Russell Brand is joined by Eddie Gallagher, Dave Fields, and Jake Fields to review the year 2019 and talk about the highlights and low points of the past year. Plus, a look back at the most radical changes in Russell's life over the past decade.
00:00:57.000Is it that we're going to just review the year today and look at, like you guys, with your podcast, Shoot Me Straight, which I actually, by the way, Dave, hear you use in normal conversation?
00:01:36.000So like, I thought we were going to talk about like, I think what we're going to talk about is the year.
00:01:42.000We were picking up, I suppose, Eddie, when we were chatting a minute ago, we're just following up from like when you have something like a trial, a literal trial in both of our cases at points hanging over you.
00:01:51.000You have to learn to live kind of differently.
00:01:54.000And even when I think about 2026, I think, oh, that's the year I'm having the trial, Juda 2026, London, trial, Crown Court, numerous charges.
00:02:05.000It's like, so for me, 2026, I'm looking forward to having that trial and by God's grace, getting it out of the way for, you know, whatever happens.
00:02:12.000But 2025 has been a bit defined by radical changes in my life.
00:02:17.000I didn't think that the way things were going, I was not going to be a person that drove a Ford 150 truck, carried a cult firearm, wore most of the time baseball caps.
00:02:32.000I mean, I've become sort of a redneck by default.
00:02:36.000Well, you are because you're living in the redneck Riviera.
00:02:38.000So eventually you can try to combat it as much as you can, but it'll sink in.
00:02:43.000I was trying to think maybe I could just wear bowler hats and pinstripes and really sort of lean into my Englishness.
00:02:48.000But actually, like, you know, I've changed.
00:02:53.000I mean, the whole thing's radically altered.
00:02:56.000So this year, I think like that, what I'd love to do, let me know in the comments and chat what you consider to be the high points and highlights of 2025.
00:03:05.000Remember, we'll only be accessible on YouTube for a little while.
00:03:07.000Remember, we'll only be accessible next for a little while.
00:04:23.000And Dave, the other topic on here, other than these numerous Katy Perry and related stories, are Ice Raids, Candace Owens, UK marches on immigration, Charlie Kirk, God rest his cell, assassination, Erica Kirk, Candice, and then a terrible list of celebrity deaths.
00:04:43.000A surprising and terrible list of deaths.
00:04:56.000I am, you know, I suppose, like in real time right now, I'm warming up to go to turning point.
00:05:02.000And I'm wondering if Candace Owens and Erica Kirk will have had their powwow prior to that.
00:05:09.000And isn't it interesting that in this sort of ultra right-wing space, as it's regarded at least, it's two females that have become the preeminent figures in this defining moment.
00:05:23.000What I mean to say is like a lot of the cultural ephemera of the woke era feels like it's falling apart and falling away.
00:05:30.000I think we're entering into a really unusual new time.
00:05:35.000And I think that 2026 is going to be significant because I think people will be looking naturally forward to the post-Trump era, looking naturally forward to what politics outside of nationalism look like.
00:05:48.000I mean, it feels like we're in a really unusual space where, unless there's like radical change, the tension between decentralization and centralization could spill into mayhem, mayhem, at any moment.
00:06:01.000That's why I keep myself super clear at the near end of it.
00:06:05.000I mean, I've done so much of this, but I'm feeling pretty sharp, guys.
00:08:37.000Well, yeah, it was so crazy because I was doing a podcast with Dave Rubin.
00:08:42.000And when they showed the, when I first saw the footage of it, when I like, because with the era we live in, you immediately have to ask, is that legit?
00:08:53.000So when I saw that, now there's so many areas to unpack with that assassination.
00:08:58.000Of course, it could take the whole show.
00:08:59.000Because firstly, I didn't, this is what I've learned.
00:09:02.000I think the dead Charlie Kirk or posthumous Charlie Kirk to honor him is like a different object to living Charlie Kirk.
00:09:10.000I never, like when people said like someone will have assassinated him beyond the person it was claimed, I, in all honesty, thought, well, why?
00:09:20.000What's the influence and power that Charlie Kirk has that would warrant someone wanting his life to end?
00:09:25.000In the subsequent period, I've become more open to it.
00:09:28.000And certainly, even without engaging police, without conspiracy theories, just the thing that sort of made me most question, well, firstly, anytime that anyone gets shot, it's never a lone gunman.
00:09:43.000And then it would be obviously beneficial to get your insights on this.
00:09:47.000Like, it just seems to me implausible that anyone that's not extremely competent and experienced would be able to take and get a shot like that, dismantle a rifle and disappear into a crowd unless they had.
00:10:02.000I mean, if I was to do that, if I was going to go and kill someone, find a site where I've got a good eye line, get a shot off, get rid of it, unpack it, I think I would need a little bit of training.
00:11:11.000These are people that don't use rifles, barely any, but they are still qualifying with that rifle and able to hit their target.
00:11:17.000So when you come down to 150 yards, no, it does not take a qualified marksman to hit that shot.
00:11:23.000But I will say with the planning and the disassembly, reassembly of the rifle, even picking a spot ahead of time to go shoot from, that definitely takes some training.
00:11:39.000I mean, even to disassemble a gun takes some training.
00:11:42.000If you were given those data points, like someone is going to kill a high-profile public figure in a public space from a rooftop with this type of rifle, at this type of distance, what profile emerges in your mind of the person?
00:12:03.000And is it like a 22 year old guy who lives with a furry and he's queer and stuff and is into trans issues?
00:12:14.000Uh, whatever that that doesn't fit the profile of what you are thinking of right uh, some transgender furry is going to go out there and, you know, disassemble or reassemble a rifle, pick a spot to shoot a guy from.
00:12:28.000But I would also say that's not out of the realm of a possibility because you could just go right, he's going to be doing a turn.
00:12:43.000I'm good to go, the gun sighted in, and i'm going to go take my chances.
00:12:48.000I will say, you know just the, the act of doing that um, of getting up there lining up those sights on Charlie and taking that shot um, I mean, if it's his first time, which it sounds like it was his first time shooting somebody.
00:13:05.000That's a huge, that's a huge moment right, because i'm sure he was nervous.
00:13:10.000Um, you know the whole crowd's there he's getting ready to do this thing, which he might have had that thing dialed in.
00:13:16.000He was aiming for the chest and maybe broke a little high or aiming for the face, but i'll tell you, as a sniper, I don't yeah, I never aim for the head or face.
00:13:27.000That's too much of a margin of error for you to miss.
00:13:30.000I mean, I would just center, mass it uh, in the chest.
00:13:34.000So I mean he could have easily broke that shot, you know, because he was nervous and it hit up there in the neck.
00:13:41.000So there's the technical attempts to understand it, and then there's the cultural impact of it yeah, and there's the tendency now to question everything.
00:13:54.000And what's interesting for me, I suppose, oh man see, if you can get on this, it's pretty crazy.
00:14:01.000The internet is like a massive consciousness, like or at least it's a matter like it's got the qualities of intelligence you know, like there's lots of, and it's got content.
00:14:11.000It's sort of like an externalized brain and externalized consciousness.
00:14:16.000I'm talking about online visual content mostly.
00:14:20.000Just if you confine it to that, because I know you have, dave of sort of a more vast and deep understanding of what i'm talking about.
00:14:26.000But say, if you were to say you know, on your phone you can click and watch or engage with a variety of content.
00:14:33.000I'm saying that's like having a shared brain that everyone has access to.
00:14:38.000I'm wondering if what we might find in the work of mythologists like Joseph Campbell, the American academic who, through his brilliant work, notably Hero of a Thousand Faces, pointed out, building on the work of Carl Jung,
00:14:53.000that myths from Africa, Iceland, UK, Celtic world, whatever, Native Americans had similar themes and ideas that were recurrent and indicate either some mass diaspora where there was like a centralised group and the...
00:15:08.000the stories all must have spread out from, or there's something in the human mind that creates the same stories wherever you go in the world.
00:15:16.000Wherever there's like characters like the trickster or the king or the miser or whatever, the princess, all these characters crop up wherever you go in the world.
00:15:27.000The second principle is that now that the internet is like one vast brain, it's almost like archetypes are being formed in internet spaces.
00:15:36.000And I think that Candace Owens is like almost a living archetype.
00:15:41.000And it's interesting to me that she's a black woman.
00:15:45.000That, like, that in Jungian terms, the idea of the feminine and blackness, and I know blackness is a sort of a cultural term as well as a sort of a racial one.
00:15:53.000And I'm sort of calling on the idea of a kind of Jungian appraisal of that idea right now, i.e., this woman is bringing up a lot of unconscious material.
00:16:04.000People don't want to talk about the things I felt most uneasy about when I went around the house was knowing that I had a turning point thing coming down the pipe.
00:16:12.000Was, well, I'm not really comfortable.
00:16:14.000You know, Erica Kirk is a grieving widow.
00:16:17.000I'm not comfortable with the idea that Erica Kirk's involved.
00:16:20.000Sort of find it difficult to accept that Turning Point might be involved.
00:16:24.000And I think there's enough margin in something like ongoing investigation means people have to keep their mouth shut about certain stuff.
00:16:33.000And that, you know, to provide, I don't want to say cover, but reasonable limitations around how Turning Point a members are turning point are behaving, right?
00:16:42.000So I don't automatically think turning point we're involved in it.
00:16:45.000However, though, it does seem like with any public event these days, that the first thing you're told might not be the truth.
00:16:53.000And I think that's most of the time because I think when stuff like this happens, you know, Charlie Kirk's death or name any other traumatic event where someone was shot, you know, everybody, I think we're in a society now where everybody wants to be first, first with the breaking news, first with the breaking story.
00:17:08.000And we used to blame mainstream media.
00:17:10.000We used to be like, this is, you know, mainstream media is fake news.
00:17:15.000They're trying to come out with headlines right off the bat without getting the whole truth.
00:17:19.000That was, I think, one of the biggest complaints that the American public had after a while, after finding out that they weren't reporting the truth.
00:17:27.000So then people broke off and they started their own independence, right?
00:17:31.000But I think because some, and this is just from my perspective, seeing all these independents, you know, having their own channels, I feel like it's just back to the same.
00:17:40.000It's like everybody is now trying to be the first to come out with whatever breaking news or what they think really happened.
00:17:49.000And since people stop listening to mainstream media, they're listening to these independent channels trying to get their news from.
00:17:56.000But I think the people with the independent channels have to be very careful not to fall in the same trap that mainstream media did, which is, oh, we have to be first so we get more clicks, more likes, more views, and everything like that, which is how we come to these, you know, where we're at now, where nobody can trust anybody.
00:18:13.000Everyone's like, well, how do I know you're telling the truth when this person is saying this?
00:18:16.000Like Candace Owens is saying Turning Point USA might be involved.
00:18:21.000And then you have Erica Kirk or whoever else combating that and being like, no, we're not involved.
00:18:26.000So it just becomes this whole thing when in reality, nobody is giving it time to settle, to actually find out exactly what happened.
00:18:34.000And I can tell you through going, you're going through it too, Russell, and from what I went through, it takes a long time for investigations to come out with like, hey, here is everything.
00:18:49.000And if you don't give it to us now, then we're going to come up with our own conclusions.
00:18:53.000Then we're going to start forming our own opinions, our own ideas of what actually happened.
00:18:57.000And so what that causes is a huge distrust in everything because people you have followers that listen to you, but it's like at the end of the day, a couple months later, the truth can be laid out by the FBI or CIA and be like, hey, this is what we've concluded.
00:20:40.000Yes, there is the reputational aspect.
00:20:42.000I mean, like, do come in used to as well.
00:20:44.000But what I've started to feel is what is the French expression is raised on d'être.
00:20:52.000What is the purpose, the meaning, the reason for existence of the FBI and CIA?
00:20:58.000And say this year, another big story is the, obviously, the Epstein files.
00:21:03.000I mean, we'll get to Katie's Perry in space and get to that.
00:21:06.000But like, like with the Epstein files, what I feel the function of that object, I'm trying to look at things these days as sort of like, as, you know, objectively, which means sort of, although that's impossible, of course, I try and look at things as an object, i.e., with no disrespect to Charlie Kirk, God rest his soul.
00:21:23.000What is the object of Charlie Kirk's death doing in the culture?
00:21:35.000You see people sort of like being inappropriate and saying crazy stuff about it.
00:21:39.000You see, you know, like you see, create the object when you drop it into the pool of public consciousness creates so much madness.
00:21:45.000Well, I think the object of the Epstein files, like if you was, if it was just a rock that you could sort of understand, that rock has gone into the system.
00:21:53.000And I think what it means is everyone now thinks that deep state agencies are fundamentally corrupt, fundamentally.
00:22:05.000And if you think that's not that new, that probably begins with like mocking birding, MK Ultra, assassinations of the 60s.
00:22:11.000But now has reached such a point of saturation because of immediate communication that people, most, I don't know most people, because I don't know most people, but just looking at the world, it seems to me that in general, people think, well, the Epstein file shows that loads and loads of high-profile people, whether that's celebrities or more significantly, political figures, have been sexually compromised so that they can be controlled.
00:22:36.000And that's a standardized tactic of many people believe, like Mossad, CIA, and that someone like Epstein is an asset for that.
00:22:45.000And because that story's been so back and forth and no one's been able to, you know, now we have videos of Kash Patel sort of going, yeah, it's all going to be released.
00:22:53.000And Dan Bolgina, oh, it's all going to be released.
00:22:55.000And Trump, yeah, it's all going to be released.
00:22:57.000That pan Bond is on my desk right now and then it doesn't happen.
00:23:01.000I think it compounds it indeed right, I think you're right to counsel for patience, that we should be patient, because you know, like saying, just the Charlie Kirk Incidence, there's children and a wife and anything, you know, there's all these things, but none of us are aware of our unconscious biases and I think that what the Charlie, the uh, the Epstein thing has done, as sort of It's the first time in the Post-Trump era that the deep state thing came to a pinnacle again.
00:23:30.000Before Trump, everything could be in a basket.
00:23:32.000Like, you know what the Democrats are.
00:23:38.000They just want imperial global control and they're bringing it about in this variety of ways, pandemics, whatever.
00:23:43.000And now it's like, oh, fuck, this is still happening with Trump.
00:23:48.000So it's like, so I think like we're living in this, again, things are coming so fast.
00:23:53.000And now we have to appraise it and understand it so quickly that it's for me, for me, actually, what it's done is it's made my Christianity.
00:24:02.000Like if you, if the culture is moving so fast, if the culture is so unreliable, if the institutions that we used to look to, media, governmental, for something to rely on are all just collapsing and imploding, where do you go?
00:24:20.000Yeah, when you see all these stories lined up and reflected on 2025, I think for the right or the conservative, you go, we got our guy in power and look who he's brought in.
00:24:32.000Then you realize they can't do anything either.
00:24:35.000So now it's on the other side going, is just the system in general, no matter who's leading it, so corrupt because it's operating on a non-biblical standard that no matter who's in charge, I feel like it just makes you completely lose hope in the system, which you should ultimately, and turn your eyes towards Jesus.
00:24:58.000I think people, you know, when, like you said, when Trump got elected and got put back into office, there are these Trumponians, you know, the hardcore right that are like, everything's going to be good now.
00:25:10.000And that's where I think people just set themselves up for disappointment because it's like, if you are depending on one man, a human being who's just like you and I, that you think that he is going to change dramatically the course of, you know, how this country's going and your life's going to somehow be a lot better because he's in office.
00:26:51.000And they say things that got layered out.
00:26:54.000I've started to notice more and more that they want you to be like universal basic income, that sort of like financial dependency.
00:27:01.000I can see that idea is being touted and promoted.
00:27:04.000Then there's this kind of like we want they want us reliant on them for morality and for ethics, for direction, what's right and wrong and what's possible and what's not possible.
00:27:11.000And they play God in a variety of ways culturally.
00:27:13.000And now in my country, the UK, there's facial recognition technology being introduced simultaneous to digital ID and discussions of CBDC.
00:27:25.000So there'll be, and there's Bill Gates, funded some research through the WHO that talks about a centralized set of data so that in one place, your health data and vaccination status, your economic status, and your ID, ethnographic data will be all stored.
00:27:48.000And if that's tied to your finances, that's dangerous.
00:28:18.000I got a question about that just in the UK in general, because I think from America, we're watching from afar, I think, watching the UK collapse.
00:28:29.000Are most people over in the UK on board with what's going on?
00:28:33.000Or I mean, is there people fighting back to be like, hey, we don't want this?
00:28:39.000People are fighting back, but because the culture is so fractured, the fight back is fragmented because there's been years of sort of embedding cultural differences.
00:28:49.000And because even the level of cohesion that would come if there was a meaningful trade union movement, once industries got moved out of the UK to, you know, say India or subcontinent or whatever, that cohesion that existed because everyone was members of sort of like coal mining unions or truck driver unions or whatever unions were dominant, that's gone.
00:29:14.000And now the UK, because of mass migration, there's a lot of disparity there.
00:29:17.000There's a lot of disparity and conflict around migration and in my country, Islam.
00:29:23.000So people are, it seems to me that there's a lot of cynicism, scepticism, doubt in the UK about what's happening.
00:29:31.000But there's what they've done is they've created the good preconditions by making the population very disparate, cynical of one another.
00:29:40.000I mean, it was that dude, I'm blanking on his name, Dave Smith, actually, that said, at the beginning, he said, the Occupy movement was one of the early movements that came out of online communication.
00:29:53.000So around 2008, people were protesting in the post-financial collapse era, protesting against the corruption of financial institutions and banks that seemingly deliberately brought about the collapse of the economy so they could benefit from it.
00:30:07.000The Occupy movement was cross-cultural.
00:30:10.000Like right-wing people were in it, left-wing people were in it.
00:30:15.000Dave Smith observed that that was the point that woke ism and identity politics really got promoted.
00:30:22.000Now, that idea has been in the culture for a while.
00:30:24.000It used to be called political correctness.
00:30:25.000People say, oh, it's political correctness gone mad.
00:30:27.000You can't even use the word black anymore.
00:30:30.000And there is definitely, obviously, an argument for ensuring that minority groups or vulnerable communities or call them what you were will are not subject to hateful speech from the dominant population.
00:30:42.000But that idea has clearly gone wrong because people don't know how to assess a country like Japan, where people generally want a stable population, or a country like Ireland, which isn't a former colonial power that's got really strong views on migration and big problems with migration.
00:31:02.000So it's all really, really falling apart.
00:31:04.000And in my country, yeah, you can tell there's a right-wing fashion, a right-wing kind of resistance movement built around Tommy Robinson.
00:31:31.000How politicians were partying throughout that?
00:31:34.000Why are they still not revealing the number of vaccine-related deaths?
00:31:37.000You know, a lot of information is getting sat on.
00:31:39.000So there is this latent, nascent resistance, but it's not organized.
00:31:45.000And it's difficult for it to be organized in a country that's so disparate.
00:31:49.000And I would think, and I believe in fact, that that points to the solution.
00:31:53.000When the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan, like said, the medium is the message, he meant in that time, well, it's mass media, it's television.
00:32:04.000Like whatever you watch it on, that's the message.
00:32:07.000And in those days, a few people could control all print media.
00:32:12.000A few people could control all broadcast television.
00:32:14.000It was a very cohesive, tight group you could control, other than like renegade journalists here or there with a Watergate or an Iran contra or whatever.
00:32:59.000In the same way that you wouldn't just have Fox versus MSNBC, because now you've got thousands of bespoke media outlets.
00:33:07.000Why would you not have a politics that reflects smaller units of sovereignty, which is what America was set up for anyway?
00:33:15.000And I think it's a matter of very short time before people are able to go, we should have decentralized control over our state, over our town, over our community, that the principle should be localization and individual sovereignty.
00:33:45.000And then you can have national consensus on big subjects, migration, what kind of military force you want to keep, what kind of infrastructure is needed.
00:33:52.000And if that conversation ever gets out, think how quickly the idea can spread.
00:33:56.000And then who the fuck wants to have a couple of hundred people in Congress or Westminster Parliament?
00:34:01.000So I think even though in Britain it's disparate and desperate and sometimes seems totally hopeless, especially for someone facing a rape trial just while they're getting ready to get rid of juries, thankfully not in rape trials actually, but rape or sentences that hold trials that hold big potential jail sentences.
00:34:20.000You know, the hope I see in it is they're trying to keep down something that if enough people start thinking that way, like looking for our connection instead of our differences, then I think there could be successive radical changes.
00:34:39.000I also, you know, just the way my brain works, I can see from that decentralized command or that, you know, having decentralized government or like, hey, you do your thing over there.
00:35:07.000Like, hey, you're not allowed to come on our land or you're not, you have to follow our rules.
00:35:12.000So again, I just, I'm like, what it all comes down to to me, man, is, you know, if you don't, if you have God in your life and if you don't treat others the way that you want to be treated, then there's always going to be an issue.
00:35:25.000And I think that there's plenty of people that don't have God in their life, but they're not, they think they're leading a good life.
00:36:04.000They're at war with the tribe that's two miles down the road.
00:36:07.000They never see each other, but they go to war over that guy stole my goat or that guy's uncle took, you know, something from us a long time ago.
00:37:19.000Well, I think, firstly, stop insulting England.
00:37:24.000Secondly, I think that, you know, it is interesting to think of how does a nation expand and contract and ultimately implode and fail.
00:37:35.000Like, because I see Tucker on something the other day and he was asking, why did Britain, it was on Piers Morgan, like, why don't, aren't British people mad that the First World War and Second World War essentially bankrupted that nation and drove it into decline?
00:37:49.000And obviously, there's no sort of clear, it's been on my mind since I heard him say that.
00:37:54.000And I thought, what is the stain on the national character of a fallen empire?
00:37:59.000I suppose in a way, maybe it's a slightly bogus premise because in the same way that the vast, vast, vast majority of ordinary Americans are in no way benefiting from American global domination.
00:38:15.000So yeah, like I think that you're right, boy.
00:38:17.000But how could they even, if they wanted to, in the UK, revolt?
00:38:24.000England, I think that our, like, this is what I heard, you know, obviously I've thought about English power, British power a lot because I'm from there.
00:38:32.000And I saw someone, it might have been Candice Ammonis talking to someone like Piers Morgan, actually, that while British power globally and economically has completely imploded after those wars, it's a deep power.
00:39:20.000By burning a dissenter, a Catholic dissenter.
00:39:23.000And yeah, Britain's good somehow at maintaining it.
00:39:26.000But you know, like in Bulgaria, like about a week ago in Bulgaria, there was a general strike across the population and the whole government had to resign.
00:39:34.000And I know we sort of think of like Balkan countries and little countries as not being sort of comparable to long-established former imperial powers.
00:39:44.000But actually, I do think that's what all this is about.
00:39:47.000I think there are going to be big revolutions in coming years.
00:41:58.000I mean, I think, and that's where I think some people need to look at it that way, where, you know, you look at El Salvador and how, you know, the change that's happened, like you just said, right?
00:42:08.000But those were some extreme, there's extreme measures we're taken to have that change.
00:42:13.000And so we, I know on the list, like ICE, right?
00:42:31.000I think it's a necessary, I guess, a necessary evil at times, because I do think while there are, you know, criminals, gang members, whatever else that have come into this country illegally, yes, get them out.
00:42:47.000Like we need to disperse of all of them, especially the ones bringing the drugs in the country, the ones doing all the child trafficking, all that.
00:42:54.000But at the same time, we all know that there are hardworking illegal immigrants that have been here, that have made a life here that honestly do more for this country than a normal citizen does a lot of the times.
00:43:05.000And then you see large groups of them getting deported.
00:43:10.000Where that's where you're like, okay, where do we draw the line?
00:43:13.000And I think that's where it becomes controversial with a lot of people.
00:43:16.000But at the same time, I do understand it's an extreme measure.
00:43:20.000And if you want extreme change, an extreme measure is needed at times.
00:43:36.000So then when you see it, but like, you know, you can't say that it was clandestine or it wasn't what we voted for.
00:43:43.000Yeah, whereas the Epstein files, you can say, hold on, you told us we were getting those folks.
00:43:46.000But, you know, they did say we're going to deal with the problem of migration.
00:43:49.000And I was reminded, of course, of when Joe Rogan played that clip of Hillary Clinton in around 2000 and maybe eight, maybe a little earlier, talking about migration.
00:43:58.000She's like, if you are, you should be rounded up and kicked out of the country.
00:44:02.000You should be, if you want to stay, you have to get in line.
00:44:07.000You know, like she was to the right of him.
00:44:09.000So, and as Joe Rogan said, in response to that clip, it just shows you that it's all bollocks.
00:44:13.000Yeah, well, that was back in the day when Hillary actually thought that she could win on just the votes of the American people.
00:44:19.000That's how the Democrats thought they could win on just having the votes to the American people.
00:44:23.000So, of course, they're going to say that.
00:44:24.000But I think that whole position changed when Trump won.
00:44:28.000And they're like, oh, shit, we don't have all the votes.
00:44:31.000So let's go ahead and get all these illegal immigrants in here, put them in blue states, you know, give them money, provide them with everything.
00:44:40.000So therefore, we can have their vote the next time an election comes around.
00:44:48.000I mean, like, I've always struggled to understand that kind of stuff.
00:44:51.000What we'll say is when we went to Dallas to go to that rock bridge thing, like this event for Chris Buzzkirk and JD Vance have this foundation, which is in itself pretty fascinating because it's an attempt to replace the infrastructure that was lost when the union movement fell apart.
00:45:08.000And when formerly Democrat voters started to vote Republican around Trump, they realized they couldn't direct them.
00:45:17.000They started all these chapters around things like hunting and small business and all of these new ways to create organization once you can't economically loop people into categories where they can be sort of managed or whatever.
00:45:27.000Anyway, when we were landing in Dallas, we saw like a bunch of like sort of guys mostly getting high state detainees.
00:45:50.000They were giving them priority to go on flights.
00:45:53.000They were paying for their plane or plane tickets to go wherever in this country.
00:45:58.000So again, that wasn't a good feeling either.
00:46:00.000It's like, why are we letting all these people in who didn't come in here the right way and then giving them money, giving them EBT cards, all this other stuff that was going on to, it was all to sway their vote, to sway like, hey, we're the ones helping you out right now, not the Republicans.
00:46:20.000We're the ones giving you all this free stuff.
00:46:22.000So when you can vote, you know who to vote for.
00:46:29.000Two different dilemmas that both are wrong.
00:46:34.000If somebody was coming in, a leader was coming in and he's making hard choices and all these changes happen.
00:46:41.000Would you, you know, all the great movements, I guess, if you look over the history of the world, when you're in the middle of it, what does it feel like?
00:46:49.000Like, do you would you recognize it as that or Napoleon or this feels like because some of that stuff is the unknown of what's happening?
00:46:58.000And you go, you, you sway between, I trust this guy, I like him.
00:47:02.000This guy's psychotic and he's ruining the country.
00:47:06.000And I feel like all you think with Trump, you mean that or anyone in anyone?
00:47:11.000Any big thing, like even El Salvador, when you start locking people up, is there a moment where everybody's just blindly trusting?
00:47:19.000Or do you feel like it's a I don't think you can have that?
00:47:24.000Like, why would it be that the sort of history of our kind is, you know, we start off as tribal people, then over time, tribes start getting amalgamated under feudalism, like you mentioned in the UK.
00:47:36.000And then you say, right, this is a thing called a country now, and I'm king of all of you, and you barons.
00:47:42.000Like, why would you keep making those things bigger and bigger?
00:47:46.000Like, one trajectory is like, in the end, there's a global imperialist government where everything's, you know, turned into quadrants or zones all our hunger games.
00:47:54.000Or the other one is, who's benefiting from that system?
00:47:59.000What is the point of this continuing aggregation?
00:48:03.000And I think that, like you always say, any individual or set of individuals are, because they are broken and fallible, whether it's Trump or any of us in this room, are gonna reproduce those kind of results eventually.
00:48:16.000So what I'm suggesting is that we start to look at systems themselves and address what the system, systematic errors are that lead to these results.
00:48:26.000Now, of course, I feel like I can feel like Eddie will say human nature is sort of conflict.
00:48:31.000And definitely that's part of human nature.
00:48:34.000And I think that it is what you said there that unless you're sharing the gospel, unless you're sharing wake up to the reality of Christ in yourself.
00:48:44.000And then I'm sort of torn because like before I came to Jesus, my kind of personal ideals were all about, in a sense, social justice.
00:48:52.000I really sort of was aware of corruption, deception, lies, hypocrisy in myself and in the world.
00:48:58.000And I really, I was mostly focused on how do you change it in the world instead of how do I change it myself.
00:49:02.000Much harder to change it in yourself, of course.
00:49:04.000But since coming to Christ, I'm like, well, it's sort of in here.
00:49:08.000It talks a lot about the world is controlled.
00:49:10.000Like the Old Testament, false idols, false idols, false idols.
00:49:29.000And I think what one of my, if I can, my lament against Christians, and you've all been Christian longer than me, and you're all sort of American Christians and everything, but I feel like Christians don't talk enough about evil.
00:49:40.000And when they do, it's normally sort of temptation style individual evil, like, oh, you've got demons tormenting you, making you crazy, rather than the government is flat out controlled by the devil.
00:49:53.000Now, I suppose that's because in there, it doesn't say in the book, I'm saying pointing at the Bible.
00:49:57.000It doesn't say that that's what we're supposed to do.
00:50:00.000It doesn't say Jesus is recruiting you, but it does, I get a sense that we're supposed to be doing something, not just passively like, well, let's wait for the second coming.
00:50:08.000I get the idea that we're men of engaged agents in the bringing about of the kingdom, but I don't understand why or how.
00:50:14.000And I don't understand why there's not more explicit talk about the evil in human institutions.
00:50:42.000I think that certain church leaders are scared to speak out against it because politics has been politics is involved in everything, right?
00:51:03.000They're like, oh, I'm going to try and word it in such a manner where I'm not upsetting, you know, a certain administration or a certain whatever.
00:51:11.000Instead of just being what they're supposed to do is come out and be like, this is what the word says.
00:51:23.000But I think out of fear, just because, you know, whatever you want to call it, cancel culture or everything else that we've developed over the years that it has made people a lot more scared to speak out on what the truth is because they're scared of what's going to happen to them, the repercussions.
00:51:39.000I think growing up in, you know, the 90s Christian home, you're almost taught, like, don't talk about the devil, don't talk about evil, almost like you were giving it an open door to somehow take over your life.
00:52:06.000It bothers me because it was never good art, you know, and it's like, which is a reflection of makes you feel like God's not creative, that he's not, you know, bigger than this terrible stuff that we're making as Christians often.
00:53:29.000It's like a principle of subsidiarity as well.
00:53:31.000That's like the principle is it starts at the smallest unit authority does with you interfacing with God and then it flows outwards to the state, et cetera.
00:53:43.000Then you are just a drone or a larvae within it.
00:53:47.000My, he's not a friend actually anymore because like, you know, you get accused of some stuff in public and Lord alone knows it's pretty hard for people that still live in the culture and make their money from the culture to remain your friend.
00:53:58.000And I don't know how that, what your version of that was like in the military.
00:54:03.000Yeah, well, you know, so like there's this really, and actually I've not reached out to him or anything, so who knows?
00:54:09.000But there's a, this brilliant British comedian, Frank Skinner, who I've always admired and liked and done interviews with at different times or whatever.
00:54:18.000He's a Catholic and I saw him on a Christian TV or a podcast, actually, podcast.
00:54:24.000And he said, people don't talk, he goes, we shouldn't try to neuter Christianity and make it, you know, sanitary and like, it's just a good system.
00:54:35.000Like, it's like it's wellness or it's not like it's not wellness.
00:54:39.000We should bring up like, yeah, like we believe in like a virgin birth, angels, demons, giants, floods, all these like really crazy things that are in there should be brought to the forefront.
00:54:51.000And as I engage with scripture, like, say, like when I'm reading Ezekiel or Daniel and reading prophecy, it has, I would say, a sort of a psychedelic impact on me.
00:55:02.000And it seems like what when people are talking about visions and prophecy, it seems to me that what they're talking about are layers of reality.
00:55:21.000So it's a church story anyway, but I'm praying it's true.
00:55:23.000I should probably research these things before I start telling everyone.
00:55:25.000Anyway, I heard that there was these experiments done on two sets of dogs like in a laboratory, both in cages, both of which are electrified, you know, low-level electric impulse through the cage.
00:55:37.000One set of dogs, say group A, have access to a lever, but when they press it, it alleviates the current and they're no longer electrocuted.
00:55:45.000Group B dogs, there's no lever in there.
00:55:47.000They can't do anything to stop that electric current being transmitted.
00:55:50.000Eventually, over time, those dogs just lay down, live with it, totally accept it as part of everyday life.
00:55:54.000The next part of the experiment is they put both sets of dogs in another cage.
00:55:57.000That cage has an electric charge, no lever, but only a one and a half foot high fence.
00:56:01.000If the dogs want to get out, they can get out.
00:56:03.000All the dogs that were in group A, where there was a lever, get the fuck out of there.
00:56:07.000All the dogs that were in group B, just lay down and take it.
00:56:10.000Well, it occurred to me that we live in an electromagnetic cage in so much as everything that happens on the level of the brain, whether it's sensory information received through the nose, the eyes, or the ears, is interpreted within the body as an electromagnetic impulse through the synapses.
00:56:41.000Now, depending on maybe accidents of birth or some grand inconceivable design, some of us have known there's a lever in the cage.
00:56:50.000Some of us have known, I can get out of this, actually.
00:56:54.000But me, my own version of being one of the dogs that gets out of it is I've always thought, you know, say from the economic and social class I was from as a child, my route out was I'm going to become, please God, famous.
00:57:07.000And like the route of doing that, also I was taking drugs the whole time and becoming an addict.
00:57:11.000I was in so much pain and probably couldn't really work out.
00:57:14.000Maybe in some level, I always knew that the trophies of the culture would never heal the wound.
00:57:22.000But, you know, at that point, I just thought, Christianity is total bullshit.
00:57:25.000You know, I didn't have any understanding of it.
00:57:27.000Anyway, so I wonder what you think about that, about the idea that is that true that neurologically your subjective experience is just receiving a bunch of impulses.
00:57:43.000You're just receiving electromagnetic impulses.
00:57:46.000Other than if you are on some grid of God where you're receiving sublime and divine information.
00:57:52.000So I think that if people don't start to look at reality like you're contained in a cage full of impulses, they don't have to look at it like that.
00:58:01.000They're not going to receive the wisdom or potential truth that there's a way out of it through the cross, through him.
00:58:24.000Generationally, and maybe it was even carried in the genes, man.
00:58:27.000Yeah, yeah, under the decline, like you always talk about the power of their salvation, you know, of what Christianity is in the UK, that correlation.
00:58:36.000Like you said you would go to churches, it'd be so boring, and it felt like nobody believed any of this stuff anyway.
00:58:42.000If they started to believe it, and that light switch could turn on and that power could come back, and you start pulling levers and getting out instead of just laying down still, you know.
00:58:53.000Because if he was in a church, like imagine, like, it's almost a sketch.
00:58:57.000If you're in there in a church, they go, like, right, God came to earth as a baby.
00:59:08.000Like, it's actually like, you know, when I feel, I felt when I first come to Jesus, it is a bit like the feelings I remember from when drugs work.
00:59:17.000You know, when drugs work, and it was a bit like, oh, yeah, this is good, man.
00:59:23.000I felt like waves of kind of, oh my God, it's the subtle detection of a reality that's more powerful than the reality you think you live in, normally brought about by trauma or whatever.
01:00:36.000And sometimes that's, it takes, it takes everything.
01:00:39.000You have to have everything stripped from you, or you have to be almost at rock bottom to for the Lord to be like, now do you see?
01:00:45.000You know, at least it does for us knucklehead.
01:00:48.000So the Christmas story, ultimately, the season that we're in, the light of the world out of the darkness shines bright.
01:00:58.000I think about those sort of revelations that happen in the season, what they should be, not about shopping, not just reflecting on the year, but this beautiful story of the light.
01:01:10.000So I'd love if Russell, you read a little bit.
01:01:14.000Sometimes I think, Jake, you know, Jake's not taking life seriously.
01:01:31.000Jake, where in Luke will I find it, mate?
01:01:34.000Well, look, what's interesting is everything we're talking about of these news stories, all the failure of governments, all the failure of leaders.
01:01:43.000If you read Isaiah 9:6 verse, Isaiah 9:6.
01:01:47.000This is the promise of Jesus in the season prophesied for a long time.
01:01:55.000And even when Jesus came, there's like 400 years of silence.
01:02:05.000For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders, and he will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace.
01:02:19.000Of the greatness of his government and peace, there will be no end.
01:02:22.000He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness.
01:02:29.000From that time on and forever, the zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.
01:02:39.000That's what we're all, that's what we're all wanting, and that's what we're all really asking for when we see the collapse of society and all the people we've put our false hope into.
01:02:50.000And then he answers it right there: the government rests on his shoulder, his kingdom will have no end.
01:02:54.000And you know, he'll be just, and you'll know he's the wonderful counselor.
01:02:59.000He does it all right where everybody else fails.
01:03:02.000And so you can submit to that and surrender to that, innit?
01:03:05.000Because that feeling I have all the time of I can't trust people, I can't trust people if I trust I'll be when you said that about protection.
01:03:10.000I felt like, oh, that's so nice to feel like, especially someone like you who I associate a lot with physical competence.
01:03:52.000So Joseph went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.
01:04:02.000He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.
01:04:06.000While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son.
01:04:12.000She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger because there was no guest room available for him.
01:04:20.000And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.
01:04:25.000An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them.
01:04:49.000You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.
01:04:53.000Suddenly, a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth, peace to those on whom his favor rests.
01:05:10.000Yeah, I think I like that moment of discovering him, of discovering him in the low places in a manger or in a prison cell, or in my case, sort of in a field by the house when I was doing some suicide planning, just like sort of planning out the kind of that's a low point.
01:05:29.000The suicide plan, yeah, I think that's pretty low.
01:05:32.000Yeah, okay, so the dog leads this dog leashes this long, carry the one.
01:06:59.000That's what that image system is talking about.
01:07:03.000Consciousness, awareness, the sort of presence of God.
01:07:07.000You know, yeah, so it's felt sort of joy.
01:07:09.000It hasn't felt like any of the packaged versions, the sort of modern contemporary, you know, consumerist versions say, or the even the Victorian, like the British, like many of the, much of the paraphernalia of Christmas is British, Victorian, like Yuletide log and Christmas tree and all that.
01:07:30.000I felt a bit more of a kind of, oh, like Christmas is the coming of the most power conceivable in the lowest circumstance and in the most innocent way.
01:07:41.000Great power in vulnerability, great power in brokenness, great power in total trust, total trust.
01:07:49.000Like that famous story that I hear Christians tell a lot of like when the missionary work being done in Fijian Islands and they had no work, they had no word for trust, no word for faith, no word for belief.
01:08:00.000And in the end, the missionary said, well, when you sit on that chair, what are you doing?
01:08:06.000Like, and he says, oh, we're putting, there was a word that means putting your full weight into something, putting like yielding.
01:08:14.000And I'm like, that's where I'm, I'm this Christmas feeling that continually in and out of it because any attempt at control is a kind of a denouncing of his sovereignty.
01:08:27.000And I don't know how to fully make yourself like just the tip of the spear, how to make yourself just a sort of channel of his peace, just a sort of an open vessel.
01:08:36.000And he's like when jiu-jitsu's going good, like of like, just, oh, well, I'm not even doing anything, you know, I don't know how to do that.
01:08:44.000I think that's a constant battle as well.
01:08:48.000I mean, I have, I have conflicts with the way Christmas now from when I was raised, you know, I was raised as a Catholic and much as you celebrate Christmas the same way as a Christian does, you know, there's no, really, no differences.
01:09:02.000But as I got older, I had a harder time at Christmas.
01:09:08.000And I still do because I truly believe like the worldly ways of the way we celebrate Christmas is not the way that Jesus would have wanted us to celebrate it.
01:09:18.000I would think if Jesus came back to earth right now and saw the way that we do things surrounding the birth of him, I don't think he would agree with it with all the consumerism, with all of the, it's like all these normal excuses that we do for any other holiday to make money and to sort of, you know, I guess just to take advantage of like, oh, this is what we are celebrating, but let's make, let's start making money around this and marketing it in such a way.
01:09:48.000And I do have, I have conflicts with that.
01:09:50.000But I also know, you know, it's a part of just the way that we've developed Christmas and the way that this country, or not just this country, but I think worldly does it.
01:10:00.000You know, it's, you know, oh, we have to go buy presents and we have to do this.
01:10:03.000It's almost like this manufactured happiness, like joy.
01:10:07.000You're supposed to be like, oh, this is the time of Christmas.
01:10:13.000And so when it's shoved down your throat like that, I have, I don't, internally, I have a conflict with it because I'm like, well, then why aren't we treating every other month like this then?
01:10:30.000And, but at the, that's something that I have to constantly deal with.
01:10:34.000And I have to go to him during this season to be like, give me peace about the way things are going, the way that we do things here.
01:10:42.000Because at the end of the day, I don't want to be a Grinch either and be like, oh, like, I don't like the way this is done because I'm not perfect either.
01:10:49.000So, you know, I don't know if that I was sort of trying to relate to what you just said a little bit.
01:11:02.000The traditions have, you know, obviously with the kids getting older, the traditions sort of change over the years.
01:11:06.000I mean, traditionally, when I grew up, yeah, you wake up in the morning, presents are under the trees, Santa Claus came or whatever, you know, and milk and half of you.
01:11:15.000Yeah, you leave out the milk and cookies the night before.
01:11:17.000But then as you get older, when you become this, when you become Santa Claus, obviously you want to try and keep those traditions alive.
01:11:24.000But, you know, depending on who you marry, they might have a different tradition as well.
01:11:29.000So you learn to sort of just cohabitate and like blend those traditions.
01:11:34.000So everybody gets, you know, does it their way, has a little piece of what they grew up with.
01:11:40.000But then that pours out into your children.
01:11:42.000I'm sure when my children are older, they're going to take some of what we did, but then also some of what their spouse or somebody else did and mix it as well.
01:11:50.000But at the end of the day, the one thing that we, that doesn't change is we recognize that it is the birth of Jesus Christ and that that is a reason that we are all together and celebrating.
01:11:59.000And then we go to Christmas Mass that night, you know, at midnight or in the morning, if that's the way you do it.
01:12:07.000But that is, that is the purpose of why you're together as a family.
01:12:12.000What's the British equivalent to milk and cookies?
01:12:15.000Because there's no way it's just milk and cookies.
01:15:29.000I just couldn't think of like, well, we started pre-normally footprints, the flower footprints now near the half, and like, oh, Santa's been in here.
01:15:37.000And I thought, how do you make Santa being here in your house more interesting?
01:15:41.000And immediately, without delay, he's shitting in the toilet and he's doing sort of festive Santa crap.
01:16:14.000I've tried to this year you should uh this year you should leave like a mess just on the carpet and be like, dude, Santa didn't even take time to go use the toilet.
01:17:46.000Anyway, when we were on vacation, what do I mean?
01:17:50.000Yeah, how it got found out is the best part of the story.
01:17:54.000We're in DC staying at a place called Simba, which is this sort of important place where Christian, like where to encourage Christian ministry among the political community, the members of Cedars invite like leaders and minister to them, right?
01:18:07.000And they, so we went there and stayed there.
01:18:25.000So like when uh, Dave and Jake came in my much nicer room that I was staying in in Cedars I had like a whole suite of stuff they found the green mistress on my bed, like what, what is this?
01:18:36.000And I said oh, you know, when I pee in the night I don't want to get, so I travel with this thing and I use it out.
01:18:41.000Can you tell how you came up to that conclusion?
01:18:43.000Like, all right, one time I found my friend's house, who's a double, not a double amputee, he's an amputee, my mate Will.
01:18:48.000And like when I used the bathroom at his house, I went for his room and I saw he had one of them, but he had those ones like you get in a hospital that's made out of the same box of egg, same materials, egg crates, you know.
01:18:57.000Yeah, like those papier maches looking stuff, and I thought that's a good idea, that man, i'm gonna get me one of those things.
01:19:03.000I asked my wife I go, can I get one of them.
01:19:05.000There was some debate as whether it was morally wrong because he is an amputee.
01:19:13.000when they found out i told dave you know well my mate will he had one he went he don't have any legs We use pea bottles all the time on deployment.
01:19:25.000Yeah, we'll have boxes of just bottles full of piss by the end of the week in your room and then you just go empty that out and then start over again, because usually we don't have like indoor plumbing most of the time.
01:19:36.000So if you use a the portajohns which are but that makes sense, right?
01:19:40.000Yeah, when you're on a mission or you're in the woods or no, it's not even when we're on the mission, it's when we're back on the fob in our own rooms.
01:19:46.000The thing is we have portajohns that are, you know, maybe a quarter mile away, and it's like i'm not gonna walk all the way over there.
01:19:53.000That also makes sense when you're at a nice place in a suite and then you have one in your bed so you don't have to get up.