Andrew Thomas Callaghan (born April 23, 1997) is an American alternative media journalist and YouTube personality. He is the creator and host of the YouTube series Channel 5 and All Gas No Brakes. Beginning as a man-on-the-street interviewer in New Orleans, Callaghan built an audience covering subcultural and political events across the United States, and by December 2025, Channel 5's YouTube subscriber count had surpassed three million, a figure Columbia Journalism Review noted exceeded that of The Washington Post on the platform.
Callaghan first gained attention for Quarter Confessions, a viral Bourbon Street interview series, and later for All Gas No Brakes, a road-trip documentary show he lost control of after a contract dispute with the production company Doing Things Media. He subsequently launched Channel 5 in 2021, through which he has interviewed figures including Alex Jones, Hunter Biden, and Pete Buttigieg, and produced the feature documentaries This Place Rules (2022), about the January 6 United States Capitol attack, and Dear Kelly (2025), a profile of a man radicalized by conspiracy theories following a home foreclosure. Callaghan has described his own approach as a "radical empathy agenda" and has disputed characterizations of his work as gonzo journalism.
Early life Andrew Thomas Callaghan was born in Philadelphia on April 23, 1997, and grew up in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. He is of Irish and Italian descent. In ninth grade, Callaghan's parents enrolled him at the Northwest School, a small private school in Capitol Hill. Around this time he met a future collaborator, Evan Gilbert-Katz, at a soccer field in Seattle. As a teenager, Callaghan also aspired to work as a rapper or graffiti artist and recorded an EP with two friends under the name Self Evident.
Callaghan has said that he "hated every class from the first day of kindergarten to [his] last day of college" except for a journalism class taught by a teacher named Calvin Shaw, which he began in ninth grade and continued taking throughout high school (although he later clarified he was bored by most of the required core curriculum, but once allowed to pursue his own interests, he did enjoy things like astronomy, creative writing, and New Orleans mythology). Shaw allowed Callaghan to leave campus to report on stories of his own choosing, telling his students only that they needed a story by the end of the week. The teacher of that journalism class convinced him to pursue his passion for journalism. During high school and a gap year before college, he interviewed people associated with the darknet market Silk Road, Occupy Seattle protesters, and juggalos, and wrote about homelessness and freight-train hopping in Seattle. He later relocated to New Orleans, where he studied journalism on a full scholarship at Loyola University and worked as a doorman at Bourbon House Seafood on Bourbon Street to support himself. He was a contributing writer for The Maroon, Loyola's university newspaper.
Career Quarter Confessions While working as a doorman on Bourbon Street, Callaghan saw what he described as "hellish scenes" and wanted to find a funny or clever way to document them. He quit his job and began interviewing people on the streets of the city about their secrets while they were intoxicated, which he compiled into a YouTube and Instagram series called Quarter Confessions, named after its location in the French Quarter. Other accounts credit the show's creation to Callaghan's college friend, the filmmaker Michael Moises, who invited Callaghan to join the series as a host after starting it in 2018.
All Gas No Brakes
In 2019, Callaghan published All Gas, No Brakes: A Hitchhiker's Diary, a memoir-zine recounting stories from a 70-day hitchhiking trip across America that he undertook two years prior at the age of 19. The idea for the YouTube series All Gas No Brakes was conceived from this memoir, before beginning his journalism studies at university. Quarter Confessions led to a partnership between Callaghan and Doing Things Media, who agreed to fund All Gas No Brakes. Doing Things Media provided Callaghan with a $45,000 salary, a $10,000 production budget, equipment, and a recreational vehicle. Nic Mosher, a college friend, became the series' cameraman, and Evan Gilbert-Katz, Callaghan's childhood friend from Seattle, later joined as lead producer. The first episode was filmed at the Burning Man festival in Nevada. The series went on to cover subjects including the Storm Area 51 gathering, the Midwest FurFest furry convention, and a "Donald Trump Jr. Book Club" meetup.
In early 2020, Callaghan started an All Gas No Brakes podcast in response to travel restrictions stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. On the podcast, he interviewed past subjects from his All Gas No Brakes series via video call.
During the George Floyd protests in May 2020, Callaghan travelled to Minneapolis after concluding that mainstream news coverage was too focused on looting and fires without examining the protesters' grievances. Callaghan and his crew filmed the protests, producing an episode that videographer Nate Kahn described as a shift towards serious on-the-ground news coverage. According to people involved with the show, producer Reid Hailey of Doing Things Media subsequently expressed discomfort with its serious content and asked Callaghan to focus on "party content". Callaghan attempted to renegotiate his contract in late 2020, but he and his crew were locked out of the franchise's social media accounts and fired in March 2021. Hailey later said that the company was "really bummed it didn't work out with Andrew".
In March 2021, Callaghan announced that he and his team were no longer involved with production of All Gas No Brakes or its planned television adaptation. He stated that he had signed an employment contract with a production company without reading it and subsequently lost control of the show's accounts and income, including Patreon and YouTube revenue. Callaghan also said that Nic and Evan, who had lived in the show's RV and produced its original material, were no longer involved.
On March 23, 2021, details of Callaghan's contract emerged in The New York Times. Doing Things Media had signed him to a contract granting him a $45,000 salary plus expenses covered in exchange for the intellectual property rights to the All Gas No Brakes brand. Callaghan was required to produce a set amount of content, but was otherwise granted creative freedom. The Patreon page set up for the show also paid out a further 20% to Callaghan, 20% to the crew, and 60% to Doing Things Media.
In 2025, Callaghan reacquired the rights to the All Gas No Brakes brand. He subsequently announced plans to relaunch it as an "affiliate program" of Channel 5, describing it as an outlet for "subcultural deep dives on the American Fringe," distinct from Channel 5's growing focus on political and breaking news.
Abso Lutely Productions and This Place Rules
In May 2020, Doing Things Media and Abso Lutely Productions entered a deal to develop a television series based on All Gas No Brakes. Callaghan said the partnership began when Eric Wareheim, one half of the comedy duo Tim & Eric alongside Tim Heidecker, privately messaged him on Twitter to ask about creating a television series. As the co-founders of Abso Lutely, Wareheim, Heidecker, and Dave Kneebone would serve as executive producers; Callaghan, Reid Hailey, and Max Benator would serve as executive producers for Doing Things Media. Following Callaghan's departure from Doing Things Media, Heidecker confirmed that Abso Lutely would still be working with Callaghan on "something major".
On the Fear& podcast in July 2021, Callaghan revealed he had created a documentary film with Abso Lutely about the 2020 United States presidential election.
The title was later revealed to be This Place Rules. Directed and executive produced by Callaghan, the film followed him as he interviewed people involved in events leading up to the January 6 United States Capitol attack. It was released by HBO Max and A24 on December 30, 2022, with Jonah Hill being added to the list of executive producers.
On January 5, 2023 the first of several accusations of sexual assault and sexual coercion by Callaghan surfaced. On January 12, Tim Heidecker said on his weekly Office Hours Live podcast that he and his comedy partner Eric Wareheim have “no plans” to work with Callaghan in the future, effectively ending Callaghan's relationship with Abso Lutely Productions.
Channel 5
Callaghan released the first content for Channel 5 through Patreon on April 5, 2021, in a style similar to All Gas No Brakes. Its first YouTube episode, covering spring breakers in Miami, was uploaded on April 11, 2021, and briefly removed over accusations of spreading COVID-19 misinformation before being reinstated five days later.
Its subscriber count grew from roughly 1.5 million in June 2022 to 1.93 million by July 2022, when Callaghan earned approximately $100,000 per month through Patreon, to 2.2 million by December 2022 and more than three million by December 2025.
The channel has covered subjects including the Satanic Temple's "SatanCon" gathering in Scottsdale, Arizona, the National Rifle Association's annual convention, dueling pro-choice and anti-abortion demonstrators following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the aftermath of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and drill rappers associated with O-Block, a Chicago housing project. Callaghan also reported from Ukraine during the Russian invasion, interviewing the mayor of Lviv and refugees, partnered with Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith on coverage of Greenland, and launched a Spanish-language edition of Channel 5.
Channel 5 has staged live touring events combining screenings of unreleased material with audience-participation segments, beginning with a 2022 show featuring nudist musician Will Blunderfield. A February 2026 stop in Medford, Massachusetts included the premiere of a documentary about a man's search for his lost pet parrot, a preview of an All Gas No Brakes relaunch video on the "adult baby" subculture, and a question-and-answer session with WBZ NewsRadio reporter Matt Shearer. Callaghan launched C5.NOW, a streaming platform for independent creators on July 20 2026, and has partnered Channel 5 with the news-aggregation service Ground News.
In 2025, Callaghan launched 5CAST, a long-form interview offshoot; guests have included Alex Jones (twice), Hunter Biden, Nick Shirley, Shia LaBeouf, and Pete Buttigieg. His interview with Jones drew criticism, particularly for a This Place Rules scene showing Callaghan lifting weights and drinking whiskey with him. Asked by WBUR how the Sandy Hook parents might feel about it, Callaghan said the families' lawyer, Mark Bankston, had told him he "loved the scene". Callaghan has argued that "deplatforming" extremists is often counterproductive and pushes their audiences toward less moderated platforms.
Some Patreon subscribers criticized Callaghan for not pressing former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg hard enough in a Channel 5 interview, and Callaghan considered not releasing it before doing so; he later said Buttigieg had appeared "because he wanted to connect with a different demographic" but Buttigieg "wasn't necessarily very open with his answers".