In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the UFC's highest-paid broadcaster joins us to talk about what it's like to be a professional fighter, how he got into the business, and what it s like to go on stage and perform in front of thousands of people for the first time. He also talks about his favorite part of being a fighter, and why he thinks he s better than most at what he does. We also talk about how he trains for his fights and how he deals with the pressure of being the highest paid fighter in the business. And, of course, we talk about his love of the UFC and what he thinks of his opponent, Conor Conor McGregor. This episode is a must-listen for anyone who has ever watched a UFC fight, or has ever been in a cage with one of the greatest fighters in the history of the sport. We hope you enjoy this episode, and if you like what you hear, please leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and tell a friend about it! Thanks for listening, and Happy New Year and Happy Holidays! -Jon Sorrentino and Joe Rocha. -The Joe Rogans Experience. Jon and Samir Jon & Samir "J.R. "The J.R." Rogan Podcast by Night, All Day, by Night by Day, By Night by Night - All Day All Day by Day by Night (featuring The J.J. Rogan) by Night Podcast by Day and All Day By Night, by Day - by Night By Night By Day, all day by Day & Night, by Night and Night, all by Night & Night by Morning by Day... by Night! by Day/Day by Night... by Day! by Night/By Night, By Day/By Day, All day, by Morning, by night, by Evening, by day, All By Night - By Night! by Day.... - By Day... , by Night , All Day , By Night... By Night by Morning... -By Night... , , all day... By Day & Day, By Night.... -All Day & Afterday, , Afterday By Day -- By Night , by Day - Afterday... By Any Day... , By Day ... By Day.... By Night ... By Night? ... by Night ...
00:01:01.000I mean, they're just such intricate little machines, and they're organic, so they just start to soften on you, you know?
00:01:07.000I had a guy in the other day, Bilal Muhammad, he's a UFC fighter, who's had a detached retina and a detached lens on his other eye.
00:01:14.000On both eyes, it's like, you're talking to people like that, and the game they're playing is, you know, you're punching people in the face, and a lot of times thumbs go in the eyes, because UFC gloves have open fingers, so occasionally guys accidentally get poked in the eye.
00:01:55.000And then what's left a huge expanse of life ahead of you.
00:01:58.000Not just that, it's like the things that you've looked forward to are these enormous events where you're in your underwear and you're walking out in front of this gigantic group of people that's there to watch you slam your fists into someone's face.
00:02:12.000Well, and you've worked up to it, too.
00:02:13.000All the training and the getting ready, the challenging someone, the setting the fight, and where it is in your career.
00:04:29.000I think that there's a balance between performing a lot and perspective.
00:04:35.000One of the things that happens to guys when they perform too much is that they talk about things that are related to their life as a traveling comedian.
00:04:43.000It's all air travel and flights and hotels and restaurants and so much of the material revolves around this very narrow window of existence.
00:05:25.000Well, you're at a point right now, you're ready to do this special, which is this thing that you're going to live stream in Madison Square Garden, which is fucking super exciting.
00:07:58.000Well, it's also, it's like people are really longing for it because there's so much political correct bullshit, this woke bullshit, what you can and can't say.
00:08:06.000And so many people feel upset about it.
00:08:07.000And that like, they don't know what to say because they can't talk at work or they get fired.
00:08:11.000They can't talk amongst their community or they get shamed.
00:08:23.000And to me, everything that's happened has been natural.
00:08:26.000It's like normal that comedy has to be defended every few years.
00:08:30.000When everybody's being cool, when the world is kind of cool like it was up until maybe 2015 or so, it's just kind of cool.
00:08:38.000Comedy is cool, but then when things get shitty in terms of this sort of thing, people being more divided and unable to express themselves, comedy gets more important, but also starts getting attacked.
00:10:35.000When you do good jokes about black people, not like white perspective jokes, About being alienated from them.
00:10:42.000But if you do a good joke about black culture or Chinese culture or Jewish culture, the people in those groups laugh because they're in the show.
00:10:51.000And they know their culture as well as anybody does, you know?
00:12:37.000When you're on the lists and you're at the red carpet and stuff, it's like playing blackjack and you start getting good cards and you think you're good at blackjack.
00:16:55.000And then it finds, now I have a bit that she's part of, that her resistance helped me find all of the round edges to the bit and all of the angles, you know what I mean?
00:17:05.000That's one of the most fascinating things about comedy, is that you really need the audience to develop it.
00:18:54.000No, some people just like clean and easy, and that's fine, too.
00:18:57.000I mean, there's a great audience for that, too.
00:18:59.000I think one of the unique things that you've always liked to do is you like to go to clubs unannounced, so they don't know you're going to be there.
00:20:56.000Because you're in a tube, in an American tube, and you go over there, and then you sleep in an American hotel, and everybody's white, and they don't sound British, they sound a little more like us.
00:21:05.000It feels American, then you're walking down the street, and a fucking parrot flies by.
00:22:02.000And there is these guys that live in Perth and they all have tons of money from this dirty work that they do.
00:22:09.000And they call them FIFOs, fly in, fly out.
00:22:12.000Because they fly into the mines and then they just live, it's just covered in shit and, you know, sleep in a bunk next to the hole for like a month.
00:22:21.000And then they give them like whatever, you know, thousand, hundred thousand dollars.
00:24:58.000That's the most fucked up thing about that day is that there was no, you know, they had the hospitals were all ready and there was not like one.
00:26:29.000Living in Manhattan, because I grew up with movies like Warriors.
00:26:33.000And with memories like the blackouts, and I wasn't even there for the blackouts, but there was all these blackouts where everybody got killed.
00:26:40.000And there was a lot of movies about, like, New York City is shut down and everybody, and, you know, the wolves come out.
00:27:00.000And then I was on the road and I was in LA. I was supposed to pitch a show and I called the network and I said, I assume the meeting is cancelled.
00:27:11.000And they said, yeah, but if you want your show to go forward, we do have to have...
00:27:59.000And everyone was allowed in the lounges, and everyone was getting upgraded to first class because the planes were empty.
00:28:06.000And for a while, it was part of the protocol.
00:28:09.000Before the flight takes off, they used to say, they would give you the safety stuff, and then they would say, you can use your seatbelt, detaches, you can use it as a weapon.
00:28:23.000Yes, they would say this is part of the thing for like the first month after 9-11, and they would say, we're here to protect you, but you have to protect us.
00:28:32.000And there was one flight I took where I was flying first class, like seat 1B, I was right at the bulkhead, and this other guy's sitting at 1C across from me, and the captain came out right before the flight, and he kind of squatted between us, and he said, listen, fellas, Because it was a red eye.
00:28:47.000He said, you're the last line of defense, so I need you not to sleep on this flight.
00:29:06.000Yeah, I got asked once by a lady, these two guys were fighting, and they were thinking about removing the guys from the plane, because one guy had put his bag above this other guy's seat, and the other guy goes, hey man, that's for my seat.
00:29:18.000And he's like, no, it's first come, first serve.
00:32:02.000But the people that, like, this is all...
00:32:05.000I was on a subway in New York once, and it was packed, and everyone's, you know, people like this, you're smushed against people, you know?
00:32:13.000Your chest is against somebody's back, and we're all strap-hanging, and some people are sitting, and this woman had a salad, and she was eating it on the packed subway, and she was like, she had it out like this, and she's just stabbing that,
00:32:29.000and she's just taking up all this space so she can eat her fucking chicken salad.
00:35:46.000Where like, all these kids were fighting in the hallway and teachers were trying to separate it and this one kid threw this kid to the ground and punched him unconscious and the kid went into a seizure and like, oh god!
00:35:57.000And it's awful and a lot of it is people that just don't know how to fight and they don't know how to defend themselves and then they're fucking flailing wildly at each other and this one guy knew something and he threw this guy to the ground and punched him out.
00:38:38.000I would look down the hallway, and I would open up the door to the outside breezeway, and I saw him on the other side, and I'm like, I've got to go around this way.
00:38:56.000I was kind of bigger than a lot of kids my age, so I guess that, you know, I just didn't, and I didn't have a lot of conflicts with people.
00:39:02.000So I never really got much into fights.
00:39:03.000I just sort of slid through, you know?
00:39:05.000And then in senior year, I don't remember, junior or whatever, but I was high a lot, and I was in the library, and I was laughing.
00:39:13.000I was making a lot of racket in the library.
00:39:15.000I used to get yelled at all the time for being loud in the library.
00:39:19.000And this kid who was a sophomore, little kid who was like this on me, kind of skinny and wearing a leather jacket, he goes, Hey, shut the fuck up!
00:41:15.000So I went over and something happened when I got on the bus and there was this girl who like was this tough girl, smoked cigarettes, she had a leather jacket.
00:41:34.000Like it wasn't even like I didn't argue back.
00:41:40.000It was just like she just started punching me.
00:41:42.000And then, this little guy who wound up being my friend, his name is Muggsy Malone, he wound up being, he later went on, I think he was a politician at one point in time.
00:42:23.000I was just covering my head up and she was just fucking with a leather jacket on and a fucking cigarette.
00:42:29.000What is her life that she needed to go right to Defcon 5?
00:42:32.000Well, she wound up being the girlfriend of the guy who's the toughest guy on the wrestling team, which I joined the next season, so thank God I didn't swing back.
00:46:02.000And everyone was into, because it was all liberal teachers, everybody was into like, we're hosting this family because they lost their home.
00:46:10.000So all of a sudden, David Russell's living in Newton.
00:48:05.000It's like a very unusual education in human beings and development and why people do the things they do and why they say the things they do and why they're trying out different kinds of behaviors and bullies and people who are pacifists and people who get bullied and you see it ruin their lives.
00:49:22.000It can help you understand what's happening to other people.
00:49:26.000It can help you even understand people that hurt people.
00:49:29.000Like, when you get really hurt by people, you have two choices.
00:49:33.000You can decide to collapse under it and say, I'm too weak to live in this world, or you can decide to hate them, which is another very corrosive thing.
00:49:41.000You can just decide that they are shit, they're not human.
00:49:45.000Or you can look at them and go, why did this person do this to me?
00:54:06.000And it's bizarre watching them go through it.
00:54:10.000Them going through, like, trying to find their identity and trying to find their friends group and little disputes that they have in their friends group.
00:54:18.000Like, one of my daughters has this one little daughter, one little friend, rather, who's...
00:54:24.000I don't want to say she's evil, but something's wrong.
00:55:44.000Back then there was like a box on the side of the classroom wall with a clock and a speaker and a button, like a microphone, like to call the office.
00:55:53.000And they'd call the office and say, get Mr. Shanahan.
00:55:56.000He was our one teacher who was big enough to handle this kid.
00:55:59.000And he would come and just subdue him.
00:57:05.000But the teacher pulled me aside and he said, listen, John, the fucked up kid, he goes, his parents have offered to drive and nobody wants to.
00:57:19.000And I was like, I don't want to do that.
00:57:21.000And he said, I'm asking you because I think you're a nice person and you're the one person I can think of that I could ask, could you make this sacrifice and let him not feel so isolated?
01:00:37.000Bohemian Grove is a famous place where rich world leaders would meet in Northern California and they literally worship this Moloch the owl god and everybody thought it was bullshit but John Ronson And Alex Jones snuck in.
01:03:01.000And there's been things, of course, in your life, in my life, where you say something or have an experience, and then afterwards you go, fuck, I wish I hadn't said that, or I didn't know how this would feel, is the thing, right?
01:03:12.000So somebody who's not even in public life and who just suffered an off-the-charts trauma...
01:03:18.000And Anderson Cooper and his producers going, no, you should talk, talking them into it.
01:03:23.000Saying, you should talk to the world right now.
01:03:26.000You should be on the news talking about it now.
01:04:27.000And there's been extensions of that throughout the history since then.
01:04:31.000Every time something bad happens, nobody slows down and thinks about it.
01:04:38.000Well, there's also a thing that happens where you get eyewitness accounts that are all fucked up.
01:04:42.000And one of the reasons why eyewitness accounts that are fucked up is because when people experience a traumatic incident, their memory is very confused.
01:04:51.000You are working with a part of your brain that's like this reptilian part of your brain that's like completely freaked out that something horrible happened.
01:08:20.000And they got to come in with it really quick because because it's got to get in here.
01:08:25.000Before anything else, it's got to, you know, so nobody listens to, if there was like a thing where you need to take a day after his speech, you have to read it, you have to watch it, and discuss it with the staff, and then make a decision, make a speech, you know, an opinion,
01:08:41.000the opinion would be like, he's got points and blah, you know what I mean?
01:08:45.000It would definitely be, and it would move the ball forward, and it would get people to hear each other more.
01:09:20.000But if they don't say that, you're not going to pay attention, and then they're going to lose out on that Pfizer dollars that's going to come during the outbreak.
01:09:26.000If you say what you really think, it would be like, well, we'll see.
01:10:49.000And it's because people are tired of it.
01:10:51.000It's a shitty format and in comparison to long-form discussions like independent interview shows like you know there's so many different political shows now and podcasts where people have nuanced perspectives and if you really want to understand what's going on in the world like Complicated issues like the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
01:11:11.000You need people to break it down to you and they're not going to get it in five minutes.
01:11:16.000You're going to get, they hate us for our freedom.
01:11:19.000That's what you're going to get in five minutes.
01:11:20.000You're going to get nonsense talking points.
01:11:22.000Now, I remember when I grew up, Walter Cronkite was still on the air somewhere.
01:11:32.000Was when Apollo and Soyuz, the Russian and the American capsule, docked in mid-space.
01:11:40.000There was something where they were both up there once and they ran into each other and saw each other from the window and kind of got close and thought, hey, what if we could meet?
01:11:49.000So they went back and they fashioned a dock.
01:11:53.000This is like in the early 70s or mid-70s.
01:11:56.000And they went up and they docked and then they hung out and drank vodka.
01:12:09.000But Walter Cronkite saying, if you live in the northeast of the United States, if you go outside tonight, if you look up, you'll see a red light and a white light blinking next to each other, and that's them in orbit.
01:12:21.000And I went up and I fucking saw it, and it just blew my mind.
01:12:25.000And the way he said it with a little bit of a smirk, like, isn't that cool?
01:12:44.000They had ethics, that it took years of training in college and school to get through, and a system of a hierarchy of whatever, internships.
01:12:54.000That by the time you were running the network news, you were a serious person that took it seriously.
01:13:02.000And I remember maybe in the mid-80s when I started to hear this sound from the news.
01:16:57.000No, it wasn't that far after, but it was interesting.
01:16:59.000It was like we were kind of adults now, and we hung out a little bit, but then we went on a little road trip together, and she was so annoying.
01:17:08.000She was so annoying that I faked that I had—my friend called me up, and I faked that I forgot to take him somewhere so I could get rid of her.
01:19:26.000So all day long, this is what my day was.
01:19:29.000I'd wake up whenever, I'd go to the gym, I'd get a workout in, and then I would go to the pool hall.
01:19:33.000And I would go to the pool hall in the afternoon, and I'd hang out with the guys, we'd play pool, we'd talk shit, we'd have some lunch or whatever, and then I'd go do shows.
01:19:41.000So I'd do shows at night, and then I'd come back to the pool hall at midnight, 1 o'clock in the morning, and it would be packed.
01:19:47.000And those fucking animals would be in there gambling and talking shit and doing drugs.
01:19:51.000And they would stay up till 5, 6 o'clock in the morning.
01:19:54.000And then we would go to the Star Diner in Mount Vernon, New York.
01:21:09.000And then me and like Kevin Brennan and Dave Attell and a guy named Dan Vitale who just passed away and a few other guys used to go to the diner on the Westway Diner on Ninth Avenue.
01:22:26.000It was enough to pay my rent in New York City.
01:22:29.000And at the time, I liked New York City a little more than I do now because there was more cool stuff like bookstores and Tower Records and there was more movie theaters.
01:22:38.000There was more off-the-wall culture and strange stuff to see.
01:23:10.000Like, there are some times I'd hear people talk on your show and other shows saying, like, this city, New York City is dead and it's dangerous.
01:23:48.000Yeah, paying cash, and the guy gives you a little piece of pastrami while you're waiting, and you tip him, and then you take these fat chunks of pastrami on rye back to you, and a big pickle.
01:26:16.000And so he got banned from television forever.
01:26:18.000Yeah, because I went to the Museum of Broadcasting or whatever it is in New York where they have all the archives because I wanted to see that tape because I read his description of it.
01:27:00.000Like, he just sort of, like, flashed fingers around because Ed Sullivan was showing him, like, making finger signs in him that he didn't understand.
01:27:06.000He wasn't told that Ed Sullivan would give him a two-minute signal.
01:28:00.000Well, I think they have to do that so that some, like, you know, like you have, you can't just own someone's stuff, but if you do commentary over it, and then you play it, yeah, then they can't give you a copyright strike on it.
01:30:10.000If you go back to those days when there was only one or two, you know, you had like Jack Parr, you had Ed Sullivan, you know, there was only one or two guys that was in control of like the gateway to show business in a lot of ways.
01:30:26.000Like Johnny Carson was like that in a lot of ways.
01:31:07.000We're all in a good mood tonight because that's important for a young comedian who's making his very first appearance on The Tonight Show.
01:31:12.000And Richard's going to be seen this September on the annual Young Comedian Special on HBO. And he'll be performing in New York City at Caroline's at the Seaport.
01:33:33.000You're sitting there with one sweat sock and a burrito watching a shark that only kills one family out of an entire ocean full of perfectly edible people for no reason that we ever explain and you won't turn it off because you think it's going to get dead.
01:34:33.000Wouldn't an apartment building be sufficient protection from the average shark?
01:34:36.000I mean, even if he's a really ambitious shark, right?
01:34:39.000Let's say, by the time he gets to the apartment building, parks in a guest spot, explains himself to the doorman, come up in the elevator, you would most likely smell fish and run.
01:34:48.000No, the brother is leaving town altogether.
01:37:49.000When I was getting ready for this tour, I was at the Cellar a bunch, and that's where I usually build this stuff, and I was struggling a lot of sets, because the Cellar has become Very trendy.
01:38:04.000There's a lot of cooler people that go there, like nicely dressed young people go to the cellar.
01:40:14.000So Larry Norton killed, and then Hicks went on after him, and Hicks is fucking existential angst, and smoking cigarettes, and cancer, and this and that.
01:40:25.000And then the audience is just fucking leaving.
01:40:28.000And so he's doing, I don't know if you remember that bit that he does about, I think it's like the devil fucks John Davidson in the ass.
01:41:39.000Yeah, he goes, do you want your grandmother to die alone in a room of strangers with her veins fading into dust, or do you want her to meet Chuck Norris?
01:41:52.000And he'd do this thing of sending out this person who's half dead, and then Chuck Norris just kicks her head off.
01:43:34.000Yes, he was like, where did this come from?
01:43:38.000Totally different than any other kind of comedy.
01:43:40.000I think Steve Martin was like that, too, in a totally different tone.
01:43:43.000He was the one that excited me the most.
01:43:47.000Like, I loved Cosby and Pryor and Carlin when I was a kid, but Steve Martin was the first one where I went, you're not even doing show business.
01:44:07.000He was the first person I watched that I thought, there's other ways, because I wasn't a slick guy who can talk and then talk like this and then talk like that.
01:44:15.000And prior with this, these skills were just swim around my head.
01:44:21.000I could never do that, especially as a kid.
01:44:23.000But when I saw him, I was like, that's how I talk with my friends.
01:44:27.000That's the kind of jokes I make and that's And no rhythm to it, you know?
01:45:51.000And I think what we were talking about earlier, what you do a lot...
01:45:55.000By showing up at clubs where they don't know you're going to be there and just actually working out stuff, you really do get to figure out what's funny and what's not.
01:46:02.000Whereas I know guys who have their own crowds who never perform in front of anyone but their crowd.
01:46:12.000I mean, you could do that and your crowd might appreciate it.
01:46:15.000You could do it, but you get more out of fucking around.
01:46:19.000It's the only way to do it is to go on and do clubs and unannounced and start with zero jokes and struggle, have a bunch of bad sets, get through.
01:46:32.000Even at the cellar, people, when they recognize me, they're happy to see me.
01:46:35.000Then I'm like, well, here comes new jokes.
01:46:50.000And I usually would try opening with stuff that's not, this ain't gonna get it, this isn't gonna work probably, and get them to this level.
01:47:17.000So you do that night after night until you get 10, 20. And then after you get 20 minutes and you've done it a few times, if you have the discipline, you stop doing those jokes.
01:47:28.000And you start again with a new 20 from nothing.
01:51:26.000Yeah, I always do that when I do arenas.
01:51:28.000What I do is I get index cards and I'll actually write the bullet points for each bit and I lay them out on the coffee table in the green room.
01:51:36.000I get there early and I write all that stuff out because that way I'm good.
01:51:51.000I'm not unconfident about it, but I know that the right way to do it is to sit down and to write down these index cards and to set them out and have all the punchlines, because the fucking thing that drives me more nutty than anything is when I forget a tag.
01:53:08.000But your set from the times you've been doing it over and over again, it's kind of on tape.
01:53:13.000And when you're on stage, your brain goes and accesses it.
01:53:16.000But doing like the cards before, it loads it into the RAM. It loads it into the present moment.
01:53:23.000Because especially when you're doing big things like an arena, you get adrenaline and you start thinking about the size and then that's nowhere.
01:54:07.000And sometimes they're because I studied, but sometimes they're because I haven't been on stage in a long time, and I'm having to remember, and I go, yeah, fuck, and the feelings get a little more real.
01:54:19.000Sometimes when I do too much stand-up, I lose a touch of enthusiasm, and sometimes it's actually good to take a day or two off, and then I jump back in, and then I'm kind of excited.
01:54:30.000Yes, that's why this, like I'm doing tonight the, what do you call it?
01:55:07.000If you're not in shape, then the show is as good as your luck, right?
01:55:13.000If you have a good crowd, you'll have a good show.
01:55:15.000And if it's just a good night and things line up right, you'll have a good show.
01:55:19.000But if you leave it up to that, you're a fucking asshole.
01:55:22.000If you're in shape and you have wind and your mind gets clearer when you're in better shape and you try not to eat sugar and stuff, then no matter what, the show's going to be great.
01:55:32.000If the crowd sucks, I'm just going to have to work a lot harder.
01:55:36.000It's not up to them how good this show is.
01:55:39.000It's just I'm gonna have to put in a lot more fucking effort.
01:55:42.000So I need to be healthy enough that when they suck, I'm great.
01:55:47.000And that when they're great, it's out of the park.
01:55:51.000I remember you telling me about this back in the day where you used to run.
01:55:54.000You used to run like you're training for a fight.
01:58:29.000But if I just wait a few extra seconds and keep my—if I can discipline my heart rate and not listen to the reptile and just cool off, I might be able to get something out of this.
01:58:42.000I think that's what helps me on stage because there's a fight-or-flight moment when I do an abortion joke or something and everyone's just upset that I brought it up.
02:00:29.000Do you know how hard it is to be that person?
02:00:31.000To go on stage and talk about stuffing his nose in a girl's asshole when you're eating her pussy from behind?
02:00:36.000Yeah, and also it's just another subject, and it's a pungent subject, because sex is a pungent, and it excites people, and it scares people.
02:00:43.000What people don't like about dirty jokes, they're really hard to follow with clean jokes.
02:00:48.000If you're a fucking pussy, and you're not paying attention.
02:05:05.000But the looking cool thing is because you don't want to feel like a piece of shit, and you do, so you decide, I want to look cool, so that way I won't be a piece of shit.
02:05:52.000I didn't know and one of them is that there's some automatic laughs that you're getting and You got to be careful with that right just timing laughs Yeah, you're just getting some laughs cuz mm-hmm, you know like tags a lot of tags are just like all you're doing is spending that dollar again And they'll laugh for you and also they're nice people.
02:06:11.000Yeah, and Comedy audience automatically is a pretty nice person.
02:06:18.000Well, and also they came to sit and in this day and age of like staring into it, they put their phone down for the most part and they sit with strangers like shoulder to shoulder and they listen to a fucking person.
02:07:32.000She's got a rhythm and she's got, she's really good at it.
02:07:36.000And so there's ways that she's doing this stuff and then she's building a thing and I just find myself laughing with the people also because they're laughing.
02:07:44.000But also I just, I was honestly laughing really hard at something.
02:07:58.000There's definitely that, but there's also if you are genuinely having a good time and you're genuinely locked into these ideas, like you're not thinking about anything else.
02:08:09.000You're thinking about those ideas and that makes its way into other people's minds.
02:08:13.000Yeah, when you do, that's to me the goal.
02:08:17.000Every show, to break out of the rhythm.
02:08:20.000And try to be saying this stuff and really feeling it.
02:08:23.000Yeah, you have to be actually thinking about it in the moment.
02:10:52.000I watched him do that and I thought, that's how I feel about comedy.
02:10:54.000I'd like to have a club and be the place where new guys come in and new people and watching them and encouraging awkward comedians that aren't...
02:13:02.000Like, the inside looks fucking incredible.
02:13:04.000And the scene here is already amazing.
02:13:05.000I mean, we went, I did the Vulcan last night, and then after I did a set there, I went over to the Creek in the Cave, and then there's other rooms in town, too.
02:13:13.000And guys are hopping back and forth from room to room and doing two, three sets a night.
02:13:55.000And all these young people that come here and they do Kill Tony, that show, and so that gives them a chance to maybe get one minute and do it in front of hundreds of thousands of people on YouTube.
02:14:05.000So there's like this energy to this town.
02:14:08.000That's happening now with stand-up that's really exciting because it's a completely new scene.
02:15:05.000You can teach certain principles and you can kind of coach people in whatever their individual style is and sort of giving them some tips like maybe if you did it this way or here's the problem with that or you're taking too much time with this.
02:15:17.000Yeah, there's obvious mistakes people make and you can help them by giving them that.
02:15:54.000And she's really hard to take for a lot of, for my crowd, who are there to be offended.
02:16:01.000What I love doing, whenever Adrienne's on stage, I'm right behind her, behind the curtain, and I'm standing there where I can really hear, because she does these jokes and people go, oh!
02:16:13.000She does this thing about racism and white women are the worst and that we don't have enough serial killers because they always kill white women.
02:16:25.000And it boils down to, when you think about it, Jeffrey Dahmer did more for black people than Martin Luther King because he killed white women.
02:19:26.000But when you're fucking healthy, you've got to do whatever you can to preserve that and recognize that there's a possibility that you could get sick.
02:19:37.000Appreciate the shit out of being healthy.
02:19:40.000Well, and then with work, though, with comedy, I feel like there's this other side of the other side of the spectrum, which is that you should be willing to be very uncomfortable and very unhappy to do it right, because that's love.
02:20:36.000Well, I've had streaks where I'm like, I'm doing it all right.
02:20:40.000And I'm not doing things that I know make me feel like shit.
02:20:43.000Like eating a bunch of pizza that's just going to flood me with sugar and slow me down and give me a headache and give me a depression that I end up curing with a cigarette and then I can't move even more and then I eat more.
02:23:37.000It's just you got to know what's happening like I like drinking I do I enjoy drinking I like like fucking tipping a few back with my friends Cheers everyone cheers.
02:23:46.000I like doing a shot before I go on stage.
02:23:48.000I enjoy it Yeah, but I I know what I'm doing right I know when it comes to the morning I'm going to do everything I can to counteract that yeah sure I do everything I can with vitamins I take IV vitamins and drips and I do all kinds of shit, but I keep it working,
02:24:13.000Well, we live weird lives, too, because most people can't when we say things like, it's important to be healthy, but it's important to enjoy yourself.
02:24:20.000Most people even can't have that conversation.
02:24:23.000Like, most of the population is just...
02:24:27.000They're just dragging their bodies across broken glass and trying to like hand off just enough to their kids and then fucking collapse in a heap of cancer.
02:25:28.000So we can have these long conversations about what's the right way to think and what's the right way to live and all these many, many boutique things of here's how to feel better.
02:26:33.000What I'm saying is that it's actually part of why people are miserable is because it's a ridiculous conversation.
02:26:41.000It's not like the earth and the experience of like competing for food and oxygen and living on earth, you know, and living in society and just being a person.
02:26:53.000We've got to some altitude here where we're having some stupid conversations that are just, you know, should I do a cold plunger of sauna?
02:27:05.000It's not that like, it's not you should be ashamed because people can't afford it.
02:27:09.000I feel sorry for the guy in that conversation.
02:27:11.000It's like it's a ridiculous trying to find just the right balance because there's nothing really challenging you because you don't have any real problems and you're not on the earth.
02:27:21.000You're not standing on the earth anymore.
02:27:22.000You're in a bubble where you sort of like, maybe I'll try this and maybe I'll just do protein now and I'll do, you know what I mean?
02:27:30.000And you'll never find a balance because that's not a normal life.
02:29:08.000I think part of it is just being an old guy that I think, like, you see certain signs that the game is over because people are starting to talk about such abstract forms of life.
02:29:19.000And I can see that none of it satisfies anybody.
02:29:24.000Abstract things like having your body at the right temperature and talking about different substances going in and out and ways to, you know, and turning on oxygen in certain rooms.
02:29:35.000Well, it's just to try to enjoy it more.
02:30:09.000But there's also a thing that people do and try to- The last thing I'm doing is putting it down from like, oh, you're so lucky you can have- That's not what I mean.
02:31:24.000But my feeling is they should open it, the border, and just let them pour it, let everybody pour in, and then the answer, which is, well, then there will be all these problems.
02:32:04.000And it forces people to do cruel things to other people.
02:32:07.000There's a lot of people that die so Americans can be safe.
02:32:11.000They're just dying, you know, weddings that are drone bombed in Yemen because the guy said something that might have resulted in American insecurity.
02:32:24.000Not even like definite American deaths, but like just so we can breathe a little easier.
02:33:29.000And it's got a lot more depth to it than anybody knows here.
02:33:32.000And we're not really sharing with them because they're kind of like the other guys because we're afraid of how many of them are dying to come here to work for us for very little.
02:33:50.000Is that the more this American security, this feeling of like, you know, there's more oxygen in the air, it's not good in the end for everybody, somehow.
02:34:01.000Well, it's certainly not balanced, right?
02:37:13.000And then we start having conversations about what's the right way to say things and what's the right stuff to put in your body and what's the right position to sleep in.
02:38:48.000Well, like, a lot of the shit, you know, that we worry about, you know, these kids are growing up with the internet and TikTok, and they kind of...
02:40:53.000And there's a scene where he was a very powerful man, so this one guy keeps trying to get him a position in government, and he says to the guy, I don't think you'd be good at it, but I'll get you a job as a teacher.
02:41:06.000And he goes, why would I want to be a teacher?
02:41:08.000And he says, I think you would be a great teacher.
02:41:10.000And the guy said, but who would know it?
02:41:13.000And he said, well, God, your students, your friends, and yourself.
02:41:40.000You also got to acknowledge that you've got problems in your head and you're, everyone's selfish in ways that ends up not being good for other people.
02:42:24.000Because you know what it is, and you've experienced it, and it's been a giant part of your life, is walking out there and everybody goes crazy and cheers and like, thank you.
02:43:31.000And about halfway through, I saw this moment where the crowd was going nuts and he just put his arms out and he just went like this and he basked in it.
02:47:10.000The way it works is I say stuff that is the wrong thing to say.
02:47:14.000I hear the resistance to it, and then I work with it and work with it.
02:47:19.000And it takes a few shows for it to be a safe bit to do, but there's a few audiences that, you know, and that audience actually didn't mind it.
02:48:06.000Unless you want to make some big public apology or you want to apologize to me and tell me why you did it and what real feelings of insecurity and jealousy.
02:48:16.000But Tim Dillon put a great post on his page about what's really going on.
02:48:21.000He put a great post on his Instagram and that's when I became friends with Tim Dillon.
02:48:25.000He wrote, you're getting a bunch of people that are mediocre comedians and that are attacking him not really because of what he's saying but because he's great and because they hate the fact that he was getting any attention at all and that should be theirs and now they find some chance to move up in the social structure.
02:51:35.000I mean, that's one of the things that was interesting about the store was like you would get comedy nerds that would come and they'd go, I love how that bit's changed because I saw it and then I saw it again and I saw it again and now it's got to this point.
02:52:24.000And it was about stand-up mostly in the L.A. area.
02:52:28.000And so, like, there was one guy, his name was Sasquatch, and he would go to every show at Largo, at these kind of alternative shows, and he would do a rundown.
02:52:37.000He'd tell you who was on, he'd give you an idea what the bits were, and he'd analyze.
02:53:17.000You're going to have all sorts of different ways of looking at things and things that people disagree with and agree with and things that people like and don't like.