The Joe Rogan Experience - #1266 - Ben Anderson

Episode Date: March 18, 2019

Ben Anderson is a journalist, television reporter, writer and recipient of the Foreign Press Award.

You remember the last time you had Shane on? It's been a while. Working? Live? We're live. Do you want to talk about that? Or no? The Shane thing? Did you have something to say? Everyone sent me the clip and I think you said something about taking a knee in the middle of a gunfight. And he said, yeah, that was Ben. He's a fucking savage. What did you do?

What happened? Refresh my memory. We're in Afghanistan. Right. And the guys I'm with, the Afghan soldiers I'm with, get ambushed by the Taliban. And I just went down on one knee and carried on talking. And Shane said, yeah, he's a fucking savage. Apparently that's a compliment.

I wasn't sure. War journalists are very fascinating people to me because uh oftentimes you guys move towards the gunfire with the camera to get the shot and you know i've talked to folks before who have worked as a war journalist and they say you almost don't think you're you're you're you're you're so concentrated on getting the shot, you don't think about the fact that you might get shot. It's a safety mechanism, yeah. You think you're protected by looking at it on a screen

rather than realizing it's actually happening in real life right now. It's stupid. It's so strange. Try to keep this like a fist from your face. Perfect. There we go. I was with the U.S. Marines for Operation Mushtaq, like the biggest operation of the Afghan war.

And there was a town called Marja that was controlled by the Taliban. And I met up with this one group of Marines. I used to love going out with the Marines because if you were willing to run the same risks as them, they'd let you film everything. And their mission was to get dropped by helicopter in the middle of this town at 3 a.m. on day one

and then just fight their way out from the middle of the town. And as soon as the sun came up, all of the speakers on the mosques were saying, the infidels are here, the infidels are here, get your weapons, get your weapons. And General McChrystal had introduced this rule of courageous restraint, saying you're not allowed to shoot unless you're shot at, or unless you see someone preparing a hostile act. And the Taliban had figured out how to use this. So I'm sitting in this field with about 28 Marines, watching the Taliban drop off guys in buildings all around us with their weapons wrapped in blankets, knowing the Marines can't shoot them.

So they're setting up the perfect ambush. And as soon as we started walking across the field, it started and it's like nothing I've ever heard or experienced before. We ran and dived into a ditch. The guys either side of me got hit, one of them badly. A guy was killed on the other side of the field almost straight away. I was there alone filming it myself and because I was watching the whole thing through this tiny little screen on my camera, it felt like I wasn't, you know, in as much danger as they were. And I was so afraid. And the adrenaline runs out after a while and you just become numb. I mean, then I'd resign myself.

I thought we were all going to get killed. We were completely surrounded and outnumbered and there were RPGs and snipers. And I watched it back and the footage is pretty good. You know, I'm changing shots. I'm zooming in and focusing. And I think focusing on that helped me, you know. How did you get out of it i mean to this day i'm not even sure i think the marines just started identifying taliban

targets and picking them off and then the taliban ran out of ammunition and the actual ambush lasted like six seven hours of non-stop fighting yeah and then we ran into a an old building which is which became their base for six months, just an abandoned building. And they shelled that all night and the fighting carried on the whole next day. But that first day in the ditch, I remember saying to myself, you're an idiot. You never say no to anything. You always just join up and sign up for these insane trips. And if you survive today, and you're probably not going to survive, if you do survive today, don't ever go out with these idiots ever again um and the next day they said oh we're going to launch this operation take this mask and i went out with them all over again this felt like a good night's sleep yeah well it

wasn't even a good night's sleep but yeah but yeah once you survive a few you i mean i remember when i started doing this you had an idea of what what good odds and bad what odds were and that you know you're willing to accept lesser and lesser odds as time goes on because nothing happens and it's it's easy to get to get careless and stupid that's a real thing with violence right until you've actually experienced it firsthand personally being enacted on yourself it almost doesn't seem real even when bullets are zipping by your head. Yeah. Is that just a weird compartmentalization thing that people are capable of? Is that what it is?

I think it is. I mean, I think with me, it's slightly different. I mean, I took part in this MDMA therapy for PTSD recently. And one of the revelations that came out as a result of that was I got into this 20 years ago, thinking I could help people in Syria, Palestine, Congo, wherever, by raising awareness about what's happening. After a while, you lose faith in that idea. So then you start feeling a bit guilty and thinking, am I just here for my own benefit? Am I just here to profit in some way and not actually helping whatsoever? So I think that guilt made me think you're not important enough to have something as dramatic as getting shot or blown up happen to you i know that sounds so stupid and never thought that until you know it came out as part of this therapy but i think i

really had started thinking that so the the mdma therapy made you sort of look at your rational perspective? Like, how are you rationalizing your time in these very, very dangerous places? In ways that I hadn't even thought about before. It was going on in your subconscious. Absolutely, yeah, yeah. You're sort of making these agreements and arrangements in order to be able to still do that. Yeah, and if it continued, then it was going to end badly. Once more coffee?

Thank you. There was only one way it was going to end, and I hadn't seen that coming at all. I hadn't connected the dots like that at all. How did you wind up stopping? Cheers. Cheers. I mean, this is the big thing.

I haven't stopped, and I don't think I'm going to stop. I did the MDMA therapy thinking this would give me an excuse to stop, and I thought that's what I wanted. Three quarters of the way through the first session, I was planning the next program. I mean, people say you're an adrenaline junkie. That's not true at all. It's not a thrill to be there.

It's horrible to be there. It's an endurance test every single time, but I still think it's important. Do you think it's important because the information that you can get to people, there's no other way they can get it? Yeah. I mean, I wonder what impact that has these days. But you hope that...

It has an impact. Everything has an impact. I'm sure it has an impact. But, I mean, the example I always use, and some of my colleagues have been broken by this, is the Syrian war has been very well covered. Every crime has been very well covered. Every crime has been very well documented, you know, often with video footage of exactly the crime being carried

out. Has it made any difference whatsoever? I'm not sure. The Syrian one is one where you hear rational people say that, like, Assad is not our enemy. And that, how do you, what do you feel about that? I mean, I think we're dealing with the legacy of the Iraq and the Afghanistan wars, in that even if you want to help, what's the point? You can't, you're only going to make it worse. I think a lot of people feel that way. And I think that leads some people to think Assad is not a good guy. He probably does have the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands, but we should deal with him anyway, because that's better than Iraq or Afghanistan.

Is it because when we do get rid of a leader like Libya with Gaddafi or Iraq with Hussein, that what happens is you get this power vacuum and then it becomes far worse? We've tried every model. We've tried invading Afghanistan, taking over, trying to rebuild the entire culture and armed forces and government ourselves.

That has failed miserably. Tried Iraq. Libya tried leading from the back, you know, limited intervention, hoping that the guys on the ground could do the fighting for us. And then Syria, we've tried almost no intervention whatsoever. And all three have failed. So I think now you've got people. I mean, the thing I always think most people would say we should have intervened in Rwanda. I think almost everyone would say,

I mean, Bill Clinton would say that's his biggest regret, I think, in his presidency. Most people would say we should have intervened in Rwanda. I think if Rwanda happened tomorrow, you'd have a lot of people here saying it's not worth it. We won't help. We can't make the situation better. So why even try?

Well, it's so hard when you look at the rest of the world and you see these horrific conditions and you see warlords in power and you see atrocities being committed and we're sitting over here and you know in the valley watching on internet and drinking starbucks you know or Or it's just Trump gossip. Yeah. I mean, well, more so. Yeah. American foreign coverage was never great. No. Now it's almost gone. I mean, Yemen, we'll see. I mean, because of the Khashoggi murder, maybe something can happen with Yemen. And there is a lot we can do there because we are, you know, directly supporting one side. It almost seems like what you were talking about but in a far lesser extent the the feeling that you get when you're in these war zones that it's almost

it's not real that you're you're covering it through this this lens so you're immune from it it almost feels like we view the the massive conflicts of the world that way they're like we're watching it on television we're seeing it on our phones or our laptops it's not it's real i know it's real it is a it's a real issue but it's not real like in terms of it's not knocking on my door yeah no it's almost like we feel about it that way yeah and the numbers as well i mean you know in syria it could be 800 000 dead um do people really think what what that means what does 800 000 dead actually mean right do they when i think with certain numbers you you just they just become uh it just becomes digits

and it just doesn't make sense yeah doesn't uh you like if you hear five guys get killed in a shootout you go wow those five guys are dead yeah you start thinking about it you hear 500 000 people died on the other side of the planet. It almost doesn't register. But for you, it registers. Yeah. And the reason I started doing this when I was a kid, as soon as I started reading about these situations, and I remember reading that my government, the British government, was arming often the wrong side in these conflicts. I remember thinking, how is this not front page news?

How is everyone not talking about this every single day and i still feel like that now even though i'm clearly out of step with you know most of the population but well you're so immersed is it hard for you when you come back and you see the trump gossip and all the nonsense and all the things that we engage in on a daily basis here in america that are really trivial at best on a daily basis here in America that are really trivial at best. I mean, you know, is it hard for you to, I mean, you get to see the worst shit happening in the world all the time. Is it hard for you to relate? Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, one of the main symptoms I had of the PTSD from covering

this for so long was, it was numbness to physical danger when I was there, but it was numbness when I got back home. So you'd come back and, you know, at one point you used to think, if I come back with the footage I have of whatever conflict, it's going to have some kind of impact. It's going to create some kind of ripple. And then you come back and you think,

there's going to be nothing. The film's going to go out. There's a few people are going to tweet. A few people are going to, you know, send me a message. That's it it are we in a information overload state i mean you you if you go back to you know the early days of the internet facebook it was going to be the free flow of information you know no borders it's i mean i don't think you can doubt it's made us dumber now that now. It's not just how much there is. It's also how much bad stuff gets traction

and how much really important stuff doesn't get traction. I mean, one of the great things about the Trump era is some of the best writing, you know, I think, for years. But how many people are reading it? Yeah, I would like to know how many people read Matt Taibbi's articles. Yeah. From the beginning to the end. Yeah. Yeah, I really would like to know how many people read matt taibbi's articles yeah from the beginning to the end yeah yeah i really would like to see the night when you think about the amount

of time that guy puts into an article yeah this is a it's such a strange time because it doesn't it doesn't seem like any other time it doesn't seem like any other time in terms of our consumption of information or how much information we're consuming. And it's like the sheer volume of it is, it's almost insurmountable. Like the sheer volume of data that comes in every day. It doesn't go away. It's just new data comes in. It just keeps coming in and piling up.

You know, it's like porn, right? Like you never could watch all the porns yeah it's not possible like but they keep making them yeah you know what i mean and like you open up porn hub and you go what the how many of them how many of them are there yeah and that's you know that is really data i mean but then all these crazy internet videos and stories and there's just every day. It's something new. It's constant But but you'd have thought that would that would have led to a situation where some things are indisputable Right because there is video evidence, but but it's the opposite is the case

Nothing is verifiable now no matter how much evidence exists My concern is that that's leading into this trend of deep fakes and the this new audio editing ability that they have to they can take your voice and your your mouth and put some stuff in there that you never said yeah and you know it could be news i mean you could do that it could be assad it could be obama it could be anyone it's so strange and it might get debunked in the new york times the next day no one cares how many people are reading that very few people are even aware of it yeah very few yeah yeah everything is taken out of context no one reads the full context anything that is a

small video clip no one's going to see the full thing and i think that's what what trump has mastered yes um he doesn't care if he gets taken apart the next day in the new yorker he knows his base aren't reading the new yorker they're not even aware of that article well it doesn't seem to be bothering him either he's one of the rare guys i've been paying attention to him a lot over the last few months he doesn't seem to be getting older like a lot of them do like it's the concern that makes them old you know it's the stress of the job that makes them all he seems to be sleeping in late i i go i go traveling and i come back and i read the headlines you know trump's having a meltdown screaming in the white house and i see him on tv he looks as happy as a pig in shit i don't believe any of that shit they write i think they write things like that i think he yells at

people but i think he yelled at people when he was a real estate mogul i mean i think you know he wants to get shit done he's a billionaire he likes progress he likes to make money he doesn't like incompetence he yells at people i don't know man it's just it's i feel like we're at this cusp of something very strange happening like we're in the middle of it right now but we're at the cusp of something very strange where all it would take is one massive world event one mat to to completely remap how we we view each other and how we view things it's very disconcerting to me this i mean it feels like without that one big world event we're not that far away from that right now right there are parallel universes right now that exist on things that you would have thought

everyone can accept as a basic fact like what you know um uh i mean syria yeah you know the white helmets there are some fairly serious people saying the white helmets are you know some kind of media front for al-qaeda or al-nusra would you explain the white helmets for people so when there's a when there's a bombing and a building collapses they go in and drag people out and get their medical attention as quick as possible and people think that they're somehow or another involved in it they're a front yeah to and the footage is faked in order to drum up sympathy for the rebel held areas oh i mean that's i've heard you know serious people say that serious people yeah not not not loons on facebook i've heard heard, you know. Like journalists? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, Seymour Hersh, I think, has walked it back a little bit since, but he said that in the early days. Why do you think he believed it? I read a really interesting article about him just a few days ago. Where was it? I forget what. It was, you know, the, not expose, but a really good look at him. And I think he's just spent his career

believing rightly that the government lies about all kinds of things and that's got him into a point where he thinks well they always lie no matter what um so and it's happened to a lot of journalists uh robert fisk uh seymour hirsch um martha gellhorn i mean one of my favorite war correspondents of all time i reread some of her stuff recently. And the first batch of war reporting she did, I think, is the best war reporting I've ever read. Spanish Civil War, Vietnam. And then she spent 25 years writing novels and then later on wrote about, I believe it was the Yom Kippur War. And was denying that massacres had happened and saying, you know, Arabs lie, they always lie, there was no massacre. And we now know there was a massacre, or there were massacres in the aftermath of these wars.

So I don't know what happens. I mean, maybe if you just do this for too long, you just become so cynical that you're open to these things. But it's, yeah, I'm amazed that Seymour Hirsch is open to that idea. When the very people that are calling it, the very people that are calling it the very people that have boots on the ground and that are in these war zones are and calling these things when they become cynical and they become jaded that's when it gets really really sketchy and and we rely so heavily on people like you like there's i'm not going over there you know jam I'm not going over there. You know, Jamie's not going over there. Look at him.

You know what I'm saying? I mean, and you wouldn't be able to really get, like, I know people that have gone to Venezuela and they come back and they go, I don't know what the fuck is going on over there. I don't know who to believe. I don't understand it.

Venezuela is a very strange one and I get messages all the time and, you know, I've had Abby Martin who goes over there and she has one take on it and I have other people that I talk to that have a different take on it and I do not know. I don't know who to believe and I think had Abby Martin who goes over there and she has one take on it. And I have other people that I talk to that have a different take on it.

And I do not know. I don't know who to believe. And I think you'd have to go over there and do, you'd have to spend a lot of time to try to figure this out. And it would have to be the entire focus of your life to really try to parse it out. I think that's true of a lot of conflicts. I mean, one of the drawbacks of doing what I do is I'm covering seven or eight things at once. So I feel like I'm not expert enough in even Afghanistan where I've covered that more than any other. But Venezuela is an interesting one because there's such a left-right divide on that.

And if you support the opposition, then you find yourself alongside John Bolton and Donald Trump, which means that a lot of people are going to automatically attack you. Right. Right. Automatically. Yeah. Even if it's correct. And I think it's, you know, we can say without a doubt that Maduro has destroyed the economy there. Maduro has imprisoned, beaten, killed journalists. There is a movement there

that do want genuine elections. But some people will say, well, just because George Bush in another area or John Bolton in this era support the opposition therefore the opposition must be illegitimate and the information coming out must be must be false and i wish people did rely on on people who actually went there but it doesn't feel like that it feels like they rely on the you know the guy behind the glass desk on the on the news with their loud opinion rather than the people who are actually there well we still have this idea in our head that the the person who's reading the news is the authority you know that don lemon has the inside scoop or whoever it is you know and i think it used to be that those guys would spend 20 or 30 years traveling and then they'd get the

cushy job behind the glass desk in the studio now it seems like you can go straight to the cushy job behind the glass desk well we just need someone who's relatable who can read a teleprompter you know who fits the profile that they're looking for whether it's fox news or cnn you know and also the information is there you know there are fantastic documentaries articles being written about all of these conflicts right people aren't reading them well with something like venezuela the the real problem is you have two sides you have two different versions of what's happening and it's if you're if you're not educated in that country and you don't understand their politics it's very difficult to figure out who's telling the truth. Yeah. Same with Syria. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I agree with you that I don't necessarily think

we're getting stupider or dumber in this country or in the world in general because of the internet, but we're definitely getting weirder in our perceptions of actual world events. And I think every time something happens, like mass shootings, for instance, like New Zealand, every time one of these horrific tragedies takes place, you see more and more division.

I watch people fight over it on Twitter, people blaming left-wing people, people blaming right-wing people, people trying to find some reason. And this one is particularly disturbing because it appears that at least one of the guys i don't know their names i don't know if they've even released have they withheld the names of these guys who've done this i haven't seen the name so far didn't one of them seems like he's trolling like he he thanked pewdiepie and and said that candace owens was

his biggest inspiration and he's doing that i guess we could agree some people are saying that that okay sign is a white power sign i know we had this dispute with tim pool where he was saying i guess it is a game that some people do play what is it called the game the look i don't know there's an official name there's some game where if you look under the table, you see someone doing that, they're allowed to punch you or something, something stupid like that. I saw the Stephen Miller photo where he's doing up his blazer and supposedly doing the white power sign. I thought, really?

Is that really evidence enough? No. There was a woman in court, too, that was doing that, where she had her hand like this, and people were saying that. But that's what people are arguing about, rather than. Right. Which is ridiculous. Like, ah, evidence but this guy in custody is clearly making that symbol

clearly so like what is he you know he's like some troll murderer some troll mass murderer i mean he's both he's both fucking with everybody and a cold-blooded ruthless killer of people that were praying Yeah, I mean, I think let's not lose sight of that You have to have some serious hatred to walk into a mosque and gun down He's a to people and seven people in the other way, you know, that's yeah, it's horrific across the board top to bottom It's it's horrific But it's also one of those things where like we we see so many of these now that we're starting to get numb, whether it's a Jewish synagogue, whether it's a Muslim temple, whether it's a gay club, whatever it is.

It's like you see so many of these mass murders now. That's just whether it's a school or a movie theater. It's like, fuck, man. theater it's like fuck man it's just it all like you were talking about when you're filming the news you're you're there you're watching the bullets fly by you hear them fly by your head and you are just watching it through the lens we are many many many many levels removed from that and we're sitting here trying to figure out what to do and we're not there we're not where the bullets and the people that are there where the bullets take place they try to give you a description of it and even they barely can comprehend what happened but also as

you said we're going straight to the argument about who to blame who did he follow and you know rather than yes i mean if people spent as much time as they spend arguing on twitter reading yes you know i know people say fake news you know that there are people who you can trust if they write a 10 000 word piece on syria for the new yorker for example like you know that they're they're being fact check and maybe it would be better if there was a website where we curated all of like the bulletproof that's a terrible way to describe it but you know lock saw rock solid investigative journalisms that are 100 ethical that you could completely rely on for an accurate assessment of what's happening because it is difficult for

people and when people they rely on biased websites which many of them do whether it's biased to the left or biased to the right things get even more muddy and there's so many of them it's so easy to get so easy to reinforce your confirmation bias with whatever you know whether it's left-wing or right-wing just find that website read the comments these are my people they think like me and especially now it used to be if you were conservatively and you'd read the comments these are my people they think like me and especially now it used to be if you were conservative leaning you'd read the wall street journal if you were liberal leading new york times now no matter how far off the scale you are you can find a pretty professional looking website yes that will write a story backing up your your prejudice and people aren't looking at a story thinking okay i want to find out what happened here yeah they're thinking i know what

my gut feeling tells me i need to find a head not even a story, a headline that justifies my gut feeling about this. And that's as far as it seems to go. Now, you as a journalist, as a person who risks their life to bring this information to people, how does this make you feel? that MDMA therapy not just the fact that you were you know you're you really are without better use of without a better term shell-shocked right I mean you're you're there you're there yeah there's something that comes out of that that's got to be very very difficult to recover from and overcome yeah but there's also the fact that you're going over there and bringing this shit back and it doesn't seem to people don't seem to give a fuck. And that used to be what kept you going, is you thought like some of my work is going to make some kind of difference. And when that starts to fade and you start to think that's not going to happen, that's...

I'm sure your work makes a lot of difference to the people that pay attention to it. I think we're overwhelmed by bullshit. I think it's everywhere. And when i mean bullshit i mean like nonsense yeah you know kim kardashian psoriasis is in the front page of the cnn or something like that you know i mean it's not nonsense to her but you know what i mean like there's there's stuff that people are concentrating on it's like jesus christ it's i don't mean one of our one of our docs on on HBO, if it got 4 million views,

I think that would be considered very good viewing figures. Yeah, that's giant. 4 million in a country of 360 million people. Yeah. Well, it's very difficult to get people to watch documentaries on real-world events. You get them to watch documentaries on a sex cult from Oregon or something like that, like Wild Wild Country.

They probably got 10 million. Yeah, yeah. It's just, I don't know man you know this new zealand thing really had me rattled i and you know what is also strange people like seem to demand a response they demand um people in the public eye to talk about it and you know say thoughts and prayers or something like that but as soon as you say thoughts and prayers they'll say they'll get thoughts and prayers here we've had that for years and nothing's actually happened it's yeah yeah it's um it's very strong but like like i don't know if they they're concerned that you're not horrified they want to make sure you are like who the fuck isn't like how could you not be i don't

understand this or is it just they're just frustrated to confuse themselves so just lashing out at any target they can find or anyone they can find and also you know i mean i know the footage is available of you know this guy's head cam as he as he shot everybody but but footage like that has been widely available for a long time now. And I think that's had a massive, numbing effect. I mean, you know, the picture of the Syrian refugee washing up on the beach, you know, it felt like that was going to have an effect. It felt like that was the picture that was really going to change things.

No, I'm not sure it did. It might have for a couple of days. Yeah. And then more news. Yeah. I mean, not, you know know just to be not completely pessimistic that when you're doing stuff for vice um and hbo you do get young people reaching out to you and saying i had no idea i want to be a photographer a doctor or maybe that's an effect that's going

to be felt down the road i don't know it feels like there are that there is a generation of people growing up thinking i'm not going to play by the normal set of rules like i am going to actually try and do something about this i think i really do believe you do have an effect i think vice certainly has an effect i think a lot of this has an effect i think it's very difficult to feel that effect if you're not experiencing it personally i mean to just look out onto the landscape and say how much of an effect is this having on people it's hard like where are you getting the feedback from? How are you gauging whether or not this is changing people's perceptions?

Well, sometimes the feedback you do get is on Twitter. You'll get a few lunatics will say, oh, you fake this footage. So then you think, wow, really having no impact. But I think that's an argument for just not reading the comments. Well, there's a little bit of that. And then, you know, I renee di resta on recently and she's done a lot of work

covering all these various uh russian troll farms and how they uh so how they essentially organize conflict online and you know they they set up these things where you have like a pro-Texas movement and they set them up across the street from a pro-Muslim movement and they do it on purpose. And then they have these pro-LGBT movement things online that they organize to attack certain people in certain groups, diminish certain aspects and defy parts of the Democratic Party. It's crazy yeah when you hear about shit like that on top of all this you're like well okay just the the actual news itself is so difficult to disseminate it's so difficult to figure out what should i pay attention to what's real and then you have this kind of shit happening on top of that you're like well fuck you know i don't you know there's a piece came out in the new york i don't mean to keep on

going on about the new yorker but a piece came out in the new york i don't mean to keep on going on about the new yorker but a piece came out about the new yorker today by ed caesar a friend of mine about brexit and about aaron banks and and and i haven't read the piece yet but i know i know what he's been working on and you know there may be evidence that the russians directly influenced the brexit vote are the brexit voters really gonna look at that article and think oh maybe i was misled maybe i maybe i read 10 articles on facebook that that made me vote wrongly you know how many people actually have their minds open enough to consider that i mean especially with american politics it feels like football yes you know if your player fouls someone of course it's not a foul right if your

player gets fouled that's a blatant foul he should get sent off it's 100 blatant tribalism yeah very few objective people very few legitimate centrists everyone seems to be digging their heels in on one side or the other and it seems that a lot of them have just picked a team yeah i don't i don't necessarily think they've curated these opinions and cultivated these ideas over many years of soul-searching and reading and trying to understand who they are and how they interface with the world. I don't think that's happening. Or your family. Yes. So if your family has always been Republican, then suddenly saying, maybe I'm going to vote for Hillary instead of Trump feels like coming out with something. It's that big a deal.

Your occupation, depending upon your occupation i mean good luck finding a job in tech if you're right wing you know good good luck working in the arms industry if you're left wing yeah yeah it's like there's it's a weird weird time ben yeah you know and i you know i always i used i always used to read about the uh the nixon era thinking that must have been a fascinating time to be alive. But then to actually live through a similar period now, you're thinking it's not fascinating. It's just depressing every single day. Well, the Nixon thing, it must have been insanely difficult to get information, right?

You relied on Rolling Stone, New York Times, whatever, washington post whatever newspaper was covering whatever story you relied on all those but you you couldn't get it any other way now you can get it from everything i mean there's people on the ground that are tweeting about things and then they become local celebrities so they become sort of like temporary internet journalists slash celebrities. Yeah. Fucking weird, man. When you, your perspective and your life experience is so much richer and deeper in this than anybody else's. Do you think there's a way to turn this around? Is this going to eventually even out?

I hope so. Right now, I don't see what that what that looks like what that looks like is the best way yeah to describe it what does that look like i mean you know my attention span i think has been shortened yeah i'll sit down to watch a movie at home and within 10 minutes i'm reaching for my phone yes i'm thinking you know i'm not a heart surgeon there's no emergency that you know right right i might just be checking twitter again again yeah you know um it's a perfect storm yeah of distractions and and we now know it is it is addictive so yeah how you turn that around i i mean it feels like there's a little bit of a movement of people to you know switch that stuff off and just read a book or go for a walk or put yeah you gotta have real discipline though i mean you're fighting against a fucking heroin addiction man yeah it's crazy and everyone else is addicted

too oh yeah so you're not part of the conversation if you're not man i walked into a restaurant the other night and everyone was looking at their phone no one was looking at each other i'm like i'm in a movie yeah this is a movie some poster This is a movie. Some poster pop-up. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, if instead of looking at their phones, if everyone was just looking at the sky, you'd be like, oh, my God, there's a real problem. These people are sick. Yeah, yeah. There's something wrong.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? If everyone is just sitting there with their hands open, like staring up at the sky and sitting next to each other, you'd be like, these people are sick. There's something wrong. They need help. Instead, they're looking at nothing.

Yeah. They're checking their feed over and over again someone's complaining about captain marvel being a woman yeah yeah yeah and are the experts are they the ones getting followed on there they're not who are the experts i mean the experts in whatever you know the ones you really know are we looking at them you know it should be this this free flow of information where you can find out anything in your hand what an incredible thing yeah but it's it's not that it's definitely not that well i think there's two things i think one we didn't earn it is just given to us right it's not like we did all the work to curate all this technology and put it together and figure out how

to implement it in our deal no we just went to to the fucking Verizon store and picked up a new phone. I mean, that's, that's what most people are doing. Yeah. And because of that, it's almost like being, um,

like a trust fund kid or something like that. It's just all given to you. It's all handed to you. All this, you know, I felt, I feel the same way sometimes about weapons. I feel like the,

the discipline required to learn how to use one and create it and build it and then understand the responsibility of actually using it on a human being, all that shit's out the window. You just go to the store and buy it. There's no requirements of you other than you never killed anybody yet. Have you driven over anybody in your car no have you robbed a bank no okay here you go you beaten your wife no okay here's a guy yeah it's fucking strange and this as as a human being the the lack of discipline and accountability that

that we have in this ultimate access to all these things constantly. And many of them become just massive distractions. And this in some ways is the utopia that people have dreamed of for generations. We're free of war. You're not going to get attacked in your house tonight. You're not going to starve. You have everything you could possibly need. So you'd think we would become the perfect human beings in the absence of all those things that would have killed us in the past or would have made life hard in the past

yeah and again that's that's not what we're doing well i don't think we operate very well without legitimate conflict without legitimate conflict in terms of like actual things you need to worry about like i when i used to live in the east coast one of the things that was really noticeable was that when it snowed out, people were nicer. They helped people when they were broken down on the side of the road. They were nice to each other. There was a sense of vulnerability that we were all deeply entrenched in this winter nature thing, and we got to work together, otherwise we can't survive. And I think that applies to all aspects of life, that when there's no real danger, people become extremely frivolous.

Yeah, it's amazing how quickly we become lazy and complacent. And actually, the flip side of the negative stuff I was saying earlier, on good days, I'll come back from Yemen, Syria, wherever. I'll go out and I'll get a cup of coffee and I'll read the newspaper and I'll get a donut and I'll think, man, I'm the luckiest man alive. Yeah. The flip side. It's the fact that I can do this. Because you do experience these horrific environments, so you can appreciate it. Yeah.

And the fact that we can, you know, I mean, within a few hours here, we could have one of the best meals possible in the world. You know, it's, you know, it's, that's fairly incredible. So on good days, you can appreciate it. But again, this is you coming from these bad things, so it puts it in perspective. Sorry, yeah, I was trying to back you up and say, if you're not protected from all that stuff, then you can get to appreciate the basics again.

I was on this trip in Prince of Wales. We camped out on this island. It rained every day for six days, seven days. I mean, we were soaked. You're soaked. Everything's soaked. Your sleeping bag's soaked. Your tent's soaked.

Everything. Came back home, and it felt so good. Like, I'd never felt the sun like that before. Like, the sun was just this magic love glow that the sky was pouring down on the city. Everything felt so happy. And I realized, like, you can't really appreciate this until it's taken away from you. glow that the sky was pouring down on the city everything felt so happy and i realized like you can't really appreciate this until it's taken away from you yeah it's taken away from you then you understand what it is so then you wonder when the kids of today grow up right what are they

going to be like when everything has just been at their fingertips from day one forever forever no mystery they don't understand bullshitters either because Because when I was a kid, people used to lie about shit, and you really didn't know. You're like, man, I don't know. He seems like he's full of shit. You couldn't just, you'd have to go to an encyclopedia and actually read the information. Now you can go, okay, what year did this happen? And you pull up your phone, get the fuck out of here, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know? Yeah. People lie about being in the Olympics. They lied lied about this they lied about that they'll yeah it's um it's good in that we have ultimate access to information for people that use it and understand what it is and appreciate it is good but to your point if there was a way to actually filter yeah and say this is verifiable this yeah this contains seven things which are absolutely bullshit. We have no doubt about that whatsoever. If that could exist, wonderful, but I mean, folks have tried it.

A few people have tried it. It still feels like you end up being described as being on one side of the fight. Yeah, I almost feel like we need some sort of organized discipline, like maybe mandatory volunteer work, cleaning up impoverished communities or mandatory volunteer work doing things like it and but i don't want people to have to do things like i'm conflicted on that too i don't want people to have to do that you know like when there's countries that have mandatory military service they seem to have an amazing feeling of

of patriotism in those countries and appreciation in those countries because they actually do have to join the military for two years or whatever it is. We don't have that over here. Yeah. It's weird. And to your point about going up and cleaning up an impoverished area, at least then you'd get to meet other people. Yes.

People outside of your circle and your bubble. I mean, the amount of times here when you talk to people about Muslims, LGBT, whateverbt whatever it is and you think oh it's because you've never met anyone right you've actually never met anyone that is x y or z which is i moved to brooklyn five years six years ago and i moved to clinton hill fort green and i got a few friends that have been there forever and i said look this probably sounds like a really stupid thing to say but it feels kind of segregated here and they were like duh of course it does and i couldn't believe it you know i'd grown up on the spike lee movies and right i mean i guess they do show a kind of segregation but i thought you know this was the place where everyone lived together on the same block went to each other's bodegas and

restaurants and right i lived on the dividing line between the bit that was getting gentrified and and the projects you go two blocks that way pretty the projects. You go two blocks that way, pretty much all black. You go three blocks that way, pretty much all white, with yoga studios and bougie coffee shops and pet spas. And the two communities just did not mix. It wasn't necessarily that they hated each other. They just did not mix. Different language, different everything.

Right. This is this utopian perception that there is a place where everybody's cool. Yeah. And I thought it might be New york it might be brooklyn yeah it's probably the only place that's close right like at least it has the reputation for it yeah because at least in brooklyn people walk around i mean yeah but but talking about amazing pieces of journalism over the last few years there's nicole hannah jones wrote a piece about new york school system public school system the most segregated school system in america in new york really and she had to get her daughter into a public school and the choice was the the very good well-supported school in the gentrifying mostly white area or the bad failing public school in the non-gentrified mostly black area where her kid's education might suffer and i think i'm remembering correct correctly but her and her

husband had a real fight about it because she said no we got to put our kid in the in the bad failing school and help it get better and it's going to take years and our daughter may suffer in the short term but that's what we have to do if we're living in this neighborhood um it's an incredible piece wow yeah that's a the real conflict as a parent do you have children no when you're possibly yeah i'm sure right you're when you're thinking of your children you're you're always thinking of their safety you're always worried about them and you want to protect them so putting them in a situation where they wouldn't be as protected is never your first instinct oh she was in in town hall meetings where know, progressive white liberal parents who would be very left wing on every other issue were really fighting to make sure their kid went to the good majority white school.

And, you know, they want a bit of diversity, but not too much diversity. Right. They want a black friend. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's when people think of Brooklyn, they do think of it as being like the most diverse place. Yeah, and it's, yeah.

I mean, street by street, segregated. Atlanta's pretty diverse. Atlanta's interesting, you know, because Atlanta has a lot of, there's a lot of, well, there's a lot of everything in Atlanta. But it's a very black city in a lot of ways, but it's also a very white city. You see a lot of black and white people hanging out together in clubs and bars and restaurants and stuff,

and it's really much closer to a 50-50 split than a lot of places, at least in some of the neighborhoods that I've been to. When I go back to London, that's one of the few things I'm proud of about London, versus certainly New York. It's not a big deal for a group of friends, a family, a couple to be genuinely mixed. Is that, you would know, I'd ask you, is that because London didn't experience slavery the way the United States did?

Yeah. I mean, obviously, we have a colonial you know, colonial history, right? Of course, but that wasn't in the country itself. Right. For a very long time, we've had a huge Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Jamaican community. And it's, it's, you know, I mean, here, if you have black friends, or you date a black girl, or you know, it's it's people think you're trying to prove you're woke, right? There, it was it was just normal. Normal. I'm saying London. I'm not saying England's perfect. London.

I experienced that when I was in London as well. It seemed like way more integrated. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I mean, still five, six years after I moved to New York, there's still a surprise every day to reinforce that. Well, New York is a different animal now. New York is so fucking expensive.

It's so strange. And my friend judah who uh judah freelander who lives there said he's he's lived there for a long time he's like it's so changed it used to be like a lot of artists and a lot of creative people and he goes now it's all finance people like everywhere you go it's finance everybody just wants the most expensive suit and the most expensive watch and they live in this ridiculously expensive apartment and i thought that went out in the 80s i thought that was like wall street american psycho yeah that still very much exists that's still prevalent well i was talking to this guy yesterday who is a 26 year old who's graduating uh with a degree in finance and trying to figure

out what he wants to do and he's thinking about moving to new york and getting a degree in finance and trying to figure out what he wants to do. And he's thinking about moving to New York and getting a job in Wall Street. But he's hesitant because he's a nice guy. He doesn't want to go dark. And I'm like, you could go to the dark side. These people are, look, not all of them, but a lot of them are just straight-up materialists. They're just chasing money. When you're in the money business and you're just chasing money,

your reward is things. Your reward is objects and status and clothes and houses and shit. Yeah, and sometimes you talk to those guys and you say, so what do you do? I work in finance. Yeah, yeah, but what do you actually do? I work in finance. I'm very well rewarded, as you can see. Yeah, but what do you actually do i work in finance i'm very well rewarded as you can

see yeah but what do you actually do oh i i look for fluctuations in international grain markets congratulations what an amazing thing to dedicate your life to you know and if you just said what they do rather than what the reward was right i think this is ridiculous what a waste of your time it is but the the status of being super wealthy for a lot of them is worth it because they don't have a passion right they don't have a thing they're they're not trying to write a book they're not trying to make a painting or whatever the fuck it is yeah you know they're just trying to make the money and they're making the money so everything is great yeah they're doing coke and i mean if i if i pulled up here in a purple Lamborghini with a diamond studded watch.

I'd be like, look at this motherfucker. He must be robbing people. Yeah, yeah. But not that many people would be that impressed. I think most people would think, what a douche. What a tool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's certain circles, right?

It's whatever circle that you're in. Yeah. Certain circles, like in finance circles circles it is about those things more than it's not because those things represent success in your industry your friend should read a piece it may even even in a book by michael lewis um and he talks to a bunch of graduates who you know are about to get approached by the big banks and financial institutions he says listen you think you're going to do this for two or three years a earn a few million dollars, and then do something worthwhile with your life. But what's going to happen is you're going to get seduced,

and you're going to get the mortgage, and suddenly 20 years of your life will have gone by, and you'll think, what the fuck have I just done with life? This is the exact advice I gave him yesterday. The exact advice. I was like, man, you've got to do something that actually makes you happy. Don't get sucked into that. And he was saying, I was thinking of trying it for a few years.

That's what they say. Yeah, man. Once you get a mortgage, once you get a car. Yeah. Ooh, nice BMW. Yeah. How much does it run you a month? Yeah.

Yeah. Ugh. Fuck, man. Yeah. It's a strange thing, too, the stock market, the moving around of numbers and looking for fluctuations in the market. And the fact that what drives me crazy is when you hear that people have gotten servers that are the closest as possible to the market because the ping, because they're using algorithms, so that everything is done off of a computer program. And the closer they are, the quicker the transaction takes place.

And it actually can be to the tune of millions of dollars. That's another Michael Lewis book, yeah. Oh, is it? Flash Boys, yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, these guys figured out what was going on. And then they started a trading floor where there was so much cable that no one could benefit from those nanose know, those nanoseconds of advantage. And of course the other banks tried to close it down and it wasn't that

popular. Jamie was telling me that there's a game called Fortnite and all the kids play and they're moving to Columbus, Ohio so they could be closer to the server. Not just there, but that's one of the places. Right. Texas also.

So another place where they moved to? Same deal? Yeah. To be closer to the server so that they could ping lower. Cause it's like a real business. Yeah. But at least these guys are playing a game. It's a skill.

I mean, they're... I guess it's a skill. It's a skillful game. I mean, yeah. Someone made $100,000 yesterday playing. Yeah. Yeah. Sure, sure.

So I turned on ESPN last night trying to watch the boxing. There was boxing at Madison Square Garden last night. And ESPN, the main channel, had gamers in a stadium playing football but on a computer

they have an eSports arena in Vegas right? at the Luxor it's like an eSports arena I think the franchise fees for the next season of Call of Duty

are 25 million dollars a team which is like four guys on a team Jesus playing the game and someone's got to pay for that Jesus Christ you were were in uh dallas for the earl spence uh mikey garcia fight yeah yeah

earl spence is the real deal i mean i thought mikey garcia would outbox him for a few rounds at least um early on and then maybe you know spence's size and power would make a difference but he outboxed him from when i looked at them in the weigh-ins i was like yikes yeah he's a lot bigger yeah two weight divisions yeah it yeah well mikey started his career at one what was it 135 he was featherweight champ i think was his first oh so it's lighter than that so was that 126 see pull pull that up mike garcia see they fought at 47 and earl spence looks every bit of 147. I mean, he's a big fella. He looks like he could fight 154 easy. You know, Michael Garcia just looks so much smaller than him at the weigh-in.

But it wasn't just the size. It was like, Earl Spence Jr. is just the real deal. That was the surprise for me. He was incredible. He's fucking good. He's so smart, too. Like, when you hear him talk, he's so smooth and smiley. Do you remember the Winky Wright-Felix Trinidad fight?

Yes, I do. It reminded me of that. Yeah, look at the size difference. talk he's so smooth and do you remember the smiley winky right felix trinidad fight yes i do it reminded me of that yeah look at the size difference and he would have put on a load of weight yeah in the next 36 hours as well yeah i mean he's uh he's taller he's wider he's more muscular and he's probably pretty dehydrated making that way look at roberto duran having the time of his life yeah yeah i love rober Yeah, he was dancing at the weigh-ins and shit. Certain fighters were dancing, and he was dancing too. It was pretty funny. What is he doing now?

Is he, like, working as a, he's helping them promote these things? Is that what's going on? He was on this one. Yeah, he was there. We saw him ringside. He's so beloved. What a crazy story that guy had, right? Like, to go for that that no moss fight he was

he was shunned i mean hated yeah mass shame across the whole world for years yeah until he beat davy moore that's one of my favorite fights of all time i mean it's brutal but brutal just to see that tenacity just slowly yeah and i read a story that tyson was at that fight with all of his friends from brooklyn and they couldn't tickets, so they just rushed the security gate, knowing that three or four of them would get caught. Really? And the others would get in, and that's how he got in, yeah. Wow.

Wow. Yeah, I remember watching that fight thinking that he was going to lose, and I was a big Roberto Duran fan. And I was thinking, God, man, he's probably going to lose. He was supposed to lose, right? Yeah. He was a massive underdog. Sure, and he fucked Davey Moore up.

Davey Moore wound up dying in a crazy accident where he was working on his car in his driveway and it fell on him yeah he either fell on him or it ran him over like one of those things he was trying to fix his car something fucked up like that and duran laced him at one point when you still had the leather laces yep he thumbed him too they think that's what you remember his eyes swole up pretty bad that's one of the fights that makes me feel

a bit guilty about loving boxing when you see that because it's it's brutal it's a brutal fucking business man it's a brutal business

you know I mean I don't know if MMA is more brutal I think it probably is but there's a lot of pokes to the eye

in MMA a lot and most of them are eye in MMA, a lot. And most of them are unintentional, most of them. But a bunch have to be intentional. The thing that gets me with MMA is because I come from, you know, boxing is my sport. When you see a guy go down and he's clearly out and the guy jumps on him and pounds him.

I know sometimes the ref tries to get in there. That's just a bit too much for me. This weekend, Jorge Masvidal, he knocked out Darren Till and he KO'd him. He clipped him with a left hand on the way down. He hit him with another left hand and then Darren Till is flatlined, completely out and Masvidal uncorks a bomb right on his face

while he's out cold. It was rough. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like a boxing crowd appreciates a good, skillful, technical match. I feel like sometimes a UFC crowd will be cheering at that moment you just described. I think humans like brawls. I mean, there's a reason why Arturo Gatti and Mickey Ward was such a successful trilogy.

It's because those guys would just beat the fuck out of each other. They were so closely matched, and they were both these blood and guts warriors, and they just stood in front of each other. And we knew at the time that these guys are not going to beat floyd mayweather they're not going to beat the best guys they're they're you know they're good fighters they're world-class fighters but they're not world champions and there's a thing that we look at when we watch fighters like a fighter could be good but there's a there's a fighters that we appreciate but they'll never fight for the world title if they do they have no chance and then there's fighters like this guy might be the best in the world you know there's a difference you

know and you can admire floyd yeah defensive skills but he's never going to have that that war with mickey ward or churagati never but he's also gonna be fine when he's 55. He'll be able to talk and walk and nothing happens to him. He didn't endure the punishment and the beatings that those guys had. That's the saddest of all is when you see these guys, you see them on television, you see the war, but you don't see the aftermath. You don't see the struggles that they have with their memory. You don't see the confusion, the anger out of nowhere, the emotional outbursts. They don't know why they're doing what they're doing. They don't know why they're saying what they're saying.

Most of them are broke before they even retire. Yeah. Did you see the film about Michael Bent? It just came out on Netflix as part of that Losers series. No, I did not. That's worth watching. He never really liked boxing, never really wanted to box, but has got a really successful career in hollywood producing plays and movies really yeah yeah yeah it's a great michael bent produces plays and movies yeah he

wrote a play i think and he teaches uh actors how to how to box as well like you know when they're doing movies it's a great little talk good for him well i'm always very happy when someone finds a path you know you just get the sense that boxing was never him and he found a way at the end to be him and do something he loved and he's thriving at it which which is a rare thing for xboxes it's crazy when people are just good at things there's a guy in mma like that anthony rumble johnson who's one of the most terrifying fighters in the history of the sport just a ruthless knockout artist and um last his last loss he i was talking to him in the octagon i was interviewing him and he said i know i don't

like fighting i'm not a fighter he goes i'm an athlete i'm just good at it and i was like wow that is a crazy honest like in such a introspective way like he's like looking at himself like this is not what i i don't want to do this yeah but since then he's thought about coming back but people say to me all the time you're adrenaline junkie you're addicted to the thrill i'm like there's no fucking thrill doing this what you think it's a thrill you're not you're not close enough i'm sure there's no thrill for you but do you think that being in these incredibly tense environments in these incredibly tense environments ramps life up in a way that you don't get outside of it like did you did you read tribe sebastian young yeah and i met him a few times as well he was he was when i was having a few problems he was he was very helpful he was a really really good guy yeah

i really like that guy yeah yeah before i met him you know he's got that picture in vanity fair of like posing with the dog tag and it's like a model looking picture. And I thought, oh, this guy is ridiculous. Tosser. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I met him and he was the nicest, most humble, considerate guy. He's fantastic. And I really like that book as well.

Yeah, I couldn't be a bigger fan of his. He's as a human too, just very genuine, really there when you're talking to him. But that's sort of his take on it is that um and if you're listening i know i talk about that book too much uh i just love it but his take on it was that these people are experiencing life in this incredibly extreme environment and then they come back to the rest of the world and it just doesn't feel real anymore so it's not it's not thrilling when you're there but it is real drama you're seeing life and death drama right in front of your face so when you come back you think you really want to see this person see this film try out this new restaurant and then you get back and you just you just don't care it just feels flat

yeah yeah i mean the you know when when i was getting the ptsd treatment numb numbness was the word that came out more numbness to everything like numbness to the danger when you're there but numbness back here for the things that should be pleasurable and should be providing some kind of relief as well. Now, how did the PTSD treatment get organized? Is this through maps? Are you part of that study? Yeah, we did a short film about Rick Doblin and this effort to get MDMA legal. But I'd been in denial for years and years.

Then a new producer joined Vice, a guy called Stephen Bailey. And we had the first meeting where he was pitching some some first meeting where he was pitching some of his ideas and he mentioned you know this breakthrough therapy using mdma for ptsd and i just involuntarily put my hand up and said i'll do it straight away it was like gave me the excuse to actually you know get some help and then and see if had you done mdma recreationally before that i mean mean, yeah, I came of age in London in the 90s. I mean, it was like having a pint of beer. Right. Then.

What is the difference between doing it in a therapeutic environment? I mean, it's MDMA-assisted therapy. Right. The emphasis is on the therapy. So you're lying in a bed. You've fasted for 24 hours before. The therapist knows you and knows your issues. So knows how to like politely

you know gently nudge you towards the right topic of conversation but always makes it makes you actually get to the conclusions right um you know there were times when i would ask him um why is this happening why do i think this and he'd put it back on me and make me put two and two together um sometimes you listen to music sometimes you put an eye mask on and you don't sleep but you just you know have a quiet 20 30, 30 minutes. But it's a very intense seven to eight hour therapy session. And the MDMA just enables you to get the benefits. And all of the veterans and first responders who took part in the first round of trials had been therapy resistant. And I think the first round, I think 72% of them got the benefits and were considered PTSD free

after the three month trial. So during the three-month trial how many experiences do they have one a month one a month three three total yeah yeah and that I mean the best the best example I can give of how this works I the first veteran I met had been through it he had one session and he'd lost some friends in Iraq and it felt guilty about it and always thought maybe if I'd have done something different I could have saved them and he imagined lost some friends in Iraq and he'd felt guilty about it and always thought maybe if I'd have done something different I could have saved them. And he imagined being them in the first MDMA session. And they were saying to him, why are you ruining your life? You're alive, you're healthy, we want you to have a fun, productive, full life and enjoy

your friends and enjoy your family. And he said that gave him permission. And that was what he needed. And he didn't even do the second two sessions wow that's a what an interesting way of looking at of course and that word permission because there is so much guilt yeah just getting permission to just give yourself a bit of a pat on the back is real oh yeah yeah a lot of people that come back from the war that lost friends have that horrible feeling that it should have been them, that they're not as good as the person who died, or that somehow or another them being alive is the reason why their friend was dead. Irrational thoughts.

Well, maybe I didn't really experience it because I came out unscathed. Right. Yeah, which is one of the reasons why I didn't seek treatment for years and years and years, because I've got friends who lost their legs. I've got friends who were kidnapped and killed you know so maybe I've only just dipped my toes so there's nothing nothing I've got nothing to complain about what was your number one issue um I think the numbness to danger and to pleasurable things back here um I mean my cameraman in Mosul we were there when the Iraqi army beat ISIS. And it was, I mean, it was house to house fighting.

We were stepping on bodies to get through rooms. And at one point, um, I was with, we were with three or four Iraqi soldiers trying to get to the river to cut off these two ISIS positions. And they got a radio message saying there's a suicide bomber and a gunman running down the street towards you now.

So we stepped into this, what used to be a shop that was all blown up and smashed a bit. And I sat down as the two soldiers tried to shoot this suicide bomber as he was running towards us and someone said i.e.d. i.e.d. and right next to me under the rubble was an i.e.d. the day before i think or two days before two french journalists and kurdish journalists had been killed when they stepped on an i.e.d. trying to get out and javier monzano, my cameraman, just said, he looked bored. And he filmed it. We got that moment on camera,

and I remember just looking so bored, and I couldn't give a shit about the suicide bomber, the IED. I was just bored out of my brain. And that's when I thought, this is not a natural reaction to what's going on around you right now. What did you think your natural reaction should have been? mean blood rate increasing heart rate increasing you know um vigilance um you know and what did you think at the time was the cause of you being numb like while it was happening i hadn't really thought that much about ptsd i just thought i'd become so used to this and one of the things that came up in the in one of the last sessions i did um was

i didn't think i was important enough to get to get shot and hurt and have medics rush over to help me and maybe a helicopter take me out and you know um i know that sounds ridiculous now but i think part of me thought yeah you're not important enough to have something so dramatic happen to you you're just you're just witnessing other people in these dramas. Wow. To be right next to an IED and not freaking out is pretty crazy. Yeah, with a suicide bomber running down the street towards you. I mean, that's... And also, you know, people...

One of the reasons you feel guilty is you do get respect for being brave. And I would say it wasn't bravery. I wasn't scared and then did it anyway i wasn't scared i was just numb and just you know kept you get respect from other journalists from the soldiers like who are you getting respect from yeah or people that watch the films yeah yeah and uh it doesn't it doesn't feel like bravery it just feels like you're you know you've you've you've become stupid about the risks you're taking. So talk me through this therapy. So you're fasting for 24 hours, you take the MDMA,

and then they just start talking to you about the things that are troubling you? Yeah. So you take 125 milligrams, and then when that hits about an hour. Is that a lot? I think it's a good dose. But then when it hits you, you take another 75. Whoa. So overall, that's a good dose.

And that keeps you up for, you up for six, seven, eight hours. And then the therapist would ask very brief questions, just knowing what direction to push me. And I remember the first session, I mean, I'd thought because of what I now know was PTSD, I'd thought because of the job I do and because there was this kind of darkness in there, I didn't get involved with anyone seriously for a very long time

and even thought I'm not going to have a family and kids and house and dog. I hadn't even thought about it, just assumed that's not for me because of the job I do. Right. And very early on in that first session, after I resisted it for about an hour and a half, I was really resisting it for a long time and thinking it was even a placebo um but but there was this wave of relief of just of course you can of course you can have all that and it it felt like a revelation because I thought that had been closed to me for so long for I don't know seven eight years maybe longer I just thought you can't do that that's not for you or you can't put someone else through that with you

what is it particularly about MDMA what What is it about? I mean, I've done it, but I've only done it once. Is it just because of the fact that it just alleviates the insecurity and allows you to look at things in a more natural sense? You look at everything as if we're just talking about having coffee or water. Everything is just easy to think about and address and talk about. And I think I'll probably explain it badly, but I think the science of it is you have five networks in your brain. And I was basically in fight or flight mode so much that that was the only mode I knew. So even when I'm back in New York, if someone walks up too close behind me, I'm expecting a confrontation. I'm in fight or flight mode all the time. So your brain is

ignoring the other parts of your brain that provide context and that say that bang outside is just a car backfiring it's not an id or someone shooting so the mdma just allows your brain to you know all the parts of your brain to communicate again you're not just in that fight or flight mode so once you get out of that fight or flight mode you can then address things that you couldn't even begin to address before. And once you've had these experiences, for you it was three experiences, they're profound enough that you retain the benefits? Some. I mean, it looks like I'm in the 25% that still have PTSD after the three months, but it still helps enormously. I mean, the next day they got me to sit down and do a video diary.

And I was kind of saying, yeah, I thought this was a revelation. And I said, you know what, I I thought this, and this was a revelation. And I said, you know what? I'm just smiling now in a way that I don't feel like I've smiled for years. Like it feels like my whole face is smiling. And this is the next day, which is usually a little wrecked. Yeah.

I think it's two or three days when you have what we used to call a moody Tuesday. Yeah. Is that what it is, two or three days? Yeah, but with this, there's no come down. With this, there's no downside.'s no there's no come down um with this it's it's you know there's no downside how they give you no come is they give you five htp or anything while you're um nothing apart from the mdma i mean i wow you have you have juice you have water throughout um i mean maybe the come down is related to you know people that used to

take it would just dance and sweat right all night dehydrate yeah yeah maybe maybe it's a shitty mdma maybe it's real shit yeah i mean the yeah the ecstasy they would have sold in london would have been rat poison and breeze block dust and all kinds of stuff in there yeah yeah um so i know they're having very positive results with this and are they planning on implementing this to the public in any kind of short term i mean is this something that like people that are listening to this right now is this going to be available to them fairly soon it looks like it should be legal by 2021 2022 the third round of officially fda approved trials starts soon um that's the first one that involves people other than veterans and first responders

if that gets as good a result to the first two trials which i'm sure it will then then i think it's going to be and because fda gave it breakthrough drug status there's nothing that you know anyone can do to stop it it will be legal by 2021 2022 that's very good news for a lot of people that are suffering yeah it's so difficult for people to change perspective just to to have a break from the the normal sort of momentum of your life and to be able to stop and analyze yeah and that's exactly what it did to me i was just in this rut for so long where there was it was impossible to to look at things did you think about changing your life yeah and i'm thinking about a lot right now i mean i you know i i thought i would retire after this um this

therapy but but i think i said it before that you know in the first session i was planning the next I mean, I thought I would retire after this therapy, but I think I said it before, that in the first session I was planning the next film, the next series. This is still what I want to do. I've just got to do it smarter. I've got to take breaks. I've got to recover in between trips.

There isn't this pressure to be where people are getting their heads blown off every single time. The last film I did was about Yemen, and we spent a week on the front lines with the various fighting groups and got the usual crazy fighting footage but the powerful stuff was a woman who had her leg blown off by an airstrike in an idp camp in a miserable idp camp where the saudis and emirates are claiming they're providing people with everything they need and then at the end a child malnutrition clinic right on the front line where a nurse just just begged

all parties to end this war and she was she was literally on the front line where a nurse just just begged all parties to end this war and she was she was literally on the front line surrounded by a minefield couldn't get doctors couldn't get supplies had a few dozen kids in this clinic that she was just managing to keep alive you know these wailing emaciated babies with their rib cages caged in caved in um and you know the reason you do this is to cover the effects of war. It's not to get crazy footage of explosions and shootouts. It's the effect of war on civilians. So maybe the answer is to do that and, you know, not feel this pressure to just get the crazy fighting footage all the time. In our country, Yemen is in many ways mostly synonymous for drone attacks.

mostly synonymous for drone attacks drone strikes is when we think about yemen we think about the drone strikes that we hear about on wedding parties the accident the the number of people that are accidentally killed the civilian casualty rate is some preposterous number yeah i mean no one knows because you can't check most of these areas but it's in the tens of thousands at least and it's the percentage is also preposterous it's far more than 50 right yeah i mean it's it's airstrikes yeah so it used to be u.s drone strikes on on al-qaeda suspects now it's saudi emirati airstrikes and um with with u.s assistance i mean we were until recently refueling the planes supplying the planes supplying the weapons but they've hit weddings, funerals, schools, hospitals. And I don't think that's by accident.

I think they're taking an approach to Yemen that we need to crush the opposition, not take out the military leaders. And you can't, there's no movement in history that's been crushed by force. That never works. Jesus Christ. When you're over there there what does it feel like

in Yemen as opposed to Afghanistan or other places Yemen the actual fighting is much more low intensity

it's fairly small groups of guys at some distance just lobbing shells at each other and there's snipers and there are gunfights

but it's not as big scale as Iraq or Afghanistan but there are regular airstrikes that are killing civilians. And while the two sides are fighting this slow and bloody war, the infrastructure is being destroyed and the civilians are unable to get basic food and medicine.

That's the really shocking thing there. And also, I mean, I knew that the coalition, as it's called, you know, the fighting groups backed by Saudi Arabia and UAE were American-backed. But you see American stuff everywhere. I mean, MRAPs, you know, these million-dollar bomb-proof trucks. I've only ever seen American soldiers and Marines driving in Iraq and Afghanistan. You see them everywhere there. And that's a real surprise to see that. Well, how did Yemen become this area that's so synonymous with drone strikes? Like, why did we approach Yemen differently than any other part of the world in terms of the allocation of drone strikes there? In terms of numbers, I don't know.

I mean, I think for a while the only thing the U.S. was doing in Yemen was drone strikes against al-Qaeda. But I don't know if there have been more drone strikes in yemen than than elsewhere i mean that's where we killed an american citizen right that which got lots of headlines right on purpose yeah yeah with no trial they just said so it was because he had joined isis is that what it was for al-qaeda yeah it was it was a very well-known and popular online presence, rallying people to fight. But the airstrikes in Yemen are, you know, and with U.S. weapons, that's what's really killing people. And meaning that people can't get food and aid there because you just can't move things around there. Whatever came out of that guy getting killed,

basically no one was punished for it. I mean, he's an American citizen. If it was in America, if somehow or another this guy was in the suburbs of Chicago and they launched a drone strike on him, it would be front page news and it would be a real issue. But the fact that it was in Yemen. I mean, again again the legacy of

iraq and afghanistan is that now we're killing guys like him with drone strikes or special forces raids here and there and it's it's happening almost in secret and no one's saying this appears to be illegal i mean some people are yeah you know you can you you know which media outlets you can go to to read about this but i think most people are thinking if that's the alternative to invasion and trillions of dollars and American soldiers coming back with no legs for a war we don't understand, I think a lot of people are willing to accept it. I don't agree with it, but that seems to be what's happening now. No, I think you're right. um the the other thing about that is with a lot of these even though it does seem to be illegal people sort of shrug their shoulders and then no one pursues it and then it just kind of goes away yeah but there's some stories that for whatever reason like jamal kashogi did not go away and

still still out there like it was so egregious and so crazy that this guy walks into the embassy yeah and just never comes out. And they're like, I don't know what happened. And then slowly you start getting a different story. And then apparently there's audio and perhaps even video of his murder. Yep. And ordered, by the way, by someone who was hanging out with Jared Kushner afterwards with apparently no mention of what happened.

Yeah. afterwards um with apparently no mention of of what happened yeah now as a journalist when you see shit like that that has got to hit home oh the yeah the last few years for journalists especially you know if you're if i mean he wasn't an american citizen right but he did write for the washington post yeah and was a resident but but i mean i was i was i was arrested in iran for a week a long long time ago and roughly the same time an iranian canadian photographer was arrested and she was raped and beaten to death so the people that are citizens of these countries they're they're really really bearing the brunt um and again that's why i'm uncomfortable if people call me brave because i get to come home right um with these guys you know they can get to them and they can get to their

families very easily and that that takes a whole other level of of bravery the woman who's raped and beaten to death what was she involved with what happened she was a photographer she was just taking pictures yeah yeah and the usual thing with i mean certainly in iran but this is common all over the place um if you're a dual citizen working as a journalist in for example iran they'll accuse you of being a spy. I was accused of being a spy. They tried to get me to confess to being a spy. That's a very normal assumption out there.

And how long were you in jail for? Just seven or eight days. What was that like? Actually, not too bad. I mean, psychologically, it was bad because they were threatening torture and execution. Physically, it wasn't too bad. I was fed. I had a bad bed.

I was roughed up a bit. I wasn't beaten. But I did think. I had a bad bed. I was roughed up a bit. I wasn't beaten. But I did think it could last months and months and months. And I did think I could go to Evan Prison. They actually put me in a car and drove me to what they said was Evan Prison once and then just took me somewhere else. Evan Prison? Evan Prison is where people have been tortured and executed. So they just drove you there to scare you? Drove me around for a few hours to scare me and then took me to another place, yeah.

What were they trying to get you to confess to? To being a spy. And they said at one point, they said, do you honestly expect us to believe you travel the world collecting all this information and you don't share it with your government? I said, yeah, that's exactly how it works. And they thought I was insulting their intelligence

by saying that. What were you over there covering? I did a series. One of the first series I did was called Holidays in the Axis of Evil. So I spent my first four years as a journalist undercover wearing a secret camera.

And luckily I appeared on a couple of docs with a guy who was not very good. And so I looked genuine next to him. So the controller of BBC Two said, give this guy a series. And I was racking my brains trying to think, to be a foreign correspondent wanted to cover conflict then george bush made the axis of evil speech and john bolton added three countries to the list so it was iraq syria cuba north korea uh libya cuba were the six evil countries so we went to all six countries. Me and one cameraman, handheld camera.

Shane actually saw it, and that's when he first reached out and I started talking to Vice about eventually joining them. But kind of documentaries from the streets up. So we were just trying to say, you know, despite all the rhetoric about Iran, this is what the people are actually like. And it was kind of youth-led. We interviewed a bunch of students who were involved

in some famous protest in 1999 where the police came in and smashed the dormitories and burned them down and beat them I think because we interviewed them we were then tracked and arrested Wow so how'd you get it free how did I get how'd you get free it's I didn't know at the time if two countries have diplomatic relations it's only a big deal after a week. So on the night of the seventh day or the eighth day, they let me go. Oh. Yeah.

But I had no idea at the time. I thought this could go on months and months and months. Now, when you're over there in Iran, what is their perception of the United States when you talk to the young people over there? Oh, love the United States. Really? Music, culture, sports, everything. And I'm extremely well educated about the United States. American foreign policy is a completely different discussion.

But, I mean, one of the things we tried to cover was the Friday rally at Tehran University where you see everyone chanting death to America, death to Israel. And we wanted to cover it because they bus in old men from the countryside who sit there going oh yeah death to america death to israel yes yeah it's it's not something to be so it's just some propaganda staged event yeah i mean if if there was a turning point in the iraq and afghanistan wars um with iran ryan crocker who

was the you know former ambassador to sa Arabia, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, straight after 9-11, he was sent to Geneva, where a number of countries affected by the refugee crisis were meeting to discuss how to deal with it. One of the countries was Iran. So they'd have this meeting, and then he and his Iranian counterpart would disappear for, he says, seven or eight hours over tea to discuss the future of American-Iran relations. They knew that they were

going to get rid of the Taliban. So the Iranians said, OK, here's a map of the Taliban leaders' homes. If you take out those homes on day one, Taliban are finished. And Ryan Kroger said, oh, thank you. Can I take notes from this map? They said, the map is yours. We made it for you. Gave him the map. Let americans use iranian airspace handed over some prisoners they were absolutely key in us overthrowing the taliban so quickly and ryan crock was making good progress in then talking about the future of iraq post saddam one night he gets a knock on his door and two of his staffers come in and say boss you're you're really not gonna like what's just happened. And he said, what's just happened?

And it was the axis of evil speech. So the moderate, so-called in Iran, who had fought hard to get permission to negotiate with the great Satan, the US, said, you've made us look stupid. You know, it was hard for us to get this chance. We helped you in Afghanistan. We were willing to discuss future relations between our two countries. And this is what happened so it's over Wow and then fairly soon after that obviously there's the invasion of Iraq

and Iran is sponsoring the insurgency and giving them sophisticated IEDs and all that rather than you know potentially helping so you think that with Wow with one speech yeah the whole thing shifted yeah so they would they would have been willing to somehow or another negotiate or cooperate or i mean work alongside getting rid of saddam was obviously in in their interest yeah they fought a brutal eight year eight year war with him we have a very strange relationship with iran i mean going back to the hostages from you Jimmy Carter era. Yeah, but I do think it's one of the most misunderstood countries in the region.

I mean, when you actually go there, the people are so smart and so educated and potentially such, such good allies. So what is the key issue? It's the government. Yeah, and what I just explained. Right. I think they're capable of being far more rational than the speeches by the crazy old mullahs would suggest. I mean, they've proved it. Yeah. And the idea that the Saudis and Emiratis can somehow bomb the Houthis in Yemen into submission and push back Iranian influence on their southern border is ridiculous.

That's just never going to happen. And I think even if you ignore the obvious moral argument, just from a pragmatic point of view, the idea that we should back this unconditionally is ridiculous. See, this is just part of the real problem when you're dealing with world events, is trying to parse all this stuff out and look at so many different stories from so many different parts of the world and so many different areas of conflict. And it's almost impossible to pay attention to it all. Every time I meet people from these countries, I feel like a fraud because there's so much that they know that I don't know and I shouldn't know. And, you know, I get paid to do this.

I get paid to pay attention to this for a living and i feel out of my depth regularly and that's focusing on the five or six countries that i focus on let alone everything else what other countries do you focus on uh i mean the last few years it's been congo quite a bit afghanistan mostly iraq uh yemen i've focused on a lot of the last three, four years. They're the main ones. Been to Brazil recently, been to Central African Republic recently. Now, I've talked to a friend of mine who's from Brazil who has a completely different take on the new leader of Brazil. Like, he's more positive about it. And I've talked to other people that say he's a monster.

Yeah. I mean, if people in Brazil are living through the current chaos, I can understand why they might go to a Duterte-type figure to say it's going to be messy, but he's going to clean it up. Right.

But he certainly seems like a monster. Yeah. And they're experiencing some crazy economic crisis as well, right? Yeah. And it was the fastest-growing economy in Latin America. It was booming. Yeah, it was booming just a few years ago. Yeah. And it was the fastest growing economy in Latin America. It was booming.

Yeah, it was booming just a few years ago. Yeah. So it's like this rollercoaster ride. We did a film there recently, and I might get the numbers slightly wrong, but the amount of people that were murdered in Brazil in 2017, I believe it was, was double, more than double the amount that were murdered in Syria. Jesus Christ. I think it was 72,000.

Yeah. than double the amount that were murdered in syria jesus yeah i think it was 72 000 yeah and after the world cup and olympics the the trafficking gangs and the police militias just retook all of those areas that were pacified to you know protect the tourists during the the world cup and olympics so that violence has just come right back to the failures see again there's just so much shit to pay attention to yeah and rio the image of rio is still you know samba on the beach yeah i've been a few times right yeah i've been for ufc events it's beautiful people very nice very friendly but then you go two or three miles up into the hills yeah it's another world well we drove when you land at the airport you drive through the favelas on the way to rio and you're like whoa this whoa, this is a different kind of poverty.

And during the World Cup Olympics, they put billboards next to that road to block the view of the favelas. Did they really? And those billboards are now starting to fall apart, and you can now see in again. Wow. And you can hear it. If you stay close to there, you'll hear it. I mean, we went into the favelas many times. We saw one guy who was suspected of being a police informer um so the the trafficking gangs had captured him slashed at his

leg so he was lying on the ground put four rifles to his head and just unloaded and his chin was still kind of where it should be but everything else was this is when you you got there well we got there right afterwards sorry no we didn't witness it happening and we got there right afterwards but yeah it's it's i mean hideous violence there on a massive scale yeah and also i got into an argument with someone the other day about this um deeply racist uh you know the the rich people in ipanema tend to be white european descendants the poor kids getting shot in the favelas uh almost all black. And if you walk into a bar in Ipanema with a black girl, everyone will assume she's a prostitute. If you walk into a bar in Ipanema with a black guy,

everyone will assume he's a drug dealer. And again, the exact opposite of the public image of Brazil. Ipanema is the more wealthy area? Yeah, that's the very wealthy, nice beach area with all the nice hotels and apartment blocks. But they still must get robbed all the time down there, right? It used to be that the violence was separated from the really rich areas, but there are now a lot of wealthy Brazilians leaving because it's affecting everywhere now. I mean, one of the experts we interviewed in the last film said,

I believe it was one in three rio residents will get caught in crossfire at some point over the course of a year i might be wrong on that i believe it was one in three year yeah yeah but it was a massive massive number yeah fuck yeah i mean if you're anywhere near a favela you'll hear it most nights you'll hear shots being fired most nights and not like boom boom boom you know you'll hear a fight going on jesus christ how much time do you spend over there uh three weeks i believe it was wow and what are you covering uh we did a film about the pacification campaign the police and army clearing the favelas before the world cup olympics so we went back just to see just to sort of illuminate it for people to think that this is what brazil is actually like and see

what yeah what happened afterwards right and those areas were abandoned as soon as the world cup olympics were over dude i don't know how you do this you're so friendly too like so easygoing like look at you you seem so peaceful like you don't seem like a shell-shocked guy you know you really don't you seem very very even oh that's that's good to hear six months ago yeah i mean i think i still have ptsd but it definitely helped and i bumped into a friend of mine the dan reed who made the michaels jackson documentary i saw him in new york a few weeks neverland yeah yeah he said ben you just seem you just seem a bit a bit calmer what what is your take on that documentary i have not watched it but i've heard that those two guys had testified saying that nothing had ever happened to them before this

and then then now they're down on their luck and now they've changed their tune and saying that it was they go into that in in detail in the doc and basically they'd been replaced by the new young boy and kind of kicked to the side and then michael reached out and said i need you to help me and and they say it was exciting the idea to be to be back in michael's good books and be wanted by michael again so they they talk about that very. I had dinner with them a week before the film came out and I believe them. Really? Yeah. Yeah. And one of them certainly I think has what looks like the symptoms of PTSD. And the other one I think went through therapy before he was able to talk about this stuff. So I don't think they're doing it for financial gain. What did you think about the doctor, Michael Jackson's doctor, saying that he was

chemically castrated oh i didn't i didn't hear that you didn't hear that this is something that we've talked about before because his voice was so different and to me i said a long time ago before his doctor came out and said he was chemically castrated i said he sounds like a castrato he sounds like one of those men who are taken as boys in you know the 1800s and the 1700s so he chose to do it the doctor saying i don't know i think the doctor saying that his father did it to him i think that was this is the doctor that killed him by the way so take that with a grain of salt right but he was saying that he chemically castrated him to preserve his voice which you know

it sounds preposterous until you look at his frame I mean it did not have the frame of a person who then he had kids to own his kids He did not those kids are not his good not his kids. They're definitely not his kids I mean, so we're talking about how it's easy to get the facts to fit a theory, you know Well, those kids are not his kids. Those are the whitest kids you're ever gonna look at. Yeah, they're really white. I mean, they're not Part African American. I mean, and he, we got to remember before his vitiligo kicked in, he was very dark. You know,

he looked like his brothers. Yeah. Yeah. He looked like his father. Yeah. I mean, it's, um,

I don't know. I hadn't heard that theory before that his kids, his kids weren't his kids. Really? I haven't heard many theories. I'm not, I don't think that much about Michael Jackson. So,

I mean, I think that's just been pretty much established. Yeah. That his kids weren't really his kids. And I think his, the woman that he had children with, I think that's just been pretty much established. Yeah, that his kids weren't really his kids. And I think the woman that he had children with, I think, was on the record saying they never had sex. Right. I think. Yeah, I think they talk about that as well, yeah. Yeah, I don't know.

But we had a similar case in the UK with Jimmy Savile, the most popular. That seems even worse. And the documentary is great because it's a portrait of how you groom not just a kid, but the family as well. And in some ways, you groom the entire country to the point where if accusations come out, everyone says, no, not him. No way. Right. That's how it works. Well, he looked like a monster.

Michael Jackson looked like a monster eventually. But when we always go back to him as a boy when he was singing abc i mean he was this adorable little kid incredibly talented and so dynamic and exciting to watch like god he's so talented look at him and then in thriller i mean everybody loved him but jimmy savile looks like a monster in in retrospect i wrote to him as a kid because he had this show called jim will fix it right we'd grant you your wish and then you'd sit on his lap and give you a medal you got off light no no one thought he was a monster back then wow no one but he was so hideous yeah and and uh louis thoreau did a great documentary with him yes he keeps his mother's uh bedroom exactly what it was all the clothes hanging in the closet

yeah but honestly in his lifetime this was not discussed not even questioned yeah and like i say i think he groomed the entire country Well, there's so many cases like that where you have this systemic pedophile situation that doesn't make sense like how did this how did this last like Penn State like the Sandusky case like how did this like how did everyone seems to have known about it? How did it last and people had seen a kid in the shower? Yes, and hadn't

i mean yeah you think now you'd you'd right you'd kill yourself if you didn't you know right intervene in some way i think it's also easy to forget how much that wasn't part of the conversation back then though you know the idea that there are pedophiles out there and it's it's actually incredibly widespread that just wasn't right that wasn't something people were worried about back then from my memory at least anyway no it was church it was catholic church priests we knew about that ever other than that there was no discussion of like some world famous football coach who was secretly fucking kids like that you never heard that i mean and paterno they think had to have known there's no way he couldn't have known or at least been exposed to some of it.

And to the conversation we had earlier, I remember that great documentary where a guy protests in front of the statue. And another guy comes up and tries to beat him up just for daring to suggest that this hero of his would be capable of that. People just can't fathom it because they've been so well-groomed. It's also Penn State football. It's a religion. It's so important to them to see that these people that were in charge of it were so fucked up. Yeah.

Jesus, man, this show's a bummer. Sorry about that. But, you know, do you plan on doing mdma therapy on a regular basis and what what sort of an impact do you think i mean when when you go over the results of the first therapy where you almost immediately alleviates you of a lot of your feelings but you still are thinking about planning your next adventure and your your next project? I'm probably going to do a fourth session. The therapist recommended a fourth session, which isn't what I normally do. But I thought being able to cry would be a major breakthrough as part of this therapy.

You normally can't cry at all? I haven't cried since I was 13 years old or something, 14 years old. Oh, well, that's different because that predates your war correspondence. Yeah, yeah. I mean, English culture, it culture it's you know my grandparents fought in the war were tough as nails it's you know there is this pressure to be to be tough oh in the first normal therapy session i told her what i thought was quite an everyday story about an experience in war to the therapist and he cried oh jesus christ and then the first mdma session the therapist cried i don't know two or three times and the cameraman cried and i still still couldn't get there and then the third session i nearly did and i like my jaw was trembling and i kind of thought

oh there's there's going to be this what would have felt like a breakthrough and still never happened yeah what were they crying about uh i can't even remember what stories i mean you just said this show has been a bummer like the stories i just tell them that you know well i mean i'm joking kind of joking but he says i'm very happy you're talking about it this is one of the you know one of the the lesser symptoms of doing this is you you turn up to a party or a dinner or something you know with people that are enjoying the cell their sales are smiling people say oh this is Ben. Ben's just come back from Yemen.

Oh, what's it like in Yemen, Ben? Do you really want to know? Yeah, yeah, tell us. And then 10 minutes later, there's this dark cloud over the evening, and everyone's just, oh, Jesus. So you just feel like you're, you know, you're just killing the… They're cutting into their steak, and you're talking about someone getting their leg amputated. Yeah, I've got a bad habit of doing that. But I can't even remember what the stories were that had that effect.

What is it like when you go to dinner with fellow war journalists? What do you guys talk about? There's a few that are really good friends and we can talk about all this stuff. There's a lot that I'm not that close to. I don't like the mutual back patting that goes on with it. Is that what it is? I kind of think if you're doing this for a living, you shouldn't be sharing stories with other people who cover that country,

other people from your background, from your country. You should be talking to the people from that country. And a lot of journalists, I mean, it's possible in Afghanistan, in Syria, in Iraq, to have a pretty good life. You stay in the five-star hotel, you eat well, drink wine every night, and you get information from each other. And I think that defeats the point of foreign reporting. Oh, I see. So consciously or unconsciously, I don't spend a lot of time with other war journalists. There are those who I deeply admire, who I see every now and again, like Sebastian Junger.

But I don't hang out with them day in, day out. So there's levels to the involvement. Yeah. To how deeply you're immersed. And it's completely upside down in the States because the TV news journalists aren't deeply involved and just want to get that quick shot of them looking like they're somewhere in Middle East and E, closest to the front line with the flak jacket on and the perfectly ironed shirt, and they're not sweating.

Or even worse, the Brian Williams type situation. Yeah, yeah. Or on the roof of the Five Star Hotel. You might see people report about what's happening with ISIS, and they're in Beirut. And I think they're relying on the fact that a lot of people don't understand that's a different country. But, you know, those guys, some of those guys are paid millions and treated very, very well. The photographers and print journalists who are immersed and are spending weeks there are sometimes struggling to make a living and aren't

well known and aren't well supported. What is it about the talking head in front of the camera that we want so badly? I mean, I think it's a way for the news networks to claim credibility. And then when you see them get deployed, they're not focused on getting material from the war in these countries. They're focused on the two-way. Right.

We're now talking to our guy live from wherever. Right. That's more important than actually spending days collecting footage of what's actually going on. It seems like you see that rarely, if ever, these days. It's more and more rare. It seemed to me that during Desert Storm in the 90s, there was always someone that was over there, and it seemed like there was real threat, and it was really going on.

But now everything seems to be done from the desk and you don't really see a lot of i mean am i right about that yeah i mean i think in mosul a lot of the major news networks said to their crews you're not allowed to spend the night in mosul you know you can go there and film a street and interview some refugees who just escaped isis territory but you can't spend days on end there whereas the freelance photographers and some of the writers they were spend days on end there. Whereas the freelance photographers and some of the writers, they were spending days on end there and getting the real stuff. Is it because the on-camera people will be targeted?

I just think the risk is too high, full stop, for the entire crew. And certainly if, you know, when the story's really big and you send one of the very well-known correspondents there, then yeah, they can't be running around, you know, filming house-to house to house fighting so when you're over there and you see these guys show up and you know that they're just going to be hanging out at the hotel and what is that feeling like uh yeah i mean i'm pretty disdainful of those yeah those guys you have to be yeah yeah and you see these films like um whiskey tango frockstrap um about afghanistan and i just i just don't recognize that that world that you know partying every night at whatever bar or restaurant i just

i just think if you're there you're in you're obviously in the wrong place right right and it's not it's not an adventure you know it's not a fun trip for you of wild times and you know it's it shouldn't be that it should be um i mean for me it feels like an endurance test every time you go it should be hard and you should be spending time with the people you're covering and and you know sometimes you can you can think you've finished with someone and just go for dinner or tea and just by having normal human conversations you find out so much other stuff that you didn't go there to report on you know that's that's that's what you have to be doing and that takes weeks weeks of getting closer to them and gaining their trust yeah yeah. Yeah. And just spending enough time there where you then end up being in the right place at the right time to show something really happening.

I mean, in Mosul, we filmed the Iraqi army attacking a house where ISIS was shooting from the house and there were three or four families in the house. So the Iraqi army shot at ISIS. So the ISIS guys went down and encouraged the families to run towards us. And just seeing that moment of civilians fleeing and escaping ISIS for the first time after three years. And when they turned the corner and saw us, they knew they'd made it. And they just collapsed to the ground. They were kissing the ground. They were hugging each other.

Those are the moments you're trying to capture. I mean, I've never seen relief like it. Jesus Christ. And how do they get them out of there? What do they do from that stage? I mean, they'll eventually walk out of Mosul itself, and then there are people that can take them to the IDP camps around there, and we'll get them the basic services they need and medical services.

But there's not much of that there. And that was the shock in Yemen, was the places that the Saudis and nimrati said were being so well supplied with food and water and tents and medical facilities just just weren't at all we took no please go we talked about syria early you know half the population right is displaced yes uh you know you're talking about you know 12 13 million people either internally displaced or fled uh you. You know, just unimaginable. Unimaginable. And it's one of the biggest controversies in this country

in terms of what to do when the refugees come. What do you do? Some countries are taking them in with open arms. Some countries are not. And there's a lot of people that are concentrating on the negative aspects of taking these people into your community. What is your take on watching all this thing happen, watching all this take place? I spent Friday and Saturday in Houston with a group of Afghan interpreters

who I'd been with in Afghanistan who got these special immigrant visas and came to America with their families. I cannot think of a better group of people who are contributing to life here. I mean, on the Saturday morning, they were running a food bank. They've got jobs. They're paying taxes. Yeah, I mean, I think we should welcome them with open arms. And I think, you know, despite our moral obligation to do that, I think we would benefit from doing it.

And, you know, we turned away Jewish refugees during World War II. You'd think we'd learn from that and say, never again. Yeah. You know? I mean, if you're an American Christian, I think Christianity is fairly clear

on what to do with refugees. Yes. You know? So, to not only say no to refugees, but also to vilify them and say, oh, look, a lot of them are fighting age males. Clearly ISIS is sneaking in.

I mean, that's a level of viciousness and ignorance that I just can't fathom. The ignorance is, it's very pervasive, right? It's like, it's one of these things where we don't, you don't know, stories, and these people are telling you that these are fighting-age males, and that we could very well be letting ISIS into our country. We very well could be letting in these terrorist cells and allowing them to come in, but we also could be letting families in. This is a country that's made of immigrants. be letting families in that this is a country that's made of immigrants i mean it's one of the weirdest things in this country that this is a country so so obsessed with borders and

immigration but yet it's comprised entirely of immigrants yeah there's a great um do you know um gary young the british journalist no uh he interviews richard spencer um and richard spent gary young i think makes a very similar point and richard spencer um and richard spent gary young i think makes a very similar point and richard spencer says um yeah but this country was built by white people um you know um we we came up with the he said no no it was it was literally built by black people gary young says he says yeah yeah but only because we told them how to do it and it's on camera gary young says you know what i came to see you because I thought you were the intellectual argument for supporting Trump. So I thought I might learn something.

Richard Spencer was the intellectual argument. Why did he think that? I don't know. But he says, you're not. This is just ridiculous. And he just shuts down the interview, turns around and walks off. Good for him. I don't know anything about Richard Spencer other than he always gets mentioned as a white supremacist.

I literally don't know what he stands for what he does or what he says and they always say he's well dressed and with a nice haircut yeah this is a yeah it's such a crazy subject the idea of i mean it would be nice if the whole world was up to the same standards of health and and prosperity and you didn't have to worry about where you could go if the whole world was essentially like the united states where you could go to where the good parts were you know if you live in detroit and you save up your money you can move to florida or wherever you want to go i mean you can do that this is the beautiful thing about living inside of a country it'd be fantastic if the

whole world was like that you could just kind of go wherever you would prosper and wherever things would be well but this the thing about refugees in other countries where we don't understand their language or their culture and then you get scared because you hear that they're muslims we're worried about muslim terrorists and it's again it's one more piece of information that just it just overwhelms you one more one more thing to concentrate on there is a difference with Muslims in the the Catholic Church and child abuse scandal yes did a lot of people say are therefore all Christians are suspicious and all Christians are secretly pedophiles right they're just not telling us no they didn't they

didn't but they do with with muslims what's fear of the unknown you know it's a lot of it the languages and the the fact that we're you know there's also this there has to be this feeling that we've invaded their country several countries and been there for a long time and there's a deep seated resentment that you know there's the the thought of long time. And there's a deep-seated resentment that, you know, there's the thought of every time you accidentally blow up a wedding party with a drone, every time you kill civilians, any times any collateral damage, you're creating untold numbers of people that hate the United States.

You'd think that, you know, having traveled to most of those countries, I don't see that. And yesterday I was interviewing the Afghan interpreters, and I said, what do you think about negotiating with the Taliban? I mean, in one case, a good friend of mine called Sroj, who's now living in Houston, I said, you know, these guys killed your brother because you were working for the Americans as an interpreter. So how do you feel about the Americans now doing a deal with the Taliban? do you feel about the americans now doing a deal with the taliban and what about if the u.s leaves and the taliban finishes off the government and then comes after your family he said you know what america's not gonna let that happen america has so much power and knows what to do that they will make sure that any agreement they reach with the taliban will be enforceable and it'll be safe he had so much faith and i mean far more than me wow and that's that's what i hear far more often than than the opposite is it does that really depend on where you go i mean because if you go certain

places people have a lot of faith in trump you know like donald trump's going to protect us from evil there's places where you go that i mean it's become a cliche but but i do think you'll you'll find a lot of places critical of American foreign policy. That doesn't mean they're critical of America. How do they parse that out? I think, I mean, Vietnam, I think is a good example. We have defeated communism or communism has been defeated in Vietnam, just because the new generation grow up and think Western culture, communism. I know which one I want. It's a simple choice. And I think that young i want it's a simple choice yeah um and i think that young generation is making that very simple choice and it could just mean democracy and you think that is in afghanistan as well yeah that they're recognizing that western

culture provides more freedom and more economic opportunity more prosperity yeah um and i haven't heard apart from from the taliban i haven't heard much anti-American feeling in Afghanistan at all. Really? Also, a lot of that, I mean, maybe I'm biased because a lot of the people I'm talking to had interactions with Americans. But they would even say as many mistakes as were made in the prosecuting of the war with airstrikes and night raids and all that, the American soldiers and Marines we met, we knew were good people. and night raids and all that. The American soldiers and Marines we met,

we knew were good people. And like I said with Throach, my interpreter, it's incredible how many people still believe that to this day. There are conspiracy theories. So, for example, in Iraq, you'll hear a lot of people say, well, ISIS must have been part of America's plan. Incompetence cannot explain what happened in Iraq. This cannot be a mistake.

A lot of people believe that. A lot of people believe that over here as well right yeah but that still doesn't mean they'll hate all americans in america um and it means a lot of them would love to visit and maybe even come and live here is that anything that you take seriously though those conspiracy theories is there any validity to any of that stuff the the massive failures in iraq and afghanistan have done massive damage to the U.S. on the world stage. There's no way the U.S. benefits from what's happened. I mean, you know, the Taliban would have done a deal in 2002 where they got almost nothing. Eighteen years later, a trillion dollars later, tens of thousands of lives later,

we're now negotiating with the Taliban where they might get a very good deal. That's a massive humiliation for the US. And also Iran, Russia, Hezbollah, others know that the US is not going to intervene in lots of countries. So they're doing whatever they want and almost gloating about it, knowing full well that America just doesn't have the public support to intervene anywhere else for a very long time. What's the predominant conspiracy theory that they want to prolong this war because of the military-industrial complex, because they're spending tons of money and gaining contracts? Oil, obviously, in Iraq. Hamid Karzai has said to me, do you think America failed in Afghanistan?

And I said, of course I do. Like, every film I've made explains exactly how. And he says, no, I think this is exactly what they want. They want us being attacked on all sides by extremists so we will bow to their every wish. And what do you say to that? I mean, you know,

he's met far more senior people than me so it's hard for me to argue with him. But yeah, I don't give that theory any thought whatsoever. That's the creepiest thought whatsoever is that the government wants these perpetual wars i mean that is the scariest conspiracy theory i'm not saying i support it but if you wanted to consider a conspiracy theory that's truly terrifying it's that they keep perpetual wars going on so that they can profit. And, you know, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton benefited from airstrikes. You know, there's a quick possible bump in terms of your approval ratings.

That's been proven many times. But these wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, having gone so long and resulted in, I think, a humiliating defeat in both countries. No one's benefiting from that. Well, there's a numbness that this country has towards them now. It's been so many generations. It's been so many years. There's so many.

I mean, what are the numbers of troops that have gone over to Afghanistan and Iraq and come back and not come back too? It's just staggering. And those towns they fought for, Fallujah in Iraq, Helmand province in Afghanistan, are now back in the hands of the Taliban in Helmand province.

That's not even news here. No. All those places, Marja, the place I described earlier, is now back in the hands of the Taliban. I've been since I went there with the U.S. Marines. I don't remember seeing a headline about that. No.

No, it's conveniently ignored. Because the public are just, you know, have had so long of seeing people come back in body bags or without legs and thinking, I don't even know what victory looks like now. I don't even know what the point of this is anymore. Yeah, what are we, 16 years in? Is that what it is now? Afghanistan is 18. 18?

Yeah. I mean, they say the longest war in American history. The first four or five years we went to iraq very quickly and weren't doing very much in afghanistan so you know i'd argue it's not an 18 19 year war but it's it's a very long and very costly war does this ever give you this feeling of hopelessness like do you look at yourself 40 years down the line still doing this like how do you how do you how do you approach this i think about that and i also think about just selling everything i have and getting a little house in jamaica and just

just drinking beer and relaxing yeah i think i tried to do my bit i'm not sure how much of a bit i did but but yeah like it's yeah it's it's you can get that feeling very easily yeah i would imagine that you you see so much and you see so much anguish and so much pain and suffering and death and war and so much of it seems pointless that after a while you might want to just detach disconnect and you said it earlier you know when you read the numbers uh hear the stories i just i can't even take it seriously anymore i mean i can take it seriously but i can't fathom it you know i can't really take it seriously anymore. I mean, I can take it seriously, but I can't fathom it. I can't really take it on board and really imagine what that's like. And I've seen it with my own eyes, and even then it's so hard to process.

Do you have an exit strategy? No. I mean, I could make documentaries about other things, but I just don't think it would be. This feels urgent to me. Yeah. And I question how useful this work is, but I just don't think it would be. This feels urgent to me. Yeah. You know? And I question how useful this work is,

but it feels somewhat useful. It certainly feels like the most useful thing I can do for now. I'm not a doctor. I'm not, you know, I'm not a politician. So even if it's not that much use, it's somewhat useful. Well, there's also the problem that you've dedicated so much of your time to i do think it's

very useful you've dedicated so much time doing this that if you were to make you know documentary on something frivolous oh this guy's a cabinet maker how do you do it bob yeah yeah yeah you might lose your fucking mind i mean i don't think you once you've experienced what you've experienced it's probably very very difficult to look at the uh the world through a normal lens and be satisfied with normal results and it would be easy to to dismiss anything else you did as being frivolous yeah in comparison to covering yemen or afghanistan or congo or wherever so do you essentially just take it project by project and just keep going? Yeah.

I mean, I'm, I'm thinking about this every day right now because like I said in the, in that first MDMA session, I thought this is what you want to do. This is, this is what you care about. This is where your heart is.

Um, so I'm, I'm, I'm pretty sure I'm going to, I'm going to keep on doing it. Just maybe do it in a different way. I'm also really tempted just to try and take, you know,

three months off and go to Costa Rica and surf and do yoga and read nice books and just then see how I feel. One of my favorite quotes is Nietzsche. He says, credit no thought not had in the open air while walking in beautiful landscapes. Ah, what a great quote. Yeah, only when you're in that state of mind can you make the right decision. So it'd be nice to make the decision in a place like that. Sure, especially you mean you caught up in the momentum of these chaotic events and everything you is happening that you want to be I mean Isis are about to get defeated in Syria I want to be there to

see it yeah cover it do you think you really could take three months and go to Costa Rica have you done that before I did nine days in Jamaica recently nine whole days? Yeah. What was it like on day two? I loved every minute of it. Did you really? And I actually felt like my brain kind of woke up. Yeah. I just felt, you know, the numbness I talked about earlier, the worst thing is it just kills your curiosity.

Yeah. And that's horrible. Right. And I just felt, you know, curious again. I felt like my mind, and I read a couple of books that weren't war related, and I focused on them. I took it in. I was in it for the experience, and I loved it.

Why don't you just do that then? Take those three months. Maybe you'd have a different view. I feel guilty. You do feel guilty. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you. i wanted to know if you felt guilty around day two idea i didn't feel guilty on this one because it was it was quick um i mean in the past you know you can you can go to a big fight

and enjoy it and love it you can go for a big dinner and enjoy it and love it but that's about it um you know a month of of luxury somewhere, I think I would get uncomfortable. You're not covering this fight. When you went to the Errol Spence, Mike, you were just... I've made a couple of boxing docs. I made a documentary about Danny Jacobs. Did you really? When he survived cancer and the night he became a world champion.

Oh, wow. We were there. And it was actually, it was great to be able to say to people, here's my latest film. It'll make you feel really good. It'll inspire you. So to contradict what I said earlier, that felt really good to be able to do that.

Maybe there's more of those in your future. Yeah. Yeah. I was talking to someone the other day about maybe a documentary about the gym that Danny comes from, which is a door that leads to the basement of a bodega in Bed-Stuy.

And they all have three world champions. Wow. It's tiny. It's not a lot bigger than this room. Really? With a lower ceiling. Yeah, yeah. Really? Yeah, yeah. And it's underneath it's you know it's not a lot bigger than this room really with a lower ceiling yeah yeah really yeah yeah and it's underneath a bodega yeah it's a saddam ali i think is the first arab or yemeni world champion he beat miguel cotta wow he got into boxing when he's a kid so his dad who owns the bodega built this gym in the basement and that's where he and danny came

up that's incredible and people walk past it and it's just this door. There's no sign. People wouldn't even know. Have you ever been to the Cronk Gym in Detroit? No, I haven't. It's like that. It doesn't exist anymore, does it? No, no. But you turn up to the building and you think this can't be the right place.

It looks like a derelict building. Right. And you go down this basement, staircase into the basement and there's this crappy gym with one ring and a few bags and that's it. And then Tommy Hearns walks in

and Henry Akin one day walks in and Uber Car walks in. It's similar to that. I had Lennox Lewis on on the podcast last week it was amazing he sounded great he's amazing right yeah doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with him at all i was wondering if chess is what's helping him you know because he doesn't seem to be sustaining any of the long term and he got knocked out a couple of times like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he really did. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing. I really do wonder because chess is so difficult

and your mind is constantly firing. And the brain in some ways does atrophy without use. I mean, whether it's not physical atrophy in terms of the size of it, but in terms of its abilities. The more active you are solving puzzles. George Foreman used to do a lot of crossword puzzles and things along those lines. And he actively sought difficult little quizzes and puzzles and things to keep his mind sharp. I met Quincy Jones a couple of months ago. Oh, yeah?

He's learning Mandarin, I think, and doing well at it. How old is he? I don't know. He's in his 80s, I think. He just turned 86. Wow. And by the way,

a whole group of us had dinner and he was the last man to leave. He closed the restaurant down. Wow. He's incredible. And I got into an argument about Rio and racism in Brazil in front of him.

Really? And he said, wait a minute, I've been going to the fa and racism in Brazil in front of him. Really? And he said, wait a minute. I've been going to the favelas in Rio since the 60s. I thought, oh, shit, here we go. And he said, and Ben's right. Brazil is deeply racist. I was like, I just got backed up by Quincy Jones in an argument. It was great.

But he says exactly the same thing. Yeah, so he does these things specifically to try to stay sharp. Yeah. Yeah. Treat the brain like a muscle yeah i think there's something to that i mean the lennox i mean lennox lewis is obviously one anecdotal case but man he's so fucking sharp but that's what's so frightening about the numbness that comes from the ptsd is if it takes away that curiosity it takes you know you've got a day off and you think i'm gonna do a crossword i going to learn a language. If it takes away that energy, that's terrifying.

Right. The numbness. Yeah. The numbness that people, well, people in extreme poverty and extreme stress, they do experience that sort of numbness, especially if you're in a dangerous neighborhood and just you're overwhelmed. Like you were saying about how the adrenaline eventually wears off and then you're just kind of, you're in this weird gray state. Yeah. And imagine someone in prison. If you can awaken that, you know, who knows what's possible.

But it seems like there's almost no effort at rehabilitation. None. Awakening that is, I don't think that difficult. It just needs the right book or the right person, the right film. Well, there's a place where I believe MDma therapy could really have some amazing results yeah we've talked about it with with the therapists who are leading this um i think that's their dream is to get in and do this in a prison because i guarantee the majority of those guys in there are suffering from ptsd a reaction reacting to it well and the majority of them have probably been abused and come from abusive

environments and horrible situations and the the idea that we just take people and lock them in cages and say well you've done your time now get get out and now you're going to be even more fucked up and now you're you know you're habituated yeah you're used to being surrounded by violent criminals good luck in the world and we're going to make it even harder for you than anybody else to get a job or an apartment yeah yeah i mean there was this uh story about kim kardashian trying to pay this guy's rent because he got out of jail and she's going to pay his rent for five years to sort of get him on his feet he still can't get a fucking apartment oh i'd heard the first bit i hadn't heard the second bit yeah nobody wants them no one wants to take them in yeah yeah it's and we don't ever want to give anybody a road to

redemption you fuck up once you do something wrong one robbery you get accused of yeah fucking up oh yeah and you're off to rikers for three years before you even stand trial sure i read a stat the other day i think it's 94 of trials in the u.s are settled on a on a plea bargain don't even go to trial and i thought that was wrong i thought that can't be accurate and well they scare people yeah yeah you can plead guilty and get five years yeah or you can go to trial and you'll probably get 30 yeah which is insane yeah like what why would you give me five years if a judge would give me 30 like what, what is that? Yeah. What is happening there? If I am guilty.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's insane. It's just like that. It's the money saving sort of mechanism and,

and ensuring that they don't lose, you know, and just, they scare you. Yeah. You want to risk it all. You want to 30 years, you won't have a life,

but five years you will. Yeah. You might get out in two. Yeah. Be a good fella. Don might get out in two. Yeah. Be a good fella. Don't stab anybody in jail. Yeah. Yeah.

What we do with people in this country when someone commits a crime is, it's pretty stunning. And then when you factor in the fact that there's actual businesses that evolve or revolve rather around profiting off of people being incarcerated is even crazier yeah and no one investigates that either yeah and again there are some great investigations pro publica people like that sure how many people are reading them reading them that's a better way to say yeah it's not that no information is there yeah and to your point about you know the overflow of information it's it's all there it's just that's not the stuff at the top of the pile and we're near the top of the pile that's probably the last thing that people

are concentrating on because you're assuming these people are bad criminals and you don't want them on the street what do you want to do you want to

think about all the good people out there that are struggling concentrate on them first then what but this is part of what's wrong

part of what's wrong is these people are in these terrible situations terrible communities no way out nothing no positive image

to model. Everyone is a drug dealer or a criminal. It's crime around you all the time. You wind up in the system. You become incarcerated, and then that's your life now. Yeah. And you're stuck in this thing. And there's more of them in America in prison

than anywhere else on the planet Earth. Yeah. And as a foreigner here, that's one of the things that just never fails to shock me. Well, England's got its own concerns too, right? I mean, there's so many fucking stabbings in London now.

It's really crazy. Yeah. Uh, yeah. I mean, but compared to shootings here, it's, it's nothing,

you know, it's, uh, but yeah, it's, it's, it's definitely a problem. And,

and you know, that you just don't see police on the streets like you used to, um, in London. Yeah. And you don't see police. My dad was a policeman, um,

before I was born, but you, you just don't don't see you know like streetwise policemen who were part of the local community getting intelligence knowing what you know and often you'll see I mean I remember the riots in Brixton which were right near where I lived and the police would stand back let the riot unfold and then just study video afterwards recognize that guy will arrest him three days later I didn't think that's what police were supposed to do well they want to protect their own ass yeah yeah yeah ben how do we fix the world i have no idea i think it might be mdma actually i i know some people would would say that and make a good argument for it and uh and really believe it's just a really good argument

for psychedelics remapping the world there really is there's a moment in the frivolous yeah there's a moment in the mdma documentary you did where i interview rick doblin you know the the mastermind of this um i've had him on oh right yeah he's been on and at the end i say what's the potential for this if you get it legalized and he basically says spiritualize the world world peace and i look at him like are you serious and he laughed and says i know it sounds crazy but I really believe this is possible. It is possible. Yeah. Well, not just MDMA.

MDMA is a great doorway because of its work with people with trauma, but psilocybin is as well. And psilocybin obviously comes with these profound breakthrough psychedelic experiences that not just completely remap your perceptions of life, but show you a whole world that you didn't think could possibly exist. And then all the other ones, you know, Ibogaine, for all these people that are hooked on pills, it was one of the most effective drugs or known molecules on earth for alleviating people of opiates. I'm trying ketamine. I've tried it a couple of times, but that's what they want to try with me next.

Yeah. I mean, anything that makes people compassionate and kind to themselves as well as to others yes it doesn't seem like that much of a jump i think most people have it in them yeah you know not not that far under the surface well people are scared you know they're scared and they're tense and you know people are just in constant states of conflict i mean that's a big thing that's going on this world and one of the things that psychedelics do is they give you a brief break from that conflict and then give you these thoughts that you probably would have never achieved without these drugs and that's exactly what mdma did with me it just removed all of those fears. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it's entirely possible. I really do. I think it's a real – there's a real case for us being able to set up some sort of clinics, some sort of supervised psychedelic experiences where one after another people start changing. And then it trickles down. they start changing the people around them people say well what happened to mike like oh mike did mushrooms at this new clinic that they're opening up and they're changing a new guy he's a different person he's so nice and then they join too and i mean i just think there's so much room for that in this world it's so difficult to change who you are. People rarely change.

They become a slightly different version of who they were 5, 10, 15 years ago. They rarely actually change. And even to people who are completely skeptical about this, the fact this is helping veterans means that everyone is behind it. Well, it's a great way to get in. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, they're very wise, MAPSes, in their approach to this one particular modality, because if they can actually achieve this, you're going to also achieve it and help people

that are in the community that's least likely to accept psychedelics, right-wing, pro-war, you know, MAGA people. Like, those people, I mean mean those are probably the least likely if you wanted to generalize yeah to accept psychedelics we watched the Fox News segment with Rick at his house in Boston of Fox News talking about MDMA for veterans well how did they approach it well they looked at each other at the end and said do you ever think you'd do a pro ecstasy piece and they said no but if it the veterans, I guess we're for it too, right? Yes, exactly.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And if it can lower crime rates to get people on mushrooms, I mean, if dimethyltryptamine can change people's perceptions, there's so many of these different drugs too that you could introduce people to under a clinical supervision setting where you could change that. I a clinical supervision setting where you could

change that i mean how many people are involved in psychotherapy and it doesn't do a goddamn thing to them they just keep going back and forth or they numb them up with pills oh with me it was zoloft straight away yeah of course it didn't work they doubled the dose didn't work double the dose again i was just i was just a zombie yeah and that i don't have any experience with it but i know people that have had very negative experiences where just the world becomes, all the bright colors are gone and the world just becomes

weird. That's exactly what it was. Dull. Dull to everything. And the great thing about MDMA is it's not a potential opioid crisis because it's a therapist sitting down giving you the pill. I don't give you 50 pills and you can abuse it however you want. Logistically, doing what you say is going to be hard to set up we need a lot of therapists a lot of facilities but it's it's it's it's possible well once there's

success it and then it becomes a business then it can happen i mean once insurance starts covering it once people start experiencing positive benefits. You can get it from both sides, right? You get it from the commerce aspect. You get money starts coming in. People start paying for it, and it becomes a business that's successful. It actually has good results. People start talking well about it. Other people start opening up these centers.

There's so much potential to this. Those people at MAPS and Rickblan and all of his crew they're they're really they have the real potential to change the world yeah and actually went the first session when i was really resisting it and fighting it i just imagined rick's face and the mithoffer's faces in in south carolina um and just the kindness and benevolence yeah and i just i just thought of those faces and that's what allowed me to just let it wash over and wow and and hit me um but johnson and johnson just got permission to use to market their version of ketamine and right now uh the dose of ketamine i had was is like 90 dollars uh they're going to sell it for 15 000 that. That's the danger of it getting properly legalized

and, as you said, turned into a successful business. Oh, that's terrible. Yeah. Now, why is it so expensive? Just so they can make money off of it. Now, this is the therapeutic dose of ketamine in some sort of psychiatric sort of... What's the environment they're going to do it in?

So they want to have it very much controlled, but it looks like they want to stop the therapist giving it in the study, in their own office, I mean, which is what's going on now, and have it controlled under, you know. A hospital sort of situation? Yeah, and there is a very good, and it's not even underground, because I'm not even sure it's illegal here, right? Ketamine? Ketamine?

I think it is illegal. Oh. But there are therapists giving it out now. I mean, I bought mine legally. You know, I think you can, oh, you bought it personally. With a prescription. Really? Yeah, with a prescription in New York.

Oh, maybe I'm wrong. Is ketamine legal? Legal under prescription? Maybe it's a Schedule II drug or something along those lines i was going to get that someone sent me the message about the fifteen thousand dollars and what it that's fucking crazy yeah ninety to fifteen thousand yeah which is far worse far more than the the you know the amount that martin screlly um put up the price right and went to jail for yeah yeah but uh yeah he's he's a dou, though. It's easy to point at him.

He owns that Wu-Tang Clan album. Yeah. What happened with that? I don't know. Someone's got it, man. He's in jail. He's in jail, yeah. So I saw he's still running his business from a burner cell phone in jail.

Oh, that's hilarious. Well, what he's saying is, though, what happened to the Wu-Tang Clan album? I thought it was in possession of the FBI. That's hilarious. And they had to auction it off or something. Come on, son. That shit is hilarious. That might be one of the most hilarious parts of that story.

The FBI owns the Wu-Tang Clan forbidden album. How much did he pay? Didn't he pay like a million dollars for it? He paid a lot because it was up for auction. I think this says he paid two million. Wow. You can never get that money back, especially if the tracks got released.

But what a great marketing tool. It's worth more than two million dollars in marketing. The actual sale price was not released. He confirmed he paid two2 million for it. Yeah, but he's full of shit. I bet he did, though. I mean, if I had to guess. I mean, how many wealthy people out there are Wu-Tang fans?

A lot. Probably a healthy bid. Healthy bidding war. Yeah, this is as of like a year ago, the feds have it. So I don't know if there's an update on that. There's always, I mean, when it's an individual that's like him, that's easy to – it's easy to look at him disparagingly. Like look at this guy.

He's a dick. Oh, he wants to raise the money or raise the price of these drugs that can help people. Fuck him. Let's go get him. But if it's Johnson & Johnson, it it's like yeah first of all i'll get they make baby powder yeah you know they're so respected it's such a um common household name and they're not calling it ketamine they're calling it s ketamine s slightly different that sounds like a snail right sounds like escargot and it's a nasal spray oh jesus i don't know how different

that makes it but huh well it's better than shooting it up because i know that a lot of people take it intramuscularly where you just jab it into your thigh i believe yeah this is the drug will only be given by accredited specialists who must monitor patients for two hours after administration i don't think you can just get it and go home and oh that makes sense because uh i know neil brennan did it and he had some very good results from it i talked i've spoken to him a few times he's tried everything he's uh he's tried yeah he's great he's had uh he's a fucking hilarious guy he's had some real depression problems though he has some very good relief from uh magnetic therapy yeah and have you seen the involuntary trembling thing he did as well? No.

He's got a video of that. What is that? I have no idea. Involuntary trembling? Yeah, he's just sitting there and his arm and shoulder is just going. He said it was great. They just juice him up with something? Nothing.

Nothing? Just talking. Oh, so he just does it on purpose? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or this therapist in LA gets him to do it somehow. And that helps him? Yeah. You'd helps him? Yeah. You'd have to ask him.

I don't know the ins and outs. But I watched the three-mic special thinking it was just another comedy stand-up. I had no idea about that, that third mic being the serious stuff. I thought it was incredible. He's a brilliant guy. He's a very smart guy, and his stand-up is outstanding. And it just keeps getting better. But, you know, he's a guy fighting demons.

He's the classic case of the comedian that can never be helped. He just keeps getting better. But, you know, he's a guy fighting demons. Yeah. He's the classic case of the comedian that can never be happy unless he's on stage killing. You know, and then, you know, even then that's brief. Like he's just never this jovial, funny guy, but he's a brilliant comedian. Yeah. But as long as I've known him for many years, he's struggled. And it sounds like he's kind of an unofficial executive producer for a bunch of other comedians as well um how so like advising them and giving them notes and it seems like a whole bunch of people i'm sure he does and get his input well

people definitely respect him but yeah i'm sure he gives people tag lines and gives them advice and stuff like that he's a very smart guy but to be as honest as he was and not even end it with a joke right you know just to tell the serious story and then end i you know that blew me away yeah i met him on the friday night and watched it on the saturday morning and had no idea and it was it was one of the best things i've seen for a long time wow yeah no he's a special guy it's uh it's hard when you know i've had a few friends take their life three in the last year um and you know you you see a guy like neil and you know he's constantly pursuing all these different therapies and constantly trying to find something that alleviates this depression and you just keep hoping you keep hoping you keep searching and keep hoping that one of these things sticks one of

these things really see i mean he's very very proactive he's always searching for new things he's very open about it and talking about it but the ketamine does seem to have helped him quite a bit and he was telling me like man he's like this is so fucking crazy i'm going to this doctor's office and having these full-blown psychedelic experiences at the doctor's office yeah and then two hours later you're out on the street feeling completely normal what was your ketamine experience like uh i took a tablet you put it under your tongue and let it dissolve for for 10 minutes and then i laid on a sofa in a therapist's office for two hours and i was out on the street again two hours later so how long did it take before it kicked in uh i don't really know because i never thought it was kicking in

um but then i just found myself saying things and concluding things that I wouldn't normally say. And for the next week and a half, I just felt like that was just a weight off. Did you have any sort of hallucinogenic experience? Nope, none whatsoever. Nothing? No hallucinating at all? No, no. Listened to music quite quietly, put an eye mask on for a few minutes here and there. Sometimes didn't talk at all um but yeah just there was just this relief especially afterwards like in the week and a half or so afterwards just felt this just this lightness you know and you

know to your point about neil being so open to trying everything even that even taking that step is hard you know sometimes even getting out the door sure it's hard let alone researching this stuff and trying everything. When I first moved to America, I said, okay, you're not going to do yoga. You're not going to do therapy. You're not going to do prescription drugs. That's New York bullshit.

To drop that skepticism and to try everything and be genuinely open to everything, that's a lot in itself. Well, it's hard for people to try anything new. I mean, you have to respect anytime anyone does anything new. The first time a person straps on a pair of running shoes and goes for a jog it's fucking hard yeah it's hard to just do something it's hard to change gears yeah or be curious enough to try it in the first place you need to be open to the idea not just be curious i mean in the case of taking something like ketamine brave you have to be brave i mean you're

once you take you can't untake it. Yeah, yeah. You're on a ride. Yeah. The first MDMA session was more frightening to me than going to Syria or Yemen or Afghanistan. How so? I guess the vulnerability.

I just thought I'd say things and accept things that I'd put up a front against for so long. Is this a British thing? I think. And it's a British thing? I think it's very much a British thing. But it's also, you know, my identity has been a tough, brave war correspondent. Right. And you can like that. Yeah.

It's respected. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, you know, I don't know. I don't know. When I had that feeling of relief in the last, I think it was the last, no, the first session, sorry, about, oh, you could have a family and a dog and kids and enjoy it and be happy. There's also a part of me that resisted that and thought, no, that's somehow taking your foot off the gas.

That's somehow losing sight of what's important and what your role is and what you can do to actually help things, you know? Yeah. And just doing whatever is good for you well it seems so conflicted because you obviously great get a great benefit out of this this ability to help you and you really do help and you really do put yourself in these incredibly difficult situations so there's there's something there's there's a positive aspect of it but for sure there's a price that you're paying that's pretty substantial yeah and i before the mdma therapy i thought if the price is you're on your own and you're not

enjoying the things that most people enjoy then that's the price you pay you know that's that's that's you know what you want to do and you'll do it whatever the price is um and so i'm open to the idea of that that not being the case i hope that's the case i hope it not being the case is actually the case yeah listen ben thank you man thanks for coming in here thanks for everything you do i really appreciate it it was great talking to you and uh i wish you well man if there's ever anything we could do please let me know thank you thank you very much thank you thank you Please let me know. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.