On this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, I sit down with my good friend Hasan Ahmad to talk about comedy, poop, and what it's like being a door guy at a comedy club. It's a short episode, but it's a good one. I hope you enjoy it, and if you do, tweet me if you have any thoughts or suggestions on how to improve it! Timestamps: 4:00 - How to be a Door Guy at a Comedy Club 8:20 - What it's Like Working At A Comedy Club 16:40 - What It's Like Being A Door Guy At A Standup Comedy Club 21:30 - How To Be A Comedy Door Guy 27:15 - What's It Like Working As A Comedy Crewing Door Guy 38:00 - What its Like Being a Comedy Crew Door Guy 39:10 - Being a Comedian 45:00- What's it Like Being The Door Guy? 47:10 What's the worst thing a comedian does when you have to clean up poop in a bar? 48:10- What it s like working as a Comedy club door guy? 49:00 What are the worst things you do when you're a comedian when you don't have your own bathroom? 50:00 -- How do you clean up after someone poops in a public bathroom after a night out with other people? 51:30 -- What do you do to keep your place clean up? 56:20 -- What's your favorite part of the job you've ever done? 57: What are you looking forward to do? 58:10 -- How to keep up with your friends? 1) How to make money as a comedian? ? 58) -- How much money is it's gonna cost you? 59) -- What is it like to be in comedy? ) 1:00:00 | How to write a standup comedy routine? 6) What does it take to be funny? 7) What are your favorite place to hang out? 61:30 | How do I know a good time? , 8) What do I like to do with a good friend? 9) 6: What s your favorite thing to do on a Friday night? 62:20 | What s my favorite part about my day job? 63:40 | Can I do it better?
00:01:23.000And then you were showing me your phone and telling me your process and how you write and how you listen to every single set as you drove back home after the store.
00:01:30.000And you talked to me for like 20 minutes.
00:01:33.000And then you left and Curtis came up to me and was like, hey, so someone pooped in the bathroom and missed.
00:02:30.000Like every time I've ever gone into a bar bathroom and there's dudes in there shitting, it's just like, oh my god, I can't wait to get out of here quick.
00:02:38.000If you're shitting in a bar, it's basically like, oh, this is the last resort.
00:03:19.000While other guys were shitting, they're just ragging on them, yelling in the window.
00:03:24.000That back parking lot, before they invented sacred grounds and before they had the back bar, that was where we'd all hang out.
00:03:33.000But the problem is you'd get randoms from that little back area that would come and they would come and Interrupt a conversation and get in the way.
00:03:42.000I'm like, we've got to go to a place where we can just chill by ourselves.
00:03:48.000And so for you to hang out, it would really be interesting to watch as a door guy because you'd have to watch.
00:03:53.000People would be like making game plans to talk to you.
00:03:57.000You know, you could see them like, okay, if I do this and I do this and I do this and you'd have to just tell people like, hey, maybe you should go hang out in the patio or something like that.
00:04:09.000I see them every now and again, you know, especially if it's like someone like Burr that I only see like once a month or, you know, when you see them, you're like, this is an important time.
00:05:08.000I mean, we were talking about what we hoped it would be and what it is, and I don't even know if I... I don't think I ever hoped it would be this good.
00:05:15.000I mean, the club's not even a year in.
00:05:18.000I think we're only just sort of at the start of what it can be.
00:05:22.000We have like 660,000 Instagram followers already.
00:05:30.000And now that Gillis is here, and Shane moved here, and McCusker is here, and we've got Ari, and we've got, I mean, Ari's been coming down a lot.
00:05:40.000We're doing another Protect Our Parts.
00:05:41.000I'm trying to get that motherfucker to move here.
00:06:29.000It destroyed people's belief in mainstream media and It made people completely distrust the government and their regulations and their wisdom behind closing this and closing that and forcing this and forcing that.
00:06:41.000And it made everybody just go, man, where the fuck am I going?
00:06:46.000Because this is not what I used to live in anymore.
00:08:06.000You know, when you're punctuating your words, and I'm seeing this guy going like this, I wanted to address it, but I didn't want to stop the bit.
00:08:13.000So if you're out there, buddy, I'm sorry I spit on you.
00:08:59.000Well, you need a bunch of bombs to figure out how to bomb.
00:09:02.000You know, and I've seen some people pull out of bombs.
00:09:05.000That's some of the most impressive shit of all time.
00:09:07.000When someone starts bombing, and then they hit, and then they get their confidence back, and then they got a banger, and then everybody, okay, okay, maybe that first joke sucked, but we're on board now.
00:09:16.000It's a really good feeling, especially because I open all these shows, right, is that when I get on stage, and that first joke doesn't hit, and then it's like, ooh, alright, I'm gonna stay in the pocket, And I'm gonna figure this out.
00:09:29.000And by the end of it you're like, this is gonna be a good show?
00:13:52.000And we were fucking around, and I don't know what happened, but something fell and clanged me off the back of the head, and I thought I was dead.
00:14:55.000Former fighters and football players and even soccer players, which you wouldn't think get head injuries, but they head the ball all the time.
00:15:04.000And sometimes they collide with each other, too.
00:15:08.000You know, I've had head injuries from collisions in jujitsu, just accidental collisions, like someone will knee you in the face accidentally and fucking ring your bell.
00:15:16.000And guys have gotten knocked out in the gym totally accidentally.
00:15:20.000You know, just you zig when you shoot a zag, a guy's moving towards you and you're moving towards him and your chin collides with the top of his head and you just go unconscious.
00:16:58.000Most of it was people would say that they got a back injury and they couldn't work so they were getting money but then they would go and work another job.
00:17:06.000And then you're following them around.
00:17:52.000What it really was, the dude lost his license from a DUI, and he needed someone to drive him around.
00:17:59.000And that was Dave, but I was kind of his assistant, so like what kind of would happen like one time it made me really sad.
00:18:06.000The scam would be, so say if someone was doing something that you knew was illegal, right, and you had to catch them.
00:18:13.000The scam would be you would write their license plate on a piece of paper with several license plates that are very similar to it, very close.
00:18:23.000And so then Dave would go to the door and say, hey, I'm so sorry to bother you, ma'am, but I'm not even supposed to have this information, but a friend of mine works for the police department.
00:18:33.000My girlfriend was in a car accident, and there was a witness to this hit-and-run, and they wrote down the witness's license plate, but then a cop spilled coffee on the paper.
00:23:56.000Well, one of the things we really wanted to do when we started the mothership, you know, and you and I talked about this, we all talked about this, was have a real program.
00:24:18.000And you're going to be able to see all the different levels.
00:24:21.000People have been doing open mics for four months, six months, folks who've been doing it a year, guys who are coming in that are pros that are going to drop in and do a set, and you're getting to see the door people do their sets.
00:24:37.000What I love about the people here in Austin is that, you know, you don't run into the sort of people in LA who you would run into that, like, they're just really doing this to become a writer, or they're just really doing this to become an actor, right?
00:24:48.000So this is just something that you, no.
00:24:50.000The door people here are like wannabe stand-up comedians.
00:25:26.000Wisconsin recently and I took one of the door guys CJ Landry with me and one of the reasons I took him with me is I did a random show with him in Dallas like this is last year at 1230 just a horrible show at like midnight and he buried me really he buried me and I was like oh if when I get the chance you're gonna go on the road with me because I have to follow this mmm I wasn't expecting it you know I'm in there all cocky I've been doing it so long and then I was like I got wow I got buried by a door guy Oh,
00:25:55.000I gotta, I gotta, you know, it's like the energy around the place, like when Shane was there, the energy of just like everyone was just like, this is awesome, we can get to watch the best, we can all become better.
00:26:05.000Just last night I was walking into the little boy and there was a door guy in there named Fuzzy.
00:26:10.000And I was like, hey Fuzzy, how you doing?
00:26:33.000And there's no, like, no one's, like, competing for, like, oh, there's only two sitcoms, like, the place where I can get a sitcom.
00:26:43.000What's nice is that you look up and you see the top of this, you know, you see you, Shane, Tony, and you see that everyone is just doing what they want to do.
00:29:10.000It's so funny because when we were all talking about it, we were in the green room of the Vulcan, talking about how to build it, what we were going to do.
00:29:18.000It all seemed like, eh, is this really going to happen?
00:29:21.000I could tell some people were skeptical.
00:29:24.000I mean, you would hear all the time people being like, they're not going to make the club.
00:31:05.000Yeah, and then it opened and you could just feel it immediately.
00:31:08.000I didn't think it was gonna take as long as it took, but that was because we had another building, and the building owned by the cult, and that shit fell apart.
00:31:15.000But lucky it fell apart, man, because it's like where we got is the best spot in the world.
00:31:20.000That 6th Street is like no other place, man.
00:32:07.000There's no business partners or fucking weird money people that want you to charge more for that or pay the comics less or make our own rules.
00:32:17.000It's what they talk about at the stores of a comics playground.
00:32:27.000What I like about the sort of theory I have is, because I started in San Diego, which is a pretty red city and a blue state, and now we're in a blue city and a red state, that's sort of the best mix for comedy.
00:32:36.000Yeah, you get all sorts of people all across the spectrum and that's like a this is what America really is.
00:32:43.000There's people who believe this people who believe this They're all in one place.
00:32:45.000Can you make all of them laugh at once?
00:32:47.000Yeah, it's well, it's it's also people that recognize there's a new scene here So there's like this energy to that and they want to come experience it Right is there really haven't been like Austin had a scene it has small scene There was always some good comics that came out of Boston of Austin You know,
00:33:06.000because, like, Hicks was here for a while, and, you know, there's like a history of good comedy out of Austin.
00:33:11.000But it didn't have, like, a community like we have now.
00:33:16.000There was nothing like it, where all these world-class comedians had moved to a city.
00:33:24.000I mean, the only time it really happened, I feel like, is when Carson moved to L.A. Well, I bet L.A. had comics already, though, no?
00:33:33.000I mean, I'd imagine so, but then you hear, like, I guess my view is the view of the comedy store's history, but, you know, all these people came from, all these high-level comics came from New York, right?
00:34:04.000And you would get these, like, five to seven minute spots, and guys would prep forever for that spot.
00:34:11.000They just wanted that one—they wanted— There was some guys that only had like one killer seven minutes because their whole idea was just get on Letterman.
00:37:15.000We were just discussing this last night because a friend of mine was saying, what are you thinking about this actor strike?
00:37:21.000And I said, I really don't know enough about it to comment other than...
00:37:26.000Look, if you're a person and you do something, even if you're a comic and you do something on Netflix, like when I've done Netflix specials, they just say, it's doing really well.
00:37:48.000Because they don't have to tell you, so you can't really negotiate.
00:37:52.000Like, if you do a special, and that special is 10 million people watch it, oh shit, we're gonna pay Hassan more money next time.
00:37:59.000Because if he finds out that this many people are watching, you don't know until you go out on the road, and then you sell more tickets, and you're like, oh, people enjoyed it, I guess it worked.
00:38:07.000But when you don't have any data, From the company.
00:38:11.000They could just not give you the data.
00:38:12.000Like, on their side, it's great for negotiation.
00:38:31.000The longer paragraph is here, but it's...
00:38:34.000Part of our promise with creators at the time we started creating original programming, our creators felt like they were pretty trapped in this kind of overnight ratings world.
00:38:48.000Overnight ratings, an analyst interview that went live, a weekend box office world, defining their success and failures, Sarando said during a pre-recorded analyst interview.
00:39:01.000And as we know, a show might have enormous success down the road, and it wasn't captured in that opening box office.
00:39:08.000So part of this was the relationship with the talent, not just the business aspect of it.
00:39:12.000And I do think that over time, people are much more interested in this.
00:39:16.000We're on a continuum today of how much data do we publish.
00:39:20.000I think we've been leading the charge, starting everyone down the path of a top 10, publishing our top 10 list and our annual wrap-up list.
00:39:29.000And everything to give a lot of transparency to the viewing, and I just expect will be more and more transparent.
00:39:59.000They want to know what's successful and what's not.
00:40:02.000It does seem interesting that he says that like, oh, we have, you know, a show might do better as time goes on and the initial box office numbers might not reflect that.
00:40:11.000But it's like, but then you're also canceling all these shows the time they get to the second and third season.
00:40:29.000Yeah, this seems like a very abusive relationship.
00:40:32.000So I would imagine that has something to do with, I think, if you were an actor and you were a star of a Netflix movie and it was fucking huge, you would want to know what the numbers are.
00:41:04.000I don't know if it was actually being...
00:41:07.000Someone actually trying to get people sign or was just being discussed where they would pay the extra like an extra would be on the set and Then they know they own their digital image They could use it forever So they could put you in the background of the fucking Hulk movie they could put you in the background of it You know like conspiracy theorists believe they're crisis actors right show up at every mass shooting and start talking about something in this bullshit like this is the most evil of conspiracy theories right right But
00:41:37.000this crisis actor thing, imagine if you just start seeing, like, AI people in every fucking movie, every disaster movie, you see that same guy, like, that's that dude!
00:41:47.000And that dude probably got paid 200 bucks.
00:41:50.000It's like the Wilhelm scream, but with, like, people's faces.
00:42:16.000Someone said, I forget the tweet, but it was something...
00:42:20.000Along the lines of you're not gonna be able to ever know what's real again.
00:42:23.000No, and if it feels this way looking at the news with what's going on over You know over in Israel and Palestine.
00:42:28.000It's like what am I seeing how much of this is real what's yeah, how much like the propaganda on top of that they're like Shitty reporting.
00:42:37.000It's so interesting that we have phones and we have the access to information constantly, and now we just know if none of that information is true.
00:42:44.000Well, we just know quickly what actually happened if you're online and paying attention.
00:42:49.000And the mainstream news is so far behind that.
00:42:54.000He was saying that the original narrative was that Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza.
00:42:59.000What actually happened was another Islamic terrorist group Launched a missile, it failed, and it landed in the parking lot of the hospital.
00:45:37.000Former President Barack Obama signed a law in 2012 allowing government propaganda in the U.S. and making it perfectly legal for the media to purposely lie to the American people.
00:45:49.000In 2013, Obama signed legislation that changed the U.S. Information and Education Exchange Act of 1948, also known as the Smith-Month Act.
00:46:00.000The amendment made it possible for some materials created by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the nation's foreign broadcasting agency, to be disseminated in the U.S. The facts.
00:46:10.000A post circulating on Facebook with a photo of Obama falsely states that he repealed a ban on government propaganda in the U.S. when he signed the National Defense Authorization Act in 2013. The amendment did not repeal the Smith-Munt Act, but rather lifted some restrictions on the domestic dissemination of government-funded media.
00:47:00.000Would I rather watch Game of Thrones or government-funded media content?
00:47:05.000Allowing media produced by the U.S. agency for global media such as The Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty to be made available to Americans upon request.
00:47:16.000It was not possible before the law was changed.
00:47:19.000Even upon request, if I wanted to get it through the Freedom of Information Act, for instance, they couldn't do it.
00:47:25.000The amendment changed that, says Gabe Rotman, director of the Reporters Committee's Technology and Press Freedom Project.
00:47:34.000Boy, whenever someone puts freedom in their project, I'm like, ugh.
00:53:13.000If you try to go there, the military will stop you.
00:53:15.000The military, even though there's fucking thousands and thousands of members that have probably seen this, they've hidden this information from the general public for the greater good of mankind or for evil reasons.
00:53:58.000That's what it sometimes feels like where it's like, oh, you just kind of found out too late.
00:54:01.000So you're like, oh, I must they must go on the extreme of everything.
00:54:04.000Well, people love conspiracy theories because some of them are real, you know, and when you find out one's really like, holy shit, they really did that?
00:54:15.000And then you start getting suspicious about everything, you know, and you can go down rabbit holes, right?
00:54:20.000And you can find the thing about like a video on YouTube, for instance.
00:54:24.000You can find someone who's a really good narrator, who's using good words and good sentences, and they're speaking well, and they sound intelligent, and they're saying things that are just absolutely not true.
00:54:36.000No one's stepping in to prove it, that it's not true.
00:54:40.000But if they were having that same conversation, and they were talking to Brian Keating, And he starts explaining to them how we know the Earth is round, how every planet we've ever observed is round, why they are round.
00:54:54.000There's a thing called Bode's Law where you could accurately predict based on the mass and the size of a planet where the next planet is going to be.
00:56:37.000And this idea that there's some great conspiracy to protect people from it or to keep that information because if we knew that God was real, we would...
00:57:02.000Yeah, we're all just doing our best guess.
00:57:04.000Well, it definitely feels like there's something more.
00:57:07.000Whatever this is, whatever the energy that we share with each other, there's definitely some sort of spirituality in this world that you have to sort of let in.
00:57:15.000I think there's something to the energy.
00:57:46.000Like, people that want to start arguments and fights with people.
00:57:50.000People that want to, like, god damn, man.
00:57:53.000I know you're probably frustrated in your life, and you think that's part of your personality to be blunt, but every time someone does that, it ripples out.
00:58:01.000That person feels negative about people, and then they're always taking it into their mind, oh, sometimes people can be douchebags.
00:58:07.000And then it's just going to create more issues in your life, in the lives of the people that you run into.
00:58:12.000But if you can find a way to recognize that and shift it, Then you could do the opposite.
00:58:20.000And the more positive you put out and the more positive conversations, the positive interactions you have with people, then they have more positive ones.
00:58:28.000And then everybody from that, it ripples out in a good way.
00:59:00.000If the first point of contact they meet, whoever bags their phone, is having a rough day, and they let that rough day come out of them, the shows going forward will not be as good because their first point of contact is someone who is not in a good space.
00:59:17.000And they take that space with them and bring it to their seat.
00:59:20.000Like, it's all those sort of things, like the small little things matter in a comedy show.
00:59:52.000The camaraderie and the friendship and the support and how everybody's very cool and very complimentary and there isn't that weird fucking competitive energy that used to get Particularly in the 90s, man.
01:00:04.000When I first came to the store, it was, God, it was so dog-eat-dog.
01:00:08.000Because everybody was trying to get on a sitcom.
01:00:10.000And if you and I both went on an audition for a sitcom and you got it, I would be like, God damn it.
01:00:39.000They had this idea that somehow or another, if you got something and it was good for you, it was somehow or another taking away from my success.
01:01:15.000Right, that's a level of freedom that, you know, and I do wonder if, you know, I mean, because eventually industry and stuff are going to start coming here.
01:02:39.000And also, by the way, if we're here, you get more stage time in L.A. So take advantage of that.
01:02:44.000Because there's a lot of people getting stage time at the store that probably wouldn't get it if Tom Segura was still in town, if Christina Pazitsky was still in town.
01:03:32.000You can't walk an ideological line, and you can't, like...
01:03:35.000What I find so funny is that, like, there's so many of these, like, you'll hear, like, oh, you know, we need to be more diversity in the club or whatever.
01:03:43.000And then, you know, a lot of times when Hollywood does diversity, I think something that Brian Simpson and I have talked about, they'll just take, oh, we need a brown guy?
01:05:04.000You have a path, whereas I think when we all started out, it was a lot more random.
01:05:09.000There was no clear place where you could go and you could learn from watching all these other comics, and then you could get spots, and then you could eventually be a pro.
01:06:22.000And so, you know, there was enough stand-up in town that we always could work at the Vulcan, but this dream of putting together this, like, perfect comedy community.
01:06:33.000Boy, when it happened, it's almost like, dude, it felt like that building wanted us to be there.
01:06:39.000You know, like this weird energy, like the building was like, thank you.
01:08:42.000If they're someone from India, they might not know the implications of that.
01:08:46.000I'll never forget, in 10th grade, we were doing a World War II history unit, and my teacher was like, you guys think, oh, Hitler and all this stuff, this is all common knowledge, but check this out.
01:09:00.000We had a girl from India in our class, born and raised, and just moved in.
01:09:04.000She was like, do you know anything about Hitler and the Nazis?
01:09:14.000Because you would think that, oh, hey, this is like...
01:09:16.000And, you know, this is like the common knowledge of everyone, but it's like if you don't know, if you grow up in a culture that doesn't really teach you that, it's like you're not going to know.
01:12:17.000Dude, they killed an entire city in Jin China and stacked the bones so high that the Kwar of Chorisma, the Shah of Chorisma, when they sent an embersary to go to visit Jin China, they thought it was a snow-capped mountain.
01:12:33.000And as they got closer, they had abandoned the roads because there were so many bodies rotting in the roads that their wheels were getting stuck in the mud of decaying bodies.
01:12:45.000And then when they finally got to the city, they realized that thing that they thought was a snow-capped mountain was a pile of bones.
01:13:13.000Because people are fat and they cook real good.
01:13:16.000If you light them on fire, cover them with kerosene and launch them through the air, they would land on rooftops and just light the houses on fire.
01:14:05.000They lived off of milk and blood from their horses.
01:14:07.000So they'd take the milk from their horses and they would cut their jugular and take some of the blood and pour it in with the milk and they would use that to stay alive.
01:15:22.000So if you were to talk about the hospital bombing, well, maybe if it's just a war of information and it just hit a parking lot, well, 500 people aren't dead.
01:15:32.000It's just a hypothetical 500 people that are dead.
01:16:50.000And you definitely are like, well, if you're in the New York Times, you're like, well, if we just run with this now, the amount of attention that got, it was a whole day of everything on Twitter was about what happened there.
01:18:02.000And if the government is allowed to do that or does that if they're not allowed or whatever, they can do kind of whatever they want now and make it look real.
01:18:56.000There's people that think that Twitter should be regulated more and that it should be moderated more because of the false information that comes out.
01:19:03.000I think the community notes is the best solution to that.
01:19:25.000And one of the things we ran into with Alex Berenson getting removed from Twitter for printing actual studies and talking about real data about COVID and vaccines.
01:19:37.000They want to be able to shut up anybody that's doing something that's going to fuck up that business.
01:19:41.000And if you're doing that on Twitter, then when you found out that the FBI was contacting Twitter, getting them to take things down, that is wild.
01:19:50.000And it's very short-sighted, too, for people to be like, well, you know, so you would, let's say, with that specifically, you'd be like, you know, one of the people who are pro-vaccine is like, oh, this is the science.
01:22:31.000Well, it also wasn't scientific because they didn't account for people that had been infected and had recovered, which was far superior protection than the vaccine was imparting.
01:24:48.000A lot of those Died Suddenly's people that were suffering from leukemia for 10 years.
01:24:55.000Yeah, or it'll be like because sometimes like there is that that correlation with like the athletes right or like more athletes are doing it now.
01:30:19.000Well, they were going after CNN. CNN was in Gaza with fucking helmets on the ground and people were fucking screaming at them, fuck CNN. Oh yeah, like the people?
01:30:32.000If I'm a Palestinian civilian and I see American news networks, I'm like, oh, the amount of damage you've done against us, that's how I'd feel.
01:30:55.000I was sort of, I had this thought, do you think, so like, there's this migrant crisis that we have now, and the sort of migrants in Europe.
01:31:02.000Do you think that that is the natural end state of imperialism?
01:31:17.000Because part of me feels like, oh, this is kind of what happens when you go into these other places and sort of destabilize them, is that eventually it comes back to you.
01:31:32.000I would say bad in Central America and just sort of destabilizing governments and propping up sort of these rebel groups and helping along the drug trade that all this destabilization eventually would make people go, well, the only thing we can do is leave here and go up to the place that we're kind of being told is the best.
01:31:54.000Yeah, and if it's available, and you can just walk across the border, and if you get across the border, then you can vote.
01:32:00.000Did you see where they're sending Venezuelans back?
01:32:55.000The issue with the Republican Party that they will have is always that Christian right.
01:33:00.000That'll scare a lot of people away from, like, in ways that I think that, like...
01:33:07.000Someone like my parents, both hardworking immigrants, would most likely be sort of aligned with those conservative God, family, hardworking, those values that the Republicans tend to espouse a lot.
01:33:21.000But that Christian right scares them away from that.
01:35:07.000If we didn't have a left or right, you'd have people that have essentially some conservative values, maybe some social liberal values that all exist together.
01:35:16.000But it's just you get defined by the worst aspects of whatever group.
01:35:19.000So the most extreme right-wing people, whether it's fucking Patriot Front or whatever, extreme when people think of hardcore right-wing people.
01:35:40.000You don't want to be a part of either one of those.
01:35:43.000I think most people are kind of middle-ish.
01:35:47.000And most people that are nice are probably middle-ish but lean left when it comes to social issues.
01:35:54.000And most people that have had either experience with violence or crime or people that understand hard work and people that have Growing up in rural communities, they're much more likely to be right-leaning.
01:36:21.000Yeah, and I think to people, what social media has done to people and their political beliefs is when they surround themselves with this echo chamber of people who just say what they want to hear and pander to their beliefs,
01:37:07.000I make sure to have, like, these sort of left-wing guys and these sort of right-wing guys at the same time, because then it shows you, like, oh, this is their bullshit, but it also shows you, like, oh, I didn't think of this from this perspective.
01:40:20.000We were talking about it the other day, that the amount of carbon in the atmosphere that we're talking about, when they're talking about radically changing all electric cars, and no one's going to own a car anymore, and all that shit.
01:40:31.000The amount of carbon in the atmosphere right now is.04.
01:41:10.000So it's like there's a whole system going on to use that stuff.
01:41:15.000It's not good that we're polluting the world.
01:41:18.000It's not good that we're releasing excess carbon.
01:41:20.000It's not good that we're monkeying and maybe even making the world hotter at an accelerated rate.
01:41:27.000There's a lot of nuance, a lot of weirdness in the data, and there's a lot of unpredictability in these charts and predictions that they use.
01:41:36.000It's almost like, again, a few years ago, if you had told me, like, oh, you know, we're doing global warming and we're on pace to, you know, exterminate ourselves, pretty much is what they're trying to say.
01:41:48.000And then it just sort of reminds me of the same sort of fear-mongering that they had with COVID. Well, during the 1970s, they thought we were entering into an ice age.
01:41:55.000I mean, yeah, this is better than that.
01:41:57.000There was a Leonard Nimoy thing on, I think it was In Search Of, where he talked about the upcoming Ice Age.
01:42:04.000Well, yeah, and the way the media portrays it, too, because I saw this, like most people, I get my news from headlines that I see on Twitter, and then I learn how to feel about it by looking at the comments.
01:42:17.000But, you know, I'm an average American.
01:42:29.000But, so CNN had put out a headline that, you know, the iPhone sends you the news headlines on the phone that says, major, you know, current on the verge of collapse due to climate change.
01:42:41.000And I was like, oh shit, we're in trouble.
01:42:43.000So I clicked it and it said, the Gulf Stream may collapse.
01:45:22.000You can shoot as many deer as you want, and people shoot them in the suburbs.
01:45:25.000So I was listening to this guy who gets permission to hunt on people's land and they ask him to come and do it because they have so many deer.
01:45:34.000They said they're like rats on stilts.
01:45:37.000There's thousands and thousands and thousands of deer.
01:45:40.000They don't even have accurate numbers, but the predictions are like every square mile is hundreds of deer.
01:45:47.000Like they think there might be like 600 deer per square mile in some of these areas.
01:45:52.000And so this guy is literally shooting deer with a bow and arrow from, like, people's swing sets and shit.
01:46:43.000I think we get captured by the issue that gets promoted the most, and that issue is climate change.
01:46:49.000And along with climate change, there's going to be someone trying to use methods to mitigate it that also restrict your ability to do things.
01:46:58.000And you're seeing in California where they're saying they're not going to sell any more gas cars after 2035. I'm curious about that.
01:47:43.000So these boats were emitting so much pollution that it was acting as a filter for the sunlight that was heating up the ocean.
01:47:54.000So when they changed the regulations and these boats emitted less carbon and less pollution, there was no longer a foggy haze where they traveled.
01:48:04.000And so the sunlight came down more and the ocean warmed up.
01:48:09.000So it warmed up the ocean much more than they predicted.
01:48:43.000Because there isn't this filter of protection of those artificial clouds that people think are chemtrails.
01:48:50.000Not that there might not actually be chemtrails, because it definitely seems like they've experimented on that.
01:48:54.000Because it's one of the things they've talked about to mitigate the effects of this lack of pollution from these cargo ships is to spray shit in the sky that would also linger there and act to cool off.
01:49:07.000So they're going to make their own pollution.
01:49:09.000And then the other thought that makes more sense and seems more sustainable is actually to take ocean water and just spray it into the air and to have these machines...
01:49:51.000What happens is there's, at a certain temperature, the heat of the jet engine, and combined with the condensation in the atmosphere, when there's a certain amount of moisture in the atmosphere and a certain temperature...
01:50:50.000Oh my god, this is a crazy interview with Prince where he was talking about how when he was young, everybody would be in the street having a good time and then all of a sudden planes would go by and everybody would start fighting.
01:51:05.000Prince thought that they were spraying, like, angry gas over the cities.
01:51:10.000I was like, yo, bro, you need to get some better friends.
01:54:38.000Was that just like something that interested you so you studied it?
01:54:41.000Yeah, so in high school I actually did a summer program where I got to do the effects of attention and I had human subjects that I got to do it on at UC Davis.
01:54:53.000They got me in this special program to let high school kids run trials on people, and it was about cognitive science and attention.
01:54:58.000So I thought, oh, this is interesting, like, how people pay attention, how we get to focus, how quick, like, the way my program lead described how hard it is to hit a fastball was so fascinating.
01:55:26.000It takes 0.2 seconds for the actual move of the muscle.
01:55:31.000So that's 0.4 seconds already taken up by seeing it and moving.
01:55:37.000So the other 0.2 seconds you have to decide...
01:55:40.000Whether it's in the strike zone, if it's a slider, if it's a change-up, you know what I mean?
01:55:46.000Like if it's an actual fastball or something that's off-speed designed to look like a fastball, and you have to decide, you know, am I going to swing?
01:55:53.000You know, like make all those decisions in 0.2 seconds.
01:55:59.000And I had a lot of good classes on it.
01:56:01.000I took the guy who, the phantom limbs pain, the mirror trick for people with phantom limb, V.S. Ramachandran, I think his name is, he was one of my professors.
01:56:37.000Yeah, and sometimes those get wired and crossed.
01:56:40.000That's why foot fetishes are, like, one of the more common fetishes.
01:56:44.000And in fact, like, people who had, like, amputated penises or whatever, they can say, if they rub their feet sometimes, they can still feel it.
01:56:52.000Because the foot neurons have just, like, taken that spot over.
01:57:27.000I come from one of those families, you know?
01:57:29.000And I just, I knew I kind of never wanted to do that.
01:57:33.000I did this game plan where I figured out that I could get my BS degree without taking organic chemistry.
01:57:43.000Like, there was a path for me to get the degree without taking organic chemistry.
01:57:46.000But you need to take organic chemistry to go to med school.
01:57:50.000So what I did is, I didn't tell my parents I didn't take it, and then when I was like, oh, I'm a couple credits away, Give me an extra year, it bought me some time.
01:58:00.000And then starting from year two is when I started writing jokes.
01:58:16.000Well, I would think that understanding how brains work would help that.
01:58:20.000Yeah, so the one thing I took away from that is like...
01:58:25.000The focal point, we have like sort of, when we pay attention to like an array of things, this is from my very limited understanding from what I remember, but there was like focal points that your attention is sort of primed to.
01:58:38.000So what I'll do now is like, because I use the stage a lot more now when I perform, when I'm done with a thought or like a long thought and it's time for a new one, I'll go to either the stool or the mic stand, whatever felt natural, and I'll touch it.
01:59:20.000Yeah, so, and, you know, I'll just, whatever it is.
01:59:23.000After the first thing, after the first big, big, like, pop, I'll either touch the mic stand or the stool, whatever one I'm closest to, and then I'll just go back to that.
01:59:30.000What would you do on a stage with no mic stand and no stool?
01:59:33.000I would pick a spot on stage and look down.
02:00:57.000I mean, you can almost always tell now with an audience going up top if they're going to be work or not based on how much they cheer at the opening...
02:01:06.000Like, the announcements that, like, Curtis or Jody or Kino give.
02:03:46.000We're sort of learning for each other.
02:03:47.000But my job is to get it so whoever's on next, so Duncan yesterday, that they're automatically like, oh, Duncan steps here, we'll step here with him.
02:03:56.000Okay, the last guy taught us how to dance, now we can dance.
02:03:59.000And it's a good lesson in staying in the pocket, too.
02:04:13.000My showcase set yesterday, I was in the middle of the lineup, and I was like, I have to do all this new material that I've been writing since Shane got here.
02:04:19.000I have to do it, and I have to be okay with it not doing well.
02:04:23.000And I have to just stay in the pocket and figure it out.
02:04:44.000After Triggered, you came into the comedy store, you know, to do 30 minutes or whatever, and it was just all brand new material, and it was just not working.
02:07:02.000Like, his bits are just these wonderful journeys down, like, every subject was, like, Punchline, punchline, new angle, punchline, punchline, new angle, punchline, punchline, another angle.
02:07:14.000You're like, oh my god, he's tying it all together.
02:08:51.000And I think a part of the reason why we were all able to develop is that for some reason, around this time, there were all these people that were like, we're trying to be great at stand-up and trying to push each other.
02:09:03.000And one of the things we'd always tell people is, you gotta leave.
02:09:06.000Because you would see these people who stayed for too long, Who are at the top for too long.
02:09:11.000And you see it across all cities that aren't like the places where the big comics go.
02:10:43.000I can write the funny stuff, but I need things that excite me that really do excite me to talk about.
02:10:49.000That truly, yeah, that you care about.
02:10:51.000When something comes up and it's like something that I'm actually, like the bodies exhibit one, that shit took me a long time to figure out.
02:10:58.000How do you make comedy out of dead people?
02:11:02.000And there's parts of it that I couldn't make work.
02:11:04.000There's this one lady who was having an affair with the mayor of this town.
02:11:10.000And she was on a news broadcasting show.
02:11:25.000The wife of the man who was the mayor, who this woman was having an affair with, the wife was the manager of the plastination plant that turns people into statues when they use them for the bodies exhibit.
02:11:38.000And then months later, a woman with an eight-month-old baby was on display.
02:11:44.000A woman with an eight-month-old baby on display in her womb.
02:11:49.000Her proportions exactly match this missing woman.
02:11:59.000This woman was then, afterwards, this woman who was the manager of the Plastination Plan, who was married to the mayor, was arrested for murder.
02:12:58.000Up at the whole thing, you look at China, you'd be like, damn, they are doing the right things to be in a place of a very powerful position very soon.
02:13:30.000If we're creating these conditions, it might already happen because I saw a tweet of someone being like, well, if we already did that, that sentient being would do its best to hide itself.
02:13:38.000Well, why would it have any incentive to let you know that it exists?
02:13:43.000It wouldn't have any biological needs that we have.
02:13:47.000Like, the need to show itself, the need to brag, the need to, like, get validation, or the need to control, or the need to push its ego on people.
02:14:40.000But other than survival, it's like when people are struggling to try to make it, what they're trying to do is trying to get physical rewards.
02:14:46.000They want a bigger house, they want a nicer car, blah, blah, blah.
02:14:49.000Trevor Burrus If there was something that it could gain by that,
02:15:08.000like if it was programmed to have better resources or better something if it gained more power, that it could utilize that power and use it to further its needs, like maybe make a better version of itself.
02:16:37.000And just, we just, we are so primitive.
02:16:41.000Even though we're advanced for everything else that's here, we're so primitive in terms of our ability to understand the inner workings of everything around us.
02:18:05.000All these shows that we do, like, how lucky are we to...
02:18:07.000Ron White's in there talking shit, and Duncan's talking shit, and we're just having so much fun.
02:18:12.000I've always said this about me, and I'm sure I think we've talked to you about this, but I feel like I am one of the most blessed people on the planet.
02:19:27.000And what I learned from my obsession with martial arts at a young age was that When you're obsessed with something and you constantly concentrate on that thing, you get way better really quick.
02:23:23.000Coachella just happened and there was that Tupac hologram.
02:23:26.000I think that was like 2012. And I just remember just ranting about it and I said the words, it's crazy that we brought back Tupac before we got out of Afghanistan.
02:23:37.000And then one of my friends was like, there's an Olomite you should go try.
02:25:03.000Like, I thought comedians were like, I was gonna go see Richard Jenny followed by, you know, this guy, followed by, you know, Jerry Seinfeld, and I can't go out in front of those guys.
02:26:19.000I have I have my 10th time on stage somewhere deep in my like private YouTube on on stage like my 10th time One day like when it's all said and done.
02:26:31.000I want to release that But like after my whole career is over be like this is how it starts.
02:26:36.000Yeah, it's amazing It's an amazing journey and it just it takes so fucking long and you're never done like I'm I feel like I'm better now than I've ever been It's nuts.
02:26:47.000That's the first thing you said when you sat down.