On this episode of Thick & Thin I sit down with comedian and podcaster Jeff Perla to talk about how he went on a four month hitchhiking adventure around the world, what it was like, and why he decided to do it in the first place. We also talk about what it's like to travel the world in a backpacker backpacker style, and how he got to where he is now. It's a great episode, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it. The podcast is brought to you by Gimlet Media and produced by Riley Bray. The opinions stated here are our own, not those of our employers, and do not necessarily reflect those of any other companies or organizations. We are not affiliated with any of these companies, and we do not endorse any of their products or services. Thank you for listening and supporting this podcast. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to our other shows on Apple Podcasts and Podchaser.net. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review! We'll be looking out for you in next week's episode. 5 stars is much appreciated and really helps spread the word about this podcast to the rest of the podcast world. Love ya! Peace, Blessings, EJ & Cheers, Ej and Cheers. - The Ej & Jon. Jon & Brett - Caitlyn. ( ) Jon and Brett ( ) <3 ( ) - Mike ( ) & Ben ( ) ( ) . & Ben ( and Jon ( )( ) ( ) ( . & Jon ( , ) ( ). , Ben ( & Brett ( . ) - ( ), + Jon ( ), and Ben ( . . , etc. ( ) , , and Jon's ( ) ... And much more! ( ) and Ben & Brett's ( ), and so much more. , & ... (and more! & ) & , AND MORE! . ) & ( ) ! AND ( ) AND MUCH MORE!! Thanks Jon and Ben's podcast, and much more!!! with your support, ) and ! & THE PODCAST ( )!! & MUCH MORE!
00:04:15.000I was thinking the other day when I was looking at all this crazy shit that's been going on in England, these terrorist attacks, and what happened in France, and I was just thinking how long that section of the world has been in turmoil.
00:08:08.000Yeah, and then they're taking things to another level, because they're seeing the level of all these other people, and like, a guy in Germany can compare himself with a guy in Japan, and a guy in America.
00:12:18.000What they did is they protested, they yelled and screamed, and he felt unsafe, and he left the college, and then the college got shut down due to threats.
00:14:11.000When you talk to people who understand how brains develop, one of the big things that they always say is the frontal lobe, the frontal cortex doesn't really develop until you're like 25. It's not fully developed.
00:14:36.000By the way, that's my theory on why people send their kids away to college, is because they're fucking embarrassing, and they don't want them anywhere near them while they're trying to grow into real people.
00:15:04.000Oh, yeah, you know other conversations girls and boys, you know Mostly girls you creep.
00:15:09.000I mean, you know, whatever you creeping sort of sure Super into that but like But yeah, they're just dumb they're dumb when you listen to them and you're like you're just well-read and dumb and Well, there's a lot of people that, I mean, are 18 years old and you can have a very intelligent conversation with them.
00:15:41.000To kind of get how to, you know, sort of factor all the aspects of life together and make it some sort of a manageable plan for yourself and live your life.
00:15:52.000But the idea of those kids being able to run that principle and run the president of that school like that and just tell them to put his hands down and laugh at him.
00:16:38.000Isn't that amazing, though, that that is what we decide to do as a collective group of humans, to find the thing that you can mock about him physically?
00:17:11.000James Comey that Trump didn't like him because he was six foot eight.
00:17:15.000Oh, cuz he's huge James Comey's like this giant basketball player like dude you really yeah, and he just towered over everybody including Trump Trump's like get rid of that fucking guy I'm sure it was more complicated than that.
00:17:28.000It's more because he's investigating them.
00:18:12.000The next move is Comey runs for president.
00:18:14.000A bunch of people, they get in a room with him, there's these bankers, and there's this one dude who's an internationally successful businessman, but he keeps like a humble lifestyle and a normal house, and he likes to bird hunt.
00:20:00.000David Taylor once said he was trying to write, they were buying dumb scripts for a Hallmark channel, and he said he researched a bunch of them, and he goes, pretty much every one of the movies at work is about a pet, a family reunion, or a holiday.
00:20:13.000So he had a Lost My Dog at Christmastime movie that he wrote to try to get it on there.
00:20:32.000Dude, one of my favorite comments you ever made.
00:20:34.000Because it was this, like, cop show, where there was a woman in the front, a woman behind her, kind of like Charlie's Angels-ish, little Tuckin' Tough guns, and then, like, a dude way, way in the back, maybe three women, one guy, but they're, like, hard-nosed detectives.
00:20:47.000And you're like, Hallmark Channel is sci-fi for women.
00:20:56.000I forgot I said that, but it's so true.
00:21:01.000I was doing that on stage for a while.
00:21:03.000Yeah, now that I remember it, I was doing it, I was saying that on stage because it was right there, and I could point to it, and I'd say, there is a fucking billboard across the street, and I need you to go out there and look at it.
00:21:15.000I'll tell people, after the show, look at it, this joke's gonna be better after the show.
00:22:06.000Yeah, he got out of the car with her, and it was a woman, and she was really little, and she was pulling him over, and he got out of the car, and I don't remember The exact chain of events, but I remember he was punching the fuck out of her.
00:22:20.000And he KO'd her and he on the ground and he smashed her in the face a bunch of times.
00:22:38.000It's not sexist to think that it's a scary thing to have a 130-pound woman on her own out there driving around in a cop car with a gun trying to pull over.
00:27:05.000And so you just do, and at some point you're like...
00:27:07.000You know how when you haven't gotten enough sleep for like a few days in a row, you've got four hours, four hours, four hours, and you sleep like 11 hours, and you're like, I am completely caught up.
00:27:16.000So like not having any responsibility.
00:27:19.000The stress level goes down, down, and then it's just like waiting in that zero responsibility life for like three months in that level, I guess.
00:27:47.000Yeah, it was just like relax and then I could just think about things my art form in general people in my life You know what I want and don't want I'd have like moments of just like Yeah, take a 10-hour bus.
00:28:03.000There's no Wi-Fi You know, you're just like thinking for a while Yeah tons of moments like that.
00:28:15.000So I was gonna come back for this show, but then I remembered my manager, my friend Eric, they wanted to do a show at Third Man Records in Nashville for the Wild West Comedy Festival, and I forgot about that, because people ask me,
00:29:21.000There's a lot of people that, like, they'll get, like, a truck.
00:29:25.000You know, like some sort of a SUV thing and they drive it around to campgrounds and they camp and they use the showers at the campgrounds and then they do stuff enough for money so that they have gas and they keep traveling around and hope their car doesn't break down.
00:30:32.000Unless you're walking around with several high-powered rifles and scopes and you're setting up, you know where the animals are, they hear you coming, you're walking.
00:30:41.000You're not going to be able to walk all the way to Maine.
00:30:43.000Oh man, maybe that's you, but an experienced hunter like me, I understand.
00:31:28.000Yeah, it's one of the reasons I didn't go to South America is because I was like, there's going to be more camping, it seems like, up and down the coast and stuff, and less cities.
00:31:35.000And I'm just like, I don't know if I can camp alone for that long.
00:31:55.000It's basically like just this tiny-ass little tent And like if you were a minimalist hiker, like if you're some guy who's trying to walk 50 miles or something crazy like these guys, they try to carry as light of stuff as they can.
00:32:10.000They try to go as minimal as they can.
00:32:48.000Like, there's a real movement right now towards minimalism.
00:32:53.000Or where people are trying to pare their life down as much as possible.
00:32:57.000Yeah, I think people don't want to get involved with, like, banks and fucking having to, like, mortgage themselves and their lifestyle just for the sake of, like, having things.
00:33:36.000The point system attached to it, the monetary point system, it can get you all fucked up because it'll get you working like 12 hours a day, 13 hours a day.
00:33:48.000To get better stuff, to get more prestigious stuff, to get stuff that, you know, all your other stuff having friends are really jealous of your stuff.
00:33:54.000Yeah, you're just gonna die, bro, and it's not even long term.
00:33:57.000I mean, like, what are you getting out of it now?
00:34:01.000Yeah, a ton of people that are like, I don't want that shit, so I'm just gonna do a job, you know, working on a tugboat in Seattle for a few months, save up money, and then go fucking enjoy myself.
00:34:12.000Yeah, there's a lot of people that are just choosing to look at everything that they can see, experience every new place that they can go to.
00:34:20.000That Henry Rollins podcast, man, it's a world changer.
00:34:29.000Yeah, he goes and does stuff and sees stuff.
00:34:31.000It was just also his outlook, how he simplifies all the things that are wrong with him and all the things that are wrong with the way he interacts with people, and so this is what I'm going to do.
00:34:42.000His story about being given Was it Ritalin?
00:35:11.000He grew up in, from what I understand, he's from Potomac, Maryland, which is the same county as where I grew up in, but that was the richer part of town.
00:35:21.000Not that he was a rich kid, but Montgomery County is one of the richest counties in America, and that was just a standard thing.
00:35:28.000If your kid's not performing ideally, he's learning disabled, give him some pills.
00:35:35.000People thought for a while that that was the way to go.
00:35:40.000Just it's just fascinating that he's so like Henry's so intense and he's so like is he's got like these rock-solid Ethics and this view of the world.
00:35:52.000It's very egalitarian and very open but also very aggressive Very interesting like he thought it out though.
00:35:58.000It's not just like oh whatever and this is what I believe no matter what Yes, he's like, oh yeah for sure.
00:36:03.000I thought about this and here's the answer.
00:36:04.000Oh No, I super enjoyed talking to him.
00:37:17.000Did you ever see the Vice piece on Liberia?
00:37:22.000Vice guy to travel and they went to Liberia and my man Shane, he was over there in Liberia talking to this dude who, his name is General Butt Naked.
00:37:35.000This guy was famous for going into combat during the war.
00:37:39.000He would take all his clothes off and he'd run naked.
00:37:45.000Dude, he admitted he was talking about how they would capture a child from the other tribe and they would kill him and cut pieces of the heart out and eat it to give them invincibility.
00:42:57.000And, and, if you get sick during those weeks off, if you had to go to a hospital in wherever country you're in, and you showed them I was in a hospital, you get those days back.
00:43:05.000They'll count against your sick time instead.
00:43:08.000And they expect you to take the vacation time, too.
00:43:11.000Not like here, where they're like, come on, you can't really use it.
00:44:42.000It's an expectation that you never take off.
00:44:44.000You have to pour your whole life into that shit.
00:44:46.000And it's like, oh man, go do some stuff.
00:44:48.000Okay, let me play devil's advocate because if I was one of the people out there that likes to complain about shit, I'd be like, that's easy for you to say, Ari, you haven't had a job.
00:44:54.000You don't have the responsibilities I have.
00:45:18.000Unless I want to buy something that you make.
00:45:20.000Then could you please get everybody to do overtime and put in a night shift and give people time and a half for overtime so you encourage them to go overtime?
00:52:55.000New versions of the world and new experience of what people care about.
00:52:58.000Well, I think we love to to Compartmentalize and to like look at our specific area because I think it's a part of being a human until recently like until you could travel like this We like what people liked was knowing the sort of security of their environment.
00:53:16.000They know the environment well They're around all times.
00:54:27.000And it's like, if you're an English banker from London or somebody from New York, and you took the job in Shanghai, China, you have to have some adventurous bone to you instead of staying in New York or staying in London.
00:54:43.000You have to be saying like, yeah, I'm going to go with my kids or without my kids.
00:54:46.000I'm going to go fucking do this new thing.
00:56:17.000He just walks down to the hole that's under his toilet that goes a mile plus into the ground and then pops up at some goofy ass house and gets in a car and drives off.
00:57:12.000I always wondered, like, that's one of the unique things about, like, learning a language, is the way they structure their sentences is very different.
00:57:25.000It's interesting when you talk to people from other countries, when you're out there, and you start to be able to translate their mistranslations.
00:57:30.000Like, easy things, like what time it is.
00:58:27.000Why can't you just tell me what page it's on?
00:58:30.000What a crazy world to think that there are people that will go into crowded areas like in Manchester and just blow themselves up and kill a bunch of people around them.
00:59:47.000You know, there's a different, in deviant sociology, there's a different category for people who attempt suicide and people who commit suicide.
01:00:06.000And the people who do it generally shut up about it more.
01:00:08.000They just do it without telling people, like, I'm gonna kill myself, I want to kill myself.
01:00:12.000So somebody said if people say they want to kill themselves, that's a good sign that they need help, but that they're not gonna kill themselves.
01:00:22.000There's a different mentality between also someone who wants to kill themselves and someone who wants to literally be the bomb that kills a bunch of other people.
01:01:27.000And then all of a sudden it's just you disembodied in an infinite black room.
01:01:35.000It's just you forever in the blackness of infinite space with no stars just you alone With no body what's floating through eternity?
01:01:47.000You just you you can experience the blackness of space But with no stars and nothing to look at no women forever just you just you just your consciousness and realizing how huge you fucked up forever and Oh,
01:03:26.000Yeah, and it's all happening on a screen, but the car's moving around so it feels real, and it's an enormous fucking really high-resolution screen where it's showing this huge cartoon where this whole thing plays out.
01:08:36.000Okay, when we moved in, I was told that using prison labor at the governor's mansion was a long-standing tradition which kept down cost.
01:08:44.000Clinton writes, she adds that most of the workers were convicted murderers and she became friendly with, in quotes, a few of them African-American men in their 30s who had already served 12 to 18 years of their sentences.
01:08:57.000Despite their alleged friendships with these men, Clinton tells her readers, we enforced rules strictly and sent back to prison any inmate who broke a rule.
01:09:06.000Despite having no psychological qualifications, she later asserts that these men did not have inferior IQs or an ability to apply moral reasoning, but instead they may have been emotional illiterates.
01:09:52.000Clinton makes no mention of whether or not these men received any money for working for her and her husband.
01:09:58.000A 2016 article from Mother Jones notes that when it comes to prison labor, some states include Texas, Arkansas, and Georgia do not pay inmates at all.
01:12:10.000Judo Gene LaBelle was, uh, he was, uh, I know he was a national champion in judo, and I think he won a gold medal in the Olympics.
01:12:18.000Dude, I saw Clay Guido see him once, and this was when Clay Guido was coming up, so he wasn't like, he was in the cheap seats with us, and he saw Judo Jean in the section where you sit, and he was like, oh, fuck!
01:12:28.000And he just jumped, I don't know how he got past security, just like ran past them, just to go give that guy a hug.
01:23:30.000My parents had to give them away, so we had to bring them into the garage every night, because we'd wake up the neighbors in the fucking middle of the suburbs, and they're just like...
01:27:22.000The dogfighting thing to those people...
01:27:25.000Mean the people that believe in it, I'm sure they would argue with you that there's no difference between dogfighting and rooster fighting.
01:30:48.000Well, they just, they have their dicks and balls, though.
01:30:52.000The unsullied, the problem with those guys is they've been neutered so they can't fight that good because they don't have any testosterone.
01:32:44.000I mean, they've essentially been selected over many, many, many, many generations to be incredibly dog aggressive, incredibly prey-driven, and almost impervious to reacting to pain.
01:32:57.000That's what's so terrifying about them, is that they don't care.
01:33:10.000They're locked faces on each other, and their tails are wagging back and forth.
01:33:14.000Like they're having the greatest time.
01:33:16.000I saw a thing for some, like, OC County fair.
01:33:21.000They train their dogs to do tricks and shit.
01:33:23.000And they said they've gotten to the point where, this reminds me of this, where the treat they get for crashing the Frisbee eventually becomes the Frisbee.
01:33:33.000So, like, they're trying to catch, like, cool, I got to grab that frisbee.
01:35:05.000I think I might have, but it was so dark, I could only see that it was some sort of a dog-like creature that was running across the dirt road ahead of us while we were in hunting camp waiting to get picked up.
01:40:07.000And he jumps over your fence and you run inside, you're covered in blood and you're like, oh my god, this skunk bit the fuck out of my face.
01:41:18.000I wonder if a Komodo dragon was the inspiration for that thing that the alien would do from the movie Ridley Scott movie Alien where it would open its mouth and all the slime and everything.
01:41:28.000They have all this bacteria in their mouths.
01:41:30.000Like supposedly if you get bit you're still gonna lose your leg.
01:41:33.000We've gone over this at least twice and I always forget which it is.
01:41:37.000That they used to think that it was a toxin and now they think it's bacteria or they used to think it was bacteria and now they think it's a toxin.
01:42:53.000I mean, I'm trying to imagine that those people were just like us 12,000 years ago, and they were a tiny little thing, almost like a cross between a human and a chimp.
01:43:04.000They don't really know exactly what their skin color was or what they look like.
01:43:07.000They put it next to a drawing of a full-grown, like, now man, and he's shredded.
01:43:57.000Well, Australopithecus is like a modern human, but like one of the first versions, I think, I want to say a million years ago, but I'm probably just making that number up.
01:44:07.000But, you know, human beings in this form, they don't know the exact number, obviously, but they think we've been around in this form for only about a quarter million years.
01:44:24.000I saw one on a rock, and you go right behind some leaves and some branches, so you get up close to them, and it's still sort of scary, because you could probably get through the branches, but probably not.
01:44:36.000And you can just take a picture from that close, all the saliva's coming out.
01:44:41.000I'll show you this at the store one night.
01:44:43.000Can you imagine the horror that you would feel if a kimono dragon was clamped down on your calf and you felt all that hot poison going into your body and you were trying to get away and you broke free with a big chunk taken out of your calf and it's about to leap on you and you're trying to run away with a limp.
01:45:04.000You're hobbling away and screaming no and no and running through the bushes and you look back and you see it just taking its time walking towards you.
01:45:50.000So they grow and shit, but then they die.
01:45:51.000So they go to the watering hole, and the Komodo dragons know that they're gonna go to the watering hole, and they just fucking wait for him.
01:45:56.000And so he jacked him on the leg, and then he's slowly making his way towards him.
01:46:01.000Imagine if that was you, and you had to see that thing walking up the bank towards you.
01:50:15.000Yeah, it's one of the things that makes life Fascinating is that there are these Ruthless merciless predators Jamie's shielding his eyes from Harry's dick.
01:50:28.000Oh The image want to just put the image on me for a second educational You don't want to show his Jamie, could you get away with doing this on YouTube or Instagram?
01:50:38.000We might be in trouble just because we mentioned that you're peeing.
01:50:54.000Like, say if you're walking past the school and you're like, God, I gotta take a leak, and you just innocently walk towards a patch of trees, and you piss there, and someone from the school calls the police.
01:52:48.000Shops are also prohibited from operating within a thousand foot radius of a church, school, park, liquor stores, or other dispensary or a drug free zone such as a library.
01:54:41.000And when we're hanging out with this dude, he was telling me that he got pulled over outside of New Orleans because he was walking on the street with an open beer.
01:54:49.000I forget where he was, some other city.
01:55:39.000There's too many dumb young dudes that would bring drinks and splash them on people and be walking on the street with open beers and be goofy.
01:57:36.000You know, Duncan had Greg Fitzsimmons on his podcast this week, and I've only listened to the first 10 minutes or so, but Duncan was talking about how different New York is in terms of diversity and all the different cultures and people.
01:58:40.000And they had a house that was for sale in Brooklyn.
01:58:45.000They built like a Georgia mansion in Brooklyn in like 1920. And they were trying to put mansions, like southern style mansions, in Brooklyn.
01:58:56.000It's like an 11,000 square foot house.
02:02:57.000You just sort of scratch out everything that's there, throw some water on it.
02:03:01.000But like that dark blackness that you get from a cast iron pan, I don't know why, but when I cook on one of those, I feel like a fucking man.
02:03:13.000If you give me a choice, there's a cast iron pan and some bitch ass fucking tungsten, one of those ones that you could flip a cheeseburger without putting any non-stick.
02:07:48.000Now, when you're writing your new shit, like when you're doing it now, are you incorporating experiences that you had when you were on this walkabout?
02:08:12.000Mostly I'm kind of hearing what Rollins said, too, about how he does it, and it's like, oh, some time to process it, you know, use it as, like, references and things, instead of, like, bits about that, you know?
02:11:06.000Yeah, but we're all in just a ring, and it was like, we're all talking about whatever stuff, and then one at a time, one of us, you could see them, like, thinking about how that fight ended.
02:11:12.000Four rounds plus of dominance by one guy, and a last minute fucking triangle out of nowhere to keep this, one of the best champions of all time, still in power.
02:11:24.000And you see, one at a time, Randy or somebody, I remember Randy doing it after someone else did it, they would just kind of go off, like you see them thinking about something, and they would just shake their head and go, whoa, my hand!
02:11:34.000And you're like, oh, you're thinking about that fucking fight.
02:11:36.000It was right in the hallway right afterwards.
02:11:39.000Yeah, there's a unique feeling that you get when you're recounting like a crazy event where someone knocks somebody out or chokes somebody out.
02:13:17.000There's one video I'm pretty sure it's in, but I need to double-check and listen to make sure it's the part they're talking about because it was getting highlighted as it.
02:13:23.000Someone sent it to me, and they sent it queued up right where it is, and it's so hilarious.
02:18:34.000Okay, but it's more so, but it's not 100% of the time.
02:18:38.000So if I came from a divorced household, I didn't, and my dad wasn't around, and my dad beat my mom, that can be a way worse and harder experience than the Cosby kids.
02:18:52.000So it's like, just because you're this, it might make the odds harder for you, but it's not 100%.
02:18:58.000But there's an origins thing, and one of the origins that every black kid has to face when they think about it, is that someone down the line was a slave.
02:19:07.000And they're not slaves anymore, but that's why people who look like him are here.
02:19:12.000They're all here because someone brought them over here in chains.
02:19:15.000Yeah, and there's still a tree with remnants of that.
02:19:17.000And there's got to be a weird self-esteem or a self-identity issue attached to knowing that everybody knows that your ancestors were slaves.
02:19:27.000And there's a certain thing that people do when someone has something and someone else wants it.
02:19:36.000If you have a group of people that's different, it's really easy to almost think of them as not you.
02:19:45.000So many people, by dehumanizing the other.
02:19:50.000And this thing that has to balance out, that I guess is...
02:19:59.000I guess just the echoes of that is like we have to get so many generations away from people being slaves and any repercussions of it socially or economically.
02:20:10.000We have to get so far away that it doesn't factor in anymore where we don't care.
02:21:13.000And it becomes this moral, high ground, sort of grandstanding, peacocking sort of a thing, where they just are constantly trying to let everyone even know how uncool it is to do this, and how wrong it is to do that.
02:21:58.000Someone under the influence of alcohol, which was very questionable.
02:22:02.000That's a weird one because we all know that there's different states of mind and that a woman who decides to get a couple drinks and then wants to have sex.
02:23:02.000Well, it still is the rule, but I'm saying they'll say that if it comes to sexual intercourse, but they won't say that when it comes to driving.
02:23:10.000No one's going to say you couldn't consent to being behind the wheel.
02:24:39.000I think sometime in the 50s or 60s, or maybe even up to 1980 when MAD started, the states that weren't adopting it were going to stop getting funding for federal road money and stuff like that.
02:29:33.000I would guess that he has, like, um, like, limp implants and Botox, and it's like an oddly shiny forehead, and he, um, he's got a perfect haircut, and he's very feminine, but in a weird sort of a way, and he's just,
02:29:49.000uh, rubbing, and he has a suit on, and he has white gloves.
02:29:53.000They're white gloves, like, with the lines in the back of them, like Mickey Mouse has.