on just having the votes to the American people.
So, of course, they're going to say that.
But I think that whole position changed when Trump won.
And they're like, oh, shit, we don't have all the votes.
So let's go ahead and get all these illegal immigrants in here, put them in blue states, you know, give them money, provide them with everything.
So therefore, we can have their vote the next time an election comes around.
I mean, like, I've always struggled to understand that kind of stuff.
What we'll say is when we went to Dallas to go to that rock bridge thing, like this event for Chris Buzzkirk and JD Vance have this foundation, which is in itself pretty fascinating because it's an attempt to replace the infrastructure that was lost when the union movement fell apart.
And when formerly Democrat voters started to vote Republican around Trump, they realized they couldn't direct them.
They started all these chapters around things like hunting and small business and all of these new ways to create organization once you can't economically loop people into categories where they can be sort of managed or whatever.
Anyway, when we were landing in Dallas, we saw like a bunch of like sort of guys mostly getting high state detainees.
It did not look good.
It didn't look like the feeling when you see it was not a good feeling.
Well, no, but I'll tell you this.
Just a couple of years ago, I saw almost the same thing, except it was the opposite when I flew into airports.
They were flying them in.
They were giving them priority to go on flights.
They were paying for their plane or plane tickets to go wherever in this country.
So again, that wasn't a good feeling either.
It's like, why are we letting all these people in who didn't come in here the right way and then giving them money, giving them EBT cards, all this other stuff that was going on to, it was all to sway their vote, to sway like, hey, we're the ones helping you out right now, not the Republicans.
We're the ones giving you all this free stuff.
So when you can vote, you know who to vote for.
You know what I mean?
So that's what I mean.
Two different dilemmas that both are wrong.
If somebody was coming in, a leader was coming in and he's making hard choices and all these changes happen.
Would you, you know, all the great movements, I guess, if you look over the history of the world, when you're in the middle of it, what does it feel like?
Like, do you would you recognize it as that or Napoleon or this feels like because some of that stuff is the unknown of what's happening?
And you go, you, you sway between, I trust this guy, I like him.
This guy's psychotic and he's ruining the country.
And I feel like all you think with Trump, you mean that or anyone in anyone?
Any big thing, like even El Salvador, when you start locking people up, is there a moment where everybody's just blindly trusting?
Or do you feel like it's a I don't think you can have that?
I think it's institutional.
Like, why would it be that the sort of history of our kind is, you know, we start off as tribal people, then over time, tribes start getting amalgamated under feudalism, like you mentioned in the UK.
And then you say, right, this is a thing called a country now, and I'm king of all of you, and you barons.
Like, why would you keep making those things bigger and bigger?
Like, one trajectory is like, in the end, there's a global imperialist government where everything's, you know, turned into quadrants or zones all our hunger games.
Or the other one is, who's benefiting from that system?
What is the point of this continuing aggregation?
And I think that, like you always say, any individual or set of individuals are, because they are broken and fallible, whether it's Trump or any of us in this room, are gonna reproduce those kind of results eventually.
So what I'm suggesting is that we start to look at systems themselves and address what the system, systematic errors are that lead to these results.
Now, of course, I feel like I can feel like Eddie will say human nature is sort of conflict.
And definitely that's part of human nature.
And I think that it is what you said there that unless you're sharing the gospel, unless you're sharing wake up to the reality of Christ in yourself.
And then I'm sort of torn because like before I came to Jesus, my kind of personal ideals were all about, in a sense, social justice.
I really sort of was aware of corruption, deception, lies, hypocrisy in myself and in the world.
And I really, I was mostly focused on how do you change it in the world instead of how do I change it myself.
Much harder to change it in yourself, of course.
But since coming to Christ, I'm like, well, it's sort of in here.
It talks a lot about the world is controlled.
Like the Old Testament, false idols, false idols, false idols.
Stop it.
Follow the one true God, you idiots.
Oh, God, I've sent another prophet.
Why aren't you listening?
The New Testament, all right, I'll do it myself.
I'll do it myself.
You're never going to sort this out.
I'll come down, explain it all.
And then it's like again and again, we're told the world is controlled by the evil one.
The evil runs this world.
And I think what one of my, if I can, my lament against Christians, and you've all been Christian longer than me, and you're all sort of American Christians and everything, but I feel like Christians don't talk enough about evil.
And when they do, it's normally sort of temptation style individual evil, like, oh, you've got demons tormenting you, making you crazy, rather than the government is flat out controlled by the devil.
We need to go to war.
Now, I suppose that's because in there, it doesn't say in the book, I'm saying pointing at the Bible.
It doesn't say that that's what we're supposed to do.
It doesn't say Jesus is recruiting you, but it does, I get a sense that we're supposed to be doing something, not just passively like, well, let's wait for the second coming.
I get the idea that we're men of engaged agents in the bringing about of the kingdom, but I don't understand why or how.
And I don't understand why there's not more explicit talk about the evil in human institutions.
Why do you think that is, Dave?
I mean, we're Americans.
So, like, I think as an American, it's almost pride, probably, in a lot of ways.
It's like, we're not going to talk about evil a lot because it's about us and we're the center of our world.
I think it's fear.
I think that certain church leaders are scared to speak out against it because politics has been politics is involved in everything, right?
Even our churches.
And I think that a lot of pastors, they try to deliver a message in such a way that it doesn't rock the boat.
Right.
They're like, oh, I'm going to try and word it in such a manner where I'm not upsetting, you know, a certain administration or a certain whatever.
Instead of just being what they're supposed to do is come out and be like, this is what the word says.
This is what our government is doing.
This is wrong.
Like we should be combating against this.
Right.
But I think out of fear, just because, you know, whatever you want to call it, cancel culture or everything else that we've developed over the years that it has made people a lot more scared to speak out on what the truth is because they're scared of what's going to happen to them, the repercussions.
I think growing up in, you know, the 90s Christian home, you're almost taught, like, don't talk about the devil, don't talk about evil, almost like you were giving it an open door to somehow take over your life.
And so everything was like sheltered.
You know, the world is evil and we're going to make alternatives to that.
You know, we talk about it all the time, like, don't watch this movie, but watch this terrible Christian movie.
That really bothers you that way.
It bothers me because it was never good art, you know, and it's like, which is a reflection of makes you feel like God's not creative, that he's not, you know, bigger than this terrible stuff that we're making as Christians often.
Talking about Kirk Cameron.
Yeah, yeah.
And he's, you know, like even Kirk Cameron.
You're naming and shame in some of these bad things.
Hey, I had to sit through a couple of his Christian movies and I was like, dude, this is not it.
And he's committed.
So like he is who he is.
No, he's not a bad person.
He's a good person.
He was in the culture.
You know, he was in the movie, in the TV show.
Growing pain.
And just like, you would know him.
And then it was a complete shift.
And he's like, I don't want to be a part of this culture.
But then he just created an alternative culture ultimately.
But when you grow up, not with the authority, like push back darkness and to go after it and shed light on it.
And we're always told, be the light of the world.
But like for me, it was like the devil came up.
It's like, don't talk about it.
Like you're giving him open door.
Something's going to happen, you know, instead of we have the authority.
And Ali's been so good, like speaking through those things, like in our household.
So that's been, if it starts in your heart and then it goes to your home and then you affect your community, then it grows from there.
Yeah.
It's like a principle of subsidiarity as well.
That's like the principle is it starts at the smallest unit authority does with you interfacing with God and then it flows outwards to the state, et cetera.
Not the state's in total control.
Then you are just a drone or a larvae within it.
My, he's not a friend actually anymore because like, you know, you get accused of some stuff in public and Lord alone knows it's pretty hard for people that still live in the culture and make their money from the culture to remain your friend.
And I don't know how that, what your version of that was like in the military.
Yeah, well, you know, so like there's this really, and actually I've not reached out to him or anything, so who knows?
But there's a, this brilliant British comedian, Frank Skinner, who I've always admired and liked and done interviews with at different times or whatever.
He's a Catholic and I saw him on a Christian TV or a podcast, actually, podcast.
And he said, people don't talk, he goes, we shouldn't try to neuter Christianity and make it, you know, sanitary and like, it's just a good system.
Like, it's like it's wellness or it's not like it's not wellness.
We should bring up like, yeah, like we believe in like a virgin birth, angels, demons, giants, floods, all these like really crazy things that are in there should be brought to the forefront.
And as I engage with scripture, like, say, like when I'm reading Ezekiel or Daniel and reading prophecy, it has, I would say, a sort of a psychedelic impact on me.
And it seems like what when people are talking about visions and prophecy, it seems to me that what they're talking about are layers of reality.
I've been thinking about this.
You might like this.
I don't want to lose track of what we said about why Christianity don't bring those things to the forefront.
But I heard this really good story.
I've been messing around with it in my mind ever since.
Someone said it from the pulpit.
So it's a church story anyway, but I'm praying it's true.
I should probably research these things before I start telling everyone.
Anyway, I heard that there was these experiments done on two sets of dogs like in a laboratory, both in cages, both of which are electrified, you know, low-level electric impulse through the cage.
One set of dogs, say group A, have access to a lever, but when they press it, it alleviates the current and they're no longer electrocuted.
Group B dogs, there's no lever in there.
They can't do anything to stop that electric current being transmitted.
Eventually, over time, those dogs just lay down, live with it, totally accept it as part of everyday life.
The next part of the experiment is they put both sets of dogs in another cage.
That cage has an electric charge, no lever, but only a one and a half foot high fence.
If the dogs want to get out, they can get out.
All the dogs that were in group A, where there was a lever, get the fuck out of there.
All the dogs that were in group B, just lay down and take it.
Well, it occurred to me that we live in an electromagnetic cage in so much as everything that happens on the level of the brain, whether it's sensory information received through the nose, the eyes, or the ears, is interpreted within the body as an electromagnetic impulse through the synapses.
Even something like pain, right?
It's an electromagnetic impulse.
So all of us are in these cages where we're continually subject to stimulation.
Could be like we're subject to bad food, bad information, bad screens, bad stuff.
You're living in a cage.
Now, depending on maybe accidents of birth or some grand inconceivable design, some of us have known there's a lever in the cage.
Some of us have known, I can get out of this, actually.
But me, my own version of being one of the dogs that gets out of it is I've always thought, you know, say from the economic and social class I was from as a child, my route out was I'm going to become, please God, famous.
And like the route of doing that, also I was taking drugs the whole time and becoming an addict.
I was in so much pain and probably couldn't really work out.
Maybe in some level, I always knew that the trophies of the culture would never heal the wound.
Only Christ can do that.
But, you know, at that point, I just thought, Christianity is total bullshit.
You know, I didn't have any understanding of it.
Anyway, so I wonder what you think about that, about the idea that is that true that neurologically your subjective experience is just receiving a bunch of impulses.
That's all that's happening inside.
You're just receiving electromagnetic impulses.
Other than if you are on some grid of God where you're receiving sublime and divine information.
So I think that if people don't start to look at reality like you're contained in a cage full of impulses, they don't have to look at it like that.
They're not going to receive the wisdom or potential truth that there's a way out of it through the cross, through him.
No, I think that's a good analogy.
So I'm sure.
And it's probably why UK is so much more less likely for like overthrow change is because they've been conditioned.
Yeah.
Generationally, and maybe it was even carried in the genes, man.
Yeah, yeah, under the decline, like you always talk about the power of their salvation, you know, of what Christianity is in the UK, that correlation.
Like you said you would go to churches, it'd be so boring, and it felt like nobody believed any of this stuff anyway.
If they started to believe it, and that light switch could turn on and that power could come back, and you start pulling levers and getting out instead of just laying down still, you know.
Because if he was in a church, like imagine, like, it's almost a sketch.
If you're in there in a church, they go, like, right, God came to earth as a baby.
You'd be like, What?
A baby, yeah.
Then they killed him.
Oh, my God.
Why?
Well, I don't know, man.
Like, it's actually like, you know, when I feel, I felt when I first come to Jesus, it is a bit like the feelings I remember from when drugs work.
You know, when drugs work, and it was a bit like, oh, yeah, this is good, man.
It's switching off the pain.
It's working.
It's working.
I felt like waves of kind of, oh my God, it's the subtle detection of a reality that's more powerful than the reality you think you live in, normally brought about by trauma or whatever.
It was in my case, at least.
Like that's sort of amazing feeling, isn't it?
But it's hard to sustain, isn't it?
It's hard to sustain that connection.
Forget, but my experience was similar to yours.
A lot of people have more of a gradual, it won't be as dramatic, but when it's dramatic like that, I mean, you feel it.
I don't know.
I don't know.
When you first came to the Lord, when you were in prison, you really had that.
Yeah, I mean, that was a super dramatic.
I mean, that couldn't be more like you.
It's almost like what you said.
It's if no drug had made me feel that way.
I felt, I definitely felt this presence.
I felt the weight come off me.
I felt a feeling of like protection, like just something wrapped around me.
And I, and I've done every drug under the book.
And I'm like, nope, this is, this is happening to me right now in my prison cell without any substances.
I'm like, this is real.
Yeah.
That's amazing.
And sometimes that's, it takes, it takes everything.
You have to have everything stripped from you, or you have to be almost at rock bottom to for the Lord to be like, now do you see?
You know, at least it does for us knucklehead.
So the Christmas story, ultimately, the season that we're in, the light of the world out of the darkness shines bright.
I think about those sort of revelations that happen in the season, what they should be, not about shopping, not just reflecting on the year, but this beautiful story of the light.
So I'd love if Russell, you read a little bit.
Sometimes I think, Jake, you know, Jake's not taking life seriously.
He's a Louisiana guy.
But then I look at the clock and I see it says 59 minutes and 40 seconds.
And Jake says something like, read the Christmas.
This guy knows what he's doing.
He's on point.
Good transition.
It's real.
It's real.
He's real.
Jake, where in Luke will I find it, mate?
Well, look, what's interesting is everything we're talking about of these news stories, all the failure of governments, all the failure of leaders.
If you read Isaiah 9:6 verse, Isaiah 9:6.
This is the promise of Jesus in the season prophesied for a long time.
And even when Jesus came, there's like 400 years of silence.
I mean, that's crazy.
So I start with 9-6.
Isaiah 9:6.
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders, and he will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace.
Of the greatness of his government and peace, there will be no end.
He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness.
From that time on and forever, the zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.
There is my son on that note.
That's the hope.
That's what we're all, that's what we're all wanting, and that's what we're all really asking for when we see the collapse of society and all the people we've put our false hope into.
And then he answers it right there: the government rests on his shoulder, his kingdom will have no end.
And you know, he'll be just, and you'll know he's the wonderful counselor.
He does it all right where everybody else fails.
And so you can submit to that and surrender to that, innit?
Because that feeling I have all the time of I can't trust people, I can't trust people if I trust I'll be when you said that about protection.
I felt like, oh, that's so nice to feel like, especially someone like you who I associate a lot with physical competence.
Yeah.
What should I read about the and they're saying in Luke, Jake?
Luke 2:1 through 20.
It's just the Christmas story one through 20.
In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.
This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria, and everyone went to their own town to register.
Mass surveillance, facial recognition technology.
So Joseph went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.
He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.
While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son.
She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger because there was no guest room available for him.
And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.
An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them.
And they were terrified.
But the angel said to them, Do not be afraid.
I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.
Today, in the town of David, a savior is being born to you.
He is the Messiah, the Lord.
This will be a sign to you.
You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.
Suddenly, a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth, peace to those on whom his favor rests.
Yeah, I think I like that moment of discovering him, of discovering him in the low places in a manger or in a prison cell, or in my case, sort of in a field by the house when I was doing some suicide planning, just like sort of planning out the kind of that's a low point.
The suicide plan, yeah, I think that's pretty low.
Yeah, okay, so the dog leads this dog leashes this long, carry the one.
Oh, don't wear high-heeled Cuban shoes.
Was this in the UK?
Yes, there's a theme developing, Eddie.
Yeah, it's a suicide nation.
Well, you're trying to kill yourself the dog leash.
I'm like, a gun would do the trick.
That's your point.
I was just saying, that's what I was wondering where it was at.
Well, wait, you could be using this firearm.
So, has Christmas changed since becoming a Christian?
Yeah, the first one, like, was the last one, but this one, the advent, I've had this awareness of the idea of coming light.
I've really been aware of coming light.
I've really thought throughout the event season, I've been doing this in with the Brown family, actually.
That's their surname.
I don't consort with people that are not white.
Last name, sorry.
And like we've been having these Advent events where they've been like music and it's been very, very beautiful.
And I've been really feeling the principles of peace and joy and the coming of light.
In particular, it's in there somewhere.
Light by which all other light is experienced.
The light by which all light is experienced.
You couldn't see light were there not another light by which you saw light.
Like, you know, like that.
That's what that image system is talking about.
Consciousness, awareness, the sort of presence of God.
You know, yeah, so it's felt sort of joy.
It hasn't felt like any of the packaged versions, the sort of modern contemporary, you know, consumerist versions say, or the even the Victorian, like the British, like many of the, much of the paraphernalia of Christmas is British, Victorian, like Yuletide log and Christmas tree and all that.
I felt a bit more of a kind of, oh, like Christmas is the coming of the most power conceivable in the lowest circumstance and in the most innocent way.
Great power in vulnerability, great power in brokenness, great power in total trust, total trust.
Like that famous story that I hear Christians tell a lot of like when the missionary work being done in Fijian Islands and they had no work, they had no word for trust, no word for faith, no word for belief.
And in the end, the missionary said, well, when you sit on that chair, what are you doing?
Like, and he says, oh, we're putting, there was a word that means putting your full weight into something, putting like yielding.
And I'm like, that's where I'm, I'm this Christmas feeling that continually in and out of it because any attempt at control is a kind of a denouncing of his sovereignty.
Yeah.
And I don't know how to fully make yourself like just the tip of the spear, how to make yourself just a sort of channel of his peace, just a sort of an open vessel.
And he's like when jiu-jitsu's going good, like of like, just, oh, well, I'm not even doing anything, you know, I don't know how to do that.
I think that's a constant battle as well.
I mean, I have, I have conflicts with the way Christmas now from when I was raised, you know, I was raised as a Catholic and much as you celebrate Christmas the same way as a Christian does, you know, there's no, really, no differences.
But as I got older, I had a harder time at Christmas.
And I still do because I truly believe like the worldly ways of the way we celebrate Christmas is not the way that Jesus would have wanted us to celebrate it.
I would think if Jesus came back to earth right now and saw the way that we do things surrounding the birth of him, I don't think he would agree with it with all the consumerism, with all of the, it's like all these normal excuses that we do for any other holiday to make money and to sort of, you know, I guess just to take advantage of like, oh, this is what we are celebrating, but let's make, let's start making money around this and marketing it in such a way.
And I do have, I have conflicts with that.
But I also know, you know, it's a part of just the way that we've developed Christmas and the way that this country, or not just this country, but I think worldly does it.
You know, it's, you know, oh, we have to go buy presents and we have to do this.
It's almost like this manufactured happiness, like joy.
You're supposed to be like, oh, this is the time of Christmas.
You're supposed to feel joyous.
You're supposed to feel this.
And so when it's shoved down your throat like that, I have, I don't, internally, I have a conflict with it because I'm like, well, then why aren't we treating every other month like this then?
You know what I mean?
Why is it specifically on his birthday?
Right.
And, but at the, that's something that I have to constantly deal with.
And I have to go to him during this season to be like, give me peace about the way things are going, the way that we do things here.
Because at the end of the day, I don't want to be a Grinch either and be like, oh, like, I don't like the way this is done because I'm not perfect either.
So, you know, I don't know if that I was sort of trying to relate to what you just said a little bit.
Do y'all have any traditions?
Have you done any traditions?
You just wake up, do presents.
The traditions have, you know, obviously with the kids getting older, the traditions sort of change over the years.
I mean, traditionally, when I grew up, yeah, you wake up in the morning, presents are under the trees, Santa Claus came or whatever, you know, and milk and half of you.
Yeah, you leave out the milk and cookies the night before.
But then as you get older, when you become this, when you become Santa Claus, obviously you want to try and keep those traditions alive.
But, you know, depending on who you marry, they might have a different tradition as well.
So you learn to sort of just cohabitate and like blend those traditions.
So everybody gets, you know, does it their way, has a little piece of what they grew up with.
But then that pours out into your children.
I'm sure when my children are older, they're going to take some of what we did, but then also some of what their spouse or somebody else did and mix it as well.
But at the end of the day, the one thing that we, that doesn't change is we recognize that it is the birth of Jesus Christ and that that is a reason that we are all together and celebrating.
And then we go to Christmas Mass that night, you know, at midnight or in the morning, if that's the way you do it.
But that is, that is the purpose of why you're together as a family.
What's the British equivalent to milk and cookies?
Because there's no way it's just milk and cookies.
It's going to be some stupid.
It's going to be like tea, figs.
Well, of course, one must unlock the figgy pudding and peel the parsnip.
The crossing.
Every year I eat.
We take a piece of coal.
Well, actually, our family, it's like milk and biscuits and a bitten into carrot.
Like, don't tell your sisters this.
I'm figuring we can get a couple more years out of them.
I don't know how you do in your family with the stack of that.
They're losing it like each one.
I think Josiah was the last one.
And I felt like he was heartbroken.
Even the whole elf on the shelf thing.
He's like, wait a minute, you do that.
Yeah.
And then he could see it and I hated it that all of a sudden it was like, ah, the, you know, it's out of, but it's about Jesus.
Oh, man.
What about your one?
So we do household with the with the traditions and with their children's imaginative compliance.
So when I grew up, my family said, no, we're going to be honest with them from the get-go.
So when I was like three years old, from what I can remember, they're like, there's no Santa Claus.
It's all made up.
We don't want you to think we're liars.
And you're adopted, which is like, not only is there no Christmas, we're not your parents.
I want to tell you right now.
Yeah.
And we're going to shoot you.
You're going to want them.
Turn this into a Hallmark movie.
Jeez.
Trauma from the get-go.
I had a guy that was like in the church that was making this big argument that you need to go.
Like it was a whole thing.
He spoke on it and he was like, you need to go and tell your kids right now there's no Santa Claus.
And I just, my argument back to him was, I don't know any churches of Santa that are out there.
Like I don't know any adults that are still just like, that's how I put my trust and faith in.
And then he was kind of like, okay, this is naturally drops off.
Yeah, it drops off at some point.
And I just, I hate that.
I could see the sadness in his eyes.
Like, you do it?
What do you mean?
We put some good production in over at the Brand Household.
We've been like, we leave a letter from him.
And what I started when I was too young to appreciate actually was that he uses the bathroom in the house like Santa does.
And he leaves a note describing why he's got such a terrible bowel condition.
He leaves a yule-type log.
He's like, I put food colouring in a toilet.
Now, you have to be careful because red's not good because that looks like Santa's ass is saluting it.
Santa's menstruating.
Santa has cancer.
Yeah.
Merry Christmas.
He's not coming next year.
Yeah.
Sadly.
Now I put food dye and scribble icing around it and like then put like sort of different unidentifiable candies.
And then I leave a note where he calls it things that I consider to be good.
I've got the scribbling Pip Squeaks, the stark Carmichaels.
He describes his bowel diseases.
I'm so sorry.
I panicked.
Shoot, that's actually.
Wait, wait, are you serious?
Oh, yeah.
In the toilet, you put candies in the toilet.
Oh, my God.
Skittles and MLs in there.
I love that tradition.
I think everyone should take on.
We're going to take on.
Where did you get this from?
I just couldn't think of like, well, we started pre-normally footprints, the flower footprints now near the half, and like, oh, Santa's been in here.
And I thought, how do you make Santa being here in your house more interesting?
And immediately, without delay, he's shitting in the toilet and he's doing sort of festive Santa crap.
And they get excited to see it.
Like, let's see what's it that's Santa's adult.
Do they go check Cassini Poop?
It's only really been two years.
My children are seven and nine.
So I reckon I've been doing it.
Like Peggy's been online in Imagination Land for maybe sort of three years.
So I reckon I've done three or four years in current memory.
You know, so and I'm they do go and check and they they like it.
I hope they never see this or experience it or not.
I don't think they watch you.
No, they don't.
I've tried to this year you should uh this year you should leave like a mess just on the carpet and be like, dude, Santa didn't even take time to go use the toilet.
He's gonna even need it.
And it's cool cocoa.
I think that should be there.
Why has he done that?
There's a big market for Christmas books and we could sell like Santa turds.
Yeah.
Try our new reborn turds.
Santa's stools.
You just drop a few of these methylene blues.
It's the perfect color for Santa stools.
Green, has he got a urethra infection?
Red, arse menstruation.
No one needs that from Santa.
Blue, yellow, that's just urine.
Blue, that's the color it has to be.
So take your methylene blues and then your urine actually will be blue.
And it's Smurf P.
Yeah.
That's amazing.
Our work is done here.
Poshnips.
Poshnips.
And that's got to be some kind of weird.
I can't believe you have that as your tradition.
I think that's hilarious.
I can believe it.
Oh, I think it's so funny.
Jake's really adjusted to my strangeness very quick.
I love it.
I still have the literature.
I carry like when we went to DC.
There's a new product coming out.
I haven't told Eddie this.
I have this.
It's just a camping bottle that you can pee in, right?
And I just refuse anymore to get up in the night for a pee.
I could be doing two peas at night.
I refuse to.
I hear you.
Yeah.
Green Mistress.
The Green Mistress is like khaki green camping equipment.
You unscrew, you pee in there, you do the lid shut.
Every day you bleach it and you rinse it out.
I will say that.
Do check the small print.
Anyway, when we were on vacation, what do I mean?
Yeah, how it got found out is the best part of the story.
We're in DC staying at a place called Simba, which is this sort of important place where Christian, like where to encourage Christian ministry among the political community, the members of Cedars invite like leaders and minister to them, right?
And they, so we went there and stayed there.
There you go, Hoops.
I know he's flipping ga gambling cogs like he's a stripper.
He's gone for it.
Yeah, it works.
Keep that on Shepherd's top he's wearing.
Actually, it's one of your kids tops he's wearing.
Yeah, you love Shepherd, um anyway.
So like when uh, Dave and Jake came in my much nicer room that I was staying in in Cedars I had like a whole suite of stuff they found the green mistress on my bed, like what, what is this?
And I said oh, you know, when I pee in the night I don't want to get, so I travel with this thing and I use it out.
Can you tell how you came up to that conclusion?
Like, all right, one time I found my friend's house, who's a double, not a double amputee, he's an amputee, my mate Will.
And like when I used the bathroom at his house, I went for his room and I saw he had one of them, but he had those ones like you get in a hospital that's made out of the same box of egg, same materials, egg crates, you know.
Yeah, like those papier maches looking stuff, and I thought that's a good idea, that man, i'm gonna get me one of those things.
I asked my wife I go, can I get one of them.
There was some debate as whether it was morally wrong because he is an amputee.
when they found out i told dave you know well my mate will he had one he went he don't have any legs We use pea bottles all the time on deployment.
Yeah right, special ops, I knew him.
Yeah, we'll have boxes of just bottles full of piss by the end of the week in your room and then you just go empty that out and then start over again, because usually we don't have like indoor plumbing most of the time.
So if you use a the portajohns which are but that makes sense, right?
Yeah, when you're on a mission or you're in the woods or no, it's not even when we're on the mission, it's when we're back on the fob in our own rooms.
The thing is we have portajohns that are, you know, maybe a quarter mile away, and it's like i'm not gonna walk all the way over there.
That also makes sense when you're at a nice place in a suite and then you have one in your bed so you don't have to get up.
It's a different story.
That's level.
You want to wrap it up?
That's leveling up.
I hope that people at Cedars don't object to that.
I was doing that in their room.
I mean, I had to admit to them i'd spilled something kind of chair as well, and it wasn't urine.
I should clarify, remember?
Yeah, Cedars is like a.
It's like a historic home there in Washington Dc, that you're not supposed to talk about secrets.
I'm meant to admit to being there.
So, like the fight club, I don't know, we weren't there.
We weren't there.
All right.
Well, thank you very much for joining us for this christmas edition of stay free.
And thank you, Eddie Gallagher, as always.
Thank you Russell, as always, beloved Dave.
Thanks mate, you bet buddy.
Thank you.
Yeah, you know what the hell were you thinking.
Thank you Jake, the man.
Beloved Jake, I don't feel comfortable in this raised chair.
I feel uncomfortable in it.
Yeah yeah, I feel like i'd rather, I reckon I would have been funnier over here.
Yeah, you feel like you're in the center.
I think if you would have been in that chair, you would have said, how do I get in that raised chair?
But I always feel like Dave should be in charge of this sort of thing, driving, you know?