You know, ever since Brett Cooper left the Daily Wire, I have been forced to look at Ben Shapiro. There was only a male Ben Shapiro left. The lady Ben Shapiro has been gone, and which is very sad, obviously, for all of us. But I am joined now to talk not just about the hit Daily Wire show, Pendragon Cycle, but also about Brett's viral tweet and a story that I'm actually shocked to see come out of the New York Times regarding Haitian oregano, jazz cigarettes and spinach talking about pot. I'm joined by Brett Cooper. Brett, good to see you. Hi, Michael. I'm happy to be here. It's nice to see the replacement Ben, the Ben upgrade. This is excellent to see you in frame. So I actually, we have been seeing you around here because Pendragon has come out. This show was 100,000 years in the making. In a way, it actually was kind of thousands of years in the making because it's this medieval epic. So the show's out now. I want to talk about it. I want to hear about how the show's going, you know, on its release and the making of the show and the crazy accents and the horses and the bulls and whatever. I want to hear about all of that. First, though, I want to talk about drugs because you had this viral tweet that, you know, I knew a little bit about this from a while ago, but it kind of broke through one of the biggest lies that the left has been promoting for my entire life. And I'm at least five times older than you. And the lie was that pot is not bad for you. And actually, it's really good for you. And there are no downsides and you can't be addicted to it and nothing bad happens. And everything that we do on pot could bring us world peace. And you tweet out this story from Politico reacting to the New York Times editorial board, New York Times, which says it's time for America to admit that it has a marijuana problem, in which the New York Times admits they got pot wrong. And you said, my mom and I have been told that my brother's psychosis, now full-blown diagnosed schizophrenia, is most likely drug induced from his years of smoking weed. This drug isn't harmless, no matter what our culture and screaming people in comment sections tried to tell us. First of all, this admission from a doctor, even that is kind of novel. You don't really hear about that. So what happened? yes um so i actually just put out an episode two hours ago talking about this tweet and talking about the story um and it's interesting that this blew up yesterday and i tweeted about that after the fact because you never really know what things are going to take off on x and i'm very much like i post and then i turn off my phone like i have my name muted on x i do not like listen to what is happening and then suddenly i started getting all of these texts and seeing all of these replies and comments and going, oh my gosh, this is really, you know, striking a chord with people. And it's funny because this is something that I have shared before. I did a, you know, four hour, something like that long interview with Sean Ryan early last year and talked at length about my brother's situation, touched on drug use. So this is something that I've been very open about, but obviously as the New York Times is finally walking back their, you know, decades long assurance that pot is harmless, that it's great, that we should legalize it, that it will have no ramifications on society. Obviously, everybody is talking about this. So yes, my brother Reed, who I just adore, he's 12 years older than me. He is, like I said, diagnosed schizophrenic. He is not able to function in society without medication. And I say function, meaning he's completely unstable without medication. And this has been going on for over a decade. And one thing that I talk about in my episode is that there are, this connection between cannabis and psychosis is now very well established going back to 2008, Michael. Like before, you know, this drug was legalized in many states, the NIH was saying, hey, there is a risk here. There's a connection between cannabis and psychosis. We knew that in 2008. And they basically shoved all of that down and said, oh my gosh, it's harmless. You can't get addicted to it. You can't get enough of it. You can drive. You can do all of this stuff. It's great. It's going to chill you out. It's going to be wonderful. And we basically indoctrinated and lied to an entire society about this. So again, we've known about this, but there are many different ways that this psychosis can be triggered. And so that's what I talked about in my episode is that, you know, this did come out of nowhere for my brother. He showed no signs of mental illness prior to his psychosis. This is not something that my family is predisposed for. We have had problems with addiction in my family, which I've also talked about, but serious, severe mental illness has not been a thing in our family. And the other caveat that I offered, and this is also something that is connected with cannabis, is that, as you know, I have a brother who died when I was very young. And that brother is my brother Reed's identical twin. And Reed watched his identical twin pass away in front of him at 17 years old. I didn't know they were twins. I actually, that part, I didn't know about it. Yeah. So they were identical twins and he watched him have a cardiac arrest in front of him. And that's an important caveat that I want to offer because Reed was already smoking pot around that time. He was, you know, I would guess a dealer in high school. I was very young, but that was a part of his high school experience. But in light of our brother's death and in light of his grief, he self-medicated and he began smoking more and more and more. And so I want to offer that caveat because it wasn't just like he was this happy, go lucky, everything was great in his life, and he was smoking pot. He already was dealing with massive grief and trauma, was self-medicating with weed, and then from there had psychosis. So that is a story that many people also have. There are also stories where it just comes out of nowhere, literally, and you do not have any trauma, and your brain is not already broken by the grief of the death of your brother. And so there are many stories. And so really I shared that post not to try to shame anybody or attack anyone, but just to say, yeah, I have personal experience with this. This is something that my family has been dealing with for years. I mean, we were talking about his drug use. We were talking about drug-induced psychosis eight, 10 years ago when this first started with my brother. I was 12 years old, I think, when his first psychotic break took place. and the doctors were very quick to say, I think the first question was, what is his history with drug use? And so this is something that does not feel abnormal to me. And so I just wanted to share that. And then when I realized that it was going viral and I was looking at the comments, I was like, oh my gosh, people are so angry. Like Michael, they get so triggered. I know. And it's because they've been so conditioned to believe that it is harmless. And I like I not attacking you or your experience I simply saying we should be able to have an honest conversation about the realities and the risks of this drug It not just something to be toyed with it is a risk You're not allowed to say that. I almost never get, and maybe I don't get more pushback on any other issue than when I point out that maybe the devil's lettuce isn't like the greatest thing in the world. There's a meme going around right now because of this story, and in part I think because of your tweet, where if you talk to an alcoholic and you say, hey man, you're drinking too much, It's screwing up your life. It's affecting people around you. Sometimes the alcoholic's going to get angry and say, no, it's not. I got it under control. I can quit whenever I want. And sometimes the alcoholic is going to say, yeah, you're right. I got to go to rehab. This is bad. And you get, I don't know, maybe it's 50-50, somewhere in there. Not one regular marijuana user has ever in the history of vegetation admitted that maybe it could possibly be a problem. There's so much cope. There's so much denial. They say it's not an addiction. I saw even in the responses to your tweet, people saying, no, no, what you don't understand is it was an underlying condition, hereditary. It was genetics. The marijuana might have just brought it out a little bit. But you just said, no, you don't have a history of that kind of mental illness in your family. No, we do not. My brother is my half brother. And so there's a whole side of my family with my dad. But in terms of my mom and my brother's father, there is nothing. And again, I want to offer that caveat of we did have this traumatic event, and so that is part of my brother's story. But that is not the case for many other people who endure this psychosis and then end up having schizophrenia. There is a study that just came out in 2024 that says 41.3% of young men specifically, young men are the ones who are most at risk. Young men who have a psychotic episode due to their cannabis usage, within three years that turns into full-blown schizophrenia. That's an insane number. 41.3%. And I'm sorry, not all of them watched their brother die. Like, again, there might be something that is, you know, predisposed. Again, it might be hereditary. I'm not ignoring any of that. I'm offering that as an addition. But we should talk about these vulnerable populations and acknowledge that there are risks before just plastering this drug everywhere, opening vape stores on every corner, handing out, you know, weed pins to young people. we should talk about those risks and be able to have an honest conversation we do with alcohol that's the point that I made in my episode today is that you know alcoholism it's something that carries a lot of shame yeah and it's very I would say it's out in the open it's very clear when somebody is an alcoholic again like you said you know alcoholics and people who are drinking they go yeah I know it's poison like if I go out and I have a margarita I'm like yeah this is really bad for me and we talk about it as we're drinking the margaritas we know that it is poison but why is it when we just try to have that same conversation and lay that foundation with cannabis that we all just get screamed at from the laid back, you know, vegged out community? It's like, they should be so chill. They're jumping down my throat. Just down to the point of the addiction. These are people who will wake and bake in some cases. I mean, like every day, if you look, I think it's in the Times story. All day. They'll do it all day, you know, because they have the vape pens, which have much higher THC than, your mom or grandma did in the 60s. And they'll do this every day. The number of Americans who use pot 21 or more days per month, so effectively every day, has quadrupled, I think, in the last 23 years. And they'll say, no, it's not an addiction. You cannot describe a habit that you feel a compulsion to do every single day as anything other than an addiction. So anyway, The Times says here, they say, look, yeah, we kind of got this wrong. We long supported marijuana legalization. Much of what we wrote then holds up. It doesn't. But not all of it does. And then they go on and they say, we predicted it would bring a few downsides, but it actually does. And it's driving people crazy. And they're using it all the time. And it's led to addiction problems and paranoia and psychosis and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then, of course, paragraph four, they say, but America should not go back to prohibition to fix these problems. So basically, they say, we were totally wrong. We called for legalization. We were completely wrong. And we should learn nothing from that fact. And we should do absolutely nothing to correct the errors. It's so I'm really I'm just really pleased that you're highlighting this because it's so bad as someone who, you know, I like a like a little Coca-Cola every now and again, you know, a nice little scotch on the rocks. Maybe I obviously love delicious Mayflower cigars. I don't chain smoke 20 of them a day. You know, I have an evening cigar or, you know, but nevertheless, we say, yeah, all these behaviors carry some risks. Here's the good stuff they do. And I've never seen anyone benefit from habitual marijuana use. Maybe in some very rare circumstances, people try it out in a kind of experimental trial for something like PTSD and then get off it. And even there, like jury's still out, but like, okay, maybe, but for 99.9% of people, the fact that you even mentioned your brother self-medicating because of this trauma, that of course tells you, you know, your brother would have been much better for him had he had talk therapy or had he been able to speak to a priest or something like that. Or, you know, obviously it's not helpful to dull your pain and grief with some drug that just tries to push it aside. Anyway, totally right. I could talk about this for like hours. I just, I feel, so vindicated on the issue, which is such an unpopular issue. Thank you. Well, it's vindicating for my family as well. So I had people commenting and saying, oh, I'm so sorry that you're going through this and that you're sharing it. I'm like, I'm happy to share it because at least people are listening and could learn from it. Me putting this out there, again, not attacking people who want to take their gummies, whatever, not my cup of tea. I think it's ruining your brain. But if you want to do that, that's fine. But I do, Again, it's about having an honest conversation and assessing the risks and making sure we're not lying to young people. Yeah, that's right. Because it's developing risk. Like, don't, please, pardon the kind of vulgar image, but it's like, don't urinate on my leg and tell me it's raining. Like, if you want to do drugs, just be open about it and we can talk about it and maybe there's some excuse to do it or maybe not. Go to preborn.com slash Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S. Pregnancy can arrive unexpectedly. 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It often begins with something as simple as an ultrasound, one moment that can change everything, and you can be a part of that change with a $28 donation to cover the cost for a mother in need. I personally support this group, and I strongly recommend that you give what you can. All donations are tax deductible. 100% of your donation goes directly to saving babies and building families. To donate securely, dial pound 250, say keyword baby. That's pound 250, keyword baby, or go to preborn.com slash Knowles, can-a-w-l-a-s, preborn.com slash Knowles. You know what you should do if you're feeling stressed out and if you want to relax a little bit. A much healthier thing you can do than induce psychosis in yourself is watch Brett Cooper in the Pendragon cycle. We have a trailer, right, of Brett in Pendragon? All right, let's see it. I am Kustenin, king of Gotha and Kelithon. You've met my daughter, Ganyeda. Ganyeda. My father likes you, Wolfboy. you're welcome here stay The Pendragon Cycle Rise of the Merlin premieres January 22nd only on Daily Wire Plus It actually already premiered by the way but the rest of that trailer was terrific I am angry about one thing in Pendragon which is that I visited Hungary twice I think during the pre-production and the production of it just oddly enough I had speeches and engagements and things there and all I wanted was to be disemboweled in some battle scene. I just wanted one like seven second cameo where I'm beheaded or something and they never gave it to me. I'm very upset about that, but I'll tell you. Well, Matt did too. Matt Walsh did too. I remember being in the break room with you guys prior to even leaving Hungary and Matt was like, how do I get an audition? Like, how do I be a soldier or whatever? And that was, Matt was really cultivating his, I sort of got cured of the acting bug. Matt is just catching the acting bug. Ever since he took on the character in Am I Racist, Sean, he really, I know, poor Matt Hardest hit. When I saw the first cut of this, I didn't know what to expect. Because conservatives don't make content like this, and it's just absurdly ambitious, and it's just insane, right? And I was very pleased that they picked this kind of a property, because I was afraid they were going to do Atlas Shrugged or something, which all the conservatives from the past 30 years, they love that. Ayn Rand is awful, and that story is awful. That book should be burned. Like I'm totally in favor of book burning for that book. And so then they pick this great epic medieval Christian Arthurian kind of tale. Very, very cool. But I saw it. Can they pull it off? And I think it landed. You know, you're seeing reviews of Pendragon, even from people who don't like Daily Wire, even from people who don't like conservatives or Donald Trump or whatever. And they're saying, you know, it's good. So what's I mean, what's your take on you? You were actually there slogging through the marshes of, you know, Estragon or wherever you were. What was it like making it? It was fun. And I will say you made a great point about it, you know, reaching so many people. I was just watching a clip of Rogan talking about it. Anyway, so it's reaching new heights. And yeah, and they were having a whole conversation about how, you know, you can find TV anywhere now. And it's not just the big studios making it. And you're not just finding it on cable. And there are so many different creative ways to make content now. and they were saying, and we have to acknowledge the people on the right who are doing this because it is good and it has great substance. So yeah, it was a wonderful experience. I, you know, grew up acting as you know, and had not really dipped my toe back into it. And they were like, Brett, you're going to go do this. And I was like, all right. And it was tons of fun. And it reminded me why I love storytelling and why I love filmmaking. And so it was invigorating just for myself personally, because that was something that I had walked away from because I just knew that I did not want that to be my actual career. I did not want to have to rely on Hollywood to provide for a family ever. And so it was nice to be able to go back to that purely just out of the love for it and to enjoy it and to support good people in a project that I believed in. and yeah it was wonderful the cast michael is incredible because it is almost all people who are relatively unknown who this was you know their first big project and because of that when you have a cast that is relatively new and i don't mean new that they've like never acted before but this is like you know their first big meaty role or they're carrying a show for the first time like tom sharp was they care so much and it's not just like any other project but it's like no this is yeah and I'm going to put blood, sweat, and tears into this. We know we have to make it good. And so being in that environment was really special because everybody truly was just 100% committed. And it's just a special experience doing any kind of, I would say, creative production. And you know this too. When you're working on a play or a musical or a film or a TV show, you're kind of insulated in this bubble with your cast and you become a family and you get to know each other really well, especially if you all really care about the project. And so I got to know so many great people. I met one of my best friends while working on the show, Rose Reed, who actually wrote my big episode, which is 106, which I think is coming out next week or this week. Next week, because they're on 105 now. And so she wrote my episode and she is a brilliant writer and was an amazing person to collaborate with. And we became very good friends. So yeah, it was a wonderful experience and a great way to spend a few months in Hungary. Yeah. I remember on that point of just like this pressure cooker, kind of magical land where you're totally insulated. I remember years and years ago, I was a student, I was doing a play and I ran into Brad Dourif and who's a great actor, has had an amazing career, you know, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and, you know, everything since then. And we were talking about it because to do a project like that is so all-consuming, you know, it really, it kind of puts you in this other universe. and we were complaining about it, another actor and I, and Dorev, who's, you know, been around forever, he said, ah, to me, it's just like summer camp. You know, I just like, you could tell he just still so loved it So then this leads to my next question which is now your circumstances have totally changed You know you have a child you have goats I told you have you know like these animals that have to be milked or I don I don really know what one does to an animal other than eat them Uh but you know your your your life circumstances are so different from this kind of like magical la la land that you have if you're in a movie or a play or something. So you say it was great to be in this creative endeavor again for love of it. You know, that's what amateur means. It's like to do something for the love of it, not just for commercial gain. Are you still afflicted by the acting bug? Will there be some other role that you're pursuing? Or do you say, no, I'm cured. I'm done. We did this epic, huge show. It's awesome. And I'm done. I don't know. You know, I don't know if I will ever be cured of it. It's so funny. Do you know Cody Johnson? He actually, he's the one that Kid Rock covered at the halftime show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He did an amazing documentary a few years ago. And I actually, it's called Dear Rodeo. And his whole story is that he was a cowboy in his past life. And then everyone else around him, you know, they leaned into that. That became their careers. They became these huge rodeo stars. And he was still kind of like slogging along. But he also knew that he loved music. And so he was doing both. And he finally decided just to lean fully into music. He was broke for many years when he and his wife had just gotten married. And then finally his career takes off. And so this documentary is taking you through his career and his story. And he's now this huge, huge country musician. One of my very, very favorites writes incredible music as an amazing storyteller. You would think, you know, oh, you have all of the things that you want in the world. You should be so happy. And he has this song called Dear Rodeo. And he's talking about even with all of this, I still think back to my first love. and it's like there's always going to be that itch there and it's like I just wish that I could do that or there's still you know part of me that loves it and so I remember watching that documentary years ago and it didn't come out years and years ago but like two or three years ago and thinking you know that that's very much how I feel I grew up acting I dedicated my entire childhood and young adult life to acting I love it there's very little that I love more than storytelling and that would be having a family and having control over my life. Minor goods. Yeah, exactly. Being able to dictate my own career and drive the ship and not be whipped around like you are in Hollywood. So I will always love it. And I want art to continue to grow and get better. So I love seeing projects like Pendragon come and take the world by storm and be created. I want to see Hollywood produce great things that are not atrocious, like the new Wuthering Heights. I want to see great stories being told. And if I can play a part in that, then great. But I also am able to scratch my itch by doing my show because I feel like I get to sit in front of a camera. I get to connect with an audience, which is one of the reasons why I loved acting. And I get to tell stories. I get to weave stories and tell those in a creative way every single day. So I get to scratch the itch, but I think I'll always love it. So I don't know. I think it would have to be unique situations where it's the right project and the right timing because it is hard. You have responsibilities, you have a family, you have a child now, and you can't just – I don't want to be one of those people that just leaves it all and walks away. Because that's really what turned me off about this industry so many years ago is I was a young person and I was watching these adults that were coworkers of mine that I considered mentors and friends. and I would watch them leave their families for three or four months at a time. And their kids would go off to boarding school because they were shooting, you know, a huge hit TV show. They were shooting, like, I had a good friend on Breaking Bad. And so her entire family had to move to New Mexico. But then her kids would go back to school in LA and it was just, that just wasn't the life that I saw for myself. And so I'm very grateful that I've carved out something that is on my own terms that I'm getting to dictate. And so if I get to do projects like this, I'll be so happy and I will revel in it. But yeah, it's kind of a dear rodeo Cody Johnson situation, I would say. I totally get it because even very successful actors, I mean, Academy Award nominees and winners, even like top of the profession, a lot of them have very tough lives, you know, and it's not that industry, especially after the collapse of the studio system where no one has a normal job anymore. It is not conducive to happiness. And, you know, it's funny. I say that I'm the only guy in the history of the theater going back to ancient Greece who ever got cured of the acting bug. I'm like totally cured. I really, but I did enjoy that. I mean, when I was a student, I loved directing opera. I liked translating plays. I liked acting. I liked music. Still love all that. I love it. But I remember I was talking to a professor of mine who was a Dante scholar and I was trying to decide. I knew I enjoyed theater and arts and things. I knew ultimately I wanted to be in politics. That was kind of always the end goal. But for the intermediate, I really liked all of those endeavors. And I asked it to him, and he's a very, very serious scholar. And he said, ah, Megaluzzo, you know, when I was a boy, I wanted to be an actor. And I said, really? Oh, did you ever pursue that? He goes, I told my mother and she pointed to the door. She said, there's the door if you're going to be an actor. And I said, oh, that's kind of, it's very Italian. It's from this very tiny town in the South. and I said do you ever regret that do you ever regret not having made that your career and he said I used to be an actor now I am the real thing and I thought it's such a beautiful what you're describing you know having a family having goats whatever you know doing your show where you can speak about these real issues in a way you're kind of the real thing and you get to scratch that itch you know on the side and I think of it every day I wouldn't have any other job right now than the job I have. But I was born to play ukulele. You know, if only I might, that's my itch. That's my, I got to scratch that itch on my, but you do the show, you do the day job anyway. Uh, well, look, it's obviously been a huge success, Pendragon. And, uh, anyone who has not seen it yet, anyone who is not going to see Brett in Pendragon, you go right now, you download the app on your phone, on your television, on your radio, on your gramophone, on whatever device you have, Download the Daily Wire app, subscribe, follow me, follow Michael. And the next thing you do is go, obviously, forget about the other guys, and then go watch Pendragon. Go join the many, many people who have joined Pendragon to see Brett and all of the other excellent performers in it. Brett, excellent to see you, both in Pendragon and here. Yes, great to see you too. I'm happy to be reunited.
