Louis Theroux Interview - 5CAST (#22)

Summary

5CAST w/ Andrew Callaghan – Episode #22

Guest: Louis Theroux

Date: July 29, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this expansive interview, Andrew Callaghan sits down with acclaimed British documentarian Louis Theroux to discuss the arc of Louis’ multi-decade career, the philosophy and ethics behind immersive journalism, the challenges of documentary access in the age of influencer media and livestreaming, and the often surreal worlds both men have explored. They also dig into contemporary issues: the rise and evolution of conspiracist and manosphere movements, the ethics of platforming controversial figures, the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the personal costs of investigative storytelling.

Theroux candidly shares stories from his career, reflects on his interview techniques, and offers richly detailed commentary on the changing landscape of journalism and documentary. The conversation is lively, digressive, and alternately funny, dark, and revealing.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Drive to Document the Weird and Uncomfortable

• Finding Sustained Motivation
  Louis emphasizes the importance of genuine curiosity and excitement:

  "The key is to always be excited about the story and never do something you're half cocked about... It's an instinct, it's a sense of excitement and if I lost that, I would. I'd stop."
  (00:08)

2. Immersive Journalism & the Interviewer’s Role

• Participatory and Awkward Interviewing
  Both discuss their participatory approaches, with Andrew crediting Louis for the "toddler nod" technique—giving space via silence and minimal affirmation so subjects keep talking:

  "Within that silence, they occupy it, and they give you the best quote that you're looking for because you've given them the space to talk."
  (25:31–26:02)

• Roots in Anxiety and Humility
  Theroux shares that what may look like calculated space-giving was often just insecurity:

  "I was so anxious and insecure... My main reaction was just wanting it to go okay and for the contributors to like me."
  (26:02)

• Balancing Access & Integrity
  The challenge of honesty vs. rapport, especially with problematic or extremist contributors, is discussed:

  "You sort of want to be in the film on camera, reflecting the same attitude and Persona that you have in the commentary and the editing. You don't want to be like, oh, he's all being nice in the room. And then he's going, but their vile beliefs were so disgusting, I had to leave."
  (81:02)

3. The Ethics of Platforming

• Platforming Harmful Voices
  Both reflect on the shifting sands of public and journalistic responsibility, especially post-Trump, #MeToo, and Woke 1/2 eras:

  "A value exchange in their head [for subjects]—I know this guy disagrees with me, but his platform is so large that I'm willing to kind of take the piss as long as I can get out there."
  (31:26)

• When to Exclude
  Louis shares that sometimes interviews are left out, not just for morality, but because there’s no "chemistry" or narrative value, or if the subject is simply too dark or monotone without further insight.
  (44:02)

4. The Rise of the Manosphere & Conspiracist Subcultures

• Economic and Algorithmic Drivers
  Andrew connects the mainstreaming of manosphere figures and disinformation to algorithmic choices and corporate wokeness backlashes. Louis discusses the spectrum of believers and grifters that exist in these fringe spaces.

• Generational & Geographic Trends
  Louis details the UK’s own manosphere influencers and draws parallels to American dynamics, noting generational distrust and alienation are similar:

  "I would say probably the same. Exactly the same. Yeah."
  (55:36)

• Performance Culture
  Both host and guest riff on the theatrical, cosplay, or roleplay aspects of these movements—whether with channelers, cryptozoology, or manosphere worlds:

  "I just enjoy the role play."
  (19:40)

5. The Changing Documentary Landscape

• Livestream Age and ‘The Borat Problem’
  The trend of subjects preemptively filming their own interviews (often to "fact-check" or selectively rebut) challenges traditional editing and narrative control:

  "...the streamers find the idea of editing suspect... Meanwhile, 90% of their material is seen only as clips."
  (84:49)

• Evolution from Satire to Seriousness
  Louis describes his shift from seeking comedic moments to more serious, emotionally high-stakes stories:

  "I was like, maybe we forget about the funny."
  (34:39)

• Access, Lawfare, and Institutional Support
  Andrew and Louis discuss the legal perils of independent reporting (“Lawfare”) and the diminishing advantages of institutional backing vs. YouTube-native creators:

  "If you work for an institutional media outlet... you're more or less protected... but if you're an independent journalist, you get sued personally by rich people."
  (61:30)

6. Reflections on Memorable Subjects & Missed Opportunities

• Bigfoot and Channelers
  Both share stories from fringe "true believer" communities—highlighting the complex dance of belief, social affirmation, and grift.
• Joe Exotic and Tiger King
  Louis describes meeting Joe Exotic years before Tiger King, and the difficulties of telling stories when access or competition intrudes.

  “He was like, around him, everyone else just paled into insignificance.”
  (99:09)

• Subjects Louis Would Revisit
  The outlaw "Almost Heaven" Idaho militia and polyamory communities are those he remembers most fondly—spaces of frontier eccentricity and nonconformity.

7. The Israel/Palestine Equation

• Reporting in the West Bank
  Louis provides a ground-level view of the spectrum of settlements/outposts, the differential application of the law, and daily Palestinian hardship.

  “What you do have is a sense of there's two communities with different ethnic identities... subject to a different legal regime. In certain respects, I'd argue it's worse than apartheid…”
  (124:51)

• Checkpoint Cruelty & Social Engineering
  Andrew describes humiliation and delays at checkpoints as tools of "a war of inconvenience.”
  (127:21)

• Possible Futures: One State, Two States?
  Both are pessimistic about a two-state solution, with Louis suggesting a single state with equal rights, though acknowledging "it is a hard one to crack."
  (131:30)

8. Personal Toll and Self-Care

• Finding Balance on the Road
  Louis and Andrew share how they (sometimes) maintain mental health in the churn of hotel rooms, heavy subject matter, and transient relationships.

• Impact on Relationships
  Frequent travel and total focus on story can tax relationships and personal stability:

  "Every minute you're there, you're kind of taking goodwill out of the family bank..."
  (110:10)

• On Vulnerable Contributors and Regret
  Both reflect on the moral hazard of exposing subjects to mass judgement and the unpredictability of repercussions after viral documentaries.

  “I felt like I had betrayed them in some way…” (79:23, Andrew on a QAnon subject family getting sued and harassed after appearing on camera)

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Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• On excitement driving the work:

  “You know it when you feel it...if I lost that, I would. I’d stop.”
  — Louis Theroux (00:08)

• On the ambiguity of belief vs. grift in fringe phenomena:

  “That binary doesn’t really exist. It's more of a spectrum.”
  — Louis (06:29)

• On the ethics of inclusion/exclusion:

  “It’s not about the morality...You need to feel some level—this is going to sound weird—but some level of chemistry...”
  — Louis (44:02)

• On “platforming problematic ideologies” and shifts post-Trump:

  “Platforming problematic ideologies would somehow signal boost the spread of harmful rhetoric... Those efforts were a failure because whatever was pushed down... is now absolutely dominating the Internet.”
  — Andrew (46:39)

• On channeling communities policing authenticity:

  “There’s a sense of needing to police the authenticity, but...how do you police the authenticity of something that's basically is all being pulled out of your head?”
  — Louis (12:21)

• On the paradox of editing and livestreaming:

  “The streamers find the idea of editing suspect... meanwhile, like, 90% of their material is seen only as clips.”
  — Louis (84:49)

• On the window between performance and sincerity:

  “I just enjoy the role play.”
  — Louis (19:40)

• On the Israel/Palestine situation as compared to South African apartheid:

  “What you do have is a sense of there’s two communities with different ethnic identities... subject to a different legal regime... in certain respects, I'd argue it’s worse than apartheid.”
  — Louis (124:51)

• On personal consequences for contributors:

  “I felt like I had betrayed them in some way...I wish that I had maybe told them, when I hold up a mirror to you and show it to millions of people, you might come off a little more out there.”
  — Andrew (79:23)

• On the possibility of a single vs. two-state solution:

  “The idealist in me, I began wondering whether a single state solution with everyone with the same rights might be possible... but maybe that's naive.”
  — Louis (132:03)

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Important Segments with Timestamps

• Louis’ documentary methodology and early career:
  20:55–25:31
• Discussion of notorious interview subjects (Nazis, KKK, Westboro):
  21:23–29:53
• Reflections on editing, fairness, and subject pushback:
  81:02–85:00
• Israel/Palestine documentary insights:
  116:47–132:10
• Personal costs and ethics of chronicling the fringes:
  109:16–113:05

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Episode Highlights

• Louis’ sense of “participatory awkwardness” as a point of both discomfort and connection—often yielding the most truthful footage and insight.
• The contemporary challenge of “platforming” in both a practical (legal, algorithmic) and ethical sense, especially when extremists, grifters, and livestreamers are now fully media literate and often co-produce or refute their own coverage.
• A nuanced chronicle of the social, economic, and technological factors fuelling subcultures from cryptozoology and New Age channelers to manosphere grifters and alt-right movements.
• First-hand reporting on the everyday reality of Israeli settlers, the two-tiered legal system in the West Bank, and the “war of inconvenience” designed to encourage Palestinian flight.

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Conclusion

This episode is a must-listen for anyone drawn to the complexities of immersive journalism, the evolution of fringe movements, and the ethics of documentary storytelling. Andrew and Louis offer a frank, witty, sometimes sobering look at what it takes to witness and document the edges of culture—and at the hidden costs, for both subjects and audience, of that act.

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Transcript

[Andrew]

What drove you initially as a young person to want to spend so many decades making the kind of documentaries that you do? Because I want to be doing what I'm doing 20, 30 years when I'm your age.

[Louis Theroux]

I don't know. But I do know that the key is to always be excited about the story and never do something you're half cocked about. You know what I mean? Like, you're a bit like, I've almost never worked to hire, you know, I've never been like, oh, we're developing something, we think you'd be a really good presenter for it. Like you, I've always been. Not the captain of my own ship, but I've been like co captain. And every idea that's come up has either been from me or if from someone on the team. But I felt like, yeah, that's the one. And I've always had a feeling in me, like, am I excited to go out to the prison or meet the manosphere influences? Am I excited to be back in the West Bank? You know it when you feel it, like it's a. It's an instinct, it's a sense of excitement and if I lost that, I would. I'd stop. Yeah. Nick Fuentes disavowed, kind of disavowed CHUD the builder. Did you see that? Yeah. He's like, that's not very nice. It's not going to lead anywhere productive or beneficial.

[Andrew]

Not to the movement, not to us, not to anybody. It's just this constant game of like, who's a fed, who's running a psyop. And so there's a perception among people like Nick that a lot of these people stirring up domestic, religious or racial divisions are like Zionist agents.

[Louis Theroux]

Oh, I see.

[Andrew]

Yeah. So when someone's like really racist toward like black people who's white but doesn't have anything to say about like the deep state or something, they're seen as

[Louis Theroux]

sort of like a. I wonder if that's what it is. I wondered whether he actually, actually thought it wasn't very nice. Like he was kind of offended by that level of racial animosity because he turns pointers, tends to not go and harass people irl. Yeah, I think in the content I've

[Andrew]

seen, it could be fear based. You know, I can't really imagine him doing that.

[Louis Theroux]

But part of his camouflage as well is like, I'm okay with hanging out with black guys. So when I went to the AFPAC conference, there were a couple of black people, there's a couple of black groipers. Yeah.

[Andrew]

Well, it makes sense. There's kind of like a manosphere crossover in like the Hebrew, Israelite esoteric sense.

[Louis Theroux]

There's that too. I wish. I think it's more of an autistic thing really. I think maybe. Yeah, yeah. One of them, another one was just, I think a rapper who was. Who saw. He's called Bryson something.

[Andrew]

Bryson Gray.

[Louis Theroux]

Bryson Gray, Yeah. I think he's more about the clout.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I interviewed him on stage back at a Stop the steel rally in 2021, right when gun, Tote and Patriot came out, which is his biggest song. But since then he's not a Maga rapper anymore.

[Louis Theroux]

What is he now?

[Andrew]

Just a Christian rapper who like really doesn't like the gays.

[Louis Theroux]

Okay.

[Andrew]

But like, you know, the maga rap world has shrunk a lot because Maga itself is almost over.

[Louis Theroux]

Interesting.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Louis Theroux]

I feel like Trump got a lot of credit from some people in the rap world when he pardoned Kodak Black. Florida rappers did seem to be down with the Trump aesthetic and then by extension the politics.

[Andrew]

Well, I think he gets a lot of love because he just like makes money and stuff. He has like gold toilets and sick ass cars.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah. Ostentatious wealth.

[Andrew]

Well, thanks so much for making the time today.

[Louis Theroux]

Not at all.

[Andrew]

Really appreciate it.

[Louis Theroux]

Has anyone ever grabbed your questions?

[Andrew]

What's that mean?

[Louis Theroux]

Just take that. Yeah.

[Andrew]

You want to check them out?

[Louis Theroux]

Not really. I find that a little aggressive. It's happened to me a couple of

[Andrew]

times who grabbed the questions the most aggressively.

[Louis Theroux]

I was very early on when I was still at TV Nation, there was a segment called Bully Reunion Night and each of the correspondents went back to meet their childhood bully. You know, you don't really have one childhood bully, but I thought of a few candidates and settled on a guy. I'll just call him David. And by a weird twist of fate, he hadn't bullied me that mercilessly. Like he'd just given me a little bit of a hard time occasionally. But he kind of did that to a lot of people. I think looking back, he was probably quite troubled and in pain in his own way. Anyway, in the interim, he'd become a Tibetan monk and he was living in a retreat in Scotland, which was kind of perfect, right? Cause you arrive at this great location, it was like Kung Fu Panda. You're arriving in this remote area of Scotland and they're literally all shaved heads, robes. And David was there and he knew what the premise was, but obviously some part of him was like, this is a little Weird. Is this a sting? So I had some questions on a piece of paper and he grabbed the paper and said, no, you've come to see me. This is my segment. Wait, wait, wait, wait. This is my film. This is my film. You've come to see me.

[Andrew]

Wow.

[Louis Theroux]

And it was kind of like he was bullying me.

[Andrew]

Yes. It didn't serve the intended therapeutic purpose.

[Louis Theroux]

No, well, but it served a televisual purpose.

[Andrew]

But it was a bit of a re.

[Louis Theroux]

Traumatizing experience for you, Kind of like. I guess it was, yeah. For a moment I was a little fearful.

[Andrew]

Well, thanks so much for coming and making the time. You're a big inspiration. It's been kind of crazy to film stuff like around the late 2010s and up to now and then kind of see your coverage of the same events, oftentimes the same people around the turn of the millennium. And it's really helped thread the sands of time.

[Louis Theroux]

Yes.

[Andrew]

Like at the UFO Mega Conference in Laughlin, Nevada. You know, I talked to Bob a lot.

[Louis Theroux]

Did you?

[Andrew]

Yeah. Bob Short, Bob Brown, and Bob Brown's daughter Barbara.

[Louis Theroux]

Oh, okay. I don't think I met them. Don't.

[Andrew]

Bob's same vibe, really. Ponytail, a lot of ponytails, similar vibe, a lot of bolo ties with saucers on them.

[Louis Theroux]

That was definitely Reverend Bob Short's energy. Bolo tie. Old man balding. First time I met him, I should say for the people. He was a UFO contactee, I guess, but of a previous, like you, we think of the Whitley Strieber 70s communion, Close Encounters 70s ethos. Right. That whole almond eyed, kind of a post apocalyptic projection of what humans would evolve into. That seemed to be the template for what aliens might be. Hyper intelligent, quasi angelic. But previous to that, in the 50s, there'd been a wave of contactees and this was before we'd been to the moon. So the astronomy or the understanding of the physical universe was evidently a little different because their aliens were coming from Venus. And Reverend Short in the 60s was part of this wave of guys who'd been contacted and it was slightly new age and he claimed that one of them on a planet called Coldus, his name was caught on, spoke through him. This is central control. This is central control.

[Andrew]

What percentage of those people, I know you probably can't ballpark the exact fraction do you think are true believers versus just sort of like profit driven, control freak hucksters trying to make money and influence others?

[Louis Theroux]

You know, that's a really interesting question. Question. And if I've discovered anything, is that that binary doesn't really exist. It's more of a spectrum. In general, I'd say the profit is less than you might think. Like the idea of it being a monetary thing. People don't go up to Idaho and join a militia to make money. They do it because usually they've lost all their money and had a crisis moment and they believe the conspiracy theories. The UFO world is slightly different because it's, it often demands less commitment. So the, the barrier to entry is pretty low. You know, it doesn't really. You just sort of, you could be a fantasist, which makes it challenging as a story because you can just be like you're just getting in a room telling fantastical stories and in the end it doesn't really hurt anyone. Does it really matter? And with Reverend Short, it was a little of both. I think he was in recovery for alcohol. I remember being struck though, because one of the things I did was having weird weekends and some others. And then having got burned out on tv, I decided to go back and meet them again. Like there was a part of it that I thought, I don't know if I, you know, I was part of this sort of the process of TV making, which doesn't always get you to the truth because you're in some ways trying to create a journey and a moment and a TV show. You know, it's not a pure, very pure, perfectly pure endeavor. So I thought if I go back without cameras, maybe I'll figure out like I just felt like I hadn't figured it out. It was the premise for a book called the Call of the Weird. It was kind of a completely misjudged project because really I thought there would be a lot more depth there and in some case there really wasn't. And with Reverend Short in particular, it was like, why do you. I just thought, how would you go around thinking that I'm a space channel and I can see the future? That was part of his belief system. And actually I've got quasi, almost messianic powers, right? This all knowing alien deity is speaking through me. I could, you know, the whole world, like that would be like a psychosis. And I said to him, I just found the whole psychology of it very strange. And I remember, so having gone back like five years on, maybe more, traveled to Las Vegas, then down to, I think it was cotton, Cottonwood, Arizona, outside Sedona, remote area. And I went to see him. I was, I'm figuring this thing out. And I went on a drive and I said, so what you Know what's it all about, Reverend Shaw? Like, it must be so strange. Like, do you ever think I'm crazy? Do you ever think, you know, that this isn't real? Like this can't possibly be real. And he goes like, no, no, no, no, no, that. Because then you're assailing, then you're assailing yourself with doubts. You can't do that. You can't ever do that. And I was like, oh shit. Like he just isn't that interested in whether it's true or not. And that interiority of like, oh, it's good, you know, you're a con artist or you are speaking truthfully. Some people just aren't that interested. Like that duality doesn't. Just doesn't figure in their thinking.

[Andrew]

What struck me about those environments is just like the affir quality of the environment. It's the most affirmative place you can ever be. No matter what your experience is, no matter what you have. If you've claimed to have been abducted by an alien, anything that you can think of. If you think your dreams are prophesizing an apocalypse, people will believe you and take you seriously. And in the world everything is so practical. And everyone's always calling each other full of shit and trying to figure out the truth and objective science behind what people are saying. And it's a comforting environment for those who have a tinge of delusion and self importance.

[Louis Theroux]

Yes. What's that thing where people, they dress in like, as, like in Japanese cosplay. There's a cosplay element to it. I know there's cosplay conventions where you're just going to be endorsed in whatever identity you take on. Which makes it kind of funny when someone really whacked out turns up because there is still judgment but they have to sort of tiptoe around it a bit. Like. So with Reverend Short I got the feeling from other channels. The famous one was a woman in Montana, I think who channeled a 10,000 year old caveman. Do you remember that one? In the 90s, I think. And Elizabeth Claire Prophet, I think she channeled. It was this idea of like I go into a trance and you know, it starts speaking through you. So there was a woman in Sedona who channeled a guy called like an 18th century doctor, he was called Charles Peebles. And she came quite highly recommended I think because she did a good voice. Like a lot of it seems to be the quality of the voice. Oh no, she did this sort of fake British like 18th century voice. Like tis true the D'. Appony. And they'd be like, I'm just starting a. The way it's observed is that you sit in a hall and the channel will be at the front of the room. And it's like sacramental or religious experience. And then people turn up with their questions. I'm starting a new business that's a yoga and we're just opening it in a couple of weeks. But we're real worried because we haven't got a lot of signups. Do you have any advice? Sign ups are not where doth lead, but the eye of the dolphin shall awaken. And so they speak in this code and oh, it's called the dolphin yoga facility. So the eye of the dolphin is awakening. Means that it's going to be successful, I think. So they take away whatever meaning they need, which I mean I like theater, I like improv performance. Like it ticks all of those boxes. I remember after going out for lunch with the woman who channeled Charles Peebles and a couple of other people and I said like, do you know Reverend Short? Like he's also channeling. He's channeling a space alien called Corton on the planet Coldust. Do you know about him? And it was a bit like, oh yeah, I think some of his communications have a little interference. You know, it's like this very implied thing of like, yeah, he's kind of full of shit.

[Andrew]

So you think even in the channeling community, which some people would all see as absurd and possibly lying, there is posers and so called true believers.

[Louis Theroux]

There's a sense of needing to police the authenticity, but which is difficult because how do you police the authenticity of something that's basically is all being pulled out of your head?

[Andrew]

Well, the reason that people lie so intensely in those worlds is because you can acquire some real social capital by telling the biggest fib. I remember I was at a Bigfoot hunting event one time and you had this guy named Abe Del Rio who had been hunting for the Sasquatch for like 30 years and he had never had what's called a class A, which is a direct sighting. He had a bunch of Class Cs. He had these tree knock audio tapes.

[Louis Theroux]

What a Class C?

[Andrew]

A Class C is when you kind of like feel Bigfoot around. Like for example, you might feel like the hairs on the back of your neck raise and you get the sensation that someone is chasing you.

[Louis Theroux]

Right.

[Andrew]

A class B is when you hear a wood knock or a wolf whistle or something like that. A class A is when you lay eyes on the Sasquatch. And it's known in the Sasquatch subculture like nobody's had a class A. I mean, some people have had like, a. Because Sasquatch probably doesn't exist in the form that they believe. That's just my personal opinion. I don't want to inject too much of my own bias into this, but pretty much no one's had a Class A. Yeah. And those who have had class as have been on their deathbed admitted, like, okay, that was fake. That was my buddy in a Bigfoot suit. Yeah. The famous picture of Bigfoot.

[Louis Theroux]

Well, the Patterson footage, which is like the Zapruder film of Bigfoot ology, right. Is the one where he's walking to the woods and then he turns around to the camera. Do you remember? Does he give a little wave?

[Andrew]

Someone involved in that footage had a deathbed confession where they were, like, about to die, and their daughter was like, is there anything else you want to say? And he's like, yeah, the Bigfoot footage was bullshit.

[Louis Theroux]

Really.

[Andrew]

So Abe Del Rio's out there with these new young recruits who are fresh, green, young Bigfoot hunters. And this guy Dyl, it was his first Bigfoot hunt, right? He's, I gotta go take a piss. Like, he runs off to pee in the woods and he comes back and he's like, I just had a class A. I just saw him and everybody just turned on him. And they were like, no, you didn't. They're like, we have been, you know, we have been looking for Bigfoot our whole life. And you just come in trying to seem like you're some hotshot. You didn't have a class A. And he wasn't invited back to any of the future expeditions.

[Louis Theroux]

And maybe he did have a class A.

[Andrew]

The world will never know.

[Louis Theroux]

Did you hear that? I nearly did. Cryptozoology. Those stories that rely so heavily on faith. And like I say, like my early on my barometer, because I was looking first of all at segments at TV Nation, but then later on, I was trying to do 50 minutes of TV for weird weekends, and I realized, like, you can't just be going around kind of meeting one loon after another. It's going to get very old and it'll seem cheap and it might be funny for a bit, but after a while, I mean, there's ones that verged on it. Like the UFO one kind of verged on it. Yeah, but you saw, I sort of needed that little bit of, well, stakes. You just needed some sense. What are the stakes here? Like is, have they upended their life? Have they risked, like, to go into the porn world? Have they risked the embarrassment of their family or the exposure that you get from, you know, the self exposure from using your, you know, your sex life as your. As your money making instrument, if you like. You know, across the board, many times people came like, why don't you, you know, have you ever been to canandaiga?

[Andrew]

No, I've only been to Talladega.

[Louis Theroux]

Show me your butthole. Sounds similar. Very different. Do you know about canandaiga? No. As I recall. And you need to not need to check this. It was a town in upstate New York that was completely made up of spirit mediums. And they would get round like, I'm feeling something, like in the conjuring or something like that, and it felt. It felt irresistible. Oh, wow, there's a whole town and they're talking to the dead. But then you're like, it's just guys sitting in a circle making things up with no accountability unless they're claiming to cure cancer. Right? And then you've got a. So I don't mean to sound really crass and.

[Andrew]

No, it's okay. It's an unregulated platform, you know, but

[Louis Theroux]

it's the idea of if the state, you know, if healers are pretending to cure cancer, then you're like, that's pretty messed up. And that's people. That is high stakes because you are taking money and then the people are dying. But. But for the most part, I've stayed away from those kinds of stories and, you know, crypto, same thing.

[Andrew]

Two years ago, I officially committed to stopping all my cryptozoology coverage.

[Louis Theroux]

Had you done quite a bit?

[Andrew]

I had done a bit. And I always kind of. I felt like Richard Dawkins at the Vatican every time I would go to a crypto conference.

[Louis Theroux]

You know what I mean?

[Andrew]

Because people knew that I didn't believe in Bigfoot because I had made a couple satirical videos about crypto's zoological phenomenon. And they kind of just saw me and I was just like this big science buster, like anecdote buster. And then I went to one conference in Pennsylvania, and there was this guy name Stacy who kind of bombed this Q and A by saying, like, you guys say you've seen Bigfoot. Well, I actually live with. With Bigfoot. And I'm, you know, I'm seeing a Bigfoot woman named Pearl or Peach or something. So we said, okay, can we go to your compound in Ohio and visit your Bigfoot girlfriend? And we visited, and he Just gave us the run around. Every time we would, you know, turn our backs, he'd say, you just missed her. Her name was Flower, actually.

[Louis Theroux]

Hey, Flower, you got any friends out here?

[Andrew]

Hey, Flowers.

[Louis Theroux]

Anybody out here?

[Andrew]

It just got to the point where I'm like, I'm not really documenting anything of journalistic value here. It's more just like a mosaic of people's delusions. So I stayed away from it. But anyways, back to the channeler subculture. Have you ever encountered Daryl Onkka, AKA Bashar?

[Louis Theroux]

I don't think so.

[Andrew]

He right now is the most popping channeler and he says the alien will return to Sedona next summer and you can buy a ticket to his conferen for $1,700.

[Louis Theroux]

Wow.

[Andrew]

We got kicked out last time because I guess he thinks I'm not a true believer. But there's this notion of like, if you don't have faith, you know, anything that you're not seeing is because of your lack of belief.

[Louis Theroux]

That's the kind of sort of the Uri Geller maneuver as well. You'll know him, the like the spoon bending Israeli psychic who in the. He was huge in the 70s. Like there was Gela mania. Like he claimed, like he'd get a spoon and then look, if you just love it and look at it and just very gently. And look, now it's bend. It's bending. Do you see that? Do you see that? Can you get that on the camera? And believe it or not, like that, which is, in my opinion, a conjuring trick. Just was like wildfire. Along with the Bermuda Triangle, Cassius Clay, Evel Knievel. It was like one of those pop cultural viral moments. And then the Amazing Randy the magician turned science debunker, or rather like debunker

[Andrew]

of the paranormal, because you're the Amazing Randy. A big beard, you expose people that bend spoons.

[Louis Theroux]

Oh, I'm not bending spoons. Jackass did a whole book called the Truth About Uri Geller. The Geller moon over was like, it's too much. No, I'm not feeling it. Randy's point is like, actually that for a lot of people that contributed to his mystique because he's like, oh my God. Well, if he was a faker, wouldn't he be able to fake it all the time? And sometimes he's just not feeling it. Notice my true believer is an American.

[Andrew]

Sounds about right.

[Louis Theroux]

So Randy's thing was he had a number of things that people wanted to root for Geller, but no one's interested even, like, if. Even I. When you mentioned the thing about I had a. This girl and she said her boyfriend was Bigfoot, I was thinking, like, I'd be excited to go and meet, like, go to that house. You know what I mean? Like, because you think, like, of course it's not true, but a little part of you is like a kid thinking, but what if there is, you know, there's something and. Or just the performance, the role. I just enjoy the role play.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Louis Theroux]

Is he here now?

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Louis Theroux]

You know what I mean?

[Andrew]

So you like it for, like, the campy theatrical aspect.

[Louis Theroux]

There's a performance. It's why I like any of those codified, rest, you know, performative forms like gangster rap or wrestling or the porn industry or even the world of the brothel or where you take on roles. And it's like, are we doing it now? Like, have we started? Like, can I do this? Like, what are the rules? Like, you know, and I just enjoy. I mean, I don't know if it's the silliness of it or just the strange sense of self impersonation that you

[Andrew]

get aesthetically and journalistically. What is your favorite brothel in Nevada?

[Louis Theroux]

Well, I haven't been to that many. I think I went to about four, maybe three in the course of making Louis and the brothel, and that was in 2003. It was then called the Wild Horse Resort and Spa, and now it's rebranded as the Mustang Ranch.

[Andrew]

I feel like the pioneer spirit of the lawless west is, like, most alive in those towns between Reno and Salt Lake City, Elko and Winnemucca.

[Louis Theroux]

You know, I have been to Winnemucca, and I've been to Elko. There's two or three in Winnemucca. I think they're. They're downtown.

[Andrew]

That's why I say it's like Main

[Louis Theroux]

street, which is very unusual.

[Andrew]

I went to a cow auction where there was no actual cows, but there's pictures of cows there. And there was, like, a bunch of guys in rancher hats, like, knocking each other over, bidding on these cows. And there was a brothel next door, and it was full of the cow, the cowmen. It really felt like I was, like, transported back in time.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

To the free frontier.

[Louis Theroux]

It's very cool.

[Andrew]

I am worried that some people in the US Might not be familiar with your whole catalog, so I'm gonna ask you the most annoying question known to man, which is, who are you? Who is Louis Theroux?

[Louis Theroux]

Good question. I'm a documentary maker. I kind of like. You were saying before, like, in a way, covering story, but pre Internet, pre Andrew Callahan, pre YouTube, I was doing similar stories, but on TV. First of all, as part of Michael Moore's TV Nation. And then later on in my own series, starting with Weird Weekends and then a bunch of specials. And the idea is try and get involved. And that I was also. I mean, I wasn't intentionally awkward, but I was accidentally quite awkward. And also, I think I was a beneficiary having. Of having been picked up by Michael Moore. I've been working magazines, and then Michael hired me on the basis of no experience and no real aptitude. I mean, he kind of taught me that time everything I knew for sure. Like the. The idea of, like, oh, we just film everything, which now is common because, you know, digital media is cheap. But back then it was still half hour Sony video cassettes that you filmed on. So the idea of you just arrive and you film. You film the moment you arrive and say hello. The first couple I did was about millennial groups that think the world is about to end. The second one was about the Ku Klux Klan attempting to rebrand itself as a civil rights group for white people.

[Andrew]

They failed.

[Louis Theroux]

Well, they did then. They're kind of more successful now. They dropped Ku Klux Klan and then became digital influencers. And so you film everything. You film all. And the comedy isn't like, oh, I'm gonna say something hilarious. It's just the weird process of negotiation, social negotiation that goes on of. Of, oh, can we go over here now? Don't. I don't want you filming over there. I remember we was on NBC, the show, right? And Michael thought, okay, this guy's pretty funny. I was vouched for by a couple of his writers. I've been working on a magazine in New York. That was why I had some track record of print journalism. And my friends were like, you know, yeah, Louis kind of funny. And it's gonna be on the BBC. So Michael, he'd be a good hire for you, and you can just send him off. And I did the interview. Michael sent me off to do the first segment. It was about, like I said, millennial groups. I thought it was amazing. Others disagreed. Like, we edited it. And some people were like, yeah, this is great. But then I remember the NBC commissioner came along, and he was like, this is. I didn't hear. I only heard it by anecdote. But evidently they saw that segment and, like, this is fucking shit.

[Andrew]

Really?

[Louis Theroux]

Who's this British guy? Yeah, who's this fucking British asshole? They didn't say that, but that was the vibe. But luckily, based on the. The buzz in the office, like from Michael and the team, like, no, no, Louie's great. They'd already sent me to do the Ku Klux Klan one. So in the Klan one, I'm interviewing these guys. One's called Michael. No, in Texas. He goes, yeah, come on in. And he made this mistake of. He's like, we're not, we don't, we don't discriminate. And we just. I said, so you just like white people a bit more? Yes, sir. We don't hate anybody. That's wrong. We just love white people. But he left various bits of, like, merchandise and accoutrements, paraphernalia lying out. And one of them was like, cook, like discriminating shopper. And I was like, well, why does it say you say you don't discriminate? No, sir, we do not discriminate. But why does it say for the discriminating shopper and discriminating is in red for the discriminating individual? The shop is catchy. Yeah, but that doesn't. Is that because you discriminate? No, we do not discriminate. No, sir. It's not. It's not a pun there. No, a slight one. A little one. That is one of our T shirts designed. Oh, that's just something they did. Just could look like that. So then we go into another spit and he's got these clan figurines giving Nazi salutes. We don't believe in Nazis. No, sir. But why is he doing like a Nazi salute? That's not a Nazi salute. So that's a rack arm. This is one of the clan figurines that we sell. Why is he sticking his arm in the air like that? It is a salute.

[Andrew]

You know, a lot of times the media will.

[Louis Theroux]

They'll think that it's a Nazi salute. It does. It looks a little bit like a Nazi salute. Yes, but it is a right hand salute. He said sir all the time. That was one of my first exposures to Southern politeness, being almost like a distancing strategy a bit. I'm going to be so polite, it's going to be actually unfriendly. No, sir, that's a Roman right armed salute, sir. That's nothing to do with Nazis. I go, but why is he doing it with his left arm? Oh, they made them wrong. They made them wrong. And then we laughed because it was so awkward. My point is just that it was the strangeness of those tiny moments of awkward social interaction that Made it funny. And that led me to getting hired.

[Andrew]

People don't know this, but I actually developed one of my interview techniques from watching you, which you don't say this is your thing, but I've called it on many occasions the toddler nod. You know, sometimes when the kid's listening to you, but they don't know what to say, they'll go like this. So you're giving people just enough to keep going, but not being so affirmational where they think that you're kind of pulling a fast one on them. And within that silence, they occupy it, and they give you the best quote that you're looking for because you've given them the space to talk. Was that always something that you had developed, or was. Was there a particular moment where you're like, okay, this really works?

[Louis Theroux]

I didn't consciously develop that. I. I do know that I was so anxious and insecure when I got hired, you know, as a network TV correspondent on, you know, on NBC, 23 years old. I just. My main reaction when I got the call from Michael's producer saying, like, we want you to jump on a plane, like, this afternoon and go out to Oakland and interview Harold Camping. He was the first one who thinks the world's ending later this year. I remember thinking, like, oh, fuck now. Like, I was terrified. Yeah. And. And I just thought, I can't do this. Like, I don't know how to make tv. I don't know how to do an interview in a live setting. Like, I'm going to forget my questions. There'll be a bunch of people, like, actual professional camera guy, sound person, producer, assistant producer all around me, and it's going to be an absolute nightmare. And I was kind of afraid of being exposed. Like, I didn't feel like I knew these guys were barking up the wrong tree. Like. Like, ideologically, I'm obviously not religious. I don't think the world's about to end in October. But I also didn't think, like, I was able to mount a rope, particularly robust, defensive, like, rational values or whatever. I just so badly wanted it to go okay and for the contributors to like me. So mainly, I think I was acting out of fear and that the contributors in turn. Contributors, just the term for, like, the people I was interviewing. Right. Would open up and then almost felt a bit sorry for me, I think, because they're kind of nervous as well. Yeah. And they're like, oh, this British dipshit doesn't have a clue. Right.

[Andrew]

So that nod was coming from genuine terror and anxiety.

[Louis Theroux]

The nod was coming from maybe, like, I don't know what to say. Or possibly I'm just allowing the moment to settle because what I wasn't interested in was what I had to say about anything. And I didn't think my questions were particularly powerful or amusing. Our interviews were so long. Like, we would do, like, two, three, four hours. So they might have just found the bits that were resonant.

[Andrew]

It could be a matter of having, like, a healthy ego, too. Like, you know, not thinking that your personal anecdote needs to be imposed on some random person and being willing to learn. Like, when I first started, I wanted to learn about other people and have the platforms be, like, a way. The show to be a way for the public to understand new people. Not for me to show how much I know about them or to show them how much I know about random shit they don't even care about, for sure. So I'm curious, like, have you ever read a book called the Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm? And it's such a great book. I don't know what you think about

[Louis Theroux]

it, but it's an amazing. But we've mentioned that a few times on my own podcast. It's one of those ones where. Yeah. You come back to it. Well, you should talk about what it is.

[Andrew]

Well, it kind of just explains a relationship between a journalist and a convicted murderer. And throughout the process of, I guess, getting source material and interviews with the murderer, the journalist befriends the murderer.

[Louis Theroux]

Specifically Joe McGinnis, who wrote Fatal Vision. A very, very long and actually kind of amazing. If you've read that account of Geoffrey McDonald being convicted of the murder of his family. Yeah, his three children, I think, and wife. Or maybe his two children and wife who was pregnant at the time. In the course of being recruited by the McDonald team, Joe McGuinness starts to think. Actually, I think they think he's going to write a sympathetic account from the point of view of the defense. And then Joe McGuinness decides, actually, I think this guy probably did do it, and then writes the book from that point of view. So it's kind of the ultimate case of what's viewed as a sort of journalist seduce and betray journalism.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Because then the murder is suing the journalist for operating under false pretenses, saying, oh, you were too affirmational with me. You were too agreeable. You manipulated me into telling my side of the story, not knowing that, you know, you would use my words against me in what's called the Post production process. And I've dealt with this so many times. So I was wondering, when it comes to you holding space for your interviewees, where do you navigate that, that space between active listening and deception, especially when you're interviewing someone that you fundamentally do disagree with or don't take seriously.

[Louis Theroux]

Just one thing on that quickly. Jeffrey McDonald, I think is still alive and still in prison. And there are people who think he didn't do it. And Errol Morris, the documentary maker, I think, did a whole documentary showing how, and it wrote a book too, that Jeffrey McDonald probably didn't do it. It's maybe not as awkward as you might think it would be. Like most of the time, especially as I go on, because I have a track record of making programs. People know what they're in for when I make a film with them. And also specifically, I think it's slightly less of an issue in tv, certainly the kind of TV I make versus a book. In a book. So much of what you have to do is kind of be the camera for your reading audience. You have to. Everything has to be characterized by, you know, whether it's, you know, just words like adjectives and scene setting. I use minimal voiceover in my programs. I try to let the scenes speak for themselves. And most of the time when people see themselves speaking on camera, they're like, yeah, yeah, I did say that. And actually, if you're talking about, like, I did a whole program about neo Nazis. It was called Louis and the Nazis in 2003. And they don't think I'm a Nazi, right. They're just grateful for a kind of mainstream TV program to be covering them. Actually, I think they accept that the price of admission is for me to be saying I was about to go and spend time with, you know, some of the most hateful and reviled people in, you know, in America. Like, they're not like, yeah, they'd be like, yep, that's fair.

[Andrew]

So there's a value exchange in their head where they're like, I know this guy disagrees with me, but his platform is so large that I'm willing to kind of take the piss as long as I can get out there.

[Louis Theroux]

I assume that's what's in their heads.

[Andrew]

That's also what's enabling so many, many hood vlogs to be captured in the US When I first started filming in different, I guess what you call low income majority black areas in the us There were a couple people doing it like within the communities themselves. You had a guy named Zack, TV who was killed for doing this in Chicago around the birth of the drill movement. But you didn't have what you have today, which is a budding industry of content creators going to every hood in America and producing more or less the same thing. Poverty porn with a fake sort of, did you ever want to be an astronaut thing. They ask grown men, when they ask who are holding guns about lost potential and cultural issues in the community or what, whatever. There's a value exchange there, too, where they're like, I'm going to let people film my hood because I know that content means money and I want money, so I'm going to allow access.

[Louis Theroux]

Are the vloggers from the area or not? Not.

[Andrew]

But I mean, there. That's.

[Louis Theroux]

Now how is the interviewee going to monetize the encounter?

[Andrew]

Through asking to be tagged, through the sort of figuring out how to just even be.

[Louis Theroux]

They've all got a social media.

[Andrew]

Everyone's got a social media platform. And now we're in this different era where. Where journalistic access is now at its maximum because of. Everyone's a content creator, but it's sort of forcing the interviewer to be collaborative with the contributor.

[Louis Theroux]

That's right.

[Andrew]

But for you, you mentioned that the existence of fair reporting made it easier for you to get access. Do you feel like you had to deal with what's called the Borat problem early on in your career?

[Louis Theroux]

And for clarification, is that like a physics problem? Is that like the Fermat theorem?

[Andrew]

Yeah, it's pretty much like that. And I had an executive producer who worked the first Borat movie explain kind of what that problem was.

[Louis Theroux]

Was it Larry Charles?

[Andrew]

It was Jonah Hill, but whenever he was he.

[Louis Theroux]

I didn't know he was a producer.

[Andrew]

One of the Borat. One of his first jobs was like an assistant producer for the first Borat movie. And he talks about how they wanted to make Borat 2 right after. Because it was so successful, of course, but because the character had become so famous and associated with, like, mockery and like, like I said, taking the piss, as they say out here, they couldn't make Borat 2 for decades because they would try to film and people would either play up the character too much, you know what I mean? Like, my, this is my wife. Or they'd be like, no, this guy's here to troll us. Let's not talk to him.

[Louis Theroux]

And they even filmed because Borat came after the Ali G. I think it was Ali G. Or maybe Borat trialed as a character on the HBO show. Do you Remember that? Yeah.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Louis Theroux]

So they could only do Borat in areas that didn't have premium cable. Did you know that?

[Andrew]

No, I didn't.

[Louis Theroux]

So the areas that they filmed Borat the movie in were ones that hadn't been served by HBO because. So they. Because they were, like. They hadn't been exposed to the character, so they couldn't make Borat, too. So your question is like, did I have a Borat problem?

[Andrew]

Did you kind of. Cause you started off not, like, as a prankster, but your work has gradually gotten more serious.

[Louis Theroux]

But there was definitely people who might have felt the tone was not entirely serious or I had a sort of agenda.

[Andrew]

And so the question is, was that pivot toward more serious coverage a precaution that you took because you didn't want your access to be limited in the future, or did you just kind of naturally.

[Louis Theroux]

It was a natural growth. And I think after a while, it was really simple in one way. There was kind of a fork in the road. It was around 2002-4, where I was running out of subjects. And it had been. I used to call it the tripod. That there were three legs that made a good subject for me. And one was participation, and one was a sense, you know, my participation in. I could get involved. One was the idea of it having stakes. Like, it was some emotional angst that it entailed. It wasn't trivial. And the third one was that it was fun, funny. And basically I was like, maybe we forget about the funny. Because I'd much rather be doing stories that feel interesting. Chasing funny gets old quite quick. And I did a couple, probably the less successful episodes of Weird Weekends. They're still funny, but they're the ones where you're like, yeah, but that's just kind of goofing on something that's not that weird. Like the Off Broadway episode, which I could tell the idea might not be the strongest if it demanded me to get more involved. Like, my participation had to be ramped up. Another one was Home Shopping Network, where the climax is me trying to sell a paper shredder on live tv, which it's kind of amusing, but it's not wildly interesting to my mind. So it's like, well, what about if they're not that funny? And we kind of inch towards it with the brothel one. The Neo Nazis, and. And then we kind of went more into the funny with. I got plastic surgery for one. Again, the climax was me getting liposuction and interviewing the surgeon as he pumped the fat out of my abdomen. And it's kind of funny, but in the end, it's like, it's a little bit too normal. I hate to use that word, but it's a little bit too normal. And then we did one about a prison. Like, there's not that much, on the face of it that's funny about San Quentin prison, But we got access there for basically two weeks. It's just like, I don't really care if it's not that funny. I just think it'll be really amazing.

[Andrew]

I thought that was a pretty funny scene when you, like, approached all those Aryan Brotherhood dudes on the yard, and you were like, which one of you guys is in charge here? And they were like, I don't know. White power all. And you were like. You were like, yo, but would you tell me if you knew who was in charge? They're like, no, White power. We're white guys.

[Louis Theroux]

Huh? They weird. They make a weird noise.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Louis Theroux]

What's that noise? I don't even know. 707. And then they had an area code as well. They go, 700?

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Louis Theroux]

They kept doing an area code, remember, 713. And then they go, well, which gang are you in? Like, Barbarian Brotherhood. Which I was like, oh, they must be bad. I Googled, and they're not saying Aryan Brotherhood, right? Because I did double check. Aryan brotherhood is a legit cross. Many prisons, one of the most feared gangs, certainly in the U.S. barbarian Brotherhood. It's kind of like temu. Aryan Brotherhood.

[Andrew]

I didn't know. Yeah, I thought they were saying, could

[Louis Theroux]

get me in trouble.

[Andrew]

No, I don't think you're gonna end up in San Quentin. So you'd be okay?

[Louis Theroux]

No, I hope so. But then Tomlin got out, but, yeah, I think they kind of. It was all like, farm league, Aryan Brother. Any of you in Aryan Brothers? No. Maybe one day. I love that they recruit me.

[Andrew]

A lot of those guys are from Cocoa county, which is like Antioch Conquer.

[Louis Theroux]

Is Cocoa short for something?

[Andrew]

Yeah. I just don't know what it is. Riverside County. Cocoa County. Like, I feel like that's where a lot of those type of dudes come from. Would you rather be in San Quentin or the Miami mega Jail?

[Louis Theroux]

San Quentin.

[Andrew]

How come? Just because you get to go outside.

[Louis Theroux]

Well, it depends which bit of mega jail. Because actually, there's areas of Miami mega jail that are much less bad. We looked at main jail, where they put the hard nuts, like the real ingrained cases. You know the thing about distancing where you're like, how long have you been in here? I've been in here three years. Like three years. Like, but you're not convicted. No, I'm awaiting trial. Like, well, why you? Why? And you think like your civil rights, like, whatever, that's not right. Justice delayed is justice denied. Then it turns out, no, they want to be in there because they've got murder charges and the longer they wait, the more unreliable the witnesses are or even the possibility of some of the witnesses dying. So it's called distancing from the crime. So they're in there because they want a distance. So those guys are pretty serious. And I don't even think they'd put me in there with them even if I committed a serious murder. Maybe they would. Whereas other areas of Miami jail were not as bad. San Quentin, I mean, it kind of looks amazing. I joke that it's like Hogwarts for crime. It has, it has a sort of Harry Potterish even down to like Hufflepuff. What are the other ones like? Hufflepuff, Gryffindor.

[Andrew]

Slytherin.

[Louis Theroux]

Gryffindor. Gryffindor is like the Harry's one. So that would be like, oh, I was dealing meth or DUI or whatever. But then Slytherin is like the sex offenders, you know, or the gang dropouts.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it's even worse.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And then Azkaban would be Alcatraz.

[Louis Theroux]

Right? Good point. It's decommissioned. Is that the.

[Andrew]

For now.

[Louis Theroux]

But your question was about. So, yes, there's still humor there. It's not like, oh, and what you realize is, oh, it doesn't have to be funny on the face of it. Like the comedy. There will be humor that arises from the weirdness of just seeing me in that world. Like I've done stories about, you know, because if there was a progression to do. Let's see how, let's see how unfunny we can get. I did one about a maximum security mental hospital for sexually violent predators called Koalinga in the Central Valley. Like there was 800 people there, 600 of them had more than one index offense involving crimes against children. So like absolutely, like even beyond Epstein in terms of like what they'd actually done. Not scale obviously, or connection to VIPs, but. So these guys are like, what did you do? Well, I was babysitting a two year old and I guess one thing led to another.

[Andrew]

I was babysitting at the time and I was under the influence at the

[Louis Theroux]

time and, and

[Andrew]

some touching was involved. Yeah, you can't exactly look at the camera like Jim from the office after that?

[Louis Theroux]

No, but you're like, but there's a part of you. So that's obviously horrific. But then there's a whole scene where because it's a hospital, they're not allowed to be imprisoned. Sorry, they're not? Well, that's correct. Technically, they've been civilly committed for an extended period. It could be forever. They're technically for their own own health. They're patients. You couldn't call them inmates or anything. You couldn't even call them patients. Patience was considered slightly degrading. So you had to call them residents or individuals and you had to address them as mister. So Mr. Callahan, if you were in there. Mr. Callahan's here. He's been here for 10 years. We hope to be getting him out. He's doing really well. On the phase program. There was a program like a 12 step derived phase program, but I mention it because they are playing in jazz combos. They had like koalinga iron doing talent shows. And while we were filming, they were celebrating Halloween and they all stood around singing the theme song from the Addams Family. And there is a very dark comic dimension to that.

[Andrew]

Yeah, certainly.

[Louis Theroux]

So.

[Andrew]

So even though, like, it wasn't funny in the sense of the previous work, there's definitely a dark element.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah. It's not like broad physical comment.

[Andrew]

Convicted pedophile Adams family cover band.

[Louis Theroux]

Yes.

[Andrew]

Yeah. I got contacted recently by a non offending pedophiles group who are like moving onto an island so they can stay away from K. And they invited me to hang out with them. And I just, off principle, given the Epstein moment, had to not respond. Really? Yeah. I was like, well, you know, I just. First of all, it sounds like a bad time, but journalistically stimulating.

[Louis Theroux]

It's interesting. Like, getting out of your comfort zone is obviously part of what works. Yeah. You don't want to see someone too comfortable. Like, why would I want to watch that? Like, there's got to be some conflict, like some feeling of like a collision of worldviews and values. Right. You know, you can see someone on a porn and it's kind of weird and interesting. But then if you see a kind of googly, geeky, like British guy, like, looking on as the guy struggling to get wood, there's something about that dissonance that creates an interesting flavor. Right.

[Andrew]

You're talking about jj.

[Louis Theroux]

Well, that's one year in that case. I was talking about jj. Just because you had a hard time

[Andrew]

in the military, that doesn't mean you

[Louis Theroux]

should just say, well, porno is the

[Andrew]

only thing for me, I finally found somewhere where I like being.

[Louis Theroux]

And in the case of. Of, like, pedophile, non offending paedophiles, I think it's very high risk because, I mean, I was aware of it at Koalinga. Like, I gotta really manage my tone. Like, I need to project the necessary sense of distance and disapproval.

[Andrew]

Is there a general moral line where you feel like it's your responsibility to the audience and the interviewee to disclose your opinion about a certain matter?

[Louis Theroux]

Yes and no. Like, I think maybe the main thing I'm thinking of is actually for the program to work, you need to make it clear where you stand beforehand or on camera. On camera. So there's quite a few moments in the film where I say, like, you know, you do realize what you did is the most horrific thing. Yeah. People can really conceive of. And there's many people who would want

[Andrew]

to see you killed.

[Louis Theroux]

I think that's the opening. That's the cold open.

[Andrew]

Yeah. It's appropriate for the context and you

[Louis Theroux]

sort of need to go there a few times just so the viewers can relax and be like, okay, I'm in safe hands with this presenter. I did another one about pedophiles living in special accommodation in south la. It was called among the Sex Offenders. Did you ever see that one?

[Andrew]

I saw clips of it on YouTube.

[Louis Theroux]

Full disclosure. There was a character we shot with who did some horrific. And it didn't make the cut because it was just. It was just too heavy.

[Andrew]

Are there any other notable subjects that you have removed from the cutting board and haven't published their interview because you felt like you didn't even want to give them a large platform?

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah, yeah, but it's usually. It wouldn't be like. I think it's possible that it's not about. Necessarily about the morality. Maybe that's obvious. Like in San Quentin, we talked to a guy who's like, oh, he was called David Silva. He talked about being on a spree of breaking and entering and tying people up and torturing them and burning them. And you can see even in his face, he seems. I mean, this might be a subjective judgment, but he seems quite pleased with himself. I go, like, did anyone die? He goes, nobody died, but a lot of people wish they did, dad. And you're like, wow. Like, are you getting a thrill? I don't know. That might be wrong. But that was the sense, Slight sense I got. So it's not about like, oh, someone could be a sadist and do a bunch of horrific things, but you could Include it. I think part of it is that you need to feel some level. And it's going to sound weird, but some level of chemistry or just some sort of sense of like, oh, I. There's something about this guy I feel intrigued by. Like, if it's just flat, affecting, it just feels dark. I don't want to. You know, there has to be almost like a little bit of charisma there. That's a weird way of putting it. But the question about platform, or if they are attempting to broadcast some disinformation, misinformation, again, it just needs to feel like the level of accountability is there. Like I need to be doing more of a job to hold them to account. And that also varies with how powerful they are. Like Reverend Robert Short is saying he's channeling a space alien from the planet Coldust. That is factually incorrect, I would argue. Nevertheless, we gave him a platform to broadcast that disinformation because it was so evident and because no one is going to. I mean, one or two people might have seen that and be like, that guy, he knows his shit. I'm going to go out there and pay him some money. But most, you know, tens of millions would not think that. But if it was someone like Alex Jones. Yeah, there would be more responsibility there to challenge and to disrupt the narrative.

[Andrew]

Yeah. I think that back in 2017, what some people call woke war one or just woke one, woke two being 2020,

[Louis Theroux]

I never heard that they call it. Or the Reckoning 1 and the Reckoning 2.

[Andrew]

Well, Woke 1 and Woke 2 were quite different. But Woke 1 was big on.

[Louis Theroux]

Is that your term?

[Andrew]

I've seen it on Twitter. I just know what people are talking

[Louis Theroux]

about because they call 2020 the reckoning. Right, Right. Have you ever heard that?

[Andrew]

I thought it was the storm. There's a few things to call 2020. I call it Fahrenheit 2020, hell year, or I call it year one. But there's. Anyways, there's this whole idea of platforming problematic ideologies would somehow signal, boost the spread of harmful rhetoric and it would make people more powerful.

[Louis Theroux]

I was gonna say 2017 was the me too, but then 2014 was Ferguson, I guess.

[Andrew]

I mean, when Trump got away, which

[Louis Theroux]

woke war was that?

[Andrew]

Okay, I'm talking about the post Trump election woke war, where it was like, okay, Trump's in. Get serious. It's not time for jokes. We have to combat the rise of this kind of comedy by any means, necessarily. And I think now we can look back and see that Those efforts were a failure because while it was true that you were able to push certain subcultures underground for a certain period of time onto alternative platforms like Rumble Parlor and Gab Boom, the backlash is like Elon Musk buys Twitter. And these same people who are doing big numbers underground are now absolutely dominating the Internet. Internet, like whatever was pushed down back during one is now up in the post war era.

[Louis Theroux]

Interesting. I talked to John Ronson about some of this. You know, he's a documentary maker and writer who spent time with Alex Jones way back like late 90s. And they, and they went to Bohemian Grove together undercover in a kind of baptismal moment of in, I guess in Alex Jones case, maybe red pilling kind of or turbo red pilling. And then with Ronson it was this other exposure to. Well, he turned it into a best selling book called Them when he was being trolled by Alex Jones followers. And then Jones was completely deplatformed, I guess 2017, like all the harassment and shit he would get went way down. Like he was like, they kind of turned the spigot off. I guess the question with turning the spigot off is, you know, it might not be coming out there, but it's coming out somewhere else.

[Andrew]

Well now, as I kind of mentioned during like our previous podcast on your show, which I hope people watch as well, is that for me, especially post Epstein Files drop. And even in their redacted form, it's almost impossible to talk about conspiracy theories in the same way that we did before because we now know that amongst all the stuff that wasn't true, like chemtrails, Pizzagate, Flat Earth, all these kind of like new age apocalyptic woo stuff that was really popular around the pandemic and beforehand, all of that was kind of sprinkled over top of the Epstein reality to make everything seem really stupid. And I even think some of these people may have been compromised in some way by the government. I think that they were algorithmically promoting ridiculous conspiracies to create a sort of like disinformation watchdog campaign on the left and then create useless rabbit holes on the right for people to jump down. Do you think that that's on purpose? That this is like some sort of a grand design to get us to

[Louis Theroux]

be desensitized to the idea of demons eating babies?

[Andrew]

Yeah, for sure, like geometry calculators, you know, QAnon drops. But now it appears that most conspiracy theories that hatch during Woke 1 were actually a psyop by the Epstein class to kind of obscure the messaging ahead of the anticipated Epstein file release. So I'm super careful when I talk about Alex Jones and stuff because it does feel to me like old news. Especially because we don't know what's true now. And I feel like I want to suspend like conspiracy judgment until the files have been totally unredacted. Maybe I'm tinfoil hat now, but that's just how I look at things.

[Louis Theroux]

My thinking is very normie. But what I do see is that this term, cultural Marxism, that gets used a lot in Anders Breivik when he went on his killing spree in Norway, he was railing cultural Marxism became a kind of talking point of the right. Saying that it was almost like a kind of red pill rollout where it's like, oh, we're being brainwashed by this vanguard of do gooders and wokerati and actually it's all bullshit. So I wouldn't call that necessarily a conspiracy theory. It's a theory about down social engineering. And in a way that's just true. But you're just, you're misliking or railing against something that has, I think, a lot of good intentions behind it. In other words, the idea that, okay, we're going to act as if men and women are equal in all spheres, be they, you know, intellectual, physical or otherwise emotional. We're going to act as though all races are exactly the same in all respects. We're going to act as though the only thing keeping people down is discrimination. And that may or may not be true, but it's an honorable template to have for social renewal. The backlash against that which has informed so much of our current politics has been huge. And I think we're in a strange position now of trying to figure out which bits of discourse we police and which bits we don't police and to what extent we can allow free speech to so called or algorithm algorithmic regulation or algorithmic non regulation to dictate how we think about the world. Does that make sense?

[Andrew]

Yeah, and I think it connects pretty well intellectually to the recent documentary that you put out about the manosphere, because all these conversations are pretty connected. I've always seen the rise of the manosphere around 2020 as a boomerang of what was happening as far as like the corporate appropriation of wokeness, as they say, you know, because the George Floyd movement and the protest really started as a straightforward black liberation move. The aims were pretty straightforward, police accountability. Cops stopped killing black men in America and it had been on the heels of so many different shootings. Quickly it became Something totally different. It was co opted by, I mean I think white suburbia and specifically like the gentrified corridors of America found a way to bastardize it. And then corporations got involved and you saw a sort of like a tech

[Louis Theroux]

infinite sense of like almost like social vanity, like wanting to co opt a sense of like social versus well for

[Andrew]

one, I mean the tech establishment, the corporate establishment under at that time was left leaning already, but they saw a significant market value in pivoting that way. You know, you had like the Black Square challenge. You had all these, you had celebrities in Hollywood doing these paid campaigns to raise money for NGOs and you had a lot of rhetoric online that was sort of extreme, being directed toward the boogeyman, which was like the cisgender, straight white American, Christian, able bodied man, which happens to be the largest and most powerful group in the United States.

[Louis Theroux]

Yes.

[Andrew]

So especially the young people plus isolation, I feel like really gravitated toward the manosphere stuff that was being promoted in the algorithm. And I feel like your documentary did a good job of explaining the actual industry and the economic system and grift behind the creators themselves. But I saw things from a ground level like lonely 16 year olds and younger being like, I'm being told that I'm bad and I don't understand why and these guys are telling me that I'm actually good and that we're under attack.

[Louis Theroux]

I'd buy that. The challenge is it's tough to make a documentary that looks at lowly, alienated teenagers where they feel a bit left out of the conversation. And you know, I'm fully in favor of Black History Month and stuff like that. But if you're a white kid, it can feel awkward, I think. I mean, as a father of three white boys, it's obviously a subject that I kind of see in my own home. So we kind of looked at the influencer economy and the way in which grievances were being weaponized in order to, to just become wealthy. Right. In a dream scenario, I'd love to have been able to cover more of the tech substrate, trace the lines to which platforms and what. It gets a little dry, it can turn into a PBS documentary quite quickly. But which platforms are they mostly streaming on? Who's programming the algorithms? Thing is, you end up in a kind of clean office in Silicon Valley with techie guys bending over computers, you know what I mean? But yeah, absolutely. And the grassroots part of it is valid too. We wanted to shoot more with the, the two kids on the beach. I say kids are in their twenties.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Louis Theroux]

Who you see as sort of the bottom level of the manosphere community, because they're just one of them, I think, is has been homeless and they're just jogging around on the beach. They haven't got. Each of them actually had his own little social media thing going on, you know, running programs on how to become millionaires or property gurus, but literally with perhaps no followers. But we wanted to go back and interview them again. They felt we were too matrixy for them, I think.

[Andrew]

So that kind of speaks to the collapse in trust of institutional media. And they probably saw you as that, given that you worked for different universities.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah. The Netflix thing gets you a little way. But in the end, there's a suspicion that. Well, I think some of them had found a thing where I had a pop at Tate and that bothered them, where I talked about his whole what color's your Bugatti viral? Moment, and I said, I'm the anti Tate. Look at my watch. It's shit. Like, I've got a shit watch. I don't believe in any ostentatious wealth. I was kind of grandstanding as an avatar for non materialism. I wouldn't say it bit me, but it nibbled me because people saw that and they'd be like, hey, why is this guy saying he's the anti Tate? We love the brothers, man. What's the fucking problem, man?

[Andrew]

Is there the same kind of institutional distrust among young people in the UK as there is in the us?

[Louis Theroux]

Yes, I would say probably the same. Exactly the same. Yeah. There's a couple in the uk, I think it's called Hamza, one of them, who sort of like very muscly influencer. There's McGarry, there's HS, Tiki, Toky. And in schools across the UK, I don't know if they're coming out of the other side slightly. I think all of them age out to a degree. And, like, Tate's getting kind of old now, right?

[Andrew]

Oh, yeah, it's old news.

[Louis Theroux]

So I don't think, you know, clavicular is obviously big, and then behind that, who knows?

[Andrew]

What do you make of, like, Tommy Robinson, some of the free speech projects, protests here?

[Louis Theroux]

Well, that's an older crowd and a lot of that is driven by his ability to mobilize crowds and his connections with. I think, you know, he came out of the Luton football hooligan scene, maybe I should say football supporting, but I think he was up for a rock if it came to that. And I think, you know, they originally, they were the EDL English Defense League, which, again, was an outgrowth for. Of a certain. Certain branch of the football fan culture. And he's got. He. He has extraordinary resonance. People really respond. He's like a talented broadcaster. He's got an ability to communicate that's amazing. White English are a minority in my hometown. I know what it's like to live as a minority. I know what it's like to live with a dominant. A dominant hostile Islamic supremacist community. Whether it's reached its tipping point, I don't really know. Like, he has a lot of liabilities. Like, he's got a couple of fairly serious convictions. One's for mortgage fraud, I think. So I don't see that as, like, really resonating with young people that much.

[Andrew]

I just saw Nick Shirley, an American content creator, speaking with him at a rally. And so I think that it's resonated. Yeah, he was here. I think that in the US a lot of his content and associated content about, like, you know, the UK being compromised by like a sort of globalist techno fascist elite is resonating a lot.

[Louis Theroux]

Is that his narrative? I thought his narrative was just like, is that. Is like, he was. Basically, we get Islamicization.

[Andrew]

Yeah. It's a. Europe has fallen because of immigration, specifically Western Europe.

[Louis Theroux]

And the policies, specifically Islamic immigration would

[Andrew]

be his contention because of liberal politicians and they've. They've colluded with the social media platforms themselves to make it so you can't talk freely about the problems facing society here. Is that, like, reflective of reality? Is there more social media censorship here than in the us?

[Louis Theroux]

I would say that there's a more concern conservative with the small C culture with respect to public discourse like that. We don't obviously have a First Amendment. In general, when you don't have a First Amendment, there's a sort of sense of like, oh, no, it's easier to ban speech. I don't think the Westboro Baptist Church could exist in the uk.

[Andrew]

What would happen to them?

[Louis Theroux]

Oh, I think it'd be like, no, you've got to stop doing that shit.

[Andrew]

Or what? You'd go to jail, probably.

[Louis Theroux]

I think. Yeah, I think they'd classify it as hate speech. And I mean, I'm slightly speaking off the top of the dome, but that would be my suspicion. Suspicion, right. Would be like, oh, we're not putting up with that.

[Andrew]

Have you heard of the group Palestine Action before?

[Louis Theroux]

Yes, of course. Yeah.

[Andrew]

I had a friend cover a rally here and there was people being arrested for just holding signs that Said a Palestine action. And that struck me as strange because even in the US you can't get arrested for nonviolently holding.

[Louis Theroux]

Well, there we go. There's a perfect example. They proscribe it as a terrorist group and then anything that you have a placard of that seems to be in support of the group, notwithstanding that it was all pro. You know, the only crimes that they perpetrated under the old legislation was property damage. And there was no harming of any people. So that was kind of Orwellian.

[Andrew]

So it's a tough situation, I suppose, for an investigative independent journalist coming up here in 2026.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah, I guess so. I mean, you know, for the younger people, people coming up on YouTube, I'm not sure how much invigilation there is of their content. Like I do know that to flip it the other way, there's real value and in the BBC and the extent to, to which they have a public responsibility to be accountable to license fee payers and they're not perfect, but my own experience across the board has been they take it pretty seriously. Like their responsibility to be accountable and tell the truth about stuff. They let me make the settlers, you know, a year after October 7, I made a film about the situation in the west bank and the extent to which the settlers were kind of running amok with an explicitly ethno nationalist agenda, intimidating, harassing and sometimes killing Palestinians. And I think my instinct is only the BBC would have made that. And it's interesting that in the US that film was, was bought by BBC select, but no one else seemed very interested in it.

[Andrew]

You think that it was algorithmically, like suppressed on US channels and platforms?

[Louis Theroux]

I just think the content would have been considered too controversial.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I want to talk about that documentary in a minute. But I was wondering, you know, if you were to start your career over again right now and you're a 24, 5 years old, do you think that you would try to make YouTube videos or would you work the more institutional route and get involved with someone like the BBC, which is where you started?

[Louis Theroux]

I think I probably start on YouTube. I think it's so easy to just start putting up content. And look, I hope the BBC continues and stays around for a while, but there's less money there, it's more embattled, it's got less reach. I think people like you are doing amazing content and I'm sure, you know, of people that I probably wouldn't who have just been able to, you know, just go out with your phone or a small camera and go wherever you want. Like the BBC still is still quite slow and you know, you got to pitch something, get commission, months go by. I think there's still like in terms of long form, really ambitious, you know, to get into Koalinga, the mental hospital took a couple of years. You needed that institutional backup. And there's probably other examples where that's helpful. So it's, it's, it's kind of horses for course.

[Andrew]

I think the biggest disadvantage of being an independent journalist on YouTube and elsewhere is Lawfare, specifically in the U.S. i don't think people understand behind the scenes like how much we get lawsuit threats and how many independent journalists you do all the time.

[Louis Theroux]

Really.

[Andrew]

Yeah. But if you work for an institutional media outlet, like if you work for BBC or the Washington Post or someone like that and they co sign you publishing an article, you're more or less protected. I mean they could go under. But you're not going to be individually sued as a private citizen for your reporting. If you work for an outlet, if you're an independent journalist, you get sued personally by rich people. And right now the civil court system is being used against journalists in a way that I never even thought possible by the Trump administration, by private individuals. Like every time I make a major documentary or it's coming out, if the people being exposed, which not every video is about exposing someone, but if someone looks bad and they have money, they will 100% send me a cease and desist, threaten to bankrupt my company, do all these crazy things beforehand to, to limit the release.

[Louis Theroux]

Can you just ignore that or not?

[Andrew]

Really you can ignore it, but if you put it out, oftentimes they do sue. I happen to have a large Patreon following which I use to crowdfund my legal defense. Like Dear Kelly, you know, I was getting sued for Wire. I've had to spend half a million dollars. Every dollar of profit from Dear Kelly, the film I released a year and a half ago, has been spent on legal defense fees, you know, for a totally bullshit charge. But it's not about the truth, it's about being burdensome to the creator. So it's like that's kind of the flip side of this.

[Louis Theroux]

Now what would happen if you, if you just didn't engage with any of it and then you end up in court and you represent yourself, you know what I mean? If you just raw dogged the whole

[Andrew]

thing, maybe I should have done that.

[Louis Theroux]

Do you know what I mean though?

[Andrew]

I don't know. Can you represent yourself?

[Louis Theroux]

It's free, right? Like, you like it? This is. I'm not gonna even reply. Come get me.

[Andrew]

I think that.

[Louis Theroux]

Only that's what L. Ron Hubbard did towards the end. Like, he had. So. Founder of Scientology. He had, like, reams of lawsuits, people coming in. Like, you said I was gonna be clear.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Louis Theroux]

And I'd have a photographic memory and remember being an alien in the past life. I can't remember shit, man. Like, this is fucked up. I spent. You know, people say, like, I spent 100,000, 200,000 on Scientology, and this is all bullshit ex members saying, you kept me locked in a box for two years. You said it would cleanse my soul. These are fictional examples. Right. But he ended up just hiding out in, like, a guy's house just to evade all the legal process servers.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Isn't David.

[Louis Theroux]

I don't even want to defend it.

[Andrew]

Isn't David Miscavige also kind of on the run?

[Louis Theroux]

I mean, I don't know. You can. You can have that lawsuit as well if you want. I say no, he isn't.

[Andrew]

Have you ever been?

[Louis Theroux]

He doesn't do a lot of public appearances, though. Joining us live tonight is David Miscavige. Mr. Miscavige took over as the head of Scientology in 1987 following the death

[Andrew]

of the church's founder, L. Ron Hubbard.

[Louis Theroux]

There's tons of litigants who would love to drag him in for a deposition, and he successfully managed to not be done. Not do that.

[Andrew]

Have you been sued for your words before or your reporting?

[Louis Theroux]

Probably, like, a lot of that. Another privilege of working with a team and the BBC one. Some of that stuff doesn't even get to me. Like, we're getting sued, I think, on the Manosphere film, and they're not even telling me about some of it. Like, one of them, though, is a guy who we thought he was AI. There's a scene where. There was a scene where we're on the Fresh and Fit podcast, and they show a sign, a clip. Like, there's a clip of a scientist. And then Myron Gaines from Fresh and Fit here. I want to see. See this? This is interesting. And the guy pops up on the video, goes like, did you know that when you have sex with someone that for a woman, some of that DNA will stay in the body for years? Did you ever wonder why some women's children look like the partners they had years earlier? It's because it's their DNA.

[Andrew]

Women absorb and retain the DNA of every man they've been with via sperm. A woman's past. Men leave A permanent, biological, logical imprint. Ever wonder why some kids resemble an ex more than their father? So, ladies, your past doesn't disappear. Every man leaves a mark on your body and your future children.

[Louis Theroux]

And I say go. Like I say something like that. No one believes that. No one. I said, you know, when you hear about disinformation or misinformation on the Internet, people talk about that. This is what they're talking about. And that guy, like I said, he looks so weird. He didn't really move properly. We thought he's probably an AI and he turns out either he's not an AI or we're being sued by an AI because a lawsuit came in for like, I don't know, 50 billion or something. Quite a lot. Maybe it was one and a half billion. It was definitely over a billion. And eventually they send these look like we unequivocally reject the idea. It was a tweet that I'd sent about David Miscavige, and. And it would. It was a retweet. I had written it. You know, when you retweet an article, sometimes it. Auto. Generates a head, a small headline.

[Andrew]

Sometimes not for me, but made for you.

[Louis Theroux]

Sometimes you, like, retweet it be. It would. It'd be a review anyway. It was a review of my Scientology movie. And, like, positive review. And the retweet went beep, and. And I didn't see it till later. So it was a long legal back and forth. Quite clearly. It has to be read in the context of the article, which is not saying that and making legal arguments. So it went away, but it cost like 15 or 20,000, I think.

[Andrew]

Okay, so you've gotten sued by Scientology,

[Louis Theroux]

and they didn't sue. They threatened.

[Andrew]

Okay, but you didn't have to go.

[Louis Theroux]

They sent a legal letter saying unless you make an unreserved appointment apology, we will be considering our options.

[Andrew]

So I assume you don't want to comment on the whereabouts of his wife, Shelly Miscavige.

[Louis Theroux]

Shelley, I think, is a. In a facility near Lake Arrowhead in. I think it's San Bernardino county, up in the mountains at the Gold Base. It's not Gold Base. It's. I think it's. Can't remember what the name of it. I think it's called the Lake Arrowhead facility. Maybe it's the CRT center for Religious Technology, where I believe, among other. They transcribe the complete works of L. Ron Hubbard onto titanium scrolls or titanium tubes so that they're preserved forever. And it's an organization that's in charge of the preservation of the perfect accuracy of the religious tech. And I think Shelley is. My own belief would be that she's not, like, prevented from leaving physically. Shelly Miscavige made one mistake in 2006. She reorganized Scientology's leadership while her husband David was away. Witnesses say she was dragged from the compound crying. Her mail was rerouted to a facility surrounded by armed guards and inward facing spikes. That was 18 years ago. No one has seen Shelley in public since. I think she's in some. There's some level of complicity in what she would regard as almost like a kind of process of spiritual seclusion, like a monastic Right with draw, which I

[Andrew]

suppose is normal for some religious people.

[Louis Theroux]

Some religious people would be like, oh, I can pursue an absolute kind of spiritual perfection on a retreat in the middle of nowhere and years can go by. It's weird that they're still married, though, and he's gadding around.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it is kind of weird. No one's seen her for decades.

[Louis Theroux]

I think a lot of people, I think for the funeral of Heber Gench.

[Andrew]

Is there a picture of that?

[Louis Theroux]

I think so. About eight years ago.

[Andrew]

Okay, that's good to know.

[Louis Theroux]

I think so. Because the thing is, that's what got Leah wrote Remedy out of Scientology, was that she'd been tight with Shelley, and at Tom Cruise's wedding to Katie Holmes, she was saying, like, where's Shelley? Like, why can't Shelly be at the wedding of the century at a castle in Italy? And then she. When she got back, people like, that was not okay. You need to do, you know we're going to file. Is it a knowledge report? A knowledge report. And you have to do some amends. And she's like, fuck that.

[Andrew]

I think there's a bit of a confusion as to what Scientology truly, truly believes, because on one hand, you have, like, the south park version of Scientology, which is like Xenu and the volcanoes and like the sort of crazy.

[Louis Theroux]

Like, you're not supposed to talk about Xenu.

[Andrew]

Well, we're not in Scientology, so I think that we're safe here. And then there's like the Dianetics pitch that you get if you walk by.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Auditing. Where it seems like very much psychology, which is like, hey, you don't like scrambled eggs? Well, you may have been forced to eat them as a kid. Holy shit.

[Louis Theroux]

Or more. Or your father may have tried to abort you a fetus, and he might have had scrambled eggs on his breath.

[Andrew]

Right.

[Louis Theroux]

That's what dianetics is, a Lot of like, forced abortion. Like, Hubbard had a thing about forced abortions.

[Andrew]

Where does the truth lie between those two narratives?

[Louis Theroux]

Well, the front door is Dianetics. And oh, well, if you just talk about things that are bothering you, you can erase them. It's kind of like McAnalysis, you know, like, that's a McDonald's reference. Right. It's been pointed out that Dianetics, I think, came out the same year as McDonald's and they have similar business models. It's a franchised religion. So the hamburger or the Big Mac is really just, you know, you get on an E meter, you talk about your problems, you become more successful, then they upsell you. And I'm not sure this is where the McDonald's analogy maybe breaks down. If McDonald's had like a subscription program where if you pay enough money, there's a little restaurant behind the restaurant and they're selling you really amazing up like hamburgers with. Got wrapped in gold. And so with Scientology, it's like you discover this. Not just things that are bothering you in this life. There's the whole track which goes back previous lives going back thousands of years. Famously in Hubbard's case, memories that he had as a clam in like in. In a kind of evolutionary pre. You know, cycle, like millennia ago. And then you learn about Z Inu when you get to OT7, I think, operating Dayton 7. It's a while since I. I love bringing this stuff up. Not often you get to talk about, you know, Scientology tech.

[Andrew]

Do you have to buy your way into Sea Org before you get to OT7? Or is Sea Org two different tracks? But I'm saying, is that an added bonus with the. The whole yacht excursion? You don't have to buy into that.

[Louis Theroux]

Most of Sea Org wouldn't be on the yacht. The Sea Org name is just a reference to the fact they used to be on the yacht and Hubbard was in the navy and he liked naval paraphrase paraphernalia. Sea Org is like the Scientology's version of kind of monasticism. They're people who take a vow of. Kind of a vow of poverty. But they may not be OT7. They might not even be OT3. Like, they may. I think it's OT3 where you learn about OT3. I want to get that right. They may not be that far along the bridge. You could join the Sea Org as like a teenager, I think, or 18, and not be that far up the bridge.

[Andrew]

It's not an end game upgrade.

[Louis Theroux]

No. So it can happen. Whereas you can be outside the Sea Org. Like Tom Cruise is not in the Sea Org, but I think he's OT 7 or 8.

[Andrew]

Okay, what's the top OT?

[Louis Theroux]

I don't know, maybe 9 or 10. But then I think they add. It's like there's always something beyond. You never arrive. To get the deep dish on this, you sort of need to read it or look at Tony Ortega's blog. But they did that. They occasionally would do this thing where they're like, oh, we got the text slightly wrong. You have to redo it. That would be a bit like your burger. You didn't eat the burger. It was the wrong one. You have to eat another burger.

[Andrew]

When I'm watching you cover stuff like this, you know, it's interesting because you rarely ever like project any kind of resentment or disdain for the people that you're talking to, which is, which is something that I definitely relate to. So when I was reading Call of the Weird Back to the Book and you tell that Marshall Silver story.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah, that's my first book, the one we talked about, where I went back and went to meet the people I had been most fascinated by.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And Marshall Silver was like a sort of self help guru. He's still around selling courses.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah, he was kind of doing Trump University before Trump. It was like, I'll turn you into a millionaire if you just pay me $5,000.

[Andrew]

And that was the first time I had. And I've read a lot of your stuff that I've really seen you like outwardly project resentment toward an interviewee. Like you really didn't like him or you didn't give him the benefit of the doubt. And I feel the same way about these kind of like profit driven self help, get rich quick people. I just found it interesting that you had talked to. So you had talked to a pimp, you had talked to like kind of exploitative actors within the porn industry so much, yet it was this guy doing something that may be perceived as somewhat innocuous to the outside world that you found the most, I guess, was it

[Louis Theroux]

going back, like when you visit the second time, you know, years later and you having done the program, you know, having made a documentary and then that was one of the discoveries going back was, oh, I've been on the journey with this person and you know, it's like a meal I've already eaten. I don't really feel like it that much anymore. Does that make sense? And so I, I think there's, for good or ill, more judgment in the book. And when I met Marshall Silver, I Thought like, okay, fair enough. This is intriguing. And I spent time with Michael Yee, who is one of his acolytes. And then in the course of making the program, he was so kind of squirrely and avoidant that I began to not like him as much. You don't want that to interfere with your ability to present the story dispassionately. Also, you sort of. There's some part of it that kind of wants the viewers to experience the duality of. On paper, this guy's kind of a dick. But actually, I can't help liking them a bit. Like, that's sort of the sweet spot. With Marshall, it was quite hard to warm to him. And even for the audience, there would have been a concern if he'd been just totally obnoxious. It happened again when I went back. I did the Westboro Baptist Church film where I spent basically three weeks over the course of several months filming with the Westboro Baptist Church. And that one was called the Most Hated Family in America. I'm really proud of it. Like, I've watched the. That sense, it still holds up. I went back and made two follow ups, and they're both good, but you feel the fatigue. Like, there's a feeling of, I know what you are and you know what I am. And we're not really going on a journey in quite the same way. So I think it's one of the perils of going back with a pimp. She wasn't drafted. She chose to come with the princess. You put them on back page, is that right? Back page? Yes, that's correct. I don't think, like, oh, a pimp is better than Marshall Silver. Like, this interesting overlap, actually. You know, both Marshall Silver, that world of self hypnosis, nlp, and also Speed seduction, which was part of the same program. Ross Jeffries overlaps with pimping. People talk sometimes about pimpnosis, the ability to influence suggestible people by either social domination or certain techniques of social influence. But the point about the pimp is I didn't spend that long with a pimp. And I strongly suspect if I was around a pimp for like two or three days, it would start to tell a bit. And that goes back to your other thing, which was, like, when you're with people, like, do you have to withhold judgment? How much do you disclose? How much of your own life? And it's weird. Like with the Westboro Baptist Church, I remember being with them inside. They kind of rather approachable. Like, certainly they were to me, very hospitable. And intelligent. The cliche of that. People say, I love that thing you did about the Hill Billies. Like, they don't fall into that bracket in any respect. They're lawyers living in Kansas, professionals. One of them was a fan of Truman Capote. Bizarrely cosmopolitan taste in culture. So you find yourself giving more of yourself. And that's odd, too. And I found myself mentioning. I had a child at the time with my now wife, but then girlfriend. And they were like, oh, how's little Albert? And my. Oh, yeah, he's great. The family started to kind of like me. There was this weird thing where one of the kids, I think, called Noah was like, something like, is Louie gonna come back? You know, will he bring Albert? Or something like that. And then one of them was like, oh, it's very sad, Noah. Like, why Louie's going to hell. He was like, oh. And then he started taking an interest, like, you gotta put away. They just started giving me advice. It was odd. So I try and hold back, but you can't hold back totally.

[Andrew]

Especially when you need to be connectable. You have to connect with them to gain interview access. It does feel a little bit weird sometimes.

[Louis Theroux]

And also, there's G talking before. On long car journeys, if you're not filming, it's. You got like two or three hours. You could be, like, driving to a picket. I did this thing, Louis, and the Nazis I mentioned, I knew with April G. She's a total Nazi. Like, you can't really get much more Nazi.

[Andrew]

Her quotes were brutal. Yeah, I find other races annoying. They bother me. I find them annoying. I don't like. I don't like their chattering in other languages. I don't like to look the way they. They look.

[Louis Theroux]

You know, she's there with her two daughters, but then you're on a long con. She's talking about, she likes the Beatles and Thomas Hardy. She's highly educated. And then there comes this moment. It's happened a few times. Like, let me ask you something. What do you really think? And then you're like, your heart sinks a little bit because you sort of have to say, you know, I've got pretty mainstream liberal beliefs. You know, I just think that everyone should get along. And I think there's been a lot of discrimination. You know, you kind of lay out the whole liberal blueprint, and then you find your back and you go, but don't you think that. And you're like, yeah, not really. And then you're like, we could just be having this on camera. I don't really want to sort of go through. I'd much rather you just try and find topics that are uncontroversial.

[Andrew]

It's very difficult, and sometimes you can really let people down. I documented a family that's called the Spencer family in Georgia during the Stop the steel movement in 2020. The clips went pretty viral after the film was released.

[Louis Theroux]

It was for the HBO project for this Place Rules. Yeah, they were the QAnon family.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Louis Theroux]

Where the kid was, like, more red pill than any of them.

[Andrew]

Biden's a child molester.

[Louis Theroux]

It reminded me of the Phelps family. Except the kid in the Phelps family couldn't remember who he was supposed to hate or why. Everyone in Sweden's going to hell. I'm like, well, why is everyone in Sweden going to hell? And he kept looking at his mum. He couldn't remember. But in your one, like, the kid had it chapter and verse.

[Andrew]

And we'd go over to their house, play video games with the kids, talk to the husband about all the problems in his life. He had gotten sniffed by a contractor. You know, the wife was grieving the death of Chester Bennington, who was the leader of Linkin Park.

[Louis Theroux]

How had he died?

[Andrew]

Suicide. Well, according to her, he was taken out because he was gonna make a documentary with Bourdain about the Clinton pedophile ring.

[Louis Theroux]

Every grievance they have gets woven into the QAnon.

[Andrew]

But I was. I was just so close with them. And it was hard because, like, the documentary came out and every comment was just like, wow, I feel so bad for this kid. He's brainwashed. CPS should take these kids. And they ended up actually filing a lawsuit against HBO for the film. And for me, that just crushed me.

[Louis Theroux]

Did you follow up with them?

[Andrew]

I wasn't allowed to. HBO was like, don't contact. But I just felt like. Like I had betrayed them in some way. I think the reaction of the audience made them feel like I was the one saying that to them. And they were getting recognized at the grocery store, apparently, and people were saying, hey, you shouldn't homeschool your kids. Send your kids to school. You're in no position to teach them about the world. You believe in all this crazy stuff. And I just remember feeling like, man, I wish that I had maybe told them, when I hold up a mirror to you and show it to millions of people, you might come off a little more out there.

[Louis Theroux]

They sew in the silo that they don't really realize. Most people don't agree with them 100%.

[Andrew]

I mean, they're only around other Stop the Steal protesters. And I wasn't saying I agreed with them, but I wasn't stating that. I had mainstream opinions about a lot of those things.

[Louis Theroux]

With the Westboro Baptist Church, people, again, were saying, like, those people should have their kids taken away. And I remember thinking, like, I don't actually believe that. Like, I think that would be more damaging. You know, as horrific as those views are, like, you don't get to take people's kids away just because you vehemently disagree with their worldview. Like, that seems. Seems obvious. Luckily, in my case, they quite liked being trolled. Like, they were on the pickets every day. They liked that it was called the Most Hated Family in America. They're like, yes, the world does hate us. That was all part of the End Time program involving, oh, Jesus. You know, we'll be loathed. Everyone will hate us. Everyone hears the message, rejects the message, then Jesus comes back and we go to heaven. But we do give a doom speech where you say, like, just to be aware. This is going to be very important, intense. When the documentary comes out. Our strong advice is stay off social media. Don't engage with the comments. It'll be a temptation, but it could end up biting you.

[Andrew]

How did some of the Manosphere interviewees react to the documentary?

[Louis Theroux]

Before the film went out, the main character, HS Ticky Talky, sent me a couple of messages saying how much he enjoyed the filming process. And he's like, I don't know what you're going to do with the footage, but it was. It was really fun and interesting and I loved it. So thank you for. For doing it. And then after it went out, I think his public statements were that he was okay with it. I think it reflected in terms of tone and comment, like, who I was in the room. You sort of want to be in the film on camera, reflecting the same attitude and Persona that you have in the commentary and the editing. Does that make sense? You don't want to be like, oh, he's all being nice in the room. And then he's going, but their vile beliefs were so disgusting, I had to leave. And you're like, bye, see you in a bit. Bye. Do you know what I mean?

[Andrew]

Yeah. I struggled with that early on in my career.

[Louis Theroux]

Did you?

[Andrew]

A little bit, yeah.

[Louis Theroux]

Truthfully, when I go back, if I have issues with things I did in my earlier material, it's usually the VO or the commentary feels a bit judgy. So I do get that Sneako said, congratulations on the Launch of your film. Then Justin Wallace said he liked it too, but Myron Gaines said it was a Matrix attack, something like that. He'd filmed us the whole time, so he released hours of material like, this is the real story.

[Andrew]

None of this is in the fucking footage, is it? He's always been very straightforward with me and. Oh, what'd she say? I was always been straightforward with her.

[Louis Theroux]

You got a happy relationship. Yeah, he's very honest.

[Andrew]

And that's my footage chat.

[Louis Theroux]

You know, obviously I haven't gone back to look at all of that, but I'm happy with how he edited it. I think it was pretty fair.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I've had the same problem recently. The last two semi red pill interviews that I did was with Nick Shirley and Clavicular, who are two American figures. Nick Shirley was filming the entire interview from a side view and released it in its full length as, like, evidence that he was, like, dunking on me in some way. Same deal. And then Clavicular live streams, everything. So every moment of that interview was premiered on his channel while I was wearing a lab microphone, wired live.

[Louis Theroux]

Really.

[Andrew]

So that's definitely complicated, the role of getting to know a subject because anything that you say that can be perceived as remotely agreeable, they can weaponize against you a later time. Being like, you know, in the edit, it looked like he disagreed with me, but here's him agreeing with me, saying something, something about. So that's a clip Andrew posted, but

[Louis Theroux]

this is the actual interaction of how it went, but with Nick Shirley. I saw you did quite a long repost to his repost.

[Andrew]

Well, I had to, because, you know, after he made that response video saying that I made him look dumb, I actually made him look smarter by cutting like 30 minutes of stammers and dead air. I don't want to sound dramatic, but I did have, like, death threats in my email. Thousands of DMS from people being like, you know, you're a liberal Jew communist. My Jewish being like, oh, you were sent by the deep state. You're not a patriot. If I see you, I'm going to beat the shit out of you. All this stuff, this is an angry crowd. I felt like I had to make the video because I didn't want to be subject to this kind of, you know, bashing. 2026, keep my fucking name out your mouth. But it still didn't even work. There was already so much animosity toward, like, what's perceived as the left, that people were just like, yeah, like, Andrew edits interviews. And I saw that throughout Filming for the Manosphere. But with Tiki Talky, you had a similar experience, right?

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah, a lot of it was like. And in fact, HS Harrison in the. In the kind of climactic scene, he goes to his camera while we're filming and he's live streaming, and he goes like, see, this is why you can trust me. This is why I say what I believe. And I don't need to edit anything ever. Nothing I say is edited. It's all real. I don't rely on editors. It's just me. So fuck those guys or whatever. He does this kind of extraordinary, ordinary pronouncement on his ethics. And the streamers find the idea of editing suspect. They're like, why do you edit? Meanwhile, like, 90% of their material is seen only as clips. So there's a kind of double, you know, double agenda. They're like, it's all real. But most of that is. Then they're incentivizing these clippers to take shit out of context and put a. Put a kind of sexy clickbait headline on it.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I just remember, like, seeing some clips from that and feeling so bad. Bad for you. Because he was streaming. He just kept saying, you're a puppet.

[Louis Theroux]

You're a puppet.

[Andrew]

That's enough said.

[Louis Theroux]

You're a puppet. Puppet, mate.

[Andrew]

It just seemed like a very British insult, you know, the way he was saying it. You're a puppet, Louis.

[Louis Theroux]

I was sort of doing, you know, it's one of the techniques or such as it is, or devices, is near the end with your main character, you'll have a moment where you're like, okay, this is what I really think. Before that, you've been sort of like, but why don't you think this? And what about this? And wouldn't you think this. And then by the end, you kind of gathered your case, and it's like a summing up, I guess, maybe like a lawyer. But you're sort of going like, well, I mean, we've established that you're homophobic. Some of the things you said, clearly highly misogynistic. And he's like, well, why would you say. Well, you. You did say if you had a gay son, you'd disown him. And he's like, that's not homophobic. And you're like. And also, you said that it's much better to marry a virgin. He's like, why would you want a ting that's been run through? And so you just sort of. And then he, I think, was aware of kind of being on the Back foot. And then he kind of activated his plan, which was to start crowdstri sourcing. From his comments, the questions that would make me most uncomfortable. So first he goes to Savile. Each day brings new shocking allegations. The latest suggesting he used his charity work to gain access to the young and the vulnerable. Thinking that's going to throw me off. And I'm like, I get Savile energy from a lot of the guys in the manosphere. Even with your good mate Jimmy Savile, I get Jimmy Savile energy from some of the manosphere figures. Which is true, by the way. Like the idea of unaccountable masculinity tearing through vulnerable people, viewing women as inferior brain damage. So that didn't play for him. Someone had said, ask him about the genocide in Gaza. Do you think Israel's committing genocide in Gaza? And then I was like, that's a big question. I want to give the right answer. And then the pause was that was it. There was like. He goes, you can't tell the truth because you're owned by the Jews.

[Andrew]

Can I ask you a question? Are Israel committing genocide?

[Louis Theroux]

You're a puppet. You can't say what you want to say. You want to think about what. You're a puppet. And then he goes like, the Jews aren't my daddy. Savile's not my daddy. And then he went into his. His rant. But that little bit where I paused for two, three seconds, maybe not even that became the clickbait moment.

[Andrew]

What was your ultimate response to the question?

[Louis Theroux]

Posed that in my opinion, it was a genocide.

[Andrew]

You said that in the.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Oh, but it didn't make the cut.

[Louis Theroux]

No, it was too late because I paused.

[Andrew]

I've seen your work filmed out there. I would have assumed that would have been your response.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah, Yeah. I don't even think that's controversial. Right? I mean, it was before the UN had found that there was a case for it being genocide. Most experts in genocide had been calling it a genocide.

[Andrew]

I just know that, like, the US media can't do that. They can't say genocide.

[Louis Theroux]

They can't say that. Who says?

[Andrew]

The AIPAC groups that have compromised our political media system. Whoever's bringing us into Iran or whatever black box is making it so no one can give honest reporting about Israel, Palestine.

[Louis Theroux]

I sort of upset my own own tribe, kind of. People were confused, like, why isn't Louis clearly saying it's a genocide? And it was like, no, dude, that's a decontextualized clickbait.

[Andrew]

Well, cortisol keeps people in for a little bit longer than dopamine. So I think making people angry or like people's career being destroyed or like people being embarrassed and just the spectacle of humiliation or violence is what runs the world now.

[Louis Theroux]

It's kind of just the ultimate example of editing. It's like editing taken to the moon. Like, you keep reducing and reducing and reducing, and then you just have one clickbait moment. But that was also why I wanted to make the film right. I sometimes say I specialize and getting out of my depth. I don't want to be too in control. I did a film ages ago about wrestlers, and the best scene in the film was, like, where the wrestlers were kind of ganging up against me. And then there was a wrestler called Sarge who wouldn't let me stop working out. And I'm like, I want to stop. And then I get a little cup of water and he slaps it out of my hand. He goes, you piece of.

[Andrew]

You know.

[Louis Theroux]

You understand why I'm real athletes. Course we're. You dare to ask that question? We're not real athletes. We're the best goddamn athletes there are. I'm like, I can't do this, Sarge. Like, I've got to stop. I'm feeling ill.

[Andrew]

I don't care.

[Louis Theroux]

That's kill.

[Andrew]

I don't care. Get up.

[Louis Theroux]

I don't care. We were up at the fucking six in the morning listening to my goddamn irritable little ass. You think these fucking guys ain't athletes? I said. I never actually said that you're not athletes. I just said, how do you decide what you're gonna do in the ring? I implied that it was choreographed, but he's like, you fucking piece of shit. And then I ended up throwing up, right? And then he goes, that ain't nothing you ain't doing. Done nothing. You're going to puke, puke chunks.

[Andrew]

That ain't nothing you ain't done nothing.

[Louis Theroux]

Blow chunks, puke. Even your vomit isn't really manly. Like, it's insufficiently viscous. Yeah, that's like the best scene in the film. And you can't always engineer that. You can have an idea of how it might take place, but specifically, you can extrapolate that into the other films. Like in the Miami jail, it's going into. Into the cell, and everyone's like, the guards look nervous, like, the two correctional officers. Like, I don't want to go in there with just you and me. It was better if there are two guards. And then we go in and everyone's a bit, like, tense. Or you get the chimpanzee out of the cage in the one I did called America's Most Dangerous Pets. And you've heard about chimpanzee attacks, and suddenly it's like, is the chimpanzee going to attack Louis? And he goes over and smashes the window. You're like, what the fuck? In the Scientology one, obviously the sweet spot's like, jesus, I hope we get surveilled. Do you want to be like, I hope. I hope they fucking tail us and harass us, because if we. If they don't, it's not going to be much of a movie.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I'm just laughing because I've seen so much of your shit, but I've never seen America's Most Dangerous Pets.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah, well, that was the one where I met Joe. Exotic.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Before the whole tiger.

[Louis Theroux]

I spent 11 days with him, and I was like, this is the most extraordinary person I've met. Like, it was after Miami jail. We did Miami jail, even though we'd done San Quentin Prison. I was like, well, it's a jail, not a prison. That's different. Different enough. But you're like, now what do we do? And then I was like, well, actually, animals, like, dangerous pets is kind of like a jail. Like, found out that there's more tigers in Texas than there are in India, but they're all in backyards owned by oil barons or.

[Andrew]

What are the kind of guys that want tigers?

[Louis Theroux]

It's a similar overlap with people who own guns in the sense that, like, yeah, I got a lethal weapon. He's out the back, kind of stripy. He got two big teeth like that. Oh, I've got a tiger and I'm badass. But, yeah, no suburban streets. The woman who raised Travis, the chimp that did the attack, Connie Casey, I think was her name, she lived in Missouri.

[Andrew]

Missouri. Created basis for the. Nope. The Jordan Peele.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah, I never saw it.

[Andrew]

It's based upon the premise of the Travis tag.

[Louis Theroux]

Travis, obviously, was a case where it was a chimp that lived with a woman. They were very close. He'd come out, he'd drink red wine from a stemmed glass. She'd give him a Xanax. They'd watch Full House together, something like that. But for whatever reason, on this occasion, I think it went and attacked her neighbor and ripped her face off. Then she had facial reattachment surgery, which never seems to work as well as you might hope. Kind of had a droopy face. As a result, the Horrificness of reading about those attacks on a plane over to a shoot where you're like, for this film to work, we kind of need me interacting with a chimpanzee. And then you're like, it's either going to rip your face off or rip your penis and balls off. Those are its two signature maneuvers.

[Andrew]

Which would you have preferred?

[Louis Theroux]

Penis and balls?

[Andrew]

Really?

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah, easily. At least you can go out and have a normal life in public. I mean, maybe I shouldn't say it like that, but imagine you got no fate. You look like someone in a horror film. Have you seen that movie Terrifier 2, where the woman's interviewed and her face

[Andrew]

is all, oh, my God, I thought

[Louis Theroux]

she was going to attack me. I mean, it would be like that. You, like, kids would run away from you. I mean, penis and balls isn't ideal, but. I'm 56.

[Andrew]

But you need your face to keep making documentaries, big time.

[Louis Theroux]

That would be. It'll be sad. Then they'd be for a while, like, no, we want you to still keep making documentaries. We sure be fine. And then no one would watch the films and it would be like, oh, tell me a bit about, you know, what's life like? And then you. I'd be like,

[Andrew]

well, kind of on that.

[Louis Theroux]

How do you like being in, you know, living in a mobile home? Yeah. Is it nice? Be so weird. Maybe I shouldn't put it like that, but it would be really tough. There was a guy who was a broadcaster in the UK who got cancer and he was trying to. He, like, they, like, he. After he got his larynx removed or something, and he was still broadcasting, like, he'll be fine. We can still do it. And then he's there going, like, it just didn't work.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Any kind of vocal change. Like, even the last Sonny Barger interviews from the Hell's Angels. It's a shame because he has that thing in his throat from cigarettes and smokes. I'm so hard to listen to.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah. Even when I got alopecia, I was like, oh, my God, I look like Jason in Friday the 13th. You remember in the opening scene of the Manosphere film? Literally the opening scene, I'm going into H.S. tikky Toky's house. You can see there's patches in the back of my hair. I'm like, how can I fucking make a documentary? And it was my Netflix debut and I look like I've just recovering from serious burns.

[Andrew]

Having any kind of physical thing happening to you that's aesthetically displeasing around manosphere guys is a recipe for disaster.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

For example, when I was interviewing clavicular, I. I just got a buzz cut, and he was like, you're not gonna ask me about hair loss solutions. He was furious during our interview that I wouldn't treat him as some kind of, like, clinical professional and ask for looksmaxing advice. There was not even a single genuine attempt at, like, a specific looks max question.

[Louis Theroux]

He kind of capsized the interview. Right. And was that because he was livestreaming and he thought, well, fuck it, at least I'll get some content out of it if I. If I end the interview?

[Andrew]

I think he genuinely is upset when people ask him questions that aren't about the science of looks maxing. He has this weird thing where he goes, if you ask him about politics, I'm going to shut the interview down.

[Louis Theroux]

Are you trying to.

[Andrew]

I see. You want to make this political. I'm not a political figure. He's so post political. Like, he was groomed in such a politicized environment that he doesn't even see himself as the result of, like, Peter Thiel's transhumanist agenda and, like, multiple years of manosphere grooming by grifters who are now millionaires that were trying to sell security to insecure boys at that time. He has been been molded by these things. When you ask him about politics, he's pissed because he's like, I don't know anything about politics. I just want to have a perfect facial harmony score. So I increase my ROI and stream with tape. He gets mad. ROI is return on investment. So my favorite clavicular quote was, can you imagine going on a bowling date with a girl without streaming? I go, what? He goes, what's the ROI in that? Say you were to do, like, a bowling date with a girl and you weren't streaming it. Like, what about, like, connecting with her because, like, you like her or something like that, you know, like, maybe you want to start a family. Where's the ROI in that? What's that? Return on investment. So it's this idea that all human interaction can be quantified in terms of capital or views, and even women themselves are just to assist you to get bigger status and return on investment. And so I think he lost control of the interview because I was asking him about that, and he realized that I wasn't there to ask him about looks maxing, so he flipped it and pretended he didn't. Didn't know who I was when he was the one who DMed me for an interview. Even after he cut the interview short, he went on his stream and he was like talking to his followers, you remember, and he was like, I was just trolling, like, I rage baited that guy. So it was a last ditch effort to gain control. I've got owned.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah, that's right.

[Andrew]

I was just trying to help him, like come up with the question, you know, I don't like people who sell security to insecure people. You take someone vulnerable who doesn't believe in themselves and you tell them like, oh, if you just be like me and pay me money, you're going to be fulfilled in life. I hate using the word evil because it's so like biblical and binary. But they're so motivated by self interest that they lose empathy for others. And at that point, I just have no time for people unless I'm filming an interview with them.

[Louis Theroux]

Right. I think I'd agree with that. Even if someone's running a con, if you feel like you're included, then it might be okay. Like you could still spend time with them. And people say, do you really like the people? Like, you know, for professional purposes, I kind of have to. It's a bit like being, in some respects, like being a clinician to do the work. There has to be some level of being comfortable and okay with being around them. Right. To dial back. So chimp attacks for the America's most dangerous Pet stock. While researching the documentary, one of my producers was like, oh, we found this guy. So he's got 400 tigers and he lives in Oklahoma and he's got two husbands, he's gay and he's got two husbands and he's got a mullet and he wears a cowboy hat and he used to be a police officer and he has a heavy social media presence footprint or whatever. And he's renting that. I can goddamn guarantee you that Carole Baskin sits one foot of my property. Should get a bullet in the head. Whatever. Well, it wasn't explicitly threatening death, that was a bit later. But he was ranting against an animal rights campaigner called Carol Baskin. Baskin, crawl this fence and try and

[Andrew]

hurt any of my animals again. You can guarantee goddamn tea.

[Louis Theroux]

I'm gonna put a trap in your ass. And I was like, okay, let's get out there. And in fact, in being out there, I was like, this is so weird and amazing. I thought this is too much for just one episode. Like, we should do two parts. Like we'd done Miami Jail was two parts. I got into this thing, like, let's do two parts. It can be two hours. So we filmed tons of excess material with ancillary characters and like the soap opera of the world. And then when we got back it was like, oh, but none of the other characters is that interesting except Joe. We'd made it clear to him that we wouldn't be filming animal rights people. Like, it wasn't our style to go and like, let's find out why this is wrong. Like, I would be making them the animal rights arguments. So as a result, it only turned into one hour of TV and that was 2011. And then later on he blew up as Tiger King and everyone's like, well, why didn't you make Tiger King? But he hadn't actually tried to kill Carol Baskin at that point. That was the difference. We made a follow up film in 2020 called Shooting Joe Exotic. Then we got to use all the other stuff we'd shot where we could make it more of a portrait of his world. He was such an odd Persona. You know, he rehomed tigers and other animals. Chimpanzees from Connie Casey, others unmanageable people who like, bought a tiger. Like, I didn't think it was going to get that big. You know, I can't handle it. Or people who'd had chimpanzees and then died. Like, who can handle a chimpanzee? So he had this huge menagerie. But then he also rehomed people. Oklahoma has a big. Or had a big meth problem, homelessness problem. All these vulnerable people who are more or less on the streets would come and work as volunteers and he'd give them a place to stay and they just go and feed the animals and basically help with the donations and whatnot. So they were all rather subsidiary characters. They had a sort of NPC energy. So they'd be in his world going like, I don't know. I just do what Joe tells me to. Like, really like, do you like it? I love it here. Tell me about you. Well, I had a few problems and here a few setbacks. But luckily I'm getting back home on my feet and I'm real happy to be here.

[Andrew]

But he was the Manson character.

[Louis Theroux]

He was like, around him, everyone else just paled into insignificance. Hey, I'm Joey Exotic, otherwise known as the Tiger King, the gay gun cane redneck with a mullet. He sort of illustrated the concept of vulnerable power where he was so sensitive and vulnerable. I'm gonna have the bitches head in a jar. I throw it in Ike Turner a bit as well. You found the people around him felt protective of him. And that was something I sort of experienced as well, this sort of urge to make him okay because he would so easily upset.

[Andrew]

I didn't realize that so many of the stories that were in the movie about Ike and Tina, the famous one, weren't pulled from either her memoir or his and were kind of invented by Disney, but there was an arbitration clause where he couldn't sue them. I'm not defending Iker. I'm just saying I didn't realize that so many scenes in that film that people take as fact were just totally fabricated.

[Louis Theroux]

Well, funnily enough, I filmed five or six days with Ike Turner. It was probably the most I've ever filmed on a project that never came to fruition. We made two trips, filmed him at home, he lived near San Diego, filmed him with his girlfriend Audrey, filmed him rehearsing his band. And basically it was the same thing where he just didn't like anything to do with Tina being mentioned. But he told me that I think for $30,000 he surrendered any legal rights to take a legal action against the film. And it's been said, I don't know if it's true or not, that Tina regretted some aspects of the film, but he did beat her. He talks about that in his book.

[Andrew]

So you mentioned that you filmed for six days, but it never came to fruition. Have you ever had a dream story or a dream interview fall through the cracks that you really wish you could have captured, but you weren't able to?

[Louis Theroux]

There's been a few, but way back, this was before tv, I was working at Spy magazine. I was the lowest one on the totem pole. It was a satirical fact based magazine in New York. A call came into the receptionist. You didn't know where to park. Pass it through. She's like some woman's calling. She says she's a Hollywood madam and she wants to talk to a reporter. So she came through to me and yeah, she had this whole story about I'm a Hollywood madam and I've got a bunch of clientele among the rich, famous and powerful of Hollywood. Charlie Sheen was one, a producer called Michael Nathanson and others. And she said, I can fax you the canceled checks showing that it's all legit, it's all real. It was Heidi Fleiss. Heidi Fleiss who then blew up for like in the following. Following six months. A lot of her allegations were directed at producers from Columbia, Tristar. At least one of them was maybe more and Columbia TriStar were advertising in Spy for the summer movie issue. So it was like, we can't. We can't do this. But that was so I missed out on the Heidi Fly story. And then over the subsequent years, like, the one that's popped into my head is when we were doing the Miami rap story in 2021, I discovered the Island Boys.

[Andrew]

I'm just island island boy.

[Louis Theroux]

I'm a just island boy. Island Boys. It would have been a nice flavor for the film, and we just couldn't quite hook it up.

[Andrew]

I almost hooked it up with them too, like I was telling you. But then, like, I was supposed to go to some house party in Palm beach, but they, like, disinvited me because they're like, you're gonna make fun of us, dog.

[Louis Theroux]

Right.

[Andrew]

I tried to not think about it so much, but I just asked you because some near misses, they do burn. Like, I almost had the Don Jr. Interview lined up because he wanted to promote his, like, Qatari crypto company. And it would have been so Good. Donald Trump Jr. Yeah, him and Eric were supposed to. To come on Channel 5 and, like, advertise their literally, like, corrupt crypto fund. And then they found some clip of me talking to Hunter Biden, kind of exposing them for it, and they just, like, canceled it. I was in, like, a six hour coma just imagining the what if. But that's the life of a reporter.

[Louis Theroux]

I tend to not focus, but I see things. Oh, I could have done that a little differently. Like, for the Tiger King follow up, I'm kind of crossing paths with team behind Tiger King. And then they get annoyed because I'm covering Joe. Exotic. And this is sort of feeling like, oh, we are. We made Tiger King and he's our character and he's more or less under contract. So they sent me a legal letter, and I'm like, I'm gonna put the legal letter in the film. And, you know, there's something almost distasteful about, oh, you know, he's our talent. This kind of convicted felon who's doing 21 years. Like, he's fully under contract with us. And I'm like, I don't think that's. Yeah, I don't know. I guess it struck me as odd. And it was preventing me from speaking to Joe had literally sent me a letter or a message saying, I want Louis Theroux to come and tell the. He invited me back. Then I got the Netflix, not that I should. The Tiger King, Eric Goode Productions, saying that you can't talk to him. So that was super annoying. So then the story becomes like. Actually, it becomes a sort of, like, story about how the media and the true crime industry runs on, you know, misfortune and malfeasance, which is kind of strange. You know, if you just kill one more person, then we're going to get a deal for a documentary. If only that, that could happen. We can't tell you to do that, you know, like most. That's an extreme example, but you know

[Andrew]

what I mean, I'm not a fan of true crime at all.

[Louis Theroux]

I mean, I am. That's the thing.

[Andrew]

But you can't look away when a Dahmer documentary drops. I'm going to watch it. But it's dark that we're keeping monsters alive.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah, I don't want to incentivize horrific crimes. I don't really want to reward. Like, there was a famous story about the Long island killer, you know, the Gingo beach killings. The wife, it's alleged, was besieged by media offers and quite high paying ones, saying, like, we want to give you a lot of money because you're, your husband killed a bunch of people, so we think you should have a big payday. I mean, that's dark. I'm involved in. Not that, but, you know, I can't pretend I'm lily white. So I'm trying not to be judgy, but it's hard to resist being judgy. So in the shooting, Joe Exotic, we had the offer because the one person who hadn't signed away his legal right, all the people in Joe's circle. I'd met John Finley, the husband, Tim Something was in Kentucky, I think, who had his own. They'd all signed up their legal rights because they were all part of the cast of like, it was like Jersey Shore or, you know, the cast of the original Tiger King doc. So the one who hadn't was Joe Exotic's lawyer. He was called Francisco, and he says, I'd love you to come with us to D.C. we're going to lobby the government, the White House, and we're going to get a pardon. They were going to wait for the pardon. On Trump's last day in office, which was January 6th, I didn't even think about it, but if I'd filmed with them, it would have been awesome because we would have had this show where I'm filming with Francisco and then the Tiger King crew would have been there as well. It would have been like Anchorman, you know, the ultimate media showdown where you're like, you can't film here. I'm like, just stop me.

[Andrew]

Yeah, well, at least that it would

[Louis Theroux]

have been the most perfect scene for the end of the film.

[Andrew]

Yeah, but you know, like you've done so much cool stuff, but it's like you guys take it to the chin and move on to the next one.

[Louis Theroux]

I know, but it would have been so good though.

[Andrew]

Well, you know, it's a question I hear people ask you a lot because you've been so many places. Now they ask me this too, which is kind of annoying. Which, like you've heard so many conspiracies and out there viewpoints. Is there any of them that you believe? So I'm not going to ask you that. But a better question that may connect to Joe Exotic is in all the people that you've met, is there one group of people in particular where you feel like, you know, what if I lost all my friends here in London and elsewhere, I would hang out with those guys for a bit, no cameras, and be my true honest self for a while.

[Louis Theroux]

You know, I have fond feelings for the time I spent in Almost Heaven. You know, it was partly because it was the first episode of Weird Weekends I ever shot. They were the guys who, under the auspices of the ex Green Beret. I think he was a Green Beret, real life Rambo, Colonel Bogrit's and moved up there. And they were living this outlaw existence. Like it reminded me of almost like a historical experiment in religion and free living. Like in the English Civil War. Like we're called the Ranters and we believe that you should go everywhere upside down. And here they were like, oh, we're all up here, man. And like we get a. We're just trading everything and we don't use currency like that. You know, we just barter everything. And it was, it was something in cowboy hats, their holsters. It was like the Wild West. I mean it would have got old pretty quick, but there was a romance and an adventure to the lifestyle. Plus, Northern Idaho is beautiful. Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

But you felt it when you were there.

[Louis Theroux]

I felt some sense of like, yeah, this is my destiny. Like, you know, the whole idea of like we're not part of you, you know, the whole thing. United States of America and they spell U in the lower case. You like, only the original 10amendments are legal. Everything else is a fake law. So like the abolition of slavery and you know, 19th amendment for women's votes, like all that's bullshit. And really property tax is bullshit. Income taxes. It was when it goes so far Right. That it starts to take on almost slightly far left.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Louis Theroux]

Habits and connotations.

[Andrew]

Like a Jeffersonian Burning Man.

[Louis Theroux]

It's like Burning man meets Jefferson meets MAHA meets Whole Earth catalog. The whole bit. I can do whatever, man. So there was a part of the. That I quite liked. And then the other one's polyamory. Not that I'm about to, but polyamory just kind of makes sense. You know what I mean?

[Andrew]

Yeah, totally. As a non jealous person, I would love to.

[Louis Theroux]

If I was a different person every weekend, I'd be doing that.

[Andrew]

You can't really do it if the other person feels possessive over you that you're with. So that's kind of the issue.

[Louis Theroux]

I don't even know if that would be the issue. Like, I feel like I just don't think I'm cut out for it. Like, you remember that. That totally cringe term that got bandied around? I can't remember who used it. Some actor said they were sapienosexual.

[Andrew]

I feel like I identify as sapiosexual.

[Louis Theroux]

Do you remember that?

[Andrew]

No. But would that mean you'll bang any human?

[Louis Theroux]

No, it meant that in order to have sex with someone, you need to be attracted to their mind first.

[Andrew]

Sounds like some pimp talk.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah, but the point is, in other words, glory hole is out, right? Yeah, right. Unless they're like, did you hear about, you know, what do you think? Did you know the Greeks were heliocentric and undoubtedly understood. Oh, this is turning me on. You're gonna be like, what do you think about Plato's Republic? Hell yeah.

[Andrew]

Just somebody saying this through the glory hole.

[Louis Theroux]

There'd be another hole up here. Yeah, Two holes. No, but you actually have to get to know someone and. And you're attracted to people that way. It sounds totally fake and cringe and soy boy to the max, not soy. That's kind of my vibe.

[Andrew]

We're talking about the personal lives of journalists here. People who live chronic on the road. There's a particular scene in the Call of the Weird that I related to, where you're kind of sitting in this bland ground story motel with a cup of wine that's half full and just thinking to yourself, like, I'm sort of the one with the pitiful existence. Like, I have a home country to go back to. But here I am just floating around aimlessly, tracking down people that are. Some of which are out of their mind but you have an affinity for. Because whatever's inside of us that wants to know.

[Louis Theroux]

I appreciate that. You know that book more People have read the second book I wrote, which is more of a memoir. Got to get through this. But the Call of the Weird came from a very deep place of self discovery due to limitations on my. In terms of writing and form. Not quite finding the. I was very kind of gummed up. Like there's good things in it. I'm not tragic. I think I was trying to do Ronson, I was trying to do John Ronson. So I was trying to do that thing of very spare, elliptical. So a lot of it is a dry humor of like, oh, I was really with the neo Nazi. And we were driving around and then the daughter said and just kind of dialogue driven. But truthfully, I kept reams of notebooks and that was. I went through so much reporting that like eight months on the road and like you say that the sense of like, who. Who the am I? But a lot of that didn't make it into the final edit.

[Andrew]

Whenever you're on the road, what are some things that you do to maintain stability and a clear mind as you sign cycle through these different universes?

[Louis Theroux]

Well, one of the reasons the Call of the Weird was intense was because I wasn't on my own. Because my wife, my now wife, my then girlfriend came with me. I'm someone who needs human company and of a kind of. Of a normie or mainstream. Like I need to check out. I can't be fully submerged in the world for too long. I will start struggling mentally. So one of the things, one of the things I really enjoy about making my documentaries is having a team with me and that you can decompress in the evening and you'll go out and have a meal, glass of wine usually, or in the crew vehicle, you just. You kind of do a first pass on the edit. Almost like that bit where that thing happened often, then later on that bit didn't play on camera, but you're kind of processing and you know how good the story is generally by how much you're talking about in the crew vehicle too. Because if you leave and then you're like talking about stuff that's going on back in London, it's usually a sign that what you just shot was not that interesting. You really want to be going like, what was that all about? And then the basic things are having a little bit of distance from the story. Like my director who directed Most Hated Family and the porn episodes of Weird Weekends and various other things, Jeff o', Connor, when we filmed with the Westboro Baptist Church, he was like, we're not staying in Topeka. We're going to stay in Lawrence, a college town with a nice hotel. It's a 20 minute to half hour drive, but that's quite a helpful decompression zone so that you're not mixed into the nonsense too much and, and you can eat at a nice ish place. You also are unlikely to be overheard because you can take, you can chat shit at the hotel, but you don't know how small the town is and how much is going to get back to the contributors and you just need a little bit of a sterile cordon and then exercise is the other one, making sure you get plenty of exercise. I mainly struggle though, if there isn't enough going on, like if you're at the hotel and like, oh, it all fell through. Like we filmed in Huntington, West Virginia, the opioid epidemic. Basically the first two days, everything fell through. The heroin addicts were unreliable and then you're like, why am I here? And you think I've got a family back home. Every minute you're there, you're kind of taking goodwill out of the family bank, not wasting time because you can find other things to do. But it does feel like you're so. I don't know if you have the same thing. Like, as long as I'm productive, I'm happy. But if I don't feel productive, I will struggle.

[Andrew]

That's why it's the hardest part to maintain, I guess, close personal relationships in this line of work, because that person would kind of have to be with

[Louis Theroux]

you all the time, but you're kind of, you're a monster. Like with your work rate and the amount that you're out and about, like it's helped me actually in some ways having my family that it's stopped me from traveling so much and I'm kind of grateful for that.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I'm trying to have a family as soon as I can. I just haven't found the right person.

[Louis Theroux]

Keep looking.

[Andrew]

Well, it's hard because then they say, oh, we're gonna have a family. You're gonna be able to, to slow down. I'm like, nope. But when I'm home, I'll put the phone in the freezer. As long as it doesn't explode.

[Louis Theroux]

Well, maybe you're not ready yet. I was 35 when I got married, but it was always an issue in relationships was, oh, I'm going away suddenly and. Or I can't guarantee missing. I missed a family holiday on one occasion, so there's been quite a bit.

[Andrew]

Just going to stand up yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Louis Theroux]

The other question is vulnerability of contributors. And I. I saw you got a little shit. Well, from one person about the ship Shia LaBeouf interview. I'm not sure. He seemed like he was either drunk or on something.

[Andrew]

Well, thankfully I tried to limit it to one beer cuz, like, he was drinking so much. And I felt comfortable because I know he only had like, you know, one Modelo, so I felt cool with it. I mean, like I said, he had

[Louis Theroux]

more than like, that wasn't one beer.

[Andrew]

No. That particular day.

[Louis Theroux]

But he did. He wasn't talking.

[Andrew]

He was just wired. I used to be the kind of person who would like, defend every interview and be like, oh, you know, I would try to come up with an ethical defense, defense system for it. Was he in the best position to be interviewed? No. Was he campaigning for me to interview him and texting everyone he knew, being like, I want to talk to Andrew. Everyone from the media is trying to reach out to me. If I don't talk to him, I'm going to talk to tmz. I. I'm getting too many texts from my family. I want a way to respond to them on a format without having to address each person individually. Yeah, that's what he wanted to do. So he wanted to do it. I. So I did it, you know. But I mean, would I have advised him to do it? Probably not.

[Louis Theroux]

No.

[Andrew]

But I don't necessarily think that's my job to be everyone's like, general counsel for whether they should be on camera.

[Louis Theroux]

I've talked to people who are not in the, you know, the right frame of mind. Usually drugs, maybe alcohol. It never seems to quite work. It you can use a little bit. I don't mean ethically. I just mean, like for the. For the. For the film or whatever. It just can feel a bit like you just want the person present. I'm not. This isn't about Shia LaBeouf.

[Andrew]

It's all good. No, that wasn't even had a guy at a live show come up to me and be like, you shouldn't do that interview, man. And maybe he's right. Maybe I shouldn't have. Like, I'm not in a position. I used to be like. Like I said, militantly defending every interview. For example, even the interview with Crip Mac, who's like, one of my earliest contributors. Like, did I allow him to, like, maybe stay in his gang lifestyle and gang character, Crip character forever and give him the chance to monetize that side of himself and not progress and stay in the Crip commodity for possibly a decade, probably. Did he participate enthusiastically?

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

So it just depends if you believe in this whole fourth estate, like journalism, which is even harder now because we have to be influencers to justify our own existence, because you have to market your own likeness to like, to stay afloat.

[Louis Theroux]

So I've said this before, but I mentioned I specialize in getting out of my depth. But truthfully, I control the edit. I mean, there's a slight difference with some of the streamers because they control their edit, but I control my edit for the most part. So it's an illusion of vulnerability in some ways. I mean, I can choose to make myself vulnerable. I can choose for me to. To be exposed. And at the same time, there's programs we've made that you can't see in the US because that was part of the condition of the access, but that was pre Internet or certainly pre social media. And now you can probably find that content in America and you're not really supposed to be able to. And so that's awkward. And then you got the other one, which is having made the Most Hated Family in America the first time. When I went back the third time, there was a least one person who come from the UK to join the West Baptist Church.

[Andrew]

Wow.

[Louis Theroux]

Not entirely, but maybe partly because they'd seen my film. So you can't control for everyone's reaction. There'll be people who see the film, just as there's people who read the Bible. And yes, I'm comparing my documentary to the Bible. They'll see the Bible and say, oh, that's telling me to go and shoot up a. A school or do something crazy. Yeah. In the end, you just got to talk of make the best fist of the decisions.

[Andrew]

This is a pretty different topic, but I'm making a documentary right now about the settlement expansion in the West Bank. How bad is it for someone who hasn't been on the front lines of that situation?

[Louis Theroux]

It really depends where. Where you're going. I did a hostile environments course. There's various things that they can teach you. And then I worked with a director who is experienced with filming in high conflict zones, truthfully. And it goes without saying, most of the danger will be directed at the Palestinians. And your camera will have an almost prophylactic effect. It will be to some extent, a cone of safety, because most of the time the settlers and the IDF who are protecting them don't want to be filmed beating people up. Obviously they have been. And you know, there's a lot of UGC but if you're there with a camera, it will tamp things down a little bit. As an American, that gives you an added power. Power because the US passport especially, you know, obviously if an American gets hurt by settlers or by, by the idf, that, that becomes an embarrassment. Maybe not for the settlers that much, but for the Israeli government.

[Andrew]

PR wise.

[Louis Theroux]

PR wise. Yeah.

[Andrew]

It's interesting because I was traveling through the west bank with Palestinians and thus couldn't access any settlements or speak to any Israelis or foreigners that were living in that land. But you guys got the chance to be frontline on some of the, the most famous settlements. You also mentioned during the screening the other night that each settlement has like a different character. Can you explain what you mean? Like it's not just one settlement style.

[Louis Theroux]

I can't say exactly how many settlements there are, but there's a lot. I think more than 100, maybe 2 or 300. In addition, there are what are called outposts, which are almost like the, the over, like the edge eggs of settlements. Like they kind of the embryonic form where it's a bunch of extremists. Israeli activists, often youth, settler youth, take a hill or take a little area, put camps up and then oftentimes the IDF will de facto kind of defend them, but they're not recognized by the Israeli state. So we saw one recently legalized under Israeli law, but not under international law. Outpost that was Eviatar. It was a kind of religious, national nationalist settlement of a fairly extreme sort. And the caravans. Then we saw the settlement in Hebron, which is unusual because it's within this Palestinian city of Hebron. Again quite extreme, far right, religious nationalist. But there's other settlements where, where they are larger and more suburban looking. Some, at least some or maybe most of the people there will be either economic migrants, if you like, interlopers. Like they're people who've gone there mainly to get cheap housing because most people wouldn't want to live there. And they're like, well, okay, the sort of hardship dividend is that you get cheap housing. And then some of them are ideological settlers who've come from America or elsewhere. But again, it's a more suburban setting, so they sort of run the gamut. And then there's even more extreme and crazy ones that we didn't get into because they just don't want anyone there. I mean, in a sense there's a self selecting process that the guy who was media doing media for Eviatar was somewhat kind of jolly and clubbable. This one's worth where you go. And they're just, most of them don't really want outsiders in there.

[Andrew]

You think they know that it's wrong what they're doing.

[Louis Theroux]

They know that the world views it as wrong. There's just a general feeling like everyone thinks we're supposed to not be here. Why even engage like the world hates us, we don't care is the attitude.

[Andrew]

It's interesting. You said they're not recognized by the Israeli government and outposts not in settlements. But I feel like there's this gray area that they love to kind of like dance around because there is a relationship between Ben GVIR and the outpost settlements.

[Louis Theroux]

Right? I mean, I don't know how it works functionally, but the attitude of Smotrich or Ben GVIR or Daniela Weiss, who I interviewed would be it's not the west bank, it's Judea and Samaria. It's historically in their view, the Jewish homeland and therefore it should all be settled. You know, they're only sorry that there's basically any palace Palestinians there and they'd like to see more. All the settlements, they want to see it all annexed. The west bank has not been annexed. It's under occupation. So it's in this weird limbo of 60 years of being controlled by the Israeli military but not recognized officially as part of Israel. So there's 3 million Palestinians who don't have full rights, they don't have voting rights, they don't have their own nation, and they live the most part in either villages or cities that to different degrees are subject to, you know, explicit and intense IDF control. So smartrich Ben gvir, Daniela Weiss would say, well, we just call it Israel and you either agree to be part of Israel and you'll get some rights, or if you don't, then you leave and you're forcibly deported.

[Andrew]

But these outpost kids, the troubled youth as Netanyahu calls them, have access to a ton of firearms, whereas power Palestinians, unless they're PA security staff, security forces don't have access to them. So how did Ben GVIR and the Israeli government make it easier to buy guns after October 7th?

[Louis Theroux]

Well, what happened was post October 7th, Ben Gvir basically authorized the release of larger numbers of high caliber firearms to the Israeli, the reservists, because there's compulsory military service in Israel for men and women. Unless you certain exemptions for the ultra Orthodox who do like religious scholarship. But basically every adult more or less is a military reservist, is an army reservist. So all, virtually all the adults who weren't ultra orthodox in the west bank would have qualified, as I understand it, for a machine gun. So they were just awash with these guns and, you know, thinly supervised at best.

[Andrew]

Is there any recourse for a Palestinian who has been assaulted or had a friend that was killed by a settler?

[Louis Theroux]

There is a recourse. But the important thing is to understand is that there's an entirely different civil infrastructure. In fact, it's an. It's a. They are subject to military rule and military courts and the standards of, you know, detention, detention without trial, indefinite military detention, obviously like it being a quote, unquote, war zone. In effect, martial law exists, whereas all the Israelis in the settlements are subject to Israeli civilian law with all its checks and balances. So it's very much a two tier system.

[Andrew]

You covered South Africa shortly after apartheid was lifted when some of the structures and social divisions still existed. How would you compare what you documented in Africa to or in South Africa to what you documented in the west bank, both for ultra Zionists in 2011 and settlers last year?

[Louis Theroux]

You know, it's sometimes said, oh, well, is there apartheid? You know, apartheid being the term that was used in South Africa for racial segregation, does that exist in the West Bank? In my opinion, absolutely. The difference, though, you know, I don't know. You could decide for yourself whether you view it, how important you find it. It's not in quite the same sense racial that, you know, the apartheid in South Africa was explicitly, literally about skin color and texture of hair. There was something called the pencil test, where if you put a pencil in your hair and it didn't fall out like, then you fell under black racial categorization. And then there were other racial categories, categorizations. Japanese were honorary white. Chinese, I think, were honorary Asian, which fell under a term they used which was colored, which was somewhere between white and black. So it was all about racial identity in the west bank. What you have is a sort of religious ethnic identity. Like you can have Palestinians you might think were white. Right. Who look white. You can have Israelis that are black. Right. So the racial dimension doesn't map. But what you do have is a sense of there's two communities with different ethnic identities. By the way, some the Palestinians are Christian, many of them in Bethlehem are Christian, but obviously most of them are Muslim. And they are subject to a different legal regime. And in certain respects, I'd argue it's worse than apartheid. Like, it's more militarized, it's less functional. Like life, I think, is more intolerable from what I observe and understand in the west bank than it would have been in South Africa.

[Andrew]

Intolerable in what sense?

[Louis Theroux]

I mean, I'm on slightly thin ice here because I haven't studied the stats, but just the lethality of it and the extent to which the objective of the settlers is to, for many of them is to drive the Palestinians out. Like under apartheid, the white South Africans, they didn't tend to say like we want to drive the Africans, the black Africans out. They wanted to subject them to a punitive and degrading legal regime, but they weren't routinely, as I understand it. I want to be careful how I say it because I don't want to be a pit of minimizing any aspect of, of apartheid. But what I saw in the west bank was a life that was day to day unlivable, where you couldn't really, you know, endless check hours to hours to get anywhere if you could get anywhere. A sense in which you, you were just a stranger in your own land.

[Andrew]

So the checkpoints are specifically also divided based upon the license plates, right?

[Louis Theroux]

Correct.

[Andrew]

There's Israeli and Palestinian license plates. The Israeli plates are typically owned by settlers. And from what I saw, there was separate highways built for the settlers, like fast track systems. And for the Palestinians, endlessly brutal checkpoints between areas. Like to get from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, even though it's a five to ten minute drive, can take up to four hours. And part of it just feels cruel, like the mood of the guards. If a guard decides I'm having a bad day, I want to go smoke a cigarette, chew some bubble gum, they'll just shut it down just to inconvenience people as much as possible. And some of these soldiers are young people with bad attitudes, being really hostile. Yeah, I remember I was driving through near Ramallah and we pulled over and I had like a Handycam and I pulled out to get a shot of a bulldozer in the distance that was bulldozing a Palestinian village to build what looked like somewhere between a hilltop settlement and a subdivision. And as soon as I pull the camera out, these Israeli soldiers, one appeared to be Indian, one was like a fat kid from New York City. They come running up point like M16s or whatever, was at my face, cocky, and they're like, what the are you doing? And I'm looking at him and I'm like, I'm getting a shot of that bulldozer. And they're like, that's the Jewish area, you can't film that. And I was like, well, I'm American, I can film whatever. And they look at the Palestinian car and they go, then why are you with the bad guys?

[Louis Theroux]

They say that?

[Andrew]

Yeah. And I was like, we're in Palestine, they're Palestinian. And they were like, well, we need to run everyone's id. So they made us wait in the car for three hours while we look back. And they were just like drinking soda, eating corn dogs and tons of hockeys and, you know, just because they knew that it would inconvenience us and just create this daily dread and logistical anxiety. And that was the goal.

[Louis Theroux]

The goal.

[Andrew]

It's like a war of inconvenience.

[Louis Theroux]

A war of inconvenience at best. Like, and that, that's the daily grind. And then it's also a war of, of torture, literal torture, and, and murder at times as well.

[Andrew]

It makes me wonder if in addition to causing people to leave through Jordan, you know, engineer some kind of just like exhaustion to get them to flee. If they're also hosting, hoping that a Hamas style faction emerges out of angst and anger and resistance in Area C, Palestinian Authority zones, which is now 18% of the country, to give the Israeli army the final pretext to do what they've always wanted to do, which is annex the west bank and just go in and be like, oh, we have a fringe element now. They're being terrorists. It's time to finally, once and for all get rid of the Palestine problem. It feels like that. I feel like that's kind of part of the agenda. Is that crazy?

[Louis Theroux]

No, no. I think that's probably. I think there's different agendas in different visions. I think one of them is you either agree to be Israeli or you get kicked out. I think that's one scenario. I think there's also a de facto. I don't know if it's planned or not, but there's a de facto sense in which life becomes intolerable. I mean, they're doing this in Gaza, right? They're saying like incentivized immigration, saying like, you, you just leave. So I think there's a sense in which they, for many of the, certainly the far right, they just want the Palestinian Palestinians to go. They see them as just an intractable problem that would have to just have to be forced out.

[Andrew]

What do you think about the notion expressed by some that the PA is a proxy of the occupation?

[Louis Theroux]

I've heard it said that the PA is seen as kind of puppets of Israel, that there's in different ways, in a way enforcing the sort of the intolerable conditions that exist. There's another documentary that could be made and it may be you're making it. I did a couple of days in Nab. I did a bit of time in Jerusalem, which is sort of its own situation. Hebron, a little bit. But Tukharam, I did a tiny bit of time in. But in terms of life inside the Palestinian Authority, I don't know that much about. I will say. Can I make one other thing? Would you. Because your comment about different roads and because people say, like, well, how. How does this exist? Like, if it's that horrendous or are people indoctrinated? And I think there's a sense in which there's a media bubble and everyone to some extent is a victim of the media that they consume. Right. So there's a failure of empathy that's been inculcated based on restricted access to information. And then there's an ideology based on, obviously the very real thousands of years of persecution and the Holocaust, in a sense, in which you hear a lot like, we, you know, we've got one country, like, there's lots of Muslim countries, there's only one Jewish state. Why does everyone have a problem with it? So that's. There's a sort of narrative that the settlers tell themselves. I think another part of it that is often overlooked, though, is that the whole physical influence infrastructure is constructed in such a way that Palestinians are made invisible. You can drive up and down the west bank and the way the roads are constructed, the ways in which life takes place inside the cities that are hard for Israelis to get into. In fact, they're explicitly prohibited with big red signs that say danger of death. If you go into this Palestinian city or whatever. Palestine, in a kind of factual and practical way, has been sequestered and made invisible. And as I think it's easier to put out of your mind, the idea that Palestinians, the millions of Palestinians there, have rights, that they might be suffering or struggling and entitled to aspirations of state, like, if you just don't see them. And then again in Israel, within the 67 borders, they're not going out to the west bank much. So it's all been. It's a bit like prisons. You drive around London, there's a prison, I went down to Wandsworth, down to Tooting the other day.

[Andrew]

You drive.

[Louis Theroux]

You drive past one of London's biggest prisons, Wandsworth Prison. But it's behind trees and walls, so you don't really know it's there. Wormwood scrubs. So you don't really know what's going on and thereby it's kind of rendered invisible. Slaughterhouses are the same way. There's this willed and deliberate sense of disconnection.

[Andrew]

My last question is as far as a solution for the future. Do you think that if Israeli society were to moderate a bit and kick out the fringe sort of Ben GVIR smart smotrich element and initiate good faith talks with the pa, do you think like a two state peace solution is possible in the future based upon what you've seen, or do you think things are too far gone and the cycle of revenge and trauma is so deep now that it's just going to be a nightmare for the rest of eternity?

[Louis Theroux]

I remember in 2011 thinking, wow, two state solution seems really tough at this point. And actually, you know, because the settlement incursions are so huge, the level like the border would be, you know, so they talk about, oh, population transfers, but you've got two non contiguous terrains like Gaza and then the west bank. Also there's right of return. Like what about the houses we left in 48? Like what about all the villages that were erased in 48? The idealist in me, I began wondering whether a, a single state solution with everyone with the same rights might be possible.

[Andrew]

Many Palestinians have embraced the idea of one state in which they live with and have the same rights as Israeli Jews.

[Louis Theroux]

Like that seemed in a way more realistic. But maybe not. I mean, maybe that's naive. I mean it does have. Belgium is essentially a state with two separate and distinct national identities, like the Walloons and the Flemings. I mean that would be the future for Ireland, I would have thought. Like it's a single state encompassing the whole of the island of Ireland. So is that really. I mean, in a sense it's way above my pay grade and I sort of focus on where I see kind of organized rationality or organize like predation and violence. It is a hard one to crack.

[Andrew]

Well, thank you so much for your time.

[Louis Theroux]

Thank you, man.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it was a great interview, man.

[Louis Theroux]

I enjoyed it.

[Andrew]

Awesome.

[Louis Theroux]

Cool. Thanks guys.

[Andrew]

Channel 5 Live Worldwide Hollywood Advice the Authority Channel 5 News Channel 55.

[Louis Theroux]

We don't with custers and 5 is the best number.