The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1647 - Dave Chappelle

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

00:00:03.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day!

00:00:14.000 Oh, hello, David.

00:00:15.000 Hello, Joe.

00:00:16.000 How are you?

00:00:17.000 What's going on with your mask, man? 1.00

00:00:18.000 Nah, nah, just fucking with you. 1.00

00:00:19.000 I just want to see how you react. 1.00

00:00:23.000 All this Rona talk.

00:00:25.000 All this Rona talk.

00:00:26.000 Sick of it.

00:00:27.000 Yeah.

00:00:28.000 Yeah.

00:00:29.000 Headphones or no headphones?

00:00:30.000 Oh, I'll do the phones.

00:00:31.000 Okay, there you go.

00:00:32.000 I just don't want to be the only one.

00:00:34.000 Nah, nah, it's all good.

00:00:36.000 Can I turn them up right here?

00:00:37.000 Yeah.

00:00:37.000 Check, check, check.

00:00:38.000 Here we go.

00:00:39.000 What's up, fingers?

00:00:41.000 He's over there typing every few minutes.

00:00:42.000 He goes like this.

00:00:43.000 Let's go. 1.00

00:00:45.000 Let's do this shit. 1.00

00:00:47.000 So first of all, man, congratulations. 1.00

00:00:50.000 You're the first guy to beat the system. 0.95

00:00:51.000 You're the first guy to get fucked over by the system, go public with it, and then get your money. 0.95

00:00:57.000 I've never heard it happen before. 0.97

00:00:58.000 I don't think it's ever happened before.

00:01:00.000 Bro, bro, I still can't wrap my mind around it, but I do have to shout out Chris McCarthy over at CBS Viacom, that guy, when we were working this out, his approach was someone who was actually trying to resolve something.

00:01:16.000 Came through.

00:01:17.000 It was amazing, man.

00:01:18.000 It's amazing.

00:01:19.000 It's a happy ending.

00:01:20.000 Because usually those artists gripes, they never get resolved, not to where the artist feels comfortable or happy with it.

00:01:26.000 Right.

00:01:27.000 They always feel bitter and angry. 0.97

00:01:28.000 They got fucked over and someone else is a producer and they're making millions of dollars off of your work and they continue to sell it and make money off of it and... 0.96

00:01:36.000 Well, I could say with a high degree of honesty. 0.96

00:01:40.000 Not to say I was never angry about it, but I don't think I was ever, like, bitter.

00:01:45.000 By this point in my life, I wasn't bitter.

00:01:49.000 You would joke about it. 0.99

00:01:51.000 You were angry about it, but not to the point where it fucked with your head, but you would joke about it. 0.97

00:01:57.000 Well, I mean, you know, the bottom line is no matter what happens to you, you gotta keep going. 0.98

00:02:02.000 You gotta keep going.

00:02:03.000 And bitterness is quite cumbersome.

00:02:05.000 Yeah, it's bad for you.

00:02:06.000 Right.

00:02:06.000 So, you know, jokes is a way of shaking that off or processing something with the alchemy of levity.

00:02:12.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:02:12.000 Holding grudges, bitterness, shit's very bad for you. 1.00

00:02:16.000 It doesn't ever help. 1.00

00:02:17.000 No, and now we're getting on an age.

00:02:19.000 You know what I mean?

00:02:19.000 When we were younger, it was fine to hold a grudge.

00:02:22.000 You didn't realize that, you know... 1.00

00:02:24.000 You didn't realize it was fucking with you. 0.99

00:02:25.000 What is that expression? 1.00

00:02:26.000 It's about jealousy.

00:02:28.000 The jealousy is the only poison that affects the container that's holding it.

00:02:32.000 Right.

00:02:33.000 That's exactly right.

00:02:34.000 But bitterness, the same thing.

00:02:35.000 Same thing.

00:02:36.000 Yeah, it's not good.

00:02:37.000 Yeah.

00:02:38.000 It's just not good for you. 0.99

00:02:39.000 You gotta be able to let shit go. 0.99

00:02:41.000 Yeah, I mean... 0.99

00:02:43.000 But...

00:02:45.000 In your case, you made a ploy.

00:02:47.000 You said what happened, how you felt about it, and they were like, he's right.

00:02:53.000 I think, yeah.

00:02:54.000 Let's give him the money.

00:02:55.000 It wasn't a court of law.

00:02:57.000 I don't believe I would have got anything.

00:02:59.000 It's kind of amazing.

00:03:00.000 In a court of law.

00:03:01.000 I think in a court of public opinion, it was a good time for me to say my piece.

00:03:06.000 And through the years, it wasn't something that I would harp on.

00:03:09.000 When I did interviews and stuff, people would always ask me about it, but it was something I was actually reluctant to talk about.

00:03:14.000 It was a lot.

00:03:15.000 Yeah.

00:03:16.000 Well, it's hard for other people to relate to this idea that you want more money, you know?

00:03:20.000 You're talking about regular people, and you're saying this thing, even though it is yours, it's hard for people.

00:03:26.000 Money is, if you look at life, anything in life, through the framework of money, you'll miss most of the picture.

00:03:34.000 Yeah.

00:03:37.000 In business, especially at this stage in our careers, you realize through the years, people play incentives.

00:03:45.000 You know what I mean?

00:03:46.000 If they incentivize a certain way, then that's the way they're going to behave.

00:03:50.000 So what they want is never really surprising.

00:03:55.000 How they get there is where all the surprises are.

00:03:59.000 So I feel like I can forgive somebody for playing an incentive.

00:04:04.000 It's disappointing.

00:04:06.000 But, what was so remarkable when I walked away from the show, right, is that it was against incentive.

00:04:15.000 So people couldn't understand it at the time.

00:04:17.000 It was so much money.

00:04:18.000 How could you do that?

00:04:19.000 And blah, blah, blah.

00:04:20.000 But you know, if I had taken that money and finished the show, I would have got the money, but I might never have been the same.

00:04:28.000 I think it was one of the most gangster moves in the history of entertainment.

00:04:31.000 And it made you a legend.

00:04:32.000 And the fact that you then started doing shows like...

00:04:35.000 I heard Dave's doing a show in the park in Seattle.

00:04:37.000 He's got a box.

00:04:39.000 He pulls out a speaker and just starts doing stand-up.

00:04:41.000 That was in Portland, yeah.

00:04:44.000 Because in that sense, it was freeing.

00:04:47.000 Yeah.

00:04:49.000 Something about, you know, I was geared a certain way growing up because I wanted to make it in show business. 0.99

00:04:54.000 And boy, that shit fell all the way apart. 0.99

00:04:58.000 And as far as I knew, my career was over. 0.99

00:05:00.000 So where do you go from there?

00:05:02.000 Yeah, but your career wasn't over.

00:05:04.000 You just decided you were going to just sort of lay back for a while.

00:05:08.000 In hindsight, yeah.

00:05:09.000 But when it was happening...

00:05:11.000 You really felt like it was over.

00:05:13.000 I'd never seen these things before.

00:05:14.000 I didn't see anyone else do this and get back up. 0.69

00:05:17.000 I didn't see, you know, and the drumbeat is he's crazy, he smokes crack, he's this, he's that.

00:05:22.000 It was a wild experience.

00:05:24.000 The way people close to you react to it.

00:05:27.000 Like I had failed or I'd ruined my life.

00:05:30.000 Hmm.

00:05:32.000 And then when you're cold, that phone don't ring that often.

00:05:38.000 And then I had over a decade of sitting in that choice, but I didn't languish in just that experience.

00:05:45.000 I started doing stand-up for much better reasons than making it.

00:05:49.000 I still enjoyed it.

00:05:51.000 I started seeing the places where I was performing.

00:05:54.000 Normally when you're successful in comedy, You know, you get off the plane or the bus, you do the hit, you go back to the hotel, you get back on the bus, you don't really see anything.

00:06:05.000 Even now, like this last run we did here in Austin.

00:06:08.000 We was here for weeks.

00:06:10.000 And then I got to see Austin.

00:06:13.000 I got to find restaurants I like.

00:06:15.000 I met people that I probably called because I'm in town.

00:06:18.000 Stuff like that.

00:06:19.000 And it was like that all over the world, not just the country.

00:06:21.000 I started going around just seeing the world.

00:06:24.000 I got overwhelmed with this idea that none of my information was firsthand.

00:06:29.000 I just read it in books.

00:06:30.000 I heard it from friends, and I was eager to just see something for myself.

00:06:35.000 And I kind of...

00:06:37.000 Entrench this philosophy that my memories are some of the most valuable things that I have.

00:06:43.000 These first-hand experiences.

00:06:45.000 Can't take that away from if I reminisce on a nice day, then, you know, it feeds you.

00:06:50.000 Remembering something is neurologically almost identical, I've read, to experiencing it.

00:06:57.000 Yeah, I think that there's a real value in having experiences where you do it on purpose.

00:07:04.000 Like you go someplace to have experiences and think about having those experiences.

00:07:10.000 Because most of the time, like you were saying, if we do shows, you just kind of show up, you do the show, and then you go home.

00:07:17.000 But if you set aside some days, To do things like that's very valuable for your perspective, which is ultimately valuable for your act.

00:07:24.000 It's valuable for everything because you're choosing to take in more information and data specifically to enhance your perspective on life.

00:07:32.000 Right.

00:07:32.000 You learn things.

00:07:33.000 Yeah.

00:07:34.000 You gain perspective, which is very valuable for a comedian and a person.

00:07:40.000 And it's humbling and it's empowering at the same time.

00:07:44.000 Yeah because we know comics like that was a big theme during like the 90s right where comics would all tell the same stories about being on the road there were all the jokes were about airplane travel airline jokes hotel food and that kind of shit and the maid do not disturb knocking on your door because that's what they related to right the road warriors yeah that was what that's that was their life's perspective and it's it kind of shows That experiences,

00:08:08.000 interesting experiences, are very valuable.

00:08:11.000 But you don't think of them as valuable.

00:08:12.000 You think of them as recreational.

00:08:13.000 But they really are valuable.

00:08:15.000 Right.

00:08:15.000 And I call, you know, any information is valuable.

00:08:18.000 I call it expensive knowledge.

00:08:21.000 Right?

00:08:23.000 It's like your buddy that's a war veteran or something. 0.99

00:08:25.000 You don't want to know the shit he knows if you knew what he had to do to know these things. 0.99

00:08:32.000 That's what they call expensive knowledge. 0.99

00:08:33.000 I would not recommend quitting your show the way I did if you can avoid it.

00:08:38.000 Yeah.

00:08:39.000 But the way you did it was so cool.

00:08:43.000 Because, you know, you kind of drifted off.

00:08:45.000 I promise I wasn't trying to be cool.

00:08:47.000 It was a series of troubleshooting. 1.00

00:08:50.000 It was like, fuck it, man. 1.00

00:08:51.000 What are you going to do? 1.00

00:08:54.000 Whatever you go through, you got to live.

00:08:57.000 You got to make a way and find your happiness.

00:09:00.000 And, you know, I'm lucky.

00:09:02.000 I'm in show business, which is...

00:09:08.000 It's a multi-dimensional career path.

00:09:10.000 This thing could go a lot of ways.

00:09:12.000 Yeah.

00:09:14.000 Especially today.

00:09:15.000 Oh my God.

00:09:17.000 It's so strange.

00:09:18.000 Yeah, and another time, would I have ever gotten that money?

00:09:20.000 I don't think so.

00:09:21.000 No, because there would have been no social media, no pressure.

00:09:24.000 Right, no dropping specials on the gram, no comment section, no moveon.org, no...

00:09:30.000 And if you had gone to, say, like, The Tonight Show and made a pitch like that, they probably wouldn't even have aired it.

00:09:38.000 No, of course not.

00:09:39.000 I had a gripe with someone that owned a six of the media.

00:09:42.000 Yeah.

00:09:43.000 What am I going to do, tell the media on them?

00:09:45.000 It's never going to work.

00:09:46.000 Right, they would definitely edit that part out.

00:09:49.000 Be like, why is Dave's section only four minutes long?

00:09:51.000 Yeah, edit it, spin it, whatever it is they do.

00:09:56.000 But again, you know, all parties involved, I thought...

00:10:01.000 In repairing that situation, and I don't want to go all into what those conversations were like other than to say, and this is not like I'm just happy because they paid me.

00:10:10.000 It was class act.

00:10:11.000 That's beautiful.

00:10:12.000 It really was.

00:10:13.000 It was very encouraging.

00:10:16.000 That is very encouraging.

00:10:17.000 I think that coming up behind us, these kids are going to be playing on a whole new ball game that we did.

00:10:25.000 I hope so.

00:10:26.000 I think there's more accountability now because of the internet, because of, you know, people's ability to express themselves is so much different than it used to be. 0.71

00:10:36.000 So you can't just be some ruthless, evil executives fucking over the artists like they did during the, you know, in the music business.

00:10:44.000 I mean, it's legendary. 0.96

00:10:45.000 The music business is legendary if you're doing that.

00:10:47.000 Man, look.

00:10:48.000 First of all, we gotta get into this music business thing in a second, but I was looking on the internet It was a bunch of waitresses talking about what celebrities did or didn't tip them. 0.99

00:10:57.000 Nobody can fuck up anymore. 0.98

00:10:59.000 It's true, yeah. 0.99

00:11:00.000 Yeah, they got a whole website dedicated to bad tippers.

00:11:03.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:11:04.000 All of a sudden, breaking news, Ellen DeGeneres is a bitch. 1.00

00:11:07.000 What? 1.00

00:11:09.000 What?

00:11:12.000 Who knows?

00:11:13.000 By the way, I like going a lot.

00:11:14.000 I'm just saying, this is what we're faced with.

00:11:17.000 Our personalities get yelped.

00:11:20.000 Yeah.

00:11:21.000 The thing is, if you talk to enough people, you're gonna have disagreements with people. 1.00

00:11:25.000 And if someone cumulates, if they curate only those disagreements and only take it from the perspective of those people that you had problems with, they could paint you out to be a piece of shit. 0.99

00:11:35.000 Even if you're a really nice person who just doesn't take any nonsense from people. 0.99

00:11:39.000 If you talk to enough nonsense people, you're gonna have enough conflicts. 0.99

00:11:42.000 And if they only curate those conflicts and make like a compilation, like, Dave talked to this guy and told him to eat shit. 0.95

00:11:49.000 Well, that's why I usually don't do interviews. 0.52

00:11:53.000 Because I feel like this is about fame in general. 0.99

00:11:56.000 And I see you go through similar shit. 0.98

00:11:57.000 It's like they blow you up like a balloon and twisting all these wild shapes like a balloon animal. 0.99

00:12:03.000 Yeah.

00:12:03.000 Once you're in that thing, they can control the perception of you.

00:12:08.000 So why fuck with it? 0.99

00:12:09.000 Gaslighting. 1.00

00:12:10.000 Yeah.

00:12:11.000 They gaslight people.

00:12:13.000 And, you know, again, people play incentives.

00:12:17.000 I'll give you an example.

00:12:20.000 Years ago, not that long ago, you remember when all those writings of Gandhi came out. 0.99

00:12:26.000 They're like, well, all this really racist shit. 0.99

00:12:30.000 I did. 1.00

00:12:31.000 Yeah.

00:12:53.000 I shouldn't have said that, but, you know, I forgot.

00:12:56.000 We're on the internet.

00:12:57.000 It's fun.

00:12:58.000 Didn't Gandhi... 0.60

00:13:00.000 There's people that were upset at him because he slept with a bunch of girls, too, right?

00:13:03.000 Didn't, like, tempt himself?

00:13:05.000 Yeah.

00:13:06.000 I think he tempted himself by sleeping...

00:13:09.000 I think that was the way he described it?

00:13:12.000 Like, he would sleep with young girls?

00:13:14.000 To tempt himself?

00:13:15.000 Yeah.

00:13:16.000 I think that was the... 1.00

00:13:17.000 The evil Knievel of pussy. 1.00

00:13:19.000 And now I will tempt myself. 1.00

00:13:21.000 What the fuck is this? 0.99

00:13:23.000 I think I'm remembering that correct. 1.00

00:13:24.000 That's why I tell my wife, I'm going to the titty bar to tempt myself. 0.98

00:13:27.000 He tortured himself. 0.95

00:13:29.000 Tortured himself.

00:13:30.000 Is that what he said?

00:13:31.000 Yeah, let's get this right, because I actually revere Gandhi. 1.00

00:13:35.000 Fucking ad bloggers. 1.00

00:13:38.000 Sexual torment of a saint. 1.00

00:13:39.000 A new book reveals Gandhi tortured himself with the young women who worshipped him and often shared his bed.

00:13:46.000 Daily Mail, so this has got to be true.

00:13:52.000 He was killed by an assassin in 1946, huh?

00:13:55.000 Wow.

00:13:55.000 Well, that part was in the movie.

00:13:57.000 I don't know about all this torturing himself.

00:13:59.000 I didn't know it was that.

00:13:59.000 I thought it was later.

00:14:01.000 And then they just show a picture of him walking with some...

00:14:03.000 You know, we don't know.

00:14:04.000 I don't know.

00:14:05.000 But go back to what it said there.

00:14:07.000 Gandhi, a London-trained lawyer-turned-guru, was a ruthless cult leader who enslaved his followers...

00:14:16.000 With such bizarre sexual demands that it became difficult for many people to take him seriously, even during his own lifetime.

00:14:22.000 What?

00:14:22.000 That crazy book.

00:14:23.000 Oh, it claims.

00:14:24.000 Gandhi Naked Ambition claims that Gandhi.

00:14:27.000 Someone wrote a book called Gandhi Naked Ambition.

00:14:30.000 Yeah.

00:14:31.000 It goes so far as to suggest that the draconian practices instituted by this iconic figure in the ashrams he founded prompted the perverted 20th century cults of Jim Jones and Jonestown.

00:14:41.000 Okay.

00:14:42.000 Okay.

00:14:42.000 All right.

00:14:43.000 Someone wrote this book.

00:14:44.000 I look at Gandhi as the person that fought against white supremacy in his homeland.

00:14:49.000 So there you go.

00:14:50.000 Yeah, so he liked to torture himself a little bit.

00:14:52.000 I'm sorry.

00:14:52.000 He liked to lay down and get hard on.

00:14:55.000 What's the big deal?

00:14:55.000 I'm sorry I brought that up.

00:14:57.000 I didn't know naked ambition just hit the stands.

00:14:59.000 What was it?

00:14:59.000 Gandhi?

00:14:59.000 What's it called?

00:15:00.000 Yeah, but how would anyone know whether or not he tortured himself?

00:15:05.000 Does his writing say that?

00:15:07.000 Did he talk about it openly?

00:15:09.000 Did he like to just get blue-balled?

00:15:11.000 Yes.

00:15:11.000 Lay there?

00:15:12.000 Yeah, see, it's that, though, man.

00:15:14.000 It's all this, like, you know, I hate the debunking of great legacies.

00:15:20.000 Right, right, right, right.

00:15:21.000 You know what I mean?

00:15:22.000 Like, imagine how the whites might feel if they tear down a Civil War statue. 0.54

00:15:27.000 This kind of thing to me is that.

00:15:30.000 My equivalent of that.

00:15:31.000 Like, oh, now we're debunking Gandhi.

00:15:32.000 You know, it was really funny when they started tearing down statues.

00:15:35.000 Trump was like, what are they going to do next?

00:15:37.000 They're going to tear down George Washington? 0.98

00:15:39.000 And everybody's like, well, that's ridiculous. 0.80

00:15:40.000 They're not going to do that. 0.85

00:15:42.000 And then they started tearing down George Washington statues.

00:15:44.000 They tear down all the statues.

00:15:47.000 I mean, George Washington did own slaves.

00:15:51.000 He did.

00:15:53.000 So did Thomas Jefferson.

00:15:54.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:15:55.000 Many of the framers. 0.99

00:15:58.000 It's one of those things where you shouldn't revere what they did.

00:16:03.000 But what a statue is supposed to represent is here's an image of some person who's historically significant and established in the country.

00:16:12.000 Right, that's the analogy.

00:16:14.000 To me, Gandhi fought against white supremacy and was very successful, and then decades later started tearing the statue down.

00:16:22.000 Yeah, the worst thing he did was get hard-ons.

00:16:26.000 Lay there and get tortured. 1.00

00:16:27.000 Yeah, I'm not trying to put no value judgment on any of this shit. 0.99

00:16:31.000 I'm just saying he did expel the British peacefully, which was unprecedented in the world. 0.99

00:16:37.000 A peaceful expulsion of oppressors.

00:16:40.000 Yeah.

00:16:42.000 It's interesting how peaceful protest, like, peaceful protest resonates for years and years and years.

00:16:48.000 And when someone does something, like, remember that image, I'm sure you do, of that, there's a video of it, of a monk in Vietnam lighting himself on fire to protest against the war.

00:16:59.000 It's on the cover of one of the Rage Against the Machine albums.

00:17:02.000 Yeah, it was crazy.

00:17:03.000 Crazy.

00:17:04.000 Everybody remembers that.

00:17:06.000 Yeah, there was another guy who did that underneath the window of the Pentagon here in the United States during the Vietnam War.

00:17:11.000 Oh, did he?

00:17:12.000 Yeah, a white fella. 1.00

00:17:13.000 I can't remember his name.

00:17:15.000 That's a way to go.

00:17:16.000 That's a crazy way to go.

00:17:17.000 But Gandhi didn't call it a peaceful protest.

00:17:20.000 He called it civil disobedience.

00:17:22.000 The idea being that I will not participate in my own oppression.

00:17:26.000 It's a fine idea.

00:17:28.000 It's a good idea.

00:17:29.000 Yeah.

00:17:30.000 Why would anybody concentrate on the hard odds?

00:17:32.000 Yeah, you know what I mean?

00:17:34.000 Yeah, yeah. 1.00

00:17:36.000 Gandhi got so much pussy. 1.00

00:17:38.000 Let me tell you about this Gandhi you fuck with. 1.00

00:17:42.000 He didn't even do anything. 1.00

00:17:43.000 He just laid there.

00:17:44.000 Yeah, that's it.

00:17:46.000 That's a weird move, though.

00:17:49.000 What, to just lay there?

00:17:50.000 Just lay there and get hard and go like... 1.00

00:17:52.000 Beat it, bitch. 1.00

00:17:54.000 Go on and get some sleep. 1.00

00:17:58.000 It's crazy.

00:17:59.000 I think that...

00:18:00.000 I don't know, man.

00:18:04.000 I don't know where this culture is headed. 0.99

00:18:07.000 I don't know what the fuck everybody's doing anymore. 0.98

00:18:10.000 It's COVID year. 0.98

00:18:11.000 I'm a little packed away.

00:18:14.000 I've been out.

00:18:16.000 It's doing something to us, collectively.

00:18:18.000 We talked about this the last time I was here, and I told you I was going to come to the show.

00:18:21.000 I wasn't bullshitting.

00:18:22.000 Remember that day I said, I'll come after the inauguration, because we all smelled that coming.

00:18:28.000 It's a tough one.

00:18:30.000 It's a weird one.

00:18:31.000 We're being tested.

00:18:32.000 It's testing the foundations of our culture.

00:18:35.000 The foundations of our civilizations testing how well we can be peaceful with each other and make sense and get along and how much we value getting along with each other and How much there's just so much divisiveness because we've never been there's never been a time in history where the whole Economy and the whole society basically just got frozen for a year and stuck in some weird weird sort of side patch We had to figure things out fresh.

00:19:03.000 How many people lost their jobs?

00:19:05.000 How many people lost their lives?

00:19:06.000 How many people lost their grandparents?

00:19:08.000 Their loved ones, that's right.

00:19:09.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:19:10.000 It was a weird fucking year, and everybody's very sensitive. 0.99

00:19:14.000 And everybody's quick to pull the trigger. 0.99

00:19:16.000 And then you got everybody who's...

00:19:18.000 There's so many people that have just been online all day long this whole year.

00:19:21.000 And that's not good for you.

00:19:23.000 I still think at the core of all of this, what you call weirdness, is these profound trust issues.

00:19:32.000 Like I said on Letterman, these people that hoarded toilet paper and went and bought bullets out.

00:19:42.000 None of these things are good signs.

00:19:45.000 I think that something about the nature of COVID punched us square in our American identity.

00:19:50.000 We're individualists.

00:19:51.000 The mask and all these things, I don't think are actually oppressive, but I can see why Americans would feel they are.

00:20:00.000 They just don't trust the messenger anymore.

00:20:03.000 There's too many mixed signals.

00:20:04.000 It's hard.

00:20:05.000 In the beginning, when Fauci was saying you don't have to wear a mask, and then eventually they were saying you got to wear one, you should wear two.

00:20:10.000 That was a huge mistake.

00:20:10.000 I agree.

00:20:11.000 Yeah, if you give people information that may not be true, even if you have the intention of having them behave in a way that's beneficial for everybody, the misinformation, the way you achieve these things, the separation from ends and means, We're good to go.

00:20:45.000 Mm-hmm.

00:20:46.000 Nobody feels that way right now.

00:20:47.000 Well, we did before.

00:20:48.000 I think people had faith in the government in the sense that, worst case scenario, even if they're incompetent, everything will stay together.

00:20:56.000 Now you realize, no.

00:20:58.000 No, it doesn't have to stay together. 0.97

00:20:59.000 It can be irreversibly fucked, like I think some of our cities are right now. 0.99

00:21:05.000 I think there's some sections of LA, I don't know how the fuck they're gonna bounce back. 0.99

00:21:09.000 You drive down the street and you see everything boarded up. 0.51

00:21:11.000 You go, how does this come back?

00:21:13.000 How long does it take?

00:21:14.000 Does it take a year?

00:21:15.000 Does it take 10 years?

00:21:16.000 Like, what is this?

00:21:17.000 And I have no point of reference to even make an educated guess.

00:21:20.000 I've never seen any of this before.

00:21:21.000 Nobody has.

00:21:22.000 I'll tell you, like, okay, so my experience during COVID, I live in Ohio.

00:21:25.000 I don't live in a cough's distance from anyone I don't know.

00:21:28.000 You know what I mean?

00:21:28.000 It's open space.

00:21:30.000 So we were isolated, but it wasn't impressive.

00:21:35.000 I could go outside.

00:21:35.000 I could take a walk.

00:21:37.000 I could whatever.

00:21:39.000 I go to New York, I was telling you, maybe a couple weeks ago when they opened all the comedy clubs back up, you know, just to show support for the clubs that nurtured my career early on, and it was a tough one.

00:21:51.000 I had been there before, like, the Saturday Night Live week.

00:21:57.000 That week was, you know, unseasonably warm.

00:21:59.000 Biden had just won that weekend, so people were celebratory.

00:22:03.000 This time around, I got a sense of the emotional carnage that happened in that city.

00:22:09.000 And it was significant.

00:22:11.000 It was palpable.

00:22:12.000 You would notice it.

00:22:13.000 I did.

00:22:14.000 And to hear them say it's like, phew, things are getting better.

00:22:16.000 And I'm like, better?

00:22:18.000 Because I hadn't seen New York since it was, like, incredibly healthy.

00:22:21.000 You know, in a non-COVID time, I've heard a $2 trillion economy just in the five boroughs of New York.

00:22:29.000 I don't know what's going on there now.

00:22:31.000 You know, restaurants open at limited capacity.

00:22:34.000 It takes courage just to go to a coffee shop or this, that, or the other.

00:22:38.000 Especially with this problem of trust being in deficit.

00:22:46.000 Yeah.

00:22:47.000 It's just a tough one.

00:22:48.000 Well, it's also a lot of people are moving out.

00:22:50.000 When people are moving out, you get the sense like it's an abandoned ship, like it's a sinking ship.

00:22:56.000 And then people don't want to invest money in it.

00:22:58.000 They don't know what to do.

00:22:59.000 They're not sure if they should stay.

00:23:01.000 They start looking at other states where things are open.

00:23:03.000 Maybe we should just move.

00:23:05.000 Maybe we should forget about this business and start fresh in Florida or move to Texas or whatever.

00:23:11.000 Yeah, I can't imagine New York City not coming back from this.

00:23:14.000 It'll come back.

00:23:15.000 It just won't come back the same.

00:23:16.000 It's gonna be different.

00:23:17.000 It's gonna take a long time.

00:23:18.000 You think anything will be the same after that?

00:23:20.000 It'll take a minute, bro.

00:23:22.000 It'll take a minute.

00:23:22.000 It'll be a new normal, though.

00:23:24.000 Well, even Austin, like, it's not the same.

00:23:27.000 It's actually bigger.

00:23:29.000 It's growing.

00:23:30.000 This city grew, I'm sure.

00:23:31.000 Grew.

00:23:31.000 I'm sure a lot of people from the Bay moved here for the tech jobs.

00:23:35.000 Yep.

00:23:35.000 The weather's good.

00:23:36.000 Yep.

00:23:37.000 The restrictions aren't as impressive.

00:23:40.000 People are nicer, too.

00:23:41.000 That's the big one for me.

00:23:43.000 My feelings here are different.

00:23:44.000 I feel less anxiety here.

00:23:46.000 I feel like people are nicer.

00:23:48.000 They're genuinely friendly.

00:23:49.000 But do you think that people are nicer?

00:23:51.000 Do you think the circles you were rolling in in California weren't as nice?

00:23:56.000 No, it was just regular people that you meet.

00:23:58.000 Like, there's a guy in my neighborhood.

00:23:59.000 I look forward to waving to this guy every day.

00:24:01.000 He's an old dude who works on his lawn. 1.00

00:24:04.000 And this motherfucker will wave at everybody who drives by. 1.00

00:24:06.000 He's there digging. 1.00

00:24:08.000 He sees a car.

00:24:09.000 He's like...

00:24:09.000 No, that's hilarious.

00:24:10.000 And every day I see that guy, I get ready.

00:24:12.000 I get ready.

00:24:13.000 I'm going to wave to my friend.

00:24:14.000 I see him.

00:24:14.000 I'm like, hey, waves at me.

00:24:16.000 Make a little eye contact.

00:24:17.000 It feels good.

00:24:18.000 I never got that in California.

00:24:19.000 Nobody ever stopped from digging in their lawn to look up and wave at you at every car that passes by.

00:24:24.000 This guy waves at every car.

00:24:26.000 That's sweet.

00:24:27.000 It's sweet.

00:24:27.000 How old is this guy?

00:24:28.000 Probably 70s, 80s.

00:24:30.000 Okay.

00:24:31.000 Older fella.

00:24:31.000 If it was a guy my age, it'd be weird.

00:24:33.000 What's happening? 1.00

00:24:36.000 Nobody want to see that shit. 1.00

00:24:37.000 Yeah, that's a little odd. 1.00

00:24:38.000 He's a little too friendly.

00:24:39.000 Call the police!

00:24:40.000 Yeah, 20-year-old kids doing laundry out there waving at everybody.

00:24:45.000 Hilarious.

00:24:46.000 Yeah, no, it's age-appropriate.

00:24:48.000 But there's friendly people out here, man.

00:24:51.000 There's less of them.

00:24:51.000 People value people when they're not a burden.

00:24:54.000 When you get to... 0.91

00:24:55.000 You know, 20 million people or whatever the fuck LA is. 0.72

00:24:59.000 People, they lose their value. 0.98

00:25:01.000 They become annoying.

00:25:02.000 There's too many of them on the highway in front of you.

00:25:04.000 There's too many of them around you, you know?

00:25:06.000 Well, let me ask you this.

00:25:07.000 What is the mechanics of your day like?

00:25:12.000 Is your day mechanically the same as LA? Minus the comedy, obviously, it's COVID. But I would imagine you work out a few hours a day, no matter where you are.

00:25:22.000 You do your show a few hours a day if you're here or there.

00:25:27.000 You kick it with your wife a few hours a day and the kids. 0.89

00:25:30.000 What else do you do here that you don't do there?

00:25:34.000 It's just quieter.

00:25:35.000 It just feels better.

00:25:36.000 It feels better.

00:25:37.000 It feels better.

00:25:38.000 Like, I just like the vibe of the city better.

00:25:43.000 How so?

00:25:44.000 It's like, no one's trying to be famous here.

00:25:48.000 There's a thing in Hollywood, even if you're not a person who's in show business, Maybe you had an ambition and you abandoned it.

00:25:56.000 Or maybe you think now, because of reality shows and because of social media, maybe you don't even have to be famous for your talent.

00:26:03.000 You just have to be famous.

00:26:05.000 Look at the Kardashians and a lot of people that are famous just for being famous.

00:26:10.000 There's a weird currency In having a lot of people know who you are.

00:26:16.000 There's a social status to that that exists in LA that is primary.

00:26:20.000 That's very true.

00:26:21.000 It's above all.

00:26:22.000 All right, well, let me say this.

00:26:23.000 First of all, when I remember meeting you in the 90s, this thing never really seemed to affect you.

00:26:28.000 You seemed serious about comedy.

00:26:31.000 I had heard whispering that you did kung fu.

00:26:37.000 You know?

00:26:38.000 But you weren't like a... 0.86

00:26:39.000 I mean, you were social with all the comedians, but you weren't like the hangout kind of guy.

00:26:44.000 You were always off doing your own thing. 0.98

00:26:45.000 And even this podcast, even though it grew to be a big thing when it started, I don't even think it started with the intention, I'm going to blow this motherfucker up. 0.99

00:26:54.000 You just did it. 0.98

00:26:54.000 Yeah, there was never a thought of blowing it up. 0.98

00:26:57.000 It was just silly.

00:26:58.000 There's a funny video that was in the Comedy Store documentary of Tom Segura talking about leaving my house and talking to Red Band saying, what is he doing? 0.51

00:27:07.000 Why does he do this?

00:27:08.000 And he's like, I don't know.

00:27:10.000 He wants to do it all the time. 1.00

00:27:11.000 He wants to do this stupid fucking podcast that no one's listening to. 1.00

00:27:15.000 Yeah, it's dope. 1.00

00:27:16.000 It's dope. 0.55

00:27:17.000 I mean, but at that time, and even still, the way I remember L.A., it's Winner's Circle.

00:27:23.000 Yeah.

00:27:23.000 And earlier in my career, if you're doing well in LA, now it's fun as fuck out there.

00:27:29.000 All the ropes open up and, oh, Mr. Chappelle, and they accommodate you expertly because they're so proficient with hospitality. 0.93

00:27:37.000 But if you're not doing good, they'll remind you just as quick.

00:27:41.000 Yeah, it makes you feel bad.

00:27:42.000 It makes you feel bad.

00:27:43.000 I've seen people, the look on their face when you pass through the line and the security guard goes, oh, come on, come on up here.

00:27:49.000 And the other people that are waiting, they watch you walk through, they feel terrible.

00:27:53.000 Oh, God, I hope not.

00:27:55.000 Because I do it all the time. 1.00

00:27:56.000 I'm a rope-crossing motherfucker. 1.00

00:28:00.000 No more waiting for me. 1.00

00:28:02.000 But you know what I'm saying?

00:28:03.000 Like for those people that are in that line to be that person that gets called to the front of the line and the doors just open.

00:28:10.000 They grab that velvet rope.

00:28:11.000 Oh, Mr. Chappelle.

00:28:13.000 Right.

00:28:13.000 Flagrant elitism.

00:28:14.000 Yeah, they love it.

00:28:15.000 They love it.

00:28:15.000 They wish it was them.

00:28:16.000 Yeah.

00:28:17.000 And they want to be hanging with you.

00:28:18.000 Maybe if I'm hanging with Dave, I'll get through that rope.

00:28:20.000 Yeah.

00:28:21.000 Yeah.

00:28:22.000 I'm with Dave.

00:28:23.000 Oh, you're with Dave.

00:28:24.000 Come on in.

00:28:25.000 I told you the first time I met Denzel Washington, a guy did that to me.

00:28:28.000 He came up to my table like, you know, Dave, I hate to bother you, but Denzel Washington is here.

00:28:33.000 Would you like to meet him?

00:28:34.000 I'm like, oh my God, yeah.

00:28:36.000 And he brings me up to the table.

00:28:37.000 Wow.

00:28:38.000 Denzel Washington is Dave Chappelle.

00:28:40.000 I'm like, oh my God, Denzel is very gracious.

00:28:43.000 And then the guy goes, and my name is? 0.99

00:28:44.000 I'm like, oh, this motherfucker didn't know me. 0.99

00:28:47.000 He used me. 1.00

00:28:49.000 It is wild out there.

00:28:51.000 That's hilarious.

00:28:52.000 It's wild out there, man.

00:28:53.000 Yeah, it is wild.

00:28:54.000 There's social climbers in LA. It's an art form.

00:28:58.000 They're skilled.

00:28:59.000 They know how to do it.

00:29:00.000 I think I moved to Ohio initially to be free of these feelings you described.

00:29:06.000 Yeah.

00:29:06.000 This idea that You know, I started so young that I didn't know how to untether the rest of my life from those interests.

00:29:17.000 And geography was the quickest life hack.

00:29:20.000 I love the way you talk about Ohio.

00:29:22.000 I really do.

00:29:23.000 I've always loved it.

00:29:24.000 You do a lot of things that I think are awesome.

00:29:26.000 Man, thanks, bro.

00:29:29.000 You've always been a kind person, despite all of your success, all the accolades.

00:29:35.000 All the love that you get, you've never let it turn you into someone who felt like you were better than other people.

00:29:44.000 Like, I've seen you, the way you interact with the door people at the store.

00:29:47.000 That, to me, is everything.

00:29:48.000 How do you treat the door staff?

00:29:51.000 How do you treat the bartender?

00:29:52.000 Are you friendly with all those folks?

00:29:53.000 And if you're not, man, you're kind of missing the whole point.

00:29:57.000 Like, you can make someone's day just by being cool.

00:30:00.000 That's what always makes me laugh about Punky.

00:30:02.000 Yes!

00:30:04.000 The last time I saw her, she was a barback. 1.00

00:30:07.000 Now she's on SNL. And the next time I saw her, she was rehearsing at SNL. That made me feel real good for her.

00:30:12.000 She's amazing. 1.00

00:30:13.000 And I thought of all the comedians that might treat the barbacks like shit. 1.00

00:30:16.000 You better be careful. 1.00

00:30:17.000 Yeah, right?

00:30:18.000 Security.

00:30:19.000 Idris Elba, the famous actor.

00:30:20.000 He used to be a security guard.

00:30:22.000 Really?

00:30:22.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:30:23.000 You used to buy weed from him.

00:30:24.000 You know, you used to buy weed from Idris Elba?

00:30:27.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:30:27.000 I don't know if I should talk about it.

00:30:28.000 Yeah, you can talk about it.

00:30:29.000 I did.

00:30:29.000 It's legal now in New York.

00:30:31.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:30:31.000 You know, he had a kickboxing fight.

00:30:33.000 He's a legitimate Muay Thai fighter.

00:30:35.000 I heard he's nice with it.

00:30:36.000 Oh, yeah.

00:30:37.000 He's good.

00:30:37.000 And he fought a good guy.

00:30:38.000 Like, it wasn't a bullshit fight. 0.97

00:30:40.000 It was a fight. 0.98

00:30:40.000 It wasn't like he went out there and just knocked this guy out with one punch. 0.98

00:30:43.000 They were scrapping.

00:30:45.000 Oh, yeah.

00:30:45.000 It's a good fight.

00:30:46.000 And he trained for a long time.

00:30:48.000 Pull up some video footage of Idris Elba hitting a heavy bag.

00:30:51.000 This I gotta see.

00:30:52.000 Idris Elba's got skills.

00:30:54.000 He trains hard.

00:30:55.000 And I think he did it for a television show.

00:30:58.000 So I think they documented his training.

00:31:00.000 And he trained for quite a long time. 0.99

00:31:02.000 And, you know, Muay Thai, that's a fucking brutal way to fight. 0.99

00:31:07.000 Kicking legs. 1.00

00:31:08.000 Is that the shit that they do in Thailand? 1.00

00:31:11.000 Yeah, that's the shit they do in Thailand. 1.00

00:31:12.000 I went to the Muay Thai fights. 1.00

00:31:14.000 Oh, look at that.

00:31:15.000 Yeah, he's getting after it.

00:31:17.000 So he would train at this like legit Muay Thai gym, and you watch him. 0.98

00:31:23.000 I mean, if I saw him about to fight in the UFC, I'd go, fucking not a good move. 0.96

00:31:31.000 Look at that, he got dropped there. 0.97

00:31:32.000 Like, he's training.

00:31:33.000 He's doing real.

00:31:35.000 I mean, he's getting his legs kicked, the whole deal.

00:31:38.000 And you could tell that This is, you know, they're not cutting any corners.

00:31:44.000 He's doing the hard work.

00:31:45.000 The real hard work.

00:31:49.000 Man, I came across it.

00:31:49.000 So here's his fight.

00:31:50.000 So he had like a fucking real fight. 0.99

00:31:53.000 Oh, it's a real fight, man. 0.99

00:31:54.000 A real Muay Thai fight.

00:31:56.000 I mean, they were getting after it.

00:31:57.000 Is it showing the fight?

00:31:58.000 Yeah.

00:31:59.000 Oh, so there's a whole documentary on it.

00:32:01.000 If you think about most actors, you know, too, I don't know if they got this kind of grit.

00:32:05.000 No. 0.99

00:32:05.000 Or humility to possibly get their ass whooped in front of everybody. 0.99

00:32:09.000 That's the thing. 1.00

00:32:10.000 I mean, every human being, you get knocked the fuck out, right? 0.84

00:32:12.000 We saw that with Jorge Masvidal. 0.99

00:32:14.000 Jorge Masvidal, when he got knocked out by Usman, Masvidal, he had an iron chin his whole fucking career. 0.93

00:32:20.000 He'd only been like dropped a couple of times and he was fine every time. 0.93

00:32:24.000 Like dropped by big guys like Darren Till dropped him.

00:32:26.000 But I mean, he's one of the best strikers in the sport. 0.99

00:32:30.000 And then when Usman flatlined him, everybody's like, oh shit. 1.00

00:32:33.000 Everybody can get knocked out. 1.00

00:32:35.000 The human brain, the human body, the way your face is constructed, it's just not designed to get punched.

00:32:40.000 So look at this right here.

00:32:41.000 That could have easily killed him. 0.64

00:32:43.000 That would have dropped me. 0.99

00:32:43.000 Yeah, a good shot. 0.99

00:32:45.000 I mean, he's got good defense, though.

00:32:47.000 He fought well.

00:32:48.000 He did everything well.

00:32:49.000 I could be any fighter alive at the press conference. 1.00

00:32:52.000 But that shit, forget it. 1.00

00:32:55.000 Yeah, it is a real fight. 1.00

00:32:58.000 They're showing in slow motion.

00:32:59.000 It's hard.

00:33:00.000 Fighting's hard.

00:33:01.000 It's hard not to look sloppy.

00:33:04.000 It's hard to get to a point where you're looking like Andre Berto or Floyd Mayweather. 0.97

00:33:11.000 It takes a long fucking time to develop that kind of timing and poise and movement. 0.96

00:33:16.000 A lifetime. 0.99

00:33:17.000 Yeah, forever.

00:33:18.000 What he did, though, is it shows character that he took that chance.

00:33:22.000 That's a rare person.

00:33:24.000 When my kid was young, my youngest son, he got really into boxing.

00:33:26.000 He used to take him down the wild card in Hollywood.

00:33:29.000 We were in LA. And he trained with Justin Juco and shit like that. 0.99

00:33:33.000 Juco was a great trainer because he'd make everything fun for my son. 0.97

00:33:38.000 And my son got really into it.

00:33:39.000 And one day, he was young, he was like, I want to spar somebody.

00:33:43.000 So they put him in the ring with this top amateur contender.

00:33:47.000 Little guy, but You know, he was nice with it. 0.99

00:33:50.000 And my son in his little child talk was like, I'm going to fuck this guy up. 0.98

00:33:55.000 I'm like, no, you're not. 0.99

00:33:56.000 They got in there and, you know, he did all right.

00:34:00.000 But the gym got real amped.

00:34:03.000 And I remember one of the fighters came over to me and was like, this thing your son has, you can't train that.

00:34:09.000 You're either this way or you're not.

00:34:11.000 Right.

00:34:11.000 He liked it.

00:34:12.000 This tenacity he had.

00:34:14.000 So I always thought about that.

00:34:15.000 You can't train that.

00:34:16.000 You're either this way or you're not.

00:34:17.000 Right.

00:34:18.000 Well, some people, they can get better at it.

00:34:22.000 You can get better at tenacity.

00:34:24.000 You can get better at mental strength.

00:34:25.000 It's not totally innate.

00:34:27.000 Some people are just born with it, though.

00:34:29.000 Some people are ferocious from the jump.

00:34:31.000 Where did you fall in that spectrum?

00:34:35.000 I don't remember, because it took so long ago.

00:34:40.000 But I always had...

00:34:43.000 I always had unusual power because I have a weird frame.

00:34:47.000 Like I have very large hands for my body and I have wide shoulders and I can generate a lot of force.

00:34:53.000 And so the problem with that is I would load up and it took me a long time.

00:34:58.000 What do you mean load up?

00:34:58.000 I'm sorry.

00:34:59.000 I would try to knock people out all the time.

00:35:02.000 I can't imagine.

00:35:03.000 Taekwondo tournaments, most of the fights are won by points.

00:35:10.000 They're won by decision.

00:35:11.000 I won most of my fights by knockout.

00:35:13.000 A lot of them by knockout.

00:35:15.000 Maybe not most of them, but I was always trying to knock someone unconscious.

00:35:18.000 What does it feel like to knock somebody?

00:35:20.000 Is it satisfying?

00:35:21.000 Does it scare you at all?

00:35:25.000 It's shocking and it doesn't feel good.

00:35:28.000 It never feels like great.

00:35:30.000 I would pretend it felt great.

00:35:31.000 I'd be like, yeah! 1.00

00:35:33.000 But meanwhile, I was like, what the fuck? 1.00

00:35:35.000 Part of me would be like, what the fuck? 0.99

00:35:37.000 It's always felt weird. 0.99

00:35:38.000 There was one time that I never recovered from.

00:35:41.000 When I was 19 years old, I fought in Anaheim, California.

00:35:44.000 Flew out here to fight in the Nationals.

00:35:46.000 Won my first fight.

00:35:47.000 Then I won my second fight.

00:35:49.000 I was fighting this kid.

00:35:50.000 And I was there with just me and my friend Junkzik.

00:35:54.000 He was coaching me.

00:35:55.000 He was cornering me.

00:35:56.000 And this guy, they had their whole team with them.

00:35:58.000 And there was all these people in the stands that were...

00:36:00.000 I remember saying, come on, Johnny.

00:36:03.000 Get him, Johnny.

00:36:04.000 Get him, Johnny.

00:36:05.000 And I knew this dude was just a little slow, and he was doing some things, and I was seeing some openings, and I hit him harder than I've ever hit anybody in my life. 0.92

00:36:13.000 I hit him with a wheel kick.

00:36:14.000 I hit him so hard, I was limping for a couple days afterwards because my heel hurt from hitting his head.

00:36:21.000 And I flatlined him.

00:36:23.000 He face-planted, he started snoring, and he never got up.

00:36:27.000 They carried him off in a stretcher.

00:36:29.000 He was unconscious for half an hour.

00:36:30.000 And they eventually carried him off, put him in a stretcher, brought him to the hospital.

00:36:34.000 But he literally never stood up and walked around.

00:36:37.000 That's scary.

00:36:38.000 It scared the shit out of me.

00:36:39.000 And you liked the dude?

00:36:41.000 I didn't know the dude.

00:36:42.000 He was from Chicago.

00:36:44.000 I was from Boston.

00:36:45.000 And we just met in California.

00:36:47.000 That's what's weird about boxing.

00:36:50.000 Beating somebody up that you're not angry at is a wild thing to think about.

00:36:55.000 It is wild.

00:36:55.000 Yeah.

00:36:56.000 They do it all the time.

00:36:58.000 A lot of MMA fighters, they're good friends.

00:37:00.000 A lot of them train together, and then they go and they fight.

00:37:04.000 But I went back to my instructor, and my instructor was a hard man.

00:37:09.000 He was a Korean dude who had been taught by General Choi Young-yi, who's the original founder of Taekwondo, who used to train troops in Vietnam.

00:37:16.000 And this guy was hard.

00:37:19.000 And when I went back and told Mr. Kim, I said, you know, we were talking about the tournament.

00:37:24.000 He goes, I heard you had a really good knockout. 1.00

00:37:26.000 And I said, it was very scary.

00:37:28.000 I go, made me nervous.

00:37:30.000 I go, because he never got up.

00:37:31.000 I mean, I thought he was dead.

00:37:33.000 And he goes, Sometimes they die.

00:37:37.000 Wow.

00:37:38.000 And then he walked away.

00:37:39.000 Wow. 1.00

00:37:40.000 And then I was like, oh shit, they is me. 0.99

00:37:43.000 How old were you then? 0.99

00:37:44.000 19. Jeez.

00:37:46.000 And that was the decline of my taekwondo career from that moment on.

00:37:50.000 My fighting career, I fought for a couple more years, but I lost a lot of my enthusiasm with that one fight.

00:37:56.000 Did the fighting and the stand-up overlap?

00:37:58.000 They overlapped for three kickboxing fights.

00:38:00.000 I had three kickboxing fights while I was doing comedy, and I wasn't committing 100% to either one of them.

00:38:06.000 I was half in with both, and then I realized I couldn't do it anymore.

00:38:11.000 And I actually got told by a dude who was an open-miker.

00:38:14.000 He actually, like, said something that was so true I couldn't even argue with him.

00:38:19.000 He goes, yeah, he goes, you started out pretty funny.

00:38:21.000 He goes, but you lost steam somewhere along the line. 0.99

00:38:24.000 And I remember looking at him going, fuck, he's right. 1.00

00:38:27.000 Wait, wait, wait. 0.99

00:38:28.000 In what context did he say this?

00:38:30.000 Talking about comedy, like who's getting good, who's getting bad.

00:38:32.000 We were all like a year in, you know?

00:38:34.000 We were all struggling.

00:38:35.000 And we were sitting around talking about, oh, this guy's really funny and that guy's really funny.

00:38:39.000 He's like, yeah, you started out pretty good, but it seemed like you lost steam.

00:38:43.000 Really?

00:38:44.000 He wasn't even being mean to me.

00:38:45.000 He was just being honest.

00:38:46.000 What was he seeing?

00:38:47.000 I just wasn't as into it because I was still fighting.

00:38:51.000 I was still doing both things.

00:38:53.000 And I was still teaching.

00:38:55.000 I was still teaching at Boston University.

00:38:58.000 I taught a course.

00:38:59.000 So you started stand-up in Boston.

00:39:01.000 Yeah.

00:39:02.000 That's a weird circuit.

00:39:03.000 It was a good circuit.

00:39:04.000 It's a great circuit.

00:39:05.000 It's an anomaly.

00:39:06.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:39:06.000 It was a good place because they have no tolerance for bullshit. 0.99

00:39:14.000 There's no dilly-dallying up there. 0.99

00:39:15.000 They want punchline, set up punchline, set up punchline, bang, bang, bang.

00:39:18.000 They want entertainment. 1.00

00:39:19.000 That Don Gavin shit. 0.99

00:39:20.000 Don't be late. 0.99

00:39:21.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:39:21.000 Don Gavin, Lenny Clark, Steve Sweeney.

00:39:25.000 Yeah, man.

00:39:25.000 I remember when I was a kid, I used to catch a train up to Boston and work out with these kids.

00:39:30.000 Yeah.

00:39:32.000 It was the first circuit I'd ever seen guys making like six figures and never leaving their city.

00:39:37.000 It trapped them. 0.95

00:39:38.000 They would go to bars and shit and you'd think they played for the Celtics or something, like the town embraced the local comedians. 0.99

00:39:45.000 Like they were stars in Boston. 0.99

00:39:48.000 Oh yeah, like nothing else.

00:39:50.000 There's no other comparison to any other city that's like that.

00:39:54.000 What was the guy you used to drink all the time?

00:39:55.000 Teddy Bergeron.

00:39:56.000 Oh, yeah.

00:39:57.000 You remember him?

00:39:57.000 Oh, yeah.

00:39:58.000 Well, when he was in it, he was a beast. 0.96

00:40:00.000 Teddy Bergeron had one Tonight Show set that was so fucking brilliant. 0.97

00:40:04.000 It was so brilliant. 0.99

00:40:05.000 And then, apparently, he got fucked up on pills and booze, and they made him stick around. 0.98

00:40:10.000 But he came back, and he was so fucked up on drugs that it, like, tanked his career. 0.97

00:40:15.000 So he had this one set that was magic. 0.81

00:40:18.000 And you watch that set, you're like, my God, that guy might be the best comic alive.

00:40:22.000 He was so smooth.

00:40:23.000 I remember opening for him.

00:40:24.000 He was so smooth.

00:40:26.000 He was so good.

00:40:27.000 He was so good.

00:40:28.000 He was such a smart guy, too, such a good writer.

00:40:31.000 But, you know, success and the demons, I mean, that's why one of the things that's very impressive to me about people like you that manage the success, it doesn't change your personality.

00:40:42.000 Whatever anxiety comes out of all the pressure and all the people paying attention to what you're doing, You roll.

00:40:50.000 You roll with it and you handle it.

00:40:51.000 But some people don't.

00:40:54.000 That scrutiny, being the object of attention, is crippling for some people.

00:40:59.000 I think early in my career, I didn't know how to handle that.

00:41:04.000 You know what I mean?

00:41:05.000 I was a kid.

00:41:05.000 I was immature.

00:41:07.000 It was a weird thing.

00:41:08.000 But you still handled it well.

00:41:09.000 Even though you didn't know how to handle it, you figured it out.

00:41:13.000 Like, you did it. 1.00

00:41:14.000 It was a struggle, but you never became an asshole. 1.00

00:41:17.000 No, no. 1.00

00:41:17.000 You never fell apart. 1.00

00:41:18.000 I think life is too just humiliating of a practice.

00:41:25.000 You know what I mean? 0.99

00:41:25.000 No matter how you feel about yourself, you get up in the morning, take that first shit of the day. 0.99

00:41:29.000 You're a person. 0.99

00:41:30.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:41:31.000 Oh, yeah. 0.64

00:41:32.000 Fingers are like gross.

00:41:34.000 No, it is.

00:41:34.000 It's true.

00:41:35.000 It's true.

00:41:36.000 It's true.

00:41:37.000 Yeah, I mean, the more things that I do that are humiliating or humbling, humbling is probably a better word.

00:41:43.000 The more things I do that are humbling, the better it is for me.

00:41:45.000 Well, the thing I like about your comedy origin story, like, I was fighting, I was teaching, he said, and I was doing stand-up, but I didn't commit to all of them.

00:41:53.000 But now, that sounds like the recipe for everything you do.

00:41:57.000 Well, the things I do now, they enhance the other things.

00:42:00.000 It's like, if I'm doing a podcast, I think it enhances my stand-up.

00:42:04.000 It enhances my perspective.

00:42:05.000 The more people I can talk to, the more ideas I can take in, more conversations I can have with people.

00:42:10.000 I get a better understanding of people.

00:42:12.000 Like, I'm building a mountain out of layers of paint.

00:42:15.000 Like, every day I'm getting a little bit more understanding of people.

00:42:17.000 A little bit more understanding of myself.

00:42:19.000 You got a broad base, man.

00:42:20.000 Like, you know, I see you talking to people like Malcolm Gladwell.

00:42:23.000 I read his books.

00:42:24.000 It would intimidate me to just chop it up with him.

00:42:26.000 He's a good dude.

00:42:27.000 He's easy to talk to.

00:42:28.000 He seems like a good dude.

00:42:29.000 I don't know him at all.

00:42:30.000 But he's a brilliant dude.

00:42:31.000 You are a brilliant dude.

00:42:32.000 But it's just weird.

00:42:34.000 It's weird that I know you.

00:42:36.000 You know what I mean?

00:42:37.000 It's just so strange.

00:42:39.000 I think back when we were all so young, nobody knew if we were going to make it, not make it, this, that, or the other.

00:42:44.000 And what our careers evolved into.

00:42:47.000 And I use the word evolved very specifically in your case because none of it was obvious.

00:42:53.000 No.

00:42:53.000 The MMA thing, it's not obvious.

00:42:55.000 This podcast is not obvious.

00:42:57.000 And these things were what made you, you know, a multi-million dollar player. 0.99

00:43:03.000 I mean, sitcoms, that's like the obvious shit. 1.00

00:43:05.000 We all did that shit. 1.00

00:43:06.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:43:07.000 But you found your lane.

00:43:08.000 And it's a really hard thing to do.

00:43:12.000 I've just been lucky that I've always listened to my own instincts in terms of like, what do I enjoy doing?

00:43:20.000 Whether or not it's a good career move or not, I enjoy doing it.

00:43:23.000 Like, the early days, MMA wasn't a good career move at all.

00:43:26.000 Like, the people that I was working with on news radio, they would talk to me about it like I was doing porn.

00:43:31.000 They were like, why are you doing this?

00:43:34.000 You're going to Alabama to do some cage fighting commentary? 0.99

00:43:39.000 Like, what the fuck are you doing? 0.99

00:43:40.000 Back then I wasn't even doing commentary. 0.99

00:43:42.000 I was interviewing fighters.

00:43:43.000 I was just interviewing them.

00:43:45.000 I was the guy who would interview the fighters after the fight was over.

00:43:47.000 Would you call fights?

00:43:48.000 No, I didn't call fights until 2001. That was the first time I called a fight.

00:43:53.000 1997, I was just the interviewer.

00:43:55.000 I did it for a couple years, and I enjoyed it, but it was just fun to be there.

00:44:00.000 It was cool.

00:44:00.000 I would just fly into these weird places like Dothan, Alabama.

00:44:07.000 Weird little spots you'd obviously never go to otherwise.

00:44:10.000 And that MMA thing was just kind of starting out.

00:44:13.000 I remember I started seeing the Horace Gracie fights and shit like that in the early 90s.

00:44:19.000 They started doing it. 0.58

00:44:21.000 Shamrock was another place to watch.

00:44:22.000 Yep, 93 is when it started.

00:44:23.000 I came around in 97, so I did it in 97 and 98. And then I couldn't do it anymore.

00:44:30.000 It was costing me money.

00:44:32.000 I could make more money doing a club for a weekend, a comedy club, than I could.

00:44:36.000 Doing these gigs and then, you know, I just decided I'm just gonna stay a fan.

00:44:41.000 Just watch it from afar.

00:44:42.000 I did it.

00:44:42.000 I did the little interview thing.

00:44:43.000 It was fun.

00:44:44.000 And then the UFC was purchased by the Fertittas and Dana White and I became friends because I was on Fear Factor and he gave me free tickets to come to the fights.

00:44:53.000 That's when no celebrities really knew what it was and so if you could get a celebrity to sit up in front row and Then they would interview me, and I knew so much about fighting.

00:45:03.000 I started asking him questions about guys that are fighting in Japan.

00:45:05.000 And then Dana and I went out to dinner, and he was like, why don't you do commentary?

00:45:10.000 And I said, man, I don't want to do commentary.

00:45:11.000 I want to get drunk and watch fights.

00:45:13.000 Like, come on, man. 0.99

00:45:14.000 Damn, props to Dana White, though. 0.99

00:45:15.000 That's a good move. 0.99

00:45:16.000 Yeah.

00:45:17.000 He saw me on the Keenan Ivory Way-In show, too, making fun of Steven Seagal.

00:45:22.000 Yes.

00:45:24.000 We were talking about martial arts and Dana thought it was hilarious.

00:45:28.000 And then we started talking about commentary and then he talked me into doing one.

00:45:32.000 I did like the first 15 of them I did for free.

00:45:36.000 I did it for a while, like more than a year, like maybe two years I did it for no money.

00:45:40.000 I just got free tickets.

00:45:41.000 He just flew me out.

00:45:43.000 It's that, bro.

00:45:44.000 You know, these paths in life, they reveal themselves.

00:45:47.000 And this goes back to what we were saying earlier.

00:45:48.000 If you look at things through the lens of money or monetary gain, you'll miss so much.

00:45:54.000 You miss so much.

00:45:55.000 This thing about just following a passion, having a good dinner with somebody, yeah, I'll do it.

00:46:01.000 That's usually how the greatest things happen.

00:46:03.000 When I did Stars Point, I don't do movies.

00:46:05.000 I'm so glad I did it.

00:46:07.000 And it was just because I liked Bradley Cooper.

00:46:09.000 I kept meeting him at parties.

00:46:10.000 That's awesome.

00:46:11.000 And I just liked the guy.

00:46:13.000 No.

00:46:13.000 Yeah, that's being able to just do what you enjoy doing.

00:46:17.000 That's the real success of life.

00:46:18.000 Because if you're making a lot of money but you hate what you're doing, like when I was doing Fear Factor, I didn't enjoy the job.

00:46:24.000 I enjoyed the people I was working with.

00:46:26.000 It was fun.

00:46:26.000 They were a good group of people.

00:46:28.000 We had a lot of fun.

00:46:28.000 We had a lot of laughs.

00:46:30.000 But it wasn't what I wanted to do.

00:46:32.000 I was doing it for money.

00:46:34.000 But it gave me... 1.00

00:46:36.000 The good thing was it gave me fuck you money. 1.00

00:46:38.000 So it gave me money where I had money squirreled away. 1.00

00:46:41.000 I was like, ooh, I can relax now.

00:46:42.000 Now I'll just do what I want to do. 1.00

00:46:43.000 And what I wanted to do was do this stupid podcast. 0.99

00:46:46.000 And then do these MMA shows. 1.00

00:46:49.000 Go and do commentary. 1.00

00:46:50.000 And I did all that shit. 1.00

00:46:52.000 Again, it was all just because I enjoyed it. 1.00

00:46:56.000 And then that became my life.

00:46:58.000 My life became...

00:46:59.000 Only things I enjoy.

00:47:01.000 So now, whether it's podcast, or whether it's stand-up, or whether it's commentary, it's just I enjoy it.

00:47:06.000 I look forward to it.

00:47:08.000 I had a year like that, right, maybe like a year before I did Chappelle's Show.

00:47:12.000 It was just like I was saving up to take a chance.

00:47:16.000 You know what I mean?

00:47:17.000 Yeah.

00:47:17.000 So when it came time to do Chappelle's Show, you know, the money was terrible, but I'd saved up.

00:47:22.000 I could take the shot.

00:47:23.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:47:24.000 I could come off the road and take a real shot.

00:47:27.000 And it made all the difference in the world.

00:47:30.000 When you take a chance, it's such a weird feeling, taking a chance, doing something, even just moving here.

00:47:36.000 It's so exciting.

00:47:38.000 So exciting when you don't know how it's going to play out.

00:47:40.000 It's so nerve-wracking.

00:47:41.000 It gets you. 0.99

00:47:42.000 You're like, fuck, is this the right move? 1.00

00:47:44.000 Maybe I should just play it safe and stay where I am. 0.99

00:47:46.000 I mean, LA's got to open back up eventually.

00:47:49.000 No, this was a great move.

00:47:50.000 I can't imagine what you saved in taxes.

00:47:53.000 I don't know.

00:47:54.000 It's a lot, though.

00:47:55.000 It's gotta be.

00:47:56.000 13% is what California state taxes are?

00:47:59.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:47:59.000 It's crazy.

00:48:00.000 I'm not even good at math, and I know that's $13.

00:48:02.000 It's gonna get worse, too, man.

00:48:04.000 It's gonna get worse.

00:48:05.000 What?

00:48:05.000 Because they're jacking the taxes up.

00:48:07.000 They're trying.

00:48:07.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:48:08.000 They're jacking them up in New York.

00:48:09.000 You know what?

00:48:10.000 Yeah, they're fine.

00:48:11.000 Listen, if I felt like it fixed things, I would be happy.

00:48:15.000 It's that.

00:48:16.000 You know, I was with Jon Stewart.

00:48:19.000 We were in Copenhagen.

00:48:22.000 And, you know, socialized country.

00:48:25.000 And Jon Stewart said to me something.

00:48:28.000 He said, you know the difference between a taxpayer here and a taxpayer in America?

00:48:32.000 He said, these people think they get something for their money.

00:48:36.000 Yeah.

00:48:36.000 But I think socialism or something like that only works in homogenized countries.

00:48:42.000 Like, everyone in China is Chinese. 0.99

00:48:44.000 There's a lot of white people in Copenhagen, I think.

00:48:47.000 You know what I mean? 0.98

00:48:48.000 I think in America, it's the them or the they of it all that fucks us up. 1.00

00:48:53.000 It's also small populations, right?

00:48:56.000 It's like one of the things I was saying about Austin.

00:48:58.000 One of the ways Austin works is there's only a million people in the city.

00:49:01.000 And then there's another million on the outskirts.

00:49:03.000 That's not a lot of people.

00:49:05.000 That's not a lot of people.

00:49:06.000 It's one of the reasons why it works.

00:49:07.000 It's like people are valuable.

00:49:09.000 They're not a problem.

00:49:10.000 Even when you're in traffic, it's like five minutes.

00:49:12.000 Like, oh my god, so much traffic.

00:49:14.000 Took you an extra five minutes.

00:49:16.000 Right.

00:49:16.000 It's nothing.

00:49:17.000 No, not coming from LA. Nothing is traffic after LA. Maybe Atlanta.

00:49:22.000 Yeah, Atlanta's rough.

00:49:23.000 Chicago's rough.

00:49:24.000 I remember doing radio in Chicago. 0.98

00:49:27.000 I was doing the Schaumburg Improv, and you do radio in the city, and then you got to go back out to Schaumburg, and you're like, holy shit, this is far. 0.88

00:49:34.000 There's so much traffic. 0.95

00:49:36.000 There's so many people.

00:49:37.000 Big cities, that's the rub on big cities is that people, they don't value each other as much.

00:49:44.000 When you're in a place like Copenhagen or any of these, whether it's Denmark, these places are not that big.

00:49:53.000 They're big enough, but they're not that big.

00:49:56.000 The United States is so big.

00:49:58.000 It's so big.

00:49:59.000 It's so big and it's so different.

00:50:01.000 There's so much going on.

00:50:03.000 So many cities.

00:50:03.000 Everywhere is different.

00:50:05.000 So many climates. 0.99

00:50:07.000 350, whatever the fuck it is, million people. 0.98

00:50:10.000 Yeah, but if you see an American when you're outside of America, you know they're one of us. 0.99

00:50:16.000 A lot of times.

00:50:17.000 Yeah.

00:50:18.000 A lot of times.

00:50:19.000 The lines are getting blurry now, though.

00:50:21.000 How do you mean?

00:50:21.000 You might think someone's American, you talk to them, like, hello, mate.

00:50:24.000 Oh, look at you, motherfucker, with your backwards baseball head on. 1.00

00:50:27.000 Oh, that is true. 1.00

00:50:28.000 Yeah.

00:50:28.000 I play overseas a lot now.

00:50:31.000 And I used to do it when I was a kid.

00:50:33.000 It was more challenging.

00:50:35.000 This internet makes all the crowds kind of the same.

00:50:39.000 They know every reference.

00:50:41.000 And American culture is still a marquee culture.

00:50:46.000 You know, they know so much about our political lives.

00:50:48.000 They know so much about our cultural lives.

00:50:50.000 So much more than we would know about them going over there.

00:50:54.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:50:55.000 And on stage, like, I was doing a show in Tokyo.

00:50:58.000 I'd never worked in Tokyo before.

00:50:59.000 What was that like?

00:51:00.000 If I took a picture from the stage and asked you where I was, you'd think I was playing San Francisco.

00:51:05.000 Really?

00:51:06.000 It was interesting.

00:51:06.000 Yeah, some of the people who came didn't even speak English.

00:51:09.000 They just wanted to see the spectacle of...

00:51:11.000 Oh, wow.

00:51:11.000 Because they had heard of me.

00:51:12.000 Oh, wow.

00:51:13.000 That must be wild.

00:51:14.000 It's Netflix, man.

00:51:15.000 Like, look, you get out in that world, Joe, you're famous everywhere.

00:51:20.000 You've never been to these places, but when you get there, they're going to know you.

00:51:24.000 Or, there's a thing that happened to me years ago in London where I was in a restaurant and I was kind of waiting for the table and when the lady, she asked me my name.

00:51:34.000 She said, what's your name?

00:51:35.000 I go, David.

00:51:35.000 She goes, well, this is David on the list.

00:51:37.000 What's your last name?

00:51:38.000 I go, Chappelle.

00:51:39.000 And she looks up.

00:51:40.000 And I look around and everyone's kind of looking.

00:51:42.000 I could tell they had heard of me, but they didn't know that that was me.

00:51:47.000 Oh, right, right, right.

00:51:48.000 It was that kind of thing.

00:51:49.000 Yeah.

00:51:49.000 This was after I quit the show, but not long after, like 05, 06. What did you do for those 10 years?

00:51:56.000 A lot of shit. 1.00

00:51:57.000 I learned a lot. 1.00

00:51:59.000 I mean, but it was a humble existence.

00:52:02.000 You know, I had had young children, and I was raising my kids.

00:52:07.000 I was living a suburban life.

00:52:10.000 And then every once in a while, I get this feeling like I'm the funniest guy.

00:52:14.000 God, I gotta get out there.

00:52:15.000 And I would fly to Denver, do a week in Denver or something.

00:52:18.000 And that's when he would read, I was doing these six-hour shows.

00:52:21.000 I'd perform like I was desperate for it.

00:52:23.000 I loved it.

00:52:24.000 Yeah.

00:52:25.000 And at one point, I had done one of these big comedy tours that Live Nation put together, that Oddball tour.

00:52:33.000 And I did alright.

00:52:34.000 I had a good run.

00:52:35.000 I wiped out in Hartford.

00:52:37.000 And that was all over the internet.

00:52:38.000 That was the first time that thing had happened to me.

00:52:41.000 But for the most part, the tour went good.

00:52:43.000 But it was a tough tour for me.

00:52:45.000 Because it was a long show.

00:52:46.000 I had to close it.

00:52:48.000 You know, my chops weren't as tight as they normally were. 0.93

00:52:51.000 But I didn't suck by any means.

00:52:53.000 But, you know, it could have been better. 0.96

00:52:55.000 Humbling.

00:52:55.000 It was humbling.

00:52:56.000 But it made me want to go back.

00:53:01.000 And the shows were like, every show was like 20,000 seats.

00:53:04.000 There were like all these...

00:53:05.000 What year was this around? 1.00

00:53:07.000 Shit. 1.00

00:53:07.000 I can't remember. 1.00

00:53:09.000 Obama was president, maybe.

00:53:11.000 I don't know, 8, 9, 10. But you were famous for just showing up places.

00:53:15.000 You would just fly into places.

00:53:17.000 That's the one.

00:53:18.000 That's when I started.

00:53:20.000 In the summer, I started riding motorcycles, which is very uncharacteristically.

00:53:25.000 But I loved it.

00:53:26.000 I said, I'm going to ride my bike across country.

00:53:29.000 And I did.

00:53:29.000 I cheated.

00:53:30.000 I had a tour bus with me.

00:53:31.000 It was a trailer, so if it rained or something, or if I just wanted to bail, I could.

00:53:36.000 But I rode across the country, and I'd never seen America like that.

00:53:40.000 We talk about how big it is and expansive.

00:53:42.000 Man, I saw all the little pockets.

00:53:44.000 On a bike, you really feel the environment, you see things.

00:53:50.000 And I would.

00:53:51.000 I'd stop and play.

00:53:51.000 One of my favorite birthdays was here in Austin.

00:53:54.000 I'd never been to Austin really, and I pulled up on 6th Street.

00:53:57.000 I'd been to Austin, but I'd never seen Austin.

00:54:00.000 Pulled up on 6th Street.

00:54:01.000 It was my birthday.

00:54:02.000 I was riding with the guy.

00:54:03.000 He's like, what do you want to do for your birthday?

00:54:05.000 And at that time, I wasn't drinking or smoking or anything.

00:54:08.000 I said, I want to do stand-up.

00:54:10.000 And I found a bar.

00:54:12.000 It was right around closing.

00:54:15.000 And I saw the DJ packing up, and I said, can I use your microphone?

00:54:18.000 And he recognized me, so he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. 1.00

00:54:21.000 And I went up there, and I just started talking shit. 0.99

00:54:25.000 You know, but it was just like, you know, teasing the bar staff as they're cleaning up, talking to patrons, you know, get home fast, buddy, and all that shit. 0.99

00:54:32.000 Right. 0.97

00:54:32.000 And people laughing. 0.97

00:54:33.000 It was like doing, they used to do street comedy in New York.

00:54:36.000 It kind of reminded me of that, like building a crowd.

00:54:38.000 And in a while, people stopped and listened.

00:54:40.000 Now, I'm not a tech-savvy dude.

00:54:42.000 Twitter had come out.

00:54:44.000 And I guess people had started tweeting like, yo, this is crazy.

00:54:47.000 Dave Chappelle's just in here ranting.

00:54:50.000 Man, it might have took like an hour.

00:54:51.000 That place was packed.

00:54:52.000 Yeah.

00:54:53.000 And I must have stayed on stage three or four hours.

00:54:56.000 Wow.

00:54:56.000 And, you know, they closed the door.

00:54:58.000 They locked the door because it was after hours.

00:55:01.000 And I was in there killing it.

00:55:03.000 Wow.

00:55:04.000 Best birthday I ever had.

00:55:05.000 One of the best birthdays I ever had.

00:55:07.000 Sometime around when I turned 40, I just decided that I'm gonna have fun.

00:55:14.000 You know, like right now, you know, this is a weird thing to talk about, but after DMX passed and Black Rob, you know, now far more often people from my peer group pass away.

00:55:24.000 And it just makes me feel like, it's not a midlife crisis, it's almost the opposite of that.

00:55:29.000 It's like, look, I know I don't get to stay here forever.

00:55:32.000 My time is limited and precious and I don't take any of these things for granted.

00:55:37.000 I don't take this money for granted, this platform, and I'm not talking about the fame platform, I'm talking about comedy.

00:55:44.000 This genre, like, this genre It's been so good for me, my social life, the people that I've met, the friendships that I've had, some that I've lost along the way, these memories we make,

00:56:01.000 you know, As the years go on, I'm like, what a special, special way to live your life and to see the world.

00:56:08.000 It's like when we did those dates, where were we?

00:56:13.000 In Seattle and Utah, was it?

00:56:18.000 Salt Lake City?

00:56:19.000 And one of those nights, there was a massacre in Dayton.

00:56:23.000 It's not far from where I live.

00:56:25.000 People where I live hang out in Dayton.

00:56:27.000 Was that the night we were there?

00:56:29.000 We were together when that happened.

00:56:30.000 That same night, the guy that owned one of those comedy clubs in New York was murdered, too.

00:56:35.000 It was like a really dark night.

00:56:37.000 And I found all this out right before I was going on.

00:56:40.000 You didn't know.

00:56:41.000 You were already on stage as this news was unfolding.

00:56:43.000 I'm sure you got an earful when you got off.

00:56:47.000 But I was like phew. 0.99

00:56:48.000 You know during the run we would go places and I'd see flags at half staff and I'm like oh shit that's for like my city. 0.99

00:56:55.000 It really hit home. 0.97

00:56:57.000 And the best part of that experience was being with comedians.

00:57:02.000 If anything bad ever happens comedians are who you want to be with.

00:57:08.000 You know, 9-11, I was in a room full of comedians because I had to, you know, I was staying on West Broadway and Canal Street, which is not far from the Trade Center, but Canal Street, I'm on the north side of the street.

00:57:21.000 From the south down, the city was evacuated, so I got to stay in my hotel.

00:57:26.000 But during the day, we didn't know that.

00:57:28.000 I had a new baby, and I ended up going to a comedian's house.

00:57:32.000 They lived in Greenwich Village.

00:57:33.000 Bunch of comedians were there.

00:57:35.000 As bad as that day was, that was the room to be in.

00:57:39.000 It's something that these guys and girls have always inspired courage in me and levity in me.

00:57:46.000 There's some subtext of comedy that everything's going to be okay.

00:57:50.000 I spent the day with Joey Diaz and Ralphie Mae.

00:57:53.000 Oh, wow.

00:57:53.000 9-11?

00:57:54.000 Yeah.

00:57:55.000 Who else would you rather have been with?

00:57:57.000 When you think back at the tragedy, I bet you can think of four or five things you laughed at that day.

00:58:02.000 Not about the tragedy, but we just laughed. 0.97

00:58:04.000 We were high as fuck, and we were just freaking out about the fact there's no planes. 0.94

00:58:10.000 Like, look at this guy, there's no planes. 0.99

00:58:12.000 There's no planes.

00:58:12.000 Yeah, it's that.

00:58:15.000 Comedians...

00:58:15.000 Yeah.

00:58:16.000 You know, it's funny that this genre is under attack, because to me, this is the everything's gonna be okay genre.

00:58:23.000 It's under attack because people have this ability to complain about things now and then people pile on.

00:58:30.000 It's a new thing.

00:58:31.000 And they realize it's very useful.

00:58:33.000 It's a good weapon.

00:58:34.000 And if you choose targets, you can take targets out.

00:58:37.000 You can go after them.

00:58:38.000 And so it becomes a hobby.

00:58:39.000 It becomes a hobby like if, you know, if you see a window and you got a rock, You feel like throwing that rock.

00:58:46.000 And so a lot of times these targets aren't justified, but you can find a justification.

00:58:50.000 You can say, oh, they put these words together in this order, and if you look at it in quotes written down on paper, you go, oh, well, this is ableist, or this is this, or this is that.

00:58:59.000 This is something we can attack.

00:59:01.000 Let's attack. 0.93

00:59:01.000 This is transphobic. 0.93

00:59:03.000 This is homophobic. 0.99

00:59:05.000 Attack. 0.96

00:59:06.000 Attack.

00:59:06.000 And it becomes, it's a recreation.

00:59:10.000 It's recreational outrage. 0.98

00:59:11.000 It is exactly, you know, the last time I came on your show when Donnell was here, and I fucked up, I looked at the comment section. 1.00

00:59:17.000 I'll never do that shit again. 1.00

00:59:19.000 I'll never do that shit again. 1.00

00:59:21.000 First comment is, somebody said, Dave looks like he stinks. 1.00

00:59:24.000 Word. 0.95

00:59:25.000 Word.

00:59:27.000 What did I do?

00:59:28.000 What did I do to you, bud?

00:59:30.000 When RZA was on with Donnell, that was the first thing I said to Donnell after the show.

00:59:34.000 I go, hey man, that was fun.

00:59:36.000 Don't read the comments.

00:59:37.000 Don't read the comments.

00:59:38.000 And Donnell just dove right into that comments.

00:59:41.000 And he was on a deep spiral of mental illness for several days.

00:59:45.000 Yeah, he said, man, I kept saying I interrupt, son.

00:59:47.000 Yeah, I heard all about it.

00:59:50.000 We was on tour after that.

00:59:52.000 He was traumatized.

00:59:53.000 He got shook.

00:59:54.000 I told them, stay out of there. 1.00

00:59:56.000 Don't read that shit. 1.00

00:59:57.000 You're the same person. 1.00

00:59:58.000 You don't want to be affected by those people.

01:00:00.000 No, you don't.

01:00:00.000 No, because they just want to bring you down to their level.

01:00:03.000 They're miserable. 0.96

01:00:04.000 Whoever wrote that comment that said, Dave looks like he stinks, is probably going to watch this and be like, nailed it. 1.00

01:00:10.000 So congratulations, motherfucker. 1.00

01:00:12.000 And I can't wait to read your comment about me commenting on your comment. 1.00

01:00:15.000 You're in the big time, bitch. 1.00

01:00:18.000 Your mother stinks. 1.00

01:00:20.000 Comment on that, too. 1.00

01:00:23.000 Yeah, it's a weird thing, comments.

01:00:25.000 Comments are a weird thing.

01:00:26.000 Yeah, it is.

01:00:28.000 But like you say, and here's the rub, you can just not read them.

01:00:33.000 Or you can just not click on that special that's gonna hurt your feelings. 0.99

01:00:36.000 At a certain point, you gotta look at this shit like food. 1.00

01:00:39.000 What are you eating? 1.00

01:00:40.000 What are you putting in your mind?

01:00:41.000 That's what I keep saying about me when people get outraged about my podcast.

01:00:45.000 I'm like, well, you don't have to listen to it.

01:00:47.000 Like, why are you listening to it, looking for things that are pissing you off?

01:00:50.000 Like, what are you doing? 1.00

01:00:51.000 Yeah, it's like listening to someone's ass when they take a shit and be like, ew, you farted. 1.00

01:00:56.000 What the fuck are you doing in here anyway? 1.00

01:01:00.000 What's wrong with these people? 1.00

01:01:01.000 Well, people are looking to get mad.

01:01:03.000 There's plenty of things to be authentically mad about.

01:01:06.000 Yes.

01:01:07.000 But those are confusing and frustrating.

01:01:10.000 And it takes time, patience, research.

01:01:12.000 Yeah.

01:01:13.000 There's a lot going on with those.

01:01:14.000 Why do that?

01:01:15.000 Yeah.

01:01:15.000 Why do all that?

01:01:16.000 Yeah.

01:01:17.000 I don't know, man.

01:01:20.000 I'm optimistic about the future, but I think because I've never seen these things before, I can't quite call where it's going.

01:01:28.000 It's a challenging time, but human beings have always done better than the previous generation. 1.00

01:01:32.000 Every single generation, if you follow like Steven Pinker's work, From the beginning of time, from recorded history to now, it's the safest time to be alive ever.

01:01:41.000 And it's a very clear trend.

01:01:43.000 We struggle.

01:01:44.000 We have conflict.

01:01:47.000 There's ups and downs.

01:01:48.000 There's mistakes and there's good decisions.

01:01:50.000 But ultimately, things become safer.

01:01:53.000 They become better.

01:01:55.000 We accept each other more.

01:01:57.000 I mean, think about when I was a kid, gay marriage was impossible. 0.83

01:02:00.000 You couldn't get married if you were gay. 1.00

01:02:02.000 Whenever they would propose it, people would freak out. 0.69

01:02:05.000 Now it's nationwide.

01:02:07.000 It's like things change.

01:02:09.000 Even though there's more violence now than ever before.

01:02:12.000 I mean, there's not more violence now than ever before.

01:02:14.000 You see it.

01:02:15.000 You see violence now more than you ever have before because of social media.

01:02:19.000 You could pull up Instagram videos or car accidents. 0.97

01:02:22.000 Gun fights and crazy shit, but the reality is there's less violence than ever before. 0.95

01:02:28.000 There's less murder than ever before. 0.99

01:02:30.000 It's a slow trend.

01:02:32.000 And Pinker gets criticized for this because people don't want to hear that because they go, but what about all the injustice?

01:02:36.000 What about all the murders?

01:02:37.000 What about all the crime? 1.00

01:02:38.000 There is all that shit. 1.00

01:02:39.000 There is rape. 1.00

01:02:40.000 All that stuff is real, but it's way less than ever before in history.

01:02:43.000 And I think as time moves on, it'll get even better.

01:02:46.000 There'll be hiccups.

01:02:47.000 There'll be ups and downs.

01:02:49.000 It's not less because people are sick of that behavior.

01:02:56.000 It's not like these things happen less often because People had to do things to make these things happen less often.

01:03:07.000 It didn't organically just be like, man, that's enough murder for us. 0.99

01:03:10.000 We had to do some shit. 1.00

01:03:12.000 People had to do some shit. 1.00

01:03:13.000 Right. 1.00

01:03:13.000 We had to, you know, gay marriage. 1.00

01:03:16.000 People had to be made aware of how people are struggling.

01:03:20.000 One of the great things of that movement was when everyone started coming out of the closet and everyone realized, oh, like five of my best friends are gay and were embarrassed when we were saying this, that, and the other.

01:03:29.000 Right.

01:03:30.000 And then you realize you like this person more than you like whatever prejudice you're carrying around.

01:03:34.000 These types of actions are what...

01:03:36.000 Information.

01:03:37.000 Information.

01:03:38.000 Information, yeah.

01:03:39.000 And as more information gets out about what's avoidable and unavoidable, and the more we get to understand each other, the more we realize we have way more in common than we don't.

01:03:48.000 Right.

01:03:49.000 You know?

01:03:50.000 It's...

01:03:51.000 As time goes on, I think we're gonna get better.

01:03:54.000 I think our culture, our civilization will be improved upon.

01:03:58.000 What we have now is a very unique struggle that's never existed before because it's a combination struggle, right?

01:04:06.000 It's a virus, a disease, it's fear, it's anxiety, and then economic depression all thrown in together and it scares the fuck out of people.

01:04:16.000 Because they're powerless.

01:04:17.000 Because all of a sudden, the government comes along and says, you can't work.

01:04:20.000 Or your business is not essential.

01:04:23.000 Imagine being told you don't have an essential business.

01:04:25.000 I was.

01:04:27.000 Well, comedians are, yeah, in a way.

01:04:29.000 We're not essential.

01:04:31.000 Fortunately, podcasts were, for whatever weird reason, an essential business.

01:04:34.000 So were liquor stores, which is kind of crazy.

01:04:37.000 Well, because your podcast was like a beacon of some semblance of normalcy.

01:04:41.000 I didn't look something like Joey, you look good, and the world's going on.

01:04:45.000 But there's also something illusory about it.

01:04:49.000 Because if they see us on yachts popping bottles while they're going through this thing, they're going to feel like, well, is something wrong with me?

01:04:55.000 Yeah.

01:04:56.000 There's a lot of tone-deaf folks out there that didn't get that.

01:04:59.000 They're out there taking that photo in front of a private jet with a Gucci bag, smiling.

01:05:03.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:05:04.000 Like, hey, hey, this is not the time for that.

01:05:06.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:05:07.000 Yeah, it's true.

01:05:09.000 This is not the time for flossing.

01:05:10.000 No, it's not.

01:05:10.000 But for some people, that's like a part of their image.

01:05:15.000 You know, part of what they do.

01:05:17.000 Yeah, many people.

01:05:18.000 I think in their understanding that that's almost definitively what celebrity is.

01:05:24.000 It's like, how am I going to be successful without doing that?

01:05:27.000 And they sell something different than, say, you or I might be trying to sell.

01:05:31.000 Right, right, right.

01:05:33.000 You're not selling that if you're a comic.

01:05:35.000 You've got to be careful.

01:05:37.000 Nah.

01:05:38.000 I'm trying to think.

01:05:39.000 Is there a comic that flosses?

01:05:41.000 Kevin Hart flosses a little bit.

01:05:43.000 Never bothered me though.

01:05:44.000 No.

01:05:45.000 He's a happy... 0.99

01:05:45.000 Well, first of all, who the fuck works harder than that guy? 0.99

01:05:48.000 Nobody. 0.99

01:05:49.000 Not me. 1.00

01:05:49.000 Fuck that. 1.00

01:05:51.000 Fuck that. 1.00

01:05:52.000 He makes me feel lazy. 1.00

01:05:54.000 He's always like co-producing some project and...

01:05:58.000 Animating some movie and doing a voiceover of this and starring in that and then doing a theater tour.

01:06:04.000 And then he's got Jumanji 5 coming out.

01:06:06.000 He's always got something happening.

01:06:08.000 And he's relentlessly kind.

01:06:10.000 And everyone that works with him looks elated and happy.

01:06:13.000 He's not a tyrant. 0.99

01:06:15.000 He's like hanging out with a self-help book or some shit. 0.98

01:06:17.000 He just makes you feel good. 0.98

01:06:19.000 He's a powerful, powerful guy.

01:06:22.000 It's impossible not to like him.

01:06:24.000 Yeah.

01:06:26.000 And, in fact, in my mind, he's a great case scenario that a good person can do well in life.

01:06:34.000 Because there are some cynics that believe that they can't.

01:06:36.000 I don't know about any crying behind that fortune.

01:06:39.000 You're just a good dude.

01:06:40.000 No, he's just a good dude.

01:06:41.000 You can be a good person to make it.

01:06:44.000 It's just the problem is, like, making it is usually connected to ambition, which is usually connected to aggression.

01:06:50.000 It's usually connected to, you know, someone who's like...

01:06:54.000 Really, fiercely trying to succeed.

01:06:57.000 And a lot of that is usually, in a lot of people's eyes, that's at any cost.

01:07:02.000 You know, ruthlessly trying to get through the maze of show business, of life, to succeed.

01:07:07.000 And some people, back to incentives, adopt this ruthlessness, thinking, well, that's how things get done.

01:07:14.000 If I can't do this, then I'll never make it.

01:07:16.000 And that's a myth.

01:07:18.000 Sylvester Stallone had a great quote on the acting studio.

01:07:33.000 Yeah.

01:07:48.000 I would imagine that that's...

01:07:50.000 I mean, there's actors that are, like, real artists.

01:07:55.000 When they're putting together a role, whether it's Denzel Washington or Daniel Day-Lewis or...

01:08:02.000 You know what I mean?

01:08:03.000 There's, like, levels of acting.

01:08:05.000 And there's a certain level where they're not, like, just a regular guy trying to be famous.

01:08:12.000 They got some thing that they've tuned into.

01:08:15.000 They can become...

01:08:15.000 Gary Oldman.

01:08:16.000 They can become a person.

01:08:18.000 Man, Daniel Day-Lewis. 1.00

01:08:21.000 That motherfucker. 1.00

01:08:22.000 Think about it. 1.00

01:08:23.000 When he's not working, he's like making shoes and shit. 0.99

01:08:26.000 He's not on what I call the whole stroll, that red carpet. 1.00

01:08:30.000 He ain't doing that shit. 0.99

01:08:32.000 He's a serious actor. 0.99

01:08:33.000 He's a great artist, and that's why he makes a premium for his work.

01:08:36.000 I think he quit acting.

01:08:38.000 He said he retired.

01:08:39.000 Him playing Abraham Lincoln was one of my favorite things I've ever seen someone do.

01:08:42.000 And it's not my favorite movie he's been in.

01:08:46.000 But it's a movie about the passing of a bill. 0.98

01:08:48.000 I can't think of a more boring process than fucking the bureaucracy of passing a bill, no matter what the bill's about. 0.95

01:08:56.000 But man, something about that performance made me excited about art itself. 0.98

01:09:02.000 For me, it's the There Will Be Blood. 0.98

01:09:04.000 It's the fucking greatest movie ever. 0.99

01:09:06.000 There Will Be Blood is the one. 0.99

01:09:07.000 That character, it was so many things.

01:09:10.000 He was a murderer, he was evil, he was kind, he was ambitious, he was a victim of circumstance, a victim of his environment, and also, you know, kind of a tyrant.

01:09:22.000 Yeah, I picture myself as an actor reading that script and just being like, I don't get it. 0.92

01:09:28.000 Let alone untangling an emotional life for this guy and a rationale for behaving this way.

01:09:34.000 Yeah.

01:09:35.000 Man, this guy nailed it.

01:09:36.000 Yeah, he nailed it.

01:09:37.000 But that's when people think of the worst aspects of ambition, they think of that kind of person, that character that he portrayed.

01:09:46.000 The worst aspects of it, the dehumanizing aspects of Of ambition.

01:09:53.000 Yeah, geez. 1.00

01:09:54.000 Some dark shit. 1.00

01:09:56.000 Yeah, dark shit. 1.00

01:09:57.000 I drink your milkshake. 1.00

01:10:00.000 Beats a guy dead with a bowling pin and I'm finished.

01:10:03.000 Yeah.

01:10:04.000 No spoiler alert, my bad, everybody.

01:10:06.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:10:07.000 Fucking heavy. 0.99

01:10:08.000 Great, though. 0.99

01:10:09.000 Yeah, brilliant.

01:10:10.000 You know, it's kind of like...

01:10:12.000 One of the things I did...

01:10:14.000 After I left the shows, I got into boxing.

01:10:16.000 I don't know, I used to just go to the fights.

01:10:19.000 And part of it was because that era was like Manny Pacquiao was fighting, Mayweather was fighting, Marquez was fighting, all these guys were great fighters.

01:10:27.000 And I got this notion that anytime I can be a witness to greatness, I should see it.

01:10:31.000 Yes.

01:10:32.000 And it's like the fast food of greatness.

01:10:35.000 Floyd fight, you know that's going to be good.

01:10:38.000 A Pacquiao fight, you know what I mean?

01:10:39.000 I was there when he got knocked out, like these moments.

01:10:41.000 Oh, you were there when Marquez knocked him out?

01:10:43.000 Boy, was I. With my Filipino mother-in-law.

01:10:46.000 She sang the national anthem and everything.

01:10:48.000 I was like, sorry.

01:10:54.000 Wow.

01:10:55.000 Yeah, it was crazy, man.

01:10:56.000 That was a crazy punch.

01:10:59.000 That was.

01:10:59.000 Now, who do you have on Saturday?

01:11:01.000 Canelo and Billy Ray Saunders?

01:11:03.000 Yeah.

01:11:04.000 Billy Ray Saunders is a problem.

01:11:05.000 That guy got good feet.

01:11:06.000 He can move.

01:11:07.000 He can move, but there's no one in the business harder to hit than Canelo right now.

01:11:11.000 He learned something from Floyd Mayweather. 0.93

01:11:13.000 Man, that was like a Harvard ass-whooping Floyd gave him. 0.88

01:11:15.000 And it wasn't even like a... 0.98

01:11:16.000 Yeah, it was a clinic, bro.

01:11:17.000 Trouncing.

01:11:18.000 It's a trouncing.

01:11:19.000 Yeah, it's a trouncing. 0.97

01:11:19.000 It wasn't an ass-whooping, but... 0.97

01:11:21.000 Floyd didn't hit hard enough to really give him a real ass whooping or really hurt him and punish him and have him in real trouble. 0.94

01:11:27.000 But he boxed him up. 0.93

01:11:28.000 Boxed him up.

01:11:29.000 It was like watching a Globetrotters game.

01:11:31.000 Yeah.

01:11:31.000 You know what I mean?

01:11:32.000 Yeah, right?

01:11:33.000 He was beat handily.

01:11:35.000 But then if you watch Canelo, because Floyd was impossible to hit, and I think Canelo thought he was going to be able to hit him.

01:11:43.000 And then he realized somewhere in the fight, like, this guy knows everything I'm going to do long before I do it.

01:11:47.000 Like, my language, the way I'm speaking with boxing is so slow.

01:11:51.000 Right.

01:11:52.000 He's just like...

01:11:53.000 Right.

01:11:53.000 He's just many steps ahead.

01:11:55.000 But then you watch Canelo now, like...

01:11:58.000 He's slick.

01:11:59.000 He's so slick.

01:11:59.000 The Danny Jacobs fight's a great example of that.

01:12:01.000 Yeah, that was.

01:12:02.000 He's standing right in front of him, just moving the head.

01:12:04.000 His head movement's phenomenal.

01:12:05.000 And that's not indicative of a classic Mexican boxer.

01:12:09.000 No, they come straight at you.

01:12:10.000 Yeah.

01:12:11.000 Dying their shield.

01:12:12.000 He's not that guy.

01:12:13.000 He's so skilled.

01:12:14.000 He got the rub.

01:12:15.000 That's what we call it.

01:12:16.000 When a great fighter fights another great fighter, they learn something.

01:12:21.000 You learn something from the higher levels.

01:12:22.000 Like when you get beat by a guy, you get that rub.

01:12:25.000 You see a lot of times a guy will come out of a fight with a great fight.

01:12:28.000 He might have lost, but then the next fight you see like, oh, he recognizes the higher frequencies, the higher RPMs of the real true great ones.

01:12:36.000 I think that was a problem in boxing, this idea that people were addicted to undefeated fighters, but there's something to be said in greatness for getting beat up sometimes.

01:12:47.000 If you can come back from it with your wits intact and learn the lessons that the ass whooping taught you, you might see something even more special from a guy that got a loss or two on his record. 0.88

01:12:58.000 Yeah, but there's a fine line.

01:13:00.000 There's a type of loss that you never bounce back from, like the Julio Cesar Chavez, Meldrick Taylor loss.

01:13:06.000 Meldrick Taylor lost to Chavez.

01:13:08.000 He got knocked out with like...

01:13:10.000 Richard Steele stopped the fight with like two seconds to go in the last round.

01:13:13.000 But Chavez was just getting to him.

01:13:15.000 Just getting to him.

01:13:16.000 And Meldrick was so fast.

01:13:17.000 Meldrick was a part of that team.

01:13:19.000 That 76 Olympic gold medalist team.

01:13:21.000 Not 76. Was it 84?

01:13:23.000 84 team.

01:13:23.000 Where it was like Mark Breland...

01:13:27.000 Riddick Bowe.

01:13:28.000 Was Riddick Bowe on that team?

01:13:29.000 No, Tyrell Biggs.

01:13:30.000 Mark Breland, Tyrell Biggs, Pernell Whitaker, Meldrick Taylor.

01:13:35.000 There were so many great fighters, all gold medalists.

01:13:38.000 And Meldrick Taylor was so fast.

01:13:40.000 He was so good.

01:13:41.000 But Chavez was relentless.

01:13:44.000 Julio Cesar Chavez was relentless.

01:13:47.000 He just would bob and weave and bob and weave and come pop, pop, pop, pop.

01:13:50.000 And started getting to him, started getting to him.

01:13:53.000 And then finally, last round, boom, drops him.

01:13:56.000 And Richard Steele looks into Meldrick Taylor's eyes and he waves it off with two seconds to go.

01:14:01.000 Oh, wow. 1.00

01:14:02.000 And everybody's like, oh, shit. 1.00

01:14:04.000 And he never came back from that. 1.00

01:14:06.000 Never came back from that.

01:14:07.000 He fought after that.

01:14:08.000 He always looked like Julio Cesar Chavez took a piece of him.

01:14:12.000 He never returned 100%.

01:14:14.000 I tell you, it's a guilty pleasure fighting, because I see what it does to guys.

01:14:19.000 He brought a Riddick Bowe.

01:14:21.000 I talked to him once in a fight, and I'm like, man, this guy took some shots.

01:14:24.000 Took some shots.

01:14:25.000 And I'm not saying this disparagingly.

01:14:27.000 No, it's just reality.

01:14:28.000 Yeah, it was a tough one, because...

01:14:31.000 You know, I think about how much I enjoy watching these fights and then coming face to face with the price that so many paid.

01:14:39.000 I saw Terry Norris at a fight once and he was talking to a fan and I was moving on my way to the seat and I heard Terry talking to this guy and I was like, oh no.

01:14:48.000 It was bad.

01:14:50.000 Yeah.

01:14:50.000 It was bad.

01:14:51.000 Muhammad Ali, my hero.

01:14:53.000 It's tough to watch.

01:14:54.000 Tough to watch.

01:14:56.000 And it happens to all of them eventually.

01:14:58.000 If they keep going, it happens to all of them.

01:15:01.000 Yeah, you gotta hang them gloves up at some point.

01:15:05.000 That's what makes Andre Ward so special.

01:15:07.000 Andre Ward wins a gold medal in the Olympics, wins two world championships in two different weight classes, retires undefeated, They offer him money to come back.

01:15:18.000 He goes, I think I'm better served as a commentator.

01:15:20.000 I'm done.

01:15:21.000 He talks perfect.

01:15:23.000 Talks perfect.

01:15:24.000 Had him on the podcast.

01:15:25.000 Brilliant guy.

01:15:26.000 Thoughtful.

01:15:28.000 Articulate.

01:15:28.000 Smooth.

01:15:29.000 Classy.

01:15:31.000 One of my prized possessions is some gloves he signed for me.

01:15:34.000 I'm a big fan of the Bay Area.

01:15:38.000 Before the Warriors were champs, Andre Ward was carrying Oakland.

01:15:45.000 He was their champion.

01:15:47.000 And he's doing it with one arm.

01:15:48.000 You know that?

01:15:49.000 No.

01:15:50.000 Yeah.

01:15:51.000 Andre Ward's right shoulder's basically been useless.

01:15:53.000 Oh, that's right.

01:15:54.000 Most of his career.

01:15:55.000 Yeah, this was when he was, I don't know what kind of contractual disputes he had.

01:15:59.000 He had the shoulder surgery.

01:16:02.000 He was going through all that.

01:16:04.000 And we had a conversation about it.

01:16:06.000 I was really, like, inspired meeting him.

01:16:07.000 And we had a conversation about exactly what you're talking about.

01:16:11.000 Well, he was talking to me.

01:16:12.000 You know, we didn't know each other.

01:16:13.000 I just happened to meet him.

01:16:17.000 Hanging his gloves up.

01:16:19.000 It's a crazy thing for a comedian to hear.

01:16:21.000 Imagine saying, okay, I'm done with comedy.

01:16:24.000 I could quit.

01:16:25.000 I could say I quit the limelight.

01:16:27.000 I don't know if I could quit doing stand-up in some way, shape, or form.

01:16:32.000 I don't know if I could take 30 years off like Eddie.

01:16:35.000 Right, right.

01:16:37.000 Yeah, Eddie keeps talking about coming back, right?

01:16:40.000 But he still hasn't.

01:16:42.000 Listen, bro. 1.00

01:16:44.000 He's funny as fuck. 0.99

01:16:45.000 As far as a naturally athletic comedian, I don't know that I've ever seen his equal. 0.99

01:16:51.000 Yeah, I think you're right.

01:16:52.000 Remember that?

01:16:53.000 That speech where he talked about them taking Bill Cosby's Mark Twain prize away.

01:16:58.000 I was there when he said that.

01:17:01.000 I can remember, too, all the comedians who were there crowding around the monitor because it was the first time he did anything that looked like stand-up.

01:17:09.000 Right.

01:17:09.000 And he was smooth.

01:17:11.000 Right.

01:17:11.000 He stopped doing stand-up in 87. It's the year I started.

01:17:15.000 That's incredible.

01:17:16.000 This entire time.

01:17:17.000 And so if he does come back, I'd be the first person to buy a ticket.

01:17:24.000 I would watch a bad Eddie Murphy show.

01:17:27.000 If he was really trying to do a thing, before I would go see one of my own.

01:17:32.000 I remember we were, I forget what club in New York, we were talking, and Chris Rock was talking about how good Cosby was.

01:17:40.000 He went to see Cosby.

01:17:41.000 At the Apollo.

01:17:42.000 I've heard his story.

01:17:43.000 And Bill Burr and I were planning on seeing Cosby.

01:17:47.000 We were trying to figure out where we should go.

01:17:49.000 I'll tell you where, the correctional facility in Pennsylvania, that's where he's at.

01:17:53.000 As we speak. 0.99

01:17:54.000 It was before all that shit happened. 0.99

01:17:56.000 We were thinking about going to see him somewhere. 0.99

01:17:58.000 Yeah.

01:18:01.000 Yeah, I don't know.

01:18:02.000 I mean, like, I look at these kids coming up, and there's things that they do much better than we did.

01:18:07.000 They can all produce.

01:18:08.000 They can all generate their own.

01:18:10.000 They make heat out of nothing.

01:18:11.000 Right. 1.00

01:18:12.000 In the 90s, you go to the fucking comedian's parking lot at the comedy store. 1.00

01:18:17.000 That shit used to be filled with shitty cars. 1.00

01:18:19.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:18:19.000 And now you'll see a guy you never even heard of getting to the hottest whip. 1.00

01:18:22.000 Yep.

01:18:23.000 It's that now.

01:18:24.000 Yeah.

01:18:24.000 I don't know.

01:18:25.000 These guys look like straight-up contest winners. 1.00

01:18:27.000 Like, who the fuck is this guy? 1.00

01:18:28.000 But they're killing it. 1.00

01:18:29.000 Internet money.

01:18:30.000 Right.

01:18:32.000 What's too bad about it is we're from a process of refinement that doesn't exist anymore.

01:18:39.000 Right.

01:18:40.000 The road when you're anonymous.

01:18:43.000 Right.

01:18:43.000 The road when you're anonymous.

01:18:44.000 Just being on the strip or in a smoky nightclub.

01:18:48.000 Well, not smoky.

01:18:49.000 No one smokes anymore.

01:18:49.000 But then being in one of those nightclubs.

01:18:54.000 That's a lot to miss.

01:18:55.000 Yeah, the grind, the long grind of developing a real act.

01:18:59.000 And to do it also where there's no cell phones, there's no distractions.

01:19:06.000 Right.

01:19:06.000 They're competing with too much, and that's too bad for them.

01:19:09.000 But I don't fault them for it.

01:19:11.000 I'm impressed that these kids...

01:19:13.000 Made a new way.

01:19:14.000 But I like the way we do it.

01:19:16.000 There's a new way that they're doing where one of the things that showed a lot of people's ability to improvise and to change was during COVID, a lot of people started doing things online.

01:19:30.000 And like Andrew Schultz is the best example, I think.

01:19:33.000 He started doing those things like turn your phone sideways and those long rants like 10-15 minute rants with photographs and punchline after punchline after punchline and then they did a whole Netflix special about it like he did a series of Netflix pieces on it And what he did was,

01:19:49.000 he said, okay, I can't do stand-up, but this isn't stand-up, so I shouldn't do stand-up like this because there's no audience.

01:19:55.000 And he figured it out.

01:19:57.000 He's like, the key to this is you've got to hit it fast.

01:20:00.000 The punchlines have to come one after the other.

01:20:02.000 It's got to be fast-paced and with images.

01:20:05.000 So he would use all these visuals while he was hitting punchline after punchline.

01:20:10.000 He figured out a new way to do comedy.

01:20:12.000 He figured out a way to do internet, Instagram, 10-minute comedy.

01:20:16.000 Well, okay, but that's not, like you say, that's not stand-up.

01:20:21.000 No.

01:20:21.000 Like, this thing that you're describing, God bless him.

01:20:24.000 Yeah.

01:20:25.000 That's not what I do.

01:20:26.000 Yeah, it's different.

01:20:27.000 It's different.

01:20:28.000 It's different than the way he does stand-up, which is interesting, because his stand-up is slower.

01:20:32.000 He holds laughs.

01:20:34.000 He holds pause. 1.00

01:20:34.000 He laughs at shit. 1.00

01:20:35.000 He fucks around. 1.00

01:20:36.000 He works a crowd a lot. 0.99

01:20:38.000 His stand-up is loose.

01:20:39.000 Right.

01:20:40.000 He has fun.

01:20:40.000 He's comfortable up there.

01:20:42.000 Right.

01:20:42.000 But these little clips that he does on Instagram are rapid fire.

01:20:47.000 Bang, bang, bang. 0.89

01:20:48.000 And he works with a series of writers.

01:20:49.000 They all work together.

01:20:50.000 They put these things together.

01:20:51.000 They work it out, man.

01:20:53.000 By the time it's done, I mean, it is a polished machine.

01:20:56.000 But he used that time and innovated.

01:20:59.000 That's clever.

01:21:01.000 I'm not interested in it because, no disrespect to him, I like happening in real life.

01:21:09.000 Even during COVID, the fact that we found a way to get in front of audiences again meant the world to me.

01:21:16.000 That's what I do.

01:21:17.000 Yeah, it's a different thing. 0.98

01:21:18.000 I could throw a slideshow and the shit if I wanted to, but that crowd's not there. 0.99

01:21:23.000 What's the fucking point for me? 0.99

01:21:24.000 I know what you mean, but for him, he's coming up still. 0.99

01:21:27.000 You know, you'd already made it.

01:21:29.000 You just wanted to get back in there.

01:21:30.000 Yeah, and it's a whole different ball of wax.

01:21:33.000 That's what I'm saying.

01:21:34.000 That thing, that evolution he was able to make, I'm like the old guy who has that hot outfit from the 70s.

01:21:42.000 Fashion going without me.

01:21:44.000 I look fine.

01:21:45.000 I'm that.

01:21:46.000 I'm good with what I do.

01:21:48.000 Those shows we did at Stubbed felt real special.

01:21:52.000 It might not ever be that special again, because it was hard.

01:21:56.000 It was hard to do, and it was weird, and it was the fact that you could do a show in a pandemic, like a real legitimate pandemic.

01:22:04.000 And what it did for the people who were able to come.

01:22:07.000 Yeah.

01:22:08.000 And for the comedians who were able to participate.

01:22:11.000 We all felt better.

01:22:13.000 We felt a lot better.

01:22:14.000 We had some wild fun.

01:22:16.000 Yeah.

01:22:16.000 Wild fun.

01:22:17.000 Life might be okay. 0.99

01:22:19.000 Just to laugh around other people during a shit show of a circumstance. 0.99

01:22:26.000 It was great. 0.99

01:22:28.000 It was great.

01:22:29.000 I wish that we could have done a more diverse array of shows, but we were locked into the circumstances we were locked in.

01:22:38.000 We tested everybody.

01:22:40.000 Everyone who bought a ticket got a COVID test, free mask.

01:22:44.000 And as a comedian, it was a new experience.

01:22:48.000 Being in a room full of people, or whatever that venue was, full of people that just realized that they don't have the dreaded coronavirus.

01:22:58.000 Right.

01:22:59.000 And they're at a show, and the music's playing, and comedians they recognize come on the stage.

01:23:04.000 It was like pure joy in there.

01:23:06.000 No matter what we said, at a certain point, we were all happy to be there.

01:23:11.000 Comedians didn't take You do a million sets, you start thinking it's just another night at the office.

01:23:16.000 But every night at the office could have been the last night at the office.

01:23:19.000 Yeah, that was the thing about it, too.

01:23:21.000 It's like you're never going to have another day like that or another series of nights like that where there's a first real pandemic of our lifetime where things are shut down, but yet we do have this weird opportunity to do shows.

01:23:37.000 So they felt electric.

01:23:39.000 They really did.

01:23:40.000 They felt electric.

01:23:42.000 Those shows that we did will remain etched in my mind.

01:23:46.000 Forever.

01:23:46.000 That was special.

01:23:48.000 The fact that, you know...

01:23:50.000 And also, man, no gas to nothing, but the fact that you're as successful as you are at all these things, you're wildly famous, you're also very unaffected, but you got nervous before your first set.

01:24:05.000 I respected that.

01:24:06.000 I said, okay, see, this guy makes all this money, still cares.

01:24:11.000 It's that.

01:24:15.000 You see some guys, you can see that you're a fighter.

01:24:19.000 Sometimes the fight gets out of them.

01:24:21.000 Yeah, they get soft.

01:24:22.000 Your belly gets full.

01:24:22.000 You don't feel like going as hard as you used to.

01:24:25.000 Or you might start worrying about what they say in the press and all that shit. 0.99

01:24:30.000 None of that shit ever got to you, bro. 0.99

01:24:32.000 You was going hard in the paint. 1.00

01:24:34.000 It was fun to watch.

01:24:35.000 I'm like, yo, you're going hard in the paint, bro.

01:24:38.000 But it was fun, man.

01:24:40.000 And the spirit that I love about the genre was That's right.

01:25:08.000 I know guys that you know, and they're famous, but they struggle with this thing.

01:25:12.000 Yeah, they do.

01:25:13.000 And they stop coming around, and I miss their presence and their voices.

01:25:18.000 And a lot of these young comedians, this process of refinement is gone because they don't have these guys to look to.

01:25:24.000 Right.

01:25:25.000 Because, you know, they're making money, and I don't want to upset anybody.

01:25:28.000 Yep.

01:25:29.000 Yep.

01:25:29.000 Kids are in college or whatever it's gonna be.

01:25:31.000 They don't want to ruin what they already put down.

01:25:33.000 Yeah.

01:25:34.000 They laid down some nice roots.

01:25:36.000 They got a good thing going on.

01:25:38.000 They don't want to fuck it up.

01:25:39.000 Would you ever leave the limelight?

01:25:41.000 Yeah, sure.

01:25:42.000 Does it bother you, the limelight?

01:25:44.000 You don't live in a way where...

01:25:46.000 I don't do limelight things.

01:25:48.000 You know what I'm saying?

01:25:49.000 Like, I don't go to parties. 0.99

01:25:50.000 You gotta try some of this shit out, bro. 0.99

01:25:51.000 It's not bad. 0.99

01:25:52.000 You gotta try some...

01:25:53.000 I mean, look, you don't have to do it all the time.

01:25:55.000 Once and again.

01:25:56.000 Once and again.

01:25:58.000 I mean...

01:26:00.000 I have needs, and my needs are like exercise, keep my mind straight, all those needs, those have to be fulfilled.

01:26:11.000 They have to be filled for mental clarity.

01:26:15.000 If I don't do that, I'll lose my way. 1.00

01:26:20.000 You also have a lot of access to shit. 0.99

01:26:25.000 Who were you talking to yesterday? 1.00

01:26:28.000 Yesterday was David Holthouse, who's a documentary filmmaker.

01:26:33.000 He's a journalist.

01:26:35.000 Yeah, every day you talk to some kind of jogger nut in some field. 1.00

01:26:39.000 Yeah.

01:26:40.000 Elon Musk or Malcolm Gladwell. 1.00

01:26:42.000 What do you think about this shit? 1.00

01:26:42.000 Elon's going... 1.00

01:26:46.000 It's puzzling.

01:26:47.000 No one is woke enough.

01:26:49.000 They can't appreciate the fact that you're dealing with literally one of the most brilliant men that's ever lived, who's gonna come do your show. 0.97

01:26:56.000 You're talking about a guy who simultaneously runs multiple World-changing businesses, whether it's Tesla, whether it's SpaceX, whether it's the boring companies making tunnels underneath the fucking Earth.

01:27:10.000 He's putting satellites into space to put high-speed Internet around the world. 0.79

01:27:15.000 He's doing all these things simultaneously.

01:27:17.000 But can he write a monologue is what we're going to find out.

01:27:20.000 He's not funny.

01:27:21.000 He's a brilliant guy.

01:27:23.000 He could probably do anything if he set his mind to it, but the fact that they've decided somehow that he's problematic, like, it doesn't make any sense.

01:27:30.000 I mean, yeah, but no one's really saying what.

01:27:32.000 Is it just because he's rich?

01:27:34.000 Who knows?

01:27:34.000 It doesn't matter anymore.

01:27:36.000 They just decide. 0.99

01:27:37.000 Like, what the fuck is this? 1.00

01:27:39.000 And everybody's like, what the fuck is this? 1.00

01:27:41.000 This is bullshit. 1.00

01:27:42.000 Why him? 1.00

01:27:43.000 So there was no obvious catalyst for this?

01:27:45.000 No.

01:27:45.000 Okay, I was just curious.

01:27:46.000 There was some people that felt like he dismissed COVID's danger at one point in time.

01:27:52.000 They didn't like him because of that.

01:27:53.000 But he did it just because he's intelligent.

01:27:55.000 Because his perspective was, he's a reductionist, or I should say, like, his perspective on it was like looking at the numbers and looking at what it is, instead of looking at the emotional impact of people losing loved ones.

01:28:10.000 So sometimes someone who's like a genius might say something that appears to be...

01:28:15.000 Appears to be insensitive.

01:28:17.000 I don't think he's insensitive.

01:28:18.000 I think he was just looking at it in terms of what is the odds that you're going to die and saying that children are essentially immune.

01:28:25.000 He was saying things that a lot of people felt were insensitive.

01:28:29.000 But first of all, A, it was a long time ago.

01:28:32.000 And B, he was just explaining his perspective on the disease.

01:28:38.000 And he wasn't as fearful as they thought he should be.

01:28:42.000 And then, you know, he came to our shows and his pictures of all of us hanging out maskless.

01:28:46.000 And then people got COVID afterwards.

01:28:48.000 A lot of people thought that it was his girlfriend that gave us COVID. By the way, he and she were very incredibly kind.

01:28:56.000 Super nice.

01:28:58.000 Unaffected.

01:28:58.000 I teased him about being the richest man in the world.

01:29:00.000 He took it with good humor.

01:29:02.000 And what's funny is I had hung out with him years ago after I quit Chappelle's show.

01:29:07.000 When I was on that tour that I was telling you about that was a tough one, we hung out on a tour bus, and he says to me that night when we was all together here in Austin, he goes, I met you before.

01:29:18.000 I'm like, I don't know.

01:29:19.000 I have no recollection.

01:29:20.000 And he looked kind of hurt.

01:29:24.000 It was a long time ago.

01:29:25.000 It was like two, three companies ago.

01:29:28.000 I just thought it was funny that he was the richest man in the world.

01:29:31.000 I think these, whether the people that are complaining that he's going to be on Saturday Night Live, I think what's going on now is they want someone to be 100% compliant to whatever ideology they're a part of.

01:29:43.000 And any deviation of that is problematic.

01:29:46.000 Whether it's because they think, like I saw an article that said Elon Musk donated $150 million to some charity and they called him a cheapskate.

01:29:55.000 That's hilarious.

01:29:56.000 How hilarious is that?

01:29:57.000 We'll wait until they see when I'm a billionaire.

01:29:59.000 Get ready for this cheapskate.

01:30:03.000 No, my brother. 0.99

01:30:04.000 But it was such a shitty article. 0.99

01:30:08.000 It's just a poorly written knucklehead article. 0.99

01:30:12.000 Yeah.

01:30:13.000 Again, like you say, no one can be woke enough.

01:30:16.000 I'm torn because I like a warrior for a good cause, but I'm really into tactics.

01:30:25.000 You're not going to nag people into behaving in a way that's...

01:30:31.000 In fact, if...

01:30:33.000 If you continue with this tone, even if you're right, you'll be very hard to hear.

01:30:40.000 Yeah, I think so.

01:30:42.000 It's just, I don't mean, maybe it was the COVID thing, like I'm saying.

01:30:45.000 But again, if I think back on his statements, I don't think they were particularly insensitive.

01:30:49.000 I think they were just, you know, it was more of like a factual bluntness to the way he discusses things.

01:30:56.000 Because he's a numbers guy.

01:30:59.000 He looks at things in terms of equations.

01:31:02.000 I mean, he's trying to put people on Mars.

01:31:04.000 You know what I mean?

01:31:05.000 I remember seeing him on your show once, just like on one of these YouTube clips.

01:31:09.000 But I dug the clip.

01:31:10.000 It was just one sound bite.

01:31:12.000 He said, I have so much in my mind.

01:31:15.000 Yeah.

01:31:15.000 You remember this?

01:31:16.000 Yeah.

01:31:17.000 Because I asked him, I'm like, what's it like to be you?

01:31:19.000 Like, what's it like to just think?

01:31:21.000 He goes, you wouldn't want to be me.

01:31:24.000 It wasn't bragging.

01:31:26.000 He's being honest.

01:31:27.000 You wouldn't want this. 0.98

01:31:29.000 His brain is like a hurricane. 0.98

01:31:32.000 You could see it while he's sitting there. 0.94

01:31:35.000 He's trying to sit here and just have a conversation with you. 0.98

01:31:37.000 He's probably going over fucking equations and thinking about concepts and new ideas and plotting things.

01:31:46.000 I remember talking to somebody once, I'm not going to say who, but they go, more than half the people on earth live on a dollar a day, and at least half of them are happy. 0.99

01:32:00.000 He says, I know 20 billionaires, and all of them are miserable.

01:32:04.000 Wow.

01:32:06.000 This is reminiscent of a thing my father used to tell me about, just the nature of money and what he wants your life to be about.

01:32:14.000 Now, I mean, I'm a lucky guy.

01:32:16.000 I've met some billionaires.

01:32:18.000 I don't know who's brimming with having this.

01:32:19.000 Elon seemed like he had a good time that night.

01:32:21.000 Kanye, sometimes he's having a great time.

01:32:24.000 But I don't know when they're having fun if it's the money that's doing it.

01:32:30.000 No, it's probably not.

01:32:31.000 The money gives you a certain amount of freedom to do whatever you want to do, but it also comes with so much pressure, so much responsibility, and so much scrutiny.

01:32:40.000 Think about how many people are looking at every single thing that Elon does.

01:32:44.000 Like, this Saturday Night Live thing is a perfect example.

01:32:46.000 They've just decided that it's not good that he's on Saturday Night Live.

01:32:51.000 Maybe I'm wrong.

01:32:52.000 Maybe there is a specific thing they're upset about, but I haven't heard it.

01:32:57.000 I'm literally asking.

01:32:58.000 I'm not indicting the cast members saying that I'm fond of all of them, but this one puzzles me. 0.99

01:33:05.000 What I'm talking about, what I'm saying, I see people online going, what the fuck is this? 0.77

01:33:09.000 It's not even people that were the cast members that were saying that. 0.98

01:33:11.000 It's just folks online that were upset.

01:33:13.000 I'm like, I don't get it.

01:33:14.000 Why are you upset?

01:33:16.000 What do you think is saying it for Elon?

01:33:17.000 If I was the richest man in the world, Would I do Saturday Night Live?

01:33:21.000 I don't know.

01:33:21.000 I mean, I might, just because I love comedy so much, but what do you think?

01:33:25.000 I guess he loves comedy.

01:33:26.000 Yeah, he loves comedy.

01:33:27.000 Yeah, he does.

01:33:28.000 I've seen him at the store a bunch of times.

01:33:30.000 Yeah.

01:33:31.000 He's like, well, probably cool.

01:33:33.000 That's probably the thought.

01:33:34.000 Oh, I thought it'd be cool.

01:33:35.000 Yeah, I'll do it.

01:33:36.000 They probably called him.

01:33:37.000 Saturday Night Live wants to know if you want to host Saturday Night Live.

01:33:41.000 Uh, okay.

01:33:43.000 He probably just said okay.

01:33:44.000 Yeah, there's something about that that's endearing.

01:33:47.000 It's going to be interesting to watch his monologue.

01:33:49.000 I'm gonna watch.

01:33:50.000 Oh, yeah.

01:33:50.000 Depending on where that fight is.

01:33:52.000 I gotta watch the Canelo.

01:33:53.000 Oh, that's this Saturday, right?

01:33:54.000 Canelo-Sunders. 1.00

01:33:55.000 Oh, that's right.

01:33:56.000 Hopefully they won't be against each other.

01:33:57.000 Is that fight out here in Texas?

01:33:59.000 Dallas, yeah. 1.00

01:34:00.000 Oh, shit. 1.00

01:34:00.000 70,000 cap. 1.00

01:34:03.000 70,000 people. 1.00

01:34:04.000 Holy shit. 0.99

01:34:05.000 Country's about to open up, man. 0.99

01:34:07.000 It's open.

01:34:08.000 I did Jacksonville, Florida.

01:34:09.000 We did the UFC a couple weeks ago. 0.99

01:34:10.000 Holy shit, it was wild. 0.99

01:34:12.000 15,000 people. 0.99

01:34:13.000 Oh yeah, I'm scared to go to Florida.

01:34:15.000 It was wild.

01:34:16.000 It was wild.

01:34:17.000 You probably see that Corona cloud from space in Florida. 1.00

01:34:19.000 These motherfuckers been out there getting it. 1.00

01:34:22.000 It was interesting. 1.00

01:34:24.000 Nobody had a mask on.

01:34:25.000 It was like there was no COVID. You go everywhere you go, people were just out there walking around, normal.

01:34:32.000 Remember the last time when I was here when we were doing the shows together?

01:34:36.000 And gosh, remember we increased the cap so maybe we were up to like 700 people a night on a busy night, right?

01:34:42.000 Man, we must have tested a few thousand people that week.

01:34:46.000 I don't know that we got a single positive that week.

01:34:48.000 I think we did.

01:34:49.000 I think we got, out of all the weeks we did it, we only got like four positive tests.

01:34:56.000 Out of thousands of people.

01:34:58.000 Yeah, thousands of people.

01:34:58.000 That's when I was like, okay, this is...

01:35:00.000 I just remember feeling like...

01:35:02.000 Well, we're gonna do the MGM. That's gonna get wild, David.

01:35:08.000 Oh, man.

01:35:08.000 Let me tell you something.

01:35:08.000 That's gonna get wild, David.

01:35:09.000 Joe, let me tell you something.

01:35:12.000 That gig, I'm not going to say the dates, but I know we're talking about doing another two dates, maybe towards the end of the summer.

01:35:21.000 I'm very excited about this gig.

01:35:22.000 I'm very excited, too.

01:35:23.000 We're going to get wild.

01:35:24.000 Oh, it's a fight weekend, too.

01:35:26.000 Oh, yeah.

01:35:27.000 Yeah, it's UFC weekend.

01:35:28.000 It's McGregor's fight, right?

01:35:30.000 Conor and Dustin Poirier.

01:35:31.000 Who's Dustin Poirier?

01:35:33.000 Dustin Poirier's the last guy who beat Conor.

01:35:34.000 He knocked him out.

01:35:35.000 Oh, so this is a rematch.

01:35:36.000 Yeah, they fought twice.

01:35:38.000 One time, I think six years ago, Conor knocked him out, and then he just knocked out Conor.

01:35:44.000 Oh, they traded Naka. 0.96

01:35:45.000 That's a good one.

01:35:45.000 Oh, it's a good one.

01:35:46.000 It's a real good one.

01:35:47.000 Maybe I'll stay an extra night. 1.00

01:35:49.000 Fuck yeah. 0.99

01:35:50.000 You know, I've never been to an MMA fight. 1.00

01:35:52.000 What?

01:35:52.000 That's outrageous.

01:35:53.000 This is the one to go to.

01:35:54.000 It's funny, man.

01:35:55.000 I'm such a boxing fan because it's the gentleman's sport.

01:35:59.000 You know what I mean? 0.99

01:36:00.000 MMA, all that ground and pound and shit. 0.97

01:36:02.000 It's like really intense. 0.99

01:36:03.000 I remember talking to you one night at the store.

01:36:05.000 You were like, Dave, I see so much violence.

01:36:07.000 I'm starting to worry about myself.

01:36:09.000 You know what I mean?

01:36:10.000 Yeah.

01:36:10.000 I worry because people get hurt.

01:36:12.000 It doesn't bother me.

01:36:13.000 Yeah, that's normal.

01:36:14.000 Yeah, that's a tough one.

01:36:16.000 This is one of the things that happened.

01:36:17.000 My wife cut her head.

01:36:19.000 Like a hatchback, you know, the car thing was up, and she was pulling something out of the car and didn't realize that the corner of the thing, she miscalculated, and it stood up, and it dug right into her head, and blood was pouring down her forehead.

01:36:35.000 And I was like, handle it, bro.

01:36:37.000 I just looked at it.

01:36:38.000 I was like, that's nothing.

01:36:39.000 It's nothing.

01:36:40.000 She's like, what are All this blood!

01:36:43.000 I go, it's a tiny cat.

01:36:44.000 It's nothing.

01:36:44.000 And I'm like, oh Jesus, what's wrong with me?

01:36:47.000 I'm so accustomed to people being broken.

01:36:50.000 I'm so accustomed to lacerations and concussions and broken bones and blood all over the place.

01:36:57.000 I'm so accustomed to blood.

01:36:59.000 That's crazy.

01:37:00.000 I can't even conceive this.

01:37:02.000 It's a weird thing because I've definitely become desensitized.

01:37:05.000 I've seen I don't know how many thousands of fights up close. 0.98

01:37:11.000 I've seen so many people get fucked up. 0.98

01:37:14.000 And then there's my time from being a young guy and competing in martial arts tournaments and seeing so many people get fucked up there. 0.99

01:37:22.000 So I've just seen, like, my whole life people get fucked up. 0.94

01:37:24.000 If you had, like, a... 0.99

01:37:25.000 If there was, like, a chart of all the people throughout history who've seen people get fucked up, like, just the fuck beating out of them, I'm right up there. 0.97

01:37:33.000 I'm at... 0.98

01:37:33.000 The Genghis Khan level? 0.98

01:37:35.000 Yeah, there's not, like, a lot of people that have probably ever lived... 0.97

01:37:39.000 Other than, like, warriors who fought with swords and shit. 0.98

01:37:42.000 There's not a lot of people in the modern era who've seen as many people get the fuck beat out of them as me. 0.99

01:37:47.000 That's crazy. 0.98

01:37:48.000 That is a crazy thing to say.

01:37:49.000 It's crazy.

01:37:51.000 Yeah.

01:37:51.000 Super desensitized to violence and injuries.

01:37:56.000 It's real strange.

01:37:57.000 Do you think you'd ever come back from it?

01:37:58.000 Do you think if you took a break?

01:38:00.000 No.

01:38:01.000 And someone's getting in their knee, you'd be like, oh, I'm too used to it.

01:38:04.000 And then there's hunting, you know, so I'm used to it with animals.

01:38:07.000 I'm used to taking animals apart. 0.99

01:38:09.000 Okay, see that's some next level shit. 0.99

01:38:12.000 Yeah, you get used to things like that. 0.99

01:38:16.000 People get desensitized, like doctors talk about that, like trauma room surgeons, stuff like that, they talk about that.

01:38:22.000 They get very desensitized to injuries.

01:38:24.000 I remember talking to a doctor once about just that, but this conversation was more about, from their work, realizing the fragility of life.

01:38:34.000 Man, it's fragile.

01:38:36.000 Yeah, humans are fragile.

01:38:37.000 Yeah.

01:38:38.000 Very fragile.

01:38:39.000 We're so easy to injure, you know?

01:38:43.000 It's so easy to hurt people.

01:38:46.000 And not just physically, you know, emotionally.

01:38:49.000 Emotionally and...

01:38:51.000 Yeah, I don't know, bro.

01:38:52.000 I feel like recently our biggest export is heartbreak.

01:38:58.000 Like, we gotta do better than this.

01:38:59.000 Not just our country, the whole world.

01:39:03.000 Emotional heartbreak, like emotional pain being given out online.

01:39:09.000 That would be interesting to see.

01:39:11.000 The emotional impact of, like, online interactions and harassment and people just fighting with each other online, how much different the emotional content of, like, online interactions, how much of an impact that's had on human beings,

01:39:28.000 if that could be measured, if, like, there was a number that you could attach to it.

01:39:33.000 Quantifiable?

01:39:34.000 I tell you what, I tell you what, it's a weird thing, but with comedy...

01:39:41.000 Most comedians that I know, and a matter of fact, this even goes with proficiency to a degree, the more proficient they are, usually somewhere you can see that they're wildly sensitive or empathetic.

01:39:55.000 Yeah.

01:39:56.000 They do have a profound acuteness to how awareness of how they make other people feel.

01:40:02.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:40:03.000 You know, people would think comedians are callous, but they're not.

01:40:10.000 Mostly not.

01:40:11.000 But sometimes they appear callous because they'll go after somebody just for the laugh.

01:40:16.000 Yeah, but I don't even know that that's callous.

01:40:18.000 It's almost like, well, I gotta sacrifice you for the joy of the rest of the room.

01:40:22.000 That's what it is.

01:40:24.000 Comedy without victims can be boring.

01:40:26.000 Sometimes people gotta take a hit.

01:40:28.000 I once roasted a guy that lost both his legs in the war.

01:40:34.000 And I roasted him.

01:40:35.000 Wow.

01:40:35.000 The crowd was uncomfortable.

01:40:37.000 I bet.

01:40:37.000 Him and his buddies were laughing so fucking hard because it was one of those things where you're like, I don't know if I should talk about it, but when you, yeah, let me just, and then this guy was dying to talk about it.

01:40:48.000 He had a real interesting story, like, you know, met the president many times and was like, you know, he sacrificed everything for the country, but His sense of humor was paramount. 0.87

01:41:01.000 He survived this thing, and I can tell that his sense of humor was very instrumental in doing it.

01:41:06.000 And the laugh that we had together, that was one of those special nights where it was like, people are dope.

01:41:13.000 People are dope.

01:41:15.000 For the most part, people are dope.

01:41:17.000 And they're dope when you're in front of them. 0.70

01:41:19.000 They're dope people to people. 0.89

01:41:21.000 You look in each other's eyes, being around each other. 0.94

01:41:24.000 I think it's part of the problem that we're dealing with with the online shit is that all the normal cues of looking at someone and talking to them, being right there, it's not there. 0.99

01:41:35.000 So you have this ability to write things in text and say mean shit to people and you think it's okay. 0.99

01:41:42.000 Yeah, that disconnect. 0.99

01:41:44.000 You don't see them cry.

01:41:46.000 You don't feel their pain.

01:41:47.000 You're just pushing buttons.

01:41:48.000 You're just pushing buttons.

01:41:49.000 Metaphorically and literally.

01:41:51.000 Yeah, that's what it is.

01:41:53.000 How do you like doing this podcast that you're doing?

01:41:55.000 It's very good, by the way.

01:41:56.000 It's very interesting because it's produced.

01:42:00.000 You have music and it's edited.

01:42:03.000 It's a different thing.

01:42:04.000 It's dope. 0.55

01:42:05.000 Now, there's a weird reason why it's done that way.

01:42:08.000 Because ultimately they'll all exist on vinyl.

01:42:13.000 That's why the shows are the duration that they are, so that they can fit on sides of vinyl.

01:42:20.000 I'm curious to see how people will react to it, but I love doing it.

01:42:26.000 They're gonna love it.

01:42:27.000 The people that I'm working with, Yasin Bey, formerly known as most deaf, Talib Kweli, These guys are like great, great friends of mine.

01:42:36.000 They're great artists.

01:42:38.000 And, you know, it's like you.

01:42:39.000 I could talk to you guys forever about a diversity of stuff.

01:42:44.000 Yeah.

01:42:46.000 And so, in that sense, it was a joyful experience.

01:42:50.000 It was during COVID. And the whole concept or the genesis of this show was just literally us finding an excuse to be together.

01:42:57.000 You know, everyone's...

01:42:59.000 Always so busy, you know, as we get mature in the business and we got kids and we got this and we got that.

01:43:05.000 And we never catch up as much as we should.

01:43:08.000 Yeah.

01:43:08.000 And I'm telling you, in this season, when we keep losing people that are important to our culture and important to our community, it was almost like an emergency.

01:43:18.000 Like, yo, why are we fucking around? 0.80

01:43:19.000 Let's just do something together. 0.92

01:43:21.000 It was one of these things, definitely wasn't about the money or anything like that, but it was about...

01:43:26.000 You know, spending time with your friends.

01:43:27.000 And, as you well know, there's an art form of conversation.

01:43:31.000 Yeah.

01:43:31.000 You know, you're great at it.

01:43:36.000 Most quality, I could talk to them forever, they're well-read, they're well-traveled, and they're hilarious dudes, and they got an interesting perspective.

01:43:47.000 Some friends you have, you know, you go around the world and you don't see each other often.

01:43:52.000 But when you see each other, it's like you'd seen each other just a moment ago.

01:43:56.000 And you can download all these obscure and wild experiences and it's safe and it's comfortable and there's no judgment in it because you're friends.

01:44:03.000 You're truly friends.

01:44:05.000 And that's the way I feel about those guys.

01:44:08.000 And I think that's one of the things that makes the show so special, like fun to do.

01:44:13.000 I look forward to it.

01:44:14.000 Yeah, that's everything.

01:44:17.000 Enthusiasm is contagious.

01:44:18.000 If you're having an enthusiastic conversation with someone, that's one of the things that makes it interesting to listen to.

01:44:23.000 Because when you're listening, it's like you're a fly on the wall.

01:44:27.000 That's what people like about a good conversation.

01:44:28.000 You could be in the room without being in the room.

01:44:32.000 There's folks listening to us right now in traffic, and they're here.

01:44:36.000 Right.

01:44:37.000 They're here.

01:44:38.000 Right.

01:44:38.000 There's not much different.

01:44:40.000 I mean, they don't see us if they're driving, but maybe they're watching it on a video.

01:44:46.000 It's not much different than sitting in the room.

01:44:47.000 There's a missing element because you're not physically here, but it's pretty damn good in terms of the ability to be a part of a conversation, and it changes the way you look at things.

01:44:57.000 Because the more people that I can talk to and get their take on how they think and how they do, it enhances my own way of looking at things and talking to people.

01:45:09.000 Yeah, and that's, again, the big problem with all the lip-buttoning now.

01:45:13.000 I kind of like hearing all these different perspectives, whether I agree with them or not.

01:45:17.000 You can't silence people. 0.99

01:45:19.000 You've got to let them fuck up. 1.00

01:45:20.000 If they fuck up, and you know, there's nothing wrong with apologizing either. 1.00

01:45:23.000 If you fuck up and you say something wrong, there's nothing wrong with apologizing. 0.99

01:45:28.000 I don't disagree with that. 0.99

01:45:29.000 I think context is everything.

01:45:31.000 It depends on where I am when I said it.

01:45:33.000 Yes.

01:45:33.000 Yeah.

01:45:34.000 You know what I mean? 0.99

01:45:35.000 If I'm on a comedy stage and you fucking print a joke I wrote like it was a stump speech, that's a fucked up thing to do. 1.00

01:45:42.000 It's a fucked up thing to do. 1.00

01:45:44.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:45:45.000 But, you know, if I'm at a press conference and I whoopsie poopsie, then there you go.

01:45:51.000 Sorry, everybody.

01:45:52.000 Whoops.

01:45:53.000 Well, it's just...

01:45:55.000 You know, especially with stand-ups. 1.00

01:45:58.000 I mean, Jesus Christ, how many times is stand-ups just going out to dinner, having a couple drinks, we say the most ridiculous shit ever. 1.00

01:46:04.000 It's the greatest. 0.99

01:46:05.000 It's like one of the joys of my life.

01:46:07.000 Now, think about being a politician now. 1.00

01:46:09.000 Who's signing up for that shit now? 1.00

01:46:12.000 All these Republicans talking all that shit. 1.00

01:46:14.000 And I'm not trying to be partisan, but when them motherfuckers rushed to Capitol, did any of you guys go to greet your constituents? 1.00

01:46:21.000 No, you ran to the bunker. 0.99

01:46:23.000 I feel like...

01:46:25.000 You know, but constituents aren't like fans.

01:46:28.000 Did you ever see those videos of cops opening the doors and letting people in and opening the gates and letting people through?

01:46:37.000 I did. 0.99

01:46:38.000 What the fuck is that? 0.99

01:46:39.000 I don't know. 0.99

01:46:40.000 In fact, there was an investigation about that.

01:46:44.000 I don't know the results of it, but I'd heard about it.

01:46:47.000 You know, what's ominous about it is, you gotta think, there's probably like 300 cops on duty, Capitol Hill, right?

01:46:53.000 By the end of it, D.C. police get called in, Homeland Security gets called in, you know, FBI's, and so now there's a thousand guns.

01:47:03.000 Inside of the Capitol.

01:47:04.000 It could have went a million different ways.

01:47:08.000 You have members accusing other members of Congress of giving tours and showing people sensitive areas.

01:47:15.000 This kind of suspicion within law enforcement, within government, it's a very ominous sign.

01:47:23.000 This type of partisanship is a very ominous sign.

01:47:27.000 This lexicon now, so binary, Republican, Democrat, Republican, Democrat, this is not doing us any favors.

01:47:34.000 In a perfect world, the best idea wins.

01:47:37.000 And in this current situation, I don't know that people even agree on what the truth is.

01:47:43.000 That's a problem.

01:47:44.000 It's a real problem.

01:47:46.000 Chris Rock had a great bit about it.

01:47:48.000 What did he say?

01:47:48.000 Remember that bit about gangs?

01:47:50.000 Like that people just join gangs?

01:47:51.000 No.

01:47:53.000 What did he say? 0.97

01:47:54.000 I don't want to fuck it up, but it's basically how whether they're a Democrat or a Republican, they really just get into gangs. 0.97

01:48:06.000 It is that.

01:48:07.000 Yeah.

01:48:07.000 They just decide that this is my gang.

01:48:11.000 Right.

01:48:12.000 And their constituents are worried that they're feckless.

01:48:15.000 And like you say, the speed of information is so much faster now than the speed of bureaucracy.

01:48:20.000 Yeah.

01:48:21.000 That's a problem.

01:48:22.000 It'd be like if you turned the air conditioner on your car and it came on four months later.

01:48:26.000 We needed the heat right now, bro.

01:48:30.000 Especially with the stimulus checks, right?

01:48:31.000 Like, how long did it take before they actually sent checks out in the mail?

01:48:34.000 Remember all the talk about it?

01:48:35.000 Oh, I do.

01:48:36.000 Took forever.

01:48:37.000 I wonder why they never, I guess I know why. 0.99

01:48:39.000 I was gonna say, it's a stupid question, why they never suspended the gift tax? 0.91

01:48:43.000 Like, if I wanted to give my brother or my sister or my friend some money during a time like this, why tax that transaction? 0.99

01:48:51.000 They want the money.

01:48:52.000 Well, not just the money.

01:48:53.000 Think about how rich people would move their money around.

01:48:55.000 Of course. 1.00

01:48:56.000 If they unfettered that shit. 1.00

01:48:58.000 It's the greed that's killing us. 1.00

01:49:01.000 They agreed, I agreed.

01:49:02.000 It's killing us.

01:49:03.000 It's not good.

01:49:05.000 Nah, it's not good at all.

01:49:06.000 But you know...

01:49:08.000 It's again like what we were talking about before, like you would give the taxes up if you felt like it was for something.

01:49:13.000 Right.

01:49:14.000 If you really felt like it did, like if you knew that your tax money was really enhancing the world, really helping.

01:49:20.000 Right. 0.99

01:49:21.000 Instead of going to some fucked up... 0.99

01:49:23.000 We're bringing crowns to the ghetto. 0.99

01:49:26.000 What?

01:49:27.000 Why are you doing that with the money?

01:49:28.000 Because kids need crayons in the ghetto. 1.00

01:49:31.000 It's like, who's prioritizing this shit? 1.00

01:49:34.000 I don't know, bro. 0.99

01:49:36.000 I mean, not to be cynical, but this thing.

01:49:39.000 It's tricky.

01:49:40.000 This one we're doing now.

01:49:41.000 I hope everyone does anything that they can do to help foster trust amongst each other.

01:49:52.000 I'm not talking about government and politics. 0.97

01:49:54.000 I don't give a fuck if someone likes Trump or anything. 0.97

01:49:56.000 I know a lot of good, decent, hard-working people that have political ideas that I think are nonsense. 0.97

01:50:04.000 But I don't conflate that with their character.

01:50:07.000 I don't conflate that with culture.

01:50:10.000 These things are all different issues.

01:50:13.000 What they say, throw the baby out of the bathwater. 1.00

01:50:15.000 They can't do that.

01:50:16.000 I'm not going to throw a whole person away because they have four ideas I don't like.

01:50:21.000 I just hope that if the economy can bounce back, people will start to relax again.

01:50:25.000 And if not just vaccines, but also some form of effective therapy, so that even if someone's not vaccinated and they get COVID, there's a very effective way to treat it if that does happen.

01:50:37.000 All right, what about this?

01:50:39.000 This is a what if.

01:50:40.000 Say they didn't cure COVID. They had no vaccine or nothing.

01:50:44.000 It was just like, let's call it six months ago, right?

01:50:48.000 But during that time, they stumbled onto a cure for AIDS. Do you stay in or do you go out?

01:50:55.000 Stay in it or go out?

01:50:57.000 What do you mean?

01:50:57.000 Do you stay inside or do you go out?

01:50:59.000 COVID's still out there, but AIDS is cured.

01:51:01.000 Oh, I keep going out.

01:51:02.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:51:02.000 Yeah.

01:51:04.000 Yeah, I keep going out.

01:51:05.000 Yeah, no A's. 0.97

01:51:06.000 Break out that disco ball. 1.00

01:51:07.000 We're going to the goddamn disco. 1.00

01:51:09.000 Fuck COVID-19. 1.00

01:51:11.000 The real problem is if it becomes not even COVID, but something else that's worse, like some really bad one, like a Spanish flu, like something that kills a large percentage of the people that get it. 1.00

01:51:24.000 This one's pretty bad, though.

01:51:25.000 But it was less than 1%.

01:51:27.000 I'm talking about something that kills 10%, 20%.

01:51:30.000 Jesus, I couldn't imagine.

01:51:31.000 Those are real.

01:51:32.000 I mean, those have existed throughout history.

01:51:34.000 This one, when we say it's pretty bad, it's pretty bad, but it's pretty bad because of the sheer numbers of human beings.

01:51:42.000 We got lucky in the sense that, I mean obviously not lucky for anybody who died and nothing but love and respect to all those people that lost loved ones.

01:51:50.000 That's right.

01:51:51.000 But we're talking about just raw numbers and I think this is also what got Elon in trouble.

01:51:56.000 When you look at the 99 point whatever it is percentage of people who survive when they get it, especially when they're young, especially people with no comorbidities, that is a relatively mild pandemic in comparison to what's happened in history.

01:52:10.000 If you look at any sort of real plague, like horrific ones, again, like the Spanish flu. 1.00

01:52:16.000 I mean, this last one, New York City, for a month straight lost 2,000 people a day.

01:52:21.000 It's hard to wrap my mind around that.

01:52:22.000 It's hard to wrap your mind around that.

01:52:23.000 I met some woman who was an ER nurse in New York, you know, who had a witness.

01:52:29.000 The carnage up close.

01:52:31.000 I mean...

01:52:32.000 There was a lot of mistakes made that I wonder if they would go back.

01:52:36.000 First of all, the respirators.

01:52:37.000 Remember when they were all looking for respirators?

01:52:39.000 Yeah.

01:52:39.000 Like, New York City needs respirators.

01:52:41.000 Then they realized, no, no, no.

01:52:42.000 Respirators kill people.

01:52:44.000 Right.

01:52:44.000 I do remember this.

01:52:45.000 Yeah, they didn't know.

01:52:46.000 But that's the thing with COVID. It's like getting COVID. When I got COVID, the first few days, you just sit around and wait to see what it'll do to you.

01:52:58.000 You know what I mean?

01:52:59.000 And I was incredibly lucky.

01:53:02.000 I was largely asymptomatic. 1.00

01:53:05.000 You know, so I was smoking cigarettes the whole time, the whole shit. 0.99

01:53:09.000 But I was waiting to get flattened. 0.98

01:53:11.000 How many days did it take before you tested negative?

01:53:16.000 Maybe inside of 10. Inside of 10 days.

01:53:20.000 Whatever my immune system did, that shit worked. 0.99

01:53:23.000 And you take vitamins? 1.00

01:53:24.000 Do you take carriers? 1.00

01:53:25.000 I did all the shit. 1.00

01:53:25.000 As a matter of fact, you gave me a vitamin regimen. 1.00

01:53:29.000 I took it very seriously. 1.00

01:53:31.000 I took all that shit. 1.00

01:53:31.000 Oh, good. 1.00

01:53:32.000 What was it? 0.99

01:53:33.000 Zinc and all this other shit. 0.99

01:53:34.000 Quercetin. 1.00

01:53:34.000 Yeah, I took the shit. 1.00

01:53:36.000 D3. You know, whether that was what was doing it or not, I don't know, but I did it. 1.00

01:53:41.000 Well, it most certainly would help.

01:53:44.000 It didn't hurt me.

01:53:45.000 Yeah, it didn't hurt you.

01:53:46.000 It didn't hurt me.

01:53:46.000 And like I said, I was largely asymptomatic, so I felt very lucky.

01:53:51.000 But there was other people that I knew in that same outbreak.

01:53:55.000 You know, and they had a tough time with it.

01:53:57.000 Everyone, thank God, is healthy, but it's just not, you know, it just doesn't do the same thing to everybody.

01:54:03.000 It doesn't.

01:54:03.000 And that's what, I guess, vitamins are everything.

01:54:07.000 And that's one of the things that made me furious during this time, that there was no emphasis on taking vitamins.

01:54:13.000 They didn't make it seem like it was a big deal, and there was no emphasis on getting healthy and losing weight.

01:54:17.000 Not in the media, but every healthcare professional I talk to, because I have access to decent healthcare, did bring up the importance of vitamins.

01:54:28.000 And when you said that, it wasn't completely foreign to my ears.

01:54:32.000 I'd heard such things.

01:54:33.000 You just gave me a very specific regimen, and I tried it, and it worked.

01:54:37.000 It didn't hurt me.

01:54:38.000 Yeah.

01:54:39.000 No, you cruised through it.

01:54:41.000 So did Donnell, which is hilarious.

01:54:42.000 I know, because he's in terrible shape.

01:54:46.000 If Will Smith thinks he's in terrible shape, he needs to take a look at Don L. For real.

01:54:51.000 I mean, oh yeah, Will Smith did pose to dad bod people.

01:54:54.000 Hilarious.

01:54:54.000 It's hilarious.

01:54:55.000 I'm not going to lie to you.

01:54:56.000 I'm in the worst shape of my life.

01:54:58.000 Oh, he's a funny dude.

01:54:59.000 With a big smile on his face, though.

01:55:01.000 He's a funny dude.

01:55:01.000 Yeah, well, I think what Will Smith is probably going to do, Will Smith's one of those dudes that just, like, sets his mind to things.

01:55:08.000 I bet what he's going to do is take that photograph, and then you're going to see him four or five months from now shredded.

01:55:15.000 That's what I bet.

01:55:16.000 Oh, I could see that happening.

01:55:18.000 Yeah, that's the motivation. 1.00

01:55:19.000 The motivation is he takes a pose, looks terrible, looks like shit, tells everybody, hey, this is the worst shape I've ever been in my life. 0.99

01:55:26.000 And then he's like, all right, now it's go time. 0.99

01:55:28.000 Yeah, it's funny.

01:55:29.000 He still looked like a movie star in Bad Shake. 0.99

01:55:31.000 How the fuck are you doing this, Will? 0.98

01:55:34.000 Remember when he played Ali? 0.99

01:55:36.000 It was amazing.

01:55:37.000 Dude, he looked great. 0.99

01:55:38.000 He looked fucking great. 0.99

01:55:39.000 Yeah, he did. 0.99

01:55:40.000 He looked great.

01:55:41.000 I mean, he got in tip-top magoo shape. 0.99

01:55:43.000 He looked fucking fantastic in that movie. 0.88

01:55:45.000 If you think about even the courage it would take to take on a role like that. 0.96

01:55:49.000 How about Jamie Foxx?

01:55:50.000 Who's he playing?

01:55:52.000 Tyson! 0.96

01:55:52.000 Yes. 0.96

01:55:53.000 Okay, that's going to be dope.

01:55:55.000 Because Jamie, I'm sure probably by now, if he couldn't before, can talk just like Mike Tyson.

01:56:01.000 Oh, yeah.

01:56:01.000 Probably memorize the rhythm of Mike Tyson.

01:56:04.000 Oh, yeah.

01:56:04.000 And he'll probably look like him somehow.

01:56:06.000 Jamie's an alien.

01:56:07.000 He's so nice with it.

01:56:09.000 I remember watching Ray being like, I can't believe I know this dude.

01:56:12.000 And he was doing Ray Charles so good.

01:56:13.000 And then he took the sunglasses off.

01:56:14.000 I'm like, oh, he's Jamie again.

01:56:18.000 He's so talented in every way.

01:56:20.000 He's so talented as a singer.

01:56:22.000 He's talented as a comedian.

01:56:23.000 He's talented as an actor.

01:56:24.000 He's just got a way.

01:56:26.000 He's got a thing.

01:56:27.000 There's no fat in his portrayals.

01:56:30.000 He just cuts through it.

01:56:32.000 It's clean.

01:56:33.000 He just knows how to do it.

01:56:34.000 He's also one of those feel-good people.

01:56:37.000 Super positive.

01:56:39.000 Yeah, he's just fun to be around.

01:56:41.000 I've never seen him as a party pooper ever.

01:56:45.000 Right. 1.00

01:56:46.000 He's fucking jacked right now. 0.99

01:56:48.000 Is he really? 1.00

01:56:49.000 Jacked.

01:56:50.000 Yeah, because he's building up to play Tyson.

01:56:52.000 Look at him.

01:56:54.000 Jeez Louise.

01:56:58.000 Yeah, and you know, he's not even done yet.

01:57:00.000 He's building up into Mike Tyson's shape.

01:57:04.000 Yeah, that's never going to happen to me, by the way. 1.00

01:57:08.000 I got swole for a minute, but then I was like, this is stupid. 1.00

01:57:11.000 You did. 1.00

01:57:11.000 You got pretty big for a while. 1.00

01:57:12.000 It was ridiculous. 0.68

01:57:13.000 What happened? 0.97

01:57:15.000 COVID. Well, before COVID. I stopped working out in COVID. Last time I can remember being in a gym was like February 2020. You know what I mean?

01:57:28.000 And then after that, it was just like, you know, I was on the road.

01:57:31.000 I was in London.

01:57:32.000 Why'd you get jacked, though?

01:57:34.000 What made you decide to start working out? 1.00

01:57:35.000 That Chappelle show shit, bro. 1.00

01:57:37.000 Yeah? 0.99

01:57:38.000 Yeah, I think, you know, honestly, what I think one of the catalysts was, not the catalyst, but one of them was the fact that they kept saying I smoked crack and I was a skinny dude and felt like I can't defend myself in this.

01:57:53.000 Like, I'm so skinny that this thing is believable.

01:57:56.000 That bugged the fuck out of me. 0.93

01:57:58.000 How many people said you smoked crack? 0.98

01:57:59.000 Was it in articles?

01:58:00.000 What was it in?

01:58:02.000 I believe it was an article in Newsweek.

01:58:03.000 They didn't say I smoked crack.

01:58:05.000 It was some legal precision.

01:58:06.000 There was some guy saying, I'm not saying it was the drugs.

01:58:09.000 At the time, I wouldn't do nothing. 0.99

01:58:11.000 I was like, this is fucked up. 0.98

01:58:13.000 Yeah, cracks, that's one of those, like, if you were going to do something to ruin your life, that's the thing. 1.00

01:58:22.000 I mean, I was from D.C. Our mayor smoked crack.

01:58:25.000 D.C. seemed fine.

01:58:28.000 Well, it's just coke.

01:58:30.000 Yeah, it wasn't that obscure.

01:58:31.000 It was poor people with cocaine.

01:58:32.000 Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

01:58:34.000 Do you know who Dr. Carl Hart is?

01:58:37.000 No.

01:58:37.000 He's a really interesting guy.

01:58:39.000 He's a guy who is a clinical researcher and was real straight-laced, but he was a university researcher.

01:58:49.000 I forget what university is he at.

01:58:51.000 I forget.

01:58:52.000 Columbia?

01:58:53.000 Brilliant.

01:58:54.000 Brilliant guy. 0.98

01:58:54.000 I've had him on the podcast a couple times, but was researching the effects of drugs and started realizing The depictions of drugs and drug use are all fucked up. 0.98

01:59:06.000 People have this distorted idea of what these drugs do to you. 0.97

01:59:09.000 He loves heroin.

01:59:11.000 He talks about it.

01:59:12.000 He does heroin.

01:59:13.000 He snorts heroin all the time.

01:59:14.000 He's like, pure heroin is wonderful.

01:59:16.000 It's great.

01:59:17.000 It enhances my relationship with my wife.

01:59:20.000 He talks about trying pure cocaine and all these different drugs.

01:59:24.000 He does drugs all the time.

01:59:25.000 And he's a professor.

01:59:26.000 He's a professor at Columbia.

01:59:29.000 Oh, wow.

01:59:29.000 Brilliant guy.

01:59:30.000 And it's tough to argue with him because he knows so much about drugs from the perspective of an actual researcher and plus a guy who actually uses them, but goes out of his way to tell him he has dreads.

01:59:45.000 He doesn't look like a typical professor in that sense.

01:59:47.000 He looks like a cool guy.

01:59:48.000 But wait, what is he a professor of exactly?

01:59:52.000 Yeah, there you go.

01:59:54.000 Okay, psychology.

01:59:57.000 Psychologist.

01:59:57.000 Okay, so a psychiatrist prescribes drugs, correct?

02:00:01.000 But a psychologist diagnoses...

02:00:03.000 Mental illness.

02:00:05.000 Right.

02:00:05.000 Yeah.

02:00:05.000 Okay.

02:00:06.000 Yeah.

02:00:07.000 Psychologists try to help you work through things, right?

02:00:09.000 Isn't that the idea?

02:00:10.000 Yeah, but this guy, he sounds like any functional drug addict I've ever met.

02:00:15.000 And in my line of work, I have met and do know many.

02:00:19.000 Yeah, but he's not a drug addict.

02:00:22.000 He's actually, in fact, purposely does whatever drugs he wants.

02:00:27.000 Let me guess, he can quit anytime he wants.

02:00:33.000 He's actually put himself through withdrawals on purpose to document it.

02:00:37.000 So he's put himself into a situation where he did heroin multiple days in a row to a point where his body became physically addicted and then got off of it just to document what the withdrawal process is actually like.

02:00:50.000 And he says it's like having a flu.

02:00:52.000 This is the most clever drug addict I've ever heard of.

02:00:55.000 I'm not sick. 0.84

02:00:56.000 I'm documenting sickness.

02:00:59.000 It's crazy.

02:01:00.000 I don't know, bro.

02:01:02.000 I've seen so many wonderful people They'll never know in the same way again.

02:01:11.000 Because of drugs?

02:01:12.000 Because of drugs.

02:01:13.000 That's true.

02:01:14.000 It's heartbreaking.

02:01:15.000 But what makes one person fall apart due to drugs and another person not?

02:01:20.000 That's where it gets tricky.

02:01:21.000 Because some of it's biological, some of it's...

02:01:24.000 Right, but it's just like COVID. And why did I feel fine in 2,000 people a day in New York?

02:01:29.000 I mean, don't start because I know fat people don't like hotcakes. 0.99

02:01:34.000 Yeah.

02:01:36.000 There was a lot of things going on in New York.

02:01:37.000 It wasn't just the obesity, but I have a friend who was a doctor there and he did say it was a lot of obese people, unfortunately.

02:01:45.000 If you eat bad food, bad things happen.

02:01:47.000 And that's just the reality of being a human being.

02:01:51.000 I mean, but I also think it's the reality of being a drug addict.

02:01:54.000 Right.

02:01:55.000 Take bad drugs, bad things happen.

02:01:57.000 Right. 1.00

02:01:57.000 This shit is nothing to play with. 1.00

02:01:59.000 And how many minds are strong enough, like this professor, to responsibly do hard drugs? 1.00

02:02:07.000 Yeah.

02:02:08.000 This is a rare—it's like an X-Men superpower.

02:02:11.000 Well, he's also a guy who understands the actual physical reaction these chemicals and compounds have on the brain and on the body.

02:02:19.000 He knows it from an academic perspective.

02:02:25.000 I mean, and Michael Jackson OD'd by drugs that was administered by a physician. 0.99

02:02:30.000 Well, that was weird shit, right? 0.99

02:02:31.000 Yeah, it was. 1.00

02:02:32.000 Imagine the kind of stress that that guy was under.

02:02:34.000 He was under so much stress he had to get anesthetized every night.

02:02:37.000 Yeah, I couldn't imagine anything Michael Jackson did.

02:02:41.000 Once he bought that first giraffe, I was like, you on a whole new level, bro.

02:02:47.000 I don't know any of the emotional content of a guy's life like that.

02:02:51.000 There's people that were pioneers in the fame game.

02:02:55.000 And you think about Michael Jackson's one of them.

02:02:58.000 Elvis is another one.

02:03:00.000 There's people that were pioneers in being super famous.

02:03:04.000 To the point where nobody had been super famous like Michael Jackson before Michael Jackson.

02:03:08.000 I don't know that anyone ever will again.

02:03:09.000 Be what he was?

02:03:11.000 Or Elvis was?

02:03:12.000 Or the Beatles were?

02:03:13.000 It's a different thing.

02:03:14.000 No. 1.00

02:03:15.000 I think that shit is done. 1.00

02:03:17.000 Yeah, maybe. 1.00

02:03:19.000 It's a different thing.

02:03:20.000 I can't think of one thing that everyone will agree on that much ever again in this context.

02:03:28.000 I remember Michael Jackson, I've told this before, but Michael Jackson, I was listening to WBCN, The Rock of Boston, and they were going, look, I know this isn't rock, but it's so fucking good, we're going to play it anyway.

02:03:41.000 And they played Michael Jackson.

02:03:44.000 Oh, it's that.

02:03:45.000 It was that good.

02:03:46.000 Yeah.

02:03:46.000 It was so good they played it on rock stations.

02:03:48.000 He was ubiquitous.

02:03:49.000 Yeah. 0.92

02:03:50.000 I mean, you know, who knows what the fuck that scope was like. 0.95

02:03:56.000 The closest thing that I've ever seen of that up close would be like Eddie. 0.95

02:04:01.000 Yeah.

02:04:02.000 One of the guys who's been, you know, on that level.

02:04:05.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:04:06.000 And Eddie is a cool motherfucker. 0.99

02:04:08.000 In fact, if you're in his orbit, it feels normal in there. 1.00

02:04:13.000 He'd go to his house and bowl and talk shit. 1.00

02:04:16.000 His kids would come in and out. 0.99

02:04:19.000 It seems like a sitcom, but it's really hilarious.

02:04:23.000 Eddie got the heat. 0.99

02:04:25.000 He's funny as fuck, bro. 0.99

02:04:27.000 Can talk like anybody. 1.00

02:04:29.000 Says wildly imaginative things.

02:04:33.000 Why do you think he doesn't do stand-up? 1.00

02:04:37.000 This shit ain't no bicycle, man. 1.00

02:04:40.000 You know what I mean? 1.00

02:04:43.000 He's an anomaly in the sense that I'm sure it would come right back to him.

02:04:47.000 When he cuts up in the house, it should be real funny.

02:04:50.000 But I don't know what it would mean.

02:04:53.000 I don't know what it means to him, having been this person we're describing.

02:04:58.000 What's also, he feels like his material, when he goes back and watches Raw, he's kind of embarrassed by it.

02:05:05.000 He's, you know, that it's...

02:05:07.000 You know, it's funny, when I put out my first two Netflix joints, I think I was on Kimmel.

02:05:12.000 It was the only press I did.

02:05:14.000 But there was a thing going on in the press where everyone was saying that the specials were dated, because there were jokes in there that they considered transphobic.

02:05:24.000 And I still don't think those jokes are transphobic.

02:05:26.000 I'm not going to have that discussion, but if I ever have to, boy, I'm ready.

02:05:31.000 But the point is that the thing I said to Kimmel was, I don't get mad at a photograph because it wasn't taken today.

02:05:41.000 In other words, whatever was going on in 87 when he laid that set down, it was working in 87. That's where people were at.

02:05:50.000 And a good comedian It's an indicator of the time or their context. 0.98

02:05:56.000 And I look at Eddie's shit like that, like, I wouldn't look at any of his old material as embarrassing. 0.97

02:06:01.000 Sometimes I'm starting, like, wow, I could never do that now. 0.99

02:06:04.000 Right.

02:06:05.000 But it makes it even more fun to see that there was this time when he was just saying these things.

02:06:11.000 You know, I'm a comedian.

02:06:12.000 I don't smell any malice in it.

02:06:14.000 I don't think he's trying to hurt anybody.

02:06:15.000 No.

02:06:16.000 This guy is just cracking.

02:06:17.000 No.

02:06:17.000 He was doing comedy that was relevant during the time that he was doing it.

02:06:21.000 The world was a different place.

02:06:23.000 Right, and it's not irrelevant now.

02:06:24.000 The thing that's remarkable is he's a different guy now, which is why he feels embarrassed.

02:06:30.000 It's not even about what happens to the world.

02:06:32.000 It's what happened to this guy in the world.

02:06:34.000 He sees the world different now, and this happens.

02:06:37.000 The crazy thing is he doesn't look a day older.

02:06:39.000 He looks great.

02:06:40.000 He looks amazing.

02:06:41.000 He looks great.

02:06:43.000 Yeah, it's amazing.

02:06:44.000 One time I was watching TV with Eddie.

02:06:48.000 And Sand for the Son rerun was on.

02:06:52.000 And he says, I'm as old now as Red Fox was in this episode.

02:06:58.000 Wow.

02:06:58.000 Sand for the Son.

02:06:59.000 That's crazy. 0.99

02:07:00.000 Right, and then I look at the television, I look at Eddie, I'm like, damn. 0.98

02:07:03.000 He goes, yeah, I'm as old now as Carol O'Connor was in All in the Family. 1.00

02:07:09.000 You think how Archie Bunker looked, that motherfucker looked terrible. 1.00

02:07:12.000 That's crazy, he looked terrible. 1.00

02:07:14.000 There goes Eddie looking like his 1987 and shit. 1.00

02:07:17.000 That's crazy. 0.99

02:07:18.000 Yeah.

02:07:20.000 That is wild.

02:07:22.000 Yeah, he's just taking so good care of himself.

02:07:24.000 What does he do?

02:07:25.000 Does he exercise a lot?

02:07:27.000 No, I have no idea.

02:07:28.000 It's like Prince.

02:07:29.000 I've never seen Prince eat or drink anything.

02:07:31.000 I'm sure he does it.

02:07:33.000 I don't know what Eddie does.

02:07:36.000 He bowls.

02:07:37.000 He's a family guy and stuff like that.

02:07:39.000 He's really into his family.

02:07:41.000 It's good to see.

02:07:42.000 It's normal, bro.

02:07:45.000 For all the things you'll hear about Hollywood, I'm always startled how normal everybody is.

02:07:53.000 I don't know if it's just the angle I get to see or... 0.98

02:07:56.000 But all that pageantry and shit, that's completely unsustainable. 0.95

02:08:01.000 Nobody can do that all the time. 0.98

02:08:03.000 Somewhere, somehow, you're just going to be yourself.

02:08:07.000 Isn't it weird that that's what we think about when we think about Hollywood?

02:08:10.000 We think about red carpets and people with tuxedos on and ridiculous watches and purses and all just...

02:08:17.000 Right.

02:08:19.000 ...staying on the red carpet.

02:08:20.000 Right.

02:08:21.000 It's a tough one.

02:08:22.000 It's weird.

02:08:22.000 I mean, I don't knock, and by the way, I don't knock anybody for doing that.

02:08:25.000 No.

02:08:26.000 I don't think, but that, you know, that ain't what we doing.

02:08:28.000 No.

02:08:29.000 Mm-mm.

02:08:29.000 I'm not interested.

02:08:31.000 No, it's fun sometimes.

02:08:33.000 It's just so weird.

02:08:35.000 It's so different than real life.

02:08:38.000 Yeah, but in a weird way, that is their real life.

02:08:40.000 That's a work thing.

02:08:41.000 It's a peak work thing.

02:08:43.000 It's like, this is peak glam.

02:08:46.000 Ta-da! 1.00

02:08:47.000 But this thing where, and I think this is changing in the culture.

02:08:51.000 Remember, there was this thing about celebrities could never be unhappy. 1.00

02:08:55.000 Fuck that, man. 0.99

02:08:59.000 I'm not saying they should display that, but just assume everybody has a bad day. 1.00

02:09:05.000 Fuck that red carpet face. 1.00

02:09:07.000 I don't want to make that fucking face for the rest of my life. 1.00

02:09:14.000 I think, you know, as I get older, I'm overwhelmed by how human we all are. 0.99

02:09:20.000 It really makes me like people more.

02:09:24.000 And forgive people more.

02:09:26.000 That's important.

02:09:27.000 That's everything.

02:09:29.000 Forgive people.

02:09:30.000 And forgive yourself.

02:09:31.000 Yeah, forgive yourself.

02:09:33.000 I just think that the...

02:09:37.000 I don't know.

02:09:38.000 In this season of my life, I'm into...

02:09:41.000 Hopefully, I'll do something.

02:09:45.000 I will make this mean something other than just the trappings of success, how hot my whip is or... 1.00

02:09:54.000 How pretty my bitch is and all this stupid shit that we have been trained to focus on. 1.00

02:09:59.000 I wanted to be better than that. 1.00

02:10:02.000 What do you want to do?

02:10:03.000 Do you have an idea?

02:10:06.000 I have some ideas. 0.99

02:10:07.000 I don't want to make any public declarations because then I'm going to have to do this shit. 0.87

02:10:15.000 But as just a general rule, and by the way, there's so many surprising ways that you can be of use to people. 0.87

02:10:24.000 Not big things.

02:10:25.000 Everyone's always trying to hit a homer, but sometimes it's a smile you muster for a person, you know.

02:10:31.000 There's a lot of things you can do.

02:10:33.000 I just try to walk softly on the earth and have some fun.

02:10:39.000 But I just know that investing celebrity into getting more celebrity is a treadmill I don't feel interested in running on in the twilight of my life.

02:10:51.000 Right. 1.00

02:10:52.000 Yeah, fuck that. 1.00

02:10:54.000 Yeah, no, you get it. 1.00

02:10:56.000 You know what it's like to be famous.

02:10:58.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:10:58.000 And I'm not mad at fame.

02:11:00.000 When you say fame, I'm not mad at that celebrity.

02:11:03.000 Well, that's the one.

02:11:05.000 What's the difference?

02:11:06.000 It's fine.

02:11:06.000 I was talking to Letterman about it.

02:11:07.000 Celebrity is the role.

02:11:09.000 That's the one on the red carpet.

02:11:10.000 You're famous.

02:11:12.000 It's not that you're not a celebrity, but it's not like you're sticking your pinky toe out on the red carpet.

02:11:18.000 You're not going places where people are saying, what are you wearing?

02:11:20.000 You didn't make your life about that.

02:11:23.000 You're not tethered to endorsements and this, that, and the other.

02:11:27.000 You're tethered to yourself, to your journey, to your life, which makes it meaningful. 0.96

02:11:35.000 You know, for you to talk the shit that you talk, even in this context, there's a courageousness that you have to, you know, your subject is so much outside scrutiny, you know. 0.99

02:11:50.000 But you do it anyway. 0.99

02:11:52.000 That's why it's courageous.

02:11:54.000 You know, you're relentlessly yourself.

02:11:58.000 This is a practice skill.

02:12:01.000 This takes some consistency.

02:12:04.000 You have to choose in the beginning.

02:12:06.000 You have to take an inventory to know who you actually are.

02:12:10.000 Some people think they are the famous guy.

02:12:12.000 Fame is your circumstances.

02:12:14.000 It's not necessarily who you are.

02:12:16.000 Trust me, when I left the show, I wasn't famous.

02:12:21.000 It was circumstances that I left behind.

02:12:22.000 I mean, I was famous, but it wasn't that thing.

02:12:26.000 Right.

02:12:26.000 It's different.

02:12:28.000 And I realized, you know, when we came up, we coveted that thing without even knowing what it was.

02:12:35.000 Well, because it seemed unattainable.

02:12:37.000 You would see other people that had it. 0.99

02:12:38.000 You know, someone would show up at the club and walk through, and you'd be like, oh, shit, look at him. 0.99

02:12:43.000 Look at him. 0.99

02:12:43.000 Everybody knows who he is. 0.99

02:12:45.000 You know?

02:12:46.000 Right, but it was still an abstraction.

02:12:49.000 Martin walks in and he's brimming with happiness.

02:12:54.000 Right.

02:12:55.000 Martin was the first guy that I ever saw that walked in with security.

02:13:01.000 Hilarious.

02:13:02.000 I was like, wow, he's got security at the store.

02:13:05.000 And needed it, probably.

02:13:06.000 Oh, yeah. 0.98

02:13:08.000 People forgot how fucking strong Martin Lawrence was. 0.99

02:13:13.000 Goddamn, his act was powerful. 0.99

02:13:15.000 I used to have to follow him. 0.98

02:13:16.000 Mitzi Shore was hilarious. 1.00

02:13:17.000 She used to always, she thought you were funny, she would put you on after the best comedians and just throw you right to the wolves. 0.53

02:13:23.000 She always thought it was funny.

02:13:25.000 She always put me on after, I was, you know, 27, 26 years old, whatever I was, she would put me on after Martin Lawrence all the time, and I would just bomb.

02:13:33.000 But that's how you get great.

02:13:35.000 I remember the first time I met Martin, I was in high school.

02:13:38.000 Wow.

02:13:39.000 I saw Martin do a show, him and Tommy Davis, this might be one of the best single comedy shows I've ever seen.

02:13:45.000 It was like a local D.C. club.

02:13:47.000 Marlon Wayans was there.

02:13:48.000 He was going to college in D.C. at the time.

02:13:49.000 It was the night I met him.

02:13:51.000 And man...

02:13:53.000 First of all, Tommy Davidson went on. 1.00

02:13:55.000 He, man, this motherfucker Tommy can crack. 0.99

02:13:59.000 He's a funny, funny, funny, funny guy. 0.99

02:14:03.000 Great performer, great impressionist.

02:14:06.000 Every skill set that you could think of, he has in abundance.

02:14:11.000 And Martin was headlining.

02:14:13.000 I watched Tommy's show and I was worried for the headliner.

02:14:17.000 When has that ever happened?

02:14:19.000 Lauren was fine.

02:14:21.000 Martin was fine. 1.00

02:14:22.000 Like the shit he did on that stage that night. 0.99

02:14:25.000 And this was like in the area that he grew up in. 1.00

02:14:29.000 So he had that set. 0.99

02:14:32.000 You know, there's probably a couple girls in high school that dissed him that was there and that kind of shit. 1.00

02:14:37.000 He did the thing, bro. 0.99

02:14:38.000 And I'm telling you, that Martin Lawrence was a beast on stage. 0.63

02:14:44.000 He was a beast.

02:14:45.000 People forgot for some reason.

02:14:47.000 I'm from D.C., so I can't forget.

02:14:50.000 When I was starting out, he was the local legend already.

02:14:53.000 Well, when I first came to L.A., it was in 94, he was in his peak.

02:14:57.000 In his peak.

02:14:59.000 That was you-so-crazy days. 1.00

02:15:02.000 Yeah, that was some Elvis shit. 0.99

02:15:04.000 He was hosting Def Jam. 0.99

02:15:06.000 He had the sitcom.

02:15:08.000 He was putting out specials and just started getting big in that movie game.

02:15:14.000 When you watch his sitcom, people forget.

02:15:17.000 He did a bunch of different characters on that show.

02:15:19.000 It was all him.

02:15:20.000 The show was all him.

02:15:21.000 Yes, he was nice with it.

02:15:24.000 He's probably still nice with it.

02:15:25.000 I mean, I haven't seen Martin in a long time.

02:15:27.000 I haven't seen him in forever.

02:15:28.000 I ran into him at the store a few years back, which is briefly.

02:15:34.000 He was doing a few sets every now and then.

02:15:37.000 He called me after I won the Mark Twain Prize.

02:15:40.000 You know, because I'm from D.C., I gotta tell you this call means a lot to me.

02:15:46.000 He was one of my early local heroes.

02:15:51.000 I came up on a good circuit, too.

02:15:54.000 Wasn't Boston, but D.C., Wanda Sykes would start out with me, Patton Oswalt was around, Tony Woods, Martin Lawrence, Tommy Davidson.

02:16:02.000 There were some great comics.

02:16:05.000 That's one thing that comedy always needs.

02:16:07.000 You need to be around other great comics.

02:16:10.000 That's true.

02:16:10.000 The circuit.

02:16:11.000 And back in those days, no internet, nothing.

02:16:14.000 Every city has some different energy.

02:16:18.000 And the comedians, they're like, it's always exciting to go to a city and check out the other acts.

02:16:24.000 Boston, like you say, that was one of those cities.

02:16:28.000 It was a weird city.

02:16:29.000 It was.

02:16:30.000 But it was a trap.

02:16:31.000 That's what we were talking about before.

02:16:33.000 Those guys can make six figures staying in town.

02:16:35.000 But that's what they did.

02:16:37.000 Because if they went on the road, they'd actually make less money.

02:16:39.000 What made you go to Hollywood?

02:16:41.000 Why didn't you fall for that?

02:16:43.000 I saw what they were doing and even though they were great comedians I saw that they couldn't do the road and I was like if you want to get on HBO or if you want to you know you have a special you gotta you gotta get out of town and the young guys coming up kind of saw the old guard these some of the best headliners I've ever seen in my life I've seen Don Gavin have sets Steve Sweeney have sets that I mean I would put those sets up against any comic I've ever seen ever you know it was funny the first night I saw Dane Cook They go

02:17:14.000 yawning after so-and-so.

02:17:15.000 You know, it was a cocky deal. 1.00

02:17:16.000 I didn't really worry about none of that shit. 0.99

02:17:18.000 But I heard the crowd scream so loud I thought they had introduced me. 0.99

02:17:22.000 Wow.

02:17:23.000 It was Dane.

02:17:24.000 He was just starting out.

02:17:26.000 These were crowd reactions.

02:17:28.000 There was a thing in Boston.

02:17:30.000 Everyone was a room ripper.

02:17:32.000 They were all about volume.

02:17:36.000 Intensity.

02:17:36.000 Yeah, Don Gavin.

02:17:38.000 That rapid-fire style, I'll never forget.

02:17:40.000 He was...

02:17:41.000 And then, in the midst of all that, you'd have a counterweight like Stephen Wright, this wonderfully understated, dead-paying comedian. 1.00

02:17:51.000 That shit was fire. 0.99

02:17:52.000 Boston was a good circus. 1.00

02:17:53.000 Have you ever seen the documentary When Stand Up Stood Out?

02:17:56.000 No.

02:17:56.000 There's a comic named Frans Solomita.

02:17:58.000 He put together this documentary on Boston.

02:18:00.000 It's really good.

02:18:01.000 It just shows you what it was like back in those days.

02:18:05.000 They kind of invented a movement.

02:18:07.000 Really, a lot of it was Barry Crimmins.

02:18:08.000 Rest in peace. 0.75

02:18:10.000 Barry Crimmins was like the godfather of Boston comedy in a lot of ways because he was this really brilliant guy very politically savvy and He kept everybody from being a hack because everybody was scared of him He was like this fucking both boys like loud bold guy who he would go on stage and Right. 0.86

02:18:43.000 Right. 1.00

02:18:47.000 If Barry thought you were a hack, you were fucked. 1.00

02:18:49.000 Then they didn't tolerate hacks. 1.00

02:18:50.000 He didn't tolerate thieves.

02:18:51.000 He was quality control.

02:18:53.000 Quality control, yeah.

02:18:54.000 Every circuit, I guess, needs to.

02:18:56.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:18:57.000 And it's the thing that Dane Cooks talked about this, too, that they were all men.

02:19:01.000 These guys were all these big guys.

02:19:03.000 They were all, like, six-foot-plus big, burly guys who did a lot of coke and got in street fights.

02:19:09.000 All those comics, they weren't like nebbishy comics who would talk about their insecurities.

02:19:14.000 They were wild dudes who were partying.

02:19:16.000 They were like rock stars.

02:19:17.000 I remember doing a show in Boston.

02:19:19.000 Again, I don't like saying names, but I just remember seeing a guy who was heckling me and the security threw him down the steps.

02:19:27.000 Yeah.

02:19:27.000 And I'd never seen anything.

02:19:30.000 But so casually, like, this is what we do with trash. 0.94

02:19:34.000 Like, Jesus, man. 0.97

02:19:36.000 Yeah, there was a lot of violence in Boston.

02:19:38.000 It was.

02:19:38.000 It was a weird...

02:19:40.000 And I never really got a feel for that city. 1.00

02:19:42.000 I would meet these intellectuals and idiots in the same block. 1.00

02:19:47.000 The fuck is this place? 1.00

02:19:49.000 Well, there was more colleges per capita in Boston than anywhere else in the country. 1.00

02:19:53.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:19:54.000 I used to go up there and play college gigs all the time.

02:19:57.000 And, you know, I remember the Boston police felt particularly menacing.

02:20:01.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:20:02.000 Those fucking high boots they wear with no horse to match. 1.00

02:20:06.000 Fuck, I used to stop all those dudes. 1.00

02:20:09.000 It's a weird city. 1.00

02:20:11.000 But then it produced so many great, you know, sources of comedy. 0.70

02:20:16.000 Even people who aren't from Boston, a guy like Howard Stern that went to BU, A guy like Patrice O'Neal came out of the hood, moved down to New York and cleaned shit up out there.

02:20:26.000 It was an interesting scene.

02:20:28.000 Patrice is a similar type of thing, right? 0.94

02:20:30.000 He was like a cornerstone of comedy in New York. 0.99

02:20:34.000 When people talk about people getting silly or being stupid, they go, God, I wish Patrice was here to see this. 0.99

02:20:40.000 Yeah, Patrice, yeah, he had that world-weary kind of swag about him. 0.99

02:20:45.000 Early on, man, it didn't get along, but we became friends, because this guy was a real deal.

02:20:52.000 He was a real deal.

02:20:53.000 God, I wish he stayed alive.

02:20:55.000 I do, too, man. 1.00

02:20:56.000 The comedy he would have put out during all this shit? 0.99

02:21:00.000 Well, that's interesting, because I don't know what would happen to a guy like him in this context. 0.99

02:21:05.000 Mmm, he's not buckling, I'll tell you that.

02:21:08.000 I know, so I say, I don't know what's going to happen to him.

02:21:13.000 Yeah, it would be interesting to see.

02:21:15.000 It really would be.

02:21:16.000 You know, one can only imagine.

02:21:19.000 One can only imagine, but he was, man, he was something else.

02:21:23.000 He was a funny dude.

02:21:24.000 I remember him and Kevin got to New York around the same time.

02:21:28.000 I used to think Kevin was from Boston because I'd see them together so much, I just assumed.

02:21:33.000 And their arrival on the scene was like, both these guys, when they got on the scene, it was noticeable.

02:21:42.000 It wasn't like they came in quietly. 1.00

02:21:44.000 They was doing some shit. 1.00

02:21:46.000 That's another thing that every scene needs. 1.00

02:21:48.000 Every scene needs a rocket. 0.94

02:21:51.000 Yeah, someone that shakes shit up. 0.95

02:21:52.000 Yeah, like, whoa. 0.98

02:21:53.000 Like, someone who's not stagnant, they're not complacent, they're going for it.

02:21:59.000 I got to tell you, New York City in the 90s, some of the greatest comedy I've ever seen.

02:22:04.000 It was weird, too, because I was one of those guys that would be in New York and then go out to L.A. a little earlier than everyone else.

02:22:13.000 I did Montreal, and then I'd go out for this, and I'd go out for that.

02:22:17.000 And I started auditing both scenes.

02:22:21.000 New York was the dream.

02:22:23.000 But L.A., Those comics were like, the work ethics were different.

02:22:33.000 New Yorkers write more, you know, in general.

02:22:37.000 If you do ten spots in a night, you come up with a new joke on a third show, you got seven cracks at it.

02:22:46.000 By the end of the night, even though you just started the thing, it's refined.

02:22:49.000 Yeah, that's a good point.

02:22:51.000 Yeah, L.A. didn't have any opportunity to do that.

02:22:53.000 That's a different world.

02:22:54.000 Right.

02:22:55.000 LA people were so competitive about stage time. 1.00

02:22:59.000 That shit's like the Karate Kid tournament. 1.00

02:23:01.000 These motherfuckers got killed every night. 1.00

02:23:03.000 Sweep the leg. 1.00

02:23:04.000 But Sensei, you got a problem with that?

02:23:06.000 That's LA. No mercy. 0.79

02:23:09.000 LA in the 90s was everybody trying to get a sitcom, too.

02:23:13.000 That was part of the problem.

02:23:14.000 Oh, yeah.

02:23:14.000 It was a gold rush.

02:23:15.000 Yeah.

02:23:16.000 They saw what happened with Roseanne and Jerry Seinfeld.

02:23:19.000 I don't even know if that was coming completely from the comedians.

02:23:23.000 The studio system was so hungry for comedians to build these shows around.

02:23:27.000 Yeah.

02:23:27.000 They would give you these crazy development deals.

02:23:30.000 Yeah, I did a million of those. 1.00

02:23:33.000 It took me like 13, 14 of them shits to be like, man, fuck that shit before you get a Chappelle shirt. 1.00

02:23:40.000 But the good thing is I learned how television works, basically, how it was supposed to work and what I'd like to do with it. 1.00

02:23:45.000 What was interesting is they basically gave you free money.

02:23:49.000 People don't understand this.

02:23:50.000 They would give you a half a million dollars or a quarter million dollars, and you would get this development deal, and they'd attach you to a bunch of writers.

02:23:58.000 They'd put together a script, and it may or may not go.

02:24:00.000 And if it didn't go, you just got a free quarter million dollars, and you worked on a script, and maybe it went to pilot, maybe it didn't.

02:24:07.000 Yeah, but if it didn't go, you were a bad investment.

02:24:10.000 You had a couple of those in you.

02:24:12.000 And it could hurt you.

02:24:14.000 Yeah, it could. 0.66

02:24:14.000 You know, if they ever look at you like you're a bum investment. 0.66

02:24:17.000 Thing was with me, I was funny, but they didn't quite know what to do with me.

02:24:22.000 Yeah.

02:24:22.000 And I didn't know either.

02:24:24.000 Yeah.

02:24:26.000 I don't know.

02:24:27.000 Those days, the Montreal days were weird, right?

02:24:29.000 People go out there, just go out there to showcase.

02:24:33.000 Showcase their talent, try to get a deal.

02:24:36.000 And then, do you remember Chicken?

02:24:38.000 Do you remember that guy?

02:24:39.000 I do remember.

02:24:40.000 He got some huge deals in the mid-90s.

02:24:44.000 Late 90s.

02:24:45.000 It flopped terribly.

02:24:46.000 For whatever reason, they thought he was funny and nobody else did.

02:24:49.000 Yeah, the name Chicken should have tipped him off.

02:24:51.000 Maybe this is a bad idea.

02:24:52.000 Who should we make the checkout to?

02:24:54.000 Chicken?

02:24:55.000 Well, he had a big, crazy act.

02:24:57.000 It was like a lot of energy.

02:24:59.000 I never saw him work.

02:25:00.000 I saw him work.

02:25:01.000 I worked with him in Montreal. 1.00

02:25:02.000 But that name is stupid. 1.00

02:25:05.000 No disrespect, Chicken, but that's a stupid ass name. 1.00

02:25:09.000 So it all fell apart and then he wound up hanging himself in front of a school. 1.00

02:25:13.000 Oh, now you gotta bring that up. 0.97

02:25:14.000 I feel bad because I just shouted out Chicken and this nigga's dead for five years. 1.00

02:25:20.000 Oh my God. 0.99

02:25:22.000 He hung himself in front of a school?

02:25:25.000 Yeah.

02:25:26.000 There you go.

02:25:29.000 Because of comedy?

02:25:31.000 It didn't work out.

02:25:33.000 It fell apart.

02:25:34.000 So he thought he was on this rocket ship to fame, like, oh my god, I got the biggest deal ever.

02:25:38.000 He got the biggest development deal anybody had ever heard of.

02:25:41.000 I remember.

02:25:42.000 And then they were like, they're going to make a show around him.

02:25:44.000 I forget what kind of show it was going to be.

02:25:47.000 And then it didn't work out.

02:25:49.000 And then he slowly faded away.

02:25:52.000 And then he vanished. 0.50

02:25:53.000 And then one day he killed himself.

02:25:55.000 How long after the deal fell apart?

02:25:57.000 Quite a long time.

02:25:58.000 More than a decade.

02:25:59.000 He never got over the experience of almost making it?

02:26:02.000 I don't know.

02:26:02.000 Who knows?

02:26:03.000 I mean, maybe he was mentally ill. 0.70

02:26:04.000 Maybe he was suffering from depression from the beginning, and maybe that big, crazy, wild act was his escape.

02:26:09.000 So it may have not had anything to do with show business.

02:26:12.000 Totally possible.

02:26:13.000 But it's not a good narrative.

02:26:14.000 The good narrative is show business got him, right?

02:26:17.000 Yeah.

02:26:18.000 See if you can find that guy.

02:26:20.000 I never saw a set.

02:26:21.000 I remember everyone in town was talking about it, but I'd never seen him.

02:26:25.000 Comedians couldn't understand what was going on.

02:26:26.000 He would make a lot of noise and bounce around on stage and screaming and yelling, and everybody's like, what is he doing?

02:26:31.000 I've seen a few comics like that.

02:26:33.000 They'll be killing though.

02:26:35.000 And I'll be like, I don't understand.

02:26:37.000 Well, the agents thought they had it.

02:26:39.000 They're like, this is it.

02:26:40.000 He's going to be huge.

02:26:41.000 We got him.

02:26:42.000 And, you know, they played against each other and got this giant deal.

02:26:47.000 This is tragic.

02:26:49.000 It's weird.

02:26:50.000 Now I'm mourning the loss of chicken. 1.00

02:26:51.000 I never even met this motherfucker. 0.99

02:26:53.000 There were quite a few people that thought they were going to be giant. 0.99

02:26:55.000 I remember quite a few people who got development deals and all of a sudden they had assistants.

02:27:00.000 Like, you know, you got an assistant?

02:27:03.000 People would show up with an assistant and someone would take notes while they're on stage and they'd have their coffee ready for them and they drove a Mercedes.

02:27:11.000 It's like, what are you doing?

02:27:13.000 I got a development deal.

02:27:15.000 My show's going to go.

02:27:16.000 It's got a guarantee.

02:27:18.000 And then they do the pilot.

02:27:19.000 That's why I call my company Pilot Boy. 0.99

02:27:21.000 You know how many of them fucking pilots I did? 1.00

02:27:23.000 I was like, fuck this. 1.00

02:27:24.000 This is going to be forever. 1.00

02:27:25.000 It was hell.

02:27:26.000 That's why you call it Pilot Boy?

02:27:28.000 That's hilarious.

02:27:29.000 It was a development hell. 1.00

02:27:30.000 I spent over a decade of my life tinkering around with that shit. 1.00

02:27:33.000 That's hilarious. 0.99

02:27:35.000 Do you think you're going to do more of these podcasts, the ones that you have produced?

02:27:41.000 You're going to keep doing that?

02:27:43.000 I'd like to, yeah.

02:27:46.000 It's not like this gig.

02:27:49.000 It's as joyful as this.

02:27:50.000 I talk to people I enjoy talking to.

02:27:53.000 I don't want to tip my head too much because I want people to listen and see for themselves what it is.

02:27:57.000 I don't like describing. 0.99

02:28:00.000 It's like telling a girl how you're going to fuck her before you do it. 1.00

02:28:03.000 Let's see what it feels like. 1.00

02:28:08.000 But I enjoyed it, man.

02:28:11.000 Again, who I'm talking to.

02:28:13.000 I hope you do it one day.

02:28:14.000 You've got to hear it, though.

02:28:16.000 I've heard it.

02:28:17.000 I've heard episodes.

02:28:18.000 Oh, that's right.

02:28:19.000 I would love to do it.

02:28:21.000 I would definitely do it.

02:28:22.000 I love what you did in Yellow Springs, too.

02:28:24.000 Because you were the first guy to figure it out.

02:28:26.000 You were the first guy to say, you know what?

02:28:29.000 I'm going to do comedy.

02:28:30.000 We got to it early, man.

02:28:32.000 When did you start?

02:28:33.000 Like, what was the first shows?

02:28:34.000 June 6th.

02:28:35.000 The first night was the night I did that video that was on YouTube, 846, that George Floyd.

02:28:41.000 That was the very first night.

02:28:42.000 Seventy people, maybe, in Five Acre Field.

02:28:46.000 Wow.

02:28:46.000 I was like, as soon as I... You know, what was happening, so many people in live entertainment were furloughed that I started finding out from the production world who had gotten furloughed and I'd stop picking them up.

02:28:56.000 It was like, you know...

02:28:57.000 And a lot of these people, I'd pay them in cash because if I did it, you know, straight down the middle...

02:29:03.000 Right.

02:29:03.000 They lose their benefits.

02:29:05.000 And if for any reason I had to cancel the shows, then they're just stranded with no benefits.

02:29:10.000 I couldn't do that.

02:29:11.000 Right. 0.99

02:29:11.000 So it was like the 80s and shit. 0.99

02:29:13.000 I was paying everybody on the table. 0.96

02:29:15.000 Even though we wouldn't do anything illegal.

02:29:18.000 You know, and the night before the first show, I was like a condemned man.

02:29:26.000 I had to put a call into the governor's office. 0.99

02:29:28.000 I'm a fucking nightclub comic. 0.99

02:29:30.000 I'm calling the governor. 1.00

02:29:33.000 And it was a long shot.

02:29:35.000 But shout out to Governor DeWine.

02:29:37.000 He hit me back.

02:29:38.000 And he let me do it because, you know, after that massacre in Dayton, we had done a big...

02:29:45.000 Thing that really, I think, really helped heal the community.

02:29:48.000 And because of that, he was like, okay, I'll let you do it.

02:29:52.000 But the COVID protocols were so strict.

02:29:55.000 And we had to learn from scratch how to do it.

02:29:59.000 Nothing's going to be perfect.

02:30:00.000 It's a pandemic.

02:30:02.000 Everything you do is going to be risky, but we had to figure out how to do it as safe as possible within the parameters or guidelines that the government saw fit.

02:30:10.000 But we were able to work.

02:30:12.000 Did you sell booze?

02:30:14.000 I don't know.

02:30:16.000 We had to give it away.

02:30:17.000 Oh, wow.

02:30:19.000 There was a lot of stuff that we were building to get the mask and all these things that You know, we try to make it accessible.

02:30:25.000 The shows are expensive to produce, so I didn't make any money.

02:30:29.000 I'd lose money every night.

02:30:31.000 But, you know, here we are a year later, I might be 105 shows ahead of everybody.

02:30:38.000 Right, right.

02:30:39.000 Because I was working.

02:30:39.000 You stayed active.

02:30:40.000 Yeah, we might have done a good 30, 40 shows here.

02:30:45.000 Yeah.

02:30:47.000 So it's that.

02:30:48.000 We found a way.

02:30:49.000 And the best part, like I said, is we all got to be together.

02:30:53.000 So, you know, people would fly in from L.A. and New York and we'd work three nights a week and some people would stay and we, you know, we could chill because eventually we got access to testing.

02:31:06.000 That was the game changer.

02:31:08.000 So we'd test every day.

02:31:10.000 So when you first started out there was no testing?

02:31:12.000 No, it was for the comedians.

02:31:17.000 But the crowd, it's like going to the grocery store.

02:31:20.000 You come at your own risk, everyone mask up.

02:31:22.000 Everyone was outside.

02:31:24.000 Everything was outside.

02:31:25.000 Everything was probably socially distanced.

02:31:28.000 One of the things I learned early on is selling tickets in pairs.

02:31:33.000 You know, that was a game changer because it allowed us to get more people in.

02:31:38.000 And, you know, it just made everything easier.

02:31:42.000 Because imagine if there's two single seats, you can't put two strangers together in a time like this.

02:31:48.000 Of course.

02:31:49.000 Well, you know, it worked.

02:31:53.000 Yeah.

02:31:55.000 As far as the audience was concerned, not a single reported incident I've heard of someone getting sick or infected in one of these shows.

02:32:04.000 We were very careful.

02:32:05.000 And then eventually you started testing the crowd?

02:32:08.000 Right.

02:32:09.000 As testing became more available in the beginning, having tests was like, oh my God, I can't believe we got our hands on these.

02:32:15.000 It was very difficult to get testing.

02:32:17.000 And...

02:32:18.000 The test weren't as rapid.

02:32:20.000 It would take longer.

02:32:21.000 So you wouldn't have time to test those people.

02:32:25.000 I mean, the staffing that you'd have to do to give a few hundred people a test that takes 30 minutes for results.

02:32:32.000 Who has that kind of time?

02:32:34.000 Yeah.

02:32:34.000 Yeah, you can't wait 30 minutes.

02:32:37.000 Right.

02:32:40.000 But now, when we play in Vegas, we have the capacity now.

02:32:45.000 We could test all 13,000 people and get them in a reasonable time.

02:32:53.000 Sounds crazy, but...

02:32:54.000 It's possible.

02:32:55.000 Yeah, now it is.

02:32:57.000 Yeah.

02:32:58.000 Early on in the pandemic, there was, I think, like, you know, remember when Trump said something like, just stop testing everybody?

02:33:04.000 Yeah.

02:33:05.000 I'm telling you from experience, that's a terrible, terrible idea. 0.98

02:33:09.000 It's a ridiculous thing to say. 1.00

02:33:10.000 Yeah, like, I can't believe that motherfucker was in charge at a time like that. 1.00

02:33:14.000 That was a wild thing to say. 0.98

02:33:16.000 He was saying the reason the numbers are so high is because we're testing more people.

02:33:19.000 Yeah.

02:33:21.000 Yo, my man.

02:33:22.000 Like, come on, let's think this through. 1.00

02:33:24.000 Take a swig of Lysol, motherfucker, and think about what you just said. 1.00

02:33:29.000 What the fuck is this guy talking about? 1.00

02:33:31.000 That's your leader. 0.99

02:33:34.000 It's so interesting that that guy's not on social media now.

02:33:37.000 He tried to get back on Facebook, and they're like, no, come back in six months.

02:33:42.000 It's like he was up for parole.

02:33:44.000 Yeah, you know, it's a weird thing being a comedian, because there's a thing about Trump that if the circumstances weren't so dire and the consequences so high, that would have been hilarious to watch.

02:33:55.000 Yeah.

02:33:56.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:33:57.000 But, man, people died, and the country's all fucked up now, and the Capitol looks like jail. 0.99

02:34:03.000 I know. 0.99

02:34:04.000 Wow, it's crazy.

02:34:05.000 It looks like a green zone now.

02:34:07.000 Yeah, I'm from D.C. I gotta tell you, that shit was particularly offensive to me. 1.00

02:34:10.000 In D.C., that's the town business, is government. 1.00

02:34:15.000 And those people that were in that building, so many of them are people from the neighborhoods. 0.96

02:34:20.000 It feels like you fucked my city up. 0.93

02:34:22.000 Yeah.

02:34:24.000 It's just a scary precedent when you decide you're gonna break down boundaries and you're gonna rush the Capitol building.

02:34:31.000 And you're gonna do it with no real plan.

02:34:33.000 And you're gonna take pictures on Pelosi's desk with your feet up and take pictures holding the flag wearing a buffalo helmet.

02:34:41.000 Right.

02:34:41.000 There's no one to negotiate with.

02:34:43.000 Who should I talk to? 1.00

02:34:44.000 This motherfucker with the zip ties or this bullwinkle nigga? 1.00

02:34:47.000 Like, who the fuck are these people? 1.00

02:34:49.000 Man, fuck these people. 1.00

02:34:50.000 You guys are fucking the country up. 1.00

02:34:53.000 Changed everything. 0.98

02:34:54.000 One day.

02:34:55.000 One day changed everything because then people knew that that was possible.

02:34:59.000 That never happened.

02:35:00.000 Yeah, it then happened at the Million Man March, and they was ready for us. 1.00

02:35:04.000 But look at this shit. 1.00

02:35:07.000 And the president was the catalyst for it. 1.00

02:35:10.000 Whether you want to say he's legally responsible or not, that's fine.

02:35:13.000 But he did say go take the building back.

02:35:20.000 You gotta be strong.

02:35:21.000 Did he say go take the building back?

02:35:23.000 Is that what he said?

02:35:23.000 He said, you gotta take our country back.

02:35:24.000 He said, let me not put words in this fellow's mouth.

02:35:27.000 And I'm not an anti-Trump guy.

02:35:30.000 I'm not pro-Annie. 1.00

02:35:31.000 This shit is like theater to me. 1.00

02:35:34.000 I remember when he won. 1.00

02:35:35.000 You had a great speech.

02:35:37.000 He said, let's give him a chance.

02:35:39.000 Right.

02:35:40.000 And you know why I said that?

02:35:41.000 Because he was duly elected. 1.00

02:35:43.000 And stormed the Capitol and rubbed my shit on the wall the next day. 1.00

02:35:47.000 Fucking stupid. 1.00

02:35:48.000 Did someone rub their shit on the wall? 1.00

02:35:49.000 I believe a person did. 1.00

02:35:53.000 It was his first time in the Capitol he got excited.

02:35:56.000 It's kind of amazing only one person got shot.

02:35:59.000 You know, as sad as that was, it is amazing because, I mean, that could have been a terrible, terrible, terrible situation.

02:36:07.000 Yeah.

02:36:08.000 And miraculously, you know, it could have been so much worse.

02:36:13.000 If there was like carnage there, Jesus, could you imagine?

02:36:15.000 If one shot went off in the wrong context, that whole building would have been lit up.

02:36:21.000 Yeah.

02:36:23.000 There were four or five different law enforcement departments in there by the end of it.

02:36:28.000 It's crazy.

02:36:29.000 You know, seeing your officials flee their constituents.

02:36:35.000 Well, that's crazy.

02:36:36.000 You know what's crazy is that was five months ago and they're still catching people.

02:36:42.000 Oh, that's not going to stop, I doubt.

02:36:44.000 I doubt that will stop.

02:36:45.000 They're getting people off of photographs, facial recognition software, videos, people turning their friends in.

02:36:53.000 Right. 0.99

02:36:54.000 This is all like ominous shit, bro. 0.99

02:36:57.000 But hopefully it's a growing pain. 0.99

02:36:59.000 And on the other side of this, people will be more willing to do, you know, right by each other.

02:37:07.000 Yeah, we just need a legitimate leader.

02:37:10.000 I'll put an ad in the paper.

02:37:14.000 Someone who can inspire.

02:37:17.000 Everybody that you actually want to do that job, don't want to do that job.

02:37:24.000 If it's this hard being a comedian, I can't even imagine.

02:37:29.000 Even a guy like Obama, I think about it. 1.00

02:37:31.000 That shit looks really hard to do being black. 1.00

02:37:35.000 It sounds trite, but it's not. 1.00

02:37:37.000 That was a cultural, it was like the moon landing, seeing somebody who's not white be president of the United States. 0.71

02:37:45.000 Especially with a name like Barack Hussein.

02:37:48.000 Barack Hussein Obama.

02:37:49.000 My God, man.

02:37:50.000 We did that.

02:37:52.000 You know, I'm fond of what that meant culturally.

02:37:56.000 You could argue about policy, this, that, or the other.

02:37:58.000 But, you know, Ohio, we voted for Trump twice.

02:38:03.000 We voted for Obama twice, too.

02:38:05.000 It's an interesting swing state, Ohio.

02:38:07.000 And normally we pick right.

02:38:09.000 Like, whoever we pick is the president.

02:38:11.000 This last go-around being the exception.

02:38:14.000 Maybe the only exception.

02:38:16.000 You know... 1.00

02:38:21.000 Yeah, fuck politics, man. 1.00

02:38:23.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:38:23.000 Like, literally, that's feckless. 1.00

02:38:26.000 I'm telling you, I'm on my kindness conspiracy.

02:38:29.000 As long as I'm kind to people, like, if we live by an ethic of kindness, if we foster trust amongst each other, it will matter less what corporations and politicians say because we'll be able to trust our society's cohesiveness.

02:38:42.000 Yeah.

02:38:42.000 But if you politicize these things, it's going to become increasingly difficult to come to an understanding and agreement.

02:38:51.000 Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

02:38:52.000 And I think it's just, it's so difficult when people get attached to whatever political party they're in.

02:39:01.000 It's very difficult for them to disagree with that party, and so easy for them to go along with it, and then so easy for them to hate the people that are opposed to it, the people that are on the other party.

02:39:10.000 It's such a binary thing. 0.99

02:39:11.000 It's so dumb. 0.99

02:39:12.000 It's also a cold thing to do in front of all of us. 1.00

02:39:15.000 Yeah.

02:39:16.000 Because I don't think people feel that way.

02:39:19.000 No, most people don't.

02:39:21.000 No.

02:39:21.000 But when we're talking in groups, that's when it gets weird.

02:39:25.000 Right.

02:39:26.000 Talking in tribes.

02:39:27.000 Yeah, it's getting tribal here.

02:39:30.000 I don't know.

02:39:31.000 More than ever before.

02:39:31.000 You know what's funny?

02:39:32.000 I don't even really know what you politically believe or don't believe, but who gives a fuck? 0.99

02:39:38.000 I get along with you every time I see you. 0.99

02:39:39.000 I know you're funny, you're a nice dude, we laugh about shit, we learn shit from each other. 0.97

02:39:45.000 You're from Boston, I'm from D.C. It's two very different types of places and types of cultures. 0.93

02:39:51.000 But this culture of comedy, this common denominator, makes me feel like we're of the same tribe.

02:39:58.000 For sure.

02:39:59.000 And there's trans people in my tribe, and there's white and black and Asian and all kinds of people, and all of them are committed to this culture.

02:40:07.000 Concept of levity and we all get there different and interesting and unique ways.

02:40:11.000 And what's wrong with that?

02:40:13.000 It works. 1.00

02:40:14.000 And we say terrible shit to each other all the fucking time. 1.00

02:40:17.000 Everyone's fine. 1.00

02:40:19.000 But it's fun.

02:40:20.000 We look forward to it.

02:40:21.000 But it is a tribe.

02:40:22.000 It's a different kind of tribe.

02:40:24.000 Normally I get up in the morning and I dread getting on a plane if I have to go do a work thing.

02:40:29.000 I was excited to come here today.

02:40:31.000 Not to be on a big podcast. 0.99

02:40:34.000 I'm gonna fuck around and hang with Joe. 0.97

02:40:36.000 I'm sure I probably said four things that I wiped already. 0.99

02:40:39.000 I don't even know it yet.

02:40:40.000 No.

02:40:41.000 Well, take a look at the comment section. 1.00

02:40:42.000 Yeah, that's good shit. 0.99

02:40:43.000 Everything you said is dead on. 1.00

02:40:46.000 Likewise.

02:40:46.000 Hey, man, you got any of your cups?

02:40:48.000 What is this thing you got with this buffalo water?

02:40:51.000 Yeah.

02:40:52.000 I can't see you and not celebrate. 0.99

02:40:55.000 Now, obviously, is this some cheap shit, Joe? 1.00

02:40:57.000 No, that's the shit, bro. 1.00

02:40:59.000 Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. 1.00

02:41:01.000 Buffalo Tracy has been around longer than America.

02:41:04.000 That's 1773, that company.

02:41:06.000 Really?

02:41:07.000 Yeah.

02:41:07.000 Wow.

02:41:09.000 Tastes like slavery.

02:41:10.000 Let's get it.

02:41:13.000 Hey, Fingers, you don't got a cup, do you?

02:41:15.000 Right here.

02:41:16.000 Oh.

02:41:16.000 Pour out your water.

02:41:17.000 Oh, my man.

02:41:18.000 Cleaned it out.

02:41:19.000 That's good, okay.

02:41:20.000 All right.

02:41:22.000 Celebration.

02:41:24.000 All right, so celebrate to Joe Rogan.

02:41:28.000 Celebrate.

02:41:29.000 We don't need ice.

02:41:30.000 Come on, man.

02:41:30.000 No, yeah, yeah.

02:41:31.000 No ice.

02:41:33.000 Thank you, Jamie.

02:41:34.000 Marlon Wayans was at my house in Ohio.

02:41:36.000 Salute, my brother.

02:41:37.000 Cheers, man.

02:41:37.000 Salute.

02:41:40.000 Marlon Williams, I gotta tell you, is one of my favorite people.

02:41:44.000 He's a wildly consistent dude in my life.

02:41:48.000 I used to hang out in Hollywood and sometimes I drank too much, but I knew where he lived.

02:41:51.000 He's like one of the only people who knew where he lived, and I'd just knock on his door.

02:41:55.000 He'd open it.

02:41:56.000 He got some room in his basement.

02:41:57.000 He just stole blankets and then I'd sleep.

02:41:59.000 Really?

02:42:00.000 Because I trusted him. 0.98

02:42:01.000 Yeah, he's just a fucking cool dude, man. 0.95

02:42:03.000 He's a funny guy. 0.94

02:42:05.000 He's a cool dude.

02:42:06.000 That's awesome.

02:42:07.000 Anyway, I brought him up because...

02:42:09.000 He came to my shack.

02:42:10.000 That's where I do my show.

02:42:11.000 It's like my little hangout.

02:42:12.000 I got a little clubhouse in the corner from the crib.

02:42:14.000 We all just hang out there.

02:42:16.000 Nothing nefarious.

02:42:17.000 But Marlon was so incensed that I didn't have ice that he bought me an ice machine.

02:42:22.000 It was the weirdest gift.

02:42:23.000 He didn't even tell me.

02:42:24.000 He just sent it in the mail.

02:42:26.000 Who does that?

02:42:29.000 Tell me about this club that you're opening.

02:42:32.000 Comedy club?

02:42:33.000 Yeah.

02:42:34.000 Had a conversation once with Chris Rock.

02:42:36.000 Yeah, I love Chris Rock, too.

02:42:38.000 I love all comedians, but Chris and I were talking about...

02:42:42.000 This is an interesting question.

02:42:43.000 I'm going to see how you feel about...

02:42:45.000 I said, how many seats are you optimal?

02:42:48.000 Like, when you look at a crowd, how many people do you want to see out there where you feel like I'm home?

02:42:54.000 Chris said, like, 6,000.

02:42:58.000 And I forget sometimes, got big, big star.

02:43:03.000 Me, 200. 200. That's like a sweet spot for me.

02:43:07.000 That's why I love playing the punchline, you know.

02:43:10.000 But I don't even need that many.

02:43:12.000 The belly room, one of my favorite rooms on earth is the belly room at the Comedy Store.

02:43:16.000 That's like 70 seats soaking wet, right?

02:43:21.000 I would make this club 120. This club is not for people who are trying to count the gate.

02:43:28.000 This club is for people who want to rock, like really get into some shit, like try some shit out. 0.98

02:43:34.000 It's like when that alternative scene, in the 90s, for people at home, Joe, I'm not saying this, I know you know, but in the 90s it was an alternative, what they called an alternative comedy scene. 0.99

02:43:45.000 This was Patton Oswalt and Janine Garofalo and Dave Cross, Bob Odenkirk, these type of people.

02:43:53.000 And it became real popular.

02:43:55.000 It became like a scene.

02:43:57.000 And I would check it out.

02:43:59.000 Now, traditional club comics hated that scene.

02:44:04.000 They resented it because the things that was going on there, these jokes weren't structured.

02:44:09.000 It was like a lab almost.

02:44:11.000 People would go there and trash it out.

02:44:13.000 What was interesting about it to me wasn't what the comedians were trying.

02:44:18.000 As much as it was The way the crowds would listen to them.

02:44:23.000 It was one of these setups, if you went there and just did your act, no matter how funny your act is, that's not what they wanted to see.

02:44:30.000 What they wanted to see was someone take a chance. 1.00

02:44:34.000 And that shit was like heaven on earth. 1.00

02:44:36.000 When a crowd pushes someone, just try some stuff. 1.00

02:44:41.000 You don't have to land the trick, but the beauty is in the attempt.

02:44:45.000 Just try it.

02:44:46.000 Whatever this thing is that you're worried, it makes you nervous or uncomfortable.

02:44:50.000 And that...

02:44:52.000 That scene made a profound impression on me that that was possible, that you could make a crowd into that.

02:45:01.000 Because I'm, you know, comedians are addicted to the process of refinement.

02:45:06.000 You know, a guy like Seinfeld, he would never do a podcast because it's such a spontaneous, off-the-cuff endeavor.

02:45:15.000 And his skill as a comedian, one of his super, super-duper powers, Jerry Seinfeld, Is like a well-refined comedian.

02:45:25.000 He can take an abstraction and make it a refined piece.

02:45:29.000 This scene didn't have any of that refinement.

02:45:33.000 Seinfeld does that, but then he also does that cars, comedians getting cars, in cars getting coffee show?

02:45:39.000 Yeah.

02:45:40.000 Where he's like a podcast.

02:45:41.000 He's loose.

02:45:43.000 I did that show.

02:45:44.000 I enjoyed it, actually.

02:45:45.000 We did it in D.C. What kind of car did you drive? 1.00

02:45:48.000 A French piece of shit. 1.00

02:45:50.000 It like broke down. 1.00

02:45:52.000 I don't think they cut that out. 1.00

02:45:54.000 It was a good looking car, but it was a piece of shit. 1.00

02:45:57.000 Well, he's mostly into Porsches. 1.00

02:45:59.000 Most of his thing is Porsches.

02:46:01.000 If he's driving those other cars, it's really more for show, I think.

02:46:04.000 But it reminds me, that show reminds me of you a little bit in the sense that it's about his passions.

02:46:10.000 He loves cars.

02:46:11.000 He loves comedians.

02:46:12.000 He loves comedy.

02:46:13.000 And apparently he likes coffee.

02:46:17.000 Jay Leno, you ever done Jay Leno's Garage?

02:46:19.000 No.

02:46:20.000 I've done that.

02:46:21.000 He is so much better at that show than, at least the way, not that he was bad at hosting The Tonight Show, but he's himself.

02:46:31.000 He really is himself.

02:46:32.000 He doesn't have to dress up. 1.00

02:46:34.000 He wears the same shit every day, like a jean shirt and jean pants. 1.00

02:46:38.000 He doesn't give a fuck what he looks like. 1.00

02:46:40.000 He's got no hair and makeup on the set. 0.99

02:46:41.000 He just wants to talk about cars.

02:46:43.000 The guy's got hundreds of cars.

02:46:45.000 He's got warehouses filled with cars.

02:46:48.000 Full-time employees all over the place working on it.

02:46:51.000 All these people.

02:46:52.000 He's got fabricators. 0.79

02:46:53.000 People that make sheet metal, like, fix fenders and shit and all kinds of stuff. 1.00

02:46:57.000 And the fucking man loves cars. 0.99

02:47:00.000 And I brought my 1965 Corvette in. 1.00

02:47:03.000 And just, he and I just geeking out over lines.

02:47:05.000 And Steve Stroop, the guy who built my car, he came with me.

02:47:09.000 And, you know, we talked about all the various aspects of the car and all the improvements, all the different things that he had done to it.

02:47:15.000 And you can see Jay Leno going over it.

02:47:17.000 He knows the details of the 1965, the original motor.

02:47:21.000 He starts talking about all the different things, and then he drove it.

02:47:24.000 He's the only one other than me that's ever driven that car.

02:47:26.000 Really?

02:47:27.000 Yeah, and he takes it out, boom, and go out to the hills and went up to Los Angeles, Crest Forest, you know?

02:47:33.000 Man, you took me out one night.

02:47:34.000 You had a hot one. 0.98

02:47:35.000 That Porsche you used to drive.

02:47:37.000 Oh, yeah, I still got that.

02:47:38.000 That was a hot one, bro.

02:47:39.000 That was fun.

02:47:40.000 That night was wild. 1.00

02:47:42.000 And you started doing the motherfuckers. 0.99

02:47:44.000 You know, we was up in them Hollywood Hills. 0.99

02:47:45.000 You started doing them James Dean turns.

02:47:47.000 I got scared.

02:47:48.000 Yeah.

02:47:49.000 I got scared.

02:47:50.000 I said, Joe, what are you doing?

02:47:51.000 That car's glued to the ground, though.

02:47:53.000 Oh, I know.

02:47:54.000 That's what you were demonstrating.

02:47:55.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:47:56.000 You were whipping that shit. 1.00

02:47:57.000 Oh, that was the night we went to Naomi Campbell's book release party. 1.00

02:48:01.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:48:01.000 That shit was fun, though. 1.00

02:48:02.000 It was wild. 1.00

02:48:03.000 It wasn't that weird.

02:48:04.000 It was weird to me.

02:48:06.000 Well, because you weren't expecting it.

02:48:07.000 Yeah.

02:48:07.000 You were just at the comedy club I ran into you.

02:48:10.000 Yeah.

02:48:10.000 And was like, yo...

02:48:13.000 We were so high, too.

02:48:15.000 I was like, okay, let's go.

02:48:16.000 It was fun, man.

02:48:17.000 It was really fun, but it was like, you know, I thought it was just going to be a regular night at the store.

02:48:21.000 Next thing you know, we're in an elevator that's going up the side of the hill.

02:48:26.000 Oh, that mountain.

02:48:26.000 Yeah, that was crazy.

02:48:27.000 Weird.

02:48:28.000 It's a nice house.

02:48:29.000 Giant naked picture of Naomi Campbell on the side of the building.

02:48:33.000 Remember that?

02:48:34.000 No, of course I do.

02:48:36.000 Of course I do.

02:48:37.000 It was like 40 foot tall nude.

02:48:40.000 It was crazy.

02:48:41.000 And then you get in there and there's all these famous people.

02:48:43.000 This is one of my favorite parts of the night.

02:48:44.000 We're sitting around and you and I are talking.

02:48:46.000 Man, I would not want to be famous like these people.

02:48:50.000 And I look to you and go, do you the most famous person here?

02:48:53.000 That's hilarious.

02:48:55.000 Turns out it was you, Joe.

02:48:57.000 And you're like, no, am I? I go, you are the most famous person in this fucking room. 1.00

02:49:01.000 I don't have, you know... 0.99

02:49:04.000 You know, I could forget about it.

02:49:07.000 Yeah, you could forget about it.

02:49:09.000 You know how to let it go, but Lenny Kravitz was there, and Demi Moore, and there was all these famous people.

02:49:15.000 It was wild.

02:49:16.000 I was like, oh, there's that guy.

02:49:17.000 You know, again, I'm always shocked. 1.00

02:49:20.000 Lenny Kravitz is a cool motherfucker. 0.99

02:49:24.000 Very cool. 0.99

02:49:24.000 I really dig him. 0.99

02:49:25.000 The first time I met him...

02:49:28.000 Sherman Helmsley, they used to play George Jefferson, introduced me to him.

02:49:32.000 I did a movie with him years ago.

02:49:34.000 It was me, Norm Macdonald, Sherman Helmsley was in it.

02:49:37.000 I remember I didn't know him well, but I was awestruck because I'm Jefferson's fan.

02:49:43.000 Any Norman Lear show is what I was watching.

02:49:46.000 And he invited me to come to this concert with him.

02:49:49.000 And I didn't realize at the time that Lenny Kravitz's mother was on the Jeffersons, which is how he knew him.

02:49:55.000 Man, I smoked a joint with George Jefferson, and we went out to see this Lenny Kravitz show.

02:49:59.000 And Lenny couldn't have been nicer.

02:50:01.000 Yeah, he was very normal.

02:50:03.000 Doesn't he, he lives on a giant ranch in Brazil.

02:50:06.000 He has a giant ranch in Brazil.

02:50:08.000 Oh, he doesn't live there?

02:50:08.000 He just goes there occasionally?

02:50:09.000 Yeah, he's one of them dudes.

02:50:11.000 He got a beautiful house in Paris.

02:50:13.000 I've never been, but I've heard stories.

02:50:15.000 He's got, you know, spread in the Bahamas where his family is from.

02:50:19.000 Oh, wow.

02:50:20.000 And then he got the Brazilian jump off. 1.00

02:50:23.000 So, you know, he does it big.

02:50:26.000 And Lenny is a style guy, like.

02:50:29.000 Everything he does is just fly.

02:50:31.000 Prince was like that, too.

02:50:32.000 Everything just kind of fly.

02:50:34.000 They did a tour of Lenny's house.

02:50:36.000 It's a video.

02:50:37.000 He's going over all the art pieces and who designed this chair and who made all these things and showing this video of this place in Brazil.

02:50:45.000 It's beautiful, man.

02:50:47.000 He started making furniture, designing furniture, stuff like that.

02:50:50.000 Now, you know, it's funny.

02:50:51.000 I don't have really...

02:50:52.000 Kanye is like this.

02:50:53.000 Kanye West is a design genius.

02:50:57.000 It's not a trick.

02:50:59.000 People call Kanye genius all the time.

02:51:01.000 This is not just a label that's slapping on it. 0.99

02:51:05.000 If you ever see him in a studio session, this motherfucker look like Captain Kirk. 0.99

02:51:10.000 He's running the bridge. 0.99

02:51:13.000 He's nice with it.

02:51:14.000 I've been very lucky to get to see people who are great at things up close.

02:51:18.000 Even being on his podcast.

02:51:20.000 I feel like you didn't make podcasts up, but you kind of make podcasts up.

02:51:24.000 And I know you. 0.97

02:51:26.000 It's fucking a strange neighborhood in life. 0.97

02:51:32.000 It's one of the joys of my life getting to know these people and knowing and seeing them be human. 0.98

02:51:40.000 We struggle through these things.

02:51:42.000 We bellyache about decisions.

02:51:45.000 None of these people that I know are contest winners.

02:51:49.000 They all work very hard to be great at what they do.

02:51:52.000 Everyone is gifted, but these people spend time refining their gift and getting rejection and taking all those shots that you take in life.

02:52:00.000 And they made something of it.

02:52:02.000 I can't begrudge them that.

02:52:03.000 And I always hope that none of us are white. 0.98

02:52:06.000 I hope we all survive it. 1.00

02:52:07.000 And I think that's why that cancel culture shit bothers me. 0.97

02:52:10.000 I'm not even opposed to the ideas behind some of these cancellations. 0.98

02:52:15.000 I get it.

02:52:16.000 You want to do good things.

02:52:18.000 I get stopping harassment.

02:52:20.000 All of it.

02:52:22.000 Racism, harassment, everything.

02:52:23.000 This ism, that ism, this phobia, that phobia.

02:52:26.000 I get it.

02:52:26.000 Let's fight it.

02:52:27.000 And the inclination in all of it is to make the world a better place.

02:52:30.000 That's the inclination.

02:52:31.000 It gets abused and misused sometimes by the wrong people and bad actors.

02:52:35.000 But at the end of the day, what they're trying to do, at least what they think they're trying to do, is eliminate bad aspects of our culture and our society.

02:52:43.000 Right.

02:52:44.000 That's what they're trying to do.

02:52:45.000 Right, because the society doesn't correct itself.

02:52:47.000 And in that sense, I appreciate it.

02:52:50.000 My kids make me very hopeful for the future.

02:52:55.000 A lot of people say, good people I know, I don't want to bring kids into this world, like my age, no kids. 1.00

02:53:01.000 Don't do that shit. 1.00

02:53:02.000 If you think you're a good person, please, have a kid. 1.00

02:53:06.000 Put all your good ideas in that kid, so that the world will be better.

02:53:11.000 I quote you all the time because of something you said to me in the parking lot of the Comedy Store.

02:53:15.000 You said, my children didn't just increase the amount of love in my life, they increased my capacity for love.

02:53:21.000 Oh, that's very true.

02:53:22.000 They saved my life.

02:53:25.000 I wasn't in dying straits, but man, I wouldn't be fractionally.

02:53:30.000 I think what I am or have some of the courage that I was able to muster.

02:53:34.000 It's not like I'm not scared. 1.00

02:53:35.000 I'll be scared, but I just do the shit anyway. 0.99

02:53:37.000 Everybody who knows me says there's like me pre-children and post-children. 0.99

02:53:42.000 I'm like a different person.

02:53:44.000 I'm so much nicer.

02:53:45.000 I always liked you, Joe.

02:53:46.000 I never saw you as a mean guy.

02:53:50.000 You're always kind.

02:53:52.000 You're always edgy.

02:53:54.000 And everyone was scared of you because you know Kung Fu. 1.00

02:54:00.000 But, you know, it's not like you was in the comedy club sweep-kicking niggas and shit. 1.00

02:54:04.000 We was kicking it. 0.99

02:54:06.000 And I don't know, bro.

02:54:08.000 Like, I just feel real grateful for the years I got to do this.

02:54:13.000 Like, I don't feel...

02:54:14.000 I feel grateful, too.

02:54:15.000 I think we're so fortunate.

02:54:18.000 You look at people that are living their life, and that famous quote that I love, most men live lives of silent desperation.

02:54:28.000 Wow.

02:54:29.000 Who said that?

02:54:30.000 And why did they say such a thing?

02:54:32.000 Walden Pond, what is his name?

02:54:34.000 Emerson?

02:54:35.000 Thoreau.

02:54:35.000 Thoreau?

02:54:35.000 Yeah.

02:54:36.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.

02:54:38.000 Yeah, that was Thoreau's quote.

02:54:40.000 It's a great quote, and it's so true. 0.96

02:54:43.000 Most people are just fucking, God, every day is a struggle. 0.98

02:54:48.000 They're not doing what they want to do. 1.00

02:54:52.000 They don't feel loved.

02:54:53.000 They're not surrounded by interesting people.

02:54:55.000 They're not stimulated.

02:54:57.000 Like, every day. 0.99

02:54:58.000 My problem is I just have a lot of shit to get done. 0.99

02:55:01.000 That's my only problem every day. 0.99

02:55:03.000 It's funny, though, because a lot of the shit you do, there's less social capital in it. 0.99

02:55:09.000 This is an easy existence now. 0.98

02:55:11.000 Men don't have to lift heavy things anymore. 0.98

02:55:15.000 You're out here hunting your own meat, shopping your kung fu, lifting weights. 1.00

02:55:24.000 I'm not doing none of that shit. 0.99

02:55:26.000 But I realized a long time ago I have to do all those things to keep my head right. 0.99

02:55:30.000 I get that.

02:55:31.000 I get that.

02:55:31.000 I don't know that I have a similar passion, but you know what?

02:55:34.000 I find my solace in people. 0.99

02:55:38.000 There's so much shit that I see. 0.99

02:55:41.000 I'm talking about circumstantially what they'd say, normal circumstantial people who have these incredible capacities in them. 0.99

02:55:51.000 It's harder now that I got notoriety to be around the people that move me the most.

02:55:57.000 But it's people like that, the guy that goes to the job he doesn't like.

02:56:01.000 I respect this guy.

02:56:04.000 There's so many people I've met.

02:56:06.000 That's will.

02:56:07.000 That's a real willpower.

02:56:10.000 People who do actual public service.

02:56:13.000 Not these fake woketivists, but the woman that works at the shelter for the abused women or helps women get out of relationships that are abusive with their lives. 1.00

02:56:22.000 Or helps veterans cope with PTSD or get counseling.

02:56:26.000 This guy I met that lost both his legs and was cracking up laughing with me when he was talking about it. 1.00

02:56:32.000 These people blow my fucking mind. 0.99

02:56:34.000 Yeah, as they should. 1.00

02:56:35.000 It's exciting.

02:56:37.000 Yeah.

02:56:37.000 There's a lot of exciting people out there.

02:56:39.000 And just because someone's famous doesn't mean they're exciting.

02:56:42.000 Oh boy, ain't that the truth.

02:56:44.000 I ain't gonna start naming lemons, but some of these niggas is lemons. 1.00

02:56:48.000 Lames. 0.96

02:56:50.000 Lames! 0.99

02:56:51.000 It's so true. 0.84

02:56:52.000 There's so many of them.

02:56:53.000 They're so bland.

02:56:56.000 Yeah, but then I'll meet somebody who doesn't have any notoriety and they humble me because they're such spectacular people.

02:57:04.000 Yeah, I've been very fortunate to meet a lot of interesting people and I think doing this show has really changed the way I look at life.

02:57:11.000 But your kung fu has suffered, Joe.

02:57:13.000 It has a little bit.

02:57:15.000 Well, it's age, right?

02:57:16.000 That too.

02:57:17.000 But it's also just the lack of practice all the time.

02:57:20.000 I just couldn't keep getting injured.

02:57:23.000 That's the problem.

02:57:24.000 You would never fight again, would you?

02:57:26.000 No, not now.

02:57:27.000 I'm 53 years old. 0.99

02:57:28.000 Would you fight another 53-year-old like on some Mike Tyson shit? 0.99

02:57:31.000 No, Mike Tyson's still fighting demons, man. 0.99

02:57:34.000 Wow.

02:57:35.000 Those demons are still there.

02:57:36.000 Mike Tyson is the reason why this desk is this width.

02:57:39.000 Did I tell you that?

02:57:40.000 No.

02:57:41.000 This is real?

02:57:42.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:57:42.000 I had a smaller desk that I was planning on using for the new studio.

02:57:46.000 This is the exact same width as the studio desk in my old place, the exact same one.

02:57:52.000 And I had a small one.

02:57:53.000 I'm like, maybe it would be better if I'm a little closer to the people.

02:57:56.000 But then I did a podcast with Tyson.

02:57:58.000 I did two of them with Tyson.

02:57:59.000 One, when he was high, when he was running Tyson's Ranch.

02:58:02.000 He had a little bit of a belly.

02:58:04.000 He was jolly.

02:58:05.000 He was just high all the time.

02:58:06.000 We had a wonderful conversation.

02:58:08.000 And then, next time he came in is when he was preparing for the Roy Jones fight.

02:58:11.000 And he was jacked!

02:58:13.000 And he had these big-ass muscles in his forearms, and he just looked ready to go.

02:58:17.000 And he made me so nervous.

02:58:19.000 Like, he was so keyed up.

02:58:20.000 You could tell.

02:58:21.000 Like, he was Ready to go.

02:58:23.000 He was ready to go.

02:58:24.000 And I'm like, no, no, no. 1.00

02:58:26.000 Fuck this small table. 1.00

02:58:27.000 I need to not feel so nervous. 1.00

02:58:29.000 I need to have some distance.

02:58:31.000 So I was thinking if I was any closer to Mike, so instead of like here, if I was like this, and he was that amped up, it would probably affect the way I was communicating with him.

02:58:40.000 I'd be nervous.

02:58:41.000 He's an intimidating guy.

02:58:43.000 Oh, yeah.

02:58:44.000 I am fascinated with him as a public figure.

02:58:48.000 Well, he is so multifaceted.

02:58:51.000 There's so much going on.

02:58:53.000 If you just looked at him as this brute who used to be one of the greatest knockout artists of all time, you'd miss so much.

02:59:00.000 He's a scholar of boxing.

02:59:03.000 There's probably not a man alive who knows more about the all-time greats.

02:59:07.000 He could talk to you about Harry Greb and Jack Johnson and Stanley Ketchel.

02:59:14.000 He could talk to you about guys that you never even heard before.

02:59:18.000 Even the tattoos he's got.

02:59:19.000 Arthur Ashe and Mao.

02:59:22.000 Is Che Guevara on him too?

02:59:24.000 I don't think so.

02:59:25.000 Does he have Che Guevara?

02:59:26.000 He's definitely got Mao and Arthur Ashe.

02:59:28.000 Yeah, if he has Che Guevara, I hope he lasered it off.

02:59:33.000 That one's like the bad boy eyes or keep on trucking or something.

02:59:38.000 He said keep on trucking. 0.99

02:59:39.000 It's such a silly... 0.98

02:59:40.000 Does he have Che Guevara? 0.99

02:59:42.000 Yeah, I think he does on his stomach, right?

02:59:43.000 Yep, yep, right there.

02:59:45.000 Yeah.

02:59:45.000 All right, okay, I thought I was making that up.

02:59:47.000 The Arthi Ash one, though. 1.00

02:59:49.000 And then, you know, he's got one on his face.

02:59:51.000 One of the only celebrities that pulled off the face tattoo.

02:59:56.000 I mean, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro did take over Cuba when they were in their early 30s. 0.98

03:00:01.000 Like, when I was doing the second season of Chappelle's show, all these motherfuckers was taking over Cuba. 1.00

03:00:08.000 Negotiating with the United States and Russia. 1.00

03:00:10.000 Fidel ran Cuba till he fucking died. 0.99

03:00:13.000 He did. 1.00

03:00:14.000 Crazy. 0.59

03:00:15.000 But, you know, he's one of these guys, and I know, you know, as an American especially, people always kind of frown at Fidel Castro.

03:00:22.000 But I remember the deployment of Cuban doctors and the reason they were able to do that is because the education system was so good.

03:00:29.000 Cuban doctors, some of the most renowned doctors in the world, aid packages that Castro sent to Africa.

03:00:35.000 It wasn't like Cuba was rolling in dough.

03:00:38.000 I don't know.

03:00:40.000 He's an interesting guy.

03:00:42.000 I say these things, people are going to think of days of communism.

03:00:46.000 Not even close.

03:00:48.000 No one's all bad.

03:00:49.000 Very few people are all bad.

03:00:51.000 And I'll be the first to tell you, communism does not look fun to me.

03:00:58.000 No.

03:00:59.000 It removes incentive.

03:01:01.000 Everybody that looks at people like Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos, look at these billionaires and say, they have too much.

03:01:08.000 We've got to eliminate billionaires.

03:01:09.000 They have too much. 0.98

03:01:10.000 They're the outliers.

03:01:12.000 They're the weirdos that have figured out how to accumulate so much wealth that it's preposterous.

03:01:17.000 But you can't take away all incentive for people to perform because if you do that, you're not going to get any innovation.

03:01:24.000 You're not going to get all the things you enjoy. 0.91

03:01:26.000 You wouldn't have iPhones and Shure microphones and fucking Samsung TVs if people couldn't make money. 0.99

03:01:32.000 It's funny because in our business, we make, you know, millions of dollars and all this shit. 0.99

03:01:38.000 We're like famous and they still have award shows. 0.90

03:01:41.000 Like, like, this is funny.

03:01:44.000 And I got a trophy too.

03:01:45.000 This is crazy.

03:01:46.000 Yeah.

03:01:48.000 It's really funny.

03:01:49.000 And a red carpet to take pictures on.

03:01:51.000 Yeah, it's just so...

03:01:52.000 It's very strange.

03:01:55.000 Yeah, it is very strange.

03:01:56.000 Do you think you're ever going to do any more acting?

03:01:58.000 Or are you just sticking to stand-up now?

03:02:01.000 Man, I got this weird idea.

03:02:02.000 I want to go to Africa and do some of these Nollywood movies.

03:02:06.000 I've been watching them.

03:02:08.000 I was telling Naomi about it on her podcast.

03:02:10.000 It's the same thing I'm talking about with these Cuban docs, how people can solve problems with so little resources. 1.00

03:02:17.000 This is what these African directors are like. 0.99

03:02:20.000 The movies look crazy. 0.99

03:02:22.000 But it's funny how crazy they look.

03:02:24.000 But it's also awe-inspiring because I can't believe this guy with no resources solved a complicated filmmaking problem with this type of ingenuity because they had to.

03:02:34.000 What if somebody had a reputable American star to apply these tricks to?

03:02:40.000 I'll come with the funny.

03:02:42.000 You just give me that look, baby. 0.96

03:02:44.000 Don't you worry.

03:02:44.000 It's all going to work out.

03:02:45.000 I want to do that.

03:02:47.000 I want to just see what's popping over there.

03:02:50.000 Africa's popping right now. 0.96

03:02:53.000 Do you have an idea of like a script or an outline of a story?

03:02:58.000 I don't know that I need one.

03:03:00.000 You gotta see one of these movies to know what I'm talking about.

03:03:04.000 But it's just like something about it makes me feel like joyful when I watch it.

03:03:11.000 Like someone is just, I don't know. 0.99

03:03:13.000 I just want to try some shit. 0.98

03:03:14.000 Tell you what, Africa's taking over in the UFC right now. 0.99

03:03:16.000 Are they really?

03:03:18.000 Three African champions and they're three arguably the best of all time.

03:03:22.000 What countries?

03:03:22.000 Do you know?

03:03:24.000 Cameroon.

03:03:25.000 This is the guy you were telling me about.

03:03:29.000 They kept trying to get him in gangs.

03:03:32.000 He fled the country.

03:03:34.000 He found a way to train.

03:03:36.000 That was a great story.

03:03:37.000 It's a crazy story.

03:03:38.000 They kept catching him when he was trying to get into Morocco, or from Morocco to Spain, and they kept sending him back to the Sahara Desert to die.

03:03:47.000 They just drop you off in the desert.

03:03:49.000 Like, good luck. 0.99

03:03:50.000 And he made it back seven fucking times and finally made it across to Spain. 0.98

03:03:53.000 They put him in jail in Spain for two months, which they do when you get over there. 0.99

03:03:57.000 And then finally they released him.

03:03:59.000 He was homeless in France.

03:04:00.000 Slept in a parking lot and made his way to a gym.

03:04:03.000 And he wanted to be a boxer.

03:04:05.000 And they're like, man, you should try MMA. Yeah.

03:04:07.000 And he was like, you know, I want to be a boxer.

03:04:10.000 But they paid him 500 bucks to fight.

03:04:12.000 So he's like, okay, I'll do it. 0.93

03:04:14.000 So he beat the fuck out of some people.

03:04:16.000 And now he's the heavyweight champion of the world.

03:04:18.000 Oh, wow.

03:04:19.000 And not just the heavyweight champion of the world.

03:04:20.000 The most terrifying heavyweight champion of all time.

03:04:23.000 Nice guy?

03:04:24.000 Nice guy.

03:04:25.000 Super nice guy.

03:04:27.000 Super friendly.

03:04:28.000 Just the sweetheart of a guy.

03:04:30.000 Terrifying in a cage.

03:04:32.000 Terrifying.

03:04:32.000 Just nukes people.

03:04:34.000 It's Joe.

03:04:36.000 Oh dear!

03:04:38.000 Exactly!

03:04:39.000 Get Idris Elba on the phone.

03:04:40.000 Idris, I want you to fight somebody.

03:04:41.000 He's such a specimen.

03:04:43.000 And he just won the title beating the greatest heavyweight of all time, Stipe Miocic.

03:04:47.000 He just nuked him in two rounds.

03:04:48.000 What do you think of a flick like that?

03:04:50.000 What does he weigh?

03:04:51.000 He's 265 when he gets on the scale, but he's about 270-something when he gets in the cage.

03:04:56.000 He has to lose weight to make the heavyweight limit of 265. Because the UFC has a heavyweight limit.

03:05:01.000 And he's, without a doubt, the scariest heavyweight that the sport's ever seen.

03:05:06.000 Because he flatlines people.

03:05:07.000 How tall is he?

03:05:08.000 6'5"?

03:05:09.000 Oh, he's a big dude.

03:05:11.000 He's huge.

03:05:12.000 See, show the video of him knocking out.

03:05:16.000 Yeah, go to the top KO finishes.

03:05:19.000 Yeah, watch this.

03:05:20.000 Go full screen. 0.99

03:05:22.000 I mean, he just fucking flatlines people. 0.94

03:05:24.000 It's different because you can't make any mistakes with him because as soon as he touches you, boom, see? 0.99

03:05:28.000 Dudes just go down. 0.99

03:05:30.000 As soon as he touches you, you're just like, what in the fuck just hit me? 0.99

03:05:34.000 And he can do that to everybody. 0.99

03:05:40.000 Give me another one.

03:05:42.000 What is the UFC ref looking for?

03:05:44.000 That was, would you back up a little?

03:05:45.000 That was where you just were, that was the Stipe fight.

03:05:48.000 What is the UFC referee looking for?

03:05:51.000 Watch this one.

03:05:52.000 He's clearly out.

03:05:54.000 Okay, that guy, yeah, he did the right thing right there.

03:05:59.000 That fight is a beat up a dead body, wouldn't it?

03:06:01.000 Well, the thing is, guys recover.

03:06:06.000 Devastating uppercut.

03:06:07.000 He's devastating with everything he does.

03:06:09.000 And then he goes in.

03:06:11.000 That guy's clearly sleeping.

03:06:13.000 No one's faking sleep in the octagon, are they?

03:06:16.000 No, but you know what?

03:06:17.000 By the time he's throwing that shot, he doesn't know if that guy's going to get up on the way down.

03:06:23.000 He's something special, man.

03:06:24.000 Like, real unique, because he's just a top-of-the-food-chain specimen of an athlete.

03:06:31.000 How old is this fellow?

03:06:34.000 34. That's old for a fighter, no?

03:06:37.000 No, not for a heavyweight.

03:06:39.000 For a heavyweight, it's a good age.

03:06:41.000 A heavyweight's mature later in life. 1.00

03:06:45.000 Joe, the shit you know. 1.00

03:06:47.000 If you ever wrote a book, what would it be about? 1.00

03:06:49.000 Nonsense.

03:06:50.000 Yes, I think I'm the same.

03:06:53.000 I think I'm the same.

03:06:54.000 But every time I talk to you, I can't stump the band.

03:06:58.000 Anything I can talk about, you tend to know something about it. 1.00

03:07:02.000 I know a little bit about a lot of stupid shit. 0.99

03:07:05.000 It's all useful if you got a job like this. 1.00

03:07:08.000 Yeah, if you got a job like this.

03:07:09.000 But it's all because of talking to so many people.

03:07:11.000 But unfortunately, I forgot so much of it, too.

03:07:13.000 Because it's like my hard drive's just over spilling.

03:07:17.000 It's like a garbage pail that's just garbage has fallen out of it.

03:07:21.000 There's like too much in there.

03:07:22.000 Does Spotify give you time off?

03:07:24.000 Can you take a break?

03:07:25.000 Would you take a break?

03:07:26.000 No.

03:07:26.000 I enjoy it.

03:07:28.000 I know you enjoy it, but...

03:07:29.000 All these podcasts that I book, it's all based on my interests.

03:07:35.000 Like, I get a list of people that are trying to get on, and I go, what did that guy write a book about?

03:07:40.000 Oh, I want to talk to that dude.

03:07:42.000 And it's just entirely based on me wanting to talk to this person.

03:07:46.000 Do they solicit you?

03:07:48.000 No.

03:07:48.000 Spotify has nothing to do with it.

03:07:50.000 No, I'm saying the people on the show.

03:07:52.000 Some of them, yes.

03:07:53.000 Yeah, like I called you.

03:07:54.000 Yeah, but some of them, I'll call them.

03:07:56.000 Some of them, I'll watch a documentary.

03:07:57.000 I'll go, hey, can you get this guy?

03:08:00.000 Oh, that's dope. 0.94

03:08:00.000 Yeah, and then, you know, reach out and try to get him. 0.94

03:08:03.000 Or some of them, I'll have read their book, or someone else will recommend something to me.

03:08:07.000 It's all different.

03:08:09.000 If you could cast a dinner party for a guest, who you invite, and you don't say me.

03:08:16.000 I'd definitely bring Elon.

03:08:18.000 He's one of my favorite people to talk to.

03:08:21.000 I don't know.

03:08:22.000 People I know that know him really do like him a lot.

03:08:24.000 I like him a lot.

03:08:25.000 He's a sweet dude.

03:08:27.000 I gotta say, that night when we were all just sitting around talking, he's one of these guys who seems actually shy.

03:08:35.000 I don't know if shy is the word.

03:08:37.000 He doesn't need attention.

03:08:39.000 No, which is an anomaly in our walk of life.

03:08:43.000 But he's cool to talk to.

03:08:46.000 He's genuinely there. 0.98

03:08:49.000 Even though I'm a moron in comparison to him, when I talk to him, he'll talk to me in a normal way. 0.98

03:08:56.000 He'll just communicate. 0.99

03:08:57.000 I'll go, well, how do they do that?

03:08:59.000 And he'll explain it.

03:09:00.000 And I'll go, what is interesting about that to you?

03:09:02.000 And then we'll have these weird conversations where he'll explain his thought process about what's intriguing about something or what made him interested in pursuing something.

03:09:11.000 And he doesn't mind explaining these things.

03:09:12.000 Not at all.

03:09:13.000 That's interesting.

03:09:14.000 No, not at all.

03:09:15.000 Sometimes you think a person like that would lose patience with your layman intellect.

03:09:20.000 Exactly.

03:09:20.000 And he does not.

03:09:22.000 Does not.

03:09:23.000 He was explaining to me that night we were hanging out how they decide when and where to do a launch from.

03:09:30.000 Ah.

03:09:31.000 I got to tell you, I have a public school education.

03:09:35.000 That was tedious. 0.99

03:09:39.000 I was gonna write a Saturday Night Live tweet, oh, we don't explain that shit on the show. 0.99

03:09:44.000 Let's get it. 0.98

03:09:44.000 That becomes a problem with people that are really smart, is that some of the subjects do get tedious. 0.98

03:09:50.000 Like I read in some article that Albert Einstein used to fuck a lot of bitches. 1.00

03:09:54.000 Yeah, so did Richard Feynman. 1.00

03:09:56.000 Yeah, they just made me laugh, like Einstein picking up girls at a bar.

03:10:00.000 I think they were professors, and girls threw themselves at them. 1.00

03:10:03.000 I think it was like a celebrity thing.

03:10:05.000 Yeah, he was a renowned academic.

03:10:07.000 Marilyn Monroe had said she had a crush on him.

03:10:09.000 And he had the crazy hair.

03:10:10.000 I mean, he just looked like a character.

03:10:12.000 And he had that mind.

03:10:15.000 Yeah.

03:10:16.000 You know, most of us walk around in a state of complete befuddlement.

03:10:21.000 We feel a certain way, but we don't really know.

03:10:23.000 Right.

03:10:24.000 This guy...

03:10:26.000 He was also of an age where public intellectuals were celebrated like stars.

03:10:32.000 You know, he was celebrated I mean, if you think about his contribution to modern life, that's a hell of an equation.

03:10:42.000 Not just that, but all of his contributions.

03:10:45.000 He was just constantly evaluating the very nature of the universe itself.

03:10:50.000 The very nature of matter and life and energy and gravity and all these different forces.

03:10:56.000 Wasn't Oppenheimer one of his students?

03:10:59.000 I don't know.

03:11:00.000 Is that true?

03:11:01.000 I don't know. 0.99

03:11:01.000 I'm making shit up now. 0.99

03:11:03.000 Look, internet people, look that shit up for yourself, I'm guessing. 0.99

03:11:06.000 Oppenheimer's quote when they detonated the nuclear bomb is one of my favorite quotes ever. 0.99

03:11:09.000 What did he say?

03:11:10.000 He said he quoted the Bhagavad Gita.

03:11:11.000 They detonated the first nuclear weapon.

03:11:14.000 And he quoted the Bhagavad Gita.

03:11:16.000 He said, I am become death, destroyer of worlds.

03:11:21.000 That's what he said after the first atomic bomb got detonated.

03:11:24.000 There was a black guy named Earl Charles who was there when it happened, and he has a famous quote from that very moment. 1.00

03:11:29.000 He said, shut the fuck up. 1.00

03:11:31.000 What the fuck are you talking about? 1.00

03:11:36.000 What the fuck is he talking about? 1.00

03:11:38.000 I am become death, destroyer of worlds. 1.00

03:11:43.000 Yeah.

03:11:45.000 That's a wild thing to say when you just see a bomb detonate.

03:11:48.000 But imagine being there when the very first nuclear bomb gets detonated and imagine it's from your mind.

03:11:55.000 It's a bunch of other people working on it.

03:11:57.000 The Manhattan Project had a lot of people working on it, but a lot of it was Oppenheimer.

03:12:02.000 Oppenheimer.

03:12:03.000 Brilliant.

03:12:04.000 Look at that.

03:12:05.000 Oppenheimer and Einstein. 0.98

03:12:06.000 So right here, let's fuck the world up. 0.99

03:12:08.000 Let's sit down and draw out some planes and fuck the whole world up. 0.99

03:12:11.000 Let's get it. 1.00

03:12:12.000 Man.

03:12:13.000 Genius.

03:12:15.000 Yeah.

03:12:15.000 You know, Einstein looks exactly like my grandfather.

03:12:19.000 Really?

03:12:19.000 Oh yeah.

03:12:20.000 Like, so close, it's terrifying.

03:12:22.000 Take away the hair.

03:12:24.000 You know, my grandfather didn't have crazy hair like that, but with that mustache and his face, he looks so much like him.

03:12:29.000 Especially in that picture right there.

03:12:32.000 Like, he could have been my grandfather's brother.

03:12:33.000 It's startling how kind his face is.

03:12:35.000 Yeah, wow.

03:12:37.000 That makes a mean dude, though.

03:12:38.000 Imagine being a guy who's just that much smarter than everybody else.

03:12:44.000 Yep.

03:12:45.000 And you're trying to explain to people. 1.00

03:12:47.000 Will you shut up, bitch? 1.00

03:12:48.000 I'm thinking about math! 1.00

03:12:53.000 No, it seems like an island.

03:12:55.000 Yeah.

03:12:56.000 I don't know what that, I can't imagine, honestly, I can't imagine what that would be like.

03:13:00.000 I do think that I don't know. 1.00

03:13:05.000 The shit that his mind conceived in his lifetime. 1.00

03:13:08.000 Yeah. 1.00

03:13:09.000 If he were a comedian, he'd have the angles that none of us saw.

03:13:13.000 Yeah.

03:13:14.000 It's that kind of thing.

03:13:15.000 I mean, the thing is, Elon Musk is not Einstein in the sense that he's not creating equations.

03:13:24.000 That are going to shape the way our universe is thought of and perceived.

03:13:28.000 But what he is doing is creating these businesses and these Articles of technology, whether it's Tesla or whether it's SpaceX, these rockets that they're designing.

03:13:42.000 He's changing the potential of our future.

03:13:46.000 Right.

03:13:47.000 I mean, he's changed what it means to have an electric car.

03:13:51.000 He made an electric car instead of a thing that's practical.

03:13:55.000 He made this dope spaceship that goes zero to 60 in a little over two seconds.

03:14:01.000 Have you been in a Tesla, like a Model S? Yeah.

03:14:04.000 When it accelerates?

03:14:04.000 A lot of people know they drive, you know.

03:14:06.000 They're preposterous.

03:14:08.000 It's amazing. 1.00

03:14:09.000 The self-driving shit. 0.99

03:14:11.000 You know, it's weird because I feel like we live in the future. 0.99

03:14:14.000 When we used to watch the Jetsons and all this and Dick Tracy, it's better than what they thought it would be.

03:14:20.000 They didn't think of the internet.

03:14:22.000 No.

03:14:22.000 The Jetsons didn't even have an iPhone.

03:14:25.000 Right.

03:14:26.000 I know, yeah.

03:14:27.000 Neither did Captain Kirk.

03:14:28.000 He had to go, Kirk out!

03:14:29.000 Yeah, man, I got a phone in my pocket.

03:14:33.000 I can watch the news.

03:14:34.000 Yeah.

03:14:35.000 All this information at my disposal.

03:14:37.000 You can FaceTime people.

03:14:39.000 It's that.

03:14:40.000 Yeah.

03:14:41.000 Kirk didn't even have FaceTime.

03:14:42.000 Yeah, and it's just an amazing piece of technology, and then people set it up in the house, in the room by themselves, and twerk in front of it. 0.98

03:14:50.000 What the fuck are we doing, man? 0.98

03:14:52.000 What are we doing? 1.00

03:14:53.000 Tick-tocking.

03:14:55.000 Yeah.

03:14:55.000 Strange.

03:14:57.000 I hope everyone's gonna be okay, Joe.

03:15:00.000 David, I think they are.

03:15:01.000 I think they are going to be okay.

03:15:02.000 I think it's going to take time, and it's going to be like most moments in history.

03:15:06.000 It's not going to be smooth.

03:15:07.000 It's not going to be one clear ascension to enlightenment and peace and love, but we're going to get better.

03:15:15.000 We're going to get through this rocky era that we're in right now.

03:15:18.000 It'll take time, but I think we're going to get through it with the lessons of the pain and suffering that's been caused by bad decisions and the way we live right now. 0.98

03:15:28.000 Well, let's minimize the pain and try to expand the upside to all this bullshit. 0.99

03:15:33.000 Let's make these motherfuckers laugh, David Chappelle. 1.00

03:15:35.000 Let's get them. 1.00

03:15:36.000 Let's go out and get them.

03:15:37.000 Salute, my brother.

03:15:37.000 I love you, Joe Rogan.

03:15:38.000 I love you too, brother.

03:15:39.000 Cheers.

03:15:40.000 Cheers. 1.00

03:15:42.000 Let's wrap this bitch up. 1.00

03:15:43.000 That's a wrap, fingers. 1.00

03:15:44.000 That's a wrap.

03:15:44.000 Bring it home.

03:15:45.000 Bye, everybody.

03:15:47.000 Bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - May 07, 2021

Joe Rogan Experience #1647 - Dave Chappelle

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript