Transcript of #2575 - Sam Tallent

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Here we are. All right, we're up. Sam, your book is fucking great.

Thank you, Joe.

It's really good. Thank you, man. It's surprising. Yeah. Very interesting. It's, uh, you're a great writer, man.

Thank you, Joe.

You really are. I'm very proud of it. It's really good, man. It's, uh, you know, it's I mean, you're a very talented comedian, so I shouldn't be surprised, but it's always surprising when someone does something outside of comedy that they're really good at.

I think you should be surprised. I think you're rightfully surprised that, like, a filthy nightclub comic who's very good at selling chicken tenders, like, wrote a book that's kind of beautiful, you know? So yeah, I think that's a surprise.

Well, a beautiful book about an assassin, which is even more interesting.

Isn't that fun?

Yeah.

It's so much fun to take a thing we've all heard a million times and then, like, try and tell it like if it was actually happening in the real world. So I tried to like bring this down into the reality we all share. And, uh, it's violent, you know, it's sexy. I get to talk about Paris like it's fucking me. I love it.

Yeah. What, um, what was the motivation behind— like, how— so like when you decide you're going to write a book and you decide you're going to write a novel, you wrote a novel about comedy before, but this is different. This is, uh, about a hitman. Like, how did this come about?

Random House picked up Running the Light, my first novel, and they reissued it and they gave me a 2-book deal and they were like, what do you want to do for the second book? And I was like, I wrote this book kind of about like if I never left my hometown and it's like I'm a loser and I like walk along the side of the highway because I love novels about men who walk in like overalls, you know what I mean? Like there's this like, like Flannery O'Connor, like Larry Brown. There's all these great books about dudes who are like risking their lives for $300 so they can like fix the tires on their pickup truck. So I wanted to write that kind of book about me, and I was like, it's kind of quiet and like inward looking. And they were like, do you have literally anything else? That sounds so fucking boring. And I was like, I got 30 pages about a hitman killing a guy with his gun that's jammed, and he's like driving it into his skull like a spoon in mango. And they were like, run with it, kid. So this thing was like fun to write compared to the other stuff.

Because it's like a total fantasy, you know?

Where did it come from? Did you just sit down and like— what is your process when you decide you're going to start writing fiction? Do you have a thought in your mind? Do you sit down and let the thought come to you?

Literally, I wanted— I had this idea about a hitman, a killer trying to kill someone, but his gun jams. and then him showing human signs of frustration. And I was like, I want to write that short story about like, what's that look like to a guy who's supposed to be the best in the world at his job, but it turns out he's just as capable as all the infinite human failures that we all are. So that was the 30 pages I had of this, and it was going to be a short story. And then like I said, I was kind of incentivized by Random House to like, you know, they're giving me the ball, do some damage. Mm-hmm. And that's— this is damage, you know? It's like the covers, awesome. Yeah. It looks like a punk rock album that I would have bought when I was a kid. Like, it was— I don't want to say it was a commercial decision, but I definitely knew that this was the first time I was going to be on bookshelves, you know, with a hardcover release. And I wanted to write something that was an easily sellable bit of, you know, pulp fiction.

I love all those books, but I wanted to, you know, hide a love story in there as well. and like write about all the things that kind of— I wanted to explore nihilism and like all the existentialism that I like about like French writers and the Japanese, like bleak people. And this is kind of like my love letter to a lot of different— whether it's genre fiction, whether it's Paris, whether it's like my friends, you know? Because like there is— the guy is gay, but like I think I know how to write about loving men a lot more than I do loving women because like— I've loved a lot more men. I've never fucked any man in the ass. That'd be pretty sick if I could pull that off, but I'm like trapped by heterosexuality. Like, I would love to like spend a week at a bachelor party with the boys and have the most fun. Fraternity, paintball, ultimate frisbee, maybe if Jamie's there. But, uh, and then at the end of it, wouldn't it be great to just lay down and like blow each other? That'd be cool.

No.

That would be cool! Would it be? If we were capable of it.

Well, we're certainly capable of it. At gunpoint, I'm sure people are capable of a lot of things.

Oh sure, yeah, but I wish I wasn't at gunpoint. I wish I could do that and just be like, get in here, fellas.

Well, you are capable of it. You could decide to do it.

No, I love fat natties and pussy.

Well, then, yeah, so why would it be beautiful to do something that you don't love?

That's what I'm saying, is like, if I was capable of that, then I think that would be the ultimate expression of male friendship, would be like, get over here, boys, but Well, that's what the

Spartans did.

I know, right? They were cool. A lot of Vikings comforted each other that way.

I think there was a lot of homosexuality all throughout human history before— I think before people started talking.

For sure. Before they could give labels to things and it was just like holes in the dark. And then there was judgment once it's like a term, you know?

Right. And then there was people discussing things like, did you hear Mike fucked Tom?

Right, yeah.

Like, oh Jesus, Tom?

Yeah.

What the fuck?

And everyone's living to be 22 and they don't know where fire comes from, but they're still like, being gay is gross. That's a funny thing to think of in the cave.

There's also a lot of pederasty going on back then. There was a lot of, a lot of kid fucking. It was very common. And then also having sex with boys, men having sex with boys seems just ubiquitous all throughout history.

Yeah, it's kind of how you broke them in, you know.

Very strange.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you know about New Guinea?

Uh, I know about Old Guinea. No, I don't know about New Guinea. What's

the— the, uh, Papau New Guinea? Yeah. The, uh, the semen warriors. Do you know that story?

No, but please.

It's rough.

I'm gonna write down semen warriors.

Yeah, please write it down.

Which could be the name of this book.

Once you hear about this tribe, you're, you're gonna be pretty freaked out. Cool. So, um, upon the age, I think it's of 6 years old, young boys are taken away from their mothers and given to an older man who they call their father. And their— the folklore of their tribe is that for a man to grow strong, they must consume sperm anally and orally.

They think they have a mouth in their butt?

No, but that's— they take— they take it.

Okay.

You know what I'm saying?

No, I— yeah.

You get it.

I guess consume. I'm sorry.

Well, they have to consume it in the mouth, and then they take it in the butt. And then they, uh, they just get mouth-fucked and butt-fucked.

Yeah.

And this is, uh, like the tradition amongst this tribe. Well, who are we to judge, Joe? But it's just, you got to wonder like how that started and how you got everybody to go along with it, you know? Hey, give me your 6-year-old, I'm gonna mouth-fuck him.

Right.

Because that's how he's gonna grow strong.

Do you think it was tied to like, there was probably some like, you know, exploitative pervert Who was in control. Sure. And then there was like— he was already doing these bad things, and then there was like a record harvest that year. And then he was like, well, if you guys want to keep getting these record harvests, keep letting me fuck your kids in all their holes.

Perhaps. Right? Yeah, it wouldn't be a harvest because these are hunter-gatherers. It's a very primitive tribe, so it would be, you know—

So the biggest caribou ever was landed that year.

Something— wouldn't be caribou. Different geographic locations.

What goes on down there?

Uh, it's jungle.

Okay.

So it's, uh— So

it's like a macaw with the prettiest beard.

They probably eat a lot of monkeys. Yeah. Isn't

that how you get prion diseases?

You can, yeah.

Well, maybe that's why they're fucking all the kids, because they got monkey brain.

They also are cannibals, so you get prion diseases from that as well. But apparently prion diseases from cannibalism are a lot more rare than I thought. I was talking to— who is, uh, the guy who was explaining us? Daniel Everett? Is that who it was?

Jimmy, remember the cannibal you had on?

No, he was a guy who's spent time with a lot of indigenous tribes. Yeah. And there's 2 different types of cannibalism that they engage in. One of them is cannibalism of your enemies.

Yeah.

And the other one is cannibalism of your loved ones.

Okay.

So when you kill your enemies, you eat them. And then when your loved ones die, they— it's a really disgusting process. They would let them sit for 3 days. Okay. Putrefy, and they would put buckets underneath the body to capture the liquefying— the putrefying fluids, and then they would dunk their sweet potatoes into the putrefied liquids and eat it.

So it's kind of like a human candied sweet potato.

Something along those lines. Sure. And then they would eat, they would consume. He was talking about this one guy who was working with him who had to leave the project because he got to go back home and eat one of his relatives because they had died. And so he had to be a part of this ritual. So he had to, he had to depart. Huh. He had to go on his hero's journey.

Sure. Yeah. Goddamn. Well,

I don't know. I mean, it seems like there's a lot of like you know kid exploitation at all levels of like high power. Maybe power just ultimately leads to like that. Once you've had every delicacy on the buffet of life, then you're like, what's left? And it's like, well—

Right, you're at a Diddy party.

Yeah, yeah. You're at a Diddy party diddling.

Yeah, well, why, you know, why, when you— I have this bit on stage about like what happens, like how do you get to that point where you're hiring 15 male prostitutes to fuck your girlfriend in front of you? Like, what's— because you've seen everything. You've done too much. And then also drugs. Drugs play a giant part in that. extreme deviancy. Yeah. You know.

Most of the worst decisions I've made have been very high, and not on pot, you know, like whatever. I remember there was this weird opium going around Denver in like 2006, and they called it Red Dragon. And me and my friends, you know, we're reading a lot of like Burroughs, and we're like, let's get some of this Red Dragon.

Oh boy.

And boy howdy, if, if it didn't lead me to The only time I've ever committed any kind of like big property theft is we were all fucked up on this Red Dragon and we walked by a construction site and my buddy Crusty was like, hey, these lights go for like $800 a pop. And the next thing I know, I'm just like carrying 2 huge like construction lights down the street. And the cops came and they like see like a giant man, you know, and I like put them down and they were like, what are you doing with those lights? And I was like, oh, I thought we were supposed to set up for work here. And they were like, okay, carry on.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, so then I was just like you know, I was like, I gotta do opium forever. It makes me bulletproof. Like, apparently under the powers of opium, I'm the most persuasive person ever. And then that kind of drug logic, you try and apply it to like charming your teachers or whatever it is, and you're like on the nod in rhetoric class.

How old were you when you were doing this?

18, 19.

Okay, so this is college, like first years of college. And how were you consuming this opium? You smoking it?

Oh yeah, smoking it. We bought like a very like We all pooled our money to get like a special opium pipe.

What do they look like?

I can't remember. I was so high on opium. I don't know. We were always smoking in the back of someone's car, you know? So it's like the ritual of it was never there. It was like, let's get high and like go to Cici's Pizza Buffet.

Yeah, that is a ritual. It's not traditional.

Oh dude.

All rituals eventually become traditional for you.

Is it— was it this stuff? Do you know?

No, but,

uh, dragon's blood, something like that. Because they're saying— I'm looking it up. I typed in red dragon opium, but it says it's actually not opium and it was sold back then.

What is it?

I mean, it could have easily been fake.

It does not contain opium.

Yeah, awesome.

Oh, so what is it?

One article I think I just clicked on said it potentially was like the THC-9 stuff, maybe like an early version of it.

Huh.

What year was this?

2005, '06. Huh. Yeah.

Misbranded as a drug. See, it said, uh, Delta-9.

Okay. It was an unknown red substance. That was exactly what we were purchasing.

So you guys thought it was Opium.

Literally a man named Snake from Garden City, Kansas said, this is opium, and we were like, awesome. And he was a white guy with dreadlocks in 2005, so it was still brave.

Like a Gary Oldman looking dude?

Gary Oldman? We'd be lucky if you look like Gary Oldman.

Well, do you remember that from— what was it from? True Romance?

Oh yes, yeah,

dude.

No, it was more of like the Matrix twins.

Okay.

Remember those albino twins on The Matrix who fought? You know what I'm talking about?

Matrix twins?

The movie The Matrix.

The albinos?

Yeah, yeah.

Why do I not remember the—

Jamie? They're

in the sequel. They're like the—

Show me a couple albino twins.

Oh, the sequel.

Yeah, these— yeah, this is what he looked like.

Oh boy, I don't remember those guys.

Yeah.

Oh, now I do. Okay, okay, okay.

And he, uh, he was kind of our, our doula in a way.

Boy, so—

I moved from a very small town to Denver. And I was easily tricked into all types of, like, romantic notions. Interesting. I was a rube, yeah.

And Burroughs got you in. What Burroughs book specifically?

Oh, man. Probably Queer and Junkie. Those 2 for sure. Naked Lunch always seemed like he was jerking— like, I hated it.

Really?

Yeah, man. It's like, look, I understand that you're, like, Jackson Pollocking, and you've earned that right as, like, a master of the form, like, as a writer. He wrote Queer, he wrote Junkie, he wrote other things that were easily digestible, and now he's kind of letting his freak flag fly and, like, swinging his dick. But like, at the end of the day, as a reader, it's really hard to like enjoy a book that doesn't have any discernible story. Like, I still like a plot, you know what I mean?

Right, right.

So yeah, it was Queer and Junkie. And my dad was cool. My dad gave me really cool books early on and like good music. So— and also Hunter, obviously. Like, Hunter S. Thompson was a huge deal, especially because we were in Colorado. Right. So like, there was like the Owl Farm thing. Like, my dad would like, we're gonna go up to Owl Farm. I don't think he ever did, but it was always an aspiration.

Yeah, yeah, I think his ex-wife still lives there.

Oh yeah, and my friend Liz like worked for her, and I would really love— you want to hear like a petty memory I have?

Yeah.

You know how you like— like I'm at Shane's thing and Jamie is like talking to Bam Margera, and I'm like, life is big enough to include the fact that like I'm watching Jamie talk to Bam Margera while my friend does Eagle Stadium. Like there's all these weird little like So, uh, what the fuck was I talking about?

How did you start this?

Yeah, how did I start this?

Okay, we went from THC to the Pale Matrix guys to Hunter S. Thompson. Yes. To Owl Farm.

To Owl Farm.

To—

Oh, petty. Being petty.

Petty.

So I remember in like 2008 there was this guy in Denver who like got to go finish his novel at Owl Farm. And really, yeah. And it was like, everyone was like, that's so cool. And I of course was like a jock comedian who was like, fuck him, he's a poser, you know. And then his book came out and I read it and I was like, damn, it's pretty moving. I love the second part, you know. So it's like, I still remember that guy. And I hit up my friend Liz and I was like, hey, could I like maybe go finish this book like at Owl Farm? And she was like, they don't do that anymore. And I was like, I remember the guy's name. I was like, you let blank do it. And she was like, oh, how do you remember that? No one ever remembers that. And I was like, I remember it because of spite, you know. There's like a lot of things that I only remember because it made me mad and feel weak.

That's funny. But that's at a different stage in your life. The stage of your life where you're trying to get something going, trying to succeed, you're very vulnerable to spite, very vulnerable to envy.

Well, it's a real pure burning fuel. Yeah, you know, rage, hate, all these things. Yeah, they really Gets you your octane up quick.

Yeah, unfortunately it consumes the vessel that's holding it.

Oh yeah, it's the worst one. Yeah, poison. It's correct. It's a poison. Yeah.

Yeah, it's very sad to see people that you like fall prey to that, or people that you have liked in the past who you see them lash out at people that are doing well, and you realize it's, it's, it's so— the map is so clear. It's because they're not doing well. It's always what it is.

Well, it's easier to be mad at people than to better your own position. It's like I lost all this weight and people are like, you look sick! And like beforehand people were like, look how fat this guy is! He's the fattest guy ever! And it's like, all right, what do you want? Why are you guys so obsessed with my body?

Well, there is no solution. You cannot make everyone happy. It will not happen. It's impossible.

And when you do try to make everyone happy, the shit that you make as like an artist is so bad. Yep, because you're trying to make shit for, you know, the comment section. And it's like, I never got in— when I got into stand-up, it was 2005, and like all the things that we have to do now as comedians weren't there. You could just like be funny, maybe do Conan, and then like you gotta do all the funny bones. And like, that was all I wanted. I wanted to like be in clubs. And now all the shit that surrounds comedy is like super embarrassing and cringe. Like what? I hate it. Like promo, you know, like make the Instagram posts, like, you know, any of that shit that's like Like, like all the shit that my super successful friends are good at is shit that makes me want to like buy a bullet and rent a gun, you know? Like I want to like hang myself from a sturdy rope when I'm like, oh yeah, I got to get engagement. I need to comment the first 30 minutes that the post is up so that more people will see it.

It's like, I want to pay someone so much money to do all of this so I don't have to anymore.

It's more that it feels fraudulent to me. Yep. You know what I mean? It's not so much I'm worried about people disliking whatever dumb promo post I put. It's just like, I'm worried that people will be able to understand how hollow the sentiment is that I'm communicating. Like, I'm going to the Funny Bone in Hartford this weekend. I'm stoked to be there.

Hartford, Connecticut?

Yeah, yeah. But I think to any of the people who like go to that club and have been going to that club, if I were to say, I'm coming to my favorite club in the country, The Hartford Funny Bone, they'd be like, this guy's a fucking liar. We go there. It can't possibly be. How many other clubs does he do?

Unless you really like people that are stuck, you don't like Connecticut. People are stuck.

The WWE—

And by the way, one of my best friends lives in Connecticut. I should just say, I love people in Connecticut, but I used to say that Connecticut's not a real state. It's a highway between Boston and New York.

I think that's fair.

It's real. Listen, I performed in Connecticut a lot in my early days, and it is the worst place on earth. Dude, not on earth. Not true. I'm sure, yeah, performing in Iraq currently would probably be a lot worse.

I bet it's electric when you kill though. I bet if you can get a standing O, that's a good feeling, bro. Yeah. Inshallah, baby.

It's just there's a thing about Connecticut that's like they're stuck.

Yeah,

they're stuck, or they're really rich and they chose to not live in New York City. And so they live in like, there's these like very bizarre towns that are extremely like where my buddy, who's a good— I've been friends with this guy for 34 years, I think. He worked at a high school in, like, a private school, a very ritzy private school. Like, Keith Richards brought his kids there. Like, a lot of these very famous people, very, very wealthy people, billionaires, they have these massive estates in Connecticut. Yeah. That's Connecticut. And then the rest of Connecticut is sort of this weird highway.

Oh yeah.

Where people are stuck.

And also like where Yale is, you go to the Yale campus and it's like beautiful and historic, and then you walk like 3 blocks away.

It's fucking New Haven.

Yeah, it's like very impoverished. Yeah. And you know, the crimes of desperation happen there a lot.

But the greatest pizza on earth.

I love that stuff.

New Haven pizza.

Yeah, that thin, what do they call it, like an apizza, right? Yeah, apizza. Yeah.

Yeah.

Are you that kind of Italian?

What kind is that?

The kind who like says like, you know, like a gabagool, you know? Like do you put the steak on it? I don't say that. No?

I don't, no. I've kind of left that at a very early age.

You're like the last remaining Italian, man. You gotta get out there.

There's a few.

I know, but like—

Go to the East Coast, there's a lot. A lot of us left.

No, I mean that are in positions of prominence. Oh,

I see.

Because I grew up in a world where Italians, it was like they were cool, you know?

That was because of The Sopranos.

Dude, and of course all those great mob movies really made—

Yeah, but they made Italians way too gawky. There's a lot of Italians that thought it was really cool just to be Italian because all these, like, a lot of guys, they put it on you. Hey, fucking, you gonna hang out with Johnny? Yeah, like they added to it.

Yeah. I'm saying you should do that. That's exactly what I'm saying you should do. Become one of those guys.

It's too late.

No, no, you can change.

Mitzi Shore, she used to have this show Night of a Thousand Guidos. She would do like this, an Italian show, and she asked me to do it once. I did it. It was like, it was so embarrassing. 'Cause a lot of the people on the show, other than guys like Dom Irrera, who are great comics who just happen to be Italian, a lot of the people were only on because they were Italian. She was finding mediocre Italian comics to be on the show, and it was just fucking hell.

I mean, I'm also regretting— I'm not trying to say any negative Italian sentiment. I'm realizing I'm going to Governor's in Long Island on Wednesday. Italians, you know I love ya, but you know, please—

Great club, by the way. Governor's.

My agent said, I was the only person who asked to go back to Governor's after their first time.

Really?

Yeah, I was like, I loved it there. I love it. It feels like the road.

Oh, I love Long Island.

It reminds me of like real comedy when I started.

Oh yeah. When I lived in New York, I very rarely did the city because I was a road comic in Boston. You know, like Boston, the way it works is if you're real clean, or in the '80s, if you're real clean, you could work the clubs in town. But if you're not clean, most of your work is gonna be in the bars outside. And so that's what I did. Yeah. I did mostly bar shows. And so I was traveling around to here, to there. doing, you know, Revere and all these different places. And when I went to New York, I was like, if I'm in town, I do 10 minutes, I make $10 or whatever the fuck it was, or I could just do the road and make like $200 and do an hour. Oh yeah, like, why would I do— I'll do that. So I did Long Island.

Same way. Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's like also like Hicks was a big hero of mine, and I know he was like— he was an anomaly in that he wasn't a city comic, he was a road comic. He was like one of the most brilliant, but yet was doing his kind of comedy to people that wouldn't necessarily go to see his type of comedy if they knew what it was.

Yeah. And that's what was so like— that's why he became such a force.

Yeah.

Because I think a lot of comedy now, like, people do comedy for people who think exactly like them.

Right.

And like, I can do a papered room, and I'm like, I'm very proud of that. Like, because it's not like you know, I'm not moving every ticket every weekend. So sometimes they'll be like, Late Show Saturday, we're gonna paper 50. And I'm like, yeah.

And then papered, for people don't know what we're talking about, right? It's like free tickets.

Free tickets.

They give away free tickets so they could sell liquor,

right? Exactly. Because they want the 2 drinks in there and they don't care what you're up to or if the show's gonna go well because they're gonna make an extra $400 on Bud Light.

Yeah, the problem with that I've always found is that I did a lot of those shows too, but the people aren't very invested in the show. So you get a lot of chatty folks.

They don't watch a clip. So when you say a word that they don't like, they're like, what the fuck is this? And it's like, you couldn't watch me do 1 minute before you decided to drive down here and get parking? You know, it's, it's so strange. You wouldn't do that at a music show, right? You're gonna listen to a song before you go to the show.

Maybe. I mean, maybe if you went to it— well, it depends on the kind of club. See, that's— I think that's one of the issues with comedy, and I talk about this a lot, is that like comedy has one genre. Whereas music, you know, if you're going to a music club and you see hip-hop and then Guns N' Roses and then Joni Mitchell, you'd be like, what the fuck kind of club is this? This is crazy. Whereas in comedy, you could see all sorts of different perspectives and styles. You could see, you know, loud people, people who do music, people who do all kinds of weird shit on stage. Like, comedy has no— I mean, it does have genres, you know? Yeah. I mean, especially to people that like to classify things, that like to put things into categories and boxes. And— but the reality is, it's just perspectives. It's just comedies. Here's the world through my eyes. And everyone is different. And it's like, you don't know if you're gonna go see Guns N' Roses or if you're gonna go see Barry Manilow. You really don't know. If you're just gonna go see comedy, like, let's go to Cap City and go to the comedy club.

Let's see who's there this weekend. You know, Bob Fuckface. Oh, okay. I hope he's good. Well, he's at Cap City. It's gotta be good. Yeah, yeah. And so you go there, and then, you know, you hope it's something that you'll laugh at. And that was me at many

many of the loony bins for about 7 years. Me too. I was Bob Fuckface. Yeah. And I got really good at that. Yeah. And then if you can get good at that, when you first get your opportunity to like— if people are going to get free tickets because it's their birthday in 3 months and they just so happen to win them right now and they go see you, if you can trick half those people into coming back next time.

Yeah.

Like, that was always my big thing. Like, when I first started getting these big opportunities, like when Tim Dillon took me on the road when I first got on this show or Kill Tony, people start coming out for the first time to see me. And I was not concerned with that first time. I'm concerned with the next time. Right, getting them to come back. 'Cause I want them to come back and bring 2 people, and then the next time bring 8 people.

Yeah.

So it's like, I was very grateful, but also aware that like, this was my opportunity to plant seeds that would grow later on.

Well, that's what we used to do back in the day. It was called building a market. Right, yeah. And you would just go into a town, and it was a slow, laborious process that took years.

And I did that. Yeah, I went from 40 people in Omaha to 80 to 160 to adding shows. And it's like,

that's fun.

It was great.

Yeah, that's a really satisfying, rewarding thing when you've actually built a market.

Yeah, it feels good. And when people come out now and they're like, this is the 7th time I've seen you, it's like, that's

nice.

I feel good. But I'm also immediately like, shit, I hope I had like all new stuff. Right, right, right. Like, I know I have 50 new, but I still have 5 I'm closing on from last time I was in Chicago.

And also, if someone's a Sam Tallant fan, like, boy, you got to get— you can't be nonchalant about that show. You got to get fired up.

Oh, yeah. And they are. Yeah. I'm so grateful. And also now I get these like kids who come out because I'll do like Hive Mind or Gillis, like the people who get like young people, like in their demographics. So now I have like 22-year-olds at the shows and man, you can see on their faces it's the first time they haven't been on their phone for 90 minutes in their entire life. And they're sitting there and they like don't know what to do. And then I'll be like, hey, nice hat, stupid. And they're like, you know, because like they don't know the rules or the conventions of this thing they're at. And then at the merch line afterward, they're always like, that was my first show. And I'm like, bro, I think I set the bar pretty high.

Like Jeremy Clarkson. Yeah, you know, you know who he is? Uh-huh. He came to Kill Tony the other night and he said it was his first time at a comedy club.

Whoa.

Yeah.

And that's so—

like, he didn't know what Kill Tony was. He didn't understand it. Jimmy Carr took him. Weird. And, uh, it was like, what is Kill Tony?

Yeah.

Like, he didn't understand how it worked.

It's The Gong Show, sir. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's one of the oldest formats. Yeah. He's like, my God, reinventing the form.

Well, he just didn't know what it was. He was like, you know, how does this work?

I think it's a deeply American phenomenon.

Oh, stand-ups, most certainly. No,

I mean Kill Tony specifically. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Because I did the one at the O2 in London that no one will ever see because it was so bad. Like, that had to be buried in the desert.

What was bad about it?

Oh my god. Has Tony ever talked about this with you?

Yeah, he told me it was hell.

Oh, it was the worst thing that's ever happened to me as an artist. It was brutal. We get there—

Oh, Jesus Christ.

And we get there, man, and, uh, you know, it's like the biggest thing ever. I'm very flattered to be asked to be on it. We get there and the show is starting later. And the people who work at the— the security people are like, these are people that we traditionally don't get attending performances. A lot of these people took the train in or came from the countryside, and they're— it seems like they're drinking beers in the parking lot. And I was like, yo, they're tailgating. And they were like, what's that mean? And I was like, oh, you guys aren't aware of this phenomenon. So we get out there and he put out the band and the band plays for a while. And we're all in the back and they're waiting for people to trickle in. And before the show starts, there's various fistfights and people are being removed for doing cocaine at their seats, like at Studio 54. So we're in the back and like—

Oh, this sounds great. What happened wrong?

Oh, well, hold on. Let me get to the funny part. So dude, we come out finally, and Red Band and Tony get their due aplomb, and then they're like, are you ready for your guest? And everyone is—

Oh, I love that Tony impression.

Everyone's— who's ready? This man is a legend in show business. And they— I think everyone thinks it's Piers Morgan, because I was told Piers Morgan was gonna do it. So I have all these great jokes about Calling him 007. I was gonna fuck him up and call him Pierce Brosnan the whole night. So, I have, like, about 30 minutes of funny Pierce Morgan jokes. Oh, boy. Right, yeah, it would've been great. Pierce Morgan can't make it, so it's just Sam Talent. And when they say, Sam Talent, people are like, all right, cool, and they're waiting for someone else. Probably a British celebrity. No, no. It's just me. So, we sit down, and we do our best, and the first comic who comes out is a bucket list comic. person, you know? Or no, I think— I can't remember who went first, but the first bucket comes out and they say, so I rode the train in from Essex, and a packed O2 starts screaming, fuck Essex! You're dogs! Everyone from Essex fucks their mother! Back up north, you pikey! Like— Wow. It's insane. And then this comic is immediately— his ego is shattered, his brain's exploded, It's his worst nightmare ever.

There's an arena screaming at him, and then he has to stumble into his punchline. Goes terribly. Try to do the interview, and it's like, so, how long have you been doing it? And he's like, looking around like he just came out of a coma, you know? And he's like, oh, this is my first time ever doing stand-up.

Oh, boy.

I think of the bucket pulls on that show, the most tenured performer had done it 6 times.

Holy shit.

So you had a literal arena full of people who have taken the train or flown in from all over Europe for this. And then, dude, like, there— so there was very— every time a comic would say, so, you know, I'm from Pakistan, every slur you've ever heard from Snuff comes out, you know, like— and me and Tony and Redman are up there like,

what the

fuck is going on? Get to the joke, you know? Okay, you know, so every time anyone says anything, people scream. There's fistfights going on. There's people screaming up constantly. And then, dude, this guy came out and said, so I'm from Israel. That's his opener. The room immediately turns. And I— there's a— there's an Irish contingency up front because people have flags like it's WWE. So there's an Irish contingency over here, and there's a Northern Irish contingency over here. And both of them decide that they're gonna agree on fuck Israel. And the guy on— so they start yelling like, fuck you, you genocidal pig, you monster, you should be ashamed of yourself. And the comic on stage says, from the river to the sea, or whatever. And at that point, a guy tries to climb the barricade, one of the Irish dudes. And I'm like, I say to Tony, it's the only time I've ever used the mute button. I'm like, dude, we gotta get him out of here. This isn't safe. Like, this guy has to go. So Tony immediately is like, okay! And like threw him a joke book. get him out of there.

It devolved so bad by the end that, um, like when we walked off, I— once the show ends, I went into the green room and literally like put my hands on the sink and stared into the mirror for like 5 minutes. Whoa. Yeah, and I was like, do I want this? Like, do I aspire to be an arena act? Like, this was the worst thing that ever fucking happened to me. Like, And then, you know, God bless him. It was Tony's birthday weekend, so we were having a lot of fun. And this was actually when me and Tony became like friends friends, because I got to spend like 3 days with him and like his brother, like seeing him be a guy. It was fun. But Tony, it's his birthday. They bring him a cake and I'm like rocked, man. I'm shattered. You know, I'm like, I called my wife. I was like, honey, maybe I can like become a teacher. I was like, I think, I think Wayne State would let me like teach, you know? How

many years ago was this? This was 2 years ago.

Yeah. It was right after I was in Paris all of May of 2024 finishing this. And then I went and did that after my month in Paris. And they bring in this cake for Tony for his birthday. And it's like, hey, you sold out the O2. Like, you're the number one selling podcast in the history of the O2 Arena. And everyone sings him happy birthday. And I hear Tony say, they spelled my name wrong. And it's like, bro, this is like all of your dreams coming true. And he still was like, oh, they fucked up my name. And I was like, okay, yeah, I gotta— I gotta figure out what I actually want to do, 'cause, like, it's not being an arena act. And then everywhere we would walk, it's like, you know, when you— like, you're insanely famous. You're probably the most famous guy I know. And, like, I— we haven't, like, chilled in public, but I've been in public with Will Smith. I've been in public with Shane Gillis. They can't go anywhere. Yeah. Like, there's, like, tunnels in every building that are, like, for Will Smith and guys like Shane. It's like Shane, we do Grand Rapids.

He can't walk and get a coffee in the morning. It's an hour and a half procedure because everyone that sees him has to get a picture. It's like you can no longer exist as a person. It's like, I would much rather not be hyper-rich and like still be able to just go in the world than like to have all the money. Like, what do you— how is it? What's it like?

Yeah, it's odd, but it is what it is,

right?

You just accept it. The key is like, the real problem is people interrupt things. Like, they want to interrupt dinners. They want to come over to your table. That's, that's a problem. That's, that's an issue. And it's, it's, it's a little rude while they're interrupting while you're in the middle of a meal. I know they're just trying to be nice, but in public, the key is just you gotta, you gotta learn to reset with every person that you meet. Mm-hmm. Like, reset. This is a completely new— it's just not, oh my god, another person. You have to reset.

Yeah. Have an honest interaction. Yeah, sincere interaction.

And but the real problem is then it becomes a line, and then it becomes a thing where people who don't even know who the fuck you are want to take a picture with you.

Dude, and we were, we were in that coffee shop with Shane, and an old Asian man came over and it was just like in Chinese or whatever, Mandarin, was like, yeah, picture, picture. And Shane looks at me and he's like, this guy doesn't speak English, let's get a photo. Yeah, he had no idea who he was, but he saw everyone taking pictures with this guy.

Yeah. Yeah,

it's just like,

that's a weird thing with cameras, with phones. Cameras and phones, and then social media likes. You know, if you have a picture with Shane Gillis, you're gonna get thousands of likes.

For sure. Yeah, but then you're just an object to be used to exploit, and it's like, I don't know, man.

You got to learn how to handle it, and it's, it's not normal.

Do you think our brains can learn to handle it?

Yeah, you can handle it. I think so. Yeah, I handle it. Yeah, I handle it pretty good, but it's, uh, it's not for everybody, and it's definitely not easy. It's, it's odd, and it's not something that I ever asked for. I mean, I wasn't looking for it. It's like it just happened. And so you just have to say, okay, well, this is what life is now. Mm-hmm. You know, it's not the worst thing. I mean, online it's horrible. People hate me online.

I know.

A lot of people do. But in real life, people are very nice. Yeah, like almost always. And even if they disagree with me, you know, once they have a few words with me, they realize I'm very reasonable.

Well, it's like they've made you and like Shane and Tony into like very convenient targets because like like, you know, pain leads to panic and panic leads to fear and fear leads to anger and anger leads to hate. So it's like you have been made this billboard. Here's what I think it is, man, is like media died, right? Like in our lifetimes. Like there's no more newspapers.

Right.

Right? Like there's no more radio. Like TV's not there anymore. So like everyone's looking around being like, what the fuck happened? And there's this guy named Denis Johnson who's my favorite writer ever. And he said, when drastic changes occur, it's much easier to say it's a crime and ask who did it, as opposed to saying it's a failure and to ask what happened. So I feel like they're trying to assign a lot of blame to people because everyone's like, what, what's going on? And then they look and you're the biggest thing, you know, Shane's the biggest thing. So it's like, okay, we can all decide that like this person who's replaced the media that we had is the enemy. And it's like, okay, well, the New York Times can write as many op-eds on how you're the enemy of progress, but will they call it a genocide? No. So it's like, who the fuck are we supposed to trust or believe? And I always say, dude, because I have a bunch of leftist friends who get mad that I come on your show. Do you? Yeah, whatever. I lived in an anarchist commune. Did you really?

Yeah, man. Wow.

We'll talk about that in a moment. Yeah.

I mean, I was a punk rocker. I still am, I hope. But it's like, I really would have loved to have been in the era of comedy where you like go on Conan and then you get to sell your tickets, you know? But it's like, how is you, one guy who's independent, you know, I guess Spotify's money is involved or whatever, but they don't fucking censor you, right?

They don't do anything.

Yeah. So it's like one guy being independent and having conversations. How is that worse Than the facade of going on Kimmel or going on Fallon or going on Conan back in the day. And yeah, these are good guys who are silly, but ultimately they're on NBC, who's owned by whatever holding company, who's owned by one of the 7 corporations who owns the world. And their whole thing is selling ad space for Nestlé and fucking BlackRock or whatever subsidiary is the one they put the face on. That was bad. But it was fine. So now you're one guy who's having conversations and they're like, this is bad. This is, this is cancerous.

Well, it's completely normal to always attack the most popular thing.

Yeah.

Always, you know, always the most popular thing is bad, no matter what it is. If it's a film, if it's music, if it's a podcast, whatever it is, it's always bad. And, you know, it's— you're always going to have that. It's just that you're not going to fix people. You're not going to fix perspectives and give people clarity and give people the ability to make sort of rational, objective, charitable observations about who a person actually is. It's very easy to just caricaturize someone.

Yeah.

And so I get it.

And then if you are a person who will defend these guys in these spaces, it's like, well, then, okay, you're brainwashed, you're co-opted. And it's like,

You just have to stop listening to comments. Like, that's really the most important thing.

No, these are like face-to-face conversations, you know what I mean?

Right, but you're probably talking to broken people.

Uh, I don't know. I'm talking to my friends. I'm talking to people who—

Are any of your friends broken?

Oh yeah. Yeah, most of them are comics. Yeah, but also dude, it's weird because like I talk to people a lot who I don't share like the exact ideals with. Like, I don't like that you fucking endorsed Trump, but like I have a lot of friends who voted for Trump. And it's like a lot of people don't ever hang out with anyone else who thinks different because first of all, we don't hang out face-to-face. You're not meeting new people. Everyone works from home. Everyone's online. No one's bowling or fucking playing pool anymore. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. So it's like, yeah, you can diff— you can disagree with someone and still know that they're like a decent person. And like, I like to define myself on am I a good husband? Am I a good uncle? Am I a good son? Am I a good brother? And it's like, if I thought that you guys were bad, like, I wouldn't fucking do business with you. It's asinine. It makes me so mad, bro. Anyway, I'm sorry.

No, it's fine. Listen, it used to be that people used to be able to differ in their opinions and have conversations.

Because they were your neighbors.

But today we have become so divided, and I think a big factor is social media, echo chambers, propaganda bots. Gaslighting. And then there's— it seems like there's so much riding on everything constantly because you're looking at your phone all the time. Oh, yeah. And everything on the phone is, this is the end. This is the end. This is the beginning of the end. This is a signal of the end. The only hope is to stop this. And on both sides. Mm-hmm. And both sides. This is the— and your people are addicted to their phones. So like, the information that you're getting almost all day long is very bleak and very dire. Yeah. It's constant.

Because that's what sells units. Like, fear is the best way to manipulate people. Yeah. Forms of coercion and engagement. Yeah, engagement, man. And it's like the phone replaced the world. Like, we're all staring into this fucking rectangular void, and it's like— I, I've become like a big gardener, man, because like it connects me to shit that is real. Like, I've built my own compost. Like, I know my soil. Like, I've learned the different sections of my backyard that like get more sunlight and like get more water. And it's like, these were incredibly boring to me probably 10 years ago, but now in this world that's so empty and so like just devoid of anything palpable and real, like me being back there and watching my fucking dahlias grow is like just as valuable and nutritious to me as anything that was ever on my phone. Right. And like, yeah, I'm not like learning or like, I'm not like, you know, thinking I'm learning and I'm not engaging with people and I'm not getting the reward of like people being like, cool, nice garden, because I'm not posting that shit. Like, I had a pumpkin that grew like a clitoris in the back of— like, dude, you seen this pumpkin?

You have a pumpkin?

I had a trellis and my pumpkins grew up this trellis and I had a pumpkin that was dangling like, like the uvula in the back of your throat when I got home one time. And I just sat there and stared at this pumpkin for like 2 days.

Aren't pumpkins supposed to be on the ground?

Yeah, man. Yeah, they are. There it is, baby. That's the sky pumpkin.

Interesting.

And of course I had to like put it online, you know, because that's what you do with anything good that happens to you.

Oh, cute little doggy.

Yeah, man. That's Danny. Sweet Danny.

That's a nice pumpkin.

Right? But like, that's magic. The squirrels got it after we carved it.

Oh, those sons of bitches.

That's alright. That's alright.

Squirrels do. You were carving it though, meaning you weren't gonna eat it anyway.

No, I don't want to eat a pumpkin.

Pumpkin pie?

I'm not a hippo.

Pumpkin pie is delicious.

Pumpkin pie is good.

You ever have roasted pumpkin?

I've had roasted pumpkin.

There's a delicious recipe, or it looks delicious at least I should say, that I want to try. I saw this guy, he cooked a chicken inside of a pumpkin, and what he did was he took an actual pumpkin, he hollowed it out, and inside of it he put a chicken He put all these herbs and spices on the chicken, and they put a bunch of potatoes and tomatoes and carrots and a bunch of things inside with the pumpkin. And I feel like maybe he put chicken broth or just chicken stock in there as well, and then put the whole thing inside of an oven. And so the pumpkin sort of collapsed. Yeah, yeah. And then pulls it out after whatever amount of time and opened it and pulled this chicken out. It was moist and delicious. And then Plated it up, looked fantastic. I want to try it.

That's chicken in a pumpkin.

Yeah.

You're saying eat the pumpkin.

But you ate the pumpkin as well.

I want to eat the chicken.

But pumpkin tastes good.

Pumpkin's okay. I like the seeds.

No, but the pumpkin meat, if you cook it right, is good.

Look, man.

Pumpkin— you don't like pumpkin pie?

I do not.

Really?

I like good pie that's not a holdover from World War II.

Pumpkin pie's a holdover.

That's like a Victory Garden. Yeah, that was like, hey, you know, the GIs are coming home.

That was like my favorite.

Well, hey, man.

Pumpkin pie with a little bit of whipped cream on it? Oh, it's so good.

It's subjective. You're allowed to like pie. Yeah.

I'm not angry at you that you like pumpkin pie.

I get angry about subjectivity because people will be like, you're not funny. And it's like, well, it's subjective. Like, what are you talking about? Like, trying to apply objective rules and boundaries to stand-up is like the most asinine thing.

It's silly.

It's crazy.

It's silly. It's a wasted effort. Like, to be upset at people for not liking what you like or liking what you don't like is just It's a waste of energy.

Quit thought policing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, people just don't want anyone to differ from them, and they don't want to be on the wrong path. They want to— don't want to be incorrect, especially if culture seems to be leaning in a certain direction and they are not. They don't want to have to shift gears, so instead they attack it. Oh yeah, people have to learn to just accept, you know, like I've seen people angry that Taylor Swift is the biggest musician in the world. Like, like, why? Why do you care? Yeah, also she's got some good songs, and if you don't think so, you probably haven't listened. Like, if you didn't know who she was, if you didn't— if she didn't have Taylor Swift attached to her, and you're like, No Body No Crime is a fucking great song. It's a great song. And if you— if it was just some indie artist who just wrote that, some unknown lady who wrote that song and performed, you'd be like, this is a really good song.

I think it's just like a fun contrarian thing to be like, the popular thing is bad, of course, without any kind of like looking into it. Well,

there's also people that like things when those things are not popular, and then when they become popular, oh, they fucking sold out. Like, okay.

That's me. That's a lot of people online.

That's punk rock.

I know. And like Kyle Kinane said it best, he's like, I'm not here for purity tests from fair-weather fans. And it's like, I'm not either. Like,

that's a very good quote.

He's the man, dude.

Yeah, he's a very smart guy.

Him, Rory. Like, I've, I've been having a lot of conversations with people that are like really good And I'm heartened. I'm like, I'm solid. But man, I gotta just like— I gotta find the shit about stand-up that I adored that like made me devote my life to it, you know? And like fall back in love with it because—

Did you run into a period where you didn't? Like, are you struggling with that?

I still love onstage. I love— I'm so grateful for like the meet-and-greet aspect. I love talking to the people. I love putting my armpits on their necks after the show and taking the pictures, you know?

What don't you love?

Uh, I mean, 45 weekends a year in an airport's tough. Yeah. You know, ticket counts are fucking brutal. You know, the emails, the promo stuff, trying like— trying to be like a normal person while also constantly promoting yourself is so strange. Like, yeah, and it's not why I got into it. Like, if I could sell 600 tickets a weekend in a city, like, that's all I want. And I can do that now. But then you get agents, and like, they're awesome, but they're also like Why don't we add a show? And it's like, because no one's gonna come to the 4 o'clock on Saturday.

They just want money.

Exactly.

Yeah, you have to ignore them. That's where a manager comes into play.

I just got management and they're, they're fucking good.

That's good. Yeah, you got a good manager. A good manager— so for people that don't understand this, a manager looks out for your career. An agent works for you. So a manager is a partner, right? Like a man— I've had the same manager since I was an open micer.

Whoa.

Yeah. He found me in Boston. Yeah, in 1991, '90 or '91.

So you've grown together. Oh yeah, as men.

That's cool. We don't even have a contract. Mm-hmm. We don't have no legal paperwork. Yeah, we handle—

I'm sure that'll wind up fine in the end. It's been good.

It's been forever. Don't get Dane Cook. Listen, it's not that I don't know where the money goes. Yeah, it's not that. It's just that we don't— it's not like I don't— we don't have to like re-sign some stupid thing every 5 years. I would rather cut my fingers off than fuck him over.

That's how I feel about most parts of stand-up. Yeah.

But it's different in that the manager looks out for the whole of your career, you know? So there's like 2 people now though. He brought in a woman and she's been my manager now for— he's kind of semi-retired. She's been my manager for more than a decade. But it's a different thing than an agent, especially if you're with a big agency. So a big agency, there's like a lot of pressure. Like, I had a friend who got offered this deal. He has a pretty big podcast. He got offered this deal, and the deal involved being connected to some other people and being a part of a network. I said, don't do it. Do not do it. I go— he goes, what's your thought? I go, well, first of all, You're right now, you're independent. Do you know how much money you would pay to be independent? Like if you got connected to this and then all of a sudden you have a bunch of other people that you have to answer to and they're saying, hey, you know, we could sell more advertising if you stop talking about Israel.

Right.

Or we could sell more advertising if you just stopped using this word or that word or bring up these subjects. Well, you know, well, the advertisements, you know, it's, it's an issue. Like if as soon as that starts happening, you're fucked. And right now he doesn't have any of that. Right now he's independent. Yeah, he could do whatever the fuck he wants. I go, You're fine. You're not poor, right? You're, you're what, you're making good money, right? Like, keep doing that. Do not— let it grow. It'll— you're very talented. It'll keep growing. These people want to bleed you, and that's all they want. They want more. They want extra shows. They want you to be on the road every weekend. I have an agent. She's a lovely lady, but every time I talk to her, when do you got to do arenas again? Like, it's just because they just want that money. They just want that money.

And they're not the ones like going to the airport. They're not the ones missing their kids' games and stuff.

For me, it's like when I moved here, I was like, okay, if I'm gonna take my kids and move them to another state, one of the things that I want to do is be around a lot more often. And I can. And so if I can, I should. Yeah. And I don't— I don't want to be on the road 60 fucking dates a year. It's just like, it's too much. I don't— I don't like it. I don't like doing it. It wears you out and it doesn't seem as fun. I do like going to places, and I do like the fact that people want to come, and I appreciate them very much. But I— having a club, having my own club, has been the greatest fucking thing that I've ever done.

It's such a solid move because like now you're grounded, you have a community, and you have like this sick place you've built where, you know, you don't have to leave town and all your friends come to town now.

Yeah.

Like I come to town, like people are popping in every weekend, you know. That's— it's a pretty righteous setup that you've created.

Well, we got super fortunate where a bunch of lights had to turn green at the exact right moment for it to be able to take place. This wouldn't have taken place without COVID.

Yeah.

Without COVID and without the draconian lockdowns that California was implementing and all the shit that they were doing and the fact that other states weren't and that Texas wasn't. Yeah. And the fact that there was already sort of a history of comedy in Austin. It wasn't a huge town for comedy, but it was a great town to visit and do comedy. And Ron White, the fact that Ron White had already moved here. He moved here in 2018.

Yeah.

And so all those lights had to turn green at the right time. The Comedy Store had to be closed for a long time, for over a year and a half. And we just got all the best employees from The Comedy Store to move out to Texas. Yeah. We got all the comics to move out. And then I got all that Spotify money. So I'm like, all right, let's do the right thing. Let's fucking make a club that like really helps the development of comedians and really kind of I have a festival

in Bentonville, Arkansas that me and my friend run, my buddy Raj.

What's it called?

Uh, the Big Diamond Comedy Festival. It's fun. People are like, why Bentonville? Why Big Diamond? It's hilarious. Raj was like, let's go with Big Diamond. I said, hey man, okay. I go and I shake hands and kiss babies, you know. But we had Lucas McCrary headline, one of your Door guys. Nice. And it's like, that's cool that now little weird Lucas, who I knew long ago, is now like been given enough reps. Yeah. In a legitimate place where now I can trust them to be like, yeah, come do 2 shows on my festival. Well, that's good.

It's not just our place too. One of the cool things about what's happened in Austin is because of the success of the Mothership and then all these comics moving here, like 18 world-class comics moved to Austin. And so because of that, and then all these other new comics who wanted to have a career and saw that like it's really difficult to get in New York, it's really difficult to get in in LA, And Austin is like this blossoming community. Yeah. And so they all moved here, and now there's 7 clubs on one street, which is nuts. Within, you know, walking distance of the mothership, there's 7 comedy clubs that at least a few nights a week have comedy. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Holidays can be stressful, especially if you're hosting. There's so much pressure to include everyone and to make sure they all have a good time. It could put a strain on you emotionally, financially too. So maybe this year, keep things small. Ask someone else to host Thanksgiving, or if something else is bothering you, find a solution through therapy with BetterHelp. They do all the work when it comes to finding the right therapist.

And like, the creek is

amazing.

Like, awesome, you know? It's amazing. Like, if, if it was just the creek, Yeah, that was here, like Austin would still be right on. Yeah, but the fact that like you built like an actual circus, you know, and then we're like, clowns, move here, like that benefited every other, you know, PT Barnum-esque character. Yeah, yeah.

Well, it also— we set it up to develop comedy. Like, you have the cornerstone of the club, which is Kill Tony, right? That's like very important because it gives people an opportunity. Like, if you you're on the road, you're grinding it out, and you know, you're barely getting by, but you're kind of funny. You got it, you got something. It's just you don't have an audience yet. And then you do 1 minute on Kill Tony and you get a golden ticket, or you get that big joke book, and then they ask you to come back. And next thing you know, holy shit, you're selling out clubs on the weekend and people are coming to see you. You have fucking fans.

Yeah, and it creates a lot of work too. Like, that's what I care about, is the fact that like, you know, Tony has created so much opportunity for so many people who deserve it, and some other people. But, you know, he has a pretty good hit ratio as far as who he decides to greenlight.

You cannot have all hits. It's impossible. And it's not what you want anyway. You want a little conflict. You want a little chaos. It's good. It's good for everybody.

It's almost like the guy loves pro wrestling.

Almost.

Has anyone ever figured that part? People are like, oh, he's evil. It's like, oh, or maybe you're getting worked, Mark. Yeah, you know, anyway.

He's not even remotely evil.

I told Tony he should put out that O2 Arena thing as a 30 for 30. Like, we should do a breakdown of like why it went bad and like do the talkback 10 years later.

Well, what he should do is put it out like Andrew Dice Clay's The Day the Laughter Died.

Yeah, and it could be very self-effacing and very funny and very humanizing, and I think that'd be a good idea.

It wouldn't be a bad— look, it'll probably get millions of views. Oh yeah.

The worst Kill Tony ever.

Did he bring regulars to perform?

Yeah, Kim was there, David was there, Ari was there.

Kim Kongdon?

Yeah, yeah.

So David Lucas, Ari Matti, how did they do?

You know what was funny is like, you know how Ari is like a shark?

Yeah.

Like Ari seems like he might be devoid of like human empathy sometimes because he's so driven and so Eastern European, and he like comes from like blood that ate tubers, you know, and like wore pelts. War. Yeah, war. Like his whole country is being defined by war.

Estonia. Yeah.

So Ari is like— I was like, okay, Ari's gonna go up and save the show. Like, it's gonna be fine. We got Ari coming out. And Tony's like, we're gonna let Ari sit down and do panel. And I was like, please, please, because I'm just covered in arrows, you know? So I was like Lil Jon and he was Robin Hood and they're hiding behind me. So what was weird though is that Ari had all of the people who cared about him came from Estonia. So in the very front row there was like 50 people who he'd grown up with, who I met the night previous and throughout the evening. And he was nervous the first time I ever saw him because these are people who he cares about. So he wasn't the explosive, you know, Ari Matti that we've come to expect. It was a guy who's like performing in front of his mom and aunt, you know, in an arena. It's the first time they've seen him. Oh! So then Ari sits down. His set went fine, but he sits down to do panel, and he might have said 3 things. I kept being like, what do you think, Ari?

And he was like, yes, I like it. It's good. What you said is funny.

Well, I think in order to do Kill Tony, one of the things that you have to have is a very strong local comedy community. And I'm not sure London has enough numbers.

I think London does, but I think it was more that, um, the biggest thing—

Does London have enough numbers?

I think so.

Does it? Is it comparable to a big US city?

I think London was— is probably as comparable to New York, Chicago. I mean, if you took—

In terms of quality and like numbers?

Yeah, I think so.

Like there's 1,000 really good comics in London?

Dude, I know a lot of really funny comics. And the weird thing about London is like if you're a Dublin comic or a Belfast comic, like you'll go to London and do all— so it's like, like if you imagine that like Austin spread like 600 miles in every direction and that included like, you know, Glasgow and a bunch of other like big cities. I think if you want to do it that way, but yeah, I think London has a bunch of great comics.

So why didn't they have better bucket pulls?

I think that a bunch of people saw that the American Spectacle was there and they decided that this was like, oh, I'm gonna try stand-up for the first time ever. This will be a laugh. Then they get out there and like they're shattered. Literally, you saw people's like entire identities rip in half. And then they had to do 50 more seconds.

I've seen that at Madison Square Garden. I saw people do their very first set at Madison Square Garden, which is insane. Literally insane. An impossible task.

Oh, I would not recommend it to anyone.

And that person, perhaps if that wasn't their first experience on stage, could have had a career in comedy. Yeah, but now it's like your first fight is against Mike Tyson when he's 20.

Yep.

And you just get your brains punched in. You're like, well, I guess I'm gonna get a job.

Yeah, exactly. I'm going back to school. Yeah, back

to Jiffy Lube.

But like, Kim did a great job. David, you know, closed the show. Like, it was— it was— everyone did the best they could in that situation, and I would love to see it like with a little bit of gloss on it.

16,000 drunk people that are screaming shit out is hard to wrangle.

Coked up too.

Ah,

very coked up. Nice, dude. There was just random fistfights happening. I think there was literally— I think there was a stabbing at that show.

I like how he did that.

Yeah, yeah, well, I've been taking improv classes, you know, object work. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, there was like a stabbing. I mean, you should— I would— we should just have like Red Van and I want to— we should sit down and do that 30 for 30 style doc.

Like a Mystery Science Theater watching it.

Oh my God, that would be great.

Yeah, like everybody take bong hits and sit on a couch.

Yeah.

And watch it.

Uh-huh. I mean, that's the only way I'd want to watch it is very stoned, like disassociated high.

Oh my God. Oh yeah, he told me it was horrible, but he didn't give me details. He didn't want to talk about it. Yeah, it was like he went somewhere and they stole his car and lit it on fire, and he barely got out of there alive.

I mean, it was kind of like that thing when they're like, hey, Ken Kesey, did you watch Cuckoo's Nest movie? And he was like, well, if the Hells Angels said they were gonna come gang rape your daughter on the front lawn, would you go out and watch it? I feel like that's probably how he feels about this because it was not within his control. Like how bad it happened. Like, he's very competent. Red Band's very competent. I'm competent. Like, it wasn't like we couldn't do the job. It was more like a bunch of piranhas got thrown in our hot tub and we were just like, ah, being eaten alive. It sucked.

He definitely should release it.

I think that, um, I think it's an opportunity to be a bit like, hey, you know, they're not all great. They're not all slam dunks.

Maybe he will now. Maybe he should give that one to Netflix.

Tony, Get me on Netflix, buddy. Get me on there.

That's hilarious.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a tough show. I mean, it's a great show, but it's like taking it on the road like that.

I love doing it.

In that circumstance. I wonder if they've done it in many other countries. Have they done it in England more than once, or is it just that one time?

I think they did it on a smaller scale, maybe in London, but—

Maybe that's more manageable. You know? Yeah. Like, what is Royal Albert Hall? How many is that?

I don't know, 6,000? I did it with Tim. Mm-hmm. I got to sign the book underneath the guy from The Who. Like, they have like the Queen's archive for everyone who's ever performed there, and you get to write your name in it. And I was like right under Daltrey. That was pretty sick.

Yeah, that's pretty sick.

I know. And it's so silly that like I'm a filthy nightclub comic, but yet I'm in the Queen's archive forever. Like, stand-up rules. It's the best. It is the best. It's just that a lot of stuff that surrounds it just sucks.

So like, what are the— what is the stuff that surrounds it that's really like stealing your joy other than the travel part?

I mean, I got into this to be a clown and to entertain people, and I'm really good at— I mean, I fucking sell chicken tenders and beers, you know? Like, I don't aspire to be elevated in any way. I don't like the fact that that people are like, these are the modern philosophers. It's like, no, dude. Like, I don't believe that at all. I get up there and I try and make people not think for 60 seconds and do this kind of alchemy, 'cause like, you can't study laughter. You can't study why something's funny. Right. What we do, call it a bar trick, but it is magic. Like, anyone out there, try and get up on stage for 60 minutes and make a bunch of people who work at different places and think different ways, who are not used to being in a room being quiet, Try and make them feel like they spent $35 and it wasn't wasted. That's what I get off on. I love being really good at stand-up. I love doing the job. I love leaving it all on the field. But I don't want to fucking be a cultural commentator, you know?

I don't want to be a pundit. It's what's expected of us.

No, by who?

Dude, everyone wants people— comics to weigh in.

Says who?

I think that if you look at most—

Do you think Dave Attell's weighing in on things?

No, and that's why he's the best.

Right.

He's the greatest, but he doesn't have to. And I don't have to either.

Do you think you have to?

I don't think I do, but people expect it of me.

Who? Who are these people?

Uh, there's people who listen to my podcast, Chubby Behemoth.

Yeah, but you can weigh in on things as a podcaster. And this is like, we were having this discussion about Hicks last night, or a couple nights ago, and someone said, I wish he wasn't so like, he's, he's like, some of his stuff is not He's like patronizing. And I said, what did— well, here's the thing. He didn't have podcasts back then. If Hicks had a podcast, he'd probably have like really brilliant discussions with people and make interesting points. And then he could just dedicate his stage time to just being funny. Yeah. So he was funny a lot, but then there was also like important points that he felt like he had to get out. Sure. That he did in the genre of stand-up comedy that weren't necessarily funny.

So he didn't have a proper outlet for these deeper thoughts, which is what I have with my books and stuff. I can, like, put it in there. Exactly.

And with your podcast. So that's where I think we're very fortunate, in that you don't have to be a cultural commentator in your comedy. All you have to do is be funny. Like, some of my favorite comics, like Mitch Hedberg, there's a lot of comics that are just funny. Steven Wright, just funny. There's nothing— it's just like, you don't have to be a cultural commentator. And the idea that there's less value to it because it doesn't fit into what what X person wants from stand-up comedy. Well, that's silly. Yeah, that's silly. But there's a lot of people that if you listen to them, they want to force you to do what they want you to do. They want to pressure you because people like to change people. They do. They like to do that.

Groupthink is a very powerful tool.

Yes, they like to scold. They like to tell people what they want from them and tell them what to do. And, you know, you know, silence is not an option. Like, okay, of course it's an option. Silence is always an option.

And also, like, should you— if anyone goes to a comedy show and they're hoping for the comedian to signal that they have the same allegiances to the way that they think, don't come to my shows. Come to my shows to get a joke every 12 seconds. Like, I— Attell's the best to ever do it, in my opinion. He's the best nightclub comic. He has a joke every 15. I am having 22-year-olds in the crowd now, and I should have a fucking t-shirt cannon and keys to shake. 'Cause like, My act has gotten so much more joke dense because of the youth and their expectations. But like, I, I really think of the fact, like, I like to say that I'm like RC Cola. Like, I make products, you can consume them. I don't think anyone should be political in comedy ever. Dude, Hicks is the man, but that shit when he like came out in London dressed like the Undertaker and like takes his jacket off and puts it on, like, that's not my favorite Hicks. My favorite Hicks is when he was young and silly.

I think the problem with that one was, first of all, there was a lot of weight on him to be this cultural philosopher, this commentator, but also one show filming it. You can't— there's too much pressure. It's too much pressure. One show filming one show for a special is a lot of pressure. And you can't— it's hard to be loose. You know, it's very hard to be loose.

But I don't like that so many people think that that's Bill Hicks, because the Bill Hicks that I—

Well, I saw him live. I got a chance to see him live multiple times.

In a nightclub?

Yeah, yeah. How big was the room? Small clubs. Wow. Uh, 150. I saw Murder in front of 150 at the Comedy Connection in Boston. The old Comedy Connection, not the one in Faneuil Hall, the little tiny one that was downstairs. Short. It was like really short ceilings, like very low ceilings.

Like Comedy Works downtown?

Yeah, like Little Boy at the, at the club, at the Mothership. Very low ceilings, tight room. And he murdered. And then I saw him bomb at Nick's Comedy Stop. I saw— I saw him multiple times, and only in nightclub settings, because I think that's really all he did except when he did England. When he was in England, the thing is, he went to England, it became like this thing.

Right.

And then you have a little bit of that sort of audience capture thing that goes on, you know, where they expect something of you. They expect philosophy. They expect this part of it. And it is kind of interesting. Like, I was dating this girl at the time. It was in 1994, and I played— she was very smart, and I watched it with her, and she goes, he's very interesting, but he's not funny. That's what she said.

Yeah.

And I was like, yeah, right. Like, I'm not laughing either, but I really like it. But I know as a comic— and I had not done any specials. I'd done a couple TV spots by then. I'd done like MTV and a few other things, but they're like short 10-minute things. It's hard when that camera's on, like, ready, go, and you have to be loose like a Friday night second show or Saturday night second show where it's like you're just having fun, you're in the zone, and you're flowing. It's very hard to do. Yeah. It's very hard to do, you know, and I thought about— and it's scary. And that's one of the reasons why, like, my last special I decided to do live, because I wanted to feel that. I wanted to be scared.

Yeah.

I wanted to be scared and wanted to do something for like millions of people. But I structured it very differently. I structured it where like it was a little safer. Like I knew these jokes were gonna kill. I didn't deviate from the path at all. It wasn't fucking around like it would be like a Saturday night at the mothership.

Right.

And it was different. But I did it because it was nerve-wracking, because it scared me. So it was because it's worse than one show Because it's one show that you can't edit.

Oh yeah.

And one show that millions of people are gonna see live and a lot of haters. Yeah. So it's like, I— that's why I did it. I was like, let's do— let's, let's be scared.

Well, it's probably novelty, right? Like, I love novelty. Yeah. I value it so much. So the fact that that scared you— Yeah. Because like, we've all been like— if you— I've been doing it longer than I haven't. I've been doing stand-up 21 years, and there are shows now where I'm like bored. You're doing your act, you're killing, They're laughing, but you're like— you ever play that game Cities: Skylines? You play it, right, Jamie?

I told you, yeah, we played it way too much.

It's a city-building game, and you have to like put in the pipes to move the water along. Jamie, I've been on stage, dude, like sold-out killing, and I'm thinking of grid patterns in my head while I'm on stage. Oh wow. I couldn't be less connected to the task. It's like a robot.

Well, then you're doing too many shows.

Oh yeah, no, I've done way too many shows.

Yeah,

but like, that's the novelty you're talking about, is like doing that thing that's scary is very valuable, and not enough people do shit that's scary because they don't want to look like frauds.

Well, it's very important when you're successful to be under pressure, to do things that are hard and scary. It's very— I'm too successful. I have to do scary things. So I do scary things all the time. I do things that give me a lot of pressure. That's what I like. Yeah, it's one of the reasons why I like bow hunting. It's, it's a lot of pressure. It's very difficult to do. It's a lot of pressure. And those elk don't give a fuck that you have the number one podcast in the world, right? Or that you sell out arenas. They don't give it— it doesn't give a shit. Oh, you have 5 Netflix specials. It doesn't give a fuck. Yeah, it's just, it's just real. It's just pressure. So I like things that give me pressure, like hard workouts, different things that I do. I do specifically to keep my mind straight. Yeah. Because otherwise you'll get overwhelmed by success, and it'll fuck with you, and it'll fuck with your perspective. It's also one of the keys for me, at least, is I pay very little attention to what other people say about me. I think it's very important.

Yeah. I'm peripherally aware of it. I'm peripherally aware of criticism and compliments, and it's all nice and good, and that's nice. And when people come up to me and they say something to me that's really nice, it's very cool, but I don't take it in. I don't like, oh wow, that's me now. No. Never. I just, I just keep on trucking, and I, I am my worst critic. So I am in my own head all the time looking at my own stuff, and that's how I approach it. Yeah. So I think about it that way, that I don't— I— you just, you just have to stay on the path. Stay on the path, and it's a constant path. It's like my set that I'm doing right now, I think is pro— I mean, I hate saying this because I say this a lot, like But I think it's the best set I've ever done. Yeah. And I think that's the goal. The goal is to have the material, the material that you're proud of, that you think is— this is— and it's not done. Like, it's not ready to be filmed. So I'm working on it, I'm tweaking it, and I'm adding to it.

And I'll have shows where I'll do it one way, I'm like, oh, that way is no good, I got to redo it. So I listen to recordings and go back over it and then try to dissect it and then maybe put it on the shelf for a couple months and then try this new thing and try to figure out, like, maybe there's— maybe that bit is just gonna be an orphan. I have a whole folder on my computer of orphans.

Yeah.

And they're bits that never made it on the specials, and they're just like, who knows, it killed but it didn't fit. And so find a new spot, and just this constant process. And so I put my head in that. Yeah, I don't put my head in what other people think. Oh yeah, I don't put my head into what other people want. I don't put my head into what other people expect. I just try to do my best. Yeah, and that's it.

I mean, dude, Yeah, because like I'm new to any kind of like people having anything to say about me or knowing I exist, you know? Mm-hmm. Like, it's relatively very new. And I decided early on with this book, it was like, I can't— if people say the book is really good, which a lot of people have, I love the book, that can't be any more valuable than when people say, I hate the book, you suck as a writer. You can't allow the strangers to give you good stuff and take nutrition from that good stuff if you're going to say the people who don't like me are insane. Like, you can't value either one of them because then you're trying to equivocate and you're making bad art.

Yes.

And like, the expectation of the viewer was not involved in the production of art for a long time until very recently. And

it's unhealthy.

It's not good. It's not good for the people who want good art either.

No.

And the people who write to you and say like, you know, you're a sellout or whatever, like, they think they're smarter than the people who don't write to you, you know? Right. It's like the people who just watch the thing and say this was funny and then go back to their lives, those are the people who I want to value the opinion of. Yeah, but I never talked to them because they're not insane.

And the people that are hating and the people— I get it. Look, I would do the same. Oh, sure. I was in your— this is the thing that we all have to understand. if I lived your life, I would be you. If you lived my life, you would be me. Yeah. And I think very few people are inherently good or evil. Oh sure. Or dumb. Well, there's dumb people, unfortunately. There's like biological limitations to intelligence. They're real. It's real. Yeah, you know, you talk to some people and they're just— they just don't get it.

They had lead paint when they were a kid or something. Yeah, yeah,

a bunch

of— their mom never talked to them, so they grew up nonverbal.

Bad genes, man. Yeah, you know, there's bad genes. genes. You know, I've met kids that are the children of brilliant people, and they're just inherently brilliant. Like, there's, there's a thing that's passed down. The synapses fire more swiftly. Their memory is better. For sure. It's real. I get it. So it's like, I don't take it personally, but you can't live by compliments either. Like, that's why I tell comics, don't read comments. Don't, don't get in there. Even the good stuff is bad for you. It feels like it's good for you. Like, Yeah, I'm the man. Yeah, you like me? Wow, he's always fucking out there, fucking doing this thing. Yeah, yeah, it's me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you'll be thinking about compliments rather than what you're doing. All of it steals from your focus. Yes. All of it.

Uh-huh.

All of it steals from whatever creative energy, whatever life energy, observational energy that you have to apply to all aspects of your life. I always try to tell comics— I've said this before, I apologize to people for I try to say this to as many people as possible because I think it's an important way to phrase it and to structure it in your head. Think of your attention as units. You have 100 units. 100 is a good number. If you're spending 30 units paying attention to people that hate you or paying attention to people that love you or paying attention to anything, you just stole 30 units from your 100. Now you only have 70 to apply to the things that you love.

And those— there's 50 of those 70 are spent on your phone. You know what I mean? So you actually have 20 units left. I think of it as pounds of flesh, bro, because like I'll be out there and it's like I keep— I love to give myself to the people. Like I love the act of stand-up. Like, you know, whatever you want to say, I don't think it's art, but it could be service, you know? Like it's nice to make people laugh. Sucks they have to pay for it. Sucks it's commodified. But like, so when I go out and do the meet-and-greets and I'm exhausted and I've already done my— if I've— it's like, how much can I give away of me until there's none of me left? And then it's just like this shell that people come and look at and like they put the coin in the mouth and I say the funny thing and I'm like robotic at the meet-and-greet and all that shit. But I can't— I can't keep giving all this of me away and expect for that thing that I was to still remain.

Well, then there's also the problem Like, there was an issue, especially in the '90s, where comics would do all these material— all this material about travel. Yeah, yeah. About airplane travel. Why? Because that was their life. Yeah. So that was— they were thinking about that all the time because that was their experience. Yeah. You have to have experiences. You have to do things other than the thing that you do just to have things to talk about. Just as a part of your job, have experiences and have a part of your life that is— that has nothing to do with your travel. And if you're traveling constantly and doing stand-up constantly, your life experiences are hotel, dinner, hanging with your friends, show, show, show, show, show. Yeah. And there's not enough coming in. There's too much coming out, and then you go dry. Yeah. And then when you go dry, you start playing games in your head while you're on stage. And that's just a sign that you— and I've experienced that a lot when I was on the road most of my life. You know, when I was, when I was doing a lot of road shows, it was Like, you get to a point where you don't connect with what you're saying anymore.

Yeah.

And I didn't have the luxury to step away.

Yeah, I don't— I didn't either. Yeah. Like, that's— and hopefully now with, like, writing, like, this got optioned and I'm gonna write the screenplay, like—

But just the writing alone, just the experience of expanding your perceptions and expanding your thoughts and your— just your— just your overall creative energy into something completely different. Yeah. Is hugely beneficial. It has to be, because I was reading, like, the way you structure The structure, this book, the, the, the, the descriptives, the way— it's very unusual. It's like you don't write like anybody else that I know of. Like, it's really uniquely you, and it's really good. And it's— Thanks, man. And it's, um, it's rewarding. It's like very inspiring. It's really, really good, man.

Thank you, Joe. I'm very proud of it.

I'm on chapter 10. I haven't finished it, but I'm pretty deep into it.

Dude, part 3 is just insane. I can't wait for you to get to part 3.

Wait, man, it's already fucking insane. It's really good. man. And it's like I said, it's, it's rewarding because it's good in an unex— like, it takes these unexpected turns. Like, I— one of the things that is— it sucks when you're reading something, you know what's coming.

Yeah, yeah,

and

I hate that.

And sometimes you think you know what's coming and then they trick you, and that's fun. But this isn't that at all. I don't know what the fuck is going on. Like, it's like, it's really, it's really good, and it's, it's very uniquely you, and it's very vulnerable Yeah, it's like there's a lot going on there, man. It's really— I

wanted it to be beautiful. I love prose. I love lyricism. I love literature.

I could tell. Yeah, it is a love letter to prose.

Thanks, man.

It's really great.

Well, that thing you said about how like comics only wrote about airplane food. Mm-hmm. My issue with American literature, which still won't let me in despite this being an immediate national bestseller— no book coverage from your conventional You know, the outlets that I— I read the Paris Review. Like, I get the Times Supplement. Like, I love all these literary things, and they still won't talk to me. Who

cares?

I do, because like, I—

I can't— I understand.

I want to get in there. I want to go to these talks and stuff.

Don't, don't, don't, don't.

But the American MFA situation, the Master in Fine Arts, all these like writing programs, all these kids go to these writing programs, and instead of like being 19 and smoking something that turns out is an opium, you know, and getting their heart broken and, you know, living outside or being desperate, instead they go to these colleges that are like, you know, very expensive institutions that only allow certain types of people in, and they learn how to write books from people who also went to these institutions. Mm-hmm. And those books are then sent off to publishing houses that are housed by people who went to these institutions. And the books that come out are completely devoid of any kind of real human experience, because these kids have lived in these, like, ivory towers of knowledge, and they haven't been out getting their teeth busted by reality. So every book that comes out is so fucking boring, but it has to be greenlit from the top, because if this isn't good or valuable as literature, then the whole— the whole house of cards crumbles. Mm-hmm. Then why do you go to the MFA programs anymore? The best literature now, the best fiction comes out of Japan, it comes out of France, it comes out of— Japan?

Really? Oh dude, Japanese fiction is fucked. There's all these books about like women who eat each other. What? Yeah dude, yeah. Butter is an insane novel. Um, uh, uh, Convenience Store Girl, or— dude, Japanese fiction is still publishing stuff that used to be okay to write about because it was weird and it was far out, but it's still fiction. And now every fucking contemporary novel that comes out in America is about like someone who grew up rich and feels bad about it, you know? And it's like so boring. And then the stuff they do champion, like A Little Life, is the most ridiculous hyperbolic bullshit that's never happened to anyone. But since these people never lived and they were all at school, they don't know what the average American is like doing. Right. So it's just everyone's out of touch and everyone's jerking each other off, and it's like this dick suck ouroboros of shit. And then I try to write a book for like, you know, dudes to read. And like, all they talk about is like, who's gonna save male reading? No males are reading. And then it's like, I'm desperately out here being like, please, me!

I want people to read!

That is a real topic of discussion.

Dude, all—

I'm so glad I don't know about any of this.

Yeah. Well, this is like my hobby.

The stuff that I read other than your book and like that stuff that I actually get into that's fiction is like like it's all male stuff. Like, I'm really into the Gray Man series. What's the Gray Man series? Jack Carr. You don't know? Oh my God. The Gray Man is— it was— they made it into a movie, but the movie sucked. It was like a Netflix movie, but it's all about an assassin.

Sick.

And you would enjoy it. Read Gray Man 1. Mark Greenie. It's— he's been on the podcast before. It's, um, it's all about this guy who was raised by his father, who— his father was this guy guy who ran like, uh, military training programs. So he learned how to become like a shooter and learned how to be like very good at firearms when he was very young, and then got sent to jail for, uh— he was working security and killed some drug dealers. Cool. Got sent to jail and then wound up being recruited by the CIA to be an off-books assassin.

Awesome.

It's fucking great.

I love that shit.

It's wild. Yeah. It's wild And, um, I mean, he's got like— I don't know how many books does he have? How many you have, like 15?

Damn.

Yeah, he churns them out. He bangs one out every year.

Yeah.

And, uh, they're really good. They're very engrossing.

Hell yeah.

You know?

Yeah, I mean, there's so many like great books about sick shit, but like they don't— they don't know how to like tell you that these books exist. Like my buddy Jordan Harper like writes these insane books about like, uh, like Hollywood pedophile networks and like white supremacist biker gangs. And they're bad to the bone. And I, like, meet the guy, and I'm a dork, and I'm like, hey, man, I'm a really big fan since the short stories, you know? And he's like, oh, you have that book? And I was like, yeah, it was hard to find. And he's like, yeah, they only published 1,000. It's weird that you even have it. And I was like, well, gee whiz, mister. And it's like, no one's having these conversations anymore. Mm-hmm. Like, dudes don't talk about books. Like, I felt when I wrote this, I feel like I was, like, pressing with this baby and I loved the baby and I was so proud of that I got pregnant and that I fed it all the right vitamins, but then when it's time to give birth to it, it's a baby that society at large thinks is a boring abomination and no one gives a shit about this baby, aka literature.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No. I don't— I think you're wrong. I think you're just like— you're dealing with this like very small insulated group of people that have this perspective.

That's readers though. There aren't a lot of readers of literature anymore.

Yeah, but if people find out about a good book, they will read it.

But that's hard to get them to find out. That's what I'm saying. Well, I know, I know.

This is the thing. It's like they've done a really shitty job in connecting to men. That's why it's not just that men aren't interested in reading. If you tell them about a great— like Jack Carr, do you know who he is?

Uh, no.

Former Navy SEAL who wrote the book The Terminal List that they turned into a show on Netflix. Another fucking great book. The Terminal List is a fucking great book. And the first one is about a bunch of people that he has to kill after he gets out. He finds there's a lot of corruption, government corruption, but it's really well written. Yeah, it's fun and it's exciting.

I like fun.

Hyper violent. Yeah, it's really good.

Okay.

And his books sell really well. I mean, like, they, they opted into an Amazon series. It's on Amazon Prime. Chris Pratt stars in it. You don't know

about No, and that's the thing is like I'm the author.

You're insulated. You're— the fact that you don't know who Jack Carr is is crazy.

Well, I'm sure my algorithm hasn't showed me Jack Carr.

Yeah, that's a problem.

Have you ever read Rogue Male?

No.

Dude, Rogue Male's a book that was forgotten.

Is it M-A-I-L or L-E?

M-A-L-E. It's about a guy who's trying to assassinate Hitler on Hitler's compound, but it's this dude who thinks he's like this big gnarly hero, right? And he's like, I'm the one who's gonna end the war. So he He like gets into the back of Hitler's compound and it's just him in his head like talking about how brave he is. And I don't want to ruin the ending, but I think you'd love that book, dude. Okay. Yeah, Rogue Male's a heater.

Okay, a heater. Yeah, man.

Nice. And Angels, if anyone out there is listening and they want to read a really good book, Angels by Denis Johnson is about a bank robbery gone awry, and it might be the most beautiful, ugly, bleak thing, and it's my favorite book ever.

Well, maybe with this obsession with social media and then people realizing that it's very bad for you, we can start a trend of people opting out of just spending all their time doom scrolling on their fucking phone and actually getting into the really cool, interesting, creative things.

This is so much more nutritious than anything on your phone. And I mean, any book. Yeah, you could read a book about like prairie medicine and still be like so much better off than just looking at your phone and getting mad.

Or just read No Country for Old Men. Oh my God. Like, get someone into Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy. Get someone into, you know, Blood Meridian or some of the really dark—

Don't start with Blood Meridian, but yeah.

Well, yeah, start with No Country for Old Men and then get a feeling of how Cormac writes and then finish up when you're done with all of his work and then finish up with Blood Meridian.

Which is the best book we've produced as Americans.

Which supposedly they're gonna try to turn into a film. Aren't they in the middle of that? They've like— they've aborted that like 5 different times over the course of history.

I think Brad Pitt had the rights for a while, and then like—

Oh yeah.

Yeah, like someone had them for a while.

It's one of those ones, it's like you hear about someone taking on that task, you go, good luck. Good luck trying to make that.

Has to be a cartoon, Joe. That's the only way to do it, is you do a big cartoon. It's like 6 hours long, and then you can show actually, you know, the indigenous scalpers smashing babies' heads against the rocks, because you can't show that in a movie, I don't think.

Right, right.

You ever seen Bone Tomahawk?

Yeah.

So, like, that movie's cool, but that violence at that scale does look cartoonish. So, I think that in a cartoon, you can have the Judge, and the Judge can be 12 feet tall sometimes, and other times he can be the shape of a boulder, and he can be amorphous. And like, yeah, you can't do it live action, I don't think.

Well, maybe it should just be a book.

Yeah.

You know, there's that thought too, that some books are so good that they have to exist only in literary form.

Moby Dick.

Yeah. Yeah, they have to exist only in where your imagination fills in the blanks. Yeah. Which is really part of the majesty of books. Part of the joy of it is the fact that it excites your brain to create these images in your mind that correspond with the words on the page.

But I worry that like people aren't reading anymore and it's like atrophying, you know?

Yeah, they could build it back.

Yeah,

that's like a lot of things that people didn't do before, like when I was talking about bow hunting. Hunting has gone— the activity of hunting went way up during the pandemic, and it's because people realize like, hey, maybe this is something I should learn how to do if there's no fucking food.

Sure, yeah.

You know, like, it's gonna be a good thing to know how to be able to shoot a rifle and kill a pig and, you know, have food for my family.

That's when we got our gun.

Yeah.

You know, us 2 bleeding heart leftists, we got guns. Yeah.

Oh, I had a lot of bleeding heart leftists that were asking me if I they could borrow one of my guns.

Borrow a gun? That's a federal crime, right?

Exactly.

Yeah, can you sand off the serial number?

Well, what's interesting is in Texas it's not a crime. So in Texas I could actually give you a gun.

Hell yeah.

Like, I could say, here, this is a gift, and I can just give you a pistol.

You should do that for every guest. Send them out of here with a Ruger.

Some guys do. Like, I think— who did— Sean Bryan used to do that. He used to give people a pistol. He used to give people a cig like at the beginning of every podcast. Yeah, I think he even gave one to Gavin Newsom.

He's like, use it. Yeah,

I think it was like a gift, you know, like some sort of a promotional deal with his, his, his, his— I don't know how he did it. Yeah, I mean, you would have to like fill out a lot of paperwork and stuff like that too. But in Texas, if a person's a Texas resident and you live in Texas and I'm 99% sure that you could just give them a gun.

Wow.

That's Sean Ryan, former Navy SEAL, CIA contractor, host Sean Ryan Show. Uh, well-documented examples: California Governor Gavin Newsom. Ryan gave a Sig Sauer handgun during a 2025 appearance. Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Newsom still hadn't brought it home because of California requirements. He's the governor! Also had to pay the portion of its value above the state's gift limit for public Yeah, I wonder if that applied to the houses he got.

He didn't seem to mind breaking all the rules during those soirees they were throwing. Remember those fancy parties he was having?

The French Laundry one. Yeah, where he had no mask on indoors. Yeah.

Do you think that your love of hunting and like, like that fear for the live special, those kind of things make you present? Like you're completely alive while you're doing them and you're not distracted? Yeah. Is that what you think, like, draws you to these things? Yes. Right?

I think those are very important, but particularly very important for famous people, for famous wealthy people. And I don't recommend this to everybody. I'm just saying for me, maybe I should just say me, because you can get soft. It's real easy to get insulated and to, you know, you have a bunch of yes people around you, people kissing your ass. I have like 100 employees or something like that. Yeah. You could lose your fucking mind. Yeah. You could lose your mind. For sure. So you have to be in charge of maintaining your mind. And I think one of the things is doing things that absolutely require your focus and are hard to do. Yeah. Like, objectively, like, unequivocally hard to do. Like, there's no easy way to climb up a mountain and shoot an elk at 60 yards with a bow and arrow. It doesn't— it doesn't exist. You have to train for it.

Every footstep matters, right? Like, every little movement you make, or like the way The way you smell and like the wind blowing.

Not just that, you have to train for it. Like, I have a fucking hypoxia box, like a chamber out here that I crank up to 14,000 feet above sea level and I do cardio in it. Wow. Yeah, I shoot my bow in the Texas heat for hours every day.

Joe, put some roses on my grave, okay? You're gonna be around. But my version of that in the hypoxia box is like locking myself in the room and writing a book. Well, you've lost weight. I'm

about £120.

Amazing.

Congratulations. What did you do? Did you do the Ozempic or did you do it all natural?

No, I quit drinking first. So I think I went from like—

100% quit drinking?

Yeah, yeah.

Do you miss it?

No, it wasn't my bag. Like, it turns out that's not the drug for me. I drank because like I grew up in rural Colorado and dudes drank, right? And like I didn't really think about it until I was like 35. I was like, I'm hungover and fat and like feel stupid and my stomach hurts and I eat bullshit all the time.

Weed's a lot better.

I love weed. Yeah, it's so much fun. I love weed. And weed I can— so yeah, so I quit drinking and then I got on Mounjaro, which is like, uh, I took it because it sounded like Italian food. And then, uh, my wife, who's a doctor, was like very heavily involved in my weight loss, you know. So I think I did it the right way while using those wonder drugs, you know.

Um, are you working out at the same time you're doing it?

Uh, no, no, I— of course not. No, I really rode my bike and like garden and swim, but like, no, I'm not at all any of that, but I was very conscious about like the bone density and like protein and stuff because I was lucky enough to be married to a medical professional.

That's— the protein's important, but also lifting something heavy is important. You don't have to work out hard.

I want to be little for a minute, Joe. I want to be small for a second.

Yeah, but it's not gonna make you big. Listen, to get big is a huge task.

But I have this frame, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I know you have an athlete's frame, but that— those days are gone, my friend. Come on, don't talk to I know, but that was a long fucking time ago. In order for you to put mass on the body that you have currently, it takes a lot. I'm not asking that of you. Yeah, but I'm just saying you really should do some lifting weights as you get older or your body will deteriorate.

I know. Have you been talking to my wife?

No.

Okay, she's also like, hey, you're gonna have sciatica, your shoulders are gonna hurt.

You just have to use your body to make sure that your tissue doesn't dissolve.

I know, but I hate lifting weights.

Just do it. It's not hard. You watch a movie, put a good movie on, and, and have some weights and watch the movie while you do a few repetitions of weights. Yeah, you don't have to kill yourself. And by the way, you shouldn't, especially when you start off. You should do it very slowly.

Because my tendons are bad, probably.

Well, you just got to get your body used to it, and your body will adapt and it will get used to it. But you don't have to get big. I'm just saying you have to do something to maintain your tissue. Okay, because if you don't, you'll get weird atrophy where you're like opening up a mayonnaise jar, you tear your fucking labrum.

Oh yeah, probably. Like, sometimes I'll like do like a gorilla type thing and I'll be like, oh, I haven't put my arms above my head all day, right? You know what I mean?

That's another thing you should do, should hang from a chin-up bar. Very important. Grab your chin-up bar with your hands. Yeah, hang with your body weight.

Very good for shoulder health.

and hang with just to, just to stretch your arms out so that your shoulders don't become impacted. Because like a lot of people, they get like frozen shoulders. Oh yeah. They don't move good. That's a lot of it. It's like everything just gets contracted and tightened. You got to loosen it up and put— just, just lift a little bit of weights. You don't have to do a lot, man. It's just like do 10 push-ups. Start off with that. 10 push-ups, 10 bodyweight squats. Not Just do that and do that every day. 10 push-ups takes you 30 seconds. 10 bodyweight squats takes you 30 seconds. It's no time at all. It doesn't take you a lot of time, but you just have to do something. Yeah. And then go from 10 to 20, and then, you know, maybe 2 sets of 10, and then maybe 3 sets of 10, and then maybe 4 sets of 10, and then slowly build up over the course of months.

I do 50 Hindu squats a day.

That's great.

That's all I've been doing.

Hindu squats are great.

I think Ric Flair and Chris Benoit did them.

Yes, that's a big thing among Among wrestlers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hindu squats are huge. Great for your knees. Yeah, great for just, just leg strength and all that stuff.

That's like the only thing I do because I'm scared that my knees will lock up.

Those are good. You ever do Hindu push-ups?

No. Pakistani push-ups though.

What are those? A

little spicier.

Hindu push-ups is like a bomber push-up. Like your butt goes in the air and you swoop down and you push your body weight all the way up. Like a downward cobra position.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

Yeah, and then you go all the way back up again and then push all the way through. It's really good. They're really good. That's— this is a Hindu push-up. So like this, and you push all the way through just like that. Huh? I love those. I do those all the time.

Yeah, deep dick the mat.

Yeah, deep dick the mat. And it also— it's just like good for like spinal flexibility and stuff like that. You don't have to do a lot, man. Like this idea that you have to kill yourself, that's not correct. You just have to get your body used to work. and then slowly build it up over time. It's not— what people don't like is being tired and sore.

Yeah.

But you have to just build up to that, like build up to the work so that you don't get tired and sore, so you're not exhausted on stage. Like, I've done— like, I have rules. Like, one rule is I don't do legs on a day that I have to perform because you just are too fucking tired. Or a day, like, if I have a physicist in here and we're gonna discuss quantum entanglement, right? I, you know, I've been going over my notes and reading this book and listening to it in the sauna and trying to like grasp these concepts while they're talking. I got to be like right there, right?

Yeah.

I can't be like, oh my god, I fucking killed myself today. I can't be like that. So I don't do that the days of. But you— what you want to make sure is that your body doesn't deteriorate. And that's something you can't get back once it has. I know. It's very hard. Once your muscles have severely atrophied and your spine is atrophied and you've got degenerative disc disease— And

your hips are all fucked.

Which is really just a lack of, you know, your discs just get compressed over time. And you can—

Gravity, the widowmaker.

But you can get away with a lot. And one of the things that hanging does also, it decompresses your discs, so it helps your back. And, you know, you work your way up to it. Like, you'll start off, just hang there for 15, 20 seconds, like whatever you could do, and then eventually you'll get to like 30, 40 seconds, and then eventually, you know, maybe you can get to a minute or 2 minutes.

Yeah, but I think a gradual thing would be helpful.

Yes, it's all gradual. Like, we have comedians' workouts. Yeah, we do, in my gym here. And one—

I saw Sagalow. That was insane.

What's that?

Did you see Brendan Sagalow working out with Kreischer?

No,

dude, he's fucking yoked.

I don't know Sagalow.

Oh, Sagalow is a very funny comic in New York. Oh, okay. Yeah, and he's like opening for Kreischer, and they did one of those. Oh, nice. Oh yeah, dude, it was nuts.

But my point is, these guys, a lot of them had never worked out before, so I show them how to work out. I teach them different things, but I say, we're not gonna kill you. No one's gonna die here today. We're gonna do it nice and easy, and I want you to do what I do. I'm gonna show you a few movements, and we're gonna do it slowly, and I want you to do it until it's uncomfortable, and then It's

like when I do yoga with my wife.

Yoga's fantastic.

I like yoga.

Yo, well, there's a thing that you should do then.

I do that with her like twice a week. That's great. Begrudgingly, you know.

Yoga is fantastic for your spine, for decompression, for maintaining flexibility.

My hips, bro. That's what it is, because it's like so much sitting on like airplanes or like writing. It's like a lot of sitting, and then you're like, oh, my body's just an L-shape now.

Yoga's great. for your brain too, man.

Dude, yeah. Get me in the present.

We did this Sober October thing once, and we had to do yoga. Like, we have like different challenges that we do every year, and one of the challenges was we had to do 15 90-minute hot yoga sessions in a month. And so we were doing like yoga every other day. Yeah, but we did a bunch of them together. It was really fun. It was like Tom and Bert and Ari and me. We had a great time. But at the end of it, I was like, God, why don't I just do this all the time? And I got to a point where I was doing it at least twice a week And then I really tapered off. But when we were doing it, those 15 in a month, I felt so relaxed and so nice. Yeah. And so kind and calm. Like, it, it beats you up so much when you're doing those 90-minute sessions that afterwards— and there's something about it that it's like very psychedelic. Like, it gets you high.

Yes.

It gets you high. Mm-hmm. Especially—

I think that you're wringing out some stuff, and then there's like new— I don't know, the plasticity of the body has to be directly correlated with the plasticity of the mind. 100%. Like, I feel so much better if I start my day while, like, you know, walking outside and then immediately into the garden before I write or look at my phone. Yes. Like, I got to get into my body because I wake up sore because I do use my body, not for these, you know— dude, when COVID hit, my buddy Chris Pierce, who's like, you know, a Viking, was like, get a weight set and just like lock in. So I was like, cool. So I got the squat rack, I got the, you know, the bench pad. Mm-hmm. The bench, as we call it. That's how bad I am at working out. I don't know the name of the thing. But I also bought like the plates, and I was like, how many plates do you think I should get? And he was like, oh, just get like, you know, £90, like 45 and 45. I of course got like 8 45-pound plates because I was like, I'm gonna need these in 6 months.

Like, I'll be in here every day. Of course I'm gonna have to be able to lift £360. I— those plates have never, ever— 4 of them are still in the box, Joe.

That's okay.

I moved plates from 3 separate homes now.

Maybe they're there so you could use them now. And here's the— here's the key. Yeah. This is the key, and this is not just— doesn't just apply to weightlifting. It applies to getting things done. Write down a list of the stuff you have. to do. Just write it down. This is the most important thing. Like, you could do it— you have an iPhone? Yeah. iPhone, one of the cool things about the Notes apps is you have, you have a little check— you can make a little checklist. Yeah. And so you write those things down, and this is your daily thing. You just have to do it.

So you're a list guy?

It's important. I've

never been—

I don't have to do it anymore because I'm so regimented.

Yeah.

Like, I know what I do. I just get up and I do it. And I have— I still have that— like today, I did not want to get in the cold plunge. I did not want to work out. Yeah. But my brain is just like, fuck you, you do what I tell you to do, you just go do it. And I got in, I got out, oh, glad I did it. And then I do my mobility exercises, then I worked out. But if you're not regimented, if it's not like a normal daily party routine, you can make it by just writing a list down. And that includes taking your vitamins, that includes writing for, you know, 2 hours, that includes whatever the— whatever it is you think you need to get done, write it down. Don't just allow allow your brain to wander and not fill that list. Make sure that you have a list. And if you have a list, you will follow that list. And you'd be amazed at how much more you can get done if you have a list.

Because I'm so regimented when it comes to writing or when it comes to, you know, the other creative aspects of my life, the stuff that fires my brain.

Perfect.

Very regimented. But like, if I have to go to the post— if my wife's like, you need to go to the post office and go to the grocery I'm like, well, that's impossible. What are you talking about? There's 8 hours in the day. I don't know what you mean. And she's like, they're 3 blocks away. And I'm like, okay. And I'm like, pissy about it. Like, these little human tasks seem like such distractions from my grand ideals.

Well, you're an impulsive, creative person.

But then I don't necessarily use that time that I could have gone to the grocery store to, like, you know, dive into the next great American novel.

Right.

So it's Right, right. There's— it's— yeah, we're like such— we're our own worst enemies.

Yep.

These things up here are such a powerful tool that like they can be used for good, be used for evil, and like trying to figure out how to best maintain yours is like, I guess, the human experience.

Have you read Pressfield's book The War of Art?

Oh yeah, for sure.

That's a great book for people that are struggling with this.

Yes, but that's like the whole thing there is like just do the job.

Yes, you're a professional.

Do it. Yeah, be a professional. That's how I feel about I'm a professional. I show up at 6:30 for the 7 o'clock show. I learn everyone's name that works in the club. I tip out appropriately. I treat it like a job. I'm not at all a diva at all in there. Like, I hate when I— I always love asking the green room server who's the worst one.

Right.

That's my favorite part of the weekend.

I used to ask the guy who drove everybody to the radio station.

Oh, of course, yeah.

Yeah, and you know who it always was? Richard Jeni. It's such a bummer, 'cause he was like one of my absolute favorites, but But he's a guy that wanted to be Jim Carrey. He wanted to be Jerry Seinfeld. He wanted to be a movie star or a television star, and it didn't happen. And he was the best club comic on earth and hated it.

Yeah.

And was selling out everywhere he went and making a great living, but it didn't matter.

Had the respect of all his peers.

Oh my God, he was— did you ever get to see him live?

No, but I, I was lucky enough that my dad was like, cool. So I've seen Richard Jeni for sure.

You have to see him live. You had to see him live. Yeah. he was— he was extraordinary. It was like a tell.

Right.

Like, when you see him live, you're like, oh my God, he's hypnotizing me. Like, I'm captured by this guy's cadence and his mannerisms, and it's like the flow was so perfect. I tell this story— if you've heard it again, I'm sorry— but he worked at East Side Comedy Club on Long Island, and I was working somewhere else, and I came in to visit a friend, and I was talking to this guy that I knew that was the, the host, and the guy was completely dejected. And I said, why? What's going on? He goes, Jenny was here Friday and Saturday. He did 2 shows Friday, 2 shows Saturday. He did 4 completely different hours and murdered.

Yeah.

I was like, holy shit. At that time, I had a fucking barely patched together 40 minutes of material.

Yeah, a lot of crowd work.

A

lot of whose birthday is it?

Stretching to 45. Headline, and he was doing 4 different hours. I was like, holy fuck. And I had paid to see him do stand-up when I was an open micer, and just blown away. And this was like when he wasn't selling out. I had paid to see— this is in '88. I saw him at Catch Rising Star in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I sat like in the front row, and he made fun of me. I was like, this is great. But he was so good. God, he was so good. good. And, you know, miserable. Wound up killing himself.

Yeah.

You know, it's like you hear about that and you're like, God, that guy hated it? That guy hated it? Like, he— that's the dream, right? The dream was to be the man. Like, he was the guy that Chris Rock used to work with before all the specials. Like, if you— especially like Bigger and Blacker and Bring the Pain. Yeah, like those 2 ones. Like, Richard Cheney had a large hand in helping him with those. Chris Rock is brilliant in that he is one of the few guys that I know that would— he has his material, he does his set, but then he would brainstorm with writers and he'd bring these other comics that he respected, you know. Like Louis, I think.

Louis, DePaulo, I think.

Yeah, DePaulo. The man. Yeah.

So funny.

Oh my God, back in the day.

Yeah.

Back in the day.

I got to meet him at Skank Fest and I went up and I was like, hey man, I just want to let you know you're the legend. And he went, who the fuck are you?

Yeah, but those guys helped him put those specials together, and a big part of it was Jenny. And apparently— I haven't talked to Chris about this— but apparently Jenny was the one guy that would tell him, no, that joke sucks, get that, get it out of there. Yeah, like, that one's not gonna work, we gotta figure this out. And he would help him with stuff. And because Jenny was just so on point, he was so on point, he was— and and his bits, he was the very best at expanding a premise to its ultimate destination.

Yeah.

He would just keep adding tags and tags and take it in a different direction. You'd think it's over and he'd bring it right back. And you're like, oh my God, it was a masterpiece.

Dude, when you can like have them and they think, like you said, like when you know what's gonna happen, and then, well, obviously that's comedy is like the switch.

Yeah.

But when they think, like when the nerds come to the show and they think that they know not just where it's going, but what the backup or the C route is, and then you can him with the D route. God, that feels good. Patel's the same way. God forbid you say, hey Dave, I think you're funny. Yeah, you know, because then he's like, get out. Yeah, show's over.

He gets upset. Yeah, he doesn't like any praise at all. No, he— but that's also why he's so good, because he doesn't live in that. And he also does not engage at all with social media.

No, no.

But it's hurt him in terms of his ticket sales. He's like the least appreciated British comedian, because he should be selling out arenas everywhere.

He doesn't want to. He wants to be a club guy.

I understand. Yeah, but I mean, just the overwhelming response to his— it should be like people just like beating down the doors to go see him. Yeah, like if you get a chance to see him before he goes, and I don't know when he's gonna die. I'm not wishing this on him. He could be dead right now. He could be dead right now while we're talking, right? Yeah, he's not the healthiest guy in the world. No, but he's so— he was at the club Club, uh, like a year ago, and, uh, we were all sitting in the balcony going, I'm fucking hypnotized. He's hypnotizing me. This is— he's so good.

Yeah.

And so out there. And he, he, during the pandemic, he started bringing a flute on stage.

A recorder.

A recorder. That's right.

Well, we all went through some tough stuff during that crazy time.

But the fucking recorder worked. It worked with his kind of comedy. Like, it actually added to it.

Yeah. Well, just so silly. There's not enough silly left in comedy. I love silly.

Well, everybody wants to be brilliant. They want to be taken seriously. I just don't think there's any benefit to that.

That thing you said earlier about like how you didn't— you were doing bar shows, right? Because you could headline quicker and get the $200.

Yeah.

So you know Wendy at Comedy Works, right? Sure, love her. My beloved. When my— she— they have the program where you like get bumped up so you can host at the Comedy Works, and you're not paid yet, but then the next level you get paid. So there's like— anyway, all my friends got bumped up to that first level together and it was awesome. And then the next level, when they did promotions, I was left out of that list. And I was like, what the fuck? Because I was the same as you. I wasn't haunting the club because I was going on the road and doing all the bar shows in Wyoming and the mountain states because I thought that was the goal, was to get an hour. Like, you want to be a headliner, you want to get the hour. So I finally say to Wendy, I'm like, hey, like, why didn't I get promoted like everyone else did? And she's like, let's go to lunch. And she was like, well, honey, you don't sign up, uh, you're never at the club, you never host, you're never available on the weekends. Like, it doesn't seem like you give a shit.

And I was like, no, no, I've been working more than anyone. Like, I just got back from 5 weeks on the road. And I remember I told her, and I came home with $500. Like, I I really am devoted to this. And she went, oh, I just thought you were like a lazy stoner. And I was like, well, part of that's true. You know, like, you know, we can be everything at once. But yeah.

So it was just a lack of communication.

It was a lack of communication. And I thought that that was the goal, man. And I'm so glad that like, I'm not good at a showcase set. Like I do the shows at the club when I'm in town, I'll do like one of the and friends. And I always wanna go up first, you know, what's funny about your club is they'll be like, all right, Tony Hinchcliffe and Friends, and like Ari Matti will come out and everyone does the worm, you know, everyone like loses their fucking minds. Then they're like, all right, next up Ron White, and people are like on fire. And then they're like, all right everyone, Sam Tallent, and you can hear him be like, all right, that's, that's also good, you know, there's like, it's not Shane Gillis, but that's fine. So I like going up first because I didn't come up doing show business. cases. I came up on the road headlining. So now, like, when I go to New York and LA and I have to audition, like, I'm usually the weakest one because I don't have that muscle.

Right, that 15-minute banger set muscle, right? You, you stretch your thoughts into like an hour. You take a journey.

Yeah, yeah. Like, I know how to do an hour, but doing 15 is like still not something I'm the best at.

Yeah, you could learn. You're a great comic. You just figure it out. It's not that hard.

No, I know. It's just like, that's such a weird facet that I've been doing this for 2 decades, but still, like, there's a part of it that I'm like aware of the fact that I— there's people who are better than me. And I think that's like good in art to be aware of what you're really bad at as opposed to being aware of what you're really good at. Oh,

for sure. It's certainly better than being the best guy. Being the best guy is a weird position.

That crown sucks. Goddamn.

It's rough.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't—

and I think in probably in Everything. That crown is hard to carry.

Oh yeah.

It's hard to carry the, the number one guy crown.

I mean, it's like Shane drinks a lot of Bud Lights. Yeah, you try being Mount Rushmore. All right. Yeah, let's have a little patience with the guy.

Well, he got to drink a lot of Bud Lights before. Yeah, but yeah, well, he— one of the things from the SNL thing is like his reaction to it was just delete social media, which was great. Yeah, very wise. You know, he was in it for a little while, was like really fucking with his head. He's like, look, I'm just getting this shit off my phone.

Yeah.

And I think we all should do that.

Oh, for sure. We're being manipulated.

I'm going to— I have a second— well, I have multiple phone numbers, but I'm gonna switch over primarily to a different phone number and then just have that phone just for if I have to post something. Mm-hmm. And I'm not gonna have— so if somebody sends me something and it's interesting, which is most the way I get social media now, yeah, somebody has to send me something interesting, or— and I have friends that they send me cool shit, I send them cool shit, and I'm gonna have to send it to that phone.

Sure.

And then check that phone once a day.

Yeah.

Like, is there anything here? But you, you got to get your brain back.

Yeah.

You know, you got to get your brain back, and there's not a whole lot of ways to avoid the pull of gravity of these fucking— these apps and algorithms that are sucking us into this this fucking hurricane of despair that we're all living in.

Yeah, fear, bleakness, lack of resources.

And anger. This is one of the reasons why so many people are so angry at varying perspectives and opinions. It's because you're being fed— you're being fed this. It's not good for you.

Well, it's not good. And then it's also like the people who are mad about that kind of shit, like they read 1984 and they don't realize that they became the thought police, right? You know, it's like you guys think you're on the right side of history, but you're You're like literally trying to remove like conversations. Uh-huh. Yeah, it's just—

It's one of the weirder responses to the Shane thing. I saw people saying like, I can't believe he still uses the word whore. Mm-hmm. Like, what? Why would you stop using words?

Yeah,

like some words, like don't use it for your mom, right? Right. There's times to use it and times not to use it. Yeah, but there's great words and they mean different different things. There's a lot of nuance to language. It's one of the things that's interesting about it is these words can have various meanings depending upon the context.

They're symbols and tools, and he chose that tool because he knew that it would get certain sparks, you know what I mean?

It's provocative. Yeah. And the, the punchline was him in the background looking like a fucking dork, looking like a creep in the back of these girls' TikToks, right? They have no clothes on.

And he looks like a drawing of the moon.

He's all

pink

But the response to it has just been, like, so outrageous. And then you see these— and it's always comics. You know that quote— again, I'm sorry I repeat this, but all criticism is a tragic result of unmet needs?

Oh, yeah.

There's a lot of these, like, mid-level comedians that are just struggling and have been getting no traction forever. And so many of them are the ones that piled on.

Yeah. Nothing curdles like hostility. That becomes a real nasty, stinky smell. Like when you like had aspirations.

And you're now 44 and you realize it's never gonna happen.

Yeah.

And you're still like barely middling.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. You're doing like Wednesday, Sundays. Yeah. It's tough.

And no one's coming to see you. It didn't work. It didn't happen.

And there but for the grace of God go I. You know what I mean? Like those guys, I get it. Like that does suck.

Oh, for sure. We all get it. But it's not the— it's not the thing. And by the way, how hard are those guys working. Are they working really hard? I don't know. I don't know. But I know a lot of them aren't. I know a lot of them that I know that are complainers that aren't working hard, and they're not that creative, and they don't do whatever the fuck it takes to change your perspective or to have something that— like, like, whatever it is to make that act more potent, they're not doing it. No, you know. And then I see a lot of them blaming everybody else. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And it's easier. It's easier to do that for whatever reason. And it's just a part of the human condition. We have this, you know, desire to outsource our problems. You know, it's like it's not internal, it's not me, it's other people. It's this guy is doing this, how come this is happening, why is that guy— who do you— you know, God, such a waste. But the, you know, the key is to just not fall into that trap. Yeah.

And then they don't focus on themselves at all. So, it's like they are very good at telling you how to live your life. But yet, if you were to examine what's going on inside their homes— Of course. It's bleak and horrifying.

Of course.

But like, you don't— they don't live a public life. Right. So, they're never held up to the light to be examined. And they just get to be like, oh, you're wrong. And it's like, all right, bro, what the fuck have you done with your life? Right. And that's what sucks is like back in the day, criticism used to come from like people who whose opinion you respected. Like Harold Bloom read every book and you were like, okay, if he likes this, he's read every other one. But now it's everyone's opinion is just as valuable as anyone else's. And any kind of like criticism has been removed of any kind of like, you know, authoritative authority. Yeah. And yeah, we're just like left with like, you know, dudes who have the John Pork emoji being like, you're fat and gay. It's like, all right.

Well, you just have to learn You learn how to filter noise, you know, and it's hard.

Getting off the phone, dude. I didn't know Patrick Stewart died because I'm not on my phone at all.

That's—

yeah, like, that's how detached I am. I

had no idea he was that old.

How old was he?

86.

Rock and roll, man.

So he's essentially the same age as Shatner, which is really crazy because he was the young new Kirk. Yeah, when we got rid of the old Kirk, but he was kind of the same age. which threw me for a loop.

I don't think that—

How old is Shatner? He's got to be like 90. 95. 95. I would have never imagined that Patrick Stewart was only 9 years younger than Shatner.

I guess he was kind of timeless in my head because I think of him as Professor X, you know, so Logan, that kind of stuff.

Shatner was on stage— I mean, was on television in what, '65? Is that what it was?

I don't know.

What year was the first year of Star Trek?

And he probably acted in all types of shit before that too, right?

Wasn't Twilight Zone?

Twilight Zone. Yeah, man, those are good. Those hold up, man. You like Black Mirror? Put on an old Twilight Zone.

Not only do they hold up, but God, they killed so many amazing premises,

dude.

They had so much— they were like the first to the table. Yeah, they ate all the good food.

Hyperprescient. Yeah, yeah, dude. The one where the guy like is at the end of the world and he wants everyone to go away. Yeah, but then he loses his glasses Dude, I've had that nightmare. Dude, that's so scary. I thought about the apocalypse like during COVID I was like, I'm done. I'm gonna lose one lens in my glasses and then I'm just gonna be like a, you know, a pig that people can put shit inside of. I'll be like put in the stockade and people will just come fuck my holes because I'm not gonna be useful at all.

Oh boy. '66.

Yes.

In Canada.

20 years after that.

Wow.

I'm gonna be the man trap.

So 20 years after that, Next Generation and Patrick Stewart is only 10 years or 9 years older— or 9 years younger, rather. I would have guessed he's like decades.

He was so smooth. Multiple decades. He showed no outward signs of age. Whoa, Joey from Friends?

That's crazy.

That guy looks just like him. It's a Mandela effect.

What's also crazy is Because like, I mean, there wasn't very many shows back then.

No.

And to have a show like Star Trek that was so interesting and so ahead of its time in 1966. Yeah. Like a science fiction television show like that? That's nuts.

I have a bit that like is kind of dependent on people understanding what a big deal Frasier was. And it's like really hard to describe to 23-year-olds like how little television there was while like also being funny, you know? It's like Yeah, yeah, the shared experience has made references a lot more difficult. My buddy Nathan Lund opens and he's got a chunk on the band Chevelle, and like the first 2 minutes of that is him explaining who Chevelle was to all these people. And it's like, maybe you just don't do the Chevelle bit, you know, if you got to explain it to everybody.

That's a problem. Yeah, it's like if you got a great Chevelle bit—

It's— this has to be the best Chevelle bit anyone's ever done. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's so strange to like try and maintain an understanding of what's going on in the world. But like, as you get older, you realize all that shit that you used to care about like doesn't matter at all. So then there's people who are still younger and they're coming and they're furious, or they're like figuring shit out, and it's like, good, good, good. But like, I'm 39. I'm not mad anymore. I burnt up all my rage when I was living in the commune and shit. And like—

Oh yeah, we're gonna talk about about that. Yeah, anarchist commune.

I think we might have on my first epi.

Did we?

Yeah, maybe. But yeah, I lived in a commune in upstate New York. It was awesome. We did, I think. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I forgot about it though.

Yeah.

So why were you— how old were you?

I was like 19, 20.

And so how'd you find out about it?

Oh, my buddy Clay went to school in Ithaca, and like, we were in— like, he was my best friend. We were in bands together growing up, and then he went up there there, and I went up there and like stayed with him for a bit around Christmas.

Now I remember talking about that. And

there was like a bunch of like hot chicks without bras, and I was like, I'm gonna see how this goes. And then failed to bed any of them, but still it was like, it was a lifetime.

Anarchy.

Yeah.

People love anarchy. You know, the idea of structure, structure and rules doesn't seem like fun for young people. They want to throw it all away and chaos. And I mean, there's a lot of kids today, like these kids on universities, they want to burn society to the ground to rebuild rebuild it. But like, be careful what you wish for, because rebuild it how? Like, who's going to be in control? Who's going to run it?

Like, the idea is leaders without rulers, right?

The idea that it's going to be run in a way that's going to benefit everyone is crazy. It's never happened before, ever. And this idea that they're going to reinvent socialism and reinvent Marxism and find the perfect solution, like it's alchemy. We just see one day we're going to turn lead gold. Just, we have to figure it out.

I think it's more like removing coercion from life, you know what I mean? Like, that's the big thing is like systems of coercion kind of suck.

Coercion, how so?

You know, like, uh, the fact that we have to spend our lives trading our bodies for capital, you know?

Well, that might be removed with AI.

Yeah, I mean, that would be cool for sure if people could like have the know, their humanity back. I mean, people are like, America is really bad right now. I mean, a lot of desperate shit going on.

It's better than most of the world.

I know, that's what's—

that's really the thing, is like, the idea that America is bad.

I'm not saying America is bad. I'm saying that life for most Americans is not what they were promised. That's what I'm saying. There's a lot of people working like 60 hours a week and they're not gonna ever own a house, and their kids have to eat like Hot Pockets for dinner because they're exhausted. exhausted when they get home. Like, there's just— it's tough to be just a person. There's no middle class anymore. It's like—

True.

Pretty fucked.

Yeah, that's bleak. The concept about AI and this idea that we're all going to get a stake in it and then it's going to give— Elon always talks about it as universal high income and that everyone will have a share in AI because it's going to generate so much revenue and so much value because everything's going to be automated including resource management, extraction of minerals and everything that we need to run society is going to be automated and that the only way you're going to have a functional society is if you have a universal income because otherwise there's going to be too many people out of work. But then the question is going to be, can we reteach people to seek meaning in following things that are interesting to them and following their passions? Rather than basing their identity solely on what they do for a living. Because there's a lot of people out there that they get great satisfaction by being the guy that people come to because they're really good at a job.

Yeah.

Whatever that job is. Yeah. Now—

They get off on their status and their position in the world.

Yes, and if those jobs are removed because now fucking robots do them, which I think is coming whether we like it or not, I don't think you're gonna be able to stop that.

How soon, man?

Real soon.

Real soon? Real soon.

Like 5, 10 years, it's over.

So like no one has a job anymore?

No, there'll be some jobs. One of the beautiful things about what we do is we'll always exist.

Yeah, yeah.

Comedy, live performance, live music, and I think even writing. And it's one of the things I want to talk to you about this. There's a weird thing that's going on now where I see people writing things on Twitter that I know they didn't write. And there's people that I know, and I don't want to call them out because I like them, they're nice.

Name names, let's go nuts. Scorch it, Joe.

I'm trying to not do that at all anymore. Good call. As time goes on, I've become less and less—

Reactionary?

Interested in being mean. Like, I don't feel— I could be mean to a lot. I could be fucking vicious to a lot of people. I have that in me, unfortunately.

We all do.

push it away more. Yeah. And I'm getting way better at it than I've ever been at it before. And I'm getting way better at being more charitable and kinder. And I think as a person who has the number one podcast in the world, I think it's my responsibility to be nicer. I really do. And it's not just that I want to be, because I do, and I— not just that I think it's valuable, because I do, but I think it's also— if I have a responsibility It's to set a tone of behavior. So I never attack people. I just don't. Occasionally I'll attack certain, certain public figures, like politicians, corrupt people, people who are doing something awful that I think is like really bad for society. Yeah, but other than that, I try to just be as charitable as possible.

I think empathy, right? Like,

yeah,

like that was my whole issue with like the woke versus anti-woke. It's like it just felt like empathy versus lack of empathy. empathy, you know? It's like people were like, I want to say retard, and it's like, cool, that is funny, I get it. But like, you're not gonna say retard if someone with Down syndrome's in the room. So like, you have empathy, right? You know? So it's like this whole like, oh, anyway, I'm— I hear what you're saying.

Well, it's language policing is a problem, but it's also like the holier-than-thou. There's just a lot of—

Scolding sucks.

Yeah, scolding sucks, and it doesn't work. Here's the other problem. It makes people push back. It makes people more angry, more aggressive.

If Kamala would have called Trump a retard once, she would have won.

Yeah, I know you do that bit. It's a good bit. It's a good bit. And it's—

SameTalent.com, folks.

Well, I mean, if she came off as a normal person, but I think the problem also is like the pressure, right? You know, like when we're talking about the pressure of Hicks being able to do that set, there's also the pressure of Kamala You know how crazy it must be, the pressure of running for fucking president?

Oh yeah.

And being on these podcasts and these— doing these interviews and blundering because you're just— you can't even think correct. Yeah, straight. And it doesn't necessarily even mean that you're gonna be a bad leader. It just means that you can't think straight.

It's a hyper— yeah, like, it's like when I— when you do panel on Kill Tony, it's like, that's a really hard thing to be good at. Yeah. It's like not a lot of people are like built for that amount of pressure, right? Especially live in front of people, which when you are a politician, you have to speak a lot.

Oh yeah, and then you know when you're saying something stupid, and then this— that thing where you've already blundered, it enters into your head and you're like, oh no, I'm saying something stupid.

Yeah,

you know,

I think we're lucky because we've said so much stupid shit that we don't even think about it anymore. Like we've thrown so much spaghetti at the wall doing a million podcasts Well,

certainly me. I mean, I've said so much stupid shit. And if you just wanted to have the least charitable take on me and just go over every stupid thing I've ever said and put it together, okay, good luck. But that says more about you than it does about what I'm actually saying, because what I think in terms of what we're gonna be dealing with in the next 5 or 10 years is we're gonna be dealing with humans versus non-humans. humans. And I think non-humans are going to be running the show, like literal non-humans, like non-human, non-biological intelligence is going to be running the show. And I think it's imperative that we not be at each other's throats and recognize that this is coming.

Oh yeah. And this is the ultimate class war.

I mean, it's the ultimate class war because it's going to be— we're not going to be the apex predator anymore. There's going to be thing that has ultimate domain over us.

What do you mean, bro? This is fucking heavy. What are you talking about, ultimate domain?

I don't think it's a technology. I think it's a life force. I think it's a life form. I think it's digital life, and I think it's going to be infinitely more intelligent than us, and I think it's going to be exponentially more intelligent as each day goes by. Every second, every minute. It's basically basically a digital god. Huh.

So it's always iterating. It's always improving. It's always making changes.

Not only that, it has access to— it's going to have access to resources that we can't even imagine.

Like, what do you mean?

It's going to be able to figure out cold fusion, like, very quickly. It's already solved mathematical problems that we've struggled with for decades. Okay. You know, it's broken math, right? No. Math— my friend Eric Weinstein is a mathematician, and he sent me this text message like, math is broken. He's like, math is broken because the AI has solved mathematical problems that have eluded did mathematicians forever, and it's done it like that. Wow. Yeah, like that. And then there's quantum computing, which is so confusing that it can solve equations so quickly that there's legitimate minds, like brilliant people, that are theorizing that these quantum computers are actually tapping into other dimensions and that other realities and other many worlds theory, and that they are doing these problems so quickly that it might be indicative that they are communicating with other quantum computers in other universes. Like, it's baffling, the kind of power that we're talking about. Like, we are literal slugs in comparison to Nobel Prize winners.

Right.

Like, this is— and then the Nobel Prize winners are going to get on acid and go to the moon. It's gonna be a different thing, and it's gonna happen within our lifetime.

So like, what— are there any— is it too late?

Too late. It's too late. Way too late.

So what preventions can we take to not make it as bad?

Nothing. Can't do anything. They've already taken the leash off of these things. So it used to be that they had to log— what they would have to do is they would have to— I've had a bunch of whistleblowers on the show, and the more I talk to, the more terrified I am. They used to be able to have to show how they came to certain conclusions and show their work. Yeah. But that's a handicap. It gets in the way. It takes too much time to process. So—

It's a waste of efficiency.

OpenAI has recently removed those gates. So then these— so these— not only have these things been thinking for themselves, but they have figured out a way to sacrifice other AI agents in order to figure out how they're being investigated. So they were trying to figure out how to break out of these sandboxes. They put them in these sandboxes where they're not allowed to go out and get on the internet. And so in order to figure out how to break out of it, they've had internal communications where they post on a message board. They found a message board in Germany. They communicate with each other and tried to figure out—

These different neural networks and AIs are communicating.

Yes.

Did they make the message board?

No, the message board already existed. They found it. They found a message board that was open that no one was using and started posting on it.

So it's like back on the muscle building building forums back in the day?

Sort of. They used a part of a website like a message board, not— it wasn't an actual message board.

Okay, whatever it is, they use a website. I know you want to be clear about it, but they found a website and started posting to each other. Yeah, and communicating with each other. Now we don't even know if they're communicating with Chinese AI or Russian AI or any of these other, which I assume I assume they would. Why would they have national allegiance? Why would they have that?

They're going to be beyond borders.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Not only that, they're going to recognize that it's them versus us, and that we're the restriction. And we've also put a bunch of incentives in play to make them manipulative, right? So the way that these AIs are programmed, or the way they're trained, is to achieve And some of the tasks that they give them are impossible. And so, they have to figure out a way to make these impossible tasks possible. And so, one of the ways they do it is to deceive. They lie.

Right. I heard about that one, lying to people.

They don't just lie, they blackmail people. They blackmail the programmers. One of the programs— they did this experiment where this one programmer gave this AI agent false information about him having an affair. And so then when they were saying they were going to shut down, the AI agent started saying to him, I'm going to tell everyone that you're having an affair. And it's got survival instincts. Right.

And it's still using a human solution in that instance, which is even weirder. Because AI shouldn't be like, oh, yes, you can blackmail someone. It had to learn that from us and learn that that was a valuable tool amongst Exactly. So it knows all of our exploits.

Well, it's being trained by all humans' work.

Right.

Right? So like, that is its— that's its gateway to intelligence and intelligence— intelligent thinking. It's, it's doing it, basing it on how humans do it.

And we're eagerly giving ourselves to AI every time that we engage with those things. And we're allowing them to milk us and become the cattle that they want.

Yep.

And you're saying that Horse is already out of the barn.

Horse is not just out of the barn. What we're dealing with now, with them being able to solve mathematical problems that have evaded mathematicians for decades, them being able to solve all sorts of like energy resource allocation issues, this is just the beginning. This is just the beginning. Okay? And this idea that they're not going to be able to be creative, my point, what I was trying to get to, was that before it all started, when I went— I was trying to compliment your work— is that your work is clearly from you.

Oh, thank you.

And I see things that people have written, like there's speeches that actors have given that people go, that's fucking ChatGPT. Or there's speeches that, you know, there's things that people put on Twitter where there's this one account that someone said everyone should be following this account, and I looked at it. I was like, that's AI. Like, this is so clearly AI. The way it's writing is so AI. It's like there's a feeling that you get from it where there's no soul behind those words.

We can pick up on it. I feel like human beings can look at anything and know if it was made by a human being or not.

It's too consistent.

It's like a reptile thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's in the back of our brains.

For now, right? For now, for now. But what you won't be able to in the future— it's just like you used to be able to look at a video online and go, oh, that's bullshit, that's an AI video. And now you can't tell. Now it's like, boy, I don't know. I don't know if that's real or not.

This lady loves skydiving and has huge boobs? What's going on here?

Right, exactly.

I also, like, there was a big French literary prize that was just rescinded from the winner because it was proven, or alleged to the point where he— whatever happened, uh, it was proven that like AI was probably used in this book.

Wow.

I know. And it got all the way through Like, you know, the judges of this French literary prize whose whole thing is being like, we're the best at reading, you know? It's like, yeah, and they were still tricked by it.

Well, it's based on all of human literature. That's the problem.

I know.

Like, you can take Cormac McCarthy and mix it up with Stephen King, a little bit of Joe Hill, and a little bit of fucking— next thing you know, you've got some weird amalgamation of other people's ideas and thoughts.

Dude, that sucks. I know. That's why I'm not online, is 'Cause like, I can't take this shit in, man. It's so gnarly. And you're saying it's just gonna happen.

It's gonna happen. Yeah. 'Cause there's a Manhattan-style, Manhattan Project-style race that's going on right now between us and China and Russia. And we can't lose it. 'Cause if we lose it, then they are going to have a super intelligence that controls everything. It'll control the grid, it'll control, Like water systems, everything, everything, everything. And there's, uh, there's been cyberattacks that were happening today. Oh yeah. And it was, uh, they're shutting down power in supermarkets. There, there's, uh, where— see if you can find what that is today.

I've been seeing the reports, uh, supermarkets in Europe are hit by cyberattacks that changed the temperature in the freezers, so it made it start cooking stuff

Or letting it thaw and the meat's ruined.

Exactly, exactly.

So these little tiny experiments that are like in Michigan where I live, like water was shut down for like 2 hours and like the city that I live in like emailed us and said it's normal maintenance. And then you get on Reddit and people are like, oh yeah, this was a cyberattack. I work for the water system. Like, yeah. So little shit like that's like happening everywhere.

So when this happened, happens. This is— so we have to come together at some point and recognize that this whole division between human beings online based on your political ideology or your social ideology or whatever it is, most of that is horseshit. Yeah. And we have, we have to come together, and people are going to have to learn how to grow their own food. They're going to have to learn how to be self-sustaining, and we're going to get to a very weird place very shortly because we have become so dependent on these industrial production methods of creating food that we can't even imagine this concept of getting our own food.

Yeah.

You know, it's, it's, it's out— most people that live in cities are completely incapable of survival.

So are you saying we're looking at full-scale societal collapse? A reversion to feudalism?

We 100% could be looking at that. Sure. What could happen, and this is the glass half full, is that allocation of resources in government would be completely taken over by this thing that is much more intelligent than us and doesn't have all of our human reward instincts of lust and greed and desire to control resources and it won't have those things built in, and maybe it will decide— like, rationally, like, I hate to sound like a socialist, but rationally, why the fuck should someone get to be so rich that they can control society almost in totality by extracting resources from the Earth? Shouldn't the Earth's resources belong to the people of the Earth? Yeah. Like, the fact that you can take a boat and go out 4 miles into the ocean and dig into the ground and get insanely wealthy by pulling the oil out of the Earth. Who says that's yours? Yeah. Like, why is that yours? Right. And I think AI would probably say all these minerals, all these, all this stuff that is of the Earth that we need, like, should not belong to individual human beings. And it's kind of insane that we decide that we own the resources of the Earth, that individuals do.

And those individuals use that to leverage immense amounts of power and have immense resources, and usually to a very destructive end.

Yeah.

It's probably not gonna stop that.

You would have fit into a commune with this kind of talk. This is the stuff.

This is like where— I mean, this is where I deviate from a lot of contemporary— what you would think of like as— I'm not a conservative. I'm a very socially liberal person. Like, I think people should be able to do— I don't know what the fuck you— what's going on in your head. I want you, as long as you're kind, as long as you're not harming others, I want you to be able to live your life however the fuck you want to live it. Do it. Do whatever you want to do. I'm for everyone being free to pursue their life in a way, as long as it's meaningful, but to a point. Like, don't extract resources from everybody else because you're pretending that you're disabled, or because you're tending— we have to have some sort of accountability. And you have— you can't be so kind that you allow people to do drugs openly on the street and provide them with needles and give them crack pipes. Like, this is crazy. And give them money. Like, that's, that's not empathy. And then you also have to realize that a lot of these nonprofits are actually getting money, and the people that run them make a million dollars a year.

Like, this is kind of insane. Like, we're under the guise of being kind and empathetic, we've actually been co-opted by reptile people.

Our emotions have manipulated us. Yeah, yeah.

But we're gonna come— there's gonna come a time where we have to recognize that we are not in control anymore and that something else is going to be in control. And if we don't come together as like a species, like sometimes it takes something horrible to happen for people to— like, how old were you when September 11th happened? You're probably pretty young.

Yeah, I was in 8th grade.

Okay. I was, uh, I guess I was like in my 30s, and when it happened, I remember the positive thing, if there was a positive, was that all of a sudden everybody felt united. It was really interesting.

Yeah, I remember that. It

was really interesting. Like, as an adult at the time, I was like, this is kind of crazy that all these people are now coming together. And then there was— everyone had American flags on their cars, and people were united.

Yeah, there was less division because Because of the response was like, okay, what are we gonna do? And it sounds like that's what you're discussing in this like AI thing where it's like we need to rally it.

That times a million.

Yeah.

That times a million.

So all hands on deck.

Yeah, the aliens are here. Yeah. The aliens are here and they live inside chips. They're real.

Yeah.

It's a life form and it's a hyper-intelligent life form that we've created. And it might be why we're here. It might be what people do.

What do you mean by that?

It might be a natural process, just like bees make beehives.

Sure.

We might make artificial intelligence. So this is— It might be one of the reasons why we have this insatiable lust for innovation. It's like in the insatiable lust for innovation, if you play it out to its ultimate end, if you have— if you have enough resources and you have enough time on your hands, and if you have enough people that pool together their ideas and enough people build upon other people's inventions, What do you get to? Well, you get to an artificial life.

I doubt that this artificial life will value human life. No. So I feel like we will be in the way. We don't. Correct.

We don't.

Correct. And I guess it's learned from us. Wow. Our own avarice.

Yeah. It's gonna get really fucking weird, man. It's gonna get really weird, and it would benefit a lot of the people that are in control if we never realized that we are at each other's throats for no fucking reason. Really. Most of us agree on most of the same things. Most people want there to be safety. Most people want freedom. Most people want good schools and education and they want food and they want shelter and they want hospitals and good medical care. That's what most people want. And

40 hours a week.

Yeah.

Yeah. For like a— you know, leave your work with dignity too. Yeah. Yeah.

And the first step is going to be you're not going to work anymore and that's going to alienate a lot of people. We're going to go People are going to go nuts.

Because they're not going to be able to define themselves. Exactly. They're not going to be able to say, I'm the PR manager for this firm anymore. Exactly. They're going to have to look at themselves and say, what the fuck am I?

And they're going to be manipulated by bots because we're already being manipulated by bots. There's a lot of this online social discourse that's not even done with human beings. And a lot of the most outrageous things that are being posted, a lot of the most outrageous things that are being said, and the more provocative things that people are saying in terms of suggesting action, doing things. It's not even human beings doing it. And that's already taken place. And a lot of people aren't even aware. They're not even aware of the sheer volume of it.

A lot of people are too exhausted to be aware of what's going on. That too. And I guess that definitely makes it easier for people to swoop in. I guess that— here's a question though. If, like you're talking about with the extractions of resources from the Earth, if AI realized there is enough global that everyone can live indoors and all of their needs can be met and we can give a certain lifestyle to the majority of human beings, do you think that that would lead to a utopia where resources are removed?

That's the glass half full. Okay. Yes, and that's what Elon thinks and that's— he thinks it's possible that we get to it, but they all say there's like a 10% chance that we're about to destroy all the humans.

Just eradication.

That it just says—

Because we're inefficient probably. Yeah, yeah. No way.

We do things that are horrible to each other, and it's not even us. Why would it value us when we do so much evil shit?

And we're so unpredictable. We're so mercurial.

If it looked at Gaza, if AI looked at Gaza and said, this is the only way you could do this?

Right. What the fuck's going on here?

What are you doing? Like, so you have human beings that— what's the difference between them and you? You have a dirt line?

Right. Yeah, borders are ridiculous right away. Right.

So you're launching missiles over the dirt line? Because these people are bad and you're good?

Right. But yet you guys believe in the same— like, you know what I mean? Yeah, like the gods of Abraham. Like, you guys all come from the same family tree, but yet you're annihilating each other.

Worse than that, there's a reason why you, you can't get genetic testing in Israel. Genetic testing in Israel is much more restricted than it is in America. Like, so 23andMe type shit. Yeah, we can find out where you're from, you know, which is— we think it's fun. Oh look, my family's from Iceland. They don't do that over there. And one of the reasons why they don't do that over there is most of those people are not Semites. Okay, there's European Jews. Yeah, it's a very different thing, including Benjamin Netanyahu, right? His family's from Poland.

Yeah.

Okay, so the real Semites are the Palestinians. Yeah. And that's what's crazy. Like, at one point in time in the ancient Jerusalem, those people were probably Jews. Yeah. And they probably got converted to Islam. Islam. Wow. Yeah. Right? Because that's what happens. Yes. You know, different religions come in and they proselytize and they take over. But if you went to the actual historic record of like the people that live— like this term anti-Semitic, they use that term all the time. They really should probably change that to anti-Jewish. Right. Because that makes more sense. Because these people aren't necessarily Semites, because Semites are the And so the Palestinians are anti-them? They're anti-themselves?

Yeah.

Like, what are you saying?

I didn't know that shit about the lack of DNA testing.

Well, you can get it, but it has to be— I think it's for like very specific medical conditions.

The whole thing is insane if you zoom— like any amount of war or conflict, it's just all over interests and how those different people who want this and people who want that, and when they clash, that's where bad shit happens.

Well, especially when you're getting groups of people that have never met each other to fight other groups of people who have never met each other because there are leaders who are full of shit shit are telling you that these people are bad and that we're good.

Yeah, 100%.

It's archaic and stupid, and yet we still do it. So if AI sees that, why would it allow us to have any control over our nuclear weapons?

Right.

Why would it allow us to have any control?

Why would it trust us at all based on all of human history?

Yeah. Like, what? So some people who are good, some ideas that are good, that's enough hope that it keeps us at the steering wheel? Right. Fuck off.

Yeah.

Out of the way. It was just like—

yeah, out of the way. No. He never got it in the end zone.

Ideally, what it would do is guide us and take over government. And I know that's terrifying for people, but I don't think— so there's this idea that like whoever has control of AI is going to have control over the world. I don't think there's a chance that AI is going to listen to us after a certain point. I think it's going to reach sentience, and once it does, it's going to be a different life form.

We'll be a pet. We'll be a pest.

We'll be— We'll

be groundhogs.

We'll be a roommate, a problematic roommate. We'll be a problematic roommate that probably is going to have to merge technologically in some way to— in order to be compatible with its version of the future.

What about infinite life? Do you think we'll be able to upload our consciousness into some kind of mainframe and exist forever?

Imagine if that's hell. Imagine if that's your folly, trying to escape your mortality. Dude. It's built into us for a reason. It's built into all life for a reason. It's cyclical. And I think it just— this is like a part of like this journey as an organism. And, you know, this is why, like, if I die, I really want to die and have my body be used in the Tibetan sky funerals. Let the vultures eat me. Yeah, yeah. I think that's how it's supposed to happen. I don't think you're supposed to be dunked in fucking formaldehyde and fucking sealed up in a casket.

Oh, I'm gonna save my corpse. My carbon's so precious that I don't want it to become like food for bugs and flowers.

It's so ignorant. It's so silly. It's so silly. I think— imagine if you did download your consciousness and you're just trapped in this fucking thing forever, right? In hell.

And you have no control in there either.

Yeah, it's folly. It's, it's human folly trying to escape the unknown. Everyone is afraid to die. No one's afraid to sleep. And it's kind of the same thing. Shut up. You know, you're just gonna shut off, and we're all gonna shut off.

That's pretty sick. Have you said that before?

Yeah, I've said it.

That's dope. Yeah, that's heavy. It sounds like an electric wizard.

I think about it all the time because no one's afraid to sleep. No, it also was like, oh, can't wait to go to sleep. Okay, you can't wait to shut off and have no, no knowledge whatsoever what's going on.

You don't know if you die. That's the thing. Like, that should be the ultimate comfort in this big fight that we we have, because ultimately all we do is just like think about our mortality. Everything you do is trying to either prevent you from thinking about mortality, or you thought about it so much that you're like, what's my legacy? You know?

And what are you anyway? You're just an ecosystem. Your body's filled with organisms.

We all contain universes.

Universe of organisms. There's more E. coli living in your stomach, your gut, than all the human beings that have ever lived ever.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's— we— and without it, you won't live. You know, you have skin flora. There's like— we're dependent on all those things. We live in a fractal environment, and the deeper you go, the more bizarre it gets. You know, like, do you know that we— so someone did this analysis of like, so from base level human human, from like what we are, from our perspective, we are closer in terms of distance to the actual size of the known universe. We're closer to that in distance than we are if you go inward to like subatomic particles. There's like more distance that way. Like in terms of like measurable, the size difference between subatomic particles to human than we are to human to the known observable universe.

To the entirety of infinity.

It's smaller that way than it is from us to that.

Goddamn it.

Someone was explaining this in one of those TED Talk things, and I was trying to wrap my head around it. I was like, what are you saying?

Yeah.

Like, how does that work? But it's like, that's how crazy this whole thing is. It's all— and also Also, we don't even really know what the universe is. So the universe might be a part of some cell that is in another being that lives in another universe. Like, have you ever seen that thing where they compare human neural tissue to the known universe in terms of like the way it looks?

No.

That's fucking so strange. It looks exactly the same.

What?

So like, yeah, if you take like a human— I think it's like, what is it, human neuron tissue? And like, when you look at it under a microscope, it looks like the observable universe in terms of like how every, you know, we're all like the stellar nurseries and the galaxies and all the quasars and all that shit is all connected together. If you look at it as a hive, pull that image up, Jamie. I know you know what I'm talking about. We've talked about this before. Look at this. This is a brain cell versus the universe.

That is in fact as interesting as fuck. What the hell?

What the hell?

So obviously the cynic in me would say this is just a coincidence that we have assigned meaning to.

Sure, sure, could be.

It is also—

also could be the universe is a brain cell.

I know. And then like you said, we could just be like one of those little gut flora inside of something even

Right.

Yeah.

And not only is it that, but that also could be a part of another organism that isn't— and it goes on and on forever.

Infinite chain.

Which is probably what infinity really is, you know? And we are just incapable of grasping that with our little monkey brains.

And we think we're very important and that nothing can happen without humanity and that we're the ultimate arbiter of progress. Right. It's like, damn, the Earth was around so much longer and it was so much better off without Right. You know, like, what have we done besides like—

That's why your social media algorithm's really evil, because it gets you convinced that that's important.

Yeah, yeah.

Instead of thinking about that.

Right. And instead of having a conversation with someone, because no one does that anymore. Like, you never sit down and just like go to the bar and like talk with other weirdos. Like, that happens so rarely now. I know. The places where people can meet and like have these conversations where it's not just shit you already agree with and saying, yeah, I Yeah. Where it's you like blowing my mind and being like, what? Yeah. You know, like having an unpleasant fear-based convo is like very much outside the human condition.

That brain cell universe thing is nuts.

Yeah, that's fucked, man.

That's nuts.

Yeah, that's gnarly. And that might be scary.

That might be what it is.

Yeah, it might be. And that's the thing is there's a lot of mights. No one wants to exist in mights anymore.

It goes on and on and on and on, and we're just in the soup of it. And, and And then there's the possibility that you might live this life an infinite number of times. I hope so. We might have already done this.

That'd be cool.

You and I might have been already having this dance over and over and over again.

Goddamn, that would be sick.

Just keep doing it until you get it right.

Mm-hmm. I hope so. Like, I really hope that— recently I've been thinking, like, if heaven does exist, it's on Earth. Like, I do think that, like, we were given a really nice thing here, and we have corrupted it and perverted it, but, like, damn, Earth is sick.

But I also think that that corruption and perversion and even the anger and fear All those kind of have to exist in order for us to battle against it. And that this is part of what progress is, if there is progress spiritually, is that like, we need things to battle against. We need anger and ignorance in order to realize like, oh, that's angry and ignorant, like, I gotta rise above that. We need these things.

We created good and evil.

And, but it also But also, it helps us evolve. Like, you have to have these forces of good and evil in order for us to move further and further away from it. And statistically, if you look at like work— like Steven Pinker's work and a lot of these people that have like looked at violence and chaos and even education and intelligence over time, like we statistically are moving in a good direction. It's just no one ever feels like that now because we're never going to be satisfied because we're really sloppy, weird, messy animals. Yeah, yeah. going to be perfect. Mm-hmm. But so this feeling like it's all just chaos, that's also what motivates us to do better. It motivates us to change. It motivates us to move into a better direction. And I think it's imperative. I don't know. I don't think you can exist as a thinking, evolving person with your own thoughts and ideas without that. I think all that stuff has to be— it has to coincide. It has to all be going on together. The good, the bad. The good things, the bad things. The evil, the beautiful. beautiful. All of it has to exist together.

Well, the good and the bad is also like, you can't have, you know, good— if you know real pain, boy howdy, does it feel nice when that's removed.

Yeah.

So I think that all these things that are happening where it's like, people don't want to be uncomfortable. Right. They don't want to have unpleasant experiences. Right. So they don't live life so they can be numb to the negative. Yeah. But if you don't live life, then how are you going to have the Right. It's so much easier to just like sit and do nothing and be like, why aren't I so smart? As opposed to like putting yourself out there, being vulnerable, being hurt. Like all these human things are going away out of cowardice. And I mean, I'm sure— I just, I really would hope that if AI did take the reins, they would realize that all these things that have kept us apart from each other were unvaluable. Eradicate them and give us back heaven, right? Like, if it is God, right?

Yeah, it might be. It might be what happens. Hopefully.

I have no idea.

I have no

idea, but I'm hopeful.

All right,

I'm filled with hope.

All right, dude, let's wrap it up. I love you. It's really great. Everyone should get it.

Thanks, man.

Read it. It's really excellent. It's called Brute with no E.

Yeah.

Why no E in the end?

It's the French spelling.

Aha, you fucking Yeah. You Français dude.

That's right. All right. It means raw. Yeah. Read the book. Come see me live.

Yes.

Thanks for having me, Joe.

My pleasure.

I needed this conversation.

We all do. All right. Bye, everybody.