Russell Brand and Theo Vaughn dissect global tensions, from London arson linked to the Ashab al Yamin group to France's terror preparations amid Iran conflicts, while critiquing the expanded Five Eyes alliance. They debate psychedelics for addiction with Jake Smith, contrasting spiritual growth against government mandates, and explore faith versus science regarding Noah's Ark and the Crown of Thorns. Ultimately, the episode argues that modern cultural decay demands humility and belief beyond observable evidence or rational proof. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, MahmoudAshraf/mms-300m-1130-forced-aligner, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.00, and large-v3-turbo
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Political Gameplay and Intelligence00:11:47
Russell, controversial conspiracy theorist.
Trying to bring real journalism to the American people.
Hello there, you awakening wonder.
Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
It's Friday.
This is the day that's called Friday.
What do you mean?
I said that.
That's my own name.
Are you okay?
What's the matter?
I just like went like this on my neck and it really cracked.
Like, oh, that's good though.
Sometimes people do that for like a big fight or whatever.
Fuck me.
Footloose!
I watched it yesterday.
Pretty deep.
Pretty deep.
Hey, if you're watching us on Rumble, Rumble Premium, you're where you're supposed to be.
If you're watching us anywhere else, Get here and join us.
Remember, let's do a quick and spontaneous reading from my book, Russell Brand How to Be Christian, How to Become a Christian in Seven Days.
Got to learn the title of this book that I've written.
Oh, this was a good bit.
Yeah, you should get it.
It's really good.
That's that bit where I'm talking about King David and his squabble with prophets and the challenges of King David remaining on track with our Lord as a fallen and broken man.
It's good stuff in there.
Hey, listen, I've got a lot of things to talk you through today on Friday.
I'm not doing this live because I'm in New York.
Or, I'm actually not sure where I am anymore.
I'm not here, I'll tell you that.
But I'm around.
I do a segment called Don't Say You're Not Live.
Yeah, they don't like that.
And then you just say, Am I live or not?
Am I live or not?
How would you ever know?
Well, if I was live, I certainly would be willing to talk about Theo Vaughn taking a call from a guy.
Dave, you wanted to do this, did you?
Oh, yeah.
That was pretty funny.
Well, what about it?
He's just funny.
I love his responses to this.
I'm still not meeting him.
I've been talking to this girl for like two years.
And it turns out I got her pregnant.
The word got around, and somehow it turns out that she's my first cousin.
Wow, dang, brother.
That's, uh, ooh.
That's, you're going to be raising a dang lizard, homie.
You can't, um, wow, brother.
Good golly.
At the very least, it's going to need glasses.
That thing is going to need bifocals, brother.
You know, make sure it doesn't stand straight up when the moon is full and shit like that when it's real young.
Just, I'd hit a couple high notes near it on an instrument.
See if its eyes turn red or anything, but you're just going to have to keep tabs on it.
Just stay safe, brother, and I would back off that type of behavior.
You know, if you win this round of DNA roulette, brother, I'd leave the rest of the bullets in the chamber, baby, when it comes to family.
That's very good.
If you win this round of DNA roulette, he does it so smooth.
That's the thing.
I mean, he says such crazy stuff.
High notes, stand up.
Hit some high notes on an instrument.
That was good.
Yeah, that's a lot of high access to a real interesting array of images that's been demonstrated there.
Really, really beautiful.
Really beautiful.
Hey, who's married to their ninth cousin?
I just learned about it yesterday.
Oh, Kevin Bacon.
But, like, ninth cousin, how do you even track that?
Like, you know, Kevin Bacon had six degrees of Kevin Bacon.
Well, Kevin Bacon himself is married to his ninth cousin.
So it's like he's trying to join in the game of six degrees from Kevin Bacon with his.
I didn't know that.
I'm with you.
Ninth cousin?
How do you, because isn't it like my second cousin is my cousin's son?
And then if he had a son, then my kids would be what, four, fifth cousins to that kid?
You get the remove thing, like first cousin once removed or something.
I don't understand it.
By that time, you may as well move to Louisiana and start having sex with them and roll the barrels on DNA roulette with Theo Vaughn at that point.
Yeah, all right, listen, let me do this thing about my country.
It's gone mad.
As the temperature of global conflict continues to increase, the UK man is falling apart.
I'm glad I'm not there, but I will be going back there pretty soon.
There's anti Islam attacks, there's anti Semitic attacks.
Keir Starmer said last Sunday he was appalled by several.
Arson attacks on Jewish sites in northwest London in recent weeks following an attack from Saturday, Sunday targeting a synagogue.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed Sunday to bring the perpetrators of recent arson attacks to justice.
As Britain's chief rabbi said, a sustained campaign of violence and intimidation against Jews was accelerating.
Starmer's spoken out against it, and UK police say that it could potentially be linked to this ongoing holy war that seems to be getting worse by the day.
The incidents are similar in nature.
They have been arsons.
Targeting Israeli and Jewish premises within London.
Most have been claimed online by a group, Ashab al Yamin, the Islamic movement of the Companions of the Right.
The same group in recent months have claimed attacks across Europe, also happening at similar premises, such as Jewish and Israeli premises.
I want to be clear, irrespective of the motive.
They say I want to be clear a lot now, don't they?
They say I want to be clear a lot.
And that's because I suppose everything is so tangled and confusing.
You know, what were we talking about on the last show?
Ibergain and psychedelics.
It's so tangled and baffling.
Watching Theo Vaughn counsel a man who's had sex with his cousin is sort of such a relief.
It's such a relief to watch something as straightforward as.
Incest guidance.
It doesn't sound right, does it?
It doesn't sound like that's going to solve the problem.
It sounds like political gameplay the whole time.
Like that, what she's saying there.
The perpetrators of this, it doesn't sound like people going, hey, what's going on, man, with all the racing?
Are you unhappy inside?
What the hell are you all doing?
And I suppose the answer to that question is we're all just bewildered and trying to cope with a world where.
No one feels any connection to their community or their self or God.
France prepares for a terror attack on London as tensions over Trump Iran war strike.
Why is France preparing for an attack on London?
France is preparing for a terror strike target in London, it has been claimed.
With France considered as one of the UK's closest allies and security partners, French diplomats are understood to have undertaken a crisis management exercise to help prepare for a massive incident in the city as global tensions following the Iran war.
Continue to arise.
A French crisis response blueprint is understood to cover all contingencies, including a potential terror attack involving French citizens in London, reports the standard.
French consular staff also reportedly participated in the crisis room at the embassy in West London.
These teams would offer support to victims and their families and have the authority to give out passports to French citizens.
I mean, this is probably just an exercise, but we said that about event 2019, didn't we, where Bill Gates et al. prepared for.
A potential pandemic, which then very definitively did happen.
Trump says we may stop Cuba.
We may stop Cuba after we're.
Is that connected to this story, Massey?
Iran fallout.
It's just like, oh, it's just general Iran.
I just saw that it was Trump, you know, with everything that's going on in the world.
He's like, oh, we may stop by Cuba after this Iran thing.
Just more global tensions constantly rising, basically.
Oh, my God, it never ends.
Sorry.
And Cuba's a failing nation.
And we're going to do this.
And we may stop by Cuba after we're finished with this.
But Cuba is a nation that has just been horribly run for many years by Castro.
I didn't like the Five Eye Alliance when Edward Snowden announced it existed.
Which, in case you don't know, is in order to get round laws that countries have, like Australia, New Zealand, the UK, US, to prevent governments spying on their citizens, their citizenry, their subjects, you and me.
Australia will spy on British citizens.
Britain will spy on American citizens.
New Zealand, like, you know, there's a kind of a merry-go-round of snitching and spying, even before the advent of the fully immersive surveillance that we know is coming.
Took some comfort from is that Benjamin Netanyahu weren't adding a sixth eye to the Five Eyes.
The Five Eyes, I always thought sounded all right.
I think as a Five Guys burgers, it just sort of sounded a bit like friendly and not totally, I do want to say satanic, but Six Eyes, I don't know, man, that's taking it to another level and it's happening.
We also produce these incredible weapons that we share with the United States.
We produce intel that is invaluable for the United States.
You're familiar with the Five Eyes, Patrick?
You know what that is?
You know, all these countries that are part of the American intelligence system?
Well, there's a sixth high Israel.
It's a very powerful high.
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And we share our intel with the American intelligence services.
And that's why the bond is so strong.
It's not only a bond of values of our common Judeo Christian civilization.
And it is really a war of civilization against the barbarians that we're fighting.
But it's also a bond of utility, of great success.
That partnership is very, very strong.
I know it's challenged all the time, but it's very, very strong.
And you should talk to some of the people in the higher places in the Pentagon.
I wish you could talk to the people who share our intelligence or the weapon systems that we share.
I think that you'll discover that they appreciate.
As we appreciate enormously what America gives to us, and they appreciate what Israel gives to America.
Whoa, man, there's a lot going on in that interview.
Barbarians casually flung around, sixth eyes being added to the five eye civilization, Patrick Bet David having Netanyahu on at all.
The world is changing quite rapidly, isn't it?
More rapidly than I can be expected to tolerate, and yet we have no power in it.
Hey, do you want to come see me?
I'm doing a live performance on the 18th.
And on the 19th of May, I'll be talking about our Lord and our common Judeo Christian culture, as Benjamin Netanyahu called it.
Although, increasingly, isn't it our job as Christians to bring people to Christ and, in particular, the 12 tribes of Israel?
And is that a troubling thing to say?
I don't think so.
Defibrillating Spiritual Charge00:15:53
No.
I don't know.
Let's see what happens.
Let's see what happens.
Said it now.
Let's see how that goes.
I mean, we certainly know that this little guy is getting spied on all over the show.
Hey, listen, it's Friday.
Let's crack on with, in this instance, it's Russell and Dave because Joe is otherwise engaged.
Let's call it that.
All right, so yeah, crack on.
Oh, gosh.
Oh, yeah, you'll have to read that thing out.
Do you have that thing on the screen?
Which button is it?
Sorry.
52.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
I'll do it, shall I?
Or you do it.
Have you got it?
Give it in Joe's voice.
This podcast is not allied with nor endorsed by any particular 12 step fellowship, although we may reference their literature.
We do not represent these organisations.
The primary purpose of this podcast is to provide additional support to men and women who walk the path of recovery.
We share our personal experience of the 12 steps in the hope that others can benefit.
Take what's useful, disregard what isn't.
Apologies in advance for any offence caused.
Any other problems, take them to your God and your sponsor.
Crack on!
Credible access to the falsetto there from our beloved friend, Jake Smith.
On Crack On, we talk about addiction.
This might be a good place to talk for a start about that.
You know, about using psychedelics to get out of active addiction and using psychedelics to get over trauma.
In a way, there's no question that psychedelics can be pivotal in a person's spiritual journey.
Development, they were in mine.
At the time, I used to think that this LSD should not be being taken by me at a bus stop in Grays, but under clinical conditions or with a shaman in a feathery headdress, not here outside Lakeside Shopping Centre in the rain, terrified and anxious.
Because it's, you know, when you're 16, your identity is just coming together.
And if you sort of dismantle it and resolve it, although, Well, I suppose to cite Paul, he was there to save the Gentiles while being knitted together in his mother's womb.
So there is a version of yourself that's trying to be born.
And there's no question that psychedelics can help you to arrive at an uncluttered and recovered place, a redeemed place, an identity that's not of this world, an identity that's not your response to trauma and coaching and conditioning, but an identity that's real and true and in God.
But you're saying, Dave, and I would back this up, that it's not enough to just like have some powerful ayahuasca experience.
Because, me, I feel like if I had a powerful ayahuasca experience, the very next thing that I'd want would be another powerful ayahuasca experience.
In fact, the main challenge I have is like not really wanting to be here.
And I would prefer to remain in a kind of spirit, is what I would probably call it.
I prefer to stay in spiritual states.
I find being in the world and in the body pretty difficult.
And I think that sometimes what we're trying to do is kind of Defibrillate a spiritual charge out of dead matter, out of density, out of thick things, you know, like food or sex or whatever, trying to get it, trying to rest satisfaction out of this world.
So let's start with the spiritual nature of our condition.
And what happens if something that's plainly spiritually powerful, like the use of psychedelics, comes into conflict with the idea of total abstinence?
I mean, I think, would you take them today?
I'd like to.
I'd take them every day.
I'd take them from the minute I get up to the minute I went to bed if I could.
I'd like it's, I mean, in a way, what is it you're looking for right now?
My life is so beset with really sort of what seemed to me to be sort of gargantuan challenges that the idea that I could live, you know, when we watched that video one time of Thailand and there was like a waterfall and, you know, like sort of on a comet, I really kind of want to live like that now.
I really want the opposite of going to New York and arguing with Piers Morgan and Megyn Kelly.
Me too.
I'd like to live in a lagoon.
I'd be okay just sitting in a field, I think.
A field?
Just don't even have to have water.
You've got to have access to water, Jake.
That's necessary for human survival.
But like, so, you know, and what's really interesting is when people say, no, like plant medicine, it's not drugs.
And I recognize it's not drugs like cocaine, although that is plant derived, or heroin, although that is also.
Plant derived in this is like it's medicinal in so much as its sort of explicit purpose is to induce the spiritual state.
But it's just so strange when that kind of thing gets sanctioned when that thing's got the government's fingerprints on it, even when it's people in the government I sort of deeply admire, like Robert Kennedy and people from the media space, like Joe Rogan, who I hugely respect.
I still think, oh man, as an addict, this ain't gonna work.
I think if they were, if it was just them to bring it to fulfillment, right, I would not, then I wouldn't feel like it was tainted.
But the fact that they're just going to get it passed, but like who's actually going to be benefiting from it and all that, then I feel like, I don't know, we'll see on that.
I would think of it when I think of doing that, I think of it as just checking out.
Yeah.
And so anything that's allowing me to just check out, I would almost consider it a relapse if I did it.
Yeah, so would I.
I mean, it would be.
Even though I know that.
Like, especially with ayahuasca, I believe, it's not.
It's not like just taking some acid.
It's not always a great experience, the first part of it, at least.
No.
And it's not like people, I think people get tripped up on the idea that it's a sort of Epicurean that is about the pursuit of pleasure.
All drugs make you vomit.
If you do them properly, alcohol will make you vomit, and weed will make you vomit, crack will make you vomit, smack will make you vomit.
It's not like, oh, it's bodily uncomfortable.
Any serious drug addict is going to push right through that.
I'm interested in like, That the profound, I mean, profound in the literal sense, deep, that underneath your identity as who were you before you had that name?
So I was like, I had to turn the lights off, even though I weren't really ready to finish reading.
I wanted to read some more of Jamie Winship's book, actually.
But the baby was waking up.
So I turned the light off and I was doing a rosary.
You know, I do, I chant the rosary, something I don't chant, I just say it in my head.
Now, I had this while I was doing it, I'm thinking, okay, so Christ, you're real and you're here now.
And the Holy Spirit, that's God's spirit.
That's the spirit of God that raised Christ from the dead.
It's the spirit that created all reality, material and non material, observable and non observable.
And just this morning when I was trying to explain the nature of consciousness to my seven year old and my nine year old, I was going, do you know what consciousness means?
And they went, no.
And it goes, it's like awareness, and consciousness is the recipient of sensory information.
Like you can see all this stuff with your eyes, but who is it that's seeing it?
It's like awareness, and it's the experience of being you in the world.
That is consciousness, and you can meet Christ there.
And last night, I was having an experience of, like, okay, so Lord, what do you want me to know?
What do you want me to know right now?
Who do you want me to be?
What am I supposed to do with all this?
What do you want me to do with the challenges in my life, the trials, figurative and literal?
What do you want me to do?
And, like, what I felt intimacy, I started to feel some intimacy.
And I think that this idea of intimacy is an important one because, like, as a person that slept around a bunch, like, intimacy is kind of one of the ingredients, one of the essences rather than ingredients that you're pursuing.
I also think there's a kind of anesthesia that drug addicts, like you said, checked out.
I love checking out, man.
I can do that now with a TV, though.
You can do that.
Like, sometimes I'm, I grew up so much staring at screens anyway, and I'm, I, you know, my childhood predates the screen ubiquity of the modern era.
I like just staring at a TV and like, ah, coming down.
Like, but last night I felt like I experienced, and again, this is something that's sort of quite new to me.
The presence of, oh, yeah, what would it be like?
Because, like, I'm not going to, I don't feel like I'm going to experience Jesus in a kind of a South Park way or in a nativity, like, hello, Russell.
Like, you know, what are you going to do?
Envisage his face, a face that's a bit like mine, a bit like the Turing Shroud, a bit like Jake's, a bit like anyone that's got long hair and a beard.
Is that what you're looking for?
Or is it going to be, given that we're talking about, we're talking about bursting the bank's cup run of over realities that don't fit into your own, your contemporary understanding of what reality is and what reality's limits are?
So, while I was doing that, I'm like obviously incanting a prayer that's about the mother of God, the person that held God in her body and birthed God.
And what is the rosary?
I know like none of you guys are Catholic and Joe's not here to stand up for it.
But the idea of the divinity of Mary is obviously based on the fact that our Lord grew in her and how pure a person would have to be to undertake that task and on what kind of level of self abnegation.
So, that a person would have to undertake to.
Fulfill that.
And while I was sort of saying those things, I was feeling like a kind of an openness to, like, the point of praying to Mary, I suppose the Catholics would say, is like, you daren't approach our Lord.
Now, that's one of the things that I don't agree with because I think the whole point of Jesus is direct access to God.
I don't want another layer of brokerage after the curtain's been torn, temple curtain's been torn asunder, and after you've been granted that level of access.
However, as I'm sort of doing it, I felt like I was really dropping into something deep and beyond my personhood, beyond what I think about myself, what I believe about myself.
Good or negative, it was sort of like all just melting away as I lay there silently in my mind chanting.
And then, though, I started to feel darkness.
I felt the presence of like what I would call demonic evil.
Like, because if you're in absolute fields, if you're in a boundless field of reality, like the field that Jake wants to live in, like you are going to encounter not just whatever essential forces drive good, but whatever essential forces drive evil.
Evil.
And I think actually the alcoholic is like a self designated priest, an uninitiated priest who said, I can't be in this world.
I'm out.
I'm entering into a kind of a cult or I'm entering into a kind of monastery.
But because it's not got disciplines or rituals or routines or ceremony, what it's actually going to focus on is the end goal of the spiritual life altering your inner state so that you are not identifying with who you think you are or what the culture says you are.
And that's obviously dangerous.
And messy and crazy, and shouldn't be in the hands of kids just doing drugs on their own, but neither should it be in the hands of some of the worst corporate criminals in the world.
Now, again, like you say, I trust Joe Rogan and I trust Robert Kennedy as much as I trust any person, any leader, any powerful people, of course.
But it's so odd for me, fascinating in a way that I've still not fully understood that the culture and politics are getting right into the sort of molecular level of reality and messing around in there.
This could just be more profit earring, just like AI or whatever, pick a news story.
But Dave, you know, like you're an addict just the same as me.
You're a person, therefore, that can't fit in this world just the same as me, that you're a suicide risk if you are just left on your own.
And I am.
I suppose what I'm asking you, mate, is do you see that there's some not forming there?
Like, there's something going on in that moment in the White House.
It's like there's something going on that I don't fully understand, but I want answers on.
Even bring into it the fact that aren't you friends with one of the people that represented the government in the opioid crisis?
Yeah.
I think there's so much going on there in the spiritual world that I think there's a lot going on there in the spiritual world.
Um, What's the Jake?
You remember in the Bible it has the story of where he opens the eyes where they could see the spiritual army.
Is that Ezekiel?
Yeah, the Ezekiel.
Like surrounded, but they're surrounding that enemy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Why is that?
Or is that Elijah or Elisha?
I think it was one of the.
I think it was Elisha.
Yeah, you've mentioned this before.
Why are you still getting right now, mate?
I think if we could see in the spiritual world around that, I mean, you just see.
I don't know what you'd see.
I don't think about it much just because there's not really clarity around it.
I mean, I don't know.
I think there's a lot going on around us.
I think in the last few weeks, especially with Jamie coming in town, talking about fears and identities, I've felt more growth in the last month probably.
Yeah, I have.
What is going on?
And resistance too.
Yeah.
Some of it not necessarily.
Demonic, some of it's just my own self will resistance, too.
So, but say when someone says that it's endocrinal or hormonal or menopausal or manic depression, don't you think that's just one tier of analysis?
Like, what's going on?
You know, what is self will really?
Well, self will for me is the nexus via which Satan or I'm trying to find the right vocabulary for all this stuff so I don't put people off, but evil or fallenness or destruction.
Or malevolence traps you.
When I'm in myself, which I am much too much of the time, that's when I'm vulnerable.
And even when I'm in a kind of neutrality, I'm vulnerable.
I'm only not vulnerable to the schemes of the fallen one when I'm directly involved or directly connected to Christ.
And what I mean by that is if it's like, it's not always bloody mysterious and amazing.
Sometimes it's just like, what are you supposed to be doing right now?
Be kind.
What are you supposed to be doing right now?
What role are you in?
In this moment, you're a father or you're at work.
And the problem, one of the challenges I have is that I feel like the role that's coming out is see, these shows have been crazy.
The last one we've done and this one, right?
But I know that part of the role that I'm moving into is more like this, but it's new.
It's very new.
Like, I don't want to be involved at all.
And I, but this is who knows, this could be just selfishness in management, bureaucracy, operations.
I feel like I want to sit in front of a temple, I want to sit and meditate and pray and then be brought out.
To talk and deal with spiritual things and then taken back in there.
Now I know I've got to look after.
Overhauling Sex and Innocence00:11:37
I'm a father, I'm a householder, I'm a normal dude.
I'm a normal dude with kids, you know, and I know I've got to do all that stuff.
And then when that man and when that unfolds into like, even you, a lot who are trying to do this sort of more, you know, this is a relatively, I don't mean this in a derisory, obviously, way, innocent sort of place to live.
You know, you're not living in London or Chicago or Dallas where the culture would be, Addy, like, yeah, sorry, I shouldn't use particular names, but like, you know, one more of the older daughters, you know, and that'll be my daughters in a few years are, Getting pulled into some crap, you know, like, you know, like they're on this thing now, like some sort of terrible screen that's pulling them this way.
We're in this, and you still have to go and do all of the baseball stuff and all that.
You know, the world's so greedy and porous and magnetic, and I sort of don't want to be in it anymore.
And I don't mean that in a suicidal way, I mean it in established communities outside of it and live in alignment and live in truth.
And I see like the appetite for it is real, like people that are in normal, let's call them normal American churches.
They want it.
They want a richer, more vivid, vital experience of Christ.
People that have just spilled into the world recognizing, oh no, like whether you're purchasing Lamborghinis or rattling around in Target, they're recognizing, oh no, everyone, this is precipitous.
We're at the edge.
The old ways aren't working.
That's what it feels like.
It's just like whatever was familiar, whatever, even things that you could go back to for some sort of sanity or control, don't work anymore.
So we're.
I think we talked about it a lot.
Like we're in this unknown and there is resistance and we still can't see what's ahead, but we're sort of just trying to take it a day at a time.
So I'm grateful for it.
They never really did work.
We had our security and other stuff.
It's just getting exposed.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I do think not just in Christ when you're, you know, sitting down on your knees doing the rosary at night, but I think I've been thinking quite a bit of just being grateful for the deep friendships I have.
Because other guys, like, I mean, Christ went well with us on a plane or wherever we're going, you know, at Tucker's or other places on mission, too.
I really feel it there.
And, and like they're experiencing it day by day with other guys like you and Jake and other and Micah and Robert, like guys that I'm close with.
And talking to them and talking.
A lot of times, I think it looks like when they see something, then they're like, hey, are you getting resentful?
Or, you know, they're looking out for my six.
Like your back, looking out for your back.
What was it that you just said?
Looking out for your six.
So, like, check your six.
Check your six.
Six o'clock.
Six o'clock.
Ah.
Yeah.
Nice.
Hey, that story was Elisha, 2 Kings.
When Elisha prayed, open his eyes, Lord, that he may see.
And then the Lord opened the servant's eyes and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
He thought he was like, you know, down and out and the enemies were too big.
He just said, open his eyes.
I think that's a good prayer always.
Open my eyes.
Where exactly in Kings is that?
So I'd like to look at it.
It's 2 Kings 6.
Yeah, well, I suppose, see what, like in that moment of contemplation and prayer last night, I've had a felt experience of this is not reality.
Now, it's very difficult to encourage people to look at the world that way because it's invisible.
But that's throughout the book the kingdom of heaven is on the earth.
It's all about us.
You can't see it.
How am I going to explain this to you?
It's a bit like, you know, there's so, it's a bandwidth challenge, isn't it?
So, how do you explain to people?
Another layer of reality.
Don't be afraid, the prophet answered.
Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.
And Elisha prayed, Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.
Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
As the enemy came down toward him, Elisha prayed to the Lord, Strike this army with blindness.
We struck them with blindness.
I reckon it's, um, yeah.
I'm trying to, like, a drug addict is trying to spiritualize the world.
You're trying to make the world spiritual.
Can you fulfill me?
Can you complete me?
Can you distract me?
And it can't, and it doesn't, and it won't.
And if you go the addiction, chemical dependency route, you'll realize it really, really quickly.
You'll realize it quicker, or you'll die trying.
And if you're still doing it in ways like mundane ways, It can take forever.
I think that people are suspended in this, in a false reality, in a false identity for the majority of their lives.
It's a sort of, it's one of the paths you can go.
It's the path that I was on.
And even when you're in it and on it, when you start to feel God and know God differently, it's very difficult to remain in it.
I drift in and out of it on a moment to moment basis.
I like where it says in the big book, their head in the clouds with God, but their feet firmly on the ground.
Yeah.
Where the work must be done.
Do you think that's pluralized?
Because I think that's hard to do on your own.
I don't think that's easy to do on your own.
And I like the way that Jamie talks about sort of a almost a collegiate identity of being part of a group or clan.
It's like, you know how to handle this situation, don't you?
Or are you better?
Because I'm not good at this.
I'm freaking out.
And like, you know, yeah, heading like when the spirit's on me, I can really do the head in the cloud stuff pretty nicely.
The feet on the ground, like, you know, I do tend to need assistance.
I run out of road a lot.
I run out of road.
I crash pretty bad.
I crash in it, man.
I see what this is.
All right, now check this out sex, huh?
Well, what possible problems could there be around that?
So, this is also what we're going to discuss today because one of the ways that we try to energize ourselves and energize dead matter is over sexualization.
Now, I went to a treatment center for sex addiction when I was.
Pretty young, actually, I was in my 20s.
And, um, for a sex addiction, yeah, Keystone, Philadelphia.
And, um, our man, because there was a regular rehab attached to it, and I did not like being on the bus with the, I mean, they were really lovely people, but excuse me, a lot of their problems were more, um, what I would say vividly and troubling.
Yeah.
And what I was there for was it co ed?
No, thankfully it was not.
I was there sort of mostly with men.
Entirely with men, but like some of them are like, you know, had some serious stuff going on.
Now, about sex, many of us needed an overhauling there, but above all, we try to be sensible on this question.
It's so easy to get way off track.
Here we find human opinions running to extremes, absurd extremes, perhaps.
One set of voices cry that sex is a lust of our lower nature, a base necessity of procreation.
That's Puritanism.
Then we have the voices who cry for sex and more sex, who bewail the institution of marriage, who think that most of the troubles of the race are traceable to sex causes, Freudianism.
They think we do not have enough of it or that it isn't the right kind.
They see its significance everywhere.
One school would allow man no flavor for his fare, and the other would have us all on a straight pepper diet.
We want to stay out of this controversy.
We don't want to be the arbiter of anyone's sex conduct.
We all have sex problems.
We'd hardly be human if we didn't.
What can we do about them?
It goes on to suggest that we develop sane and sound sexual ideals.
And, like, if you're a married man, your sane and sound sex ideals would be sex within the marriage.
I talk a lot to.
Gay people, you know, as a Christian, and like a couple of gay women actually.
And I'm really sort of navigating that territory of, yeah, what is wrong with same sex folks being in a relationship, loving one another?
And it gets good, it gets pretty nitty gritty because I'm like, you know, because I'm like a married man.
I wouldn't say that the erotic component of my marriage is what's driving it and defining it at this point.
What about you and your?
Partner, and she's like, Yeah, yeah, the same, the same.
Yeah, I like, and what I like is being in conversations where non judgment is the principle, and where this is where I think the old conventional church could benefit is from a bit of the old log in your own eye rather than the spec.
I feel like sometimes, like the Christian community, I feel like we're really into judging gay folks or whatever when people at our own church are looking at porn the whole time.
And that's why I loved it.
John Rich, very early in my walk with our Lord, John Rich, when I asked him about it, because he was wearing a cowboy hat and seemed like a Southern guy, which he is, he was like, no separate compartments in hell.
Like he just didn't get involved in that, in judging people for that.
Definitely, though, where I've gotten to is where you can get to pretty easily is all forms of objectification of sex that arouses suspicion, causes bitterness and resentment.
That should be.
Off the agenda for all of us.
And I've gotten to that place.
Like, you know, now say, like, we've all got daughters and a son each, actually, haven't we?
And there would have been a point not that long ago where I've said to my daughter, I'd have been grateful to say, Well, my daughters, you know, no sex outside of marriage, girls.
That's how our faith and our ideology handles this.
And I believe in it.
And this is why.
And I could tell them.
But I would have been with my son.
But you, lad, you get like, but now, not even that.
Now I'll be like, And you also, I can tell you.
Do not.
This is the safe way.
This is what our.
This is.
Thankfully, there's a way back for those of us that mess up, but.
You ever hear the, uh, you ever watch Yellowstone, the country TV show?
I haven't.
John Dutton, like the main country dude on it once, uh, he was giving a speech and he said, with daughters, you try to keep them from getting fucked.
With sons, you try to keep them from fucking themselves.
I'll always remember that it's like your two things between, like, you, like, you really worry for your daughters.
You're like, man, I want to keep their purity.
I do.
I do.
I shouldn't say we.
Uh, I, I want them to remain pure and I want them to have a husband that loves them and, Committed to him, and then with my son, I just want him to keep his dick in his pants.
You're saying, beloved, did you see your major once we open that bottle?
It's gonna change in this room.
Rats in Therapy Sessions00:05:48
I just want to see where he even is.
Best believe it.
What's going on, darling?
You're all right.
I thought I'd better jump on.
I can't leave my little box or just a little black square.
It was horrible.
It was like Black Lives Matter, which they do.
I feel a void, don't I?
You certainly do, mate.
So here I am.
You're filling that void too aggressively.
What's been going on?
Why are you late?
Talk us through it.
You're in the middle of it.
We're doing crack on actually now.
So we're talking about, we've talked about the complexity of prescribing psychedelics to treat addiction.
We've talked about the sex problems that we all face.
And now we're talking about you, Joe, and what you're doing.
And where you are and what's going on to the degree that you want to talk about it?
Well, yeah, that's a difficult one.
I'm on the way home.
Let's just put it that way.
I've been traveling a little bit, doing some logistics and security.
It's not been very successful, and I won't be doing it again.
I've had enough.
Life's hard enough, innit?
What was the outcome on the debate for psychedelics for addicts?
I'm always curious on that.
And funny enough, I had a call with someone about a week ago now.
And I remember having this same conversation with you, Russell, about five years ago.
And I was like, look, I think this is the answer.
It's going to help me.
It rewires your brain.
You take the psilocybin and it lights up these new pathways, new synapses form.
Then you take the lion's mane and that memorizes the new pathways.
And you're like a new person.
It rewires your whole brain.
This is it.
And you was like, nah.
No, you can't, mate.
Just hold off on it.
I remember being so disappointed, so disappointed.
But I had the same conversation with a younger lad recently.
And I said to him, look, mate, you follow this path, all these things change.
There's no quick fix, but in time, you're going to be all right and you're going to understand why you've got to go through these shifts of new feelings and life being a little bit more raw and having nothing to take it away.
But in time, That experience is going to be useful and it's going to, you're going to start to see, oh, I get it now.
I get why I had to go through that.
And, you know, and it was nice me having that conversation.
I thought, fucking hell.
That was like a good five years ago when I was told that.
And it really, he wasn't just palming me off with, look, don't do it for now and hoping I'll forget about it.
Like, it really does work.
If you follow this path, things change.
There you go.
When you said that psilocybin opens new neurological pathways, then the lion's mane fortifies them, it's so sort of comforting to find language that makes it seem plausible.
And perhaps even on some high level MRI, you could observe that happening.
But it's all phrenology in the end.
You remember phrenology was the science where they felt they could tell a person's, the Nazis liked it.
It that you could tell a person's character by feeling bumps on their skull in the end, all human ingenuity will just sort of collapse into meaninglessness because I think we're living in a fragment of reality that's so insignificant compared to the whole,
whilst it may bear its fractal essence, that all conclusions drawn from observing this tiny corner of reality are sort of moot, redundant, insufficient, and insignificant.
You can even make that.
Claim using contemporary astrophysics 90% of the world is dark matter, or excuse me, of the universe is dark matter and dark energy.
And through our instruments of amplification, microscopes and telescopes, and all forms of amplification, right down to double slit theory, detecting movement of electrons is a form of amplification, it's a form of observation.
We kind of accompany discovery instead of with awe, with a kind of contemptuous arrogance.
And I reckon those of us that are Like our own lab rats, where we're running experiments on our own consciousness.
Watch that lab rat video that I've got on the one I had on there for so long.
We should be very humble about what we can understand and what we can know.
It sounds like you've given some good guidance to that person.
Because the truth is, I too had a conversation with my sponsor where I was like, listen, ayahuasca does this and it rewires the networks and the part.
I mean, we're all having that rewired network.
It's like some sort of threesome.
Conversation with a long term wife.
Listen, this is what the threesome is gonna do for our marriage.
The threesome, ladies and gentlemen, it's gonna revitalize.
Can we do it with a guy?
Shut, shut.
No.
Threesome with a point two.
Power pointing our way through idiotic ideas and notions only to discover that you can't derive satisfaction from this world if only you manage properly.
The only way, the only way is through a kind of Death of the very thing that you're trying to fulfill, and that will come sure enough and fast enough.
But Jake Smith has for us this Do rats do therapy?
Well, do they?
Do men need therapy?
Believe it or not, no.
Really?
You know, a lot of research lately.
There was a study that I actually did with rats, and what they did is they put the rats in therapy.
Death of Worldly Fulfillment00:02:07
They had the rats telling the rats that everything they were doing is okay, it's not their fault.
But the rats were actually still running around scaring girls and biting people.
They're still rats.
Yeah, they're still just running around.
Let me get this straight.
So they brought in a test group of male rats, and then they brought in a therapist.
Female rat therapist.
And she did therapy on these male rats, and at the end, they found that they're still acting like rats.
Pretty quickly, the rats started mating and running around, and girls still were freaked out by them when they saw them.
The therapy just doesn't work.
But the rats still wanted cheese.
Cheese is cheddar, you know?
Yeah.
Get the cheddar means money.
Yeah.
What is money?
Cheese.
No, currency.
Oh, currency.
Yeah, sorry.
And what is currency?
Power.
No, it's how you buy stuff.
Okay.
This is all of us now.
That's what we're doing.
That's our job, participating in that.
All right, then.
Hey, we'll be back in a moment.
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Surrendering to the Simulation00:09:46
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Look at this sacrilegious madness.
The world's getting worse.
I saw some posts that said, like, if you watch Before Sunrise now, like that movie Ethan Hawke and that French actor, you're like, oh, God, everything's worse.
Everything's falling apart.
Like, the cities aren't so beautiful.
The world's not so beautiful.
Some innocence has been stripped back.
Now, of course, like, when I was a kid, older people said that stuff.
But, oh, man, it does feel like we're living in total deterioration.
This is not a time of ascendancy when it comes to the metrics of the world, is it?
It's collapsing.
What do you think is the best time period then?
The 90s.
What?
The 90s?
So, when you were young.
And out of the 60s.
Pop was coming up, like Jordan and all that, but in a pure way, it felt like.
I was sort of disillusioned already.
My life was so, because I had such a dreadful adolescence, I didn't like it.
And also, I don't see myself as connected to eras or time.
You know, like McDonald's, Coca Cola felt like kind of normal.
Yeah, not like before.
It's like, oh, they're trying to kill you.
It felt like Nike shoes, maybe the purest of the big things, pop stars, Michael Jackson.
Like, these things felt right.
Well, it sounds like you, like, I'm older than you, of course, but like, I didn't believe in the culture already.
Like, all of that, while all of that was happening, Coca Cola, McDonald's, or whatever.
I do remember when they built McDonald's in Grays, where I'm from, I was like, this is fucking brilliant.
Oh my God, we're getting a McDonald's.
Thank you so much.
It's more than we deserve, but we'll take it.
But it feels like such a long time since I've believed that the culture could do anything good.
And now I've been right in the culture's belly, like Jonah, and booted out of its blowhole, like Jonah.
I now don't have any, I'm actually sort of almost got a bristling allergy to it.
Like, you know, I can't get excited about nothing except for potentially.
Well, the archaeologists saying he's found Noah's Ark, it's not going to be Noah's Ark, is it?
Don't you like?
I mean, we'll look at it.
Let's see if we can get it up for Noah's Ark.
But part of the problem, one of the things is, you know, as all people go, there was some, the Turing Shroud, it's like a nuclear raid.
I don't think you, we're dealing with planes of reality that can't be fully reconciled.
Even though, like, when I read the Book of Acts, I was like, oh, my man, this is crazy.
This actually happened.
I get it now.
I can feel the people in it.
I can feel the humanity.
I don't think you can.
Provide the interstitial material that's going to make you rationally understand the miracles of Jesus.
I think they have to be understood on a sort of basis.
I think you have to be able to skip between planes.
I don't think you can go, see, look, here's this actual Noah's Ark.
You know, like it could have been so many things.
I would say it reminds me of the take from the Crown of Thorns.
Yeah.
It was probably one of the most negative received clips we've ever put out.
Like people were not happy about it.
Like, I don't even understand what y'all are saying.
Stop being gory about it.
Get into it.
Like, this is the Lord.
Be sincere.
Yeah.
I was a clip that was pretty interesting to just see people just go, that's not how I feel about it.
Right.
Yeah.
I can see why.
Because if you're like a lifelong Christian and then maybe you see something like that and you can really sort of use it as a meditation, I know Joe would have been into that because Joe likes the gore of the.
Or those people like people in the comments.
I like it.
That guy, Jeremiah Johnson, is a.
Like, come into bat for him.
Like, the guy who brought the.
Yeah.
They were like, that's not.
He's not like any other people.
He researches stuff like coming to his defense.
Pretty interesting.
Well, I've got his book at home.
We were just talking about like Christians perving on that stuff.
Yeah.
On the.
On the passion and stuff, I don't know why I find that awkward because for me, it's like you're dealing with something sort of unknowable.
And I reckoned I didn't get anywhere when I was thinking about the extraterrestrial Ezekiel stuff.
When I was going, Oh, well, maybe Noah's Ark though, maybe it was DNA that was being stored because how could you really get two giraffes and two water buffalo?
And like it doesn't work so, but maybe if they if like they were sort of interdimensional beings that were helping gather DNA and da and all of like that stuff, you know, I like that.
I guess I like ruminating on the sort of a Marginalia of it.
Like when it's like when you feel like you're dealing with some edge stuff.
I think like now I'm going to go read Enoch and I'm going to go read them sort of Gnostic Gospels just because I want more architecture.
I want more ammunition.
I want more material and fodder.
Not that I've, you know, understood 2% of what's in sort of the canonical Gospels.
But like I feel like dragging it into the material world is not what your men are doing with it.
That's what I would say.
And that's a bit like what I feel about that Iber Gain stuff.
Like, no, no, these institutions aren't going to work.
These institutions aren't going to resolve it.
See, when thinking about the first miracle being turning water into wine, an analysis like, oh, I see.
So, after Christ at a nuptial ceremony where we become, as his collective church, like the bride of God in this reinvigorated ceremony, the water of a thin.
Experience of being alive is going to be enriched and like transformative, like wine.
I can sort of like, like, as a poetic interpretation, I can get into.
But if someone says, you know, you actually, how he may have done that is because he may have been able to, da da da da, I'm like, if they took it from like a chemistry, they're like, well, hydrogen molecules, you can do that.
Maybe if he had these kind of lasers on his arms, like, I don't think that's the right direction to go.
Like, I think you're sort of, again, it's an affront.
To the mystery in some way.
Not that, you know.
None of that ever, like, brings me into more intimacy with him.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, that's true.
Because, like, it's going to come down to.
See when, like in Grief Observed, when all of us are going to experience points where just normal life nearly destroys you, and then your actual human life ends because your body's going to expire one way or another.
And that, yeah, right.
That's not going to help if I've got some sort of scientific explanation for how this happened, or some very brutal explanation for the passion or something.
Because it'll still take faith to believe what they're showing you is actually true.
So, even if they showed you all the facts or they showed you, you would still have to take faith to go, Well, how do I know that that's real?
I know.
Yeah.
So, what about when you go to the places like when you go, This is the actual cave where or the actual?
I don't know, man.
Still takes the whole thing.
What if the whole thing's, you know, like when it starts, when you start to get nearer to feeling this is a simulation, you've been captured, your consciousness is sort of trapped in a kind of sphere of reality that you can only penetrate and break out of through accepting Christ.
You know, it's sort of, it's, There's so many kind of different threads and so many connections that have got to be sort of formed that it's not, you're not going to roadmap your way out of it by visiting a geographical location or having a real understanding of what it would actually be like to be whipped with a cat of nine tails or, you know, this is what it's like to hang in the sun on a cross.
It's like, it doesn't seem like that's where it is.
Yeah.
Well, I don't think you can.
I mean, the We Agnostic puts it really good where it says, we, you know, reason can get us up to the bridge, but we have to cross it in faith.
Yeah, that's right.
And that I don't know if I've seen anyone come to know God.
It's like, oh, well, now I have enough factual evidence of something that I'm going to choose to believe in.
Isn't that like the Lee Strobel thing?
Like people that really enjoy that, they don't know.
Lee Strobel was doing some research to disprove that God is real.
And even those people, I feel like still it was by faith, like God grabbing a hold of them.
Yeah.
And because what happened to me was like, you know, it's weird because, of course, there are lots of people that still don't believe.
But like what happened was.
Well, I've heard all of this stuff loads and loads of times before, and I think it's not true.
And now something's happened, and I'm like, oh, it's true.
It's true.
But then, even like C.S. Lewis goes through, or Mother Teresa, or presumably every great saint goes through times where you feel like, oh, Lord, it's pretty hard to believe in you right now.
I'm finding this difficult.
Why are you doing this?
I don't want this.
But I can't see any other path anymore.
I can't see any other path.
Like none of it.
Not nihilism, not hedonism, not suicide.
There is, like, it's just become the road gets narrower, narrower is the gate.
In the end, I keep praying to be able to surrender more.
I keep praying to be able to surrender more.
Let me surrender more.
Come see me in Florida.
Come see me.
Thank you very much for joining us for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
We'll be back next week, not with more of the same, but with more of the different.