And, This Is The Man Who Survived The Manosphere - Louis Theroux
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 12 minutes
Words per minute
170.6728
Harmful content
Misogyny
9
sentences flagged
Toxicity
15
sentences flagged
Hate speech
20
sentences flagged
Summary
This week on the Sports Slice Podcast, it s all about the NFL Draft, and we ve got a special guest, Louis Theroux, who s done dozens and dozens of documentaries on the porn industry, neo-Nazis, and Scientology. And just completed a really insightful documentary about the manosphere. This is a wide-ranging conversation you don t want to miss.
Transcript
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you've got to the heart of the better and i sometimes say the weirdest thing about weird
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people is how normal they are this isn't the manuscript this is the boyosphere it's more of
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a grift than an ideology these guys are selling selling selling selling selling selling selling
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so those of you who have tuned in to the podcast know we've dove deep into the issue of the crisis
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of men and boys richard reeves and the institute of men and boys talked to scott galloway a number
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of other guests also talked about the manosphere but we've never gone quote unquote inside the
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the manosphere. And that's why I'm so excited to have my next guest, Louis Theroux, who's done
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dozens and dozens of documentaries on the porn industry, neo-Nazis, did documentary on Scientology,
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Westboro Baptist Church, and just completed this really insightful documentary about the manosphere.
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This is a wide-raging conversation you don't want to miss.
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creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated.
00:01:31.260
Listen to The Clifford Show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:36.100
And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok.
00:01:41.140
This week on the Sports Slice Podcast, it's all about the NFL draft.
00:01:46.660
The director of the NFL's East-West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galko,
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joins the Sports Slice Podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects.
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From hidden traits teams look for, to the biggest mistakes franchises make, to the players flying under the radar, this is the insight you won't hear anywhere else.
00:02:04.360
If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode.
00:02:08.520
Listen to the Sports Slice podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:02:14.340
And for more, follow Timbo Slice Life 12 and TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok.
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Where are you? In London proper? Where are you specifically?
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I'm in London, England. In northwest London, in an area called Kilburn.
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Northwest, I don't know, you really have to know London to know where exactly,
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Are you out there, just on the plane, around the globe?
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when I was trying to win my Spurs as a documentary maker.
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I have, I'm half American, half, I've just started.
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But I've just kind of gone into my origin story.
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He's a travel writer and novelist from Medford, Massachusetts.
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I grew up with a US passport, but I grew up in South London.
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identity wise between the uk and the us and then when i graduated i was trying to figure out what
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to do with my life in 91 uh i went to the us and thought well i'll put that passport to some use
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and get some legal work working in boston then i thought well i should really you know work with
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words that's what my dad does it's what my mom does she works for the bbc or used to
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and i got a job in san jose california on a free weekly called the metro and really i credit my
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experience in san jose as being the formative experience professionally or certainly one of
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them of my life like you know some people said like i went to africa my dad's thing was he went
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he was in the peace corps and he went and taught in malawi my thing was i worked for a free weekly
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in san jose but there was something about being decontextualized and being exposed to a culture
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that was very different um and and and also working with words writing articles you know
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from the bottom up was work for the willow glen resident and the metro and then the san jose city
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times all under the same umbrella writing about city council meetings but also character-driven
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stories about uh past life regression counseling and people who were into guns or the whole kind
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buffet of the Western American experience. And that was the jumping off point for so many things
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that followed. And I was thinking, as I say, before I came on this call, I've made over the
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years 14 different documentaries in the great state of California. So much of the last 25 years
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for you, obviously, have been defined by all of these, I mean, what you could describe or has been
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described by people that watch you, these sort of fringe subcultures, your willingness to enter
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into that, you know, into worlds that, that people are curious about, but don't know much
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about what, what was, what was the first, what was the inspiration for the first documentary?
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I mean, you're, you're, you're there writing, chronicling, um, culture, but politics and,
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you know, you're, you know, finding your way 14, just in California alone, documentaries.
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Just in California. Yeah. So I, I, there's a psychological dimension to that. And then a
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kind of professional like i i was someone who grew up in as i said south london i was always anxious
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i was always worry prone i always saw other people and thought they've got the they've got
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they've figured something out that i haven't uh but there's also a quality to feeling like an
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outsider that it gives you uh observational skills it makes you attentive uh it makes you
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a good listener because you suspect that um you suspect that other people clued up about something
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So I was always a fringe dweller in that sense.
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Yeah, I was always attracted to whether it was reading about
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or finding out about practices that struck me as odd,
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Then fast forward, I was in America figuring out
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i worked for spy magazine and then some friends uh after spy magazine that was a magazine you
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know based in new york in the 90s it folded and then some friends went to work with the
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documentary maker michael moore who at that time had made roger and me and was working on a new
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tv series called tv nation and they uh my friend said like you should come and talk to michael
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he's looking for some he needs to have a british correspondent because some of his money is coming
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from the BBC so uh I went along underqualified nervous uh no wardrobe to speak of with no
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reasonable right to expect anything uh to cover the meeting not realizing that all those things
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lack of wardrobe underqualified nervous in Michael's eyes were kind of positives right
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yeah he didn't want uh he didn't want uh a wind swept well a bit like yourself Kevin because you're
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And I think he thought, well, his awkwardness is an asset.
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Like, oh, he's intelligent, but he pretends to be bumbling.
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In fact, I was just bumbling, but I was also very keen.
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so he hired me to make my first segment segment which uh was about groups that think the world
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is about to end and it was called millennium took me to oakland california funnily enough
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uh among other places there were four or five different uh cults or sects featured but the
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first one was led by harold camping and he was predicting the end of the world for later that
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year 1994 wow uh it didn't end spoiler spoiler alert the world didn't end uh then i went down
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to el cajon outside of uh san diego it was it was a ufo group called what were they called
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uh i can't even remember what they were called they thought that they thought that uh ufos were
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going to land in 2001 and uh spoiler alert that didn't happen either but that that kind of
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experience of uh you know notwithstanding i had no tv skills what i did have was curiosity and and
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a sense of uh fascination like i i if i my problem was i was over interested and i tended not to
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interrupt like i was really like so when's the world actually gonna end i'm like well it's on
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the thursday but it's too late for salvation because that happens on the tuesday you know
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and all the details but I basically loved the experience of immersing myself in the in these
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other mindsets like I sometimes pretentiously quote Friedrich Nietzsche the philosopher and say
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like it's like his madness in individuals is rare but in epochs groups of people and religions it
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is the law something like that in other words like we're all swimming in the waters of irrationality
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we just don't see it you know and if we just recognize so that kind of that kind of uh
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organized irrationality you know which isn't it's not psychosis right it's not that kind of madness
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it's the madness of oh yeah i'm going to sell my house because the ufos are going to land or
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because harold camping has told me that jesus is coming later in the year that's that's actually a
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sane person who's been so conditioned by a belief system that he's acting in ways that are
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irrational so in a weird way that first one i went on to do a second one about the ku klux klan
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uh as they were rebranding themselves a civil whites group civil rights group for white people
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that was in texas and arkansas and on and on but that those that first story about cults and and
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in a way, was a template, set me off on a trajectory that I haven't deviated from.
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You know, I do programs in a longer length now.
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It's very much been a furrow that I've plowed, you know, with a great deal of pleasure and
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And we'll get to the Inside the Manosphere, which I'd love to talk about your latest
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But what is there been a thread that connects? I mean, it's it's interesting.
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One of the I mean, you've consistent watching some of these documentaries and inside the
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Manosphere, you come across not as condescending, but truly interested, curious, open.
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You create a safe space where, you know, people start to express themselves and then their
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contradictions are exposed. And and but at the same time, you know, the way you just
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described a rational irrational mindset um has there been a thread that connects all of these
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documentaries beyond just the curiosity and the fringe but is it is there an empathy that you've
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developed for many of these okay so yeah this is this this you've got to the heart of the better
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and um the short version is i sometimes say uh the weirdest thing about weird people is how normal
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they are yeah by which i mean that you you find out that people arrive at irrational well i would
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consider irrationality and by the way i don't necessarily exclude myself from that but
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it's kind of this fee it's satisfying very relatable human needs and i do try and disrupt
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that binary of us and them like i do try and see them as people who are available they're up for
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grabs that they're they're persuadable or if they're not persuadable because most of the time
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they're actually not persuadable but they are they're emotionally present like they want to
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relate they want to be friendly or that they want to persuade you of why what they're doing
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is the right way and you've made a mistake like a very the first episode i made of this
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my first tv series of my own was called weird weekends it was about militia men
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It was very Trumpy in its way, although it was 1996. So it was a long time before. But people who believe in conspiracy theories, they think that the UN is taking over the world and that their only safety is by hiding in redoubts up in northern Idaho and Montana, stockpiling guns and sort of sitting out in the end times in one way or another.
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quite a paranoid mindset but but the the shock was going up there and sort of finding out wow
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there's something about these guys this kind of room a little bit romantic and almost cool like
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they were like cowboys like the seduction of it was palpable like it wasn't like how could you
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possibly believe this it was like oh i kind of get the mystery and romance like everyone wants
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to be the hero of their own life and this is a way of leading out an epic destiny then i met
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Part of the same journey, I went to the headquarters of a group called Aryan Nations.
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Like, they're sort of unapologetic or were neo-Nazis.
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They lived in a compound up in Coeur d'Alene in northern Idaho.
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And at that time, their pastor was a guy called their head.
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I don't know if that was a tax dodge or PR thing.
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Or maybe they sincerely believed that they were the true Israelites, like these white guys.
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but they they they lived in a compound that was straight out of central casting with a fence
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around it and a guard tower and two german shepherds called hans and fritz i mean i was
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scared going there the biggest uh the but i was so relieved when i met pastor richard butler and
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he was like 85 years old and his his second in command or his aide de camp was called jerry
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droodle who was about 70 years old and i thought if it comes to it i think i can take them right
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like a physical if it gets physical um but they took me around and i remember jerry grudel uh
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took me to the top of the guard tower and he starts talking about how much he likes england
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and the town of cheltenham and he's a big fan of benny hill and then he starts talking about a
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sitcom from the 70s called are you being served which will mean nothing to your audience but what
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it meant to me was well this is a guy who's a deep anglophile number one but number two like this is
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a guy who really wants to kind of be my friend now uh that's an awkward thing for a journalist
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when he's dealing with a neo-nazi right i mean in one sense it isn't awkward but it's kind of him
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it was it's borderline i mean it was kind of funny but it's also a little embarrassing it
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was complicated and i but the surprise was wow these are people who really are in some respects
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lonely right in some respects looking for connection and i'm not in any way trying to
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minimize the hatefulness of it there's no excuse for it you know i deplore it obviously but
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but you can't blind yourself to the the polyvalent quality of extremism you know and i've seen it
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across the board whether it's in koalinga the you know the maximum security mental hospital
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for sexually violent predators and you go among them and they are they are there presenting as
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regular people and uh and you're like wow they they don't you know i mean i don't mean to be
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glib but like you you sort of have to check yourself and and remind yourself of the things
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they've done because you're being filmed you're making a documentary and actually there's an
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expectation to bring an appropriate level of objectivity and and forbearance but at the same
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time you're thinking at times like he's he's he if i didn't know better i'd think he's kind of a
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nice guy you know he's an okay guy which is the paradox the paradox this is the cross i'm burdened
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with um you mentioned one other thing which was manosphere which i know we're coming on to but
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the other thing that's happened in the 25 years of working is that a lot of this so-called fringe
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stuff went mainstream yeah you know and going back to the silicon valley and the changes in culture
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i think the big thing we've seen the biggest change i've seen is uh how the internet but
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social media specifically has allowed um people to aggregate people who in the in the past might
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have not felt in community with people like before they might have shortwave radio magazines or they
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a few of them might be on bbs's on the internet like bulletin boards but they they weren't um
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pinging each other on snapchat you know or whatsapp or god forbid streaming live on their
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own platforms and uh so in good ways we've seen the internet if you've got a disease and it's rare
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you can now crowdsource solutions that's that's wonderful but if you are planning a race war
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to initiate the end times uh you can also find your community it's not such a good thing and or
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if you want to proselytize on behalf of being a flat earther or an anti-vaxxer you can find a
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audience and not just that you can catalyze an even bigger audience by spreading that information
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so those programs that in the past seemed not exactly harmless but i had the luxury of being
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able to see them as uh part of something lonely like you the empathy that you built with them
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felt relatively safe even the skinheads when i was with doing louis and the nazis they were
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damaged men from difficult backgrounds who'd come out of prison some of them had developed
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a kind of white racial identity as a safety mechanism having been in prison like i've seen
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that in san quentin yeah it's very hard to go against the float you gang up and that that's
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that's i don't know if it's still the case but when i was there in 2012 you know 2008 9 um that's
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how it was but uh so you could sort of extend a bit of understanding and i guess you can still
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but it's now closer to the the power is uh they less obviously hierarchical now it's not so now
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they are in some respects equally powerful you know in some respects when i go and document
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whether it's white nationalism or extremism or toxic content i'm just one more content maker
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turning up to document another content maker and i no longer or or my bbc paymasters or whoever's
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financing the project no longer owns the conversation and the and monopolizes the um
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the platforms in the way that they used to meaning they're streaming at the same time that that like
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ticky talky well in a small way they have they have they have their own outlet like so going back
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five years i made a documentary called extreme and online uh that was about nick fuentes and
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the groypers and and i spent uh a couple of days with nick fuentes who has since gone on to some
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notoriety based on his affiliation with Kanye West or yay as he's now called and also his sort
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of taking up the mantle post Charlie Kirk uh but he's he so irrespective of me them streaming me
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when I arrived they're just people who've got platforms of their own right I mean midway through
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making that program extreme and online it's on I'm not trying to do a big plug but I think it's
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But I remember arriving and I was filming with him
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We went back to London to kind of figure out next steps.
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And in the meanwhile, he was streaming about me,
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and he's broadcasting his version of Our Encounter.
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and then i've got mine and hopefully i'm reaching more people then fast forward a few years uh
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but that was the first exposure to make your program and in a weird way i found it chastening
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but also uh enjoyably enjoyably challenging right you know i like i sometimes i sometimes joke i
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specialize in getting out of my depth and i i enjoyed the sense of i don't want my job to be
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too easy and i and i think it kind of keeps you honest you know what i mean and if i'm if i'm there
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and and he's doing his version and he and he's releasing you know there was a guy called baked
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alaska who was part of the same documentary and he filmed me while i was there and i filmed him
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and he streamed me and it creates an interesting dynamic but it also allows for a an enjoyable
00:22:44.880
piquancy to the encounters and then later on i went deeper into that with this more recent
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documentary for netflix which is called louis through inside the manosphere where i was either
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being live streamed or appearing on podcasts in their in their world throughout and then being
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made to be uncomfortable and having to deal with their gotchas or their attempts to discomfort
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and discombobulate me uh it's it's fascinating i this notion i mean you're this iterative
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conversation what you're making the movie it's making you i mean it's searching you you're
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searching it you're back i mean it's almost it's like a ping pong match almost and obviously it's
00:23:27.460
promoting itself even before it's complete uh and so it obviously well that would be i know that's
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a good i know it's funny isn't it like we because the party's like oh this is kind of a nightmare i
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mean truthfully i knew going into it it would happen and i hoped it would happen but it's also
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uncomfortable and then i did realize well it is chumming the water like gets everyone uh
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it gets everyone but you know you raise a serious question which is um if they are feeding off my
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content or feeding off my presence for their content um i'm going to preempt your question
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am i am i in some way amplifying them am i a pawn in their game how do you deal with
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um how do you deal with it like me platforming them or just actually bringing them attention or
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as i say sort of being a character these live streamers they stream their lives uh more or less
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24 not 24 7 because they're not asleep but it might be eight hours a day or 10 hours a day
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The most recent example you'll know is Flavicular,
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but he thought you were better looking than J.D. Vance,
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it's a mixed blessing receiving that kind of compliment, right?
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One of the reveals of making the documentary was,
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this isn't the manosphere, this is the boyosphere, right?
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but we probably grew up watching Dukes of Hazzard,
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You know, they break a few rules to get things done.
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You know, they're not going to listen to the Chief.
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They're going to go out and kick ass and take names
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and do what they have to to catch the bad guy.
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like there was a sort of an outlaw an outlaw kind of maverick code and in in in this day and age
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like our kids are getting our boys are getting content in the same way we did but from the
00:26:08.040
internet and then our time as well there were i don't know it was rockers or punk or heavy metal
00:26:13.200
or guns and roses or whatever it was but we sort of believed that these were our guys because we
00:26:19.300
were kids we we wanted people who felt out outlaw and naughty and disruptive and who our parents
00:26:24.940
probably didn't approve of right so nowadays that that's youtubers like youtubers are filling that
00:26:30.960
space for good or ill and the complicated part is they're obviously real as much as they are also
00:26:38.460
performing themselves and they are uh going out and you know there's no gate key there's no one
00:26:45.080
cbs abc or bbc like saying you know what this is before the watershed so let's tone it down you
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know it's a little bit the language is a little bit blue like you know these there's not there's
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nothing there's no there's no influence that's going to stop them they stream on a platform
00:27:03.440
called pick many of them where the content moderation is extremely uh loose it's owned
00:27:11.400
by a gambling company so a lot of it's tied in with gambling promotion and basically anything
00:27:17.340
goes and part part of the filming you know one of my insights such as it is was that this is less
00:27:24.320
about or it's as much as it's about ideology it's also about sales and these are guys who found a
00:27:31.540
business model that involves putting out spicy or divisive or explicitly bigoted and misogynistic
00:27:39.680
homophobic racist content that gets eyeballs because the algorithms like things that are
00:27:45.320
divisive and then the upsell is some crappy fx trading app or finance trading app or a workout
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some workout regimen that'll give you muscles or supplements uh one of the paradoxes is that you
00:28:02.560
know people say like oh it's a rabbit hole but truthfully with a rabbit hole it gets weirder the
00:28:06.280
deeper you go but actually it's really weird the shop front is weird like because that's how they
00:28:12.420
get your attention Andrew Tate saying I don't think women should drive and women shouldn't vote
00:28:16.940
but then behind the facade is something quite banal and that's what you know and that's why
00:28:21.840
you should sign up to the real world and it's a not terribly insightful or interesting so-called
00:28:28.420
online university so it's all incentivized uh by business and by an attempt to monetize outrage
00:28:43.760
More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.
0.97
00:28:47.960
And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:28:54.080
And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.
00:28:57.740
Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers.
00:29:03.300
So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:29:06.820
Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio
00:29:21.260
my journey from basketball to college football,
00:29:27.000
this platform became bigger than I ever imagined.
00:29:33.680
This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations
00:29:43.600
of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment.
00:29:56.360
and for people who are chasing something bigger.
00:30:04.240
Listen to The Clifford Show on the iHeartRadio app,
00:30:06.600
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:30:10.300
follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok.
00:30:20.100
The director of the NFL's East-West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galko,
00:30:26.100
what really matters when evaluating draft prospects.
00:30:28.680
From hidden traits teams look for, to the biggest mistakes franchises make, to the players flying under the radar,
00:30:35.300
this is the insight you won't hear anywhere else.
00:30:37.820
If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode.
00:30:41.980
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00:30:47.800
And for more, follow TimboSliceLife12 and TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok.
0.86
00:30:52.540
there's two golden rules that any man should live by rule one never mess with a country girl
0.98
00:31:02.620
you play stupid games you get stupid prizes and rule two never mess with her friends either
0.99
00:31:08.960
we always say that trust your girlfriends i'm anna sinfield and in this new season of the
1.00
00:31:16.060
girlfriends oh my god this is the same man a group of women discover they've all dated the
00:31:51.780
Back to this documentary that was just released, as you suggest, on Netflix last month and
00:31:58.500
has gotten a lot of attention, premiered number one on Netflix. And, you know, it continues to
00:32:06.240
this day because these guys are continuing to talk about you and this whole subject matter of
00:32:11.300
the manosphere. But the point you just made is the point that you emphasize or at least comes
00:32:16.820
across, even if it's not expressed intentionally, or at least edited in that context, is that it's
00:32:23.340
more of a grift than an ideology, that these guys are selling, selling, selling, selling,
00:32:27.600
selling, selling, selling. It's not necessarily right-wing conservatism, but it is misogyny.
00:32:35.560
It's an interesting take on this whole frame, because so much of the nanosphere,
00:32:40.660
from our perspective, sort of the lazy perspective, is framed in contemporary terms to Trump's
00:32:46.180
success, big podcasters like Joe Rogan or Theo Vaughn, folks that I know that are adjacent to
00:32:54.200
this, that are not necessarily part of this. But Andrew Tate seems so much of the origin story
00:33:00.220
of what is contemporarily expressed as the nanosphere. You didn't get him necessarily
00:33:07.980
to be on the documentary, but he's part of your documentary. But tell me a little bit about
00:33:15.260
Andrew Tate, tell me a little bit about your kids, your three sons.
00:33:18.880
Tell me about the why this subject matter was the subject for this latest documentary.
00:33:27.100
So I went through lockdown with three sons, which, you know, any father or mother who went through lockdown with kids, I think we're still recovering from that.
00:33:41.420
they're now 20 18 and 11 so at the beginning of covid they would have been like 15 13 and
00:33:50.540
six or seven it was it was a lot uh and like like everyone else we all defaulted to phones and
00:33:59.020
screens a great deal um just for like you know that's how they kept in touch with their friends
00:34:05.280
and as did we but i remember 2022 slot like slightly started to come out the other side
00:34:12.640
i began hearing um about andrew tate from my my boys the older boys saying like andrew tate said
00:34:18.900
this funny thing uh like it was a name you know like that's why andrew tate like who are you you
00:34:24.200
keep talking about this guy andrew tate like i'm supposed to have heard of him they're like oh he's
00:34:27.540
really funny so it was uh it was spicy content to the effect of women are all like this and and
00:34:35.580
then also his flex his flexes like he's like oh people say they don't like the color of my bugetti
00:34:40.800
and i say what color is your bugetti that was you know kind of funny kind of a funny flex right
00:34:46.840
i mean one thing that you always have to give take credit for is he's extremely articulate and he's
00:34:52.260
kind of brilliant broadcaster you know irrespective of the message he has a fluency for language
00:34:58.380
and phrasing and messaging and in addition he figured out something about the internet
00:35:03.440
so he would be doing you know his background was American dad British mom separated parents
00:35:08.920
grow up mixed race in Luton in very well I say it's a rough area of a satellite of London
00:36:01.300
It was basically a repackaged version of something.
00:36:12.900
body language and messaging in order to having almost mysterious and magical attraction over
00:36:19.560
women um there was a book about it called the game by neil strauss so and it's quasi-hypnotic
00:36:26.720
techniques like you use these words and women will fall into your lap so that was the precursor
00:36:30.920
culture to tate plus a little bit of iceberg slim like a kind of pimp speak based on the writings of
00:36:37.740
the kind of pimp subculture of the sort of 50s and 60s um all packaged together uh in this kind
00:36:45.880
of the form of this muscly good-looking kickboxer and then doing his podcast uh he realized that
00:36:52.540
the the more outrageous he was the more it was getting traction and then he would get clippers
00:36:58.160
uh guys sort of piecework or gig work part-timers around wherever like working from their homes
00:37:05.540
who would take little bits and put them on the internet,
00:37:14.860
I sometimes say like Andrew Tate's actually a side effect
00:37:17.000
of the TikTok algorithm, or he was at the time.
00:37:35.280
by other influencers looking to be the next Andrew Tate
00:37:38.280
in slightly different forms or with similar messaging
00:37:44.200
originally the hope was we might get Andrew Tate
00:37:48.060
I continued a kind of back and forth with them,
00:37:57.460
But we have other contributors who sort of speak to the culture.
00:38:05.280
A guy called Myron Gaines, who's sort of an associate of Nick Fuentes.
00:38:17.720
Sneako, whose real name is Nicholas de Belanthasi,
00:38:23.840
And a UK-based streamer who goes by HS Tiki Toki,
00:38:30.640
All of them in different ways illustrating the sales grift
00:38:34.980
or the ways in which this new media influencer culture
00:38:45.300
I should say, my kids are somewhat out the other side.
00:38:49.980
And they would say, like, we never believed Andrew Tate.
00:38:53.600
Like, we just enjoyed it as, we thought it was funny, right?
00:39:02.400
it is funny like and actually no one really why are you getting triggered like no one really
00:39:07.520
thinks that but truthfully while a lot of kids don't think that like enough of them do for it
00:39:13.660
to be concerning like i think we give we should give our children the credit of knowing most of
00:39:18.660
the time how to read irony and and understand that this is you know much as a comedian on stage
00:39:24.900
might say things they don't mean you know there's an element of that but that doesn't get you all
00:39:30.600
the way off the hook and and i think the most extreme thing you know that i saw probably while
00:39:38.360
filming wasn't even explicitly ideological like it was a what they call a pred sting
00:39:44.120
which is a moment when they set up a an encounter with someone they accuse or believe to be a sexual
00:39:52.360
predator on flimsy evidence i would argue and then as we as we observed from a distance they
00:39:59.860
basically beat him up and that that for me even as a documentary maker you know it's one thing to
00:40:06.480
sort of talk to someone about their beliefs or historic practices or you know criminals
00:40:11.020
in a prison or whatever but when you're there and seeing a planned what appears to be a planned
00:40:16.900
attack yeah and physical violence basically as you know because they're doing it in order to
00:40:23.080
engage people at home on you know on the platform kick and they're watching their view account go up
00:40:28.220
you're seeing in real time a criminal act or what appears to be a criminal act being incentivized
00:40:34.060
by the algorithms of a tech platform. I think it was one of the most compelling parts of the
00:40:38.540
documentary was what Ed Matthews or some of these predator stings that they're doing and
00:40:42.760
as he's justifying it and you're visibly shaken up a little bit by it but they're making the point
00:40:48.360
how the numbers and the algorithms everything's dialed up the rage is dialed up and then he
00:40:53.500
claims that he deleted it uh only to find out that they clipped the heck out of it and monetize
00:40:58.260
they've already clipped it it's already got virus too late you know as much as the same with you
00:41:02.380
know when i talked to sneaker who's also like these are guys who would say our women shouldn't
00:41:06.980
be able to vote yeah um women are in various respects uh not the equals of men um there's
00:41:15.500
this sort of attempt to roll back it's almost generous to call it a 19th century but some sort
00:41:21.740
of earlier sense of you know masculinity in a time when you know women should be absolutely
00:41:28.540
either discouraged from or maybe forbidden from leaving the workplace uh and these are guys who
00:41:35.680
say like well i'm banned from most of the platforms a lot of them are back now zico's back on youtube
00:41:41.220
i think and he's certainly on x and by the way i'm not necessarily even arguing that that's i think
00:41:46.580
that's a whole other question about you know how whether banning works or not but either way even
00:41:50.920
the banned ones their clips will go viral and um you know we mentioned nicholas fuentes like he's
00:41:57.620
been banned from more platforms he's back on x but um everyone sees his content because uh it gets
00:42:04.880
clipped up and circulated uh so it's not a straightforward question of are we going to
00:42:10.940
de-platform these people and truthfully you know it isn't really a free speech issue because it's
00:42:17.840
not so much that everyone you know this idea well you want to ban and censor truthfully what's
00:42:25.880
happening isn't isn't uh a free speech a kind of level playing field for um for people's views
00:42:32.420
it's an it's an amplification and an incentivization of extremism right uh we are being
00:42:41.280
more or less cajoled coerced finagled hornswoggled into watching things that we might not even want
00:42:51.500
to watch that much by appealing to our kind of lowest common denominator like you look at your
00:42:56.620
feed and it's like here's something else here's something else and without being lewd like i
00:43:02.040
sometimes having made a few films about adult film or the adult world i sometimes use the metaphor
00:43:06.760
of pornography like everything's become kind of version of pornography like it's the poor it's
00:43:12.440
either emotional pornography it's uh political pornography which extremist content is it's
00:43:18.440
looking for a quick a sort of a quick hit what's going to grab you what are you going to see the
00:43:23.140
thumbnail or what are you going to see that will be like oh i'm going to see that because it's it's
00:43:29.720
so glaringly strange and appealing it's firing deepest basis parts of my brain in my amygdala
00:43:41.160
They've connected the most up-to-date and sophisticated kinds of media dissemination with the most primitive parts of our brains.
00:43:51.980
And that's a dangerous cocktail, like that doom scrolling.
00:43:57.860
I don't feel good about myself, but I can't quite switch off sort of mindset.
00:44:03.480
When you were interviewing these folks, I mean, you know, I think the Myron Gaines
00:44:08.640
clips were interesting in the documentary because he was visibly uncomfortable. You're talking to
00:44:14.260
his girlfriend at the time and, you know, you're getting two different stories. You know, the folks
00:44:19.360
in front of the screen and then the folks behind the screen, you know, to the extent that they
00:44:24.400
ever go offline. But you almost, I mean, the way it least appeared to me in the documentary is
00:44:30.260
there's there's kind of split personalities these guys are performing yes more than anything it's
00:44:36.200
complicated yeah i think it's i think it's a mistake to take it all at face value uh one of
00:44:42.000
the things i said to the team early on was you know there was this conversation about it's about
00:44:46.560
the manosphere but what about you know how do we reflect the kind of the female experience in the
00:44:51.760
film you know and there are female manosphere influencers um who promote you know bizarrely
00:44:57.620
the same sort of content saying uh you know because the view that uh the man's view is like
0.89
00:45:03.420
women are basically pardon the expression hoes like you know that the women are just attracted
0.94
00:45:09.000
to men of high value and a man is only as good as his metric like his income his height maybe the
1.00
00:45:16.880
size of his sexual organ like you are literally numbers and that's how women see you like women
00:45:23.260
are their views of women are shallow and so it's a it's kind of strange and you know demeaning
00:45:28.780
to to both the men and the women um but at the same time you sort of want to see
00:45:34.540
well what how do we sort of see the way women kind of exist alongside these guys and my feeling was
00:45:41.000
like we don't really you know most of the man's very influence actually are men and like all men
00:45:46.560
they exist alongside women and what we'll find is okay it's actually a little bit of a hack of
00:45:54.480
my own a professional hack is like if you're struggling with figuring out who someone is
00:45:59.320
you see them with their significant other you know I've done programs about celebrities I can't
00:46:04.680
get through this guy I often joke like if I went to do a program about Trump who knows maybe it'll
00:46:10.480
happen i would um probably spend more time with melania you know or i'd want to see them side by
00:46:16.980
side right how do they negotiate each other you know they say no man is a hero to his valet that's
00:46:22.620
an old cliche but in the same context like no man or woman is a hero to their significant other and
00:46:29.700
and so i just had an instinct that when we're with these guys they're going to be performing
00:46:33.820
masculinity saying like i i can have any woman i want and you know and and then the girlfriend
00:46:40.440
is going to be there and they'll be like anyway never mind nothing you know they'll just they'll
00:46:46.080
just they'll kind of have to moderate it or something and um or it will be that you'll get
00:46:53.080
a sense of the woman is not on board with it or because i've done programs about pimps too and
00:46:57.660
you know pimps are real like it's strange to see but the women are very often uh you know deprived
00:47:04.600
of other choices in different respects grappling with low self-esteem they're damaged they're
00:47:10.420
in a bad spot so there is a there is a kind of emotional and social algebra in which it takes
00:47:16.540
place that kind of makes it make sense you know albeit in a toxic way anyway we're sure enough
00:47:22.580
when we turn up with Myron Gaines and he's saying like a lot of these guys are I believe in one-way
00:47:27.260
monogamy I'm not doing the accent right I'm all over the map and he goes um I go what's that and
00:47:32.100
they say um he says I think I should be uh allowed to basically pursue as many romantic adventures
00:47:40.400
as I like but my wife my girlfriend is is completely loyal to me and that's the way it
00:47:45.840
should be and she and then it's just as we're talking about it his girlfriend Angie arrives
00:47:51.520
and then I kind of calculatedly cynically you might say dob him in I'm like hey um Angie
00:47:59.340
Myron was just saying that you know he wants to have multiple wives and and and you are you
00:48:04.840
signed up to that and you can see like she's like she makes this face of like I don't know
00:48:09.780
you know we've talked about that and I'm not sure and then which which is not surprising
00:48:15.660
what's a little bit surprising is that he starts backpedaling and saying like well you know that's
00:48:22.620
a long way off and and I go well it sounds like you're avoiding because and who knows maybe I'll
00:48:28.820
decide I don't want multiple wives which in his world is a huge misstep because what you don't
00:48:35.420
want to be doing is uh pandering to the perception of female expectation right it's called losing
00:48:42.480
frame you're supposed to stick but with you know it's non-negotiable you've got to be it is what
00:48:48.340
it is like that's considered alpha behavior yep so he was kind of unmasked or at least found guilty
00:48:54.420
of non-alpha behavior something i participate in quite freely by the way but um uh as in the
00:49:01.760
non-alpha-ness. But in his world, that was a misstep. And so you see him feeling, I think,
00:49:09.720
discombobulated, unmasked, humiliated, maybe. So it was one of those moments you feel like,
00:49:16.280
okay, I think I did my job today. Are these folks enduring? Meaning, are they,
00:49:21.940
I mean, 10 years from now, do you see the boy's fear turning into the man's fear?
00:49:26.360
Do you see a, or is it just, this is a continuation as you reflect back? I mean,
00:49:31.760
you've you know passed this prologue in terms of just this has existed it will continue to exist
00:49:36.540
but now it's being amplified weaponized the grievance that is our algorithm it's just it's
00:49:41.340
finding us i mean it's yeah that's a that's a call it's a big one and uh that's a very
00:49:47.040
apposite question i mean i i purposefully framed the film around the extreme of the manosphere
00:49:52.540
there's a really good article on the new york times which you can find on the website or on
00:49:57.080
the app which is something along the lines of like we're all in the manosphere which kind of
00:50:00.520
makes the case that we we we shouldn't make the mistake of making all masculine behavior quote
00:50:06.820
unquote toxic like i think it's okay to say a lot of the time not all the time but a lot of time
00:50:11.780
a lot of guys like things that a lot of the time a lot of women might not like or that there there
00:50:17.540
are interesting divergences that don't hold true universally but which is nevertheless helpful
00:50:23.300
you know it shouldn't be necessarily toxic to say like most men might prefer this and most women
00:50:28.760
might not prefer it you know and for some reason that's become in some circles i don't even know
00:50:35.560
like there's a perception that maybe that's controversial i don't even know if it is but
00:50:40.100
i i do know that a lot of guys rightly or wrongly feel judged about um maybe conforming to certain
00:50:47.340
masculine archetypes and uh as a father of three boys as a man myself like i i think you know you
00:50:55.000
shouldn't feel judged like if you if you participate whether it's combat sports or you
00:51:00.420
want to take your boys to the game or like that should be okay and and by the way girls too and
00:51:07.620
women too but you know we shouldn't we shouldn't feel we shouldn't feel as though we're afraid to
00:51:13.440
endorse or behave in ways that in the past like might be associated with masculine masculinity
00:51:19.940
uh where it goes next i i is is a hard one to call like you were mentioning like are they really
00:51:26.700
like that or is it a performance it's sometimes it's hard to tell the difference like it's
00:51:32.680
definitely not the case they go upstream and say um well let's go to the opera and i can't wait to
00:51:41.260
read this new book by uh you know joyce carol oats you know what i mean like and it gets a little
00:51:54.260
But they also are, in certain respects, being distorted.
00:51:59.360
Like, I sometimes say that, you know, the algorithm is a mirror.
00:52:03.160
Like, that's been said by Neil Mohan, who runs YouTube.
00:52:11.740
but in this sort of distorted and often grotesque way.
00:52:14.780
if if you remove the funhouse mirror of the algorithm um it would be nice to believe you
00:52:21.280
go back to normal um i'm not sure if you go completely back to normal like i i think if you
00:52:28.320
if you drink of that sort of content for long enough and intensively enough i do think it has
00:52:36.120
an effect on you and the thing i avoided and this is either dereliction or just the kind of
00:52:44.220
filmmaking i do i avoided trying to show what positive masculinity looked like it's like this
00:52:51.600
is very much like a conversation that needs to be had but not one that i necessarily presented
00:52:56.720
in the film and the idea of like have we been overly censorious of certain aspects of behavior
00:53:03.420
is that could we more indulgent you know what does a second chance look like in a world where
00:53:09.860
we're also holding people to account for their transgressions like these are all great questions
00:53:15.600
that i think is part of a bigger and different conversation i will say that and also the level
00:53:23.400
to which those distorted kinds of thinking percolate downwards like how how pervasive
00:53:32.340
is that kind of toxic behavior to what extent are kids able to metabolize and then move on from it
00:53:39.060
observing my own kids like i'd like to think they are well adjusted and i'm sure that's true for
00:53:44.200
many of them i do also think that for a lot of these guys like i'm just as interested in
00:53:49.060
the distorting effect that it has on the influences themselves and i i i think there's a kind of
00:53:55.440
almost not psychosis exactly but a kind of existential existential fragmentation or
00:54:05.480
disintegration that can kick in with these streamers when you're online for that long
00:54:11.420
it's like a sensory deprivation tank like yeah you're not going you're going out to stream
00:54:16.160
everything's content your main relationship in the world is not with another physical person
00:54:21.040
it's with the chat and the chat just wants you to get into fights yeah or go out or be obnoxious
00:54:27.460
to a woman or say things that are outrageous and then at a certain point it's like who are you
00:54:33.760
so i do i all of that like there's a degree of sympathy i have for those content creators
00:54:38.880
and how they come out of the other side of it but luckily it's people like you gavin who've
00:54:44.180
got the privilege of figuring out how much of this is legislated for like how we
00:54:49.220
put measures in place like obviously down in i think it's in la is it where they've had
00:54:54.360
the so-called big tobacco moment with tech and the attempt to try and uh
00:55:01.080
push back or hold to account the streaming platforms that have incentivized self-sabotaging
00:55:08.840
behavior. But I don't know what this looks like in terms of policy. I do think government has a
00:55:16.160
role though. And we've had a lot of interesting conversations. Scott Gallo. Canadian women are
00:55:23.380
looking for more. More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders,
1.00
00:55:47.540
Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio
00:56:02.000
my journey from basketball to college football,
00:56:07.600
this platform became bigger than I ever imagined.
00:56:14.560
This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations
00:56:19.260
and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated.
00:56:24.320
of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment.
00:56:37.100
and for people who are chasing something bigger.
00:56:44.960
Listen to The Clifford Show on the iHeartRadio app,
00:56:47.340
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:56:50.840
follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network
00:56:53.760
This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft, and we've got a special guest.
00:57:00.920
The director of the NFL's East-West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galco, joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects.
00:57:09.680
From hidden traits teams look for, to the biggest mistakes franchises make, to the players flying under the radar, this is the insight you won't hear anywhere else.
00:57:18.540
If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode.
00:57:22.360
Listen to the Sports Slice podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:57:28.540
And for more, follow Timbo Slice Life 12 and TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok.
00:57:36.180
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
1.00
00:57:43.800
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
1.00
00:57:46.640
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
1.00
00:57:53.880
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...
00:57:59.780
...a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
00:58:04.520
I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me?
00:58:08.060
The cops didn't seem to care, so they take matters into their own hands.
00:58:13.340
I said, oh hell no. I vowed I will be his last target.
00:58:19.660
Listen to The Girlfriends, Trust Me Babe, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:58:34.080
Richard Reeves has been focusing on the Institute of Men and Boys, and many of us are trying to lead the what is positive masculinity look like?
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How do we address the crisis of our men and boys?
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And what is it that they're, as you suggest, that we, you know, I love the Starsky and Hutch and, you know, Six Million Dollar Man and all your references.
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You're right. We all sort of attach to that archetype, but in a way that, you know, didn't necessarily go down the path that is the path that briefly I want to just touch upon, which is, you know, there's so many reveals here about back to misogyny, et cetera.
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But also this anti-Semitic, you know, reveal, which seems to be the one, I mean, that connects so many of the dots.
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I mean, you can't even get started on Nick Fuentes, but, you know, Sneeko's challenges with that.
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You know, I know he's QAn adjacent, but all these guys, there was an undercurrent.
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Even Harrison Sullivan and his relationship with his mother, which, you know, is a whole nother thing.
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Their lack of relationship perhaps with their father.
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So there's so many components, you know, that's, I guess, you know, for follow up for the rest of us. But the anti-Semitic thread, is that something that belongs to you?
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And I think there's a couple of things behind it.
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in my documentaries and jails and high crime areas,
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At the time anyway, it was an area of Milwaukee.
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Like it was just, there were no fathers there, right?
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And actually, then you get this cycle of violence.
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uh two main things one is uh wherever you find conspiracy theories anti-semitism is usually
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not far behind um it's kind of you know it's been phrased in the past that anti-semitism
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is the socialism of fools um and this goes back at least to the 19th century and in fact
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further like i during the pandemic i read a book about black death 1347 to 49 a third of the
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european population died and job one when the black death came to your town seemed to be uh
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round up the jews and harass or kill them you know and that was like well we don't know if it works
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but it's worth a try kind of and i think that's that speaks to us in the west having a um as part
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sadly part of our christian legacy is an anti there's an anti-semitic dimension to that and
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you know as as a kind of perennial other like viewed as people who are um in different ways
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not fully trusted uh it's a kind of easy sort of go to uh an attempt to uh stigmatize dehumanize
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and um you know in extremists actually harm and hurt i think the other part of it is as a taboo
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and you know and rightly so uh you know i think bigotry obviously should be a taboo but taboos
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are also catnip online so it's kind of the ultimate you know the part they call it the final
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boss of taboos like when you've when you've kind of explored the boundaries with sexual content or
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uh stay racist or content or fighting or sexism where do you go where's where else do you go for
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the ultimate outrage you that's where you you start uh indulging in anti-semitic tropes or
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calling out antisemitism or rather indulging in antisemitism so i think um it's a symptom of
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uh the outrage economy as well uh so yeah it's it's depressing and in fact it's the last reveal
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of the film in a way but nevertheless that's where an attention economy uh winds up i and i don't
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even i think across the board i think there's parts of it that are real uh i i think myron
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gains is genuinely anti-semitic i think with harrison sullivan notwithstanding that he
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clearly says anti-semitic things i think he and ed matthews as well it's almost like they say it's
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with so much ignorance yeah that you feel like you don't even really know what you're saying
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it'll be in the same breath as oh and by the way we've never been to the moon and the earth is flat
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right right you know it it feels like a either a profound ignorance or a or a profound need to
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just say something bonkers for them uh and then in other cases it feels like it's based on
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it's mixed in with uh a really deep uh i really a deeply felt bigotry um and and so the anti-semitism
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I mean, you know, and I appreciate just the empathy
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is not being judgmental in terms of the inquiry.
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was this something left you wanting, frustrated,
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hopeless hopeful uh deep more deeply concerned about the trend lines of where we're going and
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you know how it's it's multifaceted with these platforms and you know rumble not just kick and
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others and not that the platforms themselves are the problem but the content and um just
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the nature of the brain and the algorithms and uh truth trust we haven't even gotten it
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yeah it's hard i mean it's hard it's hard to um like i often think that my um documentaries are
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informed by a spirit of optimism and and as much as it's uh it's true that i focus on the dark side
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of life you know sexual predators or criminals or gang leaders very often it's usually in the
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context of seeing how their pastimes or their or their you know the things that they're indulged in
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are informed by a need for community, a need for meaning,
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And there are positive values mixed in with that
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So I do allow for those elements of this world that are humorous.
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I know it sounds weird to maybe even acknowledge that,
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uh that are creative disruptive free-spirited anarchic you know going as a fan of gangster rap
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by the way which also there's a little bit and wrestling like these all you know pro wrestling
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you take on a name all of these worlds which involve creativity and self-performance and
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feuding and outrage so i i do i allow for those and i recognize those as parts of the car like
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in my day, we just played with marmels and yo-yos
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I don't know in terms of where the culture goes.
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I mean, one possibility is that they just get overtaken by the next AI.
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It may be that this tsunami is just overtaken by the fact
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yes, we should discourage our kids from being on phones and screens too much.
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check what they're watching if they you know i'm not giving my 11 year old a phone
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he's gonna have a brick phone or a dumb phone i guess at least till he's 12 i don't know 13 40
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something we haven't figured it out but you know be present be a present be around for your kids
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all of that stuff but so i have micro suggestions but on the macro stuff uh i don't have much
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concrete except to say that i if i've seen anything in all these years of making work
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in this kind of world i am struck by the adaptability of humans are are are wherewithal
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in terms of dealing with the impossible like anything that's come along and also as a historian
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i mentioned i went to oxford i'm going to mention that again but you know we've been through so many
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cataclysms and upheavals you know it was probably it was the printing press or was the industrial
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revolution um it was tv it was gangster rap going back to 92 charlton heston and tipper gore
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you know we thought it was the end of the world i'm not i'm not trying to trivialize it but
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you know it was that feeling of like what our kids are listening to cop killer by iced tea
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nothing's ever going to be the same again so i do try and keep it in perspective and um but i also
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think it's about policing the content in ways that are uh modest and achievable you know and
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picking your kids up on things that they say and having conversations with them i do think that
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we've i do think that the i think the future is bright but that's more of an act of faith
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than an observation about reality what's uh what what's the next project
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i've got a few things cooking well i mainly do my podcast between my day job my real job is
01:09:07.000
making documentaries but to try and be around for my kids i've started podcasting more and more
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uh i've got i'm talking to netflix about doing something else i don't know it's it's it's a
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strange situation where your job involves documenting like dysfunction like it feels
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like I'm a parasite on you know the apocalyptic trends of humanity like I always I shouldn't even
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say this to the governor of California but I used to enjoy living in LA I lived in LA for three years
01:09:36.560
I was like because every day it felt like the world was ending I mean I'm slightly exaggerating
01:09:40.900
but you don't be like it's in the winter you get mudslides and then later in the year you get
01:09:46.920
heat waves and then you get forest fires like we were on perpetual sense of ecological catastrophe
01:09:59.520
Like, I'm not trying to be rude about the city,
01:10:04.760
Yeah, it's a majesty of a city that's, you know,
01:10:08.620
fascinatingly figuring itself out in real time.
01:10:16.500
depending on whether you're a documentary maker
01:10:22.940
a win is a win a win is a win i don't care what y'all say yep that's me clipper taylor the fourth
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you might have seen the skits my basketball and college football journey or my career in sports
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If you want to understand the draft like an insider,
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You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct?
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It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
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