Comedian Bill Burr joins Jemele to discuss his new stand-up special, PANDemic, which premieres tonight on Showtime at 8pm ET. He also discusses how he got into comedy and what it's like to be a standup comedian at a young age, and why he thinks it's a good thing that he doesn't have the same amount of money as other comedians. And, of course, he talks about how he's going to get out of this standup comedy career a lot faster than most people do. Thanks to comedian Bill Burr for being on the show and for being a good friend of mine. I'm so excited to have him on the pod and can't wait to see what he's up to next. I hope you enjoy this episode and that you enjoy it as much as I did making it! Thank you so much to my good friend, Bill Burr, for coming on to the pod today. I couldn't be more excited to do this and I can t wait to do it again next week with him on his new comedy special on Showtime. I can't thank him enough. -Jemele - Thank you, Jamey, for being here and supporting me and I appreciate you, I really appreciate you. -Jamey and I love you. I really much, really, really really appreciate it. XOXO, J.E. & J.B. -A. BONUS EPISODES: - J.R. J. & A.M. - SON - PANDEMAIL - JORDER - JORDY - JAMEY AND AYANCHOR - JAMIE - JACOB PODCASTING - JAMES M. SON - JAMES AND KELLY PANDY - - DOGS - JOSEPH - JODYO - JAYE RYAN - JAWNSYKE - JUICY AND DOUBLES - JOSH CHEESE - JOKES AND SONGS - JODI SONDS - JORGE OCHTER - JAVY SONNYC - JONATHANXO BONDSETTER - DADDYANDSETTON - JESICA AND JAMES WELCOME - JEAN JEASTER AND KEVIN MAYO BOWL - JEROME M.
00:01:56.000I think it was either Dennis or Terrence McKenna said that when the bonfire of knowledge increases, the surface area of ignorance is exposed.
00:02:07.000So the idea is that the more you know, the more you realize the possibilities and the less you really think you ever knew anything.
00:02:15.000When you're young, your knowledge is so limited and your world is so small that you get cocky and you think...
00:03:52.000But something happened around that time where I think, I believe Louis C.K. was probably one of the big reasons why people started doing a lot of really regular specials.
00:04:05.000Because if he wasn't the top guy, he was certainly at the top.
00:04:08.000And you've got to remember that this is when Chris Rock took that self-imposed exile, just decided to not really do shows, except whenever he wanted to, for like 10 years.
00:04:17.000So during that time, Louis really came up.
00:04:21.000And Louis, when he was at its peak, was doing a stand-up special every year.
00:04:25.000And I think even he thinks that they weren't as good as they could have been if he gave it two years or three years.
00:04:30.000But then everybody started doing that so throw your material out and then the the number if you go back I bet I bet if we had like a chart that show the number of stand-up specials made like when the internet became really popular in like the 2000s and then things started getting on the internet like YouTube clips Everything just ramped up everything in a big way the not just a sheer volume and everybody does the same thing now you abandon your material and then you do all new stuff and And I think Louis C.K. during that time too,
00:05:00.000he disrupted the business model of introducing the $5 special.
00:05:03.000So it became something that was like, hey, you can self-produce it, put it out there.
00:06:37.000Ricky Gervais, I would say, is like the top dog, right, that's over here in America from England, and he does pretty much American-style stand-up, wouldn't you say?
00:07:15.000I'm more of the goofier side of things.
00:07:17.000But in the spectrum of comedy, I think there's like Gervais and, you know, it's like Chappelle and yourself that kind of dissect, you know, a certain element of a premise, you know, it's like they walk down an alley and they flash the flashlight on the tangents and explore it.
00:07:31.000It's almost like a modern day philosopher.
00:07:33.000I feel like, you know, back then they would go to the plaza, talk, you know, these points out.
00:07:39.000Well, one thing I've noticed, in particular in these last couple of months, when we haven't been able to do stand-up, first of all, some people are figuring out how to do it anyway.
00:08:13.000It's like he's writing these pieces and then he's doing a different thing because the comedy clubs aren't available, which is where he would be working all this stuff out in the comedy club.
00:08:21.000So instead of just waiting, he said, no, I'm going to just do it and I'm going to make this content and just make it so good I don't even need an audience.
00:09:05.000And I think that there's a real hope for the future stand-up, knowing that in this dangerous time, guys like that are still out there swinging from the hips, like throwing bombs.
00:12:51.000That's what's great with cartoons, you know?
00:12:52.000It's like, all of that's like, yeah, it doesn't harm.
00:12:56.000Bro, imagine if that was really what life was.
00:12:58.000Like, you started off as a single-celled thing, and then that died, and the next life you come back as a multi-celled organism, and then that dies.
00:13:06.000And then you work your way through the worm world, the insect world, the spider world.
00:13:11.000What if we're at the end of a long process that started, not just biologically started with the first single-celled organisms, but that's a graduation that the life form has to go through?
00:15:50.000We all agree that this is a part of this thing that we do so I Think we take comfort in like Having markers like oh, it's lunchtime.
00:16:02.000Oh, it's dinner time Let's watch a show and then I'm gonna take a shower and go to bed and you know it gets to you get to these markers where they're in your head and it kind of makes life make sense like oh, you're just looking forward to the next thing and looking forward to the next thing but If you knew for a fact that this life goes on forever,
00:16:21.000forever and ever and ever, it could go on a million eons.
00:18:32.000In the dirt and the soil that they live in, they transmit data from plants to plants.
00:18:39.000And if there's a group of plants, like a community of plants, and one of them needs more resources, like if it needs more water, they'll allocate more water to that plant.
00:19:20.000The next one, he would say really mean, obscene things.
00:19:23.000And then he would freeze it, and then the pattern of which the ice would kind of crystallize, like the one he said mean things to, like the ice would crystallize in a very dissonant way, like the pattern didn't look proper.
00:19:36.000And then the one where he said all these nice things, it was a very beautiful, repetitive, organic thing.
00:19:44.000If that's true, and I don't think it is, because I'm pretty sure they debunked that.
00:19:49.000But that's one of those ones that I have to be real careful with because I'm wishing for it to be true.
00:19:54.000Like I hear shit like that and I go, well that would be dope if you could see that like thoughts and feelings actually come out in your words and they affect physical objects.
00:20:03.000But I think I read that that was debunked.
00:20:10.000I've read stuff like that where you put your intentions in the water, and at its earlier roots, it's kind of like when we have a shot of whiskey, it's like, hey, cheers, and it's putting to your good health.
00:20:21.000Yeah, to a positive intention in motion, and you feel it.
00:20:26.000That's interesting because I think we inherently know that it's a real thing.
00:20:30.000You feel it, so that's, I think, one of the reasons why we want to see it.
00:20:33.000That's why we would think that seeing it in the ice crystals would be cool.
00:20:36.000Yeah, it's like under a microscope when he saw the ice, it's like you could see that design.
00:20:41.000But, I mean, you know, 80% of our body is water.
00:20:45.000It's like to think that there's not some kind of like living thing that it's affected by emotion and reactive to our words, which go into plants, you know?
00:21:20.000So I think sound and the sound that one can make, it's like the language could be different, but I think the vibration that stems from here, there's something that happens between here and here when it comes out, it affects people.
00:21:33.000It's like you can have somebody not speak the language and yell at you to know that, oh, this guy's pissed.
00:21:39.000Or just give you that look and you're like, ooh, I better get out of here.
00:22:42.000Because doesn't everybody have, like, a few cancerous cells and your body breaks down those cancerous cells?
00:22:47.000I think that's the key, is that, like, when you get, like, really ill with cancer, your body's just not stopping the reproduction of these damaged cells.
00:22:56.000So I think if the dog can smell it, they can always smell it when you got like real cancer, not like what normal people, the amount of cancerous cells people have in them.
00:23:09.000I have a theory that the dogs, like the smell that they're trained to smell, it's like there's something in the sweat.
00:23:14.000It's like in somebody's sweat that radiates either the smell of, you know, when somebody's diabetic or when somebody, you know, it's like they have, or high blood pressure, they have these dogs to kind of pick that up.
00:23:44.000You know, when somebody faints, you know, they start to sweat and that's a mechanism that the body does to help you wake up, you know, your body goes cold after.
00:23:51.000So it's a certain level of sweat, you know, it's like, you know, we drink coffee, we go to the restroom, we smell when we go number one, take a piss, like, oh yeah, I drank coffee earlier.
00:27:35.000I don't look like a deer and move closer to the alligator apparently trying to touch it the 10-foot alligator estimated 400 to 500 pounds then attack covert who officials said was five feet tall and 100 pounds this crazy lady Decided that she was going to Touch a fucking alligator It's not even her fault.
00:28:00.000People don't get it drilled into their head what an alligator actually is.
00:28:04.000There's dinosaurs that live amongst us.
00:29:06.000When the alligator resurfaced with Covert's body again, a deputy fired several shots from his 9mm service pistol, killing the alligator and allowing the first responders to retrieve Covert's body, according to the sheriff's office.
00:29:19.000So that cop killed a monster that ate a lady that just lives in the neighborhood.
00:29:38.000If there was no alligators, and then all of a sudden there was alligators, we'd want to kill them all.
00:29:43.000If alligators came from outer space, like a fucking UFO filled with crocodiles, came from outer space and just started eating swimmers, we'd be like, we've got to gun these fucking things down.
00:30:54.000There was one, we went back and forth on this, Jamie, that was, we couldn't find it at first, the one where the alligator was stopped traffic.
00:31:31.000You know, you got like a pack of gum and a fucking Diet Coke and you're looking for your keys and you look and 15 feet away from you, that thing is walking across the median.
00:32:00.000I'm trying to find it to show you, but there were two alligators fighting in the middle of a residential street, and one got the other by the head.
00:32:09.000The video, these guys are filming for four or five minutes.
00:32:11.000One guy goes and tries to grab the tail to pull them apart.
00:32:17.000What's interesting is the alligator is the calmer of the species, and because it's the calmer of the species, it allows it to live alongside people, and people tolerate it.
00:32:29.000Because you see an alligator, and keep playing that because it's freaking me out.
00:32:58.000The crocodile is too much of a threat, and the balance of the ecosystem is so fucked up.
00:33:02.000Somebody released, because Florida's crazy, somebody released a couple of Nile crocodiles in the Everglades, and a biologist found them, and they issued a shoot on sight.
00:33:17.000If you see a Nile crocodile, because if they take hold, and they start taking up Real estate in the Everglades and breeding, breeding populations of Nile crocodiles in that fucking already unmanageable shithole of pythons.
00:34:33.000It was like a bunch of ducks go there and it was just taking down ducks.
00:34:36.000And I guess the family spotted it and they closed down the park until they got it out and they did some mitigation there with the swamp to clean it up because it was filthy.
00:38:26.000He's biting it by the neck, and he's holding on to the fucking pigeon and killing it.
00:38:30.000So what's going on in New York City is cannibalism, rat wars, where rats are invading other rats' territories, because there's as many, if not more, rats in New York City as there are people.
00:39:30.000Although, like, it's interesting to see, like, Mark Norman was doing a bunch of shit, was just going down the street, and there's no one on the streets.
00:39:36.000It's a really, really rare time when no one's on the streets, and you could just go do that.
00:39:41.000Yeah, I went to downtown LA. I've been going to downtown LA and it's like all the santee alleys and all that, it's gone.
00:39:49.000People cannot sustain the, you know, the close down.
00:39:53.000You know, they don't have money to pay for the leases and the rents.
00:40:56.000I mean, you know, we were talking about it earlier that, you know, all these businesses are going to go under like the, you know, You know, childcare and barbershops and stuff like that.
00:41:11.000Maybe in hindsight it's going to turn out that it was the right thing to do and that it stopped the spread of the virus and even though there was some flare-ups here and there, it made people more aware and the virus eventually goes away.
00:44:08.000The reward should be you're a good citizen.
00:44:09.000Like if you see someone breaking into someone's car and you managed to catch their plate, you should turn that in because you're a good citizen.
00:44:30.000You give people money for things, you incentivize them.
00:44:33.000It makes it dangerous because there's an incentive to go one way or the other.
00:44:37.000So if someone sees a crime and they want to give up the information about that crime, whether it's a license plate or a description or you got a video or something like that, you do that because you're a good person.
00:44:49.000You don't want your mom to get robbed like that.
00:44:51.000You do that because you don't want your neighbor to get robbed.
00:44:53.000You do that because there's a problem in your community.
00:44:55.000There's a person who's committing a crime, and as a community, we organize, we look, we look out for each other.
00:47:12.000You would think after all these that have been filmed all these have had like there's some sort of Education to stop this there's some sort of intervention.
00:47:22.000There's some sort of psychological examinations They give people to stop them from getting to the point where they can't separate themselves from as a you know because he's killing a man whatever Whatever happened?
00:47:34.000I don't know if there was a physical thing?
00:48:13.000And all the guy was doing was reaching for his wallet.
00:48:15.000I remember thinking like god damn it like how crazy are the interactions between people when you're a cop And you're in that weird position where you literally have life and death power over someone at any any moments notice You can decide that you were threatened and you had to take a life and if no one's there with a camera How many times have guys died like this where no one was there with a camera?
00:49:14.000Dude, I think people that work as cops are just like, they're people.
00:49:18.000They're exceptional people because it's a very difficult job, right?
00:49:21.000They're tested in a way that most of us are not tested, but they're just people.
00:49:24.000And there's a giant spectrum of people from people that are like genuinely happy for other people and good people who do, you know, who love each other and do, and then there's fucking monsters.
00:51:45.000I don't know if it mimics soldiers, but soldiers commit suicide at a very high rate too.
00:51:51.000And I think for a lot of them it's just regular life in comparison to the chaos of war and the chaos of Of the violence that they'll run into on the streets if you're a cop.
00:52:04.000Like regular life, it's just like you're too fucked up from it.
00:52:08.000And I don't know how many of those guys get treatment, how many of those guys get therapy, or how many of those guys go into that job for the wrong reasons.
00:52:15.000They go into that job because they like having power over people.
00:53:11.000If we watched him just kick that guy to death, it would be insane.
00:53:17.000But somehow or another he thought it was okay if he just put all of his weight on his shin and put it on that man's neck.
00:53:25.000Dude, I don't know if anybody's ever done that to you, but people have done that to me.
00:53:29.000In Jiu Jitsu, I've had guys like when they're passing, maybe they go for a mounted triangle or something like that and they put their shin across my neck and not even for long periods of time, but it's hard to handle.
00:53:40.000It's hard to handle for someone who does jujitsu.
00:53:42.000It's one of the reasons why triangle chokes are so effective, right?
00:53:45.000It's because it's your leg bone and your other leg bone and all that leg muscle and all that pressure.
00:53:51.000Triangle ain't shit compared to putting all your weight on a guy's neck.
00:55:45.000Yeah, it's a pattern, but it's also it's just a pattern with cops.
00:55:51.000It's not just a pattern in that, you know, cops are killing young black men, but it's also a pattern that cops really, there's certain cops who really can't handle that kind of power.
00:57:18.000And I don't know what they can do about that other than have stricter standards to keep people like that from becoming cops.
00:57:24.000Or is it just that the job makes them that way?
00:57:28.000Is it just that the stress makes them that way?
00:57:31.000And seeing all the criminals, dealing with all the crimes, seeing all the violence just fucks them up so bad.
00:57:37.000Yeah, even there was a case here in LA in Boyle Heights where there was a man who was Not fighting back, and the officer's going in and just fighting him to the point where the officer rips his glasses off and starts railing on a guy that is completely not fighting back.
00:57:55.000And there was a home there, and the people from the home come out, and they're like, hey, he's not fighting back.
00:58:03.000And there was another officer trying to kind of calm the thing, but man, that officer was teeing off on this guy who was just holding on to the fence.
01:00:42.000I feel the same way, you know, I feel like cops are, in a sense, they're so necessary and yet so disrespected and underappreciated, and then they're also forced into doing things that are not what they signed up for,
01:01:03.000Like, cops become glorified revenue collectors if you just make them sit hiding behind a bush waiting for someone to go 49 on a 45. Like, I got them!
01:01:14.000Yeah, well that's not what a cop signed up for.
01:01:16.000They've signed up to stop bad guys and make the community safer.
01:01:19.000And then it opens up a whole thing with, you know, you know, Fourth Amendment probable cause, you know, you get stopped for one thing and it opens the door for other things.
01:01:27.000On Snoop Dogg's page, he's got a really good video of a good cop talking about what these cops did wrong.
01:01:33.000And I love that Snoop put that up there.
01:04:26.000That's how dudes take over and form an army of other murderers and they fucking start slaughtering people and take over the city and you don't do shit about it.
01:04:58.000It's just in the middle of all this crazy crisis, everything has been such a rollercoaster ride because in the beginning everything was really scary in terms of worrying about the pandemic, but it seemed like people were being a little more chill.
01:05:10.000It seems like people were confronted by real danger and were like a little nicer to each other.
01:05:16.000I had a lot of hope in the beginning of the pandemic, and then somewhere later on, it seemed like businesses started failing, people started going bankrupt, a lot of suicides, a lot of craziness, a lot of drinking, and then things just got way worse.
01:05:32.000It seems like the online discourse now, if you go to Twitter or shit like that, seems way more aggressive and angry.
01:06:13.000Already the conspiracy theorists are out.
01:06:17.000I saw some shit on the Instagram where people were saying that federal agents were starting the fires and they're doing that to control Minneapolis.
01:07:01.000Now you're going to walk around this area that you and your friends burnt to the ground.
01:07:06.000And how you're so connected to that act now.
01:07:09.000If you're one of those guys that threw a Molotov cocktail or did whatever you did to light those buildings on fire, when you walk by those things every day, when all this is settled, all the dust is settled, you're going to realize what you did.
01:07:23.000You just burnt someone's building down.
01:07:25.000It didn't have anything to do with it.
01:08:01.000Andrew Yang, when he was running for president, one of the platforms that I really liked, he said he wants every police officer to at least be a purple belt in jujitsu.
01:08:37.000Like, if you don't know how to fight and you're also the person that gets to enforce judgment, like, that's a crazy, that's like not knowing how to drive but being in a race car on a track, like, you don't know how to drive?
01:12:58.000XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I mean,
01:13:44.000The future hopefully is a positive one and an uplifting one.
01:13:48.000But when someone has a futures female shirt on, they want it to be female.
01:13:51.000That means they're going to lean more female than male.
01:13:53.000It's like if you want real equality, you should hire the best person for the job always.
01:13:59.000So if you've got this job and you're leaning toward this guy, he seems like he's better, but he's not a woman and there's a mandate to have a woman, you're going to go with someone who's just a woman.
01:14:07.000You're going to give them a little break because it's a woman.
01:15:14.000I never thought that, you know, if you asked me about the pandemic, I said, yeah, a bunch of people died from the flu, but I didn't think people were walking around with masks on.
01:17:53.000The purpose of the mask was to keep away any bad smells, known as miasma, which were thought to be the principal cause of the disease before it was disproven by germ theory.
01:24:44.000Now, once it airs, once it's on Showtime, will it be available on an app afterwards or on iTunes, on Apple TV? Yeah, it's going to be a wide release where people can stream it on...
01:26:09.000You're very kind and seeing you work, too.
01:26:11.000It's like when I get to host those shows for you at the improv or the comedy store, it's cool to host, but to sit there and see what you're doing, tweaking stuff.
01:26:19.000I remember you working on the Jenner bit.
01:26:25.000When I saw you do that act out of the stool of getting up there, it's like, holy moly.
01:26:29.000Like, you're one that constantly changes, and I'm, you know, when you perform, I'm always kind of watching what you're doing, and man, that act out was insane.
01:26:39.000Well, I had to figure out some way to, like, make someone whispering in his ear while he's sleeping.
01:26:45.000But I also had to make it, like, it had to be dramatic, like...
01:26:54.000And I wanted to do it in a way like I'm really flexible so I can move in a weird way, you know, so I can move like I think a demon would be.
01:27:02.000So I had to figure out how to make that funny, man.
01:30:33.000I've been writing and just the routine that we develop of, hey, you write during the day, you get stuff ready, you perform it at night, record the set, wake up in the morning, listen to it.
01:30:43.000Like, that's been disrupted completely.
01:31:42.000Yeah, most of the time I feel like I'll somehow do a better version the first time I say it, and then I'm chasing the dragon for a long time.
01:31:53.000That's where recordings come in play though, right?
01:33:30.000I'm a fan and a student of comedy, you know?
01:33:33.000It's like, you know, from the get-go, like, you know, even...
01:33:36.000Because I didn't have full command of the language, you know?
01:33:39.000You know, until I was like around in the fifth grade.
01:33:41.000So my first exposure being, you know, Mexican comedians like Cantinflas or, you know, Chespirito, who was a playwright, you know, who wrote these funny characters and India Maria.
01:33:51.000And that was my first exposure to comedy, I feel like.
01:33:53.000It was like, you know, from there into physical comedy to your Laurel and Hardy and Three Stooges, Buster Keaton.
01:33:59.000Like, to me, that was like hysterical.
01:34:04.000I started learning—well, I think by fifth grade I fully understood it, but I grew up around—even though I'm born here in Long Beach, you know, you slowly learn it.
01:34:16.000Yeah, I slowly learned it, and I was in or around only people that spoke— Spanish.
01:34:21.000I think there's a giant advantage to being bilingual, not just in that you can speak two languages and talk to, you know, people from different cultures and go and travel around the world to speak Spanish, but also because I think your brain has that, there's more nuance.
01:34:35.000To your understanding of language, right?
01:34:38.000Because you've got two different languages that you can go back and forth in your head.
01:34:42.000You've got a romantic Latin language and you've got, you know, European English.
01:34:46.000You've got this weird combination of those two things you can choose.
01:34:49.000And so you get a flavor of, like, they sound different.
01:34:53.000There's different ways of structuring sentences.
01:34:56.000I bet it's playing chess in a lot of ways, like a little brain exercise.
01:35:01.000Yeah, it's interesting, but I think initially when you're trying to learn a language, my dad used to joke and say that I was going to end up mute.
01:35:08.000He's like, you can't speak English or Spanish well.
01:35:10.000He's like, this is bad, and that's true.
01:35:12.000I think from a learning point of view, it's like...
01:36:06.000Yeah, it's your ability to communicate and it's also when you get behind the eight ball with something like that as a kid and you get self-conscious about it and then it's bothering you for years and years, that can affect all the aspects of your life.
01:36:21.000It can affect your confidence with girls or with friends or with whatever.
01:36:34.000Well, it's because the lack of communication.
01:36:36.000They get angry and frustrated at the world and lash out.
01:36:39.000But, you know, now as an adult, knowing both languages, it's quite interesting because especially performing stand-up.
01:36:45.000I've been to New Mexico and performed stand-up, and it's really cool because even as I was getting ready to do this special, there was a show in Mexico that I went to go do, and I did the hour in Spanish.
01:38:28.000So it's like now I think in English and translate it into Spanish.
01:38:32.000But, you know, so when I went to Mexico after like a day or two, it's like I'm now thinking in Spanish because my crosshairs have been adjusted.
01:38:39.000You know, you almost have to like want to soak in the environment.
01:39:23.000English, Spanglish, whatever, he's a beast.
01:39:25.000Yeah, you don't want to follow him with English, but I'm telling you, in Miami, when they used to have him go down to the Miami Improv and middle, he would middle for these big-time headliners, and Joey was friends with the guy who ran the club.
01:42:07.000One of the things I got in the habit of doing if I can't get to my little notebook, I just start an email chain with premises for the week.
01:42:18.000And then when I do sit down and write on Friday, I could just pull up the thing and I pull up this thread that I've been replying to myself.
01:42:26.000It's like birthdays and then whatever thing I said.
01:42:29.000Why don't you just store it on your notes?
01:42:33.000Because I like to make things difficult, Joe.
01:43:09.000And then, you know, I put them up on my wall because I like to be like constantly...
01:43:13.000Like looking at them, so I feel like in the morning when I look, I wake up and I look at the wall, I have the bits and I have a running set list on a whiteboard in my room that I just kind of look at, just look at the set list and then the stuff that I'm working at that I just write long form.
01:43:51.000The way it gets better is thinking about it and thinking about it with intent and energy and real focus, really trying to figure out how to make this bit better.
01:44:00.000And the more time you spend doing that, the better your bits are.
01:44:02.000So you're doing all the right steps, whether you do it through email or whether you do it through notes.
01:44:06.000I'm just wondering why you don't do it through Notes or something like that or Evernote.
01:46:29.000Yeah, it's good because I feel like you're engaging more parts of your body in writing something.
01:46:33.000You're, you know, you're writing the letter so subconsciously you're tapping into the memory of how do I write this letter, this word, you know, organizing it visually.
01:46:43.000It's like, Yeah, it really becomes ingrained in the mind, and I think there's something special that I don't see myself walking away from that part of it, but for the sake of remembering the premise, because then there's nothing worse than like, dang it, what was that thing?
01:47:03.000So when it's slippery and it's in my head like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, why is it that, and then I'll say it, bam, and it comes out perfect.
01:47:11.000Yeah, voice to text is really amazing, too, because sometimes in the process of remembering and writing, some of the words are lost and it's like, no, that wasn't the same.
01:47:52.000Now, why is it that that's such a popular name in Spanish?
01:47:59.000It's, you know, it's because it's, you know, Mexico, my parents are from Mexico, and, you know, the predominant religion in Mexico is Catholicism, so it's Jesus, much like, you know, in the Muslim religion in the Middle East would be,
01:48:15.000yeah, so it's our equivalent, I think.
01:48:17.000I believe it lands somewhere in there.
01:48:20.000Do you know how crazy you have to be to be a white guy to name your son Jesus?
01:48:25.000Bro, you gotta be off the charts crazy.
01:48:27.000If you found out his kid's name is what?
01:48:59.000And there was a thing that didn't match up, and it was an accent.
01:49:02.000So if you look at it, it's written with English letters.
01:49:06.000So it's like my parents didn't really know how to read or write, so somebody else filled out the paperwork for me, like my birth certificate.
01:49:14.000So it's Jesus Trejo, just like you would see it anywhere else.
01:49:17.000But in Mexico, there's an accent over it.
01:49:20.000You know, there's an accent over the E, Jesus.
01:51:44.000That's, to me, one of the more fascinating things about humans today is that they have this one part of the world where they develop these enormous men.
01:54:14.000Character formed from the letters A and E. Originally, a ligature representing the Latin diphthong AE. It has been promoted to the full status of a letter in some languages, including the Danish,
01:58:47.000Once you get into this whole, like, yeah, once you get into the iPhone of it all, the Apple products, it's like, they got you by every angle.
01:59:01.000It's good to have competition, but the way they've done it, man, they've made it so attractive that, like, at least 50% of the people, I think, are on iPhones.
02:02:13.000I think phones are doing the same thing that cars, like car companies do that, you know, they kind of go with a certain chassis and they dress it up in their own way.
02:04:54.000It's the same thing with the zoom, right?
02:04:56.000Like the zoom is a lot of it's digital zoom, right?
02:04:58.000Yeah, it still has a lot to do with the optics and the glass that's going in there and then the sensor that it's them being going on to that can give you a better or worse picture.
02:05:06.000But it used to be a big deal to have like a 5 megapixel camera on a phone.
02:05:11.000Now they're up to 108. They have these gigantic camera bumps in the back of these cameras now because they have actual zoom lenses that are mechanical zoom lenses and then they have digital zoom.
02:05:39.000There's a brand new phone that had a, which I think it was on a phone like 10 years ago when it came up, but there was like a setting you could do while you were taking a photo.
02:05:46.000It was like an infrared camera filter that allowed you to technically see through stuff.
02:05:56.000So like Lou from Unbox Therapy made a video just showing you what you could see through.
02:05:59.000So you could take a picture of an Apple TV, like the actual physical box, and see through the black plastic to see the internal components.
02:06:42.000Well, you make a great point for the Galaxy.
02:06:44.000I'm definitely up to try it, because, I mean, with the iPhones, it's just a constant having to upgrade, and it's like, that one, it seems like it would be good for longer than the iPhone would.
02:07:27.000But there was this lady who was working for Huawei who got in trouble because she was posting photos on Instagram for Huawei products using an iPhone.
02:07:37.000They proved that she was using an iPhone to take the pictures and posting them up as Huawei.
02:08:22.000When you buy a Samsung phone, if Google updates their operating system, you have to wait a while, maybe even six months, for them to kind of update you to the next, because they have to code it, they have to get it, but it gets released on the pixels first.
02:09:34.000I didn't get to ask him that, but that could have just been very coincidental because I get an Apple Watch update every day from this particular app.
02:09:41.000It just happens at like the same exact time.
02:11:01.000That's what's coming on the new iOS 13.5.
02:11:04.000I updated it the other day and there was a notification that said it allows your phone to pop up to type in your passcode faster because it'll know if you have a face mask on.
02:11:14.000This is the first step, they're saying, because there's going to be some app to notify you.
02:11:18.000They need a fucking fingerprint reader.
02:11:20.000Everybody else has a fingerprint reader.
02:13:07.000Right there I think it was checking like It looked like it was looking at pineapples and whatnot, but there's some new apps right now.
02:13:12.000If you want to get, for instance, this computer or a new shoe, you can tap in the thing, like, show it to me, and you can now turn your camera onto this table, and it will show you what it will look like sitting on your table.
02:13:22.000You can change the angles and see what this new thing you want to buy will look like in your space.
02:13:26.000That would be amazing if you were an interior designer, and you're trying to set up someone's house, and you'd be like, look, look what we could do here.
02:14:51.000Because there's a lot of shit going on that has nothing to do with you, that can affect you in an insane way, like what happened in Minneapolis, right?
02:14:59.000I mean, if you were a person who had a building there, and all of a sudden your building's on fire because some fucking cop was a piece of shit, What do you do now?
02:15:09.000Your whole life got changed overnight by something that had nothing to do with you.
02:15:14.000That's the risk we run by being a human in society.
02:15:24.000No one saw this pandemic coming in fucking October of last year.
02:15:28.000No one thought that this time next year we'd all be sick of being locked down for over two months and everybody would be sick of all this shit and wanting to get back to work.
02:15:37.000And as comics, it'd be the first time in our careers.
02:15:40.000What is the longest time before this that you didn't do stand-up?
02:16:39.000I feel like I've always had a certain level of urgency in stand-up because I love it and trying to make a buck, I guess, to provide for my family.
02:16:49.000But even now with the pandemic and to see how scarce and how fragile life is, it's like, this is what I want to do.
02:17:13.000Yeah, it's also exciting for you, too, because this is a big break right after a set that you put out on Showtime, so you get a chance to really think about what you want to start talking about next.
02:17:25.000It's like a rebirth, like a rebuilding, you know?
02:17:32.000And it's, you know, that spectrum is reflective of where I was leading up to it.
02:17:36.000And, you know, moving forward, I want to show growth.
02:17:38.000I mean, I don't want to be the same person and stagnant, a different style, you know, talk about more real stuff or, you know, whatever it is.
02:17:45.000I just don't want it to be the same where it's predictable.
02:19:27.000I was real scared about it in the beginning, and then I'm not really at all anymore.
02:19:31.000I'm more concerned with people's health.
02:19:34.000I think the better message is not to be scared of a disease that kills such a small percentage of the population.
02:19:39.000I think a better concern is to look at that small percentage of the population, no matter how tragic it is, look at that number and say, how do we decrease that number far further?
02:19:49.000Can we do it with exercise and diet and nutrition?
02:19:51.000And the answer is yes, but you don't hear that promoted.
02:19:54.000You don't hear anything from our politicians about how to get that number lower other than stay away from each other, wear a mask, wash your hands.
02:20:04.000There's no talk of making the population healthier overall.
02:20:08.000The governor should go on television or do a YouTube video or whatever with someone who's a bona fide nutrition expert, maybe some Rhonda Patrick-type character, who could sit down with them on TV and go, these are the strategies.
02:20:33.000Through improving your health and increasing your immune system and just increasing your cardiovascular activity and making a better diet for yourself.
02:20:41.000We're going to drop our mortalities by 50% across the board.
02:20:46.000So 50% of the people that would die if they kept doing what they're doing right now won't die.
02:20:50.000If someone had some kind of stats like that, I just made that number up, but it's probably accurate, and then got on TV with a government, then that's real leadership.
02:20:58.000Then you're really showing people something that can help them.
02:21:02.000Not just saying, stay away, we'll tell you when you can get back your freedom, but right now you can't.
02:21:06.000Tell people what to do to make them healthier.
02:21:10.000If they're going to listen to you about staying home, you don't think they're going to listen to you about drinking water and stop drinking soda and eating sugar and eating bullshit?
02:21:18.000You don't think they'd listen to you about that?
02:21:47.000For sure you should be preventative, but for sure you want the best surgeons, the best virologists, the best people that are making antibiotics.
02:21:54.000You want people that know how to save lives, but you also want to know How to prevent your body from ever getting into a vulnerable position with things that aren't vulnerable for a lot of people.
02:22:04.000It's not trying to shame people, like health shame them, but we know for a fact that some people catch this virus and it doesn't do anything to them.
02:22:11.000And then other people get devastated by it.
02:22:17.000There's a lot of variables, but we have some answers and they should be talking about that.
02:22:22.000Yeah, and it's like too much of either one extreme is not good.
02:22:26.000It's like trying to find the equilibrium point of, you know, Eastern and Western, like you said, good surgeons, but also like how do we prevent it?
02:22:32.000Are we eating what we're supposed to, like you said, water, exercise?
02:22:35.000And there's so many things, but I don't know.
02:22:43.000People don't get good programming from the people around them.
02:22:47.000When you say someone's being programmed, it's not always bad.
02:22:51.000Sometimes someone can program you just by virtue of living with them to develop more discipline, because you see it by example, and it makes you want to raise the bar.
02:22:58.000It makes you want to do good yourself.
02:23:15.000And you're just in a fucking real bad pattern.
02:23:18.000You don't know anybody that you can model on.
02:23:20.000Like, one of the things that we're lucky about with stand-ups is we get to see these other successful stand-ups come in and work out material.
02:23:45.000I think that's, you know, the root of a lot of problems.
02:23:48.000You know, it's like, you know, me growing up in East Long Beach, you know, as a kid in the early 90s, it's like, it was conditioning.
02:23:56.000It's like, how does one follow a path of staying, you know, educating themselves, whether it's going to college or not?
02:24:03.000Not saying that that's the correct way, but it's like, if you're never exposed to anything else and only a certain lifestyle, it's like you become conditioned and conditioned.
02:24:11.000You know, this is the end-all, be-all.
02:24:13.000It's like, no, you have to open your eyes, but you hope that the person has enough, you know, intelligence to, like, you know, what's over there, you know?
02:24:23.000But yeah, you gotta condition somebody.
02:24:26.000Conditioning somebody could be bad, but also conditioning somebody to ask questions.
02:24:30.000Well, even if someone's not conditioning you, just by providing an example of what's possible, providing inspiration, you can model after that person, and you can get a lot of shit done that you wouldn't ordinarily get done.
02:24:42.000That's one of the beautiful things about the internet, that you can have these conversations with variants, like Kevin Hart, like the other day.
02:24:48.000You know people listen to Kevin Hart talk and you just want to run through a building?
02:24:51.000You listen to him talk like, I'm going to get shit done!
02:27:10.000But not putting white socks on when I wore a suit...
02:27:14.000I wore the white socks, and it's like I'm learning how to tie a tie, but they exposed me to this other realm of being a professional and reading.
02:27:23.000I remember they gave me the book of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
02:27:51.000When not around you and the way people think that people behave and talk when not around like He gives you a sense of things that are happening that you're not exposed to they don't have your presence doesn't affect them So you get to there's something about there's an observing effect that actually enhances your understanding of people by reading fiction This is I'm probably butchering this idea but I think that's the thought behind it is that there is something to fiction that kind of It benefits you in a way that regular nonfiction doesn't
02:28:22.000It's another layer of something, another layer of experiences, another layer of information.
02:28:29.000How do you exercise creativity if you're not reading something that's so outlandish that wouldn't be real under gravity laws that govern this world?
02:28:40.000Or even just scary shit like Stephen King stuff.
02:31:00.000There's all sorts of different kinds of depression, but for some people, there is definitely depression of being stagnant, which is one of the things that scares me the most about this pandemic, is mental health, people's mental health, being locked down for all these months, and especially, you know, I had Adam on the other day, Adam Egott.
02:31:34.000Everybody's so huggy and real friendly there.
02:31:36.000Even the ones that say that they're anti-social, it's like there's still a level of socialness that you need as part of your concoction that you call life.
02:32:06.000Like, the idea of just being fine forever by yourself.
02:32:10.000That just means your time with people is so bad.
02:32:13.000Loneliness feels better than being around people.
02:32:17.000The loneliness, the thing that drives us crazy, for them, it's a relief of the pain that's stronger than loneliness that they feel when they're around people.
02:32:27.000There's a pain that they don't want to project.
02:32:29.000There's like a psychological thing that they don't want to project the loneliness that they have onto somebody, but, you know, the mind is so clogged up that, you know, they can't see through that.
02:33:26.000You know, time in comedy, you know, these 13 years, and it's been the people that I've met, the people that have given me opportunity, you know, and, you know, all these things that happen along the way to get to an hour special.
02:33:39.000This is a dream come true, but it's like, this is not a lone wolf sport.
02:34:07.000The comics that are all very friendly and get along together so well, one of the things that I think we all share is this sense of camaraderie.
02:34:16.000Everyone's happy when people are doing well.
02:34:18.000Everyone's happy when someone puts out a new special.
02:35:46.000Did you put any money away before the pandemic?
02:35:50.000Yeah, I always got into a groove of like trying to save a little bit.
02:35:54.000It's not much, but it's like, you know, I learned that from my parents.
02:35:58.000You know, my mom, she comes from a very big family.
02:36:01.000And my mom would say that, you know, because they couldn't afford a lot of food and they had so many kids that every time they bought rice or beans or whatever it was, my grandmother would take a handful and just put it away.
02:36:15.000And before you knew it, it's like if some, if, you know, My grandfather did a job for somebody, you know, growing crop and they weren't able to pay them right away.
02:36:24.000It's like, there was still something to get us by.
02:36:27.000So it's always like, even when times are tough, that little fistful of grain will do you well in the future.
02:36:35.000I bet there'll be a lot more of that from everybody now in terms of, like, don't live outside of your means.
02:37:43.000It stems there and it grows into something else.
02:37:45.000And, you know, we're all guilty of it.
02:37:47.000There's moments of, you know, you almost have to allow yourself to be lazy at times just to know what it's like, you know?
02:37:53.000Well, there's a real argument for creativity being stirred on by boredom.
02:37:57.000We never allow ourselves to be bored because we're always checking our phone.
02:38:02.000I always trick myself into, well, I'm just going to go look through my Google News feed and I'll probably find something really incredible to talk about.
02:38:09.000But most of the time, we're just staring at bullshit.
02:38:13.000But when you put that fucker away and you're just bored, That's when you start thinking about shit, when you're just bored.
02:38:20.000Sometimes like when you're doing other things, like when you're commuting, I used to come up with some of my best jokes in my early stand-up years not listening to the radio.
02:38:28.000I used to drive around and when I was driving around with no radio, no nothing, just driving, I would have some of my best ideas.
02:38:36.000Because if I'm listening to fucking Paradise by the Dashboard Light, Ain't no doubt about it.
02:39:29.000Yeah, even running, like running for a while was a big thing for me where I could just clear my mind and I'd have the worst pace ever of running, you know, but...
02:40:07.000There's no pressure in me just sitting at a coffee shop, you know, staring at my iced coffee, seeing the ice cubes melt and listening to my set.
02:40:14.000I'm like, oh, you should have said this.
02:40:22.000There's like a common area, you know, and then they have like, you can pay like a bunch of money for like, the little cubicles that you like open and close and you know, you leave your stuff there.
02:40:33.000But if you just pay for like the common area, it's like it's basically a Starbucks where you're not required to buy coffee.