Super yogi Bert Kreischer tells us about his journey to sobriety and how he managed to stay sober for the past month. He talks about his struggles with drugs and alcohol, and why he decided to get sober. He also talks about how he got into pot and how it helped him deal with the anxiety and panic attacks that came with it. And he talks about what it's like to quit smoking pot after a month of smoking. He also gives us some tips and tricks on how to get over your addictions and get a good night s rest. And he explains why he thinks pot should be legalized in the US. This episode was produced and edited by Annie-Rose Strasser and Alex Blumberg. Our theme song is Come Alone by The Weakerthans courtesy of Lotuspool Records. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. Art: Macklemore and Ryan Lewis Music: Hayden Coplen Editor: Patrick Muldowney Producer: Will Witwer Audio Engineer: Ben Koppel Additional mixing and mastering: Matt Newell Mixing: Matthew Boll Special thanks to Haley Shaw Thanks to our sponsor and our sponsor, Scentless Coffee Roasters Thank you for sponsoring this episode of the podcast for the cover art and music by & . and is by , and our theme song by . Please rate us thanks to in our adidas at , thank you to , our logo by and thank you by ) and , thanks to my band on to . . @ , thank you for our logo and our logo out of ( ) and our ad by my ) and my , is s of the ? & our logo is , & our from , the , we are this is in + has a logo is by my ad & my logo by our logo, so , my logo is my logo is and her ! we is my ad is & her , so you can help us out in this episode is on this podcast is out in the middle of the episode
00:06:03.000Right now, you're in this really great place, right?
00:06:06.000You're healthy, you're feeling good, you're sleeping good, but are you thinking that this is just a vacation from your other life, or are you changing your life?
00:06:14.000My therapist, when this started, he said, do not do this challenge.
00:07:58.000Fucking insane mobbed and I would love to have sat in the front row where they sat me and shit on their show But I can't man I would love as a comic to be like I'm better than this the men they forget up there and they have such great chemistry and they're Showing like inside clips and it's just a multimedia event.
00:08:16.000Oh, so it's not like stand-up It's like a bunch of different stuff that they do like they show like Pranks they play on people?
00:08:22.000No, they show more pictures from their childhood.
00:08:25.000Because they've known each other forever.
00:08:28.000Then when they were younger, they tell stories about them traveling together.
00:09:02.000We've all been like, Joe's not quitting weed.
00:09:04.000And then Ari managed this coup d'etat against you for pray for Joe.
00:09:09.000Ari, look, I know Ari gets a lot of shit online and everyone's fucking with Ari, but I will tell you, this has been exponentially fun because of his involvement, because this is right in his little swing zone.
00:09:23.000When you said, I'm not quitting weed, Ari then branched off to me and Tom.
00:09:29.000He's like, gentlemen, get ready for the assault on Joe.
00:09:33.000And both Tom and I were like, I don't think that's a good idea.
00:10:39.000He got mad the other day when I was fucking with him and I sent that text saying that I listened to your podcast, Ari, and it seems you haven't been doing all the poses.
00:10:47.000But good news is there's still plenty of days in the month to make up for the 15 different hot yoga classes.
00:10:54.000And he took it seriously and got fucking super mad.
00:11:10.000And the second level was like, look, just go to classes and whatever things that you didn't do from the other classes, you can just redo them on the honor system.
00:15:12.000Dude, let's just say I run on the treadmill all the time, and I can easily run under a 10-minute mile.
00:15:22.000I go on the road and my first Set of miles was like 12 minute miles and I was I was in pain Yeah, and I was like whoa This is not the same and then I got to a 10 minute miles like that feels like a fucking sprint But you know you can get do we show you those treadmills that are like running?
00:15:39.000Yeah, I thought about getting one But so what I do now is I'm doing maybe work out some sort of deal with them What are who are they some sponsors go to rogue rogue athletics?
00:15:49.000They're the guys who made the reverse hyper machine that we have in the back.
00:17:24.000So what I'm doing is I'm doing road work probably three times a week, and then twice a week I get on the treadmill just because I'm terrified of injury and then not being able to run.
00:17:32.000And I'm trying to run five days a week.
00:17:34.000You worried about like plantar or something?
00:17:47.000Yeah, and then sometimes it'll happen inside the heel and you'll feel it like when your heel touches the ground it feels like glass.
00:17:53.000When you first started doing yoga, were you noticing rather that your foot was like unstable and that it hurts your feet to try to balance on one foot and do the poses?
00:18:09.000What I noticed, the one thing that is the reason I will continue doing hot yoga was Or yoga in general maybe, but probably hot yoga because I like to sweat, is my feet are stronger.
00:18:21.000Like, I was going to say to Bobby Kelly, I was going to text him and go, hey man, you should start going to hot yoga because he has the same problem with plantar fasciitis that I do.
00:18:28.000And go, it really has strengthened my feet.
00:18:30.000And when I run now, I have no pain in my feet.
00:19:54.000Like that was the one thing was like, I don't know, but also you got to realize that these people, a lot of these people that are throwing in their Molotov cocktails in the party, they don't They, like, they just want to get a response.
00:20:07.000They just want to hurt you so that you can respond.
00:20:10.000Like, that's the one thing that I will say, like, Ari's been pretty visible on my Instagram comments.
00:20:16.000Like, he's going right back at people.
00:22:40.000A random black guy who was sitting behind me, and we both realized that he was dead at the same time, and When we lost our shits and then walked out to the lobby together and started...
00:23:05.000And one of my favorite experiences after a movie is when total strangers get together and they're like, shut up, hold on, wait, what happened?
00:30:27.000I think bullfighting is completely retarded.
00:30:29.000I think if you want to shoot a bull and kill it and eat it, I get that, but you should do it humanely and you should, you know, you should do it where you're, you know what you're doing, you shoot the bull in the head or wherever you're gonna shoot it in the heart and get it over with, but they stab those things with these long spears and they poison them,
00:30:47.000they do a lot of shit, but this is, to me, way more Dangerous?
00:31:55.000Well, this guy put up, I found out about this guy, this animal rights guy, and I followed his page, because he put up a picture of a friend of my friend Adam Greentrees in Hawaii, in Hawaii, Australia.
00:32:09.000Because in Australia, they hunt feral cats.
00:32:12.000And this guy was holding up a cat, like a house cat, that they shot and killed.
00:32:17.000And the reason why they do that is because feral house cats in Australia are an invasive species and they are devastating the local ecology.
00:32:27.000They destroy ground nesting birds, they kill everything, and there's a large population of them.
00:32:33.000They actually have a bounty on feral cats in Australia.
00:32:37.000See, they've made some terrible mistakes with conservation in Australia.
00:32:43.000And one of the mistakes they've done, like over and over again, is introduce invasive species to the continent.
00:33:58.000There's thousands of them, hundreds of thousands of them in Australia, and they're a giant issue.
00:34:03.000They hire people to kill them because they're devastating all these animals that had no idea what a cat was.
00:34:10.000So it's a much more complex issue than a lot of these animal rights activists Understand and I was thrown off because Adam Greentree my buddy gave me a bow hunting magazine from Australia when I was there visiting him and I was going through it on the plane and And there's pictures of guys holding up cats that they shot.
00:34:29.000And I was like, what in the fuck is wrong with you Australians?
00:34:32.000But when it's explained to you by someone who lives there, it's not like we hate house cats.
00:34:52.000Either you just let everything go extinct, And don't handle it, or you try to clean up the mess that your ancestors sort of started before you.
00:35:46.000And not just a flat walk, up mountains, because you've got to glass these things.
00:35:51.000I feel like I know I'm a hunter from watching this video every day.
00:35:55.000He would post it on his Insta stories, and he was looking, he'd find elk, I think he was hunting elk, and he would find elk, but it wasn't the one he wanted.
00:36:04.000And he'd see this elk, and he's like six pointer, or six...
00:36:23.000He's doing an Instagram story of these bears charging him, and in one of the Instagram pictures, it's him holding up a gun, and you see the bear in the background standing on its hind legs.
00:36:33.000When I posted that, his likes or his followers went from the beginning when he started this quest, he was at 75,000 followers.
00:36:41.000By the end of this trip, he had doubled to over 150. What is he at now?
00:37:11.000Fucking A. Look how big those goddamn things are.
00:37:14.000And if you're interested in these Instagram stories, right now my friend Remy Warren just posted another crazy Instagram story about their time on Afognak Island in Alaska where they got attacked by a giant Kodiak bear.
00:37:32.000They got attacked by a 1,000 pound bear.
00:37:34.000One of the guys wound up riding the bear on its back.
00:38:12.000He's got some pictures and videos of the hunt that they went on in a Fognac, but they had killed an elk And that's the elk down there, the one with one antler.
00:38:23.000And he had broken off one of his antlers fighting.
00:38:27.000And they were cutting this elk up and packing it out and then they set it down and they were just sitting down eating lunch.
00:38:36.000And they didn't have their guns on them.
00:39:43.000The girls went camping, and when I came in Sunday, this is so silly that this is like how life works.
00:39:48.000And by the way, I think anyone who's a podcast fan will get this, is I'm following Adam, I'm watching his stories, And he's showing all this PAC stuff he's got.
00:39:58.000And me and the girls are getting ready to go to REI. And I went, oh, I'm going to get some of his shit.
00:40:56.000I have some friends that have experienced alcoholism, like abusive alcoholism from their parents, and they have the same feeling.
00:41:03.000They just don't want to have anything to do with it.
00:41:05.000They see how it just wrecks people and ruins people.
00:41:08.000And I'll tell you, man, I don't feel that way because I've enjoyed drinking, and I've never really had a terrible thing happen to me because of drinking.
00:41:16.000Being sober over these last 12 days or whatever the fuck it's been and being at comedy clubs every night and seeing sloppy drunks.
00:41:25.000Like, I've seen three or four, like, the other night at the store, some fucking unbelievably drunk guy wanted to have a conversation with me from like two inches away.
00:41:35.000You know that sloppy drunk close talk type thing?
00:43:26.000This is not a change in your lifestyle like I feel like I'm what I'm worried about is it's like you're just gonna like this is great I feel great I've never felt better and then woo!
00:43:37.000Almost that you're planning but it was almost like you're planning to go off the rails like this is just like I'm gonna keep it together for a month and then no I talked to Tom and Push about this a lot but like I I don't want to stop partying, but I don't want partying to be...
00:44:54.000And then when we go, you know, when you get on your back and you put your arms out, and Tom just reached over and grabs my hand and holds it tight like a lover, and he's like, get me the fuck out of here.
00:45:06.000It's gotten easier and like things that we couldn't do now we can do and it's we've only been to like six classes But we're getting better at it and we're enjoying it more and like everyone knows us because we're the two big fucking bears in there and so Tom got in trouble for drinking water one time.
00:45:43.000Guys are the ones that tell you no water.
00:45:45.000The girls are like, if you'd like to drink water, please do it when we're done with the pose.
00:45:50.000The idea is that everyone's working together.
00:45:53.000This is the idea that Bikram's does, is that you're all working together, and that if you interrupt the work to drink water, you're sending a bad message.
00:56:24.000Like, you know, I work hard, and when I'm done working, I like to go to a restaurant and have a nice meal, or sit at home, maybe cook for myself.
00:58:21.000What would be the drink if you're sitting on the beach, on a beach bar in, like, St. Martin's, and the sun's getting ready to set, and someone goes, sir, can I get you a drink?
00:59:46.000I think Ari and I are going to a Saints-Bucks game on the 6th, and then me, Sal, Volcano, and Nate Bargazzi are doing the Joy Theater the evening of the 6th.
01:02:17.000They're going to roofie me, get me to a hotel room, and then fucking take my watch off, take my ring, go through my wallet, take my cash out.
01:05:01.000I don't really do coke, but people give me coke a lot.
01:05:04.000I don't do anyone's drugs that they give me.
01:05:06.000I appreciate the offer, but I'm going to pass.
01:05:09.000Yeah, I don't smoke weed with people anymore.
01:05:11.000I had a guy in Cleveland that wanted to, he looked like a cop, like completely looked like a cop, and he was asking me where to get DMT. And I was like, what?
01:05:22.000And he was like a fit-looking guy with a crew cut who was like real sketchy.
01:06:13.000And I had a comic call me when I was in D.C. He was like, hey, man, I got slipped something last night, and I'm still a little sketchy, but I want to just run it by you.
01:06:23.000I know that this stuff's happened to you.
01:08:59.000Having you know unsavory male behavior that would be difficult to defend because you're trying to get laid versus What you're seeing it what people are furious about rightly so is predatory behavior by a person who's in power affecting someone's employment and career right is I was talking with Whitney Cummings about this.
01:09:22.000And, you know, because Whitney, obviously, she's a female, prominent actress, comedian, you know, she's been...
01:10:04.000Before there was the internet, before there was any accountability at all, like in the 70s and the 60s, that is what all those guys did.
01:10:12.000That's what they did like in a lot of those starlets that's how that's you got to pay to play and that's what they did They had to fuck these guys like that's literally how it all went down.
01:10:22.000It's crazy I always thought that I always thought that whenever I got something like Elliot Gould and I did a pilot together and he left his number in my in my dressing room He's like we should go to dinner one night.
01:10:32.000I was like, I'm gonna have to fuck him No, I kept dodging him.
01:11:00.000He was such a sweet guy, and then randomly I saw him like five years later, or maybe more than that, maybe eight years later, and I had Georgia and Isla, and I was with Leanne, and I was with Leanne's dad, and we were walking from Baja Fresh by the Screen Actors Guild.
01:11:14.000We were walking out of Baja Fresh, and Elliot saw me, and he was like, Bert, it's Elliot!
01:13:11.000And by the way, let's just talk about the side stories you'd hear about Brett Butler that they'd share when you were young and you'd go into a meeting.
01:13:17.000You don't want to turn into Brett Butler.
01:13:44.000She was kind of alluding to the fact that she had made some gigantic mistakes and it was kind of like a play to her, like to who she actually was.
01:13:53.000But she was on that show, Grace Under Fire, and Chuck Lorre, the same guy that did Two and a Half Men with Charlie Sheen, was the guy running it.
01:14:48.000She goes, you know, all of a sudden I went from being this housewife, you know, having no money, to being the star of this giant sitcom that was like, at the time, when she was on Roseanne, what was it, like four channels?
01:16:05.000Top ten comics in the country making money, Sebastian.
01:16:10.000But think about all the different possibilities, all the different YouTube stars, all the different cable shows, all the different, you know, there's so many Netflix shows, so many stand-up specials.
01:16:37.000But you can get carried away, and also the pressure of a show rides on your back, too.
01:16:41.000That's another thing to take into consideration.
01:16:43.000You have all these other people that are around you, and they all have their own little thing, and they're fucking with you, and it erodes your own concentration and your own vision, and sometimes it's like, hey, hey, hey, it's my fucking show!
01:17:18.000There's a thing that happens, too, when you do a bad show.
01:17:21.000It's a particular type of off-the-rails.
01:17:23.000When you know you're doing an unsatisfying bad show, and I think that was one of the things that was happening to Charlie Sheenman, who's on Two and a Half Men, because that was a bad show.
01:18:38.000Yeah, it was one of his bits that got him really, really criticized.
01:18:42.000But then people were like, wait a minute, is he right?
01:18:45.000I had some people from the CDC come to my show in Atlanta one time, and we were joking around, and I said something about, like, tell me about diseases.
01:19:12.000I had two uncles die from HIV, but I think it was drugs.
01:19:16.000There's that, and there's also the medication they give the people.
01:19:20.000That was apparently a giant issue in the 80s and the 90s, was that AZT that they were giving them.
01:19:26.000AZT apparently used to be a chemotherapy medication, but it was killing people quicker than cancer was.
01:19:34.000So they stopped giving it to cancer patients.
01:19:36.000And there was a lot of real confusion when AIDS first came about.
01:19:42.000I remember there was some local story, some story in Boston about some scientist was trying to say that AIDS was a derivative of the herpes virus.
01:19:53.000Yeah, they didn't know what the fuck it was when it first burst on the scene.
01:19:56.000And by the way, dude, everybody thought they had it.
01:19:59.000I'm older than you, but I got my first...
01:20:01.000Blood test for HIV in 1993, and I was shitting my pants.
01:20:07.000I was thinking about every one night stand on the road, every freaky girl, like, let's do shots.
01:20:11.000Next thing you know, you're raw dog in some dirty hotel room.
01:20:14.000And like, oh my God, am I going to die?
01:21:52.000He goes, when you go to a bar, when you go to Young's, you and your dick take off in different territories to cover more surface area, and then meet up at the end of the night and go, oh, this is who we fucked.
01:24:11.000Well, it's good to lower your expectations, too, because imagine if you married your high school sweetheart, you met when you were 16, you fell in love, she broke your virginity, you broke hers, and then one day when you're 35, you come home and she's getting gorilla fucked by her personal trainer.
01:24:26.000Who looks like Emmett Smith, and he's just stuffing her into the corner of a couch and just fucking hammering it.
01:24:31.000You walk in the house, it smells like pussy.
01:24:53.000See now like having gone, you know what happened to me?
01:24:56.000There's a girl that I was dating We weren't like kind of I don't think we were like we weren't like boyfriend and girlfriend We were definitely having sex and fooling around and I think I was 17 at the time And she was 16. And I used to have a paper route where I'd get up in the morning and deliver papers.
01:25:17.000And I would deliver papers every day, 365 days a year.
01:30:34.000And she doesn't know that she needs me.
01:30:35.000She wants, and totally healthy for her to establish herself as her own person and do her own stuff, but man, all I can see is it's just going to get harder.
01:30:44.000Well, there's one thing to take into consideration that you really can't fix, and that's you're on the road a lot.
01:33:34.000It's the only thing I knew how to make.
01:33:36.000You just take a cup and you cut the center out of bread, and then you crack an egg and you do an egg inside that center, and you let it grill, and then you flip it over.
01:33:44.000That was the only thing I knew how to make.
01:33:57.000Can I tell you, and I don't know if they're a sponsor of your podcast, but can I tell you, one of the things that keeps my family together is fucking Blue Apron.
01:34:06.000The fact that they come in, and my kids will eat something different, and we cook a meal for four, and my daughters will be like, what is it tonight?
01:35:55.000We are making a mistake with the way we live our lives.
01:35:59.000I think that the pressure to succeed, the hustle and bustle that people have is not counterbalanced in this country by relaxation and enjoyment and family time and a nice long meal and appreciating the rest.
01:36:16.000We appreciate a person who sleeps three hours a night and fucking is just hustling all day long, constantly hustling, hustling.
01:36:23.000There's something to hard work and hustle.
01:36:26.000But man, I think it should be counterbalanced and I always feel that when I go to Italy I mean we've gone to Italy my family two summers in a row and every time we go there it's just delicious food and relaxation and you're at the beach and sitting at the water and just having a couple of drinks and kicking back and it's like my whole being just It feels like all the bullshit just goes away.
01:36:51.000I don't pay attention to the fucking news.
01:36:58.000I'm gone for seven, eight days, whatever it is, just leave me alone, whatever it is, put the fire out, and I'm just going to be eating pasta.
01:37:06.000And just go to these churches, check out these beautiful places.
01:37:10.000You know, we went to the Colosseum one year.
01:37:13.000The next year we went to some beautiful church in Ravello.
01:37:16.000And you just see all these amazing places where you're just seeing places that are a thousand plus years old and food that's just fucking incredible.
01:37:25.000You're eating sardines that are fresh right out of the water and potpies.
01:38:59.000Like those things aren't bad to have or as a goal, but clearly your base has got to be I hate to sound corny, but it's got to be things, matters of the heart.
01:39:11.000It's got to be friends and loved ones and family.
01:39:14.000It's got to be your children and your wife and your mom and the people that you care about, like those people, like have good times with those people, like happiness.
01:39:27.000If you do not have that, all that other stuff is bullshit.
01:39:30.000If you don't have friends that love you and you love them and you're legitimately happy to see them and you have laughs together and fun together, then all the money in the world won't mean anything.
01:39:40.000You will have a zero happiness register.
01:39:46.000You will register zero pleasure from any financial success if you and your best friends hate each other.
01:40:48.000I feel like I'm very blessed to be in this situation that people want to see me do comedy, so I'm like, fuck, I'm in there every fucking week.
01:40:54.000And Joey was like, dog, I do two weeks a month, that's it.
01:40:57.000If I can't spend time with my family and do my fucking podcast, who gives a fuck?
01:42:15.000You're getting a higher percentage, but you've got to be there fucking Wednesday night, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, fly home Monday.
01:42:21.000And those just add up into like fucking...
01:42:55.000But what I'd like to do is like I would like to do go ahead and get with some of my friends get on a tour bus and not kill myself with the travel and do you know like straight out 14 dates, 10 dates, do the tour, make some money, and then go and be at the store and write.
01:43:10.000Because that's what you guys do, and I never do the straight tours.
01:43:15.000Yeah, but the straight tours, I just don't think they're healthy.
01:43:55.000Maybe going on eight or nine years ago, but it was one of the best things I ever did.
01:43:59.000I would think about doing Thursday and Sunday, and then you just feel like it's just taking up too much time.
01:44:09.000I would rather do Friday and Saturday on the road and then come back home, and if I want to do a set Sunday, I'll do a fucking set at the store or the improv or something like that.
01:44:16.000Just driving to town, have a good time, get home.
01:44:19.000I just think there's a balance that you have to have.
01:44:23.000We've all seen those guys that are older and really burnt out, and they just don't have any energy left for it anymore, and they feel like it's a burden instead of a pleasure.
01:44:34.000When I go on the road now, it's a pleasure.
01:47:56.000I think you have to have weightlifting, but you also have to have yoga.
01:48:00.000You have to have running, but you also should do something else.
01:48:02.000I think you've got to have a balanced approach to stand-up.
01:48:06.000And one of the things is intimate rooms.
01:48:09.000Being right in front of people, you know, and then also not.
01:48:12.000Sometimes being in a big-ass place, like I'm doing the Belco Theater in Denver, that's like 6,000 people.
01:48:17.000That's the kind of place that, you know, you have the big show.
01:48:21.000It's like, it's not intimate, but your act gets honed in all these other places to this razor-sharp edge, and then you go to that place, you just fucking send it home.
01:48:45.000And I think, like, what I love about that is you go in, and for me, I can do the hour I'm working on, the hour I have, the hour that's new, and then when they yell the machine, I go, it's a theater.
01:49:41.000But if you said Ron White's going to do an hour of new material, and by the way, at the end, as an encore, he does tater salad, I'd be like, oh, sweet.
01:49:48.000Somebody yelled out one of my shows recently, brrrr!
01:49:52.000And I'm like, I can't do it anymore, man.
01:52:39.000It has this room, and it has another room that's downstairs, and that room used to be called Duck Soup, which is named after the Marx Brothers movie.
01:54:01.000Because it was like everybody's like what the fuck like guys like Steve Sweeney and guys like Lenny Clark who like you know, they had a lot of dirty jokes They couldn't do the dirty jokes there like they were trying to like somehow or another like pure it It was a disaster as one of the owners of the comedy club had this fucking Wacky idea in his head that clean comedy was the future really classy clean comedy He wanted just squeaky clean comedy.
01:54:26.000It was death and So they set this place up, they spent a shitload of money on construction, they put this thing together, and it was gone within a year.
01:56:36.000A lot of the older big-time headliners, they got older and older, and people sort of forgot.
01:56:41.000And then the open mic night scene, once Patrice left and once Burr left, the guys coming up, there's not as strong...
01:56:50.000I think there's now Laugh Boston's got a good scene.
01:56:53.000Last time I was there, they were pretty excited about the scene.
01:56:55.000They were saying there's a lot of up-and-coming guys coming, and gals, excuse me, and binary, non-binary people.
01:57:01.000And they've developed, like, you know, a good group of, like, local people that are really doing the right thing, trying to really get good at comedy, but shit.
01:57:10.000There was Stitches, there was Catch a Rising Star in Cambridge, there was Play It Against Sam's had a show.
01:58:09.000By the way, and I just started getting the vibe.
01:58:12.000It took me a long time to understand the OR. Like, the OR for me was a little bit of an uphill battle.
01:58:19.000The main room's always been, it's like, it's always a great, just a great performer, but like, I think I was looking at the OR as like, uh...
01:58:27.000It's like more of like, less of a club and more of like a workshop.
01:59:56.000And both of us were like, yeah, how come they can't be funny?
01:59:59.000Like, yeah, both of us were like used to, I used to make the analogy, working out, doing stand-up in New York was like working out in the prison yard.
02:01:19.000I did Nerdist Meltdown one time, and I just told a story, just a story that I was working on, and it murdered so hard, and I was like, this is a really legit comedy club fan.
02:01:39.000The alt rooms, though, the problem with those rooms is that if you just work those rooms and then you try to do a set in the OR, you're fucksville.
02:01:48.000Like, if you try to go on after Joey Diaz in the OR and all you do is alt rooms, and by the way, Adam, that sick fuck, he will throw you on after Joey Diaz if he thinks you do a lot of alt rooms to you.
02:03:15.000You know, the OR is a bad setup in the sense of that hallway, but it's a great setup in the sense of the size of the space and the intimacy of it.
02:04:02.000Dude, back there, look, there's touchstones in your life where you go, these conversations were meaningful.
02:04:08.000I remember a night, I was just started up doing Birth to Conquer again, and you and Burr were sitting, you were standing and he was sitting in that corner seat where the door opens over to hit you, and both of you, I remember, I don't know if, what have you, you go, how much money is enough money?
02:05:11.000You'd go on the road, you wouldn't do stand-up for weeks at a time.
02:05:13.000I'd try to put in a date, like jamming a date in between touring or doing travel channel, but the truth was I'd be away from my family and then I'd be a mess.
02:06:51.000The funny thing about you is how un-extraordinary you believe you are.
02:06:57.000Like, I'll tell you, when Tom and I did the first hot yoga, we did the hot yoga, we got done, and we were really fucking floored.
02:07:04.000And the first thing we said was, Ari's not doing it right.
02:07:06.000There's no way he could do these in a day.
02:07:07.000And the second thing Tom said was, you know, at this point in Joe's day, it's only like 10 in the morning, and he hasn't done kettlebells, run, or a podcast, or sets yet.
02:07:17.000I was like, I'm going home and eating candy bar and going to bed.
02:07:21.000But that's the one thing that's been pushing me through this month is I go, alright, I'm going to go and run now.
02:07:26.000I'm going to try to do more in a day than I normally do.
02:07:29.000And I think that is only achievable with a real true balance of being sober and healthy and not just getting off the fucking rails all the time.
02:07:40.000Yeah, because if you do go off the rails all the time, your body's just not capable of working hard.
02:07:58.000You can work out you can work up to those things like you could start off with just a light half-mile run You could start out with do your best in a 90-minute yoga class You know you could start out doing all these different things and then over time you build up Conditioning and strength and health and you know,
02:08:16.000I've never been in better shape in my life never been more healthy I work out all the time.
02:08:20.000I feel great I mean, I really do, and I just always want to tell people that.
02:08:26.000Obviously, a lot of people have way more time requirements than I do in terms of your day job and stuff like that, but the more effort you put into keeping your body healthy, the better you're going to feel.
02:08:37.000You're just going to have more energy.
02:08:39.000I feel good all the time, and I feel better this week or this month, this 12 days in.
02:09:20.000I never remember seeing him drink ever.
02:09:21.000I remember when he lived here, we'd go to the store, do like a podcast or something, and he'd get high, but he just, he didn't have, he would eat candy.
02:12:43.000I think I do that with physical stuff, because I was an athlete growing up, and I just go, ah, I can always jump back in.
02:12:49.000But when it comes to stand-up, man, I am beyond fucking critical.
02:12:52.000I look at some of these people that put out hours, and I go, like...
02:12:58.000I'm not going to name names, but man, there's some people that people have said, like I saw someone who, I won't say names, but they closed their special with street jokes, and I was like, nah, you can't, hey, you don't have friends?
02:14:00.000Your managers, unless they're fucking top of the food chain, they don't know shit about what it takes to do stand-up, because they don't do it.
02:14:09.000You have to have a really good manager who goes, listen, we really need to manage the time and the energy and the focus you put on your act, because you only get one shot at doing this act.
02:14:21.000And I've fucked that up before, and I think a lot of us have before.
02:14:24.000We've all done sets where we weren't really prepared.
02:14:27.000And you don't know what it takes until you do it wrong.
02:14:32.000And then you feel the sting of mediocrity.
02:14:35.000And then you realize, like, oh, there's no substitute for running 200 miles.
02:14:45.000You've got to go through and say, where's the lazy writing?
02:14:47.000You've got to punch up the good writing.
02:14:49.000That last hour special I did, I think the one that really helped break me to sell tickets and whatnot, was me looking at it from the travel channel perspective of lazy.
02:15:12.000I need to really be honest with myself and go, this is hacky.
02:15:16.000I'm not doing the work in the special.
02:15:19.000I think that applies to everybody that does everything.
02:15:22.000It's not just our creative endeavor of stand-up comedy.
02:15:25.000But whatever you're doing, if you're a fucking engineer, if you're a chef, whatever it is, whatever you're doing where you focus on and it gets good, if you focus more on it, it'll get great.
02:15:36.000I mean, it's just you have to figure out what's missing in it.
02:15:44.000You know, one of the things that I'll do, and this is a thing that I've been doing a lot over the last two years, I'll take a bit that I know is killing.
02:19:39.000That's like when you say something in a green room, and you don't know one of the comics, and then he gets up and leaves, and the other comic goes, Ah, just so you know, his dad's gay.
02:21:21.000I love that when you find someone who's like who powers sexuality like there's a girl one time It's like hey can I like people always go hey can I girls will go can I pinch your nipple in the pictures my shirts off?
02:21:29.000I go yeah, yeah, whatever This one girl goes hey can I play with your nipple?
02:21:32.000And I was like yeah, and she did some sex stuff to my nipple that I literally knocked my wind out of me I went oh And then I was like hey can you tell me what you did so I can tell that to my wife like that was fucking amazing You can slam my nipple in a bank vault.
02:21:46.000I don't feel shit These things are useless.
02:22:57.000So imagine if you had really, really strong inseams, and you couldn't get to the balls because the inseam didn't move because it was strapped around your feet.
02:23:50.000Yeah, I really thought, like, because I had, in the old days, the cups that you would have were like, they were cups that would sit in jockstraps.
02:25:27.000And the night before, I said to someone, no, you can hit me in the dick.
02:25:31.000I'd rather be hitting the dick than in the balls.
02:25:33.000And there was this girl, Lani, and she was like, you're telling me you have no feeling in your dick?
02:25:38.000I go, no, I feel in my dick, but if you punch me in the dick...
02:25:41.000Like, just dick, if you held my dick in my hand and punched me, it wouldn't hurt as bad as if you held my balls in my hand and punched me.
02:25:46.000So the next day, we're doing this yuki gossip, and someone throws a snowball right when it starts, and it hits me on the head of the dick, and I thought it exploded in my pants.
02:25:55.000I thought, and my hands were cold so I couldn't feel.
02:25:59.000I was like, when I touch this dick, it will be in pieces in my pants.
02:26:34.000They're trying to take away what you need and want.
02:26:37.000They're so fucking ruthless little animals.
02:26:39.000I did a podcast with Callan the other day, and I go, and I love the way his brain works, and the first thing's out of his mouth, have you ever seen a hairless chimp?
02:28:05.000Anyway, whoever the fuck studies chimps, I think they've universally concluded that chimpanzees have entered the Stone Age.
02:28:15.000So they are using tools without being taught so by other chimps.
02:28:20.000They're using tools independently, and they're using tools constantly.
02:28:24.000And they're using all kinds of different tools.
02:28:26.000And so they think that what's going to happen is eventually they're going to figure out a lot of other stuff, and it could take hundreds of thousands of years.
02:28:33.000But chimpanzees, literally, chimpanzees and monkeys have entered the Stone Age.
02:28:37.000I mean, this is from the BBC. They're using rocks and tools, and they're cutting things and breaking things open with tools.
02:28:46.000And he would say, it's not the worksmanship that makes them special.
02:28:50.000If anything, a casual observer might struggle to even identify them as ancient tools.
02:28:55.000It's not their antiquity that's exceptional either.
02:28:58.000They're only about the same age as the Egyptian periods.
02:29:01.000What makes these tools noteworthy is that the hands that held them weren't human.
02:29:06.000These stone tools were wielded by chimpanzees, capuchins, and macaques.
02:29:19.000The sites where they have been unearthed are the basis of the brand new field of science, primate archaeology.
02:29:25.000So what they're saying now is, if you think about human beings, right, that one point in the history of human beings, we were far more primitive than we are now, right?
02:29:39.000One of those people who believed in evolution...
02:29:41.000If you go all the way back, we were some sort of Australopithecus, right?
02:29:46.000It's like some sort of a chimpanzee-like humanoid thing, and that we got more and more intelligent for whatever reasons, and over the period of two million years, the human brain size doubled.
02:29:58.000And they think that hunting played a part of that, cooking food might have played a part in that, a bunch of factors played a part in that.
02:30:05.000But they think that if chimpanzees keep going the way they're going now, that who knows what the fuck a chimp looks like in a million years.
02:30:14.000I mean, it's entirely possible that they could grow to be a new type of super-intelligent primate.
02:30:27.000But if you believe scientists, the most studied in the field believe that human beings in this form, we've existed in this form for somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million years plus, right?
02:30:39.000I don't know if that's the right number, but I think it varies back and forth.
02:30:45.000Who knows how many hundreds of thousands of years before that we looked exactly like these motherfuckers.
02:30:51.000I mean, we've been around relatively recently.
02:30:55.000I mean, if you look at the history of the human race versus the history of the world, the world's like four and a half billion years old.
02:31:01.000The humans haven't even been around a million years, I don't think.
02:32:17.000That guy had a pet chimp and that chimp got too old and when they get old they're incredibly strong and super aggressive and they don't understand the consequences of biting someone's finger off.
02:32:28.000They just decide, I'm going to bite your fucking finger off.
02:33:20.000I was at this, I think it's called Monkey Kingdom in Miami, and they had this depressed gorilla because this circus had him before, and they took out his canines.
02:34:43.000I was like I just and they're like I can't believe you made him laugh and I was like that and then Travel Channel's like I don't see why that's impertinent to the show.
02:38:17.000I tried to post it online, because they used to let me post all the content, and then once they realized they were ready to part ways with me...
02:40:14.000Air the fucking whole video, because it's me going 25 minutes.
02:40:18.000The whole video's not 25 minutes, it's like 8 minutes, but it's me doing like an hour tour through this spook house, and I am losing my shit.
02:41:29.000I felt guilty that you guys went through all that shit and I didn't do anything.
02:41:32.000That's one of the reasons why I was willing to pay for it.
02:41:35.000Like, that's where things get fucked up.
02:41:37.000Like, my intention to pay for your trip to the basketball game was a good intention.
02:41:42.000But it put Ari in a weird place because I kind of stepped in for him and then went, oh, Joe had to step in for Ari because Ari's a welcher.
02:41:50.000Maybe if I didn't do that, you guys would have sorted it out quicker.
02:42:40.000But I watched the comments roll in after that, and he didn't realize what he had posted, and I watched it, and I was like, he didn't realize.
02:42:47.000It's a long story, and I'm not getting into it, because I love Ari, and I don't want him enough to deal with it.
02:42:51.000But, like, he didn't realize what he had posted.
02:42:52.000He thought he was posting something fun.
02:43:14.000When you said you weren't going to smoke weed and we put the Pray for Joe thing out, dude, this guy wrote to me, he goes, don't ever forget, you are nothing without Joe Rogan.
02:43:54.000You know, it was legal only medically, but if you didn't get a medical marijuana card, like, if you went to a doctor and they said no, like, you should go to a fucking hospital, because there's probably something really wrong with you.
02:44:04.000Because they were giving them away like candy.
02:44:06.000Like, anybody could get a goddamn medical marijuana card.
02:44:08.000And someone was saying to me, like, well, you are throwing it in the face of the people that actually need marijuana for, like, glaucoma or PTSD or whatever.
02:44:16.000Like, what you're doing is skirting the system.
02:44:44.000But weed's made me a nicer person because it's made me more sensitive.
02:44:47.000And I think that if there's one thing that we could all use more in this, like everybody gets carried away and everybody's a work in progress and people all say things that they probably shouldn't have or just, you know, you're acting wrong.
02:44:59.000You know, impulsively or you, you know, just you go with the thought that's in your head and you say what's on your mind and it doesn't come out right.
02:45:50.000Crash, by the way, folks, if you're in California, the float lab is the greatest...
02:45:55.000Float place in the world and this guy is like a lot of people credit me for making Isolation tanks more popular.
02:46:05.000I'm very happy that that's the case, but my tank experience Increased dramatically when I hooked up with crash because I had a friend who was working on my tank and he was fixing it and I had an older tank It wasn't the best tank, but it was good and I had a lot of great experiences in it but He told me about this guy in Venice that ran this place called the Float Lab.
02:46:27.000And I said, well, what's the difference?
02:46:29.000He's like, well, his stuff is just, like, super engineered.
02:46:33.000Like, you don't have any of the issues with, like, the bladders at the bottom that hold the water in breaking because he doesn't use waterbed bladders.
02:46:42.000Instead, he uses those things they use for ponds, like koi ponds, like a very thick, thick plastic.
02:46:48.000Everything, he has air pumped in it so you get fresh oxygen inside the tank.
02:46:53.000He uses two waterbed heaters and they work together simultaneously.
02:46:59.000He has a really excellent digital calibration system for the temperature.
02:47:04.000He takes it to the next level with everything.
02:47:06.000He's got an ozone filtration system that kills all the bacteria, kills everything.
02:47:10.000He uses two gigantic jacuzzi filters that everything gets run through these tiny micron, I forget what the number is, filters, where they filter everything out of that water.
02:47:21.000And for me, it's like it's only me in the water, but for public ones, it's critically important that you know that you're not going to catch some weird skin disease or something when you get inside these tanks.
02:47:32.000So this guy, I got in touch with him, got a tank from him, he installed it in my basement, and then I can't shut the fuck up about things I love.
02:47:41.000And that's part of my problem, because I'm repetitive as fuck, but that's what makes me good at things.
02:47:49.000I'm just constantly droning on about the same things constantly.
02:47:52.000And sometimes that becomes a problem with podcasts.
02:47:55.000Crash, that guy, he's the motherfucker behind tanks.
02:47:58.000If it wasn't for him, the tanks that we have, even the non-crash tanks, non-float lab tanks, all the other tanks in the world, that is the gold standard.
02:48:08.000His tanks are the gold standard, and all the other tanks since then have They've elevated in quality substantially because of his contribution.
02:48:17.000When I first started using a tank, which was like early 2000s, like 2000, I think I got one in 2003. And I think the first time I got in one was like 2000, 2001. And I had one in my basement in 2003. From that time,
02:48:32.000the fucking whole business has gone like this.
02:49:38.000Well, the thing about tanks is you could do all the meditation in tanks, but you have way more disconnection from your body, and I think that's important.
02:49:48.000It disconnects your mind and your thoughts and your ideas from your physical frame.
02:49:54.000Like, that's what people are trying to do when they meditate.
02:49:57.000Sit down in a comfortable spot and just concentrate on your thoughts and you absolutely can achieve these amazing states of mind in that way.
02:50:04.000But I feel like those states are elevated substantially from the tank.
02:50:08.000And everyone I know that disagrees has never done the tank.
02:50:10.000People that have done the tank go, oh yeah.
02:50:13.000People that know that meditate and do the tank as well go, oh my god, this is a game changer.
02:50:17.000It's just a completely different environment.
02:50:19.000And the people that resist that, I've talked to a few people that meditate, and they're like, do you meditate?
02:50:36.000Because it's a complete, naturally occurring psychedelic state.
02:50:40.000So anybody who's sober, anybody who doesn't want to fuck with drugs, I always tell them, get in that goddamn tank and you'll have a drug experience without any drugs.
02:50:48.000Where you don't have to worry about losing your mind, you don't have to worry about addiction, you don't have to worry about overdosing or getting, you know, someone give you the wrong shit.
02:50:55.000You can get in that tank and legitimately have a psychedelic experience.
02:51:02.000The big thing, this is gonna sound, once again, this is gonna sound, a lot of my realizations this month are gonna sound very childish and pedestrian.
02:51:10.000But one of my really hard things was going to sleep.
02:51:14.000We call them unassisted sleeps in our house, so we can go to sleep without drugs or alcohol.
02:51:46.000Because what you've done is, considering your lifestyle and how long you've been doing it that way, it's amazing.
02:51:52.000And I know that you rise to the challenge of a competition that sort of motivated you to do it, but not a lot of people would have done it, man.
02:51:59.000A lot of people would have quit by now.
02:52:00.000A lot of people would have found some excuses or figured out some way, like, oh, it was my friend's birthday, I had to do a shot with him.
02:52:07.000You know, like, there's all sorts of real weird tricks that your mind will play on you to get you to quit.
02:52:13.000In a bunch of different ways, but I'm proud of you.
02:54:56.000It doesn't look good if I'm telling you guys to quit the booze, and then when it comes to the weed, I'm like, no, no, that wasn't a part of the deal.
02:55:02.000But I'm like, I want people to know that it's not hard to quit weed.
02:55:46.000The very accurate statement is going out to the patio in the store, sometimes you do see something that I was just part of my night was like, do my set, go to the patio in the store.
02:56:35.000I will say, me personally, I'm very lucky to have the group of friends I have because I go, I look back, I remember you telling me a long time ago over a shot of whiskey, you don't have to have shitty friends.