I Spoke With People Close To Justin Bieber | Episode 25

You all probably think that you know the story of Justin Bieber.

But beneath that story is another story and another story and another story.

And somewhere underneath all of the noise is the truth.

And that is what we're going to start breaking down today.

So unless you guys have been living under a rock, I am sure you have seen the insane headlines and press around Justin Bieber right now.

It's been going on for months, but it seems like he and his wife Haley cannot get out of the press.

I mean, just look at the Google search volume from the last 24 hours.

The number one search right now, a breakout search on Google, is what's wrong with Justin Bieber.

The number two search, which is up 450%, is Are Haley and Justin getting divorced?

And the headlines you guys probably have seen read something like this.

Justin Bieber facing a lot of different demons as former Circle Fear Singer is making really poor decisions.

Justin Bieber's former collaborators say that he is lost and unprotected amid Haley Bieber divorce rumors.

Justin Bieber's former crew worried over debt reports.

And mixed in with all of that are social media videos and photos that people are taking of him and Haley just going about their personal lives, paparazzi hounding him, him fighting back against paparazzi, and people saying, well, that's him crashing out.

Like the entire narrative is that Justin Bieber is falling apart, that he's lost his mind, that he is going into debt, and that he and his wife Haley are heading towards a divorce.

And this narrative is everywhere now.

I just am here to remind you that Justin Bieber is also, as an adult, probably experiencing one of the most traumatic years years of his life.

Money, money, money, money, money, money, money.

Money, get out of here, bro.

Is this common for somebody who is possibly using to be very normal some days and then very crazy?

So what really is going on?

Now, like so many of you, I am a huge fan of Justin.

I have been a believer for as long as I can remember.

I hope that he comes back and does an amazing new album.

I love his music.

And in a crazy turn of events, I actually had the privilege to talk to people who are actually currently close to Justin.

And basically everything that I assumed about what's going on was confirmed.

Now, as you guys probably know, I have been involved in this very weird entertainment industry for a long time now.

And the news cycle, what we were hearing about Justin, just wasn't sitting right with me.

And my conversations with people in his circle have confirmed these theories.

And so my goal today is to start peeling back the layers of this onion for you because I promise you, it is not as it seems.

Now, before we dive into this story, make sure that you are following our podcast page and that you leave a rating if you enjoy the show.

And I want to remind you guys that I am going on tour this spring.

All of the dates and tickets are available at brettcooper.com, or you can check it out in the description below.

All right, so to fully understand this story, I think we need to go back to the beginning.

Justin Bieber was raised in a small town in Canada and he was born to a single mother.

But from a young age, he expressed an interest in music and was highly, highly talented.

But his life pre-fame was nothing comfortable.

This was not an affluent family.

In one article, he said, I remember being poor and being teased by other kids.

He said, I remember sitting in restaurants with my mother and she'd make me order water instead of soda.

I remember so badly wanting to order a soda.

And I also remember that when we got my first big paycheck, I was so glad to be able to use that money to take care of my mother.

Despite this, her son displayed musical talent from an early age.

He learned to play the piano, the drums, the guitar, and trumpet, singing in local talent competitions.

His mom would share videos of him performing R ⁇ B classics on YouTube for friends and family to see.

Little did just to know that these videos would lead to his eventual stardom.

Like this is not just some kid who could sort of sing like he truly is a musical genius.

He is like a once-in-a-lifetime talent.

He has an ear for music that most people can't even comprehend.

And he was discovered at 12 years old when Scooter Braun watched one of his videos on YouTube.

And after that, a bidding war started between Usher and Scooter Braun Braun and Justin Timberlake to be able to sign him and launch his career.

And in the end, Usher won out.

So it was Usher and Scooter Braun working together to sign Justin Bieber to start his career.

Raymond Braun Media Group, RBMG, and currently under the brand name Scooter Braun, is an American record label founded by RB singer Usher and talent manager Scooter Braun in 2008 as a joint venture.

The label was initially created for both parties to mutually manage the career and recording catalog of then rising teen pop star singer, Justin Bieber.

As of 2025, Bieber remains the the only artist to ever sign with this label.

And in 2025, he is still in dealings with Scuda Braun, which we are going to get into in just a bit.

And if you're like me, if you're Gen Z and you grew up in the era of the Bieber craze, you probably remember all of this, but he was everywhere.

People could not get enough of him.

And as a child, he was hounded daily by hordes of fans, all of these girls of all ages.

And the paparazzi would not leave Maloney.

It was Britney Spears' level of paparazzi attention.

Get up on the album, Justin.

Get up

So that was the very beginning.

That was the first time that he had ever encountered paparazzi.

This was the very, very start of his career.

And you can see him there, and he's so cute.

And he has the little like swoop haircut and he's so excited about it.

He's saying hi to everyone.

And obviously, if you've seen the videos now with how he's interacting with paparazzi over 15 years later after being hounded by them for his entire life.

I think you can obviously see why he is treating them the way that he is today.

And again, there are multiple layers to this story that can also provide more insight.

Now, in addition to the crazy levels of fame and attention, on every level, people were overtly trying to take advantage of him and sexualize him.

And you could see how uncomfortable he was in all of these situations.

From interviewers asking him on national TV if he would perform naked or make out with one of his fans to people grabbing him on stage and sniffing him.

Like you name it.

That was his entire adolescence.

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Now, obviously, as you guys probably understand or are starting to understand, this path was not easy for him.

And this story, really interestingly, has been around me for a while now because when I was a young person, when I was a child actor and I was in singing lessons, I actually went to the same vocal studio that Justin Bieber went to.

It was a studio that was run by a woman named Jan Smith in Atlanta.

She goes by Mama Jan.

And Justin and I would often be at the studio at the same time.

Now, I never interacted with him.

I never worked with him in any capacity, but everybody talked about him because his presence was so strong in the studio.

And the tone around him at that period, when I was around 11 years old, and I think that he was probably 19 or 20, was that everybody was worried about him, not because he was doing bad things, but because of the people that were surrounding him, because of the contracts that he had gotten into, because of the ways that they were pushing him to become something that he wasn't.

And Mama Jan was a mentor to basically everyone who walked into her door.

She cared so deeply about Justin to the point that the entire studio was basically thinking about him and supporting him and praying for him, not just to be successful, but that he could personally stay on track because this environment that he had found himself in was just so insane.

Like this is an impossible environment to be a young person in, especially when your family doesn't have a lot of money, when you're not experienced in this and you're having to put your trust into other people who obviously are a lot more powerful than you are.

From there, moving out of his teens, his career obviously grew into what we know it as today.

Tons of albums, huge tours, a massive relationship and then public breakup with Selena Gomez.

And much like what people say about Taylor Swift today is what they said about Justin Bieber.

He was the music industry.

He ran the music industry.

But somewhere along the line, things went south and they started to change.

But going back to laying out this timeline, now we find ourselves in 2018.

And this is where it really seemed like Justin's life took a turn possibly for the better or objectively for the better because he and his wife Haley got married he had also deepened his faith he had found God again he'd come back to Christianity and then in 2019 he wanted to engage in other creative endeavors so he started a clothing company called Drew House with his former stylist and his best friend Ryan Good this is the friend who is the best man at his wedding which will be important to remember in a later episode now then moving on to 2021 Justin released his last album.

We have not heard anything from him since.

That was the album called Justice.

And then we get to 2022.

Justin is dealing with severe health problems.

He's dealing with the facial paralysis that we all saw happen on social media.

He tries to go on tour because he has a tour scheduled, but he struggles to make it through.

And he ends the year, he ends 2022 with hypnosis purchasing his entire musical catalog for a reported $200 million.

Why?

Did he sell his entire catalog?

What was the reason for that?

And there is one.

So then we are finally getting caught up here.

In 2024, he really made a splash when he publicly parted ways with his manager, Scooter Scooter Braun.

And at the time, his team gave this quote to the press.

They said, on Sunday, June 16th, representative for Justin Bieber told people exclusively that Scooter Braun and SB Projects are not involved in Justin's current business or management and will not be involved moving forward.

Justin is excited about the projects that he is currently working on and is focused on what is in front of him.

Now, I'm just going to do a little PR reading into this because this is obviously a very specific and tailored, probably looked over by attorneys, contrived statement.

And notice that he does not thank Scooter Braun.

He's not saying, we had such a great time time together.

I'm so grateful.

He just says, he is no way involved in what I am doing.

He will not be in the future.

And I'm focused on what I can do now, my future projects.

And that obviously set off alarm bells in my brain.

I mean, obviously, thinking about the Taylor Swift story, the Ariana Grande story with Scooter Braun, like things were not looking great for Scooter Braun at the time because basically everyone was leaving him.

And Justin Bieber was the last client that was shutting the door.

Now, at the time, Scooter Braun kind of played this off as if he was just retiring.

He kind of timed that with Justin saying goodbye.

But it was clear, to me at at least, that Justin was drawing a line in the sand because it wasn't just Scooter that he was walking away from.

He also parted ways with many other key players on his team, like his longtime business manager, Lou Taylor, who interestingly also used to manage Brittany Spears.

In her recent memoir, Brittany wrote, quote, she, Lou, was front and center during the implementation of my conservatorship that would later allow them to control and take over my career.

Lou, who had just started a new company called TriStar Sports Entertainment Group, was directly involved in calling the shots right before the conservatorship.

At the time, she had few real clients.

She basically used my name and hard work to build up her company.

So obviously, I think we can maybe start to draw some parallels.

We can maybe see why Justin was uncomfortable with having this person run his business.

Now, obviously, I should say Lou Taylor denied these allegations.

She basically said, like, Britney's crazy, like, I didn't do any of this.

She was saying, I'm not involved.

But this is a fact.

She did manage Britney Spears and she went on to later sign Justin.

Now, on the surface, because of these very perfectly contrived and placed statements and articles, people all thought that this was, you know, relatively normal and peaceful until early January 2025 when Justin unfollowed Scooter Braun and blocked him on Instagram along with other former collaborators and team members.

You can see here it made national news global news, really.

And in my mind, as I'm reading into this, this was probably Justin's way of saying, I can't say anything.

I can't say what I want to say, but I'm letting you all know where I stand.

It's been almost a year of this, and I'm drawing my line in the sand.

Now, at the time, Dilborg had also reported an interesting fact that even though Scooter had retired and they had parted ways and were not working together in June of that year, they were still contractually linked.

This is from that Billboard article.

As of August 2023, Billboard reported that Bieber was still under contract for about four more years.

And guys, this is still based on the contract that he signed when he was like 13 years old.

Four more years following a series of amendments to his deal with Braun made in 2020.

In the same report, sources familiar with Bieber's business dealing said that he was focused on resolving his predicament with Braun at the time.

This is literally from Billboard.

This is not from me or who I talked to.

You can see it in Billboard.

He is resolving a predicament based on the contract that he signed with this man when he was 13 years old.

And I've now had it confirmed that they are still in multiple hot legal battles stemming from the fact that Justin wanted to walk away.

years ago.

So we have to ask, could this be why he is lashing out?

Could this be why he is unhappy?

Why he's posting on Instagram saying, I'm filled with anger.

I'm trying to control it.

I don't know what's going on.

Maybe because he's embroiled in a major legal battle trying to get his freedom again from a contract that he has been in for over 15 years.

Now, all of this brings us back to the negativity, the publicity, and the press that he's been receiving.

And I honestly, I just have questions because all of this has kind of coincided with Selena Gomez making her come back into the music industry, getting engaged to Benny Blanca, who also was connected to Justin Bieber because he produced a bunch of her music.

So there's this whole like just Hollywood and entertainment in general is so incestuous.

You're going to see this in the story.

It's so crazy, but all of this coincided with Selena Gomez's new album.

And many have now tried to tie Selena's album back to Justin Bieber, which has then just fueled the divorce rumors with Justin and Haley.

And I can tell you guys from what I have heard, none of that is true.

They are not getting a divorce.

They are very happy.

And from what we know from Selena's own mouth, this album is not about Justin.

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But even though all of this is just baloney, basically, that has not stopped the headlines.

Here is one from just a couple weeks ago.

My fans are speculating that Selena Gomez's new music is about Justin Bieber.

And they're speculating because there are some songs about about previous relationships, and she and Benny wrote about exes.

And so, obviously, the most famous ex that she has is Justin Bieber, even though she's dated plenty of other people.

So, they are pinning it directly on him.

They're seeing that he's not doing well.

So, they're saying, oh, he's divorcing Haley.

He wants me back with Selena.

She's moved on.

It's a whole mess.

None of that is real.

Both of these parties have moved on.

They are happy.

Justin is happily married to Haley Bieber.

They have a beautiful, amazing son.

Selena, in her part, is also incredibly happy.

She is engaged to Benny Blanco, who genuinely seems to worship the ground she walks on.

We should be happy for these two parties individually.

And I'm sure that both of them would appreciate Stop Being Pitted Together.

And Selena is basically asking people to stop.

She is saying these songs are not about him.

This music is not what everybody thinks it's about.

She literally said, I would like to say that most of this album has nothing to do with what everyone may go to.

I think it's important for me to say that because I've evolved so much.

I've experienced life with new people.

She's saying it's not just about Justin.

He's moved on.

I've moved on.

I've had to go through transitions with friends and lose people in my life and gain new people.

I've had a whole new life forever.

So it's up for whatever people want to interpret the songs as, but to me, it was about both of our past and our history and also just inspired by friends and relationships.

Like some songs were actually meant to be about friendships in my life.

And I think that's what to me the album was about.

And I just wanted to get that out there because that was really important to me.

She literally gave an entire quote without saying his name.

that this is not about him.

This relationship that was so relevant in my life where I had so much press, everybody was talking about us, they still talk about us, they still pit Selena and Haley together.

It's not about that.

And yet they continue to run these stories.

Not just that, but saying, oh, Haley and Justin are on the rocks.

Oh, they're so unhappy.

He's cheating on her.

Oh, he posted this.

What is the motivation?

Why do you continue when you objectively have facts saying that that is not the case?

Where is it coming from?

So now I want to bring my friend Candace Owens into this because last week, Candace uncovered that the same PR company that is embroiled in the Jessa Baldoni Blake Lively case is the PR company that has represented Scooter Braun for years.

AKA Jones Works owned by Stephanie Jones.

And this is what Candace had to say.

I am being told, unbelievably, that the PR firm that is engaging in this behind the scenes, and I'm going to say allegedly here,

is Stephanie Jones PR.

Cannot make this up.

The one that is engaged in the lawsuit right now with Justin Baldoni.

And they're starting to realize that if you just start drumming up old beef, I mean, why are they?

It looks like Selena Gomez has moved on.

She's getting married.

She's doing tons of interviews with Benny Blanco, and they're all trying to make Justin Bieber believe that his wife is really a secret stalker that's ruining his life.

I mean, when I was watching Candace's episode last week, I basically burst out laughing because it is just so perfect that that fell into her lap.

Like, it just could not be the most insane intersection of these stories.

And it truly, it's truly wild.

And again, it will just show you how incestuous this industry really is because it's not only Stephanie Jones and Jones' works, because Scooter Braun and his company are also, this is confirmed, major stakeholders in the agency group PR.

I mean it's just so insane because there are three publicists that are named in the lawsuits between Blake Lively and Justin Maldoni.

It is Jennifer Abel, it is Stephanie Jones, and it is Melissa Nathan who owns the agency group PR.

So how coincidental is it that two of these women that are being sued for creating PR war campaigns and being incredibly corrupt in how they do their work are also now allegedly being tied back to a PR campaign against Justin Bieber that seems to be targeted at trying to destroy his life and destroy his marriage.

And again, it's just kind of strange, a little too coincidental, if you understand what I'm saying, that Scooter Braun is tied to two of these publicists.

I mean, it is just so incestuous, it is messy, and basically, I don't think that any of these people actually care about protecting truth.

In my opinion, they are pushing narratives based on where their money comes from.

And this money, a lot of this money, seems to be allegedly coming from one man.

One man who Justin desperately does not want to work with anymore.

Now that you guys have heard all of that, you've seen the intersections, let's just start to put the pieces together.

Justin signs with Scooter at 13 years old.

Years later, Justin wants out.

He has been screwed over in more ways than one, based on what I have been told, which you will get into in another episode.

It's too much for one episode, but trust has been broken and he fires Scooter.

in June of 2024, but it's not as easy as that.

Now they are in a heated legal battle and suddenly our airwaves are flooded with attacks on Justin, his mental health, and his marriage.

Basically painting him out to be an insane person.

Which of course you can look at that and you can say, okay, well, Justin, just don't look at the headline, just focus on your family.

When you are being chased by the paparazzi, that will break a person.

And he is doing everything he can to maintain his faith, to protect his family, and to try to protect his own life, if we're being frank.

And it's my opinion, and based on everything that I have now heard, they are doing everything they can to physically and mentally and spiritually break him because he had the courage to say no and fight back.

And unfortunately, guys, this is very normal.

And you might be asking, why do I care?

This is just some huge celebrity, but the fact that this is a huge celebrity who is basically the music industry, who has lots of money and should have a lot of power, the fact that this is happening to even him, that it is taking such a toll on his personal life, on his spiritual life, that it is basically uprooting his entire career.

Just think about what they could do to somebody who is much smaller, what they have done to people who are far less famous, far less influential, with less resources.

I mean, my mind immediately goes to my friend Haley Page, who is a well-known wedding dress designer about 10 years ago, who basically lost her entire brand and lost the right to use her own name to a company that she had signed with.

And she had to fight for over five years just to get back the right to use her name.

They put her through the ringer.

She finally came out on top, but she didn't even have the ability to share her side of the story.

And they destroyed her career for years.

They took advantage of her God-given talents.

They took advantage of her ingenuity and the fact that she was young when she signed this contract.

She was excited that her wedding dresses were were going to be sold in stores around the country, around the world.

Somebody else was going to be helping her produce these designs and scale them.

She had no idea what she was actually signing and they took advantage of that.

And again, that happens every single day.

It's not just in the music industry.

And so when somebody has the balls to stand up and say, enough, I'm going to fight back.

I'm going to hold your feet to the fire.

I'm going to take back what is rightfully mine.

I'm going to take back the ability to use my own name to create art freely without you telling me what to do or what to say or how to sing or what to create.

That threatens these institutions.

That threatens these individuals who have power over these creatives.

And the only way that they then can fight back is to try to destroy and break up every other part of your life to make you weak, financially weak and emotionally weak, so that you can't actually fight back.

Now, another interesting thing that Candace brought up in her episode about Justin was the role that arbitration, legal arbitration plays in these types of contracts.

Because if anyone wants to get out, of an entertainment contract and break free and go independent, if they have any kind of dispute, most of the time, nothing can be public because of the way that an arbitration plays out.

Take a listen to this.

Well, now these contracts are written so that these artists and these podcasters are forced to go into arbitration.

And of course, if you're a child who star whose only person looking over your shoulder is your mother who had you when you were 16 years old and you see the word arbitration, you have no idea what that, what that means, what the context of that is.

It means that it's private.

It means that you have to go meet and there's one person that gets to decide your fate.

And of course, within LA and New York, we are learning more and more that these judges and these lawyers

are in many times paid off, right?

Everything overlaps here.

It is like David versus Goliath.

And you might be thinking, Brett, again, he's Justin Bieber.

He's so famous.

Okay.

Well, he's been taken advantage of.

If you're going up against a huge label with paid off judges, allegedly, with PR firms that are waging a war against you and you have been broken spiritually and financially, makes it really freaking hard to fight back.

Now, One Variety article way back from 2011 was also talking about these arbitrations and said the whole point of arbitration was to get disputes through the system at a greater speed and lower cost.

Plaintiffs, i.e.

the stars and the creators suing studios, usually over their share of the back end, say it does neither.

The system, they say, has morphed into one that favors the studios, particularly when it comes to accounting and distribution of profits.

And that is why it is now a studio standard to demand that contracts include arbitration clauses because they know that it benefits them.

Not only benefits them because they have an advantage, but also they can quell a PR war that would come with any kind of public dispute or public lawsuit.

So it's faster, but again, it's one person who maybe is in bed with other people deciding your fate.

It's privately.

It is David versus Goliath, no matter how famous you are, no matter if you are somebody like Justin Bieber.

And so because of this and because of the confidentiality, so many of these stories never get told.

Or if they do, they're told years after the fact, like Haley Page was only last year finally able to share her story about what she went through to literally just get get the right to use her name back.

It has now come out how authoritarian so many of these contracts are, the contracts that people signed when they were naive and young and had no support, and how all of this really just benefits the big institutions, the labels, not the artists.

Now the singer Jelly Roll, who I'm sure all of you guys know, he has famously been an independent artist for a very long time.

He waited a really long time to sign with anyone, I think, until he really started to understand the industry, but he broke down this entire relationship a couple of years ago on busting with the boys.

Take a listen.

Now the label owns the masters of the record.

Now, the Masters has the right to sync something, to put it on a TV show.

The Masters is the right to where it lives and doesn't live, to break it down in a beat format, to whatever they want to do with the Master recording, right?

Artist doesn't own the Master.

He's only participating in the royalties of the album.

When I say 70-30, that's a strong deal.

It's a lot of artists on Music Row right now with 95-5s.

And what he means is that the label would take 95% of what you make and you would get 5%.

That you put in all the effort, you do all the creative, you write the songs, you record the songs, you are the music, and you only get five percent because they're saying, Well, we're giving you a chance.

And the fact is, they're not even putting money in that you get to keep.

One thing that Jelly Roll says in this interview is that they will give you a loan, they'll say, Okay, here's a million dollars to make your album, but you have to pay it back before you can even start making money, and you already have an insane disparity in the profits that you would be taking home after you pay back that million dollars.

So, it's an incredibly slanted system on the side of the label.

So, how do you make money then?

And then, and then, um, touring merch.

So, how does touring this new thing called a 360 deal, which is called ancillary participation, which means now not only do I want 95% of what your streaming does, I want 15% of what your touring does, gross.

I want 15% of what your merch does, gross.

I want 15% of your appearance fee, gross.

I want 15% of everything you do, gross.

It is all-encompassing.

And I think 15% is probably very generous.

I think usually in situations like this, it's more like 75 to 85% that they are taking of everything.

And of course, I have to say that all of this is legal and people do sign these contracts, so the labels are not in the wrong.

And you know, if you are somebody who's making a ton of money and you have a team that works hard for you, that you trust implicitly and you feel great about giving them that percentage, maybe this is not the worst thing in the world because you're still growing, you're making money, you're not losing money, especially for a new artist who needs that leg up.

Again, with a caveat, if you have people around you that you trust.

But going back to our story, what about for an artist who has now lost trust in the people that are literally controlling him?

All the while, these people are making millions and millions of dollars and he's not seeing any of it.

When those people are only in it for profit, at the expense of what this person believes and their health and their well-being, who push him like a workhorse with no regard for his values or his health.

I think any normal person in that situation would want out.

Whether it is in business or it's some kind of toxic, abusive, controlling relationship, you need to get out.

And a person like that would fight tooth and nail to obtain that freedom.

Because again, it is not not as simple as just showing up one day and putting in your two weeks' notice.

If only it was that simple.

Justin is now going into his second year of fighting for his freedom just to get out of this deal.

And it's not even secret information that I'm getting from people close to him.

This was reported.

It's being talked about in Billboard.

He is fighting for the freedom to put out the music that he wants.

He can't put out music right now.

He wants to get away from the people that he signed with at 13 years old to focus on his wife and his son and his values and his faith to pour into creative projects that really mean something to him.

And they are making it nearly impossible.

It is crippling him while simultaneously he is being hit from all angles.

His wife is being hit by PR attacks.

That is the information that you need to know.

This is not some kind of normal legal proceeding.

This is not a situation where somebody's contract is up and they say, okay, goodbye.

And maybe there's some hurt feelings.

No, they are literally fighting.

And you would think that in a rational world that his old team would want to stay on great terms with him, even if just for PR and image purposes to show some support or excitement for Justin's future, potentially to be able to share in that success later down the line.

But these are not rational people that we're dealing with.

And I've kind of learned that there are a lot of not rational people in the entertainment world because this is all ego driven.

It's all fame driven and profit driven.

And they are so angry that he has turned around and said, I don't need you anymore and I don't trust you anymore.

They're so angry that he is taking a stand and walking away that they are willing to literally destroy their own business and their own reputation in order to break him and try to take him down once and for all.

And again, unfortunately, this isn't abnormal.

It can happen to people like Justin Bieber.

It has happened to Taylor Swift.

It can happen to people in other industries.

It can happen to people who are barely famous at all.

Because again, it all goes back to the power imbalance that these contracts allow.

This happens every single day in the entertainment industry.

And time and time again, we see people be broken by this and then they're silenced.

And time and time again, people are broken.

And they're silenced.

We never get to hear their stories.

The only thing that we hear are the headlines saying they've gone crazy.

They're losing their mind.

I mean, think about Michael Jackson and Prince and Elvis and Britney Spears, who had a similar team to this young man that we're talking about today.

We've watched it happen time and time again, and we're letting it happen again now.

And guys, this really is just like the tip of the iceberg.

And I wanted to do this episode first to kind of lay the groundwork, to show you some of the key players, understand the underbelly of this situation.

Like we haven't even gotten to the stories of who really let him down, the betrayal from his best man at his wedding, the PR wars that he was forced into, that he never wanted to be engaged in, the money that his advisors let him him lose, just so that they could further control him.

But now we have laid the groundwork.

And so the thing that I want to leave you guys with today is that Justin Bieber is waging a war.

And if you are somebody who supports freedom and authenticity and autonomy over one's work, if you support a man prioritizing his faith and his family and trying to do everything in his power to protect that,

you should be supporting Justin Bieber.

You should be praying for him.

You should be publicly shouting from the rooftops to free Justin, to help him.

Because this this is a man, and I'm telling you this from people who know him, who are, I've verified, are incredibly, incredibly close to him, from people that I know who know him.

This is a man who needs our prayers and needs our support, and he also needs his story told.

Because when you take away the ability for somebody to creatively express themselves, especially somebody like Justin Bieber, you are taking away his humanity.

And then when you add in attacks on his family from every single angle where every single piece of his life is being nitpicked, of course he's going to break down.

Of course you're going to see him and wonder what happened to him.

And so, instead of attacking him and shaming him and laughing, maybe you should be praying for him.

I mean, in this situation, the deck is stacked against him.

I mean, the only thing that we can really do is share his story and amplify this and pray for him and hope to God that he makes it through.