The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1985 - Steven Wright

00:00:12.000 It was fun hanging out with you last night.

00:00:14.000 Yeah, it was...

00:00:17.000 You know, when you're in one of those rooms backstage, it's the same...

00:00:23.000 Yeah.

00:00:24.000 It's the same vibe, it's the same...

00:00:29.000 Fun.

00:00:29.000 Even if you don't know the actual people, it's a connection.

00:00:35.000 Yeah, in a good room, yeah.

00:00:37.000 Yeah, we're all having fun.

00:00:39.000 Telling jokes.

00:00:41.000 The setup is so nice, too, because where the green room is, it's in between the two rooms.

00:00:46.000 So you can go to one room and watch, and then you can go to the other room, because we have the balcony set up.

00:00:52.000 I didn't notice that.

00:00:52.000 Yeah, it's very nice.

00:00:53.000 It's very, very convenient.

00:00:55.000 And that actually was the projector room.

00:00:57.000 For the theater.

00:00:58.000 So we converted the projector room for the theater into a green room.

00:01:03.000 It's a perfect position, because it's in between the two rooms.

00:01:06.000 So you got people going, leaving, going, and coming back from the set, and then you can see them doing it on the monitor?

00:01:13.000 You can see them on the monitor, or you could just step off into the balcony, because we have that comics balcony, so you could watch.

00:01:19.000 Like, if you're on stage, I could just sit up there and watch.

00:01:21.000 I don't have to go downstairs.

00:01:23.000 It's very nice.

00:01:25.000 It's a fun vibe, right?

00:01:26.000 Absolutely.

00:01:27.000 It's great for me to watch someone like you appreciate it, like go and check it out and go...

00:01:33.000 Yeah, it's like, you know, right from the beginning, the same, no matter where you go, I mean, if it's a good place, I would have stayed longer, but...

00:01:47.000 I didn't want to...

00:01:49.000 Is this going now?

00:01:50.000 Yeah, we're going.

00:01:51.000 I don't hear...

00:01:52.000 You don't hear yourself?

00:01:53.000 No, maybe because I'm not listening.

00:01:56.000 Is that good?

00:01:57.000 Do you hear it now?

00:01:58.000 No.

00:01:59.000 Not at all?

00:01:59.000 No.

00:02:01.000 Might have to bail on the headsets and go with real ones.

00:02:06.000 Oh, there it is.

00:02:07.000 You got it?

00:02:08.000 Okay.

00:02:09.000 Real ones.

00:02:11.000 I made these.

00:02:13.000 In your wood shop?

00:02:14.000 Metal shop.

00:02:19.000 When you started out, was it the Ding-Ho days? 0.69

00:02:23.000 Was that like the first place where you started?

00:02:26.000 What was it like?

00:02:27.000 What year did you start out first of all?

00:02:29.000 July 79. What was the scene like?

00:02:34.000 Well, it was the comedy connection.

00:02:36.000 The little one, downstairs?

00:02:38.000 No, it was on Warrington Street.

00:02:42.000 It was street level.

00:02:44.000 That was the first one.

00:02:46.000 Before Nick's?

00:02:48.000 Before Nick's.

00:02:49.000 So it was the same comedy, excuse me, the same one that was the Charles Playhouse, right?

00:02:57.000 Yeah.

00:02:58.000 You got straight in, and it was right in there.

00:03:02.000 It was an amazing room.

00:03:03.000 Yeah, little, like...

00:03:05.000 150 people probably?

00:03:07.000 I don't even think that many.

00:03:09.000 Maybe 100, maybe 90. That was the first.

00:03:13.000 Yeah, low.

00:03:16.000 That's where I... I went to see an open mic there, and then I thought...

00:03:24.000 What I was doing is I was, you know, into comedy from watching The Tonight Show.

00:03:28.000 That's when I really got, like, oh, these comedians, you know, Carl and Robert Klein, all these guys.

00:03:35.000 I had to watch The Tonight Show because my brother was older than me, and we had to watch what he wanted.

00:03:42.000 So, you know, I started watching, then I started to like it.

00:03:46.000 And then I heard that there was a club in town, and I thought...

00:03:52.000 I should go out, you know, I was 16 when I really was into it, but then when I was about 23, I heard of the club, and I thought, well, maybe I've got to go try it out.

00:04:04.000 I wouldn't have to move to Los Angeles or New York.

00:04:08.000 And my character then, I couldn't have...

00:04:12.000 23, I'm not going to move to Los Angeles.

00:04:16.000 It was like a...

00:04:18.000 That was too much for me.

00:04:20.000 So I went to the Comedy Connection and I watched a show and then I learned that there was a...

00:04:28.000 the open mic nights was every Wednesday.

00:04:32.000 So then I thought I'm gonna go back in two weeks.

00:04:36.000 Do you remember your first set?

00:04:39.000 I don't remember.

00:04:40.000 I remember the first joke was, but I don't remember the rest of it was, I said I went into a bookstore and I started talking to this very French looking girl.

00:04:51.000 She was a bilingual illiterate. 0.53

00:04:53.000 She couldn't read in two different languages.

00:04:58.000 And then it...

00:04:59.000 And that's how you started?

00:05:01.000 Yeah.

00:05:01.000 I had about three minutes.

00:05:03.000 So did you always write in that style?

00:05:06.000 Like the sort of non sequitur, absurdist...

00:05:10.000 No, see, I didn't even write anything until I went to the open, watched the show, and when I knew I was going back in two weeks, during that two weeks, I wrote things, but I had never written comedy at all.

00:05:23.000 Right, but when you first started writing comedy, it was always that style?

00:05:26.000 It was about 70% like that.

00:05:30.000 It was more like normal-ish.

00:05:35.000 I don't know why it came out like that.

00:05:38.000 I mean...

00:05:42.000 You know, I was influenced by Carl Talking about everyday little things.

00:05:48.000 And that's what I said, oh, I'm going to do that.

00:05:51.000 And then the structure of a joke was from listening to Woody Allen's stand-up albums.

00:05:58.000 But that's just how it came out with those two influences, plus my own mind.

00:06:05.000 Well, that's where it gets interesting, right?

00:06:08.000 Because in your own mind.

00:06:09.000 Because you have a totally different style than anybody else.

00:06:13.000 Well, really anybody else.

00:06:15.000 In the country, but in Boston at that time, there was a lot of guys like Lenny Clark and Steve Sweeney and Don Gavin.

00:06:24.000 There was all these very, very funny comics.

00:06:26.000 Great, great.

00:06:27.000 Every guy you mention is hilarious.

00:06:29.000 Top of the food chain.

00:06:30.000 I tell everybody to this day that those days in the 1980s when I lived in Boston, Those are some of the best comics that have ever lived. 0.52

00:06:38.000 Those guys were murderers.

00:06:40.000 I totally agree with you.

00:06:42.000 They were so good.

00:06:43.000 You would go there at any given night, and you'd watch Sweeney just destroy Nick's comedy stuff. 0.96

00:06:48.000 And he was so fucking good. 0.89

00:06:51.000 His timing was so good. 0.97

00:06:52.000 So much energy. 1.00

00:06:54.000 And there was so much stuff about Boston, and Boston people just fucking loved that shit. 0.99

00:07:00.000 Every one of those guys is different than the other guy. 0.99

00:07:04.000 Mike Donovan, Kenny Rogerson.

00:07:06.000 Kenny Rogerson, so prolific.

00:07:08.000 Mike Donovan, unbelievably hilarious.

00:07:11.000 Yeah, so many good guys.

00:07:13.000 Lenny.

00:07:15.000 Lenny Clark is so funny. 0.99

00:07:17.000 God damn, he's funny. 0.97

00:07:19.000 And just great guys, too. 0.98

00:07:21.000 It was a very unusual group of artists because they're these wild kind of partying guys, but they had real rigid rules about don't be a hack and don't be a thief and don't be a this and do good comedy.

00:07:38.000 And they all just wanted to kill.

00:07:39.000 And there was no real showbiz sort of like pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. 0.93

00:07:46.000 It was really just being a headliner, just killing.

00:07:49.000 That's all they did.

00:07:50.000 And there was no show business there.

00:07:52.000 There were no agents, no producers, no one to say, oh, you should do it.

00:07:56.000 Why are you doing it like that?

00:07:58.000 It was like being on an island.

00:08:00.000 That's how I've described it.

00:08:02.000 When we all started, like the club started in 79, so everyone started maybe one year before, one year.

00:08:09.000 Everyone just started it once, and we were all learning how to do it.

00:08:14.000 It was weird how it lined up.

00:08:16.000 It wasn't like that club was there for 10 years.

00:08:19.000 The club opens, and everyone you just said comes, and it just begins.

00:08:27.000 Like, where was it before?

00:08:29.000 It wasn't anywhere.

00:08:31.000 Like, Jay Leno was there before, but he would play the Playboy Club, and it wasn't actually a comedy club before this comedy connection.

00:08:42.000 Yeah, it's...

00:08:43.000 France Alameda did a great job of capturing it in that documentary when stand-up stood out.

00:08:48.000 Yeah, brilliant.

00:08:48.000 Great, great documentary.

00:08:50.000 I agree.

00:08:50.000 But about what a strange scene it was.

00:08:53.000 And it was arguably the best scene in the country.

00:08:55.000 It might not have been the best scene in terms of, like, everybody getting to know those comedians worldwide...

00:09:01.000 But in terms of the quality of the comedy, it was as good as anywhere in the world.

00:09:06.000 I agree.

00:09:07.000 It's one of those fluke things that just happens.

00:09:10.000 Probably like the music thing in the 60s in the village with the folk musicians and all that.

00:09:17.000 Or in London.

00:09:19.000 All of a sudden, these things come together and then just things happen.

00:09:25.000 I'm so grateful to have started there.

00:09:28.000 Me too.

00:09:29.000 When did you start?

00:09:30.000 I started in 88. 88?

00:09:31.000 I started after the wave.

00:09:33.000 So I started, you know, there was all the evening at the improvs then and stand-up specials on, like, MTV at the half-hour comedy hour.

00:09:42.000 So I started...

00:09:45.000 You know, like, George MacDonald was the host of Open Mic Nights.

00:09:49.000 I loved George.

00:09:50.000 Yeah, and you get to see Teddy Bergeron would stop in, who was just, to this day, one of the best comics I've ever seen.

00:09:55.000 Tremendous, tremendous.

00:09:55.000 So good.

00:09:56.000 So I started, um, when the wave of, like, television comedy was just starting to sort of subside, I kind of caught the last wave, you know, of that kind of, like, the comedy boom was starting to settle down.

00:10:14.000 You know, and there was a lot of mediocre comedy out there.

00:10:17.000 There was a lot of people that were doing what sounded like an impression of what a comedian should sound like.

00:10:23.000 You know, and they were working all over the place.

00:10:27.000 Now, were you living in Massachusetts?

00:10:28.000 Yeah, I was living in Newton.

00:10:30.000 And where did you get it in your head?

00:10:31.000 Why did it go into your head?

00:10:33.000 Like I told you, for me, it was watching The Tonight Show.

00:10:36.000 How did it...

00:10:37.000 The germ, Stuart.

00:10:39.000 Well, definitely watching stand-up on TV. I used to love watching Richard Jenny on The Tonight Show.

00:10:44.000 Oh, he was me.

00:10:45.000 So good.

00:10:46.000 He's incredible.

00:10:47.000 I was driving home one night fairly recently, a few years back, and you know how sometimes like a Bluetooth on your phone just randomly plays a song when you plug it in?

00:10:56.000 It just randomly played this Jenny bit.

00:10:59.000 And I was laughing so hard driving home.

00:11:02.000 And while I was driving, I downloaded the whole album.

00:11:07.000 And I just listened to the album coming home from Orange County.

00:11:11.000 And it was like...

00:11:13.000 I just forgot.

00:11:15.000 I kind of forgot how good he was.

00:11:16.000 I forgot how funny he was and all the tags and bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

00:11:20.000 He just never stopped.

00:11:22.000 He did several specials, stand-up specials.

00:11:25.000 I saw him live in California.

00:11:27.000 He's one of those guys where you laugh out loud.

00:11:31.000 You know, sometimes you can watch a guy and you can think, that's really funny, but you're not really laughing out loud.

00:11:36.000 It's not a judgment.

00:11:38.000 But then there's other guys where both lines up, you know, like Jenny and Kevin Meany.

00:11:44.000 He's just like, oh, my God.

00:11:47.000 But Jenny, I mean, so prolific.

00:11:50.000 He was so prolific.

00:11:52.000 Top guy.

00:11:53.000 He worked at Eastside Comedy Club in Long Island.

00:11:57.000 And I got there on Sunday, and the host and a couple other comics are sitting there.

00:12:01.000 They look depressed.

00:12:02.000 And I'm like, what's going on?

00:12:03.000 And they're like, Jenny did four different hours.

00:12:06.000 He did two different hours, two different shows Friday night.

00:12:09.000 He did one hour for the first show, totally different hour for the second show.

00:12:13.000 Then he does a totally different hour for the first show Saturday.

00:12:17.000 And another totally different hour for the second.

00:12:21.000 I never heard of such a thing.

00:12:22.000 They said he never repeated a joke.

00:12:24.000 He said he did four totally different hours and just murdered. 0.95

00:12:27.000 And they all wanted to kill themselves.

00:12:29.000 Yeah, I would too. 1.00

00:12:31.000 Kill myself, not them. 1.00

00:12:33.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:12:34.000 It's crazy.

00:12:35.000 It's crazy how good he was.

00:12:36.000 So I saw him and I saw Kenison.

00:12:42.000 I was actually introduced to Kenison by a girl I worked with.

00:12:44.000 It was a very funny story. 0.98

00:12:46.000 She had seen Kenison on HBO and then she went and acted out The bit about the homosexual necrophiliacs paying money to have sex with the freshest male corpse. 0.92

00:12:56.000 So this girl who's a friend of mine is lying on her stomach in the parking lot, acting it out. 0.98

00:13:01.000 She's going, oh, oh! 1.00

00:13:02.000 Life keeps fucking in the ass even after you're dead! 1.00

00:13:05.000 It never ends! 1.00

00:13:06.000 It never ends!

00:13:07.000 So she's acting this out in the parking lot. 1.00

00:13:09.000 I'm laughing at her acting it out. 0.71

00:13:11.000 I couldn't even see the bit.

00:13:12.000 Yeah, this is your introduction to Sam Kinison.

00:13:14.000 That's my introduction to Sam Kinison. 1.00

00:13:16.000 It's my friend pretending she's getting fucked in the ass like she's dead. 1.00

00:13:20.000 Oh my god. 1.00

00:13:21.000 That's touching.

00:13:23.000 It was touching.

00:13:24.000 I think about her all the time.

00:13:26.000 I really do think about her all the time because she was a girl I worked with at the Boston Athletic Club in South Boston.

00:13:32.000 I was a trainer there, and she was like this, she was very funny.

00:13:36.000 She was like this big volleyball player girl. 1.00

00:13:40.000 She was like a big athlete, strong girl. 1.00

00:13:42.000 So seeing her lying on the ground going, oh, oh, life keeps fucking the ass even after your dad. 1.00

00:13:48.000 It never ends. 1.00

00:13:49.000 Was there anyone walking by?

00:13:52.000 No, luckily, no. 0.99

00:13:53.000 She wouldn't give a fuck, though. 1.00

00:13:55.000 She could have been a cop. 1.00

00:13:56.000 She was very funny.

00:13:58.000 She was very funny.

00:13:59.000 There's a lot of people like that that you meet that are like, God, that guy could have been in a comic.

00:14:03.000 You know?

00:14:04.000 A few of those people.

00:14:05.000 So that girl introduced me to Kinnison, arguably.

00:14:08.000 I mean, believe it or not.

00:14:10.000 And then I just...

00:14:13.000 I saw Kinnison for the first time and I was like, oh, that's comedy too?

00:14:17.000 And that was like one of the first times that I thought I could do comedy.

00:14:20.000 I was like, maybe I got this wrong.

00:14:24.000 I thought comedy was like Jerry Seinfeld, Richard Pryor, polished, it's all done, and like, you can't do that.

00:14:32.000 You don't know what you're doing.

00:14:33.000 I see a little Kinnison in you.

00:14:35.000 Yeah.

00:14:37.000 Oh, definitely influence.

00:14:38.000 Like a sprinkle.

00:14:39.000 Kinnison, Hicks, Pryor, all of them.

00:14:42.000 Lenny Bruce.

00:14:43.000 So I saw an open mic night.

00:14:46.000 And once I saw an open mic night, that gave me the confidence. 0.97

00:14:49.000 Because I was like, oh, okay, everybody sucks in the beginning.

00:14:53.000 Because, you know, you see someone.

00:14:55.000 On my open mic night, the first time I went, when I did my show, afterwards, Teddy did a set.

00:15:00.000 So Teddy Bergeron went up and just showed everybody how it's done.

00:15:04.000 And for people who don't know, Teddy Bergeron, he was so smooth and so relaxed.

00:15:10.000 And he had this command of the audience and the stage with his presence and his performance.

00:15:16.000 I just been thinking, I can never do that.

00:15:19.000 How am I going to do that?

00:15:20.000 The guy's so advanced.

00:15:21.000 He's so good.

00:15:23.000 So that's how I got started.

00:15:26.000 And I got started by friends.

00:15:28.000 Friends talking me into doing it.

00:15:29.000 Oh, they said, why don't you try it?

00:15:32.000 Yeah.

00:15:32.000 Like, they pushed you, like, got you to go, like?

00:15:37.000 Yeah, it was my friend Steve, who I'm still one of my best friends to this day.

00:15:42.000 We were hanging out, and he was just like, I think you should be a comedian.

00:15:46.000 It was like when I was teaching martial arts, actually.

00:15:48.000 So I was like...

00:15:49.000 Making them laugh.

00:15:51.000 I'd make my friends laugh when we'd go fight in tournaments, and I'd make everybody laugh before we're about to spar, because it was like everybody was real nervous, you know?

00:15:58.000 So for me, it was a nice opportunity to get attention and to cut the tension, you know?

00:16:05.000 Yeah, that's how I got started.

00:16:06.000 But I think a lot of, you know, just because someone's funny hanging out doesn't mean they could do that.

00:16:14.000 I mean, you obviously have done it, but the big difference is, like, if you're in a bar with someone and the TV's on, there's a lot happening going by.

00:16:26.000 The waitress goes by, someone drops something, someone says something about that, something's on the TV, something goes by.

00:16:33.000 A truck goes by.

00:16:34.000 There's all these things.

00:16:35.000 But when you go on the stage, there's nothing happening.

00:16:38.000 So just because you can do that with your friends doesn't really mean then you could go do that.

00:16:44.000 Because when you walk out, there's nothing.

00:16:46.000 Right.

00:16:47.000 It doesn't mean that you can do it, but if you can't do that with your friends...

00:16:52.000 Oh yeah, definitely.

00:16:53.000 If you don't have that, no.

00:16:55.000 You're either funny or you're not funny.

00:16:57.000 And if you can be funny with your friends, it's just a matter of like, how can I figure out how to be funny in front of everybody else?

00:17:05.000 Yeah, that's where it's tricky.

00:17:07.000 And to me, the most interesting thing about the art form is that no one can tell you how to do it.

00:17:13.000 You do it very different than I do it, and we both do it very different than Seinfeld does it, and Seinfeld does it different than Louie Anderson did it.

00:17:20.000 It's like everybody's got their own little weird way to do stand-up, and you kind of have to figure that out on your own.

00:17:26.000 It's like a fingerprint.

00:17:28.000 Everyone's mind is like a fingerprint.

00:17:29.000 You have your own fingerprint, and then you've got to figure it out.

00:17:33.000 And also, if you look at art forms that are very popular, like stand-up is obviously a very popular art form.

00:17:39.000 People love to go see it.

00:17:40.000 There's no real courses on how to do it.

00:17:43.000 There's no real structure.

00:17:46.000 Everything else, whether it's music, songwriting, literature, fiction, nonfiction, there's all teaching.

00:17:54.000 People teach people how to do it.

00:17:56.000 People who've done it already, they teach you how to set up your stories.

00:18:01.000 There's ways to learn almost every other art form.

00:18:06.000 But even acting.

00:18:07.000 They teach acting.

00:18:08.000 You can't really teach stand-up.

00:18:10.000 You gotta practice it in front of people.

00:18:12.000 You can kind of take classes.

00:18:14.000 The classes, the best thing the classes do is they get you on stage.

00:18:18.000 Yeah, I've always...

00:18:19.000 Years after I was doing it, I thought back that you are your own teacher and student at the same time.

00:18:26.000 You're standing on the stage.

00:18:27.000 You don't think of it like that because you're just trying to do it.

00:18:30.000 But in hindsight, and you can only learn from doing it over and over and over and over.

00:18:36.000 Your mind is soaking up like, oh, even mistakes at work.

00:18:40.000 Oh, oh, oh.

00:18:41.000 Like you soak everything.

00:18:43.000 You need every second that works.

00:18:46.000 Oh, that doesn't...

00:18:46.000 Oh, oh, oh.

00:18:49.000 And we tape them, audio tape them, the beginning sets.

00:18:53.000 Because it's happened so fast.

00:18:54.000 It's like a car accident.

00:18:56.000 The next thing you know, the thing is, oh, what?

00:18:58.000 And then you can, like, oh, because some of it went better than you thought.

00:19:02.000 Some of it didn't go as good.

00:19:05.000 Your writing process must be...

00:19:08.000 You have a very difficult style to write for, I would imagine.

00:19:13.000 Because your style is non sequiturs and a lot of it's very absurd.

00:19:20.000 Is it hard to...

00:19:23.000 When you write, do you sit in front of a computer?

00:19:25.000 Do you just come up with ideas as you're walking around?

00:19:27.000 What's your process?

00:19:30.000 In the beginning, I would sit down and look at the paper, like look for a word to jazz my mind or look for something.

00:19:37.000 And I would try to find jokes on purpose in the first six months.

00:19:44.000 And then after that, like I had this thing once, I was looking through the paper and it was an advertisement for electrolysis.

00:19:53.000 And I thought, what an interesting word.

00:19:55.000 Just the sound of the word, what it means, both things. 0.58

00:19:59.000 What the hell? 0.98

00:20:00.000 What the hell? 0.98

00:20:01.000 So I made a note of that. 0.67

00:20:02.000 And then, I don't know, my mind.

00:20:05.000 Because your subconscious is like a factory.

00:20:07.000 It's working when you don't even know that it is.

00:20:09.000 You're minding your own business.

00:20:11.000 You're in line doing something.

00:20:13.000 This just in.

00:20:14.000 Yeah.

00:20:17.000 And what my mind did with that was I had this thing about living in an apartment building where they allowed pets and I had a pony.

00:20:27.000 I had a Shetland pony named Nicky.

00:20:30.000 And he was once involved in a bizarre electrolysis accident.

00:20:36.000 All the hair was removed except for the tail.

00:20:38.000 Now I rent him out to Hare Krishna family picnics. 1.00

00:20:45.000 And that whole thing came because I saw the word electrolysis.

00:20:49.000 So I would try to find things on purpose, but then after a while, I didn't, my mind was, I would just notice things, because I think comedy, all art is based on noticing what's around you.

00:21:02.000 And I would, my mind, like, I drew a lot.

00:21:05.000 I know that you used to draw, too.

00:21:07.000 I would draw realistically in high school and stuff, and like, if you were going to draw this cup and this There's the two shapes, and then you notice, if you're trying to draw it real, this shape, this shape, and then there's the shape that's in between.

00:21:23.000 That's also a shape, which helps you get it accurate.

00:21:28.000 So you don't really notice that shape unless you were trying to draw it.

00:21:33.000 So I think that that exercised my mind of noticing Then later on, doing the comedy, I was already noticing, I think was noticing just some people were very aware of what's around.

00:21:47.000 And you know, like in the tower at the airport where the radar goes like this, it goes like this.

00:21:53.000 And then there's the little beeps of the planes, like those are the planes.

00:21:58.000 So I think my mind got like...

00:22:01.000 Scanning like that, subconscious.

00:22:04.000 I don't walk down the street thinking I need another joke.

00:22:07.000 I'm going to go walk down that street.

00:22:09.000 I'm just going around my day just doing it.

00:22:13.000 But the thing is going...

00:22:14.000 And then it'll see a word.

00:22:18.000 It's like...

00:22:20.000 Oh, oh, okay.

00:22:24.000 And then, oh, and then, like, write it down.

00:22:27.000 And I think of the show, the wording comes pretty fast, like, in a minute.

00:22:33.000 It's like, because in my mind, it can only be one way it can be written.

00:22:39.000 And then I just would write it down and then go on with what I was doing.

00:22:44.000 But the noticing never stops.

00:22:46.000 Don't you think what you do is you're reacting, right?

00:22:50.000 You're talking about the world, but you have to really see the world.

00:22:55.000 Yeah, you have to really see the world.

00:22:57.000 And I do a real similar thing, where if there's a certain subject that I'm working on, All throughout the day, I'm thinking about that subject.

00:23:06.000 If there's a new bit, it's just bouncing around in my head like, what is going on with that?

00:23:13.000 Why do we accept that?

00:23:14.000 Why is that so weird?

00:23:16.000 It's just always playing in the background.

00:23:18.000 My mind is trying to sort it out.

00:23:21.000 My mind is trying to figure out what my angle is.

00:23:24.000 And then sometimes I'll just take it on stage and just roll it out and go, let's see where this goes.

00:23:30.000 Without it all figured out.

00:23:31.000 Without it all figured out.

00:23:32.000 I'll just do it in between bits that are real.

00:23:34.000 So I'll do a bit that's good, like it's a solid bit, and then I'll work in that thing and I'll just go, let's see where this goes.

00:23:42.000 Under pressure, after a bit that kills, You get stuck in this spot.

00:23:46.000 There's something in there.

00:23:47.000 Where is it?

00:23:49.000 I have little destinations that I'd like to get to.

00:23:52.000 I'd like to talk about this part of it.

00:23:54.000 I'd like to talk about that part of it.

00:23:55.000 But let me just see.

00:23:57.000 I think because you're in front of the audience, everything's heightened.

00:24:00.000 So there's a pressure there.

00:24:01.000 So your mind is kicked into another intensity than if you were just at a red light.

00:24:07.000 So you're trying to survive, meaning get the You don't want a minute of nothing.

00:24:13.000 So your brain, like, you're turning up the knobs.

00:24:17.000 Like, we've got to figure this out.

00:24:19.000 Right, with all those eyes on you.

00:24:21.000 Like, there's something in there.

00:24:22.000 I know it's in there. 0.98

00:24:23.000 Let me fucking find it. 0.98

00:24:25.000 You know, but people kind of know the process now, so people enjoy seeing that. 0.96

00:24:30.000 I've talked to people, like guests that have come back, and they said, you know, that bit, I saw that bit six months ago, and now it's like totally different.

00:24:38.000 It's amazing, like you figured out this and that, and yeah, yeah, it's like a process.

00:24:43.000 So the fact that fans can come and check out the process, Yes.

00:25:00.000 Gross.

00:25:04.000 I'll stare at my notes when I get home.

00:25:06.000 I'm just trying to think, like, am I missing something?

00:25:09.000 There's another angle?

00:25:10.000 Is there another way I could...

00:25:12.000 How would another person approach this?

00:25:14.000 A person who didn't have this structure already set up for this bit.

00:25:17.000 Maybe someone will look at it differently.

00:25:18.000 Maybe the ending should be the beginning.

00:25:20.000 Maybe the beginning should be the ending.

00:25:22.000 You know, it's like...

00:25:23.000 You triggered things.

00:25:25.000 It was amazing.

00:25:26.000 No, thank you.

00:25:26.000 Thank you.

00:25:28.000 Just, you can't see anything coming.

00:25:32.000 And the connections, it's like, it's all completely logical.

00:25:38.000 Oh, yes.

00:25:39.000 Oh.

00:25:39.000 You know?

00:25:40.000 And it's so intense, too.

00:25:42.000 You have this intense presence, like a force.

00:25:49.000 It's like going on a mental ride, a mental rollercoaster.

00:25:54.000 You know?

00:25:55.000 Yeah.

00:25:56.000 Really amazing, I think.

00:25:59.000 Thank you.

00:25:59.000 It just...

00:26:00.000 Oh, you had a thing.

00:26:04.000 Oh, when you were talking to those female comedians the other day. 0.99

00:26:09.000 Kim and Sarah?

00:26:10.000 Yeah, but no, it was in your act, I think.

00:26:12.000 It was about the guy... 1.00

00:26:13.000 Oh, shit. 1.00

00:26:18.000 The oil guy, the guys with the money in Texas and they started... 1.00

00:26:22.000 Oh, Bucky's.

00:26:24.000 Bucky's.

00:26:26.000 Bucky's is like the craziest gas station ever.

00:26:30.000 Is that a real place?

00:26:32.000 It's a real place?

00:26:32.000 You should go.

00:26:34.000 It's amazing.

00:26:36.000 It's not a chain, is it?

00:26:37.000 Oh, it's a chain.

00:26:38.000 And it's called Buc-ee's? 0.64

00:26:39.000 Yeah, B-U-C-C-E-E-S. Buc-ee's. 1.00

00:26:43.000 That's Buc-ee's. 1.00

00:26:44.000 It's the biggest gas station you've ever seen.

00:26:46.000 It literally doesn't even make sense.

00:26:48.000 That's not even the biggest one.

00:26:49.000 Yeah, that's only like even half of it.

00:26:50.000 That's a small one.

00:26:52.000 That's a little Buc-ee's because that's the Buc-ee's car wash and then there's like this Buc-ee's gigantic store.

00:26:58.000 Is it only in Texas?

00:27:00.000 I don't know.

00:27:01.000 I don't know.

00:27:03.000 It's definitely a big Texas thing.

00:27:05.000 It's like a Walmart, like a huge Walmart attached to a gas station.

00:27:10.000 They sell everything in there. 1.00

00:27:11.000 It's fucking nuts. 1.00

00:27:14.000 It's amazing. 1.00

00:27:15.000 Look at that thing. 0.92

00:27:15.000 Look at the size of it. 0.92

00:27:16.000 Look at the size of that place.

00:27:17.000 Looks like an airport with no planes.

00:27:19.000 Like the planes would be at, you know, the gates are gone. 0.98

00:27:23.000 Yeah, they're nuts.

00:27:25.000 And they're like that everywhere you go. 1.00

00:27:26.000 Everywhere you find a Buc-ee's, they're fucking gigantic. 1.00

00:27:30.000 A chain of buckies. 0.98

00:27:32.000 I thought for certain you would say, no, it's not a chain.

00:27:37.000 It doesn't sound like a chain.

00:27:39.000 It sounds like some guys at night going, let's call it buckies. 0.99

00:27:44.000 We can't do that.

00:27:47.000 Yeah, some guys have got high on cocaine and built the ultimate gas station.

00:27:50.000 It's the nuttiest place ever.

00:27:53.000 But it's a very Texas place. 0.53

00:27:55.000 Because Texas is a strange place.

00:27:58.000 How so?

00:27:59.000 Well, people here are very friendly.

00:28:01.000 They're very nice.

00:28:02.000 But they're also very tough.

00:28:03.000 And they're very progressive in Austin.

00:28:07.000 But not crazy like they are in California or they are in New York, where they're like cult members of this rabid liberal tribe.

00:28:15.000 So it's an interesting balance.

00:28:17.000 The people coming from the country and the people stopped on the East Coast and other people went the whole way.

00:28:24.000 And the other people said, oh, just stay here.

00:28:26.000 We're staying here. 1.00

00:28:27.000 We're going to stay here and fuck. 1.00

00:28:30.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:28:31.000 Well, that was the other thing in my act about Texas, and it's a true story.

00:28:34.000 It's a true fact.

00:28:35.000 There's more tigers in captivity in Texas.

00:28:38.000 That's what it was.

00:28:39.000 Tiger world.

00:28:40.000 Tiger world.

00:28:41.000 Yeah, that's it.

00:28:42.000 A big oil guy, right?

00:28:43.000 He wanted more tigers than the other guy?

00:28:45.000 Yes, that's it.

00:28:46.000 Yeah.

00:28:47.000 Yeah.

00:28:48.000 Because there's more tigers in people's yards in Texas than in the entire wild of the world.

00:28:55.000 More tigers in private collections in people's yards.

00:29:01.000 And it's true, and that's true.

00:29:04.000 Oh, it's 100% true.

00:29:05.000 I've been to some of these places.

00:29:07.000 I've been to some of these crazy ranches that they have.

00:29:12.000 Like, Texas wildlife laws are very different than anywhere else I've ever been to.

00:29:17.000 And the people who own the property own all the animals.

00:29:22.000 It's different than, like, wildlife in any other...

00:29:25.000 Like, say if you live in Montana, and you own a ranch in Montana...

00:29:31.000 You can get landowner tags for that ranch.

00:29:35.000 That means like, so you, say if you own like 6,000 acres in Montana, you and your friends and some family members, you could get license to hunt on that property.

00:29:45.000 But you're only allowed to hunt a certain amount of animals.

00:29:48.000 There's a certain season.

00:29:49.000 It's like very specific.

00:29:51.000 It starts at one time.

00:29:52.000 It ends at one time.

00:29:53.000 And, you know, you go to jail if you violate those things.

00:29:56.000 In Texas, as long as the animal's not from Texas, you own it. 0.99

00:30:02.000 So, like, zebras, lions, tigers, there's fucking stray kangaroos. 0.99

00:30:10.000 Like, kangaroos get out. 1.00

00:30:12.000 My wife saw a fucking zebra. 1.00

00:30:14.000 She was driving, and she's like, I saw a zebra. 1.00

00:30:17.000 There was a zebra on the side of the road.

00:30:21.000 Somebody had a zebra and it just got out.

00:30:24.000 What if it's a zebra from Texas?

00:30:27.000 I don't think it is.

00:30:27.000 I think it's probably born in Texas.

00:30:29.000 Not that zebra.

00:30:30.000 I mean in general.

00:30:31.000 You're saying you can own the land and then you own the animals if they're not from Texas.

00:30:36.000 As long as the animals are from another country.

00:30:37.000 Why though?

00:30:38.000 It doesn't make any sense.

00:30:39.000 It's not even just...

00:30:40.000 It's so crazy that it doesn't even make sense because they're not even exotic animals.

00:30:46.000 Like, for instance, elk.

00:30:48.000 Elk hunting in most of the country is a difficult tag to acquire.

00:30:53.000 It's a very prized hunt because it's delicious meat.

00:30:57.000 So it's very specific with the regulations.

00:31:00.000 In Texas, you can hunt elk 365 days a year, and you own the elk, because the elk were brought into Texas, even though they used to be in Texas.

00:31:10.000 So they were in Texas, and then in the 1800s, they wiped them out, and then when they reintroduced them, they said, well, you ain't from around here, so we own you.

00:31:19.000 That's a loophole.

00:31:20.000 It's a loophole.

00:31:21.000 A giant elk loophole in Texas.

00:31:24.000 You can do that with some animals.

00:31:25.000 You can't do it with eagles.

00:31:27.000 If you start hunting American eagles here in Texas, then people would crack down like, hey, enough.

00:31:33.000 Enough, Texas.

00:31:34.000 Settle down. 1.00

00:31:35.000 We own these fucking eagles. 1.00

00:31:37.000 We own these eagles. 0.99

00:31:38.000 There's no historical record of eagles in these here parts.

00:31:42.000 It's a weird place.

00:31:44.000 So because of that, there really is more tigers in people's yards.

00:31:48.000 That's just mind-boggling to me.

00:31:51.000 I wonder how the Tigers feel about that.

00:31:54.000 They must be like, this is wrong.

00:31:56.000 Unless there's some wild tycoon out there that's got a crazy setup where he lets a goat loose and the Tiger gets to chase the goat and eat it and kill it.

00:32:07.000 Just for the hell of it?

00:32:09.000 Well, because that's what tigers do. 0.81

00:32:10.000 Because otherwise you're going to...

00:32:12.000 Either it's that, or you kill the meat, and then you bring it to the tiger, which is not as fun for him. 0.98

00:32:19.000 Like, you'd really rather kill it themselves. 0.97

00:32:22.000 That's what they like to do.

00:32:22.000 But if you bring the animals here, then you can own them.

00:32:26.000 Yes.

00:32:26.000 Like, you could bring, like, I mean, how small can you go?

00:32:29.000 Can you go to crickets?

00:32:30.000 Can you bring crickets?

00:32:31.000 Bring worms in? 0.55

00:32:33.000 I think...

00:32:34.000 I own these worms because they're from Spain.

00:32:36.000 Yeah, you could.

00:32:37.000 Like that?

00:32:37.000 But I think that would be an invasive animal.

00:32:40.000 Like, you wouldn't be able to control it.

00:32:41.000 There is problems like bugs and things that come from other and even plants that come from other parts of the world that don't have natural predators and they just run over everybody else and take over an ecosystem.

00:32:52.000 Do you have any animals that you own that you've brought in from other countries?

00:32:57.000 Because I'm really here.

00:32:58.000 I'm representing the authorities.

00:33:00.000 No, I only have a golden retriever.

00:33:03.000 Is he from the United States?

00:33:04.000 He appears to be.

00:33:06.000 He appears to be.

00:33:09.000 I cannot confirm nor deny, but I did get him in California when he was six weeks old, so I'm pretty sure he's from here.

00:33:18.000 But, you know, that's literally, like, the opposite of a tiger.

00:33:21.000 Golden Retriever, they just, like, love sponges.

00:33:26.000 Yeah.

00:33:26.000 But it's very interesting, like, the laws here when it comes to wildlife.

00:33:31.000 Also, most of the land here is private, which is interesting, too.

00:33:35.000 Like, you know, California has a lot of public land, and there's public land that people go hiking on, hunting on, fishing on, and same thing with, like, New York State and a lot of states.

00:33:45.000 Not Texas.

00:33:46.000 Texas is very little public land, like a tiny swath of it where we can go hunting on.

00:33:52.000 So what brought you?

00:33:53.000 Why did you decide to move to Austin?

00:33:56.000 It was during the pandemic.

00:33:58.000 And everything in California was just really going sideways.

00:34:02.000 There was a lot of riots, there was a lot of smash and grabs, and there was a lot of really incompetent government.

00:34:10.000 Where they were telling people that you have to stay alive.

00:34:12.000 We couldn't even do outside shows.

00:34:14.000 You couldn't do outside shows.

00:34:16.000 They wouldn't let the comedy store do shows in the parking lot. 0.66

00:34:19.000 I'm like, this doesn't make any sense.

00:34:21.000 There's these incompetent bureaucrats who are telling people what to do over public health decisions.

00:34:26.000 They had massive control over your life all of a sudden. 0.99

00:34:29.000 The mayor never had any fucking control over who worked and who didn't work. 1.00

00:34:33.000 Now all of a sudden he does, and he's a moron? 1.00

00:34:35.000 I was like, I gotta get out of here. 1.00

00:34:37.000 Delight, Texas.

00:34:38.000 Well, I came to Texas with some friends, because we were all disgruntled with California.

00:34:44.000 And you've been to Texas before?

00:34:45.000 Oh yeah, many, many, many, many, many times.

00:34:47.000 So you've had a feeling for Texas.

00:34:49.000 I love it here.

00:34:50.000 We've always loved it here.

00:34:52.000 And really what I wanted to do, I wanted to move to Utah or Montana.

00:34:57.000 I wanted to move to somewhere where it was these beautiful mountains and woods.

00:35:01.000 I just wanted to...

00:35:01.000 I'm like, I travel so much, I want to go somewhere that's nice and peaceful.

00:35:07.000 Like, I don't want to be in cities anymore. 1.00

00:35:09.000 I was like, this city shit is bullshit. 1.00

00:35:11.000 It's just too much. 1.00

00:35:12.000 That's what I did.

00:35:13.000 Yeah, I mean, we were talking about it last night.

00:35:15.000 I think you're on the right track.

00:35:17.000 It overloads your senses.

00:35:19.000 I don't think it's healthy for you.

00:35:21.000 So, there was that, and then...

00:35:23.000 It was also, this is a great town.

00:35:26.000 I mean, it's an amazing place.

00:35:28.000 There's only a million people there, and then a million on the outskirts.

00:35:31.000 So it's like really mild traffic, very friendly people, like great restaurants, a great artist community.

00:35:39.000 There's a lot of great musicians here.

00:35:41.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:35:42.000 I haven't even noticed in the airport.

00:35:44.000 I've never seen this.

00:35:46.000 There's singers in the airport, like at different gates.

00:35:49.000 Yep, yep.

00:35:50.000 That was wild.

00:35:51.000 And legit barbecue.

00:35:52.000 They got a salt lick at the airport.

00:35:54.000 They do?

00:35:55.000 Yeah, it's very good.

00:35:57.000 We were excited when salt lick was open.

00:36:00.000 Yeah, the food here is incredible.

00:36:01.000 But the big thing was freedom.

00:36:05.000 Freedom was number one.

00:36:06.000 Because when we came here, everybody was like, restaurants were open.

00:36:10.000 People would just walk around doing things.

00:36:13.000 We went out onto Lake Austin.

00:36:15.000 This friend of mine, she became a friend of mine.

00:36:18.000 She was a real estate agent. 0.88

00:36:19.000 And she took us on a tour on a boat.

00:36:22.000 And my young daughters were like, oh my god, we want to live here. 0.99

00:36:26.000 We want to live on the lake.

00:36:28.000 Let's go.

00:36:28.000 And my wife was very hesitant at first, but she took to it like a duck to water when she moved here.

00:36:34.000 Why was she hesitant?

00:36:35.000 It's a big change.

00:36:36.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:36:37.000 All of her friends are in L.A. You know, it's hard. 1.00

00:36:39.000 It's hard just packing up your shit. 1.00

00:36:41.000 Absolutely. 1.00

00:36:41.000 Was there a second runner-up to move to? 1.00

00:36:44.000 Or was this just...

00:36:46.000 Yeah, there was...

00:36:47.000 I liked Park City, Utah.

00:36:50.000 Park City, Utah is real nice, real quiet.

00:36:52.000 But it's also, like, it's a resort town, mostly.

00:36:55.000 So, like, how many people even live there in the summertime?

00:36:58.000 It's like, maybe that'd be too weird.

00:37:00.000 But I really do love it up there.

00:37:01.000 It's so beautiful.

00:37:03.000 And again, I really love Montana, and I really love Colorado.

00:37:07.000 I just was like, LA is too much.

00:37:10.000 And the thing about the government, that was the big one for me. 1.00

00:37:13.000 It's like, you guys are morons. 1.00

00:37:15.000 You can't tell me what to do and what not to do, especially when it comes to health choices, and you're fat and disgusting, and you look like you don't take care of yourself at all, and you guys are giving out mandates on health. 1.00

00:37:27.000 Get the fuck out of here. 1.00

00:37:29.000 I was like, this is just, I gotta get out of here. 0.95

00:37:31.000 And that's when I realized how valuable freedom is.

00:37:35.000 And to not be suppressed by these people that are supposedly acting in the guise of your best interest.

00:37:42.000 I get like that over parking tickets.

00:37:45.000 Seriously, parking tickets infuriate me.

00:37:49.000 For years.

00:37:50.000 What do you mean?

00:37:53.000 You decided you own this piece of the earth and you're gonna charge me?

00:38:01.000 Everything you just said I have boiled down to parking tickets.

00:38:04.000 That drives me crazy, and you know what drives me crazy?

00:38:06.000 Tolls. 1.00

00:38:07.000 When I go to New York, every time I go over those stupid fucking bridges, I get angry. 1.00

00:38:12.000 I'm like, you're making me pay again to drive over the bridge? 1.00

00:38:15.000 You paid for this bridge a thousand times over, you cunts. 0.96

00:38:20.000 Because, like, the whole idea in the beginning was, we gotta fund this bridge, so we need to charge people money to go across the bridge. 1.00

00:38:27.000 But then after a while, the funding's done, you paid for it, you fucks. 0.97

00:38:30.000 But now you're just addicted to charging people. 1.00

00:38:33.000 So you have this massive bottleneck where all these cars just stop dead, because everybody's gotta go to these stupid fucking booths. 0.99

00:38:41.000 And you're just raking in money and just staying incompetent, staying with your terrible money management so everybody's angry at you, and they still just keep paying it every day because there's no way around it. 0.99

00:38:53.000 You gotta go on the bridge, you gotta pay. 0.99

00:38:55.000 Put that stupid thing over your rearview mirror so it clocks you every time and dings your credit card. 1.00

00:39:01.000 Fuck. 1.00

00:39:03.000 It's theft. 1.00

00:39:04.000 They're a bunch of creeps.

00:39:05.000 The whole idea behind it has already been passed.

00:39:09.000 Like, you're supposed to pay for the bridge.

00:39:10.000 You paid for the bridge.

00:39:11.000 Now you're just stealing.

00:39:14.000 Parking spots. 1.00

00:39:15.000 Fuck you. 1.00

00:39:18.000 I overreact to parking spots. 1.00

00:39:20.000 I don't think you overreacted.

00:39:22.000 I think we need to get violent.

00:39:25.000 Do you know Brian Holtzman?

00:39:27.000 Did you see Brian Holtzman last night?

00:39:28.000 Very, very funny guy.

00:39:30.000 And he just got here.

00:39:31.000 He was a really funny guy from L.A. But Brian used to be a meter maid. 1.00

00:39:36.000 That's what he used to do.

00:39:37.000 He was a comic, and he did parking enforcement.

00:39:41.000 Really?

00:39:41.000 Yeah.

00:39:42.000 We were just talking about it last night that I ran into him one night.

00:39:45.000 He must have some stories.

00:39:46.000 Oh, he's got great stories.

00:39:48.000 He's funny.

00:39:49.000 You should see him.

00:39:50.000 He's very funny.

00:39:51.000 You would enjoy him. 0.92

00:39:52.000 He's so crazy. 0.69

00:39:54.000 He does the late night spots. 0.89

00:39:57.000 He likes to close off the show.

00:39:59.000 He was on stage last night till 1.45 in the morning.

00:40:02.000 Wow.

00:40:03.000 He must have gone on after I was gone.

00:40:06.000 Yeah, he went on late.

00:40:07.000 He went on real late.

00:40:08.000 He likes to go on at the very end of the show.

00:40:10.000 He was on till 1.45?

00:40:14.000 Kellen.

00:40:15.000 He's so funny.

00:40:16.000 But it's like that Kinnison spot, you know, like at the store.

00:40:19.000 They used to have late night Kinnison spots.

00:40:21.000 And that's kind of what Holtzman does now.

00:40:23.000 Used to be back in L.A. It was Brody Stevens, too, before he died.

00:40:26.000 He did the same kind of thing.

00:40:28.000 He would do those late spots and it would be so much fun.

00:40:31.000 Did he ever tell you some conflicts he had when enforcing the parking thing?

00:40:35.000 No, I never talked to him about it.

00:40:38.000 I'm sure he had a few.

00:40:40.000 Absolutely.

00:40:41.000 Those poor people, because they're getting the whole thing taken out.

00:40:46.000 They're just trying to do their job.

00:40:48.000 Yeah, they get attacked.

00:40:51.000 Parking meter people, they get attacked.

00:40:53.000 Yeah, it's just, it's another creepy way that the city makes money off you.

00:40:58.000 It really is.

00:40:59.000 You're dead right.

00:41:00.000 It's like, why are you charging money for this little spot?

00:41:02.000 And if it's like the meter is a dollar or whatever it is, but if I don't pay it, it's like 50 bucks?

00:41:09.000 Like, what is that?

00:41:10.000 That doesn't make any sense. 1.00

00:41:11.000 You should charge me a dollar, you piece of shit. 1.00

00:41:14.000 It's like a dollar. 1.00

00:41:14.000 Is it a dollar? 1.00

00:41:15.000 Like, what's with the penalties?

00:41:17.000 What's with all these, like, crazy 50 times over penalties?

00:41:21.000 Like, you just get to say that you get to take my money?

00:41:24.000 If I'm gonna pay for the parking thing, and you know you're gonna make me pay because you give me a ticket, how about give me a ticket for what I should actually be paying?

00:41:32.000 That's what it should be.

00:41:33.000 Well, they're charging you on time and space. 1.00

00:41:35.000 Fuck off. 1.00

00:41:36.000 They're stealing money. 1.00

00:41:37.000 They're stealing money because it's never going to be worth $50.

00:41:40.000 Like, how's it worth $50 to just park in a spot?

00:41:43.000 But you can hit me with a $50 ticket if I don't pay?

00:41:46.000 Like, that's crazy.

00:41:47.000 Like, oh, it's a penalty.

00:41:49.000 Oh, all right.

00:41:50.000 Imagine that in the Wild West.

00:41:52.000 Imagine, like, 1860. That's how people got shot.

00:41:56.000 Your horse is in the wrong spot.

00:41:58.000 I wonder when they started doing that.

00:42:00.000 That's interesting to think about.

00:42:00.000 It had to have started.

00:42:02.000 It had to have started.

00:42:03.000 The first guy.

00:42:05.000 Imagine that meeting.

00:42:06.000 Let's find out.

00:42:07.000 When was the first parking meter?

00:42:08.000 I was thinking about when jaywalking started, it was like you could do it for a long time until there was too many cars.

00:42:16.000 And the cars were like, hey, hey, hey, get these people out of our way.

00:42:19.000 That makes sense because if you look at those old videos of New York City at the turn of the century when people were first having cars and they were cars mixed in with horses, everyone's just kind of always walking across the street.

00:42:29.000 Everywhere.

00:42:30.000 I got a ticket once in jaywalking in Los Angeles in the 80's and it caused me, the penalty was I couldn't, it was with my car, even though I was walking, the penalty went to my car somehow.

00:42:45.000 Like even though the crime was walking across the street and then the ticket went on to my registration, which had nothing to do with what I had done.

00:42:57.000 Oklahoma City.

00:42:58.000 First parking meters in the United States went to Oklahoma City in 1935. The city grew rapidly in the early 20th century.

00:43:05.000 In 1913, the city had only 3,000 drivers, but as people traded in their horses and wagons and bought cars, the numbers grew.

00:43:12.000 By 1930, 5,000 cars were registered within the county.

00:43:16.000 500,000.

00:43:16.000 Oh, 500,000.

00:43:18.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:43:18.000 Oh, my God.

00:43:19.000 That's insane.

00:43:21.000 How did I miss that hundred?

00:43:23.000 Oklahomans who worked downtown arrived early and took the most convenient street parking for themselves, leaving their cars in one spot all day.

00:43:30.000 As a result, shoppers had difficulty finding places to park.

00:43:33.000 Like other towns addressing the problem, Oklahoma City tried to control this by marking tires with chalk.

00:43:38.000 Oh, that's gross.

00:43:40.000 Cars that were left in the same space for too long were ticketed, but that was time intensive and took policemen off their regular beats.

00:43:46.000 A better solution was needed, so they came up with the parking meter.

00:43:50.000 Interesting.

00:43:52.000 Huh.

00:43:53.000 I guess you gotta kinda do something, because people are gross, and they will just park their car and leave it there forever.

00:43:58.000 Oklahoma City, who would've...

00:43:59.000 You could've never known that.

00:44:01.000 Yeah.

00:44:02.000 Thank you, sir.

00:44:06.000 Yeah. 0.96

00:44:09.000 Have you ever fucked around with autonomous cars? 0.96

00:44:11.000 I don't even know. 0.97

00:44:12.000 Do you ever drive a Tesla?

00:44:13.000 I wouldn't.

00:44:14.000 If it drives itself, you mean?

00:44:16.000 Yeah.

00:44:16.000 I wouldn't do that.

00:44:18.000 No?

00:44:18.000 No.

00:44:19.000 I mean, sit there and let it do it.

00:44:20.000 I mean, I might do it as a test, but I don't like the idea of it.

00:44:24.000 Yeah.

00:44:25.000 I love to drive.

00:44:26.000 I love it.

00:44:27.000 I love it.

00:44:29.000 It's one of my favorite things.

00:44:31.000 What do you drive?

00:44:32.000 I drive a Toyota Highlander.

00:44:34.000 Oh, nice.

00:44:35.000 And I drive a 1986 Jeep CJ7. Nice.

00:44:40.000 I love going from point A to point B. There's something about moving.

00:44:45.000 That's good for you, at least for my mind, too.

00:44:48.000 Yeah.

00:44:49.000 It's like there's something unwinding just by moving forward.

00:44:55.000 I used to come up with a lot of my best ideas of driving and no radio on.

00:44:59.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:45:01.000 You gotta shut it off sometimes because you always got radio or phone or something and sometimes you have to have nothing because nothing isn't really nothing.

00:45:14.000 You gotta like...

00:45:17.000 It took me years to realize that doing nothing was really good.

00:45:21.000 It was really doing something, because your mind thinks differently when something's not going in.

00:45:29.000 You can really think more.

00:45:32.000 For a long time I thought, well, I'm not doing anything, and I like it, and I think of things sometimes.

00:45:38.000 Part of me thought, because of society, it's like, well, what do you mean you're doing nothing?

00:45:42.000 It has a negative, you know what I mean?

00:45:45.000 It has a negative thing, and then it took me years to think that, no, this is really something.

00:45:51.000 And then I started looking up nothing.

00:45:53.000 It sounds like a George Carlin.

00:45:54.000 I started looking it up, and it showed the benefit of silence and just, you know.

00:46:01.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:46:03.000 So you would drive with no radio, and you just, your mind?

00:46:07.000 Yeah, especially early in my beginning days of stand-up.

00:46:12.000 I drove a lot, because I delivered newspapers, so I drive in the mornings and deliver my newspapers.

00:46:17.000 And I do it with no radio on a lot of the time.

00:46:19.000 And some of the best ideas that I had came from just doing this manual labor, chucking these newspapers out the window and just driving around, and your mind is free to think about other stuff.

00:46:31.000 Instead of constantly having entertainment and bombarding it, I'd listen to Charles Laquadera, the morning radio, but if I just shut it off and listen to nothing, then I got some of my best ideas.

00:46:44.000 Plus you're doing this mundane thing with the paper, which is almost like the gears in your head, it's doing something, but that allows another part of your brain to go on its own, because you're distracting enough I don't know,

00:47:01.000 it's fascinating how it works.

00:47:02.000 It's focused, but you're not, you're focused on this boring thing, then your mind is playing, because creativity to me is playing.

00:47:11.000 It's like a child with finger paints, you know, just like, it's always been a very playful thing to me.

00:47:19.000 I've never like thought, oh my god, I need more, I need five more minutes.

00:47:24.000 It's just like, Because creating is thinking.

00:47:28.000 You can't stop thinking.

00:47:30.000 If someone said to you, you can't think of any more comedy or you'll be arrested.

00:47:36.000 They wouldn't know if you didn't say it, but you can't stop, right?

00:47:40.000 It's like a machine going down a hill.

00:47:43.000 Well, it's how you look at things. 1.00

00:47:45.000 You're always going to look at something stupid and go, what is that? 1.00

00:47:48.000 How is that real? 1.00

00:47:49.000 Yeah, why is that like that?

00:47:51.000 How are we accepting that?

00:47:52.000 Because the world is, like, so chaos.

00:47:55.000 It's chaos.

00:47:56.000 And then people have come up...

00:47:58.000 Civilization, on one hand, it's good. 0.74

00:48:00.000 They have certain rules to guide it, but there's stuff spilling over the edges.

00:48:07.000 There's like tornadoes.

00:48:09.000 And the comedians are...

00:48:11.000 Pointing out, well, I know you're trying to get it so the world doesn't just blow up, but that rule is insane.

00:48:18.000 And then you can comment about the stuff that's spilling over.

00:48:22.000 Look what's spilling over.

00:48:24.000 Why didn't you do anything?

00:48:26.000 It's like, because we're just trying to go from point A to point B in the day and our entire lives and just get to the end.

00:48:34.000 And it's like a puzzle.

00:48:35.000 It's completely out of control.

00:48:38.000 You're just trying to survive.

00:48:41.000 It's interesting you're talking about your process, too, that you had this process in Boston.

00:48:46.000 And in Boston, out of all the places that I've ever lived, they appreciate hard work and work ethic more than any place I've ever lived.

00:48:56.000 And there's something about, like, they discourage lazy people.

00:49:00.000 They do not like lazy people.

00:49:01.000 Like, it is a thing growing up there where people work hard. 1.00

00:49:05.000 You gotta shovel your fucking driveway to go to work. 1.00

00:49:09.000 The shoveling the driveway thing is big, because there's so much goddamn snow. 1.00

00:49:12.000 Like, you have to get up in the morning. 0.98

00:49:15.000 You gotta do the work.

00:49:16.000 You gotta go to work.

00:49:17.000 So if you're some guy just sitting on the couch, I'm just waiting for ideas to come to me. 1.00

00:49:22.000 They'd be like, fuck you, Steven! 1.00

00:49:24.000 Go to work! 1.00

00:49:25.000 No, that wasn't growing up.

00:49:27.000 No, no, no.

00:49:28.000 I don't think growing up.

00:49:28.000 He has a successful comic.

00:49:30.000 He doesn't even...

00:49:31.000 He just wanders around the yard talking himself.

00:49:41.000 You know?

00:49:42.000 Get a job.

00:49:43.000 Get a job.

00:49:44.000 What are you doing, Steven? 1.00

00:49:45.000 Get a fucking job, you lazy slob. 1.00

00:49:49.000 What are you doing? 1.00

00:49:50.000 Talking to yourself?

00:49:51.000 You're convincing yourself you're working hard? 1.00

00:49:53.000 Get the fuck out of here. 0.98

00:49:55.000 But that's another thing. 0.99

00:49:57.000 There is that.

00:49:58.000 There is that physical, physical, physical.

00:50:00.000 It took me years to realize that thinking is doing something too.

00:50:06.000 Because what you just described is...

00:50:08.000 So burned into you.

00:50:10.000 It's like, well, wait a minute.

00:50:12.000 I'm doing this.

00:50:14.000 It'd be one thing if you were not shoveling the driveway and not thinking of anything.

00:50:21.000 Because of that ethic that you described, thinking is not like...

00:50:28.000 I think it's almost abstract, even though it isn't.

00:50:31.000 You can't see someone thinking, but you can see the guy shoveling the driveway.

00:50:35.000 So that guy looks like he's doing something, and that guy doesn't look like he's doing anything.

00:50:39.000 But that guy just wrote two pages of something.

00:50:43.000 Just wandering around in his yard, staring at the trees.

00:50:47.000 Yeah.

00:50:47.000 Talking to himself.

00:50:49.000 I think it's only people who do creative stuff kind of appreciate that you really do have to have that time just thinking.

00:50:57.000 Because ideas, they just, they're out there, and if you don't go looking for them, they don't come into your head.

00:51:02.000 So if you spend time just too involved in stuff where you've got to be very aware and paying attention and doing this and doing that, like...

00:51:10.000 You don't have any boredom.

00:51:12.000 You don't have any, like, just flatness.

00:51:13.000 Yes, boredom has a negative thing where it's on a notion to it, too, because boredom, that's where the stuff comes.

00:51:21.000 Like, sometimes if I have to, everyone, everyone in there, every day, like, I have to go here, I've got to buy this, I've got to do this, I've got to call this guy, I've got to do this email, I've got to go, then I have to go there because the car needs this, and all of that, and then it's like, it's like,

00:51:36.000 I can't wait to just sit there.

00:51:40.000 Yeah.

00:51:41.000 Without doing these tasks.

00:51:43.000 Because if you're doing all these tasks, you can't think of anything other than the tasks.

00:51:48.000 Right.

00:51:48.000 You're caught in a loop.

00:51:49.000 Yeah.

00:51:50.000 And people, you know, I just like to think.

00:51:54.000 But you have to do that stuff.

00:51:55.000 If you didn't do anything, you just pile up and your house is on fire.

00:52:00.000 I'll put it out next week.

00:52:02.000 I gotta write a joke.

00:52:04.000 I'm thinking about walnuts right now.

00:52:06.000 A lot of guys, like writers, authors in particular, they like to write and then they go for walks.

00:52:12.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:52:13.000 And so they have all the writing of the day done, like say if they commit to a certain amount of pages or a certain amount of letters that they write.

00:52:21.000 So they write all those words and then they go for a walk.

00:52:24.000 And then you think about what you wrote.

00:52:26.000 And then ideas will come to you as you're walking around just thinking about what you wrote.

00:52:30.000 Like a lot of guys, either they talk into their phone or they have like a little tape recorder and they just talk into it every now and again while they're walking.

00:52:39.000 Or even Einstein, when he couldn't figure something out, he'd play his violin, or he'd go for a walk.

00:52:45.000 Imagine seeing Einstein walk, what the hell, get back in the office!

00:52:50.000 And he figures out this giant thing, because he went for a walk.

00:52:54.000 He knew.

00:52:55.000 He knew.

00:52:57.000 Yeah.

00:52:57.000 It's just we have to separate the difference between lazy and a different effective strategy for engaging your mind.

00:53:06.000 Because we think of walking and just hanging out as being lazy.

00:53:10.000 But for a creative person, like...

00:53:12.000 One of the things that I think is really important for comics and I guess probably for anybody creative is to do things.

00:53:18.000 Like, you can't just do shows.

00:53:20.000 No, you have to have real experiences.

00:53:23.000 Yes.

00:53:24.000 You have to go out and live life.

00:53:26.000 Go out and go visit museums.

00:53:28.000 Go travel places.

00:53:30.000 Go hang out with friends in other states.

00:53:32.000 Go do stuff.

00:53:33.000 You gotta do stuff.

00:53:34.000 Because if you don't do stuff, your field of references becomes very small.

00:53:38.000 Yes, you'd just be doing stuff about clubs and your house.

00:53:43.000 And air travel.

00:53:44.000 Yeah, air travel.

00:53:45.000 I have several museum jokes by accident.

00:53:49.000 LAUGHTER By accident.

00:53:51.000 Well, I mean, I went to the museum.

00:53:53.000 I didn't go to get some jokes.

00:53:55.000 I'd see the woman's name for the ladies. 1.00

00:53:58.000 Oh, that must be an exhibit.

00:54:01.000 Or where they have the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums.

00:54:05.000 A museum who had all the heads and arms.

00:54:07.000 That's because I went to a museum.

00:54:10.000 Or I exercise.

00:54:12.000 I'm a bike rider like an hour a day in the spring and summer on a stationary bike in the winter every day, 30 minutes.

00:54:22.000 I'm addicted to that.

00:54:24.000 And that's like a weird drug that makes you more relaxed and energetic at the same time.

00:54:31.000 And that affects your thinking, too, somehow.

00:54:36.000 It's like it's all...

00:54:37.000 I mean, I do it to feel good, but I like how it affects my mind also.

00:54:43.000 Then you add coffee, and then you're out of your mind.

00:54:48.000 I love cardio before shows.

00:54:51.000 Oh, you do?

00:54:51.000 Yeah, I do too.

00:54:52.000 If I could do like an hour of cardio before a show that night, I'm always so loose and relaxed.

00:54:57.000 Yeah, you're like, oh.

00:54:59.000 Yeah, like, hey, everything's fine.

00:55:01.000 Big smile on my face.

00:55:02.000 Yeah.

00:55:03.000 I was out to dinner with my wife once, and I had just a giant smile on my face. 1.00

00:55:06.000 I was just like, what the fuck are you doing? 0.99

00:55:08.000 What's so funny? 0.99

00:55:09.000 I did cardio today.

00:55:11.000 I feel great.

00:55:13.000 It's just like it rings out all the tension in your body.

00:55:16.000 It just leaves you free.

00:55:18.000 I have to do it.

00:55:19.000 I love doing it.

00:55:20.000 Some people look at it like as a task.

00:55:23.000 I look forward to doing it.

00:55:25.000 That's good.

00:55:26.000 If you can look forward to it, it's way better.

00:55:28.000 Because when you think of it as a task, then you put off doing it.

00:55:32.000 And you procrastinate or you dread it.

00:55:35.000 Instead of just saying, this is what I love to do.

00:55:37.000 I'm going to go do this thing I love to do.

00:55:39.000 It's just hard for some people to think of exertion as being something they enjoy.

00:55:45.000 For most people, exertion is work.

00:55:47.000 And I'm tired of working.

00:55:49.000 I want to just relax.

00:55:50.000 You know, because mostly they're doing work they don't like to do, too.

00:55:55.000 So they have an association in their head.

00:55:58.000 But people who don't like exercising are people who don't exercise.

00:56:03.000 Because they see it as a, like, move those rocks.

00:56:06.000 But people who do it know how positive it is.

00:56:10.000 Yeah.

00:56:11.000 It's everything.

00:56:12.000 Were you doing it when you first started?

00:56:14.000 No, I started doing it about in the early 90s.

00:56:19.000 I lived in Santa Monica.

00:56:20.000 And I had a bike just for no reason.

00:56:24.000 I had a bike.

00:56:25.000 You know the bike path along the ocean there?

00:56:27.000 So one day I went down.

00:56:29.000 I lived three blocks from there.

00:56:30.000 I went down and rode my bike on the bike path just to ride like a kid rides.

00:56:36.000 And I would do it a couple times a week.

00:56:38.000 And then one time I went down and I must have gone longer than before.

00:56:42.000 And I got that rush thing, that endorphin thing, because I must have spent more time on the bike.

00:56:50.000 And I thought, oh my God, this is what I've been hearing about my whole life.

00:56:54.000 I didn't go to get it.

00:56:55.000 I didn't do it.

00:56:56.000 I was like a kid riding a bike around the neighborhood.

00:56:59.000 But when I got that, I thought...

00:57:01.000 I want to get that again.

00:57:03.000 So then I went on purpose to get it again.

00:57:07.000 And now it's been like since 32 years.

00:57:11.000 It's like a drug, like a strike.

00:57:13.000 And it was all just from that couple first bike rides.

00:57:19.000 If you could get Runners High and put it in a tablet.

00:57:23.000 You know how many people would buy it?

00:57:24.000 Yeah, it's amazing.

00:57:25.000 You feel so good.

00:57:26.000 You feel so relaxed.

00:57:28.000 Just like, the world's fine.

00:57:30.000 The world's gonna be great.

00:57:32.000 The sun's out.

00:57:33.000 Yay! 0.99

00:57:34.000 Then I would be in the hotel and I would do 30 minutes before I would go on stage.

00:57:41.000 For years I did that because of the reason you said you walk out.

00:57:46.000 Because for me, the stage is very intense for me.

00:57:50.000 I mean, I might look like I'm walking around and saying this stuff, but it's like a tightrope.

00:57:56.000 And then when you do the exercise, it's just different.

00:58:00.000 Then I switch to walks.

00:58:02.000 Now I go for a walk.

00:58:03.000 I'll be walking around out in the back of the theater going all around.

00:58:07.000 People might see me.

00:58:09.000 They're going into the show.

00:58:10.000 They must be so nervous.

00:58:12.000 I'm not nervous, though.

00:58:13.000 I'm trying to, like, oh, I'm trying to get that floaty thing.

00:58:17.000 And then you walk out, and it's like...

00:58:20.000 It's not as intense.

00:58:22.000 Do you think it's intense?

00:58:24.000 How do you feel about being out there?

00:58:26.000 It's intense.

00:58:26.000 Yeah.

00:58:27.000 Yeah, it's intense.

00:58:28.000 It's dangerous, don't you think?

00:58:30.000 It certainly is.

00:58:31.000 People paid money. 1.00

00:58:31.000 They don't want you to suck. 1.00

00:58:33.000 To me, it's like you are running across a lake of thin ice, and it takes you 85 minutes to get to the other side. 0.99

00:58:40.000 You hear it cracking behind you.

00:58:50.000 And if you care about what you do, it's intense.

00:58:53.000 Especially that live performance in front of many, many people that come to see you.

00:58:58.000 There's a lot going on there.

00:58:59.000 It's a very complicated issue.

00:59:01.000 And it's a lot of fun. 0.99

00:59:02.000 It's a lot of fucking fun. 0.96

00:59:04.000 I've done a lot of different things. 0.97

00:59:06.000 I love doing stand-up.

00:59:09.000 It's one of the most fun things I've ever done.

00:59:10.000 I agree.

00:59:12.000 I love doing it in clubs.

00:59:14.000 You know, I do a lot of big shows, too.

00:59:16.000 But the fun I'm having at the club is the most fun.

00:59:21.000 We were all talking about it last night.

00:59:23.000 We're all sitting around after the show.

00:59:25.000 Because we've all done, like a lot of the guys that come with me on the road, we've done arenas, we've done big theaters, but there's nothing like clubs.

00:59:33.000 It's the most fun thing ever.

00:59:34.000 It's like everyone's just sharing a moment.

00:59:36.000 We're all just having a good time together.

00:59:38.000 I got all these things to talk about, I prepared, I've been doing a lot of sets, so it's gonna be smooth.

00:59:43.000 Have a cocktail, let's have a laugh.

00:59:46.000 And it's fun!

00:59:47.000 It's the most fun thing to do. 0.99

00:59:49.000 Out of all the shit I do, that's the one thing that I don't think I'd ever stop doing that. 0.99

00:59:53.000 Just too much fun. 0.99

00:59:54.000 The audience is a weird thing.

00:59:56.000 Weird and positive.

00:59:57.000 It's like they're your friends, but you don't really know their names.

01:00:01.000 You're hanging out with them.

01:00:03.000 You're hanging out with them.

01:00:05.000 Yeah.

01:00:06.000 You don't know their names, but they know you.

01:00:08.000 And they know you inside and out.

01:00:10.000 Especially because of podcasts.

01:00:12.000 They really know you.

01:00:14.000 Like, they know you know you.

01:00:15.000 They listen to you talk for hours and hours and hours.

01:00:17.000 They know who you are.

01:00:18.000 You can't fake it, you know?

01:00:20.000 And so, they're excited about that, too.

01:00:23.000 It's a weird, like, extra connection that people have to comics now because of podcasts.

01:00:29.000 Yeah, but they're really thinking not on stage, because before it was just what the show would be.

01:00:36.000 Yeah.

01:00:37.000 They also like the fact that sometimes, like, we'll bring up stuff in a podcast, and then I'll write it down, and then that'll become a bit.

01:00:44.000 Like, I'll have something pop into my head, and they'll go, ah, I remember when you first talked about that, and now it's, like, your closing bit, because you figured out how to turn it into this five-minute chunk, you know?

01:00:54.000 How long have you been doing the podcast?

01:00:59.000 14 years?

01:01:00.000 Is it almost 14 years?

01:01:02.000 13 and a half years.

01:01:03.000 Wow.

01:01:03.000 Yeah.

01:01:04.000 Yeah.

01:01:05.000 Amazing.

01:01:06.000 Crazy.

01:01:07.000 That must be one of the first ones that you have here.

01:01:11.000 The first one was Adam Curry.

01:01:14.000 He was number one.

01:01:15.000 He's the podfather.

01:01:17.000 And then Corolla had one when he left radio.

01:01:21.000 And Marc Maron had one.

01:01:22.000 And there was a couple other that I had heard about.

01:01:25.000 But it was Kevin Smith.

01:01:27.000 Kevin Smith had one real early on.

01:01:29.000 But it was a fairly small amount of people.

01:01:35.000 And what drew you to it?

01:01:39.000 Just having fun.

01:01:41.000 What drew me to it was like I used to like to do radio.

01:01:45.000 I used to like to do like Opie and Anthony because it was a bunch of comics hanging around.

01:01:49.000 And you know it was like Jim Norton and Rich Voss. 0.95

01:01:51.000 We would just hang out and talk shit and just laugh. 0.99

01:01:54.000 And it was so much fun. 0.99

01:01:55.000 I would look forward to doing it every time I went to New York.

01:01:57.000 I couldn't wait to do the morning radio.

01:01:59.000 Because I get to hang with these comedians and just laugh.

01:02:01.000 Jim Norton's hilarious.

01:02:02.000 He's the best.

01:02:03.000 I love him.

01:02:04.000 But it was a camaraderie thing.

01:02:07.000 It was a fun thing.

01:02:08.000 We just would always leave there.

01:02:10.000 Ari Shaffir and I would do it together all the time.

01:02:12.000 And we would leave and we'd just be laughing.

01:02:15.000 It was just so much fun.

01:02:17.000 And then the idea came.

01:02:20.000 I'd seen Anthony Cumia from Opie& Anthony.

01:02:22.000 He had his own show that he was doing in his basement online.

01:02:26.000 And Tom Green had his own show online.

01:02:28.000 So I was watching a few other people do things.

01:02:30.000 And I was like, why don't I just try something?

01:02:32.000 Just have a webcam show. 0.98

01:02:35.000 Just do it for the fucking fun of it. 0.99

01:02:38.000 Let's see what happens. 0.99

01:02:39.000 We started doing that.

01:02:41.000 You were doing it with your friend?

01:02:43.000 Yeah, my friend Brian.

01:02:44.000 And then I would bring in comedians like Tom Segura and Joey Diaz and Duncan Trussell and Ari Shafir.

01:02:51.000 And then it just became all of a sudden I have guests and all of a sudden I have scientists and all of a sudden I have authors and psychologists and physicians.

01:02:59.000 And it was weird.

01:03:01.000 It just like slowly became this thing that it is now.

01:03:05.000 You started in Los Angeles?

01:03:07.000 Yeah.

01:03:07.000 Started in my...

01:03:08.000 I just had a spare bedroom that I just like set up.

01:03:11.000 Like how did you...

01:03:12.000 I mean you had the comedians and stuff but then how did it go to like scientists?

01:03:17.000 How did that happen?

01:03:19.000 I started, the podcast became fairly popular in podcasts.

01:03:24.000 I mean, by fairly popular, I mean, you know, thousands of downloads, nothing like it is now.

01:03:28.000 But it was enough so that I could convince people, hey, here's this episode.

01:03:34.000 Would you like to do my podcast?

01:03:36.000 Like, check it out.

01:03:37.000 This is what we do. 1.00

01:03:38.000 And they would do it, like, oh, you guys are silly. 0.99

01:03:39.000 Like, what are you doing? 1.00

01:03:40.000 You're sitting around smoking pot and talking shit about things? 0.99

01:03:42.000 Like, yeah. 0.99

01:03:43.000 Do you want to come?

01:03:44.000 Yes.

01:03:44.000 And a lot of people said yes.

01:03:46.000 Like, Anthony Bourdain, he was an early one, he said yes.

01:03:48.000 Oh, yeah.

01:03:49.000 Graham Hancock.

01:03:50.000 Graham Hancock was, like, the first real one.

01:03:53.000 Because Graham Hancock is a journalist and he specializes in ancient civilizations and the demise of ancient civilizations and that there's evidence that shows That there is likely some sort of a natural catastrophe that took place around 11,800 to 12,000 years ago that wiped out civilization.

01:04:13.000 And all the civilization that we think about, like Babylonia and Mesopotamia, those were probably reboots of an old civilization that was destroyed by asteroid impacts.

01:04:25.000 There's like all this physical evidence.

01:04:27.000 It's called the Younger Dryas Impact Theory.

01:04:30.000 There's core samples they do where they find iridium at around 11,800 years, which is very common in space, very rare on Earth, but there's a large layer of it.

01:04:39.000 And micro-diamonds which indicate impacts from the asteroids.

01:04:44.000 So we probably went through an asteroid shower, and it probably destroyed civilization somewhere around 11,800 years ago.

01:04:52.000 Ended the Ice Age.

01:04:53.000 So Graham Hancock, he has Ancient Catastrophe, which is on Netflix.

01:04:59.000 This whole series on that, where you can follow the evidence, the physical evidence and the archaeological evidence of these ancient civilizations and these ancient construction methods that to this day we still don't understand, like how they move these enormous stones, how they place them,

01:05:14.000 how they even cut them.

01:05:15.000 We don't know what tools they were using.

01:05:16.000 We don't know anything.

01:05:17.000 How did you get him to come on?

01:05:19.000 I was a giant fan of his, and I would always sing his praises when I would do radio shows and stuff.

01:05:24.000 I'd tell people about this book he wrote called Fingerprints of the Gods.

01:05:27.000 An amazing book.

01:05:29.000 It just shows all this evidence of these ancient cultures that just don't exist anymore, including sunken cities off the coast of Japan.

01:05:39.000 There wasn't water there, or there was ground there at one point in time thousands and thousands of years ago, and they think that there was actually a city there, and now it's covered by the ocean.

01:05:49.000 There's a bunch of those that they find out there in the water.

01:05:52.000 There's a lot of indications that there was like really advanced civilization like 12,000, 20,000 years ago.

01:05:59.000 So that guy was like one of the first guests.

01:06:01.000 And you have Neil and DeGrasse.

01:06:02.000 Yeah, I've had him on multiple times.

01:06:04.000 Is he a nice guy?

01:06:04.000 He's a very nice guy.

01:06:05.000 Yeah, he's a very nice guy.

01:06:07.000 He's a sweetheart.

01:06:07.000 Because that stuff fascinates me.

01:06:09.000 Yeah.

01:06:10.000 I can only take so much.

01:06:11.000 I mean, I like to watch the shows, and then my mind, like, you know, my Burlington, Massachusetts mind.

01:06:21.000 Okay, okay, and then...

01:06:24.000 No, no.

01:06:25.000 No more room?

01:06:26.000 No, no, but I'll watch.

01:06:28.000 I'll hear the words.

01:06:29.000 Yeah.

01:06:29.000 I'll listen, but okay.

01:06:31.000 But I love it.

01:06:31.000 I love that stuff.

01:06:33.000 Well, we had Michio Kaku on the other day.

01:06:36.000 He's brilliant.

01:06:37.000 And he was talking about quantum computing.

01:06:39.000 He's really interested.

01:06:41.000 He wrote a book on quantum computing and what a game changer that's going to be when something can...

01:06:47.000 Compute not at a level of like ten times more than we could do now, but like millions and millions of times more.

01:06:53.000 And that it happens simultaneously in different universes.

01:06:57.000 And that they're calculating not just in this universe, but they're calculating simultaneously in multiple universes.

01:07:05.000 And he's telling me this, I'm like, what did you just say? 0.98

01:07:07.000 The fuck does that even mean? 0.98

01:07:09.000 I have to get going. 0.99

01:07:12.000 I'm like, what are you saying, Michio? 0.98

01:07:14.000 That guy is so goddamn smart. 1.00

01:07:17.000 Talking to him, you just realize what an ape you are? 1.00

01:07:20.000 He was building a particle collider in his garage when he was in high school.

01:07:26.000 With miles, and what did he say, like 20 miles of copper pipe?

01:07:31.000 Something crazy like that.

01:07:34.000 Is he from the United States?

01:07:35.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:07:36.000 What town was he building?

01:07:37.000 Where was he?

01:07:38.000 Do you remember?

01:07:40.000 I don't know why I want to...

01:07:41.000 Was it New York?

01:07:42.000 I don't know.

01:07:43.000 Yeah.

01:07:44.000 Genius.

01:07:45.000 But that's like...

01:07:46.000 He was like that as a kid.

01:07:48.000 When I was 17, I was picking my nose. 1.00

01:07:51.000 I was an idiot. 1.00

01:07:52.000 You were right. 1.00

01:07:52.000 22 miles of copper wire. 1.00

01:07:53.000 It says...

01:07:54.000 Why don't I pop this up?

01:07:55.000 Okay.

01:07:55.000 I think San Jose, California.

01:07:57.000 Oh, that's right.

01:07:57.000 Right.

01:07:58.000 That's right.

01:07:58.000 Because he said the heart of Silicon Valley, which is now...

01:08:01.000 Silicon Valley.

01:08:02.000 So just to be able to talk to a guy like that.

01:08:04.000 Yeah, a pleasure, a gift.

01:08:07.000 A pleasure.

01:08:07.000 Just to be in the same room with that guy.

01:08:09.000 I've had the most unexpected education talking to these people.

01:08:13.000 Yeah, amazing.

01:08:14.000 Yeah, it's been, it's very, very, I feel super, super fortunate for that aspect of it because I've learned so much talking to so many different people.

01:08:23.000 And you get all these different perspectives, these heterodox perspectives and alternative perspectives and people that are like very rigid and their ideologies and then people that are like very open-minded and they're just like trying to find the truth.

01:08:35.000 And they're all like mixed in together in this world.

01:08:38.000 And if you can bring them together and have conversations with them, it expands your understanding of how the mind works so much.

01:08:45.000 Like I was only exposed to a certain kind of people before.

01:08:49.000 You know, I was exposed to us like comics.

01:08:52.000 And my martial arts friends.

01:08:54.000 And then, you know, other people that I knew from various walks of life, like whoever I ran into.

01:09:00.000 But I never got a chance to, like, how would you get a chance to sit down with a John Carmack?

01:09:04.000 And it's because you took that, let me say, webcam podcast.

01:09:10.000 Let me try this.

01:09:11.000 Let me try this.

01:09:11.000 Then you cut to Neil deGrasse, he's standing here, and the guy with the, what was the other guy?

01:09:16.000 Michio Kaku.

01:09:17.000 Yeah, you're saying, let me try this, and then, dang, it's like you have just people, the top people, you're sitting across from them.

01:09:25.000 That doesn't happen in real life.

01:09:27.000 It doesn't happen in real life.

01:09:29.000 And then Elon Musk was a big one.

01:09:31.000 That was a huge one.

01:09:32.000 You had him in here, too?

01:09:33.000 Yeah, I got him to smoke weed.

01:09:35.000 In here?

01:09:36.000 Yeah, because we were drinking.

01:09:37.000 It was like we were having a couple of whiskeys and I wanted to loosen him up because he's very intense.

01:09:43.000 I mean his brain is, like you can tell when you're talking to him, his brain is working on like five different things while he's talking.

01:09:50.000 It's like a different kind of thinking.

01:09:53.000 So we were drinking a little bit, loosening up, and then I sparked up a joint and it became a giant issue because he took a hit.

01:10:00.000 Oh, I remember that.

01:10:01.000 And the stock price of Tesla dropped like 6%.

01:10:05.000 It did?

01:10:06.000 Yes.

01:10:07.000 It went back up.

01:10:08.000 I think it went past where it was the next day, but, you know, people panic on those things.

01:10:12.000 It went back up when he wasn't high anymore.

01:10:15.000 Exactly.

01:10:17.000 And then, you know, there was also an issue with Top Secret Clearance.

01:10:23.000 Because even though it's legal in California, we was, where we were, it's not legal federally.

01:10:28.000 Yeah, it's so weird.

01:10:29.000 So here he's involved in this thing that's illegal, and he's also involved in NASA. He's also involved in top-secret rocket programs, you know, because he's got SpaceX.

01:10:39.000 And they're like, hey, motherfucker, what are you doing over there? 0.99

01:10:42.000 Did he smoke in his private life anyway? 1.00

01:10:48.000 You know what?

01:10:49.000 I never asked him.

01:10:49.000 Did you say, hey...

01:10:51.000 Oh, I just sparked it up.

01:10:52.000 I know, but you don't know what his history was.

01:10:55.000 I didn't ask.

01:10:56.000 Yeah, I didn't ask.

01:10:58.000 But we do it all the time.

01:11:00.000 So if we're having a couple of drinks, and I spark up a blunt, I look at Jamie, and I hand it over to him, and I hand it to Elon, and he's like, hmm, okay.

01:11:11.000 So he takes his head of it.

01:11:12.000 It was funny.

01:11:14.000 But it's like, how often do you get a chance to sit across from someone like that for three hours and just talk to them for three hours? 0.95

01:11:23.000 He scares the shit out of me. 0.96

01:11:24.000 He scares the shit out of me when he talks about AI. He's the one, like, out of all the people that have this, like, rosy view of AI, including Michio Kaku, who's brilliant, they have this rosy view of AI, artificial intelligence, and Elon does not. 0.80

01:11:39.000 He does not.

01:11:40.000 He's like, this is the biggest chance of being the demise of civilization, the demise of humans.

01:11:45.000 The biggest chance.

01:11:46.000 Yeah, because if you can't tell it apart, then you won't...

01:11:52.000 You won't know.

01:11:53.000 There's two things.

01:11:55.000 There's one, a bad state getting control of AI before a good state.

01:12:01.000 We try to think of ourselves as good guys.

01:12:03.000 Let's just for the sake of this argument say we're the good guys.

01:12:05.000 So if we're the good guys, we would like to get that AI before China does. 0.81

01:12:09.000 We'd like to get the AI before Russia does, before Iran does. 1.00

01:12:12.000 We don't want people that oppose us having the ultimate control over information and computing.

01:12:19.000 Because it'll probably be such a big game changer that there'll be no more encryption.

01:12:24.000 It'll burn through everything.

01:12:26.000 It'll be able to read passwords.

01:12:27.000 It'll be able to duplicate things.

01:12:30.000 You can do things with artificial intelligence that you can't even imagine could be possible.

01:12:36.000 And it's going to happen in our lifetime.

01:12:38.000 It's going to happen in 10 years, in 20 years.

01:12:40.000 It's going to be an unrecognizable world.

01:12:43.000 I don't like it.

01:12:46.000 I like this, though.

01:12:48.000 It's pretty cool, right?

01:12:49.000 Yeah.

01:12:50.000 Is there a story behind this?

01:12:51.000 Oh, there's an artist.

01:12:52.000 His name's Jack of the Dust.

01:12:53.000 He makes a bunch of cool stuff.

01:12:55.000 They're ceramic.

01:12:56.000 Or what is it?

01:12:57.000 Resin?

01:12:58.000 They're resin sculptures.

01:13:00.000 I always love these Day of the Dead skulls. 0.96

01:13:01.000 They're pretty fucking cool.

01:13:03.000 He made me a few, and I said, I think they would all look cool here. 0.91

01:13:07.000 I just put them all on the table.

01:13:09.000 Is there a reason there's six?

01:13:11.000 Nope.

01:13:12.000 Just a bunch of colors he has.

01:13:14.000 I just thought they're cool.

01:13:16.000 It is cool. 0.99

01:13:17.000 I like to have a bunch of shit laying around. 0.99

01:13:19.000 Yes, I see. 1.00

01:13:20.000 It makes it comfortable.

01:13:21.000 You know?

01:13:23.000 I love the photographs out there of the Indians out there.

01:13:29.000 Oh, that's Greg Overton.

01:13:30.000 Yeah, Greg Overton is this amazing artist.

01:13:33.000 And he's done a bunch of these incredible Native American art pieces.

01:13:39.000 And this area in particular was rich with Native American history because it was a very, very fertile area because of all the lakes and all the rivers and all the wildlife.

01:13:49.000 So there's arrowheads everywhere out here, all over the place.

01:13:53.000 I have a friend who has a ranch, and he's pulled thousands of arrowheads from his ranch.

01:13:59.000 They do these excavations where they know the areas where they hunted a lot.

01:14:04.000 Where there's a lot of wildlife and they dig into the ground and they sift through it.

01:14:10.000 And he finds these incredible points.

01:14:12.000 He's found Clovis points.

01:14:14.000 He's found Comanche arrowheads.

01:14:17.000 It's amazing, amazing stuff.

01:14:19.000 Yeah, tremendous.

01:14:19.000 Do you know that photographer?

01:14:21.000 Has he passed away or what?

01:14:22.000 The artist?

01:14:23.000 The guy that took the big pictures.

01:14:25.000 Oh, the photographs.

01:14:26.000 The photographs are of Quanah Parker.

01:14:30.000 Quanah Parker is the last Comanche chief.

01:14:34.000 So the Comanches were the people that were in control of the plains, in control of Texas, and they were the most fierce tribe, and they were the most difficult to get past.

01:14:44.000 And they were the reason why people couldn't settle this area.

01:14:49.000 It wasn't until the Texas Rangers figured out how to combat them on their own terms.

01:14:54.000 They cold-camped, they never used fires, they dressed like normal civilians, and they kind of lived like Indians. 0.88

01:15:02.000 And they ran around, and that's Quanah Parker. 1.00

01:15:05.000 So, Quanah Parker, his mother, Cynthia Ann Parker, was kidnapped by the Comanche when she was really young.

01:15:13.000 She was nine years old.

01:15:14.000 Her family was murdered in front of her, and they took her in, and she eventually became the wife of the chief, and they had a baby.

01:15:23.000 So, she was white, and she had a half Native American baby, who was Quanah Parker, who was the last Comanche chief.

01:15:31.000 And he was big for a Comanche and just like very, very fierce guy. 0.80

01:15:36.000 That photograph of her sucking, having her kid sucking on her nipple is a very famous photo because she would do that in front of people and they thought that was like so uncivilized. 0.96

01:15:48.000 Just to make them disturb them? 0.98

01:15:50.000 No, just that's how they did it.

01:15:51.000 Where, you know, in the Native American cultures, in the Comanche culture, they would just breastfeed.

01:15:56.000 So she would do that and they took a photo of her doing that because they thought it was like, This is like the evidence that she's not one of them.

01:16:02.000 Oh, I see.

01:16:03.000 She's very primitive. 0.68

01:16:04.000 She's like one of them.

01:16:06.000 She was kidnapped when she was nine years old.

01:16:10.000 I'm a fan of Red Cloud, the Lakota chief.

01:16:13.000 I read this book, In the Heart of Everything.

01:16:18.000 Yes, I read that book.

01:16:19.000 Just amazing.

01:16:19.000 It's a great book.

01:16:21.000 It's a great book.

01:16:22.000 How he gathered all the Indians together. 0.98

01:16:24.000 If I make it one big army, fight the white guys. 0.99

01:16:28.000 Just like... 0.99

01:16:30.000 Yeah.

01:16:31.000 Because that's what it was supposed to be like.

01:16:34.000 Not the wars, but when they had it.

01:16:36.000 When they had this.

01:16:37.000 Yeah.

01:16:38.000 That's...

01:16:39.000 No parking meters.

01:16:41.000 No parking meters.

01:16:42.000 No malls.

01:16:43.000 That was the real version.

01:16:46.000 Well that's the nostalgia that everybody loves so much about Native American culture, the fact that they lived off the land, in the land. 1.00

01:16:53.000 And they did it at the same time where Europe had already experienced the Enlightenment and the Renaissance and there was all this Stuff and cities and all this culture all over the world.

01:17:05.000 It was like sophisticated and art and literature.

01:17:07.000 They didn't even really have art, the Comanches. 0.99

01:17:10.000 Their art was their arrows.

01:17:12.000 Their art was their clothing.

01:17:14.000 Their art was, you know, what they did to live off the land.

01:17:19.000 You know, they just followed the buffalo and lived off of them.

01:17:22.000 That's all they ate.

01:17:23.000 They ate mostly just buffalo.

01:17:25.000 And then all that's happening in Europe, and this is still here, like...

01:17:30.000 Stone Age culture.

01:17:31.000 10,000 years.

01:17:32.000 Yeah.

01:17:33.000 Amazing.

01:17:33.000 And they're making the trains.

01:17:34.000 If you could go back in time and see what that must have been like, my God.

01:17:39.000 How incredible. 0.99

01:17:40.000 To be like one of the Lewis and Clark people, to take that trek across the country, and just experience what it was like before the white man came and fucking put his greasy little palms over everything and built cities. 0.99

01:17:51.000 It would have been too much for me. 0.99

01:17:53.000 I would have cried to death.

01:17:56.000 Where is he?

01:17:57.000 He fell out of the canoe.

01:18:01.000 Hard life.

01:18:02.000 Not good for comics.

01:18:04.000 You know, the Lakotas had a comic.

01:18:06.000 They had a permanent, like, fiction.

01:18:09.000 Really?

01:18:11.000 I never knew that.

01:18:12.000 Yeah, it's called the Heoka. 0.66

01:18:13.000 The Heoka was the sacred clown. 0.79

01:18:15.000 Wow. 1.00

01:18:16.000 The sacred clown, the job that they had in society was to mock things, because anything that could be mocked must be bullshit. 0.99

01:18:24.000 Like, you would peel away the layers of ego and distortion. 0.98

01:18:29.000 Because if you can make fun of things...

01:18:31.000 So the Heioka was allowed to make fun of everybody.

01:18:34.000 Make fun of the chief, make fun of the women, make fun of the warriors. 0.97

01:18:39.000 He made fun of everybody.

01:18:41.000 I never heard of this.

01:18:42.000 Yeah, it was a very important part of their culture.

01:18:44.000 Did the other tribes have that?

01:18:46.000 I don't know.

01:18:47.000 What is it called again?

01:18:48.000 Heyoka.

01:18:49.000 Yeah.

01:18:50.000 It was like he was like a kind of a medicine man.

01:18:52.000 It was like there was a spiritual aspect to it.

01:18:54.000 Heyoka.

01:18:55.000 That'd be a good name for a child.

01:18:56.000 Heyoka.

01:18:57.000 Heyoka.

01:18:58.000 A little bit of cultural appropriation.

01:19:00.000 You can get in trouble for that.

01:19:01.000 Oh.

01:19:03.000 Oh, the Indians. 1.00

01:19:05.000 Oh my god, the Indians. 1.00

01:19:06.000 I say the Indians in my show.

01:19:08.000 I say the word Indian in my show.

01:19:10.000 They say it.

01:19:11.000 It's one of those weird ones, where like some people think Eskimo is a bad term, but some Eskimos prefer that term, depending upon where they are in the country and where they are in the world.

01:19:22.000 It's like a lot of Native Americans, they actually want you to use the term Indian, American Indian.

01:19:28.000 Well, then I say, I wonder if in Cleveland now, little boys are playing Cowboys and Guardians.

01:19:38.000 What are they playing now, right?

01:19:40.000 You can't play Cowboys and Indians anymore.

01:19:42.000 Yeah, Guardians, you know, the name of the Cleveland team.

01:19:45.000 Yeah, they changed it.

01:19:47.000 But the Washington Redskins are still the Redskins, right?

01:19:49.000 No.

01:19:49.000 No?

01:19:50.000 It's done?

01:19:50.000 The Commanders.

01:19:51.000 The Commanders.

01:19:52.000 Oh, right.

01:19:52.000 Is anybody a Chief anymore?

01:19:54.000 Chiefs are still there?

01:19:56.000 Yeah.

01:19:56.000 And then the Seminoles in Florida State, like, they have a deal with the tribe to stay in the Seminoles.

01:20:00.000 Well, the Seminole Nation is the only nation that was never conquered. 1.00

01:20:05.000 They just fucking kept running shit in Florida. 0.99

01:20:08.000 You know, that's why they have all the casinos down there and the Hard Rock and the Seminole Nation is huge in Florida. 1.00

01:20:14.000 I did a book report on those Indians when I was in eighth grade.

01:20:18.000 Oh yeah?

01:20:19.000 Because we went to Florida on vacation and I saw the name all around.

01:20:24.000 I don't remember anything about it though, of course.

01:20:26.000 Well, there's a great book about Cabeza de Vaca called The Land So Strange.

01:20:31.000 Have you ever read that book?

01:20:33.000 No.

01:20:33.000 It's a great book.

01:20:34.000 It's about Cabeza de Vaca when they first came to America and how they made their way from Florida across the country and they're like, everybody died.

01:20:43.000 There's like a couple guys left at the end of the journey.

01:20:45.000 But the stuff that they encountered, the way they had to try to get by, and starving to death, and facing hostile enemies, and just crazy.

01:20:55.000 Crazy being there then, doing that then.

01:20:58.000 We're so lucky.

01:21:00.000 Oh my God.

01:21:00.000 So lucky you just go to Starbucks, get a cup of coffee.

01:21:04.000 Go get a sandwich.

01:21:06.000 It's so easy to get by now.

01:21:10.000 These people almost starved all the time.

01:21:14.000 Even the rain would be different.

01:21:16.000 I mean, experiencing the rain would be a big decision thing.

01:21:20.000 Also, you didn't know when it was coming.

01:21:22.000 You didn't know when it was going to end.

01:21:24.000 You had no idea a hurricane was on the way.

01:21:26.000 You had no idea.

01:21:28.000 It's just like the fate of the gods.

01:21:30.000 But the weather guys, though, even now, like, I mean, my brother is really into the weather.

01:21:36.000 I mean, I love snow.

01:21:38.000 I can't wait for it to snow.

01:21:39.000 I love snow in Massachusetts.

01:21:41.000 But he told me about this weatherman in Brazil years ago.

01:21:45.000 And he predicted these big, giant rains and stuff.

01:21:49.000 Bad weather was supposed to come.

01:21:52.000 And then all these tourists didn't come.

01:21:54.000 And then the weather didn't come.

01:21:56.000 And they put them in jail.

01:21:58.000 They put the weatherman in jail.

01:22:01.000 That's crazy.

01:22:01.000 I think that should happen.

01:22:05.000 Just a row of cells of weathermen from all over the United States. 0.97

01:22:09.000 There's actually an even dumber one that's recent. 0.97

01:22:11.000 And the dumber one was there was some geologists in Italy, I believe. 0.96

01:22:17.000 And they failed to predict an earthquake. 0.99

01:22:19.000 So they were tried.

01:22:22.000 And I want to say they were convicted and then they had a win on appeal.

01:22:26.000 See if you can find that story.

01:22:28.000 But it was insane for all the scientists that actually understand seismology and how those...

01:22:34.000 You can't predict earthquakes.

01:22:36.000 You just...

01:22:37.000 You can't. 1.00

01:22:38.000 And so these morons had decided, hey, it's this fucking guy. 1.00

01:22:41.000 He should have told us. 1.00

01:22:44.000 They tried these guys like they're criminals.

01:22:48.000 And it was real bad for science.

01:22:49.000 It was real bad for seismology and the study of earthquakes because they had given – because of their own ignorance, they had decided these people could figure it out.

01:23:00.000 So they're exonerated.

01:23:01.000 Why Italian earthquake scientists were exonerated?

01:23:04.000 Judge who overturned conviction – yeah, so there was a conviction – say experts use the best available science. 0.99

01:23:12.000 Yeah, you can't fucking predict earthquakes, jackasses. 0.91

01:23:15.000 Six scientists convicted of manslaughter in 2012, so only 11 years ago, for advice they gave ahead of the deadly L'Aquila earthquake were victims of uncertain and fallacious reasoning. 0.98

01:23:29.000 To say the three judges who acquitted the experts and reduced the sentence of a seventh defendant last November in a 389-page document deposited in court on Friday since released to the public, Yeah,

01:23:50.000 there's no way.

01:23:52.000 Other scientists, however, accused the judges of failing to understand modern seismology.

01:23:56.000 What does that mean?

01:23:58.000 Well, the judges definitely didn't understand it because they thought that these people could accurately predict when an earthquake is definitely going to come.

01:24:05.000 That's just not available yet.

01:24:07.000 Imagine telling the guy in the next cell why you're in.

01:24:10.000 Why are you in here?

01:24:11.000 Well, Italy's got goofy courts.

01:24:14.000 Really?

01:24:15.000 I did not know that.

01:24:16.000 Oh, real bad.

01:24:17.000 I had Amanda Knox in here. 0.94

01:24:18.000 Well, not that America doesn't.

01:24:20.000 I mean, one of the things that I do...

01:24:21.000 You had her in here? 1.00

01:24:22.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:24:22.000 She was great.

01:24:23.000 One of the things that I do on a regular basis is I have a very good friend, Josh Dubin, who is a civil rights attorney.

01:24:31.000 And one of the things he does, he used to work with the Innocence Project.

01:24:34.000 Now he does stuff on his own.

01:24:35.000 And his, like, main goal in life is to find people that were wrongly convicted and get them out.

01:24:41.000 And he gets a lot of people out.

01:24:43.000 He's constantly doing it.

01:24:44.000 It's like his main life's work.

01:24:46.000 It's his main passion project.

01:24:48.000 And so we have, we highlight those cases, like, every three months.

01:24:51.000 He comes on and we sit down and we talk.

01:24:54.000 And, you know, he talks about cases, and he'll bring in people.

01:24:58.000 He's brought in several guys who spent 15 years, 20 years in jail for something they didn't do.

01:25:03.000 Wrongfully convicted.

01:25:04.000 He brought them in here?

01:25:05.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:25:05.000 A couple different guys.

01:25:07.000 And it's amazing.

01:25:08.000 Josh is, I mean, he's amazing. 0.99

01:25:11.000 He's a fucking saint. 1.00

01:25:12.000 But you get to realize our court system sucks dick, too. 1.00

01:25:16.000 But Italy's is even worse. 1.00

01:25:18.000 And Amanda Knox got fucking railroaded. 1.00

01:25:20.000 Like, railroaded bad. 0.99

01:25:22.000 And there's a really good Netflix documentary that shows all the stuff that happened.

01:25:27.000 I mean, there was so much DNA evidence that connected to this one guy.

01:25:30.000 Who murdered the girl.

01:25:31.000 He 100% did it.

01:25:32.000 Like, they had handprints, bloody handprints.

01:25:35.000 Really?

01:25:35.000 Yeah.

01:25:35.000 But this fucking, this prosecutor had it in his head from the beginning that she was it.

01:25:42.000 She was it. 1.00

01:25:42.000 He had a stupid idea that it was definitely her, and he didn't want to look at any other evidence. 1.00

01:25:48.000 And he suppressed evidence. 0.99

01:25:49.000 He didn't look at it.

01:25:51.000 He knew that this other guy was probably guilty, but he had already said she was, so he wanted to convict her, and he did it.

01:25:57.000 And he got her locked up.

01:25:58.000 And then she won on appeal.

01:26:00.000 And she finally got out after years in jail.

01:26:02.000 Yes.

01:26:02.000 And then they tried her again.

01:26:04.000 While she was in the United States.

01:26:06.000 Yes.

01:26:06.000 And she was exonerated again.

01:26:09.000 But, I mean, this poor lady. 1.00

01:26:10.000 And she's so interesting. 0.98

01:26:12.000 She's so fucking brilliant. 0.98

01:26:14.000 So smart. 0.96

01:26:15.000 And one of the things that I said to her, I said, do you think you would be the same person if you had not gone through this horrific experience?

01:26:22.000 I would never want you to go through this experience.

01:26:24.000 But because you did...

01:26:26.000 You're this amazing, fascinating person with this, like, very introspective, very open-minded view of things.

01:26:36.000 Like, she's looking at things from all these different angles because her mind was tortured.

01:26:41.000 What was her answer?

01:26:44.000 She definitely would not have wanted to do that, but she definitely realizes she's a different person.

01:26:49.000 Absolutely.

01:26:50.000 She would have to be.

01:26:51.000 An incredible person because of it.

01:26:52.000 Was the guy they got, was he one of the people there?

01:26:55.000 Like, was he from the outside?

01:26:57.000 Wasn't there like four people?

01:26:59.000 The guy who they think did it was a guy who knew the woman and he had been with her. 0.99

01:27:05.000 And he was at that fucking place that night. 0.99

01:27:08.000 Like, he was there. 1.00

01:27:09.000 And he was also a criminal.

01:27:11.000 He had been breaking into people's places and stuff. 0.98

01:27:13.000 They knew that he had a history of doing some fucked up things. 0.80

01:27:16.000 They didn't have a connection previous to this with murder. 0.94

01:27:21.000 And he said he didn't do it.

01:27:22.000 He said he got there and someone was already killing her and he ran away. 1.00

01:27:26.000 A lot of bullshit, ridiculous stories. 1.00

01:27:29.000 And he's in now? 1.00

01:27:30.000 They got him in now?

01:27:31.000 No, I don't.

01:27:32.000 I think they convicted him of something else and I think he went to jail for a certain amount of time and then he got out.

01:27:38.000 I think I got convicted for some other kind of crime.

01:27:41.000 Wasn't it like a break in and entering thing or something like that?

01:27:46.000 But most of the evidence, at least as it's presented in the Netflix documentary and talking to her, seems to point to this one guy that they're pretty sure did it.

01:27:55.000 It was a horrific murder, too.

01:27:57.000 It's not like a normal thing that women do. 1.00

01:28:00.000 It was like a male thing, like a vicious knife murder. 0.54

01:28:05.000 What was she like?

01:28:06.000 What was her vibe like?

01:28:10.000 Like a person who's been through hell.

01:28:11.000 And because that person been through hell, like her mind is just very unusual.

01:28:17.000 I mean, the amount of time that she had to sit and deal with the fact that she was wrongfully convicted in front of the whole world.

01:28:26.000 I think?

01:28:44.000 Who was 20 years old at the time. 0.98

01:28:46.000 She's a kid and she's just over there studying abroad and the next thing you know she's locked up in a jail for something she didn't do and it's in front of the whole fucking world. 0.93

01:28:56.000 And she thinks she's not getting out. 0.98

01:28:57.000 She thinks she's not getting out.

01:28:59.000 Imagine that.

01:29:00.000 Yeah.

01:29:00.000 And also then she gets to be embedded in prison with all these women who have had these horrific lives.

01:29:09.000 Horrific stories of abuse and this life of crime and their whole families filled with crime and chaos and And you get to realize that these are just people just people that just like went down the wrong road And just all of it just didn't line up Just a little tiny fork in the road.

01:29:28.000 Yep the wrong fork and it could happen to anybody wrong circumstances wrong time wrong place you're born in the wrong area and Wrong family, wrong this, wrong that, wrong friends.

01:29:39.000 Bad decision.

01:29:40.000 You get drunk, you do this, you do that.

01:29:42.000 Next thing you know, you're in jail.

01:29:44.000 That's a lot of us.

01:29:45.000 There's so much randomness for the benefit of your life when you're born.

01:29:50.000 Oh, yeah.

01:29:52.000 Where you're born, where you grow up, who your parents are.

01:29:55.000 It's like rolling dice.

01:29:58.000 And if you get a good situation, it's just like rolling so many sets of sevens for years in a row.

01:30:05.000 Sevens.

01:30:06.000 And once you start doing well, it's easier to roll sevens, which is weird.

01:30:11.000 The rich get richer.

01:30:13.000 The fortunate people become more fortunate.

01:30:17.000 A lot of people want to believe in fate.

01:30:21.000 Fate's a beautiful thing to believe in, right?

01:30:23.000 This is all meant to be.

01:30:24.000 It kind of takes away some pressure.

01:30:26.000 But boy, like, mathematically, that doesn't seem likely. 0.98

01:30:31.000 It seems likely there's a lot of just, like, random shits. 0.99

01:30:35.000 Shits. 0.99

01:30:35.000 Like, it's not fate that a baby dies of leukemia. 0.99

01:30:37.000 Is that, like, someone does a plan for the baby to die of leukemia?

01:30:41.000 That doesn't make any sense.

01:30:42.000 Like, when people want to say that, like, you manifest your own reality.

01:30:46.000 Like, do you, though?

01:30:47.000 Because babies get shot in drive-bys. 0.82

01:30:49.000 It does happen.

01:30:50.000 Do you think they're manifesting that?

01:30:52.000 No, that's random.

01:30:53.000 That's, like, chaos.

01:30:55.000 That happens too.

01:30:56.000 Like there's probably a lot of factors that are all simultaneously working together.

01:31:00.000 And the question is, how much is fate a part of that?

01:31:04.000 Is fate, is your mind a part of that?

01:31:07.000 Like how much of it do you actually manifest out of your own mind?

01:31:11.000 How much of your choices change reality itself?

01:31:16.000 There's just so many ways to process what's happening, because if it's all chaotic or maybe some of it isn't, there's just so many versions to look at it.

01:31:27.000 It can't be figured out, really.

01:31:29.000 It's a mixture.

01:31:31.000 I think it's a big mixture.

01:31:32.000 You're trying to figure out answers.

01:31:34.000 Like I said before, it's so chaotic, but your brain is trying to have a right way.

01:31:42.000 And then there's choices you make, right?

01:31:44.000 Like where you decide to move.

01:31:46.000 Like I don't want to live here anymore.

01:31:47.000 I want to move to a different place.

01:31:48.000 Now all of a sudden you're in a new reality.

01:31:51.000 You know?

01:31:52.000 That's an interesting thing to do.

01:31:55.000 So you were in Boston and then you lived in California, but now you're back to Boston.

01:32:00.000 Yeah, in Carlisle, out in the woods, trees near Carlisle.

01:32:05.000 When did you go back?

01:32:06.000 I went back about 22 years ago.

01:32:09.000 Wow.

01:32:10.000 I lived in Burlington, then I went to Middlesex Community College in Bedford, then I went to Emerson College in Boston, then I started doing stand-up, and then I stayed, like, after I got out of...

01:32:23.000 I stayed like five years in Boston, then I went to Hollywood for two years.

01:32:29.000 Emerson's like a performing arts college, right?

01:32:31.000 Yeah, radio, mass communication.

01:32:33.000 What did you go for?

01:32:34.000 I went for radio because I thought that I didn't really...

01:32:37.000 I wanted to be a comedian.

01:32:38.000 I had like my mind divided in half.

01:32:41.000 That was my goal, but part of me thought that's not really gonna happen.

01:32:45.000 Maybe if it doesn't happen, maybe I can be a guy on the radio.

01:32:49.000 Maybe I can be funny on the radio.

01:32:52.000 And then somehow get from the radio onto the stage.

01:32:56.000 How that would happen, I didn't know.

01:32:59.000 But that's why I went to that school as like my backup plan.

01:33:03.000 I loved that school, because not really from what I learned about it, because everyone there was slightly awed.

01:33:11.000 It had an automatic screening system that if you decided you wanted to go there, you weren't normal right there.

01:33:21.000 So then you get all these people who decide to go there, and they're all a little bit odd, and then you started feeding off them.

01:33:29.000 So you even got more creative, because everyone you knew was creative.

01:33:34.000 So what I got out of the school was the people.

01:33:37.000 More than what I learned in the actual school.

01:33:40.000 Some of my best friends are still from that time.

01:33:43.000 And then I went on The Tonight Show.

01:33:46.000 Then I went out to Hollywood for two years.

01:33:49.000 Then New York City for five years.

01:33:52.000 I thought everyone...

01:33:53.000 When I lived in New York, I thought everyone should have to live in New York for one year.

01:33:57.000 Everyone in the United States.

01:33:59.000 That's what I thought at the time.

01:34:00.000 Because it was just...

01:34:02.000 You know, you're like 30 years old, and he's like, oh my god!

01:34:05.000 Then I went back to Santa Monica for 12 years.

01:34:11.000 And then I thought, you know what?

01:34:13.000 I want to go back.

01:34:15.000 I want to go home.

01:34:16.000 Because the United States is like the United States, but it's like five countries, environment-looking.

01:34:22.000 There's New England, then there's Florida.

01:34:25.000 Colorado was completely different.

01:34:28.000 Nevada, here.

01:34:31.000 Utah, the Northwest, California.

01:34:34.000 It's like seven different countries named one thing.

01:34:37.000 But my gut was thought, I want to go back.

01:34:41.000 I want to go back to where the seasons are, where those buildings are.

01:34:46.000 I was just drawn from my gut to go back.

01:34:49.000 When you were in Santa Monica, were you here because you were doing Hollywood stuff, and that's why you felt like you needed to be here?

01:34:55.000 Yeah, I was here, like, doing...

01:34:57.000 I was mainly going on the road, and I'd come back to L.A., but going on the road, man.

01:35:02.000 And then I'd do some movies, like, some parts in movies, some TV. But I was mainly going, doing what I'm doing.

01:35:11.000 And I thought, well, wait a minute.

01:35:12.000 You know, I'm in this place that I really don't...

01:35:14.000 I didn't hate it, but I didn't like it.

01:35:17.000 It's like I saw it as like a waiting room.

01:35:20.000 Like you're waiting for something to happen.

01:35:22.000 Waiting for this other thing to happen.

01:35:25.000 And then I thought, well, I'm going on the road mainly.

01:35:30.000 The audience doesn't care if I came from LAX or Logan.

01:35:34.000 They don't know.

01:35:35.000 Right.

01:35:36.000 And I thought, well, I don't want to be here waiting for something else anymore.

01:35:41.000 This is what I do, mainly what I do.

01:35:43.000 So I'll just go home and I'll do it based out of there.

01:35:47.000 And I'm happy that I did it.

01:35:50.000 During that time, when I was gone, I started to really like nature.

01:35:54.000 I would go to Rhode Island in the summer, and I really became more and more into nature.

01:36:00.000 So when I went back to Massachusetts, I didn't want to live in a city anymore.

01:36:04.000 I lived in Boston, New York, Los Angeles.

01:36:07.000 Now I wanted to be around the trees, because my mind was just like, my being was like, I didn't want that madness anymore.

01:36:14.000 It's just like, oh...

01:36:16.000 You know, then I can go into the madness.

01:36:18.000 I go to Boston or whatever.

01:36:19.000 Then I go on the road into the madness.

01:36:21.000 Then I come back and it's trees.

01:36:23.000 Yeah, that's the way to do it.

01:36:26.000 Isn't nature powerful?

01:36:27.000 It's very important.

01:36:28.000 Nature is incredible.

01:36:29.000 It's medicine.

01:36:30.000 It is.

01:36:31.000 I remember when you did it.

01:36:32.000 I remember when you went back to Boston because it was a big deal.

01:36:35.000 A lot of people were talking about it.

01:36:36.000 They're like, Stephen Wright, I've been back to Boston.

01:36:38.000 I was like, whoa.

01:36:39.000 Because nobody moves back to Boston.

01:36:41.000 Everybody goes from Boston and they move to L.A. or they move to New York.

01:36:46.000 But it was always this thing that you kind of had to leave Boston.

01:36:50.000 Because, unfortunately, like what we talked about with those great comics, That were around back then.

01:36:55.000 They never became worldwide.

01:36:58.000 They were just these huge talents that stayed in Boston.

01:37:03.000 And it was kind of a cautionary tale for a lot of us that were the next generation.

01:37:08.000 Like, hey, I think you've got to get out.

01:37:10.000 If you really want to do TV, if you really want to do stuff, you've got to get out.

01:37:14.000 You've got to do the road.

01:37:15.000 You can't just do local jokes to local people, even though it's amazing and so much fun.

01:37:21.000 You really, like, you're kind of selling yourself short if you don't get out there.

01:37:25.000 So when you went back, I was jealous.

01:37:29.000 I was like, look at him.

01:37:30.000 So free.

01:37:30.000 I didn't even know people were weirder than I was there.

01:37:32.000 I was like, so free.

01:37:33.000 Just went back.

01:37:34.000 I was like, it's such a gangster move.

01:37:36.000 You get to, like, at the top of your game, killing it all over the world, doing stand-up.

01:37:41.000 You're like, eh.

01:37:42.000 I live back in Boston.

01:37:44.000 It was a gut feeling, you know?

01:37:47.000 Your mind's only so much involved, but your gut makes a lot of decisions.

01:37:52.000 Just like time is so precious, right?

01:37:55.000 So here I am in a place that I don't really care for, Los Angeles, and meanwhile the time is going, my life is going, and it's like, well, why not be in a place where I like where I am?

01:38:07.000 Did you have friends back there?

01:38:08.000 In Los Angeles?

01:38:09.000 No, Boston.

01:38:11.000 Yeah, I had some friends there, definitely.

01:38:15.000 But I know most of my friends still live in Los Angeles, but I have friends in New York and Massachusetts and Los Angeles.

01:38:24.000 I have a few friends still back home in Boston.

01:38:26.000 It's very interesting.

01:38:27.000 It's good to keep in touch with them.

01:38:29.000 It's good to go back.

01:38:30.000 I love going back.

01:38:32.000 It's one of my favorite places.

01:38:33.000 How often do you go back?

01:38:34.000 Well, last time I was there, it was probably the most emotional set ever.

01:38:39.000 I did the TD Garden, and it was like for me...

01:38:42.000 Wow.

01:38:42.000 Congratulations.

01:38:44.000 Thank you.

01:38:44.000 So for me, starting out there.

01:38:47.000 Yeah.

01:38:47.000 Doing open mics.

01:38:48.000 Wow. 0.99

01:38:49.000 And then coming back and doing the garden and this fucking crazy sold-out show. 0.99

01:38:53.000 Amazing. 0.99

01:38:54.000 It was very emotional.

01:38:56.000 It was like, oh my god.

01:38:57.000 Yeah.

01:38:57.000 That's something else.

01:38:58.000 It's pretty wild.

01:39:00.000 But you know how Boston is?

01:39:02.000 It's like...

01:39:03.000 If they know you came from there, there's like...

01:39:07.000 There's a thing the way a town embraces you when you came from there.

01:39:14.000 That's different than any other place.

01:39:16.000 And Boston is a...

01:39:18.000 It's a very proud city.

01:39:20.000 Very proud city.

01:39:21.000 Like, they love people from Boston.

01:39:24.000 So it was like, going back there was like, Like, look, I did it.

01:39:29.000 You know?

01:39:30.000 Like, it worked out.

01:39:32.000 Here I am.

01:39:33.000 I'm back. 0.96

01:39:34.000 You know, it's like, to start out at a place, and also when you start out at a place, you know, you're always kind of like, in the back of your mind, you remember how bad you sucked.

01:39:43.000 You know, you remember what it was like in the beginning.

01:39:46.000 And to be able to come back and sell out an arena is just weird.

01:39:51.000 But, you know, Boston has got this rich history of stand-up comedy that I think is unlike any other city in the country.

01:40:00.000 Because I think it was the only city where you could have these top talents that never left.

01:40:05.000 And so you're dealing with this incredible high level of comedy.

01:40:10.000 But it's all local.

01:40:12.000 And it's just a bunch of killers.

01:40:16.000 It was very, very unusual.

01:40:18.000 I think to this day, there's no other place like it.

01:40:22.000 Because everybody in New York was trying to get on TV and trying to do this and that.

01:40:25.000 There was no real show business there.

01:40:27.000 The show business was, when's your set?

01:40:30.000 You know?

01:40:31.000 Yeah.

01:40:31.000 Oh, I got an 8 o'clock at Nick's.

01:40:34.000 And you go down to Nick's and you see your friends and everyone's doing shows.

01:40:37.000 And there's shows down the street, The Connection, and shows over there at Dick Daugherty's Comedy Vault.

01:40:41.000 And it was like...

01:40:43.000 But there were comedians like Paula Poundstone and Dennis Leary and Kevin Meany.

01:40:50.000 But Boston, the people there, they loved the comedians.

01:40:56.000 You're talking about Boston going back, Bill Burr.

01:40:59.000 He was telling me before he did Fenway Park with Tony V, who was one of my favorite comedians.

01:41:05.000 Love Tony V. Tony V, one of that prolific...

01:41:08.000 Bill Burr, just amazing.

01:41:10.000 And he was telling me when he was walking around the city before that people knew he was going to do Fenway and they were saying, hey, I hope it goes great.

01:41:18.000 He felt like they were rooting for him, which is a really cool thing.

01:41:22.000 It's a very cool thing.

01:41:23.000 No one's more Boston than Bill Burr.

01:41:27.000 He's like the most Boston comedian ever.

01:41:31.000 He's mad at so much stuff.

01:41:33.000 He's hilarious.

01:41:35.000 He's so funny.

01:41:37.000 He's amazing.

01:41:38.000 And he's the best.

01:41:40.000 Yeah.

01:41:44.000 There's so many guys like that.

01:41:45.000 Patrice, when Patrice was in Boston. 1.00

01:41:48.000 And there's so many goddamn killers. 1.00

01:41:50.000 That area just produced... 1.00

01:41:52.000 It's also, people don't have a lot of attention span. 1.00

01:41:55.000 They don't have a lot of tolerance for stupid shit. 1.00

01:41:57.000 Like, come on. 1.00

01:41:59.000 Get to the jokes. 1.00

01:42:00.000 Let's hear some funny shit. 0.97

01:42:01.000 You know, over the years, people have asked me, why so many comedians from there? 0.98

01:42:05.000 What is it?

01:42:06.000 I cannot even answer you.

01:42:08.000 Because when you think of all the people, all we've been mentioning, this giant list of people from this one area, I do not know why.

01:42:20.000 Well, I think it's what you were talking about, how the club was built, and then all of a sudden everybody came to the club.

01:42:25.000 And because there was no real show business, it was really just about doing those shows.

01:42:30.000 Because it was kind of isolated.

01:42:32.000 Yeah, like an island.

01:42:33.000 That's how I saw it.

01:42:34.000 Thinking back, it was like an island.

01:42:36.000 Also, it's like, when you have guys like Barry Crimmins...

01:42:40.000 Oh, man.

01:42:41.000 He was kind of like the watchdog for everything.

01:42:44.000 He was this brilliant guy who had very high standards, was a real artist, and was very politically aware, very socially aware. 0.88

01:42:54.000 Comedy was fucking brilliant, but it was also very smart. 0.83

01:42:58.000 Absolutely. 0.99

01:42:58.000 Kind of set the tone. 0.99

01:43:00.000 Absolutely.

01:43:01.000 A lot of what he talked about, I didn't know what he was talking about.

01:43:04.000 Right, he would talk about obscure political things.

01:43:07.000 And then he opened the Ding Ho comedy.

01:43:09.000 So the connection started for about a year.

01:43:12.000 And then Barry went and opened that in Inman Square.

01:43:16.000 And that was a whole other thing than the connection.

01:43:19.000 That was more like a...

01:43:21.000 Clubhouse of insanity.

01:43:23.000 And he was a great comedian, brilliant comedian, and he ran the place.

01:43:29.000 So that was an odd thing.

01:43:31.000 Yeah.

01:43:32.000 Because he saw the whole thing through the mind of a comedian.

01:43:35.000 He's one of my favorite people I love. 0.99

01:43:37.000 I love him to die.

01:43:39.000 He was amazing.

01:43:40.000 He was an amazing guy.

01:43:41.000 And his influence, I think, was a huge part of that scene.

01:43:46.000 Again, it was before my time, so I didn't get to experience it.

01:43:49.000 The ding-ho, but I knew all those guys, and I talked to all of them, and they all talked about it.

01:43:53.000 And everyone to a person was talking about Barry.

01:43:56.000 Barry was like, you know, you didn't want Barry on your bad side.

01:43:59.000 Yes.

01:44:00.000 You didn't like hearing you do something, like, not a good, you know, like, kind of hacky.

01:44:05.000 Derivative.

01:44:05.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:44:07.000 And younger guy, I was really good friends with him, but I heard years later, I heard that younger guys were afraid of him.

01:44:13.000 I was afraid of him.

01:44:16.000 And then I thought, well, why?

01:44:18.000 And then I thought, well, wait a minute, let me look at him as if I didn't know him.

01:44:22.000 Yes.

01:44:22.000 Yeah.

01:44:24.000 One time he was being heckled at the dingo and the lights on the stage, you know, they were track lighting and he just turned the light around to the guy in the audience and he started hammering him.

01:44:35.000 Like, now the light is on him.

01:44:38.000 That's hilarious.

01:44:40.000 That's hilarious.

01:44:41.000 Yeah, I was terrified of him.

01:44:43.000 You were? 0.97

01:44:44.000 Yeah, well, he was smarter than everybody else, he was a great comic, and he had super high standards, and I sucked. 0.99

01:44:50.000 So I was like, fuck, please don't let this guy see my set. 0.99

01:44:58.000 Luckily, I got very lucky. 0.99

01:44:59.000 He didn't see my set until long later.

01:45:02.000 It was already a headline.

01:45:03.000 I was already killing.

01:45:04.000 I was already good.

01:45:05.000 Then he saw me.

01:45:06.000 And then he told me I was really funny.

01:45:07.000 I was like...

01:45:08.000 And then I became friends with him.

01:45:11.000 I had him on the podcast.

01:45:13.000 Oh, really?

01:45:14.000 That's great.

01:45:15.000 And then, you know, he just...

01:45:20.000 And then he did that documentary where he explained his abuse and what happened to him when he was younger and what sort of shaped him as a person.

01:45:30.000 I knew him so well and I didn't even know a lot of that stuff.

01:45:34.000 I don't think anyone knew.

01:45:36.000 When he went to Congress and was arguing with them, that was incredible.

01:45:40.000 We should explain what he did because in the early days of AOL chat rooms and things along those lines, People were openly trading in child pornography and he found out about it and he exposed it. 0.99

01:45:56.000 He made it a big part of his life's work to shut that shit down. 0.72

01:46:02.000 And this was the very, very, very early days of the internet. 0.99

01:46:07.000 Yes.

01:46:08.000 You remember that part of the movie where they show him in there in Congress arguing with the guy, and then the lawyer beside him for the other side says some lawyer thing, and then Barry shreds him with reality, and then the guy said another lawyer thing,

01:46:24.000 and then Barry shreds him with the real point of the situation, and then the guy stopped talking.

01:46:32.000 Yeah.

01:46:33.000 Barry was the wrong guy.

01:46:35.000 He was the wrong guy to argue with.

01:46:37.000 Wrong guy to be on the wrong side of an argument.

01:46:39.000 Funny hanging out too.

01:46:41.000 Just funny.

01:46:42.000 Just like...

01:46:43.000 Always hilarious.

01:46:45.000 Brilliant.

01:46:46.000 I think...

01:46:47.000 And that's one of the reasons why the scene emerged.

01:46:50.000 I think it was because of Barry.

01:46:51.000 I think there's like a thing that happens in scenes where you have this top-down force.

01:46:56.000 This one guy that's the gold standard.

01:46:59.000 And then you have this...

01:47:01.000 Army of assassins that's around this guy.

01:47:04.000 The Kenny Rogersons.

01:47:06.000 Yeah.

01:47:06.000 The John Gavins.

01:47:07.000 Brilliant. 0.98

01:47:08.000 Killers. 1.00

01:47:09.000 Killers. 1.00

01:47:10.000 Just a sea of killers.

01:47:13.000 Tony V. Everywhere you would go, there's like so many comics that were just top-notch, man.

01:47:18.000 I went into Nick's Comedy Stuff one night.

01:47:20.000 One of the things that Nick's used to do that was absolutely brutal, and this was when I was a beginning comic, they would take people, like say if like...

01:47:30.000 You know, Billy Crystal was in town.

01:47:35.000 Billy Crystal wanted to do stand-up.

01:47:36.000 Billy Crystal celebrated around the world.

01:47:39.000 He's Billy Crystal.

01:47:40.000 He's an amazing comedian.

01:47:43.000 Everybody's gonna go see Billy Crystal.

01:47:44.000 Let's go see Billy Crystal.

01:47:45.000 He's at the next Comedy Stop.

01:47:46.000 It would be Billy Crystal.

01:47:48.000 But before Billy Crystal would get on, it would be Kevin Knox, and then it would be Steve Sweeney, and Don Gavin, and Kenny Rogerson, and Lenny Clark. 1.00

01:47:57.000 By the time he got on, that audience was beat to shit. 1.00

01:48:01.000 And these guys were fucking killing. 1.00

01:48:04.000 They would all kill for like 15 minutes. 1.00

01:48:05.000 Every one of those guys. 1.00

01:48:07.000 Kill! 1.00

01:48:07.000 Just roars! 1.00

01:48:09.000 People falling out of their tables.

01:48:11.000 They couldn't believe how funny it was.

01:48:13.000 And then they would set these poor guys up.

01:48:15.000 And these guys were used to doing soft shows on the road.

01:48:18.000 They picked their opening act.

01:48:20.000 They have a nice soft casino type show.

01:48:23.000 Hey, it's Mr. Saturday Night.

01:48:25.000 It's Billy Crystal. 0.99

01:48:26.000 Just eating plates of shit in front of Longshoremen at Dick's Comedy Stop at 9 o'clock on a Thursday. 0.99

01:48:37.000 It was brutal. 1.00

01:48:37.000 That's how they did it. 1.00

01:48:39.000 Whenever someone came into town, they set them up.

01:48:41.000 Did they do it on purpose?

01:48:43.000 100%.

01:48:43.000 100,000%.

01:48:46.000 I didn't know that.

01:48:49.000 And every comedian that went up, no one did new stuff.

01:48:53.000 No one took a chance.

01:48:55.000 They were burying that guy.

01:48:58.000 They were burying that guy.

01:49:00.000 They would do it to everybody.

01:49:01.000 Did you see it?

01:49:02.000 Oh, I watched it. 1.00

01:49:03.000 Yeah, I watched a lot of guys eat dick. 1.00

01:49:05.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:49:06.000 I watched a lot of guys.

01:49:07.000 Richard Belzer.

01:49:08.000 I watched a lot of guys.

01:49:09.000 They just threw him to the wolves.

01:49:11.000 But the only guy I saw come out of that like arose was Dom Herrera.

01:49:16.000 They did that to Dom Herrera.

01:49:17.000 He was headlining, and they had like 15 killers on in front of them.

01:49:22.000 Like, everybody's murdering. 0.99

01:49:23.000 And Dom Herrera just went up there like a fucking pro and rode the wave and went on stage and immediately was killing. 1.00

01:49:31.000 And I was like, that's a fucking pro. 1.00

01:49:33.000 Look at him. 0.99

01:49:34.000 Yeah, he's in New York.

01:49:36.000 Hilarious.

01:49:36.000 Oh, yeah.

01:49:37.000 Philly.

01:49:38.000 Started out in Philly.

01:49:38.000 Oh, Philly.

01:49:39.000 I only know him from New York.

01:49:41.000 Yeah, I became friends with him later in life, but I actually paid to see him before I was ever his friend.

01:49:47.000 So I remember seeing him at Nick's Comedy Stop and bringing my girlfriend at the time.

01:49:51.000 Because I was just starting to do stand-up, and I wanted to see all the good ones when they came into town.

01:49:56.000 And I got to see that.

01:49:58.000 See Dom Herrera in his prime.

01:50:00.000 It was amazing.

01:50:01.000 But it was like the only guy that I ever saw that ran that gauntlet and came out of it on the other end looking like a pro.

01:50:07.000 Did you tell him later when you became friends with him?

01:50:09.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:50:11.000 And he knew it too.

01:50:12.000 He did?

01:50:12.000 He knew what they were doing?

01:50:15.000 He was like, oh, that's what they did.

01:50:16.000 They set you up. 1.00

01:50:17.000 They just threw every fucking local killer. 0.99

01:50:21.000 Whenever a big-name guy was in town, all those guys would be there to do sets. 0.99

01:50:25.000 It was 100% on purpose.

01:50:30.000 That's kind of cruel actually. 1.00

01:50:32.000 It's fucking terrible. 1.00

01:50:33.000 It's terrible. 1.00

01:50:34.000 Richard Lewis was another one.

01:50:36.000 He got it.

01:50:36.000 They gave it to him.

01:50:38.000 I love him though.

01:50:39.000 Yeah, it was a great comic.

01:50:40.000 It's just like his style of comic was his audience and you wanted his bit.

01:50:46.000 But if you have a bunch of other stuff on before that, that's just murderous.

01:50:50.000 That style is very hard to change gears and get into his.

01:50:54.000 Absolutely, because they're all like Indy 500 cars, different versions, just like, and so intense, intense, intense.

01:51:02.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:51:03.000 Top quality.

01:51:04.000 You can't get better than those guys.

01:51:06.000 You can't get better than those guys.

01:51:07.000 And really laugh out loud.

01:51:10.000 I think ever.

01:51:11.000 I think ever.

01:51:12.000 Of all my years of comedy.

01:51:14.000 I mean, it's hard now because you go back and watch it now.

01:51:18.000 It's like you got to realize it's a totally different time in the world.

01:51:21.000 It's not our culture.

01:51:27.000 It's a different culture.

01:51:28.000 It's the culture of 1980s.

01:51:29.000 Things were more risque.

01:51:32.000 They're more like when you said things, they were more shocking.

01:51:35.000 And a lot of that stuff's already been said so many times now that if you go back and listen to it, it's like some of it doesn't really hold up the same way.

01:51:41.000 But for the time, in those days, those guys were the cream of the crop. 0.98

01:51:47.000 And if you had to follow them in Boston, like, good fucking luck. 0.98

01:51:51.000 Because I don't think anybody ever killed Harden. 0.98

01:51:53.000 I didn't, I didn't, those guys, I didn't want to go on after them.

01:51:57.000 I did, because I was proud of the lineup.

01:51:59.000 But I knew that the sound from the audience of the laughs, I knew they were going to, it was going to be more than me.

01:52:08.000 But I just accepted it.

01:52:10.000 Because it was like wave, you know, when a big wave hits, boom, boom, boom.

01:52:14.000 Yeah, all of those guys.

01:52:18.000 Gavin Sweeney, Donovan.

01:52:22.000 Did you feel any pressure to sort of ever change your act in the beginning before you made it?

01:52:29.000 Were you just committed to that kind of style?

01:52:35.000 Well, committed means a decision.

01:52:38.000 There was no decision.

01:52:39.000 Like I told you, that's how I wrote it, and it came out like that.

01:52:43.000 It meshed with how I speak.

01:52:45.000 This is how I speak.

01:52:46.000 And for some reason, accidentally, the abstract jokes went good with my voice.

01:52:53.000 But the audience, they weren't thrown off from it.

01:52:57.000 People ask me, well, you know, it was different.

01:53:00.000 Would the audience take a while to come around?

01:53:03.000 And they didn't, because right from the first three minutes, they laughed at some of it, and they didn't laugh at other things.

01:53:09.000 So then I knew right then it wasn't how I was saying it or my voice or anything.

01:53:13.000 They don't care about anything. 0.99

01:53:15.000 I don't give a shit. 0.99

01:53:16.000 As long as it's funny. 0.99

01:53:18.000 So they thought some of it was funny, and some of it wasn't.

01:53:21.000 And Mike McDonald helped me a lot, because he saw me the first time, and I was naively disappointed, because I didn't laugh at everything, which is insane, but that was out of being naive.

01:53:32.000 And he said, Take that material.

01:53:35.000 He never did it before.

01:53:37.000 Take that set and take out the stuff that didn't work and put other stuff in that works.

01:53:43.000 I mean, to try out.

01:53:45.000 And when I left, from him telling me that, I thought it was a success because they laughed at some of it.

01:53:52.000 Here I am wanting to, I was 16, wanting to try it and then I, they left it a minute and a half, I, oh my god, they left it.

01:54:00.000 So then he made me leave, when I left I was like, oh my god, oh my god, I gotta keep changing and changing and changing.

01:54:08.000 But I didn't think of changing my style or anything because, like I was saying, fingerprint before.

01:54:14.000 It was just what it was.

01:54:16.000 It didn't even enter my mind to change it.

01:54:19.000 Some of it worked, some of it didn't.

01:54:21.000 Change it, try more, try more, try more.

01:54:24.000 And I'm glad there wasn't any show business there because someone might have said, you can't be mumbling over on the side.

01:54:31.000 Get a sport jacket and talk loud.

01:54:34.000 You know what I mean?

01:54:36.000 There was no one watching from that angle, I mean.

01:54:39.000 And all of those guys that we were just talking about, none of them are like the next guy.

01:54:45.000 It was like a factory that only made one car, and then they made a different car.

01:54:52.000 It was like a Mustang, then this.

01:54:54.000 There was no assembly line.

01:54:57.000 Every one of those guys is completely unique.

01:55:00.000 Every one.

01:55:01.000 Yeah.

01:55:03.000 One of the interesting things about the documentary, When Stand Up Stood Out, was that you were kind of the first guy that got discovered in Boston.

01:55:11.000 And then you took off.

01:55:13.000 And then it became a different thing.

01:55:15.000 Because then people realized that that was possible.

01:55:18.000 And so then, in the documentary at least, there was this attitude where a lot of guys had like, hey, what about me?

01:55:25.000 Like, where's my thing?

01:55:27.000 How come it's not happening for me?

01:55:28.000 You know, I'm a headliner.

01:55:30.000 I'm a this, I'm a that.

01:55:30.000 Like, why isn't this?

01:55:32.000 And it became where a lot of guys were trying to make it now.

01:55:37.000 Do you remember that time?

01:55:38.000 I knew later when I heard about it after I had gone.

01:55:44.000 But we all wanted to go on the TV. Everyone wasn't doing it just to be doing it in Boston.

01:55:54.000 I wanted to someday go on TV. I had no idea how I would get there.

01:56:02.000 And then I got a lucky break because Peter LaSalle came to Boston and he saw me in the club.

01:56:07.000 Because there was an article about the Ding Ho, and a freelance writer wrote about it and went into the LA Times, this weird comedy club, Chinese restaurant.

01:56:17.000 And then he read it, and then he went back east looking at colleges for his kids were getting out of high school.

01:56:25.000 They did a summer trip.

01:56:27.000 To Boston and New York to look at schools.

01:56:29.000 And he remembered the article and he called up the club.

01:56:31.000 I'm going to go in.

01:56:32.000 And then he saw me and then I went on there.

01:56:36.000 So I got a very lucky break.

01:56:40.000 But I know you're talking about, like, I mean, I was just insanely lucky.

01:56:48.000 But that Fran's movie, I mean, he never even made a movie before.

01:56:53.000 He never made a movie.

01:56:55.000 I know.

01:56:55.000 And that was a very interesting thing because say we were all rowers.

01:56:59.000 Like a row guy is not going to make a movie.

01:57:03.000 But a comedian, a creative guy, he's going to make a movie about the time.

01:57:08.000 You don't have a movie of your time in high school or your best time in college.

01:57:14.000 We have a document by one of our own guys of the time.

01:57:19.000 And it's still, all of us, one of our favorite times in our whole lives.

01:57:24.000 So it's a precious gift that Fran made the movie to see, to see this thing.

01:57:32.000 Yeah.

01:57:33.000 And for us, for guys from Boston, it's so fascinating because it does really do a fantastic job of capturing how unusual that scene was, how strange it was, and how it's really never happened again since.

01:57:49.000 Yeah, so there's two things happening.

01:57:51.000 The scene is happening on its own, and now there's a movie about the scene.

01:57:55.000 It's tremendous.

01:57:57.000 It's tremendous.

01:57:58.000 He did an amazing job.

01:58:00.000 He's so smart, that guy.

01:58:02.000 Yeah, it's a great piece of history.

01:58:07.000 For comics, too, like any comic from anywhere in the world, watch that documentary.

01:58:11.000 It's a great insight into how something like that can happen.

01:58:16.000 And I think something like that can happen in a lot of places.

01:58:18.000 It just doesn't.

01:58:19.000 It takes a lot of things that have to go right to make something like that happen.

01:58:25.000 Yeah, a lot of things line up, just like flukes lining up.

01:58:29.000 And people like that movie who weren't even in that time, are not even from Boston.

01:58:35.000 They like seeing that unique thing that evolved on its own.

01:58:41.000 Yeah.

01:58:42.000 No, it's very special.

01:58:44.000 When you do stand-up now, are you doing, like, the local clubs in Boston to fuck around to work on new stuff, or do you just take new stuff right to the stage?

01:58:55.000 How do you do it?

01:58:55.000 I mix it in with my show.

01:58:58.000 Like, I have, like, spots in my act where I know I'm gonna put this stuff in.

01:59:06.000 Put the new stuff in?

01:59:06.000 Yeah, just mix it in.

01:59:08.000 And most of it doesn't work.

01:59:09.000 I don't know about you.

01:59:11.000 For only...

01:59:12.000 I don't know what your batting average is, but only one in three or four jokes that I write gets a big enough laugh to stay in the act.

01:59:22.000 Yeah.

01:59:22.000 So I try it three times.

01:59:24.000 If it gets nothing three times, I know it's never getting anything.

01:59:28.000 But if it works once, I don't even really count on it because it might have been a fluke, you know, the audience, how I said it, the mood of the audience.

01:59:34.000 But if it works three times, then I can trust it.

01:59:38.000 But if they don't laugh at it three times, then I get rid of it.

01:59:42.000 I don't even remember what it is.

01:59:43.000 I get rid of it.

01:59:44.000 But I don't think that I was wrong.

01:59:47.000 I still think it's funny.

01:59:48.000 If I wrote it down, I think it's funny.

01:59:50.000 Otherwise, I wouldn't write it down.

01:59:52.000 But they don't agree with me.

01:59:55.000 They're in charge.

01:59:56.000 They're the editors.

01:59:57.000 The audience is editors.

01:59:59.000 They don't think they're the editors, but they're going like this.

02:00:03.000 And they're in charge.

02:00:04.000 So I just throw everything out that they don't like.

02:00:08.000 I still cannot predict.

02:00:10.000 I don't know about you.

02:00:11.000 I cannot predict in all these years what they're going to laugh at.

02:00:15.000 I cannot write something down and think, this is going to be on a scale of 1 to 10. This is a 7. Nothing.

02:00:24.000 Nothing.

02:00:25.000 500 people of silence to create, manufacturing silence for other countries.

02:00:31.000 I can't predict.

02:00:33.000 Can you predict when you do it?

02:00:35.000 No, there's some setups become bigger than the bit itself.

02:00:38.000 Sometimes, like, it's a setup, and the setup gets a huge laugh.

02:00:41.000 And then you're like, what is going on here?

02:00:43.000 Why is that funny?

02:00:44.000 You didn't get to the point yet.

02:00:45.000 Yeah, I didn't even think that part was funny.

02:00:47.000 And then, you know, that is one of the interesting things about stand-up, is that the audience is part of the editing process.

02:00:54.000 And that you really create comedy with other people.

02:00:57.000 You don't really do it in a vacuum.

02:00:59.000 You come up with the ideas in a vacuum, but the way it becomes an actual bit that you could do multiple times, it has to sort of alive.

02:01:06.000 It's alive.

02:01:07.000 That's why I don't put jokes like on Twitter or something.

02:01:11.000 To me, the joke is an alive thing.

02:01:13.000 It should be said out loud and heard by people.

02:01:16.000 See it just written.

02:01:18.000 It doesn't do it.

02:01:19.000 You had one of the most interesting uses of Twitter ever, because you started writing a book on Twitter.

02:01:25.000 Yes.

02:01:27.000 So each tweet you would write was a part of this book.

02:01:31.000 Someone could literally go back to your original Twitter feed and start reading this book.

02:01:37.000 A little bit every day.

02:01:38.000 Well, what happened was I wrote an article for Rolling Stone magazine in like 1987. It was a fairy tale about how the beach was invented.

02:01:50.000 It was very interesting, weird.

02:01:52.000 And I would read it every five years.

02:01:54.000 I would read it and think, oh, I should write another story sometime.

02:01:58.000 So then one of the last times I read it, I should write another story.

02:02:02.000 And then right then, Michael O'Brien got me this Twitter thing, you know?

02:02:07.000 Oh, here, you should do something on here.

02:02:09.000 So then I thought, all right, I'm just going to try to write another story.

02:02:12.000 I'll just write it on here.

02:02:14.000 So I wrote two sentences, then two sentences, then the next day two sentences.

02:02:18.000 Because it didn't, like I said, it didn't enter my mind to write jokes.

02:02:22.000 I'll try to write something.

02:02:25.000 I did it for like four or five days and people were leaving messages saying, someone has to tell him what this is for.

02:02:31.000 This is really good for his jokes.

02:02:33.000 This is perfect.

02:02:35.000 And other people would be saying, he's writing a novel on Twitter.

02:02:39.000 This is insane.

02:02:44.000 So I did it on and off for a few weeks and then I stopped writing it for a while and then I thought, I should just keep writing this but not on Twitter.

02:02:54.000 And then that's how the book got going.

02:02:57.000 That's interesting.

02:02:59.000 What a great way to start a book.

02:03:01.000 Yeah, another fluke.

02:03:03.000 You know, I read the thing about the beach.

02:03:05.000 I think I should write something else.

02:03:07.000 I have no idea what it is.

02:03:08.000 I start writing about this kid in school.

02:03:12.000 And then, oh, oh, this, take it off the air.

02:03:15.000 Oh, this should keep going.

02:03:17.000 It wasn't like, oh, I'll write a book.

02:03:19.000 It was, this should keep going.

02:03:21.000 Yeah.

02:03:23.000 Because there's never really big planning out, at least in what I do.

02:03:28.000 And then I just started doing it, and it went further and further.

02:03:33.000 I really liked doing it because, like we were saying before, the jokes from noticing, you know, like the sweep of the radar.

02:03:44.000 You're walking down the street, you see something.

02:03:46.000 But with this, I actually, after I started doing it, I started to sit down on purpose, like for a couple of hours a day, focusing right on this kid in this class.

02:03:59.000 And that was different than just random things coming into my mind.

02:04:04.000 So I was focusing it, and I couldn't stop doing it.

02:04:08.000 I mean, I would do it for a couple of hours a day, but it just...

02:04:13.000 It kept going and going and I was creating this weird world.

02:04:18.000 And I was fascinated what was in my head because I was sitting there on purpose.

02:04:24.000 Because it was like going into your own head with a flashlight.

02:04:27.000 You know in the caves when there's stuff written on?

02:04:29.000 It was like I was going in my own head with a flashlight because I was determined to try to write for two hours.

02:04:36.000 And that determination made me go deep in like... 0.98

02:04:40.000 And there was all this shit in there that I had no idea if I hadn't focused. 0.89

02:04:46.000 And then the stuff that I thought of that had nothing to do with the book, just life things, would come back to me and go, oh, this can go right in here. 0.98

02:04:58.000 You know, for what I do, a couple sentence joke, two sentences, and then have the audience laugh, hopefully.

02:05:06.000 It's like a narrow window.

02:05:08.000 Say, and then laugh.

02:05:11.000 But I had stuff in my head that wasn't going to go through that window.

02:05:15.000 It wasn't going to be good for stand-up.

02:05:18.000 I had other stuff.

02:05:20.000 I mean, I'm not complaining about that's how the jokes are.

02:05:23.000 That's just how it is.

02:05:24.000 And then when I started writing this thing, I thought, oh, I know what I'm going to do.

02:05:29.000 After it kept going, I thought, I'm going to put a funnel on this kid's head, and I'm going to pour everything I think about being alive into his head.

02:05:39.000 And it'll seem like he's thinking it.

02:05:42.000 I mean, he can't really be, a 70-year-old couldn't be thinking this.

02:05:46.000 So I got to express a lot of stuff in my mind that wouldn't ever be expressed in the way I do stand-up.

02:05:58.000 I really liked doing it.

02:06:00.000 I had fun doing it.

02:06:02.000 It's awesome that you have that free, your process is so free.

02:06:07.000 Like your process is just like go where the whim takes you and then just follow it and then just be open to it.

02:06:15.000 Yeah, I had no book deal.

02:06:17.000 I had no thing.

02:06:18.000 I was just like when I said before creativity is like playing.

02:06:22.000 It's like it's fun like finger paints.

02:06:25.000 I was just having fun discovering what was coming out of me because I was sitting down trying to do it on purpose.

02:06:34.000 It was a whole other thing.

02:06:37.000 It was playing.

02:06:38.000 It's like playing with thoughts.

02:06:40.000 It's like you're hanging out with yourself.

02:06:42.000 Me and you are talking right now, but when you're alone joking, it's like There's almost, you're joking and you're reacting to what you joked about.

02:06:52.000 So there's, you know, it's one thing, but it's almost like there's plural.

02:06:56.000 It's like there's you and your thoughts.

02:06:58.000 And you're reacting, your thought and you can almost be a little bit different.

02:07:03.000 So you, oh, oh, I like what you just said there.

02:07:08.000 Oh, that's nuts.

02:07:09.000 You can't say.

02:07:10.000 Oh, what about this?

02:07:11.000 You know, it's like I guess I'm a major loner person, but I'm never lonely, very rarely.

02:07:19.000 So it was like you're hanging out with yourself.

02:07:22.000 You're your own buddy.

02:07:24.000 Even in the book it says that the kid was his own best friend.

02:07:28.000 I feel like that about me.

02:07:29.000 I'm my own best friend.

02:07:31.000 So writing it was like hanging out with myself.

02:07:36.000 Yeah.

02:07:44.000 That's a great way to think about it.

02:07:48.000 It's very light.

02:07:51.000 Creating should be a fun thing, not like, oh, at least for me.

02:07:57.000 I've done it like that the whole time, but I didn't even decide to do it like that.

02:08:04.000 It was just how it would be.

02:08:10.000 I don't know.

02:08:11.000 It's a playful thing, the whole thing.

02:08:14.000 It's always interesting to me the different creative processes.

02:08:17.000 That everyone has their own different way to do it.

02:08:20.000 It's always interesting to hear how other people...

02:08:23.000 Your process is so different.

02:08:25.000 And also one of the things that's different is the thing that you're doing these shows and you're just sandwiching these new bits in between your other bits.

02:08:33.000 You're not really performing at clubs.

02:08:35.000 You're not dropping in and doing a lot of sets at regular places.

02:08:39.000 No, just in these theaters that I'm doing.

02:08:42.000 Do you miss the club environment though?

02:08:45.000 No, I don't.

02:08:46.000 I would be in it like...

02:08:48.000 I don't really.

02:08:50.000 I got so used to where I am now that it's normal to me.

02:08:54.000 It's very comfortable to be with the stage and they're out there.

02:09:01.000 If I ever go in a club for some reason, it's almost jolting to me because they're right on you.

02:09:08.000 It's like, oh my god, I'm in the cage.

02:09:11.000 I want to be outside the cage, looking into the cage.

02:09:16.000 So this is just how I've been doing it for years.

02:09:19.000 Right, theaters.

02:09:19.000 Yeah, that is the difference between the big stage and the audiences below you.

02:09:24.000 It's like a completely different kind of experience.

02:09:25.000 Open mic really should be in a nice theater in front of a full audience.

02:09:29.000 That should be the open mic.

02:09:31.000 You think so?

02:09:31.000 Just as an analogy.

02:09:34.000 Because when you start, you're starting at 11 at night and there's 10 drunk guys, you should start out in a nice theater and work your way to 10 drunk guys after you've been doing it for four years.

02:09:47.000 Right, so you know how to handle it.

02:09:48.000 Yeah, so now you start in the most...

02:09:55.000 Anyway.

02:09:55.000 Yeah, but that, I think, is where you really learn how to do it.

02:09:59.000 Yes, that's the other side.

02:10:01.000 I don't think you can really ad-lib that well in those big-ass stages.

02:10:04.000 It's different.

02:10:05.000 In an arena, I'm always on script. 0.98

02:10:09.000 I don't really fuck around. 0.98

02:10:11.000 There's that many people. 0.99

02:10:12.000 But with a club, there's so much room for fucking around. 0.99

02:10:16.000 I'm always on. 0.99

02:10:17.000 I present what I've written.

02:10:19.000 I'm not making anything up there.

02:10:22.000 Always?

02:10:22.000 It's like always.

02:10:23.000 I know exactly.

02:10:24.000 Okay, okay.

02:10:27.000 What do you do with hecklers?

02:10:30.000 I ignore them.

02:10:32.000 Yeah?

02:10:33.000 Because it's the hardest thing to do really.

02:10:37.000 Like if I took a tennis ball right now and threw it right beside your head, you would jolt.

02:10:42.000 And the heckler is like, he's trying to make you move.

02:10:47.000 I think it's the hardest thing to do is to have no reaction, no reaction, no reaction.

02:10:54.000 Then you make the audience have a reaction because they're mad at their car.

02:10:58.000 But eventually he goes away if you don't acknowledge it.

02:11:02.000 What do you do?

02:11:03.000 Do you enjoy it?

02:11:05.000 I don't mind sometimes.

02:11:06.000 It depends on what they're doing. 0.80

02:11:08.000 It's like if someone interrupts a bit when you're in the middle of it, that sucks.

02:11:12.000 Because you're ruining it for everybody.

02:11:14.000 Oh, yeah.

02:11:14.000 You're ruining the timing.

02:11:15.000 You're making it all about yourself.

02:11:17.000 Yeah.

02:11:18.000 And, you know, that's the thing you're going to run into.

02:11:20.000 You ran into a lot in L.A. L.A. more than anywhere I've ever been.

02:11:24.000 Where people just feel like they need to talk.

02:11:27.000 Yeah.

02:11:28.000 Well, that's the thing that I don't understand with comedians.

02:11:30.000 See, being a comedian, one of the good things I think, or important things, is to talk to the audience like you're really talking to one person.

02:11:39.000 They don't see themselves as a crowd.

02:11:42.000 I'm just, they're watching the guy.

02:11:44.000 So there's like...

02:11:45.000 One person times 400, but it's still one times 400. Yeah.

02:11:51.000 And if you're communicating well, they feel like they're really talking to you.

02:11:56.000 That's why sometimes they talk back.

02:11:58.000 But if they went to a play, they wouldn't say, what the hell are you putting the glass on that table for?

02:12:04.000 Imagine at a play yelling out, shut the other door!

02:12:08.000 Yeah.

02:12:10.000 It doesn't happen.

02:12:12.000 Or yell at the movies.

02:12:13.000 Yeah.

02:12:14.000 Yeah.

02:12:16.000 It's one of those things where it seems like you're just talking.

02:12:19.000 And everybody can talk.

02:12:21.000 Everyone can talk.

02:12:22.000 So when someone's on stage just talking, you're like, I do that thing too.

02:12:25.000 Yes.

02:12:25.000 Well, I'll say this to this guy.

02:12:27.000 Yeah.

02:12:27.000 I'm going to help out.

02:12:30.000 And they think they're helping you.

02:12:32.000 Yeah.

02:12:32.000 Did you like that thing I said?

02:12:34.000 It's the worst.

02:12:36.000 Some people are just not good at being audience members.

02:12:38.000 Some people are just very self-centered.

02:12:40.000 They don't care if there's 500 other people in the room.

02:12:43.000 They want to yell.

02:12:44.000 They want to say something. 1.00

02:12:45.000 Just ego and stupidity. 1.00

02:12:49.000 But it's also live. 1.00

02:12:50.000 It's part of the fun of live things, that you do have to interact with all these strange people.

02:12:55.000 It's live.

02:12:56.000 There's no...

02:12:57.000 It's like action, 80 minutes later, cut.

02:13:02.000 There's no like...

02:13:03.000 Let me try that joke again.

02:13:05.000 No.

02:13:06.000 Do you ever do multiple shows in a night anymore?

02:13:09.000 No, I haven't done that in years and years and years.

02:13:12.000 Because it was just too many one-liner jokes.

02:13:15.000 I wouldn't know if I already said it before.

02:13:18.000 One time I was doing that and I strutted into this joke.

02:13:24.000 I was saying...

02:13:26.000 When I got right that far in, I realized I had already said it 20 minutes earlier, and then I said, just checking.

02:13:37.000 And they die often.

02:13:39.000 So then I put that in on purpose.

02:13:42.000 Every night I would start the joke.

02:13:44.000 One of the jokes is if I didn't know I said it.

02:13:47.000 And you can feel them getting uncomfortable.

02:13:49.000 Just checking.

02:13:50.000 But that's an example of how mistakes.

02:13:53.000 Don't you soak up mistakes?

02:13:55.000 Like accidents?

02:13:56.000 It's like your brain is like a computer.

02:13:59.000 Oh, that worked.

02:14:00.000 Oh, that worked.

02:14:00.000 I need that half a second.

02:14:02.000 I need that.

02:14:03.000 Oh, yes, yes, yes.

02:14:04.000 That's the thing that you said.

02:14:06.000 It really is like a live.

02:14:07.000 It's a living art form.

02:14:08.000 And you're feeding it when you go to work.

02:14:11.000 Yeah.

02:14:12.000 And sometimes, like, something will go bad, and that bad thing is the best thing that ever happened to that bit.

02:14:17.000 They're like, oh, this is the way to handle it.

02:14:21.000 This is the way to talk about it.

02:14:22.000 And you don't know unless you do it in front of people over and over and over and over again.

02:14:27.000 Yes, over and over.

02:14:28.000 And the audience is different.

02:14:30.000 They're like one being.

02:14:31.000 I find that they have the personality of one person.

02:14:36.000 Like, they have their own...

02:14:48.000 How do you get opening acts?

02:14:50.000 Who do you choose to take with you on the road?

02:14:54.000 I had them for a long time, but then the show, I do like an 85-minute show, and I thought, I'm not going to bring a guy now anymore, because the audience would be too tired by the time I got to my 80 minutes.

02:15:10.000 Like, if you had a guy sitting there for 15 minutes, then the first guy comes on for like 12 minutes, then there's another break.

02:15:17.000 So all that energy is now gonna be felt when I get to 70 minutes.

02:15:23.000 So I thought, I want all.

02:15:26.000 I don't want them to be tired.

02:15:27.000 So you go on by yourself?

02:15:29.000 Yeah, would you take people?

02:15:31.000 Yeah.

02:15:32.000 You start the show off, and then you walk out there.

02:15:35.000 Yeah.

02:15:37.000 Yeah, for years.

02:15:40.000 Yeah, that's the way to do it.

02:15:43.000 Fun way to do it.

02:15:45.000 Wild, going on by yourself.

02:15:47.000 The audience only has so much, like a movie.

02:15:50.000 You can only pay attention for so long, I think.

02:15:54.000 And listening, you know, it's tiring to follow someone, their little, whatever they're saying.

02:16:02.000 Anyway, that's what I learned.

02:16:05.000 To do it that way.

02:16:07.000 I do have guys go on with me, and one of the things I do in town when I do local shows is I have a lot of people go on in front of me.

02:16:15.000 Really?

02:16:15.000 Yeah, because it's like running with weights on.

02:16:18.000 By the time I get up, everyone's tired, so I have to be really focused.

02:16:22.000 Oh, you do that on purpose?

02:16:24.000 Yeah.

02:16:24.000 So they're tired?

02:16:26.000 Exactly.

02:16:28.000 Yeah, and I'll, you know, I do like the Joe Rogan and Friends show.

02:16:32.000 I'll have like five killers on in front of me.

02:16:36.000 Sometimes six.

02:16:37.000 So the show's an hour and a half old before I even get on stage.

02:16:39.000 No way.

02:16:41.000 Wow.

02:16:42.000 Yeah.

02:16:44.000 You can feel it, too.

02:16:45.000 Yeah, that's crazy.

02:16:46.000 You feel the audience like, Jesus Christ.

02:16:51.000 And you do that to make yourself better.

02:16:54.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:16:55.000 Put yourself in a state where you have to be on point.

02:17:00.000 You have to be very energetic.

02:17:02.000 Man, an hour and a half before you hit.

02:17:04.000 Sometimes more.

02:17:05.000 One time I did a show with all those guys that was two hours old before I got on stage.

02:17:10.000 Are you kidding me?

02:17:11.000 No.

02:17:12.000 No.

02:17:13.000 But it does help.

02:17:15.000 It does help because it really makes you tighten your act up.

02:17:17.000 And then when you're on...

02:17:18.000 And someone's only on in front of you for like 20 minutes and just getting the crowd warmed up.

02:17:22.000 Oh my god, it's like so easy.

02:17:24.000 So different.

02:17:25.000 But if you could take the lessons that you learn from doing the crowd, like the late night spot, like when all these people are on before you and the show's really old, you could take that energy and bring it to a fresh audience.

02:17:38.000 It really is like running with weights on.

02:17:40.000 Yeah, it is.

02:17:41.000 You're training extra.

02:17:42.000 Yeah.

02:17:43.000 It's also, too, I think that I like a show where people get to see a lot of different stuff.

02:17:50.000 One of the things that I'm trying to do with this comedy club is I want a lot of different styles, a lot of different people.

02:17:56.000 I want people to see it.

02:17:58.000 This guy does it different than she does.

02:18:00.000 She does it different than he does.

02:18:01.000 Everybody's doing their own...

02:18:03.000 It's part of the thing, is to showcase the art form.

02:18:06.000 The club is really amazing.

02:18:08.000 It was really fantastic.

02:18:11.000 Two rooms designed specifically, like you said, comedy.

02:18:17.000 Louis C.K., who I think is brilliant, giving you some points on how to lay it out.

02:18:23.000 Yeah, give me amazing advice.

02:18:24.000 He's just brilliant, man.

02:18:26.000 And everyone was in a good mood there.

02:18:29.000 It's like, you know, it's like...

02:18:32.000 That's your own island.

02:18:33.000 You have your own island of that fertile thing you get there happening.

02:18:38.000 Yeah, we're creating a magnet for comedy.

02:18:45.000 That's the idea.

02:18:46.000 Congratulations on that.

02:18:47.000 That's just tremendous.

02:18:48.000 It's very exciting.

02:18:49.000 It's almost, it feels surreal when you're in a place.

02:18:52.000 Yeah, I can see that.

02:18:53.000 Yeah, it's like, wow, is this real?

02:18:54.000 Really do it?

02:18:55.000 Because everything is perfect.

02:18:56.000 Everything's perfect.

02:18:57.000 The lighting's perfect.

02:18:58.000 The sound's perfect.

02:18:59.000 The rooms are perfect.

02:19:00.000 The monitors in the green room are perfect.

02:19:02.000 The green room area is perfect.

02:19:05.000 Yeah.

02:19:05.000 We did it all the right way.

02:19:07.000 It's fun to be able to do something like that.

02:19:09.000 It's very exciting.

02:19:10.000 And now, because of that and because of the pandemic and all the different things that happened where things just kind of fell into place, we have this spot and then there's like world-class comedians here.

02:19:20.000 Roseanne lives here.

02:19:22.000 Ron White lives here.

02:19:23.000 Tim Dilland. 0.99

02:19:24.000 Tony Hinchcliffe and fucking Tom Segura, Christina Pazitsky, Duncan Trussell. 0.97

02:19:30.000 They all live in the area here? 0.99

02:19:31.000 They all live here.

02:19:31.000 I didn't know that.

02:19:32.000 Yeah.

02:19:33.000 Like 13 or 14 world-class comedians live here.

02:19:36.000 Incredible.

02:19:36.000 And they're all dropping in.

02:19:38.000 All dropping in.

02:19:39.000 Just popping in and having fun any time when people are in town for the weekend.

02:19:42.000 They'll come in early, do my show, do Sunday night shows, hang out, do the little boy shows, the little tiny room, have fun.

02:19:50.000 It's an amazing environment, you know?

02:19:53.000 And every week it seems like we have, you know, some new crazy guest pops in.

02:19:58.000 It's very exciting.

02:20:00.000 It's like an art school, not school, but it's like a creative building.

02:20:06.000 Yeah, and that's the purpose of it, right? 0.96

02:20:09.000 The whole purpose of it for all of us to help us develop comedy, to write your shit, and then to also to have a place where people can come and have a good time. 0.96

02:20:18.000 That's the beautiful thing. 0.98

02:20:19.000 Like watching people leave and the show is over and they have these giant smiles on their face and they're leaving. 0.98

02:20:24.000 God damn, it's the best feeling in the world. 0.97

02:20:26.000 It's the best feeling in the world. 0.99

02:20:26.000 You made people feel good. 0.99

02:20:27.000 They came, they got babysitters, they did all the stuff, they got to the club, and then just fucking laughing and having fun. 0.97

02:20:36.000 It's the best. 0.96

02:20:38.000 I love it to death.

02:20:39.000 You should feel good about creating that place for all those people.

02:20:43.000 I do.

02:20:44.000 Well, I did it for me, too.

02:20:45.000 It's a little selfish.

02:20:46.000 Yeah, but both, you know?

02:20:48.000 Yeah, both, for sure.

02:20:49.000 It's definitely not set up just for me.

02:20:51.000 It's set up for everybody.

02:20:52.000 It's our club.

02:20:53.000 And I could tell seeing you last night that you loved being in here.

02:20:58.000 You loved the whole club.

02:21:00.000 You know, me and my friend Dean, we have this term called a treehouse.

02:21:05.000 Treehouse is our term meaning when something is done, created just for fun, just like when you were a kid and you were 12 and you're building something and oh, oh, oh, oh, has no, like, outside.

02:21:17.000 And that's what you have.

02:21:18.000 You have like a giant treehouse for all this funness.

02:21:22.000 Yeah.

02:21:24.000 It's fun.

02:21:25.000 And it's also a great place to talk shop.

02:21:27.000 Like guys get off stage and like, do you see my new thing?

02:21:30.000 I'm doing this new thing.

02:21:31.000 And then we'll all talk about it.

02:21:33.000 Like, how did you set it up?

02:21:34.000 And like, oh, oh, what do you still do in that part?

02:21:36.000 No, I dropped that part.

02:21:37.000 And now I got this part.

02:21:38.000 Like, oh, that's way better.

02:21:41.000 Oh my god.

02:21:42.000 And when you see people do stuff like that and create right in front of you and you watch the sets and you watch their bits grow, it's all just like, it's so much fuel. 0.96

02:21:49.000 There's so much fucking gasoline in the air. 0.56

02:21:52.000 So many matches. 1.00

02:21:53.000 It's like, whoa!

02:21:54.000 It's fun.

02:21:55.000 It's very exciting.

02:21:57.000 I love it.

02:21:57.000 I'm so happy we could do it.

02:21:58.000 And this is the perfect place to do it, too.

02:22:01.000 Because there wasn't really a scene here, and now there is.

02:22:04.000 So that's exciting.

02:22:05.000 So the town loves it.

02:22:06.000 And the people love that they can just go down there anytime they want to, whenever they can get tickets at least, and go see some shows.

02:22:13.000 The city's very into it, I imagine.

02:22:16.000 Yeah.

02:22:16.000 The city embraced it, like, really early on.

02:22:19.000 They were very excited that we moved here because California sucked. 0.96

02:22:23.000 Like, this was part of it. 1.00

02:22:25.000 They were like, yeah, California fucking sucks, right? 1.00

02:22:27.000 Like, yeah, it sucks. 1.00

02:22:28.000 I'm glad I'm here. 0.92

02:22:30.000 And so it was part of the fun of it.

02:22:32.000 And also, like, when has that ever happened before?

02:22:35.000 Where just a bunch of world-class comedians just moved somewhere and set up shop.

02:22:39.000 Yeah, never.

02:22:40.000 There's been scenes before, but the scenes kind of already existed.

02:22:42.000 Yes.

02:22:43.000 And this is a different thing.

02:22:44.000 Not like landing on another planet.

02:22:46.000 Yeah, it's like Boston in the 70s.

02:22:48.000 Yes.

02:22:48.000 It really is.

02:22:49.000 Yeah.

02:22:49.000 In a lot of ways where it didn't exist before.

02:22:52.000 Yes.

02:22:52.000 But people moved here.

02:22:54.000 So it's even more extreme.

02:22:55.000 It wasn't just like Boston was pulling from funny guys that were in the area.

02:22:58.000 Yeah, right.

02:22:58.000 Now that there's a club, they can go on stage.

02:23:00.000 This was different because this is like everyone said, hey, let's move there.

02:23:08.000 And they moved here before I even had a club.

02:23:10.000 That was crazy.

02:23:11.000 Because the club, I had another place that I had bought.

02:23:15.000 And that deal fell apart because the place was kind of a mess and the whole story was a mess.

02:23:20.000 But that club, that setback, because I had bought this one place, then I had to get out of the deal, and then buy a new place, that was like a whole year plus of wasted time.

02:23:32.000 And that was when everybody was moving here, too.

02:23:35.000 And so then we were just doing local clubs, like little rock and roll clubs.

02:23:38.000 It plays the Vulcan Gas Company, which is basically like an EDM club.

02:23:42.000 And we were doing sets there.

02:23:44.000 And then the Creek in the Cave opened.

02:23:46.000 And so that was nice.

02:23:47.000 It's a nice little club.

02:23:48.000 And we do sets there.

02:23:49.000 So we did clubs in town.

02:23:52.000 But I didn't have the place yet.

02:23:54.000 People were still moving here just to do those shows.

02:23:57.000 Because of the scene that you were creating?

02:24:00.000 Yeah, because it was already, there was already, Seguro was already moving here.

02:24:04.000 Tim Dillon already moved here.

02:24:05.000 Hinchcliffe had moved here.

02:24:06.000 There was already these comics that were coming, and we were all talking about it.

02:24:10.000 And so then people would come to Austin, they would do my podcast, and they would do these shows with us. 0.95

02:24:15.000 They'd be like, God damn, you guys are having so much fun. 0.97

02:24:18.000 I want to move here. 1.00

02:24:19.000 I'm like, fucking move here. 0.99

02:24:20.000 Come on. 0.99

02:24:20.000 Come move here. 0.99

02:24:21.000 Excellent.

02:24:21.000 Plenty of spots to go on stage.

02:24:24.000 There's a lot of clubs in the town.

02:24:27.000 Like the music scene in Los Angeles in the 60s.

02:24:31.000 All the people, music from all over Canada, the United States, that whole thing.

02:24:37.000 Yeah.

02:24:39.000 Yeah.

02:24:40.000 Yeah.

02:24:41.000 So that's what's exciting about it to me, that it worked out.

02:24:45.000 You know, that it's actually happening.

02:24:47.000 And it's new.

02:24:48.000 I mean, it's really only been two months old.

02:24:51.000 Wow.

02:24:51.000 I was just thinking of that.

02:24:53.000 Think of the history that's gonna happen.

02:24:55.000 Yeah.

02:24:56.000 Look at the stories that are gonna come out of this.

02:24:57.000 It's exciting.

02:24:59.000 Yeah, it's exciting.

02:25:00.000 And it's also exciting for the development of comedy because we're really dedicated to that.

02:25:04.000 We have two nights of open mic nights.

02:25:07.000 All of our door staff The door staff all auditions.

02:25:10.000 They're all comics.

02:25:12.000 They audition to get those jobs with their stand-up.

02:25:14.000 And then they have spots that they can go up throughout the week.

02:25:18.000 Like, they're getting a lot of spots.

02:25:19.000 Like, these guys are going on stage constantly.

02:25:22.000 And they're seeing each other get better, so it's kind of a competitive environment, too. 0.99

02:25:27.000 You're seeing, like, oh, this guy's fucking talented. 0.94

02:25:29.000 Like, this one girl is rising up, and this one guy's got to figure it out. 0.98

02:25:33.000 And, like...

02:25:33.000 You're watching, even over the course of just the last two months, these people learn and grow.

02:25:38.000 And this is like this pressure cooker thing going on there, too.

02:25:41.000 Because, you know, Shane Gillis will stop by, Dave Attell will stop by, Rich Voss, Dave Chappelle, and Andrew Schultz.

02:25:48.000 It's like it's crazy in there. 0.99

02:25:49.000 It's like every night there's some more wild shit going on. 0.99

02:25:52.000 And so there's this real excitement of a new thing. 0.99

02:25:57.000 Like, people realize it's very special.

02:25:59.000 Yeah, this energy that's down there.

02:26:02.000 That's amazing that it's just only two months old.

02:26:06.000 For some reason, I thought it was longer than that.

02:26:08.000 It just seems like it's been there.

02:26:10.000 When you're in it, it feels like it's been around forever. 0.97

02:26:13.000 It feels like The Shining, like the fucking Overlook Hotel, like it's always been there. 0.97

02:26:17.000 It really does. 0.98

02:26:18.000 Because that building is a 1927 building.

02:26:22.000 And that building has had Stevie Ray Vaughan on stage in the 1980s.

02:26:28.000 If you look in the green room, all those posters that are around the top of the walls, those are all concert posters from people that performed at the Ritz.

02:26:38.000 So it's like the Misfits, the Butthole Surfers, Black Flag, all these different bands that performed there.

02:26:45.000 So there's the memories of all of those things.

02:26:49.000 That happened in that place and they're kind of burned into the framework of the building.

02:26:55.000 You feel it in there. 0.98

02:26:56.000 I know it sounds like woo-woo bullshit, but when you're in that building, there's an added element. 1.00

02:27:02.000 In the ingredients of whatever the fuck that building is. 0.99

02:27:05.000 I agree, because there can't be that much intensity, creativity in that one building without it seeping into the walls. 0.97

02:27:13.000 Yeah.

02:27:13.000 I think.

02:27:14.000 Into the atmosphere.

02:27:16.000 I think there's something to that.

02:27:17.000 I always felt that about the Comedy Store.

02:27:20.000 I always felt that about, like, Dangerfields in New York City.

02:27:23.000 There's, like, clubs you go into and you just go, whoa, this place is alive.

02:27:28.000 Like, this place, like, I feel this place.

02:27:30.000 Like, oof.

02:27:32.000 I felt that the moment I went into the Alamo, it was almost like it was asking me to do it.

02:27:38.000 Like when I was walking around when it was the Alamo Drafthouse, the Ritz Theater, they had leased it to the Alamo Drafthouse, but then the Alamo Drafthouse there went under during the pandemic.

02:27:51.000 So when I was walking around, it was just this empty theater.

02:27:54.000 But it was almost like it was telling me to do this.

02:27:58.000 It's like you're walking around like, this is what you can do.

02:28:00.000 You can raise the floor up and you can lower the ceiling.

02:28:04.000 Fix that stage, put a different stage up.

02:28:06.000 You're like, yeah, okay.

02:28:08.000 And I'm walking around.

02:28:09.000 It's like, come on, we're going to take care of you.

02:28:10.000 You take care of us.

02:28:11.000 We'll take care of you.

02:28:14.000 It feels like the building is happy that we're there.

02:28:17.000 I know it sounds crazy, but that's literally what it feels like when I pull in.

02:28:20.000 The building's like, thanks for coming.

02:28:24.000 Because all of a sudden it's alive.

02:28:26.000 Yeah, you feel it.

02:28:27.000 And it's alive with happiness and fun.

02:28:29.000 Yes.

02:28:29.000 You can't ignore your feelings.

02:28:31.000 Yeah.

02:28:32.000 Your feelings are real.

02:28:33.000 I mean, maybe I'm making it all up.

02:28:35.000 Maybe it's all in my head.

02:28:35.000 Maybe it's convenient.

02:28:37.000 No, but it doesn't matter.

02:28:37.000 It's the same.

02:28:37.000 But it doesn't matter.

02:28:38.000 It doesn't matter.

02:28:39.000 Yeah, it's the same feeling.

02:28:41.000 You know, I have to...

02:28:42.000 Pee?

02:28:43.000 Guess what I have to do.

02:28:44.000 You gotta pee?

02:28:44.000 No.

02:28:45.000 You gotta leave?

02:28:45.000 No, that's it.

02:28:46.000 I have to pee.

02:28:47.000 At least I was...

02:28:49.000 We can wrap it up.

02:28:50.000 You wanna wrap it up?

02:28:51.000 Yeah, I think so.

02:28:52.000 It was fun.

02:28:53.000 Thank you very much.

02:28:54.000 I really appreciate it.

02:28:55.000 Thank you for having me so much.

02:28:57.000 My pleasure.

02:28:58.000 I truly enjoyed it.

02:28:59.000 There's your book.

02:28:59.000 It's Harold.

02:29:00.000 Did you do an audio version of it?

02:29:03.000 Yes, yes.

02:29:04.000 Nice.

02:29:04.000 Yeah.

02:29:06.000 And so that's available too.

02:29:07.000 Pre-order the book today.

02:29:09.000 When is it available?

02:29:10.000 May 16th.

02:29:11.000 Okay, so real close.

02:29:12.000 Real close.

02:29:13.000 And will the audio be available May 16th as well?

02:29:15.000 Yes.

02:29:16.000 Nice.

02:29:17.000 And you did the audio?

02:29:18.000 Yes.

02:29:18.000 Perfect.

02:29:19.000 That was something else.

02:29:21.000 That would be awesome.

02:29:21.000 You can't have anybody else do that.

02:29:23.000 Thank you.

02:29:24.000 My pleasure, brother.

02:29:25.000 I really appreciate it.

02:29:26.000 It was fun hanging out with you last night.

02:29:28.000 Absolutely.

02:29:28.000 Fun doing this today.

02:29:29.000 Next time I go there, I'm going to hang out longer because, you know, I was trying to save my stories.

02:29:36.000 I know you didn't want to talk last night.

02:29:38.000 I only have three stories.

02:29:39.000 We could talk forever, man.

02:29:42.000 I knew that yesterday.

02:29:43.000 I was like, don't worry about it.

02:29:44.000 Let's have fun.

02:29:45.000 It was great.

02:29:47.000 It's been an amazing experience.

02:29:49.000 Thank you very much.

02:29:50.000 My pleasure.

02:29:51.000 Listen, man, I've always been a giant fan, so it's great to become friends with you and get to know you.

02:29:56.000 I appreciate you.

02:29:57.000 I think you're an amazing comedian.

02:29:59.000 I said in the beginning.

02:30:00.000 Thank you.

02:30:00.000 Unbelievable.

02:30:01.000 Thank you.

02:30:01.000 I absolutely feel the same way, buddy.

02:30:03.000 Thank you so much.

02:30:04.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - May 13, 2023

Joe Rogan Experience #1985 - Steven Wright

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Transcript