The Joe Rogan Experience - #995 - Jon Ronson

Episode Date: August 8, 2017

Jon Ronson is a writer and documentary filmmaker whose works include the best-selling The Men Who Stare at Goats. Checkout his new special podcast called "The Butterfly Effect with Jon Ronson" on Audible.com

three two one John Ronson welcome back Joe it's good to be back good to see you again very good to be back what's happening man how you been I've been good uh the love floating around this neighborhood yeah I've spent a year um on porn sets just research oh it's research it did it was a lot my wife did say to me once or twice do you really do you really have to go to another

porn set I've just finished making a series for Audible called The Butterfly Effect and the flap of the butterfly's wings

which I'm tracing throughout the series is is this young man called Fabian who's like a

tech nerd in Brussels. And he has the idea to get rich from giving the world free porn. So free streaming porn. So the series is about the kind of tech takeover of porn in the valley. Doesn't he know that that's already real? Oh, no. Free porn's everywhere. Yeah, no, that was back in the day.

That was like in the 90s. Oh, okay. So Fabian gave the world Pornhub. Okay. And it's fiction. No, no, this is this is all true. So, okay, let me go back. Okay. So in the 90s, right, this kid called Fabian would like Fabian Tillman, so a young boy in Brussels, like a tech nerd, would like go on CompuServe and swap porn passwords to get porn for free, which is how people got porn for free back in the 90s. And then he had like a sort of eureka moment, which is I can give the world YouTube for porn. So he bought up this fledgling company in montreal called uh um it was called mamsef at the time it was run by these two brothers up in montreal and they had just invented porn hub uh fabian bought up porn hub and then kind of overnight single-handedly took over the valley uh that it's an extraordinary. This massive flow of money went from

where we are now in the valley, a community of people who were making pretty good money from porn. The money just flowed into Fabian's pocket. Because what Fabian did was... Well, look,

if you're a porn star and you go to a bank and say, can I have a checking account? Did you say a porn star or a pornster? A porn, well, I said a porn star, but actually there aren't really many porn stars anymore. If you're a porn person and you go to a bank and you say, can I have a checking account? The bank manager will usually say no, because you're in porn, which means you're disreputable. Really? Yes. People like Stoya have written about this a lot, about how they found it really hard to get mortgages, how they found it hard to get checking accounts. But checking

accounts, that seems unlikely. I mean, I would believe that maybe mortgages, they would think that your business is fairly unstable. That kind of makes sense as far as an investment is concerned. And also the idea that other people, other customers might not like the idea that their high street bank is being shared with somebody who's in porn. Really? Yeah, it's called reputational risk. Wow, that seems really dumb to me. Yeah. It doesn't make any sense at all.

Right. Well, sure. Yeah, I mean, I want to make any sense at all. Right? Well, sure But Fabian was making money from running a site that dealt in In in piracy, so basically fans would upload porn illegally onto Pornhub Mm-hmm. So Fabian was running the site that was filled with pirated content. Fabian went to a bank to say, I want to expand.

But because he wasn't ostensibly a porn person, he was a tech person who was deemed to be respectable. This bank gave him a $362 million loan to expand, to build an empire based in part on the handling of stolen porn. So we went to the Valley, who were already kind of paranoid that all their porn was being stolen and put up onto Pornhub. And he bought up loads of companies at cut price because the companies were panicking and wanted to sell. And suddenly Fabian just single-handedly took over porn. And nobody cares about that. Nobody was thinking about the consequences of that

because Fabian was giving the world what they wanted, which was free porn. But I was really curious to know like, well, what were the consequences? Let me pause there. You said no one cares about it, but a lot of people did. It was a huge issue.

And there was a lot of like moral. It was a huge issue. And there was a lot of, like, moral debate. About whether streaming porn... Well, you know, there was a lot of the girls that were in porn that were really pissed off because they weren't making any money anymore. And there was a lot of social media posts about it, imploring people to stop using these sites, which no one listened to. Exactly. I mean, porn people cared.

But, you know, porn consumers didn't care. I mean, porn people cared, but porn consumers didn't care. Well, it was an interesting tech, like a moral tech debate that was going on for a while. The debate is lost. I mean, there was a, it's really interesting because there was a guy who lived down the street from me, and he was a big-time porn producer. And I actually knew him from my jujitsu class, and was a real high rolling sort of character like he always had this beautiful mercedes-benz and he wore these really big watches a lot of you know fancy clothes and he was just making just tons of money and he had this beautiful house and he was just this

baller character and then it all dried up it all dried up i mean all dried up. I mean, it dried up quick. Yeah. It all went into Fabian's pocket. He lost his house. His house got repossessed. Yeah. And Fabian got so rich because of this. Because the money went from your friend's pocket into Fabian's pocket. Fabian got so rich. But how's he getting rich off of free streaming?

So the ads? Is that what it is? Partly because of ads, but partly because he bought up the paid sites as well. So, you know, because the paid sites were like panicking because they were losing all their money to piracy. So he just bought up everything. So he bought up the competition, he bought up RedTube, he bought up YouPorn. So he bought up all the competition to porn her, but he also bought loads of paid sites, including like Playboy TV. So your friend got so poor that his house got repossessed. Fabian got so rich that he installed in his house an aquarium that was so big that a diver had to come every week and dive in and clean the coral reef. Wow.

You know you're doing well when you get your own diver. That's weird. Yeah. So, yeah, you're right. Porn people cared a lot. but the outside world didn't care. Because, you know, the outside world doesn't care when music's getting pirated. So they sure as hell don't care when it's porn. Well, they care a little bit about the music thing, but the porn thing got almost no traction.

And when the porn industry essentially, for the most part, collapsed, or at least there was a massive amount of loss. There was no talk about some sort of a bailout or anything silly like that. It was like, no, that industry is gone. Right, exactly. Many other industries were bailed out. They were far smaller. Right. When you look at their headquarters up in Montreal, the company that owned Pornhub, it's not porny, it's techy.

So you walk in. Fabian actually said to me quite tellingly, he said, yes, he said it was amazing. You wouldn't even know that we were in porn unless you went to the wrong floor. Now, he seems like a guy who's well aware of his crime. Yeah. I mean, Fabian would say, if it wasn't me, it would be somebody else. What does that mean? That sounds like a good thing to say after you kill somebody. And he'd say, it's progress.

He'd call it progress. But he's a criminal. I mean, it's essentially, he's lucky that he's dealing in pirated stuff, right? The one time Fabian got annoyed with me, he was quite game. Like, I wanted to interview him, and then I wanted to travel to the valley to look at the consequences and trace consequence through to consequence. Like, where would I end up if I just... Because I think people

don't think about consequences on the internet that much. They want to just, you know, destroy somebody and then carry on with their day. So I wanted to tell a story about consequences. The only time Fabian got annoyed with me was when either me or Mike Quasar, director, said to him, you know, you uploaded pirated porn. And he said, no, I didn't.

I have never uploaded pirated porn. I offer a service in which of the people can upload pirated porn. And if they tell us to take it down, we'll take it down which is they have to find it they have to find it and also there's so much fucking free porn on porn yeah that it's like cutting down a forest with a butter knife it's impossible to yeah you know you can you can say take down my pirated porn they'll say okay sorry fine but then there's like a million other people's free porn up there anyway um yeah so uh actually it's funny i don't by the way what i'm about to say shouldn't be construed as me saying that i think that fabian is a psychopath because

i don't but that thing about not taking responsibility for your own actions i just remembered i wrote a book a few years ago about psychopaths called the psychopath test and a psychopathic trait is that like if somebody kills somebody in a bar they would say well it's his fault for looking at me funny so failure to accept responsibility for own actions is one of the 20 items on the psychopath do you think that he's a psychopath or do you think it's some sort of a convenient neglecting of a certain responsibility for what happened he i don't think Fabian, that was very much a tangential thing, because I don't think Fabian is a psychopath at all. But I think that tech people have created a sort of amoral bubble around themselves. I talked to the head of Pornhub's mobile division. So if you've ever

watched, he's called Brandon. If you've ever watched Pornhub on your mobile, you have Brandon to thank. And I said to Brandon, Brandon said, like we never, like 99% of Pornhub employees never set foot on a porn set. And he said, that's good because, you know, we're designing, you know, we're search engine people. We're, you know, we don't want to say, it would be sort of unpleasant to set foot on a porn set. It would be sort of intimidating and unpleasant. And I said, well,

maybe it would have been good if more Pornhub people did set foot on porn sets because you would be able to see the negative consequences of your business plan. And Brendan went, their livelihood, which again, is a very techie thing to say, right? Because it's all about, it's all about progress. Their livelihood? What does he mean by that? Like, okay, now you want to talk about their livelihood. Their livelihood, the people. But I mean remembered a guy called David Lowery, who's a...

He's interested in the kind of piracy issue in music. And he said, when we look back on the dystopian movies of the 1930s, when machines would take over, like Metropolis or something, the moral of the film, the moral of the film, like the climax of the film is when the people, the humans defeat, say, you know, we're not going to live in a world run by machines. We're going to defeat the machines and human morality will take over. But now that machines are ruling the world, instead of us defeating the machines, we are adapting our morality to fit in with the machine's capability. So because it is easy to pirate, instead of saying, let's not pirate, we're just adapting our morality and saying, OK, we can watch pirated porn.

It's fine. Yeah, but it's not as simple as pirating because pirating is what everybody does on, you know, when they're sharing it through message boards or you know what have you that's sort of pirating right when they're uploading it to these websites and servers and stuff but what what he's doing is massively profiting off of other people's work it's a little bit of a more of a gray area yeah i'd say so he's not even gray. It's kind of dark. Well, he certainly profited hugely from other people pirating, you know, their favorite porn films onto his site. Has he been sued? He got into he got arrested for tax evasion. And that's how he got out of the business eventually.

But I think that all got that all got solved. I'm not sure if he ever got sued. Because if somebody said to him, take down my Bad Babysitter's Volume 2 is mine. I say that because I was actually on the set of Bad Babysitter's Volume 2. He'd say, oh, sure, yeah, sorry, of course. And it would go down. But then maybe somebody else would put it up later that day.

And it didn't matter because everything else was free. I'll tell you one amazing consequence of all of this though um so what i wanted to do in this audible series uh the butterfly effect was to kind of trace the consequences of this like you know what was the tornadoes that were being uh created and one amazing consequence is like fabian surrounded himself with uh tech wizards like people who knew how the internet worked uh including a lot of search engine people so instead of making porn films like they made in the 90s um this porn director mike quasar said to me that the first film he ever made back in the 90s was called Women of Influence.

Now all the porn films have to be easily searchable. It's like a kind of arms race of search engine optimization, like to get yourself up the Google rankings. So all the porn films in the Valley aren't called Women of Influence because how do you search for that? They basically see what the most popular search terms are and then make films based on that. So Mike Quasar was telling me this on the set of the film he was shooting that day, which was Stepdaughter Cheerleader Orgy. So I said to him, it's just around the corner from here.

So I said to Mike, because I thought about like Women of Influence versus Stepdaughter Cheerleader Audrey. Look, I haven't seen Women of Influence. So for all I know, the moral of Women of Influence is that women shouldn't have influence. But my guess is that Women of Influence is a more kind of holistic porn film than Stepdaughter Cheerleader Audrey. So I said to Mike, are there any people in the valley who like can't get work because they're just not a keyword and mike went yeah like every at home porn actress now between the ages of 23 and 29 can't get work because they're not a teen and they're not a MILF. They're like in this sort of fallow period between teen and MILF when they're just attractive, and just attractive isn't a searchable term.

So if you're not a teen and you're not a MILF, if you're like a 26-year-old adult film actress, you can't get work. You just have to, like, well, I said to Mike, what do you do? Do you just, like, sit there until you, like, become a MILF and become employable again? And the answer is they have to find other ways to make money. So escorting is going through the roof in the valley. You know, because of the tech, because people like Fabian, because of the tech takeover of porn, escorting is going through the roof. But also another thing that's going through the roof is this kind of weirdly adorable world of bespoke porn yeah and that's what the article what was the uh publication who published that article it was the guardian i did like a written version of one of the episodes

of this of the show i just stumbled upon it you know knowing that you were going to be here i didn't even know you wrote it i was reading it and as i was reading i was like oh john wrote this right it's isn't it what an amazing did you know about this world no and you're right in porn land here in the valley so yeah it's a pretty hidden so fascinating explain what it is like people literally will request some of the most bizarre things yeah and these people will make custom films based on their weird kinks. Just for them, like a team of professional porn people, because the Valley's suffering so much because of Pornhub and so on, will make an entire porn film just for you. Now, how much does something like this cost?

Say if you want to make a film about girls wearing Mutant Ninja Turtle outfits who kick guys in the balls. Like, that's entirely possible, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah, anything's possible. But that sounds like something that might actually sell. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Like a couple of thousand dollars. That's it? Yeah. A couple grand? Yeah. Wow. I got so obsessed with the world of bespoke porn because it was such a fascinating window into people's inner lives.

Yeah. One of the first ones I saw was a condiments video. Like ketchup and relish and stuff like that? So it's a woman sitting in a child's paddling pool and out of shot, one of the bespoke porn producers is pouring industrial-sized tubs of condiments on her head, like ketchup, mustard. And the woman's trying to...

She's like Gabe, so she's going, oh, it's so cold and slimy. Anyway, the guy who commissioned this video, the producers knew one thing about him he's a restauranteur who deals with condiments every day how weird yeah and has to you know presumably avoid situations like that happening in this restaurant so he just sits around thinking like as like customers just hitting'm going to squirt her with some mayonnaise, just lather her up with ketchup. Or maybe it's stress.

Maybe it's like, oh, my God, if this tub of mayonnaise falls on the floor or falls on this woman, like, we're all fucked. We get sued, yeah. Yeah, we're doomed. And there'd be like the cleaning bill. And maybe it's like, maybe his release is to do this. Wow. Another one was a Norwegian man has spent 40 years amassing a very valuable stamp collection. And his bespoke porn film was to send his stamp collection to the valley where three naked porn women would destroy his stamp collection.

Whoa. Yes. There you go. There's a still from it. Yeah. How much is a stamp collection worth? Well, it turns out because we managed to track down Stamps Man and he talked to us after a lot of persuasion. And he's got 10 books of stamps

and once a year he sends one to a custom producer and so he does it once a year so that's his thing yeah it turns out it's because uh he grew up in iceland where stamp collecting was a very popular hobby at the time in like the 70s and the 80s uh stamp collecting was big so uh he became like an obsessive stamp collector the stamp shop owners would say oh if you buy this stamp it's going to be very valuable in 20 years uh but then came the internet and it like killed off the stamp it killed off stamp collecting as a hobby like you know yeah nerds apparently felt like other other things to be interested in like you know yeah nerds apparently found like other other things to be interested in and you know the thrill of the chase just wasn't there anymore

like you can easily buy yeah so anyway so his stamps lost all of their value the stamp stores closed down that kind of collegiate atmosphere of fellow stamp collectors just vanished uh he began to like you know regret his life choices of like spending all of that time and money collecting stamps. He began to feel depressed and isolated. So he went to see a psychiatrist who told him that stamp collecting is a ridiculous hobby because it isolates him. So now he pays porn people to destroy his stamps. The psychiatrist told him that a hobby is ridiculous. Yeah.

According to him, I mean, I never talked to the psychiatrist, but according to him, yeah, he said that stamp collecting is a ridiculous hobby. That seems like a ridiculous thing for a psychologist to say. Sounds like a bad psychologist. Yeah. If someone enjoys it. Yeah. If you have all your ducks in a row and everything's firing on all cylinders, but you really truly enjoy stamps, who's to tell you there's something wrong with that?

Well, the only, I mean, one good thing that came out of it was he really enriched the imaginations of the people in the valley. And also my imagination, too. I mean, Stamps Man, because all the custom producers talk, you know. Right. And Stamps Man was such a mystery to them all. So, you know, so at least he destroys the stamps now in a way that's beneficial to him. God, it's so weird. Yeah, isn't it amazing?

But it's all weird, right? Well, it's also quite sad. Dan and Rhiannon, who made one of the Stamps videos, called us just as we were finishing our series and Rhiannon was in tears and they'd just had a request. And the request was for a guy, a guy wanted a porn woman to sit cross-legged on the floor, fully clothed, and say into the camera,

you are loved. Things may be bad now, but they won't always be. And suicide is not the answer. Yeah. So then they thought, fuck, what do we do? So they told him they'd make the video for him and they could shoot it really soon. And he didn't respond.

So they made it anyway. And we were there to record it. And it made me realise just how kind of delightful the bespoke porn world is because they were so eager to help. To help him. Yeah, to help this guy. Did he kill himself? We don't know.

They made the video for him. The woman, the porn star Riley was saying into the camera, you know, I have thought about dying too. But I came out of that hole, you know, and I came back stronger. And now I can see all the good in the world. And Riley was crying and Rhiannon, the producer was crying, and they sent the video to the guy. And we don't know. The producer was crying and they sent the video to the guy. We don't know. You know, it's interesting. There's quite a few porn stars on Twitter that have, you know, really like kind of motivational Twitter feeds.

Like they say nice things. They say positive things. They seem like healthy people. Yeah. And if you separate the fact that they have sex on film for a living, take that out of the mix. And what you have looks like your average person who's trying to do better in this world and is sharing positive things that they find that gives them inspiration and moves them along in a certain way. But then you add the sex thing. And for whatever reason, we have this weird hang up about sex it's because we're all fucked up i talked to this girl called dakota who was part of a radical

honesty group a radical honesty have you come across radical honesty no i don't think so you would love it i might be in one i don't even know it can i tell you it's a radical honesty okay well the first time i ever heard about radical honesty was my friend Starley Kine, the podcaster, who went on a radical honesty group. And one of the things you have to do is… She's on a podcast? Yeah, she does a podcast called Mystery Show. She used to be on This American Life. Okay.

Anyway, so she went to a radical honesty group where you have to be radically honest to each other. So at Harvard, it starts I've been to one as well. It starts with everybody sitting in a circle and they have to confess to the room a secret about themselves that they've never told anyone.

The one that Starley went to, the first guy said my secret is that I haven't paid taxes in 10 years. And so everyone went, oh. And then the next guy said, my secret is that I killed a man. Yeah. He said, I was in a truck.

I was driving a truck. And I kicked the passenger out of the truck. And he fell onto the road. And he got run over. And I got away passenger out of the truck. And he fell onto the road and he got run over. And I got away with it. Wow. And nobody knows that it was murder. So then the next person in the circle went,

well, my secrets are pretty disappointing compared to that. She said, I suppose I can tell you that i have sex with my cat so then the um murderer kind of put his hand up and said that's disgusting no so can i add something so could i add something to my you should be ashamed of yourself no quite the opposite he said could i add something to my secret he said um I also have sex with my cat. So anyway, he had a one-upper. Yeah,

he had to like, he had to be the best secret in the room. He might be a bullshit artist, huh? It's possible. Yeah,

that's part of the problem with those. Yeah. I should say, by the way, I met Brad Blanton, the guy who runs

these radical honesty groups and I asked him whether Starley's story was true and he said yes the way she described that circle is what happened so I was at this radical honesty group in this church school

in New Orleans and this girl called Dakota said that her secret was that she was she's like this young church girl she said her secret was that she watched porn so I said what did you you know what you watch it on and she said Pornhub of course because this is how like every

child in the world learns about sex these days and I said did you ever get so into it that you would like learn their names you'd say oh there's James Dean and she said no no no she kind of laughed and she said no I never learned their names it's like when you kill a deer, you don't name it because then you can't eat it. So this is what the porn people are up against, right? It's this shame of the viewer. It's like in that hypocrisy lies exploitation, which is why somebody like Fabian can come in and get a $300 million loan and take over porn. It's because we don't want to think about it because it makes us feel bad about ourselves. But that sort of thing, but her issue is, like, churchgoing plus female,

whereas men, they have very specific tastes and they tend to gravitate towards very specific porn stars. Like, one of the things that I've noticed that really popular porn stars like one of the things that I've noticed that really popular porn stars will have like gigantic numbers on like social media Twitter or Instagram like upwards of a million yeah you know and maybe more like and so they obviously have like a following you know yeah you know you said that a lot of porn women on Twitter are kind of a-positive and are giving you interventional messages. One of the reasons why that is, I met this porn woman called Macy May, who was, like, really depressed. Another of Fabian's consequences is that, like, kids grow up on Pornhub these days.

So there's no longer the kind of outlaw status about coming to the Valley to do porn that they used to be in like the 80s and 90s now you know the valley's like flooded with women who who you know they turn 18 they watch porn they think that looks cool and then they come to the valley and and a negative consequence of that is that they get work for like a couple of weeks and then you know there's loads more women off the bus and so the producers don't need to employ them anymore so there's a massive turnaround. They get work for a few weeks and then it's over. So I met this woman called Macy May who was in that funk. Like she came in May.

Throughout May she was working. I met her in July and the work had just dried up. And she was like venting on Twitter. But then she stopped venting. And then all of her tweets were like, I'm so happy. But then she stopped venting. And then all of her tweets were like, I'm so happy. It's such a beautiful day. And I said, why did you stop venting on Twitter?

And she said, well, a bunch of porn producers told me it looked bad for my brand. Like, you know, they don't want a sort of miserable porn person saying I'm not getting work today. They want a porn person who says, here's a picture of my butt. Yeah. And isn't that unhealthy, right? That this is what we've turned Twitter into. We've turned it into this thing where we're not allowed to be ourselves or to tell the truth about ourselves. Well, in this particular example, maybe. Well, in this particular example, maybe.

But, I mean, I think it's an inherently, for whatever reason, in my estimation and in many others, a depressing business. Porn. Yeah. And I don't know why. I mean, for a lot of people, the idea of a young girl going into porn is depressing. You know, like I have daughters. The idea of my daughters going into porn is very depressing. But I've met porn stars that seem nice they seem happy so i mean but why is it that it's everybody wants to have sex

but if you have sex on film yeah and everybody gets to watch the shame yeah yeah it's weird it's a weird little side effect of our civilization it's's the shame coming in from the outside looking in. There's no shame. When I was on the set of Stepdaughter Cheerleader Orgy, which was quite close to where we are now, probably like a mile away from here, but up in the

hills. It was a kind of familial bubble, like everyone was being nice to each other. Everyone was happy. But Mike, the director, needed to get an establishing shot of the cheerleaders arriving home from cheerleader practice. So we went outside. They were all wearing their cheerleader outfits.

And some teenagers had cottoned on to what was happening, that a porn film was being shot, like up on a nearby hill. And they were like catc calling and hissing and sort of mocking these girls and for the first time not just the girls but the cameraman the director everybody suddenly felt like self-conscious and the girls were like you know sort of trying to back down their skirts so until the mocking outsiders came along it was healthy and shame free but as soon as an outsider started hissing at them, it became shameful. And I think that's, that's, that's porn for you. Like most of the problems that porn people face are stigma from the outside, not from the community itself, which tends to be

quite respectful. And the people that were mocking them, first of all, they're young, right? Teenagers. And second of all, they're probably thinking of it in terms of like, almost like they're online. Yeah. I mean, like one of the things about online is there's no consequences for what you're saying. And then people have no problem shitting on people. We couldn't see them. We could only hear them. I was looking up and I couldn't see them. Right. Because they were up on like a ridge above the house. Yes. It's almost like being anonymous. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, anonymous people online, it's the behavior is very bizarre. Because like, sometimes I'll

see people's comments, whether it's to me or to somebody else. And they're so fucking vicious and nasty over nothing just over nothing over nothing yeah you know over you know someone's movie that they did or some album that they did or whatever it was and just shitting all over every aspect of their person just almost just to try to get them to hurt the way they're hurting. You know, that's almost what it seems like. It's like you're just like super angry, bitter person. It's just life is just throwing rocks at them everywhere they go. And every chance they get to throw a rock back, they do. Like that Randy Newman song, I just want you to hurt like I do.

Yeah, I'd say there's certainly an element to that. There's also an element of what the right call, what's that phrase that the right use all the time? Virtue signaling, which I don't like using that phrase because it's so been kind of adopted by the sort of white nationalists. But that's different, right? But it exists. Virtue signaling is absolutely real. I see it all the time.

I see it all the time. It's usually like really really weak men that are like trying really hard to court the favor of women and they're not attractive and they're not desirable and so they try really hard to be allies. Yeah. The last time I was here I'd just

gone through all of that as a result of my public shaming book coming out. Oh yeah. And like a sort of small group of people decided to sort of try and... Angry at you, John Branson. Get in the group. Yeah. Wrongthink.

You were guilty of wrongthink. Yeah. I just read a story this morning in Vulture about the young adult world where this book came out called... I think what's it called? Let me see if I can find it. Called The Black Witch. out called um i think what's called like the let me see if i can find it um called the black witch and it's a it's a liberal book it's a young adult book that's a liberal book it's a progressive book

but it contains uh racist characters so a blogger took some of the quotes that the racist characters said in the book um this Vulture article quotes it. And took them out of context. Yeah. Page 163. The Celts are not a pure race like us. They're more accepting of intermarriage, and because of this, they're hopelessly mixed.

So that's a quote from the book, and then the blogger wrote underneath, Yes, you read that with your own two eyes. This is one of the times my jaw dropped in horror and i had to walk away from this book so then how noble so then like hundreds and hundreds of people like powered in on the book and then kirkus gave this book a good review and then people powered in on kirkus kirkus kirkus is like this industry it's like when you write a book one of the first reviews you get is from Kirkus.

It's like it's an industry. Spell that word. K-I-R-K-U-S. Okay. And if you get like a starred Kirkus review, it's like a big deal. And so they powered in on Kirkus for giving it a good review. But I noticed two things happened as a result of this. One was actually it didn't seem to affect the book's success.

The book is doing well, like on Amazon, and people actually read the book aren't offended by it. And the same thing happened with my book. So you've been publicly shamed, like the kind of, you know, people trying to turn against the book, it didn't. Well, the numbers are so small, the numbers of twats that are actually out there beating the bushes for this stuff. I mean, you're talking about a few thousand people at a whatever, or a few hundred maybe even, very vocal. Yeah. And if there's anyone particularly upset at you,

it might just be, there's many instances where people are attacked by one person and that person assumes multiple identities online. I had a buddy of mine who was dealing with someone who was doing that. Yeah. It's just, it's real common. Like they just, for whatever whatever reason just single you out and maybe you wrote something that you know they found personally offensive or but the thing that drives me crazy about that about this uh taking out of context this character who's a racist character is we're talking about fiction and if fiction if you can't portray realistic humans

i mean there are racists just but how come you're allowed to make a fictional character about a murderer or about you know some sort of uh you know nazi type character or something along those lines like how come that's okay i mean these are these are like, you know, these, I think, are kind of young kids because this is the YA world. And, you know, they're not thinking of a young adult type of publishing. And, you know, they're not thinking it through. They're not thinking this through. Well, they're just seeing an opportunity to be outraged.

You know, the expression, recreational outrage. Yeah. So, but the other thing that happened as a result of this, so the book itself apparently isn't being particularly negatively affected even though the outrage was huge. Probably helps it.

Possibly. But the journalists from this Vulture article interviewed publishers who basically are saying, you know, we're telling our authors, you know, just, you know, it's having a chilling effect on novels. It's like we're telling our authors, like,, it's having a chilling effect on novels. It's like we're telling our authors, like, don't put in, like if the author's white,

don't try and put in a person of colour as a character. It's just, it's not worth it, you know, just don't do it. So actually, these new rules, these are new rules. A few years, you know, I just wrote this, I've been writing movies lately and I always try and put in characters of color. And because I think, OK, you know, maybe a director will kind of ignore it. But if I put that into a screenplay, then there's a good chance that a person of color is going to get offered a role.

But now suddenly I'm being told like that's not that's not good I shouldn't do that well you'll be told you're being told you shouldn't do that because you need to stay in your lane yeah well I'm not being told it but I'm reading these articles where I read that novelists are being told but this is a different situation you're not talking about an offensive character you should probably clarify that oh yeah no of course yeah no what you're talking about is someone's telling you not to do or maybe you shouldn't do a person of color in your screenplay because that's not your place. Yeah. Writers are being told, according to this Vulture article that I read today, writers are being told not to do it. And of course, not like.

Right. That's a different thing. It could easily be misconstrued. Yeah. I didn't want to let anybody take you out of context there. Right. Yeah. No, of course. and that feels like a very new sure rule it is yeah well it's just again it's it's just the left is turning on itself i mean there are people that are turning on them so there you cannot be progressive enough there is no one out there that's progressive enough and so there's always going to be someone to find some fault in something that you do particularly if you're doing fiction that portrays realistic scenarios that could easily exist in any city in any in

any you know civilization on earth yeah and I know this one when you know because I was covering all of this for a couple of years and I was writing so you've been publicly shamed and I I noticed every time somebody like Justine Sacco kind of got got on the internet. Breitbart, Infowars, Marlowe Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson, Alex Jones, they would propagandize the hell out of this stuff. And this was in the run-up to Trump getting elected.

And I can't help thinking that the left eating itself is part of the reason why we've got Trump now. Yeah, they fucked up, for sure. They became unreasonable. I mean, there's a meme that's going out there that I've seen on many, many different places on Instagram and Twitter and stuff that says, this kind of shit is why I got elected. And it's Trump like pointing at the camera. And I think it's true. Yeah, it's 100% true.

People are fed up. I mean, they're fed up and they didn't realize what the consequences are. You know, what's really fascinating is I saw this article today where it was talking about America, it was on CNN, about Americans, like in general, like everyone polled, does not like the fact that Trump tweets. It was some crazy number of people to think that he should stop tweeting But one of the things that got him elected is the fact that he tweets said people enjoyed it Like here's a guy who's fighting back and he's he's not he's not scared to hit back

With personal insults and like we'd never seen that before from someone running for president. Like, this was stunning. Yeah. You know, but then he became president and everybody's like, well, he'll surely let that go once he's in the office because that's not presidential. But he used an expression, you know, I forget the expression,

but something like it's modern presidential to tweet. That's right, yeah. Yeah. Modern presidential. What? Yeah. the expression was something like it's modern presidential to tweet yeah yeah i remember the very first talk i ever did for so you've been publicly shamed there was this woman in the front row uh this kind of elderly lady this was at the bookshop santa cruz and she was like pointedly shaking her head in disagreement with everything that i was saying and then when it came to the q a i said like has anyone got any questions and she went and she said uh i said okay i just said if

you play she said if you play with the twitter toy then it's your fault if you get burned why and what i said to her was like you know it's influences beyond Twitter. Twitter is infecting the culture, and it infected everything. What began on Twitter, a new type of discourse and a new way of seeing each other, infected politics, culture, the mainstream media. It's infected everything. In the same way that I wonder whether Fabian ever sort of feels a bit guilty about some of the consequences of his business plan.

I wonder whether some of the Twitter executives ever feel guilty about what they've done. Well, they certainly feel like they have some sort of responsibility, which is why they're silencing certain people. And I don't know if shadow banning is real, but there's all this talk of people being shadow banned. And then a lot of people have had their accounts suspended. Yeah, so they are doing a bit of stuff now. I was a member of Megan from the Westboro Baptist Church, Megan Phelps, who's a friend of mine. Oh, she came on your show, didn't she? Yeah, she was great.

She was amazing. She's so great. Fascinating that someone who came from such a horrible, regressive environment became this fascinating, really intelligent, really well-spoken, sensitive person. You know what? I think Megan would say if she was sitting here, because I kind of said that to her one time, and she said it sort of goes to show that for all their sort of hateful beliefs,

my parents were good parents. They gave me this positive stuff as well as the negative stuff. Wow. Isn't that amazing? She can't even talk to them anymore. Yeah. They won't talk to her. They won't talk to her.

I think she went up to them at a picket of David Bowie's memorials. God. They wouldn't talk to her. They wouldn't look her in the eye. That's so crazy. Yeah. Anyway, she was on the phone to Twitter one time, she told me, because they love it. I mean, Twitter love her because she sort of got talking to liberals on Twitter.

And that's what persuaded her out of the Westboro Baptist Church. So for Twitter, that's like the best story in the world. So she was talking to Twitter, she told me, and they wanted her to do a talk. And she said, oh, you know who should do a talk as well? John Ronson. And she said Twitter went quiet on the phone. So they're upset at you in some way? I think they're upset at me for basically pointing out what a, you know, how we're all toddlers crawling towards a gun on Twitter.

But it's not all people. I mean, you're pointing out some of the issues that many other people have seen. Yeah. I mean, this is not, I don't think what you're saying is controversial at all. You're just astute. I don't think so. That story I read about Justine Sacco a few years ago and about how, you know, the woman who tweeted, going to Africa, hope I don't get AIDS, just kidding, I'm white.

And then when she was asleep. LOL. Yeah. And then when she was asleep on a plane, you know, thinking she'd made a smart kind of South Parkian joke mocking her own privilege. Like, everyone united to destroy her. And she was fired. Fired. By the time she landed. Yeah, and, you know,

everyone from, like, misogynistic trolls through to social justice people all united to destroy this woman. You know, she upset everyone. And, yeah, so I think that story became pretty powerful at the time and i think it probably affected twitter's business for a while people got too scared to go on twitter so

i think that's oh i don't think it dropped their business off at all oh i think it did i think i think people started to think like it may have recovered now but i think people started to think fuck if twitter's not fun you know what's what's the point of us being on here? You think just from the Justine Sacco one racist joke that she got fired for, you think that really had an overall effect on Twitter use? I think, well, what happened was my book got extracted in the New York Times. It was that story. And that story kind of went crazy viral. It really spoke, it kind of spoke to people's like,

like deep fears, that story. Well, deep fears, they might get drunk and pop a Xanax and say something really stupid. Do the same shit. And wake up in Africa fired. Yeah, exactly. And I think that, that kind of probably affected Twitter.

I don't think it did. I think they need to relax. I think all that stuff just makes people interested and that makes more people sign up and i just i don't boy i don't see that at all if they were upset at you over that that's pretty preposterous i i wonder i've given i gave talks uh facebook and google but you're upset they won't give you a talk well i'm just what's going on well i'm curious i'm curious'm curious. You have to sit before their Orwellian council and maybe they'll go over every word that you're about to say. What is their

trust and verify council? What the fuck is that called? They have some people on that that are ridiculous social justice warriors. Proven attention whores. People that are dishonest. They're not honest people and they're a part of this whole thing where their business is

getting attention and being a victim and exploiting it to the nth degree. I mean, that's a bunch of people that are on that thing. That's what they do. I do think, like, if you're going to address harassment on social media, you have to accept that it comes from both sides. It comes from the right to the left. It comes from the left to the right. it comes from misogynists to feminists it comes from feminists you also have to define what is harassment and what is

criticism now if you have ideas in the open marketplace of ideas and you have ideas that people think are profoundly ridiculous they're allowed to mock your ideas that is not harassment I just think that that is someone shitting on you. Yeah. And you put yourself out there. I mean, especially someone who's, look, you're not, these people, a lot of them, they're not singers. They're not authors.

They're not musicians. They're not comics. They're not, they're not producing anything other than their words. Right? So if someone doesn't like your words and they shit on your words like that what else do you expect yeah i noticed that there was some kind of gaslighting going on on the left like like everyone would agree the sort of world that i come from like the guardian and you know the left like everyone would agree that if a gang

of misogynists sort of gang up on a particular feminist writer and basically harass her until she goes offline, everyone agrees that's bad. And it is bad. It is bad. Yeah. But when the mirror image of that is happening, people just pretend it's not happening. Right.

When someone goes after someone on the right, even if it's a woman. People just pretend it's not happening. Right, when someone goes after someone on the right, even if it's a woman. A perfect example of that was no feminist stood up to defend Sarah Palin. There's no one. You never heard that. When Bill Maher was calling her a cunt and all these different people were mocking her. No one was stepping up and saying, hey, that's a woman, that's a mother.

That's someone's mom. Leave her alone. Have some respect for women. If you're a woman and you're a conservative, you might as well be a monster. There was undoubtedly sort of, well, it's cognitive dissonance. Like when somebody's being harassed, they don't want to then see themselves as doing the same thing to a group of people that they don't like. Well, it's very easy to think of someone who is opposed to your point of view or thinks of things completely different as another. You don't even think of them as a person. editor said that they wanted to run a series of articles about um about bullying on the internet and wanted me to like you know contribute to the series uh and they said they wanted it to all be

about how women are being bullied by men and i said um you know i've no doubt that that happens a lot and it's presumably disproportionate like women are bullied by men more than other groups are bullied you know that could well be true but if the series of articles only about women being bullied by men and you know it legitimizes certain types of bullying like when the left pile in on somebody like justin sacco it's going to legitimize you know if it's that partial it's going to legitimize certain types of bullying. And the editor, when I said that to her, kind of rolled her eyes as if to say, well, you would think that. Oh, wow. Yeah. But, you know, it's true. It's true.

And, you know, the problem is not going to go away until we. Yeah, they're hypocrites. I mean, that's essentially what's going on. It's just people don't want to be nice. They think that there's power in shaming. And they think, I mean, I've had multiple conversations with people online that think there is good in shaming people. I'm like, well, you're saying that because you're hiding behind a keyboard and it's a free shot. But if you had to sit down with that person in front of them and talk to them face to face and feel the social consequences. Right. It reminds me actually a moment I was telling you about one of the consequences

that I look at in the butterfly effect about the tech takeover of porn is that if you're a 25-year-old adult actress, you can't get work now because you're in this sort of hinterland between teen and MILF. And I think that's not just porn, that's the internet. Like on social media, you know, if you're a kind of loud loud aggressively authoritarian person on the left or a loud aggressively authoritarian person on the right you're like the teen or the milf like those of us in the middle of these people who are more interested in people talking to each other and and they don't you know we don't want to like scream we want to like listen and understand we're like the 25 year old adult film actress yeah at work well people don't like nuanced points of view and they also We're like the 25-year-old adult film actress who can't get work. Well, people don't like nuanced points of view. And they also don't like people that are willing

to talk to anybody. I've had so many people call me some sort of a right-wing monster. And I'm like, well, let's go over what makes a right-wing monster. What is right-wing? I support gay marriage. I support universal health care. I'm absolutely in favor, if it could work, I don't know if it would work, of universal basic income. Like, where does it, where do I become right wing? Like, where does it go? I'm anti-war. Like, where do I become right wing? Well, I just think like in politics, as in porn, everything now has to be kind of keyword searchable. So everybody has to fall into some sort of niche. And if you're not doing it yourself then someone else is going to do it for you yeah but even when you're saying that like you don't that's not real like you don't

have to you don't have to fall into those categories it's just be easier for people to categorize you if you did fall into those categories i'm sure i have some points of view that people would consider uh conservative and i have many more points of view that people would consider conservative. And I have many more points of view that most people would consider to be liberal. But it's very convenient, especially when you look like me, and I look like a meathead. It's easy to say that I'm some meathead conservative or a right winger or something along those lines. But I'm way more likely to vote for someone on the left than I am for someone on the right. Because I think the people on the right in general are more suppressive, especially socially and culturally.

And I think that's where the real issues lie. When you look at what Obama did. Yeah, on the right. When you look at what Obama did in office in terms of what he did as far as drones uh about uh freedom of the press and going on after whistleblowers and god a lot of that was very right very right wing if you looked at in terms of like actual real consequences of him being the president a lot of it was very right wing but when you look at in terms of like support for gay marriage and you know and passing the affordable care Act and all

these, a lot of that stuff was very left wing. Now, I don't know if the Affordable Care Act was good because a lot of small businesses that small doctors with small offices hated it and thought it was absolutely horrible and it killed their business. I don't know who's right about that because I don't, obviously I don't have to deal with that. It's a controversial subject. But the idea behind it, I liked, I liked the idea that

we would have some sort of universal healthcare because I think the idea of someone being too poor to get healthcare in this incredible country, like if we're going to pay, if our taxes are going to go to anything, God damn, doesn't it, shouldn't it go to caring for our neighbors and our fellow humans? Like that seems to me to be a no brainer. Yeah. And that's probably a pretty left-wing idea Well, I got a ton of those but but it's easy to call me a right winger for whatever reason I find that fascinating that people do not like us a nuanced approach not only that they it's not that they don't like it is that's that they find it extremely easy to categorize you in sort of a negative caricature.

Yeah. I got a question. Can I just like totally change the subject for a second? We have Alex Jones in common because I years ago snuck into Bohemian Grove with Alex. What year was that? That was like when he did it in the late 90s or 2000? Yeah, it was 19... You were with him on that.

That's right. Yeah, 19... That's right. Did we talk about that the last time you were here? We did talk about it last time, yeah. But since I saw you last, I rekindled my relationship with Alex as a means of trying to get inside the Trump world, which didn't go great.

It didn't go well? What happened? Not that well. Well, I think I annoyed Alex a little bit. Oh, what'd you do? I basically said Alex shouldn't have political sway. You told him that? Well, I wrote it in a story about him.

I went to the RNC and I sort of, you know, got back in with Alex and spent a little bit of time hanging around with him and Roger Stone and so on and got really interested in the kind of dynamics of how Alex and Trump communicate to each other. But I'm wondering, you've seen Alex more recently than I have. Well, Alex has been my friend since

1998. Yeah, I was at his custody trial not long ago and you were brought up. You were brought up in evidence. Oh, that's right, because he was smoking pot on my show. He was smoking pot, exactly. Well, I'm just testing it. See, George Soros makes the weed stronger. That's what he said. He said that in his custody trial.

Yeah, that's exactly what he said. He said he tests it once a year. It's weird because he's like, I'm always there when that happens. I mean, come on, man. What's really funny is we drank whiskey on the show, too. No one gives a shit about that. That's way more destructive.

It's the pot, whatever, the self-reflective, paranoia-inducing marijuana. It's a real problem. But I now wonder. So he says that Trump called him just after the election to sort of thank him. And I'm inclined to believe that's true because I don't think that's the kind of thing that Alex would lie about. But have you come to any conclusion about whether there is a connection between Alex and Trump now? Because I'm beginning to think maybe there just isn't anymore. But I could be wrong.

That's a good question. I don't know. I mean, first of all, I don't see how Trump can have a connection with that many people. I feel like the job of being the president has got to be so insanely demanding. The idea that he's taking a few moments out of his day, he's got his feet up on the chair with a laptop, and he's on Infowars.com. He's like, God damn, I got to call Alex and find out what the fuck is going on with this child slavery thing on Mars. Alex, where are these slaves? Tell me where. We're on Mars. I think it benefits everyone to think that Alex, because it makes Trump look bad.

Yeah. So it benefits people on the left to say that Alex is connected to Trump. Yeah. It kind of benefits Alex, I think, for people to think it too because it aggrandizes him. Well, it helps him in a way. I mean, it's like the people that,

there's a bunch of people that enjoy Alex, right? So some of them enjoy it for the theater. There's a theater element of it all, you know? I mean, and it's all doom and gloom and and then some of it some people enjoy because like bohemian grove occasionally he's correct like bohemian grove is a real mind fuck when you see all these super rich people wearing robes right well i was there an effigy yeah i was in in the crowd with all the old men of wealth. Did that freak you out? You see those people?

One thing freaked me out. Alex came out of our Bohemian Grove night with a varying interpretation of what we witnessed. What was your interpretation? My interpretation is basically, with one caveat. I'm about to caveat this. My interpretation was that it's just like fucking Skull and Bones or Harvard Club. But those are all creepy, right? Yeah.

And there does seem to be amongst the American ruling elites, there does seem to be a proclivity for ritual. Yeah. Maybe amongst the British elites as well. I'm not sure. But that's in itself psychologically interesting. I think secrets too. Right. So it's like, why?

So that is interesting. Like, why? Even if the ritual at Bohemian Grove, you know, and I would contend that contrary to what Alex implied, they weren't actually sacrificing a child. No, he didn't say they were sacrificing a child. Oh, in it.

Did he say it at some point in time? In this video, yeah. It could be real. It could be a child. Did he say it at some point in this video? Yeah, it could be real could be real could be real ladies and gentlemen It could be real he probably was so jazzed up that they were actually dressed up like monks With the hoods and they have the Moloch the owl God when he was actually there I mean that probably ramped up his love of conspiracy. Oh Three or four hundred percent it was hilarious because you know we went in separately to to um because alex got it into his head that maybe i was part of the bohemian grove oh you're like deep deep inside yeah like the wicked man that i was like luring him in

and he would be the one sacrificed in the belly of the owl oh no um so he went in separately to me he went by the undergrowth and i went up the drive i just went up He went and filed the undergrowth. And I went up the drive. I just went up the drive where I gave the security guard a kind of I rule the world wave. And then we went in there. That's all you had to do? Yeah, yeah. I mean, probably not now. God, that's so often the case. It's like the White House.

And then we saw Alex and Mike Hansen, who was his producer at the time, walking towards us. And I was with this local lawyer who we talked up with. And I was like, hey, Alex, Mike, how are you doing? And they were like, keep walking. There's cameras in the trees. There's owls everywhere.

Owls? Yes. So you felt like the owls were cameras? They got it into their heads that the owls at Bohemian Grove, the owl motifs at Bohemian Grove, the owl motifs at Bohemian Grove was indicative of the fact that it was like Moloch, the owl god. Yeah. And it was like some sort of satanic. But actually, I would say that the reason why there's all those owls, because I saw like stuffed owls in display cabinets and so on.

But I think it's like, I think it's an owl sanctuary. play cabinets and so on. But I think it's like, I think it's an owl sanctuary. But anyway, but I want to put Why do they stuff them then? Well, it's an owl sanctuary.

I mean, I presume it died of natural causes. They miss it. Shitty fucking sanctuary. If they kill it, then stuff it. So it's sort of like

Norman Bates' mom and psycho stuffer. But what was odd that night was one thing that the oddest moment and this is where I will, this is where my memory of the night does tally with Alex

is, is that for whatever reason, the people in the crowd were really into this ceremony. Like there was a sort of, they were really fired up by it. I remember this old guy walked up to me before it started and said,

are you a first timer? And I went, yeah. And he went, oh, you're going to love it. You're going to love it. It's like, burn him, burn him. Or something along those lines. And it did make me think like, and then I looked behind

and there was Alex and Mike wide-eyed, looking like they were in the belly of the beast. And then there's all these old preppy men, like wide eyed. They were really into it, too. I felt like the only sane person in the entire Redwood Forest. I was like the only person who was thinking this is fucking ridiculous. It is ridiculous. But.

But they were into it. It was that moment. It was that moment of revelation, actually, that then led me to write the book that I wrote after that book, which was The Many Stare at Goats, which was about soldiers trying to kill goats just by staring at them. Because I remember thinking, I was actually in Belfast. I was giving a talk about my book Them, which is where I talk about all of that stuff.

And somebody said, OK, so I know what you think of it. This woman in the audience said, I know what you think. I know you think this is, like, ridiculous. And I know that Alex Jones thinks it's evil. But what about the people in the crowd? What were they thinking about it? And I thought that's a really good question. So that's what led me to write a book about, like,

irrational thoughts in powerful places, which is what led me to write The Monster Who Goes. Now, when you when you're there and you see that there really is this giant stone owl and they really do have this bundle of sticks that they're burning and everyone really is wearing these robes like like I mean you had a bit part of you had to be like how many of these fucking things are going on that we haven't infiltrated well yeah that's true look at at that. There's a photo

over there. This is real. I mean, they really do have a giant owl and they really do burn some sort of a sacrifice in front of this owl. And there's the speakers that are... At one point, this is a lesser documented part of

the ritual. At one point, there's a guy in leaf-covered lederhosen, appears in like a stage cut out of the redwood tree, and starts singing this kind of elegy to nature. Like, oh trees, oh leaves.

So that's how it starts. That's before the men in robes turn up. So it's like some weird pagan nature ritual. Leaf-covered lederhosen, Joe. How much would you starts that's before the men in robes turn up so it's like some weird pagan nature ritual covered later hose and joe how much would you give to be in one of those skull and bones meetings see if they actually like film each other sucking dicks or something there's just something that goes on where they have like something over those guys supposedly that's like the yeah the conspiracy theory that's they make them engage in gay sex i do believe these things happen for a

reason like you know skull and bones exists for a reason well they have something over you it could be that or it could be just this weird sense this weird sort of psychological need that people like ivy league people feel they need to like have a sense of superiority and one way to do that is to kind of create these secret rituals to give them a sense of like you know grandeur over the people that's possible now a guy like alex jones stumbles upon something like that or infiltrates it and finds out it is real i mean that is justifying to such a an enormous enormous level yeah but alex but here's my my truck with Alex in all of this, is that it wasn't like for Alex, all the fucking crazy shit that we saw that night wasn't enough. Like he had to like turn it up to 11.

Of course. Yeah. And imply that we had possibly witnessed an actual human sacrifice. Of course. But that's standard. That's standard Alex Jones 101. But it shouldn't be standard. It shouldn't be standard. It shouldn't be, but I mean, think

about all the exaggerations that take place in the media, whether it's on the left or the right, there's rampant exaggerations. Well, it's funny you should say that. So did you watch Alex being interviewed by Megyn Kelly? Yes, I did. Yeah, well, that made me laugh. You know, they phoned me a couple of days before the broadcast,

Megyn Kelly's people, because they were panicking. Do you remember? There was like a lot of criticism they were getting. For having him on in the first place. Yeah. So they called me up and they basically wanted me to give them as much evidence as I could that proved that Alex and Trump were aligned

and they would talk to each other and so on. Called you, why? Because you went to Bohemian Grove with them? I went to Bohemian Grove, but then I also brought out this little Kindle single last summer called The Elephant in the Room in which I'm trying to trace the relationship between Alex and Trump

via Roger Stone. It's kind of interesting stuff. So I answered the questions as best as I could, but I don't know that much about exactly how often Trump and Alex talk to each other. Yeah, I don't know either. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not really that interested in it, as odd as it is.

Like, I have a very fucked up relationship with Alex in that he's actually my friend. And so when I see him, it's like, what's up, man? What are you doing? And I give him a hug, and people go, oh, he's a monster. How can you be friends with him? And this and that. And like, I don't know.

I just base it on my interactions with him. And does he say fucked up things? The most disturbing thing that I didn't even know when he did the podcast, I didn't know that he was a Sandy Hook denier. Right. So apparently he's backed off that since being confronted by the facts. And there was a horrible article that I read about a father who was actually a conspiracy theorist until his son was killed in sandy hook and then he got death threats for lying and presumably from info wars yeah and that was so just so just so sad yeah that's just so horrible

people look for fucking conspiracies in everything and i don't know what it is i have friends that have this issue i don't understand it things that could be easily explained they look for a conspiracy anything that happens in the news there's got to be a different story like sometimes shit just happens and when that shit happens the news has a story it doesn't always have to be some sort of nefarious plot, but these people also think that the government is filled with idiots. Well, I'm sorry, but you can't have it both ways. You can't have a bunch of incompetent fuckheads who pull off the perfect fake world where everything you see is some sort of an elaborate played out scheme in order to manipulate

you into either buying this or voting for that. There's a weird inclination that people have to not just some conspiracy theories, but almost everything, to think everything is part of some crazy plot. I'm not sure I understand it. What you said about biases and untruths and like across the media on the left hand and right reminded me of the megan kelly thing so um you know so they phoned me up obviously in a bit of a panic because they were getting like so much criticism right and then they re-edited the show like frantically just before it went re-edited it yeah what did they change well i don't know but

what i do know is like you i saw final product. And the final product was basically Megyn Kelly looking incredibly poised, saying, you know, you're wrong, Alex. You're wrong about this. And then it would cut to Alex going, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. And then it would cut back to Megyn. So all they did was edit Alex at his most sweaty and stuttery. And then Megyn Kelly at her most poised and perfect. Did you hear the Alex Jones audio? The leaked audio that he released?

Yes. Where they were sort of buttering him up and conning him. Yeah, Alex the father. Personally, I would... She was saying, I'm not here to make a hit piece. I just want to know the real you. Although they did re-edit, so I wonder what the original program would have been like because they

felt forced to basically him yeah well they felt forced by like the people pushing back against them doing it both by him yeah uh to then put out this shitty you know 10 minutes i wish i was in megan kelly's corner i would have told her first of, don't ever go to NBC. Listen, here's the deal. You made your bones as an ice princess on this conservative network. And do you think they're just going to accept you at NBC? People are going to resent you. They're going to hate you. You're the lady that chastised people for saying that Santa Claus potentially wasn't white.

Remember that? I don't remember that. Oh, my God. It was some thing where there was people talking about Santa Claus being black And I'll never forget it cuz she was on TV going you know listen Santa Claus is white like then I'm like what this What the fuck are you talking about Santa Claus? Is it real you crazy bitch? You can't say Santa Claus is white more than you can say Cat in the Hat is red They're not real things

You know, you can decide that You know, like the Cat in the Hat in the book Is always white Okay, yeah, you're right Good point But is he black? Is he white? What is a Cat in the Hat?

He's got a hat that's red and white What color is he though? Hmm I think he's black Right? Is he? Okay It's not I think he's black, right? Is he? Okay. It's not important.

But what's important is that her whole thing was being this spokesperson, this ultra-hot spokesperson for the conservative movement, but also being someone who's ruthlessly smart and articulate and capable of shutting down these stammering liberals that dare go and question her narrative. And then all of a sudden she's on NBC. Like, you can't do that. That's a terrible move. They're not going to accept you. This is not going to work. And the ratings have been horrendous.

And now they pulled the show. They pulled the show early. But it just goes to show, like, you know, we rightly attack people like Infowars for spreading outright lies. Yes. But we on the left, like Megyn Kelly, editing that segment to make it look like she was poised and perfect. And all Alex does is stammer and sweat. It's a very hard sell saying that Megyn Kelly's on the left. She's on the left now?

Well, I mean, the mainstream. I'm sorry, the mainstream. It's like NBC. So the mainstream has its own tricks. It's like it's not an outright lie like Alex would do, but that, you know,

panicky, selective editing is a lie of its own. I would have imagined that, like, during the interview between Alex and Megyn Kelly, Alex would have said some things that were, you know, eloquent or a sentence without a stammer and a swear. I'm sure. Yeah.

I'm sure. So it's a life of its own. Well, here's also the problem. Having any sort of a conversation about any sort of difficult subject and stuffing it into seven minutes or whatever it is, is ridiculous. Yeah. It's an ancient way of communicating. And now that we have the internet and Alex has shown with his own show that he can go

and rant about something for 15 minutes or whatever it is, with no limitations or restrictions, it's a better way to communicate. And one of the things that I wanted to do when I had Alex on the podcast is I wanted people to see the Alex that I know. Because there's no other way to see him like that. I wanted to get him drunk. I wanted to get him high and I wanted to have him talk. And my friend Eddie, who's just so into conspiracies, he kind of fucked some of it because he's

just so into chemtrails and proving that chemtrails are real. Right. But it was good overall because it's like he was Alex is so crazy that even Eddie was like what? There was a couple moments where Eddie turned to look at Alex and goes what the fuck? Like when he's talking about interdimensional child molesters and it's I wanted people

to see him the way I see him he's a fun guy that I like hanging out with. Do I think that he has a lot of influence? Yeah. Do I think he says things that he definitely shouldn't say? Of course, especially the Sandy Hook stuff. I mean, I think this inclination to always look towards conspiracy is dangerous. Like a template.

Yeah. Yeah. It's dangerous in that people are easily led. And if you get people thinking that everything's a conspiracy the real problem is they don't know what the fuck a conspiracy actually is when it's in front of them and it's real right and there's a ton of them that are real so when you caught you're crying wolf around every corner and then all of a sudden you turn a corner like holy shit that's a real wolf no one is listening sure i agree that that's my frustration with alex too

is that he has a conspiracy template and whatever whatever real-world event happens, he gets shoehorns into this kind of simplistic template. Yeah. Yeah, he's got some crazy ideas about Mars. There's – or, no, was it the moon? There's bases on the moon that they're going to all the time. Is that what he's saying? all the time. Is that what he's saying? He's got some crazy moon thing. Like he thinks that they, well, they went on the moon. The problem is what they found up there.

Like he's got like, The goat spider hybrid that he talks about is true though. He doesn't express it very well. But I learned this when I was writing The Manistead of Goats all of those years ago that they really were like, they really were mixing up spider silk with goat milk.

Here we go. Creating some kind of. Alex Jones reveals the truth about animal-human hybrids and the moon landing. The real problem. Give us some volume here because Alex. We're bleeding from your facelift. Yes. And they're like, oh, we're scared.

You're so mean. It's like Kathy Griffin griffin simulating murdering trump and then trump says you ought to be ashamed of yourself and she's like how dare you you broke me you talked at me i'm a victim pause right there the left's run i agree with him 100 on that i felt like that was so preposterous and i like kathy as a person i've met her a hundred times she's kathy griffin oh okay's always sweet. But when she was saying that he's a bully and he broke me and I was like, oh my God, you held up a photo of his headless body that his children could have seen or his, not his headless body, his head separated from his body

that his children could have seen. Like, is that like, what is that? Like that's, that's, it's so ineffective. It didn't. And then for her to say that, like he broke her, he's a bully.

Like all he did was say it was horrible. Yeah. Like that he's targeting her. It's like this, this whole like professional victim thing that people enjoy. They enjoy like taking on the role with such they have such like energy they put to being the victim it's just god you you shouldn't hold up pictures of people's heads okay if you don't like them i mean especially like in this day and age when there's people that

actually cut people's heads off and show them on camera. I mean, this is fucking crazy. Yeah. Yeah. You know, by the way, speaking of cutting people's heads off and showing them on camera, around the time that I was hanging out with Alex at Bohemian Grove, I was also hanging out documenting this Islamic militant called Omar Bakri Mohammed, who was the head of this group in Britain called Al-Muhajiroun.

And a bunch of his people are the ones who now drive vans into pedestrians. And it makes me realise that all of the people with the kind of craziest and most pernicious ideas that I hung out with in the 90s

rose to the top and influenced their worlds. Including Alex. Well, I don't think Alex should have political sway. Well, maybe he's right about these animal-human hybrids. Go back to that, please. We need to find out what's happening on the moon.

There was also... Did you turn off of it? Go back to it. What'd you do? I'm running around fomenting war, fomenting violence, fomenting death. Out of all their meth mouth reporters. He broke me. Looks like the day of the dead on CNN. Just like Kathy Griffin.

I guess that's the look that Zucker's looking for. And then they freak out and go, you me irresponsible you said that i was a bad person i've been crushed by you you're a bully it's a bunch of corporate special interest that had their foot or their knee on our neck and now they don't 100% got us on the ground and they're just flipping out. Okay, stop. Pause. How the fuck did he go from Kathy Griffin, who's a comedian who did a gag that she thought was going to get her attention to backfire to, they're a bunch of corporate special interests who've had their knee on our neck. Like what? So how the fuck is Kathy Griffin got her knee on anybody's neck? Like, she's not a corporation.

She's not a special interest. She's a fucking comic. I know her. You can can that conspiracy instantaneously. You looking for the part where he talks about the moon? Looking ahead to see what this human-animal hybrid is coming in. Here's the thing. I agree with you that he has too much influence over some people.

But I disagree in that I don't think I don't think any of that should be taken seriously like what what he just said should not be taken seriously right sure I mean none of this would matter if there wasn't just the possibility that Trump believes this stuff although I'll tell you what I would say uh last summer I was when I was I wrote this book, The Elephant in the Room, trying to trace just how it worked, like Alex via Roger Stone meeting Trump and so on, I discovered one really interesting thing, which is this is something Alex didn't like.

Alex did say to me when I was writing this book, you can write whatever you want, I don't care. But that turned out to not be entirely true. There were things that he did care about that I wrote. And one of them was I talked to Glenn Beck and he told me the story. This is before Trump was elected. He told me this story about how Trump invited him to Mar-a-Lago around the time that Trump was deciding to stand. He phoned Glenn Beck, even though they were both at Mar-a-Lago. Trump was in one room and Glenn Beck was in the other. And Trump phoned Glenn Beck and said, I think you're so influential.

You're so great. You're great. You've got such influence. You can unite the Tea Party and the mainstream Republicans. And Glenn Beck thought, you know, fuck you. I know what you're doing here. You're playing me. I've been down this road a million times. And then Trump did the same thing to Alex. He phoned Alex and said, you know, you have so much influence. You're so amazing. And Alex bought it.

This is according to Glenn Beck? No, no. I spoke to both of them. But you didn't speak to Trump. I didn't speak to Trump. I spoke to both of them. I mean. But you didn't speak to Trump. I didn't speak to Trump. I spoke to both Glenn Beck and Alex. Right. But you don't know that Glenn Beck really did get that phone call from Trump, right? Well, Glenn Beck told me that.

Right. So either Glenn Beck was telling the truth or he was lying. But Glenn Beck has said some pretty ridiculous shit himself. It's true. And he became a Mormon at the age of like 50. Well, I only have Glenn Beck. Hey, did you read the book? So, but I do think like...

That's convenient. Like if it's right, it's convenient. It makes it look interesting. Although, well, I mean, it's what Glenn Beck told me. I only have his word for that story. But I mean, you don't really know, right? Well, I mean, Glenn Beck told me that. I believe that if Donald Trump

called up Alex and said, you're so influential and you're amazing, and Alex would go, well, thank you, Mr. President, we're going to do our best to keep you in office and fight against the tyranny and all these fucking people out there that think they're going to stop us! He's, he's, I mean, that's who he is.

You can get him riled up. That's who he is. But I know you can get him riled up that's who he is but i do i do think that alex has a kind of bit of a neophyte in in all of this because nobody had taken him that seriously before not nobody in positions of power had taken him that seriously yeah but here's the deal i suppose what i'm saying is i think trump played alex and alex was played you might be right but if if trump turned on alex and said uh you know info wars is a bunch of losers a bunch of this and that alex would he would turn it around again and he would go after trump yeah like he he would oh alex was really smart like alex right from the beginning said like you know i'm I'm with Trump until Trump does something that I don't like, and then I'll drop him like a hot potato. So Alex was very

smart. Like Alex always gave him like gave himself a sort of parachute on this relationship. So, so I think Trump played Alex and Alex was a bit too gullible and believed Trump's slick talk. Now, but Alex was also smart and gave himself an out whenever he wanted the out Alex is goddamn entertaining like that alone is fucking entertaining especially for me a person I'm not gonna be influenced by these things that he says but one thing that I have been influenced is by him uncovering some things that are real conspiracies one of them being agent provocateurs that they used to disrupt peaceful protests.

This was something that I didn't know was a standard tactic by the military and by certain politicians. And what they do is they will hire these people. I don't know, like, what branch of the military, what they do, but they will hire these people. And this has been confirmed by people that I know that are like special operators, they take these masked guys and say if they have some peaceful protest, the big one was the World Trade Organization. Remember that protest? Yeah.

And these guys with masks and government issue boots came in, started smashing windows, lighting things on fire, and that gave them an excuse to come in and break up this riot where it had been a peaceful protest where they couldn't stop the peaceful protest. So now they break up these riots that they've created themselves, start arresting people left and right. Then they put up a no-protest zone. This is all documented. What the fuck did you just do?

Jamie's like, we need some dance music here. This video has music on it, apparently. With Alex. But see, this is, I mean, he documented this and has been documented by many people since then. And even in legitimate circles, like it was a big factor in the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Occupy Wall Street movement was infiltrated ad nauseum by people from whatever branch of government, whoever the fuck they were. But what they did was they caused chaos and then it gave them an excuse to arrest them. And then in the World Trade Organization thing, Alex detailed, like with news reports,

independent news reports, how those people were not arrested. They negotiated their freedom. They all held up in a house somewhere and then they got them out of there as soon as everybody kind of like forgot about it all. And then they set up a no-protest zone. And the no-protest zone

was fascinating because there's a lot-protest zone. And the no-protest zone was fascinating, because there was a lot of people that disagreed with the policies of the World Trade Organization. And these people were going to work with a pin on a backpack or a jacket that said WTO and had a line through it. The police told them they could not go through with the pin on. They could not go to work with a pin on that had a line through the word WTO. Like they opposed the WTO. This is a no protest zone.

Wow. Alex Jones showed that. So as wacky as he might be about alien babies that are coming from another dimension, that are here to steal your soul and make you vote libertarian, he might be wrong about a lot of shit. But he also, he's got the balls to expose a lot of crazy shit that people didn't talk about. Yeah. It reminds me of a time I went to Aryan Nations just before it closed down.

Do you remember Aryan Nations in Idaho? Oh, they had that. That was like near Boise, right? Yeah. They had like some crazy camp. Oh, Coeur d'Alene. That's right. Which is gorgeous.

It's crazy. Yeah gorgeous it's crazy yeah that's that crazy lake up there they have yes beautiful so I was making a documentary about Randy Weaver about Ruby Ridge and I was spending a lot of time with Randy's daughter Rachel who I liked a lot anyway like part of the reason why the whole Ruby Ridge escalation happened was because Randy Weaver had gone to people a lot of people don't know that story. Well, I tell the story. Yeah. Okay, so it was a family of white separatists,

Randy and Vicky and their children, Sarah and Rachel and a boy whose name I've forgotten. People will be... It'll come to me. Anyway, so they moved to Idaho, early conspiracy theorists. They moved to Idaho to a cabin on top of a hill, a place called Ruby Creek. Anyway, Randy and Vicky used to go to Aryan Nations for their picnics and barbecues. But they weren't, and this is a kind of pivotal point,

they weren't as crazy as the people at Aryan Nations. They weren't white supremacists, but they were sort of fellow travellers, but not quite as crazy. So Aryan Nations was infiltrated, like all white supremacist groups, by lots of federal agents. And they saw Randy and thought they could work with him. So they said to Randy, you know, will you be an informant for us? And Randy said no. So then they sent in this guy and asked Randy to saw off a shotgun, a quarter of an inch below the legal limit.

So Randy sawed off the shotgun for this guy. And then they said, we're federal agents. You just committed a felony. You're going to go to prison unless you become an informant for us against Aryan nations. And Randy, being a kind of hot-headed idiot, said, no, fuck off. I made a big show of saying, no, fuck off. So they went back to their cabins.

They went back to their cabin and a warrant was issued for Randy's arrest and Randy didn't turn up to court. So now the US Marshals are like hiding in the bushes, looking at Randy's cabin. Randy arms his kids, his tiny little kids, so they're patrolling up and down outside the cabin with these guns. They were becoming increasingly paranoid,

thinking they were being watched from the bushes and they were being watched from the bushes. And they were being watched from the bushes. CCTV cameras and U.S. Marshals. Anyway, one day the U.S. Marshals got too close to the cabin and one of Randy's dogs started barking. And the kid, Randy's son, came out, 12-year-old kid, looked much younger, looked like eight years old, came out with a gun and gunfire happened. The US Marshals shot the little boy, nearly shot his arm off

and he turned around and tried to run back to the cabin shouting dad and the US Marshals shot him in the back and killed him and they killed the dog and one US Marshal was killed and there's debate as to whether it was either Randy's son or a family friend or whether it was friendly fire or not. So they got the son's body and put him in the cabin. And the next day, this FBI sharpshooter called Alon Horiyuchi turned up. So the FBI surrounded the cabin.

U.S. Marshals had been killed. There were tanks. There were hundreds of troops. This was like in the Clinton 90s when the Cold War was kind of dying and they needed a new enemy. And so the new enemy that week was Randy Weaver and his family. So Vicky Weaver was holding their baby, Elisheba, in the doorway of the cabin.

And the sharpshooter shot Vicky through the face and killed her. And then they pulled Vicky's body into the cabin and Randy was shot as well but survived. And a siege ensued that lasted about two weeks of the kids inside the cabin, the FBI outside of the cabin. It ended up ending peacefully uh Bo Greitz who was a big kind of militia hero turned up and sort of helped to stop it from

happening uh to to you know helped you know to get Randy out of the cabin um and in the end the daughters each got a million dollars each in compensation and um and it all kind of faded away so i was making a documentary about all of this uh and i went to aryan nations because i thought i can just turn up and say i'm friends with landy weaver and they'd let me in so i turned up and immediately all of these skinheads surrounded me and started asking me what my genealogy was, because they thought correctly that I'm a Jew. So I said, what's my genealogy? That was the word they used. What's your genealogy?

So I said, I'm Church of England. And one of the Nazis, the Aryan Nations, made a joke and said something like, oh, Church of England, you're the guys who blah, blah, made some kind of joke. And the skinheads sort of drifted away from me. And I've always thought that the guy who alleviated the situation was maybe an undercover agent who was like calming things down. You think so?

Protecting me. It's always crossed my mind, knowing how infiltrated those groups always are, just like the video that my mind, knowing how infiltrated those groups always are. Just like the video that you saw, knowing how infiltrated those groups are. Do they know how infiltrated they are? They must do, right? That's got to be so weird. I know.

I know. They must do. Because they were, like, infiltrated to fuck. I mean, all of them were. Yeah. Well, that's one thing the federal government does good. They infiltrate yeah the mob like they're always getting people to wear wires right they're good at that yeah jim you

wearing a wire i forget we're live they're good yeah so i think i think they protected me in that moment when i could have had the shit kicked out of me you think so yeah i found out you were jewish yeah well because i am and I'm obviously fucking Jewish. No, not necessarily. Do you think? Yeah. People don't know anything and they think all English people look like you. Right.

It was my own stupid fault. I drove up the drive past all the signs that said no Jews. Jews turned back. Now, as they surrounded me, I did think to myself, like, if I get beaten up now, it's my own stupid fault. The Jew thing is so weird because it's a race and it's my own stupid fault did you think it's so weird because it's a race and it's also religion it's a weird one yeah you know it's weird right yeah because you're european but you're also jewish but which is a religion yeah so if you're a

european atheist are you still a jew yeah well. Well, I mean, I am, basically. I remember when I was with Omar Bakri, the Islamic fundamentalist, and he outed me as a Jew at his jihad training camp. He did? Yes. Son of a bitch. In a place called Crawley, which is near Gatwick Airport. How rude. He said to me, look at me with the infidel John, who is a Jew.

And they all went, ah. Wow. I said, surely it's better to be a Jew than an atheist and I heard someone in the crowd go no it isn't the thing that really surprises me about that exchange is that I am an atheist so of all the places where I would choose for the first time in my life to kind of exert my Jewishness. Right, right, right. I chose a fucking jihad training camp. Like, what self-defeating. Did you have second thoughts about that one? Like, were you in the midst of those people going,

what the fuck am I playing with here? Yes, although quite quickly, the tension dissipated. And I remember, like, a bunch of these young radical Islamists all started asking me like what what it was like to be a Jew they were like treating me like a kind of tropical fish like what do babies taste like and I I remember leaving that jihad training camp that day thinking I'd done some sterling work in bringing together communities like and you really believe that well I thought I believed it until 9-11. Oh, wow.

I don't believe it anymore. And Omar's people were like, people in that room at that scout hut went on to become suicide bombers and to kill people and to drive vans into people. It was a different world before 9-11, though. The fear of jihadis was much, much, much less prevalent. I'm flying over Downing Street. So we made this sort of almost comic film about his sort of blundering attempts to create like Sharia law in Britain.

And the joke of the film is that, oh, this is never going to work. And it was kind of, you know, some of his ideas were ridiculous. Like at one point he had these 5,000 black balloons carrying the call to war on these little, like they were like leaflets, like attached to these balloons

with like slogans like Islam is the future of Britain. And they were going leaflets like attached to these balloons uh with like slogans like islam is the future of britain and they were going to like fly over london and like land wherever but they hadn't properly calculated like the the weight ratio so these fucking balloons are like let them off they all just like stayed on the floor so all year they were like failing at doing everything. But yeah, but then like this was like 96 and then five years later, 9-11 happened. And now Omar's in prison in Beirut for inciting terrorism. And a lot of Omar's people became terrorists. True. John Ronson, you've been around.

I've been around the block. You've seen some shit. I have seen some shit. So when was the last time you were in Alex's presence? Does texting count? No. Have you been around him since Bohemian Grove? Oh, yeah, yeah. In person?

I went to visit Infowars last summer, last August. And what did you think of him, like knowing him in the late 90s when you guys went to Bohemian Grove together and knowing him now? Well I mean his operation has expanded like massively. Oh yeah. Yeah when I knew Alex in the 90s InfoWars was a spare bedroom in his house with choo-choo train wallpaper like like little trains, and an Empire Strikes Back poster. And it was Alex, Mike Hansen, Alex's girlfriend. They always called her Violet, but her real name's Kelly.

I said to her, because I went to the custody hearing for a couple of days. Oh, so I saw him then. I went to the custody hearing because I was just curious. And I said to her, like, the last time I saw the two of you, you were, like, kissing and telling each other how much you loved each other. And then, like, 16 years passes, and it's the worst, like, divorce that Texas has ever known. Is it? That's what divorce lawyers were saying, like. How's it the worst? Oh, they just, because it went national? And they just hated each other so much. They hated each other. Sad.

I say, like, yeah. And now Alex has got a staff of like 75 people, you know, with like these giant hangers for his supplements, his male vitality supplements. Have you ever seen the video of when Joey Diaz and me alex's studio and joey realizes that it's on the internet so because it's on the internet he could say whatever he wants so we go we go live and uh alex goes uh well actually from here on out we're on the internet so you can kind of say whatever you want but try to keep it clean and the look of for joey diaz it was like the cat who saw the canary and realized that the cage was open and he and so he's telling some story about smuggling weed through the airport listen to this it's time to listen to your Congressman or your governor or even a president and he's kicking you with that same that they give you every years and you still vote for the

Momo and then you get mad think think about me saying the word fuck. With that, I'm out of here. I gotta go smoke a cigarette. Oh, hey, hold on a minute. We gotta say bye here. You're making some very solid points. Don't do the, uh, don't do, no, I know, Joey, you get it.

So I'm with you, but this is just to let the American public know that every four years they buy the same shit they've been buying every four years and the same people with their Harvard articulation and how they don't curse and they're Christians and they have a family, and these are the same people that shove it up your fucking ass every year. The one thing that you'll get about me is I'll say fuck,

but I will not fucking rob you. If I need something, I'll ask you like a man. Hey, hey, go fuck yourself, you cop. Hold on, hold on one second. Take a joke, take a shuttle. Joey Diaz, Facebook, Twitter, check yourself before you wreck yourself. Big dicks in your ass. Get out of here. You're in trouble.

I'm the umpire. This is... Alright, alright. Stay black, because that's the most important. Okay, okay. He made Alex speechless. He's the funniest man that's ever lived do you think alex regrets all of this no alex is great i have a good time with alex i'm telling you no when i say all of this i

mean do you think alex regrets the fact that the you know that the spotlight is on him in a kind of unprecedented way do you think he doesn't no you don't think a part of him is, like, stressed out? What? Honestly, I don't think so. He's fine. I've never met a guy in my life that has more Teflon when it comes to stress. Like, well, I've been kind of stressed out lately, but I go to the gym and feel fine. Had a cheeseburger. Probably shouldn't have had that shit.

Trying to stick to my diet, but it's hard. He doesn't give a fuck, man. He's a weird guy. Like, he's got a very unusual um constitution you know what i bet did stress him out though uh there was a couple of like pending lawsuits like chabani and chabani what does it mean chabani the yogurt people the yogurt yeah the yogurt yogurt yeah he got into trouble with chabani because he said they were like importing rapists And of course he got into trouble with the pizza restaurant and I would bet me in Pizzagate Yeah, that shit your InfoWars Alex Jones apologizes for saying Chobani supports migrant rapists

He didn't really say that. Oh Jesus Christ. He did't even realize he did that. Oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah, he did. He's so fucking crazy. And I would guarantee that that... They support it. I would guarantee that that and the Pizzagate stuff

properly stressed him out because I think both of those were risking his entire operation. Okay, let me tell you something. It might stress you out.

Like, if it was you and you were being sued by Shabani, you'd probably be freaking out. You'd be like, I've clearly made a horrible mistake. I need to come clean and I need to apologize. I'm so paranoid that I freak out if I eat a Shabani guava and think I'm like, fuck, this is the most disgusting thing I've ever eaten. My threshold for getting like panicky and stressed out is very low.

That's incredible considering you're in a jihadi camp. Yeah, I know. I often wonder why I put myself in these dangerous situations. Maybe that's why it's so compelling when you do. Yeah. But Alex, you think, doesn't. No. Right.

No, I know him, man. He's a different dude. Right. I don't agree with a lot of the stuff he says there's a I don't agree with a lot of the stuff He says just like I don't agree with a lot of stuff my friend Eddie says, but I love the both of them It's a it's weird man, and I get it I get people saying that he's got too much influence and he does you know but my take is like if you really think there's fucking Alien bases on the moon and that there's child slaves on Mars fucking shame on you shame on you

you know I think the deeper and the more crazy he goes the better his show is more it's entertaining I mean maybe I'm a bad I'm a bad person for that I don't think I am though yeah you got me wondering like why I put myself in dangerous situations when Really? Are you thinking about it? A little bit. Maybe it's because people who have anxiety disorders are quite good when it comes to actual difficult situations because we've rehearsed it so many times. We panic unnecessarily so often that when something really worth panicking comes along,

we actually handle it really well. Well, let me ask you, has there ever been a situation where you were confronted with an idea and you're like, you know What that one is too dangerous. I'm not doing that. Yeah when I was writing the minister goats the minister goats was about this kind of secret unit in the 80s of like Soldiers who were trying to like walk through walls and be visible and kills that remote viewing as well Yeah, remote being was that there was a they would they were different but there was like an overlap I met a bunch of those guys right I bet I was doing that sci-fi show right Joe McMoneagle and Ed Dames

Do you remember that Dames? I met with him. Okay, yeah talking to me about how they found, you know various bad people Losing this weird stuff and I was like, hmm. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No. So I met all of those people too. Like remote viewing sounds like really exciting, but, you know, psychic spies in the military. But it turns out that actually their lives were quite shit because they were like,

because basically they sat in a fucking room all day trying to like psychically sketch for like 20 years. They never saw any action. It's not coming out of my nose. One of them told me that because they were were black up because they didn't officially exist they had no coffee machine they had to like bring their own coffee into work every day because they couldn't like justify having it also that the the room that they're in was really like bad because they couldn't get it repaired because they didn't exist right yeah um so their lives were quite shit so um

i tell you how i came to this story. So that was out. This guy called Jim Schnabel had written this book called Remote Viewers, which kind of uncovered all of that stuff. And there was this magician called Ray Hyman, who was like a skeptic. I think he's dead now. The CIA brought him in to assess the remote viewing program to see whether they should keep it going or close it down. And Ray Hyman said it was kind of nonsense. And so that helped them. The CIA closed down the unit. So I met Ray Hyman and I just happened to say to him, it's like one of those questions that kind of changes your life.

I said to him, so when you were like in the military, like sniffing around with the remote viewers, did you happen to notice like anything else going on? And he went, he went, yeah. He said there was this general called Stubblebine who thought he could like burst clouds with his mind. And there's this lieutenant colonel called Channon who thought that he could like, you know, train soldiers to like fast for a month and so i had these like two names stubblebound and channon and the whole minister goat stuff which which wasn't out in the open all came out it was amazing that they were trying to kill goats just by staring at them so yeah yeah so they had like i met this guy who was was part of the goat staying program. And they had like, this is all at Fort Bragg. I had a trip around Fort Bragg one time.

And I said to them, like, so where's Goat Lab? And they went, you're not supposed to know about Goat Lab. Yeah. So they had like, at one point they had like 30 goats in a room. And they were all staring at goat number 16. They all had numbers on their backs and goat number 17 fell over, which I suppose is collateral damage.

I mean, I would argue that if you stare at a goat long enough, it's going to fall over. I mean, everything's going to fall over eventually. Sorry, I was drinking water when I was laughing. Okay, sorry. So the goat really did fall over and die? Well, no. Oh, well, Guy Cervelli.

So we tracked down the goat starer. He now runs a dance studio in Ohio. The Cervelli Dance and Martial Arts Studio. Jesus Christ. Yeah, so we tracked him down. I said to him on the phone, I said, do you still ever like kill goats just by staring at them?

And he went, well, as a matter of fact, just last week, I killed my hamster just by staring at it. Hamsters live to be like three days old. He said he caught it on video. And I said, well, can we come and watch the video? So we went. He said, okay. So we come and watch the video? So we went. He said, OK.

So we flew to Ohio to meet Guy Cervelli. The whole time, his son was filming me. The whole time I was there, he was filming me. So eventually, he admitted why they were filming me. And it was that he was worried that I might be al-Qaeda, like trying to learn... How to stare at people and kill them? Yes. So he was like filming me just in case.

So he really believed it? Totally. So with this video, did it show him staring at a hamster and it does? I saw the video of the hamster staring. I should tell you, by the way, that the moment when they... I think I've pinpointed the moment when they worked out that I wasn't Al-Qaeda. And it was because it turns out that Guy Cervelli's daughter is in the movie Chicago, like one of the dancers. And so I kind of shrieked.

Oh, I love Catherine Zeta-Jones. And I think they all kind of relaxed. I think even like a kind of deep cover Al-Qaeda operative wouldn't think to go that effeminate. So, yeah, so then they showed me the hamster video it's a hamster i'm sure this is on youtube by the way um i'm sure you can find this it's if you typed in uh i don't know john ronson hamster crazy rollers of the world guy savelli or something so like he's like so, hamster, crazy rollers of the world, Guy Cervelli or something. So, like, he's like, so the hamster's, like, running around in its wheel. And that guy's off camera, like, staring at the hamster. And then finally the hamster gets off the wheel and it's like all the sawdust. And then the hamster, like, drops, like, stops moving.

Drops down and stops moving amid the sawdust. So I'm like, whoa. and stops moving amid the sawdust. So I'm like, whoa. And then the hamster gets up again and the video ends. So I was like, that's not dead. Like, a guy said. You flew all the way to Ohio to see a video of a hamster.

Yeah. So a guy said, yeah, yeah. My wife, my wife told me like not to. My wife said, don't show them the part where the hamster dies. What? Yeah, in case I was like a bleeding heart liberal. What? His wife told him to not show you the video that you flew all the way the fuck to Ohio to see? Well, I think it's possible that that hamster just doesn't die No way bro, but it's true the guy showed me like a whole but

Screen please you need to put a guy's fairly amount Hey, what happens when you've got a guest is on for three hours, and they want to use the bath just go ahead You the bathroom good cover for yeah. Yeah, we'll turn the volume. Go ahead. Can you cover for me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll turn the volume on here. Okay. Oh, he's doing some fake martial arts, too. Oh, this is hilarious. Oh, you don't understand. This is my favorite stuff, John Ronson. Look at this. This is my

favorite stuff. It's all like pokes. Triangle of death. Oh, it's called the triangle of death. Yeah. Oh, go back to that. I need to watch that again. This is hilarious. Right here, behind there's a carotid artery.

Ooh, the artery. And there is the... Esophagus. Airway. Yeah. That is the ABC approach of helping a person or hurting a person. They need a clear airway. They need to be able to breathe and they need have circulation

of blood through their body pause every second what's one thing about bullshit artists is they always like use these real technical terms like especially martial arts bullshit artists they always talk about like uh like medical terms that they're disrupting the nerve, the vagus nerve that goes to the brain. This is your C6, C7, your cervical disc, and I'm going to attack the cervical disc through the carotid artery. It's almost like they learn all these technical terms to sort of make their horseshit look more palatable.

Good. In order to live. In the poison hand technique. Poison hands. Although we're not showing you how to strike to penetrate the skin of which we have a way to do that. What? Please don't show anybody, sir.

With your flabby grandma arms. He's going to watch. He's going to show you. Oh, boy. How's he alive? It's just the end part is my favorite where he does like the fucking karate stance behind the guy's back. He's at your tab. And look at the end part! A little limp hand to the back. Oh, that guy's wonderful.

I don't know why, man. I don't know why, but this stuff gives me so much pleasure. I enjoy fake martial arts videos more than almost anything. Almost as much as hold this beer, that Twitter account that I fucking... Every two days I have to retweet one because I find a good new one. I don't know why.

Oh, he's got new stuff. Oh, what's he going to do? Mind development. Oh, mind development. And striking techniques. Let me see this. Let me see this. The guy's coming close.

He's touching him. He's about to touch him. What the fuck? What the fuck was that? The guy's about to touch him. What the fuck? What the fuck was that? The guy's about to touch him. Chunkun Tao means that you can do whatever has to be done to protect, not hurt. You're going to hear this. Is that the first real exercise?

No, no, no. No, no. He's got this. Hold on. Play that back. Play that back. Development of the mind. So you know the shit better than me, right? Oh, yeah, I certainly do.

This is your bread and butter. This is... well... Hock Chun Kun Tao means that you can do whatever has to be done, if you're not hurt. This is the first real exercise towards that goal. This is something I've been doing more than I've been doing anything in my whole life. This is the first real exercise towards that goal. You can't... you can't see this! It's so fucking stupid! So he's the goat stuff. Oh, he's just gonna punch a watermelon. Oh, you're crazy, bro.

Oh, it's solid? Oh, no way. That's impenetrable. That's basically a brick wall. He's gonna use his fingers. One, two. Oh, I broke his hand, son. You broke your hand, kid. He's the first guy to tell me about the dim mac, the death touch. He went right through that watermelon, bro.

I would let that guy do that to me. I'd be like, okay, fuck the watermelon, dude. Let me tighten up my stomach. Oh, yeah, I've seen these. I've seen this stuff. Yeah, this is guy doing military stuff, right? This is deep. This is menace to goats.

It's not really military but he's wearing a military outfit hey i do know that guy like went to fort bragg and did the goat stuff like he showed me documentation see this right here listen man i used to do this look at that's so stupid that guy he picked his leg up when he's doing it. Oh, this is hilarious. This guy's going to do it with his fingertips. Hi-yah! My hand went through. Here's the thing. When I was a kid, like real young, we used to do these demonstrations when I was like 15.

Right. When we would open up a new school, we'd do these demonstrations. And it was the only time we ever broke boards. Right. We fucking never broke boards. Because it's really easy to do Looks harder than it is a bit like you're not cold right? That's what's way easier than walking on hot coals right because those things the first of all the way They're cut is with the grid like the grain is

It's going in a manner how what's the way we describe it so if you're holding something up The grain is actually going in the way that you want it to break. So you're breaking it with the grain. You literally can do it with your fingers. Like I could, you could take, and those are thin pieces of wood too. You could take this piece of, if this wood, if this pad was a wood, you would just go like this with two fingers and just go snap and it would break. Breaks like nothing.

I was 15 and we would do these karate kicks and punches and stuff. And they always broke. They always broke. They're so easy to break. So here's a question. And what does it say about like special forces at Fort Bragg that they would bring guy in to do these? They brought that guy in?

Well, I mean, it wasn't like, I don't believe it was like a sanction from the very top. But he certainly went to Fort Bragg and stared at goats. He stared at goats at Fort Bragg. Well, they probably just grabbed whatever dummies they could find. Like, get some dudes who want to stare at a goat. Like, there's a lot of people, though. Here's one thing that is a fact. There's a lot of people, particularly in the 80s and the 90s, before the Ultimate Fighting Championship came around,

there was a lot of fake martial arts out there. A lot. I know people that were teaching fake martial arts that got into the military, that got into the police. I knew the guy who was deep in the police force, and he had fake martial arts. His martial arts were fucking completely useless. And it tallies with the US military, U.S. military credo of, like, thinking out of the box.

Like, if we don't try this stuff, nobody else will try this stuff. What is going on here? They're blurring. Look at how easy it is to break that. His special forces. Oh, they're special ops. Okay. So, yeah, there you go.

And they were killing goats. Kun Tao. I've never even heard of that one. Kun Tao. Yeah, that's Guy Cervelli's thing. But, you know, General Stubblebine, who I'm sure would have been a fan of this show because he was a big fan of Alex's

and so on. So he was like head of army intelligence. He had 16,000 soldiers under his command and he like totally believed in all of this stuff. He believed in that stuff? Oh yeah. What that guy was doing? General Stubblebine would, when he was head of army intelligence in Arlington, would try and walk through his wall.

Because he told me one time, he said like, he said, what is the atom mostly made up of? Space. What is the wall mostly made up of? Atoms. I mean, to me, the key wordness is mostly mostly

he would like stand up from behind his desk and like you know basically run into it you should have asked him what's an atom bomb made up you fucking idiot he said let me show you a video he said he would like he'd bruise his nose trying to walk through his wall. He said, fortunately, he was going through a messy divorce at the time. So, like, other people in his office just assumed it was like, you know. His wife beat him up? Yeah, his wife beat him up. But, in fact, he was trying to, like. She's probably, I've got to get away from this wall-walking asshole.

He was trying to merge the spaces between his atoms and the wall's atoms. But he just kept bumping his nose. Yeah, yeah. This is, yeah, this was fun. This is my couple of years. When I did that sci-fi show, we did a whole segment on remote viewing, and we actually had a guy who claimed to be a successful remote viewer, and we set up this location and asked him, me and DJ Grothy,

who's a skeptic yeah very nice guy and and you know dj was just as accurate just guessing right as this guy was yeah i think actually now that i think about i think dj was more accurate you know the um yeah the kind of dark secret of the remote viewing world i mean i can't you can't sort of totally blame the remote viewers for this. But so the remote viewing unit at Fort Meade got declassified and shut down. So a lot of these remote viewers then set up their own training centres,

including Ed Dames in, I don't know, maybe in Vegas or somewhere not far from here. So Ed Dames had this student called Magneto. What was his name? There was a woman called Courtney and then there was this other student. I've forgotten their names. Anyway, but they would

then, so Ed Dames taught them remote viewing, these two people who would then go on the Art Bell show and they became like regular guests on the Art Bell Show. And they're the ones, these two of Ed Dames' students, they're the ones who basically announced on the Art Bell Show that the Hale-Bopp comet had a companion object in its tail.

They'd remote viewed the Hale-Bopp comet that was about to pass over the Earth, had a companion object in its tail. And listening to the Art Bell show was the Heaven's Gate group. So they decided that that was the spaceship they were waiting for. Yes. So they all killed themselves to get on the spaceship. Wow.

Prudence Calabrese and another guy whose name I forgot. Good Lord. Yeah. So that's the sort of weird name I forgot. Good Lord. Yeah. So that's the sort of weird butterfly effect. That's hilarious. Yeah. That whole thing was such a, it's amazing what people want to believe. Now this, when it goes back to conspiracy theorists or whether it's the remote viewers

or even someone who would watch that guy's karate videos and think that he's really doing death touches, he's talking about how he has a method of going through the skin that attacked the organs like right oh yeah he told me all of that stuff he oh he showed me a photograph of um uh well actually he accidentally showed me a photograph of him karate chopping a goat at four oh no you weren't supposed to see that one yeah he did he did the death touch on a goat. Well, you could fuck a goat up if you hit it in the right spot. Yeah, a lot of indignities were meted out to goats in the U.S. military. Goats are actually pretty tough, though, now that I think about it.

I bet you probably couldn't kill a goat with a karate chop. Right. I mean, you have to really hit it hard in the right spot, in the neck. Is it true that in the movie adaptation of my book, The Minister of Goats, there's a kind of bit of comedy where somebody thinks that they fell victim to the death touch. But it happened like years later, like 25 years ago, he was given the death touch and now he's dying from it 25 years later was that in the movie yeah that was in the movie is it true in like the death touch world in the dim black world is it true that some people think like you can touch them now and uh that's that's the moment that's the moment it was great yeah uh so that's the moment. That movie was great. Yeah. So that's the moment. Well found.

So is it true in the Death Touch world that people think you can do the dim mac on someone and they die years later of seemingly natural causes? I'm sure there's someone who believes that. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you see that guy that was just having... Did you see that guy who did all the crazy stuff and the guy falls down?

You might have missed it. Yeah. But that's the movie. That's the movie based. Oh, oh, you mean in the loo? Yeah, the other guy. Right. He does all this.

Thank you for using an English word, by the way. For you. He does all these crazy, like, fake karate moves. Slap, slap, slap, slap, slap. And then he slaps him in the back. Yeah. Yeah, there's people that believe all kinds of crazy stuff. Well, you know, he definitely inspired the cats as in the Minnesota Goats movie.

Have you ever seen what happens when one of these fake death touch guys fights a real fighter? No. Do they kind of get the shit kicked out of them? Oh, it's horrific. There's a few of them. Right. And these guys just don't seem to learn one of them that was recently in China was so was so poorly received that the guy who was the MMA fighter had to go into hiding because he

beat the living fuck out of this guy in like 10 seconds like the guy came out and did all this crazy stuff and the guy just smashes him in the face MMA style and his kung-fu was no good this day watch this so you get the young guy in orange shoes who's like a legit fighter and then the other guy who is this um silly death touch guy dressed up like he's in a different century and like watch how this goes down because it's it's horrible because this guy on the left with the orange sneakers on is a real trained fighter and this other guy has a real belief in this system that he's been practicing under and he has no idea that it's horseshit and the way he finds out that it's

horseshit is on youtube i mean he literally finds out in this moment that what he's, I mean, he probably believed it. He probably believed that what he does is actually real and effective. So check this out. It's horrible. They get together. Blah, blah, blah. They go over what you're supposed to do or whatever. And they, I don't know if they make

them shake hands. Yep, they shake hands. And then they go back. And then they get the party started. it takes ten seconds here we go ready set go there goes so this guy's like literally doing like some movie stuff. And then, boom, the MMA guy just starts teeing off. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And that's a wrap. It's horrible.

Oh. I mean, it literally lasts, once he engages him, it lasts 10 seconds. But that's because one of them is doing an actual martial art and the other guy is practicing nonsense. And he's probably practiced that nonsense his whole life. And he thought it was real. There's another one where there's an old man. And that's even harder to watch because this old man gets kicked in the face.

And you just go, oh, Jesus Christ. Like, this guy, this is horrible. And he looks like legitimately, like, let's watch what he does. Back it up to the beginning. So he bet $5,000. Check this out. Like, look what he thinks he can do. He claimed a 200 and 0 record.

Look, he's not even touching these people. They just go flying. It's like they're a part of a cult, you know? So they move at him. And he really firmly believes that he can do this. Look, he's like manipulating them like part of a cult, you know? So they move at him, and he really firmly believes that he can do this. Look, he's, like, manipulating them like he's a puppet master. It's so crazy. So this guy is so, he's so, like, hypnotized by his own bullshit that he decides that he's going to fight.

So this is like a con, right? Well, he's, I don't know. So this is like a con, right? Well, I don't know. See, here's the thing. Because he actually makes a real fight with a real trained martial artist. So he may very well have been in on it himself. I mean, not in on it. What I mean is he might have been taken by his own bullshit.

He might have actually believed it. So now he's going to fight an actual... A young, actual martial artist. And so he's got this crazy idea that he's just going to give that guy the hex and the guy's going to go flying through the air like the other guy was teaching. But this kid just sort of circles him for a few seconds

and then, just like that other video, beats the holy fuck out of him inside of about 10 seconds just zoom off until they engage yeah it's like here it goes see he's like doing this craziness and the the young martial artist just grabs him punches him kicks him and he's like you see he like he's holding his face he's like what the fuck and the young guy is really nice like he's like you okay you want to keep going and he's holding his face. He's like, what the fuck? And the young guy is really nice. He's like, you okay? You want to keep going?

And he's holding his mouth. Look, the young guy literally says, look, does he want to keep going? Let's stop. Let's stop. This guy's bleeding out of his nose. And so he says, keep going. He says, I'm fine. And so he gets his hands up.

This time it's going to work. This time I'm going to hit him with the full voodoo. And this just blam blam blam and then this kick boom that's that was where it gets horrific and that guy was probably like 60 it's not not a good time to get kicked in the face you know in the military i'm remembering i don't think about the minister at goats that much because it was so long ago but now i'm remembering some I'm remembering some of the other stuff that they were doing. And there was a lot of weaponry stuff. You know, there was the prophet hologram. All of this sort of came from the central well of like, you know, 80s.

Prophet hologram? What's that? Yeah, that they would, they never like got it off the ground. But what they were trying to do was have a hologram of Allah that they would project over an enemy capital. And Allah would basically say whatever the US military wanted him to say. Like, the Americans aren't that bad. God bless President Bush. They had a race specific stink bomb, which again, they never managed to get off the ground.

What about the gay bomb? that was real they literally were engineering some sort of a chemical warfare device that would turn men homosexual and what's less known about it is that they were also trying to do a halitosis bomb so that

you'd turn the enemy gay and then it gave them bad breath and they'd be so freaked out that the Americans would come in and win. Wow, they would just have shame all around. Yeah. They had attack bees that would again just attack the enemy. None of these things got off the ground, I don't think. Well, I guess it's sort of like writing comedy.

You throw a lot of shit against the wall and only like one tenth of it sticks. Yeah. And some things did stick right i mean the the taser came from the military but that seems totally reasonable though everybody knows you can get electrocuted yeah figure out a way to get a large charge into a small device yeah and then there was all those kind of weird aural techniques that they would do at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Aural, you mean oral? Yeah. I probably said it wrong.

Yeah. Where they would like play, exactly, try and play subliminal sounds. Right. They'd blast, they'd blast like Metallica at people, but laced into Metallica would be these like subliminal sounds that would try and like hypnotize people. Do you remember when they used to do that in movie theaters? Hungry popcorn. They'd have like subliminal sounds that would try and hypnotize people. Do you remember when they used to do that in movie theaters? Hungry popcorn. They'd have subliminal images that would, like, in between screens. Yes, it's like one-fifth of a second.

Like one frame. Has it ever been shown that that actually worked? It works. I'm not sure that it ever worked in the... I met this guy. Oh, my God, I just remembered. So I met this guy called Jamal Al-Harith, who had been released from Guantanamo.

And he was telling me about all of this stuff. He was in Guantanamo for like two years, and then he got released. And he was telling me about this stuff. He said they played him an entire CD of a Fleetwood Mac covers band. At normal, in Guantanamo, at normal volume. Those guys are just fucking winging it. Well, I said to him, I said, what was going on? at normal, in Guantanamo, at normal volume.

Those guys are just fucking winging it, man. Well, I said to him, I said, what was going on? He's like, I don't know. I said, like, were they doing it to be nice? Maybe they thought you were a fan. Want to make it more pleasant. He said it was Guantanamo. They weren't trying to be nice. Anyway, so I interviewed Jamal Al-Harith.

He was telling me about all of this weird shit. And a few months ago, he goes and fucking joins ISIS and blows himself up somewhere. This guy, the Fleetwood Mac cover band guy? Yeah. Wow. So when they arrested him and brought him to Guantanamo Bay, was he innocent of those charges? Well, he certainly convinced everybody that he was. And in fact, Tony Blair got involved and

helped get him out of Guantanamo. Wow. And he went on to be a jihadi. What I don't know, but I'd be very curious to find out, is exactly the question that you just posed. Was he always a jihadi? Or did the experience of being in Guantanamo somehow, like years later,

help to turn him into a jihadi? I don't know the answer to that. Well, you kind of think if you're an innocent person and for two years they take away your freedom. Yeah. And they make you listen to Fleetwood Mac cover band. You probably feel like I can't get over that, man. Right. It's stained.

It's stained my soul. I have no idea. But I met this guy, very personable young man. I met him at a hotel in Manchester. Wow. Which is where I interviewed him for the Men's Day at Goats.

And where did he kill himself? I can't remember. Can you look it up? He killed other people as well? Jamal, I don't know, Jamal Al-Harith. Also heartbreakingly

from around that time. Omar Bakri, who was the guy, the jihadist I made a film about. His son, he had this really sweet little kid, this son, Mohammed, who was really guy, the jihadist I made a film about, his son, he had this really sweet little kid, this son, Mohammed, who was really scared

that his father might get hurt because he was so public and open. And he would confide in us that he was scared that his father would get hurt. Fucking two years ago, his son joins ISIS, tries to leave ISIS, so ISIS kill him. I know, all these people I knew 20 years ago, I tell you all the words.

Here we go. Jamal al-Haith has been killed when he carried out a suicide car bombing in Iraq. Iraqi army base. Yeah. Jesus Christ. I know. I know. What does that feel like when you hear that? That you knew someone that became a suicide bomber?

I was, well, Jamal, I just met that one time. But still, you knew him. Well, I met him that one time. If I had someone on my podcast that turned out to be a suicide bomber. Well, you did. Who? No, you. I did?

Oh, you mean if. No, no. I thought you were saying I did and I didn't. No. No. Shit, you going to tell me something? I thought you were saying that you did. No, well, I did have a guy on my podcast that almost beat a woman to death after he was on,

and now he's in jail for life. Shit. It was a very public story. He's an MMA fighter named War Machine. His name's John, John Copenhaver. Right. named war machine his name is john john copenhaver right and uh he apparently found this girl he was dating but they broke up he found her in bed with another man and wound up beating him and beating her like half to death like ruptured her liver broke her ribs smashed her face broke

her teeth horrific horrific and she she was here with him when he visited do you think it was steroids do you think it was psychopathy um all the above i think steroids probably played a factor traumatic brain injury probably played a factor um i think uh that's what they say about Chris Benoit, right? Mm-hmm It's a huge factor because these guys they they get hit in the head so many times and no No one can tell you when it's gonna go bad No one knows it's it varies like you might be able to take a hundred punches for me It might be 30, you know, no one knows it doesn't it doesn't really make sense Yeah, and you don't know what they're absorbing in training versus what happens in actual fights.

And what the effect it has on one person is very different than the effect it has on another person. Also, how much time is in between these beatings that they've received? Are they receiving them on a regular basis? Does it change them instantaneously? I know far too many people that have experienced a lot of shots to the head where it's completely changed who they are. Right, right. But this guy was troubled to begin with. He saw his father die, beaten up by cops.

Wasn't that the story? I think that was the story. Something fucked up, experienced at a very young age I wonder whether you know at this book called a psychopath test and I met a martial arts guy once I got into like a road rage instance with this guy I'm at like my son was one at the time and he like leapt out of the car and I said my son's in the car and he said i don't give a fuck about your son and afterwards when i got the psychopath test i always remembered this guy as being like i wonder whether he was a psychopath i wonder whether like given that

one of the items on the psychopath checklist is like grandiose sense of self-worth i wonder whether whether the mixed martial artist world given that know, whether it sort of attracts psychopaths. Well, it certainly attracts people that aren't opposed to violence. Right? Because they're engaging in violence. And it also attracts people that are just like they might have been BMX riders or skateboarders or skydivers. They love the extreme danger aspect of it. They're thrill seekers.

And the way I describe mixed martial arts is high-level problem solving with dire physical consequences. And that's really essentially what it is. And these guys are attracted to these extreme experiences. So some of them are very pleasant people some of them are very nice like like for instance Mighty Mouse it's probably the best pound for pound fighter ever if you met him you would never know he's the best fighter in the world he's the sweetest guy so normal very articulate easy to talk to doesn't get hit a lot either though he's so slick and smart and the way he fights is so clever but

some of them get hit a lot and uh you know now that we're knowing more and more essentially every day about the effects of traumatic brain injuries and concussions and you're seeing more and more of these stories of football players doing crazy things and i'm sure you saw that recent study where they tested 111 football players and they found 110 of them had traumatic brain injuries. Wow. Well, I know that's what they said about Chris Benoit. Maybe that's why he...

Oh, yeah, for sure. Those guys get it, for sure. And people will say, well, that's fake wrestling. Listen, man, there's nothing fake about what those guys go through. They might be choreographed. They might have a bunch of things that they're doing. But these guys are body slamming each other and throwing each other through the air and landing on each other and hitting each other with elbows. That is 100% real.

And they suffer. And you have to be tough to do that. They are experiencing some severe pain. severe pain. I remember the forensic exam. He's Chris Benoit's brain forensic exam consistent with numerous brain injuries, CTE, which is found in all regions of his brain,

chronic traumatic encephalopathy. You know, I wrote a piece about Chris Benoit for the guardian. And when it came out, uh, one o'clock in the morning, the, uh,

press officer for WWE phoned me up and yelled at me. Yelled at you?clock in the morning the press officer for WWE phoned me up and yelled at me. Yelled at you? One in the morning. And said what? Like I tricked them into like spending time backstage at WWE when I was only interested in Chris Benoit you know. Was this, did you write the, did you go backstage before he killed people? No it was No, it was afterwards. Oh. Yeah. You tricked them.

I don't think I tricked them. How the fuck could they think that you were going to put a positive spin on someone murdering their family? Exactly. Well, I think they thought I was going to put less emphasis on Chris Benoit and more emphasis on the nice things about wrestling. Oh, Jesus Christ. But they knew you were going to put some emphasis on it, right? Yeah. Well, I was asking lots of put some emphasis on it, right? Yeah. Well, I was asking lots of questions, so they must have known. Speaking of nice people, by the way, my porn people, it was probably the loveliest year

of my working life, hanging out with the porn people. Yeah, they were delightful. Did you feel like you got all that work done maybe, I don't know, a couple days? We did a lot of digging. A lot of digging. It sounded like dicking with your accent. Didn't it? We did a lot of

dicking. I didn't know dicking. I'm sure. Let me explain yourself. I'm just joking. No, it was tracing the butterfly effect of Fabian's business plan on their world. Yeah. It was such a kind of interesting exercise, you know, to try and work out what's the furthest ripple I could find. Like, what, like, you know, so Fabian has this idea about giving the world free porn. And then that leads to that. And that leads to that. And that leads to that. And like, what's the so Fabian has this idea about giving the world free porn. And then that leads to that and that leads to that and that leads to that.

And like where, what's the furthest I could find the furthest consequence. And it was such a sort of fun exercise, coupled with the fact that being around porn people was a little bit like being on a Broadway show backstage, you know, these like, you know, theatre people. So coupled with all of that and the fact that i was in la and i got to like hang out in la it was it was a really fun year can i tell you by the way like one of the strangest consequences that i sure um so this um you know like pretty much every child in in the world gets to learn about sex through porn hub these days porn hub is sex education for like

every 12 year old. I'm sure. Yeah. Because their parents probably don't get around talking about it in time. Exactly. It's like, you know,

I think when we were growing up maybe, I don't know, 14 was probably maybe about the age that we started like seeing ripped out pages of Playboy

and Bridges and so on. For me it was 12. We would find them in the woods. Okay. I have a whole bit find them in the woods. Okay. I have a whole bit on it in my act. Yeah?

Yeah, about finding perversion. Right. It's a true story. I literally didn't know about perversion until I found a fucked up magazine in the woods. Right. What was the magazine? It was like a, I think it was called Foot Action or something like that. Right.

It was very strange. But here's what's weird. That kids today, if you give them a phone, like, I mean, what age do kids get a phone? Like some kids get a phone at like 10 or 9. You're essentially giving them porn. Yeah, you're giving them every awfulness. You're giving them ISIS beheading videos. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. So anyway, so I was really interested in in like so what are the consequences of this of like 12 year old kids learning about sex through pornhub and i found this terrible consequence in oklahoma so this was a boy called nathan with autism so he was like an awkward kid with autism um trying to like chat up a girl but didn't know how to do it. So he thought, like, the smartest, you know, he thought, you know, he thought he should text her lines of dialogue that he'd heard in porn films. So he texted her. First he texted her a bunch of hentai porn photographs.

And she didn't respond. i said like if she'd responded what would you have done he said i would have stopped like if she said can you stop sending me these what would you have done he said i would have stopped sending them i just assumed she was busy so then he texted her a line of dialogue that he heard in a porn film and it was, I want to bend you over and rape you from behind. So he is now on the sex offender's registry for 25 years, which means he has to live in a house right at the edge of town because he has to be 2,000 feet away from parks and daycare centres. He can't go anywhere where children go,

so he can't go to football games, basketball games, he can't go to the park. How old was he? He was 17 and a half, I think, something like that, maybe 18. But kids as young as eight years old are on the Sex Offenders Registry in the United States. Eight? Eight years old, I had no idea.

Boys and girls, by the way. Like, if you play there's this little boy they were like playing this game where they take their clothes off in the dark and then put their clothes back on quickly like a bunch of nine-year-old kids or something this one kid kept his clothes off when they turned the lights on the girl complained to her parents and this boy is on the sex offenders register Jesus Christ so you can't so with Nathan

first of all where the fuck were the parents you know unsurprisingly it's like I think this kid was a foster kid so there's already like stigma attached to him the shadow of stigma Nathan's a kid with autism.

So I said to this woman who defends children on the sex offenders registry, I said to her, why doesn't the judge just say this is ridiculous and throw it out of court? And she said, you know, there's this kind of prevailing view that, A, it's better to protect, you know, it's better to err on the side of caution. But also there's this prevailing view that if a kid starts acting sexually weird at the age of 10, that's a kind of precursor for them being sexually weird when they're an adult. Maybe. But maybe not.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I'm sure it's true in certain cases, but I'm sure it's not true in many cases. But the consequences of sentencing a kid like that are so extreme. Like, you should probably have a real understanding of what's going on with the kid. Yeah. And if he's autistic and he doesn't know what the fuck to do and he's confused and he... Yeah. Well, Nathan, so he read me, like, his book.

He needs to, like, fill out this sex offenders book, like, at therapy. And so he was, like, reading me the... How old is he now? I think he's offenders book, like a therapy. And so he was reading me the... How old is he now? I think he's about 20 now. He's going to be on the sex offenders registry for the next 23 years. Now, what is it like talking to him? Does he understand the consequences of what went down? Yeah.

He says it's like being permanently grounded. He was reading me the questions and answers from the sex offenders book. So it's questions like, have you ever had a sexual situation in which urine or feces was involved? And his answer was like, no. And there were questions like, you know, have you ever had sex with animals? And his question was like, no. And then the last question was, when was the last time you had sex with somebody? And his answer was still a virgin.

Oh my God. A virgin on the sex offenders registry. Wow. I mean, of course you can understand why the girl was scared and told her parents

and the parents told the police. You can totally understand it from the other point of view. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, I mean,

what a butterfly effect that is. Yeah. And I'm not, of course, I'm not saying any of this is Fabian's fault. This is all unintended consequences. That's just access to sex and porn.

And, you know, the other thing that's weird is that porn, for the most part, I mean, other than this bespoke porn, which is very specific, but porn, there's like levels to the depravity that never existed before. Yeah, because everything's keyword searchable. This is what happens when you let tech people run the world. But it's also ramping up. It's also people get tired of just people kissing and then having sex. And so then it's like, I want to watch a guy tie a girl up. Oh, I want to watch a guy spit in a girl's mouth. I want to watch her get smacked around.

And then it gets weirder and gagging and all this, you know. Yeah, exactly. So that's one consequence of the ubiquity of, like, you know, free porn and just the sheer volume of free porn. Yeah, you've got to stand out with extreme content in some way. But the other thing is all these search engine people are sort of looking at what's being searched for the most. What is number one?

Well, I'll tell you what's like a rumor. I don't know if it's number one, but I'll tell you what's really like way at the top. It's anything to do with like stepsisters, stepbrothers, stepfathers, stepdaughters. Really? Stepmoms? Incest porn is basically. But it's not real incest. It's not real incest. It's like you get away with it.

But actually, when I was on the set of Stepdaughter Cheerleader Audrey, poor Mike Quasar, the director, there was a bit of dialogue. These guys were saying, oh, I think your stepdaughter's sexy. But they kept on getting it wrong. And they were saying, I think your daughter's sexy. Mike's going, stepdaughter! Mike, behind the camera he's going stepdaughter

that's hilarious we don't want to be too fucked up here people step keyword step alright take one these are great people

my porn people were great people well that's nice you know and that sort of shatters some of the stereotypes people have about porn

that the people are sleazy and uncaring and doing coke and smacking each other. This show, if I may blow my own trumpet. Please do. Which I learned on the set of Blow My Own Trumpet. I did a little bit from the butterfly effect on stage at the Ace Hotel down in Los Angeles, here in Los Angeles. And we invited a bunch of our porn people along. And they said to us afterwards, like, 25 years of being in porn, we were the first mainstream people to come along and not treat them as like, you know, ingredients in our pre-existing ideology. So not pitying them or attacking them, just treating them on a level as a fellow human being.

And isn't that kind of nuts that that's rare in porn? Because we all feel the sort of society, as mainstream journalists, we feel these kind of societal pressures to in some way attack them. You know, they're to be pitied, they're to be hated, you know. I think you also have to establish that your own, whether it's moral superiority or good taste, that you don't approve of this. You're not one of those people.

Exactly, yeah. I'm not even a connoisseur of this work. Right, exactly. I made my excuses and left. That was, you know, yeah. And that means, you know, because of our hypocrisy,

they get exploited. So that's why I wanted to do this show. I'm sorry that I sort of brought it back full circle, but that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this show. When I first moved to California, I was on this sitcom called News Radio, and one of the guys who was a writer on News Radio was a writer for porn films on the side.

And what it was was it didn't really pay much, but it gave him access to the girls and let him meet these girls. And he was kind of a nebbishy, sort of dorky guy, and he had never been around, like, a real bombshell girl that was willing to have sex with him before. So all of a sudden, he's having sex with these porn stars, but they get to have sex with these guys on set.

And it was like some of this weird thing that like, this was his girlfriend, but she would go to work and get the shit fucked out of her by a bunch of different guys. And how did he feel about that? This is what the straw that broke the camel's back. Um, he was having dinner with her and she was like,

God, I'm so tired. I had to do an anal scene all day today. And he was like, what? They were out to dinner. In his mind, he was able to put that barrier up. And what she does is just work. It's fine.

We're going to go to dinner and have a wonderful time. Candlelight, fine wine, some amazing food. I'm in love with her. She's amazing. And he couldn't handle it. Nope. She was she was tired she's complaining about taking in the ass all day and he's like check please let's get out of here so they split up i got another one it wasn't my friend but it was a friend of a friend who told me this story that uh this guy was dating this girl and you and it was just the same thing. It's like, hey, that's what she does for a living. No big deal. And he read her contract, and he goes, what's airtight?

And airtight is a dick in every hole. And he's like, check, please. This is it. I can't do this. I can't. So the first guy first guy though took me to a set and this is like in 94 okay, so this was the pre keyword pre Fabian days pre Internet and They were all rich everybody was rich and the porn stars were like real stars It was Janine and Jill Kelly who are very famous porn stars were like real stars it was janine and jill kelly who are very famous porn stars a

lesbian scene and there was a scene like there was a a cartoon character a comic book character this woman wrote she came to life and they were having a lesbian scene together but it was it was really weird because like um like she knew that we were watching, and so there was this air of theatrical enthusiasm that was very forced. They would do the scene, and she'd be like, I love my job. I love my job. My job is amazing. And I'd look at my friend at the time, and I was like, hmm. I don't know if I'm buying all this.

I was like, hmm, I don't know if I'm buying all this. I was like, this just seems weird. I remember Mike Quasar saying to me on my first porn set, this director who we kind of embedded ourselves with, said to me, you'll find that there's a wisp of darkness to everybody who does this for a living. Yeah. A wisp of darkness. But that's what's fascinating.

Like, why? It's illogical if you look at it on paper. It's like everyone who is healthy, whose body functions correctly, enjoys sexual relations, whether it's straight sex or gay sex or whatever the fuck it is. People like to be touched. It's part of being a person. Why is it so shameful when other people get to watch? And why does it devastate people when they find out that their loved one had done something on film that others can see?

And when they leave porn, this is another consequence of Fabian that I look at in the show, is that when they leave porn, it's much more likely that they you know they leave porn they go to a different part of America they start a new life it's much more likely that they'll be noticed than in the 90s like in the 90s for an ex porn star to be outed someone would have to go to like a DVD shop and like right these days everybody you know just watches 20 porn films for five seconds each until they found the one that you know they want to jack off to. So it's much more likely that a former porn star

will be spotted and outed and, as a consequence, fired. Like, I was talking to this guy called Dale Rutter. His porn name is Dale DeBone. And he got a job as a nurse in a hospital and Human Resources called him in and said to him are you dale de bone he said yeah and said we have to fire you because like if any patient says you even like looked at the wrong way like they would win in the court yeah so poor dale and dale said that his recognizability has gone up massively since porn hub and free porn came Yeah, you shouldn't be mad at the people who recognize them.

Yeah. You're a pervert. I'm just doing a job, you fuck. There was a woman who got arrested, not arrested, rather fired. She was a schoolteacher, and it turned out that in the 90s or something like that, she had done porn, and she was a really well-respected, very loved schoolteacher. And then one of the kids in school figured it out. Right.

Started telling everybody. Next thing you know, kids are getting on the line. Yeah. And watching the teacher. And she lost her job. And she was like really, really respected and loved. And then, you know, we don't love you anymore. You used to fuck.

Yeah. I know. It's baffling you know even in these sort of sex positive more sex positive kind of anti-slut shaming times there's still a massive amount of stigma yeah but that i that's that's not real yeah well it's a bubble it's a small bubble that most of the world doesn't share well that's the other thing it's like what about other countries like is this stigma attached to... Wasn't there, like, in Italy, a former porn star ran for parliament or something like that?

Yeah. And then started going out with... Oh, fuck. The artist, Jeff Koons. I don't know who he is. Oh, he's like a big, like, famous sort of pop artist. Oh, okay. And I think they were having a relationship.

And yeah, she... Hello. She, yeah, she ran for... Britain has still that stigma were having a relationship. And yeah, she, she, yeah, she went for, Britain has still that stigma, I'm sure. Yeah. But yeah, no,

Italy, they've got it. Italy doesn't give a fuck. They don't give a fuck. They're a little wild over there. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I would wonder, like, what countries

are the most accepting of former adult stars? Adult is my favorite term. Adult. Right. Like, you know, it's like urban. You know, it's like urban.

You know, when you say urban, you just say black people. Jesus Christ. Adult. Say porn. Just say porn. Don't say the adult industry. Like, what do you mean? The industry of people who are grown up?

Like, what are you saying? Can't play stupid. Like, what? Adults. As opposed to what? The children industry? The fuck are you saying? Yeah.

It's just a weird term. Well, I hope the butterfly effect, because it just shows them to be just like the rest of us. Ordinary, sweet, fucked up, nice mixtures of... And they are. They're just people. I hope it will do its bit. Yeah. Do you think I should go now? Do you think you should go

now? Have you said enough? What do you think? I think it was great. We had a great talk. This would be a good way to end it. I enjoyed it very much. I'm going to meet my family and I've got to run in and have a walk. Oh, that's a good place. Yes. You do that all the time? Yes. It's a good spot. I go to Runyon every day when I'm in Los Angeles. Oh, that's a good place. Yes. You do that all the time? Yes. It's a good spot. I go to Linn every day when I'm in Los Angeles.

Oh, beautiful. Joe, it was such a pleasure to talk to you again. Always a pleasure, John. Let's do it again, for sure. I would love to come and do it again. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

And tell people how they can find your stuff. Okay, so this new series is called The Butterfly Effect, and it's on Audible. Audible.com. I'm a big fan of Audible. I love Audible. I also love Audible. They're amazing. There you go. Here's the butterfly effect.

The biggest collection of audio entertainment on the entire internet. And look at that star rating. Beautiful. Look at you, you savage. So that's my new, and my Twitter thing is just at John Ronson and J-O-N Ronson. Oh, yeah, and the other thing is I just wrote this,

co-wrote this movie called Oak Joe, which is on Netflix about a giant pig. It's on Netflix. Beautiful. Yeah. John Ronson, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, brother.

Thank you. Yay!