[SPEAKER_03]: What's up ladies and gentlemen boys and girls around the world?

[SPEAKER_03]: I'd like to welcome you back to the real talk with Zubi Podcast.

[SPEAKER_03]: On today's episode we have got on Phil Maker, Hawk Jensen, and actor and writer, Clifton Duncan.

[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome to the show, however you both do it.

[SPEAKER_03]: doing okay man.

[SPEAKER_01]: Doing well, enjoying getting into the summer here and, you know, looking this world unfold in front of us has been pretty nuts lately, but it's been fun because you guys are also experiencing it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So things are going great.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I don't think the world is ever normal and perhaps the world has never quite been normal and that's just the story of humanity and history.

[SPEAKER_03]: But as we say that, I mean, a few years ago, we were living in a totally, totally different time, and all three of us have had a lot to say about that and have said a lot about it.

[SPEAKER_03]: The first question I want to ask you both individually is, [SPEAKER_03]: What are your thoughts as you reflect back on everything that happened in 2020 through to 2022, even later, depending on where you are in the world?

[SPEAKER_03]: But we went through a lot of madness with the whole COVID-19 hype, the pandemic, the lockdowns, the mandates, all of it.

[SPEAKER_03]: What are your thoughts now as you reflect on it years later?

[SPEAKER_01]: Part of the reason I got hyper involved with trying to document what was going on during the pandemic and the lockdowns through the this TV series that evolved the science lockdowns go viral, which you guys are both participated in, was that knowing that we have a cultural norm of a type of amnesia that everybody eventually forgets everything that we went through.

[SPEAKER_01]: and we didn't typically have a way to capture it and we seem to have this capacity to repeat history because people don't learn from the wisdom of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Seems like two or three generations it goes away.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so I really wanted to work on this amnesious aspect of it through this project.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here we are, four or five years into it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And now, all of us who were actually active dissidents of various stripes or active documentaries or active pundits or voice pieces trying to talk to what was going on trying to un, you know, kind of, [SPEAKER_01]: decode the truth from it are seeing this amnesia sort of kick in people are just sort of oh I don't really want to think about it or I it's I don't really recall anymore It's this this part of our cultural experience that's normal and [SPEAKER_01]: or just been normalized to the point that people because it's amnesic, people forget it's happening as it's happening.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I feel like all of us are sort of watching that happen and it can be very disheartening I would say because you think we've done all this hard work and it seems to be slowly disappearing, which is why I tried to [SPEAKER_01]: mitigate that in my own little way with this with this series, but it's interesting to watch it happen on one side, and then I'll just add, you know, then then you see like years later, all that it was a movement to push back against it, and you see the sort of riffs in the movement, the falling out amongst dissidents, it's sort of the natural progression of a movement, and so then you see and and you see sort of how wedges were driven between different groups and groups that seem very tight are now not working with each other, there are groups that are [SPEAKER_01]: are like oh wait we were right when they've been bolstered by that and and and even to the point of of a different I'd hold different group of scientists coming into power and the form J about a charion whatnot which we'll get into but it's just like that aspect of the amnesia aspect and sort of like the watching the movement evolved within that amnesia has been really [SPEAKER_01]: interesting to do primarily because so many people such as your two gentlemen as well can see it happening actively.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what I would sort of say is where I'm at, where my vision is right now, watching that unfold.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was on a walk this morning and I was struck with this sort of epiphany, a mini epiphany about, you know, I spent so much of my life, especially as an actor, you know, you desperately want to fit in.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's an industry that's very much built and needing to be liked and accepted by the people around you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, Zubee, as you asked your question and Hawke, as you were speaking, up out to myself, the revelation I had this morning, which was [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't realize how valuable it is to not fit in with people until 2020.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was a time where actively going against the grain, and going against the quote unquote consensus, which was completely manufactured, was actually far more valuable.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think far more beneficial to my personal health and individual health, even though it was a really long time.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it was a time where I became and Zubi, you had a great thread, you know, a classic thread about this on Twitter.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, you just learned a lot about humanity, you learned a lot about social coercion and social disintegration, you learned a lot about [SPEAKER_00]: people's collective psychology, you learned a lot about just how willing people are to abandon their stated principles.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it was funny to watch the people who've been shrieking about fascism for the past decade become the most ardent fascists for one.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think at the bottom of the bottom of it for me, and me as the sort of sensitive artist type, I was so disturbed by just how willing people were to completely throw away everything that makes life worth meaning.

[SPEAKER_00]: for an indefinite period of time and to let, you know, out of one side of our faces, we say that these politicians are complete embezzles and no one should follow them, but then they spent years allowing politicians and these bureaucrats to dictate every aspect of our lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you spoke out against that, if you opposed that, then you were the one who was been called insane by people who were still to this day or putting masks on their children.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it was a very, very bizarre time and Hock, you were looting to people who were trying to kind of forget about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, I meet people who...

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they don't want to re-litigate the past, or if my favorite is, you know, what we didn't know what we know now, and hindsight is 2020, and well, you know, we had the hindsight in 2020, and we were trying to tell you what was going on, but you called us conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers and tried to destroy our lives, and now you want to just kind of walk away from it, and that's really unfortunate, and again another lesson, a hard lesson about humanity, unfortunately.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, for sure, so many lessons learned and many reinforced.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's really important to keep talking about it.

[SPEAKER_03]: I can totally understand, believe me.

[SPEAKER_03]: I can totally understand even from the perspective of a dissident, which I guess I could call myself.

[SPEAKER_03]: Even I sort of have that thing of just like, let's move on and not talk about it, partly because it's just frustrating and it's sort of makes me mad when I reflect back on a lot of the stuff that happens, it makes me like, I'm a pretty chilled guy, it makes me very, very annoyed.

[SPEAKER_03]: we can't allow it to be memory-hold.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's the thing.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I don't think it's worth holding on to anger and resentment because that just poisons yourself, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: It poisons the vessel you've got to get on with your life, but at the same time there hasn't been any acknowledgement or accountability even all these years later.

[SPEAKER_03]: It sort of seems like that's potentially just not going to come.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't know, like the thing that worries me, [SPEAKER_03]: is I know for sure some people have learned the right lesson from it, but I think some people have learned the opposite.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think there are people who live through that entire thing.

[SPEAKER_03]: And if you were to ask them about it, their whole thing is like, oh, we should have like, we just didn't go hard enough, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: We should have given the government even more power.

[SPEAKER_03]: We should have locked down harder and earlier, and we should have forced those anti-vaxxers to do this.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm just like, oh my gosh, like that is the lesson that you picked.

[SPEAKER_03]: from those last couple of years.

[SPEAKER_03]: So that's the part that's really scary.

[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe even more so now like as a father and as someone who's going to have descendants and you just kind of think, gosh, what's going to come down in the pipeline?

[SPEAKER_03]: It could be a decade from now.

[SPEAKER_03]: It could be 20 years, 30 years from now, but you know, something else is going to come down the pipeline and how are people going to react?

[SPEAKER_03]: Will anything have been learned collectively?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I love about people like Pete Parada, you know, the drummer who was ousted from his former band, whom we won't mention, you know, and I know people who were, you know, they say to me privately, oh, I agree with everything and I hate everything that's going on, but, you know, I have [SPEAKER_00]: I have a daughter to raise and everything, and I'm thinking to myself, okay, well, I mean, I understand, but then what kind of example are you setting for your daughter A and then what kind of world are you creating, what kind of society and culture are you creating for that daughter or that son to live in, or that they them to live in, once you pass on.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it was not just about [SPEAKER_00]: We're acting in the moment, I think a big part of my opposition and my, you know, dissent if I can call it that was the setting of precedence and what it means for the future.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I agree that people, I mean, there are still people that are like, you know, that it's the meme, government-harder daddy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, they think that it was the right thing to do, and they would do it all over again if they could.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the most terrifying thing to me.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I mean, I'm, I'm sort of the eternal optimist dissident where, where the aspect of, I'm, I feel that there was a process.

[SPEAKER_01]: I can open with, I mean, I'm, I still kind of live in 2020 and 2021 and I'm, you know, I'm still, I've been, I look at materials.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've downloaded vast archives of all the media from the time.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm still working on some finer points on some of the later episodes, but episode 1 and 2 follow the science has been released.

[SPEAKER_01]: 3 is right now.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just trying to thinnest that one.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the whole story of the Great Berndton Declaration more importantly about the herd immunity sort of propaganda stick lying that occurred from basically the get go of the lockdowns.

[SPEAKER_01]: and and and going through it all and it's just maddeningly difficult to understand because it's high-level science different coupals a different scientific groups different propaganda stick ways of thinking and speaking and presenting at a public health policy level and they're all kind of conk [SPEAKER_01]: Coming together at this key moment of history in which everyone's terrified for their own well-being and and and everything's just fear fear fear fear fear Do it or to told do it or told do it your told it's this is unique piece of history and it was worldwide never ever ever happened like that before [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, there was when I kind of was pulling together various, you know, this is how I met you guys in the early days where like those of us who stood up early or kind of questioned early kind of found each other and we're talking about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the, the, the big concern was the normalization of lockdowns.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the series specifically you're like, like, instead of looking at what was Wuhan was at a lab leak.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's a whole issue.

[SPEAKER_01]: but we want to understand the science of lockdowns and there's so much going on but it's hard not to just sort of look at one piece of it without all the other aspects kind of coming in and one of the concerns another one of these concerns coming in is like well if we get used to lockdowns does that mean the next lockdown will be easier i think zubi i think you make the point the series very specifically like once we've normalized this what it's it's much easier to do it again [SPEAKER_01]: technically speaking for and at for for forgetting people to basically self-imprison in their own domicile and you know and I did a lot of work with the Soviet Union and looking at distance back that and I mean one of the recurring sort of memes if you will from that was that it the the [SPEAKER_01]: They didn't have concentration camps.

[SPEAKER_01]: They had goulogs.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in a certain point, like, well, you can't see the goulogs anymore.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, well, it's because they became invisible.

[SPEAKER_01]: The walls became invisible.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the fear, I think what I'm getting that is what Clifton was saying was the fear was like, will we sell from prison again has a norm being established, all that kind of stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: And [SPEAKER_01]: And that's a big concern, but my eternal optimism as a dissident is so many people have seen through it as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's this huge new world of dissidents, which is basically someone a free thinker who is willing to express themselves and express it out loud and say it to a lot of people.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's all a dissident as a someone who's willing to think it, say it to a lot of people.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the worry is like, well, there's a lot of people that don't seem to want to be doing that, but I think there's so many more people from around the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: Every community had its own natural distance awake and start questioning it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I always kind of lean into that that I'm very happy.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's so many people questioning it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, as I said before, the movement moves forward.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's falling out amongst different, disciplined groups.

[SPEAKER_01]: People initially were aligned.

[SPEAKER_01]: And now there's this very interesting, watching different groups kind of, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: They're not quite what they are thinking and there's differences of opinion and that turns into an egoic rift usually and who's making money off of it and they're kind of off of falling out which is unfortunate but typical and and what always happens with the dissident movement but my main point is there's a lot of free thinking individuals way more on alert than there were [SPEAKER_01]: five years ago, and the nature of tyrannical regimes is they know anyone person who thinks for themselves and pushes back is a threat to the system, and so I just, that's where I find solace, is that so many people saw it, so many people are going to question it, and if it comes back, I just don't think the compliance, this exercise and compliance that I think the lockdowns, [SPEAKER_01]: and the co-opademic represented will move, we'll go through it smoothly, and there'll be severe serious resistance, if not outwriting noring of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's my sort of grand look at it in a positive way.

[SPEAKER_03]: Something that I've reflected on a lot over the last few years, and I want to pose a question to each of you.

[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe Clifton, you can take this first, but [SPEAKER_03]: Why do you think it is that you saw through it?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that's a really tough question.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it goes back to what I mentioned at the top of the conversation.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I have someone who, I feel like I've spent much of my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: with my feet and two dimensions, and even now, you know, I find this pattern in my life where I am watching two, I'm like a stride to separate in competing realities, and [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I sort of had my awakening, so to speak, in 2014, and I mean that in the sense that I realized that so much of what we call journalism is, in fact, not that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we live in a society that's built on lies in many, many ways.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, the funny thing is for me that when 2020 began, I was very much in, you know, maybe it was a bit of contrarianism or something, but, you know, the first three months of that year.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I was the one who was, you know, masking up and, and, and, and, you know, wiping down my mail and my groceries.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I got made fun of at 1.000 midtown Manhattan going into the subway and this guy saw me I was wearing a mask, you know, it was like dust and about to be brush-hour and black folks are so funny man, but he was just like he said the ones are wearing a mask, they must be the ones that got it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was the one, you know, I was going to auditions, being like, hey, man, it's a virus coming.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm not going to shake your hand.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I stocked up on food and supplies and I overpaid.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, even at that point in late January, early February, it was impossible to find a mask.

[SPEAKER_00]: A mask meant two hours one night walking around lower Manhattan, going into every convenient store, trying to find face masks, and they were already sold out at that point.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was the one who was going against the grain saying, A guy is like, they're certain death coming for all of us, and no one's doing anything about it, but then around April or so.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or March or April, I began to say, well wait a minute, this kind doesn't make sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think one thing that may be saved me is you'll be going to your original question, is that I had people in my life with whom I disagreed, and whom I also respected.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so one of my friends, you know, sent me an article by the note of the noted scientist, John Yannides, and his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, I think it was in March.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was like, you know, this thing might not be as bad as it's being projected to be.

[SPEAKER_00]: I remember being highly annoyed, but because I respected this person that sent it to me, I kept a little door open as they all.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, fine, I guess everyone's gonna die, but you know, I'll consider that you might be saying the right thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, whatever, fine.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I think maybe that little drop of skepticism, and also my natural skepticism towards the broader, I guess, media landscape, I suppose.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because if you remember about February or so, all these outlets were saying, it's just the flu, bro.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then a month later, they were like, everyone's going to die, stay at home.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's which, and observing, you know, I don't watch the news I observe the news.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so observing the news, and how it did 180 was another sort of antenna moment, a spidey-sensis tingling.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then over time, I realized that even though our numbers were improving, the restrictions were either remaining or getting worse, I noticed how no one was really taking any cost benefit analysis.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I was already kind of thinking like an economist in a way, what are the trade-offs of what we are doing, are you willing to trade-off, and for how long all the benefits of life and everything that makes life worth living, [SPEAKER_00]: for an illness that we already know impacts a certain number of people or a certain specific type of person.

[SPEAKER_00]: And...

[SPEAKER_00]: And then the summer of Love came along and all the George Floyd riots, and it was just like, okay, man, like you literally had outlets like Vox printing stories that said, well, you know, a week before, if you were protesting lockdowns, you wanted everyone to die, but then if you were protesting on behalf of Black Lives Matter, then you know, scientists say that the protest might be slowing the spread of the virus, and they're like, really guys, are you kidding me?

[SPEAKER_00]: Are you kidding me right now?

[SPEAKER_00]: So, I think, you know, probably April 2020 on, I, again, began, had this instinct to not really go along with the consensus and say, well, something else is going on here.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that is sort of what saved me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think another wrinkle to that and Zubi, you and I had a conversation long ago that kind of, you know, put me on this journey.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it was the spiritual component because, you know, I'm someone who self-identifies as an atheist and a non-believer at the same time of nowhere near as much of a dick about it as I was, you know, a decade or 15 years ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought it was really interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: watching my Christian friends, my religious friends, be far more willing to speak up and stand up and say something is spiritually wrong, something is evil about all of this and demonic even, whereas my supposedly sophisticated secular friends were freaking out about everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so again, I don't know, you know, I think some people are sort of built different.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, even back in 2009, with the Barack Obama's medical, you know, is the Obamacare.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, the two words government mandate are the I remember very clearly in 2009 I said nope not about it [SPEAKER_00]: you know because of those two words.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I think some people maybe just be they might just be built different.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some people just have an instinct.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some people, you know, there's some level of maybe natural skepticism or a instinct that that something is wrong and they allow themselves to follow it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, I don't think I'm some kind of special person.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just think that I was [SPEAKER_00]: is has been sort of a lone wolf in many ways and someone who just for whatever reason was able to say something is not right about any of this and I cannot shut up about it and I don't know why that is.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't really have a good solid answer for all I just talked about it.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's very interesting answer.

[SPEAKER_03]: Hawk, what are your thoughts?

[SPEAKER_03]: What was your experience?

[SPEAKER_01]: in terms of seeing through it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you know, it's funny.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's, it's, I used to use it.

[SPEAKER_01]: The term happy go lucky.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's how I used to sort of deter, like describe my personality, just an experiencing life through about to 2012, 2015.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, all right, you can kind of, it was, the end of history was that, [SPEAKER_01]: early 90s and we had the sort of 30 years of relative peace in terms of I guess America's the suit dominant superpower whatever it was.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean there was a reason there was sort of it just seemed as if history had sort of paused and everyone was just sort of well this is how life goes and we're just living life and [SPEAKER_01]: And during that time, I was like, well, great, I wanted to experience as much as I can, so I traveled a lot, did a lot of things work many different aspects of a career.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was working film in LA, so I could travel with work and then take breaks and work and do a lot of traveling and trying to learn a lot.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in that time, I always enjoyed absurdist humor or strange literature.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I got into Kafka and other and [SPEAKER_01]: Lots of writers from the European era, where they were dealing with the Soviet block or aspects of a leftist society that were just so confusing, they couldn't figure out how to describe it to people.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I always thought it was just sort of an interesting, you know, if you look at Kafka, it's like these very strange stories that don't really make sense.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought there was kind of funny and an absurdist way.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then I accidentally, I got a phone call from a group out of DC looking to tell the stories, very difficult stories about dissidents in the Soviet Union, or former Soviet Union states, or our socialist states, or left-of-center states.

[SPEAKER_01]: I also previously done a lot of work with dissidents in fascist states.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I was interested in dissidents.

[SPEAKER_01]: I always thought that was interesting.

[SPEAKER_01]: This ability to express and speak truth to power, I guess, is the term.

[SPEAKER_01]: I started talking to these dissidents in the Soviet Union and did this series called witness project in which they kind of inundated me with all this, like it's crazy, it's so hard to describe, like I mentioned earlier, it's a Gulag where the walls are invisible, which what's a Gulag, it's a prison where the walls are invisible, where they've used, there's a type of fear, these authoritarian regimes know how fear works.

[SPEAKER_01]: and that it's not a rational thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: We all have these sort of rational understandings.

[SPEAKER_01]: We appreciate logic.

[SPEAKER_01]: We appreciate kind of having a rational conclusion that makes sense to us.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the use of fears and a rational tool used to kind of create an irrational control mechanism that is inherently difficult to describe.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so in the series I would actually kind of focus on one aspect of what they were talking about because I realized that I as your everyday American like I didn't know what the cold war was really I didn't know what the red threat was I didn't know what authoritarian was I mean even even understanding fascism like I had a historical understanding of it and I had kind of a [SPEAKER_01]: a way of relating to history and these lessons, but to actually live it and have it affecting your day-to-day, we were isolated from that in some way.

[SPEAKER_01]: And by working with these dissidents and learning their stories, it was so, what they were going through was so absurd and so difficult.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you start to see all the great Russian writers, and I mean, people like Valkovhov, Havul, and Dostey Eski, and [SPEAKER_01]: and similar ones where they're just trying to describe what it was like to [SPEAKER_01]: live through this.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it was, it's just almost impossible.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's, it's, it's, it's an irrational sort of absurdist experience where people that you think you know suddenly will just, they're, they're, they're convictions disappear and they do what they need to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: There was this sort of somewhere between the ego and self preservation instincts, the authoritarians know how to take just enough fear and use it like a like a, like a knife to sort of cut out that, that sort of individual critical thinker.

[SPEAKER_01]: And at any point that they need to, and I say that as a setup for, then I fast forward and here comes this lockdown scenario for this pandemic.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I was like everybody else like, oh, okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I always saw SARS and like HNNNN one.

[SPEAKER_01]: They always seem to be sort of over-wrought things that they were trying to sell us on.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then when SARS COVID-2 came along or, you know, the coronavirus everyone's gone around the back of the day and before it was called COVID-19.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I saw like, oh, this one seems to be, this is a bigger tide in this coming.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I felt I needed to take it seriously because I was worried about, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, food shortages, you know, I chose to be, well, like, well, if everyone buys into this, there might be a food shortage, so I'd better prepare a little bit, I bought, I bought stuff I had a time and whatnot.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I really felt it was going to be overrought, but once the lockdown, this idea of lockdown was presented.

[SPEAKER_01]: and with the justification of it's for hospital beds because we don't want people to die.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it was like this two week thing, I was like, this is really suspicious.

[SPEAKER_01]: This doesn't, this seems like we're all gonna go along to get along, but it just doesn't seem to be a full presentation and what the needs are.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then the way it instantly turned into, [SPEAKER_01]: mission drift and there was never a like well the how the two weeks do you know or or what of the parameters for for understanding where the hospitals are and and you know in fast forward and I've now become a student of Fauci and all of the public policy people at the time I also I've worked on a second film called 15 days [SPEAKER_01]: with Natalia Markiver, which is looking specifically at school closures all around the world, an epicenter of New York, but like Randy Weingard and the head of the teachers union and how the teachers unions were involved.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's interesting because I gave me a chance to really see like the figurehead of Randy Weingard and Hurlk and then the figurehead of Fauci and his ilk going at it.

[SPEAKER_01]: and the use of propagandistic language.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, they just, they're so good at it.

[SPEAKER_01]: They just know how to make sure no matter what they say, it brings it back to the fear of death, the fear of, if you don't, if you guys don't do it, we say, well, you might die.

[SPEAKER_01]: and I'm given a very simple sort of summary of it just to kind of get to the point.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, it's really incredible how anything that went against their way of thinking they could pay lip service to like, well, you know, you have to consider this, you have to consider that they'd always have sort of a get a jail free card kind of, I said everything, I considered all the variables, but they very specifically would use these tools like the fear of death, the kind of short circuit people's egos, they're like to push everyone towards the agenda that [SPEAKER_01]: And they're various lanes that we're all kind of coalescing to whatever, I don't know, I mean, we could get it like whatever global control mechanism that they were trying to voice upon us through this pandemic.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can see it and you can see this sort of madening use of of language where.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, when you had the actual subpring it back to 15 days, where it's very much closely follows Dr.

J about a charia who look, look, this isn't lockdown science.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the science of pandemics is lockdowns don't work.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what the science was at the beginning of this.

[SPEAKER_01]: and other scientists like Dr.

David Katz was at one who pointed it out earlier, he pointed it out in March of 2020, June of 2020.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there was an initial kind of aspect of just the jump into it, heard immunity kind of like, well, what's the natural course of a disease running it?

[SPEAKER_01]: Do we need to lock down, do we need vaccines?

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, what normally would happen?

[SPEAKER_01]: And this idea got broached and then Jay and the great barrenton declaration, which was he and his [SPEAKER_01]: colleagues try to start a discussion on the science doesn't seem right about the right about lockdowns.

[SPEAKER_01]: We should have a bigger discussion about it and how both those instances of trying to have a discussion of what the actual science is around pandemics and around lockdowns and how lockdowns are not are known not to be effective.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can watch someone like Fauci.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's other other people do it but he was the chief mouthpiece for this stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: Every time there was anything that [SPEAKER_01]: And then he would do it and then all of his, all of the sort of doctors in his camp who, you know, make a funny from it, would repeat it, then you'd watch the mainstream media have it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I have hours and hours of media, if you just watch the sort of the mainstream campaign unload and it's just death, death, death, death, death, death and that brings me all the way back to the authoritarian regime's no fear of [SPEAKER_01]: death is so powerful that it's short-circuit us and they know it's a control mechanism and I think we can see that laid bear from these last few years and can move against it, working against it, trying not to let this fall for us again.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are those of us who see that way and then there are those who just are so terrified that they're never going to see through it.

[SPEAKER_01]: That irrational filters now on their face and they can't see through it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so now you have people who who's eyes are [SPEAKER_01]: It's, it's, this is the world we're in now.

[SPEAKER_01]: It feels, you know, it felt like that was something of history.

[SPEAKER_01]: As I mentioned before, it felt like that was something that happened in the past and we were now all kind of in the wake people.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now we're in this, we're in these, there's whole, there's whole, odd rays of culture in the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a whole continent of culture.

[SPEAKER_01]: People believe a certain way.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I can see him like, why am I part of that?

[SPEAKER_01]: And they're going that way.

[SPEAKER_01]: They think they're right.

[SPEAKER_01]: They think I'm crazy.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think I'm at least on the path of truth.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think they're made a bad, bad mistake.

[SPEAKER_01]: But you just have to like, well, there they go.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we're just going to have to see where we collide again in the future.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very strange huge sort of macro level understanding of what I've heard.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then there are those of us who just sort of have our little window and are trying to navigate as best we can and help people understand it as best we can.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, if I would add, if I could add one thing, Hawk, on top of all of that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you mentioned Votslav Havolt, the great playwright turned president of the Eastern Block, and he wrote this very, very fascinating book called The Power of the Powerless, and I highly recommend everyone to read it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the key insights from that book is that he draws a distinction between a classic dictatorship and what he calls a post-totalitarian system.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what I thought was interesting about what these figureheads like Randy Wein-Garden and others, Tony Fauci, everyone's favorite imp, were able to create among the populace reminded me of that book, which is that...

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, whereas in the classic dictatorship, you have the centralized power that's imposing it's will upon the people, what's fascinating about a totalitarian regime is that it's not only imposed upon the people, but it's also imposed by the people amongst themselves, and it lives within the people themselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: So in a way you could say that that fear of death that you're talking about and that fear of social ostracization, that fear of non-compliance, that social pressure that people faced, that is also what drove people to internalize this idea that I might die or I might be causing death.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm going to make sure that anyone who's breaking the rules, I'm going to chastise them, I'm going to disavow them, going to do everything I can to make sure that they feel some kind of pain or discomfort or worse.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so in that way, it was a very, very fascinating look into what a totalitarian sort of society looks like.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he also makes the point in that book about, [SPEAKER_00]: that ideology is the main thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ideology forms the bridge between true reality and the reality that the regime wants you to believe in.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that was another fascinating instance of that, where you had these officials who were sort of captured by whatever or possessed, if you will, by this ideology, and then they were able to impose their will upon the people who then imposed, [SPEAKER_00]: that same will upon their fellow citizens.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was very interesting to watch and horrifying to experience.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think you're both still massively understating it.

[SPEAKER_03]: It was so sinister.

[SPEAKER_03]: It was ludicrously sinister.

[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, the Clifton touched on a really important point on the depth of the propaganda.

[SPEAKER_03]: Because the core point of the propaganda wasn't even [SPEAKER_03]: you're going to die.

[SPEAKER_03]: It was if you go outside, if you violate anything you're going to be responsible for killing other people, which is actually way more sinister, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: If it's just like, hey, you're putting yourself at risk, then people kind of do their own personal math and they're like, okay, you know, am I at risk?

[SPEAKER_03]: Am I not like, what do I fall into?

[SPEAKER_03]: But if you tell people, hey, [SPEAKER_03]: You're going to kill grandma, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Remember the whole group, you're going to kill grandma, you're a grandma, you're a grandma, you're like, I don't know where that came from.

[SPEAKER_03]: And the other way, I think that it's being understated is, of course, you guys are American and you're based in the USA, but I still to this day, don't think most people around the world truly recognize just how global it was.

[SPEAKER_03]: Um, sometimes I talk to people and they think like, oh, well, this was just in my city or my family.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm like, no, like, most like the entire so-called developed world with the exception of like Sweden and maybe Belarus you can throw in there if you if Belarus is on that same level.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like, [SPEAKER_03]: everywhere else like UK like the entire Anglos fear all of Western Europe central Europe most of Eastern Europe all of Asia pretty much like every continent except Africa and Antarctica like went super crazy hard on on all of this and I had a very weird experience because I actually went to nine different countries during this time period.

[SPEAKER_03]: And so it was like, it was uncanny.

[SPEAKER_03]: This messaging we're talking about, this propaganda, like each nation had their foul cheese and their Randy White, like whoever the figures are that you're talking about in the States or within certain states and cities.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like every city, every region, every country, had these, you know, their, their scientists and the so-called public health officials and the people on the school boards.

[SPEAKER_03]: And of course, their authoritarian politicians [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it was just, it was just bonkers to witness.

[SPEAKER_03]: It was so strange, like the amount of weird stories I have from 2020 to 2022, the things I saw, whether in the UK, USA, Romania, Mexico, United Arab Emirates, like wherever I went, I was just like this is so freaking, [SPEAKER_03]: bizarre, like it was just like you've just programmed, not millions of people, billions of people have just suddenly been programmed.

[SPEAKER_03]: I remember, you know, 2019.

[SPEAKER_03]: and my entire life up until 2020.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it was just like, nobody behaved like this.

[SPEAKER_03]: All of these behaviors we're seeing, nobody used to say this, nobody used to do this.

[SPEAKER_03]: We've had illnesses, my entire life.

[SPEAKER_03]: We've had disease, my entire life.

[SPEAKER_03]: And before I was born, we've had vaccines, my entire life.

[SPEAKER_03]: We've had masks, my entire life.

[SPEAKER_03]: And no one, despite the flu, SARS, Ebola, bird flu, swine flu, like, you know, we've lived through different forms of epidemics or pandemics.

[SPEAKER_03]: And during none of those was, was even a fraction of what was done done.

[SPEAKER_03]: And if your whole argument is like, oh, well, you know if it saves a single life blah, blah, blah, like if that's the argument, then every single flu season, you should be taking these actions, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: You know, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people every single year die of the flu.

[SPEAKER_03]: And that, of course, remember they whole, like, the flu disappeared, remember COVID came, and, you know, there were zero cases of flu in many countries.

[SPEAKER_03]: There were just so many things, which I was just like, wait, like, what, like, this does not, [SPEAKER_03]: make sense, but one of the biggest, I think one of the biggest red flags for me from very early on was just the, um, I think two things that really stood out to me.

[SPEAKER_03]: Number one was just the, the lack of discussion.

[SPEAKER_03]: Just the lack of, like what's being proposed here is like very major.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let's say we just take the piece of the lockdown.

[SPEAKER_03]: We don't even need to talk, like not even the mask mandates and the later vax mandate, just the lockdowns themselves, it's all right.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is a very severe unprecedented measure.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like if you're asking an entire nation of people or nations of people, [SPEAKER_03]: to just stay home, stop work, stop school, stop everything you're doing and just like that requires it to discussion.

[SPEAKER_03]: That requires a huge conversation.

[SPEAKER_03]: People are like four and against and then the other thing that and it's sort of layered on top of this was just the complete tunnel vision of just COVID, of just COVID and COVID illness and COVID death.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's like there are all sorts of [SPEAKER_03]: things that people that harm people, their all sorts of diseases out there, their all sorts of ways that you could get sick or you could die, and then beyond physical health, there's the economy, like there's jobs, there's mental well-being, there's children and there's schooling and there's [SPEAKER_03]: and from very early they knew okay this is a disease where like you know maybe if you're 70 plus particularly if you have some cop pre-existing conditions it could be rough for you but we knew from around like March April 2020 the data had already come out from multiple countries basically saying if you're like under 60 years old in healthy [SPEAKER_03]: 99.9% chance you're going to be all right and and it just didn't matter like you're not none of that mattered there was no conversation it was just sit down shut up if you don't shut up if you don't do what you're going to do your grandma killer blah blah blah and it was just like whenever there's just no [SPEAKER_03]: No conversation or no dissent is being allowed or just asking a question is getting you called names.

[SPEAKER_03]: I was like, all right, this is not normal.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is not normal.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then it just got weirder and weirder as they proceeded with all the mask stuff and that all the vaccine stuff and that all the incentives and the punishments and the will give you free this.

[SPEAKER_03]: I was just like, this is so bizarre, like none of this makes any sense.

[SPEAKER_01]: because I've been working on the series and trying to ease people into thinking about this stuff a bit, just in terms of the nature of storytelling, but in terms of just jumping right to it, I think you're right, I just don't think the intent was, I think there was nefarious intent involved in this, the type of thing that people should go to jail for.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, certainly disgrace and removed from office and some of that's already happened and whatnot.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I [SPEAKER_01]: You know, letting the system go after these people in terms of what was done criminally or or or civilly, but I do think it was because this this suppression of conversation were like it happened because there was clearly an agenda and they couldn't allow.

[SPEAKER_01]: any descent or any skepticism or any natural scientific way of of let's let's see if this work.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's see if these ideas can hold up to the scientific scrutiny.

[SPEAKER_01]: The fact that that itself was pushed aside, just as indicative of how they didn't they weren't interested in pursuing the truth.

[SPEAKER_01]: They weren't interested in [SPEAKER_01]: in, I believe, saving lives.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this whole, like, one, one life's too many.

[SPEAKER_01]: To me, that's just them knowing that we've gotten far away from our own mortality.

[SPEAKER_01]: People die all the time.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is part of life.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, with the tens of thousands of people die from influenza hundreds of thousands yearly, and it's and let alone all the other aspects.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there was this aspect of, they just knew, just like with the amnesia, and they know the people forget, they know people will be fearful of their own lives or the equivalent of like a social, a social death of like being canceled, they're being ostracized as we were saying before, you know, they really absolutely wanted to maintain, like we know that if we get everyone focused on one thing, it simplifies [SPEAKER_01]: global movement.

[SPEAKER_01]: They want to, you know, there's, there's some sort of a change that wanted to be affected at a global level, and this was a vehicle to do so, and anything that moved us away from that agenda was so clearly just, was just shouted down, beat down metaphorically through through.

[SPEAKER_01]: non-stop media it's I mean we're it was a type of media war was it's this bizarre sort of non-stop assault on our attention and our information intake to not allow us to think for ourselves or not allow us to consider other people who ways of thinking we [SPEAKER_01]: We should have like hey everybody we're in a mess.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's see let's see what's working.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, there's a group of doctors down in Texas that found that there was this good protocol that seems to be working.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's lean into that for a little bit.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe that works for them.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, like there was no sort of where was the Manhattan Project of of US or world doctors all getting together going, all right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, there seems to be some things that are working here working there.

[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, you just have this sort of, we have to listen to the science.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's one science scientist in particular and his science is so important that even the current president of the United States that is very despised by a particular political persuasion say like he has to do what science says he if he doesn't do what science does he's an idiot and the science is pure and our guys are pure.

[SPEAKER_01]: And anyone who disagrees is an apostate or is the enemy, you know, is evil, and is evil to the point that it's okay to destroy their lives, not let them put food on the table for their children.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's all the way down to like, it's not just like, it's okay to like, push that person if they, if they were to die, they'd be happy.

[SPEAKER_01]: If their children were to die, they'd be happy.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's an implication of all that.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's very embarrassed to your point to do me.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that the propagandistic way of speaking that they said, oh, I said all these things that kind of, well, I considered that.

[SPEAKER_01]: No.

[SPEAKER_01]: You.

[SPEAKER_01]: paper did over and steam rolled the legitimate scientific pursuit of truth and the civil rights of the United States and the goodwill and the denizens of the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's terrible.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's just terrible.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the worst thing we've ever seen.

[SPEAKER_01]: We've never seen anything like this before.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the true first true world experience and it's not good.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's my [SPEAKER_01]: I don't just say what I think is going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: For me, I think one of my frustrations, I mean, to use the word nefarious or insidious or, or I think even sinister, is a very powerful word here.

[SPEAKER_00]: For me, one of my, maybe going back to your original questions will be about what I learned.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think another thing that I learned is that people have a very, I think, and I struggle with this, this, this issue, because [SPEAKER_00]: I think I struggled with internally between the idea that people did believe they were acting in the interests of humanity and they got caught up in this fervor versus the idea that people [SPEAKER_00]: saw an opportunity to exploit and they acted with malevolence because the implications of the latter option are very, very dark indeed.

[SPEAKER_00]: But for me, I think something that really frustrated me during that time was that people had a very skewed conception, I think, of what evil looks [SPEAKER_00]: And we can look at a common criminal or a murderer or a rapist or something like that and say, well, that person is evil or there is some kind of violent sociopath.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think people have this idea, this conception of evil as, well, it's a man with either a very narrow mustache or a very long mustache that they twirl.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, with great joy.

[SPEAKER_00]: and people aren't willing, or weren't willing, maybe still aren't willing, to conceive of the idea that someone, let's say an octogenarian doctor from Brooklyn, New York who's five-foot nothing and wears glasses and has a very thick accent, [SPEAKER_00]: They can't conceive of the idea that someone like that who has credentials, who has very high levels of intelligence, who's very well spoken, who comes off as very, as very ingratiating to the public.

[SPEAKER_00]: They don't conceive that someone like that can look right into the camera and just tell lie after lie, after lie, after society, destroying lie.

[SPEAKER_00]: And because they have this very narrow idea of what evil is and what it looks like.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I remember looking at there was this interview between Anderson Cooper and Bill Gates, everyone's favorite billionaire who's in peak physical condition by the way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he, you know, in towards the end of the interview, Anderson Cooper, you know, actually mildly kind of asked an interesting question where he was like, well, you know, don't you think maybe we should maybe know about maybe like where it maybe came from or something like the virus, you know, so like it never happens again.

[SPEAKER_00]: And without missing a beat, Bill Gates just says, hmm, no.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and I thought to myself, wait a minute, so I had to go back and watch the entire interview because next Bill Gates says, oh, and by the way, you know, I saw a study that said that, you know, it couldn't have come out of a lab.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, dude, Anderson never mentioned the lab.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I went back and watched the entire interview and just to confirm that thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, dude, this person is like not even a good liar.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, why is it that somebody like this is, [SPEAKER_00]: who, in previous interviews, is he can't even say that the transmission rate in schools is lower because that would dispel fear.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said the transmission rates are different.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like this smartly person with his button down shirts and his cropped public image with his card, his cashmere sweaters and everything and his glasses is trying to dictate, is being upheld [SPEAKER_00]: And yet, he's defending things that were never brought up.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm thinking to myself, people don't understand that the most evil people aren't the ones out, you know, who are out there telling you that they're evil, they're the people who are sophisticated enough to conceal their evil.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the most evil thing about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, how come no one else can see this?

[SPEAKER_00]: And that was the big thing for me is that people have a very weird and maybe unrealistic, perhaps movie-driven Hollywood-driven idea of what evil [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and to go beyond that, you know, people, and I understand this desire, you know, everyone wants to think that they're a good person.

[SPEAKER_03]: And people like the idea that, you know, there's just good people and evil people.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's that very famous soldier in its in line, of course, you know, the line dividing, good and evil runs down the heart of every man.

[SPEAKER_03]: And that's the truth.

[SPEAKER_03]: You know, if someone reads through history and they read through all the terrible things that happened, genocides and forced famines and totalitarian regimes, and so on, of course, every single person, you ask anyone in the West, you know, they all like to think they would have been the good guy, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: They would have been the person who would have fought against the Nazis, they would have hid the Jews in their house, they would have freed the slaves, they would have, you know, whatever the so-called right side of history is, of course, they would have been on it.

[SPEAKER_03]: And no one wants to read history and, like, think, okay, like, what if I were the bad guy?

[SPEAKER_03]: What if I were just like the, you know, if not the murderer, the person who stands by idly and sort of let's it happen, because statistically, that's what most people would be.

[SPEAKER_03]: Right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Statistically, most people wouldn't necessarily be perpetrating the evil, but they'd be, you know, trying to save their own hide and, you know, they'd have the same excuses.

[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, well, I've got kids.

[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, well, I've got a job.

[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, well, I'm just too scared and so on.

[SPEAKER_03]: you know that that's just the reality of it.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think part of the reason I know with me years before any of this like I'd read I haven't read the Gulag archipelago info but I'd read in a bridge version of it and I'd read in full the book Ordinary Men and I found that very fascinating and when I look at like awful things that happen particularly in the 20th century I try to like do this exercise of not like assuming [SPEAKER_03]: that I would just be the good guy, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Not just assuming, oh, well, of course, like these were just bad, like that's a lot of psychopaths, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: They couldn't all have just been psychopaths.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, no, like, I've been a Germany, maybe six or seven different times in my life.

[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it can't be the case that in less than 100 years ago, like Germany was just full of psychopaths or Russia, former Soviet Union countries or Cambodia or like, like, gosh, how many places have had to tell you?

[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, it wasn't the case that, oh, the whole population is just evil.

[SPEAKER_03]: Gosh, in our own lifetime, 1994, Rwandan genocide, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Like, is it just that there's just all these millions of awful people and it's, it's no.

[SPEAKER_03]: The most core thing is, um, and actually I'm surprised this word hasn't come up in this podcast yet, but to me, the the biggest, I don't want to say the biggest source of evil, but the biggest enabler of mass evil is actually cowardice.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's what it is.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's cowardice.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's it's not even, um, [SPEAKER_03]: I think it's cowardice even more than it's lack of critical thinking, because you need the critical thinking to be able to kind of see through the propaganda and see what's going on.

[SPEAKER_03]: But it takes a level of courage to stand up and say, hey, something here is wrong.

[SPEAKER_03]: Very few people are willing to do that, even if they think it, even if they feel it.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I think something unique about all the people who descend to during that time period is it's not just the ability to see through it for whatever reason that may be, but to have the willingness and the courage to stick your head above the parapet when it is absolutely not popular.

[SPEAKER_03]: and you're going to get called names, you're going to catch flack, you might have problems within your family, within your friends, with your career, Clifton, I know like that was a major one for you and it takes a serious level of courage to do something despite that because most people won't and most people don't and most people didn't.

[SPEAKER_03]: We don't need to [SPEAKER_03]: think now in hypotheticals because we've seen it.

[SPEAKER_03]: And we know what happened.

[SPEAKER_03]: We know what happens.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's a little bit of a, it's quite a big black pill.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's something that I'm, I'm very much an optimistic person, but I guess now when I just kind of like look at history, you just know, okay, maybe you're going to have like 10 to 15% actual evil perpetrators, maybe 10 to 15% like courageous, dissident fighters, and then you're going to get that like 70, 80% in the middle [SPEAKER_03]: go wherever the wind blows, and they're going to kind of go with the consensus if the consensus is going in that way.

[SPEAKER_03]: They'll go that way, if the consensus is going that way, they'll go that way.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it changes over time, of course, which is why we're not currently in a lockdown and why we don't currently have mask mandates.

[SPEAKER_03]: Because if it weren't for dissidents, I believe right now it would still be going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, thought it's very interesting, too.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd jump in and say that it's so funny to me because the people that got [SPEAKER_00]: Most swept up in a lot of the firver or hysteria, if you call it, they view themselves as highly intelligent people.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I love that you mentioned the Chinese or the Russians or the Germans, are these stupid people?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think that they are.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yet they still got swept up on all this stuff and created just mass destruction and terror and devastation.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so are you going to tell me that you're somehow smarter than those people that and that you can you have some special insight and can and can avoid being swept up in these kinds of things and I think people don't have that level of beyond level of beyond lacking courage they have a very sort of [SPEAKER_00]: lacking in sort of any kind of self reflection or introspection or even realism about themselves or the human condition.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think myself as an actor having studied people.

[SPEAKER_00]: You watch it observe people.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I totally agree with it with the classic solution.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's in quotes.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love everyone quotes like that footnote on like page three of the book.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they can act like they read the whole thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: But they didn't.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, and I've read it, you know, myself either.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's, you know, there's that quote where he's that, that footnote where he says, you know, we didn't love freedom enough, and to me that's such a huge, huge thing to put, just in a footnote.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there is, there is that at that element of it as well, which is like, you know, I think people just sort of lazy about it and they don't want to protect it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But if you can convince people as you were saying that they're doing it for a good reason and for a good cause, then they'll just be let it all go.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and I'll add to that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the one thing, there's this aspect of the bureaucracy.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's like the soulless bureaucracy that if the, I mean, it's not all these years.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're talking about all these psychopaths.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's just those who can get control of this bureaucracy.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in a way, the bureaucratic classes are sort of the codification of cowardice.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe to your point, Zubi, about [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I would say before all this happened, you know, I'm a creative.

[SPEAKER_01]: That means I can say yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want to do things.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want to create things that don't exist as a filmmaker.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, oh, there's a problem.

[SPEAKER_01]: What's the problem?

[SPEAKER_01]: This film doesn't exist.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let me see what I can do about that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I was start working on it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And inherently, like any bureaucracy, you go to any next level.

[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone wants to tell you, no, it can't happen.

[SPEAKER_01]: And like, oh, you can't do it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because that's the policy.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's this.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is how we do things.

[SPEAKER_01]: type of cowardice that exists in the bureaucracy or or just the codification of society.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're like, well, you can't do that because people haven't done it that way before.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there's this failure of imagination that go past it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then those of us who can imagine something going past of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I I just always consider myself a bureaucracy buster as a creative.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I would get into all this something.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, I want to film on this stage in this place.

[SPEAKER_01]: And Amazon, well, you can't do that because of these reasons.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, well, what's the source of the, no, let me get to the source of that note, talk to the person, see if I can figure out the way around the note and to turn that note into a yes or get around the note.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's just to me, that's a nice summation of what a part of the creative process is is just seeking the yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it just seems one of the things I did learn with all this work working about authoritarian regimes is that, or even a monarchies, if you want to have power, you basically need to have about 2,000, I guess it's 2,000 families or 2,000 bureaucratic units to run any one government, I mean, if you look at North Korea, it's about 2,000 families, you get the Saudis, it's about 2,000 Crown Princess, you look at anyone, [SPEAKER_01]: group that rules entirely, another population.

[SPEAKER_01]: You have about 2,000 uh...

Fiefdoms of bureaucracy that you that required to do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now that always exists.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean you go back to like the Qing dynasty or you know, the, you know, when the, when the Emperor fell, you know, when the Emperor was opposed, it was because the bureaucracy was tired of that Emperor and they went with the new person.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's this sort of entity of this bureaucracy.

[SPEAKER_01]: That I think really encapsulates the the human nature of cowardice in a way.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just going to kind of bring those together and and I think, you know, it's all about, you know, it's the dissidate that is the one I think that's why those who are on top and then we'll power through this sort of solace bureaucracy.

[SPEAKER_01]: They know that if there are a small group and they're using fear for compliance with the bureaucracy and it's the dissidents who can come up and like no, no, I'm not just because the bureaucracy says it has to be that way just because the sign says I have to be six feet apart, be wearing this mask, have the visual indicators that I'm complying and then those those who choose not to do that there's something there's something about.

[SPEAKER_01]: That group is always able to subvert the bureaucracy and the subversion of the bureaucracy terrifies the power that the leaders, these are the various leaders who can come to power.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this desire to kind of keep society free and open and not have a government that serves the people as opposed to is ruled ruling the people.

[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so I just, this is kind of what occurred to me as you guys were talking about and there's this, there's this aspect of control that is as well known in terms of the how bureaucracy is control society and how you, how you have to wheel control the bureaucracy to maintain that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Um, that said, I, where was I going with that I was, I wanted to say that it's just been interesting to watch.

[SPEAKER_01]: this awakening to this process.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the fact that we were able to discuss this in such a nuanced way.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, 10 years ago, we probably could have talked about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we would have said, we probably would have laughed a lot more about like, ah, you're which conspiracy theory, cool, they'd have you drunk and which, you know, which dialogue you're using.

[SPEAKER_01]: But now that we've all lived through it, and have seen the absurdity of it and seen the irrationality of it, the really is it's like a real attempt to describe it in such a way that is, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's not just an academic.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's the academic understanding.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's the dissertations that are going to be written.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's the policies that we hope to be enacted in various governments.

[SPEAKER_01]: But there's also the lay understanding, the street understanding, where everyday people, like ourselves can speak to other everyday people and have a general understanding of what went wrong and how do we not repeat it?

[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like that's what we're getting at here because it was such a miscarriage of what we considered [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I, you know, at the beginning of the zoo, you said, like, there's what we thought society was or where we thought reality was and it seems as if that might not have actually ever been the case.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we might have been in our own little delusional bubble as to what we thought the everyday society was.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I feel like we are trying to find a way back to, or not, not back, but the next evolution of what a free and open society is where [SPEAKER_01]: freedom of expression, the bitterle express yourself, and the pursuit of truth and the scientific method is something that we want to get back to or see it evolve to the next iteration of it because science and the [SPEAKER_01]: and the world of medical science, science, at large, and medical science.

[SPEAKER_01]: Basically, I feel we're sacrificed for this movement to try and get the world under a new type of compliance.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there was this belief that they were pure, they're just as corrupt as everything else.

[SPEAKER_01]: Turns out, everything gets corrupt, all the bureaucracies get corrupt initially.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we've now seen that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we're like, well, how do we rebuild trust, how do we rebuild a vision for the future that makes sense?

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I got a little of the weeds here, but you can see it's sort of, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, where are we going with this, how do we proceed?

[SPEAKER_01]: We're all exhausted.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then I guess the main point was, and that bureaucracy is exhausting.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm tired, you're tired, clifed in tired.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're all tired of dealing with this stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's been difficult to communicate all this stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's this sort of massive point of moving forward and holding on to this wisdom and having these conversations that I think will see us through it in the end.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's where me coming back to being positive.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think we're going to get through it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if I can say one last thing, because this has been on my mind quite a bit, I mean, I'll keep mentioning the term tired.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think the more popular it terms, been memeified lately, is fatigue.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the fatigue has been centered around certain demographics, which is sort of unfortunate.

[SPEAKER_00]: However, I think it's a piece of a broader fatigue.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that broader fatigue, which, you know, I'm not the most, I'm not always the most optimistic person.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, this may be a gray pill, but I think that fatigue for me is it's the collapse of this regime that sort of held power for at least in America for the past 60 years, you know, I just began reading [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if anyone who's read Thomas Souls a conflict of visions, which I think was published in 1996, that book is almost a manual for how the pandemic played at the pandemic years played out in terms of the competing visions and how they interact and how they understand the world and how it functions.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then there's the vision of the anointed, which was published in 1984, interesting choice of year there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that, you know, he opens the book talking about how, you know, this, a small concentration of people with this very specific philosophy and view on things in world view, control all these institutions.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think what's happening now is that they've had such a, um, [SPEAKER_00]: They've had so much control, I call them the reality cartel.

[SPEAKER_00]: They've had so much control over how society and how discourse unfold for so long.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now at the advent of the internet and social media and platforms like this one, the average person on the street can record themselves speaking their minds.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they can go viral because people will say, [SPEAKER_00]: And meanwhile, you see these people, I think there was an interview with Michael Malice, I watched the other day, it was always really interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now is this era where all these people that have these Ivy League degrees and they're paid millions and millions of dollars to pontificate.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they annoy themselves as experts and as people who are more sophisticated than you.

[SPEAKER_00]: You see how utterly unimpressive so many of these people are.

[SPEAKER_00]: on Twitter, you know, with an anime avatar, you know, is sitting there just destroying some Yale expert, you know, in philosophy, just with just, with just raw common sense, or maybe superior logic or in rhetorical flair.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's a very interesting era that we're living in where, yes, I do think that as Hock has been saying that there are more people than ever with their eyes open, and I think it's largely a fatigue with whatever this, I call it the Blue Juasi, but the fatigue of this regime is collapsing now.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're controlled over the discourse, they're controlled over the narrative, they're controlled over what we think is being broken because so, because the messaging has become so decentralized now.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, on one hand, it's sort of weird master valence, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone has these sort of smart phones and their cameras everywhere, but we can see events unfolding in real time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then we can see how those events are reported on, and how those events are utilized for certain agendas.

[SPEAKER_00]: And while on one hand, there's the brain rot of all of these devices, and [SPEAKER_00]: how it's deranging our mental health.

[SPEAKER_00]: On the other hand, it has provided a layer of transparency, and it's provided ways for people to communicate with each other, and people who are very skilled, and charismatic and strong communicators might be able to use these tools nefariously, but at the same time, I do think for all my pessimism, and Aristotle writes about this, and rhetoric he talks about how people sort of [SPEAKER_00]: And I would hope that as things continue to collapse, and I see certain things bubbling up that I'm not really happy about society, but we'll see what happens.

[SPEAKER_00]: The levers of control are shifting, and the power of communication and who wields power over the ability to communicate is shifting.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so maybe it's true.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe Hock is correct that if they tried something like this again Now we're more savvy to it and on top of that there are more people now who are willing to speak up and use their own microphones as it were To say No, this is wrong and I will tell you why that is and there's nothing you can do about it You can make my life difficult.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe pull me off these platforms, but people will still hear me one way or another.

[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely [SPEAKER_03]: You brought up the word fatigue.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'll tell you what fatigue I have.

[SPEAKER_03]: Increasingly is just a, I just have political fatigue.

[SPEAKER_03]: I just think the last 10 years have been unrelenting when it comes to politics.

[SPEAKER_03]: I just think from 2015 up until about now, it's just been, it hasn't stopped.

[SPEAKER_03]: Initially as a Republican nominee and then eventually it's just like from that time period and then it went straight into you know 2015's also when all like the the trans stuff the LGBTQ extremism kicked in and you know It's a man a woman can women be man Katelyn Jenner blah blah and then it just rolled into that and then a rolled then a rolled into COVID for like two or three years then a Puputin put an ended COVID right put in invaded Ukraine and COVID just ended and it was just Russia or Ukraine Russia [SPEAKER_03]: then boom, it rolls into like Israel, Palestine, and like that's just, but it just seems like for the past 10 years in particular.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I know social media is obviously a key factor in this, but it's just been unrelenting, 2015, 2016, 20, like just those 10 years.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I just think myself and many others, I think everyone needs to just like, [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_03]: If I say this is someone who makes a good chunk of his living on social media, but I think if we could have like a one, even like a one month moratorium on social media, and just like on news in general, just like just a one month, like everyone just, everyone just just go live, just go live your lives, no news, no social media, no Twitter, no Facebook, no ticket, just just go your live your lives and everyone come back.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think that would be a good mental health reset, probably even a physical health reset just for like people across all these nations.

[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_03]: I got dragged into a lot of the culture war stuff, particularly in 2019, onward, and then of course with all the COVID stuff, but it's kind of funny because [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, like, like yourselves, that was not, I don't think any of us got into what we do because we particularly wanted to get involved in some sort of like cultural or political battle.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's just like, you've got certain principles and you see some things going on, and you get roped into it, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I didn't plan to be some big voice, like against the whole transgender mania.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I just saw this thing and thought it was stupid, and it was like, you know.

[SPEAKER_03]: Posted by famous deadlifts to end that you're all of a sudden like you're here.

[SPEAKER_03]: You're a TV studios You do the podcast with this.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just like whoa like this is not what I [SPEAKER_03]: Like, but at the same time, like, at the time, no one was talking about it, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: No one had the courage.

[SPEAKER_03]: No one wanted to just stand up and say, you know, the emperor has no clothes.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it's kind of strange.

[SPEAKER_03]: You know, here we are six years later from 2019.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I guess about three years later from the pandemic and all of their response.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like, gosh, three to five years depending on when you count it from, which is pretty crazy in itself that all of this kicked off more than five years ago.

[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't seem like it.

[SPEAKER_03]: Um, but yeah, I just think, uh, [SPEAKER_03]: I'm personally taking a bit of a break from it.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm doing what I now call tactical aloofness, which means I'll drop my little comments here and there, and I'll chat about this here and there, but generally speaking in my day-to-day, I'm not spending a lot of time thinking about politics or culture wars or whatever.

[SPEAKER_03]: Of course, I live in Dubai, so politics is non-existent over here.

[SPEAKER_03]: No one cares about any of this.

[SPEAKER_03]: obviously I'm a father now.

[SPEAKER_03]: I've got my son to lick after.

[SPEAKER_03]: I've got my wife to lick after.

[SPEAKER_03]: I've got my body to take care of.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm just like, you know what?

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just getting closer to God enjoying my life and you know, I still do what I can to help and motivate and inspire people and get them to think.

[SPEAKER_03]: But I just see it still like just the the back and the forth and the fight.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just like man, are you guys not?

[SPEAKER_03]: I see some people online, I'm like, bro, are you not tired at this point?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's been, I have to jump in because you are in my brain.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I, for me, especially after October 7th of 2023, and again, for me, it's just insane how much time has passed.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that was a moment for me where I really began to step back and I saw all the fact that, you know, the Factionalizing and people, you know, breaking apart and and bickering about everything and I'm just thinking of myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: God, you people are so freaking miserable all the time, Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, and it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's part of the fatigue as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: And people are really, really tired of all of this stuff and they're worn out from the culture war stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: And for me, I'm in this weird space where this is one of the reasons that I want to focus more on art and culture.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what I want my niche to be in this particular space because I don't think a lot of people are really talking about it enough.

[SPEAKER_00]: And [SPEAKER_00]: And so now I was literally drawing up before we came on, you know, I want to launch this really, this really cool initiative, which I think will be interesting, but you know, it's it's finding the ways that that art is useful and beneficial to us and to our society and what value it brings to our society and [SPEAKER_00]: and how, you know, we'll never going to be united over religion or over politics and striving as crazy, but you know, art is one of those things where you can come to a museum, you could come to a concert, you can come to a stand-up show, come to a play, come to a film, with a bunch of strangers, and have a very moving human experience, and it's your own experience, but, you know, whatever that experience is, it's still putting you in touch with your humanity, and it's still bringing you together in this communal sort of space with other people.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a uniting power in that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's unfortunate that so many artists see themselves as forces of social, they don't see themselves as that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But they've become forces of social disintegration and division.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I think I'm hoping that we can spawn some kind of new cultural renaissance.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that can be spiritually healing.

[SPEAKER_00]: That can sort of men some bridges.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that can also, for just personally speaking, drive me away.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've stepped back from that stuff too of just like y'all are crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not just doing I'm just I'm I'm so worn out by this and it's so depressing and You know, you're so reactive all the time and angry angry angry angry angry angry angry and There's just so much more to life than whatever is on the news and That's what people need to be focused on and I think that's what's more important and Sure, there's the saying that you know if you're not interested in politics and politics will be interested in you and maybe keep an eye on that stuff but [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I, I, I mean, one of the things I love about your account is you'll be, is that, you know, you, you don't weigh in directly, you know, you do, what is it tactical aloofness, I'm stealing that, I'm stealing that, I'm stealing that, it's just that, that for me is like dude, I mean, I'm reading books on, you know, on.

[SPEAKER_00]: The renaissance and actor managers in the Victorian era and all these other things that interest me and I'm trying to figure out how can I Utilize all of this and simply that synthesize my talent stack.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just got Adams would say and and Put out something that is just not all this noise because I think people are done with it and they want Something else so I'm so glad that you brought that up because I'm just I'm done and I in like I said, you know, I I just wanted to be an actor [SPEAKER_00]: That was all that I was how you doing that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But all this stuff came along and I was like, I just I have to say something and then I got, you know, the night got swept up in this stuff, you know, nowhere near on the scale that you have.

[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, at a certain point it's like, okay, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and once I began to see the other side of the sort of like, you know, this influencer sphere, especially in politics, it's just another form of show business.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a bunch of crazy people trying to be famous.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that was deeply unappealing to me, and it's not something that I want, and I could have easily made some money.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's something that's a thing about it as well, for me, I find that I can go on Twitter right now and type up some hot take that I know will go viral and when we meet thousands of followers.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's easy now.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know how to do that now.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that's just not what I want.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't want those kind of eyeballs on me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's not really my purpose.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what brings me meaning and fulfillment.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm glad that you've voiced that because I think there's a lot of people who are like, oh man can we please just like talk about something else for heaven's sake, please.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, tactical aloofness, I'm stealing that and that's gonna be my mantra for that going forward.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's amazing.

[SPEAKER_01]: One thing that occurred to me all you guys are talking, just authenticity.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know it, I guess that's become a buzzword in the last year or two.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, everything's oh, I mean, before that was an epitheon authenticity.

[SPEAKER_01]: But, but I mean, just kind of the old world definition of authenticity.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's [SPEAKER_01]: there's something about what's been going on where it's been also inauthentic and i think we have that i mean even going back to the original question of like how did we see through it i think we all inherently can smell when something's inauthentic when when people are when you have people on the tv or or you know news or or social media and they're saying things because it's what they should it's either propagandistic or something they want they're trying to create something we can somehow tell it's inauthentic and smell it even though we may not be like even if we decide about in the moment we would even point to them but we can [SPEAKER_01]: somehow inherently smell its inauthentic.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there's something about this fatigue we're all in.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we've been talking about like, well, you know, 2020, 2021, 2020, too.

[SPEAKER_01]: 2023, for me, was the year of exhaustion.

[SPEAKER_01]: I dropped.

[SPEAKER_01]: I worked, I'm a Clifton knows.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was working 16 hours a day for three years straight trying to get this project going, talking to all these people.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I finally, and we had, we had some, we had some successes.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then, [SPEAKER_01]: working not on really my authentic interest combined with the sheer complexity of the most complex story that we've ever experienced and I'm trying to make a light pithy sort of TV show version of it so people understand it while I'm trying to understand what exactly happened it's been him absolutely I mean very difficult and it's not something I inherently wanted to be working on or talking about and [SPEAKER_01]: and it just trains.

[SPEAKER_01]: It trains and trains and trains and 2023.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've collapsed for like six months.

[SPEAKER_01]: I said I'm going to sleep and take a break and get away from it all.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then it was around that time and Clifton started tweeting about like, you know, an artist who has been working on their authentic expression really really is doing it wrong and I'm like, damn it Clifton.

[SPEAKER_01]: Don't say that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, let me finish and then then because you're totally correct.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I was working [SPEAKER_01]: like a comedy thriller, you know, screenwriter and was having a great time with that and was really enjoyed as I said, I was happy go lucky.

[SPEAKER_01]: I liked making fun things in high energy spaces.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's where my heart would want to go and then we all got pulled into this and there's something about [SPEAKER_01]: the authenticity of it where we we're all looking for it to be done with this thing with this giant exercise and inauthenticity that has occurred because whatever the agenda was, whatever the implica, the the desired results were, the intentions were, the reactions were all this like talking, talking, talking.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was one giant exercise and ungrounded inauthentic [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm and I'm and I'm tired of decoding it and try to turn it into something and I mean, I'm really looking forward for you guys in the the other episodes that are coming out soon.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just working on the last bottle neck in episode three trying to get the J about Atari a great variance in declaration and this weird obsession about herd immunity that the mainstream site.

[SPEAKER_01]: Policy scientists like Anthony Fauci felt needed to be taken out from the beginning even though that's the natural progression of every respiratory disease is herd immunity But that I've realized like that was like from the get go one of the great propaganda the stick things that I've been decoding and telling the story of But to this point of that's not my authentic self expression to try and to code that for everyone and what we're doing and [SPEAKER_01]: and everything.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's this interesting sort of we all rose to the occasion to do what was needed as as participants in this unbelievable world experience.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I really look forward to any year or two, all of us having another podcast where we're talking about entirely different interesting creative exploits that were really excited about and I can't wait to share what I'm doing with you guys because it's what we've earned it.

[SPEAKER_03]: Amen.

[SPEAKER_03]: So to close it out, guys, where can people find and follow you online?

[SPEAKER_03]: Where do you want to send them?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you can find me on X, formerly known as Twitter, excuse me, at Clifton A Duncan.

[SPEAKER_00]: I also have a sub-stack that's called the state of the arts, but we're going to be doing some exciting rebranding soon, but you can find me there to search my name.

[SPEAKER_00]: You'll find me there.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm also working on a new publication called Becoming Thomas Soul.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that chronicles my journey in creating the soul play last year.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did a successful crowd funder for the development of a script and an eventual stage production of a play based on Thomas Soul's life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm chronicling that process, the creative process, over on sub-stack, at Becoming Thomas Soul.

[SPEAKER_00]: I also have a YouTube channel, which is pretty bare-bones right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: But again, like I said, I'm doing working on a rebranded and relaunch.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you can find me, Clifton Duncan, over there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And those are the main avenues you can find me.

[SPEAKER_00]: So come over, say, hello, come experience my tactical aloofness on Twitter.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm talking about nothing and enjoying it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's, you know, I'll be happy to hear from you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and so my right now, I'm working on follow the science series dot com, sorry, all the science series dot com, which is the follow the science series that have been working on the first episode lockdowns go viral, the first episode is actually available for free, you can go sign up and watch it there.

[SPEAKER_01]: and that'll get you into the second episode, third episodes coming out soon, and it'll eventually be a six episode series that we're very excited to get out the door.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have a small Twitter account at at Hawk Jensen, which I'll be developing much more fully soon as soon as everything's out the door on fall the science side, and [SPEAKER_01]: I've also been producing a project called 15 Days, the real story of American America's pandemic school closures, which is at 15daysfilm.com, and that's about the story of school closures and the effects of children in the United States.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've been very focused on all things locked down for the last several years and looking forward to getting these films out the door to push back against the overall amnesia that we're suffering as a culture so we can keep this wisdom and keep [SPEAKER_01]: self-expressive artistic selves in the for front living our most authentic lives and hanging out and having a laugh.

[SPEAKER_01]: So please check out those those shows and I look forward to talking you guys again soon.

[SPEAKER_03]: Nice one guys.

[SPEAKER_03]: Hawke clipped in always the pleasure to speak to you both.

[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for the gift of your time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks Ruby.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me on my good to see you again.