This is Gavin Newsom - And, This Is The Man Who Survived The Manosphere - Louis Theroux

00:00:00.320 you've got to the heart of the better and i sometimes say the weirdest thing about weird

00:00:04.320 people is how normal they are this isn't the manuscript this is the boyosphere it's more of

00:00:08.320 a grift than an ideology these guys are selling selling selling selling selling selling selling

00:00:13.040 so those of you who have tuned in to the podcast know we've dove deep into the issue of the crisis

00:00:18.080 of men and boys richard reeves and the institute of men and boys talked to scott galloway a number

00:00:23.120 of other guests also talked about the manosphere but we've never gone quote unquote inside the

00:00:28.880 the manosphere. And that's why I'm so excited to have my next guest, Louis Theroux, who's done

00:00:34.620 dozens and dozens of documentaries on the porn industry, neo-Nazis, did documentary on Scientology,

00:00:42.520 Westboro Baptist Church, and just completed this really insightful documentary about the manosphere.

00:00:49.600 This is a wide-raging conversation you don't want to miss.

00:00:54.340 This is Gavin Newsom.

00:00:56.120 and this is Louis Theroux

00:00:58.960 this is an iHeart podcast

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00:01:06.860 a win is a win

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00:01:11.300 Clifford Taylor IV

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00:01:41.140 This week on the Sports Slice Podcast, it's all about the NFL draft.

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00:02:19.100 When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.

00:02:25.220 They take matters into their own hands.

00:02:28.140 I vowed I will be his last target.

00:02:30.700 He is not going to get away with this.

00:02:32.820 He's going to get what he deserves.

00:02:34.780 We always say that, trust your girlfriends.

00:02:39.080 Listen to The Girlfriends, Trust Me, Babe,

00:02:41.640 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

00:02:44.220 or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:02:46.140 In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins,

00:02:56.140 but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.

00:02:58.620 You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct?

00:03:02.080 I doctored the test once.

00:03:03.880 It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.

00:03:08.400 Two more men who'd been through the same thing.

00:03:11.000 Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini.

00:03:13.000 My mind was blown.

00:03:14.580 I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped.

00:03:17.440 Laura, Scottsdale Police.

00:03:19.280 As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.

00:03:23.980 Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:03:30.040 Where are you? In London proper? Where are you specifically?

00:03:33.580 I'm in London, England. In northwest London, in an area called Kilburn.

00:03:38.640 Northwest, I don't know, you really have to know London to know where exactly,

00:03:43.120 but I just cycled back from Trafalgar Square

00:03:45.700 and it took me about 25 minutes.

00:03:48.100 I love it.

00:03:49.540 Where do you spend most of your time?

00:03:52.220 Are you out there, just on the plane, around the globe?

00:03:55.600 I have three boys, three sons,

00:03:58.880 and as they've got older, I've traveled less.

00:04:00.860 Like before I came on this call,

00:04:02.580 I was thinking about my life and times

00:04:04.780 as I want to do as an older man, 55 years old.

00:04:08.080 I was traveling a lot, you know,

00:04:09.900 when I was trying to win my Spurs as a documentary maker.

00:04:13.820 So a lot of back and forth.

00:04:15.740 I have, I'm half American, half, I've just started.

00:04:20.040 Is that all right?

00:04:20.900 Yeah.

00:04:21.220 But I've just kind of gone into my origin story.

00:04:23.740 But I was, so my dad's American.

00:04:28.260 He's a travel writer and novelist from Medford, Massachusetts.

00:04:31.320 I grew up with a US passport, but I grew up in South London.

00:04:34.100 And I've always been slightly split, you know,

00:04:37.920 identity wise between the uk and the us and then when i graduated i was trying to figure out what

00:04:44.540 to do with my life in 91 uh i went to the us and thought well i'll put that passport to some use

00:04:50.640 and get some legal work working in boston then i thought well i should really you know work with

00:04:56.680 words that's what my dad does it's what my mom does she works for the bbc or used to

00:05:00.780 and i got a job in san jose california on a free weekly called the metro and really i credit my

00:05:08.340 experience in san jose as being the formative experience professionally or certainly one of

00:05:14.820 them of my life like you know some people said like i went to africa my dad's thing was he went

00:05:18.440 he was in the peace corps and he went and taught in malawi my thing was i worked for a free weekly

00:05:23.760 in san jose but there was something about being decontextualized and being exposed to a culture

00:05:29.340 that was very different um and and and also working with words writing articles you know

00:05:37.080 from the bottom up was work for the willow glen resident and the metro and then the san jose city

00:05:42.700 times all under the same umbrella writing about city council meetings but also character-driven

00:05:48.740 stories about uh past life regression counseling and people who were into guns or the whole kind

00:05:58.140 buffet of the Western American experience. And that was the jumping off point for so many things

00:06:04.160 that followed. And I was thinking, as I say, before I came on this call, I've made over the

00:06:07.880 years 14 different documentaries in the great state of California. So much of the last 25 years

00:06:16.640 for you, obviously, have been defined by all of these, I mean, what you could describe or has been

00:06:21.740 described by people that watch you, these sort of fringe subcultures, your willingness to enter

00:06:27.180 into that, you know, into worlds that, that people are curious about, but don't know much

00:06:32.040 about what, what was, what was the first, what was the inspiration for the first documentary?

00:06:36.100 I mean, you're, you're, you're there writing, chronicling, um, culture, but politics and,

00:06:41.040 you know, you're, you know, finding your way 14, just in California alone, documentaries.

00:06:46.080 Just in California. Yeah. So I, I, there's a psychological dimension to that. And then a

00:06:52.340 kind of professional like i i was someone who grew up in as i said south london i was always anxious

00:06:57.920 i was always worry prone i always saw other people and thought they've got the they've got

00:07:02.100 they've figured something out that i haven't uh but there's also a quality to feeling like an

00:07:08.180 outsider that it gives you uh observational skills it makes you attentive uh it makes you

00:07:14.580 a good listener because you suspect that um you suspect that other people clued up about something

00:07:21.740 or you just feel comforted by the idea

00:07:23.880 that you're enveloped in the strangeness

00:07:26.220 of how other people lead their lives.

00:07:27.740 So I was always a fringe dweller in that sense.

00:07:30.940 And I moved to America.

00:07:33.700 Yeah, I was always attracted to whether it was reading about

00:07:37.000 or finding out about practices that struck me as odd,

00:07:41.380 whether it was weird religious practices

00:07:43.140 or bizarre pathologies.

00:07:46.180 Then fast forward, I was in America figuring out

00:07:48.860 how I thought I should be a writer.

00:07:50.360 My dad's a writer.

00:07:51.160 i worked for spy magazine and then some friends uh after spy magazine that was a magazine you

00:07:57.040 know based in new york in the 90s it folded and then some friends went to work with the

00:08:01.160 documentary maker michael moore who at that time had made roger and me and was working on a new

00:08:07.120 tv series called tv nation and they uh my friend said like you should come and talk to michael

00:08:12.780 he's looking for some he needs to have a british correspondent because some of his money is coming

00:08:17.900 from the BBC so uh I went along underqualified nervous uh no wardrobe to speak of with no

00:08:26.760 reasonable right to expect anything uh to cover the meeting not realizing that all those things

00:08:32.740 lack of wardrobe underqualified nervous in Michael's eyes were kind of positives right

00:08:38.100 yeah he didn't want uh he didn't want uh a wind swept well a bit like yourself Kevin because you're

00:08:46.700 You've been credited with having good looks

00:08:50.260 and sort of being TV, being TV-ready.

00:08:52.920 Like, I wasn't that TV-ready guy.

00:08:55.240 And I think he thought, well, his awkwardness is an asset.

00:08:59.060 Like, his awkwardness and his sort of...

00:09:02.360 I mean, I think he might have assumed

00:09:04.420 that it was kind of a party trick almost.

00:09:08.280 Like, oh, he's intelligent, but he pretends to be bumbling.

00:09:10.700 In fact, I was just bumbling, but I was also very keen.

00:09:14.100 so he hired me to make my first segment segment which uh was about groups that think the world

00:09:19.520 is about to end and it was called millennium took me to oakland california funnily enough

00:09:25.300 uh among other places there were four or five different uh cults or sects featured but the

00:09:31.740 first one was led by harold camping and he was predicting the end of the world for later that

00:09:37.080 year 1994 wow uh it didn't end spoiler spoiler alert the world didn't end uh then i went down

00:09:45.780 to el cajon outside of uh san diego it was it was a ufo group called what were they called

00:09:52.340 uh i can't even remember what they were called they thought that they thought that uh ufos were

00:09:56.920 going to land in 2001 and uh spoiler alert that didn't happen either but that that kind of

00:10:04.380 experience of uh you know notwithstanding i had no tv skills what i did have was curiosity and and

00:10:11.480 a sense of uh fascination like i i if i my problem was i was over interested and i tended not to

00:10:17.920 interrupt like i was really like so when's the world actually gonna end i'm like well it's on

00:10:22.880 the thursday but it's too late for salvation because that happens on the tuesday you know

00:10:27.360 and all the details but I basically loved the experience of immersing myself in the in these

00:10:35.560 other mindsets like I sometimes pretentiously quote Friedrich Nietzsche the philosopher and say

00:10:40.040 like it's like his madness in individuals is rare but in epochs groups of people and religions it

00:10:48.240 is the law something like that in other words like we're all swimming in the waters of irrationality

00:10:54.720 we just don't see it you know and if we just recognize so that kind of that kind of uh

00:11:01.460 organized irrationality you know which isn't it's not psychosis right it's not that kind of madness 0.64

00:11:07.780 it's the madness of oh yeah i'm going to sell my house because the ufos are going to land or

00:11:13.600 because harold camping has told me that jesus is coming later in the year that's that's actually a

00:11:19.460 sane person who's been so conditioned by a belief system that he's acting in ways that are

00:11:25.540 irrational so in a weird way that first one i went on to do a second one about the ku klux klan

00:11:30.540 uh as they were rebranding themselves a civil whites group civil rights group for white people

00:11:36.120 that was in texas and arkansas and on and on but that those that first story about cults and and

00:11:44.120 in a way, was a template, set me off on a trajectory that I haven't deviated from.

00:11:50.200 You know, I do programs in a longer length now.

00:11:53.040 That was a 10-minute segment.

00:11:54.640 Now I do 60-minute or 90-minute documentaries.

00:11:57.740 It's very much been a furrow that I've plowed, you know, with a great deal of pleasure and

00:12:03.420 some success ever since.

00:12:06.160 And we'll get to the Inside the Manosphere, which I'd love to talk about your latest

00:12:10.240 documentary in a moment.

00:12:11.160 But what is there been a thread that connects? I mean, it's it's interesting.

00:12:15.260 One of the I mean, you've consistent watching some of these documentaries and inside the

00:12:19.920 Manosphere, you come across not as condescending, but truly interested, curious, open.

00:12:27.160 You create a safe space where, you know, people start to express themselves and then their

00:12:32.380 contradictions are exposed. And and but at the same time, you know, the way you just

00:12:37.860 described a rational irrational mindset um has there been a thread that connects all of these

00:12:45.300 documentaries beyond just the curiosity and the fringe but is it is there an empathy that you've

00:12:50.400 developed for many of these okay so yeah this is this this you've got to the heart of the better

00:12:55.340 and um the short version is i sometimes say uh the weirdest thing about weird people is how normal

00:13:03.960 they are yeah by which i mean that you you find out that people arrive at irrational well i would

00:13:11.260 consider irrationality and by the way i don't necessarily exclude myself from that but

00:13:16.260 it's kind of this fee it's satisfying very relatable human needs and i do try and disrupt

00:13:24.800 that binary of us and them like i do try and see them as people who are available they're up for

00:13:31.220 grabs that they're they're persuadable or if they're not persuadable because most of the time

00:13:36.320 they're actually not persuadable but they are they're emotionally present like they want to

00:13:41.280 relate they want to be friendly or that they want to persuade you of why what they're doing

00:13:47.520 is the right way and you've made a mistake like a very the first episode i made of this

00:13:52.020 my first tv series of my own was called weird weekends it was about militia men

00:13:57.640 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.

00:14:22.060 quite a paranoid mindset but but the the shock was going up there and sort of finding out wow

00:14:28.440 there's something about these guys this kind of room a little bit romantic and almost cool like

00:14:32.420 they were like cowboys like the seduction of it was palpable like it wasn't like how could you

00:14:37.580 possibly believe this it was like oh i kind of get the mystery and romance like everyone wants

00:14:42.860 to be the hero of their own life and this is a way of leading out an epic destiny then i met

00:14:49.340 Part of the same journey, I went to the headquarters of a group called Aryan Nations. 1.00

00:14:53.400 They were the most extreme of that world. 0.80

00:14:56.860 Like, they're sort of unapologetic or were neo-Nazis.

00:15:00.820 They lived in a compound up in Coeur d'Alene in northern Idaho.

00:15:05.160 And at that time, their pastor was a guy called their head.

00:15:08.000 They started themselves a church.

00:15:09.500 I don't know if that was a tax dodge or PR thing. 0.79

00:15:12.320 Or maybe they sincerely believed that they were the true Israelites, like these white guys. 0.67

00:15:17.560 but they they they lived in a compound that was straight out of central casting with a fence

00:15:22.520 around it and a guard tower and two german shepherds called hans and fritz i mean i was

00:15:28.340 scared going there the biggest uh the but i was so relieved when i met pastor richard butler and

00:15:34.700 he was like 85 years old and his his second in command or his aide de camp was called jerry

00:15:39.260 droodle who was about 70 years old and i thought if it comes to it i think i can take them right

00:15:44.580 like a physical if it gets physical um but they took me around and i remember jerry grudel uh

00:15:52.060 took me to the top of the guard tower and he starts talking about how much he likes england

00:15:55.600 and the town of cheltenham and he's a big fan of benny hill and then he starts talking about a

00:15:59.360 sitcom from the 70s called are you being served which will mean nothing to your audience but what

00:16:05.320 it meant to me was well this is a guy who's a deep anglophile number one but number two like this is

00:16:11.460 a guy who really wants to kind of be my friend now uh that's an awkward thing for a journalist

00:16:18.860 when he's dealing with a neo-nazi right i mean in one sense it isn't awkward but it's kind of him

00:16:25.560 it was it's borderline i mean it was kind of funny but it's also a little embarrassing it

00:16:29.740 was complicated and i but the surprise was wow these are people who really are in some respects

00:16:36.460 lonely right in some respects looking for connection and i'm not in any way trying to

00:16:41.520 minimize the hatefulness of it there's no excuse for it you know i deplore it obviously but

00:16:46.620 but you can't blind yourself to the the polyvalent quality of extremism you know and i've seen it

00:16:52.820 across the board whether it's in koalinga the you know the maximum security mental hospital

00:16:58.120 for sexually violent predators and you go among them and they are they are there presenting as

00:17:05.000 regular people and uh and you're like wow they they don't you know i mean i don't mean to be

00:17:11.860 glib but like you you sort of have to check yourself and and remind yourself of the things

00:17:18.560 they've done because you're being filmed you're making a documentary and actually there's an

00:17:24.300 expectation to bring an appropriate level of objectivity and and forbearance but at the same

00:17:28.960 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

00:17:34.960 nice guy you know he's an okay guy which is the paradox the paradox this is the cross i'm burdened

00:17:41.120 with um you mentioned one other thing which was manosphere which i know we're coming on to but

00:17:46.380 the other thing that's happened in the 25 years of working is that a lot of this so-called fringe

00:17:55.700 stuff went mainstream yeah you know and going back to the silicon valley and the changes in culture

00:18:02.240 i think the big thing we've seen the biggest change i've seen is uh how the internet but

00:18:10.000 social media specifically has allowed um people to aggregate people who in the in the past might

00:18:17.880 have not felt in community with people like before they might have shortwave radio magazines or they

00:18:24.840 a few of them might be on bbs's on the internet like bulletin boards but they they weren't um

00:18:31.300 pinging each other on snapchat you know or whatsapp or god forbid streaming live on their

00:18:36.440 own platforms and uh so in good ways we've seen the internet if you've got a disease and it's rare 0.79

00:18:43.400 you can now crowdsource solutions that's that's wonderful but if you are planning a race war

00:18:49.960 to initiate the end times uh you can also find your community it's not such a good thing and or

00:18:56.460 if you want to proselytize on behalf of being a flat earther or an anti-vaxxer you can find a

00:19:03.040 audience and not just that you can catalyze an even bigger audience by spreading that information

00:19:07.880 so those programs that in the past seemed not exactly harmless but i had the luxury of being

00:19:13.740 able to see them as uh part of something lonely like you the empathy that you built with them

00:19:20.720 felt relatively safe even the skinheads when i was with doing louis and the nazis they were

00:19:26.660 damaged men from difficult backgrounds who'd come out of prison some of them had developed

00:19:32.140 a kind of white racial identity as a safety mechanism having been in prison like i've seen

00:19:39.880 that in san quentin yeah it's very hard to go against the float you gang up and that that's

00:19:45.640 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

00:19:52.280 how it was but uh so you could sort of extend a bit of understanding and i guess you can still

00:19:59.040 but it's now closer to the the power is uh they less obviously hierarchical now it's not so now

00:20:07.420 they are in some respects equally powerful you know in some respects when i go and document

00:20:12.560 whether it's white nationalism or extremism or toxic content i'm just one more content maker

00:20:19.540 turning up to document another content maker and i no longer or or my bbc paymasters or whoever's

00:20:27.360 financing the project no longer owns the conversation and the and monopolizes the um

00:20:33.400 the platforms in the way that they used to meaning they're streaming at the same time that that like

00:20:39.300 ticky talky well in a small way they have they have they have their own outlet like so going back

00:20:44.440 five years i made a documentary called extreme and online uh that was about nick fuentes and

00:20:50.520 the groypers and and i spent uh a couple of days with nick fuentes who has since gone on to some

00:20:58.120 notoriety based on his affiliation with Kanye West or yay as he's now called and also his sort

00:21:06.120 of taking up the mantle post Charlie Kirk uh but he's he so irrespective of me them streaming me

00:21:12.560 when I arrived they're just people who've got platforms of their own right I mean midway through

00:21:16.740 making that program extreme and online it's on I'm not trying to do a big plug but I think it's

00:21:22.820 on BBC Select in the US, which no one has,

00:21:25.820 so I couldn't forget about that.

00:21:28.480 But I remember arriving and I was filming with him

00:21:31.700 and then I took a break.

00:21:33.580 We went back to London to kind of figure out next steps.

00:21:36.180 And in the meanwhile, he was streaming about me,

00:21:38.000 saying, I met a guy called Louis Theroux.

00:21:40.840 And people say, what's he like?

00:21:42.060 He's kind of pretentious.

00:21:43.340 He's kind of pretentious.

00:21:44.540 So he's got his, I mean, he's got his platform

00:21:48.440 and he's broadcasting his version of Our Encounter.

00:21:51.520 and then i've got mine and hopefully i'm reaching more people then fast forward a few years uh

00:21:58.080 but that was the first exposure to make your program and in a weird way i found it chastening

00:22:04.840 but also uh enjoyably enjoyably challenging right you know i like i sometimes i sometimes joke i

00:22:14.500 specialize in getting out of my depth and i i enjoyed the sense of i don't want my job to be

00:22:21.480 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

00:22:27.720 and and he's doing his version and he and he's releasing you know there was a guy called baked

00:22:33.080 alaska who was part of the same documentary and he filmed me while i was there and i filmed him

00:22:37.960 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

00:22:50.380 documentary for netflix which is called louis through inside the manosphere where i was either

00:22:55.360 being live streamed or appearing on podcasts in their in their world throughout and then being

00:23:03.400 made to be uncomfortable and having to deal with their gotchas or their attempts to discomfort

00:23:09.980 and discombobulate me uh it's it's fascinating i this notion i mean you're this iterative

00:23:17.760 conversation what you're making the movie it's making you i mean it's searching you you're

00:23:22.460 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

00:23:32.620 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

00:23:37.520 mean truthfully i knew going into it it would happen and i hoped it would happen but it's also

00:23:41.880 uncomfortable and then i did realize well it is chumming the water like gets everyone uh

00:23:47.440 it gets everyone but you know you raise a serious question which is um if they are feeding off my

00:23:56.200 content or feeding off my presence for their content um i'm going to preempt your question

00:24:03.260 am i am i in some way amplifying them am i a pawn in their game how do you deal with

00:24:11.100 um how do you deal with it like me platforming them or just actually bringing them attention or

00:24:18.480 as i say sort of being a character these live streamers they stream their lives uh more or less

00:24:27.240 24 not 24 7 because they're not asleep but it might be eight hours a day or 10 hours a day

00:24:33.460 The most recent example you'll know is Flavicular,

00:24:39.500 who I think you must be where he's,

00:24:42.060 he shouted you out.

00:24:43.260 I don't know if he's a fan,

00:24:44.840 but he thought you were better looking than J.D. Vance,

00:24:48.120 which in their world is meaningful.

00:24:52.160 Currency.

00:24:52.480 It's kind of a mixed,

00:24:53.240 it's a mixed blessing receiving that kind of compliment, right? 0.97

00:24:56.300 Yeah, from the Luxmaxers on the internet. 0.77

00:25:00.240 By the way, my son was very proud

00:25:04.360 because he was very familiar with Klavikur.

00:25:07.720 That's another conversation.

00:25:09.260 Yeah, you've got a 15-year-old,

00:25:10.220 which I know is actually the sweet spot.

00:25:12.620 One of the reveals of making the documentary was,

00:25:15.400 this isn't the manosphere, this is the boyosphere, right?

00:25:19.100 It's kids aged between 12 and maybe 17.

00:25:23.840 That's the sweet spot.

00:25:25.620 And in my day, we're not far apart in age,

00:25:28.900 but we probably grew up watching Dukes of Hazzard,

00:25:31.800 the A-Team.

00:25:33.120 Of course.

00:25:34.420 So it was B.A. Barakas, Pity the Fool. 0.99

00:25:37.200 Like, it was that... 0.99

00:25:37.820 And you thought, those are all...

00:25:39.440 Maybe the $6 million man, but there was a...

00:25:42.760 Or Starsky and Hutch.

00:25:43.720 There was a feeling like, these are badass.

00:25:46.440 You know, they break a few rules to get things done.

00:25:49.640 You know, they're not going to listen to the Chief. 0.99

00:25:52.220 They're going to go out and kick ass and take names 0.99

00:25:54.480 and do what they have to to catch the bad guy. 0.98

00:25:56.780 like there was a sort of an outlaw an outlaw kind of maverick code and in in in this day and age

00:26:03.660 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

00:26:52.920 know it's a little bit the language is a little bit blue like you know these there's not there's

00:26:59.040 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 0.74

00:27:56.480 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

00:28:37.080 So just interesting to me, I mean. 1.00

00:28:41.560 Canadian women are looking for more. 1.00

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.

00:28:51.680 I'm Jennifer Stewart.

00:28:52.860 And I'm Catherine Clark.

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.

00:29:01.140 All at different stages of their journey.

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

00:29:09.200 or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

00:29:12.120 A win is a win.

00:29:13.380 A win is a win.

00:29:14.520 I don't care what y'all say.

00:29:16.160 Yep, that's me, Clifford Taylor IV.

00:29:18.680 You might have seen the skits, the reactions,

00:29:21.260 my journey from basketball to college football,

00:29:23.180 or my career in sports media.

00:29:25.320 Well, somewhere along the way,

00:29:27.000 this platform became bigger than I ever imagined.

00:29:29.420 And now I'm bringing all of that excitement

00:29:31.220 to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show.

00:29:33.680 This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations

00:29:36.300 with some of your favorite athletes, creators,

00:29:38.520 and voices that not only deserve to be heard,

00:29:40.800 but celebrated.

00:29:42.060 One week, I'll take you behind the scenes

00:29:43.600 of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment.

00:29:45.940 And the next, we'll talk about life,

00:29:47.700 mental health, purpose, and even music.

00:29:50.440 The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast.

00:29:52.480 It's a space for honest conversations,

00:29:54.900 stories that don't always get told,

00:29:56.360 and for people who are chasing something bigger.

00:29:58.680 So if you've ever supported me

00:30:00.280 or you're just chasing down a dream,

00:30:02.120 this is right where you need to be.

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.

00:30:09.000 And for more behind the scenes,

00:30:10.300 follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok.

00:30:14.320 This week on the Sports Slice Podcast,

00:30:16.740 it's all about the NFL draft.

00:30:18.620 And we've got a special guest.

00:30:20.100 The director of the NFL's East-West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galko,

00:30:23.640 joins the Sports Slice Podcast to break down

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 Listen to the Sports Slice podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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

00:31:21.780 same prolific con artist.

00:31:23.880 I felt like I got hit by a truck.

00:31:25.860 I thought, how could this happen to me?

00:31:27.600 The cops didn't seem to care,

00:31:29.500 so they take matters into their own hands.

00:31:32.540 They said, oh, hell no.

00:31:34.160 I vowed I will be his last target.

00:31:36.600 He's going to get what he deserves.

00:31:40.960 Listen to The Girlfriends, Trust Me, Babe,

00:31:43.740 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

00:31:46.260 or wherever you get your podcasts.

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.

00:33:39.440 Louis, how old are the boys?

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

00:35:17.600 that's got its own social challenges

00:35:20.300 and got into kickboxing,

00:35:22.280 then got into reality TV,

00:35:23.960 but always had a sense of his own mission.

00:35:25.960 Good looking guy, muscular, six feet three,

00:35:30.180 and with evidently some natural gift

00:35:33.360 for charming women.

00:35:36.660 And so he had taken to the podcast circuit

00:35:41.060 and was doing interviews.

00:35:42.700 And then he was talking a lot

00:35:44.180 about various online sales techniques.

00:35:49.140 Part of it was something he called the PhD.

00:35:54.180 And it was the pimping hose degree.

00:35:55.900 And you could subscribe to his course

00:35:57.560 and he would teach you how to be a player,

00:36:00.480 for want of a better term.

00:36:01.300 It was basically a repackaged version of something.

00:36:04.680 I'd also made a program about,

00:36:06.360 called Pick Up Artistry,

00:36:08.260 which was this subculture of using

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,

00:37:08.780 put them on TikTok.

00:37:11.420 Most of it was TikTok.

00:37:13.280 I sometimes joke, it's not really good.

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.

00:37:20.340 And then that would get viral.

00:37:22.580 And then suddenly his name was everywhere.

00:37:24.440 And more and more people were clipping him

00:37:25.840 and getting more viral.

00:37:27.200 So that led to this moment of emergence of him

00:37:29.520 as the most Googled man on the planet.

00:37:30.980 But the techniques he used were picked up on

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

00:37:40.960 or slightly different.

00:37:42.720 And so for our documentary,

00:37:44.200 originally the hope was we might get Andrew Tate

00:37:46.500 or his brother Tristan Tate.

00:37:48.060 I continued a kind of back and forth with them,

00:37:51.800 DMing them as we were filming.

00:37:54.180 It never resulted in a one-on-one encounter.

00:37:57.460 But we have other contributors who sort of speak to the culture.

00:38:01.640 We have four main ones.

00:38:03.220 Justin Waller, who's a friend of Tate's,

00:38:05.280 A guy called Myron Gaines, who's sort of an associate of Nick Fuentes.

00:38:09.480 He's probably the most extreme one we follow.

00:38:11.540 He's a podcaster based in Miami.

00:38:14.540 We have Sneak, he's part of Fresh and Fit.

00:38:17.720 Sneako, whose real name is Nicholas de Belanthasi,

00:38:21.600 who's a streamer now based in New York.

00:38:23.840 And a UK-based streamer who goes by HS Tiki Toki,

00:38:28.940 real name Harrison Sullivan.

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

00:38:40.500 is going viral and being streamed by our kids.

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?

00:38:58.300 And he's like, yeah, Dad, it is funny.

00:39:00.260 You've got to admit it's funny.

00:39:01.240 This is me being my kids now.

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

00:43:36.620 And I'm helpless.

00:43:38.960 You know, they've kind of hacked our brains.

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

00:51:47.120 I mean, I can't think of even an example.

00:51:49.420 They're not thinkers and readers.

00:51:51.260 You know, they're definitely...

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.

00:52:07.100 But actually, it's a funhouse mirror.

00:52:09.340 So we are recognizably ourselves,

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

00:55:27.280 and the world around them.

00:55:28.700 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce

00:55:30.300 the Honest Talk podcast.

00:55:32.380 I'm Jennifer Stewart.

00:55:33.600 And I'm Catherine Clark.

00:55:34.820 And in this podcast,

00:55:35.900 we interview Canada's most inspiring women.

00:55:38.560 Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians,

00:55:41.220 and newsmakers,

00:55:42.120 all at different stages of their journey.

00:55:44.260 So if you're looking to connect,

00:55:46.120 then we hope you'll join us.

00:55:47.540 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio

00:55:49.920 or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

00:55:52.860 A win is a win.

00:55:54.100 A win is a win.

00:55:55.260 I don't care what y'all say.

00:55:56.120 Yep, that's me, Clifford Taylor IV.

00:55:59.420 You might have seen the skits, the reactions,

00:56:02.000 my journey from basketball to college football,

00:56:03.940 or my career in sports media.

00:56:06.040 Well, somewhere along the way,

00:56:07.600 this platform became bigger than I ever imagined.

00:56:10.340 And now I'm bringing all of that excitement

00:56:11.960 to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show.

00:56:14.560 This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations

00:56:17.020 with some of your favorite athletes, creators,

00:56:19.260 and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated.

00:56:22.800 One week, I'll take you behind the scenes

00:56:24.320 of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment.

00:56:26.700 And the next, we'll talk about life,

00:56:28.440 mental health, purpose, and even music.

00:56:31.200 The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast.

00:56:33.220 It's a space for honest conversations,

00:56:35.620 stories that don't always get told,

00:56:37.100 and for people who are chasing something bigger.

00:56:39.400 So if you've ever supported me

00:56:41.020 or you're just chasing down a dream,

00:56:42.920 this is right where you need to be.

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.

00:56:49.700 And for more behind the scenes,

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

00:57:40.560 Rule one, never mess with a country girl. 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

00:57:50.140 We always say that, trust your girlfriends.

00:57:53.880 I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...

00:57:57.660 Oh my God, this is the same man.

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.

00:58:17.320 He's going to get what he deserves.

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?

00:58:42.800 How do we address the crisis of our men and boys?

00:58:44.940 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.

00:58:53.000 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.

00:59:08.960 But also this anti-Semitic, you know, reveal, which seems to be the one, I mean, that connects so many of the dots.

00:59:17.200 I mean, you can't even get started on Nick Fuentes, but, you know, Sneeko's challenges with that. 0.99

00:59:23.240 You know, I know he's QAn adjacent, but all these guys, there was an undercurrent. 1.00

00:59:27.480 Even Harrison Sullivan and his relationship with his mother, which, you know, is a whole nother thing. 1.00

00:59:32.720 Their lack of relationship perhaps with their father.

00:59:35.260 And that was also modestly explored.

00:59:37.420 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?

00:59:47.960 I think it's key to understanding that.

00:59:52.720 And I think there's a couple of things behind it.

00:59:54.520 And by the way, thank you for referencing

00:59:56.740 the psychological dimension.

00:59:58.640 I do think absent fathers is a common thread

01:00:02.720 through a lot of the upbringings that we see

01:00:04.500 and a lack of parenting.

01:00:07.980 And there's a lack of positive role models,

01:00:10.500 which by the way, as a denizen of prisons

01:00:13.420 in my documentaries and jails and high crime areas,

01:00:16.300 is a very common thread.

01:00:19.700 Like I did a film about Milwaukee,

01:00:21.480 about it's the most incarcerated postcode

01:00:27.200 or zip code in the US.

01:00:29.440 At the time anyway, it was an area of Milwaukee.

01:00:31.580 I thought about calling the documentary

01:00:33.180 like the city without fathers.

01:00:36.140 Like it was just, there were no fathers there, right?

01:00:38.420 And actually, then you get this cycle of violence.

01:00:42.640 To the point about antisemitism,

01:00:44.780 uh two main things one is uh wherever you find conspiracy theories anti-semitism is usually

01:00:54.960 not far behind um it's kind of you know it's been phrased in the past that anti-semitism

01:01:03.200 is the socialism of fools um and this goes back at least to the 19th century and in fact 0.73

01:01:09.340 further like i during the pandemic i read a book about black death 1347 to 49 a third of the 0.99

01:01:17.440 european population died and job one when the black death came to your town seemed to be uh

01:01:25.980 round up the jews and harass or kill them you know and that was like well we don't know if it works 0.96

01:01:33.620 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 0.99

01:01:40.980 sadly part of our christian legacy is an anti there's an anti-semitic dimension to that and

01:01:46.680 you know as as a kind of perennial other like viewed as people who are um in different ways

01:01:55.700 not fully trusted uh it's a kind of easy sort of go to uh an attempt to uh stigmatize dehumanize

01:02:04.480 and um you know in extremists actually harm and hurt i think the other part of it is as a taboo

01:02:12.620 and you know and rightly so uh you know i think bigotry obviously should be a taboo but taboos

01:02:19.240 are also catnip online so it's kind of the ultimate you know the part they call it the final

01:02:25.520 boss of taboos like when you've when you've kind of explored the boundaries with sexual content or

01:02:32.540 uh stay racist or content or fighting or sexism where do you go where's where else do you go for

01:02:40.500 the ultimate outrage you that's where you you start uh indulging in anti-semitic tropes or

01:02:46.260 calling out antisemitism or rather indulging in antisemitism so i think um it's a symptom of

01:02:54.440 uh the outrage economy as well uh so yeah it's it's depressing and in fact it's the last reveal

01:03:01.940 of the film in a way but nevertheless that's where an attention economy uh winds up i and i don't

01:03:10.600 even i think across the board i think there's parts of it that are real uh i i think myron

01:03:15.760 gains is genuinely anti-semitic i think with harrison sullivan notwithstanding that he

01:03:21.080 clearly says anti-semitic things i think he and ed matthews as well it's almost like they say it's

01:03:29.760 with so much ignorance yeah that you feel like you don't even really know what you're saying

01:03:35.920 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

01:03:40.580 right right you know it it feels like a either a profound ignorance or a or a profound need to

01:03:48.900 just say something bonkers for them uh and then in other cases it feels like it's based on

01:03:55.840 it's mixed in with uh a really deep uh i really a deeply felt bigotry um and and so the anti-semitism

01:04:05.740 is more real in those cases.

01:04:07.860 Louis, do you feel, I mean,

01:04:08.980 after you complete a documentary like this,

01:04:11.220 I mean, you know, and I appreciate just the empathy

01:04:15.560 which you, you know, indulge, you know,

01:04:20.560 and really try to, you know, understand

01:04:23.300 and at least how you come across

01:04:25.920 is not being judgmental in terms of the inquiry.

01:04:30.120 But after the manuscript,

01:04:31.920 was this something left you wanting, frustrated,

01:04:35.420 hopeless hopeful uh deep more deeply concerned about the trend lines of where we're going and

01:04:43.200 you know how it's it's multifaceted with these platforms and you know rumble not just kick and

01:04:48.200 others and not that the platforms themselves are the problem but the content and um just

01:04:54.360 the nature of the brain and the algorithms and uh truth trust we haven't even gotten it

01:05:00.980 yeah it's hard i mean it's hard it's hard to um like i often think that my um documentaries are

01:05:09.140 informed by a spirit of optimism and and as much as it's uh it's true that i focus on the dark side

01:05:17.120 of life you know sexual predators or criminals or gang leaders very often it's usually in the

01:05:22.620 context of seeing how their pastimes or their or their you know the things that they're indulged in

01:05:28.460 are informed by a need for community, a need for meaning,

01:05:32.600 a need to be the heroes of their lives.

01:05:34.600 And there are positive values mixed in with that

01:05:38.400 and trying to see it in the round in that way.

01:05:44.440 So I do allow for those elements of this world that are humorous.

01:05:51.340 I know it sounds weird to maybe even acknowledge that,

01:05:53.620 uh that are creative disruptive free-spirited anarchic you know going as a fan of gangster rap

01:06:03.180 by the way which also there's a little bit and wrestling like these all you know pro wrestling

01:06:08.580 you take on a name all of these worlds which involve creativity and self-performance and

01:06:15.340 feuding and outrage so i i do i allow for those and i recognize those as parts of the car like

01:06:21.600 We don't want to be the old guy who's like,

01:06:23.960 kids these days, you know, like, you know,

01:06:26.460 in my day, we just played with marmels and yo-yos

01:06:29.200 and, you know, we went to the game.

01:06:31.440 You know, like, clearly, this is, you know,

01:06:34.080 that needs to provoke an outrage.

01:06:35.940 All of that needs to be acknowledged

01:06:38.020 as an evergreen part of the human experience.

01:06:41.780 I don't know in terms of where the culture goes.

01:06:46.020 Like, it's clear, it's also clear that

01:06:47.460 these platforms aren't going anywhere, right?

01:06:49.700 We have to live with them.

01:06:50.760 I mean, one possibility is that they just get overtaken by the next AI.

01:06:55.620 Things are changing so quickly.

01:06:58.080 It may be that this tsunami is just overtaken by the fact

01:07:02.640 there's another even bigger tsunami behind it.

01:07:05.380 The really basic and quotidian thing is that,

01:07:08.460 yes, we should discourage our kids from being on phones and screens too much.

01:07:11.720 Keep the phones out of the bedroom.

01:07:13.780 Talk to your kids.

01:07:14.780 Phones out of schools.

01:07:16.820 Don't give them the phones to a certain age.

01:07:20.760 check what they're watching if they you know i'm not giving my 11 year old a phone

01:07:25.180 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

01:07:31.920 something we haven't figured it out but you know be present be a present be around for your kids

01:07:36.860 all of that stuff but so i have micro suggestions but on the macro stuff uh i don't have much

01:07:45.660 concrete except to say that i if i've seen anything in all these years of making work

01:07:50.560 in this kind of world i am struck by the adaptability of humans are are are wherewithal

01:07:58.560 in terms of dealing with the impossible like anything that's come along and also as a historian

01:08:03.860 i mentioned i went to oxford i'm going to mention that again but you know we've been through so many

01:08:08.700 cataclysms and upheavals you know it was probably it was the printing press or was the industrial

01:08:13.720 revolution um it was tv it was gangster rap going back to 92 charlton heston and tipper gore

01:08:20.700 you know we thought it was the end of the world i'm not i'm not trying to trivialize it but

01:08:24.280 you know it was that feeling of like what our kids are listening to cop killer by iced tea

01:08:28.900 nothing's ever going to be the same again so i do try and keep it in perspective and um but i also

01:08:37.080 think it's about policing the content in ways that are uh modest and achievable you know and

01:08:43.840 picking your kids up on things that they say and having conversations with them i do think that

01:08:49.560 we've i do think that the i think the future is bright but that's more of an act of faith

01:08:53.980 than an observation about reality what's uh what what's the next project

01:08:58.540 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

01:09:12.800 uh i've got i'm talking to netflix about doing something else i don't know it's it's it's a

01:09:19.280 strange situation where your job involves documenting like dysfunction like it feels

01:09:25.340 like I'm a parasite on you know the apocalyptic trends of humanity like I always I shouldn't even

01:09:31.620 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

01:09:52.940 and a city that was kind of in the throes

01:09:56.680 of kind of breaking apart.

01:09:58.700 I love LA.

01:09:59.520 Like, I'm not trying to be rude about the city,

01:10:02.400 but part of its majesty...

01:10:03.580 Blessed and cursed, I appreciate.

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.

01:10:11.500 So there's no shortage of subjects,

01:10:13.760 which is either a good thing or a bad thing,

01:10:16.500 depending on whether you're a documentary maker

01:10:18.660 or the governor of California.

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

01:10:32.020 you might have seen the skits my basketball and college football journey or my career in sports

01:10:36.940 media well now i'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast the clipper show this is

01:10:42.400 a place for raw unfilled conversations with athletes creators and voices that not only

01:10:47.220 deserve to be heard but celebrated so let's get to it listen to the clipper show on the

01:10:52.100 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

01:10:54.080 or wherever you get your podcasts. And for more

01:10:56.020 behind the scenes, follow at Clifford

01:10:57.900 and at TikTok Podcast Network on

01:11:00.040 TikTok. When a group of

01:11:01.980 women discover they've all dated

01:11:03.760 the same prolific con artist,

01:11:06.380 they take matters into their

01:11:07.860 own hands. I vowed

01:11:10.040 I will be his last target.

01:11:11.880 He is not going to get away with this.

01:11:13.980 He's going to get what he deserves.

01:11:15.940 We always say that.

01:11:17.620 Trust your girlfriends.

01:11:20.240 Listen to the girlfriends.

01:11:21.520 Trust me, babe, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:11:51.520 flying under the radar.

01:11:53.060 This is the insight you won't hear anywhere else.

01:11:55.620 If you want to understand the draft like an insider,

01:11:57.760 you don't want to miss this episode.

01:11:59.780 Listen to the Sports Slice podcast

01:12:01.120 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

01:12:03.880 or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:12:05.560 And for more, follow Timbo Slice Life 12

01:12:07.760 and TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok.

01:12:10.960 In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd

01:12:13.700 was accused of fathering twins,

01:12:15.840 but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.

01:12:17.900 You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct?

01:12:21.520 I doctored the test ones.

01:12:23.480 It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.

01:12:28.280 Two more men who'd been through the same thing.

01:12:30.540 Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini.

01:12:32.540 My mind was blown.

01:12:34.200 I'm Stephanie Young.

01:12:35.620 This is Love Trapped.

01:12:36.980 Laura, Scottsdale Police.

01:12:38.800 As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.

01:12:43.500 Listen to the Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app,

01:12:46.300 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:12:49.500 This is an iHeart Podcast.

01:12:51.520 Guaranteed human.

This is Gavin Newsom - April 23, 2026

And, This Is The Man Who Survived The Manosphere - Louis Theroux

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