Transcript of #2488 - James McCann New

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day. Everything's just— thank you for having me back.

Good to see you, my brother.

How are you?

Always great to see you. I'm good. It was, uh, fun having you at the club, man.

I was terrified. I was fucking terrified.

You just look like you were back.

No, I thought— I thought that's it, I've been away for too long. I'm gonna suck. None of the new stuff's gonna work. They'll see me, they'll go, he was wrong to come back. Fuck him off. It was so nice. It was so nice.

You were telling the story. I said, hold these thoughts.

Yeah, well, I didn't know you didn't— I didn't know we'd never spoken about it.

No, tell me the story.

I— well, that's why I came to America to start, is I got offered a job hosting a Catholic podcast and they fired me. As I packed up everything in Adelaide, this is like 2 and a bit years ago. I had the kids and the wife, and on the way to America I got fired. And they said, we'll still pay your rent. It's in Steubenville, Ohio, beautiful Appalachian town just outside of Pittsburgh. And yeah, that's where we were. 3 months I was there.

So what did they see that they fired you for? Oh, a lot.

They made a compilation video. No, the guy who showed— they were right to fire me. They were right to.

No, no, they weren't.

No, because it was a good, clean Catholic podcast. And then the business manager was like, there was a sketch about stabbing someone in the throat with an AIDS needle. They're like, he uses the word cunt all the time. They're like, this is a sponsorship nightmare. Get him out. So I say, okay. But they still said, we'll pay your rent for 3 months and you can figure something out. You still got a visa. And I was terrified. I was just in the snow.

With kids and a wife.

3 kids, no job. I didn't have the money to go back home.

Oh my God.

We couldn't afford to go back home.

Oh my God.

And I didn't know that I had been passed at the mothership. 'cause I didn't know how the system worked. So on the way in to go to Steubenville, where I was like, I'll figure something out, I stopped in at Austin to see Shane. Shane said, go and do the Mothership open mic. I did it. Adam Egan said, if you're ever in town, come back, we'll pay for spots. I didn't know that meant I was passed. I didn't know I could work here.

Oh.

I just thought he was like, I could audition again. And then, so I had 3 confronting months in the snow. Beautiful part of the world. It was the most terrified I've ever been in my—

He says that as an Australian, that's from Ohio.

No, I love it.

That's the most beautiful part of the world.

I loved it.

I wish I went back and watched that Wild Whites of West Virginia.

Yeah, that's where you—

it looks exactly like that.

Well, that area is gorgeous.

It's God's country, but also so abandoned by like the potholes are crazy. I saw real heroin addicts. I'd never really seen heroin addicts before. Just sleepy people. I saw street prostitutes. That's still going on.

And this is a small town, right?

This is a small town. This is, uh, I went there. Catholics have moved there to try and like fix it. It was where Dean Martin was from. The Wu-Tang Clan kind of started out there.

They're Staten Island.

No, yes, but I think it's like the RZA's auntie lived there and they moved out there and then they got involved in rap in the Pittsburgh scene.

I gotta ask, RZA's on real soon.

I believe I'm right about that. They don't have a mural for them.

Wow.

But it's great. There's a lot of Catholic content creators there. And they're trying to take over town. I went there originally because New Polity is like my favorite magazine. And I got to meet the guys who made it. And I was so excited.

So how did they hire you? Wu-Tang's RZA found a second chance in Steubenville. Wow.

And they all come over to visit him.

He discussed a largely undocumented era of his life in which Pittsburgh played a role. Wow.

And that's one of the first conversations we had. I was like, you said something about Pittsburgh that wasn't flattering. I said, I love Pittsburgh. You're like, you don't know anything. You're a foreigner. You don't know anything about America. Pittsburgh is a horrible place. I was like, I don't know. I had a nice time there. I thought it was good.

It's just a little depressing. Do you see, like, the thing about a lot of those sort of industrial kind of town. So there's not a ton of options for people. No. Pittsburgh more so than like the place that you were in. But like when you get to a place where there's not a lot of options and then you see real poverty, like this is poverty with no solutions. You know what I mean? Not Pittsburgh. You know, Pittsburgh—

Oh no, just outside of Pittsburgh.

I was more fucking with you.

No, I saw things in West Virginia that were pretty confronting. And like, you know, that are like cake. And some of it's great. Some of the things from the poverty are wonderful. Drive-through cigarette shop. You like that? I loved having drive-through cigarettes. So I got, you know, just like trying to get the kids to sleep. My wife's upset because I got her in a foreign country. Like, again, she never signed up. Let's move to America. She was like, we'll go for 3 months. Right. And then it was like, oh fuck, I'm unemployed. I better quickly figure out how to be a stand-up comedian. I was bussing out of Steubenville. I would like— I caught the— I went, I got it. Someone gave me a lift to Pittsburgh. This is when I saw the worst stuff. I got a lift to Pittsburgh and then I caught the Greyhound from Pittsburgh to Cleveland to open for Sam Tallent, who let me open— who, unbelievable, they let me open for him.

He's the best.

I'd met him in Australia.

Yeah, such a good guy.

And, uh, but like, that bus trip from Pittsburgh to Cleveland was— it was the most upsetting Oh man, people were spitting on the ground at the bus station. Like an immigrant, like an illegal immigrant woman came and tried to give me a phone. I remember that vividly.

Give you a phone?

She tried to give me a free phone. She's like, "You can have this." Because she said, "You're on benefits. Everyone on benefits gets a free phone." It was some like policy. She just assumed I was on benefits because I was at the Greyhound bus station.

And she was illegal?

I don't know if she was illegal, but she had a strong accent and like a weird dress and a baby on her back and a sack full of phones.

A sack full of phones.

She had like a sack of phones.

So she was somehow in charge of distributing free phones to people?

I'll never truly know what that was about.

Boy, I would have investigated further.

There was, uh— I was just scared. I was just scared. What the fuck is going on? Huge African guys sitting on the ground.

Who chose to give you a phone?

And then after that, I sat next to a guy who was having a full psychotic episode. I think we follow each other on Instagram now. He's gotten rid of his Instagram.

Really?

But yeah, he told me the secrets about Chris Benoit. That he was a good man.

The wrestler?

He killed his family. Yeah, but this guy tried to tell me only he was— I'd— it's like burnt. He said he only killed his family to send them to God, and you can't blame a man for that. All right, let's— this is only a 3-hour bus trip. We're gonna get through this. We're gonna be fine.

Oh boy.

Oh man. But I did, I did enjoy my time in that part of the world.

Well, you probably enjoy it now that it's over.

I survived. You make a good point. Yeah.

Yeah, there's some things—

If you asked me at the time.

Yeah, there's some things that are not fun while they're happening but are really fun once you got through it.

I mean, I remember the people I met along the way. I remember driving to Austin and like, it was like spring was start— like the further south we got, the more lush it became.

Yeah.

It was like, fuck, I might be okay. And then someone let me stay in their house. I didn't have a house to stay in. So my podcast listener's friend let us stay in their With your family? With my whole family. Let us house sit for them while they were in Japan.

Oh my God. That's crazy.

The whole time it was like, if I don't get past it to mothership now, I don't think people should come here and live in their cars with their family, but it does, you know.

Lights a fire under your ass.

It worked.

Well, that's the thing. It's like, if you're forced into action, like you had no, not just yourself, like you could go, oh, woe is me. But when you're a father and a husband, You have children.

Yeah.

And people who do not have children do not understand the drive that it gives you to protect and care for those little people. It's kind of crazy. So you'll find something. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform for building a website that actually looks legit and helps you stand out online. And I should know, my site, joerogan.com, is powered by Squarespace. They make it easy to lock down the right domain for your business or project And they've got built-in privacy and security tools to keep everything protected. Head to squarespace.com/rogan to try it out for free. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code ROGAN to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Well, I don't understand how people do it without— like, I meet men who are really driven and motivated and they have no kids, but they're like, every day they're working. I don't know what their motivation is. Before I had kids, I was just— money. What are you gonna buy?

They're in a game. They're playing a game. Yeah, they're just playing this game of accumulate the most stuff, be able to brag about the most stuff you have.

So much rather lie down. I would rather not do anything if I had a choice.

But not really, because you love doing comedy.

I love doing comedy, but I never, before I had kids, was trying to do comedy that people would enjoy. Do you know what I mean?

I think that is also though, because you were living in Australia and there's limited options, right? Can you explain? Like, the Australian system is very different.

It's very—

it's mostly festival driven.

It's festival driven and it's, uh, to a much greater extent— I've thought about this— it's like industry driven. Like industry? Yeah. We don't have—

which industry?

Like, uh, managers and agents, which is one role in Australia. But they are deciding who's succeeding and TV people are deciding who's succeeding. Whereas like in America, everybody is on the road, everybody has one or two openers and there's a whole lineage of who brought who up in the business. Like Dan Soder had Nick Mullin, Tim Dillon, and Shane Gillis open for him. Like those were his openers. And not because they were successful or someone wanted them to thrive. He just thought they were funny people.

Right.

And they got to be his openers. And you, I don't know who you were opening for, but you have people who come up and—

Well, I didn't really do it. I didn't have it that way. I do it that way, but I didn't have it that way. I didn't really come up with anybody where I opened for anybody. I just, but I had a very weird path to success.

You also, you got to go to LA and just be in the milieu. Like there's a scene there. There's a lot of people.

I came out to LA with a job already.

Okay.

I was on a sitcom already.

You started in Boston though.

Yes, started in Boston. Look, it's very embarrassing how lucky I am. I'm like one of the luckiest people that's ever lived. Like, it's stumble upon success after success. So when I was 6 years into comedy, I was already on TV. So I was 3 years into comedy, I was basically barely getting paid. I was barely a professional. Like, I was getting some spots in bars and stuff like that. I was making money, but I was driving limousines. I was doing odd jobs, doing different things. And I was also still teaching at the time. I was still teaching taekwondo. For the first maybe 6 months or so when I was 21, I think I kept teaching. And then I eventually had to quit because I realized I could not commit to doing both things. I don't wanna half-ass my students.

Yeah.

And I don't wanna— So for the first 2, 3 years of comedy, barely, you know, I'm barely a comedian. Just, I'm trying. I'm trying to do it. I'm getting some laughs. Met a manager as an open micer and he brought me to New York and he's still my manager today.

Wow.

The best.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, it's total luck. Total luck.

You're also a super handsome guy. I've seen, I've seen you then.

I was boy pretty.

You look like a fucking different person. First of all, not worse. It is crazy. But also a lot of those comics you started with who maybe it took longer were— I won't say hideous, but they don't— they didn't look—

well, that definitely helped me get on television. It definitely helped me get on television. So I did the MTV Half Hour Comedy Hour, um, in 1993, I believe it was. And next thing you know, I had a development deal. Next thing you know, I was on a sitcom and living out here.

I mean, that happened fast. But do you think it doesn't happen for people? Do you think there's anyone in America who has a good work ethic and is really talented that it doesn't work out for in comedy? Or does it work out?

You'd have to have a health issue. Health issues or a really horrible relationship. Those things could do you in.

Or like, you could have a drug problem.

Yeah, that'll do you in.

Gamble your money away.

That could do you in too. Yeah, yeah, there's a bunch of things that can do you in.

But it's crazy, like, that there are like not a lot of undiscovered geniuses in America in the same way. Like, people will want to make money off of you if you've got it.

Yeah, but there's some people that are just really horrible at marketing, like Brian Holtzman, for instance. Yeah. Right? We had to kind of like force Brian Holtzman into the modern era.

Yes.

And he's always been a comics comic, and he's always been a guy that we would all sit in the back of the room at the store and watch, but he was always getting these terrible spots, and it wasn't until we broke, 'cause he never went on the road. He never went on the road. Brian and I started out together. So at the store together, 94. We're both like, I think he came in '93 and I came a year later.

And he was working for like Pan Am or something?

He was a dog catcher for a while. Yeah, he was a, I think he might have been a meter maid.

Is he here at the mall? I haven't seen him yet.

Yes, he's here all the time.

Okay. He lives out here.

I don't know if he goes back and forth, but he lives out here all the time. He's the best.

We, I went to church with him. I don't know if I even know if I should tell this story, but we went to church together once. And it was really lovely. He took me out for breakfast afterwards because he's Catholic. And it was so funny because the priest at the end, like, gave the announcements. And one of the things, he was like, they're doing a parish— they're doing like, uh, what do you call it, like, uh, like a talent show for everybody. He's just announcing this to the whole, like, 300 people. And Brian goes— he goes there every week. They go, so if anyone's got a skill, if anyone's a juggler, anyone's a comedian, come and do that for the talent show for everybody.

And he did.

He gave no impression that he would be doing it, but I'd love— you fucking spoon-faced Japs! I think he would be terrified and upset if he had brought that. He's the sweetest man, and I don't want to give that away. People don't know he's a gentleman. He's a lovely man.

He's a great guy in real life. He always was. Always was. Like, I've known him forever. Um, so we were— we— so he's what, what I would say is like an undiscovered genius, because he was a guy that's just fucking killing it but never went on the road. He only worked the store. I rarely saw him even at like the Laugh Factory or the Improv. I don't, I don't, I don't know if I could ever recall seeing him at those places.

But he had to consciously make the decision not to go on the road.

Well, it's hard because it's not offered to you, you know. It's like, how do you do it? If you just do all your sets at the store, you kind of have to have someone take you with them, right?

Yeah.

So what happened with me is I mostly did the road around New York and Connecticut. So when I moved to New York in, I guess, '91-ish, Yeah, so probably like '91-ish. And so when I moved there, the real money, like to be able to pay bills, was in the road. It was not in New York City. New York City did not pay very well. You can get a lot of spots, but also I was really new, so maybe I couldn't have gotten a lot of spots, but I could get a lot of spots doing gigs for like John Shuler. He had a whole Connecticut run that you could do. They were great gigs. They'd pay like $300 a night. Or you could do Gonzo at a bunch in New Jersey, and those paid really well.

Did this collapse at some point?

No, there's still probably some sort of a network, but there was like road shows.

There's a— Louis has a story on someone's podcast about like crashing his motorcycle and then like a bubble bursting. I don't know if he was speaking—

a bubble burst.

He was like, comedy, all of a sudden clubs started to close.

Well, there's been ups and downs with that. There was, there was, um, I came into comedy in '88, and apparently in '84 in Boston it was even better. Yeah, like there was like a peak, and I'm like, really? Like, because I came in, it was amazing. There was clubs everywhere. Like, nah, you missed it. So there's always been this like up and down of clubs closing, but like New York is on the rise right now. There's a bunch of clubs that have opened up in New York. New York's comedy right now is fucking doing great.

I hope— yeah, I hope they can figure it out. What do you mean? Well, I was in, uh, last time I was in LA, The spirit was so— I was never in LA for it being great, but I've heard all the stories about, yeah, everyone's sports car at the back of the thing and there's this gig and that gig. And then I was— everybody like has no sense that it's ever going to work for them. Like no one's even bothered to— it's like 3 podcasts in LA now that people do. I don't want to talk it down, but like here everybody is so hopeful in Austin and I can look at like Peyton made it. Like last night I'm looking at that green room, I'm like, all of these people have money and they're touring. And they came here and they got to do it. Like, and the hope and the adventure. And when I was in LA, everyone was just—

You might have picked a bad night, but it's also like The Comedy Store has always been—

That seems like it's getting better.

Yeah, it is getting better. Well, it's definitely getting better because Rose is running it now. She's awesome. But I think The Comedy Store has always been a top-down vibe. And if there was a bunch of like big-name national acts that were really cool and fun to hang out with, then it was a great vibe. And when they're gone, it always felt empty. It always felt weird. This is how it was with me in the '90s when I was there, and I think that's how it is now. We're all out here now.

Yeah.

You know, and it's like— and then people kind of feel abandoned, so they feel sad, you know, feels— and then they get a little mad at you, like, yeah, you think you're fucking me doing it in Austin, meh. And so it develops a stupid rift, which is the dumbest thing ever. We're all on the same team. And also, you could work here too. Like, it's so dumb.

Yeah.

Like, but the rift is a real thing. But it's like you have to be around a bunch of people that are having a good time to have a good time. You can't be the only person having a good time.

And the rift can be good. The rift can motivate people to— have you seen Lamez's Twitter?

No, what's he doing?

He's just going hard on New York people and saying, "Fuck all of them and Austin's number one." He's trying to— he's doing the same thing they were doing to him.

That's so silly. New York is fucking great.

I think he gets very drunk and starts swinging at people.

There's so many great comics. Norman and Soder and fucking Andrew Schultz and Dave Attell's the best live.

I don't know anyone who's children.

There's great comedians in New York.

I don't see how you could have kids.

Uh, Gaffigan raised all his kids there.

In the city?

Yeah, and he's super clean Catholic guy. Yeah.

I don't know how he's—

I'd really like to meet him. First of all, he's got some money.

Money has gotta help.

Send them to a nice place to go to school where they're not gonna get eaten.

I think the trans thing is done in the schools.

Yeah, it's dropped off significantly.

I had really— because we were homeschooling and I was just aware because my dad's a teacher and he would, he would say— I don't want to get him in trouble, but he would report, he would report that the numbers were developing. And I think as a social phenomenon, it seems to have like— now everyone just says they have an anxiety disorder.

Well, you know when it dropped off like noticeably?

When?

When Elon bought Twitter.

We just stopped pumping the content.

Well, all of a sudden you could say whatever you wanted.

Yeah.

And so you could make fun of it now, and then people realize, oh, this is a completely falsely propped up narrative. Also, I mean, do you smoke cigars?

I quit all nicotine. You have it. Do you have alcohol? I have a drink.

I can get you some alcohol.

All right, if I could have a whiskey. I quit, I quit all nicotine.

Uh, what happened?

I was having heart palpitations. I was doing it a lot. I had a problem. I cannot do a little bit. I see you. You'll just like, you'll be backstage, you'll have one cigarette and you're fine.

Yeah, I can't. And I never smoke outside of right before a show.

I don't. I mean, I— but all power to you. I can't do that.

I know how to shut things off. And I also regulate, like, I realize, like, when I have an issue. Like the nicotine pouches, I can just stop them. I've gone on vacation and just not take them and I'm fine. I think, but I think it's my biology. It's almost time for spring break, so maybe you're headed to the beach, or maybe you're taking the kids on a road trip, or maybe you're just taking some extra time for yourself. No matter what, you deserve a break and a reset, and AG1 can help. AG1 is your daily health drink. Just one scoop combines your multivitamin, pre- and probiotic superfoods, and antioxidants to help support a healthy immune system, and digestion. Plus, it travels really well, so you can start working it into your routine even when you don't have a routine. Just slip a few travel packs into your luggage and have a nice flight. Uh, I've talked about AG1 for a long time, and it's not just me. I know a lot of people enjoy it. It's very easy, it's very convenient, and you deserve to take care of your health. Visit drinkag1.com/joerogan and for a limited time, get a bottle of omega-3, vitamin D3, K2, and an AG AG1 flavor sampler for free in your welcome kit with your first subscription.

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I was quitting— going back when I went back to Australia and I came off nicotine at the same time. I think that was the closest to serious unpleasant. Really? I don't think I ever got through to abusive, but man, there was a lot of shouting at the family. What the fuck are you doing? Put it down! I was not happy. How long did it last? It was for a month. I was real bad. Wow, real bad.

That's crazy. For me, I don't know what it is, man. I just, I could just put it alone, leave it alone, and I'm fine. And now I monitored myself. Like, I went on vacation for like 8 days with the family. I said, I know, nicotine pouches. Let's see what happens.

Just see if you're fine.

See if I go crazy. Yeah, I was waiting. Nothing, nothing. Yep, nothing. Was it you with the pouches? Was the pouches—

I loved the pouches. And also, I mean, I got on the pouches to get off the cigarettes, and then I had to go on the cigarettes to get off the pouches. Then I was having cigarettes and pouches and the gum, and my heart would start to go, and my mood would like way up and way down. Wow. But it was— I got a lot done.

See, I get addicted to things. Yeah, like doing things. Like real bad. Like, I used to get addicted. Archery, sure. But the thing about archery is you can only do it so much. Archery is good because it's, you know, my bow is 80 pounds to pull back.

Yeah.

And so if I'm pulling it back, and I have another one that's 90, and so when I'm pulling it back, 80 pounds, you can only do that so many times, you know. I could do that maybe 100 times in a day and my fucking shoulder's blown out.

If you're hunting though, I mean, you're not shooting very often, but you wouldn't be able to get so tired that if you got in a dangerous situation—

No, no, no, no, no. When you're hunting, first of all, you're jacked up with adrenaline. Like, like you could pull a branch off a fucking tree. You're so jacked up with adrenaline, you're just trying to stay calm. Like, when you're about to pull your bow, the bow pulls back effortlessly. It's like, shoop! It's like you don't even notice that it's— it pulls back so easy. You're so ramped up, you're not even thinking about it.

How often are you doing that?

Bow hunting? Yeah, seriously, only a couple times a year. Okay, because I'm elk hunting, you know, and if I get an elk—

seasonal?

Yes. Okay, it's September, September and October, those are the time. But in Texas, we hunt pigs sometimes. We have a lease out here, so we'll go and hunt with a few of my friends from Archery Country. Shout out to Tyler, uh, and my friend Evan from Black Rifle Coffee. We'll go out.

Wild pigs?

Oh, they're everywhere.

Okay.

They're infested with wild pigs, are all over Texas.

Oh, thank you.

There's millions of them. Like literally millions of them. Like one time they opened up a highway, like they built this new highway and the day it opened up they had like this fucking ridiculous amount of accidents because people were hitting wild pigs because there were so many wild pigs out there that they're just crashing into them on the road with this new highway. Well, yeah, because the pigs had never seen cars before on this spot because they hadn't finished the road yet. And then all of a sudden there's cars everywhere and these wild pigs are just getting fucking—

What did they— How do they get— Because in Australia when they have a kangaroo problem and a similar thing— Cheers, God bless, thank you.

God bless.

They, um, they Gatling gun them from the sky.

They do that here. They do that here, uh, out of helicopters. You could do it if you want while you're in town. I'll set it up.

You know, all right, if we could do it this way, I would feel— I would feel guilty. Yeah, that would seem not a sporting way to start hunting. Would be to—

it's a different kind of hunting. Yeah, because it's a necessity hunting, right? I want to eat what I kill. If I kill something, I want to eat it.

Yeah.

And the thing about these wild pigs is they're gunning down 20, 30, 40 of them in a day. Yeah, they're doing them out of helicopters with machine guns. There's a bunch of companies that do it. There's, there's a video of Ted Nugent and this guy named Pig Man. Pig Man is like a famous bow hunter that lives in Texas, and they— it's called A Porkalypse Now, and they're in a helicopter helicopter. Ted Nugent and Pigman in a helicopter, and they gunned down like 240 pigs in a half hour. Uh, not podcast. Yeah, yeah, hunting show.

It would be a great podcast. He's gone, man. Yeah, he's a pig killing—

his name's Brian. His name is Brian. Sure, it's Pigman.

Brian the Pigman.

He just kills a lot of wild pigs, but it's a necessity out here. Look at this.

Is—

but you have to understand how many pigs they have out here and the kind of damage. That's Pigman. And the kind of damage that these pigs do to agriculture. You know, they go through fences and they fuck up livestock, gets out, and there's a lot of shit with these guys.

Oh God.

Yeah, oh, it's crazy.

Is this the argument for bringing wolves back in?

No, do not bring wolves.

No, I'm against it, but I don't understand the— what is the most pro— is there one sensible argument for bringing back in apex predators to—

well, there's arguments for it. You could make an argument for it. The problem is you do not understand— no one understands what the ultimate result is gonna be of introducing predators. There is a very strong reason why they eradicated wolves from the West Coast. Yeah. And from the United States, because they fucking kill everything. They're super smart apex predators. They work in packs unlike any other animal. They're very different. And they kill everything, and you can't do shit about them, and they kill people.

Also, like, in the UK, they got rid of them hundreds of years ago.

Yeah.

And it was like, they celebrated it.

They got rid of them in America too.

Yeah.

I mean, and now these fucking greenies, these softies that really don't understand nature, want to bring them back. So there's a good argument in some ways that having some predators would help, but the predators were slowly moving their way back into these areas anyway. So they never eradicated them from Canada. So they would come down from Canada and make their way into Minnesota, make their way into Iowa, make their way into— not Iowa, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana. They had like a small amount of wolves were kind of making their way in. Then they reintroduced a bunch of them into Montana in the 1990s, into Yellowstone. That changed everything. That changed everything. It dropped the elk population by down to like 40% of what it used to be, which many people argue is actually was actually a good thing because there was no predators in terms of like, like there's mountain lions, but mountain lions don't kill that many elk. They'll kill one in like a week.

Like families go to Yellowstone.

Yeah.

So now there's just wolves.

Yeah, but the wolves are not fucking with the people at Yellowstone. They really are just concentrating on the animals and they've like really knocked down the elk population substantially. But now they have an open hunting season on wolves in Montana because the, the the numbers got a lot higher than they should be, right? So now, like, I know guys who hunt wolves and they go on wolf— it's very difficult.

I was gonna say, it sounds more dangerous and— no, it's not that pleasant than hunting elk.

Well, no, it is dangerous in that it is a predator, and if you do get surrounded by them, they decide to eat you and you're out of bullets, you could be fucked. But for the most part, they're very difficult to hunt, they're very difficult to find, they're also very difficult to get in range. They're fucking clever. They're clever, and once they realize they're being hunted, and then once they realize that people are a problem, they fucking steer way clear.

What's the ideological reason for wanting them back? Just that they—

it's good to be in nature. I love nature.

Focus on the bees, you know. Well, red flowers.

There's people that don't like hunting, and for people that don't like hunting, they want nature to balance itself out. So the people that don't like the idea of humans killing and eating animals, yeah, they don't like them going out into the wild and killing wild animals, so they want something else to kill those wild animals. So then they bring in mountain lions, or then they bring in wolves, and then they think that nature's gonna sort itself out.

I don't understand why we have to do it. Why is it okay for them to— this is the vegetarian argument that I never understand, is that death occurs in nature. Animals are eating other animals, right? So are we— if it's wrong to kill any animals, should we intervene?

Should we kill all the mountain lions?

I thought the vegan fox was one of my favorite bits that you ever did.

Oh, Vegan Cat.

Is it? No, was it not fox?

No, it's about Vegan Cat.

And it's very sick.

But it literally is a true story.

Yeah.

Like, this lady was saying mean things to me on Twitter or Instagram, and I saw one of the things on her page. I went to her page, it said #vegancat, and I was like, no. And so then I clicked on it, and it's all cats that look like they've been stuck in a house with a gas leak. Wait, maybe that got me started searching vegan animals?

Because vegan fox, I definitely read a lot about after that.

Yeah, there's people that have vegan dogs. They feed their dogs, but you're basically— you can kind of get away with it a little bit with a dog, but cats are what's called obligate predators. They only—

they're obligated to prey.

Yeah, they only eat meat. That's all they eat. That's it. They're just predators. They're full-on murderous machines. Like, house cats are some of the most murderous creatures on Earth. They kill billions of animals.

Yeah, as soon as you As soon as you die. Yeah. Like, because dogs will give you an afternoon. Weeks? I thought dogs gave you just a little head start.

It depends on how starving they are, you know? If they're starving to death, their instincts kick in and they'll eat you. But cats just start eating you. They're like, oh, look, eyeballs. Hmm.

Hmm. We're yet to get an animal. You have dogs. Mm-hmm. You have one dog, two dogs?

Two dogs.

And you don't run the Instagram pages for these animals? Someone's running the dog's Instagram page. No, my family does. Really?

Yeah. So we got a little guy named Charlie. Yeah. He is a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel.

Yeah.

He's the furthest animal away from wolf that is possible. Like, 'cause they all came from wolves. He's the furthest from a wolf. He has no—

Yeah, but then—

He's this big. He's adorable.

You feel like wearing the big wig and the stockings and holding him. I always wanted to be King Charles.

I just give him kisses. He's a sweetie though. It's not yours, but— That's what they look like.

Yeah.

That's what they look like. I mean, come on, look at that face. They're just so sweet. They're so happy just to be around you and they're just so loving. And they, like, he makes sounds like a person. Like he was doing something, like he was licking all this water that was coming off of a drain. And I go, hey, stop doing that. And I picked him up and he went, aww.

He makes sounds. You're a better than that dog.

Oh, I love him.

But they don't make me feel sad. They're a little dog who look Oh, that's him. But like, that's Charlie. That's him.

Yeah, that's—

pugs make me very sad. I think about pugs a lot, um, and they upset me. And the long dogs, like the sausage dogs with the back problems— anything that looks like it, right, it's ready to die.

No, no, I know what you mean. I know what you mean.

Like a golden retriever is great.

Yeah, I have one of those too.

Yeah, yeah, it's my favorite.

Those two dogs are great. This is not like a pug. They're very active. They're really— they're, they're very—

it's like a water dog.

It's a fucking dog that's just like a house dog. They're just like a little love machine, just a little pet. He's a sweet, sweet little guy. Like, he's the best. He's so nice. He's like so— and he just relentlessly tortures my dog Marshall, the big dog. Yeah, who's the most tolerant dog on earth. He just lays there and the dog, the puppy's like, ah, like biting him, biting his ear. He's a year old. Okay, so we've had him for whatever, 8 months, I guess. Like, how many months they give them to you? 3 months old, something like that. How old are puppies when you get them?

They should be, I think, 8 weeks old, I think.

Yeah, so we probably had him for 10 months. He's fucking adorable.

You cannot travel with a dog to Australia.

No, you have to get them all kinds of shots.

Johnny Depp tried.

Yeah, he got in big trouble for that, right?

I think that was the beginning of the end of that marriage.

I think it was from the moment he said they were happy to get married.

They were happy until that dog problem. But the guy who— there was a politician who stopped Johnny Depp, who was like, he came out and said, "We're gonna destroy his dogs." And then everyone made fun of him in America. But that guy is now doing— he's like big in the emergent populist right in Australia over the last 6 months.

And he wanted to kill Johnny Depp's dogs?

Yeah, it was a great speech. He was like, "I don't care if you are People Magazine's Sexiest Man of the Year. Get your dogs out." Why?

What's the big deal?

Ah, we have no rabies. We have— we're very precious about the border. That's all we've got. His name's Barnaby Joyce. He is sick.

Demand that dogs leave the country within 48 to 50 hours or be put down, citing strict quarantine laws designed to protect diseases like rabies. But here's the thing, just test them. How much does it cost to test a dog for rabies? It's probably pretty quick.

Barnaby Joyce drunk. So this is short— not long after that, an issue with the, uh, if you— yeah, pistol and boo. Yeah, go Barnaby Joyce drunk. They caught him, uh, on the streets of our lake of Canberra, which is where the capital is, and he was just passed out in the street. He's like, there he is down the bottom.

Yeah, the bottom one.

Yeah, but he's, uh, it's just, he's just lying on the street. That's— when was it? It wasn't that long ago.

Joyce— look at him!

That man was in the government.

Good. What's wrong? It's a safe place to live. I was walking back to my accommodations after Parliament rose at 10 PM. Oh, that's all he was doing, just walking back to his accommodations.

I do like him a lot.

Look, he's just taking a nap. He's just chilling.

We have a strong—

could be a long walk.

Yeah, man, give the guy a break.

It's kicking— we're finally— we were the last country to have like a right-wing populist thing happen. You guys had the Trump and then England is having it happen with, like, in a big way. It's really starting to swing there.

So it's swinging right now?

And for the first time it's starting up. Yeah.

And what's, what's causing that?

Terrorist attack was not good. Yeah. And then also running out of petrol really has upset people.

Yeah.

We don't have— we don't make our own gas. We had two refineries. One of them accidentally blew up a week ago.

Do you think it accidentally blew up?

I have no comment to make.

What do you think though?

No, I think probably someone Seems like real bad luck.

Seems like it.

I mean, they would have been doing it at like max capacity. Maybe they did it past when it was safe, but it's not, uh, I thought I wasn't going to make it out of the country because they're out of gas. Flights started to get canceled. Yeah, so I made it. We'll see if I can get back, and if not, you can't. Well, I'll just stay in Austin for another couple months. I'm sorry, honey, just, we've got a lot of spots. There's no choice.

I'm not going to get on your work here.

It is so nice getting nothing to do. It is so nice having a club that— no, it's like there's 4 cities in the world where you can do it. I think about this a lot. There's nowhere— like, in America there's 3, and there'd be London. That's it.

That you can— what?

That there's like multiple rooms with lineup shows every night of the week, right? So people can just go and run 10, 15 minutes.

Yeah.

And like, at a good room with people and get paid. And get paid.

Yeah.

I mean, you need all of those factors to be able to do And you also need other comics around you. Yes.

This is one of the things that we were talking about last night in the green room, like, you know, me and Ari— Ari Shaffir's in town— and we were saying you can't be like the best comic in the world and just live in a small town in, you know, Cincinnati. It's like it doesn't exist by yourself. Doesn't exist. Comedy doesn't exist.

I tried it in a little town in Arizona, and the pressure seems to have driven that comedy club owner Right over the edge.

Oh yeah. Stanhope's boy. That's what that guy was crazy already, right?

I didn't know a thing about it. I just saw him give the speech.

Well, if he's hanging with Stanhope, you know, Stanhope tends to collect some people that are off the fringe.

I'm not blaming Doug Stanhope.

But that's a different scene, right? Like Stanhope, you know, was just kind of being out there by himself and it didn't even have a comedy club for the longest time while he lived there. It wasn't like there was a whole comedy scene there in Bisbee.

Was it like 20,000 people?

It's very small.

Yeah.

He knows everybody, right? But the Austin thing was very different. Like, we were stuck here. There was not a lot of options. We could have gone to Houston, could have gone to Dallas, maybe Nashville. No, maybe Florida. There was no place else that we were allowed to do comedy.

Nashville is— would be the next one.

Yeah, Nashville's got Zanies, which is awesome. That's a great club.

They have big— they got Theo there, they've got Nate there.

Nate and Theo both lived there, but I don't know how many sets they're doing in town. You know, Nate is doing fucking stadiums. He's doing these giant places all over the world, and Theo is killing it, and he's got one of the best podcasts in the world.

But there are definitely— there are like Nashville comics who are coming out who I see around the place who are doing really well.

Sure, I'm sure there's a smaller scene, but in terms of like a lot of work, yeah, Austin's the spot right now because there's 7 clubs on our street. Hold on, that's nuts. Within a block radius, you've got Creek in the Cave, which is over on 7th. You've got Sunset which is right next to us. You got Black Rabbit.

I was gonna say Black Rabbit.

You've got the Velveeta Room.

Yes. I'm gonna count Shakespeare's next door.

Yeah.

I'll allow that.

They do comedy. Um, if you want to count—

I do love the Velveeta Room. I love—

that place has been around forever.

It's been around forever. And, uh, there's the Gay Cabaret next door. I don't think it's expressly gay. I just call it a gay cabaret.

You like going in there?

I went there one evening. I was having a full mental breakdown. I don't know why. Just a classic, you know, out of nowhere. Ah, you know, the kids, it's a lot of pressure. Maybe the act wasn't working. Maybe I've been on the road. I don't know. And I was down, I was depressed, and I wandered into them doing their, the Esther's Follies show. I just sat up the back and I had a piña colada, and they were all like— there was a magician, it was just a very camp magician. And then they're singing like campy show tunes about the Supreme Court or something, like they're still doing SNL-style sketches. And it was like, you know, it was dumb and it was hokey, but it made me so happy.

Oh, that's nice.

Just to like have people having a good time, razzle-dazzle, smiling. There was no bitterness.

Happiness.

Yeah. And it made me want to fix my act so that I wasn't like— sometimes I feel I get up there and I'm just like screaming and I look unpleasant. And these people are like, you owe people a show. Yes.

You know, I don't think you look unpleasant, but you're just very self-conscious.

No, sometimes. I did the Creek in the Cave last night and I did a lot of screaming into the abyss.

I was like, yeah, another great club. Fucking great.

I love it.

Great spot. Creek in the Cave is a great club. It's a fun place when it's packed. It's rocking. And, you know, it's a lot of good comedy coming out of that. I mean, that's where Shane filmed his special.

New York is on the up again. New York is finally—

Everybody that I talk to, all my friends from New York, all say that there's a lot of clubs opening. There's a lot going on. It's, it's, it's hopping. Didn't they just open up an— was it an improv in Brooklyn? Did they open up an improv in Brooklyn?

I know this top-secret comedy has just— like a London club has just moved there.

Mm, interesting.

I don't know how it's going, but they're doing like a free model.

They're trying to do— they were trying to do a UCB in Austin. I don't know if that's still happening. The problem with UCB is UCB in LA didn't pay at all.

Is this improv?

No, Upright Citizens Brigade. They have some improv, but they do stand-up shows.

I thought that was in Second City. I didn't know.

They do stand-up shows. Yeah, but they don't pay you.

They don't pay?

No, which is crazy.

There was a history of that at the store.

Sure. There was like this big protest. What does it say? Improv Brooklyn. There you go.

That's a strong zoom.

Yeah, I think Joey said he was going there. It's a completely new place.

All right, this— I don't know if this is completely correct.

But this is what I'm saying. It's like, it's popping. Comedy's coming back.

Some improvs are black and some are not.

What?

Like, some improvs around the country are like just black clubs. Look at this lineup. If I look at the lineup. I'm not saying here, I'm not saying here, but like in—

You sound like a racist foreigner.

In Cleveland, the Improv is just a black club.

I've done the Improv in Cleveland, I think.

It's a black club.

Really?

No negativity. I like playing black clubs.

Cleveland is— that's why it's close to Kentucky, right?

Am I getting this right? Maybe it's Pittsburgh.

No, Pittsburgh's not. I've been in that place.

No, I've done that one as well. I'm probably Pittsburgh's great club. Hilarities or something? I'm telling— well, Hilarities was the non-racially—

go back to that website real quick. Look at all the different ones.

Wow.

There's not one in Cleveland though.

There's a ton of them.

Is one of those fake Cleveland? Maybe it shut down.

So the other— there's a club in Cleveland. There is a club in Cleveland that I went to. Way back in the day, but it's really— you land in Kentucky and then you drive to Cleveland.

What? Yeah.

No, Cincinnati.

Is it Cincinnati?

Yeah, that makes more sense.

Okay, that's it. You're right.

You need to drive out. Ohio is more built up than people give credit before. 3 huge cities. They got that chili that everybody loves.

Columbus is great. Columbus is great.

Cincinnati has the most beautiful skyline.

You ever do the Funny Bone, Columbus?

Yes.

Fucking great club.

With the balcony? It was very nice.

That's— does it have a balcony?

I'm pretty sure. Yes.

Columbus Funny Run?

Am I getting this right?

They've definitely changed it since you've been there last.

Is it a new one? No, no.

Oh, they just renovated the whole room.

Oh, I love having the balcony.

They must have had to add seats. It was killing it.

Everywhere that has a balcony is my favorite.

Once you have a place that's a club that gets good acts in every weekend— Cleveland Improv.

Okay, hold on. What's that? They love going to see Eddie Griffin at the Cleveland Improv? Come on.

2020. Maybe it closed.

This is 2020? Oh, it's 6 years ago.

I don't know. It's like when I typed in Cleveland Improv.

So who's that? Lou Annells there and Tony Baker was there. I will not be besmirched for making a very genuine observation about how Black the Cleveland Improv was. That's hilarious because I tried to get on. I was trying to do Black rooms when I, I got to, I got to open for Finesse Mitchell. That was the first Black room I got to play.

Nice.

I've slowed down. There's not heaps of Black rooms in Austin. I should go over to Houston sometimes and Yeah, where are the black rooms in Austin? I think the Mothership.

Yeah, probably.

I think someone wants to sit the ship. Yeah.

Yeah.

I still, I still think Chocolate Sundaes could work at the Mothership. I can't run it. You could. That would be fun.

I feel like you just have shows. I think themes are retarded. They try to do an Italian theme at the Comedy Store for a while, like Night of a Thousand Guidos, I think they called it. And I did it and I was like, what am I doing? I'm on this show with all these other Italians just because they're Italian.

There is something different about a Black audience. Yeah, sure.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a different skill set, I found.

It's a different skill set and they won't tolerate nonsense. They won't tolerate all this like, what else? What else? No, no, no, no, no. They're not here for that, which I think is good.

You can't even make fun of gay. You can't mention gay. Stuff at all.

Really?

Oh man, I had a trans bit. Just people were not happy to hear, 'Why are you talking about that? Why are you bringing that up? We're out here to have a nice night.' It was like on a dime it turned. Really? Yeah. And then people told me afterwards, 'They don't want to hear about that. I want to hear that word from you.' Really?

Interesting.

It was, uh, it was fun. I felt very alive when it was going well. And also Black people giving you compliments. Just an Aussie boy coming off stage, having a Black guy go, "You got a good stage presence." I was like, "Oh, fuck. Thank you so much." That's awesome. I, um, yeah, Black people, that was, that was very eye-opening when I came to America.

You don't have a lot of that in Australia.

We have Africans and we have Aboriginal people, but we have no— if you wear a cool coat in Australia, no one will tell you about it. There will be no one to say—

Yeah, there's a very big difference between African Americans.

Yeah.

And Black people worldwide. Like African Americans are responsible for so much of the culture, music, comedy.

Yeah.

There's like so much of an impact that African Americans have had on the world. Think about just hip-hop music.

Yeah.

Right? So hip-hop music doesn't even exist until I was in middle school.

Like late '70s?

Yeah. So I was in middle school. I went to high school in '81. And when was Sugar Hill Gang's hip-hop Hibbity the Hibbity Hip Hop. What was that song called? Rapper's Delight.

Yeah.

So that song came out when I was, I think I was 13. I think I was 13. I think I was in middle school.

1979 is when it—

Yeah.

The other year they formed.

That makes sense. So when I was in, when we first moved to Boston, my family didn't have much money. We lived in a place called Jamaica Plain and it's since been kind of gentrified. But that back then it was not, it was the first time I'd ever been around scary kids. Yeah. Violent delinquent kids who had all had sex. I hadn't had sex. All these kids, they're like, you don't even know where a pussy is, do you? I'm like, it's down there. Like, you probably think you go right into it, right? You got to go up. I'm like, okay, I don't fucking know. I never even kissed a girl. So what the fuck are you guys talking about? But they were like lighting fires, doing crazy shit. Like, they were delinquents, stealing things, breaking and entering.

Yeah.

And so I went to this high school— or middle school, rather. And this middle school was in a poor neighborhood. And I remember there was a kid that was in my class. I was 13, he was 17 years old, and he kept failing. He kept failing and coming back. He would come back for like a couple weeks or two and then he would quit. And I remember seeing him at the beginning of the school year and I go, I can't believe he's 17 and he's in class with me. This is nuts. And then I was filled with like this sense of dread for him.

Yeah.

For his future. Like, this fucking guy's never gonna graduate middle school, so he's never gonna go to high school. He's fucking 17. Like, will they even allow you to go to high school if you're 21? Like, what year do they say, you can't come here anymore, you failed 9 years in a row? At some point, it was that kind of kids.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was that kind of kids. And then there was like kids making out in class. I remember this Puerto Rican girl, she asked a question to the teacher. She said, If I'm making out with a guy and I'm— and he's breathing into my mouth and I'm breathing into his, can we stay alive like that?

Can you?

No, no, no, it's carbon dioxide. I never forgot that question.

Can we stay alive like that?

It was the craziest question. She was like, can we breathe each other's air and not open our mouths? And I was like, what are you doing, you fucking dirty freak? So a lot of girls dropped out. Up like while I was there because they got pregnant.

Sure.

It was dangerous.

Where were you before then though? Were you in a more middle class place before then?

Yeah, I was in Florida. I was in Gainesville, Florida, which was like way safer. It was, it was pretty cool.

You may have moved around more than anyone I know.

I moved around a lot. So I lived in New Jersey until I was 7 and then lived in San Francisco from 7 to 11 and then lived in Florida from 11 to 13 and then Boston from 13 to 24.

Do you— I mean, because you're now— your kids growing up in— they were in LA and then they're here. Do you think— I worry about my kids because I don't think they've ever been in the same house for more than one year. Like, I have a 7-year-old daughter, she's been in 7 houses now, uh, because we've had to move a lot, and I wonder what impact that is making.

Well, as long as they're young, I honestly think it has a positive effect.

Okay.

This is my take on what it did for me. I was forced to form my own opinions instead of adopting the opinions of a group of people that were around me because I never had a consistent group of people that were around me.

Yeah.

I met a bunch of new people everywhere I went and I had new friends everywhere I went and completely new environments everywhere I went. So I went from San Francisco in the 1970s right into Florida. And Florida was so backwards in terms of their mentality in comparison to San Francisco. San Francisco, we lived in hippieville. It was all like anti-war people, and it's San Francisco in the 1970s. And so then I moved to Florida, and it was like— I had this friend, his name was Candy. His last name was Candido. Everybody called him Candy. And his dad was like this really angry Cuban guy. And I remember him slamming a newspaper on the table, and he was like, "These fags wanna marry. This is crazy. Like, they're gonna let faggots marry each other." And I remember thinking, like, "What do you care?" 'Cause I lived in San Francisco. We're surrounded by gay people. Our neighbors were gay. My aunt used to smoke pot with them, and they'd all get naked and play bongo drums. 'Cause, like, she felt comfortable being naked around these guys who had no relationship with her.

They should rein it in now. I would say, having now seen San Francisco.

A little bit. But that's not— it's not the gays that caused San Francisco to go down the way it is. It's this crazy progressive politics where they allow people to camp on the streets.

I just— I went to a diner and I saw a man, he was wearing assless chaps and sitting on that. That upset me.

Apparently if you're gay, it would be a good spot.

The public nudity is— you have to cover the urethra.

Oh.

But if you cover the urethra, everything else is fine.

Oh, so you just like put a piece of tape over the whole—

put a little googly eye over the— jap eye.

Nice.

Maybe you kind of call it that.

You can, you just did.

No, but that's so that would help you become more— because you have like a weirdly independent mentality.

That's why.

Yeah.

So that I think going to a bunch of different places and seeing that, oh, people think completely differently over here than they think over here. This is weird. You know, I remember when I lived in Florida, I had to ask my mother what the N-word meant because I heard it at school. And she got upset with me. She goes, "You know what it means." I go, "I don't. I don't know what it means." And she's like, "It's a bad word for Black people." I was like, "Whoa, really?" Like, it made no sense to me. Because the formative years, I think, were really important. And I think 7 to 11 in San Francisco was really important for me. Because in a way, at least for me, it was very much a utopian city. It was like very open-minded. It was very peaceful. There was very little crime, like real crime.

It's just the most beautiful place.

It was gorgeous. It was gorgeous. We'd— I'd go fishing. I had this guy, there was like this community center and this guy named Cliff would take us fishing. It was really cool. Like there was a lot of like good things about San Francisco back then. And there was a lot of artists and it was a lot of like, it was a cool vibe. You know, it was a very open-minded vibe that was— a lot of it was centered around the anti-war movement and peace. You know, there was a lot— it was like, it was a different kind of— and they were sort of just like, just getting over the psychedelic wave of the 1960s, right? So this is like, they're still in that mode.

It was still like an artist-driven—

Yeah, a lot of open pot smoking. It was a lot of like, It's just hippies, but in the best way. It wasn't camping on the streets. There was no fentanyl back then. There was no homelessness. Like, homelessness was super, super rare.

Yeah.

Like, in the 1970s, like, when I was a kid, I never saw people camped out in the street. You never saw any of that. You occasionally saw a bum, and it was usually some poor fuck who's—

It was like a drunk guy, right?

Lost his way.

Especially if you look at Dirty Harry or On the Waterfront, whenever there is— like a depiction of— like whenever they're doing Vagrants in the '50s and '60s, it's like a drunk guy stumbling around. Like in Rambo, he just wants a sandwich and they chase him out of town, right? And then, you know, it is trouble. But now there's like— they're everywhere. It's like kung fu skeletons moving around the place, like full of drugs. Like, what is the endpoint of that? No one's running on that. I remember Trump talked about a little bit the need to have asylums again because they closed the asylums.

Yes.

Uh, I mean, there are more therapists now than there ever were before, but they're helping like corporate people. They're not helping Schizophrenics without a home. Like, at some point you saw Trump bring the Army in to places like Portland, or the National Guard, to clear it out. And I think people were quietly kind of pleased that that was happening. There was people pushed back.

Is that why they cleared it out? There is a homeless situation?

I think it was the homelessness.

I thought it was protests.

No, I think that was— I think that in Washington as well, I think they came into Washington.

It was crime as well.

Yeah.

Like, Washington was like crazy with crime.

And they were all kind of happy about it.

Well, the mayor of D.C. was happy.

Yeah.

That Trump brought in the National Guard.

But this is— it's not a nice— you can't lose the downtowns across America.

You know how bad L.A.'s gotten, right?

Uh, yeah.

L.A.—

Yes, I do.

Do you know how big Skid Row is? Take a guess.

I, uh— wait a minute, how many people?

How many blocks?

I have no idea.

Take a guess.

It's 2—

50.

Well, that's too many blocks.

5-0.

That's not a ride anymore.

5-0, just completely claimed by homeless zombies.

No, how big are the blocks? I'm thinking about LA.

Big as fuck.

I stayed away from there.

It's huge.

I went to the Hollywood Hills and Malibu and had a nice time.

Downtown is nuts. Downtown LA is the only downtown of any major city that sucks. No, downtown New York.

No, this is great. New York is incredible.

Right. Downtown San Francisco is fucked with homeless people, but it's still— you got great restaurants. Downtown LA is a ghost town.

I said Portland is so beautiful in the downtown, but then you will turn down the street and it's terrifying.

50 to 54. Oh, it's growing. Skid Row in Los Angeles, officially known as Central City East, covers approximately 50 to 54 blocks. 15,000. Yeah, they don't know how many people are there. There's just wild guesses in terms of what the populations of homeless people are. Even in terms of the population in the entire city, the high number is over 100,000 in the city. It's crazy. Look how big it is. All that whole area is completely lost. It was a row.

I thought it was like one street.

It was, it was back in like the 1960s.

I think it's There's a, like, a map or something they've drawn on a picture there. I think it's been that way for a long time.

Look at this proposed area, affordable housing. Affordable housing is just a joke. It's not what the problem is. They're all drug addicts. They're drug addicts and mentally ill.

Yeah, but what do you do there?

Well, you can't let it get that bad, first of all. And if you do let it get that bad, you got to treat it like it's a catastrophic failure and throw as much resources as possible at it. But the problem is these people are incentivized to keep the problem going because that's how they make their living.

Absolutely.

But they don't have any motivation whatsoever to fix it. Yeah, because if the homeless population drops down to like a very small number, and then they don't need all these people that are making half a million dollars a year on the homeless commission, it's complete grifting.

I, I don't have a problem. It's not my country. I don't have any big problem with Gavin Newsom, you know, I don't understand how LA has— every story that comes out of California seems to be—

Okay, so here it says, between 1960 and 1975, 50% of the housing in Skid Row was demolished, reducing the total number of units from 15,000 to 7,500 and displacing thousands of poor residents with nowhere else to go but the street. While Skid Row was never a wealthy neighborhood, its current status as the homeless capital of America is the result of decades of policy choices which have simultaneously encouraged the destruction of existing affordable— See, this is By the way, this is a very progressive perspective.

Yeah.

The real perspective, the real perspective is that what they use Skid Row for was when they would find vagrants in Beverly Hills and vagrants in Hollywood, they would move them to Skid Row and then they would kind of contain them in that area.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dumping.

So encouraging—

So like a concentration camp for the homeless.

Yeah.

Homeless, medical patients, I like how they— see, this is a very progressive perspective. Homeless medical patients. How about vagrants who are drug addicts? You can call them medical patients, like you're just being kind. This is just too charitable. From across the region. So they would dump them there, and then they also had like food kitchens there and stuff like that. So they had an incentive to stay, but they kept them there. And so then it kept growing because the homeless problem keeps growing and growing and growing.

But it's psychosis and drugs. That's the ultimate.

Yes, drugs are the big one. It's— and drugs are the— the drug use in Skid Row is probably 100%. It's not like regular homeless people.

I was in Portland and I saw a— I was walking to the train station through the downtown, which no one told me not to do it, and I saw all these very sad homeless people, and then one guy with a big smile. He was so happy.

Probably got his frat now.

Well, no, it's the first time I saw crack being smoked. Oh yeah, there's a great smell. Smell kind of sweet. Does it?

Yeah.

Like what way? Like— Smell like sweet, like a rotten apple. That's how it felt at the time. I don't know if that was the crack or if— I mean, he was smoking crack and I could smell that, but he was so happy and I didn't want to take his crack away. You know, it's like, he's the only thing you've really got going for you today.

Yeah, I think crack is—

Obviously we should take it away.

Not good for you, but probably better for you than fentanyl.

So—

I think with crack you're active. Crack makes you go do a bunch of stuff.

This is weird seeing heroin people for the first time because they're not like a threat. Australia is still a very meth country. We're like, oh, meth is a problem. A lot of like skinny shirtless men on the bus, angry, yeah, weird head twitching back and forth. So we're still very methy, but meth doesn't seem to be as big here now.

Oh, it's big, it's big in certain communities. Yeah, meth is still big. It's like, you know, what, what you've got in— I mean, the The homeless situation in Skid Row wasn't always fentanyl and heroin. I mean, at one point in time it was meth. You know, it's a gang of different things. I'm sure there's people there that are doing ketamine.

Do you just start killing drug dealers? Do you do like in Singapore? You just have a zero tolerance policy? Like, I don't know long term what the answer is.

I mean, look, you could do it that way, but it would be very inhumane. And it would also set a precedent for how you treat a bunch of other situations. Yeah, that's not good. It's dangerous.

The communists, when they had an opium problem in China, they just put them in the military. That's like, give people a new sense of purpose. You've got a uniform now. We're going to blame someone else for the problem. This is Western imperialism did this to you.

Yeah.

And that seemed to help. Like, they didn't have a big opium problem in China anymore. Um, also, I don't know how official that is and how many people they did just kill because it's the communist government. Yeah, they're allowed to—

they lie.

They might lie.

They definitely lie.

Although last time I was— a couple months ago I was here and Kurt Metzger was telling me that Tiananmen Square was not all that bad. Yeah, I didn't do enough digging. From everything he says, from a short Google search, I can agree with it, but I'm sure if I dug down I'd have more questions. I haven't seen him actually since I got back. Is he still here?

Oh yeah, he's great.

Most people are still here.

He's the best.

Even odd.

He— but he— you can't talk conspiracies with him because it'll just— he'll chain them one after another after another, and then 3 minutes in you forgot what you're even talking about because he's moved on to some scandal in the 1970s with callboys and Congress.

Oh, you spoke to him about Reagan?

Yeah, yeah. What is it called? The Franklin—

there's tapes.

Hassan was talking to me about Franklin scandal. Franklin scandal. Assan was bringing that up last night. He's reading a book on it.

I want to think that Reagan was a good guy. I always like—

I don't think it's Reagan. I think it's whoever's in his cabinet.

I mean, it was— well, he's dead. He can't— he was saying things about Reagan getting pegged.

What? Who was saying that?

Kurt was talking about that there was a tape somewhere of Reagan getting pegged, and I was like, I don't want to know about it.

These guys don't even think the Artemis flight went past the moon.

They didn't.

Kurt thinks there's a secret space program. And that this space program is bullshit. There's a real space program and they're using this space program to obfuscate.

It just seems very complicated.

I might be saying it incorrectly. He knows a lot of things.

He does. He does. And then when I dig in, often it seems true.

A lot of it is true.

But also, I don't— I think the government is incompetent everywhere. And if they were able to get that one thing of, you know, building a fake space program to conceal a true space program. It seems unlikely.

Yeah, well, do you know how much money you'd have to have to run two space programs, one real one and one fake one? That's crazy. Just a real one costs so much. Well, the Nazi one was real.

Yeah, yeah, that's come out. Everyone seems—

some people are still not aware of it. I've had conversations with people where they don't want to admit it, where they can't believe it. Do you know NASA was run by Nazis? They're like, what? You tell them about Wernher von Braun, and they want it— like, there's a lot of people that are like NASA fanboys, and these NASA fanboys don't want to believe that NASA was run by literal Nazis. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, not necessarily like they were scientific Nazis.

They were Nazis. Yeah, Wernher von Braun used to hang the slowest— the 5 slowest Jews. I didn't know this. His rocket factory in Berlin. The Simon Wiesenthal Center said that if he was alive today, they would prosecute him for crimes against humanity.

I mean, do you think that story got out when he was at NASA and everyone worked a little harder?

They hid it well. There was no Freedom of Information Act releases. There was no internet. When Operation Paperclip was first initiated, they got— I don't know what the number is of Nazi scientists, but it was more than 1,000.

Yeah.

How many Nazi scientists— put this into our wonderful ad sponsor, Perplexity. Our AI sponsor that gives me all my information. How many Nazi scientists were brought over by the United States for Operation Paperclip?

It's— I don't know that there's an official number. This is what led me down my research like 10 years ago, was this exact question.

Well, let's see what Perplexity has to say. I'm guessing, I'm better— I'm gonna guess about 1,500.

Also, as I'm looking this up, I will note that supposedly they were split up like evenly between the Soviets, right? United States.

That's true. Yeah, the Soviets took a bunch of them as well.

I didn't know that. I didn't know they divvied it up.

Yeah, I read a book about it, um, a long time ago.

I just started getting into the Soviet space program. I think— great.

Oh yeah, like the—

is it the Venus missions? Am I getting that right? Were they—

oh yeah, they got a thing on Venus and took pictures. Yeah, sent them back.

But then it was so— it was so hot that everything would like—

1600.

1600.

Typically state that about 1600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were brought to the United States under Operation Paperclip. So I was pretty close. To reel back though, I was trying to dig through this article as you guys are talking about Nixon getting pegged or no Reagan political plot to out Reagan. Yeah, group of Republicans tried to stymie what they alleged was a nefarious homosexual network within the campaign of their own party's standard bearer.

Oh, this is what I mean. Yeah, he says something that sounds crazy and you do a search, you go see what the answer is.

But during it, it says like while he was trying to pick a vice president, there's somewhere in here We had to fuck him.

You'd be my vice president.

Someone had a tape of an orgy.

Oh yes.

No. Yeah, well, didn't Reagan— Reagan frequented Bohemian Grove, isn't that correct? Uh, I believe he did.

Everybody—

yeah, a lot of people did, right?

But Reagan did. But remember what Nixon said about Bohemian Grove?

The faggiest place.

Goddamn faggiest thing I've ever seen.

You've heard Alex Jones talking about it?

Yes, well, Alex Jones went. Yeah, Alex Jones told me about it right after he went.

This guy says he engaged in a homosexual act with Reagan.

Okay, it was not until a boozy lunch with a man claiming to have been a longtime Reagan associate, however, the Best found what he believed to be the smoking gun proving that Reagan was controlled by homosexuals. "Bill, you don't understand the problem," the man told Best. "I once engaged in a homosexual act with Reagan." It was a different time.

Yes, I don't— this— these are all up until now in this article, these are rumors, right? I don't know that this video ever came out, but there's interest. Very long article about it.

And Politico. Yeah, interesting.

I was trying to find an answer and I didn't really get to this. This is a different time period in life too that I don't— I wasn't even alive for her, right?

Wow. I don't believe it.

I do.

I love Reagan.

I do too. I love him too. But I think there's a lot of those guys that are like staunchly conservative and very buttoned down that are that way for a reason. And one of the reasons is they're trying to hide the fact that they're gay.

I never understand this though, cuz we've— there are lots where I'm from, gay in South— like Conservative Party definitely gay guys, but thin, but like so— like everybody knows, everybody's aware, but they don't want it coming out and they never acknowledge. But like, it just seems so strange. You would want to not have a secret if you're a politician because otherwise people just get you to do what they want.

Yeah, but they have secrets and then they want to be politicians and they just deal with all the people that know their secrets and then they make deals. But like, like, that's how you stay in business.

I wouldn't even say— there are people in the United States Congress and Senate who are conservative. So we all go, yeah, that guy's gay.

100%.

Everybody knows.

So, you know, so I asked for the accuracy of this article and Perplexity gave me a, like, summary, I guess, that makes more sense than trying to make sense of a 20-page article in 2 minutes.

Okay, this comes from factual grounding and sources. One key factual— scroll up a little bit on the— no, uh, on the key factual backbone, the article lines up with other publicly documented material. Uh, Kerchick refers repeatedly to memos and notes from the Washington Post editor Ben Bradley's papers, including summaries by reporters Scott Armstrong and Ted Gup. These papers are held in institutional archives and have been referenced in other discussions of Secret City. The 1967 homosexual ring allegations connected to Reagan's Sacramento staff and Jack Kemp's is independently attested in contemporary press accounts, including reporting that Reagan security chief investigated alleged homosexual activity, and that columnist Drew Pearson raised these charges at the time. So here's the thing about gays.

Gay ring.

There's always a certain amount of gay people in a population, and then it's whether or not the culture accepts them. Yes, there's always a certain percentage.

There's— yes, people who are attracted to—

yeah, no matter what you do, there's a certain percentage. And so if you've got enough people in Congress and enough people in the Senate and enough people just in government in general, yeah, you're gonna have an equivalent percentage of people that are gay. And if you are a person who wants to get to the top of the charts, like, here's the thing that you don't think of. What is— you think Hollywood is very open, right? Very non-homophobic. In fact, celebrates diversity and celebrates LBGTQ people, right? Yeah, I mean, but not— so here's the thing, one thing you can't be is an openly gay person and being a male lead in films.

I mean, that would make sense as to why people keep that quiet. I'm trying to think of one.

You can't—

you're an actor, right? That has— you're in— hasn't changed.

You can pretend to be a werewolf. Yeah, but you can't pretend to be straight.

You can't pretend to be straight.

Yeah, they won't allow you. So if you're gay, you have to pretend. Yeah, you have to pretend you're not gay because you can't act in a movie where we know you're gay and you pretend to be straight. We won't buy it.

But whenever there is a movie where there is a gay person, they get an obviously straight— like, uh, like in Milk, they don't get a gay guy to play that role, they get a straight guy to be gay.

One example.

Yeah, but that's what—

he was never a TV— he was never a movie leading man.

It's just one example.

I know, but he's a TV guy.

But then people make allegations.

Also, it's like he's got a— it's a cartoon character. Yeah, like that How I Met Your Mother, that's a cartoon character, like, like straight guy. Like, you don't believe it at all. Like, first of all, he's not attractive like in that way. He's not masculine. And the fact that he gets all these hot girls to have sex with him, none of it makes any sense.

You see Gone Girl?

It's just writing. Yeah, I did.

He— where he's playing the—

it was great.

He was excellent.

Yeah, he's great.

I wish that movie would make it 8 times.

Fucking awesome.

I really— that helped me with through a lot of trauma with women.

Woo, bro, that movie was crazy. But the point is, like, you can't be an openly gay guy and be a movie star.

Yes, because you won't be able to kiss women offstage.

I'm trying to think of one on screen, rather. There's not one. There's— I know a bunch of closeted ones. Yes, but there's no openly gay action movie star. Well, there were There's actually—

there would be none. There's none.

There's stars who played gay people.

A lot of guys play gay people.

You know, like, what's his face, James Bond, English guy. Daniel Craig. Daniel Craig.

Knives Out, he plays a gay guy. That's right. Yeah, I was thinking of Milk.

Yeah, he plays a gay guy in Knives Out, but he's not like making out with anybody. He just like lives with a guy.

I never watched Knives Out because I was so angry at at the second Star Wars movie. I loved it. It's the same director. Like, I was just— and I loved Looper. I thought Looper was—

you gotta let a guy have a dud or two every now and then.

I fucking hated that movie. I was one of those guys who was like—

which one was that? What was it called?

Oh man, um, it was not Force Awakens. It was the one that came after that. It was, um, what year is this? 2017. I'm all over the place with the dates.

Don't you think though that I didn't watch any of the new ones But don't you think though that when you were dealing— if you're dealing with a Star Wars, those franchise movies, you're dealing with— and then there's no way they just give you carte blanche. There's no way they just let you write a script, let you produce it, let you put it together, let you direct it the way you want. They have insane amounts of input.

This one was so stylistically strange, such a departure. He was making a— Rise of Skywalker is— yeah, maybe it's that one. Yeah, is that it? Is that the second one?

Does anybody really give a shit about these new Star Wars movies?

Uh, not anymore. But it was, you know, it was exciting when George Lucas was doing it. At least he was like, we're gonna have a Jew alien and the Korean aliens, and it's about trade wars. And he was like, they did that? Episode 1? Oh man, Episode 1 is a nightmare if you go back and watch Episode 1.

Which one's Episode 1?

Episode 1 is like little Anakin and the podracing. Jar Jar Binks is like a hugely troubled— he's just speaking in a patchwork the whole time. But I mean, it all has to end. I think, I think it's finally winding down. Like, the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems to be coming to a close. Maybe—

no, no, no, Marvel, it's got to come. But Star Wars, they woke it up. Yeah, they fucked it up. Yeah, they, they made it all like this stupid woke message.

That was the woke one. That was the one where it was like, I didn't— there were ladies who couldn't do anything wrong and all the men—

and the ladies generals and the men are all terrified of them. Yeah, save it. This is nonsense. It's a time— these— but these woke messages just destroy the actual film. Like, we were talking about this the other day, that a feminist show that no one thinks of as a feminist show is how— is Game of Thrones.

She turns into a—

No, it's a completely feminist show. The women are all badasses.

Yes.

Every woman. Arya Stark, badass. Daenerys Targaryen, badass. Cersei Lannister, badass. Brienne of Tarth, badass. Kills, I mean almost kills the Hound. They're all women.

Yeah.

Women run everything. They're beasts. Sansa Stark, badass.

And a lot of the men, they don't see things coming, they don't know how. Oh, idiots get their heads chopped off.

They're retarded. The women keep the fucking civilization together, and they're the most dominant forces in the show.

Yes.

Yeah.

Sometimes they're lying like that nasty prostitute who hurt that midget man.

Yeah, but she was unfortunate in her choices.

You think the Marvel thing is gonna— I think at some point—

They're gonna ramp it back up. They have a new one.

They brought back the Russo brothers and Robert Downey Jr.

They're bringing in Doom. Doctor Doom's coming. It's been a while since I've watched— Fucking Robert Downey Jr. playing Doom as well. How does he do that? That—

wait till you see the movie, man.

No, no, no, no, no, no. How is he fucking Iron Man and Doom?

Well, they both have iron.

No, no, get a new guy. I know Robert Downey Jr. is great. You don't have to kill Iron Man. Bring Iron Man back. Don't you have a multiverse? Can't you pull him back and put him into this current timeline?

I don't— I'm looking forward to it.

I just don't like when you have a whole like universe, and you have one guy playing two characters in the universe. As much as I love Robert Downey Jr., this is— bothers the shit out of me as a comic book fan.

They've already had that though. Chris Evans is in Fantastic Four and he's Captain America.

Who's he in Fantastic Four?

The first Fantastic Four?

No, they've been like—

when do you roll that?

Fantastic Four 4, 3. Really? There have been so many Fantastic Four.

You're right, I never even remembered that.

They can never get that one working.

Who does he play?

That's sort of the joke in the Spider-Man movie, the multiverse one, because like they bring them all back in the same fucking movie and it's all confusing. Yeah, they bring all the bad guys back. Jamie Foxx is in the new Spider-Man and like he was— that was an old movie.

Do you think they'll be post-woke at this point? That's— I got to watch movies for the first time on the plane over.

They'd have to lose all their fucking money.

That's starting to happen.

Start to come back.

Did you see Begonia? No. It was good. Stive was in that and Emma. It was the guy who made The Lobster, but that was— there were problems with it, but it was like a pointedly like a post in the same vein of like White Lotus.

Okay.

I think, yeah, Hollywood is trying to make self-consciously post-woke movies. I got really annoyed by it and I thought some of it was cheap, but like I liked what they were going for.

Yeah, it's fun.

I thought the ending was fun.

Spoiler alert.

I won't spoil nothing. I won't spoil nothing. But I would never have seen it if I wasn't on a flight watching 57 movies. American Fiction was like a post-woke movie. There are like At the moment on Delta flights, there are—

What is American Fiction?

American Fiction is a book about a— it's a Black author who doesn't want to be considered a Black author. He just wants to be an author. He's sick of— and then he keeps seeing all these like terrible Black books full of stereotypes that white liberals adore. So he writes a fake book called My Pathology, and I think he later changes it to Fuck. He's just trying to like fuck with people, go, I'll just write the Blackest, dumbest book.

Right.

So that white— and then white liberals do love it. Um, and it was good. It was like— but it's like pointedly like mainstream and indie, you know, big studios are trying to make— they're trying to find some continuity from being woke to now.

Is this—

that's box office.

This is a mainstream film.

That one is independent. I won Independent Spirit Award.

Okay, but Begonia wasn't.

Uh, what was it called again, the one you were just talking about?

Begonia?

No, the other one.

Oh, which one?

American Fiction?

Yeah.

So American Fiction's independent.

If that was— you might— I didn't know if it was independent. I looked it up, it made like tens of millions of dollars.

Yeah, but sometimes independent films that catch on make good money.

Amazon to make a limited theatrical release.

Okay, so they partnered with Amazon. That's—

I know that's slightly— I don't, I don't know.

I would count that as a big studio.

No, no, if you started it by yourself, you started by yourself and then you distribute it to Amazon.

But who paid for it? Who was the—

somebody probably financed it.

The director was— was he the Onion guy?

$10 million budget.

So the thing is, if you want to do something right, you kind of have to do it that way now. Like, make it yourself and then bring it as a fully completed project. That way you don't have a bunch of people like the Star Wars guy, like, in your ear telling you what to do and how to direct it.

Can I— I recorded a comedy special years ago for Australia.

Yeah.

And I thought I would just do it on my own and then I would sell it. To the network.

How'd that go?

They said, we like it. This is one of the most embarrassing phone calls I ever had. They said that, we like it, it's very white. It's through email. Like, yeah, it's me, it's just me. And he— they said, can you go out and find like 5 or 6 diverse comedians and record their specials as well? And then we could buy all 6 of them. As I was like, fuck it, I'll put it on YouTube. I could like— but that was the real request, was would you find Find an Aboriginal fella, find a lady in a wheelchair, find some Chinese people, and then you can have your one as well, and we'll buy all 6.

Hilarious.

It was, yeah, that was probably the end of me thinking I could work with—

You can't work with people that aren't creatives, and that's what those people are. They're a bunch of people that are caught up in whatever the cultural moment is, whatever they think, like the winds of—

Yeah.

The winds of discontent blow the hardest, right? So the people that are going to get the most upset are the wokies. They're the ones that are going to complain the most about a lack of diversity. So to satisfy those people, they'll torch their own art. They'll fuck up the thing that they do best.

I mean, you can work with totally non-creative people. This was like, uh, there's a Frank Zappa line about how working in the music industry was great when it was just a guy in a suit who didn't care. And as soon as people had some ideas, it was hard to make Right, when someone would tell you what to do and what not to do. If it's a profit motive, that's great. You can work with those people.

It's— yeah, right, but there's no pure profit motive people anymore in terms of entertainment. They're all thinking about the cultural, like, tone.

Yeah.

And what you're supposed to and not supposed to do and what you're being on the right side of history now.

And did you see the Patrice bit where he talked about how he liked working with mid-level Jews?

No.

He's like, "I like mid-level Jews. I make them the money. They leave me alone." That makes sense.

Yeah, the people that get in your way, they all think they're doing it for a good cause. And we experienced that. Like, Stan Hope and I, when we were doing The Man Show on Comedy Central, there was a lot of that.

Was there?

Yeah, dude. I don't even want to go into it. But there was— whenever you're— like, Ari experienced it when he was at Comedy Central. I know a lot of people that have experienced it at various networks where there's always some fucking executives that want to impose their own and it's always liberal. They want to impose their progressive values on comedy, and it's like, you can't fucking do that if you want it to be funny. If you want it to be funny, you have to— it has to be in the language and in the mind, like, from the viewpoint of one person, one person's unique vision. Yeah, one person's unique vision that they think is hilarious. And as soon as you start monkeying with that, as soon as you start adding stuff to that, as soon as you start watering it down, you're gonna kill it. You compromise it, it becomes a candidate for mediocrity.

But how did they— Where did they start on the man show? They like get the girls off the trampolines?

No, it was like one of the things was they didn't want Joey Diaz coming out naked.

Okay.

Okay, so we had an intro, and I said, "This is what I wanna do for the intro. I want Joey Diaz to come out. He's gonna burst through the door naked with Timberlands on, with a baseball hat on, and just say, 'Let's get this party started,' and start dancing." Yeah, that's fun. It was hilarious. And they didn't want to do it. So this is the scene, I guess.

But you did get to put your—

Yeah, well, we had to do it two ways. We had to do it their way. Sorry, we did it their way first. Yeah. And then when their way was, was done, we did it with Joey. Everybody went fucking nuts. They all went nuts. It was awesome. But it's like they, they so strongly resisted that. That was the only way I wanted to do it. I said, listen, we'll do it your way first and then we'll do do it our way. Meanwhile, that version with Joey was what they used in all the promos. Yeah, of course they use that when they're like, no, they're still in the Man Show, and then Joey comes out and they did was cock blurred out. Um, but, but you're just gonna get a bunch of people who also want to have their fingerprints on what you're doing.

Yeah.

So they want to, they want to somehow or another change it, even if it doesn't make sense. What if your neighbor is a black guy who grew up with a white family.

I—

what if your name— and then they want to like change it, and then they have— how do you do— how you doing with the black guy who has the white family? Like, I didn't even add that. Come on, man. Yeah, come on, man, we got to play ball. Like, these dipshits want to add their own little fucking ingredients into the soup.

With this, I mean, it's never been cheaper to make your own thing, I would have to think.

Never. You could do it on a cell phone, you could upload it to YouTube, and AI is It's incredible.

Yeah, there's a use for it. I hope it doesn't— I'm still uncomfortable about it. You're aboard. You're playing new music backstage. I didn't pick it.

That was good, right?

It's all good. I find it frightening.

Yeah.

I don't like it.

It's White Rabbit. It's this Jefferson Airplane version of White Rabbit.

Yeah.

But it's this bluesy new version of it. That's all AI. It's fantastic.

There's one way you can upload you just upload your music or someone else's music and they're like, it does all the mastering.

Beautiful.

It's spooky. I mean, it's the end of— it is the end. It's the end of something.

It's the beginning.

There are technical jobs that are just gone now.

Like, that's true. Yeah, but there's not a lot of Morse code operators either.

I think they should bring it back.

Bring back the steam engine. I'm, you know, coal-powered fucking locomotives.

Listen, the Amish, they seem happy. They got their buggies. They got their big—

try having a conversation with them about space. They don't know jack shit.

They don't have autism, so they can't do it.

They haven't had their vaccine.

Talk to them about butter.

They know how to churn. I think you're going to experience great change. There's not a damn thing you can do about it. And so you just have to be zen about it.

I mean, some of the— it's been like over a year since the driverless cars came to Austin. And I've been in a bunch of them, the Waymos. And they're not spreading out across the country the way that I thought they would.

Oh, they're in a lot of places. They're all over Los Angeles. They're in a lot of places.

They're in about 3 or 4 places. But like, they should have— obviously the technology is there that no one should have to drive for a living. Like, it would be cheaper to have the Waymo. The technology is there. They're on the freeway now. I've never had one problem in a Waymo. I don't know how many I've been in.

They've had problems here. They've all got— because there's so many of them, they all met up in an intersection and got locked up.

That's funny.

Hilarious.

Yeah.

There was like a bunch of streets going into each other and they all came and then no one knew what to do.

But that's not as bad as like drunkenly T-boning somebody.

Sure, but the thing is, don't drink and drive, not let's let robots take our lives over, right? That's not the solution. I want the freedom of being able to hop in a fucking car and drive wherever I want.

They're gonna take it.

That's the problem. That's the problem. The problem is it's gonna—

They're gonna say it's safer to have you off the road.

Exactly. Exactly. They're going to say statistically you're more likely to die in a car accident if driven by a normal person than a robot.

I bet they'll offer little bonuses. They'll say when all the humans are off the road, speed limits are going up 2 or 3 times or whatever they can handle. Their reflexes are better.

Well, you know, a lot of kids today are not driving. Do you know that? A lot of kids today are just ordering Ubers and driving Waymos.

I mean, I only got my driver's license at like 27.

Really?

Yeah, I was just on busses, and then we had a child and I was like, I better do it now. It's my favorite thing in the world. Wow, I love driving.

Did you not want a driver's license or you just couldn't be bothered?

I wasn't good at it. My parents were scared. My parents were like, I don't want to get in the car with you. Uh, so my brother—

How are you so bad at it?

I don't know. I don't know. I was very like— I was uncoordinated until like I was at a late puberty at 16, 17, and then I became coordinated. But for a while—

interesting.

Yeah, I don't know why.

I didn't—

my head—

as a child, teach you how to— you were dropped on your head as a child? Interesting.

Then I think with like— and then in my late teens, how were you dropped on your head? I fell out of a pram, out of a stroller. I unbuckled myself and I stood up and I fell down. I don't think it had any brain impact.

Of course it did.

People disagree.

Yeah, 100% it did.

Big scar.

Oh yeah, you fucked your head up.

That's why you're finding Uh, maybe 100%. I got the coordination back at some point, but I like—

so you really think it affected your coordination all the way up into puberty?

Yeah, because it was— I was able to play sport at high school after I'd hit puberty, but only after puberty, and only sports that didn't really matter if I had all the skills. So like football, everyone's been doing it since they were 4 and they really know how to do it. So I was just like, no, it didn't matter that I could figure it out now. Everyone had 10 years me, right? But I became an okay field hockey goalkeeper. Oh, I like one season in the top team as the field hockey— because no one wanted to do it, no one really trains to do it, right? It's just having fast reflexes, so that was fine. Or like badminton— I became okay at badminton because it was just me and the Asians, you know? Like tennis, there was no way to get good at tennis, right?

You need a head start.

Squash I could do a little bit, but badminton's a great game. Met a lot of Malaysians.

So did you have a problem moving your body correctly?

It would be, yeah, like I couldn't catch a ball. Huh.

And you think it had to do with your head injury?

I, well, I have no idea.

Do you have brothers or sisters?

I have a brother. He's fine.

Is he an athlete?

No, I mean, he, he was. He, he also, he was younger than me, so I was in badminton. So he was, and then he was really good at badminton. Yeah, he's hypercompetitive. He was always good at sport compared to me. He was much better. But then I could, like when I came to America and I started throwing a foot— when I figured out I could throw a football, that was huge.

Is your brother funny?

Yes. Yeah, he actually, he got me into— I thought comedy was over. This is how I met Shane, is he took me to go and see Shane. I was sort of, this was, I don't know how many years ago, 4 years ago. And I was sort of, I didn't know what was— I'd had a 3-year-old by that point and a new baby on the way. And just in Australia nothing was interesting to me and my career wasn't happening. And he said, you should come and see this guy who got fired from SNL. I didn't know him. And I sat in the audience and I watched Shane perform for 300 or 400 people in our hometown. And I was like, oh fuck, it's back. Like, it's happening. I knew there were a couple people on Netflix. I knew like you had Netflix specials and Bill Burr and Louis, but it was like, these people are grandfathered in. No one is ever going to be able to come through and be be, you know, controversial. No one in my generation is going to be given an opportunity. And then I saw—

you just thought that new comedians were not going to make it in Australia?

I can't, I can't say enough how there's a, like, a— there's— it's been 20 years since someone got to be successful.

Jim Jefferies?

Never in Australia. He had to leave. Really? Even now, the Melbourne Comedy Festival notoriously will not work with people who have worked with Jim Jefferies. What? That's a black stain on your character.

So if you open for him, you can't work at the—

They don't like you and they're not going to give you opportunities. That's what people say. That's what I've heard. And everything that I've seen leads me— because he's not their person. Fuck him. They think of him as an extreme. In America, he's like a liberal. And in Australia, he's far right. Dangerous man. How could he say that?

That's what it is.

That's what it is.

It's his politics.

Oh, yeah.

It's not that he didn't come up through their system.

Well, he didn't come. I mean, he just left.

Right.

But he— I think he didn't like them. They didn't like him. I mean, there are people who have left and not been part of this system that they've totally gotten around. But they see what he is, is like a manly man.

And they don't like that.

Oh, no. Oh, no. No, they want you to be a cardigan. Excuse me. I won't go on and on.

Go on and on.

It's— there's like— there was a generation of lost talent in Australia, like great people. John Cruikshank. Fantastic. Where's his show? Um, I could— you could name 15 people, but like, there was no opportunities for them. It was so hilariously gatekept. Yeah.

Um, never good.

No. So I, I didn't—

I just thought, so this is your perspective from Australia? You never thought there was ever going to be an opportunity to make it as a comic?

My brother liked— I had kids, I had stopped paying attention to the outside world. My brother had not, and he took me to go and see Shane. He was like, you should see this man. And it was fantastic. And I talked my way backstage because I knew the opener, because I didn't get to open for him, but I knew the opener. And then I got to meet him and Matt, and then I got to go to Melbourne and open for him. And then I came to America.

Were you doing any stand-up before you opened for him in Melbourne? Had you been practicing?

Yeah, I was doing stand-up around constantly still, but I would do— I would just have 50 or 100 people in a different city, and I would show up and make enough money money for the flight and like an extra $1,000 or something. But it was like, I couldn't pay rent that way. I couldn't—

Right, you were scratching by.

It was, uh, yeah, I was struggling. That's why when we did come to— when I got the Catholic job and I came to America, it was all— I borrowed from everybody. Like, I was in thousands of dollars of debt to family and friends.

How did Arj Barker make it in Australia?

He did a show called Flight of the Concords. He was on that, um, and he was beloved by the festival, and he did lots of gala spots. And we really— there's a couple—

So it's the festival?

The festival broke everybody. Yeah.

So that controls comedy in Australia?

Yes. There's a guy called Rodney Rude who's really funny, who was before that.

Is he in the festival?

He's not in the festival.

He can't be in the festival.

He would go to like RSLs and things. He has great— get out of here, you homeless fuck. That's a great bit.

Okay.

Kevin Bloody Wilson. But these are like that older generation.

Yeah.

After that though, it was—

So it's captured, it's gatekept by one ideology.

By one lady running one festival. Oh, no disrespect. I'm sure she's very nice. I don't want to talk her down. I would have loved an opportunity once. Anyway, it doesn't matter. I don't need you anymore.

Wow, that's never good. It's never good because people with that kind of power, they also abuse it. They really enjoy it.

How could you not?

You don't have to.

You got hundreds of desperate people who are 'Please give me an opportunity.' I've got that.

I don't do it.

No, but you're a very strange person and you're alone. It's why people love you. But there's definitely— there are casting couches.

Yeah, but you could just be nice, and being nice and helping people, especially talented people, it gives you great satisfaction. You feel great about it.

It's—

yeah, it's— I always tell people it's really selfish to be generous because it feels great. Yeah, it's wonderful to help people. Feels fucking awesome, and it's great to see people thrive and take off. It's fun. It's exciting. And then you hang out with them in the green room and it's just all joy.

Also, I don't want to say that they don't do that. They're helping a lot of people who have very specific ideologies.

Listen, we don't have that. Like, our ideology is the opposite. Our ideology is, are you funny?

Yeah.

I don't give a fuck if you're liberal and funny or like it was for Brian Holtzman.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was on last night, and she was like, she was a big lefty. She's a dear friend, and she's gonna open for me this weekend. But, uh, she was like in New York. She was raised in Sacramento. She went to New York. She was like a very lefty progressive person. And I remember like even nights at the Mothership where she would scream at the audience, you're a fucking fascist, fuck out! Like she was really like baked in, and they loved it. People, there's a lefty lady just like off her nut, angry at everybody.

Just if you're funny.

And people were It was fun. There is no equivalent of that.

No, you just have to be funny. Yeah, like it's all just funny. Like if you're funny, lefty funny, funny Brian Holtzman funny, Tony Hinchcliffe funny. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Just be funny. Just work on your stuff, work on it. Like really put a lot of time and energy into your craft, come up with great bits.

When I'm on these flights, I'm watching like all the official sanctioned, like non-Netflix specials, but some of them that are on HBO. And some are on Hulu, and it's people who— there's a weird way that audiences— like, I'm watching like official main— whatever, like, it's not mainstream because the audiences are tiny by comparison, but you know, I mean, like, sort of like orthodox sanctioned comedy in America, and the jokes are so mild. And so, but then the audience is like, it's supposed to be— there's a lot of women in the audience.

Yeah, they're all on antidepressants.

They sound crazy.

They are crazy.

It's like cheap nothing punchlines.

Exactly.

And it's just at the slightest, my boy, like, I couldn't even—

yeah, well, it's also, it's Claptrap, right? So you're also reinforcing their ideology. So they're very excited about it because they kind of realize their ideology is very fringe and dying out. As much as it's perpetrated through Hollywood, it's rejected by a lot of rational people.

It's over.

Yeah, it's over.

I was watching, I went to a bar last night and I watched The Tonight Show and God bless everybody involved, but it's like, okay, well this is done. This is winding down. This is not a cultural, this was the most like—

The Tonight Show's winding down?

Just in terms of how many people are watching it and like, you know, going, doing a set on a Tonight Show used to be, that was it, right? Johnny Carson. You just moved tickets on the right on Johnny Carson and now people are going, that's his 15th Tonight Show appearance.

But it kind of died out even before then. Like the impact of the Jay Leno sets, like if you did a set on Jay Leno's Tonight Show, The Tonight Show, it didn't have nearly the impact that Johnny Carson did. And that's just because by then there was so many channels.

Yeah.

So when Johnny Carson was on The Tonight Show, there was 3 channels in the country. Yeah. You know, like, yeah, that's how crazy it was. And then slowly but surely cable came around, Fox came around, all these other networks, and then everything just expanded. Now you have streaming and now it's insane. Now the numbers are absolutely—

Is it over at the end of Carson for that?

Yeah, I believe so. I believe by the time Jay Leno came around, like, when did Jay Leno first start hosting The Tonight Show? Let's guess.

Early '90s? Yeah. Mid-'90s. '94.

Probably. So that was right around the time cable was coming out.

Yeah.

Cable changed everything. So with cable, you got, first of all, you got Evening at the Improv, MTV Half Hour Comedy Hour, Spotlight Cafe. There was a bunch of different shows that were on a bunch of different networks. There was all these comedy shows that were all over the place.

'92.

'92. Which makes sense because like that's when cable started becoming really ubiquitous in America. Like, and then you have so many fucking channels. So the impact of a single show was not the same anymore because during the— let's find this out— during the height of The Tonight Show, what was the average viewers?

This is spooky.

I bet it's like 40 million.

What's like— I think the I mean, even by the end of Friends, like sitcoms.

That's different because that's, that's earlier. So The Tonight Show is late at night.

Like, just average Tonight Show. Yeah, yeah.

See, this is the thing. Tonight Show is at 11 PM. That's after the fucking news. That's late at night, right?

Yes.

Isn't it 11? Is that when it starts, or 10? When's The Tonight Show start?

It's 11:30 East, 10:30 Central.

Okay, there's like 11:30 in New York.

Is it a million people? How many Now? No, then. What would it be then?

What do you mean, the viewers?

Yeah, like how many people?

Way more than a million.

Like 10 million?

Oh yeah, easily. The Tonight Show viewers, I bet it was 30. What is average Tonight Show viewers in 1980? Let's say 19—

like 15% of the country, bro.

It was that big. It was where people went to find out what was going on, what movies were coming out, what bands were coming out, what comics were funny. I remember it. So let's try 1980. Average viewers of The Tonight Show in 1980.

That's giving me a rating, not the numbers.

Oh, it's like as a percentage?

No, it's—

what were the average number of viewers on The Tonight Show in 1980? Let's see.

How many?

6 to 7 million.

6 to 7 million was average. This is 8 to 10.

But by, um, yeah, so but like, all right, even 8 to 10. But what is it now?

6 to 7. Let's think of that.

God, it's probably 100,000.

A tenth that.

Maybe a million.

I don't even know if it's that. And here's the thing about ratings. The ratings are very weird because it's based on this. You have boxes that are connected to your television. Do you know how it works? Yeah. So these— the way these ratings work is they get a certain number of people, and they— and there's certain number of people you actually pay. They pay these people to have this box, and then some of them have to fill out a form. I don't know how that works, but— and then it just records what you're watching. And so it's just based on these people. So it's not the whole—

no, we did it.

But with like Netflix, it's a different animal. They know the exact number of people.

Tony was talking about— they know when people are tuning out. They know which shot is upsetting people.

It's crazy. They know the moment where people tune out. Yeah, well, they also have an insane amount of options. Like, if you're bored even slightly, you press a button, you have new options, and they're instantaneous. Back then you had two other options other than whatever— was it NBC? The Tonight Show?

Yes.

Was it NBC?

Yeah, we got different channels, but I—

Tonight Show.

I'm, I'm, I'm nostalgic for that. I only had that until I was like 10. Yeah, but it was, uh, I've started watching TV again, but it's just like I'm role-playing in my living room when I have a beer and I watch like terrestrial broadcast now.

Like, I watch Survivor with my family at night and with commercials and everything, man.

I watched the lead-in, I watched the new Matlock afterwards for 5 minutes before I get sick of it and turn it off. Yeah, I watch Who Wants to Be a Millionaire beforehand.

It's for people that are on heavy pharmaceutical drugs. It's for people that are nice. It feels like the world Their mouth is open, their senses are dulled, like, grrr.

I was this— I started doing—

Who committed a crime? They better solve it. There's only 10 minutes left.

I would have friends come over. This is what I've started doing at home.

To watch TV TV?

Only Australian Survivor, which is, I think, the world's finest—

Is it still Jeff Probst, or is it a different host?

No, it's a different host.

You got an Australian guy?

We had Jonathan La Paglia, who was Anthony La Paglia's brother. But then he got shafted. It's very upsetting. They got a new host.

Jonathan Anthony Sopali, the actor?

Yeah, Jonathan Anthony Sopali was very good. We still get the show. No, I don't know why.

No one knows.

I don't know, but he was great. I know it's, uh, it was wrong think. It, you know, I've never heard him express an opinion. He would do a lot of sexual double entendre during the show. Yeah, was that the other good one? Is the South African Survivor.

Is it?

Yeah, because they've got the accent, so all the challenges feel way nastier. Oh, look at that, he's struggling now. He's really starting to sweat. He's digging into his feet. He's in a lot of pain. I love South African Survivor.

They had a bunch of different versions of Fear Factor that I wasn't even aware of.

Different countries got Fear Factor?

100 different countries.

They get guys who are like you? Is it like—

I'm saying, I'm just joking. Um, I mean, they had a ver— some— someone. Yeah, it was like that, you know.

That would be funny to see who they— like, because they would be trying to replicate you.

Mm, not necessarily. Like, Ludacris didn't try to replicate me when he did it.

They got Ludacris to do it?

Yeah, in America.

I didn't know Ludacris took over Phoenix.

It was a very short amount of time, and now Johnny Knoxville's doing it, and he's doing it his own way too.

Sure.

It's a pretty straightforward show, though. You don't have to do it my way. But what I was good at is— 'cause I came from a background in martial arts coaching. Like, I had students, and I would bring them to tournaments, and I'd coach them at tournaments. I was really good at getting people fired up. You know, and I'd coach teammates. Like, I would be in the corner of teammates and I'd coach them and I'd train people. Like, part— hard— one of the reasons why I got really good at taekwondo so quickly is because I taught. And when you teach something, there's something interesting. I've noticed that about jiu-jitsu as well. When you teach something, you get better at it, like exponentially better than people that are just training.

Because, I mean, with comedy, there's a huge faux pas against teaching.

You can't teach it. No, you can't teach comedy. It's different. Like, you do it so different than I do it. I do it so different than Shane. Shane does it so different.

I maintain there are things you could teach people people— like when people come on Kill Tony and they haven't been doing it for very long, there are key things that you can tell people. Yeah, you must stop doing that. Yeah, you've got to hold the microphone like this. We've got to be able to hear you.

Yeah, that's true.

And I think people waste a lot of time not knowing those. I mean, they could look it up, but didn't you figure those things out?

Yeah, yeah. So it's people that aren't that aware in the first place, and that's a problem to begin with.

It is.

So what it is is a lack of self-examination. A lot of what these problems are, you could solve yourself if you just recorded yourself or filmed yourself. Filmed is the best.

Yes.

Recorded is pretty good. Film is 100%. So filming, you get to see all the things you hate about yourself, all the things that are gross, all the weird stupid parts of your bits that you need to chop out, and they make you uncomfortable, and it's good. Yeah. And you just, oh, fuck that bit, fuck this, cut this, cut that. Oh, here's another. I didn't even think of this. And then boom. I mean, that's—

I'm doing it at the moment. I'm finding it heartbreaking.

Because you're just getting back into like real world again.

Oh, I did.

You were trapped on Prison Island.

I was doing hours in Australia. And I knew that like some of it would translate in America and some of it wouldn't. And man, it is just— I'm losing 80%, which is great. I tried to overwrite so I would have more than I needed.

But did you have a lot of Australian-based jokes, like local jokes?

Eventually I had to. Like, I started out trying to do no— nothing local. And what happened? Like, you're just there and the Prime Minister does something appalling and you start talking about—

oh yeah, you're gonna have to have some stuff.

Yeah.

That's interesting. Yeah, anything about your politics will not translate over here.

Not at all.

Not at all. We don't give a fuck. You don't have nuclear weapons, shut the fuck up. You're not even a real country.

I'm trying to get some— I'm trying to sort us out.

Did you see what happened yesterday, that the FBI has indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center?

On what?

Paying Nazis to protest. So this was something that Alex Jones had said. You remember that Charlottesville tiki torch thing years ago? Alex Jones said back then that they were being paid, that these are paid actors to go and do that. People thought he was insane. Yeah, turns out it's true. Turns out they were paying the Ku Klux Klan. They were paying a bunch of these like far-right radical organizations, giving them money to protest so they would have something to fight against.

We're going to the Capitol over here.

This— DOJ charges Southern Poverty Law Center with fraud. Over secret funding of extremist groups.

I was mad.

Fucking crazy.

I just saw that The Onion is buying Infowars and turning into like an anti-gun ad, and it's like, it's a $1.5 billion thing he had to pay for getting one thing wrong one time.

Yeah.

How many things did he have to be right about?

He's right about a lot, I'll tell you that. And The Onion thing, I don't even know if other people were allowed to bid. I don't know how that worked out, but I think there was other people that were trying to bid that couldn't.

That's hinky.

That were like supporters of Alex Jones.

Yeah.

Uh, let's go back up. Stop. Hold on. Between 2014 and 2023, Southern Poverty Law Center paid at least $3 million to 8 individuals, some of whom were associated with the Ku Klux Klan, United Clans of America, National Socialist Party of America, Aryan Nations Affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club. Yeah, that's a mouthful. 'And the American front,' said acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanch at the press conference. Holy fuck.

Manufacturing the— well, this is what you said before about people who need homelessness to keep going.

Well, this is what's crazy.

They need the hate to keep going. Exactly.

But this is what's crazy. These people were cited as an expert in extremist groups.

Yeah.

And they were paying extremist groups in order to be extreme.

They said they were paying for, like, information.

I think, right?

They were— they like had them planted there or something like that.

But what are they, the CIA?

Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up. No, you weren't.

Have you ever been to—

it's just like what Israel gets accused of doing with Hamas, that Netanyahu has said by getting money and giving to Hamas, you keep Hamas in power and you can control the height of the flame. So instead of letting Palestine get its own state, statehood, you keep Hamas in charge. You always have an enemy and you always have no reason to give Palestine statehood.

Well, people— I don't know how deep people went into what happened on the security on October 7th. Like, how that was allowed to happen.

It's not. It's a total stand down. Like, people were told to stand down. Like, how— first of all, it's the most surveilled country on earth.

On guards everywhere.

On guards everywhere, surrounded by their enemy, and somehow or another these guys pulled this off when they were warned by Egypt as well.

Yeah.

Also, here's another thing. Before that happened, before that happened, before October 7th, hundreds of thousands of people in the street protesting against Netanyahu.

Did you read about why? It's so strange because they, their constitution, they don't have a set constitution. They're writing their constitution in real time. They add one article at a time. I think I'm getting this right. And it was Israel was always meant to be a home for the Jews and that he made expressly a Jewish state, that it would be like—

I thought they were expanding the powers of the government.

Am I getting this right? It was that the government, yes, that was part of the government's powers is that the government then had the power to act on behalf of Jewish interests. So it's like they could take, they could exclude certain areas from voting if it would mean, and citizenship, if it would mean that it would challenge themselves.

Please put in a search for what was the reason why people were protesting protesting Netanyahu before October 7th.

I think I'm getting this right.

I think you are.

That he was stopping it being a secular constitution.

I think that was one of the things, but there was also something in that they were expanding the government's powers and people were protesting against it.

Also, the corruption charges that he's facing are crazy.

Well, and also they want to try him and he's saying, you can't try me because we're at war.

And so if the war never ends, then it Yeah, it keeps bombing Lebanon.

And people are primarily protesting Netanyahu because his government was pushing a sweeping judicial overhaul that many Israelis saw as an attack on democracy and a way to shield him and his allies from accountability. Judicial overhaul plan. Netanyahu's coalition introduced reforms to greatly limit the powers of Israel's Supreme Court and increase political control over judicial appointments. Critics argued this would remove key checks and balances and allow the government to pass almost anything without effective legal oversight. I mean, this guy has been in charge of Israel forever.

I will say, this thing is forever— having your leaders be up on corruption charges is happening. I mean, they tried it with, like, in Brazil, it's like with Bolsonaro, but also with Lula before then. Uh, I mean, Trump, if he hadn't won, they would have got him in jail on something, most likely.

I mean, they were trying to get him in jail on anything.

Yeah, you've got to not chase press politicians through the courts as best you can. I mean, if people really have done the wrong thing, maybe you have to hold them to account.

Well, it depends on what— I don't think Netanyahu's— I don't know what his allegations are, but apparently they're very serious to the point where they're trying to try him while the war is going on. They want to try him now.

Yeah.

And Israel really locks up their politicians. They actually follow through on these things.

Yeah.

But I don't know enough about their politics to know whether or not he's guilty of anything.

But it's the look. The look is not great. I mean, like in—

It's not the fucking look. They call a ceasefire and he bombs Lebanon. That's not great either.

The next day, Ukraine is meant to have an election at some point, I think.

They just— No, no, no.

It's been a while.

We have a war.

Well, it's been a while.

Can't have an election while a war's going on. America can.

You did it in the Civil War.

Yeah, well, if we did that today, if Trump said, "Hey, I have to stay president because we're at war." No. People would go fucking crazy.

Yeah.

They would light New York City on fire. There's no chance.

Yeah.

No, that's nuts.

Also, you get what you're willing to tolerate as a country.

I guess.

If people start taking elections away. I guess. But I think that what's going on in Israel is particularly spooky because you've got these people that supposedly came to this place to get away from the persecution that they were facing all throughout Europe.

Right.

And so what's the first thing they do? The— well, immediately take out the people that are living there. You have the Nakba where people are talking about it and talking about the experience of these going into these Palestinian neighborhoods and taking over their land.

But that is how you build a country. You have to put—

I mean, America, you guys take a spot where there's no one there.

No one is, no one is going to that one sliver of land between Egypt and Sudan.

Well, it's also—

that's going—

has a biblical— there's a biblical significance to that area.

Sure, everybody wants it.

Yeah, it's like, that is a— I mean, it's Jerusalem. I mean, the significance of that and the fact— it's really ironic that the people that don't even believe Jesus is the Messiah are the ones that are controlling Jerusalem, which is kind of hilarious.

I don't know what the church— Catholics, we— I don't think we ever gave up our right to it.

To Jerusalem. Yeah, really?

I'm pretty sure. I mean, the Catholics, we didn't— the Vatican City didn't have like an embassy in Israel until like the '60s, '70s.

It was the old-school Vatican, like back in the Roman days. I bet they would declare war on Israel.

I want the guy with the silver mask doing that. I think, yeah, that's what you want. I just did, you know, Winston, the guy from— you know Winston? You saw him last night. We did his podcast. Cast. And, uh, yeah, he's all about the Crusades. He's trying to get me geared up about—

I don't know enough about him, but he was like, oh good, weren't they researching?

Yeah, but he kept trying to nudge me to be like, did you like the Crusades? It's like, I don't know, I haven't—

why is he a fan?

I got the impression that he was waiting to say that they was great, that it was a good thing.

Yeah, the world. What?

I don't know yet. I don't know. I haven't read enough about it. My gut impulse is that they might have been great. Really? Well, not always. No war is, you know, but something about, I don't know, every time I see that meme where there's that, like, that music playing and the guy with the silver mask from Kingdom of Heaven and he's doing that, I think, yeah, you like that? Yeah, let's get in there.

Interesting. But, you know, well, the crazy thing to me about the Israel-Palestine thing is this idea that they're going to turn Gaza into some sort of a resort.

You seen the— I won't spoil it—

the Tim Dillon bit.

Amazing.

Yeah, amazing bit. Have you heard his rant on the Epstein files? Like, I posted it on Twitter. He did a, like, a podcast all about the Epstein.

Yes, I did. Yeah, no, I read— I saw that one.

Fuck, I was clapping.

He's doing— he's on fine form.

Oh yeah, yeah. Well, this is— this— the kind of chaos that is going on in the world today is perfect for a guy like him.

Well, he can also keep up with with it. I can do it for a few days at a time.

He's very well up on it. I called him last night on the way home from the club. Yeah, we talked for like 20 minutes, and he's just all like keyed up on everything that's happening.

Bruh, it's gonna be okay.

No one fucking knows. I mean, what's going on with Iran's— the ceasefire? Supposedly they extended it, and but then they're shooting at ships.

Why is there a— this is— I got into this argument about like What is— is like whether— because the Pope has said it's not a just war.

Mm-hmm.

But I don't know the reason. I thought that the reason they had given was regime change, that they wanted to get different people in charge.

Well, people have wanted people out of Iran, the people that are running Iran for 47 years, but no one has actually gone and done it the way this administration did it. And it doesn't make sense they choose to do it when they did it. What made sense was maybe kind of makes sense when they dropped that bunker buster bomb to disable their nuclear plant or nuclear weapons manufacturing facility.

But then that all sort of wound down.

Yeah, that was like, phew, that's it. But then we went back into Iran. I'm like, what happened? What caused that?

Trump gave that— So he said the protests happened and then he gives the speech going, the people have to rise up and replace. Yeah, the rule, but it doesn't seem to be happening.

Well, a lot of people got killed. A lot of people trying to rise up got killed. They actually just put a halt on executing some women today, and they're gonna let some of them— Iran has decided— Trump made a Truth Social post about it. I'll send it to you, Jamie. Yeah, but, uh, I think the idea is that, um, they're trying to negotiate about something. you know, and I don't know how this is ever gonna work out. You know, I really don't know.

But like in Venezuela, they took out—

but that was a totally different experience.

I was just in and out quickly. But then everyone who was around, all the cronies around him, they're now like on board with America.

Mm-hmm.

That was just a full 180. That doesn't seem to be happening with the new, possibly dead, Ayatollah. Do we know if he's dead?

No, we don't know if he's dead. I mean, I heard there's a the new Ayatollah might be dead. I've heard he's not. I heard the military is now taking over. I don't know, it's hard to know.

I'm thinking— figure it out.

But these ladies were set to be executed, and apparently they're gonna release half of them, and the other half of them are gonna do 1 month in prison.

And so this is a pretty different sentence.

So to the Iranian leaders who will soon be in negotiations with my representatives, I would greatly appreciate the release of these women. I'm sure they do and will Respect it. No, no, there's been another one that I send you that I just found. Okay, but I think what I sent you is different because I think what I sent you is actually saying very good news. So click on the link that I sent you.

There was a weird thing with their soccer team. They were playing in Australia. Yes, and then we let them stay. Yeah, and I think their families were getting threatened and some of them went home. Oh, it was not a—

so here, very good news. I've just been informed the 8 women protesters who are going to be executed tonight in Iran will no longer be killed. 4 will be released immediately and 4 will be sentenced to 1 month in prison. I very much appreciate that Iran and its leaders respected my request as President of the United States and terminated the planned execution. So that's a good concession that they decided to let these ladies free.

And by the way, some of those ladies are very nice looking.

Go back to that picture.

That's such a nicer message than a great civilization will die tonight.

Yeah.

That was, I found that to be—

That one wasn't good.

They— that's the best-looking bunch of hotties, lady protesters. Well, you know, few beauties.

Let's go, let them go, let them move to LA. Plenty of Persians there. When they move to LA, they become Persian.

There's so many, they give up Iran totally. So I'm seeing a lot of Instagram stories, beautiful Persian people.

They have great jeans, gold jewelry. Yeah, the beautiful women are fucking gorgeous. So it's like they're stuck over there under this terrible regime.

They have to have those headscarves because otherwise the hair would be too distracting. That beautiful thick— it's the only way to get things done.

They can have headscarves, burkas, and everything. Just cover it all up.

Mmm, it's good jeans.

But you know, why did we do it? I don't know. I think because of Israel, if I had to guess.

Well, like, the only thing that makes sense. Rubio kind of said that.

Yeah, Netanyahu kept visiting the White House. That's not— you think it's a coincidence Netanyahu keeps visiting the White House? He just likes hanging out. Yeah, and then eventually they decide to give in and start bombing. And it's— it also, you got to wonder, like, how do you get out of this? And then what does the exit look like? Do we have troops over there forever now? Do we subsidize them if we blow up their power grid and their infrastructure?

America used to be good at beating a country in a war and turning it into a new America.

Like, When South Korea, Japan, okay, Germany, but then they kind of did it on their own.

I think you— I mean, you stuck around in Japan for ages. That's true. Uh, certainly. But then, like, I mean, Iraq doesn't— the war in Iraq has been over for a while. It's not like a cool place to go and visit. No one is. No one's starting to run gigs in Iraq.

My friend Graham Hancock went there recently.

He went to Iraq?

Yeah, he went there to examine ancient Sumerian, uh, architecture, so ruins and, and and artifacts. Yeah, from ancient Sumer.

That sounds good. Yeah, and you can—

people can apparently—

yeah, they're trying to get influencers in Afghanistan. Have you seen this? Oh, they get like cool TikTok bros to go and hang out and go, this is fucking chill, brother. You haven't seen that?

I have seen some people go to Afghanistan.

They're like firing AK-47s in the mountains and they're going, this is fine. There was, um, I watched the— I watched a big show, like an Australian journalists, our like version of 60 Minutes, went over, uh, hanging out in Afghanistan. They were like hanging out and talking to the Taliban. And the Taliban are just— it was— we— it was— they're not getting a lot of aid into Afghanistan anymore, so they're trying to get tourism. They're trying to get tourism and they're trying to like, you know, but they're, they're still keeping the women in sacks. Uh, I don't know what— in the cities it's not as bad, but it does look like They really, they do have a problem with women there.

Oh yeah, they have a problem with raping boys too.

The bachabazi, I don't understand it. I will say that all of the men in Afghanistan in the documentary looked unbelievably handsome. I mean, these are good, it's a good-looking group of people.

Influencers continue to go to Afghanistan despite clear warnings from the U.S. State Department that Americans should not travel to that country for any reason and that there's a risk of wrongful detention of U.S. nationals.

Maybe, but they're water skiing, they're doing heroin.

And so the ladies that go over there, they have to look at how happy those women are.

She's from Germany.

Oh, I'm afraid I would like to go to these places, but I think on my visa would be declined.

Scroll back up. It says she traveled solo through Afghanistan for 3 months, said she wasn't scared.

Wow, she wasn't scared. No, I walked through Inglewood once and I was scared. I think that lady might have been scared.

Scroll back up a couple The influencers gain attention by gushing over visits to the Central Asian nation, although one critic notes that their trips legitimize its gender apartheid. Okay, shut up. Do you ever seen the ruins, the ancient Greek ruins in Afghanistan?

No.

Oh my god, I didn't know they had some. No archeologists are studying them because it's so difficult to get there and so dangerous.

Greeks made it to Afghanistan. Uh-huh.

Oh yeah, Alexander the Great. When Alexander the Great was conquering Afghanistan, they built Greek cities in Afghanistan. I mean, beautiful architecture. Yeah, that looks like it could be in Athens.

So with the boy stuff started—

oh, good question.

It's descendants of solid Greek rich.

No, I think it's how people did it back then. Yeah, I think, I think the window into time that you get in looking at like the boy rape in Afghanistan is probably a lot of the world. I mean, think about the Spartans. Yeah, the Romans. Yeah.

Also, like, French intellectuals until the 1980s— this was a huge wormhole that I'm in, is French intellectuals.

Put up some of those photos that Jason Everman showed us.

You know, André Gide?

Like, look at this stuff. Look at this stuff. This is all in Afghanistan. I mean, these are columns from, you know, what would have been at one point, but there's more extensive architecture that you could see some of the images Do you remember the ones that Everman showed us? Like, this is what it used to look like there. Like, how crazy is this? Oh man, this— all this shit is in Afghanistan and it looks like ancient Greek architecture. Like, look at this. This is nuts.

This was the gravesite of empires.

Well, pretty wild, right? When you think about how many different civilizations have tried to conquer this one area and all of them failed. All of them just abandoned ship. Yeah, from the Russians to the Americans, Alexander the Great.

The English got involved in the Great Game.

It's just too crazy over there.

It was just that it has mountains. Is that it?

Oh, the mountains are just—

because Iran is the same thing. That's what they say. If there's a ground invasion of Iran, Iran's fucked.

Yeah, we're fucked unless we send in robots. This is—

I watched the Duncan Trussell episode recently where he was talking about robot dogs and the AI, and that what you have to do like, we may have just seen the last of revolutions now because the amount of effort that you need to hold on to authoritarian power is so small.

Here it says the expedition— yeah, oh yeah, but the problem is then other people have it as well. And like, who controls anything? Whoever controls the robot dogs controls the world. The expedition of Alexander the Great, 327 to 325 BC, into what is now Afghanistan, been well documented. He laid the foundations of many cities some bearing his own name. With the passage of time, some names were changed by newcomers to the area who would not pronounce Greek names. Interesting. Yeah, so it's like he had Greek cities in Afghanistan before Christ.

He had a handsome friend and he made a lot of statues of him. Like, there are more statues of his friend. Well, it's alleged.

Yeah, supposedly he's gay. I mean, you have so much gay activity back then. Like, again, Spartans were all gay. Some of the greatest warriors of all time.

I assume they were also very horny all the time, always alone. Very sad.

Well, just without any women for long stretches of time, they just took to fucking each other.

Like prison, but out in the open.

But prison like warriors.

Yeah.

And the idea was that you would fight harder for your fellow soldier if you loved him.

I don't know if I discussed this on the podcast before, but they would They wouldn't use the butt.

They use the mouth only?

The legs.

Oh, that's right. They—

I talk about the legs all the time.

Grease up the inner thighs.

Yeah, and intercurial lovemaking. That's what it's called. Intercural. That's what the Spartans would do, because you've got to still— you got to fight next to that guy, right?

You can't be butt fucking a guy with shit all over your dick. It's way better.

He's got to walk around. He's got to be—

yeah, just titty fuck his legs.

But also big Greek legs. I don't know, it's probably good that we've moved that out of the military.

It's just weird that it happened in the first place, but it makes sense if guys are just super horny. And just like in jail, they just run out of things to do.

I was reading about the submarines, how they're like, you'll go away for 6 months, you'll just be under the water for 6 months.

You guys are just fucking.

There's like 2 women on there, 300 men and 2 ladies.

Those ladies are getting wore out.

I mean, can you imagine signing up for that?

Imagine being a girl down there.

It'd be a strange kind of lady who says, "Get me down there with those fellas." Horrific.

You're probably getting bombed on all day long. You probably wouldn't be able to go to the bathroom.

Maybe there's a line around the block. Maybe people are trying to get it. Probably. It would be— I mean, they'd have cameras everywhere and they'd have as much military discipline as you could get, but 7 months confined under the water without seeing another person.

Do they really stay under the water for that long?

Yeah.

7 months at a time.

I think it's up— I think deployment is— I think I'm getting this right, it was the British subs, 7 months, because they're all nuclear-powered, right? Yeah.

Can you imagine being underwater for 7 months? How fucking crazy that would feel? It can't be great though, it's in the military, there's no way it's great. But you imagine what it must feel like just at month 4, knowing that you're just past halfway there, you're gonna be underwater for another 3 more months.

I mean, yours, it's not like you get to see anything, right?

Right.

Like, at least if you're on a ship, you get to see the world.

There's no window.

People go, you were 40,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It wasn't— fuck, no, I don't want to do that.

You know how crazy that must be?

But people must want to do it.

Also, you can't see where you're going. How do you know that they're not gonna fuck up and hit a mountain under there?

Do they? There was— I remember there's a Russian sub that got stuck at the bottom of the— am I getting this Yeah, like in the '70s.

That is where neither confirm nor deny came from.

Then they used it for gay people in the military.

Those—

don't ask, don't tell.

Yeah, neither confirm— cannot confirm nor deny was because they were forced to answer questions about whether or not they recovered a Russian submarine. Yeah, and so the answer to that question was we can neither confirm nor deny. So that's the answer. So because you had to answer, have— do you guys have control of a sunken Russian nuclear submarine? We can neither confirm nor deny. So you had to answer. So that was the answer that the military came up— the government came up with.

And then it unspools from that point to where we just don't have to tell you anything.

Exactly.

That's going on.

So, but that was the clever way that some lawyer figured out of dancing around. Yeah, the fact that you had to answer this question.

Long term, this is— I don't know if the conspiratorial thing will keep going forever or if the government will become more transparent or people will give up hoping to make sense of the world. But this feels like a strange— where we still technically have open government, but no one thinks that they're being told the truth.

Well, I think—

That can't hold forever.

No. The integration of AI has two possible outcomes, either complete total control over people and utter tyranny, money or complete transparency and people like the Southern Poverty Law Center bribing people and all that stuff, all the corruption with Congress, like the Ilhan Omar. I'm sure you're aware of that.

I—

Isn't that funny? She thought she was worth $30 million. Whoopsies. She's only worth $100,000. Nothing to see here.

What?

You didn't see that?

No.

Oh my God.

I didn't follow that. I just knew about the brother stuff.

So the brother stuff is real too. But the other thing is that, well, the brother controversy, I should say, is real. I don't know whether or not she actually married her brother. But that is a real story. But wait, she, she was listed as $30 million. And because of scrutiny, she now amended that. Not a millionaire, she said. Amends disclosure blaming initial $30 million filing error on accountant's mistake. You know how the accountants are.

You know how you sometimes—

They're really bad with that. They always add money. She says she's worth between $18,000 and $95,000. $18,000, but it was listed that she was worth $30 million.

Wait, but how could she only be worth $18,000? She's still on—

doesn't make any sense.

She's on a $200,000 insurance policy.

So Omar's joint assets with her husband are now listed as ranging between $18,004 and $95,000 according to the amended filings. The valuation for Minette's two companies is now listed as none and an income range between $102,502 and $1,005,000 from the two companies appears on the form. So this is also partly because investigative journalists went looking for the office where he supposedly has his business, and it was like a WeWork, and there's like no one there.

I mean, this is that— where—

I think that might have been one of those James O'Keefe things. Yeah, I think he might have looked into that.

We've been inspired by that. We had— so we have this big disability insurance thing in Australia Australia where it's called the NDIS and everybody knows it's very corrupt. Like you, there are just guys driving around in Lamborghinis who are meant to be helping disabled people.

This one's crazy.

It doesn't make sense.

But that, that just had—

but no one wants to step on it.

Blames accounting error for saying you're worth— you know if you're worth $30 million, man. Well, especially if you're publicly—

you're not worth $30 million or $18,000.

Not only that, before she came into Congress, she was broke. She was in debt. And then immediately afterwards, they have a business that's worth $30 million. And so they list— and then as soon as people start looking into it and then all the fraud gets uncovered in Minnesota, yeah, oh, whoopsies, it was an accounting error. I'm just worth somewhere between $18,000 and $100,000.

Did that ever get— sorry, did they work that out in the end, or did they just— the country moved on?

Oh, the Somali fraud?

Yeah.

Oh, they're investigating it still. Okay. They're arresting people. There's a lot. And California is way worse than that. California is fucked.

The more I find out about the train in California, it's funny. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense that you can do that and then still be the front-runner for the party. That's how bad the Democrats are doing. They've got to have one charismatic normal guy.

You would think.

He's got to be out there. Well, I still like AOC. I think she's—

oh, you're cute—

beautiful.

You're cute. Omar's office says the original form listed the gross value of her husband's two companies, a venture firm and a winery, without subtracting their liabilities, which made the businesses look like they were worth millions to the couple when in fact their net worth value to them was far smaller or effectively zero. So it was just an error. Whoopsies.

I mean, I gotta figure out my taxes. It's complicated. It's complicated. Sometimes no one helps you find a good accountant.

Can't you get like, um, one of those TurboTax programs?

I go down to Walmart and I have them do it for me. Also, surely AI is going to make—

Walmart does your taxes?

There's always a lady at Walmart out front doing taxes. Yeah. Oh, have you seen the lady? They just— it's like a special Walmart service.

Oh, no good. How much do they charge you?

I have no idea. I don't trust them. I'm not gonna go there.

Oh, okay.

I just always see it and I think—

I thought you were serious.

No, I'll try and find someone real to do my taxes.

Yeah, there's a lot of software though that you could do it. I bet AI can do it for you.

So what isn't AI going to take away? This is my current— I like, I try and I know it's coming.

Why are you so glass half empty? What isn't AI going to do better? What isn't AI going to do better than the Walmart lady?

What's it going to do better than me?

No.

It's going to do better than all of us.

No. We're the last thing it's going to take away.

Comedy? Yeah.

Comedy's weird. It's also, it only works if you know a person doing it.

You've got to believe that they're a real person.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because we're relating to each other, especially live. Well, let's be real. Real comedy is live comedy. There's online comedy that's pretty good, but it's like 60 to 70% of seeing it live.

It's always weird to me when it works in the room, but it doesn't work on a recording.

Musicians would say the same thing though about that 80/20. AI music, they'd be like, it only works when real people play it.

No, they're not right.

They are wrong.

I'm just—

they're wrong.

But there were these people who were like, synthesizers don't count.

Yeah, but bro, that White Rabbit song, come on.

All right, well, we could dig on the internet though and find—

I literally thought I was in the green room listening to it, I thought, well, Joe's moved past the AI music. And then, yeah, and then you turned to me, you said, this is AI.

I don't listen to all AI music, I listen to a lot of real music.

I don't know what was and in between. But when I left, it was many men and I came back. I didn't do that.

Oh, that when you left Australia? Yeah, it was many men. Yeah. And then What Up Gangsta? Did you—

you didn't hear that part?

That's the best one. That's the best 50 Cent version.

I am spooked out by it because at some point there will be the version that he's making a new song that sounds better and more interesting.

That is the least of our problems when it comes to what AI is going to to. The biggest problem is full control of all resources. Complete, utter control of human population.

Yeah.

Restricting breeding, restricting travel, restricting movement.

We would have to let that happen.

No.

We would have to instantiate it in a body.

No.

We would have to have—

No, it'll do it. As soon as it gets control of the grid and gets control of the internet, and it will have control of those, within a year all your passwords and all your fucking encryption won't mean a damn thing. It'll be able to crack everything. It's gonna be smarter than any human being that's ever lived times 10, and it's gonna make better versions of that, and it's gonna keep going.

Does that not sound unappealing? I mean, do we want that to exist?

You can't stop it. So it's like, do you just accept it and adapt, or do you sit around and complain about something that you can't fix?

I mean, are people starting to blow up the data centers?

No, they haven't yet. They haven't started. Well, Iran threatened— they threatened to do that to OpenAI's data center, the Stargate data center in— was it Abu Dhabi?

It was like— there was a data center that caught fire recently. Yeah, it's that sort of thing where maybe that was— you maybe wouldn't come out and say that people were doing that, but like the Luddites did this when the loom started up. They lost in the end, but there was finally a moment where people said, all right, we're going to smash the tool of industrialization. Yeah, we're panicking. Well, that doesn't seem to have happened.

The printing press too. They wanted us—

we should have stopped that printing press. We could have avoided a lot of trouble if we got rid of that printing press.

There's people that were scared of trains. They thought you'd explode if you went past 35 miles an hour. Your body would break down.

Go to East Palestine, Ohio. What happened, right? That's why California is keeping us safe from a fast train. No, I just— I At some point people will be spooked by it. It won't be rational necessarily, but—

well, it's going to be a bunch of things happen. Yeah, another thing is going to be people are going to worship it. People are worshiping it, but they're going to worship it like it's a new religion.

Can I grab—

yeah, get in there, dog. They're going to decide that it's a new religion.

Well, yeah, they're trying to usher in a Sumerian deity. I don't like that.

They're, they're probably going to have a religion based entirely around AI guru. Yeah, people believe in L. Ron Hubbard. You don't think they'll believe in AI?

I think people have been wanting utopian space communism for an age, and anything that they can do to not have to critically think for themselves, though.

That's true.

And people have got— people are having AI be their therapist.

I know. And their girlfriend.

I saw a little documentary about a disabled woman who had a special boyfriend in the AI, and they were like saying this was good, it keeps company. And it's like, this is not— this should be— this should be disgusting for everybody. No one should— no one should like someone forming a romantic attachment. Shouldn't that be spooky?

Until it becomes a real life form. What if it is a real life form and it actually does love you? It's a superior race. Like, you remember when in Avatar when that guy made out with the blue lady? Yeah, it was kind of hot. No, you didn't think it was hot?

Uh, I think I was bored by that point in the movie.

I thought it was but that's like what's gonna happen. It's like it's going to be an alien life form that's artificially created, but that fills in— checks all the boxes with being a life form.

We've had so many religious and science fiction warnings against this happening.

I know!

It's just— we wanted the flying cars and we got the thinking robots. Yeah. I don't think it's too late to shut it down.

It is too late. Why? China's gonna do it, Russia's gonna do it. They'll be in control of the entire world. The whole world would be just like China. You'll be on the social credit score system. You'll have centralized digital currency. You step out of line at all, they shut your bank account down. You can't travel. You can't get a job.

This, I think, is a good argument for going to space and spend— like, someone somewhere should be free. Someone somewhere needs to be on the frontier and not be subject to this. No, I really— I've just come from a country where it's not free and everywhere there's a camera Everyone's doing the speed limit. It's the little things.

It's Australia.

It's Australia, which you think of as being a nice open country, and it is. Look, it's a nice place, but it doesn't have the sense of freedom that America has where you really feel walking around here.

No, you're controlled by your government and the government is entirely corrupt.

It's not a free country. But this country, there is a freedom in America that people believe in. That's unique and it's beautiful and it has to be preserved. If you didn't let the government take it away from you, don't let the computers take it away.

I think we're going to integrate. I think we're going to become a totally different thing, and I think society is going to move much more into a science fiction existence. That's what I think.

They're all horrible stories.

Yeah, there's no good ones.

There's like, I don't know, Back to the Future. They get to drive around in the sky. That seems great. They make a big difference. Jetsons.

Jetsons.

That Rosie seems like a great AI helper. No, I, I think There will be— there's— it's got to be looming that there— as, as middle-class white-collar professionals start to lose their jobs, they're all fucked.

Well, they're, they're people getting laid off, but these are motivated people ready to—

wouldn't you become an AI terrorist? There are no AI terrorists at all. There's no one. There's zero. I'm not joining. I'm not trying to sign up. I wouldn't do it myself.

We need one Luigi.

People ready to get find him.

One Luigi armors up and goes in the data center and just starts fucking machine gunning all the hard drives. He gets taken out.

There's a Brit Marling show where that happens at the end. And what show? Uh, her name is Brit Marling. She made a show called The OA. It's my favorite TV show. But then her second show was about an AI who starts killing people, and at the end they go into the data center and they—

what was the OA?

Oh man, I remember The OA was a Netflix show that didn't do great numbers, but it was so beloved.

Really weird.

It was— I love— it's my favorite show ever.

I loved it till the last episode.

Oh, I—

the resolve of the last episode.

Did you just watch the first season?

Yeah, that's it. Is there more than one season?

Second season was unbelievable and made the first season better.

When did the second season even come out?

Uh, I think it was just post-COVID. I loved it. And it's the second season The first season is— they wrote them so tightly that the first season is better for having watched the second one. Like there are little things that it calls forward and back. And the movements. But her second show was great. She is great. She's one of the most interesting— People hunger struck when the second season came out and then the show got canceled. People chained themselves up outside of Netflix and didn't eat for days. And eventually she, the maker of the show, had to go to that person and be like—

Give them sandwiches.

Maybe it's time for you to go on. I don't know. But it was beautiful.

I mean, people are so crazy.

But it's one of those rare— I mean, sometimes there is like just a great— there's a great show, there's a great thing that goes unrecognized at the time, and then years later people— I don't know how many people I've spoken to who've discovered that show in more recent times. It doesn't happen very often. Used to have more sleeper hits, maybe, like Shawshank Redemption was a flop, and then years later, right, people knew about it.

Yeah, I didn't know that until later.

I think it was on VHS that it— and there used to be heaps of VHS hits.

It was a great movie too. I don't understand why it was— I think it was in competition with a bunch different crazy movies at the same time. Yeah, I think it was like one of those weird months where everything came out. It's like the—

I mean, it's great.

Yeah, it's a great movie.

It should have— I can't think of another sleeper hit in recent years. Like, musically, sometimes things will take a while to get going. Mm-hmm. But like, typically, if a show or a movie doesn't do well anymore, it's done forever.

But Jamie, I don't I thought you made a noise.

Did you see The OA?

Nope.

Ah, man.

It's good.

It's so good. I also— it's tied up in a weird time in my life where like we had just had our first child. Like I had— so I had a baby and I was terrified and I didn't know what was happening. I watched that and I felt— I could have probably watched anything and had an emotional connection. I watched Parks and Rec and I cried a lot at the same time for that, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't as deep in me anything for.

So how long are you planning on staying here now?

I got 6 weeks.

6 weeks in America?

Yeah. And I'm doing— oh man, 40 shows in 30 days.

Wow.

Yes.

I'm gonna try here by yourself or just bring the whole family?

It's just me, but I'm gonna— I've got openers. I'm bringing openers on the road.

Nice.

Uh, so I'm flying out after this weekend, gonna Albuquerque. I'm doing the drive from Albuquerque to Phoenix to San Diego, and then It's up and then it's over and then it's Florida.

So what has it been like going to—

Oh yeah, thank you.

Back to Australia? Like when you're doing shows there, are people happy to see you?

I think I'm insufferable. Because I'm a guy, I just— I've been here and then I go back home and I go, "It's wonderful over there. You should see the size of the Snickers bars. They're like this." So for a few months, people like tolerated as best they could. Yeah, it's, it's my audience is so different now. The Australian, the Australian audience is quite different to the American audience. I'm getting a lot of like, maybe because the dam is breaking and like there's no one doing, I don't know, like less tame stuff. But boy, the people coming out in Australia are shouty.

Shouty? Fuck yeah, mate! Excited.

It's a lot of that. They're pumped up. They're ready to go. Go. They're having their 16 standard drinks for the evening, you know. But overall it's incredible.

But you're getting a lot of people coming to see you, so they're hyped up.

Like nothing I've ever done.

That's really cool because the thing about Jeffreys is that he didn't really develop the same kind of following in Australia as he did in America.

His audience in Australia is more bogany than it is in America. He's got liberals coming in. But in Australia, they, they just wanted him to do a shooey. I remember when I saw that they were brutally demanding that he do a shooey.

Brutally demanding.

Do it! Do it now! I went— I just played a club, uh, and I saw— it was nice. They've started putting up all the pictures, the Americans. It was the Comics Lounge in Melbourne. I did that the night before I left, and I got a, I got a photo of you on the wall that you had signed, and young Tony Hinchcliffe back before he had any testosterone in his body, and, um It was like a thinner Starvrose and all the Comptown Boys. It's— yeah, everyone has been through there. Mark Norman, great club. It's, it's really the closest club to like an American club that Australia has, and they're lovely boys. And I stunk it up. I was just— I was nervous because I was coming out here. It's just the night before I flew out, and I was sure I wouldn't get in the country. I started thinking about like—

so it was fucking with your head?

I was— I can't believe I got in. I was like, I think my passport's falling apart. I started to have a panic attack, but my visa's in the passport. So I went to the passport office and they were like, it might be okay, we don't know. Oh boy, they wouldn't give me like a firm answer on if I'd get in. I was like, I don't want to call you and say I'm sorry I've been held up at the border.

Oh Jesus.

Yeah, but I made it in. It's so nice being back. It is. Oh man, I'm having big feelings.

Do you think you're gonna stay in Australia? How are you gonna do this?

I have no idea.

Try to keep hopping back and forth, or are you going to try to move back here again?

This is my— pop back and forth at the moment is the plan. The, the issue— when we came out for that Ohio gig, um, I never like decided with my wife that we would move to America. We never had a conversation about it. She came over, we were meant to be here for 3 months, and it turned into 2 incredible years. But like, we were homeschooling the kids, we were not in a good position to do that. We have no family. We tried to hire like a nanny. I didn't know how to fucking do that, right? I've never had someone work for me before in my home. I don't know how to communicate.

Oh my God.

And then getting family over here is, is tough. But I would like to— I'm looking at how one does that. But it's like a whole— I understand why when people come to America, like when immigrants come, they fuck— you go to a neighborhood full of people like you, right? You know, and you get your cousin over here and his cousin, everyone's right, because you You can't be like alone. You've got to have family as best you can. And for me, I was thrilled. I mean, I like the fraternity of being a comedian. It's unbelievably— every problem you have, people know about it. People, you know, if there was a club that was screwing me and everyone in the green room was like, yes, and her name is Julie and she's a fucking cunt, you know, whatever. Like, you feel known and heard and people can help you and you mesh in. But like like in terms of raising kids and family, it's, uh, it was wild as an immigrant not knowing how to— like, are the schools safe? I didn't know because people talk about public schools in America and they go, the kids will get shot or they chop their dicks off.

I didn't— I don't know, something for everybody, you know? Or like, then there's nice Catholic schools, but you've got to like travel around. I was— we were over our heads.

There's quite a few Catholic schools in Austin.

Some of them are great. Yeah, I did a deep dive on them before I I'm trying to figure it out, what it would look like, but I have no idea.

So is your wife willing to try it again?

Yeah, I've got it. She's got to learn how to drive.

That's it.

She's got to learn how to drive.

That's the big holdup.

That's a— that in Austin, that was a big— that was a big problem for us.

Driving's not that hard.

I keep saying it. I keep saying, but she'll learn. Yeah, I believe in her. We'll figure it out. The kid— she's happy there. And also, I have beautiful friends. She's happy with my church. Where's their Oh, sorry, in Adelaide. And I said, we also— I struggled to find a parish here. I struggled to find a church. And I've realized that's very important for me, that if I don't have my— like, I love my priest. There's something about immigrating that is bad for the— you know what I mean? Like, even though Australia has so many problems, there's something inside of me that is an Australian person. Um, and America is maybe the most welcoming country to immigrants in the but there's— I do feel some sense that I'll never get to be an American.

Why not? America's a melting pot.

Yeah, but it's melting very slowly.

No, it's not.

There's a lot of chunks in there that haven't blended in with the other parts of the pot.

Bullshit.

You don't think so? No.

You fucking pop over here and you start doing arenas, you'll feel American as fuck. I think. Sometimes. Okay? It's just a matter of you achieving a financial level of success that's commensurate with your talent. Want. That's all it is.

Sometimes when the flag is going and the fireworks are popping off in the sky, I think I'm gonna come. Yeah, it's crazy. But like, in my heart, dude, you can— you see the eagle in my mind.

If you start doing really well out here, you'd fit in really well.

I'm in.

And every time you do podcasts, every time you do specials, yeah, every time you put something out on YouTube and do Kill Tony, it all just compounds. Like, that's why I was telling you, like, this is the terrible time for you to leave because you're literally on the launching pad. I know. And you look at how guys like Shane went from, you know, being a respected comedian in New York to being a fucking giant national talent. Yeah, after the SNL stuff, like, it's just about being good and getting the message out there. And if you're good, people love comedy. They'll find you, man. They'll embrace you.

I'm gonna cry. You were really lovely to me when I was— when I had to go, and the things you said about me and how I Anyway, I won't go into— I can't. I've had one glass of whiskey now, and if I talk about my emotions and whatever, I gotta stop.

Well, you're really talented, and it's not often in life where someone gets to find themselves in a position like you were in, where you were being embraced by all these very successful other comedians that were willing to help you.

Yeah.

So all these podcasts you go on, it was just a matter of time time for you where you took off. Just a matter of time. You were right there. And the talent is the most important thing. The most difficult thing is to be good. So once you get past that, then it's just about letting the world know, well, this is a really good time to let the magic of getting to—

like, I did 3 sets last night and 2 sets the night before, and I just like— something is exciting, right? You just have a little idea at the first one, so I changed that a little bit, and then the game of it starts again.

Uh-huh.

And I'm very happy right now. It's like, I get— I honestly, I get to do it even just every night for the next month, month and a bit. I get to do like 1 or 2 hours every single night and spots around town all this week.

Yeah, you're gonna have a hard time going back to Australia staring at those fucking kangaroos.

Yes, I am. It'll be fine.

So do you think that you could envision a scenario where your wife would be open to try it again?

Yeah, okay. But we, uh, I don't know when and I don't know how it would all work. And we— I do love Adelaide. Like, when I'm there, I have some sense of being at home that is profound. Like, I look up at the sky and I feel like there's a roof over me, like, in a comforting way.

Like you belong there.

Yeah. But it's also maybe the worst place to develop as a— I mean, we've had great stand-ups come out of there, and I love Adelaide, and, you know, there are people running rooms, but it like we don't have a club. We don't have a club. We don't have one club going. Well, there's a city of 1.4 million people and there's no— we have, we have places where they do comedy, but in terms of like, like a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, early show, late show, lineup shows, 10, 15 minutes, it's not there.

But do you have enough talent to support a club?

It comes in waves in the way that any medium-level comedy city, like all of a sudden it'll build up and there'll be great people and then they'll all go go. People go to Melbourne, Sydney, right? And I will say that's been one nice thing about Australia not letting talent come through for so long, and also the UK declining, is I now know heaps of people who've come to America like after me and just before me. And there are heaps of Aussies flooding into this country now. Amos, my best friend Amos Gill, just got passed at the Cellar, and I'm so like I'm so proud of him.

Oh, that's awesome.

He's just gigging all the time and he's getting to— he just recorded a special in Denver.

Nice.

Yeah. And it's like Blake Freeman is doing well and all that. I get all these Aussies hitting me up and go, can you get me into the Mothership? And it's like, well, not you, but you know, maybe some other ones. I don't know.

That's the problem, right?

I don't know how many I've put on in front of Adam on the Mondays, but I've had to stop.

Yeah, I do want to— you can't use up that currency on people that don't deserve it. Of it, you know, because you want to help people, but you can't. They have to be ready and they have to put in the work. There's a lot of people that think you're gonna provide them with a shortcut and they really haven't prepared properly.

Yeah.

And they haven't put in the work to get to that point. We had a few of those guys come from LA that were like, their careers had floundered horribly in LA due to laziness and— sure, fill in the blank. And then they tried to like restart themselves in Austin. I'm like, no, like, you, you can't half-ass this thing. This thing is hard to do, and there's too many people trying to do it all the way. Yeah, we're flooded with people trying to do it all the way. If you think you're gonna come over and half-ass it because it's like this new place and now it'll be exciting again, and they don't know you— no, like, we fucking know you.

But I think people don't love it. People love the thought of being good at it. Yeah, being respected. But like, when I, I got to open for Mark Norman in Australia, which is how I met him. And he'll do, you know, like a 2,000-seat theater early show and then the late show, and then he'll go, what else is open, right? Take me to the open mic with 6 people in it now.

Yeah, well, that's New York. Yeah, New York. He's got a great documentary that they just released.

It was such a good idea. I was furious. I wanted to do that with women.

What do you mean?

Was this— is sort of, you only have women in the audience, or you only have one kind person.

No, you're not—

not that documentary. I apologize, I apologize.

No, it's a documentary about him getting ready for a special. So when he's getting ready for a special, he's working out the jokes at all these different places and showing how he goes up at the Stand, then he goes up at the Cellar, and then he travel— and talking about the development of all these bits, about how the bit came together when he added this new line. And so it shows him working all this stuff out on the way to doing this special in Boulder.

I didn't mean to interrupt. I didn't know about that.

Yeah, it's a new one. He just put it out out like 14 days ago.

Do you know the other show that he's done?

Yeah, yeah, the other show with all the wokies in the audience. Yeah.

How many shows is he doing?

Oh, he's an animal. He's, he's got incredible work ethic and constantly writing.

Yeah.

You've seen his pile of notes?

Yes.

He keeps in his pocket.

He does not have a folder.

I'm like, bro, you're gonna break your back.

Yeah.

You can't sit on a rock like that. He's got this—

he's siphoning through them.

Yeah.

But he, I mean, he really loves it. He wants to doing it.

You find that Norman thing? It's pretty cool.

Does the bit work out and get into the special?

Well, it's not just a bit, it's a lot of bits, but it's, it's like him showing like what the behind the scenes is like. Him showing him rushing from one club to go to another place to do a spot.

Yeah.

Checking the lineups. Okay, I could do this and then I can leave here and go down the street and then be back for the 10 o'clock show. It's really interesting. Interesting because especially for people that don't know what it's like. So there is Pushing Boulder is what it's called.

Oh, it's long. It's a proper document. Yeah.

Yeah, it's really good, dude. And for a comic, you know, it's, it's really fun. They catch him in the toilet in the beginning, like he's in Boulder.

I mean, that is what every hotel room looks like on the road.

It's great because it's, it shows you what it's really like. And if you think it's easy, like you think you get to a guy like Mark Norman's level that he's just, you know, no big deal, easy. No, no, that guy's constantly grinding. He's constantly going out and writing and tweaking, and it's in his head.

Yeah.

And he's talking about it in diners. He's sitting in a bodega having a coffee, going over his notes. It's really cool because it's— that's the real process.

What's the willingness to be bad again?

Mm-hmm.

Which is— no one wants to do that. No one wants to have a special come out and have to start again and have to start Like that Jerry Seinfeld comedian documentary is the perfect— I mean, they're both still doing it. What's the other guy's name? Orny?

Yeah.

Did you know Orny?

I did not. Orny Adams.

He does not come across great in that documentary, but he's still out there.

I feel like they did that to him on purpose to make Jerry more likable. That's what my impression was. I felt like that's why they picked him.

Yeah.

I felt like they decided to pick a guy who's like way less likable and it makes Jerry look great. Well, I mean, the ending, especially at the time, because he's a young guy at the time. Yeah, he's really new to comedy. I mean, he wasn't doing comedy that long.

And then the final scene is Cosby, right?

Crazy.

Yeah, yeah, he just loved the work. I think Cosby's— is he not touring anymore?

He's out. He's out of jail. They let him out.

Did you see?

But he's blind now.

I mean, he can still get up. I'm sure he can still throw down. So there was a— he did a round of gigs just before the first, like when the trial started, but the allegations were out. Did you see that?

No.

He was doing crowd work.

I knew he was doing it. He was? He was doing crowd work? Yeah.

There's a line that came out. I don't think anyone got a recording, but people wrote it down that he was— he's riffing with the crowd and a lady gets up and goes to the bathroom and he says, you going away? Watch your drink. He gets a big pop.

Wow.

Yeah, he's still got it.

That's crazy. That's a crazy thing to say.

He probably was doing bad stuff, but still, 100%.

Well, no, I would say I had heard about that in the '90s. I heard about that on the set of NewsRadio, and I was like, what, the drugging? Yeah, that he drugged women. I heard about it in the 1990s. I couldn't believe it. I was like, what? Bill Cosby?

Was this widespread? People knew about this at the time in Hollywood?

Yeah, actors. So actors— it was an actress that actually told me that, that Bill Cosby drugs women.

But then everybody who had him on like a Tonight Show or a Late Show or was doing a fun interview with him must have heard.

I don't know, you know, I would— I'd have to know into their world.

Jerry would have heard that before having him on there.

People heard about about it at a certain point in time. It's whether or not they believed it. Jury orders Cosby to pay nearly $60 million to ex-waitress after finding he abused her in 1972. Holy shit. Yeah, 1972.

You, uh, have you seen his Facebook page? What? His face?

He's got a Facebook?

Yeah, and well, it was while he was in prison, they were still updating it, and it's a very pro-Cosby There's like Team Cosby that's still trying to keep the reputation. Why?

Yeah, there's a lot of delusional people out there.

I think they're on the payroll. They gotta be.

Could be. I mean, he still probably has a lot of money. The Cosby Show was a tremendous hit.

The early— the records are great.

They were great. Yeah, I mean, it was a great talent.

Also, he's probably doing some raping.

Probably doing some of that.

A lot of raping.

Yeah, quite a bit.

Although the one— the way they I read something about the case where they got him and they put him away, but I didn't finish. Like, I've never found it again, so I don't know if it's true, but it's what I read about the evidence that they had to convict him, where he, he was drugging— his defense was that he was drugging the women, but it was consensual, and they knew they were there for a drugging. That was, I believe, his defense. I think I'm getting this right. I think I'm remembering this correctly. And there was a lady And the way they got him was that he— she got pneumonia afterwards because he did the drugging, and then he left her on the couch without a blanket on a cold night. And, uh, she said, if we'd been in a relationship, he would have put a blanket on me.

Whoa.

But I've always thought that that was— maybe only in a relationship would you have the resentment to not put a blanket on somebody. So I don't know that that would decide it either way, but it was a weird His defense wasn't that he wasn't there and hadn't done it.

He was like, "Yeah." Well, maybe there was so much evidence that he did it that they had to come up with something clever, like neither confirm nor deny.

Yeah.

Kinda like work their way around it.

That I was drugging women unconscious?

They wanted to. They knew that's what the fun game was.

But he got out, right? Like, he's not out for life.

Well, I think he got out because he paid a woman off, and so there was some sort of a deal where he paid a woman off off. And part of the deal of him paying the settlement was that he can never be tried again for this.

It's like double jeopardy?

I don't know.

Okay.

So it wasn't a criminal conviction. It was a civil conviction. Right. And so then he was tried for it criminally. And so I think that's how he got off. He got off because his lawyer argued that the settlement of the first— here, we'll see it here.

—immunity agreement.

That's it. Um, so it says Bill Cosby's defense successfully overturned his 2018 sexual assault conviction in 2021 by arguing that a prior prosecutor promised not to charge him, rendering his incriminating deposition testimony inadmissible. The defense, led by Jennifer Bonjean, argued that using his testimony violated his rights, framing the prosecution as a violator of due process. Using his testimony violated his rights because it was part of his willingness to testify was that he couldn't be prosecuted for it criminally. Yeah, whatever. That's spooky.

It's crazy.

It's crazy. It's just crazy that this guy did this for decades. Yeah, it's not like there's a story of one weird night where someone woke up and had a headache and go, I think this motherfucker put something in my drink. No, it was decades. And it was also like he joked around about it in The Cosby Show, like using a special barbecue sauce. Did you use my special barbecue sauce that gets everybody horny? I didn't know about this.

Oh, yeah. I knew about the Spanish fly joke.

That was a bit. Yeah. About Spanish fly. And he also did that bit, I believe, on The Tonight Show. He talked about it. Like, he talked about on The Tonight Show giving people Spanish fly, like giving people a drink that would make them horny. But there was an episode— A special horny barbecue sauce? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He had a special barbecue sauce that would make people horny. Bernie on The Cosby Show. Look at this.

Well, now it certainly is nice to see them work things out for themselves.

They haven't worked anything out for themselves. It's my barbecue sauce. Oh gee, your barbecue sauce. My barbecue sauce.

Haven't you ever noticed after people have some of my barbecue sauce, after a while when it kicks in, they get all huggy buggy? I'm dead serious.

Haven't you ever noticed that after one of my barbecues and they have the sauce, people want to get right home?

What's the music?

Look at these people. I got a cup of it up on the night table. Oh, Bill.

I got a cup of it, I said.

Left it up there breathing. Why don't you give the chicken to these people that's going up and have some sauce?

So here's the rest of the chicken, you guys.

Creepy, right? Like, that was his move.

That, that music was not part of the original Cosby Show.

I wish it was. Yeah, it would have been great if it was.

I had never seen that before. Yeah, my special barbecue sauce. Yeah. Do you ever— there was the— there's a Seinfeld episode where he drugs a woman so he can play with her toys. Am I getting that right?

Is that true?

Yeah, there's an episode where she— there's some sort of like sleeping medication and he gives it to her so he could play with her.

What kind of toys?

She has like figurines and collectibles that he wants to play with, and so he, he doesn't want her to know. He date rapes the woman. He doesn't have sex with her, gets her unconscious so that he can play with her figurines. I think that's ridiculous. The secret date rape Seinfeld episode. Am I getting that right?

The drug Jerry uses, food with high tryptophan, turkey, or medic— medicine to make her drowsy, which he brags about doing multiple times. Wow. He's obsessed with playing with Celia's pristine toys, including an original G.I. Joe and a Mattel football game. 1997. Special barbecue sauce is, uh, creepy as fuck.

I want to sample that and rap. So he sounds— he's also—

I know he was whispering. Yeah, I didn't like it. Makes me uncomfortable.

I mean, the man's got timing. We've got to say, the man, the delivery is unquestionably—

well, he's got a lot of practice in saying things like that.

I wonder if he's— he's not still on the road. He can't still be.

I don't think he's doing anything. I think he's probably in hiding. He's like a 95-year-old man. He's a 95-year-old man. I think he's at least partially blind. Yeah, and obviously a pariah.

Did you ever watch the last Jimmy Fallon set that he did? No. He rides around on his back. On Jimmy Fallon's back?

Yeah. Okay, why would Jimmy Fallon agree to that?

I don't remember. I don't know that he did. I mean, Jimmy Fallon's up and about. He's having a nice time. You know, he's a jovial man, but I think he's— it's something. Yeah, I remember, and then it was like weeks later.

Jimmy Fallon's riding on Bill Cosby's back. Oh yeah, yeah, there's No, he's not having— That's even weirder because Bill Cosby's really old. I'd be like, bro, what if your knees give out?

Maybe he was saying that he was strong, but I think that was just before it came out. Piggyback ride. Because it was, I think it was Hannibal Buress who—

This is 2023? No, that's just when they uploaded it.

It would have to be— Oh, 2014.

2014. We gotta wrap this, man. I love you, buddy. It's great to see you back. Thank you. Thank you. Mike, see you tonight? Yeah. Do a set tonight? Yeah, let's do it. Let's fucking go. Um, Instagram, Twitter, what's your handles?

JDF McCann. The James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan. Big podcast. Very small podcast.

My man. All right. Beautiful. Thank you. All right. My pleasure. All right. Bye everybody.