← Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
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- [00:00]
Alex Clark
Have you ever talked about what happened with your brother that passed away?
- [00:03]
Brett Cooper
I felt so guilty turning 17 because he did not get to live longer than that.
- [00:09]
Alex Clark
Do you think that your brother losing his identical twin, is that what triggered the schizophrenia or were there signs of this before?
- [00:16]
Brett Cooper
It's directly correlated. I found him passed out in front of targets after overdoses. But we're basically all one traumatic event away from losing our minds. I think so many of our societal ills would be healed by people realizing that their life is not determined by, you know, the consequences of their childhood or their parents or their current circumstances.
- [01:00]
Alex Clark
She was recognized in the New York Times this year as one of the top conservative voices young people are listening to online. Of course I'm talking about the charismatic Gen Z Daily Wire host of the comment section, Brett Cooper, who on YouTube has a cult following of more than 4 million subscribers with her upbeat and countercultural opinions on current news and cultural phenomena. You also know her from the Daily Wire plus animated sitcom Mr. Bircham and she is starring in the upcoming historical fantasy series the Pendragon Cyc Michael as well as playing Snow White in Snow White and the Evil Queen in the first feature length production for Bent Key, the Daily Wire's children's entertainment platform. Brett has done several high profile interviews about her life as a child actor and working for the Daily Wire. So while we do touch on those things, it was important for me to ask some questions she doesn't get asked a lot, like the inner workings of the wardrobe department at Daily Wire to her brother's death and other brother's battle with schizophrenia and its subsequent effects on her family. We also talk about avoid being the forever girlfriend, what's in her purse currently and why she loves beef tallow for the face. You can watch this interview on the real Alex Clark YouTube channel or culture Apothecary on Spotify, which has video now and of course anywhere you get your podcast. Twice a week a new guest brings their own unique remedy to heal a sick culture physically, mentally or spiritually. We are completely donor funded so if you believe in our mission, consider becoming a financial supporter of the show with a tax deductible donation with the link in the show notes. If you love the show, pausing right now in leaving a five star review for free also really helps if a crunchy, cute servitive in your life needs a Christmas gift show. Merch is available on TSA merch.com and you can get 10% off with code Alex Clark, you're welcome. Please welcome host of the comments Section Brett Cooper to culture Apothecary. We both got our color analysis done this year, and we're both winters, so I have to know how much of your wardrobe you have changed. Like, how committed have you become?
- [03:02]
Brett Cooper
I don't think I am fully committed. Indefinite definitely now impacts, like, day to day decisions when I'm buying things, but I didn't go through and do, like, a whole closet clean out. And my husband Alex, he thinks that so much of this is bogus. Like, I'm now putting on things. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I should be wearing white. I should not be wearing cream. But, like, his favorite shirt that I have is beige. I'm like, but it washes me out. Like, I look terrible in beige. But he's like, no. Like, this is. She's totally wrong. Whatever. So he's not bought into it. So as a result, because there are things that, like, he loves that I wear, I have not, like, cleaned the whole thing out at work, though. We definitely have been, like, more conscious of it now, and we're, like, picking things based on that. And I, like, brought it back to the whole warfare team. And I was like, this is what we need to be buying.
- [03:44]
Alex Clark
Well, that's so funny you bring that up, because that's exactly what I was going to ask. I feel like it has changed my life.
- [03:51]
Brett Cooper
I.
- [03:51]
Alex Clark
And I am fully committed. I have switched all my jewelry to silver because you and I have the same rules we're supposed to adhere to. Switched all of my bags, my belts.
- [03:59]
Brett Cooper
Sweet pink. All of it? Yeah.
- [04:00]
Alex Clark
Like, I have, like, my nail color always. I switched my makeup. So I was wondering what all you did. Like, did you share the results with your makeup artist and say, like, this is what I should be doing?
- [04:09]
Brett Cooper
I did a little bit. The one thing that I can't commit to in makeup is a brighter lip. Have you seen the new thing on TikTok where it's like, are you a high or low contrast?
- [04:16]
Alex Clark
No.
- [04:17]
Brett Cooper
Okay, you should do that next. I haven't done it yet, but it's like, figuring out, like, on your face, like, whether you should be, like, eye dominant or lip dominant. I do not think I can pull off, like, brighter lips. So when she put on, like, the hot pink lip, I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. Like, I see that the pink works, but I'm just like, this feels like too much on my face, so I haven't implemented that. But definitely, like, I used to only do, like, peach coral nails. Peach on my face.
- [04:40]
Alex Clark
Oh, I did peach Blush, everything.
- [04:42]
Brett Cooper
Yeah. And so now that's. I've completely changed all of that. Like, I look like a bubblegum, like, fairy princess whenever I put on, like, too much blood.
- [04:48]
Alex Clark
So I'm using all these different makeup artists. If I'm filming somewhere else or whatever, which I know you. You do the same thing. But the cup, there's, like, three items. I always bring my foundation. I have a primer that I specifically like, and then my blush color. And the blush that I think looks so good on the winters is tart. Blushing bride.
- [05:06]
Brett Cooper
Okay.
- [05:07]
Alex Clark
So it's kind of like a purple mauvy pink. And anyway, this is, like, my jam, so I always bring that with me. I got to visit the Daily Wire headquarters for the first time this year, and by far, the most fascinating thing on this entire tour to me was the wardrobe department. Specifically, your racks.
- [05:27]
Brett Cooper
Yeah.
- [05:27]
Alex Clark
I had 10 million questions about this, and the guy leading the tour said, like, well, we've never had this many questions about wardrobe, and I did get all of them answered. So I'm going to run through all of these. One thing that they said is that you guys buy your wardrobe for a set amount of time, and then you switch it out. What is the time duration the clothes are for, and then how often do you switch them out?
- [05:52]
Brett Cooper
I would say probably six months, but it's not like a. We hit six months. They're all thrown out. There's a whole new one. It's always like, all right, we're going to start implementing new thing. So I still have a few pieces of clothing in, you know, on my racks that I've had from year one of the show, because I just like. I love that jacket. I love the shirt. It goes under anything. So we keep those things. But, like, especially with the changing seasons, we'll rotate things and out. I would even say it's more like a rotation than just, like, we're getting things out. So there are definitely certain pieces that it's like, in the summer. Like, I won't see these for six months, but we'll bring something back that, again, I've had for two years. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I love this. But, yeah, I would say about six months ago, they start adding new things in, and then we kind of do like, an assessment. My producer will come in with me, and we'll, like, sit down with the wardrobe team. We'll go, okay. This is, like, fitting where Brett's at right now. Do we want to, like, change this? We did a big set redesign in December, January of last year? Well, they had it done by the time I came back from Budapest. We, like, launched it in January. And so with this new set, we're like, should we do new clothing? Do we want anything to change? So it's, like, definitely a revolving conversation.
- [06:55]
Alex Clark
Yeah. So do you guys sit and think about what's going on in your personal life, and should your clothing reflect that? Like, when you got married, were you, like, her look should change a little bit because she's now married?
- [07:05]
Brett Cooper
Like, was there stuff like that already sort of happening? It wasn't like, okay, now I need to dress this way. Like, I think when we started the show, I was definitely like, I want to be more casual. I want to be in hoodies. I want to be comfortable. And then as the show grew and I think I matured, and then we, you know, the show kind of started evolving with me. Then I was like, okay, I think maybe, like, let's throw in some blouses. Let's try something new like that. I also had got, like, a call from my mom. Gosh, this was maybe, like, nine months into me doing the show, and there was one hoodie that she hated that I always wore, and she finally just lost it, and she called me, and she was like, this makes you look so ugly. You need to take it off. Like, you're just schlumping, and you look whatever. And I was like, okay, okay, okay. So I think at that point, we're like, maybe it's not translating how I want it to on camera, because in my mind, I was like, I'm casual. I'm comfortable. This is just Brett. But on camera, I was like, all right, you have this really beautiful set now. You have amazing cameras. You have this amazing team that's doing this incredible lighting, and you're sitting here in, like, a target, like, sweatshirt and making you look slumped.
- [07:57]
Alex Clark
See, we're going through a set redesign. We're going to make a permanent, like, culture apothecary theme set for my show for the first time. I've never had that. We're doing that. And even the set itself, I took into consideration my colors. I mean, that's how, like, psycho I am about this. So do you sit with the stylist and you choose what you want? Like, you guys are just, like, looking on revolve, and you're like, I like this. I like this. Or are they choosing everything for you and it's kind of a surprise they're presenting to you? Here's what we're thinking.
- [08:24]
Brett Cooper
It is usually, like, we'll come in with a Pinterest board, and we'll be like, all right, this is kind of the style that we want, and we'll do that for shoots as well. So it's like, hey, we need to do a shoot for X, Y, and Z. Or going to do this podcast. We'll send, like, hey, we like this style, this vibe. They will bring in a few different things. Or it's like, we have this premiere, and I want to dress this way. You know, this is kind of the color that I want. And they'll go, okay. They go out into the world. As I say, my wardrobe stylist name is Kristen. She's like, all right, I'll go see what the world has. So she, like, goes out and she, you know, picks a bunch of things and buys them and then brings them in. And then we usually do, like, a day where we try things on. If they're doing a big, like, integration of new things, we'll set aside, like, four hours, basically, and I'll go through and I'll try everything on. Do we like this? How would we layer this with this? Does this work with other things that you have? And then there's also days where I'm just, you know, I come in and I'm wearing something that I really love. Like, I just bought a new shirt. In my personal life, I'm like, no, I want to wear this today. So they're very receptive to that. So it isn't just like, they're picking out everything.
- [09:17]
Alex Clark
Do you have to tell them in advance I'm coming in wearing my own thing today?
- [09:20]
Brett Cooper
No, I'll just show up and I, like, stick my head. I'm like, hey, I'm fine. They're like, okay, okay.
- [09:23]
Alex Clark
So are they on call or. They only show up whenever. They're always there.
- [09:27]
Brett Cooper
They're always there because they're there for all of us. And they're, like, primping.
- [09:30]
Alex Clark
And so is it you because you're the girl that's the most high maintenance and demanding with the style?
- [09:35]
Brett Cooper
Oh, no, I'm definitely not the most high maintenance. I actually think the guys take a lot more than I do, which is so funny. I think that me coming in required them to, you know, expand their horizons in a way because they were all focused. Like, it was so male dominant for so many years. And so that forced them to think, like, a little bit differently, and we had to. I think it was more creative for them because they're like, okay, finally. We're not doing something that's Just, you know, suits and suits and suits in general. I actually think, because I'm, I'm pretty laid back with what I wear. Like if they throw something out, I'm like, okay, yeah, I'll put it on. But I think the guys especially because they do more events, like public facing events, that it's like they're always dressing them, they're always doing that kind of thing. I'll often like pack for myself at home if I'm going on a work trip because I like, know, like my jeans, the majority of things that they pull for me are tops. I have very specific jeans that I love and pants I love. So I'll come in wearing those pants.
- [10:24]
Alex Clark
Okay, tell us the jeans.
- [10:26]
Brett Cooper
The best jeans, Abercrombie.
- [10:27]
Alex Clark
Really?
- [10:28]
Brett Cooper
Yes.
- [10:28]
Alex Clark
Is there a specific one?
- [10:30]
Brett Cooper
The curve love.
- [10:31]
Alex Clark
Oh my gosh.
- [10:32]
Brett Cooper
Yeah.
- [10:32]
Alex Clark
Because you've actually got a butt and I don't. So I don't know what that's like.
- [10:36]
Brett Cooper
But that's literally is the only jean that I have found that like hits the waist. Doesn't like buckle in the back.
- [10:43]
Alex Clark
No, we love that. And doesn't stretch.
- [10:44]
Brett Cooper
Cause the thing like, I love madewell, but I feel like four months into wearing them, they're like falling off of me and they've like shrunk in weird places. Abercrombie does not stretch. They feel like Levi's, but they actually fit me the way that like old school Levi's did. Like new Levi's just don't fit me the way if I like find a great vintage pair at like Goodwill. Those are great.
- [11:04]
Alex Clark
No, I think Abercrombie and Fitch is phenomenal.
- [11:06]
Brett Cooper
They're great.
- [11:06]
Alex Clark
I've been telling everybody they've completely changed. Like they used to have weird rules like we don't allow black clothing. Like navy was the darkest color. They only had a certain amount of sizes. You know, all this. And they've totally expanded and redone everything. I think they are such a great quality for the price.
- [11:20]
Brett Cooper
Yes.
- [11:21]
Alex Clark
I think that they are just as good of quality as madewell stuff a lot of times. And a little less expensive.
- [11:26]
Brett Cooper
Like, honestly, I'll go to Aritzia and I see something that is like 300 and I go to Abercrombie around being like, okay, I can get this for 175, 120, whatever.
- [11:34]
Alex Clark
Cute work wear and stuff.
- [11:35]
Brett Cooper
And again, the sizing, it actually, like, I can never fit in Aritzia pants. Like, they just don't. Like, they never fit me. If you have any kind of thighs, but whatever does not Fit.
- [11:45]
Alex Clark
Okay, so they're mostly doing tops, I'm assuming, dresses?
- [11:48]
Brett Cooper
Yes. Yeah.
- [11:48]
Alex Clark
Okay, so tell me about what happens to the clothes when you're finished with them. Because here's my theory. Is there a secret poshmark or ebay that is actually Brett Cooper set clothes and people don't even realize they're buying from you?
- [12:02]
Brett Cooper
I actually have no ide.
- [12:03]
Alex Clark
You don't know what?
- [12:04]
Brett Cooper
I don't know. I don't.
- [12:05]
Alex Clark
Are you allowed to check them out and you're allowed to take these and wear this stuff in your personal life?
- [12:09]
Brett Cooper
The only time that I did that was when I went to Budapest and so I was there for work and I went for five months and they basically, you know, since they were sending me there, putting me up in an apartment there, I brought a bunch of personal things and casual stuff, but they basically packed me for, you know, Hungarian winter shooting. Comment section. If you're going to take any, like, street style photos, if you're going to do any, like, we used to do these, like, off the clock videos. If you're going to do any interviews, whatever, we want to make sure that you're totally, totally set.
- [12:37]
Alex Clark
Yeah.
- [12:38]
Brett Cooper
And so I wore a lot of those clothes in my personal life because I couldn't bring my entire wardrobe. So in my mind it didn't make sense for me to bring, okay, here's like Brett's normal clothes and here's her on set clothes. And so they kind of all got mixed together, but in general they're pretty separate. Just because those are things that they're buying. They keep very clean. Everything is dry cleaned. I don't dry clean anything in my personal life, but everything, like in the wardrobe department is like pressed and perfect.
- [13:00]
Alex Clark
So favorite brands right now that a lot of your wardrobe is coming from.
- [13:04]
Brett Cooper
Aritzia is definitely just because they're great basics. We do get a lot of madewell tops, even though I don't love their jeans. Here's another thing. I love knits. I am like, I'm a sucker for a knit. If there is a knit tank top or a crochet tank top, it is like I have about 15,000 of them.
- [13:21]
Alex Clark
Yeah, that does seem very you.
- [13:23]
Brett Cooper
I love them if it's like lots of color, textures. I'm big on texture.
- [13:27]
Alex Clark
And favorite decade of fashion.
- [13:29]
Brett Cooper
70S.
- [13:29]
Alex Clark
I knew you were going to say that.
- [13:30]
Brett Cooper
Yeah. This is. Okay. So my husband and I were Dr. Evil and Frau Forbizna from Austin Powers for Halloween just a couple of days ago. And it's so funny because Alex Always says that if I could dress like I was a character in Austin Powers, that would be his favorite thing. Because I always wear like fun little colorful dresses and these big boots.
- [13:47]
Alex Clark
So he's into it.
- [13:48]
Brett Cooper
Oh, he's like total about it. And it's his favorite comedy, which is so funny. I was like, you want me to dress like I'm an Austin Powers? He's like, yes, but Yeah, I love the 70s style and when I go to events and that kind of thing. I love staed dresses. Me too.
- [14:00]
Alex Clark
Me too. Yes, yes, yes.
- [14:01]
Brett Cooper
I think the last couple of like premiere dresses have been from there. Oh, Alison, Olivia. Alice and Olivia is great. They have great winter colors.
- [14:10]
Alex Clark
Okay, they do. And I love their stuff. But listen, let me tell you something crazy. I'm going to black pill you on Alice and Olivia. So I had no idea until recently, but Alice and Olivia has the worst resale value of any designer, which you don't have to worry about. I guess Daily Wire would.
- [14:26]
Brett Cooper
But they have a secret poshmark.
- [14:27]
Alex Clark
Yeah. If they have a secret poshmark is that as soon as you wear it or take that item off the tag, it's like you lose like hundreds of dollars on it. Which is crazy because I'm constantly switching out. I'll go to a luxury consignment store.
- [14:42]
Brett Cooper
Or something and I'll bring my stuff.
- [14:44]
Alex Clark
So I'm always doing stuff like that. And I had an Alice and Olivia item even with the tags on that I had bought. And I had just missed the return date by three days. And they were like, this is only worth a couple hundred dollars now. And I paid. It was close to $1,000. So those are the types of things. I don't know. It's something weird with that brand. So that's just personally for you to know if you. That's unfor.
- [15:06]
Brett Cooper
Because I love. They just have like the best jewel tones.
- [15:09]
Alex Clark
I know.
- [15:09]
Brett Cooper
And they're also just. They're like a little edgy, but not edgy in the sense of like color. Yeah. Patterns non traditional, which I like.
- [15:21]
Alex Clark
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- [16:41]
Brett Cooper
Yes.
- [16:42]
Alex Clark
So was your fiance, had he. Was he there the whole time traveling with you or did he show up?
- [16:46]
Brett Cooper
He came in, in and out. So he was going to be there the whole time. This man, I just love him to death. And I'll give him a shout out here. I give him a shout out on basically every podcast because I'm obsessed with him. But he literally turned his career upside down to be able to travel with me, to be flexible for me.
- [17:02]
Alex Clark
Is he managing you well, like a business adventure?
- [17:05]
Brett Cooper
No. Well, he does because everyone does that.
- [17:07]
Alex Clark
Candace's husband, Ali Bestucky's husb been, they're all doing this.
- [17:10]
Brett Cooper
I would love that he does that in like a non professional way. I think that some of my best ideas end up coming from him. He's a strategist in advertising, so he's just incredibly creative. He's much smarter than I am, much more creative than I am. I just, he's amazing. But he was, you know, in the corporate world working for other people and you know, even with remote work, with my schedule changing so much and Daily Wire being like, all right, you're gonna go to hungry, you're going to go do this. It was very difficult. And so he made the decision, you know, early last year to say, okay, I'm going to take, you know, the reins of my own career. I'm going to start my own business. I'm going to, you know, be totally flexible so that I can be there for you, with you so that this is not a problem for us. Which honestly has just made him even more successful and even more like, fulfilled. And it's just great. So it's, you know, worked out wonderfully. So he did all of that in an effort to be able to come be with me for the entire time in Budapest. And then he was training for a triathlon and he tore his acl mcl. Basically just every ligament in his knee just exploded. Oh, it was awful. And so it was like the day before the triathlon. And so he went through all of these different tests and he had to be moved around from doctor to doctor. Finally got his surgery scheduled for the day after I left for Budapest. And I felt so guilty because I was like, I'm just leaving you here all, like, strung up. So he had to be home to recover for about six weeks, or for the first six weeks I was out there alone, which honestly, I think was a great test for our relationship because, you know, we had been together for about a year at that point and we hadn't really been apart. And I was in a new country, I was working, you know, two full time jobs. Basically we were apart on completely different time zones.
- [18:50]
Alex Clark
How did you talk?
- [18:51]
Brett Cooper
We had like scheduled facetime, you know, like before I would go to bed, before he would go to bed, because it kind of alternated. But it was a great test because I realized how much I relied on him and missed him. Like, I'm a very hyper, independent person and I always have been. And so I think in a relationship that was not as strong and that wasn't as meant to be, it would have been like a relief to kind of be away and like, oh, I can go do my own thing. And I realized how much I missed him. It's like I'm in a totally new country, living abroad, living in these, like, beautiful Hungarian apartments, doing these amazing things, working on a TV show with like some of the best people I know, meeting all these great people. And it's just like it was so dull because he wasn't there. So I was proud of myself because I was able to do it alone. And we managed doing the show and Pendragon and Reagan flew out and stayed for the majority of the time and helped produce the show while we were there.
- [19:40]
Alex Clark
Isn't your producer Reagan also married?
- [19:41]
Brett Cooper
Yes.
- [19:42]
Alex Clark
So what happens to her husband?
- [19:43]
Brett Cooper
Oh, poor Adam.
- [19:44]
Alex Clark
Poor Adam.
- [19:46]
Brett Cooper
It was this poor man.
- [19:48]
Alex Clark
She needs a plus one also on all your little getaways.
- [19:50]
Brett Cooper
Exactly, exactly. He has been able to come maybe a couple times, I think, but. But no, he's just wonderful. He's one of Alex's best friends as well. So that Was good. So they were able. They literally. They hung out while we were there. And then Adam came for a bit. Alex came, I think for two of the five months, and then he had to go back and be in person with a couple of clients at the tail end. But, yeah, he came in the middle. And the day before my birthday last year, proposed, took me up to Fisherman's Bastion.
- [20:17]
Alex Clark
Were you expecting it at all?
- [20:18]
Brett Cooper
I knew that it was going to happen sometime before the end of the year, but I didn't know exactly when. But I was not actually surprised in the moment because Regan was hiding out in the bushes. And I already knew that something was suspicious because on the first day that he had arrived, we all, meaning Alex and Regan and I, went to brunch. And then we were really close to Fisherman's Bastion. I was like, oh, come on, Alex. You can go see this view. This is, like, the thing to do in Budapest. So we had already seen it, and he was hell bent on going to see it at sunset. I was like, we were just there, like, 24 hours ago. Let me go show you something else. There's so many amazing things to do. I love Budapest. He was like, no, I really have to go see sunset. I was like, okay. So we didn't make it one night. And he was all, like, flustered about it because I think I had to stay late shooting. So then the next night, we really have to go. And so we had dinner reservations at this cool French place on the opposite side of the river. And he was adamant we were gonna walk, and we were gonna walk through Fisherman's Bastion, and we were gonna get to dinner. And I was like, okay. I was like, that seems a bit fishy. And Reagan was also being, like, very coyote. And then we were on this walk, and it was fine. And we were. You know, I literally had called Regan on the walk because there was, like, some drama thing that happened with one of our friends. I was like, regan, can you believe what I just saw on social media? And she was like, wow, that's so true. I'm in my apartment right now. She was not. She was hiding in a bush. But the way that I knew was because he wears an apple watch. And I looked over at his arm, and there was a text from Reagan, and she said, all clear. I'm hiding in the bushes, or something like that. And I was like, oh, no. And so then I started to hyperventilate, and I was again, we're on this stupidly long walk. We have now walked from my apartment or Our apartment in Budapest. Walked through the main city center across the river. Now, we were walking up all of these stairs. This man was like, let's, like, do a romantic hike. It was not romantic. I was, like, sweating all the way up here, and I had, like, my jacket on. And then I saw it. I was like, oh, my God, it's happening. And so I was like, all right, Br. It's going to be fine. This is going to be great. This is everything you've ever wanted. Let's be calm. We get up there. It is the most crowded I have ever seen it. Which he did not anticipate because they had gone the night before to, like, scope it out, and there was nobody there, and it was totally quiet. There were, like, four huge tour groups. They were all, like, Chinese tourists, selfie sticks everywhere. Somebody was doing wedding pictures. And I was like, oh, my God, this man does not know me at all. Like, Because I was like, I do not want any public engagement. What are we doing? And so I got so stressed, and I made him go to Starbucks, because there's Starbucks up at the fashion. And I got a bottle of water, and I was, like, chugging it as we walked down the steps. And then it got even worse.
- [22:45]
Alex Clark
You were delaying your own proposal.
- [22:47]
Brett Cooper
Because I was so nervous, because I hate for somebody that, like, does this for a living. I hate, like, public attention. And so I was like, oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. And little did I know he was also freaking out, because, again, the last side was totally empty. And so he was going, why are there so many people here?
- [23:01]
Alex Clark
There's going to be people in the shot.
- [23:03]
Brett Cooper
Yeah, exactly. And he also knew that I didn't want a super public thing, so I think he was, like, freaking out. And we start walking down the steps where they had prepped, and there's a violinist in the middle. And I was like, oh, my gosh. And I was like, this is. Now we're drawing even more attention to this.
- [23:16]
Alex Clark
Was that him or.
- [23:17]
Brett Cooper
No, that was just a random guy that was there. And we ended up getting to this little, like, spot that he and Reagan had picked out, and it was, like, actually very secluded. So he did a great job. There was nobody around. You couldn't see anybody in the shot. But in our actual, like, when he actually got down on one knee, I was holding my jacket, and I had my Starbucks water bottle, and I was just like. So Regan, literally, she was, like, yelling at me, and she was like, throw down the water. Like, redo, redo. And so I, like, Hurled everything on the ground. True producer. Yeah, exactly. She produced my engagement. But no, it was so great, and it was so meaningful for it to happened there, because again, I think that it was. We had just gone through six weeks of being apart, which, again, really solidified. Like, you were the person that I want to be with. Like, you bring so much color into my life. Like, I don't want to experience any of these things without you. You know, seeing what he had done in his career to be able to be there for that length of time and the sacrifices that he had made. So it was really meaningful in that way. And then, you know, ended up designing my wedding dress there and had it made by a Hungarian designer, which was so special. We planned most of the wedding while I was still in Budapest. So, yeah, it was just a. It was a really, really wonderful experience. And I love Budapest so much. I had already been once before, before going out there to shoot Pendragon, and I just loved it. Now it's like a even more special place in my mind.
- [24:25]
Alex Clark
Is it true that you had a guy once tell you that he would need seven years before he could decide if you were worth marrying?
- [24:32]
Brett Cooper
Yes. Yeah. That was my. That was my college boyfriend.
- [24:36]
Alex Clark
Walk me through this.
- [24:38]
Brett Cooper
And I always. I hate saying this, because he's a great guy, and I think we would have been really, really excellent friends. And we were really good friends, which is why I think on as long as I did, because I think we dated under a year, but the signs were there that it probably was not working earlier than that. And I think that's one of the reasons why I'm so adamant on the show. And I talk to women and I talk to guys. It's like, when you know that it's not right, like, why are you wasting your time? Like, why? Like, that's the one thing you can't get back is your time and your energy. But, you know, it's a learning experience. But, yeah, we had had some conversation about, you know, intentions and marriage, and I was always very clear that it's like, I want to be a wife. I want to be a mom.
- [25:12]
Alex Clark
And this is even in college.
- [25:13]
Brett Cooper
Yes. Oh, yeah. I was very, like, again, from childhood, the number one thing that I've always wanted to be is my mom. My mom is my idol, greatest person in my life. The way that she just attacked motherhood with everything in her being is just so inspirational to me. So it's. It's like, put her on a pedestal. It's like, that is the best thing I Could do. So I've always wanted that, always in very upfront. And he very cavalierly said, yeah, well, you know, that won't happen for a long time. Okay. I said, what do you mean? And he said, well, yeah, I'll need, you know, I'll need to date you for 7 years to know if I really want to marry you. Because then we will have gone through everything. I will have seen you in every single light possible, and then I can be sure. And in my mind. And that was when I was, you know, 18, I think I was looking at the clock. I'm like, no, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna sit around for seven years and wonder if you're gonna want to marry me. So I ended that pretty shortly after the fact.
- [26:05]
Alex Clark
So you broke up with him?
- [26:06]
Brett Cooper
Yes.
- [26:07]
Alex Clark
Do you think too many women are making the mistake of willingly becoming the perpetual forever girlfriend?
- [26:14]
Brett Cooper
Yes. Yeah. And it's. I think it's a combination of a few things. I think the main one is fear of there not being something better. And I also think that a lot of women, when you've already put in the time and effort and you've gotten through the awkwardness and you've gotten out of the, you know, the weird talking phase, and you've gone through the hurdles of swiping on apps and going on first dates and you're in a relationship, it's like, I'm going to hang onto this with every fiber of my being. I've already put in three, four, five years, but in my mind it's like, okay, you've put in, you know, three, four, five years and you're going to walk away from that. Like, wouldn't you rather start from ground zero and find the right person to then spend the next 60, 70 years with instead of spending 60, 70 years with the wrong person. It's like, like when you put it in that perspective and also, like, that's why I say when there are signs, when you know that there is not compatibility from the beginning, when there are things like, you know, I'm going to want to date you for seven years and, you know, like, I want to have kids by the time I'm X age, I want to get married. I don't want to wait until I'm 26 years old, whatever it is. I want to be able to be free and go meet people who actually might want to know that they want to marry me earlier than that. That's when you cut dry and you move on. Because then you are not so emotionally Entangled. My mom always said it's her clinging vine theory, which is my favorite thing ever.
- [27:29]
Alex Clark
Tell us.
- [27:29]
Brett Cooper
If you have like a clinging vine wrapped around a tree, it's very easy if the vine is a baby. If it's a new vine, you just pop it off. It's easy. It's like in the south we have kudzu and it is an invasive species that every southern father, like once a year goes out and it's like, I will get the kudzu. That kudzu, if you don't get it when it's a baby, when it's just started growing, it will take over your entire life. You literally have to take like an axe and be hacking it off. She's like, that's the same thing with relationships. If you've let this relationship invade your life and go on for far too long, if you are now living with this person, if you are sexually active, this goes for both men and women. If you just let it hang on when you know that it's not right because you're avoiding the confrontation, you're avoiding the feelings of being alone, that breakup is going to be even worse than you could ever imagine that you're just going to keep putting it off. So again, if you know, then just like cut dry when you can.
- [28:15]
Alex Clark
What was your timeline of dating to engagement and then engagement to marriage with Alex?
- [28:21]
Brett Cooper
It was about a year and a half until we were engaged and then we got married in six months. In the grand scheme of wedding planning, that was fast.
- [28:28]
Alex Clark
Well, and I think also for our generation, I feel like everybody's having really long engagements.
- [28:33]
Brett Cooper
Super long. Yeah. And I think that also, that is the wedding industry is to blame for that, really. So my sister in law just got engaged. They're looking at wedding venues, they're trying to figure out when they could get married. Things in the south where they want to get married are literally booked up for the entirety of 2025. They can't get Mar married until 2026. Oh, and then when you had this long engagement and this was a piece of advice that my mom gave Alex and I was that the longer the engagement is, the easier it is to make it a bigger deal than it really needs to be. Like to make the party a bigger deal and to spend more money. Because then you have, you know, two years. Like, oh, let's just spend, you know, here, what's an extra 6,000? Here, what's an extra 3,000? Let's do this crazy thing, let's plan a whatever. But if you have these, like, six months. We were very clear, I think, that if we had had, you know, a longer time, we might have done a different wedding. We had a lot of different ideas that we had planned. Yeah.
- [29:25]
Alex Clark
I was going to ask you, what was the vision for your wedding? And then how close did the final result match up?
- [29:31]
Brett Cooper
It was almost exactly to a T, except for the venue, but I don't regret the venue in the slightest. So I had always envisioned kind of like a outdoor backyard style wedding. And so we had just bought this farm, and we have all this land, and we're like, all right, this will be great. Let's have the wedding here. Let's do this. But the logistics of it were going to cost more than any venue would have. Like, we were gonna have to bring in bathrooms, parking.
- [29:57]
Alex Clark
Right, Right.
- [29:57]
Brett Cooper
We live very far away from Nashville, honestly. And it's not feasible for people to Uber. And so if they were gonna be drinking, so we were gonna have to plan for vans, shuttles. Oh, yeah, crazy. Then a rain plan. Tents. You do not expect that tents are gonna be, like $50,000, but if you get a quote, it is truly insane. And so even if it doesn't rain, you still have to pay for the tent, even if you don't use it. So it just became bigger and bigger and bigger. We literally had our invitations about to be sent to the printer. We had had all the vendors booked farm. And my really good friend Rose, who was one of my bridesmaids, she starred in Pen Dragon with me. She and her family own a wedding venue. And in the back of my mind, I had always said, okay, well, we have that. But it's a beautiful venue. It's always booked up. There's, like, four other girls from Daily Wire who have gotten married there. It's just like this stunning. It has a chapel, it has a barn. It's just, like, lovely. And they offer everything. It's all inclusive. And in back of my mind, I was like, okay, we always have that. They also have a. A great barn on their property where they've held events. So it's, you know, it's a little closer to Nashville. So I had kind of her family as our backup. And I just had this moment where we were going through all the logistics, and we were about to book this tent, and I looked at Alex and I was like, I can't. This is, like, way too much. I was like, we can't spend this much money. We had, you know, given ourselves a budget. We were going to stick to the budget. We had just bought this farm, had definitely extended ourselves, you know, financially as much as we could. And that was more important than throwing a wedding, in our opinion. And I was like, I just can't. The logistics, I just can't do it. And he said, okay, then let's just. Let's just see if there is even a date available in the venue. We can change everything. So I called Rose and her parents and they randomly had one date available left in the spring. They said, it's yours. And it was like God thing for sure. And it was so special then because even though it was not the thing that I had envisioned, it was so special because she is one of my closest friends. Was a bridesmaid.
- [31:46]
Alex Clark
Yes.
- [31:46]
Brett Cooper
Her family is like my second parents. Like, I go over to her house and have family dinners. Like, it was so special. They were all involved. And so that made it more special in my mind because. And this is just a very, very cool thing. And I've suggested this to people. It's not an easy thing to pull off. But every one of our vendors was somebody that we knew personally, which was just like, it gives me chills. It was so special because, you know, the woman who made our cake was someone who used to work at Daily Wire and was like my brand manager. She's like another mom to me. She was on the Great British Bake Off. Random. So she makes incredible cakes. Yeah. My mother in law got all the flowers from a friend of hers who is a florist. And the morning of, we made all the bouquets. The person who catered it was a friend of Rose's family that we had known and does like amazing barbecue. We wanted it to be really casual. The band, Alex sat next to them on his flight out to Budapest randomly.
- [32:37]
Alex Clark
Oh my gosh.
- [32:38]
Brett Cooper
Just random, random stuff like that. Even like the folks that we rented our stage from is like the company that Daily Wire uses that I've interacted with a ton. Like, I always see them in the studios. Like they're bringing couches in for backstage or whatever. I know. Like when I went to pick out the stage, I was like, oh, I know you. Like, this is so great. It was genuinely like everybody who touched our wedding was somebody that was like involved, you know, in our life. And so it was really like. I kept saying it was like a barn raising in many ways, because truly everybody came together to make this possible.
- [33:10]
Alex Clark
In hindsight, is there anything that you would have done differently with your planning or execution?
- [33:16]
Brett Cooper
I think I would have asked for help more because wedding planning in my experience, was a bit of a lonely, alienating experience, which I've now heard from more people. And I had the best friends. I mean, Reagan is sitting over there, like, is incredible. She is the only one of my bridesmaids who had already gotten married. And so she had gotten married, like, the year before, stepped up in a massive way. Rose, when her family was like, all right, let's have you use the venue you set up. But before that, it really felt like there was so much pressure because you have all these people. I didn't expect the pressure because it's like, you know, it's our day, we're doing what we want to do, and we're getting married, and it's so fun. But then when you have all the. When you've sent out the invitations and you have all these people that are flying in, you're like, oh, my gosh, I need to feed all of you. I need to make sure you get home safely.
- [33:59]
Alex Clark
Did you feel any pressure as someone who is a social media personality to make it look good to all your followers? I mean, just honestly, not really.
- [34:10]
Brett Cooper
And it was a. You know, I did that article with the conservator to cover the wedding, and that was honestly a kind of second thought decision. And that was less because I wanted to show off the flowers and the dress and more because I knew people were going to be interested. I knew that they were going to have opinions and thoughts.
- [34:27]
Alex Clark
Were you honestly dreading your audience finding out that you were getting engaged?
- [34:34]
Brett Cooper
Not really, no. I was really excited about it. And I had, you know, I had kept Alex private because that is what he wanted. I love him so much. I will, like, sing it from the rooftops. I want everybody to see him. I think that he is so cute. He's so sweet. He's so funny, and I just love him. And so I would love to just have him on display all the time. But he was, you know, very certain that he wanted to maintain his privacy and kind of like, let that come out. Which I also, you know, I say I want to have him on display and show him off. But at the beginning of our relationship, I was really protective as well, because there were so many people that had opinions. And I have, you know, a pretty male dominant audience. It's changed now. I think it's more even. But there were a lot. And I think a lot of people hear me say that and go, oh, you didn't want them to, like, leave you. You wanted them to be obsessed with you. But it was more so Like, I just didn't want everybody else's opinions and anger and concerns about my relationship until I was totally certain of it and could. Could kind of withstand that because I knew people would have opinions, and I didn't want to invite millions of people into our relationship when it was still like a baby relationship. So in hindsight, I do think we handled it in the right way. But with the, you know, showing the wedding, my decision to have, or our decision to have conservator come and do the article was because, again, I knew people would have, you know, an interest in it, and I wanted to share it. And especially I wanted to kind of make a statement and that it's like, I'm young. I'm getting married. This is, you know, what I'm doing. I believe in this. I believe in the institution of marriage. Like, I'm so excited. This is where my life begins. Marrying Alex, I feel like, was the beginning of my life in a lot of ways. People say, like, oh, you're settling down. I was like, no, this is like, we're building this future together. This was the start of something so amazing. So I wanted to share that. And getting married is a statement in a lot of ways. I wanted the article to share our values and why we were getting married and why we held our wedding in the way we did with having our community be very involved. But I didn't want it to look like I was monetizing my wedding. That was a big concern. Like, I, you know, Reagan said, well, do you want to do, like, a video on your channel? I was like, because I get money from that. Like, that's. That's weird to me because this is so, you know, personal, and I'm making it not private by inviting you into it. And so the conservatory is run by some of my closest friends, and they're wonderful, Jamie and Caroline. And so they were already going to be attending the wedding, and I was planning on inviting them. And I thought, this is, you know, they've never covered a wedding before. Caroline is a beautiful writer. They would cover it in a way that was not just about the dress and the flowers and who's there, but they would cover it in a way that is about the values and the people and the marriage and the biblical meaning behind it. So that was our decision in doing that.
- [37:15]
Alex Clark
Make sure you're thinking ahead in case you or someone in your family gets sick. As the cooler weather creeps in, I've been building my medicine cabinet and fridge, and I've got elderberry syrup, b Propolis throat spray, turmeric supplements and liposomal vitamin C. And in my fridge you are going to find a ton ton of immunity juice from Squeeze Juice. Made from a small GMO free family farm in California. Squeeze Juice has no added sugar, no water added and only pure ingredients. The immunity juice is pomegranate juice, mandarin juice, apple puree, carrot juice, ginger juice, turmeric juice, habanero pepper juice and vitamin C. Oh my gosh. All items that could be an ingredient and real food. The last thing you want to drink when you're sick is the run of the mill orange juice that you find at the store. Filled with 30 grams of sugar and high fructose corn syrup, sprayed with glyphosate, which wrecks the gut and is terrible for your immune system. Squeeze Juice is like squeezing fruit and making it yourself in the kitchen, except they do the work for you. It's the same clean ingredients without the work, shipped cold straight to your door. Go to shop.squeezejuice.com with code Alex for 25% off. Go to shop.squeezed juice.com with code Alex for 25 percent off. We have to talk about simpgate. What does your husband think about your comment section? Does he find it cringe? Does he find it funny? Does it annoy him?
- [38:42]
Brett Cooper
He is so unflappable. He is the most unflappable man I have ever met. He is so sure of himself in every single way, which is one of the many reasons why I love him. Like, nothing can touch him. Like, he is very sure of himself and his values and what he has and where he's going. And so he reads those and he just laughs and he's like, oh, that's a good one. Like that's.
- [38:58]
Alex Clark
Did you have a conversation when you were in the just dating stage of like, so this happens every time I post. Like, did you say anything?
- [39:06]
Brett Cooper
He just, he already knew. So I think it didn't really have to be like, I don't think we ever had like a formal conversation about it.
- [39:12]
Alex Clark
How do you feel about it?
- [39:13]
Brett Cooper
I think it just comes with the territory. It's not something that I obviously seek and but you know, it's totally different.
- [39:21]
Alex Clark
Than any other girl in the conservative.
- [39:22]
Brett Cooper
Which is wild. Yeah, totally different. It's kind of like again, I just laugh at it and I never want it to be like, I'm like wagging my finger at these guys. I'm like, I'm moving. Move on. It's like, I don't really care. If you want to comment that it's fine. I laugh at them. You know, if I can give guys hope that there are good girls out there that are waiting for them, then that's great. That's kind of how I see it, that it's like, okay, well, I might be taken. I might have just gotten married. But there are. There are girls like me. There are girls who, you know, still love men, that don't hate men that want to get married, that are smart, that, you know, believe in common sense, you know, conservative politics. And so if I can offer some hope in that regard, then it's like, I don't mind.
- [40:01]
Alex Clark
Was there anything cute that your husband said to you on your wedding day that nobody knows? Like a cute moment or a little side comment he made?
- [40:08]
Brett Cooper
Okay, this isn't something that he said to me, but our. My, like, bridal suite is. Had a. A window that opened up into the patio where the cocktail area was. And so he was out there, like, mingling with his groomsmen and kind of greeting people. And the window was open, but the curtains were closed, so I could hear him and I heard him down below. And he. Oh, my gosh, I'm so nervous. And my mom, being my mother, marches right out there. And so I hear her go, alex, what did you. Why are you nervous? Like, what. What's going on? And then he was like, no, Diane, it's not that. I'm like, I don't want to go through this. I'm just nervous. I'm so excited to see her. And so that was sweet. Cause I don't think he didn't know that I was there listening. Um, but it was just a great day. I literally. I took a nap before I walked down the aisle. I was so relaxed. You were at peace. I was so. I was like, this is, like, exactly who I wanna marry. This is exactly the wedding that we've envisioned. Like, everything went perfectly. There was a problem with the forks. I had no idea. Nobody told me anything. I was just vibing, literally in my.
- [41:03]
Alex Clark
Veil, like, so good.
- [41:04]
Brett Cooper
It was great.
- [41:05]
Alex Clark
That's how you know you're with the right person.
- [41:06]
Brett Cooper
Yeah. Like, every. At the end of the day, it didn't matter because it was like, by, like, 9pm I'm going to be dancing with Alex. I'm going to be married. It's going to be great.
- [41:13]
Alex Clark
So this new place that you have, is it Homestead?
- [41:16]
Brett Cooper
Yes.
- [41:16]
Alex Clark
Is that what you're planning on doing is you want to really, like, create your own food and grow it and whatever and raise it?
- [41:22]
Brett Cooper
Yeah. So I Have. It's been like a childhood dream with mine. My mom, actually, she always wanted to do 4H. She always wanted to do agriculture things. They lived in the suburbs of Atlanta. They lived in Dunwoody. So my grandmother was absolutely adamantly against that. She is, like, very prim, very proper. I love my grandmother, but she's, like, very nervous about everything. So she was like, diane, like, why do you. We want to go do things with cows? It's very weird. So my mom never got to do that, and she always moved us to properties with land.
- [41:51]
Alex Clark
Was she a single mom when you were growing up?
- [41:52]
Brett Cooper
No, my parents actually got divorced, Gosh. When I was 16, 17, but the divorce. Been going on for many years.
- [42:00]
Alex Clark
Okay.
- [42:00]
Brett Cooper
And they were technically. Not legally, but they were separated probably from the time that I was 10 years old. They were sleeping in different bedrooms. Okay. So I knew from a very young.
- [42:08]
Alex Clark
Age that they were not together. Yeah.
- [42:10]
Brett Cooper
But they stayed together for me, which. That's a whole different conversation of should.
- [42:15]
Alex Clark
You stay together for the kids.
- [42:16]
Brett Cooper
Yeah. And I think in a lot of ways, maybe not if you're just going to be in separate bedrooms and you're not even going to show affection or even pretend like you're together. But I also think that them even trying to be together does speak volumes to me that they would stick it out that long and even try to be in the same house. And, you know, we would sit down and have dinners together, even though they really didn't get along and they couldn't stand each other a lot of the time. So I'm grateful for that, and I'm grateful that I got to spend time with them together rather than always being bounced around, because I would go out to California and New York for acting, and my mom would take me out there. My dad wouldn't go, but, you know, I would always come back to Chattanooga, which is where I'm from, here in Tennessee, and my mom would come with, so we would all be together in that way. So I. I kind. I got that experience. But again, I probably knew from the time that I was 8 years old that they were going to end up getting divorced. I think I. My mom always recounts that there was a time I was in the car with her, and I was like, when are you guys going to get divorced? Like, come on. This is like, I see the way you fight. I see your disdain for each other. This just. It, like, literally, it does not make sense. Their relationship doesn't make sense.
- [43:19]
Alex Clark
Yeah.
- [43:20]
Brett Cooper
Very, very different personalities. She's very dominant. He's not.
- [43:23]
Alex Clark
And she wanted to live in the country and he didn't.
- [43:25]
Brett Cooper
Yes. Yeah, that was a big thing. So we would always, like, move to, you know, this house has five acres, this house has six acres. And every time my dad was like, we don't want chickens. I don't want cows. I don't do any of that. So she always got so close to it, but never actually got to take that leap. She was always very crunchy. I wouldn't say that my mom is like, she's become extremely, extremely crunchy. But growing up, it was more so that she was just very clean and very skeptical of everything. Like her. Her end all be all was Mark Sisson. She loves Mark Sisson in the Primal Kitchen.
- [43:56]
Alex Clark
The Primal Kitchen.
- [43:57]
Brett Cooper
Yes, Love.
- [43:58]
Alex Clark
I like Mark, too.
- [43:59]
Brett Cooper
He's great. And she, like. I remember she had his big, like, primal blueprint book. So, like, she would get my dad the grounding shoes, like the little, like, five finger toe shoes. That's pretty crunchy.
- [44:09]
Alex Clark
That's pretty ahead of her time.
- [44:10]
Brett Cooper
Yeah. So, yeah, she was. And she, you know, stopped vaccinating me when I was really young. When I always think of my mom in my childhood, she would wear these, like, long Patagonia shorts. And her favorite T shirt was a shirt that says, no farms, no food.
- [44:21]
Alex Clark
Cool.
- [44:22]
Brett Cooper
And so even though she chose to respect my dad and not get these farm animals and not do any of that, she was very engaged in our agricultural community. Some of our good friends had a Highland cattle ranch in Kentucky. So, you know, she would take me up there so that I could learn about all of that and be around all the pigs and the cows, and that's so cool. So it was very. Even though she couldn't offer that to me, she wanted that to be part of my life and be something that I really cared about. We were always at the farmer's market. She was a cooking teacher and a baker for a long, long time. So everything that she made was from scratch. So that was just a part of my life. And I never really considered that that was, like, a statement in any way or, you know, differed from the norm. I knew that our family was a little bit weird because I wasn't allowed to watch tv. I never watched Disney Channel.
- [45:02]
Alex Clark
You never watched tv?
- [45:03]
Brett Cooper
Oh, no, we didn't have tv.
- [45:04]
Alex Clark
So you are not a gen zer that grew up with SpongeBob?
- [45:07]
Brett Cooper
No, no.
- [45:08]
Alex Clark
Oh, I'm so sorry.
- [45:11]
Brett Cooper
You sound like my husband, because he loves SpongeBob. You're missing out. I know. That's what he says. But no, I never watch anything. In fact, we would go to hotel and I would always be so excited because whenever we go travel, I would be allowed to watch 30 minutes of PBS Kids.
- [45:24]
Alex Clark
It was a treat.
- [45:25]
Brett Cooper
It was a treat.
- [45:26]
Alex Clark
So what, Arthur?
- [45:27]
Brett Cooper
Yes, yes, literally. And Barney. I was obsessed with Barney. We did have a television and I was allowed to watch the Andy Griffith show and I was allowed to watch I Love Lucy.
- [45:36]
Alex Clark
So if you were not growing up with tv, then how did you know to become that you wanted to be a child?
- [45:40]
Brett Cooper
It makes no sense. I loved books. I loved stories. My love of acting does not come from like a love of cinema. I think that this is like, oh, it's storytelling. It's infamous for me to see. And you know, people in the film industry will say, like, they'll talk about all these directors and these films. I'm like, I really have no idea because I just love the stories. I love narratives, I love, love fiction. I was an English major and I focused in British literature in college. And it was really. Because I would. I would just lie on the floor in our house. I was homeschooled. And so I would, I would. The majority of my education growing up was just books. I would read for like eight hours a day. My history curriculum was all like historical novels based. And then we would supplement it with whatever she felt like I was missing. But that is what engaged me in a subject. And so that's really the foundation of.
- [46:27]
Alex Clark
That's very Charlotte Mason method.
- [46:29]
Brett Cooper
I don't know any of that.
- [46:30]
Alex Clark
Are you thinking you want to homeschool?
- [46:32]
Brett Cooper
Oh, sure. That's. Yeah.
- [46:33]
Alex Clark
So there's like all these different, like education styles and stuff like that. And Charlotte Mason is one where you are basically using literature to connect to all these other subjects.
- [46:43]
Brett Cooper
Oh, that's exactly what it was.
- [46:44]
Alex Clark
Yeah. So, like, if you're reading a book that happens to mention London's bridge, well, now we've read about this. So now let's do a whole study on London's bridge and architecture and bridges and other famous bridges in the world.
- [46:53]
Brett Cooper
That's exactly what it was.
- [46:54]
Alex Clark
What does it take to build a bridge? What materials are you. So you see, you get into science and math and all this, but it's.
- [46:59]
Brett Cooper
Based on very student driven of like, what you find your interest in, which I think is how we ended up in that way. Because, you know, my mom knew that I was very different from my older brothers. My older brothers are extremely analytical. They are math and science based. You know, my brothers do not want to read. They do not want to write essays, do anything thing. And I was just like, give me all of it. And so she quickly realized, okay, this is not going to work. What we did with, you know, the boys is not going to work for her.
- [47:23]
Alex Clark
And that's so smart of her, because that is totally the case is usually you have, you know, within one family, even a homeschool family. The cool thing about homeschool is that you can individualize the education. So if, you know, you've got this sibling who learns really well doing this, then you can do that for them. But then you are really into books, and you learn from books.
- [47:41]
Brett Cooper
Even outside of homeschooling, because I was the only one who went Basically K through 12, I went to public school for one year, ninth grade, terrible. But I learned, learned a lot. Didn't learn anything academically, but I learned that I didn't like it. So that was a positive thing. But I was only one who really was homeschooled the entire time. My brothers did it in and out. They never really excelled in homeschooling. It just didn't really work for them. And so they actually, you know, early, early 2000s, Stanford University was the only online high school. So they did that for a little bit, but she was just very conscious of what would be best for each child. So, like, my oldest brother knew that he wanted to be in the military. The Marines are the only branch that do not have a university, but they have a high school. And so he was like, I want to go here. I want to do this. It's going to help me get into the service academies. And she was like, great, then let's get you nominated. Let's get you there. So it was really individualized for each child, even outside of homeschooling. My brother David, he's the one who passed away. He was very soft spoken, very sensitive, a bit more artistic than the other boys. And he always felt like he needed a bit of an edge. And I think the hardest thing my mom ever did was send him to that military school because he desperately wanted to go. And he was like, mom, I need to man up. I need to be tougher. I'm not. We were living on an island at the time, and he basically came to her with this pitch. This is like a common thing in my family. We would give my mom, like, PowerPoint presentations of why we wanted to do something, and we would have, like, an adult conversation about it, go through the pros and the cons, and then, you know, we would make a decision. But he said, I really think that I need this because I'm not getting this on the island. I don't have these types of friends. I don't feel like I'm strong enough. I don't think I'm. And it was, like, heartbreaking to her because this was her, like, very artistic, sweet boy. And she sent him off to military school. But he did great. He learned so much. And at the end of that first year, he went, okay, yeah, this isn't for me, but I learned a lot. And she's the kind of mom that would go, okay, we tried that, and we can go do something else. Like, I'm not. She wasn't. She wouldn't get upset because we tried something that didn't work. Like, when I went to that public school for one year, by my end of my first semester, I knew this is not for me. But I said. And she offered to pull me out immediately. I said no. I promised myself that I would stick it out for a year, that I would do this, that I would get this experience and I would make these friends. I would do. Check off all the boxes, go to homecoming, do the football games, all of that. And then after a year, I was done, and she was like, great, all right, we can move on to something next. It's just. It was a really, really effective way of parenting that really made us all, I think, feel seen, like, genuinely seen as individual human beings by our mom.
- [49:57]
Alex Clark
Have you ever talked about what happened with your brother that passed away?
- [50:00]
Brett Cooper
I've talked about it here and there, but never on a. Never on a podcast.
- [50:02]
Alex Clark
Do you mind sharing what happened?
- [50:04]
Brett Cooper
I'd love to. I think I've only ever talked about this. We do something called All Access Live with Daily Wire, where we do, like, Q. And as with our members, I think I've talked about it there, but so I have three older brothers, Chase, Reed, and David. Reed and David are twins. When they were 17 years old, they were at rowing practice. They did crew. David had a cardiac arrest and fell off of his rowing machine and collapsed. They did not have any defibrillators on campus, and so they tried cpr, but nothing could revive him. It was on Valentine's Day, 2007. So by the time we got to the school, there was basically nothing that could be done. Went to the hospital, they did an autopsy, and to this day, we really don't know. They've linked it to something called long QT syndrome, which is a rhythmic problem in the heart. But Reed and David are identical, and Reed had no Sign of any of it. He had no heart problems. He's never had any heart problems. They literally are identical. And so it had to be something that was like epigenetics, that like something changed environmentally in David's life. My mom, you'll appreciate this because she was relatively crunchy. She talked to the doctors about the fact that David drank like two Red Bulls a day.
- [51:19]
Alex Clark
Oh, my God.
- [51:20]
Brett Cooper
Gosh. And she was always very like, David, you should not be drinking these. But that was probably at the time when my parents relationship was the most heated. It was really, really bad. Very, very tense. Not great. Chase had just gone off to college and she was just kind of just distracted. I don't want to put words in her mouth and say that she regrets it, but I think that that's something that I. She probably wishes that she had pushed more on because they would just get in the car. He would have his Red Bull. He would have his Red Bull on the way home. And she brought it up to the doctor. She said, in my gut, I knew that he shouldn't be drinking these. Could that have caused anything? No, of course not. And then we literally. My mom and I were on the phone about two months ago and she sent me a new study that was done on young people drinking Red Bull and the spikes in cardiac arrests.
- [51:59]
Alex Clark
Well, it also reminds me of like the Panera lemonade scandal, which got meme to oblivion, but also very real, real, the amount of caffeine and things like that. I mean, you, you. I think that's a very fair question.
- [52:11]
Brett Cooper
Yeah.
- [52:12]
Alex Clark
Do you remember where you were when you found out that he had passed away?
- [52:16]
Brett Cooper
We were making Valentine's at our house in North Chattanooga. We went to the school first and then we followed the ambulance to the hospital. And it's very blurry after that. I remember the room where they would put the family of somebody who had just passed away. I think that that's what the room was, was like very dark, very like purple hues. And a nurse took me and I remember walking through the halls. It was by that point very late in the evening because they had tried everything at this point they were doing automatically. And I had my bright lime green Hannah Anderson clogs on. And I remember this because there was nobody else in the hospital. And I was like clomp, clomp, clomp, running through the halls and really had no concept of what was going on. And I don't think I really understood for a while, but it absolutely destroyed my family. I mean, there was really no coming back for that. My parents marriage was already on the fritz, and losing a child was just. There wasn't any coming back. My brother Chase went back off to college. He handled it in his own way. He definitely is somebody that kind of shuts down emotionally. So I felt very alone at that point in my life. I actually was just on Lila Rose's podcast, and she was asking why I had gotten into acting. And it was because my mom noticed that I just had become basically, you know, this incredibly shy, not talking, not coming out of my shell, Would literally hide in the cupboards in our houses. We were in the process of moving when David died, would not speak to people. And there was, like, a community theater production at my brother's school that was going on, and they needed some kids. And so she was like, I think this is a good opportunity to just get you out there, like, get on stage, go do something. And I just fell in love with it because I think I had. I had felt so shut down and kind of left behind in a way, because we had. I was the. And understandably so I was the lesser priority in the family at that time because my brother Reed was in the room, was sitting next to David. He watched his identical twin die.
- [54:19]
Alex Clark
And is this the brother now that struggles with schizophrenia? Yes.
- [54:21]
Brett Cooper
Yeah.
- [54:22]
Alex Clark
So do you think that the. That your brother losing his identical twin, is that what triggered the schizophrenia? Or were there signs of this before?
- [54:30]
Brett Cooper
No, there were no signs of it before. Was. It's directly correlated, my mom often says, and I think a psychologist who was working with my brother Reid told her this as well. But we're basically all one traumatic event away from losing our minds. Like, it's just. It can happen like that. Like something just in his brain that. And then. I can't. Can't play down this part. And this is also a controversial thing. He, in the aftermath of David's death, smoked a lot of weed. And people hate. Hate this conversation because they want to say that weed is harmless. Ali Beth Stuckey and Liz Wheeler have been sounding the alarm specifically about cannabis and its links with schizophrenia and psychosis. Yes. And so I think that those two things are intrinsically connected. And weed can also spark, you know, clinical depression. It can spark a myriad of different mental health conditions. And so I think that it is all very, very connected. And I don't think we could ever pinpoint which one caused it more than the other, because schizophrenia is often caused by a very, very traumatic event. And I think that, you know, people hear that and they go, okay, well, people die all the time, like, what's different here? But if you're not a twin, you. You just don't know. And I can try to understand my brother as much as possible. I have done therapy with my brother. We have. I've sat next to him with a psychologist that literally specializes in twin loss, because the only way that he would go see a therapist is if I would go with him. So I've sat through, you know, listening to all of this. It is an experience unlike anything else. There is a point in a twin's life when you do have to disconnect, when. Because you've just been together. I mean, since you were in the womb. And Reid and David had been in the same bedroom. They had split up for that, you know, nine months that David went to the military academy. That was awful for them. So they came back together. They had been in the same school, same class, same friend group, same bedroom, same routine. They look exactly alike, exact. I mean, they were identical, identical, identical. And they had not gone through that period of breaking apart and becoming their own individuals.
- [56:33]
Alex Clark
Right.
- [56:33]
Brett Cooper
They were one. And so Reid literally lost half of himself. And he aggressively has tried to change the way he looks. He won't shave his beard. He keeps his hair very long. And I think a lot of that. And he's shared. Shared this sometimes with me. And bits in bits and pieces is because he can't look in the mirror and see David.
- [56:51]
Alex Clark
So he is capable of, like, having coherent conversation and things.
- [56:55]
Brett Cooper
Not anymore.
- [56:55]
Alex Clark
Oh, not anymore.
- [56:56]
Brett Cooper
He's totally nonverbal now.
- [56:57]
Alex Clark
Really?
- [56:58]
Brett Cooper
Yeah.
- [56:58]
Alex Clark
And so how often do you see and talk to him?
- [57:00]
Brett Cooper
I have not seen him since December of 2021.
- [57:03]
Alex Clark
Has he gotten to meet your husband?
- [57:05]
Brett Cooper
No.
- [57:06]
Alex Clark
How does that feel?
- [57:07]
Brett Cooper
It's awful. I was actually. I'm dealing with a bunch of stuff right now because. Because if anything were to happen to my mom, we would lose all contact with Reid.
- [57:19]
Alex Clark
No idea where his whereabouts are or anything.
- [57:21]
Brett Cooper
Yep, exactly. Because she has been able to, you know, work with his doctors, even though he is an adult. He's 12 years older than me. So I'm actually working through things right now to become part of that guardianship just so that I can be there. And it's always been, you know, this has been going on for 10 years at this point. I think was his first psychotic break. This has been, like, probably the defining part of my adolescence, really. He's been in and out of my life for many years. He was homeless in California, so I would literally have to go out and find him on the street. And make sure he was okay. I found him passed out in front of targets after overdoses. It's been. It's just. It's been really, really terrible. But for 10 years, I've kind of known that this would. And not in a bad way, but that this would inevitably fall on my shoulders, that I would be the one to take care of him. My dad really is not. They're not that close. I don't think Reid would want that. My brother Chase, that's just. You know, they have a pretty fraught relationship because of some things that Reid has done in the midst of psychosis. I mean, because he just becomes a totally different person. Sure. And I just made the decision that I would rather have, you know, carry all of that than have him be out there and be alone.
- [58:33]
Alex Clark
That's a lot at a young age.
- [58:35]
Brett Cooper
It is, but it's. It's worth it to me because I know he's such an incredibly brilliant human being. He's a wonderful human being that has just had odds and odds and odds stacked up against him. And obviously, you know, you have to take accountability. And he has made some not great choices that we've, like, talked about as a family. And he used a lot of drugs. He rejected help when he probably shouldn't have. But, you know, you can't change that.
- [59:00]
Alex Clark
Do you feel like you've ever been allowed the space to fully grieve your brother's death?
- [59:05]
Brett Cooper
Yes. Later on. But I've. It's interesting. I think I've grieved both of them in different ways. I don't think that I grieved David's death, honestly, until I turned 17. It's a weird thing that people talk about if you've lost a parent or if you are a young person and you lose a sibling. I felt so guilty turning 17 because he did not get to live longer than that. And it was, like, the worst day of my life. I just remember I had, like, a Spanish final that day. It was like my second year of community college, I think. Sat in my car just, like, bawling. And I literally. And I don't think I really expressed this until, like, I called my mom that day from the car, and I was like, I genuinely thought that my life was going to end a week after my 17th birthday, because his birthday is February 7th, and he died on February 14th. I was like, that was just. I haven't thought, like, really further than that. Like, I've dreamed about things, but it was just like, that's just. That's where the road ends. And it felt like a betrayal in a way to be able to get older and do things that he never got to do. Cause I was looking up to him in so many different ways. And I've idolized him for my entire childhood. Because, you know, when you lose somebody, you usually focus. Obviously. Not that he was like a bad person or anything like that, but you focus on all the amazing things. And he's so wonderful. And he really was. He was so artistic and he was like the best of us and he was so kind and so. And so I've put him up on this pedestal and then to now be older than him felt like such betrayal to be able to. He never went to college. He, like, had all these dreams. He wanted to go to UT Austin, he wanted to be an architect. Like, to be able to go and chase my dreams, to get married. Like, he desperately wanted to get married. His long term girlfriend just got married a couple of years ago, which was so wonderful. We're still in her life, but, you know, to see everybody else's life progress and his, you know, him not be able to, I think that's really when I grieved.
- [60:51]
Alex Clark
What do you miss about him the most?
- [60:53]
Brett Cooper
I miss what could have been. I think when you lose somebody at such a young age, I was five, There are. There's a presence in my life that I miss. I miss what my family was like, that kind of like childlike innocence of what we were like before he passed away. But I really miss what our family could have been like if he had not passed away. And I miss what Reid would be like if he was still here. And that's a whole lot other thing of, you know, having to grieve somebody who is still alive. Because I had to come to terms with the fact that the brother and the boy that I grew up with who was like always in the bedroom next to me, that's. That person's not coming back. And I think I held out hope for a couple. For many years, probably seven years of going through all this with him that, you know, he would come back, he would get, you know, spurts of like, all right, he's coming back. He hasn't had a break in a while. He's off his meds. This is great. And then it would just happen again. And this last one that happened In December of 2021, it was a week before I moved here. That was the last time that I saw him because he was put in a hospital that was still like Covid era. So we weren't allowed in and he pushed us away. We couldn't find him for a while. It was kind of the doctors at that point said like, this is kind of it and this is, he's always going to need care. We don't know if he'll ever speak again and this is just going to be it.
- [62:16]
Alex Clark
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- [63:18]
Brett Cooper
Do you remember?
- [63:19]
Alex Clark
Do you. Did you have to like brace yourself for like, okay, I gotta dump all this. I'm scared. Is he gonna love me through this? Is he gonna leave? Is this gonna be too much for him to handle? Were you, were you nervous about that?
- [63:27]
Brett Cooper
I was very nervous. I sobbed the night before I met his parents because I was like, I'm such a broken bird basically. And I don't think of myself as being a victim or you know, being defined by my family, but he has, has a, he has the most wonderful family.
- [63:42]
Alex Clark
Were you nervous about them asking you, like, so tell us about your siblings.
- [63:45]
Brett Cooper
Yes. And I didn't know how to operate in a environment that was so well adjusted. I was like, I don't know, like, what do you guys do? What do you talk about? Like, we've never. He has like three amazing siblings. They're so wonderful. They actually kind of have the, the same age breakdown that my brothers and I do, which I think is just even weirder in a really wonderful way because I.
- [64:05]
Alex Clark
You're Experiencing the life that you wish you could have had.
- [64:07]
Brett Cooper
Yes. Through him, like, his younger sister is closer to my age. We actually grew up having playdates together. And. And Alex went to my brother's high school. So we've been, like, in and out of each other's lives. My mom is really good friends with a couple of friends of his. Mom, his younger brother's best friend was a good friend of mine growing up. And so it was just like, we're very, very intertwined. I was being faced with what I desperately wanted and didn't get to have, and I was just like, this is awful. But I'm pretty open about all of this. Like, it's almost in a bad way where I'm just like, very matter of fact, where I was like, oh, yeah, I had to go find my brother today. He was passed out, whatever. Like, it's just. I think it's kind of become like a defense mechanism of. It's been so normal for so long. And my dad did this, my brother did this. I'm the girl with a dead brother. So I think I just kind of laid all of that out and probably sooner than I needed to. And he, again, he's so unflappable. He was just like, okay. And I think that other people in his life were a bit more concerned than he was because they were like, oh, Alex, this has been. She's been out there. She's a public figure, and she has all of these things. But he was so steady, and he saw it as a testament to my character more than anything else. And just an interesting part of my story. He has loved me through all of it. He is like the. He is the backbone that I needed at so many points in my life. He makes me smarter. He makes me braver, makes me more confident in every part of my life. He makes me feel like I can take on anything, whether it is in career or family. So when I'm dealing with these things with my brother or, you know, whatnot, it's always. It's never like a. This is a sensitive conversation. It's just like, okay, this is great. It's matter of fact. It's. It's so. So healing in that way because it's not dramatic.
- [65:56]
Alex Clark
Do you feel like pharma has failed your brother with mental illness in any way?
- [66:00]
Brett Cooper
Yeah. Oh, for sure. There are so many studies that talk about ketogenic diets and the way that we eat and the connection with psychosis and schizophrenia, and that is the last thing that they will ever bring up. Even with talking about his grief and the trauma that he experienced that is like low on the totem and pole of being discussed. When we would go in and have meetings with people, it was like they were only caring like, okay, well you're schizophrenic, here's a bunch of drugs. And he would be put on this medication where he would literally have full body paralysis and he would be incredibly ill. He was so sick, he was losing all this weight. And they're like, yeah, well, this is, this is kind of it. This is what you get. And I think that they failed him because he trusted the doctors more than he trusted my mom and I, because I think he was always like, mom, you want me to. You know, I think he was kind of perpetually stuck in that like 17 year old boy of like, I'm fine, I'm not. I'm not sick, I'm not grieving, I'm not sad. I never cried about my brother dying. I don't need any of this, mom. I'm totally fine. And so I think he trusted the doctors more who were just saying, yeah, you just got to be on these meds. Rather than saying, let's actually work through what you've experienced over the last 10 to 15 years. Let's talk about your lifestyle and the, you know, pot that you're smoking all the time. Let's talk about the food that you're eating, the fact that you are on a vegan diet that's not any kind of like clean was vegan at the time.
- [67:22]
Alex Clark
Oh, well, right there. He's probably so vitamin deficient, Causing a lot of mental.
- [67:27]
Brett Cooper
Incredibly so. Incredibly so.
- [67:29]
Alex Clark
Going through all of this with your brothers, was this the catalyst that led you into being more interested in, in health and wellness? I feel like your content. Yeah, you started to implement a lot more health and wellness stuff into your content. Is that what it is? Or did something else spark your interest in food and pharma?
- [67:45]
Brett Cooper
So because my mom had always been relatively crunchy, she. I just. And kind of, like I said earlier, I didn't think that it was abnormal at all. And you know, I had been keto for a while. My mom lost a ton of weight by being keto and being very conscious about the way that she ate. Anyway, it was just like that was a part of my life. It wasn't until, gosh, Christmas three years ago, my brother and I were at home and my mom and my brother and I, the oldest brother Chase, were talking about how many people we knew who had gotten cancer and and it was spanning all ages. It was like my brother had four friends in his mid-30s who've been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Yeah, my mom had a ton of friends, you know, college, high school, all diagnosed with cancer. In my friend group, we had had. I've had, I think, two friends diagnosed with cancer and then even more in just mutual friends in circles. One of my good friends, she was a bridesmaid of mine, I think had three or four girls in her sorority, like, in surrounding years, all be diagnosed with terminal cold. And it was just flabbergasting to us. And my brother and I kind of made a commitment. We were like, all right, we're going to. We're going to turn this ship around. And we had decided we are going to do annual blood work and do like, you know, strict blood work. So I ended up working with Merrick Health on that, and we did a full blood plan blood panel. And so that was the real catalyst. And then that just led me down the rabbit hole looking at female fertility and because being a mom is what I want so desperately, and that's just kind of, you know, that is going to happen in my life. And then starting looking at, you know, not only cancer, but also the fertility rates and, you know, oh, it's actually all connected. And so maybe I need to not just clean up my diet, but actually the things that I'm using on my skin and my shampoo is actually killing women. And so I think that was. It was about three years ago, and then that was kind of like full circle when it came back, because obviously I had thought about big Pharma and the government's intervention in our food and our health. With COVID Sure. And they're completely. And so that was already part of it. And so it felt. It was just very synergist in that way. It was like.
- [69:45]
Alex Clark
That's how I felt. Yeah, it was. The pandemic was kind of the thing I needed to see. I needed to see those.
- [69:51]
Brett Cooper
The big picture.
- [69:52]
Alex Clark
Yeah. To understand and connect all these dots. And then that's when I became obsessed with it.
- [69:56]
Brett Cooper
Yeah.
- [69:56]
Alex Clark
Okay, so let's get into like an average day for you. You're filming, you're waking up. I want you to be as granular as possible.
- [70:02]
Brett Cooper
Okay.
- [70:02]
Alex Clark
What time you wake up? What are you eating? What are you doing? When do you go here? When do you go here? Like, tell us all of the things.
- [70:08]
Brett Cooper
Suddenly I'm awake. I wake up around 5:30, I think.
- [70:17]
Alex Clark
Is that easy for you? You have to set an alarm?
- [70:19]
Brett Cooper
I set an alarm. I have a hatch alarm. It is the greatest thing I've ever done.
- [70:21]
Alex Clark
I've been wanting to try those.
- [70:23]
Brett Cooper
Yes. And you don't need to buy the really fancy one. You can get one of the knockoffs on Amazon that's so much cheaper and it does the exact same thing. I am such a heavy sleeper. I have slept through fire alarms, literally. Alex and I have had fire alarms go off and I'm just. I'm out cold. We got our puppy in February. She had to get out and go to the bathroom like, a million times a night. I sleep through everything. My mom has promised me that when I have a child, like, I will have mom brain and I'll, like, I'll be sad, but I'm like, oh, my God. I'm going to, like, sleep through this child crying. So very, very heavy sleeper. I used to have an alarm called the sonic boom alarm, and it had a paddle that went under my pillow and it would shake me and it would go, oh, my gosh. And the hatch style sunrise, it wakes me up. So it's great.
- [71:00]
Alex Clark
Yeah. So it mimics. For those that don't know, the hatch alarm clock mimics a sunrise so that it's like a natural way of your.
- [71:07]
Brett Cooper
Body and the only sound is like birds chirping.
- [71:09]
Alex Clark
Yeah, it's really nice. It's very Disney Princess of you.
- [71:12]
Brett Cooper
Yes. Thank you. And so that wakes up. I usually I should not snooze, but I do. But I use that as an opportunity. Like Alex, because he's such a light sleeper, he wakes up. So then I get to go and, like, spend like a few minutes with him, and I get to be awake with him and kind of like prolong that as much as possible. So I'm usually out of bed by 5, 45 or 6. I get up skincare, which is very, very minimal. I'm very low maintenance. I wash my face, cold water usually, and then I will do beef tallow.
- [71:42]
Alex Clark
And beef tallow works for you. This is a whole.
- [71:44]
Brett Cooper
I know. Yeah, I don't like it.
- [71:45]
Alex Clark
I don't like it for my face.
- [71:46]
Brett Cooper
Only thing that's worked for now, see.
- [71:48]
Alex Clark
Everybody hold on to your seats. I'm saying I don't like it. And Brett does. So now what are you gonna do?
- [71:53]
Brett Cooper
Say so.
- [71:53]
Alex Clark
See, this is great.
- [71:54]
Brett Cooper
Yes. I remember your episode. I forgot your name.
- [71:56]
Alex Clark
Jamie McGuire.
- [71:57]
Brett Cooper
Yes. Yes.
- [71:58]
Alex Clark
So her and I both agree. We don't. We like it for other parts of her body, but we just don't love it on the face. But it works for You.
- [72:03]
Brett Cooper
It's the only thing that is. Like, I. Because I was an actor, like, you can't even have, like, a pimple on your face if you're a kid in Hollywood. And so I have been going to esthetician since I was, like, 10 years old. I have tried everything. I have had, like, medical grade skincare. I have had the natural stuff, whatever, and it was just too much. That's great. And also somebody who. I'm not great at sticking to a skincare routine, and I know that about myself. And so again, like, two and a half years ago, whenever this started, I said, okay, I'm just gonna. I'm gonna get rid of everything. I'm gonna go bare bones as possible. And I was only using micellar water, and that was it. And. Yes. And I was like, let me just.
- [72:39]
Alex Clark
You must not have dry skin because I have to have moisturizer and stuff on her. I'm dying. Are you oily or normal?
- [72:45]
Brett Cooper
Normal.
- [72:45]
Alex Clark
So she's blessed.
- [72:48]
Brett Cooper
So, yeah, I really did. And I would sometimes use. If I had heavier makeup that I needed to take off, I would use jojoba oil, just, like, straight hoba oil. And so that would give me a bit of moisturization. But especially living in Tennessee, it's so humid, right?
- [72:58]
Alex Clark
Yeah.
- [72:59]
Brett Cooper
That's, like, totally different. You get that if I was in California still, I probably would need a different store.
- [73:02]
Alex Clark
Okay, so skincare, then. What?
- [73:04]
Brett Cooper
Brush teeth. I just started using zebra, actually. They're great.
- [73:07]
Alex Clark
You love.
- [73:07]
Brett Cooper
Yeah, I do.
- [73:08]
Alex Clark
I love it too.
- [73:09]
Brett Cooper
We've used Ryzewell for years, and Alex still really likes them. But I like the aftertaste in zebra. It's like. It just feels very minty. It's great. Do that. The great part about how the show runs and Daily Wire and our whole operation is that I can show up literally and, like, workout attire and basically my pajamas and, like, make me beautiful. Um, so I don't have to do anything else. I will go out sometimes. I'll eat in the morning, but often I don't. I'm not a big breakfast person, and I know that I need to have more protein in the morning, but I just. I've never. I just, like. It doesn't sit well with me. So try not to drink coffee until I've eaten breakfast. Um, so I'll usually just leave. I'll get a big thing of water that I put my armor in and my element in and my hydration, whatever. I grab my supplements. Alex puts together this little. We have these little mason jars, and every Night. He goes through, and he's a big supplement guy. He goes through. When he has it, like, takes out his entire. Reagan's over there laughing. She knows. We have this whole cabinet in our kitchen. He pulls out everything and he goes through and he, like, puts. All right, here's. Brett's. This here's.
- [74:06]
Alex Clark
Oh, my gosh.
- [74:06]
Brett Cooper
Whatever. And so it's ready for me in the morning. So.
- [74:08]
Alex Clark
Okay, so what are a couple things that you're like. I notice a difference if I don't take this.
- [74:12]
Brett Cooper
The biggest thing for me has been. This is another one, actually, that you recommended. Birthright. I take their prenatals and their hormone reset. My periods have never been easier. Prior to finding her, I was. And I know you work with them as well, and I work with them. Heart and soil.
- [74:25]
Alex Clark
Yeah.
- [74:25]
Brett Cooper
Yeah. And they're packaging. Tell me. Yes.
- [74:28]
Alex Clark
Do you feel like ovulation is on another level on her? It is crazy.
- [74:33]
Brett Cooper
I don't know if I, I, I notice it more. I notice a change in definitely demeanor and happiness level. I think that my. With birthright and with heart and soil.
- [74:44]
Alex Clark
Yeah.
- [74:45]
Brett Cooper
The, the phases of my cycle are more distinct.
- [74:50]
Alex Clark
Yes, exactly.
- [74:51]
Brett Cooper
That's it. Like, I can actually tell, and it's.
- [74:53]
Alex Clark
You can tell where you're at, and it's much easier.
- [74:55]
Brett Cooper
My PMS has just, like, it's totally, like, it's so easy now. My periods are so short. It's the best. Yeah, it's just. It's turned it around. So that's a big one. Whenever I'm actually taking, like, prenatals.
- [75:05]
Alex Clark
I talked to Paul Saladino about this when he came on the show. He recommended the brand Needed.
- [75:10]
Brett Cooper
That's what, that's the other one I use. There you go. So I take their CoQ10, which is great for both heart health, which I'm always very concerned about, especially with my brother's death. And it's great for uterine health. And then I take their egg health as well. Cool. This is all, like, Alex has put all this together. He's like, he's genuinely the best.
- [75:26]
Alex Clark
Love that.
- [75:26]
Brett Cooper
So he takes, like, the men's, you know, his heart and soil package. He takes the men's, like, you know, fertility, because that was a big thing for us of, like, when we were going to have kids. Of, like, we didn't just want this to be like, all right, let's, you know, we're ready. Let's do it. It was like, we need to prepare our bodies and make sure, like, mentally, obviously, we're there. Spiritually, everything but like, physically that we were doing everything to, you know, make sure that we're in line.
- [75:50]
Alex Clark
That's awesome.
- [75:50]
Brett Cooper
The one thing that I always falter on is I don't work out nearly as as I should. And I was gonna ask.
- [75:54]
Alex Clark
I don't either.
- [75:55]
Brett Cooper
I know.
- [75:55]
Alex Clark
I don't either. So wait, why don't you like it?
- [75:57]
Brett Cooper
The thing is, I love the act of working out. I feel great when I do. It's an inconvenience and that's why I need to change it in my mind so that it's not. But you're doing.
- [76:06]
Alex Clark
Are you doing like chores around the farm?
- [76:08]
Brett Cooper
Yes. So that's kind of. So that's where I get my workout. Like, I'm like lugging hay around. I'm moving feedback. So I am moving. I'm not like totally sedentary, although I do like, my favorite way to be in my entire life is like horizontal. I love like at like 30pm it's like the gravitational pull is like pulling me down to the earth and I love it. I think also it's gotten harder since we moved farther away and we don't have a great gym where we are. And so I work out here in Nashville and I have a great gym here. But often when I finish filming the show, I'm just like, I want to get home, I want to go see the animals, I want to go see Alex, whatever. So I don't like, actually do it. But Alex is great and he is, you know, very, very regimented. And does he wish you worked out?
- [76:48]
Alex Clark
Is that something? He's like, come on, Brett.
- [76:50]
Brett Cooper
Yes. Oh, and it's not even like a come on. It is, you know, need to do this. He's like, because you're going to get pregnant and you are going to. Probably not. Yep. You need to have the habits beforehand. And so that's a huge thing for him. So too.
- [77:00]
Alex Clark
Because you got to work out while you're pregnant too.
- [77:01]
Brett Cooper
Exactly. So today I went and I worked out because last night he had a talk with me and he was like, you need. He was like, come on. Like, you got to do it.
- [77:07]
Alex Clark
Okay. We love it.
- [77:08]
Brett Cooper
Yeah.
- [77:09]
Alex Clark
Okay.
- [77:09]
Brett Cooper
So we always joke he has like these rules for me of like, you're adding your supplements. He had to. This is the role. He's like, cares, you know, I love husband. He cares about my health.
- [77:15]
Alex Clark
Exactly. Okay, so once you get to the office, what time is it? And then what time do you start filming?
- [77:20]
Brett Cooper
So I get down to Nashville around 7:30 usually, and I'll Go to a coffee shop. I love working in coffee shops. So I'll go work there for an hour or I'll just go to the studio.
- [77:33]
Alex Clark
Is that when you're writing your script for the day?
- [77:35]
Brett Cooper
Yes. Yeah. So I almost exclusively write before the show. It would be possibly better if I prepped it ahead of time. But the thing is, I do prep it. Like I know the stories that I want and I pull the big comments and I pull, you know, the videos and that kind of thing. But I don't actually sit down to, to like really hash out, you know, language and the exact points that I want to make until the morning of. Because I like it to be super fresh.
- [77:54]
Alex Clark
Yep.
- [77:54]
Brett Cooper
And I did the same thing in college. I was always like a procrastinator. But I. My best writing came from that where I would have a very aggressive outline and I would know exactly what I was writing and then I would sit down like two hours before and go.
- [78:06]
Alex Clark
Do you choose the clips that play or do you let your editors do that also? Or is that also included in your script from you?
- [78:12]
Brett Cooper
No, they pick those. There's sometimes that I'll say like, oh, I want this to jump in, or I'm making a joke and this is what I have in my mind. They take control of that. Everything else, though, I write, I pull the comments. I pull, I write every single word that's in the show.
- [78:23]
Alex Clark
And how long does it take you to film?
- [78:25]
Brett Cooper
It takes me about an hour and a half.
- [78:28]
Alex Clark
And then do you hang around the office? Are there other things or you are done for?
- [78:31]
Brett Cooper
If I. I might have other shoots that we need to do for pre recording. If we have like, like today. I ended up staying down here because I knew I had this. So it really depends on the day. But if I just have a two show day, which is a normal day, I'll do that. If I'm being good, I'll go work out and then I will head home. And then after that, Alex and I eat lunch. I do the Lauren Bosnick bowl of meat because Alex is very carnivore, so he basically only eats meat unless I'm dragging him out to dinner somewhere. So our normal lunch is a big bowl of ground beef, like taco style cottage cheese, avocado, pork rinds, maybe some salsa. And I just, I love pork rinds. We were obsessed with pork rinds. That was like my mom's like favorite snack when I was growing up. It was like diet Coke and pork rinds.
- [79:15]
Alex Clark
So you guys eat together, but is he Working from home. And so he's busy still, the rest.
- [79:19]
Brett Cooper
Yeah, yeah. So he'll, like, take some time and we'll have, like, lunch together, which is really, really nice.
- [79:22]
Alex Clark
And then what do you do the rest of the day?
- [79:24]
Brett Cooper
Like farm chores and that kind of thing, or I'll go and run errands. I have more time in the latter half of the day, so I'm able to. I do most of that farm stuff.
- [79:33]
Alex Clark
Are you the grocery shopper?
- [79:34]
Brett Cooper
Yes.
- [79:35]
Alex Clark
And who is the main cook?
- [79:37]
Brett Cooper
It really depends. I want to say me, because he works later into the evenings. And so because I'm home, I can, like. I'll stop and pick up things at Whole Foods or we love Turnip Truck. It's like an amazing grocery store. And I'll pick up things and I'll get everything sorted and done and I'll have dinner ready for him because I have obviously the time to do that. And I'll be able to go out and, like, work with the cows and feed them. And if I need to be working with our farmhand that's doing, you know, mending fences or whatnot, I'm able to go do that. Which now things are kind of slowing down because for the last, you know, nine months, we've been building a lot on the farm because it didn't really have a lot of infrastructure. So there's been a lot of projects that I've had to, like, oversee when I get home. But now it's kind of slowing down because it's like, oh, we have. All of our fences are done. This is great. Our hydrants are working. So that takes up a lot of the latter half of my day. And then I'll read. I'll start prepping the show in the evening.
- [80:32]
Alex Clark
What are you reading right now?
- [80:33]
Brett Cooper
I'm reading Caraval. It's the second Caraval Rose. My friend recommended it to me and she is doing a murder mystery next Saturday night that is themed off of Caraval.
- [80:43]
Alex Clark
Like a party?
- [80:43]
Brett Cooper
Yes.
- [80:44]
Alex Clark
Cute.
- [80:44]
Brett Cooper
And she is. She's a brilliant. And so she has literally written out all of these scripts and all. We have all these characters that we're going to play, but it's based off of this. I want to finish the second book in time.
- [80:53]
Alex Clark
So reading and then. And then you guys have dinner. And then what time do you go to bed?
- [80:57]
Brett Cooper
Ideally, I'm in bed by 8:45.
- [80:59]
Alex Clark
That is early.
- [81:01]
Brett Cooper
I'm not asleep by then. But again, I like to be like the gravitational pull. You like to scroll? Yes.
- [81:06]
Alex Clark
Yeah.
- [81:06]
Brett Cooper
And that's When I do my best research for the show totally is. I like, oh, yeah, I get my beef tallow on. I put my primally or my Purely Parsons hair oil in shout out to them because I love them. And I like get in my pajamas and I'm, I'm like a worm.
- [81:20]
Alex Clark
Yeah, yeah.
- [81:21]
Brett Cooper
Which I know you love. And I'm there and I'm scrolling and I'm reading my book. I'll go through like slack messages, whatever I need to catch up on and I'll basically like, my slack messages to myself are like the most insane, chaotic Bread Cooper brain dump. Because it's like I'm pulling in all the clips that I want to bring and I'm like, okay, this is my point here. This is what I do. And then in the morning I'm able to go through that and I have my whole stream of consciousness. Yep. And then it's like, okay, there's the script. So I do all of that, like late at night.
- [81:48]
Alex Clark
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- [83:38]
Brett Cooper
A myriad of reasons, probably two or three main ones. So the big one was I didn't really know why I was going. I went because I didn't have anything else to do or I didn't think that I had anything else to do. So at that point I had decided that I wanted to walk away from Hollywood, which seems more dramatic in my mind than I think it does to other people because it's like you weren't like famous, you weren't do anything. But I had spent 10 years of my life in this industry. Sure, yeah. And that was.
- [84:06]
Alex Clark
That was your identity.
- [84:06]
Brett Cooper
Yes, and that was my life plan. And I'd already made the decision that I wanted to go more into producing and writing and directing. So I've been doing that for the last two years with BLM and Covid and all the politics just becoming just aggressively rampant in Hollywood. Like they were not even hiding the fact that they were so biased. I just could not stomach it anymore. I was working at this production company that I was just obsessed with. I was so passionate. They were, you know, Academy Award winner. They had produced some of my favorite films. I just felt so fed by being there and the stories that they were creating. And in 2020, my job switched from finding great compelling stories that the whole goal was that the audience was left changed in a positive way. It was not like a hit you over the head, like Christian, uplifting, whatever. It was just that it. You leave having some kind of hope in humanity or wanting to go have a positive conversation with somebody, like, it's just a tinge of like we're making some kind of positive difference in somebody's life when they finish watching this film. And I love that. And it was so rewarding to me. And all the films were very character driven. And it switched from finding those stories to aggressively being like, we have too many white people. We need more black led movies. The big one was they were like, we don't have a Native American female lead. And they're like, Brett, you need to find a Native American. And I was like. And I was reading all of these like ridiculous scripts that were fine, but they were ones that we would have never considered other than the fact that they were about a Native American girl. And I was like, come on guys, we. And they Literally, like, cut their slate in half. And they're like, we can't do any of these white people movies anymore. We have to do something else. And it just became so calculated. And that was around the time that the Academy had rolled out all of their new rules that then impacted the SAG Awards and the Golden Globes that were.
- [85:44]
Alex Clark
Well, then that. To me, I would assume then that that's why you would want to go get out of this and go to law school.
- [85:49]
Brett Cooper
Exactly. And so, yeah, so that was my like, all right, I'm done. I'm out. And I was an English major. And what do liberal arts majors do when they don't know what they want to do with their life is you go to law school, take the lsat. And that made me feel like I was moving my life forward in a way, because that was in the middle of COVID I was at ucla. You know, acting was just going nowhere, and I wasn't happy. And that was around the time, like, every single audition that I was getting was like, she's ethnically ambiguous. I'm like, I'm not ethnically ambiguous. Like, I'm never going to be ethnically ambiguous.
- [86:16]
Alex Clark
Are you anything? Because I always get, what are you? And I'm like, white.
- [86:19]
Brett Cooper
The only interesting thing is that me and Elizabeth Warren, we. I have, like, a tiny bit of Cherokee.
- [86:23]
Alex Clark
Oh, just a tiny bit.
- [86:24]
Brett Cooper
She's more. She's more.
- [86:25]
Alex Clark
More than you.
- [86:26]
Brett Cooper
Oh, yeah. Pocahontas. Yeah. Dutch. And then my dad's family is like, I'm technically. I technically can be like, a Daughters of the Revolution because my. I have ancestors that were. That like, came over and were in the Revolutionary War. But, yeah, a little bit. My mom's family is from Oklahoma, so we have Indian over there. But yeah, I'm just. I'm white. My brothers have a different dad. My dad is their stepdad, and they have, like, a tiny bit of African. And that was like, the best thing that ever happened to my older brother when he found that he did 23 and me and he was like, I'm black. Cues in 2020. I was like, j, you cannot be saying that. But no. So that was. That just really kind of ruined the industry for me. And so I didn't know what to do. And I needed some. Something that was driving me forward in this senior year of college because I wasn't working. I had intentionally taken a step back from acting. Again. Yeah, the ethnically ambiguous. So I wasn't going to getting any roles. I had also, at that point had said, I'm not doing nudity. I'm not doing sex. And that was a big like, what are you doing? You're cutting yourself off from so many roles. I was like, well, sorry, then maybe you should change what you're doing, because everything is super promiscuous and I'm just. I'm not interested in doing that. So I felt like I didn't really have a home there. Tried production, just felt very beaten down. Had lost a lot of my friends because of politics in Los Angeles. And so, you know, I thought, let me try to change things. Let me go to law school. And I thought maybe I could be an entertainment attorney. But then I was like, I don't really care about that when I care about is politics and culture. And so, you know, I've shotguns my whole life. Very pro gun family, brothers in the military. So I thought, okay, I'll be a 2A attorney. Like, I really care about the Second Amendment. That was, you know, a big part of me growing up and being confident as a young woman and being like, I would carry in California, which was like, it was totally illegal, but I would, like, walk through skid row to my job. And my mom was like, I have your gun. So I thought, okay, well, then, you know, that'll be meaningful. That'll be good work. I can at least, like, feel like I'm moving my life forward in some kind of, you know, productive way. Maybe the Hollywood thing will come back. Maybe they'll even out in the next year. Maybe when Covid's over. And the vax, though the VAX mandates were a big part of it. And so, yeah, I took the lsat. I got into some great schools. I was planning on going to Pepperdine because I thought that would be, you know, the least insane of the California schools. And then my mom decided that she was done with California, understandably so in 2021. And she bought a farm in Idaho. She finally did it like her divorce had been finalized. She was going to get her farm. So she moved there. And I realized, like, why am I. I have no reason to be in Los Angeles. I don't want to act anymore. And so I followed her to Idaho. And on the last day possible, I applied for University of Idaho's law school. Got in. I was going to do a dual JD MBA program. So I would come out with my master's in business as well. And so again, it was all just like, I got to be doing something productive. I graduated from ucla. What am I doing with my life? I was working At Trader Joe's. I've been working at Trader Joe's for five years at that point. That was my, like, I love. Which is so unfortunate because everything there is just, like, riddled with seed oils, so I can't really shop there.
- [89:21]
Alex Clark
Still processed food, but they have great prices on eggs and produce.
- [89:24]
Brett Cooper
Yeah. So I've been working there. And so I went to Idaho with her, and I got a job being a waitress at a steakhouse. They're super fun job. Genuinely loved it. Loved being a waitress. And at that point, I was doing, like, social media videos for Prager U. I was a Haslett Fellow at the foundation for Economic Education. So Fee. So I was doing, like, economic journalism for them and was doing some social media. And then I had gotten a job at Young Americans for Liberty, and I was like, they. I think my job title technically was, like, marketing strategist, but I basically did a lot of different things. They had me copywriting all their fundraising emails. I would do social media for them. I would help come up with a social media strategy. I was, like, the only girl on the team. So I was like, all right, you libertarian men, let's, like, figure something else out. We need to be, like, more female dominant here. I was doing all of that and was planning on doing that as I went law school. And I was speaking at Freedom Fest, which was held in South Dakota that year, and I was speaking about homeschooling. And through Fee, they had invited me, and a friend of a friend had a couple of constitutional lawyers that were there who were speaking. I was like, this is great. I'll be able to go talk with them. And another friend of mine who was there also was going to go to law school and do that. She's actually in law school now and is pursuing that. And I was talking with them, and they talked to both of us, and they walked away from it going, like, your friend should go. That's exactly what she wants. Wants to do. There's no reason for you to go. You should not go. You don't. You're not passionate enough. I was like, what do you mean? Like, I'm going to fight for 2A. And I said, you are going to go to school for four years. Because it was a dual program. You're going to put your life on hold for four years. You're going to go into debt. There are too many lawyers. We don't have enough jobs for lawyers right now. And because of unsubsidized student loans for grad programs, basically every university in its mother has created a law school. So we have an influx of these JD students coming out. There's not enough jobs. Constitutional. Constitutional lawyers make basically nothing. Obviously their jobs are very important, but they make basically nothing.
- [91:09]
Alex Clark
Right.
- [91:09]
Brett Cooper
And they said to me, it's not that you're not smart enough or whatever, but you are. You're making a name for yourself in politics and culture. You are doing videos, you are getting invited to speak places, you're writing these articles that are going viral. You're going to stop all of that because you won't be able to continue it. You won't be able to work while you're in law school for four years, go into debt. And he said, you can do everything that we do as constitutional lawyers except sign the briefs. All the advocacy work that you are really excited about, that we're doing, the testifying, the social media campaigns that we do, you can do all of that except sign the briefs.
- [91:43]
Alex Clark
Right.
- [91:43]
Brett Cooper
And it was like a light bulb moment. And so that mixed with the financial implications of it, you just thought content creation, sort of. Yes. Yeah. So I then realized it wasn't even, like, content creation. It was just like, okay, how can I I. Because I didn't even really thought about, like, being an influencer or creator. And that way I was just like, all right, well, I can just keep this going wherever it takes me. I don't really know what that'll be. I think in my mind, I was just like, I'll just kind of, like, move up in the ranks at Young Americans for Liberty and, like, run a conservative nonprofit, I guess, or something like that. And the Daily Wire slid into my DMs, and they said, you know, we've seen your videos. We think you're really cool.
- [92:17]
Alex Clark
This is what happened with me in Turning Point.
- [92:18]
Brett Cooper
Really?
- [92:19]
Alex Clark
Yes. They slid into my DMs, but they were. They had no production department. They weren't doing daily shows.
- [92:25]
Brett Cooper
So funny.
- [92:26]
Alex Clark
So they messaged me, thinking I could just be an influence or something. And I didn't know what that was because my whole career was in radio. So if somebody's like, we should work together. I only know, like, doing shows. So I was like, great, I have a show idea. Because I was trying to get out of radio because I was openly conservative, and it was just becoming super contentious and said, I want to do this pop culture show. And then, you know, the rest is history.
- [92:47]
Brett Cooper
So that's very, very similar because I had a. I had done a pilot that I had, like, shopped around to, like, the nonprofits that I was working with and they were all like, oh, we don't really get it. And it was the format that of comment section. It was like reading comments. It was very punchy, lots of memes. But I had thought that it would just focus on education. Like that's what I care about. Obviously I was homeschooled. I had just gone through, you know, higher ed. I just went through this law school thing. I was like, we need to like this. We're going to be radicalized about this. It's going to be great. I was like I'll focus on, you know, educational stories and the chaos in the educational world. And it was pretty, you know, narrow minded but that was just like the world that I was, was living in. And they actually never saw the pilot because legally they couldn't accept pitches. They were like, please don't show us. But they had an idea and it just happened to be very similar. The format was very similar. The team that brought me on, it was very cool. I think a lot of people assumed that it was like all the Daily Wire suits being like let's have like a young, you know, 18 year old girl do the show. But it was all people that were my age. They were all like 20, you know, 21 to 24 who were at the company, were working on Ben's YouTube and were having him do, you know, funny YouTube videos. We're going, there's such a, there's a need for a new voice here that's younger and for content that we would actually watch. And a lot of them were young men of like we want somebody that's like, you know, hitting these stories that the guys aren't gonna hit that is in a, a shorter like bite sized amount of time that like young people will not. Because so many young people don't wanna listen to long form content so really making it directly for them. So it was created like by Gen Z for Gen Z, which is really cool and obviously like the, my audience spans many generations which I love and I'm grateful that so many people can, you know, extract value from it. But we created it for people like us in mind, like the team.
- [94:30]
Alex Clark
So did they already have the idea, like we want to call it the comment section. Like did they have that stuff ironed out?
- [94:35]
Brett Cooper
They had the name and they had the concept.
- [94:37]
Alex Clark
So once you were hired, how much tweaking to the format did you do?
- [94:43]
Brett Cooper
Yeah, I was able to go in and we built the set for me. Like they basically, basically said I think it was like $10,000. They're like, here you go, here's $10,000. Here's you and your little team. On it was like a bunch of like social media coordinators and people in marketing. They're like, you go try this out and we'll see if it works. And Jeremy's famous words were like, I don't get this show, but I think somebody else will, so try it. We had no big marketing push behind it, did no paid advertisements for it, nothing. They were just like, let's see how it works. And so we scrounged together this set, we created the whole thing, did tons and tons of pilots and different trials. And at first they really only wanted it to be pop culture. And I was like, that's not because again, I, I wasn't on social media as a kid. I didn't watch tv. It was like, who am I to be talking about pop culture? Like I'm, I wasn't even raised around this. I was like, I'm an intellectual. And so we kind of found some middle ground. Like my first episode was reacting to Biden's State of the Union, but it was in a fun and light hearted and comedic way. And then as the show grew, more and more people wanted more pop culture things. And so because I just didn't care about it on a surface level, my whole angle, and I know you do this as well, was like, okay, well if everybody cares about these pop culture stories, what can I do to extract meaning from it that will make your life better? So if we're all going to be sitting here and we're all going to be scrolling, we're all going to be on TikTok, we're all going to be watching YouTube, we're all going to be like looking at these celebrities doing award shows. What subliminal messages are they sending us that we can actually like, take and understand and talk about? And that probably comes from my like, academic background. Have I just been into liberal arts where we just sit around and we, you know, analyze a passage for days on end. But we can do that with social media. And that actually got me excited about social media and pop culture. I was like, this is great because I can meet people where they are.
- [96:25]
Alex Clark
Honesty moment. How long did it take for you to feel burnout?
- [96:28]
Brett Cooper
You know, honestly, it was right when I went to Budapest.
- [96:30]
Alex Clark
Yeah, and that's probably good that you had a little bit of a, sort of kind of a break.
- [96:34]
Brett Cooper
It was not even a break because we were still doing the show full time. And that was probably the, the hardest I'VE ever worked. But my environment changed, which was great. And my routine was totally turned on its head, which was very, very needed. And it had just been, go, go, go, go, go. And there was like, we couldn't really make adjustments to the show, basically because they were like, this is like insane. This. Like, you're so famous now. And we have so many, like, don't change a thing, just like, keep going. And I was like, I'm so tired.
- [97:00]
Alex Clark
Yeah.
- [97:01]
Brett Cooper
And I'd been traveling a lot last year. I literally was gone more days than I was home in 20, 20, 23. And so I had been doing a lot of pre recording of the show and just trying to keep up. And so going to Budapest, it gave me a chance to reset, have some distance, you know, got to explore a new city. We got engaged, got to spend great time with Alex. I got to spend great time with Reagan while we were there, where we really got to like, just be one on one with each other. And we both love this show so much. We love this format. And go, okay, what do we want this to be? Like, who really are we reaching? Do we want to tweak anything? And then while we were gone, they were actually rebuilding my set and I was kind of like giving notes from afar.
- [97:38]
Alex Clark
Yeah. So that's totally the right timing then for all of that to kind of just give you a refresh. Do you see yourself sticking with politics and pop culture for the foreseeable future? Are you like. No, I think there's other things I want to do.
- [97:48]
Brett Cooper
I'd love to expand. And obviously we are expanding a bit with. I don't want to say we, but, you know, my personal content, I think is going to change as Alex is in. My life changes. And as now we have this farm and whenever we have kids. And I obviously want people to be, you know, involved in that.
- [98:04]
Alex Clark
You think you're going to vlog your kids?
- [98:06]
Brett Cooper
I'm not going to vlog my kids.
- [98:07]
Alex Clark
Are you going to post them?
- [98:08]
Brett Cooper
No.
- [98:09]
Alex Clark
Interesting.
- [98:10]
Brett Cooper
I don't think so.
- [98:10]
Alex Clark
This is a big thing. I'm very undecided on what I'm going to do with that.
- [98:14]
Brett Cooper
I think that I've just been so black pilled about the entire thing and I've covered. Oh, my gosh, that was. Another part of the burnout was in 2023, especially in the summer. It was like the most disturbing episode after disturbing episode of just like, oh, my gosh, how many pedophiles do we live amongst? And I just got to the point where I was like, I just can't. So I think I, I'm black pilled from that. But I also think that was kind of like the conversation that Alex and I had where it's. I made the decision to be a public figure. I came to terms with this. I'm not going to force you to open yourself up to this and open yourself up to attacks. You can if you want to. He knew going into this, this is who I am, this is what I do. But I don't have to subject you to all of it.
- [98:52]
Alex Clark
Sure, yeah.
- [98:53]
Brett Cooper
That is on your time. And it's like when I have kids, it's like they can't consent to it. And while I would love to, because I'm sure I'll love them and they'll be so cute and all of that, but I'm sure I would love to share that. It's just like, I know I was, you know, I, I don't think I could consistently, you know, do one thing with Alex, who is, you know, a 30 year old man, and give him that respect and allow him to decide when he's gonna go out and then have kids and just say, yeah, here you are. Let me just put your face everywhere for a bunch of people to see. Especially when I'm kind of like a controversial figure.
- [99:24]
Alex Clark
So, yeah, speaking of controversial, was the most controversy you've gotten into you talking about birth control when the Washington Post admitted they got you taken down on TikTok.
- [99:35]
Brett Cooper
That actually was not the biggest controversy. Like by that point people were, especially in my audience, were like, yes, this is great. We're so excited that you're talking about it. It was like a rallying cry. Probably the biggest, the biggest controversies have always been when I've been talking about.
- [99:51]
Alex Clark
The Red Pill Bros. Don't I know know it.
- [99:54]
Brett Cooper
Yeah, that's always the.
- [99:56]
Alex Clark
It's like poking the hornets nest.
- [99:57]
Brett Cooper
Yeah, exactly. And it's a, you know, it just brings everything in and, you know, half of my audience is like very on board and then I don't even know if it's the other half of them or if a bunch of like viewers of the content that I'm talking about come over. Actually the most hate that I've ever gotten. I did an episode. Oh, gosh, I can. I usually am able to pull the title off top of my head. Was it the Man Crisis, Reagan? What was it? It was. Oh, it was so bad. It was. They were so, so angry at me. This was like early 2023 and I made an episode basically going through. I Don't want to say the failures of men, but it was where men were falling behind. Men are not dating. Men are.
- [100:41]
Alex Clark
It was like an accountability episode.
- [100:43]
Brett Cooper
It was accountability, and it wasn't even like, you need to be better. I was saying, hey, guys, this is what's happening. I don't know if you realize that this is happening on a broader scale. This is what's happening. If you don't want this to be you, it's time to take action. And it was, you know, men are not getting their driver's license, which is.
- [100:55]
Alex Clark
So amazing to me.
- [100:56]
Brett Cooper
That is so indicative of, like, you know, developmental, I think, problems in our society. Totally not dating, not working. They're not working out. They're unhealthy.
- [101:05]
Alex Clark
Yeah.
- [101:06]
Brett Cooper
It was holding up a mirror, and I felt like it was in a kind way, and I was really excited about the episode.
- [101:10]
Alex Clark
But you're a woman saying it.
- [101:11]
Brett Cooper
Yeah, it was a problem.
- [101:12]
Alex Clark
Yeah.
- [101:13]
Brett Cooper
Got so much hate, I lit. We literally flew Chris Williamson in, who I literally adore, and I had him be on the podcast with me, and I was like, chris, let's walk through it.
- [101:21]
Alex Clark
Did you lose a bunch of subscribers? I mean, was it like that type of a fallout?
- [101:23]
Brett Cooper
No, I didn't. I don't think I lost a ton.
- [101:26]
Alex Clark
Just angry comments.
- [101:27]
Brett Cooper
Just very, very angry. Like, we are. We feel so betrayed. We thought that you were here for us, to support us. And I was like, well, this isn't what I said in the Chris episode. And he, I think, held me accountable in a good way, but softly, like, said, no, she's actually right. And he was like, maybe, you know, they weren't ready to hear it from you. And maybe the tone wasn't the best. I was like, okay, I can. I can, you know, deal with that. But he sat next to me and said, no, guys, you know, she's actually kind of right. And he said. But he spun it in a positive way that I think I could have done better. Where he said, you know, men, the bar is literally on the floor at this point.
- [101:54]
Alex Clark
Yeah.
- [101:55]
Brett Cooper
So you have an incredible opportunity. It's like, literally, if you just work out three days a week, you are ahead of so many men. Like, that is acute. If you create a community of young men, if you go to church and you find, you know, four good friends and you start studying the Bible together, if you work out together, you are literally leagues ahead of the majority of young men. And so it made it, I think, more attainable for them and more exciting for them, and also better to hear it from, you know, a fit, successful guy rather than me. But, yeah, that was the biggest controversy. Like, literally, I remember I've done multiple live streams, and people have said, like, do you regret doing that episode?
- [102:27]
Alex Clark
Oh, my gosh, I don't.
- [102:28]
Brett Cooper
Because it was all true. It's all true.
- [102:31]
Alex Clark
Tell me some current health or wellness favorites. Could be snacks, products, habits, books, anything.
- [102:36]
Brett Cooper
Habits still are using tallow. And again, like, you said it, like, it works for some people. It does not work for, like, my. One of my former producers has terrible, terrible eczema. Tallow is the only thing after, like, all of this medication.
- [102:48]
Alex Clark
Raw milk will help.
- [102:49]
Brett Cooper
Worked. Yes, it will. And so tallow is fantastic. Filtered showerhead. Changed the game for my hair. Regan has the jolie, and she really likes it.
- [102:59]
Alex Clark
Oh, yes. That's what I want to get.
- [103:00]
Brett Cooper
So that is a big one. And then any kind of meat sticks. We are a huge chomps family. I love chomps.
- [103:06]
Alex Clark
That's good. Little protein on the go type of a situation. Okay, let's go through what's in your purse.
- [103:10]
Brett Cooper
Okay, let's see.
- [103:11]
Alex Clark
And tell us the bag. What bag it is.
- [103:13]
Brett Cooper
This is a Louis Vuitton carryall, I think is what it is.
- [103:17]
Alex Clark
Is it never full?
- [103:18]
Brett Cooper
Yes. There we go. That is it. You know it better than I am. I actually, like, never really cared or wanted a Louis Vuitton bag. I don't really. I'm not big into bags. I have a bunch of, like, vintage bags for my mom, like, old coach bags. But the dots were what sold me because I obsessed with color. This was their 2023, like, collaboration. Okay, here's Caraval. This is their second one.
- [103:37]
Alex Clark
Okay. She's reading Legendary. A Caraval.
- [103:39]
Brett Cooper
Yes. This is second Caraval novel. It's great. It's like, it is so cool because the entire premise of the novel is that you can't trust literally everyone, anyone. So you are reading the novel and you know less than the characters.
- [103:53]
Alex Clark
Oh, I love that. That's fun.
- [103:54]
Brett Cooper
Which is so great. So I have that. Oh, this is fun. This is my Alex Jarff supplements.
- [104:00]
Alex Clark
Oh, cute.
- [104:01]
Brett Cooper
Yes.
- [104:02]
Alex Clark
So I have, like, your husband Alex.
- [104:04]
Brett Cooper
Yes, my husband Alex. You know, I know you have your supplements, too, but this is what he. Oh, gosh. Prepares me in the morning. So I've taken some of them. But, like, I have my. My needed egg support. My Coq 10 I haven't taken yet. I have this gray one is for eye health because I have bad eyes.
- [104:18]
Alex Clark
Ooh, what's that? I need that.
- [104:19]
Brett Cooper
I don't know. I'll Text it. I don't. Horrible eyes. He bought it for me and he was like, you're going to go blind. You need to take this.
- [104:24]
Alex Clark
I need that.
- [104:24]
Brett Cooper
And it helps. And then my magnesium and zinc that I'll take in the evening. So that's all that. My aura ring charger.
- [104:30]
Alex Clark
Yep.
- [104:31]
Brett Cooper
That. I lost my aura ring. So now the charger just follows me. Sorry for the gentlemen. My kora pads because I stopping using tampons changed my life.
- [104:41]
Alex Clark
Really?
- [104:42]
Brett Cooper
Yes.
- [104:42]
Alex Clark
Okay.
- [104:43]
Brett Cooper
Yeah. And I do not like pads. Terrible. I was like, I don't want to wear a diaper. My periods have never been easier like that. Mixed with birthright. It is seamless. Now I just have random pads everywhere. And then I have a Dell lipstick.
- [104:56]
Alex Clark
They're great.
- [104:57]
Brett Cooper
I wear clock lips every day. So this is like a fun one.
- [105:00]
Alex Clark
That's a pretty one.
- [105:01]
Brett Cooper
My mother in law got me this. And this doesn't, like, hurt my head when I lean back in the car. Oh, it's flat out.
- [105:05]
Alex Clark
Yes.
- [105:08]
Brett Cooper
It's almost like a French pin in that way in the plane.
- [105:11]
Alex Clark
I hate that too, with the claw clips. Okay, that's great. That's so fun.
- [105:15]
Brett Cooper
There we go.
- [105:15]
Alex Clark
What fun projects are currently in the works for you that we can look forward to?
- [105:18]
Brett Cooper
Pendragon is the biggest one, and I am so excited about that. It was an honor to be able to dip my toe in a big way back into acting, but be with people who I love and adore so much to work with, you know, the company that I love. And it was just such a refreshing experience to be on this set and to not have to worry about the things that you were saying or what you were representing. And also even more than that, because it's like, I don't need everybody to, you know, agree with me everywhere. But to be working on a script that has such great values and a story that genuinely, you know, wishes the best for its audience, I think that that's so rare because I remember being in Hollywood and I would get auditions and I would read these scripts and I was like, these people are like, these characters are terrible. Like, they're genuinely terrible human beings. And they're doing nothing for the audience other than just like filling their head with garbage. And Pendragon is so different than that. It is so thoughtful. It is theological. It's gut wrenching in so many ways. So it was such a, such a joy as an actor and a storyteller to do that. And then just as like, you know, Brett, who's conservative and felt burned by.
- [106:20]
Alex Clark
Hollywood and what's the summary of what it's about?
- [106:22]
Brett Cooper
It is an Arthurian legend, so it is a take on the King Arthur story, but from the Christian perspective.
- [106:27]
Alex Clark
And when does this come out and where can people watch it?
- [106:29]
Brett Cooper
That is still to be determined.
- [106:31]
Alex Clark
Okay, perfect.
- [106:31]
Brett Cooper
They're still working, like day in, day out on VFX and coloring. I mean, it's like the parts that I've seen and then just being there and watching the dailies and being on set, it is incredible. Like, it is the biggest thing we've ever done. It's a passion project for Jeremy. The actors are just incredible. Like, the cast is just amazing. So, yeah, people are going to love it.
- [106:53]
Alex Clark
If you had one remedy to heal a sick culture and that could be physically, mentally, or spiritually, what would it be for you?
- [106:59]
Brett Cooper
Empowerment. I don't know if that can be a sure. But I think so many of our societal ills would be healed by people realizing that they have agency and that their life is not determined by, you know, the consequences of their, you know, childhood or their parents or their current circumstances because victimhood is just so prevalent. And empowerment, I think, is the reason why I'm here today. You know, based on my family and the experiences that I've had and watching my parents divorce, my brother's death, my brother's schizophrenia. I think that I would be a very different person if I let that define me.
- [107:32]
Alex Clark
Sure. Yeah.
- [107:33]
Brett Cooper
And so I think that if I can offer people empowerment and excitement about their life and knowing that they have agency and that they, you know, that their life really is their fault, I think that's the best thing that I could do.
- [107:44]
Alex Clark
That is beautiful. Okay, where can people subscribe to you on YouTube and find you on Instagram?
- [107:49]
Brett Cooper
You can find me at. I'm Brett Cooper on Instagram and then the comment section with Brett Cooper is where I am twice a day. Brett, thank you for coming on Culture Apothecary.
- [107:59]
Alex Clark
I was slated to do this interview for an hour, hour and 20, but it was just so good, I had to keep going. I hope you learned some things about Brett that you didn't know before. I definitely did. Her show is phenomenal, so make sure you subscribe to her and Daily Wire plus for movies and TV shows without left wing propaganda the whole family can enjoy. Please leave a five star review and tell others why they should listen to Culture Apothecary. We're on a mission to heal a sick culture. Twice a week, new guest bring a unique remedy. That's Mondays and Thursdays at 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern. Subscribe to Real Alex Clark on YouTube and follow me on Instagram at Real Alex Clark TPSA merch.com and code Alex Clark gets you 10% off gorgeous culture Apothecary Merch the best materials, design and quality. I'm Alex Clark and this is Culture Apothecary.