Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "A Very Sober Christmas" with Bridget Phetasy

Transcript

"A Very Sober Christmas" with Bridget Phetasy · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Get a humans welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. I'm Josh Steps. Thank you so much
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  for joining me as a part of my tribe, part of my community, my friends, my people, my countrymen.
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  If you're a member of the sub stack community, thank you again. You don't have to be paying any
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  money. You don't even have to give me your credit card information. You don't got to do nothing.
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  I just want to gauge the support for the show by getting you to sign up with your email account and
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  then you'll just be, it'll just be one of mine. You'll be, I'll be one of yours. We'll just be in a
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  little tent a tent, a little dance, a little pad to do. And if you're not doing that, I'm not sure
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  why you're listening to this show because obviously if you listen to this show, then you like me,
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  and if you like me, then you should probably want to keep in touch with me and you want to help
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  this show do what this show does, which is have sane conversations in an increasingly insane
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  world. So sign up if you haven't. If you are on the, if this is the premium feed that you're
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  listening to, then you'll, you'll have a wonderful experience listening to Bridget Fedessi and I
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  get tangled into knots over our first eight questions like whether or not she would rather live
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  in a murder house or a sailboat. That's an in joke about a previous episode, which she has a
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  lot of fun with. And yeah, she noodles on some of the more profound things in life towards the end
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  of the show. You won't get that if you're not subscribed to the sub stack, but you'll still hear,
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  Bridget, who's wonderful, talk about most things, including Israelis in Sri Lanka. Bridget is a
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  digital media phenomenon, really. She's one of those strange people who has exploded in this space
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  in between the ideologues on both sides, both sides. She was previously a heroin addict and
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  alcoholic and turned her life around, but not in a highly puritanical, finger wagging, judgy sort
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  of way. And she came to my attention. I don't remember where, but she was doing quite a lot of
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  press on like Gwen Beck's show and Dave Rubens show and Joe Rogan's show during I guess the height
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  of the culture war and the pandemic. And she's got her own fabulous podcast called Walkins Welcome,
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  which is a bit of a staple. She has a YouTube show called Dumpster Fire, which is kind of a
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  satirical commentary on the news cycle. And she's a writer who's been published frequently in
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  the spectator and half-posed playboy, the Federalist, Washington Examiner, the New York Post,
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  the New York Daily News and so on, sharing her opinions and her advice and her stories. I won't
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  say much more about Bridget. I mean, she's also a comedian, so she's very funny, but she's just a
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  warm, wonderful, heartfelt, thoughtful person. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with her
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  as much as I did, the one and only. Bridget, that is it.
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  I have a twin, I have five year old twins. Yeah. I know this is so funny because I feel like
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  you and I have been trying to have a conversation for approximately 70 years and then children,
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  there's just been basically, you went and got knocked up, I think is what the problem was.
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  I did. I got knocked up. I had a little baby of your own. How old is Hishi now?
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  She is seven months, a little bit over seven months. You're almost out of the woods.
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  No, I'm serious. You're almost out of the first woods. I say eight months is the first,
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  is the first, like the first eight months is the basically you've been deployed to Afghanistan
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  and you're just in the trenches and it's horrendous or it was for me. But then they get,
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  then they start moving. They do get harder to catch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know,
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  they start sort of sleeping a little and, you know, becoming a little, they basically go from
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  being lizard aliens into babies. She's been sleeping. She's, I just feel like I'm doing everything wrong.
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  But maybe that's exactly what parents feel. Yeah. I think that's right.
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  And there's so much information now. It's, I'm writing a piece about this right now. Actually,
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  if I, you know, if I don't let her cry it out, am I going to end up with a child who's
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  gluing herself to the Mona Lisa in 20 years? Yes, is the answer to that question.
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  No, yeah. I mean, oh, letting them cry it out, that was the best thing that ever happened.
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  Well, the good thing about twins is you don't, you can't fuck around it because you'll die.
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  Like you need to do the shit to get them on a proper sleep schedule. You need to, because if
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  they're all over the place, like one kid all over the place, you can just survive. Two kids say
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  out of control, you will die. Right. So you have to be a bit more like a rigid, rigid, you know,
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  a bit more disciplined about it. But when we did sleep training, it was life changing. I was like,
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  why didn't we do this earlier? Yeah, it's, it's, did you do it or did your, did your wife do it?
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  I'm married to a man, but thank you for asking. But he did, I mean, we both did it together,
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  but he was like, I was, that's right. Exactly. He was, I must say, better at it. I mean,
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  I was working, I was more of more of the primary breadwinner at that point. And,
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  but you know what? It was not as hard as getting up in the night.
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  Like the sleep training, you know, it takes you a couple of nights and you feel terrible.
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  We didn't do it like, I think there, I think people have misconceptions about it. And they
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  think that either you just have to be completely at the whim of the child, or you have to be
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  cruel or devill like standing there while a child loses their mind for an entire night,
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  and expressing showing them no love. But like the standard thing that pediatric
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  psychologists recommend is like some sort of a hybrid thing where like there are lots of tactics
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  where you know, they, they cry, but you don't come in immediately. You like, you go up to them
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  and you shush them, but you don't touch them. There's a fade out method. There's a fade exactly,
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  that whole. Yeah. And you gradually would just withdraw yourself. So it's clear to them that
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  they're not going to get cuddles. And then they just learn to sort of, they learn that sometimes
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  during the night you wake up and that's okay. Yeah, my friend and she said she liked it because it
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  taught her daughter to deal with disappointment at an early age. At seven months. Yeah,
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  that's right. That's right. But then I think eight months, something changed. And then I think
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  about like 20 months, something changed. And then about like three, three and a half, they actually
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  became moderately enjoyable. Oh, okay. Only only a couple of years to go. Sorry to be the
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  bearer of that news. No, she's been watching it. Joy. Yeah. I love it. It's been challenging
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  because I'm more of the breadwinner at the moment. And so I was back to work at six weeks
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  and trying, I don't have a nanny or help or any of that stuff. So just trying to balance
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  creating content and creating a baby in this first year has been where I inevitably feel like
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  I'm failing at both being a mom and being a content creator. Yep. I mean, you seem to be doing
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  fine on the content creation side. So I can't speak to the baby side. Yeah, it's it's it's been
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  it's again, I feel like I'm it's easy because she can't talk or move. So the minute that she's,
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  you know, banging on my door, yelling mommy. Yeah. Things are going to get a little bit more
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  challenging. I have a friend who did sleep training after their child could already walk and talk
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  like that late. And so they were literally like their child got their door. This is horrible. Their
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  daughter would get would climb out of her cart her crib and go up to the door and they were holding
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  the door closed while she's on the other side of the door trying to pull the door screaming mommy,
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  mommy, mommy, and like mommy is like in a tug of war with this goddamn door. I was like,
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  man, you really should have done that two years ago. Yeah, that's that's why I'm getting I'm
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  getting on it. But I have to yeah, I can't just rip the bandaid off though because she's been
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  it's a long story and of failure as my I was so good like month two. She was sleeping in her
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  crib and through the night pretty much, but then we started traveling and traveling as you know
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  messes everything up. Maybe you don't know, but I don't know. I do. I'm sure you do. My kids were born
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  in the States and we moved them to Australia when they were two months old.
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  Wow. I love Australia. I was just writing about Australia last night. Why?
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  Because I spent time on an Ocho ashram right outside of Byron Bay and ended up being a little bit
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  sex culty and so I was writing this whole story and just it got me thinking about I'm trying to
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  write my this book basically and a lot of it is just stories memoir-esque and that whole trip to
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  Australia was just so random and me kind of couch surfing through Australia and of course usually in
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  and since I ended up on this place because I followed a guy to Byron Bay who assured me that
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  there would be places to stay and there weren't and then I found on couchsurfing.com this you know
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  it was like oh come to this yoga retreat. Well those are to be fair to them. Those are places to stay
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  I mean it counts. She's a place to stay of sorts. Totally. Yeah. But I asked her then I ended up in
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  like Ocho ashram. What's an Ocho ashram? What does Ocho mean? Ocho was that he I don't know if you saw
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  the documentary that covered it Wild Wild Country. Wild Wild Country is what it was called
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  and it was all about that. Okay so he was a very controversial figure and had a lot of he was kind
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  he kind of saw himself as like he called himself Zorba the Buddha so he he didn't see
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  meditating and the spiritual practice didn't need to be so serious it could be a bit back an alien
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  and you could have fun and he came up with this concept of dynamic meditation and everybody
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  swapped partners. I knew you were going there. I knew you were going there. Every time there's a guru
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  who wants meditation to be a bit more fun. The fun usually involves him fucking other people's
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  wives and young girls. You should see the documentary it is insane. They became like their own
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  well-armed militia in the middle of Oregon because it's so crazy it was he's very controversial. I
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  think he ended up dying in a prison in Oregon. It's a it's a crazy story actually and then some
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  Aussies you're like they took over this town. Wow and so then the Aussies were like oh mate we
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  got to do a bit of that in foreign bay. Yeah and the guru there is very strange he said he was in
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  his 80s but I think he was just lying and actually was really in his like 60s to make it seem like
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  he was more more you know viral than he and and just alert and together then he really was but
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  he was he was a maniac you know they would break you down and that was the whole thing and and
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  make you take a new name. I took a new name. What was your name? Prem serita. Prem serita. Prem serita.
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  It means forever of love. Prem PR EM. Yes. Prem serita okay just going to call you Prem from now on.
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  That's cool. And to people who don't know Byron Bay who might be outside of Australia it is the
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  hippie it started out as a hippie counterculture town. It has now become fantastically wealthy and
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  it's where like Chris Hemsworth and Crocodile then the lift but it still still has a little bit
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  of the DNA of the old counterculture movement. So it does particularly yeah particularly I think in
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  the bush like where we you were more inland and then there's that little town where the farmers
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  market is. I can't remember the name. Yes thank you. Yeah that's the that's kind of the
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  counterculture pot like acid capital. Yeah a lot of ayahuasca was being done when when I was there
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  I didn't but I know a lot of the people who are on the ashram were starting to partake in the
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  ayahuasca ceremonies over there. And were you still on drugs at the time?
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  I was drinking and doing drugs I had taken a year off before and then I was like about a one
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  way ticket to Australia and right before I left I'm like I'm not going to be sober on Australia
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  that's ridiculous. Yeah right. And then I so yeah but on the ashram you couldn't drink or do
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  drugs real I mean they had some kind of allowances for like mushrooms and ayahuasca I think but
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  the for the most part you couldn't you couldn't drink or do drugs. I ended up getting very drunk in
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  town and then bringing a bunch of wine back to the place and like my punishment was that I had
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  to share all the wine with everybody. Of course and then have some where some allowances yeah and
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  then have sex. That's the standard punishment here at the ashram as everybody knows.
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  Well it's funny that you're writing about that because not a lot of not one that you know
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  Australia is a funny place we only get press in the states when someone gets eaten by a crocodile
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  or someone gets eaten by a shark or there's like viral footage of like the police going
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  getting being too strict on COVID or you know there's it has to be something very sensational.
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  It's never just like the Australian parliament passed you know such a such a law. It's just that
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  on nobody cares. Nobody cares. It felt very big brotherish to me when I was there actually.
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  We'll just yeah it was something that I felt very just all the cameras everywhere on the roads
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  because we drove from Sydney up to Byron Bay and that was oh yeah. One of the first things I noticed
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  was all those speed cameras. Yeah you can't speed they make it they made a decision like in the 80s
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  and 90s that they're going to get serious about drunk driving and speeding and they're just like well
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  we'll just put random breath tests that are all over the place every Friday and Saturday night and
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  like put speed cameras in and we'll just mail you a fine and if you get enough fines then you'll
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  lose your license and it's not like it's where everybody's just flying around the 405 at 90 miles
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  an hour. Yeah we have we have a lot of automobile deaths in the United States. But you've got
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  your freedom so that's the that's the thing. Like they're trade-offs. My partners from New Hampshire
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  and every time we're there I see the the cop cars that literally emblazoned on the side of them
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  because I know you're from the North East as well say live free or die in massive
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  letters like on the side of a cop car and to someone like you're probably going to die. Yeah I'm
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  I'm like is that a threat like what if I don't what if I don't want to live as free as you do
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  like is that like you're gonna with your death wedge. Yeah you're gonna shoot me officer
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  if I'm if I'm insufficiently libertarian. But anyway but I don't know if you remember Bill
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  Bryson wrote a book about Australia then you know the humorist and he has a great stat in it which
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  is he goes back through he does like Alexa's next research or something of all the references to
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  Australia that have been published in the American press and he compares them to other things that
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  the US media writes about and he says that to Americans Australia is more important than bananas
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  but a lot less important than ice cream. Just on a number of cars. I was thinking about
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  Carves Harbor. Have you ever been to the big banana? Tell people what the big banana is.
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  It's a bit literally a big banana. But when you say big I mean people might think it's three
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  feet long. No it's like a hundred foot tall banana. Yeah. I stopped there on my road trip
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  back down to Sydney from when my the trust fund baby who abandoned me in Byron Bay to the
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  sex call picked me back up like three weeks later. Oh that's nice. Good for him.
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  And then we ended up stopping along the way home at all these different places and
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  Carves Harbor. You know Australia doesn't just have a big banana. It is funny how you get to look
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  back on the place where you're from when you leave it or talk to other people and see how weird it is.
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  Australia has a big pretty much everything. So like towns will vie for the largest thing. So there's
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  not only the Carves Harbor big banana. There's a big prawn. There's a big marino sheep in one town.
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  There's a big mango. So each town will be like oh mate you think the cost of the big banana is good.
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  You should see our prawn and there'll be like 120 foot prawn. I'll be like don't go. Don't drive
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  don't drive 400 miles down the road to the big banana. Just take your fat on the front of the big prawn
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  right here. I felt that there was a bit of a Texas vibe to Australia actually. We're basically
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  obedient Texans. We're Texans without the the rugged individualism. Okay. We're Texas
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  meets Canada. We're Texan where like the yeah where is where peculiar like Texans and then
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  obedient like Canadians. It's weird though because honestly when I was traveling around the world
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  the new Americans on the road at the time were Australians. They were and perhaps they were
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  the bogans as you might call them but they were the loudest most of noxious group of people
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  anywhere you went. Absolutely. And they were absolutely out of their minds. I mean the guys that
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  I knew in Sri Lanka they were literally out of their minds. They would do a bunch of ketamine
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  and wrestle in the surf and then they were jumping off. You know one of the guys was a
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  base jumper and he was just any chance he had to jump off a cliff into a death defying
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  least small little target he would take. Yeah. It was like these guys were maniacs. Aussies are
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  yes we are obedient but also tough and fun. You got to admit. Very fun. No they were my best. I
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  have a true love of Aussies. I think when you're traveling around and Americans probably would be
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  this fun if they traveled more but the kind but Americans don't seem to go outside of America as
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  much of you being an exception. The kinds of Americans who you tend to meet when you're backpacking
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  around exotic parts of the world are either you're like Northwest kind of Pacific coast people who
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  really let's face it Canadians in disguise. Or they're just very touristy. You know they're
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  they're your Midwestern people who are dressed in tourists gear with the Hawaiian shirt and the
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  camera and they're a little bit lame. The people who are cool are you know they're usually
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  Israelis or Aussies or Kiwis or Israelis to so many in the road. Yeah in Sri Lanka where I was I
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  was supposed to go for two weeks I ended up staying for two months and I loved it. It's such a shame
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  all of the unrest there but it was my favorite country probably I've ever been to and the place
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  where I was was a surf break and it was just I stayed there long enough to see the most traveling
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  people and it was always Aussies and Russians love Russian love love it down there and Israelis.
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  Yeah not not a lot of Russians German yeah Germans German travel yeah yeah they travel more than anyone
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  yeah well they don't but there are more of them like you know they're like four times the
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  popular three or four times the population of Australia so you'd expect I did like it there though
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  I really could have I almost went full expat and stayed in Australia. You can find some like once
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  the kids old enough to travel actually before she's two so you don't have to pay for a you know a
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  full fair ticket you should come down we'll find some junket for you to do like speaking tours or
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  some shit like that get someone else to pay for the business class seat. Well we I do love it it's
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  very I ended up I ended up actually in New Zealand instead with a with a kiwi so well now was
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  there a six drug callton New Zealand as well. No that that it was this whole entire this whole story
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  is actually so crazy of how the whole me just buying one way ticket and how it all unfolded it
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  it would take me the entire duration of your podcast plus to tell the story. A light and
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  real but it's basic yeah it's just it's so wild it's just one thing unfolding into another thing
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  in me just being on my own and I was I went to New Zealand and I worked on a horse trekking farm
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  and it was a horse trekking like company I guess not farm but they and I didn't know anything
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  about horses but I do have a very big mouth and I'm good at promoting so they would just give me
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  flyers and tell me like go into a queen's town and just promote. Sure I imagine that you
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  would be more aggressive at the promotion than a mild man at New Zealander would be yeah I was
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  going to come on a little horse ride and you'd be like come on down get your ass on a horse.
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  I would be like come on you guys want to go Lord of the Rings it up vlogger here.
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  The the problem with having a you know the reputation that Australians and New Zealanders do
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  are broad of being the the wild tough people you know people uncontrollable travelers
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  is that if you're a mild-mannered a feat like half-jew gayish kind of guy like me
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  you keep getting into trouble abroad because everyone thinks I'm tougher than I am. I remember
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  you mentioned ayahuasca the only time I did ayahuasca was in New York I lived in New York for
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  most of my professional life and I just came back here when I had kids a few years ago and there
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  was this like peruvian dude you didn't want them to die in a special shooting you're like all right time
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  to go it was partly that it was partly like just everyone losing their minds over Donald Trump and
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  me not wanting to work in the media in during the Trump administration and yeah I got a job off
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  her back here and my partner was like you know what yeah let's just do it just go and chill out a
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  little bit and the the peruvian guru who was doing this overnight ayahuasca ceremony in Brooklyn
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  like everyone comes up and like this chanting and you know bells and shit and he sort of takes
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  your measure by like looking at you and then decides how much ayahuasca he's going to give you
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  on the first dose and pours it into a little urn for you to drink from and when I come up he's like
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  how are you I'm like I'm good you have an accent I was like yeah where are you from I was like
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  Australia there's okay tough you are tough and like you know no no it was me a triple dose he's
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  like I'm like you don't know this Australian sir excuse me sir did you did you did you end
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  up getting in touch with your Australian I did actually it was great it was the perfect
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  it was the perfect dose didn't need anymore when it came to the second second round but did
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  you end up doing any of that that's no and then I got sober before it really became like the
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  thing to do yeah the the current thing and just sobriety for you extend to that kind of thing I mean
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  I know some people who are I'm sober drink wise as well and I have for friends who are you know
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  sober on recreational drugs but don't really think of psychedelics as being fun they're more like
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  spiritual tools right or there's like California sober which is you know you don't do hard
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  drugs or alcohol and you smoke weed so that's right yeah that seems like I feel yeah it's
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  like weed's not gonna change your life you know what I mean it's not like weed's not ayahuasca it's
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  not like I'm getting in touch with my spiritual side weed you're just using weed the same way
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  other people use alcohol so you know anyway but yeah tell me what sobriety means to you
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  um I mean really for me I I have such a addictive personality what I've really realized
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  over the years and I anything that alters the way that I feel I get addicted to pretty quickly
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  and with psychedelics I mean I guess I could make like a carve out for them if I wanted
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  in my sobriety I I understand the spiritual tool aspect of them but the I do worry about
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  the you know when I used to do mushrooms I would drink like a case of beer coming down it's always
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  the come down that worries me right in terms of how am I gonna manage the come down from
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  something like that because and I've had friends and sobriety have done ayahuasca and they don't
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  see it as as a thing and they've had a lot of benefits from that I I just don't feel at this
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  present moment that could change I don't feel the need to to do I don't need to have some life
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  changing spiritual experience I don't see why I would do that my life is very you know I've worked
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  through a lot of trauma I my life has been very I feel very blessed I don't I don't know that
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  I feel like whenever people do that they're trying to like really work through something
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  like that mother wound or the you know the trauma they experienced or abandonment and I'm sure
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  I have all that sure but I I don't know that psychedelics I've also always been very I always
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  joke that psychedelics are for kid like when I was growing up I was like psychedelics are for kids
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  who come from good homes like they didn't have shit hitting the fan all the time at home because
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  you can't really be tripping on acid and and be worried that like your stepdad's back in the mental
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  institution or whatever like they're whatever was going down so I never I never really enjoyed
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  psychedelics because I don't like being that out of control for any extended period of time
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  yeah I see that I mean isn't the whole quest for spiritual fulfillment a little bit of a
• 28:18
  hashtag first world luxury yeah even when you're even when you're talking about the every story
• 28:27
  I hear about I was guy like it makes me laugh inside because it's always some peruvian
• 28:35
  yeah it's like yeah we've gone to it's like white white colonial man has gone to South America
• 28:42
  and plucked this bro out so that we can so that Brooklyn hipsters can pay him too much money to
• 28:48
  create this as that spiritual experience for everybody and he seems like such a white people
• 28:54
  thing too yeah like this always sounds like the whitest white person shit to me yeah no totally
• 29:00
  I mean the dude with he was probably from central casting you know he probably was probably from
• 29:05
  Iowa he's like what did you do last night man I chose to pretend that they're peruvian fucking
• 29:11
  spiritual yeah my friend told me about their experience it was like a Malibu and they're like
• 29:17
  there's this guru I'm like she's probably from like San Bernardino yeah that's right when you say
• 29:23
  guru what exactly do you mean by guru I mean it's like you would know from like traveling around
• 29:29
  Sri Lanka and other places that you know when people are just busy getting on with their lives
• 29:33
  I don't have a lot of time to gaze at their navels and try to figure out what the meaning of the
• 29:38
  universe is and like why they're broken as a soul it's like bro there's a rice patty that needs
• 29:44
  to be worked on yeah yeah that that was something that was it was interesting to me I used to when
• 29:52
  I was in Sri Lanka I held I was this one woman that the Aussies dubbed like her nickname was
• 29:59
  chompers because you guys have the best nicknames she didn't have that many teeth come on come on
• 30:05
  friends are eat it don't talk to us about nicknames no you guys have the best nicknames ever
• 30:11
  and she invited us to her house jungle side and we went and they got her new machete and I was
• 30:19
  trying to help herself some pineapples one day and I got fired because the English people were so
• 30:26
  like niggling dining this woman who walks up and down the beach trying to sell pineapples and
• 30:32
  they're like oh the pineapples from the other lady are like probably the equivalent of a penny
• 30:36
  that they would walk over in their country wouldn't even stop and in on this beach they're like
• 30:43
  niggling diming in her at niggling diming her and I was getting so angry at them and she was like
• 30:48
  you're not helping yeah absolutely I just want to take I just want to clip from what you just said
• 30:56
  just the line we got her a new machete because I was trying to buy a pineapple and just take that
• 31:02
  out of context and make that the promo of the show like what the fuck is really the better
• 31:07
  seat talking about yeah I was once traveling around Indonesia where the currency is you know it's
• 31:13
  sort of like an India where the currency is worth like one billionth of it never penny uh and we
• 31:18
  were eating and it was actually just after there'd been a financial crisis and so the rupee
• 31:23
  was even cheaper than it had been and I was with a uni university friend and we were all eating
• 31:29
  there were four of us eating at this place and it was literally like you know 20 cents or 25 cents
• 31:34
  for a meal and we have this feast and then at the end they bring back the change and it's just coins
• 31:41
  in the middle and I could just eyeball it that the change was about like a cent and a half
• 31:48
  and my friend who I wasn't very good friends with and henceforth never sorry again was rummaging
• 31:54
  around through the cent and a half to get her quarter share of the cent and a half oh god
• 31:59
  and ends up like taking back two thirds of a cent because she doesn't want to leave a tip
• 32:06
  I'm like let it go I think these people have better use for two thirds of a cent to you do
• 32:11
  oh yeah that's that's so weird that kind of cheapness on that the thing I love about travel
• 32:18
  in places like that is you can just make someone's month with $10 you know you can just
• 32:25
  hey we were just in South Africa actually during the pandemic I guess we went for our honeymoon
• 32:31
  because we got married November 2020 my husband and I and went to South Africa February of 2021
• 32:40
  which you might remember was when the South African strain was was in the news so everyone was
• 32:47
  telling us not to go but we ended up going and it was tourism had been so decimated by
• 32:55
  you know all of these restrictions that the country was suffering and the people at the the
• 33:01
  parks were suffering and all the national parks and we had so much fun just like throwing money
• 33:07
  around it was in it wasn't even that much didn't you have trouble getting back or something
• 33:13
  am I misremembering but wasn't there didn't people start blocking flights off from sub-Saharan Africa
• 33:20
  yeah there it was it was dodgy for sure the the problem was you needed that negative PCR test
• 33:29
  and we had friends who actually got a false positive two days before we were supposed to leave
• 33:38
  and it just it definitely created like all these you know you're like okay do we stay here
• 33:45
  and risk getting COVID we're in the middle of Kruger National Park or do we get on a plane
• 33:52
  and go back to Cape Town and I have friends there at least we can ride out whatever
• 33:58
  COVID luckily none of us had COVID but our friends who were there they had they have like four
• 34:03
  children they were she she's like I have to get back they went and did another test and it came
• 34:08
  back negative so she got just a random positive but we had to stay in a hotel room for two day it was
• 34:14
  just like it was weird traveling and the flights were so empty our flight there were probably seven
• 34:22
  of us on the flight I mean it's weird doing on those long hauls yeah yeah with no one I had I was
• 34:30
  in northern Italy in like December when Omicron was exploding so this is a little bit after that
• 34:38
  but like the Biden administration still had a you cannot enter the United States unless you get
• 34:45
  your test done and I think it was within 24 hours of getting on the plane that you had to have
• 34:50
  your test on which was absolutely crazy because I mean it's not like there was any ever any attempt to
• 34:55
  do a zero COVID thing in the United States so I mean now it's all over the place we still have these
• 35:01
  we still have something like this for the United States like what fucking difference does it make
• 35:05
  I mean unless you're gonna go hardcore you know and be like all right we're not gonna allow any
• 35:10
  COVID in that wall and we're not gonna allow it to spread like if you're China okay well that's
• 35:14
  a compromise you can make I suppose but it makes absolutely no sense to be anyway you know stopping
• 35:18
  people getting on a plane and coming into the country if everyone there already has it it's
• 35:23
  like spreading all over the place like what are you doing but anyway I was in I was just in Milan
• 35:28
  for one night because I'd gotten the train over from France I was seeing some family because you
• 35:32
  know we couldn't leave Australia for the whole we literally did have a zero COVID two years basically
• 35:38
  and although there was lots of who are about how brutal it supposedly was when there were lockdown
• 35:43
  periods for the vast majority of Australians for the vast majority of the pandemic life was just
• 35:47
  going about normally and there was no COVID because the borders were closed and the state borders
• 35:51
  were closed so in places like Western Australia and Queensland and South Australia you had millions
• 35:56
  upon millions of people with no masks no school closures no social distancing no isolation no
• 36:02
  nothing just eating out and living their lives and then everyone eventually got vaccinated and the
• 36:06
  borders opened and COVID ripped through but there wasn't the same kind of you know disruption
• 36:11
  that had happened in New York and London and Italy in place and this is the beauty of being able
• 36:17
  to shut your borders and being in Ireland right absolutely and and you know what this is a little
• 36:23
  known tidbit of information that I'll tell you so you can sound interesting at parties Bridget but
• 36:28
  just before the pandemic what a lot of people don't realise is do you remember Australia had horrendous
• 36:34
  bushfires do you remember seeing that on the news like the front page of the New York Times was just
• 36:38
  like a kangaroo bouncing along in front of just a city on fire there was just horrendous the worst
• 36:44
  like wildfires in history were taking place in Australia between November I guess like October
• 36:53
  and February as COVID was developing so no one yes no one came to Australia from China and the
• 37:03
  United States and other places like that I honestly think that we would not have been able to get our
• 37:08
  hands around suppressing the cases of COVID that were here in February and March if it weren't for
• 37:15
  the bushfires ceasing travel between what I feel guilty still that's really interesting that's
• 37:24
  like one of those freakonomics things exactly yeah yeah one of the side the consequences that you
• 37:30
  never could have foreseen that's right yeah at the time we're thinking this is the worst thing that
• 37:34
  has ever happened to Australia and then like eight months later we're all just going to the beach
• 37:38
  while the rest of the world is hunkered down for a pandemic and we're like oh I guess the
• 37:43
  worked in our paper and members baked like oh yeah that I was I was called out by Australians
• 37:51
  because I was on doing a live stream and I think it came up and I my way of handling all things
• 37:57
  tragic is to try and make light of them and laugh and the Australians were like this is not funny
• 38:03
  I'm like I mean obviously it's not funny and tragic tragic why what did you say because I was making
• 38:10
  light of four of them of the bushfires right yeah I was like I was like we okay yeah we look like
• 38:16
  we have forest fires here every other day literally it feels like something's always burning and so
• 38:23
  I was just I knew they were catastrophic and they were awful and I obviously as I've mentioned
• 38:29
  love Australia so I just I handle all to my I think own detriment I handle almost every single
• 38:39
  thing that's tragic with a attempt at humor for a dark humor and the Aussies were they still
• 38:47
  call me out for it they're like oh weren't you the girl that was giggling about the bushfires I
• 38:52
  mean it's hard isn't it is like I share your instinct to laugh at things but you have to find a
• 38:59
  way of laughing at the thing where you're not diminishing the thing that you're laughing at as well
• 39:04
  I mean you don't have to but like if you want it to not come to not land wrong then yeah and it
• 39:10
  was probably a bit too soon you know I'm sure they were so like burning and everybody was very
• 39:14
  sensitive and I understand that and it was of a different scale I mean the like the I saw
• 39:20
  shot the satellite shots of how the the smoke from the fires blew across the Pacific across South
• 39:28
  America across like Africa across the Indian Ocean and back to Australia and the same smoke was
• 39:36
  like the smoke from the fires on the east coast was being breathed in and smelled by people on
• 39:41
  the west coast of Australia because it went it was so much it went around the entire planet
• 39:46
  yeah so any to any real listeners who are were offended I apologize this is my chance to make
• 39:54
  to make it right I love I apologize for my you are insensitiveness I love I love that you have
• 40:01
  a have a piece recently I was just reading your piece about basic Christmases and how you're
• 40:06
  gradually coming coming around to sort of grudgingly liking holidays now that you've got a kid
• 40:13
  explain that to people are you a have you traditionally been a Grinch I have been yeah the
• 40:19
  holidays were you know I think the holidays were tough for me growing up and and once my
• 40:25
  parents got divorced in particular we would be on planes halfway through the break to split the
• 40:33
  holiday and it was always running around trying to see people there was always a lot of drama for
• 40:41
  some reason the holidays were very triggering to my mom for whatever reason so she would always
• 40:47
  seem to kind of have like a meltdown every Thanksgiving or I think this is common a lot of families
• 40:52
  actually yeah and and it was just it was traditionally a time that I was like oh god and then as I
• 41:01
  got older and started just pursuing my own stuff and trying to create whatever I could in terms
• 41:10
  of content I I just became resentful of how they're like bullies that force you to partake
• 41:18
  it was just it always felt like this bully came along and would just make me partake and all
• 41:27
  like mandatory fun yeah and just a lot of drinking too when I was drinking it was always like this
• 41:34
  this was I was I was just yeah this was usually the the kind of tail end of a bender that started
• 41:44
  around Halloween which my whole year was usually a bender but this was like the bender on top of the
• 41:50
  bender that ran through New Year's and so by Christmas I was really sloppy I would say for a lot
• 41:57
  of the years and I just didn't I'm not a huge fan of obligation although I think there's a lot more
• 42:04
  to be said for that now but I just I didn't want to like show up at all these vents and I'd never
• 42:13
  really could get that into it so what's changed now you just want to force your daughter to have to
• 42:19
  do all of this that you didn't want to do no I I didn't know I think actually I've done a lot of
• 42:25
  work around it over the years I still hate Halloween and think it's a trash holiday and it's
• 42:30
  great for kids but it's partaking it's great what's not fun about it it's ridiculous because we know
• 42:36
  I mean I was always so overwhelmed by it in New York because they do it too such a big Halloween and
• 42:41
  I just thought it was well yeah but L.A. you have to like go to a particular place because
• 42:46
  everybody everything is so spread out and disjointed I mean in New York you can't avoid it it's like
• 42:52
  I guess I imagine that in L.A. like there are occasional suburban streets where it's not taking
• 42:56
  place but New York just explodes in a giant pumpkin yeah so I think with I've done work just I've
• 43:04
  created my own traditions and and I have family out here in California and they it's now we have
• 43:12
  just kind of sweet traditions but I've just had to do work around my my own grinchness so that
• 43:20
  every time the holidays didn't come up on but I wasn't like oh god the holidays and here they
• 43:25
  are just to kill your momentum like I just wrote about this this time of year between Thanksgiving
• 43:33
  and Christmas is like when everyone gets the fuck it's yeah yeah it's easy to any of your gains
• 43:41
  if you lost weight if you were saving money you can you can erase those gains in three weeks
• 43:47
  yeah easily it's fun though it's fun it's fun getting fat and lazy it wasn't so at what point did
• 43:57
  the drinking part not be fun um there were many points I think that the most recent rock bottom
• 44:09
  that led me into this sobriety which was probably the first one I really took seriously but the
• 44:16
  third one in my life I the third me in that the first one was when I was 19 and I was like there's
• 44:25
  no way I'm quitting drinking before I turn 21 that's just not happening but I will quit heroin
• 44:29
  which I did and then the second one what how did you do that um I put myself into rehab basically
• 44:40
  and then I stayed in a halfway house for like seven months and I I tricked myself into thinking
• 44:47
  that I wasn't an addict because I was like oh heroin was just my problem so weirdly it kept me
• 44:53
  out a lot longer than I might have been out because I just was like anyone would get addicted to
• 45:00
  heroin right heroin right not thinking like yeah but probably only someone who's like an addict
• 45:08
  would do heroin but but um so then the second one was an experimental year where I just wanted
• 45:18
  to prove to myself that I could not drink for a year and I did that I went 13 months I was right
• 45:23
  before I went to Australia actually and then the the most recent one I'd come back from two years
• 45:31
  of traveling around the world and I was back in LA one of the things that caused me to go on that
• 45:39
  giant walk about was a really bad heartbreak and I ended up in my hometown before at the end of all
• 45:47
  of these travels waiting tables and was just back in this rut that I was in in my 20s and I was just
• 45:56
  so it is that what they say in in the big book in in 12-step programs there's this idea of pitiful
• 46:04
  demoralization and that really was how I felt and I felt suicidal and I really considered going
• 46:14
  back and using heroin which was to me a red flag that I basically wanted to die and so I ended up
• 46:20
  coming but this was on the plane on the way back to LA and I was like maybe I should go you know
• 46:27
  for a hike before I go cop heroin on El Mita but I did go for that hike and some I don't know it was
• 46:37
  like some inch of willingness cracked open and I was able to see that I needed to get sober I don't
• 46:45
  know that it was even formulated I just knew I in that year that I was sober I felt good and I
• 46:54
  I reached out to somebody and went to a meeting that night and then kind of begrudgingly stayed
• 47:00
  sober for many years and now I love it and can't imagine I can't imagine my life any other way
• 47:08
  but it took many many years of being sobered before I would say I truly came to enjoy it I was very
• 47:17
  resentful that I had to quit drinking I loved drinking so it was but it was not just drinking it was
• 47:23
  drinking and doing blow and you know all my bad habits it was like I always say like I don't
• 47:29
  smoke I only smoke when I drink but I drink every day yeah yeah where was the hike where you had
• 47:37
  that realization to mescal do you ever go back there yeah I love it it just it's such a magical
• 47:45
  place and beautiful but you it's I go there all the time it just there's a rock at the very I
• 47:52
  remember going up that hill and I was so gross like sweating out toxins and Molly and cocaine
• 47:59
  booze and cigarettes and I had been so unhealthy and I just felt toxic and I I was I mean I had burned
• 48:08
  a lot of bridges with my family members that I loved I I was just really at another rock bottom
• 48:14
  I've been in so many rock bottoms it's embarrassing does that place still evoke that
• 48:22
  it does actually yeah it does it makes me feel but Joshua tree has the same effect on me where it
• 48:30
  feels like I always say Joshua tree is my church it just feels sacred to me yeah but definitely
• 48:38
  to mescal is an easy place for me to tap into that sacred connection to something and it that's what
• 48:46
  my husband and I started a podcast called factory settings where we just take a topic and talk
• 48:52
  about it he's a licensed marriage and family therapist or oh I guess almost licensed he's on his
• 48:58
  way to being licensed um he's like the guru at the ashram who has sex yeah he's like a you know
• 49:05
  he's got the hours he has to wait for the state to give me the code take the test it's like a whole
• 49:10
  thing yeah all the stuff but he so he's an associate marriage and family therapist and he and I
• 49:18
  will talk about like this week we talked about gratitude and I'm like I'm not gonna be able to talk
• 49:23
  for an hour about gratitude but then once we start talking we I love I love the conversations
• 49:30
  because I never know where they're gonna go but it really always starts with what it was our kind
• 49:35
  of factory setting default idea that we had about gratitude where did it come from how was it
• 49:41
  modeled what what was our earliest experience with that concept and one of the topics that came up
• 49:48
  that now I want to do a podcast about is this idea of willingness that little sliver of willingness
• 49:55
  that opened to maybe being curious about my life looking differently I remember on that hike
• 50:05
  having that moment of being really brought to my knees feeling toxic and thinking what does my
• 50:13
  life look like if I never do this again if I never drink again I've spent 20 years 20 plus years
• 50:20
  drinking and smoking weed at this point what happens if I just don't do that and that's really the
• 50:28
  adventure I'm on now I was just reading Bridget Matthew Perry's new autobiography oh yeah he talks
• 50:37
  about his addiction to pills and you know he's at some point he's taken you know 50 or 60
• 50:45
  viking and or percuss set you know some kind of oxy every single day and he he says several times
• 50:51
  in the book that he never wanted to use heroin like for him that was that would have been a bridge
• 50:56
  too far that would have just meant that he had truly failed if if he had allowed all of these you
• 51:02
  know heroin adjacent substances to actually turn into heroin itself how did you use it the first time
• 51:09
  um I smoked it I and it funny you should ask me this question like the the piece that I just
• 51:18
  filed which will come out and spectator magazine in the print magazine for the next um edition so I
• 51:25
  guess it will be January's I was writing about junkie pride and how I basically lied about the
• 51:33
  fact that I shot heroin for I don't even know how many years because I was so embarrassed that I
• 51:40
  had never shot it and there's this whole kind of hierarchy within sobriety and I just said I had
• 51:48
  shot it once and then I realized and I'm like I told this life for so long in my early 2019 2021
• 51:56
  that I then believed it and it wasn't even until like five years into this sobriety that I'm like
• 52:02
  I never shot heroin really why am I holding on to fly you never inject no right no because I never
• 52:09
  I never I knew that would be the end for me I like needles and B I just knew I was already so sick
• 52:17
  from smoking and snort snorting it wait did you say you like needles I like needles like I like
• 52:24
  having my blood drawn yeah I've yeah I'm I'm weird like that but I'm not alone and so I knew
• 52:33
  I knew that the whole the I'd seen enough people doing it I knew that the ritual there's like
• 52:38
  you know this ritualization of the whole process around shooting up and it becomes this like for
• 52:45
  me it was like smoking a bowl and drinking coffee in the morning or I loved chasing the dragon I
• 52:51
  liked I liked the ritual around it and um even like cutting lines I liked the weirdly like I
• 52:59
  I never learned how to roll a joint either and you would think that that's something that I would
• 53:03
  have prided myself on but I never did I was like such a lazy stoner but that's another thing where
• 53:10
  people have their whole ritual you know they have their process and I think that's some of this
• 53:15
  hardest stuff when you're quitting but that like I couldn't look at tinfoil for like a good solid
• 53:21
  three years without being triggered yeah where did you get it to begin with and how did you when
• 53:27
  you say that when you came back to LA and you were hiking you were thinking you know maybe I should
• 53:31
  just go down and get some like if you asked me to get weed or MDMA I'm sure that I could ask
• 53:38
  around and I'd be able to find someone who knows someone and they'd be able to procure it for me maybe
• 53:44
  cocaine like but I kind of I don't know where I was not to find heroin yeah that was
• 53:51
  uh interesting because mostly I got it through my boyfriend at the time and he got it through like
• 54:00
  he was in the industry and got it through someone he was working with and then we I was actually
• 54:06
  living in Minnesota at the time and so it would get like shipped to us from here and and again like
• 54:15
  I couldn't even look at like a FedEx truck without being triggered really you'd order it from a dealer
• 54:22
  in California and a FedEx van would arrive in Minnesota well no it wasn't from a dealer it was
• 54:29
  from someone like in the industry who was a friend who was sending it to us out in Minnesota yeah
• 54:37
  you can pick your word for that but I think they I think the FBI would probably call that a dealer
• 54:42
  probably this was so long ago and and so yeah that it it was um sketchy for sure and then
• 54:52
  and in when we were here yeah it was just like down in certain parts of LA you could kind of
• 54:59
  sass out who was dealing it and they just kind of walk up to your car to you and you know you're
• 55:06
  in a neighborhood and generally people my friend actually was just telling a story about how she got
• 55:11
  kind of ended up in the wrong neighborhood in LA and she got pulled over because the cops were
• 55:15
  like the only reason someone like you is in this neighborhood is the by drugs that's happened to
• 55:20
  me that's happened to me in LA as well I'm like I'm just looking around just going for a drive they're
• 55:24
  like sir you're an idiot Australian get out of this area like you're either going to get shot or
• 55:28
  you're going to get you're going to buy drugs and neither of we don't want either of those things
• 55:31
  to happen that's the weird thing LA is so kind of you know split up like that in different
• 55:39
  neighborhoods it's not it's very strange it's a very strange city in that respect it's very
• 55:45
  it's a collection of it's a collection of villages interlocked by freeways yes and so then but
• 55:51
  what is becoming famous like for you like at what point do you go from you know this kind of all
• 55:57
  these problems to realizing is it Twitter that does it for you where at what point do you go wow
• 56:02
  I've got like a I've got a fan base yeah I don't I don't get famous I don't know that I'm famous
• 56:13
  um famous is I I mean you can use the word a bunch of different ways right I mean it's not like
• 56:18
  you get mobbed at airports and you're flying private and wearing having to have any wear sunglasses
• 56:23
  so that you can just buy a coffee at Starbucks but you know if you if I know of you and if Joe
• 56:29
  Rogan knows you and you know I don't know there's there's a certain elite kind of cultural soup that
• 56:34
  we swim in and you're known to all of the important people in that circle I guess but I think
• 56:41
  of famous like you're you're my mom knows your mom knows my name you know it's it's it's like
• 56:48
  I don't know it's maybe maybe my mom doesn't mean my mom wouldn't know who met you parry yes
• 56:54
  so that by that yeah he's not famous either right yeah that's that's a good you know what I mean
• 57:00
  I mean you're not waiting at what point do you go I'm not waiting tables anymore I'm not you know
• 57:05
  I wasn't that long ago Joe I guess this is now a thing I guess for a living now I get you know
• 57:12
  people get to pay me to talk shit well I've always wanted to write so getting paid to write was
• 57:19
  really the first iteration of that wherever I am now and that was I mean I was just talking
• 57:27
  about this my last paycheck that I received I think from waiting tables was like 2019 I
• 57:33
  was probably the end of 2018 that I was still and I was still going up and working on farms to
• 57:39
  make extra money just to survive I mean I'd been freelancing for a long time and I started writing
• 57:47
  for Playboy in 2015 and then they gave me a column and that was really when I started doing what
• 57:58
  I had always wanted to do and come out here to do which was be a writer and I had been doing
• 58:04
  stand-up comedy as well which I started doing in 2010 and then I traveled for those years and
• 58:10
  came back and was grinding away at that again and then I don't know like that the story of how I
• 58:18
  became an accidental pundit is is really hilarious I mean I feel like I just was playing a gigantic
• 58:28
  game of yes and like an improv game was like yes and now I will appear on Glenn Beck and have a
• 58:36
  conversation but that was really just more that I happened to be in these weird intersections that
• 58:46
  were experiencing some cultural shifts at that moment and then during the Trump years when
• 58:54
  everyone lost their mind like working at Playboy being in comedy these are all these I just
• 59:01
  happen to be in those places when suddenly everyone was getting me to and comedy comedians were like
• 59:09
  why can't I make these jokes anymore and and you know everything everyone went crazy so
• 59:17
  I started writing I guess about more like culture things when I was at Playboy actually they gave
• 59:26
  me quite a few columns when I was still there and then and then I was unceremoniously let go from
• 59:33
  Playboy and after that it just things just got kind of weird but I started the my podcast walkins
• 59:41
  welcome in 2018 and I'm I will hope that you will come on it I love that podcast I've been able
• 59:48
  to talk to I so many thank you I'm excited about that but I'll turn the table on you I've talked
• 59:53
  to so many people about so many different things and I mean you have an excuse to pick people's
• 59:59
  my I mean that's what I love about this show and I do a normal radio show on where I have sort
• 1:00:04
  of some kind of a duty to be somewhat responsible in who I talk to and what we say and like it has
• 1:00:10
  to have some tethering to things that are going on in the in the world because it's the public
• 1:00:15
  broadcaster but here like we can just talk about you know Israelis in Sri Lanka for as long as we
• 1:00:21
  want and you can pick somebody's brain about about whatever the fuck and it's it's a it's an
• 1:00:25
  enormous luxury it's the kind of thing that I would do and then I'm sure you would do even if
• 1:00:30
  you know we've even if it wasn't a job it's it's great fun and then I mean so I'm interested
• 1:00:36
  also in you said that you were sort of at this intersection at this particular moment in time
• 1:00:40
  when everyone was losing their minds it was Trump it was I mean maybe you you you found yourself in a
• 1:00:49
  I guess a niche in the culture where cancel culture was a big thing like there was I guess
• 1:00:56
  wokeness was peaking hopefully peaking like I think I'm interested in what you think about that
• 1:01:01
  whether you think that's on the define and whether our tolerance for cancel culture with with
• 1:01:05
  more people are getting more fed up with it and so you know therefore things are a turning but I
• 1:01:10
  I guess I noticed you as being like a rare voice of here's a reasonable person who's not a
• 1:01:17
  right wing like shit wad but who is willing to you know to just call bullshit on the left at a
• 1:01:26
  time when people were very hungry for that sort of sanity yeah I think that I that's what probably
• 1:01:34
  has cost me lots of opportunities maybe in the industry like in Hollywood and in some of the
• 1:01:39
  industries I would hope to be in but but I think really I just was trying to understand I didn't
• 1:01:48
  understand how Trump could go from being the butt of everybody's late night jokes for an entire year
• 1:01:56
  and overnight becoming Hitler you know be once he won basically and that was where I just didn't I
• 1:02:03
  was like hot really really that that afraid of this I like he's a buffoon is he buffoon or is he
• 1:02:11
  dangerous which I just didn't understand and I do think the guys at buffoon and I also think
• 1:02:18
  dangerous to a certain extent but he he didn't strike like I have this I just would kind of ask
• 1:02:28
  people like play the tape forward when you're saying this is literally the next Hitler you think
• 1:02:36
  people are going to end up on trains like the this seems like a diminishing of someone who is
• 1:02:43
  truly an evil person who had an ideology and I don't really know what Trump's ideology even is
• 1:02:50
  other than he's obsessed with people you know needing to be liked and paid attention to.
• 1:02:56
  Well yeah I mean it also means that in the future if we actually do get potential tyrants in
• 1:03:01
  the United States we will have cried cried wolf so many times that it's like because I mean it is
• 1:03:05
  conceivable yeah what if you get someone who really of course who's a Nick Fuentes or one of like
• 1:03:09
  these people who's a real like open white supremacist anti-Semite and you know wants to really do
• 1:03:16
  something about the Jewish problem with like deputy they're like I don't know vice president Kanye
• 1:03:23
  or whatever it is like that that wasn't the sense I got from Trump you know that he was not that he
• 1:03:29
  had any kind of like that's what I mean I have a friend who's a Holocaust survivor and he was like
• 1:03:37
  you know Hitler wrote a book he was very clear about what he wanted to do yeah and he was also
• 1:03:43
  complicated I mean you know yeah he was disciplined he was disciplined yeah exactly you know
• 1:03:48
  what he wanted to achieve yeah I mean and the I just got I very quickly got weary coming back to
• 1:03:54
  why I left the States as well with the the coarseness of the analysis of him and how boring and kind
• 1:04:00
  of lazy it was and you know calling the calling his immigration changes a Muslim ban when you know
• 1:04:08
  there were lots of majority Muslim countries that he wasn't restricting immigration from he
• 1:04:12
  was restricting immigration it was a very kind of you know nasty crude thing to do to suddenly
• 1:04:16
  ban people from these very very very troubled third world terrorist adjacent places but
• 1:04:22
  to call it a Muslim ban is just lazy to talk about kids in cages well yeah I mean when you
• 1:04:27
  incarcerate people who've broken the law then they end up in cages and that's really cruel but we
• 1:04:33
  don't use that by the way they're still in cages right thousands and thousands of them it's a
• 1:04:39
  horrendous thing but I mean just it's so obviously an emotional ploy to phrase it that way instead of
• 1:04:45
  saying like you know family separation and like the incarceration of people I don't know it just
• 1:04:50
  felt like there was a lot of there was a lot of lazy group thing like yeah hyper and pushing
• 1:04:56
  of buttons and everything that I was like I don't really want to be part of this conversation because
• 1:05:00
  I don't really want to defend the guy and also I didn't want to become like Dave Rubin or something
• 1:05:06
  you know I didn't want to I didn't want my and it is something I sort of admire about you as well
• 1:05:10
  is like a lot of people who became the kind of contrary and centrist who didn't want to join the
• 1:05:16
  group think of the left have just kind of drifted over the other side and become what I regard as
• 1:05:21
  hacks on the right it's it would be easy you know there's there's it would be I can I mean a part
• 1:05:29
  of me understands how and why that happens because I am still poor you want some of that Rubin
• 1:05:39
  money baby and they're not yeah I mean for people who don't know the economics of this I mean
• 1:05:45
  they get paid by conservative like by shadowy like conservative evil goat globo corpse to keep
• 1:05:51
  doing they know they get sponsored by you know oil companies like that and you know and Rubin's
• 1:06:00
  defense he did also create you know locals which I think they're in and now rumble about it so I
• 1:06:06
  actually think there's there's some tech yes that was a social social platform wasn't it yeah
• 1:06:12
  and he gets lots of views on YouTube so he gets to sell ads against that so it's not not wholly corrupt
• 1:06:16
  but it's it's it's capture by a particular audience and I would say pandering to that audience in
• 1:06:24
  what I regard as an unprincipled way I just think that there there were lots of people
• 1:06:31
  who kind of pivoted into the lane I was just like screaming from in in post trump like you know you
• 1:06:40
  see I think Barry Weiss like very very very effectively pivoted out of mainstream media into common
• 1:06:49
  sense and is really has the vision to try and build something and Glenn Greenwald and Matt
• 1:06:58
  Taibi they're all people who have successfully I see left mainstream media and seem to have an
• 1:07:06
  audience that try holds them somewhat accountable I think as much as you can yeah yeah so there it
• 1:07:16
  there seems to be a growing you know I think Rogan has always held the center for pretty much
• 1:07:22
  everybody I don't I don't know where we'd be without him and his voice and his platform in this
• 1:07:29
  discourse now as much shit as that man gets he really has left it open for many people of different
• 1:07:38
  you know beliefs to come sit down and talk with them for hours and he's been so generous to
• 1:07:44
  so many people I mean I was actually in the other days like just saying like I don't say thank you
• 1:07:50
  enough but like he I've been on this show seven times he was he was I just wouldn't be where I am
• 1:07:56
  and I wouldn't have the opportunities if I that I did if he hadn't just spotted me on half post
• 1:08:01
  live one day in 2014 and invited me on the show and then continue to support me and and told me
• 1:08:07
  that I have to do a podcast and you know came on my podcast and like one day just let me use his
• 1:08:14
  studio in LA to do a podcast with him and like Sam Harris and it was just uh I think people don't
• 1:08:22
  understand people who scream at at Joe and people like him just don't know what they're talking
• 1:08:28
  about they don't see what's going on behind the scenes they don't see the they don't see the
• 1:08:32
  human being they're just like I don't like disrespect of your output and therefore I think that
• 1:08:35
  you're you know an evil force like he's a human he's a human being who's trying to have interesting
• 1:08:41
  conversations and do the right thing anyway and he's really done nothing nothing differently
• 1:08:45
  you know he's like doing the same thing that he was doing he just suddenly took on this like
• 1:08:50
  outsized influence in the culture at a certain moment and I it's not I don't think anything he ever
• 1:08:56
  wanted or expected yeah yeah and it's like all there's this massive it's like it's like it's
• 1:09:02
  well sorry I was just like they think that all of a sudden if people like what you do a lot then
• 1:09:06
  you have to suddenly change it to make it a mainstream conform to mainstream media norms like how
• 1:09:13
  many follow how many listeners does he need before he before you think that he has to stop doing
• 1:09:17
  his show and start doing the show that you want him to do like is it is it a million ten million
• 1:09:22
  a hundred million like at what point does it does his show no longer become his show no longer his
• 1:09:27
  show and the show that made him successful you know and starts to have to suddenly become NPR
• 1:09:32
  right now it's not him it's like he pioneered this whole so much of the space that we're in and I'm
• 1:09:40
  yeah I'm just he's a good friend I'm eternally grateful to him and I think that he's given me so
• 1:09:47
  many opportunities he told me to start the podcast that I started and he's been so supportive and
• 1:09:53
  just I I'm so yeah I think there's there's a lot of people who occupy this weird independent
• 1:10:01
  space I you're another one you're someone else who is in this space but I I still haven't
• 1:10:09
  I I still feel like there were definitely moments in 2017 2018 I was joking the other day I'm
• 1:10:20
  like someday I'm gonna write a book the money I turned out like the money he said no to
• 1:10:24
  oh dear just the deals I've said no to yeah it's hard you know I was like I've been I had seven
• 1:10:34
  dollars in my bank account for a long time I have a lot of financial insecurity I I can look around
• 1:10:38
  and see that people in my space are making millions of dollars and it's hard for me not to compare
• 1:10:44
  and despair which is not good for me in general but I have to just take a step back and be like I'm
• 1:10:50
  doing fine I'm I've hired my cousin on full-time we're creating content that we love and that
• 1:10:56
  we're proud of and that's really all I can do because it grounds me in whether I should say yes
• 1:11:06
  or no to some of these deals or offers to come you know be a part of a bigger enterprise that's
• 1:11:14
  perhaps more right-wing leaning and I just don't want to do it at the end of the day you only have
• 1:11:20
  and I think that our audience is appreciate are like I just keep saying like a kind of a bullshit
• 1:11:27
  free attitude towards things are independence autonomy like not being bossed around not having
• 1:11:31
  to count how to other people the moment you lose that and start like singing from a hymn sheet
• 1:11:36
  that other people are paying you to sing from well and you've lost the only thing that people
• 1:11:41
  like to bet you in the first place yeah that's a really good point and honestly I'm not really
• 1:11:48
  great at having other people be my boss any I ever or anymore but I was freelance for so long
• 1:11:55
  and I liked waiting tables because I could really control my own schedule to a certain extent and
• 1:12:01
  I've just been on this like forging my own path for so long that it would be weird to like go
• 1:12:09
  clock in and have to crank out a bunch of content that was you know maybe I was the most far left
• 1:12:16
  wing person but then I'd just be like the most hated person at this organization but eventually I
• 1:12:24
  think you just you drift it's hard it's hard it's it's easy because you're getting you know
• 1:12:31
  accolades so it's it's very human to go where those accolades are coming from and I mean speaking of
• 1:12:36
  this whole independent you know media movement and Barry Wise and Matt Taibi and Glenn Greenwall
• 1:12:43
  and Andrew Sullivan and these people who've left mainstream media and are now creating empires
• 1:12:47
  of their own do you have a sub stack or do you just do are you off that platform no I have a
• 1:12:52
  sub stack so I was on patreon moved over to locals and I don't really start anything anymore until I
• 1:13:01
  know that I can do it consistently and so in August I launched my sub stack and then
• 1:13:09
  we are doing like a weekly letter from the politically homeless because I have thousands of
• 1:13:16
  letters from people who feel politically homeless over the years and I find them just fascinating
• 1:13:21
  I love them they're I love people will write me and tell me like their whole story of how they
• 1:13:27
  ended up wherever they might be and it's just I I love them and then that's where my husband and I
• 1:13:33
  started our podcast actually and it's available wherever else you get podcast factory settings but
• 1:13:39
  it's also on sub stack and I have my geriatric mommy blog where I'm writing about being a mom that's
• 1:13:47
  where I wrote that piece about regretting being a slut which was like took on a life of its own
• 1:13:52
  and cool one one thing I want to do before we before we go is is play first eight questions which is
• 1:13:59
  I just ask you some questions some really bad first eight questions and you just answer like
• 1:14:03
  kind of Rorschach you know first thing that comes into your mind and so people who are
• 1:14:07
  premium subscribers to the show get this and if if they're not then then they can see me on the
• 1:14:11
  next episode and screw that and let me see I've got a long list here
• 1:14:19
  when was the last time you walked for more than an hour um walked for more than an hour
• 1:14:30
  probably like last week I walk a lot you know I have a baby so I like to walk around and try
• 1:14:39
  and get her to nap was that just walking around the living room no like the in her stroller right
• 1:14:46
  okay okay just down in the neighborhood the streets of your neighborhood yeah what part of LIA
• 1:14:52
  you in um I prefer not to say because okay someone lives in Beverly Hills uh what no no I'm
• 1:15:03
  I just don't like people to know where I live that's fair enough um uh what's the best
• 1:15:10
  like
• 1:15:40
  follow the links in the podcast description otherwise I'll see you next time on Uncomfortable Conversations
• 1:15:52
  is produced by Stefan Postumer. Follow me Josh Seps on Twitter and Instagram for all the latest,
• 1:15:58
  may your day be fruitful, your mind humble, your enemies generous and your conversations perfectly,
• 1:16:05
  sparklingly, delectably uncomfortable.