Transcript of South Beach Sessions - Ari Shaffir New

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You need to take a minute or anything?

I don't need to take a minute. We've started already. Who's gonna make this weird? Am I gonna make this weird or are you gonna make this weird?

It's one or the other.

He's Ari Shaffir. You probably know him for over 15 years of allowing comics to tell their stories in a way that is really fun. And the New York Times says he's got the best, or one of the best comic specials going right now. The name of it is, and I imagine you spent—

Hear a lot, I'll give you permission.

A lot of time on it. Jew is the name of it. And it's being watched a lot. It's particularly timely.

And thank you for joining us, by the way.

Yeah, thanks for having me. How is it going over, the special? How did you feel about doing it? And how did you come about naming it? Because it is very simply perfect, and I'm surprised it hadn't been taken before.

Yeah, Jew. Well, they make you in these specials pay by the letter. So I decided to cut it down, save myself some cash because I pay for myself. No, 'cause that's what it was. I had other titles like Heretic or something like that, or like, But yeah, it's just, this is all about, it's me, it's about my, I grew up Orthodox Jewish, which is like the Frisbee ones. And yeah, it's all about just growing up like that, but also like filthy. Everyone from the Jewish community's like sort of seen it, but they were like, we're watching it, but we're worried. And then they're like, no, it's actually really like respectful. It's far too filthy, but I don't know why you just say fuck so much when you talk about the Bible, but okay.

It also games the algorithm, right? It gets a whole lot of people in these particular times to find you.

Yeah, I guess so. I didn't do it for this Times. Times came up around me. I saw Kanye West last night. For real. He was playing his new album at the Comedy Store. It was wild.

How does that happen?

He's with Dave Chappelle. Dave Chappelle's like, "Let's go to the Comedy Store." And then he's like sticking his phone in the aux and playing his new—

I was like, "This is nutty." Well, you started at the Comedy Store. We'll get to your special in a second. You started at 15 years old, 16 years old, answering? When did you start answering phones?

No, 24, 25. But right out of college. Right out of University of Maryland, Terps, practice player.

Actually, that would be weird if it was 15 or 16 years old, given that it'd be illegal for you to be in there in a drinking establishment.

No, dude, you're allowed to perform. When I was a door guy there, there were people under 21, and I'd have to escort them off stage and out when they were done. Like, as soon as they were off, I'm like, "Let's go, out, out." Some of my friends too, they started at 19, and I was like, "We gotta go." Yeah, the place ruled. It was the best. It's where I became kind of a man. We were all like crazy idiots. And then the owner was just becoming kind of senile, so she stopped coming, and nobody was running the place. I mean, imagine— you were at ESPN or no?

I don't know if I was then. Back then, I have been at ESPN, yes, many years ago.

But imagine if like you're an employee there and then just there's no boss, and then you guys would all just do what the fuck you wanted. I mean, there would be like definitely full games. I mean, you'd have Jon Bois Studios, really. That's what you'd have. Um, yeah, that's what it was. We're playing— we're in casinos in the back and just like everyone's having sex everywhere. It was just a wild time. Yeah. And then the people that weren't, like the young guys, would like try to spy on the older guys having sex and like peer our head over the bathroom stall to see if we can get a look.

Well, how hard for— how hard was it for you to even come out here, to get out here and start chasing the dream?

Uh, yeah, it's difficult. I mean, okay, so there's some like weirdo jobs, you know, you have one. I call them like outside the norm jobs. HR is not a weirdo job. But yeah, writer, comedy, you have to make it like kind of a leap, right? You have to be like, yeah, I wanna do this other thing. But also like, it wasn't like I had a good job. I just had prospects.

But it's unsafe and I don't know how much support you're gonna get.

My parents were way against it, you know? They're like, it's not really a job you can do. It seems weird now because comedy's so big that it does seem like a job you can do. But back then it was like, you had Ray Romano and then like nobody, you know? And then the next best guy was making like $40 grand a year. So yeah, it was just seemed silly, but I don't know, I didn't wanna work under like halogen lights in an office. That seemed like more dangerous to me.

It is.

Yeah. And it was like, I figured I'd come out here and fail, but at least I could like, if I had like 3 kids and a mortgage and some fucking neighbor that hates me, at least I could be like, well, I tried.

Oh, so you didn't have like— so you didn't have grandiose dreams that you thought you were going to conquer?

No, I was like, seemed fun to do stand-up. I did one open mic in Northern Virginia and then like— and that was it. I had no— I had no reason to tell anybody like, I couldn't do this, that there's— I couldn't, I have no training. Um, but it— I don't know, it seemed fun. And then I— it came and started, I just fell in love with it.

Well, how old were you? So the open mic in Northern in Virginia.

I was probably 23, 24. I started college late because I went to seminary. That's what the special's about, Jew. It's a lot of those days, but, um, it's hard to imagine you.

Yeah, it's hard to imagine you though as profoundly religious.

No, visually you can pull it off. Visually, I think, I think you could do it. But you, as profoundly religious, given both your material and the stuff you've been talking about for 15 years, I can't imagine you leading others spiritually to God.

Well, we're also like, okay, Jews are like a funny people, you know, like we have a sense of humor. So even as religious as we all were, we were still cracking jokes, but just about other things, you know? So yeah, I mean, I wasn't as filthy.

No, but when you talk about seminary, like this requires a devotion.

Yeah.

Take me through the path of how it is you get to there and how you break off from that.

Okay. Okay. Damn, I thought we were talking about sports. This is wildly different.

Oh, so no one told you this was largely biographical? I probably shouldn't have told you that there was no obligation to be funny and it's largely biographical.

I have always an obligation to be funny. I always feel that. And then, and then, um, yeah, let's— all right, sick. Um, it's great to talk to you. We had one dinner once, but like, I've been watching your shit for a long time.

Okay, well, it's great to talk to you as well. Let's— I'm gonna backtrack for everybody here. Last time I saw you, it was in the back of a restaurant that felt a bit like Goodfellas.

They hated us.

Uh, it was a comedian's—

a lot of comedians were at dinner, and you, fairly shockingly, had half a beard and, and half of a haircut. I don't know how long this phase lasted.

It went for about a month. It went for— I did it that day, I think, because I was doing a show. I was like, let me just fuck around for the show. And then I was like, I, I think I was on the way home and some drunk white lady was like, I like that. And I was like, I'm keeping this for a while. Then children, dude, would be like, They'd just point, they'd pull up their mom's skirt, like, "Mama, mom, mom." And so I'm like, "I'm keeping it." Yeah, probably a month. It was so wild. Who'd you say I looked like then? There was some, it wasn't like Nick Foles. You said it was somebody I looked like.

It was brave of you to do it for even a month. It was a terribly bad decision all around.

People would see me from just this side and they would talk like normal. And then I'd turn, they're like, "What the fuck?" What, man? Or I'd have two people talking both this way and they couldn't— neither one could see. They're like, oh, he's just shaved. Oh, he's just fully haired. Um, yeah, those people fucking hated us. And what— Salacuse kept taking pictures and they were like, stop with the pictures. And he's like, all right. He would just sneak them. And then they were like, we're going to throw you out. It really was like a Goodfellas place.

I mean, it was strange because, yeah, you were in the back of, uh, you were in the back of the restaurant. You weren't actually in the restaurant. You were, uh, but so it's a group of comedians and you thought we were going to talk sports because you for a while did a sports podcast or were thinking of doing a—

Punch Drunk Sports. Yeah, yeah, we didn't have any— actually, we did a few out of this studio a long time ago, but yeah, it was just me, Sam Tripoli, and T-Bone just like saying the stuff we would love if ESPN said, you know, what guys' bulges looked like and who they're fucking and shit like that.

The stuff that you discussed as teenagers because you guys never have actually grown up.

Yeah. Did you guys ever have— I don't want to flip it, but did you ever Do you ever have moments during sports analysis where you're like, okay, hey, we got to stop, we're about to start, and then go into what you actually are allowed to talk about?

What I was able to do later in my career, the televised stuff, is zig because the zag had been established. So I didn't actually have to be as respectful as talking sports guy because there was already the established, okay, there's debate culture. Now I can just make fun of all of it and just sort of weave in and out because I didn't think that that was very entertaining, right? Because I love what you guys do. A lot of what we do on South Beach Sessions is talk to the comedians because I like talking to the creators because they view everything as askew. I don't know that the comedians would enjoy the content of ESPN very much. They like the sports, perhaps, like the sports, but not the making of stuff. You could— I imagine you'd be watching this and starting Punch Drunk Sports because you're saying you could do so much more with this. There's so much more space in this playground to fool around. Yeah, I'm stunned that more sports things haven't been made that are funny. Like, you think about— they would think about in the history in the history of all the content that's been made in sports, what you would regard as, man, I thought that was funny what they tried to do there.

Yeah, it was just like comical. Like Berman would do like a funnier way to say something early on. Like, it's a lot of— Yeah, the Boom Goes the Dynamite stuff was like cool, but not like long-form funny.

Yeah, I'm always complaining about sports sort of being a weird cathedral. Like it's way too respectful.

Way too, especially all the athletes now are fans of comedy, so they wouldn't really care. You know, they never would have cared. The LeBron types would have cared because he's fucking a stick in the mud.

I don't know if you've gotten very good at deflecting intimacy the way I have, but you really moved us off the whole story of how it is, how it is that we got biographically from you being extremely religious and almost choosing a life of total devotion that probably wouldn't have suited you into your path as an analyst of sports.

Yeah, you did that nicely.

Thanks, buddy. Yeah. I was in Israel, seminary, kind of like could go rabbi or could go like just devote, devout, I mean. And then came back to America with the Yeshiva University, owners of the longest all-time baseball playoff consecutive losses record. It was just snapped, I think at 107. Jews love baseball, but they cannot put motion on a ball. Yeah, and then I got back, I was in yeshiva university, and I just kind of lost my faith. I was just like, thought about it, I was like, I don't think I believe in God. And then I struggled with it for a while because it's like, you know, the whole life. I mean, it must have been like, not the same, but like, what if you wake up one day, you're like, I think I'm a communist. Then you're like, I can't be here, you know? You're like, I better like either start planting some stuff.

So what was happening though? Was your upbringing and patterns so rigid that you weren't doing a lot of questioning?

Questioning for them? Yeah, you're just doing it without thinking about it. You just, you don't really have a chance to look into it. Like, my friends ask me, like, was it repressive not being able to eat cheeseburgers because cheese and meat together? And I was like, we never even had it as a possibility. It was like, I don't feel like I'm being held down because I can't fly. I didn't, you know, I didn't even think about it. We had our own groups, it was fine. On Saturdays and Friday nights you couldn't use TV, so couldn't see Dukes of Hazzard until it came on reruns. Yeah, you just didn't think twice about it, but then when I looked inwards, like, oh, and then it opened up like, well, it was like a struggle for like 4, 5, 6 months of like, what does this mean to me? And then how do I tell these people in my life that I'm not this anymore? Between the ones that are super religious still and the ones that are not, that are gonna be like, I knew it, come on over. Which I didn't want that either. It was just like an internal struggle.

Talked to a couple of friends and they were like trying to like get me back. And I was like, I'm open to it. Talk me into it. But then it just wasn't inside me. I don't know what your faith in God is, but it just wasn't in there.

I mean, I was raised Catholic, but Orthodox Jew is— it's a different— like when you are that determined, devoted, rigid, I guess keeping life small, right? Like you're, you're with just your people all the time. Like, I don't know that there's much like it. Like, I don't— Catholicism has its rigidities, but it's not quite this.

No, it's not that. It's just like, right, go to church, but it's not like, watch what you eat outside of Lent. Yeah, you have to wait 6 hours after meat before you can have pizza.

But this seems particularly ill-suited to just the things that you are in terms of rambunctious and free. And, and it doesn't mean you're not disciplined in many ways. Your work ethic shows everywhere.

Except for the Being on time today. Email sitting in my thing just going, obviously here's your schedule, I should open it.

You've been lamenting your lateness here for minutes today.

Dude, I'm sorry, I apologize. I really am feeling bad about it. They call me like, are you almost there? I'm like, where? I mean, thank God it was an 8-minute walk.

So this is you emerging, this is emerging, this is you emerging for a morning in Los Angeles.

Yeah, yeah, haven't even had my mata yet. Yeah, I think I'm probably rebelling, to be honest, or making up for lost time. I was like, I do, I started doing way more drugs than a normal 35, 40-year-old would do. Fun drugs, you know, but obviously I was making up for lost time. Fucking way more than I, you know, should have. Not that it was bad, but it was just like, haven't you worked through this yet? No, I'm just getting started. This is really fun.

Yeah, you're still a child in many ways, right?

Yeah, exactly, yeah.

You've just not used any of these muscles.

Yeah. And then you get into the comedy world and The Comedy Store is such a melting pot of these different backgrounds. You had like people like me and then people who grew up with like prison life, you know, and then like abusive households and then like a loving family man. And then like we're all just together putting all that stuff behind me. Friend, good friends of the Palestinians as I lived in Israel for years and like, yeah, well, Everybody's an unlikely friend and we all just love comedy, you know?

How did your upbringing not become a special until this late in life, given how unusual an upbringing it is?

Dude, you should do a podcast. You got good questions. I couldn't handle it. I didn't know how to do it right. I tried in the beginning. Everything came off hateful. So I had to work out my own shit first. Um, kind of like Los Angeles, actually. I lived here for 12 years, lived right next to Pink Dot down the street, um, so I could walk to the Comedy Store because I wasn't allowed to park there because it wasn't like a regular yet. And, um, and, uh, when I left, I started seeing how shitty LA was, the parts that were shitty, how everyone's focused on money over art. You know, you ask somebody how a movie was, and here they tell you the box office. It's like, what? You guys are supposed to be acting and directing, and you're talking about money first, always.

You have a real disdain for acting.

I hate them. They're the worst people in the world. They're so self-absorbed, and they think that you can't see through it. They think they're not being phony. They go, I still talk to normal people. And we're like, normal people don't say normal people. They just say people. What the fuck are you talking about? That was your brag? Oh, oh, goddamn. If you show up with a beat-up Toyota, like, ew, like, what the fuck? It's a reliable car. Yeah, I do.

Is that why you got out of acting? Is that—

did you get away from the people?

And I didn't— I— it got— it would get in the way of stand-up sometimes. I booked commercials, like, you gotta— I'm like, shit, well, I got a gig. And then when people start coming to see me and not just like a gig I was on, then I'm like, I can't let people down on for like for a callback for something. And then also I did a movie that I was really embarrassed about with, uh, Gad, that super hot chick. What's her name? The Israeli one.

You, you should know. You did the movie. I don't know even what you're talking about.

It was the guy from Mad Men, the main dude from Mad Men.

You're not—

you're gonna—

I don't know the movie.

Jon Hamm. Keeping Up with the Joneses was what it was called. And it was like a spy movie, that super hot Israeli model chick and Galifianakis. And I read the script and I'm like, seems bad, but Galifianakis and John Hamm, I guess it'll be. And then I got there, I'm like, no, this blows. And then I was embarrassed to be a part of it. And everyone's like, wow, cool, Zach Galifianakis. I'm like, it's not cool. He knew it was sucky.

They all knew.

This blew, what are we doing? Yeah. Why are we making something? Just got greenlit. And then stand-up is just me and a mic, so it's like, it's so free.

I mean, it's just you and your talent. That's, uh, it's vulnerable, it's brave. Uh, I— it's something that I actually, uh, admire that people choose it, uh, but it seems like a reckless choice. Like, it seems, it seems like a really hard thing to do successfully.

Yeah, I mean, you got to be able throw out sports quotes while a fucking nerd is telling you at the end of a show, like, this is what you got wrong.

Comedians are always good about saying it's not quite as brave as you think it is because, you know, it's brave because you bombed a lot and it sucked.

But also, like, the other— I saw my friends moving into their adult lives and I was like, I want to put that on hold as long as possible. So it really was like, let's stay at this festival a little longer before we go back to work on Monday. You know, it was just a hard leap of like, okay, I'm not— I got— almost got a job designing the website for Discovery Channel. I would have stayed in DC area if I got that job because it was like somewhat creative and not done this. But then I didn't, so I was like, yeah, I'm out.

So when you're in— is it— take me back to your life.

And it is too much. So, so it was, it was losing my religion, coming to this, starting to talk about it, but I was like, I don't have— I have too much hatred. And then I had to eventually get over that hatred. Oh, this is what I was gonna say, same as LA. I love LA now. I miss the stuff that I miss about it. Being broke here is a great place to be broke. Those times in my life, it was just like— it was just the— anything was possible. Going up on hikes, going to Runyon Canyon, seeing women that you didn't even know could exist outside of a magazine, just casually hiking. Um, yeah, the beaches, the burrito, everything was just so fun. Get into ecstasy, it was just like, this is a wild party. Um, and I miss those times, and I'll see people this week and have those times. So same thing with like the religion. I eventually got back to a place where I'm like, no, this actually was really helpful to my life, gave me structure. I don't think, I don't think about it now. It's just, I don't know.

Yeah, if you're Catholic, you're probably the same way. If you go into the supermarket and you see 60-year-old woman behind you, you just naturally like, after you, ma'am. You don't say ma'am, you know, but you just do it. You're not thinking, this is what I should do. It's just right. You just do it.

Well, so what was your plan? You didn't have a plan. You, uh, well, just 6 months you decide, I don't believe in God anymore, so what I've been doing for a long time is wasting my time.

So I switched to University of Maryland. There's no reason to go to a split curriculum, religious and And, you know, math, English stuff. Why waste that money? Became a Terp and then became a practice player for the University of Maryland women's basketball team.

Oh, did you? Got your ass kicked?

Yeah, dude, those bitches.

Yeah, they're good.

Oh my God. And they're all— they're like— they use them to like cut at you.

Mm-hmm.

Me and Paige Bukers, we share that in common. You guys, you're—

but you're just— you're a guinea pig.

That's all.

That's all that the guys who think they're going to beat the women, you go right Basketball?

Yeah, you go light on them right away because it's a girl, and then they fucking elbow check you to the neck, and you're like, okay. And then you'd—

then we'd start playing hard, and then you'd start losing.

Yeah, that we'd go— I— we would go hard though. We would like push them and stuff. They were better than me. I figured out that where I would have been, I would have been first off the bench.

Really? Yeah, you would have been able to play women's basketball first off the bench, a good 6.

Not now, not now. We're talking about 21 years old.

You feel like you would have been a good 6th woman?

The women all said it. We all had these discussions. They were like, you're definitely not a starter. Yeah, you're probably first off the bench. And then the girl Michelle that was first off the bench, she goes, yeah, you'd probably get in right before me. I begged Coach Rella to put me in one time. I had long hair. I'm like, buddy, I'll paint my nails.

What was Maryland?

Was Maryland a 500 team? Was Maryland one of the good ones back then?

The women's team then was, it was like right around last of ranked or first of honorable mention. In the AP. Okay, so we had a good team. ACC also was dominant, but we lived in the shadow of the men's. But yeah, they would yell at me too if I missed layups. Like, gotta win the fucking game, man! Yeah, the fuck you doing? Like, I missed, I wasn't fucking around. So yeah, I went to Maryland for 3 years and I graduated. And now religion's done, lost my virginity now. You know, had plenty of non-kosher food, saw the joy and probably had sex with 2 women, saw the joy in bacon. And then just like, what's this world? And now it's like, yeah, it's like I'm brand new born.

Could you have started that sentence or could you have ended that sentence a little early just by saying saw the joy period? Just like what I don't imagine the life that you were living before that probably had so much discipline in it, suffering, repression in it. I don't know how much joy there was.

There was tons of joy. No, I saw the joy in it. In addition to what I had before, there's joy in another thing too. So it was like, I never considered what the outside world was like. Like, why go there? But then I was like, oh, it's actually really cool out here. I was scared of it at first. People like you, Christians, ugh, what? What are they gonna do? They're gonna steal your soul. But yeah, then I was like, this is so fun. Flipping on and off lights on the Sabbath and just like, oh, I can do anything.

So you were always joyful though, because I just, I think of the regimen of it as being—

Yeah, but it was a step. Standard. I mean, if you're in— if you've never had any schooling and you have to hear about somebody who's in high school, they're like, what do you mean, they force you to sit in the chair for 45 minutes? One? Like, no, 6 different times. And you're like, that's crazy. Didn't you hate it? And you're like, it's just a standard. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. Well, I never thought of hating school because you didn't really have a choice, right?

You didn't have a— exactly. It was just what you do. But then getting out, summer breaks, we're like, well, there's more. Last part's not a best metaphor. But yeah, I really enjoyed it, and then I was like, now I'm out, I'm on my own, but I don't wanna go into, I'm still a boy. I didn't wanna do the life life. So I'm like, let me take a chance. But I was still dealing with coming out of the religion, probably for 5 years after.

What does that mean?

Still shaking it, still like shaking that stuff off me. Like, let me think, like, so I just got back from traveling through South America for like 8 months with a backpack and just got back a few months ago. But like, my friend came, I was in Austin, he came to go on a hike and I was brushing my teeth and I just came out laughing and he's like, what? I'm like, I'd still like doing with the tap water to me is still like, what am I doing? Brush my teeth with tap water? You know, so I still had that for, for like religion. We're like, oh my God, you know, like, I can't believe I'm doing— we drank till 3:00 a.m. That was crazy.

Does it— is there any comp? And I'm sure you cover some of this in the special, but are you talking about for 4 or 5 years shaking off the cobwebs of what would be the equivalent of brainwashing?

That— I get why you're going with to these places. It wasn't that it was just religion. It—

the reason I'm doing it is just seminary work in general. I'm not even making it— I'm not even making it Orthodox. I'm just— anyone studying for a priesthood, for, for, for monk, any kind of religion. It's not specific. Yeah, I just think of it as being really disciplined and, and having so many rules that wouldn't fit with someone like you.

Right. That's why I push back so hard, I guess, where I'm like, I'm free and I love freedom so much. Like so much. I'm a more than any— I'm a freedom guy where I'm like, don't hold me back. Don't tell me what to do. I hate it more than most people I know.

Same.

Yeah. And then when you have it, some real freedom, like to like be able to do whatever today, even on one day, like this feels invigorating. But it wasn't brainwashing. It was just— it just has negative connotations.

It does. But so too does being ardently religious and then being atheist. Like the swing there is—

So if I would like read a new portion from, from the Talmud or something like that and figure something out, like get, get to like the heart of an argument that the old, old like leaders would have, and you like figure something— it was like, I did! Oh my God, I figured something out! It was like the same kind of joy, just transferred.

The reason I— the reason you're right that brainwashing has a negative connotation, but the reason that I'm talking to you about it in the, in the in the space of freedom is because you've gone from being devoutly religious and unfree to, to not believing in God at all. And so your life view or whatever it is you were thinking at one time is totally the opposite of how you were living.

Yeah. Yeah. If I went from now to there, they'd have to brainwash me to give up everything, to say on Friday night you got to stop. You can't start again until Saturday night. I'd be like, no way, you're not allowed to tell me that. They would have to brainwash you to get me back there. But it's just part of the growth process of a person, I guess, to see what you can do. You know, all the people that like, you know, left— like Che Guevara, he was supposed to be a doctor, and then he was like, I don't want that. And he'd have to like tell his dad, I'm not gonna be a doctor anymore, I'm gonna go get murdered by the US military in Bolivia. Yeah, I know, I just like, I just don't look at it like, like that, like it was repressive. It just wasn't.

It was your normal.

Yeah, it was my normal. I heard a Coolio, um, interview on, on Jon Stewart. He used to have an old show on UPN before The Daily Show, and he was on there, and, and Jon Stewart made his self-deprecating joke about how Coolio had to deal with drive-bys at school, and, and Jon Stewart was like, I just had to deal with like the bully taking my lunch money. But then Coolio was like, no, but dude, it— in a child's mind, that me avoiding the drive-by and you avoiding the bully for your lunch money operate— had the same place in our heads, had the same like weight to each of us. Obviously the drive-by is worse, but we were both— our level of fear was the same. And I think it's like that with really— you don't know what you're missing. So it's like the good and the bad is just different.

What was the first questioning like for you when you're like, I'm doing the wrong thing, I don't believe in God. How does that sneak up on you?

I looked inward for the first time. I was just doing it because you're supposed to do it. Che's probably a good example. Like, he probably looked inward and was like, oh, there's suffering here. Why are we allowing indigenous people to not have full rights? But, you know, you have to like see it, like clear. And I kind of looked in and I was like, there was just nothing there. I was just doing it because you're supposed to do it. And I'd get joy out of praying at the Western Wall on a, you know, on a full moon or something, and— or new moon. But like, uh, I just wasn't— I was doing it because it was— I guess it was getting me like attaboys from my rabbis. I never— you know, if I could do well at math, but like, why are you taking math? I'm like, I don't know, I actually don't I don't want to and won't ever use it. Maybe I should stop doing math, you know?

Well, that's the reason I chose writing. Just some people told me I was good at something, right?

And so you dropped the other shit and you're like, you didn't like the other stuff? I'm like, I guess I didn't. I never thought about it. I just had to do it. So like, so like, I looked inwards, there was nothing there, and then I'm like, well, don't make any rash decisions. 'cause once you're out, it's gonna be tough to get back in.

And you've invested a lot at this point, right?

Yeah, and I'd alienate my parents and my friends. I had to literally switch colleges 'cause it was a religious college. So it was like, I couldn't be there and not. Last semester I would lock myself in my dorm room on Friday night because if they knew I was there, they'd make me go to services. They'd be like, they'd have questions. And so I'd lock myself in my dorm room. I'd watch Star Trek: The Next Generation on a one-volume on a TV VCR, like right up next to it. And then I'd piss in a thermos and put it in the mini fridge because if I left, they would know I was there. And then on Saturday night, I'd be like, "Just got back!" And I'd empty my piss stuff without them knowing.

So you're legitimately hiding.

Hiding, yeah.

And feeling good, rebellious, dangerous while you're watching Star Trek?

Good question. Not rebellious, just bored. And so, and so I already don't believe in this, so there's no reason not to use electricity on the Sabbath anymore. Oh yeah, you can't use electricity on the Sabbath. So TV was out. It's, it's pretty wild. That's what the special is mostly about. What, what the religion is, what my version of the religion is.

Uh, yeah, but you're even, you're even as I'm sitting here not having lived it and saying, well, it seems like there's rigid and suffering and you're like, not the way I looked at it. Not, it was so normal to you.

So normal. But it wasn't like— okay, so, so you probably were near-ish the same age, I don't know, but like you're probably younger than me, but like, um, I'm 57. Nice, bro, you look great. Getting laid keeps you young. Um, all respect to your wife, um, but you're doing a great job. Look at him. Um, um, so you would watch Dukes of Hazzard on Saturdays, I think, or Friday nights.

There were a lot of people in America watching Dukes of Hazzard on Friday nights. But yes, I just told this story the other day and the young people around me were laughing and I'm like, you don't understand that like 1 in 4 people in the United States were watching Dukes of Hazzard at that time on Friday night. That was an unbelievable magic box produced things that, uh, the General Lee was not— I wasn't thinking about the civil rights movement.

No, right, not at all.

Daisy Dukes.

Yeah, and everybody was watching that.

It was crazy. She would stop people just by being hot on the road. What a ridiculous setup. Oh, I'll stop the bad guys, bitch, just going, I have a flat tire. And you're like, oh yeah, she would always flirt with the same cop. The same cop would be like, at some point, like, bitch, get away. You keep getting me in trouble. You've never put out once. That. And then like Saturday mornings was wrestling. Once a month, WWF— always WWF, fuck the E— would be on Saturday nights. That was the only time I could watch it. But I didn't know I was missing that. So instead of watching wrestling, I'd go hang out with my friends. We play basketball, or we play catch, we play baseball or something, or, or tag football. It was just a different thing. We had fun, just we did it differently, you know. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you might like skydiving, but you're like, it's not here right now, so let's go get a drink, you know? So yeah, I can recognize it looks more oppressive than it was. I don't know how else to say it.

And so how do you go to Virginia? How do you make the transition from all of that to choosing this as a career?

Well, so a lot of it was getting associated with pieces of shit degenerates. You know, even when I got to New York, it was Sam and Mark, uh, uh, Mackie, Hanley, Patel, and just boozers. Late night at the Cellar. And I was like, oh, I was never a boozer. I was broke in LA. I just started coming into some money, but I didn't really— it wasn't part of me, like, you can go out and drink. And they would just start with bullet rye on the rocks, and I was like, okay. And then it was like, they taught me how to be a cool like, Comic-Con New York. Start with that and then go off from there. I mean, List was already sober, just— and Attell wasn't sober yet, so we got after it. Big Jay was there too, and Metzger, but it was like a cool crew. Michelle Wolf, she would throw them down, and then we'd all get into fights and arguments. It was just so fun. But like, I didn't know that was possible because LA would end earlier because we didn't have subway here, so we had more like stay where you are.

When did you realize it could be a career?

Probably like 7 or 8 years in. I booked a commercial, a Kia commercial, which like— I was doing temp work. It was an obsession first. First it was just like, I just want to try it once. But I was like, I'll say I'll be a writer because I took writing classes in Maryland. So I'm like, I could at least tell people I want to be a writer. I'm trained, you know, not great, but a little bit. I couldn't tell them I want to be a comic. They're like, it is that, like, who gave you permission to do that? You're not— you know, no one normal does that. No one we've ever heard of has done that. So I kept it to myself. But that's why I immediately liked that more. So the writing just kind of faded. No offense.

And, uh, it's faded for me too. It's faded. I'm doing this nonsense, all the cotton candy now. It's been a long time. Other than other than notes to my wife, I'm not doing very much writing anymore.

I actually applied to be a sportswriter for like local newspapers, like the local that comes free on your, on your stoop. Yeah, I was like, can I please write columns for you about local sports? And they were like, no.

So you want it—

it sounds like you wanted to be a sports—

I'm jealous. Oh yeah, you're— you are where— if I could do it over again, I'd be you. Yeah, I'd be living in South Beach.

I didn't realize though that your sports inclinations were so strong that to laugh at sports would be even more magical perhaps than what you're presently doing.

If you could be like a comic in this space, especially because it's less competitive where the funny is, like, like there just aren't a lot of funny people in sports. It's weird to me, honestly.

It's weird.

Honestly weird to me.

You have fucking whatever his name is that's now on ESPN that always has— I'm so bad with names.

Are we talking about McAfee?

Yeah.

McAfee. Yeah, he's funny. But more— he's not as funny as a comic. He's still funny.

There's no one in sports as funny as a comic. Yeah, like, there's— but I'm surprised there are not more comics working in sports because it's really cheap programming to make sports programming. And I'm surprised the funny people haven't come over here and realized that there is a market inefficiency that they can exploit.

Oh, to take callers and call them idiots and stuff like that, that would be so fun.

So here's the thing, right? When— back when I used to be a writer, I got to— I get to 30 years old, okay, and I'm, and I'm I'm writing some things now that I've done before, and it's feeling a little repetitive because I've been doing it for 10 years. And I'm like, how do I change my career? What can I do that is within this realm but not? And I'm listening to sports radio and I'm like, these people are outsourcing their creative playgrounds to Bill on a mobile? Like, they're not even doing it themselves. They're just calling, they're taking a call and allowing the caller to make the content for them by saying, I think this Mets pitcher stinks or whatever. And I'm like, well, I can do better than that. I can do— I can climb over that bar.

Yeah. Yeah, right. It really is. You're just like asking them to fill your time for you.

To do your job for you.

Good point, John from Monarchy.

Imagine being on the stage at the Comedy Store and saying, here, you do it.

He's got to bid.

He's got to bid.

It's like, that was a good one. Who else? Who else has a good point? That was a good— I like the way you did that. That was awesome. I almost have a joke I wanna say. You're right, what a loser. You should go fire back at those people, call them morons, or say like, dude, they know so much more than you do. Just have some fun. Yeah, what a weird thing. I have a travel podcast, You'd Be Trippin', and my travel friend Rolf Potts, he's a writer, like a respected writer, and he goes, please start doing something. There's no humor in this field. It's all just, I was arrested in a Russian prison, or it was the most enlightening moment moment. We need some degenerates. Sports could use some too.

Yeah, the, the— I was going to ask you whether you— the trip you just came back from was part of your travel, uh, podcast.

I'll talk about it on there, but it's really just kind of obsessed with going places. But dude, I— okay, sports and travel together. Went to a Oaxaca Guerreros baseball playoff game. I was missing the Yankees, and I was out there, and I was like, oh, Oaxaca, I'm about to get to there. They have baseball, major Liga de Mexicano de Béisbol, or whatever it is, LMB, I think. And I was like, oh, season just ended. And then I'm like, they're in, they're a 2-seed. So I just like went to every playoff game. They became my team.

You just got a quick fix and quick international baseball fix intravenously?

Yeah, everybody took me in. The concessions are wild. There's no hot dogs. It's like 12-year-olds selling beers out of their hands to people. Burrito plates just coming by. There's not even a place to go for concessions, they come to you. Yeah, when you hit a home run there, they put a giant Ganesh elephant head on you and then they knight you with a sword or a baseball bat, I couldn't see from that far. It was so fucking fun. Went to some soccer games, went to some rivalry games.

Why the need to travel? What is it about seeing the world?

It's two parts. Part of it's the freedom. Is getting away from the responsibilities of— even though I'm a comic, it's still like shit pulling at me. Special. I just did this TV show called The End. It's a storytelling show. You can get on AriShaffir.com right now. Mark Norman's in there. I think you know him.

Yes.

Right? Yeah. Shane Gillis, people like that. But like, it was like, oh, you got to edit it and do stuff and return emails about it. Do this, you know, the sound and the color correction.

Well, it's called The End. It's part of, uh, the YMH family, and it seems to me, from what I can tell, 15 years of punctuation on what you've been doing since 2010 in terms of giving comics the space to tell stories, right? Like, it's a, it's a 15-year show. It's had different names, right? But this is the— I don't know whether you called it The End because this is the punctuation on those 15 years, play on a title of storytelling.

You know, the end and the end of this. Yeah, so there's a lot of responsibility to it, but I mean, it's stuff I want to do. I want to give these opportunities to these comics to be seen, you know, and let them tell their cool stories in a space that allows it. All we had before was the, like, late night stuff, and it's 5 minutes. They go over your jokes, they go, take this one out, take that one out. And I was like, that's not really what we do. So I was able to, like, start a show where I'm like— and like, how long should I do? I'm like, between 5 and 15. Or if it's longer, go longer. Like, if you got a story that lasts 25, then, then, then do that.

You're basically doing what the internet did to newspapers.

Exactly.

Where you're saying, here, there's no space limit.

Why do you have to fit this into the Washington Post in this space? Just whatever, man. If it requires investigative journalism and it's a 10-page thing, then, you know, do that. And if it's just like a one, you know, if there's a one-minute story, that's fine too. Don't milk it for no reason. Yeah, I sent these comics for him. People responded to it, like the realness of it.

But is this what you're proudest of? Like, if you look at the thing that gives you the most fulfillment as an achievement?

Yeah, I'd say it's those two things we talked about, to be honest. I think I've hit it a couple— you know, I'm sure you've got these. I haven't read— I really haven't read any of your stuff. I've seen you from TV mostly, but I haven't read any comics.

It's before your time. I was doing most of my writing 20 years ago.

Okay, you would have no reason to do—

to be reading any of it or any way to read it, right?

Like, how would I even—

you would have been reading it in ESPN The Magazine. I bet you, you have read some of the things without knowing that I had written them.

But you must get— you know which one's a better piece of yours and which one's worse, right? It's not to say anything's bad, but like, you could tell when, like, yeah, if you had to rank them all, you could. And there's probably a couple where you're like, I hit that one out of the park, I'm really proud of that one. Puring it, you know, hitting a driver, you know, 310 right to the front of the green. It's like pure, and you want to look around like, anybody see that? So it does like, nice shot, like, thank you.

That's where people get addicted to golf, the one time you hit that shot.

Where you can hit a 23-foot rolling like putt and no one in the world could do better than you. Yeah, they could equal you, but no one could do better.

That's correct.

Um, Yeah, it's sick. So there's a couple things where I've pured, you know, in, in a 20-something year career. It's that special Jew and that storytelling show.

Oh wow, what a great feeling to have your last special be the one that feels like that. That's— I mean, that, that is, uh, yeah.

Well, it was 2 ago. This one actually I did it on YouTube, and then Netflix was like, can we put it on? With everything I think going on, they're like, like, let's— hey, let's put that on our platform. But yeah, I really feel like I was like, all right, I can kind of hang my hat on that. A lot more work went into those, you know. And so everything else could be good, but you know, one of those that are like lifers, you don't get many.

What is it about Jew that you like so much? Because from the way you've just described it here, it sounds like the most adult version of you who who has grown into doing all the work on himself that can now look back on his life and find the funny without the hate, which is like, that's a, to do it without resentment is a gift. Like it's a healing property for you to be able to have that as your art where you look back on your life and you're like, oh, I made it funny. I was able to make something that could have been darker funny.

Yeah. So it was a two-part thing. It was, It was, I went to the Edinburgh Comedy Festival. It's the biggest comedy fest, fringe festival in the world. And it's 1,500 comics each performing an hour every night all over the city. The city doubles in size for the month of August. And I went once, I brought my storytelling show there once, but then I started looking at all these other comics doing these like hour-long theme hours. It's like all one, it's about one thing. It was either a plot or all on one subject. One guy, Finn Taylor, did one about the MeToo movement called When Heresy Met Sally that was just like so good. Covered like South Park covered every part of it in an hour. I'm like, goddamn. So there's some people were bad, but some people were doing really interesting stuff. And I was like, I want to do something like that. But their problem was that they got serious for like 15 fucking minutes in the middle when they lost their dad's respect or, you know, it was that they had that line that The Moth always has like, that's not just when I lost my watch, it's, it's when I lost my innocence.

And you're like, dude, fuck off, be a comic. So I was like, I want to spite them. And they all thought they were better than American comics, which is ridiculous. What are you talking about? We're clearly the best ones. But they had us beat on these theme hours. That's the only thing they got us beat on. And they would look down on us for that. And I'm like, if you're gonna attack on one point, it's like if a fighter, it's like, well, I can— you can beat me standing up, so I'll take I'll take you down. Or, you know, if like I can't, you know, post up against you guys because you got 3 centers, like, well, let me start drafting some Steph Curry types, and that's the only way I can beat you.

I love that you're trying to speak my language. You didn't— you went fighting, that didn't work, so you went basketball so that I can understand what you're saying.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. If you don't— if you can't do what it takes here, I'll hurt you. If you can't do what it takes to actually win a title, go fucking pay some other guy to come join your team when he didn't deserve to be. Two other guys, excuse me, no offense Chris Bosh, didn't mean to fucking ignore you on that one. Cheap fucking title, ruined the game, the fucking superteam.

That's my team!

Fuck you! Fuck what you did!

That's my city!

I know, and it sucked! It sucked for the rest of the country to just go, oh, let's pick up the best players.

Okay, so now you like Shaquille O'Neal, you like what that is better?

I don't like that either! You guys started that shit! You'd play for the team you got drafted for. Wait, what were we talking about?

You got drafted by the Orthodox Jews. You needed to play for them.

That's a damn good point, Levitar. You make a good fucking point. What were we saying? Damn, I got sidetracked. I got so worked up over those fucking LeBron's idiot announcement.

You were trying to speak my language on fighting analogies and basketball analogies in order to explain to me the right way to do things. Things, the proper way to do things.

Um, what was it? The proper way to do things?

It doesn't matter.

The, uh, more about to go somewhere. What were you asking?

Uh, I, I wanted to go back to, uh, how all of this went over in your family.

I know, I know. Okay, hold on. So I wanted to spite these fuckers, so I wanted to do an hour that was like funny the whole way through and informational. And so one of the informational ones, but then also be personal. And every time I was writing it, I I was like, where would these Edinburgh comics attack me? Where would they go, sure, sure, sure, but— and there was one, they're like, there's nothing personal here. What about yours? This is about Judaism. What about you? You know? And it was like, oh, good point, in my head, you know? So I'd like do that. How was it coming out of the religion? Was that different? So I'd have to write stuff like that in. And then I just hear questions like, what's the brown Jews and the white Jews? I'm like, good question, I'll cover that. What's code? You know, so—

So you're being inspired, whether it's South Park, I'm going to attack this from every angle so much work that it's going to be unassailable, that when the work is done, there's not going to be anything missing from it. And I'm going to do it so thoroughly that you also can't say that you're better than American Comics.

And then I had to do what I've never done, is do research. Because I can be— I can make fun of your shirt, you know, and I'm not wrong or right, it's an opinion. I can do whatever jokes I want. If somebody's like, no, that's a Calvin Klein shirt, like, well, I didn't like it, I'm allowed to say it. But this was like, I couldn't be wrong. I couldn't say something was it. So I actually, I went back to my seminary. I took a trip to Israel and back and I studied with my old rabbi a piece on Noah and the flood so I could like get the right stuff in there.

Um, you wanted it to be unassailable.

Yeah. And then every once in a while you'll have in New York, you'll have, I call them frontier Jews. They're like Orthodox or Hasidic Jews that will come out to comedy shows because they're not technically not allowed. It just seems like untoward for that life. But you're allowed— you're allowed— you're allowed to be like, no, they can say those words, I'm not gonna. And I'd see them, but I didn't want to offend them. So if I was doing a joke about like Orthodox Jewish women in their wigs, I keep like an eye, just an eye on them to make sure they're having a good time so it's not tacky. Same thing we do with Black people in the audience. If you're doing something about Black people, you always have like an eye to— if there's one Black couple, like if they're not having a good time about it, I got to switch up the writing.

The— it's funny that you should say some of this because the people that I admire most professionally, someone like, for example, Mike Schur, who does Parks and Rec and The Office and everything else, and then the pandemic strikes and he needs to put the creativity somewhere. So he ends up writing a book on the side about all of philosophy, all the philosophers that have ever existed. He's going to try it all and try and make it funny. He's tackling the hardest thing because it's the hardest thing. What you've just described is a much harder version of comedy, what you decided to challenge yourself with, which is, I'm going to do this on this subject, a subject that's got a lot of history in it. And I'm going to make an hour that speaks to people.

That's respectful, but that also funny, like New York club funny, you know? So it's gonna be filthy, which is like, that doesn't seem to go, you know, talking about like Adam and fucking chickens.

Well, and filthy, and I've gotta go back to Israel in order to actually study it. Buddy to make this the right kind of filthy.

And then so I toured it everywhere I could, places where there are Jews, places where there's never been a single Jew. You know, Reykjavik, Perth, Australia, where they're like, I don't even know what you're talking about. So if the joke would work in New York or Chicago, people are like, no, I see them, so I kinda get what the Sabbath is. But there they're like, I don't know any of this. So I had to make it work for them too. And I had in Denmark, some rabbi showed up with some of his adult students, and he was like, that was funny, but just so you know, like, you got a fact wrong. And I was like, no, really? No, I mean, do whatever you want. I'm like, no, no, I actually need to hear this. I had a big joke about Noah's— I thought Noah's wife had 40 children. I don't know where I got that in my head. And I had this, this long crushing bit about how gaping her pussy must be at this point. Sorry, Dan, go with me. And I mean, at 36 kids, can you even carry a baby? But you got a fact, or does it come out?

Yeah. And I got— so I had to lose the whole thing. It was such destruction. And but I had to, I had to drop it.

A bit that took a bit that was how long and took you how long to form. Yeah, it was undone by a, by a fact that you can't get wrong.

Yeah, probably 2 full years of writing it, and it was 7-minute bit of just bow, bow, boom, laughs. It was like my closer. And then it was like, oh no. Yeah, that was like, fuck, back to the writing. Well, I got—

what a horrible— oh, what a horrible thing to learn. Like, you're not gonna have a lot that feels worse in your stomach than that.

Like, no, no, no, no, no. And I went back to the text and I'm like, wait, wait, wait, I know, I know this from somewhere. And then, uh-uh.

That's worse than like writing something and then just losing it, have your computer eat it.

Yeah, right.

Like that's what you're just describing is the worst.

'Cause I still had it, so I could do it. It's like quitting smoking and then you're like finding a cigarette.

But you can't do it if the fact is wrong, right?

Because what you're, the subject matter you're choosing has to be unassailable. You have to have your facts right on what it is that you're doing.

Yeah, it was—

'Cause comedy, you can make up anything.

Any of the stories that you've been telling on your platform for 15 years, half of them are made up.

No, those are real. Those are real, but there's details that aren't. I showed up late and Dan looked at me like I was Clint Eastwood coming into a bar. That's a joke. It's not true or not true, you know? So that part's the flourish, but they're supposed to be real stories. They're supposed to be actual stories.

But they don't have to. But a lot of comedy doesn't have to be. Right, right. We have to believe that you're credible, but you're watching a lot of comedy that is not real, that people are telling stories that aren't in any way true.

If anybody ever did this, I would take them and bash their head. You would be cowardly and walk away, but it's a funnier bit to say what you would do.

So what happened with your family? If you're done with this portion of the story, you don't have to be done with this portion of the story. You haven't gotten to your climax.

They like that. I mean, when I had a talk with them about— and this is covered in the special— I had to tell them, so it felt kind of like coming out of the closet. I don't know, there's no societal problems, but in my little society, it was similar. It was like, what the fuck? What are you talking about? About and risk like never talking to them again. And I, you know, I really like my family, so I didn't want that. Dad was very mad. It's all fine now, so it's tough to even call up the pain of that, of those moments of like just becoming an adult, 20, 21. So you, you know, with our upbringing, we're children, you know know, and having to be— I might be alone for the rest of my life now because I might have lost all connection. There was a lot of that when I got away from my community. I didn't realize how tight-knit it was. It was like, I don't have anyone. I don't have any support group.

Um, there was no one supporting you on this, right?

Emotionally, there wasn't. So I didn't know who to go to for anything. It's like when you break up with your chick, the one person you go to to event would be your chick.

Oh, but it's bigger. It's bigger than that though. You are denying a relationship with God.

Like, you're running the risk of becoming an podcast, never mind support.

Your dad's a Holocaust survivor.

Yeah. And so it was like, it's like, what the fuck? Without saying it like that, what the fuck's wrong with you? You're like kind of a piece of shit. That's not the way he said it, but, uh, he did say like, even a dog believes in God, so you're probably lower than a dog. Um, and I was like, I don't know, gotta check your math on that. But like, I don't know who researched that. What are you talking about? There's been no studies on that.

What?

I don't know anything. We still put fluoride on the wall.

I don't know any deeply religious dogs.

Yeah, yeah. But again, he's totally cool. There was a time, like 4 or 5 years later, we were skiing, he goes, you can get a cheeseburger if you want, like, don't worry about it. But I'm like, I know, I won't be disrespectful, but like, but that meant a lot to be like—

but what was that period like? What was that like?

How much pain were you in?

How alone were you?

It was tough. But then I switched to Maryland the next semester, so I had that whole semester. I had to tell them why I'm switching. They were paying for college, you know, or paying for whatever the grants and the student loans didn't pay for, and the summer jobs. Goddamn, remember how much money it took just to go to a state college? You got out of there with so much debt. Anyway, yeah, I was pretty alone, but then found in a university, a big quad-type university, very friendly people, like at every quad-type university. And then it was like new friends, new attitudes.

New people, different people, different, much different from whatever it is just freer.

Yeah, my GPA in high school was so bad that, um, I had one year of yeshiva university but didn't count towards transfer, and I had two years off for seminary, which also didn't help my resume. So they waitlisted me to a state school, to a not even that great state school. And by the time I get in, all the dorms are full. So they said there's one dorm open, there's the international dorm, Dorchester, and if you write an essay about how you're linked to international— I lived in Israel for two years. I was like, okay, Okay, I got in there, but then I met very interesting people. A Liberian refugee, you know, Brazilian lady, my friend who's the son of the old president of Trinidad.

Oh wow, so you start seeing the world basically.

Yeah, and then they kind of broadened my scope of just this insular community inside, you know, Maryland to like, whoa, there's a ton out there.

So how long did you feel like you were alone or drifting or not supported?

Thing because I needed to replace God with something. The worship and stuff— I didn't have a direction. So, okay, I don't believe in God, I'm okay with it, but where am I going in the world then? And then I got to LA, I found comedy. That's probably the closest where I'm like, I love this, it's all I want to do. I mean, it helped me get through it, you know, like I said, getting laid for the first time, like, what? But this is pretty cool, you know. Um, yeah, I didn't know what a blowjob was until I did, and I'm like, where was this in my upbringing? He would not keep anyone in Orthodox Judaism if we knew this was a possibility. Um, I have a bit in there where I took my nephew for, uh, for, um, his bar mitzvah. You know those good seats you get sometimes from like an agent or something where you're like, I can't, these aren't the seats I can afford. It's a hookup. So I took, I called in a favor, got one of those. And he's like, what? We're sitting a row behind the Rangers, like behind the bench.

And he's just like blowing his mind. And then I got a cheese, I got a bacon cheeseburger and he was like, what? And I was like, yeah. He's like, is it good? I'm like, bro, yes. And he's like, ah, Oh, could I? I'm like, no, told your mom you'd be good. No, you cannot have any. You get french fries if you want.

And so what do you end up replacing God with?

Comedy. Yeah, it becomes your religion. Yeah, friendships, comedy. Yeah, but comedy, Stan, I just love doing it. I got obsessed with it. Even when I'm not doing— even when I'm going traveling, it's intentional to, to so I can come back to it with like a fresh mind. Um, I love it. I just love it. And then the friendships around it too who are like, we used to go for 15 minutes a night and then hang out for 6 hours.

I would assume many of my friends are work-related friends 'cause it's a shortcut to friendship when you have all of these commonalities.

Yeah, right.

Same with your dating life.

So many of these people though know exactly what you're talking about. They have a fluency in what it is that you love that the average person does not.

Yeah, yeah, I could actually only really ever dated artists because even if you're not a comedian, dated one or two comics too, but just someone in the arts almost always, because like you gotta unders— not you gotta, but like they get it. They get like, hey, I'm going through a process of building something right now.

Well, it's too much a part of you for it not to be understood, right? It matters too much to you. It's too much a part of your identity to be with somebody who doesn't have any connection.

Yeah. And it's not even like, so I can't do this. I just wouldn't connect with them, you know? And then I connect with their process too. They're like, yeah, I'm trying to paint this thing now. I'm trying to figure out how to do just like, I'm like, oh, it's just like, it's invigorating. You just understand the language a little bit.

So when did the support come back around?

So they— when I moved to California, I graduated Maryland. My friend was like, do you want to go to California? He wanted to be a screenwriter. He had, he had already left Maryland, gone down to Miami because his mom moved there with some dude. And then we like shocked him. We met up in like Tennessee in the GMC driving. We just drove out cross-country. He quit pretty early, became a lawyer. But like, they paid for it. So they were like, they were like, at that point it was already 3 years of Maryland, University of Maryland, and they were okay with it. And then my dad understood it completely because he left an upbringing, well, first an upbringing in, you know, work camps, internment camps. But then, you know, once it got normal, he grew up in Israel. Israel. You're supposed to stay there. You go through the army and you're supposed to like have a life in Israel. He goes, I think I'm gonna go to America. Took a boat. That's how long ago it was, you know. So he understood the like spread your wings and fly kind of idea. And eventually, eventually—

I mean, at first you were dirtier than a dog, right?

First I was dirty as a dog. It got over it. It took a couple years. But, but also I think— so we had another distant relative like a cousin's wife's kid or something like that, and he married a non-Jew, and that was like a real big no-no. And the dad was like, I'm not gonna go to your wedding, I don't, whatever. And then the next kid, the younger brother, also married a non-Jew, and I think he had to go like, Dad, you don't talk to your son anymore because you handled this so badly. Like, don't fuck this up. And he was like, "Yeah, I don't wanna lose my kid." And so my dad saw that and was like, "Well, I don't want that." He was smart enough to go, "That's not what I'm looking for. I wanted you to be religious. You're not. So I could either be spiteful and kinda lose my son, or I can be like, 'This is the way it is.'" So like, all right, you gotta roll with the punches. There's no better rolling with the punches than they stole our farm, you know, put my dad off to a gas chamber that got, you know, liberated a week before.

He was, he was done, to like, yeah, you got to roll with it. Like, I don't know, let's go to Israel. I heard they're starting that up.

I mean, you must have felt loved.

Yeah, it was great. Yeah, that acceptance, it was, it was, it was huge. Yeah.

I mean, many dads do do that, right? Or many people are ardent enough about their relationship with God to forsake their son.

Yeah, Mormons, you're, you're strict. You're like sent out out. They have a process, I think, of like, it's not just like, eh, we don't talk to him. It's like, no, we're not allowed to talk to him. That would be wild. But yeah, it was great. And then, then, then now I'm moving to— I wanted to drop out to become a writer. And he goes, tell you what, if that's a mistake, obviously he was right. Not obviously, I guess I don't really need my diploma. But I did need my education. He goes, finish the next year and a half and I'll help support you for your first year. You know, I'll pay for your— I'll pay for your gas and your insurance for you. So he did.

And you were still broke?

Still broke. It wasn't enough. I just wouldn't have gotten insurance, you know. I wouldn't— like, that's why they did it too. They're like, we know you're not gonna get insurance, so we'll pay for it. Yeah, but he was like— once I was like, I'm gonna I go to— now I've accepted me, but now I'm doing an even more alternative thing in a different way where I'm going to California to be a clown.

What, you're— and you're also doing psychedelics now, or you're not yet? Not yet. You haven't gotten into the psychedelics yet. So you're— but you're— but you're rambunctiously free in a way that has to be dangerous comparative to how you were living.

You had no job. I had to explain to my mom how I was living money-wise, how I made— I figured out my budget for food. It was $3.10 a day, and that wasn't my budget. That's— I spent as little as possible and then did the math after a month, and it broke down to 3. And she goes, you can't live on that. I'm like, I have been. I just find sales. McDonald's had 29-cent hamburger days, um, killed it that day, froze some. Can you imagine freezing a fucking McDonald's hamburger so you could eat it for the rest of the week? But we didn't think twice about it. It was just the way. Every once in a while some rich guy would drum up a beer for you and you're like, fuck.

But it's because you knew exactly what your dreams were looking like at that point. Like you were, you were not unclear in any way about what you wanted. So you chased it with the same sort of fervor that you were.

Same zeal. You're right. Good point. Where it's like, I'll just, I'm all in. I'm not half-assing it.

Yeah. But I also think you're, I think you're taking from me some sort of judgment. As soon as you said seminary, I'm like, oh my God, devoting your life to that. The rules and rigidities of what that is, that is the most devout of religious people there. That is the most aggressively religious as you can be.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so you just poured that into writing and comedy and chasing something else, uh, that is—

this is comic Argus Hamilton of The Comedy Store, and he asked him about— fuck, I forget what— smoking or something like that. And, and he quit smoking, and I was like, how? And he goes, oh, I got into running. And I had— I could— I couldn't do both, and I, I just like running more, but I had to do one because I was a cokehead, so I had to do one of those two.

Same thing happens a lot with like yoga teachers and stuff where they go from addiction to— no, I'm gonna be— yeah, just a healthier addiction, right?

But then it's like, all the time, chill, dude. Golf, I can see that being an addiction, you know.

No, I've said that before. Yeah, the reason I've never done cocaine is because I know myself. I can be compulsive, like, so I just better not do something that's gonna ravage the insides of my life.

Yeah. And so if it feels too good, it feels good. Guys like Norman can't not do a spot. He's, he's more of an addict than I am even. He's, he's, he goes up as much as he can no matter, and he doesn't even question it. He'll be on an anniversary date with his, with his wife and he'd go to the bathroom and then run next door to open mic, do 5, and come back like, oh, sorry, I had to take a poop.

So it's also an addiction, right? Like, and what, what is it? It's not validation. It's not necessarily laughter. It's doing your job well. What is it? What, what's being chased in the addiction?

It's totally validation, and it's chasing the validation. So even if it's not good, it's still the hunt for it, uh, which is crazy because comics get nothing but anti-validation for about 3 years to start, because we suck. We all suck. And so we're chasing validation, we get it once every 20 times, and then 19 times it's telling you, you should quit this, you're actually not good at it. And it's painful. I don't know why we kept doing it for the— because it was such a good high for that one pure driver a day. It's such a good high.

We're out of time, I think, because we've been going a little longer than we were supposed to.

I'm fine with whatever you want.

AriShaffir.com is where you go if you want tour dates. I have more questions. I do have more questions. Jew is the name of the Netflix special. Is there anything else?

You Be Trippin' is my travel podcast.

Show.

Yeah. And The End is my storytelling show, and, um, which is that culmination of all that. Yeah. And watch the Netflix show and Legion of Skanks every Monday. But I don't think I have to go anywhere. Um, was there one more that you had that you wanted to actually know about?

Oh no, I wanted—

I, I wanted to go down the path of psychedelics with you because I wanted to know where it is that you've had the brain, uh, the brain-altering, uh, stuff, what it is that you've been working on and where it is that it's opened you.

Yeah, mushrooms got me first to the place place of like, we can— it just, it's so cool. It drops your ego to the ground so then you can observe yourself as someone else would observe you, but you know yourself more than anyone, so you can observe all the details of yourself without trying to defend a stance. So you're like, oh, look at that guy, he should have walked his dog and put away his phone while he did it and spend time with his dog. Oh, that guy's me. I Oh shit, I better start walking my dog and enjoying my time.

So you do it without judgment?

Yeah, without judgment. Or I'm doing this wrong, or I'm doing this right, or I should call my dad more, you know, let him know that I love him. Things like that, like, you just see it. And then like, had a ton of those experiences, loved him more and more every time.

You're talking about clarity is what you're seeing, right?

Clarity, 100%. I call it the capital T, truth, where it's just— this is— it just is, and it's fine. And it's kind of—

you don't have access to it without the—

yeah, I hope some people go— you can do meditation. They compared it to— this lady I met in Ecuador was like, okay, so it's like the doorbell rings and you can go up and get it yourself and say hi to whoever that is, or you can get a butler to go do it for you and he'll open the door. And meditation is you getting it yourself. And mushrooms is like a cheat code, it's a butler. And I was like, I'd rather have a butler though. What are you talking about? I'm watching TV, I can get an employee to go do it. That's clearly better. Why would I work hard to get to the same place when I can just take a couple fucking disgusting-tasting fungus? And then ayahuasca was the one where I just like, just destroyed me completely.

I've been wanting to do that, but I'm too scared of the sickness in it. Yeah, I was And because you're purging, right? You're physically purging.

The biggest fear for me was projectile diarrhea. That's what I was most afraid of.

Those are two bad words together.

Yeah, projectile alone is not bad. Diarrhea is bad.

Both of them are bad independently. Together, those two words are really bad.

Exponential.

It is. I can't think of a lot of words I could put in front of diarrhea to make it sound good. Make it worse than projectile.

Nearly as bad as projectile.

Explosive is bad, but projectile, you're launching it across a room. Like, projectile is bad.

Um, yeah, but it didn't happen. I did barf a lot, but that's totally normal. But it's something I've seen people barf on mushrooms and it's like, and then barf again. That's crazy.

Well, but I would imagine ayahuasca had some of the same principles for you that religion did early on, whenever it is that you felt most connected to egoless godliness.

Yeah, it was a hot— it was, it was that clarity from mushrooms, that truth, but like, I don't know how to say, deeper. And it was just like someone's taking a scrub brush to your soul and just cleaning you out. And then the next 4 days, just writing in a journal all the thoughts I had before they would go away, and just feeling this like level of clean that I I really am not good at expressing it.

No, you did pretty well there.

You just did.

You did pretty well right there in the way that if you're talking about scrubbing, a cleansing of your soul, like, that's pretty good.

Yeah, I guess so.

Not a lot of things that, uh, feel like that.

Yeah.

And just feeling fine. And then I was left with— it wasn't like realizations you have afterwards, it was just a change. So there's all these comedy fights. I don't know if Sam will ever tell you about it gossip-wise. I'm not gonna get into any of them, but like, we're bitter. We're bitter people. We feud and we're like, fuck that guy. Somebody fucked the wrong guy's lady, or somebody took— did a premise similar to yours, or would have bumped you one night and you never forgave him. And we'd all be fighty. We'd be very fighty. I've seen Sam go hard on people. It's fun to watch. Um, I have no appetite for it anymore. Yeah, people come at me, I'm just like, yeah, let's work it out. I, I just— it's not even a decision. I just have— I'm just not hungry for that. It just changed immediately. I just want to make things, so this is getting in the way. So then I came home from that, recorded Jew, got it back again, recorded Jew, started like working on it, record it, and then had some time during COVID to think about, about— well, that was that.

And then like, and then started working on The End, on the show, and finishing that off, right? But it was just like, I I just want to get things done now. It brings me joy. So yeah, you, you should do it. You listen, if you do projectile diarrhea or vomit on yourself, you'll clean it up. I mean, bring a change of underwear to wherever you're going.

Okay, thank you for the advice. Thank you for the time. Bring a change of underwear, dude.

That's such a Bring a change— okay, wear something nice, black tie optional, bring a change of underwear to any event, go, "I'm not coming." Thank you, sir.