a bum bum, you're getting a bum bum bum.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's something like, yeah.

And that event that over time weakens can weaken your heart, lead to other problems.

So it was not he was like, you're not going to have a heart attack.

I mean, you might, but who knows? But like you're not you're all you things are working pretty good.

I have a lot of friends like that.

... and you're off, off to the races? What do you want Infowars to look like? What do you want it to be for an audience?

The comedy coming out of Infowars should be reflective of the Internet and the moment we're in.

Satirical, it doesn't have to be entirely satirical or straight one-to-one parody, but it'll be what a lot of people are doing are, you know, a food influencer parody show or something.

You know, something that feels like this is reflecting how I use the Internet.

That's probably, like, the main ethos of the thing or the main kind of, uh, driver.

'Cause that's where a lot of, I think, talented, funny people are, how they're expressing themselves.

I think the medium of your comedy is becoming important.

What did you, what did you mean by that?

... power, or did it feel like responsibility, or both?

Hmm.

Uh, I guess I've always been a bit misunderstood, and, uh, I, I can recall in college, you know, just being sarcastic or droll or, uh, ironic, and it often not translating, and it being perceived as a, like I was a dick or an asshole, which I maybe you could...

All those things intersect occasionally [laughs] so...

I, I think, uh, some kid actually, like, uh, went, went to knock me out at some point because he thought I was just being a dick, when I was just trying to be funny.

So, um, it can be complicated, and, uh, and caused trouble for me.

Yeah.

Um, I, I still love thinking of...

... just what do you think you will have accomplished besides sidelining Alex Jones, besides making him less offensive or powerful?

I mean, creating another place for quality, um, art and media to exist that is pretty damn independent.

I mean, this is one of the few bastions of not this monopolized super companies that we're having to live with.

So what we hope to have accomplished in, let's say, five years, is we've retrained people's brains to think of Infowars meaning something c- fundamentally different, and separate it from that ghoul.

If he wants to tell people about Charlie Kirk faking his own death or something, he's free to do it on the side of the highway.

Yeah

...

but I've been thinking over the years a lot about darkness and comedy and death and comedy, and it is a way to, like, survive the chaos of the world.

Like, where are we now?

As I understand it, and I'm not a lawyer, but, um, uh, The Onion has reached, had reached a, a deal, an agreement with the receiver, who is the, is, is a person, uh, who does, you know, it's like somebody, almost like a notary public or, or, notary public or whatever.

Like, he's just a, a guy who is in ch- is in charge of all the assets that Alex had to give up in bankruptcy.

Um, and so they've reached a deal to lease all that, the IP essentially.

All we're really talking about, to be honest, is the IP, is, is the w- access to the DNS server for, uh, info wars.com. And then some possible, you know, footage and arch- and, and archive stuff.

So, you know, and maybe some gear, I don't know.

But that's, uh, that's the agreement that, that was in place, and then Alex's attorneys, uh, somehow backroomed a deal with this, with the Texas, uh, Court of Appeals and got them to put an emergency stay on th- on anything happening.

There's a lot that's gone into it.

Have you had conversations with them?

We had one Zoom meeting with everybody a few months ago as we were preparing to launch this.

And as you can imagine, it was very emotional.

And it was everybody from The Onion was on.

I was on with my writing team as we were working on this emergency and sort of the first bunch of content that we're going to do.

And it was quite emotional.

And they were basically calling to thank us for what we had done up to that point to stay kind of dogged on this and committed to it.

And it's just sort of like, I don't, is it easier now that reality seems deranged?

Have you had conversations with them?

We had one Zoom meeting with everybody a few months ago as we were preparing to launch this.

And as you can imagine, it was very emotional.

And it was everybody from The Onion was on.

I was on with my writing team as we were working on this emergency and sort of the first bunch of content that we're going to do.

And it was quite emotional.

And they were basically calling to thank us for what we had done up to that point to stay kind of dogged on this and committed to it.

And it's just sort of like, I don't, is it easier now that reality seems deranged?

Has there been craziness that happened?

Craziness? Of course.

I was trying to, you know, I'm thinking of some good examples.

I do.

This is the one I want to share with you is I will do a Q&A before the show for an extra couple of bucks.

You know what I mean? It's a little it's a VIP experience.

Come on in.

That is a tragedy.

[laughs]

Uh, and then out of the blue, they called me, and I hadn't realized that this was back on.

And, uh, really, I think in that first conversation, I was just spitballing, and my first two thoughts were, "Well, um, it would be, it would be fun to make fun of him for a little while." Um, and but then that joke would go, go stale, and, um, but then you'd have all this.

You'd have a media site.

You'd have the infrastructure of, of, of, uh, like a streaming site or a new, you know, anything, um, you wanted it to be.

So it would be...

And at the same time I was, like, developing my own independent streaming sites, the High Network, which is where I do On Cinema and Office Hours, which is we do through Patreon, and I'm, I'm just really excited about the possibilities of, like, you know, building your own networks-

So what keeps you hopeful?

Yeah.

Uh, once, on a Zoom.

It was a very, um, moving and very powerful, but also very positive experience.

They were all in, very excited.

One of the families was like, "I can't watch your video." We had put out one of my videos of me doing Alex Jones.

"I can't watch it with my wife, 'cause she gets mad when she hears your voice, 'cause she thinks it's him." And so they were like la- they were laughing about it.

They thought it was funny.

What did you, what did you mean by that?

Can you talk a little bit about how you're going to expand on that in, from a content perspective? What's that gonna look like when, uh, things go live come fall?

You know, just, uh, finding people that really have been a bit without a home out there on the cable networks.

Younger creators, younger comedians that grew up on the internet and their humor and their look on the world is informed by that.

Funny shit that I think is good and that, and our team think is good.

The key is like we-- we're-- The Onion, you know, from The Onion's perspective, they wanna branch out, they wanna grow and, and as any company should, I guess.

Maybe not, you know, s- not every company.

But The Onion themselves is very, uh, strict in, in their sensibility and this, the tone of what The Onion does, and we-- and they, they wanna protect that, but they also wanna grow.

What would you say is the role of satire and parody in this moment? I mean, do you think that it's a particularly effective way to kind of weaponize the nihilism that seems to have taken over politics right now?

Mm-hmm

... you know, it had, it was a big, it was rel- you know, compared to, uh, maybe, you know, ABC, it's small, but it's, you know, it was, they had real money, and they had, they cared about how shows were released, and they...

You, you went there because it was, um, there was a brand of quality or of, of, you know, a common interest.

So having that as our launchpad, um, was a, was key.

I mean, I could do, l- I was literally able to just do nothing else but do that work [laughs].

Mm-hmm.

It was purely online.

So, and of course, there are stories of people getting harassed in real life, and that could be coming my way.

Oh.

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He's the best

What are his plans?

We have a, a sort of a three-month plan for pretty direct satire parody of the Infowars right-wing media scare you into buying things kind of, uh, [chuckles] sensibility.

So we've got a bunch of stuff written for that and a bunch of ideas that we will be getting into production.

And then I think that's just gonna sort of naturally sunset, and the site will kind of be a little more a broad, open-ended platform for new emerging comedy voices.

I just wonder whether they may fe-fa, A, fail to see the joke and, B, then decide that they want to express it in a sort of all too direct way.

way.Yeah, you know, I've been dealing with this stuff for 10 years.

I think since Trump came on the scene and the 4chan alt-right world, I've been very outspoken, and I've gotten tremendous online heat from these people.

And yes, it's a, it is a concern, but I, I, I personally think that it's a lot of bluster.

<< Dunna >>

<< I have heard my people cry.

All who dwell in dark and sin, my hand will save >>

Yeah, I've seen that.

Yeah.

By the way, I just wanna say sympathy and love to all the people that work behind the scenes on podcasts when people say, "Can you look that thing up?"

You're mocking it, but what's your sense of what it meant to people who, who, who made them all that money?

Well, I think, um, I, I think we're past the, uh, Infowars peak of whatever, maybe five years ago or, or 2016 or something.

I think that, that there was a period of time where he held enormous sway in this country as a, as a voice, um, and an influence to the way people voted.

And now I feel like it's kind of all falling apart.

And I would ...

My gut is saying that the, uh, his audience is probably m- most, like, I don't know about mostly, but largely made up of people just, you know, rubberneckers or people, like, watching a train wreck, uh, watching it for entertainment purposes.

Um, there seems to be so much delusion, uh, disillusion, I should say.

Mm-hmm.

Do you have, like, a memory of your first Info Wars moment?

I would think it would be in the 2015 era, pre-Trump, l- leading up to Trump.

I'm sure I was aware of him as kind of like an internet oddity, you know, a coast to coast conspiracy theory kind of fella, f- sort of harmless, benign, amusing clown.And we goofed on him at the Republican Convention in Cleveland, followed him around, and, uh, I think when he became an actual...

Like, you know, it was like Trump's going on his show and validating some of his crazy stuff, it felt like this guy's actually influencing, in a way, my life, because I live here.

It's a weird time, 'cause he's now at odds with Trump.

[laughs]

I don't necessarily think he's the expert on what's funny all the time, with all due respect.

I think Trump continues to be hilarious, insane.

And I find that frustrating sometimes.

Well, yeah, I...

Uh, uh, in the case of On Cinema, I think it is...

It's a- it's a very specific kind of dry comedy that takes quite a bit of maybe investment to...

But I say that and I sound like...

It sounds like bullshit because everything requires a bit of investment.

What are we gonna do?

I don't know because I...

Yeah.

So, um, I'm at home.

I, I, there's a, it's Friday night, and I'm, uh, st- d- shooting this commercial very early the next morning.

So Marilyn, my wife, is going to softball practice at night, uh, that night.

I said, "I'm gonna skip tonight, 'cause I'm, I'm just gonna chill." And it's about three miles from where we live up, up this canyon, uh, where there's some ball fields where they practice, and we've got two kids, 8 and 11.

And she's on the field.

She takes a ground ball, it bounces up and hits her in the cheek.

Right