The Michael Knowles Show
"It Went Completely Viral" Brett Cooper Talks Internet Drama & The Pendragon With Michael Knowles
12 Feb 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the significance of Brett Cooper's viral tweet about marijuana?
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, 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.
Chapter 2: How did Brett Cooper prepare for her role in The Pendragon Cycle?
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, you know...
You know, 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. So I actually just put out an episode two hours ago talking about this tweet and talking about this story. 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 story,
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.
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Chapter 3: What are the main themes of The Pendragon Cycle?
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.
Chapter 4: What personal experiences does Brett share regarding drug use and mental health?
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.
Chapter 5: How has public perception of marijuana changed according to Brett and Michael?
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. Actually, that part, I didn't know about it.
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, you know, the death of your brother. Um, and so there are many stories. Um,
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.
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Chapter 6: What challenges did Brett face during the production of The Pendragon Cycle?
And it's because they've been so conditioned to believe that it is harmless. I'm like, I'm not attacking you or your experience. I'm simply saying we should be able to have an honest conversation about the realities and the risks of this drug. It's not just 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, you know, 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 is 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.
Chapter 7: How does Brett feel about balancing her acting career and personal life?
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, you know, 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. Again, there might be something that is predisposed. Again, it might be hereditary.
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Chapter 8: What insights does Brett provide about the future of storytelling in media?
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 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 alcoholism, it's something that carries a lot of shame. 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 shouldn't be so chill.
They're jumping down my throat.
Just on 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. They'll do it all day, you know, because they have the vape pens, which have much higher THC than, you know, 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. I'm just really pleased that you're highlighting this because it's so bad.
As someone who, you know, I 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. But nevertheless, we say, yeah, all these behaviors carry some risks. Here's the good stuff they do. And I've never seen anyone...
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