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

Episode Date: March 28, 2021

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Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishon. And this is a show for you, if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Delighted to say we're joined today by a reverse guest. We've just been on his show and here he is talking to us. It's the founder of Rebel Wisdom. He used to be a journalist and documentary filmmaker for BBC and Channel 4 for many years.

Devin Fuller, welcome to Trignometry. Thank you. It's good to be in the other role. It is. It's good to have you another role. I thought we had a great productive conversation on your show. And, you know, actually, maybe we can reveal a little bit of how our connections started, which was you got in touch with us saying, I've got a bit of a story to tell.

So before we get into that, very interesting story, just tell everybody who are you, how are you where you are, what is the journey that leads you here, Sid and talking to us. Yeah. So I'm a journalist, filmmaker. I thought about this just before I came. I think I might be one of the last people who actually got their start in journalism via C-FACs, which the Americans watching will have no idea what that is, but I think some of the Brits will. So TV, before kind of the internet really existed, you pressed a special button on your remote control,

and you got up these kind of little hidden pages. I worked for BBC South and C-Fax, trained as a video journalist, and then ended up with Channel 4 News for many years, mostly doing foreign affairs for Channel 4 News, and then I started making documentaries. And the reason that, I guess, we're having this conversation is because I began, I sort of made the move from the kind of mainstream

traditional media into the alternative media in about 2018 with Rebel Wisdom, which started with a documentary that I did with Jordan Peterson and then has kind of developed into an interest in the intellectual dark web and also in the topic of sense making. And the thing that I'm really interested in, why I'm really interested in this conversation, we had a great interview the other day, like what are what is this sort of alternative media space what are the what are the opportunities of it and what are the challenges of it and I think that's a really like it's a question I wrestle with a lot like what are the positives and also what are the negatives because I've got a strong sense that there's a lot of negatives from the traditional media like there's a real

sense that it's becoming performative it's becoming a little bit more ideologically captured, it's becoming increasingly sort of corrupted, especially in the states. I think the state's in a much worse situation than we are in the UK. But if we're seeing that fail, is the alternative media going to take over? How is it going to take over? And what are the failure conditions of that alternative media? And how do we pursue truth in a kind of post, in an alternative age and sort of post-mainstream age. Because I do have this sense that these institutions are breaking down increasingly fast, partly because of the rise of digital media, the rise of alternative media. We're going all of these different perspectives, which is really valuable. But I'm also kind of

worried that we're losing a lot of the ability to discern truth, like a lot of the checks and balances that we built up over years, decades, centuries, we're losing. And what was great about our interview that we did the other day was that it was, really like we had a real good back and forth of kind of challenge and disagreement and that's really valuable. That's really something that I don't see enough of and that's something I'm concerned about. So I just wanted to say thank you for kind of introducing that that was the nature of the interview we were going to do and then how it played out because, and I called it walking a talk on free speech, which I think you did and that's something that I really respect and value.

Well, we appreciate that and thanks for having us on the show. And we'll talk. about the mainstream media and also the alternative media later on because I think that's a very important part of the conversation but let's talk about the interesting story that I teased at the top because you made this documentary called the glitch in the matrix and it was covering the jumping off point is is the Kathy Newman interview with Jordan Peterson but it explores a lot more than that first of all just tell everybody a little bit about that and then maybe you start to get into what happened yeah

Yeah, and you've seen, you've both seen the documentary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was very good by the way. Yeah, it was really, yeah, it was it. So the backstory is in 2017, so I was still sort of working as a documentary maker and doing freelance shifts mostly at Channel 4 News, which kind of ties into the Cathy Newman. Have you worked with her directly? Yes, yeah.

I mean, everyone as a producer, I was kind of, I'd write scripts and we'd kind of, I had kind of, I actually messaged her directly after the Jordan Peterson film came out to say, I thought I really liked the way they sort of had this like sense of, you had a sense of like they mutually respected each other by the end of the interview. There was the sort of subtext that I saw and I thought was really, really good. So I actually messaged us straight after it. But going back to 2017, I've always had a real interest in philosophy, in like spirituality, transformation, religion, and always been a little bit frustrated that you don't get enough space. The framework in legacy media is really kind of narrow.

And I'd always kind of thought there's more to it than that. There's more frames. There's more perspectives. There's more than we're being shown through like the legacy media and the mainstream media frame. And so I pursued a lot of my own interests, a lot of stories about like psychedelic therapy and these kind of like fringe things I think are really valuable.

really interesting that might change our culture at some point in the future. Psychedelic medicine being one of them. But in 2017, I first discovered Jordan Peterson and my immediate thought was, wow, this guy has the message that is just going to go viral. I just had this sense of like, this is exactly what the culture needs right now, because we've lost so much of like traditional values. It's been kind of excluded from like the kind of, I call it like a low resolution grand narrative of the liberal media is like framed those things out and it was like Jordan Peterson just had this kind of like archetypal force almost of someone who was like channeling something or coming with more than just his his own personal perspective and I think a lot of that has to do with

young the psychologist young talked about kind of the power of the collective unconscious the power of the archetypal and he was really kind of bringing a lot of that into the into the culture and that has a huge force, a huge power. And I've done a lot of work around Jung as well. I've done a lot of study of Jung. I trained as a counsellor. And I could kind of see this is really vital. And it's also like, I'm also aware like the new atheists,

the sort of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, had this whole stranglehold on the culture. And it was very difficult to get, when I was a filmmaker, it's very difficult to get films made about kind of religion or spirituality, all of these kind of things, because the new atheists, pretty much all the commissioning editors know that they're going to be attacked by the likes of Dawkins if they commission something that says, that's on a kind of spiritual topic.

So to see someone come along, take on the new atheist on their own turf, and basically, I'd say beat them. Like if you looked what happened online, all of the sort of Sam Harris fans are sort of saying, oh, actually, no, there's, to dismiss centuries of religious thinking is really naive. And suddenly you had this sort of like, you're an idiot. if you think that religion's got any truth to it, to you're an idiot if you think that there's no truth in religion. And I think a lot of that was down to Peterson.

So I kind of looked at it and I thought, there's the cultural side, there's the kind of political side of Peterson. But I was way more interested in like this, the Jungian side, the synchronicity, his kind of, yeah, this sort of sense of a completely different perspective of who we are and what we are as human beings was something he was bringing. So I was like this guy.

And so I flew out to pay my own ticket, flew out to see him in Toronto, saw one of his Bible lectures and then got an interview within the next day, went to his house, interviewed him about Jung, about synchronicity. Like that was the main thing we were talking about was like this idea of synchronicity, which is, synchronistic would be defined as like coincidences that have a deeper meaning. When something happens, it's like, oh, the universe is trying to tell you something or there's more to it than is immediately. and you kind of follow those synchronicities in your life, I think, as you start to kind of navigate by them. But yeah, so we talked about synchronicity and how these kind of strange coincidences have a deeper meaning. And I started entertaining the documentary.

And then literally one or two days after I brought that documentary out, the start of 2018, he was on the Cathy, that he had the Cathy Newman interview on Channel 4 News, where I used to work for around 10 years, with Kathy Newman, who I used to work, with and it's like that is a synchronicity in itself and I was like what on earth is this about? I watched it and thought it was, as I said, I thought I thought that it was a really fascinating piece. I thought there was so much going on in that one interview. At first I tried to,

I got, I was in touch with Jordan. I was in touch with Kathy and I wanted to kind of, I saw them having this increasingly bad tempered falling out in public and I hope that they could then stay in contact and Jordan wanted another interview to talk about why this had happened and Kathy was resistant to that or Kathy didn't want to go there. Channel 4 News basically kind of pulled up the shutters and didn't want to go there. Jordan was still keen to kind of have another interview about okay why did this blow up what is it which I thought would have been a fantastic interview to sort of say there's all of these different layers of the alternative media clashing with the mainstream media this kind of old tired way of gotcha journalism all of

All of these things just came together in one. Then you've got the sex dynamics, you've got the kind of gender dynamics. It was all just, there was so much there. And so I tried to kind of bring them together behind the scenes for a while. That wasn't working. So I then thought, okay, what do I do? Okay, I just put it all into this documentary, which became Glitch in the Matrix. And Glitch in the Matrix looked at, it was subtitles,

Jordan Peterson, the mainstream media and the intellectual dark web. And it just looked at everything that had happened since 2016, the rise of Trump, this sort of, like naive, as I said, like the low-resolution grand narrative of liberalism that was starting to get all of these holes in it. And then like the clash between alternative media and mainstream media and all of these different layers that I just put into this documentary with about the Cathy Newman and Jordan Peterson interview. And it's done by far, it's by far the most, Jordan Peterson uploaded it to his channel where it's still, I think, now the second most popular

film he's ever put out on his channel. It's got about five million views there. It's got another million views on the Rebel Wisdom channel. And I'm still proud of it. I mean, it's from, it's a certain period of time. But it, yeah, it just felt like it was a, I mean, I don't know if your viewers would respond to this kind of word, but I felt like it was kind of channeled. It was, it was just sort of a, it was a stream of consciousness thing of just like, okay, I've been thinking about this stuff for like two years and tried to get it all into this documentary. But the interesting thing with the documentary was it still felt incredibly current. even though it was from four years ago, you still felt as if, in a way, we haven't really moved on.

We are still wrestling with these issues. We're still wrestling with these problems. Do you think that we've moved on at all, or have we just remained stagnated? And in a way, not knowing how to escape the problems that you brought to the surface there? Yeah, it's a really, really good point. I think we haven't. I mean, this is the kind of tragedy of the post of the Trump presidency is I think the Trump presidency. is I think the Trump presidency was in many ways a kind of like it was a fuck you to kind of liberal

like there's a button mark fuck you in I think Brexit and Trump or both of that like our societies are two split and there's this kind of subtle or not so subtle hatred of like there's this kind of worldview which is like we're so inclusive of absolutely everyone from everywhere apart from those people who don't think like us

and unfortunately those people who don't think like us are an awful lot of the population and there's sound reason why they don't think like us or like them. And so, yeah, I think there's almost been no, or very little. I think there probably has been some, but very little learning about why Trump happened, why Brexit happened.

Because I think it, again, I'd use a Jungian frame and a Petersonian frame. I don't think we've wrestled with the shadow. Like the shadow is like all the parts of ourselves that we don't want to admit or deny or repress. And there's so much of, like, Trump is a perfect example. Like he has that reaction because he's all of those parts of yourself that you don't want to admit. And I think in so many of these places, like, we're in a time where we're going to have to wrestle with all of these shadows.

And we're not doing it. Like, we haven't done it. We haven't worked. Okay, why did it happen? Because the question is, why did it happen? It's something to do with me. And if we don't accept that all of these people that we're kind of rejecting, that we're judging, that we're – demonizing our aspects of ourselves, we're never going to get through. And that's the kind of

the key kind of realization that I don't think many people went through after Trump. It was just this sort of sense of opposition, rejection, and very, very little learning. And it's true in kind of personal, it's true in any of our sort of personal lives. If we don't learn the lessons, we're going to be forced to learn them in more and more difficult and more and more catastrophic ways. like things start falling apart. If we won't learn the lesson of a certain negative pattern that we have or a negative kind of belief structure that we have, then it's just going to keep coming up

and it's going to come up worse and worse and worse until we learn that lesson. I think generally that's where we're at in society. I think you're right. I think that's, in a way, it's a tragedy that the documentary holds up so well because I think it shows that we haven't really moved past that much. And do you think part of the, using the term the shadow, part of the shadow of liberal people

is the belief that they're right and there's an arrogance about that and if you go against them, you're wrong and therefore you deserve derision, you deserve to be mocked and once that happens, you stop having a conversation. Yeah, I think we all suffer from that but I think that perspective is in shadow.

That's kind of the liberal shadow because there's this paradox of being open to absolutely everything, being open to all, all gender, sexualities, races. And that is obviously necessary, like that's a necessary thing. But then there's this hidden shadow bit of like, yeah, but secretly we reject all of those people who don't think like all the bigoted, deplorables. And that's the paradox, I think, that we're still wrestling with. So I think it is, it is true, but that's in shadow for kind of like the, as I've said, like the low resolution, liberal worldview.

So you make the documentary. Yeah. And the documentary, I wouldn't say, was, you know, super critical of anyone in particular, actually. I thought it was quite balanced. It was a good piece. And what happens from there? So in the aftermath of that, so there were some criticisms of Cathy Newman in there.

Although I tried to balance that, the same. Not unreasonable given the interview and how it went. Yeah. Yeah. You know, if someone's missed five open goals in the match, you sort of go, maybe they didn't have the best game. Yeah, I think that's fair enough. But also I tried to give the context that she was kind of thinking about a five-minute interview. She wasn't thinking about half an hour interview. She was thinking about five minutes cut down where she was sort of, which is another factor in the kind of contrast of like alternative versus, like, we're now in a long form environment where you can actually kind of dig in a little bit more and unpack complicated ideas.

and that whole kind of sausage-making factory of the news, putting something into three or five minutes is just completely unfit for purpose. But, yeah, so I did say in it that it was an ongoing car crash for Channel 4 news, for Channel 4, I think. And I knew I was, I knew it was, I knew it was very difficult to go back in. I've been working in Channel 4 in Channel 4 news a few weeks before that. I've been continuing to freelance there on a fairly regular basis. And I knew it would at least make it difficult to go back in.

into the newsroom. It would be quite embarrassing or difficult to be going in after having put that out. But all of my, as soon as I'd done that, the freelance shifts kind of dried up. And then someone came to an event about a year afterwards and told me that I was a guy who had been banned from ITN. When he came in, he said, oh, I told them I was coming to this event. They said, oh, he's the guy who's been banned from ITN. So that kind of, and I kind of knew it at the time that I put that documentary out, I did kind of I wasn't naive. I knew that it was probably going to make things difficult at least and maybe ending my career with Channel 4 News

and making it potentially difficult to work in the TV industry. I think I don't want to overdo it, but yeah, I knew it would sort of, it sort of puts me on. I sided with Jordan Peterson, I guess, ahead of my current employer at the time is the way that I kind of, but it was a huge opportunity. Like I don't, I don't regret that because rebel wisdom and this kind of new and fascinating exploration

and the alternative media started from that moment. And so I don't regret any of that at all. But just jump in, why did you do that? Because that could be seen as an act of self-sabotage. You know, this was your bread and butter. This is how you put food on the table. why would you go essentially go against your employers and support Jordan Peterson?

I think because I took so seriously, like obviously I was really highly influenced by Jordan Peterson at the time. Still a huge fan of his work and I took incredibly seriously and still do his injunction to tell the truth. Like to tell the truth no matter what. and the paradox or the great thing about that is that it has worked, I'd say it's worked out. Right.

I'd say it has, yeah, it's been a fascinating exploration of, from following Jordan Peterson and, a lot of the first films that we did were about the Jordan Peterson phenomenon. Like, what is it about his message right now? What does it say about the culture? What does he, we kind of called him a one-man lightning rod for the culture war?

So it was just this sense of, which I think I'd always had anyway, but it was just a sense of it's the right thing to do. It's the right thing to do. I think I've got something to contribute. I think it's the right thing to say at this moment. And I think it's that that feeling of following, that feeling of following truth to me feels like, I'd say I've made that a priority in my life.

And I've tried to kind of live to that as much as I can. while also being aware that it can be very, you can never kind of tell yourself that's why, that's the only reason you're doing things because you're going to end up bullshitting yourself. And we've all got, yeah, self-aggrandizement and stuff like that is something I'm wary of. But it is something I've tried to make a priority.

And I trained as a counsellor and I know, and this was articulated by Jordan Peterson as well. It's like the value of counselling, the value of personal growth is orienting yourself. to truth. It's speaking truth, it's orienting to truth, and it's building on that. And I truly believe that that's our only hope. I agree. And it's interesting to me, because I hear in the way you talk about it a lot of how we think about comedy, because we've been not quite the same, but in a similar way, we've pursued the truth by doing this show. And as a result of that,

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green mattress.com slash trigger. Avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. No, no, he's not Exactly, pretty much, right? And there's no question that our opportunities within comedy, the comedy world, the comedy industry have been massively curtailed. But I hate talking about it because I don't feel a victim of that situation. We went into that with our eyes open. We knew what happened. We thought pursuing the truth was more important.

And let's be honest, we've been rewarded for it, right? We have a show that's successful, it's doing well. So none of the three of us want to go into this, oh, poor me, I got cancer. for my, you know, because that didn't happen, right? But at the same time, there's a bigger thing at stake here, which is less so David Fuller, Constance and Kiss and Francis Foster, more, why is a massive media institution so scared of being criticized? They, quote, unquote, ban you.

Is that normal? Do we want media institutions that do that? Shouldn't the pursuit of truth be the fundamental value of that institution? And that implies a plurality of viewpoints? Yes. The thing that I was, I mean, I would still say it would probably have been quite embarrassing or difficult for me to go back in there and do freelance shifts after putting that out. Like I don't know if I would have wanted to go back and do that anyway.

Just on a personal level of kind of like, hi. Hi, I think you're an idiot. Yeah. But the thing that I was most disappointed about is I thought Kathy could have done a really interesting documentary. Like, and I investigating, like, what happened? Because I think Kathy's got a really interesting story, seeing it from her perspective, she was a political reporter for a long time. So that's kind of why she's got a lot of that sort of combative style, like trying to catch out politicians. And she'd also worked in Westminster, which is kind of some of the places,

like with a really strong old boys network and kind of one of the kind of vestiges of real, kind of, if you want to say that there's, yeah, in politics, I mean, there are still very outdated attitudes, kind of, and old boys' clubs, et cetera, et cetera. And I think she could have explained that. I think it would have given people more sympathy and more understanding about where she'd come from and how she'd succeed as a journalist. But also, I think she could have then gone into, like, what is the reality of the gender pay gap?

What is the reality of, like, if you value truth, more than anything, then I think, I think, I think she should have done that. Like it would have got a huge amount of viewers. But she'd also, and this may be unfair, and I'd be more than willing to have the conversation with Kathy, if it is. I'm sure she's watching me. I'm sure she's. But also, I think there's a danger because she'd also established herself with a certain perspective. If you look at kind of, she was writing a book about feminism effectively. She was a big campaigner about kind of the gender pay gap and stuff. So I think it would have been maybe difficult for her to go into that exploration

if she may have come out with a different view than the way the one she came in. But I think, I thought that was like, that for me was a no-brainer because it had been such a kind of cultural moment and then to kind of examine that and try and find out the truth of the things that she was putting to Jordan Peterson, I think would have been a really, like that would have been a really interesting documentary. But isn't that just a recurring thing of people not wanting to examine their own actions, their own beliefs, their own prejudices in order to help them grow.

Yeah. And we've seen, we've sort of Brexit Trump, but we've also seen it with Channel 4. Yeah. And I mean, this is a little bit of a segue into the thing I mentioned at the beginning, because I think this is increasingly important because if the failures of the existing media structures are like systematic or they're structural, I think the failures in the alternative media universe, are individual because we're all becoming our own brands. And like if you look at on Twitter or even on YouTube, like most of the failure conditions,

and I kind of followed the intellectual dark web, I followed like these alternative sense-making networks. And most of the failure conditions there are narcissism, they're like audience capture, they are the way that conversation becomes performative, they're attracting an audience and not wanting to let that audience down. They're all of... Because the nature of social media and the nature of kind of what social media is doing to us

that Tristan Harris talked about in the social dilemma is it's basically hacking all of our worst aspects. It's playing on our narcissism. It's playing on our desire to be liked. It's playing on our... The way that we have certain views to appear because of how they appear rather than what we really think. And I think we get this kind of gap open up

between what we truly be... believe and what we want other people to think we believe, all of those things. And that is where my concern about the alternative media is because I think we all have those, we all have those kind of negative characteristics. And I think they're being increasingly weaponized against us in the social media landscape. I want to get into that. I'd just like to say at Trigonometry, we don't have that problem because we let our audience down all the time. And by the way, like and subscribe. Exactly. Hey Francis, do you like Martians?

Well, I work with one, don't I? Would you like to have an immersive experience with a Martian? Are you going to get me drunk on the vodka? I'm in my fucking go to the site last time? You wish. No, there's this great new immersive experience in London based on Jeff Wayne's The War of the World. I've heard about this.

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with our special promo code, which is, of course, trigger. All you need to do to take advantage of this fantastic offer is go to the war of the world's immersive.com. That's the war of the world's immersive.com and experience a world where we're being invaded by Martians, which is still better than being in lockdown. Follow the link in the description and I'll see. see you there. Before we get into the problems with alternative media, and we're not going to shy away from that at all. You talked about the systemic and structural problems with the mainstream media. Now, they've been talked about endlessly in these sorts of conversations as here's the

problem. Where does it come from? That's what I want to know. Why did the media suddenly get broken the way it did? I think we're in a slightly different situation in the UK than we are in the US. the US last year, I did a series of films called What the Fuck is Going On? What was that about? It was mostly about, so there was a whole series of like kind of major incidents within so many American media organizations. There was the James Bennett had to leave the New York Times. He was the common editor who commissioned that op-ed by Tom Cotton about troops on the streets, I think. Barry Weiss then left. Andrew Sullivan left New York Magazine.

And Matt Taibi, kind of left-wing journalist, talked about he was aware of at least like 10 revolts within newsrooms. And in the States, the way that that was written up, mostly by Barry Weiss, was that there's a new generation of journalists who care more about harm than they do about truth, effectively. So a lot of the criticism of the Tom Cotton op-ed was it's putting journalists of color at risk on the streets, which is kind of a bit of a leap to make that point. But effectively, activism in journalism, a different conception about what journalism is for and a different set of values. And there's this kind of real generation gap. But because of the nature of that generation gap,

because of the nature of those attacks and the nature of the criticisms, very hard to argue against. And Brett Weinstein will talk about kind of how powerful that particular worldview, we want to call it kind of weaponized wholeness or social justice activism or whatever, inside institutions is very hard to defend against. And so I think that, like the New York Times is no longer the paper that it was in many ways. It's no longer the same organization, even though it's got the same kind of thing on, same name on the, on the mast head. And I think America is further down that line than the UK, from what I can tell. But I think it's partly, and then you've got this other kind of factor of like, I think it's also financial, like because there's less and less money

there as well, you've got a lot of people going on to substack. You're losing a lot of kind of really good journalists from the institutions as well, because they're leaving and setting up on their own. So I think that's kind of increasing the kind of decline of the media. And then you've got this sort of sense of journalists, basically, the world is getting more and more complex, but they're still positioning themselves relative to other journalists. There's a group think that comes in. Most of the time, they're positioning themselves in terms of what they think other journalists are going to think of them than necessarily following the truth. But I don't think it's, I don't think, I often find myself in the position of kind of saying it's not as bad. Like, I'm sure you'll be aware.

There's a huge anti-media undercurrent on YouTube especially, which I understand where it comes from. I have some sympathy for it, but I think it goes too far because most of the journalists that I've worked with in the past have been very conscientious, very driven. Like, they could have made more money in lots of different other areas. But there are systematic failings, and a big one is who watches the watchmen. It's kind of this idea that over time journalists have been used to being kind of the people who judge, the people who decide,

the people who are the gatekeepers, but not really asking themselves whether they're qualified for that effectively or who gave them that power in the first place. Like power without responsibility, I think, becomes corrupting. And now there is more scrutiny, I think, on media than there was. And again, I say it's not, it's not catastrophically bad.

And I think a lot of journalists are good, but there are systematic flaws with the system that I think are becoming ever more clear. And do you think part of the problem is what you've just said, but it's also when a business, because they are businesses, and they're struggling to monetize themselves, and they're struggling to be relevant,

they're automatically going to go for the lowest common denominator because it will ensure clicks and views and all the rest of it. Yeah, no, it's a really, really good point. And it's one I shouldn't have missed out. Thank you for. That's what I'm here for, mate. Awesome. That's part of the economic problems with them.

Is that, and that's to do with, if you put out articles, say you're the New York Times, it stops being in their business interest to challenge their audience. Because especially you've got a subscriber model, it's much easier for someone to be like, oh, you just put out that article that said Jordan Peterson wasn't a monster. I'm going to unsubscribe. So they're increasingly, the business model is increasingly rewarding them, playing to their base, giving their base what they want, not challenging them. The more they challenge, the more it's not in their financial interest.

And I think that they're subject to the same pressures that I think alternative creators are, I think it's often, I think that problem is often worse in the alternative environment because it stops being in your interest to kind of really have a kind of 300, 60 degree set of perspectives. But yeah, I think as it spirals down and the smaller and smaller pie, I think you just start to kind of reward people don't like to be challenged. And that's sort of the other big problem with social media that is also affecting the big news organizations is, and this is something Tristan Harris talked about, we're optimizing,

social media is optimizing for outrage. It's optimizing for any kind of response that keeps you kind of engaged and outrage. righteous outrage, outrage, porn, and what he calls the race to the bottom of the brain stem. Like, we're bypassing our kind of cortex. We're going directly to kind of like the limbic system and kind of like getting you into a fight or flight kind of mode because it rewards engagement

and gets you kind of into a, like, I can't believe they said that, I'm going to do that. And that's happening to the big players as well as the small players. Yeah, and at the bottom of it is a death of nuance. Yeah. Where what we see now is every media outlet, with exception of the small selection, it's just advocacy media. You know what they're going to say before they say it.

So this is what I was trying to get out earlier with my question, David, because you talked about where we are now substack and all that sort of thing. But there was something that happened before that. There was something that happened that by 2014, 15, people in the media decided that their job was not the reason that you're no longer welcome at Channel 4, the pursuit of truth, their job was activism. Their job was to stop Brexit, let's say, or to stop Donald Trump being elected, or to stop remain or whatever it was. Their job was to campaign. And so when we talk about, you know, the New York Times versus alternative, the only thing that I see is a

distinction, and yes, we're all subject to the same pressures and pulling and driving factors. people like us don't pretend that we're neutral. Kathy Newman pretended in that interview to be neutral while not being neutral, to put it very mildly. And that is a change that I don't know, and I was curious to ask you about it because you were a journalist in that world for a long time. When did that shift happen?

Maybe we're just making it up. Maybe you're thinking the good old days that never actually existed and everybody was always parted, And we've always had a partisan media in this country. We have newspapers that are right-wing, we have newspapers that are left-wing. Am I idolizing the past here by saying it wasn't always like this?

No, I think there was a shift that some, when, and I can kind of remember it because I think that that shift is also connected to social media. So I think one of the things that the growth of alternative media has done is shown up the bias of the mainstream. Yeah. Like before there was this kind of like objective view from nowhere, voice from nowhere, affectation, that increasingly is obviously like, oh, that's a thing.

That's a game. And it's obviously kind of, it's more and more transparent that that's going on. But there was a time where the anchors, for example, of the reporters at Channel 4 News or any of the big news organizations were allowed to have their own perspective. But they were increasingly kind of liberalized rules around. You're allowed to kind of campaign on Twitter. you're allowed to have a persona that's not just purely independent. So I think there was a deliberate, and I think probably a valid decision made at some points

by kind of the editors to say, okay, we need them to compete in this kind of information economy, so therefore that we're going to have to allow them some more limited, some more freedoms on social media to kind of have their own opinions. And that definitely happened quite a while ago. But there are still different regulations as to what you're allowed to do on screen versus what you're allowed to do in social media. So there's almost, and that's another part of the problem is there's no off-com regulation of something like YouTube.

There's no regulation of stuff like Twitter. And I think they kind of adapted to that by saying, yes, you're allowed to kind of campaign on these different issues. Whereas there are still off-com and there is still regulation on, especially on broadcast news in the UK. in a way that there isn't in the US. But yeah, I think they did actually make a specific decision to say, no, we've got to compete in this kind of information economy

and now we're going to take the shackles off in terms of what you're allowed to say. And we've now moved into the social media world, where everybody has got a slice of the pie, or at least a chance of a slice of the pie. But that very much produces its own challenges, its own problems, which, let's be fair, we are all wrestling with. Everybody in this room is wrestling with, you know, we're trying to figure out as we go along.

What to you are the very real challenges and problems that we face as creators? Yeah, and I think that's a really good way of framing it because we are all subject to these same things. We're all wrestling with this in many different ways. Like I, certainly for as someone who's got a YouTube channel, I'm very aware. I wish I was less aware of like the comments for example like caring what the comments think. I know we talked and you guys said you're less worried about it because of your comedy background. You're kind of used to being heckled and people. But I feel that as a kind of like and I don't want to.

I don't want to kind of feel that as a, but I'm, it's like I've got an eye in the back of my head I'm kind of know what they want and what they don't want. And I tried to not let that affect me and I do put out things that I know are going to challenge the audience. And I'm getting more and more comfortable with doing that, but I know that that's something I don't feel entirely comfortable with. There's also a set of kind of aligned incentives. And one of the things, like, I really enjoyed the interview that we had. And I've tried to do sort of, I've tried to follow like the truth of,

when I think there are challenging questions to ask someone, I'll ask those challenging questions. But it's a difficult place to be in in this alternative media universe, because if you get yourself a reputation as someone who's just a difficult character, then it's not, if I was working at Channel 4 News or working for one of the big organisations, I'd be able to do that and I'd have the organisation behind me, people would still say yes to the interview, whereas if you get yourself a kind of reputation as being too challenging

and the alternative, people can just say, no, we're not going to do an interview with you. My central worry is I think that we've got a dysfunctional system. We've got the old system of the kind of what some people called the Blue Church media establishment that was increasingly dysfunctional in many ways, but still had a set of checks and balances, still had a sense of like free speech without the ideas being tested for me is not free speech. Free speech is a prerequisite for then the ideas being tested in the marketplace of ideas. And what I see coming along in the alternative environments, we've gone away from one system, we might at some point have a decentralized way of approaching truth.

Right now, I think we're in this kind of no man's land where a lot of the alternative narratives are not showing up in the mainstream, but they're not being challenged in the alternative as well. And I think the system is like really broken. I know we talked, we did a series of films about London Real earlier in the... Great guy. Great guy, yeah, about how much I admire Brian Rose. Love you, Brian.

Yeah, love him. 2%. I think he's got in for London Mayor campaign. So I actually just group with the others in 3%. But yeah, I mean, the reason I was interested in that story was because he had on David Ike at the beginning of the pandemic. David, I'm sorry to interrupt. I'm just aware the channel we're talking about used to be a YouTube channel, did interviews with people. And then when the pandemic hit, they started doing conspiracy stuff basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a good summary. They had on David Ike at the beginning of the pandemic. He said COVID is a hoax. It's caused by 5G. If you don't take matters into your own hands, then life as itself will be over. YouTube took that down, quite rightly, I think. But he then embarked in this quite cynical, like bringing on a lot of conspiracy people, not challenging them. And it was very successful.

He got a lot of views for it. He started up this kind of digital freedom platform thing, the way he kind of raised a load of money for it. And what upset me or what kind of I was really concerned about was like, okay, you've got these alternative narratives like being arising and no one's challenging them. Like there's a huge audience for them and they're not being reflected in the mainstream at all,

which is kind of increasingly, you can argue, increasingly conformist. And then you've got the alternative narratives and they're just thriving because they're getting views and they're not being challenged. And that, I was also interested with London real because he was kind of using this like free speech argument and that for me was really like free speech is such a sacred value that if you're going to use it and you're going to exploit it for your own purposes I think that's really really dangerous and if the ideas are not being tested in the

marketplace for me is not is not really free speech and that's where I think that's why I think our interview was really interesting as well because I think these are there's huge nuances you can talk about free speech versus censorship and no censorship but then you've got the question like, who are you inviting on to interview? How are you doing that interview? How are you promoting that interview? Is this person's views being challenged elsewhere, even if not by you, then by other people? And that for me is like where I see this. Yeah, it's breaking down everywhere. Like the way of challenging truth and finding truth, I think, is breaking down everywhere, which is in the mainstream, but also in the alternative as well.

Do you not think that we maybe think of ourselves as a full replacement for the mainstream media, where really what we should be thinking about is, well, if you want this perspective, you come and watch trigonometry, and if you want to see that perspective challenge, there will be other channels that will provide that, rather than thinking that it's the job of rebel wisdom or the job of trigonometry to provide you with the full range of opinions. Because frankly, it's not going to happen for reasons to do with financial, technical, staffing and all sorts, we don't have the resources,

or frankly, the ability to attract every type of guests that we'd like. Because the way that it works in the alternative media space is once you've had Exxon, then Y won't come on your show. Because they don't think of you the same way that they would think of Channel 4, where you can have Jordan Peterson on today and a massive woke feminist on the next day. It just doesn't work that way in our space. And so to expect you or I or Francis to,

to be able to do that is unrealistic in the first place. Yeah, I think we all have to make our own, follow our own conscience in terms of the people that we're having on and how we're doing those interviews. And I do think, I mean, just the sheer size and scope, like we don't have the ability to kind of do a proper news job. And even so, like, we're mostly, I'd say we're mostly kind of commentary opinion rather than kind of,

I've done a couple of like investigations and sort of what I consider, like primary news stuff, but they're few and far between. Most of the time, I think we're doing interviews and we're shedding light on the stories rather than... But I mean, the point that we kind of clashed on in our interview before was about the interview with Sucha Abakti and whether putting on someone who was critical of the vaccine meant that you had an obligation to put on someone who was pro-vaccine. I mean, that's an open question.

I was asking you that as a question as to whether... That for me, and that in the end for me comes down. to an individual conscience thing and then being aware of like what's the drive, why am I doing certain things, am I doing this just for the just for the sort of the amount of views, which is always going to be a factor. I mean, we're not going to put on into views that get no views. I mean, that's always going to be a factor. But then is that, is that warping my decision of who to get on? Do I feel an integrity in the way that that has happened? Do I feel I've got the amount of background of research to be able to challenge this person or to be able to

able to evaluate their claims, all of that sort of stuff. But it depends what your objective is as well. Like for me, I think I've still got a very strong set of, I don't know, principles that I kind of built up over, say, 20 years doing journalism that maybe aren't even appropriate for the new alternative world. That's a kind of inquiry I'm involved in. But I do, there's a few people who are really wrestling with this question quite deeply. A friend of mine, Daniel Schmachtenberger, is putting together something called the Consilience Project, where he's trying to do like really high level, almost like kind of secret service briefing level analysis of issues, of the news, because that's what he thinks is needed. Like we need, there's an imbalance because a lot of the

most, a lot of the most high quality information is being gathered by people who, researching for hedge funds, people who are researching for security services, and a lot of that doesn't necessarily filter down into the mainstream media. So he's saying this is an imbalance which allows some people to exploit the world, become rich at other people's expense. And what we need to do is democratize that really high-level information getting. So I do think there are people, but this is a project that's costing several million pounds to put together and is going to be involving kind of employing a lot of people. people. I don't, we're, we just don't have the capacity to do that sort of thing.

But it's all, and it's a great point, but there's also the issue of challenging, like people always go to us and the criticism that we face all the time is you don't challenge your guests enough. And then you talk about what does that actually mean to challenge someone? And a lot of the time is like, oh, they said something seven or eight years ago. Why haven't you brought that up in an interview? And I, I would love to know what your position on that is as a trained journalist. Is that challenging? Is that just always challenging? Does that mean something else?

What does challenging mean to you, challenging an idea? I would say, it depends on who it is. I would generally say yes. Like if there is someone who's made a comment or has kind of had a disgrace in the past. Like if this is the main thing that people know about them, for example, then I would say, yes, you probably do need to bring that up in the interview. to say, look, you said this thing a while ago, or do you still think that?

Do you regret saying that? I think there is an obligation to give background so that the audience are able to make up their minds on who this person is, what they think. Especially if, I mean, there's some people who I think if you're not doing that, you're doing a disservice to the audience by not bringing it up.

I can think of some various kind of pretty, if someone's controversial, I don't think, I mean, one of the one of the kind of criticisms oh you shouldn't have a conversation with that person and that's often done it's like the guilt by association thing and that for me is just that's an old tactic by the kind of media and that's trying to put that's trying to put the genie back in the bottle and that's not going to it's not going to work like we've got an infinite number of media channels so that that that whole guilt by association thing is a game that won't that won't work anymore but i do think

that there is for me i feel i i feel a certain obligation to if someone's controversial to explain in the conversation, why they're controversial. Just say, you caused a real controversy a while ago when you said this and this. What was that about? Did you regret, yeah, do you regret that? What was the context for it? And for me, the danger is that a lot of this becomes performative. And I think people are really sick and tired with the performative nature of a lot of legacy

media because the journalist isn't really oriented towards finding truth. what they're oriented towards is signaling to other journalists, signaling to everyone else, that they're still on their side, and that this person's beyond the pale for this reason and this reason and this reason, which was, I mean, the Cathy Newman, Jordan Peterson interview was the perfect. That was the apotheosis of that kind of way of interacting. And it's like, and I think everyone looked at it and they're like,

this isn't how normal people talk to each other. And the interesting thing is that now in the alternative media, when you look at Joe Rogan and you look at kind of these people who've made their livings out of an alternative long-form conversation, you're like, they're talking to each other like people talk to each other. And this kind of performative thing is just, it's an old way of, you're not reacting, you're not even relating to that person as a person. Like you're relating to them as something else.

Like you're relating to them as an it. You're not relating to them as someone that you can have a interaction and a connection with. And I think Joe Rogan is a good example because I've seen him do really informative, challenging interviews on some fairly controversial people. He did a really good job with Stefan Molyneux, for example, who's a kind of pretty controversial kind of race realist type. And if you look at the interview that he did, he done a lot of research on that.

He brought up some pretty critical and suspect things that he'd said in the past, that he'd done in the past, the nature of the organization that he'd kind of created. And Joe Rogan, despite kind of being a, by his own admission, being a sort of meathead who's just like talking to people and then found himself in this role that he never expected. I think he's really kind of grown into that. And I see a lot of responsibility in the way that he does his interviews. I think he did a very interesting one with Candace Owens as well. If you compare that to the one that Dave Ruben did with Candice Owens, like it was a really different kind of interview. And I felt like she struggled with a few of the follow-ups.

So I think there is a way of doing it. I think you need to avoid being stuck in the performative mainstream, like I'm just doing this to signal to everyone else that I'm a good person, you're a bad person, game. And the other side of I'm never going to ask anyone a difficult question or I'm just going to let them speak. I think there's a midpoint that we're still evolving towards. I think we're all still kind of learning what that is. I think it also changes with how powerful you experience yourself to be. If you have a show with 10 million subscribers, you are not afraid to piss off your guest.

And also there's more pressure on you from, like this is. is the other thing. I think Joe Rogan is under scrutiny from YouTube and from the, like, I think he is also slightly forced to do that. I think that's why he doesn't have certain guests on, because people take notice of who he puts on. Yeah. So I think that's the other weird thing is that the journalistic obligations grow as your channel grows in a way at the moment as well. Yeah. And, you know, I think we all experience it. I think the bigger we get, the more we, but also, you know, the problem is as well is a lot of us who are doing this. don't have any journalistic training, right?

So we don't, we feel our way through the whole thing. But actually, I wanted to come back to your thing about comments because I think this is a really important conversation to have. And Rogan is, you know, he's got his way of dealing with it, which he says, just don't read it, which I don't buy. Well, you don't think he doesn't read them. I don't think he doesn't read them, number one. And we've seen some evidence of that.

His first interview with Jack Dorsey, for example, was a good example. He did an interview with Jack Dorsey, got a shit ton of pushback and suddenly bam jack dorsey was back on the show with timpool and vigiagad being grilled right yeah so he clearly perfect example yeah so he first of all he does read the comments uh clearly or someone does for him but the other thing as well is you know you talk about how the comments affect you and we as comedians are less of i as i said on your show we have a tremendous amount of respect for our audience we really do but at the same time I don't even believe that the comments under this video

are necessarily from the fans of the show. What will often happen with an interview is you'll get people coming along who either love or hate your guests who don't follow your show and who comment on that video. And actually, you know, one of France's ex-girlfriend said this. She said, have you ever commented on a YouTube video?

Do you know anyone who's ever commented on a YouTube video? So the fact that 10 people or 100 people, even a thousand people who've left some comments under this video right now, a representative of our audience to me is a complete misnomer. Because very often what you'll have is loads of people upvoted video, very few downvoter, and yet all the comments are negative. And you're going, well, that doesn't make any sense. And the reality is, you know, people who comment are the people who feel the strongest,

perhaps. That's one interpretation. Does that mean that that's representative of the public reaction to an interview? I don't think so. So to me, yes, there's some gold to be dug out of that, but you have to recognize that it's not representative of the audience. And that's why, you know, Peterson and Rogan, to me, are inspirational in that way, even though I have disagreements with both of those men on many things. The way that they have inspired me is the way I think about it is, well, I'm going to ask you a question that I find interesting. And I'm going to trust that there's an audience out there that is also interested in that. answer to that question, you know. And I think that's an approach that does that mean that this

channel as a result will be neutral and unbiased? Well, of course not, because I'm biased and so is Francis and so are you. But at least it's honest, right? It's then honest. I'm asking the question that I really want to ask you. And I think that's maybe where the answer lies to some extent, is just to go, what's the question I want to ask you? And let's find out what you want to say about it. So yeah, an audience capture is a thing that I think a lot of people are concerned about it, but I don't think audience capture and allowing yourself to be captured by the audience will ever work, actually in the long run. It's a very poor long-term strategy.

It also depends who you're, I think you're right. I think the comments often are the most reactive, the most triggered people who've seen that particular thing. And they're often not representative of, so we have a membership, like we've got about a thousand, members of rebel wisdom and the conversation with them is so different from the conversation that goes on in the in the comments and i i think that's because we've put out a lot of different films over a long time and i know kind of what sort of background a lot of them come from i think if you have and that is far is a far bigger um influence if your biggest patreon subscribers or supporters have a certain perspective,

then I think that starts to warp it a little bit more. And it depends who are the people who are most attracted to your content. Who are the ones who are the ones who are willing to pay for it? Who are the ones, like especially if you've got like really high value tiers, like say, you know, we had quite a high value one at one time and we got rid of it. I think that starts to have a real impact on you. If you're and if you're framing your show in a certain way and you attract a lot of people, that, like I'm very glad with the audience that we have.

Like that, for me, acts as a kind of dampener on if we were to sort of take the comments too seriously. Because I know that there's a much more considered group of people who have invested more time and more energy and more money in supporting us. And we have the same thing. I mean, this is the whole financial side of this is very interesting because we are sitting here recording this in mid. March, we probably lost about 10 to 15% of our income that we had from subscribers in the last couple of months because we came out very strongly when the whole Trump thing, capital thing happened. And we were very clear about our view on that.

And deliberately so, because we know that the core audience that we have are people who are interested in sensible balance conversation. And if that means that over time, those ups and those downs, we'll live with that. Are you sure that that was the reason? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And so, and that's fine by us. I think that's another, so someone I think who does that, whether you agree with him or not about certain things, Sam Harris, I think, is someone who deliberately goes out of his way to kind of speak out and to cast off some of his audience. Like he talks a lot about Islam, but he will think. say things deliberately to kind of avoid Islamophobes becoming sort of like, oh, he's on our side. So he'll say things to deliberately piss off and, I guess, to whittle away at the people

that he doesn't want following him or doesn't want influencing him. And I think that's essential. It's like the great artists of, like you think of a David Bowie or someone like that, who constantly changes, like, because you get trapped. Like David Bowie sort of does a, what is it, space oddity. gets people who just want more space holiday. It's like, no, no, no, I'm an artist to completely reinvent each time.

And I think that's the kind of thing. As soon as you put out something that then attracts a certain people who want you to do a certain thing, then you're stopping evolving. You're stopping growing. You're stopping kind of doing, following your own inner sort of sense of exploration

and you start kind of responding to what you want from or what the audience wants from it, which I'm sure you get in comedy as well all the time. people who just sort of mining themselves and repeating themselves, and it just feels like tired and pandering. Pandering. Exhausting after a while. But it's also one of the things that I never expected when doing this is the struggles that

you have with your own morality, where you actually thinking about inviting a guest, for instance, we had Nigel Farage on, which went out a few weeks ago, and then reflecting on that, and you're thinking to yourself, did I challenge them enough? Should I have brought up that comment? Was it the right thing to get Nigel Farage on? on, why did I get them on? And that constant process of self-examination that actually, if you're a journalist working at Channel 4, you don't have to ask yourself those questions. You do and you don't. I mean, the other thing is that you're constantly in a dialogue with your

editors or with different layers of management and different people around you in the newsroom. So it's generally a kind of, it's generally a pitch that then is approved or disavoured. approved by someone. So there's more people involved in that conversation. But there would be, like if you're going to get knowledge of Farage on, there'd be a conversation about why are we getting him on, how are we getting him on, what are we going to ask him about, what are the things that you need to respond to. So, yeah, but there is a sort of institutional protection as well that, in a way, it's not just your decision when you do that with Channel 4 News or with one of the big organizations. I'd just like to reassure everybody at home that the morality questioning Francis talked about.

I don't have that. But David, it's been great chatting with you. Thanks for coming on the show. I think we explored stuff. Normally we interview the guest, but this time we had more of a conversation, which I really enjoyed. And as you know,

we've got one final question for you. Which is always, what's the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be? Obviously, I knew you were going to ask this. I was thinking about it this morning. I was going to have... I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole with the question because I think everything is being,

because you can talk about, there's lots of topics that are not being talked about in the mainstream and should be, but there will be other places where they are being talked about. And I think that's my biggest sense. The thing that we're not talking about is the fact that all of these topics are being talked about in different ecosystems and they're not coming together. But that for me is the crucial, the fragmentation of the information, landscape, the fragmentation of, well, some people, I mean, these are kind of, these are kind of very pompous words, but the fragmentation of the epistemic commons is something that people

on our channel have talked about quite a lot. The fact that sense making is becoming so difficult because of the nature of filter bubbles, because of the nature of social media, because we're basically being served up more of what we already think, like that. That, that's the real tragedy is that we're being locked in, and we're not really aware of it. We're not, because it's being warped around us, we're not being aware of the fact that it's actually easier and better for these big, incredibly powerful algorithms driven by some of the, by the most kind of sophisticated technology we have, are just building these like prisons around ourselves, and all of them are just basically keeping us what we already know.

It's like, oh yeah, we already hate those, we still hate those, more outrage, porn about how the other side are crazy, the other side are wrong, and this sense that those bubbles are getting further and further away from each other. And so I think what are we not talking about? Any subject that I can say we're not talking about is being talked about somewhere in some bubbles and there's ecosystems that grow around like even like forbidden truths that the mainstream are not talking about. But then there's a danger there because that becomes another ecosystem that isn't challenged as well. So then, so that's my, that would be my answer to that. I think an understanding of how fragmented we are, how broken the system is for coming together and connecting with each other, and the fact that social media is kind of weaponized.

I use this one example because I think it's really, really useful. So Jonathan Haidt's work, and I know you're familiar with Jonathan Haidt, amazing social psychologist who talks about why good people are divided by politics and religion, says that a lot of our views are essentially temperament. mental. Conservatives tend to rate higher in order, liberals higher in openness. And the reason for that is that we need different proclivities. We need different temperaments. We're effective in tribes. That's how we've evolved to be effective in tribes. And what social media is doing to us is weaponizing those temperaments against each other. And then we're tribalizing based on those temperaments. And that's an existential crisis. We're basically doing this incredible experiment on ourselves. And it's a temperate, it's a, yeah, I don't think we quite realize the danger of that,

the fact that we are kind of tribalizing ourselves in a way that could be a civilizational threat. And so that's the thing I think is being talked about. And I think the documentary, the social dilemma on Netflix is a real first step. And I think we're starting to kind of have a conversation around, oh, well, in the same way that we start to talk about smoking being really dangerous. we're now starting to realize that social media is dangerous. But I don't think people realize quite how dangerous it is and quite how, because it's changing the nature of everything we're perceiving. We're all in different worlds.

And you can't run a society if you can't agree on what's true. How can you solve any of the problems in the world, whatever they are, if you can't agree on that they're problems? But there's so many different views on climate change. There's so many different views on so many of these major issues. So until we figure out how to fix the information landscape, we're not going to make progress on anything else. And on that upbeat note, thank you very much, David, for coming on the show.

If people want to find you online or on social media, where is the best place to do that? Rebel Wisdom. Follow me on Twitter. Check out Rebel Wisdom. And check out the interview that we did together because I think it was a really good interview. And I've bigged you up at the beginning, so I'll big you up now. Yeah, I was really, really pleased with the conversation.

we had and walking the walk on free speech and long may I continue. Thanks for coming on, David. Make sure to follow the links will be in the description of the video. Thanks for watching and we will see you very soon with another brilliant interview like this one or a live stream. Take care and see you soon guys.