Andrew Callaghan: Channel 5, Gonzo, QAnon, O-Block, Politics & Alex Jones

There's two people in the back, two of her homegirls wearing sheisty masks. I'm like, "What are we doing? Where are we going?" She goes, "We're going to go film the riot. We're going to Lake Street." We drive down there, Kmart is burning, Target is burning, everything is on fire. She has the Sony a7, she gives me a microphone and she's like, "Go talk to that guy." That was the guy with a molotov cocktail in his hand who had just burned Kmart down. I go, "What should I ask him? She goes, "What's on your mind?" I walk up to him and I'm like, "What's on your mind?" The following is a conversation with Andrew Callaghan, host of Channel 5 on YouTube, where he does Gazelle style interviews with fascinating humans at the edges of society. The so-called vagrants, vagabonds, runaways, outlaws, from QAnon adherence to fish heads, O'Block residents, and much more. He created the documentary that I highly recommend called This Place Rules, on the undercurrents that led to the January 6th Capitol riots. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. Now, dear friends, here's Andrew Callaghan.

I tried to color match you though. Got the black and white going. I went to Walmart before this and got the Wrangler shirt with the Texas Longhorns Tee and everything. Is that where you shop, Walmart?

Yeah, the suit thing. Yep. Anyway, what was the first, if you remember, first recorded interview you did? Well, my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Claudia, this is back in the day like I was telling you, we just asked her about her life in Columbia and stuff like that. I didn't really get into actual journalism until my ninth-grade year. I had no idea I had an interest in it. Before then, I wanted to be a rapper. It's all about hip hop and meditation and picking psilocybin mushrooms and public parks and stuff like that. That's what I was into.

You hitchhiked across us for 70 days when you were 19. Tell the story of that. Well, this connects to what I was talking about with the boredom of school and these common core classes. After my first year of school where I lived in the dorms, like an old-school dormitory building at a school in New Orleans called Loyola University. I wanted to just do something, I felt so bored. I was working for the school newspaper for that whole first year, it was called the Maroon. I didn't have the ability to write my own stories. I had to defer to an older editor and they would give me stories to write about.

What else? What's some interesting, beautiful people that you've met along the way? Well, I used the app Couchsurfing to find places to stay.

You worked as a doorman on the, I could say, legendary Bourbon Street in New Orleans. That's right.

And the first event that we were called to cover was the Burning Man Festival. And that was tough because Burning Man is not too keen on filming. It's supposed to be a non-commercialized escape from reality. They have a gift economy set up. It's based upon mutual participation and non-exploitation. And so, the idea of making a Burning Man video was tough at first. Because burners oftentimes, and this is not all of them, are pretty well off in general. A lot of them have tech jobs, are pretty high up in Silicon Valley. And Burning Man is where they go to take the edge off and basically become their burner persona. On the playa, they become reborn. And they take ketamine and they wear kaleidoscope glasses and steampunk hats and they snort MDMA and they run around the sand. Listen- Do you snort MDMA?

I'm not sure why that is. Fear, maybe. Paranoia, I don't know. It really divided people. Along the lines, as you mentioned, triple mask yourself or fight for your country. Yeah, right. Exactly. Why are those the two options? That is literally what it was.

I mean, there was still a comedic element to the way you do conversations, so the way you edit. So did you see yourself as potentially like a Jon Stewart type of character? At first, but I just think human beings are just funny in general.

I'm not even sure what fame means. I mean, I just see myself as me. When did you get the shades?

So let's go to that project. It turned out to be a movie called This Place Rules. It was supposed to be called America Shits Itself.

Yeah. QAnon is part of that story, what'd you learn about QAnon from that? Just an all encompassing worldview. That family that I talked to, I call them the QAnon family, but it's called the Spencer family. They were non-political up until the Stop the Steal movement began in September of 2020. And within four months, their entire life revolved around the mythology and lore of Q. And I've never seen in my life a psyop just devour people's minds in such an intense way, in such a rapid period of time.

You were shirtless, lifting weights while whiskey or some alcohol was poured into your mouth by Alex Jones in this movie, and then you did the same to him. That's true.

Just on your own politics, is it fair to say that your politics leans left? I'm not really sure sometimes. I like to think that I am socially left. I think people should be able to dress and act however they want. I don't believe in restricting people's social freedoms. Economics-wise, it doesn't seem like leftist economic policy works very well on a city funding level. Like if you see what's going on in California, it seems like the city leadership is mishandling the funds in California too. So I don't know about that, but... I don't know. I don't really see myself as left or right. I just never have.

There was a controversy a year ago where a woman came forward and said that you were pushy with her. You respected to know, you got the consent, but you were pushy about it. Looking back, can you tell the story of that? What are the lessons you learned from it? Yeah, I've yet to speak on this for a lot of reasons. Mostly because it was a hard time and it's a sensitive subject. And I've wanted to prioritize the reporting, but I think that now I'm ready and able to do so. Everything started on December 30th, 2022, and that was the release date of the HBO project. Like I told you, we didn't know when the movie was going to come out. We weren't told that it was going to come out on that date until early November. And so it was like, "Oh my God, here we go. We got a movie coming out." I didn't even know it was going to be them.

If we can go back to Channel 5, can you tell the origin story of that? Yeah. Channel 5, during the All Gas No Breaks days, we used to tell people that we were called Channel 5 if we wanted them to stop antagonizing us while we were filming, because every town has a Channel 5. So when people were like, "What's this for?" If they were being super rude and trying to get in the camera and be hell of obnoxious, we would just say, "Oh, we're Channel 5." And they would be like, "Oh, my grandma's going to see that," and they would leave us alone. So Channel 5 was a diversion tactic during All Gas No Breaks.

You've interviewed many rappers. Yes.

Slim Jesus. You made a video on O Block. Yeah.

You have an interview with Crip Mac? I do. Free Crip Mac. He's in VO right now.

You mentioned the UFO Convention. Yeah.