Transcript of #2523 - Ali Siddiq New

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Good to see you.

Same.

We were just talking, so I had us pause Jamie before the podcast. So you were telling me that LeBron James is not going to go back to the Lakers. How old is he now?

41.

41.

Yeah.

What is like the oldest that an elite athlete has been?

Tom Brady's 44, I think. NFL QB. That'd be pretty high up there.

How old was Kareem?

That's a good question. How old was Kareem when he retired?

Bernard Hopkins, I think, would be the next.

Bernard Hopkins is number 1.

Yeah, Bernard Hopkins, definitely.

We were talking about how he beat Kelly Pavlich at 42.

But Bernard had a couple of years to incubate a little bit.

Oh yeah, you know about that. Yeah, not take damage and steel up the mind. He had the most intense discipline. That guy never got out of shape, which is also a giant contributor to longevity. Never, never was building back, you know. He wasn't like a 42-year-old who was like, you you know, he took 6 months off, I haven't been in the gym, no, no, no, every day it was running, nutrition, everything was always on point, never varied.

Kareem was like 42, I think.

So he might be the oldest of the past guys, but this is before all the science, right?

Yeah, the science changes things. The science.

So we were just talking about the science. So Jamie, what are they allowed to take and not allowed to take?

I don't know. It's like the NBA used to, like, I think for like weed stuff, they used to say that it was like they'd get tested, I think like October 1st, which is like right when preseason starts.

For weed?

Yeah. And so like, if you, as long as you were clean on October 1st, then you're good because they wouldn't test the rest of the year.

That's ridiculous.

But now I'd like, I know in the NFL, if you have a crazy game, you're going to get tested the next day. They're just going to check you for what was going on with you yesterday.

Yeah. Why would you play good? The ridiculous—

I don't think the NBA does that specifically, but I don't know, honestly.

So what are the rules in the NBA in terms of marijuana now? I thought that was part of the thing that they negotiated in the contract to make sure, because a lot of players like to be high when they play.

I think they might, they might just have just stopped testing for it.

I want to mention names, but I'm friends with some guys and they tell me they can't play unless they're high. That's the same thing with pool players. I know a lot of pool players. They like to get lit before they get on the table.

Yeah, pool, pool shit. You should be lit playing pool.

Yeah, you feel things better. Here we go. NBA can randomly drug test each player up to 4 times during the season and 2 times in the offseason, with additional tests allowed anytime there is reasonable cause, but marijuana is no longer part of the standard testing panel. Yes, sir. Yeah, so they can smoke weed, which makes sense. Let them. It's not— what are you doing? It's not hurting anybody and they play better with it. I think leave them alone. That's what I think. Unless they're doing— unless they're doing meth. Unless they're doing— you know what I mean?

They also had another big betting scandal that's kind of broken recently in the last 24 hours there.

Oh no.

Where a player has been called out for throwing at least 4 games. And then where that's going to go from here is kind of being speculated online.

I'll tell you where that goes. If people find out, that goes to bullets. That's the problem. The problem with someone throwing a game is somebody bet on that fucking game. A lot of people bet on that game.

Cases I've seen though are like the overs, like they had player props and like he needed 4.5 rebounds and he has 4 and he's just trying extremely, extremely, extremely hard to get that extra rebound, which is like, that's wrong.

Wait a minute.

It's not that bad.

That means he's playing well.

The other one, which was, uh, he was fixing a spread at like in the last second, like he sprinted down the court to get an extra basket with like 3 seconds on the clock when they were down by 10, or 7 technically, to beat the 8.5-point spread.

Yeah, but so what? He's just scoring. How can you ever—

it's just a— it's an— when you watch basketball enough, you go like, that doesn't happen that often, why would he do that?

Like, looking gross.

Yeah, especially— yeah, you used to people throwing the ball in the air, just throwing it down there, not you running down.

I know, but if you can do it and score Why wouldn't you do it? I don't even understand why anybody would question that.

You down by 10, it's 5 seconds to go, the game is over.

Fuck you, I want that ball in the net.

Fuck you, man. No, what, why? Because that's not going to change. Oh, oh, we lost by 8.

Well, it just means you're competitive to the end. You never give up. And even though you know you're losing.

And no starters on the floor at this time. You down by 10, it's It's 5 seconds to go. No, no starters on the floor.

Yeah, but how—

but it's not like he's missing on purpose. So it's one thing if the guy's like missing on purpose, but if he's scoring on purpose, leave him the fuck alone.

Alright, so similar thing, World Cup just happened like 2, 3 nights ago where they just got into the knockout round, you know, so that the big tournament was every team plays 3 games to figure out where you figure— where you end up to play the next part of the tournament. 10 teams get eliminated. Third-place teams for the first time ever can make it through. And so there was a— I think it was Algeria and I forget the other team, sorry. But if they both tied, they both move through. If one team wins and one team loses, one team goes through. And then they're like, with 4 minutes to go in the game, they're kind of just passing the ball around, the score is tied, and one team goes ahead and scores. And it kind of starts a fight on the field where you see the other team yelling at the other team like, Fuck you. Like, I don't know exactly what they're saying, but like what? Like, and then it was like 2 minutes to go. The other team sort of just stops playing defense and kind of seems to like let them score.

Oh God. It's like, is that, I don't know if it's a big collusion or if they just were like maybe dreaming or. How do you, don't they have mics on those guys?

It's such a crazy thing.

They have to have mics on somebody. They have strong mics now and they have people that can lip read. They could pick up, hey motherfucker, you're supposed to leave this a tie. If that happens, like, you can't play anymore, right? Like, what happens to those guys? They have to get suspended for—

That'd be the entire— that'd be both teams, the coaches, it'd be everybody.

Oh my God.

I don't really know how it's gonna pan out, but it was very—

What a conundrum.

Yeah.

How could you do that? Like, I hate that. This is what I don't like about sports betting. Not that, because that's about advancing. About sports betting is the even the consideration that a person is playing a certain way because they're worried about a spread or because they've been paid off to not score or they've been paid off to foul. You know, like, there's the problem with these things is you could bet on anything.

You can bet on anything, anything, anything.

So if you're crooked— and what has been like the most crooked aspect of the fucking human race over the past like 100 years other than the legal system? The The most crooked aspect has been sports betting. It's always crooked.

Sports and politics. Politics. They damn near—

They're all the same.

Yeah, they the same.

It's the same. It's money. It's anywhere, anytime there's money involved and decisions can be shifted, influence can be used to make something happen.

But it seems like that with most things that people, you know, have some type of, you know, hierarchy desire for.

They—

100%.

They gonna put something in You know, like even with like awards and games, this is a who can promote the best and who can, if you can take all the people that vote to dinner and you know, schmooze them at dinner, it's gonna be a thing where who's gonna beat you when you got all the voters? Or you have a situation where you have people that work for your company that can vote, you know what I'm saying? Who, how, how you not gonna vote for the project that the company put out?

Right?

Yeah. You know, we got 60 voters, you know, so we at least got 60 votes.

This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the home of my website, joerogan.com. If you wanna level up your business, you gotta improve your website. Squarespace gives you everything you need to get a fully custom website. Offer services, sell products, and get paid all in one place. Go to squarespace.com/rogan for a free trial, and when you are ready to launch, use code ROGAN to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. I think you said it best when you said the hierarchy. That's really what it is. It's in anything that has any kind of a hierarchy. Politics is the ultimate example.

Politics is the ultimate Yeah, ultimate example.

But there's, there's that hierarchy shit in everything in the world, everything, and trips people up.

But with politics, it is a little more detrimental than with sports, you know. Sports is, you know, you gambling, people trying to win things. But with politics, it's like if you're not somebody that's not qualified can be in a position where, you know, they making decisions on the masses of people's lives.

Not just that, they can appoint judges.

Which is—

And they can appoint crazy judges. Like, there's obviously judges, like, they have disputes. Well, why do they have disputes? Because they're ideologically captured on both sides. There's people that are like, you know, like certain right-wing judges, you throw some case out there that's a right-wing case, what abortion rights, whatever it is, immigration, you know how they're gonna vote. Same thing with left-wing people, like hardcore left-wing people. You guarantee trans women in sports. Trans women are women, let them play in sports. That was a recent Supreme Court order. 3 judges said that trans women should be able to play in women's sports. The rest of them said fuck no. The other 6 canceled it out, luckily.

And you know, those people are not taking into account the sport. Like, it's a difference if you was originally something and now you playing as something else. Your strength is different. Everything's different. And, you know, you don't feel that until your daughter get knocked out the ring where she's supposed to be boxing somebody that the same gender, then now she's, her whole side of her face broke from, you know.

It's insane. It's insane. And it's not cruel to not let that happen in sports. That's what Title IX is about in the first place. Give women the opportunity to play in an equal time as men. That's a good thing. Having men that think they're women play with women is fucking crazy. That's like, what do we— it doesn't mean, you know, you need to cast those people out of society. Doesn't mean anything. Live and let live, I agree. But get the fuck out of the women's room.

You have a dick.

If you get the fuck off the team, you're running track at a literal women's Olympic level. And you're 15. Why? Because you have a dick. This is crazy. You're not really a girl. This is nuts.

You know, that's the, that's the world we live in. And oh, well, that's the— no, I'm, I'm not even gonna say that's the world we live in. That's the world that's being presented to us at this point.

That, that's right.

You know, and it's, you know, it's a lot of things is like this, man. You— this is why in comedy I choose not to go the current of the current affair or the political route. 'Cause I don't have time to separate the room. I'm too busy trying to do things to bring the room together. And that's more of a righteous aim for me.

Well, you, I said this before, I'll say it live publicly. What you've done is very extraordinary because you've made a giant following online completely organically. It's very inspiring because all you do is just do your thing the best that you can and put it out there and it just keeps growing. It's amazing. It's very, it's very cool. It's very inspirational. And it's— you should be proud of it because what you've done, like I said, it's totally organic. Like, you don't have a bunch of production companies pushing you and trying to make you more popular than you are. No, it's all just putting it out there and getting this gigantic following just from your work. Yeah, just the work.

Appreciate it. And then, you know, even with that, you still have um, some type of responsibility to not see things the same as other people. Like, with— I just got all this flack about me talking about the— how this business of people inflating things has caused depression in comics. You know, that we supposed to be a happy craft, but now it's this big push about if you're not on social media, you're not on this, you're not on that. A lot of these comics are, you know, going through this mental health thing where they always sad about their numbers or, you know, or this, that, and the third. Like, yo, man, it is a, it's a thing. And some people inflate things and everybody wants to be on the same level. So sometimes you, you can't be Oh, well, you can, but people look at it as a certain way. Well, when you proud of the steps that you've taken, and if I played in the G League, that's not the NBA. So I wouldn't say that I was playing, I played in the league, because I know what the league means. I know, you know, I know this says this the G League, but when I present myself, yo, you know, I play in the league, people automatically think the NBA, you know, it's not, it's not, no, the G League is not, and not knocking the G League, but that's not the first thing— that comes to my mind.

Right. You know, it's just playing for the Washington Generals is not the NBA. Even though you played against the Globetrotters, they were great players. Right. But we know how this game goes. But people, that's how people see things now.

Well, the numbers thing is real. The numbers thing is a real problem with people because it gives you a quantifiable measure of whether or not you're doing well. And if you already have anxiety, which a lot of comedians have, you're already like socially awkward, which a lot of comedians are, you don't feel accepted, which is how a lot of comedians feel. And then you look at those numbers, you're like, 2,400? I only have 2,400 followers? I've been doing comedy for 7 years. Why do I only have 2,400 followers? And then you go to someone's page that you never even heard of, they have 1.2 million. You're like, what the fuck?

And, and so this is about being grateful in the position that you, you're in. I remember when they would— people was pushing me, oh, you need to get on the internet, you need to be on social media. Okay, but I would see those people that had all those followers, and that same year, the year before that, I did a half-hour special with Comedy Central. Then the year, um, 2018, I did a full-hour special with Comedy Central. I had um, 500 followers on Instagram. I had 300 followers, 300 subscribers on YouTube on a page that I didn't own. I had to fight to get this page. I had less people on Facebook, but I was efficient in what I was doing. So the numbers didn't— they didn't pick me because I had these numbers. They, they picked me because I came and I did what I did and then they, oh, he's, he's great. So then we, we started going, you know, a route to, to build it up. But we were already getting things prior to the numbers.

Right. What, what year is this again?

This is '17 and '18.

Okay. So the difference is that in '17 and '18, people were just starting to be aware of the power of social media and then they were really concentrating on different comics that had a large social media following. You know, I think that was like right when it first started happening.

Dane Cook had blew up before that.

That was a— yeah, that was a MySpace.

That was a MySpace thing, internet, another internet thing.

That's true, that's true. That was different, but the difference is like he had gotten so huge just from that that he was already doing like arenas.

Yeah.

And when they— so He was already huge and then they just went with him. But he was like super popular. Now it's like super popular on social media is one of the most important things.

So now, now moving up to this, 'cause I have a strong argument with this. So I have a million followers here, a million followers there, all these specials. I still didn't get invited to the BET Awards. I still didn't get, I still don't get invited to a bunch of things. I still get looked over for things even though I have numbers and success, but I don't worry about it. I'm just in my, I'm not worried watching to judge myself against what somebody else is doing. It's guys who have less everything, but they're in this, in this realm where they, they had every, they had everything. I, I see guys that said everything with no, um, with no specials and no proven thing. They just around. And I'm like, okay, but it's, I'm not, I think the point that I'm not judging myself up against what somebody is doing socially.

But that's also easier when you're successful, and you're successful, you're very successful. So the difference is like when you sell out these shows and you put out these specials, like I've seen your specials, have millions of views. So it's like obviously you have a following. If you didn't and you were doing the same thing, then it would be a problem. But then also that would— it's like comedy in a lot of ways, not always, but a lot of ways is a meritocracy. If you're good, people will come. Yeah, it's that simple. Fight night is here. Title shots, debut killers, and the rising contender nobody's talking about yet. And only DraftKings has you covered every step of the way. The DraftKings app is now available in all 50 states and includes all markets, bringing the game straight to your fingertips wherever you are, no matter where you're watching, you're always connected and in the game with one app. New DraftKings customers sign up with code ROGAN, spend $5 to get $200 in rewards within 21 days. That's code ROGAN in partnership with DraftKings. The crown is yours. Bet with DK Sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER, 1-800-MY-RESET.

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But I also have no desire to inflate things and compare myself to somebody else or make myself seem like I'm more than what it is. Like guys are, hey man, I got, I'm at this room, I got 50 tickets sold. Okay, how much the room seat? Oh, the room seat 300. Okay, cool. You have 50 people more than you had then if you didn't play the room. You know what I'm saying? 'Cause who knows you in Utah? You're built, it's a building thing. Like, I got all of this going on, but if I go to Utah, I'm in a comedy club. It doesn't matter what happened the night before. I was just in an arena, but in Utah, it's like, it takes me back to on Trading Places. You know what I'm saying? He said, hey man, this is, he gives all this, elaborate what this watch is. And that man said, this is what this costs in St. Louis. Like, I don't care about you pawning the watch, right? And saying, so I don't have that. And I'm not— if I— it's like, you, you, you own a club, okay? It's guys that can come to your club and sell your club out, and then it's guys that come in the club and you pay for the room, okay?

Then there's guys Like when you in the theater, some, you can scale a theater down. Some theaters hold 4,600 people, but you can scale it down to 2,000. But then the, I'm not going to say if the room holds 4,600, I put 2,000 tickets on sale. I didn't sell out the, the, um, the theater. I sold what I put on sale. You know what I'm saying? 'Cause I'm not to the point where I can get the 4,600 yet. If I could sell the room out, then I would need to relish the real accomplishment versus the lesser accomplishment.

Inflating, yeah.

Yeah.

And that's, and because I don't have this thing where I'm in competition with what happened before me. You know, so.

With other people.

So I'm in San Antonio. We at, We at the theater. And 'cause people can make you feel bad about anything. If you a person that feels bad, just think. Minnesota. It's all these people that's on the team that play for the Boston Celtics that are millionaires. They already millionaires, they play in the league. Boston traded 7 people to Minnesota for one person, Kevin Garnett. They got rid of 7 human beings for one person. So it's like, if I was a person that felt bad about my career, this would make me feel bad. Like, they, they— like, the first person that they asked, they asked, okay, I'm gonna trade this person for that, but they're like, no. Well, I'm gonna give you 2 more people. They're like, no. And then I'm gonna give you 4 more people. Okay, and a lottery pick. Okay, I'm gonna feel horrible. They traded me for 7 people. Y'all didn't even want me, realistically. So Boston went, they got Kevin Garnett. I mean, um, what's this? Yeah, Kevin Garnett and 7 other millionaires. They got all this money, they got all this. They went to Minnesota. It was then, so If somebody wanted to make you feel bad about something, you know, they could if that's how you are.

So I'm in San Antonio. The line is around the block. The place is sold out. It's the same sellout no matter who comes there. It's sold out. That lady said to my face, Tamar, you should have saw it when Matt Rife came. I was like, in my mind, I was like, and I asked, I say, was it a different theater? She said, no, same theater. So when Matt Rife came, he sold it out. I sold out two nights. I mean, 2 days in the same night. But her thing was, you should have saw when Matt Rife came. I was like, okay.

She probably wanted you to feel bad.

I was like, but I'm not. Good for you.

But good for you. But the thing is, a lot of people would. That's, that's what it is. A lot of people are in competition with other people. I think you should be inspired by other people. You know, if you want to compete in that way, be inspired. But the, the moment you turn it into a negative, it's like, are you—

you're, you're a fool.

You're being Compete in charity.

Also, inspiration is power. It's fuel. If you see someone doing well, so you see someone set and you like it, that's fuel that makes you want to go work, makes you want to get some shit done, makes you— gives you energy.

It may—

or it could cripple you if you're a dummy. If you're a dummy and you get angry and you get bitter, and then you just put all this negativity on the person who's doing better than you, which a lot of people do.

That's Yeah. That's a weird dynamics in this business when you know that it's gonna be people do— no matter what you're doing, it's gonna be somebody doing better than you. When I was in comedy clubs, I remember being there and they would paper in the room. Okay. I wasn't saying I was selling out. They was papering the room. I know out of all these 300 people in here, 240 of these people came because it was free. They sent out the email blast. But then what I looked at was they wanted to come.

Yeah, they wanted to come. They're probably comedy fans, which is why they're on the email list in the first place. And then those people, you give them a great show, they'll come back.

Then the next time I came, they didn't pay for the room. They sold the tickets.

That's how it used to be, man. That was the old days before social media. You would build a market. So you just show up at Philadelphia once a year, show up, do your homework, like make sure you got a tight set, you've been practicing, you're ready to rock, fuck these people up, and then leave. And then they're like, can't wait till you guys are back again. And then next time you come back, you know, all right, I built an audience now. I got— I can't disappoint these people. I got to get fired up. And that's what it used to be. Used to be a totally organic thing across the whole country.

Is it a, is it a thing, is it a difference in your opinion between me bringing my audience to a venue from whatever other thing that I do versus people coming that don't know anything about me and me winning that person over versus the person I already know?

Yeah, it's a different thing. You know, people are coming to see you specifically, you've already won them over. It's a different thing, or they want to take a chance on you, that's a different thing because I've heard about you. But when, you know, that's a completely different thing because that's your— you have an audience now, you have fans. When you are just performing at a club and it's a papered room, you have an opportunity. You have an opportunity to turn these people into fans. You have an opportunity to give these people a great night and have a good time. And also you're doing your fucking thing, which is the most important thing of all. Everybody is results-oriented. I try to be process-oriented. When I— with everything I do, I'm process-oriented. I think about— there's a goal that you gotta reach, but how do you get to that goal? The way you get there is not thinking about the goal. The way you get there is thinking about what you're doing. What's the process? What's the process? The process is writing bits, performing them, tweaking them, getting them tight, knowing, reviewing tapes, going over your material, going over your writing, talking with friends, And then every day it gets a little bigger.

Every day it gets a little better. Every day that knife gets a little sharper. That's the process. That's the process that leads you to become whoever, whoever you are.

And then you add other little pieces in that process. I was talking to Bobby Lee, and me and Bobby Lee talking, I said, Bobby, you don't realize where you met me at. And he's like, well, is this gonna be a good story or is it a bad story?

Bobby's got a lot of bad stories.

I said, you met me at at the Houston Improv, and they called me and asked me did I want to host a room that I already sell out. You know what I'm saying? They asked me did I want to host. I said cool. So I came and I hosted, and I was not trying to, but I was destroying his feature. I'm just hosting.

Well, you should not be hosting, especially at the Houston Improv..

But my thing was, this was years, this was years ago. But I say, Bobby, you didn't understand when the, when I was hosting at the Houston Improv, I was doing something that most people didn't understand what I, why I was even doing it. Well, like, why? And they would see like, why would you be hosting? I said, because I'm not gonna be in front of Bobby Lee's audience. But it's people that live in Houston, right? That his audience that I have no, I have no idea who I am. Right. I said, Bobby, but before you, I say, I was coming to the Houston Improv hosting for multiple people, and I was just winning over fans that would never had seen me if they wasn't coming to see you. They wouldn't be coming to my show. I said, so before that, it was, you were last, Bobby. It was you, and the week prior to that, it was Monster Bronnie. And the week prior to that was, um, Was my girl, Angela Johnson. Angela Johnson, and before that it was some random white guy. I said, I just came. And I wanna do, I'm a comic, so me hosting was no big deal.

I wasn't working, so I say, well let me just come host it, that's what they want me to do. So I gained fans from 4 different audiences in a month. So when I came back, they was like, yo, I saw you with Miles Jabroni. And so I came back, I came back to see you when you, when you put your show up. I'm like, cool. So my process, that was a part of my process. I, it didn't matter who I hosted for. And then I was like, okay, cool, you know, let me, let me go. Like when I hosted for, um, Bill Burr, Bill Burr was like, I was like, this is crazy. We in Austin at the Paramount, and I said, the worst thing about this was that at the time I was wearing all black. And I went to the show, and when I walked on stage, the first thing I said is, hey, I do not work here. Don't, like 8 people asked me, where's the bathroom? I don't know, I don't work. But it was like, I looked like an usher. Like, yo, I'm like, yo, Sucks, you know, but it was a cool gig.

That's hilarious.

That's a smart approach. I mean, that's a great way to build, especially if you're already headlining. Yeah, I think, I think that, that thing about concentrating on the process, people should try to apply that to everything, you know. My friend John Dudley, who taught me archery, he's a big believer in that, being process-oriented. Like, that's how you get better at archery. And he used to compete all over the world, travel, compete in archery tournaments. I think that's the— I think that applies to everything. I think that applies to music. I think that applies to everything. The more— I think it was one of the things that trips people up about social media, a lot of these young guys in particular, young people in particular, is that they are thinking about other people and they are comparing themselves to other people and they are looking at those numbers. And you're looking, you're spending all of your energy. If you have an allotted 100 units of energy in a day, you're spending a disproportionate amount on things that don't empower you and actually kind of fuck your head up. Not good for you at all. Instead of saying, wow, I am chasing the fucking dream, right?

I am out here being a professional comedian, and I have a real chance to develop a real following if I put my time in, I put my effort, I really care, and I really work hard. I could sell out a theater one day. That's possible. Like, that's a goal. It should be a goal, just like getting your PhD in chemistry or whatever the fuck it is your goal is. But the process is what's important. The process is like appreciating what you're doing, why you're doing it, and just bearing down and doing your best. That's it. That's it. And other people, you look at them as inspiration. Other people that are kicking ass, you know, don't go— don't get— become a hater. That shit is so bad for you. I know so many dudes who have like hater tendencies and they never excel. Never. It's the, the counterthinking of an excellent person is a hater. Someone who's always trying to diminish people and downplay people and look at someone in the least charitable way, in the worst possible way, to somehow or another trying to make themselves feel better. But it doesn't work. It does the opposite of work.

It robs you. It robs you of your self-esteem. It robs you of your self-respect. You're spending so much time thinking about this other dude. Like, why?

It's a lot of energy. And my dad, this is one story that I did not put in the special that I should have. And my dad had all these thoughts. And he was— I literally say he was a crazy man. But when you think about the things that he would say, made sense. My dad— And why would you be telling me this at the age that— But he just gave them. I think I was like 11. And my dad out of nowhere just say, you know something, people spending the same time and money on being fake when they can put that same time and money into being real.

Yeah.

And I'm like, I didn't know, I didn't understand what that meant. But as I got older, if you spend any money or time faking something, you could probably spend that money and time being real about something.

Yeah.

You know, why go buy a fake necklace to act like you rich when you can go buy a real necklace, you know what I'm saying, at some point, you know what I'm saying, and actually be rich, you know, if you keep comparing it to necklaces. But I just didn't understand it at the time. But then as I got older, I understood like, Why put this, why put this time in to pretending when you can put that same energy in and then become real at what you do? It makes no sense.

My Uncle Vinny, when I was 6 or 7 years old, I was staying at his house with my cousins and we were supposed to brush our teeth and I didn't like following rules, period. And so I wouldn't brush my teeth. Instead, I would take toothpaste and mush it around on my teeth, and so that when they smell my breath, they would smell toothpaste. And my uncle explained to me, he goes, he goes, uh, I understand why you're doing it. He goes, but the amount of time that you're spending pretending to brush your teeth, you could have just brushed your teeth. And I thought about that when I was 6. I was like, damn, I was just a little kid, but I was like, ah, he's right. Why am I faking brushing my teeth?

I felt like I was 6 years old.

I was like, I feel like such a— My Uncle Vinny was like super patient, super calm. Out of all my family members, he was the strangest out of all these wild, crazy Italian people. Like, he was an artist and he was like very soft-spoken and never got angry about anything. He'd always speak really rationally. I was like, "God, he's so smart." He's just so peaceful. He just— but the way he laid it out, he didn't say, "Hey, I know you're not brushing your teeth, you little fuck." It was the time you're spending pretending to brush your teeth. You could have just brushed your teeth.

It's just—

but it was like sometimes adults will say something to you like that when you're 6, and it just gets in your head. You're like, whoa, okay, that just saved me a whole lot of time.

Brush them. Just brush your fucking teeth.

Stop pretending. Stop faking. It doesn't help anything. It does the opposite.

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Ach ja.

Does the opposite. And you know, people, the truth sometimes is hurtful to people.

The truth doesn't feel good, you know, to a lot of people, unfortunately. But you know, you have to look at it, you have to have perspective.

But that's the ultimate hate right there. That's the ultimate hate. Is for me to give you a falsehood instead of tell you the truth.

Right.

That's the ultimate, it's the ultimate hate.

Especially if you're making up a background for yourself. You're making up a story about your life that's not true. You're pretending you're somewhere in life that you're not.

Yo man, just do the thing. Just do the thing.

Yeah, but it's hard for people. It's hard for people. And then there's a lot of people that think you just fake it until you make it. And then you hear stories of this guy, I had $500 in my bank account, but I told them I got this, I got that loan, and next thing you know, my business is making all this money. And you go, wow, he faked it until he made it, and it worked. And you think it's gonna work, but it doesn't work most of the time.

That's so few and far between, then they never tell you that that guy goes to jail later for fraud.

Yes, 100%, 100%.

Yo, the feds busted my house 3 years later and took everything. Like, okay. Exactly.

Like when they arrested Carlos Mencia recently. Recently for like all those counts of tax fraud. I was like, okay, I don't want that to happen to him, but there it is, right? I mean, that's what it is.

I'm not laughing at Carlos Mentea. I'm just laughing at the fact that you like, yeah, yeah, when they busted Carlos.

I mean, I didn't, I wasn't, didn't bring me any joy to see that. I don't like anybody getting arrested taxes. I think, I think taxes, until they have an accurate account of where the fucking money goes, and until you completely eliminate all fraud and waste, what the fuck are you doing locking people up for not paying taxes? Like, you guys should get locked up for not doing a good job with our money.

So what you think about all the new purchases and redoing the White House? And all this with tax dollars.

Did they do it with tax dollars? Like, how much money did they spend in tax dollars to do the ballroom? Let's find out.

What's that?

Um, they need a ballroom though. That's how that guy snuck in with a gun because they tried to do that White House Correspondents' Dinner in a hotel. That dude who got arrested a few months back.

What's this, this, this resolution? The pool, something full of algae right now that we spent all the money on?

Yeah, I don't know about that. That's something about making the pool look nice, that, that whatever that is, reflecting pool.

Yeah, the reflecting pool.

Reports indicate the new White House East Wing ballroom is projected to cost about $600 million, with roughly half, just over $300 million, coming from taxpayer-funded government accounts, despite earlier promises that it would be taxpayer-free. $300 million sounds like a lot until you find out how much money they spent on other things. When you find out how much, just how much fraud is in NGOs, how much fraud is in nonprofits, how much fraud is in insider trading and propping up companies so that they can get better deals. Well, the, the whole thing is fraud.

The thing is, if you spending— I understand how much money goes in other things, but if you spending any money that, that, that's my money that I don't know that, that I need it, or that's not really the aim, the goal.

You should be able to vote on it.

You should be able to vote on it.

You should be able to vote on where all your tax money goes.

How much money is, how much tax money is being spent on getting smart people in place, getting smart, making smart children?

That's the big one.

That's the, that's the thing.

The big one is if you look at our country as a community And that's what we're supposed to be doing. We're supposed to be the United States of America. All that bullshit aside, that was the one good thing that happened about 9/11. When 9/11 happened, after that, we were all united. It was crazy. It was crazy. We realized, like, we are actually on a team. So if we're on a team, why do we have these deeply impoverished neighborhoods for decades and decades that are riddled with crime and drug abuse? Why? Is it impossible to fix? That's crazy. That's not true. It's just no one's tried to fix it. No one's done any effort to fix it. And if you did fix it, you want to make America great. Here's the best way: less losers. And how do you get less losers? More opportunities for people. More opportunities, more support, more education, more everything that you need if that was your neighborhood. Yeah, and if we did that, we, we'd have to switch the way our system runs, but that could be done, man.

That's the thing.

You don't have to have losers, not that many.

That's the thing about Make America Great, right? If you're trying to make anything great, don't you need intelligent people to do that?

Of course, that's the number one thing.

So when we have all these divisive people that, that's on a lower vibration, how is that making the, the country the country great if we're putting people in position that don't have the experience or the education in those things. And then we just saying a bunch of divisive things. Yeah. If I'm watching the extravaganza that happened at the White House, what was the thing? Michelle Obama is a man. How did that help How did that help?

That guy says that every time he—

but what is the, what is the, the thing? First of all, it's, it's really divisive because you know that a large portion of the country is gonna take this, it's gonna have a problem with this. You know, clearly she's not a man, you know what I'm saying? But it makes no sense, like, to— I've never seen this many people say so many damaging things about a past president. It's like he's still on the forefront, and it's not like we have a president that's doing the greatest job for this, this country, you know, which is, which is weird, a weird thing to me. And people gonna ask, is that what's the belief? That's the, that's the real belief of people? That's the real thing?

Yeah, well, listen, there's some crazy people that believe the world is flat. There's a lot of dumb beliefs. There's probably people that do believe Michelle Obama's a man. What that guy does He's like a pro wrestler. Like, he's got a character called the Incredible Hulk. It's very corny in a lot of ways. Sometimes it's, you know, cringey. But the point is, he gets a lot of attention. A lot of attention because of all this. That's what he's doing. So what he's trying to do is maximize the amount of attention that he can get for a very short window of career. It's not how he really feels, how he really thinks. When you talk to him in real life, he's very reasonable. This is an act that he does, like a pro wrestling act. But what he can do is fight. He's really good, and that's what's so confusing about it all. So you got this guy who's created like this fake persona where he puts on an American flag bandana, comes out to Hulk Hogan music, does all his interviews with sunglasses on, has a bunch of crazy silly rhymes, and says ridiculous shit just trying to get attention, the most amount of attention.

So it is very divisive, don't get me wrong. But that's by design.

So he's Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage in the same—

in the same actual fighter, and a really fucking good one, man. He just knocked out Derrick Lewis at the White House. Derrick Lewis has the most knockouts in the history of the sport.

Don't, don't, don't do that. Don't do that, Joe.

Don't do what?

Let's just— just don't, don't, don't say that so excited, because Derrick Lewis go to the same gym, uh, Main Street Boxing Gym in Houston. I'm very close to that dude.

I love Derrick.

I don't like the fact that Derrick Lewis lost that fight.

I think it's Derrick of 10 years ago would have been a real fucking problem for that dude, because Derrick of 10 years ago, you couldn't hold him down. He would just get up.

He had—

there's a whole compilation of people trying to hold Derrick Lewis down. He just gets a hand on you and just whoop! His grip— they did that UFC grip thing where they test the grip. Everybody's like 140, the strong ones are like 160, 190. Derrick just squeezed it casual. 218. And they were like, what the fuck?

So you see how problematic this was for me. You already beat my friend, then you turn around and say—

He beat a 40-year-old Derrick Lewis.

A 40-year-old Derrick Lewis, then turn around and say Michelle Obama's a man. I was like, okay, you know something?

I know what you're saying.

I'm pissed.

Listen, you're right. Listen, you're right. But I'm telling you, if you met that dude in real life, you would get it. He's just a dude. He's just a guy who's a competitive wrestler, played in the NFL. And he's like, "I gotta do something to figure out how to get people to pay attention to me, 'cause it can't just be fighting. It's not enough." If you look at Conor McGregor, you look at Sugar Sean O'Malley, you look at these guys that have these flamboyant personalities, these big personalities— Cassius Clay's the original example. They get an immense amount of attention, and that translates into much more money and much more opportunities. There's no fucking way that guy would have gotten that fight at the White House if you couldn't fight. Because the fight that he had before that, he fought Curtis Blades, who was a top 10 UFC heavyweight, huge wrestler, and they went to war, dude. I mean, he put it on him for 3 fucking rounds. Like, Curtis just has an insane heart and survived it. But that guy can fucking fight. But just that alone is not enough. But you got to get attention.

I don't agree with it. I don't— I wouldn't do it. It's not my thing. I don't like it, right? But I get it, and it's smart.

With Muhammad Ali, though, he was very respectful in his act, you know, to get attention.

No, he wasn't.

Yes, he was.

I mean, he wasn't with other people, but he would show up at fucking Sonny Liston's house and scream about him on his fucking front lawn at 4 in the morning. He did wild, crazy shit. He did a lot of wild— he was just all about getting your heart rate up, getting your emotions in there. He was so fucking smart. He knew before everybody that you could just get somebody into a frenzy and they wouldn't be able to sleep. Their whole life revolved around fighting you, and I can't let this guy beat me, and the fear of losing, he's gonna keep you weak. It's gonna keep you— you're not gonna be able to eat as much food. You're gonna feel nervous.

But you see what happened when somebody called him Cassius Clay?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Who was that? What fighter was that?

He kept punishing him, saying, "Cassius Clay name." "Your mama name Clay, I'mma call you—" But that didn't work out for him, right? He beat the piss out of him, and he carried him.

He carried him while he was beating his ass. Dude, he was a special, special guy. It's, you know, I'm not comparing him in terms of his cultural significance to Josh Hokut because, you know, he was— my parents, my mother and my stepfather, were hippies. They never watched fighting. But when he had a rematch with Leon Spinks, that's how much of a cultural figure he was. They wanted him to beat Leon Spinks. You know, Hakurei Kuniyasu. Like, oh my God, he's gotta win, he's gotta win. Hippies sitting in front of the fucking TV in like 1970, whatever it was.

You know how crazy it is to have Italian hippies? It's like, because I heard it, it was like my family was like, I thought they was Italian.

Italian hippies. Well, they were hippies, but you know, my grandmother went to jail for running numbers for the mob. So it's like there was a lot of, uh, okay, there was a lot of real Italian, a lot of dynamics. Yeah, grandma went away for a little bit. She wouldn't rat him out, so she did some time.

I was at a show one time and I said, "Where are all the Africans at in here?" And this Italian dude, he's from Sicily, he raised his hand. And I said, and the people was like, "Why is he raising his hand?" I was like, "He knows." He knows.

He knows. Yeah, there's a really good reason My Sicilians have darker hair, curly hair, darker skin.

He was like, yeah, you know what I'm saying? And that's all I said was, he knows. And people who got it, they was like, okay. And at that point, it's like when people don't know that you have some sort of level of intelligence. Yeah, you got some information. They was like, oh, okay. Like, yeah, it's a big thing. But that's funny though, Italian hippies. But my grandmother also.

Well, you know, there was a lot of hippies back then, man. And I think the original idea behind it was great. I was just watching this thing today about the CIA and LSD and what they did. It was really funny, man. It was a, um, yeah, like Animal Day 2. Isn't it dope? See if you can find it, put it up, because it's kind of cool.

Conveniently, an MKUltra hearing going on right now in the—

Oh, how convenient. Listen, bro, that they I got it right here, Jamie. I'll send it to you. They 100% are still doing that, no ifs, ands, or buts. If you think they did that in the '60s, and they 100% did, if they're doing mind control experiments on people and they're influencing people's opinions, and half of the reason why people are at odds with each other all day long online is probably government intervention at one point, or some government's intervention. This is, this is not ours, Russia and China and This is wild.

That the CIA created the hippie movement, and your mom's favorite band probably helped them. In the 1950s, the CIA bought up the world's supply of LSD. They brought it to the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, who reverse engineered it, giving them an unlimited supply and a complete monopoly. Then the testing started. One early volunteer for these tests was Ken Kesey. Kesey wrote a book inspired by this experience, which became a bestseller. Then Kesey went on to host events which he called acid tests, and he wasn't charging anyone. He just wanted people to show up and do acid. For these events, he hired an unknown house band called the Grateful Dead. These events became wildly popular, and with them rose the popularity of the band. So the Grateful Dead begins touring, and Kesey follows them around in a bus from show to show, and everywhere he went, he brought a vat full of Kool-Aid laced with LSD. This guy had a seemingly endless supply, exporting the hippie culture all around the US. Meanwhile, the CIA is flooding college campuses with LSD under the guise of research, and the Grateful Dead was just one of many bands in this movement.

At the same time, in Laurel Canyon came a wave of musicians with something in common: they were all children of high-ranking military officials. The biggest names in music— Jim Morrison of the Doors was the son of an admiral, Frank Zappa's father was a chemical warfare air specialist. Even Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Yeah, all three of them. And all of these bands as well. The theory is the CIA orchestrated the hippie movement to steer a very real anti-war movement into something a little easier to combat— dissent without teeth. The hippie slogan was literally, "Turn on, tune in, and drop out." In other words, do acid and remove yourself from society. And a lot Some did drop out of society to go live in communes in the woods. This intersection between hippie culture and the CIA could all be a great big coincidence. Maybe military brats naturally want to rebel. And maybe the CIA was giving away acid because they're chill like that. Maybe CIA created the hippie movement, and your mom's favorite band probably helped them. Yeah, isn't that wild?

That's crazy. That's wild. They also had a big influence on gangsta rap. Big influence on promoting gangster rap. Oh, for sure. 100%, proven. 100%. 100%, yeah. You rather push— They wanted to fill prisons.

You want to push that over anything else, you know, 'cause we can look at how rap music changed and when it changed. You know, 1992. Yeah. After 1992, they was like, no more positive rap.

Well, it was whenever Straight Outta Compton came out, 'cause I was in Boston at the time. I remember to the day it happened.

But Straight Outta Compton wasn't a drug field induced album. It was, if you look at some of the songs, you look at a lot of the songs that was on that album, it was rebellious songs against the system. Yeah. Fuck the police. And then 1992, man, when they decided, yo, we don't want no more De La Soul, we don't want no more Tribe Called Quest, we don't want no, You get them leather medallions off your— It's like, yo, we need, we need, like, yo, they was like, Self-Destruction and West Coast All-Stars, they was like, what? They coming together? Hell no. We need this to be divisive. We need them to separate. And that's crazy that, The biggest times that I've experienced this country being together was the Olympics when the Dream Team came, 9/11, and COVID. That's the biggest time that we— the 3 biggest times I've ever even seen us together.

Yeah, because we need something. We need something that's real. We need some sort of an event that makes us realize, first of all, the fragility of life. That's important. And we have to realize that we're all supposed to be a part of a team.

And— and we— you can't play on a team if your teammates don't think that you—

that you valuable. Not only that, you can't play on a team if your teammates are poisoning you. If your teammates are allowing you to eat rotten food so that you can't play, and maybe giving you inferior gear on purpose, and maybe keeping you in a place where you can't get sleep. So that you're not gonna evolve. That you just— You're not gonna, like, you're always gonna be tired, you're gonna be fatigued, so you're never gonna get better at whatever the fuck it is you're doing. You're never gonna advance in life. You're gonna be tired, you're gonna be on drugs, you're gonna be poor. This episode is brought to you by Amra. Every week there's some new wellness hack that people swear by, and after a while you start thinking, why do we think we can just outsmart our bodies? That's why Amra colostrum caught my attention. It's something the body already recognizes and has hundreds of these specialized nutrients for gut stuff, immunity, metabolism, etc. I first noticed it working around training, especially workout recovery. Most stuff falls off, but I am still taking this. If you want to try, Armor is offering my listeners 30% off plus 2 free gifts.

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This is how I see— that's not a good team. This is how I see with parenting. It's hard to parent if your number one goal is survival. Right. You know what I'm saying? It's hard to parent. Right. You know, you gotta parent from a comfortable space. You can't parent from— nervous chickens really don't lay eggs. That's true. So the thing is, you— if— like the way I parent now versus how my mom— my mom was strictly survival. So my thing is, Survival first, you know what I'm saying? Then the rest of it, you know. I don't remember going to, um, on vacation with my parents, you know. Like, vacation? What? Your mom working two jobs and going to school trying to better— she's just taking care of you, right? So I'm not in the position— my kids go on vacation, you know, it's different. You know, so I, I see things from both sides all the time because I'm in that, which makes me grateful. I'm grateful that I can do the things I can do with my family, you know what I'm saying, versus parenting from a place of frustration. Yeah, you know, but I understand this, this, this frustration thing, you know.

I'm trying to take care of you and, you know, and then sometimes I look at my kids like You know something? You have it really easy because if I wouldn't have washed them dishes, my mom would have destroyed me. Because her mindset is, hey, I'm trying to take care of y'all. Y'all got the help in this. You know, with me, it was like, we have a housekeeper. You know what I'm saying? The housekeeper come in 4 days out the week, you know? And now I'm like, so you just gonna throw that stuff on the floor? And you making it hard for the housekeeper. You know, the reason why she's there 4 days a week is so to make your life easier, but you, you're adding on to— by being lazy, by being lazy. Like, like, I don't—

there's a balancing act, right? You want to protect your children, but you don't want them to develop soft. You want them to be able to take care of their own problems, and you want them to be able to understand the consequences of their actions. So this is like fine line of like encouragement and punishment and like explaining to them how your life was different and you have to appreciate this life. This is very unusual. You're super fortunate. But I think ultimately what they learn from is how you behave. That's a giant part of being a parent that people I don't think are totally aware of until you start doing it, that they understand you. Whatever the fuck you say is one thing. That's great. What you do is what they really see. And if you're a lazy fucker who's always making excuses, your kids are gonna not have respect for you. They're gonna know like real early on you're kind of full of shit. This is the craziest thing though.

You know how hard it is to put somebody on punishment and then say, hey, Pac, we going to Cabo. Am I on punishment or we going to Cabo?

You don't get your iPad for 16 hours.

Yo, when we get to Cabo, you stay in your room and overlook the ocean. And think about your consequences as you order room service.

Drinking Coca-Cola, eating french fries, lamb chops coming to the room.

He's like, yo, you on punishment, dude. And then, so I can't have oysters. Like, you hear the birds chirping, you look, looking at the waves, you know, like, it's, it's, it's rough. And it's Being— it's a, it's a certain part of success that you almost can't punish because it's like, I'm not staying at home because you don't punish me. See, my mom would— she— ah, it's just different, you know. It's different. My mom would go in her room and turn on Notchland and Dynasty, and I'm in my room with no TV because it was only one TV. There's a TV in every room. You know what I'm saying? The punishment was, come in here and watch Falcon Crest with me. What? I don't want to watch no Falcon Crest. And then you start watching Falcon Crest and now you love it. You like, so when is it coming on again? You get addicted to the characters. That's why I like M*A*S*H. You know what I'm saying? I would be in trouble and you watching M*A*S*H and Bonanza, then all of a sudden you love M*A*S*H. I cried with M*A*S*H when I was— it's like that.

Do you remember the dude who dressed up like a girl in M*A*S*H? Jamie Farr? Yeah. He was my neighbor. I was your neighbor? Yeah. Wow. Back in California. He lived right next door, 2 houses down. Wow. Klinger. It used to be just me and him, and then another guy built a house in between us. Uh, it was cool. Very friendly guy.

Yeah, who played a, played a character, played a good character.

That was a good show.

Yeah, M*A*S*H was a very good show, you know. And I, I, I said this other day to a friend of mine, I said like, I listen, I used to ride and take my kids to school and listen to morning shows, you know, really Tom Joyner, you know, uh, listen to Tom Joyner. And this is something I can listen to with my kids now. There's, there's no morning shows that I can listen to with my children without them putting in a different element that I don't want my kids to be a part of. And no, that's a weird thing that they cursing on radio and doing all this other stuff.

Oh, they can't curse on radio still.

Oh, yes they can.

Can they? They changed it?

They'll drop a B-word in a minute.

Oh, a B-word. Yeah. But that's it. You can't, you can't use, you can't say fuck.

No. Yeah. But the rest of it, you know, my, you know, you got daughters, you in the car. Right, right, right.

And you're hearing some shit you don't want them to hear.

Like, that's a weird thing. You like, so they go to school and, you know, at the end they say, you watching the B? You like, damn, that was the ending of the show. Right. So now you just, we ride and listen to Keisha Cole, you know what I'm saying, with No Talk. Oh, I listen to NPR, I listen to Urban Network, you know, for them to listen. Now they got all these political questions and, you know, when your 5-year-old like, so why aren't we voting? I'm like, oh, it's because you've been listening to Karen Hunter, you know what I'm saying, the whole time on the way to school or from school. So it's It's weird how you— what shows would you sit down and watch with your kids now? You know, they have to watch the shows that I grew up watching. You know, you got to go back. You got to watch Perry Mason and Family Matters and, you know, The Cosby Show, you know, Different World. We had to go back and watch Good Times. You know, we can't watch the current things, you know, so You know, even with comedy, I took Hassan to a comedy show with me to see some friends.

And he was 14 at the time. And we left because it was no— it was nothing— the things that were being said, it kind of made me go back to when, um, Cosby did the, the story about his son going to see Eddie Murphy, and he's, Daddy said these things. And I was sitting there like, the, after the first 2 minutes, I'm like, yo, we got to get out of here. How old was he at the time?

14. 14. That's too young. And I'm like, yo, man, but I mean, the guy who's doing comedy is doing comedy for adults that are drinking in a nightclub, right?

No, we was at it, we was at a, a event where it was all these bodybuilders, the gym. Next Level had did a show for all the people that work out there and the trainers. And I'm thinking, okay, this is at a ballroom, you know, it's probably gonna be pretty cool. And I stopped in, you know, we sat in the back, and then it went left. And I was like, hey man, let's get outta here. And he seen me, and so he's like, "Man, this ain't the same." I'm like, "Yeah, I'm not going for a certain type of laugh. I'm not doing shock value." So he's watched almost all the specials. So it's not the same for him. And he knows a lot of comics. So it's not— this wasn't conducive. I was like, "Hasan, we out." We outta here. He's like, but it's some comics you can go and you can watch they whole show. Like a Marcus D. Wiley, he can get an understanding of at least marriage, you know, how marriage go to give you some fuel. But I think the landscape of comedy is different for different people. Not knocking the people who do shock value or a lot of sexual content.

That's their stick and they probably young and at some point they'll grow. Hopefully they'll grow and it'll be more things in life to talk about. People like, "Well, how do you have this many specials?" Because I have a life. I had a life before that I talked about and then I have a life, a current life that I'm still experiencing things. I'm going to talk about things that, that's, that's a little different because I'm, I'm living and I'm not stuck in— sex is not the, the number one thing. I remember when I, when I figured that I was— sex wasn't that big when I went to, you know, they had the thing Netflix and Chill, and I actually wanted to watch the movie. Like, yo, get your hand off my leg. I'm trying to watch this movie. You know what I'm saying? So it's a thing about the development in this game of how you grow and what you think about. Well, I think comedy is just—

one of the problems with the label is that there's no genres. It's not like blues comedy, rock and roll comedy, hip-hop comedy, EDM comedy. It's just comedy. You don't know what it is. It's just different people's perspective on things. And there's different kinds of comedy that people like. You know, some people are giant Richard Pryor fans. Some people are Sam Kinison fans. Jerry Seinfeld fans, and some people love Bonnie Raitt, and some people love, you know, whatever, James Brown, fill in the blank. There's a lot of different styles of music, and there's a lot of different styles of comedy. And all that I care is that you enjoy what you're doing and you're doing it because you enjoy it. And if you're doing that, I don't give a fuck. I don't give a fuck what you're doing. I don't care if you have props. I don't care if you write signs and hold them up for the crowd. I don't give a shit what you're doing. I don't care if you do impressions. I don't give a fuck what you're doing.

That was a huge— So when you talk about the scope of comedy, you know, I'm— I can start with Carol Burnett, and I watched that, but the guy who I watched on HBO a lot, I knew I wasn't gonna do that type of stand-up. That was just a whole different thing, but Gallagher was crazy to me. Crazy. That was the craziest.

Everybody wore plastic, garbage bags around their necks.

Like the front, what, 6 rows?

Yeah, just getting splattered with watermelons and pineapples and coconuts and whatever the fuck he was— cabbage. Ridiculous, ridiculous. But he also had some good jokes. He had some solid jokes in between then. Dude did a ton of specials. Yeah. You know the craziest story, the Gallagher story, is Gallagher retired and his brother took over. His brother was Gallagher 2. So he had a brother that kind of looked like Gallagher.

I remember that. Right? I remember Gallagher 2.

And then somewhere down the line, Gallagher decided he wants to start doing comedy again. And he's like, hey, Gallagher 2, the gig is up. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm making money. I'm Gallagher 2. I think there was some sort of a legal dispute. Find out if that's correct. There was a legal dispute between them. Gallagher's younger brother Ron, who shared a strong likeness to Leo, asked him for permission to perform shows using Gallagher's trademark Sledge-O-Matic routine. Leo granted his permission on the contingent— on the condition that Ron and his manager clarified in promotional materials that this was Ron Gallagher, not Leo Gallagher, who was performing. Ron typically performed in venues smaller than those which Leo Gallagher performed. After several years, Ron began promoting his act as Gallagher 2, Gallagher 2 or Gallagher T.O.O. or T.W.O. In some instances, Ron's act was promoted in a way that left unclear the fact that he was not the original Gallagher. Leo initially responded by requesting only that his brother not use the Sledge-O-Matic routine. You can't use the fucking— you can't use the sledgehammer. Ron nonetheless continued to tour as Gallagher 2 using the routine.

In August 2000, Leo sued his brother for trademark violations and false advertising. The court ultimately sided with Leo and granted an injunction prohibiting Ron from performing any act that impersonated his brother in small clubs and venues. This injunction also prohibited Ron from intentionally bearing likeness to Leo. What? Imagine you can't look like your brother.

Cut your mustache. Yeah, you gotta change your mustache.

You gotta get rid of the beard. That's crazy. So did, um, did Gallagher continue with his career after he kicked his brother out? Did he come back? Probably. Was that part of it? Yeah, I think. I don't know. Nobody— I mean, does it say it there? Didn't say it here. It doesn't say that specifically in this paragraph. No. Does it— did— when did Gallagher start performing again? Put that in a search. See what it says. Because I think he did start performing again.

Yeah, he says it's— he was rushed to the hospital after performing performance in 2011.

Oh, so okay. And what year did he sue his brother? 2000. Oh, so he did start doing comedy again. So that's it. Yeah. So he's like, hey, motherfucker.

Yeah, he had a special in 2007 and 2014.

Yeah, you can't be doing that with Gallagher too, running around siphoning off of your crowd. You know, people like, honey, you want to spend $50 and see Leo, or do you want to spend $20 See, basically the same shit. See Ron smashing fucking cabbage.

You know, then you had, uh, yeah, Carrot Top.

And imagine saying, yeah, you could perform, but you can't use a sledgehammer.

I would use a mallet. What about a mallet? Can I use a mallet?

Can I use a baseball bat? Can I just have someone pitch me things and I smash them into the crowd?

Yeah, you can't own that. That's a different thing. I'm handing out oranges and tomatoes in the audience.

Yeah, I honestly, I don't give a fuck what you do as long as you like what you're doing. It's like, I love certain kinds of music that's completely opposite to other shit that I love. I mean, I like all kinds of stuff. I don't think you should pigeonhole yourself with anything, but I would not take my kids, especially when they were really young, to see someone who's like very sexual or really rowdy or really raunchy. Like, I don't want to—

you know, the caveat to this is he was in the green room and they were looking right at him. Like, they interviewed— like, and I'm like, what does it mean? Tell me what you're— I didn't know they act.

But oh, so he didn't say, hey bro, you got young kids?

Yeah, hey, because I would say, hey man, tonight, you know, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I would definitely do that if especially if you were another comic and you brought your kids. I—

bro, yeah, cuz Juan Villarreal used to bring his kids. We got like, yo, yo, you got to get him out of here.

They don't need to know about all these techniques.

Yeah, so that, that's weird, you know.

But yeah, that is weird. But you know what I mean? It's like time and a place. Like, who is he doing it for? I mean, they probably knew what he did before they hired him. They probably wanted that. Someone's a fan. Which is fine, but just don't invite kids.

And like I said, I didn't— all I did was, hey, Hasan, let's go. And that's it. I didn't— hey, y'all should have been— I'm like, hey man, do what you do, but I'm getting my kid out of here, man. And then you get the phone call, hey man, why you leave? You don't really want to know why I'm leaving, because you are terrorizing my child's ears. And then, so yeah, it— no, But I definitely wouldn't take my girls to like none of them.

I'm like, none of these guys at all. They don't need to see that early. Not at all. My wife got mad at me when I think one of my daughters was 6, the other one was 8. I had them watch the movie Alien. You ever see that movie Alien, the original movie? Yeah. Fucking terrifying. And I was like, this is too young. This is too young. I fucked up.

You know, I think Hassan watch Annabelle when he was young, and it was— Annabelle's creepy. It was— he was traumatized. He watched it at somebody else's house. Oh, you know, with some other kids, and they were like, I guess they, they understood. But Hassan was— it was a whole problem. Like, you talking about sleeping with all the lights on in the house? Like, I want all the lights on and I'm sleeping in your bed.

Like, do you ever go to that place in Vegas? The— it's, uh, haunted— Zach Bagans Haunted Museum. He has the Annabelle doll there. Wow. Yeah, there it is. Which one is one on the right? Oh, hell no, that's the real one. That's right, it's the one on the left, the movie one. Yeah. Oh really? Interesting. Wow.

So that Annabelle is both on creepy as hell to me, but it.

Well, there's something kind of extra creepy about the one with eyes like a person, the left one. That's insane. You believe in ghosts? Yes. Really? Have you had experience?

Um, no. Oh no, no, no, no, no. I— it— I have. Let me go back. Let me— let me say that I do believe in ghosts. So my old house where my mom stays at now, now. It's a girl that lives there, you know. I don't know what happened at this house, but it's definitely a girl that lives in this house. But she would only come from like the hallway bathroom to the kitchen. And I remember during the pandemic—

wait a minute, you say a girl, you mean a ghost?

Yeah, that's, that's a girl. Okay. She's definitely a girl. And I remember being during the pandemic, I was was in the den and I was working on something. And literally I just turned and said, so you up, huh? And because I could feel her. I was like, yo, because, but, and I had to go back through my family. A lot of people in my family have experiences with past relatives that passed on. My uncle said he saw his dad, which is my grandfather, in his shoes. And my mom says she saw my grandfather before, and they lived in— they died in the house that they had in, um, Mississippi. But yeah, I believe in ghosts. I believe in unsettled spirits. But we definitely had a girl that lived in that house.

My grandmother, the one I was telling you about before, she was very interesting, and she, uh, she really strongly believed in ghosts. And there was a guy that stayed with them for a while. They had a like an upstairs area that they weren't using once the kids left. And so they rented out, like, it was like an attic space that they had converted or something. I forget exactly what it was. Anyway, they rented out a room to this guy, wherever, whatever the circumstances were, and he died. And my grandmother swore that that dude stayed in the house.

Yeah, I believe it.

I think it's possible that what if something happens to you that if you're dying, it's a very traumatic experience. And I have a feeling that we don't totally understand memory. And we assume that memory is something that only human beings have or that only animals have or that only creatures have— living creatures have. I don't think that's real. I have a feeling there may be a type of memory from particularly traumatic experiences that stays in a space. And I think this is one of the reasons why they have to disclose within a certain amount of time someone's been murdered in the house in a lot of places before you buy it, because people don't want to live in a house that's got that energy in it. Yeah, because I think, I think things keep energy. I think they do. They— I think there's something more to memory than just as simple as, oh, remember when we were 5? I think there's something else there. I think, I think that's our memory. But I think there's a type of memory in things. That's what I think.

I believe in the unseen world. So I believe in djinns, you know, I believe in angels. So it's an unseen world that's not, you know, our thing. But it was things— there was things here before us, you know.

So I think there's things here with us. Yeah, definitely with people who don't think that haven't smoked DMT. Definitely get ahold of some DMT and you're like, okay, I don't know shit. There's things around me all the time. There's things that are influencing you all the time. And this is like when we talk about like good energy and bad energy. One of the things you experience in psychedelic states is a clear recognition of like good things that you've done and bad things you've done. Good— the good way of thinking, the good way you think about things, a positive way, and bad —like, I remember having negative thoughts in an experience once, and it was all these, like, dark fractals. And then I realized it was trying to show me that these dark fractals, these crazy geometric, these, like, scary patterns that I was seeing, was because of my own thoughts. And then I released them, and it turned into beautiful geometric patterns over and over. And it kept saying, like, "Look at this, and look at this." And I was like, "Oh, it's actually the way you think." changes the world around you. It has an effect.

It might not have the ultimate effect. It might not be 100% of what happens to you and in your life, but it has a meaningful effect. We just can't measure it. And there's things that are out there, whatever they are, they have some kind of consciousness that are around us all the time. We just don't have the senses to take them in. Just like when you wave your hand over an earthworm, it has no fucking idea you're doing doing that. We don't have the senses to understand that there's things around us. And people have been writing about these things for so long. To discount them all, they're all liars, they're all delusional, they're all crazy.

I think that people discount them due to thinking that they were on drugs.

Well, they probably were.

But it doesn't mean they're wrong. It doesn't mean they're wrong. You know, like a drunk A drunk really don't tell a lot of lies. That's a drunk. A drunk don't tell a lot of lies. They gonna, I can't, I'm drunk, I can't remember all that. I'm just saying what it is. Right. You know what I'm saying? But when you, when people like LSD, you know, you hallucinate, you know, or mushrooms or these things, people like, well, you only saw that because you was on this. But maybe that's the portal. On how you see certain things.

I think there's certain things that we block ourselves from being able to see by our own protective instincts. We protect our thoughts. I mean, this is why people, I think, get paranoid when they smoke weed. One of the things that weed does is it dissolves all these artificial barriers that you've put between you and the thoughts of real danger. They're all there. You realize your vulnerability. You realize— who you are.

So just think of how years ago how weed was viewed, how marijuana was viewed. It was taught that marijuana is the gateway drug to crack. Like, right. I didn't believe that. Like, how does that even correlate? But it's for those who are trying to find an ultimate high. Maybe you just smoke weed and that's all you ever did, you know. And you wasn't trying to find another high. I think some people try to find another high. Like now, man, a lot of these young people are on so many different things at the same time. Like, what are you searching for? You know, they popping pills, doing coke, drinking lean, doing everything all at the same time. Like, what is— and drinking. Like, what, what What are you trying to escape, or what are you searching for? You know, and I just know people who just smoke weed and still smoke joints. They don't smoke the— I know people who grow their own bud. They not even trusting what's going on now. Now they finding fentanyl in all this marijuana, you know.

And pesticides. Pesticides. Horrible pesticides, 'cause what people don't know is that a giant percentage of all the drugs, or marijuana rather, that people are buying in places where it's illegal, They're growing them in national forests in California, and the cartel's doing it. And the cartel uses a bunch of pesticides and herbicides that are illegal, like real toxic shit. And they find them doing it all the time. They find these grow-ops in the forest all the time because it's a misdemeanor. So because marijuana is legal in the state of California, growing it is just a misdemeanor. So you could have a full-scale grow-op in, you know, public land out in the forest. And these guys find them there all the time. A friend of mine found one in a ranch that he works at. He followed these PVC pipes and he realized that some guy was diverting water into this little area that was on a Tejon Ranch, which is a big ranch outside of Bakersfield. But this dude that was on my podcast before, his name is John Norris. He wrote a book about it. He was a game warden. Garden. And he had a— it turned into a tactical unit.

They had to get like dogs, like Belgian Malinois and shit, with bulletproof vests. And they're going in there having shootouts with the cartel because the cartel had set up these marijuana grow ops in the woods. And it was his job to police that area. It's like, okay, I guess that's what we're doing now. And then they— it's a crazy story, man.

Sound like moonshine. That's why you doing moonshine. Exactly, exactly. And this thing, moonshine, moonshining developed into NASCAR. Exactly, exactly. They had to outrun the cops.

Yeah, yeah, that's what NASCAR came about from. It's fun. It's— I mean, listen, also it's Al Capone, you know, it's all the, the mob. They were all running alcohol, and there's a lot of people that were connected to them, you know. Some people believe that JFK's dad was involved in alcohol, but that's disputed. But the point is, it's like a lot of people were making money selling alcohol. They were all criminals, all of them. And so what are you doing? Are you stopping people from getting marijuana? Nope. What you're doing is you are empowering a criminal empire, and you're giving them an immense amount of money. And they're probably gonna have to kill a few people because people get in the way. They're probably gonna have to rob a few people because people are competition. There's a little bit of a problem over here.

We got another guy growing. When we live in— we live in a a society where the bad guy is definitely romanticized, right? So how do you stop people from wanting to be the bad guy when it's so romanticized in everything?

You know, it's romanticized to the point where John Wick is a good guy. Yeah, John Wick is a contract killer for the Russian mob. He kills who knows how many fucking people. And he's the good guy.

But, but you got a problem with the Iceman, right? Iceman was a terrible person, right? You know, he did it with poison.

John Wick at least looks sexy in that suit.

But you cannot wait for John Wick 6 to come out.

I love those. Well, the John Wick movie though, like, he had a reason. They killed his dog and they stole his car. They fucked up. They fucked up. They stole the wrong guy's car and they killed the wrong guy's puppy. And so you're rooting for him, you're rooting for him to kill all these bad Russian guys, but you don't realize like that guy's been a contract killer for the Russian mob for who knows how many dads he's assassinated. How many fucking people that have families that will never come home to them because of John Wick?

And yeah, and sometimes, a lot of times, you know, people don't care. We don't know. That's weird.

Well, we're weird. We're a weird animal. We're a weird animal in a constant flux of thoughts. And we, you know, trying to figure out what's the right way to think, the wrong way to think. And people join religions for it. They'll join cults for it. They'll join political movements for it. They just want to find a way to think that makes them feel better than the way they think right now.

You know, with, with the need to feel better outside of yourself, you know, or your family you know, or being, you know, great to society. I think that's detrimental to this society where I just need, I personally need to feel better, but I don't want the community around me to feel better. And in my mind, if everybody around you in the community feels better, I think it makes for a more harmonious you know, environment than me just being the only one.

Yeah, because you're a wise person. The problem is there's a lot of people that aren't wise and there's no one wise around them. And that's, that's the real issue, is that there's an extreme lack of like a good direction book on how to lead a solid life. You're not taught at school. In school, you're taught to sit down and learn some shit that you don't I don't give a fuck about learning. Memorize this, do good on the test. You got to get a job. What's a job? Well, you got to sit there and do some shit you don't want to do to get some money, and with the rest of your time you could do whatever you want as long as you keep showing up every morning at the same spot. Okay, and then that sucks. And so what do you want to do? I want to escape this suck. So what do I need? Cold syrup? Okay, give me some of that. What do I need? Weed? Give me some of that. Adderall? Ooh, Adderall makes me like the job. Okay, I'll take this shit every day. Now I don't give a fuck. Now I'm trying to get ahead.

Next thing you know, I'm moving up the corporate ladder. I don't know, fucking animal, bro, cuz I'm on Adderall. You're basically on meth. You're on a well-designed slow-drip amphetamine, and you're out there fucking sleeping 4 hours a day, getting shit done, you know, driving a Jaguar. And this is the problem with society, is it like people don't have a real— there's a lot of people out there that don't really have a purpose. They don't have a real feeling of purpose in their life. You are very fortunate because you found a thing that you're really good at, you love to do, and you make a great living doing it. A lot of people don't have a thing, and they don't— never, they never, never were taught to pursue a thing, or they never saw anybody else do it and they realized they could do it too. And then next thing you know, they're married and they have kids and they're in their 30s and then they're in their 40s and they feel like shit. I ask you a question.

You have a team, correct? Team of people. In terms of what? What team of people? Sure. Okay. Would— do you think your team is happy doing whatever they do for the team?

If I didn't think that, they wouldn't be working.

Okay, so you don't want to be the only one happy on the team? No, no, that's terrible.

So, and you don't want to also have someone on the team that is one of those people that just was never happy. That's a problem too. Yeah, that's a problem too. So there's people out there you can't fix.

So with, like, I produce other people's specials now, and comics that hit me, hey man, I want you to distribute my special, I want you to do this for myself. And the hardest thing, because I'm a small company, The hardest thing is when I have to explain to somebody why it's a no, you know, on this particular special. And it's not just my no. It is 4 other people's no because I tell people, and I explain this, if we doing a special with you, you have to get the approval of all 5 of us, 'cause we all 5 do different things. And I want everybody who's involved in your special to want to do it, not they have to do it because it's a part of the company. No, I want them to want to do it. And I say, I'm not putting you through a process that I'm not putting myself through. You know what I'm saying? And I've tested this team. With me giving them a special that I knew that wasn't special. And I'm the head. I'm like, I sent it out and they— we brought it back to the table and it was a lot of silence at first.

I'm like, so what we think? What we thinking? And they was like, I don't know. Like, Ali, this is horrible. And I'm just listening to everybody's, you know, opinion on it. And they was like, I don't understand the direction. I don't understand where you're going with this. I just, you know, we're gonna have to fix a lot of it. I'm like, and I'm just sitting there listening. And we took the vote. And when we turned the vote in, it was 5 nos. And he was like, so did, what was your take on it? I said, I knew it was a no from the beginning. I just wanted to make sure that y'all wasn't gonna try to fluff me with the, you know, 'cause he's the head, I'm— we're gonna say yes. And I'm like, good. So anytime we do a project, it was that I put it on the table just like I put anybody else's project on the table. And you got to get all 5 people. If you want me to finance, you got to get me. Then you got to get the marketing person that's going to market. Then you got to get the director.

You got to get the, um, the manager. You got to get everybody. So they can feel good about pushing your project. I don't want anybody pushing a project that they don't like. It's very smart.

Yeah, so you make it a democracy. You're smart.

So you got all 5 of us, then now we ready, right? I'm saying, and, and now I'm gonna feel good about somebody coming to me and say, this is gonna cost this, right? Because I know they're doing it out of, hey man, this is what's gonna cost, we gonna figure it out. We— and I'm like, cool. But even when I do a special, man, they— it is a lot of, "You don't wanna talk about this part." Like, no. Like, we should talk about this part. And it's been some decisions that have been made that was— it was my call at the end, but it was somebody else's idea. Like with Domino Effect. It would've never been a Domino Effect 2 2, 3, or 4 if I would've stuck with the name that I started with. The name was 1983. So what it was gonna be, '83, '86? Right, right, right. It's like, and Rugged, which won what, 3 Webby Awards? Rugged was, the original name was I'm Not Handy. And Eric called me, he was like, I'm like, no, I've listened to it, I watched it so many times, I think that we should go with this name.

And he gave me the name and I sat on it for a day and then I called him back, I'm like, yeah, you about right. I'm about right.

That's good, that means you got good people.

And I think that people should put, like right now I'm on the Custom Fit Tour. Well, I'm off until August, 'cause I'm gonna take 6 weeks of Vacation. But Custom Fit is not going to be a special. It's just the tour that I'm doing now because the specials that I'm writing are different than what I— I just wanted to take this time to just do some material. I didn't want to have a theme, be working on the special. Right. But the theme is about— people think Custom Fit is about clothes. It's not about clothes. It's about tailor-making the people around you. I'm saying, that can— you can be a benefit to and can be a benefit to you. I'm saying, not just having these people around, because, you know, sometimes people have a bunch of people around that secretly despise them, you know, and secretly despise their success. And that's, uh, that's detrimental to anything. Haters.

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes haters will get real close to you. Staying, staying next to you. It's a problem. I mean, when you're in a position like you're in too, when you're producing other people's specials, you're gonna get a bunch of people to come to you that you don't want to do their shit. It's just like owning the club, the same issue. The way I bypass that, I put all the power into Adam. Adam Egitt decides who's there and who's not there and how the club gets scheduled and, you know, who passes and who doesn't. And he's really good at it. You know, he's really good at it. He's— I trust him implicitly, so I don't have to think about it. And I like it so that when people say, I want to work your club, I'm like, well, you got to talk to Adam. I just perform. I might be the owner, but I just perform there. I don't, I don't think about it in terms of like how the scheduling is. I often have to check the website to see who's there. I don't know who's there. You know, it's, uh, it might be mine, but I got a guy who does it and he does it really well.

So why would I get involved in that?

When I— It's easier to not. When I had the club in Houston, I couldn't be funny in the club at all. Why not? 'Cause I was actively working the club. So I'm on stage and I'm worried about—

Oh, I see.

So many other things going on. Like, yo, did you just drop a glass on the ground? Like I'm— I didn't have enough help.

So you got to get the right help. Yeah, I got very fortunate in that a lot of the people that I took to Austin, they were from the Comedy Store and they were out of work. So the Comedy Store closed because the fucking stupid government of LA, they wouldn't even allow them to do outside shows. Wouldn't— you couldn't do an outside show in the parking lot of the Comedy Store. They wouldn't allow it. It's so stupid. They were closed for like a good solid year and a half. They couldn't support paying all these people, so they had to get rid of them. And I moved here, and it's the same time. It just by chance it happened at the same time. And so they were all out of work, and I said, hey, let's get the band back together again. Let's— let's do— you guys want to move to Austin? So I paid for everybody to come out here, and I paid for them. I gave them a full salary with everything for like a year and a half or so, maybe even more. Maybe 2 years before anybody had to go to work because the club wasn't open.

So I was like, I want to give you a job, like, so you could settle in, get used to Austin. You're gonna get paid like you get paid, like you're working, but you don't have to work. But I love you, I know you, and, you know, come here.

Very admirable. With the store, I just performed at the store, um, main room. For TDE. They had a thing before BET Awards, so I popped in. And The Comedy Store has a certain politics to it that, you know, I like the other one a little more, even though all they serve is pop. Improv? No, the other Comedy Store. Oh, La Jolla?

Yeah, La Jolla. La Jolla is the shit. Which is— That place is the shit. What a club.

They just don't have food. No. Popcorn, drinks.

I don't believe in food in comedy clubs either. Yeah, so. But it's just a different environment. La Jolla is like very nice, beautiful place. That club is awesome. I love performing there.

And with the store in LA, it's like you get there and it seems very segregated.

This is now?

To me, that's when I come.

How long ago was this?

I just performed. What, last week, last Wednesday.

That's sad to hear, because it wasn't like that before.

It seemed like the main room and the room around the corner and the belly, all these rooms are different spaces. And that's to me, and I may just, it may just be that feel because I'm not there a lot, you know. But when I come, before I came that time, but the management walked up was very pleasant.

What do you mean by different spaces? But obviously the different rooms, but I mean, what do you mean?

It seemed like the main room is different from the room around the corner.

Well, it is different, but what do you mean by feels different?

It feels, it feels a little different.

Well, I mean just by its design. It's a big showroom. It's, it's brighter. The ceilings are taller and then you get into the original room, which is just tight and perfect. The original room is like that's where you find out what's real, you know. I've seen a lot of people have rough sets. They were real, real confident going into that room.

That room is a truth serum. I like a tight room.

Well, then, then there's the belly room. The belly room is the ultimate truth serum. The— trying out new jokes in the belly room is the place because, you know, only seats 70 people.

You can't bullshit those people. That's the, that's the crème de la crème.

Oh yeah, it's a tight Belly Room is—

because that's what I came from, such a good room. I came from small audiences.

They're the best. It's the best for finding out if jokes are real. There's nothing like a small crowd. Like in our club, we have the Little Boy, the Little Boy. We have our rooms are named after the bombs they dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And Little Boy is only 110 seats. It's a super low ceiling.

This is when You know, it's those times in comedy when you knew that that's what you actually love to do. And I remember I was in San Antonio at this place called Santa's. He literally owned the whole strip, the club, the washateria, the corner store, everything. The guy named Santa. I didn't know that he owned it, but it was like a rainstorm or something. The show got rained out. And it is literally 3 people in this room. It's 2 ladies and it's Santa. And I don't know that this is him at the time. And we had to go on to get paid. The promoter was like, I'm not paying nobody who don't go on. We still doing the show. I'm like, okay. So this is $100. He's getting paid $100. And he was like, who going up? I'm like, I'm definitely going up and I'm going up first. Like, I don't, I don't care. I did like an hour and 30 minutes for 3 people. And I was like, because I kept looking at like anybody else going over there. He was like, nah, we good. I'm like, I— and Santa, I remember he, he finally revealed that he was the owner of the club.

And he was like, well, let me take you to the back. He took me to the back and he gave me like $700. $100, you know what I'm saying, for performing. He say, yeah, man, you wasn't scared. And me and my friends had a good time. And it was like 3 people. It was literally the dude named Vance put the show on. It was like 3. Vance tell anybody this story. He was like, this is when I knew Ali was different. When he went out, 3 people, he went first, and he's like an hour and 30. And he was like, and it didn't look like he was coming down. I'm like, Yo, bruh, I'm here. This is what I do. I don't— and I need that $100. So that's definitely some extra motivation.

That's crazy that no one else wanted to go up. They was like, no.

And another time I was at Wiley, it was Wiley College, and Marcus was performing and the mic went out. And it's like all these people in this auditorium, the same place they shot— Denzel shot the movie The Great Debate. So we in this auditorium and the sound goes out. And they start ribbing Marcus and I, and I was in the back. I was like, what's going on? And he's like, the sound went out. And I walked out. I was like, what's happening? And I said, hold on, Marcus. Let me ask him something. Wait a minute. I know damn well y'all not in here trying to get somebody in a problem because y'all got us in— we didn't bring this sound system. Got us in Fair East Side High performing Broken Clock. And so I say, listen, Marcus sat down in the back. I was like, yo, this is what we gonna do. I'mma talk, y'all gonna laugh, then I'mma talk some more. But y'all can't be laughing all along 'cause we don't have no sound. I'm not supposed to use my real voice in this. So I'm at like 45, and then I look back at Marcus, I say, hey man, you wanna come back up?

Marcus was like, no. Like, you got it? Like an hour and 20, he's like, yo, Ali's nuts. I'm like, no, this is what I do, and I'mma figure it out.

We did a show at the Improv once in Hollywood, and the power went out, and they were gonna cancel the show. And we were sitting there talking, and I said, why don't— can we light the stage somehow? And they said, yeah, we can get a an emergency light attached to like a generator and we could put a, you know, put the— run the wires through the crowd and put an emergency light on the stage. I go, that's that. We'll do that. And then we'll just do stand-up with no mic. And we did the whole show with no mic. It was the opening, middle, and then me. I did a full hour. It was amazing. Everybody had a great fucking time. It felt special. It felt very unusual. Yeah, you got to see what it's like, like when you don't have a microphone and you're projecting to the back of the room. Changed my pacing on things, but it was great. It was— it felt cool. It felt like you were doing something, and the audience was into it. I go, look, we're gonna have fun, right? Like, fuck it, who cares? This is gonna be— this is never gonna happen again, probably ever.

I've never— I've been doing comedy 30-something years. I've never had that happen where I did a show with no microphone except that one.

So this is the thing, these are the experiences that as a comic going through the trenches that some comics will never have. Right. Because they didn't come up that way. And you have a different set of chops when you come up a certain type of way. I've come up in— just joking had to be the craziest place. 'Cause some nights you're coming in, it's like, 9 people, but these 9 people are into comedy. And Alice would be like, you gotta do the show. Like, it's not a— we don't have a limit. We gotta do these people that's here. Because what the thing is, that whole idea that the show must go on regardless, regardless too.

Well, I learned that from Paul Mooney too. And one of the things that I said, I did a show at the Comedy Store. It's like like the first time that Mooney ever complimented me. And that— I was always scared of him because like, Mooney didn't like you, it was terrifying. Yes, he was a legend. He was a legend, wrote for Richard Pryor, and it was like the way he carried himself, like he didn't like you, like, uh. And I was 27, you know, I was young and stupid. And I went up because I would always go up last or late. I had late spots, and there was like 15 people in the room, but I did my act. And I heard in the back of the room, "Ah ha, ah ha." He was laughing, having fun, and then he grabbed me afterwards, he goes, "You're a real motherfucking comic." He goes, "That's what a real comic does." He goes, "All these other motherfuckers, they went up there and they did, 'Oh, where you from?' Bitch, I know where I'm from. Tell me some fucking jokes, do your fucking act, and that's what you did." And I was like, "Wow, Paul Mooney likes me, whoo." Me and Paul had a, different type of relationship.

Did you and Paul not get along?

Um, one, I have to always say I love, I love Paul until I met him. It's like Paul was on some bullshit when he— when I met Paul, man. I was at the Improv and I was featuring for him, and the Improv had got me to feature for him, and I was like, cool, I'm excited, I get to one of my idols in this game, one of the people who changed the course of my pacing, 'cause it— my lineage to sitting down, I passed through Paul. So it's— when I first started, I was a crazy man. I was all over the place, thought that you had to have this, all this energy. And then this guy named Dez White walked into the club One night I was there and Dez stood in the same exact place. He never took the mic out the stand, put his drink down on the stool, and Dez just stood there and he was destroying this room. Never took the mic out the stand. And people, and he always, some of my people say, Dez, Dez, why you don't take the mic out the stand? And he's like, because there's a stand.

Let it They didn't hold the mic.

So some of my favorite comics don't take the mic out of the stand. Ron White. Yeah, Ron White just stands there with a drink on a stool, sometimes with cigar, just killing with the microphone in the stand. Oh man, Joey Diaz. Joey Diaz keeps the fucking mic in the stand and he makes me laugh harder than any fucking human being that's ever lived. That—

so I'm gonna go to— I'm gonna finish Paul, then I'm gonna go to Ron. So what did he do though? So I'm in the green room and at the old Improv where they had a downstairs, you would come through the, it used to be a Rainforest Cafe. Right, right, right. Yeah, so it was Spellbinders at first and then it changed. So I'm sitting in the green room and like it's a main part and it's a smaller part. He walked into the small part and said, hey, go count the room. And I was like, what? Yeah, go count the room. I was like, I don't, I don't work here like that. I don't count the room. And he's like, yeah, all right. Then he walked out and then he came back like maybe 25 minutes later. Yeah, tell you and your little white friend that it's packed out there and I want my bonus. What, like, what white friend? What are you, what are you talking about? Raymond Cook is the manager of the club at the time. He was talking about Raymond, and I was like, yo, Paul, I don't count the room. I'm, I'm the feature.

Why would I be counting the fucking room? Like, and then he said something else negative to me, and I'm like, yo, Paul, if you say something else to me, I'm gonna kick your ass, Paul. Like, what the— what is wrong with you? So I called DL, I'm like, yo, I'm about to fucking beat up Paul Mooney. He's like, you can't beat up Paul Mooney, he's a legend. I'm like, it's like, even if you beat him up, you're still not gonna win. It's like, it's gonna be a loss. So I'm like, yo, so then another time— oh, and then later on that, that same weekend, he had this lady with him and she was sitting at the top and I was sitting up there. And she got up and she left her purse. So I didn't want to leave and leave the lady's purse there, so I grabbed the strap and I got the purse like this. I came in, I'm like, "Hey, ma'am, you left your purse." And Paul turned around like, "What are you doing with her purse?" I said, "She left it." And then the only thing in my head is, "DL, you cannot beat up Paul Mooney." So I just walked out.

I'm like, "I'm gonna fuck Paul up." What year was this? This is like 3 years before he died. And this was the old improv.

This is what I'd heard, just for clarity. He was struggling in the last years of his life. So you probably didn't get the best version of Paul Mooney.

So then we here in Austin. We performing at the theater that's right next to the Paramount. It's another theater that's connected to the Paramount. The Black Heritage, the Black Art something, had booked both of us, not knowing that we had odds. So I'm in my green room, and the lady comes in. Hey, she's very nice. Hey, Ali, Paul Mooney's next door, you know what I'm saying? And you would like to meet him? And I was like, no, I'm cool. And then she goes, Paul, Ali's next door, you know, I don't know if y'all want to meet each other. And Paul was like, no, I'm cool. And I went up, I'm in my green room, and the host is on stage, and Paul was getting ready to go up. And this was his apology. He walked by the room and came back like on Purple Rain, came back and leaned in the room, went, "Hi, Ali." And then I think Paul's fucking nuts, man. And yeah, but he—

that's— you got to take that. That, you know, there's certain people are just eccentric. That's Paul. I mean, I wouldn't have counted the fucking room either. I would have been like, that's not my job. Yeah, but Ron White—

I was in Orlando, manager Orlando called me, say, hey Ali, um, I know you have a, I know you have a, um, a feature, but, um, Ron White would like to, um, you know, feature for you. Ron White. And I was like, I don't, I don't know, um, no person named Ron White. And she's like, you don't know Ron White? I'm like, wait a minute, like Ron White, Ron White? I think it was like some other guy who's using his name or something like that. His name happens to be Ron White too. Like, Ron White, Ron White? He's like, yeah. I said, he wanna feature for who? He said, you. He called and asked. I was like, I'm like, the fuck? I say, hell yeah. So I call Marcus. I'm like, yo, Marcus, you gonna go up and then you gonna bring up Ron White. When was this? This was like maybe 4 years ago. That's crazy. And Ron shows up in this huge tour bus. Like, I'm walking to the club and I'm like, who bus is this? And I'm like, I'm like, oh shit, it's Ron's bus. It got the tequila brand on it and all that.

And he's in his bus. He's not even in the green room. Then I get a knock on the door, and it's his manager. He's like, hey, Ron would like to know, can he come in the green room? I was like, it's fucking Ron White, yeah, he can come in the green room. So he comes in, he's like, yo man, I just wanna, I love what you do, I just wanna do some time. Ron went up there and was destroying this room, and I couldn't wait to get up because I wanted to just talk about fucking Ron White just featured me. And I destroyed this room, and Ron, he sat out and watched. He was like, "You're fucking amazing." And like, in my mind is I'm still in awe that Ron White wanted to fucking— Wanted to work with you. I was like, "That shit was crazy to me." That's so cool.

Well, you know, when he's working on new stuff, that's what he likes to do. He likes to go around and does a lot of sets. He's constantly active. He's at the club tonight. We're working tonight. He's one of the main reasons I moved here. Ron moved here before the pandemic, so I called him up in like 2018. I'd loved having him at the store. So he started coming to the store around 2014-ish, something like that. And oh my god, we had so much fun for years and years. Years, and he had a beautiful place up in Beverly Hills. And then he just got sick because he's always traveling. He just got sick of the long flights and the traffic. And I called him up, I go, why'd you move to Texas? He goes, Austin's amazing, the food's fucking great, everyone's nice, it's in the middle of the country. If I want to fly to Florida, it's quick. If I want to fly to— I'm like, goddamn it, can I live in Texas? And then the shit hit the fan with COVID and I was like, I'm gonna get the fuck out of California. This place sucks.

They're telling me what to do. This is not what I signed up You tell me I can work, you tell me I have to wear a mask, fuck you, I'm getting out of here. And when I came to Austin, it was one of the main reasons why I was willing to move here. I'm like, if we never do comedy again, at least I can hang out with Ron.

That's, that's amazing.

Yeah, and then everybody else came. And then once— I mean, everybody says that I got everybody to move here, sorta. I got a lot of people to move here, but Ron got me to move here. That's the most important thing. Like, Ron got me to move here, and then I realized how nice people are here and how disconnected connected they are from show business. And I was like, oh, this is so refreshing. Everyone's just normal. My neighbor's a normal guy. Everyone's normal. They're regular people, just people living their lives, having a good time, you know. It's like— and for me, you know, because I love hunting, this is— everyone hunts out here. Yeah, it's, it's, it's like a normal pastime. I tell people I bow hunt in California. Texas is—

Texas, we have been a gem for a long time, and we just let other people feel like they the upper echelon. We was like, okay.

Texas ruled forever. I mean, you gotta think Kenneson and Hicks, two of the greatest of all time, came outta Houston. Yep. And when I was coming here all the time, I knew it, right? So one of the things that was good about doing comedy is a lot of people that moved during the pandemic just wanted to get outta California, but they had no idea what the rest of the world was gonna be like. They never been to Nashville, they never been to Austin. I've been here a couple dozen times. I knew I loved it. So I was like, look, this will be alright, like, I'll be fine. Like, it looks like I'm never doing comedy again. I was like, it looks like comedy's done. It looks like they're gonna fucking make us just stay indoors, especially in like blue cities. Like, this is crazy. You have to have a vax card to eat at a restaurant in New York City. Like, this is fucking bananas. None of this shit makes any sense.

I remember you guys came, Mothership was coming. The next thing I know, Creek in the Cave was here. Creek in the Cave was here first. Yeah, I'm saying how I heard about it. I'm like, oh, Creek in the Cave. I'm like, damn, okay, Creek in the Cave is coming from New York. And then Mothership is here. But they had rooms, you know, the main thing was, what was the room that was was so hard to get in there first. It was an Austin comedy club. Damn, I forget the name of it. Velveeta Room? No, no, it was the actual comedy club. Cap City? Cap City. Yes. Cap City.

That place was always packed. Yeah, you know. I almost bought that place.

Yeah, I heard that.

Yeah, I almost bought that whole mall, but the guy who was trying to sell it to me wanted way more than it was worth. And then he got roped up in some FBI investigation. I was told while it was going on that he was being investigated, and I was like, oh, okay. And then he wound up getting arrested. And but that building was for sale, the whole thing was for sale. And I went in there, I thought about how many shows I'd been there, how many shows I'd seen there, how many shows I performed there over the— I'm like, I could own this place.

Oh my god. Cap City was the first place that I did on the road with DL.

That was a great club, you know, fucking great club, perfect club. That place was amazing, such a fun place to work.

I think that people don't—

didn't realize how the rich history of Houston, Dallas, Austin, Laugh Stop, San Antonio, that, bro, Laugh Stop in Houston and River Oaks, one of the greatest clubs of all time. Somebody told me that that building still exists like that. That, that it's still set up like that, that there's nothing in it. Is that true?

There's nothing in it though, but it's still the same room.

Yep, man, we might have to do a Mothership Houston. Yeah, that's, uh, yeah, we see if there's another city that could support like a large group of talented up-and-comers, Houston's one of them.

Yeah, so you know, we have, um, Secret Group there.

We have, um, they had the other Cap City that upstairs. Remember they opened up the second one?

They closed that one and then opened up another one. I'm talking about Laugh— no, Cap City. Cap City had another one.

Oh no, I'm sorry, Laugh Stop.

Yeah, Laugh Stop. That was the Laugh Spot. Oh, they changed—

no, no, no, they had that already.

That already existed. No, the Laugh Spot had went upstairs on Wall. They had moved.

I thought that was the Laugh Stop. I thought it was the same group that— no, it was the same group that owned the Laugh Stop in River Oaks. The Laugh Spot was another place. I knew that because when I was working at the Laugh Stop, Ralphie May was working at the Laugh Spot. Yeah, we got together, we're hanging out and eat dinner. But that was— that was— I don't know, that was the old spot. Then there was the other Laugh Stop that they put upstairs. It was a new— but it didn't last. It was only for a couple years.

Yeah, I didn't go there. I didn't go to that.

It was a good spot. Yeah, then it went under. Yes. Yeah, Ari Shaffir did it with a Hitler mustache once. He trimmed his mustache to look like Adolf Hitler.

Ari is by far the craziest person that I know. Like, I thought my Uncle Mac was the craziest person, and then I met Ari. I'm like, this is the craziest person that I know. Yeah, he's awesome. Yeah, and he just moved to England.

I'm like, brother, gonna stab you. You move to England, they will fucking stab you. They stab people there.

Don't get stabbed. Ari is nuts, but he's such a cool dude. But he's fucking nuts. I said I went to go see him, um, at the Creek in the Cave when he, um, was getting ready to film his special. And I, I like, yo, Ari is so— Ari is so crazy. If you just— if people took time, just, just go through the diff— the many looks of Ari Shaffir on the internet. The one that killed me was the half— he was just bald on one side, then on the other. I was like, yo, is he doing Two-Face? Like, he is insane.

He did Two-Face from Batman. Yeah, he's out of his mind. But, but that's really who he is, you know. He ain't—

he's not trying. Yeah, he's not trying. He's— that's what he is.

He's out of his mind.

Yeah, complete maniac. When he tore up Burt, when I heard about him tearing up Burt's check, it was like $25,000. He's like, yo, I just made $25,000. He just tore the check up. Like, they'll write you another one. I'm like, are you insane? Like, he's the craziest person, but he's fun. I've had some great conversations on the phone with him and he's just, and I was very fucking smart dude. I was very honored when he called me to do the, um, his last, The Endless. Mm-hmm. You know, I was like, that's cool to say, because that, that's where I, that's a pivoting point, a major point in my career when I did, um, This Is Not Happening.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a great show, man. It was a great idea. I remember when he started doing it, he started doing it at The Lab at the Improv. So you remember The Lab? Yeah, another little room. Cool little room.

They should have never got rid of that room.

They changed that place and they fucked it up, in my opinion. That's the room— the main room's still awesome, but the Lab used to be in the back, and it was like there wasn't a big bar there.

I think it's still there. It's different now. Yeah, Dion Cole— when last time I was there, Dion Cole—

yeah, but it's different. It's not the same setup. It used to be you went through a door and it was like another small room. And in that small room, it was separated from the front door. They moved the front door, and now everybody went in through the parking lot, right? And so they went into the lab through the parking lot. So the front door was back there now, and when you would open it, it was all this noise from the street, and they had a curtain to block off the noise, and you'd hear people talk. They were like right next to your stage where they were buying tickets. It was annoying. And then there was the bar, which was right there. It's still a cool little small room once everybody settles in, but the original setup was way better. And Ari started doing it there, and I was like, what are you doing? And he's like, I'm gonna do a storyteller show.

I was like, ugh, what the fuck is that?

That's what I thought. I was like, why are you doing that? And then he said, well, it really helps you without like having to have like punchlines and setups and have everything really tight. You could find the beats in a story. And I was like, oh. Well, actually, that's brilliant. That's pretty fucking smart. It's a good alternative sort of way to develop bits. You know, you develop bits by working it out, but into a more loose format of telling a story.

And I didn't even know that that was the premise behind it, 'cause when I got it, it was like, you go on and you tell a true story. And I was like, okay, cool. That's my thing. Right. You know, and I had just won Comedy Central's Comic to Watch in like 2013. So you get a package, you get an album, you get a half hour, and you get a chance to go on one of the shows that's already on Comedy Central. So they was pitching me the Adam Devine show, and I was like, mm, I don't like it. And it was another show. I was like, nah, I'm cool. So every show that they would say that they wanted me to go on, I was like, nah, that really ain't my thing. So then Chase DeRusso, young comic, called me and said, hey, listen, you might want to go on This Is Not Happening. I was like, what's that? He say, it's a show started on the internet. You know, you— I went on and I watched both I think both seasons of it on the internet. And I was like, yo, this is the one.

So I called Anne Harris that kind of— I was like, this is the show that I want to do. And Ari didn't know me. Ari's like, I don't know him. But Eric Abrams is one of the co-creators of the show. He's like, I know him. So he's pretty good. You should bring him on. And Ari would already tell anybody, he's like, I didn't know him. Know what he was gonna do. But all I know, it was a true— all you had to do was tell a true story. And I was like, perfect. Eric thought that I was gonna do the story that I did on the second time that I was on. But I— and I was like, when I got there, I was listening to people's stories, and I was like, nah, I'm gonna do a lighter story. Because the second story is Mitchell. It's like when I was gonna kill his CO. And I was like, nah, I should do a lighter one. And then I did the prison riot, which is affectionately known as Mexican got on boots. And Ari's like, best fucking story I ever heard. I'm like, me telling the story about a riot, a prison riot.

Like, you know, and I'm telling what happened. And I only did like 16 minutes of what happened. That was a whole ordeal. Like, it wasn't a 16-minute riot. It was like 9 hours. Like, the whole thing is like 9 hours. I only told the beginning part of it, which was, you know, pretty cool.

You know what happened? I already lost the show, right? Yeah.

Yeah. And so that— so when the show came back, it's with Roy Woods. They called me to do it, and the loyal spirit in me, I called Ari first. I was like, hey, they want me to do this show, I'm really not fucking with it. And he's like, no, no, do it. I was like, what? He's like, I heard about all the stuff. He's like, man, do it. Eric is still shooting it, you know what I'm saying? So you should do it. He goes, we wanted you to be the host, but they didn't want you to do it. You know, they got Roy, which is cool.

I don't think they wanted anybody affiliated with Ari to do it. Yeah, so punishing Ari.

So when they tell people why—

so for people that don't know, they already got a deal. He got an offer to do a Netflix special, and he wanted to do it, and they wanted him to do the special on Comedy Central. And he said, well, I don't have to, it's not in my contract. They said, well, if you don't do it, we're gonna cancel your show. He was like, wow, I can't believe you would do that.

And that ain't what you tell Ari.

Nope. No. So we were trying to figure it out. I offered to host it for free. I said, I will come in and host it. I'd already done it. So I'll come in, I'll host it for no money. I go, because he wanted to make sure that everybody was paid. He was gonna take out a loan and Ari was gonna pay all the grips, all the camera people, because they, you know, these people, they chart out their year. They're like, oh, I'm doing this, it's not happening for the next 6 weeks, and then I'm doing this for 5 weeks, and I'm— that's their year, and that's how they budget their life. And Ari decided that he was gonna take out a loan to pay everybody. So, and I'm like, wow. I go, listen, man, go tell Comedy Central that I'll host it for free. They weren't interested. They weren't interested in anybody affiliated with him. He tried to— he offered up a bunch of other comics. Yep, they weren't interested.

So I was in that group of the bunch because I know it was you, it was Joey, It was me, Bert, and they just got me to do it. Once Ari told me it was cool, he's like, "Man, do it." Yeah, Ari would never try to stop anybody from working. So what I went on and did in my protest of, you know, you didn't want Ari, so what I did was told a story about Ari. I just told him like, "Okay, cool." My story is mushroom story, which is an Ari. And I started out with, yo, second season I did this show, Ari gave me mushrooms. And Ari went through the whole thing of what happened when Ari gave me the mushrooms. I ate the mushrooms. I didn't know that they were mushrooms mushrooms. I thought they was something else. And it was like I ate an eighth of mushrooms. And it was a long, long trip.

Day. Rude thing to not tell you to not eat all of them.

And I remember Janice, Janice was my assistant. And I remember I had to fly the next day and I'm still, I'm still gone. I'm out of my shit. So I get to the airport and I call Janice. I said, Janice, people are going through this machine. And then I'm not seeing them anymore. And it's like, he's nuts, he's going like— and Janet said they probably going to various places. I was like, but I don't want to go to various, I want to go to Houston. So then when I get up to the TSA agent, I said, hey, I'm seeing a lot of people go through this machine and then I'm not seeing them anymore. Where are they going? The man said, man, various places. And I got out the line, I called Jan, I said, you are right, they are going to various. Jan's like, he's nuts, like he's losing it. I'm like, yo, I was so toasted and just getting on the plane with still full of mushrooms, it was— I just, I wanted to just close my eyes, but the shit just wasn't working. It was like I was I was out of it.

I never, mushrooms is a crazy thing. It's a crazy thing. And that same week, 'cause I was there for a couple days, Joey Diaz gave me a black star. And I remember calling somebody, he was like, yo, don't you eat that shit. He say, if you wanna lose it, don't you. So it's an episode of I'm on Joey Diaz. This is back when I was smoking. I took an edible with the Flying Jew, and me and him, it's like you literally see us. I was fine at first, and then you— Joey's the only person that's in this studio that's still together. And you just slowly see us just melting. We both did. And then I know I was speaking very good English at one point, then I was— and it was like, yeah. Oh, it's— Joey was like, oh, I understand. I don't understand.

The Church of What's Happening Now had some of the greatest overdose on weed moments ever in the history of the internet. Just Lee, just seeing Lee Sia just melting, cuz he can't keep his eyes open. He's, he's just melting in his chair.

Yo, it's like, at first I was like, yo, he's tripping. Then all of a sudden I'm like I'm like, this is not happening to me. Like, it was crazy. Joey Diaz doesn't give a fuck. And then—

Because I want to see the devil.

The other side of the story is another comic with me named Billy Sorels. He had taken some edibles, but he ain't on the show, so he's outside. He didn't just melt it out. Like, he's just sitting on the ground outside the studio like, yo, those black stars are 500 milligrams. Yo, I— that was—

yeah, I saw Joey eat two of those once. Just chucked down two of them. I'm like, that is so crazy. That's so much. You know, Jamie doesn't feel it. Edibles don't work on him. Jamie's got some weird fucking biological condition. Throw it at me, I'll try it. Yeah, I'm not afraid. He doesn't give a fuck. He's not scared of edibles at all.

I've done two different types of mushrooms. I didn't know that they were. It's like the ones where I was really on one, that's the one that Ari gave me, and then there's some other ones that made me very talkative.

Like, "Look at me!" start. He's in another dimension right now. Oh, he can't keep the headphones on. He doesn't know what to do. Oh, Joey's the best. They're back. They're doing it again. They back. They're back together again. Yeah. Oh man, they're doing it. Are they doing it out of New Jersey? Is that what they're doing? It has to be. Yeah, he's the best.

Yeah, I remember I called Moses Malone for, um, Joey because he's a big Moses Malone fan. Before Moses died, I called him. He's like, you know Moses Malone? No fucking way you know Moses Malone. I'm like, yeah, I know fucking Moses. And then Moses was nuts too. Like, Moses Malone was a fucking nut.

Have you heard about these new mushrooms that make you see little tiny people?

Oh no, no, I haven't. The talkative ones were like, I called a lot of people on my phone and everybody's same report was You know, you call me like 3 in the morning, tell me you want to talk to me about my life. I'm like—

and which ones are those? What did you take? It's not psilocybin, it's something different?

Yeah, it's something different. It made me very talkative. DeLay, I told DeLay about it. What that would be? Comic named DeLay. I told him about it because he— I called him and I talked to him for like hours just about it. So then He end up taking the same mushrooms. He called me and I knew what it was. I was like, go ahead, just talk. He was talking his ass off. I had put the phone down and went to sleep. I woke up, he was still talking. I was like, yo, this shit is crazy. What is it? I don't— man, I gotta—

Jamie, put that into Perplexity. I gotta call— put that into our AI sponsor and find out what mushrooms make you talkative.

Yeah, I know who gave them to me, so I call her and ask, hey, Hey, what was them shrooms that you gave me? Because she went and bought them, and like, I was a fucking talkative mess.

I don't know what that is. I've never heard of that before. Most of the time when people take shrooms, they can't talk. You know, it's like, uh, no, I was—

oh my God, I was on one. That's crazy. I wonder what that is, because the ones that Ari gave me, it just says it's magic mushrooms, just in general.

Huh. Some people's response to it. Yeah, but he's—

he's— it seems that there's different responses to different ones.

I know I'm saying On the screen says what I just said.

Huh, I don't think there's enough research for Perplexity to have an educated answer. Right, how much research are they doing out there? Mm-hmm, talkative social on magic mushrooms, but there's no specific mushroom reliably proven to make you talkative. All right, ask if there's a mushroom that makes you see little people. Yeah, that's different. I know, I know, but I want to see what Perplexity has to say about it. What does Perplexity say? Ask it about, is there a mushroom that makes you see little people? Let's see if it really is up on its psychedelic science.

It's just going to repeat the articles I just pulled up.

I want to see what it says though. It's just a question to see how it handles this. Yes, a specific edible mushroom called lanmoa. Asiatica has been reported to cause very vivid hallucinations. You say hallucinations, maybe they're really little people right there. Of little people when it's undercooked, a phenomenon known as Lilliputian hallucinations. So the thing is, how do you know it's a hallucination? Maybe you're just now can see these things that people have been writing about for eons. How ignorant are people and how arrogant are we? That we know everything that's going on all around us all the time. We don't. People have always thought gremlins are real and gnomes were real, fairies.

Studying that since the '60s.

Of course they have been. I'm studying it right now. Let's study. Let's go study mushrooms, man. Yeah, they've been studying it, but like, the real problem is there's got to be a bunch of— I know for sure there's other strains that are much more potent because I know a guy who's a mushroom guy. He's like deep in the world of mushrooms, and he was explaining to me that there's one that's like 10x stronger, and there's one— there's new ones that they found. I think they found a new one, I want to say in China, they found a new hallucinogenic mushroom. But this one, this Lilliputian one, is weird because it's not psilocybin.

So when it's cooked, this has something to do with cooking it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Once you normally eat them raw?

No, it's, um, that I think this might be the Chinese one because I think it's a— is it? Yeah. Okay. So this is— I conflated the two. So they eat it. If you cook it and you do a real good job cooking it, you don't trip. But apparently some people have not cooked it and eaten it and go, oh, wait a minute, what are we cooking out of this? When you're— you might be cooking out whatever the mushroom is giving you to let you see the spirit world or see the fairy world or the gnome world or or whatever it is. Restaurant, you can get in restaurants. Let's go! I'd be like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, undercook my— just put it on some salad dressing, send that shit out, let's go!

I, I don't have a— I unfortunately, I don't have a problem with mushrooms. I, I think that— and I just like being— unfortunately, what do you mean? Because, you know, some people like, you shouldn't be on there. I'm like, but I, I don't have a problem with mushrooms, and especially if I'm in in a safe environment, but being at the Lowe's on mushrooms, that's not the best place to be.

Also trying to fight it. If you fight it, you're fucked. If you start going and you start like, no, I don't like this, like, uh-oh, it's gonna get dark on you.

It's gonna, like, I've tried to wrestle with it. I've had them in chocolate, like little chocolate squares, and it's It's been a time. I don't, it's been a time. Sometimes it can get rough. To see little people, I definitely wanna be somewhere where I just need to be somewhere safe.

Bryan Simpson has a hilarious story about someone gave him a mushroom chocolate bar and he put it in his freezer and forgot, forgot that it was a mushroom bar and then just ate the whole thing and just went to Pluto. He's like Dr. Manhattan sitting on Mars, fucking lotus position.

This one's kind of strange. It says, doesn't matter who you are or what you do, you're gonna have the same experience as everybody else who's done it.

Okay, at that point in time, when do we start to say maybe there's something in this substance, this compound, this molecule that lets you interact with something that's real, that's around you? If it's repeatable, people over and over and over again. If all these people see the same thing over and over and over again, and people have been writing about it since the beginning of time— they've been writing about elves and fairies and gnomes and magic people in the woods— what do you think they were doing? They were probably eating these fucking mushrooms.

So this is a show that I watch that I still don't know what this show is about, but I've watched— I'm on season number 4. And I have no idea what it is. What show is it?

It's called From. Ah, I've been watching it. I love that show. I'm in the middle of season 4 right now.

And so you know he's taking mushrooms.

The one guy did, yeah. Well, spoiler alert. Spoiler alert.

No, but you know. Spoiler alert. But you know already.

Big spoiler. I know, but the people that are listening don't know.

Hey, the people, it's still gonna be fantastic.

Don't fuck this up. It's good.

No, it's on MGM. No, they moved it. It's on Paramount. No, they moved it.

One of these new shows that's been talked about it's getting moved. No, no, no, that's still on Paramount. Yeah, I think it's MGM. I think it's MGM. Yo, great fucking show. Yeah, very original. I still— people— is officially on Netflix. There it is. I don't understand. Oh damn. Oh wait a minute, hold on. Maybe it's on Netflix as well. Yeah, that's—

yeah, that's all I was saying. Oh, that's what it is. It came on—

oh, it's on Epix and then You watched all these seasons. Good show. But you have no idea what— There's no rules. And so I called my director, I said, "Hey, I want to make a show that is about whatever we doing." And he's like, "Well, give me an example." I say, "Watch From." Like, I've watched all 4 seasons. I cannot tell you what this show is about. It's like, I just know this shit is good.

For people that don't know, that wanna watch it, it's these people trapped in this town, they all have the same circumstance. There's a downed tree in the road, they can't go further, so they turn around and they find themselves in a loop that keeps leading them through this town.

To the same town.

Over and over and over and over again, and no one in the town can escape, and at nighttime, monsters come out, and they look like people, they look like a mailman, they look very normal.

That scary-ass milkman. Oh, that whole thing is scary. It's scary. Like, that milkman is insane.

Yeah. That old lady. The old lady that knocks in the window. Oh, man. Terrifying. It's a terrifying show. It gives me anxiety, and I know it's all fake.

It's like, it's a crazy show. Yeah. And season 4 is even more bizarre. Yeah. Like, everything that I be thinking, I was like, yo, I think this is what it is. And then it don't, it doesn't be that, but then it come and I'm like, see? And like, but I'm like, see what? Like, what am I, like, I don't know the freak this show is going.

They don't know, no one knows where it's going. But it's like Lost, the same people that made Lost made that show. Word? Yeah, that's why it has that same sort of feel. And like crazy, doesn't make nothing, nothing, you can't predict what's gonna happen. You cannot predict.

Nothing makes sense. And very entertaining. Lloyd. Tickles the shit out of me. Lloyd is mad about every goddamn thing. But it's so— it's a crazy— it's crazy, but it's very interesting. Like, I don't miss it. I love it.

Yeah, I've been binging it. So I started— I guess me and my wife started about a month ago or so, and we burned through the first 3 seasons, and now we're into the 4th. Yeah, it's good. And I think the next season's coming out in 2027, but I don't know how they— I think the next season's the last season unless they decide to keep it going. Finale. It's the finale. They just announced that it's gonna be the last season. And maybe, maybe when that money comes rolling in. But the thing about this kind of show is you could do whatever you want. Like, yeah, you go back in time, you could do wild shit. Like, I don't want to give anything away, but yes, there's no rules. There's— you can make anything happen.

You can make anything.

It's a very strange show, but it's very entertaining.

It's—

oh man, it's a very entertaining show. Yeah, but if you want to just sit at home and watch shit and not do anything, man, you never picked a better time to be alive. You could waste your whole life just staring at a screen.

Yeah, like when I ask people, because my palate for what I take in and it's different than a lot of people. You— and I turn people on to a show. Like, when I turned my boy on to Peaky Blinders, I was like, yo, Peaky Blinders is a great show. I was like, yo, you got to watch Peaky Blinders. He called me and was like, yo, this is crazy. And I remember my boy D got so invested in, um, what was the first show, the motorcycle show that I turned him on to?

Um, I know what you're talking about. I never watched it. What is that show? That motorcycle show that everybody liked? You know what I'm talking about, Channing? That's it.

Sons of Anarchy. I turned him on to Sons of Anarchy. And it's a person on there that you kind of get invested in. And I remember he called me and said something about him. And I was like, yo, who? Like, who? What? What'd you say? And I'm putting on my shoes. And then I noticed, are you talking about the person on Sons of Anarchy? He said, yeah, that's him. Fucked up what they did. I was like, yo, you, you a crazy man. He's like, no, I'm so invested. And like, I was like, yo man, you are a wild person. But you know, Sons of Anarchy, Peaky Blinders, like I was big on Yellowstone and now the two spin-offs of Yellowstone, Marshalls and the Dutton Ranch. I, I can't not watch it. Like, shit is— it's some good shows out there. And I just can't watch the typical stuff. I gotta watch something that has a little more to it than what normal people would watch. Because I like to see normal people in shows, like something I can relate to. The Dutton Ranch, you know, being Texas this is— I don't— how ranching is, this is how I always experienced how ranching goes with cows and, and how you keep your land and all these different fights that people have over land.

I'm like, shit is, shit is pretty interesting. It's very interesting.

Yeah, that Taylor Sheridan's a friend of mine, the guy made that. He was on here the other day, um, uh, talking about it. But the other show that I love is Landman. Same kind of deal. It's all about the oil industry. Yeah, you just realize like, oh Jesus, is this how all this works?

Yeah, it's other things happening in life, and it's way more notorious people than a drug-dealing show. This is, man, crude oil is a business.

So it's such a big business, of course you're gonna get devious shit going on.

You gon' get shit happening. Has to.

Yeah, the real world of oil must be nuts. It must be nuts. I mean, that's why we're in war right now.

And you have to be ruthless. Yeah, you know, with oil, like, that's a big thing. And I don't understand fake meat. Like, why would people be giving somebody fake meat?

Well, because they make money selling fake meat. That's why. I mean, that's, that's, uh, what a lot of people were trying to push while they were saying that cows are bad. Cows, the methane, the environment, man. It's bullshit. Well, all they're doing is trying to— someone is pushing this idea that we need to stop eating meat because they're profiting off of us not eating meat. That's what it is. It's all it is. It's not bad for you. It's good for you. You need it. Protein, super healthy, one of the best foods in the world for you. There's just a bunch of horseshit out there saying that we need to eat less meat for the environment. No. We need to figure out how to not pollute, that's for sure. But regenerative farms aren't polluting. You're full of shit. It's not true. You know, if you want to say we need to stop doing factory farming, okay, maybe. Yeah, that's probably a good thing to do. But you need to figure out how to feed all these fucking people. You've developed a system that's entirely reliant on massive amounts of animals moving through. The amount of chickens that people eat in America every day is Crazy.

Yeah, it's cool. What are the amount of chickens that get consumed in America every day? Let's guess.

20 million.

At least. At least. I'm gonna say 50 million. 50 million chickens a day. How many million chickens a day get killed? Oh, okay. How many do we eat? How many millions of chickens do we eat every day in America?

Because I know I can account for 3 in my house.

22 million chickens every day, son. That's nuts. That is a crazy amount. That's way bigger than the entire residents of Los Angeles if every person was a chicken. Yeah, every— we eat that amount in this country every day. That's crazy.

In my home alone, if we roasting chicken and we going to get a roast chicken, we're going to get 3 of them because it's going to I didn't even know that I could eat a whole chicken by myself until I did it. It's like, yo, man, this Muslim grocery store, they sell them in there and it's already roasted and you get 2 garlic sauces with each chicken. And once you dip a piece of that chicken in that garlic sauce, it's not gonna survive. Like, it's like, I bought 3 of them 'cause I know if 2 are gonna make it home, I have to eat this one. Chicken by myself, and they put it on a piece of pita bread. It's already roasted, and it's insane that I would eat a whole chicken by myself.

Estimates suggest 24 to 26 million chickens are killed every day in the United States for meat. So it's a— So if you don't want factory farming, you gotta figure out a solution where you can get 26 million chickens a day, or you convince people they need to stop eating meat.

Meat. But if we look at, like, say if I'm looking at a show, um, Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon, when I would see them sit down to eat, it was a lot of meat on that table. Yeah, very variations of meat. It's a whole— they— I've never seen the king sit down, it wasn't a whole entire pig on the table. And then if Most people haven't bought a lamb, and you think that a lamb is enough. It depends on what you— on who's there. If you— if we— if it's Eid and it's after the fast and you put a lamb on a skewer and all these Muslim families come to your house, that's not enough. You need another lamb. You need two lambs, like whole lambs. It, man, it's, meat is delicious.

It's great for you too.

Don't let anybody tell you any different. Oh, and they can, but I'm not really listening. Like when somebody tell me about a vegan situation, I'll listen to you, but none of it is going in. It's like, you know how I say something comes in one ear and go out the other? It's not even going in the ear. It's like, I've already made my decision. Like, okay. Hey, I feel you, but I'm not really listening to you. I'm eating the lamb. Goat, I'm eating it.

Life eats life. It's just the factory farming thing is the uncomfortable part. That's the gross part. And if you just were on a ranch, it's natural. It's natural.

If you want to get overtaken, just let the animals just do they thing. Exactly. And see how many— see, see, don't you see a I Am Legend taught you that. Yeah. Like, yo, how many antlers ran through a place? It was a stampede. Like, it's a— so even like with the thing that happens in the ocean, sardines, right? So mass, all these mass sardines come one spot, then the whales come first, then the sharks come, and then we still get sardines. Sardines. After all these, this ecosystem is eaten, we still get sardines. It's, you're not running out of natural food if you let everything do its thing. You know, do you know how many jellyfish it is? Somebody should start eating them. You know what I'm saying? 'Cause that is a crazy, jellyfish can mob out.

Like mob out. And they can kill you.

And they can kill you. Yeah. Somebody eat 'em.

Something eats 'em. You can eat 'em at Chinese restaurants. I've had jellyfish before. Was it good? I don't remember it being good. I don't remember where I ate it, but I remember someone cooked a specific type of jellyfish and I was like, okay. So I didn't even know you could cook that.

In Texas and Louisiana— What kind of jellyfish are edible? Find out. In Texas and Louisiana, the amount of crawfish that we eat in 2 months is literally insane. Imagine if they didn't.

Imagine how many crawfish would be.

Yo, because imagine, I know I can account for at least £50 by myself.

Like, I know, I think how many crawfish there would be if people weren't eating them. Like, when I was a kid, uh, I grew up in Florida for a while. We lived in Florida in Gainesville, and there was alligators there, Florida, but they were protected back then. The alligators were protected like the Everglades. Well, it wasn't the Everglades quite here. Okay, hold on. Edible jellyfish. Best-known edible species used in Asian cuisine. Oh boy, try to say that word. Ropilaima esculentum, often referred to as the Japanese edible jellyfish. That's a lot easier. Salted in Japan. Or flame jellyfish. So there's a few different species of jellyfish. Anyway, my point was, when I was a kid, alligators were protected, and they were at this lake, and you could see them, and people would throw marshmallows in the water, and the alligators would eat them. And then now there's too many. Like, there's so many alligators there now, like, they can't get rid of them. They're, they're in every body of water. Everywhere you go, there's alligators. Yeah, the entire Everglades filled with alligators. Golf courses filled with alligators.

I remember when that, when that, um, the kid got eaten at Disney World. Yeah. And I was like, yo, that That's insanity. Because I don't trust a puddle of water in Florida. No. A puddle. It could be a puddle. I'm like, it's an alligator in there. But what they removed? 400-some-odd alligators from Disney World?

Oh, they remove them all the time. They have to check every day. They have to go back there and make sure that there's no alligators.

It's like a huge number that they— It's a huge number. Like maybe 24 this year, 40 or something this year. But it's 400 and something overall. Like, that's insane.

You know, Disney World has a bass fishing lake. You can go bass fishing at Disney World. There's like a little trip that you take. You go there. 414 alligators removed from Disney World since toddler's death 10 years ago. That's a lot of monsters. It's a lot of monsters, man.

They're legit monsters. I remember when I was in Guam I was in Guam doing a show, and I think the military had moved there, and it was a bird that they was trying to protect. And so they killed all these snakes. And this is how when you change the ecosystem to something, something happens. So the snakes, not only were they eating that bird, but they were eating and controlling the toad population. So when they got rid of the snake, We were coming back from the show and it's like, it's literally hundreds of thousands of frogs that come out at night. They everywhere. It's like you just see them flat in the street with you because you can't not, you can't miss them. It was hundreds of thousands of frogs on Guam. And I was like, yo man. People fuck up everything. They gotta do something, man. People metal.

Yeah, they gotta bring the snake back.

Yeah, gotta bring the snake back.

Stop. Stop, stop your bullshit. People just meddle. I mean, there's so many countries that are infested with animals that people brought in to kill other animals. You know, like Australia is a giant feral cat problem. They brought in feral cats, I think, to kill it. I forget what species. I think it was a toad they were trying to kill off.

My neighborhood has a goddamn cat problem. Like, my neighborhood is like One cat has some babies and my family has something to do with it. We fed, we fed the cat and then of course shit.

And you want to be nice. Meanwhile, they're killing billions of birds every year in this country. Cats, uh, I love cats though. I love cats too, but they kill billions. House cats kill billions of birds and mammals in this country every year.

If you, you don't have a bug problem if you have a cat in your house. House because we, you know, we had these water bugs. They call them cockroaches. But I've watched it before I left. The cat that's just outside, he was just slapping one around. It's like 5 of them dead out there. He's just slapping one around, like just toying with him. I'm like, but I don't mind because then they never make it into my house. It's like cats are—

you know about the Four Pests campaign that happened in China? What is that? What'd they Explains it to you in these little four pages.

Under Mao, aimed at exterminating rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows as a part of the Great Leap Forward. It was framed as a public hygiene and agricultural protection drive meant to reduce disease and protect grain from being eaten or contaminated. Mass mobilization methods included trapping and poisoning rats, swatting flies, mosquitoes, and organized efforts to scare and kill sparrows.

Just like that, it's— before you get to the end here, they had one little problem, so they introduced something else else to fix that problem. That created a new problem, so they introduced something else to fix that problem. Yeah, it ended here with tens of millions of people dying from a famine because they didn't have the natural ecosystem to— this is crazy.

So sparrows were targeted because they ate grain seeds, but they also consumed large numbers of crop-eating insects. Their near extinction caused an ecological imbalance leading to insect population booms, lower crop fields and contributing to Chinese famine, the Great Chinese Famine, which tens of millions died. Wow.

You got to give something to get something.

Yeah, man, you don't think you're smarter than nature, you dumb fuck. Yeah, you got to give something to get it because there's a balance out there and we don't totally understand that balance.

What's this fish that we have now?

Asian carp, the one that's infested all the different lakes.

And then the snakehead, that's another Then that the joint that torpedoes up. Oh, that's the Asian carp.

Yeah, they fly through the air when you're in a boat. Yeah, they just for whatever reason when you're in a boat, they just try to throw themselves onto the boat. Like, get me the fuck out of this lake. There's so many of them and they don't have a natural predator and they bring them into places sometimes to clean up the algae and then also now, now you have a carp problem. Now the carp eat all the algae. They eat everything. Where there's like your whole lake looks like a swimming pool. There's no algae left. Look at these fucking things. That is crazy. That's the Illinois River. I mean, this is just hundreds of fish just flying through the air everywhere they go. How nuts is that? You ever see people, they shoot them with bows and arrows, so they wait for them to hop up in the end, they try to catch them in the air with a bow and arrow with the string on it.

Oh yeah, there's a bunch of people do that.

That's so very popular sport. Is this fish edible? I don't know. I've never heard of anybody eat— I know people eat regular carp. I don't know if Asian— is Asian carp edible? Yep, there you go. It's lean and nutritious.

So I would just have a net rolling behind me and fillet of fish.

There you go. Don't you guys need product There you go. Get out there with bows and arrows and get it done.

How many crawfish does Texas and Louisiana consume in crawfish season?

That's a good question. I guess you would have to do it in pounds, right? Would you do it in pounds or millions of actual crawfish? Because they, they don't measure them in individuals. They weigh them by weight, right?

Because they're kind of little. Yeah, they go by weight.

How many pounds of crawfish do you think Texas— just say Texas and Louisiana in a year. 50 million?

Whoo, I have to ask again, but it did give me 90% of the farm crawfish comes from Louisiana.

Yeah, 90%. How many pounds? How many pounds does— I know I went way too high. How many pounds does Texas and Louisiana consume in a year? I'm gonna say 2 million. Of pounds?

No, it got to be more than that. Really?

2 million pounds is a lot. It's fucking way more than that. What is it?

What is it? 70% of the consumed amount is eaten in Louisiana, and the total is upwards of 150 million pounds. Yeah, I'm trying to tell you, 120 to 150 million annually. Whoa. Yeah, just in Louisiana, 70% which which is almost 100 million pounds of that, is just in Louisiana.

That's crazy. Between crawfish boils and crawfish egg touffée, that is fucking delicious. That's delicious. That is a crazy thing.

Texas doesn't have a number, it just says tens of millions.

Well, all we need— we got the Louisiana number. I would have thought that would be double what the whole country ate. That's crazy.

Like Maryland actually thinks that they are big on crab, and we just be shaking our head like, okay. I think we ship crab to them. The Chesapeake Bay cannot outdo the Gulf of Mexico. No. Gulf of America now, by the way. It is, we still— They changed the name. We still Gulf of Mexico. I don't think Mexico agreed. He's like, no. I don't think they did either. They're like, no, you know, this is not the Gulf of America. We still like, we're not saying that.

That's hilarious. Well, hey brother, it's great to talk to you again as always. It's always fun, man. Very good to do. Thank you. Do it more often, man.

I'm here. Okay, let's do it.

It's always fun. Yeah, uh, tell everybody where they want, if they want to consume all your specials. All of it's on YouTube, is it?

All of it's on YouTube, but you can go to alisadiq.com. Um, the new special out, My Father, is just getting busy right now. It is a, it's a great, this is a great special. It really is. Where did you record this? That was in Detroit.

Beautiful. Like I said, I love what you do. I love the fact that you're so prolific and you know, that you've built this whole thing just on hard work. So congratulations.

Appreciate you, thank you very much. Always good to see you. Alright, alright, bye-bye. Bye.