#810 - Brett Cooper - The Quiet Revolution Against Modern Feminism

23:45Yes. And then it cuts what the guy's actually doing. And it's him high -fiving with his homies with his top off in three and shorts. This is what guys want to do. Stop fucking oppressing us. Oh, so sorry. The patriarchy is coming back around through pickleball. I'm so glad. Thank you. I'll shut down the matriarchy. Well, no, and I learned my lesson from that. Right. I still don't, I don't really enjoy pickleball. I played tennis growing up. And so I thought also probably feeds into my feelings about it. But still going to some, like playing pickleball with people, showing up to those leagues, joining in Nashville, it's in Tendulapark.

24:15They always do soccer and softball and volleyball during the summer. where you can just join these rec leagues. Go do that. If you've seen this ascendancy of like 5K runs, run clubs. Yes. I think run clubs are basically a... They're a dating organization, masquerading as a fitness pursuit. Yeah, I could say that. That's what it is. Because no one goes to the run club for the running bit. I've seen these things. People walk half of them. Yes. But everybody's got their brand new sokeny or new balance. They're new clubs, that's what it is. Exactly. And tiny pair of shorts and they get to run along and sweaty and see if he's that guy from last week again.

24:51Yeah. Again, and that's okay. What you just said, that guy from last week, that is also key. Repeatedly going to the same place with the same group of people. And again, laying back groundwork. Yes, exactly. I need you to stalk now. But the low stakes environment where you are having to grow a relationship over, say, six weeks of like you're going to this run club every single week. You meet a girl, oh, you banter, whatever you run along. Talk to somebody else the next week. she's there, pick up the conversation. Just being able to... It's wild that this is revolutionary. I know. Yeah, I know.

25:24Again, but that goes back to my point of... My generation just has not had to do that. Yeah. And it's all been so digital. And then mixed in with our, you know, our social skills just have been totally warped by the digital age and COVID didn't help at all. And I mean, the majority of my college experience was online. So when people talk about, oh, you learned to date in college, People who graduated around my year in 21, nope. Learn to date online. Yeah, while at college. Yes, in your Zoom class, like, oh, this guy's kind of cute. Let me do like my like private Zoom. We'll do a breakout. Yeah, so like, oh, yeah, the guy in my Zoom, you know, break out of my business class when we're working on our accounting, whatever, like that's those are the options.

26:06There's a current big pushback against women having kids as well. Even me, who doesn't use TikTok, saw that girl with a list. Oh, yeah. thing printed off 350 reasons about why not have a child. What is the opinion on motherhood among Gen Z at the moment? Interesting. Do you see that study that said that is over half of women do believe that motherhood is just as or more important than a career, just from a couple of weeks ago. But these are not conservatives. These are just normal women. They don't want to brand themselves as conservatives, they want to get married, they believe the hookup culture is bad, and they believe the motherhood is important.

26:47And so I think deep down, because these are biological instincts, I do believe that women have those urges and want that. I think that it is the culture coming in very heavy -handedly, with the most absurd reasons not to like the list, which is just 365 examples of fear monger. Can't walk cute heels anymore, got to and then I miss brunch with the girls. Yes, and it's like some of them already be like, oh, like get that part of Giving Birth, does not sound fun, but the end result is worth it, and I don't care, because I wanna have a child, but a huge portion of them are, oh, your clothes don't fit properly, and oh, I might not be able to go back to my crib.

27:23You wanna go back and sit in a cubicle? When you could have this beautiful, amazing child that you've created with the love of your life, and you're worried about going back and working for the man, I thought you hated the patriarchy. Does that make sense? But no, there is a lot of fear mongering. There are more women than people think that are waking up. That was actually planning an episode for next week about this. There have been an influx of women just on my social media alone. Speaking out about cultural issues, social issues, political issues, talking about voting for Trump, these are not political accounts.

27:59These are random influencers, just girls on their private personal, social media's, talking about the things that Biden is doing in regards to Title IX, the transgender issue, that they have been completely woken up realizing, oh, I don't actually want this anymore. Mix that in with the women that are in their 30s, they get made fun of constantly on X for crying in their carve of fact that they can't meet a guy because they prioritize their career over dating. And then they just get ripped to shreds when you're on the right, which I think is so problematic. Yeah, I mean, they are struggling. This kind of cell phones, you know, as you said before, people on the right that's supposed to be pro family saying, but you're going to give up your career, you just managed to find your success.

28:35This is one of the sort of real areas, I think, of failure, especially for the right, supposed to be the ones that are rational. We position ourselves up against these, you know, super emotional fucking people on the left. You go, dude, you've just taken the piss out of a woman who is the realization that you've said that they're going to have. What do you want? Do you want it to create a time machine and go back in time? That's evidently not going to happen. And someone opens up to give the message as opposed to going see this stupid broad sheatian of listen to blah blah blah. You go, okay, is it caution retail?

29:06Yes. But there's a human on the other side of that. It's so dehumanizing. This is why I'm so bored with most of politics and sort of culture war stuff because everybody sees everyone as a political football of some kind that they can either kick away from them or sort of grab and bring onto their team. Perfect example of this. Remember when Nicki Nicki Minaj won Antivacs for a couple of weeks. And the right was like, Nicki, come on, I'm like, Nicki Minaj, are we being serious? But oh, there's this brief sort of sliver where their talking point coincides with my desire to push this particular narrative.

29:42Yeah, and you hold on and you're like, I'll ignore everything else. Super blame. And it's, you know, and I'm somebody obviously that reacts to culture. I talk about the news, you know, that is something that I would talk about on the show. But it's like you walk a fine line of acknowledging that this is interesting. You know, sure, that's cool. That's, you know, one thing that I agree with Nicki Minajon, but you don't have to suddenly absolve her of every other value that she's ever had that I disagree with. And I think that's the real problem. Like you can say, oh, that's cool. I don't agree with the rest of the things that you're doing, but that's interesting.

30:11I wonder how she got to that point. That's what's interesting to me. And then looking at the reaction, and obviously, I mean, it's called the comment section. That's what I do. But seeing how the internet responds to it, that's also the interesting part. I don't need to adopt her. I don't need her to suddenly come over to my side. So yeah, I completely agree with that. And I think that that response to women does not help us at all. That response to women who are 31 single, desperately need help finding somebody. The responses. Yeah, the responses not screw you. Oh, boohoo. The response is, no, there will still be somebody out there for you.

30:45I believe that. If you, you know, realign your priorities. If you do put yourself out there, if you become open and you're willing to be vulnerable, I do believe in that whole hard way. But then you use that as a, again, the cautionary tale. Like you said, if like young women, this is what could happen. This is what we warned. This is what feminism said you wouldn't care about. You won't care when you're 31 and you have no kids and you've frozen your eggs and you, you know, you're working for the man and you have some corporate career. It won't matter. Obviously it does. That being said, I have this idea that normalizing the gift of IVF egg, embryo freezing or at at least like egg freezing at 21 would be one of the best things that you could do.

31:24I think that instead of giving a girl a fancy trip to Tulum with her and her friends or a nice watch, or whatever, I don't know what American families do, but like 21 tends to be like a big and getting your eggs frozen is not cheap. But imagine just that insurance policy just in case something happens. I think that would be a good way to look at stuff. But yeah, I, so is it your belief that we are seeing a kind of quiet revolution of young women beginning to see the importance of motherhood and sort of long -term relationship? Is this a pushback against casual sex, against hookup culture? Is this tied in with the conservative movement, or is this totally separate?

32:02Is it just siloed off on a dating? I think that you can smush them together if you want. And I think that there is a lot of overlap, but I don't think that this is a lot of them and suddenly being like, you know, I'm conservative. I'm gonna vote for Trump. I'm ready to be a tradwife. Give me my, you know, frallicking sundress. That's not what it is. It's women being intelligent and having self -awareness and looking at the world around them. Going, this doesn't sit right. I don't know if that's gonna translate into votes. I would love it to translate into votes because I think that the world needs some literal, you know, political redirection.

32:33But I do think that it speaks volumes about our culture and the lies that women have been told. It's not just about their relationships and dating and motherhood, but women are also having a really rude awakening about our health. I mean, birth control is such a huge topic right now. Our health are OBGYNs who have gaslit so many women for years at this point about their health, about our hormones. I think that there is just a, in general, women are looking around going, oh my gosh, what we've been told and fed for the last 20, 30 years. None of this makes sense. We need to take a step back and reevaluate and they were seeing this in real time.

33:08Some of it is even happening on the right, because a lot of women on the right are making up to Big Pharma and their health. It's happening in every single political pocket, but it's just very, very cool. I'm glad that it's happening. There was a TikTok I saw earlier on, an obese woman who diagnosed herself based on Grey's Anatomy. I watched that earlier. Yeah. Got angry with the doctor that she thought was safe, because the doctor suggested that the woman lose weight. The woman asked her to not talk about BMI because of its history as a tool of eugenics, racism and colonialism and I'm indigenous.

33:40Yes. It's pretty great. Did you hear that was actually in my episode today that I filmed before coming here? God damn it. And I was in slip streaming me on the same story. But the thing, okay, the thing that is looped it in with the fat beach day that happened in New York. What's that? So obviously body positivity movement, they need to be accepted. We have not accepted them enough. We have not meant to me enough. They needed to have their own beach day together so that they could encourage more acceptance. So that happened in New York on Saturday. So literally just so much of fat people, they went to the beach.

34:14And I said this on the show where I said, if this was like an interest group, if there's those people that were coming together with a common shared, there you go. Star Wars. If they were coming together because these people that are trying to lose weight, and they need, they have one health problem, they need camaraderie, they want support, that would be one thing. That's great. I believe that it's wonderful to find people that you share things with, things that you're going through, that community is a more and just in general, I think our society has lost community. But that's not what this is.

34:45This is a bunch of, there was like fat New York City models who went, literally taking their tops off posing on the beach. I was like, no, this is not about you wanting support and being healthier. This is literally you fueling your own narcissism and a desire for attention. And I think that they are flailing right now because I've seen a ton of new body -bounded of movement, uh, tiktoks popping up over the past couple of weeks because they're losing your hold with ozempic with people waking up just about their health in general. People are losing weight rapidly. There was a really interesting interview from the CEO, um, and head buyers of a lot of different, uh, women's clothing companies and retail stores and they were saying we've never seen in the last 15 years.

35:24We have not seen so many small, extra small sold and they're begging for smaller sizes, like they're now going down to like triple zero, which has not happened in the last 15 years. And just back in in COVID, they were saying we need, you know, size 16, 18, 24. I think the average size of an American woman clothing size was an 18, 16 last year. And now to see that. Not gonna be for long. Well, I mean, talking about intersectionality, the environmental movement should be happy about people losing weight, think about how much less material is being used, how much less stitching, the freight amount, the weight that you need to use to transport that across the world.

35:58If only the social justice movement could get on the same page and have some consistency, They might actually do some good. They might do some good. So I had Johan Hari on the show and he's written this new book Magic Pill about a Zempick. And the most interesting stuff that I found are all the economic impacts downstream. So airline companies predicting lower fuel costs because of a lighter populace. All of the confectionery companies Ben and Jerry's are trying to dial in their margins because they know that the sales volume is going to go through the floor. are hip and knee replacement companies, way fewer of those because people are less, and this was the wildest one, jewelers using less gold for fat fingers.

36:38So the amount of people that have had to pay to go into jewelers to get their rings adjusted because their fingers have grown. But I really think you're under something here with the sort of ozemic meat body positivity challenge. So for a long time, being obese or being overweight was seen as an identity. And I think that if people can't lose weight, even though they try, if they can't get what they want, they need to teach themselves to want what they can get, which is being a little bit bigger and saying, well, actually, there's no bearing that weight has on health, et cetera, et cetera. The problem now is if you go...

37:10And they put it on you and say, actually, you're the problem. Correct. And it's not that we can't lose weight, whatever, yes. Plain seats or whatever. Problem being, if you can basically bestow on anybody that's got the right medical insurance or 200 bucks a month, if you can bestow on them weight loss to whatever level that they want, you just increase the odds. and you can dial in your weight to whatever it is that you want. It makes being obese much more of an obvious lifestyle choice. And it really lowers the status, I think, of being overweight. When it becomes convenient and easy to be thin, yeah.

37:44It becomes... Deep down, that is what people want. I truly don't believe that people want to be obese. I don't believe that people want to be unhealthy. I mean, why? Again, it's like travel is so complicated. all the other, you know, health problems have come with it. The knee replacements, you know, the difficulty just existing in society, which again, I think a lot of people, Duncan, folks that are overweight and just make fun of them, I'm like, they are struggling. Like life that way is not great. It isn't designed for them. I don't think that society needs to bend a knee and change airline seat sizes and make, you know, all the bathrooms bigger.

38:16There was that one video where the one was like, I need hotel hallways to be bigger for me. I'm like, no, okay. That's fucking wide -wise. Yeah. Cute. It's like that doesn't need to change, but I still do believe that obviously they are human beings, they're deserving of empathy. But, you can't they don't want that. And again, like you said, they only adopted this because it was like, I can't have this, so I'm going to become really, really passionate and really enraged and make it a U -problem because I'm not going to take responsibility. But again, now that there is this opportunity and this innovation that they can easily grasp on to, obviously they're going to trickle over here.

38:50Well, we saw what happened to Adele when Adele lost weight. and she was completely castigated, thrown out of the big girls club, whatever it was. As if it was some sort of a middle finger, as if her being bigger was like a show of fieldy, like a flying particular flag for some group. Like some of the feminists want other women to be ugly and miserable. There's an amazing billburbit where he says, are chicks. If you could only support the WNBA, the same way that you support a fat chick that's gained weight and is no longer a threat to you, they'd be doing more numbers than the NBA. And it's so true.

39:26I have this, you've nailed it, that I think the body positivity movement is highly motivated for women to encourage their friends to eat themselves out of their competition in the dating market. So you have intracexual competition, competition between women and a lot of quite rightly girls go, that's fucking disgusting. Of course I don't think that. And it's like, no, you don't consciously think that. No, it's subconscious. Precisely. Women are terrible to each other. That's kind of just a... Well, most slut shaming comes from women. Yes, most of the beauty standards come from women. And it's so irritating when women turn the beauty standards on men.

40:00And they'll say, oh, the patriarchy made me do this. You know, I have all of these body image issues because of what men have told me, what man has told you that he wants you to get plastic surgery on your eyelids. That's a new big plastic surgery thing that's popping up in America. Or if you have like hooded eye eyelids, you get them like sliced and cut and re -sown. You know, you have these crazy caterpillar eyelashes on your eyes. You're getting filler everywhere. You're doing all of this. It's not for men. You are aware that guys have no idea what you're talking about. They don't know the difference between an LV bag and one that's from Target.

40:29That's the point. They don't care and they don't know. They're doing it for women. Women are encouraging it. They're seeing it on social media. Yeah. It's like that's, you cannot blame that on men. You cannot blame the insane things, you know, how much money you're spending on your nails and your eyelashes and your fake tans on men. That's other women encouraging you to do that. I saw you throw my alumni organization, Love Island, under the bus recently. I did. I can't believe that you would do that. What was your experience? How were the women all fillered up? It was, so I went on nine years ago.

41:03So it was less bad back then. but there has been a couple of sort of transformation. They did an all -stars thing. So they brought people that had been on previous seasons back on and there was a few and you basically got to compare then until now. And I thought, some of the girls that were on my season had had a bit of work done. And you compare to now and they look like brats dolls. And these stories have gone super. And I feel for these chicks that have been like, I didn't, it's kind of like being gassed by fucking culture into believing that this is the thing that they need to do. I don't know.

41:32So preventative Botox is now the thing in the States. I don't know if it is in New York. What's that? Where women, my age, and younger, starting at like 20 years old, are getting Botox to keep themselves from getting wrinkles in the future. Does it work? No, it's absurd. Right. And any good esthetician and dermatologist is going to say, you literally do not need that, but they're making money off of it. And so there's a whole social media campaign for it. You know, start getting your preventative Botox here. Just a couple of injections here and there. Make sure you don't get, you know, crow's feet, like my age.

42:01It's like, no, those aren't wrinkles. those are like your dimples. Those are just your normal lines over your eyebrows. But it's all... For the girls that are listening, guys, don't notice. Like, we don't know. We're not doing it for us. We don't know. We don't know what's going on. So one of the other trends that I've noticed is kind of generalized cynicism. And you spend a lot of time in the comment section. A lot of people in your audience are Gen Z. Why are Gen Z so despondent? Why is there such generalized cynicism? Is that true? Is that just what we see rise to the surface? What's the kind of cultural temperature at the moment for Gen Z?

42:31I think that there is a lot of cynicism. I think that it can be kind of politically divided. I think Gen Z on the left is a lot more cynical. But I think that also just goes back to people on the left, especially young people on the left. It's fueled by this desire for victimhood. There's no good in the world. I shouldn't have children because the world is going to go up in flames and there's going to be no earth anymore. And I don't want to populate the earth. I don't want to bring a child into the world. I mean, it's it is very, very cynical. On the right, social people that are, you know, more driven by their faith, there's a lot of hope and a lot of encouragement.

43:07I also don't think that they really bog themselves down with that kind of cynicism. But for just making a generalized statement, every generation has gone through hard things. And so I think that it is not honest and kind of irresponsible to say, oh, well, Gen Z has like, he's really had it tough because of COVID and they were born, you know, post -9 -11 and the world changed and, you know, and then Trump came in and there was so much, I was like, there's, we weren't alive during polio and, you know, we don't have any actual wars that we are physically, like our men are not being drafted right now, maybe they will be out of love if they're trying to get women drafted.

43:46But right now things are okay. Like, we are better off than we have ever been in the history of the world. We are richer, we are healthier, we are happier by and large. And so I don't think it's correct to say the Gen Z has been through more. I think we've been through different things. The digital age, we are the first generation that was raised fully online. We are more exposed to seeing things around the world. No generation before us has had this much of an unbridled access to the problems consuming other countries and other societies. So maybe it's a little bit of like, you know, we don't have that innocence is bliss.

44:22COVID obviously was very, very difficult for my generation. And I think that sent them on up spiral because obviously, or already we were, you know, our socialization was not up to stuff compared to older generations just because of the digital age. COVID only made that worse. So again, I don't think that we are worse off. We are just dealing with something different that no other generation has had to encounter before. And I think that they wear that kind of as a chip on their shoulders. Well, like, you don't get it. You don't get it. It's a moment we understand we can point to the reasons why, but still take a step back and see that the world is better than it has ever been for.

44:56You have more opportunities than you've ever had. Obviously, there are problems. There will always be problems. That's life. Like as a human being, you are always going to have hurdles. It's kind of the name of the game. And I think the Gen Zs, putting themselves in this situation where it's like any of those hurdles, it's like I'm out. It's triggering. I now have depression, anxiety. I need to be, you know, medicated. there's no point in living anymore. It's like they're, they just thrown in the towel. It's easy, I think, for people who aren't from that generation to look at it and say, well, look, this is just online, these are terminally online people.

45:32There's nothing to worry about. This isn't a problem, it's just a problem on the internet. But I looked at some stats recently that said, the average amount of time that an American spends as sleep is 6 ,015 minutes, and their total screen time per day is eight hours. So they're on screens for more than they are asleep. the virtual world is more real than the real world. It's correct. So that is for you to say this is just online. It's like you have got the bar stool upside down. Yeah. It's all online. It's all online. That is life for these people. So yeah, I think being sort of disparaging of it, it's just not going to get people anywhere.

46:04And if you don't want to sound like a boomer that's completely out of touch, that is not the solution. Saying, ah, it's just online. Yeah. You're right, you don't, you evidently don't get people. That's why you have to meet them where they are and meet them online. And that's why I think, you know, I've had people ask me before, you know, you were raised with no TV, which I was. I didn't have a TV in my house until I had one at one point in my college years, but never used it. Didn't have cable, didn't have Netflix. I got one when I moved in with my husband because he watched a sports. I was like, okay, now I have a TV.

46:35But I was very offline. It didn't have a phone for many, many years. Just had a flip phone when I was in high school. Like I was very, very detached. that trauma was very involved with my social media usage as a young person. And people will say, well, that was your experience to advocate for that. You advocate for people to get offline touch grass is what I say to have that balance to go be involved in the real world. And yet you're online. And you're in the comment section. It's like, well, yeah, that's where you have to meet them. And the best thing that I can do in my opinion is talk about things that are terminally online and talk about these online issues, but give them a framework work so that they can dissect them intelligently and have self -awareness.

47:12So I think the worst thing is that if you're spending that amount of time online, which everybody is also for my generation, our work is online, our school is online, dating is online. If you want to be involved, you do kind of have to be online as a young adult. The worst thing to do is just to be in that online world on social media and not be thinking about it and not be conscious about what you're consuming. So if I can give them a framework of, so this is alluding to this. This social media trend that sounds really dumb, that's on TikTok, it's a ridiculous thing. This is indicative of X, Y, and Z, the happening in our culture that is probably fed from this.

47:41If I can give them kind of like, I see where that's coming from. So they're not just blindly consuming it. How persuasive do you find that to be? There. I think it's changed a lot of minds. I think one of the problems people have is that it's pointless me even engaging with the discussion with these people because I feel like they're a lost hope. I feel like there's a lot of people that I think would look at Gen Z and just say, if I can chalk it up as a lost swing in a mess, Let's go to the gen alpha. Maybe we can do better with them. I don't think so. I mean, Gen Z men are becoming more right wing than ever are waking up about a lot of things.

48:15I'm seeing this with young men. That's not, you know, they're not becoming more right wing, but I do think that they're waking up to a lot of the lies. Again, the lies that they've been told, the lies of our culture, feminism. I also think Gen Z, you can just see the way that they're already critiquing millennials and wanting to be different. So Jen Alfadleth, we've seen like the Sephora tweens. Okay, so millennials are very into gentle parenting. And gentle parenting, as it should be described in the actual definition, I don't have a problem with of being engaged with your children's emotional life, leveling with them, not just pointing a finger, disciplining with no explanation, kindness, you know, again, meeting them at their level.

48:58But it has become something that is more of a, I guess a doormat situation where it enables lazy. Lazyness. Oh, I'm a gentle parent. No, you're not. Yes. They're children walk all over them. And then they're the iPad kids, gen alpha is the iPad kids. And so Gen Z is now in the workforce. They are preschool teachers. They're kindergarten teachers. They are working at Sephora. And they see gen alpha come in and have no respect for anyone that's older than them. They're walking around buying drunk elephant retinol products to put on their 12 year old skin because they just seen it on social media and nobody in their life, no adult in their life is saying, hey, you're 12 years old.

49:35Retinol is for when you're 35. Don't buy that. Destroying testers. It's all of these videos of tweens. Tween girls, stealing makeup, destroying the test displays. Why is Sephora fucking ground zero for this? Because they watch beauty influencers. And they all shop at Sephora. Fantastic. And so now there's all of these like 12, 13 year old, like little beauty influencers. They're like, hi, come see my Sephora hall. Do my makeup for school. I was like, oh my gosh, when I was 12 years old, I was making like little mix music videos in my pool, like my drain pool in the wintertime. And never post to them, God forbid that, ever made its way onto the internet because it was for our enjoyment, not for clicks and not for social media.

50:15But these young people, because they've been raised online, that is their fun is like becoming an influencer and posting themselves online. So they wash the beauty influencers, they go to Sephora, they buy this makeup, but Gen Z is interacting with them on a daily basis and they are saying, we don't want to raise kids like that. We don't want to be the millennials. In other news this episode is brought to you by Nomadic. Last year I went in a tour across the UK, USA and Dubai and I didn't check a single bag because hold luggage is a sideop meant to keep you poor and late. In fact, I never need to check bags anymore at all.

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51:17So if you buy your new bag, try it and don't like it. They will just give you your money back. Right now, you can get a 20 % discount by going to the link in the show notes below or heading to nomatic .com, slash modern wisdom and using the code mw20. A checkout. That's nomatic .com slash modern wisdom and mw20. A checkout. What's the next one? Gen beta? That's going to suck. Probably. If you're what generation were you? I was the meaty generation. I found this since 2009 more than twice as many 15 to 19 year old girls and young women have been admitted to the E .R. for self harm behaviors in the US even more shocking five times more 10 to 14 year old girls were admitted to the E .R.

51:55for self harm in 2022 than in 2009 that's five times more families taking their fourth to ninth grade daughters to the hospital because they have intentionally harmed themselves. It's awful. Where's this coming from? A lot of it social media. I said something recently on a show because I covered a woman who got a lot of flack on TikTok for talking about her strict rules with her children, where she does not allow them to take their phones into their bedrooms. They have time limits on their social media apps. The most ridiculous thing was they have to tell her where they're going to go before they go.

52:31So the chinos where they are. And her is like, oh my gosh, you're a stalker. It's like, no, you want to know where your 15 -year -old daughter is going to be. Anyway, I talked about her and I basically said in terms of social media, point me to one study that says that social media is good for young adults, for young women specifically. There is not one. There's not one that even says it is fine. It is all detrimental. And so I think that plays a huge part in it again because of what they're seeing and the peer pressure online and the standards that they're setting for themselves that they now want to try to adopt because they see this influencer doing this, they see this person, and you know, in Bali on a beach with their hot boyfriend and they don't have that and they'll never be that.

53:10They see, you know, these now 13 year old little girl influencers who are going to press events and getting PR packages like it's starting so, so young. And women are very susceptible to that. Peerity as a woman is one of the worst things you will ever go through. You feel like the most ugly duckling on planet Earth? I was so ugly, it was terrible. Because I sprouted, I would say earlier, but I still had a baby face and I had a bull cut and I was like five, six, already was, you know, super tall. Hey you guys. Yes, it was so weird and it was so awkward. No boys liked me and you feel so insecure and then that being heightened by social media by COVID and having to live online, I think it's just a perfect storm.

53:57It also doesn't help that social media has almost encouraged having a mental illness in a lot of ways. And glorified that pathology. Yes, and Jordan has talked a lot about social contagion. I think that is absolutely real. It is the cool thing to be depressed. It is a badge of honor to have anxiety and be dealing with it. And the more that they engage with that and tell themselves that they are, obviously you're going to become that. Again, that's just a perfect storm. You worked in Hollywood as a child actor. Yes. What did you make about the recent news on Nickelodeon and quite unset and all of that?

54:35None of it surprises me at all. I feel very very lucky because I had a great experience But I had a fantastic experience because I had a mother that was literally a shark who was so I just cannot say enough good things matter Who is so engaged in every part of my upbringing and my career? Not as a momager, but as a mother someone who knew that this industry had the reputation that it did, she already knew about the casting couch. She knew about child actors and the drug usage and the scandals. She was not interested in me doing any of that. But I loved it. Like I lived for performing. That's all I wanted to do.

55:13And so she saw that in me and wanted to be able to support that. And I've seen a lot of comments actually, if people saying, you know, if your mom knew these things about the industry, why did she let you move to LA to audition? Why did she take you to New York so that you could go audition for Broadway shows? I just want to take that opportunity to answer it. My brother died when I was five years old. He was 17. He was an artist, super, super creative, and up until that point, my mom had kind of tried, not to put my brothers in a box, but she was like, you know, approach. My brother who died is a twin and so she kind of put the twins together and she was dealing with her failing marriage with my father and that kind of took priority over the kids.

56:03And after he died she made a conscious decision with me that she was going to completely change that. She was like I'm not going to prioritize this marriage that is you know there is no future really. She had already kind of decided both of them had decided that. I'm going to put this child first and then one thing that she said is you know if I knew that David was going to die at 17 years old. And he had all of these ambitions and things that he wanted to accomplish. What would I have done to make sure that he got those opportunities? That he got to enjoy every aspect of that? And so that's why we did it because she saw that I loved it.

56:35I came alive when I was on stage. A lot of things in my family, I think really shut me down, losing my brother already young age, my parents' relationship. Obviously, it took a major turn for the worse after he I had a lot of fun with my brother. My brother really kind of went off the deep end and a lot of ways as well. I began very closed off, suppressed. I would literally like hide and kitchen cabinets when people would come up because I didn't want to speak. That all went away when I got on stage and was performing. And so she wanted to keep that up as much as possible because that was my one outlet.

57:06So I know that's kind of the backstory of how I ended up there. And why she was willing to put me in those situations. and also why she was so willing to protect me. So then back to the point, I knew all of that, growing up, I knew that it was happening, I had experiences, nothing like what was discussed on, my wife, like, quite on set. I was about to say after dark, quite on set. Jeanette McCurdy wrote her fantastic book, I'm glad my mom died, about her very abusive mother, momager and her experience with Dan Schneider. She didn't name her book, which she just called him the creator, obviously for legal reasons.

57:46So when I read her book, I remember getting to the end of her book literally just like crying. Did you ever interact with Dan Schneider? No, I auditioned for some of his projects. I don't know if I was ever in the room with him. I mean, it was literally he was so prolific in Hollywood still at the time when I was coming up that at least once a week there would be. I could probably go back in my old email now and, you know, untitled Anshina project, untitled Anshina project. My mom already knew about that reputation. It was so commonplace that he was a creep. I think I might have auditioned for a couple of them, but she drew a line in the sand and said, that guy's a weirdo, she's not going out for any of those projects.

58:20She's not going to go work at Nickelodeon. I desperately wanted to be on the modern iteration of Boy Meets World, which is called Girl Meets World, which obviously catapulted Rowan Blanchard and sobriety carpenter to fame. I desperately wanted it. And so I fought with my mom. I was like, please let me go out for this. Please let me go out for this. She did not want me on this channel. did not want me on Nickelodeon because she knew that those children's networks were so filled with creeps. And I ended up doing one children's show at a different network. And that is where my bad experience was.

58:52And it's so predictable because it's the men who choose to work with children, with young girls. What happened? It was after the show had ended. And I actually told the story with and I got a call from my mom, which was like, you miss an important component of the story, so I can actually share that here. It was the writer on the show. And he had wanted to connect with me and another girl who were on the show. And he was always writing new things, and I'm gonna create another show. In Hollywood, it's very normal. Oh, let's go have coffee or lunch with this person who could get you this next job.

59:29It's always like, what's gonna get me that next job? So they had reached out, he had reached out to this girl who was the co -star on the show with me, was a very, very good friend of mine at the time. And her mom reached out to mine. I think he had mentioned something about, oh, I'd love to see Brett as well. So her mom reached out to mine and said, hey, you know, Brett's friend is going to go meet up with this guy, would Brett like to go and connect with him and you know, it'd be great. He wants to see her. And so we ended up going to the Griffith Observatory and this woman told my mom, you know, I'm gonna be with them the entire time.

1:00:00I'm gonna watch them, don't worry. I'll be the parent in the room. My mom said, okay, great. Last time she ever trusted anybody in that regard. And so my mom dropped me off. I went up there. Her mother was nowhere in sight. Watch from the car, basically. Walked around the Griffith Observatory. This man immediately launches into his lesbian fantasies that he has with me and this other girl at 14 years old. Again, the creator and writer of a children's show. And I get immediately very, very weirded out. You know, we're walking, there's this part in the growth of observatory where you can go and you see what your weight would be if you're out, you know, on the moon or in space.

1:00:39And so we went and like stood on this and he looked at my friend and said, I want to know how much you weigh with your clothes off. It's like stuff like that. And so then we finally got out of the museum. He's told us about our lesbian fantasies, whatever. We're walking back towards the restaurant and he sticks his hand in our back pockets, like as he's walking like this. And I immediately am just like, absolutely, get off of me. My friend shoots me a look like, don't screw this up for me. Like, don't say anything. So I don't, we just keep walking. Get back to the car. Whatever, I immediately, you know, dropped off at my house.

1:01:08I talked to my mom. This is so weird. I never want to be around this man again. This was so uncomfortable, so creepy. My mom calls her mom. Her mom admits that she knew. That's why she wanted me there because I would be a buffer. She said, oh, you know, we know that he's weird. We've gotten very weird vibes. I didn't want her to be alone with him. So we wanted Brett to be there. So she knew. But she was so desperate to have her daughter and her daughter was so desperate, although it was coming from her or coming from her mother to be in this room and not rock the boat because she desperately wanted a new show, a new audition, a new job that she was willing to take it and be in that space and then put another child in that situation.

1:01:47And the thing that was normal and this guy would show up to, he was very enmeshed in my friend group for a long time because he just worked with all these young people would show up to teenage birthday parties, where maybe like, you know, enacting teacher or somebody would drop by and drop a present, hey, happy birthday, you know, whoever your name is, have a great party, whatever. This guy would come stay until 2 a .m. with 16 and 17 year olds. If you are obviously like getting drunk and getting high, whatever teenage actors are doing, painted portraits of child actors was a whole thing on his social media.

1:02:22I was just very, very weird. So, it's nothing compared to what so many have been through. But even in my limited experience, even with a mother that was so, so careful that I still had that. And I think that I was in an interesting position because I loved acting and I loved my career and I loved working, but my mom had done a very good job. Kind of saying, you know, this is not your whole identity. This isn't your whole life. You never have to do anything you're not comfortable with. Like acting is fun. It should always be fun. It should be a hobby. You should never cross any lines that you're not willing to cross for that.

1:03:06And I don't think that was instilled in my peers. So like my friend who was, you know, shot me that death stare. Don't you like don't say anything about him touching my butt. And for this man, I'm growing a 14 year old. 15 year old, I think she was a year older than me. I didn't have that, I didn't care. Like who cares if he doesn't like me? And again, my mom knew all of this going into it. She put me in self defense against sexual assault, women's self defense, sexual assault. Starting at age 11 or 12, I was fighting literally in like rape scenarios, date rape situations, would do that twice a week, was in private lessons, Did that for probably seven years?

1:03:46And I think that was a huge part of it. Marshall Arts are just, I think, so important for both men and women. But especially young girls, I think it's so underrated because the confidence that I had because of that was I knew how to defend myself because one of the first things that you learn is how to say no and how to use your voice and understanding that where you're being touched, that's not right. I had that and she didn't. And that's why I was, you know, put in those classes. is almost like you're going into rooms with people that I don't know. You know, you're being brought in by a casting director to go into a room for 15 minutes and do a scene.

1:04:19I feel like they're doing to you in there. You need to know again, what is appropriate and what's not. And interesting, this sort of line that is kind of similar to helicopter parenting, but done in an empowered, safe way that's aiming to try and give you as much independence and security as possible. It was the foundation that was more of a, not a helicopter, but like I'm gonna be very, very careful so that then you can go out and do whatever you want it. But it's similar to the flirting and how to detect whether or not someone likes you. It's the subtle differences. It's the deafness. It's the nuance that's really, really important in how you do this.

1:04:55The wildest thing about that story is the complicity of both the girl and the mother in... Did not care when they were called on it. Yeah, oh, sorry. How you do your own weird. So it's just kind of the price of doing business. Yeah. And there's a lot of that in Hollywood that I think that's one of the reasons why I've made you know, conscious decision when I was in college that I was like, I just don't think. I don't think this is for me because there is, there's a big price. You, they ask for your everything. They ask for you to be complicit in whatever they want to do. They ask for you to give up your life and your stability and your control over your personal life.

1:05:32I mean, you know, at the drop of a hat, you know, you need to fly to Vancouver and shoot this and you know whatever they don't care about your personal life, which is fine. It's an industry. They need to film things when they need to film things and where they need to film things. But I was not a person that was willing to get all of that. I was also not willing to sacrifice. My values is kind of goes back to the politics stuff. I would get scripts constantly. I look at the characters that I'm playing. I would re -invient the script in its entirety if I was, you know, got a movie script. And I would kind of, I would sit down and I would dissect what are they trying to tell audiences with this story and I would deeply disagree with it.

1:06:08I would hate what my character was being used can vey. And you have no control over that because you're just a shell. That's your job. We'll get back to talking to Brett in one minute, but first I need to tell you about Momentus. Trust really is everything when it comes to supplements. A lot of brands may say that they're top quality, but few can actually prove it, which is why I partnered with Momentus. They make the highest quality supplements on the planet, unparalleled with their testing, and I fall in love with their way isolate protein powder. Each batch is exclusively sourced from EU dairy farmers whose cows are grass -fed and free of hormones and steroids and all of the other junk.

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1:07:11A checkout that's livenmementus .com slash modern wisdom. And modern wisdom. A checkout. Did you see that Disney vice president, see any vice president man, talking about how we often don't hire white people for roles? Oh yes. And there was a mixed race guy that wasn't black enough. Yeah. I mean, that blows my mind as well. It's like how many - How do you see that? I saw that all the time. Like when, I don't know when this really started to pick up, it wasn't in 2020 with the LMA. It was before, I think it started a couple of years before that, really. But before that, you would get breakdowns.

1:07:46It would be, you know, Brunette, White, around 12 years old. This is the role. It always, you know, at this point, starting maybe in 2018, very consistently, it became ethnically ambiguous. Can be mixed. We are looking - I'm big -o -ones. Yes, they were looking for people to check those boxes. Rather than writing characters just because they fit the story or because they're interesting characters. It was, you know, they were writing these characters, but we don't really care who it is. We need you to check that box. And I saw that on the production side of it as well. I was basically working in my dream job when I was in college, because I had made that decision.

1:08:21I don't really know if I want to act anymore. I want to go into production. I always thought I wanted to run a movie studio one day. So I was working at a Oscar winning production company and they did very their whole thing was character driven stories and very, very compelling. They wanted to leave audiences changed, but they weren't like hit you over the head, social justice or non -profit style films. These were very, very good standalone films that just at the tail end, they cared that they were making audiences a little bit better. I loved that. And so I was working for them in college and worked for them throughout 2020.

1:09:01When BLM hit, my job which had been receiving scripts, doing a breakdown kind of of like before the executives write it, I would go through and write a synopsis of the script that I had received. Talk about some of the key characters. What do you learn from this script? Would you recommend this? Would you recommend this be pushed on through this executive? And so that was like the first person that scripts came to a company. My job changed from look for good character driven stories and that leave audiences changed that are moving the needle in some capacity. It wasn't for political things. It was for making humanity better that these stories will be used for good.

1:09:38It became changed to we need you to find a Native American, a protagonist moving ASAP. We don't have enough black people in this movie. We need to act however percentage of our slate because it wasn't diverse enough. So I saw that as an actor a few years prior, and then I saw that on the tail end of like, this isn't real anymore. These aren't authentic stories you're telling. You are literally at every part of this industry, molding, shaping, adapting, tinkering with to fit these quotas and these agendas. And I was just out. I was like, because the reason I wanted to be an actor, the reason I wanted to be in Hollywood is because I love stories.

1:10:15I love seeing humanity at its worst and it's best I love being able to sit and relate to somebody who I obviously have no connection to. Who I don't even be real but see myself in them as an actor. I love that. I'm being able to put myself in somebody else to shoes and process things might be going on in my personal life in a unique way because I get to act them and it's safer because it's not Brett having to do that. It's this character that I'm playing. All of it was so real and genuine and suddenly like the rub was you know I pulled out of my eyes. I was like, no, it's all perfectly designed and tailored.

1:10:50It blows my mind how well Hollywood has managed to face plan consistently over the last few years. They just do not seem to be able to understand. There was some Star Wars actress that responded on the late night show, saying we don't want white people watching our show in any case. Did you say her anti -white song that she released? She did that on Juneteenth, and it was a, you can pull it up on her Instagram. And it was, it's about racism and how she's oppressed and all of the stuff and she's mixed. Like if you Google her name, it's only photos of her and her white father. And she's singing about not liking white people and how white people hate black people.

1:11:29And it's just like, doesn't make sense. Speaking of going from mainstream media across to independent media, what you make of Tucker Carlson's move,

1:11:41I thought it was great. I think he turned something that could have been career ending. I don't like, obviously, don't know the details of what happened. But thinking that he could have taken that as like, OK, I'm done, he has become more famous and more culturally relevant since. I mean, the amount of places that I see him now on social media, in real life, doing his tour, the amount of people that I see in random comments sections on social media work like fan edits are made of him where it's like him talking about masculinity and family and all these guys in the comments being like oh I used to always hate him I thought he was such a boomer and I like I can't get enough of him like Tucker Tulson's leading the hope call movement.

1:12:23Yeah truly I his thing that he said with Charlie Kirk years ago and it's in great in my mind it's probably one of the reasons why I got married young but he was like get married to young have more children than you can afford that's how he starts that. And somebody didn't interview recently and somebody asked him about that again and said, you know, do you still stand by that? Do you think this is still something that people need to hear? And he just gave the most incredible answer about, you know, freedom comes with responsibility and taking responsibility, you know, becoming a father, becoming a husband.

1:12:56You know, it changes you in ways that you cannot even describe. He was like, if you think you can't do it, the moment that you have a child, it's not that you can do it. It's you have to do it. And how empowering that is. And reading the comments of all of these because I can't wait to be a dad. This is so true. I never thought I would relate to Tucker Carlson. It's crazy. And so I think it's great. I think that he was kind of stuck in a few stuck in a certain Fox News brand. So it's great. Yeah, when you watch Fox now sort of in comparison with the pivot that Tucker's made, it feels very slow and sort of pedestrian and lumbering.

1:13:30We both got a lot of friends that still do commentary for them. But it's just, I don't know, that old style of TV production for cultural commentary, political commentary and stuff like that. Just I think it's, I mean, is this what you think the future is going to be? Are we going to see more independence create is coming out of mainstream? That's how it should be. Mainstream media dead, in your opinion, or dying. How quickly, how slowly?

1:13:56Quickly, but I think now they've realized how it started to happen. And so they're kind of like playing catch -up of all I need to fix this. I need to do this better. We need to keep up with the time. So I think it happened faster than they could have expected. So I think they looked back and went, oh, you are being left in the dust. I think they're trying to adapt. But I do think that the future is independent creators. I think that it's people starting podcasts like yours and just getting on YouTube and saying, no, this is what I think this is what I believe. Again, like I said, the women on TikTok who just have personal accounts, like 3 ,000 followers who just post their shopping hauls, saying, I am done voting this way.

1:14:32Trump derangement syndrome is cringe. it's lame, don't do that anymore and they get millions of views. It's just people speaking from the heart, which is very, very cool. Yeah, I wonder, I think a big part of it, you know, we had Andrew Hubeman's little foray with the mainstream media a couple of months ago. They're so funny. So many of those situations, I think, are ostensibly what it's supposed to be is something that's newsworthy talking about an individual or what they're getting up to. But behind the scenes what I think it is is a slowly dying medium, death rattling and kind of grasping at We're going to use the popularity of this side of the aisle to actually generate clicks on our side of the aisle Yeah, and you know you can have as much criticism as you want and rightly so about the lack of media standards You know, we're not you're not beholden and neither am I to the same kind of Publishing standards maybe the fact checking standards that you would have to be able to get onto a TV organization but on the flip side, the TV organizations, the only way that they can get clicks for the most part now is talking about stuff that's happening independently.

1:15:39Like when Don Lemon has decided to make the pivot. Yeah. You know, like that, I mean, he's the final horseman of the apocalypse. He's got to be. So. It's good to know what it is. Yeah. Why did you not do this independently? Why do this daily? Why? You could have, you're the star of the show. It's a, I've seen your setup. It's, it, how would you say, lean, lean. Complementarily, it's lean. No, it's like not, it's not super ex -ravegan. It's no more complex than it needs to be. Why didn't you do your thing in your own? I was very out of my element. I didn't think I could. I think, and I don't know if I, I'll be confident.

1:16:12I think I could have figured it out. Obviously, it was a smart person. I was very, very nervous. I've changed a lot in the last two years, just on my confidence in speaking about culture and politics. I've gotten to understand social media a lot more I really had no idea what I was getting into. I had just kind of jumped ship from Hollywood because I had moved from acting to, oh, I wanna go into production. Ugh, I don't like that either. So I studied for the LSAT. And I applied to law school and got into law school. And then the week of my orientation went, oh, nope, this isn't for me. I'm not supposed to be an attorney.

1:16:47I don't wanna do this. And then was literally working as a waitress and writing articles for Foundation for Economic Education and helping yell with their young workers for liberty with their copywriting for their development team, their fundraising team. And I was just, I desperately wanted to be with a group of people that was moving the needle in meaningful ways. I didn't know how I wanted to do that. And so I had started a little Instagram. It had maybe, I think I'd racked it up to 5 ,000 followers. But every time I posted, I was still like, I still had that, I guess like post Hollywood syndrome of, if I post this, my career is going to go away, my agents are going to, you know, drop me.

1:17:26Nobody's ever going to hire me again. And even though I had decided I don't really think this is for me, I was still petrified. I didn't know what my future held. Had no idea if I would just go into writing and become some kind of journalist if I would end up wanting to go to law school later on. Literally had no idea. I was working at this wine bar steakhouse in Boise, Idaho. And the social video team at Daily Wire saw one of my videos that I made for young Americans for Liberty. and they liked me and de -empt me and said, you know, we love what you're doing. You have a unique angle and a unique voice.

1:18:02Obviously, you are camera trained, you're media trained, we'd love to talk with you about producing a show. And I think a lot of people assume that, you know, I came in and daily, why I already had this like put together show and they're like, here, we just needed to cast a girl to be the, you know, young right wing girl to get all the guys. Like, that's often a critique that I get. But I actually have a pilot that I did independently that I wanted to shop around, but was kind of too scared to and to talk to some other political organizations that is, that pilot is comment section. It has the memes, it has the comments.

1:18:34It had what I wanted to communicate and articulate, and so they had a similar idea, but we brought it together, we worked on it and molded it for three months before we released the show, and that's what I needed. I felt like I needed that support system that gave me the opportunity, the resources, the team, which is great. So I think that I could have done it independently, emotionally and confidence wise, I was not there yet. I was still absolutely terrified. And I had no idea what I was like, I don't know if this is gonna work for months. I'd say the one I was like, I'm gonna get fired. They're not gonna like the show.

1:19:05This is gonna be a success. And then it took off like a rocket. I was like, oh, okay. I guess that I've like, I've got something that's worth saying. What do you think it was? Why do you think anyone cared? I think it was a combination of a few things. I think that my generation, I think I filled a niche online on YouTube specifically, that I knew that I wanted to fill, that I had experienced not having. So one thing that I had vocalized many times now is I'm not the Trump intern, you know, Rhino Republican, you know, the girls and their beautiful pencil skirts are perfectly blown out hair. I'm also not like the badass hunters that live in Montana and like live on their fathers ranches and you know are super mega and super awesome and I'm like I'm obsessed with both of them I think that they both bring you know really interesting you know discourse and they're unique individuals and all that But I was just normal.

1:20:03I was like I have these values and I have opinions that feel very counterculture And I'm not seeing that represented anywhere like where's just the normal Girl that thinks that all of this is insane And it's as simple as that. I think that I filled that niche. I also think that I brought humor to a side of the internet and a political corner of the internet that often doesn't have a lot of humor. I try to approach things with levity and hope and positivity and obviously like strike hard when it's needed and drive a point home. But also it's like, if you're not laughing, you're crying. Like you might as well look at the world and go, no, this is absurd.

1:20:40Let's actually laugh at this because this is so dumb like the fat beach day You have to laugh at that you have to it's like I would not be fun for me And it's not done for anybody like they're ruining the world. This is so disgusting. Whatever you have to go this literally absurd Like why are they and I that was I didn't I also didn't see that anywhere, you know, I watched You know, I listened to everybody at the daily wire, you know, Matt specifically and Michael I was obsessed with before I came to the daily wire, but it was very It was very serious and their fathers, we need to protect this society, we need to change things.

1:21:17I was like, I want to have fun. Which sounds so silly, but I wanted somebody to speak to me on my level and not make me feel like the world was going to end every five minutes, but truly be able to make fun of it. I also think that's how it's continued to grow is because the humor and the positivity has reached people across the aisle who might not be right -wing, but have common sense and realize. This is dumb. Yeah. What I mean is absurd. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Maui Newy Venison. Maui Newy Venison brings the healthiest red meat on the planet directly to your door. Tastes incredible.

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1:22:34them a checkout. That's mau. I. Nui. Venison .com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom a checkout. The daily why guys can be lightning rods for drama. It feels like Matt Walsh is in the news every other week for something that he said you were very good friends with Candace and then Candace falls out with Ben and then Candace falls out with DW and then Candace drags DW for the entirety of the first new week of her new show. Is it hard to focus on work when you're embroiled in drama like that, when it's kind of happening all around you? It is. I think that's why it's so important just to, you know, I try to stay in my lane.

1:23:13I try to stay in, you know, keep my priority straight and that I want to create good content. I want to, you know, reach people across the aisle. I want to empower young women and make them feel seen. I want to encourage young men. It's like that, those are the things that I care about and that I want to do. I don't want to be deterred. You can't fully divorce yourself from the atmosphere. You walk into work and it's just it's like a fucking war zone. Yeah, and so that's but That had to be my focus and so I think that is the first step in that Yeah, I mean everybody's kind of watched this whole fallout happen.

1:23:47It's not a secret obviously It's difficult because I know all of these figures Personally on a level that most people on the internet don't know I know Jeremy in a way You know, I know the Jeremy that's not the god king I know him that's not the CEO. I really got to know him well when we were shooting Pen Dragon and I got to see him in his element, you know, singing and directing and, you know, producing this project that he's wanted to produce for 30 years. And that was a, you know, genuinely amazing and our relationship really developed there. But I also know Candace as a friend. She has been one of the most gracious mentors that I've ever had in this industry who has been such a guiding light, has been an incredible friend, she and George, you know, have welcomed me into their home time and time again, resources, connections.

1:24:36I think a lot of people look at her and see her as, you know, obviously she's like a fire brand and she's, you know, ready to go punch and fight. She's genuinely just a very sweet person and a wonderful friend. And so I know both of these parties, I know the personal side of it, I don't know the professional details. Is it difficult to navigate that though? You know, you've got to show up and be the bubbly, pretty girl talking about the thing and the New York beach day or whatever, but in the back of your mind, you've got, I'm in the midst of some fucking marital drama that weird professional marathon.

1:25:13It's kind of like in a much bigger sense, you have two friends they're dating and they break up. And it's like, how are you gonna navigate? We're still embroiled in all of the friend groups that overlap. Yes. No, it is. It's just tense. And it sucks because I think that, you know, daily wire is doing incredible things. Ben is doing incredible things. Candace is amazing. She's the best at what she does. She's incredible. And it sucks that we weren't, you know, that it wasn't going to be able to be together forever, that we weren't, you know, going to be the band of brothers. I think that she'll go off and do great things.

1:25:49I think daily wire will go off and do great things and that's kind of just where I have to sit. And again, I can't get into the details, because I don't know the details. I'm not in the C -suite. I don't know any of the legal things. And so I really just have to think of them as, you know, these are people that have been hurt. They're hurting because the relationship has fallen apart. I think a lot of people online don't see that side of it. It's like these are friends. That's really, really hard to navigate. That's one of the problems I think, it's very rare because people show up just to see the equivalent independent creator thing that they use to with news.

1:26:27The guy that does the six o 'clock news doesn't talk about the production problems that are going on behind the scenes or the fact that our internet just recently went down so we've actually had to get some local storage because the server, like, no, just tell me the fucking news. So there's a level of slickness and polish and professionalism that I think most people expect when they watch any kind of content. That changes if you're Sam Suleck and you're just videoing yourself and do you know that is? Right, okay, brilliant.

1:26:53It changes if you're him, but for the most part, you see an organization like you guys and there's still kind of some rules that have been ported across from mainstream media. But the thing that people don't realize or that I think might be useful even to kind of open the doors a little bit more for everyone is there's a whole side of operation going going on behind the scenes. There's runners and a team and a guy that handles hard drives and there's a dude that does the thumbnails and the uploads and sometimes they don't work and sometimes you're on holiday in the internet sound or whatever the fuck's going on.

1:27:25And the reason that that feels a bit icky, at least to me to talk about, is that it feels like you're molesting the process. It's supposed to be this sort of seamless brain to mouth to internet. This is the whole reason that everyone went to independent media in the first place. It's unencumbered. It's just thoughts and takes and all the rest of it. And this This is why we went here and didn't go. We don't want the polish. I don't need the fancy lights. I don't need the rest of the stuff. We go, yeah, but structurally, this shit needs to go from this to screen that you're watching on and there's a process in between and that means that there's contracts and there's employment law and there's negotiations.

1:27:59And there's human beings. There are human beings that you have personal relationships with and it makes it very, very complicated. Yeah, I think that's a great point and a lot of people don't get to see it. We saw this, absolutely saw this with Stephen Crowder and the entire, you know, the skirt was lifted up. There was no pants on underneath. Like everything got revealed to the world there. So yeah, you see, I know it's interesting. And again, that was a very personal relationship. I mean, he was a longtime friend of Jeremy and Benz. And so that was not just, ooh, pointing fingers at daily wire and then snapping back at Crowder and then all of that.

1:28:33I mean, these were longtime friends. It was a relationship that was broken. It's really interesting to see what's happened to Crowdrover the last year. Like a lot of people seem to have sort of turned his ex co -hosts. A couple of ex -girls. Yeah, I don't really know what's going on. I haven't been keeping it up. I saw a tweet about it today. I know that there's some update, some lawsuit. A second lawsuit, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. It's the more that you kind of get involved in that, the less that people actually take you legitimately. I think it's a good idea to try and stay clear of that as much as possible.

1:29:06and people can either come to you for the content and they can come to you for the drama about your content. You don't really get to pick one of the two, like Destiny had a massive problem with this, I think over the last year, that people stopped coming to it for his content and just started coming to him to find out what car crash he was fighting with this week. Like, who is it that he's going up against and what's going on with his love life and what's that thing that just happened over there? You go, dude. It's a great point. Fair play, but you don't really get to have it both ways. You either get to talk about the thing you're talking about or people get to talk about you.

1:29:33You don't really get to do both. Correct. Yeah, how do you decide what you want to talk about on the show? I Go on social media. That's really the The crux of it. I Spend a lot of time online. I'm pretty chronically online Which is hard. You need to have balance in your life but I Go through a TikTok Twitter Instagram. I see what's trending a lot of times the things that I'm really interested in and I feel like the episodes that, you know, these often don't do the best for the ones that I'm like, oh, I want people to see that I'm really interested in. It's connecting the dots about kind of the underbelly of social media.

1:30:14So this isn't like, oh, a celebrity did this. This isn't the Justin Timberlake got a DUI, sorry, which all obviously cover and talk about but the things that I love is I think I touched on this little earlier of like, okay, these trends are popping up on social media. They're not mega, mega viral, but a lot of women are talking about this, a lot of men are doing this. I'm seeing this commonality in the comment section. Why? So let me show you this and then let's tie it into here's an article about this from five years ago When did this start? What does that mean for our future on social media?

1:30:42How can I break this down and explain it to you? So those are my favorite episodes to do. I think people find those interesting because it's almost like a little video essay of like Hey, here's what's going on in the Gen Z, you know the underbelly of TikTok That does mean though that I have to I have to be in that crawl through the muck in the myer and feces I have to find the, like if you saw my messages to myself on TikTok, like when you send your self messages to like say them, that's how I say things. Oh my gosh, you would think that I was just absolutely manic. But I see something and I've gotten good at it at this point of like, that's unique.

1:31:13And I'll send it to myself. And then three days later, oh, I'm seeing it again. I knew that that was something boom, boom, boom. And then a week later when I have a slate of things, I'm like, you're like scrolling up through my messages to myself. Boom, I knew what I saved it. Like I can connect these dots. So it's a lot of digging online. And then sometimes, like the Justin Timberlake story, oh, let's talk about the fall of celebrity and what that means for his marriage and why is his wife on all of these talk shows talking about how she really doesn't like that he's on this tour and he really needs to rest with his, it's like, okay, so what's going on there?

1:31:45Like, is he not an active participating father? What's going on? So tying those together? And then of course, there's the more political current effects type news that I don't do often because I think it seems like you've leaned away. I've heard you say that you're actively becoming less and less interested in politics. I'm more interested in culture and how that feeds into politics. So rather than talking about Biden said, X, Y, Z, I would rather talk about a cultural issue and then kind of tie it into things that are happening. So it's like, you know, I'm seeing this online. People aren't buying houses.

1:32:19Gen Z is crying online because of their financial instability. Oh, let's talk about the economy and what you voted for. I would rather kind of circumvent it and go that way rather than go, here's a video about Biden's economy and the federal reserve and how they're f -ing us all over. I think it definitely triggers some sort of antibody responses from people if you open up with the politics side. Because, oh, if you're not on my side, then you're on the other side, which means that I don't get to listen to what you're going to say. Do you ever get sort of fatigued or exhausted having to do the newsworthy trend were the stuff.

1:32:49I know that you're an earnest person. It seems like you want to make things that matter. I don't know how many people are going to go back in six months and watch just in Timberlake's DIY or James Charles learning to sing. I know that that's kind of, you worried about how evergreen and how much sort of gameplay, click Newsworthy stuff versus I want to make a body of work that over time I look back on they go meaningful meaningful meaningful painful, made value, added value. Oh, I'm very concerned with that. And that's why over time, that was not the case at first. It was very current events. But you can go back to my first videos.

1:33:23And there are very, very few of them that I would say have stood the test of time. They're not evergreen. Very, very Newsy. And I intentionally moved away from that. It was actually kind of by accident, because I rarely skip a day of comment section. I would rather pre -record and have things going out just because with people who don't know, like the YouTube algorithm, you need to be posting at a certain rate. you don't want to screw up your algorithm. And so I would rather put in the work a week before I go on vacation and film at least one episode in advance or one episode every day. I usually do too.

1:33:54And post those and get those up. And so when I was doing those, those can't be current events. I can't be talking about what Biden said or what celebrity did XYZ. So I have to be thinking, okay, what is something that is actually relevant that is going on right now? That's kind of where that structure came from. Of how can I take something that is sort of going on that's bubbling, that's not a, ooh, I have five minutes to talk about this and get those million clicks and views, but I can bring it into a broader conversation. So that's it accidentally happened. I love this. This is so much more meaningful to me than having a dunk on a rib on a random Wednesday that nobody, you know, 100 ,000 people are going to watch it in the first, you know, four hours and then it's just going to go away because every other person on the right is talked about it and there's something else, you know, Biden's pooped his pants and other talking about that, whatever it is.

1:34:36Yeah. And so it all kind of happened accidentally. And so now I kind of strike a balance because I do two shows a day, a lot of content. And those all can't be just at the volume that we're doing, those all can't be evergreen. That's like, I would not be able to sustain that. There's not enough philosophy to do 14 shows. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's not, and I don't think I have enough time as one individual to be in the underbelly of TikTok. draining substance from the most disgusting social media platform. Yeah, literally that's me. Yeah. Like, please give me something. And so I mixed them up. And so, you know, I'll do, oh, you know, here's three episodes about, you know, these things that have happened in the news.

1:35:20And then here's three others that I think are much more substantial. And there are things interestingly that I've been surprised by where I've done something that's more newsy. And I look back and it's like, how does this have four million people? and views now. But something else has come up like this person is back in the news, they go back, they find the video, so it sometimes can surprise you. But I want to add substance to some of the most vapid and superficial things online. Like if I can do that, that I'm doing my job right. If I can take a Justin Timberlake story that I told my house about, I was going to talk about this.

1:35:51He was like, that is the most idiotic story. Like, why are you going to talk about this? I don't want to hear about Justin Timberlake. And I'll often run my stories by him. He was like, this is so dumb. And then the episode did really well. And he listened to it. He was like, yeah, you actually had a great take that was so interesting about their marriage. I'm like, that if I've, you know, gotten you to change your mind about it, if I can pull some substance to spark a conversation about marriage and parental priorities and even just, you know, for five seconds about, oh my god, in 2024, call a freaking Uber, don't drive drunk.

1:36:22I shouldn't have to say that. But if I can say that to some of the 18 -year -olds to watch me, then I've done something right. There's an idea from internet marketing, which is, sell people what they want, teach them what they need. Yeah. And it's kind of the same in content creation, which is sort of like click for the rage, stay for the insights. And it's unfortunate that there's a game that needs to be played. But I think striking the balance is very important. We're consciously thinking about, like, de -limbically hijacking the channel, not that it really is that much at all. But that's something that I'm always thinking about, like, how can I get, How can I strike the balance between making sure that the numbers are there that this important guest or message or whatever gets out to the requisite number of people But also do it in a way that doesn't feel cheap or tacky and you know, there's an eck there and the bottom line for any Audience member that doesn't like the direction that our channel is going in in terms of the way that they frame stuff If it's the content, then there's a bigger problem.

1:37:15Yeah, the way that they frame it. It's like dude Create is just make what you click on. Yeah, you know, like if you don't like it click on something else Yeah, that goes back to meeting people where they are. And it's like if my strategy of starting with, you know, what people wanna click on what they're interested in and then, like you said, getting into what they need to hear, that's not working. I would, you know, change the strategy. But my generation does wanna know what's on TikTok. They wanna know what this influencer did that's so insane. They wanna know like whether this viral woman on TikTok is actually like an absent mother, or if she's real, they wanna know what Justin Timberly did.

1:37:47And so they're going to click on that. So it's like, why wouldn't I start with that and bring them in and meet them where they are. What have you learned since working with Ben? Oh gosh. Ben is... I've never met anybody who was so good at absorbing information and then bringing it out to the masses. Like, there is, I cannot comprehend... Like, if you... You know, if something that's a Supreme Court does, um, something that Biden does, you know, politics can be very muddy to a lot of people how legislation actually works. Like in my, you know, people have been for a lot of different reasons. The reason why I loved him when I was coming up, as I was listening to him, was because he made it digestible.

1:38:30He brought it to normal people and said, here, let me tell you what's actually going on. Let me break it down for you. And he can do that in five seconds. And that is so admirable. And I think that that critical thinking and his ability to dissect it is such a great skill. He also works harder than anybody I know. I mean, he is like constantly improving, constantly writing books. It's like I was in Miami with him back last summer. And he comes in and he does the show and he'll begrudgingly do the social media things that his team wants him to do. And then immediately he's going into an interview.

1:39:03He's flying here to meet with this person. You know, in his off time, he's writing three new books. And oh, I want to go create this venture. I'm going to call Jeremy about doing this thing. And he does it all between the hours of his kids or at school. and he said to me, my kids don't know that I work. They have my work does not in -frange upon my time with them. I drop them off, I pick them up, and then I spend time with them and I put them to bed and they may be all right some more. But I mean, he is so dialed in, works out right in the middle of the day. It's a well -oiled machine, his whole operation down there in Boga.

1:39:33It's fully intentional, jeep, condensed, which I think it is very easy for this job, and that's something that I'm working on and something that Jordan and I kind of talked about of, you know, in this transition into, you know, being a wife wanting to be a mother, what is that going to look like? How are you going to be able to do that? This job, it feeds out into your personal life. It feeds out into, you know, this is not a nine to five. Not that it's easier or harder. It's just very, very different. It's not something that you can just leave at home. Like, again, I'm constantly online. I'm constantly searching for stories.

1:40:07If I'm out just at the grocery restore. Can I be off the clock? People know who I am. They're going to come off and they're going to talk to me. I'm very aware of who I am and what I represent. And that's always on. The only place that's off is when I'm at home, when my husband and my ox, I'm like, I'm just like that ends. And so I think that Ben is on a very good job of setting those boundaries. And I think, especially for younger creators, people coming up, like that is a skill that you have to learn. Those are lines you have to draw in the sand and it's difficult to do that boundaries are so hard.

1:40:37I don't know anything about his fat. I know he's got 85 children or something and his wife's a doctor and beyond that, I don't know anything. I think that purposefully making a private life boring or just opaque at the very least is a really, really good strategy. Same for Rogan. I know he's got daughters and a wife and a golden retriever and beyond that, I don't know what they're studying, whether they're at school, what the wife does for work. I don't know any of those things. And, yeah, I mean, Mary Harrington has got this idea of a digital hijab, where she basically says, there's certain areas of yourself that you should keep from the internet.

1:41:13And it definitely seems like Ben has worked very hard, given the amount of scrutiny and the amount of people that have got a problem with it. Agree with them, disagree with them. But I think that if someone wants to keep their private life private, that should be something which is respected. Yeah, it's very hard to do. I mean, it's like the, like, all the strisin effect, or the harder you try to keep something private, the more probably it will become, which is, but I think he's done a very good job of it. Well, also not like, this is a secret, nobody like, nobody know what I'm doing. Which creates its own kind of sort of a desire.

1:41:46Yeah, it's just, nope, this is what I do. I go home, I don't talk about it. I got a lot of flak for keeping my relationship private for as long as I did, because I didn't know. Why did you get flak about it? People, they felt like they were owed information about my dating life, I think. Meanwhile, Alex Cooper is able to get in a long -term relationship while talking about the issue of casual sex for four years Get married says that the proposal was brilliant and a rose garden got down in one knee and there's just this wake of Hundreds of thousands of goals who've been like it's insane Conned by this she never got The requisite sort of call to arms that I think was needed for that like this chick who's been the forefront of a big I like one of her first three episodes is about the Gug, Gug, 5 ,000, like some blowjob, like episode.

1:42:32Meanwhile, she is secretly having a relationship that turns into an engagement that turns into a marriage and it's so beautiful and I really, really feel like, what the fuck was all of that? What was this part of the work that you just did? And that was one of the bits where I thought, you know, you want to talk about female privilege, no one called her to account for that, no one. Yeah, and I think that's not people put me in the same camp as that but I think that they Probably felt all of those episodes about blood jobs that you just keep on doing I Know all my you know

1:43:08So I understand that they you know, it's the internet My generation influencers and my generation they give a lot of their private life They have a lot of access to us. And I made sure, when I started the show when I created the channel, I didn't, you know, I was drawing a line in the sand with parts of my life and parts of my personal life. I didn't want to obviously get access to everything. But I wanted them to know who I was as an individual outside of just me sitting in front of a microphone. I think that's really, really important, especially if you're trying to bring people over from the other side, being able to level with them.

1:43:38So I'm not just a face on the screen. I'm a, you know, a human being who's going through what you're going through. and I wanted to make sure that I did that, but there were also parts of my life that I wanted to keep private. And so, I only said that I was with somebody when he proposed. And I posted a photo of our engagement. I was like, well, now this is real. And I had a lot of people, I still have memes on my, anytime I post on Instagram. It's men still posting. It's overbodies. Who's gone? Yes. It's kind of become a... It's overbodies. Like, Trend was so good. Sneakho so upset. Yeah, it was funny.

1:44:13It was good. But um, so I understand that they felt like they had access to me And then there was such a significant part of my life that I didn't share, but it was very intentional It's also not central to your content. No exactly And I didn't and contrary to what Alex Cooper was doing I wasn't saying you know, don't have a serious relationship. Don't get married all the while I'm like he he he he he he he I I also wasn't I think this might be kind of where that hurt came in was that I believe that there were men out there who watched my content that felt like maybe they had a chance or it's like this was the ideal.

1:44:48I don't see those comments. I don't want to say that without being like, oh, tooting my own horn, it's just kind of that's what I saw and I've been told that. As I think they felt betrayed in that regard of like, she let us, you know, but I never, and never intentionally did that. Like I never said, oh, you know, you could have a chance to date me if you wanted to. It was just like you kind of, you know, you had this idea of me. But I'm very, very glad that I kept it private. I think it's very difficult to date and have a relationship when you're a public figure. It's very hard to kind of pick and choose what stays private.

1:45:18And as we were talking about at the beginning with dating, it's hard. It's even harder when you're a public figure and when you don't really have any experience doing this and you know, you're meeting somebody in person for the first time. It's my first time being famous too. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's just, you know, there was not a roadmap for that. There's a, there's an equivalent, I think, for everyone. You know, it doesn't matter whether you're in some ivory tower behind Benke's production door talking, talking to a few million people, or you're just a normal person with 3000 followers on Instagram.

1:45:47If you stop posting a lot about your relationship, other people will become invested in it in a way that it disorganizes and it skews the way that you see yourself and those expectations. In the priorities, it's very like I, I mean, the people who are just dating in relationships and start these like relationship TikToks. There's a, like their couple TikToks, like they have joint accounts. Okay. And they do like relationship content. And not like, here's how to get a good man a date. It's just like, we're doing couple of trends. And this is us going our day to day lives. Like there's one, there's a big breakup recently on TikTok.

1:46:22The crew name is Tiana. His name is Cori or Cody is an NFL player. They just got engaged, but people have been able to track their entire relationship on TikTok. And they always do, you know, trend. She's at every NFL game. They were like, ooh, the, you know, the TikTok it couple. They broke up right after they got engaged. Nobody knows what happened. Drama, the, I mean, TikTok blew up for days and are now attacking him, attacking her, what happened, saying, making up all these lies, saying that he was an abuser or actually he cheated on her. So now she has to come on and say, that didn't happen.

1:46:54Sometimes relationships just fall apart, but now you have literally millions, about millions of people, deep diving, what happened? but I mean, I do that. Cause you brought me into your life. And now I see you move. I'm invested. I know. I'm like, I'm not gonna know. I can't make tell me to not be invested. Yeah. Watch what we're doing. But now stop watching what we're doing. Yes, there was a guy who made a video. Car about what we're doing. But now stop, car. Yeah, there was a guy made a video about this. And it was like, if you're going to be in a public relationship and get us invested, if you break up, we deserve to know why.

1:47:18Because otherwise, we're gonna go dig. And I was like, I agree with that. Like, just say it. But I agree with that. I'm also like the person that's on the other side of the camera. I'm like, I don't want to do that. So that's why you do have to be very careful about like what, what door am I going to open up? So I like slightly opened it up. When we got engaged based on his comfort level and he kind of wanted to like tip to he's very, very private does not want to be on camera does not care. That's one of the things I love most about him is he does not care that I'm some public figure. When we started dating, he would intentionally never watch my show.

1:47:48Never. I always feel like, I don't want to do you like the show? Like do you support me? I don't want to think of you as the girl on the screen. I want to get to know Brett that I go on dates with, who I get to spend time with, off camera, another thing that he said that I just thought was so glad he did this. He was like, I want to make sure that we can hold a conversation and talk about things that you haven't just talked about on your show. It would have been so easy for me just to watch your show and we go on a dinner date later that night and go, oh, so you were talking about XYZ and you did another episode about that.

1:48:19What did you think? That was just kind of a crutch. I was like, I wanted to make sure that this prep for the date was watching your episode. Yes, yeah, like I'm going to get ready. So he never watched it. And I'm so grateful for that. And so he, you know, you know, I don't, he never set out to like, date a public figure or want to be with one. And so I wanted to be very careful and respectful, like respectful to him and what he wants and what he's getting into by being with me. And so then by cracking that order up and I saw the stress and effect, you know, in real time, for the hadn't shown his face, I hadn't talked about him, had not said his name, anything about him just said, you know, fallen love with this guy, love him to death, I'm getting married.

1:48:58Didn't episode about it on a comment section where I just said, you know, this has happened. This is why I kept it private. I intend to keep it, you know, private living forward. Oh my God, they just latched it. It was like the internet detectives just went. They found out who he was within two months. And it was not like, oh, here's his LinkedIn with his photo that I think is like, you know, he looks so handsome. Whatever it was like photos of him as a sophomore in college dressed up as a hot dog at some frat party. And here he is like dancing on stage when he's the best man at his friends wedding.

1:49:28He's definitely had a couple beers and he's like on stage dancing. And they're like, oh, look at this, you know, whatever. They immediately found him, found his family, created stories about him. They were so many Reddit posts of like, you know, well, he's gonna destroy our life. I know these kinds of guys and they knew nothing about him. And so at that point, we had a conversation, I talked with the guys on my security team because at that point, I was genuinely concerned because they had found out so much about him. And we made the decision together. I was like, I would rather be ahead of this.

1:49:59And you know, you're the person that I love and I wanna protect you and I wanna kind of present you to the world. Which sounds so weird. And it's so odd that you know, you kind of have to think about that and they did. And so when we got married, my friends who run the conservator, which is just an amazing digital magazine, kind of trying to be the alternative to Teen Vogue in 17. And I mean, honestly, even not even Teen Vogue, just Vogue, they do really, really high caliber stuff. The girls who run that are good friends of mine. And so I asked them, you know, will you cover the wedding? Because I know people are gonna be interested.

1:50:30They're gonna have questions about, you know, what dress to do, where would I do whatever? And they're gonna wanna know about him. and I want this to be done in a very tasteful way. The represents our values and what we wanted this day to commemorate and why we did our wedding the way that we did and then share information about him just so that it's like, it's settled, basically. So it's out there, no more strison effect. No more line under it. Digging. So interesting that there's this sort of sweet spot between not enough information, not enough means that people are gonna go digging. Too much information means they start to get invested.

1:51:02And there's this weird habitable Goldilocks's own in the middle. I'm not just staying there. It's enough to be satisfying and not so much that it's no longer boring. Yes. And, yeah, I mean, it must be interesting as well, having the power dynamic the other way. You know, typically it's guy, out front, famous, famous man with, like, you know, sort of humble wife at home type thing. And it's very, yeah. This one's the other way around. I think it's... It's an interesting dynamic, but it's not weird and it hasn't been a problem. I think a lot of people assume that it is. Also I talk about traditional gender roles and trad and so people look at me and they're like, well, you don't have that because you work.

1:51:45Your husband's not in front of the camera. He doesn't work. He owns his own business. He's very successful. He's just private. Just because I'm out front and he's not like our relationship at home, again, separating the Brett online from the Brett that goes home to him every night. Like, that's very traditional. Like he's still the head of our household. Like I still, I mean, revere and respect him, trust him to lead me and lead our family. It's traditional in that sense. And that I think is more important than having him, you know, be the more superficial figure. In like an image like aesthetic of a traditional.

1:52:18What have you learned or given the fact that you've got two women for every one man completing for you, a US college degree by 2030. You've got women out earning men in their 20s as well. What have you learned about navigating, even if he is professionally successful on his own? There is a odd sort of turning of the polarity in some ways. What advice have you got for guys and girls that are trying to date? I'll be married in a situation where part of the power dynamic has changed a little bit more. Again, I think it goes back to basic respect and who you are when you leave your jobs at the door and that you do need to leave your work at the door.

1:52:59I think that you should be for women, you should be looking for a man who can provide not just like, oh, he can buy me all the fancy things that, you know, I want whatever he that he can emotionally provide and that he's stable. I also think women are less willing these days and this sounds bad. Maybe you have a better way to say it, but like a man in progress. Under construction. Under construction. Yes. And there's all of those stats about women mature faster than men. And so if you're marrying or dating somebody around your age, it's quite common for a woman to be a little bit ahead, even just mature wise.

1:53:37It's matured wise. It's where I think have grace and understanding and pick somebody who is ambitious and who is willing to take big swings for you. And for men, be willing to show that, like if there's a type of woman again that you want, it's like, what can you do to get to that level? Even if you're not there yet, that shouldn't stop you. It's like be willing, be bold at a young age when you don't have any other responsibilities. You don't have to live in a certain place. You don't have me to provide for a family yet. Like what risks calculated risks? can you take for a major, major payoff?

1:54:10What can you do to set yourself up for success? This is the time to start a business. Be bold, don't just be like the cog in the machine. If you want something more like back to the time to do it, and then prove to this woman or this partner, if you're a girl, that you have those abilities, I guess, in that ambition. That's what a lot of women, I think, are signaling off is a man's capacity for growth. If that wasn't the case, Why would the starving artist guitarist that sleeps on his friend's couch be attractive? Well, the reason he's attractive is that he's kind of like a penny stock, but I see his talent and I see his artistic ability.

1:54:48And the ruthless thing, I think, for professionally successful women is that that same talent is not valued by guys. But she might become a really successful business woman in future. It's like the 21 year old barista from Starbucks, that's a bit more agreeable and emotionally stable wins every time. So I think you had educating guys and girls on what the other side is looking for. I've been talking a lot about women cultivating receptiveness. So that's so good. So in sort of the aristocracy era in Britain, ladies would drop a handkerchief in front of a man that they sort of wanted to come. It's like, Look, I know that you might have a pro -changity and kind of stupid.

1:55:36Like here's the least subtle cue that I can give. Again, going back to, we don't know how to do it. Men and women. Like I remember my mom called up one of my friends who was just having a hell of a time dating. And this is one of the reasons is one of the stories that I tell where men are like, you know, women don't want us. There's no good women. I'm like, they're my friends. They're out there. They also don't know what they're doing. And they are just doing a matchmaking service. I would love to, I don't know how to do it, but we're thinking about it. putting something together. I actually really started thinking about that when Jordan came to Bridgestone here.

1:56:08And I had all of these young people coming up to me because all the daily wire folks went and so we were walking through Bridgestone and so all of these young people, I was like, there are thousands of you here, all of you young men in your Jordan Peterson suits and all of these girls here, I know that you're single. I was like, how can I get you to meet? I was like, oh my gosh, you're here. This one opportunity, please go find each other. I gosh, where was I going with that? Your friend is having a nightmare. My mom called her and said, you need to, like, do you know how to flirt? Do you know how to say, because she was like, nobody like, I go on these dates and they don't kiss me or they don't move forward.

1:56:41It doesn't text me after like, what am I doing? We can't, she's super cute. She's really smart. Comes with great family, great values, you know, very agreeable. But we learn on dates. Yep. On dates, she would just sit at the opposite end of the table, don't touch, nothing. And she was like, well, I don't want to be promiscuous. My mom was like, it is not promiscuous to brush his shoulder to like, oh, scoot over a little closer. Don't sit on the opposite end of the table. If he's trying to show you on your phone, go over to the other side of the table and sit next to him. Like, why? She was like, oh, I'm so scared.

1:57:08I didn't know that that's what I had to do. Check me to learn peanut escalation. They should have done some pick -up audissary. Yes. So yeah, again, it's on both sides. There's a lot to learn. The handkerchief one is great. And also what you said about, you know, the agreeable barista at Starbucks. If she makes eye contact, if she's sweet, if she flirts. if you're so genuine interest in you, like that's what men are going to be interested in. Not the girl boss who's so focused on like, oh, I've made this much money and I've done this, and I'm getting to my bag. I was gonna be like, ooh, let's.

1:57:37Scary and intimidating. Yes. I mean, in a post -me too world as well, I think it's important for girls to realize that if no meant no previously, anything that isn't a fuckier is a runaway for me as fast as possible. So, you know, there's still a, like, carryover, latent carryover from Wyman Love Bitches, treat him like you don't like him. That world of playing hard to get. But playing hard to get now from a girl to a guy, for the guy, is just perceived as, exactly, like this is a headline waiting to happen. So I think everyone just re -centering their expectations is probably a really good place to start.

1:58:20Yeah, I agree. I've heard you say that you were socially awkward as a kid. Oh, so socially awkward. Is the an advantage to being a little weird when you're younger? Absolutely. I That's kind of one of my rebuttals to people saying, you know, oh don't homeschool your kids because They're gonna turn out weird. They're not gonna be normal. Look at the normal kids these days Do you really want your kids to turn out like that to be like gender -confused? and I was just hooked, hooking up with people on drugs mentally ill, illiterate. No, I would much rather be a little bit of an oddball. I was never socially weird and that I shouldn't say never.

1:59:01After I'd rather died, really struggled with being social, working through all of that. It's just very, very difficult. Performing really got me out of my shell. Again, I came alive, being on stage. After that, I became the weird homeschooled musical theater horse girl. I had literally every stereotype stacked against me, humanly possible. I actually asked my husband about that and I said, if you had told your private school across playing self at 15 years old, they would end up marrying again, the homeschooled theater kid horse girl, Moody of set. He was like, I've been out of it horrified. So I was weird in that regard.

1:59:39I always marched to the beat of my own drum. I was once I got through all of my social, I don't want to call it anxiety, but just my trepidation at birth. Oh, goodness. Yes, after my brother died, and that was more so environmental rather than me not being social and being shy. Once I made it through that, my social awkwardness was just that I was unique. I could talk to a tree. I've never met a stranger, even from a young age, or nearly eight years old, and that I was one of the benefits of being in Hollywood and working from a young age. I don't think it needs to be in Hollywood, but making sure that young people are working and have some kind of responsibility is so that they interact with adults.

2:00:23They interact with people that are older than them. I think one of the biggest drawbacks of the traditional school system is that students will interact with their teachers. They'll have a one off adult in the room, but the majority of people that they interact with on a daily basis are all their peers. Kids learn from kids. Yeah, and it is not only just in their same age recupit, it is from the same school system, the same county, the same neighborhood, or if you're at a private school, it's still at the same town, same background, the same crop of more fluent kids that are going to this private school.

2:00:52With homeschooling, I had a complete opposite experience. I would go and I would take ballet classes and I would meet girls from every different part of Tennessee. And then I was in L .A. and I had progressed more. So I was dancing with people that were five, six years older than me and had to interact with them I had to hold my own when I was working as an actor, you know You are working with adult directors writers producers people who are applying your parents They're really looking at you as a kid because you are an employee Just being hired to do yes, it's like we know we're not playing your games.

2:01:23It's like you're here to work Know your lines that responsibility is huge You know also when I was homeschooling like I was in gymnastics So then I was with a different set of people. I did my tennis not pickable and And my tennis camp with a bunch of other students, I, you know, my parents went to two different churches going back to their incompatibility. But I would, you know, have two different groups of people at churches. My mom was very, very, very engaged in philanthropy and working with nonprofits and so I would go with her. And I would, you know, volunteer with her, contribute, be around people from vastly different backgrounds.

2:01:58Me and like every Christmas, we would adopt a different homeless shelter in China, Newcastle. So not only was I interacting with, oh, the other kids whose parents are able to afford gymnastics or dance, but I was like, no, I'm around the children of the women at the matter, women shelter, and being able to hold a conversation and empathize. So I was weird, but I was very, very social and more socially advanced than my peers in that. What would be your advice to someone who's suffering with a bit of social anxiety or maybe a parent of a child who's got social anxiety and wants to become better socially.

2:02:32As patient zero, I couldn't communicate particularly well for a little while. If stepping out and doing pantomime isn't the solution. I mean, I don't want to go do an improv class. I feel like this isn't a good answer. And so let me know what you think. But you just have to start. It's kind of like, again, going back to the dating, going back to working out, you do 10 pushups a day. It's like, again, if you are at Starbucks, can you say an extra two words to the brista? Perfect example you gave. Doesn't have to be for the, it doesn't need to be a means to an end for dating. It can just be to get yourself comfortable.

2:03:09Jordan talks about this all the time of exposure therapy. Do exposure therapy for yourself. That actually became a huge trend on TikTok, funnily enough, of people saying, I have a problem with rejection. And so they would do a few different creators did this. And so they would put themselves into a situation where they were going to get rejected every single day, Going into Walmart, hey, can I go into the back room and just look around? No. There's a, if you Google 100 days of rejection. Yes. Yeah. 100 days of rejection is 10 years old now, but it's not asked for a free coffee, ask a person on the street if they'll give you 100 bucks.

2:03:40Yeah. They're just random, ever escalating things. Yes. But yeah, I mean, overcoming rejection, overcoming that fear, I think, by purposefully putting yourself into it, and it's the same as the low stakes conversation that we were talking about earlier on that when you don't care about the outcome, it makes going into it that the stakes are way lower. There's no pressure because you didn't expect this to go well and then they're not going to give you a free coffee or maybe they'll give you a discount or maybe they won't laugh at you or maybe you won't die. They won't call the police. That's the biggest thing.

2:04:08That's the biggest thing is like you have survived that. You have that interaction. You were okay nothing in your life fell apart. You can move forward. And it's also a habit. like I am, I'm a better, more confident person when I'm doing the show every single day, when I am sitting in front of a camera having to articulate myself having to interact with people. If I, in a rut, like I don't think I could ever like take a full month off and never, you know, do the show. Like I always need to be doing something, writing, working, you know, engaging my brain in some capacity because you just turn inwards.

2:04:45And even like the most social of us, I'm very extroverted. I literally talk for living. But if I take away the structure of having to show up every day and do this and put myself out there, like if I've taken, when we were shooting a pen dragon in Budapest, there were a couple of weeks when I did not do the show because I was, I was on pen dragon, me were flying back and forth between Hungary and Italy and you know, you will not be able to film for this amount of days. And I came back and I was like, oh, I feel clunky. How do I say this? Because I was so, even though I was communicating and I was working, I was saying somebody else.

2:05:16Different rhythms. Yeah. What does a what does a typical day look like for you? So I wake up around 545 and I have one of those like hatch alarm like sunset alarm clocks, which I love so it eases me into the morning. Get up on weekdays. I don't often eat breakfast, which is a problem and I should work on that and it's usually like a quick grab and go once I get to the office, they keep us stocked up, which is great. But I get in the car. I have a long commute now. I try to beat traffic. I also like the solace of coming into the office when nobody else is there and just being able to fully focus on the show.

2:05:56So, you spend more time, do you get in? I actually end up getting there at anywhere between 720 and 745. And then I don't film the show until 930. And it used to be that Matt Walsh would get there before I do. Now, I think he has an office at home that he can like go into, but it was kind of his private time. He has six kids. He was like, I need to be able to get up in the morning and just fully, both of us write the book of our show in the morning before we go. I think Ben doesn't know before, Michael, I think does it the night before, but Matt and I, I think, perform best when it's fresh. Yes.

2:06:30And even if I've written a book of it that I before, like I'll often do the outline, I have the story in place. I would say 95 % of the time. I know what I'm going to be talking about, but I come in and it's like the finishing touches. Is there anything you want? What does that look like? Is this a Google Doc? Yes. Is this and it's outlines, it's bullet points, it's notes, links. Yes, so I start with bullet points and links. Go through all the stories. I'll often pull comments first because I don't want to be in the habit of picking and choosing the comments to shape the story. And sometimes I will do that and it's like, I want to prove a point like, okay, this is happening here's an example of somebody saying this.

2:07:04But for the most part, I want the actual comment section to drive the narrative. and then off of that all, like bounce off, here's this, let's pull this in. Start with the story, go find the comments, put it in the Google Doc, links, comments, here's the extra context that I'm gonna bring in, and then I usually go through, and at the beginning it's like, here's my thesis statement and my conclusion, that's what I start with. It's what I was an English major in college. It's like writing an essay, but it's a script. And so I know what I wanna get across, and then I take the content that I've pulled into the Google Doc and I'm kind of like, work it.

2:07:39So like, does this make sense going here? Or should I hit this point first? And then it makes, you know, it's stronger to bring this in later. It's all story structuring. Again, like in essay, just, you know, this paragraph come first. It's the, you know, what we all learn in high school of like, you have the hamburger with your two buns and you've got the meat in the middle. And then I fill it out in some episodes are more written out than others if there are ones that there's a lot of technicalities if I'm talking about a lot of data, if it's a more sensitive issue, I don't want to waste time in the studio going like, oh, you know.

2:08:12What is that thing? Yes, I write and can you go check this? Can you pull this data? Oh, I didn't like how I said this. I want to make sure like a fits, you know, sensitive. Like I just did one about Instagram's latest scandal that Wall Street Journal did report on. We're in to them. I mean, it's just the worst meta is the worst for children to be on. A new report from Wall Street Journal just came out and said that not only are people to one of the age of 18 Fed sexual content, they are fed more sexual content than adults on the platform. If you have a like under 18 account, if you say you're 13, 14 years old, you are fed a higher percentage of sexual content than adults.

2:08:49They know this, their internal reports say this, most of your journal found it, and then it was corroborated by internal employees, met up time and time again, is saying, you know, we're protecting kids, we're protecting kids, a year ago in 2023, I did an episode literally almost a year to the day, Another Wall Street report, Wall Street Journal report, came out again about Instagram that their algorithm was helping connect a ring of pedophiles and that they were pushing child porn through and that they were doing nothing about it. And so meta comes out constantly. You know, nobody out of the age of 16 gets fed sexual content.

2:09:22This never happens. We have systems in place they don't. Like they're being sued by the AG in New Mexico for this exact thing. They've gone, you know, before Congress to deal with this. So anyway, it's a very, very - Hence subject matter, not just because I want to get it right, but also because I know that I have a younger audience, I know that I have parents to watch with their kids. The innocence of children is so vitally important to me, and I think that it is something that our society has just completely forgotten about and doesn't seem to care about. You swear, I've ever heard you swear.

2:09:54Oh, I do, yeah. Do you? Yeah. My mother wishes I didn't, but I do. All right, so you've got that 39, 49, 45 record to go? Yeah, so I put all that together. It depends on the episode, whether it's more written out than other. So again, like that one was, you know, I want to make sure I'm hitting every single thing on make sure I'm saying this and I don't want to waste my words. I would rather speak less and make sure that it is very specific, so I'm not going to just improv it. At the beginning of comment section, when we first started the show, I had no script. I would just pull the topics and it was just me riffing.

2:10:28It took a long time. It was cool. And I think I'm glad that I started that way because it got me into a better habit of, Can I think on my feet? Can I speak on my feet? But now I want to make sure that it's very... I'm punching when I speak. So I work on that for an hour, but the finishing touches on there adapt the story if need be, if some new development has happened overnight, because a lot of things happen at night on the internet because that's when people are awake, not sleeping, spending those extra two hours on the internet. And then I go into a hair and makeup and do that for about an hour and then go into the show at 9 .30 and then we film anywhere from 9 .30 to 11.

2:11:06And then after that, it really depends on... And that's both segments? Mm -hmm, yep. After you're then backed back. And then we'll do reactions that go on YouTube shorts. I'll have a social team come in and they'll say, hey, you know, you have, you know, you keep being tagged in this video on TikTok, you wanna stitch it and react to it. So I'll put a phone in front of me and I'm like, oh, okay, this is crazy and then I react to it. I'll also take that time if I have social media things that I want to do independently. I usually do that right after the show. And then after that, it really depends on, you know, do you have meetings?

2:11:39You have to meet with your team about a new video that you're doing, a new off -the -clock video or strategy meeting. You have to meet PR about this, or do you need to go talk to Jeremy about pen dragon. Do I have a live stream for, on daily wire, we do all access lives. Just so you're from your member, then you get to come to a live stream with us and, you know, unbridled access, all access. So after that 11 o 'clock hour, it's very up in the air. And so sometimes I'm done and I get to go home and work on the farm and work on the script for the next day. And sometimes I'm down in Nashville until 6 p .m.

2:12:13working on whatever it is they need me to do. How much time you caught up doing admin operation stuff emails back and forth like any of that bullshit? Used to be a lot more not very much anymore. My admin stuff is more so high level things with my team of strategy. Let's pitch this, let's try this, could we get this person? It's usually me communicating to them what I want. And then they're like, all right, we'll go and execute it or talking with ad sales. But I really want this brand, could we adapt this, could we do this, could we figure out a way to fit them in? It's a very creative, cool stuff.

2:12:47What's an evening look like? Go home. I usually cook dinner for Alex and I and we will work on projects that we have at the house. So we just bought this farm and so you know, he's out every day building fences, mending things. We should eat in more but we love going out to eat and my producer actually lives very close to me and so we spend a lot of time with her and her husband which I love. So we have a pretty vibrant social life. I try to get a workout in before I leave Nashville, again, just so that everything, both of us, do Alex tries to get it done before I get home so he kind of knows, all right, this is the long day for you.

2:13:31Like, can I go work out at five instead of three or whatever. So we try to get all of that stuff done so that when we get home, it's just like we actually have time together. Yeah, it really depends on the day. What time is bedtime if you're getting up at 5 .45? Oh gosh, I would love it to be like 8 .30. By 8 .30 you can't get me out of the house. It is rare if it's like, Brett you want to go out and go. I mean, a couple of weeks ago my friends are like, let's go line dancing and we got there at 9 and it was like, oh gosh, this is a stretch. It's especially without living farther away. It's like it's now, I'm, you know, I've got an hour drive back home from this place.

2:14:06But usually around 8 .30 or 9, Brett is moisturized with her tallow. She is in her pajamas. She is in bed either reading working on the show do not move her do not touch her She's not getting out to go to dinner anytime past 830 And then usually like actually asleep by 10 or 11 But I am like in the confines of my home by 830 and don't that's like a sacred time I haven't heard you talk about faith all that much What how big of a role does that play in your life? It grows by the day, which kind of surprises me actually. That was not something that I expected. My father is a piscopalian, and so he loves high church.

2:14:52I don't know what that is. That sounds like a diet that people wear are the only fish. Oh, yes, and pescadarian, yes, very similar. The way that it is often described in colloquial terms is like Catholic light. It is become sadly and much to his sadness of very, very progressive denomination. Like, if you're driving your own Nashville and you see pride flags and trans flags, it's probably the Episcopalians with their female priests. So, he is very, very Episcopalian. My mom has kind of wavered in her faith. No real denomination. And we went to like a very hippie -dippy church. I would go back and forth between very structured high church.

2:15:32and then she went to a church called Unity. And it was like there were Christians there, there were Jewish people there, people who were Buddhist. I mean, you just went there and you basically prayed and they would read from the Bible. It was just, it was very, very super hippie. And I saw growing up, spending a significant portion of my childhood in Tennessee. I saw very stereotypical Southern Christians, which I hate saying. But I saw people that made their faith more of an identity and a badge of honor than something they actually believed in were walking. I saw a lot of hypocrisy, especially in my extended family of people who I was told are the, you know, they are the best Christians.

2:16:14Like they, you know, really walk their faith as a themari. Why do you treat our family like this and why do you act like this? And so I kind of left that behind when we, my mom and I moved to Los Angeles, which we went back and forth I would spend half the year with her there, half the earth my dad at home. I kind of all fell apart. We never really went to church there. But one friend in Pollywood, growing up in this my like child actor friend group. One also from the south was a question. He was the only one that didn't have his faith stopped out of him, who stayed very consistent, who walked the walk every single day.

2:16:51And he started bringing me to church with him when I was about 16 years old. There was a lot going on with my family, my parents divorced, was in full swing at that point. I have a brother that gets a frenic. He was homeless at the time and I was like taking care of him at 16. It was a lot of stress. And I started doing therapy at that time, which was helpful in some ways, but this friend of mine was like, you need something else. And so I'm going to take whether you like it or not, we're going to go to church in Sunday morning, I would sit in some of these sermons and just like a ball. Not understanding what was being told to me.

2:17:29I didn't understand the context of what they were talking because I never read the Bible. In full, like, you know, I'd been in Sunday school, but I never sat down. I had never done the work. And would just be like, I just, I'm missing something. And even then, I didn't like fully take the step. But that was kind of always in the back of my head. And then, what to college, there was no religious, anything, no faith at UCLA, at least in my world. And very little in Hollywood, obviously, and came to Nashville and was again just, ugh, like, I'm back in the place that left such a bad taste in my mouth about faith and Christianity, specifically.

2:18:12But I dipped my toe back in the water and I've made it more of a And a integral part of my life, it is humbling in so many ways because it's such a journey. There's so much that I think that I have to learn and so many that are all like leaps of faith that you have to take. I think, you know, a lot of people talk about, you know, the husband is the head of the household. You look to him. I think it's been really wonderful that Alex was taking that we were on a similar journey of, you know, he was raised in a determination that he wasn't really like, I don't know if I'm going to stick with this.

2:18:48And so when we started dating, he was on a similar, like, I'm going to find what I believe where I land, I'm going to find good people. And so it was very easy to slip into that and go, you know, I can trust you, follow you or on this together. So that's kind of so where I am. I went through, I did some R CIA, which is the education that you go through to convert to Catholicism, because it was really, really very akin to the Episcopalian church that I would go to with my father. I love the structure, love the high church, without the wokeness obviously and the kind of compromising on their values and what the Bible says and what the church believes.

2:19:26And I put that on pause when I went to Budapest and haven't fully started that up again. And I'm not really sure where I landed that I'm still really interested in Catholicism, but I don't think I'm at a point yet in my education where I can make that leap to say, I'm gonna, this is what I'm going to be. I'm gonna continue this and be confirmed. And it's also kind of going back to what we were talking about, about having a public and a personal life. Faith is something that people have a lot of opinions on. People are obviously very concerned with you coming to faith. There's a lot of, it's wonderful.

2:20:08And we're praying for you. We want you to come over here. They care a lot and I think it all comes from a good place But it is so personal and when you're on your own journey and you're taking it step -by -step and you're exploring all these different things You're kind of unlearning the stuff that you would learn as a child and the things that you saw and the impressions that you had a faith It's very personal and I also never want to Jump on my platform and be like I learned this today about pauses when I'm doing that. I don't I know nothing I am truly a student right now and so So that might make some people uncomfortable because it's like, we want to know, we want, you know, because it's like, you'll know when you know, and I'll know when I know.

2:20:45There's a big Christian revival happening at the moment, for sure. Which I think you'll have probably been tracking as well. So many people, I mean, Russell Brand recently got baptized. Jordan is being much more open about his faith, Constantine Kissins, talking about it a lot. Tucker Carlson went full creationist mode. Yeah. You know, there's varying degrees of belief. And yeah, I wonder whether, what's that, you'll know this, that Latin mass thing that loads of young people are going to? Yes, yep. Whether you entire think, unless you speak Latin, you're not going to be able to understand any of it.

2:21:17So it's evident that there is sort of odd horse -shoeing back around. You know, Atheism time. I credit all of that to Michael Nolz. I mean, every day, I mean, the reason why I wanted to, I just work with all of those of us, because I loved Michael so much. It was like, you make this sound so, and proud, he's just amazing. And he goes to Latin Mass every Sunday. Let's real find him. But yeah, no, there is a, and there literally is a revival that were revivals at Southern schools in 2023 that just kept popping up of, you know, people traveling from all over the country because there was just something going on in these rooms and people were, you know, singing and worshiping for, like, five days on end.

2:21:54You'll just be like, call to this, like, I'm not even a Christian and I, you know, I need to, I need to be here. I'm going to drive to Alabama to be at this revival. Is this happening on TikTok? Is this a Gen Z thing? How much is this broken through? It's in Christian sex it has broken through. It isn't like a TikTok trend to have a revival. It was events happening at college campuses and workshops that were happening and they just never stopped and they just grew and grew and grew beyond the school, beyond the student body, and people traveling. So I think it is not just to the celebrities searching.

2:22:26It's not just these public figures. It's also I think that I think that kind of goes back to the cynicism that we are talking about with Gen Z of you know They've put their faith in Palitans they've put their faith in celebrities. They've put their faith in the environment and climate and they have started to worship this planet and you know rather than a god I've turned that into a god and that hasn't panned out and that hasn't been fulfilling obviously and and it only leads to more doom and gloom. And I think they look at the world around them and they go, what am I living for? Like what is, what's the purpose?

2:23:04What am I being guided by? What principles do I have? Especially when family is being derogated, you don't need to have children. You're just floating. Yeah, work like your father and have sex like your brother. You'll be fine. And you, and they're being, you know, popped around to different current things. Like that's all that, you know, I'm living for this social issue. I'm living for this now because this is now trendy. There's nothing tethering so many young people. And so I would guess that that's a big that. I mean, that was for me as well. And I'm not being bounced around with the current thing.

2:23:34But I think having a pretty tumultuous childhood, being at a pretty tumultuous industry, where every day I'm, you know, have to keep up with things, stand top of it. I see a lot of really disturbing, terrible things about the internet, some things I choose to cover, some things I don't about like horrific child predators. the way that our, you know, big tech organizations are promoting this, the insane stuff that's happening on the left, I'm in that on a day -to -day basis, and being able to have something else that's, you know, guiding you and moving you forward something that is bigger than yourself, I mean, it's so important.

2:24:09Family and Faith is a degree of stability then. Yeah. There's a study that I wanted to teach you about, which you kind of related to this. So this is probably one of the coolest studies that I've learned about this year. So it's called The Ties that Blind, Misperceptions of the Opponent Fringe and the Miscalibration of political contempt. So one of the reasons that there is a lot of political polarization is that most sides dislike their opponents for beliefs that they don't hold. And this obviously fuels an awful lot because it sounds more extreme. And there's an interesting stat that out -party hate has emerged as a stronger force than in -party love.

2:24:48So around about 2012, it was Obama 2012. People said that they dislike their opponents more than they like their own side. So much of politics is kind of a to protest vote against something that they aren't. And it's six stages that they found of how people progress through this. So the first one is that both sides exaggerate the other side's extreme views. So people on the left assume that all people on the right are racists that want police officers that shoot black people to have fewer consequences. And all People on the right assume that people on the left want everybody to get an abortion and for everyone to be trans and to have a week military.

2:25:27And when you actually poll both sides, that's not the case. But most people hold very moderate views and most people on both sides would agree with the other side. So most people on the left want to have a strong military and most people on the right are fine with gay guys getting married. This is what's called false polarization. So it's polarization that is assumed but inaccurate. So you have this first stage, which is extreme views that are inaccurate. Second point is that this leads to disliking of the other side. Makes sense if you believe that this person has a false interpretation, you judge them as this crazy extremist, not true, inaccurate, right?

2:26:06So you have extremism that's inaccurate leading to disliking, and then disliking leads to avoidance. The avoidance bits really interesting because this never interacting with someone who holds different views to you because you assume they're gonna be really excellent They're not Causes you to never actually have your inaccurate assumptions correction. Corrected, right? And just snowballs. Correct. Yeah, so you're less likely to Share a taxi with them shake hands with them have your son or daughter marry them. I think two thirds of with left -leaning parents would fear their son or daughter marrying a Republican.

2:26:43So you just have this huge divergence and obviously being unwilling to have a conversation with a political rival means that your inaccuracies are never going to be corrected. And then what this also causes is both sides being reluctant to criticize their own side's extreme views. That's so, yeah. So if you misperceive how common your own side's extreme views are, no, not that many people think that children should take home on block as a eight -year -old. No, not that many people believe that you should ban abortions for all reasons across the entire United States or whatever it might be. It's like, no, they are there and the assumption that they're not.

2:27:17Another part is there's a an incentive to not appear disloyal. And I guess their hatred and fear of the other side galvanizes them to maybe kind of turn a little bit of a blind to what's going on. So that's the fourth stage. Fifth stage is that, well, one question would be how is this fueled and partisan media does fuel this quite a lot because it doesn't show a balance perspective by design. You know, 50 years ago, if there's two news stations, you need to just deliver to everybody. But now when you can pick and choose your own custom designed news station because you're competing with 200 others, including independent creators, you can find the exact story or the exact niche that you can speak to.

2:28:03Yeah, precisely. It's like what you were saying about, you know, with big mainstream media now, their father is the other side. They're not creating news, creating culture. They are, you know, not even talking about their own sides. It is, you know, what is this insane person doing that it literally is the father for? Yeah. Yeah. And then, fine one, a political polarization leads to greater acceptance of unethical tactics. So if you suspect that the other side is doing something which is unspeakable, then you're like, ah, yeah, but, you know, look at what they did. Turn a blind eye to the protest or the riot or whatever it is that someone does.

2:28:40And yeah, I just think this like vicious cycle of increasingly anti -democratic, uncaring behavior gets explained an awful lot. And the beautiful thing that I like about this particular study is that it all comes from one genesis, which is a misunderstanding at the other side of the screen, but beliefs. If you can correct that, everything downstream from that gets fixed. Now that's not easy. It's not a small thing to do, but I do think that if you have a more delicate or nuanced take about things that are trying to be a reasonable voice, it actually, to me, that sort of emboldened me that a lot of the time I'll get criticized for being so bigoted from the left that I'm a misogynist and so cucked from the right that I'm a soy boy.

2:29:30You can't win. Yeah, but threading the needle like that to me, I think that shows that if you can continue to show the best of both sides and why there's degrees of agreement, that that's actually doing a lot of good. So yeah, that was the ties that blind was one of the best studies I've found recently. I think that that's something that I think about a lot and kind of going back to when you ask why do you think that the show was successful and I talked about humor of being able to just point out to normal people that are sitting at home going, man, both of you people, like both sides are just really insane.

2:30:01Like you are, there's a lot of chaos happening and being able to find humor and common sense through it. That's kind of my touchstone is always finding that versus just always picking aside. Have you found since moving to daily wire, obviously there's degrees of purity within the organization? Have you felt the temptation or the needs to socially adhere to guys that are further right than you? Obviously, you've got these people that are so, you respect them, they're ambassadors, they've got all of this success and you're kind of your boss or at least your colleague. Is that something you've been conscious of, trying to hold onto you to anchor you as opposed to getting pulled further right?

2:30:45I think I did at first just because I was so nervous and it want to screw up the outside. story. I'd for to yes, you know, there's so incredible all this up and they are and I, you know, one of the great things about, you know, the people that I work with is, you know, I disagree with Matt on some things. I disagree with Michael on some things. I disagree with Jeremy and Benet, you know, but we all have common values that we are tethered to and I'd mathematically respect the work that they all do. And I know that they feel the same with me. So we have that baseline. But definitely when I started, I was like, I, you know, I need to thread the needle, not that I was saying things that I didn't believe, but I was like, I'm going to be a little more political.

2:31:22And I want to hit on these things, and I'm going to talk about Biden saying this, and this, and lean in more, I guess. And as time has gone on, and I've become far more comfortable and confident in my voice, and also learning firsthand what you just talked about in that study of, oh, maybe some of these, how that these takes, but the way that I'm speaking about this issue, maybe that's not the most productive for how to contribute to the problem a little bit. And is there a way that I can thread the needle, not dilute my values or what I want to say, but articulate it in a way and bring in both sides so that I'm not alienating people.

2:32:04So that I am because my goal is, number one, to make people, you know, who share my values, who were me five years ago, not feel insane or alone. Like, you know, looking around the world going, nobody at my school thinks the way that I do. do I feel crazy? So no, you're not. There are the people, you know, I have four million subscribers. We're all here. We agree. And then also reaching to the other side and saying, you know, we're also not crazy. Like there are things we'll be able to agree upon. Looking forward to the best, most acceptable version of this, the most reasonable. Yeah, I mean, so few people have been convinced of anything by being patronized or mocked.

2:32:42There's this idea of the soft signal of effectiveness, which is basically if you really care about convincing the other side of anything that you believe in, you'd actually take the opportunity to dial back the vitriol. And that's a price that you need to pay because you think this is fucking insane. These people and blah, blah. Okay, if you actually care about changing minds and you understand an IOTA of how human psychology works, you're not going to try and make them feel stupid. We're saying you're actually going to dial that down and say, look, let me bring you along for the ride Here's a couple of ideas that I think are really really important and here's a gentle way to deliver it to you And I'm aware that it's not as sexy as being a flame -wielding truth -telling firebrand But I think that it changes minds more effectively.

2:33:25It does it's more palatable And you know, I love them or I love facts, you know Don't care about your feelings and that's true But also a lot of people's feelings don't care about your facts and if you can't reach them I bet emotional level, especially with my generation who is, oh my gosh, so emotional, so emotional. If you can't meet them there and touch those emotions and give them a reason to give a crap about what you're talking about, you will not change Gen Z's mind. You will not. I put this in my newsletter today. Stories don't care about your statistics. In a controlled experiment, research has documented a pronounced story statistic gap in memory, the average impact of statistics on beliefs fades by 73 % over the course of a day, the impact of a story fades by only 32%.

2:34:12So, in short, people's beliefs are more durably impacted by stories and statistics, which has a huge implication for how voters beliefs can be more easily swayed during upcoming elections. That's so good. I completely agree. And that's, again, going back to you were asking, yeah, how do you structure the show? How do you decide what you're going to hit? It's like, if I'm talking about these social issues, these TikTok trends, whatever, if you watch to show there's a lot of the time when I, you know, I start with a celebrity, a TikTok, whatever. Here's the social thing that's happening. Let's back this up with some facts, knowing that that's not going to be what people remember.

2:34:42But in the moment, my goal is to go, Hey, it's not just this random person. It's not whatever. Here are the things to back it up. And then we go back into the story that is much more emotionally compelling that made me interested in it in the first place because I didn't get interested in this story or this, you know, current event that's happening because the facts and because, I but because of the stats and the fact that, there's an emotional connection. Yes, it's like I was not interested in the story about meta -serving sexual content to teens because they are the very minute stats of 2 .7 times more likely, whatever, that was not the reason why I was invested.

2:35:21The headline of they are feeding this to children, they are not pulling back, there are solutions in place, ways that they can mitigate this, and they're choosing not to. And children are now at risk and 13 year old girls are getting unsolicited dick pics They are seeing only fans models within three minutes of going on Instagram just creating an account Within three to twenty minutes that is what dreamy and then when I get down in the article I'm like, oh my gosh these stats are literally insane But as you just saw I don't remember the actual stats How do you remain a beat given that that's your disposition?

2:35:53But that's also the way that you presumably want to live as well You don't want to be dour, but there's generalized cynicism amongst your generation. There's also an awful lot of very disempowering and scary stories you cover. What is your process for remaining positive sum and hopeful for the future that you wish more people knew? I believe that there is a future worth saving. Again, going back to what I said about, with all of our problems with all the cynicism, we still do live in objectively the best time in all of history. The most advanced, again, it was healthy. The richest, just remembering that, heading as a perspective shift.

2:36:38I think that there's a lot to live for. There's a lot in my personal life that I'm very excited about. The news and current events in in the show such a small percentage of who I am and what I think about on a daily basis. If you calculated the amount that I think about having babies, oh my God, it would completely out way, the TikTok trends that I think about. And I also think that being such a priority to me and being something that I'm so interested in, I mean, having children is the most hopeful action that you can do. You're saying like, I believe that there's a world for you. I believe that you can change the world for a better place.

2:37:09I believe that I have the power to help mold and shape the next generation, has an insanely hopeful thing. So the fact that that's such, you know, an important thing in my life is something that I'm so excited to do. I think that continues to drive me. I also know that a lot of our own problems and a lot of the problems that we face are our own doing. Um, you know, the only thing that I can really control in the world when I'm doing these stories and when we're absorbing social media and current events, like you can't control what's happening in order to control your response though. And I would rather respond in a way that is productive, that is empowered, that is not doom and gloom goes back to the, you know, the dating stuff of, yeah, it's a freaking mess.

2:38:00And people don't understand the nuances and online dating is absolutely like out of this world dumb and it's addictive and these apps are designed to keep you on them and they want to keep you single like that's all a mess you can't control that. You can control how you operate within that world. You can control the way that you respond to these news articles and always putting it back on yourself and your personal responsibility and the fact that you control all of that. You control what goes on in your home and your private space. That makes life worth living to me. That makes life exciting.

2:38:28that makes me, you know, every day want to get up and produce a great show and want to change minds. Because I can control that. I can do that. I don't have to just sit and wallow, oh, my generation's so screwed. They're lazy. They're terrible. It's like, okay, let me try to change that because obviously I made a change in my personal life. I went from literally not speaking and being so awkward and I almost did not take the job of daily wire because I was so scared. I didn't even want to send in my tape. They're like, hey, could you react to a couple of stories so we can see how you are on camera with some of these.

2:39:00I almost did not send it in. I had recorded it and I was petrified. I was like, I'm not good enough. I'm not, I just don't want to, this is too big of a fight. I don't want to get out there. I'm not ready yet. To my mom literally yelling at my face. I think this one, this opportunity will never come again. Stop being a wimp. Like get your act together. I want to meet your mom. She's insane. She's amazing. She sounds great. She's perfect. Um, and I mean, a lot of it comes from the way that she raised us. I mean, radical personal responsibility. And I think people see responsibility and personal responsibility and accountability for yourself and your actions as very daunting and uncomfortable and it is.

2:39:38But it's also the most freeing thing that you'll do for yourself. If you realize that your life is your fault, or something the Kanna's always says, your life is your fault. You will be so much happier. You will be so much more empowered because suddenly you have all of the options in front of you. And if you choose to not take that risk, to not go after that girl, not go after the job, not speak to that person, it is your fault. And so you can either be really pissed at yourself and have a lot of regrets, or you can say, I at least, I swung for the fences and I did it. And that can be huge life things in terms of your career and marriage and all of that, but can also be just the way that you wake up in the morning and approach the world.

2:40:15I also think that humor is so underrated and because of the dilution of comedy, I think that we have lost the art of laughing at the absurd. And so I've loved bringing that back in a lot of ways and allowing people to have a safe space where they can laugh at this stuff no matter what side of the blue glial you're on. And that makes it more fun and enjoyable because I get excited to get up every day and crack jokes and hopefully make people laugh. So yeah, it's all of that, but I'm a very hopeful person. I'm a very positive person. I'm not like a, when I'm like a starry -eyed rainbows and unicorns.

2:40:53I'm still a realist, but I know that there are certain things that are in all of our control. And at the end of the day, if you're coming home and you hate your life, there's probably things you can do to make it better. And I'd rather like always live in that space. I'm constantly going, what can I do to make this situation better? I'm unhappy, what do I need to fix, what do I need to do? Again, so empowering. How yeah, Brett Cooper. How yeah. I appreciate you. Let's bring this one into the land, which people go. They want to check out all of the things you're doing. And what can they expect?

2:41:21What's coming next? Yeah. So you can find me at the comment section with Brett Cooper on YouTube. You also just launched on Spotify, which was crazy. Congratulations. Thank you. We now have video and audio on Spotify. So you can find us there. You can find me on literally every social media platform. I am in the underbelly of all of them. And there are a lot of exciting things coming up. I dipped my toe back into acting with Daily Wire, which has been a really enjoyable experience. It's been fun to work with people who actually share my values, who I trust. Kind of like we were talking about, you know, not wanting to be a shell for somebody's message that you don't agree with.

2:41:55It's like I feel like I'm, you know, doing something that I care about and telling a story that I love. And so, Penn Dragon was an amazing experience. That'll be coming out. I don't know when, but hopefully soon I know that they're working on it. It's an amazing story. Obviously, we announced no white bets in the works. We have launched, you know, we've taken some big swings at the company, you know, we just launched Perchham. I'm in a lot of the BenQi productions. They keep me busy and excited to see just in a general sense the brand of Brett Cooper, which is so weird to think of yourself as a brand.

2:42:24Obviously, which I know, you know, it's so weird to look at yourself, but I think what people can expect is that there will be growth as I continue to grow and that's what I'm excited about to continue taking them along with me so that it's you know they know that I am I'm not just the girl behind the camera I'm like I'm a malable human being that's growing alongside all of you and I'm excited to see how that impacts the show and my work and all that. Time right. I appreciate you. Thank you. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.