Ep 14 ｜ Dave Rubin ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
190.87566
Summary
Comedian and radio host Amy Poehler joins Jemele to discuss the importance of being present in the moment, and why being present is the most important thing you can do in a world that seems to be getting crazier and crazier every day.
Transcript
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I was taught when I was a kid, but my daddy drilled it in my head over and over and over and over and over again.
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What you follow the two most powerful words in any language with defines you.
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Well, here was the word that popped into my head.
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I was going to say, it sounds sort of cheesy, right?
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But that was what popped in my head when you just said that.
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You actually said to me, let's not talk for a minute before we start here.
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I am really trying in this crazy time that we live in that seemingly is getting crazier constantly.
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And then when you add the technological component where everything seems to be getting sped up faster and faster, where we used to talk about a 24-hour news cycle.
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The way we want to destroy people and things and institutions that have been with us forever.
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The way we want to just sort of ransack history and think that we can build everything new.
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And as if you just have ideas today that have been born of nothingness and all of history was meaningless and all of these things.
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And we've done it a couple times on each other's shows over the last couple of years.
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I really try to just sit in that room with that person and forget everything else.
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And, you know, there could be on any given morning.
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You can figure out ways, I think, to mitigate some of the madness.
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And hopefully you can pilfer some happiness along the way and find someone or some people that you love and enjoy some good food and sex and whatever it is that makes you happy.
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You know, I don't know what the real purpose is other than you have to find some use and utility for your own life.
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So I think if I figured out one thing, it's that I know that I wake up every day with a purpose.
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There is not a day at this point in my life at 42 years old after, you know, having all the 12 years of struggling as a stand up comic and a couple radio shows and Sirius XM and being on the Young Turks and and personal struggles and being in the closet for a long time.
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And a whole slew of things that I wake up every day and the second day starts, I'm like, there is so much to do.
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You know, I still want to have time to walk my dog and just, you know, do some human things, too.
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But I think being present is the most important piece of that, because that's where you'll find some honesty.
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And I think generally, I think what is sort of put me on the map with a lot of people is that I've been honest about my political evolution, my personal evolution.
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You know, I've got really the public intellectual of our time, Jordan Peterson.
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And he's a clinical psychologist and bestselling author and all that.
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I've got Eric Weinstein, who's a world renowned economist and Brett Weinstein, who's an incredible biologist and Sam Harris, who's a neuroscientist and sort of the most
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outspoken atheist we have in a slew of other people.
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who's who's lived through more than than any of us can possibly imagine.
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She to me is the is the the the marker for what side of things you're on.
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If I say Ayaan Hirsi Ali to you and you don't immediately say I love her or I admire her, you know, maybe you don't know who she is.
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But if there's a moment where you have to think about what you think of this woman, if you know who she is, you something is really whacked with your moral compass.
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I've I've interviewed presidents, prime ministers.
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I've interviewed everybody you could possibly think of.
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She is the only person that had a at the time, a secret service man stand at the lens of the camera.
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But I can tell you that I've been at private homes with her where security where no one could have possibly known where we were and security guards have to be outside.
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But anyway, I'm surrounded by this level of incredible intellectual, deep, meaningful people who are who are doing incredible things.
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It's like I'm I'm someone that's that's interviewing them usually.
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And now I'm I'm thought of as someone that's in this group with these people.
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And it's like, wow, what if what a freaking gift.
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So I guess I did something right along the way.
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Well, Twitter is the journal from hell, I suppose.
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So I don't want to give away too much at the moment, but it has a lot to do with I think some of the things we're going to talk about here a little bit about my political evolution.
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Sort of the way I see the world sort of shaking out now and what really are the issues that we can't talk about and why can't we talk about them and how if we're going to start talking about it, we can go ahead and do that.
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And really how I've been able to have these really tough conversations with a guy like Ben Shapiro, you know, who will not only not bake me the cake, but said that he wouldn't even come into if I had an anniversary party for me and my husband.
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If I had an anniversary party, Ben said he probably wouldn't come.
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Now, he may not be a friend the way my true my truest friends in the most accepting, decent way people that I go way back with are.
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But I don't need to make the world bend to my will and I can find room for people that I think differently.
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And more importantly, and I said this to Ben when we got into this and we both got a lot of hate for it, by the way, he got a lot of hate from people on the right that aren't happy with gay people.
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And I got a lot of people hate from people on the left that thought I was being a pushover or something to him.
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But I said, you know, Ben, hopefully we'll do this for another 50 years and we can do it in public.
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You know, we'll do these conversations and we'll talk about these things.
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I think when when I'm 90 and he's a little younger than me, he's 80 or whatever it is.
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I think that over time I will have moved him on on certain issues.
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Not that I want to change what his religious beliefs are.
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I don't want to change them, but I think that over the course, the only way we are going to get anywhere, period, in this world is by doing this.
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Will your relationship be worth it if you don't move him?
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You will never engage with people who think differently than you.
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And we're, you know, as we just discussed on my show, it's like we are veering to that place in many respects, but I'm hopeful because of the amount of people I see in real life, not in 140 characters, but in real life who are trying to grapple with some of these issues, who are realizing in many cases that their allies are the same people they thought were their enemies a couple of years ago.
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You know, the first time that we sat down, I said to you, I thought you were, I think, I thought a half genius, half crazy, half entertainer.
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And I know that's three halves, but there was a lot going on there.
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And it's like, I don't know that five years ago I would have thought, wow, I can sit down with Glenn Beck and have no agenda other than, you know, look each other in the eyes and figure it out.
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And I just see no, you know, there's this idea that if you talk to somebody, that automatically means you endorse their ideas.
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Or you're giving air to whatever thoughts they have that, you know, are untoward or something.
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And I'll keep fighting to make sure that that's not the world that we live in.
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That's really amazing that, I mean, so I, I was invited to go to interview Assad in Syria.
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And turned it down because it had too many restrictions.
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Because I knew what he wanted, you know, he wanted me to tell his story.
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And somebody asked me, well, you can't talk to him.
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I would just ask honest questions and let them hang themselves.
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You know, let them be exposed for who they are and speak honestly about it.
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I don't understand how, um, I don't understand how me being friends with you, you being friends
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with me or Ben or something, how that hurts us, how that, how that's your, even if we weren't
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friends, you being on my show, I'm not endorsing you.
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Well, this shows how people have conflated people and ideas, right?
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So of course, I mean, this is the most rudimentary, simple thing that people need to understand
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if we're going to function as a, as a society, you have to be able to talk about ideas and
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I mean, this is sort of the age old thing about the, the artists and the art.
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And you're going to have all sorts of flawed people are going to have all sorts of flawed
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conversations and create all sorts of brilliant art and, and all sorts of things.
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And if we can't separate those two things, you'll never imagine if, if we couldn't do
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But what kills me is the, the much of this now is coming from the left and you were the
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You know, you go to a play, you read a book, you see a piece of art.
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It should, it should push you maybe into uncomfortable places.
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Well, where is that now on something much more important ideas?
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It's so weird because, you know, it's kind of funny.
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It's like, if I asked you to tell me your political journey, you can picture certain
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markers along the way, but it's really hard to truly remember what you were thinking at
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So even though my journey has been, been pretty quick in the last, let's say three years,
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that's a pretty quick space to have a pretty big evolution.
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It's still hard to remember exactly what was going on, but I know that, look, I was a lefty,
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I always considered myself liberal and I wasn't really one of the people that was always screaming
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I was, and I'm sure I did it more than I'd be happy to remember, but I wasn't sort of
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That being said, I was also at the time because so much of it was related to gay rights a couple
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And because that directly affected me, I think I did get caught up in it.
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So I think that that's partly, maybe I use that as a little bit of an excuse now, but
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I think that's a pretty honorable position in that all I wanted was equality.
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And I think once, once everyone has equality under the law, which we have right now, well,
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It's a little bit of luck and it's a little bit of hard work or probably a lot of hard
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And there's going to be bad people and there's going to be racists and there's going to be
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bigots and there's going to be cheaters and liars and stealers.
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And, but there's also going to be great helpers and teachers.
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They don't know they're teaching, but they're teaching.
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You know, one of the things that Peterson, who I'm on this tour with says all the time
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And I think if you really take that, you know, you really think about like what makes a great
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adventure, you know, like you've got Darth Vader's helmet in there.
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Why is Frodo going to that wherever the hell he went?
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And I'm more of a Star Wars guy, whatever, Mount Doom or whatever.
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And this is where you can take this to a religious level if you want.
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But, but I don't think you have to only discuss it in a religious sense.
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It's on you in this world to figure something out and, and do something that's not easy.
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If you do something that's easy, I have a lot of friends right now who are, you know,
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So most of my friends are, you know, let's say within five years of that, a lot of them
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are sort of getting to this place where the rubber's meeting the road, where it's like,
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we're not young anymore in a traditional, you know, we're not, we're not in our twenties
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You know, we play basketball and it's a lot slower.
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Usually someone has a career ending injury every week.
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And yet we're not, we're not old, but like now our lives are ours, you know?
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And I'm, what I'm finding is a lot of my friends who never really challenged themselves.
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They just kind of got a job that was relatively meaningless.
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Maybe they're married, but it wasn't the person that they were really supposed to be with.
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It was just somebody that was there sort of thing.
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They're kind of having their midlife crisis right now, which I think is a little earlier
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maybe than a traditional midlife crisis would kick in.
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But I think this also goes to the things are speeding up and technology speeding up and the
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And I'm not there because I, I have purpose every day and I feel like there's an adventure
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I'm about to go on to, I think, eight countries in Europe in 16 days with Peterson and find
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out what all new people are thinking and, and have those conversations.
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And I get to go out there and talk to all kinds of people and they tell me all sorts of things
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But, but to the earlier point of this group of people that I'm surrounded by with, with
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Harris and the Weinsteins and, and, uh, and Peterson and everybody else, and you, I included
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I was a poli sci major, but I'm a, I'm a comic and I'm a talker.
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And I, you know, I, I like to think about these issues, but I don't think my place is to
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necessarily, uh, be the hardcore intellect, not that I can't do it, but I, I'm not a
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trained biologist, let's say, or neuroscientist or something, but I come more from, from your
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school, which is I want to connect with these people.
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I think the thing that I'm probably best at is distilling some of these really complex
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ideas into language that, that regular people can understand because I consider myself
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And when I sit there with Eric Weinstein, who rifles off five math mathematical theories
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Well, if I can get one of them into something that makes some sense for people that they
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can use, you know, one of the greatest minds of our generation, you know, he's using a
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mathematical theory to explain something that's happening on social media, you know, a
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There's a mathematical certainty reason for this.
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If I can get a couple of people to understand that a little bit better, and it cleans up
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So, you know, Diane, so Diane Sawyer, I said I'm 42, not, not, not 22, you know,
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she invited me to lunch one day when I was at CNN before I went to the evil empire.
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And, uh, and, uh, and she invited me to lunch and I was, I was about your age and I was on
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tour and I, I, I mean, I just was not stopping.
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And I came in and the first thing I noticed, she wasn't in stage makeup and TV makeup.
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So she, she looked tired and I must've looked exactly the same because I sat down and she
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And she said, Oh, you have to look at it differently.
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She said, you will come home every day if you can come home.
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And when you're finished with the day, you will be bone tired.
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And she said, you will be bone tired, but in exchange, you will get to witness and see
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That's why I asked you if you kept a diary, you're a witness to something that nobody else
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You know, it's, I've never had it sort of explained that kind of clearly to me, but it
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I'm tacitly or maybe not tacitly is probably not the right word.
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I'm subtly, I guess, aware of that behind myself sort of like there are moments when I'm
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on stage and you know, whether I'm with Peterson or doing standup and I'm, I'm really, I'm
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doing my best to say something that is true that I believe or in standup.
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Sometimes it's like, you're saying something that's mostly true and trying to make people
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Um, but then when I see the way people react to me after and want to share their stories
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with me and all of these things, it's like, it definitely, I can tell you this.
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I am a better person even right this second than I was four months ago than when we started
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this tour because not only because of sort of just being around Jordan, who I think
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is, is as close to consistently saying something true as anyone I can really imagine on earth.
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He is trying so freaking hard using all of the incredible tools that he has attained.
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He is so slow in his speech and people have said to me, he's so slow.
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He's weighing every word to make sure it's right.
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One of the analogies that he uses about the way he approaches these talks.
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And I love this because this is where he can take a very complex idea and get it into something
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that, that you can just, that a regular person can understand.
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He'll say, well, you know, when I'm, when I'm thinking through an idea on stage, you're
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I want to get it to the edge of where my intellect can get it.
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And then I have to sort of put it down so I don't, you know, just completely lose it
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And he likens that to his daughter climbing the tree in front of their house when she was
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She could get to a certain branch and then, you know, a couple of times put her leg over
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But then a couple of days later it could get a little bit further and a little bit further.
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And before he knew it, she was at the top of the tree.
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The guy's doing hour and a half lectures that are different, basically every, I mean,
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I mean, you know, sometimes there's some themes obviously that are similar, you know, I'm sure
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the, I'm sure the publisher would be happier if he was just talking about the book the whole
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time, but he's using this to expand his knowledge.
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And I think, and I've never seen him, I've never seen him lie or say something that he doesn't
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believe or intentionally mislead the audience or anything like that.
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I've seen him, uh, you know, if I, if during the Q and a, when I ask him something that
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maybe he doesn't want to fully address at the moment, um, he'll say it, he doesn't, you
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know, I mean, you know what it's like all these people that get on TV all the time and they
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have an answer for everything and they know everything.
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And you know, you're never going to see a real human there.
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I see presence and human with him all the time.
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So I think I'm better from that just in these last couple of months, I still got a long way
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None of, none of us, I don't know anyone that's, that's fully there, but as soon as you stop
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I want to keep being on the adventure, but also knowing that, that people think that
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I've done something good here just because I just started saying what I think.
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So to get back to the original question, I just, I was a lefty.
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And I saw something early on that now pretty much everyone sees.
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I mean, everyone, whether you're conservative libertarian, you're an old school liberal,
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even most of the progressives, I think actually see it now that there is this truly horrific
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authoritarian strain that has just encompassed the modern left.
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And I mean that from the academic perspective to the media, to the political establishment,
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And for some reason, I was one of the first people that saw it.
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And I tried the best I could as an insider to say, let's wake up or it's going to lead
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to really terrible things, not only within our party, but within the other guys, you will
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get Trump, the guy you think is a Nazi and all of these things.
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And then you won't be able to see the Nazi when the Nazi comes because the Nazi might be
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And I think that's a lot closer, although I don't like playing those word games, of course.
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And because of that, an awful lot of people suddenly, I guess, were in the recesses of
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You don't, I don't think, I don't think people are born brave.
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Um, I don't think people, in fact, I don't think there's any, I don't think there's anybody
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in history, unless they were insane, that did something great that wasn't terrified.
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And unless you've had to exercise that muscle on smaller things all throughout your life,
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Well, I, if, if this is sort of leading to something about sexuality, is that kind of
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I mean, unless there was some other thing that would have been different that would have
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went, Oh no, wait, wait, I don't know what this is.
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Well, no, I mean, I always, I think I, you know, it's so funny.
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People say, Oh, I always thought I was different.
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And then it's like, well, we all couldn't have been different, you know, what are we?
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So I was always, you know, I was always kind of funny and quippy, even when I was in kindergarten,
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you know, I was always like sort of the, I wasn't the class clown, but I was kind of
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in the back, like making fun of the class clown or like, so I always saw the world a little
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Now that may be a precursor to, uh, to talking about sexuality a little bit, I would suppose
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maybe around third or fourth grade, something like that.
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But, but I would say in a, in a more, when, uh, what I'm looking for is, um, the first
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time you thought I, I'm different and this is a bit scary.
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So that I think probably around 10th grade or something.
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And I don't even know that I've ever talked about this publicly before.
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I remember thinking that like, I seem to be attracted to guys, but I didn't think I was,
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Gay was like, you like show tunes and you like dancing.
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And it's like, well, what do you, what do you really say?
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Like, you know, there's pretty much one thing that makes you gay and then everything else
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But I still don't really like theater and I'm a horrible dancer.
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And I'd, and I'd much rather play basketball and video games or whatever, but I assure you
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Like, so I, so that's what made me feel weird, I think, because I didn't act the way you were
00:25:20.560
And I think there's a lot more people like this than, than we see at all because we still
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sort of do even now for all the progress that's been made.
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And I say progress in the, in the true sense of progress, um, mostly what you get on television
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or in mainstream media from, uh, gay people is still sort of a minstrel show.
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You can get a lot of them on Bravo talking about fashion or you can get some over the
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top, you know, sort of clown on some other show or whatever, but it is, there are people
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If anything, there was a time in my life where in a weird way I was actually jealous of
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them because I thought, Whoa, you so are who you are.
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And it's just out there while I kind of felt like a freak because people would say, even
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after I came out and people would say, we don't seem gay and I, and they meant it as a
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They meant you seem normal, but I didn't feel normal.
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So the more people tell you you're normal and you don't feel normal, that's when you really
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So I don't want to compare the two at all, but I'm an alcoholic, but I had certain rules.
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I wouldn't drink until 5 PM, but I would stand at a place at five and I would literally, I
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And so it's a weird thing because you're convinced.
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You know, one of my policies when I, so I actually, I don't know that I've ever, I think
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maybe I've said this once or twice, but the first night that I ever came out to someone,
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believe it or not, was, uh, nine, 10, September 10th, 2001, 2001 at about 11 30 PM in the
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And I told my friend, Mike Singer, who was a comedian, uh, he was gay actually.
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And he was the first person I ever came out to.
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And then, and he didn't really realize that it was like something major for me.
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He, he thought I was just telling him like, I'm gay, you know, like zippity doodah, whatever.
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I went back to the Upper West side, uh, Upper East side at the time.
00:27:25.600
And, uh, and I woke up the next morning and obviously the world had changed.
00:27:30.300
And I remember, I mean, this is what being closeted is sort of like, it's an inside job.
00:27:38.520
And when you are that isolated and that disconnected and not being real with, with your reality
00:27:43.460
and not being truthful, you, you become paranoid, you become duplicitous.
00:27:51.220
Like people would say, well, you know, who are you dating or what?
00:27:53.100
And it's like, you could just come up with a lie.
00:27:54.800
It wasn't, I wasn't walking around thinking I'm going to lie to people all the time, but
00:27:57.540
lies and that, that probably, yeah, that's probably very similar to autism or abusing
00:28:02.640
Um, but I remember I woke up the next morning and I know this sounds completely insane.
00:28:07.740
I woke up the next morning and I honestly thought it had something to do with what I said that,
00:28:16.060
I truly thought that that's how sort of twisted the world had become to me.
00:28:20.880
Like, because when you, when you were so cut off from reality.
00:28:24.300
Was that a religious thing or what, what, what, where did that come from?
00:28:28.680
I thought I had had this horrible, horrible secret for so long and I finally said it.
00:28:38.960
And then I woke up the next morning in the city that I lived in.
00:28:47.340
I mean, I think at some point over the next couple of days, then the true nature of the
00:28:52.760
Gosh, that must've made it a thousand times worse.
00:28:56.180
I mean, I can't imagine that, you know, anything that would make it a thousand times worse,
00:28:59.460
but, but, you know, within, within an hour of, or maybe two hours of the attack, I was
00:29:06.940
So if you know Manhattan, I mean, that's really the polar opposite of where the towers were.
00:29:11.100
And, you know, within two hours, the, the smell and the soot and the, and the air.
00:29:17.120
And then, you know, I had friends that couldn't get out of the city that stayed with me.
00:29:24.240
My dad couldn't get out of the city, stayed with her and some of his coworkers and just
00:29:28.260
So I think I probably broke out of that paranoia quickly, but I mean, it was a real thought
00:29:34.100
in my mind for a little while, but that's what happens.
00:29:36.400
I think when, when you are so closed off to reality and you can't deny your truth.
00:29:43.480
I mean, you know, I didn't, I'm pretty sure I'm not the guy who came up with the truth.
00:29:46.280
It'll set you free, but you can't, you can't deny your nature.
00:29:49.980
You can, you can, you can be the best person you can be and you can always work at that.
00:29:56.920
So my favorite, uh, line is not the truth shall set you free.
00:30:04.200
It's, and I don't remember who said this first, the truth shall set you free, but it
00:30:15.380
So when you started, how did your parents take it?
00:30:20.540
So I was still, so what I did was, so after that, I thought my policy, I, despite this
00:30:26.740
psychotic and really paranoid thought that the world was ending because of me, I mean,
00:30:31.880
I'm not, you know, I'm really not kidding when I say this.
00:30:34.800
After I got past that, my policy was if I tell one person and I feel better, then I'll
00:30:43.980
And that's what I did for the course of like two years.
00:30:49.640
So I was not a young person relative to figuring out who you are.
00:30:55.060
And I regret the, you know, not, I don't have regret in that.
00:30:58.200
I know I'm here now and I'm supposed to be here now.
00:31:01.140
Um, but I know I did a lot of undue damage psychologically to myself and probably physically
00:31:07.540
at some level and I did drugs and, and all sorts of things because I was coping the
00:31:13.720
So my policy was if I tell one person and I feel better, then I'll know that that's sort
00:31:20.000
And what I would do is I would tell one person I'd feel better for a little while, and then
00:31:25.680
I would start feeling worse again because I needed to tell someone.
00:31:28.560
And then when it would get to the breaking point again, I would tell someone else.
00:31:31.140
And the more people I told, what I realized was the, the, the time before I'd feel bad would
00:31:36.160
start getting shorter and shorter because of the more reality I stepped into, the less
00:31:45.200
And so that, that was, it was like I was testing myself in a way I was testing.
00:31:50.440
Well, I don't feel gay, whatever that means, or the world doesn't see the person that I
00:32:01.760
And, uh, you know, it's not even something that I talk about a lot or think about a lot
00:32:05.640
that much anymore because I just am, I just am here.
00:32:10.980
And, uh, the back to the, what my dad said, I am, I mean, that's really a complete sentence
00:32:20.040
You know, it can be followed by something, but when you are whole, that's all it needs
00:32:27.900
Um, I would say the, the piece that I do think about is that, you know, you always do
00:32:34.600
yourself, like no matter how good or whole, uh, Glenn Beck might be in 2018, you know,
00:32:41.800
the guy that was standing there at the bar counting those minutes down.
00:32:45.160
And I know the sort of damaged person that I was for a while.
00:32:50.140
I don't, I'm too busy to dwell on it now, which is nice, right?
00:32:52.660
Like, it's like, I'm doing something right now.
00:32:54.460
So I don't, but some of the vestiges of that still haunt you, haunt me at least.
00:32:59.760
And I don't know that you fully can ever escape that.
00:33:04.440
Maybe there's a fuel in that, that you need as a, as a, either a creative person or just
00:33:10.940
As a, as a Christian, you know, we believe in the atonement, we believe in forgiveness.
00:33:18.020
And so if you really accept that and you can give that to whatever, um, but it does change
00:33:25.520
Uh, cause it was when I was, uh, you know, 30, I was completely out of control and, uh, I
00:33:36.440
And I couldn't live with the mistakes that I'd made.
00:33:40.600
And, um, uh, you could look at this as a spiritual thing or a mental thing.
00:33:49.000
Um, but when I finally made the, I took the step and said, this is what I believe.
00:33:59.300
And this, I'm going to give this package to him and he's going to take it and I'm not
00:34:15.440
But I had blinding, crippling migraines twice a week.
00:34:21.640
And I know it was just from the mental beating inside the day I made that commitment last
00:34:29.280
migraine I had, I mean, and I had them for years and you can give it away, but it's almost,
00:34:46.320
I think hell is not being able to forgive yourself, not being able to put your past
00:34:56.800
I mean that, so that's like saying, well, hell is here and heaven can be here too.
00:35:01.180
If you line this stuff up correctly, whatever your mission is here and you do it forthrightly
00:35:06.880
and honestly and treat people well and, and truly do the best you can, which we all fail
00:35:15.220
Like if you don't think you do, then you probably do more than, more than most.
00:35:18.580
So if you do that, then you could be, then heaven could be right here because otherwise
00:35:26.560
It doesn't mean you're going to have 50 million bucks tomorrow and you know, and on this.
00:35:33.240
So anything that I think that we can imagine as human beings can happen here and now.
00:35:39.540
And if you really believe that, if you really strive to achieve that, I think you have a
00:35:48.200
You might not, and you might screw it up, right?
00:35:51.120
You might get it for, I think what you probably, I think probably at the, at the end, if, if
00:35:56.220
you all, if everyone goes across a life, that's a full healthy life to 90, let's say, I suspect
00:36:01.580
that the people that, that do this, the best that live the truest, most honest, decent life
00:36:08.280
I suspect there's very few people that live in that place of heaven for a long time.
00:36:12.560
You kind of can dip, you can dip in and out, you can dip in and you might have a run.
00:36:17.500
You know, it's like, you can look back on your life.
00:36:19.100
I can think of certain moments in my life, certain summers or whatever it was, man, that
00:36:27.060
I was, you know, whatever it was, whatever I was doing, you know, like I can even think back
00:36:31.320
when I was doing standup and like, I, even though I was a lot of my repression was what
00:36:38.840
Like I was, that's the interesting thing, actually.
00:36:40.860
I, it really fueled a lot of good comedy when I was younger because pain usually does pain
00:36:47.260
But then, you know, I heard George Carlin say this, um, and I love this.
00:36:50.240
It's like, you got to have a certain amount of pain to be a comic, but then at some point
00:36:58.840
And again, there's a great analogy to an alcoholic here.
00:37:01.900
It's like, you, you may need it for a while or you may have a good time on alcohol for
00:37:08.220
And I think this is why so many great comics die of drug overdoses or alcoholism or, or
00:37:12.780
otherwise do all sorts of crazy things because they never get to the point where the pain
00:37:17.360
is secondary because they need the fix to be funny.
00:37:20.180
And I definitely remember thinking that my life was sort of like, uh, it was like two tracks
00:37:26.860
So like I was really on a good career track, but my life was miserable and I was alone and
00:37:34.740
And now my life is pretty, you know, it's pretty close and there'll be moments when it's disjointed
00:37:43.100
And hopefully I'm just aware enough to, to get it lined up when it needs to be.
00:37:47.640
Tell me the moment that is crystallized in your head of this is hell not being me.
00:38:18.780
The moment that I remember that I sort of hit rock bottom, so to speak.
00:38:24.460
And if you know the New York subway is a little bit, the closest subway is 86th and Lex.
00:38:28.680
That's a pretty far walk for a subway because you got to go 89th, 88th, 87th.
00:38:39.220
I was working, I was doing standups at, uh, standup at night, but I was working just some
00:38:43.320
job at a, I don't even, I honestly don't even really remember what it was.
00:38:49.960
I have almost no recollection of it really because I was so disconnected from my reality
00:38:54.720
that there's a certain, there really is a certain part of it.
00:38:57.260
My husband, David, who's named, same name as me.
00:39:00.360
Uh, he asks me often about my early twenties and I always say, I can't really remember
00:39:06.560
because I think my day to day life was so disconnected from whatever was going on in my head that
00:39:13.260
I can't really, like I have a vague recollection of the office, but I don't really remember what
00:39:23.240
I mean, this is, this is, you know, 20 and it's not that long ago, 20 years or something.
00:39:27.860
Anyway, I remember walking that commute one day to just to get to the subway station in
00:39:33.200
the morning and I'm walking down the street and everything was shaking.
00:39:41.560
The street was shaking like an earthquake like this around my head.
00:39:45.440
But I was still, so I was walking and I felt still on the street, but the entire, it felt
00:39:50.840
like the entire world was, was shake, not spinning like this.
00:39:55.600
It was shaking like this, like this, like a globe that you were like doing this.
00:40:04.780
Like, I was like, whoa, I have got to fix this.
00:40:07.580
Like, that's when I finally was like, something is not right here.
00:40:13.400
It's like when your reality is so disconnected from real reality, man, your world will shake.
00:40:24.780
But that for me, I guess that was really the rock bottom moment that then I started getting
00:40:38.180
It's good to go, you know, because some of this also is the more you talk about this.
00:40:41.260
I don't talk about it that often, but that is how you get some closure on some of this
00:40:45.140
stuff and it, and it, it is, it renews some of the things that, wow, how did I get here
00:40:53.660
I remember at the time I said the worst thing about me, somebody had called up and at the
00:40:58.880
time I was on radio, I'd been done radio for, I don't know, 25 years and, uh, and had
00:41:12.880
I was an alcoholic and somebody, uh, I was, I was trying to clean up my life and I had
00:41:24.560
And, um, somebody had called in on this morning show and said, you know, Glenn Beck, you know,
00:41:32.080
you might have the perfect life, blah, blah, blah.
00:41:37.860
And I stopped and I said, you know, let me tell you something.
00:41:49.800
And the room just stopped and everybody was like, Oh dear God, play a record, man.
00:41:56.360
And, uh, and I said, uh, let me tell you who I am.
00:42:01.400
And I just bore my soul and I turn off the mic and I looked at Steve, Stu, my, now still
00:42:17.780
This is the day Glenn Beck destroyed his career.
00:42:22.560
It's so empowering because you have lived with this secret and it's destroyed you.
00:42:31.320
And you just want to say, this is who I am and I'm struggling and I'm, you know, I am
00:42:39.200
And all of a sudden, all these people would, would come up to me or in the days when we still
00:42:46.180
wrote letters would write and say, I can't believe you said that.
00:42:57.080
And it's amazing to me how, it's why I believe when somebody says, you know what?
00:43:09.740
That is so damaging because when you keep that secret, you're not only crushing it,
00:43:17.940
Everyone around you has their own secret, whatever it is, you're actually crushing the
00:43:24.260
I really believe that the more that you operate in some sort of alternate reality because of
00:43:38.500
So maybe as the two of us sit here right now, we're doing the game a little bit better than
00:43:45.820
Of course, not to say we don't have struggles and deficiencies and all of those things,
00:43:50.940
But if everyone's doing that at some level, well, then the reality that we're all co-building
00:43:56.660
together becomes this really strange, tenuous thing.
00:44:00.660
And I think that that's really where we're at right now.
00:44:04.540
We sit online all day long yelling at people and pretending as if we've got all the answers.
00:44:09.840
You know, all of these writers at all of these ridiculous publications.
00:44:13.280
It's like you people, none of you have created anything.
00:44:16.760
You know, I got into it once with, you know, Jonathan Chait at, is it New Yorker magazine
00:44:23.080
I don't even, I don't even like mentioning names because I try to talk about, I try to
00:44:26.000
talk about ideas instead of people, but he's either in New Yorker or New York magazine.
00:44:31.180
And he said something to the effect of on Twitter, something about how small business, the phrase
00:44:36.240
small business is just a Republican catchphrase.
00:44:43.440
It's just a way that they trick you into being for big business, something, something to that
00:44:48.340
And I wrote, I retweeted him and I wrote back, well, Jonathan, just FYI, I have a small business
00:44:53.520
with a couple employees and I'm very proud of what we've built here.
00:44:58.320
I mean, I did it pretty respectfully, not on the attack.
00:45:00.300
And then he wrote back immediately and he said, see a couple employees.
00:45:06.240
And I thought, this is, this is pretty interesting.
00:45:10.920
I built a company that I'm incredibly proud of.
00:45:12.880
We pay all the benefits, a hundred percent for all of our employees.
00:45:15.940
We're growing a little bit right now, but we're doing it within our means.
00:45:28.100
Um, but, but he mocked the idea of a couple and I thought this is really interesting.
00:45:37.300
Now you have somebody saying I'm a small business.
00:45:46.460
He works in a giant company for a lot of money.
00:45:48.940
And it's like, well, if I had 16 employees, would that be the number that now you're okay
00:45:53.620
Because I know if I had a hundred employees, you'd say I'm big business and I'm bad.
00:45:56.520
I have a couple, so I'm small business and I don't exist.
00:45:59.500
What's the number for you person who's created nothing?
00:46:03.520
You know, you write some things, but do you do?
00:46:06.460
Again, I don't want to make this too much about specifically, but I relate this back to what
00:46:12.360
It's like, we're all playing these imaginary, um, intellectual games that somehow we know
00:46:20.900
And if only we could control everything, everyone would be okay.
00:46:24.000
And that's actually pretty tyrannical and not very horrible.
00:46:31.460
Um, but does it, does it come from arrogance or fear or both?
00:46:44.400
You look at Facebook and the pictures, my pictures of my Facebook.
00:46:50.720
My favorite pictures of me are when I get up in the air in the morning and my hair is
00:46:59.460
But you look on Facebook, you look on everything is fake.
00:47:04.480
You, you take a picture now and you color adjust, you color correct.
00:47:10.460
You make sure that no, that, that product is there or this cup is there or my favorite
00:47:24.280
Well, this is why I try to take these breaks because you really, especially if you do what
00:47:28.320
we do where people really are paying attention.
00:47:30.900
It's not just like I'm taking a picture of food and my five friends are commenting on it
00:47:35.440
I mean, we're, we're really trying to engage in ideas in an honest way.
00:47:42.240
And yet there are moments where even I, as someone that's really aware of this and I
00:47:46.940
And as you know, I did the August off the grid thing and all that.
00:47:49.560
I still get caught up in the madness of it all, or, or I'll be on Instagram.
00:47:53.840
And if I took a picture of my ice cream cone, I suddenly realized it's five minutes
00:47:58.200
later and I just adjusted the color of the mint chocolate chip.
00:48:06.760
It's like, this doesn't need to be colored anymore or saturated or structured or whatever.
00:48:14.380
We're not giving ourselves the space to just kind of be anymore, but it's to ourselves.
00:48:19.920
But I think there's going to be a big anti-technology movement building.
00:48:22.780
I mean, I think there's, there's the roots of it now.
00:48:25.940
Well, I think there's a, there's now camps for adults where there are anti-technology
00:48:29.820
camps that are springing up all over the place.
00:48:32.120
And you can, you know, technology, not anti-technology tech, a response, a balancing of technology.
00:48:38.840
Well, I think the camps are designed to really get you off the devices and be present and
00:48:46.220
Well, I think eventually we'll get to some of that.
00:48:48.120
I mean, I think there will be really, there will be radical anti-technology people.
00:48:53.680
I'm sure there are some now, no, I don't think I will be because, because everything
00:48:58.440
that humans have created can be good and it can be bad.
00:49:15.220
And anything that we create, anything that humans can do.
00:49:21.440
It's like, you know, you see people that are either forced themselves or against themselves
00:49:26.120
And it's like, if something can be done, it will be done.
00:49:30.860
So I don't believe in just stopping things because of the potential for evil because it's
00:49:38.260
And you don't want to just, I would say, you don't want to just, if all the good people
00:49:43.040
stop because of all the potential bad things, well, then you're just going to leave it to
00:49:46.640
all the bad people who are going to do all sorts of awful things.
00:49:49.240
Like, for instance, I do not want the federal government to have AI.
00:49:59.000
Well, I hate to tell you, the ship has sailed, my friend.
00:50:01.180
No, I mean, AGI, but I don't want, I certainly do not want China to have it or Russia to
00:50:09.260
So you're kind of sitting here and you're like, okay, well, we better, but what if
00:50:17.280
I mean, what if, well, it's still a metaphor, but what if, what if it really has happened already?
00:50:21.860
Because I am starting to think that that might be where we're at, that these algorithms
00:50:25.680
now, you know, the people that came up with the Google algorithms that now control so much
00:50:29.780
of our information, a lot of them aren't even there anymore.
00:50:33.580
So, so that, so we have AI, are you familiar with AI, AGI, ASI?
00:50:44.340
And artificial intelligence is good at one thing.
00:50:47.320
So I can sort through Facebook and I can find these things.
00:50:56.480
I can look at, uh, uh, uh, cancer, uh, tests and I can diagnose it, diagnose it better than
00:51:04.660
That's AI, but it can only do one of those things.
00:51:19.620
When we hit a GI, the world completely changes.
00:51:25.680
Artificial general intelligence that will work like the human brain.
00:51:43.560
That puts us in a position of, it has been described as, we are a fly on a plate in a
00:52:00.960
And what those people are even, what they are, let alone what they're talking about.
00:52:15.220
Ray Kurzweil says we will get to AGI by 2028, I believe.
00:52:23.680
And the problem is, is that you should never fear the technology.
00:52:34.020
Because when it hits AGI, and especially AI, whatever its goal is, it will accomplish it.
00:52:45.860
Well, that's why the, right now, if you were to just take this into where we're at now,
00:52:49.220
when you see the James Damore memo at Google and you see the way social justice and this,
00:52:55.140
this faux diversity has been, uh, has been injected into the algorithm.
00:53:00.500
I mean, we know, yes, we know the way search results are manipulated.
00:53:03.940
So we actually are now manipulating truth in the name of diversity.
00:53:07.660
This is so now, so if you just play along now with these next two phases that you've
00:53:12.340
mentioned here, eventually this AI, if it has been manipulated properly, properly by
00:53:19.080
by the bad people, the way they want it manipulated, there's going to be an awful lot of people
00:53:25.900
Now we're in every dystopian movie ever, right?
00:53:29.460
They did a study, um, on, um, releasing people from prison.
00:53:37.140
So they fed all of this information into AI, um, and it's just cold and calculated.
00:53:43.520
And so what it did is it spat out who should go on prison release and who should not.
00:53:52.580
Everything was working out until somebody noticed, wait a minute, this is letting more white people
00:54:06.860
Wait, well, if you programmed it to take in race, perhaps, but if you took it in to look
00:54:22.820
You have to define, we are in a place where nobody knows what any word means anymore.
00:54:30.840
We don't know when people say a safe zone, it drives me out of my mind.
00:54:40.500
What we are programming right now is only going to get worse because it will just, it's
00:54:49.660
So what I would say that the saving grace, because when we go down this rabbit hole of
00:54:55.740
And I know guys like us are going to think about this all the time and worry about it.
00:55:00.360
We can, we can be the canary in the coal mine, all that.
00:55:03.720
The saving grace is that I believe that this, this social justice idea and these terrible
00:55:10.740
ideas of diversity and unbiasing where you're actually, you're then putting in systemic bias.
00:55:17.080
So if, you know, they're the, the one that everyone talks about is that if you search,
00:55:20.820
um, something like American scientists, um, or famous American scientists, you now get
00:55:30.060
Now nobody is saying there aren't black scientists or shouldn't be black scientists, of course.
00:55:36.900
But if you were to search famous American scientists, most of them would be white.
00:55:41.240
Now we can discuss all sorts of reasons why that is, but it is just the truth.
00:55:45.520
Now, what you realize is that the, all of these, these trickeries that all of these, that
00:55:50.900
the AI is doing and that these people are putting into the system, they can't stand forever.
00:55:56.980
I believe, I honestly believe, and this is why I think that, that the individual can win
00:56:02.360
still ultimately is that it will, it will destroy these companies.
00:56:07.480
If Google says, you know, we're not going to hire Asian engineers anymore because they're
00:56:11.780
disproportionately represented at our company and in the engineering field.
00:56:15.660
Well, then what you're going to say is, well, first off, you're now putting in systemic racism
00:56:19.780
There's no systemic racism that's stopping anyone from any color working anywhere.
00:56:24.480
If you now, as a company, Google say, well, we can't have Asian, Asian engineers here because
00:56:28.640
we want to be more diverse, you're actually injecting systemic because now it's in the
00:56:33.860
It's a, it's a, it's a, uh, not, not a law at Google, but it's part of your company policy.
00:56:40.540
Ultimately what that will do, and I mean, this not just at Google, but at every place that
00:56:44.500
buys into these ideas of this faux diversity, they will start hiring worse people, not because
00:56:50.420
these people are minorities or gay or transgendered or whatever they are in a wheelchair or whatever
00:56:56.840
they are, but because you will not be taking the best of the best and forcing people to
00:57:00.760
strive to be the best of the best, you will be taking people for lesser reasons.
00:57:04.480
And ultimately over time, that means your company will start faltering because there
00:57:10.440
will be someone out there who is smart enough to go, this is nonsense and I'm going to fight
00:57:17.740
So that's a little bit different than totally fighting the AI and the evolution of all of that.
00:57:22.640
But that's still where humans can make a difference.
00:57:24.600
It's stop buying into this nonsense because it will, it will come for everyone.
00:57:50.140
Oh, you're because of, because of AI's life-saving technology, you're 300 years old and you're
00:58:02.400
thinking back, what do you hope you will fill that blank in after I am at that moment?
00:58:20.880
I hope at the end, wherever that end is, whether it's 86 or 329.
00:58:36.140
I think I'm okay that, that whatever it is that I did here, that at the end that I felt
00:58:44.140
okay with whatever I created, whatever, whether, whether I have kids or don't have kids, whether
00:58:49.520
I, uh, whether, whether nothing, where there are all the things that we've talked about
00:58:55.120
here, whether I'm irrelevant in a year for some reason, or whether this is just the beginning.
00:58:59.640
Again, I always feel like I'm at the beginning.
00:59:01.800
Um, I hope that at the end I'll go, I did everything I could do.
00:59:07.360
You know, within the constraints of being a human, I, I did everything that I possibly
00:59:13.600
I, I had a good friend, my best childhood friend since I'm four years old.
00:59:17.200
I remember the day we met in kindergarten, literally, uh, we've been, we've been best
00:59:26.460
He had a heart attack in the middle of the night.
00:59:30.280
He had, uh, four great sons, whole bunch of grandchildren, been married, I think 60
00:59:39.000
I can only picture this guy smiling every time I went over to my buddy John's house.
00:59:42.700
Dad was there having a great time with us and messing with us.
00:59:45.700
And, you know, it was a good father, obviously a good grandfather and everything.
00:59:48.940
And I went to the, I went to the funeral last week and, you know, people were crying,
00:59:53.780
but they were also laughing and, and all of the things that happened and the feeling
00:59:58.520
that I walked away with, I hadn't seen his dad in probably about 10 years, but the feeling
01:00:02.860
I walked away with was that was a life that was full.
01:00:07.000
And I think that's all you can want that you did something, you know, whatever it was, whether
01:00:14.100
for him, it was, you know, having kids and having grandkids and being around for everybody
01:00:18.900
or whatever else he did in his life that I don't know about that.
01:00:22.080
You just hope that you did something that was real.
01:00:24.720
And then at the end you go, all right, I did it.
01:00:41.140
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