In this episode, I sit down with comedian, writer, and all-around great dude, Nick Alfieri. We talk about how to deal with anxiety, how to manage it, and how to find a balance in your life. I think you're going to really enjoy this one, and I hope you do too. Nick is one of the funniest, funniest people I know, so it's no surprise that he's also one of my favorite comedians. He's funny, smart, and down to earth, and we talk about a lot of stuff. I really hope you enjoy this episode and that it helps you deal with some of your own anxiety. I know that I know I did, and it's not easy, but I hope that you can find some solace in this episode. If you're struggling with anxiety or are struggling with any kind of anxiety, I encourage you to talk to a professional about how you can deal with it. I'm here to help you get some tips and tricks on how to get better at managing your anxiety. I hope this episode gives you some insight into how to cope with it and help you manage it. Thank you so much for listening and supporting this podcast. I appreciate your support. xoxo -Jon Sorrentino Music: "Good Morning America" by The Weakerthans (feat. John Singleton and "The Good Life" by Suneaters (ft. ) & "Goodbye" by (featuring The Good Life (feat by ) and . (Music: "Sue) is a song written and produced by by "Good Life and from . . & with of , and , in ( ) (c) by ( (and . ) & ( ) ( ) is a tribute to the amazing singer-songwriter-song written and performed by . ( ) & (& ( ), and ( . and ( ) by , & , is to ( ). ( , ( & ) . , ( ) and ( on ) ( & . / ( // (or ) & ( ) is ( / ) , ) - AND ( ) in has
00:00:27.000And your words change, and you see a lot of people that are trying to say things because they want to assure themselves, and then they want to find other people that agree with them.
00:00:39.000Twitter is such a dangerous thing for people who are mentally unstable during these trying times.
00:02:13.000And then when time stopped last year, I was like, oh, man, I got all this baggage.
00:02:20.000I gotta unpack it, and I don't want to.
00:02:23.000But I did, and it was kind of profound.
00:02:27.000And when I decided to move to Austin, that was part of this thing that I just discovered of great change that needed to take place in my life.
00:02:38.000And then I met the love of my life when I got here, which is crazy because...
00:02:44.000I had just signed on to this autonomous plan of not dating anyone for nine months.
00:02:51.000I did it for a couple months and it was awesome.
00:03:24.000Anxious and depressed and then like the more I'm just like you said earlier, you know This challenge of what I can't do like It's actually kind of nice.
00:03:39.000I see what you're saying You know like you found like a balance in yourself and then you may met someone like that's that's like the if you would talk to like a psychologist clearly I'm not one of those but if you could I would give you some bad advice I'd be like, fucking suck it up!
00:03:55.000Definitely be the worst psychologist ever.
00:03:58.000But I think they would all tell you that that's when you're going to make your healthiest choices because you're comfortable with yourself.
00:04:04.000It's like when people get desperate, right?
00:04:06.000That's one of the things like an attractive person could be desperate and it makes them unattractive.
00:05:11.000No one really knows how to do it because whoever you are now, hopefully, no matter how old you are when you listen to this, whoever you are now is the best version of yourself.
00:05:22.000But we don't all start at the same starting point.
00:05:24.000It's a hard thing to recognize, but as I've gotten older and hopefully a little bit wiser, I've recognized that in more and more people.
00:05:36.000And everybody's got their own challenges and weird fucking journey.
00:05:39.000So what it takes for you to just get your shit together, and even if it's not in comparison to how you have your shit together in 10 years, you know, hopefully you'll be better at it in 10 years.
00:07:16.000First of all, you realize, A, that that can happen.
00:07:18.000And then when it keeps happening for long periods of time, you start going, wait a minute, why am I giving up agency to other humans that are making poor choices?
00:07:29.000Poor choices for the economy, poor choices socially, poor choices for how we look at life and risk.
00:07:37.000And then how much faith are we putting in pharmaceutical companies?
00:07:41.000Now all of a sudden you have to lift a finger.
00:07:44.000You have to stop being a baby and you have to actually do your work.
00:07:48.000Have an understanding and have discernment.
00:08:53.000So does having a high level of vitamin D. I'm not saying it imparts the same amount of protection, but it's a protection that's ignored.
00:08:59.000They know now, and they've known for a while, that COVID attacks fat cells.
00:09:04.000There was a New York Times piece about it the other day.
00:09:06.000But you don't hear this expressed over and over again in the news like you hear all these other things.
00:09:11.000Buy like a new pill coming out or a new this or you got to do that or make sure you do this and triple mask and whatever it is.
00:09:17.000They don't tell you, well, here's a sign that for sure, if you're overweight, we should fix this collectively.
00:09:25.000We should talk about this the same way we talk about all these other pandemics.
00:09:28.000Let's talk about the pandemic of people just not being healthy.
00:09:32.000Yeah, well, you know, that becomes this touchy subject of like the way, you know, be yourself is celebrated and, you know, being healthy is anti.
00:10:10.000And you can't just expect people to fix it on their own.
00:10:13.000So this whole like, you know, you're okay being you movement, you're beautiful as you are, it's good psychologically for these people because the conceit is that these people are damaged.
00:10:25.000That's why you've eaten all this horrible food, whether it's something's wrong education-wise or whether it's something wrong emotionally, like someone hurt your feelings and put you in a bad place in life, or you grew up in a household that's shitty or that has poor food choices.
00:10:42.000Whatever the fucking thing is, obviously you and I are different than those folks.
00:12:27.000The bad feeling is what we're trying to avoid, right?
00:12:30.000We're trying to avoid people having a bad feeling.
00:12:33.000I think there's ways to address the positive aspects of losing weight and not so much the negative aspects of being fat.
00:12:42.000You could explain to people and they could do the math themselves.
00:12:46.000You could tell them that they probably could use it, but let them figure it out on their own.
00:12:51.000But the most important thing is get everybody fucking doing something You know, I realized this just over the last few days because, you know, over Christmas break, family was over and there was a lot of food and I ate like a whole pie.
00:13:16.000Suzanne, I have a real problem with food.
00:13:17.000So I understand people that are overweight.
00:13:20.000Yeah, but you've got the metabolism of a dragon, so you're fine.
00:13:23.000But Work it off and I do also I trick I do little tricks like I don't eat for like, you know 24 hours after I eat something horrible like that Yeah, I let it burn through my system, but I'm so stupid cuz I pay the Punishment like I felt like shit for the rest of the day.
00:13:38.000I felt like shit headache or anything Exhausted I was like this is what I felt like just I had a whole pie in me.
00:18:08.000And he said that essentially what used to happen was they used to have a very low yield grain.
00:18:15.000And over the years of fucking with it, they've turned it into a very high-yield grain, but it has more of these glutens in it, whatever a complex gluten is.
00:18:24.000But is that specifically to the US? Because, you know, you go to Europe, they have different flour.
00:19:55.000It's something I've had to work on, is say thank you, instead of, like, but kids are, you know, their joy is, until, you know, they reach a certain age, or, you know, hopefully nothing bad happens, but, like, the joy in them is amazing.
00:20:54.000Equally as, I don't want to say as exciting, but like terrifying as a, you know, a parent to think like, oh my God, this one time I said this thing and then the kid was never the same, you know, or, you know, I guess you kind of have to leave that up to, you know, fate or whatever.
00:21:08.000But it is fascinating how, I mean, I would say my sisters and I were raised differently because of our different personalities and our, you know, Predispositions to whatever trouble all of us would get in, which were all very different troubles.
00:21:24.000You know, we all did different bad stuff.
00:23:52.000I mean, the question is, is the world a more dangerous place now, or do we perceive it as a more dangerous place because we know the danger now?
00:24:08.000Because I think if someone wasn't there that recognized it at the library when I was, I guess I was like eight or nine or something like that.
00:24:44.000I grew up in Parma, Ohio until middle school, which is pretty blue-collar, so you get a lot of working folks and a lot of alcoholics.
00:24:56.000There were total pedophile stuff on the street, and you'd just be like, oh, don't go to that house.
00:25:03.000It was just common knowledge to know where your My understanding of trouble was.
00:25:13.000And I feel like, actually the song I want to sing to you is about that.
00:25:17.000And I had that revelation not that long ago about how fortunate I feel to have had this upbringing where I experienced real life and I wasn't coddled.
00:25:30.000I mean, I have great parents, and they took really good care of us.
00:25:56.000There was this kid who would walk the tree line of our backyard every day in army fatigues and a BB gun.
00:26:03.000And I always got a sick feeling every time I saw him.
00:26:06.000And at one point our babysitter told us that he tried to force himself on her.
00:26:12.000And, like, she lived with her grandfather, so if that doesn't tell you, like, that's a tough situation.
00:26:16.000So I remember my parents going to talk to her grandfather, and, like, years later, this guy, like, was a convicted serial rapist, like, dozens of women in the greater Cleveland area.
00:26:25.000And I used to see him every day looking out the back kitchen window, walking across our backyard.
00:26:34.000It's just, you know, I look back at that stuff and it's very sad, but it's also like, but I knew something, you know, obviously, like, something's wrong with that kid, you know?
00:26:44.000Right, but you could have got in a bad situation, right?
00:26:47.000Well, there was, I think I told you this on the podcast.
00:26:50.000This was a story I told a long time ago.
00:26:52.000There was another kid who, so when I was little, I was, I still am, but I was obsessed with fishing and You said when I was little, but I still am.
00:29:02.000When I think about the time when I was in the library, as an adult, thinking back on it, how crazy it is that someone got to a point where they were essentially my age, or maybe a little younger.
00:30:15.000Missing Utah college student found alive and covered in coal in man's basement.
00:30:19.000Utah college student was found nearly 90 miles from campus in the home of a man who has been charged with kidnapping and rape, police said.
00:32:06.000We're like, you know, just an advanced primate.
00:32:08.000But I think with that said, I feel, and maybe I don't want to toot my own horn here, but I feel like there's a degree of my instinct that I have now.
00:32:22.000That like, you know, ooh, this feels familiar, or this doesn't feel right.
00:32:26.000And I've gotten really good at just going with it, even if I'm wrong.
00:32:30.000I'd rather be wrong and look like a crazy person than right and in trouble.
00:32:35.000Yeah, but you probably wouldn't be wrong.
00:34:00.000Your mama came running out of the house A wild look in her eyes You trailed her all the way down the block Till she sat right down and cried Curtains swaying in every window Cracked Venetian black Yeah,
00:34:22.000it could be any one of us with a broken mind Yeah, it could be any one of us with a broken mind And I learned about mercy I learned about mercy For everyone else
00:34:52.000and for myself, I learned about mercy.
00:35:04.000Yeah, I was just a kid then, skinning my knees in Woodbury Hills, trying to make a little sense, but my heart got crushed when the cat got killed.
00:35:18.000Was it mean With his keep outside and his poison milk How I learned to keep the door locked The thought of it still gives me chills And I learned about darkness I learned about darkness Heavy like sick or hidden in
00:35:48.000a kiss I learned about darkness Sometimes I don't know how to be How to shut my mouth,
00:36:04.000how to let things breathe And it gets so hard to see With my history standing in front of me I always fought with my sisters White knuckle and nonsense Hands
00:36:34.000full of blisters They felt like strangers They still do now Sometimes they're saviors Sometimes they're saviors And I learned about changing I learned about changing You win some,
00:37:01.000you lose some Cry about things that used to be fun But you're changing Yeah, we're changing Yeah,
00:42:08.000But it brings me back to some reality within myself where I'm not like...
00:42:13.000Caught up in a tornado of emotions from social media or my fucking email or just the news.
00:42:21.000The minute I pick this thing up that has me on a leash, I feel like I've lost my agency and I never know what's going to happen and then I have to collect myself afterwards.
00:43:22.000No, that's the thing too of like, you know, so I got engaged and we wanted to like post something and I was like, oh man, like I feel like, not that I'm not excited because I am, but there's something about it that I hesitated at first,
00:43:39.000Like we feel so good to, to share our announcement, you know, but I get a little knee-jerk with just being inundated with people's feelings all the time because most of the time there's not a solution.
00:43:56.000You know, it's just the, I feel bad, you know, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:44:01.000And I get that and I have empathy, but I think there's some...
00:44:05.000I wonder what happens when you don't share that publicly and you figure out how to heal yourself and...
00:44:13.000Well, I mean, there's nothing wrong with sharing it publicly.
00:44:15.000A lot of people, they can push aside the negativity and they can look at it in perspective.
00:44:21.000Maybe it's the victim thing that I'm really reacting to.
00:44:45.000It depends on how much rent they owe and...
00:44:48.000You know, their girlfriend dumped them, they got fired from their job, and they're fucking angry.
00:44:52.000But the fact that they can type something really mean that you could read, and for no reason, you're taking this, like, we're not designed for that.
00:45:01.000So it's not bad to Post something, but it is bad to read all the things that various random people think about the posting because you don't have that much time.
00:45:12.000Every single thing that a person says to you, you at least have to consider.
00:45:16.000You can say, oh, that person's a moron.
00:45:19.000Or maybe that person's smarter than me.
00:45:21.000Maybe I should consider what they're saying.
00:45:23.000But when it's just random assholes and you don't know anything about them and they're saying mean stuff to you because you're posting, you got engaged to your fiance.
00:47:47.000One of the reasons why I came here, talking to him, he's so smart.
00:47:51.000When he was high on Austin, I was like, okay, maybe he's on something.
00:47:54.000But anyway, he talked to me about this, and he said a lot of this was based on a bunch of people who died, a group of kids that died from bad e-cigarettes that were actually marijuana cigarettes.
00:48:30.000It was a small group of kids that died because there was a tainted product.
00:48:34.000And he said, I don't think I'm paraphrasing him.
00:48:38.000I think he was saying that it's one of those things, like we talked about earlier, it's either the outrage is because something is really, really dangerous or the outrage is because something threatens profits of something else.
00:48:49.000And I should just, out of the way, I'm 100% in favor of you buying cigarettes.
00:49:23.000Vitamin E acetate has been found in product samples tested by the FDA in state laboratories and in patient lung fluid samples tested by CDC from geographically diverse states.
00:49:35.000Vitamin E acetate has not been found in the lung fluid of people that do not have whatever EVALI is.
00:50:03.000So is this the story of the, okay, so it says at the top when you scroll up, it says outbreak of lung injury associated with the use of e-cigarette or vaping products.
00:50:12.000I guess I'm looking for like a dumb story and this is like a page of the government CDC site.
00:50:18.000The thing is, Joe, it's really difficult to decide what's real.
00:50:25.000You hear a story, you see a story on the internet, and maybe it's true, maybe it's not.
00:50:47.000I do know of a family who had a young son who was a teenager who died and they think it has a connection to vaping.
00:50:54.000He got very sick and he had some sort of a lung issue.
00:50:58.000And I gotta imagine that if you're doing it all day long, like a lot of these kids are, they're doing it all day, like if you can give a kid something where you give them, which nicotine is essentially, is it listed as a stimulant?
00:51:22.000I was going to add into this, which I don't know.
00:51:25.000I know that from when this happened, whoever was getting them, or I don't know if it was a national thing, so lots of people that were getting the actual cartridges that they were putting the juice or the oil or what have you in, those were where the issues started, I think.
00:51:53.000If it was regulated, like if you could only get a version of it where there was some sort of potential culprits in mystery lung illness, black market vaping products.
00:52:18.000I think if you're doing anything like that all day long, if you're taking any mist into your body that has chemicals in it, which is essentially what those things are, those ones that look like a lunchbox and these kids are sucking on them and they make Giant clouds of smoke.
00:52:32.000Those kids are taking in stimulants through their fucking blood vessels all day long.
00:56:29.000You know, when I did a couple tours by myself, where I was driving like 10, 12 hours a day by myself, and I was, like, the thing that kept me going were racy novels.
00:57:13.000But the point is, this is what I can say generally, is that one thing exists in the female culture that doesn't exist in the male culture, and that's written pornography.
01:00:00.000Someone's willing to, like, just go out there and do the wildest shit you can do is end a person's life, and it might be her life.
01:00:07.000So they align themselves with this guy.
01:00:09.000I feel like that would be like an interpretation of power in some way, obviously, because if you have the power and the gumption to end someone's life, that's a specified brand of power.
01:00:23.000So, and, you know, I'll be honest, there's a lot of betas out there.
01:00:30.000And, you know, I think that there's an imbalance of Actually, an egregious imbalance in our feminine and masculine social structure.
01:00:44.000So, I mean, I'm not into serial killers, disclaimer, but I think I could understand a specific kind of woman that really needed a specific kind of energy, which is fucked up.
01:00:58.000I mean, there's a lot of therapy in there.
01:01:02.000I think that, you know, with this imbalance, a lot of us, like, not myself anymore, because I really did find my king, and he's something else.
01:01:13.000And I've never felt this balance in my life, to be honest with you, because he's really such a man in so many ways in his intellect, but he's also...
01:01:35.000I've been alone for a long time, and I've been lonely for a long time.
01:01:39.000And I've been very autonomous in this way where I feel like I've had to be very masculine and feminine in the sense of just taking care of myself.
01:01:57.000And like in so many ways, being a musician, touring, and like just like, you know, being the only woman in a room full of men all the time.
01:02:06.000But, you know, it's really since I met Nick and he really is like my match.
01:02:12.000Like we are just, we were made for each other.
01:02:16.000I get to be more of a woman now than I've ever been, and it's so cool.
01:03:24.000You know, a lot of my life has changed in so many ways, but specifically my politics and my belief in, you know, where I was before and where I am now, which is really in the middle.
01:04:02.000And there's a lot of people that just can't do that anymore for whatever reason.
01:04:06.000But one of the things that he said about...
01:04:08.000Today said, if you look at past civilizations, whenever they were about to collapse, whether it's ancient Rome, ancient Greece, they got affixed on gender.
01:05:10.000The only thing that fucks me up is the idea of accountability and discipline.
01:05:14.000I think that one of the reasons why people are not as happy as they could is because there's some of us out there that are not putting in the amount of effort and time to take care of our bodies.
01:05:27.000In terms of whether it's even just meditation or exercise or something, that requires discipline.
01:05:34.000And sometimes you can't just be nice to people and expect them to have discipline.
01:06:04.000I don't remember who was the author of that, but it's a very common expression that I think is real.
01:06:10.000And I think it's represented in just our cycle of evolution, of developing as a race of people, as a civilization, life on Earth that's human.
01:06:25.000We're all evolving and figuring this out.
01:06:27.000And we're battling about how to do it and how not to do it and what to say and what not to say.
01:06:32.000Yeah, yeah, no, it's so, everything's so offensive.
01:06:35.000Yeah, but it's also, we're just sorting it out.
01:06:37.000Like, in the middle of the offensive, there's people saying, it's not offensive, stop, relax.
01:06:41.000And then everybody calms down a little bit.
01:06:43.000There's like this battle going on back and forth.
01:06:46.000I appreciate your peaceful way of approaching that.
01:07:14.000And there's a lot of confusion as to what that requires.
01:07:19.000Are these people assholes and pieces of shit?
01:07:22.000Or maybe they just have a different way of looking at stuff.
01:07:25.000And if you guys talked, maybe they don't know anybody like you.
01:07:28.000Maybe they meet you and they look at things different.
01:07:30.000And maybe your ability to be humble and just project yourself and your thoughts honestly might affect them in a way where they could say, I never met anybody like that.
01:08:20.000And what I think is happening is people, mostly from societal persuasion and media persuasion, there's all this narcissism and this feeling of your individual suffering is more important or worse than someone else.
01:08:36.000And so you got to speak up and attack this person because they're the culprit, you know, like Dave Chappelle or something like that.
01:08:42.000And I think that it's interesting to me that Nobody can be...
01:08:48.000Well, first of all, everyone's entitled to their feelings, right?
01:08:52.000But these days, you can't quietly be uncomfortable or sort something out yourself.
01:09:00.000There has to be this alignment with identity.
01:09:03.000And the way that people are doing it is so divisive.
01:09:29.000I can't say what I really feel because, oh my god, this side's not going to like it.
01:09:35.000You just can't be responsible for so many other people's opinion of you.
01:09:39.000There's nothing you could do about that.
01:09:42.000You're entitled to your own opinion of you, and I would assume your own opinion of you evolves as you grow and as you become a different person as you get older in life.
01:09:52.000The problem with expressing yourself about any controversial subject is you're going to encounter a bunch of people that are deeply unhappy that disagree with you.
01:10:00.000They're going to lash out at you in very personal ways.
01:10:04.000There is a disagreement that can be had and can be had civilly and I have with friends or close friends who I love to death and I admire very much who have a different perspective on things than me.
01:10:38.000And the idea is that anyone who, you know, that we're binary, anyone who's on the left side of this fence is fucked for life and everyone on the right side, I'll die for you!
01:11:41.000Part of it is because we don't know what the fuck we're doing yet.
01:11:44.000We have these impossible tools where you can communicate with the whole fucking world.
01:11:48.000You could be a TikTok star because you're like dressing up and dancing and you will have access to the minds of 45 million people, which is wild shit.
01:12:00.000That's a real thing that's happening right now while you're being tracked by whatever fucking algorithms that app uses and whatever is checking what you're buying and where you're going and flying, what airport you fly out of.
01:13:48.000But I feel like at this point in time, with the chaos that's here right now, the fucking universe has put me in this place where I can at least have access to more opinions than most people.
01:14:25.000Yeah, but that falls back on you because when you're a cunt, you have to live with yourself.
01:14:28.000You do, but a lot of times they get extra cunty when no one responds because it generates the initial impulse and gives them some sort of like a pat on the back, some sort of like reinforcement.
01:14:41.000I think I think at the end of the day, you know deep in that pinprick of your spine of your existence that you're being an asshole and it's not okay.
01:14:51.000And there's something that's going to be unsettling.
01:14:53.000Even if you have validation and a whole echo chamber of support, at the end of the day, it's not cool.
01:15:00.000If you're a thinker, if you're a person who's discerning, you know, like you're really thinking about everything you say and everything you do and you want to make sure that you're a solid, good human being, you're 100% correct.
01:15:11.000But there's a lot of people out there that are just existing on the revenue of being a cunt.
01:16:40.000Is that in the same time period as the shit is going fucking haywire and the culture war is at like full nuclear, you know, red alert threat.
01:16:50.000There's still people out there that are just being nice to each other and having fun.
01:16:55.000What's really going on, I think, is we're in the middle of a fucking transition.
01:16:58.000Some sort of a weird digital integration.
01:17:01.000And as much as we're trying to fight all this shit, and I think we should fight it being in control of human beings.
01:17:08.000It's going to come a time, whether it's 10 years from now or 20 years from now, some fucking artificial intelligence is going to be far superior than us, and it's going to trick us into plugging into the Matrix.
01:24:30.000Actually, I did a couple shows in the Carolinas and it was like some of the biggest paying gigs I've had in a while and it was like, you know...
01:24:38.000It was like a $20,000 weekend, and I needed that.
01:24:40.000It was the only money I made all year.
01:29:00.000It appears, I can't speak for the man, I don't know him, but it appears he has the intellect, the kindness, the comedy, he's got the whole thing.
01:31:21.000Even if I know someone knows who I am, I feel like I have to say that.
01:31:25.000I got recognized in the nail salon in Austin, and this girl said all these nice things to me about, oh my god, I love your music, and I just bought six tickets to your show on the 15th, but I was like, oh my god, so tell me about yourself!
01:31:40.000So I got clingy, and I think I kept her for too long, and she was like, okay, I gotta go!
01:32:06.000What you don't want is to feel like you're the shit.
01:32:09.000It's like a balancing act between someone reaffirming that you're doing good, that they love what you're doing, but you never get into a position where you think you're better than other people.
01:32:21.000It's like this weird balancing act that actors and musicians and comedians and all kinds of famous people fail at all the time because there's no guidebook.
01:32:30.000It's a weird balance, though, because...
01:33:43.000What I would like to happen is I want like concentrated touring where I'm out for like two weeks and then I'm not away from home for so long because home is really important to me and for so long in my life like I moved every year for like 15 years.
01:33:59.000I didn't really have a home and I'd just be on the road constantly and What I would like is a comfortable amount of financial return and then my home life while I'm creating more content and music.
01:35:17.000So the things with young artists, if someone's coming up and they haven't fully popped yet, when people know they're good and they have a bright idea of their future, they'll sign them and lock them into these weird contracts.
01:38:55.000And the thing about the fucking, the weird thing about Lyme disease is that they think it might be connected to this thing called, is it called Meniere's disease?
01:41:37.000It seems like no matter what you are, whether you're a frog or an eagle or a wolf, there's a system in place that's designed to encourage innovation and success and growth and strength and dominance and also weed out the weak.
01:41:56.000And weed out the weak, whether it's weak psychologically, weak socially, weak culturally, weak physically.
01:43:08.000Right now, it's like this sort of a reckoning that we're all kind of responsible for the tone of the civilization that's around us, where all of us sort of looked at the civilization that was in place, the culture that was in place, and said that, well, this is just how it's always been, this is how it will be for the foreseeable future,
01:43:26.000and I'm just going to operate on the idea that all this was set up by some super-intelligent people that really had a good sense of the future.
01:43:34.000Because we see that in, like, the Declaration of Independence.
01:43:47.000Like, four years in, then people get to reassess, then you get another four years.
01:43:51.000And, you know, they figured out some, like, parameters where they felt like they could foresee how human beings could go apeshit with power and how they could correct for that.
01:44:04.000But the big ones are the freedom of speech.
01:44:28.000If the people who aren't Nazis have the power to silence the Nazis, that can be equally bad, because for whatever fucked up reason, some people are going to listen to those folks.
01:44:38.000And if they get shut down, if they get shut down left and right, and they don't have to engage with someone who clearly has better ideas than them, or the whole world gets to see, well, this idea sucks, Because it was tested on the battlefield of discourse.
01:45:16.000Like a small group of people can just decide that they're going to protest something and shut everything down.
01:45:22.000They can decide to change, like the Dave Chappelle thing is a great example.
01:45:27.000What Dave did in that special was respond to previous, like, anger at him about what they perceived to be transphobic comments with talking about his friend.
01:45:38.000If you look him up on Wikipedia, that's one of the first things that comes up.
01:45:55.000The problem is not that a small percentage of people reacted in the way they did and started shutting things down.
01:46:03.000The problem is that we're all willing to consider what a small percentage of people are furious about rather than what we think because it's too hard to gather your own opinion independently.
01:46:16.000On every subject, especially when you can be called out for it or people can decide they're going to attack you for it.
01:46:24.000It doesn't mean that we can't all do better, but what it does mean is we can't get anywhere if we just attack each other mercilessly and without logic.
01:46:36.000Here's the thing about Dave Chappelle.
01:46:37.000First of all, he's one of the nicest people I've ever met in my life.
01:47:26.000I'm ashamed to admit that I was in that vacuum for a little while in LA, not against Dave or anything, but I was part of the collective anger and repost, and I got to a point where I recognized that I was not operating on my own agency,
01:47:52.000And I'll be honest with you, when I came here to visit you guys last December, I was in my bubble in LA, and I saw that you and Dave were doing stand-up at Stubbs, and I hadn't played or seen any shows all year,
01:48:08.000and I really wanted to come see you guys.
01:48:11.000And I called you, and you were like, just come down.
01:50:46.000And I was driving my rental car and there were these people walking in the street with their dog and I slowed down and then I looked over and it was my friend Alejandro Shaky Graves.
01:50:59.000Who's the only other person, really, that I knew at the time in Austin.
01:51:12.000And I... In the coming months, I basically got this house that was handed down from a friend of a friend, which was a little more than I paid in rent for a one-bedroom apartment in LA. So I have this really cute little cottage house with a big backyard.
01:51:28.000And then I met this person, this love of my life, and my life changed forever.
01:52:12.000If you don't want to go, then don't fucking go.
01:52:14.000The realists looked at it and said you're not going to control a respiratory virus.
01:52:19.000The realists look at it and said, you might be able to mitigate some risk by making people follow certain protocols where you would spread it less easily, but goddamn, some of these things are like really good.
01:52:31.000This new Omicron, is that how you say it?
01:53:35.000You know, this is why I love No Agenda, because they give you such a perspective when they concentrate all of it, and you're just like, oh my god, they're all saying the same bullshit.
01:55:12.000The idea was they were floating it out there that your browser history might make you available for more credit.
01:55:20.000So the idea would be that if you gave up all the shit you looked up, they would allow you to have more credit because they know, hey, well, he's not Googling bulletproof vests or fucking freeze-dried food.
01:55:34.000If they did that, though, people would just make burner accounts to look online instantly, and it would be over.
01:55:38.000Yeah, but if they track your fucking device, like, who knows what kind of ability they have to actually track your phone or your laptop, right?
01:55:47.000Like, if Edward Snowden didn't tell us about their ability to essentially, like, mass store every fucking phone call and email you've ever made, if Edward Snowden didn't tell us about what the NSA was cooking up, we would have never guessed it.
01:56:02.000So who knows what the fuck is going on right now?
01:56:05.000You should assume that everything you say is constantly being monitored and recorded.
01:56:10.000Whether you're saying it on a phone, off a phone.
01:56:14.000Will Harris shared a post today about a guy who spent the week at his mom's house and is now getting advertisements for his mother's toothpaste.
01:56:29.000No, no, it has nothing to do with that.
01:56:31.000It knows everything you've bought because of all of the terms and conditions you've done, so it's checking your email and all of that stuff.
01:57:16.000It could have known that you were watching TV because it's coming through a streaming service now and it knows you would have seen the ad so it's re-giving it to you.
01:57:26.000The only reason why I know about it is I've seen an ad.
01:57:29.000I've been using YouTube TV for two or three years now and I recently watched I don't remember the reason why but like over the air football game.
01:57:40.000The advertisements are so different and you don't even realize Thank you.
01:57:44.000Right, but I have had conversations with you, or with a lot of people, where I'm talking about something, and then all of a sudden I get an ad for that thing in Google Ads.
01:57:52.000I also think there's a lot of, how many ads do you get all day that that doesn't happen to, and then you're like, oh shit, I mentioned that thing yesterday.
01:57:59.000And also when you mention it, are you mentioning it because it's in the public zeitgeist?
02:01:25.000And this might be child's play to you because you're you.
02:01:28.000But I... Eat one, Friday, in the middle of the day.
02:01:34.000Oh, I'm going to have to spark up another joint to hear this story.
02:01:38.000And I didn't know what I was getting into because it was street legal, and I'm in Texas, so I thought, like, you know, I lived in California for so long, I've had edibles and all that shit.
02:01:48.000I was high until midday Sunday and fucking incapacitated.
02:01:58.000And I started to, like, do some research and ask around, and I apparently had, like, the equivalent of, like, 70 milligrams of THC. That's it?
02:03:20.000Did you ever hear that story about a monk that, I forget who, went to visit him and gave him LSD. And they were trying to talk to these monks and tell them that this...
02:04:10.000And you give him an acid and he doesn't even blink.
02:04:12.000Well, actually, I know a couple people that have this immense capacity of meditation that Is, I would say, on par with psychedelics and acid and all that stuff.
02:04:29.000It's not on par with the actual experience when it's at its peak, but there's people that are sober, that don't need anything, that have a weird understanding of how things work.
02:04:42.000I told you there's a viral TikTok video a couple months ago, and now they've come up with a new term for this called Eddie Blocked.
02:04:49.000There are people that are like me that are Eddie Blocked.
02:04:52.000They're not able to get high off of edibles.
02:05:14.000I mean, I don't think people even fucking knew that it was different until like the 2000s when people found out about all the different metabolites that are created when you eat it.
02:07:25.000I always feel like I can't tell if it does anything.
02:07:28.000If you have inflammation from exercise, if you have inflammation from all kinds of different weird things in life, there's two things you can do to change that.
02:09:31.000But there's a lot of people that sell CBD mixed with THC. The problem with that is if you have a square job, like if you work somewhere where they're going to test your pee-pee, Like, Suzanne, we don't trust your body.
02:10:39.000If you drink wheatgrass, you're just deciding, I want to be healthy.
02:10:43.000Well, it's nice when you're in that zone of like, I'm taking care of myself and I know wheatgrass and ginger and all that stuff are good juice.
02:12:28.000I am after a life of health and vitality and joy, and so, you know, I exercise a lot, and I keep a fairly, you know, like, concise diet, give or take, getting stoned and eating cereal at midnight,
02:18:09.000You do feel like a guy with a glove on.
02:18:14.000But a lot of the best players, if you looked at all the best players in the world, I would say at least 50% of them are wearing pool gloves.
02:18:57.000One of the reasons why nine ball is a gambler's game, and this goes back to decades and decades ago, is that nine ball is kind of a wild game in that all the balls are wild.
02:19:08.000If you went to shoot the one ball in the corner, but you missed, and it bounced three rails and went into the side pocket, still good.
02:19:36.000I do too, but there's something fun about watching a nine ball ricochet around a fucking table when someone missed and then go into the corner pocket.
02:21:10.000I was literally talking to Nick about this last night.
02:21:12.000I said, I compared that sentiment to other areas in my life where I was like, when I'm doubting myself, I'm like, I'm not going to make this.
02:23:50.000The name is escaping me right now, but it's amazing what happens.
02:23:55.000First of all, the minute you have a forkful of food coming towards your mouth and your senses and all the things going on inside your mouth, like these trash cans of saliva that are going to grab whatever's bad and whatever's good and all your nutrients and all that stuff.
02:24:19.000But anyway, this book gives you this whole rundown start to finish on what happens when you're ingesting food and it's going through your digestive system.
02:25:12.000That's the weirdest part about being a person that's never, I mean, very rarely discussed that there's more bacteria living in your gut than have ever been people ever.
02:25:23.000There's a bunch of weird factors that attribute to your personality.
02:25:27.000Well, your gut health and your mental health are very related.
02:26:28.000But on top of that, you also experience enlightenment in various forms of meditation or maybe psychedelics or whatever it is that works for you.
02:26:42.000And my question to you is, do you feel a difference when you have achieved a level of, it's not even self-awareness, it's kind of like an overall, like maybe spiritual and physical and mental awareness, where you introduce or reintroduce a contaminant or sugar,
02:27:01.000where you feel it harder than you did maybe when you were a kid, right?
02:27:06.000I think you feel it harder when you're a kid, and I think you also feel it harder when you're more aware of how...
02:27:12.000I don't think you feel it harder when you're a kid.
02:27:13.000When you're a kid, you're just like, fucking cupcakes.
02:27:29.000If I eat cupcakes today, I feel them very differently than if I ate cupcakes when I was 20. When I was 20, it was like thrown into a volcano.
02:27:37.000It would just burn off, and that would be the end of it.
02:27:44.000But there's also a thing where I think I'm more aware of how what I eat affects my body, whereas back then I was just like, I was just fucking bouncing into walls with blinders on and I don't think I was necessarily that aware.
02:27:59.000I think I was like more engine, less traction.
02:29:18.000Because I would get these repetitive, it would start in my specifically right shoulder blade up my neck to the back of my skull and I wouldn't be able to like turn my head and it would lock and I would always attribute it to like, oh, I slept funny or like I've been playing music even if I weren't playing music.
02:29:36.000And so I was married to this narrative that wasn't necessarily true.
02:30:16.000And so my muscles are deprived of, like your myofascial is deprived of oxygen, which creates this lock in your shoulder blade, which is where it would show up for me.
02:30:26.000How is your myofascia deprived of oxygen?
02:30:29.000Because your brain, it's your repressed emotions and they're putting it somewhere.
02:30:33.000So it's like your brain makes the muscle contract or something?
02:30:37.000It's putting this anger or unresolved thing in your body.
02:30:43.000And specifically what happens is your myofascia is deprived of oxygen which then makes the muscle lock.
02:30:51.000Is this a theory of what the mechanism is or has this actually been proven by studies?
02:30:59.000I mean, I've read his books, and I've watched a bunch of YouTube videos, so I'm not an expert on it, but I can tell you from my life, when I recognized that my pain was potentially ostensibly emotional, I started examining,
02:31:22.000When I've had moments of tension where I was having an argument or something, or I was getting bad news in an email, and I'd start to feel whatever.
02:31:30.000Maybe my stomach hurt, and I get a lot of stomach aches, and that's definitely a manifestation of my emotions.
02:31:39.000I would take a different approach rather than be like, oh, fuck, I've got to get some Rolaids, and I've got to lay down, and I have this routine that I've had for a long time.
02:34:00.000This idea that you can sort of reconnect with your natural physical being as opposed to like, you got this, you should take this medicine for this.
02:34:10.000And just thinking for a long time that you have an issue that you ostensibly don't have.
02:34:17.000Mind you, if you have an accident or something that might require more attention, that's different.
02:34:24.000But I've recognized recently that a lot of my shoulder and neck issues are specifically emotional.
02:34:31.000Well, I think there's a lot of people for sure that are experiencing that.
02:34:34.000There's a lot of people for sure that are experiencing a lot of tension.
02:34:37.000And especially now, like more than ever in our lives, right?
02:34:41.000Like when have you ever been alive where people are this fucking tense?
02:35:31.000If you're a teacher and maybe you haven't been concentrating on your health and all of a sudden going to school is not just you're going to take care of some kids and give them some ideas and help them to educate themselves and evolve their view of the world, now you might die.
02:35:55.000I know people that have gotten fucked up by COVID. And I know people that just breezed through it.
02:36:00.000And I know people that got fucked up by Delta.
02:36:04.000And I know people that got this new one, Omicron, and it's been nothing for them.
02:36:09.000So fortunately, that's the way this is headed with this particular variant, is that it's more contagious than ever, but it's less virulent.
02:37:01.000You know, I got caught on to the Alex Berenson stuff in his research.
02:37:08.000And then I personally don't know anyone who died from COVID. But I know people telling me, family members, and I have so much respect for that.
02:37:19.000I have empathy, sympathy, all the things.
02:37:32.000When I hear but, I'm always like, well, here comes the hard stuff.
02:37:35.000But the thing that's confusing me now is this Christmas season, so many people I know are like, oh, I couldn't go home because we tested positive even though so-and-so is asymptomatic.
02:37:48.000And we tested positive, but thank God we were only sick for two days.
02:37:54.000I'm confused by there are not bodies piling up in the streets.
02:38:07.000It could be if it imparts real immunity to people that catch it.
02:38:12.000Like that this immunity lasts for the next variant and the immunity that we used to have previously.
02:38:17.000It's not 100% guaranteed with this variant.
02:38:20.000Like people have been sick for COVID and Peter McCullough actually admitted this recently on Twitter.
02:38:25.000He said that the variant that we used to have, like the Delta, if you had had the Alpha, you were immune to the Delta.
02:38:32.000But if you've had previous infection to COVID, you may not necessarily be immune to Omicron.
02:38:40.000So even if you're a person who survived COVID that before, like a month ago, they thought wasn't going to get COVID again, you might get this one.
02:38:47.000But you just said Omicron, like one person is reported as...
02:38:51.000Yeah, one, but they don't even think that that's how he died anymore.
02:40:07.000And like I said, I have so much respect for anyone who's had a really hard time with this specifically death of loved ones or their own illness.
02:40:17.000I would like to have a conversation and understand.
02:40:22.000What you've experienced, but I do believe that what's on the news is so manipulative in terms of fear-mongering and trying to get us to think something that may not be what it is.
02:40:36.000And I want to be a part of the solution and positivity, but the way that things are being run is really fucking scary.
02:40:56.000Like, if you talk about the numbers, if the numbers are exaggerated, it's more beneficial to the person that's reporting the story.
02:41:02.000Because more people are going to read it.
02:41:03.000If you say a thousand people died this week from COVID, way more people are going to read that than zero people died.
02:41:08.000So instead of saying this new variant seems to be like a cold and if we take care of ourselves and if we look after our immune systems we can get through this and also potentially gain herd immunity.
02:41:22.000Imagine if they just set that out there.
02:41:24.000They put it out there like, we're going to give you guys a little emotional and anxiety treat.
02:41:34.000Because this one variant that seems to be really prevalent and impossible to stop, like even that crazy lady on CNN, that Asian lady that's always talking about doom and gloom, she's the end of times lady.
02:44:14.000He has a computer set up in the back where he has a net that he drives into, and the computer tracks the speed of his ball and how far it's going to go, given the certain trajectory as it hits the net.
02:46:24.000The first movie, you can argue that the first movie was more terrifying, because I think it was, because we had never seen anything like that before.
02:47:07.000It's never a woman finally gets a role at the number one role in a monster movie where she kills and saves the earth from the evil fucking...
02:47:25.000And then James Cameron comes along and he says, okay, that first one was really hard to kill, but the ones that I'm putting in this movie are retarded.
02:47:33.000And they're just gonna run right into your guns.
02:49:55.000Yeah, you put goggles, they're like glasses.
02:49:57.000They look like a pair of Roka sunglasses.
02:49:59.000You put glasses on and inside the glasses, it's like a screen.
02:50:04.000You're watching like a giant movie screen.
02:50:07.000So say if you want to watch Netflix, On a Samsung phone, you put these fucking glasses, like if you're on a plane, say if you're on a plane, you're flying back to Cleveland, you put a pair of these glasses on, you watch Netflix on your phone, like maybe a movie you downloaded already,
02:50:23.000it's inside the fucking screen, like you are watching a giant movie screen.
02:54:12.000And if you're spending too much time thinking about things that freak you out or anger you or frustrate you or you disagree with or people that are pieces of shit and fuck them.
02:54:52.000If we all, like legitimately, I know this would never happen, but if we all shared resources, if like we said, hey, there's only a certain amount of natural resources on the planet Earth, there's a certain amount of people, there's too many people living in poverty, we're going to distribute this stuff fairly evenly across the world.
02:55:08.000We're not saying that you don't make more money if you work harder and you like establish a business, you figure something out and you innovate.
02:55:14.000We're not saying that, but what we're saying is natural resources like oil and shit and all that stuff.
02:55:19.000We're going to just distribute that evenly.
02:55:21.000Can we agree to disagree that all our problems we have with religion and socioeconomic policies, all these different things, at the very least- Is it socialism?
02:56:13.000And then I woke up to a violent earthquake, and it was really scary.
02:56:17.000I'd lived in California for almost 20 years, and I went downstairs and I asked the front desk, I was like, do you guys get a lot of earthquakes here or something?
02:56:28.000And they were like, no, it's because of the fracking.
02:58:14.000But it's also not good if you don't know how to do the job, and it's the most important job in the world, and a new person comes in every four years.
02:58:23.000I mean, both those things are terrible, right?
02:58:26.000Well, it's corrupt at the ground level, because in order to run For Congress, it's up...
02:59:16.000No, no, I think of overqualified intellectual too, but the problem with overqualified intellectuals is oftentimes they've spent a large portion of their life in academia.
02:59:26.000So they've gone from being in school to graduate school to eventually teaching to like they're a part of this system and Although that's amazing that they can do that, and in the best case scenario, it allows them to be professional intellectuals and to dissect ideas at the highest level in ways that people like you or I or many other people probably wouldn't have access to the right resources or sharp minds to put this into order.
02:59:57.000And then when they do put it into order and they publish something, the rest of the world gets to examine it and see their brilliant thoughts.
03:00:47.000I'm friends with real terrifying human beings that make a living out of throwing their bones at other people, trying to knock them unconscious.
03:02:12.000Like, they think they're way better than they are.
03:02:14.000They think they're a way better singer or way better comic or way Way better a podcaster.
03:02:18.000Why don't I get the fucking attention I deserve?
03:02:20.000There's always a lot of people that have these thoughts in their head.
03:02:23.000And some of them, they just are ready to pop, and the world doesn't know yet, and they're kind of frustrated, and then they break through, and then all of a sudden it becomes a thing.
03:02:33.000Like, did you listen to the podcast I had with Jewel?
03:02:45.000She's homeless at 18. Okay, she's singing in a fucking coffee shop.
03:02:49.000She talks, the owner of the coffee shop is about to go under, and she says, listen, would it be okay if maybe I do this thing and I'll put out flyers and people come to hear me sing?
03:03:26.000It's like I don't want them to experience great pain.
03:03:30.000But it seems to me, whether it's Joey Diaz or you or many of my friends, Eddie Bravo or Ari Shafir, all my friends that I love the most dearly, Duncan Trussell, they all came from some crazy,
03:04:23.000You and I, whether we were brothers and sisters in a past life or something, there's something, whether that's bullshit or whether it's true, the moment I met you, and I feel the same way about Ben, the moment I met you guys,
03:04:38.000I was like, I'm connected to you guys.
03:04:44.000It's like there's people in this life that you meet like that and there's people in this life where you have to earn their friendship and you have to earn the connection with them.
03:04:53.000And that requires more than a few hangouts.
03:04:56.000You have to hang out with them for months and months.
03:04:59.000There's friends like that, where the first time I met them, we were kind of peripheral friends, and I had to crack through the ice, and then you get closer to each other, and you realize, oh, we're all very, very similar, but maybe this person has been famous longer and is a little more jaded to people,
03:05:15.000annoying them and sucking up and stealing their time, which happens to some of these, especially rock stars.
03:09:59.000They just might have been off by a few years.
03:10:03.000They thought that something was going to change, whether it was some sort of procession of the equinox changes or a change where the constellations are in the sky, whatever it was.
03:10:15.000They thought something was changing in the calendar.
03:10:17.000They had this very long calendar, and the end of the long count was December 21st, 2012. And when the world didn't end, everybody was like, oh, we're going to be fine.
03:14:54.000Some of the best hits of all time have been written in five minutes.
03:14:57.000Those songs that were written in five minutes were a byproduct of songs that were your efforts as a songwriter for the whole essence of your being.
03:15:33.000And he's saying, life without struggle is meaningless.
03:15:35.000And he's basically essentially saying everything that David Goggins has said, that Cameron Haynes has said, that Laird Hamilton has said, that I've said, that a lot of people have said, like there's something about trying to achieve something that's intensely difficult gives you some sort of sense of purpose.
03:15:52.000It's not necessarily all of life, but what it is is like a path to understand yourself so that you can more honestly assess what life is.
03:16:01.000And I think people have a really hard time assessing what life is if the path they're on is either too easy or is filled with falsehoods.
03:16:09.000If it's full of bullshit, that's one of the reasons why people in Hollywood are so spiritually starving.
03:17:35.000Face-to-face, person-to-person, we can do that, but then that person will check in on Twitter, and Twitter will let everybody know that you're a piece of shit and probably an anti-vaxxer, and everybody will go fucking angry.
03:17:44.000Someone recently called me a white supremacist, and I was like, what?
03:17:50.000That is a sign of, like, they just want to shut down all discourse.
03:17:55.000Well, there's, like, a bad card to pull, and it's, you know, Like, let's just listen.
03:18:03.000So the problem with that card is, if you pull it on people who aren't white supremacists, then they don't believe that there really are white supremacists.
03:18:10.000And then when a real white supremacist comes along, it's a lot like Cryin' Wolf.
03:18:14.000Like, all of a sudden, that's a real wolf.
03:21:28.000I've been thinking about doing something like that.
03:21:30.000While we're having this podcast, and I'm a little bit drunk and a little bit high, but I've been thinking, why don't I have some sort of promotions group?
03:23:05.000So you run to the river, you run to the sea You sift through the rubble and search the debris But you won't find anything if you don't find peace Ooh,
03:23:58.000Maybe your mama didn't treat you right.
03:24:04.000Maybe you just didn't sleep last night You know I don't give a damn why you wanna fight Oh babe, so what you gonna do now?
03:24:22.000Don't wait till you die This is for you.
03:25:06.000So come out from the weeds and into my arms Oh babe, I know the dark and how it can harm you And I've had my conscience rip me apart too So here's what we're gonna do now Take all of your needs and all of your sins And all
03:25:36.000of the losses you threw to win And we'll carry the weight if it breaks every limb And that's what we're gonna do now Don't wait until you die You always change your mind and make it right.