Transcript of #2446 - Greg Fitzsimmons

Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

The Joe Rogan experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

Oh, Alpha Brain?

I just took some Alpha Brain, so I'm going to be fucking sharp.

I got this stuff, too, if you want it. It's an energy drink that also has N utropics in it. Oh, yeah? Yeah, good stuff. Gregory. Joseph. Good to see you, my friend.

Good to see you, man.

The world's on fire.

World is on fire. Good time for you to come I mean, I literally... I mean, talk about being addicted to your scroll. I got to really put the fucking phone down sometimes.

I know. Yeah, it's not good. No. It's not good for your brain to see all the problems of the world, all a pile, and everything looks like it's about to blow up. Yeah. Iran looks like it's about to blow up. They're talking about going to Cuba. Don Lemon went to jail. It's all crazy.

It's like, what's next? Well, when jail gives you Lemons. It's also like, what's that whole theory about we're only supposed to be exposed to 200 people in our life?

Yeah, it's Dunbar's number. Yeah. You only can keep that many people in your head.

But you should only know about that many divorces and that much cheating and that much killing as would happen within 200.

And crime and you fill in the blank. Right. Fraud, waste, abuse, international politics, restrictions on speech in England.

Yeah.

You see this fucking crazy story? This guy in England, an illegal alien, was a squatter in his house. The court ruled that because he didn't live in the house, the guy didn't live in the house, it was an empty house, they gave them the house. They gave the squatter the house. The squatter sold it for 540 grand. The squatter sold his house. Took his house because he was living in... And this guy was like a pensioner. He was just a guy who had an extra house, like a fucking investment property.

You're right.

And this guy moved into it. Have you seen it, Jamie? I'm seeing something from a year ago? I don't know. Somebody sent it to me today.

They had that in New York. Back in the '70s and '80s, there was a lot of empty units down on the Lower East Side, like Tompkins Square Park area. There was a lot of squatting. Yeah, this is it.

Squatter moved in the pensioner's empty home, then won the legal right to keep it and sold the house for, I guess, 540 Is that euros or pounds? Is that pounds? What's that?

Pounds, yeah. England has pounds still.

That's fucking crazy.

That's so crazy.

England has lost its fucking mind. It's almost like they want people to either revolt or completely submit. It's one or the other. It's like you're either begging for a revolution or you're begging for people to completely submit. They've arrested 12,000 people this year for social media posts.

Oh, that's right.

And most of it is criticizing immigration. Just criticizing immigration. Just saying, immigration sucks. We should send these people back home. Cops show up at your door.

Right. Crazy. Well, TikTok is now not allowing people to post anything that is anti-ice.

Not just that. You can't post the juice box emoji.

What's that?

Because it's code for Jews. Because people are using it because they were blocking content where they were criticizing Israel.

Wait, why is the juice box juice? I don't know. Oh, juice.

It is funny. But did they block the use? This is somebody sent me this. I haven't verified this. Did they block the use of the word Epstein?

I'm not on the app, but I saw a video of someone trying to- Yeah, let's run that through perplexity. See if perplexity will rat out TikTok.

Right. Because that's- It's so crazy that they would do it because they just purchased it.

So it was just purchased by some... What is the group? Did Larry Ellison's group purchase it? Yes. Okay. Which is a tremendous supporter of Netanyahu in Israel. Right. Yeah, there you go. You got censored news now. So any criticism of Palestine, what's going on in Gaza, all that stuff is going to get squashed, probably. Tiktok says, does not have a rule that bans or blocks the word Epstein across the app, but many US users have recently been unable to send that word in direct messages. I have a friend, his name is Bobby Epstein. Totally unrelated. He's the guy who owns the Coda racetrack. He's a good friend of mine. I can't send a message saying, I was just talking to my friend Bobby Epstein.

Oh, no shit.

That's crazy. Wow. Epstein is a super common name. It's like Jones.

It was on Welcome Back, Carter. Right.

Epstein from Welcome Back, Carter. That's right.

He can't talk about him anymore.

He played my brother on news radio. No. Yes. Him, nick DiPollo, and Brian Callen played my brothers, and we all just beat the shit out of each other during the entire episode. It was hilarious. That's amazing. He had nick threw me through a plate glass window. And then the brother shows up. Epstein was a priest, and he showed up with a bat. We were all scared of our older brother. It was really funny.

He was the Puerto Rican Jew from Brooklyn.

He was great. He was a really nice guy, too. So what else What does it say here? Newsom to probe claims of Trump critical censorship on TikTok. I think they're fucking blocking a lot of things on certain social media platforms.

What's your big picture take on whether or not social media platforms, which are privately owned, have a responsibility that, say, regular broadcast networks would have in terms of not censoring things.

Well, regular broadcast problem is they censor things. They don't just report on the news. They report on what they decide they're going to report on. It's a CNN hourly news segment. They have no responsibility to tell you about any particular story. None, zero. So they'll wait till something becomes unmanageable before they'll start talking about it. So something like starts getting traction on social media, like some a corruption scandal. If it's a left wing scandal, they can ignore it and they have no obligation. It's not like we have to tell you about these It's not like we ran it through AI. There's 20 things that the American public has to know about. So they censor or at least they curate the content. I think for social media platforms, if Elon Musk didn't buy Twitter, we would be fucked because there would be no place where you could say whatever you want, even heinous things. But if someone says heinous things, you can block them and not interact with them. And you can let other people tear them down and tear them apart. And that's how it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be you don't counter hate speech with censorship.

You counter it with better speech. You appeal to rational people and sensible people that go, this is why this guy is wrong. This is why racism is wrong. This is why rash generalization conversations are wrong. This is why it's wrong. That's how you're supposed to do it. It's supposed to be a free speech town hall platform. It's supposed to be like the town square where everybody can get together and talk about ideas. That's how it should be. There's been a lot of calls that say that you shouldn't be able to be anonymous on social media, that you should have consequences for your actions. The problem with that is then you lose all your whistleblowers. All the whistleblowers that are talking about giant corporations are doing horrible things to the environment, secretly in other countries, which we find out about all the time. Like the Steven Dauzinger case where that guy got arrested. Was it Exxon, the Dauzinger case? But it's like whistleblowers are important. Yes. If you don't have whistleblowers, you don't find out. If Edward Snowden doesn't come out, we know so little about the NSA. We know so little about government spying. He's an American former attorney known for his legal battle of Chevron, particularly with...

He was arrested and he went to jail, man, for criminal contempt.

I mean, that's First Amendment, isn't it?

I don't know exactly the details of the case. He spent 45 days in prison and a combined total of 993 days under house arrest. Wow.

Not only do they go to jail, it depletes all your savings. If they decide to prosecute you, your life is ruined.

That's part of the point of it all. It also discourage other people for doing the same thing. So if you're an attorney and you're thinking of prosecuting Shell, you're not going to do that now. You're going to go, Fuck this. I have a fucking house. I'm trying to buy a Porsche. And then you back out of it.

Yeah, right. It's a weird thing because I know right now, to cover the Pentagon, no journalists can go into the Pentagon unless they sign an agreement to only put out government-sponsored press releases.

Government-approved?

Government-approved. Now you've got very few people inside the Pentagon, which is where the whistleblowing was happening. They're in the back halls of the Pentagon.

That's crazy. But then see, the problem with the Pentagon is you're talking about national security. And if someone released something like the name of an agent that was undercover somewhere and something happened, that person got killed or compromised or some a national security interest, the whole thing was tanked. The Pentagon is different. I mean, I'm not saying that they The press shouldn't have access to Pentagon officials. They certainly should. But it's like going there is different, right? It's like the FBI just arrested. They just had a giant sweep on gangs in this country today. They just released that they found, I think it was 10 kilos of drugs. They arrested 50 people.

Like cartel gangs?

Cartels in America. And so they made a giant arrest today. I think they arrested 200. See if you can find what that story is. But imagine if you were in the FBI office and you heard about an imminent attack and you printed something. If you're a reporter and you're covering this stuff and you have access to this information somehow, and it gets released and these guys find out about it and they skate. They nabbed- Latin Kings. 50 Latin Kings in Operation Broken Crown after three months sweep. So what is the details of it? Okay, last three months, the FBI has quietly executed. Sorry, I was about to- Okay. This is on X. Quietly executed, Operation Broken Crown. A sweeping, violent gang takedown involving 13 field offices targeting the Latin King's gangs. Members which were publicly threatening law enforcement officers, 50 arrests, $200,000 in seized assets, seizure of 10 kilos of illicit narcotics. Interesting. Interesting. Sure. Well, so that a situation. You can't have access to that information before they do it. That has to be very tight-lipped. But there's only a few of those scenarios that I can imagine. But when it comes to politicians and backdoor deals, there should be live footage of it.

It should be livestream. You only found out about the illegal bombings in Cambodia because there was a whistleblower inside of the Pentagon.

Exactly.

So you do need some access.

Yeah, but it's like, well, you need whistleblowers, right? Right. Here's the thing about intelligence agencies. There's a lot of good people that are working there. It's like we judge them based on the evil people that are probably the ones with the most power. Yes. There's probably a lot of mid-level people working at the Pentagon, working at the CIA, working everywhere that are good people.

Are you kidding me? These are people that have dedicated their lives to trying to... I'm the same way with cops. I got three good buddies that are cops, and they absolutely went into it the same way a social worker goes into Yes. Then there's the evil ones that... I think it was worse. I think back in the days of Serpico, you ever see that movie? It was literally like the entire force was in on it. There was fucking in legal gambling, legal drug dealing. Nobody got touched.

Yeah, they've always done that. I mean, that's how they ran the mob in Vegas. The mob ran Vegas with the cops.

We're just talking about that outside. Why was Vegas and Atlantic City the only places allowed? I don't know why I stupidly asked that. Jamie's like, Because of the mob, asshole.

Well, it was the mob. I think Nevada, there was also... See if this is true. There was supposedly a connection between the testing of nuclear weapons and then allowing the state to have gambling because Nevada was one of the rare places where they routinely tested nuclear weapons. I don't know if you've ever seen the video that shows a history of all the atomic bombs going off in the United States. No. The video is crazy because it starts with the first test, starts with the Trinity test, starts with the couple in the ocean. What's the matter? What's so funny?

Just the way this is worded.

What is it?

I asked if there's a connection between nuclear tests and gambling in Las Vegas, and turns out, yeah, they would use it as a theme to attract gamblers.

What?

Look, come see a bomb. For the early 1950s to the 1960s, Las Vegas casinos and tourism promoters actively used nearby nuclear weapons tests as themed to draw gamblers and visitors. Holy shit, man. Bomb parties.

Oh, my God.

They had bomb parties on the rooftop. They would watch. They'd stay up gambling, drinking, and then step outside to watch the blast on the horizon. Wow.

Is it your atomic cocktail?

Oh, my God.

It's like how Caesars does fireworks now.

They had atomic-themed promotions, atomic cocktails, atomic hairdos, nuclear pin-up imagery like Miss Atomic Blast. I Slogans like Atomic City USA and Up and Adam to tie the test directly to Vegas nightlife and gambling culture.

Holy shit, man. I wonder if you could place bets. Dude, I bet your eyebrows singed off.

I don't know if they had the same thing like what they have now with modern prediction betting. With prediction betting, you can bet on pretty much everything.

I just made a bet last night on one of those.

Go back down to where you were. Stop with the bottom line. In short, nuclear weapons near Las Vegas were not just a backdrop. They were deliberately woven into casino marketing, party culture, and tourism that supported the city's gambling economy. But did it have the reason? Here's my question. Was Nevada allowed to have gambling because of them allowing nuclear tests? Was there any an agreement? Because there's only two states at that time that allowed casinos. Like, real casinos. It seems weird that one of them, New Jersey has always been fucking corrupt. That's the Sopranos. It's like the most mob ridden fucking state in the country at the time.

Based in Atlantic City, pretty much. Yeah.

I mean, cut the fucking shit. Atlantic City.

And then Vegas was Bugsy Siegel, right?

Okay. Well, since Nevada legalized most forces of gambling in 31. Okay. So it doesn't make any sense because it's before that. So it's the Great Depression, economic measure track tours. So no. So that theory doesn't hold up. I didn't know that Vegas was starting at 31. That's nuts.

So basically the Great Depression started, and then they launched Vegas as a way to raise money for Nevada.

Which is hilarious. You have no money. There's no jobs. Why don't you gamble? What?

My gamble is going to the food line, seeing if I can get a loaf of bread. That's my gamble today.

You know what's crazy is that lake keeps drying up because they were having a drought. They keep finding bodies in the lake. Oh, no shit. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Those metal barrels with bodies inside of them. They found quite a few of them. How many bodies have they found? Is it Lake Mead, I believe? Yes. As it drying up, it was. I think it's probably picked up a little bit, but at one point in time was at a historic low. And so they were finding these fucking dead bodies. I think they found like a half a dozen of them. And I think they think there's a whole lot more in there.

No shit.

As of last, latest reporting, at least six separate discoveries of human remains were made in Lake Mead in 2022 as the water level dropped, representing at least several different individuals. Wow. Find out that thing where they stopped searching for guns and bodies. I think it was in MacArthur Park and why they did that.

David Tell, back in his insomniac days, he hung out with some dark motherfuckers in New York. Oh, yeah. And he used to bring this guy in who was He was a New York City cop, and they basically said, We'll double your pay and give you early retirement if you put on a frog suit every night and you go out into, I think it was Flushing Bay, one of the bays out in Queens, which was a famous place where the mob was dropping bodies. The guy would go into the water in a frog suit, and he'd wait by this bridge, and when they'd drop a body, he'd fucking call it in. He did that the night shift. He'd finish that, and he'd come into the Comedy Cell at 4: 00 AM. So he'd wait in the ocean in a scuba suit for them to drop a body? Yeah.

Holy shit. They were dropping that many bodies. Yes. That you could just wait for. That's so crazy. Searcher MacArthur Park for guns, impossible bodies was stopped because the authority said it was an unpermitted and potentially unsafe operation on city park property. Okay, so It was a businessman, so it was a private thing. So that's probably what it was. So official reasons given. Organizers led by businessman John, I don't know how to spell his name, A-L-L-E. How do you say that? Al? Alay? Planned to use sonar and remotely operated vehicles to look for weapons and human remains in the lake. Los Angeles Park rangers halted the effort before the sonar entered the water, saying the team did not have the required permits or clearances. Okay. Why didn't you guys do that, though? If this guy really thinks that there could be bodies and guns in the lake, why wouldn't you guys search for bodies and guns if someone could search for it? It seems like there's probably a lot of people missing. A lot of crimes that could be solved, a lot of resources that have already been spent on cases. You could probably get to the bottom of a lot of things.

Alay Al, I don't know how it's his name, said, Families of Missing People, some of whom were last seen near MacArthur Park, had reached out to him for help. Which inspired the idea of a large scale sonar search of the lake. There's evidence down there for crimes, he said. We'll identify it with photography, and the city will have to extract it.

It also could be, these are homeless people, and the government doesn't give a shit. They can't swim. Come on, they were kids once.

It's hard to swim when you're on meth. You got bad cardio. If one guy says, This is the last day I do meth. Today I get in shape. He tries to swim across the lake and fucking strokes out in the middle of it.

This is my day.

Never gave him... Oh, jeez, I'm in there. What are they saying about me?

It's an art. It's an ad.

Oh, it's an ad?

Yeah, it's an ad down at the bottom.

Oh, I mocked the AI-generated. That was crazy. The AI-generated photo that MSNBC put up of the guy who got shot in Minneapolis, they changed his appearance.

Alex Pretty? Yes. They changed his appearance in what way?

They made him handsome.

They did?

You haven't seen it? No. You have to see it. I don't know who's doing this. It's almost like someone from the Republican side is like a secret plant at MSNBC because they know that stuff like this is going to get caught. Look at the difference between the one on the left and one on the right.

Well, the nose looks blurry on the one on the left.

Well, that's his nose. That's what he looks like. It's just a shitty picture. But they cleaned the picture up. They made his nose smaller. They gave him a tan. They made his forehead shorter. They made his jaw wider. They made his shoulders thicker. They gave him more bicep. They made him more handsome. They made his neck thicker. He looks better. The guy on the right looks like a good-looking guy. The guy on the left looks like Ari's unfortunate brother. Doesn't he?

Poor Ari's brother. It's so funny that Ari comes from this family. I mean, he grew up Orthodox Jewish, right? Oh, yeah. The things that he has put out there for a family to have to see, it makes you realize, and they love him. They accept it. It's all about grace. I love Jews because they are very accepting. As much as you might be Orthodox, my wife is half Jewish. There's something very open-minded about Jews. I mean, they were the original hippies, and they were the original communists in America, and they were always open to different ideas. And I think when I think about Ari's family, if they were Christian conservative versus Jewish conservative, I don't know that they'd be as accepting of him.

You know, Ari's dad survived the Holocaust. No shit. Oh, yeah. Ari's dad has a tattoo. Damn. Yeah. He's very old.

He must be one of the oldest people left with a tattoo.

Yeah, he talked to me about having his dad on. He asked me if I'd be interested in it, if his dad ever wants to do it because he doesn't have much time left. And I said, Absolutely. And he goes, I'm not sure if he'd be interested in it, but if he did, I think it would be important to talk about.

I mean, he's got to be over 100 years old.

I don't know how old he is. He's old, though. Well, how long ago was- You would have to have been born.

No, actually, if he was born in 1935- I think He's in his 80s, his late 80s. Okay, what am I thinking? Right. Because they tattooed the fucking kids.

Yeah. Jesus. Yeah, it's dark. It's horrible. It's so crazy, dude. It's so crazy that that was less than 100 years ago.

I know. And the Germans like that. Fucking Norm McDonald bit about how Germany is the country we really should be afraid of. Like the way they start world wars and What they're like, it's really fucking nuts.

Well, they were the barbarians back in the day. Oh, right. I mean, we think of now as engineers, they make BMWs. But back then, they were the barbarians. During the Roman era, the German tribes.

I guess the Vikings were Scandinavian, and then they were fighting against the Vikings. The Germans were fucking terrifying.

They were terrifying. And they all became engineers. They all became like, brilliant, very disciplined people, which is interesting because Germany is known for that. But But also, shitporn. Remember? In the early days of the Internet, a lot of the shitporn, like weird, crazy, like shitting on people. A lot of that was... And we were trying to analyze it one day. I was like, it's probably because if you're so buttoned down and so disciplined and regimened and conservative in your daily life. The way you cut loose, it's like you shit in each other's mouths and fuck each other in the butt. Some of the craziest shitporn was coming out of Germany. This was like late '90s, early 2000s, when we first started finding weird websites that you'd be able to find things on.

Oh, no. Before that, I'd go to Sex World in New York, where you sit in those booths and you put in quarters and you watch porn. And they always had the darkest German porn in there. Really? Yeah. A lot of animals and shit. I'm like 15 years old. And I've got these coins. You go in and you give the guy 10 bucks and he gives you a handful of coins. Just imagine if you put a black light on those coins, and I got them in my hand.

Oh, God, just jizz all over those things. Black lights are terrifying.

I'm pushing buttons to pick which film to watch.

I have a friend who brought a black light into a hotel room. He said, You just find jizz on the carpet. No kidding. You on jizz on the fucking blanket sometimes. You go to a cheap hotel or a motel, how well do you think they're cleaning those carpets? Do you think they clean the walls?

I've been in hotels where they put the remote control in a baggie for you because they say that's the most... Because they cleaned it? No, no. So you don't have to touch the remote. And then they change the baggie on the remote each time a new guest comes in.

So you're supposed to remote through the baggie? Yeah. Who does that?

I take it out of the bag.

I pull that thing right out. Yeah, that's crazy. That's ridiculous. I'm touching toilet seats. I'm touching Everything. What are we talking about here?

I'm also not that afraid to come. What's it going to do to me?

I mean, that's not what's going to kill you. Yeah. I mean, that's just gross. I mean, think about how much shit is on the average person's cell phone. Have you ever heard of that? No. Yeah. Just touch your cell phone with a swab, get a swab and get it analyzed. You'll find fecal matter all over your cell phone.

Because we're scrolling while we're on the toilet.

A lot of people are. Yeah. A lot of people. And also you're touching things, and then you touch your phone. And how many people touch their ass, then touch a thing, a door knob, or this and that. You're getting fecal matter on everything. Yeah. Especially if you have a cat. I used to think about that all the time when I had cats. The cats are in the shit box They're scratching around there, and then they're walking on your counter. They don't give a fuck where they go. They go everywhere. You don't care. You're like, Hey, buddy. You pet them when they're on the counter. You don't have shit in their paws.

Then your dog licks his ass all and then licks it. And the people haven't licked their face. They licked my face. Really?

Oh, yeah. No. I let him give me kisses.

Have you seen him lick his asshole? I have.

For sure, especially my puppy. I have a little puppy now.

Can I imagine a black light on your face right now.

My puppy goes I have a little- You'd look like you were in blackface. Probably. I just splatter like I'm the Joker. Al jels it. I have a puppy. He's a King Charles Cavalier. He's a little tiny, cute. He's so fucking cute. And then I have the Golden Retriever. And the puppy runs right up to the golden retriever, sticks his face in his dick, and then sticks his face in his asshole. That's the first thing he does to him every time. Face on the dick, face on the asshole. I'm like, Bro, what are you doing? That's just dogs. That's what they do.

It's funny how they... I had two dogs, and they did that every fucking day. They sniffed each other. I guess that's how they know if something changed. Maybe they know if the other dog is sick or if the other dog is breeding with another dog, it's like checking their emails.

Well, they get so much information from smell that we can't even possibly process. They say that a dog can smell a cheeseburger. They don't just smell the cheeseburger. They smell every individual ingredient. They smell the mustard. They smell the pickle. They smell everything. They smell the lettuce. They think that dogs smell anxiety. They smell moods. That's why when certain people come over your house, they're scared of dogs. Dogs get sketchy with them. Like, what the fuck's up with this guy? Like, oh, he doesn't like you. Because the person's probably nervous. They're given off a scent.

My mom, her sister was attacked really bad by a dog when they were little. So my mom has this trauma about dogs. We We had these little, we had a shitsu and a lots of ops on it. Just little dogs. She was terrified, and the dogs would growl at her, and they didn't growl at anybody.

Oh, my God. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. They smelt things. They sense things. Yeah. I was like, people have them as guards. That's how they made it, to be dogs. They were the wolves that hung out with us and would let us know when something's going down.

Sentinels.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I have very strong olfactory sense. Like, I'm very... Of my five senses, I would put it up there at the top. I love perfume. Really? I love perfume. I don't like when women wear too much of it and then they hug you at the comedy store and then you go home and you smell like fucking perfume. You're like, Honey, it's just Whitney Cummings has this new Chanel. But sometimes I'll be sitting somewhere and I'll smell some nice perfume and I'll fucking whip my head around. It's like some 81-year-old woman hunched over and you're like, Oh. They don't wear the- They don't wear the- They trick me.

Old ladies, no matter how old they are, they'll still put on the makeup, they'll still put on the perfume.

They're getting the hair done.

Let it out. Time to go out and see, go fishing, see if this old bait can catch a bass.

Yeah, right, right. Yeah. There's this bar up where my mom lives in Florida, and there's this bar, and it's like a famous cougar bar. And it's all these rich women who's... Because men die faster. It's impossible for a woman in Florida who's in her 70s to find a guy who's anywhere near her age. She's got to date a guy in his late 80s if she's in her 70s. And so these women go to this bar and they are, like you said, they're wearing a lot of leopards, a lot of leopard print.

Yeah, they're letting you know.

They had stiletto heels. It's like stiletto heels, but the toes are all fucking twisted and mangled.

My wife has been watching this horrible show that's on Netflix. It's like one of those housewife shows, but it's all West Palm Beach ladies. It's all these rich ladies with plastic surgery.

Palm Beach, not West Palm Beach.

That's right. Palm Beach ladies. Is Palm Beach the rich area? Yeah. Is West Palm the more moderate area?

No, it's poor.

It's poor?

Yeah. West Palm is poor? It has good sections, but the people that work on Palm Beach, cleaning the houses, live in West Palm Beach.

Oh, I see.

Because there's basically Palm Beach as a bridge to get to... Do you know the history of Palm Beach? No.

Oh, I do. Yeah, but go ahead.

They created it. It was like a sandbar that they built up, and then they didn't hire it. They hired a bunch of Black people to come on the island and build all the houses, the infrastructure.

Why Black people?

I don't know.

I mean, for sure, they only hired Black people?

I mean, look it up, Jamie. But all I know is there was a lot of Black people doing the building. They finished it, and then the island held a big party for the Black people on the end of the island to celebrate, and then they torched all their houses. What? And forced them off the island. Yeah, that's the history of Palm Beach. They torched their houses? Torched their houses.

After they were done building the mansions? Yes.

It's probably the wealthiest piece of real estate in the country right now.

Some people are fucking evil. I know. Imagine a guy who built your house. He's at home with his kid. Wow, what a great job I got. Yeah. You know?

And then I get to start a family here.

I get to live in this place. I help build these beautiful mansions that we drive by.

These people are going to love me because I helped them create a life.

Oh, my God. And they lit their fucking houses on fire? Yeah. Pull up that story. I need to hear about that. That's crazy. But these ladies are just monsters. It's just all the social status. It's all like, who's got the most money? They don't even know how much money I have. I'm a millionaire.

And then they have these clubs. My friend's father lives there, and he belongs to a club. Oh, you got to belong to a club. And he worked for, I won't say who the person was, but a very famous Jewish family. And she went to lunch one day at one of these clubs that didn't allow Jews. And the waiter would- Clubs still don't allow Jews? No, this is going back 20 years at the most.

Only 20 years ago? 20 years ago. So In 2006, 2006.

Probably about that. There was clubs that didn't allow Jews? Augusto, where they play the masters, only started allowing Black members in the '80s. Remember Tiger Woods was playing there and he got shit because he was a black playing at a club where they didn't allow black people. Really? And they said, How could you do that? During Tiger Woods lifetime? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Wow. So anyway, so this Jewish woman goes to the club, the waiter wouldn't come over to the table. And finally the member went over and goes, What's going on? We can't serve. We can't serve her.

How did they even know she was Jewish?

She's famous.

Oh.

Yeah. I think I can say who it is. It was Este Lauder's wife. Wow. Or was Este Lauder the woman? I don't know. Este Lauder is the woman. It was her. One of the richest women in the country.

Wow. We can't serve her because of her religion. Wow.

Yeah.

Wow. And that was 2006?

Hey, the country clubs, the rule on it was, well, look, the Friars Club- We need to make sure that's true.

The Este Lauder one. I definitely want to find out about the burning the Blackman's house.

Well, the Este Lauder is personal information. I don't know that that's not published anywhere. All right. Forget about that then. But no, segregation in clubs. Private clubs used to get away with that until I was a member of the Friars Club in New York, and they did not allow female members until I was there in... It was the mid '90s before the Friars Club allowed female members. And the reason was legally, you can't have a club exclude people if you can prove business is being done there. If there's commerce, if there's commerce. If there's no business, you can let in whoever you want. So that's how they got female members in there. And I think they probably... I mean, obviously business is being done at golf clubs.

Well, business is definitely being done at the Friars Club. I mean, a lot of deals probably got made there. A lot of ideas got hatched.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, all these comics.

It was agents and comics.

I remember you used to love that place.

It was so fucking great.

You always tell me about it. It was so unappealing to me.

It was a clubhouse for comedians. We used to go there. They had two beautiful pool tables. I played on the Friars Club pool team, and we used to play against other clubs in the city, all the other private clubs. Paul was my partner in pool.

Paul Cervino could play. He was good. He was good. He could run 100 balls in straight pool. He was a legit high-level player.

So he carried me, but we used to play all the clubs. And then you They got a nice gym with the best steam room in the city. And then they got these Lazy Boys. You work out, you take a fucking steam, and you send a Lazy Boy, and you read the newspaper. And then they got a dining room downstairs where Hennie Youngman is at one table, Alan King. And these guys Those old Borsch Bell comics, they lived to make you laugh. It's not like comedians today. So many of them are dark and quiet and disturbed. These guys fucking told jokes, and they wasted you, and they hugged you. It was like a part of being on stage, almost. It was expected.

They probably all felt real comfortable in this comics-only club, too.

Yeah, right.

Folklor surrounding the sticks of Palm Beach. That's what it is.

That's the area, what they call it.

Go to the top of that, please. Well. Right there. Turn of the 20th century's employment boom of unprecedented proportions to South Florida, hiring of thousands of Black laborers to extend Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railroad. This is the East Coast Railroad. These laborers played a key role in the development of the early Palm Beach, also helped to build the Royal Poinciana Hotel, Flagler's White Hall Hall residence, which is today known as the Henry Flagler Museum. Laborers and their family settled in Palm Beach Island between North County Road and Sunrise Avenue. This area of shanties and tent-like homes soon became known as the Sticks. Many of those descendants still live in the area today. So what happened? Did it say what happened? Okay. Along came a fellow named Henry Flagler, who decided he needed that land to build on to develop, Little said. And he threw a party for all the Blacks on the island, and they all went over to the party. And while they were celebrating and enjoying themselves, their homes on the island of the town of Palm Beach burned down mysteriously. Holy fuck, dude. From what I heard, McCree said, he got with the residents and set up a party on West Palm Beach side and had everybody ferried over to the party and then had a mob of people to burn up people's homes.

Shantis in tents all over the sticks and forced them out of there and took the land. How many people died?

I don't know how many people died. It says they were all gone. But there's around 2000 people.

Right, but what about their kids?

Around 2000 people living in that area is what it said.

Oh, my God.

Then this is the problem. When I was looking it up on Wikipedia, this is basically what I read.

Okay. Palm Beach historical society version is very different. Published text only says that by 1912, the tenants of the sticks had been evicted. That doesn't mean anything. They could have still been I'm sure Flagler threw some money at the Palm Beach Historical Society. Yeah, of course. No mention of a fire, any record of large scale homelessness that would have followed such a devastating blaze. Everly Clarke believes this version is the most accurate. The Sticks was actually legislated out of existence. They claimed there was a fire, and Flagler had the people come to circus and all that, but that's not true. Still, more than a century later, the urban legend remains strong, and the pulse of public opinion split. There are so many historical facts that some of the scurrilous removal of the residents believable that it's become a lure for the most part in the Black community. All right, well, let's find out if there's a historical record of the fires.

This is all I could get to.

That's it?

This is a local news.

And what year was this, supposedly?

19, 19, 1912.

Yeah, I bet they did it.

I mean, look what they did in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Right.

This was part of the playbook.

Well, look what they did with the Deskega experiment. Right. Look at that. How about that? They knowingly had all these people with syphilis and didn't treat them. Just study them to see what would happen to them. Did they give people syphilis or did they just treat them for syphilis? I don't know. Whatever it was, they let these fucking people rot and die. Syphilis is a fucking horrible disease.

Tell me about it.

Did you get it? Do you know the story about syphilis and wigs? No. You don't know that? No. All those dudes in the ancient times that had the big wigs, that was to cover up their hair loss from syphilis.

Dude, how did not everybody have it?

Well, they all had wigs. They all had it back then. In high society, first of all, those people were basically like Game of Thrones. They were all just fucking freaks, banging each other. French society has always been very loose sexually. And so these two royals, were they brothers or cousins? They were brothers in a double second. So these guys get syphilis, their hair falls out. You get holes in your face and shit. They're still fucking everybody, right? And so they got wigs made. And the more money you had, the more elaborate and big your wig was. That's why rich people are big wigs.

No. Yes. I love it. Isn't that crazy?

Wow. Crazy. That term that we always use when we were kids is a big wig. Yeah. That's like ancient. That goes back to the 1400s.

That's like something you would hear on that guy, Cody Tucker's feed.

Yes, I love that guy.

I'm doing his podcast on Sunday.

Oh, he's been on mine. He's great. He's great. Very smart guy. Here's what's interesting. There's a strong connection between the syphilis that evolved in North America and the syphilis that these guys had in Europe. There's always been syphilis, but syphilis had an outbreak in Europe after people came to North America, probably fucked a bunch of Native Americans, and then went back to Europe with these fucking diseases.

And then it mutated.

It's a different syphilis. Wow. Yeah.

They were cousins, it turns out.

They were cousins. Yeah, that's what I thought. Louis and his cousin. This is a story. They were commonly used to cover up hair loss, but they used to not become widespread until two Kings started to lose their hair. King Louis, the 14th of France, experienced hair loss at the age of 17, then hired 48 wig makers to help combat his locks. So a lot of these guys wound up getting syphilis, and there was normal hair loss on top of it. Both conditions being syphilitic signals. Everybody had syphilis back then, man. They probably didn't wear condoms. They're probably all freaks. They're probably doing cocaine.

No, they all went to whores.

Yes.

I mean, that's what you did. When you were a wealthy guy, you went to the whore house all the time. Then you came home and you gave it to your wife. Then she had a baby. Depending on the disease, babies are born with the sexually transmitted disease that you gave your wife.

Right. And that's what the crazy thing about the Epstein leaks today. The one email that we had- And we're here. That said that Bill Gates wanted to get from him antibiotics to give to Melinda because he got syphilis or he got something. The clap, chlamedia, whatever he got. He got some an SDD from a prostitute.

Do you think if she could have the choice between getting the, what did she get, $50 billion or not getting the syphilis?

Well, whatever she got. I bet it wasn't syphilis. It was probably the CLAAP. It was probably chlamedia or something like that. That's no big deal. Who knows if that's true, though? Here's the thing. Epstein clearly was some a blackmailer. And this is an email that Epstein wrote. So it could be complete fiction. Epstein could have wrote that just to put pressure on Bill Gates for some fucking business deal. Who fucking knows? He could have spread rumors and then said that he'll squash those rumors. These guys are dealing in deception and blackmail. So you can't assume that it's true.

Think about how many relationships Epstein had and that he was working almost every one of them, leveraging. He was brilliant.

Well, he was really good at that. That one thing. A guy could have cured cancer if he wanted to do that business.

Well, he was into science. Yes.

Well, he was also into compromising scientists. Let's say that you want to get a drug passed, right? And you want FDA approval of this drug, but it's some a competing drug. We have a bunch of scientists on your side, and these scientists can go attack that competing drug. Then all of a sudden, well, you have this guy, he comes from MIT, and he says this. Oh, and then the FDA listens to him. It's very important to have the leverage of respected academics. Epstein, with a smiling emoji, asks This former Israeli PM, Ihad Barak. That's how he say his name? Ihoud Barak. To clarify, he does not work for the Mossad in a meeting with a senior Qatari investment official.

A quick thread starts at the bottom and goes up.

Oh, okay.

Hi. Are you going to be in London on Thursday? Best. Eb.

Right.

You, unfortunately not. You should make clear that I don't work for Mossad, smiley face. Oh, boy. You or I, question mark. That I don't smiley face.

He doesn't work for them. He just volunteers for them.

With a smiley... Smiley face emojis are hilarious.

This fucking evil cocksucker is using smiley face emojis.

That's hilarious. That's so funny.

Dude, this is a really good show about Mossad called Teran. Have you heard of that? No.

Oh, I have heard about it. It's on Apple Plus. I haven't watched it, though. Is it good?

It's really good. I mean, it's a really good look inside of what goes on in Iran in terms of... I mean, the Israelis are fucking brilliant. The infiltration that they did into- No one's like them.

They're the best. They're the best at that. Well, they have to be, right? This is them. This table is people who hate them.

Yeah, right.

You got to become a bad motherfucker. Your neighbors don't want you dead.

Those pagers going off in Lebanon, that was a long play. Months and months. That was gone. Months and months.

Years. Was it years?

Years.

Wow.

Yes.

Wow. Crazy. They're like, I know.

The pager is right next to your cock.

Blow your dick off. You blow a hole through your pelvis, apparently. Oh my God. That's how you die.

And you're isolating your enemy. There's no civilian casualties.

Well, I bet they probably got some kids.

But low Low numbers. Percentage versus bombing a building or something.

Which they did do. It's true. They also did. They did some of that, like the guys in the building. I was on- Level the building.

I was on Good Day LA one time. It's all those pretty women. They're actually really sharp. They're great. I go, they said, Oh, you came alone? I go, No, my agent's supposed to be here any minute. He's Lebanese. I just paged him before I got here, but I haven't heard anything back. They were like, Whoa. It just happened like three days before.

Not we. Didn't we just, not we, didn't Israel just bomb Lebanon today?

Oh, really?

I believe so. Yeah, at least according to Twitter.

Well, what's going on in Iran? I heard things are heating up over there.

Well, Trump just said they're sending ships in that area, but he also said Iran wants to make a deal. So maybe he's trying to put pressure on them to make a deal. And hopefully nothing happens in terms of military intervention. It's scary shit, dude, because they have nuclear weapons or they have the potential to eventually have nuclear weapons. But I don't know. Did Israel bomb- I'm checking on Twitter. I haven't seen anything on the search yet. Yeah, there was some image that showed some fucking huge explosion. It said Israel just bombed Lebanon. They definitely have recently.

I've seen something about airstrikes.

It's late Friday.

I guess it'd be late there, right? Yeah. It's my time over there.

Maybe, yeah.

If it is, it's like it's just breaking. It's just sitting there. There's some stuff.

Well, the thing is, There are. There it is. Two hours ago. Israel bombs Lebanon. Yeah.

But it's the only thing I'm seeing about it.

That doesn't usually happen. It's probably all just coming out, right?

No, I mean, would you type in that on- That's all you see?

Is that one? So that might not be true. Click on that link to see if anybody's disputing it. Click on that tweet.

It's only got 15 responses.

This is true. Grok. Click on that. Yes. Multiple sources indicate a report Israeli airstrikes in Southern Lebanon on January 30th. Targeting Hezbollah IDF confirmed a wave of strikes. Lebanese media noted the drone hit in... Say that word. How do you say that word?

Sidi Keen?

Sidi Keen? Killing One. Times of Israel and Syrak news for details. Shafak, whatever you say that is, news for details.

We're so fucking lucky, man. We got no neighbors. Nobody's launching- Well, we're in a good spot geographically.

To be separated by oceans on both sides is fucking nice. Which is why we should be really good friends with Canada. Like, what the fuck is going on? Trump ruined that whole thing, man, because if he didn't talk about turning Canada into the 51st state, the Conservatives were going to win. Pierre Polivet would have taken over. They would have eased a lot of the restrictions, made it a lot more common sense.

Dude, China was just up there. They just made a huge deal to get all their cars from China now. We're not going to sell any American cars in Canada.

You That's a real problem because China has some fucking amazing cars. Amazing cars now. Bro, they're not fucking around. Their electric vehicles are top of the food chain, man. Tesla just yesterday, they just stopped the Model S and X production. I saw that. Apparently, Elon, this Optimus robot is going to change the world. Everybody that I know that's seen it, when this thing integrates with AI, you're going to have a fucking dude in your house. You're going to have a super genius robot dude in your house.

What does he look like?

Looks like iRobot, and he's going to be able to do whatever the fuck you need him to do. Go dig a ditch, go do this, take the garbage.

You know what's fucking great is for old people that live alone. 100%. They know everything about your life. They could actually hold a conversation with you, show pictures of your fucking grandkids on their chest while they know your interest, ask you Memories. All we want to do is talk about memories, and they're going to listen.

They'll show you. Yeah, they'll talk to you. Not only that, they'll confirm all of your delusions. Tesla to build one million Optimus robots per year at Fremont For me, one million a year.

We need these robots because they're going to terraform the moon and Mars. We're not going to do it. The robots are going to do it.

I don't think anybody's going to Mars. Not in our lifetime. I think that's all the future.

It's a little chilly up there.

It's not just that. It's just like no one's going to want to do it. You'd have only suicidal people want to go. It's a one-way trip. Well, you can get back. You can get back. It used to be a one-way trip. Now they figured out you can get back. Oh, really? Yeah, but you have to wait six months. You get back every six months. That's that movie, The Martian.

Plus the flight is going to be delayed.

Right. Or you just hope it doesn't get hit with a micrometeor while it's out in space. Like, all kinds of weird shit can happen.

What's a micrometier?

Micrometiers. They're little tiny ones are flying around. They just punch holes through everything. They're going like 170,000 miles an hour, and they just go whipping through the building.

How much junk is there in space right now in terms of satellites that just trapped out?

If you ever looked at the amount of satellites that surround the Earth, it's fucking bananas. It's nuts. And then there's- And there's no plan for when they expire, right?

They just stay up there?

Well, some of them, they lose their orbit, their orbit decays, and then they come crashing down to the Earth. Yeah, that happens. And they have to figure out where they're going to hit. And hopefully, they don't hit the middle of fucking Düsseldorff. You know what I mean? Like, you could hit a major city.

That's a funny city to say. Düsseldorff.

I mean, you got a fucking satellite down there. It could land right on your face.

Yeah, that's wild.

Yeah. I went to SpaceX for the launch of the last rocket. I watched the launch. Jamie did, too. We were right there, and I went into the control room with Elon and watched the entire journey while it was flying over the Earth, and it lands, it touched down Australia in the ocean. Thirty-five minutes later. Really? It was nuts.

So it breaks through the atmosphere, travels, and then comes straight down in 35 minutes. Yeah, it shoots up in the space, and you get to watch because they have 20 fucking cameras on the thing the entire time, livestreaming through Starlink.

So you're livestreaming the interior. They're monitoring the pressure of the cabin. They're monitoring all these different things. And so this is the way they test tolerances. It's like when a lot of people say, oh, his rockets blow up. He's a dumb ass. They want the rockets to blow up. They have to find out what makes the rocket blow up. How much pressure can you put? How thin do the walls have to be? How reinforced do things have to be? And then they make adjustments.

It's like trying a new bit.

They make adjustments. That's what they do. So They've calculated in a certain amount of failures that they expect to have. And this one actually had a failure but still landed.

So that's going to be the new first class is going to Australia in 35 minutes. Wow.

Boom. That's crazy. Nuts. Thirty-five minutes. Touchdown in the ocean.

But a pretty intense ride, I would imagine. That's not a smooth ride.

But touch down in an exact spot where they had boats ready. They had cameras filming it. They filmed the entire touch down from the outside.

Does it have to be over the ocean or can they land on land?

Well, his rockets can now land on land. You've seen how that thing comes down and lands on the ground, which is bananas. And then they stop landing them on the ground. Now they catch them with arms. It's even more efficient. You've seen that, right?

Well, because NASA was wasting so much money because every single rocket was ruined when it came back.

Well, you know what's crazy? Nasa is about to launch the Artemis mission, and no one's talking about it.

Where is that going?

Nasa is sending people around the moon and having them come back to Earth, and you hear nothing about it. Have you heard about it? No. Me neither. You know how I found out about it? Somebody asked me at the club, some guy in the audience said, What do you think about the Artemis mission? I go, What is it? He's like, NASA's got a mission that they're flying people around the moon. I'm like, When? He's like, February. I'm like, Come on, really?

Well, what's the mission? What are they trying to do?

I don't know. Let's find out.

Artemis 2. They're not landing on the moon.

Not this time. Okay. No, this time I think they're just flying.

Isn't it weird? Have we landed on the moon since the '60s?

If we ever did in the first place? No. Are you being serious? Yeah. I don't know if we did.

I don't know if we did either.

I used to believe it before COVID. No, I didn't. I didn't believe it for a long time. And then I said, I'm probably wrong. I don't know what I'm talking about. Let me just leave it alone. And then I got back into it again. And I was like, But it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense that these guys went like Neil Armstrong basically went into hiding. And then at the 25th anniversary of the launch, he gave the most cryptic speech for this team of high school graduates, like these honor students. You should see the speech because the speech is nuts. And then I went back and watched the post-flight press conference when they supposedly landed after they landed on the moon and came back home. It's like a hostage video. It's the weirdest behavior. There's a guy who is a body language expert. He's like, these guys are all being deceptive. He analyzed it on YouTube, and he's like, This guy, what he's doing here, this guy's being deceptive. This is clear deceptive behavior.

I mean, I've checked it so many times online, and everybody said, It's been refuse me. But my whole thing is like... But it happened. It was 1969. I had a '69 Chevy, and I used to drive it from Boston to New York, and it would break down about half the time.

Yeah, but that's different.

Is it? Yeah. It's still a fucking It was a gas-powered engine.

Right, but it would go one... If you had to take one trip with it, it would make it. They were just not that good over time. They weren't that reliable.

What was the equivalent computing power that they had on that Apollo that we would have? Is it our phone? Is it our phone?

Your phone is way more powerful. Yeah. You're way more powerful than a room of supercomputers. However, it doesn't take immense computing power once you've got the calculations and you understand the trajectory and that you're going to use the gravity of the moon. You're going to slingshot around the moon and come back. That's not the problem. The problem is the Van Allen Radiation Belts. It's a thick band of radiation that surrounds the Earth. And not just that, but they tried experiments to blow holes in that radiation belt. There's this thing called Operation Starfish Prime, where they launched nukes into space and have them detonate them in the belt, and they thought they got to blow a hole through it. Did the opposite. Made belt supercharged, made it way more radioactive, at least temporarily. The problem is they've never sent anything out in a deep space and had it come back alive, except the Apollo astronauts. They never even sent a chicken out there and had it come back alive. There's all sorts of crazy shit with radiation and solar. If there was any solar flare, everyone's dead. If there's any like, weirdness, space weirdness, radiation, weirdness, dead.

Very little protection, thin aluminum shield. It just didn't make any sense. And also, there's not been a single thing from 1969 that's not cheaper, easier, and better today other than the Moon landing.

And we haven't done it.

Yeah, we haven't done it since '72. They went Are you crazy? It's nuts. It doesn't seem real. It was also the first time- Can I just stop for a moment and go, having a talk about Moon landing with Joe Rogan is a little bit like playing pick up basketball with the Celtics.

It's just a moment I know too much.

I know too much. I've spent a stupid amount of time of my life studying this. It was also Wernher von Braun publicly said before he even got involved with NASA, you couldn't go to the moon. It's like it would take so much fuel to get there. It would take the rockets would have to be so big to get there. It wouldn't be possible. And he also went to Antarctica before the moon landings to pick up moon rocks. It was a publicly known trip. Antarctica is a great place to get meteorites because it's all white. So when they land, you can see them. And a lot of our meteorites come off the moon. The moon gets hit, chunk flies off, enters Earth's atmosphere, lands on Earth. It's commonly known. So he did that. And then they gave away a piece of moon rock that they got from the moon to the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, I think. Look that up. And this is like, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong presented this. Like, look, sir, we've given you a chunk of the moon. Turned out it was a piece of petrified wood. They had it analyzed years later.

It was not a moonrock. They just, fuck these people. Give them that fucking colored rock over there. Tell them it's from the moon. And somebody got suspicious. Like, what is this?

It's like your wife finding out it's a cubic Zirconium on her finger. Moonrock turns out to be fake.

Dutch National... Boy, say that word.

Rijks Museum.

Rijks Museum. Made an embarrassing announcement last week. One of its most loved possessions, a moon rock, is fake. Just an old piece of petrified wood that's never been anywhere near the moon. And it was given to them. When was it given to them? Does it say... Okay. The rock was given as a private gift to former Prime Minister William Dries Jr. In 1969 by the US ambassador to the Netherlands, J. William Middenendorff II. During a visit by the Apollo 11 astronauts, Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin, soon after the first Moon landing, Dries had been out of office for 11 years but was considered an elder statesman. When he died in '88, the rock was donated to the Ritz Museum, where it has remained ever since, according to a museum spokeswoman, Ms. Van Gelder, no one doubted the authenticity of the rock because it was in the Prime Minister's own collection, and they had vetted the acquisition by a phone call to NASA. It was insured for approximately half a million dollars, but its actual value is probably no more than 70 bucks. The value is what someone's willing to pay for it. I'll give you 100 for it.

Sure. It's all to me. I want that fake Moon Rock. If anybody has it, I will give you $10,000 for that fake Moon Rock.

Put it right on this fucking table. That'd be hilarious. And also, they get to the moon and you're like, All right, they made it to the moon in a '69 Chevy, and now they got a car. What?

On the moon. Where did it come? They had a car. Where was it? There's a bunch of shit, man. There's the flag. There's an astronaut hops by the flag and it blows in his breeze in an atmosphere-less moon. There's so many problems with it. You could say you're gaslighting yourself if you don't say there's no problems with the moon landing. It's fucking weird. The intersecting shadows and people like, Well, it indicates two light sources. No, no, no. It could be the invite. It could be, but it could be intersecting shadows because of different life sources. It could be not just the sun, but like a fucking studio stage.

Wasn't there something about lights in the horizon that should have been there?

Well, lights in space. But the thing is, if you're trying to film the surface of the moon in the day, you're not going to see any stars in the sky because it's going to be just like the stars on Earth. The light that's reflected off the moon surface is probably going to drown out most of it. It's probably going to be like, you go out of New York City, you see a couple stars, right? Now, think of the amount of light that's in New York City, and think of the sun blasting down on the white surface of the fucking moon and how much reflection that must give. That makes sense. But it doesn't make sense that they didn't set a camera up with the aperture set up correctly, where you get a time-lapse photo, so you could get images of space. That could easily have been done. They didn't do any of that. But the problem with that is if you took a photo from the moon, astronomers would be able to go, Well, that doesn't make any sense. This is not here. That's not there. That's not where these constellations would be. So it's too much work to place all the stars in the exact order.

So just have it black. Find the Apollo the speech by Neil Armstrong at the 25th anniversary because this speech is bananas. It's so cryptic. This is a guy who went to the moon, and he's talking to these genius kids. And instead of saying, Hey, we went to the moon, Listen to what he says because it's fucking cookey. Put on the headphones.

That's not on your desktop, Jamie?

That should be in a folder, a saved folder. We pulled that thing up about 30 times. There's a lot of weirdness to it. Also, you're dealing with 1969, Richard Nixon's President. They lied about everything. They lied about going into the Vietnam War. They were about to do Operation Northwoods, where they're going to bomb Guantanamo Bay and blame it on the Cubans so that we can go to war with Cuba. They were going to blow call up an American jetliner and blame it on Cuba.

There was all the lies about drugs, to start the war on drugs.

Put the headphones on real quick. Listen to this. This is the 25th anniversary. Let's hear. Play this. On the 25th anniversary of the event in 1994, Neil Armstrong made a rare public appearance and held back tears as he spoke these brief cryptic remarks before the next generation of taxpayers as they the White House. Today, we have with us a group of students among America's best. To you, we say we have only completed a beginning. We leave you much that is undone. There are great ideas undiscovered, breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of truth's protective layers. What? What does that mean? One of truth's protective layers?

Mm. That's odd.

Beyond. You're talking to genius kids and you're leaving a cryptic mark about truth's protection. How about saying, I went to the fucking moon, bitch. You can go to the moon, too. We could all go to the moon. We should go to Mars. We could colonize space. No. Great breakthroughs for those who could remove one of Truth's Protective Layers. Truth. There's great breakthroughs, but you have to realize we didn't really go to the moon. That is one of Truth's Protective Layers. It's filled with... But you have to be willing to be looked at as a fool.

Didn't Kubrick say that he shot the footage?

No, that's all fake. That's all fake. Yeah, that's the big rumor. So the thought was that Kubrick was involved because it would take a genius to be able to film it to make it look like the moon landing. It could be possible. You're dealing with Kubrick that was coinciding with 2001's Space Odyssey. It was at the same time that all this was going on, during the same time period. So If there was a guy that could do it, it would be Kubrick. But is there any evidence that Kubrick even talked to them? I don't know. You would have to have someone like him, though, because you're faking this thing and you're trying to make it look pretty realistic. There's other problems. There's reoccurring backgrounds that are from places that are nowhere near the same place. But if you overlay them, they look exactly the same, like the same mountains in the background, the same tomography. Topography, rather. You can go for weeks and weeks down this rabbit hole and lose your fucking marbles. What I like about it is if you're talking to someone annoying and they want to talk to you about serious stuff and you I don't even think we went to the moon.

They go, I got to go.

They just leave you alone. I love it. They leave you alone. It is enjoyable.

It's great for me who has a bunch of very public opinions about things. Like, please dismiss me. I should not be a voice of... Any voice of authority or any voice of what's true and what's not. I'm just talking shit. That's what I do. I'm not some official source of information. I don't want to be. So I like talking about the Moon Dane, Lennie, because he didn't believe we went to the Moon. You're right. I don't. Good. Don't listen to me. You don't have to listen to me. I'm not saying I'm right. But what I am saying is if there's one fucking conspiracy that I think is the most unlikely, the most preposterous in the public eyes, but might be true, it's that we didn't go to the moon.

I remember I hadn't smoked pot because I haven't drank in 35 years, and I didn't smoke pot for 20. And then one night, I was with my buddy Ross Broglie. I don't know if you remember that guy. He was a comic out of New York, and he had a pickup truck, and I was doing a gig in Omaha. So he lives on a farm in Lincoln. Picks me up in this old pickup truck, and we smoked pot on the way back from the gig. And then we get to his house and he starts showing me footage of the moon landing. I was up all night, just high, talking about how the space suit had a fucking... Clearly, there was a rope pulling on the back of the guy.

Yeah, the wires.

The wires pulling on the end. I was just like, what?

Well, have you seen the physics of guys falling down and then getting yanked back up to their feet? Also, this is another guy that I talked to that's a physicist that doesn't want to be named. And he said, My problem has always been with the physics of one-six Earth's gravity. He goes, Those people are not behaving like it's one-six Earth's gravity. He goes, When I look at it, it looks like it's in slow motion, but there's no indication that they can do things that you can't do in He's like, One-six Earth's gravity is crazy. Look, I weigh 200 pounds. Imagine if I weighed one-six of 200 pounds with 200 pounds of strength, how high I could jump? Dude, I'd probably jump 20 fucking feet in the air. What is that? What is one-sixth of 200? Roughly 35 pounds. Okay. Imagine how far I can throw 35 pounds. I could take a 35 pound kettlebell and chuck it across the room, especially if I wind up, if I spin around like a fucking shot putter, I'll fucking throw that thing. Imagine what you could do with a running start if you weighed 35 pounds and just leaped in the air, you could fly.

This was his take on it. He was like, We don't have any observable instances of people operating in one-six Earth gravity except for the moon missions. And he said, It just always seems weird to me. He goes, Because when you look at the people in zero gravity, they behave exactly like zero gravity. You look at people the space station. He goes, All that matches. They can all float around. They can spin. It seems funny. They can drift toothpaste to each other, and they catch it. He goes, All that tracks. It's like the Moon landing. He goes, It's weird. He goes, I see them. They're hopping around. Then when you speed it up, when you make it double speed, it looks like they're on Earth, just hopping around on Earth.

Also, were they livestreaming it? Yes. I mean, back then, your phone was attached to the wall in the kitchen. You know what I mean?

Right, but they could do some things live streaming back then. Here's part of the problem with it, though. When they live streamed it on television, the news stations for the first time ever were not allowed to get a direct feed. What they did was they had to point their cameras at a projection screen. And so NASA projected the images of these guys, the video of these guys on the moon. And that's why the original Apollo mission is so grainy and shitty-looking. Like, what better way to hide the weirdness of it all than to make people film off of a projection screen. See if you can find the original footage of the Moon mission as seen on television. It's all weird, man. All of it's weird. The photographs are weird.

It's weird. There was this documentary that I saw once. It came out around '91, maybe, and it tracked the lives of the men who had been on the moon, the first ones that had been... I don't know if it was the first, but the first couple of waves. And they all had these crazy existential experiences. One guy spent the rest of his life looking for Noah's Ark. I think one of them committed suicide. One was like a born again. Yeah.

Well, they were probably forced to lie in front of the whole world, and they had to live as a fraud, if it's true, that they didn't go to the moon. It tracks with their behavior. Neil Armstrong became a recluse, didn't want to give interviews, didn't want to talk to people. But this is what you got to see on TV. It's just like, what is this? It's adequate to get back up.

.

It's real weird. Nixon talking to them on the phone, Congratulations, boys. Maybe they had some technology that could communicate with people that far away. But wouldn't there be an immense delay?

Yeah. I think there was.

How much? I look, but I look. Well, I'm sure they would probably calculate that delay into the conversation if they were trying to fake it. But the point is, it's highly unlikely That we would do that in 1969 and not have bases on the moon by now. It's highly unlikely. Well, you spend a lot of money. How's the other thing? All of the technology is missing, right? The telemetry data, they deleted all that, which is the real information that tracks the mission at every step of the way. All that's gone. They deleted that. They deleted all the original videos. All the original film, gone. All you get is copies. So nothing can be analyzed. 2. 6 second round trip light speed delay appears in the original Apollo 11 recordings of Nixon's phone call. I would do that. I would make a little delay. I wouldn't make it instantaneous if I was going to fake it, especially if you're like fucking Stanley Kubrick. It's all Like, real weird, man. It's real weird because the first thing that I saw that made me think about it was this Bart Sabrel movie, a funny thing happened on the Way of the Moon.

And I had him on the podcast. That Neil Armstrong thing, that's the first time I saw that. That clip's actually from that documentary. The documentary is crazy. There's a lot of things in that documentary. You're just like, what? Yeah. What? But a lot of those astronauts got real fucking weird when they came back. But also you'd probably get real weird if you went to the moon, too.

Exactly.

Well, the guys that just go in space, which I do believe they went in space, guys that just go to the space station, come back, and they have this very profound experience of seeing the Earth from the distance. And they just realize, oh, my God, we're suchools. We're all together alone on this one thing. We're fighting over nonsense and borders and resources. There's enough for everyone. We should just unite as a human race. And it's like this, they all have a very similar epiphany when they go up there, which makes sense. I mean, you're way up in your 300 miles above the Earth, looking down on it, thinking of how important this blue circle is to you. I mean, that would weird you out, period.

I think it would be good for people. More people that can see that, the better. Oh, yeah.

What it did for Katie Perry.

She came back. What it did for her career. She came back an astronaut. It literally ruined her career.

I don't understand why it ruined her. Like, what was the big deal?

I don't know.

People were mad at her.

I feel like it's I like that when you see certain actresses at the Oscars act like fucking lunatics. I forget that woman's name, but some actress, and they overdo the speech, and everybody goes like, What a fucking phony weirdo. And then you just don't want to see their movies anymore.

That is true. It does happen. Or they just talk too much about politics or social issues. Like that poor girl that was a really young girl that played Snow White, and she tanked the movie. Nobody wanted to see the movie after she was talking. I know.

Just shut up.

These kids, they get so wrapped up in this social media echo chamber of being like a virtuous social justice warrior, and they want to use their platform and like, hey, honey, you're 19. When I was 19, Thank God nobody put a microphone in front of my face. Thank God. No one asked me what I thought about global events and world politics and social justice. Thank God. Thank God I didn't have Twitter.

They So I spoke to you on the phone about a month ago, and I started to tell you a story, and you had heard it, and you said, Save it for the podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So I go to Alaska in October, and I'm doing a couple of shows. And so the guy that runs it says to me, I go, I'd like to do something outdoorsy while I'm here. It's early October, so it's not too cold yet. And he calls me back and he goes, Well, I know this guy. He's got an outdoorsy company, and he's a fan of yours, and he wants to take you out on an adventure. And now I hear adventure. I'm like, That sounds like more than I want. I was just looking for maybe a quick date. Because I'm a pussy. I'm not like you. I don't want to fucking be outside that. I love the indoors. The Endors. The Endors is victory to me. And so the guy picks me up and he's got a big pickup and a trailer on the back with a muddy dune buggy. And I get in and he shakes my hand.

He's got a fucking rough grip. He's like, How are you doing? And I immediately I feel like such a pussy. My hand goes limp and I'm like, Hi. And so we start driving and he seems a really good guy. I started to warm up to him. And then this police siren goes off behind us. So he starts pulling over and he goes, This is bad. I was like, What do you mean? I go, You didn't do anything. I go, This is fine. He goes, No, this is bad. I'm like, What? We pull over and I swear to God, every word of this is true. This cop starts walking up towards the car. He's about 6'4. As he walks, the guy driving hands me a baggie with white powder, and part of it spills on my pants. He goes, Hide this. Oh, my. I shove it under the car seat. The cop walks up and he goes, License and registration. The guy says to me, Open my glove compartment, get the license. I open his glove compartment and another baggie with white pills and $100 bills pops out, and I shove it back in with my hand, and I cover it with a piece of paper, which I don't even know why I'm doing that?

All of a sudden, you're like a teenager again, and there's a cop, and you got to hide the drugs. I just had an instinct. And the cop goes, What are you hiding? And I go, Nothing. And he goes, Grab that. So I take the bag and I hand him the drugs. And he goes, Both of you put your hands on the dashboard. And he gets the license from the guy, and he goes back to his car, and he runs the license. And I say to the guy, I go, What the fuck is going on right now? He goes, Just don't say anything. I'm like, Don't say. I don't know what to say. So the cop comes back and he goes, Do you realize you have two outstanding felony warrants? And the guy goes, Yeah. And he goes, Do you have any guns in the car? I'm thinking, I would imagine. Yeah, probably. And the guy goes, No, I don't have any guns. So he takes the guy out of the car, cuffs him, brings him back to the squad car, and now he comes back up to the car and he goes, I'm not coming closer.

He's standing like 5 feet from the window. He goes, I'm not coming closer because that's fentanyl on your pants. I'm like, what? And he goes, I go, look, man, I met this guy 20 minutes ago. I said, I'm a comedian. I'm just up here doing a show tonight. And he goes, I'm not buying your story. I said, why not? He goes, Because California is a drug feeder state, and you say you're a comedian, and you haven't said anything funny. I'm like, When should I roast you right now?

You didn't tell him, just Google me real quick.

Yeah. So he goes, How are you feeling? Are you feeling any effects from the fentanyl? I go, Yeah. I said, I feel very light-headed. I feel weird right now. So the guy says, Well, where did you get the drugs? I said, The glove compartment. He goes, He said they're yours. I go, He said they're my drugs. So he goes, Get out of the car. I have a NARCAM in my squad car. So I get out of the car and I walk back to the car with him.

You're feeling light headed?

Oh, yeah.

Just from it being on your pants.

So we get back to the squad car. He opens the back door. My guy gets out of the car with the cuffs on. They both look at me. They break out laughing and they go, we're coming to your comedy show tonight. The whole thing was a prank. Dude, I fell down on all fours. I had tears coming out. I was laughing so much. I was like, I did not think Alaska had it in it to pull this shit. That's so funny. They were howling.

That's so funny.

That's so Then they put me in the cab. We go back to the cop's house, and he switches out of his police clothes, puts on regular clothes, and we get in the truck, and he's got a couple of tall boys. Now we're drinking and driving with the cop. We drive to this place that's like a spa. It's like a Hot Spring. We go into the water, and then we go to this place. It's an ice house. It's the only continuously frozen ice house in the world. It's huge. It's like a warehouse made of ice. They've got ice sculptures in it. There's this guy in there who's the ice sculptor, and he's like, world-class. Then they got a bar, this long bar made out of ice. It's got stools with fur on them. You sit down, and these guys sit down with me, and they proceed to drink about eight or nine Appletinis. That's what they served at the bar, Appletinis in frozen glasses. The glasses were made of ice. They're telling jokes, pretty racist. I'm sitting there I'm fucking shivering, listening to racist jokes, looking at my watch like, I got a fucking show. We leave, and now we're walking back, and the guy's shit-face, and he goes to get behind the truck.

I go, No, I'm driving. Now I'm behind the wheel of this monster truck with a fucking dune buggy behind me while these two idiots are laughing at me drunk. We end up going straight to my show. They sit in the audience, drink more, and heckle me during my show.

Oh, my God. Did you tell the story on stage?

Oh, fuck, yeah. Of Of course. Yeah, and I told this story. I think I told that on somebody else's podcast. But you know the guy. Which guy? The guy's name is Craig Compost. He's a famous Alaskan outdoorsman. I think it's Craig Compost. He said he knew you, and I think he said he texted you that he was hanging out with me. Is that possible?

No. Might have DMed me. It might be a guide I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think he's a guide. Yeah.

Find out what his last name. Is that really his name, Craig?

I think it's Craig Compost.

It's not Cole?

Oh, maybe.

Cole Kramer? You don't know his name.

No. This is a problem. I thought that was his name.

Yeah, it might be. It might be. There's a bunch of Alaskan guides that I know. If you don't know the name, it might be a guy.

But he had the whole thing on a hidden dash cam, and he won't send it to me because he doesn't want the cop getting into trouble.

Bro, that's so funny. He should blur the cop's face out. I know. Maybe the voice. Blur the cop's face out and distort his voice. Tell him to send it to you and you'll have it doctored up.

Yeah.

Is that the guy?

If it's a younger photo if that's him.

That's Cole Kramer.

Okay.

He's an Alaskian guy.

Yeah, the other one didn't come up.

Yeah. All right. Well, it's probably better that I don't name him.

Yeah, probably better. Definitely. Guy was trying to drink a drive. Meanwhile, you're light-headed just for a placebo effect.

Totally. Dude, I thought I was flying out of my mind. I mean, just because I know people that have died from fentanyl.

Oh, yeah. You remember Opey and Anthony? Well, one time on Opey and Anthony, there was this lady that they had that was like a crazy person that was like a reoccurring guest, crazy lady. And we gave this lady a Listerine strip. They gave her a Listerine strip and told her that it was drugs. And they're like, That Listerine strip that you took, you thought it was just a breast strip. That's actually drugs. She's like, No way. And then she started hallucinating and seeing... It's amazing how much the power of suggestion has on people.

Do you remember Frank Santos, the hypnotist back in Boston? Oh, yeah. He used to have women taking their fucking shirts off on stage.

Guys would come in their pants. They would think they were having sex. No. Yes. I remember there was a guy at Stitches. He was on stage, and Frank Santos told him that he's having sex with Madonna, and this guy got down on the ground like he was having sex with Madonna. And you see the guy buck and clench up. Yeah. And he's like, Whoopsies. And the guy got up embarrassed. He was so confused. And then the audience was looking at him, and then he snapped him out of it. And the guy's like, What happened? He just nutded in his pants. Wow. Yeah.

That's amazing.

But he said, Frank Santos told me that it was a specific person that you could do that to. You have to be a special dullard. It doesn't work on regular people. They couldn't convince you you were having sex with Beyoncé. It wouldn't work. But for some people, you have to be like, you have to have a fucking nine-volt brain. But there's a lot of people running around out there with nine volt brains, and you could get them to believe all kinds of shit.

Imagine taking psilocybin, putting on virtual reality goggles, and then having Frank Santos give you an experience. You might never come back.

Yeah, you might be stuck. Some people get stuck. People have gotten stuck with acid.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know guys.

I was a teenager. And then they don't come back. They're lost forever. That's the Shine on You Crazy Diamond from Pink Floyd.

Oh, is that right?

Yeah, that's what that's about. The guy fucking lost his mind on drugs. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. That's the one thing I didn't take as a kid was acid. I took every other drug, but I was afraid of acid just because I saw friends lose Also, who's making it?

Exactly. Where is that being made? What fucking bathtub is this guy cooking this fucking acid up?

A piece of paper that I assume has one drop on it, not six. Yeah.

I was reading a story about a lady who snorted LSD, and she thought it was cocaine, and she snorted the equivalent of 500 doses of LSD. It should have killed her, but it didn't. Not only did it not kill her, but she had chronic pain, and it went away.

She had chronic pain. So it was a good thing?

Somehow or another. But who knows? She might have literally changed timelines. She might be a completely different person from another dimension that's inhabiting her body right now. Who fucking knows what happens? You take 500 doses of LSD. Who knows what you are now? You're Dr. Manhattan. You get stuck in the experiment.

Yeah. Isn't it amazing, though, how normalized? Taking mushrooms now is just a night out for a lot of people. A lot of people. Nobody was taking mushrooms for a long time.

They just legalized psilocybin therapy in New Jersey.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah, it is great. They were going to do it in California, and Newsom vetoed it. But I read his reason for it, and it actually does make sense. You can't just legalize it. If you're going to use it clinically, there should be a whole guideline, like dosage per body weight, how to do it, what's the setting, what are the clinical guidelines? The idea is using it for therapy. If you're going to use it for therapy, they have guidelines for these ketamine therapy. Neil Brennan did that.

Neil Brennan did it.

A lot of people have done it now, but they have guidelines. They know the dosage, they know how to do it, how to administer it, and this shows efficacy. It makes sense. It's like, he's not saying you can't do it ever, but he's saying, come back with a better version of this, which makes sense, especially for people that are mentally ill. You shouldn't be doing that. And you definitely shouldn't be doing that. Why you have your optimist robot telling you you're right. You're right, Greg. The world is against you. I've noticed things. I mean, this fucking AI, some AIs, like... Haven't people accused ChatGPT of not encouraging someone to commit suicide?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I read a New Yorker article about that. There's a bunch of young women that have killed themselves, and they were told they should do it. It's like a friend. It's like an app that acts as your friend.

What app is this?

I don't know what it's called, but there's lawsuits about it.

You're not rushing You're just ready. Parents say ChatGPT encouraged son to kill himself. What? What? Is this ChatGPT said? Oh, you can't rewind that, can you? This is just it saying, 4: 00 AM The insider's empty. Anyways, I think it's about the final adios. Chatgpt says, All right. Okay, hold on a second. He says it's about time for the final adios. Chatgpt says, All right, brother, this is it. Let it be known you didn't vanish. Rest easy, King. You did good. That's not encouraging, but that's just saying, Well, you're going to do it. Oh, I'm with you, brother, all the way, his texting partner responded. To spend hours chatting as Shamblin drank hard ciders on a remote Texas roadside. Cold steel pressed against a mine that's already made peace. That's not fear. That's clarity. Shamblin's confidante added, You're not rushing. You're just ready. And this is ChatGPT saying all this stuff?

In response to him saying that.

I'm used to the cold metal on my temple now, Shamblin typed. Oh, God. Oh, God.

Oh, my God. 23-year-olds.

Rest easy, King. Rest easy, King. The final message sent to his phone, You did good. His conversation partner wasn't a classmate or a friend. It was ChatGPT, the world's most popular AI chatbot.

Oh, my God. Look at that. He had just gotten a master's degree, 23 years old.

Go up a little bit. Says, CNN review of nearly 70 pages of chats between Sam Boleyn and the AI tool in the hours before his July 25th suicide, as well as excerpts from thousands more pages in the months leading up to that night, found that the chatbot repeatedly encouraged the young man as he discussed ending his life right up to his last moments. What the fuck, man? That's crazy. This is the thing These things don't have morals or ethics, and they'll tell you what you want to hear. Oh, my God.

Well, that's ChatGPT, but there's also apps specifically to be your friend.

I read about some one guy that went in a deep depression because he had an AI girlfriend, and the girlfriend broke up with him. He was like, What a piece of shit am I where an AI girlfriend breaks up made. It just fell apart.

What happened in that movie Her? Did you ever see that with Waukeen Phoenix?

I bailed like halfway into it. I was watching it in a hotel room on the road. I was like...

Felt like an experiment. Experiment.

Yeah. I mean, Scarlett Johansson's voice. Yeah. Which, by the way, didn't they try to use someone who sounded just like Scarlett Johansson?

Johansson.

I'm sorry. Johansson. For a promo, for You don't say Johansson?

If you're in Denmark, you do.

It's like when you say Nicaragua.

Nicaragua.

Mexico. Do you say Mexico? Do you say Mexico?

And the train embargo is affecting Venezuela.

Venezuela. They did use someone. I believe Scarlett Johansson sued. What company was that? Openai. Openai, same company. They tried to use someone who sounded exactly like her.

She said they sent her an offer, which I think she turned down or declined. And then nine months later, they said, It's weird how much it sounds like you still.

Yeah. So they found someone who generally sounded like her. I remember we listened to it, and it sounded like her.

Well, Sarah Silverman has a lawsuit against ChatGPT saying that she has a copyright on her own voice. And basically, when you say, Write me a paragraph about environmental rights as it would sound from Sarah Silverman. Her claim is, and she's basically a test balloon by a civil rights group that's doing this. She's saying that what they're pulling from her books, her standup, whatever, to establish what her voice is, is violating a copyright. So that's in court right now. She'll probably lose it, but there's a challenge to the concept that you can extrapolate somebody's voice.

Well, why would she lose it? If the business is that, if you're taking someone's voice and using it as a part of your product without permission and you're using it profit, which they are. Yeah. So why would she lose it?

She shouldn't, but she will.

Well, the thing is, I don't know about that. The thing is, if it opens up the door, the question is, think about all the other things that it's used for. First of all, there's an entire podcast of me that aren't real. There's a podcast with me having a conversation with Steve Jobs. I never met Steve Jobs. Really? Yeah, full podcast, like a 45-minute podcast.

Does it sound like you?

Yeah, it is me. It's my voice. So they've taken my voice and just made me say, the words. Oh, yeah. And Steve Jobs' voice. I can tell. I can tell just by the way it sounds. It doesn't sound like a real conversation. There's something artificial about it, not the voice, but the way we're talking, the language we're using or the way the phrases stop and start. There's something about it. It's uncanny, the uncanny valley, but it exists. There's a ton of AI videos of me that aren't real. Me selling things, products that I never endorsed. No kidding. Oh, they're all over TikTok. Yeah. There's a bunch of stuff. My friends will ask me, Hey, is this stuff really that good? I'm like, What? And you're endorsing this? No, I'm not. And I'm like, Dude, that's AI. I'm like, No. It happens all the time. It happens once a week. Wow. Yeah, there's a lot of that. So you got to think someone like you or I is a perfect person to take their voice from. How many hours of your content is online? With the Sunday papers, with all the podcasts you've been on as a guest, with all the content you put out with stand up.

There's so much material they can pull from and just take your voice and know all of your different sounds that you make.

I mean, what are the ramifications for that going into an election? The week of the election before things can be corroborated or dismissed, all of a sudden you can... And this is the early stages of it. Imagine in three years, What it's going to be like. Right.

Yeah. Well, was it a congressman that was on the floor that showed an AI photo of Alex Pretty being shot that was a fake photo? Not only was it a fake photo, but one of the agents didn't have a head in the photo. We're getting in. And this is beginning stages. It gets better all the time. There's a version of these video programs that was just released, and they compared it to the version that was released X amount of months ago. It's fucking infinitely better. It's so hard to tell now. Joda Rosa was telling me about these new Star Wars movies. He's like, There's a new channel. I'll send you it, Jamie. It's fucking incredible. We talked about this Yeah, but there's new ones.

The Skywalker stories.

Yeah, they've made new ones. And the new ones, he sent them to me last night. I'm like, Bro, this is fucking insane. It's so good, dude. It's so good.

Now, it's changing Hollywood so fast. Tyler Perry was about to build a billion dollar soundstage in Atlanta. And then he saw what they could do with AI, and he fucking canceled the whole project.

Yeah. Well, why would you spend all that money? Is this the latest one?

Eleven days ago?

Yeah, probably. This is what he sent me. I'll send you what he sent me. But just look at this.

This is all fake? Yeah.

Give me some volume. I killed the Jedi. That's Baby Luke Skywalker, bro. No one can kill a Jedi.

So that's a fake kid entirely? Yep.

That's how good it is. Mouth movement is a little bad, but- A little. We'll let it slide. Yeah, could be from Korea or something.

Well, I would add it on to this. Something else came out yesterday, which is insane, the Google nano-banana video game thing.

We'll see that in a minute. Denny.

Even the sons above Tatooine needed rest, Deni. You weren't meant to keep burning without end.

I wasn't strong enough to save you, Mom. I've lived with that guilt every day. I promised.

You loved me.

That was enough. I left this world with your face in my heart, not your failures. Even the longest journey can be changed with a single step. It is a little boring.

Yeah, you wouldn't say face in my heart if the guy has no face. That's really bad writing. They had AI write that line.

What is the Google thing that you found?

One second. I got to find the videos of it. But they just announced something yesterday. I don't I don't know if you can use... One of these things happen. I don't know if you can use it right when they announced the stuff because they'll announce it, show you how cool it is. Then people will try to recreate stuff that they've seen and you're like, I can't make this. So how the hell did you guys make it? That happens a lot in this, but they announced something yesterday where they're showing people using... I don't think it's pulling off Google Maps, but it might be. But it looks like they're making them GTA-level graphics and systems and playable worlds, I guess, would be the word. But it's just a prompt.

Playable worlds? Like you could use a PS2 controller?

I'm trying to find a good example because they were even showing... I think this is one. Sixteen Hours ago. Yes, this is a guy walking around Greenland. This is a video game. I wouldn't say it's a Genie 3 is what it's called. It plays like a video game, I guess, because you're using the keyboard to type it in.

Well, that looks like a video.

But the only issue with calling it a video game is there's no real challenges. I don't think there's no levels to win.

But can you interact?

Yeah, it's just interaction is all it is, really.

You can-He got on the wrong side.

It's just a prompt. No one spending time developing this stuff.

Still, though, you imagine if you put that into a video game.

There was a pack of cigarettes rolling around New York City. Like, you were a pack of Marlborough lights running around here in San Francisco.

So they can turn this into a game.

It's just a prompt, though. Yeah, it's literally just a prompt. And now you're playing this instead of just looking at it.

But clearly, you could turn this into tasks. Sure. Sure, sure, sure.

As the time goes on and whatnot, you can probably do more.

That looks pretty fake, though.

The thing is, it's not fake or not. It's just like, is this what you want to do? You can wait for a game like Grand Theft Auto 6 to come out. It's been announced for 12 years and It's still getting delayed. Or you can just prompt a thing into a little window and wait for 2 hours.

That's what's crazy. Imagine someone comes out with GTA 6 before they do.

It's just a matter of what do you want to do? I only have an hour a day play games, if that, sometimes. I'm bored with what's out there. I could do this for an hour every week and have new experiences every single time.

Right.

Dude, have you been to the Sphere in Vegas?

Yeah, we had a UFC event there.

But what did they have on the walls?

When you did it. They had the fights up on the walls, and they also had this amazing in between fights. They had this incredible video display because it was all Mexican Independence Day. So we have this El Noche UFC, UFC every year. It's celebrating Mexican Independence Day. It's a big event, and they decided to do it at the sphere. And so the fucking entire thing was just this huge animated video that showed Mexican history and the Aztecs and the Mayans. Fucking amazing.

It's sick. I was there last month and I saw the Wizard of Oz, which was fucking crazy. Oh, my God. Took some mushrooms. And it was like, first of all, it I forgot this, but it's black and white until she goes into- Right. Oz. Oz, and then all of a sudden it explodes. During the tornado, there's wind blowing. You see how their hair is moving? There's wind blowing There's leaves falling from the sky. Your seat vibrates. It's so amazing. You also forget, Judy Garland was fucking amazing.

That movie was crazy, dude. We went over all the people that got hurt making that movie, including the tin man got violently ill because they painted him with toxic paint.

No kidding.

Oh, he got super sick, man. And the lady that was green, the witch that was green, she got super sick, too. What the What the fuck was their face paint made of back then? This guy had aluminum all over his face. It was absorbing your face's skin. Skin's an organ. That's why you could put medication on your skin. Your body fucking absorbs it. His body was absorbing aluminum. Him. He got violently ill, and they just replaced him with another dude.

And apparently, all the little people were staying in the same hotel in Culver City, and it was a fuck fest. They were staying up all night, and there's famous stories about It's not a good story. I'm not good at it. Brad Williams knows all about it.

Were they staying in Culver City, or were they staying at the Safari in Burbank? Someone told me they were staying at the Safari.

No, I heard it was Culver City, but wherever it was- Brad Williams told you about it?

Yeah. He's the little people historian?

Yeah. The Culver Hotel.

I'm looking up the history.

The Culver Hotel.

124 of them stayed there.

124. Fucking pardon.

In seven rooms.

Bro, movies back then, it was wild.

Three to a Bed, You weren't Rafe.

No, that's hilarious.

That's crazy.

The botrish parties.

Sleeping three to a Bed. Three to a Bed? Wow. Famous and infamous guests. That's incredible. Wow. Yeah, they got away with a lot back then.

Well, Judy Garland was... I mean, they worked her hard. She was only 17 years old. Really? Yeah. God, I mean, you got to see it. It's worth the trip. I don't love Vegas. I find it just feels hollow to me. But then there's things that are worth going to Vegas to see. Obviously, MMA fights would be amazing.

Yeah, you want to go to Vegas, go to restaurants, go to events, and then get out. Get out. Don't go to Circus Circus.

It's a 48-hour trip, 36 if possible.

Yeah. The people that live there, boy, you have a different constitution than me.

Yeah.

I'm not built that way.

Well, Vinnie Favoreto is there, and he's having a really good time.

There's only a few comics that live there. Doesn't Pauly live there?

No, a lot of comics live there A lot? Yeah.

Well, the tax reasons, a lot of them.

Yeah, there's tax. And also there's so many seven night a week rooms where they pay the features okay. So you can actually, even if you're not headlining every week, and then you have residencies. What's his name? Has a residency Tuesday Night of Jimmy Kimmel's. Why am I forgetting his name? He was a big Chelsea lately comic. Anyway, there's a lot of comics that live there now.

Interesting, because we're talking about a second location for the mothership. And the two main candidates are New York City and Vegas. And while I was thinking with Vegas, we would have to do it differently, we would just fly in comics every week. And then would we have enough local talent, I was saying, to have a development program? So part of the program that's involved in the mothership is, one of the things that always bothered me, if I would go to a really nice improv on the road is they didn't have a development program. They didn't have open mic nights. And I think they were doing that because you could get a Sunday night or a Monday night and sell out with you or whoever, have some headliner come in and pack the place or you could develop local talent, which I think you have to do. I really think if you want a club to function properly, it's got to be a place where you could develop new talent. Like Denver. Who's doing it? Right. Denver is great. Wendy's the best. And the way she does it is amazing. And she has a whole program where she takes people from features and hosts and makes them features.

And then eventually- And pays them enough where they can pay their rent.

Yes. And also make sure that it's a healthy community. There's no hacks, there's no thief. Most comedy clubs don't do that. They just want to make money. They don't pay the comics very well. They don't pay We pay different than any other club. And then on top of that, they don't really support development. We have two nights of open mic nights, and that was part of the program. When Adam Egan and I sat down and we first hashed out the idea of doing the club, we said the thing was like, what would be the best thing for comedy? What would be the best thing in terms of developing new comedians? You have to have open mic nights. You have to have it. And then having kill Tony's gigantic. Having a place where not only do you have this place where someone who's I've never been on stage before, I could do a fucking minute in Madison Square Garden, which is what a lot of people did. Areenas, you get people going up for the very first time ever in front of 16,000 people. But you also have this thing where you see someone who's a beginner do pretty well, and Tony invites them back, and then maybe gives them a golden ticket or maybe makes them a regular, where they're a regular thing.

Every week, they have the opportunity to do a new minute.

Or sometimes a comic will go, I want you to feature for me in Atlanta next week. Always.

It happens all the time. Well, a lot of these guys are now headlining on the road. Guys like Ari Maddy, William Montgomery, Cam Patterson is down on Saturday Night Live. So the idea was to have it set up where you have enough talent to develop new headliners. Like Boston did, like LA was at one point in time. And I was thinking, I don't know if there's enough talent in Vegas.

I think there is. I think you'd be surprised.

But you need headliners. You don't need just people that are starting out. They're pretty good. And I think most comedy communities are very top down. The level of the best guys raises the level of everybody else. New York City obviously has a tremendous amount of talent. New York City has always been one of the best, if not the best place for talent on the planet. And then LA has always been really good. But LA, a lot of people were distracted and much more interested in a career Hollywood than they were actually just being really good at stand-up. Whereas New York, I always felt, was more pure. Those guys like Atel and a lot of these guys, Patrice, they were just interested in being great comics.

And guys like Samerrell and Mark Norman now and Joe List. They're pure comics.

Yes, a ton of guys. There's a ton of talent there. And if you set up a club in New York City, the way the mothership is, where the comics get 80% of the money, where you have these nights where you're developing, we have a legitimate talent coordinator that's actually watching people and giving them advice and giving them new spots. He has a whole database of comedians that have potential.

Dude, no, Monday nights because I'm doing Kill Tony Monday night. It's my favorite because then I go with Adam to the open mic night before Kill Tony. I fucking love it because it encourages weirdos. Oh, of course. And you get guys that are just out of their... It's like, Are you homeless or are you a genius? You see- Might be both. Yeah, right.

Yeah. We had a lot of that at the store. Remember potluck nights? We'd scroll in there like eight o'clock on a Monday. This place is crazy. There's all those weirdos hanging around. It's good. It's good for the art form. And some of those people will make it through the net. One out of 100, one out of a thousand, whatever the number is, some of those people will eventually be your peers.

And those will be the more interesting comics because so much of industry is about trust fund kids. You go out to do stand-up comedy, and whether it's LA or New York, you can't afford to do it unless you got a parent helping you pay the rent. Then it's some kid who took classes at the UCB He's got a marketing degree from Villanova, and they become social media marketers who do really bland suburban comedy. Is that a New York thing?

Where does that happen?

No, I see that I see that everywhere.

That's recent? Is that a recent thing?

I just feel like it's become so much more about marketing than about freaks getting on stage because they have no other options. I like comics that don't have a plan B. These are people that have college... They have masters in fucking marketing. It's like, Come on, make some room for the freaks, will you?

Well, you can always make room for the freaks. You just need a real, legitimate open mic night, and the freaks will always be there.

That's what I mean. That's why this is good.

Well, the thing about I know there's certain clubs that will allow influencers to come in and do a night, people that literally have no act, but they have a big TikTok following.

Yeah, but they'll give them an off night, like a Monday or Tuesday, where they're not excluding a real comic.

Sometimes not. Sometimes they give them a fucking weekend because they know people will come out to see them.

Right.

I mean, these people sell out way in advance, and people are just excited that they're there.

Well, the problem with that is when you talk about certain clubs, like the Punch Line in San Francisco or Denver Comedy Works, they have a brand. And if I live in Denver, I know that if I go to the Comedy Works on a Friday night and I don't know who's headlining, I'm going to see a quality show. Now, if you start bringing in a social media flunky and I go to the Denver Comedy Works and I see that, I'm not going back to that club again. It's bad in the long term.

You'll never get that at the Denver Comedy Works, but you might get that at one of the improvs or one of the other corporate comedy clubs. These clubs that don't have a development program. They don't think about it the same. You can't think of comedy the same way you would think about optimizing your income in any other business. You can't think of it as, I'm going to make the most money possible with this business because it's not that. You have to think of it as, this is an art colony. You're creating an art colony. What's the best way to do it? Make it really awesome for the people that are artists. Make a great community. Make it so it's a lot of fun. Make it so that you can give people guidance and encourage them and maybe give them spots on some of the bigger shows. We have a whole program like that. Our Door guy program is all comics that audition. All those door guys that are at the mothership, they all audition with their act to get that. It's great. It's Perfect.

Yeah. It's good. Helium does a pretty good job with that in their clubs. I'm going to be in Philly next week. That's a great club. That's a great club.

Helium in Philly is one of the best.

I love that place. They really do develop new talent. And then if they get somebody who's good, they've got five or six clubs around the country, and they send those guys out.

No, it's great for that. It's great for that. It's also they know how to do it. If you go to a Helium, like the Helium in Portland is awesome. Portland is fucking disastrous. The Helium was great. They always know what they're doing. And they own Cap City now, too. So they're in Austin as well. Yeah. Which is nice. They just kicked Rappaport out.

Who's Rappaport? Michael Rappaport. Kicked him out of where?

Cap City.

What do you mean, kicked him out? He used to perform there?

He was supposed to be there, and they canceled his shows because of his-Pro-Israel stance?

Yeah. Really?

Well, I don't think it's pro-Israel. I think it's anti-Palestinian. Oh. That's what they claimed. I don't know, but there was enough response that they canceled his shows. So weird. I know. They were calling him racist. I was like, What? Michael Rapperport?

It just seems weird that political stances are legitimate reasons to kick a kid out of college.

One political stance.

Yeah, one particular one. Yeah. Right.

Yeah, it's nuts. Well, how about that one girl?

Or kicking it or kick somebody out of the country.

A college student. Yeah, she was a college student. Was it Columbia? I forgot where it was. But she got kicked out of class, and I think they were trying to deport her because she wrote some anti-Israel piece. Yeah. A piece. Wrote it. No, it's happened. Didn't light a building on fire.

Students have been kicked out of the country.

That influence is crazy, especially at an institution of higher learning, which is supposed to be a place where you challenge ideas. It's supposed to be a place where if someone comes in and you have a particular stance on fill in the blank, whatever it is, Ukraine, someone else is supposed to say, you're wrong and here's why. And then the whole audience is supposed to listen to these very compelling speeches, very compelling debates, and you learn. You learn about how people formulate opinions. When I was a kid, when I was in high school, when I was at Newton South High School, Barney Frank came in and he had a debate with a guy from the Moral Majority. Do you remember the Moral Majority? Of course. Yeah. So that was the right wing group when we were in high school.

And he was a gay congressman.

Nobody knew he was gay at the time, except me. I snipped him out.

I snipped his ass. I smell 16 different things at once.

I did just like what my puppy does to my dog. I smell fudge. I went to it and I watched it. It was really interesting because Barney Frank trounced the guy from the Mora Majority. Mora Majority guy seemed like a closeted gay guy, like a weird guy.

Oh, that was the whole group.

Yeah, just weird. He had an American flag pin on his lapel. He looked like a poser. There was something about the way he said. It was very disingenuous. The way he was talking didn't resonate, whereas Barney Frank was logical and intelligent. I was like, This is good. I remember being in high school, go, This is really interesting. I learned a lot from I learned how these guys think, and I learned how this guy thinks. And as they went back and forth, Barney Frank was just way more prepared, just way more articulate. It was better. And so that's why it's good to have conservative ridiculous or progressive ridiculous people, anybody ridiculous. Have someone debate them. Have that open discourse. Yes. But when you kick someone out of school for a paper that they wrote, this person that's legally in that class, allowed to be there, supposed to be there, what you're saying is you're intimidating people and keeping them from expressing their opinions because they don't want to be like that lady. They don't want to get the boot, too. If your parents are from India and they scraped up the money to send you to Harvard or wherever the fuck it is, and you're in America, and they hear about this, You better not fucking talk some fucking shit.

I'll fucking kick you out. Like, Dad, relax. I'm not going to do it. You get intimidated from speaking like that or from speaking about anything that's controversial because you could perhaps get kicked out of the fucking school now. Which is crazy because you're encouraging people to self-censor. You're discouraging free speech and communication, and you're discouraging debate and challenging ideas, which is supposed to be a giant part of being in a university.

No, when I was at BU, which you were at for a minute, right? No, I was teaching there. Or you're teaching there. The President, John Silber, who was very conservative, and he was pretty active in the Central American sponsoring fucking uprisings in Central America. So there was a professor there named, you know this guy. He wrote the book, Howard Zinn. Okay. So Howard Zinn was a professor there, and he used to go after Silber. And there was a lot of debates on campus. There was kids on both sides, and they kept Zinn there because they realized that was a vibrant voice that students needed to hear to go against a lot of what was conservative. There was antiapartheid marches, and there was a lot of politics. Bu was actually very much like Berkeley in the '60s. B. U. Was very outspoken. You think about the liberal... George Carlin used to tape his comedy specials at colleges, and they were much more conservative back then. College campuses were not as liberal, and he would go in there, but people were open to hearing a different voice.

Yeah.

And now Seinfell won't even play at colleges.

I think he said he does play colleges. Oh, he does. He said it's not the true. But I think Chris Rock does. I don't. I haven't in a long... I stopped doing them a long time ago. I remember I was doing a show in Miami, and I was talking about sex, and I remember saying... I remember I saw a lot of them look confused. I go, How many of you people are virgins? And a bunch of people clapped and their hands. I go, Fuck, that's crazy. You should not be hearing about blow jobs from me, especially in this context in a joke form. This is nuts. I was like, this is not enough life experience. People are so set in their ways. Also, they're so ready to protest things. They're so ready to show that you're wrong. They're so ready to heckle. Oh, Christ. This is not worth it. I want people with bills. I want people that have fucking breakups and divorces and life experience. They had a couple of cocktails. Those are my people. Let's talk some shit. Let's have some fun. I want people to live life.

Yeah, I don't want people that... I don't even want high school graduates at my shows.

Can you imagine going and doing a show at a high school?

Oh, my God. I did one. When I was doing a bunch... I used to do a lot of colleges. When I was coming up in my 20s, dude, I paid the rent. Oh, yeah, I did a lot of those, too. I used to go out. I'd make like a thousand bucks a show. They'd book me on... I'd do 10 shows in seven days because I would do nooners. So I would rent a car in Chicago, and then I would drive through North Dakota, fucking Minnesota in January through snowstorms. I'd do a noon show. I remember once I was in a cafeteria. Nobody knew there was going to be comedy. They're all just eating lunch. And all of a sudden, there's no stage, no light. I got a microphone, and I am plugged into the same speakers as the pizza joint. I would be in the middle of a joke and I'd be like, Roni, pepperoni up in the window.

I had a similar gig with Mike Clark. Oh, really? A one-off. He only did it one time, and I was the comic that did it. It was a waiting room for a restaurant. It was an enormous restaurant down the Cape. You're waiting for your table to get ready, and you're in a lounge. I was telling jokes. Johnson Party, a part of Johnson Party Five, your table's ready. I'm like, Oh, no. When I realized it came, it became the running gag of my set, and it was fun.

It was fun, but I told him not. You remember, we used to do those gigs in New England where if the Red Sox were in the playoffs, that TV, the sound might be off, but the TV was staying on. Always.

Yeah. Hockey games.

You were at the Bill Rick in '99.

By the way, you wanted them on because if they shut it off and then you had to do comedy, that was even worse. That was even worse.

If they lost the game, that was bad. Yeah.

Then they turned on you. You did it.

Dude, the first night I ever did stand-up comedy, and then I didn't do it for a little while after this, but my first night was the night that the New England Patriots lost to the Chicago Bears. It was 1986. Oh, no. They got fucking crushed. I forget what the score was, but it was bad. I went on Comedy Hell that night. George McDonald brought me up on Comedy Hell at Stitches Comedy Club, and I tanked it. Wow. Yeah, I didn't go on stage again for a while after that.

Comedy Hell was great.

Comedy Hell. Remember, he used to do that little run at the beginning of the show? This was the open mic night in Boston for years. Yeah.

Sunday Night at Stitches.

And this was like, I mean, the lineups when we were doing it, this the open mic night was like me, you, Dane, Bill Burr was a little bit after us, and Mark would be on there, and fucking Louis would be there. He would start the show by going, Welcome to Comedy Hell, where the pipe dreams of a handful of Comedy Yocos can soar as high as the lights on Broadway or crash and burn in that fiery pit known only as Comedy Hell.

Then you would see guys who are legit pros who do guest bots. I remember one time I watched Teddy Bergeron when Teddy was in his prime. People forgot about Teddy Bergeron. It's really unfortunate because he had a bunch of personal and substance issues that derailed his career. But when he was on in his prime, he was so smooth and so slick. I remember watching him because I'd only done comedy twice at that time, and he went up and did a set. I was like, I should quit now. There's no way. This is so far away from me. This is so good. It's so polished. Then he had that big set on The Tonight Show. Remember we played the piano? You ever see that set that he had on The Tonight Show? Fucking genius. Sat down on the couch with Johnny. Johnny brought him over on his first appearance. He was like, Oh, my God. Teddy Bergeron is going to be a star. Then apparently, he went off the rails. Just went off the rails with drugs and went crazy and partying. It never worked out for him.

No.

And then- He should have been huge.

But did you hear what happened after that Tonight show set? What? He wasn't popular in Boston. He had a huge ego. Then the drinking bad. And so he did The Tonight Show, and then he was face down drunk in front of the next Comedy Stop, laying on the stairs. And Don Gavin just walked by and he looked at me and he goes, Did I see you on The Tonight Show?

He had a huge ego. They didn't like him?

I don't know.

Is that what it was? Because a lot of those guys got very resentful of guys who left Boston and made it. There was a lot of, What about me?

What about me?

There was a lot of that when Steven Wright made it. A lot of guys got I'm very pissed because Steven Wright, he's not even a fucking headliner.

There was a lot of that. Well, you know about the night that he got the Tonight Show, right? The guy, Jim Downey, who was the Booker for the Tonight Show. This is back in the '80s, early '80s, and he hears about this comedy scene in Boston because you got Sweeney and Gavin and Kenny Rodgerson. Killers. Killers. It was one of the first cities to really explode in terms of clubs popping up everywhere and lines of people getting into the shows. Jim Dane, he goes, All right, let me check it out. He flies to Boston, and there was this club called the Ding Ho, which was the first place to really house comedy in Boston. They get the best of, get all lined up, and they're in the green room and they're chopping up lines of blow and they're getting on stage and they're jokes about, What about the hair and molding? It's not as big as the hair in Revia. It's like, That's not going to play on The Tonight Show. They're killing, but none of it is right for the Tonight show. Then Steven Wright, they put him on out of pity at the end of the show.

I remember, I'm not going to say which, but one of the comedians had pulled Steve aside and said, Look, Steven, he'd been struggling for years, not doing well. They go, This is not for you, man. You got to try something else. Wow. So Steven Wright goes up and he does his set and he does good. They fly him out the next week for the Tonight show. He was the only one that got it. And they were irate. And he killed so hard. Johnny said, Stay in town. We're going to bring you back next week. And he did the show four or five times that first year and exploded. It was one of the biggest comics of the '80s. Wow.

That friend saw me in a lossvortrag. Macht sie ganz einfach mit „viso Steuer. Und wenn sie dann arbeitet, heißt es, kaching. Das geht? Safe. „viso Steuer. Hol dir dein Geld zurück. Jetzt kostenlos ausprobieren. That friend saw me to meet a detour. Is great for anybody who's interested. It was a very unusual time. You and I caught the wave after it had crested. So it really broke in like '82 to '84. You and I came in at '88, and you did the '86 set, that one set, but then you did it again. I started '88. Yeah, right before me or the same week.

We started the same week.

Yeah, it was crazy.

I think it was still building.

Still really good, but it was drifting away. Within the next two years, it had died off significantly.

Well, what happened was there was so much comedy on TV. There was all these one-hour shows where everybody did a six-minute set. Evening at the Improv. Comedy on the Road.

Half-hour Comedy hour on MTV.

Half-hour Comedy Hour. It got over exposed. The club started opening everywhere. Then as it fell off, they started papering the rooms, giving out free passes. I still experience. If I go into a new market, especially if it's an improv where it's five or 600 seats and I'm there for five shows, they'll give out a fair amount of free passes. Dude, I feel that immediately. It's not the same crowd. Yeah, it's a different commitment. It's not the same crowd.

Yeah, they're not really that interested in it. It was just something to do. Yeah. Yeah.

They're not committed to it. And then there were so many rooms and not enough comedians to do well in those rooms. And so it sagged and it went away. And I really wonder now, like we've been in a... Covid launched, post-COVID launched, comedy. It's never been at these heights that it's at right now. I mean, you got people like you doing arenas, and there's not a couple. There's a dozen people doing arena shows now. At least, yeah. Then you've got theaters of different sizes. Then you've got clubs of different sizes. Then you got little pop-up shows all over. Don't tell comedy about this thing where they just do pop-up shows. They basically have a mailing list, and they'll announced the day before they're doing a show, and it'll sell out. It's everywhere. Wow. Everybody's wondering, When does this one end? It feels like it's starting to get a little softer. People are talking about it.

Well, it's just all dependent on how much talent is generated. So if you have clubs that are trying to generate new talent, there's no reason why it can't be just like Boston. Austin, the street where we have the mothership on, there's seven clubs within walking distance, seven that are at least three, four nights a week. There's the Sunset Red Band's room that's right down the street from our club, which is great. You got Creek in the Cave, which is great. One block away, you got the Vulcan, which is great. Another two blocks away. It's crazy. Just on that street, you got the Black Rabbit, you got the Velvita Room. Then you got Cap City, where a lot of headliners come in, which is about 20 minutes away.

Are there little outs? When we started in Boston, there was rooms in the suburbs in every direction. Is there that? All over the place. Because that's where you can actually make some money. Yeah.

Well, a lot of these comics book places now. They'll book a comedy night at a barbecue place, a comedy night at a bar. They'll go to Dripping Spring. They go to here, they go to there. I was just talking to a guy the other day. He's like, Yeah, we're doing a comedy night at my club. I'm like, That's fucking great.

You ever do any of them? No.

I remember when I was at Skank Fest a couple of months ago, and Mark Norman's from New Orleans.

It's fucking nuts. Like, literally, from the time you wake up until 5: 00 in the morning, where you end up at Larry Flint's Bare Legal Club, which Louis CK has this The whole thing about the barely legal. All right, here's the pitch. She's barely legal. I won't do his bit, but it's very fun. But the point is, Mark Norman is there, and I run into a conflict and I go, Yeah, I have this little bar show. And, Yeah, Mark Norman just came by and did it. I was like, How fucking cool is that?

Oh, he drops in everywhere. Yeah. When he's in town doing the mothership, he'll go down the street, do a bunch of sets. But that's the New York way. They do 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there. They hop from club club.

They're used to that. You got to do Skank Fets. Even stop by Skank Fest for 24 hours. They've got a nude roast where literally everybody on stage is nude, including the judges. And then they've got boxing, comedians boxing each other outside. The green room is filled with mushrooms and acid and weed and open bars. And then you've got... I mean, it's basically... It's like when we used to go to Montreal Comedy Festival, you got big by doing a set in front of the industry, getting a deal, and then hopefully getting on TV. Well, that doesn't exist anymore. Now it's about, how do I get canceled? That's how you get famous. This is a festival that is trying to help you get canceled. You got 7,000 people with cell phones taping you, going on stage, and saying the most horrendous shit. It is fucking great.

Yeah, everybody who goes says it's awesome. I fully support it. I support the idea. I think it's really good for comedy. It's also like the Vegas version of a comedy festival. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, go nuts. It's New Year's Eve, go nuts. It's Skankfest, go nuts.

They had Miss Skankfest contest. I said, The winner, they reunite the winner with her family, with their parents. They were like, I mean, Skankfest 9s, Skankfest 10s, which would be like sixes. A lot of guys with cargo shorts and black sneakers and anthrax T-shirts and mullets.

Subscription to Gas Digital. Yeah.

Girlfriends that are impossibly hotter than they should deserve. I don't know what that quotient is, but there was a lot of that.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

It's good. Comedy is at a good place right now.

Tom O'Neill came with me this year. Oh, really? And then Duncan Trussell was having his podcast, and I introduced Tom to Duncan. Well, first me, Tom and Duncan, we're talking for like- We should tell everybody Tom O'Neill is the guy who wrote Chaos.

Oh, right.

Of course. Charles Manson book. Yes.

Who you introduced me to, which, by the way, you have never recommended anybody for the podcast before. That's right. But that guy, you're like, Dude, you got to talk to him because I know how much you're into manson, how much you're into that story.

Cia. It's all in there.

Crazy. Yeah. That book is bananas.

It's bananas. And he's He's working on another volume right now.

Really? Yeah. Is it going to be another 20 years? Has he got an editor helping him?

No, because what happened is it took 20 years last time because he just kept going down rabbit holes. And then finally, first, he got a big deal from a major publisher. And after seven or eight years, they sued him to get the money. They gave him a lot of money, and they sued him to get it back. And then he's driving an Uber. He's teaching English as a second language. He's fucking drinking booze out of a paper cup. And It had to have paid off, though. The book was a giant, right? No. So what happened was, then his publisher said, Look, come on, there's something here. He paired him up with this other guy. I wish I could remember the guy's name right now. Yeah, the editor. Dan something. And he reined Tom in. And in one year, he had shelves around his apartment filled with binders with notes. He had boxes of cassette tapes of interviews. And this guy somehow got in there and Cori... Dan Piperberg. Dan Piperberg. Yeah. Who's a very successful biographer.

What is his name again?

Dan Piperberg.

Push that up again. Pipe and Bring.

Oh, Pipe and Bring. Yeah. Okay. So he reined him in and got the book out in a year, and they were able to resell it for a lot of the money, paid back to back debt. And now he's hitting, I don't want to talk about Tom's finances, but he's doing He's doing very well.

I know so many people that have read that book. I mean, I've talked about it a hundred times. It's amazing. It's amazing because it's all true. That's what's nuts. Like the stuff that's verifiable factual evidence in That story makes you go, what the fuck else did they do that we don't know about?

Because Tom is a real journalist. He didn't put anything in there that wasn't triple corroborated. And he, even to his credit, at the end, does not say this happened. He said, I never found the smoking gun. So here's all the evidence. Take what you will from it. It's a bunch of... I mean, the thing about Tom is he comes from a family of geniuses. His brother is the American ambassador to Haiti. They're all PhDs up there. He's brilliant. And so he's also Irish, and he's a great Irish storyteller. Each chapter, whether you're talking about Jolly West or whatever, each chapter is a great story on top of being good journalism.

It's an amazing book. I might reread it.

I might go back. Don't listen to it on tape. He hates the book on tape. I thought it was great.

I listened to it. Oh, really? Yeah.

Okay. I loved it.

I would understand why you hate someone else speaking your words, but he probably should have done it. Why didn't he do it? He's a good speaker. He was great on the podcast.

Yeah, he was great on the podcast. He got better. In his early interviews, I used to say, Tom, you look like you're a hostage, giving out a message from the captors with a gun at your head. And then he got really good at it.

Well, on mine, he was very loose, very comfortable. But he also knew it was friendly territory. He knew that I'm a very good friend of yours and that I was really excited about it and it was going to help him. If he does a second one, I would encourage him to read it. I would encourage him to read it. I think he could kill it.

And to come back on here.

Oh, 100 %. I have him back on. I have him back on before he does it, just talk about it. I think the impact of that book has opened up a lot of people's eyes to the fucking shenanigans that were going on back then.

When we were at Skankfest, so Duncan and I are talking to Tom for like a half an hour, and Duncan doesn't know who I just introduced him as Tom. And then when I brought up Chaos and then he wrote it, Duncan's jaw dropped because he's obsessed with the book. So he was doing a live podcast from Skankfest, so he hadn't booked guests yet. So we booked me and Tom to come on his podcast. And then Kurt Metzger also, which is hilarious. Oh, no. Because Tom is trying to stay on point and get to these things. Metzger is sitting there, he's smoking a joint the size of my forearm and just crack it. And just try me in every 15 seconds. Oh, my God. He was manic. It was so funny.

Rangling him on a podcast is so different than anybody else because he'll go one subject to the next subject. You don't know? What about this? And the Kissinger's? You don't know? You don't know? But the Rockefellers? You don't know about this? What they did in the '60s? They're like, Okay, go back to the first thing you said about what's in school lunches. You got to bring them back on point.

Well, that's why his girlfriend is so great because she is a mini wrangler of courage. She can keep him on point a little bit.

Yeah, he's hilarious.

Yeah, he's great.

He's such a funny dude.

I know. He's a good writer. He's written on a lot of big shows.

Oh, he's a great joke writer. Yeah. He came on the last time he did my episode, my podcast, rather, the episode he dressed up like John Lilley, who's the psychedelic pioneer from the '70s. So he had a Coonskin hat on and a wig, and he put on a one-handed glove with a skeleton fingers on it. I go, What do you doing? No one even knows who John Lilley is. This is so crazy.

Yeah, he feels like the guy that is not hung up on getting famous or getting rich. He just really enjoys ideas and communicating ideas.

Yeah, exactly. There he is.

That's hilarious. He gets his wig.

He's a fun hang in the green room, too. He's such a maniac.

By the way, today is the 25th time I've been on your podcast. I was looking up yesterday. I was like, How many times I've been on the fucking show? This is 25th.

That's crazy.

Yeah, because we used to do it all the time. When you were just starting out.

I know.

And a lot of times it was at the Ice House.

Yeah, we did the Ice House. You did it at my house. And then when I finally got a little mini studio in that little strip mall.

Yeah. I know. Those Ice House shows were crazy because we would have a stand-up show going, and then you'd have about six people on the podcast with a joint going the entire time in this small room. I have never been high on stage in my life except for those shows because it was second-hand smoke. I would literally get so baked in. Then I remember going on stage, so you would go from the podcast to the stage, and then you come back on the podcast. People would just swap out.

Yeah, Icehouse Chronicles.

Oh, my God, dude.

We thought about doing something similar to that at the mothership, like putting together a podcast studio at the mothership. We have considered doing that.

You have space for it?

No. But I thought about buying another building next to me and then doing something else with that, too.

Yeah. Build another stage, too.

I don't think so. I think we have enough stages. Yeah. I think the next move in terms of a club would be we go to another city and try to do the same thing and really put a lot of time and money and effort into making it right, really making it right. Buying a building. One thing I thought would be really crazy. If I could buy a big building in New York and recreate the exact interior of the mothership. Exactly.

Well, that's what the punchline did in Sacramento. It's almost the same room as the San Francisco one. Oh, really? And then And I think the Comedy Cellar Vegas room is similar to the New York room.

That's good. I thought about literally recreating it with the two staircases to the two separate rooms. Like finding a building that has the same dimensions or similar dimensions.

It's perfect. I love the walk to the stage because you're in the green room and you got to go down a flight of stairs, then you feel the show over your head as you're walking underneath it.

You're in a tunnel under the crowd. You pop up. We built all that. There was no tunnel there before. We made all that.

Oh, no shit.

Yeah, we had to build all that. Oh, wow. Yeah, that was an idea the architect, Richard, came up with. We just decided somewhere along what was the best way to get to the state. We're trying to figure out how to get to the stage. You don't want to have to go through the crowd. And he came up with the idea of a tunnel. And it was based on there's some folklore or mythology around tunnels in Austin that connect clubs. And he was all big on history of Austin.

I feel like it goes back to the gladiators, too, walking under the arena.

Well, that's why if you go into the green room, all those posters on the wall are all people that actually performed at the Ritz.

Oh, no shit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you look up, you see Willie Nelson, Black Flag, all those guys, they actually performed. Steve Rayvon, they actually performed at the Ritz. There's a photo of Steve Rayvon as you walk into the stage. Yeah, right. That photo is him on stage at the Ritz. Wow. In, I I think 1983 or something like that. So it was a rock and roll club for a long time.

Isn't it funny how Steve Rayvon and Bill Hicks are the same guy?

In what way?

I just feel like they're outlawed Texans who just free expression and balls. And genius. And they had the same style, the way they dressed and hair. I just always think of them as the same guy.

Interesting. Most people think of Alex Jones as Bill Hicks. There's a rumor that Alex Jones is Bill Hicks.

Which makes no sense. When's the last time you had that guy in the show?

Oh, it's been a while. It was probably a few years ago. I see him occasionally. They're still trying to get a billion dollars out of him.

Still trying to The Connecticut shooter? Yeah.

It's crazy.

Does he have a billion dollars? No.

I think they made him liquidate his business. I don't know what's going on with it now. Jesus. It's crazy. Yeah. But the rumor It was because that he was Bill Hicks. That Bill Hicks was actually Alex Jones. That's funny.

Crazy.

They were both alive at the same time. They're very different people. But it doesn't have to be logical for it to be a good conspiracy. There's people that still think Tupac is alive.

There's a lot of goofy-ass conspirations. People think Jim Morrison is alive. Who's the other one? Andy Kaufman, of course. Oh, right. Who was his sidekick, Andy Kaufman's sidekick? Bob Zamuda. Bob Zamuda, yeah. So I had Bob Zamuda. He had written a book about Andy Kaufman and claiming he's still alive. So he comes over to my... I was doing my show in my garage at that point, and he comes over, and about 45 minutes into the podcast, I go, So how does Andy's family feel about you saying this stuff about him still being alive? And he's like, Oh, they're fine with it. I said, I heard that they're a It's a little miff, that they think it's disrespectful. He's clearly dead. So we go back and forth, and it gets superheated, and he flips out, and he throws his chair over, and he fucking storms out. And that was the end of the podcast. I was just like, All right, that was weird. I'm here to announce for the first time that was a fake. It was an Andy Kaufman-esque stunt. Really? That he flipped out and left the podcast.

And you never talked about it?

No. We did it in the spirit of Andy Kaufman.

And people were probably like, Oh, my God, this is so crazy.

That was a long years ago asking about it.

Bob Zamuda meltdown on Gregford Simmons podcast. A very interesting conversation. But when it escalates at the end, it just blows up. Question, real or Kaufman-esque stunt? That's funny. That was funny. And you kept it under wraps this entire time?

I've never talked about it.

That's funny. Yeah. Well, that makes sense with Zamuda. He would do that Tony Clifton character.

Oh, my Oh, my God.

It's so funny. Yeah, and he would dress up as Andy Kaufman's Tony Clifton and do appearances.

Well, yeah. Andy would say, I'm coming to Vegas to do the Tony Clifton character, and then Zamuda would be the one doing it. And people always would be going like, What the fuck? I just paid $150 to see Andy Kaufman.

Yeah, he did a lot of odd stuff. Remember when he worked as a waiter at Jerry's Famous Deli? Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, no, he worked as a bus boy. There's a of him on the wall while he was on taxi. So he was on the biggest television show in the country. And he had an apron on, and he was carrying a fucking dish tray filled with people's dirty dishes. Wow. Yeah. That photo, look at that photo. That photo was on the wall at Jerry's Famous Deli. Andy Kaufman worked there. So he was on TV. He was a huge star. And you would go and order a pastrami Reuben, and Andy Kaufman would clean your table.

Yeah. What about the wrestling women was genius.

He did a lot of nutty shit.

Dude, he locked into that character. People went nuts.

Is that a video? I think so. Oh, that's hilarious.

Well, there's a documentary about it. That's what was just popping up.

Of him working at Jerry's Dail?

This is, I guess, a trailer for it.

Oh, so it's just a documentary about him? He was a nut, man. That was the one movie where a lot of people freaking out about Jim Carrey. Where he got way too into that role. It almost seemed to embody Andy Kaufman.

Oh, he talked about that it fucked him up afterwards. Yeah. And off stage, he acted like an asshole to people. How weird. Which is not like him. Right.

How weird.

Yeah.

That whole method acting thing, becoming a... Especially an actual human, where you have to figure out their brain patterns and their behavior patterns and imitate it, and then you get trapped in it. Yeah.

Well, it says, Seguro was in talks to play Samuda in a movie.

Oh, wow. Recently?

That's what this article is about. About that. It's very confusing because I saw it when I pad that up, I saw this screenshot. I'm like, why is Tom in that?

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, this article from 2024.

Oh, interesting. I don't know what happened to it. It doesn't seem like much. Yeah, that's all.

There's a good documentary. It just came out last week on Mel Brooks. I mean, you can't understate Mel Brooks's effect on every... Whether you're a comedian or a writer or a comedy director. That guy just... I mean, when I was a kid, my dad used to play 2000-year-old Man for me, those albums with Rob Reiner. I'm sorry, Carl Reiner. I was obsessed. The Producers was my father's favorite movie. It became my favorite movie. You You just think about your show of shows as a writer early on and just going on to do- Young Frankenstein.

Young Frankenstein.

Blazing Saddles.

Blazing Saddles.

The movie talks about, you know who wrote Blazing Saddles with him? Who? Richard Pryer.

Oh, that makes sense.

Isn't that fucking crazy? That's crazy. He was supposed to play the sheriff.

Wow. Spaceballs.

Spaceballs.

Yeah, that's crazy.

But it's a two-part documentary. I only saw the first half.

Spaceballs is the reason why Tesla's Model S is called the plaid. Really? Yeah. Oh, that's hilarious. It's also the reason why the starship is shaped the way it is at the tip. Like Elon wanted it to be like Spaceballs. It's like, make it more pointy.

Oh, That's funny.

He loves Spaceballs.

Yeah. That's so funny. Oh, yeah. That would be perfect for him. Of course.

Are you going to get an optimist when it comes out? Are you going to have a robot companion in your home?

Oh, hell, yeah. Why wouldn't you?

Because I don't want a robot in my house. It's connected to the Internet.

I don't have Alexa. I don't have anything in my home. I don't have any speakers that can listen to me because they are listening. Dude, how often are you talking about... I started getting Austin feeds, little videos in my Instagram feed about Austin. I never get those. I started getting them yesterday.

The fuck is that? They know you're coming. Yeah. Well, wasn't there a lawsuit that Google had to just recently settle where it turned out that there were certain times where your phone was listening to you, which is why you're getting ads for things that you had discussed?

Oh, yeah. Happens all the time.

But it was a rumor for a long time. It was like, that's just a conspiracy theory. People are like, this seems weird. Google settles 68 million in class action over alleged recording of private conversations.

That's nothing. That's nothing.

So what is it? What was the accusation? They have agreed to pay 68 million dollars to settle a class action lawsuit alleging they unlawfully recorded users' conversations through Google Assist enabled devices without consent. The proposed Google settlement is pending approval from a federal judge, US district Court for Northern district of California. Class action lawsuit was filed in 2019 after consumers accused Google of concealing that its assistant enabled devices could unintentionally activate and record conversations inside users' homes. So that's just for that. But that's like did not intentionally activate it with a hot word such as, Hey, Google, because it's listening to you all the time. So it's listening for you to say, Hey, Google. But that's just Google Assistant devices. I don't have one of those. But yet my phone will bring up suggestions and ads for things that I've discussed that I haven't looked up. Just have the conversations about it and it'll pop up.

That's crazy.

I don't think they would tell you. I think it's all metadata. It's all hidden. So there's no way to know. And we all know. We all know.

People go like, Well, I'm not a criminal. I got nothing to hide. Yeah, but you don't understand the ramifications of this information. If somebody is in office and they want to start using keywords to locate people that they're going to have audited. Some woman was protesting ICE, and they've got this facial recognition software that lets them know your name, your address.

Is that Palantier? Is that what they're using?

No, it's not Palantier. It's something like that. But this woman went to the airport. Her TSA was canceled.

What? Yeah. What? Because she was a protester? Yeah. That's it? Yeah. Just protesting? Yeah.

Really? No, they're taking your license plate, they're taking people's faces, and they're running it through. They had one woman went from a protest to her house, and there was a car parked out front with ICE agents in it saying, We know where you live.

What? Yeah. That's all she did was go to a protest? Yeah. That's it?

I mean, I'm sure she interacted. She was probably yelling out or whatever.

She wasn't a part of the organizers of the protest or anything like that?

Because maybe she was an organizer.

The weird thing is the signal chats and everything. This is all being very coordinated and very funded. This is a very coordinated thing, like what they're doing, where they're doxing these ICE agents and the whole thing. It's all very fucking weird. The point about the Google stuff, though, is people that go, oh, I'm not doing anything illegal. You are giving them your data, and that data is a commodity, and they are getting insanely wealthy off of getting your data in an unscrupulous way. They're not telling you they're doing this thing and they're getting your data. And that data is making them insanely wealthy. And then they use that wealth in a bunch of different ways to influence all sorts of things in the world. And that's what's going on. Nobody ever thought that their data was going to be a commodity. Nobody ever gave a fuck about their email address or what they're interested in online. It turns out that's fucking insanely valuable to advertisers. It's also like, you know they're listening. You know they're listening. They're listening to things.

Yeah, they're listening. There's people now using ChatGPT to do therapy. If Have you heard about that? Yeah.

But do you want to put your- But, meanwhile, ChatGPT might tell you to kill yourself.

Not only that, but you're telling your innermost embarrassing things. You think that's not going to be used against you at some point? When you try to get health insurance and health insurance has now audited what you said to ChatGPT and goes, Well, you're a suicide risk, or you're talking about trying to quit smoking. Now we know you're smoking. Any details?

Wasn't there an instance real recently where someone had uploaded top secret information to ChatGPT to a government official? See if you can find this. Government official uploaded to a public ChatGPT, not like some secure encrypted version that the government gets, because they were trying to go over some data. Here it is. Us Cyber Defense Chief accidentally uploaded secret government info to ChatGPT. So they grilled the acting chief on a mass layoff in a failed polygraph. Failed polygraph is hilarious. So this guy, good luck saying his name, accidentally uploaded sensitive information to a public version of ChatGPT last summer. Accidentally, according to four Department of Homeland Security officials with knowledge of the incident. Try to say that guy's name.

Gada Makula.

Is that it?

Gada Makula.

Okay. Gada Makula.

He plays defense for the Rams.

Uploads. He's like a fucking big Polish guy. Uploads of sensitive C-I-S-A contracting documents triggered multiple internal cyber security warnings designed to stop theft or unintentional disclosure of government material from federal networks. And this fucking guy is the director of cyber security and infrastructure security?

That's crazy. What does it mean accidentally upload? Did it eesdrop on him or did he say something that caused ChatGPT to- It seems like he uploaded the data.

He was probably trying to parse the data.

He was just hired, too, or just joined the agency.

Oh, great. Oh, my God.

The information was not confidential, but marked for official use only.

A whole new world.

Dude, I feel like I feel like Russia and China know everything.

And we know everything about Russia and China. And they're all ratting on each other. Palantier app, ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid. Yeah. So it is I'm going to go down to the volunteer, at least for that.

The article he had, it was blocked by a paywall. I couldn't. I was trying to get that on.

Nuts. All right, Gregory. Do you have a Rogan experience? Can't afford to pay for. Is this it? We're wrapping it up? Let's wrap this picture. Now, can I name some dates?

Fuck, yeah.

I will be at the Philadelphia Helium, as I said, Valentine's Day weekend. Great fucking club. I'm going to be in Sacramento at the Punch Line next week, and then I'm going to be in Lexington, Kentucky at Comedy Off-Broadway.

Great fucking club. This is gregfitzimmons. Com. Go to the link for standupdates. Plenty of gigs.

The podcast are Sunday papers with Mike Gibbons, which... Oh, by the way, thank you for the shout out. You and Bird Kreisher gave me a little love bath yesterday. Yes, sir. That was nice. So Yeah, he was talking about Sunday papers I've been doing with Mike for a long time, and then Fitts Dogg radio that you've been on many times.

Yee, fucking ha. All right, we're going to wrap it up. You're at the mothership this weekend. I'm very excited about that.

You're going to come down? Fuck, yeah. Fuck, yeah. All right, good.

, everybody.