Comedian Michael Kosta joins Jemele to discuss his new podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, and why he doesn t want to make money off of it. He also talks about how he got into stand-up comedy, and what it's like to be a kid growing up in a house where no one knows how to talk. Plus, he talks about the worst way to talk to other people, and how he learned how to do it through dumb luck and persistence. And, of course, he has a story about the time his mom taught him how to play tennis. You won't want to miss this one. It's a must-listen episode! If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting platforms. We'll be looking out for you in the coming weeks with new episodes and interviews. Thanks so much for listening, and we really appreciate it. -Jemele and I hope you enjoy this episode. XOXO, Alex and Jemele Thank you for listening and supporting us! -The Joe Rogans Experience -Jon Sorrentino and The Daily Show Check us out! Thanks for supporting us, Jon and Alex for sponsoring this episode, and for supporting the show! and for sponsoring the show, and supporting the podcast, and also for all the work we do in the future episodes of the show. --Jon Rogan and the show that goes out there! -- Jon Rogan and the rest of his life, and so much more! --Jon and Alex, and the podcast that goes on the road! -- Thank you so much, and much more. -- -- -- and thanks for listening to this episode of the podcast Jon and the support we get back and back and more, and more of this, and all the love and support we can do, and thanks to you for the support that you're getting back from the work that's being done by you, the support you're all out there. and so on and more. . -- thank you for all of you all, and keep on coming, and thank you all of your support, and good vibing, and love you back and love, and support you'll keep on forever, and God bless you, bye bye, bye, good night.
00:00:42.000When you go to that thing on the iPhone that says, you can use my location always or while using, it's crazy how many apps are just using your location.
00:01:30.000As a younger than you comic, you know, you look to the comics older than you and you say, who is doing what I want or creating something special that's unique to them?
00:04:10.000I did this one, and I don't want to say where it was, but the guy wouldn't even acknowledge that you were there until he did a bunch of other stuff while you're just sitting there.
00:04:21.000So you're just sitting there in the stage, and he's talking about some stupid stuff they're doing outside on Applebee's.
00:04:45.000Jealous or angry that you're working the road, even though it's not like the road comic is making tons of money that week or whatever, but for some reason, morning radio, Johnny Danger, bang, bang, bang, those guys seem mad about their life lots of times.
00:05:11.000Well, it's just like when someone is in that sort of a position where they're the one who's promoting your show, you need them to promote your show.
00:05:17.000So you get up, you go there, and they're the star, and everybody's getting them the pieces of paper, the stuff they have to say.
00:05:25.000There's always some super young person, at least for me, when I walk in the studio, that has just Googled me.
00:06:01.000Well, it fucks up your rhythm, too, because your brain rhythm is off when you get up early in the morning a couple of days in a row, because you're used to doing sets till late at night.
00:07:40.000We were talking earlier, I haven't done stand-up since the pandemic, but I'm hoping to feel what you felt when you first went back up there, because I have to reevaluate how much do I enjoy it if I've really enjoyed kind of not doing it right now.
00:10:27.000Because it would be packed, and many people there were fans of yours, and I'm not at the stage where I have 400 fans, and I'm like, you can't disappoint your fans, but also you've got to work your shit out.
00:16:21.000There was a bunch of people that were not comedians, and they were not creative, but they wanted to put all this creative input into the show, particularly because they had the chance to put their greasy little fingers all over it because Adam and Jimmy had left, and then they're like, okay,
00:16:37.000now we're going to mold this into what we want.
00:17:01.000There was a time, and I think this is available.
00:17:04.000We wound up using this, actually, and it actually wound up being a part of the promo.
00:17:06.000There was a time where we were doing these intros, and I said, I want the intro to be when the doors bust open, Joey Diaz comes out, balls naked in a pair of Timberlands with a baseball hat on, and he yells out, let's get this party started!
00:17:23.000And he starts dancing, and he goes, Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rogan and Doug Stanhope, and he introduces us, and one of the ladies that was an executive was literally in tears.
00:19:25.000But that's what made it work, because it was so unproduced.
00:19:30.000Everybody always told me everything has to be under three minutes when the internet came out, right?
00:19:35.000It was like, you better do under three minutes.
00:19:37.000It was like, and then if you've listened to all that, that's what's so funny about this.
00:19:40.000You know, I look at some of your episodes, like three and a half hours, and I'm like, this is fun.
00:19:45.000And Hamilton was talking about it when he was on, too.
00:19:47.000That long form, now people are gravitating towards these long conversations.
00:19:52.000There's nuance, there's subtlety, because we're getting so angry at everything just being 40 words, headline, da-da-da-da-da-da, click, click, click.
00:23:50.000Oftentimes, there will be an inevitable question that will either come through the manager or back channels, which is like, would Michael feel comfortable stepping off this?
00:24:08.000Maybe now isn't the right time, but...
00:24:10.000There's also a thing where we're talking about people like to interject in conversations because they want to be heard and they want to talk.
00:24:15.000There's a thing that happens in a meeting when you have a bunch of executives like that.
00:25:48.000And she climbed on top of this guy, pulled out her breasts, and put whipped cream on her breasts, and he was sucking off the whipped cream.
00:28:03.000So, I had five years, probably, where you could really put something on the internet, and I had five years to get better without people seeing that.
00:28:20.000And I encourage people to look at those because if you're thinking about doing stand-up and you think like, oh, you look at a person that's successful and they're touring and everything.
00:28:32.000Like what you're talking about when you're talking about developing a new bit and doing it in front of a large crowd that's there to see you and they paid money, how nerve-wracking that is because it's a new bit and a lot of times new bits bomb.
00:30:26.000It takes repetition and concentration and focus and discipline, and you've got to keep grinding over and over and over again.
00:30:33.000And then you get okay, good, and you go play a competitive tournament, and you lose 6-0, 6-0.
00:30:39.000I mean, there's a wonderful interview of Roger Federer talking about his first tournament, 6-0, 6-0, lost.
00:30:45.000I mean, the greatest tennis player of all time is admitting publicly, and he's not ashamed of it, he shouldn't be, Oh yeah, he goes, but then I took something from that.
00:30:54.000And I've also taught tennis forever, but one of the most common mistakes people make when you teach them tennis is they run to where the ball bounces, right?
00:31:04.000You're not going to hit the ball there.
00:31:05.000The ball bounces and then you should be further back.
00:31:08.000But the biggest mistake everyone makes is they run directly to the ball.
00:31:10.000It sounds funny, but in every sport you should be more or less where the ball bounces.
00:31:53.000I use you as an example of people that were successful in other things and understand discipline better than most stand-ups.
00:32:00.000Because one of the things that does trouble stand-ups is that discipline.
00:32:04.000They like doing it, they enjoy doing stand-up, but a lot of times they wind up doing the same material over and over again because it's safe.
00:32:12.000And because they don't have the discipline to like, oh no, no, today we're doing 10 minutes of new shit, get up there, do it, write, grind, keep going.
00:32:19.000And people that have a work ethic and an understanding of discipline from something else, like it transfers better into stand-up.
00:37:25.000I mean, I don't know what jobs are even possible.
00:37:28.000It's a grind, man, but what you said really holds true, that the people that are creative that find solutions to keep their businesses afloat.
00:37:36.000And I think a lot of these comics are going to have to find solutions.
00:37:39.000I mean, some of them have done a brilliant job, like Andrew Schultz.
00:39:38.000Isn't our human brain trying to find patterns so we can go, okay, that's what this sickness is, but this thing seems to be all over the place?
00:42:05.000And I don't think you can do something and not have a consideration for the consequences, the negative consequences of what you're doing.
00:42:14.000Like telling people they can't work and shut down their businesses.
00:42:17.000When the economy collapses because all these things are shut down, And yet you still don't have a significant decrease in the cases.
00:42:26.000What you're showing is you have this one idea, you're sticking with it, and there's no indication that you have any respect for the negative consequences.
00:42:38.000How are you going to bring everybody back up?
00:42:39.000How are you going to bring back these restaurants?
00:42:41.000What are you going to do about these comedy clubs that are dead?
00:42:43.000What are you going to do about these bars that are going under?
00:42:45.000What are you going to do about these mom-and-pop shops that are never going to be around anymore?
00:42:48.000I don't know how it is in your life but in my life numerous friends of mine in what appeared to be healthy strong relationships They're fucking toast.
00:43:09.000So there is a different consequence to all this.
00:43:12.000Now, I also find it entertaining that we elect these officials, and then now they have to be in charge of a health crisis.
00:43:19.000I would much rather we elect them off of popularity or whatever it is, and then when a health crisis strikes, we have a health minister who kind of comes in and just, like, The problem with these health ministers is in a situation like this, they don't even take into account the economic consequences.
00:43:37.000And that the economic consequences are also going to bring with them suicide, drug addiction, domestic violence, child abuse.
00:43:58.000They are not incentivized to keep businesses open.
00:44:01.000If they were the CEO of a company where the more money the company makes, the more money they make, they would be incentivized to make sure these businesses stay open and these people can keep paying taxes.
00:44:16.000These fucks keep getting paid no matter what happens.
00:44:54.000If you let your economy collapse due to these decisions that are not based on science, like particularly outdoor dining, that's not based on science.
00:45:10.000So we are fortunate in LA that you have very good weather.
00:45:14.000So keep the fucking restaurants open that can open outside, help them, accommodate them, give them some sort of a bridge to let them get through this so that on the other side, after the vaccines and after herd immunity or whatever happens, these people will still have businesses.
00:45:30.000In LA, were they letting people set up out on the streets?
00:46:09.000You know, there's an example of a restaurant owner who said, I'm now more of a outdoor general contractor than a restaurant owner because all I spend my time doing is finding propane for the heaters, asking someone to build potted plants.
00:46:25.000We need more reflective lights on the outside.
00:48:37.000He actually just sent me a message that he wants to send me a pair of sunglasses that are made out of the plastic that they pulled out of the ocean.
00:48:46.000So they're not just taking this plastic.
00:48:47.000I thought it was a pair of sunglasses he found in one of the oceans.
00:50:30.000When it rains in L.A., everything comes down the L.A. River, and the L.A. River is filled with trash, and it just goes right into the ocean.
00:50:38.000The fucking L.A. River is the biggest, saddest story of humanity.
00:51:16.000When concrete was invented, we just went ham on concrete, especially in LA. But this is unbelievable, and this is a solution, but obviously, initially, let's not throw this shit in the ocean in the first place.
00:51:28.000Well, it's not just let's not throw it.
00:51:30.000Things get washed in the ocean with the rain.
00:51:34.000Assholes that throw their cigarettes out the window.
00:53:09.000Well, we just do a really bad job of garbage disposal.
00:53:13.000We do a really poor job of making sure that the garbage is in a controlled environment, it's in an absolute container, and a lot of people are fucking litter.
00:53:27.000We drive down the highway and see someone throw something out the window.
00:53:30.000In LA, you would see these motherfuckers.
00:53:31.000I'd drive my motorcycle down sunset sometimes, and you'd go in between the cars at a red light, and people would just throw their stuff out the window, not knowing I'm standing there, or on my bike, and it would hit you.
00:56:24.000There's no debate whether or not human beings are having a negative influence.
00:56:27.000They're definitely having a negative influence.
00:56:29.000But, you know, when you go back and you look at when Earth was an ice, when there was an ice age, and most of North America was covered in a mile-high sheet of ice, and you see that, you know, there used to be dinosaurs in certain places, and are now all, like, this is not stable.
00:57:36.000Not only is it gross, it's like a crazy situation.
00:57:39.000These people that own these houses on these beaches hire security to chase people off the beach because the beach is in front of their house.
00:57:54.000You own the piece of land where your house is at, but these people pay like 20 million bucks for this little house that's right there, and they think, well, I shouldn't have people playing the drums right in front of my house.
01:02:02.000He was on acid once, and he was overlooking this area, and he had this vision.
01:02:07.000He realized, like, he was looking at this incredible terrain, you know, these canyons, and then he had this vision, like, oh my god, this is from water.
01:02:16.000Like, all this erosion came from water.
01:02:18.000What would cause this much water and this much erosion?
01:02:21.000And then he spends literally decades researching this.
01:02:49.000Evidence in terms of soil, when they do soil samples, core samples, that there is what's called, I think it's called tritonite, and it's nuclear, it's literally nuclear glass, and it happens on impact sites of asteroids.
01:03:05.000So when particles hit the Earth, literally, it's the same glass that's created when they did the Trinity test.
01:03:12.000They did the Trinity test and they detonated a nuke.
01:03:15.000So this stuff all exists in this time period that coincides with the end of the Ice Age.
01:03:21.000And that also coincides with these rapid melting of these glaciers.
01:03:27.000And then they pushed across the Earth and did this crazy shit to the surface of the Earth.
01:03:34.000When I Google it, there's a video from NASA that pops up first now.
01:04:36.000There's some people that think they can stop it.
01:04:38.000Oh, we'll just do this and we'll just do that.
01:04:39.000But when I talk to experts like Neil deGrasse Tyson and these type of people, we're more than a decade away from being able to do something about it.
01:04:47.000To change the trajectory of an asteroid?
01:05:36.000Because we had sort of this idea of what it would be like, and this one thing hit Jupiter and the explosion was literally the size of Earth.
01:07:44.000Like, yo, look at the ocean, look at the sky, and it's fascinating.
01:07:49.000And you think about men, you know, hundreds of years ago that would look up there and say, I want to go there or study or learn about that.
01:11:46.000They had a lot of understanding of it because you've got to realize these people were observing and studying and writing this stuff down for thousands of years.
01:11:54.000Even though they don't have the kind of astronomy understanding that people have today, they still had thousands of years of observation.
01:12:04.000And they knew how to, like, make it so in the solstice it would line up correctly, which is insane.
01:12:09.000You know, speaking of Humble by Nature, Jordan Jonas, who you had on The Alone, one of the things that I was so drawn to with that season, or excuse me, season six of Alone...
01:12:26.000I was always like, okay, I'm going to see some bad asses figure out how to survive in nature, but the ones that really thrive or win have this humbleness to it all.
01:12:35.000And that's what drove me to Jordan when he's killing the Wolverine with his bare hands and shit, but he's still somehow doing this totally alpha nature predator thing, but then he would still have this like, you guys are in charge, I'm just chilling here.
01:15:45.000I needed a car, and there was no way I was going to have a car in New York City and pay, like, I don't remember what a spot was, but it was as much as my rent was from my apartment, that's how much a spot was to park your car.
01:16:11.000I got into the New York scene later in comedy where I had road work I could rely on, but I just don't know how you survive and live full-time as a New York City stand-up comic.
01:16:22.000I mean, there are people at the cellar that will tell you they've pulled it off, but they haven't bought a new winter jacket in like 12 years.
01:17:53.000Commute quickly in New York City, but you're sweaty, you're gross.
01:17:57.000Nothing was as simple and as easy as popping in the car, 10 minutes, go to the comedy store, get a great spot, maybe do another spot up at the belly room, two shows a night, through osmosis, absorb other great comedy.
01:18:12.000The LA world, if you were in at the comedy store, was perfect for me.
01:18:16.000But now that I'm in New York, it's a fight.
01:19:46.000Some comedy purists make fun of the road.
01:19:48.000To me, it's an awesome way to get good at comedy.
01:19:52.000Those were comedy purists that don't exist anymore, though.
01:19:55.000The ones who are successful don't make fun of the road.
01:19:58.000That was a thing that was going on back in the day, whereas the people that lived in the city, and they existed and survived in the city, they would mock everybody who went on the road.
01:20:48.000Ann Arbor is this very educated, very, I will use the word pretentious, Michigan town.
01:20:56.000And people in New York here, I'm from Michigan, and they always are like, oh, it's all like, you know, Michigan militia or Trump or whatever.
01:21:01.000And I'm like, I don't know about you, but all of my friends' parents were like PhD doctors.
01:21:06.000I'm not saying that's a good thing either, but I'm saying you're out of touch with what is existing in Michigan.
01:21:13.000Yeah, and so the road could do an hour.
01:21:18.000If you are just chasing laughs and you're just chasing like, you know, I want to be popular for the moment, you can get hacky and that's what you got to fight against.
01:21:26.000Yeah, well, you know, you don't have that fear.
01:23:18.000But what you're suggesting is that a comedy audience, a community, can be created through listening to good comedy.
01:23:26.000And I would believe that too, because you go to these clubs that have actually booked good comics, and you see that that audience, over the course of time, gets smarter as well.
01:24:34.000Like, right before pandemic, I was, like, starting to see ticket sales go up and sell out a couple things, and it's such a, like, it's so motivating, because you're like, okay, some of this shit is, like, working, and then I'm not at all complaining at all, but I'm saying, like, the ball was moving a little bit, and selling tickets is tough,
01:27:18.000You don't have to worry about having that shit.
01:27:20.000I used to love when I would start out, there would always be this successful road comic that will go unnamed, but he would always bring a buddy with him that has the clicker.
01:27:29.000He'd have to pay his buddy to count the heads, and I was always like, what is all this?
01:28:28.000Comics are a shit show, and that is also part of my complaint, is like, hey, comics, like, I think in general comic comedians are doing this, but like, let's pick it up a little bit.
01:28:39.000Like, let's wash your shirt, you know?
01:33:34.000This is the equivalent of me taking someone who's never even done anything on stage and saying, they say to me, hey, I'm going to go do stand-up tonight.
01:35:34.000You have to jump back and forth and this and that.
01:35:37.000And in jujitsu, it's both very technical and very explosive as well.
01:35:40.000That's interesting to hear because that's kind of what I love about tennis is the relationship between explosive power but then like very small, fine technical adjustments.
01:35:53.000Like golfers spend like hours on their swing.
01:35:57.000We have that and we have 10 swings and one point.
01:36:00.000But it's interesting to hear the comparison to jiu-jitsu.
01:36:02.000Maybe I'll fucking start getting out there.
01:36:04.000It'd be fun to do, but it's a terrible thing to do during COVID, because you're literally on each other's face.
01:41:28.000But he has all the original ligaments and tendons.
01:41:31.000I'm sure those have been repaired as well because his ACL was blown out, which was one of the reasons why he had to do it in the first place.
01:42:03.000So he's doing all kinds of different Highland game shit with like kettlebells and clubs and stuff.
01:42:09.000You can do things now with these resurfaced joints that you really couldn't do before.
01:42:16.000So every year they're getting better and better at repairing and replacing.
01:42:21.000But the thing that's interesting to me is...
01:42:24.000Being able to biologically regenerate tissue.
01:42:27.000They've done a lot of that with stem cells, and they've been able to do a lot of, like, I had a really fucked up shoulder at one point in time, and I had a full-length rotator cuff tear, completely healed from stem cells, completely, where the doctor freaked out.
01:44:35.000It doesn't offer a performance benefit.
01:44:37.000Unless it offers a performance benefit.
01:44:38.000Yeah, there's no performance benefit in resurfaced knees.
01:44:40.000In fact, it's very unlikely that you're ever going to be able to compete at the same level that someone would do before an injury like that.
01:44:49.000The resurfaced knee thing is fascinating to me because it seems like they've got it down to the point where these things aren't failing.
01:44:58.000So these people are doing things like they're doing martial arts, they're running, and the doctors are saying it's okay to run on these things, which is like crazy.
01:45:09.000Because what they're doing is extremely dense plastic, and they're resurfacing the tops of people's knees with this insanely dense plastic.
01:48:27.000Now, I also think Pfizer refused to be a part of Operation Warp Speed because they didn't want, like, government to be looking at their shit.
01:48:34.000Which I think is why him and Trump and them had a disagreement about the amount of vaccine.
01:48:40.000But I also kind of like that Pfizer was like, hey, fuck the government.
01:48:43.000We'll do our own thing because we want to do our own secret shit in the lab over here.
01:48:48.000Well, they know the amount of money that they're going to generate after selling 300 million vaccines or whatever the fuck they're going to sell.
01:50:13.000I think it's good to do it publicly, because I think there are some people that are really afraid and don't, or conspiracy, you know, and I think, I believe in it.
01:50:31.000Because of the biological variability of human beings.
01:50:34.000But people focus on that a little bit too much.
01:50:37.000But I feel like there was a perception that a vaccine was 100% perfect all the time, and whoever's in charge of vaccinating us has not done a good job explaining to people what you just said, that there will be a small percentage that will have a difficulty with this vaccine.
01:50:54.000Well, this is the thing about COVID, right?
01:50:56.000If you look at the amount of people that get COVID, it's a very small percentage of people who die from it, right?
01:51:04.000If you look at the amount of people who get vaccinated, it's a very small percentage of people that are going to have a...
01:51:11.000But if we concentrate only on the small percentages in both cases, we have a very distorted perception of what it is.
01:51:17.000You know, one of the things that's happened during this pandemic is the amount of people that have died from heart disease is fucking astronomical.
01:57:56.000And what I like about the heat is there's another element that forces your body to produce heat shock proteins.
01:58:03.000And there's actually a study that's being done right now at Harvard showing the positive health benefits of yoga in heat, and they think that it mimics the positive health benefits of sauna.
01:58:15.000So they've done this study in Norway that showed A 40% decrease in all-cause mortality from sauna use.
02:00:36.000It was like a different feeling of, you know, if someone, people can catch you at the wrong time in your life when you're all stressed out in the same exact situation can cause like a really bad reaction.
02:00:49.000And I guess what I was thinking at the time was, I gotta strive to be the person I was when that guy rear-ended me as much as possible.
02:01:37.000Just like you need capitalism for Pfizer to be able to make a vaccine, sometimes you need a little aggression to get shit done, to be competitive.
02:04:12.000And then some of them are doing wild shit on top of that, like fucking skiing and all kinds of other stuff.
02:04:17.000God, you're putting yourself at risk all the time.
02:04:21.000Then they'll hurt their shoulder moving their suitcase.
02:04:24.000You just wasted fucking $15 million worth of money.
02:04:28.000Did you used to eat a specific amount of time before you would play?
02:04:31.000I would try to be on a little bit of a schedule, but where I was playing, I was playing minor league pro tournaments, I was in weird places, man.
02:04:41.000You know, it was always like a different cuisine.
02:07:55.000Yeah, and with tennis, there's no clock in tennis, so some of these matches, pro matches, can be four or five hours, so they definitely have refueling strategies during the match, 100%.
02:09:01.000Sometimes I'll get food to go, especially now, because everything's to go, and I'll be carrying it, and it's just so heavy.
02:09:08.000And I'm going, this is all going to be in me.
02:09:10.000All of this weight and this density that I'm carrying is going to be in my body, and that's fucking gross.
02:09:16.000Well, I don't work out nearly as much as I used to, because I still work out a lot, but when I was doing jujitsu a lot, I was working out An hour and a half, multiple days a week, and then lifting weights on those other days.
02:09:30.000So I could basically eat whatever the fuck I wanted to.
02:10:58.000Genetically, that's how we were with sugar, because it was so hard to get this in our olden times that now it's like, Skittles, it's this big, keep going.
02:11:27.000The industry would start polluting the oceans and it was creating the red tide that was killing all the manatees and it was fucking like they'd been dumping all of their nitrates that were a fertilizer for sugar in Lake Okeechobee in the center of Florida and it was hanging out at the bottom of the water and then eventually through a rainstorm it would come up and go to the ocean and it was like killing everything.
02:11:48.000They had to shut down the beaches blah blah blah.
02:11:51.000Trying to investigate sugar and sugar companies?
02:12:42.000And then someone else is going to call on like, oh yeah, fuck you.
02:12:44.000We're going to charge less and we're going to undercut you and we're going to get a hold of your distributors and we're going to talk to the people that you're selling to and we're going to look, I'll sell you this shit for half price and I'm going to poison some alligators.
02:13:18.000That would be an interesting regulation, if you could only grow your company a certain amount each year.
02:13:25.000What if you hit the jackpot, and you have this amazing device, and it's sold like crazy, and then they go, oh, you're making too much money now.
02:15:47.000Yeah, if she came in the room and started blowing them, they'd be like, you're a psycho.
02:15:50.000I love that we're creating just total hypotheticals now.
02:15:54.000Jeffrey Toobin's wife is sucking his...
02:15:56.000He was seen lowering and raising his computer camera, exposing and touching his penis, and motioning an on-air kiss to someone other than his colleagues.
02:17:15.000Yeah, well, that's what happens to these dorks.
02:17:17.000Like, guys who don't know any girls like that in real life, and then they have this online relationship with some gal, and they send her Bitcoin every day and jerk off in front of her.
02:17:27.000And these girls make a lot of money with these guys.
02:17:54.000And then what if you go on to do other things and now you have a regular job, you're working for a law firm and someone's like, that's funny because she used to finger herself while I'm marked off.
02:19:50.000Wait till you get these augmented reality headsets, and then you're in the room with them, and then you put this harness on your old cock and balls, and next thing you know, you're in some suit, some fucking wet suit, haptic feedback suit, and you literally can feel everything,
02:20:06.000and you're having sex with this person.
02:20:07.000You think you're having sex with them.
02:20:19.000As soon as Elon Musk comes up with this fucking Neuralink thing and they open up a quarter-sized hole in your skull and screw this thing in place and these wires are gonna go straight to your pleasure center.
02:20:29.000There was a woman that lived in the 1970s, and she had some sort of a problem with pain medication, like an allergy to pain medication.
02:20:40.000So they hooked her up to this device, and it literally put a wire into her pleasure centers, and it gave her a button.
02:20:48.000And when she was feeling pain, she would hit this button.
02:20:51.000But this button was also causing her to orgasm.
02:20:54.000So she was just hammering that button.
02:20:57.000They said that she developed a blister on the finger that she used to hit the button.
02:21:04.000And she also was constantly begging them to take it out and then fighting with them when they tried to take it out.
02:21:13.000And she also was trying to adjust the amplitude of the thing to jack it up, to make it higher.
02:21:19.000So she was trying to hack into this device that they gave her.
02:21:22.000I mean, isn't this like the rat and cocaine thing, where they'll stop eating and just go for it, even though they know it's killing them?
02:21:56.000I don't know if that's the exact one she had, but there's a couple articles about this device that could be attached directly to your spinal cord.
02:23:05.000I'm not going to ruin the story, but it sounds awesome because it just takes over everything that was going on in the Oasis and now everyone's just living these experiences.
02:23:13.000You know, that's one of the things that McKenna predicted in terms of worldwide or widespread psychedelic use is that they were going to figure out a way to recreate the DMT experience in some sort of augmented or virtual reality.
02:23:29.000The last time I was listening to it, it got...
02:23:31.000I wonder if that would work, though, because the way he explains how it works in the book, he was going to experience someone doing heroin, but without the...
02:24:41.000I mean, it's crazy that we have created something that we want that badly to our own, that will create our own death.
02:24:52.000What's crazy is how many artists used it, you know, and had amazing music, in Hedberg's case, amazing comedy that's directly influenced by that.
02:26:32.000It used to be that films were the really interesting things, but now films sort of pale in comparison to these Netflix-type shows, these streaming shows, whether it's Hulu or Amazon has Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and a bunch of other great shows.
02:26:46.000Those shows are the best entertainment.
02:30:32.000The homeless people, a lot of them just, you know, like many homeless people, They're missing community and love, and they find themselves alone.
02:30:42.000Now, all of a sudden, they got brought into this cult, and they felt like they finally had something.
02:30:49.000Like, I'm here, and I will live my life here.
02:33:49.000I'm terrible at chess and I don't want to get good at it because I think it's something I would get absorbed with.
02:33:54.000I remember there was a time where Howard Stern got obsessed with chess and he was taking chess lessons when he was talking about it on the show.
02:34:00.000Yeah, and I remember thinking, oh, he's an obsessive.
02:34:04.000I think he eventually bailed and stopped.
02:34:07.000Stopped doing it, but I've had problems with video games.
02:35:30.000I mean they'll run racks after racks and it was like wild how the brain is not how my brain works but my brother's brain would be like one ball there two ball there is you're gonna move it off here and that's like geometry chess it's all like that yeah it is and it's also finesse and touch yeah and feel yeah and great sounds yeah it's also a sport that thrives on drugs Really?
02:36:57.000The Hustler with Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman...
02:37:00.000That was the theme of the movie, is that Paul Newman is winning for like 15, 16 hours, and then Jackie Gleason has character, and Paul Newman is self-destructive, and eventually Jackie Gleason overcomes him.
02:37:12.000I don't know if I've ever seen The Hustler, but obviously that has helped Paul Newman get cast in Color of Money.
02:38:56.000I believe Color of Money, I remember reading about it that they locked Tom Cruise in a room for three months and taught him how to shoot his grip.
02:41:02.000I forget the character's name in Queen's Gambit, but when she kind of lays in bed and looks up and watches the world, you kind of see pool players look at the table that way.
02:41:55.000And you get in what they call dead punch or dead stroke, where you understand exactly how much impact and exactly how hard to touch that cue, exactly how much impact it has on the ball to just perfectly place that ball in position for the next shot.
02:43:51.000And I say, 110. They go, no, there's no chance.
02:43:54.000I get out there and you really count my strokes and the time that I move the ball and the time that it followed the rules, a shot at 110. But everybody lies.
02:44:06.000Par is 72, but I guarantee you he's going to say he shoots in the 90s, and when we go out there and we actually play, he's going to shoot like 125, like a typical house station.
02:45:03.000I'm just going to be objective about this.
02:45:06.000There are some women that beat a lot of men at pool, but In the aggregate, when you look at the total of all the great pool players, the best pool players are all men.
02:45:18.000But the women are excellent, and the women are capable of beating some of the best players some of the time.
02:45:24.000But when it all averages out, the best players in the world are like, there's a bunch, like Shane Van Boning, there's Dennis Arcuglio, there's a lot of Filipinos, a few American guys, a few Europeans, they're all men.
02:48:02.000And English snooker players who come over and play pool, they excel at it.
02:48:06.000They must think pool Yeah, because the balls are smaller, the holes are smaller, and the table's bigger, and also the mechanics are so precise.
02:48:15.000Like, you have to have absolute precise mechanics to play snooker.
02:48:19.000Yeah, and it's a really valuable game.
02:48:22.000Like, the guys who do it really well, they make a lot of money, or they did at one point in time.
02:48:26.000I think its popularity has kind of dwindled a little bit.
02:48:28.000But I remember when I was in England, I was doing a gig over there.
02:48:32.000And I was in my hotel room, and I just turned on the TV, and I was watching snooker on TV. I was like, this is crazy.
02:49:04.000I forget what it's called, but it's a mix of racquetball and tennis, and you could hit off the back ceiling, and each court would be different, but there'd be a net, and you'd use this racquet and a pressureless ball, and eventually tennis evolved out of that.
02:49:16.000But these courts still exist in the deep of English country.
02:52:06.000I think, for whatever reason, they put holes in the table.
02:52:11.000But when they first started doing it, billiards was like a gentleman's sport.
02:52:15.000And it was like a parlor game for the aristocrats.
02:52:18.000And it was a game where it was all about making a ball, hit one ball, and then bounce off of three angles and hit This shit is crazy to me, and my brother has played it.
02:52:42.000So you hit the first ball, and then you have to hit one, two, three cushions, one, two, three cushions, and then he collides with the other ball down there.
02:52:50.000But what has to hit the three cushions?
02:53:28.000It's very difficult because you have to have a real understanding of angles and the harder you hit, the sharper the angle will be because you're digging into the cushion.
02:55:46.000But a lot of the best pool players also play billiards because they have this extreme understanding of the angles and where the ball's going.
02:55:55.000You have to have this really weird perception of where the thing's going to be.
02:56:01.000You've got to really have a deep understanding of where the ball's going to go.
02:56:04.000I love any sport that you can excel and wear a bow tie in.
03:01:11.000Thinks it's gonna be okay to be 250 fucking pounds and try to dunk, and I might be generous by saying 250, and try to dunk and realize, like, oh, you're risking everything.
03:01:24.000Like, you could blow—you're so overweight.
03:01:26.000Like, doing all this activity, explosive activity, is exceedingly dangerous.
03:01:31.000I mean, just overpacking a suitcase and carrying it to the car, you feel that impact.
03:01:38.000And this is your knee that's now carrying this.
03:01:40.000But Tom is in pretty good shape at the time, apparently.
03:03:24.000Like, was he gambling this thing away?
03:03:27.000Now, I would make the argument he did not throw the match.
03:03:29.000I would make the argument that Billie Jean King was a much better tennis player than him at that time in his life.
03:03:35.000But, fascinating character, and his first Wimbledon, he bet on himself to win Wimbledon singles, Wimbledon doubles, and Wimbledon mixed doubles, and he did.
03:03:48.000And this was before it was a professional tournament, so that was how he made his living.
03:03:53.000He bet on himself to win in its amazing character.
03:03:56.000But anyways, watching Bert and Tom play hoops like backyard shit made me think of Bobby Riggs.
03:04:02.000One of the things about New York City that I always thought, like, I have these romantic ideas, like, romantic ideas like living in the mountains.
03:06:45.000And so when I started playing pool, I got really lucky that the place that I went to was filled with hustlers and filled with guys who were playing big money games.
03:08:52.000When you walk into a pool hall, you see some boys in the corner smoking, and they're talking shit, and it's a little bit of a ragtag group.
03:10:05.000Well, he would take those car bins and he would buy them from stores.
03:10:09.000He had a guy in stores that would get them to him, and then they would make a duplicate of that card, and they would use those cards, and they would buy a bunch of shit and sell a bunch of shit.
03:11:23.000And I'm also thinking about pool, and on the Moneyball...
03:11:28.000It's the pressure shot, and it's a fine movement like you were saying earlier, and you do have to figure out how to execute that under pressure with such tiny motor skills.
03:11:58.000Yeah, but that's to try to make it more interesting.
03:12:01.000But most of the time in professional tournaments, they don't have a shot clock.
03:12:04.000In Hustler Pool, there's no shot clock.
03:12:07.000And that's one thing that people do that frustrates people is they'll overlook a shot, like look at a shot over and over and over again, just to drive the guy crazy.
03:16:04.000But there was all these different guys that had these crazy names.
03:16:07.000Some of them were real simple, like Ray the Fireman, who's just a guy who was a fireman.
03:16:10.000You know, and then, you know, there's different people with different nicknames based on, you know, where you came from, like Mount Vernon Tommy.
03:19:37.000But I don't know a first thing about handball, but now that I live in New York, I see the culture and the community of handball, and it seems almost like a similar vibe.
03:22:01.000It's interesting that you made that It's an observation at that age, but also it's interesting when you talk about this podcast, how when you started it, it was like, where is this going to go?
03:22:13.000I like doing this, I'm not going to think about the endgame.
03:22:16.000Well, I wasn't desperate when I started this podcast.
03:22:19.000When I started the podcast, I was already doing UFC commentary and doing stand-up.
03:22:46.000And then once I moved out of my parents' house, it was around the same time I moved out of my parents' house, I remember thinking, like, fuck.
03:23:46.000I'm surprised that he was so good, because you normally play racquetball against an older man who looks completely out of shape, looks like he plays the billiards, and he'll fucking smoke you.
03:23:58.000Because he knows the kill shot, which is that front angle.
03:24:01.000And I would always play these guys, but I'm fit, so I could run around, but I don't know how to play racquetball.
03:24:08.000I just hit it against the wall, and these fucking big fat guys would come in with their goggles, and they'd just crush me.
03:25:14.000But, I mean, I felt like at 24, I was still hungry enough to push, but I... Yeah, I mean, some of these guys, they get married and their wife doesn't even know them as a comic, and then they try.
03:25:28.000Or when you have a kid, you're married, and you have kids, and you have a full-time job, and you tell your wife, look, I'm thinking about going on the road.
03:25:34.000She's like, what are you talking about?
03:28:40.000And I was working in the fitness thing, and she was working at the front desk.
03:28:45.000And she was like, oh my god, you have to see this fucking comedian I saw last night on HBO. And she tells me about this guy, and then she does the bit.
03:28:53.000You know where Sam Kinison did this bit about homosexual necrophiliacs paying money to spend a few hours undisturbed with the freshest male corpses?
03:29:06.000Where Kinison's like, he goes, imagine these guys, they're lying down, they're on the slab, they're like, well, I guess my life's over, and I'm gonna be with Jesus now, and he's like, hey, what is this?
03:29:17.000It feels like there's a dick in my ass!
03:29:19.000You mean life keeps fucking in the ass even after you're dead?
03:29:57.000I got it off of Blockbuster Video, so you could rent it.
03:29:59.000So it had gone on HBO, and then you'd get it on VHS. And then I remember watching it, and I remember thinking, oh my god, this is comedy too?
03:34:52.000But I would kind of go through my day in a journal, and then for whatever reason, I would usually write down one instance throughout the day that made me laugh.
03:35:25.000So tennis took over my life and then joke writing became a little bit of a reprieve from the pressures of competition.
03:35:35.000So if I had a match in a couple hours or I was waiting for a court to be done, I would go sit in the locker room or wherever I was and write jokes that Something so unrelated to tennis just to kind of help me diffuse because I put a lot of pressure on myself to play well.
03:35:50.000So eventually, while I was coaching at Michigan, University of Michigan, sorry Jamie, I signed up for an open mic like everybody else and once you do it, you're fucked.
03:36:02.000Did you know after you did the first set that you'd wind up doing it?
03:36:13.000I drove her to sobriety, but yeah, I just got off the stage and just, I don't know if it was the same for you, but everything just started to click.
03:36:46.000And I hate to think that I'm shallow enough that what I really need is external validation, but it might be.
03:36:52.000I don't know if it's necessarily just external validation.
03:36:55.000There's the same challenge that you must have experienced in getting good at tennis and learning how to play, and the challenge of trying to win.
03:37:04.000There's a challenge in trying to get laughs and trying to figure out how to construct a joke.
03:38:13.000I remember when I was, like, early days, in my early 20s, like 21, 22, when I was starting out, there was a time where I was very jealous of people who were doing well, and I was hoping people did badly.
03:38:26.000Like, I was working with other people, I was like, oh, I hope he bombs.
03:38:29.000And then I realized, like, oh my god, what a bitch way to think.
03:38:33.000And then I realized that I had not taken the same principles that I had applied to martial arts, and I had not applied them to comedy.
03:38:42.000I had thought this was a totally different thing, and I had allowed my weaker instincts to take over.
03:38:49.000And then I remember being very embarrassed with myself.
03:38:52.000I'd say, okay, that's a very weak way to think.
03:38:55.000And you should think about this the same way you think about martial arts, where you should always look at the people that are good as inspirational.
03:41:29.000And I don't think it was until the internet came around until like YouTube and podcasts and they realized that this is bounty of opportunity.
03:41:38.000And then comics realized like, oh, you know what's the best thing is actually we hang around with each other and we get each other on each other's shows.
03:42:02.000Where you see these angry, bitter people.
03:42:04.000One thing they have in common, they're all mediocre, and they're not doing well.
03:42:08.000And they're angry and frustrated, and it's so transparent, and they can't see it.
03:42:13.000And they think that somehow by being mean to people that are being successful, or mean to this girl, or mean to this guy, that they're going to somehow or another stop This thing that's happening that's good for them and stop the bad feeling that they have,
03:42:28.000this disappointment of comparing themselves.
03:42:31.000It's one thing that these people have all in common, the bitter comedy world of Twitter.
03:43:24.000I was reading all these great reviews, and then I stumbled into this one review, trash, total piece of shit, why this movie's awful, and I'm like, okay, well this is just what I'm saying.
03:43:36.000There's always going to be someone that thinks something that's amazing sucks.
03:43:40.000You know, like, there's no getting around that.
03:43:43.000There's certain people that just have this terrible mindset, and they just always look for the worst in things.
03:43:50.000And I think that's, for whatever reason, well, for sure, that's been exacerbated by the pandemic, by people being forced to being at home, and also just being stuck in front of a screen all the time, and not having the input of other humans and real interactions and hugs and...
03:44:07.000A lot of people in my life, friends, acquaintances, have experienced really fucked up things during the quarantine.
03:44:19.000And as I tell this to other people, they all go, yeah, me too.
03:44:32.000And I'm hoping, yeah, I'm just trying to second what you're saying that sitting in front of a screen all day is just exacerbating our already deep down anxieties and fears.
03:44:45.000Yeah, I mean, even wearing a mask and being 10 feet away from people only gives you like 30%.
03:46:21.000I had fucked up the booking, and I needed to do some pickups, and you had an L.A. improv show on a Saturday late night, and I shot early, and I messaged you on Twitter or whatever, and you were like, dude, come down, do the thing.