1156: Andrew Callaghan | Documenting America's Shadow Self

Summary

Summary of Episode 1156: Andrew Callahan | Documenting America's Shadow Self

The Jordan Harbinger Show delves deep into the complexities of societal issues, and in Episode 1156, host Jordan Harbinger engages in an insightful conversation with Andrew Callahan, the creator behind "All Gas, No Brakes" (Channel 5). This episode, released on May 20, 2025, explores themes of radicalization, conspiracy theories, personal trauma, and the role of media in shaping public perception.

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I. Introduction to Andrew Callahan

Andrew Callahan, known for his unique brand "All Gas, No Brakes," has established himself as a prominent figure in gonzo journalism. Jordan introduces Andrew as a dynamic content creator whose work captures the unfiltered essence of American subcultures.

Notable Quote:

"Gonzo journalism, if you look at the official definition, was pioneered by Hunter S. Thompson... So I just kind of roll with it every time it's mentioned."
[02:10] Andrew Callahan

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II. Radicalization and Conspiracy Theories

The conversation shifts to the factors that lead individuals to adopt extreme political ideologies. Andrew emphasizes that personal tragedies often serve as catalysts for radicalization.

Key Points:

• Personal Trauma: Loss of home, financial instability, and familial breakdowns can push individuals toward extreme beliefs.
• Conspiracy Mindset: Andrew explains that belief in conspiracies provides a semblance of order in chaotic lives, offering easy answers to complex problems.

Notable Quote:

"The conspiracy mind frame tells people there's someone with a plan... It offers a band-aid for existential crises."
[08:06] Andrew Callahan

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III. Core Needs Framework: Security, Significance, Connection

Andrew introduces a framework based on three core human needs that influence susceptibility to radicalization:

1. Security: Basic necessities like housing and employment.
2. Significance: One’s place and recognition in society.
3. Connection: Deep human relationships and community.

Key Insights:

• Individuals lacking in these areas are more vulnerable to extremist ideologies.
• Strong communities can mitigate the effects of personal tragedies by providing support and a sense of belonging.

Notable Quote:

"If these needs aren't met, people can fall into extremes as a way to cope with their unmet needs."
[13:25] Andrew Callahan

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IV. Impact of Modern Media on Polarization

Andrew criticizes mainstream media for exacerbating political polarization through sensationalism and emotional triggers, likening it to reality TV's influence on public discourse.

Key Points:

• Sensationalism: Media outlets prioritize dramatic and emotionally charged content to capture audience attention.
• Cortisol Triggers: Content designed to elicit strong emotional responses, fostering division rather than understanding.

Notable Quote:

"Most news media today is based upon the deployment of micro traumatic digital media... It triggers a fight or flight response."
[98:12] Andrew Callahan

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V. Personal Experiences and Anecdotes

Andrew shares personal stories that highlight the challenges of his work and the broader societal issues discussed:

• Misidentification Incident: Being mistaken for a gay prostitute, reflecting societal prejudices.
• Couchsurfing Memories: Hosting diverse individuals, illustrating the complexities of human interactions.
• HPPD and Mental Health: Discussing his struggles with Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder (HPPD) and its impact on his perception of reality.

Notable Quote:

"Depersonalization is the main symptom that accompanies HPPD... It has to do with the visual processing system being disinhibited by psychedelics."
[54:34] Andrew Callahan

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VI. Mental Health: HPPD and Depersonalization

The discussion delves into the psychological effects of substance abuse, specifically focusing on HPPD:

Key Points:

• HPPD Symptoms: Visual disturbances and persistent hallucinations that affect daily functioning.
• Treatment Challenges: Limited effective treatments and societal stigma surrounding mental health issues.
• Personal Coping Mechanisms: Andrew shares strategies to manage his symptoms by prioritizing other senses.

Notable Quote:

"HPPD is something similar to epilepsy where you can have a seizure; it's about the brain's visual processing being disrupted."
[53:55] Andrew Callahan

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VII. Media and Legal Challenges

Andrew discusses the repercussions of his work's exposure, including legal battles and media backlash:

Key Points:

• Legal Allegations: Addressing false accusations and the impact on his professional reputation.
• Media Representation: How mainstream and alternative media can misrepresent and amplify issues unfairly.
• Corporate Influence: The role of corporate interests in shaping media narratives and influencing public perception.

Notable Quote:

"I just think that alternative media is following the exact same incentive structure as the MSM, if not worse."
[99:53] Andrew Callahan

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VIII. Path Forward: Healing as a Nation

Towards the end of the conversation, Andrew offers thoughts on societal healing:

Key Recommendations:

• Reducing Screen Time: Encouraging individuals to disconnect from digital media to foster genuine human connections.
• Facing Consequences: Emphasizing the importance of accountability to prevent the recurrence of extremist actions.
• Community Engagement: Advocating for active participation in community-building activities to fulfill core human needs.

Notable Quote:

"Get off the damn phone. That's the first thing."
[101:43] Andrew Callahan

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IX. Future Projects and Personal Growth

Andrew concludes by sharing his upcoming endeavors and personal reflections:

Key Points:

• New Projects: Pitching a Native American-directed TV show and a documentary about a man searching for his lost parrot.
• Personal Development: Reflecting on overcoming substance abuse and the positive impacts on his creativity and productivity.
• Tattoo Symbolism: Discussing tattoos as representations of personal experiences and milestones.

Notable Quote:

"Addiction has a weird way of embedding itself in your creative... Once I cut out alcohol, I was able to start this five-cast. I'm putting out three episodes a week."
[63:41] Andrew Callahan

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X. Closing Thoughts

The episode wraps up with mutual reflections on societal issues, personal struggles, and the journey towards understanding and healing. Andrew emphasizes empathy, personal responsibility, and the need for systemic change to address the root causes of extremism and polarization.

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Conclusion

Episode 1156 offers a profound exploration of the intricate factors leading to societal division and personal extremism. Through Andrew Callahan's candid narratives and Jordan Harbinger's probing questions, listeners gain a deeper understanding of the human psyche, media influence, and the pathways to collective healing.

Transcript

[Jordan Harbinger]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment.

[Andrew Callahan]

Of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra.

[Jordan Harbinger]

See full [e-mail] this episode of the.

[Unnamed Guest]

Jordan Harbinger show has some explicit language. So if you're offended by that, well.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Skip to the next one. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional cold case homicide investigator, Russian spy, real life pirate or special operator. And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology and geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime and cults, and more that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we.

[Unnamed Guest]

Do here on the show.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Just visit jordanharbinger.com start or or search for us in your Spotify app. To get started today on the show, Andrew Callahan of All gas, no breaks, aka Channel 5, one of the most iconic personal brands on the Internet today. We dive into a lot on this one. Why people radicalize and attach themselves to extreme political ideologies, gonzo journalism in the age of the Internet, psychedelic use and drug abuse cancel culture and a whole lot more. We get into some real ish on this episode.

[Unnamed Guest]

In fact, he even says as much.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Towards the end there. I know you'll dig the conversation whether you're already a fan of Andrew's work or not. Now, here we go with Andrew Callahan. The thing is, a lot of the people you interview, I think would just.

[Unnamed Guest]

Urinate in their pants.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, that's for sure. At the moment, myself included, I've been known to leak a little bit.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, that tan suit you would not be able to hide.

[Jordan Harbinger]

How would you?

[Unnamed Guest]

By the way describe what you do. Because I had some trouble with that when I was prepping the show. I was like, gonzo journalism.

[Andrew Callahan]

But that's like, pretty accurate. Well, gonzo journalism, if you look at the official definition, was pioneered by Hunter S. Thompson, and it included elements of reality and fiction, and it was always retrospective fiction. So Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is supposed to be half true and half featuring fictional elements. The word gonzo gets used to refer to, like, in the field reporting because that's also something the Hunter S. Thompson did. So I just kind of roll with it. But technically gonzo has to be written and it has to be semi fictitious or fantasy. Like, it sounds cool, the word gonzo. So I just kind of roll with it every time it's mentioned.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, I'm with it. I shouldn't admit this. It's usually like a category of porn. I didn't know it was a real category of journalism.

[Andrew Callahan]

There's gonzo pornography category.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

In the field. Setups turning into, like, sexual activity.

[Unnamed Guest]

I think now it's like most porn is that. I don't know, because I wrote the stuff off a while ago for like, mental health reasons and physical health reasons, actually. But I think now it's like what most of the videos are. I think back in my college days in like the early aughts, it was like. Yeah, it's not like in a studio. It's like a guy has a camera and a bed.

[Andrew Callahan]

Oh, like fake taxi or like fake pov.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, stuff like that. Nonsense.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. Because the pizza man set up got kind of played out and a lot of people became delivery guys and realized we're not getting late. Yeah, man.

[Unnamed Guest]

I've been delivering sandwiches for like 6 months and I have gotten late 0 times.

[Andrew Callahan]

Depends where you work. I think if you work for Erewhon and deliver, like, really healthy sandwiches, you could have a chance of like, meeting someone nice. But Jimmy John's.

[Unnamed Guest]

Jimmy John's. Exactly. It's exactly what I'm saying.

[Andrew Callahan]

In cell profession. No offense to people work for Jimmy John's. I just mean being a delivery driver may not be fruit. The romantic department.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's true. It does depend. You're right. Era 1, definitely. Highest chances of getting a piece.

[Andrew Callahan]

Totally.

[Unnamed Guest]

So you actually used to live in a van, is that correct?

[Andrew Callahan]

An rv. So van life is its own thing.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yes.

[Andrew Callahan]

Van life is pretty sick. You can customize them to do a lot. RVs are spacious, so I felt like I was living in a house on wheels.

[Unnamed Guest]

Okay, so you started the all gas. No Brakes, which, by the way, love that. But then it blew up so fast. I can only imagine that you were not also expecting that to happen.

[Andrew Callahan]

Definitely not. And so, yeah, the all gas, no bricks RV was a 26 foot Class C Catalina coachman sport motorhome that was acquired for $21,000. I was getting 45k a year. And then like that was a sick salary coming out of college. Yeah, the show exploded to a degree. That created some tension with me and the production company. But before you proceed, I just reacquired All Gas, no Brakes three days ago.

[Unnamed Guest]

You did? Wow. Congratulations.

[Andrew Callahan]

I own the IP catalog, brand rights and all that stuff. So the beef is squashed.

[Unnamed Guest]

The beef is squashed. Well, that's pretty awesome. I also lost an old business in a way where it was like, hey guys, I want to leave. And they were like, cool, we'll just do this amicably. And then they were like, wait, what if we screw you out of everything and then you just have to sue us? And as an attorney, I was like, not only am I going to do that, but I also know that this is going to take forever, so I'm just going to start over. And there's so many layers to how.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Crappy that all is.

[Unnamed Guest]

Like it's, can I do this again? Was that lightning in a bottle that I can't do anymore? Why did these people do this thing when they could have done it a million different ways? And then it's also my identity was the all gas, no brakes guy. So who am I now and can I redo that or is it, am I still that person? I assume you went through a lot of that.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I've gone through a couple different business fallouts. One of them in particular, the two people in IT quit while simultaneously both owning a significant share. But there was a loophole in the contract where they could quit and resign from their duties while retaining economic interest in the company. So I had to complete their resignation by accepting a buyout offer for their share. So it's like stuff like that that made me very wary. Now, moving forward, I have a lawyer draft. Like a perfect agreement for everything. Whether it's a work for hire editor, a camera person. I just make sure that there's no room for error.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, that's smart even. And I don't mean to scare you, people always, they would go, oh man, that happened to you.

[Jordan Harbinger]

As a lawyer, dude, you got to.

[Unnamed Guest]

Get these certain kinds of agreements. And what people who aren't lawyers don't realize is you can have the Best lawyer in the world, draft something. And if I go, yeah, well, I'm not going to follow that. You then have to sue me and hire an attorney to do it. And it's going to cost you 50 or $100,000 when all is said and done. And then the judge is going to take three years to go through this whole thing. Like, I had a judge tell me.

[Jordan Harbinger]

This business only makes a few million dollars a year.

[Unnamed Guest]

Why were you even in front of me?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Are you kidding?

[Unnamed Guest]

If I have a sandwich shop that makes $200,000 a year, I can't go to court. This is 10 times that size. And the judge is like, why are you in front of me? And yeah, we're not Deutsche bank, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem for the company. What the hell is wrong with you? Yeah, you get up in close to some objectively crazy people. I don't know if that's a fair assessment, but depends.

[Andrew Callahan]

But definitely sometimes, yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

The subject of the new documentary, this guy Kelly, it's, I'd rather die than wear a mask. People are selling baby parts at Planned Parenthood. That's another thing this guy Kelly believes, what part of this is brainwashing and what part of this is mental illness? And where does the Venn diagram overlap, you think?

[Andrew Callahan]

I think that for one, people who gravitate toward conspiracy theories, even if they masquerade as being very angry, it's actually collective self soothing because they could appear angry, but they're very united in their belief in the perseverance of the human spirit, specifically the human ability to keep secrets. Right. In a world full of random variables where every single day loose lipped, clout chasers and people who are just like leaking stuff on signal are throwing totally straightforward operations off track in a catastrophic way. The conspiracy mind frame tells people there's someone with a plan. And the conspiracy way of thinking doesn't make you do the intellectual legwork of actually identifying who these people are. So you say, all right, there's someone that's a demonic force, but the point is someone's got a plan. And so I think that a lot of people who gravitate toward conspiracy movements, their life has fallen apart, and so they can hold on to certain nuggets of truth and draw a correlation where it doesn't exist to prove some kind of order because poverty and decay comes with an existential crisis and conspiracy theories offer a band aid for that.

[Unnamed Guest]

So it's. There's so much chaos in my world. Lost my family, Lost my House lost my car, kids won't talk to me, career falls apart. It's part of an evil plan. It's not the result of all these terrible decisions that I've made over the last 20 years or 10 years. It's part of a plan. And also just even collectively as a country, like everybody I know is worse off economically now there's all these things going on. Surely someone is pulling these strings. It's not just a series of bad decisions by the leaders that we have voted in collectively.

[Andrew Callahan]

Except the random, chaotic and horrific nature of humankind that nobody knows what's going on. Yes, and the idea that there is a shadowy cabal of unknown figures that are making very deliberate, coordinated plans every day is comforting to some people. And for the Planned Parenthood stuff, there's some truth to what's being said. Let's keep it real. Planned Parenthood does in fact have some system set up where they donate some of the embryos and the fetuses that are aborted to science for research purposes.

[Unnamed Guest]

I didn't know that.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, they do that at the morgue too. Yeah, there's organ donors. There's plenty of situations like that.

[Unnamed Guest]

Right. But they're not selling the baby's parts.

[Andrew Callahan]

You can look at it how you want, but they're definitely not selling them to a cabal of satanic Epstein island residents who are then using them for ritual purposes. So it's. When you draw certain correlations, there could be an argument to say, I don't think any people who have passed away, whether it's a fetus or a living human old person, you could argue that their bodies shouldn't be given to anybody for research purposes. If that's your stance. You think, once people rest in peace, I don't want cremation, Let them decompose safely in a casket. That's a normal position to have, if that's how you feel. But the conspiratorial way of thinking is no. This is actually just the tip of the iceberg to a far darker situation.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, that's so interesting. I wonder, aside from politics, you mentioned the person's life is falling apart. What does that look like? What factors make people so susceptible to being brainwashed? Persuaded by qanon esque ideology, other kooky ideologies.

[Andrew Callahan]

Every catastrophic generational event is a big conspiracy pilling moment for the masses. For us, it was probably 9, 11, the Iraq war. These are all situations that create despair, whether it be people dying overseas. Covid obviously. Massive economic recession, social isolation. All of these Things. The LA fires. There's plenty of collectively traumatic events that cause people to ask questions because they're upset. That's a perfect time for someone to be fed disinformation.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, that's true. That's a good point. It's really obvious when you list the events because those are the things with the most conspiracies around it.

[Andrew Callahan]

When things go bad, people look for answers, and then there's lots of theories that are floating around because people are desperate to find answers. And like I said, the conspiracy route gives people an easy answer to complicated questions.

[Unnamed Guest]

That is insightful.

[Andrew Callahan]

Right?

[Unnamed Guest]

It's the easy answer to complicated questions. Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

Like I said, you don't have to do the intellectual legwork of identifying exactly whose plan it was. But it was somebody's plan. The evil nebulous force that is trying to take everything from the hardware working American Patriot. For Kelly, the 2008 recession and the economic fallout after that was probably his catalyst.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, we'll get more into this dude Kelly because he's what a find, right? When you come across a guy like this, you've gotta go, wow, this is great. But also, I feel bad for this guy, but holy crap, I'm so glad I met this guy. Cause you ran into this guy, like, in the street.

[Andrew Callahan]

I ran into him at a White Lives matter rally in 2021 in Huntington Beach, California. But to clarify, he wasn't a part of the white supremacist group that was planning to show up. So what happened? It was like the Boomerang effect, right? Where Antifa and Black Lives Matter showed up to counter protest the Klansmen.

[Unnamed Guest]

I see.

[Andrew Callahan]

He's like on the third string MAGA group chat, being like, antifa is at the pier. So he's showing up to confront Antifa, thinking it's an antifa rally, but they're there to confront the Klansmen who never showed up. It's called. I think the FBI calls it a honeypot.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, that's so funny. So they probably were like, hey, dude.

[Jordan Harbinger]

We'Re just trying to catch some antifa.

[Unnamed Guest]

Violent guys or whatever. You don't need to be here with your triple flag thing.

[Andrew Callahan]

The Four Banger.

[Unnamed Guest]

The Four Banger.

[Andrew Callahan]

So there's the Four Banger is Kelly's battle staff. It's a Sherwin Williams extendable flag pole. It has four flags on it. There's the All Lives Matter aborted baby flag. I think there's Blue Line, Gadsden, Don't Tread on Me flag. And of course, the American flag.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

At the top.

[Unnamed Guest]

So you get into conversations with a lot of these people. I mean, I talk to some of these people casually, not on the show, but you talk to these people professionally. And one common thread is that a lot of them have a deep personal tragedy. So it's not just, oh man, 911 was really bad, traumatized all of us. They had something severe happen to them, or usually more than one thing happened to them. In the case of Kelly, it's like he lost his home, but it was like, eh, that's not the beginning of the story for this guy. They connect that to this wider spiritual war. Like it somehow becomes God, Jesus versus the Democrats. And it's like, dude, you had your home foreclosed. How does that happen? So that leap is what I'm interested in, but also I feel like that's the common thread, is that these people have a personal tragedy. And then it's like instead of dealing with that, they do like a sidestep and they go, now I'm a spiritual warrior.

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, it makes it so they don't have to complete the grief process. And they can be stuck in between. Between denial and anger is pretty much where that radicalization happens. So I theorize in the movie that there are three core security, significance, and connection. Yes, security is like a home, an actual like roof, your head, a bed to sleep on. Significance is like your place in society. It's typically in line with employment or creative contribution. Like for me, I find significance in doing journalism. Like even right now you're interviewing me on a podcast. Like your show is part of your significance. Your security is where you lay your head at night. Connection is the third most important need. And that is something that's not related to security or significance. And that's like human connection. Being loved by another person, your partner, your children, your grandparents. And connection is the most important one and it can't be fulfilled by the first two. So some of the people with the most security and significance, that is some of the richest people, are the most alienated, whereas there are people with very little significance or security who have a lot of connection to others. Community exists, in my opinion, more on a working class level than it does at the very top.

[Unnamed Guest]

That makes sense.

[Andrew Callahan]

I think that part of the reason Kelly had such a fallout is because in this country in particular, everything is connected. There was a 1950s Levittown, leave it to Beaver era thing that said strong fences make strong neighbors. That's a distinctly American dream, post war thing where your status is inextricably connected to your Own privacy and the walls that you build in between the people around you. When I lived in Phoenix, Arizona, I lived in a nice neighborhood, like maybe 6k a month. My neighbors, I never saw them. One time they would call the landlords for noise complaints, never talk to me. I was totally isolated from them.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's weird. Hey.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. And when I was younger and I was paying like 500 bucks a month, living in the French Quarter on Bourbon street in an attic the size of a baseball dugout, my next door neighbors, Frankie and Johnn, these gay dudes who sold meth, were like my best friends. And if I needed their help, I would call them. So the more money that I've made in my life, the less close I felt to my neighbors and community. So I think a snake that eats itself.

[Unnamed Guest]

I think a lot of people have that experience. Not the gay meth dealing neighbors, but the community issue reminds me of that movie Office Space, which I'm sure you've seen, where he's like talking on the phone.

[Jordan Harbinger]

He's like, hey, man, you want to come over?

[Unnamed Guest]

And the guy already heard everything. No, man, I don't want you fucking my life up too, man. Oh, yeah, he's already heard the whole thing because he's right there. Those two gay Beth dealing dudes are.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Like, guys, I need your help.

[Unnamed Guest]

And they're like, yeah, we heard the whole thing. We're on it, man.

[Andrew Callahan]

We're on it.

[Unnamed Guest]

We know.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, that's a perfect reference. I forgot about that scene.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

But yeah, that guy's neighbor literally is like, exactly what I'm talking about.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. And they both like, down and out. Like, one dude's like a construction guy and the other guy works in that crappy office. They look forward to hanging out. They can count on each other for stuff. They can lean on each other. They have pretty much nothing in common.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. And the reason that's so significant is because when Kelly lost his home, his neighbors were like, can't help you. Good luck. Like, in an ideal world, if you have a strong community, you can get your house foreclosed and people will help you. You can stay on your friends couches. Like, assuming you're a well standing community member, you can recover from that. But the way it was in his world where everyone had built up their own empires, even if they were next door and they wouldn't share, it was like, up. You lost your house. Sorry, bro, you got to go with the poor.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. And you almost get the sense that in a community like that, there's gleeful Gossip going on. Oh, did you know that he lost his home? The family had to move out.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Oh, I thought he was a lawyer.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, well, not anymore. You got disbarred. And it's like, I see a little bit of that in the online space. There's a lot of people who really, we should all be, like, helping each other out and cheering for each other. And, I mean, you saw this when you got accused of stuff, which we can talk about a little bit later.

[Jordan Harbinger]

There was a lot of people that.

[Unnamed Guest]

Were like, dang, I can't really believe that. And I was like, okay, I want to hear the detail. I always is, especially as a lawyer. I'm like, I want to see the details and the receipts. But a lot of people were like, ah, I knew that guy sucked. And I'm like, no, you didn't. You know nothing. You still know nothing. What are you talking about?

[Andrew Callahan]

Online hatred and the accumulation of wealth are all rooted in existential dread. The desire for power, whether it be wealth or followers, is rooted in the existential fear that nothing matters and that your entire life, you're just working toward achieving something intangible that will disappear the moment you pass away. The reason people want to hoard wealth is because being rich is the closest thing you have to immortality. And being famous might even be a more immortal sense than that, because you go around and you see outlines of the Beatles on stained glass windows at the Hard Rock Cafe, murals of Kurt Cobain on Melrose in places he's never been before. So fame and money are the two things that can help us deal with this shared dread that we have, because everybody's going to die.

[Unnamed Guest]

A friend of mine, Neil Strauss, wrote a bunch of cool books. He was like, what would you do if you had six months to live? And I was like, oh, I record so many cool podcast interviews. And he's like, why? No one's gonna remember you in a hundred years. And I enjoy doing it, and I think, oh, it's gonna be a great legacy. But he's not wrong. It's also like, you should just really only spend that time with your kids and your family, because none of the rest of it matters at all.

[Andrew Callahan]

That's something hard to grasp. I'm sure. You're a workhorse like me. I see you do a bunch of episodes.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

The satisfaction and dopamine rush of, like, doing numbers on a podcast is transitory compared to the fulfillment you get from really connecting with somebody.

[Unnamed Guest]

It is. It's very hard for guys like us. You don't have kids now, do you?

[Andrew Callahan]

No. I want to, though.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. Once you have kids. This was before I had kids, so I was like, no way, man. You know, do the podcast. And then once I had kids, I was like, love y' all, listeners. This is great. We're gonna be in reruns because I have terminal cancer or something like that. This is not true.

[Andrew Callahan]

Not true.

[Unnamed Guest]

Not true, folks. But if that were the case, and I'd be like, I'm just gonna go to Greece with my kids. I'm going to China. I'm literally not gonna answer any more email. If you wanna write me, my wife will check it. Probably after I'm dead. The end.

[Andrew Callahan]

This makes me think, man. My mom invited me on a birthday trip this weekend. I told her I couldn't go because I had to record a broadcast, but maybe I should just postpone that and go with her.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. Make those memories, right? It's her birthday or your birthday.

[Andrew Callahan]

It's mine. But we haven't got to spend time together, just us, in a while. But, man, the way you said that. I'm the one who brought this whole train of thought up, but you kind of drove it to the station. Maybe I should just say, fuck the broadcast this weekend and go to San Diego.

[Unnamed Guest]

How important is the broadcast? Can it be moved?

[Andrew Callahan]

It can be moved.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. Just move it, dude.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Whenever I miss important stuff, I regret it 100% of the time.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And, like, I missed Halloween with my kids this year because I was in another country and I was like, oh, it's early Halloween. My dad's taking the kids, my wife's taking the kids. And I was like, how was it? She's like, oh, they had a good time. And then she goes, okay, if I'm 100% honest, all week they said, why is dad missing Halloween? Why is dad missing Halloween? And then the day of, they were all really bummed that you weren't there. And then the whole time, they were like, you think dad will meet us later? And she's like, I'm not telling you this to make you feel bad. I'm just telling you. And I'm like, I am never going to miss Halloween again. Cause for me, I'm like, Halloween, it's like 90 minutes max before they get bored and tired.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Who cares?

[Unnamed Guest]

They're not gonna miss me. My whole family's there. They only wanted me to be there. And I was like, on a plane.

[Andrew Callahan]

Damn. So this year, you're gonna be extra.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Hell or high water.

[Andrew Callahan]

I'm waking up with my costume Thousand Dollar makeup.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's right. Yeah. I'm calling somebody from Marvel Studios to come do my Halloween.

[Andrew Callahan]

I'm gonna scare people in my neighborhood. My own kids are gonna be scared and shitless when you see me. That's right.

[Unnamed Guest]

It's gonna be Voltron with my daughter on my right arm and my son on my left arm.

[Andrew Callahan]

You guys live here in California?

[Unnamed Guest]

We live up in San Jose, yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

Oh, cool. How do you feel about staying in California?

[Unnamed Guest]

I like it because my wife's family's there, my parents are there. I moved them in from Michigan and I like my neighbors. Speaking of community, it's actually really cool we have Neighborhood watch because somebody tried to break into my house a couple months ago and freaked everyone out. We were home. So I scared them off.

[Andrew Callahan]

Holy shit. That's terrifying.

[Unnamed Guest]

It's really scary. Luckily the cops were like, look, this is a break in crew. This is not a like come and kill everyone in your house crew. And you could tell because on the cameras they kick my window in after looking in our windows and not seeing anyone because we're in bed like eight. Because I got little kids and I was in my bedroom, they kicked the window in and you hear like, get the out of here.

[Andrew Callahan]

From you?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. And then they stand up like, oh, crap, there's someone home. And they just took off. So it's not like I'm some hard ass. I actually didn't see them.

[Andrew Callahan]

I would have bought a maga hat for the day after that I was like, this fucking bullshit.

[Unnamed Guest]

Calmy fornia.

[Andrew Callahan]

Those communists tried to come in here and convert my children to Ms. 13.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. So look, at the end of the day, I like California because I love the weather. And I go outside like every day. I'm always outside doing stuff. I grew up in Michigan where literally half the year I'm depressed af because apparently seasonal affective disorder is a thing. And I didn't know that growing up. I just thought, wow, really hate life for six to eight months. This is normal. And then when I went to LA for a temporary period when I lived here, I was like, wait, you can just skip winter. You can just opt out.

[Jordan Harbinger]

This is awesome.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

You can also opt out of winter in Arizona.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

So like, if you're forced to brave.

[Andrew Callahan]

Like the worst summer imaginable. Cause I'm from Seattle. I had a similar, like seasonal effective thing. I moved to New Orleans for college and it just swaps. Everybody's depressed in the summertime there. Same with South Florida. And I was like, oh my God, this is really the spot. But I asked you that because so many different podcasters, entertainers, and just business people have left California.

[Unnamed Guest]

It's true.

[Andrew Callahan]

I think they lost $4 trillion in wealth in the year. And I just got my IRS statement. They're going to take 45% of my income this year.

[Unnamed Guest]

Don't you have an accountant that's like, Andrew makes $60,000 and everything else goes through the business?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, but still, this is, like, federal plus state. And now I'm thinking, like, dude, I love it here so much, but is this worth it? Because I can hire more people and pay less for rent money in a different state.

[Unnamed Guest]

I know that's true. You can spend a lot of time in California and live and have your business in another state. It's just, do you want to spend every other week in California and then your business is in Nevada? That's a pain in the butt. Once you have kids, you can't really do that.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I wouldn't mind the taxation if we were living in a utopia. Like, they actually took care of people, created tunnels under the freeways that alleviated traffic, and you just saw, like, lots of people coming here for business. But in turn, it feels like they're. I don't know if they're embezzling it or just giving it to nonprofits who are doing nothing with it. But it's crazy because it's like, you look at other states that have reinvested their money properly, and it looks great. Like, even if you go to Vegas right now, you're like, damn, this place is booming. It's cool to be around somewhere where there's, like, young hustlers and people getting to it as opposed to here. Like, I have an office in Universal City, and, like, my janitor was, like, mopping the floor and, like, pointing to empty offices and being like, Michael Jackson once recorded Beat it right there in 1995. It feels like I'm in Detroit after GM shut down.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, that's depressing. When I was in New York and doing the finance hustle thing back in the early aughts as a lawyer, that place was electric energy, and it was awesome. I would live in New York again. Even in winter in New York is dope because it's just so much going on and you're inside and stuff. It's like, whatever. You can wear nice winter clothes. You feel stylish, whatever. But winter in Michigan is just so. I have to get in my car right now for 20 minutes. I got to warm up my car for 40 minutes. To take that ride. This is terrible. So if my family didn't live in California, I don't think I would live here. It's tough. But also all my friends who moved to Austin are like, same problems, different weather.

[Andrew Callahan]

I also, this is a controversial take, but I believe Texas is for Texans. And I say this as a guy who loves Texas and respects the culture there. They have a different way of life. I just don't think that California bag chasing mentality works too good out there.

[Unnamed Guest]

I can definitely see that being an issue for them.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, Florida, I feel like it's for everybody. It's like a mutual American place where you can just go to start a second chapter. Texas people belong there. You can feel it in the way they talk, the way they dance, the way they just think about things. Like the pace is meant for them. It's not meant for LA comedians looking to turn over anything.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's a really good point. There's a lot of people who moved to Austin, for example, from California, and they brought a lot of their same mindset that didn't work in California down to Austin. And it's funny because the people in Texas are like, God, get out of here. But they're also still annoyed with how Austin has turned up. And I'm like, you guys are doing that to yourselves. But I also have a lot of friends who move to Austin that love it, but they don't live necessarily in the city I live in. Like my friend Ryan Holiday lives in Bastrop, Texas. Just out there, just like out in the middle of nowhere, runs a bookstore. And this is for me. So look, this is a little bit of a tangent, but I agree with you a lot. I think there's a lot to think about. Move before you have kids. It's so much harder to move after you have kids. It's nearly impossible. You mentioned those three core needs. Security, significance, connections. When this happens to teenagers, you mentioned in the documentary, they go into dangerous attention seeking behavior. So when someone's assaulted or has issues at home, they start getting into trouble. And that's why we look at the homes of teenagers when they go off the rails. But what about adults? What do we see with adults? Because not everybody who goes through a personal trauma ends up being a QAnon 4 banger.

[Andrew Callahan]

Obviously your underlying opinion, if you were already kind of like a staunch Reagan style conservative, you'd be more likely to gravitate toward MAGA conservatism. Of course, some people have less media literacy than others and that has to do with intelligence. And not so much with their upbringing. Yeah, you're right. There's plenty of people who get their homes foreclosed and don't go like straight to the Capitol on January 6th.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, exactly.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. And there's also plenty of kids who grow up in broken homes and don't join gangs. So there's a bunch of factors. Some are cultural, but some do have to do with media literacy and intelligence.

[Unnamed Guest]

That is a good point. A few decades ago, maybe I'm delusional. Maybe you've got some info on this. A few decades ago, I feel like Americans could disagree with each other without hating each other. And politicians from opposite parties, they played softball together or whatever. But also there was just this totally different level of respect. I feel like in the 90s, and if somebody was a Republican and you were a Democrat, you didn't shame them or call them names or anything. You were just like, oh, I voted because I care about education. And they're like, taxes are too high. And that was kind of it. It wasn't like Uncle Frank's spit takes spitting his food.

[Andrew Callahan]

So, dude, like, politics were boring back then. There wasn't like WWE showmanship. There couldn't be like a Romney adjacent proud boys, you know, and there couldn't be like antifa during Bill Clinton.

[Unnamed Guest]

When I see British politicians like the. Maybe 10 years ago, 20 years ago when I was in college, I was like, these people are ridiculous. So they're like, harrumph, harrumph, harumph. And they're like yelling at each other. And you see these other, I don't know, like Lebanon's parliament or whatever, they're all freaking out and yelling and screaming, Serbia. They're launching tear gas. I just remember thinking, gosh, look at our Congress. Like, we have our shit together now. It's, nope, we're the same. Worse than all these other sort of, like you said, WWE showdown in government. And it's like, what are you talking about? Marjorie Taylor Greene's talking about Jewish space lasers. And it's, how did this happen?

[Andrew Callahan]

And also the politicians are on the same damn phones as we are. So now we're in an era back in the day was like, politicians were the ones who traveled. They were more engaged with the public. They're also on Twitter being hypnotized by the same social media platforms that the average person is. And that goes for like, left and right. So that's why there's such little conversation. I actually think that the generation after Gen Alpha, so when the current 12, 13 year olds who were in elementary school during COVID once they are at the age where they can have kids, their kids are gonna be anti technology because their parents are gonna be so hypnotized by like watching live streamers and just being engaged with this AI generated brain rot content. So I think all kids born in 2040 are gonna look at people with phones as like, you guys are dumb. Don't you know those things destroy your mind?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, that's a really interesting point. It'll be like cigarettes.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. They're like, dude, put that damn phone away. Kids are gonna wanna kick the can around. Like, I grew up throwing sticks around, chasing squirrels. You did too.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, climbing up trees and stuff. If you have your kid climb a tree now, other mothers will call the police on you sometimes. My buddy has this kid who's eight climbing trees and he climbs quite high. He'll climb up and other mothers are like, that's dangerous. And he's not really. He's gonna fall on the grass. It's not gonna be a big deal. And also he's not gonna fall. And then they called the police and the police came and they were like, yeah, that's pretty high, what's the problem? And the guy's like, these women are harassing me about how high my kid's climbing in a tree. And he's like, the cop was like, you called the police for this? Also they did respond to the call. They weren't like, click, what are you talking about? They showed up for that. That's insane to me also, and you're right, I think that next generation is going to be like, yeah, my dad's always on the virtual thing. And I'm going to be sitting there like, no, this is cool. The movie looks 3D and it's going to be like, dad, touch grass, man.

[Andrew Callahan]

Totally. Because I think that already now they did a survey, I think it was like related to the new Madden games where people actually preferred to play Madden 2007-25. Because it turns out that people, we're at this point now where people prefer nostalgic video game graphics to hyper realistic graphics because it makes them feel like a loser. They're like, here I am controlling this man who looks real and stronger than me and playing a fake game back in the day, like now there is actually more of a demand for a regression. So back when things were more fun and arcade like, and we're going to see that more and more. There's an anti tech movement that is brewing and it just hasn't hatched yet because Gen Alpha doesn't have any kids.

[Unnamed Guest]

That is quite fascinating. I'm actually looking forward to that. I do need my son, who's 5 right now, to slap the iPad out of my hand. Like I want to slap it out of his hand. What's funny about this is my kids, they love iPad, they love watching stuff and they learn a bunch of stuff. They always want to play with actual toys. If they have a choice between iPad and Legos every time. If they have a choice between iPad, phone and running outside, run outside every time. Bubbles, flying planes, whatever.

[Andrew Callahan]

So your kids might be that anti tech generation. That's awesome.

[Unnamed Guest]

They're three and five and they'll love the iPad if they're eating. When they're done eating, they don't want that thing at all. And sometimes my son will be like, iPad, please. And we're like, nah, we're gonna talk. And he's okay.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And I'm like, wait, that doesn't work on anyone over the age of 10.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

What's going on here? And look, sample size of 2. Because I have two kids, but it's pretty incredible to see. And all you hear is that kids are addicted to devices. Sorry, mom. Sorry, dad. My parents are addicted to the devices, dude.

[Andrew Callahan]

Honestly, in the same way that a lot of parents don't let their kids have social media until they're 13 or 14. Yeah. We should do a similar thing with people after they turn like 80. Yes. Or maybe even like 75. Like where they have to be supervised on Facebook. Because I've seen some old people fall for some real, like terrible computer art that anyone can tell is fake. Like Hillary Clinton eating a baby. And it's just so obviously like a dead baby Photoshopped as like on Microsoft paint over like an AI Hillary Clinton with like giant jaws. And they're like, look at this picture.

[Unnamed Guest]

This is a photograph.

[Andrew Callahan]

Shit, you sound like a kid.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, this is like a kid who's intellectually disabled and doesn't understand that it's a cartoon. That's crazy to me. Do you subscribe to the idea that any of the. Speaking of conspiracies, is any of this culture war stuff a manufactured distraction or is it just the result of bad incentives?

[Andrew Callahan]

I think that most of the things they talk about are true, but it's just a matter of scale. For example, the trans sports stuff that's happening, that's probably affecting a couple different sports throughout the country, but the magnitude of the broadcast and the way it's recommended on Twitter makes that 40 times more important than student debt or income inequality. And you're like, what the hell's going on? No one can afford Medicine. In 1990, it was so crazy. The average cost of a four year university for a bachelor's degree was $9,000. And people were leaving with no student debt and an 85% chance of getting a good job in the white collar sector now the average cost is between 45 and $68,000. And the average debt that people have is almost twice that. And they're three times less likely to get a job. That's a big problem. Let's figure that out. So when I go on TV and people say, I don't know if you saw, but there's a transition trying to play in women's sports, I'm like, sounds like something for the school to handle. What the hell am I hearing about this for? But I'm careful to like cast everything. It's like just culture war bullshit. Because that makes it sound like the thing itself doesn't matter. For example, police brutality was a real thing. It dominating the conversation in a way that it did for that long on a corporate level made no sense.

[Unnamed Guest]

I suppose that's true. I don't know the stats or anything around that stuff.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I'm just saying, like, even if you look at trans rights, trans people by state in a lot of states don't have access to the healthcare that they need, period. Women's rights. That stuff's real too.

[Unnamed Guest]

That is real.

[Andrew Callahan]

The ability to have an abortion is important, especially if you're young or you didn't want the baby. It's a real thing. I'm not gonna say, yo, the news is talking about that. They're just trying to hop us up on some culture war bullshit while they're silencing the truth. Because that stuff does matter. Like I said, it's just a matter of scale.

[Unnamed Guest]

Scale, yeah. That's an interesting way to look at it. You're right. I do feel like certain things are nonsense distractions, especially the trans hysteria. And during the election, it was crazy to me. When you looked at what they were talking about, the politicians, you would think that was the biggest problem or issue in the entire country was whether trans women could play soccer or something like that. It was just like unbelievable. And meanwhile I was thinking, don't we have massive debt and like trade issues and education issues and stuff? And it was just like, can you believe they're going to let them use the bathrooms? And it's okay. I thought we moved on three Years ago, this is still the number one thing. It's absolutely insane to me. That part, I think, is distraction by design. Because it's real easy to just harp on that instead of being like, we have a complicated question we got to figure out about our education system or.

[Andrew Callahan]

Like health care, it makes for more potent reactionary content and headlines that capture the average person. Like I said, the showmanship, the WWE wrestling style, nature of political discourse today makes it so the real boring shit just isn't talked about.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, no, that's a good point. Because it doesn't get enough clicks.

[Andrew Callahan]

It's boring. I don't know if I want to hear about tariffs.

[Unnamed Guest]

No, you're right. I look at these things and I go, I'll read a book about it later because I can't control it. Now, that's partially an excuse. The other part is it's not interesting enough compared to the other things that I'm looking at now. Look, I'd like to think the things I'm looking at are objectively interesting. I'm profiling people like you or whatever. That's more interesting than learning more and more about what somebody did yesterday. That's no longer the case. Especially because Trump changes his mind so often that it's like, I don't need to learn the whole plan. The plan is going to change on Monday.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. Like we were going to go to Harvard University this weekend to cover the DI student walkout. Another thing came out yesterday. I don't know what the hell happened, but it's not happening anymore. So when you chase the reactionary fault lines of different Trump related issues, you're always chasing yesterday's papers.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. What you need to do is buy refundable flight tickets. Otherwise you're just wasting your money.

[Andrew Callahan]

That's a good piece of advice.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Until I get my dead baby parts business off the ground, I need you to help me pay the bills by supporting the amazing sponsors that support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Wayfair. I work indoors a lot.

[Unnamed Guest]

I mean, a lot, a lot.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And as much as I love what I do, being stuck inside gets a little bleak. You know what I mean? Not seeing the sun all day sometimes, no bueno. So whenever I get a break or even a phone call, I take it outside in the backyard.

[Unnamed Guest]

Just that little bit of fresh air.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Makes a huge difference for me personally. And that's what pushed us to level.

[Unnamed Guest]

Up the outdoor space.

[Jordan Harbinger]

We hit up Wayfair and, man, they have everything. I'm Talking lounge chairs, dining sets, string lights, you name it. I got a modern, sleek looking patio set. This is what old people care about.

[Unnamed Guest]

Seriously folks, what happened to me?

[Jordan Harbinger]

It's comfortable. You can take calls, you can lay around and take a breather for a minute between calls. The prices were great. Too fast. Free shipping, even on the big stuff. And it's furniture.

[Unnamed Guest]

It's big.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So if you're low key dreaming about turning your backyard into an oasis, check out Wayfair. They got outdoor gear for every style and budget. If you do it now, you'll actually get to enjoy it all season long.

[Unnamed Sponsor]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

This episode is also sponsored by Hammermaid. You ever throw on a high quality shirt and you just feel like I don't know, got my life together. That's how I feel when I put on my Hammermade. I grabbed a couple shirts for a conference I'm speaking at and I figured I'd level up a little bit. Cause you know, dad mode, man, it looks sharp. I gotta say, Hammermade shirts, they're not mass produced. They make small batches so each one feels a little bit unique. And the quality is top tier. Made in the same factories as high end designer brands without the how is this shirt $300 type of price tag. They've also nailed the fit too, even with the slim fit option which normally.

[Unnamed Guest]

Like doesn't fit me. But the arms are always too tight on those things.

[Jordan Harbinger]

No big deal, just been working on a little hammer made nails that it's tailored, clean, nothing boxy. That's always the stuff. Always looks boxy on me. They don't have that problem. They don't look stiff. Great to wear from meetings, events, date.

[Unnamed Guest]

Nights, even just after dinner.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Somebody always comments and they got options with stretch and wrinkle resistance, which I appreciate because I am not going to iron anything. And if you want to step up your style, Hammermaid is where it's at. Just a solid way to show up looking like you got a little bit of your ish together.

[Unnamed Sponsor]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

If you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers, creators every week, it is because of my network, the circle of people I know, like, and trust. I'm teaching you how to build the same thing for free [e-mail] now, this isn't just for booking podcast guests. Obviously this is all about improving your relationship building skills. And the course does that in a super easy, non cringe, very down to earth way. No cheesy stuff, just practical exercises that'll.

[Unnamed Guest]

Make you a better connector, a better.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Friend, a better peer. You've seen this a lot at work. Now dig that. Well, before you get thirsty, folks, build relationships before you need them. And many of the guests on this show subscribe and contribute to the course. So come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Again, it's all [e-mail] all right, back to Andrew Callahan.

[Unnamed Guest]

I'm curious why you make some of the choices you do when you produce and edit documentaries. For example, I think it was Kelly talking about, he's describing his villain origin story and you're like, let's set him up in the bathroom. And I'm like, okay, that's a deliberate choice. He's talking about how he loses his house to fraud. According to him, he's either you were on the toilet or he was on the toilet and someone else is like on a little stool. And I'm thinking you could have set this up anywhere, but you set them up in the bathroom.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I feel bad about that because the reason that happened is we hate shooting interviews in hotel rooms. We travel so much for work and we typically get these identical $125 Super 8 Holiday Inn Express rooms in around the country. And it always looks the same. Two tiny queen beds, maybe twin beds with this weird TV and the coffee machine and the minibar and then one really bad piece of stock image art. And so we have this thing where like, we can't shoot any more interviews in these hotel rooms because it makes us look amateur. And so we just sort of panicked and we're like, let's just do the bathroom. That's gonna make people think. And now I feel bad about it cause, like, it was an important interview, but thankfully the Z90 shot, which is the zoom cam, was tight. So we try to avoid the bathroom shot, but I am in fact on the toilet.

[Unnamed Guest]

Okay. Yeah, I just I wondered if that was. Oh, look at the juxtaposition between us being in here. And, like, him telling him this.

[Andrew Callahan]

Okay, so even this question shows that it was a good choice to do it in the bathroom. Cause, like, what is he trying to say?

[Unnamed Guest]

Deep hidden message. Yeah, hidden messages. We're cig.

[Andrew Callahan]

We're flushing down the problem.

[Unnamed Guest]

Or just like, this is really silly, and we're not taking it that serious, even though he's taking it that serious. But that's kind of a mean way to look at it, because you actually did treat him with a tremendous amount of respect. So this guy Kelly, once again lost his home. He'd lost his business. He was disbarred, and he lost his family. His version is, what, I lost my home because of Bill Joyner. But then it was more like, actually, you got out of your skis financially, then when you got disbarred for literal tons of misconduct, which maybe was related to a mental illness, because that's a lot of misconduct, dude. Then he loses his home because he lost his business. And then it's like his family's like, yo, we can't take any more of your shenanigans. So they go their separate ways.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And he just blames it all on this one event, which is the foreclosure. He's a semi sympathetic character when you.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Get to know the story.

[Andrew Callahan]

And I think part of the reason that he was pushing his family away, because think about it, the foreclosure was like, I think 2017, 2018. He continuously pushed his family away for four years because he couldn't accept what had happened and completed the grief process to where he was like, you know what? I took an L. I'm gonna step back, and I'm gonna figure out what to do next and live life in a way where I can avoid this kind of catastrophe, which is hard to do because you have to swallow your pride. You have to forget about what was lost. You have to forgive enemies of the past and move forward. And nobody likes to be around a resentful, spiteful person, even if they were done super wrong. It's just exhausting. Everybody's got their own problems and their own conflicts in life. They don't want to be around some person spinning out about, oh, fuck Bill Joyner. He's a piece of shit. So I think just that energy and that frantic negativity is part of what made them feel like, I don't want to be around my dad.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, it's sad. You start to feel sympathy for him. But then you also go, I wouldn't end up in this situation because I would make different choices all the way. By the way, the misconduct thing, did you ever get further insight on that? Because getting disbarred is actually hard to do.

[Andrew Callahan]

I just knew it was for a variety of infractions that occurred over a five to six year period of time. Just not paying clients back, overcharging hours, just different stuff. On his. I don't know if it's like Google reviews or whatever, but his former clients had left some feedback and it was all like, man, this guy sucks. But some people said he was a great lawyer. I don't think he was particularly like evil. I just think he cut corners and he got caught.

[Unnamed Guest]

I wonder, do you think it's chicken egg? Right? Was it like mental illness? Then he starts doing the misconduct stuff because he's not all there. That results in him also overspending and then losing his house. Because he didn't lose his house to a bank. He took something that might be a loan with aggressive terms because banks wouldn't deal with him, most likely.

[Andrew Callahan]

Totally.

[Unnamed Guest]

So chicken egg, right? Was he mentally not all there?

[Andrew Callahan]

I just think he had bad spending habits. I think he didn't grow up with a lot of money. A lot of it has to do with how you raised. Think about rappers or athletes. When they get a $38 million check, somehow it goes away in two years because they didn't grow up with people who were spending wisely. I think he grew up in a trailer park in Iowa or somewhere in the Midwest. So, like he got all this money, he succeeded. He's like, I'm balling. I want to prove to myself and to my wife and kids and community and family that I am the shit. So I need this big ass house. If he didn't move into a giant house and get 47 animals, he'd probably be in a position where he's a nice apartment. Here's how we're living. He could have even gotten disbarred and used his legal expertise to do a different job.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's true. That's a really good point. Yeah. When you see this guy. So he has 47 animals, which is wild. And it's like a stingray. It's not just like a bunch of cats, it's like a stingray.

[Jordan Harbinger]

There's a bunch of.

[Unnamed Guest]

The aquarium is probably like 25 grand.

[Andrew Callahan]

Pygmy goat, like animals you never even heard of. It's got a little pig, Miss Piggy. Yeah. Rest in peace.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It's just.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, no.

[Andrew Callahan]

The video was filmed 25 years ago, so I'm assuming Miss Piggy's passed away. I'm not sure what the pig lifespan is.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, that's a good point. This super interesting fact you Talked about, the January 6th rioters. 60% of January 6th capital rioters had recently filed for bankruptcy, 20% had recently lost their home, and 50% were in severe debt. That was a real wake up call, I guess you would say, for me, because I was like, who are these people? Is it just a random cross section? No, it's the same people who have this deep personal tragedy. Bankruptcy is serious because it's not just that you're out of money. You usually lose your assets, which is like your home and your business as a result, which can have profound personal consequences. So those are the people, by and large, that ended up breaking into the Capitol building.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, because they channeled their personal grievances into a larger grand spiritual battle. And think in the way the politicians talk, like, there is a conspiracy to take things from me and from you guys. If you're doing well and financially stable, that rhetoric's not going to land so well. You're going to be like, I'm doing pretty good. What the hell is this guy talking about? America's in decline. We're under attack by the communists. What do you mean? Illegals are taking jobs. What jobs? I have a job. Most people can't see beyond their situation. If you're somebody who just got screwed over by a landlord or an authoritative figure in your life who didn't give you the benefit of the doubt and, you know, cast you to the side, here comes a politician who's like, this is happening to you and me and everybody who's good. And it works perfectly. In a way, you feel bad for some of those people.

[Unnamed Guest]

Actually, I felt bad for most of them because the way that they end up there, These are not universally losers. Right. Some of them were like, the guy with the Auschwitz T shirt, like, this is a guy who clearly never a productive member of society. But when you look at a guy like Kelly from your documentary. Yeah, he's a lawyer, he had a great business, he had a couple kids. He had a nice home in Laguna Hills. He lost all of that stuff. And it doesn't really even matter whose fault it was. The fact is that he lost it. And so it's sad to see that downfall from somebody and it can result in those sort of mental health consequences that result in radicalization. I'm not trying to get Too in the weeds on this particular guy. But I do think it illustrates the complexity of factors behind the breakdowns that these people have in their lives that lead to extreme belief systems.

[Andrew Callahan]

And on the other end, I think that there's extreme leftists as well.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, I want to hear about that.

[Andrew Callahan]

Typically and not always caused by an over fulfillment of core needs.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

So in a way that radical conservatism is about a mythologized past that needs to be revived. Oftentimes radical leftism or liberalism, I'll say is about a mythologized utopian future. And a lot of people that you see are the most active in the protest movement are those who actually grew up quite wealthy, had their core needs fulfilled, have two loving parents, then go to college, hear something, and for whatever reason shave their head or dye their hair and get a spider web tattooed on their head. And now they're going to jail for Palestine.

[Unnamed Guest]

What's the spider web thing? I don't even know.

[Andrew Callahan]

It's just hipster styles. I grew up in Seattle, so I grew up with anarchists. And I know that like most of the hardcore, like throw a Molotov cocktail at the cop type of people have loving parents.

[Unnamed Guest]

That is quite fascinating because for me, I would think, wow, this guy got into skateboarding and the rest is history.

[Andrew Callahan]

No, but the people feel like I grew up with a lot and I'm learning as I'm getting older because obviously micro traumatic media is like pictures of sad people who are oppressed. They deploy on the liberal side. They're thinking, I feel so bad about what I have that I need to go above and beyond to fight for those who don't. Which is well intentioned. But it often leads to a lot of like, appropriating of other people's causes, a lot of paternalistic attitudes about minorities who they perceive as being disempowered, a lot of weird ways that you see white people talk about black people. Stuff like that where you're like, this is fucking weird. Have you met a black person before that's not like a part of your social group at school? Have you ever gone to a black neighborhood and made friends? That's pretty easy to do. You should try it. Go do that for a little bit and then go to the protest after and be like, huh, these black people leading this protest don't exactly think the same things as all of my friends who are black, who are their own people and have a diversity of opinions.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's quite fascinating. So political fanaticism, you said something along the lines of it's built on top of unprocessed trauma. You think that's both for the right and the left?

[Andrew Callahan]

I think it's possible for the left, definitely. Those who grew up very poor can become extreme progressives. Yeah, for sure. And I'm pretty far progressive. But I mean, like those who are the most vocal and doing extra'd out shit like shining laser pointers in the eyes of police officers and carrying around squeaky pig toys and terrorizing the police like they do in Portland and Seattle. Most of those kids don't have to work.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, I don't want to make it.

[Andrew Callahan]

Seem like every conservative is a blue collar man who's fallen from grace, because that's not true. But like, I know a lot of hardcore conservatives and they work real jobs, like farming in the actual working class sector. That's why it's hilarious when so much progressive leftist logic is about the working class versus the ruling class, when the far majority of the agriculture and manufacturing sector is conservative, because these people want to get taxed less and they don't want to see free stuff being given to the homeless and poor. Yeah, it's really hilarious. Of course you have trade unions, you know, like a Starbucks union and Workers United and stuff. Those are. They're doing great work. I'm not going to discount unions or something. I'm not an asshole. But it's just funny. Growing up in Seattle, then moving to the south and going back and seeing like the most rich kids from my high school are now like, dedicating their life to social justice causes and I'm like, that's crazy. You used to say the N word at house parties. Yeah, not with the hard R but like singing along to yg.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, that's okay.

[Andrew Callahan]

I would never do that.

[Unnamed Guest]

You wouldn't? Even the.

[Andrew Callahan]

No, dude, I grew up in the inner city. Like that shit's just weird. Like I'm not wired that way.

[Unnamed Guest]

What is that movie I just saw where the guy does it in private and there's a camera on him? What movie was this? I think it was actually like a Bill Burr movie called like Bad Dads or something like that. And they show the guy doing it in the privacy of his own home and he's all singing along there, but then he's not comfortable doing it.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I mean, if I'm singing along to a song, shit, you never know. But the point I'm making is that like, I feel like when you're in the belly of the beast, you can see things progress. Like I definitely have more understanding of progressive radicalization or whatever than conservative. That's why I made a whole movie about Kelly, because I'm trying to figure it out.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense. This guy, man, he's obsessed with these causes and he's basically dead to his kids. And that's a little bit unfair, but he's estranged completely.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And you can't help but feel bad.

[Jordan Harbinger]

For people like this.

[Unnamed Guest]

But then when they make their problems everyone else's problem, that's where it gets bad. Not just annoying. It's more than that. I don't exactly know.

[Andrew Callahan]

Everybody will have situations in their life where everything they care about falls apart. It's a matter of rebounding from that in a healthy way. And that's a thing that some people can't do. A lot of people live in perpetual victim mindset about certain things. And I think that he was like that to an extent too. As much as the Trump conservative crowd wants to be like, we're not victims, we're not going to say that we were ever disadvantaged in any capacity. A lot of them are stuck in anger about an enemy of the past who's no longer even thinking about them.

[Unnamed Guest]

Geez, you've been to some of the most charged, chaotic, bizarre events in America. What's something that shocked you? Something that you didn't expect going in?

[Andrew Callahan]

I didn't know furries would be that cool.

[Unnamed Guest]

Really?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. Furries are chill. They're not even weird.

[Unnamed Guest]

Tell us what that is again, because.

[Andrew Callahan]

I think furries are people who dress in anthropomorphic fur suits that cost like, a lot.

[Unnamed Guest]

Like Chuck E. Cheese.

[Andrew Callahan]

Chuck E. Cheese. But it's connected to, like, an anime adjacent fandom of nonverbal anim interaction.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, it's non. Verbal.

[Andrew Callahan]

Okay, it's verbal. But you don't use your real voice when you're in the fursuit.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh. So you talk like, oh, hey, yeah, hello, I'm Andrew. Oh, really?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, sometimes.

[Unnamed Guest]

So that's strange. What's going on there?

[Andrew Callahan]

I don't know. But a lot of them have. A lot of them are on the spectrum and they're just chill.

[Unnamed Guest]

Okay.

[Andrew Callahan]

I thought they were gonna be all like Zoo Files.

[Unnamed Guest]

The sort of rumor about it is it's all a bunch of weird sex stuff.

[Andrew Callahan]

They do some sex stuff, but it's mostly just like playing around that almost seems.

[Unnamed Guest]

I hate to say this, I kind of want to see that.

[Andrew Callahan]

You should get a fursuit. It's going to run you like four grand then.

[Unnamed Guest]

Do I have to get one? And you can't just be like, yo, I'm here to cover this as a journalist.

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, I feel like a furry orgy. You kind of have to be given a fursona. You have to develop it. They can tell if you're a poser. Like, if you go to a country music concert, you know, and you have your cowboy hat.

[Unnamed Guest]

Right.

[Andrew Callahan]

Like, one time I wore a cowboy hat to an event in Virginia City, Nevada, that was camel racing. I didn't know I had a women's cowboy hat on with bedazzled cross on the front. Like, they were not fucking with me. So with the first suit, you'd have to really grow into it and develop your voice. So, like, for me, I'm a scaly. I'm not a furry.

[Unnamed Guest]

So you're a reptile?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. Cause I was close with a reptile back in the day who passed away during the American idol finale in 2006. That was when Bo Bias lost who was my favorite. So Bo Bias loses. I go into my room. Snakey the gecko was dead. It was the worst night of my life. So I felt like when I was becoming a scaly at the Midwest Fur Fest, I was channeling the spirit of my lost brother.

[Unnamed Guest]

I kind of feel like I'm you in one of your videos right now interviewing somebody.

[Andrew Callahan]

You just telling me that? Why do you think I'm so good at it?

[Jordan Harbinger]

That's really funny.

[Unnamed Guest]

Guaranteed somebody who listens to this show. Many people are furries. I would love for them to email me and tell me, you said given a fursona. Right. So do other furries tell you what they perceive of you?

[Andrew Callahan]

Kind of. But you might come up with a couple names yourself. But if you have a real, certified furry homie and you bounce it off them, they'll be like, nah, that's not you. At first, I was Franklin the fantastical falcon, and they were like, nah, you're not a falcon, because everyone's got a spirit animal, and I'm not a falcon.

[Unnamed Guest]

Man, I am dying to know how I come across to that community.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, they're cool.

[Unnamed Guest]

And no judgment. I'm just genuinely interested. I feel like I've asked this question before, and I got a couple emails about it, but I replied, and I didn't get answers. I think I don't want anybody to think I'm making fun of them. I'm actually just genuine.

[Andrew Callahan]

No, no. You're coming off with respect. It's all good.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, Good, good. Is there any specific interview or rally moment that's haunted You. Aside from when you went to TJ Maxx and bought a bedazzled cowboy hat by accident?

[Andrew Callahan]

No. I have pretty bad memory conversationally. I can remember a lot of stuff, but I've just experienced so much, I don't really remember anything unless someone's talking about an event. And I have a thousand stories. But if you were to ask me straight up, what's a crazy ass interview you've done? I would say, like, I don't know.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, what's your favorite interview? And I'm like, gosh, I can't even remember the ones I did this week. I literally don't know.

[Andrew Callahan]

If you were to say, like, what's your favorite interview you've ever done in Tulsa, Oklahoma, or Las Vegas at night.

[Unnamed Guest]

I believe, or like with a cop? I could maybe come up with a couple.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, yeah, totally.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, something like that. I know you did.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I saw this.

[Unnamed Guest]

Something about psychedelics and you have visuals and you can't drive. Is that true?

[Andrew Callahan]

I can drive, but my night vision is kind of bad. It's called hallucinogen persisting perception disorder. Researchers are not that sure about what causes it. If you want to get ocular real quick, it's caused from psychedelics like lsd, mdma, peyote, all that.

[Unnamed Guest]

MDMA is a ecstasy. That can cause that?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's alarming. The dose must have to be massive to cause.

[Andrew Callahan]

No, it's very specific. It happens between 4 to 4.5% of psychedelic users. So something like 1 in 30.

[Unnamed Guest]

That is a lot.

[Andrew Callahan]

Check this out. If you have HPPD at home and you have visual snow palaenopsia and all of the things that we have, it's not an eye problem, it's a brain problem.

[Unnamed Guest]

It's a brain problem.

[Andrew Callahan]

It has to do with the visual processing system. So it's a little bit of ocular science here. There's 130 milliseconds between your eyes, seeing something and sending that information to your frontal lobe to be processed before it goes there. It goes through four steps. So it goes into the eye, through some sort of stem to the back of the brain, to the occidental lobe, and then from there to the front where it's registered in the mind. So there's like we're actually living in the past in a very micro way at all times. So they think that HPPD is something similar to epilepsy where, you know, when epileptics, when they see strobe lights, they can have a seizure.

[Unnamed Guest]

I remember the Nintendo issue back Then.

[Andrew Callahan]

So this is something like that where they don't know quite yet because nobody wants to put up the money to help people with this condition. But it's something about the occidental lobe and the visual processing center being basically disinhibited by psychedelics.

[Unnamed Guest]

So do you see snow or whatever right now?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. And actually, so according to HPPD science, the brain has a self correcting mechanism that clears it up before exporting the final high res.

[Unnamed Guest]

So I'm seeing white noise based on things my eyes are seeing. And my brain's like, we ignore that because it's everywhere.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. It's not necessary. It's not real. And so I see that and I see extreme eye floaters. Like, I probably see a hundred black squigglies right now.

[Unnamed Guest]

Wow. And I'm surprised that your brain can't then be retrained to forget to see those things or to not. Not tell you that those things are being seen.

[Andrew Callahan]

What I've done is I've trained myself to prioritize other senses. So I'll try to live a lot through hearing and sensation. Like when you're doing through HPPD therapy, they say be grounded, feel the earth through your toes. Just don't look at eyesight as the main way to perceive the world. It's generally the most important sense. But if you start to prioritize others, that's the conscious way to retrain.

[Unnamed Guest]

I apologize for eating all that garlic last night. Since you're relying on your other senses.

[Andrew Callahan]

No, I can't even.

[Unnamed Guest]

This Jordan guy freaking stinks.

[Andrew Callahan]

Fucking reeks, man. He's a genius. But he smells like.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Like shit. That's right. Garlic shit.

[Unnamed Guest]

Actually. What is depersonalization? You mentioned this in another interview, and I remember it was terrifying because this. What is it called? Hppd.

[Andrew Callahan]

Hppd?

[Unnamed Guest]

Something that can get rid of the symptoms is what? Benzodiazepines, which you should never take, and alcohol, which you know can go wrong.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. So the first person to research HPPD was Dr. Henry Abraham, who's from the American Psychiatric Association. He lives in Massachusetts. He theorized in the 80s and 90s that it was benzodiaphenes, particularly diazepam and Xanax, that could help you not think about hppd. It doesn't take it away, but it stops the anxiety mechanisms. And alcohol works as a suppressant. But the problem with alcohol is it makes you forget you have hppd, but it makes the symptoms worse over time. And alcoholism is generally bad. There are scientists now who are pointing to a couple different Treatment options. One of them is over the counter magnesium every night, which apparently has worked for some. And the other is an epileptic medication called lamotrigine.

[Unnamed Guest]

Have you tried these?

[Andrew Callahan]

I haven't. I have to go to a doctor to get it. But it's shown some promising results, especially for kids, because there's a lot of kids who are prescribed Ritalin who develop hpd.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, no way. Wow. So this is something you can get from a lot of different pharmaceuticals.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, it seems to be totally random. A lot of people say, man, you must have done a lot of mushrooms. I'm like, I did mushrooms three times.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, I just assumed that you were like, hey, it's college. I'm gonna do this. 7.

[Andrew Callahan]

No, I was 14 a year.

[Unnamed Guest]

No kidding. So it must just have to do with developing brains. And, like, you have a pathway that wires or unwires that shouldn't be unwired or wired, and that's the end of that.

[Andrew Callahan]

And there's gotta be a way to fix it. But the problem is you got two lobbies. You got people trying to make drugs look as beneficial as possible. You know, doing clinical trials to use MDMA to treat PTSD and anxiety. Then you have the other crowd who are just not trying to help drug users with anything. We're like, why would we help these brain fried people? Here's the solution. Don't do drugs.

[Unnamed Guest]

How about abstinence? Those are the same people that are like, oh, yeah, a lot of unwanted kids. How about just find Jesus and don't have sex before you get married?

[Andrew Callahan]

Exactly.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's not working.

[Andrew Callahan]

And I look at HPPD much like that, It's a harm reduction conversation. Because right now, psychedelics are decriminalized in nine different states. And in Colorado and Oregon, a psychiatrist can give you them for supervised use. So obviously, if it follows the same trajectory as marijuana legalization, in 40 years, there's gonna be mass legalization of psilocybin mushrooms. So I think it's important for people to know about HPPD so we can figure out how to cure it and how to prevent it.

[Unnamed Guest]

Once all that stuff gets legalized and 200,000 people get HPPD the following year, then they're gonna work on it.

[Andrew Callahan]

It's gotta be a simple mechanism. If, in fact, it disinhibits the processing center and the occidental lobe, this is.

[Unnamed Guest]

Maybe a reach, but whatever. Do you think that interviewing other people in the very authentic way that you do and then being able to watch yourself on video maybe proves to you in some way that you are actually real.

[Andrew Callahan]

Oh, yeah. That's the best question I've ever been asked in history.

[Unnamed Guest]

Really?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, because you asked about. No one's ever figured that out. I don't know how you did that.

[Unnamed Guest]

Just because of. I don't know. I watched a lot of your stuff.

[Andrew Callahan]

I've never said it. You thought of that?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, I wrote it down.

[Andrew Callahan]

So basically, depersonalization is the main symptom that accompanies HPPD symptoms. Because of the unreality created by your visual symptoms, oftentimes you become depersonalized. And depersonalization is similar to the second symptom, which is derealization. So the difference is that when you're depersonalized, you get the sensation that I am not real. I have no connection to my body. I am a nebulous soul being held prisoner in a skin suit and particularly trapped in an escape room behind my eyes and trying to figure out how to escape the hell of self.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's super terrifying.

[Andrew Callahan]

Once you come to terms with the fact that you are stuck in the skin suit, derealization comes, which is, okay, I am real, but the rest of the world is not. Everything that I'm seeing is a non sensory object, and everything in my visual field and in the world is a hallucination or a figment of my condition. And I'm the only conscious being on the planet.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's like the loneliest thing I've ever.

[Andrew Callahan]

I wouldn't wish the feeling on my worst enemy. And I hate my enemies.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. Wow. So do you feel that way now, or do you know that's not the case?

[Andrew Callahan]

After filming content for years, the derealization just left me. So it goes hppd. In my experience, it's first hppd, then depersonalization, then derealization. And in the fourth stage, you can just break it and accept your broken eyes.

[Unnamed Guest]

I've never heard of derealization.

[Andrew Callahan]

Like you're saying, being on camera and filming stuff in the field is proof to me that I'm living in a shared reality and on the same 3D plane as the other people. So it helps with derealization. Not hppd, not depersonalization, but that third symptom I was able to treat by filming people in the streets.

[Unnamed Guest]

I think one of the reasons that this came about was because I can't even put my own finger on it. But these conversations that I have with people like you on this show, it gets you so far outside your personal opinion, so far outside your belief system, so far outside your personal experiences, so Far outside. Like your own upbringing, whatever it is, that. It also, I suppose, makes me realize that other things are actually real. It's not the same, though, as yours is, like, way more acute. I don't think I've ever thought I'm the only thing real in this universe that's too heavy. And it's making my heart race thinking about it.

[Andrew Callahan]

What sucks about it, too, is, like, when you try to talk to people about it, oftentimes it gets mistaken for an existential crisis or, like a philosophical musing. Like, what if I'm the only person? No, it is a sensation. I am the only person. Your brain is telling you that. And so when people try to talk you out of it, they're typically not doing it well. They're like, what do you mean? We're here together. And I'm like, you're the hallucination.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, you're a hallucination. It's just like when you dream something that's not real. But it's got to be hard to talk about because other people might also think, oh, look at this narcissistic piece of crap. You're the only person in the universe that's real.

[Andrew Callahan]

I didn't even think about that.

[Unnamed Guest]

Sorry. There's something else to worry about.

[Andrew Callahan]

The fucking center of the universe.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yes, literally.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Oh, yeah, we all exist in your head, bro.

[Unnamed Guest]

We don't have feelings or wants or lives or anything.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, it sounds like a justifying sociopathic.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, we're all just a hallucination for you to enjoy.

[Andrew Callahan]

But I remember I would look at cars driving by the window of my mom's apartment, and I would just try to imagine myself being the driver of that car and being like, they're here too. You know what I mean? Like, it's not just me. And I would convince myself and I'd be like, no, it is just me. And I would stare at my own eyes in the mirror and being like, who is that fucking guy? And I go, oh, that's me. Wait, if that's me, though, then there's no one else. But it leaves hard work and consistently working towards something tangible on a shared planet with others. When I walk in the street and people say, I love your video, that's them saying, your derealization symptoms are an illusion.

[Unnamed Guest]

Derealization. Is that also a result of psychedelic.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Use or is it.

[Andrew Callahan]

No, no, no, no. Psychedelic use causes the hppd, which sort of starts the chain reaction that leads to that.

[Unnamed Guest]

I see.

[Andrew Callahan]

Remember that if you're derealized, that's the final Boss, you're not going to be depersonalized again. So it can feel like the scariest part, but it's like the final boss in a video game, because once you defeat that shit, you're good.

[Unnamed Guest]

Not everybody can become a creator that gets spotted on the street. So what do we recommend for those people?

[Andrew Callahan]

Just find something that gives you value in your community. Volunteer at the food bank in a small town, move to Aberdeen, Washington and give out moon Pies to homeless people. And then you come back a week later and they're gonna go, yo, thanks for the sandwich, bro. I love Moon Pies. Maybe that's an extreme example. You could do something. It doesn't have to be homeless people. You could become a street magician in Venice Beach. I don't know. There's so many ways.

[Unnamed Guest]

We're going to be walking down Venice beach and someone's going to go, hey, man, I came up with this idea based on your podcast, and it's going to be like, what, making sandcastles? Yeah, man. The only thing that makes me feel real. And I guess we'll have to pound.

[Andrew Callahan]

It out because, like, yeah, I can see that happening in the future. Especially if this episode pops off.

[Unnamed Guest]

Who are some of your influences? Because to me, it seems like a mix of certain people. Look, of course yourself. But I don't know.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Louis Theroux.

[Unnamed Guest]

You know Louis Theroux, right?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, yeah, he liked Adirkelly. That was the person that I was most stoked about is he texted me, he got my number. It was a plus. 44 British number. And he was like, it's Louis. Fantastic film. I was on the edge of my seat. Really amazing.

[Unnamed Guest]

Cool compliment.

[Andrew Callahan]

I was like, yes, that was the sickest compliment. Louis Theroux, big inspiration. I was inspired by a lot of other shit that's not journalism. Like Chief Keef. Music. He's a rapper from Chicago. New Vegas. The video game on Xbox. Lil B. Random stuff. Has nothing to do with journalism. Was an inspirational.

[Unnamed Guest]

What about the Ali G show? Sacha Baron Cohen?

[Andrew Callahan]

Honestly, probably that stuff. There's also a lesser known interview show called Brushstrokes with Norman Vanami.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, I've totally heard of it.

[Andrew Callahan]

So random. It's done by a graffiti writer named Ja.

[Unnamed Guest]

Is this on YouTube?

[Andrew Callahan]

It's on YouTube. It aired 16 years ago. He has two characters. One's called Shams de Baron, which is like Ali G. One of them is Norman Vanami, who's supposed to be an asshole, like Paris art gallery collector. And so he would go to different art galleries and just Troll people. That was a big influence. Early Daily show was super good when it was Wyatt Sinek and John Oliver and that shit.

[Unnamed Guest]

What do you think about when it comes to substance abuse and creativity? Because I know you did the psychedelic thing. A lot of people like the Hunter S. Thompson, like, oh, I've gotta be, like, super drunk all the time to write.

[Andrew Callahan]

It's bullshit. I used to think that my magic was, like, doing frenette shots every night and partying and that I had to be in an RV getting drunk. But actually, when I stopped doing that, I got 10 times more creative. Addiction has a weird way of embedding itself in your creative.

[Unnamed Guest]

I'm telling you, I'm doing something good for you.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. In your creative pursuits, like, you need me. It's almost like a bad friend who's like, you need me to succeed. Once I cut out alcohol, I was able to start this five cast. I'm putting out three episodes a week. We've expanded the newscast to Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, England, Lebanon, and Canada. And I'm not even stressed out. I just have all this free time that I was spending on my second job, which was drinking, going out, seeing the homies.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. Getting over hangovers and stuff like that.

[Andrew Callahan]

All that stuff.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's a good message. Look, I've done a lot of drinking. Way too much. I've also done other things. One of my big realizations also was, you don't need that stuff to be creative. But like you said, your addiction brain tells you you're more creative when you're abusing substances. It's like a rationalization.

[Andrew Callahan]

And look at the end of Hunter's.

[Unnamed Guest]

Life, a lot of these guys, right?

[Andrew Callahan]

I mean, a lot of these greats who rationalized. And I'm not saying that Hunter wasn't doing anything at the end of his life. Hunter S. Thompson's widow, Anita, she told me that his biographer was jealous of him. And he hijacked Hunter S. Thompson's story. And he said, oh, he was unable to write because at the end of his life, he was just doing all this cocaine. And so they published this schedule. It was like Hunter S. Thompson's daily routine was like grapefruits in the morning. Go shoot shotgun shells in the backyard, do a bunch of whippets and cocaine all day, coffee, write a little bit. And they use that when explaining why he ended up taking his own life, saying, look at this poor man. At the end of his life, he wasn't able to muster up any creative energy because he was incapacitated by Addiction. Hunter S. Thompson's wife, Anita, she told me, no, that was bullshit. At the end of Hunter's life, all he wanted to do was be a sports reporter. He hated the character that he had built with fear and loathing. He hated that he had built himself into this gonzo hero of doing drugs and traveling. And he had built up this character because that character made it so that he couldn't get jobs from ESPN and other trade publications like Rolling Stone.

[Unnamed Guest]

Surprised by that, he was writing more.

[Andrew Callahan]

In his final years about baseball statistics and sports information than any other time in his life. And they wouldn't buy his columns or pay him a fair price per word because they said, you're the drugs guy. We don't want you in our newspaper. And he'd say, I'm not the drugs guy anymore. And then the people who used to buy his columns, like Fear and Loathing, the drug stuff, were like, hey, can you go back to the Kentucky Derby again and do some ether and do a bunch of ketamine and talk to some horse jockeys? And he was like, dude, I have a wife and kid now. I don't want to do that. And so I think that part of the reason he was so depressed and took his own life is because he felt that he had to live up to this character that he no longer identified with.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, I think a lot of us can relate to that. I suppose you hitchhiked for a long time, eh?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, for sure.

[Unnamed Guest]

Tell me about that. I would love to do that, but I'm also scared because I grew up in the 80s and the 90s where it's like, they're going to get Hatchet murdered if you hitchhike.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I said this incorrectly in a news broadcast because I mixed up different information, which happens when you're speaking off the cuff. But there was an FBI counterintelligence program that had something to do with incentivizing car ownership, where they were trying to stigmatize hitchhiking.

[Unnamed Guest]

Sounds like a conspiracy theory.

[Andrew Callahan]

It's real. It was, like, part of. I think it was J. Edgar Hoover or it was someone.

[Unnamed Guest]

He's the one who.

[Jordan Harbinger]

He did all the bad stuff.

[Andrew Callahan]

It was this whole idea of the danger of on the side of the road. If you look at some of the films that were made during that time, that is Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 1972, kind of seems like there was a concentrated effort to take hitchhiking culture away and incentivize car ownership. If you look at la, they destroyed public transit.

[Unnamed Guest]

Detroit did that, too.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

They had streetcars going up and down Woodward, which is like the main street all the way from downtown all the way up towards Woodward. And I want to say Ford bought it and was like, like, let's rip these out.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So people have to buy cars, which.

[Unnamed Guest]

Is a damn shame.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, exactly. And now look at these cities. They're such low social cohesion. But yeah, hitchhikers are like the enemy of the state back in the day. I don't know if they're still that now. They're just like escaped convicts.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, that's true. You ever drive on the highway and it's like, prison area. Do not pick up hitchhikers.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. For up Nevada, it's every fucking mile.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. And you're like, shouldn't they be in the prison, though?

[Andrew Callahan]

It's like, why did you guys let him get out? God damn it. But I used to hitchhike every summer when I went to college in New Orleans. I would just hitchhike back to Seattle after every semester.

[Unnamed Guest]

Other countries have pretty robust hitchhiking culture, like Israel. You can hitchhike and if you're a soldier, you're expected to hitchhike.

[Andrew Callahan]

Sounds annoying as shit.

[Unnamed Guest]

It is. But I remember going to Israel in college and we were on a bus tour or something and we picked up a soldier, because you always pick up soldiers. They're going home or whatever and they're carrying like an automatic rifle. And I remember being like, yeah, whatever. And I remember this girl next to me and the guy next to him were like, I don't think my parents would be too happy if they knew we picked up an armed man. And I was like, when you put it that way, it is kind of sketchy. Like one o' clock in the morning, we're driving and we picked up two armed dudes who are like carrying an automatic weapon with ammunition.

[Andrew Callahan]

I mean, there's still places in the US that you can hitchhike. If you're in the Colorado mountains west of Denver during ski season, the Pacific Coast Trail, the East coast is just a no go, obviously. Can you imagine trying to hitchhike from Philly to New York? Geez, sounds like, yeah, no one's picking your ass up.

[Unnamed Guest]

I was in Ukraine 20 plus years ago, and single girls would hitchhike.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And it was the craziest thing. I remember hanging out with my host sister. So these girls that were like, I don't know, 19, 20 years old, and they would just wave a car down, dude would unroll the window and they would lean in like, you see Prostitutes doing in the United States? And they'd lean in and go, hey, we want to go downtown? And the guy would be like, all right, 10 bucks. And they'd be like, how about five.

[Jordan Harbinger]

For each of us?

[Unnamed Guest]

And then my friend's free, and they're like. The guy's like, all right, fine.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I just want some chicks in the car.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. He's like, it just kind of smells better when you guys are in the car. And then you get in the car and you go downtown, and the guy says, whatever, man. And that was really common. I remember saying, like, aren't you guys scared? And they're like, no. We've been doing this since we were 14. Nothing has ever happened. My friends all do this. None of us have ever had anything other than a guy might be like, hey, you don't have to pay me if you, like, sit in my lap. And you're like, no, thanks. Next. It seems crazy to us growing up in this day and age, but it's really common in other countries to hitchhike.

[Andrew Callahan]

I mean, I have a lot of female friends who are hitchhikers. It's weird. The gender stuff is so intense nowadays when I tell people I hitchhike. I remember one time I had a live show in. I think it was Richmond, Virginia, and I told this story about hitchhiking, and this lady raised her hand in the audience, and she was like, don't you feel like it's kind of a male privileged thing for you to be able to hitchhike? And I was like, first of all, most dudes don't have the nuts to hitchhiker. Secondly, yes. However, that doesn't disqualify my story from being interesting.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, that's a weird gripe.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

It's a male privilege thing. Lots of things are. Does anybody else have a real question about this?

[Andrew Callahan]

Also, female privilege. You got to pay five bucks. I had to pay 100.

[Jordan Harbinger]

All right, now, I don't get sued nearly as much as Andrew Callahan, but I've still got bills to pay. And you can do your part as a patriot by supporting the amazing sponsors that support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by notion. I've got a confession, Jen. And I totally judge people. People by how they handle email. You know, you do it too. If somebody never replies, they seem buried. It's hard not to think that they're a little disorganized. But honestly, I get it. Email feels like quicksand sometimes. My inbox gets slammed with guest pitches. Of various quality listener emails, coordination with the team, you name it. It used to be pure chaos, but since switching to Notion Mail, it's actually manageable. Notion Mail is the inbox that thinks like you. It's automated, personalized, flexible to finally work the way you work. With AI that learns what matters to you. It can organize your inbox, label messages, draft replies, even schedule meetings. There's no manual sorting required. We already use Notion to run the podcast, so having email built right in obvious win. Everything's connected all in one workspace and I love the snippets. I send a lot of repeat emails, intros, follow ups with one click it is done. Attachments, links, whatever. If email stresses you out, try Notion Mail. It is built for people who actually rely on their inbox and it works the way you work.

[Unnamed Sponsor]

Get Notion Mail for free right [e-mail] jordan and try the inbox that thinks like you. That's all lowercase letters notion.com jordan to get notion Mail for free right now when you use our link, you're supporting our show.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Notion.comjordan this episode is also sponsored by Oura Ring. How you feeling today? And the real question is why? Why do you feel that way? Most of us have no idea. We wake up a little groggy, feel a little bit off in the afternoon. But with Oura Ring, you stop guessing. You actually start understanding what your body needs. I've been wearing the Oura Ring for years. Years and years. I just bragged to Jen this morning how I got an 87 sleep score and I feel great. It's wild how much insight that gives me. We're talking 30 plus biometrics, heart rate variability, sleep stages, stress recovery, body temperature. It's all tracked from this sleek little ring that looks like something you'd wear anyway. And what I love about Aura is it's not just about hitting your steps.

[Unnamed Guest]

Or telling you like, hey, you didn't sleep enough. Yeah, cool.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Thanks. I know Aura connects the dots. It gives you long term trends, personalized recommendations that actually help improve your health span, not just your day to day. It's helped me realize how often I push through stress or skimp on recovery. And the ring doesn't let me off the hook. This little device is up to eight days of battery life, so I take it on trips.

[Unnamed Guest]

I don't need to charge it every day or whatever.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It's so sleek I forget I'm even wearing it. Definitely has a serious cult following now. So if you're looking to stop winging it when it comes to your health. Give Aura the finger. Learn [e-mail] Jordan this episode is also sponsored in part by Quince. Quince is where Jen and I go anytime we need a closet refresh.

[Unnamed Guest]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

Same premium fabrics as the big name luxury brands but without the insane price price tags. They work directly with top tier makers and skip the middlemen so you're not paying for branding or a fancy storefront. What I really appreciate is that they are doing it right. Everything's made in factories that follow safe ethical practices and the materials are really top notch so you can look sharp and feel good about what you're wearing. Jen is obsessed with their washable stretch silk tanks. She has them in basically every color now. Lightweight, super flattering, perfect for summer. She also picked up a couple delicate gold necklaces that somehow go with everything. They never come off. If you're looking for a crisp, crisp white linen shirt that nails that laid back coastal vibe, Quince has you covered there too. Bottom line, Quince makes the stuff you actually want to wear at prices that don't make you flinch. I've already got a few go to pieces. Just trying not to follow Jen's lead and buy the same thing in five colors.

[Unnamed Sponsor]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

Of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support those who make the show possible. All of the deals, discount codes and ways to support the show are searchable and Clickable [e-mail] deals Also, if you can't remember the name of a code, you're not sure if it exists. Email us. We are happy to surface codes for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Andrew Callahan.

[Unnamed Guest]

You got mistaken for a gay prostitute. Tell me how that happened.

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, I just was the youngest person on the road in a place called Crowley, Louisiana and a gay Honduran man thought that I was a gay prostitute. Took me to a little place where you have sex with gay prostitutes. And then I told him I wasn't. He was hella chill.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh. He wasn't like, oh dang.

[Andrew Callahan]

He couldn't believe it because apparently the place That I was at was a cruising truck stop where lot lizards of the male variety would procure clients. But he was chill. I think he just wanted, like a hand job.

[Unnamed Guest]

So. Yeah, I take it you didn't provide.

[Andrew Callahan]

No, I didn't provide the hand job. But I was like, good luck. And he was like, it's all good. I'll find one by the end of the day.

[Unnamed Guest]

Let he who hasn't been confused for a gay prostitute cast the first stone.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. Respect.

[Unnamed Guest]

I was one of the first 500 members of Couch surfing. And I heard you're really.

[Andrew Callahan]

Oh, shit. Okay. Dope. Yeah, it was a great community.

[Unnamed Guest]

It was so awesome. I remember emailing the guy who started it. It was like a month after he started it, and name was Corey. And I was like, hey, this is the greatest idea. Let me know if you need help. And he's like, I might need some website help. And I remember using Dreamweaver to try to make a template or something for him. And the stories I have from couch surfing have changed my life. There were times where I had 13 random people who would otherwise be homeless, basically in LA, in my crib, like German girls, Brazilian dudes, Colombian girls, guys and girls from all over the world, Lithuanians. And I'd be like, it's gonna be hard to sleep in here because the floor's taken, the couch is taken, the chairs are taken. There's girls, like, snuggling in my bed and I'm on an airbed on the floor next to them. We should go to a bar and we would just invade a bar. And I remember.

[Andrew Callahan]

That sounds so fun.

[Unnamed Guest]

It was so fun because imagine you.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Show up and the bartender's like, how.

[Unnamed Guest]

Do you know all these people? And I'm like, I don't. I met them all yesterday, today and the day before. And they're all from all over the world and we're all just hanging out. Like we've known each other for a year.

[Andrew Callahan]

Dude, I'm so happy you brought that up because when I was hitchhiking, I would use couch surfing almost every night to find a place to stay. It was easier back then because you could just bomb applications. I could hit like a hundred people up in one night. Now I think it's 10 per day, which makes it harder.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, that makes sense. Otherwise you get mad spam.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I mean, I only had one bad experience on couch surfing.

[Unnamed Guest]

What happened?

[Andrew Callahan]

I didn't read in the description that this place I was going to in Dallas was clothing optional for me. That just meant, like, you can walk to the bathroom naked. Like, I'm not going to be pissed if I see you walking around naked. But I didn't realize that was, like, obvious code for a nudist colony.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh.

[Andrew Callahan]

And so I got there.

[Unnamed Guest]

So it's not really optional.

[Andrew Callahan]

I just didn't want to be naked. Like, I wasn't weirded out by it, but I was just like, I didn't want to do it. And like, they were just really mad at me. So I ended up leaving. I was like, I don't want to be naked. They're like, okay, we understand. Some people aren't as evolved as us. Some people have a very limited consciousness and they don't understand. I'm like, dude, I don't care if you guys are naked. I was also the youngest person and shit. I was like, this is whack.

[Unnamed Guest]

It's a little predatory to, like, enforce that on you if it's optional.

[Andrew Callahan]

I just think being a nudist is kind of like being an atheist. There's this inherent edgelord thing to it where it's like, you grew up thinking you had to wear clothes. Guess what, asshole? I'm butt naked. It's kind of like people who are like, I'm an atheist. I don't know. There's no way that we go to heaven. It's like, how do you know? Why don't you just be non religious?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Or just don't force it on other people. I think it would be a little strange if everybody I was in a couch surfing house with for a night was naked. But it's way more weird if they're like, hey, man, you're supposed to be naked too. And it's like, came here to sleep, maybe watch a couple episodes of the Office. I'm not here to, like, compare dong.

[Andrew Callahan]

Sizes or like, because you're gonna look at everybody's dick. Obviously there's no way around.

[Unnamed Guest]

I'm doing that even with my clothes on. So I don't want other people to look at mine.

[Andrew Callahan]

No matter how evolved you are. Like, I'm gonna look at everyone's dick whether or not I like it. Because it's just there's a dick and you have to see what's up with it.

[Unnamed Guest]

Exactly.

[Andrew Callahan]

Because maybe if there's something wrong with it, you could say, hey, man, one of your nuts is huge. You have to go to the hospital. Do something.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, yeah. There's nothing weirder than the male genitalia, dude.

[Andrew Callahan]

I was at a nude beach one time in Florida called Haulover Beach. I Saw a guy with the biggest dick ever. It must have been a two foot long dick. I'll never fucking forget this. He was like a short, Cuban looking dude in Miami with a two foot dick. Nobody was with me. So I tell this story and I'm like, are people gonna think that I'm like, lying?

[Unnamed Guest]

Gotta take a photo.

[Andrew Callahan]

The thing is, why would I be lying about some guy's dick if I don't even know?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, you shouldn't be lying about. That's hilarious.

[Andrew Callahan]

But if you're out there, get in touch with me. We have a documentary crew ready to.

[Unnamed Guest]

Find the man with the two foot long dick. Yeah, that's one of those where you're like, oh, man. Props. Oh, wait. Actually, everything for you probably really sucks. There's no woman that can like handle.

[Andrew Callahan]

And you can't even use the urinal because your dick probably falls.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, gosh. You gotta carry sanitizer wipes because it's always dangling in things it's not supposed to be. Geez, I almost feel bad for that guy.

[Andrew Callahan]

Me too.

[Unnamed Guest]

Almost. By the way, Insane Clown Posse is from my hometown in Michigan. Roylo. Yeah. Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

Cool.

[Unnamed Guest]

The Juggalos. You know of this community, right? Oh, my God. Have you covered them? I didn't catch anything.

[Andrew Callahan]

I haven't covered them because they were just so over covered. Do you know what I mean? Vice did such a good job and so many journalists have done such a great job covering the Juggalos that I almost feel like, what could I possibly have to add to the current discourse? But my neighbor right now in LA does all their merchandising, so I have the Inn for Biology at the end.

[Unnamed Guest]

So for people who don't know, Insane Clown Posse is a rap group that's clown themed, for lack of a better word. And their Juggalos are ICP Insane Clown Posse fans. Super fans. And they have goth clown themed makeup.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, they dress like clowns. They have the dark carnival mythology, which has its own, like, lore and history.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, this is probably mean, but whatever. It's like white trashy kind of stuff. So a lot of getting super drunk and like, wrestling.

[Andrew Callahan]

No, they own that.

[Unnamed Guest]

They don't own that.

[Andrew Callahan]

They have something called Lake Hepatitis at the gathering. Or they used to, where everyone takes their car batteries and throws them into a mud pit and fills the mud pit up with faygo and beer and swims it.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, that's really gross.

[Andrew Callahan]

Or I was told that by Mike Busey. It could be an exaggeration.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's super gross. But also kind of on brand and.

[Andrew Callahan]

Building up natural immunity to other chemicals.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, man.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Ugh. Really gross. What's this about getting shot in the ass by the National Guard?

[Andrew Callahan]

Oh, I got shot in the ass by the National Guard.

[Unnamed Guest]

Okay. Is there more to the story?

[Andrew Callahan]

I was in Minneapolis on Lake street right after the George Floyd murder, and I was doing an interview, and I got shot with a rubber bullet in the ass by National Guard.

[Unnamed Guest]

This is a dumb question. Many of my questions are, but that hurt really bad, right?

[Andrew Callahan]

It was such an intense day.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

I was watching someone rip an ATM out of a Wells Fargo and take sledgehammers to it.

[Unnamed Guest]

Did that work?

[Andrew Callahan]

I don't know. I left because my friend Lacy started filming and they were like, bitch, turn the fucking camera off. So I was like, all right, I'm going. Sorry, you're going to die and I'm going to live.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, man.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Shot in the ass.

[Unnamed Guest]

I've seen people get shot. Actually, my friend got shot in the nuts with a rubber bullet and he's suing LAPD for that. I would too, obviously. I believe. Lost that one.

[Andrew Callahan]

No way.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. No, not the lawsuit. Sorry. The nut. He lost the nut.

[Andrew Callahan]

That's my figure.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, yeah, yeah, the nut's gone. And he used to be one of Nelson Mandela's security guys, so this is.

[Andrew Callahan]

Not like some kid. Are people still trying to kill Mandela?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, not anymore.

[Andrew Callahan]

For Connors tracking him down.

[Unnamed Guest]

Not anymore. Yeah, back in the day, he foiled an assassination plot against Nelson Mandela. He was on the show, but, yeah, he protested against LAPD and they shot him in the balls. And. Yeah, now he lives in South Africa. That's where he's from originally.

[Andrew Callahan]

But, yeah, once, like, the kind of bruise sets in, it hurts to sit down. But the immediate sting's not too bad.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, not really. Not too bad, huh?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, it kind of hurts.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's crazy. Geez, I heard people lost their shit when you had Alex Jones in the documentary. Yeah, yeah. Why, though? I mean, it's clear that you're not.

[Andrew Callahan]

Like, this guy's amazing on a corporate level. Oh, my God. Dude, I wish I could take you into some of those 16 person Hollywood Zoom calls with people I've never met. But there is a school of thought that happened around 2016 in Hollywood that de platforming people and refusing to speak about people who are problematic in some capacity will reduce their power.

[Unnamed Guest]

I see.

[Andrew Callahan]

Which it does reduce their reach. But the people who stick with them are as powerful as 10 people because they've been emboldened. The natural human response to Being deplatformed is I'm telling the truth. So they're silencing me, especially when that ax is dropped by a faceless corporate entity like Facebook moderators. So Alex Jones is enemy number one of Hollywood, and me putting him in the film, even though it was in a satirical light, was not enough for certain people who I'm not going to name.

[Unnamed Guest]

It's really interesting to see that or hear that, because when you watch this, you're lifting weights with Alex Jones. Alex Jones is a conspiracy theorist. He said Sandy Hook was a hoax. He's, in my opinion, a terrible guy for doing that. He dragged those families through hell. But you're weightlifting with him and he's like pouring whiskey down your throat. I mean, it's objectively ridiculous and it doesn't portray this guy. Oh, this is a credible source of news I should listen to. Oh, this is a ridiculous person.

[Andrew Callahan]

I will say about Sandy Hook, though, obviously what he said was horrible, but they've dragged it out in the news media on purpose to make sure through SEO, that you will always think of him as the Sandy Hook guy, if that makes sense. His whole thing back in the day was, I am going to question and offer a false flag conspiracy on every single event that happens ever. He still does it. That's what his audience wants. A lot of his fans are the ones who engaged in the relentless harassment of the Sandy Hook families. And so I think it was very much like a creator responsibility thing. He hasn't fully apologized for it because it's also like, if he did apologize for it, he would lose some of those fans.

[Unnamed Guest]

Sure.

[Andrew Callahan]

So it's a delicate balance. And I do think that, of course, that was horrible, but I will just add that in there real quick that that was the perfect moment for the media to use against him every time he says anything ever. So they look for disqualifying things, and that's one of them.

[Unnamed Guest]

I just feel bad about somebody who lost their kids and then is being threatened to be murdered because it's quote, unquote fake or a false flag. When they lost their kids and now they have to move, they got to change jobs.

[Andrew Callahan]

I mean, it's just like, I agree 100%. I'm just throwing that in there just to explain that, like, the agenda against Alex Jones is for both horrible things that he's done and also to make sure that other things that he's saying don't get out there too.

[Unnamed Guest]

Ah, I see. The soundbite he's most well known for is they're turning the fricking frogs game.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Which is funny because that's kind of true. This weird frogs aren't turning gay, they're just reproducing, what, asexually or something. And it has to do with the chemicals and the water. So it's like the most ridiculous thing that he said is true.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Anyway, you shot yourself in the foot with this media tour that you were doing for. Was it the last thing on stage? It was for the HBO thing, the.

[Andrew Callahan]

HBO press tour of 2022.

[Unnamed Guest]

Tell me about this, because I laughed when I heard the story originally, which I know is bad because it was not good for you, but it's funny. What, 2020 hindsight? Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

Basically, HBO, who was great to work with, set up a press tour and they gave me media training and they said, here's how you're gonna have to answer certain things. And I didn't understand why they were being so deliberate about it, but they told me, they were like, I don't know why I did this, but I decided to do everything the opposite of what they told me. I wanted to see what's gonna happen if I don't do that. So they were like, when you go on cnn, be very complimentary. They're gonna ask you about your life, they're gonna ask you about the film, what inspired you, all of that stuff. So I'm assuming the CNN interview was the first interview of the press tour. I go on there, and I'm assuming they're gonna ask me about all that stuff. Immediately I'm sandwiched into an expose about the Proud Boys who I was still actively covering. So it's a conflict of interest as well. And Don Lemon goes, what can you tell us about the mental state of Enrique Tarrio leading up to the January 6th riot? And I'm like, holy shit. I'm with this handler that the A24 films had sent to accompany me. And I'm looking at her, she's wearing like an N95. And I'm like, hey, what's up? And she's not even looking at me. People say they see red. I didn't see red. But I was like, you know what? The mainstream media is complicit in the division cycle that even created the climate for something like January 6th to happen, much like they were in the riots of the summertime. So I was like, it's not about that. It's about you guys and Fox in this constant 24 hour news cycle that you're doing in these gymnastics and WWE political climate. You're creating that's making people lose their minds and get fried in a time where we should be coming together to get over this pandemic and revamp the economy. And they were not having it. So that CNN interview was over and then I got word or someone told me that Time Warner C suite was furious and I didn't know what that was. I was like, what's Time Warner C Suite? And they told me that the same people who own CNN own hbo. And my press tour aside from that day was being discontinued.

[Unnamed Guest]

Sorry, it sucks. But you know what? It also illustrates one of the exact points that you're making, which is like, these are all in cahoots and the messaging is essentially curated in some weird way that maybe shouldn't happen.

[Andrew Callahan]

I wouldn't take back what I did that day for a billion dollars.

[Unnamed Guest]

Really? Yeah. I don't blame you. The reason I thought it was funny was because you innocently proved your point in a way that embarrassed a lot of people in a kind of a funny way. But yeah, you're right, a news channel, they didn't get the answer they want. So hbo, where your documentary was like, ah, we're not going to platform this guy.

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, they got the pressure from the corporate partners. And that's the thing about economic interests, is that it allows for leveraging and that kind of stuff. Like HBO is the homie. It's people above them who are like, hey, you have to act this way or you're going to lose your fucking. They say follow the money. Money. If you follow it to the top, you just get to a bunch of corporations who are interested in having a profit yield. And if they're co signing someone who is causing their ratings to go down or challenging them, that's seen as a threat to capital.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's right. No, that totally makes sense. Do you think January 6th could happen again? That kind of thing?

[Andrew Callahan]

No, because. Okay, I tell people this all the time. During 2020, the groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who are the ones who led 2020, they thought that they were on the side of law enforcement. They actually thought they were a wing of law enforcement. A lot of that has to do with some of the political theater that was unfolding in Portland. In particular, when you had brawls between Antifa and the Proud Boys because of the 2020 defund the police, let's call it, what is the fuck the police movement that happened in 2020. The groups that were defending the police were very chummy with the police because they were also against Antifa. So I would go to Parks where they had Proud boy rallies in 2020, and I would see cops yucking it up with proud Boys. They were like chummy. They were in group chats. They were operating as a unified front and a force. The men's groups and the Trump adjacent militia groups and the cops that made them think that they could storm the Capitol. Nobody who stormed the Capitol thought that they would get in any trouble. They were storming the Capitol with blue line flags while fighting Capitol police officers. They had no clue they would get in trouble. So it couldn't happen again because they were not ready for the consequences. A lot of people went down. Of course they're out of jail now, but a lot of them spent four years in terrible conditions in prison and it wouldn't happen again because for one, Trump can't run again to get them out of jail. But two, they realized, holy shit, we can go to jail for 25 years for doing something like that. They didn't think there'd be any consequences.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, they got pardoned. But hopefully some of those examples were set. I guess we'll see.

[Andrew Callahan]

Consequences are what create recidivism for violent action. Consequences create the likelihood for a recurrence. So if, for example, 2020 summer could happen again, because aside from a select few, like my friend Dylan Robinson, who did three and a half years in federal prison for burning down the precinct in Minneapolis, that's a guy people always say, oh, Antifa had no consequences. A lot of them did. But the vast majority of people did not go to prison for anything. So the riots could happen again. January 6th couldn't happen again because of the consequences. Law and order is real. It does make a difference.

[Unnamed Guest]

You're very attuned to other people's trauma. I noticed. Do you personally relate to that? On some level is you're really empathetic with them in a way that I don't think most people would be. I think most of the time you see an interview with these people, it's kind of like, oh, look at this guy. You're not really doing well.

[Andrew Callahan]

I firmly believe that most people are good and I definitely believe that almost everyone thinks they're doing the right thing. I don't think anyone wakes up, aside from a select few sociopaths and says, you know what? I'm going to do something bad today that I think will hurt people. There is Ted Bundy's out there.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, sure, but.

[Andrew Callahan]

So I just naturally felt like most conservatives and people that I disagreed with had coming from a genuine non hateful place for some people now I'm just as empathetic, but I don't think that people are as good as I used to think.

[Unnamed Guest]

What sort of eroded some of that?

[Andrew Callahan]

Just finding money and success, man. You see a dark side of people when you succeed.

[Unnamed Guest]

Interesting. Yeah, I think you're right. Most people are good. But you're right. It's kind of like the people who are up at these other echelons, they're less wholesome.

[Andrew Callahan]

Whenever I put it like this. Whenever you're like a regular person who hasn't achieved some level of like clout or money that people want, there's some people that like you and there's some people that don't like you, but no one feels particularly strongly about you. You got your friends in high school. You don't have any extreme enemies. When you become famous and successful in any capacity, bro, it could be at a company, it doesn't have to be on tv. The margin goes like this, the polarization. And people either love the fuck out of you or they hate you. And they want to see you go down through either your best friend because they see you online every day, or they hate you because of the same reason. Because they see you on the media and they don't like what you say. Even if the people you grew up with. I can't tell you how many times I hear, yo, bro, I just met your homie. He said he went to high school with you. He said you guys were best friends. What's his name? Josh Danielson. I'm like, I have never heard that name in my fucking life. Or reversed. Yeah, bro, my homie went to high school with you and he said you were like a total piece of shit.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

And I'm like, what's his name? Mark Fairhaven. And I'm like, I don't know. That is either. So all of a sudden everyone's your homie or your enemy. And it's just there's no one normal in my life anymore.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's kind of depressing. Does that cause you any sort of struggle? Personally?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, it's fucking annoying. I can't find any real friends.

[Unnamed Guest]

Really.

[Andrew Callahan]

It's hard. All my friends either work for me or are working against me. Most of my friends work at Channel 5 and I love them. And I have nothing against them. I love them. I love my family too. But every friendship I have seems poisoned by some ulterior motive. Whether it's, oh yeah, like it's just this augmented enthusiasm it doesn't make any sense. Like, all of a sudden I make a friend and they're a fan, and I'm like, can we be friends if you're a fan? Are you perceiving me as a regular person? If I let you down in some way, are you gonna come for me? I just try to stay away from people. That's why I want to move back into an RV in the middle of the Mojave Desert and just stay the fuck away from people.

[Unnamed Guest]

Geez, that does not sound super healthy. I'm sorry to hear that. I hate to pile on with this, but I want to address these sexual misconduct or whatever allegations. What happened there. I've heard your version of events before, but I think it's important to get it out there because if I don't address it, people are going to be like, oh, avoided it because you guys want to be buddies and so you're not going to hold them to account.

[Andrew Callahan]

I mean, I understand that you have to ask about it if you're doing a podcast.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So what happened?

[Andrew Callahan]

Sexual misconduct, shit like that.

[Unnamed Guest]

When I heard it originally, it sounded horrific, and then when I researched it, it was possibly a misunderstanding.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, it was.

[Unnamed Guest]

So can you tell me a little bit about that?

[Andrew Callahan]

I don't want to speak too much about it because I've talked about it before, but pretty much I was on really good terms with somebody who a long time ago I had hooked up with and at one point felt like they said I had a good time. I enjoyed the experience. But looking back, I have these texts. I just didn't put them out because I don't want to release texts without people's permission.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's fair.

[Andrew Callahan]

And she was like, yeah. Looking back, I felt more pressure to agree than I realized at the time. I still want to be friends. I have no ill will towards you. I don't feel like anything happened. And then we made amends at that point. And then two and a half years later, eight minutes before the release of the film on hbo, she asked if I could give her a portion of my HBO paycheck to pay for therapy. Hadn't heard anything about this before. I don't know if it was coming from a genuine place. I'm not opposed to the idea if you've harmed someone of helping them out if they need help. But just because of our interaction before, it wouldn't make any sense. I would come at that time, especially no communication, no defined amount of money. I learned a little bit later that she was connected with a lawyer here in the LA area who was trying to basically get a confession of guilt from me. So they hit me in court for money. Yeah. After that came out, some more stuff piled on, most of which is not true.

[Unnamed Guest]

Do you worry about meeting a girl when you're out having fun and this scares a lot of people? I mean, look, I feel bad for her too if she's been traumatized.

[Andrew Callahan]

And that's why I haven't gone super hard on clearing it up. Because obviously this person went through some trauma. They disclosed to me that they had PTSD from a childhood incident and for whatever reason attached onto me as like the cause of that. It's probably has something to do with the fact that I was on the media all the time and I don't know, it's hard to get in people's minds. But yeah, as far as like people being scared, I don't like when people say like, you can avoid allegations by this. If I was treating people perfectly and being really cautious and not rushing things and not hanging out with fans, that wouldn't have happened to me. So I just look at it as, what did I do to put myself in that situation? Because what else am I going to do? No one wants to see some successful guy, especially after a rebound. Talk about how like, you got to be careful around these women. Because I don't think it's like a women thing. I think you would have to be careful hanging out with dudes who you don't know, who are fans who are possibly compromised in some capacity. I don't think that the person is lying because you have your own experiences, if that's how you experience something. I do know that them asking me for money is inconsistent with our correspondence up to that point.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, that's interesting. When you're young, you're like, I'm gonna hook up with girls, I'm gonna drink and party. And now, now it's, I'm married now, but let's say I was single. I would probably not be having one night stands and random encounters with people I met.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I would say avoid that altogether. Especially if you think that you're going to find success at some point in life. But just in general, avoid hookup culture. I think it's bad. Maybe have fun, I guess, when you're younger, but it's a spiritually dark, negative experience for everybody involved. You end up regretting it. I had a lot of fun being young, partying, but the pain that situation caused is much greater than the excitement of hooking up with someone new. So I just look at that and I think seeing your mom cry, reading the newspaper with your name in it is not worth the best hookup in the world.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, geez. Did people stick by you or did.

[Andrew Callahan]

You get dropped by Hollywood instantaneously? Didn't have anybody there for me except for a couple. But you gotta think, when I first got the request, me and my friends are like, you know, what the fuck? This is crazy. You work something for years and someone just sees you on TV and thinks, I'm going to ask them for money. At this strange juncture, my friends were like, oh, well, we can't tell if it's genuine. The people in Hollywood are like, just pay it, get the paperwork signed.

[Unnamed Guest]

Just get, pay it, Sign a whatever. Not NDA, but. Or like a.

[Andrew Callahan]

That's what they said, essentially.

[Unnamed Guest]

An NDA.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I said, no, I'm not going to be in this NDA sphere that you guys are in. Once someone's got that on me, they could probably use it to control me at some point down the line and limit the messaging. So, I mean, it was a pretty compromising position. Yeah, I will say that, like, there was journalists who were writing shit that was like total and utter bullshit after that initial thing. But also that initial allegation is what broke the headlines immediately. So that kind of freaked me out. That kind of weirded me out too. Why is that being covered by NBC, Fox? They never covered me before.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, now that's a good point. That's strange.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, the hardest thing was like, people making it seem like I had this like long standing pattern of just randomly.

[Unnamed Guest]

Like assaulting people or something.

[Andrew Callahan]

Right when I was actually in really good standing in every community that I'd been a part of. And anyone saying otherwise is lying.

[Unnamed Guest]

Because at first I was like, oh, I don't know this guy's allegations against him. And I was like, well, I'm going to look into it. And then I was like, what am I missing? And the answer was, I wasn't missing anything. It just got completely destroyed, blown out of proportion by the news media.

[Andrew Callahan]

Fair to say, because there's two things happening. A lot of people always comment. Do you think that you got set up after CNN or whatever? Npr? No, I think that there was something that was posted that wasn't architected by the deep state. But I do think that the news machine latched onto it as a perfect chance to try to get me out.

[Unnamed Guest]

The way you said something, or at least I gleaned this from something you said. TV news has basically replaced reality TV for nonsense, clickbait, attention grabbing headlines.

[Andrew Callahan]

Totally.

[Unnamed Guest]

And that's a fascinating take because I hadn't heard it phrased that way. But you're not wrong when you create. You're coming at this from a very different approach than legacy media. I'm curious why you think mainstream media has lost the public trust, not just because of blown up stupid headlines that are clickbaity, but there's more to the story.

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, I just think that the casual nature of podcasts is what people connect with. I think that mainstream media is so fixated on Crossfire and arguing between people. There was actually a show called Crossfire.

[Unnamed Guest]

I remember that.

[Andrew Callahan]

I think Jon Stewart broke it down perfectly. It was a Tucker Carlson show on CNN back in the day where he would just get two people about opposing viewpoints and get them to yell at each other. Because you knew people would watch that because it triggers cortisol. Most news media today is based upon the deployment of micro traumatic digital media, which you might not be traumatized by it, but it is pulling on something through messaging, through words and images that triggers a fight or flight response and makes you want to engage with it.

[Unnamed Guest]

I have that with certain things online. I definitely have that.

[Andrew Callahan]

They know what they're doing. They know what words and phrases can be used to cause someone to have an association. And so if you watched Fox during 2020, it was all cops putting old ladies in headlocks for not wearing their mask at the grocery store. And on CNN it was all cops brutalizing black and brown people. And so you're collectively traumatizing the public. And the George Floyd video was extremely traumatic for a good reason. But that is a microcosm of what the media has been doing for a very long time. And podcasters don't do that. However, I do think that alternative media is following the exact same incentive structure as the msm, if not worse. Most of these people were like, we're not the mainstream, but we're going to give you an alternative perspective.

[Unnamed Guest]

When it's just the mainstream, it's like, we're not mainstream. But do you know that Democrats drink adrenochrome from babies? And it's, well, okay, you're not the mainstream in that you have no accountability, but this is the same dumb crap. Rebranded.

[Andrew Callahan]

Absolutely. And also corporate media is figuring out how to own alternative channels through sponsorships and investment and stuff like that.

[Unnamed Guest]

Do you think mainstream outlets can earn that trust back or is it too late?

[Andrew Callahan]

That's too late.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, I think it's too late too. I agree with you. This is random. I noticed that the editing style of your videos has changed over the years. Just like a slightly different style, but you got rid of, what do you call it? Like the office, where it's like, look straight at the camera.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And that's gone. And a lot of the slapstick stuff.

[Jordan Harbinger]

What are they called?

[Unnamed Guest]

Like those crash zoom.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, the crash zoom was like. The reason the crash zoom and the slapstick stuff is gone is because of what I call the Borat effect. I'd wear the tan suit and I would do essentially what were ambush interviews. And the Borat effect was when Sacha, Brayer and Cohen couldn't go film Borat skits anymore because everybody would either know that he was Borat and they would overact or they would see that he was Borat and avoid the cameras because they didn't want to be embarrassed. It got to the point where I would be going into the field and half the people would be running up to me yelling viral catchphrases from the show. Or they would see me and say, don't talk to that guy. He's gonna make you look stupid. So undoing those editing choices was a way of me earning back public trust to be able to do my job in the future.

[Unnamed Guest]

I see. It seems like it worked.

[Andrew Callahan]

It totally worked. I just had to pivot.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, Good for you. What do you make of the projection from some of the folks in your videos? The QAnon type stuff? I'll give you an example. There's a man who's like, Hillary, Biden.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Oprah, they're all pedophiles.

[Unnamed Guest]

And then you were like, here's your criminal record where you were convicted of raping an 8 year old boy. You know what I'm talking about, right?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, of course.

[Unnamed Guest]

And it's like, what do you think is going on here? Yes, projection, obviously. But what function is that serving in this guy's life?

[Andrew Callahan]

I think it's just deep guilt. It's a way of putting a band aid over it. When you know you are something, you can posture yourself as like a superman against that thing so that nobody suspects you. It's like really basic two dimensional shit.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

Because it becomes really obvious. But you always see like the Mormon anti gay people in Utah are like caught with a gay prostitute getting a blowjob in the bathroom. In the Senate, it literally repeats itself every single time. You know what I mean? Every accusation is sometimes a confession, but it's particularly just like those who or fighting for the kids. Oftentimes our pedos but not always. I mean, the Boys and Girls Club, those people are chill. I don't think they have any. It's not like the Catholic Church.

[Unnamed Guest]

With everything you've seen, from QAnon rallies to protests to political conventions, do you have a take on how we can begin to heal as a country?

[Andrew Callahan]

Get off the damn phone. That's the first thing. But no, things are gonna have to get worse before they get better. There's just so much collective hypnosis and polarization that I can. I can't even perceive what that would look like.

[Unnamed Guest]

What are you working on right now?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I'm actually pitching two things on like a studio level because the studios have accepted me again, which is great. And one is a Native American directed TV show that's like a Breaking Bad but on Indian reservation in Arizona. It's a narco drama, so I'm pretty stoked about that.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's totally different than what you. So this is a completely new type of.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I'm an executive producer of it. It's like a sick ass thing. I'm playing like an alcoholic journalist who's like, like on the trail of a corrupt tribal official in Arizona. It's like the first time I've acted. That's been really fun.

[Unnamed Guest]

I bet.

[Andrew Callahan]

I'm pitching a separate documentary about a man who lost his parrot and his search for the lost bird.

[Unnamed Guest]

It's a true story, I assume.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Can I ask you about your tats?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, sure.

[Unnamed Guest]

What are those all about?

[Andrew Callahan]

Okay. This is the Space Needle.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

Cause I'm from Seattle, but I didn't want it to take up the whole arm. I got this because we used to joke back in middle school that, like, all the kids from the suburbs would get. Get Space needle tattoos because they felt like they weren't from the city and they wanted to live up to it. And so I said, you know what? I'm gonna take that back and get the needle blasted myself. Shout out to Thomas from Liberty for doing this. This is a Mount Rushmore tattoo, which might go against what I just said about directing and helping Native Americans break Hollywood.

[Unnamed Guest]

Sure.

[Andrew Callahan]

But when I was younger and I was drinking a lot, I got arrested in Sturgis, South Dakota for vandalism. I was really drunk. Vice was following me around, making a documentary about me.

[Unnamed Guest]

Okay.

[Andrew Callahan]

And Vice said that it was their protocol at the time that they had to wear N95 masks because they would get fired if they were like, in a red state at that time without a mask. And if you know that during that Time wearing a mask in a red state was like wearing a MAGA hat in Portland, Oregon. So they were following me around with these masks on. And it was making people in the Sturgis Spike Week environment think that I was a liberal that was there to shame them for not being masked while they were outside. So one night I figured, okay, I'm gonna get Vice to leave town by spray painting. Vice News was here all over this historic town so that they kind of hit the streets in the morning and get chased off by bands of vigilantes from this town. I grew up writing graffiti, so it was kind of an impulse. And that's why I'm happy I'm so sober.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

So I write Vice News on a historic building. Vice was here. Fuck the police or some shit like that. Then I go over and I do a tag. I think I wrote Crazy Horse over a mural of Mount Rushmore with black spray paint. Because I was like, I was so drunk that I was like, fuck Rushmore. Like, I'm not even particularly well versed in the history of the Black Hills. But I was like, ah, yeah. And so I get arrested by the police chief on scene. I spray painted the side of a Domino's Pizza as well. So I had to write an apology letter to Domino's corporate.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, gosh.

[Andrew Callahan]

So the chief of police arrests me. He takes me to jail. I'm thinking because I'm from Seattle that I'm not gonna get in that much trouble. I go to my court date and they say, you might have up to like a year in the state jail. So they gave me a court date for defacing the Mount Rushmore mural. They had put me in the newspaper as like Seattle anarchist activists, Target Canyon, Sturgis, whatever.

[Unnamed Guest]

They're a few years too late for the anarchist activist thing.

[Andrew Callahan]

And so during my court date, I say to the judge, I got my tattoo before my court date. I say, how could I have spray painted a Mount Rushmore mural if I have Mount Rushmore tatted on my arm?

[Jordan Harbinger]

I have respect for it.

[Unnamed Guest]

Look, I even put it on my.

[Andrew Callahan]

Bag, took it from one year in jail to five days.

[Unnamed Guest]

Five days.

[Andrew Callahan]

So I served five days in the slant.

[Unnamed Guest]

So that tattoo saved you 360 days in jail. That's a good investment.

[Andrew Callahan]

And then I have a tattoo right here for my boy, Mr. Daddy who passed away. He died recently. He's my buddy from Vegas. He passed away. He was on ketamine. He went in the lake. And if you're at home watching this and you're a ketamine user. This is how Matthew Perry passed away too. Don't submerge yourself in cold or hot water because it causes a mechanism. Something happens where you go into shop and you have no control of your motor function so you can drown in a pool or a lake or ocean.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh my gosh. Did not know that. Geez. That's a PSA and a half right there man. Thank you for coming on the show, dude.

[Andrew Callahan]

I really appreciate it.

[Unnamed Guest]

It was a lot of fun. Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

All things Andrew Callahan will be in the show [e-mail] advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show [e-mail] deals please consider supporting those who support the show. Also our newsletter, we Bit Wiser. The idea is to give you something specific and practical that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions. Psychology relationships in under two minutes a week. So if you aren't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It is a great companion to the show. Jordanharbinger.com news is where you can find it. Don't forget about six minute networking as well over at 6minutenetworking.com. I'm ordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram, or feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn. This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tata Sidlowskis, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends. When you find something useful or interesting. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's interested in Andrew Callahan's work or just loves a good zany story, maybe they're interested in political extremism, definitely share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn and we'll see you next time.