Comedian Joe Pesci is back and better than ever! We talk about his return to stand-up comedy, how he got into comedy, and what it's like to be a comedian in New York City. Also, we talk about what it s like to work with comedians, and how it s okay to not know what you re going to do with your time in comedy, because you re not going to get fired if you don t know how to write a joke that s good at it, right? Joe is a standup comic, writer, and podcaster. He s been in comedy for a long time, but it s only been recently that he s been able to get back on stage and do what he loves to do, which is stand up comedy. He s also a writer, comedian, podcaster, and all-around funny guy. We had a lot of fun with this episode, and we hope you enjoy it! Thank you so much to Joe for coming on the pod, and for being a part of this podcast, and helping us make it what we all love to do! Love ya, Joe! xoxo -Jon Hosted and Produced by: Matt Knost Music by: Jake Kasinski Artwork by: Alex Blumberg Editor: Ben Koppel Logo by: Evan Handyside Theme Music by Jeff Perla and Music by Ian McKinnon is a production of Vaynerchukin Thanks to: Kevin McLeod ( ) for the music used in this episode was produced and edited and mixed by: & produced by , . and by thanks to in the music is by ) and , and is on thank you at , all rights reserved and by Brian Mclean to be from , the ? and our song is , our , thanks to all credit is . . of , & s with are ) and . & is also out of this episode is in this podcast is (and was if you like it, and it s in any of the music we use in the song
00:00:10.000Okay, I thought I was getting the coolest ones, but then my friends who were shopping with me, they came running back and they were like, uh-uh, uh-uh, don't pay yet, don't pay yet.
00:05:03.000Well, she was in that kindersport, whatever it was, where they moved these Jewish children from Germany to England, kindersport or something, to save them.
00:06:49.000And that's a lot of what comedy is, is improvising a line and trying to say something.
00:06:54.000And in the moment, you might think it's funny, but if you had more time to think about it, you might have said, I shouldn't say it that way.
00:11:16.000Now I say those of lower intellect is, I think.
00:11:19.000You know what I think big part of what's going on?
00:11:21.000It was about Iran and the people's spite in Iran of which I'm so...
00:11:27.000I'm thrilled and supportive for the people, the working people of Iran who want to overthrow their ruling class mullahs who, you know, control the way they think, do and say in every aspect, particularly for women.
00:13:03.000So, 700 years of us being controlled by...
00:13:08.000The Babylon thing, the whole descent of Babylon, which itself is artificial intelligence, and the Tower of Babel, which is the Tower of Artificial Intelligence, where everybody was trying to go higher and higher in the pyramid and the hierarchy.
00:13:24.000Where there's only like a certain percentage of people at the top and billions at the bottom in chains, you know, that pyramid.
00:14:15.000But anyways, I forgot what I was saying.
00:14:18.000Oh yeah, he said, we put these satellites, this is the age of miracles, messages bouncing off satellites and appearing in billions of places at once faster than the speed of light.
00:15:01.000This is the first time in history, I said to him, It seems to me like this might be the first time in history where no church or state can keep the facts from the people.
00:15:57.000And we were, as we got here, Jamie was informing me that there's some new YouTube policy that is saying, what was the descriptions of our podcast?
00:16:08.000Number 1357 got a human review with harmful or dangerous acts.
00:17:35.000See, part of this is they're incentivizing people to do shows that they can profit off of.
00:17:42.000So if you have a show that has no bad language, if you have a show that has no controversial topics, those shows are more appealing to advertisers.
00:17:50.000So for them, as a business, they'll look at someone like me and say, well, this is a limited advertiser option.
00:17:56.000But I just think they're looking at it incorrectly.
00:18:00.000If you looked at the popularity of it, you'd say, well, there's a lot of people that are paying attention to this.
00:18:33.000I think what it's more like is they've got very rigid ideas of what is or is not suitable for advertising.
00:18:40.000And maybe this is coming down from the ad executives, maybe this is coming down from the people that are at the top that have a much more progressive stance on things, what you'd call progressive.
00:18:52.000I would say like hard left, like a more hard left stance.
00:19:01.000There's a lot of people that are getting censored that are not just people that are on the right, which I'm not on the right, but people that are...
00:19:36.000When you see all these riots and these protests where people are screaming at each other, they want power.
00:19:42.000I mean, whether it makes any sense or not, it's not like these people are in a position to actually do anything with that power, but they want people to comply.
00:19:48.000When they're yelling at someone, they want people to decide that this person's good or this person's bad or they're right or they're wrong.
00:20:29.000And maybe Sally likes to joke around about certain things and they'll just decide, well, this is not suitable for advertising or this is dangerous or harmful.
00:20:37.000And what people decide is harmful and isn't harmful, the problem is this is not First Amendment, right?
00:20:44.000In their defense, they're not keeping me from saying these things, but they're incentivizing you to not say these things by costing you money.
00:20:53.000Now the question is, are they doing this because they just want to maximize their profits, and this is just how the deals that they have with advertisers, or are they doing it because of their personal views on what you're saying?
00:21:04.000And that's where things get squirrely, right?
00:21:05.000When a person tells you personally, Roseanne, I don't like the way you talk about The country or about liberals or about this or about that.
00:21:14.000So we're going to try to silence your voice.
00:21:16.000There's a lot of that happening too, whether people like it or not.
00:21:18.000Yeah, there has been for a really long time.
00:21:19.000But there's also a lot of left-wing journalists that are getting silenced.
00:21:22.000There's a lot of people that are independent journalists that are getting pushed out.
00:21:26.000It's like Tulsi Gabbard, she's a liberal, she's a Democrat, but she's also served overseas, two deployments, and she's a six-year veteran, more than a six-year veteran, a six-year congresswoman.
00:23:04.000And away from any kind of possible power we could have to coalesce and go, wait a minute, you guys are not going to take any more of our money for your fucking travels.
00:24:10.000I And then Laura Loomer went up to Nancy's Vineyard trying to find her.
00:24:17.000It's like, if you guys don't get yet that it don't matter who the president is, it's all a fucking scam to put public money into private pockets and nothing else.
00:24:50.000I think about we all need to be Mr. Smith and all go to Washington.
00:24:55.000It's like this is our government and that is our tax money.
00:24:58.000And it will be audited as Trump has promised.
00:25:02.000And as long as President Trump continues to make the moves to keep that promise to us, I will be supportive of him because that needs to happen.
00:27:12.000When they give it to private contractors to go to, you know, where they go, you know, move guns and shit all around the world, that means, like Eisenhower said, that's one less high school for the kids.
00:27:26.000Come on, we're going to be the kind of a country that leads the world.
00:30:26.000Like way back to, as far as we know, from Rome to the Inquisition to the Mongols to the, you know...
00:30:33.000I mean, there's been horrific things done by human beings.
00:30:36.000And one of the things about knowing about things like Auschwitz is it lets us know that even though things in this country right now are relatively great in comparison to the rest of the world, relatively great in comparison to some parts of the world that are war-torn and terrible right now,
00:31:30.000One of the things that I think is really interesting about the internet today is you're seeing groups of people that are connected to groups of people.
00:31:35.000And for sure this podcast is guilty of it in a certain way, although it's unintentional.
00:31:40.000But there are people out there that are essentially running online cults.
00:33:49.000He had a mind like, wow, that was like two centuries.
00:33:53.000Looking at him was going back centuries, you know, just the storehouse of information he had in his brain of history, the kind of history we never hear.
00:34:41.000I think having that core foundation of information, there's a lot of kids that are just really lacking that today.
00:34:49.000If they're not paying attention in school, they're just fucking off and they're Googling things on the internet and And they go in one ear and out the other after the test is over.
00:34:56.000They don't remember any of it because they're not really interested by it.
00:35:59.000I don't even know what bad pot is anymore.
00:36:01.000Well, now that it's being sold on every street corner out here, it's like heaven.
00:36:06.000The only issue is, there's a guy named John Norris, and he was working for the Department of Fish and Game as a game warden, and he started stumbling upon these illegal cartel grow-ops.
00:36:21.000Apparently some crazy number, like between 80 and 90% of all the illegal marijuana that's sold in this country is coming from cartel grow-ops, or similar illegal grow-ops where they use dangerous pesticides.
00:36:34.000So there's a movement right now for people to test marijuana.
00:36:38.000And in fact, my friend Todd is actually starting a business doing this where they want to check marijuana plants and make sure, inspect the stuff that people are growing to make sure there's no harmful chemicals or pesticides.
00:36:51.000Because they're using this stuff to keep animals away, to keep bugs from eating the leaves.
00:36:55.000And then you can smoke that stuff and it's toxic.
00:36:57.000Yeah, because that's what they're saying about fentanyl.
00:37:29.000So if you grab some sweaty guy who's overdosing and you're a cop and you have bare hands and that sweat gets in your hands, you literally can get fucked up from that fentanyl.
00:40:04.000But what they're trying to say is that there's no way you would be able to encode or encrypt this information that would keep it from this insane computing power that they're developing.
00:41:40.000And that billion dollar tequila he was selling with Randy Gerber, they got it added up to being worth one billion dollars by that company that owns the most liquor stores in the world and roads and trucks and blah,
00:42:05.000And the stuff they make tequila with, well, you'll have to read the article.
00:42:10.000It's for people who fancied themselves progressive, and then when their eyes beheld what the left actually does with its invested money, their eyes bug out.
00:42:24.000What is he doing with this tequila money?
00:42:27.000Well, it's not what he did doing with it.
00:42:50.000And it's to their – it's like a Walmart kind of deal.
00:42:54.000To their demise, you know, the products they use to produce the – Tequilas are like getting waylaid like in a Walmart shopping cart called George Clooney's Company.
00:43:09.000And these families who have lived for generations are getting the screwed-in deals like they do when Walmart comes in the community.
00:43:27.000So what you're saying is that he is basically profiting off of the hard work of these people that are remaining poor and they're buying their formula and then using that formula to make that tequila and they're growing everything, but they're making all the profit?
00:48:34.000He used to say, hey, call your grandma up in the winter.
00:48:36.000He said, go call your bubby up and tell her to come to the house and visit you kids and tell her to walk down the side where the icicles are so I can crawl out on the roof and fucking hammer it and it will fall down and pierce through her brain.
00:54:01.000And I was like, my dad would be like, you're never going to get, and my parents both, you're never going to get a husband because you're too fat and you have, you know, you have no ass, you have no waist, you need to work out, you know, whatever.
00:54:15.000And you have a big mouth and no guy will ever like that.
00:56:05.000You know, we talked about on the last podcast, I think was really important that people understand, you know, I've been a fan of yours forever, and I know your story.
00:57:14.000Foolish, so foolhardy, and to try to change who you were, the reason why the goddamn show was successful is because of who you were, and the fact that other people on the show didn't have your political ideology, and you would argue with them and fight with them, and it's like real-life conflict,
00:57:41.000And they tried to mold you to these woke times and foolishly reacted to the way you were talking as if you were doing something that was like, they changed what you were doing and made it this horrific, terrible thing.
00:58:27.000It's like such an elitist, out-of-touch vote.
00:58:30.000The view of humans, it's always offended me.
00:58:33.000It always offended me that they didn't like their audience, and I liked the audience because I thought I'm from there, and they're familiar to me.
00:58:42.000And I vowed to myself, I'm not going to disrespect the audience.
00:58:48.000And I never did, and I never did sell out, neither.
00:58:51.000So everybody, you know, there will come a day, I believe, when, you know...
00:59:16.000She says that this might be the beginning of the valuing of an artist, because it was the lowest point of ever devaluing an artist and an artist's work.
00:59:27.000She says, so maybe now it's turned around and the artist will be better respected for what they bring.
00:59:34.000I hope so, because they were even pulling your old show off of things.
00:59:42.000That's kind of what killed the comedy thing for me, is that I was also told that one more, me getting in trouble one more time, I wouldn't have my reruns anymore.
01:07:40.000If you're in great physical condition, like she's always been, she dances, she does so much physical stuff, that if she got a lap band, it would fuck with her body.
01:11:23.000He thinks I may be mentioned for other reasons, but no, it's just like, man, if you're going to go do this, you've got to get yourself, you know, one of these four-wheel drive here's like I got with the rifle.
01:13:54.000I mean I grew up involved in violence and martial arts and stuff when I was really little.
01:14:01.000I think I developed that way and I got good at figuring out how to channel that and then when you stop doing that, the difficulty for a lot of people is figuring out how to turn it off.
01:15:19.000I mean, that's part of what people call paranoia, the paranoia that you get from weed.
01:15:23.000I think it's an understanding of your place in the universe that you're kind of denying.
01:15:27.000Most people are denying because they're so self-focused.
01:15:29.000They're focused on their own life and their own objectives and what they're trying to accomplish and how they want other people to look at them.
01:15:35.000And then you smoke the pot and you're like, oh my god, this is crazy.
01:18:18.000We're not just all of our cells and all of our DNA, but we also have this weird bacteria floating around in our body, and it's keeping us alive and keeping us healthy.
01:18:25.000And some people say that bacteria is telling us a story.
01:18:29.000Like, yeah, I know, it's a big one, because it's like, okay, maybe the loop that goes through in your mind, which maybe this has something to do with me being on Ambien and being in a psychotic state when I tweeted, but Maybe it was just something was playing that didn't make all that much sense,
01:21:06.000And it's also very important that we have empathy towards people with mental health because we have empathy towards people with other ailments.
01:21:12.000If someone has liver cancer, we don't go, oh, fix your liver, you fucking idiot.
01:25:36.000A lot of people are getting confronted about those kind of things.
01:25:39.000And they need to hear me or you and thousands of us, frankly, say, hey, you guys, bring it back a little, come on, bring it back to the middle, where it makes common sense.
01:26:03.000One of the CEOs of Google, one of the main executives of Google, was talking about that recently, about how distraught they were at the election and what a terrible result it was.
01:26:13.000And they were, you know, looking at their own role in elections, because that is a thing that social media has now.
01:26:19.000People that openly discuss and support a candidate or deny a candidate.
01:26:26.000And this is what Tulsi Gabbard's suing for, is that they denied her YouTube searches.
01:26:30.000They did something to censor her ability to get her message out.
01:26:35.000Well, I think that people, what they're doing is they're digging and they're going back to who's funding who.
01:29:05.000You know, depending on where they are geographically.
01:29:09.000But that community, in the words of Malcolm X, why I ran for president on that party, it needs to create community health and community sovereignty and community...
01:30:05.000We try to do that in Hawaii where we create not an artificial economy but a barter economy.
01:30:12.000And of course it's all based on land as is all wealth.
01:30:16.000Because you can grow shit and feed people and that's what matters.
01:30:19.000So the biggest problem facing us as humans is how do we get the food in front of the hungry kids?
01:30:26.000That's our problem, but we go to all this other shit rather than that.
01:30:31.000So we need to start over, get grandmothers in charge.
01:30:35.000Every grandmother, there'll be a community grandmothers organization, all based on the nation of Iroquois, which was how the United States was actually founded, because Benjamin Franklin was a fan of the Iroquois people and the way they ran their government,
01:30:50.000which was run by a grandmother's council.
01:30:53.000And that's what he invented the 13, you know, they came up with the 13 Colonies United because it was 13 tribes and the Iroquois were the judge.
01:31:03.000But didn't you just get done telling us about how evil your grandmother was?
01:31:07.000Well, she was good, but she was like money hungry, you know.
01:33:24.000Well, I think as time goes on, with solar power and batteries and battery life getting extended due to technology, they're going to figure out better ways to do a lot of the things they're doing now.
01:33:34.000But regenerative farming is really important, you know, especially a place like where you have, where you have control of the land.
01:33:40.000You know, there's a lot of methods that you could use to do all sorts of things to grow your own food out there.
01:33:45.000The thing that's so great about Hawaii is that it has so much, oh Christ, I can't, diversity.
01:34:14.000I like the way they design things, especially the new farming things that I'm seeing on the island.
01:34:19.000Well, the vibe of the island, and you're on the big island, but I love all the islands, but the vibe of Hawaii in general, it's like this very interesting vibe, because it's friendly and nice, but proud and strong, and they know they have a really beautiful,
01:34:35.000unique place, and they have a really incredible history.
01:34:38.000Of people that were so bold that they got in these small handmade boats thousands of years ago and made their way through the goddamn ocean.
01:35:08.000Well, explain to people when they did it.
01:35:09.000Because the balls are free-floating in the sack?
01:35:11.000When there was no wind and there was no current or there was no visible waves, they would put their balls in the water to find out which way the current was going because they would feel it on their balls.
01:38:10.000You know what changed me are those round films about the wall of China.
01:38:17.000Whatever those places are, those theaters.
01:38:21.000Oh, the IMAX? Yeah, IMAX. Oh, I know what you're talking about.
01:38:24.000Yeah, those gigantic theaters where everything's around you and you get to see it visually.
01:38:29.000Well, the Keck, I've been to it a few times, but one time I caught it perfectly, where there was no moon out, and the sky was clear, and it was unbelievably beautiful.
01:38:56.000And if you hold your phone up, which I float in my pool, and you hold it up there, and then you look and it's like, yeah, there's this, you know.
01:39:06.000Whatever they're called, I can't remember.
01:39:21.000It's just so incredible that it works like that.
01:39:23.000Well, that's one of the things that helps people think about their place in the world when you see something as magnificent and enormous as the Milky Way.
01:39:30.000I mean, you see the Milky Way so clear that it doesn't even look real.
01:39:55.000It blows me away because it really shifted.
01:39:59.000In a real tangible way, the way I viewed people on a planet in space.
01:40:05.000It's undeniable because it's so gorgeous and so epic.
01:40:09.000Centering your eye and expanding your whole mind and consciousness.
01:40:13.000And that does something to your big-ass program DNA shit, you know?
01:40:18.000Once the eye sees it and takes it in, it's like the image, once the image is digested, you know, the image, you know, they say, where does it stop being that and become this?
01:40:37.000I think that lack of ability to see that is one of the things that's really screwed us up more than anything about modern civilization with all our lights, all our street lights and city lights.
01:42:28.000It's bad land management, don't you think?
01:42:30.000There's certainly that, but there's also a lack of resources.
01:42:33.000There's a lack of understanding that something like that can happen.
01:42:36.000Sometimes it takes something like that to happen.
01:42:38.000Maybe that was hitting bottom like Tiffany says and maybe now it's going to come back up.
01:42:43.000That'd be good if it, you know, did the hourglass flip where it's like, okay, we hit the bottom now and now let's build back something good and better and stronger.
01:43:00.000I mean, maybe I could do a podcast and try to unite people, but there's so many things people could do to help their community right now that doesn't cost nothing.
01:43:08.000And a lot of people my age, you know, well, they have some free time.
01:43:11.000I mean, they're probably all babysitting their grandkids like we all are because their parents are working.
01:44:02.000They said it's going to be a crash, and there's going to be a lot of people losing their homes again, and they're going to have to go to Walmarts and live.
01:51:53.000Now, if you guys had stuck up more for me, I think it would have stopped.
01:51:58.000But you ignored it because you're like, well, she is a little bitch anyway.
01:52:04.000She's done a lot of fucking stupid shit.
01:52:06.000I think sometimes when the shit hits the fan with certain people, other folks get nervous that it's going to come at them if they defend you.
01:52:13.000Of course, but, you know, now they're starting.
01:52:15.000It's real weird to see a turnaround like Piers Morgan.
01:52:18.000You know, he was quick to call me a racist on his show.
01:52:22.000He said she's absolutely a racist to have compared this and that and saying she looks like this.
01:52:30.000That's his interpretation of what I said.
01:52:32.000Which now he has a little bit more time away from, so he's just called and said he would love to interview me, and my publicist said, well, after calling her a racist, I doubt that will happen.
01:52:43.000And he said, well, I'm very sorry, and I want to apologize to her.
01:52:46.000I reacted, you know, a knee-jerk reaction, as did many others.
01:52:50.000I think he's also recognizing, and he wrote some—he did some stuff about it recently where he was on— I think he was on the Ben Shapiro show where he was talking about it and there was a clip and I actually retweeted the clip.
01:53:01.000I'm going to do a Jew beatdown on that Ben Shapiro one of these days.
01:53:49.000I mean, it's just going to show, it just was all partisan.
01:53:53.000And our media, that belongs to the people.
01:53:57.000The airwaves are the people's airwave, another way to show public money going into private hands through corporate maneuvering.
01:54:06.000But the airwaves belong to the public.
01:54:10.000So you can't use the public's airwaves the way I see it to dumb down the public so they won't vote for you not putting poison in their community or their food.
01:54:36.000I don't think society, as long as people have love in their hearts for their children and their children's friends and each other and community.
01:55:24.000Well, we were bred, but we're being activated for certain things.
01:55:28.000I'm mostly talking about the mentally ill, because I can see where all these things, these terrible things that happened, that was a mentally ill person who had mental health issues, and that's why it needs to be talked about.
01:55:41.000Mental health issues come in all colors.
01:55:46.000It's time to seriously do something about it rather than just looking the other way as people die in filth on your fancy streets of America.
01:56:34.000We can't believe nobody's thought of it yet, but this was part of my green plan for the Peace and Freedom Party as a Socialist in 2012. Well, I see that the Ocasio Solitude, whatever her name is, or AOC,
01:56:51.000I can't remember, Well, she took my green thing and fucked it up, and I'm pissed.
01:57:01.000In fact, before Trump, I was the only politician running for any kind of office who came out with solutions.
01:57:10.000And I thought that I influenced Trump because I ran my campaign totally on Twitter and self-financed and, you know, all those things and talking about a plan to make our communities work for us,
01:59:49.000For a long time I've been saying or feeling like all the good people are coming together and leaving the bad people by the side of the way.
01:59:59.000We cannot include those parts of our people's Who are bad anymore, and that's how they worked us for a couple generations here.
02:00:07.000But now we've got to let our own bad people go, and we don't protect nothing bad.
02:00:12.000We embrace good in every other, all worldwide good comes to good.
02:00:17.000And it even happened with the Vatican police, the good, because I always say like when I talk spirituality, I know you don't care about astrology or any of those things that I'm into, but I felt like...
02:00:34.000The good was winning over the bad for a long, long time now and tipping the balance.
02:00:39.000And this was proof to me because it's like the good came together against the bad.
02:00:49.000It's just really chilling and wonderful to think about the things that, you know, President Trump has done by one or two actions he's taken.
02:02:11.000But once we get it right, we can keep building something that works for all of us, and we can all actually like each other.
02:02:18.000And then I could, as a grandmother, I feel that I'm denied this, to be able to travel freely in the world going to different cultures and sampling their wonderful foods.
02:04:16.000I think there's a problem with society that we let, I mean, it's a terrible thing to say, but there's a lot of people that don't really have the best genetics or the best life experiences or the best things to offer, and they're breeding and they're doing a terrible job of raising children.
02:05:00.000I mean, there's just mean people, and someone was mean to them, and it's an imperfect cycle.
02:05:05.000I think that's what I'm getting at, is that evolution, even if it is real, there's a lot of people that are, I mean, it's not like the best versions of humans are all that's represented today in 2019. I just want to make sure everyone gets mentioned so nobody...
02:05:19.000Because the thing I think that is the enemy of humans is self-righteous indignation.
02:05:26.000And when that devil starts talking in my head, that's always where it starts with the self-righteous indignation, which gives me the right to do any mean shit I want.