Confronting ‘The Female Ben Shapiro’ | Brett Cooper

So today we're going to be speaking with Brett Cooper she's one of the most prominent gen Z political commentators who's quickly grown an audience of more than two and a half million through her outspoken opposition to the woke agenda with the daily wire I guess you might also know her as the female Ben Shapiro what surprised me most about this episode was just how shocking her story was and how that led to her beliefs today I was emancipated at 15 and I moved to California to pursue acting about 10 years ago I was acting in Atlanta first lived in New York for a bit doing theater then went out to LA for film and TV and so I was working there professionally for about 10 years you're going to want to make sure to subscribe because next week we're also posting our discussions with Hassan [ __ ] who's on the complete opposite end of the political spectrum and you don't want to miss out on that so subscribe and now with that said a quick message from our video sponsor first by the way man now that we're off camera I wanted to run by you my next business idea it's basically like Drop Shipping but for endangered animal species cameras are still on nobody steal my idea anyways man I'm still trying to figure out how to get it funded and getting a bank loan has been an absolute nightmare well I mean if simple and hassle free funding is what you're looking for then our sponsor fund and grow is able to help and they're down below in the description wait Graham down below where the description Jack not not under the table what about my endangered animals it's on you look fund and grow understands how difficult it could be for small businesses to get a loan bank loans are notoriously restrictive and full of red tape but unlike a bank loan funded grow offers a 12-month membership where you could secure up to 250 000 of credit at zero percent interest without giving up any equity in your company fund and grow already has over 4 000 4.9 star reviews and I think that's because people are seeing genuine results from such fast and simple funding and as a special offer for our listeners fun and grow has prepared a business funding master class with five simple steps of how to get 250 000 in business credit plus as an exclusive bonus you'll receive a 500 discount on their services so don't wait to fund and grow your business visit fund and grow today using the link Down Below in the description and also guys make sure to check out what's called iced coffee hour dot Club because the.com was taken we're actually doing this kind of right now we're filming an episode just with Jack and I about uh you know business and behind the scenes and all that so if you guys are interested check out iced coffeeour.club or the link is down below in the description go check it out and now let's get into the podcast welcome back to the iced coffee hour I'm Brett Cooper we are here in Nashville at our Studios I just made some iced coffee in my office for Jack and Graham how do you think it is I think it's fantastic it's growing on me the first few sips were I would say eight out of ten okay 9.5 out of 10. awesome I mean I took a risk by putting the Chick-fil-A ice in there yeah I knew it was going to melt faster it's bold I didn't put it in yours though no I got the regular ice uh mine's great though I put hazelnut in this that's good 20 semised coffee cheers guys cheers thank you so much for doing this yes really appreciate it excited imagine you just start choking on it Jack we came all the way here to Nashville for you and you were so gracious this entire set you guys set it up extremely appreciative of it we just I feel like we can't not mention what just happened we went to go tour some homes you and Graham were like filming because yeah you're looking to buy a house we can talk about that later and while you were filming just after we arrive at the house there was some banging loud banging I thought Jack had fault he he thought Jack had fallen he thought I'd slip down the stairs and yeah no I didn't feel about to walk up the steps I was like oh crap I was yeah he thought I felt but actually what happened was a huge limb off of a tree fell over crashed over probably totaled two yeah three cars three cars yeah I mean that was freaky it was like your entire cruise cars so we have a tornado warning all day today but the storm we thought was going to be over obviously um so we were gonna cancel the video because we weren't even sure because it was storming or like should we even go out there and then it was so Sunny so yeah it was wild I'm grateful that everybody's okay though you know it works out better for my video I get excited for this weather though I have to say like when it's windy like that it was raining earlier I was so excited I told Jack earlier like it's supposed to uh they're supposed to be lightning and thunder like I was looking forward to that extreme conditions are the best I grew up in like Ventura which is a very temperate place and whenever I see extreme temperatures or extreme winds and stuff like that it just excites me because it's so normal there yeah it's a blessing yeah so well tell us a bit about your story uh I first found you I think on Twitter okay because the female Ben Shapiro and I saw the resemblance and I thought okay you guys are related somehow to clear the air you guys are not related we're not related although you gave me the great idea that we should do a DNA test just to see if there's any there might be something there yeah I mean because I didn't see it I think it's the eyebrows but I really don't know we should actually do a side by side but I've seen it in some photos um but the mannerisms too are like very similar I would say so yeah and I didn't grow up watching Ben so that's one like I don't think I adopted it because of that sure um I was like a hardcore like Michael Knowles fan I love to like you know can this before coming here but I would listen to Ben and I knew who he was but I wasn't somebody who literally watched his show and so a lot of people you know have said you know oh you know you're right wing you probably like grew up watching Ben like that's why you talk I'm like literally no we just speak very very quickly and talk with our hands a lot apparently um but no so yeah I am the daily wire now I host the comment section was not hired because of any relation to daily wire even though many people think that but I am originally from Chattanooga Tennessee and then I moved to California to pursue acting about 10 years ago I was acting in Atlanta first lived in New York for a bit doing theater and then went out to LA for film and TV and so I was working there professionally for about 10 years how did you get into acting so I was deathly shy as a child and my brother's high school was doing a production of The Wiz and which is like an adaptation of Wizard of Oz and they needed the siblings of some of the kids at school to be like the munchkins at the end of the show and like to stand like do a couple of songs and then come out and be like cute and tiny I think it was five at the time no five or six um deathly shy my mom knew some people that were working you know on the show my brothers were not into theater whatsoever and she was like this is the opportunity to get my kid like over this because I would not talk to people and this was like something that she was actively working on my mother's incredible she was a very very intentional parent and so she knew I was very shy so she would you know stand outside of a gas station bring and you know make me go inside with a five dollar bill and buy something she would watch me like go up with you know to the counter with a candy bar and have to talk to the person why are we shine do you remember like the reason was it nervous of strangers not really I don't really know I just think I was uncomfortable um not to go you know go in a totally different direction but one of my brothers died when I was five years old and so I think I mean that totally blew up the dynamic of my family and I think at a very young age that was something I didn't really understand I remember at one point like we had a bunch of people at our house shortly after he died like you know bringing casseroles and that sort of thing and I was literally like hiding in a Cupboard and I was just like I didn't really know how to process it my whole family was very chaotic I didn't really know how to interact with people at school after that it was very very defensive and I think I just kind of shut down um because it you know five years old how are you supposed to process anything like that and I think my family was so concerned with you know my older brothers who were you know seemingly more impacted by it than I was so I would say that is the root cause of it obviously I don't have that issue anymore um I credit a lot of that to acting so I think that was why but she was very intentional with getting me out of my shell and making sure that you know once she noticed that this was a pattern just like I want to make sure that this is addressed so she signed me up to basically do the show and was like maybe she'll like it I don't know never you know did any theater herself was never a stage mom never wanted that I thought it would be a one and done and I fell in love with it like I just came alive I loved music even before that I you know I was already doing ballet and I just loved performing and I loved storytelling in any capacity um and then I just kept begging to do more shows so I did a few other shows with the high school just being like the you know one of ten siblings that would be on stage like doing a little dance number to Community Theater um auditioned for a few Regional professional Productions my first professional job was singing with the Atlanta Symphony and Opera and I was one of their like chorus kids and was paid to do Opera basically at I think 70 years old eight years old started doing like long-running Regional Productions I did a you know production of Annie that I think ran for four months when I was 10 years old and then got a representation so I had an agent and manager at the time they brought whose idea was that because there's a big leap between doing this was all what you were doing and getting into that like in a manner so I with doing professional things I just kept asking for more and so you know our community theater didn't really have a ton of Productions where they would you know have kids involved and so I would say like where else could I audition like what where else can I go um and so we would you know my mom and I would sit at the computer and I would find okay well this one's an hour away let's do this you'd go on the computer and find rooms you would go together yeah what did you like so much about it I love the fact that I could tell stories to somebody else something that I've dealt with for a very long time is that I felt like I could not actually effectively communicate what I was feeling I was like very very bottled up and I you know credit a lot of that to my family not only did my brother die my you know parents had a very very messy divorce just grew up in a very very turbulent home and I think that acting gave me the outlet that I needed in order to express myself and I loved telling stories I loved being able to be somebody else for two hours so it might have been a bit of an escape in a sense or just like you zone out you could be somebody else tell a story I love it um I loved connecting with an audience too I mean I did you know TV and film for 10 years but when I am on stage just like nothing else like the energy of having hundreds of people in the room and they are along the journey with you and I think that's the beautiful thing about theaters whenever I hear people be like I don't really like musical theater I don't like theater I'm like just try it because you're sitting in this room together as a community going through this like hour and a half long long journey together and as the actor on stage it's a much more demanding task because you can't really take breaks it's not like ah you know I screwed up that line let me try it again sure it's like you are in it for an hour and a half the adrenaline rush is insane you are outside of yourself basically for an hour and a half and even as a kid I think I needed that and I just became a totally different person um and it broke me out of my shell I had so much fun yeah it was a big leap so I started doing professional stuff and I had this one goal I wanted to be Jane banks in the Broadway production of Mary Poppins which was currently on Broadway at the time I think it was probably 10 or 11. I had seen the musical multiple times I was like that is what I want I want to play that role it's so fun so then this is all people sometimes people don't believe it but like my mother did not want me to do this she wasn't like actively act like going against it but she was like I'm not going to push you to do this like we live in Tennessee my brothers were in college he was dealing with a failing marriage like this was not the time to be like getting her kid into professional whatever I wrote a letter to a manager who wrapped three of the girls that had been Jane banks on Broadway and I found him because I would watch I would actively watch interviews of like young women that were on Broadway like anywhere from my age to like 15 years old like how did they do this how do they get to do that and I saw this guy like for the interviews like um and he was their agent at the time and then he became a manager so I found where he was currently working and I wrote him a letter and I said you know these are all the things that I've been in I desperately want to be Jane Banks and then I he still has it I think but I did a drawing of myself in the Jane Banks outfit on a stage and I sent it to him 100 I'm somebody that like I will take take any risk if I can give one piece of advice to anybody my age it's just like just ask if you just write a letter if you just like the worst that somebody can say is no but at least you tried people are so damn terrified to just shoot your shot it's like please just go for it um anyway so I sent this letter and I got an email back and he was like will you fly up to New York and meet with me so I remember going to his tiny office in Manhattan and I sang a song and I did a monologue how old were you at the time uh I was 10 years old so I'm gonna flew off with me and she was like this what are her thoughts like you're flying to New York to meet with a guy who's repping these people on Broadway she means she did like you know research about him and was like are we going into that kind of thing but wait were you sending this directly to him was she like the intermediary like you're giving it to her and she sends it to him yes like we would go like we went to the mailbox together and like send it off but I was the driving force behind all of it I bet she's thinking like oh this is cute let's just do this exactly yeah and to her you know parenting so I don't think that she would have done this if my brother had not died um her parenting style totally changed after my brother David's death um and she has made most decisions since then based on um especially in my youth you know if she had known that David was only going to have 17 years would she have said yes to doing this so if you know he had wanted to go pursue something if he had wanted to travel to do some he was an artist if he had wanted to do some like crazy art program and go you know would she have said yes knowing that he only had 17 years and so I'm the youngest and it totally changed her perspective for me and so obviously I don't think these were easy decisions to say like all right let me allow my child to go into this room and pursue these things but I was so so excited about it I was so passionate and you know she and anybody in your in my family would be able to tell you that like my self-confidence my personality it totally just blossomed with being able to do performing but hold that thought Brett of course the daily wire is a hundred plus million dollar company that probably spends millions of dollars on video production every year but it really shouldn't cost that much to create high quality content like if you're looking to get started one of the best ways that you could begin is with a software like a sponsor stream yard stream yard is a live streaming software that allows you to create high quality content with the click of a button all you need is a camera and an internet connection to be able to stream directly from your browser and one of my personal favorite features is that they allow you to multi-stream which basically means that you can stream to Facebook YouTube LinkedIn and more all at the same time I also really enjoy that streamer offers various analytic tools so that you can measure the success of every single one of your live streams and you're able to see which plan platform is bringing in the most traffic stream yard is really one of the best ways to get started creating content without spending any money whatsoever and they also offer a free package so that you can get started without any risk whatsoever check out streamier today with our link Down Below in the description on top of all of those incredible benefits they've also just been an amazing supporter of the podcast and they help us do what we do every Sunday for you guys so it would mean a lot if you check them out with a link Down Below in the description thank you so much stream yard and back to the podcast but yeah I signed with this manager and so I started auditioning for things on Broadway I ended up getting the role of Jane Banks and it was going to be coming in I had to come back for one last meeting and the girl who's currently playing the role her contract was going to be up and there's a thing on Broadway where if you are under the age of 18 you cannot be taller I think at the time it was like um you could not be taller than five foot one because from the back of the house they want to make sure that you look shorter than the adults that are on stage so you need to look like a child and I had a huge growth spurt over those two months periods two month period so I came back they measure you first thing when you walk in the door and there's the audition height um and if you are taller than that you can't audition and then there's show height where they will literally end your contract if you go if you get too tall and so I had surpassed both the audition height and the show height and so that totally kicked me out of the running for any other Broadway show doesn't that make you really critical of like your body at that age where you're just like I hate it good enough like I would stand there and I would like punch myself down and I continued auditioning for a few months after that like there was the Revival of Annie that was coming up I was way too tall for Matilda Matilda was on Broadway Billy Elliott had just closed it's all just a bunch of like theater nerd stuff but there were a ton of shows that had kids in them at that time and I literally could not audition for any of them how tall were you I was like five two I think so I was like barely over there but I was 10 years old and five too and so I was like that was it okay and so I had this whole management team and I remember going into a meeting and sitting down and they were like so you can go home to Chattanooga and wait until you're 18. you can wait eight years and then you can start auditioning for Broadway again you can just keep doing the regional theater you're doing you know we'll stick with you or if you wanted to you could go out to LA and try film on TV and my mom was like absolutely not like she's from California we talked about this in the car um she spent most of her adult life in California prior to moving to Tennessee she just wanted a different pace um and she was like I'm not go every time that she's left California she said I'm never coming back even though she was born in LA and I begged I was like please like I can't just sit at home do this and so I started auditioning um via tape and so she was like let's just see if there's any bites like let's try you doing film let's get you in a film class if you even like doing this before we literally send you to LA to do something um I still loved it I started getting callbacks for things and so we rented out a friend's apartment in LA and my mom and my dad and I drove across the country did Route 66 and I lived there with her for three months and I did like every you know casting director Workshop I did all of these acting classes I was auditioning non-stop at a few commercials I got a la management and agency and then from that point on for the next four years I would spend six months at home in Tennessee and then six months um in Los Angeles so I'd go in the fall and then the spring in L.A and spend the rest of the time at home um and I loved it it was like I mean it was absolutely crazy and I feel very very fortunate that I got the chance to have a professional career at a young age and I don't think that that's many you know I don't think that's something that many people would want yeah and I definitely sacrificed a lot for it but I loved it so much tell us about your schooling at that time because how do you balance the two so I was in public school from kindergarten to third grade my mom pulled me out in third grade because my reading level was above that of my class she had a meeting with um my teacher and said could I give you know could I give you some books for Brett to read so that you know she stays interested and it's not falling behind or anything like that it's not getting bored not being complacent in the future set I just have too many students I can't do it so my mom pulled me out and she created the curriculum up until sixth grade so you're homeschooled from school third to six okay what is that like for you like being pulled out you liked it how are you making friends through this whole process because especially if you're like living in two different states and then being homeschooled how are you meeting people in when we were still in Chattanooga and I had not gone out to LA yet I was doing ballet multiple times a week and then I was a competitive gymnast so I did that multiple times a week I was in a choir so I met people through that every show that I did I would make friends through that you know friends in the neighborhood that I still knew from public school um that is like the primary question that anybody who's homeschooled gets and some people you know hate it because their parents did not go out and find them extracurricular opportunities and did not find them ways to be socialized I literally would not change my experience for the world I had the most diverse group of friends because rather than having you know one group of people that you go through you know k through eight and you go into high school or whatever and it's you know the same demographic from that same neighborhood I was friends with people of all different ages you know on my gymnastics team from all different parts of town you know boys and girls I'd interact with adults constantly because I was you know dealing with my ballet teachers my gymnastics coaches and spent a lot of time you know wherever my mom was volunteering or my dad was working like I would go and do school at his office and so I was constantly interacting with his secretaries and you know his co-workers so at a very young age I became Adept at socializing with adults which I think is so beneficial and it made me a lot more confident and you know willing to network and start working at a young age so I remember you know being in high school and I wanted a side job and so you know I would be talking with my friends and say I want to go you know apply this place and be like you just go in and you talk to them it's like yeah it's fine so I would go into Trader Joe's drop off my resume go to you know Lush Beauty drop off a resume um I was just so comfortable with it and then on top of that with acting you're constantly interacting with you know casting directors directors producers writers you know adult actors that you're working with you're in a professional environment you have to be able to work at that level with child actors they will give you some Grace for being a kid but you also like they won't hire you if you're a an idiot that's like rolling around and being super immature so you kind of have to up your game um so that is how I you know socialized for those few years and then I did an online private school but in this Online private school you could still customize your curriculum that's something my mom cared very much about prior to investing in real estate and being a stay-at-home mom she was a textbook publisher of WWE Norton so she was deep into Academia knew what she wanted me to be reading knew what textbooks you know she wanted me to be reading so with my teachers she would work at the beginning of the year and we would all go over the curriculum and it was usually tailored to things that I was very interested in I'm a super super heavy reader I love love literature and so rather than reading you know six books in a semester I was reading 30 maybe um and what sort of books were you reading just class literature primarily okay and every week was like a different you know we do American literature we do it from this time period we would do British literature I remember I think I read Jane Eyre when I was 10 years old for the first time oh my gosh here I was reading Goosebumps I love those books though I had my uh Nancy Drew phase I think I've read all like 55 Nancy Drews you know um but I had a very very academically rigorous upbringing even though I was also working and it all sounds very very intense but I had so much fun um and I loved it was worth for me you know having to time block I guess and time manage my school if I was going to be on set and I would you know work on it at night or you know on set you usually have like a tutor and so they would make sure that I was going through all my schoolwork and I would have my laptop there and be doing things and that's what I did you know until graduation except for one year I went to a normal public school in Atlanta for my ninth grade year what was that like terrible absolutely terrible I I asked to go um my friends were going to this performing arts high school and I knew these friends from doing theater in Atlanta and I went and I saw one of their like school productions I was like this is insane it was called Pebble Brook High School it's one of the best like public performing arts high schools in the country I looked at my mom and I was like I want to go here this is insane like I want to try to be normal I want to take a break from La for a year I'll still audition but I want to go see what this is like and I thought it would be really really cool I hadn't sung in a long time and so I could be a vocal major and you know do all the musicals so I auditioned we got a rental house in Cobb County Atlanta and I went for a year and within like two months I knew it was not for me what'd you dislike about it I did not like that my time was dictated by somebody else basically so I felt like I was so unproductive which seems absurd for like a 14 year old to be saying in ninth grade I was actually I think 13 in uh in my ninth grade year because I graduated college at teen I think 1920s why I think I was 13 12 turning 13 my freshman year of high school um and I hated that for six hours of the day I was sitting in the classroom when I knew because I'd been homeschooled for so long I could get all of this work done in a two-hour span like the busy work I didn't need to do I didn't like having to watch other people's hands being held I didn't like the disruptions in class um and then I would stay late for dance rehearsals musical rehearsals auditions and that sort of thing and then I would go home and because I didn't feel academically unchallenged I went to my counselor and I said can I do online AP classes so my entire time there I was doing a normal class load at school I stayed an additional hour afterwards if you were a magnet performing arts high school or a magnet Performing Arts student at the school you stayed an additional hour and did like a dance class of a class or whatever and then it would often have rehearsals afterwards and I would come home I would do my homework and then I would do APK why couldn't you have just dropped out I know like it seems silly to me that you were homeschooled for so long go for two months I would just say let's go back to homeschooling like what's what kept you there because I made a commitment and I wanted to read it through yeah well you moved your entire doesn't mean you have to commit like what's the benefit of committing at that point I would just say like you know going through and being able to say that I did it okay um you know I made this commitment with myself I wanted to try it I also wanted to be able to say later down the line I did go to I went to a public school I tried it and I know both sides of the story um and I had also kind of fed into the assumption that being homeschooled may be weird um and that I was off by that and I wanted to see if normal high school was like the movies basically depicted it I wanted the Letterman jacket I wanted to like go to homecoming do all that stuff it just wasn't for me yes um but it also was one of the because I did all those extra AP classes and was one of the best academic years for me at 13 years old I don't remember how many people were in it was a huge school I think it was maybe over 2 000 people were in my freshman class I ended up first in my class um at the end of the year and so I was really really proud of that um throughout the process so I'm still friends with them um yeah but I didn't first semester I knew that it really wasn't going to be for me but I wanted to make the best of it I did every musical I auditioned for everything I tried to you know basically suck the mirror out of life as much as I could have um but by the second semester I felt so tied down and so unhappy that I hated who I had become I felt like I was not being a good friend people that I had loved in the first semester I was I didn't feel like I was treating them as well I just felt very distant I wanted to get out and I was so much happier when I made the decision to leave and now I'm you know still friends with them we stay in contact and they went through all you know three years but it was the best decision I think for me to go and learn that yeah I think it forced me to kind of realize that what I was doing was the right thing for me it was a challenge for sure because it was a different learning environment forced me to adapt so I remember seeing home school kids as a kid and they were always kind of weird yeah uh that would be my biggest concern of like ever doing homeschooling is feeling like they're in a bubble yeah but they don't get the true experience they're not going to be like out there kind of like forging their own path what are your thoughts about that I think it comes down to the parents and sure how you dictate it because obviously if you keep your kid just inside and you don't facilitate any other kind of extra quick Killers they're not going to benefit from it but the benefit of homeschooling is the opportunities and the freedom and the flexibility that you do have so if you are in you know like my online school that I went to I didn't have to finish all my classes by a certain period I had like nine months and so if I wanted to get everything done in two weeks I could have if I said hey you know I'm shooting this movie I'm not going to be able to do this for three months I can pick it up later yeah um you know with home I didn't go to uh we try to co-op for a bit where you would go you know Monday Wednesday Friday for like two hours in the morning and you would get graded didn't really love that the opportunities weren't great in Chattanooga but I had so much flexibility so I was able to do everything that I was interested in I took art classes I did gymnastics I volunteered and that was only because I had the time to do it I was not you know in school until 3 P.M I spent so much time with my family I spent so much quality time with my brothers my relationship with my mom is one of the things that I'm most proud of and we really developed that over you know sure that period I also think I inherited you know this could be a benefit or a drawback depending on whether people like me or don't like me um I inherited a lot of her values because of that because I spent so much quality time with her that she was the one who raised me not a teacher and I think that that is so important because when you look at the statistics of how much time kids are spending with their parents these days I think that the Department of Labor it's like 35 minutes a day that's it yeah but what age what is it we got to figure out the parameters yeah so I need to look at like what the actual you know ages but when you remove like bathing making dinner watching a movie together like that kind of be like that because that doesn't like actually quality time when you are face to face with your kid bonding doing an activity where you are interacting yeah not just like sitting in front of a screen or not like oh my kid's in the same room but farther away but like that's an average of 35 minutes a day I I think that was in 2021 was when you know I saw that stat that was not the case for me like I mean I was with them all the time whether I was at my dad's office doing work whether I was with her whether I was with grandparents I spent so much time with family and I'm very lucky that I you know love my family um but that's something that I also you know do not take for granted at all but I think that's something that parents should be concerned about and obviously you know depending on your you know financial situation your job situation might not be possible and obviously you do need to consider you know the education system the public schools and that sort of thing in your area but it's really taking into consideration like who is raising your kid at the end of the day who is spending that whether it's the media whether it's teachers and my mom didn't homeschool me because of that but I think that is a result of this she was never pulling out of school because of an ideology or anything like that it was simply because she wanted a better education for me but by default like I I think I got a really incredible you know physical education but also like emotionally you know the interpersonal side of it but why do you feel like there's sometimes a stigma let's just say if the homeschool kid goes into the real world they go crazy they start partying they do drugs they like get in trouble uh why do you think that is and what held you back from that again I think it's those are usually the kids that have not been pushed out in the world at a young age have not been able to take advantage of the opportunities that you can usually have when you are homeschooled um and it's interesting because the recent stats show that homeschoolers at least in high school going into college drink less do less drugs are not Partiers and I think we're getting better at that also academically our scores are off the charts we're getting into better schools the ivy league seek out homeschoolers these days and so again it goes back to the parents of if you are making this decision you are not only taking on your children's academic life you are taking on their social life and you have to remember that because just keeping them in their house that is why sure it's because they do not have a social interaction you know they do not have a social life outside of the home and obviously you know spending time with Mom and Dad is great but you have to be around other people um and so I think that you know you see one side of homeschooling and that is kind of the loudest group and people oppose it for that group um but I also like the smartest people I know in my life are homeschoolers because they you know Advanced so quickly in their academic careers because they started working at a very young age they're incredibly self-reliant and I think those are some of the benefits but again it does go back to the parents and so if you want a homeschool but you are not in a position to take all of that on it's like then maybe they would be maybe better off in some other school and if you're concerned about academics try pipeline maybe a public school or a private school sure um but it's really like I understand the stigma because of that but I would also push back on people saying that homeschoolers are inherently weird because I definitely was weird I like was a total nerd I was a theater kid I had a career and I look at kids that are normal these days and I'm so glad that I'm not one like I'm very glad that I was not partying I'm so glad that I did not succumb to the same peer pressure that a lot of my friends who you know grew up in the normal school system did I was totally oblivious to all of that I didn't go through it um I've had people say you didn't get bullied so like you haven't been knocked around no hell yeah I've been knocked around like I had an entire acting career like where I was told no 99 of the time like my brother died my father you know has serious mental health issues I had enough like happened in my life basically um so I don't think that you are completely you know exempt from bad things happening or being toughened up um so I guess that those are some of my pushbacks against it but obviously there's a reason why that stigma exists there obviously are homeschoolers that you know have come out that way sure so what happens when you left public school yes where did you go after that um went back to LA was still splitting my time between um LA and Chattanooga started doing film again I think it was like the next summer I shot a fox miniseries called shots fired so I was living in North Carolina that summer doing a show um that fall actually I emancipated myself so I was emancipated at 15. why a myriad of reasons um I was about to shoot the second season of a show it had been picked up we didn't have a lot of details yet but it was supposed to shoot in Prague and at the time my parents are going through their very very messy divorce my oldest brother uh this was mostly in my opinion due to the death of his twin was my brother's wife brothers who are identical twins and Reed who was the surviving twin watched David die and he is you know I don't think ever really recovered for that I don't know if you can recover from watching ask what happened is that yeah he had a cardiac arrest so they were on the rowing machine and he just had a cardiac arrest a rowing machine was that was that like an underlying heart condition like just at the gym yep at school yeah and yeah and the school didn't have defibrillators and so they did CPR but could not revive him uh what we think is that he had something called Long QT syndrome but we're not sure the autopsy really didn't bring back much we didn't want to just spend a lot of time doing tests but I mean my whole family it's crazy we don't we still really don't know because Reed who is his identical twin has no signs of it has never had any signs of it and they are genetic like genetically identical and so truly the only one that has had a sign of it is me like sometimes on my EKGs because I do them yearly like something has popped up that's kind of weird but I think it's been alarming but Reed has had no signs of it oh my God but it's been 16 years since David's death now and read spiraled years after that so at the time I mean he took he left college and went to India for four years did hard hard drugs and came back totally different it was his way of coping my parents tried to keep him from going held money over his head my grandparents gave him money and he ended up you know going and it was just a whole you know obviously a lot of turbulence I would say um and he really really struggled when he came back and then he had a psychotic break so my brother is now at this point when I'm 15 he is diagnosed schizophrenic yikes yeah I can't imagine that with a twin because they hear a lot of the times that there is that connection between them uh and I believe that I think and this is like a part of yourself is is dying at the same time and so you know when you're growing up and there is I don't know the psychological term for it but therapists talk about it a lot where you are you know moving into adulthood it usually happens around College age for us people in the Modern Age now but where you break away from your parents you start to see them as individuals rather than as parents you defer you differentiate yourself from your family as you're creating your own family you're creating new relationships you're not living at home twins have to go through that on another level with each other because they spend their entire lives like Reed and David did everything together we're in the same exact class lived in the same room they went to boarding school lived in the same room together had the same group of friends looked exactly the same throughout their entire life David would wear red red wear blue so my Mom dressed them as a baby they kept it up in high school but it's like they were connected looked literally identical friends couldn't tell them apart they had not at 17 years old had not gone through that break and so it was like literally this person instantaneously was ripped away from my brother and he was at an all-boys school and so at 17 years old had no Outlet he has often said to me he was like Brad I cried once and I was fine I was fine I promise like it didn't impact me and it's like you're bullshitting us like I know you did and you don't need to do this for your friends um and so I think because he never actually processed it it just you know festered and festered and festered and then he did a lot of drugs that literally changed his brain chemistry like he would do things in India where he would wake up two weeks later in a totally different part of the country are you serious yeah I mean he's done probably everything yeah um it came back was continuing to abuse drugs got him in front of doctors and then refused to take medication for and you know I have my own thoughts about you know antipsychotics and antidepressants and that sort of thing and I really believe that there are a lot of Lifestyle diet changes that people could make to help mitigate that um and he did not want to do any of that he said I don't have a problem I don't have a problem and it's like you're literally having psychotic breaks in front of us um and so he was at the time on the street and he refused medication and schizophrenics can often be violent so my mom said you cannot live with us you cannot live with your younger sister um unless you were on these meds you need to figure something else out so he was like well I can get drugs on the street so for two years he was homeless and so I had this TV show that I was possibly going to Prague for my parents were getting divorced I got pulled into the divorce at 15 years old I should have been able to say like I want you know I don't want to have to split custody whatever um and at the time I was like I have a career I'm living in Los Angeles my brother is a mess I cannot be dealing with like my parents stuff in Chattanooga right now I just I should not be involved in it I kind of felt like I started being used as a pawn in it so I got a lawyer um it was not going to lower it 15. was it a publicly like they gave it to you no I went and I found one in Chattanooga so I did it in Tennessee um but you just walked in with your resume and yeah I was still in L.A at the time but because I was a resident of Tennessee and my you know the learner's permit was in that how do you pay for that I'd imagine a lot of lawyers at that point would just do it pro bono um maybe in Los Angeles it's very very difficult to do because a lot of families will try to do that because it's easier to be an actor if you are not a minor because they don't have to pay the additional fee right a tutor you can work longer hours that kind of thing so a lot of you know parents and families and Stage moms and that kind of thing will try to screw with the system and like get their kid emancipated to do it I didn't want to deal with that and I was still resident in 10 see so we had a couple of family friends my mom actually helped me because I went to her and I said I cannot be a part of this like you know your intention you know your attention to split between you know read and you know being at home in Chattanooga and she was going to move read back to Chattanooga she was like you're going to have to come and I was like I don't want to I'm you know I'm a professional I literally have a career please just like let me try to do this and so she was like okay um so once again me like dragging my mom along for this journey but had I don't even remember he was the father of a family friend of ours and who's a family lawyer and so it was a relatively like not a difficult process but yeah I brought my resume showed the money that I was making and I he said you know it's not consistent enough because acting's you know Ebbs and flows so that was at the time when I got a job at Trader Joe's so I was 15 got a job at Trader Joe's worked there until 2021 I kept that job throughout all seriously yeah all throughout College how much were you making at 15. um 17 an hour that's really good that's fantastic awesome on it yeah and you get full health care and all that so I got my health care through them um how do they hire you at 15 though because in California you could start working at 15. if I could get my own insurance because I was emancipated so I started working there and I kept auditioning and then I lived in La um for a summer while my parents were finalizing their divorce just in an apartment in our apartment by myself what did your parents say about you getting emancipated did they have any thoughts on that are they trying to stop you from doing that or were they like well you know you could make your own decisions my dad was more concerned with it my mom was on board because she did not want me to be involved in the divorce sure um you know I won't get into details but it was my dad who was I don't I'm not very close with him it's kind of all I want water under the bridge now but it's been a very very difficult relationship at the time he was the one that was pulling me into it and I think it was kind of a power move and so I went to him and I said this is unacceptable and I said I'm doing this because of the things that you are doing and the impact you're having on our family and I was like I'm not going to blame my brother Reed right now but I was like I just I cannot I physically cannot be a part of this um so if it's not contentious your parents can both sign and if the judge agrees that it's okay sure that it's okay um so that's ended up being what happened so my parents both agreed on paper and then it had to go to a judge um and then I was manipulated so I was able to you know live in Los Angeles I worked at Trader Joe's I kept auditioning I kept doing you know projects I did a couple of movies I did a few other you know TV shows started going to Community College um because it worked better with my schedule so I went to Santa Monica Community College it's a good school by the way yeah it's a great school it's like has the best transfer rate of any Community College in the country um my parents wanted me to go to SMC it saves me money yeah it was great I went to Community College I loved it yeah Ventura College yeah then UCSB but yeah um I say I would not change for the world I feel like I got a better education at SMC than UCLA like 100 honestly I would probably agree with that yeah with my community college experience because the classroom sizes are a lot smaller it's more intimate and also a lot of the professors like Community want to be there yes because it's more desirable to be a professor to communicate with a lot of the times than like the really nice science and at UCLA you have to be doing research it's a research University and so most yeah that's in there the continuing education or whatever it is yeah so UCLA is known for its research and so a lot of the professors there you know are you know writing their own books in the English literature Department you know working on their Theses that sort of thing in a community college they are there for the students and you know again like the through line with my life is I was around a ton of different people and so there would be people like me who were younger there were people who were coming me back you know 30 years later working on their education I met the most interesting people and in California where it's very normal the people go to Community College there was not really a stigma but I mean truly my education was better there and guess what it was seven dollars yes seven dollars seven dollars for a semester yeah yeah how there's a California Bill what's the point is what do you know what I'm talking about seven dollars I used it but it's only for the first semester the next semester I think was like a hundred fifth or something like that but it's important in state yeah if you're an in-state student um I think it's also your district has like a community college thing you have to go to the according to uh Community College yeah and then if you get academic scholarships on top of that because community colleges make money by you know having the students there and they want their you know stats to be higher so if you're a really really good student and you're coming here they make it really desirable for you so I saved so much money and it's totally flexible because you don't have to be a full-time student you don't have all those premiums yeah exactly so I would do night classes or you know 8 AMS and then go you know audition in the middle of the day and then go work up you know a 5 to 10 P.M to Trader Joe's and that was my life so you went from that and then you transferred to UCLA yeah okay two years in I was a English major with a minor in biological anthropology at first and then dropped that because UCLA if you are not already getting a BS you have to do like chemistry and physics for all of those things so I'm not interested in that but I love anthropology and I if I was more scientifically inclined I would have probably tried to do some kind of double major but I did not want to do chemistry did not want to do physics I just love bio and I love anthropology anthropology made more sense to me than any like psychology or Sociology class I've ever done and like understanding basic human instincts and what we're like wired to do it's like the perfect I guess explanation for how even like men and women are totally different like we are literally wired different ways um but anyway and so I did that for a bit drop that minor and then was a fill Miner until the end but I don't even think I finished up my film minor because I realized that I'd gotten to the end of my major and it was in the middle of covet I was like I don't want to be on zoo anymore I'm just going to dip um but that was I probably did not finish that minor because I went to the UC Berkeley's Hospital of business and they had a program where if you were an undergrad you could go to their grad school and do a business program so I did that during covid and then as covert was wrapping up I was at least in California um I didn't really think I wanted to go back to acting um I didn't love the lack of control that I had as an adult um growing up as a kid it just was like this crazy adventure and it felt like this hobby that I happened to get paid for I wasn't thinking about the money I didn't see any of the money it all went into a savings account and then legally um with being a child actor there's a thing called a Coogan account it's a percentage of your money it goes there so and my parents did not use any of the money it just went into a savings account so I used like part of that to buy my first car and for you know some of my UCLA tuition um but I was ever motivated by money because I wasn't getting like a slew of American Girl dolls or anything like that yeah it was just it was so fun for me how much was in that Coogan account by the way oh God do you remember um is that a cruise now can you invest within the account I don't think you can invest with a network it's just cash okay like tens of thousands not nothing like the phrase It's like a certain percentage though yeah I think it's 15 I don't remember what it ended up being and it doesn't accrue a ton of Interest it kind of just sits but it's your legal protection in case you are in an environment where your parents are taking your money they want to make sure that when you turn 18 you have something and I think it's a great production so I don't remember what it you know how exactly much was but I know I did my down payment for my first like Kia Niro and like bought it with that money and then paid some of my UCLA tuition with it um but yeah so I graduated and once it became once the money part became a little more close to home for me I was like okay I'm about to turn 18 this is like this is a career career and I started thinking about like whenever I get married and have kids because that's always like the thing that I wanted most is to be a mom um my mom is and just an incredible example of I think what a mother can be and she just dedicated her life to being a really really engaged parent I was like that's what I want to do I want to be able to like build humans I think that's so cool and I was like I don't really want to be a parent and be in this unstable of an environment and I really admire the people that are okay with doing that but I also didn't like that at the drop of a hat I could be told to fly to North Carolina and it would be something like okay you have this audition at 4pm today tomorrow you could be on a flight to Toronto and shooting this thing you literally have no control you have to say no to everything in your life um that was really hard for me as somebody that really values control and having autonomy over my life I didn't love the fact that sometimes you might Crush an audition and they'll be like well you don't really look enough like the person who's playing your father you're too skinny you're too fat we've Rewritten the role and you don't fit anymore so we're firing you on set or like here you've you know you filmed the entire project we don't think your role really reads anymore we're cutting it and that so it's just like constant and it's very very normal and it comes with it so it's ever something I really wanted to like try to change or combat but it was like these are all things that bother me and even though I love storytelling I think I can do this in another way so I went into production so I did multiple like producing internships at the end I was working for big beach Productions they produced A Little Miss Sunshine incredible I mean one of the best internships I ever did I learned so much um but during covert we obviously went virtual I hated that and then during BLM and covid the entire industry just became so political and my job became less about find good stories and more about could you find a Native American story for us could you find a black story for us like rather than just reading scripts for the value in them it was like we need something that is like politically woke we need to be on the cusp of this and I understood it because that is what was making money at the time that's what people wanted there was a lot of pressure I was like okay now I don't like this like that doesn't feel authentic to me so I did what every liberal arts confused graduate does and I studied for the LSAT and I applied to law school so I did that also during covid I took the Tracy you just decided on a whim be like no I'm just going to take the LSAT yeah and so I was still working still doing all of that and I went back and I got my old act tutor who also does LSAT stuff and I called him I was like so buddy you wanna work with me again um and so I decided for that for about nine months and then took that applied for all the California schools I was aiming for Pepperdine um because I thought value-wise I would be better than right that was the only College I applied to is better really yep and I said no I didn't it was so that I was devastated really yeah I've told the story it's actually sad yeah what were you applying for I well I wanted they I think had a really good business program so I was like I'm gonna go there for business but I had terrible grades in high school like really really really bad a horrible SAT score I thought I would wow them and just like write a great application do a cool story because I was really into like Reef aquariums and I was working all through high school and I thought like my resume kind of like a homeschool kid yeah exactly but I was like I was I was promoted uh in high school as the assistant manager not the assistant but the assistant manager of this whole like reef aquarium place and I loved it I'd worked there so I felt like I was going to wow them and I applied and that day okay that they were sending out the acceptance letters going to Disneyland and I was at the Blue Bayou in Disneyland pulling up the email from the first gen iPhone okay okay and I wait I got the email in the morning but I waited to open it at the Blue Bayou because I thought to myself if I get in we'll celebrate yeah and if I didn't get in we're at Disneyland it's great and I didn't get in oh my God the only School you applied to how did it feel walk us through your emotions uh at that point I because I had no backup plan well first of all I didn't know how to pay for it like no one had so so expensive so I didn't yeah so in my mind it was like 40 Grand a year I had no idea like no one in my family had money to pay for that okay I think all of them were gonna wow them with your reef aquarium get a scholarship maybe get a scholarship yeah exactly something like that but uh yeah I had no Back-up Plan okay um and I thought maybe I could be a drummer so because as I was in a band as well in high school and I thought you know maybe I could do this drum thing like maybe it'll work out yeah uh but I think like a month or two after I ended up getting my real estate license that was like my backup plan do that for a year and then I could reapply okay but that's what I was thinking about going to SMC during that okay like maybe I just take a year in SMC or I get my real estate license yeah it was real estate license well that is so funny the dichotomy between Brett's you know growing up and Graham's growing up he's like Brett would pivot in any direction should be like success success success and then Graham's like well like I don't want her to be a drummer but who knows like Yeah I wanted to make money worked out yeah and I felt like I remember because we used to play the right decision because pepper 90 would have lost money oh yeah Pepperdine would have been terrible yeah drumming would have been interesting though because there are now ways to uh make money as a drama he's a good drama he's a very good drama terrible yeah but I would play shows on the Sunset Strip you know like the Roxy and all those places Yes actually we've done all of them we would do every single thing how did you get because we were good and then they were making something yeah I can't believe it I love the Roxy that's an incredible yeah I've been there a few times it's an incredible venue it's like iconic but we would have to sell tickets you need to bring it so this was can I join what would you do the triangle I'll do it I could well I'll give you a backup scene yeah I'd be a manager yeah I could be this I could be the guy that like brings the copies to everybody but now here's the thing so we would usually play like we wouldn't be like a headline on a Friday or Saturday night so usually we would be like a weekday night 8 p.m and we would have to sell like 70 tickets between the three of us so we each had like 25 tickets to sell and we go around school be like dude they were like 14 tickets and just like trying to get people to buy tickets and then uh the our bass player's mom would sometimes just say oh buy the tickets just hand them out no yeah so she would sometimes you know pick up the slack we'd just be handing him out it's all about the hustle that is so cool that is so cool I did not know you played at the Rocks you know what's interesting too we played a battle of the bands for Southern California it was sponsored by Coca-Cola we came in seven uh sorry second place second and technically it was a high school competition we lost to freshman college students because they're bass players still yeah you got it in high school but they were like three years older than us and we're really talented video about that man yeah exposing this right back yeah but if we won we got I think it was like seven songs recorded for free plus a trip to I think it was Scotland or Ireland I forget what was there it was one of those okay but we came in second place to them I'm so upset but we went through like we competed and then like they ranked us and we go to the next one and we'd like play again so I think it was like four of them we lost two yeah that is cool I know but uh but my point with being a drummer was that I remember seeing such talented musicians and they were broke yeah and I remember seeing these drummers like on stage and thinking they are incredible like way better than I was and they had been playing their entire lives and they were broke yeah and I'm like if that guy can't make it why could I like what would make me different from that and then I thought too if like the band broke up and I was like on my own yeah session musicians like a dime a dozen it's very difficult it's a powerful realization yeah like to have that at 18. yeah it's hard to walk away from something that you're like especially when it's something that's artistic that you've literally like poured your heart and soul I mean that's how I felt with acting where it's like you come to this realization that like logically on paper especially if you're somebody that is very like I consider myself a pretty like rational person and like I have to do what's practical it was like this doesn't it doesn't make sense and so I think for some people it not making sense is what's so exciting about it and I'm looking to do it regardless I was never gonna be one of those people graduated in 19. I was gonna go to Pepperdine I applied to Pepperdine Loyola UCLA and then one other oh Chapman in California and then my mom decided she was still living in California at the time my parents had totally slept my dad still in Chattanooga uh my brother was doing relatively better at that point he was you know Med compliant he was living in you know a what you would call the living facility but was like a residency independent kind of thing sort of before like psychiatrics we had like a nurse there and a psychiatrist on site but he was able to live like semi-independently he was doing better um but still he was so close to like all the drugs that were on the street it was really hard for him and my mom just did not want to be in California anymore and she had always had this dream of having a farm and we'd always lived in rural areas like Chattanooga we lived on a lot of land I was actually born on an island in Washington state where we had a farm um so a lot of space there but she had always wanted to have like animals and huge Gardens and run a homestead and so as I was getting older she was like all right last one has totally flown The Coop the other one seemed stable my oldest brother has been great for years he's totally fine um been out of the house he's 14 years older than me so he was long independent so she started looking at Idaho because I was going to stay in California and go to law school my oldest brother was thinking about um moving up to Seattle to take a job leave Florida go up to Seattle so he was looking a job she was like this is great I'll be like directly in between you guys will be on on the same Coast read my middle brother could either go with her or could stay in his living situation um and then I said I just I can't do California anymore I was like I don't even really want to stay here I don't really know why I'm staying here other than for acting I just can't do it and so I moved to Boise with her and lived there for nine months helped her get her Farm started got a house there started settling in I got a job as a marketing strategist at Young Americans for Liberty which is Ron Paul's former organization so very libertarian I was writing for the foundation for economic education which is the longest running free market think tank so I was doing like economic journalism for them um and was like fully leaning into this because I had already during covid I started working with prageru I just kind of struggled with friendships due to political reasons at UCLA during covet it just got so polarized and I just a lot of it how did that begin though did you start bringing up maybe certain viewpoints and getting so when did you recognize your political leaning um I would probably say the beginning of college but I didn't really even think that it was that important I just kind of realized as I would look at news stories and you know talk to people I was like oh okay I think that this is my opinion I guess that this is political in nature it was just you know values I've been raised with are things that I just intrinsically thought and I started kind of connecting the dots with politics and being like Oh okay so if I believe this and that means this um slowly started formulating all of that but I was not raised in a political household by any mean my mom is a student of objectivism she adopted Ein rand's cat after she died she spent years yes so I mean she you know was in textbook publishing was you know always more you know Freedom leading I would say um my older brother is very libertarian um and so but we were not raising a political household like my mom would listen to Rush Limbaugh in the car when my oldest brother was young but like I never heard any of that I never listened she never listened to Ben at most maybe she would pull up a Dennis Prager you know radio show like once every year maybe or something like that we never discussed politics ever I had no idea what my dad believed other than he loved the environment I mean truly had no idea and I honestly think that's I'm so grateful that that is how I was raised because it was all based on values it was like how you treat people how you see the world like you intrinsically value Freedom you value individualism you and you know you Value Independence people not telling you what to do the government not being involved in your life but it wasn't even the government it was just kind of you know free thinking independent those are the values I was raised with so as I started being confronted with politics I was like oh okay this makes sense I'm seeing the connections but was not right we literally never talked politics whatsoever and I didn't even know that Iran was a how did she get her I I had yeah she left in the middle of the night after graduating college my grandmother wanted her to go to secretarial School my mom said absolutely not so she left with her best friend from college they drove to New York City in the middle of the night and she was like I'm going to get a job as a textbook publisher and her friend had some connections I think through college they're still good friends I literally saw him a couple of months ago um he's a wealth manager now like a free market wealth manager so he's helped me with some stuff um but he had some connections I believe it was through their college that went to Davidson College um with people in Iran's Circle and her to proteges who now run her like two biggest organizations after her death you know published her books with her like that sort of thing got in contact so they started going to these like philosophical salons and getting literally trained and philosophical lessons from these proteges and Ein Rand died soon after my mom moved to New York work her cat Tommy named after Thomas Aquinas because Thomas Aquinas was the only person to argue the existence of God for a place of reason and even though Iran was like totally atheist she respected people who were arguing the existence of God from a place of reason because reason was Paramount to her reason you know healthy selfishness and productivity you know the biggest things for objectives really in my like boiled down sense I guess um and so Tommy needed a home and so they were like Diane can you take einrant's cat so she had Iran's cat she lived in a tiny room that didn't even have a kitchen or anything like that she worked night shifts at a hotel doing like the the call person um works like three jobs and finally got in the door with ww Norton and she published the first objectivist like libertarian textbook and it's still published today um so she did that and then lived in Chicago for a bit doing it but anyways no today we have been on the exact same wavelength we just go hmm that's the exact same but not only that but other words at the exact same time the same phrase I don't know we spend a lot of time together at the same time you guys went like this I know yeah okay all right but anyway so that is how I was raised to the value I was raised but I appreciated that it was not political because I you know I've had people say like you're you know your mother indoctrinated you and I was like well what would you say would be indoctrination like I was not you know being told about political policies or anything like that she just raised me as any good parent would with the values that she believed were important to create a you know a healthy independent young person and those happen to be these more you know I would say objectivist libertarian Freedom leaning whatever anyway so that is how I I guess started seeing that and obviously with covet it became very very politicized but even before that at the end of 2019 beginning of 2020 midterms it became a huge topic for people and I had already noticed some tension because people knew that I was originally from Tennessee and that was something that I didn't think was contentious but apparently it was and so being from Tennessee yeah and it was like you're from the south you're backwards you're racist and I remember my friends being super drunk at a party and I walked in and one of them said there's our racist friend Brett from Tennessee and we hadn't even talked about politics yet how does that make you feel it was just it was stupid to me and but I still thought that they were good friends I remember coming home you know calling my mom or calling my brother and be like oh yeah they said this it's so funny and my brother would be like that's not friendship right like what those are just random attacks like why are you a lying that happened I was like oh everybody you know you know shoots the [ __ ] it's fine um and they would insinuate other things like we'll be talking about our families I would say oh yeah well my you know my dad's side of the family is all for North Carolina old like dirt poor farmers and they you know fought in the Revolutionary War um so I guess could be part of like Daughters of the American Revolution I think my like great grandfather like fifth grade grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War but like dirt poor tobacco farmers and we were talking about our lineages because most of my friends were in this friend group you know one was Turkish one was Indian we're just talking about ancestry and when I said like farmers in North Carolina they were like oh so your family owned slaves and I was like how did we get there and I was like I it just said so I blew it off but I think that's kind of how it started and I fought back against that I was like we were literally I we didn't like I would know and even if it you know even if my family did how does that impact you know the person that I am now and the friend that's sitting in front of you um and so that's kind of where it started that was even before all of you know the midterm started and all of that and then midterms I believe it was no no it wasn't the terms it was primaries primaries um for the presidential election um and so then obviously there were a lot of conversations about like Bernie and Joe Biden and that sort of thing and I knew enough at that point and I was like clued in enough to know I don't really think that I would vote for either of those I wasn't like rah-rah Trump I never really have been um but I did not hate him I didn't understand the vitral about him um and so people started bringing it up to me and saying so like who are you gonna vote for I was like I don't really don't know like maybe I'll vote for you know Joe Jorgensen she's like the libertarian I don't really know I said but I don't I don't love Joe Biden I don't love Bernie Sanders and I mean they lost their [ __ ] um and it just became like a huge argument and debate constantly I remember you know all of us voting in the primaries and me not voting for either Joe Biden or Bernie and them being very very angry one of my friends voted for for Joe instead of Bernie her father was a policeman and she thought the Bernie was just like a little too much and she got slandered because she wasn't far left enough and that was my my big and my sorority and I remember thinking like why is this such an issue issue like this is crazy and then Cove had happened um and I remember friends you know making me riding a car by myself like six months in because it's like well you know you're on the right so obviously you don't care about covets you can't you know hang out with us because you're probably like not taking things seriously I was like well no it's still a I wasn't even thinking that it was political at the time even though I didn't think that lockdowns economically were going to do anything good for this country I thought that it was 100 government overreach um BLM started taking off and I stayed out of that for most of it until it just kept continuing on and seeing the way that businesses were then you know taking steps for racial action and all this stuff and I was like I think that a lot of this is you know blown out of proportion and why is the media lying about what's actually happening like I'm living in La I'm seeing these protests it's totally different than how they're painting it but the kicker for me was and this is why I left La there was a business in Burbank that got taken away from the owners because they stayed open during the second lockdown of covid and they didn't even stay open completely they left their patio open and it wasn't any kind of like political Fu or anything like that they left it open people could sit on the patio and enjoy their takeout food whatever got reported to the city council went on for nine months um their electricity was turned off the you know the business was boarded up was chained up multiple times and then it became personal for the owner and he's 22 and he inherited it from his father he became a really good friend of mine his name is Lucas lepagean and then you know yeah the whole Community rallying behind him he would break through the doors every time he would open it back up Community donated generators um they kept shutting down electricity so he just had grills and his staff kept coming back to cook and then you know policeman on their days off would come and like protect it and that sort of thing like it was it was wild um got tons of donations he was arrested I think four times multiple multiple you know City Council meetings about it and the kicker for me was there was one last city council meeting with public comment and I think public comment went on for like four hours and you know I called it everybody was calling in and this was going to be the determining factor of whether they could keep the business open and what it looks like was going to happen was that they would have to shut down for two weeks you know pay their due diligence pay the fine to they had accrued and then open back up because at this point every other business in La was open like you could go inside and eat except for this one except for this one and by the end of the city council meeting everything seemed fine they were like all right we'll get back to you tomorrow in the middle of that while public comment was going on the City of Burbank sent out a construction crew and they built a wall around the business a 10-foot barbed wire with like the what do you call that I guess that is the bar bar so it was chained like barbed wire on top 10 feet so they literally could not get into the business all their you know they were paid up on their taxes they were paid up on everything they owned this building I think they'd owned it for two generations it was two generation business from Burbank had was like a staple in the community and they totally I mean literally just took it from the owners in the middle of public comment and I was like so I'm living in a place where the government can literally come in and take your home take your business because they disagree with something that you've done and not listen to the community members that are literally on the phone for hours did they take the business though or is it more they're just deterring people from going inside that sounds like the fence is more just like basically what it is um and saying that you you know the business owner cannot operating right so you you know you must shut down basically what it was um I think the building has been demolished now um You just sold it well I'm guessing what was the verdict of the the hearing that they it was just gonna be shut down but they made that decision before so they said oh we'll come back tomorrow and so Lucas woke up the next morning in the house and the the restaurant was totally surrounded so it was so they basically just wanted to punish him for his past yeah exactly yeah um and the guy who did that who led that was a Burbank city councilman who ran um in the DSA party so he was a Democratic Socialist of America ran on that party was elected as such um and that was a kicker for me and then during in the middle of 2020 LAPD also slashed a huge part of their Major Crimes unit which included the sexual assault unit which included the gang unit and as a woman that really freaked me out because I already knew that I couldn't defend myself with a gun I'm trained with guns I've shot my entire life um and you know I spent a lot of time in the city by myself I started doing self-defense training when I was 11 years old because my mom was concerned about me going into audition rooms with you know adults by myself because obviously the casting couch is a real thing we know about the metoo movement which was like I never want you to feel insecure about that so I did that for seven years every single week you know helped teach self-defense I was a very very competent person still am um and part of that was because you know as adults she knew like you're not going to be able to carry a gun in this city you're not gonna be able to protect yourself but they took away that extra level of protection the LAPD response time dropped like crazy um gang presence in Burbank started skyrocketing again in the span of like two months there were three shootings and two stabbings in my like one mile vicinity alone which had never happened before um and I just felt totally unsafe and so my mom was leaving for Boise and I was like I don't really know if I want to be here alone I don't like this I don't like the values that are around me why would I stay in a place that you know does not value my security or safety and where the government is so willing to punish you for having a differing opinion um I was like I don't think this is where I really want to start my adult life I can do it somewhere else and so I was like I'll figure it out I'll go to Boise I loved it I loved her Farm I loved the remote work that I was doing I got into Boise's law school so I was going to do a dual MBA and JD program just four years I wasn't sure what I was gonna do with it I thought I would probably go do constitutional law specialize in 2A which was what I was really interested in and then I actually met over the summer with a bunch of constitutional liars and they said don't do it you know like you're gonna make no money it's a waste of money because unless you're going to one of the top top schools and you're going into corporate law you will make no money you're going to waste five years four years because I was doing two programs um and they said you know you're already working in politics you're doing adjacent basically you are you know making videos for prageru you you have this marketing strategist job at another organization you're writing you're doing journalism you have the connections now you don't need to go to law school to make those connections you can do advocacy and the exact words he said was you can do everything we can do except sign the brief why would you go to school for four years just to do that and go into debt because I got somewhat of a scholarship for it but I was still gonna have to pay a lot of money for it um and if you look at the discrepancy between the amount of legal jobs that are available in the amount of law schools it's just insane I mean we are pumping out so many JD students and there are not enough positions I think the base salary for a law student that did not go to like one of the top five is like in the 65-75 right that's not that much plus laws I believe the unhappiest career yeah and I'm such a creative person the people in my life are like oh this doesn't make sense but I was like I'm smart like I am academic I can make a difference I want to fight for this I was really politically engaged at the time and then the day that orientation started I was like I can't you're all right I can't do it yeah so I went through I had no plan I was doing that journal writing a fee I was being a marketing strategist and I was a waiter at a restaurant in Boise so I was doing all three of those I left Trader Joe's and I was like I'm just gonna figure it out and my mom was like you just blew up everything basically you need to figure it out I was like oh I'll come up with a plan so I was in the process of coming up with a plan I was still making video videos for prageru for Young Americans for Liberty I was running all their social media accounts when I got a DM from daily wire and they said we've seen your short form videos we love your content would you be interested in having a meeting with us and I thought it was a joke and I was like this can't be real So I responded and I was like okay and I've respected the daily wire for a really long time it actually looked and applied for jobs with them I applied to be Candace owens's assistant you're a prior yeah and her manager rejected me before I didn't even do an interview which she knows now she thinks is so funny that was the reason for the uh rejection I didn't live in Nashville oh yeah she didn't even respond because they were only looking at people that were in Nashville make sense okay but I was like I'll move my researchers like I'll move I'll move um and it was funny because her manager and I her ex manager and I are now like friends and I like was messaging her I worked out for a reason yeah exactly um I applied for like an associate producer role on Ben's show in Florida like I was like I just I want to be involved in this company somehow because I loved what they were doing in the entertainment sector and I was like I could get back into storytelling where I my values are more in line with what they're doing and that could kind of give me the balance that I'm looking for and I could be on the production side so I would have more control and a little more stability which is also what I was needing um and so I wanted that but I also in the back of my head thought you know this organization is skewed older all the hosts are older you know it's a bit more established I don't know if they're going to want to be hiring I was 19 at the time a 19 year old kid to do any of this I was like you know what I will continue working at Young Americans for Liberty which is a student organization prageru really focuses on students and I was like I'll stay here for a few years I'll apply again later on and maybe I'll you know get my foot into the door with daily wire or maybe I'll go back to acting I don't know I'll just you know leave it up to whatever happens so I got this DM I was like you've got to be kidding me this is insane respond back we start emailing back and forth I do a zoom call um really like the people um all of them still work here except one you guys met the girl earlier who sent me the DM yep and she was just scrolling on she ran the tick tock account and found me and here we are but um then they said you know you only do short form content we'd like you to do like I did reactions and like my reactions to news stories and that kind of thing and they said could you do like longer responses to news stories and then could you also show us like maybe a pop culture thing and I said okay so I did that and then they hired me I was you know I think we negotiated for about three months I had I found out that I got the job while I was in the field with my mom in her pasture like wrangling a donkey or something like that and I got a call from our CMO and I was grilled for like an hour and what what did that sound like um it was basically like are you you know we're taking a risk on a 19 year old kid and we're gonna bring you here and we're gonna try to create something with you we want to make sure that you're not some like fluke and so it was basically like I've seen your resume the people below me are advocating for you I want you to tell me why you deserve to be here and I was like shaking I was like standing up in my mom's bedroom shaking and it was like how are you different than other 19 year olds like this is and daily wire is like very very hustle oriented we are constantly you know you know we're past startup mode but we are growing so fast every single day like you'll see Jeremy boring speeches about the fact that this is a an objectively a hard place to work because we do so much we pump out so much content every single day and the benefits I think definitely outweigh the fact that it's a lot of hard work so I think we're doing really good things and I'm really proud of everything that we do but they wanted to make sure that my ambition and that my you know hustle and what I was willing to take on matched what they were going to be expecting and if they're going to take again take a risk on a 19 year old um ended up working out I guess I did a good job I remember coming in and meeting that guy and literally being like I'm so like I hope it worked like whatever um and then I you know I think that was solidified at the end of November I had 10 days to move I fought with them I was like trying to be able to start in the first of the year but they were like we really want you here now to get started on developing the show now why didn't you decide to go off and do that on your own because you could have just as easily said okay you know I could make YouTube videos I could make tick tocks and shorts I'm doing it already why have the management of the daily wire the mentorship yeah um and I've said this before the value of being in this building where I am next to Candace Owens Ben Shapiro Matt Walsh Michael Knowles Jeremy boring Jordan Peterson where I get to interact with these people often on a daily basis is immeasurable to me like that is truly Priceless um and I feel like you know they have been very very gracious with you know and I talked about this couple of weeks ago of you know as the shown has grown they have you know changed my conversation like that kind of thing like they are very very proactive with making sure that you know the talent is supported and that sort of thing but I would literally be fine with barely being paid and being being here because the things that I am learning not only about how to navigate this space but also on an intellectual and an ideal ideological level from these people who all have very very different opinions like if you watch the backstage events the daily wire does here you will see the differing opinions of all of the hosts and the fact that we all get to be here and work and debate and go back and forth and still respect each other and still you know support each other's shows it's I mean truly Priceless um and I knew that I was not going to get that anywhere else and it felt like this was just an incredible opportunity and in my head I was like if I hate it I can leave in a year because I wasn't signing on a multi-year anything at the time I was just coming to try a show and I was like I hate Nashville I always have a backup plan I had house in Boise I can come back I can go to law school again I can try to do something else to go back to acting whatever but I was gonna kick myself if this didn't happen but I almost didn't do it I almost didn't even send in the longer reaction they were asking for because I was so nervous and I don't know what it was I was so insecure I hadn't acted in a really long time and it isn't acting but it's still like putting yourself on it's a presentation yeah exactly and I hadn't been judged in that way in a really long time I just been doing my like stupid little like minute long videos and my I mean it's weird to say it was like growing considering where I am now but you know I started a new Instagram and I think by that point I had like 7 000 followers which is still like for I was not really producing it right and I was like okay I'm doing this and it's fine um and I just I kept pushing it off and I was like I'm just so scared I'm so I just don't know if it's right I don't really want to do it like I loved Boise and I was like I'm happy here I'm happy working on your farm I'm happy with this house and this life I've created and my mom literally sat me down and looked me in the eyes and she was like I don't care if you take the job or not but you are going to kick yourself in five ten years a year if you do not send this in if you don't at least try and she was like your entire life you've taken all of these risks you have literally been like balls to the wall sending letters to managers like showing up emancipating or whatever you're doing like going and doing a business program applying for law school like you pointed out like I literally would take any risk and just do it because it sounded interesting to me and if I hated it then hell at least I have a good story about it um going to public school and she was like I don't know what has changed over the past year and I think that I kind of felt like a a beaten dog in a way sure like after covet I'd lost most of my friends I left la which is all I knew I wasn't acting anymore I think I just lost all my confidence and she was like this is an incredible opportunity for you and it is also incredible opportunity to just get back on the horse try something you're literally a waitress right now like you have literally nothing to lose I was like fine you're right Diane's usually right so I set it in they loved it anyway I came here and then I was here in December and they we developed the show together and it launched a year ago yesterday wow yeah it's crazy you've done all of this in a year yeah I keep thinking you've been doing this for like five years that's insane so like two million subscribers one year I think how many did you get in the first four months I think it was like 700 000 subscribers in a few months we I hit a million in six months we're in five months what was that like for you and where did that audience come from was that Ben's audience navigating over to you because maybe there's a bit of a resemblance or is it initially yes so we did not do any paid ads for my Channel at all um in fact we did a very or daily wire did a very very soft marketing campaign like there was barely anything I remember in my pitch with Jeremy when we like brought the show in front of him he didn't even know really who I was at the time and the CMO had brought me on and I was like hey I'm the political kid that's here trying to you know get a show approved and he watched the pilot which was so bad and he looked at me and he said I don't understand the show it's not for me but I know it's for somebody else it's not really for our audience but I know it's going to reach somebody else so let's try it and I mean literally through us like a few grand to put together a set took some team members from like our social media video team and we're like just try it and see what happens um so I did my own promotion on my like social video Channel or my social media channels and I had been doing like some daily wire videos like news hits and that sort of thing so I think I was probably up to like 20 000 like followers okay one still didn't have a YouTube channel so there were some people who knew who I was in the daily wire Circle and then I did one hit on Ben's show and announced the show and that was it I don't think any of the other hosts talked about it Candace didn't even know that I had a show or who I was for like six months because nobody told her yep um we literally it was like a trial and error they did not put any paid or anything um so I think some of it migrated over and you know daily wire would repost me every once in a while so I think the initial like bulk I would say maybe under a hundred thousand came from the daily wire audience um but then it's just been where did the rest come from was that just a series of videos that you posted that did well yeah what was the in shorts shorts yeah okay I mean we that was not something I really knew a lot about but I was already doing a ton of organic content for Instagram and Tick Tock and so that made its way to YouTube and one thing I think I've done differently is that all of my shorts content was original it wasn't clips from the show it wasn't anything like that it was all like this is designed for yeah YouTube or before YouTube In the Beginning how did you pick topics to talk about is this on you or would they would they come to you and it still is on me still so I create the show I pick the topics I pull all the comments if there's anything that I want to write sometimes it's off the cuff um these days I'll kind of have like bullet points of points I want to hit if there's a message that I want to leave people with sometimes I'll write that out if it feels a little more touchy but it still is pretty improvised and I just researched the subject really well and I try to become an expert on that like one little thing every day and then share it so I still do all of that but it was basically just living on social media and it still is and so most of my content is social media heavy I will only cover something if it is like trending on social media or if I notice that it's about to so that can mean like literally trending on Twitter or if it's a trend on Tick Tock that is like picking up or a the thing in society that has you know whether it's a social media Trend or just a trend in general in the original sense of the word um and so I would find things through there and then you know it's called the comment section that was kind of the the get of the show and the angle was that I wasn't just like talking about a subject just my opinions but I was going into the comments and actually trying to get people's actual opinions about it yeah so I'd get people on both sides of the aisle on both you know sides of whatever issue I was talking about and read those comments it was fun to you know kind of act them out and use my act you know acting background to make it really really fun um and then I wanted it to be really really Punchy because I know my generation I know that I hate watching long form content because our attention spans are dead due to tick tock so it was very very fast paced so I wanted like memes like we had our first you know editing run it was like we need more it was like more cowbell like more memes like more Fast Cuts I hate that yeah but it works I mean that's like that's what my generation means it's like I need my attention yeah I'm saying he always rejected my own tick tocks like sound effects sound effects zoom in that's what I love over here sound effects sound effects yeah for young people it's what we are text on screen yep you gotta have so many things flying so we we really like worked very hard on creating that you know that style and then I wanted you know the comments were kind of a unique thing and then obviously that I was going to be you know more right laning was a different thing because there wasn't really anybody in that space that was doing this kind of like laid-back cultural commentary streamery type stuff it was really on the right that was my age yeah because it's like there's a lot of them that are you know 35 year old dudes but like an 18 year old girl like that's not really the normal right that's right um but yes it was on social media primarily and I started off doing more newsy political things I strayed away from that just because have gotten far more disinterested in that um why did you lose interest because I obviously think that politics matter and I'm interested in politics on like an academic and intellectual level I think it's interesting I care about learning about it but Andrew by um but Andrew Breitbart once said and I think it still holds weight um that politics is Downstream from culture and so it starts with culture and the conversations that we're having every single day and it starts with values and that's how I was raised that's what I care about I care about you know looking at Trends on social media and saying why why is this something that people care about um and I think that we can talk about you know social media trends and cultural things and movies and TV in Hollywood without a political angle but just talking about like what is driving these people to believe this way and in my mind a lot of that goes back to like my current critique with my generation I would say is that it's driven by this desperate need for both attention and to victimize themselves um I think that victimization is holding most of my generation back um I think we hold ourselves back a lot of the time um and we know that being a victim these days does give you more attention and so it's things like that where it's like I'm not directly talking about politics and theory and like this new law but I'm talking about things that do by default influence politics and I also think that talking about things that are more cultural and are more value-based number one they interest me but I think that it's it's easier to connect with people on a human human level that way it's less polarizing I get that um I can have so much more empathy with people and I think people find me more relatable because of that and when I'm talking to people who are on opposite sides of political aisle that is where we find the most common ground is by talking about this and then being able to say like oh okay so now I see why you think that the way you do you know because of this value that you hold or because of this you know let's talk about in the context of culture um and you're able to reach so many more people and you're able to find so much more common ground um and I think it makes my content maybe more digestible for people I would say because it doesn't come across as like I'm gonna hit you over the hammer let's talk about Trump let's talk about Biden it's like but then you think it's also easier to talk a little bit more about like drama topics or maybe topics that hit on a more emotional level exactly logical yeah and people are driven by emotion these days and I've said this publicly before on the show and I love Ben and you know he's a mentor of mine and I think you know fact don't care about your feelings such a fun Punchy line but I think especially with my generation they don't really care about facts it's like emotions are dictating so much now whether that's better or worse that's something we can all relate on that's the human human connection and obviously facts are important at the end of the day but if you can't reach somebody emotionally whether that's a positive emotional or a negative emotion like facts will go out their ear they don't care and especially in a time when we see so many you know whether it's you know scientists or politicians the media lying about facts or changing them like literally just you know saying outright lie or get you know getting the facts changed in order to fit an agenda or a narrative it's like okay so then if they're doing that then how do we reach people yeah with emotion and that also as like somebody who comes from like an acting in a storytelling background and why I loved acting so much in addition to it being an escape was that it allowed me to tap into the emotions that I was too scared to deal with as a child and was too scared to feel or Express and so I really really understand the importance of connecting to people on that level and reaching people at that level um and so it makes me happier too and so as a content creator I feel more fulfilled in what I'm doing because I read my comments and it's less about people you know being fired up about some political policy or being angry at Joe Biden which gets so tired so I don't want to talk about him anymore it's boring I do I don't want to talk about Trump anymore whether it's positive or negative it's boring but hearing people's anecdotal stories and the way that they are emotionally responding to things in the world right now is really interesting to me and you really understand where people come from um and so I think that's why I'm able to connect you know what I grew up doing my career prior to this and what I'm doing now I think it kind of fuses together in a really really nice way yeah it's a really interesting quote that politics lie Downstream from culture yeah I actually completely agree and recently actually I shouldn't say recently I'd say probably about a year ago I became a lot more disinterested in politics growing up I was kind of interested in it and I had gone to like some political meetings and stuff like that growing up and then you're laughing a year or so ago I realized it's kind of worthless it's kind of useless like a lot of the times like you said it's just all filled with vitriol and you can't really focus on like bigger picture things like hating on certain people yeah it's mostly on like incidental anecdotal with one person yeah um and also on top of that what I noticed is that conservatives and liberals and I could get blamed for this I actually have a lot more in common in terms of values like core values uh than people think yeah and a lot of the times the values are just mass by culture and certain like Frameworks of where you grew up how you grew up and stuff like that the value systems are very very extremes on both sides and those are you know that's what gets the attention yes exactly and and a lot of times you know those you know very you know polarizing sides like obviously they get very angry at each other and it's important to talk about them because those obviously feed into the masses but I think if you find like commonplace people on the street they will have things in common and I think they get pulled in either direction and they feel like they have to have allegiance to like okay this really intense crazy side this really intense crazy side I think it's important to show people that it's like it's okay to have common sense if I could say that like I could boil down my content into like one word it would be common sense and it's like I just want to have a place where you can you know laugh where you can feel like the world isn't too crazy on either side you know what's funny that could be your second Channel we were talking about this earlier common sense with Brett Cooper there you go yeah sense yeah that works with so many great ideas I know he's been like yeah even for the sponsor earlier I'm like you gotta get a sponsoring yeah exactly um but no and I think that that's something a lot of people are missing these days because that is an inherently political and I think what you were saying about it being worthless is that especially as a young person I mean you probably relate to like gen Z there's a reason why we feel so hopeless all the time like the world is just filled with fear porn that everybody's telling us the world is like burning around us or you know we're you know born into 9 11. I mean all of this stuff like it's just like but there is a reason for that because that's what gets the clicks yes and so of course it's going to feel and it gets people super angry and that sort of thing but we live in a very we have grown up in a very strange world where we're the most digital of any generation before and so that's a totally new thing it's like very very heated and polarized um and I think that a lot of gen Z is just exhausted and there's a reason why I think so many genders say you know I don't want to have families I don't want to have kids and I think having children is like the most hopeful thing you feel like every generation says that though crazy I talk to people and they're like I do not want to have kids that's a deal breaker stuff like that yeah I'm just completely it's better than being a father I don't know but I really don't know I'm just saying I think every generation says the same thing to see what people say yeah because imagine like going through World War II and thinking like oh I don't want to bring up a kid in this environment or that's true I also will say I think it's a part of the culture like people like the rebellious nature of oh I'm not going to have kids like that I'm a lone wolf I want to be by myself that's also because life can be pretty good if you just default to like going on your phone and like yeah and not having to numb in the mind I think there's also less societal societal pressure now to have kids yeah you don't need to have it yeah I think it's even in the opposite side I think it's like I remember having conversations with my friends in high school who and I would say like I want to have kids and they'd be like throw it all away for a child like that and I was like we're 15. and you're like you're like I you're so angry about this already it was and you know like even at that young age they were so anti yet it's also kind of cool to like say that you don't want to have kids yeah you want to be a lone wolf I see a lot of people doing that as well yeah yeah well I think there's a benefit in Waiting that's what that's my belief yeah I mean you should probably wait for you know while you're ready but at the same time for a lot of people they can have a baby at a younger age and then they're kind of forced to take in the parental role and then mature I don't think that should be done out of a pressure to like but I feel like for a lot of women there is that pressure where it's like you know your mid-20s like when are you gonna start having kids and I feel like that shouldn't be still biological you could also be 30 and have just as successful I mean my mom did for me I think it was 42. but as somebody who literally wants like five or six children I'm like really obviously like not right now but I do think about that of like I don't think I want to be having a kid at 42. and so I'm like it's kind of a tough thing because you think you want to have it at like you know 24 25 26 yeah because you want to be young while your kids are like growing up you play catch with them and stuff like that your shoulders don't hurt but at the same time you want to be able to enjoy your 20s so I don't know it's tough situation I think though when you have a kid at least what I'm hoping for who knows if it's actually like this is that just everything in your life becomes so much better everything and my last part already very very good but as you have a kid but having your 20s and having that freedom to pursue anything like you know you moving here would have not have been probably as doable if you had a newborn and it's like that's something you don't have to consider I mean I mean your mom did move you around quite a bit when you were young I was gonna say I also been in a different situation where in a way obviously it's not the same thing as like the freedom in your 20s but I feel like I've experienced a lot in my 21 years where it's like I've literally moved all over the country I've traveled International nationally I've had multiple careers at this point it's like all right cool I feel very stable in the job that I have now and so it's kind of weird I had this conversation with a couple of friends of you know of mine who are still kind of in this like flux of like I don't know where I want to live permanently or whatever and I was like you know what I'm not really in a position where if like I got pregnant I wouldn't be like oh my God like what's going on it's like oh I'm actually like very stable and that's terrifying that's actually scarier to me because I you know was thinking like oh you know farther down the line it was like oh like I'm an adult now that's very very weird to be like very comfortable with that um but no but I do I definitely think for women like obviously it is you know societal but for me at least it is biological because it's I had you know my brothers were 12 and 14 years older than me my mom had me when she was 42. they had a totally different relationship with my grandparents than I did because my grandparents were young super fun I barely saw my grandparents growing up because they were older they were moving into assisted living they didn't want to deal with like a you know my one cousin that's closer to my age and we like barely saw grandparents because of that totally different my brothers traveled with them did all of this stuff and I remember Grant being like I don't want that like I don't want my parents to be tired I don't want my you know grandparents to be I don't want my kids to have that experience but it all goes back yeah my mom was 38 when she had me okay so for me that just seems kind of normal yeah and it seems like at least from my perspective you pursue everything that you want to do yeah you know on your own have that freedom go and travel the world like have those experiences and then once you've done those then it makes sense I think do you think you would still like travel the world and do that kind of thing with kids probably not um I'm very set like I'm ready to set up yeah well even for me traveling it's just like it's not something I necessarily lose that's crazy that to me is like being home okay comfortable I do agree with that I don't like menial traveling I don't like just hopping like if I'm just like popping over to do like a work thing oh my God it's exhausting I don't I mean it's that's his favorite kind of traveling work travel well I mean it is paid for it so that's nice but these days where it feels like travel is so screwed up post covid in my opinion where I feel every time I travel like something goes wrong and I was in the midst of like the Southwest chaos over Christmas and I was like I cannot do this anymore however like international travel still excites me and I've always said that I would love to like spend a year abroad with my future kids and like teach them another language and do something like that but I also think because I was homeschooled and because I had so much flexibility I think of like having kids just like oh my God there's always activities like this is so so cool see for me I want to do van life with Macy and just travel the United States in a van I'd love to take the iced coffee hour on the road like at some point get it get an RV I wouldn't be opposed to it here's the thing I'm a very open-minded guy like anyone can pitch me anything in there yeah sure why not let's see what happens so I would I would be down to that test it out for a year that's the one I could have the bunk yeah but it's it's crazy though but even like having a dog makes things difficult because you can't necessarily take the dog everywhere you go having a cat easier but having a reef aquarium is probably the most limiting thing for me I can't believe here's something that he wanted it so badly this week uh 350 gallons it's really it's really it's huge yeah yeah but it's so delicate it's like someone's got to be there to like fill up the water for the reservoir like if you have like a caretaker so I mean obviously there are a couple people in Vegas that can do it yeah they they know the ins and the outs but still like if I'm there I test the waters I make sure like if something fell over it like yeah I keep it pristine so leaving that for more than a week at a time is difficult so that's something so then thinking about kids obviously I can't I can't do that van life yeah Andrew are you taking the reef aquarium with you no I wish I could put it in the van custom built van I heard this analogy and I loved it because I always grew up planning on having at least two kids and I was like okay maybe two maybe three and then I heard from somebody they're like I want to have a bunch of kids and I was like why would you want to have a bunch of kids he's like man 10 11 12. yeah I'm like why do you want somebody he's like this again you want to say yeah meet Kevin said it he's another Finance YouTuber okay and he was like and I was like why do you want to have so many kids he's like think about it this way man they're your best friends why would you not want more best friends yeah and I was like well that makes sense as long as you can find your best friend I have so many I have too many friends because you're bonded by something like it's kind of like a marriage it's like a marriage right where you're you're existing with somebody and you're living with them and you're happy and everything but as soon as you sign that contract it's another level that you have to break through if you want to leave so you have to make it work societal thing where so many people think that marriage is like is so much easier to throw away or it doesn't mean as much and you know they're like oh I can get married I'll just get divorced if it doesn't work like whatever oh no and it's like people can make it work that's the thing and they don't think that they do I think people are way more compatible in general what about instances of cheating do you want to be with somebody who's cheating there's got to be a line there where it's like there absolutely does but yeah but they don't want it to work out at all the thing is you have to it has to be two people that both want it of course yeah and you can make it work out regardless of certainly I think that's about the ending of marriage and more about like as you're entering into marriage and I see a lot of my friends and I see some of them that are you know a little more trivial with it and then some that are you know I mean they take it so so seriously this is the end I'll be all and even if you're you know already living with each other or something like that still they say like things change and you know you could become just like oh we're basically roommates but you have to like actively work and so that's something I see with at least like our generation of it being like oh you know it doesn't work and it doesn't you know we can just break up basically and get divorced I'm like that's somebody who went through that was like one of the worst you know as a child and that sort of thing I'm that's not easy it's not a quick fix like that thing took five freaking years it's exhausting um but anyway that was just my side about marriage too but I do I think it's a good thing to be like I want to have friends so I'm gonna have kids it's just like that's it's not friends man you got to do it for yourself best friend okay have you ever had a best friend before yes and what was that like fantastic I have many best friends and you can have more as long as you have kids I think look you have kids and not only that but I feel like you're also contributing to the greater good especially that's how I feel but then you're a good parent that seems selfish if you want a best friend no dude I think if you can raise kids and you can turn them into great citizens and and they're productive they help out people they help out they Advocate yeah but I feel like it with no expectation like you have to go in thinking I'm going to do this Best Shot no you go and you have to be so intentional about having children like that's what I'm saying expectations but that's what I'm saying but you can't go in with like they're gonna love me and they're gonna do this and do that I feel like well I think they're kind of love right yeah I think I love me they're gonna love Jack I was gonna say I think that you know as somebody who like with my brother and that sort of thing I've watched his relationship with my parents be so fractured over the years of you know with his you know drug abuse and like that sort of thing I've also watched you know with my father you know the way that you know our relationship was you know totally destroyed at some point um and my mom and I have also gone through periods you know where we're closer we're not closer but especially with her even in dealing with my brother like I feel like I you know I watch her as a parent and no matter what happens like that love is unwavering and her desire to Force you it's like you look at parents and your job is to like get the kid to leave the nest basically to create you know this productive fulfilled independent go out and do good things and that is like constantly her goal that's the reason why she was encouraging me to you know Take This Job do this thing move across the country do all of this with my brother it was not just like oh honey I just want you it was like I want you to be able to get better so that you can go out in the world and continue doing good things and living your life and being fulfilled like her job is not to keep you it is to bolster and continue working and even with like there were times where my brother like hated my Mom hated the things that she was trying to get him to do I don't want to take these meds I can't believe you're kicking me out of the house like all of this stuff unwavering and even now it's like he permanently lives in a psychiatric facility he's no longer in like a necess or whatever like he is non-verbal he will be there permanently um even like fully on meds like it went so far and he was like totally sober was not abusing drugs was Med compliant living with me in Idaho for a year and it just snapped one day and so he permanently lives there and even still like she still holds that hope like she would still drop anything and do everything even though he has like in many ways totally blown up some of the stuff that she offered and it's so that is the coolest thing to me to be able to like from her perspective of like you get to experience a love like literally nothing else and also it's it's literally your job to mold these humans to like send them out into the world to hopefully be good people and also like I said earlier it's sort of like for the greater good but also I think that having kids is hopeful and saying like I do think that there is like a world to be left for you like I am going to do everything in my power to make sure that the world that I leave behind for you like my legacy or whatever is you know something that's good for you and I do believe that you can change things and you can continue or continue making change it's incredibly helpful and that's when I look at our generation who's like no the world's doomed I don't want to have kids because of that it's like oh my God like no wonder Genesis is that the general consensus though because I feel like again we're just getting the Extremes in either it's a pretty popular opinion yeah yeah absolutely that's the reason yeah this is a serious conversation to have if you're dating at the stage absolutely yes I just think it's you know people are having kids later because there's more opportunity out there no way Millennials but for Gen Z it's like super common yeah really oh dude but then again it's crazy any one of conversations I'll have and they'll be like like it comes up and they say I don't want to have kids immediately it just yeah ends it ends it but don't you think that's also can be an opinion that changes over time it could be but why would I risk it yeah that's a pretty hefty bodies and you're just saying you want to have kids oh no I'm you know and they're 19. I feel like that's a lot more common my buddies I want to have kids ask them 10 years from now the same people might know how many who said no will have kids just change I don't really keep in touch with the people that's it really do you just like just audio all my friends are I like to think that they're reflections of me in some capacity and yeah they all want to have kids in fact one of them you got married already he's probably gonna have a kid soon yeah same age so I mean like on the flip side like my brother the oldest brother thought about you know wanted kids and then never you know really met anybody that he wanted to have kids with and so he's just kind of been like resigned himself to not having kids um so I mean I think it can change on the opposite end but I think as somebody who like you know dates intentionally and like looks for a potential partner and that sort of thing it's like if you're even wavering on that right now like now yeah it's even like I think it's like a value thing like from the get-go it's like I'm so hopeful I'm so excited about if you are not like that on board with it of like wanting this kind of life and it's like I know that I will probably want to homeschool my kids for at least part of my life which means or part of their life um which means that I you know will have to you know he or I will have to make a certain amount of money in order to you know give that opportunity or if I want to you know travel and live like a year abroad with them or whatever like that's kind of those are the kinds of things that I bring up um because it's yeah I think I brought that up in the second date with Macy see that's good yeah she she asked if I wanted kids I said one day not right now I want to want to do van life and do the ice coffee hour but uh I was very adamant about one and she's two so I'll have that I'd be okay with two that's good but I grew up really as like an only child so for me I loved just having like all the attention I get everything yeah I don't know I think I think there's a great relationship between siblings I have an older brother and we grew up together two and a half years apart and the things that I learned from his mistakes I didn't necessarily have to learn them myself because I could see him acting out of line my parents were like oh you better not do that and I'm like oh my God like hiding behind the corner like okay I'm never gonna make this mistake my brother made and at the same time I can go out and experience things my own way and the way that they parent me the way that they parented me it's completely different than the way that they parented him and I think that like the first go around you're like okay I'm kind of figuring it out learning as we go second time not saying oh definitely nothing else parents are better than my brother but I'll just say like it was what I think that I was it was for sure oh they were how were they on you compared to your older siblings well also because like I said my brother's death I think changed a lot for my mom but my oldest brother once said and I think he'll still say this is he had more freedom at military school he wanted to go into the military for his entire life he went to the Marines private high school and then he went to the Air Force Academy and he served for a while still works for the Air Force he had more freedom at military school than he did at my mom with my mom I mean she was very very very strict and he respects it now but at the time you know as a 15 year old boy hated it and I watched their mistakes as well but I think my mom relaxed a lot she was also you know I think I got her at a point in her marriage when she was a lot more confident and knew that things were wrong my dad was very you know has dealt with very very severe mental health issues and those are kinds of things like she stuck with him for so long through it and just got to a point where it's like was not good at all um and so they divorced but I got to see her you know at one story I don't think I've ever told before is my brother David a week before he died my dad had this like major blow up blind rage and I don't remember even what it was about he threw something that was awful my brother came into my mom's room crying and was like why are you so married to this man like why do you allow him to treat us like this um like I understand that he's ill I understand that things are wrong but this is not healthy this isn't wrong you're not happy we're not happy and he died a week later and I think I mean she was like yeah ripped apart and I mean I was five at the time yeah and so my then childhood was totally changed and that was like a snap for her of like I cannot raise this child the same way and I think constantly you know with my brothers she was battling between prioritizing you know her first husband you know was also I would say had a lot of demons but he got brain cancer when my the middle brothers were one and then he passed away so my mom was dealing with like a terminally ill husband and three boys and then was a single mom uh and then quickly got remarried to my dad who she knew in college and then realized that that was not what she had expected either and so it was constantly for their young adult life going back and forth between like I have to care for the husband I have to care for you I have to like go back and forth back and forth and I don't think I think she was so wound up and so stressed and my oldest brother now totally understands that but it we were raised so differently because but obviously like our values are the same it was still the same mother but the way that she you know reprimanded us the way that she you know gave us opportunities I think was very very different it's interesting to watch that but I also in ways I felt like an only child because my brothers were 12 and 14 years older than me but I still had that brother connection like when things were really bad with my dad my oldest brother who's 14 years older than me became like that Father Figure in a lot of ways and it's been like the support system that I have I mean could not repay him for of like he would be in Florida he would answer the phone at 4am and I would be like sobbing having some kind of panic attack over something and he would just sit there fly me out to him offered you know you can live with me would get in the middle of my middle brother and I when my brother was having like psychotic breaks and that kind of thing I mean truly like stepped the hell up and because of that I want to have like a lot I want to give them that but also hopefully closer in age um but I just you know that's a kind of relationship that I don't have anywhere else so I think it's very very empowering and empowering that's the three word it's just really really meaningful sure yeah is your older brother still in Seattle uh no so he never moved up there so oh that was the part of the story that I ever finished but I moved to Boise my mom was thinking that she was going to be so close to all of us and then I moved here my brother stayed in Florida so now my mom was just in Idaho she was like why did I stay here I could have gone you know back to the South but yes my brother's in Florida okay I was gonna say that would have been a wicked coincidence because my brother's in Seattle nice yeah now he's in he's in Florida doing Air Force stuff here's an interesting topic what do you think about legalizing drug use or decriminalize it um it's a really really hard subject because I have this like personal emotional like tie to it and so my gut reaction is like I don't want anybody doing that I don't want any family to have to go through what we did but I also kind of look at it philosophically it's like it's not my job to tell you what to put in your body we already know that you know drinking is a toxin and that's legal and people you know drive drunk and that happens and so you know drugs are not healthy for us and you know most senses um it shouldn't be my job to tell you to dictate what you put in your body um but I also think that so many drugs are just not studied well enough we just don't really know the long-term impacts especially on young people so I don't really know if I have a firm answer um for hard drugs I you know I'm not in favor of it I think it's just there's too much that's unknown I think it's incredibly dangerous for people and purely because of the an idol and maybe that's you know philosophically inconsistent I try to stay really consistent but I think I can be clouded by the fact that I have seen with my brother and with the people that he was on the street and I mean it literally it can destroy you yeah and you and you have we have no idea yeah see part of me feels like if a lot of these were legalized or at least decriminalized to a certain extent that you wouldn't have drugs laced with fentanyl and all these other randoms that could probably do more damage than if that person went like hey here's a trusted Source I'm gonna do it anyway yeah uh at least I could go through this Avenue we could regulate it to a certain extent we could tax it and I think that was my we kind of where I started with all of this and I thought that and then one thing that kind of threw me for a loop is looking at California after they legalized weed is that now it is so heavily regulated and taxed that illegal you know marijuana growth and selling is popped back up against it so expensive and the labor laws are terrible people are dying like they're real it's like but my thought is on that is that they only issued so many licenses yeah and so it was like this Lottery system and whoever didn't get a license like well I'm just gonna do it anyway yeah and I think it was a terrible system to begin with and uh seeing actually how they steal water now from the state and they do them illegally and they take water away from fighting fires yeah nuts to me yeah but that shows me that there there's a huge market for it and they may as well embrace it people are going to pull out more people you know allow make it easier for people who want to get into that to do it properly and I think that that's where it goes back to culture where it's you know if we talk to young people who think that you know drugs are harmless and that sort of thing it's like that's objectively a lie um and maybe in some cases you know it's fine but I do think if we are able to have the tough conversations of saying you know this is not like a easy fix all you can't take this to cope and fix everything you know there are drawbacks to it just like with drinking all of that I think you know at least in my generation I see that people have just gotten in my opinion way too comfortable with it um and I think that is difficult for me so I think that's why I would focus more on changing the culture around it of you know being more responsible if you're going to be because either way when the government gets involved it's going to be screwy regardless there's never going to be a perfect situation nobody's ever going to be happy there's always going to be fault the government's going to attack something too much regulate it not enough whatever um and so the only thing that I can do as a person in my situation is tell you know my family story share my opinion about it and maybe keep some kid from doing something that's like totally irresponsible I guess that's what I think good Role Models especially online are really important I liked actually we met a while ago with the strad man and he's like no alcohol no caffeine no nothing I'm just like working I'm having a great time you don't have to do this either even Danny Duncan is very much against everything and I think when he is an audience of millions of people who watch every single video that goes a long way like I guarantee you some 14 year old kids expect kids to have these role models in the same way that you can't expect a family unit to provide all the yeah the reasonable values everyone is up to somebody though yeah but just because they look up to somebody doesn't mean that it's a good Idol you could have a false idol you know and I think that it's it's a tough conundrum that I've always deliberated in my head it's like okay when should the government step in to take care of people because in my opinion like I have a I have a pretty anti-drug just like philosophy in general but at the same time like similarly to you it's like you want people to be able to make the choice that they want to make and yeah so I feel like for for drug use specifically I don't think drugs should be legalized I think they're incredibly dangerous not really I think they're incredibly dangerous and I think it is so hard for me because I like to say philosophically consistent at the same time I think that some people just can't make the right decisions for themselves and doing drugs objective I won't say objectively I will not say objectively but I think it is a terrible terrible decision yeah people are people have addictive personalities and they'll make they'll make bad decisions and it goes so go down a rabbit hole and screw yourself over everybody that cares about you too where do you draw the line and what drug weed let's let's start there with weed for like I you know I have friends that have you know battled with autoimmune diseases and you know cancer and that sort of thing if it is like medically like for people going through chemo if you are you know given like a medical cannabis thing and it's gonna you know help you through or you know chemo I've seen that be beneficial for people it's like okay I think that's different than like recreational use but I would say like that's probably wrong so so you would say that's where you draw the line so you both would draw the line I would say medical marijuana would be fine really yes I think honestly even recreational marijuana I'm like well here's that really I don't think it's like super damaging but the thing is it becomes a lifestyle and that's the part where it becomes damaging it's like if you want to do it for a little Escape at the same time it's like I think it's like a weapon I think you know what I mean it could be used like really yeah okay for my perspective they're happy they don't fight each other they're not like really getting in trouble I see I see it largely as something harmless and you know you could argue maybe it's a gateway to other things I don't know I would say like medically I don't see it as harmless with what is coming out about how it changes your brain chemistry with heart stuff um smoking weed can be detrimental for people who have like that's one of the reasons why I never was going to do it because my family has this history of you know Cardiac Arrest there are links there especially with young people um and if you are smoking pot before your brain is fully developed it's like we just don't have those studies because drugs have not been legalized they really have not been studied and we have not had you know the generational period you know to see what happens to the kids that have spent their entire you know teen years College year smoking pot what happens to them in 50 years we just don't know and that's like a risk that I'm not willing to take well don't we don't we know what happens 50 years later I feel like a lot of a lot of adults but again I think that the drugs now are so different it's dangerous because I like to compare it to a weapon it's like you can use it in a good way to defend yourself you can use it as an escape sometimes if you want to like lay low and whatnot but at the same time you can use it to do serious harm to yourself and people around you but at the same time the difference between obviously like a weapon and weed is one is altering your psychology and so that's going to impair your yeah I say this by the way someone's never done drugs oh nothing I've smoked weed twice okay two or three times I think in my entire life because I was curious as like 16 years old yeah that was it yeah never anything else but I feel like alcohol is way more home okay so I was gonna bring that up so I have a really good friend of mine who is probably the most like anti-drug person I've ever met and like can like run circles around people is so intelligent but she also gets drunker than anybody else in my life and so that's something I brought up and I don't really drink a lot and honestly I drank more before I turned 21 and I've probably you know could count on one hand the amount of drinks I've had since October when I turned 21 and I think I'm moving more and more towards probably stopping drinking and I did like dry January and I loved it I think I've had one drink since then um and it's honestly I don't know if you've noticed with our generation like being sober is beginning like it's cool very very popular yeah which is really exciting to me but I'll bring up drinking a lot and I'll you know look at her and I'll say so what is the difference and she doesn't really have an answer and it's like it is literally a toxin we know now there was a new report from oh God I was in Canada what was the the organization it was like the Canadian like Bureau of substance abuse or something like that and it talks about the links of alcohol to cancer and even like one drink increases the likelihood of Alzheimer's and cancer and so it's like doesn't it depend on the drink though because I've heard so many studies on wine like red wine I think can be a little different but still alcohol in general and intoxication and the impact that it has you know with DUIs and people you know being belligerent and killing people on the road and that sort of thing and it's like so you know we know we see all these facts so how does it differ and I think that's one point that I get stuck on because obviously we've tried Banning alcohol before that didn't work so that's where I get so torn on it and I just don't I just feel like people are going to do it anyway yeah they're gonna choose to do it something you can make and it doesn't take many resources to make something with alcohol it's the same with weed true true about we I guess I think there's a lot of drugs the people could just restore to somebody in L.A who was growing pot in their apartment I mean yeah in their apartment in their apartment oh yeah closets man yeah yeah okay I've never grown one I'm not really sure I'm just saying I think people are going to do it regardless okay that's yeah it makes sense to regulate tax uh and offer something pure where you know you're not going to get like some something laced in it that shouldn't be in there I do Wonder though uh if if you change something in the government right to to criminalize all all drugs and whatnot to a to a higher degree will that filter down into a cultural change I feel like for the most part I feel like no over time over time if you give it enough time okay so I think not to bring in another like very polarizing subject but in one instance this year where I feel like I was even kind of proven wrong on the cultures Downstream or no uh where I was proven wrong on the politics is Downstream from culture was the doc's decision so the overturning of Roe v Wade it was fascinating that in the like two months after that you know we saw all of these girls going on like sex strikes and saying I'm not gonna have sex because of this and there was a whole Washington Post article about girls my age saying like guess I'm not gonna be hooking up anymore like guess casual sex isn't gonna be for me because I can't do this and you know guess I'm gonna have to be more safe and it was all of these things and it's like I think about as somebody who is pro-life um and that you know in the back of my head and I'm somebody you know I don't really value hookup culture I think it's detrimental to especially Women's Health and that sort of thing and they were having you know they were making all these decisions because of a law that was put in place and then a lot of them you know months on the line were like oh this is so healthy like I need to be anti you know hookup culture and that sort of thing and I was like okay so I guess in many cases it can also be Downstream from politics when they were forced to but it was such a it was a weird I don't know that was trippy for me because I it was just interesting to watch them inadvertently kind of fall into like no this is actually healthy yeah but in the drug case you have to also think of enforcement and the cost of that and the cost of putting people in jail does someone really deserve to be in jail because they have an addiction or they have mental illness they're coping with through drugs and they have no violent defenses they're minding their own business and they got caught up because they bought something on the street that they shouldn't have been buying it's like is that the type of person who deserves to be in jail yeah so that's what I think and maybe there's a difference you know a different debate to be had between like legalization and then decriminalization and you know like what should be criminalized I think more mental health facilities I think would be fantastic because I think a lot of these yeah I don't know this it is but a lot of it I think it boils down to mental health yeah and I think we have a culture that on both sides of the political aisle I don't think we know how to deal with mental health and this is somebody you know saying this to somebody who has grown up in this environment which you guys now know a lot about um you know in addition to my brother like I said my dad is dealt with a lot um and that's been a huge part of my life of you know in and out of therapy you know on and off of meds and that sort of thing both sides of political aisle do not know how to deal with it conservatives have a reputation of believing that mental health does not exist I'm friends with a lot of people who believe that who say it's all stupid none of it is real and I'm like I literally have a brother in a hospital right now that cannot even function I know and obviously a lot of that is now like chemical in his brain but it's like that is mental health I know that it's real um I spent years in therapy I can tell you that it's real but you know I understand where you're coming from because I think so many people especially in my generation use it as a crutch and will self-diagnose and so I'm so depressed it's like no I think you're dealing with a minor inconvenience I think we've normalized it a little too far and travelizing it and I think there's also this kind of social contagion of people adopting mental health things and thinking that it's kind of cool to be depressed it's very cool to be like a tortured Soul these days but then on the left you know they claim to be you know very caring we're going to fix this but then their Solutions are you know Social Security and you know telling people that they you know affirming all of their problems rather than saying like here are the solution to make you get better it's like we'll give you you know twelve hundred dollars every two weeks and say yes it's okay that you you know have depression rather than saying no let's let's fix this because it is a lifestyle you know it is something that you can take measures whether you're going on meds or not to make things better in your life even if it's literally just getting off of your phone and sitting out in the sun and eating a better diet that does Wonder for you for a lot of people yes and for some people it doesn't you like my brother needs to be on mitz must be on meds and for him it's like what other I do think that there need to be better Mental Health Resources because for somebody like him his only option right now is the state hospital there is no place there is one private place in the country that I have identified that if like my mom passes away and he's in Idaho right now and I need to like step in like as part of the you know is taking care of things there's one place that I can get him to if I don't want him to be you know 11 hours away I think he's more than that because he's a couple of hours away from her one place it is in Tennessee that does like intensive care and that's private and it costs thousands of dollars but that's something that I think about in the back of my mind of like okay I know that I will want to take that on and I like agreed to take care of his estate and that sort of stuff there's one of them and obviously I don't think that the Asylum system was great and that's one thing that you know Reagan got rid of but and there were obviously they mistreated a lot of people but there's nothing like that anymore it's like what happens to those people instead they just end up on the street yeah they end up abusing drugs that's what I've seen in Los Angeles I think a lot of the people on the street they're mentally ill yes and they don't have any resources or places to turn it's like what are they going to do they're on the streets it's either they get picked up by police go to jail get released right afterwards that just that that doesn't solve anything no and in my opinion just giving them cash every week also does nothing because you can get more money if you're crazier I remember my brother was with like this community of homeless guys and one of them um who actually passed away a year ago and we planned this funeral he became a really good friend for my brother I mean this man was like 50 years old he lived on the street for most of his life was so tortured knew that he was dying and like took care of my brother in a lot of ways and if Reed was in trouble like he would call me and be like and he would be high out of his mind and still be like reads in trouble reads passed out like you need to come get him and that's what I mean was incredible um but he would fake seeing like aliens and have visions in order to get more money because the crazier you are you get more money and so a lot of that is like put on because then who's that how did they do that how do they judge like it's like a severe like go in front of a psychologist or a psychiatrist or it's like what is money what does money help with in that scenario is that because like you're that much less likely to work yep that's what it is yeah but then they don't actually like my brother never tried to get a job the people that he was around never tried to get a job one of them got into a halfway house you have to apply for those sure like the living facility that my brother was in in La he had to apply to get in and he had to pay like 50 a month or something like that so he used his social security for that uh you would get food stamps but food stamps were separate then the Social Security cash that you were literally just given um and so there wasn't an incentive for him to do that and when you are that mentally gone like all he cared about was getting drugs so if he was getting 1200 every two weeks to go just smoke pot and like trip on acid and that sort of thing like he was going to do that and so I think you know as somebody who is not really in favor of a lot of government intervention but I still think you know we do have these resources I think that you're just allocating the wrong resources to these people and you think the money is going to fix it then you're going to Pat yourself on the back like the LA you know government like this is so great we're fixing all this it's like look at the people on your streets they're literally suffering and they just die there and there's there's no other resources and just giving away taxpayer dollars does something and there's so many incredible organizations and non-profits and churches that step in and try to help but there's only so much that they can do um but then on the conservative side I think that there is such a missed opportunity on the right because we talk about personal responsibility and accountability and you need to be a productive member of society and take care of your health like there are all these studies that you know conservatives are happier than liberals you know conservatives take care of themselves more um because they care about personal responsibility they don't want to rely on anybody else that is an opportunity to reach those people and say like you are worth more like we can help you rather than like affirming this literal illness it should not be hey you don't have a problem you're being stupid it should be okay what are the necessary steps in order to get you out of this because you deserve more because you have more potential right and it's like that is such a good weather you care about politics or not it's like that is what we should be giving these people it's not just throwing them cash being like Oh so sorry so how do you make a change on that I have no idea it may be cultural I again I go back to like changing the conversation about it I'm very very open about talking with my family's mental health issues which I think is something that is very not really seen on the right I'm really the only person that I know of that talks about this stuff very very publicly I spent years in therapy um I would have like panic attacks weekly when going through stuff with my brother and when right after I got emancipated my mom was back in Tennessee dealing like finalizing her divorce I would go I have to like find my brother on the street and would like maybe see him passed out or like he was tripping on something like it was awful um then I dealt with that for years I had therapy before a lot of that started I did for therapy with my brother to kind of deal with my his twins death and we did therapy together because he only agreed to do it if I would do it with him and then I had therapy to deal with that brother wow so I've been in it a lot um and it's like I know that it's real I know people deal with it I know that our generation is the most mentally ill generation in history so it's like why there's so many reasons um I think social media has a lot to do with it technology yeah I think that's a huge important thing like present in the real world yeah I would say um I think that the fear porn in the world around us where everything you know you know the media is designed to get clicks like you said the world is ending you know everybody's worried about you know gun violence people are worried about you know the future of this country democracy ending climate is actually it is the number one stressor for Our Generation like there is climate anxiety climate depression is now like an actual diagnosis that you can have and our media like feeds into that and so I think that's a big part of it and it's interesting that a lot of these the stressors for a generation is external rather than like I always thought of Mines like it came from my family it was very internal but all of this is like all the external stuff I think it's just because we have more access to everything and it's immediate yeah and I still think it's the extremes like I keep going back to tick tock I'm just showing like the worst of the worst of the world on either end of the spectrum just to get like clicks comments I think it was on Facebook the angrier someone gets the more likely that is to be at the top of the page and it was the anger that they went after not fear or sadness it was like how angry is this going to make them to stay on here and write a comment right that's right we can have that conversation too about like how many people are actually diagnosed with things because you know we look at the stats for Gen Z and it's like our numbers are off the charts but some of those are you know self-diagnosed self-proclaimed whatever so I think that's another conversation but also like you said we're being fed this very extreme content so what is the impact that that is having on the viewers yeah so then if it's constantly angry if everybody around you was constantly depressed they're all anxious everybody's having this like identity crisis const recently it's like that becomes then the norm and whether you have that extreme or not I just see people kind of becoming complacent and believing that that's just the norm yeah well speaking of extremes what do you think of Andrew Tate foreign you know I think that he's done good I watch his clips and I think that he's done a lot for you know some young men I think it's I think he's an interesting figure um I think he started a lot of really important conversations do I think that he is like a masculine role model no I don't I think partially because I just don't love that lifestyle I'm like I look at a man and I don't qualify his masculinity because of how rich he is or how fast of a car he has or how many like high you know s-tier women he's able to get even if it's a Bugatti though well yeah do not care like I would rather you drive a truck or some kind of bronco and be a normal guy and have really great values and like I don't care how many cigars you smoke and so I think that kind of turns me off a bit maybe that's very superficial but I'm like I just don't you're not appealing to me but I understand that guys like that um and I understand that it's like in like cool for them and that sort of thing and maybe you can you know I don't know what you think about him but I know I have guy friends who are like oh he's so cool like he's making me feel like empowered me a shocked that people can't see like I see in terms of politics I see both sides equally and I'm like I love these things about this yeah I love these things about this and we could like bring them together but I don't identify necessarily with one or the other I just kind of pick and choose bits and pieces but I do the same thing with people it's like I might disagree with some things they say but I'm like that one thing I kind of like that yeah and I'll pick and choose from that I think people have the ability to do that though because it seems like now it's it's less it's it's less about saying I like this one thing about this person and I agree with like taking accountability I think people are more close-minded when they get a little bit younger though so like I think like our generation gen Z is like they like you either hate them or you love them but for an older generation I feel like it's it's it's much different than normal like I well there am I Elder you're a millennial right a millennial you are older there you go true um like I got flamed actually I wasn't terrible but I definitely did see some pushback in my comments because I was talking about Jeffree Star and he you know was talking about you know gender binary and that kind of thing and he came out and he was saying like the they them stuff it just doesn't make sense um and he's also spoken out against you know gender transitions for children saying they're not ready for that that sort of thing and so I made a video and I said you know obviously this YouTuber has a lot of controversy controversy he's done a lot of stuff people hate him for many reasons but this is something that we can commend at least so my audience can commend he sang protect children there we go and people were like no but he's done all this all like other stuff and I don't like him I'm not like raw Raj every Star I love all your videos but I'm like hey that was a that was a good thing I think some you know conservatives also think that that means like you're bending the knee you're compromising your values I'm like no I'm not becoming a fan I'm just acknowledging when somebody does something that you know might be beneficial for a listener might open up their eyes to something new and I think it's the same thing with Andrew Tate like you're saying his lessons and his messages of you know taking accountability as a young man and speaking young men and saying I know it's hard for you right now I know that you know modern feminism you know tells you you need to be effeminate and like all of this stuff like I know it's tough but here are some of the things that you could do do I like the way he speaks about women no I don't I think it's very weird and obviously you know there's a lot of back and forth about what he was doing in Eastern Europe or whatever I don't love the way that he's spoken about that like I remember he said you know I think it was about sex trafficking or no it was like you know he doesn't condone rape but you know in some countries it's technically legal so and I was like well like there's still a moral wrong there there's still a moral wrong I think that kind of goes back to like even if something's legal or whatever else still yeah I would believe that it is wrong um so I obviously don't support those things but I think he's had viral moments and I think he has started important conversations online maybe that's how I would kind of frame it yeah I'd agree with that I think he's a disrupter and I think disruptors are extremely needed because it's super easy to do that's a good way to put it yeah yeah it's kind of like he gained a lot more power than I feel like you should probably give to a disrupter just in general because usually disruptors are more extreme and you don't want someone super extreme to be like exactly but there's more gravitational pull with people that are extreme like him so it makes sense what I noticed with Andrew Tate people that like are around me that are like big Andrew tape Fanboys is the fact that he kind of gave that whole victimhood mentality to dudes which a lot of people don't really see but that's what I saw because he was like you know it's hard to be a dude dudes are depressed at rates that have never been seen before and stuff like that and guys are like oh my God and everybody yeah everybody wants to be a victim but a lot of people it's easy to be a victim because then you have an excuse so people were like okay yeah this sounds good and then he's like but there's light at the end of the tunnel yeah and people are like oh wow that's cool and everybody every dude wants to be a Heroes of the fear but I think he he offers some like Solutions I think he acknowledges like ah things are tough and I think you brought up an important point because I kind of struggle with you know talking to you know my audience of like young men and young women and saying like you have it really bad and this like Society is so screwed up but I try to make it pretty even talking about like the boy crisis because I also think that there is a huge like young woman crisis like there's a reason why the majority of young people transitioning right now are girls like there's a reason why like I think girls committing suicide at a young age is now above I mean it's like girls have so many issues as like a young girl I knew what it was like I understand going through puberty and literally feeling like you don't belong in your body and what's going on in all of this stuff um but I think only telling people that you are a victim and the people hate you is not the best and so I do think with things like Andrew Taylor it's like I wish that he had offered more solutions in a way of like all it was was like get rich buying my program and also work out which is great yeah get a six-pack that was very interesting advice but but it's like I think but at the end I agree I agree let's go to the gym yeah go to the gym and bring value yeah because I'd also get rich and get like a harem of women which I feel like it's just like okay yeah it's like okay we can take what we want the ideas that we went by making money but by making money you're adding value in some way uh it can you're being a productive member of society it could be it could bring a lot of purpose depending on what you're doing if you're adding value to somebody else could be setting goals I don't think money brings purpose but I'm saying if you're doing something of value or making money oh okay yeah yeah sure yeah yeah not the money itself but like to bring value you have to be doing something to society you have to be doing something of value hopefully yeah to do that no I think that there are really good takeaways and really poor takeaways for okay absolutely yeah but I think the best way that you said it was a disrupter and I agree we need more of those because I think people get so caught up in this very polarized group think I think if one person on you know other sides pops through it's like I disagree with this and it causes like mess whatever it starts conversations whether or not that changes people's minds I think polarizing figures like Joe Rogan is a great example and he's somebody that's kind of wrote it really well I think um of like he's unafraid to say things that are super controversial and have people on that are you know controversial and opening up those conversations and he'll say something every once in a while people are like oh my God but you like him so much and I always gained this audience and it's like okay you respect it but I think having those people pop up is so important for this culture where everybody is so terrified to say something that is out of line it's like that isn't what it should be how do you balance that though between maybe because you have a very uh big audience at this point a lot of people listen to what you have to say how do you balance your own thoughts and and think you know maybe I have some biases here yep how do I present both sides because my whole uh thinking with with my channel is generally presenting both sides and letting people come to their own decision be like here's for and against you know I kind of somewhere in the middle but I'll let you decide how do you um I think for the most part I will try to explain my bias and so like for example if we're talking about drugs I will explain my family's history with that if I'm talking about something like as a young woman or I have a personal experience I will explain that and I try to be as personal as possible and it obviously like I walk a fine line because you know I am a public figure now and so people you know get a lot of insight into my life you kind of have to draw that line of like how far am I willing to take it and I think the best way I've described it is like there's a point where like online Brett ends in like real life Brett kind of continues and I you know decide when I'm keeping private but for the most part I try to be totally transparent so that people know exactly where my biases come from sure because if you don't if you don't know then it's just me as like some Idol telling you what to think but if you understand how I have come to the conclusions that I have come to that is the thing that I respect in listening to the people you know that I listen to so for instance when I'm listening to Ben understanding his religion and his values and his culture makes so much sense and it's like oh I I relate to you I understand obviously I don't really because I'm not a Jew but it's like I can understand how you have come to this conclusion um and I think that creates more of a human to human connection which is always what I'm trying to achieve it's like appealing to emotion um and then also I always try to leave people with a more empowering message and so maybe that makes me you know I'll you know land on one side or the other but I will usually try to land with a thing that does you know make people most empowered and makes them turn against a victim mentality sure and so if there's an opportunity to present that it's less about politics and more about you know as I've said before you are deserving of more you can do more and you are holding yourself back if you are claiming that you are oppressed nine times out of ten in this Society it is because you are doing it yourself whether that is like physically or your mindset and that is something that I don't think should be political that sadly has become political anymore and so if I can encourage my audience to just push themselves even more then I would do that but I think with the biases part of it it's just explaining my own and how often do you change your opinions on something because you're mentioning debates a lot yeah at what point or maybe give us some examples of sometimes where you've debated and come away from it being like you know what they have some great points I agree I think drug legalization has been one that I've like struggled with because I came probably you know in the last few years I think I've become more Pro uh or I guess more anti-drug legalization even though I had my own you know family's history with it as I just learned more about the impacts of you know legalizing it what happened the impact on other people outside of my own bubble because I was just kind of thinking of it in my family's bubble and so I thought that's probably not the best way to look at it um and being around people who you know have differing opinions and I've you know tried to debate people who are you know not pro-legalization and I just kept falling short um I was like okay so maybe that is a sign um especially when morally I kind of lean that way but I think the biggest one was I used to be pro-choice um and I was in my part morally I knew that was something I could never do that was never something I would do I knew that it was objectively wrong however I always you know thought of it as their two lives that are at stake here uh we're talking about The Mother We were talking about the baby and if I am somebody who is anti-government intervention I don't want the government telling me what to do with my life my body why do I have any say over what you know this woman is doing and I don't know her life experience whatever right um but then I'm just leaving this unborn child with no or whatever so that was very very complicated for me but as somebody who at the time I was a lot more libertarian and I still think that I I probably lean a little bit more that way than a lot of people that I'm around I have very conservative values but I think I can fluctuate on that when it comes to how far I want to legislate that um but anyway then I got to UCLA and I started to see the pro-choice people that I was around were not really just pro-choice they were pro-abortion and that was kind of when like Miley Cyrus did like the abortion cake and it was like literally celebrating abortion but do you think maybe that you saw the extremes on that side and that maybe a lot of people land somewhere else in the middle but you guys could see them yes um and there are you know the majority of people this country I believe you know would you know support abortion up to a certain point and they do believe that there need to be restrictions upon it so I know that there are people there who like understand that this cannot be you know extreme but as I'm thinking about it on a cultural level the fact that just in the last few years people getting so Pro abortion like they are so angry about this issue that they just take it to the extreme that they are like the media and I think the media you know is a lot to blame for this because they just Stoke this fire over and over again and so I put a lot of the blame on them but it is you know creating this entire culture of people that whether intentionally or unintentionally are becoming so like just angry and pro killing something and it's like how did we get here from saying I just want autonomy to now the majority of the rhetoric that comes out about this is pro-abortion it's like the the Jessa Duggar story that just happened a couple of weeks ago where she had a miscarriage and you know the 10 media Outlets that covered it all said that it was an abortion it was like it wasn't you just saw this woman crying on YouTube for 18 minutes about her miscarriage I was a missed miscarriage and she had to have a DNC to have the fetus removed because she did not pass the naturally and you're saying that because she did that it's an abortion was not they're like she's lying about it it's like so you're using the story twisting somebody's personal experience for your agenda it's like that's why I had a major problem with it sure um then it doesn't seem genuine so I saw a lot of that at school um I saw you know my sorority sisters who were on like abortion number two because they weren't on birth control and just saw it as kind of like a backup plan like oh yeah you know it's fine I'll just use it as birth control um and then the kicker for me was learning that my dad wanted me to be aborted and that was like like my parents marriage by the time that I was conceived was already over my mom knew that she wanted a divorce wow she stayed because of me and we can argue whether that was a good thing or not a good thing and we talk about that a lot um about what that would have changed in my childhood and that sort of thing and I'm you know happy with how things turned out but how did you learn about that like where did that seems like a tough yes but I was calling my mom about abortion and I was like I'm just so conflicted right now because I was like this is something I could never do I like I know that I could not I know that it's morally wrong that we were going back and forth and my mom is incredible at showing both sides of it and so she would argue it you know kind of play Devil's Advocate She would argue it from you know the perspective of the mother she would argue it from you you know over protection of The Unborn try all of this would go back and forth what makes the most sense I mean she this is something she's changed her opinion on a lot because she used to speak for a choice as well but I mean back and forth back and forth hours of talking about this of like I just don't it's such a complicated issue that deserves so much empathy and so much grace and I think people on both sides of political aisle just do not give it that there's some people on the right as well who you know villainize mothers who have had abortions I'm like that's not freaking productive either and there's so many people who literally do not think that they have another option it is our job to show that there is another option and to amplify you know the pregnancy centers and you know the resources that are available to you because they you know outnumber abortion clinics they actually like on paper they do and you know you can have these resources um and so anyway that's just a whole aside but we would go back and forth back and forth and I was like I just don't know Marley and I was really torn up about it um and she was like I'm gonna you know be very personal with you and she was like when you know we found out that I was pregnant um Mike wanted you to be aborted and he was like we knew our marriage was over this wasn't obviously planned at all um and he was like I want you to make an appointment and go and she was like that totally changed my mind because she said I had not even considered that this would impact me personally I was a mother of three that would never be a concern of mine and she said having like a life inside of me and being told that like I would end that she was like after going through multiple pregnancies and like in that moment feeling I knew that that was never anything that I could do I think then her perspective shift shifted because for her it had always been about the rights of the mother and she was like like this is somebody that you know is the most vulnerable person in our society who literally has no autonomy that is fully dependent on this other person and I think that is where her perspective shifted um and for me making it very very personal it was just like okay yes you know it did a lot yeah don't you think saying that though would automatically push you to one side like that you can't get more personal than that I don't think so because a lot of people like I you know I had an abortion and they still support it uh I was watching a video at one point and a girl was like yeah my parents almost awarded me I wish that they did it probably would have been better for my mom and that kind of thing so I know that there are people who have different responses and maybe they are already predisposed to that opinion that's fair um but as somebody who was already predisposed to that pro-choice opinion it was interesting that's just like flipped but I wish you hadn't heard that I don't think so no okay because I think it gave me a lot more empathy for my mother for what she was dealing with at the time with my father um it obviously created another fraction with my dad's in my relationship that's water under the bridge now and we've talked about it and you know he would never have you know suggested that now and he was in came from a place of fear and anger and you know that sort of thing um but I'm glad that I did because it gave me a greater perspective about you know the way I was raised the dynamic I've had a lot of confusions you know with the my relationship with my dad and I just didn't understand a lot of stuff and I think that you know as I got older the transparency that my mom you know gave me about my family and being able to like I wasn't really shielded from a lot and some people would say that that was a bad thing but I think that it was it forced me to grow up quickly but it also like I knew what to expect in my family I understand why I am the way I am because of my family like none of that was hidden from me um so no I don't I'm not upset that I learned that got it yeah what do you think is the biggest threat to humanity right now oh gosh ourselves what about their mindset um I would say people are so desperate to be I've said it a lot today but they are so desperate to be victims and I think that they are like as a society we're holding ourselves back whether that is you know and I think a lot of the victimization is fueled by a desperate need for attention because victims get attention you know what I think it's acceptance because it's easier to be a victim and other victims love to wallow and misery what is it misery loves company so when you're upset and you could gossip with someone else and say this sucks and blah blah blah and go back and forth you feed on that and you feel like I'm not alone and I have that feeling of just like yeah exactly I feel like that's as you begin to get more successful it becomes harder and harder to find those connections yeah exactly and I but I will say I do think attention is part of it because we've seen that like the marginalized communities that say that they're marginalized they get a lot of attention it pays to be an activist it's like that sort of thing and so I don't think that is the case for everybody because obviously not everybody ends up making money in that but I think that there are a few examples that glorify people are like oh this is cool like I will get the attention I will get this community I will be affirmed I will be accepted into this because I'm not alone and I think that there's a lot of you know very you know hurting people um and I think that as a society we have you know allowed that mentality to take prevalence and so if I could leave you know people with one message is that you know it being empowered is the most like freeing thing that you can do for yourself saying I don't care what other people think is the most freeing thing that you can do for yourself being self-reliant there was literally no better feeling like me walking out of the street knowing that I can beat somebody up because I did years of self-defense that I like carry a gun that I'm totally self-reliant I don't depend on you know a family mommy and daddy's not anything like that that I am totally it's like the most empowering thing in the world there's literally no better feeling and it's like why would I sacrifice that just to be like accepted by a group of people that is also like down in the dumps and not productive enough yeah yeah so I would say I think it's ourselves interesting and also Elites in government toying with our lives I would say I would say it's like at the very base level of society because only we push ourselves like forward as a culture but I also do have to admit you know there are people that do not have our best interests at Hearts because all they want to do is make more money and be more corruption well that's why I think it's important to teach objective thinking I would love a common sense class just like taught in school like this is this is bad this is good but make Common Sense choices yeah for you yeah and just just pick like like we were talking about earlier picking and choosing like the bits and pieces that you identify with I think is really important I think that people Overlook the importance of like logic classes and ethics classes and I'm so grateful that I took those in college the one of the most important classes I ever took also was political philosophy understanding where my opinions come from on a philosophical level was so important to be having to Advocate like I remember having to write a paper in support of marks which is like the farthest thing that I could have ever like done but having to get into that mindset and understanding like on a human level why are they driven in this way what were the benefits of this ideology and having to learn all that seeing every single slide especially if you have a really good professor I did all of those classes at Community College it was exceptional but I did logic I did ethics I did political philosophy and then I did a couple of other like political Theory classes they were incredible because I had to do every single side but I was also in a good situation where you know they also had people like nozick pop up who was like the father of libertarianism we talked about Iran and like her you know philosophy so I was getting both sides and I had to advocate for and against things that I like loved and believed and things that I hated that's the one class I wanted to take was debate yeah because I feel like that's such a useful thing to know yeah and debating is a skill yes because even if your idea might Trump somebody else like if you can't communicate that to another person like you know you're gonna meet with Sean [ __ ] he's an incredible debater because he's so fast what do you think is more important in debate do you think it's the actual stuff that's coming out of your mouth like the words that the transl the transcript or do you think it's the the ability to use rhetoric it's the ability to use rhetoric I would say like my opinion isn't necessarily like suede because I will always try to I don't think that my opinion like quickly changes in debate but I think who you determine like wins I think most people pick and choose who wins a debate because of the rhetoric not because interesting I think when you're writing I think that's a different thing because it's so much slower but when you are back and forth and back and forth with somebody it is the ability to be very very Nimble with your diction and there's a reason why it's like literally a skill yeah and confidence I feel like if you go in with confidence and you don't take anything personally and you remain objective um that's what I think does it whoever sounds more confident in their books I think generally and it doesn't take any BS right it doesn't give in and that's why it's like I might be a terrible debater because I'm always somebody who's like oh yeah tell me more like oh I like you let me understand I always go in thinking that I could be wrong yeah yeah I just think like hey I'm open-minded to a lot of things and I'm okay to change my opinion if it's wrong yeah so like I'll hear the other side and be like you know what there's some good points in that like yeah I'm open to it yeah so I'd be a terrible debater yeah I want to hear more about your anti-porn stuff oh God all right all right here we go um I also think that porn is one of the things that is destroying my generation why is it so bad um okay so for first of all with the porn industry we know that like it is fueled by criminal activity I mean the sex trafficking industry is like funneled through porn PornHub is dealing with I mean at this rate 10 plus 15 lawsuits um children being molested put on the site it's just it is a breeding ground for terrible behavior um for women I think we are fed this lie um well that you can as women I think we are fed this lie that you can have this super happy and productive and like fulfilling life by just selling your body um it will not be that way you look at the mental health of sex workers you look at the mental health of you know porn stars it's not good there's like the one percent like on only fans who makes you know they make millions of dollars and they're great and that you know will sustain them whenever they stop doing this kind of work but for the majority of them it is a terrible terrible terrible industry I'm gonna play Devil's Advocate yes and very much doubles out okay okay yeah Graham's laughing yeah uh okay so I think a lot of people they fall into the porn industry because it's just like Oh you mean by happenstance I may as well do this I can make a good Buck here 100 uh so I could see why that would probably not work very well mentally for people it's like falling into something where like you said selling your body but those that do intentionally move into the industry uh and they know that that's something that they enjoy don't you think and that's I guess you did allude to the one percent of people yeah if it works for you then that's fine and I I will never say to your face like you are lying to yourself about it because I'm sure that there's some people that just like genuinely don't care and they have a good experience with it but I think on a whole I'm looking at like the entire gender like women are not you know and I maybe this goes back to like coca-culture and that kind of thing but when you look at men and women men are biologically designed to go so the seeds there's a reason why you do not carry a child for nine months for women it's like I need to find this one specific partner I can only be pregnant for nine months like I can only carry basically you know I can only have one pregnancy at once I have to protect these eggs I only have you know a set amount of eggs that I'm you know created um and so we are very very protective over that with men you are literally designed to go repopulate the Earth literally and so with women there's a reason why like biologically hook up culture and just living with a bunch of people and leaning into that and I guess you know porn is a little bit different but still this like sex positive culture for women I don't think it's healthy because it's going against how I believe we are literally biologically designed um and I think for young men it is allowing them to be complacent with just living online and not having real relationships like the violence in marriages has like Sky also I mean I'll finish that thought and go into it um but I mean like violence in relationships domestic abuse has like skyrocketed with the normalization of porn often in domestic abuse like often in domestic abuse situations the man is like addicted to porn or has a history with it um 52 of divorces in this country cite porn as an issue which is just an insane stat um but it makes sense because if you're unhappy and you're trying to find fulfillment or pleasure somewhere else you're going to go that way um but I was reading this Reddit post from this person they were arguing the benefits uh and the drawbacks between only fans and PornHub and they were arguing that only fans was better and one of the arguments for only fans being better was because they were subscribing to an individual girl and they could create this like parasocial relationship with her and it's like it feels better because I'm not really objectifying her we have a relationship we can chat and I can feel better it's like then go out into the real world and ask a girl on a date like poor is allowing young men to stay in front of their computers and not strive for anything else like overuse of porn over the masturbation it [ __ ] with your hormones like biologically it has impacts mentally uh men who are porn addicted uh who even just are not even important addicted but watch copious amounts of porn are mentally very very unhealthy like it is not natural um and it's just like and then on top of it with the industry being so dangerous it's like why is this something that we have just become you know so accustomed to and it's happened really fast like my mom and I were talking about it my producer um Matt scheller whenever uh but my former producer doesn't work here anymore he was in his 40s we were talking about like with he and my mom where if you wanted to watch adult content 40 years ago 30 years ago you had to go to a theater and you had to watch you know you know with a lot of people like there was a reason why I'm forgetting um who the actor was it was like arrested for masturbating in a theater like in an adult film or then later on with like Blockbuster and that sort of thing you had to go into like the adult section and you were you know we're in public renting it out and that sort of thing but it has become more and more private where now it is literally on your phones you can do a quick Google search it is so at people's fingertips that there is now not really a stigma around it women are almost like encouraged to go into it in a lot of ways you look at you know things online you see girls that you're never making millions you know basically objectifying themselves and you know selling their bodies is almost appealing with men it's become so commonplace you know boys start seeing form but they're like 13 years old I saw porn for the first time when I was I think probably 14 or 15. um it's just it's become so normalized so quickly and that is like the most shocking thing to me um and I also think in a similar way as we were talking about like the culture around smoking weed I do think that there's like a culture around young men who just sit in their homes and they just watch porn I do agree I think the accessibility to porn is the real issue porn itself I don't know if that's like a huge issue of guys know exactly what they're doing and they're very intentional about it and the girls that go into the business are very intentional about going to the business they feel Pride with what they do I feel like there's probably no problem with that uh well I would say there is a problem with with sex trafficking for sure yeah well yeah yeah I think now PornHub don't they verify IDs you can still get around that's still like I mean Netflix is about to drop a whole documentary I think next month literally just about the sex trafficking I mean trafficking objectively yeah of course that's a bad part I'm just talking on the theory of porn itself yeah but something that's crazy to me is that laws are just now being put in place where you have to verify your age to get on PornHub like before it was like you could just put in any birthday and get on and watch it states are just now rolling out you need to verify like if I was verifying my student discount on Spotify putting in a student ID whatever imagine a data breach like if we can't trust Equifax yeah I'm just I'm just saying yeah there's there's lists you you don't want explode I'm actually going through the list yeah just like you know control F and like how are they going to check IDs and everything like you submit you scan it wow and so and then there's the debate that a lot of people will agree that PornHub and sites like PornHub is subjectively bad because they do not protect their creators um it's dangerous it's just slipped up one too many times so people say like only fans is better only fans was not created as a like adult content site it was created as like patreon without any kind of like content regulations they are not a sex site and they're very very clear about that so they do not have any Protections in place for their creators well I thought that would the way around that was for their banking by saying like hey we don't just focus on this we allow anything and that's one of the ways around how they can get like lines of credit and a bank account and stuff like that exactly but also they were started initially it was during covid that it blew up as like a sex site because sex workers like escorts didn't have jobs during covet so they created only fans and people think that it is safer because of that or that it's like feminist porn because women are producing it themselves but it is often more dangerous because there are no regulations on the site because it is not an adult site so only fans has no way to report if like there's some guy that's trying to pimp you out they do not have many verification things there's all of these studies mainly in the UK of looking at kids who have gotten on to only fans as creators or as consumers because their age verification you can submit an ID that is not yours and still get an account so if you could like wonder what this like story of a girl who used her aunt's ID made it only fans and it's 70 or 16 years old was doing only fans content and then got exploited like some crazy guy like found her and like a bunch of stuff so they just do not have those protections so like if the industry itself is not even safe like I understand like you have a right to do whatever work you want to make it Devil's Advocate yeah exactly yeah but I don't think that one I don't think it's healthy for society as a whole I don't think that's doing anything good for any of us but it's like I get it if you know you want to that's your problem let's say what about what about prostitution because don't they say that's the okay all right all right let's go back again is it the culture of porn itself or is it porn in general I think it's both so like I agree I think culture around porn yes is extremely toxic and it's very bad probably an objective bat right yeah let's take porn itself okay with two very intentional no no two very intentional people consenting into this whatever transactional relationship yeah how is that bad um if they are doing that then I guess that's fine like if you want to make videos in your own haul I guess maybe it's the selling of it what is it exactly about the selling of it because people sell their bodies in other ways that's very true um I guess I I think in my mind that goes back to the industry like will there ever be a safe way to present that pornography but if there was then it would probably be okay in the mind of Brett Cooper I think on a moral level I would still say no but I think I think you value intimacy and having something that's like you feel is protected and is yours and is sacred I do too I 100 I value intimacy I value all that stuff too but at the same time I'm very much the type where I don't want to be telling people that know what they're going into what they should and shouldn't be doing and that's where I think I think in a perfect world where it was totally safe maybe I can't give a solid answer because I still do not believe that it is a a good for society I think people are on a whole negative it is a bad forces I would probably agree with that yeah just because the culture is becomes all and I think it's for the viewers but also I would look at the people who even if they are you know consenting individuals I was to look at that and be like you know as Brad Cooper I don't think you're making the right decision yeah like if I had control over your life I would say do not do that it is not going to be healthy for you in the long run like you are literally blowing up your reputation what's what's unhealthy about it because you're from the actresses or actors perspective um I guess I keep going back to number one the industry is like very dangerous but also on an emotional level if you are just selling them yes yeah like mental mentally emotionally you are selling like the most biologically intimate thing that you can do and you're putting like a price tag on like after that what else do you have to give it's like you are literally breaking through every barrier like you have no privacy like this is the most intimate thing that you can do I like I will never say that that is objectively healthy it goes against bile biology yes is what you're saying yeah okay like this is the most objectively private intimate thing that we are now like commercializing and selling I will never say that that could ever be healthy so you would say biological truths are axiomatically correct morally yes what did you just say I'm sorry okay that's something I would actually kind of agree with to a certain extent okay so just so everyone knows yeah okay because I feel like people are gonna it's gonna start thinking like oh Jack he's like it's crazy porn guy whatever okay because uh we've had two porn stars on the show before okay and people said that it looked like I fell in love with the porn stars which is not the case okay but that's like what the what the viewers got basically out of that I have a very intense stare yeah um yeah I'm listening intently yeah yeah I do but like I I um I agree porn culture is extremely dangerous and I think porn itself you're just taking two consenting people I think that's probably fine I'm not this crazy porn person in case of you guys watching or wondering okay I don't even watch porn I I will say openly I used to watch porn and you know this Graham I don't watch porn anymore no and I've found my life incredibly admirable thank you it's very very hard to do it's also very very rare to find men that will openly say that that you used to watch porno that you quit porn yeah both okay yeah that you like used to and that you quit or the you like actively don't it's very rare and I'm somebody that like brings it up I'm like so let's talk about that and it's like so I feel neutral like I just don't care either way I I think I think if two people are consenting and they're not hurting anybody I'm all for it right I think there's a place for it I think there's a Marketplace I think there's a market for it but if we go back to yeah on the side of the consumer some people you get rid of the market if you get rid of like the audience then but then it's going to go underground then there's going to be something else like making it illegal or whatever but if like the culture changes and we start to kind of like you know in a similar way to how like sobriety is very very cool now like there's all of these like mocktail bars that are opening up and that sort of thing it's like if the culture starts changing around it around it the market starts changing I still think that's such a small subset yeah like the mocktail industry I think that's so cool uh Macy was even she ordered a mocktail for the five I had no idea those things existed and I tried it it was actually really cool like I like it but I see these these changes but I think it's such a small part of the market yeah yeah five percent hope for that because I still see it as like a productive change I shall see those people as people that are going going out and having conversations in their community and maybe changing minds or you know opening people up to a new thing I think that that's exciting but I do put a lot of fault on the consumers because if there was not such a porn culture and consumption of porn there would not be a market for it people would not go into it thinking that it was some kind of everything you said because isn't that the oldest profession don't they call that I think so yeah I would say I don't I don't know but isn't it prostitution but I know but isn't that similar on a similar way but just because it's existed for a long time to make it but I feel like that that should also be legal I mean if two okay consenting adults are are wanted enter into a business arrangement I actually I probably agree prostitution should be legal yeah and this you probably disagree with this but I just think people you know give them the right to do whatever they want for the most part yeah I think again I always go back to the industry around it of like and maybe maybe the argument that it's like that you know it's legal and there's more you know protections and all of that stuff maybe it could be a different thing but I just because something has been around for a long time or has been done in my mind does not make it yeah right or immorally right so I look at that and I still think that I don't think that people you know should be doing I don't think that that's the healthy thing to do would I legislate that I don't know that's why I would never be a politician because I like to be able to have nuanced conversations I think I'd be in a terrible position but I I do believe that it is unhealthy for people I believe that you know selling your body is unhealthy I believe that paying for sex is unhealthy and so I wouldn't like never Advocate yeah but technically in the bigger picture when you consider the entire timeline of humanity slavery has only not existed for a very short period of time this is because something is crazy still does exist in many countries yes of course yeah so I will say this though I just want to make sure we wrap this up okay if you guys want to quit porn I would encourage it I saw my life improve and I I want to openly say this because it's an uncomfortable conversation because I know my grandma watches this hopefully she's not gonna be tuned hello Gigi my dad sometimes watches sorry Dad um but yeah I don't watch porn and I've saw my life extremely like drastically improved and yeah the way that I saw improve I don't want to go into too much detail but mostly I think that I stopped seeking like instant gratification with certain things and I I started seeing the world through a lens of like okay I'm in this for the Long Haul I'm gonna find someone I want to like settle down you felt like that was holding you back from finding somebody it definitely made me so much less motivated to try to find someone yes absolutely yeah because you got that instant gratification exactly and then why would you need to have a real life woman yeah okay we're good for the day let's whatever whatever interval of time it was okay I'm not disclosing too much right here yeah we're good for the minute no and that is the experience of a lot of men and if you look at like the studies yes about you know especially men but it's interesting now because there's so many more women that are you know my argument on that is boredom when you're bored you look for things to do when you're working and oh that's the most dangerous one is what I'm saying but if someone is like on a mission and they have stuff to do and they're busy and they're working and they're doing something productive that's not something you think about it's it's like when you're bored there's nothing to do well boredom I will say contrarian opinion right here I think boredom is actually extremely productive and I think during boredom when you're in solitude and you're like not being like allowing kids to be bored is I think one of the like 100 yeah being exposed to like technology and all that stuff I think being bored is extremely powerful it forces you to like create your own fun yeah an introspect and like question your beliefs which I think people just don't do nowadays and I think that's like one of the biggest problems open-mindedness and questioning your own beliefs absolutely I don't know I hate boredom I I just think a lot of this could be destroyed I don't think it's like people love boredom like I don't think it's necessarily something to love but I would say like it yields yeah yeah I just think a lot of this can be taken down to when when someone has stuff to do they're less likely to partake in things that are maybe not the most productive for them I think it's a symbiotic symbiotic relationship where like both if you're obviously like if you're occupied all the time you're working all the time probably not going to do this but at the same time if you refrain from this it's probably going to somehow translate back to more work ethic and motivation and stuff like that yeah yeah what questions do you have for us oh my gosh um I would say I guess right off the bat for something that's not political I'm just interested in your hottest take I think I'm so like in the middle of so many things I don't really have any extremes on either end that's wild honestly I I just like people that as long as they don't hurt anybody thinker if you're an open thinker with nuanced opinions you have to have some sort of opinion because the masses are not over oh yes open-minded things I'm not a fan of rank control I think we need to build more property oh yeah I mean that's crazy I hate rent control yeah like I'm all for people doing what they want to do like that that's it like fiscally I'd say we could you know cut back and we could yeah the fact that that's like controversial these days is wild to me it's like if you don't if it takes like two percentage of a brain to see like who we are in a terrible terrible situation but yeah all right let me think of some other ones that are less depression meds and anxiety meds are over prescribed yeah that's awesome I also think people have way more control over their life than they think so that's awesome I also think that ADHD is over diagnosed that's I mean that's and I think it's screwed up an entire generation I was diagnosed with ADD and I took uh Adderall yeah for like two years I also think hormonal birth control is bad I don't think women should be on birth control I don't know anything about that it's terrible um well it's chemical birth control so you know doctors will tell you like oh we can you know help your acne we can do all this we'll regulate your Cycles but they don't actually regulate yourself as being on the pill all it does is like chemically disrupt your hormones and stop like needed hormones for your body not just for your reproductive cycle but for your full like mental well-being as a woman it will be disrupted by that it's artificial it is chemical long-term effects like a lot of women have a lot of you know problems getting pregnant after being on birth control for a long time it changes who you are attracted to because your pheromones are different um and your hormones are all screwed up and we are naturally so attracted to people based on our biology and when that is like chemically altered that takes a toll um different kinds of birth control I mean obviously we see the impact like how does a pill cause you to like you know gain so much weight change so much about your body your periods just stop like our periods are not supposed to just stop like that shows a serious imbalance if you are like an unmedicated non-hormonal hormonal birth control your Cycles are unregulated or you are like not regular like that's a problem that you go to like a hormone specialist and you fix it because you want to be like that is because they have the biological hormonal control so like the copper IUD is probably the most popular one um but that I recently learned because I've you know have a lot of friends on that um the way that that works is that it you know they usually say it just keeps it from going and it you know gets the sperm away that kind of thing it actually makes the uterus an inhospitable environment for any kind of sperm and any kind of pregnancy it is a inflammation of the uterus but that inflammation is not localized so when you have a copper IUD your entire body is inflamed constantly because you have a piece of metal in you and so it's full inflammation which is why a lot of women say that they have like you know they struggle with mental health after you know having that there's a reason why your periods get super heavy I mean you get awful PMS makes it really really bad usually your iron gets depleted when you have one because you are losing so much blood more than you need to be um and it does not stop fertilization and that's the thing that like woke me up is that you can still have a fertilized egg and then you have like what you know was often described to me it was like kind of a spontaneous abortion of like it just does not allow the egg to stick um and so that isn't great either obviously I would probably say that that's better than like a hormonal thing that's like screwing with your hormones but it's still like there really isn't a great option but I do think that we do not talk to young women enough about and I say this as a young woman who did not learn any of this about how to regulate your cycle naturally because there are things that you know you can eat there are toxins that we are ingesting and interacting with that screw with women's hormones we should all be very regular like that is how we are naturally designed so that you can literally track you know those 28 days and know exactly when you're ovulating and you can only get pregnant for three to five you know it's really just three days in that cycle um and you know even if that's not like a 99 but if you are religiously tracking if you use other forms of protection like it's very very secure but we don't even teach girls that like they don't even know where to start when I started learning this I had no clue where to turn because I was never even presented as an option to me or something that was so like scientifically modern like the FDA is now approved like natural cycles as an actual form of birth control now it's the only actual non-hormonal non-invasive form of protein and so I would say that I think hormonal birth control is bad I don't think non-hormonal is much better even though it's probably better for a lot of people and I have friends that have had great experiences with copper IUD but I just think we need to better equip women because you literally have no idea how your body works I had no idea about the hormones that I go through every single month I had no idea about any of my cycle and the fact that it is so scientific down to the day that you can regulate it interesting yeah okay I want to know what your most hot take is I want to see if there's a thing we can disagree on so we can have some sort of like okay quasi debate um I'm anti-death penalty could go either way on that morally I do think there are some offenses that I would be you know like child rape and that sort of thing I'm like castrate the [ __ ] out of you like I do not care yeah but the way that this system is set up I wouldn't I'm anti because of that like there are so many you know cases where even if in one case they ruled it wrong and we took a life like why do we have like why are we allowed to play God why as a jury or a judge a lot yeah I would say life is the most precious thing oh I saw a tick tock on that it was so sad the kid uh was put to the death penalty I think he was like 16 years old 17 years old and then they found out like 40 years later he was innocent oh that's like a substantial yeah and and also one thing that I think really struck me is that a lot of people say that it's cheaper but it's not because you have to get so much for years yeah and the litigation too and the victim's family has to keep coming back yeah like imagine you know something awful happens to your child your loved one whatever and you have to keep going back year after year after year testifying doing all of this it's like at that point I just want to get on with my life put them behind bars for Life how about this how about assisted suicide how do you feel on that I'm anti-it anti yeah and I just ah so I'm looking at what is happening in Canada right now and it's happening to the most vulnerable population so we were talking about like the mentally ill on the street they're you know going up to these people and that's kind of that's their solution right now is that oh if you're so mentally if you're if you are so unhappy here's this you know State assisted suicide it's like that's your best option but you go for that what if someone is terminally ill I think that's a totally different conversation it is okay I think it's just the legality of assisted suicide not necessarily the culture of it yeah the legality of it in general like do you support the theory of it um I think if somebody was terminally terminally ill I think that would be the only time that I would be morally for it or and like think that it was like legally you know maybe okay I think that would be very hard as like the family member that was watching that or being involved I don't think I don't know how I would react to that but I also know people who are you know there's no other way and they want to go you know at their own especially like older people who it's like I don't want to suffer anymore I can understand that argument but what really bothers me is that like people are tatting this around it's like oh we're you know we're helping all these people you know all these homeless people you know they don't really have like a point to live and it's like that that's your option you know we're talking about like what do we do for this you know vulnerable population how do we clean up our streets how do we make it safer and it's like this is what Canada is trying to do and it's you know and I'm looking I see the videos of people who you know have been offered assisted suicide and it's like some of them were talking and you know they were saying like if this had been offered to me like a year prior I would have taken it and then over the last year like my life has gotten so much better I finally you know took the leap and I you know made all these changes it's like that's terrifying to me but again it's less of like somebody else playing God but it's like we're offering that to people as this like right all right yes I don't think that that's like a copy mentally ill people as well yeah yeah and it's like that feels like taking advantage of them and if that's the best you can do then I have a real problem with that keep trying yeah come up with some no I mean because yeah what is the goal of going into Political commentary is it to strengthen the base of the conservative population or is to share your opinion and hope to be heard and understood by the other side of the Liberals and maybe change their opinion I think it can be both I don't think it needs to be either or I was talking about this actually on a live stream yesterday um I think a lot of conservatives get themselves caught up in trying to change people's minds when I think back to you know me feeling very alienated as you know college student sharing my opinions you know losing friends that sort of thing somebody speaking directly to me and saying your opinions are not crazy there are people that you know think like you and being empowered and being told it is okay to speak up and you know having somebody that is unwavering in their values and I think Matt Walsh is somebody who is incredible at that because he does not Bend at all he is not somebody that's like I'm not gonna like find he like says it I'm not gonna find common ground with you because most of the stuff that he talks about is in regards to like his children's lives and like that kind of thing he will not waver and I think he is incredibly empowering especially at his audience of parents of like getting them to speak up and say it is okay to defend your children in this way it is okay to have this opinion there are others like you and I think if we forget the base and if we are consistently just trying to like spend all of our time going out and reaching everybody else and it's like what happens to everybody you know here so I think you kind of have to you know I think it's important on both sides I I would I like to try to do both in my content um I think that the manner in which I speak and the topics that I speak about make it more palatable for people who disagree with me and I like that I like the fact that I look at my comments and I see people disagreeing but in a healthy way it's like the most inspiring thing to me and people having like healthy conversations in a YouTube comment section is absurd and I'm like that's actually very very cool um and I like the fact that I see comments where somebody says you know I'm like more Center left and I actually relate to you on some things and I've learned a lot even though I disagree with you on things I you know I find your content enjoyable it's like that's a huge win for me but I also look at comments and at the same level seeing like a 16 year old kid who's like I you know live in Los Angeles everybody thinks differently than me I feel so alone and I hear your content and I feel empowered not to feel scared to talk about my beliefs that's a huge win because I was that kid and I felt like I was totally alone and like everybody around me was crazy and I literally I did not know who to look up to and if I can be that for somebody else then that's also win for me see the problem that I see with some of the leaders of the conservative and the liberal movements is the fact that they are so aggressive to the other side and it's like constantly shooting down the other side and I feel like if you actually really wanted to make some grounds it's and hopefully transfer some people or open up the other side's perspective uh you wouldn't be so aggressive but come from more of a place of like compassion and understanding and that's the one thing that I just I can't seem to get over as a viewer because I watch Ben Shapiro and I also watch Destiny and I watch us on and I watch you and I see all of this stuff I literally watch from both sides but that's the one pill I just simply cannot swallow that frustrates the heck out of me when I'm watching content like this it's like if you really care about the end goal of achieving what you want to achieve and hopefully like if you really believe your ideology is better than the other one and you want this ideology to take power yeah wouldn't the most effective and efficient way to get there to be hopefully transferring some of the people on the other ideology side over to your side therefore people people respond very poorly to critics like negative criticism right at least in a negative light right but they respond very very well to compassion understanding yeah and I feel like if the sides could just have a little bit more compassion understanding to the other side I think probably a big part of it though is imagine someone else comes at you and you're like okay well maybe uh you know they had some points you do that and then everyone questions well what about everything else that you said yeah maybe you're going to change those beliefs too it's like if you do that you lose that exactly so I think you need to be consistent so I think the important thing to do is that I don't bend my values to appease anybody else I don't change my opinions to appease anybody else but I am very open with my audience like I you know I've talked about Dylan Mulvaney a lot who's the you know the transgender um person who like you know blew up on Tick Tock now has like 10 million is like a transgender influencer talked about them a lot um very very controversial and there's a lot of things they've said that I do not agree with especially in regards to children but I am always very open about the fact that I like their personality and I used to subscribe to Dylan's Channel and you know Dylan's Tick Tock before you know he became she Dylan um because I thought his content was hysterical and super funny and he was like a great like this cute little gay guy and all of this stuff and I and very few people on my side of it are willing to acknowledge that but I've like I watched Dylan's stuff for ages like all throughout covid and I'm willing to say I still have that like fondness and I want to be compassionate for what Dylan is going through and that sort of thing but I won't Bend or change how I feel about the subject and about the ideas that they are sharing but I will find a way to have some kind of human connection with the story that I'm talking about same way as if I'm like dealing with a celebrity you know I will say like I still like the music whatever like I will acknowledge the fact that I'm not so black and white that if I hate like a singer's you know ideology or things that they will say no I still really like your songs like that's cool um I am also unafraid to criticize my own side if we're being idiots about something now I think a big part of that is just criticizing people for absurd stuff like Emma Watson when she had that really unflattering photo of her taken back in the summer people like this is what wokism does to you it's like no she's a 30 year old woman who has not gotten any work done which I thought that we were promoting that we didn't want women to be like fake and whatever she's natural she got caught in a bad light and you're now slander over I've never seen the picture it was like her like forehead was all like it was like huge on right wing Twitter really and they were like this is what like wokism does to you and they would like put a photo for her from like 10 years ago when the photo here it was like that why are you spending your time debating that like you're attacking somebody who has done nothing right now obviously we could have a conversation about Emma Watson's you know like hatred of JK Rowling about her policies we are going after a woman's looks to have a quick dunk on Twitter and feel good about yourself and I think being able to criticize your own side when they are genuinely being stupid I think that that humanizes you as well so you don't feel so polarized and I think the best people that I follow and the best mentors I have are willing to do that and are willing to say you know what this was actually a win on the left they did a good job or something you know on the right of like you we royally effed up and this is not productive whatsoever yeah because if you are so caught in just winning winning winning winning winning constantly at the expense of everything especially winning a quick like click or immediate hit or that kind of thing it's like what's the point that's the thing like I remember Ben Shapiro honestly he kind of went viral and he built his entire career based off of like Ben Shapiro destroys like yeah facts and logic or something like that and it's just like some kid walking up to the podium yeah oh gosh you know it just completely my favorite one was the one kid said like uh well how do you know boy scouts or boys like it's like those moments yeah yeah um but but the only thing is it's like okay obviously for profit like that makes sense as a business you got to get the clicks and everything but I just wish I'm like look he could say something like look I understanding you're coming from a place of heart and it's probably not and you know something like this and like feeling like he has compassion for the other person yeah because then he wouldn't have well he probably still still would maybe not I don't know have these like hordes of people all showing up and like protesting him when he goes to speak at these colleges because they want to hear what he has to say they want to hear this quick comebacks that's what they come that's what they think I know but I feel like it's like 80 20. like you still get like 80 of the value when you still like as you listen destroy them but like hear those like moments or miss things but if you like listen to like Ben's full like four hour for the show yeah totally different so I think it is like you know in those like quick debate things like that's the format of them and they're supposed to be very very fast but when you hear him do his like his Sunday special that he does is one of my favorite things because he usually brings people that he disagrees with and it's like a four hour conversation and it's the most like respectful like he he truly is compassionate and he's like the most digestible relatable person um and I think in that form but it's hard in yeah have you thought about doing that with like bring yeah bring something online yeah we're working like disagree I would love to see that because I think that you know those conversations are not had very often but also they're very difficult for short form stuff they like really lend themselves to the long form yeah you have to spend you know over three hours with people really diving into it and that's what you know Ben Sunday specialist is hours and hours and what Jordan Peterson does hours and hours of speaking to people but most people don't want to sit there and watch all of that so they only see the clips and those viral moments obviously yeah bring Fame and that sort of thing but they're viral for a moment or for a reason right I just do think that there could be a shift in general for like daily wire other like liberal media companies uh to have a little bit more compassion for the Assad I think that there's a huge contingent of people right in the middle still I know it's hard to believe especially with like how aggressive everybody is on each side and uh the gravitational pull from each side but I think there's still a lot of people in the middle and that could really be claimed by either side if you just came with a little bit more compassion and care for the other side I forget how many people were in the middle but it's it's like 90 percent of people are in the middle but the 10 on either side they're the ones who really show up to vote yeah yeah and so you get like those people really getting together yeah exactly no I agree with you and that's something that I do try to do and I think that that's something that shows through in my content and I think that that's why most of my audience is younger because gen Z wants that gen Z values like emotional connection and that sort of thing more and there's a reason why I do make a very very concerted effort to be human when I'm dealing with these stories and if they're all like very personal to me especially when I'm doing dealing with like gender ideology and that sort of thing like if I get like emotional with those stories it's because like these are all people I grew up with like a majority of my friends from you know high school and that sort of thing have either transitioned or are you know gay have literally chopped off their boobs and that kind of thing like these are literally friends that I you know know and so I'm never gonna like scream in their faces and that sort of thing and say you're not real but it's like I will speak out about you know my opinions I won't shy away from that but I will always acknowledge that it's like this is still a person and you know if you are going after children that's a different thing and I will not pull any punches and I do not give a [ __ ] at all but if you are an adult I will still have you know compassion for you you're still a human being um and I think it's just you know Different Strokes for different folks about how you know the tone that they use but I do think that's one of the reasons why my content is effective especially with this generation so with that said I don't know when the audio cut out guys this has been a super long episode and we've done something outside of the norm we want to leave our comfort zones and have on people with very challenging opinions so with that said you guys if you enjoy content like this please leave a comment down below because we are very excited for our guest coming on next Sunday yeah surprise you guys there's gonna be some drama okay and uh yeah let us know if you want more content like this Graham you want to do your thing yeah as usual make sure to subscribe Instagram jlt time dude wait wait actually what's your name Carter that's a great name Carter has been what I've wanted to name my son for the last like 10 years I've told everybody since I was like a left no I guess it was maybe 14 I was probably 12 when I made that decision that I was gonna name my son Carter you have a fantastic name my friend thank you Carter thank you you're a great guy everyone shout out Carter W Carter okay down in the comments he did everything so thank you thanks

Channel: The Iced Coffee Hour

Views: 1,856,152

Keywords: graham stephan, graham stephan podcast, iced coffee podcast, iced coffee hour, investing podcast, investing for beginners, how to invest, how to invest in stocks, how to invest in real estate, personal finance, business podcast, investing in your 20s, how to be a millionaire, millionaire investing, best credit cards, credit score, credit score explained, how to build wealth, real estate investing, stock market investing, passive income, robinhood app, millionaire mindset

Id: OLkmJ8hVaa8

Length: 188min 14sec (11294 seconds)

Published: Sun May 07 2023