there's two people in the back, two of her homegirls wearing like shiesty masks. And I'm like, what are we doing? Where are we going? And she goes, we're gonna go film the riot. We're going to Lake Street. And so we drive down there. Kmart is burning. Target is burning.

Everything is on fire. She has the Sony A7. She gives me a microphone and she's like, go talk to that guy. And that was a guy with a Molotov cocktail in his hand who had just burned Kmart down. And so I go, what should I ask him? She goes, what's on your mind?

So I walk up to him and I'm like, what's on your mind? The following is a conversation with Andrew Callaghan, host of Channel 5 on YouTube, where he does Gazelle style interviews with fascinating humans at the edges of society. The so-called vagrants, vagabonds, runaways, outlaws, from QAnon adherents to fish heads, to O'Block residents, and much more.

He created the documentary that I highly recommend called "This Place Rules" on the undercurrents that led to the January 6th Capitol riots. This is the "Live Streaming" podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Andrew Callaghan. - I tried to color match you though.

Got the black and white going. I went to Walmart before this and got the Wrangler shirt with the Texas Longhorns tee. - Is that where you shop, Walmart? - Generally, yeah. - I'm a Target man myself. - There's no way you get those suits from Target. - So you're saying it's a nice way to compliment a suit.

- I think you go men's warehouse, if not further. - I think you would be wrong. - You go further. - No, the other direction. - You got that from Target? - Not Target. I was joking about Target. I like Walmart better. It just felt like a funny thing to say.

- No, it was funny. - The most expensive thing I own is this watch, and it was given to me as a gift. - Yeah. When I was on tour, I had these $2,700 Cartier glasses that I got for a lot of money. $2,700. - Like sunglasses? - Yeah, but they were really embarrassing.

But I was on tour, so I just felt like I could do anything as far as fashion choices. But looking back at pictures from myself in that era, I'm like, God. - So that was the symbol of the fame got to your head. - I think so, yeah. I think fame getting to your head.

If you spend more than 100 bucks on sunglasses, you've officially gone off the deep end. - You've crossed the line. - Totally. - And that's where you go back to Walmart to humble yourself. I really love Walmart. In fact, I moved to Austin because I was at Walmart and a lady said that I look handsome in a suit.

And I was like, that's it. I love this place. She just said it for no reason whatsoever. This older lady just kind of looked at me and with this genuine sweetness, just said, "Oh, you look handsome." - She's not wrong, man. - Thank you. - That's part of your whole swag though.

- Yeah, the suit thing. Yep. Anyway, what was the first, if you remember, first recorded interview you did? - Well, like my first grade teacher, Mrs. Claudia, this is back in the day, like I was telling you, we just asked her about her life in Columbia and stuff like that.

But I didn't really get into actual journalism until my ninth grade year. I had no idea I had an interest in it. Before then, I wanted to be a rapper. It's all about hip hop and meditation and picking psilocybin mushrooms in public parks and stuff like that. That's what I was into.

- That's a lot. Psilocybin, meditation, rap, public parks. - Yeah, I was making like conscious rap music. I was to the point where I had like four dream catchers hanging above my bed, Alex Gray painting on the wall, tapestry on the ceiling, just scribbling rhymes down all the time.

- So you said somewhere that you sucked at school. - Okay, well, let's step back a little bit. So I had this amazing journalism course in ninth grade. I went to an alternative high school and the teacher was named Calvin Shaw. And he was just like, I ended up taking his class all four years.

And he used to let me actually leave school. I didn't like going to school. So he'd let me basically go around Seattle and do different interviews with people as long as I could come back by the end of the day and write a story for his class. And he'd mark me as present.

So the first article that I wrote was about the Silk Road and the deep web. 'Cause you know, as a ninth grader, when I discovered the hidden wiki, I thought that I was like really tapping into like the most secret society, elite level black market in the world. And so if you remember, they had that hidden wiki link it was like hire a hit man.

And so I messaged them and I was like, all right, I wanna get someone killed in my school. Like how much is it gonna cost me? And I published my interview with the hidden wiki hit man who was probably a fed or something, but who knows. And that my first article was called like, inside the deep web, a conversation with a hit man.

- That's nice. I mean, you're fearless even then. - I mean, I was hiding behind a Tor browser. So there's not much fear to be had. - Oh, so it was anonymous. - It was anonymous, but I did publish it under my name. So you're right, I could have been in danger.

- I also saw that you said you took too many shrooms when you were young and that led you to have hallucinogen persisting perception disorder, HPPD. Can you explain what this is? - Well, that condition is classified by persistent visual snow, floaters, morphing objects. Like I see them right now, I see them all the time.

- The snow's in the room. - The snow is definitely in the room, it's all over you. And basically, it wasn't that I took too many shrooms. I think that it was, I took, I took about an eighth of seni-essence mushrooms, which are the ones that come from the earth instead of cow shit.

And I took an eighth of those at my friend Toby's house. And, which is a normal amount, but I was in eighth grade. So I woke up the next morning with these extreme, you know, visual distortions. And I thought that it would go away. I tried to make it go away, but there was, there's really no cure for HPPD.

It's a lifelong condition. So it's just a matter of dealing with it and realizing that it is only visual. So when people ask me, "Hey, I have HPPD. "How do I cope with it?" I say, "Remember that every other sense that you have, "what you can hear, what you can taste, "you know, your feet on the ground, "you're still on earth, you're still here." - Well, you said it's only visual.

And yes, gratitude for being alive at all is great. But you said that this led you into some dark psychological places like depersonalization disorder. - Yeah. Depersonalization is the feeling that you are not real, but that reality still exists. Derealization is the idea that reality itself is an illusion created by your mind and that you're the only person alive.

And that everything that your brain is projecting to your visual cortex is a lie and that you're the only living human being. - Both are pretty intense. - HPPD creates both of those things. And so when I've talked to people who have the condition, it's really either or. But more than 70% of people with HPPD fall into either category.

They're both coping mechanisms for the, I don't know what really happens. I talked to a researcher once named Dr. Abraham. He lives in upstate New York. He's the leading scientist when it comes to HPPD research. He's the only one who actually seems to care about finding a cure. And the only known treatment right now is alcohol and benzodiaphines.

- That's not good. - Right, so alcoholism, something that came into my life pretty early. Alcohol abuse as a result of that experience because that helps with the visual symptoms, makes some of the static go away. Never tried benzos though. - So can you explain to me where in that spectrum you are?

So do you sometimes have a sense that you're not real? - Sometimes. - And something else is not real? Like the reality's not real? - Yeah, I experience it all the time. But like I said, my job helps with that because I get to feel like, when you seek out extremes to a certain extent and you put yourself on the front lines of intense events, whether it be politically or socially, or just dive into deep fringe subcultures, you get this feeling that you're real.

And being filmed is also confirmation, if you can look at the MP4 file, that you're in fact living here on Earth. - Confirming that you were in it with reality by watching yourself on video. - Exactly. - So is that basically the engine behind all the extreme interviews you've done?

- Well, I got HPPD around the same time that I began this journalism course in ninth grade. So I sort of always used journalism as a therapeutic mechanism to deal with some of these symptoms, especially depersonalization. There's some pretty good illustrations of what it feels like. Kind of feels like you're trapped behind your eyes, or that you're just this nebulous soul that's trapped in a flesh suit that you're not really a part of.

You're sort of puppeteering a flesh and bone skin suit. - Trapped, or just the ability to step outside of yourself? - You feel like your soul is not something that is connected to your body. It's something living in your head. It's really hard to explain to people who haven't gone through derealization or depersonalization, but if you go on support groups, they always say, "How do I break free from behind my eyes?" Like, just dark stuff like that.

- Oh, so you're trapped. I mean, there's a higher state of being through meditation that you can kind of step outside of yourself, but this is not that. - Unfortunately, it was kind of the meditative path, or the Eastern path that I took, and kind of fused that with psychedelic culture in Seattle that took me down the psychedelic use rabbit hole in the first place.

So I'd say it all started with Siddhartha. - Siddhartha, that's a good book. Have you done shrooms since then? - No, I don't really do psychedelic drugs, but a lot of people think that I'm against them, which I'm not, it just doesn't work for me. If it works for you, I'm sure that can be really fun, especially, I know there's lots of therapeutic uses for acid and ketamine and psilocybin, but I personally abstain from those kind of, anything psychotropic, I try to stay away from.

- Drinking a bit? - Well, yeah, I mean, I didn't drink at all before I had the HPPD stuff, and I would have drank later in life, but definitely like 14, 15, every day after school, I'd drink a 40 ounce of Mickey's. It's like a, it kind of looks like Old English, but the bottle's green, and it has a hornet on the side of it.

Just kind of became a ritual, just to deal with the anxiety of that situation. - And it made the snow go away? - Yeah, alcohol really works to suppress HPPD symptoms. - So you said you hated classes in school, except that journalism class. - Okay, we need to clear this up, because on my Wikipedia page, for some reason, for Andrew Callahan Early Life, it says, "Andrew hated every single class except for one." So I've had a bunch of teachers who are super cool, like this guy Tim, my astronomy professor at ninth grade, Mrs.

Zanetti, my creative writing teacher in sixth grade, and this really cool dude at my college in New Orleans named Charles Cannon, who taught me a class called New Orleans Mythology. My three favorite classes, besides my journalism class, and they all hit me up, and they're like, "Hey man, saw you said you hated every class.

"Sorry I couldn't be everything that you wanted me to be." And so I just want to say, shout out to all those teachers, I didn't hate every class. The point that I was making is that being forced into the institution of school so young, and having to take common core classes like biology, dissecting frogs, history of the Han Dynasty, stuff like that that I didn't want to learn, but I had to learn multiple times.

I mean, I learned about the dynastic cycle in ancient China three separate times at three different schools, and I was like, who is writing this curriculum, and why is it so important that I understand this process? The part that makes school difficult, especially in college, is that you have people just going to school just to get the degree, who don't really know exactly what they're interested in, and they don't even have time to figure that out, 'cause they're in a business program, or a communications program with no specific interest.

- Well I think if you want to do school right, take on every single subject that you're forced into, it's like the David Foster Wallace, just be unboreable by it. Just really go in as if ancient Chinese dynasties are the most interesting thing you could possibly learn. - And it is somewhat interesting, the Silk Road, and the Great Wall, and terracotta soldiers and stuff.

But I'm just saying, when I got to college, I signed up for journalism school, right? And I didn't get to take a media class until the second semester, and I had to take everything prior to that, and I'd already spent so much time, I just think the excruciating boredom of schooling left a bad taste in my mouth.

But there was individual classes that I liked a lot. - Yeah, there should be some choice, or maybe a lot of choice, even at the level of high school, for what kind of classes you pursue. - Yeah, for sure. - And you're also saying so, Wikipedia's not always perfectly right.

- No, but it's just interesting, because I've said so much in podcasts, but that's what they isolated. And I've gotten that question before, which I understand, it's the first thing on my Wikipedia page, but it makes me sound like a super hater. Have you ever seen this Instagram page called Depths of Wikipedia?

- Oh, it's great. - Oh, it's so good, dude. - You said you loved journalism. What did you love about journalism? - I mean-- - What hooked you? - On a basic level, everybody wants media coverage, right? Everyone likes to be on camera and get exposure for whatever they're doing.

And so being a journalist and being almost like a portal for exposure for people, allows you to be on the front row of everything that you want to be a part of. You get to be in the front row for history as it's unfolding, because everyone wants to be covered.

So being a journalist gives you a ticket to everywhere that you want to go in life. And so it allows you to step into different realities almost and then go back to yours. And it just keeps life interesting. - Buy the ticket, take the ride. Hunter S. Thompson, is he up there as one of the influences?

Who are your influences? - I think the early Daily Show was so good. Sacha Baron Cohen, huge influence. I mean, that was like, the Ali G Show especially. I think Louis Theroux's broadcasts on BBC were great. I was really into Hunter S. Thompson too, but not really until college.

You know, I really like a particular Hunter S. Thompson book called "The Great Shark Hunt", where he covers the Ruben Salazar murder by LAPD or LA Sheriff's Department in Boyle Heights in the '70s. And his relationship with his lawyer, Oscar Acosta, and that whole saga is great. Fear and loathing, I like, but not as much as his straightforward reporting.

'Cause there's the Gonzo side of Hunter, where he's like saying he's taking drugs and seeing shit. And there's the other side of him, which is like an actual reporter interested in telling a story that has news value. So it's two different lanes for him. - There is something about you that makes people wanna say you're the Hunter S.

Thompson of this generation. And I don't think they mean the drugs. I think they mean some kind of non-standard willingness to explore the extremes of humanity. And like almost a celebration of the extremes of humanity. - Yeah, well, that's a very kind comparison. I'll get there one day, maybe.

I just went to Aspen on a little Hunter S. Thompson recon trip to go check out the Woody Creek Tavern, which is the spot that he, it was like his bar near his cabin. And it was pretty cool to see. Unfortunately, it's kind of turned into not a dive bar now, but it's a sit-down sort of country restaurant.

But it was cool. I expected to see a bunch of gnarly Hunter S. Thompson types doing speeds. (laughing) - Just doing drugs. I mean, drugs and alcohol is all part of it somehow. - Yeah. - And so it opens a gateway to a deeper understanding of humanity. - But I will say, though, as someone now who doesn't party like I did when I was younger, it's not as important as I thought it was, you know?

- Yeah, I'm conflicted on this. I'm good friends with a lot of people that say alcohol is really bad for you. And I believe that too. But there's something that I just, as an introvert, as a person who has a lot of anxiety, for me, alcohol has opened doors of just opening myself up to the world more.

- Oh, I'm actually a fan of alcohol, moderate drinking. But I'm saying my life before, I would say 2019, 2018 especially, there was the chaos on camera, but then there was my private life, which was chaotic partying all the time. - Oh, I see. - I convinced myself, much like Hunter did, that that was the secret sauce in the core, the spiritual, in my spiritual core, that gave me the creativity.

But then I cut out a lot of that stuff, and I'm just as creative. And it's interesting that a lot of, I think one of the hardest parts about addiction is that if you're a functioning, highly creative addict of any kind, your brain and the addictive part of your brain convinces yourself that it's all part of the cross purpose, and that it has this symbiotic, you know, inspirational thing going on.

It's not true. It can be, but it's typically not. - Yeah, it's not a requirement. - Right. - You can sometimes channel, you can sometimes leverage all those things for your creativity, but the creative engine, it lives outside of that. - Like, have you read Hunter's daily routine in the year up to his death?

It was like 15 grapefruits and eight ball of Coke, and just a certain amount of shotgun shells for him to fire into the sky every morning. There's no way, he didn't do anything creative in those final years. - Yeah. - But, so the creativity goes away, and gradually you just become like a party animal, like Andy Dick.

- A caricature of yourself. - Yeah. - I mean, that's why life is interesting. You make all kinds of choices, and sometimes you can have, create works of genius in a short amount of time based on drugs and no drugs. Einstein had that miracle year where he published several incredible papers in one year, 1905.

- Did he do drugs before that? - Lots of Coke, and-- - (laughs) I was like, I believed you for a second. I'm like, did Einstein have blow? I don't think he did. - How do you think he gets that hair? Come on. - It's true. - I'm just asking questions.

- High confidence hair. - Look into it. - Yeah. - You know what I mean? - Yeah, well, no, he's a well put together, sexy young man. The hair came later. - Yeah, was Albert Einstein attractive as a teenager? No, that's not teenager. Was he attractive as a young man?

- Sexually attractive? - I don't, I mean-- - I'm turned on by Einstein at all ages. I don't discriminate. But are you more turned on by the work that he did or his physical being? - No, sometimes I fantasize what it would be like to be in the arms of Einstein.

I could even get that out. - Yeah, in the arms of Einstein. - Yeah, just I wanna feel safe. - It's a good idea for a rom-com. (laughs) - To be a little more serious, like general relativity, that space-time can be unified and curved by gravity is an incredibly wild and difficult idea to come up with.

Like it's a really, really difficult thing to imagine given how well Newtonian classical mechanics physics works for predicting how stuff happens on Earth. To think like that gravity can morph space-time, both space and time, and it permeates the entire universe. It's a field. It's a really wild idea to come up as one human on Earth to intuit that is really, really, really difficult.

And it's really sad to me that he didn't get a Nobel Prize for that. - Was there people saying he was crazy when he was around? Or was he universally recognized as like an OG of his? - No, I think once the papers came out, he was widely recognized as a true genius.

But before that, he wasn't recognized. He had a really difficult-- - So back now, where does a black hole go? Like after something gets sucked into it? - You mean is it a portal to another place, that kind of thing? - Yeah. - No, well, we don't know. It could be.

It could be that the universe is kind of like Swiss cheese full of black holes. There's something called Hawking radiation where because of quantum mechanics, the information leaks out of a black hole. So it is possible to escape a black hole. There's a lot of interesting questions there. - I hope we get to the bottom of that.

- And there's a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, which doesn't seem to scare physicists, but it terrifies me. - Oh yeah, for sure. Astronomy can be terrifying. - Yeah, we're all like orbiting. I mean, we're not just orbiting the sun, but the sun is part of the solar system, is part of the galaxy, and it's all orbiting a gigantic black hole.

- Have you ever spoke to someone who's been to outer space? - Jeff Bezos. He flew his own rocket. - Wow. That's pretty cool. - Astronaut that's been to deep space, no. Well, maybe I've spoken to an alien that just hasn't admitted it. - I wanna do a research paper, like a report about space madness.

You know, it's supposed to be this like torturous feeling that you get when you look away from Earth and into the abyss after you've exited Earth's orbit or whatever. Because there's one specific psychiatrist who knows how to deal with space madness, and I wanna figure out how, interview people with it.

- Is this a real thing? Like, is there a Wikipedia article on it? - Yes, look up space madness treatment. - Now I don't trust Wikipedia after what you told me, so. - I know, they think I hate classes. - I thought you meant more about the fact that you're isolated out in space, that we need social connection and it's difficult.

- Yeah, I think it's just a feeling of extreme insignificance that you might get sometimes when you look at the night sky, but it's that times 1,000. It's like an existential void that's created after looking into the abyss and then realizing how small Earth is in the grand scheme.

You just start to really have a strange new perception about the pointlessness of existence. - I don't need to go to space for that. - I mean, only a handful of people have been to space, but I'm sure they're all pretty well off, so the psychiatrist has to be in the multi-millions.

- Well, technically, we're all in space 'cause Earth is in space, but so, I wonder if you have to go to space to talk to the psychiatrist. - Yeah, probably so. - Well, technically, we're all in space, so he can't, that's a boundary he can't have. - But not everyone believes that, as you've seen from my work, probably.

- You're right, and those are important people that are asking important questions. - Yeah. - You hitchhiked across US for 70 days when you were 19. - Right. - Tell the story of that. - Well, this sort of connects to what I was talking about with the boredom of school and these common core classes.

So, after my first year of school, where I lived in the dorms, like an old school dormitory building at a school in New Orleans called Loyola University, I wanted to just do something. I felt so bored. I was working for the school newspaper for that whole first year, it was called The Maroon, and I didn't have the ability to write my own stories.

Like, I had to defer to an older editor, and they would give me stories to write about, and they were all about on-campus happenings, like the Pope visits New Orleans, or glass recycling to be restored in the French Quarter, or hoverboards banned on campus due to safety concerns. And it just kind of felt like, all right, I kind of wanted to be a gonzo reporter.

I'm not sure if working my way up through the traditional newsroom hierarchy is gonna get me to that point. So I started reading a bunch of old hobo literature, you know, like post-World War II vagabonding stuff, and there was this book called "Vagabonding in America" by an old hobo named Ed Byrne.

And I read this, and it just basically, obviously some of it was outdated. They had stuff in there like the hobo code, like, oh, this moniker on the side of a fence means this person has free soup or something like that. They didn't have stuff like that. But what it did tell me-- - That's great.

- It told me about train stop towns, like Dunsmuir and places in Montana where there was a friendly attitude toward drifters, and that still persists from the '60s and '70s to this day, even though, in my opinion, movies like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" have ruined hitchhiking culture in America because now everyone thinks we're gonna, you know, decapitate them if they pick you up.

So after my final day of courses at Loyola, I literally left all of my belongings inside my dorm and took the streetcar to the Greyhound station, got a one-way ticket to Baton Rouge, and I was like, I'm gonna hitchhike across the whole country back to Seattle with no money.

And that was the plan, and it worked out. - I love it. I traveled across the United States before in a similar kind of plan, 'cause you went-- - Were you on the Silver Dog? (laughs) It's the Greyhound bus. - Greyhound is pretty nice. - That's a step above hitchhiking.

- That's way better than hitchhiking, so I don't-- - Hitchhiking, Greyhound, Amtrak, airlines. - Amtrak, no, that's the leadest. - What's in between Greyhound and Amtrak? (laughs) A car, that's what it is. - Yeah, it's a car, yeah, a shitty car. - Okay, cool. - I lived in a shitty car.

- You lived in a car? - Yeah, when I was driving across the United States. - Solo? - With a friend, I'm solo, and I would eat cold soup. - I love cold soup. What I like is the cold chickpeas in a can. Get the water out and just dump 'em in your mouth.

Those are good, beef jerky. Kind bars, kind bars are really good for the road. - Yeah, I mean, all of that is great, but too much of it is not great. Like, too much cold soup, not great. Too much beef jerky. - So what was the route you took?

Was it Chicago across, or was it Philadelphia across? - Philadelphia across. - To LA, or where? - San Diego's where we ended up, but it was a zigzagging, went up to Chicago, and then all the way down to Texas. - So you went Philly, through Appalachia, up to the Midwest.

- Yep. - Through the Southwest, down to San Diego? - No, no, no, I went straight down to Texas, all the way down to the Midwest, so like. - But did you cut from Texas West through New Mexico and Arizona to get to San Diego? - Yeah. - That is the best road trip place.

Interstate 40, like Albuquerque, Flagstaff, Vegas, Kingman, the Mojave Desert, Yuma, doesn't get better. - Yeah, I mean, and you're a kid, so you don't care, and you were throwing caution to the wind, and I met some crazy, crazy people. - It gives me some sanity, like, whenever I'm feeling kind of out of control, or, you know, like, bummed out, I just remember that the road is still out there.

The open road never goes anywhere, and it's kind of like a, I see like an invisible door in the corner of the room all the time that makes me more comfortable, 'cause I'm like, hey, at the end of the day, if I'm bummed out, I can go hit the road, and I'm sure there's gonna be a fun time ahead.

- Yeah, get that Greyhound ticket, and go. - I would say Silver Dog, half, because sometimes I gotta ride the dog when no one will pick me up. There's some places in the country where no one's gonna pick you up. Kansas, Missouri, they're not gonna do it. - Maybe you're not charming enough.

You thought about that? - I was 19, fresh, clean-shaven. I was pretty charming, I'd say. But the older you get, the harder it is to hitchhike, because they think you're like an escaped convict, or some type of like psycho wanderer. And some of these people are like what we call Punishers.

It's people who never stop talking. And so they see someone hitchhiking, and they're like, yes, I'm gonna talk at this person. And you can tell, their eyes are wide. They're like, what's up? And you're like, oh, shit. So it's six hours of just like, oh, cool, nice. - That's rough.

- Yeah, yeah. - You're right, you're right. I like people that are comfortable in silence. - Yeah, but then that also raises the question, are they about to kill me? You know what I mean? - I think that's a you problem, not a-- - You know what's funny is almost everybody who picked me up when I was hitchhiking was like a day laborer.

It was almost all Mexican day laborers who picked me up. - Oh, interesting. - 'Cause I think that in some places down there, that's a typical thing to do, hitchhike to work. A lot of people don't have cars, but they still have to get to their jobs. So a lot of people ask me, hey, where should I drop you off?

Where's your job at? And I'm like, my job is to explore. And they were down with it. - See, like for me, it was really easy because you just say like, I'm traveling across the United States. And I think people love that idea and they wanna help. They romanticize it 'cause they also have that invisible door.

Everybody has that invisible door. I just wanna go. - So you know what I'm talking about. - Yeah, I mean, I don't think-- - It can anchor you a bit just to remind you that every pattern that I've fallen into is voluntary and it's for my own stability and mental health.

- Well, that's why I'm like renting everything and I'm making sure that tomorrow I could just go. I gave away everything I owned twice in my life. Just very like, I'm ready to go tonight. Let's go. - What's the hardest item you've had to part with in this experience?

- There's nothing. - You've never had a material object that was really hard to let go of? - No. - So you'd give that watch to somebody if it meant-- - No, this, you're right. You're right. That's probably the only, I've never had to let go of that though.

That's the only thing I own. This means a lot to me, but everything else. But then again, 'cause okay, this watch is given to me by Rogan, who's become a close friend. But whenever I romanticize the notion that this watch means a lot to me, he's like, "Don't worry about it.

"I'll just get you the same one again." - Yeah. (laughing) - I was like, "God damn it." - It's a pretty sick-ass gift though. - Yeah, it's pretty sick. I'm not usually a gift guy, but when somebody you look up to kind of gives you a thing, it's a nice little symbol of that relationship.

So it's nice. But other than that, no. But even this, whatever. The relationship is what matters. The human is what matters, not the-- - I agree 100%. - You had something like this? - Not really. I mean, there was a hard drive that I lost that had all of my childhood pictures on it and stuff like that that I think about all the time because I left it on a train.

And certain memories, you think about it, you just get pissed off. I just think to myself, "Someone has that somewhere." I have dreams about reuniting with the hard drive. - You and Hunter Biden have a similar kind of dream. (laughing) - I don't think he wants to reunite with that one.

- Okay. - Dude, it's crazy. All he did was smoke crack, right? Or was there more stuff going on? - I think there's prostitutes involved. - Oh, okay, whatever. - I think you gotta look into it. - I think I have to look into it too. (laughing) - I don't know.

(laughing) - Was Kerouac, Jack Kerouac, somebody that was an inspiration at all in this road trip? Did you even know who that is? The B generation? - No, I didn't know who it was. And then after I did the, ultimately I wrote a book about my hitchhiking experience years later.

And everyone was like, "Have you read 'On the Road'?" And then, "On the Road," I probably heard the title of that book every day at least 10 times for two years. And I'm sure Kerouac is a great guy. (laughing) I mean, I just don't, I'm not too familiar with the B generation.

- It's a great book. It's a, you read it or no? - I refuse to read it. People even have gifted it to me, being like, "Hey man, you're gonna love this one." And I'm like, "Is that 'On the Road'?" If I, honestly, people have given me a book with wrapping paper on it, and they're like, "This is right up your alley." I was like, "That's fucking 'On the Road,' isn't it?" (laughing) - Give you a different cover?

- Yeah, no, I'm like, "Anything but that." But I'm sure it's a great book. It's just the comparison thing drives me crazy. - Mm-hmm. - Respect, big respect to Kerouac. Would never speak down on the whole, anyone in the B generation. - What are some interesting moments you remember from that, those 70 days?

- Man, there was so much. I mean, getting mistaken for a gay prostitute on my first hitchhiking ride in Louisiana was pretty funny. - Where did you come from and where did you go? - Well, I mean, the journey began in Baton Rouge, and the first destination was Houston, which is about four and a half hours west on Interstate 10.

So I'm in Crowley, Louisiana, I'm on the side of the road, and I guess this was a cruising truck stop that was known for being a place where male lot lizards would go to procure clients. And I was there. - Lot lizards are- - It's a derogatory term in trucker culture for a prostitute who hangs out at the Love's or Pilot Flying J, large interstate truck stops.

Now, trucker culture, as it once was, is pretty much finished because of the live stream cameras they have inside of the trucks now, so you can't snort Sudafed or pick up anybody. Can't even pick up a hitchhiker or you get fired. - Killed all the romance. - Yeah, definitely.

The old school outlaw trucker lifestyle, unless you're an owner-operator who's not even in a union, which is like a real cowboy way to haul loads, you can't do that. - You were mistaken for a lot lizard. - Mistaken for a lot lizard by a small man from Honduras with a spiky leather jacket covered in studs.

- Nice. - I don't speak any English, but you know, I thought he was just, you know, a nice guy. And then he pulled over at a... There's private theaters in the South where they have confessional booths set up and they have three channels and people go in there and, you know...

- It's porn? - Yeah, people go in there and, you know, please themselves. - That's right. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I thought he was taking me to one of those. I was like, all right, cool, man, yeah, like, you know, this guy wants to go jerk off, I'm just gonna wait in the car, it's all good, I don't discriminate.

But then I was like, he buys a booth for me and I'm like, okay, you know, not really in the mood to watch porn with this random guy. So, he gets in the same booth as me and he starts jerking off right next to me. And I'm like, oh man, like, I don't think this is chill.

I'm like, dude, can you stop? He stopped jacking off and he's like, what do you mean? Like, I thought this is what you wanna do, like, I have money for you, like, what's up? And I was like, oh no, I'm just a regular guy. And he was super cool about it.

He started laughing, he was like, oh, my bad, man. I thought you were, you know, selling something. I said, no, and he said, oh, it's all good. And he gave me a ride all the way to Houston. - That's great. - Yeah, we talked about anything except that for the rest of the car ride.

- That's great, I was just rolled with it. Oh, sorry about that. - I mean, I had about a foot and a half on this guy, so I wasn't too scared. I also had like a knife in my pocket, but I didn't wanna stab him, especially not at a place like that.

- And you were still, that didn't like, leave a bad taste in your mouth? - Well, I figured that can't happen again. It can't keep happening. So I was like, all right, if I got this out of the way the first ride, the following rides are gonna be spectacular.

- Yeah, I mean, who among us have not been mistaken for a lot lizard? - It's a fact, you heard it here first. - What else? What, there's some interesting, beautiful people that you've met along the way. - Well, I used the app Couchsurfing to find places to stay.

- Nice, I remember Couchsurfing. - Now you can only submit like five Couchsurfing requests a day, unless you're a premium member, which means you also host people. - Couchsurfing's still around? - Yeah, yeah, totally. But it's evolved obviously into a different thing. - Airbnb is a kind of competitor to that, right?

- Couchsurfing is free though. - Right. - So Couchsurfing, they call it like the CS community. So basically there'd be these like Couchsurfing super hosts in different cities. Like there was one in Santa Fe, this firefighter dude who had like 15 other Couchsurfers there chilling. - Nice. - So I would do it everywhere.

A lot of them were Catholics, you know? So it was their way of giving back. A lot of them were nudists. And so I didn't realize that there's a small little section at the bottom of someone's Couchsurfing profile that says clothing optional. - Yes. - And that means if you go there, I thought it meant like it's cool if you walk to the bathroom in your underwear.

No, if you go there, everyone's gonna be butt naked. So I made that mistake a few times. Not that I'm anti-nudist, but I didn't wanna, you know, I wasn't ready to take that leap of faith. And yeah, it was just great. Couchsurfing hosts were amazing. But that was just great.

It was this constant thing where I felt like, wow, people are so welcoming. I'm not having to pay them a dollar for this experience. - Yeah, I love Couchsurfing. For like, again, for me being an introvert, just crashing on a person's couch, being essentially forced into a great conversation is great.

- Yeah. The one thing that gets exhausting about hitchhiking is constantly thanking people, you know, being in like sort of constant superficial gratitude everywhere all the time. Like, oh, thanks for letting me sleep on your couch. Thanks for the food. - Yeah. - Part of the reason I wanted to live in an RV later in life is to avoid having to constantly live in this like, thanks so much type of frequency, 'cause it's exhausting to constantly, hey man, thanks.

- I think the shallowness of that interaction is exhausting, not just the thanks. - Yeah, it was a true favor. Of course, I love giving people gratitude for that. But just this thing where everyone who picks you up, you know, you get eight rides a day, you're like thanking eight people a day, like they're, you know, the second coming of Jesus.

You start to feel a little bit debased. - What'd you learn about people from that journey? That's your first time really kind of going into it. - That the American public is just so kind overall. I mean, they're so like embracing, depending on who you are. And specifically though, the Christian family people of the US who drive in minivans and have that fish sticker on the back where it's like Jesus fish, and then they have the family sticker, you know, where each member of the family is a stick figure.

Those people never picked me up and would flip me off with their whole family. Sometimes they would throw full Dr. Peppers at me as a family while I stood on the side of the road. - As a family, together. - They'd yell shit like, "Go to hell, hippie," when I was on the side of the road.

And so it's weird that the most charitable Christian American family values people never gave me any charity or even conversation. They were antagonizing me and saw me as like a hippie leftover from the '60s who needed to go to work, go to Vietnam. I don't get it. But the people who really extended a hand to me is people on the margins.

People working on seasonal visas, people whose cars have less than a quarter tank left, people struggling with addiction who saw me struggling, or at least they thought that I was 'cause they assumed I was hitchhiking, not out of adventure, but 'cause I had no car, and were willing to sacrifice their day almost sometimes to take me exactly where I needed to go.

- That's beautiful, man. I've had similar kind of experience, that people who are struggling the most are the ones who are willing to help you when you're struggling. - Yeah. - There's people in religious contexts and other kind of communities that just judge others because they've kind of constructed a value system where they're better than others because of that value system.

And that actually has a cascade that forces you to actually be kind of a dick. - Yeah, I never thought about it that way. It's so true. Do you think about morality and religion a lot? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been to certain parts of the world where religion is really a big part of life.

I'm just always skeptical about tribes of people that believe a thing and believe they're better than others because they believe that thing. That could be nations, that could be religions. - Yeah. - I mean, in Ukraine and in Russia, I've seen a lot of hate towards the other. - Yeah.

- And that hate, I'm always very skeptical of 'cause it could be used by powerful people to direct that hate just so the powerful people can maintain power and get money, that kind of stuff. - It's a scary thing to see how easy it is for high up political people to mobilize the hate of just the average working person and can almost convince them to sabotage their own countrymen who they share more in common with than the politician they look up to just to advance the agenda of one party.

That's what we're seeing now. - Are there some places in America that are better than others? Can you speak negatively of like aforementioned Joe Rogan talk shit about Connecticut and that stuff? Can you pick a region in the United States you can talk shit about? - To talk shit about?

Oh, for sure. I mean. - Or from that experience, let's just narrow it down to that. - Oh, Colorado. - Oh, jeez. - Really? - I know so many people that love Colorado. - Dude, Dallas, Denver. I used to think Phoenix sucks, but I love Phoenix now. The way they build these cities to just be so circular and massive, it's just like, stop it.

- You don't like circles? - I like grids, man. - Oh, you're a grid guy. - Manhattan, New Orleans, San Francisco. - What is it about grids that bring out the worst in people? (laughing) Circles is where everyone just, there's a-- - Everyone's just vibing out loose and goosey, but the grid gets people locked in and hateful.

I don't know, man, but-- - I've never heard anyone talk shit about Colorado, I have to say. It's kind of refreshing, 'cause it provides a necessary balance for the Colorado Wikipedia page. - Yeah, oh, Oregon too, I got problems with Oregon. - Oregon. - Yeah. Well, here's the issue.

You have, and I don't like just calling people racist, 'cause it's kind of like a two-dimensional insult, but you have the most racist state, but the most psychotic anarchist city in the middle of it. What is going on up there? How did this happen? The yin and the yang is so extreme that there must be something in the willamette.

- What do you have against anarchism? - I have nothing, I used to be an anarchist. When I was in eighth grade, I had this friend named Mads who was part of a group called Seattle Solidarity, which is like an Antifa precursor. So I grew up going to Black Block protests, and I mean, there was a particular shooting, the murder of John Williams, who was a Native American woodcarver in downtown Seattle.

He got killed by a Seattle police officer named Ian Burke. John Williams was carving a pipe from a woodblock with a pocket knife. He was deaf in one ear. The officer pulls a gun on him and says, "Put it down." He doesn't hear him, he shoots him six seconds later.

So that police-involved shooting is what instantly turned me into a very critical of law enforcement kind of person when I was super young. And so as someone who used to see this guy who got murdered, who was a 55-year-old man, I used to see him around Pike Place where my mom lived.

It's a public market in downtown. That, to me, put me into the anarchist political sphere, just channeling the anger of that experience. And the officer got no charges, by the way. You can look up the video, it's horrific. You know, and it didn't get reported. The officer, I'm pretty sure, is still active duty.

And so it's like, situations like that early in life channeled me toward political extremism, but I grew up to realize how incompatible that anarchistic worldview is with reality and with American society. Can only exist in a small little chamber. You know, you can't apply that to the industrial heartland of the country.

- And I think also anarchism, so I've gotten to know Michael Malice, who's written quite a bit about anarchism. And it also exists as a body of literature about different philosophical notions that kind of resist the state, the ever-expanding state in different kinds of ways. And it's always nice to have extreme thought experiments to understand what kind of society we want to build, but implementing it may not necessarily be a good idea.

- Yeah, I mean, Emma Goldman, I'm a huge fan of her writing. Also the prison abolitionists that are associated with the anarchist movement, Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, all that stuff, influential. I still adhere to a lot of those principles when talking about stuff like radical prison reform and stuff like that.

But just, I drifted more toward having a more open mind as I got older. - Extremism implemented in almost all of its forms is probably going to cause a lot of suffering. - Yeah. - You worked as a doorman on the, I could say legendary Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

- That's right. - Where you saw what you described as, this might be another Wikipedia quote, by the way. This is where I do my research, it's Wikipedia. - Does it say hellish scenes? - Hellish scenes in quotes. - Wikipedia is damn right about that. - All right, thank you.

That's a win, that's one in the win column. So yeah, tell the story of that. What's it like to work on Bourbon Street? What kind of stuff did you see? - I mean, I was a host at a fine dining restaurant on the corner of Bourbon and Iberville. So that's the first street if you go from Canal Street onto the corridor.

So this is across from a daiquiri spot. It's the middle of the tourist corridor of New Orleans. And the spot was kind of like, kind of a tourist trap. It was called Bourbon House. The food was good. Chef Eric, I don't want you to see this and think, you don't make good andouille sausages, but it was overpriced.

And so we had to maintain this fine dining facade on a street where almost everyone is throwing up, fighting, or is half naked. So there was this policy. We had these giant glass windows next to the tables. So if you're eating at a Bourbon House, you can look out onto Bourbon Street and you can see as you're dining, a full panoramic view of all these partiers throwing beads, boobs, all that.

We had this policy where if we're serving someone, we can't look onto Bourbon Street if something crazy is happening. So if there's a fight or something like that, we can't look, right? So there is a dude, I remember, I'm fucking serving a table. There's a dude in a Batman mask, butt naked, with 12 pairs of beads, just jerking it.

Back to jerking it. He's jerking it, right? And every single person at the restaurant's looking out there like, look, they're taking pictures. And the manager, Steven, looks at me, he's like, "Keep your fucking eyes on the table." So I'm serving these people and I'm like, "You want to eat, you like red beans and rice?

"Or would you like some Creole fucking da-da-da?" And there's just this dude and ultimately the manager went out and escorted him further down Bourbon Street. But I would get off work at around midnight every night and that was when Bourbon Street is at its most chaotic. And so I lived in the French Quarter as well.

So I lived about 12 blocks down Bourbon in a small Creole cottage in a cute little like orange, old school New Orleans, one story spot. I lived in the attic above these gay meth dealers named Frankie and Johnny. Oh, wow. And so I would get off work and I would basically have to walk through like this battlefield.

I mean, it was a battlefield. Getting home was out of like the "Warriors" movie. It was almost impossible. The best of humanity on display. Yeah, it was like Kensington, Philadelphia, but just alcohol. You know what I mean? Just all alcohol. But it's a lot of, well, a lot of visitors, right?

From outside. Almost all visitors. Yeah. And that kind of would set the flow for the weekend. For example, if the Raiders were playing the Saints, Raider Nation, and they do not play around. If it's the Patriots, that's a whole different crowd. They think they're better than everybody else. Yeah, well, they technically are better than everybody else, but yeah.

But people from Massachusetts aren't like the cream of the crop in terms of like American superiority. Strong words, yeah. No offense, but I mean. No, I'm sure they won't take that as an offense. They are good at fighting though, I'll tell you that. All right, great. New England has hands compared to some places.

Which places are those, Colorado? Colorado has no hands. Yeah. (laughing) The West Coast, not too much hands. That's why you feel safe talking shit about Colorado. But if you get to the corn-fed parts of East Colorado, I mean, these guys got hands bigger than my head. Don't beat the shit out of me.

But anyways, I'd walk back to my house on Bourbon Street, and I would be sifting through this battlefield, and I had a friend at the time who was like, "Yo, we should do a taxicab confessions type spinoff where we ask people to confess a deep dark secret." And we posted the next day.

And so, we tried that, and it went viral on Instagram instantly. It was mostly incest stories. You know, people admitting to incest. I know it's a common Southern stereotype, but there's some truth to it. There was some murder confessions. That was pretty crazy. We never really posted any of those, but.

How'd you get people to confess? Pretty easy. And New Orleans has a homicide solve rate of like 22%. So, I mean, most of the time, they'll just tell you. I remember I was walking down Bourbon, and I asked this kid, I was like, "What's your deepest darkest secret?" And he told me, he's like, "I just smoked a dude in the Magnolia," it's a project housed in the Third Ward, project development, and they said, "I just smoked a dude in the Magnolia Playground for touching my sister, molesting his sister." And I was like, "What?" And he's like, "Yeah, look it up." And I was like, "All right, hold on." And it was like, "Man found dead in Central City Playground, like appeared to be homeless, shot execution style." So, I told the kid, I was like, "Why'd you tell me that?" He's like, "Man, put that shit out there, like I'm trying to go viral, like tag me too." I was like, "Dude, I don't think you understand that even if you're a juvenile," he was probably 15, "You can get juvenile life in Louisiana for a homicide, even if it's, you know, justified." So, I just deleted the footage in front of him.

I was like, "I'm gonna delete this footage. See that trash button? I'm hitting it right now. Don't tell anyone that again." And he was like, "All right, I appreciate it." And he walked off, but it's the little moments like that that I always remember. - Anything for the 'gram, I guess.

- Yeah, after a while though, it became sort of repetitive. You know, 'cause there's only so many things that people can confess to that go viral, you know? - Oh, so you were trying to see like what? - Well, I mean, there's the incest one. Some people would just say like, "I eat ass." That was like everyone said that.

Or like, "I cheated on someone." - I've seen a surprising number of people on your channel say, "Mention eating ass." - Yeah. (laughing) The way, how seriously you said that will live in my head for the rest of my life. - That's good. I want to live in your head saying that a lot of people mention eating ass.

- Yeah, a lot of people do mention that. Also, that's kind of where I developed this magnetism for freestyle rapping. You know, everywhere I go, people rap. Not sure why. I mean, as a former rapper myself in middle school and for the first year of high school, I think that maybe like it takes one to know one.

But everywhere I go, people start rapping. If you and me went outside of this podcast studio and walked around for five minutes, I could find somebody. - It's rapping. - I can tell who raps or who can rap, who has eight bars in their head that they're ready to go.

- I think you're also, there's something about you that gives them, creates the safe space to perform their art. - Yeah. The "Quarter Confessions" series was the first time you saw the suit. - That's when the suit came out. - Yeah, it was kind of like a Ron Burgundy, Eric Andre-inspired.

- Where'd you get that suit? - Goodwill. - Goodwill. - Yeah, always. - Wow. I was playing checkers, you were playing chess. Good job. - I mean, Goodwill has a surprising amount of identical gray suits for sale. - Yeah, I've actually gotten suits at thrift stores before. They're great.

- Yeah, a lot of people donate suits. I was going for oversized suits, which are the cheapest ones there, so. - Yeah. - It's 12 bucks, 12 to $25 every time for the outfit. - If I wanted to look super sophisticated, like I'm from another era, I would go to a thrift store.

- Yeah. - 'Cause they're usually like this, there's like the patterns they have. It's just like a more sophisticated suit, which is what you kind of picked out. It made you look ridiculous, but in the best kind of way. - The tough part about "Quarter Confessions" for me is that everybody that was featured, for the most part, would more or less regret being a part of the show.

- Yeah. - And that, over time, just gave me a bad feeling where I was like, you know what? I kind of feel like I am doing an ambush interview, especially 'cause I'm presenting as so agreeable, yet the intention is to make something funny. - Yeah. - And I get that that's what people do in the satire sphere.

I'm sure Ali G and Bruno and Borat did the same thing. And I don't think it's unethical, 'cause that's all for the purposes of comedy. It is what it is. But for me, I wanted to do something different. - Yeah, because there's an intimacy to confessing a thing. - Right.

- And then you just don't really realize the implications of that. - And the atmosphere at Bourbon Street is like, anything goes, it's a free-spirited place. But if you transport that energy digitally to a different place, like Colorado, they might look at it and be like, oh man. - Different place and time, like five years later.

- Right. - That same person has a family and stuff like this, and all of a sudden they're talking about eating ass. - Right, exactly. Kids have to think about that. Or imagine if there's a video of your grandma or grandpa out there when he was a kid talking about eating ass.

That's a horrible experience. To discover that about your respected elder later in life, it's tough. - I don't even know where to go with that. But literally the opening question was, tell me your deepest, darkest secret? - Yeah. - You just come up to somebody like that? - Yeah.

- How often do you get a no? How often, what's the yes to no ratio? - Well, the weird thing is, we don't really extract answers from people. What makes a good interview is when they're ready to talk. The more you have to talk and try to get an answer out of them, it's just not a good vibe.

So we kind of look for people who appear to be already ready to talk. Open body language, they seem confident and verbose, and we approach them first. - There's a look. - We wouldn't approach a shy person and be like, come on, tell me. No. - What about a person with pain in their eyes?

- Oh yeah, we're interviewing them. - Yeah, so they're ready to talk, they're just not like... - Yeah. - There's different ways to be ready. - Right. - I see homeless people a lot and they always look fascinating. And the ones I've talked to are always fascinating. - Yeah, we just did a video in the Vegas tunnels, like trying to, obviously it got taken down by Fox, but whatever.

- I was gonna make a joke that I didn't see it. (laughing) - We tried to help a lot of them by getting them IDs. And when I made the documentary, I had this idea that if I, it's a big roadblock for them is getting identification. Without IDs, you can't check into a homeless shelter, you can't do day labor, you can't qualify for housing, nothing.

So when we interviewed them, they'd basically tell us if I had my ID, I wouldn't be here. And so we said, okay, we're gonna really help this time. We're not just gonna talk to them about their struggles, we're gonna actively go out and get them IDs to the DMV.

So we did that and nothing really changed in their life. And we sat down with a recovery specialist who works directly with them day in and day out. And he explained to me that he's been trying to do the same thing I tried to do in a one week period for the past 10 years.

And that they have deeper underlying traumas and pain that need to be dealt with far before they even take the steps to enter society as a housed person. (exhaling) - That's a heavy truth right there. - Breaking that shame cycle has to come first because you gotta think, right?

Like I'm from a generation that romanticizes vagrancy and homelessness to a certain extent, if it's called van life, or if it is done in a way that's sort of like Rolling Stone, Willie Nelson hit the road. People who are above 50, they feel really embarrassed to be in the spiral of homelessness.

They feel like failures. A lot of them have kids who they weren't there for. That's not the kind of pain that can be dealt with by giving someone a tiny home. It's a good step forward, but for someone to really make a change, they have to want to change.

And so it's how do you help someone and guide themselves in the right direction? And if you're too paternalistic and you use shame as a method to get them to clean up, they're gonna end up right where they started. - Yeah. - That's a tough truth to accept 'cause a lot of people want a quick fix to things.

And I don't blame people who go out and give bologna sandwiches out to the homeless. - And each case is probably its own little puzzle. Each person is so complex. Now, imagine drug abuse, what that does to the brain. - Yeah. - Trauma, childhood trauma. There's so much to unpack.

And then just the belief that they're the undesirables, that they don't deserve to be a part of society because they failed a fundamental obligation like taking care of their kids. - If we could take a small tangent to, you mentioned this Vegas video, which is fascinating. It was taken down recently by YouTube or YouTube took it down based on-- - Yeah, it was illegal.

- Fox 5, I guess. - So the documentary was an hour and 45 minutes. We used 10 seconds of a news clip that was publicly broadcast by Fox 5 Vegas. And according to the Copyright Act of 1976, you're allowed to use any publicly broadcast news clip in a transformative capacity in any documentary film or research paper or broadcast or anything.

They, specifically this corporation called Gray Media that controls the TV stations in almost every small town, they had lawyers hit up YouTube and YouTube complied with an illegal copyright strike to get our video immediately removed. And I'm a YouTube partner, I'm in the YouTube partner program. So to think that I wasn't forewarned is, it's a bit strange, but it also smells like corruption to me to a certain extent.

- Yeah, you shouldn't have that amount of power. At the very least, they should have the power to just like silence that five second clip maybe. - Yeah, but I'm taking them to court because I have the means to be able to do so. I'm a larger creator, I have an audience, I have the financial backing to do it.

I can't imagine how many people out there are smaller creators with like not as much consumer of a fan base they can mobilize against someone like Fox 5 or the money to go to court. So I want to take them all the way there to set precedent for future cases so that these giant mainstream media conglomerates can't copyright strike documentary filmmakers at will.

It doesn't make sense. - Oh, thank you for doing that. That's really, really, really important and that's really powerful. And it might hopefully empower YouTube to also put pressure on people to not, and YouTube is in a difficult position because there's so much content out there. There's so many claims, it's hard to investigate, but YouTube should be in a place where they push back against this kind of stuff as a first line of defense, especially to protect small creators.

So what you're doing is really, really important. - Appreciate it, man. - And it sucks that it was taken down. Do you have any hope? - Well, I talked to my YouTube partner today and he said that the Fox 5 lawyers have two weeks to comply with my counter appeal.

But you know, I spent 20 grand on human voiceovers in five different languages. I invested probably in total like 70K into this video. So even if it gets reinstated, the steam's gonna have been taken out of its trajectory. - But also it's just like a really important video that's good for the world.

- Yeah, like why the hell would Fox 5 have a vested interest in having the video taken down? - I just hate it when people do that to videos or to creators that are doing good in the world. - Yeah, it's not an expose on the mayor of Las Vegas.

It's an attempt to show the civilian public how to get involved in a local nonprofit and potentially intervene in the lives of the tunnel people. - Well, fuck Fox 5, the other Channel 5, as you said. - Yeah. - Well, thank you for pushing back and highlighting it. Hopefully it gets brought back up.

But yeah, defending other creators so that other creators can take risks and don't get taken down for stupid reasons. - Yeah. - So "Court of Confessions" was written? - No, it was all real life, reality TV documentary. But it caught the attention of a larger company called Doing Things Media.

- Yes. - And they contacted me pretty much like a week after I graduated from college in the May of 2019. And they said, "Hey, how would you like to produce a show?" I was like, "What do you mean?" They were like, "We'll get you an RV. "We'll pay you 45K a year.

"We'll pay for gas, for food, for two hotels a week. "Go out there, make content, "and we'll be in the background just powering it all." - And that was the birth of All Gas No Breaks. - Yes. I mean, All Gas No Breaks was named after a book that I wrote called "All Gas No Breaks, "A Hitchhiker's Diary," which chronicled the 70-day journey that we were just talking about.

- It's a tough book to find, by the way. - Oh yeah, there's only a few copies left. I'm thinking about doing a reprint at some point down the line, but I sold off the last 100 copies like a month and a half ago. Yeah. - Until then, you guys should go read "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac.

- Yeah. - You should read it. - I don't know if you've read it before. - If you can't get my book, get "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. - It's great. - It's the best. - When's your birthday, I'll send you. - April 23rd. - Okay. - I'm a Taurus.

Come and see it. - Typical Taurus, yeah. - Yeah, I'm a typical Taurus man. I'm a Scorpio moon, so write that down. - What's the time when you were born? - 11.30. - 11.30 at night? Or, of course. - Yeah, typical. This guy knew it. That's the real science.

- Yeah. - Anyways, so the idea of All Gas No Breaks as a show was to combine the, I guess, road dog ethos of the All Gas No Breaks book with the presentation and editing style of Quarter Confessions. So it was to take Quarter Confessions on the road that was pretty much like a simulated hitchhiking experience but with the editing and punchy effects of Quarter Confessions, which is like, I wear a suit, we do the fast zoom-ins, little effects, stuff like that.

It was, man, those were the best years. It was just so fun. I mean, imagine, you're fresh out of college. You were just a doorman interviewing people about making out with their cousin and stuff, and then, boom, this company that you've never even heard of is willing to buy you an RV and give you 45K a year, which to me, at the time, was more money than I could possibly imagine.

So I called my dad. I was like, "Dad, I need you to find me an RV," 'cause he's the only guy I know who knows about cars. Even he doesn't know much about cars. So he's like, "All right, I'm on it." So the RV was 20,000, and the first event that we were called to cover was the Burning Man Festival.

And that was tough because Burning Man is not too keen on filming. It's supposed to be a non-commercialized escape from reality. I mean, they have a gift economy set up. It's based upon mutual participation and non-exploitation. And so the idea of making a Burning Man video was tough at first because burners, oftentimes, and this is not all of them, but are pretty well off in general.

A lot of them have tech jobs, are pretty high up in Silicon Valley. And Burning Man is where they go to take the edge off and basically become their burner persona. On the playa, they become reborn. And they take ketamine, and they wear Kaleidoscope glasses and steampunk hats, and they snort MDMA, and they run around the sand.

Listen to tech. - Do you snort MDMA? That's one. I need to go to MDMA. - Yes, you can. - I thought it's a pill. I didn't know. - It's better to take it in a pill or water, but you can snort MDMA. - I definitely need to take MDMA.

I'm already full of love, but that, I'd probably go on another level. - Yeah, don't snort it 'cause it'll only last you 90 minutes. - Let me write that down. - So anyways, we didn't know what to do because we'd try to film. - Don't snort. - The initial idea for "All Gas, No Brakes" was to, instead of asking people, "What's your deepest, darkest secret?" It was, "What's the craziest trip you've been on?" So the idea was to not satirize drunk people, but satirize people who are fried on acid.

And so we went to Boulder real quick, did a test interview with some lady who talked about seeing ancestral aliens during a peyote retreat. And so it's pretty easy to extract trip reports from hippies and, you know, gutter punks and stuff like that, or oogles. So we go to Burning Man.

We start asking people, like, you know, "What's your craziest trip story?" And they didn't have the same type of free-flowing storytelling style that, like, an on-the-street crust punk in New Orleans might have, where they're like, "I don't give a fuck, I'll tell you whatever." These people were very bottled up about what they were willing to disclose.

So we went on Burning Man Radio, and we did a broadcast, and we said, "Hey, we're psychedelic journalists." It was me and my friend CL at the time. I said, "We're psychedelic journalists. "We're parked on 10 and I," which is a cross street in Black Rock City. And we said, "We have a 1998 Catalina Coachman Sport.

"It's an RV. "We've set up a podcast studio. "We're doing a show about psychedelic voyages." - Yeah. - So lo and behold, two hours later, we had 10 people lined up at the RV. - Nice. - Willing to talk. So that vetted people in advance for us. And so we did a couple interviews, and that was that.

- Well, what were some of the stories from the trip reports? - There was this lady named Razma who said that she was known in several circles in Berkeley for being multi-orgasmic and could create multiple repeated climaxes using only her mind by squinting her eyes and squeezing her eyes together so much that the pleasure spiral just went crazy.

- I feel like I talked to several people like that at Berkeley. - Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. - Not that, well, yeah, that lady. I think she did. She manifests herself in many forms, yeah. - Right, but still, it was on the cruder end. There was one guy named Kimbo Slice was his burner name.

He talked about taking a shit after taking a quarter of mushrooms and how he was like seeing his childhood and visualizing his past life, you know, as the turds were flowing into the toilet and just talks about the psychedelic union between pooing and taking shrimps. - So he was very visual with his words.

- Yeah, so there was stuff like that. I interviewed Alex Gray, which was super cool, about his first trip in San Francisco when he was in 1971, shortly after the Summer of Love. I got to do some pretty cool interviews, but still it was a semi-ambush style. I wouldn't say that we were doing journalism yet.

It was still comedic video work, you know? - Was there a narrative that tied it together? It's like really just a trip, comedic almost with the-- - Interview, and then I go, "Burning man," and then it's on to the next one. So I guess that could give a loose structure, but it's just like a punchy and slapstick thing.

Everything was going good until we interviewed this guy named DJ Softbaby. He was wearing a golden leotard with, once again, kaleidoscope glasses, shirtless, dancing, you know, dancing. He was eating chowder out of a plastic bowl, and he was like, "This chowder's so fucking good. "This is the best chowder I've ever had in my life." And he starts putting the chowder on his face, and he's like, "I want the chowder all over me, yeah!" And so we just go, "Hey man, "can you just do a dance for us real quick, "just for some B-roll?" He does a dance.

We post it on Instagram the next morning. Doing Things Media's CEO calls me, "Reed," he says, "All of our pages are down." And he's like, "That guy you filmed dancing last night "on drugs, putting chowder on his face, "that guy's at the top of MIT." - Top of MIT.

I don't understand what that means. - He went to MIT. - That's like saying, you know, "My brother's a rocket scientist," and he's like, "Head of NASA," or whatever. - Well, I mean, the guy knows people in Boston. - Okay. - You know, not in the whitey-bulger sense, but in the reverse sense.

- I have trouble believing that DJ Softbaby-- - Oh, DJ Softbaby was major. It could have been Harvard, it could have been, but it wasn't UMass. - I don't think there's anybody that's, quote, at the head of MIT who's putting, what was it, all over his face? - Chowder.

- Chowder. - Well, then you haven't been to Burning Man yet. - Okay, I've not been to Burning Man. I'm gonna have to consult my colleagues at MIT if they know DJ Softbaby. - So whoever he-- - It probably was Harvard. Let's put it on them. - Okay, the top of Harvard.

So he made some calls, you know, to the tops, to the heads of big tech, got all the "Doing Things" media pages taken down. At the time, that was like vast network of pages. And we ended up having to take, obviously the video came down, and he held the entire network of Instagram pages hostage.

And so that was, he made us agree to never post that video again, and then somehow got all of our pages reinstated. So that was my first brush with powerful people on drugs, and that was probably my last brush with powerful people on drugs. - So what did you transition into from there?

- I think after Burning Man, we went to the South, went to Talladega Race Weekend, went to a Donald Trump Jr. book signing, went to a Juggalo-adjacent fetish mansion in central Florida called the Sausage Castle. - A Juggalo-adjacent sausage, okay, can you run that by me again? - A Juggalo-adjacent fetish mansion in central Florida.

- Fetish mansion in central Florida, Juggalo-adjacent. I mean, every single one of those words, I feel like needs a book or something. - Right. - So Juggalo, by the way, who are the Juggalos? Is this ICP? - Just ICP fans. - ICP fans, okay. - But I say adjacent because it's not a Juggalo mansion, but there's a lot of Juggalos who kick it at the mansion, and it's Juggalo-friendly.

- Oh, okay, Juggalo-friendly. - Yeah, 'cause they get made fun of in a lot of places. - Oh, so it's not, okay, got it. - And Juggalos say outrageous shit, you know, and they embarrass themselves, and they fight a lot, so they're on the FBI's gang list, which, if you ask me- - ICP or the- - The Juggalos.

- The Juggalos, who is the head of the Juggalos? - It would be Violent J and Shaggy Too Dope. But there's associated acts, like Twizdid, and there's a whole rabbit hole. Honestly, Tech N9ne is sort of a part of that. - Tech N9ne, I don't know who that is.

Should I know who that is? - He's actually one of the top-selling touring rappers, despite having sort of not that many streams. Tech N9ne is like, he's got a huge cult following in Missouri. This is like, the Juggalos started in Warren, Michigan. - We should also say ICP, Insane Clown Posse.

So this is a thing, this is a movement. - Oh yeah, if you went to Seattle right now and punched a cop, and they booked you in county jail, you may end up running with the Juggalos. - Running with the Juggalos. - They are of presence in Pacific Northwest prison system, from what I've heard.

- Can you tell a Juggalo from like a distance? - Well, they say, "Whoop, whoop." So if you see a Juggalo, they'll say that. Also like-- - I'll try to, I'll try to look out for that. - They're kind of, it's called the Dark Carnivals, the mythology they abide by.

- What do they define themselves? What's the ideology of a Juggalo? - A family, a family. - No, I understand, but what's the ideology? What's like the philosophical foundation of the-- - They're anti-racist. They like to drink Faygo, and also just like cheap liquor and stuff like that. They're into drugs.

- Yeah. - A lot of circles, if you pull out a crack pipe, people will be like, "I don't wanna drink with you anymore." If you're at a Juggalo party and someone's smoking Twiz or something, it's relatively accepted. - And what's Twiz? - Meth. - Meth, right, right. Lots of tattoos?

- Yeah. The Hatchet Man is the most common one. So it's a psychopathic records logo. It's a cartoon of a clown wheeling a hatchet. It's actually a pretty sick logo. - I vaguely remember enjoying some of the ICP music. - It's good. - Yeah, it's pretty good. It's funny.

It's edgy. - Well, they get satirized a lot, but I got love for the clowns. And also, so when All Gas No Brakes transitioned away from rich elite drug parties and into like the South, that's when the fun really started to happen. Living in your RV in Alabama and Florida and stuff is the best.

- Why? What is it about Alabama? - People are just so friendly down there, and it's warm year round, and people are non-judgmental. It's just great. The South gets hated on a lot, especially in the coastal states. Mississippi and Alabama are kind of like the butts of a lot of jokes and stuff, but those are great states.

- No, I love it. New Mexico, Albuquerque, all those. - Oh yeah, the ABQs, it's great. - ABQ, what's that? - Albuquerque. It's what Jesse Pinkman called it, is the ABQ. - Oh, shit. The depth of references you bring to the table is intense. - It's okay. - I met a lady in Albuquerque when I was traveling across the United States, and she said, "Take me with you." Said, "I'm sorry, ma'am, I can't." But I didn't think about that lady.

- Think you made the right call. - I don't know. On the Road, by Jack Kerouac. - Best book I've ever read in my life. - There's a moment when he meets a nice girl on a bus, and they have a love affair. It was good. - On the bus, or they?

- No, no, they went to California. Well, yeah, and there was a love affair on the bus, but it wasn't sexual. It was just romantic. - It was in the air. - It was in the air, which there is something in the air on a bus, like a Greyhound, Megabus, that type of situation.

There's something. - Certainly something in the air. - There's a romance. There is, man, when you travel across. 'Cause it's like strangers getting together, and you're feeling each other out. But you're in it, you each have a story, 'cause you wouldn't be taking a bus unless you had a story.

Especially if you're traveling cross-country, there's something. - You ever taken the dollar bus from Philly to New York, the Chinatown bus? - Yeah, I have, yeah. - That's a great bus. The people on that. - It's not a fucking dollar, though. - It was, there's some that are five bucks.

- No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. If you book it way ahead of time. It's like $20. I was like, this is a fucking lie, calling it $1. - I got on the show. - I don't know why I'm swearing. The anger came out, I apologize. - Hey, swearing's okay sometimes.

When I got on, last time I was on the Chinatown bus, there was like a rooster walking down the aisle. - Actual rooster? - Yep, chilling, it was awesome. - Well, there's a nice part of your film with the rooster. I forgot about that. - Yeah, that felt almost fake.

- Yeah. - Did you plant the rooster? - No, the rooster, there's a place in Ybor City, in Tampa, where roosters walk around all the time, and we had a rooster parked there, right by the main drag for, what did I say, we had a rooster parked? We had the RV parked in Ybor City for a long time, and the rooster laid eggs in the undercarriage.

- Nice. - Back to the All Gas No Brakes thing, though. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - So it was lots, it was really fun making it, and then we started All Gas No Brakes in September of 2019. Six months later, the country shuts down, and everything just hits the fan.

I was actually here in Austin when it shut down. I was on 6th Street, I remember the, I don't just hang out on 6th Street all the time, but I was just here. - Yeah, you do, come on, let's be honest. - I do like 6th Street. I like East Austin better, but I like 6th Street too.

So anyways, the NBA shuts down, everything's shutting down, so I went down to the Dirty 6 and I asked this doorman, I was like, "Are you guys ever gonna shut down?" He was like, "Fuck no, bro, the Dirty 6 never closes." And I was like, "All right, we'll see about that.

"Next day, plywood." And then I was like, "All right." I thought my career was over when COVID hit. I was like, "What are we gonna do? "Nothing's happening anymore, there's no more parties "or Talladega races or Burning Man's to go to." So I went back to Seattle in the RV and I just spent four months just depressed, living in the RV, trying to figure out what would happen.

- But all gas, no breaks, went on still. - This was the craziest thing about that period of time is that when COVID hit, I'm sure you remember, everything turned political overnight. In Seattle, if you went to a house party, you can get canceled because people were like, "Oh, you're a super spreader." So if you wanted to socialize, even with a group of four or more, you had to do so with your phones damn near turned off.

And a lot of people were doing hyper-social policing at that time. Beyond that, in the South and in more conservative places, they were doing the opposite. They were trying to prove that they could hang out 500 deep with no mask to make a statement against the establishment. So you had this polarization that led to more division.

And that's when the anti-vax protest started. And I went to Sacramento and the passion was unreal. This is about two months after the COVID lockdowns began. And that was my first political video was at the Sacramento, the California State Capitol in Sacramento, documenting the, they called it the Freedom Rally, but that's typically like anti-vax stuff.

And it was real intensity. And that video was my most successful to date at that time. And so I was like, "Okay, am I a political reporter now? "Am I covering politics? "Like, what's going on?" - What were the interviews that made up that video? What kind of, what style of questions were you asking?

- I don't know if you remember, but I was actually scared when the pandemic started. I thought that this is something that might kill us all based upon what I was consuming. And so I'd ask people, "What do you think about this lockdown?" And I've had people say, "I'm immune compromised.

"If I get exposed to COVID, I have a 95% fatality rate. "But guess what? "I'd rather be free and dead than alive, living in fear." And I was like, "Wow." So it was just stuff along those lines. You had some San Diego surfers there complaining about the beaches being shut down when such awesome waves were coming.

- Yeah, it's interesting how that really brought out the worst in people. - Oh yeah. - I'm not sure why that is. Fear maybe, paranoia. I don't know, it really divided people. Like along the lines, as you mentioned, like triple mask yourself or fight for your country. - Yeah, right, exactly.

Why are those the two options? That is literally what it was. - Yeah, it's wild. - And both groups think they're fighting for the survival of something. And so that's where you really run into problems when you have two polarized groups who both think that their cause is for the common good.

Mutual understanding is impossible at that juncture. And so after three months of almost everybody being locked down, George Floyd happens. And I remember I saw the third precinct burning on my phone in Minneapolis. And everyone says, "Andrew, you have to go cover this." And I'm somebody, like I said, police violence has been close to my heart since I was a kid.

And my first thought is, I can't do that. I'm a comedic reporter. I can't go to Minneapolis and cover this. It'll be the end of my career. And I had a friend named Lacey who I went to college with. And she told me, she was like, "Bro, this is your chance for you to do something serious.

"You can actually create a meaningful piece of reporting "like you always wanted to before quarter confessions. "And you can turn All Gas No Brakes into a news source." So I called Reed, who is the CEO of the company that owned All Gas No Brakes. And I was like, "Look, man, I wanna go to Minneapolis." I was in Orlando at the time.

I was actually at the Sausage Castle. And he said-- - Sorry, the Sausage Castle? - Yeah, the Juggalo Mansion. - Oh, right, that's called the Sausage Castle. - So I'm watching Minneapolis unfold on Lake Street where it was burning. And I got to the Orlando airport and I booked a flight without, I booked it on my own card.

I didn't consult my boss or anything. And I was sitting in my seat on the flight. And he straight up told me, he's like, "If you fuck this up and this destroys the brand, "we're getting a different host. "This, if you mess this up and you turn our show "away from a party show about drinking and drugs "and all that stuff, and you make this a social justice show, "you're done." But I was like, I just turned my phone off.

I got to the Minneapolis airport on the second night of the riots. And when I got to the airport, there was National Guardsmen in the airport. And it was like a call of duty mission, the one in the airport. And on the speaker, they say, "If you're arriving here right now, "you are not permitted to go "anywhere outside of the airport.

"National Guardsmen will escort you "to your Uber or to your car. "They're gonna take a picture of your ID. "They're gonna figure out where you're going. "You are not permitted to go outside tonight." And so Lacey picks me up. There's two people in the back, two of her homegirls wearing like shiesty masks.

And I'm like, "What are we doing? "Where are we going?" And she goes, "We're gonna go film the riot. "We're going to Lake Street." And so we drive down there. Kmart is burning. Target is burning. Everything is on fire. She has the Sony A7. She gives me a microphone and she's like, "Go talk to that guy." And that was a guy with a Molotov cocktail in his hand who had just burned Kmart down.

And so I go, "What should I ask him?" She goes, "What's on your mind?" So I walk up to him and I'm like, "What's on your mind?" He said something like, "Everything that was happening here was supposed to happen. "This is how we feel. "Is it right? "No. "Is this gonna benefit the community?

"No, but this is how we feel." - This is how we feel. That's pretty powerful. That's, through a lot of the documenting that you do, this is how we feel is like screaming through that. - Yeah, and I noticed that aside from a group called Unicorn Riot, there was no one else actually interviewing the protesters.

The local news was on the bridge, 15, not 15, but five blocks away, filming just the scene itself, just the fire. But I saw some crazy things off camera too. I saw, so there was kind of two groups there. There was like the anarchists, more mobilized protesters. And then there was just mostly African-American community members who were just pissed, who had nothing to do with the organized resistance.

And they were all kind of joining forces to riot. And there was this anarchist kid who ran up to White Castle with like a Molotov cocktail. And he was about to throw it at White Castle. And this black dude ran up to him and grabbed his arm. And he's like, "Nah, we fuck with White Castle." And I was like, "What?" And so you see, if you go on Lake Street, every business is burned.

White Castle remains. I also saw all these dudes rip this ATM out of a bank and hit it with sledgehammers. They were a group of friends hitting it with sledgehammers, right? They're hitting it with sledgehammers, boom. All of a sudden, money starts spraying out of the ATM, like I've never seen some shit like this, like pouring out of it.

And then these group of friends who were just united in getting it open start fighting each other for the money as it's flying out of it. And so there was just, it was like a, like "Joker" from the "Batman's Army" type vibes. But I got shot in the ass by the National Guard.

It was no good. - Like a what, a rubber bullet? - Yeah, not shot. - What did that feel like? - Honestly, it hurt. - I'm not sure what I was expecting as an answer to that question. I liked it, it was good. - Yeah, and then after that, I posted the video and it was very well received.

And that was the pivotal point where I realized that everything was gonna change. - I mean, there was still kind of a comedic element to the way you do conversations, to the way you edit. So did you see yourself as a, potentially like a Jon Stewart type of character?

- At first, but you know, I just think human beings are just funny in general. - Yeah, the absurdity of it. - Cool thing about Jon Stewart is like, I generally like to say that anybody who works for corporate media, whether it be Comedy Central or anything owned by Time Warner, Fox, MSNBC, they can't say what they want.

Because in order to climb up in those organizations, you have to appease the narrative of the company that you're working for to rise in the ranks. Jon Stewart, I feel like has so much clout in the media world that I'm pretty sure he can say whatever he wants. Like, I actually don't think that Jon Stewart is controlled by anybody.

I really don't. I think that he can go on the show and talk about whatever. - I do think that certain people have broken the brains of, COVID broke the brains of a lot of really great people I admire. Trump broke the brains of a lot of people I admire.

Like to where Trump derangement syndrome became a thing. Like you can't see the world quite as clearly because of it. And I think Jon Stewart is quite a genius at like stepping away, even though the world needed him in that time, stepping away during that moment of Trump and coming back now, sort of being able to reflect, being sort of the elder statesman.

- My favorite Jon Stewart moment that illustrates that perfectly is whenever he went on the Colbert Show. And he was just joking around with Stephen Colbert, who I think is a full-blown propagandist, about the Wuhan lab leak theory. He was just goofing around and he was like, "It's called the coronavirus lab and they had it before.

"And now what do we have?" And it was like, you could see in Stephen Colbert that he was like gun to his head type shit, where he's like, "Jon, Jon, stop joking about that." And that made me realize like, oh, everything that Jon Stewart did, especially for the 9/11 first responders, he's a true American.

And not in the sense of like the different political parties want you to believe as an American, not a do your part and social distance American, not a wave your Trump flag in the back of your pickup truck American, just a guy who genuinely stands up for what's right.

- There's a degree to which you can be in those positions easily captured by groupthink, though, even when you're not controlled by bosses and money and all that kind of stuff. I think Jon Stewart has been mostly resistant, but it's hard, his position is difficult. - I think he's done the best job, though.

If someone in that, obviously, Democrat-connected corporate media economy, he seems to be the freest talker. - Yeah. So this is when you first became famous. - I'm not even sure what fame means. I mean, I just see myself as me. - When did you get the shades? - Oh, that was on tour.

That was, that's a whole, the shades, that's dark time. But this, I didn't make-- - This is a meme, really? I don't even know if that's a symbol of fame or whatever. - I didn't make journalism to become famous. I made it to give people a platform to share their stories.

It just so happens that people liked it enough to where I became sort of famous. But if I could go back and not be the on-camera guy and just platform the stories, I would. But the reality is, people need a face to attach to stuff they like, and so that's just how it is.

But yeah, I would say right around Minneapolis protests, Portland protests, Proud Boys rally time, when I was really in there, is when I started to be acclaimed as more than just like a ambush meme lord. - Did that have an effect on you, the fame? - Not at that point.

- Not at that point. So you were still able to have a lightness to you? - Well, the country was basically closed. - Yeah. - So it wasn't like there was a street to walk down where people were like, "There's that guy!" So getting famous during COVID made it so when the country reopened, it was as if my life really changed, 'cause I was like, "Oh, all these fans I made during COVID "are seeing me out at the bar.

"This is cool." - Yeah. - At first, fame is the best thing ever, because you can go anywhere in the country, and these spaces that you normally feel a bit insecure in, like a local dive bar, a cool restaurant, a coffee shop, where you'd just be another guy, all of a sudden they're like, "Oh my God, I'm a big fan." They give you free stuff.

You get this sense of acceptance that you never would have gotten before. But there's also-- - The dark side. - Well, it's all love, man. Just to speak to the first part you're saying, it's just so much love that people have and they share it. - It's amazing. I'm sure you know what it's like.

- Yeah, it's beautiful. - The only downside of fame, really, is that you can't really be anonymous again, and you have to seek out more strange environments to be anonymous in. Like right now, I live in the desert, basically, and I wanna live in the middle of nowhere in the Mojave Desert.

Not because I'm scared of people, but 'cause I just wanna be like curious me again. When people don't know and I can ask questions to people that I'm interested in without them going, "I remember, I see you here or I see you there." That's the main thing. That's what I loved about hitchhiking.

- Yeah, just to have anonymity. - Yeah, it's the best. But both are great. Complaining about fame is just the lamest shit. - Yeah, we should go to furry conventions that you covered. Wear an outfit. - I love furries, I should do that. - Yeah, we should go together.

I go all the time. We should go together. - What's your favorite outfit? - Have you ever been to a furry convention? - No, I have not. - I think you might like it more than you think. - Listen, maybe I'm just afraid to face who I really am.

- Yeah, your fursona, the true Lex will come out when you're in a $3,600 lizard suit. - Lizard, is that what they go with? - Well, scalies are the lizard furries. And there's a big division in the community where they think scalies are kind of douchebag. The scalie suits are more expensive.

They're about seven grand, whereas a fur suit is 3,600. So, and they're also taller. So when the scalies pull up to the fur fest, it's like, ah, fuck the reptiles. - Fuck the reptiles, I can get behind that. I'm more like a teddy bear type of guy. - Yeah.

- I think bears, what's, maybe squirrels, I don't know. - Ooh, squirrels are so cool. - Giant squirrels, yeah. - I wanna put a GoPro on one and just see what the hell they do. - You were talking about that conversation with the guy at the head of Doing Things Media.

How did that end up? - Well, I mean, I wanna clear up a few things. Reed, the CEO of Doing Things, I actually think he's a good guy. I think that he was just trying to run a business. He saw what was working for his brand, which is very college-centric, very festival-centric.

And he was right to think that journalism, and especially coverage of sensitive topics like COVID or police brutality would definitely not work on merch. You know, you're not gonna sell a picture of me interviewing someone at a riot like you would me interviewing a furry or a drunk dude in Alabama.

It doesn't work the same. So it was a lot harder to monetize, not just 'cause of YouTube censorship, but also just because of the sensitive nature of the content. So Reed was looking out for himself as a businessman. There was a different partner, well, I'm not gonna say his name, that was more connected in Hollywood.

I think he's responsible for the collapse of the show. - What was the collapse like? What happened? - So right as the country's reopening, I get a DM from Eric Wareheim of Tim and Eric. And I'm covering something called the UFO Mega Conference in Laughlin, Nevada, which is a beautiful river town.

And he DMs me, he says, "Let's make a show." And I'm like, "Oh shit, is this real?" You know, I grew up such a big fan of Nathan For You and The Eric Andre Show, and those are produced by their company, absolutely. So I was like, "Hell yeah, let's do it." Three days later, I get a call that says, "Jonah Hill wants to hop on board." And I can't believe this, you know, I'm still in the RV and I'm in Laughlin, Nevada.

So I'm like, "Jonah Hill, super bad, "are you shitting me right now?" So I was excited. And, oh, and Moneyball, Jonah Hill's a great actor. - Oh, he's great, he's great all around. - Yeah. - Doesn't get the credit he deserves. Well, I mean, he's got the credit by now, but still deserves more.

- So basically, just within a week, I assembled this super team of Tim and Eric. - Super bad team? - Yeah, pretty much, of Tim and Eric. - I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. - No, that was good, and Jonah Hill. And yeah, we just pitched it around. Every single TV network rejected it.

I don't know why. And they mainly did that because I was in this weird situation where I had signed a contract with Doing Things Media that I didn't realize was called a 360 deal. That's what they use in like the rap world. Basically means that I can't do anything outside of them without them getting 100% of the money.

So if I was to go work at Sbarro or Quiznos while I was working for All Gas, No Brakes, they would get my 500 bucks a week from the sandwich spot. I was unable to earn any outside income. I didn't read the fine print 'cause I was 21. And like I told you, 45K a year RV, sounds sick.

And basically, the TV networks were like, why would we buy a show if the digital brand's gonna be running at the same time? 'Cause they didn't wanna stop doing All Gas, No Brakes to make a TV show. They wanted All Gas, No Brakes to continue as a web show while All Gas, No Brakes as a future TV show at Showtime or Hulu or somewhere like that was also concurrently running, which is impossible for one man to do.

And so every TV network said, okay, we're not doing that. We want an exclusive rights contract with this guy. Next, oh yeah, this is crazy to think about 'cause it all happened so fast. So Jonah Hill says, A24 Films wants to do a movie instead of a show. And they're gonna let you keep the digital brand running.

So this meant that I could keep doing my Instagram stuff with doing things media/All Gas, No Brakes while making an A24 movie with Jonah Hill and Tim and Eric. So it was just like, I was excited. It sounded perfect. So they said, okay, what do you wanna make a movie about?

And I told them, okay, here's what's gonna happen in 2020. If Trump wins, there's gonna be riots across the country. The major cities are gonna burn down. If Trump loses, the militias and his loyal supporters are going to try to have a coup in DC. That's what I said.

And I said, so I'm gonna follow the lead up to whoever wins the election and I'm gonna document what happens after. So they said, okay. And so I was to begin filming in late October, during the campaign trail, maybe mid-October up until November, and then in the following months to see what would happen.

This meant that I couldn't film anything for All Gas, No Brakes, the digital show, because I had to dedicate 100% of my time to making this perfect movie. - Yes. - Still, one of the partners at Doing Things Media was demanding that I not only produce the movie, but also more content for the show.

And I told them, there's only so many hours in a day, man, that's gonna be impossible. And I said, if you want it to be possible, I can make it work, but I wanna have half of the monetization from the show, 50% profit split, which I thought is fair.

If you want me to do double work when I was getting almost nothing before, split me in on the profits. They fired us immediately. Me and my two childhood friends who I hired to work on the show with me were all out of a job. As we were filming for the now HBO project, we got our fire notices.

- The guts on that person to, 'cause you should be owning probably close to 100% of it. - I think so too, but they didn't see it that way 'cause they figured we made the initial investment, we discovered him is how they looked at it. So it wasn't Reed, but it was the other partner who wasn't Reed who said, we have tons of, verbatim he said this, I have tons of connections in the comedy world.

We can replace Andrew overnight. I'm not sure why he made that miscalculation. I wish he would have thought about it twice. I wish it didn't have to end like that, but it did. - Why do people do that? Like what's the benefit of acting like that? 'Cause you can part amicably without the drama.

- I think all betrayal in anything like that is motivated by self-interest, whether that be economic success, social stability, whatever it is. They figured that because I was being such a burden in asking for the profit, that they could just release me and find someone equally talented and not split them in so they can make more money.

- Oh, I see. Well, that's a stupid way to think. - People think like that, man. People who are, the word I use is like sidekick syndrome. Like when people are kind of a part of the production, but they're not integral, they start thinking that the front man doesn't matter or something and that the brains of the operation are actually the people on the periphery.

And so they start to believe that they can just shift things around and the audience won't care. Not realizing that I was actually the one who created the show and that the lore of the show is connected to my rise outside of their jurisdiction, if that makes sense. Like the people who watch "All Gas No Brakes" watched "Quarter Confessions" and read the book.

And so, you know. - Well, this happens also not just financially, but just with people that are part of a team but they don't really contribute creatively to the team and they force their opinion or pressure, whether it comes from editors or all that kind of stuff or from sponsors or there's pressure they create when the creator alone should be celebrated and have all the power 'cause they're the ones that are creating the thing.

- In a way, I have sympathy because I can't relate to that 'cause I've always been the front man of my own projects by design. So I'm not sure what it's like to be someone's owner from a content perspective. I don't understand the challenges they face. Maybe there was something that I didn't understand.

I don't know. - True. Well, oftentimes if you own a thing like this, like this company, you do think about brand. - Right. - And then maybe you have a big picture idea what brand means and that can be at tension with the creative project, right? - Yeah. - But ultimately freedom for the creators is the best kind of brand.

- Yeah. I remember all three of us who worked on All Gas, No Brakes got fired at the same time. And we were in the RV that Tim and Eric's company bought for us, which was a bigger RV in the parking lot of a Walmart in South Philly. And the propane had just ran out and it was 15 degrees outside.

So the RV was getting really cold really fast. And I just looked at my phone and it was like, "You're fired." And I was just like, "God help me." But I've had a couple moments like that and God does help me. - And they were always in the parking lot of Walmart, right?

- Well, yeah. Although- - I know that Walmart, by the way. - The one in South Philly is great. - Yeah, it's great. - But technically now you can't park an RV there. - Well, you're not a man who follows the rules. - Well, the thing is those Walmart, Cracker Barrel and Big Five are supposed to technically all let RV campers park overnight.

But if there's like a crime problem in the city where they're at, they can lobby. Individual Walmarts can lobby with the corporate to take that away. So like all the Portland Walmarts, you can't sleep there anymore. Any city with like significant homelessness and like petty property crime, the Walmarts are a no-go.

- Fascinating. So that was a low point. - Yeah. - And, but from there, from the ashes, the Phoenix rose. - Over time, yeah. - Channel 5 was born. - Channel 5 was born in the March of 2021. - After we finished filming for the HBO project. - Oh, really?

So you went all in on the HBO project? - Yeah, I mean, we filmed the HBO project from November, 2020 up until April, 2021, damn near. We were just like, you know, picking up the pieces, going back for individual interviews, stuff like that. - So let's go to that project.

It turned out to be a movie called "This Place Rules." - It was supposed to be called "America Shits Itself." - Oh, yeah. Maybe you can tell the story of the film. You have, what's his name? I don't know if it's down, "Joker Gang" and "Gum Gang," is that correct?

- Yeah, the opening scene. - The opening scene of two characters just talking shit and then getting into a fight. And that, I think it was really brilliant how you presented that as almost like a microcosm of like the division between the extremes of the left and the extremes of the right.

- That's exactly what it was. I'm glad you picked up on it. - Yeah, and then what I really liked is that the joke, again, "Joker Gang" was kind of, a little bit of a spoiler alert, I apologize, but at the end of the film was a kind of a voice of wisdom.

- Yeah, I just realized-- - He seems the most sane. - He was the voice of wisdom. He like cut through it. - Yeah. - I also just realized that a lot of people are gonna stream the movie after watching this podcast, which is cool. - Yeah, where do they stream it?

On HBO Max, right? - Oh, yeah, HBO Max. I never got a chance to promote the movie. - It's such a pain in the ass, man. I wish we could all just pay on it on YouTube or something. - Yeah. - And HBO gets the profits or whatever, but it's such a, I had to subscribe for every single thing.

But yes, if you wanna watch it, I recommend it extremely highly. Sign up to HBO, whatever the hell. - On the positive note, HBO is great to work with. Like, they're the most professional, respectful company I've ever worked with, pretty much. - Yeah, HBO has created some of the greatest TV ever.

- But even in the background, they get shit done. There's no wait time. They have some of the best heavy hitters on their team. For trailers, for posters, all the promotional apparatus they have is super solid. - Did you get good notes from people there? Like how to? - A little bit, man, but you know.

- It's a truly original documentary, meaning I just haven't seen anything like it. It's even like, so there's a humor and a lightness at the right kinds of moments. Like I said, there's like a rooster in your, that's like, okay, that's like a non sequitur thing as part of a storytelling.

It kind of intensifies and reveals the absurdity of the division and how once like January 6th happens, like everybody goes on to the next thing. - Yeah. - It's like, what happened to us? It was almost like a delirium that everybody was participating in some weird, just like, well, like people say, mind virus.

Like all of a sudden we just got captured and people just like yelling at each other, doing the most ridiculous shit. And I mean, really January 6th, the way you present it especially just reveals the circus of it all. - I mean, it really broke the fourth wall, or that's how I would describe it.

Because if you were at January 6th and the lead up, it felt like it was the beginning to a series of similar riots, but it just popped off so much that that was it. You haven't seen anything like it since. It was supposed to be a second one on January 20th.

It was the actual inauguration, that never happened. It was a crazy time to be alive and around. And especially the relationship that I developed with Enrique Tarrio, who's the former chairman of the Proud Boys. He's now facing 23 years in prison. It's like a trip, 'cause I went to his house in Miami, maybe two weeks after January 6th and talking to him, it seemed like he didn't think anything was gonna happen.

He was just like, yeah, man, that was crazy. I'm glad I wasn't there. They're dumb for doing that. He even told me he doesn't think the election was stolen, which is just a mind fuck. It's like, why'd you get everyone so hyped up? It's just weird to think about how so many people's lives are drastically altered forever because of that just bizarre moment in time that we'll always live on.

- Yeah, what did you, QAnon, as part of that story, what'd you learn about QAnon from that? - Just an all-encompassing worldview. That family that I talked to, I call them the QAnon family, but it's called the Spencer family. You know, they were non-political up until the stop, the steel movement began in September of 2020.

And within four months, their entire life revolved around the mythology and lore of Q. And I've never seen, in my life, a PSYOP just devour people's minds in such an intense way in such a rapid period of time. - And I love how the kids in the movie are also the voices of wisdom.

The Spencer family, it's the kid who goes through the full journey of believing that whatever, Hillary Clinton is a lizard, and just believing all the worst versions of the conspiracy theories, and then kind of waking up was like, what was the point? - Yeah, it was heartbreaking to see his disappointment in his dad for even following QAnon so militantly.

'Cause he was like, I felt like they let my dad down. I felt like they let our family down. Because January 6th was supposed to be the day, according to QAnon, that the storm happens, and that the military is supposed to mobilize and arrest the members of the deep state, Clinton, Soros, all that.

Trump was supposed to go into a helicopter, you know what I mean? And take control of the country back from the swamp. And it didn't happen. In fact, the next day, he was almost denouncing it. Now he doesn't, but then he did. And it was really, I think it hurt people's pride a lot.

My friend Forgiato Blow, he's a Trump rapper, he describes it that way. He says a lot of people's pride got hurt by January 6th. - Trump rapper. - Oh yeah, dude. Honestly, there's some pretty dope Trump rap out there. I'm serious. - Magga rap. - Yeah, you would think, oh yeah, Magga, there's no rappers there.

But there's rappers, and they do a pretty good job. - They're good? - Delivering the messaging they want to deliver, yeah. I mean, they think of stuff, and I'm like, that's clever. - Oh, they have some political depth to 'em. - Yeah. - Wow. I mean, is there something more you could say about how QAnon works?

Like, who's behind it? What's your sense of who's behind the whole thing? - You know, I don't want this to sound rude or anything. I just don't care about QAnon. You know what I mean? I've put so much thought into it, and I just can't seem to care about it.

- Was it almost a disappointment? To me, it was like a thing that just captured a very large number of people's minds, and then it just kind of faded. - I guess that's why. It just seems like it's gone. And the ideas of QAnon have just bled into mainstream, standard, conservative thinking.

- But there has to be a kind of retrospective. That's a problem I have with COVID. You know, a lot of stuff happened. Everybody freaked out. There's a lot of big drama around it, and now everyone's like, oh, okay, forgot. - Yeah. - Just like, wait, what are the lessons learned?

Has anyone learned any lessons? - Yeah. - Like, what? - Exactly. What I'm saying is I don't want QAnon adherents to see this and think I don't care about them. - Yeah. - But as far as who is behind it, the damage is done. - Yeah, but what are the mechanisms that made it work?

I mean, that's a really-- - What do you think? Have you kind of thought about that? - I kind of think that these viral ideas can be driven by, and your film kind of shows this, by just a handful of people. And they're not malevolent. They just want to clout.

- Yeah. - And there's something sexy. There's something really sticky about conspiracy theories. Like, especially extreme ones. You just kind of like, some of them can have this momentum that capture the minds of a lot of people, and you just go with it. - Yeah. - And like, when I hear some conspiracy theories, like, there's something, like a small part of me that kind of like, yeah.

Like, excited. - It's possible, you know, that QAnon is a psyop to distract people away from actually uncovering what the deep state is, and who is truly running things behind the scenes. Because the deep state is just the 1%. It's that you get people so close to any type of class consciousness, and then you totally divert everything into like, lizard humans who live on the moon, and that Hillary Clinton is eating babies on camera.

And QAnon did just that. They want to convince you that, one, there's no conservative deep state, which is even more hilarious. That Trump isn't connected to a huge, rich corporate apparatus of propagandists. And two, that the democratic establishment is the only deep state. And that some middle-of-the-road conservatives, that there's no grifters or manipulators outside of that three-headed snake.

You know? - There's grifters everywhere. - Everywhere. Everyone wants to make money, dude. This is the world that we're in. It's in collapse. Everybody wants to make money, and engagement is the rule of law. So anything, that's why these news organizations follow retention incentives. They want to make money by selling ads, so they try to create fear and constant division to enrich the corporate media establishment.

And you have people who are almost realizing, hey, it seems like Fox and CNN might be owned by the same people, and are tactically using these machines to keep us divided perfectly 50/50 to ensure that the power structure never gets disrupted. And then you get these people, you know who's gonna save us?

Donald Trump. That's the guy? How is that the guy? It's not the guy. I don't have TDS. I'm not an orange man basher who thinks about the guy all the time, but I don't think he's the guy. - You were shirtless, lifting weights while whiskey or some alcohol was poured into your mouth by Alex Jones in this movie, and then you did the same to him.

- That's true. - This feels like an interrogation. So Alex was a part of this film. He was throughout the narrative, and you had a great interview with him. What did you learn about interacting with Alex Jones from making this film? - For one, is that he's the exact same off-camera as he is on-camera.

It's not an act. He told me that all real Americans die before 58. He mentioned Sean Connery and a few others. - How old is he? - Getting up there. I think early 50s. I just found it fascinating how nice his studio is. The guy's got an MSNBC-level setup.

I actually had a great time with him. It's bizarre because having him in that movie created so many problems for me. And when I interviewed him, I didn't necessarily portray him in the best light. We joked around a bit, but it wasn't an Alex Jones hit piece necessarily. But I like to think that I was a bit critical of him in the film, especially the ways that he antagonized his supporters to storm the Capitol or to follow that trajectory.

He told me when I met with him, he was like, "I know you think that having me in this movie "is a good idea, but you're gonna have "some serious backlash because of that." At the time, I was like, "Man, it's fine. "It's all good. "We're just hanging out, drinking whiskey, "doing bench presses, drinking Jameson.

"It's all good." First of all, I had to campaign to get him in the film because the studios were like, there was a bizarre time around, I think it was 2018, where deplatforming was the big thing that people were encouraging. It said, "Giving a platform to problematic ideologies "will in turn expand their reach.

"And so even extending your platform "to someone who's problematic is helping them." AKA destroying humanity, whatever it was. So that was the whole thing. And when I did this media training that was mandated by HBO, it was all training and how to defend from that exact question. They said, "When we put you on NPR, "and we put you on CNN, they're gonna ask you "about platforming problematic ideologies.

"And you're gonna have to say stuff like, "sunlight is the best disinfectant. "I believe that extremism only goes away "when you shine a light on it "because leaving it in the dark "will only allow it to grow." They gave me like 15 pointers. I didn't use any of those pointers because I'm not the kind of person who wants to be media trained.

I like to speak freely. But in the promotional run for the film, when I went on CNN, this was a crazy experience. So I went on CNN, and thankfully my friend was with me. And so I'm on CNN and-- - By the way, your friend is chilling in sunglasses laying in the couch right now.

- That's Larry Su. - It's like the, it's a mix of like the dude from "The Big Lebowski" and the Brad Pitt role in "True Romance." - Yeah. - You know that reference? - No, but I mean, I'm sure it describes Larry Su. He kinda looks like Brad Pitt.

- Jack Kerouac. Yeah, it's, yeah. - So HBO had a press tour set up for me. And the main ones were CNN and NPR. And so they said, "You're gonna go on CNN "on the Don Lemon morning show. "And he's gonna ask you about your life, "what led up to the movie, what we can expect." So I get in the studio.

It's about seven o'clock in the morning in New York at a show the night before at Times Square. So I'm like groggy-eyed, whatever, they put the lav on me. Boom, I'm live on CNN, Sunday morning. And he goes, "How would you describe Enrique Atario's "mental state in the lead up to the Capitol insurrection?" And I'm looking around, I'm like, is this guy serious?

Like am I sandwiched in the January 6th hit piece right now? I thought it was about me. And so I told him, it's not about Enrique Atario, it's about how companies like Fox, MSNBC, and even your station, CNN, use the 24-hour news cycle to enrage people, to generate ad revenue, and pit Americans against each other during times like that.

And he said, "There's nothing fake about CNN." I said, "I didn't say you were fake news. "I'm not saying you're lying, but you're directly "antagonizing and stirring people up "against half the country because you need money "to support a dying platform." - You said that. - Pretty much. - Nice.

Great. - My mom was watching it, she was texting me, she's like, "What are you doing?" And I was like, "I don't know." And so he goes, "Why'd you extend the platform "to Alex Jones?" And I go, "I don't know, I just wanted to drink "some Jameson and lift some weights with him." You know, I'm just, at this point, I don't support that kind of media, I don't support CNN.

So I just, I didn't give them much information about Alex. But it was very awkward, they'd never posted the segment online. When I got off of that interview, I had a handler that A24 assigned to me. So I had someone with me, and you could tell she was flustered, like she was furious about what I just did.

And so she goes, "I just got an email "from Time Warner C-Suite." And I go, "What's Time Warner C-Suite?" She says, "I don't know if you know this, "but the same people who own CNN own HBO, "and it's Time Warner." And so they canceled my press tour. So my press tour was finished.

All the late night shows that I was supposed to go on, I was supposed to go on the late night shows. And that was off the table, 'cause they were worried that I was a loose cannon, I think. And then the only remaining appearance I had left was NPR in Boston.

And that was supposed to be a premiere. So it wasn't supposed to be an interrogation, it wasn't supposed to be anything like that. Supposed to be a premiere in front of a live audience where they watched a film, and I show up after for a Q&A. So I'm like, "All right, whatever, it's kind of weird, "they only have this one press opportunity left." I kind of felt bad that I ruined the entire press tour by confronting Don Lemon.

But at this point, I wanted to just do this final one, especially 'cause it was a viewing. And I was like, "Cool." I sat in the audience, I watched people laugh to the film, it was awesome. So I go backstage and there's an NPR journalist waiting for me. And nothing against people who wear masks, but she had two N95s on.

And two N95s is over the line. So I go, "Hey, great to meet you." She doesn't shake my hand. And I go, "Why not?" She goes, "You've been around some people "who I don't want their germs." - Yeah, cool. - And I'm like, "Okay, okay, this is weird. "I thought this is a sort of like fun premiere for my movie." We sit down.

The first thing she asks me is, "How do you think the Sandy Hook families "would feel about you platforming "one of the most despicable Americans in history, "Alex Jones, in front of a live audience?" NPR never published this. The only recordings of it are by a fan named Rob in Boston who put it on YouTube, it's vertical phone footage.

And I literally am like, "Well, the Sandy Hook family's lawyer, Mark Bankston, "who represented them in court in Connecticut, "told me specifically that Leonard Posner, "the father of Noah Posner, who died at Sandy Hook, "was a huge fan of the film." And so I said that to her. And that kind of just like silenced that conversation.

But the rest of the whole conversation was just about exploitation and why are you platforming mentally ill people and giving a platform to conspiracies like QAnon? Don't you feel like you're a part of their spread? Some would call you a misinformation reporter. All this crazy stuff. And yeah, next day hit the fan.

- Fuck all those people. That film, just in case you don't get a chance to see it and you should, you're critical of Alex Jones in the most artful way. Like it was the correct way to be critical. It showed him to be more interested in the grift of it.

And you didn't do it in like a pointing fingers and like saying in the kind of NPR way that you just mentioned. It's more like a human way. Like this is tragedies happen all over the world and there's grifters that roll in and then take advantage of it in interesting ways.

And then human beings get swept up on either side of it. And it's revealing the humor, the absurdity of it all. And it was done masterfully. It was done, like for people who criticize you for platforming Alex Jones or whatever, the film from a political perspective is probably leans very much left, like heavily left.

But does it without that exhausting energy of like judging, just this kind of, yeah, two masks kind of judging. - Yeah, and it was just, when all that was happening, when I was under fire from the mainstream press for platforming Alex Jones, I thought back to what he said to me.

And doesn't mean I agree with everything he says, but he told me you're gonna be in trouble with these people if you put me in your video. And it wasn't too bad of trouble, but definitely I do think sometimes what the film would have been like without him. And I think that it was worth it because his scene is so funny to me and it brings me back to a different time in my life.

And I'm happy that that scene's out there. - I think it was really well done. - Thanks, man. - The layering of it all, the entertainment, plus sort of not considering from his perspective, the consequences of like rallying people up in this way, that it's not just, I mean, you really highlight this in the interview.

He keeps saying it's info wars, but then there's always kind of a sense that info wars can turn to actual like civil war. But maybe not, maybe it's all just a circus, like we play for each other. - If you look at the speech he did on January 5th, he said, "Tomorrow, millions of patriotic Americans "will take our country back." So he eggs people on and then when it gets hot, he steps away.

- Yeah, but like you said, the thing he told you, he turned out to be right. - Oh yeah. - And the frogs are becoming gay. - They've always been gay. - Well-- - Saying frogs are straight is even crazier. - I've read stories where you kiss one and it becomes a prince.

- Yeah, that shit's true. - A hundred percent. You think Alex believes what he says in terms of everything he says on info wars? Like how much of it is real? - He's right about like big tech censorship. I mean, I think if he's right about anything, it would probably be the heads of big tech colluding together across company lines to de-platform certain people.

He's right about that. I think most of the things that he says follow the question everything narrative and then everything is kind of like a conspiracy or like a plot or a false flag. I think that he's built up a following for so long that wants him to do that, you know?

So I think he'll question things that he probably thinks are relatively straightforward because that's the shtick of the show. I mean, the info war is fighting misinformation and people want to see him be that guy. So to a certain extent, if you're a creator who supports your family, you do follow economic incentives and people want you to be the character and so you're gonna naturally gravitate toward being it.

- Do you feel that pressure yourself? - I did years ago, not anymore. I feel like now I can speak freely and really say what I wanna say in my new life. But when I was younger, yeah, I feel like I had to be this sort of awkward, sort of amicable, aloof guy who just didn't think anything about anything and just was here to listen.

But now I feel more confident adding some narrative and voiceover and things like that. - So for some people, especially who publish on YouTube, the YouTube algorithm, they can become a slave to the YouTube algorithm. - Yeah, I mean, for sure. 'Cause, and I definitely feel that sometimes. I know what works for me, but I like to think that my audience appreciates when I try new things.

So I'm not totally enslaved to it, I mean. - Yeah, I try not to pay attention to views or any of that. - Well, you get some high views, so I'll report that for you. - So I wrote a Chrome extension that hides all the views on anything I create.

- So you took it to that level. - Yeah, just 'cause it's a drug, man. And I'm also a number guy, meaning you give me, if I do 30 push-ups today, tomorrow I'm gonna try to do 35, just enjoying the number go up. That's why I like video games.

RPGs, like where you're improving your skill tree, you're getting an extra point. And there's some aspect of YouTube and other platforms, anything, any other platform, you're like, "Ooh, I got more today than I got yesterday." That's really, really dangerous to me because it can influence how much I enjoy a thing.

If nobody gives a shit about it based on the numbers, you're like, "Oh, maybe that wasn't such a great experience. "I thought it was a great experience, but maybe it wasn't." - Yeah, honestly, I do actually feel that way sometimes. I'll put out something that I care about a lot, but if it doesn't get as many views, I'm like, "All right, it must have not been as good "as my high-review videos," or whatever.

- Yeah, that's just not true, though. - Yeah. - And it might mean, on YouTube, that your thumbnail sucks or something like this, or whatever, however the algorithm works, but that's the thing I'm battling against to make sure I ignore all of that. It's actually something Joe Rogan has been extremely good at.

He gives zero shits. - Yeah, I think it's easier to do when you're really successful. - Well, he was doing that when he wasn't successful. - Really? - But anything. He just follows the stuff he enjoys doing and legitimately enjoys it. He happens to be really good at it, but he gets good because he's doing the things he really enjoys and full-on passionate about, and that's why he'll have ridiculous guests and just shit he enjoys doing.

- Yeah, it's pretty cool. Maybe I'll one day try to do that. For now, I'm too attached to the gratification of getting a million views in a day and stuff like that. I'm not gonna lie to you and say that I've beat that or something. - Well, it's a worthy enemy to be fighting, 'cause it's a drug, and it's one that should be resisted for a creator, 'cause I feel like it can do negative stuff to your mind as a creator.

- Oh, yeah, for sure. Anybody that controls you is not good. A lot of people are controlled by their audience. They don't have to have a puppet master on a corporate level. Audience incentive is a different type of, I don't wanna say slavery, but-- - Yeah, it is, and that's why variety's good, and you're doing that, always expanding.

Well, let me just zoom out on this. You made a film. - Yeah. - That's pretty cool. - Yeah, it was a great experience, man. I mean, it was awesome working with Tim and Eric, awesome working with Jonah Hill. I feel the same about HBO and A24. Everybody that I worked on the film with, I have a lot of love for, and I appreciate the experience.

It's my first movie. It's a big deal. - It was a good one. - In my head, it's like I finally got to make the transition from YouTuber to filmmaker, and that was always this psychic barrier that I felt like I had to jump over. - There's a, I mean, just the way it's shot, the humor that goes throughout it, just the narration that you're doing in a shitty director's chair, that's really well done.

Whose idea was that? - It was actually Tim and Eric's idea. There was a really great editor named Clay who works for Absolutely, and they did all the editing pretty much in the office, and so it was Clay's idea to add a retrospective director's chair narrative arc to the whole film.

- Yeah, just starting with the absurd fight and then going, oh, that's a good way to start a movie. Just really, really well done. - Thanks, man. - What about Jonah Hill? - Like-- - Great guy. - He believed in this. - He did. - So was that, what's that like?

What do you think is behind him believing in such a wild project? - I think that Jonah Hill has a good eye for what's cool amongst the younger folks. Like, he's into skateboarding stuff. That's why he did that film Mid-90s, and I think he probably saw a similar thing in what was going on with All Gas, No Brakes, and was like, shit, this could be big.

And so not only did he actually fund the film, he also gave me his agent. And I forgot to mention that it was Jonah Hill's lawyers that he gave me for free that got me out of my contract eventually with Doing Things Media, or freed me up to speak about what happened.

- So he was also a part of you kinda gaining your freedom. - Yeah, in a weird way. Like, even though him and I don't talk that much, just 'cause he's doing his own thing, Jonah Hill is like a huge factor in my current success and just like everything that I've been able to accomplish.

- Just on your own politics, is it fair to say that your politics leans left? - I'm not really sure sometimes, you know? I like to think that I am socially left. Like, I think people should be able to dress and act however they want. I don't believe in restricting people's social freedoms.

Economics-wise, it doesn't seem like leftist economic policy works very well on a city funding level. Like, if you see what's going on in California, it seems like the city leadership is mishandling the funds in California too. So I don't know about that, but I don't know. I don't really see myself as left or right.

I just never have. - Well, if you just like objectively zoom out and don't have an insane standard of the extremes, it feels like a lot of your work leans left. - I tend to lean toward like the empathetic perspective, which I do think is more on the left and the right.

But I also, I'm not into like super like PC stuff. You know, I don't believe in limiting free speech either. I don't believe that, I believe in a free internet, which I think is more embraced now by conservatives. - But it does seem that, maybe you can correct me, but I get the sense sometimes that the left attack their own very intensely.

- It does happen. - But every community has terms of exile. I mean, look, imagine, think about what happens in the conservative realm. You know, like when Black Rifle Coffee Company like denounced Kyle Rittenhouse, they lost a lot of money too. Like it's not, the right attacks its own too.

I mean, think about Bud Light and stuff. Like they-- - Terms of exile, I like this. - I mean, you know, like every community has terms of exile. You just gotta know who you're engaging with and you gotta make that decision carefully. - It'd be nice if there's an actual writeup of the things you're not allowed to say for each thing.

- Yeah. - I wonder whose list would be longer. It just does feel like the left's list is a little longer. - If you're a conservative and you have a t-shirt with like a demon on it, like say goodbye. You know what I mean? You know, there's certain stuff that they freak the hell out about.

- And conservatives are really concerned about pedophiles. - Yeah, I mean, I don't like pedophiles either, but I don't think about it all the time. - Which one of the things you do in the film is kind of confront one of the QAnon folks where his concern is that everybody's a pedophile and you show it to him.

- Well, he calls himself a pedophile hunter and makes videos exposing Democratic elite pedophile cabals and is himself a convicted child molester. There's an old thing that people say that every accusation is a confession to a certain extent. So like, it's bizarre that some people's whole life after a big mistake will revolve around trying to seem like the good guy instead of taking accountability for themselves.

- Yeah. - It's a common thing you see all the time, like neighborhood watch people. You know what I mean? Like, what made you that? You know, like, what did you do, bro, that you feel like you have to get karmic retribution by doing the reverse? I don't get it.

- Yeah. Do you think to the degree you have bias that affects your journalism? - No, but I mean, with the migrant situation, I don't know. - What was that covering that like? - I just got a lot of hate from conservatives for like letting the migrants tell their stories about their journey and stuff.

- Well, what did you learn from just going to the border? - I mean, just the sheer desperation that the citizens of the world are in. I mean, there's people who truly believe that America is the only hope for their success and to feed their family. And I think a lot of them are kind of getting catfished.

- Meaning America has its problems too? - It has severe problems. There's extreme poverty here. - But in America, like if you just compare it to other nations, the level of corruption is much lower to where the opportunity for a person to succeed, to rise is higher. - I wish success on everybody who comes here.

But my thing is the expectation that they have and the sort of American dream propaganda they've been installed with isn't necessarily a reflection of contemporary American reality. So I'm talking to people who speak no English and say, "I'm here for a better life." I go, "Where are you gonna go?" They say, "I have no idea." And I'm like, "Man, that's tough." And you almost think how bad are things elsewhere for someone to abandon their family, make this journey across multiple continents and end up here with no plan.

And it just made me realize how sheltered I am to a certain extent as an American. And walking back what I said a little bit, 'cause I was just trying to make a point, but what I think of as bad poverty, like let's say West Baltimore or Ninth Ward, New Orleans, is nothing compared to what's going on in almost half of the world, if not more.

And so it just made me zoom out a little bit. Sometimes you forget about third world poverty when you live here for so long. And you get programmed to believe the worst things that are out there is like Kensington, Philadelphia, or Tenderloin, San Francisco. But those are just microcosms of more or less functioning cities.

Despite what they might lead you to believe, Philadelphia is a great place. So is San Francisco. But there's places where everywhere is really run down. - Yeah, and like people focus on, in major cities in the United States, like homelessness, somehow that's a sign of a fallen empire, but that's a problem.

There's definitely, it reveals some mismanagement of cities and government. - I mean, homelessness in Seattle and San Francisco is for sure a result of the housing crisis, especially post COVID and all the gentrification that preceded it. And it's unfortunate now that the conservative media is saying like, look at Biden's America, as if Biden created homeless people.

And it's just disappointing because once again, you're seeing the media use real issues that should concern every US citizen and causing people to point fingers at a different political party as responsible for the suffering of others. - Do you think January 6th can happen again? - No, I don't think so.

- So all the lessons were learned? - Yeah, for sure. I mean, people got really screwed over. I mean. - Don't you have a sense that there's a greater and greater growing questioning of the electoral process and all this kind of stuff? - I think that Americans overall are very comfortable with our standard of living.

I think people like going to Sonic and waiting in their car and getting milkshakes. And people like going to the AMC theaters and they like going ice skating and mini golfing and going to the bar after work. I don't think that anyone wants a collapse of the basic structure of the country.

Even the most politically divided don't want to see 7/11 go away. We are so comfortable. If you look at other countries, even Europe, look at how they protest. And look at the Arab Spring. Those guys were talking like January Sixers and they actually took control of the government. You know, and so think about even if the MAGA crowd took over the Capitol building, it's just a building.

I don't know, I just think that Americans, when they talk about Civil War stuff, it's just so, we're so far from that. Even if the rhetoric is as divided as it was in 2020, it won't happen again. - For it to really happen, it has to be, there has to be a level of desperation.

- There has to be a level of economic desperation that's causing people to starve or some basic resource going away, water, something like that. - Who do you think wins, Trump or Biden? - In the Civil War? Well, you know, with the guns. - In a game of Mario Kart.

In the election in 2024. - Oh man, I have no idea, man. I don't even know if I'm gonna vote. - It's weird that this is our choice. - I know, I wish people were more focused on like city politics. Like I'd rather vote like yes or no for a bike lane in my neighborhood than I would for the president.

- So local politics to you is where it is. - I think the future-- - And you feel it, yeah. - Oh, I mean, you can, your vote actually matters. Let's say you have a community of 500 people and you live in Henderson, Nevada. You can influence whether or not there's a bike lane or if this is gonna be a playground or an AM/PM.

You get to choose. And you can influence 100 people to choose and boom, this is your community. You can't influence the result of an election. - Still, those at the presidential level, it sets the tone of the country. And so Trump running again and Biden running again, it just feels like there's going to be a lot of questioning of election results.

- I just can't believe those are our guys. - Yeah. - I mean, what is, that's really our guys. Like that's where we're at. All these smart people we have in this country, they have a great history. - We got Joker Gang versus Gum Gang. Where'd you find Joker Gang?

- Well-- - Is he a legit juggler or is he just-- - No, no, no, no. Joker Gang is like a Miami Cuban guy. - Oh. - Is Joker 305, Rawest Chico alive? So me and, I had been following him for a long time on Instagram 'cause he used to post videos of himself popping Percocets and smoking blunts on the toilet freestyling.

And so I had followed him for a while. And then I finally got this platform and I said, "Oh my God, I bet you now that we have a million followers, "Joker Gang will sit down with us." And lo and behold, the clout did its thing and there I was, face to face with the man.

- There was a controversy a year ago where a woman came forward and said that you were pushy with her. You respected the no, you got the consent, but you were pushy about it. Looking back, can you tell the story of that? What are the lessons you learned from it?

- Yeah, I mean, I've yet to speak on this for a lot of reasons. Mostly 'cause it was a hard time and it's a sensitive subject. And I've wanted to prioritize the reporting. But I think that now I'm ready and able to do so. Everything sort of started on December 30th, 2022.

And that was the release date of the HBO project. Like I told you, we didn't know when the movie was gonna come out. We weren't told that it was gonna come out on that date until early November. And so it was like, "Oh my God, here we go. "We got a movie coming out." HBO had, I didn't even know it was gonna be them.

So every day for those 50 days to where I received word and to the movie announcement or to the movie release was like, I was like a kid waiting for Christmas morning. You know what I mean? It was like every day I just, I saw the movie release date as the first day of like the rest of my life.

And so I remember the week of the movie release, it was like every day I was like, "Oh my God, six days, five days, four days." And when it became two days, like I was so excited. And so like, honestly, anxiety riddled because it was such a massive platform that I went out to the desert by myself out in the Mojave, got a hotel and just kind of sat there.

And then movie release day comes. It was supposed to come out at 8 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. I remember it was like 12 hours left, 10 hours left. And then eight minutes before the movie at 7.52, or I guess it was sent at 10.52 East Coast time, I got a text message requesting a portion of my fat HBO check to contribute toward apparently years of therapy bills that this person had accrued after she says that she felt that I pressured her into giving consent years prior.

And I was confused, not only because of the timing, but because this is someone that I hadn't seen in years or spoken to in years. And I presume that I was on good terms with. So I didn't respond to the text message. And then when I didn't respond about seven days later, this person made some TikTok videos and with the help of some friends launched an online campaign that got picked up by the press pretty quickly.

- So what did you feel like when you got that text? - Well, it's tough because on one hand, I'm not opposed to restitution being part of a private accountability process for real abuse. You know, like if you've hurt someone to an extent that it took them out of work or something, like I think they're entitled to some money.

But unfortunately, as I later learned, this person had legal counsel and this was an attempt to basically create evidence by extracting a confession from me to use as precedent for a civil lawsuit to the tune of a couple million dollars. - It's dark. - Yeah. - How did you meet this person?

- Well, I met them when I was 22. And like I told you, I was living in an RV, making the show called "All Gas, No Brakes." And I would travel between cities like every other day and so I would basically pick a new city and I got in this like pretty bad habit of what I would say is essentially treating Instagram like a dating app.

You know, I would go to a new place, I'd post my location, I'd surf the DMs and I would look for like fans to meet up with. It wasn't always girls, it was just people to party with 'cause I was also partying every night, but a lot of times ended up being girls and stuff.

And so that's kind of how this situation was. I didn't have sex with this person. Had a consensual encounter that they reached out to me about two weeks after saying, "Hey, I don't want you to take this the wrong way." But looking back, I felt a lot more pressure to agree than I realized in the moment.

I don't think this is any fault of yours. I just think that you came on a bit too strong and I didn't want to let you down, so I gave in. And it was that language made me feel horrible, mainly because if this person had told me, "Hey, I don't wanna hook up," I would have said, "Yeah, of course not.

"I don't wanna hook up with someone "who doesn't wanna hook up with me." And I think that as fame increased during that time, I think I was just kind of oblivious to how people were seeing me, especially those who had a digital relationship with me prior to me knowing them.

And I don't think that I handled that the right way. - Well, thank you for taking accountability. But just to clarify, you got consent. - Yeah, I was the initiatory party in an interaction with a fan who felt it. She had to say yes because of, I'm not sure why.

I don't know why, but like I said, this person also disclosed to me they had a history of childhood trauma and were actively being treated for PTSD and that they felt things moved too fast for them, given their situation. And so I told her, I said, "Hey, if you wanna reach out, "if you wanna talk on the phone, I'm always here for you.

"I'm sorry to hear that. "Let me know if we can talk further." About six months after that, I was at Sturgis Bike Week. And I remember this day, this was the hardest day. I was just chilling and I got a text from my friend and it said, "Hey man, you're getting canceled right now." And I was like, "What do you mean?

"Like, did someone find an old tweet or something? "What are you talking about?" And I opened my phone and it was this Instagram story of me. It was like the ugliest picture of me you can find. It was like my face open that was like screenshotted. And it said, I remember this specifically 'cause I just couldn't believe it.

It said, "The ugly loser who hosts All Gas, No Brakes "is a piece of shit. "He knowingly abused my friend and got away with it. "If you follow him, I'm gonna message you and ask you why." So this person who I don't know, I didn't even know who the accusation was coming from.

They text, they emailed every production company that I was working with, DM'd hundreds, if not thousands of people. Like just saying that like I was this piece of shit. And I didn't even know who this person was. So I was frantically calling and texting like every person that I'd seen intimately for the past year and being like, "Hey, are we on good terms?

"Is everything okay?" And then I figured out that the person was coming from Florida and I knew who it was. And so thankfully I reached out to the original person who I had the communication with. And I said, "Hey, like, I think this might've been you. "This might've been your friend who posted this.

"Are we good? "Like, I'm sorry." I apologized again. I was like, "Listen, I feel bad that you feel this way. "I wanna do anything that I can to help you. "Again, I apologize." And she said, "Apology accepted. "I'm sorry. "My friend asked if she could post on my behalf.

"And I'm sorry, I was going through a lot mentally "and I saw your fame increasing. "And so I agreed to let her speak on my behalf." And we made amends in private. I said, "Okay, I'm here for you, let me know." And she said, "Apologies enough. "Thank you for taking the time to speak with me." And that was two years prior to this text message being sent to my phone eight minutes before the movie.

So naturally, I wanted to go on my platforms and talk about what was happening. But I also didn't wanna mess up the rollout of the movie. And so the PR firm was like, "We got this, we'll handle this for you." And that was, I guess, by way of a TMZ thing that said, "Andrew Callahan is devastated." I'm not sure why they thought that that was gonna make people be in my favor, but it was just a picture of me on NBC that said, "Andrew Callahan devastated by allegations." That was their plan, I guess, to show that I was remorseful or something.

- How much of this do you think lawyers kinda pushing this when money and fame are involved? - Well, I wish I could say the lawyer, but I just can't, that was involved in this. But I will tell you that I try to lean away from resentment and toward accountability completely.

What was my role in the situation? How can I never make someone feel like that again? What can I do? What changes can I make to make sure that, one, I never treat someone this way, and two, to never be in that position again? - Well, again, thank you for taking accountability.

- And the main reason I talk about that is because it wasn't just that person. There was multiple people who made videos reporting similar behavior. And so it's obvious that that was a pattern of behavior of mine. And so I made the apology video to announce that I was taking some time away because I just needed time away.

I mean, my entire support system collapsed. My friends at the time disappeared. I was getting obituaries texted to my phone that were like, "Hey, it's been nice knowing you. "It was great to see you grow. "Good luck," like I was dead. And yeah, it got dropped from my agency.

No one gave me tough love. No one called me to ask me if I was all right. It was just only, everyone disappeared in a week. - Again, thank you for taking accountability, but I just hate how many cowards there are out there. Like, when people hit low points, it's when you should help, when you should stand with them if you know their character.

- Yeah, and it was hard to separate the initial situation that I knew was more or less a setup and the possibly genuine other accounts. And so it was like, all right, you know what? At this point in my life, I wanna be on the right side of history.

I don't wanna be the anti-cancel culture mouthpiece. I don't have the mental strength to fight this, especially because I was envisioning the HBO drop to be this like, the world opens up to me moment, and it was just the reverse. But it wasn't so much the media reporting on it that hurt me, it was just little stuff, like a childhood friend that you love seeing they unfollowed you on Instagram, or just like seeing someone on the street that you grew up with and like waving at them and they don't do anything back.

And you're just like, oh my God, man, like, this is my new life. But what are you supposed to do? Thankfully, I like, somehow two weeks after, I met an amazing partner who I'm still with to this day. And I was able to conquer my two biggest fears, which is monogamy and dogs.

I was terrified of dogs and terrified of having a girlfriend. Now I have a girlfriend who I love and two dogs. So-- - What was the lowest point? - Well, right after this happened, I entered like a recovery programs. Started with AA, but then I found a more specialized program that dealt with the issues that I was dealing with.

Say the hardest point was, logically deducing that the lives of my loved ones would be better off if I was gone, you know what I mean? And thinking that my mom and my friends, that their life would be better if I took myself out of the picture. And for one, I just figured, you know, their friend's canceled.

You know, her son is a disgrace. You know, my family's gonna think they raised me wrong. And my friends, I'm a social pariah now. I'm a burden, I'm better off dead. And the hard part was, you know, I would read stories and books written by parents who lost their kids to suicide.

And they reported feeling a lot of anger after the suicide. So I tried to think of what's the way I can do it to get the least amount of anger on behalf of the people who would grieve. 'Cause the hanging someone will discover you. So I figured that drinking myself to death would be the way to do it.

And I wasn't able to. Yeah, that was just a dark place. You know, I remember hating the people who loved me because I knew they would grieve and that made me mad. That makes sense. Like I was ready to go. I had no will to live. But their grief was like, I didn't wanna cause that 'cause I didn't wanna hurt them.

So I was like, I hated the people who loved me 'cause they were stopping me from taking my own life. You know, and it's weird to think that like when I was going through that, if you walk by me in the street, I'll look like a normal guy. And so now when I walk around and I see people, I think to myself, you have no idea what that person is going through.

It's crazy that so many people are suffering in like complete silence and they don't wear it on them. - Many of the people you talk to are probably that. Many people you've interviewed before all this and after are probably going through some shit. - I also thought if I could write down what I just told you on a piece of paper and I was to do it and then they found the note, they would take it more seriously 'cause they would know that I wasn't lying.

- Yeah. - But then, you know, if you do it, it reduces the lifespan of your parents by 15 years. So I looked at it like I was taking time away from them. - Well, thank you for the most part leaning towards accountability. It's the right path to take.

What advice would you give to young men that look up to you on how they can be good men, especially in regard to women? - If you have any kind of platform, whether it doesn't have to be famous on Instagram, it could be like if you're a pillar of your community in the culinary world or whatever it is, just be hyper aware of that and remember that you are inheriting a power dynamic that can create situations where there might be some pressure that you don't even realize is there, but it's definitely there and you just have to be aware of that.

And two, when meeting new partners, having hookups and stuff like that, just try to have a trauma-informed conversation about their past. Really know the experiences and the backstory of what a new partner has gone through in that world of intimacy, whatever they're comfortable to share, obviously. But I would advise against one-night stands.

I would advise against hooking up with someone that you're meeting for the first time. Have those conversations prior because even though it might sound like a vibe killer, it's not, and if you think that that conversation is a vibe killer, you probably shouldn't be in that situation in the first place, especially now, how hyper-sexualized things are and how common that type of violence is.

You need to be able to have those conversations and stop and say, "Hey, tell me a little bit "about your past. "Are there any triggers that make you uncomfortable? "Let me know how I can be the best partner to you." And I'm sure that college-age people are not having those conversations, but I'm sure that it would go a long way.

- So especially when you're young, college-aged, you don't have enough experience to be able to read a person without having that conversation. 'Cause a lot of times you can see the trauma without explicitly talking about it, but that takes experience and knowledge and seeing the world. When you're young and you really don't know shit, making things a bit more explicit is probably better.

- Yeah, and also, as men, we're trained to believe that it's our duty to be the initiatory party in any type of sexual encounter. Like, oh, man chases woman, you know what I mean? You have to be the one to make the move, and/or she's playing hard to get if she's resistant to your first compliment or something.

I think that that's not always how it has to be, and that extra caution needs to be placed if you're taking the initiatory role in an interaction, especially if someone has a traumatic background. They might agree to do something with you because they're scared, and you might not realize that's what's going on.

But because you don't see yourself as a predatory person, you don't see yourself as someone who would ever consciously make someone uncomfortable or cross a boundary, but people have histories that you might not understand. And for me, as someone who doesn't have much, honestly, like childhood trauma or anything like that, it's been an interesting year for me working in therapy and elsewhere, understanding how that affects the mind.

And also, I understand that hurt people hurt people, and that someone with a traumatic background isn't going to have sympathy for applying that traumatic pain to someone else, even if that person isn't the cause of what put them in that spot. - If we can go back to Channel 5, can you tell the origin story of that?

- Yeah, I mean, Channel 5, during the "All Gas, No Brakes" days, we used to tell people that we were called Channel 5 if we wanted them to stop antagonizing us while we were filming, 'cause every town has a Channel 5. So when people were like, "What's this for?" If they were being super rude and trying to get in the camera and be hella obnoxious, we would just say, "Oh, we're Channel 5." And they would be like, "Oh, my grandma's gonna see that," and they would leave us alone.

So Channel 5 was a diversion tactic during "All Gas, No Brakes." And it just so happened that we were in Miami Beach one time, and this kid came up drinking liquor, trying to yell about whatever they yell about in Miami Beach, like titties or whatever. And we're like, "Bro, this is Channel 5.

"Be careful what you say." And he was like, "For real?" And he just walked off. And I said to my friend at the time, I was like, "That sounded pretty good, right, Channel 5?" And he goes, "That does sound pretty good." He's like, "That's gotta be trademarked, though." No, it's not trademarked.

It's crazy, right? There's a Channel 5 in every city. Channel 5 KTLA, Channel 5 Seattle, Como News. Dude, Channel 5 itself, we own it. 'Cause no one's thought of something that simple, 'cause you'd think you'd have to specify. We own Channel 5.com, Channel 5.news. Dude, we own it. It's awesome.

- So it was the same kind of spirit as the previous thing. What was the first one you did under the Channel 5 flag? - Miami Beach Spring Break. - I think I've seen that. And it's gonna be a callback. I think somebody mentioning eating ass there, too. - That would be the place.

I believe that was-- - There's only about five places in the US where people yell about eating ass all the time. Bourbon Street, South Beach, Miami, Sixth Street in Austin, Broadway in Nashville. And I'm just gonna go ahead and say Times Square. You might not think it, but-- - Times Square, really?

- Yeah, they yell about ass there. - Times Square. - I would say Beale Street in Memphis, but it's not good. - Oh, yeah. - I mean, Beale Street is like, the median age is too high on Beale Street for anyone to yell about ass. - Oh, this is a fascinating portrait of America through that specific lens.

So Miami Beach. And then how would you describe your style of interviewing? Just now that you've collected so many. If you had a style, how would you describe your style? - I guess before, especially it used to be like deadpan. Now I would describe it as more directed, but still relatively affable, agreeable, deadpan interview style.

- Yeah, there's a, like in the face of absurdity. - Yeah. - It was just like there with a microphone. There's a comic aspect to it. And that's intentional. - Yeah, I used to look at the camera like Jim from "The Office" back in the day. I don't do that anymore.

- What about the editing? Like, how do you think about the editing? - I still do most of it, but Susan helps a lot too. It's my associate. Yeah, the editing style. Like I said, we pioneered this editing style that honestly was inspired a bit by like Vic Berger, but we took it to real life.

Crash zooms, kind of chopping up vocals a bit to add comedic timing where it didn't necessarily exist. Like you might add two seconds of awkward silence that are built with room tone, or you might make everything really fast by cutting silence and switching frames. I mean, switching camera angles.

But now we try to be pretty straightforward 'cause we wanna be taken more seriously. - Yeah, sure, what's crash zoom, by the way? - A crash zoom is when it's artificial zoom that you might add in Adobe Premiere where the camera zooms in on someone's face. - Where the resolution is not there.

- The resolution is not there, unless you have like a Blackmagic cinema camera. - Which you don't. - We don't use those. The file size is too big. - That's the only constraint? - Yeah, 100%. - And you also do voiceover storytelling. - I think the first time I really did that was in the San Francisco streets video because there's so much content about San Francisco homelessness, tenderloin shoplifting, but there's not that much context in those videos about the history of San Francisco, the housing crisis, nimbyism, random zoning stuff that sounds boring but has a major role in the current situation on the streets there, as to why the tenderloin is neglected by police and by the city council and the other neighborhoods like Knob Hill and North Beach are so nice.

So I added that purposely to the San Francisco video and then also to the Philadelphia streets video to accentuate the reporting and add some historical analysis. - What's your goal with some of these videos like the Philadelphia streets one? Is it to reveal the full spectrum of humanity or is it also to tell a story that's almost political about the state?

- Number one is always humanization. That's the primary goal, is to take people in circumstances where they're often news items and remind the public that these are people with lives and concerns and dreams just like you. But secondly, we also wanna start introducing more solution oriented journalism. So not just, oh my God, I'm becoming aware of how horrible this is but what can you actually do to help?

And as you could see with the Vegas tunnels video, people are responding pretty positively to it. Like here's how you can maybe help a homeless neighbor, help get them an ID, help them qualify for housing or get a job at the scrapyard. There's always ways to help but so much of the YouTube world is oversaturated by just like endless videos of people suffering and the comments are always like, wow, so horrible but what does that really do for somebody?

- You've interviewed many rappers. - Yes. - Educate me. - There's a lot to it. - Yeah. Can you explain this drill rap situation? What is drill rap? - It's an evolving situation. Drill began in 2010. Some people say it was Chief Keef in Chicago. I think it was King Louie in Chicago but I think all of it was very influenced by Waka Flocka Flame who dropped an album called Flocka Valley in 2010 that was like hyper-violent, adrenaline-boosting, rap music made by people who were actually in the streets.

So in the '90s, like if you had 50 Cent, you had rappers rapping about like whatever gangster shit, selling crack and beating people up but they weren't actually doing it. Drill has a true crime component to where drill fans want to know that the person rapping about catching bodies does in fact kill people.

So drill is, it's pretty horrifying. It sounds great but it started in Chicago. Then it spread to England and now it's bounced back to New York, like the Bronx and Brooklyn specifically and spread from New York to the rest of the country. So now there's probably a drill rapper every 10 square miles.

- So these are, as opposed to pretending to be a gangster and killing people, you get some credibility by actually doing it. - Yes, and the fans are typically not in the communities that are affected by poverty. So they're kind of like superheroes to white kids. - It's dark.

- And not just white kids but just anyone who's not in the hood. It's not necessarily a race thing. There's white drill rappers too. Slim Jesus was a big one. He's out of the picture now but there's white drill rappers. - Slim Jesus. You made a video on O-Block.

- Yeah. - What is O-Block, the place, the culture, the people? - O-Block is a housing project in South Chicago in the Englewood area where Michelle Obama grew up. It's also where Chief Keef was born and raised. I don't know if he was born there but he was raised there.

And he is the forefather of modern drill music as we know it. So these are the projects where drill began. It's also the first place where you had that intersection of drill music and true crime because O-Block has a lot of rappers and then nearby is an area called St.

Lawrence, aka Tookaville, which has a lot of rappers as well. And so these two rival drill gangs basically have a lot of history and it connects to music at large. - So you've interviewed people there. Was there any concern for your safety? - No, I mean, I think that O-Block has calmed down a lot.

For one, it has security so you can't even really get in and out. But two, I think that O-Block's trying to rebrand itself a lot because it could be 'cause Lil Durk's avoiding a RICO charge. Could be for a variety of reasons. I know you don't know exactly what that means but.

- Lil Durk? - Rapper Lil Durk is affiliated with O-Block and a lot of people have been murdered in retribution for killings that Lil Durk may or may not have influenced the ordering of. But anyways. - And Lil Durk documented the killings via rap music probably. - Okay, I know you don't know about drill but Lil Durk was associated with a rapper named King Von and King Von perhaps paid for the assassination of a rapper named FBG Duck who got killed in Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood.

It's possible. The O-Block Six are drill-associated, not rappers but just shooters, and they perhaps operated on King Von's behalf when he killed FBG Duck. King Von was Lil Durk's artist. King Von's now dead. So there's definitely a concern that some of the fed charges will fall on dirt. Not sure if that's true but it's rumors in the hip hop community.

So O-Block right now, and when I filmed the video, is trying to go through a major image rehab. If you go on any Instagram of anyone in O-Block, they've all converted to Islam and so they post pictures of themselves praying in the morning and have captions like, "Put the guns down, let's pray." So I think when I went there, they saw it as a good opportunity to do a positive rebrand.

And so I interviewed a rapper named Boss Top who was there all the way back in 2011 when Chief Keef was coming up. And so he basically ensured my safe protection. But he didn't even need to. They're all very friendly and they know exactly what's up with YouTube stuff.

- I like how 2011 is the old days, like the ancient. - Oh yeah. - The founding fathers. - I was in eighth grade. (laughing) - Oh man, time flies when you're having fun. - It sure does. - Lil Durk. Where's Lil Durk now? - Atlanta. - So you left Chicago, not safe.

- Yeah, I mean, every rapper has to leave their hometown. It's what I did. - It's a journey. (laughing) - Seattle would've taken me out, bro. - How's your, I mean, you do interview a lot of people. I mean, that's like a top comment, but it speaks to the reality of the fact that you always find somebody rapping.

Or you, yeah, you create the space for people to rap. What's that about? - I don't know, man. - But they're usually really good. - You think so? - I appreciate it. - Well, hell yeah, man. I mean, rappers-- - In their own way. - Since I touched a microphone, rappers have gravitated toward me.

I think there's something happening. - You're a rapper whisperer? - I think there's something happening on a deeper cosmic spiritual level that lets the mind of rappers know that they have a safe place in front of our camera crew. - You have an interview with Crip Mac? - I do, free Crip Mac.

(laughing) He's a GO right now. - Oh, he is? - Yeah. - Is that a hashtag? - Yeah, for sure. - What, that's an intense interview. People should go watch it. People should go watch all your interviews, but that one is pretty intense. - Thanks. - I was a little afraid for your life.

- Oh, Crip Mac's the safest guy in the world. - He's a sweetheart? - Oh, definitely, dude. - Yeah, that's fun. - I feel like more safe around Crip Mac than I do with any given pedestrian. - Yeah, he was loud and flavorful, I should say. So who's he?

What's his story? - Well, his name's Trevor. He grew up in Ontario, California in the Inland Empire, moved to Texas with his mom after his dad left. His mom started dating a cop from Houston named Mr. Gary. His mom found Mr. Gary getting anally penetrated by a coworker, and so she booked Crip Mac a one-way Greyhound ticket to L.A.

where he joined the Crips. - That's a good story. (laughing) - You know, it's true. - Oh, you jumped right to Mr. Gary. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, yeah. I'm just saying that he's a classic case of somebody without a father figure who found camaraderie and a sense of belonging and purpose in a street gang, which in L.A.

is like a rule of law in most of the city. - I forget in what context, earlier, talking about martial arts and fighting, and he's gotta work on his punching form. - Yeah, I think so. He gets into a lot of fights in jail, though, and from what I've heard, he wins about half of them.

- All right, what'd he go to jail for now? - Firearm possession, it was a probation violation. - Oh. - It's too bad. - All right, so Philly, you went to the border, occupied Seattle protests, you went to Ukraine. - Yeah. - What are some interesting things that stand out to you from memory, just as I ask the question?

Some interesting-- - Well, I mean, I was in jail at the border for a while. That was horrible. - What was that like? Was that your first time? - Yeah, well, you know, I didn't know that I couldn't hop my own border as an American. I'm thinking, this is my country, I can get in any way that I want, wrong.

You can only enter the U.S. through an official port of entry, which I learned the hard way, 'cause I got arrested by Border Patrol and held as a detainee at a migrant center for a few days. - What was that like? - Horrible. - Which aspect? - I mean, well, for one, I don't know, it was just, to be in a place like that, and I probably sound like such a wimp right now, 'cause I know someone's watching this who's done some hard time, but we thought we were gonna do at least six months in jail, 'cause the guards freaked us out and were like, you're being charged with a federal crime, you know what you boys did is serious, we're waiting on word from San Antonio about whether or not we're gonna extradite you.

So we're just sitting in these cells alone, most of the time in solitary, with no pillows, just a-- - No pillows. - No pillows, no mat, nothing, just a space blanket, and I was sleeping on my shoes, stinking up the place, it was no good. - Yeah, you mentioned the UFO convention.

- Yeah. - What have you learned from those guys, the ufologists? - I really wanna know what you think about that, that's the one question that I wanna reverse on you, because you've talked to so many people, do you think that aliens have actually visited Earth? - Yeah. - When?

- So. - When, exact dates? I do, I think there's alien civilizations everywhere. I talk to a lot of people that have doubts about it, I just think, I even suspect there's an intelligent alien civilization in our galaxy, and I just can't imagine them not having visited us. So I lean on that.

What that actually looks like, I don't know. The stuff we're seeing in terms of UFO sightings, I think that's much more likely, to the degree it's real, it's much more likely government projects, so military, Lockheed Martin, this kind of stuff. - So you think that they have knowledge of it?

- Yeah, yeah. - One thing I think about with aliens is scale. So we have this idea that an alien would be a gray alien, or almost humanoid lookalike that would visit us in human form, arms, legs, head, but who's to say that they're not able to shrink down to microscopic size with the same neural capacity?

- Yeah, or just have a very difficult to perceive form. But I mean, they would go small, not big. - No, I think that would take a humanoid-like form just to be able to communicate with humans. I think that the big challenge with aliens is to be able to find a common language.

So if you come to another planet, and you suspect that there's some kind of complexity going on, but it looks nothing like humans, you have to find a common language. And I think aliens would try to take physical form that's similar, that us dumb humans would understand. - Language is really interesting, too.

I have this series that I'm gonna announce for the first time on here, but I'm really interested in endangered languages in the US. There's like 150 languages in the US with less than a thousand speakers. - Wow. - And I wanna like help spearhead efforts to preserve some of these.

Like for example, Hawaiian sign language, 15 of those people left. - Holy shit. - Because when Hawaii got annexed, the ASL community tried to make it so the deaf native Hawaiians wouldn't be able to speak their native sign language. And so they would do it under the desks at like schools for the deaf and blind, and they would get like their mouth washed out with soap and stuff if they so much as did the Hawaiian hand signs.

Also the Gullah Geechee language in the South Carolina Sea Islands, Hilton Head Island and stuff, that's like a, it's almost a Creole language that's been in the US for hundreds of years existing in isolation. That's being threatened by golf course developments. I don't know how into language you are, but I've been getting super nerded out about it.

- Actually, I'm interviewing somebody tomorrow who's an expert in human language. He's from MIT. Studying the syntax of a lot of languages, including in the Amazon jungle, the peoples that live in the Amazon jungle region. Yeah, it's fascinating. Human language is fascinating. And also the barriers it creates. And also how the games are played to what you're speaking by governments.

This is part of the story of Russia and Ukraine, is a battle over language. The Ukrainian language is a symbol of independence, which is why they were trying to make it the primary language of the nation. So sometimes the language represents the culture and the peoples. - Yeah. - And it's intricately tied to the culture of the people.

- I've been trying to learn Navajo. - Which languages do you know? - Spanish and English. - Spanish well? - Si. (laughs) - I don't know Spanish that well, so that passes me. You're fluent, basically. Oh, it doesn't. Hola. - That was good. That was real Cancun spring break.

- Well, I actually speak fluent Spanish according to Spotify 'cause there's, every episode is translated, overdubbed by AI in Spanish. - Oh my God. - Yeah, there's a very-- - Do you have a Spanish robot assigned to you? - I have a Spanish robot. I sound incredibly intelligent and intellectual in Spanish.

- Say hello to Friedman. - Exactly. From everything you've done, all the people you've seen, do you think most people are good underneath it all? - Yeah. - So the ones that do all the extreme shit. - Okay, I'll put it like this. Most people think they're doing the best thing for the world.

I don't think anyone, except for maybe a small fraction of sociopaths, wakes up every day and says, "I'm gonna fuck somebody's life up today." I think the far majority of people are fighting for what they think is right and do want to see America succeed and want us to be in a happy place where no one is subjugated.

I just think people have drastically different ideas of what means will get us there. And unfortunately, that's leading to a lot of misunderstandings between cultures. And yeah, I think that most people are good. I've been through some things that leads me to believe that a lot of people, though, are primarily motivated by self-interest.

And that in a fight or flight situation, most people will choose flight. So I don't know if people are courageous as a whole, but I think generally good. But the energy to stand up for what's right, not sure about that. - They have the capacity, though, to do good.

- I think human beings are inherently selfish as well. But I don't think that selfish is inherently bad. I think humans are primarily motivated by self-interest, but generally have positive intentions. - I do hope more humans rise to the occasion and have courage. Courage of their convictions, courage to have integrity.

But yeah, I think that most people are good, and they want to do good, and they have the capacity to do a lot of good. That's why I have hope for this whole thing we've got going on. How do you heal the misunderstandings between people, you think? Listening, it's the only option we have.

No forced education, no forced meetings or mediations between political opponents. Just listen to more people, and really listen. Try to get rid of whatever preconceived notions you might have about how you should feel about someone you are supposed to disagree with, and just keep your ears and your heart open to people that you don't know, and your life will change.

- Keep your heart open. - A lot of people are scared to listen. - Well, Andrew, I'm a big fan, and thank you for being one of the best listeners in the world. - Amen. - And showing the full spectrum of humanity to us so we can listen as well and learn.

And just thank you for doing everything you're doing. Keep doing it. - Hey man, thanks so much for having me on. You're a great man. - Thank you, brother. - I appreciate it. - Thanks for listening to this conversation with Andrew Kalkin. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now, let me leave you with some words from Hunter S. Thompson. The edge, there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

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