Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh - Russell Brand Reaches ENLIGHTENMENT
Episode Date: August 30, 2022Russell Brand came to the London studio to discuss Nirvana (The place not the band), destroying rude news people, and mans search for freedom. INDULGE! 00:00 - Start 00:55 - Support animal and Dressi...ng like Randy Savage 03:05 - Russell being Andrew’s first YouTube obsession 10:03 - Understanding addiction’s origins in all of us 15:37 - “Waking up” to your own issues 24:51 - Russell’s tactics for media appearances 28:28 - We all want and don’t want Russel to run for President 36:10 - Russell loves dressing up like famous Arab leaders… 37:38 - People want the simplest of things… freedom 50:02 - I can’t give up toilet paper to help poor people 56:12 - Power of Burning Man: potential of true altruism 01:09:25 - Channelling the God within all
Transcript
Discussion (0)
What's up everybody and welcome to Flagrant and today we are joined by the brilliant, the glamorous, the Flagrant one himself, we have Russell Brand in the motherfucking building.
Thanks.
We're honored.
Thank you. I hope that, you know, you've not brought me here to come up and annihilate me. That's why I came in camouflage.
All reality is held within your consciousness. There is nothing that you are aware of that you
do not know about whether it's the big bang or the dinosaurs or political assassinations or
quantum physics all of that exists within your individual awareness that is anticipated in all
of the great ideologies in islam in christianity in buddhism they tell you this it's an illusion
but you have to participate as if it is real you have to find
the beauty in it
you are creating reality
while you are living it
you are God
thank you
can I say something
to you real quick
up front
yeah go on
hi this is also Bear
we have Bear here
hi Bear
good boy
why don't you cooperate
it's meant to be
an emotional support animal
you know what it is
but I got
like I went to the doctors
and got an emotional support animal card and you have to support I got like I went to the doctors and got an emotional
support animal card
and you have to support him
every day
it's an unrelenting
support that you require
I double bluffed myself though
because like
I went to get the dog
so that I could take him places
but then I realised
when I can't take him places
I'm antagonised by it
and like it freaks me out
so I've actually
do require
that's how I found out
you need another dog
you can take
now I need two dogs
so big to take anywhere
like you can't fly with this guy
it makes you nervous yeah you gotta run a private jet
he's just sliding around it's gonna be a whole thing
he's scampering about the place
you'd be better off with a terrorist
at least there's a chance
because they say you can't negotiate
with terrorists but you actually can yeah just give him
a treat that's what you have to do
what are your needs
what is the historic problem
that you're trying to address
otherwise what's going to happen
cycle of violence
they're perpetuating
a cycle of violence
right
so am I getting
emotional support terrorist
I don't know
as far as
but like what if
he don't cooperate
listen I've got doubts
about the outfit
I'll tell you now.
It's one of those things, I put it on and I felt confidence,
then I see myself in the wing mirror in my car,
and I thought, you look like Randy Savage.
You know, the wrestler.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We know.
I keep doing that.
I keep dressing, thinking I'm looking cool,
but I'm always a wrestler.
And then you just snap into a slim jim.
No, this fit is fire.
Yeah, I like the fit.
I love it.
I'll take that.
I see it's closed.
Yeah, you got black American approval right now.
Thank you, black America.
So sorry for the colonial history.
I apologize.
I'm going to look at the floor
until you say it's okay for me
to look up.
You're good.
We could have another conversation.
That whole continent.
Schultz, Dutch, fine.
Talk to me.
European.
I think, yeah,
it's probably German.
Prussian actually
well
he's actually Scottish
you should apologise to me
to whom
everybody
Germany
they made it
when they didn't start it
they exacerbated it
have you seen that
Doug Stanhope joke
go on
he goes
he goes
you know what
Germany did London a favour
by blowing it up
and they rebuilt it
the same way
that's funny
man that brilliant man you were my first YouTube wormhole oh nice one blown it up and they rebuilt it the same way. That's fun.
Man, that brilliant man.
You were my first YouTube wormhole.
Oh, nice one.
Thank you very much, I think.
That's a compliment.
That is a compliment.
Yeah.
I forget which special you were touring in the States,
but you came and you did all these like interviews on like morning shows, daytime talk shows.
I think it was Messiah Complex.
Was it?
Okay, it was Messiah Complex.
Yeah, yeah.
And it was so interesting because like you were
known enough where you were touring but some of these people that did like daytime tv and shit
they don't know who you are right yeah i remember that and yeah yeah yeah it felt like they were rude
but this is this is what was beautiful about it you would come in and they were kind of like
they didn't really take you seriously that much. And then you would fucking steamroll these people.
Oh, you're very good at that.
It was so fucking satisfying to watch.
They would go, they'd judge you by the shit that you wore.
And you did lean into it.
You wore some wild shit.
And they thought you were like this rock star dude, whatever.
You didn't take anything seriously.
And then you would fucking pummel these people, charm the chicks.
You're flirting with the guy even. And the guy's like, what's going on? He's crazy straight. And then you're fucking pummel these people, charm the chicks. You're flirting with the guy even.
And the guy's like, what's going on?
If he gays, he's straight.
And then you're flirting with the girl.
And like everybody's just caught in this fucking whirlwind.
And then you're out.
And I went on this and it was just like one video after another and after another.
And I remember going, it was the first time that I saw somebody
propel themselves to superstardom without a media complex,
even though you were within industry.
I didn't, you didn't become famous to me from industry.
That's cool.
YouTube popped.
And then I was like, this guy's an FX show.
This guy's a standup thing.
Do you know what I'm saying?
And now that's how people become successful.
That's brilliant.
That's good.
Cause that means, I think in an indirect way,
very indirect,
cause it doesn't seem you're explicitly saying it at all.
You're giving me some, if not all of the credit for your
rise well done well done my mighty prodigy i thought he was gonna say for for your own rise
and i was like yeah yeah yeah and then you took it away i want to pay credit for stuff i'm not
connected to at all.
That's smart.
Although if you think of the British Empire, though,
that's sort of what we do.
Yeah, it's on brand.
It's on brand for the whole empire.
Yeah, exactly.
Nice.
On brand.
Yeah.
Now, did you go to America going, I'm going to do this.
This is easy.
No.
Look, when I first came famous, i was doing movies and all that kind of
thing in your country and like i was really excited about it i've been famous in this country
where we are now england ah your majesty like i've been famous here a couple of years when i went out
there i weren't sure what to expect but it's the sort of it's the car of our culture so i wanted
to sort of succeed there this is the moment remember most. They got me that gig hosting the MTV VMA Awards
and at that time in your country,
George Bush was president.
I said to him,
oh, you've got that cowboy fella in charge of your country,
that's very good to give back to the mentally ill
because in our country,
you wouldn't be trusted with a pair of scissors, right?
And I was very pleased with myself
and I made some jokes about the Jonas Brothers and all of that.
Oh, they wear those virginity rings.
I didn't know they wore
them on their cocks
and all this stuff
next day the death threats
was flooding in
death threats
proper death threats
and like it was weird
because we'd had this
party to celebrate
that I was doing
these VMAs
and the room was filled
with helium balloons
and by the time
I got home
they were
you know when a balloon
is hanging at half height
you know
like just hovering
like the party's over baby
and I was just like
looking at
I was googling my own name
and that's when I
infatuated my phone
and like it was like
I'd become like
one of the most googled things
in the world
you know when that sort of thing happens
no
but it was not good news
it happened
you keep up with that terrorist shit
it's coming
it's coming
like and like
but it was not good news
and my agent
I was with WME
like he goes well Russell you wanted everybody in America to know who you are and now they do and they don't like you coming. But it was not good news. And my agent, I was with WME,
he goes,
well, Russell,
you wanted everybody in America
to know who you are
and now they do
and they don't like you.
Pretty heavy diss.
And that was the guy
who was on 15%
of that shit.
So I came,
I didn't,
I came adoring
American culture
as much as,
you know,
we're all aware
of what the sort of
corporate and financial
aspects of American culture
and how that sort of
contributes to problems that all of us are experiencing at the corporate and financial aspects of American culture and how that contributes to problems
that all of us are experiencing at the moment.
But still, the front of house shit is amazing.
And we all want a little bit of a part of it.
What do you adore about it?
I think some of the greatest geniuses of contemporary art
have emerged out of America.
The thing that you and I do, the folk artists,
like stand-up comedy, the best practitioners of it,
with a few notable exceptions,
come out of the United States.
The musical legacy, what's emerged from that culture,
it's created things that are...
Before it, there's this sort of aristocratic, jaded cultures.
This is like the sort of birth
of a different type of hustler intensity,
true melting point point a true global
society i mean the tragedy is it seems to me that it has become corporatized like no culture ever
before that everything whether you look at sport or music or comedy everything is commodity and i
think that the area that like you know we if i may say are working in now is an attempt at least
to have a new frontierism a new pioneering spirit to operate in a place that ain't been fully
yeah to check it
yeah
yeah
synced
yeah
two syllables
you took the wind
out of his sails
he was going
and then he was like
you just said that shit
fuck you
but you know
you've got to have
different meters
ain't you
you've got to have
a rhythm section
can't all be guitar solos
exactly
he hit you with a ba dum bum and then he just alright number two right man Beatles, ain't ya? Gotta have a rhythm section. Can't all be guitar solos.
He's doing the ba-dum-bum-tsh.
And then he just,
all right, well, here you go.
No, but you're right, man.
It is a cool way to...
Yeah, I wonder if...
Hmm.
If the goal is to say
the exact thing
that you want to say
and how you want to say it.
Yeah.
You can't do it
within a corporate system
because they have to answer
to too many people, probably.
Yeah. Right? And if the exact thing that you want to say isn't going to be acceptable to the masses within a corporate system because they have to answer to too many people probably.
Right?
And if the exact thing that you want to say isn't going to be acceptable to the masses that are consuming that corporation's content,
then you only have one other option, right?
I think you're operating at a really interesting place
with what you did with your special and all that.
And I see when Louis came on and like you sort of talked about,
like I was aware that he was doing stuff like that a little while ago.
And like,
I've,
I think this is how we're going to operate now.
Like they call it,
don't they?
I guess you lot are all,
there'll be members of your team that are across it.
I'm trying to scan who they will be.
Cause they all look,
is it you mate?
Like things like internet free and that,
like,
it's like now we will deal directly with our audience.
Cause like for me,
it's amazing to go through something like that,
a studio system movie movie to do a movie
that's been made by a
big studio they take
you in a room and
like there's all
posters of your face
which poster do you
think of your face is
the best one I do
know I like them all
all these posters of
my face it's so it
makes you kind of
delirious and mental
but as a friend of
mine who's like a
film star he said he
goes you realize in
the end that all of that stuff, the billboards on Sunset,
that's just an inadvertent symptom of someone else making money off you.
That's all that is.
But like sweet little narcissists that we are, we think, I'm important.
I'll show them I'm not a tubby little boy anymore.
But you are.
Is that what you're trying to get over? The childhood obesity?
Who would come to a fucking interview
in this dressing gown
unless they were a fat child?
No one!
You wouldn't come in an house coat.
In a sex worker's lingerie.
Yeah, I didn't know about men having eating disorders until you.
Another area where I was at the forefront.
Also pioneered.
Pioneering those men's eating disorders.
Hold on, hold on.
This is, I think, you taking Indian culture again.
No, no, it's bulimia, not anorexia.
Yeah, but still, your eating disorder.
We're not throwing out food we paid for.
Are you crazy?
That's fair enough. Fucking fair enough. You just said eating disorder, the umbrella. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was bulimia, not anorexia. Yeah, but still, your eating disorder... We're not selling out food we paid for, are you crazy? That's fair enough.
Fucking fair enough.
You just said
eating disorder, the umbrella.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bulimia specifically, though.
Got you.
Beneath the umbrella.
I understand more than anorexia
because at least you get to taste it.
Yeah, but you've got to vomit.
That's a whole...
I mean, you can speak to it
better than we can,
but that seems awful.
If you've brought me in here
as a vomiting consultant,
after all this flattery,
I'm like, yeah, I did like,
with that addiction modality.
We've got to butter you up a little.
Say some nice stuff.
I'm brilliant.
I watched all your interviews.
You are brilliant.
How many fingers does it take?
Not too much butter.
You also can speak about vomiting
in a way that I can.
Let's get into it.
Now, like I reckon the sort of,
that model of addiction
is a very useful model.
I feel like, see, I'm a 12-step person.
That's how I stay clean from the old drinking drugs now.
Once you look at how your addiction issues began,
there's a sort of a biographical component where you go through your past,
you look at how you was as a kid.
So retrospectively, I can recognise that.
The way I was eating chocolate when I was a little kid,
the way I was watching TV when I was a little kid.
All them things are the tendencies of addiction
and as soon as you find
the appropriate object
or an effective object
like smack,
like heroin in your country
and crack,
I think that's a ubiquitous term.
Cracks have been globally branded.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We've accepted that.
Their agent's amazing.
Yeah, we all accept it fully.
Like those things, they are a shortcut,
the shortest gap between two dots.
But like their behavior and the tendency
is already latent and present.
You can sort of see it in all sorts of things.
So I reckon that eating disorders,
even though they're more complex in some ways
because food is life-giving,
and anorexia seems like a bizarre and awful reversal
of the process of nurture.
I heard an anorexic person's parents say that once.
It's as if they're undoing and reversing all of the things that we gave them,
all of the food and the care and the love is being undone.
It's fucked up as a novel.
But yeah, the bulimia thing, I reckon when I was in treatment,
in the first couple of days that I was in treatment,
I was on a drug called Subutex, a sublincal opiate blocker
that helps you come off of heroin.
And on the first night there,
there was a packet of biscuits in my room
and I ate all them biscuits and puked them up.
And I thought, fucking, that's really weird
that I've done that.
And I remember that I'd not done it
since I was about 14, 15,
which was when I started to use drugs addictively.
So in a sense,
we're all looking for an expression of something,
which is why another little note
within the rubric of addiction philosophy
is that the genesis of addiction,
longing, craving, yearning,
is a very powerful force
and can be directed to something.
What is drive?
What is yearning?
What is longing?
It can be, if you live in a culture
that will direct it,
it's a very, very powerful force,
very, very powerful source.
Go on, undercut it.
Undercut it.
Do the undercut.. Do the undercut.
Do the fucking undercut.
We'll get to that.
I have a question
to add on first.
Because obviously
what I need is caffeine.
Thank you.
Go,
go,
go.
What were you,
was it society
that you were craving
something from
or was it,
usually it's like
childhood stuff,
so you say you're craving something.
Have you identified what it was you were craving with the with this addiction i feel like akash that
there is a sort of emptiness aloneness at the heart of us why did my pronunciation elicit laughter
i think he thinks you're about to call me out on something which you might be i don't know i'm not
i thought you were gonna call akash empty and And if you knew how much weight he has gained in the last few months,
he is anything but empty or hollow.
It's marriage, you know?
It fucking fills you up.
It's comfort and love.
It fills you up in every way.
It stretches you out.
Addiction is pain.
Addiction begins with pain and addiction ends with pain.
And it probably, given what you're, the most basic,
the most basic, I want to say palette of emotions
are going to be familial
I suppose
so it's going to feel like
a sense of loss or lack
but I don't want that to sound
like a critique of my own parents
not that I can imagine
either of them
watching this
but I don't want them to
God they've suffered enough
don't take it the wrong way
they're elderly people
we're all undercutting now
it's a race to the bottom
where will we end up um so i reckon yeah i suppose it's an emotional thing i mean that's the the
treatment of addiction that i am familiar with is an attempt to address the underlying cause that
is normally pain sense of low self-esteem worthlessness all things like that but i find
these things to be pretty common among people outside of addiction as well and actually the
solutions that recovery provide are effective for you know for people that don't
have an explicit addiction because if you've had that bulimia i'm sure all of us have some sort of
attachment something that we're using to hold ourselves together yeah and if you find something
that operates successfully within your culture then you're all right. You know, no one cares. Stand-up comedy. Stand-up comedy, making money,
until latterly pursuit
of consensual sexual relationships.
All those kind of things
were like, they're sanctioned.
But it's only when you do stuff
that fucks you up
in an evident or criminal way
that it's a problem, isn't it?
Okay, so you remove those things.
But you need to find something
to transfer that addiction to,
I imagine.
Yeah.
Okay?
You wake up, if you will.
Is that fair to say?
It's exactly 100% accurate, Andrew,
because the 12th step of the system of recovery I believe in
is having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps.
It's about awakening, the suggestion being that you were in some kind of stupor.
Now, if it's alcohol or drugs, I suppose that's obvious.
But we can all become spellbound through attachment.
We can all find things to sort of hypnotize us.
And this awakening is, yeah,
an awakening to the reality of who you are
in both its beauty, but also in its trauma and its flaws.
And what about an awakening to like what existence is?
Yes, I suppose that would also be true,
but tell me more what you mean.
And how we fit within existence.
I guess what I'm trying to say is like,
I have certain friends who have woken up, if you will,
and they got there because they experienced some traumatic shit
maybe as a child or throughout their life
and they were incredibly depressed and sad.
And then they
distracted themselves with drugs or addiction and then realize that that drugs and addiction just
continued to make them incredibly sad. And they were forced because it was either killing themselves
or finding a way to live within this structure that we call life. And they were forced to like
analyze life in a different way and forced to like figure out what their maybe purpose is or if there is even a
purpose but they were really forced into being awakened yes and sometimes those friends have
tons of empathy for people who aren't awoken yet and sometimes they don't and my question to you is
do you see someone who's not awake yet and go, well, maybe they don't need to wake up.
Maybe they're not suffering in the way I was suffering
that forced me to go through what I had to go through
to wake up and figure out a way to basically continue living
because it was death or this.
No, we must all awaken.
This is what I've learned from it.
I feel like I'm lucky to have had the journey that I had
in terms of being a smackhead and a crackhead
because those things are extreme enough to warrant intervention.
At some point, you have to stop it.
But I think what we're dealing with now are cultural modalities
that keep us all sort of loosely numbed and distracted.
Like, I find it really hard to deal with drug addicts
when I have to deal with them.
Like, it really bugs me and annoys me.
Sometimes maybe I'll...
Part of my recovery is I have to, and it's wise that I do...
Help others, right?
Help the others.
Oh, God, isn't it exhausting? Others. Not even them. part of my recovery is I have to and it's wise that I do help others oh god
isn't it exhausting
others
not even them
you're not actually me
and I've got
this sort of care
and you're still existing
when I'm not there
and I've got to do stuff
like so
I like it when it's hardcore
when they're proper
like down on the streets
lesion covered
smack head needle
out the arm
missing an eye
oh I'm all over them
oh I'm like Jesus
Jesus if it was a WWFf version of jesus like i'm over there i'm helping a man's on not too close
you know like giving them everything that's required and that yeah but like what about
all people have unconscious tendencies if you're not doing what you're doing consciously you are
likely doing it unconsciously sometimes we don't know our motive what our motivations are all these
conflagrations inadvertent and irrelevant,
even in the quotidian,
some skirmish in the street
or in a parking lot.
What is it really?
What is it really
when someone gets out their car
ready to kill you
because you cut them up in traffic?
First, my whole fucking life
and now this
and now this
and like every single bit of pain.
You're willing to express it all
in that moment.
So if you are awake, you are able to express it all in that moment so if
you are awake you are able to observe oh look i'm becoming anxious now i'm afraid now if i come into
a situation like this like a sort of a very mal environment you are all strong gifted people i'm
aware like i hope that you know you've not brought me here to fuck me up and annihilate me that's why
i came in camouflage should have been required i could just slink off like a leopard but like but like uh you know like i'm stay conscious i stay conscious and then i
operate on these principles if i in my heart i'm not trying to be mean to anybody i feel like i've
got a contract like so if i come in and i start saying nasty shit then i feel god's got my back
if i'm behaving properly that's what my life's shown me. Life has shown me.
I ask that question more because I find it like
when I'm interviewing somebody like you
who I obviously respect,
but more so than that,
I don't feel like I can bullshit you at all.
So I'm very specific in the things that I'm asking you
because I feel like you see bullshit.
So sometimes bullshit is required for social lubrication yes right so
we do it in life we're getting a fucking coffee this that the other but there are certain people
and you almost immediately upon meeting you i was like okay there's gonna be no room for
bullshit right now so i have to ask you the things that i'm really curious about and tell you the
things that i'm genuinely curious about even if i look dumb doing it or maybe i look smart doesn't
matter as long as it's pure and authentic i think it works yes you have to do that it's necessary you obviously
do it to a degree naturally anyway otherwise you wouldn't have been able to enjoy the success you
do either as in this format or with the live stand-up format what i feel like like i'm what
people do and like you were kind enough to say about when i went on them normal tv shows where
it's all graphics and glistening it's they think I like you're going to be an idiot
because they think you're a celebrity person
but that's not what I'm from.
That's not.
I was 30 before I made any money out of this business.
Before that, I was having to live
in very, very different circumstances
and I was born in different circumstances
and they left my mark on me.
Now, I'm not trying to be Ice Cube here.
I'm like from Grey's in Essexx it's sort of a bit like dull it's not ice cube your idea of like the rough life
i was sort of like ice cube you know how rough it was oh my god i was straight out of compton
i had to nip back i'd left the gas on back in the compton put a few coins in the meter
out of compton again no it's not like I'm saying it's sort of super street.
I'm English, I'm white, all of those things.
But what I'm saying is there's a degree of poverty
and there's addiction and all of those things.
And then having to acknowledge the amount of personal failings
and learning to deal.
Things like authenticity and integrity are, for me,
incontrovertible ideas.
I'm still wrapped up and strapped up in all manner of hopeless flaws and stuff.
But what I do have now is I think presence.
I'm present and I'm like, I'm watching what's happening.
And also you don't have to like, you know,
make excuses for your struggles just because you're white.
Like white people have to deal with a lot.
Yeah, sometimes the industry doesn't buy their special.
You know what I mean?
There's a lot of struggle out there.
Sometimes we got to listen to minorities complain.
That's annoying.
Every single day,
we can't say anything about it.
For just $5,
you can get Andrew some earplugs
so that he can block off
the complaining
of the minority members
who he's kindly put into this show.
He's not putting his name in the title.
It's not Andrew Schultz's flagrant.
There's all sorts of people here,
two of whom are plainly not white,
and even the one who is white
has got a very good natural hair lift.
Thank you so much.
That is true.
That is a good root lift.
Yeah, I just got it done today.
It's incredible.
Yeah, it was in Turkey.
I got it done.
It was amazing.
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Let's get back to the show
When you went on the shows
Yeah
If you reflect and you're honest about it
Do you think you leaned into being
Unassuming because you liked winning them over
I feel, what I feel like
If I go, like
As an adult looking back.
Like, the Paxman interview I saw was a very similar one.
It's a political one.
Yeah.
But it was very, and he didn't play up the goofy as much.
But it was, again, somebody trying to get him and talk him in circles.
And then you talk them in circles.
Do you lean into kind of being aloof?
Because you know I can win that way.
And the win is that much more satisfying.
Actually, I wish I could say that.
Because that sounds really cool.
But like it's much more this, I'm involved in a negotiation with fear quite a lot of the time.
Like, so I'm not like, I don't walk into environments and think, yeah, fuck all you.
Like, I'm like, oh shit.
You know what I mean?
So I'm dealing with the reality of that.
I'm dealing with the reality of fear.
Like, not in a hopefully a high-pitched anxious way but i'm observing the
fear which i've come through training and time to regard as your body is energizing now in case you
have to be fast you know dealing with what adrenaline is rather than uh pathologizing
adrenaline into a neurotic state but i don't feel like i'm gonna go in there and i'm gonna
fuck him up although in my mind i do think when i'm dealing with someone like jeremy paxman who's like i don't know he's like
maybe he's like anderson cooper or something like that he's like a political commentator and he
again was like trying to get you trying to get me yeah right and also that stuff the other thing is
which like is i believe in that stuff i believe that like that primarily political discourse is
carried out in a way to exclude ordinary people and even
the distractional tactics of turning people against one another on the basis of race or gender
ignores the crucial arguments around class that most ordinary people have more in common with
one another than they have in common with the elites that govern them and that's always kept
off the table while the they exacerbate our differences to turn us against one another
so when i'm like actually confronting one of those people,
I think, fucking no, I'm talking to him right now.
So when I'm like, I try to stay very, very calm.
And then if they personally fucking do me,
it's like, yeah, that's it now.
I'm ready. Let's go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because that's rude.
I'm an Englishman.
That's a gauntlet round the chops, isn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So what it is,
is I don't go in there sort of overly confident,
but I do go in there
with a sort of a set of beliefs
that I sort of hold on to.
So something like that morning joke.
I wasn't in a very good mood,
actually, that morning.
The morning joke, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that one where it's that lady
with the blonde hair, Micah.
You know, when I went on that,
I didn't feel that good.
And I wasn't particularly happy
with the trousers I was wearing,
to be honest, Daniel. And like, so like when, on went on that, I didn't feel that good. And now I weren't particularly happy with the trousers I was wearing, to be honest.
And like, so like when on top of that, they was started mugging me off.
I thought, oh no, no. They thought that they were trying to have like, I think they thought they were going to have fun with you.
Like they thought that you were going to come in, they were going to tease you.
Yeah, you were going to be the clown and they were just going to kind of laugh at you.
And you didn't look that happy going into it, which is always funny when you're trying to convince people
to come to your happy show.
Yeah, I'm terrible at that.
And, buddy, there was a moment where you just decided.
You're like, okay, well, this interview is about to get taken over right now,
and I'm going to tell these people who I am,
and it's going to be really interesting.
And they fucking folded.
Yeah.
They got nothing to look at, them people.
No disrespect to them.
They're probably all, probably all beautiful human beings.
No, didn't he kill his secretary or something like that?
Well, that doesn't seem right.
Was the secretary particularly inefficient?
Was there a tribunal process?
Was there an opportunity to discuss KPIs?
They're not delivering in these ways.
Oh, no, straight to execution.
Yeah. No. Enough justice on an individual level. So how can we make sure… you're not delivering in these straight to execution yeah no
justice on an individual level
so how
how can we make sure
that you
don't
run for government
so you can still do
the great things
that you're doing
well
because people are going to
fucking beg you to do it
I think he's got to watch
the old ego
same as you though
how do you check it
it's not going well
it's out of control
I'm going out wearing night time clothes for southern bells Watch the old ego. Same as you, though. How do you check it? It's not going well. It's out of control.
I'm going out wearing nighttime clothes for Southern Bells.
I'm dressed like a Tennessee Williams heroine and a wrestler combined.
I mean, I suppose how I'm going to do it is like, I remember this. This is what I fundamentally believe is that those sort of systems with an apex person,
like presidents, prime minister, monarchs,
that's not representative.
The centralisation of power is not a solution.
So if, like, this happened before in our country,
when I'd done that Jeremy Paxman thing, mate,
like, there was suddenly a lot of heat,
and I'd say stuff, there's no point in voting,
you'll get the same sort of party anyway,
they're all paid for in corporate interests,
it's all bullshit, right?
And it really blew up, and they talked about me
in the Houses of Parliament, in our country,
and all of that.
And what I should have thought was, oh is amazing i'm voicing things that a lot of people are feeling and i did feel that for a while and
then i thought you're really important russell and what you think is important then it went all
wrong it vibrated too quickly and i span off out of the road so like uh yeah i won't i'm not going
to do that again in a sense how do all of us manage the challenge
of knowing that we are
infinitesimally
well perhaps
I've not been able
to pronounce a single word
no thanks humility
but this is
this is the dark shit
go go go
know that you are
infinitesimally small
but also that
all reality
is held within your consciousness
there is nothing
that you are aware of
that you do not know about
like
whether it's the big bang
or the dinosaurs or political assassinations or quantum physics aware of that you do not know about. Like, oh, whether it's the Big Bang or the dinosaurs
or political assassinations or quantum physics,
all of that exists within your individual awareness.
Is this something you think about?
No, no, it's like, I think the trickiest thing
about like essentially waking up,
and I've seen a lot of celebrities sometimes suffer this.
I think Jim Carrey suffered from this.
When he woke up, he got dark.
When he realized, I think his coping mechanism
for the world was well nothing's
important nothing matters and when you start really believing that you go oh fuck well nothing
matters well why should i wake up why should i go to the grocery store why should i be in a
the nihilism is crippling the nihilism is fucking crippling and there's another side to it which i
think he's at right now which is like okay nothing matters but life is what we make of it and we need
connectivity we need connectivity we need relationships
we need community it makes us feel good to help one another and treat one another good
so like but getting from nihilism to this is important what a fucking joy it is that we get
to be here a lot of people don't make that jump that's fucking tough man but we have to make that
jump andrew and there's a reason to make it in that that jump is anticipated in all of the great ideologies.
When did you make it?
In Islam, in Christianity, in Buddhism.
They tell you this.
It's an illusion, but you have to participate as if it is real.
You have to find the beauty in it.
You are creating reality while you are living it.
You are God, the Father and I are one.
It's like trying to tell you simultaneously, yes, it's meaningless,
but you invest it with
meaning you create purpose the dow you are the path that you are walking so in a way jim carrey's
got no excuse for going all dark no but he's doing the mask not that one with a scratchy poster
we want ace ventura not when you go all scary i mean like jim jim carrey bona fide a genius hey
like proper old school fucking physical comic genius
vibrating on a very, very high frequency.
His fascination with Kaufman, a situationist.
Kaufman's work is about, oh my God, none of this is real.
It's ridiculous.
We could just do anything.
We can make chaos.
You can suddenly stop participating in the sanctioned rules of reality.
It will fall apart because it's consensual.
Faith is a component of the fucking stock exchange,
of economics,
science itself at its most fundamental levels.
The level of quantum physics requires consciousness and belief
in order for it to collapse between waves and particles.
You know, so what the challenge we have
is to invest it with meaning
while recognizing it's meaningless,
or as Christ says,
in the world, but not of it.
And I can see how,
my personal opinion, on my own, I go fucking it. And I can see how, my personal opinion,
on my own,
I go fucking mental.
I fall down a hole
into the solipsism
and the nihilism.
I lose my connection.
I lose my erection.
I become unbearable.
I become unwearable.
I can't live within it.
I need meaning.
I need connection.
And the only place I can find it
is if I sort of think,
oh, fucking hell,
Andrew's a human being
the same as me.
He's got the same life as me.
He's got a past.
He's got things he's having to carry. Every single person I look at, they're the same as me.'s got the same life as me he's got he's got a past he's got things he's having to carry every single person i look at
they're the same as me they've got to carry on living their life and it don't seem like that
when i'm lost in my own solipsistic self-obsessiveness but like that's why that 12 step
stuff's good andrew because on one level it says awaken awaken to the fact that your life in the
past was unlivable and now the secret be of service to others don't live a life you know and I'm not
I by have no means
got this cracked
because I still spend
a lot of my time
thinking I want this
I don't want that
the devotee of my preferences
dedicated to what I want
and what I don't want
but thankfully
I've got this fucking system
that continually reminds me
why are you thinking
about yourself all the time
give us a shit
you're going to die
you're going to die
it doesn't matter
why wouldn't you
run for office
become the elites you hate become those elites get in the system and change it but good You're going to die. You're going to die. It doesn't matter. Why wouldn't you run for office?
Become the elites you hate.
Become those elites.
Get in the system and change it.
But good,
it's a great question.
I'm curious your answer,
but please don't.
Don't you think that what we should do is people have to have the ability
for amplification
is try and find people
that we think are legit
and then like,
give them some heat and shine.
Legit sociopaths.
Okay.
Okay.
What if we audition them?
But what if it's this?
What if it's like we exercise our demands to a point where they have to fulfill them,
they being the elites or they being the people that are in control.
And I think that's the only way to make change, right?
Is that we just go, we want this thing so bad.
That's why I loved the idea of not voting.
If everybody not voted, if we didn't vote in mass, it would be the loudest way to say this system is not working for us.
This two-party thing is not working for us.
Don't they want us to not vote in America?
Isn't that the whole thing right now?
No, no, no.
They want their people to vote.
They want old people to vote.
Republicans want old people to vote.
Liberals want their people to vote.
That's who we want to vote.
We want the other side to not.
If everybody's like, yo, this electoral college is fucking stupid nothing is
actually going to get done you're all the same and everybody was like we're not voting it would
be so globally embarrassing that things would have to change at the very least yeah and particularly
if you coupled that with don't vote don't pay back any of your debts like stop paying all debts
immediately stop paying all tax yeah. Stop paying all tax.
One person don't pay tax.
Yeah, you're going down.
But a thousand,
10,000,
100,000 people,
stop paying.
Join this movement.
We're not doing it out of nihilistic selfishness.
It's not just some libertarian whim
to save a little bit of cash back on an ATM.
This is,
we're not cooperating with your system anymore.
Your economic systems
are faith-based.
These are our,
and I like the use
of the word demands
because it's gangster,
but it should be a manifesto.
Uh-oh.
Uh-oh.
Uh-oh.
In America,
we're not allowed
to say that word.
We're not allowed
to say manifesto
because it's,
all right,
constitution,
new constitution.
There we go.
New constitution.
In fact,
the principles
are already enshrined.
Just do the fucking shit
that's already written down.
Allow people to have control of their own communities,
control of their own lives.
There has been no vision in politics, I think,
since the death of the great ideas of the last century,
since the death of fascism and communism.
No one is saying this is how we could live.
You can organise and run your own lives.
People don't think that they could be spending their time in leisure.
We're all defined by our work.
Our education systems are about preparation for the labor market.
You're written off at that point.
I have a question about that.
In terms of spending your time.
I'm talking about embarrassing, and you're talking about Fight Club.
Let's shame the politicians.
Let's kill them.
Let's blow up the credit unions.
I don't see you as president.
I see you as like a dictator.
I think you'd do way better.
You're dressed like Gaddafi already.
I feel like you would do perfect.
And I think it ended really well for him
on that weekend at Bernie's Jeep ride
where they jostled his dead body about in the desert.
Am I still in charge?
That was going to be a female security.
You know what I mean?
That was his issue.
That was his whole thing.
He only had hot models vlogging him.
Like, that's not going to work.
You know?
CJ, have you ever seen, like,
Colonel Gaddafi addressing, like, some Arab summit
where it's, like, all the leaders of the Arabian nations?
They're going, listen, we need to fucking step up
because the West's getting proper leery, you know?
So, like, they've killed Saddam Hussein. I don't know who's going to be next. listen, we need to fucking step up because the West's getting proper leery, you know. So like they've killed Saddam Hussein.
I don't know who's going to be next.
Well, we do now.
Poor old Colonel Gaddafi
jostled along all naked and dead.
Shouldn't have happened.
It's out of order.
It's a human being with rights and feelings.
I apologize for that.
But you did put him in a comedic position
when you said I look like a dictator.
That's what we do here.
That's what we do here.
That's why you're just delivering.
I mean, you get it.
You're the guy who went to MTV,
dressed as Bin Laden on September 12th.
You get it.
And I loved it.
It was too soon.
I loved it.
It was too soon.
That was too soon.
Had you done it today?
Comedy's timing.
It would have killed.
You don't do that yet.
That was too soon.
I apologize again.
But in hindsight,
with 20 years past or whatever,
pretty funny.
I mean, yeah.
Ballsy if nothing else.
That's exactly the argument
I made in the tribunal.
I said,
in 20 years time,
there will be streaming services
that will look upon me
as a kind of profit dictator.
Then who will be laughing?
I think we gravitate
towards leisure.
Yeah, leisure.
Leisure, leisure.
Leisure, leisure.
Potato, potato. Yeah, people want to chill. I think that if you look at the course of history, you see ancient societies and what they
gravitate to. And I'm shocked that like the British haven't figured this out yet because
they've been around the world. They'd seen everything in the world and they still keep
working for some reason. But like you look at a town, you look at the Greece, the Greeks,
the Greeks are literally just going to go, OK, we're not going to work.
And then Germany's like, do we have to bail them out again?
They're like, can you? And they're like, fine.
And then they just keep not working.
They don't change a single thing because they understand it's fun to hang out with your family, eat nice cheese, drink nice wine, enjoy the beach.
Italians, same thing.
This idea that the French take fucking months off in the summer to do something.
This is like novel to Americans
because we're young, we're immigrants, right?
We're trying to get the money.
I think eventually we all gravitate towards
the things in life that we actually do value,
which is time with the people you love
and indulgences,
but not to a point where they are addictions.
You can't, like indulging in a sunset,
can you get addicted to it?
No, but it's important. What a lovely person. Because what you're describing, of course, is freedom, that indulging in a sunset. Can you get addicted to it? No. But it's important.
What a lovely person.
Because what you're describing, of course, is freedom.
That people want to be free.
And what I really, like as a touring comic,
what I've noticed when you're, like,
and it's mostly in my country because I've not been out traveling and stuff,
but like what I've learned from people,
is people want to be left the fuck alone.
They want to be left alone.
Just leave people alone.
And now that sort of tends towards the kind of,
in your national political rubric,
the kind of Republican right-wing small government stuff.
But without, like, the argument between the communists
and the anarchists is that without some sort of
centralised state power, the people have no true representative
against the might of corporate and financial interests.
But, of course, where we find ourselves now is that the state
and the corporate world are essentially in alliance
so that people have no representation anyway.
Well, you don't need the state,
you need, I guess, the unions
as the equal and opposite reaction to corporate power.
I reckon you're right, Andrew.
I reckon that there needs to be a confederacy
of delegated power where the true democracy can operate.
So this community,
like where you have true confederacies and assemblies
where people say this is how our community want to run things this is how but there are there is a
necessity for some municipal governance there is a requirement for the roads need to be run there
needs to be some understanding of military of law and order but my my sense is that and when they've
tried these experiments there's been some success is that if you allow people to govern their own
communities they do it relatively successfully.
And the thing that perhaps agitates me more than anything else
about our current establishment and our current system
is the assumption at its heart of misanthropy,
that people are not good, that people are stupid.
What is misanthropy?
Misanthropy is a hatred of people.
Okay.
Meaning that they don't like us.
They think we're stupid. They think we're dumb. They think we can't run our own lives. That's what bugs me hatred of people. Okay. Like the meaning that they don't like us. They think we're stupid.
They think we're dumb.
They think we can't run our own lives.
That's what bugs me most of all.
That with the whole censorship of the left thing,
that people aren't able to watch something and go,
oh, that's probably a joke or that's not a joke,
but I don't agree with it.
You're almost infantilizing people.
Infantilizing us, keeping us numb and dumb and consuming.
So we're just a node at the end of the line.
All you are is you're just there to consume sugary food and sugary shit.
No control over your own community.
And what you described there, that model where people just live their lives
according to their fucking will and their freedoms
and spend time with their family, that's not ridiculous.
That's what basically everybody wants, I think.
But how do you afford that?
How do you afford it?
Because the countries that are doing that are not in the best economic state,
though they might be in the best emotional state.
Well,
because you have to look at what the economic history of that situation is.
And like there was a,
after the 2008 crash where the Democrat party bailed out the banks in a way
that was a fundamental betrayal of the entire ethos that they purported to
have.
And in my opinion,
laid the pathway for Trump's ascendancy.
What happened in Europe
at that time
was there was a rising
of populist British party
not British
excuse me
European parties
there was Syriza in Greece
this dude called
Yanis Varoufakis
and his partner
they were elected
on a popular mandate
of basically
we ain't fucking
paying them banks back
they can all fuck off
and they got
the people elected them
they went to the EU
the EU went
you've fucking given us
that money
it's over and that Yanis Varoufakis who ran it you should have him on one time like when
he came on he said that when he went to the eu he said he realized no one in in the establishment
has any real power except for the power afforded to them by their role i.e the president of united
states or the head of the eu if he just goes free money or if he goes like you know there's a spring
break you know like you can't do that shit.
You can only do what is prescribed.
That means the system will always preserve itself.
If you ever try to act against the interests of the system, you will be removed from your
position.
That's the whole point of, I'm not saying this to say it's, but yeah, it has to be
that way.
That's the point of a government.
I can't allow a person to usurp the government.
That's a coup.
Yes.
It's inherently not going to happen.
System is self-preserving above all else.
So when you grant systems more power, it exacerbates and continues.
This is why something like the pandemic was interesting
because it inherently granted more power to the government
that will unlikely be rescinded.
State power increased.
Corporate opportunity increased.
The wealth transfer took place.
Any situation that's beneficial to the most powerful
interests in the world is you know by definition advantageous and it's i don't know would that
mean that they would prolong it would they see it as an opportunity do the government and financial
interests act in accordance with the will of ordinary people these are all questions for
people to consider and i suppose really it's not like we're...
There's a philosopher called Mark Fisher.
He's a British
political philosopher. He dead now killed himself,
so I suppose his ideas didn't work on a personal level.
But like...
Hey, it's tough at the top. But like,
you know, David Foster Wallace, he was a pretty
good writer, but in the end, I'm out.
You know?
Even he couldn't read that whole thing
infinite just too literal like uh mark fisher says that he coined the term late capitalism
is that we cannot even envisage a culture beyond it we can't even imagine what it would look like
that's its greatest triumph to rob us of the ability to sort of go well what if it was like
european people and we just fucking eat long into the evening
and we hang with our kids?
And then immediately we do their argument for them.
But how do you economically underwrite that?
Hold on a minute.
How did the most resource-rich continents and nations in the world end up the poorest ones?
How the fuck did that happen?
How did that happen?
It was the British.
We did it.
But that shows you that imaginary faith-based systems
usurp practical ones it don't matter gold is fucking diamonds and gold and agricultural land
yeah well the rich people in some cold country in northern fucking europe yeah the one interestingly
where their use of christianity is the individualized protestant work-based one rather
than the catholic uh communal exactly all right
we're gonna take a break for a second because listen the coffee y'all drink is pussy
i mean it's from the bottom of my heart some of y'all drinking coffee right now
it's pussy bro you still drinking coffee from the dude on a horse
what's the colombian guy's name on a horse still horse coffee it wasn't he on a
horse al colombian coffee what's that i think it's colombian yo we're not drinking that coffee no
more dude folgers yeah suck taint no i like folgers listen no no no you drink fol, you suck taint, bro. Folgers got no adaptogens.
Folgers got crazy jitters afterwards.
Folgers got no neurogenesis.
Listen, bro.
Folgers got no C8, C10, MCT oil, theanine.
Listen, Folgers don't even got coconut extract, bro.
And there's mad coconuts where that fucking horse guy was at Listen
My point is this
Strong Coffee Company
Do you know why I'm buzzing right now
About to drop dick off
Do you know why right now
I'm buzzing crazy about to drop dick off
Why?
If I was on Strong Coffee Company
The horse would be riding me on the mountain If I was If was on Strong Coffee Company, the horse would be riding me on the mountain.
If I had Strong Coffee Company, there'd be a horse on my back like, yo, chill out.
Chill out.
Chill out, horse.
Chill out, horse.
Why don't you hop on my back?
We'll walk up and down the hills.
You can't carry me.
I can carry you because I got motherfucking Strong Coffee.
This is the best coffee on the motherfucking planet, and it's powdered.
You snorted it?
I didn't snort it, but you could.
Okay.
You could do whatever you want.
I don't know if you can.
You don't know if you can?
You don't think when we're at Burning Man on the motherfucking playa,
you think I'm pouring that shit in water?
No.
Caterpillar rails.
Oh, we call it coffee out there?
Okay.
My point is, I've had four sips of this, and I'm literally about to bench press a Samoan woman.
Wow.
I'm about to go in, and I'm about to steal something from Walmart, and a Samoan woman is going to try to stop me.
I'm going to lift her up, and I'm going to dig a hole six feet on the ground minimum.
Not going to kill her or anything like that.
Okay, good.
But we together will have a pig down there
or one of her family members.
Listen, listen, listen.
What is the point?
The point I'm trying to make is
literally the best coffee I've ever tried
in my entire life is available
at strongcoffeecompany.com.
Don't forget to use the promo code FLAGRANT.
You're going to get 20% off,
but you're going to get 150% energy.
I'm about to slap my tits.
Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't.
Don't do it.
Whoa, chill. I just hit the
thing. My point is right now,
the coffee, your coffee,
when you go, oh, can I have a latte?
Sucks that.
If you want your
coffee to stop sucking that,
okay, and start getting sucked,
this is the type of coffee that gets sucked
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I'm sick and tired
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when all you got to do
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and you can be sexy.
Okay?
Would you like to be pure sex?
Would you like to literally walk down the street
and be pure sex, girls dripping like snails?
Would you like to see women leaving snails trails
on the sidewalk?
Escargot.
Escargot, as Alex said.
Literally, escargot.
When Alex was in Paris, he wasn't eating escargot.
It was six girls that just fell and shriveled up
on the street when he walked by
because of athletic greens.
Simple as that.
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Let's get back to the show.
Here's what I find tough to reconcile about that.
I can complain about that, but at the end of the day, I'm not giving up my toilet paper.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like, my life is fucking good.
I benefit from the system.
You benefit from the system.
Everyone here, some less than others, benefits from the system.
So how do you say, oh, this whole thing needs to burn down when you know at the end of the day,
you're probably not willing to give up the shit that you got from this.
This is interesting. I saw you talk about this as well but i think this is interesting point i think you were talking to maybe taibi about this and he wrote
this but um this idea that you could use fear to motivate people in elections in the past and the
fear meaning you don't want your life to get worse, do you? If you vote for that guy, your life is going to get worse. And then for the working class, life got so bad that they're like, it can't get worse.
Yeah.
I'll vote for that Trump guy.
Yeah.
Because something's got to change.
Even Obama ran on like change.
Hope.
Hope.
Which, sorry, side note, I saw your truths when Trump got elected.
He said a lot of that stuff, which I very much agreed with, which is like, you can't,
he said this, I'm stealing your stuff, but like trump uh basically the news was like hey if you elect trump things will get
terrible but for so many people yeah they were all they were like things are already terrible
so fuck you i'm gonna vote for this guy to see if something changes so that's exactly to your
point and that's something i really aligned with what you said yeah so it's like you can't i think
that's the great failure of the if we will will, the they, the elites or whatever.
The great failure is they let the poor people get too poor.
If they keep them at a level of comfort, they won't –
You learn to love your slavery.
What's that?
That's my question with the freedom thing.
It's like how intrinsic to humanity do you think it is that we need freedom or do you think we can just learn to love our slavery and learn to be placated?
our slavery and learn to be placated. Evidently, Mark, we are a highly adaptable species and this is perhaps to our detriment because we will adapt to whatever conditions we have to survive in.
People adapt to war, famine. But for hundreds and thousands of years,
hundreds and thousands, maybe longer, I'm sure you're interested in the same kind of content
I'm interested in that look at different historical human narratives. We lived in
tribal communities of 30 to 150 people
and in our closest
primate neighbours
when they hit 150
they split.
But we're not designed
to live in concentrated
centrally led
hierarchical cultures.
I'm not saying hierarchy
full stop is wrong.
I'm saying that broadly speaking
one of the things
we could be looking to
when engineering social models
is how do we live
for hundreds of thousands of years?
What things would we like to keep?
The toilet paper, the phones.
What things do we want to get rid of?
The tyranny, the government interference, the inequality, the imbalance, the propaganda, the dumb entertainment, the bullshit, constant bullshit.
The big houses away from the cities where you can get away from everybody.
Quack!
I'm not picking on you.
That's my genuine struggle with this
is I believe all of these things,
but I also know I like nice watches.
I want to take care of my wife and kids
and other people.
Sorry.
We're going to be comfortable first.
That is interesting.
Human beings are individualistic.
Of course they are.
Part of the reason I'm so devoted to these ideas
is because I've not met that many people
that are more individualistic than me,
that are more like,
do not fucking tell me what to do. don't like you know and like my starting
position anarchist calisthenics break rules every day so that you just stay in the habit of breaking
rules i'm not fucking doing that why why why why should i do that that's how i operate
you're flirting with me now i see you're stepping it up. What, are we in the third quarter?
Where are we?
So like, but like, of course,
that's what I'm saying.
What I, for me, what that suggests, Akash,
is that what we have to do, mate,
is not have top-down dictatorial systems.
And like to your earlier point
of why don't you run for some kind of office
is because those systems create people
that occupy those systems.
And what I believe we need
are a new set of systems
and i also yeah i recognize that i'm compromised i'm compromised by it's called i am sybaritic i
like luxury i like comfort i grew up poor i like shit i want stuff you know but i recognize that
the reason that i want the watch or the attention is because there's some deeper deficit. And once in a while when I'm about to drop a load of cash
on some stupid thing, I think some little voice in me says,
do you think you would feel better if you were to do something
worthwhile with this?
And I'm just about ready to start testing myself on this altruism of like,
would you feel better?
I say it to my wife sometimes.
And because she's less mentally ill than i am she like
what if we just let like loads of homeless people live in a house wouldn't we feel better than if we
went on another luxury holiday and she you know i wonder like we are told like these things why you
need a wife these are thank god i'm not alone i didn't do well out there andrew like you know like
the like the those same spiritual doctrines or templates that we referenced when we were talking of how do you
navigate nihilism versus purpose when you recognize that you are infinitesimally small in
limitless vastness, you create the meaning. Well, by some other crazy, wacky coincidence,
also in those books, they tell us that we should be of service, that we should devote ourselves
to service, that that's a way that we will find purpose and meaning. And also that we are flawed.
And also I like to remind people in pursuit of real change
that we're not trying to create perfection.
We're just trying to make something better than this.
Just better than this.
That's all we're aiming at at first is to improve on this.
And if we think this is the ceiling,
then things have got more desperate than I imagined
because I think that it's possible for human beings to do better. I don't think it needs to be about believing in one centralized figure,
although you need people that are good communicators and that can make this stuff
funny and accessible and comfortable being honest. You need that. It's collective. It's
truly a collective endeavor. How do you think your workspace should be run? How do you think
your community should be run? What do you want to see? Trust people. It's the opposite. And once in
a while,
there will be crushing blows of disappointment
when people are bloody idiots,
as they sometimes are,
as I sometimes am.
You know, like, what I believe is,
and what I was taught is,
we're all fucking crazy,
but not on the same day.
Not on the same day.
So, like, to look at different models.
So you can keep toilet paper.
Okay.
And watches.
Free play.
Minimum of free play,
but we're going to be so abundant,
we'll be wiping our asses on Rolexes.
We'll be throwing Cartiers away.
Have you been to Burning Man?
I didn't go because of the drugs.
Even though they say there's a lot of people
they're not drinking or using,
the drugs and the hedonism.
I'm all right as long as I don't see too much of it, Alex.
If I see the hedonism, I get nervous. That hard for you there oh yeah but there are there are kids there they're like
you know people go with their families there's older people there that aren't really using but
there's a lot of people using and that might be like triggering but a lot of what you talk about
is yeah it gave i don't know when we went i've went a few times it gives you a lot of faith in
humanity if everybody's on drugs for a week, people are really good to one another.
And that is like the cynical look at it.
But when you leave,
you're like filled up a little bit.
It's like the closest that I felt to kind of like being awake.
And then it goes away
and you get caught back up in the rat race
and the things that you want to achieve,
et cetera.
But if there is a way for you to like pop in
and see what humans can not only,
not only like achieve in terms of like
interpersonal relationships but
like also build like these people just decide to go to the desert with very little communication
with one another and build a city where there's no money you can't buy anything but iced coffee
it functions dude this is the craziest thing about it you were talking about earlier about like
people being left up to their own devices in the weirdest way it's like shockingly conservative but nobody there would admit it right like it it's or
libertarian if you want to call it because it's basically like there's no fucking police really
running around there's no security there's no rules there's absolutely nothing and people are
building these structures nobody dies one guy ran into a fire that was on him he was planning on
doing that right he took the name too literally literally burning but like the idea that you could go to this place
and like people are doing all these drugs etc but they say that you are relying only on yourself
and when you rely only on yourself you go oh shit there's no safety net i better not take too much
of that because i could pass out in the desert and die oh shit i better take some food because
i'm gonna everybody has a backpack full of water when you are self-reliant you take more
care of yourself when the government or somebody is out there looking after you you push it a
little bit i feel like the system only works though because there's abundance and there's also
a week well wait wait go uh start with the abundance thing it's a function of time also
but like once there's genuine scarcity like all of of a sudden all the, the hugs and kisses go away.
No,
no,
no,
no.
A hundred percent,
100%.
What,
what it looks at for me,
I'm looking at it as not a way that we can live life.
You cannot live life like this,
but it is what humans are capable of.
So that to me really just opened me up.
I was like,
Oh my God,
like in the right circumstance with abundance,
humans are willing to share and help oh yeah it probably
existed like that in communities but but keep in mind keep in mind like i i'm from new york where
with abundance people hoard still right so i'm like every second i walk out of my house someone's
trying to find a way to get money out of me hey you want to support the environment hey you want
to do this and then i go to this place where with abundance they're like hey can i feed you
hey do you want to take a nap hey do you want a massage and they And then I go to this place where with abundance, they're like, hey, can I feed you? Hey, do you want to take a nap? Hey, do you want a massage? And they're not asking for any
money from me. And it was this fucking huge shock to my system to see that humans even wanted to do
this for one another. Will it go away in a week? Absolutely. Is there like a very tuned down
version of that that maybe we could get to? That would be awesome. Yeah. And it shows that a value
system other than an economic one,
or at least a financially motivated economic one,
is applicable.
And also that we can be bold
in the types of visions we have.
I suppose when we're utopian in our thinking,
in our conversation,
the practical part of us thinks,
oh, that can't happen.
Like you say, it's only for a week.
Anyone can pull it off for a week.
Anyone can pull it off for an hour.
Maybe I won't even get home from london without breaking some of the principles that i've like
espoused about enthusiastically in a chair for an hour you know maybe i will shout in traffic or be
impatient with someone certainly there will be examples of selfishness but at least we have an
ideal and what i return to is the idea of having a set of spiritual principles and values that are
broad enough for people to approach them in their own way and the spirituality is the idea of having a set of spiritual principles and values that are broad enough for
people to approach them in their own way and the spirituality is a kind of a personal declaration
not you should be doing that or you shouldn't be doing that just like this is how you might live
this is how philosophers used to take it in the classical world it's almost like you don't know
something's possible until you see it and then once you see it now you believe it can be attained
do you know what i'm saying so like if if maybe before that i didn't know it's possible for until you see it. And then once you see it, now you believe it can be attained.
You know what I'm saying? So like if, if, if maybe before that I didn't know it was possible for somebody to just give me something and not want anything back and to find joy in giving me
something. I literally didn't know that that was a real thing. And I'll be honest, I was,
I was quite drawn to, um, uh, priests because of this. Cause every time I spoke to a priest,
even in adulthood,
they were just like curious and thoughtful
and like ask questions and like,
but it didn't feel like
they were trying to get anything from me.
I was too old for them.
You run into the wrong priest.
Here's another question.
Would you like to sit on my lap?
Here's another question,
although short's a little tight.
I didn't feel like true altruism
existed before going to Burning Man.
And to y'all's point,
maybe we're cynical
because we haven't been.
Yes.
But I guess the nice thing
about seeing it,
and I've spoken about this before,
but even seeing it myself,
and unfortunately,
I got this feeling through a drug,
but maybe you experienced it
through drugs as well.
It's like,
instead of the drug
making me just feel good
and everything was just about me,
me, me, I did Molly and I found out what it was like to feel like full and have
extra joy. And with the extra joy, I was calling my parents and saying how great they were.
I'm calling my friends. I'm just sharing the love. And I was like, oh, is this what humans do with
abundance? Is this what humans actually do when we have more? And if we're constantly put in this
position where we have to strive to get more, where we don't have a nice enough watch, we don't have a nice enough car, we don't have a nice enough house.
And once we do get that house, there's somebody with an even nicer one.
If there is, I don't know what the system is, and I don't even know if it's a psychological change.
But if we're put in the position where we have enough, and that enough is set much lower, with this extra, we will share.
Well, to maybe this is Russell's point in the end, to the, in the end,
maybe the abundance is emotional. It's not physical. You need what you need.
But if you feel emotionally abundant, then you give,
if you don't feel emotionally abundant, no matter how financially abundant you are,
you're just feeling the void.
But if you feel emotionally abundant and you have enough to survive,
then you give, I have enough to survive. I feel emotionally abundant.
Why don't I give? And that is the idea of like a priest or like a mother,
Teresa, whoever.
That's why Catholicism or Christianity works like unconditional love from the
father.
You get filled from God. Now what do we do?
And that's why people say it's a control,
not like you say all religion is to control the poor people because it fills
them up and I can still keep being abundant.
Oh shit. I can keep all being abundant. Oh, shit.
I can keep all this money when they're filled up emotionally.
Optimistic view, cynical view.
That's it.
So then what happens when you replace religion in America with money, knowing that there's always going to be somebody richer, there's always going to be somebody with more things, and having the most things is what makes you feel the most fulfilled.
You're going to have that scarcity.
You're going to have people robbing each other.
Like you're going to have people committing violent acts to attain some of those resources.
Yeah, it's a weird thing.
Like we've completely shunned religion in America.
And we feel like we're like these philosophers by saying like, oh, religion doesn't make sense or whatever.
Whether it makes sense or not, which is what you were saying earlier, if it provides emotional stability to people
where they actually treat one another better, isn't that a better system?
If you meet and spend real time with a truly religious person, you will never knock religion
again.
You just won't.
Because you'll be like, oh, this is the good it can have?
God bless you for being religious.
Good for you.
That's what got you there.
But just like any system, they will fucking abuse it.
Just like with capitalism, we'll get abused. Just like with communism, it gets abused. We're abusers. That's what got you there. But just like any system, they will fucking abuse it. Just like with capitalism, we'll get abused.
Just like with communism, it gets abused.
We're abusers.
That's what humans do.
So it's like, how do you-
It's like the internet.
Any tool that's powerful can be misused.
God is the most powerful idea on earth.
Of course it can be misused, but that doesn't mean you get rid of it altogether.
You still see the good in it.
You in particular with the internet see the good in it.
Whenever I think about like, ah, this whole thing is shit, get rid of it, I'll think about great. You in particular with the internet see the good in it. Whenever I think about like,
ah, this whole thing is shit,
get rid of it,
I'll think about great points
you've made about the internet.
Not only our livelihood,
but like other things that it's brought.
And I'm like,
I guess it's not all bad
just how you use it.
I think religion is the same thing.
It's incredibly powerful,
so it can be misused in the worst way,
but used at what it's supposed to be,
it's a beautiful thing.
See that what you're saying,
it seems,
is that religion is something that can only be applied it's a beautiful thing. See, what you're saying, it seems, is that religion is something
that can only be applied to spiritual ideas.
But in fact, religion is a sort of a set of principles
that can be applied anywhere.
And to your point about money there, Andrew,
is that when Nietzsche says God is dead,
people forget that what he means is God is dead
and there's not enough water in the world
to cleanse our hands of the blood that we've spilled,
that man is religious. So if you take away the idea that God is dead and there's not enough water in the world to cleanse our hands of the blood that we've spilled, that man is religious.
So if you take away the idea that God is a set of values
that are about altruism, kindness, mutual support,
a set of principles that make it easier
to deal with the fact that we're alive
and we're going to die
and everyone we love is going to die.
So here are some ideas
that have consistently been found to be useful.
And I really love your point
that when you're around a religious person,
you feel its value.
You feel its value beyond rationalism and materialism. The Enlightenment gave us a set of principles, many of which were incredible. It gave us what I believe to be the
false markers of progress around science and medicine, technology and medicine. Because we
have progressed so evidently, unignorably and indefatigably in these areas, we are unable to see that in some areas we have stayed the same or even possibly regressed.
If you extract these principles from our life,
love, kindness, care,
you create a kind of nihilistic abyss is what emerges.
And you see that when you talk about your experience
at Burning Man and how it gave you a vision
for how things might be,
it brings, I believe, an important point to the forefront.
We're told that our cultures and societies are neutral.
They're not neutral.
It's not just like this is what it is.
That's a set of values that have been arrived at
because they are beneficial to a certain set.
Remember when we touched on the pandemic a moment ago?
Sometimes we think the system is broken.
Well, when you think the system is broken,
look at who it's working for really well.
And if you find that it's working really well
for the most powerful interests in the world,
do you think that that is a coincidence?
Or do you think that the system is perhaps
a reflection of their intention?
And when you see an alternative vision,
like the famous example in our culture,
you know, there's nylon, you know,
simultaneously they invented that tech across the Atlantic.
That's why it's called New York, London, nylon.
I didn't know that.
That tech was simultaneously,
as if there is some ethereal connection,
some unitary force that underwrites all apparent separateness,
that consciousness precedes material,
that consciousness does not emerge from evolutionary processes.
Evolutionary processes emerge from consciousness.
These are the ideas of Bernardo Kastrup.
He's another good guest you could have on your podcast the other example and it's dumb in a way no one could break the four minute mile then one geezer broke the four minute mile then another
one does the next day oh yeah you can do this i think calculus was the same way right was it really
like both they came up with at the same time simultaneously in different countries never
talked to each other if consciousness is non-local if consciousness is something we arrive at a certain point in our evolution but the idea of a frequency
that we can all be strung along like flags upon a string then then it's something that we're all
simultaneously accessing and this point of modeling of like creating communities that function well
to demonstrate to the problem is is whenever anyone starts a cult it always goes the same way
you find out that the leader's got a bunch of watches
and he's fucking everyone.
And you're like, oh no.
That's why it's so disappointing
when people that use those values,
they care about the same things.
They care about the values of sex and materialism.
They don't really care.
I suppose that's why the idea of asceticism emerges.
If you can live without sex,
if you can live without drugs,
if you can live without material pleasure, then perhaps you drugs if you can live without material pleasure then perhaps you're right not suggesting that everybody has to do that yeah but to
demonstrate the value of those principles and ideas i think i said it was a very lovely conversation
between the two of you about like the you know all these things are about utility how do you use it
democracy could work well america can work well internet can work well god can work well it can
work well and if we had to like restructure society,
if you had to like sit down with a bunch of people and go like,
what is the best system to get the best out of people?
The best treatment of people.
Even if you want to just extract all their resources.
But like what was the best way to control these people?
Making them value God.
Being like the coolest person in the city is the guy who shares the most,
cares the most, like wants to help the most.
That makes you the coolest guy.
Oh, he's the most helpful.
Value the immaterial and I'll value the material.
It's a brilliant system.
I don't know why they went away from it.
Why is there this push away from religion?
If you were a rich guy that is just greedy and wants to take all the money from it, why would you shun God?
If anything, double down on it.
Yeah, the people who misuse it, I think, turn those people off.
But yeah, I was even thinking Christianity, the idea of Jesus eating with like the sinners
and you know the line better than I do.
But like the compassion that teaches, if God is eating with these people and breaking bread
with these people that are supposed to be untouchable and that's like, oh, how can I,
why would I be above that? Why would I be above being compassionate toward these people that are supposed to be untouchable. And that's like, oh, how can I, why would I be above that?
Why would I be above being compassionate toward these people?
The issue with religion though, like governmentally,
is that it's ascribing power to something beyond the government.
So you have to somehow hijack that or have something like church and state,
like unity.
Or manipulate it.
Because you can't change what God says.
It's like in China.
It's like, the religion is the state.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
What about this?
We've seen, um, uh, forget what I was watching when you were talking to, and we were talking
to, uh, about like channeling.
I don't know if it's God.
I don't know if it's a higher power, but like, I remember certain moments in my life where
I've seen something and I felt like that person was attached to a higher power for
that moment in time.
I mean, I remember my brother who's had, you know,
a lot of trouble with mental illness, schizophrenia, that kind of stuff.
I remember he was playing drums in a jam band at the Blue Note,
and he went on a riff.
And I thought that, I thought he was God for a second, man.
Like, it was like, I've never experienced anything like it.
And the entire room is like watching this happen.
And he is operating with this band,
but clearly to everybody else in the band who has played with him all the time, saw it happen. And they were like, what the, it was his solo.
And they were like, what is happening right now? And he was so lost in,
I think he had his eyes closed.
I don't even know if he knew what was going on.
And I think you see this happen. Sometimes you see it happen in sports. Sometimes you see it
happen in music. Sometimes you see it happen in comedy. I'm sure we can all think of like moments
where maybe we even felt like something is happening. I'm not in control of all this.
There's something else going on. And what do you think that is?
I think that there is a unitary force under things. And I think when you get out of the way,
it comes through you. And I think when we're describing genius
in athletics or arts,
what we're describing is that process
exactly of channeling,
that the person just gets out of the way.
Because when you see it in sport,
you think, how does that person do that?
That's impossible.
That's what genius is.
It's the defiance of a rational undergirding.
You know, we'd like to think,
oh, well, if you train and if you do this
and if you do this,
and then you will arrive at this point of excellence.
But sometimes people are just amazing.
And sometimes it kills people to hold onto that because there were so many examples in particular,
you know, like, why do you think all them people
are killing themselves and becoming drug addicts?
It's a very bright thing to hold onto that.
It's a very hard thing to hold onto that,
particularly if you live within a model
that denies its existence.
What would God really be?
All the ways that we discuss God
are symbolic ways of discussing God
due to the nature that it's necessarily beyond language.
But what would it, it's a bit like a father.
It's a bit like sort of a light.
It's a bit like the force of consciousness.
It's not like any of these things actually,
but we know it when we see it and we know it when we feel it.
And we know when you feel that something is more important than you,
when it comes to you through love.
And what is love really?
I believe love is the bodily acknowledgement of oneness you love a sports team you love a pair of shoes you
love your wife or your child or whoever it is and you feel in that moment like that molly moment
that you described you thought that i've got so much i just want to love them i just want to love
them i'm connected to them i'm not separate you know but our culture doubles down all the time
on the worst values the greed the selfishness the separateness the competition all of those things can be useful assets and we've all
had to in various ways learn how to use that stuff in order to not be crushed you know because if you
don't know how to do that you will be crushed so like but like what is god really unity a loving
oneness does it have a charge is there an energy to it? What is this phenomena really?
Well, it seems from some of the conversations that I have recently that the material model no longer holds up. You cannot describe and define how the universe emerges and functions
using solely a material method because of some of the obvious examples in quantum physics,
because when someone takes psychedelics, you would think that there would be
more neurological activity, not loads less of neurological activity.
Does that happen?
Yeah, under neurological scan,
if you give someone a powerful psychedelic and they go,
oh my God, I was in this world and I met this orb of light
and these Faberge eggs of pure consciousness were talking to me
and I met Mohammed, peace be upon him.
Under a scan, what's happening is nothing.
So what's happening is the removal of the
systems of restriction and there is god that is that makes sense that makes sense when you're
saying get the person out of the way yes oh shit so when you're just like i guess i'm curious like
with channeling how can you trust that you are channeling some type of like positive cosmic deity
that's there for good and not some
type of like and i don't want to like ascribe like demonic because that puts it in like a
judeo-christian sense but like some type of negative cosmic energy like you know like you
mentioned just in like the beautiful example of your brother in a flow state doing that drumming
but that's what some people call it as well yeah what you've also mentioned is that your brother
has problems with mental illness and isn't it curious that it's the you know dictators and the mentally ill the people that claim that god is talking directly
to them you know and like what i feel like is that we all of us when it says do not worship
engraven images the engraven image that we worship is the image of the self i have created this little
inner deity called russell through trauma and memory and biochemistry and this has become the
most this is my god what What Russell wants is my God.
When this is suspended, even through the use of narcotics
or breath work or meditative practice, there is nothing.
There is like a vibrant nothing that could be anything
or a super state of potentialities,
which is how the quantum field is sometimes described,
a super state of possibilities.
The horrifying truth, if you ask me, mate,
is that it is neither good nor bad
until we make it so when we talk about the Tao when we talk about the agency of the individual
when we talk about the great British painter and poet William Blake who saw angels in the trees and
tried to illustrate them both from through his brush and through his pen he says like when he
done these engravings of the book of Job Yah Yahweh, who is God, of course, and Job are depicted as the same being.
God and Job look the same.
This is a Jungian analysis by a person called Edinger.
And he says that God and the ego are being depicted here.
Job is the ego.
Yahweh is the higher self, the highest attainable self that is already present within you.
Because where would the enlightened man be except within you?
It's not anywhere else. It's within you and accessible.
Yahweh shows Job, here is the behemoth that I have made as I made thee.
The behemoth is a dumb carnality. It's all mouth and sinew.
I know the behemoth well. I know what appetite is.
Here is the Leviathan that I made as I made thee, this deep, deep, this serpent of the deep.
It is suggested in this text and in these illustrations by William Blake
that we must become good in order to make God good.
God is beyond good and evil in Nietzsche's phrase.
God can be all things and indeed is good things.
That's why the rather moot arguments of, oh, why would God make this creature
that does this or allow cancer and all of that?
Because in the limitless oneness where all things are connected,
there is no register.
If there is no space and time,
how can there be any context at all?
Because everything is absolutely unified.
For a moment,
when you get the ego out of the way,
you channel it.
It's present.
It's in present.
We've all got access to it.
That's one of the messages of Christianity.
It's one of the messages of Islam.
It's one of the messages of Buddhism.
Don't give it to some other person
and tell them,
excuse me, will you look after me?
It's there always.
So it could be either. It could be a demonic or demonic or evil jinn force. It could
be any of those things. That's why these myths consistently address these possibilities. That's
why I believe that any political systems that we devise have to honour spirituality, but the
robustness and the trans-denominational nature of spirituality, We might all have different ways of getting there.
And someone like you is not going to want someone like me
telling you what to do.
And I think most people feel that.
I don't want no one telling me what to do.
I don't like it.
If I choose to follow some system,
whether it's political or religious, then I will.
But I don't want centralised forces
dominating that landscape,
whether they're financial, governmental, cultural or corporate.
Bring this shit down.
That's what America
was meant to be anyway.
It was meant to be federalized.
Everyone was meant to,
all these nations
that established it
were meant to run
their own states.
Allow people to run
their own communities.
This is what I feel
must be the principle.
And the reason we do it
is because no one
has no more value
than anybody else.
Well, first of all,
I love that these ideas
are resonating with you
because it is the foundation
of Hinduism.
Like everything,
it's everything that Hinduism is. I told you I'm a Jat, bro. Yeah, I love that these ideas are resonating with you because it is the foundation of Hinduism. Like everything, it's everything that Hinduism is.
I told you I'm a Jat, bro.
Yeah, so the Jats are sick, but that's close enough.
That's pure Hinduism.
Yeah, okay, fair enough, fair enough.
I actually really admire that you study Hinduism.
I think it's beautiful when other people study other religions.
And I love that you are very conscious of your ego and you are always watching it now my question to you is how do you reconcile that with the first 30 seconds of all
of your youtube videos now hello there you 5.8 million away because you've got to generate a
little bit of heat you've got you've got to get people going we don't get rid of toilet paper bro
you keep a little bit of toilet paper i I was riled up listening to that.
I was like, this is the truth?
Vaccines?
Have us meditate, yo.
Let's do some truth.
We've got to do all of it.
We've got to do all of it.
We have to awaken them.
It's all of our responsibility.
And even over the course of this conversation, we've seen how there are different contributions that we're all making.
I don't think I'm any better at being you than you are.
There's no way.
You are the best person.
You're a miracle at it.
You're marvelous at it.
You're doing such an incredible job.
And like, I want to be left alone to kind of be me
and look for opportunities to collaborate and cooperate.
And I feel like, I think we're finding them right now, aren't we?
Here's my thing is you really are so brilliant and so influential.
And then to say truth is a politic,
as opposed to truth is the God within,
is the Atman,
is what Greg achieved,
which is we are all God inside.
And Greg achieved that for a minute.
It was beautiful.
That's truth.
Yes, I agree with you.
And I just think you're so influential
and so smart
and have such a grasp of it
that when you call the things
you're about to say about the vaccine
or whatever,
although valid,
I agree with a lot of it. It's just not truth. Truth is this thing that you understand very well. Yes. Truth
is a very, very complex idea. But if you think about that, those kind of that kind of content
doesn't exist in a vacuum. I'm like trying to address a very particular problem that there
are certain narratives that are being offered. And I believe it's part of my role to create populist connections between diverse
communities including in my opinion blue collar communities in my country and in your country
so that people start to recognize hold on a minute there are other ways of approaching this and I'm
always careful to say you do whatever you think is right I don't think I know more than you your
child is different than mine you've got different grandparents than me.
You've got different ancestors.
Because this is where we're lucky as stand-ups.
We get to look in their eyes.
We get to look in their eyes.
And I tell them, I don't think I'm cleverer than you.
I know you're sick of being spoken to like you're an idiot.
I know you're over it.
And I see that this is how we conduct our discourse.
We're comedians.
We're not better than them.
We are them.
We're a certain part of their spirit.
I don't say nothing on that channel I don't believe in.
And even collaboratively, the people on my team who I'm wise enough not to put on camera, Andrew,
little note for you there.
Like, you know, they don't agree with me.
So, like, I'm continually having to go, well, this is what I think.
They go, no, this study says this, this study says that.
I actually agree with a lot of what you say.
And it's a small thing, but it gets, as a Hindu,
it means a lot to me that truth is not,
especially because you know,
truth is not something to be told.
It's something to be sought from within.
That's beautiful.
I will honor that piece of advice.
And I will honor that note.
I'll take that on board.
Thank you.
You helped me to grow.
That's a beautiful thing.
Listen, Russell Brand, thank you so much.
Thanks for having me on your amazing show.
You're so brilliant. I appreciate you for taking the time, man. This is Russell Brand, thank you so much. Thanks for having me on your amazing show. You're so brilliant.
I appreciate you for taking the time.
I love it.
This is awesome.
I'm so glad I came here.
Thank you for coming to our country.
You're beautiful.
You're brilliant.
Thank you.
Thank you for coming.
Thank you very much.
Okay, everybody watching at home,
now that we're in this beautiful studio right here,
not the one we did the KSI interview in.
That was a fucking dump.
It was basically like a Hampton Inn
that we made into something that was respectable.
God bless this team. But now we're in this decadent, ornate studio,
not built for podcasting, okay? Built for much more elevated things. This is Fiction Studios,
and it is absolutely beautiful space. And a lot of people come here, they record albums,
they record fucking anything. It's a recording recording studio and they were nice enough to accommodate us and then went above and beyond
so we could have this beautiful space and we just wanted to shout them the fuck out
nathan at fiction studios make sure you ask for nathan okay he looks like one of them twins from
matrix 2 uh and he's a good man and you should you should ask for him if you ever need to record out
here literally anything but you have this amazing space you could do it in. So check them out.
And then also, the way that we got in touch with it was through Yaz and Hot Patch.
Now, Hot Patch is essentially Airbnb for recording studios.
So Val and Yaz made this whole thing go down with Nathan.
So if you're ever trying to, especially if you're in London, I think they got a place in Dubai now.
They're out there in Korea.
We're trying to get them over to the United States so they can work with WTF. But Hot Patch
has got your back. UK people, you need a studio where you can record your podcast, record music,
whatever the fuck it is you need recorded. You go through Hot Patch. Okay. We're partial to
Fiction Studios, but they have like thousands of different places you could also record at,
but recorded Fiction Studios. But if they're not available, you can record at some of them other bum-ass places.
Just don't do it at the Hampton Inn
or wherever the fuck we did that one.
Anyway, point is, we love them.
They did a fucking great job for us,
so make sure you guys support them as well.