Comedian Pete Holmes joins Jemele to discuss his new movie, "John Wick: The Third Man" and how he got his start as a writer on Saturday Night Live. He also talks about his new role as the voice of the Verizon guy and why he thinks it's a good idea to have a female co-host on your comedy show. Plus, he gives us a run down of his favorite movies and TV shows of all time, including "Joker" and "The Joker." Plus, we talk about how he feels about the current state of stand-up comedy and what it's like to be a writer for a major comedy show and how it affects the way we view comedy and comedy in general. And, of course, we answer your burning questions. Featuring: Pete Holmes, Nick Kroll, and Jordan Peele. Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. The 500 is a production of Native Creative Podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever else you get your music. Please rate, review, and subscribe to our podcast. We'll be looking out for the next episode! Thank you so much for all the support, it really means a lot to us and we really appreciate it. Peace, Love, Blessings, Cheers, Eternally, EJ & Rory. -Jon Sorrentino -The EJ. & Rory -PJ & Pete -A.B. & R.A. ( ) -D. (NSFW) -J. (A.M. (R. ) ( ) ( ) -JOSH MILLER ( ) & J. (S. (C. (J.V. ) (ROBBY ( ) ) (TAYLOR (ROSCO ( ) AND R. (MAYO ( )) (AUGMENTING) ) (ABBY (RADIO) ( ) . (AUTHOR (AJ ( ) and J. M. (VANES ( )?) (SANDBAH ( ) [ ] ) (AYANDS ( ) ORCHTERO (AUSSIE ( ) // J. RYAN (ABSHAVES (AUROR ( ) CHEER) ) )
00:00:58.000But that guy from that fucking commercial that always gets in the accidents and falls down and gets hurt, you know that handsome gentleman?
00:01:11.000I've heard it's good, I just haven't watched it.
00:01:13.000I mean, it's no brilliant Like super creative, undeniable work of art, but it's fun as shit as far as like a really wild, crazy entertainment.
00:01:25.000It's just, it's like crazy action sequences, right?
00:02:18.000But yeah, I know people on SNL that sucked as writers, and they became cast members, and then all of a sudden they had a lot of good ideas.
00:02:26.000They just stored them all like squirrels.
00:02:28.000Yeah, just like totally sandbagged people.
00:02:30.000Yeah, because comics are like inherently kind of self-obsessed, you know, and the idea of like writing selflessly for someone else and making them much better.
00:02:40.000I was talking to somebody about this yesterday.
00:02:48.000It's just the accepted cast system that Rock is basically saying, like, hey, I'm funnier than you, and I'm hosting a show, so fucking give me jokes.
00:04:04.000Well, you just need a giant mound of shit to chop away at and then you find where the gems are.
00:04:10.000If you only have a few pretty decent ideas and you're trying to build them up, that's way less effective than an enormous catalog of ideas and you get to try and pick the best ones.
00:04:49.000The thing that I was, when you were saying about having other people come in and look, I find that a lot of guys, comedian-wise, when you get to the theater level, it's basically all your audiences are henpecked.
00:05:05.000All of your audiences are predisposed to like you.
00:05:08.000Do you ever, and what I found is a lot of people when they go to theaters, their act either plateaus or gets worse.
00:05:16.000Do you ever specifically go to rooms where they don't know you're coming so you can get a better read on shit?
00:05:59.000Well, it's also, they have, you know, it's great, though.
00:06:02.000Like, all we're saying, you know, about the thing, like, the worst part of it, but even the worst part about it is magic, because that room is fucking magic, man.
00:06:11.000That belly room, if you get something to work in that belly room, we were talking about this last night, that there's the belly room and the ice house, and the ice house is maybe the best club ever.
00:06:22.000It's got the rep, and having done it, it's like the easiest club.
00:07:09.000Louie was saying in an interview, like, when he's in L.A., he'll go, he'll do, like, an alternative show, then he'll do the improv or the laugh factory, and then he'll do the store.
00:07:47.000Because I still couldn't tell you, having been working there six, seven years, I still couldn't tell you like the psychology of that kind of person, of the average, of the audience's collective Unconscious kind of thing.
00:08:00.000Well, first of all, let me just say this.
00:11:36.000She made this big deal and she's like, fuck you, take my house down, this and that.
00:11:41.000And because she put so much effort into fighting the fact that her house was down, way more people knew about her house, and they all attacked and went after her.
00:11:49.000I think if you tell people, you can't bring your cell phone to my show, then they start wearing GoPros.
00:11:55.000They put a GoPro on, or they'll film from one of those glasses that has the lens in the center of it.
00:13:19.000But what if there's something important happening right now in the world of van to four-wheel drive conversions or whatever the fuck I'm looking at?
00:13:28.000Someone was telling me when you go, again, this isn't my name drop, when you go to Drake's house when girls come over, he makes everyone turn their cell phones in.
00:14:09.000Well, you have to have, if you're like one of those big-time baller rapper characters and you're trying to keep everything on the DL, or at least keep as much of your private life private as possible, you've got to take some serious precautionary steps.
00:14:24.000I've heard of guys having pre-nups, or not pre-nups, but non-disclosures.
00:14:29.000I mean, not everybody, but that's a common thing.
00:14:33.000I've heard things where you can't even be in the bedroom with the person until you've signed an NDA. Wow.
00:14:43.000Well, if you're worried about a fake rape accusation, that's the way to deal with it, I guess.
00:14:49.000But then the girl could say, well, I was, like, thinking we were going to make out, and as soon as I signed it, he just started raping me.
00:15:46.000Whereas if you're worth that kind of money, people look at you and they go, look, if I sue this motherfucker for a hundred million dollars...
00:16:15.000I was reading about this one guy who was involved, I forget what the case, but it turned out that he had sued, like, dozens and dozens of people for, like, he's a professional lawsuit litigator, or lawsuit court.
00:16:54.000Yeah, it's like they're known in the music industry, they will sue you.
00:16:59.000It's like Commodore music or some shit, and they'll just go after fucking the slightest, it kind of sounds like this, and it holds people up, and people just settle.
00:17:10.000Well, every now and then, when one does get through, like that song that was like...
00:17:18.000Like, how the fuck did they not know that people are going to see that?
00:17:22.000I think there's so much copying in the music business that I think they were just like, yeah, it's just kind of like, someone sounds just like fucking that song.
00:17:33.000I was listening to a podcast, I can't remember what it was the other day, but they were playing Bob Dylan songs that were stolen, that Dylan stole.
00:17:44.000So it was all sort of public domain, but he was taking other people's melodies and And then making them, changing the lyrics, and those became hits for him.
00:17:55.000Yeah, it was, it blew my mind, because you go, Bob Dylan, of all people, he's like, you know, the poet laureate of the fucking 20th century, yeah.
00:18:33.000I don't know what George Harrison's was, but I know that he lost two lawsuits.
00:18:38.000But the Thin Lines one, after all the different lawsuits and all the different people that have been sued for stealing lines in songs or stealing melodies, you would think that they wouldn't think that they could pull that off.
00:18:50.000Yeah, I was surprised they won, to be honest with you.
00:21:21.000Yeah, it was after I, I mean, we hadn't seen it, but it was like, after I was a doorman, moved out here, and went to, and met the woman who worked at Arsenio, and through Dave, and whatever, so she was like, whenever there's somebody cool on, she's like, come and meet someone.
00:21:36.000So, met him, and he was talking about Slavery.
00:21:42.000And he was like, it was me, him, and two black dudes.
00:21:46.000And he goes, he, Bill Cosby goes, and then the Dutch man came and pointed at me.
00:22:54.000Well, that to me was the only thing that made sense about this.
00:22:59.000It's like, how could someone drug somebody like that?
00:23:02.000And then I thought about it and I was like, I bet if you have lived decade after decade of people just kissing your ass and everyone around you is like some weird form of a yes man, like you have a whole industry behind you.
00:23:15.000When he's on the show, like think about he has all the production assistants and the producers and the executive producers and the cameramen and the sound guys and the makeup people and everyone is just...
00:23:37.000I don't like the guy and I'm saying he's a killer.
00:23:39.000And do you think that you just developed this sort of like really distorted psychotic view of yourself in relationship to the rest of the world?
00:23:49.000I don't think so because he's the first famous person that's...
00:23:53.000I think he had the pathology before he was famous.
00:23:56.000The idea that, I've never heard of a famous person like, oh yeah, so my shit now is, I got to the drug bitches and rape them when they're asleep level.
00:25:33.000Argument was a that just sounded like one of those remember back in the day bits like remember speak and spell it's like one of those bits for generation But yeah, I think it was way more like there was I was reading about the one of the girls who lived at Hugh Hefner's house and He offered her a quaalude and said back in the old days they used to call these leg openers Or thigh openers.
00:25:57.000I believe that they used to call them thigh openers.
00:25:58.000Yeah, it's like, yeah, women, even 30 years ago, didn't have a lot of rights.
00:26:04.000Like, sexual harassment, I don't think the first sexual harassment suit was till, at the earliest it was the late 70s.
00:26:12.000It's amazing how much things have changed and how quickly things have changed.
00:26:16.000We were reading yesterday on the podcast, was it yesterday, the day before yesterday, this speech by Lincoln when he was debating, like 1858, debating the rights of black people.
00:26:28.000And even Lincoln, back then, was saying that he didn't think that they should be allowed to serve on juries or vote or even intermarry with whites.
00:26:37.000And it was like, whoa, that's not that long ago, man.
00:26:40.000He thought that there were four-fifths of a person.
00:26:43.000It's like, you're not three-fifths, but you're not five-fifths either.
00:26:48.000And, you know, the argument is, well, listen, you have to put it into context.
00:26:52.000Like, his time, during his time, this was revolutionary.
00:27:44.000You have to get a surrogate, or you're talking about, you know, maybe friends that are also lesbians that want a kid, and, like, I'll tell you, we'll have two kids.
00:31:20.000Like, if you made a quote, like, if there was a controversial issue that came up, you know, and you made a quote, and then a bunch of people took that quote and butchered it and twisted it up 15 different ways to Sunday, and you were aware of it, Wouldn't you want to correct that?
00:31:34.000Wouldn't you want to come back and go, whoa, whoa, whoa?
00:31:36.000I didn't say you have to eat babies that are the color of orange.
00:32:21.000And scientists are studying the very nature of matter itself, down to subatomic particles and quasars and supernovas and gas clouds and all these different things they're studying.
00:32:33.000At the end of the day, All they are really truly aware of is what they can perceive with their own senses in this existence They don't know what happens when you die They don't know if it's just a gateway to another new completely different kind of experience They don't know and the idea that it's not that it's just death It's death,
00:33:29.000We're a part of this weird, crazy ecosystem and the ecosystem that has created a human being with all their creativity and self-awareness and all their ability to reflect and change and this crazy desire for innovation,
00:33:45.000like to have the newest, greatest shit, the biggest, coolest thing, the fastest thing, the smartest thing, the most advanced thing.
00:33:52.000We're constantly searching for this newer, better product.
00:33:56.000It would seem to me that all of that is a part of some almost inescapable process of change.
00:34:06.000It seems like the whole thing is always changing, right?
00:34:10.000Like a cloud forms or rather a planet forms out of clouds and dust and all kinds of shit and eventually turns into a planet, eventually acquires water, eventually has an atmosphere and then life comes out of it and that life spreads out into other planets and All of it seems to be this constant state of either improvement or death.
00:34:52.000I wonder if what we're doing by this movement that you say, some of it's exaggerated and ridiculous, and some of the people that are involved in it are ultimately really shitty people that have attached themselves to an interesting idea, but the trend seems to be inescapable.
00:35:08.000And the trend of technological innovation as well as the trend of social awareness, they might, if you extrapolate and you look at where they're going like a thousand years from now, a hundred thousand years from now, it might reach a point of really like a technologically created heaven.
00:35:36.000I mean, there's a bunch of different instincts and a bunch of different desires that are sort of sewn into the existence of being a person.
00:35:45.000You know, you have them if you're living in the jungle.
00:35:47.000You have them if you live in the city.
00:35:49.000I mean, people just have this weird, inescapable desire to do a bunch of core things.
00:35:55.000Well, maybe those core things are very important and key ingredients towards creating technology and towards creating awareness and connection of ideas and information from entity to entity until the entire thing thinks as one.
00:36:09.000So the entire thing thinks is one and has massive technological capabilities and literally can escape the very dimension that it's currently trapped in.
00:36:17.000The dimension that it thinks is all that there is.
00:36:20.000This is all that there is because I can knock on it with my knuckles and I can put it on a scale and I can run a tape measure by it and tell you exactly how long it is.
00:37:39.000And then it changes and looks like something else and it changes.
00:37:41.000And as you think about what it is, it alters.
00:37:45.000And it's almost like some bizarre lesson in perception and your own definitions of the world around you, that you are in some way, by the way you interface with the world, changing the very nature of the world itself.
00:37:59.000And this is like some weird lesson that they try to teach you while you're involved in these trips.
00:38:04.000It seems like they're trying to explain to you there's It's not just you have a bad attitude or not just anybody has a bad attitude.
00:38:11.000It's not just that you get tied up in the momentum of those bad attitudes and the mistakes caused by those bad attitudes and the energy that's put out and the ripple effect of all that energy and how it goes out into the rest of the population and how it comes back to you and you get trapped like a goddamn spiderweb.
00:38:30.000Literally, the way that you interface with the world changes the world, changes your world, changes the people that are in your world, but also changes how those people interact with other people in the world.
00:38:42.000It's this very freaky, fucking bizarre thing to have that be told to you by jesters, like giant jesters who have multi-dimensional heads that spin around and give you the finger.
00:38:55.000Yeah, but I would say that's just your own consciousness.
00:39:48.000I had Brian Cox on, the professor who's this brilliant guy who works at CERN, who works at the Large Hadron Collider, and he was trying to explain the searching for the hadron and searching for the Higgs boson particle.
00:43:08.000If you think about the fact that the automobile's only been around for a little over a hundred years, too, and the amount of innovation that's happened with that.
00:43:21.000Well, I think with this Tesla shit, like this Elon Musk character getting involved, that guy's making an SUV now that's gonna be all electric.
00:44:02.000Well, most of the time you have these solar rooms.
00:44:06.000Like, there was a cabin that a friend of mine has in Colorado, and she's got these, like, solar batteries hooked up to the cabin, and, you know, it's like a room, you know, gotta go in the battery room, see what's going on, and the batteries were dead, it was fucking up,
00:44:23.000The guy who was staying in the cabin was like, what the fuck, you know, they don't have fucking lights, you know, this is stupid, we're camping here.
00:44:51.000It's a home battery that charges using electricity generated from solar panels or when utility rates are low and powers your home in the evening.
00:44:57.000It also fortifies your home against power outages by providing a backup electricity supply.
00:47:11.000Well, we're a desert city that had intermittent rainfall.
00:47:15.000But the reason why LA was created in the first place as a Hollywood, as a movie production place, was because it was so consistent with its weather.
00:47:22.000That means you're living in a place that sucks.
00:47:25.000I mean, it's great for the sun, but it's not good for life.
00:47:29.000Well, yeah, we're not supposed to be here.
00:50:23.000Well, that's the other thing, is when computers and robots take over, there will be blue-collar people breaking into factories to beat up the robots.
00:51:05.000Remember of any bands of English workers who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton and woolen mills, as they believe was threatening their jobs in 1811 to 1816?
00:51:33.000Why are we going toward this fucking dumb work thing?
00:51:38.000Why don't we all figure it out so none of us have to work?
00:51:42.000Because people have associated working with making money and making money with staying alive.
00:51:47.000And the only way you can contribute is if you work.
00:51:50.000And the only way you can get money to stay alive is if you are in this the one thing that everybody's worried about right everybody's worried about not being able to pill that pay their bills and Starving to death having their children go hungry and like fuck what if we what if we live like the places that we know exist all over the world This place is all over the world where children go hungry Well,
00:52:08.000there's also that Protestant work ethic thing, where it's like, it's next to godliness.
00:52:19.000Well, don't you think that that's one of those tenets, that those existed because people were trying to To instill this idea of you have to stay alive.
00:54:19.000I mean, you would have to make sure that also that the people that did do all the work, that you kept a steady supply of them and kept them educated.
00:54:27.000Because if you didn't, and then we ran out of people that knew how to fix the robots, and then we're just scrambling, like we have to relearn how to fix robots?
00:56:04.000There's a guy on a show called Life Below Zero, and this fucking dude doesn't bring matches with him because he doesn't want to rely on matches.
00:56:11.000He's like, what if I run out of matches?
00:56:20.000Pull up Glenn from Life Below Zero Makes a Fire on YouTube.
00:56:25.000And he puts this bit, he has this piece in his mouth, and the piece, like, clamps down on the top of the stick so that he could use the bow with two hands and really get a lot of friction.
00:56:35.000So he has the bow that's wrapped around, the string of the bow is wrapped around the stick, and he's going right to left, right to left, right to left, right to left.
00:56:43.000As it spins, the friction starts, you see little smoke, and he's pushing dry tinder in there, and then he gets a little ball of fire, and then he builds it up.
01:01:20.000So I'd taken 5-HTP. I basically had depression most of my adult life, probably my whole life.
01:01:26.000And when you define depression, like right now, I'm talking to you, we're hanging out, we're having fun, we're laughing, everything seems cool.
01:02:34.000My brain would, like, talk me out of it.
01:02:36.000It would talk me out of why I should be...
01:02:39.000Why I should enjoy it, if that makes sense.
01:02:43.000It would talk me out of it, just like, well, yeah, but you've got a partner, you've got to...
01:02:46.000Okay, so your brain would tell you, well, you know, you're doing well, but let's be honest, you're doing it because of Dave Chappelle, and, you know, even though your writing is really great, would it be so great if Skippy from Family Ties was the star of the show, the show would still bomb?
01:03:07.000That's when I knew I needed to go on antidepressants is I had sold a script in like 1999 and I was on the phone with an agent who was saying that two studios were bidding for it and I was driving up La Brea crying.
01:03:25.000On the phone with the guy, and tears were running down my face.
01:04:04.000For example, when I know certain people get off stage, when, for instance, Chris Rock, to bring him up again, when he gets off stage, he is...
01:04:58.000Me and Dov one time talked about getting off stage.
01:05:00.000Sometimes you just want to take the mic and throw it down.
01:05:03.000It's like, well, fucking that didn't even help.
01:05:05.000Um, so, so, so I've taken antidepressants for, since I was crying on the prayers in 1999. So, uh, so I took them, and I took Zoloft at first, worked great, really worked well.
01:05:20.000And I remember telling, uh, Chappelle, I think, I said, I go, I now know why people dance.
01:05:27.000Like, that was how I knew, like, oh, this works.
01:05:31.000Because I understand the feeling that would make people want to dance.
01:05:36.000Or just like that sort of collective joie de vivre, for lack of a better word.
01:05:44.000So did that, took us a lot, probably worked for 10 years, 9-10 years, you know, with varying effect, but after a while it just stopped working.
01:05:51.000Now when it stopped working, or when I would try to go off it, I would get like a tension in my fucking temple that literally couldn't,
01:06:07.000like a knot in my temple, like if it needed to get massaged, it would just form.
01:06:12.000And that's how I knew like, oh, I'm fucking depressed again, because it would just form.
01:06:17.000And what was, when you said it wasn't working, so what was the shift?
01:06:22.000It started working, in the beginning it was great, and then...
01:06:25.000There is a term for it, and I always forget it, but it's like efficacy, long-term efficacy just...
01:06:41.000So, then I switched to, and then probably the last four or five years, I've switched a bunch, because all the ones I tried had some side effect.
01:06:51.000What is the feeling, though, that you have on them?
01:06:53.000Is it like a feeling of, you have like more energy?
01:06:57.000Do you have a little more energy, for sure.
01:07:01.000You have like more generosity of spirit if that makes sense like just like you want You're less of like a hater Hmm because you're not you don't feel so Depleted yourself that you can actually be like, oh, that's good man.
01:07:16.000That's awesome What's hard for people to be happy for other people if they're not happy about yeah 100% it's very hard because no one's mean because they're in a good mood Yeah, you know other people don't deserve happiness.
01:07:39.000But that's how it feels, because you can't do it.
01:07:41.000You can't even get, not only can you not do Stan or whatever the thing they're mad at you for, they can't even feel what they imagine you feel from doing it.
01:08:42.000Well, what was interesting is it was interesting for the few months that I had it to not have to worry about boners or pursuing girls or fucking texting and tindering and all that shit.
01:09:16.000They have theories about why they work.
01:09:19.000I was on a class of antidepressants called SSRIs, which are short for Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor, which means it's basically a double negative...
01:09:33.000It's basically when the serotonin goes out, Usually it gets collected quickly, but if you take this drug, it leaves the serotonin out in your brain longer.
01:09:56.000I think if I didn't take the drug, it would be...
01:10:03.000I don't know I guess it would my brain would collect it super quick I'm of the mind that I don't have enough serotonin to begin with like I just have I feel like I have a serotonin deficiency naturally, but whatever so So I'm so what my dick was like in a coma and I was throwing up like pretty regularly like three days a week Wow,
01:10:24.000I just be driving and go like oh I'm gonna throw up and Throw up and then be fine.
01:10:30.000So essentially with these drugs you're trying to somehow or another re-engineer your neurochemical makeup.
01:11:38.000So, they're basically saying, like, they're looking in people's feces, and they think that the amount of chemicals or combinations you have in your stomach can affect mood.
01:13:51.000And I had it written the time I was supposed to get up.
01:13:56.000I had reversed so instead of Thinking that I was supposed to get up at 9 o'clock The flight was at 9 o'clock and I was like, oh no Like I thought the flight was like 11 and I got there.
01:14:10.000I gotta think in the future I think you should just go based on what time the flight leaves I don't leave it up to the airline what time you should wake up Well, it was just such a boneheaded move.
01:14:21.000I just had too many different things going on and I wrote it down somewhere.
01:15:01.000So, okay, so I was just like, taking, like the last one, I was like, I'm so sick of fucking taking, because the thing with antidepressant, Pills is that you don't...
01:15:12.000It's a complete guessing game what's going to work for you.
01:15:15.000Because the one I was taking that was making my dick fall asleep and make me throw up was supposed to have the lowest side effect profile of all of them.
01:17:11.000Yeah, you can poach an egg, but you should throw an egg on your fucking Weber.
01:17:15.000So that's made a comeback, and then there's another one called transcranial magnetic stimulation where they just basically shoot magnets at your brain.
01:17:24.000But that's five days a week for five weeks.
01:17:30.000The treatment is you do six sessions in two weeks.
01:17:37.000So it's Monday, Wednesday, Friday of two weeks.
01:17:42.000And I did it last week and the week before.
01:17:45.000So first time I go in, and again, I don't know if I could have researched it.
01:17:49.000All I knew that when you go in, you have basically, when you do ketamine, you have like an out-of-body sort of experience, meaning like a dissociative experience, which seems pretty vague.
01:20:33.000Alright, so I did it again that Wednesday and every time I did it.
01:20:41.000The other thing, one of the ways that they kind of gauge it is you do like an inventory, a questionnaire, like a 25 question questionnaire, like how do you feel about your future?
01:20:54.000And it's not good, fine, neutral, whatever.
01:21:20.000And the only downside, and I can't get a perfectly clear read because I'm quitting the SSRI, the one that the dick killer, I'm quitting that at the same time.
01:21:33.000So I'm just like, I'm sort of having withdrawal from that.
01:21:36.000The way it was manifesting itself for a couple weeks was like, I just felt like shit.
01:21:40.000I just felt like I had the flu, but not coughing or sneezing.
01:24:34.000And that Friday, because I had done it enough, what I found, what was interesting was, every session, it would take me longer to go into the trip.
01:24:45.000Meaning like my body was getting used to it was building up like a tolerance for it for the ketamine How long is like it's all IV? Yeah, it's IV based the first time like I said 20 seconds and The last time was probably Four or five minutes.
01:28:09.000What's really dangerous, apparently, is if you take a prescription MAO inhibitor, And then you take mushrooms or you take ayahuasca, then it's super fucking dangerous.
01:28:18.000I think MAIO inhibitors have a big profile with, like, don't take it with other shit.
01:28:57.000Like, you talk for five seconds and he's interrupting you.
01:28:59.000And then they cut away from him for a breaking news report on the lady getting arraigned in upstate New York for helping the prisoners escape.
01:30:38.000Whether or not I was correct, but he believed that every psychedelic you take, you're experiencing not just your trip, but the trip of all the people who have ever tripped on that psychedelic.
01:30:49.000So when you're taking mushrooms, you're not just experiencing the mushroom.
01:30:53.000You're experiencing the mushroom as it has interfaced with countless human beings all throughout humanity.
01:30:59.000All the different people have taken the mushrooms and had these beautiful experiences.
01:31:03.000You experience those experiences as well.
01:31:39.000The things that I remember, one of the things I remember was like getting...
01:31:44.000I would start on me and then just pull out wide, like for lack of a better example, like Google Maps or in my head it was more like Grand Theft Auto.
01:31:55.000And like where I am, there's the, I'm in Santa Monica and I just go, there's California, there's whatever.
01:32:04.000I was aware of every sort of your whole experience people that I went to high school with people that I know now like just everyone was sort of there if not like actually but sort of you know I think about them and then it was like I was in The Matrix is too simplistic,
01:32:24.000but did you see the new Land of the Lost, perhaps, with Will Ferrell?
01:34:20.000I was just thinking about it, but it wasn't that much.
01:34:23.000It wasn't it was more yeah, I thought about like what if there's an earthquake also like Fucking if you're if you're tripping on on like Ketamine you're gone.
01:34:35.000Yeah, my eyes are closed I couldn't open them like I wouldn't have physically been able to open them I was like what if there's a fucking earthquake, but then I'm just feeling Wow, what a weird thing to focus on.
01:36:29.000It has to do with the SSRIs for sure, but I also feel like the thing that I've been noticing is, and this is such a weird symptom of improvement, I've been laughing at my own jokes more.
01:36:45.000Which sounds like when it's fucking, you know, so you're an egomanic.
01:36:48.000No, I'm just enjoying the idea as, like, an independent thing.
01:38:44.000There are days during the week I can go to bed at 9 or 1. I do feel like there's ideas that are available to you when you wake up early in the morning that aren't available to you at any other time of the day.
01:38:54.000Like, sometimes I force myself to get up early in the morning just to sit down and write, because I think that sometimes I force myself awake.
01:43:06.000They know nothing about it, because it's impossible to, there's no, you know what I mean?
01:43:10.000It's like, you can look at a heart, most of it, that's physical.
01:43:13.000It's just like blood, the thing, the liquid goes in, then it comes out.
01:43:17.000It's mechanical, whereas the brain is not mechanical.
01:43:19.000Well, one of the things that you brought up was Carl Hart, Dr. Carl Hart.
01:43:23.000And there's a lot of really brilliant people today that are trying to get people to understand addictions and what are the root cause of addiction.
01:43:31.000And Gabor Mate had some interesting stuff to say about that too in the movie The Culture High.
01:43:37.000And one of the main issues they're talking about is that a lot of these people that are addicted, that deal with addictions, or people that are depressed, and people that have these moments in their life they're trying to get over the hump, they're dealing with childhood abuse, or they're dealing with childhood stress,
01:44:43.000And that if you're dealing with, like, that's one of the things they say about extremely violent neighborhoods.
01:44:47.000Kids that grow up in violent, like Michael Irvin was telling me this.
01:44:51.000The kids that grow up in violent families and around violence, they literally, from the womb, the mother, as she's dealing with high cortisol levels and stress levels and adrenaline.
01:47:57.000I have to push it out in front of people.
01:48:00.000I got this new bit that I worked out last night for the first time ever at the Ice House, and as I was working it out, I was like, oh, finally, I know.
01:48:36.000I didn't think it was where I thought.
01:48:38.000Do you think that that attitude, that thinking about the credit, like what we were talking about before, that was the boost that you got, was you would get ego and you would get adrenaline and you wouldn't get the joy.
01:48:47.000Do you think that it's detrimental to concentrate on the credit?
01:48:50.000Do you think that it's better to achieve a zen state?
01:48:53.000Yeah, well that's the thing I've said on here before, which when me and Dave did the show, we wouldn't tell people who wrote what.
01:49:00.000Because it was like, it's none of your business.
01:49:02.000Because you're just going to use it to judge the person who didn't write it.
01:49:33.000I just want to contribute to the role.
01:49:37.000I want to hold my own, but I'm not like, I'm going to fucking vanquish these motherfuckers, because it's comedy.
01:49:45.000It's silly, and how you come up with it is so communal.
01:49:51.000Well, in that sense, but I'm talking about in the sense of actually writing things for you, for you on stage, not in the writer's room when you're writing for a sitcom or something like that.
01:49:58.000We're talking about you coming up with a tagline out of nowhere and go, well, I'll take it.
01:50:26.000But I'm like you, where there's such...
01:50:29.000You know chaff like just fucking nothing yeah, and then it's what's nice is when you have a thought or like a long-held Idea about something and then eight years later you come with a joke for it Yeah, and for me also sometimes I find puzzle pieces and they they're like little islands and all sudden clink can I click together and they have a bridge and then they become awesome like I know where oh my god you puzzle fucker buddy Come on over.
01:51:02.000Yeah, because after a while, if you have enough bits in your act, if you have like five or six ideas, or eight or whatever, then you can just...
01:51:11.000You'll just end up filling up those eight more than like, I gotta come up with two more.
01:51:15.000It's just like the eight get longer with those little puzzle pieces.
01:51:18.000Now, after doing these six treatments, do you anticipate this being like a quarterly thing that you do to just keep your brain charged in this state?
01:51:28.000Yeah, he told me that there's a guy who does it once a month, whether he feels like he needs it or not.
01:51:33.000By the way, I should say it's $600 of treatment.
01:53:04.000Really throwing up for hours and fighting diarrhea.
01:53:08.000And then it also seemed like nebulous in terms of, is that what happens?
01:53:12.000I've only done DMT. I've done the pure extract, which is what ayahuasca is, is a slow release version of DMT. Okay.
01:53:21.000So what happens is, with DMT, they get it down to this freebase form, which is essentially, they process it down to the raw crystals, and you smoke that, and you get pure DMT. Or, the way Rick Strassman did it, Rick Strassman, finally we rescheduled, his health is doing much better,
01:53:54.000But it was connected to Rick's work, but it was a lot of other experts, Dennis McKenna and a lot of different people interviewed talking about the drug.
01:54:04.000But what he found, he had, this is all FDA approved as well, and they did these trials out of the University of New Mexico where they gave people intravenous DMT. Which is just like they're doing the intravenous ketamine with you, you know, boom, right into this bloodstream and a long-term effect.
01:54:21.000Just like your experience, it's like a 45-minute trip, as opposed to DMT, which is like 15 minutes.
01:54:29.000So the ayahuasca, what they've done is they figured out a way to have DMT and MAO inhibitor, a natural MAO inhibitor.
01:54:54.000It would be edible, but you would be freaking out.
01:54:57.000Your neurotransmitter levels would go through the fucking roof every time you ate vegetables.
01:55:02.000So they figured out how to do it in a hospital setting, just like what you're doing, a doctor's office setting, sort of like what you're doing.
01:55:13.000And they had, you know, really, really, really profound results with it to the point where it was really, really life-changing shit for the people that were a part of it.
01:55:23.000Yeah, because it's just like a fucking, it's like having a, it's like, you know when you see boxers working with like a weighted vest?
01:56:02.000I mean, it's just the dumbest shit, but it's like, I write more, I laugh at my own jokes more, I like my dog more.
01:56:10.000The other thing that he said, which I was going to mention, of the things that will make it last longer, diet, health, exercise, talk therapy, and a close personal connection.
01:58:38.000No, at this point, I just, because I just wasn't, because I felt shitty and didn't exercise for like three weeks, now I'm like fucking doing kettlebells and I'm like fuck afterward just because I'm out of shape basically.
02:01:31.000When you take nootropics, that's one of the things that we found when we did the double blind placebo studies at the Boston Center for Memory with AlphaBrain was that one of the big markers that it increased in is memory.
02:01:42.000Memory, and even reaction time, executive function, all those things that you're attaching to, or the opposite of it, you're attaching to depression.
02:01:50.000This slowness, this drag, this weight.
02:01:54.000Yeah, the other thing, last night, last two nights when I've been at clubs, I remember everyone's name.
02:02:00.000Normally I'm like, I think I know your name, I couldn't tell you what it is.
02:02:05.000Like I could see their name next to their face.
02:02:40.000I'm one and a half, and I'm like literally staring at the picture, like staring at the camera, and Chappelle goes, and you've had that look on your face ever since.
02:03:37.000I've known way too many people that have had, like, real fucking problems with it.
02:03:40.000And I think it can be adjusted with behavior modifications, the way you treat people, the way you interface with people, with exercise, with diet.
02:04:03.000Yeah, there's a lot of people say, like, mushrooms, they're trying to, they're, mushrooms is in this whole ketamine, iboga, iboga, iboga, iboga, yeah, but the extract is iboga.
02:10:06.000The SSRI thing is, A, chemicals leaving your body.
02:10:10.000That's the withdrawal, which creates any drug withdrawal.
02:10:13.000It's just your body's trying to compensate.
02:10:16.000With this there's no there's no ketamine in me Now to speak of right I guess there's maybe ketamine create something in your brain that whatever So well that's one of the weirdest things about some psychedelic trips is you feel like there's rewiring going on You feel that with DMT like they're working in your brain like you see them peripherally and you're looking at you going Yeah,
02:10:37.000and they're like doing some shit off to the side.
02:10:46.000Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're seeing is like the roots of where your behavior is coming from when you're saying that you see the wiring under the board.
02:11:28.000At one point it became like a little roller coaster.
02:11:31.000Like but a fun kind of smooth like water ride But it's just me kind of going through different things and Some of the times it was just like white blah, you know just like and you you going into it with a mindset where you're trying to cure your depression are you trying to Eliminate it or mitigate it.
02:11:52.000Yeah, I didn't yeah, I was like I'm just hopeful and Right.
02:11:57.000But while you're having these experiences, while you're on the water slide, is this a theme?
02:15:01.000Well, that's not me, but as long as I can say I want to have a sleeve, I can't stop some guy from turning his eyeballs into Toad from the X-Men or whatever the fuck he's doing.
02:16:59.000Or yeah, some blood booger or something.
02:17:02.000I put some pictures on Twitter after I got my deviated septum done where I was blowing out these fucking silver dollar-sized hunks of blood and booger.
02:18:21.000Like they there was like an x-ray the guy's like I don't think you need anything and then he showed he did like the x-ray and It there was so much like cartilage or whatever.
02:18:29.000It was totally it was like it was like cinnamon bund to fit Oh God, so I guess he took that out, but he didn't take out enough shit They say that there's a large percentage of people that deal with block septums that this is super common because your nose is so fragile and You're whacking on a door and all of a sudden it's bent and now you don't breathe right for the rest of your life until you get an operation.
02:18:51.000I've heard, whether it's true or not, that a lot of it has to do with inbreeding.
02:19:37.000Yeah, it's just blood that becomes calcified.
02:19:40.000When blood leaks, like when you have breaks in the blood vessels, apparently, and it's under the surface of the skin, it swells up, like fills up with blood, and then that blood hardens and becomes like calcium.
02:19:53.000Someone I know was telling me that they woke up with vertigo, and it turned out Because a friend of hers had had it for months, and they go, yeah, it turned out it was just a piece of dust in my inner ear.
02:20:12.000So basically, if you ever wake up with vertigo, one of the ways you get rid of it is literally like trying to get water out of your head.
02:20:19.000You're trying to just jar the dust or whatever it is.
02:20:23.000Like somersaults fucking laying on your side.
02:20:25.000I swear to God, somersaults is one of the cures.
02:20:29.000So if anyone wakes up with vertigo, How weird is it that your ears control your balance?
02:20:37.000Like somehow your ears and your balance are connected.
02:24:22.000I love that there's so many people working on all these different ways to improve the way the brain functions, and they're kind of still in this infancy with it.
02:24:29.000They're fucking with it and adding pills and jazzing you up.
02:24:31.000I'm grateful just for the shit they've done so far.
02:24:40.000I've never had a depression issue, I don't think.
02:24:42.000I mean, I think I might have when I was really young, but I don't have it.
02:24:46.000I definitely don't have it now, but I sympathize with it, and I know a lot of people have had it, and they've come back, and they're much better.
02:24:55.000You know, Irish fear is one that I always point to.
02:24:58.000Ari was severely depressed at one point in time.
02:25:13.000He felt like I think for a while like that he wasn't being recognized he was being recognized by us You know like all of our friends and like crowds would laugh at him But the industry wasn't taking him seriously or he wasn't connecting yet.
02:25:24.000I had another brain thing over two days.
02:25:27.000I think it was earlier this week Where one day I was like fucking no one cares about you and the next day I like it was a professional gripe where I'm like all that shit and then the next day I had the same thought,
02:25:42.000and then it was followed by like, well then fight!
02:25:47.000Yeah, like, yeah, it was like, then fucking do something about it!
02:25:50.000Whereas the day before, I was just like, hopeless.
02:25:52.000Like, that's the thing, is like, one of the depression things is like, learned helplessness.
02:25:57.000They think that was one of the things that like, that was a behavioral thing.
02:26:01.000Where it's like you have to, like when mice couldn't, when they realized they couldn't get out of a box, they just stopped trying.
02:26:09.000But then there were certain mice that they gave, I think a chemical to that would keep, that would like just fight, fight, fight, fight until they died.
02:26:16.000But that was the thing of like, okay, like I wasn't getting that a month ago.
02:26:21.000That learned victim mentality, that's a groove that's like carved in people and some people it's become so prominent that they just automatically drop right into that and then they're a victim.
02:26:34.000And they search for that and then they use it for arguments.
02:26:38.000They also use it in arguments, like they become a victim in the argument.
02:26:41.000It's super common and it's so self-defeating but it's so a normal part of like really weak thinking.
02:26:49.000Yeah, but having said that, some of weak thinking is as chemical a problem as fucking diabetes.
02:27:00.000And also, not everybody has the same exact fucking childhood and growing up.
02:27:05.000Experiences so your your formative experiences that you're having with its shaping your personality What giant percentage of them are completely out of your control?
02:27:13.000Yeah, and how arrogant is it to assume that everybody had the experiences that you had so you've gotten through them Yeah, everybody else Henry Rollins needs to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and not fucking shoot themselves like Robin Williams that pussy fucking pussy Yeah, I mean that's the crazy.
02:27:27.000Well that's like when people say it's like a a Depression is like a strength thing.
02:27:33.000If you're talking about mental fortitude, I've got a pretty good track record of shit I've done.
02:27:55.000Like, he's got a good brain, and he's not like a weak guy.
02:27:58.000Well, it's good at some things, at least.
02:28:00.000You know, Mark Gordon, who's a good friend of mine who's a doctor, he's an expert in...
02:28:05.000Traumatic brain injury and recovery from traumatic pain injury.
02:28:08.000Yeah, and one of the things that he talked about he actually wrote a paper about this about people that have gone through Very significant operations where they've been under anesthesia for long periods of time and had like open heart surgery that type of shit There's a large percentage of them that experience some pretty significant depression after it's over and And they think it has to do with hormonal imbalances that occur after these traumatic...
02:29:57.000And he said, like, it's, I don't know what the analogy was, but he's like, it was just like, it was like, I had clumpy hair that I couldn't get a comb through, and now I could get the comb through it or something.
02:30:05.000I don't remember what the, but something similar to that.
02:30:07.000But he's kind of chubby, and he doesn't look like he exercises, and I bet he doesn't eat right.
02:30:26.000I'd heard stories about him where he was, you know, I'd hear stories where he wouldn't be happy with the monologue and he'd just be banging his head against the wall.
02:30:55.000He was the exec producer of The Tonight Show and like an exec producer on Late Night with David Letterman and then he became one on the new one too.
02:31:03.000So he was sort of like Letterman's go-between for Johnny.
02:31:47.000And I appreciate you coming on here and talking about it.
02:31:49.000Well, no, yeah, I, cause it's fucking, cause the thing with therapy that it's very, first of all, people don't know it's very hard to find a good therapist.
02:31:57.000Like, people are too quick to go, like, yeah, they're fine.
02:31:59.000You gotta shop around, which people don't realize, and with antidepressants you gotta shop around.
02:32:03.000And if none of them work, keep looking for other shit.