Speaker 1Hey, what's up? Welcome back to the James Kennedy podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation I had last week with the awesome Dr. Dean Burnett talking all about the brain and neuroscience, neuroplasticity, mental health, emotions, evolution, all that clever stuff. And for those of you that listen to the podcast on YouTube, you may have noticed something different happening on the YouTube channel this past week. Because I've been uploading the videos from the conversations I had on the street live outside the Royal Courts of Justice two weeks ago in London for the Julian Assange hearing. Interviews with Jeremy Corbyn, Richard Medhurst, Andrew Feinstein, Chloe Schlossberg, Len McCluskey, Daniel Lismore, and today's guest, but more on that in just a bit. So if you don't listen to the podcast on YouTube, which is 99% of my listenership, mostly listens to it on Spotify and Apple, and thank you very much for doing so, then you're not going to get to hear those interviews unless you go to YouTube. So go to James Kennedy podcast on YouTube and you can see those interviews live on the street in the moment amongst the chaos and enjoy some exclusive content. Since we last spoke, I've mostly just been doing band stuff. I've been focusing on the mighty James Kennedy and the underdogs. I did a Palestinian fundraiser gig on the weekend, and then we did a full band gig on the Sunday in Swansea, which was awesome. If you want to know where we're playing or if you want us to come to your town, head to jameskennedystuff.com slash tribe. Go to the tribe page and just whack in your email address and your city into the box, and then we'll let you know when we're coming near you. Now, before we dive into today's conversation, I just want to remind you to please subscribe to the podcast. It doesn't cost anything. It only takes a few seconds, and it really helps us out. So if you could click subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your podcasts, give us a like, give us a comment or a thumbs up or a share would be amazing. Or just tell your friends, you know, word of mouth is really powerful. It all really, really helps. I think these conversations are important and certainly interesting. And as the old saying goes, knowledge is power. So I'm going to keep these brilliant conversations with awesome guests coming. If you could keep clicking, it'll help the whole thing to stay afloat. But now let's get on with it. As I said, I interviewed today's guest already two weeks ago in London. That interview will be dropping on my YouTube channel any day now. But today we're going to be focusing on a completely different subject than the one we talked about in London. We'll be focusing on today's guest speciality, something they have spent years and years of their life researching, written several books on and made several documentaries about. Basically, they know what they're talking about. And we're going to be doing a deep dive into all of it with them today because I think this is super important and dead interesting. So please join me in welcoming on. To the show, Dr. Matthew Alford. He's a lecturer at the University of Bath, an author, a filmmaker and a leading authority on the collusion between the CIA and Hollywood, which is what we're going to be talking all about today. Matt, thank you so much for doing this, man. I can't wait to jump into this. How are you doing? I'm doing very well. Thanks for having me, James. Oh, man, it's a pleasure. I can't wait to jump into this because you were involved in a line of research that is super, super fascinating. And it's something that I know loads of people listening to this are not going to know anything about. And their mind is going to be blown wide open to hear. But all the stuff that is going on that you've been uncovering and proving and documenting for quite a while now. So to throw us into this, what would you say is the main premise of the work that you've been doing for many years now?
Speaker 2The premise is it kind of came from that exact sentiment that you just expressed, which is not having a clue that this kind of thing is happening. When we first started looking into this, so 15 or so years. A few years ago, it looked like a complete conspiracy theory. The idea that the government, the U.S. government was rewriting Hollywood film scripts and TV shows was just a really peculiar idea. I remember a song by the band James. I don't know if you remember the band James. And they did a really good song about must have been the late 90s called my something like my TV staring at me saying all our money goes into the military. And I would remember thinking, oh, that's a curious little lyric to to use. But it always seemed like quite a kind of mysterious sort of abstract sort of almost like a sort of sort of poetic thing to say based on nothing. Right. But what I found, particularly circa 2015, was this huge tranche of documents from the Department of Defense showing that they rewrite several thousand movies. And TV shows. Wow. And that was the first major sort of chunk taken out of this wall of secrecy as we saw it. And so, yeah, that's what we've been doing. I mean, we were dabbling in this work at the beginning of the 20th century when there was almost a complete blanket of secrecy around it. But really, the big sort of avalanche of material came around about 2015. And then led to this. We started off in 2015 with about 3000 pages of documents. And then that's when we realized, you know, that the government has affected maybe 10,000 plus products. But now we're up to about 60,000 pages of documentation with a lot more details filled in about the extent to which these changes are political. So basically, the government does control a lot. And it's not just the government. It's the militarized, securitized aspects of the government, the CIA and Department of Defense.
Speaker 1Jesus Christ, that is mental, man. 60,000 pages of documents supporting this. I kind of had a feeling, really, like on some films when you see them and they're so overly sickly patriotic, you know, where the lone bedraggled hero, you know, claws his way to the top of the mountain to place down the US flag and all is good in the world. You kind of think, oh, Jesus Christ, you know, but you could never tell if that's just the kind of, you know, kind of cultural indoctrination of the filmmaker. That was their actual vision. Or whether it's a result of direct editorial influence on behalf of the government. Is that a factor or is it always the latter?
Speaker 2Both of those things you say are completely accurate. And I mean, it really is the case that there are a lot of movies that are extremely nationalistic and militaristic without any involvement by the Department of Defense. Right. So I'd say all of these things are going on. So take a try to think of the best examples. Take a very, very violent, xenophobic movie, really, like American Sniper. I don't know if you saw that Clint Eastwood film from 2013, which was glorifying someone who could well have been a psychopath who went around murdering people in Iraq as a sniper. Now, that film was so extreme in what it was advocating. And basically taking out civilians in Iraq, protecting, you know, as the main character is seeing it, protecting the herd of sheep from the wolves, you know, but, you know, very sort of self-congratulatory. That film was so violent and so pro-military that the Department of Defense didn't want anything to do with it. They knew it would be a bad PR look for them. Right. It would just be insane. Or even go back a little bit with a film like... One of George Clooney's... I think George Clooney's first film that he did when he came off TV in 1997 was called The Peacemaker. Now, that film did not have Department of Defense support. That film... But that film was about, with Nicole Kidman, was basically justifying the idea of... It was basically like Team America, World Police, but without the jokes. Right. It was them going around into Russian airspace, just bombing. All of the Muslims are baddies and have all got nuclear weapons. Do you know what I mean? And, of course, The Peacemaker was... Actually, that's the United States. That's the securitized United States. Right. So, there were quite... There are a lot of films... I mean, my research gives the impression that everything is about this one office or this set of offices in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., which are kind of controlling... Manipulating events. But it is more complicated than that. And, in fact, this is our book from 2017. The final chapter of this book, which is perhaps the least read chapter of the book, does point out the extent to which this is a cultural problem and not just a government problem. Right. But that's not to understate the level of the institutional problem here as well. The fact is, if you've got 10,000 plus products that are being directly affected at script level, by the government, you do have a problem. It's not just cultural. It's both.
Speaker 1Wow. That's interesting. Yeah. So, I suppose there are some films, then, where the Department of Defense would look at it and be like,
Speaker 2well, no further work needed. That's fine. Put it out. Yeah. Either no work needed, because it's kind of fine, but then they usually offer some kind of courtesy support anyway, because there's usually something they can do to help. Or they say, look, this is just too rich for our blood. This politically is just awkward, even though it's kind of promoting America, it's making us look as insane as we are. So, that kind of thing does happen. There's all sorts of different permutations.
Speaker 1So, how does this play out, then, in the day-by-day nature of the thing? I mean, let's take a hypothetical, just to illustrate the point. So, you've got a script that's been written by somebody independently of the government. It's just their passion project. They've written it. They've got a producer. There's a whole team together. They're making the film. The government has no involvement in it whatsoever. They're just doing their thing and making a movie. At what point does the government get involved? How do they get involved? And what is the nature of their involvement?
Speaker 2It does vary a bit, but the standard process would be that the producers themselves would approach the Department of Defence and ask for some support, whether they ask for some helicopters or they ask for some extras or an aircraft carrier or whatever it is, or just advice and generic support. So almost always it does come from the producers themselves. This isn't really, although it does, and it can't be for reasons of democracy, it can't be the government going around tapping on a filmmaker's shoulders and saying, hey, hey, you, we want to control your film.
Speaker 3Right.
Speaker 2There's not a great deal of that. But that said, the relationships between them are so close that it might as well be that. In a lot of a lot of instances, obviously, in a democracy, you can't really have that kind of that kind of heavy handed approach. So it is voluntary. In theory, it is voluntary from the producers. They will approach the Department of Defence, just write in, send in a form. And me and the executive producer, Roger Stahl, have both written in forms at one time or another to ask for Department of Defence support on our bogus projects to see what they say. And in our film, Theatres of War, Roger, his application, he records on tape and you see that they get very uncomfortable because he says, you know, will you support my documentary about your about your processes? That's amazing. Yeah, it was quite a funny bit of our documentary. And so the producer will approach them and then they will get back to them and they will say, give us your whole script. They'll read the whole context of that script to make sure. There's nothing in it that bothers them. If there is, they'll send back an extensive list of changes required.
Speaker 1Wow. And that's very much conditional. And so if you want to use our airplanes or our airstrip or whatever, this has to change or go fuck yourself, is it?
Speaker 2Yeah, it's completely conditional. And the I would describe the Department of Defence and the CIA, but particularly the Department of Defence as being a very heavy handed executive producer. Right. That's basically what they're doing. They will no compromise about the content of the film. Even one line would be enough to, you know, get to to to be what they call a showstopper. So anything that involves that indicates that there is or was racism in the ranks or assault, high levels of assault in the amongst the troops. Right. Anything that indicates that nuclear weapons are under control or aren't safe. In any way, anything that indicates war crimes, anything that indicates that the U.S. is involved in assassinations, anything that indicates that the troops might frag their offices, that means murder their offices, anything that just anything involving drug taking. Right. Anything that involved. I mean, there's all sorts. It's as wide as you could possibly imagine. Anything that will bring the not just the military into disrepute. Or the CIA into disrepute, but anything that will bring the American government policy into disrepute. Right. Now, obviously, that's one of those aspects of the of this arrangement that they perhaps play down a bit because they don't want to make it look like they're covering for American policy. But that's exactly what they are doing. There was a film in the mid 90s where this was put in writing really clearly. I mean, it's all part of all that because they sign you into a contract. They sign the producers into a contract. And part of that is to say, you know. Right. Right. Right. Don't go against the interests of the U.S. government. There's a similar arrangement from what we can see with new information coming out in the U.K. Right. Where the U.K. says, you know, do not contradict the interests of the Ministry of Defense and these kind of things. We're just working on that documentation now. But the. So there was a case in the mid 90s, a film called Countermeasures, which was going to which was due to star Sigourney Weaver. And that film was about corruption on an aircraft carrier. And they. They needed. It had been greenlit, had been written and everything. And it was. But the Department of Defense got back to them in writing and said, we're not going to give you this. We have no reason to denigrate the White House or remind the public of the Iran Contra affair from the 1980s, which is all gun running and this thing, the CIA. So that so they're really clear and explicit. They know exactly what they're doing. And it's the same as what any PR agency would be doing. You know, if. If you or I were running a PR agency would probably be as religious and thorough as. Is it flattering to me? Yeah. Yeah. Or is it flattering to our client, which is in a way you can kind of understand it. You know, if you're if you're selling shampoo or whatever on on TV, then you're going to be ruthlessly supportive of of the soap industry and not say anything about where that comes from and how bad that is for the environment and all those things. But the big difference here is that. And the reason. And the reason it's so politically important is that, you know, you're talking about the most murderous and powerful, unstable organization on the earth, which is the U.S. national security apparatus. Yeah. The potential for the danger created by these people is huge. You can imagine. I'm sure a lot of the people who work for it are sort of thinking, well, you know, we're just a cog in a machine. All we're doing is putting a good spin on things here. But it's not really an institutional level. It's an absolute.
Speaker 1So if there was a film then that was politically orientated in a kind of critical or satirical way, say something like Team America, perhaps as a good example, that didn't require any favors from the government or the security services, it didn't need any, you know, tech or insight or anything like that. And they just wanted to make a film. Would there be any influence there? Because if there was no contact between the production team and the security services, but it came on their radar that this might be a little bit subversive, what would happen then?
Speaker 2Usually nothing would happen then. You're sort of getting more into the kind of conspiracy realm if they would reach out. And that's partly because or largely because the Hollywood system as it stands anyway already has disincentives to actually produce sort of radical material that really promotes the idea of, you know, kind of a peace economy and that kind of thing. So take, for instance. For instance, the Oliver Stone movie called Snowden from 2016 about Edward Snowden, who I think it's worth reminding people these days because the story is 10 years old. Edward Snowden was responsible for the biggest leak at that time ever, which revealed that the United States had been illegally surveilling people through a variety of online systems and had unprecedented, unparalleled access to people's private data. Edward Snowden ended up having to go and live in Moscow and is still wanted by the U.S. government. Most people consider him to be a hero. Oliver Stone made a movie about his life, and it was a really very well done film, very sympathetic to Edward Snowden. But economically, as with almost all of Oliver Stone's films, he had to get all of the money from Europe. Right. Couldn't get any studio behind it. And the time. And because of that. And bear in mind, Oliver Stone is one of the most successful filmmakers of all time. He's a millionaire. He's a celebrated figure artistically and commercially. But he only had 30 days to film the whole movie. And during that time. And I don't mean this to sound insensitive to him or to anyone else. I'm saying as an illustration. During that time, his mum died and he had to decide whether to fly back to the U.S. to the funeral or to continue filming. But for financial reasons. They had to continue filming. Now, that's the kind of pressures that are on Hollywood filmmakers. If they are basically already. I wouldn't like to say that Oliver Stone's marginalized, but politically, there are additional pressures on people like that. So, yeah. Is it the case that the government will involve itself in in a film that it doesn't have any formal levers over? Well, I mean, it is the case that there are concerted campaigns against movies sometimes. And again, Oliver Stone would be a good example. There were thousands of of articles written about Oliver Stone's JFK, for instance, the assassinate because he's promoting the assassination conspiracy. And so there's a gigantic backlash from from members of the government and from the media as a kind of coordinated response to that sort of reading of history. But, yeah, the actual Department of Defense office, the formal office, the PR office, the entertainment liaison people. They can't really do anything about a movie that that they haven't that they haven't been contracted into. Another good example of that would be the film about Dick Cheney, which I always was one of the sort of few that I I like to recommend just because I sort of think that it's, you know, which one I'm referring to. Yes, I've seen it. Yeah. Yeah. From 2018, I think it is called Vice. That's it. I really like Vice about the vice president, Dick Cheney. I mean, I think that's one of the, you know, really quite unusually. Combative and critical film. And yeah, they didn't ask. They didn't ask for any help from the government. They didn't need it. And. And they did a really good job, I think, of criticising that upper echelon of defence contractors and politicians. So, yeah, there are things that can get through the system. And I think that's perhaps partly, you know, we shouldn't be sort of hopeless about these things. Like this isn't just a great government conspiracy that can control everything. The levers of government control are absolutely remarkable and were completely unknown until our group got involved with this research over the past couple of decades. But there are still opportunities for some pushback. As I sometimes say, you know, you can have an entire wall. For the listeners, I'm pointing to a library of DVDs. You can make a really...
Speaker 1Very impressive collection behind him, he's pointing.
Speaker 2You can make a lovely wall of DVDs, which are critical of the government, which promote alternative histories. And that wall would be great. It's just that on the other wall, if you had to have the blockbuster movies and the pro-militaristic movies and the pro-CIA movies and the movies that all show American benevolence, that wall would be about 10 times bigger and 10 times better funded.
Speaker 1Right, right. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. I was thinking then, as you were speaking, it popped into my mind. This sounds... It's eerily similar to the Chomsky's propaganda model. And I do recall reading when I was researching your work that some of your analysis of this issue is based upon Chomsky's propaganda model, wherein there are so many limitations that are fixed and in place, like a structure that you have to operate within, whether it's going to be financial constraints, as in the case of Oliver Stone that you mentioned, where you've got to try and make the movie without a budget, or it's going to be logistical constraints, or it's going to be the... commercial constraints, or the fear of political backlash. And by the time your product has filtered its way through all of these different levels, the outcome is likely to be fairly homogenous, regardless of the intention that initially went into it. And the end results will all be fairly homogenous without the need for any direct conspiracy theory style influence from the government, just because of these various structural pressures that are fixed in place. Is that kind of what you're talking about?
Speaker 2That's 100% accurate. I think you've explained the Chomsky propaganda model really beautifully. And that's where all of my theoretical work has come from. In fact, at the beginning of my academic career as a PhD researcher, I was literally applying Chomsky's model to cinema. That's really what I did. And I got to about... I did a few years of publishing articles about the propaganda model after that. And then I was sort of just going to give up everything to do with it. And it was only at that point, because I'd said everything, you know, like you say, you know, we know why this material is homogenised. We know why there is this underlying meta-narrative of benevolence. America is the good country. Imperialism isn't even really questioned at any point in the vast majority of these films. And so I got to that point, and I thought, well, I'm kind of done with this, really. And then it was me and Tom Secker, another researcher, who got together. And that's when we started to put in the Freedom of Information Act requests. And then suddenly there was this deluge of action, which really changed, which made my kind of research career quite different, because it meant that I was actually looking at archival material rather than sort of talking, rather than reading films as texts. And considering that and looking at the... There was much more of an emphasis on this actual new data. And we were really shocked to find the extent to which there was government involvement.
Speaker 1Man, can you remind the listeners again, then, of the sheer scale of this? Because I think you mentioned some figures at the start, which I've completely forgotten. Because obviously there's so much to unpack here. Can you give the listeners and myself a reminder of just what we're talking about in terms of the amount of times that this is happening within movies?
Speaker 2Let me put it like this in terms of what we knew as a society. At the turn of the 20th century, the only literature... The only literature that was out there about this indicated that there were maybe a few hundred, perhaps 300 films that had been in some way affected by... Even just affected or had contact with the Department of Defense. No one had even looked at the CIA role at all. There was nothing written about the... There was nothing to quantify the role of the FBI, for example, or the police forces, NYPD, LAPD. And nothing... Nothing in any other country like the United Kingdom. So there was maybe just a few hundred films that looked like they had been affected in some way. Nothing written about TV. And then what we found out this century, over the past couple of decades, is that at least 10,000 products, that's television episodes and movies, have been affected by the national security state. So that's not just... That's not just the Department of Defense, although the vast majority of them are... A huge chunk of them are Department of Defense, about three quarters. But then also the CIA, which has been involved in around, say, 100. The NYPD and LAPD, which accounts for a couple of thousand or so episodes of things. And the FBI is sort of playing a marginal but nevertheless quite important role at different points historically. And, of course, that government... Involvement has become more significant and serious over the past couple of decades as well. In particular because around about 2004, 2005, they started working on... Not just on movies, because they used to work pretty much just on cinema. But then they started to work on network television and all sorts of things. So, you know, quiz shows, cookery shows, all sorts of things. Anything that might involve a member of the military. So, for example, if there's a... If there's a... If there's a... If there's a... If there's a cheesy TV show that involves, like, a bomb dog reuniting with his old owner from Iraq or reuniting couples where one of them has been served overseas and they come back together. All that romantic sort of feel-good stuff. Right. There was a TV show that was... I can't remember what it was called now. Good Chef or something like that that involved making dinner for different famous people. And they made dinner for the head of the CIA. And so all those things are kind of... They're a... They're a... And then, actually, interestingly, in that one, the CIA head chief had to skip dessert because he had to take an extremely important call. You know, all those... They're all ways of making... Associating those government organizations with friendly things, with benevolence, with cake. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With hard work. Good, wholesome...
Speaker 1Good dudes working hard to do the right thing, you know, for the people. You know, yeah.
Speaker 2And, of course, sometimes that, you know, that might be the case. But it's part of a PR system. Got you. And I guess, you know, we've known that there's a PR system that operates systematically for just over 100 years. You know, that's what the PR industry arose with that idea of... That Chomsky talks about. The idea that we need to manufacture consent. We need to provide necessary illusions. We need to control the bewildered herd. Because if not, we'll have democracy running rampant and people will be flying around like headless chickens. We are the ones who need to control what they are thinking and doing. Because we are the responsible class of men, is the way that they used to put it. So it is, of course, that's fairly... You know, we all kind of know that PR exists. And we know that advertising is perhaps not such a good thing. But what's been really criminally under-investigated is the... Is the role of government, of the state and of the military apparatus in PR. I mean, it's still... That information is still covered at various points. But people don't really understand it as well as they understand, you know, cigarette advertising and the dangers of that. People generally aren't as aware of the kind of prevalence and insidiousness of that kind of military and national promotion as they are of, you know, annoying adverts. That's for, I don't know, Wish or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah. Which they get all the time.
Speaker 1Well, now you've made that comparison. It kind of does seem obvious, really. When you think of it in that context, you know, it kind of seems like, well, yeah, okay, I can imagine that would totally happen, you know, because they've got an interest to preserve and propaganda is a very powerful tool, you know. So, yeah, I mean, like now you've kind of clarified it. I can kind of... It kind of seems almost kind of obvious now almost, you know. But obviously it's hidden in plain sight. It's one of those more insidious forms of propaganda where you're not living under a direct dictatorship where information is, you know, all information is controlled. It's kind of, it's filtered through that propaganda model and then we all get, you know, a sim, a kind of watered down narrative, if not the exact one that they want, you know. And are we talking about, like, actual editing of scripts? Are we talking about, like, do they have someone who will, like, suggest something and say, oh, how about, you know, you fucking do this instead and put... Can you end with a shot with the American flag? That'll be cool. Is it at that level?
Speaker 2Yeah, I think perhaps just to put a style in, for a realistic reason, they perhaps wouldn't be as clunky as saying, hey, look, we really want an American flag in right here. I mean, like I said, when they said, you know, we have no reason to denigrate... the white house or remind the public of the iran contra affair that was really on the nose but that was from the mid-1990s and i suspect that the personnel involved um would not hit the nail on the head quite as quite as much as that because they know that their that their own emails are the potential for them coming out is there so right they've tended to be a little bit more circumspect with their language but yeah it is the case that they um ask for line by line rewrite so for example take the film the hulk for example okay so literally there was um i always get this one the words mixed up on this one but there was a uh an operation in the script for the hulk called operation uh operation ranch hand i think it was called they said we've got to go and capture the hulk and we're going to call it operation ranch hand um and the military and the military said you can't call it operation ranch hand because that was the name of a chemical weapons program that we used to defoliate vietnam what so they bombed vietnam and to destroy trees um with operation ranch hand and by coincidence um the the filmmakers had used the same name and they said no don't use that you can't use that so they had to change it to operation angry man i think they changed it to but but the hulk example is a is a good one because that was that was a case where they they emailed the filmmakers to say look we have made that and again they were careful not to say the word sorry but they basically in a very apologetic tone said look there are so many changes that we're requiring on this that we are we are apologetic about that but we have but either you do it or you know this doesn't go ahead and because a lot of the time it's about um or at least substantial amount of the time they they just want to disassociate themselves with anything scandalous so the hulk movie is about you know something going wrong at a military lab so they're like just take out anything to do it get everyone out of uniform we don't want anything associated with us with that right so sometimes it's about to water sometimes it's about watering things down right and sometimes it's about um so or take the independence day movie for example in the original independence day movie you know remember the scenes where they blow up the white house and everything and they're like oh my god we're yeah in the original script they blow up uh the pentagon as well and the pentagon's like no you can't do that because we we can protect we we need to be seen to protect we don't ever want to show that yeah yeah yeah so there are all sorts of things that they take out of uh of movies there's a lot of watering down is there also are there also injections or is the pentagon also advising on writing injecting new material yeah they do that as well and the cia is perhaps a i mean the cia is slightly different because the cia doesn't have as many tools to offer the um the filmmakers they don't have black helicopters and all that kind of thing right so what the cia do is they get in really early with the script writing process so they often collaborate with the writers even before the film is even known in the public domain wow so that in a way the cia is almost kind of more insidious um than the department of defense and they're more kind of they do operate in a more conspiratorial way and also the cia which has got this reputation of course for never writing anything down of course they do but you know they're very circumspect about writing things down so the script changes for identifying what the cia has done has been much much harder to identify but we know that they work on things like the tom hanks movie um uh charlie wilson's war which was about u.s um foreign policy in afghanistan uh and particularly the arming of um the osama bin laden um terrorists terrorist network and um we know for instance that they worked on the recruit al pacino movie um which was about recruitment into the central intelligence agency and that's a really interesting one because um the information the information for that uh no one even knew that the cia worked on that and there's no credits or anything like that uh but the that came out because there was a separate court case for which was nothing to do with politicization it was a commercial flash um and it came out from the court case and then leaked somehow which i won't go into and i can't remember exactly the details but it was leaked not to the media um and it was therefore discovered that the cia had basically written the first draft and was essentially controlling the entire direction ideologically of that movie but the same sort of things have been happening in things like the or even something like meet the parents which is quite here's here's an interesting case of like tiny tiny thing that changes the direction about the ideological direction and the whole vibe of a film meet the parents comedy uh starring ben stiller and um and robert de niro um and uh so here's a here's a tiny change that makes a big difference so if you remember um uh ben stiller walks into robert de niro his father-in-law's office and he's scared of his father-in-law or potential father-in-law and he's scared of his father-in-law and he's scared of his father-in-law because he wants to marry his daughter and his father-in-law is scary and at that point he finds out that his father-in-law was in the cia but the way that he finds out in the original script is he looks around his office and he sees that the whole office is plastered with with torture manuals written by the cia which uh which is real uh from the 1980s from the school of america's which trained the torturers in central america um and so all of that documentation was would have been real the cia find out about this and speak to the producers and say please don't do that why don't you replace the torture manuals with the uh with pictures of robert de niro hanging out with world leaders and the producers say yeah of course yeah that's amazing perfect yeah but a tiny change like that has a huge impact because of course it you know there's this whole kind of historical amnesia about um what happened in the 1980s anyway with the um cia sponsoring death squads in nicaragua and elsewhere um so to have had that in a massive blockbusting popular comedy um i think would have been a real threat in terms of image to to the cia and you can see how a tiny change like that can have a real big impact yeah and there are also there are often tiny little changes that made something like um a film like iron man um where originally that that character was represented as a genuine anti-war figure he didn't like his father um who was an arms arms seller and the whole idea of that original um concept was that he was fighting against the military industrial complex but really by the time they actually make the movie really what the robert downey jr character is doing there is channeling the military industrial complex to kill terrorists to kill the right back yeah protecting
Speaker 1it
Speaker 2yeah there's a there's a chapter in trisha jenkins and uh tom seconds uh book superheroes movies in the state uh from a couple of years ago which really outlined exactly how that happened um but even then there were still changes that the department of defense required robert downey jr's character says at one point he makes a joke about um uh he says something like um i i i'd die to be in the military or something like that um i can't remember the exact line but anyway they had us apparently on step which is very unusual but they had us apparently on step which is very unusual but they had us apparently on step which is very unusual but they had a stand-up row on set because the department of defense said that alludes to um high rates of suicide in the military and we don't want that so even just sort of a kind of casual maybe not even wow even meant to be about that they they wanted to get rid of and they did actually they were successful in doing that i think they ended up saying you know i'd give my eye teeth for this or whatever i can't remember exactly what it was but the the yeah extensive changes are made on a constant basis and and there are you asked about other ways in which um uh i don't know if you've heard about the the the ideas are actually inserted um i mean this does happen um so say uh there was actually a separate military program in the late 1990s as well um which we don't deal with uh actually directly in the documentary theaters of war uh because it was a separate thing it was a separate pot of money under the clinton administration about 40 million dollars i think they had um and it was to promote the war on drugs um but it was run by a separate military entity not the usual office that we're talking about um it was run by a separate military entity and they uh you know remember all those kind of crappy uh daytime tv tv shows like beverly hills 90210 and chicago hope and right um all that kind of that sort of thing that they were secretly pushing uh and ensuring that there were ideas uh in there that were opposing the uh opposing the idea of drugs now in a way i can kind of see public safety thing i do understand but a it was done secretly and b it was really over the top and kind of ridiculous like there was an episode of chicago hope where i think someone like has a has a toke of a joint and then involves and then gets themselves involved in a massive car accident and then uh and then has to have a um blood transfusion um and i think that i think i think the doctor at one point says if you don't give up drugs you're not getting a drug transfusion it's a funny episode i watched it a couple years ago it's kind of it's worth watching it's it's almost as mad as that or twice as mad as that i can't remember but it's funny so and eventually the the media the alternative media salon.com found out about this and that put pressure on on it and they had to get rid of the uh get rid of that program but but yes yeah it just happens all the time a lot of the marvel series is affected in this way um you ask about the um you know do they ever wave the flag i mean i always think that the worst series the most disappointing series of all time has been the terminator series because i love terminator one and two one of the best films ever no military involvement in them and really subversive films and against institutional authority and even terminator three which i know everyone hates but i think is fantastic uh terminator three only had courtesy support i think they just i don't think they actually contracted them into anything i think they may have provided some extras or something like that so that was still a reasonable film but by the fourth film it was absolutely insane um you literally do have the final the final scene of the film and it's a really good film and it's a really good film and it's a really is them flying is the military flying off into the sunset uh this is full cooperation from the department of defense flying off into the sunset saying something along the lines of you know we will defend democracy wherever it is that's like what are you even talking about like you're you're you're in a new post-nuclear world you're completely screwed um completely betray the backstory of the and the whole world that they're actually in someone has open heart surgery in a the end of terminator four it's just an absolute mess but but they literally do it's as close as you get to the actual flag flying um is that final flying off into the sunset i mean it reminds me of another film um which is more uh an older example from 1968 but it's almost like the classic example of like the kind of this is the extent to which they can do it john wayne the cowboy actor um wrote to president johnson at the height of the unpopularity of the vietnam war and said i want to make a propaganda film about the vietnam war that will show how good we are president johnson replied saying yes whatever you want whatever you need um they made the film the film ends with uh john wayne and a little vietnamese kid walking off into the sunset with john wayne saying hey kid this is what uh this is what this war is all about um and walking off into the you know um sunset uh and then the credits roll uh and there's also an exchange between the department of defense and uh and john wayne all coordinated by the president the most famous actor at the time and the president of the united states at the time and they say shall we say thank you to the department of defense they say no let's not do that because it may because the public will be aware then that this has been a propaganda yeah but that kind of thing does happen uh all the all the time um that's just the most on the nose and well documented example that's fascinating makes a lot of sense
Speaker 1now man yeah you've really cleared it up i mean i was gonna say it would it be a telltale sign then if we're watching a movie and there's lots of helicopters and military paraphernalia in there that it's highly likely that there's going to be some editorial involvement from the military but it seems from the examples you've just given where it's like iron man and all sorts of shit you know that um this is far more insidious than that well meet the parents would be a better example than iron man because you know like just just that example of having the um those books on the bookshelf would have been funnier to show this guy has a background in you know torture tactics yeah it would have been a bit yeah and this comedic value would have been better but it's far more insidious than just helicopters and runways and stuff so this this runs deep like
Speaker 2there is a secondary concern here i mean my my primary concern is this is a propaganda um uh issue um and it is a threat to the population of the world because it is part of a system uh an important and under an underrated part of a system uh to promote american imposed violence and domination yeah it's really bad for that reason but there is a second much less important but nonetheless still annoying reason why i oppose this and that's for a creative reason these these organizations are wrecking movies they are making movies really banal they're making movies and tv shows really boring uninteresting it's a chilling effect on all of these products but like you say in that particular instance of making things a lot less funny it's also giving the impression actually that the united states and the american people um bloodthirsty pro-military and they're not necessarily um it's this is something that is imposed largely from above there's an interesting example with um with the way that they uh do flyovers in sports um this is not this is an area that's more um uh by trisha jenkins a colleague of mine and she points out that when the players come out um at the not very good on american sports but i think it's baseball and i think it's probably all of them when the players come out onto the onto the field obviously everyone wants to stand and applaud and at that very moment the military will often do a flyover of their jets so it looks like the whole audience of tens of thousands of hundreds of thousands of people are rising to applaud the military they're applauding the players just at least and again i don't know the exact extent to this i've never been to an american ball game or whatever but at least to a large extent um they are applauding the players but they are obliged to and they have the spectacle of applauding the u.s military a lot of those people might well not want to do that but what are they going to do say i'm going to i'm going to go and watch my favorite team and then i'm going to deliberately sit down yeah i don't look like i might be part of a thing that's that's applauding the um u.s airport motherfuckers and there are other films as well which are um where everyone involved admits that they just couldn't have done it without the military top gun too but being an example from uh about 18 months ago yeah um i mean that whole film uh one of the reasons that the film did that there was 30 or 30 years between that and a between the first film and a sequel is because in the early 90s there'd been a uh a very well widely reported sex scandal uh involving the u.s navy um and so apparently they went to they said oh should we make a sequel and they went no no because we kind of caused the conditions for this there was a top gun effect which created this sexism in the ranks uh you know remember there's a scene of the original top gun where tom cruise sort of burst through into a woman's toilet and he's like hey i'm sort of making it right and that's the sort of thing that was happening at the um that happened in the real world and changed the culture machoified if that's the right word and the whole uh the whole culture there's one other reason that they didn't make a sequel to the uh to that movie until 30 years later but then of course they say you know there's no way we could have made this it's not a sequel to that movie until 30 years later but then of course they say it's all um initiated by by both parties symbiotic yeah it's symbiotic completely symbiotic and something like uh black hawk down is the kind of the classic case um where ridley scott the director said um yeah we yeah i could have made this without the department of defense but i'd have had to have called it huey down and referring to the crappy little helicopters yeah yeah yeah
Speaker 1yeah those films would be impossible to make wouldn't they without the military on site you just you just couldn't
Speaker 2do it yeah i mean like you say that you um whenever you see a helicopter or uh or uh planes and things like that nine times out of ten yeah it will be um military sometimes they can do stuff with cgi but this is a question that repeatedly comes up you know can they uh is the military's role actually on the decline because of cgi i mean they've been talking about this for 20 years since i've been involved in this and they've never really done it i mean i think i watched king kong uh recently and i seem to remember there being cgi uh military planes in that and i just remember thinking that doesn't even doesn't even look very good yet um i mean maybe things will change with ai but certainly the department of defense hasn't been worried about any of this um actually filming an aircraft carrier still looks amazing um and they don't seem to be able to um replicate that in in in any way so this relationship is is going to continue wow this is wild shit man um well given
Speaker 1that we're talking about the propaganda model here and i know that when chomsky was talking about that in the book manufacturing consent which everybody should go and read um he was primarily talking about in the examples that i remember um news you know information and how that is you know co-opted and controlled through this through the system you've applied it brilliantly and effectively to the movie industry but do you think that it could apply to other industries within the entertainment sphere such as let's say the one that i'm in the music industry
Speaker 2i did write an article about about music and the role of the military is obviously much less significant uh there's not a great deal they can do but there are sometimes um there are quite a few examples where where the government in one way or another has got involved i mean the classic case being um when god saved the queen by the sex pistols was going to um get to number one and then it was artificially kept off number one and it was a big scandal about whether it was you know whether they're doing it right or not and i think that's a big scandal about whether it was you know whether they're doing it right or not and i think that's a big scandal about whether it was you know whether they're doing it right or not and i think that's a big scandal about whether it was you know whether they're doing it right or not and i think that's a big scandal about whether it was you know whether they're deliberately kept it off by manipulating the figure uh sales figures um in 1977 i think um but there are various other cases like that um wasn't there a case a couple of years ago a few years ago when margaret thatcher died um and they had uh ding dong the witch is dead um was released you remember that yeah yeah and i think they artificially kept that i'm trying to remember the details now um it was a while ago since i wrote the piece uh and there was also uh but i know of course the military does sometimes get involved in doing large-scale filming on air force bases and like that for um i'm trying to remember who did it was it beyonce but there are various big stars that have done very heavily militarized video shoots involving the military and there certainly is political interference uh involving the reception of of songs but i think perhaps overall again it's because the pop industry is so already so um diluted control and contrived yeah and also there's only so much you could even in the very genre of it it's quite difficult to say a great deal uh about uh an international conflict and international domination and illegitimacy in a just in a set of lyrics i mean there are plenty of really great rock stars and bands out there who have done political stuff um but to what extent can they uh can they sort of provide new information for example a new analysis uh in simply in what is effectively a poem yes i mean a good a good example of a of a rock star who has really pursued the uh political line of of of peace and has been very much marginalized not only by his um by society but also by his bandmates would be roger walters uh from pink boy uh he re-released um that song about uh reagan a couple of years ago which was which was brilliant um oh the bravery of being out of range is that that's the one yeah yeah so he i love roger yeah he's fantastic um and he's been a very vocal supporter of julian assange and um yes and been very roundly criticized by all sorts of different powerful organizations uh so i think if you sustain uh as a as a as a rock star if you sustain your activism um you can certainly get it certainly is the route to marginalization whether it's whether one particular product can be interfered with directly by the military and whether they care about that is another question that's interesting that you say
Speaker 1that yeah because there are different barriers really because of the because of the nature of the medium that as you described it um i've had a situation myself all right okay where i released an album in the lockdown called make anger great again it came out um a month before trump was running the the hashtag online make america great again and my one make anger great again was supposed to be a flip of that it was all about rising up against tyranny all that sort of stuff a lot of protest songs um but rising up and let's have a revolution and all that sort of stuff and um within one day of me posting my first video which basically had a lot of protest footage in google and youtube took it offline and after one day they said that it contained shocking content the shocking content when i spoke to them was actually the colston statue coming down which like which is footage i got from within youtube um and i was like oh my god i'm gonna be like facebook wouldn't let me run any paid ads on the album or the song because they said that it was politically insightful um and i was immediately then shadow banned on all platforms you should have said it wasn't yeah it was politically insightful actually um so yeah and then like social media i didn't have a label i was doing it independently and i had a big following on social media i had about 350 000 followers on twitter very engaged audience uh influencer level engagement and then literally within the space of a few weeks fucking invisible and i've been pretty much that way ever since and um yeah to have a song taken down just and there's no bad language in there it's not violent it doesn't doesn't break any of their their rules and regulations but they just took it down and yeah denied me revoked my advertising rights demonetized everything the four works so although although that didn't come from the military or the government it came from big tech which is obviously still part of that same machinery so you know same outcome different player really you know it doesn't have to be the military or the government necessarily mine came from big tech and it's part of that layers of propaganda model that you talked about earlier but with the commercial constraints of something which leads many to to self-censor so they don't suffer the same fate as me and have their career trolley you
Speaker 2know i think that's and i think that having that focus that broader focus about what society does politicized elements of society do is actually really important um it's an area where like i say over the last few years we've been so focused on the political side of things and i think that's one of the reasons why we're so focused on this on um this archive of material coming out from formal offices um the military offices and the um central intelligence agency offices and so on but the broader cultural problem and also the problem with um uh these social media giants is it is also a massive issue and i'm you know almost like the role of the military can sometimes feel slightly quaint because actually the the real control that is utilized is by the social media giants in exactly the way that you're talking about and in a way that is really unaccountable and make does anyone have any documentation about shadow banning for example i mean we can see the audience figures seem to go down precipitously and artificially yeah when someone releases something um political 100 i saw owen jones from the guardian show his uh figures online after he released particular information about gaza yeah just dropping off two or three weeks ago i've had the same and and you and this is not just something that's affecting a few journalists it like you say it does seem to be something that's affecting artists as well yeah um even just alluding to a particular a particular political issue using the same language as maga um in an ironic way it's absolutely insane it's it it's a really disturbing new twist on what's happening and i think it's really incumbent upon people like me who are researching that kind of thing to to not be to not put all the emphasis on the military and the cia and and i think chomsky would very much agree with that because you know we're talking about whole systems uh we're not just talking about a kind of conspiracy a cabal of of people who are working in a couple of cities it's a structure yeah it's just it's a structure um so that's why um i guess that's one of the reasons why on a personal level although i do still work on this i i'm uh it's mainly being driven by professor style from uh georgia uh university uh and i tend to do things that are a bit more about the wider world um and that's what my youtube series is at the moment it's it's it is about the way that the media represents things and it is about censorship and about propaganda but it's also trying to um to consider the major issues of the world holistically and the major issues of the world are russia ukraine uh israel gaza and china taiwan and really not those countries it's the us and uk's
Speaker 1role in completely fucking them up yes 100 beautifully put as well i'm glad you mentioned the uk there the little lapdog i'm sure that we have our own version of this i'm fucking definite we have our own version of this what is it like in the uk is it very much following the same model in terms of the the movie industry um i'm working with a phd student at the moment
Speaker 2about this so it'll be a few years before we get really clear answers but again it is similar and we are surprised to see it similar we've only been working on this for a couple of years and we're when i first started speaking to the phd student tarik um i was a bit like you might not find that much here you might you know you want to do something like what we did with the dod stuff in the us and um don't get disappointed but actually very quickly he found about 300 examples of um films and tv shows um that have been impacted in some way by the uh by the ministry ministry of and by uh civil service uh civil service involvement uh and again it looks like that's accelerated um throughout the 21st century there are really famous examples obviously the james bond films have all been messed around with in one way or another but they're already so supportive of um uk foreign policy but there are a few a few changes that we've been able to identify over the years but also a film like uh kingsman that series uh i don't know if you saw that it's basically a that are made which are quite um sort of pointed uh in terms of international international implications so uh again we haven't actually got the script changes for this again perhaps partly because the british system is perhaps a little bit more secret even than the us right and less accountable and this process this this process has not been uh has been even less well documented so for instance but in kingsman i think it's kingsman 3 like the the major villain in that is the rasputin figure from russia and he's villainized because he's taken russia out of the first world war i mean that's interesting isn't it ideologically that the bad guy from the movie is the one that's that's stopped engaging in what is universally acknowledged to be the worst war so some interesting stuff going on ideologically i think in that movie and um uh but yeah the system is is similar um a bit more ad hoc from what we can see a bit less formalized more more more individual offices around but secrecy is all around i mean there was a an interesting case of a biopic but this is really this is a really historical example but it's kind of uh really on the nose uh lloyd george the prime minister from about 100 years ago um he had a biopic made about him right at the sort of beginning of cinema um and they made the biopic and he watched it and he's like yeah i don't like that he got the he got the one copy of the film he put it in a safe and then no one found it until until about i don't know 1999 or something like 50 years after he guide they're like oh look we've never released this movie because you didn't like because the prime minister of england just decided the prime minister of britain just decided to suppress it and not tell anyone about it um so there are you know that's a very kind of um cartoonish example but but yeah the british example british cases are similar and of course all the other uh all the other countries have been catching up as well and in terms of involvement with with entertainment as well uh china's come up with a couple of really terrible um uh sort of nationalistic schlock that reminds you of the 1980s american american movies india i all i watch is bollywood
Speaker 1that's all i watch oh really i've seen fucking thousands of those films man i just watched one last night and i can see it in that is there anything political in i don't really know bollywood is there anything political or military 100 100 some of it is so sicky it's like oh come on dude you got the one lone you got the one lone you got the one lone bloodied soldier hero climbing his way to the top of the cliff to save the little girl and then when he gets to the top his first priority is to kiss the flag and put it down you know right oh wow just so that everybody every bad guy is from pakistan you know there's a lot there's all that stuff
Speaker 2wow that's really interesting um yeah i i should check out a bit more about bollywood but yeah yeah this is not just an american problem we're not just sort of shitting on the americans it is a a universal problem of nationalism um and and those kind of systems i mean america is particularly interested partly i've just researched america for a longer period of time than these other things uh than these other places but um i guess america is important because of its its role in the world yeah yeah as a political issue but actually someone should do an analysis of bollywood because obviously there is the potential for india and pakistan to destroy the world yeah um even though you'd think that there'll be a if that if that conflict ever does go nuclear that's the end of all of us and we won't have
Speaker 1even known that it's happening i'm amazed how much they goad them in those films like the bad guys are always pakistan they're always at war with pakistan and they're always shady and like the the indians are always so holier than thou they don't want to fight you know but yeah it's it's yeah it's it's
Speaker 2quite overt that's really really interesting absolutely fascinating i should check out a
Speaker 1pakistan does something similar as well i've wondered that yeah i've wondered that but the role of the the the influence of indian cinema throughout asia is massive you know i mean those guys are fucking mega stars you know and their films are massive in china and throughout the middle east and and everything and throughout asia as well and and increasingly in europe now as well so i think it it does have quite a powerful role in the uh the propaganda machine yeah yeah absolutely
Speaker 2um yeah good i'm glad that you've contextualized it like that um this is a really good discussion because i think yeah all these kind of ways of broadening um our understanding are really important for uh for for diagnosing what the problem is here and it's it's not just the problem of um you know a few um weirdy weirdy generals in the united states uh uh with their claws and everything i mean that's happening as well but it's a broader sociocultural and political issue and it's affecting the whole international system and we need to be alert to uh to preventing and resisting propaganda wherever it is and to create a more stable world through open systems of communication i hope that didn't sound too preachy but you know i'm trying to bring it bring it together as a as an overall thing yeah
Speaker 1no nailed it man now brilliantly put um it's quite clear i think from the way the conversation is evolving now that there are many different elements of this propaganda model and what started out in my mind as you know a vision of like eight guys sitting in a dark low-lit room chomping cigars and conspiring against hollywood directors is actually a bit more nuanced and layered than that you know this filter is a bit more nuanced and layered than that you know this filter is a bit more nuanced and layered than that you know this filter is a bit more nuanced and layered penetration system kind of includes you know commercial pressure financial pressure logistical relationship pressure wanting to keep people sweet you know in case you need them next time all that sort of stuff so it's very subtle and sinister and all pervasive by the seams of it which is a lot scarier and a lot more difficult to spot and to do something about than the more simplified version of the conspiracy theory you know so i think given that i've given that we've covered a lot so much ground here in this conversation i think this would be a perfect launch point now for us to be able to do something about it and to be able to do something about it people to do a deeper dive into your books and documentaries and all of the great research and work that you've done on this over the years so for anyone that wants to do a deeper dive into the detail and the data of what you've been working on on this where can they go what you got coming up what you got going on and you know what do you want to tell the people well i'm not
Speaker 2really selling anything at the moment james but i am sell it sell it but i am but people can go to a couple of free things that i'm doing one which is um matthew offered or dr matthew offered on uh and my youtube channel is dr matthew offered on uh on youtube and that and this year i'm doing worst year ever which is uh the worst year ever in international relations uh which is uh detailed analysis detailed heavy-hearted laughs about the prospects for a third world war um this year so a lot of analysis of israel of iran um of ukraine uh i've got a new piece coming out about next week wow a sort of tribute to his uh work and um so yeah sub stack and um uh and youtube check out my work there uh the the two movies that i've been heavily involved in are uh the writer with no hands which is also available as a book and theaters of war which is available on vimeo um i think is currently available for free for for a couple of weeks due to a promotional thing that was um being put last night but theaters of war is the one that relates most closely to what we've been discussing today um
Speaker 1awesome right well i'll put uh links into the show notes so people can click straight through and check out all of your amazing work matt thank you so much for this conversation today man it's been truly fascinating this is right up my street all this stuff and i can't wait to do a deeper dive into your amazing work as well so thank you so much for your time we appreciate it man best wishes with everything moving forward and i can't wait to see what you do next so um thanks for being with us bro have a great day okay thanks very much james it's pleasure to be on um and have a good day dr matthew alfred ladies and gentlemen what a dude you know i think this is one of those episodes where you're like oh my god i'm gonna be a where i think it would really benefit to jump on youtube and listen to it on youtube where you can get involved in the comments because i'd love to know what you guys think of this if you've got any examples from movies that you've seen where you can definitely see some kind of like militaristic or nationalistic bias within the uh the narrative i'd love to know if you've got any more information um so let's have a conversation head over to youtube wherever you listen to this from jump on the youtube with james kennedy podcast and jump in the comments and let us know what you guys think because uh yeah i think it's like it's fascinating stuff how the the science and the technology and the technology and the technology and the technology and the subtle ways the propaganda weaves its way through all of our culture i think it's far scarier that way than you know living in like north korea or something where it's just so blatant and overt because at least then you know it's propaganda and the end results are still the same regardless of the method but it's done under the guise of freedom you know we think that we're a free and open society when actually as as matt has demonstrated through this conversation our art and social commentary and satire and just plain fucking entertainment are watered down and chiseled down at so many different levels through so many different stages that the end result doesn't resemble anything like the original intention and the end result will always be nice and cozily conformist with the preferred boundaries of discourse of our government and i think that's something that we need to know about so hats off to matt and his colleagues for highlighting all of this stuff they've been working on this stuff for years and it's all backed up and proven with documentation brilliant brilliant stuff so if you want to continue to follow matt's work as he said he'd like you to check out his sub stack which is drmattalford.substack.com or head to his youtube channel where he's got some brilliant content on there at dr matthew alford on youtube links will be in the show notes so you can just click and go straight there and he's also got a bunch of books which look really awesome so i think i'm gonna have to go out and buy all of these bad boys uh they include national security cinema the writer with no hands and real power that's r e e l as in tape reel get it so go and feast your brain upon those as well i hope you enjoyed that conversation and found it as interesting as i did if you did give us a like give us a star rating give us a thumbs up give us a follow and a subscribe or a hell yeah whatever the hell you got to do show us some love and we'll keep it coming don't forget to head to youtube and check out the on the streets footage that i've been putting up from outside the royal courts two weeks ago with people like richard medhurst jeremy corbin andrew feinstein and all the others that i mentioned and i shall be back next week with another awesome conversation with another brilliant guest so stay tuned stay informed stay awake and stay on the right side of the fight love you loads
PodcastTranscript AI