TRIGGERnometry - Where Did the Mainstream Media Go Wrong？ - David Fuller of Rebel Wisdom

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishan.

00:00:08.800 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:13.840 Delighted to say we're joined today by a reverse guest. We've just been on his show and here he is

00:00:18.480 talking to us as the founder of Rebel Wisdom. He used to be a journalist and documentary

00:00:22.980 filmmaker for BBC and Channel 4 for many years. David Fuller, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:27.540 Thank you. It's good to be in the other role.

00:00:30.980 It is. It's good to have you in the other role.

00:00:32.820 I thought we had a great productive conversation on your show.

00:00:36.220 And, you know, actually, maybe we can reveal a little bit of how our connection started,

00:00:41.060 which was you got in touch with us saying, I've got a bit of a story to tell.

00:00:45.020 So before we get into that very interesting story, just tell everybody who are you,

00:00:49.400 how are you, where you are, what is the journey that leads you here sitting and talking to us?

00:00:53.180 Yeah. So I'm a journalist, filmmaker. I thought about this just before I came. I think I might be one of the last people who actually got their start in journalism via CFAX, which the Americans watching will have no idea what that is, but I think some of the Brits will.

00:01:08.500 So TV, before kind of the internet really existed, you pressed a special button on your remote control and you got up these kind of little hidden pages.

00:01:17.300 I worked for BBC South and CFAX, trained as a video journalist and then ended up with Channel 4 News for many years, mostly doing foreign affairs for Channel 4 News.

00:01:29.080 And then I started making documentaries. And the reason that I guess we're having this conversation is because I began, I sort of made the move from the kind of mainstream traditional media into the alternative media in about 2018 with Rebel Wisdom, which started with a documentary that I did with Jordan Peterson, and then it's kind of developed into an interest in the intellectual dark web, and also in the topic of sense making.

00:01:55.720 and the thing that i'm really interested in why i'm really interested in this conversation we had

00:02:00.260 a great interview the other day like what are what what is this sort of alternative media space

00:02:07.380 what are the what are the opportunities of it and what are the challenges of it and i think that's

00:02:11.360 a really like it's a question i wrestle with a lot like what are the positives and also what are the

00:02:16.320 negatives because i've got a strong sense that there's a lot of negatives from the traditional

00:02:22.280 media, like there's a real sense that it's becoming performative, it's becoming a little

00:02:28.660 bit more ideologically captured, it's becoming increasingly sort of corrupted, especially in the

00:02:35.740 States. I think the States is in a much worse situation than we are in the UK. But if we're

00:02:40.900 seeing that fail, is the alternative media going to take over? How is it going to take over? And

00:02:47.800 What are the failure conditions of that alternative media?

00:02:51.080 And how do we pursue truth in a kind of post, in an alternative age and sort of post mainstream age?

00:02:57.800 Because I do have this sense that these institutions are breaking down increasingly fast, partly because of the rise of digital media, the rise of alternative media.

00:03:07.260 We're getting all of these different perspectives, which is really valuable.

00:03:10.240 But I'm also kind of worried that we're losing a lot of the ability to discern truth.

00:03:16.060 like a lot of the checks and balances that we built up over over years decades centuries we're

00:03:21.000 losing and what was great about our interview that we did the other day was that um it was really

00:03:27.020 like we had a real good back and forth of kind of challenge and disagreement and that's really

00:03:32.880 valuable that's really something that I don't see enough of and that's something I'm concerned about

00:03:37.560 so I just wanted to say thank you for kind of introducing um that that was the the nature of

00:03:43.640 interview we're going to do and then how it played out because I called it walking the talk on free

00:03:47.900 speech which I think you did and that's something that I really respect and value. Well we appreciate

00:03:52.920 that and thanks for having us on the show and we'll talk about the mainstream media and also

00:03:58.560 the alternative media later on because I think that's a very important part of the conversation

00:04:02.900 but let's talk about the interesting story that I teased at the top because you made this

00:04:08.420 documentary called a glitch in the matrix uh and it was uh covering uh the the jumping off point is

00:04:15.260 is the kathy newman interview with jordan peterson but it explores a lot more than that uh first of

00:04:20.820 all just tell everybody a little bit about that and then maybe you start to get into what happened

00:04:24.900 once you made that yeah and you've seen you've both seen the documentary yeah yeah so and it was

00:04:30.820 very good by the way yeah it was really yeah it was it so the backstory is in 2017 so i was still

00:04:39.420 sort of working as a documentary maker and uh doing freelance shifts mostly at channel 4 news

00:04:44.720 um which kind of ties into the kathy newman have you worked with her directly yes yeah um i mean

00:04:51.700 everyone as a producer i was kind of i'd write scripts and we'd kind of i actually messaged her

00:04:56.820 directly after the Jordan Peterson film came out to say I thought I really liked the way they sort

00:05:02.880 of had this like um sense of you had a sense of like they mutually respected each other by the

00:05:08.140 end of the interview there was the sort of subtext that I saw and I thought was really really good

00:05:12.340 um so I actually messaged us straight after after it um but going back to 2017 I've always had a

00:05:19.320 real interest in philosophy in like spirituality transformation religion and always been a little

00:05:25.760 bit frustrated that you don't get enough space like the framework in legacy media is really kind

00:05:31.400 of narrow and I'd always kind of thought there's more to it than that there's more frames there's

00:05:36.240 more perspectives there's more there's more than we're being shown through like the legacy media

00:05:42.360 and the mainstream media frame and so I pursued a lot of my own interests a lot of stories about

00:05:48.880 like psychedelic therapy and these in these kind of like fringe things I think are really valuable

00:05:54.280 really interesting that might change our culture at some point in the future psychedelic medicine

00:05:58.300 being one of them um but in 2017 i first discovered jordan peterson and my immediate thought was

00:06:04.940 wow this guy has the message that is just going to go viral like i just had this sense of like

00:06:12.060 this is exactly what the culture needs right now because we've lost so much of like traditional

00:06:17.420 values it's been kind of excluded from like the the kind of i call it like a low resolution grand

00:06:23.360 narrative of the liberal media is like frame those things out and it was like Jordan Peterson

00:06:28.120 just had this kind of like archetypal force almost of someone who was like channeling something or

00:06:35.100 coming with more than just his his own personal perspective and I think a lot of that has to do

00:06:39.520 with Jung the psychologist Jung talked about kind of the power of the collective unconscious the

00:06:45.400 power of the archetypal and he was really kind of bringing a lot of that into the into the culture

00:06:50.000 and that has a huge force a huge power and I'd done a lot of work around Jung as well I'd done

00:06:55.520 a lot of study of Jung I trained as a counselor and I could kind of see this is this is really

00:07:01.800 vital and it's also like I'm also aware like the new atheists the sort of Sam Harris Richard Dawkins 0.98

00:07:08.420 had this whole stranglehold on the culture and it was very difficult to get when I was a filmmaker

00:07:13.400 it's very difficult to get films made about kind of religion or spirituality or all of these kind

00:07:17.460 of things because the new atheists pretty much all the commissioning editors know that they're

00:07:21.980 going to be attacked by the likes of Dawkins if they commission something that says it's on a

00:07:26.480 kind of spiritual topic so to see someone come along take on the new atheists on their own turf 0.90

00:07:32.700 and basically I'd say beat them like if you looked what happened online all of the sort of Sam Harris

00:07:38.340 fans are sort of saying oh actually no there's to dismiss centuries of religious thinking is 1.00

00:07:44.560 really naive and suddenly you had this sort of like you're an idiot if you think that religion's 1.00

00:07:49.300 got any truth to it to you're an idiot if you think that there's no truth in religion and I 1.00

00:07:52.920 think a lot of that was down to Peterson so I kind of looked at it and I thought there's the 0.99

00:07:56.880 cultural side there's the kind of political side of Peterson but I was way more interested in like

00:08:01.840 this the Jungian side the synchronicity the his kind of yeah this sort of sense of

00:08:08.180 a completely different perspective of who we are and what we are as human beings was something he

00:08:14.300 was bringing so I was like this guy and so I flew out to pay for my own ticket flew out to see him

00:08:19.860 in Toronto saw one of his bible lectures and then got an interview with him the next day

00:08:24.260 went to his house interviewed him about Jung about synchronicity like that was the main thing

00:08:30.860 we were talking about was like this idea of synchronicity which is um synchronicity would

00:08:35.900 be defined as like coincidences that have a deeper meaning like something happens it's like oh the

00:08:40.660 universe is trying to tell you something or there's there's more to it than than is immediately

00:08:44.540 and you kind of follow those synchronicities in your life I think as you start to kind of

00:08:48.040 navigate by them um but yeah so we talked about synchronicity and how these kind of strange

00:08:52.740 coincidences have a deeper meaning and I started editing the documentary and then literally one

00:08:59.400 or two days after I brought that documentary out the start of 2018 he was on the Kathy that he had

00:09:06.500 the Kathy Newman interview on Channel 4 News where I used to work for around 10 years with

00:09:13.140 Kathy Newman who I used to work with and it's like that is a synchronicity in itself and I was like

00:09:20.240 what on earth is this about I watched it and thought it was as I said I thought I thought

00:09:24.640 it was a really fascinating piece I thought there was so much going on in that one interview

00:09:30.700 at first I tried to I got I was in touch with Jordan I was in touch with Kathy and I wanted

00:09:35.600 I saw them having this increasingly bad-tempered falling out in public,

00:09:40.620 and I hoped that they could then stay in contact.

00:09:43.760 And Jordan wanted another interview to talk about why this had happened,

00:09:46.980 and Kathy was resistant to that.

00:09:49.600 Well, Kathy didn't want to go there.

00:09:50.580 Channel 4 News basically kind of pulled up the shutters

00:09:52.920 and didn't want to go there.

00:09:55.420 Jordan was still keen to kind of have another interview about,

00:09:57.840 okay, why did this blow up?

00:09:59.100 What is it?

00:09:59.760 Which I thought would have been a fantastic interview to sort of say,

00:10:02.840 there's all of these different layers of the alternative media clashing with the mainstream

00:10:07.680 media this kind of old tired way of kind of gotcha journalism all of all of these things just came

00:10:13.520 together in one then the kind of you've got the sex dynamics you've got the kind of gender dynamics

00:10:17.380 it was all just there's so much there and so I tried to kind of bring them together behind the

00:10:22.800 scenes for a while that wasn't working so I then thought okay what do I do okay I just put it all

00:10:27.060 into this documentary which became Glitch in the Matrix and Glitch in the Matrix looked at

00:10:31.920 it was subtitles uh jordan peterson the mainstream media and intellectual dark web

00:10:36.720 and it just looked at everything that happened since 2016 the rise of trump the sort of like

00:10:42.400 naive as i said like the low resolution grand narrative of liberalism that was starting to

00:10:47.180 get all of these holes in it and then like the clash between alternative media and mainstream

00:10:51.480 media and all of these different layers that i just put into this documentary with about the

00:10:56.520 kathy newman jordan peterson interview um and it's done by far it's by far the most jordan

00:11:03.300 peterson uploaded it to his channel where it's still i think now the second most popular film

00:11:07.880 he's ever put out on his channel it's got about five million views there it's got another million

00:11:11.820 views on on the rebel wisdom channel and i'm still proud of it i mean it's it's from it's a

00:11:17.780 certain period of of time but it yeah it just felt like it was a i mean i don't know if your

00:11:25.060 viewers would respond to this kind of word but I felt like it was kind of channeled it was it was

00:11:28.400 just sort of a it was it was a stream of consciousness thing of just like okay I've

00:11:32.180 been thinking about this stuff like two years and tried to get it all into this documentary

00:11:35.880 but the interesting thing with the documentary was it still felt incredibly current even though

00:11:42.680 it was from four years ago you still felt as if in a way we haven't really moved on we are still

00:11:48.720 wrestling with these issues we are still wrestling with these problems do you think that we've moved

00:11:53.240 donatal or have we just remained stagnated and in a way not knowing how to escape the problems that

00:11:59.660 you you know that you brought to the surface there yeah it's a really really good point i think

00:12:04.000 i think we haven't i mean this is the this is the kind of tragedy of the post of the of the 0.99

00:12:09.820 trump presidency as i think the trump presidency was in many ways a kind of like it was a fuck you 0.99

00:12:15.100 to kind of liberal like there's a button mark fuck you in in i think brexit and trump were both 0.99

00:12:21.140 of that like our societies are too split and there's this kind of subtle or not so subtle 0.99

00:12:27.580 hatred of like there's this kind of worldview which is like we're so inclusive of absolutely

00:12:32.220 everyone from everywhere apart from those people who don't think like us and unfortunately those

00:12:36.240 people who don't think like us are an awful lot of the population and there's sound reasons why 1.00

00:12:40.820 they don't think like us or like them and so yeah I think there's almost been no or very little I

00:12:47.680 think I think there probably has been some but very little learning about like why Trump happened

00:12:52.820 why Brexit happened because I think it again I'd use a Jungian frame and a Petersonian frame I

00:13:00.220 don't think we've read we've wrestled with the shadow like the shadow is like all the parts of

00:13:07.160 ourselves that we don't want to admit or deny or repress and there's so much of like Trump is a

00:13:12.040 perfect example like he has that reaction because he's all of those parts of yourself that you don't

00:13:17.020 want to admit. And I think in so many of these places, like we're in a time where we're going

00:13:23.020 to have to wrestle with all of these shadows and we're not doing it. Like we haven't done it. We

00:13:27.820 haven't worked. Okay. Why did it happen? Because the question is why did it happen? It's something

00:13:31.740 to do with, with me. And if we don't accept that, um, all of these people that we're kind of

00:13:36.740 rejecting, that we're judging, that we're, um, demonizing our aspects of ourselves, we're never

00:13:42.640 going to get through. And that's the kind of the key kind of realization. I don't think many people

00:13:47.620 went through after Trump. It was just this sort of sense of opposition, rejection, and very,

00:13:54.160 very little learning. And it's true in kind of personal, it's true in any of our sort of personal

00:14:00.380 lives. If we don't learn the lessons, we're going to be forced to learn them in more and more

00:14:05.280 difficult and more and more catastrophic ways. Like things start falling apart. If we won't

00:14:09.820 learn the lesson of a certain negative pattern that we have or a negative kind of belief structure

00:14:14.680 that we have then it's just going to keep coming up and it's going to come up worse and worse and

00:14:18.020 worse until we learn that lesson I think generally that's where we're at in society is I think you're

00:14:23.000 right I think I think that's in a way it's a tragedy that the documentary holds up so well

00:14:28.320 because I think it shows that we haven't really moved past that much and do you think part of the

00:14:34.400 using the term the shadow part of the shadow of liberal people is the belief that they're right

00:14:41.480 and there's an arrogance about that and if you go against them you're wrong and therefore you

00:14:48.000 deserve derision you deserve to be mocked and once that happens you stop having a conversation

00:14:53.940 yeah i think we all suffer from that but i think it's it i think that perspective is in is in shadow

00:15:00.500 it's that's kind of the liberal shadow because there's this paradox of being open to absolutely

00:15:05.980 everything being open to all all genders sexualities races and i and that is obviously

00:15:13.500 necessary like that's a necessary thing but then there's this hidden shadow bit of like

00:15:18.260 yeah but secretly we reject all of those people who don't think like all the bigoted

00:15:22.080 deplorables and that's the paradox i think that we're still wrestling with so i think it is it

00:15:28.060 is true but that's in shadow for for kind of like the as i've said like the low resolution

00:15:32.340 liberal worldview so you make the documentary yeah and uh the documentary i wouldn't say was

00:15:40.760 you know super critical of anyone in particular actually i thought it was quite balanced it was

00:15:45.560 a good piece uh and what happens from there so in the aftermath of that so there were some

00:15:52.320 criticisms of kathy newman in there um although i tried to balance that with saying not unreasonable

00:15:57.600 given the interview and how it went yeah yeah you know if someone's missed five open goals in

00:16:04.100 the match you sort of go maybe they didn't have the best game yeah i think that's fair enough um

00:16:08.880 but also i tried to give the context that she was kind of thinking about a five minute interview

00:16:13.160 she wasn't thinking about half an hour interview she was thinking about five minutes

00:16:16.380 cut down where she was sort of which is another factor in the kind of contrast of like alternative

00:16:22.240 versus like we're now in a long form environment where you can actually kind of dig in a little bit

00:16:28.060 more and unpack complicated ideas and that whole kind of sausage making factory of the news putting

00:16:34.140 something into three or five minutes is just it's just completely unfit for purpose but yeah so i

00:16:39.540 did say in it that it was an ongoing car crash for channel four news uh for channel four i think

00:16:45.480 and i knew i was i knew i was i knew it was going to be very difficult to go back in i've been

00:16:49.520 working in channel four uh in channel four news a few weeks before that i've been continuing to

00:16:54.860 freelance there on a fairly regular basis and i knew it would at least make it difficult to go

00:16:59.960 back into the newsroom like it'd be quite embarrassing or difficult to be going in after

00:17:03.120 having put that out um but all of my as soon as i'd done that the the freelance shifts kind of

00:17:09.920 dried up and then someone came to an event about a year afterwards and told me that i was a guy

00:17:15.560 had been banned from ITN when he um when he came in he said oh I told them I was coming to this

00:17:20.480 event they said oh he's the guy who's been banned from ITN so that kind of and I kind of knew it at

00:17:27.240 the time that I put that documentary out I did kind of I wasn't I wasn't naive I knew that it

00:17:32.820 was probably going to make things difficult at least and maybe ending my um career with

00:17:39.700 channel 4 news um and making it potentially difficult to work in the tv industry i think

00:17:46.040 i don't want to over overdo it but um yeah i knew it i knew it would sort of

00:17:51.900 it sort of puts me on i sided with jordan peterson i guess ahead of my current employer

00:17:57.180 at the time is is the way that i kind of but it was a huge opportunity like i don't i don't

00:18:03.560 regret that because rebel wisdom and this kind of new and fascinating exploration in the alternative

00:18:10.920 media started from that moment and so i don't regret any of that at all but just jump in why

00:18:16.840 did you do that because that could be seen as an act of self-sabotage you know this was your bread

00:18:22.420 and butter this is how you put food on the table why would you go essentially go against your

00:18:28.200 employers and support jordan peterson um i think because i took so seriously like obviously i was

00:18:38.020 really highly influenced by jordan peterson at the time still um huge fan of his work and i took

00:18:44.260 incredibly seriously and still do his injunction to tell the truth like to tell the truth no matter

00:18:52.580 what and and the paradox or the the the great thing about that is that it has worked i'd say

00:19:00.900 it's worked out right i'd say it it has um yeah it's been a fascinating exploration of from

00:19:08.660 following jordan peterson and and look like a lot of the first films that we did were about

00:19:13.240 the jordan peterson phenomenon like what is it about his message right now what does it say about

00:19:18.540 the culture. We kind of called him a one-man lightning rod for the culture war. So it was

00:19:23.520 just this sense of, which I think I'd always had anyway, but it was just a sense of it's the right

00:19:28.500 thing to do. It's the right thing to do. I think I've got something to contribute. I think it's

00:19:33.920 the right thing to say at this moment. And I think it's that feeling of following truth to me feels

00:19:45.260 like I'd say I've made that a priority in my life and I've tried to kind of live to that as much as

00:19:52.900 I can um while also being aware that it can be very you can never kind of tell yourself that's

00:19:59.580 why that's the only reason you're doing things because you're going to end up bullshitting 0.87

00:20:02.640 yourself and um we've all got yeah self-aggrandizement and stuff like that is something I'm

00:20:08.820 wary of but it is something I've tried to make a a priority and I've I trained as a counselor

00:20:14.020 and i know and this was articulated by jordan peterson as well it's like the value of counseling

00:20:21.300 the value of personal growth is orienting yourself to truth it's speaking truth it's orienting to

00:20:27.360 truth and it's it's building on that and i truly believe that that's our only hope i agree and

00:20:33.780 it's interesting to me because i hear in the way you talk about it a lot of how we think about

00:20:39.400 comedy because we've been

00:20:41.200 not quite the same, but in a similar

00:20:43.460 way, we've pursued

00:20:45.500 the truth

00:20:47.160 by doing this show, and as

00:20:49.500 a result of that, how many friends

00:20:51.480 have you got left in comedy, mate?

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00:21:21.060 mirvish.com no no he's not exactly pretty much right uh and there's no question that our

00:21:31.460 opportunities within comedy the comedy world the comedy industry have been massively curtailed but

00:21:37.180 I hate talking about it because I don't feel a victim of that situation we went into that with

00:21:42.500 our eyes open we knew what happened we thought pursuing the truth was more important and let's

00:21:47.800 be honest we've been rewarded for it right we have a show that's successful it's doing well

00:21:51.380 so none of the three of us want to go into oh poor me I got cancelled for my you know because

00:21:56.980 that didn't happen right but at the same time there's a bigger thing at stake here which is

00:22:03.300 less so David Fuller, Constantine Kiss and Francis Foster,

00:22:07.220 more why is a massive media institution so scared of being criticised?

00:22:13.080 They quote-unquote ban you.

00:22:15.720 Is that normal?

00:22:16.780 Do we want media institutions to do that?

00:22:18.960 Shouldn't the pursuit of truth be the fundamental value of that institution

00:22:22.280 and that implies a plurality of viewpoints?

00:22:24.880 Yes.

00:22:25.940 The thing that I was...

00:22:27.760 I mean, I would still say it would probably have been quite embarrassing

00:22:30.520 or difficult for me to go back in there

00:22:32.220 and do freelance shifts after putting that out.

00:22:34.700 Like, I don't know if I would have wanted to go back

00:22:36.600 and do that anyway.

00:22:39.740 Just on a personal level of kind of like, hi. 1.00

00:22:44.660 Hi, I think you're an idiot. 1.00

00:22:46.520 Yeah. 1.00

00:22:48.180 But the thing that I was most disappointed about

00:22:51.960 is I thought Cathy could have done

00:22:54.460 a really interesting documentary.

00:22:56.620 Like, investigating, like, what happened.

00:22:59.240 because i think kathy's got a really interesting story seeing it from her perspective she she was

00:23:03.580 a political reporter for a long time um so that's kind of why she's got a lot of that sort of

00:23:08.020 combative style like trying to catch out politicians and she'd also worked in westminster

00:23:12.880 which is kind of some of the places like with a really strong old boys network and kind of one of

00:23:19.160 the kind of vestiges of real kind of if you want to say that there's yeah in politics i mean there

00:23:26.520 there are still um very out outdated attitudes kind of and old boys clubs etc etc and i think

00:23:35.940 she could have exposed she could have explained that i think it would have given people more 0.88

00:23:39.400 sympathy and more understanding about where she'd come from and how she's she'd succeed as a as a

00:23:43.880 journalist but also i think she could have then gone into like what is the reality of the gender 1.00

00:23:47.780 pay gap what is the reality of like if you value truth more than anything then i think i think i

00:23:54.380 think she should have done that like it would have got a huge amount of viewers but she'd also 1.00

00:23:59.740 and i'm this may be unfair and i'd be more than willing to have the conversation with kathy if it

00:24:04.760 if it is i'm sure she's watching me i'm sure she is but also i think there's a danger because she'd

00:24:11.420 also established herself with a certain perspective if you look at kind of she's writing a book about

00:24:16.240 feminism effectively she was a big campaigner about kind of the the gender pay gap and stuff 1.00

00:24:22.760 so I think it would have been maybe difficult for her to go into that into that exploration if she

00:24:28.080 may have come out with a different view than the way when the one she came in but I think I thought

00:24:32.460 that was like that for me was a no-brainer because it was certainly been such a kind of cultural

00:24:37.300 moment and then to kind of examine that and try and find out the truth of the things that she was

00:24:41.160 putting to Jordan Peterson I think would have been a really like that would have been a really

00:24:44.840 interesting documentary but isn't that just a recurring theme of people not wanting to examine

00:24:50.060 their own actions, their own beliefs, their own prejudices

00:24:53.660 in order to help them grow.

00:24:56.620 And we've seen Brexit Trump, but we've also seen it with Channel 4.

00:25:00.500 Yeah.

00:25:01.120 And this is a little bit of a segue into the thing I mentioned

00:25:05.120 at the beginning because I think this is increasingly important

00:25:07.680 because if the failures of the existing media structures

00:25:11.660 are systematic or they're structural,

00:25:15.920 I think the failures in the alternative media universe

00:25:19.620 are individual because we're all becoming our own brands and like if you look at on twitter or even

00:25:26.600 on youtube like most of the failure conditions and i kind of followed the intellectual dark web

00:25:31.820 i followed like these alternative sense-making networks and most of the failure conditions there

00:25:37.420 are there are narcissism they're like audience capture they are the way that conversation becomes

00:25:45.140 performative they're attracting an audience and not wanting to let that audience down

00:25:50.180 they're all of because the nature of social media and the nature of kind of what social

00:25:55.380 media is doing to us that Tristan Harris talked about in the social dilemma is it's basically

00:26:00.180 hacking all of our worst aspects it's playing on our narcissism it's playing on our desire to be

00:26:06.640 liked it's playing on our um the way that we have certain views to appear because of how they appear

00:26:13.380 rather than what we really think.

00:26:14.640 And I think we get this kind of gap open up

00:26:16.260 between what we truly believe

00:26:18.460 and what we want other people to think we believe,

00:26:20.240 all of those things.

00:26:21.600 And that is where my concern about the alternative media

00:26:26.020 is because I think we all have those,

00:26:28.000 we all have those kind of negative characteristics.

00:26:31.580 And I think they're being increasingly weaponized

00:26:34.020 against us in the social media landscape.

00:26:37.840 I want to get into that.

00:26:38.680 I'd just like to say at Trigonometry,

00:26:40.060 we don't have that problem

00:26:40.960 because we let our audience down all the time.

00:26:43.380 And by the way, like and subscribe.

00:26:44.980 Exactly.

00:26:46.780 Hey, Francis, do you like Martians?

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00:26:59.680 You wish. 0.98

00:27:00.780 No, there's this great new immersive experience in London

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00:28:15.540 Before we get into the problems with alternative media,

00:28:18.220 and we're not going to shy away from that at all,

00:28:20.560 you talked about the systemic and structural problems with the mainstream media.

00:28:24.420 Now, they've been talked about endlessly in these sorts of conversations

00:28:28.140 as here's the problem.

00:28:31.440 Where does it come from? That's what I want to know.

00:28:34.180 Why did the media suddenly get broken the way it did?

00:28:37.400 i think i think we're in a slightly different situation in the uk than we are in the u.s 0.73

00:28:42.860 but in the u.s last year we did a series of films called what the fuck is going on

00:28:49.360 what was that about well it was mostly about so there was a whole series of like

00:28:57.700 kind of major incidents within so many american media organizations there was the the james bennett

00:29:05.560 had to leave the New York Times. He was the comment editor who commissioned that op-ed

00:29:09.700 by Tom Cotton about troops on the streets, I think. Barry Weiss then left. Andrew Sullivan

00:29:17.900 left New York Magazine. And Matt Taibbi, kind of left-wing journalist, talked about he was aware of

00:29:24.680 at least like 10 revolts within newsrooms. And in the States, the way that that was written up,

00:29:31.840 mostly by barry weiss was that there's a new generation of um journalists who care more about

00:29:39.140 harm than they do about truth effectively so a lot of the a lot of the criticism of the tom

00:29:43.740 cotton op-ed was it's putting uh uh other it's putting journalists of color at risk on the

00:29:49.360 streets which is kind of a a bit of a leap to to make that point but effectively activism in

00:29:55.940 journalism a different conception about what journalism is for and a different set of values

00:30:01.420 And there's this kind of real generation gap.

00:30:05.120 But because of the nature of that generation gap, because of the nature of those attacks and the nature of the criticisms, they're very hard to argue against.

00:30:14.880 And Brett Weinstein will talk about kind of how powerful that particular worldview, whether you want to call it kind of weaponized wokeness or social justice activism or whatever, inside institutions is very hard to defend against.

00:30:27.440 And so I think that the New York Times is no longer the paper that it was.

00:30:31.420 in many ways it's no longer the same organization even though it's got the same kind of thing on

00:30:36.060 same name on the on the vasthead and i think america is further down that line than than

00:30:42.300 the uk from what i can tell but i think it's partly and then you've got this other kind of

00:30:48.420 factor of like i think it's also financial like because there's less and less money there as well

00:30:53.020 you've got a lot of people going on to substack you're losing a lot of kind of really good

00:30:57.140 journalists from from the institutions as well because they're leaving and setting up on their

00:31:01.340 own. So I think that's kind of increasing the kind of decline of the media. And then you've

00:31:07.500 got this sort of sense of journalists, basically, the world is getting more and more complex, but

00:31:12.400 they're still positioning themselves relative to other journalists. There's a group thing that

00:31:17.820 comes in, most of the time, they're positioning themselves in terms of what they think other

00:31:21.580 journalists are going to think of them, than necessarily following the truth. But I don't

00:31:26.100 think it's I don't think I often find myself in the position of kind of saying it's not as bad

00:31:33.180 like I'm sure you'll be aware like there's a hot there's a huge anti-media um undercurrent

00:31:39.800 on YouTube especially which I understand where it comes from and I have some sympathy for it but I

00:31:44.120 think it goes too far because most of the journalists that I've worked with in the past

00:31:50.360 have been um very conscientious very driven like they could have made more money in lots of

00:31:57.500 different other areas um but there are systematic failings and a big one is who watches the watchmen

00:32:04.460 it's kind of this idea that over time journalists have been used to being kind of the the people

00:32:12.820 who judge the people who decide the people who are the gatekeepers but not not really asking

00:32:17.620 themselves whether that's um whether they're qualified for that effectively or who gave them

00:32:22.920 that power in the first place that power that responsibility i think becomes corrupting

00:32:26.900 and now there is more scrutiny i think on media than there was and that and again i say it's not

00:32:33.080 as it's not catastrophically bad and i think a lot of good journalists are good but there are

00:32:38.380 systematic flaws with the with the system that i think are becoming ever more clear and do you

00:32:43.820 think part of the problem is what you've just said but it's also when a business because they

00:32:48.780 are businesses and they're struggling to monetize themselves and they're struggling to be relevant

00:32:54.400 they're automatically going to go for the lowest common denominator because it will ensure clicks

00:33:00.200 and view in views and all the rest of it yeah no it's a really really good point and it's one i

00:33:05.140 shouldn't have missed out thank you for what i'm here for mate awesome that's part of the that's

00:33:11.380 part of the economic problems with them is that and that's that's to do with if you put out

00:33:17.780 articles say you're um the new york times it stops being in their business interest to challenge

00:33:23.560 their audience because especially if you've got a subscriber model it's much easier for someone to

00:33:27.360 be like oh you just put out that article that said jordan peterson wasn't a monster i'm gonna

00:33:31.340 i'm gonna unsubscribe so they're increasingly the business model is increasingly rewarding them

00:33:37.120 playing to their base giving their base what they want not challenging them the more they

00:33:42.320 challenge the more it's not in their financial interest and i think that they're subject to the

00:33:47.980 same pressures that i think alternative um creators are i think it's often i think that

00:33:53.960 problem is often worse in the alternative environment because it stops being in your

00:33:58.280 interest to kind of really have a kind of 360 degree set of perspectives um but yeah i think

00:34:04.880 as it as it spirals down and the smaller and smaller pie i think you just you just start to

00:34:09.940 kind of reward people don't like to be challenged and that's sort of the the other big problem with

00:34:15.020 social media that is also affecting the the big news organizations is and this is something

00:34:21.020 tristan harris talked about we're optimizing social media is optimizing for outrage it's

00:34:27.240 optimizing for any kind of response that keeps you kind of engaged and outrage righteous outrage

00:34:32.420 outrage porn and what he calls the race to the bottom of the brain stem like we're bypassing

00:34:38.380 our kind of cortex we're going directly to kind of like the limbic system and kind of like getting

00:34:42.880 into a fight or flight kind of mode because it because it rewards engagement and gets you kind

00:34:46.580 of into a like i can't believe they said that i'm going to do that and that's happening to to the

00:34:51.000 big players as well as the small players yeah and at the bottom of it is a death of nuance

00:34:56.060 where what we see now is every media outlet,

00:35:00.280 with the exception of a small selection,

00:35:02.520 it's just advocacy media.

00:35:04.180 You know what they're going to say before they say it.

00:35:06.200 So this is what I was trying to get at earlier with my question, David,

00:35:08.860 because you talked about where we are now,

00:35:11.160 Substack and all that sort of thing,

00:35:12.420 but there was something that happened before that.

00:35:15.200 There was something that happened that by 2014, 15,

00:35:19.360 people in the media decided that their job was not the reason that you're no longer welcome at

00:35:28.180 Channel 4, the pursuit of truth. Their job was activism. Their job was to stop Brexit, let's say,

00:35:36.120 or to stop Donald Trump being elected, or to stop Remain, or whatever it was. Their job was to

00:35:42.540 campaign. And so when we talk about, you know, the New York Times versus Alternative, the only thing

00:35:48.340 that i see as a distinction and yes we're all subject to the same pressures and pulling and

00:35:53.300 driving factors people like us don't pretend that we're neutral kathy newman pretended in that

00:36:01.980 interview to be neutral while not being neutral to put it very mildly right and that is a change

00:36:08.820 that i don't know and i was curious to ask you about it because you were a journalist in that

00:36:13.080 world for a long time when did that shift happen maybe we're just making it up maybe you're thinking

00:36:18.960 the good old days that never actually existed and everybody was always partisan we've always had

00:36:23.840 a partisan media in this country we have newspapers that are right when we have

00:36:27.320 newspapers that are left-wing am i idolizing the past here by saying it wasn't always like this

00:36:32.080 no i think there was a shift that some when and i can kind of remember it because i think that

00:36:38.780 that shift is also connected to social media.

00:36:41.440 So I think one of the things that the growth of alternative media has done

00:36:44.780 is shown up the bias of the mainstream.

00:36:47.220 Before, there was this kind of objective view from nowhere,

00:36:50.440 voice from nowhere affectation that increasingly is obviously like,

00:36:54.200 oh, that's a thing, that's a game.

00:36:57.260 And it's obviously kind of, it's more and more transparent that that's going on.

00:37:01.240 But there was a time where the anchors, for example, or the reporters at Channel 4 News or any of the big news organizations were allowed to have their own perspective.

00:37:16.740 But they were increasingly kind of liberalized rules around you're allowed to kind of campaign on Twitter.

00:37:22.920 You're allowed to have a persona that's not just purely independent.

00:37:29.140 So I think there was a deliberate and I think probably a valid decision made at some points by kind of the editors to say, OK, we need them to compete in this kind of information economy.

00:37:45.520 So therefore, we're going to have to allow them some more freedoms on social media to kind of have their own opinions.

00:37:52.340 And that definitely happened quite a while ago.

00:37:54.460 but there are still different regulations as to what you're allowed to do on screen versus what

00:38:01.160 you're allowed to do in social media so there's almost and that's another part of the problem is

00:38:05.360 there's no ofcom regulation of something like like youtube there's no regulation of stuff like like

00:38:10.460 twitter um and i think they kind of adapted to that by saying yes you're allowed to kind of

00:38:14.520 campaign on these different issues um whereas there are still ofcom and there are still there

00:38:19.020 is still regulation on especially on broadcast news in the uk in a way that there isn't in the

00:38:24.340 US. But yeah, I think they did actually make a specific decision to say, no, we've got to compete

00:38:28.840 in this kind of information economy. And now we're going to take the shackles off in terms of

00:38:33.580 what you're allowed to say. And we've now moved into the social media world where everybody has

00:38:41.340 got a slice of the pie or at least a chance of a slice of the pie. But that very much produces

00:38:46.720 its own challenges, its own problems, which let's be fair, we are all wrestling with. Everybody in

00:38:52.400 this room is wrestling with you know we're trying to figure out as we go along what to you are the

00:38:57.060 very real challenges and problems that we face as creators yeah and I think that's a really good

00:39:04.180 way of framing it because we are all subject to these same things we're all wrestling with this

00:39:09.620 in in many different ways um like I certainly for as someone who's got a YouTube channel I'm very

00:39:18.840 aware like I wish I was less aware of like the comments for example like caring what the comments

00:39:24.820 think I know we talked and you guys said you're less worried about it because of your comedy

00:39:28.580 background you're kind of used to being kind of heckled and people but I feel that as a kind of

00:39:33.840 like and I don't want to I don't want to kind of feel that as a but I'm it's it's like I've got an

00:39:39.400 I in the back of my head I'm kind of know what they want and what they don't want and I tried

00:39:43.360 to not let that affect me and I do put out things I know are going to challenge the audience and I'm

00:39:48.320 quite I'm getting more and more comfortable with doing that but I know that that's something I

00:39:52.460 don't feel entirely comfortable with there's also a set of kind of aligned incentives and

00:39:59.020 like one of the things like I really enjoyed the interview that we had and I've tried to do sort

00:40:04.700 of I've tried to follow like the truth of um when I think there are challenging questions to ask

00:40:10.840 someone I'll I'll ask those challenging questions but it's it's a difficult place to be in in this

00:40:15.960 alternative media universe because if you get yourself a reputation as someone who's just

00:40:19.740 a difficult character then it's not if I was working at Channel 4 News or working for one

00:40:24.780 of the big organizations I'd be able to do that and I'd have the the organization behind me people

00:40:29.940 would stay still say yes to the interview whereas if you get yourself a kind of reputation as being

00:40:34.020 too challenging and the alternative people just say no we're not going to do an interview with

00:40:38.400 you my central worry is I think that we've got a dysfunctional system we've got the old system of

00:40:45.600 of the kind of what some people call the blue church media establishment that was increasingly

00:40:53.100 dysfunctional in many ways but still had a set of checks and balances still had a sense of like

00:40:58.040 free speech without the ideas being tested for me is not free speech free speech is a prerequisite

00:41:03.780 for then the ideas being tested in the in the marketplace of ideas and what i see coming along

00:41:08.860 in the alternative environments we've gone away from one system we're kind of we might at some

00:41:13.900 point have a decentralized way of approaching truth right now i think we're in this kind of

00:41:19.000 no man's land where a lot of the alternative narratives are not showing up in the in the

00:41:24.960 mainstream but they're not being challenged in the alternative as well and i think the system

00:41:29.420 is like really broken i know we we talked um we did a series of films about london real

00:41:34.240 earlier in the great guy great guy yeah about how much i admire brian rose and um love you brian

00:41:40.900 yeah love him uh two percent i think he's got in uh for london mayor campaign but um

00:41:46.220 actually just grouped with the others in three percent um but yeah i mean the reason i was

00:41:53.860 interested in that story was because he had on david ike at the beginning of the of the pandemic

00:41:59.300 david i'm sorry to interrupt i'm just aware uh the channel we're talking about uh used to be a

00:42:04.580 youtube channel did interviews with people and then when the pandemic hit they started doing

00:42:08.500 conspiracy stuff basically yeah yeah yeah that's a good summary they had on david ike

00:42:12.480 uh at the beginning of the pandemic he said covid is a hoax um it's caused by 5g kind of 1.00

00:42:19.680 if you don't take matters into your own hands then life as itself will be over youtube took

00:42:23.980 that down quite rightly i think but he then embarked in this quite cynical like bringing

00:42:31.560 on a lot of conspiracy people not challenging them and i and it was very successful he got a

00:42:36.160 lot of views for it he started up this kind of digital freedom platform thing the way he kind

00:42:41.400 of raised a load of money for it and what what upset me or what kind of i was really concerned

00:42:46.220 about was like okay you've got these alternative narratives like being arising and no one's

00:42:51.780 challenging them like there's a huge audience for them and they're not being reflected in the

00:42:56.300 mainstream at all which is kind of increasingly you can argue increasingly conformist and then

00:43:01.460 you've got the alternative narratives and they're just they're just thriving because they're getting

00:43:04.820 views and they're not being challenged and that i was also interested with london real because

00:43:11.380 he was kind of using this like free speech argument and that for me was really like free

00:43:17.420 speech is such a sacred value that if you're going to use it and you're going to exploit it

00:43:21.340 for your own purposes i think that's really really dangerous and if the ideas are not being tested

00:43:28.160 in the marketplace for me is not is not really free speech and that's where i think that's why

00:43:33.040 I think our interview was really interesting as well because I think these are there's huge

00:43:36.480 nuances you can talk about free speech versus censorship and no censorship then you've got

00:43:40.540 the question like who are you inviting on to interview how are you doing that interview

00:43:43.900 how are you promoting that interview are is this person's views being challenged elsewhere even if

00:43:49.460 not by you than by other people and that for me is like where I see this um yeah there's sort of

00:43:55.840 it's breaking down everywhere like the the way of challenging truth and finding truth I think is

00:44:00.320 breaking down everywhere which is in the mainstream but also in the alternative as well do you not

00:44:06.100 think that we maybe think of ourselves as a full replacement for the mainstream media where really

00:44:11.940 what we should be thinking about is well if you want this perspective you come and watch

00:44:16.520 trigonometry and if you want to see that perspective challenge there'll be other channels

00:44:21.280 that will provide that rather than thinking that it's the job of rebel wisdom or the job of

00:44:25.860 trigonometry to provide you with the full range of opinions because frankly it's not going to happen

00:44:31.760 for reasons to do with financial technical staffing and all sorts we don't have the resources

00:44:37.780 or frankly the ability to attract every type of guest that we'd like because the way that it

00:44:44.300 works in the alternative media space is once you've had x on then y won't come on your show

00:44:50.380 because they don't think of you the same way that they would think of channel four where

00:44:54.160 you can have Jordan Peterson on today and a massive woke feminist on the next day just doesn't work 1.00

00:45:00.580 that way in our space and so to expect you or I or Francis to be able to do that is unrealistic in

00:45:07.320 the first place yeah I think we all have to make our own follow our own conscience in terms of the

00:45:13.440 people that we're having on and how we're doing those interviews and I do think I mean just just

00:45:18.340 the sheer size and scope like we don't have the ability to to to kind of do a proper news job

00:45:24.840 um and even so like we're mostly i'd say we're mostly kind of commentary opinion rather than

00:45:31.680 kind of i've done a couple of like investigations and sort of what i consider like primary news

00:45:35.940 stuff but they're few and far between yeah most of the time i think we're doing interviews and

00:45:41.120 we're shedding light on the stories rather than um but i mean the point that we that we kind of

00:45:46.640 clashed on in our interview before was about the interview with with uh sushir at bakhti and whether

00:45:52.300 putting on someone who was critical of the vaccine meant that you had an obligation to put on someone

00:45:56.480 who was pro-vaccine yeah i mean that's an open question i wasn't i was asking that as a question

00:46:00.060 as to whether that that for me and that in the end for me comes down to an individual

00:46:06.660 conscience thing and then being aware of like what's the drive why am i doing certain things

00:46:12.340 am I doing this just for the just for the sort of the amount of views which is always going to be a

00:46:16.620 factor I mean we're not going to put on interviews that get no views I mean that's always going to be

00:46:20.280 a factor but then is that is that warping my decision of who to get on do I feel an integrity

00:46:25.320 in the way that that has that's happened do I feel I've got the the amount of intelligent

00:46:29.840 background of research to be able to challenge this person to be able to be able to evaluate

00:46:37.040 their claims all of that sort of stuff um but it depends what your objective is as well like for me

00:46:42.880 i think i've still got a very um strong set of i don't know principles that i kind of built up over

00:46:51.360 say 20 years doing journalism that maybe aren't even appropriate for the new alternative world

00:46:57.000 that's a that's a kind of inquiry i'm i'm involved in um but i do there's a few people who are really

00:47:03.520 wrestling with this question quite deeply a friend of mine daniel schmachtenberger is putting together

00:47:07.940 something called the consilience project where he's trying to do like really high level um almost

00:47:14.820 like kind of secret service briefing level analysis of of issues of the news because that's

00:47:23.260 what he thinks is needed like we need that there's an imbalance because a lot of the the most um a

00:47:29.780 lot of the most high quality information is being gathered by people who are researching for hedge

00:47:35.380 funds people are researching for security services like those and a lot of that doesn't necessarily

00:47:41.720 filter down into the mainstream media so he's saying this is an imbalance which allows some

00:47:46.080 people to exploit the world um become rich at other people's expense and what we need to do

00:47:51.600 is democratize that like really high level information getting so so i do think there

00:47:56.980 are people but but this is a project that's costing several million pounds to put together

00:48:00.720 and it's going to be involving kind of employing a lot of people i don't we're we we just don't

00:48:07.120 have the capacity to do that sort of thing but it's all and it's a great point but there's also

00:48:11.600 the issue of challenging like people always go to us and the criticism that we face all the time is

00:48:16.540 you don't challenge your guests enough and then you talk about what does that actually mean to

00:48:22.240 challenge someone and a lot of the time it's like oh they said something seven or eight years ago

00:48:27.460 why haven't you brought that up in an interview and I I would love to know what your position

00:48:32.580 on that is as a trained journalist is that challenging is that just always challenging

00:48:37.700 does that mean something else what does challenging mean to you challenging an idea

00:48:42.000 i would say it depends on the it depends on who it is i i would generally say yes like if there

00:48:53.880 is someone who said who's made a comment or has kind of had a had a disgrace in the past like if

00:48:58.740 this is the main thing that people know about them for example then i would say yes you probably do

00:49:03.460 need to bring that up in the interview to say look you said this thing a while ago or do you still

00:49:09.040 think that? Do you regret saying that? I think there is an obligation to give background so that

00:49:16.480 the audience are able to make up their minds on who this person is, what they think, especially

00:49:20.500 if, I mean, there's some people who I think if you're not doing that, you're doing a disservice

00:49:25.900 to the audience by not bringing it up. I can think of some various kind of pretty, if someone's

00:49:31.420 controversial, I don't think, I mean, one of the kind of criticisms, oh, you shouldn't have a

00:49:36.680 conversation with that person and that's often done it's like the guilt by association thing and

00:49:40.680 that for me is just that's an old tactic by the kind of media and that's trying to put that's

00:49:45.340 trying to put the genie back in the bottle and that's not gonna it's not gonna work like we've

00:49:49.000 got an infinite number of media channels so that that whole guilt by association thing is a game

00:49:53.640 that won't that won't work anymore but i do think that there is for me i feel like i feel a certain

00:49:59.660 obligation to if someone's controversial to explain in the conversation why they're controversial

00:50:05.680 Just say, you caused a real controversy a while ago

00:50:08.760 when you said this and this.

00:50:10.640 What was that about?

00:50:12.060 Do you regret that?

00:50:15.160 What was the context for it?

00:50:18.100 And for me, the danger is that a lot of this becomes performative.

00:50:22.740 And I think people are really sick and tired

00:50:24.420 with the performative nature of a lot of legacy media

00:50:27.720 because the journalist isn't really oriented towards finding truth.

00:50:31.840 What they're oriented towards is signalling to other journalists

00:50:34.440 signaling to everyone else that they're still on their side and that this person's beyond the pale

00:50:42.160 for this reason and this reason and this reason which was I mean the Kathy Newman Jordan Peterson

00:50:46.100 interview was the perfect kind of like that was the apotheosis of that kind of way of interacting

00:50:51.240 it's like and I think everyone looks at it and they're like this isn't how normal people talk

00:50:56.720 to each other and the interesting thing is that now in the alternative media when you look at Joe

00:51:01.680 Rogan and you look at kind of these people who've made their livings out of an alternative long-form

00:51:08.260 conversation you're like they're talking to each other like people talk to each other yeah and this

00:51:13.420 kind of performative thing is is just it's it's an old way of you're not react you're not even

00:51:18.440 relating to that person as a person like you're relating to them as something else like you're

00:51:23.020 relating to them as an it you're not relating to them as a as someone that you can have a

00:51:27.600 interaction and connection with. And I think Joe Rogan is a good example because I've seen him do

00:51:36.140 really informative, challenging interviews on some fairly controversial people. He did a really good

00:51:43.620 job with Stefan Molyneux, for example, who's a pretty controversial race realist type. And if

00:51:50.420 you look at the interview that he did, he'd done a lot of research on that. He brought up some

00:51:55.140 pretty um critical and suspect things that he'd said in the past that he'd done in the past the

00:52:03.500 nature of the organization that he kind of created and joe rogan despite kind of being a by his own

00:52:10.000 admission being a sort of meathead who's just like talking to people and then found himself in this

00:52:14.340 role that he never expected i think he's really kind of grown into that and i see a lot of

00:52:20.920 responsibility in a look in the way that he does his interviews i think he did a very interesting

00:52:27.460 one with candace owens as well that was if you compare that to the one that dave ruben did with

00:52:32.380 candace owens like it was a really different kind of interview and i felt like she she struggled

00:52:39.100 with a few of the follow-ups um so i think there is a way of doing it i think you need to avoid

00:52:45.860 being stuck in like the performative mainstream like i'm just doing this to signal to everyone

00:52:50.860 else that i'm a good person you're a bad person game and the other side of i'm never going to ask

00:52:56.480 anyone a difficult question or i'm never i'm just going to let them speak i think there's a midpoint

00:53:02.080 that we're still evolving towards i think we're all still kind of learning what that is i think

00:53:06.000 it also changes with how powerful you experience yourself to be if you have a show with 10 million

00:53:11.660 subscribers yeah you are not afraid to piss off your guest if you have and also there's more 0.85

00:53:17.320 pressure on you from like this is the other thing i think joe rogan is under scrutiny from youtube

00:53:21.680 and from the like i think he he is also slightly forced to do that i think that's why he doesn't

00:53:28.100 have certain guests on because people take notice of who he puts on yeah so i think that's the other

00:53:33.360 weird thing is that the journalistic obligations grow as your channel grows in a way at the moment

00:53:39.080 as well yeah and you know i think we all experience it i think the bigger we get the more

00:53:43.460 we but but also you know the the problem is as well as a lot of us who are doing this don't have

00:53:49.380 any journalistic training right so we don't with we feel our way through the whole thing

00:53:54.880 uh but actually i wanted to come back to your thing about comments because i think this is a

00:53:58.620 really important conversation to have and rogan is you know he's got his way of dealing with it

00:54:03.400 which he says just don't read it which i i don't buy uh i don't well you don't think he doesn't

00:54:08.540 read them i don't think he doesn't read them number one and we've seen some evidence of that

00:54:13.340 his first interview with jack dorsey for example was a good example yeah he did an interview with

00:54:17.520 jack dorsey got a shit ton of pushback and suddenly bam jack dorsey was back on the show

00:54:22.320 with tim pool and vijaya gad yeah being grilled right yeah so he's a perfect example yeah so he

00:54:28.180 first of all he does read the comments uh clearly or someone does for him but the other thing as

00:54:33.600 well is you know you talk about how the comments affect you and we as comedians are less of i as i

00:54:41.540 said on your show we have a tremendous amount of respect for our audience we really do but at the

00:54:47.480 same time i don't even believe that the comments under this video are necessarily from the fans of

00:54:54.080 the show what will often happen with an interview is you'll get people coming along who either love

00:54:59.480 or hate your guests who don't follow your show and who comment on that video. And actually,

00:55:04.660 you know, one of France's ex-girlfriends said this. She said, have you ever commented on a

00:55:09.840 YouTube video? Do you know anyone who's ever commented on a YouTube video? So the fact that

00:55:15.180 10 people or 100 people, even a thousand people who've left some comments under this video right

00:55:20.180 now, are representative of our audience, to me, is a complete misnomer. Because very often what

00:55:27.420 you'll have is uh loads of people upvote a video very few downvote and yet all the comments are

00:55:32.460 negative and you're going well that doesn't make any sense and the reality is you know people who

00:55:36.740 comment are the people who feel the strongest perhaps that's one interpretation does that mean

00:55:41.960 that that's representative of the public reaction to an interview i don't think so so to me yes

00:55:48.580 there's some gold to be dug out of that but you have to recognize that it's not representative of

00:55:54.460 audience and that's why you know uh peterson and rogan to me are inspirational in that way even

00:56:00.520 though i have disagreements with both of those men on many things uh the the way that they have

00:56:06.240 inspired me is the way i think about it is well i'm going to ask you a question that i find

00:56:10.680 interesting and i'm going to trust that there's an audience out there that is also interested in

00:56:16.160 the answer to that question you know and i think that's an approach that does that mean that this

00:56:22.780 channel as a result will be neutral and unbiased? Well, of course not, because I'm biased and so

00:56:27.780 is Francis and so are you. But at least it's honest, right? It's then honest. I'm asking the

00:56:33.980 question that I really want to ask you. And I think that's maybe where the answer lies to some

00:56:39.800 extent, is just to go, what's the question I want to ask you? And let's find out what you want to

00:56:44.880 say about it. So yeah, an audience capture is a thing that I think a lot of people are concerned

00:56:50.600 about it but it I don't think audience capture and allowing yourself to be captured by the audience

00:56:56.300 will ever work actually in the long run it's a very poor long-term strategy it also depends who

00:57:01.500 you're I think you're right I think the comments often are the most reactive the most triggered

00:57:06.740 people who've who've seen that particular thing and they're often not representative of so we have

00:57:12.560 um a membership like we we've got about a thousand members of of rebel wisdom and

00:57:18.120 the conversation with them is so different

00:57:22.000 from the conversation that goes on in the comments.

00:57:25.800 And I think that's because we've put out

00:57:28.340 a lot of different films over a long time

00:57:30.320 and I know kind of what sort of background

00:57:31.900 a lot of them come from.

00:57:34.100 I think if you have, and that is a far bigger influence,

00:57:40.760 if your biggest Patreon subscribers or supporters

00:57:44.960 have a certain perspective,

00:57:46.480 then i think that starts to warp it a little bit more and it depends who they are it depends like

00:57:52.520 who are the people who are most attracted to your content who are the ones who are willing to pay

00:57:55.000 for it who are the ones like especially if you've got like really high value tiers like say you know

00:58:02.320 we have we had quite a high value one at one time and we got rid of it i think that starts to have

00:58:07.040 a real impact on you if you're and if you're framing your if you're framing your show in a

00:58:12.120 certain way and you attract a lot of people that like i'm very glad with the audience that that we

00:58:17.280 have like that for me acts as a kind of dampener on where if we were to sort of um take the comments

00:58:25.180 too seriously because i know that there's a much more considered group of people who have invested

00:58:31.680 more time and more energy and more money in in supporting us and we we have the same thing i

00:58:36.840 I mean, the whole financial side of this is very interesting

00:58:39.640 because we are sitting here recording this in mid-March.

00:58:45.020 We probably lost about 10% to 15% of our income

00:58:52.540 that we had from subscribers in the last couple of months

00:58:56.100 because we came out very strongly

00:58:58.480 when the whole Trump thing, capital thing happened.

00:59:02.920 And we were very clear about our view on that.

00:59:05.140 And deliberately so.

00:59:06.840 Because we know that the core audience that we have

00:59:08.960 are people who are interested in sensible, balanced conversation.

00:59:12.040 And if that means that over time there's ups and there's downs,

00:59:15.260 we'll live with that.

00:59:16.600 Are you sure that that was the reason?

00:59:19.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:59:21.320 And so, and that's fine by us.

00:59:24.760 I think that's another, so someone I think who does that,

00:59:29.100 whether you agree with him or not about certain things,

00:59:32.040 Sam Harris, I think, is someone who deliberately goes out of his way

00:59:35.860 to kind of speak out and to cast off some of his audience.

00:59:40.760 He talks a lot about Islam, but he will say things deliberately

00:59:44.440 to kind of avoid Islamophobes becoming sort of like,

00:59:48.760 oh, he's on our side.

00:59:49.640 So he will say things to deliberately piss off

00:59:51.520 and I guess to whittle away at the people

00:59:56.960 that he doesn't want following him or doesn't want influencing him.

00:59:59.700 And I think that's essential.

01:00:00.800 It's like the great artists of, let me think of David Bowie

01:00:05.580 or someone like that who constantly changes like because you get trapped like david bowie sort of

01:00:10.380 does a um what is it space oddity gets people who just want more space oddity it's like no no no i'm

01:00:16.060 a i'm an artist i completely reinvent each time and i think that's the kind of thing as soon as

01:00:21.320 you put out something that then attracts a certain people who want you to do a certain thing then

01:00:26.740 you'll stop you're stopping evolving you're stopping growing you're stopping kind of doing

01:00:30.540 following your own inner sort of sense of exploration

01:00:36.380 and you start kind of responding to what you want from

01:00:39.280 or what the audience wants from you,

01:00:40.620 which I'm sure you get in comedy as well all the time.

01:00:43.300 People are just sort of mining themselves

01:00:45.600 and repeating themselves and it just feels like tired.

01:00:48.200 Pandering.

01:00:48.860 Pandering, exhausting after a while.

01:00:51.460 But it's also one of the things that I never expected

01:00:54.540 when doing this is the struggles that you have

01:00:57.300 with your own morality,

01:00:58.200 where you're actually thinking about inviting a guest.

01:01:02.020 For instance, we had Nigel Farage on,

01:01:04.300 which went out a few weeks ago,

01:01:06.080 and then reflecting on that,

01:01:07.340 and you're thinking to yourself,

01:01:08.260 did I challenge them enough?

01:01:09.700 Should I have brought up that comment?

01:01:11.400 Was it the right thing to get Nigel Farage on?

01:01:13.880 Why did I get them on?

01:01:15.940 And that constant process of self-examination

01:01:18.580 that actually, if you're a journalist

01:01:20.600 working at Channel 4,

01:01:22.040 you don't have to ask yourself those questions.

01:01:26.200 You do and you don't.

01:01:27.660 I mean, the other thing is that you're constantly in a dialogue with your editors or with different sort of layers of management and different people around you in the newsroom.

01:01:39.340 So it's generally a kind of it's generally a pitch that then is approved or disapproved by someone.

01:01:44.200 So there's more people involved in that conversation.

01:01:49.240 But there would be like if you're going to get Nigel Farage on, there'd be a conversation about why are we getting him on?

01:01:54.760 How are we getting him on? What are we going to ask him about?

01:01:56.420 what are the things that he needs to respond to or um so yeah but there there is a sort of

01:02:02.640 institutional protection as well that in a way it's not just your decision where when when you

01:02:08.820 do that with a channel 4 news or with one of the big organizations i'd just like to reassure

01:02:13.960 everybody at home that the morality questioning francis talked about i don't have that

01:02:17.760 but david it's been great chatting with you thanks for coming on the show i think we

01:02:22.640 explored stuff and normally we interview the guest but this time we had more of a conversation which

01:02:28.140 i really enjoyed uh and as you know we've got one final question for you which is always what's the

01:02:34.460 one thing we're not talking about but we really should be obviously i knew you're gonna ask this

01:02:38.460 i was thinking about it this morning um i was kind of i went down a little bit of a rabbit hole with

01:02:44.260 the question because i think everything is being because you can talk about oh there's there's lots

01:02:50.460 of topics that are not being talked about in the mainstream and should be but there will be other

01:02:54.860 places where they are being talked about and that's and i think that's my biggest sense but

01:02:59.840 the thing that we're not talking about is the fact that all of these topics are being talked about in

01:03:04.900 different ecosystems and they're not coming together but that for me is the crucial the

01:03:11.120 fragmentation of the information landscape the fragmentation of well some people i mean these

01:03:17.040 These are kind of very pompous words,

01:03:21.500 but the fragmentation of the epistemic commons

01:03:24.220 is something that people on our channel

01:03:26.820 have talked about quite a lot.

01:03:28.620 The fact that sense-making is becoming so difficult

01:03:32.060 because of the nature of filter bubbles,

01:03:34.660 because of the nature of social media,

01:03:37.080 because we're basically being served up

01:03:40.100 more of what we already think,

01:03:42.340 that's the real tragedy,

01:03:43.980 is that we're being locked in,

01:03:45.720 we're not really aware of it we're not because it's being warped around us we're not being aware

01:03:50.840 of the fact that it's actually easier and better for these big incredibly powerful algorithms

01:03:57.540 driven by some of the fine by the most kind of sophisticated technology we have are just building

01:04:03.260 these like prisons around ourselves and all of the all of them are just basically basically keeping

01:04:08.180 us what we already know it's like oh yeah we already hate those we still hate those more

01:04:12.280 outrage porn about how the other side are crazy the other side are wrong and this sense that

01:04:16.820 those bubbles are getting further and further away from each other and so i think what are we not

01:04:22.400 talking about we're not any subject that i can say we're not talking about is being talked about

01:04:27.960 somewhere in some bubbles and there's ecosystems that grow around like even like forbidden truths

01:04:33.420 that the mainstream are not talking about but then there's a danger there because that becomes

01:04:36.900 another ecosystem that isn't challenged as well so then so that's my that would be my answer to

01:04:42.260 that i think an understanding of how fragmented we are how broken the system is for coming together

01:04:51.460 and connecting with each other and the fact that social media is kind of weaponized i'll use this

01:04:58.320 one example because i think it's really really useful so jonathan height's work and i know you're

01:05:02.240 familiar with Jonathan Haidt, amazing social psychologist who talks about why good people

01:05:07.360 are divided by politics and religion, says that a lot of our views are essentially temperamental.

01:05:13.680 Conservatives tend to rate higher in order, liberals higher in openness. And the reason

01:05:20.120 for that is that we need different proclivities. We need different temperaments. We're effective

01:05:24.700 in tribes. That's how we've evolved to be effective in tribes. And what social media

01:05:28.640 is doing to us is weaponizing those temperaments against each other and then we're tribalizing

01:05:34.160 based on those temperaments and that's an existential crisis like we're basically

01:05:39.520 doing this incredible experiment on ourselves and it's a temper it's a yeah i don't think we

01:05:46.800 quite realize the danger of that the fact that we are kind of tribalizing ourselves in a way that

01:05:52.340 could be a um a civilizational threat and so that's the thing i think is being talked about

01:06:00.740 and i think the the documentary the social dilemma on netflix is a real first step and i think we're

01:06:06.480 starting to kind of have a conversation around oh well in the same way that we started talking

01:06:10.640 about smoking being really dangerous i think we're now starting to realize that social media is

01:06:14.280 dangerous but i don't think people realize quite how dangerous it is and quite how because because

01:06:22.440 it's changing the nature of everything we're perceiving like we're all in different worlds

01:06:25.660 and you can't you can't run a society if you can't agree on what's true you can't how can

01:06:32.520 you solve any of the problems in the world whatever they are if you can't agree on that

01:06:37.020 they're problems but there's so many different views on climate change there's so many different

01:06:40.500 views on so many of these major issues so until we figure out how to fix the information landscape

01:06:46.020 we're not going to make progress on anything else and on that upbeat note thank you very much

01:06:52.700 david for coming on the show if people want to find you online or on social media where is the

01:06:57.360 best place to do that uh rebel wisdom uh follow me on twitter check out rebel wisdom um and check

01:07:04.540 out the interview that we did together because i think it was a really good interview and i've

01:07:07.960 I've bigged you up at the beginning,

01:07:08.960 so I'll big you up now.

01:07:10.580 Yeah, I was really, really pleased

01:07:11.880 with the conversation we had

01:07:13.960 and walking the walk on free speech

01:07:15.860 and long may I continue.

01:07:17.280 Thanks for coming on, David.

01:07:18.920 Make sure to follow the links

01:07:19.980 will be in the description of the video.

01:07:21.900 Thanks for watching

01:07:22.740 and we will see you very soon

01:07:24.320 with another brilliant interview

01:07:25.460 like this one or a live stream.

01:07:27.140 Take care and see you soon, guys.

01:07:37.960 We'll be right back.

01:08:07.960 through June 7th, 2026, the Princess of Wales Theatre.

01:08:12.000 Get tickets at Mirvish.com.

TRIGGERnometry - March 28, 2021

Where Did the Mainstream Media Go Wrong？ - David Fuller of Rebel Wisdom

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