Stay Free - Russel Brand - Science, Spirituality and the Nature of Reality — SF694

00:00:07.000 Ladies and gentlemen, Russell Brandon trying to bring real journalism to the American people.

00:00:17.000 Hello there, you Awakening Wonders.

00:00:18.000 Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:00:21.000 I'm on a mission.

00:00:22.000 You would love to know what it is because it involves saving people.

00:00:26.000 It's important, it's vital, and it's part of what drives us and motivates us as we move to a new phase and a new stage.

00:00:32.000 Today, therefore, I'm going to be showing you not only this.

00:00:36.000 The stuff that used to make me crazy doesn't touch me.

00:00:38.000 It's not that I'm so great, just I'm well-trained.

00:00:41.000 But also this.

00:00:42.000 If anyone says to me, this is what shouldn't be questioned. 1.00

00:00:45.000 Fuck that. 1.00

00:00:46.000 No, that's, I'm, no, no, let's question it. 1.00

00:00:49.000 And would you believe there's even going to be a little bit of that?

00:00:52.000 I fake my death in front of my fans.

00:00:57.000 Like young fans.

00:00:58.000 I fake my death.

00:00:59.000 So stay with us.

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00:01:05.000 We do our show Crack On, where we talk about addiction and healing people from addiction and your support in our incredible mission.

00:01:10.000 By the way, give this little guy a shot because it's fueling me.

00:01:15.000 No more lonely nights, baby.

00:01:17.000 No more lonely nights.

00:01:19.000 Thanks for joining us.

00:01:20.000 And please enjoy this extraordinary content.

00:01:24.000 I bet you didn't know that this happened. 0.99

00:01:28.000 We live in a time, I feel, in my country and yours, where there's this sort of, I have sensed a lot of condemnation and criticism of what I might describe as ordinary working people, a kind of offhandedness of like, oh, they're dumb. 0.95

00:01:42.000 They're voting for Brexit. 0.97

00:01:43.000 They're voting for Trump.

00:01:45.000 I don't like it.

00:01:46.000 And I don't like to hear it because of my own experiences and my own upbringing, which I'll happily testify are not nearly so dramatic as yours there.

00:01:55.000 But like in terms of where I sit in a class grid, it's, you know, like I'm, and I spend enough time with people that are being described in this manner to feel ill at ease with it.

00:02:06.000 How do you feel about like that kind of judgment?

00:02:10.000 How do you feel?

00:02:11.000 When you talk about these values that you were describing earlier, do you feel that there is a way of meshing together these apparently disparate groups now, these liberal professional classes and these what you might describe as working ordinary people of any color or variety?

00:02:28.000 That's my hope.

00:02:29.000 I do think so because what the work I've got to do is defining the science behind why they're valuable, the science behind why they work, the science behind why that doesn't mean you have to now come over.

00:02:44.000 And it doesn't mean that you're coming over to the proverbial other side.

00:02:51.000 I say this, you know, I say, I'll meet you in the middle.

00:02:55.000 I actually think that is more of a dare right now than it's ever been.

00:03:01.000 That spot again is not like, oh, no, not going there.

00:03:04.000 Somebody said to me that it's, oh, yeah, meet you in the middle.

00:03:06.000 You know, you know, it's in the middle of the road, McConaughey.

00:03:09.000 Yellow lines and dead armadillos.

00:03:12.000 I said, let me tell you something, but I said, I'm walking down the yellow line right now and the armadillos are running free, having a great time.

00:03:19.000 I said, you know why? 0.96

00:03:21.000 I said, the other two sides, the two vehicles on either side of the political aisle are so far apart, their fucking tires aren't even on the pavement anymore. 0.91

00:03:30.000 I mean, so trust me, it's free over here. 0.88

00:03:33.000 There's plenty of room, you know?

00:03:34.000 And I almost feel like it's a move to say, no, let's get aggressively centric.

00:03:41.000 I dare you.

00:03:42.000 It's not a recession.

00:03:44.000 It's an aggressive move.

00:03:45.000 And if it's framed like that, one, I think that can relate to a lot of people on the right of going, oh, you dared me?

00:03:54.000 You know, it's like this COVID thing.

00:03:56.000 It's like, I had to go, whoa, this enemy doesn't want hand-to-hand combat.

00:04:03.000 Don't run out in the street with your gun and knives to try and fight this one.

00:04:06.000 That's what he wants.

00:04:07.000 You know what I mean?

00:04:08.000 It's actually an aggressive move to actually stay home.

00:04:11.000 You know what I mean?

00:04:12.000 But it had to be reframed in a little bit.

00:04:15.000 Look, on the other side, on the far left that would go, well, who do, there is a lot on that illiberal left that absolutely condescend, patronize, and are arrogant towards that other 50%.

00:04:29.000 Many people were in, I'm sure you saw it in our industry when Trump was voted in four years ago.

00:04:38.000 They were in denial that it was actually, that was real.

00:04:42.000 And some of them were in absolute denial.

00:04:45.000 And even now, we're going to see how we can stabilize coming out of, looks like Biden's our guy.

00:04:54.000 Well, now you've got the right that's in denial because that's fake news.

00:04:59.000 And I understand they've been fed fake news.

00:05:01.000 No one knows who the hell to believe, right?

00:05:03.000 So they're putting down their last bastion of defense.

00:05:09.000 So, you know, that left has to see, this is the, this is, this is, I want to stay on topic, but this is where the left misses it for me, just as far as being a marketeer of a political side.

00:05:28.000 You, when you say, hey, we want to get out the vote, we want people to go be able to go vote.

00:05:32.000 We're going to do a campaign to let people vote.

00:05:35.000 I'm like, 100%.

00:05:37.000 Yes, everyone.

00:05:38.000 Is there anyone who would say no to that?

00:05:41.000 That's universal.

00:05:42.000 You have 100% of the audience going, I'm in.

00:05:45.000 That's a constitutional right as an American.

00:05:47.000 I'm in.

00:05:47.000 Yes.

00:05:48.000 And then they can't help themselves. 1.00

00:05:49.000 At the very end of it, they go, so we don't let those criminal bastards get back. 1.00

00:05:56.000 And Austin going, you're like, no, don't say the last part. 0.99

00:06:01.000 You lost 50% of your audience.

00:06:04.000 And that's, you know, part of why so much of the nation of that 50% looks at us in Hollywood as like going, oh, yeah, another celebrity over there on the West Coasters and the elite in the Northeast.

00:06:16.000 And that's what y'all say, because even from just a sales point of view, don't tab that got you on the end.

00:06:23.000 And then you have a twice, your audience is twice as big and you're getting what you want.

00:06:29.000 Even you're getting twice as much as what you, you're getting double two times as much as you would if you just didn't tab on that little stick it to them at the end.

00:06:40.000 It's going to be have to, the left is going to have to understand the science of the values and the meets in the middle.

00:06:47.000 The left will have to understand, okay, I understand I can add this up neurologically, scientifically.

00:06:53.000 I see a, you know, I see the supply.

00:06:56.000 I understand the demand.

00:06:57.000 I see the credit sheet.

00:06:58.000 I see the numbers.

00:06:59.000 The numbers work out.

00:07:01.000 It's scientific because it's got to be more than just feel good.

00:07:04.000 I believe there is science to it.

00:07:06.000 I need to still work on what is that measurement of those values.

00:07:11.000 Is that measurement that, say, if I pilot city, my first pilot city is Austin, Texas, is that measurement?

00:07:17.000 A friend of mine said this the other day, is a possible measurement that 10 years down the road, Austin is the B Corp capital headquarters of the world.

00:07:25.000 That's pretty, that'd be a pretty cool measurement.

00:07:27.000 What's the crime rate?

00:07:29.000 What's the divorce rate? 0.99

00:07:31.000 What's the rate of how happy our employers are?

00:07:36.000 Can we have a place where businesses also have the same values that Austin, Texas has businesses that have the highest rate of happiness, percentage of happiness for employers that work for somebody?

00:07:46.000 So I'm working out those measurements with the value campaign.

00:07:52.000 And if I can get those, that's something measurable that I can hand you in the elevator pitch and go, here's what I'm talking about.

00:07:57.000 Yeah, that's that's very cool.

00:08:00.000 And even within that, this suggestion of alternative metrics is the idea that our entire way of measuring what is valuable has been biased to such an alarming degree that it's created this kind of chasm of mistrust.

00:08:20.000 Everyone knows that if you can't participate economically in this system, you are not valuable.

00:08:25.000 You will not be heard.

00:08:27.000 I think that's fascinating because it sort of does seem in that the type of economic and social systems that we're currently living within are experiencing a sort of end game.

00:08:36.000 And people are reluctant to hear alternatives and what that might look like.

00:08:41.000 So I think it's, yeah, that sounds real bold work, Matthew, to look into the metrics.

00:08:46.000 What do we, especially in America, tell you you're successful for?

00:08:49.000 What do we give you a praise on the back?

00:08:51.000 What gets you the front seat, the best seat at the table to the front of the line?

00:08:56.000 Fame and money.

00:08:57.000 Fame and money.

00:08:59.000 Boom.

00:09:00.000 You know, there we go.

00:09:02.000 That's one in two.

00:09:04.000 You know, so, you know, there's a, there's, there was a, like 10,000 young 13-year-old girls were interviewed.

00:09:16.000 There was a poll.

00:09:19.000 This is about, I think, 10, 12 years ago.

00:09:23.000 So what, you know, what do you want to do when we be famous?

00:09:28.000 How are you going to get famous? 0.98

00:09:30.000 I think over 30% of the answers was, I'm going to make a sex tape. 1.00

00:09:34.000 Wow, fucking hell. 1.00

00:09:36.000 Now, come on now. 0.99

00:09:37.000 I think we can all agree on both sides.

00:09:39.000 Hey, now, wait a minute.

00:09:40.000 We got our values eskewed about what people will do to get there.

00:09:46.000 Again, it's short money.

00:09:47.000 It's today with social media.

00:09:52.000 I raise myself up momentarily.

00:09:55.000 I feel my ego momentarily if I put you down.

00:09:59.000 Meaning, not because we're a nation, we're a world that cheers louder when our opponent misses a shot than we are happy when we make a shot.

00:10:12.000 That's not the way forward.

00:10:13.000 I think we can see that one is affirmative, one's contradictory.

00:10:18.000 One is checking in with self and going, yes, I have an innate ability.

00:10:24.000 I worked at it.

00:10:25.000 I was in the moment.

00:10:26.000 I made the shot.

00:10:27.000 Yes, I can look in the mirror and go, you're responsible for that, as well as a whole bunch of other people.

00:10:32.000 But we don't forget that one.

00:10:34.000 Let's just rubberneck.

00:10:36.000 Let's just rubberneck through life and sit there and just go, yeah, look, they wrecked.

00:10:40.000 Yeah.

00:10:41.000 That's short money.

00:10:43.000 That's not ROI.

00:10:44.000 That's not, that's a battery-powered green light.

00:10:46.000 That ain't a solar-powered green light.

00:10:48.000 That's in a little two-volt battery.

00:10:50.000 It's going to dim real quick and you're going to need another fix.

00:10:53.000 Someone else to put down, someone else to down thumb, someone else to comment, someone else to snide.

00:10:58.000 It's that, person.

00:10:59.000 We've all done it.

00:11:00.000 I've been this guy before.

00:11:01.000 The person at the party who gets everyone together and tells you this great thing, little inside joke on Leslie over there, Johnny over there, that they wouldn't say in front of them because it's kind of dirt.

00:11:11.000 And in the moment, we all laugh our ass off because it was a great joke.

00:11:16.000 But then when we walk away, we inherently lose respect for that guy.

00:11:21.000 It's short money.

00:11:24.000 It's never bothered me.

00:11:25.000 It's never someone believe in God has never bothered me.

00:11:28.000 It's what do you do with it?

00:11:30.000 If you start saying to me, you know, I love this prophet or that prophet.

00:11:35.000 I love God.

00:11:35.000 I'll go, fine, yeah.

00:11:37.000 And I do this and I believe I'm great.

00:11:39.000 Yeah, put it. 1.00

00:11:40.000 And I think we should throw homosexuals off buildings. 1.00

00:11:42.000 Well, no, now we've got to talk. 1.00

00:11:46.000 Now we've got to talk, right?

00:11:49.000 Just, you know.

00:11:51.000 So it's when there's suddenly an agenda that coincidentally favors the person, you know, it's when people have exactly luckily, God agrees with them.

00:12:02.000 Dogma is the problem.

00:12:03.000 I think dogma is the real problem.

00:12:06.000 It's not just in religion anymore.

00:12:08.000 It's creeping into everything.

00:12:10.000 It's creeping into politics and it's creeping, you know, identity politics.

00:12:14.000 It's creeping into just social structures and opinions. 0.99

00:12:20.000 It's, it's, you know, if anyone says to me, this is what shouldn't be questioned, fuck that. 0.98

00:12:26.000 No, let's, I'm, no, no, let's question it. 0.98

00:12:29.000 That's the red rag to evolve.

00:12:31.000 You know what?

00:12:32.000 Don't quit.

00:12:32.000 I've always been like that.

00:12:34.000 I've always met teachers.

00:12:35.000 Someone said that I'll always, even a board game, I think, what are the rules?

00:12:39.000 Can I get out of my wind within the rules?

00:12:44.000 Yeah.

00:12:45.000 I've gone on sort of like the opposite journey in that I feel like I started off atheistic just the same way that I would reject any attempt to impose regulation or control on me for the purposes of domination.

00:12:57.000 And as I've you know, gone through my own stuff with you know addiction and mental health or whatever it is.

00:13:05.000 And like I know that you're very like, you know, for example, afterlife is about legitimate grief as opposed to some kind of abstract idea of mental illness brought about by a hormonal or neurological balance.

00:13:17.000 But myself, my own sense of despair, particularly looking at it from a perspective of mental health issues and addiction, is that there is an unaddressed yearning for a kind of oneness togetherness.

00:13:28.000 And like, you know, to your point earlier about Brent, indeed, for love.

00:13:33.000 And when like you talk about that sense of awe of like the appreciation of an animal, the love of an animal and the sort of regard and gratitude for having an animal love you and care for you or the beauty of nature or the deep, deep beauty of the cosmos, what I feel like, and my own appreciation, understanding, stroke, belief in God is that there is a kind of in the love of it, in the awareness of rightness itself, there is an indication that there is such a thing as rightness.

00:14:01.000 Not that any one particular group or ideology has unique, a particular and special access to it.

00:14:06.000 And I really firmly, deeply believe that spirituality is for me, not for me to tell other people, boy, I don't reckon you should be gay, or I don't reckon you should be allowed to do it. 1.00

00:14:17.000 I feel like it's, I do my Bible, in the Bible, it says you should pray secretly.

00:14:23.000 Oh, wow.

00:14:24.000 So, yeah.

00:14:25.000 Yeah, like there is something sort of deeply private about it.

00:14:27.000 But I also think, Ricky, that there is a social consequence to, I don't necessarily want to say atheism because I completely agree with your point that there's good and bad, you know, in like beyond those kind of limited taxonomies.

00:14:40.000 But like, I do feel like when people think there's no purpose or meaning, that and that needn't necessarily be just because of a belief in God, but it creates cultures that are oddly materialistic, nihilistic.

00:14:54.000 And I feel like in the last 20 years, we're seeing more and more worship of self, worship of individuals.

00:15:00.000 Of course, there's a new narcissism, of course.

00:15:02.000 And I don't know why I think social media is partly to blame.

00:15:08.000 I think people being rewarded for bad behavior is partly to blame, you know, magazines or TV or whatever.

00:15:16.000 I did a speech in the big brother house as Andy Millman in Extras.

00:15:20.000 And again, that was at the beginning of it.

00:15:23.000 And now it's got worse.

00:15:24.000 But a couple of points.

00:15:27.000 I do think there's a people crave a oneness.

00:15:30.000 Even if we don't go about understanding about why we're here, because again, that's very human.

00:15:34.000 We're inquisitive.

00:15:35.000 We want to know why.

00:15:36.000 We want the answer why.

00:15:37.000 And some people don't accept, well, we don't know yet, but we're on the way.

00:15:40.000 They don't, they've got, no, well, that's no, you know, the God of the gaps.

00:15:44.000 We understand that.

00:15:45.000 Well, if I look, if you don't know, explain it, God did it.

00:15:47.000 Okay, well, it doesn't really solve anything.

00:15:49.000 Down to the, I put a joke in afterlife where Kat's bothering me, and she says, where did it all come from?

00:15:56.000 Somewhat from nothing.

00:15:57.000 And I go, well, where did it all come from?

00:16:00.000 Then God made it.

00:16:01.000 I go, okay, where did God come from?

00:16:03.000 She went, He's always been around.

00:16:04.000 I go, Simple as that, innit?

00:16:06.000 So, you know, it doesn't answer the question, but I get it.

00:16:10.000 And I think, I think, apart from people wanting there to be some sort of divine justice, because that would be great.

00:16:19.000 Good people would be rewarded, and bad people would be punished.

00:16:22.000 Brilliant.

00:16:23.000 Okay, it doesn't work like that.

00:16:25.000 You know, you only have to look at children in Africa being born with cancer.

00:16:34.000 We know that's not, we know mysterious ways isn't an explanation.

00:16:39.000 Okay.

00:16:41.000 That to me is someone who doesn't know the answer and says mysterious ways.

00:16:45.000 But apart from that, you're right.

00:16:48.000 We're seeking the answer.

00:16:49.000 Why are we here?

00:16:51.000 I think we think that, hold on, well, it's too good.

00:16:54.000 It's too good to be chance.

00:16:57.000 Everything's perfect.

00:16:57.000 Well, it seems that way.

00:16:59.000 You know, it's like Douglas Adams' puddle, you know, when it imagines this, I fit this whole perfectly.

00:17:08.000 But I think you're right.

00:17:11.000 We are scared and alone.

00:17:13.000 And the idea of death is horrible.

00:17:17.000 What you'll never exist again.

00:17:19.000 What was the point? 1.00

00:17:22.000 And again, I talk about this in Afterlife One, where I say, Kath's saying that if there's no heaven, why don't you kill yourself? 0.97

00:17:37.000 And I say, so if you're watching a really good film, but you know it's going to end, you might as well just stop it. 0.87

00:17:42.000 She went, no, because I'm going to watch it again.

00:17:45.000 And I say, I think that's the amazing thing about life.

00:17:47.000 You can't watch it again.

00:17:49.000 You know, one day you'll hug your mum for the last time.

00:17:53.000 You'll smell your last flower.

00:17:55.000 You'll eat your last meal.

00:17:56.000 You won't know it's your last, but it will be your last.

00:18:00.000 And so you've got to make the most of everything.

00:18:01.000 And it is a terrifying prospect.

00:18:04.000 It is quite sad that we'll never exist again, I think.

00:18:09.000 But it doesn't mean it's not true.

00:18:12.000 You know, the bottom line is, I can't believe something I don't believe.

00:18:16.000 And so how do I find meaning?

00:18:18.000 Well, we are here.

00:18:20.000 We are here.

00:18:21.000 The chances of us being us, you being you and me being me, existing now, that sperm hitting that egg is 400 trillion to one.

00:18:30.000 You know, we're not special, but we are lucky.

00:18:32.000 We do exist.

00:18:33.000 It's incredible.

00:18:35.000 And I think of it, it's like a holiday.

00:18:37.000 We don't exist for 13 and a half billion years.

00:18:40.000 Then we explode into this mass, this electronic blob of thought, introspection, love, hate, fear, beauty, horror for 80, 90, 100 years if we're lucky.

00:18:58.000 Then we die and we never exist again.

00:18:59.000 We return, our atoms return, and it carries on.

00:19:03.000 And that's not scary because I think people are scared of death because they don't know what's beyond.

00:19:12.000 And someone said to me, what do you think it feels like when you die?

00:19:16.000 And I say, like the 13 and a half billion years before I was born.

00:19:20.000 And that was all right.

00:19:23.000 So, but we, but the big thing is injecting meaning.

00:19:28.000 I think you're totally right.

00:19:29.000 I think you're totally right.

00:19:31.000 When you start thinking about it, why are we here?

00:19:34.000 Well, I mean, not even the how, but why.

00:19:39.000 Well, to live your life to the fullest and not hurt anyone, to leave the world in a better place than it was when you came into it, to experience everything, all the reasons, all the obvious reasons, you know, love, wine, dogs, learning, all these great things that you can do every minute of every day that you're alive.

00:20:06.000 And then you check out.

00:20:08.000 You go, I'm done.

00:20:10.000 Thanks.

00:20:11.000 And it's done.

00:20:12.000 And it's beautiful. 0.99

00:20:13.000 It's fucking beautiful. 0.99

00:20:15.000 It is beautiful. 0.99

00:20:16.000 But I was struck when you said that by a few things.

00:20:18.000 One is like this sort of like the injection of meaning, as in, you know, like meaning would have to be imported externally, fabricated, somehow invented.

00:20:26.000 Whereas I think on some level, I feel that there is, that meaning is inherent and that the meaning is in the kind of zeal that you have when you describe the things that give you love, pleasure, you know, connection, whether it's wine or dogs or whatever.

00:20:41.000 I've had like some experiences like through meditation.

00:20:45.000 And when I took drugs too young, so now I'm not allowed to do ayahuasca or LSD or them things that I would definitely be doing if I wasn't in recovery.

00:20:53.000 But I had like those sort of these experiences that were a kind of, I would say, a sort of an evaporation of self and yet a continued awareness.

00:21:02.000 I know that my consciousness is connected to my biology, but I have a sense somewhat derived from the sort of the fact that you can't trace how mechanical parts ever become conscious, that consciousness may be elemental somehow.

00:21:19.000 Now that doesn't point to a God in a traditional patriarchal or domineering sense, but it sort of points to an element that's very difficult to quantify, whether that's the deep intelligence of nature, the deep mathematics of biochemistry and biology, and the essential mystery of consciousness itself, commonly referred to as the hard problem.

00:21:41.000 And through these sort of individual experiences, whilst I've not had anything that you would call typically religious, Jesus emerging out of a tunnel, Ganesh lashing around or any of that sort of stuff, what I've had is like a, well, it's highly bloody interpretive.

00:21:55.000 Because say there's this one breath thing I do, you breathe from the abdomen very aggressively and then you sort of take a sharp inhale and you normally, you nearly, well, a medical man would say what you're doing there is hyperventilating and nearly passing out.

00:22:08.000 But from the inside, what it feels like is bloody hell.

00:22:11.000 For this moment, I'm aware and I am not me.

00:22:14.000 What is this?

00:22:15.000 What is this?

00:22:16.000 Is there a possibility that my awareness, your awareness, the awareness of all animals and an awareness that's impossible to read is somehow present in all nature, in all matter.

00:22:26.000 And if that's true, then there's a kind of a real, a genuine cohesion and togetherness between all of the beings of the earth and beyond.

00:22:36.000 And those people that can't actually enjoy the lives that we are privileged to have of the red wine or the dogs or whatever, like I'm not saying that's some sort of comfort to them.

00:22:45.000 But in fact, those of us that are in privileged position might feel newly incentivized to work towards a different kind of society and system that is more reflective of those values.

00:22:56.000 Now, that doesn't necessarily require monotheism, pantheonism, or any of those things, but it is somewhat underwritten by a kind of a sameness and a oneness and how that might relate to justice.

00:23:07.000 And also, there is a sort of a personal experience of mystery in it.

00:23:12.000 I wonder what you feel about that.

00:23:13.000 And if you're curious about psychedelics and awkward states and that.

00:23:16.000 Well, you know, I love a good mystery and you're right.

00:23:21.000 It is a mystery.

00:23:22.000 Science, all science, it does, it's a discipline that follows the evidence.

00:23:27.000 And what science keeps saying, and some people say this is a flaw, but it's been wrong before.

00:23:33.000 Well, science never been wrong before.

00:23:35.000 Interpretation.

00:23:35.000 Scientists were wrong, for you know it.

00:23:38.000 And science is just a way to look and understand the physical, um universe and what science says.

00:23:48.000 It keeps saying okay, this is the least wrong theory we've got so far, and then the next day it goes, okay, we're even less wrong today.

00:23:58.000 We were, we were less wrong today.

00:24:00.000 You know, they've mapped the beginning of the universe to, to a fraction of a second, which is pretty close but um so uh I, I think science keeps proving itself and over and over again, and and the fact that we don't understand, you know, the mind body problem completely yet um, that is the beauty.

00:24:21.000 And the more we understand, the more questions it throws up.

00:24:25.000 It's like um, you know, people say the missing link uh like, there's this fossil and there's this fossil and uh, we find that one and people go, no, there's two missing links.

00:24:38.000 So you can't win, you know and um, all science be doing is just keep filling the gaps and finding and finding new gaps.

00:24:50.000 Um but yeah, you're right, you know I, I think that um, it is, it is.

00:24:56.000 It's amazing what intelligence is.

00:24:58.000 What you know I, i'm a determinist which changes nothing.

00:25:02.000 I, I believe that free will is an illusion.

00:25:05.000 So be it.

00:25:06.000 If it feels like it, it might as well be.

00:25:09.000 Um, but then to analyze it and go well uh we're we're, we're machines, we are machines, we are machines.

00:25:19.000 Um, we're machines trying to understand ourselves, and that's hard will.

00:25:24.000 Will there one day be a computer that is suffering from anxiety?

00:25:30.000 I reckon so.

00:25:32.000 I reckon so.

00:25:33.000 I reckon there'll be a genius computer that's worried about.

00:25:37.000 I really do.

00:25:42.000 Yeah, that's the science.

00:25:44.000 We're, we're lumps of meat we're, we're chimps with brains the size of a planet. 0.96

00:25:48.000 Of course we go mad and try and kill each other and worry about what's the point? 0.99

00:25:53.000 Of course we do.

00:25:54.000 It's, it's overwhelming, and the more you think about it, the more frightening it is.

00:26:01.000 So, um it it.

00:26:03.000 I just think that.

00:26:05.000 Um, you know my new, my new show, Supernature.

00:26:09.000 I start with saying it's called Supernature for two reasons.

00:26:12.000 One, I want to debunk the supernatural.

00:26:14.000 I don't believe in anything supernatural.

00:26:16.000 I think that anything that that exists is, by definition, part of nature and is explainable, if not now, then eventually.

00:26:23.000 And also supernature, because nature is super enough.

00:26:27.000 We don't need angels in unicorns. 0.98

00:26:29.000 We've got the octopus and then I go into.

00:26:33.000 You know, we don't, we don't need to look.

00:26:36.000 I feel we don't need to look elsewhere.

00:26:39.000 That doesn't mean i'm not in awe of poetry and intelligence, and you know I I just don't think that unweaving The Rainbow spoils it.

00:26:50.000 I think it makes it more exciting.

00:26:53.000 When I see a card trick and I don't know how it's done, and then the magician tells me, I can't wait for him to show someone else who doesn't know how it's done.

00:27:03.000 And how it is done is more exciting for me.

00:27:09.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:27:10.000 Yes.

00:27:11.000 Yes, I do.

00:27:12.000 And I also sort of don't believe in magic, you know, that kind of stuff.

00:27:24.000 Yeah, that dude, he's amazing, isn't he?

00:27:26.000 Like, I spoke to him about the sort of...

00:27:27.000 Well, fun and physics, all bets are off.

00:27:29.000 We can...

00:27:30.000 We can talk like this till we're blue in the face, and then quantum physics comes along.

00:27:36.000 And there's that saying, if you think you understand quantum physics, you don't understand quantum physics.

00:27:42.000 It's magic.

00:27:43.000 It might, quantum physics, by all our definitions of science and nature, right?

00:27:49.000 And we're intelligent people.

00:27:51.000 We've read a bit.

00:27:52.000 We think.

00:27:53.000 We've got a good brain.

00:27:54.000 We've got as good a brain as anyone. 1.00

00:27:57.000 But fuck quantum physics. 1.00

00:27:59.000 It's mental. 0.99

00:28:03.000 Spirituality, I think, means different things to different people.

00:28:07.000 So I don't want to generalize what it might mean, but I can say that if spirituality to you is the sense or the feeling that there's something else going on that you don't otherwise see or experience, that's an interesting state of mind to have.

00:28:30.000 And science is still a moving frontier.

00:28:33.000 Space is still a moving frontier.

00:28:36.000 There's probably more to be discovered than we have yet discovered that awaits us.

00:28:41.000 So I'm not going to say that there isn't something there that you could be tapping into.

00:28:48.000 I prefer hard evidence.

00:28:50.000 Why?

00:28:51.000 I prefer it.

00:28:55.000 Because evidence is a good thing.

00:28:57.000 There's so many things you can end up doing with your life in the absence of evidence that you could end up dying from it, for example.

00:29:06.000 If someone says, here, rub these crystals and it'll cure your ailments.

00:29:10.000 If your ailment is a particular kind of cancer for which we can actually cure you, you will likely die no matter how hard you rub the crystals together.

00:29:19.000 That's an exaggeration, but it's the kind of case where evidence-based living can have a very important effect on your longevity.

00:29:32.000 Yes, yes.

00:29:33.000 There's no question that in medicine and these areas cannot be contested, but I feel that rationalism and materialism bump up against certain limits.

00:29:45.000 And if we are to have conversations based on evidence, then in a sense, we can track what materialism, commerce, capitalism lead to.

00:29:56.000 They are currently like, you know, this is, I don't want to be like apocalyptic or anything, Neil though, I get the sense you're going to handle it.

00:30:04.000 It seems that at least.

00:30:05.000 But your hands are coming out like this.

00:30:07.000 You do look a little bit like Jesus, right?

00:30:10.000 So this combination is feeling a little apocalyptic to me.

00:30:13.000 Go on.

00:30:13.000 I'm flinging the palms out to the extremes of the crucifix.

00:30:19.000 Even as I talk.

00:30:20.000 This is what I feel like: that human beings have this relationship with the unknown and potentially unknowable, not least through our intimate relationship with experience and consciousness.

00:30:31.000 Whilst there's definitely a trackable progress in the fields of science and the benevolent miracles that have been bestowed upon us by the scientific method are foundational in what we recognize as society and civilization, it seems to me that there's another aspect to human nature that's dealing with subtler forces that are difficult to know.

00:30:53.000 And again, as a man that's dedicated to science, I'm not anticipating that this is the conversation we go, yeah, why don't we just believe in fairies and ghosts and that kind of stuff.

00:31:02.000 But the same way that invisible constructs and concepts such as the idea of the United Kingdom or the idea of America or the idea of class or to a degree gender and race can be used to control and separate, I feel that people need narratives and stories to help them access the kind of perspective that Edgar Mitchell is talking about, a passionate sense that there is something that unifies us.

00:31:31.000 And I would never, with a religious person or a non-religious person, say, hey, I think that you should regard the sublime in this way.

00:31:37.000 But it seems important to me, and I've had a comparable conversation with Brian Cox, who know that you're friendly with me, like, because you are both, it seems to me, very passionate men who love the cosmos, love the universe.

00:31:48.000 And so much of your book is talking about, it comes from a place of love and kindness and together.

00:31:52.000 I'm not sure.

00:31:53.000 Yeah, that's definitely there.

00:31:54.000 And I think that, you know, we've got more in common, those of us that believe that love and compassion should define our experience here on earth and in the outer reaches of space, have more in common than those of us that are trying to pursue materialistic, individualistic, selfish goals, although I'm capable of being both of those people.

00:32:08.000 I feel that where is the upon what terrain mentally do we afford the possibility of negotiation with the unknown when there are still such great mysteries like the formation of consciousness?

00:32:22.000 Every time I see an article saying, you know, new evidence about the configuration of consciousness on neurological pathways, it always leads to we don't believe it.

00:32:29.000 It's the evidence that we know nothing about it, that people keep publishing books on consciousness, attempting to explain it.

00:32:35.000 The more, if you just look at the progress of knowledge, when people are actively publishing on a topic, generally it means that it's not settled.

00:32:45.000 That's why people keep publishing.

00:32:46.000 The results aren't in yet.

00:32:47.000 They're not in yet.

00:32:48.000 That's correct.

00:32:48.000 When the results are in and everyone can agree, then people stop publishing on it.

00:32:52.000 So the fact that you can go to a bookstore or a library and see shelf upon shelf of people's books saying that they explain consciousness, and those books continue to appear even to this day, is just evidence of that.

00:33:07.000 Whereas if you go to the shelf of the books on gravity, there's like four books.

00:33:12.000 That's kind of it.

00:33:13.000 You know, we got to the moon, we got to Mars, we got the gravity thing.

00:33:18.000 All right, we got that worked out.

00:33:20.000 But let me get back to your point about the unknown.

00:33:28.000 The unknown is one of the most powerful forces of inquiry to the scientist.

00:33:38.000 We thrive in the unknown.

00:33:43.000 We love the unknown.

00:33:45.000 We like standing within the perimeter of the circle that is known and staring out into an abyss and saying, wow, I don't understand what that is.

00:33:55.000 Let me get back to work.

00:33:57.000 So there's a difference between not knowing something because the circle hasn't expanded large enough to encompass it and declaring something is in principle unknowable.

00:34:10.000 And the history of what it is to know stuff does not support the contention that there are things that are unknowable.

00:34:23.000 Outgo the arms again.

00:34:25.000 The arms have gone up.

00:34:26.000 The Jesus arms, just for those only listening.

00:34:31.000 But even from things that I've heard you explain, one of the things that you said that I really loved is you say when dealing with people that are, I suppose, pedagogical or evangelical, is there anything I could say to you that would change your mind?

00:34:45.000 And if the person says no, then you don't bother.

00:34:47.000 kind of done with the conversation, right?

00:34:49.000 Here's something that I'd like to say, though, and because I'm well up for learning always, I hope that surely consciousness as we understand it, and our experience as human beings limited as it is by our sensory instruments is contained within certain parameters whilst we can amplify and magnify in all sorts of directions.

00:35:08.000 There is a sort of a basic limitation to our understanding.

00:35:11.000 And even from watching your program on the cosmos, when you talked about multiverses, and even from hearing you talking about neutrinos and how inconceivably low down the sub-particular world goes, in this scope, the unknowable in terms of the human experience upon that which can be proved, that must be a vast, vast territory, because we can never know the multiverses.

00:35:37.000 Would that be fair to say?

00:35:37.000 We can never know from a sort of a century perspective the neutrino world.

00:35:42.000 I'm just not going to say that because the moving frontier delivers all manner of new surprises to things that you thought were either fully known or partially known or unknowable in a previous time.

00:35:58.000 Take a look.

00:35:59.000 This is a medium good example.

00:36:02.000 In the day when sort of religious philosophies were deeply embedded, and let's look at Europe for a moment, and someone bends over and writhes on the ground and froths at the mouth.

00:36:18.000 It's really obvious what's going on there.

00:36:20.000 The devil has infused the body of this person.

00:36:23.000 Clearly.

00:36:24.000 So we need an exorcism.

00:36:26.000 So the priest comes, brings the holy water, exorcises the person, and then the symptoms fade away, and clearly the devil left the body.

00:36:36.000 That was the explanation, in the absence of the methods and tools of science.

00:36:41.000 And now we know, of course, that's an epileptic fit.

00:36:44.000 And it does run its course, giving the illusion that removing the devil by holy water and other encantations by the priests is what actually solved the problem.

00:36:58.000 So back then, that was something that they thought they understood, but in fact did not.

00:37:04.000 Maybe there might still be people today who think that's what's necessary.

00:37:09.000 But the medical profession tells us that this is an ailment that afflicts some human brains.

00:37:15.000 Very unfortunate, rapid, uncontrolled firing of synapses.

00:37:20.000 And so that's an example of something that may have been unknowable or even divine at a time that we solved and we're onto other problems.

00:37:30.000 There's no question that superstition thrives in ignorance and institutions that crave power will exploit that void.

00:37:41.000 But what I'm talking about is even based on what I've learned from watching your TV shows, that the scope, the sheer scope, that it is, put simply, the capacity for human understanding must be finite.

00:37:58.000 The capacity for knowledge infinite.

00:38:00.000 Let me agree and disagree with you.

00:38:02.000 Okay?

00:38:03.000 So first, a lot of what you described, our consciousness, our personal experience, what we feel, in science, I don't even care.

00:38:15.000 Because the human senses are demonstrably ill-equipped to take measure of the totality of the physical universe.

00:38:27.000 So what science has done, basically since the invention of the microscope and telescope, which happened within 10 years of each other, by the way, back around the year 1600, then the race was on.

00:38:40.000 I can now enhance your view with a telescope.

00:38:43.000 I can improve your view downward with a microscope.

00:38:46.000 Your senses had no access to those places in the universe until I came up with those instruments.

00:38:52.000 And the run of science over the past 400 years has been all about developing instruments so that you can see beyond the five senses you are biologically endowed with.

00:39:04.000 So when someone comes up to me and says, I think I have a sixth sense, I have ESP, I say, fine, but in science, we have 12 senses.

00:39:12.000 I can measure things your body doesn't even know is going on in front of you right now.

00:39:18.000 And so that is a power over ignorance that science has brought to us over all of these centuries.

00:39:27.000 Now, let me now agree with you.

00:39:31.000 Who is to say that humans, who by our own definition are the first intelligent species there ever was on Earth, who's to say we have just the right amount of intelligence to figure out the entire universe?

00:39:44.000 That's kind of egocentric.

00:39:46.000 Yes.

00:39:47.000 Think about, and I give this example often.

00:39:49.000 I'll do it for you here on your show.

00:39:51.000 You take the closest genetic relative, so the chimpanzee.

00:39:55.000 It's a trifling difference in DNA between us, 2%, somewhere around there.

00:40:01.000 Well, if you're a human lover, you would say, what a difference that 2% makes.

00:40:07.000 We have podcasts.

00:40:09.000 We have the Hubble Telescope.

00:40:10.000 We have philosophy.

00:40:11.000 We have art.

00:40:12.000 We have music.

00:40:13.000 And the chimp does not. 0.99

00:40:15.000 What can the chimp do? 0.99

00:40:16.000 They can stack boxes and reach a banana.

00:40:19.000 Our toddlers can do that. 0.99

00:40:21.000 So that's a smart chimp. 1.00

00:40:23.000 What our toddlers can do? 0.87

00:40:26.000 So we're sitting pretty happy about ourselves, right?

00:40:30.000 Now, imagine some other life form 2% beyond us in the same vector that we are 2% beyond the chimp. 0.72

00:40:40.000 What would we look like to them?

00:40:43.000 The smartest of us would accomplish what their toddlers can do.

00:40:48.000 And I joke that they take Stephen Hawking, roll him forward at their human study conferences and say this human, Stephen Hawking, is slightly smarter than the rest because he can do astrophysics calculations in his head, like little Timmy over here who just came home from preschool.

00:41:05.000 Alien Timmy.

00:41:07.000 So our most, their simplest thoughts would transcend our most complex thoughts.

00:41:14.000 To them, the universe might be just a trivial exercise that you learn all about in an afternoon.

00:41:20.000 Yet we are struggling, requiring the most brilliant among us scattered over centuries with information shared and incremented upon one rung of a ladder at a time, trying to see over the hill.

00:41:33.000 And we can't yet, whatever that hill is, we don't even know how tall the hill is, how tall the hill is.

00:41:39.000 So I don't know if we're smart enough to figure out the universe, but we're still progressing and I'm happy with that.

00:41:47.000 You know, when art or music, and I suppose in your case, science, and in my case, because sometimes like watching your stuff or Neil de Grasse Tyson's or, you know, like Carl Sagan and stuff, when you're taken to that point of absolute wonder, when you think, oh my God, I actually can't hold that in my head anymore.

00:42:05.000 And like that could happen, though, in a beautiful animation or a beautiful piece of music where you're taken to that place that's sort of beyond me.

00:42:12.000 And you feel, yeah, that Nounism.

00:42:14.000 You feel that sense of this is beyond my faculties to know this, but I feel something greater, whether that is, you know, and however you want to define that.

00:42:24.000 Course.

00:42:25.000 This place, this place, this precipice that can be reached through art and through just observation, really, observation and expression of the beauty of our reality.

00:42:35.000 It has become increasingly excluded, I feel, from our cultural and social life.

00:42:39.000 And I feel, Brian, that you and you know, some of the other, you, this just about you, you don't seem to me typical of, you know, not that there's a it's not really a crowded field, is it sort of a science entertainer communicators?

00:42:52.000 I mean, there's not loads of you really out there, but but but generally speaking, you know that there's this you'll be familiar with the term scientism.

00:42:59.000 You'll be familiar, of course, with a type of scientific understanding that's used to underwrite certainty.

00:43:03.000 You'll be familiar too that recently, politically, scientific understanding has been to some degree necessarily been used to underwrite policy.

00:43:13.000 When it comes to conversations about gender, when it comes to the conversation about governments mandating stuff, can you see sometimes when it comes to the field of chemistry and pharmacology and this sort of the irresponsibility irresponsibility?

00:43:25.000 And I think we're on legally safe territory when we say with the opioid crisis, that science is occasionally a subset of corporatism.

00:43:34.000 Science is occasionally a subset of power.

00:43:37.000 Science is sometimes a subset of politics, vis-à-vis gender conversations and sexuality conversations.

00:43:44.000 How do you retain your own purity?

00:43:48.000 How do you retain your own, presumably, your own disgust in the same way as that I would be disgusted by anyone using religion as a way of reaching being dogmatic, certain, condemnatory?

00:44:01.000 How do you manage the misuse, I would call it, of science?

00:44:06.000 And, you know, be as specific as you want, obviously.

00:44:09.000 Well, I mean, a very good example is the pandemic, because what you saw there was science in action in real time in a very serious situation.

00:44:22.000 So if you go back, you know, three years, then we don't know anything about this virus at all.

00:44:30.000 It may have been in some animal reservoir, you know, in bats or something.

00:44:34.000 We really didn't know about it.

00:44:36.000 We had no knowledge about this virus.

00:44:39.000 And then we discover it.

00:44:41.000 And then we start to do science in order to understand it, understand how it transmits, develop vaccines, and so on.

00:44:49.000 So what you saw there was real-time research.

00:44:53.000 And I think that many people and politicians are just in general not scientists, they're just people, right?

00:45:01.000 They didn't know, they misunderstood that process.

00:45:06.000 It's very easy in politics to say, well, we heard it, right?

00:45:12.000 This is the science.

00:45:13.000 We are following the science.

00:45:15.000 As if there is a little book that you can open and there's a list of things and it says, right, do this.

00:45:22.000 This is what you should do.

00:45:23.000 You should wear masks in enclosed spaces or you should do this and that and so on.

00:45:28.000 When actually what was happening was people were doing research and then finding out that, okay, so is this thing airborne or not?

00:45:36.000 We didn't know actually, initially.

00:45:39.000 Does it spread mainly in droplets?

00:45:41.000 Does it spread on surfaces?

00:45:43.000 So as you find out more about the thing, then the advice changes.

00:45:49.000 And that's where I think there can be a problem because the advice changes.

00:45:56.000 A lot of people, I think, tend to think that if advice changes, then the previous advice was wrong.

00:46:04.000 It undermines the authority of the people that gave the advice.

00:46:08.000 That's not the case in science.

00:46:11.000 The best way to look at science is that we never claim that we're right.

00:46:16.000 All we're saying is that this is the best snapshot of our opinion at some time.

00:46:23.000 And it will change.

00:46:25.000 And then, on top of that, you're right, the undercurrent of your question is that people who are disingenuous, who are not practicing what we've been speaking about, which is humility and just trying to understand nature and understand a new thing,

00:46:41.000 be it a pandemic disease or the evolution of the universe, that disingenuous people can just take the one piece of advice that backs up their prejudice and then use it vocally in order to justify their actions.

00:46:57.000 And that's where it goes wrong.

00:46:59.000 So it's not, it all goes back to this.

00:47:05.000 We've got to understand that science is not a belief system.

00:47:11.000 It's not, we're not, scientists don't sit on a mountain passing down stone templates to the people at the bottom saying, this is it.

00:47:20.000 As I just said, you know, go back to what I said about Feynman and Oppenheimer.

00:47:24.000 Science is a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance.

00:47:27.000 And so I think the problems occur that they can occur sometimes.

00:47:33.000 The scientists can, you know, it's very hard.

00:47:35.000 I had great respect for the scientists that were working during the pandemic, you know, the public facing scientists, because they're not people necessarily who understand the nuance of communicating with the public, right?

00:47:50.000 They're scientists.

00:47:51.000 And so they're likely to say, well, at the moment, we don't know everything, but we know this.

00:47:56.000 And so we think you should do this.

00:47:58.000 But then they might not even say, because it's kind of obvious to them that actually we might discover something tomorrow and then we're going to say you should do the other thing.

00:48:06.000 Right.

00:48:07.000 So, so it's very, very, very difficult, especially in a serious situation like a pandemic, to communicate that.

00:48:18.000 It's an argument for science education, actually.

00:48:21.000 Because you need to, from being a child, from very young, if you can just understand that this is contingent knowledge, it's constantly evolving.

00:48:31.000 You can't be told what to do.

00:48:34.000 Science is not going to tell you what to do because with certainty, because we might find something else out tomorrow.

00:48:44.000 But I said it before.

00:48:45.000 It's the point is, it's the method we have of acquiring reliable knowledge.

00:48:53.000 In the earlier chat, you told me that they put all that athletic monitoring equipment on you and said that you burned 11,000 calories in nine hours and your heart's doing this and your heart's doing that.

00:49:03.000 Like, you know, I believe that in the ability of consciousness and will to alter anatomy and to or material to a degree, but the simple fact is that ultimately that you're a man.

00:49:13.000 Where are you going with that vulnerability?

00:49:16.000 What are you doing?

00:49:16.000 Have you got like a mentor, someone that you can call?

00:49:19.000 I haven't.

00:49:20.000 I have many.

00:49:21.000 What's really beautiful in my life, the grace of my life, is I've been called to help others and they look at me as their coach, but I'd be an idiot, the kind of people I have the privilege of coaching to think I'm just coaching them.

00:49:31.000 I go there just like I did with you.

00:49:33.000 I wanted to interview.

00:49:35.000 I reached out to you.

00:49:35.000 And fortunately, you wanted to chat with me too, which I was grateful for.

00:49:38.000 But I wanted to reach you because I feel you have a very special voice when it comes to recovery that I have not seen anywhere else.

00:49:44.000 You have a passion and a truth and a vulnerability.

00:49:47.000 And I have a lot of that, but I'm only one person.

00:49:49.000 So I'm good at finding brilliant people and then helping to pull out so other people can see, at least the people that I have an audience for.

00:49:56.000 You know, I have 20 million people on social media and they talk to people.

00:49:59.000 So hopefully it reaches even more.

00:50:01.000 So I'm always on the hunt for human excellence.

00:50:03.000 I'm in the hunt for someone who's real.

00:50:05.000 My vulnerability is absolutely there, but I've trained myself like an athlete.

00:50:09.000 Like the most common question I've been asked by the media my entire life that always makes me laugh is, well, don't you have bad days?

00:50:14.000 Don't you have days when you're like frustrated and excited and pissed off and you watch TV and you eat Cheetos and watch pornography?

00:50:21.000 And I said, well, I do some of those things.

00:50:23.000 And of course they do.

00:50:24.000 But it's like an athlete.

00:50:26.000 I built muscle over the years so that it's not that I don't have feelings, I don't get hurt, I don't feel sad, I don't feel tired, I feel all those things, but they're not the dominant force in my life.

00:50:34.000 It's a muscle.

00:50:35.000 The mind is a muscle.

00:50:37.000 Emotion is a muscle.

00:50:37.000 I mean, I think the most powerful muscles are the invisible force muscles.

00:50:41.000 It's your spiritual, emotional muscles.

00:50:42.000 Like courage unused doesn't grow, it shrinks. 0.99

00:50:45.000 So I put my ass on the line regularly so that it grows. 0.97

00:50:48.000 And when it keeps growing, then pretty soon the stuff that used to make me crazy doesn't touch me. 0.99

00:50:52.000 It's not that I'm so great, just I'm well trained.

00:50:55.000 I train this mind.

00:50:56.000 I get up every morning in my life. 0.97

00:50:57.000 You can talk about rebounder, more crazy shit I do is every morning in my life, if I'm near any of my homes, and some places I have cryotherapy. 0.90

00:51:05.000 But my homes, I have these cold plunges, and they're 56 degrees. 0.98

00:51:08.000 And the first thing I do is jump in that cold punch. 0.95

00:51:10.000 So there's not a fucking morning where I want to jump in that. 0.95

00:51:13.000 I can't remember mornings. 0.98

00:51:14.000 I can't wait to jump in that thing.

00:51:16.000 But I don't negotiate with myself.

00:51:18.000 I do it for two reasons.

00:51:19.000 One, there's a physical health component.

00:51:20.000 It moves your lymph system.

00:51:22.000 The blood flushes through your whole body.

00:51:24.000 But the main reason I do it, even more than that, is when I go up there, I don't, you know, people negotiate, well, I'm going to do it tomorrow.

00:51:29.000 I'm going to do this.

00:51:30.000 Or let me wait two more minutes till I'm ready. 0.99

00:51:32.000 There's none of that shit with me. 0.99

00:51:33.000 For decades, I go, I say we do. 1.00

00:51:36.000 I'm not here to discuss this shit with my mind. 0.99

00:51:39.000 There's mind and then there's soul and spirit. 1.00

00:51:41.000 And soul and spirit, my soul fucking knows. 1.00

00:51:43.000 And when I say jump, you fucking jump. 1.00

00:51:45.000 I'm not here to have a discussion with you. 0.99

00:51:47.000 Now, does that happen with my water every day?

00:51:49.000 Yes, because I've conditioned it.

00:51:51.000 Does it happen every year of my life?

00:51:52.000 No.

00:51:52.000 And when I find it's not working, and I step back up and condition it.

00:51:55.000 And unless I'm willing to take 100% responsibility for what I feel and what I experience, then I'm always going to be a victim to someone because there's always going to be somebody upset in the world we live in today about something you said or did or didn't say or didn't do or go.

00:52:07.000 There is no victory in the world where everyone has a voice and not everybody's voice is necessarily designed to make somebody feel loved.

00:52:14.000 It's designed to meet whatever their needs are in that moment.

00:52:16.000 They might want certainty and you're being a certain way makes them uncertain or they think you're significant.

00:52:21.000 You may think they're totally significant, but they don't.

00:52:23.000 So they're mad.

00:52:24.000 So I can't live my life that way.

00:52:26.000 So I live my life where I keep learning, I keep growing, I keep loving, I keep laughing, and I'm trying to leave a decent legacy of a meaningful life by constantly looking for ways I can be helpful.

00:52:37.000 And my prayer, a simple prayer, before I walk on every stage, is use me.

00:52:41.000 Use me, Lord.

00:52:42.000 And when you do that, it's like if you get out of the way, my greatest gift is getting out of the way.

00:52:46.000 I know that sounds silly to some people, but it's really true. 1.00

00:52:49.000 I'm not an ultra-religious person, but I'm extremely spiritual and I believe the force of life comes through me.

00:52:55.000 It comes through you, comes through all of us.

00:52:56.000 And the only thing that gets in the way is all the beliefs we have of how it's supposed to be, all the expectations we have.

00:53:01.000 And I have them too.

00:53:03.000 But I keep leading them out.

00:53:04.000 So I'm not, I don't want to give you the impression that I don't have challenges and any of that nature, but I have a hell of a lot fewer.

00:53:10.000 It takes a lot more.

00:53:12.000 When something happens like this happened, I go, oh, we're the opponent.

00:53:15.000 Because in every story of a person's life, they have what they want and desire, and then they have these needs that they're unaware of.

00:53:21.000 You know, character things that need to be developed.

00:53:23.000 And how do those get developed?

00:53:25.000 Well, if what you wanted, you just took action and happened, A, you'd be bored, B, you'd never develop spiritually or your character.

00:53:31.000 And so what happens is opponents show up.

00:53:33.000 And the opponent can be you with yourself.

00:53:35.000 The opponent can be somebody close to you that feels like an opponent.

00:53:38.000 It could be an external force.

00:53:39.000 But if you do battle with this, eventually you battle with yourself.

00:53:44.000 Because if you can solve it within yourself, you can, regardless of what happens in the outside world, you can have that sense that your life is meaningful.

00:53:50.000 And so I've done battle for 58 years and I'm going to keep doing battle the rest of my life.

00:53:55.000 But I'm doing better because I've done battles so often.

00:53:57.000 It's like, why is LeBron James who he is?

00:54:00.000 It's not because he's lucky.

00:54:01.000 You know, I'm going to say, you know, he's lucky. 0.98

00:54:03.000 Shit, you may have certain physical factors. 0.99

00:54:05.000 Or Michael Jordan. 1.00

00:54:05.000 I remember I interviewed him years ago. 1.00

00:54:07.000 And I said, what makes you the best in the world?

00:54:09.000 Is it skill?

00:54:10.000 Is it talent?

00:54:10.000 Is it ability?

00:54:11.000 Is it background?

00:54:12.000 Is it training?

00:54:13.000 And he was so awesome.

00:54:13.000 He said, Tony, I can tell you the truth and it won't sound like hyperbole or false modesty.

00:54:18.000 He said, I didn't even make the high school basketball team my sophomore year.

00:54:22.000 I was cut.

00:54:23.000 He said, What it is, is every day I demand more from myself than anybody else could possibly expect.

00:54:28.000 I don't compete with other people, I compete with what I'm capable of.

00:54:31.000 And it's just like that kind of standard is inspiring.

00:54:34.000 This reminds me: I had this conversation with Tom Cruise, right?

00:54:38.000 He's like another American sort of great square-jawed superstar.

00:54:42.000 And like he was sort of saying about how he made his success himself. 1.00

00:54:45.000 But I goes, No, but you were born with the Tom Cruise shit. 1.00

00:54:48.000 Like you had that, even the will, like the will. 1.00

00:54:51.000 You know, there's not that.

00:54:53.000 Where do you think will come from?

00:54:56.000 Where did your will come from?

00:54:59.000 I don't know.

00:55:00.000 Where do you think it comes from?

00:55:01.000 I think that'll be better.

00:55:02.000 There's something you have to push against, or you don't develop it.

00:55:05.000 How do you build the muscle?

00:55:06.000 You don't build muscle because you were born with it.

00:55:07.000 We're all born with muscle.

00:55:09.000 But if it's developed, you trained it.

00:55:11.000 And that means you had to find something that you valued more than your pain.

00:55:15.000 You had to get beyond your pain or you had to use your pain and say, I'm going to use it to become more.

00:55:19.000 That's what my life's been about.

00:55:23.000 Six years ago, I was a student in college and I thought I was going to be an engineer for the rest of my life, industrial and systems engineer.

00:55:31.000 I'm a nerd.

00:55:32.000 I like to pride myself.

00:55:33.000 I like to pride myself on studying and getting the best grades I could in school.

00:55:38.000 I got a full academic ride to college, stroke of my ego for a sec.

00:55:41.000 Full academic gride to college.

00:55:42.000 Well done.

00:55:43.000 Thank you.

00:55:43.000 For engineering.

00:55:44.000 So, yeah, I thought I was going to invent products and revolutionize efficiency in factories for the rest of my life.

00:55:53.000 That's what I thought was going to be.

00:55:54.000 Engineering.

00:55:54.000 You were going to engineer.

00:55:55.000 Oh, look, we can do this in a much more efficient way.

00:55:58.000 Yeah.

00:55:59.000 Yeah, wild, right?

00:56:00.000 And I've never had a mentor.

00:56:04.000 Like you kind of mentioned it, this weird path that myself, as well as a bunch of other influencers, creators, like whatever you want to call them, it had never been done before.

00:56:16.000 So we kind of like forged it.

00:56:17.000 We were like trailblazers in many ways.

00:56:19.000 And I've never had a mentor, which is actually why I was excited to sit down with you.

00:56:22.000 Like you mentioned, the fame, the controversy, the ups and downs of this weird Hollywood industry.

00:56:28.000 And just being able to pick your brain about stuff that maybe I didn't have direction on, it excites me.

00:56:36.000 Well, I'm flattered that you consider me in such a way.

00:56:38.000 And I'll be obviously honored to help you.

00:56:40.000 It's interesting because even though online spaces and the people that create content on them, that's a sort of a novelty in the world of fame and celebrity.

00:56:50.000 And I'm thinking about, say, when the music industry would have been transformed by the transistor radio or by vinyl or by the advent of television.

00:56:58.000 But you know, like that, that always creates sort of iconic figures.

00:57:02.000 Like, so in some ways, you're unconventional.

00:57:04.000 So, oh, I just was going to be an engineer.

00:57:06.000 But in another way, it's very recognizable.

00:57:08.000 You're a good-looking man, you're charismatic, you're sweet as candy, aren't you?

00:57:13.000 So, in a sense, it's like a very recognizable sort of path.

00:57:16.000 What's weird, I suppose, is the amount of control you have over your content.

00:57:20.000 Tell me how you got into creating the stuff you create.

00:57:24.000 That's the thing I think I might be most addicted to about what I do.

00:57:29.000 Being a creator, essentially, the control is in my hands.

00:57:34.000 And it was fascinating to come to Hollywood.

00:57:36.000 And I came to Hollywood wanting to do what you did.

00:57:39.000 I wanted to hop industries.

00:57:40.000 I wanted to be an actor.

00:57:41.000 I don't know what your original goal was, and I'd love to know.

00:57:44.000 But when I came to Hollywood, it was I wanted to be a big actor.

00:57:49.000 And then you get on set, you have absolutely no control.

00:57:52.000 It's hurry up and wait.

00:57:53.000 And the creativity is no longer from here.

00:57:58.000 And with the stuff that I do, I became addicted with addicted to just producing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.

00:58:07.000 Like that, that isn't that is an undeniable thing that I was attracted to with social media.

00:58:12.000 And I think that's why I stuck with it for so long.

00:58:14.000 And I'm still on it.

00:58:15.000 So you can just have an idea and then you can realize it.

00:58:19.000 Do you have like what we would recognize as conventional production?

00:58:22.000 Do you work with writers or producers?

00:58:24.000 Do you brainstorm and go, I think we'll do something in them suicide woods or whatever?

00:58:28.000 Oh, no, is that a bad thing to mention?

00:58:30.000 I know that was a controversy.

00:58:31.000 I know it was a controversy.

00:58:34.000 Is it an unmentionable thing?

00:58:35.000 No, no, no.

00:58:35.000 I actually wanted to dive into that with you, but just the way you said it, I mean, you know, you're funny.

00:58:40.000 You're a comedian.

00:58:41.000 Like, yeah, there's just the way you said it was.

00:58:43.000 Was it good?

00:58:44.000 It was pretty funny.

00:58:46.000 That's good.

00:58:48.000 With the generation of content Something like that How do you come to that idea?

00:58:53.000 Because I love the pranks that you've watched. 0.97

00:58:54.000 Do you know the thing that I wanted to mention to you is like jackass. 0.76

00:58:56.000 Like when jackass, all like them lads, Johnny Voxville and all them, when they all came to Knoxville, sorry. 0.81

00:59:02.000 When they all come to England, like I was working for MTV, I was still a crack and heroin addict then, but I was like working on MTV.

00:59:08.000 So I did like loads of promo for their show.

00:59:10.000 Oh, really?

00:59:12.000 And I thought, even though what they're doing is all skate culture and hurting themselves and beating up on themselves, I thought there's something real punk and prankster about what they're doing.

00:59:20.000 It's disruptor.

00:59:21.000 It's like very disruptive.

00:59:22.000 And I feel like possibly you're interested in that kind of thing, creating sort of, well, in French artistic, recent French artistic history, it called situationism, creating unusual situations that in themselves show up the absurdity of the everyday.

00:59:36.000 Absolutely.

00:59:37.000 It's funny.

00:59:37.000 The jackass guys were quite literally my inspiration as an eight-year-old to start making content.

00:59:43.000 Like my first ever YouTube video was called Logan Does Stunts. 0.97

00:59:46.000 And it was me like jumping off of refrigerators and slapping my brother in the face with like a ham inspired by the jackass guys. 0.99

00:59:53.000 And it's ironically enough, like they've, in a way, bred a jackass. 0.99

00:59:57.000 Like, you know, I like to consider myself an evolved jackass. 0.95

01:00:01.000 What are the points of evolution? 0.90

01:00:03.000 How is it?

01:00:03.000 How do you think it's moved on?

01:00:05.000 Other than the medium, obviously, and the fact that you're creating and controlling the content.

01:00:08.000 Skate culture, they would have, I guess, been doing a version of that always.

01:00:11.000 But just on VHS, he's passed around.

01:00:14.000 I think, honestly, it's a maturity thing.

01:00:18.000 I've always been a late bloomer.

01:00:19.000 I've always been late to mature in my content.

01:00:22.000 I mean, when you go back four or five years ago, a lot of it is like cringe.

01:00:28.000 It's fun, but it's just like this cringe, weird version of myself that when I look back at, and I'm sure you feel like this too when you look back at your old stuff, I'm really cool.

01:00:28.000 It's high energy.

01:00:38.000 Yeah, I know.

01:00:39.000 You've always been cool. 0.90

01:00:39.000 You must be fucking nice, bro. 0.90

01:00:41.000 I regret things I've done this morning. 0.96

01:00:41.000 He's got a lot of people. 0.96

01:00:44.000 No, you've always been great.

01:00:45.000 Not me.

01:00:46.000 I wasn't born great.

01:00:47.000 I wasn't the kid who was born with an innate talent or with a golden spoon in his mouth.

01:00:54.000 I had to learn and forge my way to become this likable guy.

01:01:00.000 And years and experience, and again, I'm only 24, so the 26-year-old Logan watching this interview will probably not recognize this kid.

01:01:11.000 I was so innocent back then.

01:01:13.000 I mean, maybe.

01:01:14.000 I'm serious, though.

01:01:17.000 My evolution over a year, two years, five years is absolutely mind-boggling to me.

01:01:25.000 Yeah, it must be changing quite radically because, again, even relating to the content, you can create all this content.

01:01:30.000 It can evolve and it can change quite quickly.

01:01:32.000 How did you get from the early prank jackass inspired slapping your brother with, I think what you said was a ham, a joint of pork-based meat.

01:01:44.000 What were your next steps?

01:01:45.000 And when did you notice that it was starting to have an impact?

01:01:50.000 Way too late, to be honest with you.

01:01:52.000 Way too late.

01:01:54.000 I was not focused on the impact of my content so much as just producing the next piece of crazy content I could.

01:02:05.000 I legitimately did not think about the impact.

01:02:08.000 Also didn't really care.

01:02:09.000 I think that was part of the Tokyo problem and the Japan problem.

01:02:14.000 Right, that's what we call it.

01:02:15.000 Not suicide, but Kokyo Pro.

01:02:18.000 No, but that's what it is.

01:02:19.000 I mean, we can call it whatever.

01:02:20.000 Yeah, that's what it is.

01:02:21.000 What happened there?

01:02:22.000 That was significant in my life for many reasons, but mainly because it took that for me to realize that what I was doing was so fucking wrong in that social media was creating a person that was just not me.

01:02:42.000 I was my only motivator was views.

01:02:45.000 I wanted views because views equated to money, views equated to subscribers, which equated to success.

01:02:52.000 And I started to skew the person that was Logan Paul.

01:02:58.000 Like that kid that was on Vine, Logan, was now becoming this influencer who all he cared about was making the most noise that he could.

01:03:07.000 And so the bigger, the louder, the faster, the better.

01:03:10.000 And there was no forethought or foresight that went into the content we were creating.

01:03:14.000 What short videos do you think I shouldn't have done that?

01:03:17.000 And tell me where you went wrong with that Japan thing.

01:03:19.000 You can totally see the build up.

01:03:21.000 Because like I said, it was just like everything I did was even bad behavior was reinforced by people that wanted to see it, whether they liked it or hated it.

01:03:28.000 They would come and they'd say, oh, this.

01:03:30.000 What like?

01:03:30.000 Can you give us a couple examples?

01:03:32.000 Yeah, sure.

01:03:32.000 Examples?

01:03:34.000 we went to sicily italy uh sicily is the um no not sicily uh what's the What's the water?

01:03:40.000 Right.

01:03:40.000 Venice?

01:03:41.000 The water, yeah.

01:03:42.000 My brother and I, we jumped into the river in Venice, and it was just kind of like a disrespectful, like ignoring the culture.

01:03:51.000 And like someone was yelling at us in Italian.

01:03:53.000 He's like, yo, you can't be doing that.

01:03:55.000 And I was like, yeah, okay, great.

01:03:56.000 And I like jumped in my boxers naked in the middle of Venice, Italy.

01:04:00.000 And then even a couple days before Japan, we were running around dressed in like Pokemon costumes, just like throwing Pokeballs at people.

01:04:06.000 Just like just like a complete and utter disrespect of both people and specifically the culture of Japan, which at the time, it just, I don't know how that didn't cross my mind, which is why I look back at those videos and I'm like, it is very clear to see the very negative side of me that I believe.

01:04:28.000 And, you know, I don't want to create excuses.

01:04:30.000 It's probably, there's probably a handful of childhood trauma that caused me to be the way I am.

01:04:37.000 But it was very easy to see the negative side of me that social media had probably helped forge.

01:04:44.000 Right.

01:04:44.000 It started to become transgressive.

01:04:46.000 Like the stuff you did, because like pranks require a degree of transgression, but I suppose there's a difference between, you know, like the stuff where it's your friends or your brother or whatever.

01:04:55.000 You know, when you dislocate yourself into Venice or into Tokyo or whatever, then you might be making cultural errors that you're not aware of.

01:05:03.000 Especially when we're traveling all the time.

01:05:05.000 The word is disrespect.

01:05:08.000 It was we believed.

01:05:12.000 And my brother did this too.

01:05:13.000 Like he got, he got, it was a mutual embarkment from the Disney channel.

01:05:18.000 I don't know how much you know about Jake, but he was on a Disney show for two years.

01:05:22.000 And he was vlogging at the time. 0.99

01:05:23.000 And he just did some disrespectful shit. 0.98

01:05:25.000 And he got let go from, it was a mutual like, hey, I don't want to be in your show anymore. 0.99

01:05:30.000 And yo, you can't be on our show anymore.

01:05:32.000 They shook hands.

01:05:32.000 They left.

01:05:35.000 Yeah.

01:05:36.000 Just blatant and utter disrespect.

01:05:39.000 This is the stuff that you were doing together, the both of you.

01:05:41.000 It was even worse.

01:05:42.000 You can imagine you thought, I'm bad. 1.00

01:05:45.000 There's fucking two of me. 0.97

01:05:49.000 And in a way, a lot of the stuff we were doing was entertainment for children ages like eight to maybe like 24, people who didn't really maybe understand respect and culture and like a worldly knowledge of what is right and wrong. 0.99

01:06:12.000 But adults who saw our content are like, what the fuck is this?

01:06:15.000 And I'm telling you right now, like, I tried to watch a video last night that I made from like three, four years ago. 0.95

01:06:21.000 I just, I can't do it.

01:06:22.000 What is it?

01:06:23.000 I can't watch my old vlogs.

01:06:24.000 This one was bad.

01:06:26.000 This one is bad.

01:06:28.000 You've had to have a little drink to...

01:06:30.000 I had to remove it from YouTube, actually.

01:06:34.000 I faked my...

01:06:35.000 I faked my death.

01:06:36.000 Of course.

01:06:37.000 I faked my death in front of my fans.

01:06:41.000 Like young fans.

01:06:42.000 I faked my death.

01:06:43.000 Hey, you're a pioneer.

01:06:45.000 I was about to say you're sort of YouTube Elvis, but in a sense, it's like YouTube Johnny Rotten.

01:06:52.000 It wasn't good.

01:06:52.000 Yeah, it wasn't good.

01:06:54.000 What technique?

01:06:56.000 Asphyxiation.

01:06:57.000 So this is what makes it bad.

01:06:59.000 You can't do that.

01:07:01.000 I'm just kidding.

01:07:04.000 I had my friend.

01:07:05.000 Okay, so I lived in an apartment.

01:07:08.000 I was on the eighth floor and across the way was I think a five-story parking garage.

01:07:13.000 And I started vlogging and I had a very quick come up on YouTube.

01:07:17.000 And so fans realized where I lived and they would stand on top of the parking garage across the way and just wait for me to appear in the window.

01:07:24.000 And I wave at them, Logan, hey, what?

01:07:26.000 So eventually, since I was, I put them in videos and they thought it was cool to show up and they wanted to be on camera and to be in the vlog.

01:07:36.000 And eventually there was like 50 to 100 kids that would stand me on the parking garage.

01:07:39.000 And so I was like, one day I was like, I'm going to teach them a lesson not to spy on people.

01:07:42.000 Because mind you, I'm on the eighth floor, but there's also eight floors of people, a whole built like 50 to 100 people who are being watched by 50 to 100 kids a day.

01:07:52.000 So I had my friend come up to me, up behind me as I was waving at my fans one day in a burglar mask, and he had a shotgun.

01:08:00.000 And he cocked the shotgun and pulled the trigger, and I hired a guy to, like, splatter, like, a gallon of blood on the, it was, I, the more I talked, the more I realized how blatantly inappropriate this is, but.

01:08:14.000 But yeah, I'm going to stand up for myself for one second.

01:08:17.000 If the fans and people across the way weren't so young, I don't think this would have been that bad.

01:08:23.000 But the fact that there are children, like, it's not great.

01:08:27.000 I see.

01:08:28.000 I was just thinking while you were saying that, that if you were a performance artist, that would be like, whoa, that's pretty transgressive idea.

01:08:37.000 But because I suppose the rules of the medium you were working in are yet to be established.

01:08:42.000 No rules.

01:08:44.000 Doesn't matter.

01:08:45.000 So it becomes kind of amorphous and a little bit confusing because some of the stuff you were saying there about respect, of course, respect is very important, but it's also an idea that's used to create dominion and control oppression of, say, women or different, like, you know, the idea of respect and institutionalization.

01:09:04.000 It can be, it's something that can be challenged and should be challenged because otherwise there will be no progress.

01:09:09.000 There would be no change.

01:09:10.000 But, you know, like, but I suppose when you're, I recognize what you were saying, it was like a near culprit.

01:09:14.000 I shouldn't have done that thing and I shouldn't have.

01:09:16.000 So, but it's a really, it's a very unique and interesting journey you're on because you're not working as a straightforward, like a stand-up like Kevin Hart, where people go, oh, 10 years ago you did these tweets, or you're not working even as a visual artist or a musician, where you're, where there's a tact on narrative that people can go, this is how you're supposed to behave.

01:09:33.000 It's sort of pioneering, innit?

01:09:36.000 Because the territory is all new.

01:09:40.000 Well, thank you very much.

01:09:41.000 I hope you enjoyed this content.

01:09:43.000 Remember, we will be back next time.

01:09:45.000 Not with more of the same, but with more of the different.

01:09:46.000 Until then, if you can, stay

Stay Free - Russel Brand - March 20, 2026

Science, Spirituality and the Nature of Reality — SF694

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