← This is Gavin Newsom
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- [00:00]
Louis Theroux
You got to the harder the better. And I sometimes say the weirdest thing about weird people is how normal they are. This isn't the manosphere. This is the biosphere.
- [00:08]
Gavin Newsom
It's more of a grift than an ideology. These guys are selling, selling, selling, selling, selling, selling, selling. So those of you who've tuned in to the podcast know we've dove deep into the issue of the crisis of men and boys. Richard Reeves and the Institute of Men and Boys talked to Scott Galloway, A number of other guests also talked about the manosphere. But we've never gone, quote unquote, inside the manosphere. And that's why I'm so exc to have my next guest, Louis Theroux, who's done dozens and dozens of documentaries on the porn industry, Neo Nazis, did documentary on Scientology, Westboro Baptist Church, and just completed this really insightful documentary about the manosphere. This is a wide ranging conversation you don't want to miss.
- [00:55]
Louis Theroux
This is Gavin Newsom and this is Louis Theroux. This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.
- [01:06]
Robert Smigel
Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy not quite on Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier this week. My guests, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an acapella band with their between songs banter.
- [01:25]
Louis Theroux
Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.
- [01:28]
Robert Smigel
Those people are starving for banter. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:37]
Psychology of Your Twenties Host
Your twenties can be so exciting, but they can also be really overwhelming, confusing and honestly just kind of lonely. May is mental health awareness month and the psychology of your twenties is breaking down the science behind the biggest roadblocks we face.
- [01:53]
Psychology of Your Twenties Guest
I was six years into my career, the 80 hour weeks and just the first one in, the last one out and I ended up burning out. There was a large chunk of my twenties that I like was just so want wanting to like be out of that phase out of my skin and I just like really regret not living in the present more.
- [02:07]
Psychology of Your Twenties Host
You don't need to have everything figured out right now. You just need to understand yourself a little bit better. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:21]
Tom Boger
American soccer is about to explode.
- [02:23]
Gavin Newsom
The World cup is coming.
- [02:24]
Louis Theroux
Ramos sending on Ernie Stewart the chip score.
- [02:29]
Gavin Newsom
I'm Tab Ramos.
- [02:31]
Tom Boger
I'm Tom Bogle. On our podcast Inside American Soccer, you'll get the real storylines, the biggest decisions, and the truth about the U.S. national team.
- [02:40]
Louis Theroux
It wouldn't be a huge surprise if our team ends up in the quarterfinals
- [02:44]
Gavin Newsom
or potentially a great run into the semifinals.
- [02:47]
Tom Boger
Listen to Inside American Soccer with Tom Boger and Tab ramos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [02:55]
Diana Maria Riva
Hey, I'm Diana Maria Riva, and on my new podcast, How Hard Can It Be? I call on my Gen X squad. From Ohio to Hollywood, as we navigate midlife's fantastic bs, unfiltered conversations. From night sweats to fupas to scheduling sex. Wait, what sex?
- [03:10]
Louis Theroux
Is it just me, or does every
- [03:13]
Diana Maria Riva
woman my age want to look at
- [03:15]
Louis Theroux
Pinterest instead of having sex?
- [03:16]
Diana Maria Riva
Sometimes they say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure gonna try. So let's get blunt with laughs, tears, or tears of laughter. Listen to How Hard Can It Be With Diana Maria Riva on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [03:30]
Gavin Newsom
Where are you in. In London proper? Where are you specifically?
- [03:33]
Louis Theroux
I'm in London, England, in northwest London, in an area called Kilburn. Northwest. I don't know. You just really have to know London to know where exactly. But I just cycled back from Trafalgar Square and it took me about 25 minutes.
- [03:47]
Gavin Newsom
I love it. Where do you spend most of your time? Are you. Are you out there? Just on the plane around the globe?
- [03:55]
Louis Theroux
I have. I have three boys, three sons, and as they've got older, I've traveled less. Like before I came on this call, I was thinking about my life and times as I want to do. As an older man, 55 years old, I was traveling a lot, you know, when I was trying to win my spurs as a documentary maker. So a lot of back and forth. I have. I'm half American, half. I've just started. Is that all right? Yeah, I've just kind of gone into my origin story, but I was good.
- [04:25]
Gavin Newsom
I.
- [04:26]
Louis Theroux
So my dad's American. He's a travel writer and novelist from Medford, Massachusetts. I grew up with a US passport, but I grew up in South London. And I've always been slightly split, you know, identity wise between the UK and the US and then when I graduated and was trying to figure out what to do with my life in 91, I went to the US and thought, well, I'll put that passport to some use and get some legal work working in Boston. Then I thought Well, I should really work with words. That's what my dad does. It's what my mum does. She works for the BBC or used to. And I got a job in San Jose, California on a free weekly called the Metro. And really I credit my experience in San Jose as being the formative experience professionally or certainly one of them, of my life. Some people said I went to Africa. My dad's thing was he was in the Peace Corps and he went and taught in Malawi. My thing was I worked for a free weekly in San Jose. But there was something about being decontextualized and being exposed to a culture that was very different and also working with words, writing articles from the bottom up. I worked for the Willow Glen resident and the Metro and then the San Jose City Times, all under the same umbrella, writing about city council meetings, but also character driven stories about past life, regression counseling and people who were into guns or the whole kind of buffet of the Western American experience. And that was the jumping off point for so many things that followed. And I was thinking, as I say before I came on this call, I've made over the years, 14 different documentaries in the great state of California.
- [06:14]
Gavin Newsom
So much of the last 25 years for you obviously have been defined by all of these. I mean, what you could describe or has been described by people that watch you, these sort of fringe subcultures, your willingness to enter into that, you know, into worlds that, that people are curious about but don't know much about. What, what was, what was the first, what was the inspiration for the first documentary? I mean, you're, you're, you're there writing chronicling culture but politics and, you know, you're, you know, finding your way. 14 just in California Alone Documentary Just in California.
- [06:47]
Louis Theroux
Yeah. So I, I, there's a psychological dimension to that. And then a kind of professional like I, I was someone who grew up in, as I said, South London. I was always anxious, I was always worry prone. I always saw other people and thought they've got the, they've got, they figured something out that I haven't. But there's also a quality to feeling like an outsider, that it gives you observational skills, it makes you attentive, it makes you a good listener because you suspect that, you suspect that other people are clued up about something or you just feel comforted by the idea that you're enveloped in, in the strangeness of how other people lead their lives. So I was always a fringe dweller in that sense. And you know, I moved to America. Yeah, I was Always attracted to whether it was reading about or finding out about practices that struck me as odd, whether it was weird religious practices or bizarre pathologies. Then fast forward. I was in America figuring out how I thought I should be a writer. My dad's a writer. I worked for Spy magazine and then some friends after Spy magazine, that was a magazine based in New York in the 90s. It folded. And then some friends went to work with the documentary maker Michael Moore, who at that time had made Roger and Me and was working on a new TV series called TV Nation.
- [08:08]
Sanjana Bhasker
And.
- [08:09]
Louis Theroux
And they. My friend said, like, you should come and talk to Michael. He's looking for some. He needs to have a British correspondent because some of his money is coming from the BBC. So I went along under qualified, nervous, no wardrobe to speak of, with no reasonable right to expect anything to come of the meeting. Not realizing that all those things, lack of wardrobe, underqualified, nervous in Michael's eyes were kind of positives. Right? Yeah. He didn't want. He didn't want a wind swept. Well, a bit like yourself, Kevin, because you're. You've been credited with having good looks and sort of being tv. Being TV ready. Like, I wasn't that TV ready guy.
- [08:54]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah.
- [08:54]
Louis Theroux
And. And he. I think he thought, well, his awkwardness is an asset. Like his awkwardness. And he sort of. I mean, I think he might have assumed that it was a. It was a kind of a party trick, almost like, oh, he's intelligent, but he pretends to be bumbling. In fact, I was just bumbling. But I was also very keen. So he hired me to make my first segment, which was about groups that think the world is about to end. And it was called Millennium. Took me to Oakland, California, Funnily enough, among other places, there were four or five different cults or sects featured. But the first one was led by Harold Camping, and he was predicting the end of the world for later that year, 1994. Wow. It didn't end. Spoiler alert, the world didn't end. Then I went down to El Cajon outside of San Diego. It was a UFO group called. What are they called? I can't even remember what they were called. They thought that UFOs were going to land in 2001, and spoiler alert, that didn't happen either. But that, that kind of experience of, you know, notwithstanding that I had no TV skills, what I did have was curiosity and a sense of fascination. Like I. If I had. My problem was I was over interested and I tended not to interrupt. Like I was Realized so when's the world actually going to end? And I'm like, well it's on the Thursday, but it's too late for salvation because that happens on the Tuesday, you know, and all the details. But I basically loved the experience of immersing myself in the, in, in these other mindsets. Like I sometimes pretentiously quote Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher and say like his line is madness in individuals is rare, but in epochs, groups of people and religions it is norm, something like that. In other words, like we're all swimming in the waters of irrationality. We just don't see it, you know, and if we just recognize. So that kind of, that kind of organized irrationality, you know, which isn't, it's not psychosis, right? It's not that kind of madness. It's the madness of oh yeah, I'm going to sell my house because the UFOs are going to land or because Harold Camping has told me that Jesus is coming later in the year. That's, that's actually a sane person who's been so conditioned by a belief system that he's acting in ways that are irrational. So in a weird way, that first one, I went on to do a second one about the Ku Klux Klan as they were rebranding themselves a civil rights group. Civil rights group for white people that was in Texas and Arkansas and on and on. But that those, that first story about cults and in a way was a template set me off on a trajectory that I haven't deviated from. You know, I do programs in a longer length now that was a 10 minute segment. Now I do 60 minute or 90 minute documentaries. But it's very much been a furrow that I've plowed, you know, with a great deal of pleasure and some success ever since.
- [12:06]
Gavin Newsom
And we, and we'll get to the inside the manosphere, which love to talk about your latest documentary in a moment. But what has there been a thread that connects? I mean it's, it's interesting. One of the, I mean you've consistent watching some of these documentaries and inside the manosphere, you come across not as condescending, but truly interested, curious, open. You create a safe space where, you know, people start to express themselves and then their contradictions are exposed and, and, but at the same time, you know, the way you just described a rational, irrational mindset. Has there been a thread that connects all of these documentaries beyond just the curiosity and the fringe? But is it, is there an empathy that you've developed for many of these
- [12:51]
Louis Theroux
okay, so, yeah, this is.
- [12:53]
Dr. Dom
This.
- [12:53]
Louis Theroux
This is. You've got to the heart of the matter. And the short version is I sometimes say the weirdest thing about weird people is how normal they are.
- [13:04]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah.
- [13:05]
Louis Theroux
By which I mean that you. You find out that people arrive at irrational, what I would consider irrationality. And by the way, I don't necessarily exclude myself from that, but it's satisfying, very relatable human needs. And I do try and disrupt that binary of us and them. Like, I do try and see them as people who are available, they're up for grabs, they're persuadable. Or if they're not persuadable, because most of the time they're actually not persuadable. But they are. They're emotionally present. Like, they want to relate, they want to be friendly, or that they want to persuade you of why what they're doing is the right way and you've made a mistake. Like, the first episode I made of this, my first TV series of my own, was called Weird Weekends. It was about militiamen. It was very trumpy in its way, although it was 1996, so it was a long time before. But people who believe in conspiracy theories, they think that the UN is taking over the world and that their only safety is by hiding in redoubts up in northern Idaho and Montana, stockpiling guns and sort of sitting out the end times in one way or another. Quite a paranoid mindset. But the shock was going up there and sort of finding out, wow, there's
- [14:28]
Dr. Dom
something about these guys.
- [14:29]
Louis Theroux
It's kind of a little bit romantic and almost cool. Like, they were like cowboys. Like, the seduction of it was palpable. Like, it wasn't like, how could you possibly believe this? It was like, oh, I kind of get the mystery and romance. Like, everyone wants to be the hero of their own life, and this is a way of leading out an epic destiny. Then I met part of the same journey. I went to the headquarters of a group called Aryan Nations. They were the most extreme of that world. Like, they're sort of unapologetic or were neo Nazis. They lived in a compound up in Coeur d' Alene in northern Idaho. And at that time, their pastor was a guy called the Head. They started themselves a church. I don't know if that was a tax dodge or PR thing, or maybe they sincerely believed that they were the true Israelites, like these white guys. But they lived in a compound that was straight out of central casting with a fence around it and a guard tower and two German shepherds called Hans and Fritz.
- [15:26]
Terry Lomax
Wow.
- [15:27]
Louis Theroux
I mean, I was scared going there. The biggest. I was so relieved when I met pastor Richard Butler and he was like 85 years old and his second in command or his aide de camp was called Jerry Groodle, who was about 70 years old. And I thought, if it comes to it, I think I can take them, right? Like a physical, if it gets physical. But they took me around and I remember Jerry Groodle took me to the top of the guard tower and he starts talking about how much he likes England and the town of Cheltenham and he's a big fan of Benny Hill. And then he start, starts talking about a sitcom from the 70s called are you being served? Which will mean nothing to your audience. But what it meant to me was, wow, this is a guy who's a deep Anglophile number one. But number two, like, this is a guy who really wants to kind of be my friend. Now that's an awkward thing for a journalist when he's dealing with a neo Nazi. Right. I mean, in one sense it is an awkward, but it's kind of, it's borderline. I mean, it was kind of funny, but it's also a little embarrassing. It was complicated and I. But the surprise was, wow, these are people who really are in some respects lonely. Right. In some respects looking for connection. And I'm not in any way trying to minimize the hatefulness of it. There's no excuse for it, you know, I deplore it, obviously, but. But you can't blind yourself to the polyvalent quality of extremism, you know, and I've seen it across the board, whether it's in Koalinga, the, you know, the maximum security mental hospital for sexually violent predators. And you go among them and they are, they are there presenting as regular people and, and you're like, wow, that they don't, you know, I mean, I don't mean to be glib, but like you, you sort of have to check yourself and, and remind yourself of the things they've done because you're being filmed, you're making a documentary. And actually there's an expectation to bring an appropriate level of objectivity and forbearance. But at the same time you're thinking at times, like, if I didn't know better, I think he's kind of a nice guy, you know, he's an okay guy. Which is the paradox. The paradox. This is the cross I'm burdened with. You mentioned one other thing, which was Manosphere, which I know we're coming on to. But the other thing that's happened in the 25 years of working is that a lot of this so called fringe stuff went mainstream. And going back to the Silicon Valley and the changes in culture, I think the big thing we've seen, the biggest change I've seen is how the Internet, but social media specifically has allowed people to aggregate people who in the, in the past might have not felt in community with people like before. They might have shortwave radio, magazines or they, a few of them might be on VBS's on the Internet like bulletin boards, but they, they weren't pinging each other on Snapchat, you know, or WhatsApp or God forbid, streaming live on their own platforms. And so in good ways we've seen the Internet. If you've got a disease and it's rare, you can now crowdsource solutions. That's, that's wonderful. But if you are planning a race war to initiate the end times, you can also find your community. It's not such a good thing. And or if you want to proselytize on behalf of being a flat earth or an anti vaxxer, you can find a ready audience. And not just that, you can catalyze an even bigger audience by spreading that information. So those programs that in the past seemed not exactly harmless, but I had the luxury of being able to see them as part of something lonely. Like the empathy that you built with them felt relatively safe. Even the skinheads when I was doing Louis and the Nazis, they were damaged men from difficult backgrounds who'd come out of prison. Some of them had developed a kind of white racial identity as a safety mechanism. Having been in prison like I've seen that in San Quentin, it's very hard to go against the float. You gang up and that's, that's. I don't know if it's still the case, but when I was there in 2012, you know, 2008, nine, that's how it was. But so you could sort of extend a bit of understanding and I guess you can still. But it's now closer to the, the power. Is they less obviously hierarchical now it's not. So now they are in some respects equally powerful. You know, in some respects when I go and document whether it's white nationalism or extremism or toxic content, I'm just one more content maker turning up to document another content maker. And I no longer, or my BBC paymasters or whoever's financing the project no longer owns the conversation and monopolizes the, the platforms in the way that they
- [20:34]
Gavin Newsom
used to, meaning they're streaming at the same time that that, like Tiki Talky was.
- [20:40]
Louis Theroux
Well, in a small way. They have, they have. They have their own outlet like. So going back five years, I made a documentary called Extreme and Online that was about Nick Fuentes and the Groipers. And I spent a couple of days with Nick Fuentes, who has since gone on to some notoriety based on his affiliation with Kanye west, or Yay, as he's now called, and also his sort of taking up the mantle post Charlie Kirk. But he's he. So irrespective of meet them streaming me when I arrived, they're just people who've got platforms of their own. Right. I mean, midway through making that program Extreme and online, it's on. I'm not trying to do a big plug, but I think it's on BBC select in the US which no one has, so could forget about that. But I. I remember arriving and I was filming with him and. And then I took a break. We went back to London to kind of figure out next steps. And in the meanwhile, he was streaming about me saying, I met a guy called Louis, Louis Theroux. And people saying, what's he like? He's kind of pretentious. He's kind of pretentious. So he's got his. I mean, he's got his platform and he's broadcasting his version of our encounter. And then I've got mine and hopefully I'm reaching more people. Then fast forward a few years. But that was the first exposure to make your program. And in a weird way, I found it chastening, but also enjoyably. Enjoyably challenging. Right. You know, I like, I sometimes. I sometimes joke. I specialize in getting out of my depth. And I enjoyed the sense of I don't want my job to be too easy. And I. And I think it kind of keeps you honest, you know what I mean? And if I'm there and he's doing his version and he's releasing, you know, there was a guy called Baked Alaska who was part of the same documentary, and he filmed me while I was there, and I filmed him and he streamed me. And it creates an interesting dynamic, but it also allows for an enjoyable piquancy to the encounters. And then later on, I went deeper into that with this more recent documentary for Netflix, which is called Louis Theroux Inside the Manosphere, where I was either being live streamed or appearing on podcasts in their world throughout and then being made to be uncomfortable and having to deal with their gotchas or their attempts to discomfort and discombobulate me. It's.
- [23:14]
Gavin Newsom
It's fascinating. I. This notion. I mean you're. This iterative conversation where you're making the movie, it's making you. I mean it's searching you. You're searching it. You're back. I mean it's almost. It's like a ping pong match almost. And obviously it's promoting itself even before it's complete. And so it obviously.
- [23:30]
Louis Theroux
Well, that would be. I know, that's a good. I know. It's funny, isn't it? Like we. Because a part of. Oh, this is kind of a nightmare. I mean truthfully, I knew going into it it would happen and I hoped it would happen, but it's also uncomfortable. And then I did realize, well, it is chumming the water like gets everyone. It gets everyone. But you know, you raise a serious question which is if they are feeding off my content or feel my presence for their content. I'm going to preempt your question. Am I, am I in some way amplifying them? Am I a pawn in their game? How do you deal with. How do you deal with it? Like me platforming them or just actually bringing them attention or as I say, sort of being a character. These live streamers, they stream their lives more or less 24, not 24, seven because they're not asleep, but it might be eight hours a day or 10 hours a day. The most recent example you'll know is Clavicular who I think you must be where he's. He shouted you out. I don't know if he's a fan but he thought you were better looking than J.D. vance, which in their world is meaningful currency. It's a mixed blessing receiving that kind of compliment, right?
- [24:56]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah. From the looks maxers and on the
- [24:59]
Louis Theroux
Internet,
- [25:02]
Gavin Newsom
by the way, my son was very proud because he was very familiar with Kloviker. That's another conversation.
- [25:09]
Louis Theroux
15 year old which I know is like is actually the sweet spot. One of the reveals of making the documentary was this isn't the manosphere, this is the boyosphere. Right. It's kids age between 12 and maybe 17. That's the sweet spot. And in my day we're not far apart in age, but we probably grew up watching Dukes of Hazard, the A team, of course. So it was Ba Baracas, Pity the Fool. Like it was that. And you thought those are all maybe the Six Million Dollar man. But. But there was a. Or Starsky and Hutch. There was a thing like these are. These are Badass. Yeah. You know, they break a few rules to get things done. You know, they're not going to listen to the chief. They're going to go out and kick ass and take names and do what they have to to catch the bad guy. Like, there was a sort of an outlaw, an outlaw kind of maverick code. And in. In this day and age, like our kids are getting. Our boys are getting content in the same way we did, but from the Internet. And in our time as well, there were. I don't know if it was rockers or punk or heavy metal or Guns N' Roses or whatever it was, but we sort of believed that these were our guys because we were kids. We. We wanted people who felt out outlaw and naughty and disruptive and who our parents probably didn't approve of. Right. So nowadays that. That's YouTubers, like, YouTubers are filling that space for good or ill. And the complicated part is they're obviously real as much as they are also performing themselves and they are going out and, you know, there's no gatekeeping. There's no one at cbs, ABC or BBC like saying, you know what this is before the watershed, so let's tone it down. You know, it's a little bit. The language is a little bit blue. Like, you know, these. There's not. There's nothing. There's no. There's no influence that's going to stop them. They stream on a platform called Pick. Many of them where the con. The content moderation is extremely loose. It's owned by gambling company, so a lot of it's tied in with gambling promotion and basically anything goes. And part of the filming. One of my insights, such as it is, was that this is less about as much as it's about ideology. It's also about sales. And these are guys who found a business model that involves putting out spicy or divisive or explicitly bigoted and misogynistic homophobic racist content that gets eyeballs because the algorithms like things that are divisive. And then the upsell is some crappy FX trading app or finance trading app or a workout, some workout regimen that'll give you muscles or supplements. One of the paradoxes is that, you know, people say, like, oh, it's a rabbit hole, but truthfully, with a rabbit hole, it gets weirder the deeper you go. But actually it's really weird. The shop front is weird, like, because that's how they get your attention. Andrew Tate saying, I don't think women should drive and women shouldn't vote. But then behind the facade is something quite banal and that's what you know and that's why you should sign up to the Real World. And it's a not terribly insightful or interesting so called online university. So it's all incentivized by business and by an attempt to monetize outrage.
- [28:36]
Gavin Newsom
So takeaway and so just interesting to me.
- [28:40]
Robert Smigel
I mean another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy not quite on Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier this week. My guests SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Sydal help an acapella band with their between songs banter.
- [28:59]
Louis Theroux
Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.
- [29:02]
Robert Smigel
Those people are starving for banter. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [29:12]
Sanjana Bhasker
Why is everyone obsessed with romance right now? Like everyone your co worker who quote unquote doesn't read. Is reading romance your mom? Book talk, the entire Internet. I'm Sanjanah bhasker. I'm Tyler McCall and this is Radio831, a romance podcast. The books, the tropes, the adaptations, the drama, the discourse and what all of it says about how we actually love, yearn and obsession. We're going to Wuthering Heights, which for the record is not a romance novel. And yet it has haunted the romance genre for 200 years. We're getting into dark romance age gaps, certain Russian hockey players and sentient objects in love, which is a thing. That's the kind of conversation we're having every episode. Listen to the Radio 831 podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [30:11]
Dr. Dom
Agency the ability to know that we're the experts in our own body on the podcast. Cultivating her space Dr. Dom and Terry Lomax create a space where black women can show up fully and be heard. I wholeheartedly think, you know, you hit 30, you shouldn't have to share a room with anybody.
- [30:30]
Terry Lomax
From navigating friendships and healing to setting boundaries and prioritizing your mental health, these are real, honest conversations we don't always get to have out loud.
- [30:41]
Dr. Dom
Totally unreasonable with different parts of life. Right? Like, oh, we'll have all three meals and make sure you're mindful during all of them. Absolutely not. During one meal, I'm standing realistic, I'm standing and handing my children food.
- [30:52]
Terry Lomax
Because healing, empowerment and resilience aren't just ideas, they're practices. And this Mental Health Awareness Month, there's no better time to pour back into yourself.
- [31:04]
Dr. Dom
Listen to Cultivating her space on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [31:12]
Carlos King
If you're watching the latest season of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, you already know there's a lot to break down.
- [31:19]
Louis Theroux
Portia accusing Kelly of sleeping with a married man.
- [31:22]
Robert Smigel
They holding K. Michelle back from fighting. Drew Pinky has financial issues.
- [31:26]
Louis Theroux
I like the bougie style of Housewives show not I think it looks like it's gonna be interesting.
- [31:31]
Carlos King
On the podcast Reality with the King I, Carlos King, recap the biggest moments from your favorite reality shows, including the Real Housewives franchise, the drama, the alliances and the tea everybody's talking about. As an executive producer in reality television, I'm not just watching it. I understand the game. As somebody who creates shows, I'll even say this at the end of the day when people are at home, they want entertainment to hear this and more. Listen to Reality with the king on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
- [32:08]
Gavin Newsom
Back to this documentary that was just released, as you suggest, on Netflix last month and has gotten a lot of attention, was premiered number one on Netflix. And you know it, it continues to this day. Cause these guys are continuing to talk about you and this, this whole subject matter of the manosphere. But, but the point you just made is the point that you emphasize or at least comes across, even if it's not expressed intentionally or at least edited in that context, is that it's more of a grift than an ideology that these guys are selling, selling, selling, selling, selling, selling, selling. It's not necessarily right wing conservatism, but it is misogyny that there's just, it's, it's, it's an interesting take on this whole frame because so much of the nanosphere from our perspective, sort of the lazy perspective, is framed in contemporary terms to Trump's success. Big podcasters like Joe Rogan or Theo Vaughn, folks that I know you've, you've that are adjacent to this, that are not necessarily part of this, but Andrew Tate seems so much of the origin story of what is contemporarily expressed as the nanospirit. You didn't get him necessarily to be on the documentary, but he's part of your documentary. But tell me a little bit about Andrew Tate. Tell me a little bit about your kids, your three sons. Tell me about the why this subject matter was the subject for this latest documentary.
- [33:41]
Louis Theroux
So I, I went through lockdown with three sons, which, you know, any father or mother who went through lockdown with kids, I think we're still recovering from that.
- [33:53]
Gavin Newsom
Louis, how, how old are the boys? How.
- [33:56]
Louis Theroux
They're now 20, 18 and 11. So at the beginning of COVID they would have been like 15, 13 and 6 or 7. It was, it was a lot. And like, like everyone else, we all defaulted to phones and screens a great deal, just for lack, you know, that's how they kept in touch with their friends and as did we. But I remember 2022 slot, like slightly starting to come out the other side. I began hearing about Andrew Tate from my. My boys, the older boys, saying, like, Andrew Tate said this funny thing, like it was a name, you know, like, that's why Andrew Tattoo, why you. You keep talking about this guy Andrew Tate, like, I'm supposed to have heard of him. They're like, oh, he's really funny. So it was, it was spicy content to the effect of women are all like this. And. And then also his flex, his flexes like, he's like, oh, people say they don't like the color of my Bugatti, and I say, what color's your Bugatti? That was, you know, kind of funny. Kind of a funny flex, right? I mean, one thing that you always have to give, take credit for is he's extremely articulate and he's a kind of brilliant broadcaster, you know, irrespective of the message. He has a fluency for language and phrasing and messaging. And in addition, he figured out something about the Internet. So he would be doing, you know, his background was American dad, British mum, separated parents grow up mixed race in Luton in very, well say, very. It's a rough area of satellite of London that's got its own social challenges. And got into kickboxing, then got into reality tv, but always had a sense of his own mission. Good looking guy, muscular, 6ft 3 and with evidently some natural gift for charming women. And so he had taken to the podcast circuit and was doing interviews. And then he was talking a lot about various online online sales techniques, or part of it was something he called the PhD and it was the pimping hose degree. And you could subscribe to his course and he would teach you how to be a player. For one of a better term. It was basically a repackaged version of something I'd also made a program about called Pickup Artistry, which was this subculture of using body language and messaging in order to having almost mysterious and magical attraction over women. There was a book about it called the Game by Neil Strauss. So quasi hypnotic techniques like you use these words and women will fall into your lap. So that was the precursor culture to Tate. Plus a little bit of iceberg slim, like a kind of pimp speak based on the writings of the kind of pimp subculture of the sort of 50s and 60s, all packaged together in this kind of the form of this muscly, good looking kickboxer. And then doing his podcast he realized that the more outrageous he was, the more it was getting traction. And then he would get clippers, guys sort of piecework or gig work, part timers around wherever, like working from their homes who would take little bits and, and put them on the Internet, whether put them on TikTok, most of it was TikTok. I sometimes joke, it's not really, I sort of say like Andrew Tate's actually a side effect of the TikTok algorithm or he was at the time and then that would get viral and then suddenly his name was everywhere and more and more people were clipping him and getting more viral. So that led to this moment of emergence of him as the most googled man on the planet. But the techniques he used were picked up on by other influences looking to be the next Andrew Tate in slightly different forms or with similar messaging or slightly different. And so for our documentary originally the hope was we might get Andrew Tate or his brother Tristan Tate. I continue to kind of back and forth with them, DMing them as we were filming. It never, it never resulted in a one on one encounter. But we have other contributors who sort of speak to the culture. We have four main ones. Justin Waller, who's a friend of Tate's, a guy called Myron Gaines who's sort of an associate of Nick Fuentes. He's a, he's probably the most extreme one we follow. He's a podcaster based in Miami. We have Sneak Freshen, he's part of Fresh and Fit Sneako. His real name is Nick. Nicholas DeBellenthalzi is a streamer now based in New York and a UK based streamer who goes by HS Tiki Toki, real name Harrison Sullivan. All of them in different ways illustrating the sales grift or the, the ways in which this new media influencer culture is going viral and being streamed by, by our kids. I should say my kids are somewhat out the other side. And they would say like we never believed Andrew Tate, like we just enjoyed it as we Thought it was funny. Yeah, right. We like. And he's like, yeah, dad, it is funny. You got to admit it's funny. This is me being my kids now. So it is funny. Like. And actually, no one really. Why are you getting triggered? Like, no one really thinks that. But truthfully, while a lot of kids don't think that, like, enough of them do for it to be concerning, like, I think we give. We should give our children the credit of knowing most of the time how to read irony and understand that this is. You know, much as a comedian on stage might say things they don't mean, you know, there's an element of that, but that doesn't get you all the way off the hook. And. And I think the most extreme thing, you know, that I saw probably while filming wasn't even explicitly ideological. Like, it was what they call a predstinct, which is a moment when they set up a. An encounter with someone they accuse or believe to be a sexual predator on flimsy evidence, I would argue. And then as we. As we observed from a distance, they basically beat him up. And that. That for me, even as a documentary maker, you know, it's one thing to sort of talk to someone about their beliefs or historic practices or, you know, criminals in a prison or whatever, but when you're there and seeing a planned. What appears to be a planned attack and physical violence, basically, as you know, because they're doing it in order to engage people at home on the platform kick, and they're watching their View account go up, you are seeing in real time a criminal act, or what appears to be a criminal act being incentivized by the algorithms of a tech platform.
- [40:51]
Gavin Newsom
I think it was one of the most compelling parts of the documentary. Was it what Ed Matthews or some of these predators, things that they're doing, and as he's justifying it and you're visibly shaken up a little bit by it, but they're making the point how the numbers, the algorithms, everything's dialed up. The rage is dialed up. And. And then he claims that he deleted it, only to find out that they clipped the heck out of it and monitored.
- [41:12]
Louis Theroux
They've already clipped it. It's already gone virus. Too late. You know, as much as the same with, you know, when I talk to Sneako, who's also like, these are guys who would say our women shouldn't be able to vote. Yeah, women are, in various respects, not the equals of men. There's this sort of attempt to roll back. It's almost generous to call it a 19th century, but some sort of earlier sense of, you know, masculinity in a time when, you know, women should be absolutely either discouraged from or maybe forbidden from leaving the workplace. And these are guys who say like, well I'm banned from most of the platforms. A lot of them are back now. Sneako's back on YouTube, I think, and he's certainly on X. And by the way, I'm not necessarily even arguing that that's, I think that's a whole other question about, you know, how with a banning works or not. But either way, even the banned ones, their clips will go viral. And you know, we mentioned Nicolas Fuentes, like he's been banned from more platforms, he's back on X. But everyone sees his content because it gets clipped up and circulated. So it's not a straightforward question of oh, we've got to de platform these people. And truthfully, it isn't really a free speech issue because it's not so much that everyone decided, well, you want to ban and censor. Truthfully, what's happening isn't a free speech kind of level playing field for people's views. It's an amplification and an incentivization of extremism. Right. We are being more or less cajoled, coerced, finagled, hornswoggled into watching things that we might not even want to watch that much by appealing to our kind of lowest common denominator. Like you look at your feed and it's like, here's something else, here's something else. And without being lewd, like I sometimes, having made a few films about adult film or the adult world, I sometimes use the metaphor of pornography. Like everything's become kind of version of pornography. Like it's the poor, it's either emotional pornography, it's political pornography, which extremist content is. It's looking for a quick sort of a quick hit. What's going to grab you? What are you going to see? The thumbnail? Or what are you going to see that will be like, oh, I'm going to see that. Because it's, it's so glaringly strange and appealing. It's firing deepest basis parts of my brain in my amygdala and I'm, I'm helpless. You know, they've kind of hacked our brains. They've connected the most up to date and sophisticated kinds of media dissemination with the most primitive parts of our brains. And, and that's, that's a dangerous, that's a dangerous cocktail like that doom scrolling. I don't feel good about myself, but I can't quite switch off sort of
- [44:16]
Gavin Newsom
mindset when you were interviewing these folks. I mean, you know, I think the Myron Gaines clips were interesting in the documentary because he was visibly uncomfortable. You're talking to his girlfriend at the time, and, you know, you're getting two different stories. You know, the folks in front of the screen and then the folks behind the screen, you know, to the extent that they ever go offline. But you almost. I mean, the way it least appeared to me in the documentary is there's. There's kind of split personalities. These guys are performing.
- [44:49]
Louis Theroux
Yes.
- [44:49]
Gavin Newsom
More than anything else.
- [44:50]
Louis Theroux
It's complicated. Yeah. I think it's. I think it's a mistake to take it all at face value. One of the things I said to the team early on was, you know, there was this conversation about. It's about the manosphere. But what about, you know, how do we reflect the kind of the female experience in the film? You know, and there are female manosphere influences who promote, you know, bizarrely, the same sort of content saying, you know, because the view that the manosphere view is like, women are basically on the expression hoes. Like, you know, the women are just attracted to men of high value, and a man is only as good as his metric, like his income, his height, maybe the size of his sexual organ. Like, you are literally numbers. And that's how women see you. Like, women are. Their views of women are shallow. And so it's a. It's kind of strange and, you know, demeaning to. To both the men and the women. But at the same time, you sort of want to see, well, what. How do we sort of see the. The way women kind of exist alongside these guys. And my feeling was like, we don'. Really, you know, most of the man's favorite influence actually are men. And like all men, they exist alongside women. And what we'll find is. Okay, it's actually a little bit of a hack of my own. A professional hack is like, if you try, if you're struggling with figuring out who someone is, you see them with their significant other. You know, I've done programs about celebrities. I can't get through this guy. I often joke, like, if I went to do a program about Trump, who knows, maybe it'll happen. I would probably spend more time with Melania, you know, or I'd want to see them side by side. Right. How do they negotiate each other? You know, they say, no man is a hero to his valet. That's an old cliche. But in the same context, like no man or woman is a hero to their significant other. And so I just had an instinct that when we're with these guys, they're going to be performing masculinity, saying, like, I, I can have any woman I want. And you know, and then the girlfriend's going to be there and, and they'll be like, anyway, never mind. Nothing. You know, like, they'll just, they'll just, they'll kind of have to moderate it or something and, or it will be that you'll get a sense of the woman is not on board with it or. Because I've done programs about pimps too. And you know, pimps are real. Like, it's strange to see, but the women are very often, you know, deprived of other choices in different respects, grappling with low self esteem, they're damaged, they're in a bad spot. So there is a, there is a kind of emotional and social algebra in which it takes place that kind of makes it make sense, you know, albeit in a toxic way. Anyway, sure enough, when we turn up with Myron Gaines and he's saying, like, a lot of these guys are, I believe in one way, monogamy. I'm not doing the accent right. I'm all over the map. And he goes, I go, what's that? And they say, he says, I think I should be allowed to basically pursue as many romantic adventures as I like, but my wife, my girlfriend is, is completely loyal to me and that's the way it should be. And she. And then just as we're talking about it, his girlfriend Angie arrives. And then I kind of calculatedly, cynically you might say, dob him in. I'm like, hey, Angie, Myron is just saying that he wants to have multiple wives. And are you signed up to that? And you can see she makes this face like, I don't know, we've talked about that and I'm not sure, which is not surprising. What's a little bit surprising is that he starts backpedaling and saying like, well, that's a long way off. And I go, well, it sounds like you're avoiding. And who knows, maybe I'll decide I don't want multiple wives, which in his world is a huge misstep. Because what you don't want to be doing is pandering to the perception of female expectation, right? It's called losing frame. You're supposed to stick but with, you know, it's non negotiable. You got to be. It is what it is. Like that's considered alpha behavior. So he was kind of unmasked, or at least found guilty of non alpha behavior, something I participate in quite freely, by the way, as in the non alpha ness. But in his world that was a misstep. And so you see him feeling, I think, discombobulated, unmasked, humiliated maybe. So it was one of those moments you feel like, okay, I think I did my job today.
- [49:33]
Gavin Newsom
Do you? These folks enduring meaning, are they. I mean, 10 years from now, do you see the boy's fear turning into the manosphere? Do you see a. Or is it just. Just this is a continuation as you, you know, you reflect back. I mean, you've, you know, past this prologue in terms of just this has existed. It will continue to exist, but now it's being amplified, weaponized. The grievance that is our algorithm, it's just, it's finding us. I mean, is.
- [49:57]
Louis Theroux
Yeah, that's a. It's a big one. And that's a very apposite question. I mean, I purposefully framed the film around the extreme of the manosphere. There's a really good article in the New York Times which you can find on the website or on the app, which is something along the lines of, like, we're all in the manosphere, which kind of makes the case that we, we shouldn't make the mistake of making all masculine behavior, quote, unquote, toxic. Like, I think it's okay to say a lot of the time, not all the time, but a lot of the time, a lot of guys like things that a lot of the time, a lot of women might not like, or there are interesting divergences that don't hold true universally, but which is nevertheless helpful. You know, it shouldn't be necessarily toxic to say, like, most men might prefer this and most women might not prefer it, you know, and for some reason that's become, in some circles, I don't even know, like, there's a perception that maybe that's controversial. I don't even know if it is. But I do know that a lot of guys, rightly or wrongly, feel judged about maybe conforming to certain masculine archetypes. And as a father of three boys, as a man myself, like, I think, you know, you shouldn't feel judged. Like if you, if you participate, whether it's combat sports or you want to take your boys to the game, or, like that should be okay. And by the way, girls too, and women too. But, you know, we shouldn't, we shouldn't feel, we shouldn't feel as though we're afraid to endorse or behave in ways that in the past, like, might be associated with masculine masculinity. Where it goes next I is a hard one to call. Like you were mentioning, like, are they really like that or is it a performance? It's. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. Like, it's definitely not the case. They go off stream and say, well, let's go to the opera. And I can't wait to read this new book by, you know, Joyce Carol Oates. You know what I mean? Like, and gets a little. I mean, you can't think of any even example. They're not deep thinkers and readers, you know, they're definitely. But they also are in certain respects being distorted. Like, I sometimes say that, you know, the algorithm is a mirror. Like that's been said by Neil Mohan, who runs YouTube. But actually it's a funhouse mirror. So we are recognizably ourselves, but in a this sort of distorted and often grotesque way. If, if you remove the funhouse mirror of the algorithm, it would be nice to believe you go back to normal. I'm not sure if you go completely back to normal. Like, I. I think if you, if you drink of that sort of content for long enough and intensively enough, I do think it has an effect on you. The thing I avoided, and this is either dereliction or just the kind of filmmaking I do, I avoided trying to show what positive masculinity looked like. It's like, this is very much like a conversation that needs to be had, but not one that I necessarily presented in the film. And the idea of, like, have we been overly censorious of certain aspects of behavior? Is that, could we more indulgent, you know, what does a second chance look like in a world where we're also holding people account to account for their transgressions? Like, these are all great questions that I think is part of a bigger and different conversation. I will say that. And also the level to which those distorted kinds of thinking percolate downwards. Like, how. How pervasive is that kind of toxic behavior? To what extent are kids able to metabolize and then move on from it? For observing my own kids, like, I'd like to think they are well adjusted. And I'm sure that's true for many of them. I do also think that for a lot of these guys, like, I'm just as interested in the distorting effect that it has on the influences themselves. And I think there's a kind of almost not psychosis Exactly. But a kind of existential, existential fragmentation or disintegration that can kick in with these streamers. When you're online for that long, it's like a sensory deprivation tank. Like you're going out to stream everything's content. Your main relationship in the world is not with another physical person, it's with the chat. And the chat just wants you to get into fights. Yeah. Or go out or be obnoxious to a woman or say things that are outrageous. And then a certain point it's like, who are you? So I do all of that. Like there's a degree of sympathy I have for those content creators and how they come out of the other side of it. But luckily it's people like you, Gavin, who got the privilege of figuring out how much of this is legislated for like how we put measures in place. Like obviously down in. I think it's in la. Is it where they've had the so called big tobacco moment with tech and the attempt to try and push back or hold to account the streaming platforms that have incentivized self sabotaging behavior. But I don't know what this looks like in terms of policy. I do think government. I do think government has a role
- [55:30]
Gavin Newsom
though, and there's no. We've had a lot of interesting conversations.
- [55:35]
Robert Smigel
Scott Gallo, another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite on Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier this week. My guests, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.
- [55:55]
Louis Theroux
Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.
- [55:58]
Robert Smigel
Those people are starving for banter. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [56:08]
Sanjana Bhasker
Why is everyone obsessed with romance right now? Like everyone your co worker who quote unquote doesn't read is reading romance your mom? Book talk the entire Internet. I'm Sanjana bhasker. I'm Tyler McCall and this is Radio 831, a romance podcast. The books, the tropes, the adaptations, the drama, the discourse and what all of it says about how we actually love, yearn and obsess. We're going to Wuthering Heights, which for the record is not a romance novel. And yet it has haunted the romance genre for 200 years. We're getting into dark romance age gaps. Certain Russian hockey players and sentient objects in love, which is a thing. That's the kind of conversation we're having every episode. Listen to the Radio 831 podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts,
- [57:07]
Dr. Dom
agency the ability to know that we're the experts in our own body on the podcast. Cultivating her space Dr. Dom and Terry Lomax create a space where Black women can show up fully and be heard. I wholeheartedly think, you know, you hit 30, you shouldn't have to share a room with anybody.
- [57:25]
Terry Lomax
From navigating friendships and healing to setting boundaries and prioritizing your mental health, these are real, honest conversations we don't always get to have out loud.
- [57:36]
Dr. Dom
Totally unreasonable with different parts of life, right? Like, oh, have all three meals and make sure you're mindful during all of them. Absolutely not. During one meal, I'm standing. I'm standing and handing my children food.
- [57:48]
Terry Lomax
Because healing, empowerment and resilience aren't just ideas, they're practices. And this Mental Health Awareness Month, there's no better time to pour back into yourself.
- [57:59]
Dr. Dom
Listen to Cultivating her space on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [58:08]
Carlos King
If you're watching the latest season of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, you already know there's a lot to break down.
- [58:14]
Louis Theroux
Portia accusing Kelly of sleeping with a married man.
- [58:17]
Robert Smigel
They holding K. Michelle back from fighting. Drew Pinky has financial issues.
- [58:22]
Louis Theroux
I like the bougie style of Housewives show. I think it looks like it's gonna be interesting.
- [58:27]
Carlos King
On the podcast Reality with the King I, Carlos King recap the biggest moments from your favorite reality shows, including the Real Housewives franchise, the drama, the alliances and the tea everybody's talking about. As an executive producer in reality television, I'm not just watching it. I understand the game. As somebody who creates shows, I'll even say this at the end of the day when people are at home, they want entertainment to hear this and more. Listen to Reality with the King on the iPhone, heart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [59:03]
Gavin Newsom
Richard Reeves has been focusing on the institute of Men and Boys, and many, many of us are trying to lead the what is positive masculinity look like. How do we address the crisis of our men and boys? And what is it that they're as you suggest that we, you know, I love the starchky and hutch and, you know, $6 million man and all your references. You're right. We, we all sort of attach to that archetype but in a way that, you know, didn't necessarily go down the path. That is the path that briefly I want to just touch upon which is, you know, there's so many reveals here about back to misogyny etc, but also this anti Semitic, you know, reveal which seems to be the one, I mean that connects so many of the dots. I mean you can't even get started on Nick Fuentes. But you know, Sneako's challenges with that. Not, you know, I know he's Q on adjacent, but all these guys, there was a, that was an undercurrent. Even Harrison Sullivan and his relationship with his mother, which you know, is a whole nother thing, their lack of relationship perhaps with their father. And that was also modestly explored. So there's so many components, you know, that's I guess, you know, for follow up for the rest of us. But, but the anti Semitic thread, is that something that.
- [60:16]
Louis Theroux
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's key. I think it's key. Yes, I think it's key to understanding that and I think there's a couple of things behind it. And by the way, thank you for referencing the psychological dimension. I do think Absent fathers is a common, is a common thread through a lot of the upbringings that we see and a lack of parenting and there's a lack of positive real role models. Which by the way, as a denizen of prisons in my documentaries and jails and high crime areas is a very common thread. Like I did a film about Milwaukee about the, it's the most incarcerated postcode zip code in the US is at the time anyway, was the area of Milwaukee. I, I thought about calling the documentary like the city without Fathers. Like which is there were no fathers there. Right. Like, and, and, and, and actually then you get this cycle of violence to the point about antisemitism. Two main things. One is wherever you find conspiracy theories, anti Semitism is usually not far behind. It's kind of, you know, it's been phrased in the past that antisemitism is the socialism of fools. And this goes back at least to the 19th century. And in fact further, like during the pandemic, I read a book about Black Death. 1347-49, a third of the European population died. And job one, when the Black Death came to your town, seemed to be round up the Jews and harass or kill them, you know, and that was like, well, we don't know if it works, but it's worth a try kind of. And I think that's. That Speaks to us in the west having a sadly, part of our Christian legacy is an anti Semitic dimension to that. And you know, as, as a kind of perennial other like viewed as people who are in different ways not fully trusted. It's a kind of easy sort of go to an attempt to stigmatize, dehumanize and you know, in extremists actually harm and hurt. I think the other part of it is as a taboo and you know, and rightly so, you know, I think bigotry obviously should be a taboo, but taboos are also catnip online. So it's kind of the ultimate, you know, the. They call it the final boss of taboos. Like when you've, when you've kind of explored the boundaries with sexual content or stay racist or content or fighting or sexism, where do you go, where's, where else do you go for the ultimate outrage? You, that's where you start indulging in anti Semitic tropes or calling out anti Semitism or rather indulging in antisemitism. So I think it's a symptom of the outrage economy as well. So yeah, it's depressing and in fact it's the last reveal of the film in a way. But nevertheless that's where an attention economy winds up. And I don't even, I think across the board, I think there's parts of it that are real. I think Myron Gaines is genuinely anti Semitic. I think with Harrison Sullivan notwithstanding that he clearly says anti Semitic things. I think he and Ed Matthews as well. It's almost like they say, it's with so much ignorance that you don't even really know what you're saying. It'll be in the same breath as, oh, and by the way, we've never been to the moon and the earth is flat. Right, right. It feels like either a profound ignorance or a profound need to just say something bonkers for them. And then in other cases it feels like it's based on, it's mixed in with a really deep, a deeply felt bigotry. And so the anti Semitism is more real in those cases.
- [64:36]
Gavin Newsom
Louis, do you feel, I mean, after you complete a documentary like this, I mean, you know, and I appreciate just the empathy which you, you know, indulge, you know, and, and really try to, you know, understand and, and, and at least how you come across is not being judgmental in terms of the inquiry, but after the manosphere, was this something left you wanting, frustrated, hopeless, hopeful, deep, more deeply concerned about the trend lines where we're going. And you know how it's, it's multifaceted with these platforms and you know, rumble not just Kik and others. Not that the platforms themselves are the problem, but the content and just the nature of the brain and the algorithms and truth trust we haven't even gotten.
- [65:31]
Louis Theroux
Yeah, it's hard. I mean, it's hard. It's hard to like. I often think that my documentaries are informed by a spirit of optimism and, and as much as it's, it's true that I focus on the dark side of life, you know, sexual predators or criminals or gang leaders. Very often it's usually in the context of seeing how their pastimes or their, or their, you know, the things that they're indulged in are informed by a need for community, a need for meaning, a need to be the heroes of their lives. Yeah. And, or you know, you know, there. And there are positive values mixed in with that like, and trying to see it in the round in that way. So I do allow for those elements of this world that are humorous. I know it sounds weird to maybe even acknowledge that that are creative, disruptive, free spirited, anarchic. You know, going as a fan of gangster rap, by the way, which also there's a little bit and wrestling like these all, you know, pro wrestling, you take on a neck. All of these worlds which involve creativity and self performance and feuding and outrage. So I do, I allow for those and I recognize those as parts of the, like, we don't want to be the old guy who's like kids these days, you know, like, you know, in my day we just played with marbles and yo yos and you know, we went to the game, you know, like clearly this is, you know, that need to provoke an outrage. All of that needs to be acknowledged as an evergreen part of the human experience. I don't know in terms of where the culture goes. It's also clear that these platforms aren't going anywhere. We have to live with them. I mean, one possibility is that they just get overtaken by the next AI. Things are changing so quickly. It may be that this tsunami is just overtaken by the fact there's another even bigger tsunami behind it. The really basic and quotidian thing is that, yes, we should discourage our kids from being on phones and screens too much. Keep the phones out of the bedroom. Talk to your kids. Phones out of schools. Don't give them the phones till they're certain age. Check what they're watching. If they, you know, I'm not giving my 11 year old, a phone. At least he's going to have a brick phone or a dumb phone, I guess, at least till he's 12, I don't know, 13, 40 something. We haven't figured it out, but you know, be present, be a present, be around for your kids, all of that stuff. But. So I have micro suggestions, but on the macro stuff, I don't have much concrete except to say that I. If I've seen anything in all these years of making work in this kind of world, I'm struck by the adaptability of humans are wherewithal in terms of dealing with the impossible. Like anything that's come along. And also as a historian I mentioned I went to Oxford. I'm going to mention that again. But you know, we've been through so many cataclysms and upheavals. You know, it was from. It was the printing press or it was the Industrial revolution, it was TV, it was gangster rap going back to 92. Charlton Heston and Tipper Gore, you know, we thought it was the end of the world. And I'm not trying to trivialize it, but, you know, it was that feeling of like, what Our kids are listening to Cop Killer by Iced Tea. Nothing's ever going to be the same again. So I do try and keep it in perspective and. But I also think it's about policing the content in ways that are modest and achievable, you know, and picking your kids up on things that they say and having conversations with them. I do think that we've. I do think that I think the future is bright. But that's more of an act of faith than an observation about reality.
- [69:25]
Gavin Newsom
What's what? What's the next project?
- [69:28]
Louis Theroux
I got a few things cooking. I mainly do my podcast between my day job. My real job is making documentaries. But to try and be around for my kids, I've started podcasting more and more. I've got. I'm talking to Netflix about doing something else. I don't know, it's. It's. It's a strange situation where your job involves documenting like dysfunction. Like, it feels like I'm a parasite on, you know, the apocalyptic trends of humanity. Like, I always. I shouldn't even say this to the Governor of California, but I used to enjoy living in la. I lived in LA for three years. I was like. Because every day it felt like the world was ending. I mean, I'm slightly exaggerating, but you know, like, it was in the winter, you get mudslides. And then later in the year you get heat waves and then you get forest fires like we were on the perpetual sense of ecological catastrophe and a city that was kind of in the throes of kind of breaking apart. I love la. Like, I'm not trying to be rude about the city, but part of its majesty.
- [70:32]
Gavin Newsom
Cursed, I appreciate.
- [70:33]
Louis Theroux
Yeah, it's a majesty of a city that's, you know, fascinatingly figuring itself out in real time. So there's no shortage of subjects, which is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on whether you're a documentary maker or the governor of California.
- [70:54]
Robert Smigel
Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy not quite on Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier this week. My guests, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel helped an acapella band with their between songs Banter.
- [71:13]
Louis Theroux
Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.
- [71:16]
Robert Smigel
Those people are starving for banter. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [71:25]
Psychology of Your Twenties Host
Your twenties can be so exciting, but they can also be really overwhelming, confusing, and honestly, just kind of lonely. May is mental health awareness month and the psychology of your twenties is breaking down the science behind the biggest roadblocks we face.
- [71:41]
Psychology of Your Twenties Guest
I was six years into my career, the 80 hour weeks and just the first one in, the last one out and I ended up burning out. There was a large chunk of my twenties that I like was just so wanting to like be out of that phase, out of my skin and I just like really regret not living in the present more.
- [71:55]
Psychology of Your Twenties Host
You don't need to have everything figured out right now. You just need to understand yourself a little bit better. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [72:09]
Tom Boger
American soccer is about to explode.
- [72:11]
Gavin Newsom
The World cup is coming.
- [72:12]
Louis Theroux
Ramos sending on Ernie Stewart the chip.
- [72:17]
Gavin Newsom
I'm Tab Ramos.
- [72:19]
Tom Boger
I'm Tom Boke. On our podcast Inside American Soccer, you'll get the real storylines, the biggest decisions, and the truth about the U.S. national team.
- [72:28]
Louis Theroux
It wouldn't be a huge surprise if our team ends up in the quarterfinals
- [72:32]
Gavin Newsom
or potentially a great run into the semifinals.
- [72:35]
Tom Boger
Listen to Inside American Soccer with Tom Boger and Tab ramos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
- [72:43]
Diana Maria Riva
Hey, I'm Diana Maria Riva and on my new podcast How Hard can it Be? I call on my Gen X squad from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate midlife's most fantastic bs Unfiltered conversations from night sweats to fupas to scheduling sex. Wait, what sex?
- [72:58]
Louis Theroux
Is it just me, or does every
- [73:01]
Diana Maria Riva
woman my age want to look at
- [73:03]
Louis Theroux
Pinterest instead of having sex?
- [73:04]
Diana Maria Riva
Sometimes they say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure gonna try. So let's get blunt with laughs, tears, or tears of laughter. Listen to How Hard Can It Be With Diana Maria Riva on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [73:18]
Louis Theroux
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.