Hello there, you awakening wonders. Thanks for joining us on Stay Free with Russell Brand.

It's actually our 100th show, which we had a kind of preordained celebratory tone established for before we heard about the recent or, you know, the current Nashville shooting.

So it's in a sense put us in a position where we're uncertain as to how to

cover that story, because in particular, to be entirely honest with you, I've noticed how

stories of school shootings or mass shootings that are obviously, as you're aware, all too

common tend to become politicised and particular

pieces of information emphasised or amplified according with the media outlet and a presumed

political alliances of that channel or broadcaster.

And I suppose one of the things we consider to be our obligation is to look for commonality

among all humanity and among all nations while recognizing that we are, of course, subject to the same

or comparable biases to any other group or any other individual.

So for me, I feel initially that I will declare that as a parent, when you hear

about this unnecessary traumatic murder of children, the first impulsive response, in fact,

is one of like dread and anxiety, because I've been with my children today, as I have every day,

and all of us live with the assumption of safety.

And perhaps we should live with that assumption of safety for what is a society other than a set of accepted beliefs, relationships and assumptions between us.

And as the fabric of society appears to deteriorate around us, seems to be more undergirded by conflict, bias, stoked conflagration and loathing.

Perhaps it is unsurprising that there are these occasional symptomatic outbursts of violence, whether they are large-scale geopolitical expressions of violence, and we've been pretty

expressive and clear about what we think the underlying motivations for that are, or more

localized forms of violence. It's commonly understood in media analysis circles that the fetishization

and focus on the perpetrator is

unhelpful in particular in that it increases the likelihood of emulation. And I think many of us

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