Jordan Peterson sits down with actor, podcaster, and commentator Russell Brand. They discuss turning to Christ, the benefits of orienting yourself toward a proper center (rather than centering yourself), how Donald Trump has shaken up the world stage, and what it means to cross the “edgelands” and make it back alive. Russell Brand is an English comedian, actor, activist, podcaster and commentator. He first established himself as a stand-up comedian and radio host before becoming a film actor. He presented for MTV UK and made appearances across media and TV (including a stint on “Big Brother”) throughout the 2000s. In 2008, he leapt from British to U.S. film acting, appearing in the hit film “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” followed by numerous international successes. In 2013, Brand guest-edited an edition of the weekly publication the New Statesman, launching his interest and later career as a political activist and commentator. Over the years, Brand has changed in his thinking, from establishment advocate to establishment critic. His current podcast, “Stay Free,” sees Brand calling out major news, governments, and corporations for affronts to free speech, expression, and thought. This episode was filmed on January 10th, 2025. | Links | For Russell Brand: On X https://x.com/rustyrockets?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor On YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@RussellBrand On Rumble https://rumble.com/c/russellbrand Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
If there is a Jesus, you're not Jesus. You are not at the center and neither is anybody else.
If you're not united by responsibility and by voluntary self-sacrifice, you will be united by power.
To let you know that the ego is still in here, I may have given up wanting to be Jesus Christ, but I'm going to give it as best a shot as I can give at being poor.
If you lose your individual relationship with divine guidance, the only thing that can possibly emerge is either chaos or despotic force.
Elon Musk, in a matter of posts, can disrupt, elevate new potential kings, desiccate them and remove them in a matter of moments.
Are you hopeful? And what are your concerns? So I had the opportunity today to once again sit down with Russell Brand. We've talked quite a bit, and we're getting to know each other quite well, which makes the discussions even more interesting and faster-paced. And we started out with a discussion of Christianity, and it's—what would you say—
the challenge that it poses in its fundamental elements to the doctrines of dissolution, so you could say that on the nihilistic side, and to the insistence that the only proper centralizing and unifying force is power. And so... Well, both of those are very powerful arguments.
One, the nihilistic argument is that everything is fundamentally meaningless and fragmented and that all unity of any sort is an illusion in this veil of tears, entropy-ridden veil of tears. And the contrary position to that on the side of power is that Only the naive believe that unifying forces are anything but the imposition of compulsion and power.
And that it's, as I said, it's terminally willfully blind to assume that there are any principles other than the Hobbesian battle of all against all. Well, is there an alternative to that? Well, the...
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