Actor Jeff Perla (Lost, Lord of the Rings) joins Jemele to discuss his iconic role on the hit TV show, Lost, and how he feels about the series finale. He also talks about his relationship with his wife, how he felt about the season finale, and what it was like being a part of one of the most iconic TV shows of all time. Plus, he talks about what it's like being an actor in Hollywood, and why he doesn't care about what other people think about his career. And, of course, there's a story about how he almost didn't make it to the final episode of the show. It's a good one, and it's one you don't want to miss! If you haven't checked out Lost on HBO, you should definitely do so. It's one of my favorite shows and I think it's a must-listen for every actor who's ever played a character on a show that's gone on to become a star in Hollywood. And if you're not a fan of Lost, you're in for a real life Lost fan, you'll definitely want to check out this one out. We talk about the show and how it's worth the price of admission and how good it is to be on the big screen. Plus, we talk about how much he's been paid for his time on the set of Lost and how much money he's made on the show, and the impact it has had on his life, so why he should have been cast in a movie that's better than the one he was cast in the movie he was supposed to be cast in. Also, he's a great guy and why you should be watching this episode of The Lord of The Rings and why it's the most important thing in your life. Thank you so much for coming on this episode. I really appreciate it, and I hope you enjoy it. -Jemele and I had a great time doing this, and we hope you do too! -Jeff Perla - Thank you, Jemele, Thank You, Jeff, and God bless you, God Bless You, Blessings, Cheers, and Much Love, -Amen and Much Blessings -Eugene -P.S. - E.J. & Elijah and Billy ( ) Thank You for Listening, E. & Alyssa, EJ & Elijah
00:01:29.000The real gravity of what you're doing until years later.
00:01:32.000Me and Orlando and Elijah and Billy went out for dinner a couple of weeks ago, and we sat around saying, the further away we get from Lord of the Rings, the more important it feels in our life.
00:01:42.000So when we're grandfathers and stuff, I'm sure we'd be like, yeah, we were involved in a piece of movie history.
00:01:47.000But at the time, you're just like, Great job, having fun.
00:01:50.000And that was kind of the same with Lost.
00:01:52.000Although, to be fair, with Lost, because we were isolated on an island in the show, but also in person, you know, we were all on Oahu together.
00:01:59.000We weren't, or certainly I wasn't, as exposed to the size of the show as much as when I went on hiatus and then people were...
00:02:08.000Follow me around and, you know, causing hassle and stuff.
00:02:11.000But when you're in Hawaii, there's like three restaurants to go to.
00:02:15.000If anyone follows me, I go to the library and then sit there for a couple of hours.
00:02:18.000So I wasn't really aware that it became this pop culture phenomenon, you know.
00:02:23.000And then the end, oh man, the end is like, you know, I'm on Twitter and stuff and a lot of people on Twitter...
00:02:28.000Asked me, how do you feel about the end?
00:02:30.000And in all honesty, I didn't watch it, and I've not watched it.
00:02:33.000You know, I left at the end of season three, came back in, peppered in season four, five, and six, but wasn't in the show when it ended.
00:02:42.000I mean, I was in the finale, but, you know, at that point, I'd ejected myself from that world.
00:02:47.000I was doing a movie in New York in the Lower East Side playing a completely different character, a grave robber that was working at night.
00:02:54.000I didn't want to expose myself to this Charlie character who I'd played because I felt like I was going to bring the Charlie character onto set the next day.
00:03:02.000So people are always very, very jazzed to talk to me about the ending.
00:03:45.000Yeah, I left the end of season three, which I really felt like it was kind of peaking at that point.
00:03:50.000It was the show that every late-night talk show host was talking about, or daytime, and it was in magazines, and BuzzFeed loved it and all that kind of stuff.
00:04:01.000And then I think the real bummer for the fans was that for the six years that it was on TV, the creators had said, it's not what you think it is.
00:04:25.000I mean, given the constraints, first of all, of network television, of knowing that you're going to have commercial breaks and knowing that you can't have certain language and certain things you're not going to be able to show, they did a fantastic job.
00:04:38.000I mean, it's just one of the all-time great shows, for sure.
00:04:43.000I think it will be, you know, something that people will talk about with me for the rest of my life.
00:04:48.000A lot of times, I'm sure you experience this as well, sometimes the things that you are personally close to, that you're working in and is a huge part of your life, it takes on a different aspect than just the simple...
00:06:02.000I mean, fuck, I... I got in trouble for saying this when Lost was on TV, but fuck it, I don't care about that shit.
00:06:08.000I watched certain cast members go from making the pilot, which was a six-week pilot, where everyone was hanging out with each other, we're all partying at night, we're all spending time with each other.
00:06:17.000I watched certain actors be like, this is the greatest job I have ever done.
00:06:22.000I mean, Hawaii is a tropical island, getting paid well, the cast are amazing, we're going on this journey together, to shooting like episode...
00:06:30.000Three or four of the first season and hearing people saying, I can't believe I'm not on Letterman.
00:08:27.000You have to take it in and you have to separate it from your ego and all your preconceived notions and assumptions and actually absorb it.
00:08:34.000Right, and also swallow that very bitter pill of regardless of however unfair you think it is and how it should change and be justified, and one day it will all be okay.
00:08:46.000And that's really, I mean, we're talking about one very specific endeavor, but it's analogous to life itself, because people will look at people that are doing other things in life, and they'll be upset that they're not doing those things, even though they've taken very little or no effort to try to do any of those things.
00:09:44.000You've got to navigate your way through them with a little bit of grace.
00:09:47.000It seems like those pitfalls in life are just a part of being a human being in this weird world because this world is not like any world that ever existed.
00:09:57.000There was never a million different people that you could compare yourself to that were on television or singing songs or on the internet.
00:10:04.000There's all these different people that you can look at and then you look at yourself and make these comparisons.
00:10:08.000It used to just be the people that were around you.
00:10:10.000And that's what it used to be for the entire history of the human race.
00:10:14.000It was only the people you could see with your eyes and come in contact with.
00:10:17.000Other than that, you didn't have this weird perspective.
00:10:20.000And I think it's part of what a human being is.
00:10:32.000It's why we try to get good at a career.
00:10:35.000It's like this desire to get better at things also leads you to compare your own progress against the progress of others.
00:10:42.000And that's where the pitfall comes in.
00:10:44.000Right, and obviously a lot of people in this new society that we've created with social media and instant information, a lot of those people that have become successful and famous are in those places because they are the fucking elite.
00:10:57.000So now we're comparing ourselves to the elite.
00:11:00.000Like, you could be a great basketball player, have an amazing game, come home, start watching YouTube feeds of Dwayne Wade or, you know, LeBron, and you're like, oh, I'm fucking terrible.
00:12:08.000You know, it's like the whole thing with beautiful women, you know?
00:12:09.000I mean, a lot of people, a lot of ladies, and maybe men, feel that pressure to be that perfect thing.
00:12:15.000But that perfect thing isn't necessarily real.
00:12:17.000Well, you know what's really frustrating?
00:12:19.000When you meet a girl who doesn't like her body, and you love her body, and she's comparing herself to stick figures that are like models that are wearing these weird outfits that weigh 18 pounds.
00:13:12.000You could have been one of those kids that's born in Iraq that has to deal with the aftermath of all the fucking hazardous waste that's in that area that's causing all these kids to be born with massive deformities.
00:14:26.000I mean, I remember being 12 and seeing a cover of an Ice-T album that had girls in onesie bikinis with big asses, and I was like, oh, damn.
00:15:55.000Yeah, what genetics but again like Obviously, it's a lot of his girls doing squats and girls concentrating on that area and developing their butt But I just it's weird to me that that wasn't a big deal in the 70s and the 80s and whatever and then somewhere along the line hip-hop community sort of Ignited what seems to be a fundamental attraction that men have right also like you know I think?
00:16:41.000I'm gonna be with these little waifish, you know, girls, because I was a little kid at the time, and then later on, I don't know, there's a fantasy element to it, right?
00:16:52.000Well, for girls, though, the look of a man being like a big, muscular, like The Rock or something like that, that's always existed.
00:17:00.000Like Conan the Barbarian, you know, that's always been around.
00:17:02.000You go back to the Robert E. Howard illustrations that Frank Fazetta did, like way back in the 70s, this fucking yoked out giant barbarian.
00:17:30.000I mean, I, you know, I appreciate a lady that kind of takes care of herself simply because I feel as if I need to, you know?
00:17:41.000I'm not the biggest dude in the world, but I go to the gym when I'm free because it gets me out of the house.
00:17:46.000And also I like to try and go to the gym Monday to Friday so that my Saturday, Sunday I can do whatever I want.
00:17:52.000And I eat relatively correctly so that on the weekend if I want to chow down some food that's a little naughty, it's not going to make a huge difference.
00:17:59.000If I'm doing that, I would like to be with someone who has the same common sense about...
00:18:07.000Their body and the way that they look.
00:18:10.000It's a bit of an issue for me because I love pizza and I like buffalo wings and I could easily eat all that stuff and get much bigger, but I'm aware of the fact that it's not healthy for you.
00:18:21.000You shouldn't necessarily be doing that.
00:18:22.000To your body, putting it under that much stress.
00:18:24.000But also, I want to feel and look and present myself good because I want to feel good about myself.
00:18:32.000And the issue with people just kind of abusing themselves in that way says something a little sinister about how they personally feel about themselves.
00:18:56.000But it's also weirdly natural for people to abuse themselves, to get caught in that cycle of overeating and then feeling shitty because you're overeating.
00:19:05.000And that's a very common cycle for people to get trapped in.
00:19:08.000And I really wonder what the mechanism of that is.
00:19:11.000Like, what's the evolutionary advantage to having that in the human species?
00:20:53.000Generally, in the mornings, I either eat fruit or I drink a kale shake, you know, one of those blended up shakes with kale and celery and cucumber and garlic and all that jazz.
00:21:04.000And then, you know, in the afternoon, it depends.
00:21:06.000But if I feel like having a cheeseburger, I'll have a fucking cheeseburger, too.
00:21:10.000Yeah, well, you've earned it, you know.
00:21:12.000Like, I'm lucky enough to travel nine months of my year pretty intensively, you know, A week in a place, 10 days in a place, a week in a place, 10 days in a place.
00:21:23.000Because of that, lots of long distance flying.
00:21:26.000I have no semblance of a schedule in terms of food.
00:21:30.000So I lose weight based on those factors and also the fact that my metabolism is very high running.
00:22:02.000A pleasurable thing that you just got to get in your mouth?
00:22:03.000Just get it down because my mom and dad told me.
00:22:05.000I mean, I was obsessed by football, soccer when I was a kid.
00:22:09.000I would get up in the morning, run out of my house when I was going to school, run out of my house before breakfast, no breakfast, get to school, play football for an hour before nine o'clock.
00:22:17.000So from eight till nine, I'd play football with my friends.
00:22:32.000First thing that I would put in my mouth, pretty much all the time, certainly more than average in school, like I would say 65% of the time, would be candy on the way home.
00:22:41.000LAUGHTER So I'd walk into the convenience store, buy one pounds worth of candy.
00:25:22.000It's about getting a good groove going, right?
00:25:25.000It's about just getting a good habit going where this is what you do.
00:25:28.000They say that if you could do something every day for 90 days, then it'll become like a part of you.
00:25:33.000They say that that's like one of the best ways to quit smoking is if you can get addicted to something else and get used to doing that every day.
00:25:53.000Yeah, my biceps are going off right there.
00:25:55.000Was there any hesitation at all in being sequestered on this island like that and being a part of this crazy show where you had to change your whole life?
00:26:14.000You meet brilliant guys every so often and I think anytime you're around someone who's brilliant, you have to sit up and take notes.
00:26:23.000And I just was aware that I was around someone with a very fast-moving, smart mind.
00:26:31.000And I went in for a general audition and sat down with J.J. and his partner, Brian Burke, and we just talked about English comedy for like 45 minutes.
00:26:41.000Talked about Monty Python and Eddie Izzard and The Goons and The Goodies and Derek and Clive.
00:27:00.000Then they got back in touch with him and said, we love Dom.
00:27:03.000They had this character of Charlie, who at the time was this 55-year-old rocker, like a Robert Plant guy at the time, that had been through all of it and was in the tail end of his career and got stuck on the island.
00:27:18.000And they reworked it, and when JJ and I sat down, I was like, what is more frustrating for that artist to have the barest glimpse of fame?
00:30:07.000Lots of times you have to be in booties.
00:30:08.000There were times when it was so cold I would come out of the water that I'd have to use two hands to unlock my car door because I couldn't use one hand.
00:30:16.000It had frozen, you know, so I'd have to go...
00:30:18.000Meanwhile, you move to Hawaii, board shorts, you don't have to wear a t-shirt.
00:31:00.000He was like, yeah, we're going to go to the North Shore now.
00:31:02.000So I came with him, hung out, and we became really tight.
00:31:06.000So a huge story for Hawaii, for me, was getting to know Kalani.
00:31:11.000I mean, he took me into waves that I had no business being involved in.
00:31:15.000There's a place called Goat Island on the North Shore.
00:31:17.000Which is a heavy wave and you have to paddle out to an island, walk across the island because then you're going to miss the break and then paddle out past the break.
00:31:25.000There's no concept of you paddling out through the break because it's so big.
00:31:29.000So I was with Kalani and a few of his mates and we were all getting ready and he came over to me.
00:31:33.000He was like, okay, this is the most hectic wave I'm ever going to take you into.
00:32:27.000I'm just going to wipe out, take a big breath, and paddle out.
00:32:31.000So I wipe out, I go under, come up, and as is usually the case with if you're surfing anything above overhead, when you come up, that wave's coming for you again.
00:32:40.000So what you have to do is take a huge breath, go under, and it's the next time you come up that you can make progress.
00:32:45.000Because you're out of breath, you're disoriented.
00:32:47.000I do that and I, Joe, I just can't, I can never catch a break.
00:32:51.000So I go under, thrown around by the washing machine, come up, I think, okay, get on your board, start paddling, look, waves right there.
00:32:56.000I'm like, go under again, hold my breath, come up again, and I'm trying to time it so that I can get it.
00:33:01.000I'm just getting pounded, pounded, pounded, pounded.
00:33:04.000And at one point, I see Kalani paddling over to me.
00:33:07.000I'm like, all right, cool, we're going to be okay.
00:33:09.000So Kalani comes over to me and he's like mad.
00:33:11.000Like I've never really heard him be mad before.
00:33:13.000He's like, dude, get on your board and go that way.
00:33:15.000I'm like, okay, that's what I've been trying to do for like 10 minutes.
00:33:35.000So when we come in, He's like, the reason why I came in to get you was not only were you in the drop zone, but you were like completely lacking of any color on your face.
00:33:44.000And he was like, people in the lineup were saying, dude, go get your boy because he's in trouble.
00:34:05.000He's like, if you're under the water and you're rolling around and you're fucked and you need to take a breath, drink the tiniest amount of seawater.
00:35:06.000Like you're doing this thing right now on Instagram with The Rock where he's fucking lifting up kettlebells and you're lifting up kettlebells.
00:35:16.000You know, and we share, you know, we have friends and he's going to We do the podcast eventually we're working on because one of the companies that he's involved with is Roots of Fight, this company that does all these old fight poster t-shirts.
00:36:16.000Yeah, they have a lot of really cool, old-school, different, like, fight posters from, like, Muhammad Ali versus Joe Frazier, Thrilling Manila, like that kind of shit.
00:36:26.000Like, he's, you know, if I were to see a guy that big on the street like that...
00:36:30.000It would be kind of freakish, but for some reason The Rock pulls it off.
00:37:48.000Work ethic and it's very often the same, the routine of going into the studio and going in the writers room and Breaking jokes and doing the monologue and all that kind of stuff.
00:37:57.000It's the same every day, but he's still motivated to do it.
00:38:00.000And he's brilliant, and he knows what's funny, and he knows what a joke is.
00:38:03.000And I don't know, all the late-night talk show hosts that I've had the opportunity to meet, I've always thought, there's something brilliant about you, you know?
00:38:13.000There's something brilliant about working in that medium, you know?
00:38:19.000Current and edgy and what they're doing at times can be a little risky and dangerous and stuff, but they're willing to get up the next day and do it again and get up the next day and not get pounded down in the same way that other people...
00:38:55.000And you need new jokes, and you need new sketches, and you need new gags to pull off, and you have new guests to review and to go over what they're talking about.
00:39:04.000And he's done a lot of jumping up, Jimmy, in a way that I really respect.
00:39:08.000Like, I did his show a long time ago, maybe 12 years ago, and at that point, you know, his hair's different, he's a little bigger, they've not quite got his suits to fit yet, the whole facade of the show, you know, was being worked on.
00:39:22.000But Jimmy, I think his drive and maybe the drive of the people that he surrounds himself with, you know, he jumped up when he did the Matt Damon thing.
00:39:29.000He jumped up when he interviewed Obama.
00:39:31.000He jumped up when he, you know, sorted out his hair and, you know, kind of dropped a few pounds and sorted out his suit.
00:40:33.000I don't think she's she's competed in jujitsu tournaments, but she's a madman mad woman rather and He's doing it now as well.
00:40:41.000He's doing jujitsu now But the point being that he's a guy that doesn't feel like he if he's home for a week or two He's like I gotta get the fuck out of here.
00:40:49.000He just constantly wants to go to Libya or Africa or China just what he just wants to experience it at all and his work is Going to places and experiencing these completely different worlds.
00:41:06.000So he's got a totally unique way of being ambitious.
00:41:11.000Very different than like a talk show host would show up in the same writer's room and drink the coffee and bang up the jokes.
00:41:18.000And he's just as ambitious, but his ambition is to go to Moscow and try their food and talk to their people.
00:41:24.000Yeah, and he also, I don't know him at all, I think he's fantastic.
00:41:28.000I read Kitchen Confidential years ago when it first came out, and I thought, wow, this guy's insane, and then obviously he blew up on TV. He also has a through line of an addict in his work.
00:41:41.000I think when you meet a lot of ex-addicts, or even addicts, they have that thing that they're doing which completely takes hold of their life, which is stopping them from doing it.
00:42:37.000I think it's a very, very personal thing.
00:42:38.000I was lucky enough to come from a family background that was very...
00:42:45.000Consistent and there, you know, my parents have been married for 42 years.
00:42:50.000I always came back to a household where dinner was on the table, regardless if I ate it or not.
00:42:56.000You know, a foundation of something that I think made me feel secure.
00:43:02.000Got interested, was always interested in music, got interested in the Beatles when I was about 12, 13. Started reading up about them and read that Rubber Soul and Sgt. Pepper's and The White Album were very much influenced by drugs and thought,
00:43:18.000oh, that's interesting because I feel artistic and I'd like to see if I can make that artistic flower bloom a little bit.
00:43:26.000And at that point, me and three other Beatles fans at my school started to seek out marijuana, which we ended up getting a hold of and did that atypical thing when your kids were You know, you all smoke a joint in two and a half minutes and everyone feels lightheaded and one of them pukes and then you get nervous and paranoid and you run off and you think you're never going to do it again and then you do it again and then you do it again and at one point you're like,
00:44:25.000Put them in a cigarette box that someone had given to me.
00:44:27.000And I would just walk around the house just smoking joints like I'm smoking cigarettes.
00:44:31.000And my brother, who's only 16 months older than me, sat me down at one point in that trip and he was like, I've never seen anyone smoke as much weed as you.
00:44:56.00018 months in LA having not worked, exposing myself to LA for the first time, and not necessarily on the biggest party scene, but certainly on a bit of a party scene, hanging out with the wrong people, the wrong women.
00:45:11.000And I think G.A.J.'s perceptive enough to probably see when I came into a meeting, like, He's a bit rough around the edges.
00:45:31.000It's a cautionary tale, I think, Drugs, and I'm really careful about it.
00:45:37.000I'm aware that there are young people who might follow me on Twitter or might follow me on Instagram that That would think, oh, well, if he's done it, it's okay, and I don't subscribe to that at all.
00:45:49.000I think you have to have your own journey and you have to have your own experiences, but the abuse of drugs has never been something that's been in my life.
00:45:57.000The usage of drugs has been something that I've done.
00:46:00.000More often than not, if I'm partaking in some sort of drug, I have a notebook and a pen close enough by me so that if I feel like I'm inventing the future, I can write it down, and in the morning when I wake up, I can be like, oh, there's a positive element of...
00:48:48.000Watching a movie that you really like, listening to a new album, I mean, dude, like, I still am in love with the band Sigurås, you know Sigurås?
00:49:07.000Wait, S-I-G-U-R, and then a separate word, R-O-S. So it's Sigurås, U-R, separate word, R-O-S. Their first album has an alien fetus on the front cover.
00:50:38.000As I look over at Jamie, Jamie's got a fat hard drive filled with fappening content.
00:50:45.000But like, if I really like a film and I watch it, if it's streaming, if I'm watching it on Netflix, if I really like that film, guaranteed I'm going to buy it.
00:50:52.000I'm going to go buy it on DVD because I want the actual article.
00:50:55.000I want it in my house and the same with music.
00:50:59.000If I like an album, I'm going to go buy that CD. And I don't want that medium to die, you know?
00:51:06.000I was at the bookstore the other day with my mother-in-law and she was talking about Zeppelin, House of the Holy was there and they're selling like these new vinyl versions of Houses of the Holy and like Barnes and Noble and Thousand Oaks.
00:51:21.000They have all these fucking, these albums.
00:51:25.000These are 1960s, 1970s albums, and people are buying records and turntables, and they're getting into the actual physical medium again, opening it up, and it's cool.
00:51:37.000Yeah, I think the vinyl culture is really fantastic, and that is great that the vinyl thing kind of came back around again.
00:51:45.000Those select artists that make their way onto vinyl, your Jimi Hendrix's, your Elvis's, your Led Zeppelin's, your Beatles, they'll always be around.
00:51:53.000But the smaller ones, they're going to be like, well, he's not big enough to go on vinyl, so let's just put him on digital.
00:51:58.000Someone's going to want him, we'll put him on digital and that's it.
00:52:00.000It makes me sad that there are albums that I own that if I break that CD, it's going to be very difficult for me to get it unless I pay $69.99 on eBay and then I get a copy that's been previously used.
00:52:34.000That, to me, is one of the most fascinating, I say, you could say scandals, tragedies, horrific crimes, whatever it is, whatever you want to call it, but that that guy turned out to be a rapist, and not just a rapist,
00:52:51.000but a guy who would drug people and fuck them while they're unconscious.
00:53:55.000It's just, that was how we listened to comedy.
00:53:59.000We would all sit around, and we'd put headphones on, and we would all sit around and listen to this, you know, whether it's Cheech and Chong, or we got a hold of some old George Carlin back then.
00:55:13.000I got to see Hicks live when I was an open-miker, which was a great, great, great chance to see one of the all-time greats in the beginning of my career.
00:55:41.000You know, it wasn't going, but the comics were laughing hard.
00:55:45.000We were laughing hard, and a few people were laughing hard.
00:55:48.000And then there's a few people in the audience that was trying to figure out what everybody was laughing at that stuck around and tried to see if, like, am I missing out on something cool here?
00:56:43.000And Lennon gets angry about the fact that he's a genius and he's having to perform like a clown in front of these fucking retards that don't get it.
00:57:16.000So they were going to go see a guy who was a funny comedian.
00:57:19.000And they had seen him on the Rodney Dangerfield Comic special on HBO, and he only did like seven minutes on that or whatever the hell it was, whatever they would do.
00:57:28.000It was a very small, short, funny set, but it was funny, a bunch of jokes.
00:57:32.000And so people went to see him a lot based on that, and they went to see him.
00:57:37.000They're like, what the fuck is all this?
00:57:39.000He hadn't really found that audience yet, and then he died, unfortunately.
00:58:15.000But, again, he was a guy that, like, if he found his audience, if, like, they knew where to go, you know, like, today, if he was alive today, my God, he would have just a fucking monster following.
01:01:06.000It's super brave and I think a lot of people don't necessarily know the mechanics of how a comedian found himself being on stage with a microphone.
01:01:18.000And if anyone did know that, people would shut the fuck up and laugh or just politely leave.
01:01:23.000Because the disrespect shown by hecklers to stand up comedians where you're like, do you have any idea how ballsy it is to get up on stage and show your ass like that all the time?
01:04:21.000Really bizarre entitled thing where they're entitled to their opinions and they feel like this is something that they're allowed to, you know, they're allowed to voice their disproval about and you should stop.
01:04:32.000I had a woman yell out next subject once to me.
01:04:46.000When they first started mapping out the human genome, there was these people that wanted to get DNA from the Shroud of Turin, and they wanted to try to clone Jesus.
01:04:56.000And they thought that if they cloned Jesus, they'd bring him back, and that would be how Jesus would return.
01:05:44.000It might just be in her very narrow view of the world, like Down Syndrome is an unacceptable subject, or religious, anything religious.
01:05:53.000Like, I've heard people say, well, hey, man, as long as you don't talk about politics or religion, like, that's ridiculous.
01:05:59.000Those are two things you should absolutely fucking talk about every chance you get, because one of the reasons why both of those dumb, retarded fucking things are still around in the same state they've always been around is because dummies like you don't talk about it.
01:06:11.000Because you've locked it in this ideology box and tucked it away somewhere where you just talk about the Lakers and the fucking lawn and how long you think this drought's gonna last.
01:06:19.000You don't want to talk about the fact that you're getting fucked and that you're being surrounded by children who believe in magic.
01:06:36.000It might not be funny, but even, like, Patrice O'Neill, the late, great Patrice O'Neill, had a really good point once where he was like, if someone goes on stage and offends you, they say something offends you, or if someone goes on stage and makes you laugh, Both of those things come from the same place.
01:06:53.000They're both trying to make you laugh, but it doesn't always work.
01:06:57.000The ideas that eventually become great bits, there's been nights...
01:07:02.000I had some bits that eventually became closing bits, like bits that I had to close on because I couldn't follow them.
01:07:44.000You're missing the whole entire point of stand-up and you can't be here because you're a part as an audience member Every audience member is not just there.
01:07:52.000You're not just seeing a show when you see stand-up You're in part of the creative process because the bits come alive in front of the crowd they evolve and change in front of the crowd and That's how they become something that eventually gets on television and becomes a special until that until it happens you You're in as much as the comic is.
01:08:33.000You know, I prefer stand-ups who don't have any restrictions.
01:08:37.000I don't like stand-ups that, you know, only, they don't use any swear words, they don't talk about sex, they don't talk about anything profound, everything is like real simple, straight across like losing socks in the dryer type shit.
01:09:45.000It's one of the funniest bits I've ever seen in my life to a point where I'm holding my body to keep everything from breaking, from laughing too hard.
01:09:57.000The thing, I totally hear you in terms of the limitations that Seinfeld gives himself that no profanity doesn't necessarily tell you a huge amount about himself.
01:10:30.000I also love the freeform element of...
01:10:32.000You know, what Hicks was doing, just anger coming at you, or Eddie Izzard is very kind of like just school of thought coming all over the place.
01:10:39.000The thing that I love about Seinfeld might be the limitations that he gives himself, but also that idea of the choices that I'm making, I've made specifically for...
01:10:51.000For this joke to work as correctly as I think.
01:10:54.000And he's a professor of comedy, right?
01:11:34.000I mean, he's a master at economy of words, that's for sure.
01:11:38.000There's definitely a rhythm to learning, like, when, you know, when to leave words in, when to add more words, when to have a pause, when to have no pause, and there's an art to that sort of creation of the bits.
01:11:58.000And, you know, she can be a little frisky and a little naughty, but obviously that's very disarming when, you know, you're kind of an attractive lady to get up and do that stuff.
01:12:25.000Some would argue that female comics are judged on a curve and that the best comics, if you look at the best female comics that are alive today and compare them just bit for bit for the best male comics, you wouldn't really have them in the same category.
01:12:44.000I mean, it's weird, like, I don't like seeing, you know, even though I said Joey Diaz is the best in the world, because I think he just makes me laugh the hardest, because that's like my style of comedy.
01:12:54.000I love that crazy, chaotic style, but I don't, just take Joey out of the equation, I don't think there's a best, but I've seen Sarah.
01:13:02.000Sarah was at the store two weeks ago, and she was fucking fantastic, just smashing, just fantastic.
01:13:18.000It's all about, you know, if they're in their groove, if they're, you know, and they're always recycling material.
01:13:24.000So you catch them two years from now, it's going to be a totally different set, a totally different point of view, totally different place in their life, totally different perspective.
01:13:31.000And I think, you know, as far as personal taste, it kind of ebbs and flows depending on where that person is at any point in their life.
01:13:55.000He had a fucked up leather jacket, shaved his head, looked kind of like a little bit of a G. And his material was just excellent, you know.
01:15:35.000And he skips over to Michael Palin, slaps him in the face a couple of times, skips back.
01:15:41.000Skips over to Michael Palin, slaps him in the face a couple of times with these fish, skips back.
01:15:44.000And then the other guy, and then he's finished, and he stands still, and the other guy pulls out a fucking huge trout and just takes him out and throws him in the canal.
01:15:51.000It's like completely silence, done to music.
01:16:24.000So what she would do, so she worked out of her house, which was also her office.
01:16:28.000She would leave the back door open, but she would lock the bathroom from the inside.
01:16:34.000So at nighttime, I could go, open the back door, go use the bathroom, but I couldn't enter the house because it had been locked from the inside.
01:17:08.000And then it started to kind of shift around a little bit.
01:17:11.000So when you came over, you were just known as an actor?
01:17:14.000Yeah, I had done a couple of TV shows in England, a little bit of theatre in England, started to do some English films, and was doing a TV show in France for England when I got the role on Lord of the Rings.
01:17:33.000And as we're coming towards the end of Principal Photography, which is almost two years, the on-set publicist, there's a lady called Claire Raskind, I think she's married now, so she has a different name, she said to me, what are you going to do after this?
01:17:47.000What are you going to do when we wrap in December?
01:17:49.000I was like, I don't know, go back to Manchester, wait for it to come out a year later.
01:17:54.000And she said, if I was you, I'd go to LA, get a jump on this.
01:17:58.000Like, go take some meetings, get a manager, get an agent.
01:19:31.000Or, you know, the cat's got up the tree and can't get the cat down and then they call the fire brigade and the fire brigade turn up and one of the people who's in the fire brigade happens to be the ex-lover of the person who's got the cat and they get together and they go have a pint together and it's very...
01:19:45.000It's very northern, but it's a little, I think, derogatory towards London people because it paints them to be two-dimensional, you know, they all wear flat caps and...
01:19:54.000Oh, I love football, me, and a bit simple, and I don't really know what I'm talking about.
01:20:10.000So I came to L.A. and still am really good friends with Elijah Wood.
01:20:16.000So I hung out with Elijah for probably a month or so, just hanging out, go to Disneyland, go to Magic Mountain, doing our thing, men's Chinese theatre.
01:20:24.000Like, when I was growing up, the whole put your hands in the Clark Gable hand thing or see how small Betty Grable's feet were, that's a huge deal for me.
01:20:34.000And then moved to my manager's place and, you know, just kind of got fucked up for a year.
01:20:42.000And then got my shit together and started going to the gym and started feeling a little bit better about stuff and had a couple of auditions that I got close on and then ended up getting an audition for Lost.
01:21:56.000I, you know, I was dumb enough to assume that New Zealand would have the weather that Australia has because it's close to it on the map, but it's actually not close to it geographically.
01:22:03.000It's a long way away and certainly much more southern geographically than Australia.
01:22:07.000So it kind of has English weather, sunny days, but generally, you know, showers and wind.
01:22:12.000They call it windy Wellington because, you know, every year some old woman will get blown down on the street and, you know, it'll be a huge issue.
01:22:18.000It's a very safe country in terms of going out and doing your thing.
01:22:58.000So he wants to keep all of his movies on the island of New Zealand, on the islands of New Zealand, because it brings a lot of industry in there.
01:23:05.000I don't think he would have done it if he knew it was outside of his wheelhouse, but there's nowhere else to make God, the fucking scenery is so spectacular.
01:23:47.000And then over the course of a few more million years, they then lost the ability to fly because they didn't need it because they're natural predators.
01:23:53.000So you have all these flightless birds walking around doing their thing, then they accidentally bring in things like possums and rats and stuff and cats.
01:24:01.000And these animals can't believe their luck.
01:24:02.000They're like, there's all these flightless birds, they can't even climb a tree.
01:24:10.000I mean, the Kakapo is a parrot, one of the largest parrots in the world.
01:24:13.000The male will build a little depression in a U-shaped valley, so he'll have an amplifier, which will be a U-shaped valley.
01:24:21.000In that U-shaped valley, he'll build a depression, and he'll sit in that depression and make a deep, guttural, bass-like noise for his female to hear him.
01:24:30.000And the female will walk over, but it takes place over the course of a few days.
01:24:59.000Because rabbits had gotten to Australia and they just bred like a motherfucker and spread across the entire country and along the way they had to figure out how to mitigate the issue of these rabbits and the overpopulation so they brought in foxes and then the foxes got out of control and then they brought in feral cats.
01:25:17.000So feral cats and foxes are like one of the biggest issues in all of Australia.
01:25:21.000They just have an overwhelming amount of them and they still haven't put a dent in the rabbit population.
01:25:41.000But they brought in an animal to bring down the populations of another animal, but that animal is diurnal and the other animal is nocturnal, so they never fucking meet each other.
01:26:17.000I mean, as a species, you know, we are a mess and we're breeding out of control.
01:26:25.000And for some reason, we place a huge amount of importance on human life because our brains are developed to the point where we think that we're...
01:26:33.000Special, but if you were to take humans off this planet and have a look at it in 200 years, it would be a vibrantly green, blue planet living in balance with itself.
01:26:44.000Right, but you wouldn't want to live there.
01:26:47.000You wouldn't be able to talk to anybody.
01:27:13.000You know, I'm lucky enough to do this show and every so often we find ourselves in the real wilderness where you've taken a car to a river and a river to a boat and then walked to someone else and then taken another boat for three hours down river and you're heading to this forest jungle-like location and I'll see humans on the river's edge fishing or playing.
01:27:35.000Kids, little six-, seven-, eight-year-old kids, and I think...
01:27:39.000Those fuckers know so much that we'll never know.
01:28:05.000I have a lot of respect for him and Steph Curry is an amazing basketball player.
01:28:09.000They can't contend with the ability that these children have, these indigo children.
01:28:13.000Right, but much like your agent told you back in the day, they live different lives.
01:28:18.000You can't compare LeBron to them, and if you put Kobe Bryant on that island, he would probably starve to death.
01:28:27.000But if you put them on the court with him, they wouldn't score a single point.
01:28:30.000It's like we're all in these different paths.
01:28:33.000Yes, horses for courses, but my retort to that would be, You know, the correct way to live on this planet would be the way that they're doing it, not the way Kobe's doing it.
01:28:46.000But in terms of excess, and I'm part of this, in terms of the excess of, let's say, Los Angeles, the waste, the portion size, the pollution, the traffic, We're not getting it right.
01:29:50.000It's about moving from being a human species that made some mistakes and realised the limitations of our planet to living as a human species that has the potential to go forward into our future.
01:30:04.000At the moment, there is no future for human beings.
01:30:40.000I think that what we're doing is definitely tragic, if you look at the consequences that human society has on the environment itself.
01:30:47.000But if you look at the potential that human minds and human creativity and ingenuity have, and you look at what we've been able to accomplish with Raw materials and what we've been able to build in this incredible world.
01:31:00.000Just the ability to do this kind of a show where you're broadcasting something.
01:31:03.000Right now it's flying through the air into people's phones.
01:31:06.000There's people in their car that are listening to this in real time.
01:31:11.000I just think that what we need to do is put some of that ingenuity on figuring out how to be more renewable and figure out a way to be more sustainable.
01:31:20.000But I don't think that's outside of the realm of possibility by any stretch of the imagination.
01:31:24.000I just think it's hard because people live in the moment and they don't feel the consequences of their actions until they're too late.
01:31:32.000And I think that's an issue, that people have to recognize the consequences Globally of the human race and what this thirst for innovation and expansion and overpopulation, what is the impact on it?
01:31:45.000But there's been a lot of talk and a lot of thought and a lot of planning and preparing for an eventual world where we don't have waste.
01:31:56.000I think even the concept of waste is just about not thinking things all the way through.
01:32:02.000And that a lot of what is waste is really just an alternate source of energy that needs to figure out how to be used.
01:32:10.000Or we need to figure out how to use it.
01:32:58.000And, you know, there have been some incredibly profound leaps in technology with some very, very smart people on this planet and we are doing the best that we can do.
01:33:07.000I would argue that all of those technological breakthroughs and all of those concepts that we have and all of those ways that we can talk about being impressive as a species...
01:33:17.000Because we can't avoid it, comes from a very human angle.
01:33:21.000We're looking at it in a human conundrum because we're in our brain.
01:33:24.000We're saying, well, that's fine, you know, humans can be dicks, but think about what we've done.
01:33:29.000We went to the fucking moon and, you know, we know what the dark side of Mars looks like and we put robots on Mars and we can create music that was made in an orchestra based on scratches in a record groove.
01:36:15.000I don't necessarily think that the universe has a bias one way or the other.
01:36:18.000If we were to play around with the idea of the universe sitting down with a pad and a piece of paper and they drew a line down it and they went ants on one side, humans on the other side, and they weighed up the pros and cons, ants win every time.
01:37:17.000I mean, ultimately, I don't know if the universe is an entity that really contemplates these issues.
01:37:22.000I mean, if you really were examining the life of human beings in comparison to the life of everything else on this planet, you would have to assume, first of all, that there's just so much inspiring potential for creativity that comes out of this one weird monkey that makes mouth noises and expresses itself through facial expressions and written language.
01:37:45.000This is a very, very bizarre And I would say, if I was completely objective and had no connection whatsoever to human beings, I would say that fucking thing is way more impressive than ants.
01:37:58.000That thing is flying through the air in metal tubes on a daily basis all across the world.
01:38:04.000That thing is sending video through the sky into a fucking phone that slips into its pockets.
01:38:10.000That thing is driving on this hard surface that it's laid out all over the world.
01:38:16.000These internal combustion engines are powering these metal boxes.
01:38:20.000They pulled the metal out of the ground and forged it into the form of metal boxes.
01:38:24.000Then they've covered these wheels with rubber.
01:38:27.000And a fucking explosion, a controlled explosion inside this iron, cast iron block is forcing this car around.
01:38:36.000They stop in these places where they pull out this fuel that they've taken, fossil fuel from around the fucking world, and tankers and pipelines, and they've processed it into this gasoline that they can then pump into this car.
01:39:03.000If you're looking at the universe, if the universe is looking at life on Earth in terms of what's more impressive, Jesus fucking Christ, there's nothing more impressive than people.
01:39:30.000It's like, oh, don't get too close to that.
01:39:32.000You know, I mean it's not good for us and Eventually, but I think if you look at it in perspective of like how long human beings have been here Yeah, we've met a mess of things like really quickly but also the amount of innovation that has occurred in our lifetimes in the industrialized world's lifetime over the course of you know X amount of hundreds of years It's fucking staggering.
01:39:54.000Yeah, it's no wonder they haven't caught up to what they're doing and And figured out how to mitigate all the issues that they've created by making internal combustion engines and airplanes.
01:40:04.000Well, airplanes create so much pollution, and that's the real global warming, is fucking airplanes.
01:40:09.000The world actually changes the temperature of the Earth.
01:40:13.000When September 11th rolled around, they stopped flying over the United States.
01:40:17.000It altered the temperature of the Earth in a significant, statistically measurable way.
01:40:22.000I mean, cows farting causes a huge amount of problems for greenhouse gases.
01:40:26.000But in my mind, as an atheist, my idea of the universe is probably a little closer to our little statue that we have here, something living in complete balance with the universe, which I think the universe would respect a little bit more in an ant than they would in a human.
01:40:41.000But if you're talking about something impressive, which all those things are impressive, that certainly comes from a human bias.
01:40:46.000How do we equate things that impress us?
01:40:48.000Oh, the fact that we can drive cars, that is impressive for humans.
01:40:51.000Elephants watch us go by and they don't think that's impressive.
01:40:54.000A jaguar, let's say, can hunt completely silently in the dark, make not one noise and catch the creature that it's looking for with complete and utter economy.
01:41:07.000And sit down, eat that creature, and then sleep for two or three days.
01:41:10.000That, for me, is more impressive than Hawking's mind or than some theory that Einstein came up with.
01:41:16.000They're living in balance and flow with their universe, and they're doing it in such a way that this creature right here that is also about balance and flow goes, you're fucking radical.
01:41:25.000Well, I don't know if Buddha says you're fucking radical to a jaguar, but I think jaguars are obviously incredibly impressive and spectacular, and I'm not arguing against jaguars, but someone with a night vision goggle can leave some food out for that stupid jaguar and shoot it in the head and turn it into a jockstrap,
01:41:52.000You decide that some gal in a jaguar thong isn't hot.
01:41:56.000You know, she's sitting out there on her porch with her headphones on so she doesn't blow her ear off while she shoots that 300 wind mag at a jaguar who's going after a piece of meat.
01:42:05.000It bums me out so hard when you see these beautiful women on Twitter that are posing with dead lions and dead rhinos and dead elephants.
01:42:13.000It's a very weird thing that people want to fly over and shoot like giraffes and all these different things, but then when you get into the conservation aspect of it, it gets very cloudy.
01:42:25.000It's not as simple as You know, people are doing cruel things and killing these animals, then posing them and taking pictures.
01:42:32.000The amount of money that's generated by these people doing that is substantially more than any other conservation effort that's out there.
01:42:50.000First of all, that rhino fed, you know, who knows how many villagers.
01:42:54.000I mean, they had all the images of them cutting up that rhino and feeding all those villagers.
01:42:58.000That rhino was also, they needed to kill that rhino because the population is very small of the rhinos, and that rhino was killing other male rhinos.
01:43:05.000It was a non-breeding older male, and it was very aggressive.
01:43:09.000It killed females, killed males, and in order to keep the population healthy, they had to eliminate that rhino.
01:43:13.000They were trying to figure out how to do it.
01:43:14.000And this guy paying all that money to fly over there and kill that rhino is actually better Counter-intuitively better for the overall population of those rhinos.
01:43:29.000You know, one of the interesting things they're doing now to stop poaching is they've come out with 3D printing of rhino horns.
01:43:35.000They're going to make artificial rhino horns and flood the market in Asia.
01:43:40.000Apparently, these are virtually indistinguishable from wild rhino horns.
01:43:44.000They actually share rhino DNA, they make them a keratin, and they're going to 3D print these rhino horns and just flood the market in Asia.
01:43:52.000I mean, it is brilliant, but it's crazy that they need to do this.
01:43:56.000I mean, poaching is way more of an issue for rhino death and any of these exotic animals than hunting is.
01:44:04.000A lot of places that we go, they discolor the horn, which doesn't cause any grief to the rhino itself.
01:44:10.000They'll color the horn orange or red or yellow so that it loses the value for the Medicinal market.
01:44:17.000Like you said, it's made of keratin, which is the same material that makes up fingernails.
01:44:35.000I mean, it's crazy that these things are going extinct because it would be one thing if you ate rhino horns and it really did make your dick hard as a rock and you could fuck all night for days, but it doesn't.
01:44:45.000It doesn't even work, but yet people are still killing them for that very reason.
01:44:50.000And I've had this conversation with people a lot where I say, let's say, like you were just saying, let's say for the sake of argument, it does work.
01:44:57.000That does not give us the right to kill that animal to the point of extinction.
01:45:01.000Well, it doesn't make any sense because there's other things that it does.
01:45:04.000It's one thing that if rhino horns made people super geniuses and cured cancer, then you'd be like, okay, we have to figure out a way to breed more rhinos.
01:45:14.000We don't want to make rhinos go extinct because they're essentially the fountain of wisdom.
01:45:20.000If you kill them off, then you lose this one opportunity to figure out how this one animal developed this property that so greatly aids us.
01:45:28.000It would be pretty ironic if rhino horns made people the ultimate human being, but yet we're killing them off to try to become the ultimate human being and robbing ourselves of this one source.
01:45:38.000But again, that's a very, very strong human angle.
01:45:43.000The rhino, all the animals that exist on our planet are Fair game to be explored and had a look at to see how they benefit us, but how about how they benefit the world?
01:45:53.000The majesty of an elephant's tusk is based on the fact that it's attached to an elephant, not the fact that you can cut it off and put it on your mantelpiece.
01:46:04.000We look at things from this human angle as opposed to this planetary universe type angle, Well, some of us do.
01:46:11.000But, I mean, again, with the rhino thing, the conservationists that are trying to protect the rhinos, they all agree that you have to kill the aggressive, non-breeding older males in order to keep the population healthy.
01:46:34.000Because all of these animals that he, when he went to those South African hunting camps, all those animals were on the verge of extinction just 20 years ago.
01:48:35.000Well, there's statements where he said, my next mission was to try and come up with a religion, and that's what I set out to do, and he did it.
01:48:42.000His ex-wife spoke in great detail about his plans in order to create some sort of religion and really profit off of it.
01:48:50.000I mean, he spent a good deal of his life living in a boat hiding from the IRS. You know, because before they were tax-exempt or tax-free, you know, status, before they had that status, they were, you know, he owed money because they were a cult and they were taking money from their members and the whole thing's fucking madness.
01:49:11.000But the Louis Theroux thing, for anybody who has a hard-line stance on this whole African hunting thing, just take a look at that.
01:49:21.000It's probably not going to change your opinion, but it'll give you an idea of the complexities and the weirdness involved in this whole thing.
01:49:29.000These animals literally were on the verge of extinction.
01:50:02.000I go around the world, try to change people's ideas about animals that most people are scared of and try and evoke a little bit of curiosity and kill fear in whatever...
01:50:14.000Whatever scares you, whether you're scared of travel or weird food you've never eaten or animals or people of different colour or people of different...
01:50:27.000I get a lot out of travel and I love animals.
01:50:31.000So what happened with me was whenever I had like two or three weeks off, I would always take a trip on my own unless I was hanging out with my girl.
01:50:42.000And the trip on my own would usually be pick an animal around the world.
01:50:48.000But to make the two or three weeks spread out a little bit, instead of going directly to the source, I would land in the capital city and spend two or three days in the capital city going to restaurants, hanging out in human communities and just asking them, like, hey, where would I go and see a whale shark?
01:51:40.000And I pitched him a trip that I took to find orangutans, a trip that I took to find the whale shark, a trip that I took to find the king cobra.
01:51:47.000And he was like, cool, do you have eight ideas?
01:51:51.000And he went, all right, come up with eight ideas and we'll come back in two weeks time and write the show and came down.
01:51:57.000First episode's about ants because it's my favorite animal.
01:52:01.000And we went to Ecuador to find the army ant.
01:52:03.000My plan was to lie down in a carpet of army ants, in what they call a drove of army ants, and know what it feels like to have this, you know, 20 million ants walking around on top of you, and will they go into your ears and your eyes and your mouth and your nostrils,
01:52:19.000and can they kill a grown human being and all that kind of stuff?
01:53:02.000Bullet ants live in relatively small communities for ants, maybe 20, 40 bullet ants in a huge group.
01:53:08.000If you were to piss off a community of bullet ants, the most amount that would be on you would probably be, let's say for the sake of argument, 50, which is outside the realms of possibility, but let's say 50. 50 wouldn't kill you.
01:53:39.000They ended up not allowing me to lie down in a carpet of ants because they said it was too dangerous, but I ended up putting my naked hand down.
01:54:10.000And he was studying for it and was staying in these, they had these huts where they were elevated off the floor of the jungle and they would put turpentine on the posts of the huts To keep the ants from crawling up into your...
01:54:24.000Because once they find you, once they decide that you're a target, you're fucked.
01:54:30.000Like I said, if you had two broken legs, you're in trouble with bullet ants.
01:54:33.000The great thing about bullet ants, and you'll see this in these communities, In the local indigenous communities, when the ants move through that village, they'll just go off for a day.
01:54:42.000They'll let the ants clear out all the scorpions, all the spiders, all the centipedes, all the bullshit, spring clean my house for me, on you go.
01:54:54.000So I'm kind of interested in the concept of fear.
01:54:57.000You know, just as a rule, I think that word is divisive and negative, potentially, and doesn't do us any favor, doesn't move us forward as an animal.
01:55:10.000I think things are dangerous, but the idea of fear makes you clumsy, makes you make the wrong decisions, makes you do things incorrectly.
01:55:16.000So some of the more archetypal fears on the planet are Heights and snakes and spiders and planes.
01:55:23.000And we try to show people those things in a slightly more positive light so that you can sit comfortably at home and start to change the way your brain chemistry works with those animals.
01:55:35.000I mean, obviously, you know that, like, let's say for the sake of argument, you are scared of spiders.
01:55:41.000If you hear the word spider, spider will take you to 10 negative things that happened in your life associated with spiders in a circle that you can't get out of.
01:55:49.000But if you now put a positive story in there where you saw a spider with a friend that you were in love with and then you went off and had food that you really liked, you're starting to change that pathway.
01:55:58.000And if you just replace the negative with the positive, you'll then feel differently about spiders.
01:56:03.000And that's what I'm attempting to do with the show.
01:56:05.000So your motivation is not to celebrate these animals, it's rather to mitigate fear?
01:57:39.000They pick up on the change in that energy.
01:57:42.000Let's say we just did an episode in Sri Lanka with the Indian cobra, monocled cobra, one of the most iconic cobras, if not snakes in the world, with those two little glasses on the back of its hood.
01:57:53.000The one that the snake charmers work with.
01:57:55.000So I pull like a six-foot Indian cobra out of a stack of wood at the back of someone's house.
01:58:02.000And the first thing that cobra wants to do is get away.
01:58:04.000So I'm holding on to it by its tail and it's trying to get away and it's trying to get away and it's trying to get away.
01:58:07.000And it intellectualizes in its snaky brain, oh, I can't get away.
01:58:12.000So it turns around and looks at my hand.
01:58:13.000Oh, the reason why I can't get away is this guy's hand.
01:58:15.000So now I'm going to deal with his hand.
01:58:17.000So it tries to bite me, tries to bite me, tries to bite me.
01:58:19.000Can't bite me because I know how to hold on to a snake and let it bite me.
01:58:24.000If I ride out that storm, which usually takes about two to three minutes, the snake, again, in its snaky brain, thinks, this isn't working.
01:58:32.000All the normal ways that this works for me, an animal's got hold of me, I try and bite it, let's go, I'm free.
01:58:57.000And there's an exchange of energy where the snake now thinks, all right, I'm not going to be aggressive because that's not working for me or this animal that's in front of me.
01:59:05.000We chill for a little bit, talk about how beautiful it is, talk about all the amazing things about it, and then I let it go.
01:59:11.000The snake's not going to then see a human a few days later and go, positive experience, this is cool, because their brain doesn't work like that.
01:59:17.000It doesn't benefit a snake to have those memories to hang on to because they don't generally run into humans.
01:59:24.000And maybe the audience will remember it.
01:59:25.000Maybe they'll feel differently about that animal now.
01:59:27.000So this show really kind of came about in sort of an organic manner.
01:59:32.000Like this is something that you were doing anyway for no reason other than because you enjoy being around these animals and you have the freedom to travel and see things that intrigue you.
01:59:46.000It could have been a show about a few different things.
01:59:48.000I'm obsessed by I love Manchester United.
01:59:52.000This could have very easily been a show about me going around the world watching major soccer rivalries around the world and eating street food and meeting people and every so often seeing animals.
02:00:51.000I've been vegetarian for the most part this year, and every so often I'll eat a piece of fish.
02:00:56.000And when I was in South Africa, I felt kind of weak with needing protein, so I ate a steak.
02:01:02.000I ate this big hunk of chicken today because I felt like I was kind of low on energy.
02:01:09.000I didn't want to come in here and be like, hey, what's happening?
02:01:12.000So I ate something to give me a little bit of fuel.
02:01:14.000But I would say, I don't know, I probably eat meat once every two or three months, something like that.
02:01:22.000I'm not the biggest dude in the world, so for me to feel full on vegetables and fruit is fine for the most part, but every so often my system is like, I need flesh.
02:03:41.000And so there's a lot of people that believe that that's a really good way to manage your weight, to not eat anything at all during the day and then you eat at night.
02:04:57.000It's like, you can't have added sugar, you can't have added salt, you can't have bread, you can't have alcohol, you can't have meat this year, although I've been cheating.
02:05:05.000But, I mean, you obviously don't suffer from the same thing that I suffer from.
02:05:10.000Putting on muscle, you know, like I'll go to the gym and train as hard as I can for, you know, the size that I'm at.
02:05:18.000And then, you know, I don't get as big as I would like unless I'm pounding food.
02:05:25.000And that's just, it's pretty stressful on my system, you know.
02:05:29.000Yeah, it sounds you have a very unique situation when it comes to that.
02:05:32.000But, you know, you could have eggs, and eggs, if you get them free range from healthy chickens, there's no negative impact.
02:05:46.000So, like, I'm having food that's created by pets, you know?
02:05:50.000I feed them healthy food, and the eggs are dark orange, and they're filled with choline and all sorts of healthy protein, and they're really good for you.
02:05:59.000You can get around killing an animal to eat them, but...
02:06:05.000The thing about being a vegetarian or being a vegan is animals don't play by that rule themselves.
02:06:10.000They're constantly killing each other.
02:06:12.000Like you were talking about the jaguar killing the antelope and that that's natural.
02:06:17.000Well, the reason why human beings are here is 100% because of hunting.
02:06:21.000If we weren't, if we'd never figured out hunting, we'd never figured out killing, how to eat animals, we probably, our brain size would've never doubled over a period of two million years.
02:06:31.000We'd never figured out agriculture, we would've never figured out civilizations, and we wouldn't, just wouldn't be in this position to debate veganism if it wasn't for hunting in the first place.
02:06:44.000We do eat meat and we always have eaten meat.
02:06:46.000It's a beautiful moral choice to try to leave the smallest carbon footprint, to try to leave the smallest footprint as far as animal suffering.
02:06:55.000But the reality is the wild itself is...
02:07:11.000I mean, you know, I'm lucky enough to go into the jungle a lot and a lot of people that I talk to is like, oh man, you go into the jungle, that must be incredible.
02:07:18.000It's so blossoming with life and all these new things and eggs and You know, creatures everywhere.
02:07:24.000And I'm like, well, there is an element of that to the jungle.
02:07:27.000But ultimately, the jungle is a place of death.
02:07:29.000It's a place of dark, swollen, water-sodden death.
02:08:46.000We don't have that as much in our world.
02:08:48.000I mean, we watch Game of Thrones, so we think that certain dragons exist and stuff.
02:08:52.000But in other animal communities, like the insect world, insects are my favorite animal, that is fucking brutal, gladiatorial daily life for these creatures.
02:09:09.000I was moose hunting in British Columbia this last fall, and when we were up there, we came across a calf that had been recently killed by wolves.
02:09:18.000I took some pictures of it and put it on my Instagram feed, because it was just stripped down to the bone, but it was bizarre.
02:09:27.000If you have never seen something like that before, it's like being there, like, well, this just happened.
02:10:03.000Because we're so conditioned by streets and phones and electricity and houses and buildings that when you're exposed to this totally different lifestyle, this totally different environment, like the wild, the actual real wild,
02:10:19.000it's like this jolt of, oh yeah, this jolt of, wow, there's like...
02:10:25.000This is a completely different variable.
02:10:29.000A series of variables that you're dealing with here.
02:11:03.000On three legs, and there was two hyenas.
02:11:06.000So it would go to the left, hyena, go to the right, hyena.
02:11:08.000And the hyenas, which knew at some point they were going to chow down on this thing, were really just fucking with it.
02:11:14.000It would come over, they would bat it, it would fall over, it would get up again, they'd chase it, they'd hit its other leg, they'd try and bite the broken leg off.
02:11:55.000In the middle of the night, we went walking around Griffith Park, and we saw an owl, and we saw some coyotes running along the track and stuff.
02:12:02.000And then we went home, and I have a few snakes at home, and I started passing around snakes for people.
02:12:07.000Hey, check this one out, check this one out.
02:12:10.000One of my friends was like, oh, this is a normal Saturday night.
02:12:13.000We're sat here with all Dom's creatures and stuff.
02:12:15.000And I stopped her, and I was like, Fleur, this is actually normal.
02:12:19.000The shit that we were doing earlier on, where we're all showing each other photos on our iPhone and watching TV and Putting a DVD on and playing FIFA on our PlayStation.
02:12:27.000That's a construct that's been created to make us feel okay about life and keep us stupid so that the bosses can do what they want.
02:13:07.000We are, as a creature, a natural creator.
02:13:10.000The natural thing created by bees would be a wild hive and honey.
02:13:16.000The natural thing created by humans would be a child.
02:13:19.000A painting is a slightly abstract version of creation.
02:13:22.000It's still a creation, but it's much more abstract than a wild beehive and a baby.
02:13:27.000So there's nothing natural about buildings, but yet human beings naturally construct them without any interaction with each other all over the world.
02:13:35.000Yeah, maybe like a shelter to keep the rain off you is natural, but like That's where it starts, and then they figure out solar power, and then they figure out electricity, and then they figure out Wi-Fi, and then they figure out...
02:14:07.000The difference being that we can debate whether or not we should be doing it, or whether or not the consequences are worth the effort.
02:14:12.000The intoxifying of the oceans, the skies, the pollution, the picture that I showed you of Mexico City, how fucked up the pollution is in Mexico.
02:14:20.000There are creatures out there that debate.
02:15:30.000I mean, there's a reason why Mexico City exists at the same time that Los Angeles exists, at the same time that New York City exists, is because if you leave people alone, you don't kill them off, you don't kill them off with disease or war, they overpopulate and they develop these nationally intrusive cities.
02:15:46.000It's natural for us as a species to look around and go, yes, Delhi is completely swollen with people, but that's the natural journey that the country of India is going to go on and create this city.
02:15:58.000I don't necessarily think, if you take out this human bias, that that is natural for our species to do that.
02:16:04.000We're not supposed to breed rampantly out of control.
02:16:39.000So we're developing this new style of living and we have to figure out a way to deal with the consequences of all this waste that we produce.
02:16:48.000And also deal with the fact that people have this very bizarre diffusion of responsibility thing going on.
02:16:54.000When there's a thousand people that are doing something and that something is fucking everything up, it feels different than if one person is doing something and that something is fucking things up.
02:17:03.000But if you're a part of a city that's polluting the world, it doesn't seem like it's your fault.
02:17:08.000Somebody else out there has got to be fixing it.
02:17:10.000Yeah, and also the very, I mean, I think apathy is one of the most dangerous words on the planet, the very apathetic idea of, well, what difference can I make?
02:17:29.000Yeah, and I see them throw them on the ground all the time.
02:17:31.000They throw them on the ground, step on them.
02:17:33.000Two of my friends the other day did it, and I don't want to just be that guy who corrects people every time that happens, so I just avoid it.
02:18:17.000And also, you see it a lot of times, people driving on roads or freeways, and the idea behind that is, I know this is bad for me, I know it's dirty, I don't want to stub it out and leave it in my car.
02:18:27.000I'm just going to throw it into the planet.
02:18:29.000Dude, I've seen eight different Priuses throw cigarettes out the window.
02:19:15.000I mean, I grew up thinking about all that stuff.
02:19:17.000It looks cool for, you know, James Dean to smoke it, and the Beatles grew up smoking, and in the Second World War, they gave them out as part of your rations.
02:19:25.000So you can understand how soldiers came back being addicted to cigarettes because they're scared of death, they're around death, they're bored out of their mind.
02:19:31.000They get ten cigarettes a week, they're all going to smoke cigarettes.
02:19:34.000But, I mean, you know, the level of education, certainly, in most of Western Europe and in this country, is to such an extent that when I see a smoker, I'm just like, Yeah, well, it's just one of those weird contradictions.
02:19:47.000I know very intelligent people who smoke, too, which is very shocking.
02:19:51.000Like, when you know someone and they're brilliant and then they can't stop smoking cigarettes, you're like, wow, if you could figure out a way to balance this whole thing out better, you'd be so much healthier.
02:20:26.000I was a lot more fucking, you know, Opinionated, not that I don't have strong opinions now, but I kind of keep them a little bit more to myself.
02:20:35.000In my 20s, I thought that it was just a human thing to be able to kind of spit venom at people when you felt like doing it.
02:20:43.000And now I've grown up a little bit, I don't do it as much.
02:20:46.000Unless I was dating someone who I was in love with and they were smoking, which I would never do.
02:21:03.000It's true, but you don't drink tequila all day every day, and the thing about those cigarette smokers is, man, they wake up in the morning, it's a cup of coffee and a cigarette, they light that fucker, and that's how everything gets started.
02:21:12.000That eight hours of downtime with no cigarette is fucking with them when they wake up in the morning.
02:21:18.000The whole system throughout the night going, okay, let's get this toxin out, let's send all these messages to the brain that this is bad, and we'll deal with it, and then they wake up in the morning, they're like, oh, I feel so bad, I need a cigarette to make me feel bad.
02:21:30.000The craving for a cigarette is not necessarily the craving for the cigarette, it's the craving to stop the bad feeling of the cigarette by replacing it with the adrenaline that your body creates by putting the poison inside you again.
02:21:45.000So you feel shitty because you smoke the cigarette, and what you need to make that shitty feeling go away is to expose yourself to another jolt of the poison so your system goes, okay, let's deal with this adrenaline, throw all those painkillers in there, and then 20 minutes later you get it again.
02:22:35.000And that was the thing that I took home with me.
02:22:37.000It was this idea that It's not the fact that the cigarette makes you feel good or you love the feeling or it's five minutes of downtime.
02:22:44.000It's the fact that that concentrated inhalation of poison is taking away from the shitty feeling that you're getting from the long-term effects of that poison.
02:22:56.000The way it's been explained to me by addiction experts are that when you have an addiction, like everyone talks about cigarettes calm them down.
02:23:04.000And the way it was explained to me, it was like, cigarettes don't calm you down.
02:23:07.000What they do is they feed your addiction.
02:23:10.000So you have this addiction, you're stressed out because your body is craving this thing that it's attached to.
02:23:15.000You have some sort of, at a molecular level, you have this bizarre attachment to this substance you've been pumping into your body.
02:23:21.000So your anxiety ramps up, your body needs it, and then when you get it, ah, so you're like, cigarettes, relax me.
02:23:28.000You're addicted to cigarettes, and that feeding that addiction calms the craving, calms the screaming of the addiction for a brief amount of time, and then it asks for it again.
02:23:40.000So the idea that cigarettes calm you, no, they don't really.
02:23:44.000You're extra amped up because of the fact that you're addicted to cigarettes.
02:23:51.000So my mom exposed me to two things, which stopped me from ever smoking cigarettes.
02:23:57.000I mean, that's not to say that when I was 17, 18, and one of my best friends walked outside to smoke a cigarette, I didn't go, oh, let me try it.
02:24:03.000And I cuffed it up and was like, oh, yeah, that's okay.
02:24:06.000You know, I've danced with that devil.
02:24:09.000The first one was she told me about people in the hospitals that she was working at that had to have legs amputated, hands amputated, arms amputated due to complications with smoking cigarettes.
02:24:20.000So I was like, okay, that's fucking heavy.
02:24:22.000And then the other one was she printed out a list of Which we've all seen by now.
02:24:27.000The ingredients of a processed cigarette, which is like, you know, fucking cyanide and horse piss.
02:24:34.000Hundreds and hundreds of different things.
02:25:09.000I do this thing on Twitter called, at the flicks, which is like, if I watch a film that It has had an effect on me.
02:25:14.000I do a little blurb about what I like about it on a WordPress account.
02:25:19.000And I thought it was a really interesting movie for a lot of different reasons.
02:25:25.000One of the major ones is that the way that it's being touted and sold in L.A. is to deal with these very cartoony-like characters that live in this girl's brain.
02:25:37.000You know, Louis Black has anger and he's all red and...
02:25:40.000Amy Poehler is Joy, and she's sweet, and then Sadness, who's, like, overweight and has, you know, blue hair and needs her adenoids taken out.
02:25:50.000From where I was sitting, it is a comment on the first time a human being has exposed themselves to depression and what it can do at a molecular level to that person and the journey you have to go on.
02:26:04.000So, like, the B story is all their little relationships with these emotions and stuff, but the A story...
02:26:10.000Was this really dark story of a girl moving from...
02:28:11.000We even went to the bookstore afterwards and we bought some books on it because they have books, inside out books, where they kind of go into depth about all the different things and the impacts of emotions, how you need the sadness and how the sadness can help you change your mind and make decisions.
02:28:29.000There was one thing which they changed at the very last, that they put into the script, not put into the script at the last minute, but involved in the story at the last minute, that I was going to write a scathing review about that particular thing.
02:28:41.000Because you know the whole thing about core memories?
02:28:45.000My thing was going to be, not all your core memories are happy.
02:28:48.000Some of your core memories are dark and heavy.
02:28:51.000And they define who you are as a person to the positive.
02:28:53.000But they did that at the end because sadness took hold of those core memories and they kind of found the balance of like, some are good, some are bad.
02:29:01.000One of the only things that I wasn't crazy about and I thought it was potentially a little darkness, a little dark, was that when the emotions were navigating their way back to the kind of brain area, they walked through the subconscious and the subconscious was scary and dark and mysterious and black.
02:29:17.000And potentially things would jump out at you.
02:29:19.000And my subconscious isn't all like that.
02:29:22.000Some of my subconscious are tigers drinking cups of tea with saucers and asking me how I am.
02:29:28.000And I'm in different galaxies, you know, spinning around having fun.
02:29:31.000So I do have dark elements to my subconscious.
02:29:33.000But I thought it was a little dangerous to tell little kids anything that lives in the catacombs of your mind is potentially dangerous.
02:29:42.000I was like, well, some of that could be a poem that's amazing or A song that you wrote or a painting, which is beautiful.
02:30:13.000Yeah, I felt like it worked on a lot of adult levels that I wrote in this review.
02:30:18.000I was like, say thank you for the fact that your kids under the age of 10 might not necessarily pick up on some of the heavier themes of this movie.
02:30:27.000You will at some point reach a point in your life where sadness will smack you in the mouth and you have to deal with it.
02:30:32.000Like, maybe your 10-year-old isn't ready for that yet, but your 12-year-old might be okay with it because they're going through some changes too.
02:30:39.000I've spent a lot of time wondering what those things are there for.
02:30:44.000Is there a reason why depression exists?
02:30:46.000Is there a reason why sadness or joy or euphoria, do they serve some sort of evolutionary I mean, is there a reason why they exist that we just have to sort of manage?
02:31:01.000But I mean, is it really the reason why people have gotten so far?
02:31:05.000Because we're not just totally content with everything the way it is, and there's always going to be jealousy.
02:31:11.000There's always going to be, like we were talking about the actors looking at other people going, why is this?
02:31:15.000Because they've reached some point of success.
02:31:17.000It's never enough and there's always some new thing that eludes them some new thing that they wishes if they could have that then thing would be better and why is thing fucked up and I don't got them what's wrong?
02:31:28.000It's almost like these are motivating energies these are motivating elements motivated I mean and the depression thing when you get when you first start dating it's like you It's it's almost like burning your hand on a hot stove like letting you know like you're dealing with something really fucking powerful here and this horrible feeling that you have right now when it's not working out Understand this and understand the consequences of getting involved in a relationship now because it's not so easy as just jumping in with someone It's not so easy
02:31:58.000as and you learn so much from those fucking early relationships Like I had a manipulative girlfriend in high school not her fault bitch.
02:32:06.000She's a nice girl Yeah, she is lovely, actually.
02:32:08.000She was a very nice girl, but she had a single parent.
02:32:11.000Her mom was quite large, didn't like men, and there was a lot of education going on that was probably not so beneficial.
02:32:20.000And you were trying to get in her panties, so she didn't learn that.
02:32:27.000But the point being was that that manipulation that I experienced from her very early on, it made me realize, like, oh, okay, this can happen, too.
02:32:38.000Like, shit that doesn't happen with my friends can happen with a girl, and then all of a sudden it'll take you...
02:32:44.000So I developed this intense zero bullshit policy.
02:32:48.000So when I got When I got older and I became a man, when a woman would try to manipulate me in any way, I'd start laughing, I'd go, that's adorable.
02:32:56.000But fortunately, I have other options, and so this is not gonna work out anymore, so take care.
02:33:02.000But if I hadn't gone through that, I mean, I have friends that are fucking perpetual victims, and they get manipulated by women over and over and over again because they're weak.
02:33:11.000And I think there's a certain amount of women, whether they appreciate it or whether they're honest about it or not, almost can't help manipulating men who are easy to manipulate.
02:33:35.000In certain ways and I kind of feel like that's all why all that shit's in place like that it's it's almost like to ensure Momentum to ensure entropy to ensure that energy keeps moving and there's no stagnant I mean if you stay stagnant you will get depressed if you if you don't evolve and don't succeed You'll feel like shit if you know if you get dumped,
02:33:57.000you know, you're gonna feel horrible You better figure out how to not get dumped, you know Right.
02:34:03.000I mean, if a girl's grown up with a mom who she admires, who is also manipulative to her dad, who she also admires, then she may potentially fall into that pitfall trap of doing that to other guys.
02:34:15.000I mean, you know, as a creature, as a species, biologically, like you said earlier on, we have taken ourselves out of the equation of how do we solve the conundrum of staying warm at night, being protected from predators, where we get our food from.
02:34:52.000I think that you have to look at it as the same...
02:34:56.000Coin just flipped over in a different way.
02:34:58.000If you have a great birthday and you get all the gifts that you want and you got the great piece of birthday cake and all your friends showed up, that's beautiful and you experienced it and you loved it and you told all your friends about it and you relive it with your friends and it was one of those days that you always think about when you go to sleep at night because it will help you go to sleep.
02:35:16.000You need to understand that the day when none of your friends showed up for your birthday party and your parents got your gift that you didn't really want, It's the same thing.
02:35:25.000You're just viewing it in a different way.
02:35:27.000You're just viewing that thing as like, oh, this thing is bad.
02:36:29.000I've been in situations in my life where I've thought, I've sat around on my own and thought, I think the worst is going to happen.
02:36:40.000In this situation that I'm in with this girl, or this business scenario, or this day that I'm going to have tomorrow, I think the worst is going to happen.
02:36:49.000My ultimate nightmare that I can envisage is going to happen.
02:37:18.000And that's one of the lessons, is like, you'll get through it.
02:37:20.000Well, that's a real problem for people who don't ever get through that, and they don't realize that it's not going to be the end of the world.
02:37:26.000I got lucky, not the girl that I talked about, but another girl that I dated in high school, who was, I don't like to say slut, But there's no other word for her.
02:38:13.000But it's fascinating to me that you say that you didn't experience any depression at all until you're 15. But then you say that depression is something that you're prone to.
02:38:44.000I think because I didn't know that it existed, when it hit me for the first time, I had absolutely no defense against it because I'd never...
02:39:37.000And I also probably punched a little bit above my weight when I was younger because I was the smallest kid at school, but I was super mouthy and no one could ever tell me to shut up.
02:39:55.000And then she'd be like, fuck you, I'm going for the jock.
02:39:57.000I'm like, ah, fuck, I can't even compete with the jock, you know?
02:40:00.000So I think I didn't give myself pitfalls until the point where my parents had kind of said, It's all you now, you know, 15, 16. They were like, okay, go find out who you're going to be.
02:40:12.000And at that point, I got a little, you know, exposed to some sadness and stuff.
02:40:17.000But I also, I just think it's part of life.
02:40:20.000You know, I have this, you know, on Twitter, I'm constantly, not constantly, but if anyone ever says to me, hey, you know, I've been struggling with this or, you know, this is getting me down or I had a rough day or I've had a rough week or I just, you know, I'm sick with this or whatever.
02:40:33.000And the way that I respond, the way that I always respond to it is like, you know, This will improve, and you will get to a point where you're able to look back and say, oh, that was a dark period in my life.
02:40:44.000Otherwise, it's going to all be dark, and then you're going to die, which is a horrible way to live your life.
02:40:51.000And sometimes it does happen, but you've got to be hopeful about it.
02:40:55.000But, you know, the way that you make sense, like I said earlier on, of your life is to know, oh, here's a dark place, here's a light place, here's a dark place, here's a light place, and the sweet spot...
02:41:09.000There's a great line in The Office, The Ricky Gervais Show.
02:41:11.000I think he ends the entire show by saying, life is a series of peaks and troughs and you don't know you're in a trough until you're heading up to a peak and you don't know you're in a peak until you're coming down the hill.
02:41:44.000I don't usually appreciate LA. I don't usually appreciate the sun, because I'm used to it.
02:41:49.000I don't usually appreciate civilization and traffic, because I'm used to it, because it's become what it is.
02:41:55.000But I spent a week on Prince of Wales Island in Alaska, and it rained every day, constantly all day, and we were camping, so we were in these tents, and we were soaking wet, and we had these helmets, or rather Headlights on you know those you strap on and you turn the light on so you could walk around at night and not fall and I turned it on inside my tent and it was just It was it was like it was raining inside the tent because it was just mist it was water mist everywhere It was just it was so wet and just it's just weird.
02:42:25.000You're just constantly drenched I had a great time.
02:42:27.000It wasn't a terrible thing but my point is when I came back to LA and And it was sunny and it was just beautiful and just driving around.
02:43:05.000I mean, born in Germany, brought up in Manchester until I was 18. A hot, sunny day in either one of those countries is probably 83, 84. That's a big one.
02:43:17.000Oh, dude, that's a day when people take days off work and they go pie and get drunk in England.
02:43:39.000So there's that, but also the major issue that I have in LA, which is something that I'm constantly exploring with my friends, is, unfortunately, the culture, for the most part, is a little jaded.
02:43:52.000You know, a lot of people come into LA, take as much money as they can out of it, and then leave, and it's been depleted Spiritually and of its soul, you know, of its community.
02:44:02.000You go to places like Barcelona or Berlin or Wellington or Sydney where people are feeding that city.
02:44:07.000I get the impression that LA for the most part has things being ripped out of it, taken out of it, like the foundations are being taken out of it.
02:44:14.000Isn't that a perspective issue though, the way you're viewing it?
02:44:18.000But I also think that one of the archetypal characters of LA The socialite walking down Sunset Boulevard or the cool guy that wears a white dress shirt and a cowboy hat on a Friday night.
02:45:20.000But anyway, so those archetypes, their reaction to seeing something genuinely impressive, let's say for the sake of argument, it's an animal that we've never seen before crossing Sunset Boulevard and when it gets to the junction of traffic going one way and traffic going another way,
02:45:38.000it sits in a yogic position and creates this fucking eclipse of bright, hot sunlight.
02:45:44.000Their reaction to that, if you're doing the cool LA thing, is to go, cool.
02:45:50.000Not to be like, holy fucking shit, my life just ended.
02:45:53.000That is the most awesome thing I've seen in my life.
02:45:55.000The required reaction in LA is to go, awesome.
02:45:59.000Those are just the people that are trying to fit in.
02:46:02.000Honestly, I think that LA has so many people and so many people that are trying to make it.
02:46:29.000I think as far as stand-up comedy goes, this is the greatest spot on the planet Earth.
02:46:33.000I don't think there's anything even close.
02:46:35.000New York is probably a second place, but...
02:46:37.000Man, it's tough to fuck with LA. And I think as far as architecture and as far as art, there's a lot of contributions.
02:46:46.000Restaurants, there's a lot of great shit in LA. And street art in downtown and stuff like that.
02:46:51.000But there's so many people that want to be one of those musicians, that want to be one of those artists, that want to be one of those comedians, that want to be one of those actors, that want to be one of those anything that's important.
02:47:00.000And so they're trying to be that person.
02:47:09.000You also move in what I would assume to be, for you at least, quite a healthy community of comics that all know each other, that have known each other for 20 years, that hang out on those clubs on Sunset.
02:47:19.000And you have a nice, you know, little percolating community of people traveling in, traveling out, everyone says hello.
02:47:34.000I mean, I'm friends with people that I've worked with before, but in terms of hanging out, Elijah and I are super tight.
02:47:39.000I don't necessarily hang out with him that much, apart from little moments.
02:47:41.000Orlando and I are the same, Billy and I are the same.
02:47:43.000But they're kind of recluses too, and it's, you know, me going out on Sunset, and certainly, certainly me going out on Sunset with Elijah, or Orlando, or Billy, is a fucking...
02:49:09.000They'll get pissy and moany because I'm not drinking their shot.
02:49:13.000First of all, I didn't ask you to come over to me.
02:49:14.000Secondly, I didn't ask you to buy me a drink.
02:49:15.000Thirdly, you're interrupting friends who all know each other and you're a complete stranger.
02:49:19.000I've had people put their hands on me in bars, like put their arms around me and try and walk me over to their friends without asking my permission.
02:50:21.000I've had great experiences in bars, where I've run into great people, and I feel like when you put yourself in those positions where you could be uncomfortable, sometimes those uncomfortable positions, I'll have fantastic conversations with some random dude who makes cabinets or some shit like that, or some guy who,
02:50:38.000you know, whatever, I'm making my own vodka, you know, you want to try it?
02:51:09.000I go out, I go to bars, and I will occasionally run into drunk retards.
02:51:13.000But for the most part, I feel like if you put that out there, that you're just a normal person, you might know who I am, but I swear to God I'm normal, most of the time you run into people who kind of accept that vibe.
02:51:26.000Same thing like you were talking about the Cobra, kind of recognizing exactly what you are and figuring it out after a while.
02:51:32.000If you put out that vibe like you can't be fucked with or everybody's annoying to you, then people find you annoying.
02:51:42.000Walking around on the streets and stuff, I would say 90% of the interactions that I have, maybe even 95% of the interactions that I have, In a bar, because it adds alcohol, that is a completely different scenario.
02:51:53.000And I don't come into bars with my backup.
02:51:56.000I'm usually having fun with my friends.
02:51:58.000One of the phrases that I use a lot in terms of animals and humans is, come at me correctly.
02:52:32.000There's just a certain amount of weird people that you're going to run into, and they probably don't even know why they're acting the way they're acting when they do.
02:52:38.000They probably feel like, what the fuck is wrong with me?
02:53:20.000Some people are just drunk, and they also, they don't like the idea that they feel intimidated by this guy being around them, and they want to, like, put that guy in his place, you know?
02:53:30.000And there's also people that are just complacent.
02:53:33.000I've run into so many guys who want to tell me how if they fought in the UFC, they would kill everybody.
02:53:38.000But they can't do it right now because they're busy with some other shit.
02:55:35.000One of the scariest dudes for me, I think he's been injured for a little bit, but I saw him, you commentated on this fight, and it was truly terrifying to watch was Rory McDonald.
02:57:38.000And the pressure on him to come back, I think is really unfair, because...
02:57:42.000Like, the most precious thing for him to hang onto now is his mind, and he looked like he was just about to lose it.
02:57:49.000Well, you know, he's had some memory issues.
02:57:52.000I had him on the podcast, and he was talking about he didn't know whether or not he had been abducted by aliens.
02:57:58.000Because he would have these moments in his life where all of a sudden he was at home and he didn't know how he got there.
02:58:04.000And I was like, whoa, that's not aliens.
02:58:07.000These are probably issues that you're developing from trauma.
02:58:12.000But in his mind, it's almost aliens, like something's wrong.
02:58:19.000When you start talking like that, it's not like he's talking like that and he has no history whatsoever of being hit, no history whatsoever of any sort of brain injury.
02:58:30.000You're talking about a guy whose fucking job is to break people's brains and he's training with other trained killers and they're hitting each other on a regular basis.
02:58:39.000There's a point of no return in fighting, and you've got to realize where that point is.
02:58:44.000And it's very hard for fighters to recognize it.
02:58:46.000They need someone to help them and talk to them about it.
02:58:49.000But George is one of the rare few that did it on his own terms while he was on top as a champion retired.
02:59:08.000He made millions and millions of dollars.
02:59:11.000He made more money than anybody so hopefully he'll be fine.
02:59:14.000You know one of the things that happens in the football community, in the soccer community in England is that these very talented, very elite sports stars that have no idea how to do their own washing or do their own groceries or write a check.
02:59:53.000It's even worse because they're brain damaged, a lot of them.
02:59:56.000I mean, there's a certain amount of brain damage almost every fighter has by the time they reach 35. And, I mean, we experience that with all sorts of athletes in America, whether it's football players, basketball players.
03:00:08.000It's a crazy thing because most people, they have the highest earning potential when they're older.
03:00:12.000You know, as they get older, they make more and more money, they become more and more successful, and then they retire.
03:00:17.000With athletes, you make the bulk of your money when you're young and wild and irresponsible and impulsive, and then you're supposed to try to hold on to that gold dust as you get older.