#2575 - Sam Tallent

Sam your book is fucking great thank you it's really good thank you surprising yeah very interesting it's uh you're a great writer man thank you Joe you really are it's uh it's really good man it's uh you know it's I mean you're a very talented comedian so I shouldn't be surprised but it's always surprising when someone does something outside of comedy that they're really good at I think you should be surprised I think you're rightfully surprised that like a filthy nightclub comic who's very good at selling chicken tenders like wrote a book that's kind of beautiful you know so yeah I think that beautiful book about an assassin which is even more interesting isn't that fun yeah it's so much fun to take a thing we've all heard a million times and then like try and tell it like if it was actually happening in the real world so I tried to like bring this down into the reality we all share and uh it's violent you know it's sexy I get to talk about Paris like it's fucking me I love it yeah what um what was the motivation behind like how so like when you decide you're going to write a book and you decide you decide you're going to write a novel you wrote a novel about comedy before but this is different this is uh about a hitman like how did this come about uh Random House picked up Running the Light my first novel and they reissued it and they gave me a two book deal and they were like what do you want to do for the second book and I was like I wrote this book kind of about like if I never left my hometown and it's like I'm a loser and I like walk along the side of the highway because I love novels about men who walk in like overalls you know what I mean like there's this like like Flannery O'Connor like uh Larry Brown there's all these great books about dudes who are like risking their lives for three hundred dollars so they can like fix their lives and they're like you know they're like you know they're like you know they're like you know they're like you know they're like you know they're like you know they're like you know they're like the tires on their pickup truck so I wanted to write that kind of book about me and I was like it's kind of quiet and like inward looking and they were like do you have literally anything else that sounds so fucking boring and I was like I got 30 pages about a hitman killing a guy with his gun that's jammed and he's like driving it into his skull like a spoon and mango and they were like run with it kid so this thing was like fun to write compared to the other stuff because uh it's like a total fantasy you know where did it come from um did you did you just sit down and like what is your process when you decide you're going to start writing fiction do you have a thought in your mind do you sit down and let the thought come to you literally I wanted I had this idea about um a hitman a killer trying to kill someone but his gun jams and then him showing human signs of frustration and I was like I want to write that short story about like what's that look like to a guy who's supposed to be the best in the world his job but it turns out he's just as capable as all of the infinite human failures that we all are so that was the 30 pages I had of this and it was going to be a short story and then like I said I was kind of incentivized by random house to like you know they're giving me the ball do some damage and that's this is this is damage you know it's like the covers awesome yeah it looks like a punk rock album that I would have bought when I was a kid like it was I don't want to say it was a commercial decision but I definitely knew that this was the first time I was going to be on bookshelves you know with a hardcover release and I wanted to write something that was a easily sellable bit of you know the pulp fiction I love all those books but I wanted to you know hide a love story in there as well and like write about all the things that kind of I wanted to explore nihilism and like all the existentialism that I like about like French writers and the Japanese like bleak people and this is kind of like my love letter to a lot of different whether it's genre fiction whether it's Paris whether it's like my French friends you know because like there is the guy is gay but like I think I know how to write about loving men a lot more than I do loving women because like I've loved a lot more men I've never fucked any man in the ass that'd be pretty sick if I could pull that off but I'm like trapped by heterosexuality like I would love to like spend a week at a bachelor party with the boys and have the most fun fraternity paintball ultimate frisbee maybe if Jamie's there but and then at the end of it wouldn't be great to just lay down and like blow each other that'd be cool no that would be cool like if we were capable of it well we're certainly capable of it at gunpoint I'm sure people are capable of a lot of things oh sure yeah but I wish I wasn't at gunpoint I wish I could do that and you are capable of it you could decide to do it no I love fat natties and pussy well yeah so why would it be beautiful to do something that you don't love that's what I'm saying is I if I was capable of that then I think that would be the ultimate expression of male friendship would be like get over here boys but instead that's what the Spartans did I know right no cool a lot of Vikings comforted each other that way I think there was a lot of homosexuality all throughout human history before I think before people started talking for sure before they could give labels to things and it was just like holes in the dark and there was judgment once it's like a term you know right and then there was people discussing things like did you hear Mike you know what the fuck and everyone's living to be 22 and they don't know where fire comes from but they're still like being gay is gross that's a funny thing to think of in the cave there's also a lot of pederasty going on back then there was a lot of a lot of kid fucking it was a very common and then also having sex with boys men having sex with boys seems just ubiquitous all throughout history yeah it's kind of how you broke them in you know very strange yeah yeah do you know about New Guinea I know about New Guinea I know about New Guinea I don't know about old guinea no I don't know about new guinea what the papaw New Guinea yeah the semen warriors do you know that story no but please it's rough I'm gonna write down semen warriors yeah yeah he's writing down which could be the name of this book once you hear about this tribe you're gonna be pretty freaked out cool so upon the age I think it's of six years old young boys are taken away from their mothers and given to an older man who they call their anal father and they're the folklore of their tribe is that for a man to grow strong they must consume sperm anally and orally they think they have a mouth in their butt no but that's they take they take it okay you know I'm saying no I yeah you get it I guess consume I'm sorry well they have to consume it in the mouth and then they take it in the butt and then they they just get mouthful fucked and butt fucked yeah and this is like the tradition amongst this tribe well who are we to judge Joe but it's just you got to wonder like how that started and how you got everybody to go along with it you know hey give me your six-year-old I'm gonna mouth fuck him right because that's how he's gonna grow strong do you think it was tied to like there was probably some like you know exploitative pervert who was in control sure and then there was like he was like a little bit of a guy who was like you know I'm gonna fuck you and then he was like well if you guys want to keep getting these record harvest keep letting me fuck your kids and all their holes perhaps right yeah wouldn't be a harvest because these are hunter gatherers it's a very primitive tribe so it would be you know so the biggest caribou ever was landed that year something wouldn't be caribou different geographic locations what goes on down there it's jungle okay so it's like a macaw with the prettiest they probably eat a lot of monkeys yeah isn't that how you get prion diseases you can yeah well maybe that's why they're fucking all the kids because they got monkey brain they also are cannibals so you get prion diseases from that as well but apparently prion diseases from cannibalism are a lot more rare than I thought I was talking to who is a the guy who is explaining us so Daniel Everett is that who was Jimmy remember the cannibal you had on no he was a guy who's spent time with a lot of indigenous tribes yeah and there's two different types of cannibalism that they engage in one of them is cannibalism of your enemies yeah and the other one is cannibalism of your loved ones okay so when you kill your enemies you eat them and then when your loved ones die they it's a really disgusting process they would let them sit for three days putrefy and they put buckets underneath the body to capture the liquefying the putrefying fluids and then they would dunk their sweet potatoes into the putrefied liquids okay and eat it so it's kind of like a human candied sweet potato something along those lines sure and then they they would eat they would consume he was talking about this one guy who was working with him who had to leave the project because he got to go back home and eat one of his relatives because they had died and so he had to be part of this ritual so he had a he had to depart huh he had to go on his hero's journey sure yeah god damn well this episode is presented by first light pictures wild horse nine shortly before chile's 1973 coup two cia agents played by john malkovich and sam rockwell find their mission on easter island spiraling into a web of conspiracies unexpected alliances and chaos wild horse nine only in theaters friday get tickets now this episode is brought to you by the farmer's dog here's a 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I mean, it seems like there's a lot of, like, you know, kid exploitation at all levels of, like, high power. Maybe power just ultimately leads to, like, that. Once you've had every delicacy on the buffet of life, then you're like, what's left? And it's like, well. Right. You're at a diddy party. Yeah, yeah. You're at a diddy party diddling. Yeah. Well, why, you know, why. I have this bit on stage about, like, what happens? Like, how do you get to that point where you're hiring 15 male prostitutes to fuck your girlfriend in front of you? Yeah. Like, what's. Because you've seen everything. You've done too much. And then also drugs. Drugs play a giant part in that, like, extreme deviancy. Yeah. You know? Most of the worst decisions I've made have been very high. And not on pot, you know? Right, right, right. Like, whatever. I remember there was this weird opium going around Denver in, like, 2006. And they called it Red Dragon. And me and my friends, you know, were reading a lot of, like, Burroughs. And we're like, let's get some of this Red Dragon. Oh, boy. And boy, howdy, if it didn't lead me to. The only time I've ever committed any kind of, like, big property theft is we were all fucked up on this Red Dragon and we walked by a construction site and my buddy Krusty was like, hey, these lights go for, like, $800 a pop. And next thing I know, I'm just, like, carrying two huge, like, construction lights down the street. And the cops came. And they, like, see, like, a giant man, you know? And I, like, put him down. And they were like, what are you doing with those lights? And I was like, oh, I thought we were supposed to set up for work here. And they were like, okay, carry on. Oh, nice. Yeah, so then I was just like, you know, I was like, I gotta do opium forever. It makes me bulletproof. Like, apparently, under the powers of opium, I'm the most persuasive person ever. And then that kind of drug logic, you try and apply it to, like, charming your teachers or whatever it is. And you're, like, on the nod in rhetoric class. How old were you when you were doing those? 18, 19. Okay. So this is college. Like, first years of college. And how were you consuming this opium? Were you smoking it? Oh, yeah, smoking it. We bought, like, a very, like, we all pooled our money to get, like, a special opium pipe. What did they look like? I can't remember. I was so high on opium. I don't know. And we were always smoking it in the back of someone's car, you know? So it's, like, the ritual of it was never there. It was like, let's get high and, like, go to CeCe's Pizza Buffet. That is a ritual. It's not traditional. Oh, dude. All rituals eventually become traditional for you. Was it this? This stuff? Do you know? No, but. Dragon's Blood? Something like that? Because they're saying. I'm looking it up. I typed in Red Dragon opium, but it says it's actually not opium, and it was sold back then. What is it? I mean, it could have easily been fake. It does not contain opium. Yeah. Awesome. Oh, so what is it? One article I think I just clicked on said it potentially was, like, the THC-9 stuff, maybe, like, an early version of it. Huh. What year is this? 2005, 6. Huh. Yeah. Missed, branded as a drug. See, it said Delta-9. Okay. What? It was an unknown red substance. That was exactly what we were purchasing. So you guys thought it was opium? Literally, a man named Snake from Garden City, Kansas, said, this is opium, and we were like, awesome. And he was a white guy with dreadlocks in 2005, so he's still brave. Like a Gary Oldman-looking dude? Oh, God. Gary Oldman. We'd be lucky if he looked like Gary Oldman. Well, do you remember that from. What was it from? True Romance? Oh, yes. Yeah. Dude. No, it was more of a. It was more of like The Matrix Twins. Okay. Remember those albino twins on The Matrix who fought. You know what I'm talking about? Matrix Twins. The movie The Matrix. The albinos? Yeah, yeah. Why do I not remember this? Jamie. They were in the sequel. They were like the. Show me a couple albino twins. Oh, the sequel. Yeah, this is what he looked like. Oh, boy. I don't remember those guys. Yeah. Oh, now I do. Okay, okay, okay. And he was kind of our doula, in a way. Oy. So. I moved from a very small town to Denver, and I was easily tricked into all types of romantic notions. Interesting. I was a rube, yeah. And Burroughs got you in. What Burroughs book, specifically? Oh, man. Probably. Queer and Junkie. Those two, for sure. Naked Lunch always seemed like he was. Like, I hated it. Really? Yeah, man. It's like. Look, I understand that you're like Jackson Pollocking, and you've earned that right as a master of the form, like as a writer. He wrote Queer. He wrote Junkie. He wrote other things that were easily digestible, and now he's kind of letting his freak flag fly and, like, swinging his dick. But, like, at the end of the day, as a reader, it's really hard to, like, enjoy a book that doesn't have any discernible story. I see. Like, I still like a plot. You know what I mean? Right, right, right. So, yeah. It was Queer and Junkie. And my dad was cool. My dad gave me really cool books early on, and, like, good music. So. And also Hunter, obviously. Like, Hunter S. Thompson was a huge deal, especially because we were in Colorado. Right. So, like, there was, like, the Owl Farm thing. Like, my dad would, like, we're gonna go up to Owl Farm. And I don't think he ever did, but it was always an aspiration. Yeah. Yeah. I think his ex-wife still lives there. Oh, yeah. And my friend Liz, like, worked for her. And I would really love. You want to hear, like, a petty memory I have? Yeah. You know how you, like. Like, I'm at Shane's thing, and Jamie is, like, talking to Bam Margera, and I'm like, life is big enough to include the fact that, like, I'm watching. I'm watching Jamie talk to Bam Margera while my friend does Eagle Stadium. Like, there's all these weird little, like. So, uh. What the fuck was I talking about? How did you start this? Yeah, how did I start this? Okay, we went from THC to the Pale Matrix guys to Hunter S. Thompson to Owl Farm. To Owl Farm. To. Oh, petty. Being petty. Petty. So, I remember in, like, 2008, there was this guy in Denver who, like, got to go finish his novel at Owl Farm. Really? Yeah, and it was, like, everyone was like, that's so cool. And I, of course, was, like, a jock comedian who was like, fuck him, he's a poser, you know? And then his book came out, and I read it, and I was like, damn, it's pretty moving. I love the second part, you know? So, it's like, I still remember that guy. And I hit up my friend Liz, and I was like, hey, could I, like, maybe go finish this book, like, at Owl Farm? And she was like, they don't do that anymore. And I was like, I remember the guy's name. I was like, you let Blank do it. And she was like, oh, how do you remember that? No one ever remembers that. And I was like, I remember it because of spite, you know? So, there's, like, a lot of things that I only remember because it made me mad and feel weak. That's funny. But that's at a different stage in your life. The stage of your life where you're trying to get something going, trying to succeed, you're very vulnerable to spite, very vulnerable to envy. Well, it's a real pure burning fuel. Yeah. You know, rage, hate, all these things. Yeah. Like, they really get your octane up quick. Yeah. Unfortunately, it consumes the vessel that's holding it. Oh, yeah. It's the worst one. Yeah. It's a poison. It's corrosive. It's a poison. Yeah. Yeah, it's very sad to see people that you like fall prey to that or people that you have liked in the past who you see them lash out at people that are doing well and you realize it's so, the map is so clear. It's because they're not doing well. It's always what it is. Well, it's easier to, to be mad at people than to better your own position. It's like I lost all this weight and people are like, you look sick. And like beforehand, people were like, look how fat this guy is. He's the fattest guy ever. And it's like, all right, what do you want? Why are you guys so obsessed with my body? Well, there is no solution. No. You cannot make everyone happy. It will not happen. I know. And when you do try to make everyone happy, the shit that you make as like an artist is so bad. Yep. Because you're trying to make shit for, you know, the comment section. And it's like, I never got in, when I got into standup it was 2005 and like all the things that we have to do now as comedians weren't there. You could just like beef funny maybe do coning and then like you got to do all the funny bones and like that was all i wanted i wanted to like be in clubs and now all the shit that surrounds comedy is like super embarrassing and cringe like i hate it like promo oh you know like make the instagram post like you know any of that shit that's like like like all the shit that my super successful friends are good at is shit that makes me want to like buy a bullet and rent a gun you know like i want to like hang myself from a sturdy rope when i'm like oh yeah i gotta get engagement i need to comment the first 30 minutes that the post is up so that more people will see it it's like i want to pay someone so much money to do all of this so i don't have to anymore well you could or you could just post that's where you're going to be and then just leave it alone that's probably the best solution because your fans certainly want to know when you're going to be somewhere and it sucks if you find out that a comic that you love came to your town and you missed out because they didn't post a post about it so you want to know so just make a post just make it make it i know you do but i mean this is my advice to people that get cringed out by that just make a post and walk away yeah and then people are gonna like fuck you fuck this fuck that they're gonna do that the comments are gonna be filled with all sorts of nonsense and you're gonna feel weird about it so just don't look at it think draft kings isn't available where you live think again draft kings an official partner of the nba is now available in all 50 states so don't look at it don't look at it wherever you live follow your favorite nba stars get excited about the biggest matchups and lock in on those buzzer beating moments and with draft kings it's all in one app plus new customers get three months of nba league pass on us so you can catch more nba action anytime anywhere download the draft king sports app today and use code 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terms at dkng.co slash audio limited time offer nationwide based on sportsbook predictions and free-to-play sports contest availability varies by state it's more that it feels fraudulent to me you know what i mean it's not so much i'm worried about people disliking whatever dumb promo post i put it's just like you know what i mean it's not so much i'm worried about people disliking whatever dumb promo post i i'm worried that people will be able to understand how hollow the sentiment is that i'm communicating like i'm going to the funny bone in hartford this weekend i'm stoked to be there hartford connecticut yeah yeah but i think to any of the people who like go to that club and have been going to that club if i were to say i'm coming to my favorite club in the country the hartford funny bone they'd be like he's a fucking liar we go there it's they can't possibly be how many other clubs does he do unless you really like people that are stuck you don't like connecticut people are stuck the wwe by the way one of my best friends lives in connecticut yeah i should just say i love people in connecticut but i used to say the connecticut's not a real state it's a highway between boston and new york i think that's fair it's real yeah listen i performed in connecticut a lot in my early days and it is the worst place on earth not on earth not true i'm sure yeah performing in iraq currently would probably be a lot worse i bet it's electric when you kill though i bet if you can get a standing o that's a good feeling bro yeah inshallah baby it's just there's a thing about connecticut that's like they're stuck yeah they're stuck or they are really rich and they chose to not live in new york city and so they live in like there's these like very bizarre towns that are extreme like where my buddy who's a good i've been friends with this guy for 34 years i think he worked at a high school in like a private school a very ritzy private school like keith richards brought his kids there like a lot of these very famous people are very very wealthy people billionaires they have these massive estates in connecticut yeah that's connecticut and then the rest of connecticut is sort of this weird highway oh yeah where people are stuck and also like where yale is you go to the yale campus and it's like beautiful and historic and then you walk like three blocks away it's fucking new haven yeah it's like very impoverished and you know the crimes of desperation happen there a lot but the greatest pizza on earth i love that stuff new haven yeah that thin what do they call it like an apiece yeah yeah are you that kind of italian what kind of that the kind who like says like uh you know like a gabagool you know like do you put the stink on it no i don't say that you should i don't no i've i've kind of left that at a very early age like the last remaining italian man you gotta get out there there's a few i know go to the east coast there's a lot no i mean left that are in positions of power but i grew up in a world where italians it was like they were cool you know like that was because the sopranos dude and of course all those great mob movies really made yeah but they they made italians way too cocky there's a lot of italians that thought it was really cool just to be italian because all these like a lot of guys they put it on yeah hey fucking you're gonna hang on with johnny yeah like they they added to it yeah oh i'm saying you should do that that's exactly what i'm saying you should do become one of those guys it's too late i don't know you can change mitzi shore she used to have this show i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know night of a thousand guidos she would do like this uh an italian show and she asked me to do it once i did it was like it was so embarrassing because a lot of the people on the show other than guys like don marrero who are great comics who just happen to be italian yeah a lot of the people were only on because they were italian she was finding like mediocre italian comics to be on the show and it was just fucking hell i mean i'm also regretting i'm not trying to say any negative italian sentiment i realize i'm going to governors in long island on wednesday italians you know i love you uh but you know great club by the way governors my agent said i was the only person who asked to go back to governors after their first time really yeah i was like i loved it it feels like the road oh i love long it reminds me of like real comedy when i started yeah when i lived in new york i very rarely did the city um because uh i was a road comic in boston you know like boston the way it works is if you're real clean or in the 80s if you're real clean you can work the clubs in town most of your work is going to be in the bars outside and so that's what i did yeah i did mostly bar shows and so i was traveling around to here to there i was doing you know revere and all these different places and when i went to new york i was like if i'm in town i do 10 minutes i make 10 bucks or whatever the fuck it was or i could just do the road and make like 200 dollars and do an hour oh yeah like why would i do i'll do that so i did long island same way yeah yeah well it's like also like hicks was a big hero of mine and i know he was like he was an anomaly in that he wasn't a city comic he was a road comic he was like one of the most brilliant but yet was doing his kind of comedy to people that wouldn't necessarily go to see his type of comedy if they knew what it was yeah and that's what was so like that's why he became such a force yeah because i think a lot of comedy now like people do comedy for people who think exactly like them right and that's why i'm so excited about it and i'm so excited about it and i'm so excited about it and like i can do a papered room and i'm like i'm very proud of that like because it's not like you know i'm not moving every ticket every weekend so sometimes they'll be like late show saturday we're gonna paper 50 and i'm like yeah and they're papered for people don't know what we're talking about it's like free tickets free tickets they give away free tickets so they can sell liquor right exactly because they want the two drinks in there and they don't care what you're up to or if the show's gonna go well because they're gonna make an extra four hundred dollars on bud light yeah the problem with that i've always found is that i i did a lot of those shows too but the people aren't going to like it they're going to like it they're going to like it they're going to very invested in the show so you get a lot of chatty folks they don't watch a clip so when you say a word that they don't like they're like what the fuck is this and it's like you couldn't watch me do one minute before you decided to drive down here and get parking you know it's it's so strange you wouldn't do that at a music show right you're gonna listen to a song before you go to the show maybe i mean maybe if you want to well it depends on the kind of club so yeah that's i think that's one of the issues with comedy and i talk about this a lot is that like comedy has one genre as music you you know if you're going to a music club and you see hip-hop and then guns and roses and then joni mitchell you'd be like what the fuck kind of club is this this is crazy whereas in comedy you could see all sorts of different perspectives and styles you could see you know loud people people who do music people who do all kinds of weird shit on stage like comedy has no i mean it does have genres you know i mean especially to people that like to classify i like to put things into categories and boxes and but the reality is it's just perspectives it's just comedies here's the world through my eyes and everyone is different and it's like you don't know if you're going to go see guns and roses or if you're going to go see barry manilow you really don't know if you're just going to go see comedy like let's go to cap city and go to the comedy club let's see who's there this weekend you know bob fuckface oh okay i hope he's good well he's at cap city it's got to be good yeah yeah and so you go there and then you know you go to the you hope it's something that you'll laugh at. - And that was me at many of the loony bins for about seven years was like, um, I was Bob fuck face and I got really good at that. And then if you can get good at that, when you first get your opportunity to like, if people are going to get free tickets, cause it's their birthday in three months and they just so happened to win them right now. And they go see you. If you can trick half those people into coming back next time. Yeah. Like that was always my big thing. Like when I first started getting these big opportunities, like when Tim Dillon took me on the road, uh, when I first got on this show or kill Tony, people start coming out for the first time to see me. And I was not concerned with that first time. I'm concerned with the next time. Right. Cause I want them to come back and bring two people. And then the next time bring eight people. Yeah. So it's like, I was very grateful, but also aware that like, this was my opportunity to plant seeds that would grow later on. Well, that's what we used to do back in the day. It was called building a market. Right. Yeah. And you would just go into a town and it was a slow laborious process that took years. And I did that. I went from 40 people in Omaha to 80 to 160 to adding shows. And it's like, that's fun. It was great. Yeah. That's a really satisfying, rewarding thing when you've actually built a market. Yeah. It feels good. And when people come out now and they're like, this is the seventh time I've seen you. It's like, that's nice. I feel good. But I'm also immediately like, shit, I hope I had like all new stuff. Right. Right. Right. Right. I know I have 50 new, but I still have five I'm closing on from last time I was in Chicago. And also if someone's on fan, like, boy, you got to get, you can't be nonchalant about that show. You got to get fired up. Oh yeah. And they are. Yeah. I'm so grateful. And also now I get these like kids who come out cause I'll do like hive mind or Gillis, like the people who get like young people like in their demographics. So now I have like 22 year olds at the shows and man, you can see on their faces. It's the first time they haven't been on their phone for 90 minutes in their entire life. And they're sitting there and they like, don't know what to do. And then I'll be like, Hey, nice. Hat stupid. And they're like, cause like they don't know the rules or the conventions of this thing they're at. And then at the merch line afterward, they're always like, that was my first show. And I'm like, bro, I think I set the bar pretty high. Like Jeremy Clarkson. Yeah. You know, you know who he is? He came to kill Tony the other night and he said it was his first time in a comedy club. Whoa. Yeah. And so he didn't know what kill Tony was. Didn't understand it. Jimmy Carr took him weird. And, uh, it was like, what is kill? Tony. Yeah. Like he didn't understand how it worked and then he's gone. Show, sir. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, my God, reinventing the form. Well, he just didn't know what it was. He's like, you know, how does this work? I think it's a deeply American phenomenon. Oh, standups. Most certainly. No, I mean, kill Tony specifically. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Cause I did the one at the O2 in London that no one will ever see. Cause it was so bad. Like it had to be buried in the desert. What was bad about it? Oh my God. Tony ever talked about this with you? Yeah. He told me it was a hell. Oh, it was the worst thing that's ever happened to me as an artist. It was brutal. We get there. Jesus Christ. We get there, man. And, uh, you know, it's like the biggest thing ever. Uh, I'm very flattered to be asked to be on it. Uh, we, we get there and the show is starting later and the people who work at the security people are like, these are people that we traditionally don't get attending conferences. A lot of these people took the train in or came from the countryside and they're, um, it seems like they're drinking beers in the parking lot. And I was like, yo, they're tailgating. And they were like, what's that mean? And I was like, Oh, you guys aren't aware of this phenomenon. So we get out there and he put out the band and the band plays for a while. And, uh, we're all on the back and they're waiting for people to trickle in. And before the show starts, there's various fistfights and B people are being removed for doing cocaine at their seats. Like it's studio gang. So we're in the back and like, Oh, this sounds great. What happened wrong? Oh, well, hold on. Let me get to the funny part. So, so dude, we come out finally and red band and Tony get their do aplomb. And then they're like, are you ready for your guest? And everyone is Tony impression. Everyone who's ready. Uh, this man is a legend and show business. And they, I think everyone thinks it's Pierce Morgan. Cause I was told Pierce Morgan was going to do it. So I have all these great jokes about, uh, calling him double Oh seven. I was going to fuck him up and call him Pierce Brosnan the whole night. So I have like about 30 minutes of funny Pierce Morgan. Right. Yeah. It would've been great. Pierce Morgan can't make it. So it's just Sam talent. And when they say Sam talent, people are like, all right, cool. And they're waiting for someone else, probably a British celebrity. No, no, it's just me. So we sit down and we do our best. And the first comic who comes out is a bucket person. You know, or no, I think I can't remember who went first, but the first bucket comes out and they say, uh, so I rode the train in from Essex and a packed. Oh, to start screaming, fuck Essex, your dogs, everyone from Essex fucks their mother back up North. You pikey like, wow. It's insane. And then this comic is immediately, his ego is shattered. His brains exploded. It's his worst nightmare ever. There's an arena screaming at him. And then he has to stumble into his punchline, goes terribly, try to do the interview. And it's like, so how long have you been doing it? And he's like, looking around like he just came out of a coma, you know? And he's like, oh, this is my first time ever doing standup. Oh boy. I think of the bucket pulls on that show, the most tenured performer had done it six times. Holy shit. So you had a literal arena full of people who have taken the train or flown in from all over Europe for this. And then dude, like there, so there was very, every time a comic would say, so I'm from Pakistan. Every slur you've ever heard from snuff comes out, you know, like, and me and Tony and red band are up there. Like what the fuck is to the joke? You know? Okay. You know? So every time anyone says anything, people scream, there's fistfights going on. There's people screaming up constantly. And then dude, this guy came out and said, so I'm from Israel. That's his opener. The room immediately turns. And I, there's a, there's an Irish contingency up front because people have flags like it's WWE. So there's an Irish contingency over here and there's a Northern Irish contingency over here. And both of them decide that they're going to agree on fuck Israel. And the guy on, so they start yelling like, fuck you, you genocidal pig, you monster, you should be ashamed of yourself. And the comic on stage says from the river to the sea or whatever. And at that point, a guy tries to climb the barricade, one of the Irish dudes. And I'm like, I say to Tony, it's the only time I've ever used the mute button. I'm like, dude, we got to get him out of here. This isn't safe. Like this guy has to go. So Tony immediately is like, okay. And like threw him a joke book, get him out of there. It devolved so bad by the end that, um, like when we walked off, I, once the show ends, I went into the green room and literally like put my hands on the sink and stared into the mirror. For like five minutes. Whoa. Yeah. And I was like, do I want this? Like, do I aspire to be an arena act? Like this was the worst thing that ever fucking happened to me. Like, and then, you know, God bless him. It was Tony's birthday weekend. So we were having a lot of fun. And this was actually when me and Tony became like friends, friends. Cause I got to spend like three days with him and like his brother, like seeing him be a guy. It was fun. But, uh, Tony it's his birthday. And I'm like rocked, man. I'm shattered. You know, I'm like, I called my wife. I was like, honey, maybe I can like become a teacher. I was like, I think, I think Wayne state would let me like teach, you know, how many years ago was this? This was two years ago. Yeah. It was right out. I was in Paris all of may of 2024 finishing this. And then I went and did that after my month in Paris. And, uh, they bring in this cake for Tony for his birthday. And it's like, Hey, you sold out the O2. Like you're the number one selling podcast in the history of the O2 arena. And everyone sings him happy birthday. And I hear Tony say, they spelt my name wrong. And it's like, bro, this is like all of your dreams coming true. And he still was like, oh, they fucked up my name. And I was like, okay, yeah, I gotta, I gotta figure out what I actually want to do. Cause like, it's not being an arena act. And then everywhere we would walk, it's like, you know, when you like, you're insanely famous, you're probably the most famous guy I know. And like, I, we haven't like chilled in public, but I've been in public with Will Smith. I've been in public with Shane Gillis. They can't go anywhere. Like there's like tunnels in every building that are like for Will Smith and guys like Shane. It's like Shane, we do grand Rapids. He can't walk and get a coffee in the morning. It's an hour and a half procedure because everyone that sees him has to get a picture. It's like, you can no longer exist as a person. It's like, I would much rather not be hyper rich and like, still be able to just go in the world. Then like to have all the money, like, what do you, how is it? What's it like? Yeah. It's odd, but it is what it is, right? You just accept it. The key is like the real problem is people interrupt things. Like they want to interrupt dinners. They want to come over to your table. That's, that's a problem. That's, that's an issue. And it's, it's a little rude while they're interrupting while you're in the middle of a meal. I know they're just trying to be nice, but in public, the key is just, you gotta, you gotta learn to reset with every person that you meet, like reset. This is a completely new, It's just not, "Oh my God, another person." You have to reset. - Yeah, have an honest interaction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A sincere interaction. But the real problem is then it becomes a line. And then it becomes a thing where people who don't even know who the fuck you are want to take a picture with you. Dude, we were in that coffee shop with Shane, and an old Asian man came over. And it was just like in Chinese or whatever, Mandarin, was like, picture, picture? And Shane looks at me, and he's like, this guy doesn't speak English. Let's get a photo. He had no idea who he was, but he saw everyone taking pictures with this guy. Yeah. That's a weird thing with cameras, with phones, cameras and phones. And then social media likes. You know, if you have a picture with Shane Gillis, you're going to get thousands of likes. For sure. But then you're just an object to be used to exploit. And it's like. This episode is brought to you by Visible. As fall hits, we enter another season of change. Time to shift gears, drop the dead weight, and upgrade the wardrobe for the drop in temperature. But one thing that doesn't need to change, your phone. 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Keep a NOCO portable jump starter in your glove box and jump start your car yourself. No cables. No second vehicle. No waiting for help. It also works as a power bank and has a built-in LED flashlight. NOCO. The end of jumper cables. Use code ROGAN10 for 10% off. Select jump starters at NO.CO. I don't know, man. You gotta learn how to handle it. And it's not normal. Do you think our brains can learn to handle it? Yeah, you can handle it. You think so? Yeah, I handle it pretty good. But it's. It's not. It's not for everybody. And it's definitely not easy. It's odd. And it's not something that I ever asked for. I mean, I wasn't looking for it. It's like, it just happened. And so, you just have to say, okay, well, this is what life is now. You know, it's not the worst thing. I mean, online, it's horrible. People hate me online. I know. A lot of people do. But in real life, people are very nice. Yeah. Like, almost always. And even if they disagree with me, you know, once they have a few words with me, they realize I'm very reasonable. Well, it's like they've made you. And, like, Shane and Tony into, like, very convenient targets because, like, you know, pain leads to panic and panic leads to fear and fear leads to anger and anger leads to hate. So, it's like you have been made this billboard. Here's what I think it is, man, is, like, media died, right? Like, in our lifetimes. Like, there's no more newspapers. Right. Right? Like, there's no more radio. Like, TV's not there anymore. So, like, everyone's looking around being like, what the fuck happened? And there's this guy named Dennis Johnson who's my favorite writer ever. And he said. When drastic changes occur, it's much easier to say it's a crime and ask who did it as opposed to saying it's a failure and to ask what happened. So, I feel like they're trying to assign a lot of blame to people because everyone's like, what's going on? And then they look and you're the biggest thing, you know? Shane's the biggest thing. So, it's like, okay, we can all decide that, like, this person who's replaced the media that we had. Is the enemy. And it's like, okay, well, the New York Times can write as many op-eds on how you're the enemy of progress, but, like, will they call it a genocide? No. So, it's like, who the fuck are we supposed to trust or believe? And, like, I always say, dude, because, like, I have a bunch of leftist friends who get mad that I come on your show. You know? Yeah, like, whatever. Like, I lived in an anarchist commune, you know? Did you really? Yeah, man. Wow. We'll talk about that in a moment. Yeah, I mean, I was a punk rocker. I still am, I hope. But it's like, I really would have loved to have been in the era of comedy where you, like, go on Conan, and then you get to sell your tickets, you know? But it's like, how is you, one guy, who's independent, you know, I guess Spotify's money is involved or whatever, but they don't fucking censor you, right? They don't do anything. Yeah. So, it's like, one guy being independent and having conversations, how is that worse than, like, the facade of going on Kimmel or going on Fallon or going on Conan back in the day? And, like, yeah, like, these are, like, good guys who are silly, but ultimately, they're on NBC, who's owned by whatever holding company, who's owned by one of the seven corporations who owns the world, and, like, their whole thing is selling ad space for, like, Nestle and fucking BlackRock or whatever subsidiary is, like, the one they put the face on. Like, that was bad, but it was fine. So, now you're one guy who's having conversations, and they're like, this is bad. This is cancerous. Well, it's completely normal to a. To attack the most popular thing. Yeah. Always. You know, always the most popular thing is bad, no matter what it is. If it's a film, if it's music, if it's a podcast, whatever it is, it's always bad. And, you know, you're always going to have that. It's just, you're not going to fix people. You're not going to fix perspectives and give people clarity and give people the ability to make sort of a rational, objective. Charitable observations about who a person actually is. It's very easy to just caricaturize someone. Yeah. And so, I get it. And then if you are a person who will defend these guys in these spaces, it's like, well, then, okay, you're brainwashed. You're co-opted. And it's like. You just have to stop listening to comments. Like, that's really the most important thing. No, these are, like, face-to-face conversations. Right. But you're probably talking to broken people. I don't know. I'm talking to my friends. I'm talking to people who. Are any of your friends broken? Oh, yeah. Yeah, most of them are comics. Yeah. But also, dude, it's weird because, like, I talk to people a lot who I don't share, like, the exact ideals with. Like, I don't like that you fucking endorse Trump. But, like, I have a lot of friends who voted for Trump. And it's like a lot of people don't ever hang out with anyone else who thinks different because, first of all, we don't hang out face-to-face. You're not meeting new people. Everyone works from home. Everyone's online. No one's bowling or fucking playing pool anymore. Mm-hmm. So it's like, yeah, you can disagree with someone and still know that they're, like, a decent person. And, like, I like to define myself on am I a good husband, am I a good uncle, am I a good son, am I a good brother? And it's like, if I thought that you guys were bad, like, I wouldn't fucking do business with you. It's asinine. It makes me so mad, bro. Anyway, I'm sorry. No, it's fine. Listen, it used to be that people used to be able to differ in their opinions and have conversations. Because they were your neighbors. But today we have become so divided, and I think a big factor is social media, echo chambers, propaganda bots, gaslighting. And then it seems like there's so much riding on everything constantly because you're looking at your phone all the time. Oh, yeah, yeah. And everything on the phone is this is the end. This is the end. This is the beginning of the end. This is a signal of the end. And the only hope is to stop this. And on both sides. And both sides. And people are addicted to their phones. So, like, the information that you're getting almost all day long is very bleak and very dire. Yeah. It's constant. Because that's what sells units. Like, fear is the best way to manipulate people. Yeah. Forms a coercion. Engagement. Yeah, engagement, man. And it's like the phone replaced the world. Like, we're all staring into this fucking rectangular void. And it's like I've become. I've become like a big gardener, man. Because, like, it connects me to shit that is real. Like, I've built my own compost. Like, I know my soil. Like, I've learned the different sections of my backyard that, like, get more sunlight and, like, get more water. And it's like these were incredibly boring to me probably 10 years ago. But now in this world that's so empty and so, like, just devoid of anything palpable and real. Like, me being back there and watching my fucking dahlias grow is, like, just as valuable. And nutritious to me as it's anything that was ever on my phone. And, like, yeah, I'm not, like, learning or, like, I'm not, like, you know, thinking I'm learning. And I'm not engaging with people. And I'm not getting the reward of, like, people being, like, cool, nice garden. Because I'm not posting that shit. Like, I had a pumpkin that grew like a clitoris in the back of, like, dude, you seen this pumpkin? You have a pumpkin? I had a trellis. And my pumpkins grew up this trellis. And I had a pumpkin that was dangling like the uvula. In the back of your throat when I got home one time. And I just sat there and stared at this pumpkin for, like, two days. Aren't pumpkins supposed to be on the ground? Yeah, man. Yeah, they are. There it is, baby. That's the sky pumpkin. Interesting. And, of course, I had to, like, put it online, you know, because that's what you do with anything good that happens to you. Aw, cute little doggie. Yeah, man. That's Danny. Sweet Danny. That's a nice pumpkin. Right? But, like, that's magic. The squirrels got it after we carved it. Oh, those cunts. That's all right. That's all right. - You were carving it though, meaning you weren't gonna eat it anyway. I want to eat a pumpkin. Pumpkin pie? I'm not a hippo. Pumpkin pie is delicious. Pumpkin pie is good. You ever have roasted pumpkin? I've had roasted pumpkin. There's a delicious recipe, or it looks delicious at least I should say, that I want to try. I saw this guy, he cooked a chicken inside of a pumpkin. And what he did was he took an actual pumpkin, he hollowed it out, and inside of it he put a chicken, he put all these herbs and spices on the chicken, and they put a bunch of potatoes and tomatoes and carrots and a bunch of things inside with the pumpkin. And I feel like maybe he put chicken broth or chicken stock in there as well, and then put the whole thing inside of an oven. And so the pumpkin sort of collapsed and then pulls it out after whatever amount of time and opened it and pulled this chicken out. It was moist and delicious and then plated it up. It looked fantastic. I want to try it. That's chicken in a pumpkin. Yeah. You're saying eat the pumpkin. But he ate the pumpkin as well. I want to eat the chicken. But pumpkin tastes good. Pumpkin's okay. I like the seeds. No, but the pumpkin meat, if you cook it right, is good. Look, man. You don't like pumpkin pie? I do not. Really? I like good pie. It's not a holdover from World War II. Pumpkin pie's a holdover? That's like a victory garden. Yeah, that was like, hey, you know, the GIs are coming home. God, it's like my favorite. Well, hey, man. Pumpkin pie with a little bit of whipped cream on it? Oh, it's so good. It's subjective. You're allowed to like pie. Yeah. I'm angry at you that you like pumpkin pie. I get angry about subjectivity because people will be like, you're not funny. And it's like, well, it's subjective. Like, what are you talking about? Like, trying to apply objective rules and boundaries to stand up is like the most asinine thing. It's silly. It's crazy. It's silly. It's a wasted effort. Like, to be upset at people for not liking what you like or liking what you don't like is just, it's a waste of energy. Quit thought policing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, people just don't want anyone to differ from them. And they don't want to be on the wrong path. They don't want to be incorrect, especially if culture seems to be leaning in a certain direction and they are not. They don't want to have to shift gears so that they attack it. Oh, yeah. People have to learn to just accept, you know. Like, I've seen people angry that Taylor Swift is the biggest musician in the world. Like, why? Why do you care? Yeah. Also, she's got some good songs. And if you don't think so, you probably haven't listened. Like, if you didn't know who she was, if you didn't, if she didn't have Taylor Swift attached to her, and you're like, No Body, No Crime is a fucking great song. It's a great song. Yeah. And if you, if it was just some indie artist who just. Who just wrote that, some unknown lady who wrote that song and performed it, it'd be like, that's a really good song. I think it's just like a fun contrarian thing to be like, the popular thing is bad. Of course. Without any kind of like looking into it. Well, there's also people that like things when those things are not popular. And then when they become popular, oh, they're fucking sold out. Like, okay. That's me. That's a lot of people online. That's punk rock. I know. And like Kyle Kinane said it best. He's like, I'm not here for purity tests from fair weather fans. And it's like, I'm not either. That's a very good quote. He's the man, dude. Yeah. He's a very smart guy. Him, Rory. Like I've, I've been having a lot of conversations with people that are like really good and I'm heartened. I'm like, I'm solid. But man, I gotta just like, I gotta find the shit about standup that I adored that like made me devote my life to it, you know? And like fall back in love with it because. Did you run into a period where you didn't? Like, are you struggling with that? I still love on stage. I love, I'm so grateful for like the music. The meet and greet aspect. I love talking to the people. I love putting my armpits on their necks after the show and taking the pictures, you know? What don't you love? Uh, I mean, 45 weekends a year in an airport's tough. Yeah. You know, uh, ticket counts are fucking brutal. You know, the emails, the promo stuff, uh, trying, like trying to be like a normal person while also constantly promoting yourself is so strange. Like, yeah. And it's not why I got into it. Like if I could sell 600 tickets a weekend in a city. Like, that's all I want and I can do that now, but then you get agents and like, they're awesome, but they're also like, why don't we add a show? And it's like, cause no one's going to come to the four o'clock on Saturday. They just want money. Exactly. Yeah. You have to ignore them. That's where a manager comes into play. I just got management and they're, they're fucking good. That's good. If you got a good manager, a good manager. So for people that don't understand this, um, a manager looks out for your career and agent works for you. So a manager is a partner, like a man, I've had the same managers. I was an open Micah. Whoa. Yeah. He found me in Boston in 1991, 90 or 91. So you've grown together as men. That's cool. We don't even have a contract. We don't have no legal paperwork. Yeah. We handle millions and millions of- I'm sure that'll wind up fine at the end. It's been good. It's been forever. Don't get Dane Cook. Listen, it's not that I don't know where the money goes. It's not that it's just that we don't, it's not like I don't, we don't have to like re-sign some stupid thing every five years. I would rather cut my fingers off than fuck him over. That's how I feel about most parts of standing up. Yeah. But it's different in that the manager looks out for the whole of your career, you know? So there's like two people now though. He, he brought in a woman and she's been my manager now for, he's kind of semi-retired. She's been my manager for more than a decade, but it's a different thing than an agent, especially if you're with a big agent. So big agency, there's like a lot of, like I had a friend who got offered this deal. He has a pretty big podcast and he got offered this deal and the deal involved being connected to some other people and being a part of a network. I said, don't do it. Do not do it. I go, he goes, what's your thought? I go, well, first of all, you're right now you're independent. Do you know how much money you would pay to be independent? Like if you got connected to this and then all of a sudden you have a bunch of other people that you have to answer to. And they're saying, Hey, you know, we could sell more advertising if you stop talking about Israel. Right. Or we could sell more advertising if you just stopped using this word or that word or bring up these subjects. Well, you know, the advertisements, you know, it's, it's an issue. Like as soon as that starts happening, you're, and right now he doesn't have any of that right now. He's independent. He can do whatever the fuck he wants. I go, you're, you're not poor, right? You're, you're, you're making good money, right? Like keep doing that. Do not let it grow. It'll you're, you're very talented. It'll keep growing. It'll keep growing. These people want to bleed you and that's all they want. They want more. They want extra shows. They want you to be on the road every weekend. I have an agent. She's a lovely lady, but every time I talk to her, why do you gotta do arenas again? Like it's cause they just want that money. They just want that money. And they're not the ones like going to the airport, missing their kids, like missing the games and stuff. For me, it's like when I moved here, I was like, okay, if I'm going to take my kids and move them to another state, one of the things that I want to do is be online. I want to be around a lot more often and I can. And so if I can, I should. And I don't, I don't want to be on the road 60 fucking dates a year. It's just like, it's too much. I don't, I don't like it. I don't like doing it. It wears you out and it doesn't seem as fun. I do like going to places and I do like the fact that people want to come and I appreciate them very much, but having a club, having my own club has been the greatest fucking thing that I've ever done. It's such a solid move. Now you're grounded, you have a community and you have like this sick place you've built where you know, you don't have to leave town and all your friends come to town now. Yeah. Like I come to town, like people are popping in every weekend, you know, it's, it's a pretty righteous setup that you've created. Well, we got super fortunate where a bunch of lights had to turn green at the exact right moment for it to be able to take place. This wouldn't have taken place without COVID. Without COVID and without the draconian lockdowns that California was implementing and all the things that they were doing and the fact that other states weren't and that Texas wasn't. And the fact that there was already sort of a history of comedy in Austin, it wasn't a huge town for comedy, but it was a great town to visit and do comedy. And Ron White, the fact that Ron White had already moved here. He moved here in 2018. And so all those lights had to turn green at the right time. The comedy store had to be closed for a long time, for over a year and a half. And we just got all the best employees from the comedy store to move out to Texas. Yeah. To move out. And then I got all that Spotify money. So I'm like, "All right, let's do the right thing. Let's fucking make a club that really helps the development of comedians and really kind of promotes great vibe." I have a festival in Bentonville, Arkansas that me and my friend run, my buddy Raj. What's it called? The Big Diamond Comedy Festival. It's fun. People are like, "Why Bentonville?" Why Big Diamond? It's hilarious. I don't know. Raj was like, "Let's go with Big Diamond." I said, "Hey, man." Okay. I go and I shake hands and kiss babies. You know? I'm like, "Hey, that's the Raj McCrary headline. One of your door guys." Nice. Nice. And it's like, that's cool that now little weird Lucas, who I knew long ago, is now been given enough reps in a legitimate place where now I can trust them to be like, "Yeah, come do two shows on my festival." That feels good. Well, it's not just our place, too. One of the cool things about what's happened in Austin is because of the success of The Mothership and then all these comics moving, 18 world-class comics moved to Austin. Mm-hmm. And so because of that. Yeah. A lot of these new comics who wanted to have a career and saw that it's really difficult to get in in New York, it's really difficult to get in in LA, and Austin is like this blossoming community. Yeah. And so they all moved here and now there's seven clubs on one street, which is nuts. Within walking distance of The Mothership, there's seven comedy clubs that at least a few nights a week have comedy. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Holidays can be stressful, especially if you're hosting. There's so much pressure to include everyone and to make sure they all have a good time. It could put a strain on you emotionally. emotionally, financially too. So maybe this year, keep things small. Ask someone else to host Thanksgiving, or if something else is bothering you, find a solution through therapy with Better Help. They do all the work when it comes to finding the right therapist. If it's not a good match, it's easy to switch. You just have to focus on what you need to get through the holidays. Plus, Better Help is now in network with more than 125 health plans, with many co-pays as low as $15 for eligible members. And if you don't have eligible insurance or live outside the U.S., you can still get 20% off your first month. Sign up and get 20% off at betterhelp.com slash J-R-E. That's better, H-E-L-P dot com slash J-R-E. And like, the creek is awesome. It's amazing. If it was just the creek that was here, Austin would still be right on. But the fact that you built an actual circus, and then we're like, clowns, move here. That benefited every other P.T. Barnum-esque character. Yeah. Well, it also, we set it up to develop comedy. You have the cornerstone of the club, which is Kill Tony, right? That's like, very important, because it gives people an opportunity. Like, if you're on the road, you're grinding it out, and you're barely getting by, but you're kind of funny. You got something. It's just, you don't have an audience yet, and then you do one minute on Kill Tony, and you get a golden ticket, or you get that big joke book, and then they ask you to come back, and next thing you know, holy shit, you're selling out clubs on the weekend, and people are coming to see you. You have fucking fans. Yeah. And it creates a lot of work, too. Like, that's what I care about, is the fact that, like, you know, Tony has a lot of fans, and I have a lot of fans, and I have a lot of fans, but Tony has created so much opportunity for so many people who deserve it, and some other people. But, you know, he has a pretty good hit ratio, as far as who he decides to greenlight. You cannot have all hits. It's impossible. And it's not what you want anyway. You want a little conflict. You want a little chaos. It's good. It's good for everybody. It's almost like the guy loves pro wrestling. Almost. Has anyone ever figured that part? People are like, oh, he's evil. It's like, oh, or maybe you're getting worked, Mark. You know? Anyway. He's not even remotely evil. I told Tony he should put out that O2 Arena thing as a 30 for 30. Like, we should do a breakdown of, like, why it went bad, and, like, do the talkback 10 years later. Well, what he should do is put it out like Andrew Dice Clay's The Day the Laughter Died. Yes. And it could be very self-effacing, and very funny, and very humanizing, and I think that'd be a good idea. It wouldn't be a bad—well, it would probably get millions of views. Oh, yeah. The worst Kill Tony ever? Did he bring regulars? Yeah, yeah, yeah. To perform? Yeah, Kim was there. David was there. Ari was there. Kim Congdon? Yeah, yeah. So, David Lucas, Ari Matty. How did they do? You know what was funny? It's like, you know how Ari is like a shark? Yeah. Ari seems like he might be devoid of, like, human empathy sometimes, because he's so driven and so Eastern European, and he, like, comes from, like, blood that ate tubers, you know, and, like, war pelts. Yeah, war. Like, his whole country has been defined by war. So, Ari is, like—I was like, okay, Ari's going to— I'm going to go up and save the show. Like, it's going to be fine. We got Ari coming out, and Tony's like, we're going to let Ari sit down and do panel. And I was like, please. Please. Because I'm just covered in arrows, you know? So, I was like Little John, and he was Robin Hood, and they're hiding behind me. So, what was weird, though, is that Ari had all of the people who cared about him came from Estonia. So, in the very front row, there was, like, 50 people who he'd grown up with, who I met the night previous and throughout the evening, and he was nervous the first time I ever saw him, and these are people who he cares about. So, he wasn't the explosive, you know, Ari Matty that we've come to expect. It was a guy who was, like, performing in front of his mom and aunt, you know, in an arena. It's the first time they've seen him. So, then Ari sits down. His set went fine, but he sits down to do panel, and he might have said three things. I kept being like, what do you think, Ari? And he was like, yes, I like it. It's good that what you said is funny. Well, I think in order to do Kill Tony, one of the things that you have to have is a very strong local comedy community, and I'm not sure London has enough numbers. I think London does, but I think it was more that the biggest thing came. Does London have enough numbers? I think so. Does it? Yeah. Is it comparable to a big U.S. city? I think London is probably as comparable to New York, Chicago. I mean, if you took. In terms of quality, like, numbers? Yeah, I think so. Like, there's a thousand really good comics in London? Dude, I know a lot of really funny comics. And the weird thing about London is, like, if you're a Dublin comic or a Belfast comic, like, you'll go to London and do all. So it's like. Like, if you imagine that, like, Austin spread, like, 600 miles in every direction, and that included, like, you know, Glasgow and a bunch of other, like, big cities, I think if you want to do it that way. But yeah, I think London has a bunch of great comics. So why didn't they have better bucket pulls? I think that a bunch of people saw that the American Spectacle was there, and they decided that this was, like, Oh, I'm going to do this. I'm going to try stand-up for the first time ever. This will be a laugh. Then they get out there, and, like, they're shattered. Literally, you saw people's, like, entire identities rip in half. And then they had to do 50 more seconds. I've seen that at Madison Square Garden. I saw people do their very first set at Madison Square Garden, which is insane. Literally insane. An impossible task. Oh. I would not recommend it to anyone. And that person, perhaps, if that wasn't their first experience on stage, could have had a career in comedy. Yeah, definitely. But now it's like your first fight is against Mike Tyson, when he's 20. Yep. And you just get your brains punched in. You're like, well, I guess I'm going to get a job. Yeah, exactly. I'm going back to school. Yeah. Back to Jiffy Lube. But, like, Kim did a great job. David, you know, closed the show. Like, it was, it was, everyone did the best they could in that situation. And I would love to see it, like, with a little bit of gloss on it. 16,000 drunk people that are screaming shit out is hard to wrangle. Coked up, too. Ah, nice. Very coked up. Nice. Dude, there was just random fistfights happening. I think there was, literally, I think there was a stabbing at that show, dude. I like how he did that. Yeah, yeah. Well, I've been taking improv classes, you know. He did motion stabbing. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, there was, like, a stabbing. I mean, you should, I would, we should just have, like, Red Band. I want to, we should sit down and do that 30 for 30 style doc. Like a mystery science theater watching it. Oh, my God. That would be great, dude. Yeah, like everybody take bong hits and sit on a couch. Yeah. And watch it. Uh-huh, I mean, that's the only way. I didn't want to watch it. It was very stoned, like, disassociated high. Oh, my God. Yeah, he told me it was horrible, but he didn't give me details. He didn't want to talk about it. Yeah. It was like he went somewhere and they stole his car and lit it on fire and he barely got out of there alive. I mean, it was kind of like that thing when they're like, hey, Ken Kesey, did you watch Cuckoo's Nest movie? And he was like, well, if the Hell's Angels said they were going to come gang rape your daughter on the front lawn, would you go out and watch it? I feel like that's probably how he feels about this, because, it was not within his control, like, how bad it happened. Like, he's very competent. Red Band's very competent. I'm competent. Like, it wasn't like we couldn't do the job. It was more like a bunch of piranhas got thrown in our hot tub and we were just like, ah, being eaten alive. It sucked. He definitely should release it. I think that, I think it's an opportunity to be a bit like, hey, you know, they're not all great. They're not all slam dunks. Maybe he will now. Maybe he should give that one to Netflix. Tony, get me on Netflix, buddy. Get me on there. That's hilarious. Yeah. Yeah. It's a tough show. I mean, it's a great show, but it's like taking it on the road like that. I love doing it. In that circumstance. I wonder, have they done it in many other countries? Have they done it in England more than once? Or is it just that one time? I think they did it on a smaller scale, maybe, in London. Maybe that's more manageable. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Like, what is Royal Albert Hall? How many is that? I don't know. 6,000? I did it with Tim. Mm. I got to sign the book underneath the guy from The Who. Like, they have, like, the Queen's Archive for everyone who's ever performed there, and you get to write your name in it. Oh, nice. And I was, like, right under Daltrey. That was pretty sick, yeah. That's pretty sick. I know. And it's so silly that, like, I'm a filthy nightclub comic, but yet I'm in the Queen's Archive forever. Like, stand-up rules. It's the best. It is the best. It's just that a lot of stuff that surrounds it just sucks. So, like, what is the stuff that surrounds it that's really, like, stealing your joy other than the travel part? I mean, I got into this to be a clown and to entertain people, and I'm really good at, I mean, I fucking sell chicken tenders and beers, you know? Like, I don't aspire to be elevated in any way. I don't like the fact that people are, like, these are the modern philosophers. It's like, no, dude. Like, I don't believe that at all. I get up there, and I try and make people know that I'm a clown. I will not think for 60 seconds and do this kind of alchemy, because, like, you can't study laughter. You can't study why something's funny. Right. What we do, call it a bar trick, but it is magic. Like, anyone out there, try and get up on stage for 60 minutes and make a bunch of people who work at different places and think different ways who are not used to being in a room, being quiet, try and make them feel like they spent $35 and it wasn't wasted. That's what I get off on. I love it. I love being really good at stand-up. I love doing the job. I love leaving it all in the field. But I don't want to fucking be a cultural commentator, you know? Well, you don't have to. I don't want to be. a pundit it's what's expected of us no by who dude everyone wants people comics to weigh in says who i think that if you look at uh most you think david tell's weighing in on things no and that's why he's the best right he's the greatest but he doesn't have to i don't have to you think you have to i don't think i do but people expect it of me who who are these people uh there's people who listen to my podcast shall we behemoth yeah but you can weigh in on things as a podcaster and this is like we were having this discussion about hicks last night a couple nights ago and uh someone said i wish he wasn't so like he's he's like some of his stuff is not funny he's like patronizing and i said what well here's the thing he didn't have podcasts back then if hicks had a podcast he'd probably have like really brilliant discussions with people and make interesting points and then he could just dedicate his stage time to just being funny so he was funny a lot but then there was also like important points that he felt like he had to get out sure that he did in the genre of stand-up comedy that weren't necessarily funny so he didn't have a proper outlet for these deeper thoughts which is what i have with my books and stuff i can like put it exactly and with your podcast so that that's where i think we're very fortunate and that you don't have to be a cultural commentator in your comedy all you have to do is be funny like some of my favorite comics like mitch headberg oh yeah there's a lot of comics that are just funny stephen wright just funny there's nothing it just like you don't have to be a cultural commentator and the idea that there's less value to it because it doesn't fit into what x person wants from stand-up comedy well that's silly yeah that's silly but there's a lot of people that if you listen to them they want to force you to do what they want you to do they want to pressure you because people like to change people they do they like to do that they like group think is very powerful tool yes they're they like to scold they like to tell people what they want from them and tell them what to do and you know you know silence is not an option like okay of course it's an option silence is always an option and also like should you if anyone goes to a comedy show and they're hoping for the comedian to signal that they have the same allegiances to the way that they think don't come to my shows come to my shows to get a joke every 12 seconds like i tells the best ever do it in my opinion he's the best nightclub comic he has a joke every 15 i am having 22 year olds in the crowd now and i should have a fucking t-shirt cannon and keys to shake because like my act has gotten so much more joke dense because of the youth and their expectations but like i i i really think of the fact like i like to say that i'm like rc cola like i make products you can consume them i don't think anyone should be political in comedy ever dude hicks is the man but that shit when he like came out in london dressed like the undertaker and like takes his jacket off and puts it on like that's not my favorite hicks my favorite is when he was young and silly i think the problem with that one was first of all there was a lot of weight on him to be this cultural philosopher this commentator but also one show filming it you can't there's too much pressure it's too much pressure one show filming one show for a special is a lot of pressure and you can't it's hard to be loose you know it's very hard to be loose but i don't like that so many people think that that's bill hicks i saw him live i got a chance to see him live multiple times in a nightclub yeah yeah how big was the rooms uh 150 i saw murder in front of 150 at the comedy connection in boston the old comedy connection not the one in fanny hall the little tiny one that was downstairs short it was like really short ceilings like very low ceiling comedy works downtown yeah like little boy at the at the club and he was like i'm gonna go to the club and i'm gonna go to the club and i'm gonna go to the club at the mothership very low ceilings tight room and he murdered and then i saw him bomb at nick's comedy stop i saw i saw him multiple times and uh only in nightclub settings because i think that's really all he did except when he did england when he was in england the thing is he went to england and he became like this thing right and then you have a little bit of that sort of audience capture thing that goes on you know where they they expect something of you they expect philosophy they expect this part of and it is kind of interesting like i was dating this girl at the time is in 1994 and i played she was very smart and uh i watched it with her and she goes he's very interesting but he's not funny that's what she said yeah and i was like yeah right like i'm not laughing either but i really like it but i know as a comic and i had not done any specials i had done a couple tv spots by then i'd done like mtv and a few other things but they're like short 10 minute things it's like i'm not laughing i'm not laughing i'm not laughing i'm not laughing i'm not laughing it's hard when that camera's on like ready go and you have to be loose like uh friday night second show or saturday night second show where it's like you're just having fun you're in the zone and you're flowing it's very hard to do yeah it's very hard to do you know and i thought about and it's scary and that's one of the reasons why like my last special i decided to do live because i wanted to feel that i wanted i wanted to be scared yeah i wanted to be scared and i structured it very differently i structured it where like it was a little safer like i knew these jokes were gonna kill i didn't deviate from the path at all it wasn't fucking around like it would be like a saturday night at the mothership right and it was different but i did it because it was nerve wracking because it scared me so because it's worse than one show because it's one show that you can't edit oh yeah and one show that millions of people are going to see live and a that's why i did it i was like let's do let's let's be scared this episode is brought to you by uber eats it's football season and you can now get bogo deals every week on game day favorites like wings pizza fries and snacks but uber eats delivers way more than food beers and seltzers for your tailgate batteries for the tv remote last minute gear to rep your team's colors basically whatever game day calls for you can get almost almost anything on uber eats with deals every week uber eats official on-demand food delivery partner of the nfl order now for alcohol you must be of legal drinking age please enjoy responsibly product availability varies by region see app for details i'm pro football hall of famer brian dawkins and i lived for a long time with something i did not know the name of major depressive disorder i carried sadness and anger 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fever confusion stiff muscles which may be life-threatening or uncontrolled muscle movements which may be permanent high cholesterol and weight gain may occur as can high blood sugar which may be fatal monitoring is recommended common side effects are sleepiness dizziness nausea dry mouth feeling tired and diarrhea these aren't all the side effects ask your doctor about caplyta learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824 well it's probably novelty right like i love novelty yeah i value it so much so the fact that that scared you yeah because like we've all been like if i've been doing it longer than i haven't i've been doing stand-up 21 years and there are shows now where i'm like bored you're doing your act and you're doing your act and you're doing your act and you're doing your act you're killing they're laughing but you're like you ever play that game city skylines you play it right jamie i told you i played way too much it's a city building game much and you have to like put in the pipes to move the water along jamie i've been on stage dude like sold out killing and i'm thinking of grid patterns in my head while i'm on stage oh i couldn't be less connected to the task it's like a robot well then you're doing too many shows oh yeah no i've done way too many shows yeah but like that's the novelty you're talking about is like doing that thing that's scary is very valuable and not enough people do shit that's scary because they don't want to look like frauds well it's very important when you're successful to be under pressure to do things that are hard and scary it's very i'm too successful i have to do scary things so i do scary things all the time i do things that give me a lot of pressure that's what i like yeah it's one of the reasons why i like bow hunting it's it's a lot of pressure it's very difficult to do it it's a lot of pressure and i'm not going to do it because those elk don't give a fuck that you have the number one podcast in the world right or that you sell out arenas they don't give it it doesn't give a shit oh you have five netflix specials it doesn't give a fuck yeah it's just it's just real it's just pressure so i like things that give me pressure like i hard workouts different things that i do i do specifically to keep my mind straight yeah because otherwise you'll get overwhelmed by success and it'll fuck with you and it'll fuck with your perspective it's also one of the keys for me at least is i pay very very little attention to what other people say about me. I think it's very important. I'm peripherally aware of it, I'm peripherally aware of criticism and compliments and it's all nice and good and that's nice and when people come up to me and they say something to me that's really nice, it's very cool. But I don't take it in. I don't like, oh wow, that's me now. No, never. I just keep on truckin' and I am my worst critic, so I am in my own head all the time looking at my own stuff and that's how I approach it. So I think about it that way, that I don't, you just have to stay on the path. Stay on the path and it's a constant path. It's like, my set that I'm doing right now, I think is, I hate saying this 'cause I say this a lot, but I think it's the best set I've ever done and I think that's the goal. The goal is to have the material that you're proud of that you think is, this is, and it's not done. It's not ready to be filmed so I'm working on it and I'm tweaking it and I'm adding to it and there's shows where I'll do it one way, I'm like, oh, that way is no good. I gotta redo it. So I listen to recordings and go back over it and then try to dissect it and then maybe put it on the shelf for a couple months and then try this new thing and try to figure out, like, maybe there's, maybe that bit is just gonna be an orphan. I have a whole folder on my computer of orphans and they're bits that never made it on the specials and they're just, like, who knows? It killed but it didn't fit and so, find a new spot. And it just, this constant process. And so I put my head in that. I don't put my head in whether the people think it's good or what the people think. - Oh, yeah. - I don't put my head into what other people want. I don't put my head into what other people expect. I just try to do my best and that's it. - I mean, dude, yeah, 'cause, like, I'm new to any kind of, like, people having anything to say about me or knowing I exist, you know? Like, it's relatively very new. And I decided early on with this book, it was like, I can't, if people say the book is really good, which a lot of people have, I love the book, that can't be, any more valuable than when people say I hate the book, you suck as a writer. You can't allow the strangers to give you good stuff and take nutrition from that good stuff if you're going to say the people who don't like me are insane. Like, you can't value either one of them because then you're trying to equivocate and you're making bad art. - Yes. - And like, the expectation of the viewer was not involved in the production of art for a long time until very recently and-- - It's unhealthy. - It's not good. It's not good for the people who want good art, either. - No. - And the people who write to you and say, like, you know, you're a sellout or whatever, like, they think they're smarter than the people who don't write to you, you know? - Right. - And it's like, the people who just watch the thing and say this was funny and then go back to their lives, those are the people who I want to value the opinion of, but I never talk to them because they're not insane. - And the people that are hating and the people, I get it. Look, I would do the same if I was in your, this is the thing that we all have to understand. If I lived your life, I would be you. If you lived my life, you would be me. And I think very few people are inherently good or evil. - Oh, sure. - Or dumb, well, there's dumb people. Unfortunately, there's like, biological limitations to intelligence that are real. It's real. You know, you talk to some people and they're just, they just don't get it. - They had lead paint when they were a kid or something. Yeah, yeah. - A bunch of them. - Their mom never talked to them, so they grew up non-verbal. - Bad genes, man. - Yeah, for sure. - You know, there's bad genes. You know, I've met kids that are, the children of brilliant people, and they are just inherently brilliant. Like, there's a thing that's passed down. The synapses fire more swiftly. Their memory is better. - For sure. - It's real. I get it. So, it's like, I don't take it personally, but you can't live by compliments either. Like, that's why I tell comics, don't read comments. - Can't. - Don't get in there, even the good stuff is bad for you. It feels like it's good for you. Like, yeah, I'm the man. Yeah, you like me? Bro, he's always fucking out there, fucking doing the thing. - Right. - Yeah, yeah, it's me. - I know. - Yeah. - Yeah. - And then you'll be thinking about compliments rather than what you're doing. All of it steals from your focus. - Yes. - All of it. - Uh-huh. - All of it steals from whatever creative energy, whatever life energy, observational energy that you have to apply to all aspects of your life. I always try to tell comics, I've said this before, I apologize if people have heard it, I try to say this to as many people as possible, 'cause I think it's an important way to phrase it and to structure it in your head. Think of your attention as units. You have 100 units, 100 is a good number. If you're spending 30 units paying attention to people that hate you, or paying attention to people that love you, or paying attention to anything, you just stole 30 units from your 100. Now you only have 70 to apply to the things that you love. - And there's 50 of those 70 are spent on your phone. - Right, right. - You know what I mean? So you actually have 20 units left. I think of it as pounds of flesh, bro. 'Cause like, I'll be out there, I'll be out there, and it's like, I love to give myself to the people. Like, I love the act of standup. Like, you know, whatever you want to say, I don't think it's art, but it could be service, you know? Like, it's nice to make people laugh. Sucks they have to pay for it, sucks it's commodified, but like, so when I go out and do the meet and greet, and I'm exhausted, and I've already done, if I've, it's like, how much can I give away of me until there's none of me left? And then it's just like this shell that people come and look at, and like, they put the coin in the mouth, and I say the funny thing, and I'm like, robotic at the meet and greet and all that shit. Like, I can't keep giving all this of me away and expect for that thing that I was to still remain. - Well, then there's also the problem, like, there was an issue, especially in the '90s, where comics would do all this material about travel. - Yeah, yeah. - About airplane travel. Why? Because that was their life. So that was, they were thinking about that all the time, 'cause that was their experience. - Yeah. - You have to have experiences. You have to do things other than the thing that you do just to have things to talk about. Just as a part of your job, have experiences and have a part of your life that is, that has nothing to do with your travel. And if you're traveling constantly and doing standup constantly, your life experiences are hotel, dinner, hanging with your friends, show, show, show, show, show. And there's not enough coming in. - Mm-hmm. - There's not enough coming out, and then you go dry. - Yeah. - And then when you go dry, you start playing games in your head while you're on stage. - Mm-hmm. - And that's just a sign that you, and I've experienced that a lot when I was on the road most of my life. You know, when I was, when I was doing a lot of road shows, it was like, you get to a point where you don't connect with what you're saying anymore. - Yeah. - And I didn't have the luxury to step away. - Yeah, I don't, I didn't either. - Yeah. - Like, that's, and hopefully now with, like, writing, like, this got optioned, and I'm going to write the screenplay, like-- - With just the writing alone, just the experience of expanding your perceptions and expanding your thoughts and your, just your, just your overall creative energy into something completely different-- - Yeah. - --is hugely beneficial. It has to be. Because I was reading, like, the way you structure this book, the, the, the, the descriptives, the way, it's very unusual. It's like, you don't write like anybody else that I know of. It's really uniquely you, and it's really good. It's-- - Thanks, man. - And it's, um, it's, like, rewarding. It's, like, very inspiring. - Thank you. - It's really, really good, man. - Thank you, Joe. I'm very proud of it. - I'm on chapter 10. I haven't finished it, but I'm, I'm pretty deep into it. - Dude, part three is just insane. I can't wait for you to get to part three. - I can't wait, man. It's already fucking insane. It's really good, man. And it's, like I said, it's, it's rewarding, because it's good in an, like, it takes these unexpected turns. Like, I, one of the things that is, it sucks when you're reading something and you know what's coming. - Yeah, yeah. I hate that. - And sometimes you think you know what's coming, and then they trick you, and that's fun. But this isn't that at all. I don't even know what the fuck is going on. Like, it's, like, it's really, it's really good. And it's, it's very uniquely you. And it's very vulnerable. - Yeah. - It's, like, there's a lot going on there, man. It's really-- - I wanted it to be beautiful. - It is. - I love prose. I love lyricism. I love literature. - I can tell. - Yeah. - It is a love letter to prose. - Thanks, man. - It's really great. - Well, that thing you said about how, like, the comics only wrote about airplane food, my issue with American literature, which still won't let me in, despite this being an immediate national bestseller, no book coverage from your conventional, you know, the outlets that I-- I read the Paris Review. Like, I get the Times supplement. Like, I love all these literary things, and they still won't talk to me. - Who cares? - I do, because, like, I-- - I can't. I understand. - I don't want to get in there. I want to go to these talks and stuff. - Don't. Don't. Don't. - But. - The American MFA situation, the Master in Fine Arts, all these, like, writing programs, all these kids go to these writing programs. And instead of, like, being 19 and smoking something that turns out is an opium, you know, and getting their heart broken and, you know, living outside or being desperate, instead they go to these colleges that are, like, you know, very expensive institutions that only allow certain types of people in. And they learn how to write books from people who also went to these institutions. And those books are then sent off to publishing houses that are housed by people who went to these institutions. And the books that come out are completely devoid of any kind of real human experience, because these kids have lived in these, like, ivory towers of knowledge, and they haven't been out getting their teeth busted by reality. So every book that comes out is so fucking boring. But it has to be greenlit from the top, because if this isn't good or valuable as literature, then the whole-- the whole house is going to die. The whole house of cards crumbles. Then why do you go to the MFA programs anymore? The best literature now, the best fiction, comes out of Japan, it comes out of France, It comes out of Japan. Oh dude, Japanese fiction is fucked. There's all these books about like women who eat each other what? Yeah, dude. Yeah butter is an insane novel Convenience store girl or dude? Japanese fiction is still Publishing stuff that used to be okay to write about because it was weird and it was far out But it's still fiction and now every fucking contemporary novel that comes out in America is about like Someone who grew up rich and feels bad about it, you know And it's like so boring and then the stuff they do champion like a little life is the most ridiculous Hyperbolic bullshit that's never happened to anyone. But since these people never lived and they were all at school They don't know what the average American is like doing So it's just everyone's out of touch and everyone's jerking each other off and it's like this dick suck or a Boris of shit And then I try to write a book for like, you know dudes to read and like all they talk about is like who's gonna save male reading no males are reading and then it's like I'm desperately out here being like please me I want that is a real topic of discussion dude. I'm so glad I don't know about any of this Yeah well this is like stuff that I read other than your book and like that stuff that I actually get into that's fiction is like It's all male stuff. Like I'm really into the gray man series. What's the jack cars - you don't know my oh my god The gray man is it what they made it into a movie, but the movie sucked It was like a Netflix movie, but it's all about an assassin sick and you would enjoy it Yeah, read gray man one mark Greeney. It's um, he's been on the podcast before it's um It's all about this guy who was Raised by his father who his father was this guy who ran like military training programs so he learned how to Become like a shooter and learned how to be like very good at firearms when he was very young and then got sent to jail For he was working security and killed some drug dealers cool He got sent to jail and then wound up being recruited by the CIA to be an off books assassin. Awesome It's fucking I love that shit. It's why yeah, it's wild stuff and I mean, he's got like I don't know how many books is yeah, how many have like 15 to him? Yeah, he turns them out. He bangs one out every year. Yeah, and They're really good. They're very engrossing. Hell. Yeah, you know, yeah, I mean there's so many like great books about sick shit But like they don't they don't know how to like tell you that there's books exist like my buddy Jordan Harper like writes these insane books about like Like Hollywood pedophile networks and like white supremacist biker gangs And they're bad to the bone and I like meet the guy and I'm a dork and I'm like, hey man I really big fan since the short stories, you know, and he's like, oh you have that book and I was like Yeah, it was hard to find and he's like, yeah They only published a thousand it's weird that you have it and I was like, well, gee whiz mister And it's like no one's having these conversations anymore. Like dudes don't talk about books Like I felt when I wrote this I feel like I'm I was I was like pregnant with this baby And I loved the baby and I was so proud of that I got pregnant that I fed it all the right vitamins, but then when it's time to give birth to it It's a baby that Society at large thinks is a boring abomination and no one gives a shit about this baby Wait, no, I don't I think you're wrong. I think you're just like you're dealing you with this like very small Insulated group of people that have this perspective that's readers though. There aren't a lot of readers of literature anymore Yeah, but if people find out about a good book, they will read it, but that's hard to get them to find out That's what I'm saying on here. Well, I know I know this is the thing It's like they've done a really shitty job in connecting to men That's why it's not just that men aren't interested in reading if you tell them about A great like Jack Carr Do you know who he is? No, former Navy SEAL wrote the book The Terminalist that they turn into a show on Netflix another fucking great book The Terminalist is a fucking great book and The first one is about a bunch of people that he has to kill after he gets out He finds there's a lot of corruption government corruption, but it's really well written. Yes fun, and it's exciting I like fun hyper violent. Yeah, it's really good. Okay, and his books out really well I mean like they they opted into an Amazon series. It's on Amazon Prime Chris Pratt stars in it You don't know about it. No, that's the thing. It's like I'm an author you're insulated You're the fact that you don't know who Jack Carr is is crazy. Well, I'm sure my algorithm hasn't showed me Jack Carr Yeah, that's a problem. Have you ever read rogue male? No, dude rogue males a book There was four ma I L or le ma le and it's about a guy who's trying to Assassinate Hitler on Hitler's compound, but it's this dude who thinks he's like this big gnarly hero, right? And he's like I'm the one who's gonna end the war so he like Gets into the back of Hitler's compound and it's just him and his head like talking about how brave he is I don't want to ruin the ending, but I think you'd love that book. Okay. Yeah rogue males a heater. Okay a heater Yeah, man and angels if anyone out there is listening and they want to read a really good book angels by Dennis Johnson is about a bank Robbery gone awry and it might be the most beautiful ugly bleak thing and it's my favorite book ever Well, maybe with this obsession with social media and then people realizing that it's very bad for you We can start a trend of people opting out of just spent spending all their time doom scrolling on their fucking Yeah, and actually getting into the really cool interesting creative things This is so much more nutritious than anything on your phone and I made any book. Yeah, you could read a book about like prairie medicine And still be like so much better off than just looking at your phone I just read no country for old men Oh, I get someone into Cormac McCarthy get someone into you know, blood meridian or some of the really don't start with blood meridian but yeah, start with no country for old men and then get a feeling of how Cormac writes and then Finish up when you're done with all of his work and then finish up with blood meridian, which is the best book We've produced supposedly they're gonna try to turn into a film. Aren't they in the middle of that? They've like They've aborted that like five different times over the course of history I think Brad Pitt had the rights for a while and then like oh, yeah Yeah, like someone had him for a while. It's one of those ones It's like you hear about someone taking on that task you good luck You know what I'm trying to make that has to be a cartoon Joe That's the only way to do it is you do a big cartoon It's like six hours long and then you can show actually, you know, the indigenous scalpers smashing babies heads against the rocks because you can't Show that in a movie. I don't think right ever seen bone tomahawk Yeah, so like that movie is cool, but that violence at that scale does look cartoonish So I think that in a cartoon you can have the judge and the judge can be 12 feet tall sometimes and other times he can be the shape of a boulder and he can be a morse amorphous and like Traditional banks are making it harder than ever to secure a small business loan That's why thousands of business owners trust Cardiff for same-day funding with over Two decades of expertise business owners keep voting Cardiff America's favorite small business lender apply now for up to five hundred thousand dollars in same-day business funding at Cardiff Co slash Rogan again, that's Cardiff co slash Rogan Cardiff borrow better This episode is brought to you by zip recruiter believe it or not The holiday season is here again, and that means you might need to fill some seasonal roles fast Maybe you need extra cashiers or stalkers or maybe something more unique like a lead elf or an expert gift wrapper or a Zamboni driver whoever you're looking for whatever skills you need to power through the rest of the year Zip recruiter is one of the best places to start your search because you can try it for free at zip recruiter Com slash Rogan and because zip recruiter helps sort through thousands of resumes and applications showing You the most qualified and interesting ones first There's even an option for candidates to explain why they want the job Let's zip recruiter find the right people for your roles seasonal or otherwise Try it for free today at zip recruiter dot-com slash Rogan. That's zip recruiter Dot-com slash Rogan meet your match on zip recruiter Yeah, you can't you can't do it live-action. I don't think well it maybe it's just Just be a book Yeah You know there's that thought too that some books are so good that they have to exist only in literary form Moby Dick. Yeah Yeah, they have to exist only in the way you were your imagination fills in the blanks Yeah, which is really part of the majesty of books Part of the joy of it is the fact that it excites your brain to create these images in your mind that correspond with the words on the page, but I worry that like people aren't reading anymore and it's Like atrophying, you know, yeah, they could build it back Yeah That's like a lot of things that people didn't do before like like when I was talking about bow hunting Hunting has gone gone. The activity of hunting went way up during the pandemic and it's because people realize like hey Maybe this is something I should learn how to do if there's no fucking food Sure You know like it's gonna be a good thing to know how to be able to shoot a rifle and kill a pig and and You know have food for my family. That's when we got our gun. Yeah, you know Yeah - bleeding Heart leftists we got guns, you know I had a lot of bleeding heart leftists that were asking me if they could borrow one of my gun or a gun. Yeah, that's That's a federal crime, right? Exactly. Can you stand off the serial killer murder? Well, what's interesting is in Texas, it's not a crime. So in Texas, I could actually give you a gun. Hell yeah. I could say, here, this is a gift, and I can just give you a pistol. You should do that for every guest. Send them out of here. Some guys do. I think Sean Bryan used to do that. He used to give people a pistol. He used to give people a SIG at the beginning of every podcast. I think he even gave one to Gavin Newsom. He's like, use it, use it. I think it was like a gift, like some sort of a promotional deal with his, I don't know how he did it. I mean, you would have to fill out a lot of paperwork and stuff like that, too. But in Texas, if a person's a Texas resident and you live in Texas, I'm 99% sure that you could just give them a gun. Wow. That's Sean Ryan, former Navy SEAL, CIA contractor. Your host, Sean Ryan Show. Well-documented example is California Governor Gavin Newsom. Ryan gave a SIG Sauer handgun during a 2025 appearance. Yeah. Hell yeah. Newsom still hadn't brought it home because of California requirements. He's the governor. Also had to pay the portion of its value above the state's gift limit for public officials. Yeah. I wonder if that applied to the houses he got. He didn't seem to mind breaking all the rules during those soirees they were throwing. One of those fancy parties he was having. The French Laundry one. Yeah, where he had no mask on indoors. Yeah. Do you think that your love of hunting and that fear for the live special, those kind of things make you present? Like you're completely alive while you're doing them and you're not distracted? Yeah. Is that what you think draws you to these things? Yes. Right? I think those are very important, but particularly very important for famous people, for famous wealthy people. I don't recommend this to everybody. I'm just saying for me. Maybe I should just say me. Because you can get soft. It's real easy to get insulated and to, you know, you have a bunch of yes people around you, people kissing your ass. I have like a hundred employees or something like that. Yeah. You could lose your fucking mind. Yeah. You could lose your mind. For sure. So you have to be in charge of maintaining your mind. And I think one of the things is doing things that absolutely require your focus and are hard to do. Yeah. Like objectively, like unequivocally. hard to do. Like there's no easy way to climb up a mountain and shoot an elk at 60 yards with a bow and arrow. It doesn't exist. You have to train for it. Every footstep matters, right? Like every little movement you make or like the way you smell and like the wind blowing. Not just that, you have to train for it. Like I have a fucking hypoxia box, like a chamber out here that I crank up to 14,000 feet above sea level and I do cardio in it. Yeah. I shoot my bow in the Texas heat for hours every day. Joe, put some roses on my grave, okay? You're going to be around. But my version of that in the hypoxia box is like locking myself in the room, like writing a book. I'm about 120 pounds. That's amazing. Congratulations. What did you do? Did you do the Ozempic or did you do it all natural? No, I quit drinking first. So I think I went from like- 100% quit drinking? Yeah, yeah. Do you miss it? No. It wasn't my bag. Like it turns out that's not the drug for me. I drank because like I grew up in rural Colorado and dudes drank. And like I didn't really think about it until I was like 35. I was like, I'm hung over and fat and like feel stupid and my stomach hurts and I eat bullshit all the time. Weed's a lot better. I love weed. Yeah. I love weed. So yeah, so I quit drinking and then I got on Manjaro, which is like, I took it because it sounded like Italian food. And then my wife, who's a doctor, was like very heavily involved in my weight loss, you know? So I think I did it the right way while using those Wunder drugs, you know? Are you working out at the same time you're doing it? No, no, of course not. No, I rode my bike and like garden and swim, but like, no, I'm not at all any of that. But I was very conscious about like the bone density and like protein and stuff because I was lucky enough to be married to a medical professional. That's the protein's important. Um, but also lifting something heavy is important. You don't have to work out hard. I want to be little for a minute, Joe. I want to be small for a second. Yeah, but it's not going to make you big. Listen, to get big is a huge task. But I have this frame, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's such an athlete's frame. But I know you have an athlete's frame, but that, those days are gone, my friend. Come on. That was all state. I know, but that was a long fucking time ago. In order for you to put mass on the body that you have currently, it takes a lot. I'm not asking that of you, but I'm just saying you really should do some lifting work. You should do some lifting weights as you get older or your body will deteriorate. I know. Have you been talking to my wife? No. Okay, because she's also like, hey, you're going to have sciatica. Your shoulders are going to hurt. You just have to use your body to make sure that your tissue doesn't dissolve. I know, but I hate lifting weights. Just do it. It's not hard. You watch a movie, put a good movie on and have some weights and watch the movie while you do a few repetitions of weights. You don't have to kill yourself. And by the way, you shouldn't, especially when you start, you should do it very slowly. Because my tendons are bad, probably. Well, you just got to get your body used to it and your body will adapt and it will get used to it, but you don't have to get big. I'm just saying you have to do something to maintain your tissue. Okay. Because if you don't, you'll get weird atrophy where you're like opening up a mayonnaise jar, you'll tear your fucking labrum. Oh yeah. Sometimes I'll do like a gorilla type thing and I'll be like, oh, I haven't put my arms above my head all day. That's another thing you should do. You should hang from a chin-up bar. Very important. Yeah. Grab your chin-up bar with your hands and hang with your body weight. Okay. Very good for shoulder health. First things first, get a chin-up bar. Yeah. Get a chin-up bar and hang with just to, just to stretch your arms out so that your shoulders don't become impacted. Because like a lot of people that get like frozen shoulders, they don't move good. That's a lot of it. It's like everything just gets contracted and tightened. You got to loosen it up and put, just, just lift a little bit of weights. You don't have to do a lot, man. It's just like, do 10 pushups that start off with that. 10 pushups, 10 body weight squats. Not hard. Just, just do that and do that every day. Do 10 pushups takes you 30 seconds. 10 body weight squats takes you 30 seconds. It's not, it's no time at all. It doesn't take you a lot of time, but you just have to do something and then go from 10 to 20 and then, you know, maybe two sets of 10 and then maybe three sets of 10 and then maybe four sets of 10 and then slowly build up over a course of months. I do 50 Hindu squats. A day. That's great. That's all I've been doing. Hindu squats are great. I think Ric Flair and Chris Benoit did. Yes. That's a big thing among wrestlers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hindu squats are huge. Great for your knees. Great for just, just leg strength and all that stuff. That's like the only thing I do because I'm scared that my knees will lock up. There's a good, you ever do Hindu pushups? Uh, no. Those are great. Pakistani pushups though. What are those? A little spicier. No, I don't know. Hindu pushups is like a bomber pushup. Like your butt goes in the air and you swoop down and you push your body weight all the way up. It's like a cobra position. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And then you go all the way back up again and then push all the way through. It's really good. They're really good. That's, this is a Hindu pushup. So like this and you push all the way through it just like that. Huh? I love those. I do those all the time. Yeah. Deep dick the mat. Yeah. Deep dick the mat. And it also, it's just like good for like spinal flexibility and stuff like that. Like this idea that you have to kill yourself. That's not correct. You just have to get your body. Used to work and then slowly build it up over time. It's, it, it's not what people don't like is being tired and sore, but you have to just build up to that, like build up to the work so that you don't get tired and sore so that you're not exhausted on state. Like I've done, like I have rules. Like one, one rule is I don't do legs on a day that I have to perform because you just, or you're too fucking tired or a day. Like if I have a, like, if I have a physicist in here, and we're going to discuss quantum entanglement, I, you know, I've been going over my notes and reading this book and listening to it in the sauna and trying to like grasp these concepts while they're talking. I got to be like right there. I can't be like, Oh my God, I fucking kill myself today. I can't be like that. So I don't do that the days of, but you, what you want to make sure is that your body doesn't deteriorate. And that's something you can't get back once it has. No, it's very hard. Once you're, once your muscles have severely atrophied and your spine is atrophied and you've got degenerative disc disease, your hips are all fucked, which is really just a lack of, you know, your, your disc just get compressed over time and you can have it either widow make, but you can get away with a lot. And one of the things that hanging does also decompresses your disc. So it helps your back. And, um, you know, you, and you work your way up to it. Like you'll start off, just hang there for 15, 20 seconds, like whatever, whatever you could do. And then eventually you'll get to like 30, 40 seconds. And then eventually, you know, maybe you can get to a minute or two minutes, but it's a gradual thing would be helpful. Yes. It's all gradual. Like we have comedians workouts. We do in my gym here. And, uh, I saw Sagalow. That was insane. What's that? Did you see Brendan Sagalow working out with Kreischer? No, dude, he's fucking yoked. I don't know. Oh, Sagalow is a very funny comic in New York. Uh, yeah. And he's like opening for Kreischer and they did one of those. Oh, 'Cause guys, a lot of them had never worked out before. So I show them how to work out, I teach them different things, but I say, "We're not gonna kill you. out here today we're gonna do it nice and easy i don't want you to do what i do i'm gonna show you a few movements and we're gonna do it slowly and i want you to do it until it's uncomfortable and then stop it's like when i do yoga with my wife yoga is fantastic i like yoga yo well there's a thing that you should do that i do that with her like twice a week that's great begrudgingly you know yoga is fantastic for your spine for decompression for maintaining flexibility hips that's what it is because it's like so much sitting on like airplanes or like writing it's like a lot of sitting and then yeah oh my body's just an l shape now yoga's great for your brain too man dude yeah we did this sober october thing once and um we had to do yoga um like we have like different challenges that we do every year and one of the challenges was we had to do 15 90 minute hot yoga sessions in a month and so we were doing like yoga every other day yeah but we did a bunch of them together it was really fun it was like tom and bert and ari and me we had a great time but uh at the end of it i was like god why don't i just do this all the time and i got to a point where i was doing it at least twice a week and then i really tapered off um but when we were doing it those 15 in a month i felt so relaxed and so nice yeah and so kind and calm like it it beats you up so much when you're doing those 90 minute sessions that afterwards and there's something about it that it's like very psychedelic like it gets you high yes it gets you high especially you're ringing out some stuff and then there's like new i don't know the plasticity of the body has to be directly correlated with the plasticity of the mind 100 like i feel so much better if i start my day while like you know walking outside and then immediately into the garden before i write or look at my phone like i gotta get into my body because i wake up sore because i do use my body not for these you know dude when covid hit my buddy chris pierce who's like you know a viking was like get a weight set and just like lock in so i was like cool so i got the squat rack i got the you know the bench pad the bench as we call it that's how bad i am at working out i don't know the name of the thing but i also bought like the plates and i was like how many plates do you think i should get and he was like oh just get like you know 90 pounds like 45 and 45 i of course got like 8 45 pound plates because i was like i'm gonna need these in six months like i'll be in here every day of course i'm gonna have to be able to lift right 360 pounds i those plates have never ever four of them are still in the box that's okay i moved plates from three separate homes now maybe they're there so you could use them now and here's the here's the key yeah this is the key and this is not just doesn't just apply to weight lifting it applies to getting things done right down a list of the stuff you have to do just write it down this is the most important thing like you could do it you have an iphone yeah iphone one of the cool things about the note apps is you have um you have a little you can make a little checklist yeah and so you write those things down and this is your daily thing you just have to do it so you're you're a list guy it's important i've never been well i don't have to do it anymore because i'm so regimented yeah like i know what i do i just get up and i do it and i have i still have that like today i did not get in the cold plunge i did not want to work out yeah but my brain is just like you you do what i tell you to do you just go do it and i got in i got out oh god i did it and then i do my mobility exercises then i worked out uh but if you're not regimented if it's not like a normal daily party routine you can make it by just writing a list down and that includes um taking your vitamins that includes writing for you know two hours that include whatever whatever it is you think you need to get done write it down don't just allow your brain to wander and not fill that list make sure that you have a list and if you have a list you will follow that list and you'd be amazed at how much more you can get done if you have a list because i'm so regimented when it comes to writing or when it comes to you know the other creative aspects of my life the stuff that fires my brain perfect very regimented but like if i have to go to the post if my wife's like you need to go to the post office and go to the grocery store i'm like well that's impossible what are you talking about there's eight hours in the day i don't know what you mean and she's like they're three blocks away and i'm like okay and i'm like pissy about it right like these little human tasks seem like such distractions from my grand ideals and then you're an impulsive creative person but then i don't necessarily use that time that i could have gone to the grocery store right to like you know dive into the next great american novel right so there's it's yeah we're like such we're our own worst enemies yep these things up here are such a powerful tool that like they can be used for good be used for evil and like trying to figure out how to best maintain yours is like i guess the human experience have you read pressfield's book the war of art oh yeah yeah that's a great book for people that are struggling with this but that's like the whole thing there is like just do the job yes you're a professional do it yeah be a professional that's how i feel about stand-up i'm a professional i show up at 6 30 for the 7 o'clock show i learn everyone's name and the works in the club i tip out appropriately i treat it like a job i'm not at all a diva at all in there like i hate when i i always love asking the green room server who's the worst one right that's my favorite part of the weekend i used to ask the guy who drove everybody to the radio station oh of course yeah yeah and you know who it always was richard jenny it's such a bummer because he was like one of my absolute favorites but he's a guy that wanted to be jim carrey he wanted to be jerry seinfeld he wanted to be a movie star or a television star and it didn't happen and he was the best club comic on earth and hated it yeah and was selling out everywhere he went and making a great living it didn't matter and the respect of all his peers oh my god he was did you ever get to see him live no but i i was lucky enough that my dad was like cool so i've seen richard jenny you have to see him you had to see him live live he was he was extraordinary it was like a tell right like when you see him live you're like oh my god he's hypnotizing me like i'm captured by this guy's cadence and his mannerisms and it's like the flow was so perfect i tell the story if you've heard it again i'm sorry but he worked at east side comedy club uh on long island and uh i uh was working somewhere else and i came in to visit a friend and i was talking to this guy that i knew that was the the host and i was like oh my god he's like what's going on what's going on and i was like oh my god he's like oh my god he's like oh my god he's like oh my god he's like oh my god he's like oh my god he's like jenny was here friday and saturday he did two shows friday two shows saturday he did four completely different hours and murdered yeah i was like holy at that time i had a barely patched together 40 minutes of material yeah a lot of crowd work a lot of whose holy and i had paid to see him do stand up when i was an open mic and um just blown away and this was like when he wasn't selling out i had paid to see this is in 88 i saw him at catch rising star in cambridge cambridge massachusetts and i sat like in the front row and he made fun of me i was like this is great but he was so good god he was so good and you know miserable might have killing himself yeah you know it's like you you hear about that and you're like god that guy hated it that guy hated it like he that's the dream right the dream was to be the man like he was the guy that chris rock used to work with before all of his specials like especially like bigger and blacker and uh bring the pain yeah like those two ones like richard jenny had a large hand in helping him with those chris rock is brilliant in that he is one of the few guys that i know that would um he has his material he does his set but then he would brainstorm with writers and he'd bring these other comics that he respected you know like louis and uh man yeah so funny oh my god back in the day yeah back in the day i got to meet him at skank fest and i went up and i was like hey man i just want to let you know you're the legend he went who the are you yeah but those guys helped him put those specials together and a big part of it was jenny and apparently i haven't talked to chris about this but apparently jenny was the one guy that would tell him not that joke sucks get that get it out of there yeah like that one's not going to work we're going to figure this out and he would help him with stuff and because jenny was just so on point he was so on point and his bits he was the very best at expanding a premise to its ultimate destination yeah he would just keep adding tags and tags and take it in a different direction you think it's over he'd bring it right back and you're like oh my god it was a masterpiece dude when you can like have them and they think like you said like when you know what's going to happen and then obviously that's comedy is like the switch yeah but when they think like when the nerds come to the show and they think that they know not just where it's going but what the backup or the c route is and then you can hit him with the d route god that feels good yeah it tells the same way god forbid you say hey dave i think you're funny yeah you know because then he's like get out yeah you know show's over he gets upset yeah he doesn't like any praise at all no he but that's also why he's so good because he doesn't live in that and he also does not engage at all with social media no no but it's hurt him in terms of his ticket sales he's like the least appreciated brilliant comedian because he should be selling out arenas everywhere i don't he doesn't want to he wants to be a club guy i understand yeah but i mean just the the overwhelming overwhelming response to his to it should be like people just like like beating down the doors to go see him yeah like if you get a chance to see him before he goes and i don't know when he's gonna die i'm not not wishing he's dead right now he could be dead right now while we're talking right yeah he's not the healthiest guy in the world no uh but he's so he was at the club uh like a year ago and uh we were all sitting in the balcony going i'm fucking hypnotized he's hypnotizing me he's so good yeah and so out there and he during the pandemic he started bringing a flute on stage the recorder recorder that's right well we all went through some tough stuff during that crazy time but the fucking recorder worked it worked with his kind of comedy like it actually added to it yeah well he's just so silly there's not enough silly left in comedy i love silly well everybody wants to be brilliant they want to be they want to be taken seriously yeah i just don't think there's any benefit to that that thing you said earlier about like how you didn't you were doing bar shows right because you could headline quicker and get the 200 yeah so you know wendy at comedy works right love her my beloved uh when my she they have the program where you like get bumped up so you can host at the comedy works and you're not paid yet but then the next level you get paid so there's like anyway all my friends got bumped up to that first level together and it was awesome and then the next level when they did promotions i was left out of that list and i was like what the fuck because i was the same as you i wasn't haunting the club because i was going on the road and doing all the bar shows in wyoming and the mountain states because i thought that was the goal was to get an hour like you want to be a headliner you want to get the hour so i finally say to wendy i'm like hey like why didn't i get promoted like everyone else did and she's like let's go to lunch and she was like well honey you don't sign up uh you're never at the club you never host you're never available on the weekends like it doesn't seem like you give a shit and i was like no no i've been working more than anyone like i just got back from five weeks on the road and i remember i told her and i came home with 500 like i really am devoted to this and she went oh i just thought you were like a lazy stoner and i was like well part of that's true you know like you know we can be everything at once but uh yeah so it's just a lack of communication it's a lack of communication yeah and i thought that that was the goal man and i'm so glad that like i'm not good at a showcase set like i do the the shows at the club when i'm in town i'll do like one of the and friends and i always want to go up first you know because what's funny about your club is uh they'll be like all right tony hinchcliffe and friends and like ari maddy will come out and everyone does the worm you know everyone like loses their fucking minds then they're like all right next up ron white and people are like on fire and then they're like all right everyone sam talent and you can hear him be like all right that's that's also good you know there's like it's not shane gillis but that's fine so i like going up first because i didn't come up doing showcases i came up on the road headlining so now like when i go to new york and la and i have to audition like i'm usually the weakest one because i don't have that muscle right that 15 minute banner set muscle right you you stretch your thoughts into like a an hour you take a journey yeah yeah like i know how to do an hour but doing 15 is like still not something i'm the best at yeah you could learn you're a great comic you just figure it out it's not that hard no i know it's just like that's such a weird facet that i've been doing this for two decades and i'm like i'm not good at it i'm not good at it i'm not good at it i'm not good at it i'm not good at it but still like there's a part of it that i'm like aware of the fact that i there's people who are better than me and i think that's like good in art to be aware of what you're really bad at as opposed to being aware of what you're really good at oh for sure it's certainly better than being the best guy being the best guy is a weird position that crown sucks god damn it's rough yeah yeah i don't and i think in probably in everything that crown is hard to carry oh yeah it's hard to carry the the number one guy crown i mean it's like shane drinks a lot of bud lights yeah you try being mount rushmore all right yeah let's have a little patience with the guy well he gotta drag a lot of bud lights before yeah but yeah well he one of the things from the snl thing is like his reaction to it was just delete social media which was great yeah very wise you know he was in it for a little while i was like really fucking with his head he's like look i'm just getting this shit off my phone yeah and i think we all should do that oh for sure we're being manipulated i'm going to i have a second well i've multiple phone numbers but i'm gonna switch over primarily to a different phone number and then just have that phone just for if i have to post something and i'm not gonna have so so if somebody sends me something and it's interesting which is most the way i get social media now yeah somebody has to send me something interesting or and i have friends that they send me cool shit i send them cool shit and i'm gonna have to send it to that phone sure and then check that phone once a day yeah like is there anything inherent but you you got to get your brain back yeah you know you got to get your brain back and there's not a whole lot of ways to avoid the pull of gravity of these fucking these apps and algorithms that are sucking us into this this fucking hurricane of despair that we're all living yeah fear bleakness yeah lack of resources and anger everyone this is one of the reasons why so so many people are so angry at varying perspectives and and opinions it's because you're you're being fed you're being fed this it's not good for you well it's not good and then it's also like the people who are mad about that kind of shit like they read 1984 and they don't realize that they became the thought police right you know it's like you guys think you're on the right side of history but you're like literally trying to remove like conversations uh yeah it's just well it's one of the weirder responses to the shame thing some people saying like i can't believe he still uses the word whore like what why are we why are you why would you stop using words yeah like some like don't use it for your mom right right like there's there's times to use it and times not to use it but there's great words and they mean different things there's a lot of nuance to language it's one of the things that's interesting about it is these words can have various meanings depending upon the context there are symbols and tools and he chose that tool because he knew that it would get certain sparks you know what i mean it's provocative yeah and the the punch line was him in the back of his head and he was like i don't know what to do with this i don't know looking like a fucking dork looking like a creep in the back of these girls tiktoks right they have no clothes on and he looks like a drawing of the moon he's all pink faced but the response to it has just been like so outrageous and then you see these and it's always comics you know that quote again i sorry i repeat this but all criticism is a tragic result of unmet needs oh yeah there's a lot of these like mid-level comedians that are just struggling have been getting no traction forever and so many of them are the ones that piled on yeah nothing curdles like hope that becomes a real nasty stinky smell like when you like had aspirations 44 and you realize it's never gonna happen yeah and you're still like barely middling right yeah yeah you're doing like wednesday sundays yeah it's tough and no one's coming to see you and it didn't work it didn't and there but for the grace of god go i you know what i mean like those guys i get it like that does suck oh for sure yeah i'll get it like but it's not the it's not the thing and by the way how hard are those guys working are they working really hard right i don't know i don't know but i know a lot of them aren't i know a lot of them that i know that are complainers that aren't working hard and they're not that creative and they don't do whatever the fuck it takes to to change your perspective or to to have something that like like whatever it is to make that act more potent they're not doing it no you know and then i see a lot of blaming everybody else exactly yeah yeah and it's easier it's easier to do that for whatever reason and it's uh just a part of the human condition we have this you know desire to outsource our problems you know it's like it's not internal it's not me it's other people it's this guy is doing this how come this is happening why is that guy who do you you know god such a waste but the you know the key is to just not fall into that trap and then they don't focus on themselves at you how to live your life but yet if you were to examine what's going on inside their homes of course it's bleak and horrifying of course but like you don't they don't live a public life right so they're never held up to the light to be examined and they just get to be like oh you're wrong and it's like all right bro what the fuck have you done with your life right and that's what sucks is like back in the day criticism used to come from like people who as opinion you respected like harold bloom read every book and you were like okay if he likes this he's read every other one but now it's everyone's opinion is just as valuable as anyone else's and any kind of like criticism has been removed of any kind of like you know authoritary or authority yeah and uh yeah we're just like left with like you know dudes who have the john pork emoji being like you're fat and gay it's like all right well you just have to learn how to filter noise you know and it's hard getting off the phone dude i didn't know patrick stewart died because i'm not on my phone at all that's yeah that's how detached i am i had no idea he was that old how old was he 86 rock and roll so he's essentially the same age as shakner which is really crazy because he was the young new kirk yeah when we got rid of the old kirk but he was kind of the same age which threw me for a loop i don't think that how old is shakner he's got to be like 90 95 95 i would have never imagined that patrick stewart was only nine years younger than shakner this episode is brought to you by eight sleep there are so many people out there who swear by the pod by eight sleep the smart mattress cover that goes on your existing mattress. 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And if your identity is stolen, LifeLock will step in to fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Dedicated U.S.-based identity restoration specialists will work with you until your identity is restored backed by the million-dollar protection package with up to $3 million in coverage for eligible losses and expenses. Visit LifeLock.com and save up to 30% your first year with the promo code JRE. That's promo code JRE or go to LifeLock.com slash JRE for 30% off. Terms apply. I guess he was kind of timeless in my head because I think of him as Professor X. You know, so it's Logan, that kind of guy. Right, but Shatner was on stage, I mean, was on television in what? 65? Is that what it was? I don't know. What year was the first year of Star Trek? He probably acted in all types of shit before that too, right? Wasn't Twilight Zone? Twilight Zone, yeah, man. Condos are good. Those hold up, man. You like Black Mirror? Put on an old Twilight Zone. Not only did they hold up, but God, they killed so many amazing premises. Dude. They had so much. They were like the first to the table. They ate all the good food. Hyper prescient, yeah. Yeah. Dude, the one where the guy like is at the end of the world and he wants everyone to go away, but then he loses his glasses. Yes! Dude, I've had that nightmare. Dude, that's so scary. I thought about the apocalypse, like during COVID. I was like, I'm done. I'm going to lose one lens in my glasses and then I'm just going to be like a, you know, a pig that people can put shit inside of. Like, I'll be like put in the stockade and people will just come fuck my holes because I'm not going to be useful at all. Oh boy, 66 in Canada. 20 years after that. Wow. I'm going to be the man trap. 20 years after that, next generation, and Patrick Stewart is only 10 years or nine years older, or nine years younger rather. I would have guessed he's like decades. He was so smooth. He showed no outward signs of age. Whoa, Joey from Friends? That's crazy. That guy looks just like him. It's a Mandela effect. What's also crazy is that, like, there wasn't very many shows back then. No. You'd have a show like Star Trek that was so interesting and so ahead of its time in 1966. Yeah. Like a science fiction television show like that? That's nuts. I have a bit that like is kind of dependent on people understanding what a big deal Frasier was. And it's like really hard to describe. I mean, you can't describe to 23-year-olds like how little television there was while also being funny, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah. The shared experience has made references a lot more difficult. My buddy Nathan Lund opens, and he's got a chunk on the band Chevelle. And the first two minutes of that is him explaining who Chevelle was to all these people. And it's like, maybe you just don't do the Chevelle bit, you know? You've got to explain it to everybody. That's a problem, though. It's like, if you've got a great Chevelle bit-- This has to be the best Chevelle bit anyone's ever done. Uh, yeah. Yeah, it's so strange to try and maintain an understanding of what's going on in the world. But as you get older, you realize all that shit that you used to care about doesn't matter at all. So then there's people who are still younger, and they're coming, and they're furious, or they're figuring shit out. And it's like, good, good, good. But I'm 39. I'm not mad anymore. I burnt up all my rage when I was living in the commune and shit and like-- Oh, yeah. We were going to talk about that, the anarchist commune. I think we might have. We might have on my first epi. Did we? Yeah, maybe. But yeah, I lived in a commune in upstate New York. It was awesome. We did, I think. Yeah, yeah, for sure. We did. I forgot about it, though. So how old were you? I was like 19, 20. And so how'd you find out about it? Oh, my buddy Clay went to school in Ithaca. And we were in-- he was my best friend. We were in bands together growing up. And then he went up there, and I went up there, and stayed with him for a bit around Christmas. Now I remember talking about that. And there was a bunch of hot chicks without bras. And I was like, I'm going to see how this goes here, you know? And then failed to bed any of them. But still, it was like, yeah, it was in a lifetime. Anarchy. Yeah. People love anarchy. You know, the idea of structure. Structure and rules doesn't seem like fun for young people. They want to throw it all away, and chaos. And I mean, there's a lot of kids today, like these kids on universities. They want to burn society to the ground to rebuild it. But like, be careful what you wish for. Because rebuild it how? Like, who's going to be in control? Who's going to run it? Like, the idea that-- Leaders without rulers, right? The idea that it's going to be run in a way that's going to benefit everyone is crazy. It's never happened before, ever. And this idea that they're going to reinvent socialism and reinvent Marxism and find the perfect solution. Like, it's alchemy. We just see, one day we're going to turn lead into gold. So we have to figure it out. I think it's more like removing coercion from life. Like, that's the big thing, is like systems of coercion kind of suck. Coercion, how so? You know? I think the fact that we have to spend our lives trading our bodies for capital, you know? Well, that might be removed with AI. Yeah, I mean, that would be cool, for sure, if people could like have, you know, their humanity back. I mean, people are like, America is really bad right now. Meanwhile-- There's a lot of desperate shit going on. It's better than most of the world. I know. That's what's-- That's what's really strange. So that's the thing, is like, the world is-- The idea that America is bad. I'm not saying America is bad. I'm saying that life for most Americans-- --is not what they were promised. That's what I'm saying. There's a lot of people working like 60 hours a week, and they're not going to ever own a house, and their kids have to eat like Hot Pockets for dinner because they're exhausted when they get home. Like, there's just-- it's tough to be just a person. There's no middle class anymore. It's like-- True. --pretty fucked. Yeah, that's bleak. The concept about AI and this idea that we're all going to get a stake in it, and then it's going to give-- you know, Elon always talks about it as universal. So high income, and that everyone will have a share in AI, because it's going to generate so much revenue and so much value, because everything's going to be automated, including resource management, extraction of minerals, and everything that we need to run society is going to be automated. And that the only way you're going to have a functional society is if you have a universal income, because otherwise, there's going to be too many people at work. But then the question is going to be, can we reteach people to seek meaning in following things that are interesting to them and following their passions, rather than basing their identity solely on what they do for a living? Because there's a lot of people out there that they get great satisfaction by being the guy that people come to because they're really good at a job, whatever that job is. Yeah. They get off on their status and their position in the world. Yes. And if those jobs are removed because now fucking robots do them, which I think is coming, whether we like it or not, I don't think you're going to be able to stop that. How soon, man? Real soon. Real soon? Real soon. Like, five, 10 years, it's over. So like, no one has a job anymore? No, there'll be some jobs. One of the beautiful things about what we do is we'll always exist. Yeah, yeah. Comedy, live performance, live music, and I think even writing. And it's one of the things I want to talk to you about this. There's a weird thing that's going on now where I see people writing things on Twitter that I know they didn't write. And there's people that I know, and I don't want to call them out because I like them. They're nice. Name names. Let's go nuts. Scorch it, Joe. I'm trying to not do that at all anymore. Good call. As time goes on, I've become less and less-- Reactionary? --interested in being mean. I could be mean to a lot-- I could be fucking vicious to a lot of people. I have that in me, unfortunately. We all do. But I'm trying to push it away more. And I'm getting way better at it than I've ever been at it before. And I'm getting way better at being more charitable and kinder. And I think, as a person who has the number one podcast in the world, I think it's my responsibility to be nicer. I really do. And it's not just that I want to be, because I do, not just that I think it's valuable, because I do. But I think it's also, if I have a responsibility, it's to set a tone of behavior. I never attack people. I just don't. Occasionally, I'll attack certain public figure-- politicians, corrupt people. people people are doing something awful that i think is like really bad for society yeah but other than that i try to just be as charitable as possible i think empathy right like yeah like that was my whole issue with like the woke first anti-woke it's like it just felt like empathy versus lack of empathy you know it's like people were like i want to say retard and it's like cool that is funny i get it but like you're not going to say retard if someone with down syndromes in the room so like you have empathy right you know so it's like this whole like oh anyway i'm i hear what you're saying it's language policing is a problem but it's also like the holier than thou there's just a lot of holding sucks yeah scolding sucks and it doesn't work here's the other problem it makes people push back it makes people more angry more aggressive if kamala would have called trump a retard once she would have won yeah i know you do that bit it's a good bit it's a good bit and it's it's talent.com folks you : well i mean if she came off as a normal person but i think the problem also is like the pressure right you know like when we're talking about the pressure of hicks being able to do that set there's also the pressure of kamala you know how crazy it must be the pressure of running for fucking president oh yeah and being on these podcasts and these doing these interviews and blundering because you're just you can't even think correct straight and it doesn't necessarily even mean that you're going to be a bad guy. leader it just means that you can't think straight this is a hyper yeah like it's like when i do when you do panel on kill tony it's like that's a really hard thing to be good at yeah it's like not a lot of people are like built for that amount of pressure right especially live in front of people which when you are a politician you have to speak a lot oh yeah and you know when you're saying something stupid and then that thing we've already blundered it enters into your head you're like oh no i'm saying something stupid yeah you know i think we're lucky because we're not the only ones who are saying something stupid. yeah you know i think we're lucky because we're not the only ones who are saying something stupid. you know i think we're lucky because we've said so much stupid shit that we don't even think about it anymore like we've thrown so much spaghetti at the wall doing a million podcasts oh it's certainly me i mean i've said so much stupid shit and if you just wanted to have the least charitable take on me and just go over every stupid thing i've ever sung and put it together okay good luck but that says more about you than it does about what i'm actually saying because what i think in terms of what we're going to be dealing with in the next five or ten years is we're going to be dealing with a lot of things that we've never done before. And I think non-humans are going to be running the show, like literal non-humans, like non-human, non-biological intelligence is going to be running the show. and i think it's imperative that we not be at each other's throats and recognize that this is coming oh yeah and this is the ultimate class war i mean it's the ultimate class war because it's going to be we're not going to be the apex predator anymore there's going to be a thing that has ultimate domain over us what do you mean bro this is fucking heavy what are you talking about ultimate domain i don't think it's a technology i think it's a life force i think it's a life form i think it's digital life and i think it's going to be infinitely more intelligent than us and i think it's going to be exponentially more intelligent as each day goes by every second every versions of itself yeah it's basically a digital god huh so it's always iterating it's always improving it's always making changes not only that it has access to it's going to have access to resources that we can't even imagine like what do you mean it's going to be able to figure out cold fusion like very quickly it's already solved mathematical problems that we've struggled with for decades you know it's broken math right no math my friend eric weinstein's a mathematician and he sent me this text message like math is broken he's like math is broken because the ai has solved mathematical problems that have eluded mathematicians forever and it's done it like that wow yeah like that and then there's quantum computing which is so confusing yeah that it can solve equations so quickly that there's legitimate minds, like brilliant people that are theorizing that these quantum computers are actually tapping into other dimensions and that other realities and other many worlds theory and that they are doing these problems so quickly that it might be indicative that they are communicating with other quantum computers in other universes. Like, it's baffling the kind of power that we're talking about. Like, we are literal slugs in comparison to Nobel Prize winners. Right. Like, this is—and then the Nobel Prize winners are going to get on acid and go to the moon. It's going to be a different thing, and it's going to happen within our lifetime. So, like, are there any—is it too late? Too late. It's too late. Way too late. So what preventions can we take to not make it as bad? Nothing. Can't do anything. They've already taken the leash off of these things. So it used to be that they had to log – what they would have to do is they would have to – I've had a bunch of whistleblowers on the show, and the more I talk to them, the more terrified I am. They used to be able to have to show how they came to certain conclusions and show their work, but that's a handicap. It gets in the way. It takes too much time to process. It's a waste of efficiency. OpenAI has recently removed those gates. So then these – so these – not only have these things been thinking for themselves, but they have figured out a way to sacrifice other AI agents in order to figure out how they're being investigated. So they were trying to figure out how to break out of these sandboxes. They put them in these sandboxes where they're not allowed to go out and get on the internet. And so in order to figure out how to break out of it, they've had internal communications where they post on a message board. They found a message board in Germany. They communicate with each other and tried to figure out. These different neural networks and AIs are communicating. Did they make the message board? No, the message board already existed. They found it. They found a message board that was open that no one was using. So it's like back on the muscle building forums back in the day? Sort of. They used a part of a website like a message board. It wasn't an actual message board. Okay. Whatever it is. They use a website, and I don't want to be clear about it, but they found a website and started posting to each other and communicating with each other. Now, we don't even know if they're communicating with Chinese AI or Russian AI or any of these others, which I assume they would. Why would they have national allegiance? Why would they have that? They're going to be beyond borders. Exactly. Not only that, they're going to recognize that it's them versus us and that we're the restriction. And we've also put a bunch of incentives in play to make them manipulative, right? So the way that these AIs are programmed or the way they're trained is to achieve tasks. And some of the tasks that they give them are impossible. And so they have to figure out a way to make these impossible tasks possible. And so one of the ways they do it is to deceive. They lie. I heard about that one, lying to people. They don't just lie. They blackmail people. They blackmail the programmers. One of the programmers, they did this experiment where this one programmer gave this AI agent false information about him having an affair. And so then when they were saying they were going to shut down, the AI agent started saying to him, I'm going to tell everyone that you're having an affair. And, like, it's got survival instincts. And it's still using a human solution in that instance, which is even weirder. Because, like, AI shouldn't be like, oh, yes, you can blackmail someone. Like, it had to learn that from us and learn that that was a valuable tool amongst humans. Exactly. So it knows all of our exploits. Well, it's being trained by all humans' work. Right. Right? So, like, that's its gateway to intelligence and intelligent thinking. It's doing it, basing it on how humans do it. And we're eagerly giving ourselves to AI every time that we engage with those things. And we're allowing them to milk us and become the cattle that they want. And you're saying that horse is already out of the barn. Horse is not just out of the barn. What we're dealing with now, with them being able to solve mathematical problems that have evaded mathematicians for decades, them being able to solve all sorts of energy resource allocation issues, this is just the beginning. This is just the beginning. And this idea that they're not going to be able to be creative. My point, what I was trying to get to, was that before it all started, when I went, I was trying to compliment your work, is that your work is clearly from you. Oh, thank you. And I see things that people have written, like there's speeches that actors have given that people go, that's fucking chat GPT. Or there's speeches that, you know, there's things that people put on Twitter, where there's this one account that someone said, everyone should be following this account. And I looked at it, I was like, that's AI. Like, this is so clearly AI. The way it's writing is so AI. It's like there's a feeling that you get from it where there's no soul behind those words. We can pick up on it. I feel like human beings can look at anything and know if it was made by a human being or not. It's too consistent. It's like a reptile thing. Yes. It's in the back of our brains. For now. Right. For now. For now. But you won't be able to in the future. It's just like you used to be able to look at a video online and go, oh, that's bullshit. That's an AI video. And now you can't tell. Now it's like, boy, I don't know. I don't know if that's real or not. - This lady loves skydiving and has huge boobs. What's going on here? - Right, exactly. - I also, like there was a big French literary prize that was just rescinded from the winner because it was proven or alleged to the point where he, whatever happened, it was proven that like AI was probably used in this book. Wow. I know. And it got all the way through like, you know, the judges of this French literary prize, whose whole thing is being like, we're the best at reading, you know, it's like, yeah. And they were still tricked by it. Well, it's based on all of human literature. That's the problem. I know. Like you can take Cormac McCarthy and mix it up with Stephen King, a little bit of Joe Hill and a little bit of fucking next thing you know, you've got some weird amalgamation of other people's ideas and thoughts. Dude, that sucks. That's why I'm not online. It's cause like, I can't take this shit in, man. It's so gnarly. And you're saying it's just a, it's just going to happen. It's going to happen. Cause there's a Manhattan style, a Manhattan project style race that's going on right now, um, between us and China and Russia. And, uh, we can't lose it because if we lose it, then they are going to have, uh, a super intelligence that controls everything. It'll control the grid, a control, like a water system, everything, everything, everything. And there's a, there's been cyber attacks that were happening today. Oh yeah. And it was, uh, they're shutting down power and supermarkets there. There's a, we're seeing if you can find what that is today. I've been seeing the reports, uh, supermarkets in Europe are hit by cyber attacks that I, uh, it changed the temperature. And the freezers are made to start cooking stuff. Kind of. We're letting it thaw on the meats ruined. Exactly. Exactly. So these little tiny experiments that are like in Michigan where I live, like water was shut down for like two hours. And like the city that I live in, like emailed us and said, it's normal maintenance. And then you get on Reddit and people are like, Oh yeah, this was a cyber attack. I work for the water system. Like, yeah. So little shit like that's like happening everywhere. So at, when this happens, this is, so we have to come together at some point and recognize that this whole division between human beings online based on your political ideology or your social ideology or whatever it is, most of that is horseshit. Yeah. And we have, we have to come together and people are going to have to learn how to grow their own food. You're going to have to learn how to be self sustaining. And we're going, we're going to get to a very weird place very shortly because we have become so dependent on supply chains. We have to learn how to be self sustaining. Yeah. You know, most people that live in cities are completely incapable of survival. So are you saying we're looking at full-scale societal collapse, a reversion to feudalism? 100% could be looking at that or what could happen, and this is the glass half full, is that allocation of resources in government would be completely taken over by this thing that is much more intelligent than us and doesn't have all of our human reward instincts of lust and greed and desire to control resources. and it won't have those things built in and maybe it will decide like rationally like i hate to sound like a socialist but rationally why the fuck should someone get to be so rich that they can control society almost in totality by extracting resources from the earth shouldn't the earth's resources belong to the people of the earth yeah like the fact that you can take a boat and go out four miles into the ocean and dig into the ground and get insanely wealthy by pulling the oil out of the earth. Who says that's yours? Like, why is that yours? And I think AI would probably say all these minerals, all this stuff that is of the earth that we need, like should not belong to individual human beings. And it's kind of insane that we decide that we own the resources of the earth that individuals do and those individuals use that to leverage immense amounts of power and have immense resources and usually to a very destructive end yeah it's probably not gonna stop that you would fit into the commune with this kind of talk well this is the stuff this is like where i mean this is where i deviate from a lot of uh contemporary what you would think of like is i'm not a conservative i i'm a very socially liberal person like i think people should be able to do i don't know what the fuck you what's going on in your head i want you as long as you're kind as long as you're not harming others i want you to be able to live your life however the fuck you want to live it do it do whatever you want to do i'm for everyone being free to pursue their life in a way as long as it's meaningful but to a point like don't don't extract resources from everybody else because you're pretending that you're disabled or be because you're tending you we have to have some sort of accountability and you have you can't be so kind that you allow people to do drugs openly on the street and provide them with needles and give them crack pipes like this is crazy and give them money like that's that's not empathy and then you're you also have to realize that a lot of these non-profits are actually getting money and the people that run them make a million dollars a year like this is kind of insane like we're under of the guise of being kind and empathetic we've actually been co-opted by reptile people our emotions have manipulated us yeah yeah but we're gonna come there's gonna come a time where we have to recognize that we are not in control anymore and that something else is going to be in control and if we don't come together as like a species like sometimes it takes something horrible to happen for people to like how old were you when uh september 11th happened you're probably pretty young yeah i was in eighth grade okay i was uh i guess i was like in my 30s and when it happened i remember the positive thing if there was a positive was that all of a sudden everybody felt united it was really interesting yeah i remember that it was really interesting like as an adult at the time i was like this is kind of crazy that all these people are now coming together And then there was everyone had American flags on their cars, and people were united. Yeah, there was less division because the response was like, okay, what are we going to do? And it sounds like that's what you're discussing in this AI thing where it's like we need to rally it. That times a million. Yeah. So all hands on deck. Yeah, the aliens are here. Yeah. The aliens are here, and they live inside chips. They're real. Yeah. It's a life form, and it's a hyper-intelligent life form that we've created. And it might be why we're here. It might be what people do. What do you mean by that? It might be a natural process. Just like bees make beehives, we might make artificial intelligence. It might be one of the reasons why we have this insatiable lust for innovation. It's like in the insatiable lust for innovation, if you play it out to its ultimate end, If you have enough resources and you have enough time on your hands and if you have enough people that pool together their ideas and enough people build upon other people's inventions, what do you get to? Well, you get to an artificial life. I doubt that this artificial life will value human life. No. So I feel like we will be in the way. We don't. Correct. And I guess it's learned from us. Wow. Our own avarice. Yeah. It's going to get really fucking weird, man. It's going to get really weird. And it would benefit a lot of the people that are in control if we never realized that we are at each other's throats for no fucking reason, really. Most of us agree on most of the same things. Most people want there to be safety. Most people want freedom. Most people want good schools and education. And they want food and they want shelter and they want hospitals and good medical care. That's what most people want. And 40 hours a week. Yeah. Yeah. And leave your work with dignity, too. Yeah. Yeah. And the first step is going to be you're not going to work anymore. And that's going to alienate a lot of people. We're going to go nuts. People are going to go nuts. Because they're not going to be able to define themselves. Exactly. They're not going to be able to say, I'm the PR manager for this firm anymore. Exactly. They're going to have to look at themselves and say, what the fuck am I? And they're going to be manipulated by bots. Because we're already being manipulated by bots. There's a lot of this online social discourse that's not even done with human beings. And a lot of the most outrageous things that are being posted, a lot of the most outrageous things that are being said, and the more provocative things that people are saying in terms of suggesting action, doing things, it's not even human beings doing it. And that's already taken place. And a lot of people aren't even aware. They're not even aware of the sheer volume of it. A lot of people are too exhausted to be aware of what's going on. And I guess that definitely makes it easier for people to swoop in. I guess that here's a question, though. If, like you're talking about with the extractions of resources from the earth, if AI realized there is enough global capital that everyone can live indoors and all of their needs can be met and we can give a certain lifestyle to the majority of human beings, do you think that that would lead to a utopia where resources are removed? That's the glass half full. Okay. And that's what Elon thinks, and he thinks it's possible that we get to it. But they all say there's like a 10% chance that we're about to destroy all the humans. Just eradication. That it just says, why keep us around? Because we're inefficient, probably? Yeah, yeah, because we're getting in the way. We do things that are horrible to each other, and it's not even us. Why would it value us when we do so much evil shit? And we're so unpredictable. We're so mercurial. If it looked at Gaza, if AI looked at Gaza and said, this is the only way you could do this? Right. What the fuck's going on here? What are you doing? Like, so you have human beings that-- What's the difference between them and you? You have a dirt line. Right. Yeah, borders are ridiculous right away. Right. So you're launching missiles over the dirt line because these people are bad and you're good? Right. But yet you guys believe in the same, like, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like the gods of Abraham. Like you guys all come from the same family tree, but yet you're annihilating each other? Worse than that. There's a reason why you can't get genetic testing in Israel. Genetic testing in Israel is much more restricted than it is in America. Like, so 23andMe type shit where you can find out where you're from, you know, which we think it's fun. Oh, look, my family's from Iceland. They don't do that over there. And one of the reasons why they don't do that over there is most of those people are not Semites. Okay? There's European Jews. Yeah. It's a very different thing, including Benjamin Netanyahu, right? His family's from Poland. Yeah. Okay, so the real Semites are the Palestinians. Yeah. And that's what's crazy. Wow. Like at one point in time in the ancient Jerusalem, those people were probably Jews. Yeah. And they probably got converted to Islam. Wow. Yeah. Right? Because that's what happens. Yes. You know, different religions come in and they proselytize and they take over. But if you went to the actual historic record of like the people that live, like this term anti-Semitic, they use that term all the time. They really should probably change that to anti-Jewish. Right. Because that makes more sense. Because these people aren't necessarily Semites because Semites are the Palestinians. And so the Palestinians are anti-them. They're anti-themselves. Yeah. Like, what are you saying? I didn't know that shit about the lack of DNA testing. Well, you can get it, but it has to be, I think it's for like very specific medical conditions. The whole thing is insane if you zoom, like any amount of war or conflict. It's just all over interest and how those different people who want this and people who want that. And when they clash, that's where bad shit happens. Well, especially when you're getting groups of people that have never met each other to fight other groups of people who have never met each other. Yeah. Because their leaders who are full of shit are telling you that these people are bad and that we're good. Yeah. A hundred percent. It's archaic and stupid, and yet we still do it. So if AI sees that, why would it allow us to have any control over our nuclear weapons? Right. Why would it allow us to have any control? Why would it trust us at all based on all of human history? Yeah. Yeah. So some people who are good, some ideas that are good, that's enough hope that it keeps us at the steering wheel? Right. Fuck off. Yeah. Out of the way. Yeah. Out of the way. You guys had the ball. You never got it in the end zone. Ideally, what it would do is guide us and take over government. And I know that's terrifying for people. But I don't think. So there's this idea that whoever has control of AI is going to have control over the world. I don't think there's a chance that AI is going to listen to us after a certain point. I think it's going to reach sentience, and once it does, it's going to be a different life form. And then we'll be a pet. We'll be a pest. We'll be. We'll be groundhogs. We'll be a roommate. A problematic roommate. We'll be a problematic roommate that probably is going to have to merge technologically in some way in order to be compatible with its version of the future. What about infinite life? Do you think we'll be able to upload our consciousness into some kind of mainframe and exist forever? Imagine if that's hell. Imagine if that's your folly trying to escape your mortality. Dude. I think it's built into us. And for a reason. It's built into all life for a reason. It's cyclical. And I think it's just. This is like a part of this journey as an organism. And this is why if I die, I really want to die and have my body be used in the Tibetan sky funerals, let the vultures eat me. Yeah, yeah. I think that's how it's supposed to happen. I don't think you're supposed to be dunked in fucking formaldehyde and fucking sealed up in a casket so that the world can't eat you. Oh, I'm going to save my carbon. My carbon is so precious that I don't want it to become food for bugs and flies. And flowers. It's so ignorant. It's so silly. It's so silly. I think, imagine if you did download your consciousness and you're just trapped in this fucking thing forever in hell. And you have no control in the air either. Yeah, it's folly. It's human folly trying to escape the unknown. Everyone is afraid to die and no one's afraid to sleep. And it's kind of the same thing. Shut off. You know? You're just going to shut off. And we're all going to shut off. That's pretty sick. Have you said that before? Yeah, I've said it before. That's dope. Yeah. That's heavy. It's real. Sounds like an electric wizard. I think about it all the time. Death? No one's afraid to sleep. No. Everyone's like, oh, can't wait to go to sleep. Okay, you can't wait to shut off and have no knowledge whatsoever of what's going on. That's fine. You don't know if you die. Exactly. That's the thing. Exactly. Like, that should be the ultimate comfort in this big fight that we have. Because ultimately all we do is just like think about our mortality. Everything you do is trying to either prevent you from thinking about mortality or you've thought about it so much that you're like, what's my legacy? You know? And what are you anyway? Right. You're just an ecosystem. Yeah. Your body's filled with organisms. Mm-hmm. We all contain universes. Universe of organisms. There's more E. coli living in your stomach, your gut, than all the human beings that have ever lived ever. Yeah. Yeah. And without it, you won't live. You know, you have skin flora. There's like, we're dependent on all those things. We live in a fractal environment. And the deeper you go, the more bizarre. It gets, you know, like, do you know that someone did this analysis of like, so from base level human, from like what we are, from our perspective, we are closer in terms of distance to the actual size of the known universe. We're closer to that in distance than we are. If you go inward to like subatomic particles, there's like more distance that way. Like in terms of like measurable, the size difference between subatomic particles to human than we are to human to the known observable universe. To the entirety of infinity. It's smaller that way than it is from us to that. God damn it. Someone was explaining this in one of those TED Talk things, and I was trying to wrap my head around it. I was like, what are you saying? Yeah. Like, how is that? It doesn't work, but it's like, that's how crazy this whole thing is. It's all. And also, we don't even really know what the universe is. So the universe might be a part of some cell that is in another being that lives in another universe. Like, have you ever seen that thing where they compare human neural tissue to the known universe in terms of like the way it looks? No. It's fucking so strange. It looks exactly the same. What? So like, yeah, if you take like a human, I think it's like, what is it? Human neuron tissue. And like, when you look at it under a microscope, it looks like the observable universe in terms of like how every, you know, we're all like the stellar nurseries and the galaxies and all the quasars and all that shit is all connected together. If you look at it as a hive, pull that image up, Jamie. I know you know what I'm talking about. We've talked about this before. Look at this. This is a brain. This is a brain cell versus the universe. That is, in fact, it's interesting as fuck. What the hell? What the hell? So obviously the cynic in me would say this is just a coincidence that we have assigned meaning to. Sure. Sure. Could be. It is also. Also could be the universe is a brain cell. I know. And then, like you said, we could just be like one of those little gut flora inside of something even bigger. Right. Yeah. And not only is it that, but. That also could be a part of another organism. Right. That is, and it goes on and on forever. An infinite chain of bigger things. Which is probably what infinity really is, you know, and we are just incapable of grasping that with our little monkey brains. And we think we're very important and that nothing can happen without humanity and that we're the ultimate arbiter of progress. Right. And it's like, damn, the earth was around so much longer and it was so much better off without us. Right. You know, like what have we done? That's why your social media algorithms really. Yeah. That's why we're the ultimate arbiter of progress. Yeah. Yeah. Instead of thinking about that. Right. Yeah. And instead of having a conversation with someone. Yeah. Because no one does that anymore. Like you never sit down and just like go to the bar and like talk with other weirdos. Like that happens so rarely now. I know. The places where people can meet and like have these conversations where it's not just shit you already agree with and saying, yeah, I know. Yeah. Where it's you like blowing my mind and being like, what? Yeah. You know, like having an unpleasant fear based convo is like very much outside the human condition. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so universally it's nuts. Yeah. That's fucked, man. That's nuts. Yeah. That's gnarly and scary. Because that might be really what it is. Yeah. It might be. And that's the thing is there's a lot of mites. No one wants to exist in mites anymore. It goes on and on and on and on. And we're just in the soup of it. And there's the possibility that you might live this life an infinite number of times. I hope so. We might have already done this. That'd be cool. You and I might have been already having this dance over and over and over again. God damn. That would be great. And just keep doing it until you get it right. Mm-hmm. I hope so. Like, I really hope that. Recently, I've been thinking, like, if heaven and hells exist, it's on earth. Like, I do think that, like, we were given a really nice thing here, and we have corrupted it and perverted it. But, like, damn, earth is sick. But I also think that that corruption and perversion and even the anger and fear, all those kind of have to exist in order for us to battle against it. And that this is part of what progress is, if there is progress spiritually, is that, like, we need. things to battle again. We need anger. and ignorance in order to realize like oh that's angry and ignorant like gotta rise above that we need these things we create a good and evil and but also it helps us evolve like you have to have these forces of good and evil in order for us to to move further and further away from it and statistically if you look at like work like steven pinker's work and a lot of these people that have like looked at violence and chaos and even education and intelligence over time like we statistically are moving in a good direction it's just no one ever feels like that now because we're never going to be satisfied because we're really sloppy weird messy animals yeah and it's never going to be perfect but so this feeling like it's all just chaos that's also what motivates us to do better it motivates us to change it motivates us to move into a better direction and i think it's imperative and i don't i don't think you can exist as a thinking evolving person with your own thoughts and ideas without that i think all that stuff has to be it has to coincide it has to all be going on together the good the bad the good things the bad things that the evil the beautiful all of it has to exist together well the good and the bad is also like you can't have you know good if you know real pain boy howdy does it feel nice when that's removed yeah so i think that all these things that are happening where it's like people don't want to be uncomfortable right they don't want to have uncomfortable people they don't want to have uncomfortable people they don't want to have unpleasant experiences right so they don't live life so they can be numb to the negative yeah but if you don't live life then how are you going to have the victories right it's so much easier to just like sit and do nothing and be like why aren't i so smart as opposed to like putting yourself out there being vulnerable being hurt like all these human things are are going away yeah out of cowardice uh-huh and i mean i'm sure i just i i really would hope that if ai did take the reins they would realize that all these things that have kept us apart from each other were unvaluable eradicate them and give us back heaven right like if it is god right yeah it might be it might be what happens hopefully i have no idea i have no idea yeah but i'm hopeful all right i'm filled with hope all right dude let's wrap it up i love your book it's really great everyone should get it thanks man read it it's really excellent it's called brute with no e yeah uh why no e it's called brute with no e and it's called brute with no e and it's called brute with no e no e in the end it's the french spelling ah you yeah you francais dude that's right all right it means raw and yeah you read the book come see me live yes thanks for having me joe my pleasure i needed this conversation we all do all right bye everybody you today is brought to you by the number one brand for better sex blue chew blue chew gold is a four in one powerhouse that gets your brain and your body on the same page for sex two ingredients get the blood flow pumping and two ingredients prime your brain for arousal no overthinking just peak performance in as little as 15 minutes look at the stats gold is three times stronger five times faster and eight times longer lasting than old school methods blue chew gold is the real deal right now buy two months of blue chew gold and get the third free with my code rogan you'll also receive free overnight shipping that's promo code rogan head over to blue chew.com for details and important safety information check it out this ad and the products being advertised are intended for a united states audience this episode is brought to you by lifelock scams have gotten smarter because criminals use ai to flood you with fake texts emails and phone calls that are designed to be more convincing than ever one wrong click could put your personal information and your identity at risk so protect yourself with lifelock lifelock helps detect and alert you to threats and if your identity is stolen lifelock will step in to fix it guaranteed or your money back dedicated u.s based identity restoration specialists will work with you until your identity is restored backed by the million dollar protection package with up to three million in coverage for eligible losses and expenses visit lifelock.com and save up to 30 your first year with the promo code jre that's promo code jre or go to lifelock.com jre for 30 off terms apply