On this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Joe and Tom talk about the time Tom almost died in a car crash, flying in a fighter jet, and what it's like to sleep in a van in the middle of the desert. Also, Tom talks about how he thinks aliens might have seen him the night before and what he's up to now. Joe also talks about his time in the Blue Angels and the time he thought he was in a fight with an alien. This episode was recorded on location in Los Angeles, California. It was edited by Annie-Rose Strasser and edited by Alex Blumberg. Our theme song was written and performed by Micah Vellian and our ad music was written by Mark Phillips. Additional music was done by Ian Dorsch. The show was mixed by Matthew Boll and Matthew Boll. Thanks to our sponsor, VaynerSpeakers. Joe Rogans is a comedian, writer, podcaster, comedian, and podcaster. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times, NPR, and many other media outlets. His music is available on SoundCloud, and his music video is also available on YouTube. If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and we'll get a shoutout on the show on the next episode of the show. Thank you for listening and reviewing! if you're looking for a good time, we'll be looking out for you in next week's episode. We'll see you next week! Please remember to leave us in the next week with a review and a review on iTunes! XOXOdeo, and remember to tell us what you think of the episode you've listened to us on your favorite podcast and what you're listening to this episode! if it's the best thing you've heard this week's podcast is a good one. Thank you! we'll hear about it on the podCast! and we'd really appreciate it on Insta: and other things that you've been listening to it on your feed! or your thoughts about it's a good thing. or what you like it's good enough, or your favorite thing is going through your brain says about it or your brain's best day, or how they're listening about it, or you're having a good day, and they're sending it out to us, too.
00:01:54.000And everybody seemed, you know, like it was, people thought it was funny, but I mean, I think she was a little concerned about the drinking, the amount of drinking.
00:05:38.000Just as a wake-up call, like, you think you understand.
00:05:41.000You see a jet, and I think of it almost like, well, obviously, like, driving a race car is very difficult, right?
00:05:47.000But driving a car fast is not that difficult.
00:05:50.000You know, like if you have a good car, if you buy a new car today that handles really well, if there's no one around, you can go pretty fucking fast and it's really in control.
00:06:43.000It was probably, fortunately for my nervous system, right after the Mission Accomplished banner and right before shit hit the fan with the IEDs.
00:06:54.000So I was kind of thinking, oh, it's okay, no big deal.
00:06:57.000And we were over there in the green zone and we were flying around in the Black Hawk helicopter.
00:07:00.000One night they said, you want to go out on a night patrol in like a tank?
00:07:04.000And I was all set to go and then they had to cancel it because of some sort of attack.
00:07:09.000And then we started hearing there's some...
00:07:57.000You know, I watch your show all the time, Joe, so it's like I know I'm, and I'm a very proud Canadian.
00:08:02.000Tom, you're the granddaddy of the show.
00:08:05.000The granddaddy, well, yeah, I don't know about that, but I mean, first of all, you've always been very nice to, you know, give me a shout-out about those early days of broadcasting in the living room, huh?
00:09:08.000The first show was more me out in the street doing crazy stuff, and then we did a talk show, which was a little bit more of a nightly show, a little bit more time to talk.
00:09:21.000When the show stopped, it was right at the time of technology changing on the web.
00:09:30.000That was always kind of how I... I was kind of looking at technology, usually, because when I was a kid, I was in a rap group, and it was from technology, right?
00:09:39.000I remember drum machines came out, and we were listening to Public Enemy, and I'm going, what are these sounds?
00:10:21.000Then someone would give you a cassette of like the criminal-minded...
00:10:25.000Boogie Down Productions, Bridges Over album and you're listening to it and they're rapping about Scott LaRock, their DJ who'd been, you know, unfortunately, you know, passed away in bad circumstances.
00:12:45.000Yeah, this sort of curveball, and we just couldn't get enough of it.
00:12:47.000So every time we was in town, we'd be down there.
00:12:49.000But Howard Wagman told me this story about Norm, and the first time he came down to do stand-up at Yuck Yucks in Ottawa, and he got off stage and he was...
00:15:39.000It's like if you concentrated on math, really got good at the basics of it, and then really started getting into more complex mathematics, it'd probably be very fun, probably be very exciting.
00:15:52.000But the problem is I never concentrated.
00:17:00.000Remember, if you're out and you're trying to meet somebody and they're going to meet you and then they don't show up and you want to figure out where they are, you'd go to a payphone, put a quarter in it, call your phone and then put your code in and check your answering machine or your voicemail from the mall.
00:17:14.000And you thought you were living in the future.
00:17:16.000And then they'd leave a message on your answering machine to tell you, hey, sorry, I'm going to be a little late.
00:17:20.000And then you hang up and then it cost you a quarter.
00:17:45.000No, I was thinking about like how when I was a kid, you know, we would be able to very easily manipulate, you know, the situation with my parents and say, okay, I'm going over.
00:18:10.000There's no way this is going to turn back.
00:18:12.000No one's ever going to decide this has gone too far.
00:18:14.000It's just going to keep escalating and getting worse.
00:18:17.000And my eyes are getting bad because I find myself addicted to the phone as much as I know that it's happening.
00:18:25.000I'll get on that TikTok and I just start scrolling through stuff and then Oh, shit, like two hours just went by, you know, and my eyes are getting blurry, and it's really kind of starting to piss me off, to be honest with you.
00:18:44.000It's so nuts, like one after the other.
00:18:46.000It's so interesting watching this mad scramble of people trying to figure out a new way to get your attention, whether it's through, like, shooting a bow and arrow with your feet over your head at balloons.
00:18:59.000You ever seen those gals that do that?
00:19:02.000They stand on their hands, and they have a bow in their feet, and they have their legs all the way over the top of their head, and they draw the bow back with their feet and shoot it.
00:19:10.000I saw another thing that's kind of like that, but there was no bow and arrow involved, but yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:20:19.000There's some aspects of it that I think forced us to be just a little bit more creative and think out of the box, or at least in a different way, because you'd go find some drum machine, or you'd go down to the Little Comedy Club in Ottawa, and stand-up comedy wasn't a mainstream thing then.
00:20:53.000I remember I'd see him and my friends would see him and then we'd go to school and we'd tell our friends, you gotta go see this guy, Norm Macdonald.
00:21:01.000He'd come three times a year and every time he'd come we'd be there and it was just like this sort of myth.
00:21:07.000And then all of a sudden we heard he moved to Los Angeles because he was writing for Roseanne, you know, and we all heard about this and it was this sort of All the amateur comics, the kids up there doing it.
00:21:21.000Well, I guess I was the kid doing that.
00:21:23.000Everyone else was kind of in their 20s and 30s, but everybody was just kind of like...
00:22:38.000I got Charlie right before I came here the last time.
00:22:43.000She's named after the John Steinbeck novel, Travels with Charlie, because I was out in the van, and that book's about Steinbeck in the 60s, made a camper van out of a pickup truck, and he drove across America, and he wrote a book about America and its differences.
00:22:59.000It's called Travels with Charlie in Search of America.
00:23:03.000And I got Charlie at a rescue called Thrive, is the name of the rescue, which is actually run by Jimmy Durante's daughter in San Diego, the entertainer Jimmy Durante, who...
00:25:29.000You know, fucking cold it is up there.
00:25:31.000But, like, the cool thing about the cold when you kind of get acclimated to it is you can kind of regulate your temperature like you wear a really warm Arctic jacket in the barn while you're doing the podcast.
00:25:43.000We'll probably move it in at some point.
00:27:50.000It all started with I found this property and this farm and I wanted to be outside and then there was these two old barns there and I would look at these barns and I'd say they were kind of calling for something to be put in them.
00:28:02.000There was stuff stored in them and so some friends of mine and I, we kind of cleaned up the barns and we...
00:28:10.000I got this mule and this donkey and so...
00:28:13.000Initially, the idea was I thought a mule would be kind of funny because they got bigger ears and they're kind of – I was thinking three amigos.
00:31:32.000I've been trying to learn as much about it as possible because I'm riding this thing and I don't want to die because you can fall off it and it's not fun falling off.
00:32:00.000I guess a horse has 64 chromosomes and a donkey has 62. And so when they breed, they take one of – it ends up that the donkey – the mule has 63 chromosomes,
00:32:16.000which is not an even number and therefore makes it sterile.
00:32:19.000So this is what I'm trying to – something kind of complicated like that.
00:32:23.000Isn't it fascinating though that nature figured out a way to stop everything from fucking everything and just getting it pregnant?
00:32:31.000Isn't it like nature's like we've got to have a system in here because that's untenable.
00:34:25.000Maybe just nobody's fucked the right thing yet to figure it out.
00:34:28.000I bet someone just pulled it off in China or Russia or something like that.
00:34:31.000They probably got some chimp-human hybrid somewhere.
00:34:34.000I've heard sort of internet conspiracy theories that there was a Russian experiment that went awry or something like this, but...
00:34:42.000There was this one very strange case of a chimpanzee that they call humanzy, and this chimpanzee had very human-like features, and it lived with a family.
00:34:52.000I forget if it was a family of researchers, I forget the story, but they always end tragically, because those things, ultimately, as they get older, they want to be the boss.
00:35:01.000It's a big male, and they're gonna just fuck you up.
00:35:04.000They're gonna bite your fingers off, or bite your friend's fingers.
00:36:22.000I sometimes think about the close calls I've had with A couple of times with animals where I wasn't really giving them the – not like just understanding the power they had.
00:36:32.000Like I had a chimpanzee on a show I did once on my TV show back in the day.
00:36:43.000And, you know, I remember after the show, I just said, hey, can I hang out with the chimpanzees?
00:36:48.000So it came out and I was just sitting out within the parking lot for about half an hour, just me and this chimpanzee right in front of me, looking right in my eyes.
00:36:54.000It was playing with the buttons on my shirt.
00:36:55.000And, you know, the trainer was 20 feet away.
00:36:58.000And I just thought it was so the cutest thing.
00:37:01.000And then, you know, a few years later, I read about the chimpanzee ripping that, you know, Killing people and how violent they are.
00:37:07.000And you go, man, that is, you know, I had a macaw at one point, which I actually had to get rid of, you know, big red parrot, you know, macaw.
00:37:49.000And I was really kind of somewhat moved by the fact that I was going to be having this beautiful macaw for the rest of my life.
00:37:55.000And it would pick my teeth and it would stick its beak in my mouth and literally like just kind of chew on my ear and all of this kind of stuff.
00:38:06.000And then all of a sudden, when it got to be about 13 years old, it just became a real asshole.
00:39:25.000I have these moments where I think about the time when that macaw would have its beak in my mouth months before it could have ripped my face apart, sitting with that.
00:39:32.000But the fanny, this mule, and I have the donkey as well, who was her companion for her, named Kia.
00:43:51.000They're telling me I'm doing quite well because I actually am able to handle this animal now, but it's been an interesting journey since June.
00:43:58.000I got her in June because at first it's – the very first sort of on-the-surface way that you ride a mule is you look where you want to go.
00:44:57.000But then I didn't quite understand the overall psychological sort of hierarchy that gets created and a trust level that's created between the mule and myself – The more I screwed up, geez,
00:45:12.000just even in the barnyard, the more I let her get in my space.
00:45:15.000You don't ever want to let a mule get in your space, like gets in your space, a very sort of a...
00:45:24.000Easy way to control that is you can just put your hands up to her eyes like that.
00:46:51.000But in my head, I'm thinking, oh, Fanny's not going to want to go around this ATV. And we get up there and I try to turn around the ATV by looking, pulling the rein, pushing my leg.
00:47:20.000I got pretty good balance, so it was kind of interesting.
00:47:24.000But the thing that was wild about it, so then I go, well, she's not going to want to go around the ATV, I say to Kaya and Lisa.
00:47:33.000And they say, no, no, well, it's not that she doesn't want to go around the ATV. It's she knows that you think she doesn't want to go around the ATV. You have to think in your head that she wants to go around the ATV. What?
00:48:58.000If a horse is walking along the edge of a cliff and a snake jumps out, the horse might be apt to just jump the other way off the cliff, killing itself.
00:49:45.000Because, like, if she's scared of the wolves, I think she should be scared of the wolves.
00:49:51.000You know, donkeys and mules, especially donkeys, and mules have donkeys, so they're actually used a lot as livestock protection animals because they'll stomp out a coyote or a wolf.
00:50:03.000So a lot of farmers get them, put them in with their sheep...
00:50:05.000And they'll actually protect the herd.
00:52:06.000I'm getting some information about this from a wolf researcher up who lives near me and he has sort of put out some trail cams and we've actually laid out some fur traps that can get a little bit of their fur and we're going to send it for a DNA sample to find out exactly the percentage of DNA that wolf to coyote that we have here.
00:52:30.000Yeah, it's kind of, I don't know, you live out in the wilderness, you know, you find these kinds of things are, I find it quite interesting to just kind of really kind of dive into it deep and try to figure it out.
00:52:44.000You're in the wild where there's packs of predators in your neighborhood.
00:52:48.000And I wish I had bear footage right now, but it's not online, but this year I put out my trail cams and I got like I'd say a little more than a half dozen distinct different bears on that exact trail, which is on my property right by my house.
00:55:06.000Everybody's arguing about issues, important issues.
00:55:12.000It's being reinforced, you know, through these algorithms.
00:55:17.000People get mad about it and then they start arguing.
00:55:20.000You know, like I sometimes kind of go, wouldn't it be interesting if Pierre Polyev won the next election, right?
00:55:26.000Because then all of a sudden we'd have a conservative government up there and let's say Biden won down here.
00:55:31.000You got conservative government up there and then Tucker Carlson might be going up to Canada talking about how great we are all of a sudden, you know?
00:55:37.000Because it just can switch on a dime, you know?
00:56:08.000I kind of think, like, wouldn't it be cool if the new thing became people start to realize that the division is almost worse than what we're arguing about?
00:56:21.000Well, the division is absolutely worse than what we're arguing about.
00:57:02.000And it's really kind of incredible to go see how they do it because they've built these, like, I can't describe it properly, but reverse osmosis machines where they have tubes coming, you know, with the sap from all the...
00:57:19.000Comes through these tubes from all through the woods on their property.
00:57:22.000It runs out to their barn where they have these machines that do something called reverse osmosis.
00:57:28.000I don't know what it is doing exactly, but they have to do it.
00:57:30.000And then it goes into this giant vat with fires, with wood-burned fires, and they boil the sap down until, you know, it becomes thicker and there's more sugar content.
00:57:39.000And then you have this delicious syrup that I... Brought a couple of...
00:57:42.000It's literally the blood of trees that you pour on pancakes.
01:00:36.000I'm going to figure out a way to do it a little differently next year, but normally the farmers that have done my property for years, they've been doing it with these big circle round bales, but I wanted to get square bales this year because it's easier to handle for the horses, the mules and the donkey every day.
01:00:51.000So every day I go to the barn, I pick up a bale, feed about a bale and a half of hay a day.
01:00:59.000It's cool because from May, June till about the end of September, you don't even have to feed them.
01:01:08.000They're just out in the pasture eating grass, which I often think about when you think about vegetarians and you go, how do you put on mussel with just vegetables?
01:01:18.000And you can look at this giant animal, all it's doing is eating grass all day and they're massive.
01:01:24.000But yeah, so I've got to figure out a better way to get it in the barn this year because some of my friends...
01:01:56.000So Fanny and Kia come from a pasture that had, you know, 20 other animals in it to my place where they're just there by themselves with the whole field to themselves.
01:02:06.000So Fanny was putting on some weight last summer.
01:02:08.000I have to now kind of monitor how much she's out in the pasture.
01:03:22.000You can feel her pulling towards the apple tree.
01:03:25.000So, but, you know, you don't want her to eat, you know, a bunch of apples because that can create acid in their stomach and they can get sick from that.
01:03:40.000I'm not sure if they, I don't know the answer to that, you know, but maybe they kind of somehow self-regulate when they're left to their own.
01:03:48.000But, you know, you can feed them carrots.
01:03:50.000And one thing, I haven't done this yet, but I understand that they really like, I was just told, because I'm actually thinking, what kind of variety can I give the ladies, you know?
01:03:58.000So they really like a frozen watermelon to be tossed into there.
01:04:53.000I admit that I am also actually, probably, it's probably not really a warranted or fear, but I am nervous about these black bears, you know, on the property.
01:07:46.000Yeah, and there's deer, and it's quite something that I never really expected to kind of live like that, but it's really kind of interesting.
01:07:56.000And then it backs on to lots of, you know, thousands and thousands of acres of protected wilderness, so they, you know, it's...
01:08:27.000It's like getting your driver's license essentially.
01:08:29.000You have to go take You have to write a test, and you have to pass it, and you have to do a course, a safety course, and then you have to send that into the RCMP, the Canadian Mounties, right?
01:08:43.000They review it, and then a couple months later, you get your...
01:08:48.000Non-restricted firearms license, which allows you to go buy a rifle.
01:08:52.000I've been collecting lever-action rifles, you know, so I've got just, you know...
01:10:51.000I think it was just an attempt to curb...
01:10:57.000Well, they voted for the government, and the government did it.
01:11:01.000So, you know, obviously, some people aren't too happy about it.
01:11:08.000One thing about Canada is, like, the gun culture is different up there.
01:11:12.000More people are, I think, I'm going to get in trouble with the people that are handgun enthusiasts in Canada, but it's just not as common up there.
01:11:20.000It's more about hunting and hunting rifles and guns.
01:11:23.000But there are probably a lot of people that are pretty upset about it, for sure.
01:11:32.000They're not actually taking away people's rifles or anything like that.
01:11:40.000One of the exemptions is individuals train, compete, or coach in a handgun shooting discipline that is on the program of International Olympic Committee or the International Paralympic Committee.
01:11:51.000Looks like someone's going to have to become a shooter.
01:12:50.000First of all, the trucker rally was interesting because I'm from Ottawa, so I grew up.
01:12:55.000You know, the Parliament Hill, I'm sure you saw it on the news, like the Parliament Buildings is basically our Congress and our Senate combined, essentially, the House of Commons and the Senate.
01:13:07.000You know, downtown Ottawa is like Washington, D.C., right?
01:13:11.000That's our Washington, D.C. I grew up there.
01:13:13.000I grew up skateboarding on the Parliament Buildings front steps, you know?
01:13:57.000And I understand that everybody has the right to express their dissent, right?
01:14:09.000And I think Trudeau probably did overstep with some of his reaction to that, with some of the things he said specifically.
01:14:17.000But there was also this element of Not only was the city shut down, there's people that live downtown, so those horns were these air horns.
01:14:27.000There was really kind of babies sleeping.
01:14:29.000It's really like a neighborhood, right?
01:14:31.000So, it's kind of funny, in a way, the difference between Canadians and Americans sometimes.
01:15:30.000Also, it's not comparable because it seems like they were instigated in some way, at least partially, by people in the audience that wanted them to go in there.
01:15:42.000Now, whether those people were federal agents or whether those people are Antifa Whether those people are Democratic operatives that want to turn this into chaos because it's a great way to attack Donald Trump.
01:15:52.000Whatever it was, there definitely was people that were instigating people to get into the building.
01:16:06.000When they had the George Floyd protest, the Black Lives Matter protest, they had way more cops there for that than they did for this crazy thing where the dude is denying the election and his rabid fans are going to show up and you're not prepared for this?
01:16:24.000If I was going to make a playbook, if I was going to instigate a bunch of dumbasses to go do something really stupid because it will make their leader look like a fascist and Hitler, that's how I would do it.
01:16:39.000It's not as simple as the trucker protest was a legitimate protest where a bunch of people were like, why are you telling me that I have to take this experimental medication or I can't work?
01:16:50.000Like, where is the fucking information?
01:16:53.000And now, Over time, we've seen now that the studies that they did do, they don't have to release them for like 75 years.
01:18:05.000But you might be right and you might be wrong, but you're right to express that you don't think the government should be able to tell you what you can and can't do, specifically about putting something into your body or you can't work.
01:18:31.000The FDA had previously said that it takes approximately eight minutes per page to process records for the FOIA request, and that it could only review and release 500 pages a month, which is 6,000 pages a year.
01:18:45.000At that rate, it would take 75 years to release all the data.
01:18:54.000I guess the point I'm trying to make, which is outside of the weeds of it, is when I'm hanging out in Canada, half the people I talk to are so excited for me to come down here, and they're all like...
01:19:07.000They were supportive of the truckers, right?
01:19:11.000This was not some fringe thing in Canada.
01:19:15.000Maybe the people that actually got in their truck and drove there and camped out there, maybe that was...
01:19:20.000A little bit more of a, you know, dedicated protester than the average citizen.
01:19:27.000But there's, you know, it's just like here.
01:19:29.000You know, you got people, fuck Joe Biden.
01:20:02.000And so it's not just like everybody in Canada is just down with it.
01:20:09.000Enough people are down with it that he got elected, but he might not get elected the next time, and then that'll be just like it is down here.
01:20:28.000I'm almost kind of wondering – this is obviously a stupid idea – but I'm wondering like maybe – wouldn't it almost be better if we just got rid of the elections and just let the conservatives run it for four years and then just automatically the liberals run it for four years?
01:20:40.000I can pick a million holes in why that wouldn't work.
01:20:43.000But – and just let it go back and forth and then people can just be like, OK, let's just all get along.
01:20:49.000Let them have four years at running the country.
01:21:31.000And I got to the point where I started to kind of just try to disconnect from the conversation, which sometimes I feel bad about it because, you know, you want to have a social, you know,
01:22:43.000But if you had someone who was good at the job, you would want them to stay on the job.
01:22:48.000Like, if you had the best CEO of your company, you're making record money and everything's doing great and the products are incredible, you'd want to keep that guy as a CEO. He's obviously killing it.
01:22:56.000And when Steve Jobs was running Apple, he's killing it.
01:22:58.000You don't want to remove him as a CEO. Because you know how long it takes to build anything, right?
01:23:19.000It takes a long time to fucking work your cabinet now.
01:23:22.000If you had a president that was a young president that gets in at like 38, 40 years old and 20 years of running the country correctly, that's what most of these dictatorships have as a benefit.
01:23:50.000It's interesting that, yeah, you got a couple- The most important job ever, and a new guy gets it, or a new woman, never yet, but someday, every four years.
01:23:59.000And often trying to undo everything that was done the four years before.
01:24:03.000So that's what term limits brought in.
01:24:05.000But then on the flip side, you know, we don't have term limits in Canada, and Trudeau's going to be there for a year.
01:24:09.000You know, if you're not a fan of Trudeau, you go, oh, I wish we had term limits, you know, because he's been there over eight years now, right?
01:24:16.000Right, but he might be getting elected.
01:24:42.000I knew if we were going to talk about this, I wanted to kind of sort of make this point because, again, I want Americans to understand what Canada is.
01:25:16.000You go on social media, you go on TikTok.
01:25:19.000You got angry conservatives in Canada saying, fuck Trudeau, and we're turning into a communist country, and all of this stuff, like completely, completely the exact same thing as here.
01:25:35.000It's just if I was – I'm not here like trying to be a spokesperson for Canada or anything.
01:25:39.000But that would – they would not want that.
01:25:41.000Well, I think that's what scares us the most about Canada is that Canada is so similar to the United States but we're seeing your rights erode.
01:25:49.000There's also weird bills that keep getting passed, the C-16 bill, the mandatory pronouns, mandatory use of someone's pronouns.
01:25:59.000And then there was the fact that you guys don't really have freedom of speech.
01:26:39.000And Trudeau actually said he would not put that into effect.
01:26:44.000Sort of a subset of, you know, it's sort of like, you know, you've got your extreme left wing here, and then you have cooler heads, and they did not actually put that into effect.
01:27:29.000And so, you know, because it's interesting, like, I just really want, you know, Americans who are, you know, just not, have never been to Canada, right, to understand that.
01:27:39.000Are you working for the Canadian Ministry of Tourism and Travel?
01:29:25.000And then using all the inclusive terms to make it seem like everybody else is a piece of shit, and you're an amazing human being, and you're on the right side of progressive movement.
01:29:34.000It's all just a bullshit act to stay in power.
01:29:38.000And when you see politicians do it, you know they just fucking...
01:29:41.000Wet their finger and try to figure out which way the wind's blowing and say those things and then act in the interest of whatever money got them into that position in the first place.
01:30:08.000It's such a huge sort of thing to wrap your head around.
01:30:11.000You know, it's capitalism, it's money, it controls everything.
01:30:14.000I mean, I kind of feel just leaving Los Angeles, leaving Hollywood, right, kind of has sort of reset a little bit of my, you know, like, you know, you know this more than anybody else, of course, but, you know, because we even talked about this, whatever it was,
01:30:30.00020 years ago on my podcast about how, you know, you can democratize It's also the
01:31:01.000hive mind of Hollywood you're leaving.
01:31:03.000There's a thing that happens in that town, in that area, where the people that think outside of the norm say it in like whispered, hushed tones.
01:31:16.000There's a certain ideology that's attached to that city, and it's not logical.
01:31:22.000It's a kooky, wacky, completely insulated left-wing view of the world.
01:31:29.000And they enforce it with an iron fist.
01:31:31.000And if you're not on that team, you don't get booked for things.
01:31:36.000If you're someone who has conservative leanings, there's projects you're never going to get.
01:31:43.000You're never gonna be involved with the people will they'll malign you and Without knowing you at all be openly prejudiced about you and So no one does it so everyone who goes over there who's just like desperately trying to make it they're desperately trying to get in movies They're desperately trying to get a recording deal whatever it is.
01:32:04.000They're desperately trying to do the last thing they want to do is Do something and talk about something that's going to politically get them at odds with the people that run the studios.
01:32:17.000Everybody just follows the same sort of wacky ideology that these people take from the universities They go straight into working as a PA, and straight into working for executives and producers, and all of those people are indoctrinated.
01:32:32.000They're all in this wild-ass cult of weirdness.
01:32:35.000And then you have people that move there to try to make it, and these people are just always going on auditions.
01:33:38.000Yeah, it's like you start out as a stand-up comedian and you are trying to poke holes in the absurdity of the world and you're saying things that are not being said on stage and then as you all of a sudden get brought into – I'm sort of saying the – Every stand-up comedian,
01:34:02.000every outlier, every person that's doing something different, a punk rocker, a skateboarder, my goofy show was so out there when I was making it.
01:34:14.000And I was making it, I was rebelling against, in Canada, in my little public access show, I was kind of trying to rebel against...
01:34:22.000What obviously seems like a formulaic mainstream way of thinking to create art, right?
01:34:28.000And then you move to Los Angeles because, well, a show we've got on MTV. I end up moving to Los Angeles.
01:34:34.000Now you're – I'm talking about myself now.
01:35:54.000So we're in the green room getting ready – I'm in the green room with my buddy getting ready to go on the show and he goes, do a shot now before you go on.
01:35:59.000And I go, okay, so I do a shot now before I go on, right?
01:36:22.000And then I got out there and I did a shot and the audience goes crazy and cheers, right?
01:36:26.000And so then I do another shot and so I end up doing way too many shots and it kind of ended up very similarly to our last conversation here.
01:37:06.000And in hindsight, I go, well, that was kind of the outrageous kind of young version of me that I was doing on the show that made perfect sense to do that for a gag.
01:37:31.000Well, like the movie studio, I was on promoting a movie and they were like, oh, we don't want you to go on any more talk shows for the movie.
01:37:51.000I was out of control, but it was planned confusion, right?
01:37:55.000But that kind of subtlety didn't really kind of pass the smell test.
01:38:01.000So then you start to go, oh, geez, I better tone it down a little bit.
01:38:05.000You better tone it down a little bit because this – and you sort of end up falling into that feeling where all of a sudden you're – Like you said, going to an audition or driving out to a meeting.
01:38:15.000Or just being a person that you're not.
01:38:19.000Like if you're hosting a late night talk show and all of a sudden you're this sort of wearing a tie, this odd button down.
01:38:26.000Trying to make something that they like and fit into their mold and You know, try to get your own little creative shots off within that mold, but no longer are you actually being purely yourself,
01:38:45.000And so then, you know, you end up living there for 20 years, end up living there for 20 years, and it becomes normal pretty quickly, right?
01:38:50.000And then you sort of slowly forget, oh, you know, this is just the way it works, I guess, now.
01:38:57.000And then eventually, you know, One day you go, I'm getting out of here.
01:39:03.000And I got to say, you know, when you moved here, it was a bit of a light bulb, I think, for me, too.
01:39:13.000It was inspiring for me because I sort of realized, oh, look at that.
01:40:20.000And the smells of my childhood, and even the things, you know, the mosquitoes, the horseflies, and you're like, even the largemouth bass in the lake, and the You know, the red-winged blackbirds and all those sounds and smells and everything.
01:41:11.000And you feel almost like you have to be there.
01:41:14.000Now everything's changed, the internet.
01:41:16.000And I think COVID did that for a lot of people too because all of a sudden everybody's locked in their house and you're dealing with people and these Zoom calls and the internet's changed.
01:41:26.000You don't have to be anywhere anymore.
01:41:27.000We realize we can be wherever we want.
01:41:31.000You know, you took your entire organization away and it's bigger than ever and light bulbs start going off and you're like, wow, you know what?
01:44:13.000All the comics are just hanging out in the green room smoking cigarettes and everyone is talking and just – it's super chill and I did sometimes find that it wasn't always like that when you're at a comedy club and other comedians sometimes a little more – feel a little more competitive with each other and there's a little bit more of that.
01:45:57.000Comics don't write and we were talking about this a little bit the other day but I love the process of hearing how the process works for you because I kind of do a mixture of things too.
01:46:07.000I like to go sit at a computer and type stuff up and then But it's always – I've always found it hard to like – this is a question I kind of have for you because when you go right, you work it out on stage and you got your idea,
01:46:22.000you got your premise, you got your punchlines, you got your bit and you're working it on stage.
01:46:27.000And then I found it really inspiring actually because – First of all, I love the way it works with stand-up.
01:46:36.000Like when you showed up at the green room, you're about to go on stage and you're like focused, you know?
01:46:42.000You're like focused and you're going through your notes and you're focused.
01:46:44.000And I'm like, you know, I can tell you're focused, right?
01:47:53.000That's inspiring because, you know, I often find it's like, you know, when you write something down or when you do the set and you maybe write it down after and then you don't go get to writing it and then you never remember what the rhythm was later.
01:48:21.000I was talking to, you know, Louis C.K. I had a conversation with him about this and it was pretty interesting because I've kind of, you know, I like to drink but I kind of quit.
01:48:39.000I really have cut back drinking in the last...
01:48:41.000You know, I quit drinking like three days ago.
01:49:00.000I like to drink like everybody likes to drink.
01:49:03.000And I'd go on the road and I started realizing, man, even if I go out drinking Friday night after the show...
01:49:09.000My Saturday night shows aren't as good as they could have been because I'm kind of like carrying a little bit of this alcohol around in me from the night before.
01:49:16.000I quickly realized, you know, the beginning was like, I'll have a beer on stage, right?
01:49:20.000Then I go, oh, I better not have a beer on stage.
01:49:22.000I'll wait till after the show to have a drink.
01:49:24.000So then after the show Friday night, you know, on the road, it's fun, you know, you're in Cleveland, let's go, let's party, we're in Cleveland.
01:49:31.000So, you know, you have a few too many drinks after the show Friday night.
01:49:35.000And of course I was, you know, younger too, right?
01:49:39.000So you can handle it a little more too than when you're 52. But then every year that went by, I was like, oh, those Saturday night shows are getting a little harder to get through, you know?
01:49:49.000And it's just one too many Saturdays just lying in my hotel room just waiting for the show to start hungover going, oh my god, and then dreading and being on stage.
01:49:57.000So then I decided I was going to quit drinking...
01:50:26.000The next day, you get a high dose vitamin IV. Well, the thing that I've been enjoying about kind of scheduling it where it's like I don't drink for a couple of days before, you know, a weekend like this when doing five shows, is like I find,
01:50:42.000and this is what I was talking about with Louie about where I had a We're not close friends but I had an opportunity to have a conversation with him about this once and it was pretty cool because the way his mind thinks is so analytical about this type of specific.
01:51:00.000And I was telling him, I was saying, you know, I stopped drinking before I go on stage because, you know, I feel like there was this period where I didn't have a drink for a couple weeks and when I was doing crowd work, I was just coming up with stuff that I would never, you know, you know when you have a great set of crowd work and you get up, I came up with this intricate story that I told and it was clear my mind was operating in a different level than it would have been had I just had a few beers the night before even,
01:51:25.000And then he said something that never really even occurred to me before, which is, you know, when you're working on a set, you know, if you have like a little bit of booze in your system even from the night before and you're up there working on a set, you don't remember the stuff that happened on stage as well either.
01:51:38.000So then when you go home, you don't really even recall, you know, and that's the biggest, you know, the big part of repetition, getting up and doing these sets over and over again and you remember everything and build on it and build on it.
01:51:49.000And if you're not retaining that information, Right?
01:51:55.000And I was actually kind of – I was excited to hear that we were going to do this show on the day of my – I'm doing two shows tonight at the Mothership with Fat Man.
01:52:07.000And I was kind of excited because I knew I wasn't going to drink on this show.
01:52:10.000So you knew you weren't going to repeat.
01:52:12.000Yeah, I knew I was going, I'm not going to do what I did last time.
01:54:29.000If I'd fallen forward, I mean my face would be burnt.
01:54:31.000I ended up immediately realizing what had happened.
01:54:36.000And third degree burns on both feet, the top and bottom of my right foot and strangely the top of my left foot, not the bottom, thankfully.
01:54:48.000And the nerves were completely burned off my feet.
01:54:51.000So after the initial shock of it, I wasn't in pain, which was the weirdest thing.
01:54:57.000And I looked down and there's a couple people came to my sort of assistance and were putting water on it, not feeling anything.
01:55:05.000I'll get graphic because it's crazy, but the skin is just falling off my feet.
01:55:21.000I'm not feeling pain because the nerves are gone, so I'm literally trying to clean it up with some nail clippers, chopping the little bits of burnt flesh off.
01:57:01.000And they took skin grafts like the size of a football off my right leg and stapled 60 staples to staple the skin into my foot.
01:57:13.000And then I come up out of surgery and the doctor says to me, which I think he was trying to make me feel better, but he said, well, the good news is you'll probably be able to live a normal life.
01:57:34.000They told me I wouldn't be able to feel anything below my waist while I came out of it.
01:57:38.000And then I'd spent two weeks in a hospital bed and I was not able to get out of the hospital bed for two weeks.
01:57:49.000This is debatably too much information, but it's interesting.
01:57:51.000You get very constipated from all the medicine that's going into you, and you end up not being able to go to the bathroom for about a week, but then you ultimately have to go.
01:58:04.000And you can't get out of bed because your foot has to remain elevated.
01:58:14.000And someone's got to clean your butts?
01:58:15.000And then these Costa Rican nurses come in and clean your butt.
01:58:19.000And it was just a really interesting moment of clarity for me where you realize you're humbled as a human being and you realize, oh, this is – I've lost all ability to look after myself and you just kind of end up having to just kind of go with it.
01:58:36.000And it was – you know, to my honest with you, I still think about that sometimes.
01:58:41.000It wasn't the worst thing in the world.
01:59:20.000It was a World War II doctor who invented the way of taking these skin grafts.
01:59:24.000Actually, they did it for burn victims in the war, and they invented some really, I don't know the word for it, but some tool that actually takes a micro-thin layer of skin out.
01:59:36.000I don't really have a scar on my leg anymore.
02:00:27.000And so I had to go under general just to like take the bandages off because it's painful.
02:00:32.000And then the third general one was to go in and take the staples out.
02:00:35.000And then medevac back to Toronto to Sunnybrook Burn Centre, Sunnybrook Hospital Burn Centre, where I spent another 10 days.
02:00:44.000And then for the next essentially six months, Joe, I would have to go to a doctor three times a week to have my bandages changed because it's like...
02:02:38.000It's almost like a sense of gratitude you get afterwards because you're like, I'm alive, I'm here, I still got my foot.
02:02:43.000And it's so strange how that happens because it's happened to me twice now in my life because I had testicular cancer when I was on MTV and that's why I stopped the show and I'd go to the hospital, they took my right testicle, I still got the left one, everything's fine.
02:02:56.000And you go from, there's this moment where you're like, in both occasions, there's this moment where you're sort of I'm traumatized by what's happening and angry about it and then it sort of almost instantly flips.
02:03:15.000It must be some sort of human self-preservation kind of thing that's built into a way our minds work where you're now grateful that it's not worse.
02:03:53.000You get so accustomed to the way your life is that you can't imagine if you were severely impaired, if something horrible happened.
02:04:01.000It's like, after I had cancer, Sometimes it comes into my mind like a little bit of a light bulb or a wave.
02:04:10.000Like I'll think to myself, you know, if I'm having a slightly bad day, you know what I mean?
02:04:14.000And I'll be like, I don't know, for whatever reason it happens, just sometimes when I'm out doing normal errands and I'm having a slightly bad day, going to the gas station, pumping gas or something.
02:04:25.000Oh, man, at least I'm not in the hospital right now dealing with some crazy, you know, existential life and death thing, you know?
02:04:34.000And so, yeah, maybe it is a learned thing because of what I've been through with that because the same thing happened after I burned my foot.
02:04:40.000You know, as soon as it's sort of – as soon as I'm – you quickly start of – you go from I can't believe this has happened.
02:05:00.000I'm not thinking about all the things that I'm normally stressed about, whether it's work or relationships or whatever.
02:05:08.000Things that are just normal, standard things that you're pissed off about.
02:05:11.000And all of a sudden, you're just, oh, not even thinking about that anymore.
02:05:13.000I'm just thinking about making sure I don't get an infection on my foot.
02:05:16.000And you're sort of treating it like a military operation, trying to save your foot or trying to make sure that you make the right choices in your cancer treatment.
02:05:26.000And then when you come out of it, this is true, it's possibly a learned thing.
02:05:31.000You come out of it and you realize, oh, all that shit that I'm normally worried about doesn't matter compared to...
02:05:40.000And then you can kind of maybe learn from that.
02:05:45.000And, you know, then as time passes, you slip back into the same routine.
02:05:48.000You start stressing out about the same things again.
02:05:50.000But then every once in a while it pops into your head and go, well, at least I'm not dealing with the foot's healed and I'm outside right now and everything's good.
02:06:20.000I think if you can force yourself to do difficult things like a difficult workout, a difficult yoga class, cold plunges, saunas, that kind of shit, your regular life will be less stressful.
02:08:21.000It's sort of like – I kind of was thinking to myself, I was going to say, you know, it's sort of like a cold plunge except it's just you just go outside as a cold plunge sometimes.
02:08:30.000You know, it's like you do get a dopamine rush, right?
02:10:09.000The idea of being trapped under the ice.
02:10:11.000There's another one of a guy who's trying to – they cut two holes and they try to swim from one to the other and the ice is clear and you see him under there.
02:10:18.000You couldn't figure out where the hole was.
02:10:19.000You see him get disoriented and then you see him trying to find his way back to the other hole.
02:10:22.000And then he does eventually find his way but there's this sort of moment of panic where his friends are up on top and they're banging on the ice and they're trying to say, no, no, this way, this way.
02:10:31.000You can see him – You can see his body panicking.
02:11:45.000You ever see that movie Never Cry Wolf from the 80s?
02:11:47.000It's about a guy that goes up in the Arctic to study wolves and then he ends up, you know, befriending them and Brian Dennehy plays the evil trapper and it was a...
02:12:09.000It's a true story about a scientist who goes up to study these wolves and, you know, it's just sort of man versus nature kind of story.
02:12:17.000It ended up becoming a Disney movie, but, you know, he ends up, you know, Running out of food, his food gets dropped off in the wrong place or something like that, so he ends up sort of seeing the wolves eating mice, so then he ends up, you know, the big scene, probably inspired some of my work later in life.
02:12:34.000He starts eating mice off crackers and stuff like that, and it was a big, oh, gross, so he needs the mice off the crackers.
02:12:40.000But then he ends up falling through the ice at one point, walking across a lake, and there's a scene like that, and it's one of those...
02:12:46.000You know, back in the 80s, pre-CGI movies where you just sort of remember you had to come up with actual scenes where something relatable and shocking happens that actually really, like, grips you, you know?
02:13:04.000Kills the wolves, and it's very sad, and that's the end of the movie.
02:13:06.000So you don't have to watch it anymore.
02:13:07.000Well, at one point in time, people did have to have become friends with wolves because that's where dogs came from.
02:13:13.000So when wolves came around the campfires, there must have been some curious wolves and there must have been some generous hunters who threw them a bone or threw them some meat.
02:15:05.000So in the morning I get up and I let the chickens out and then they spend the day walking around on the lawn and the grass and then sort of more closer to the house area.
02:15:32.000I actually would take – sometimes I'd bring one in the house and hang out with it and play piano with it and it was like – I mean this is getting weird but you could tell it was interested in the music.
02:15:44.000Like there's an intelligence there that's – no, I know chickens aren't known for being the most intelligent thing in the world but you would see their wheels turning, listening to the music.
02:15:52.000I kind of become attached to these chickens.
02:15:55.000And then yeah, so I get a bit more comfortable with having them free-range.
02:16:01.000They free-ranged all summer and they're great because they're eating all the bugs and they're getting all the insects and stuff on the property and around the house.
02:16:10.000And so I drive into town one day, okay?
02:16:18.000And I come back and I'm coming up the driveway and it's just feathers, feathers, feathers, feathers, feathers.
02:16:26.000And there was one survivor, Loretta, survived.
02:16:30.000She was sort of – funnily enough, there was one chicken that didn't hang out with other chickens all the time and this one, Loretta.
02:16:36.000I named her Loretta and she was probably just somewhere else but this vibe just got – Got killed by the coyotes and I saw them on my security cameras.
02:16:46.000And so the thing is, you realize, and I realize this even more after talking to the wolf expert, They were watching the house from the woods, and they saw me leave, and they knew that there was nobody there,
02:17:02.000and they chose their moment, the wolves, or I think it might have been coyotes that did the chickens.
02:17:50.000And then my neighbors, you know, or farmers, you know, or buddies of mine, you know, came over and they were like, oh, look at the chicken feathers everywhere.
02:18:05.000They go, not over their dead chickens!
02:18:08.000I'm like a city guy here crying over my dead chickens.
02:18:13.000So then I got two more chickens to keep Loretta company, and this is kind of breaking news as of yesterday.
02:18:20.000These two new chickens came, and they hung up with Loretta for the next, since, I don't know, August.
02:18:26.000And then, well, this is a downer, but yesterday I got a call and the two chickens killed Loretta, the one that was from the different flock.
02:18:44.000But anyway, so now you're like, okay, so that sucks.
02:18:45.000So now you've got these two cunt murderous chickens.
02:18:48.000So now I've got these two fucking murderer chickens, and I'm planning to get more chickens in the spring, so I'm going to get rid of the two chickens.
02:20:03.000And so I kind of was really mad for a minute.
02:20:07.000And then I thought, well, you know what?
02:20:08.000I think I like the coyotes more than the chickens, to be honest with you.
02:20:11.000So I'm just going to kind of figure out a way to kind of You know, control the situation.
02:20:16.000But also, you know, watching your show with – I forget who it was but it was an expert in this area and talking to people.
02:20:23.000Apparently, like, if you try to – again, this is all theory but apparently if you try to completely control the population of coyotes by – It just makes more coyotes.
02:24:39.000I have people on that are like Robert Malone, the guy that they maligned and said it was a conspiracy theorist and that he wasn't a qualified expert to talk about the subject, even though he's vaccine injured himself, even though he owns nine patents on the creation of mRNA vaccine technology.
02:24:59.000I mean, he's a legitimate scientist that worked on that technology.
02:25:03.000I think the Canadian public values freedom of expression and speech.
02:25:09.000Right, but the Canadian government doesn't.
02:25:16.000But the thing is, if they do, if they try to...
02:25:19.000And there's calls to do it right now in America.
02:25:22.000There's also calls to do it from the World Health Organization to try to put a kibosh on any...
02:25:28.000Information that doesn't jive with what they're saying in the case of another situation, another pandemic.
02:25:35.000I mean Google released that thing where they were saying that they had some new regulations that would be put in place in cases of a special event or anything of extreme social or political, some thing where they're going to be able to stop,
02:26:06.000Because, you know, it's very self-reflective, too, and I just thought it was just amazing because, you know, you're kind of—I won't say it.
02:26:13.000I don't want to say it because, obviously, you've got your show coming up.
02:26:16.000But I thought it was— Even people that may think they disagree with you on some subjects probably are going to really find it quite pointed, the way you address the issue in your stand-up set.
02:26:32.000Well, it's obviously something on everybody's mind.
02:26:35.000It's just we're in a weird pivotal moment where technology and our awareness of corruption is all meeting in this battleground in the middle of the fucking field like Braveheart.
02:26:57.000We could turn into something that's closer to a dictatorship and then something that's closer still and continue to go down that line, especially if there's some need to clamp down on society because something happened, whether it's a solar flare or whether it's a terrorist attack or whether it's just flat-out war.
02:27:18.000All that we need is some reason When they need to completely clamp down on your ability to express yourself, platforms' ability to distribute information that's contrary to what they're saying, any of those things, anything that they can do to stop that,
02:27:33.000to put a clamp down on people, like, disrupting the narrative that they're trying to distribute.
02:27:44.000COVID was essentially one of the catalysts that got me to leave the city.
02:27:49.000And, you know, it started with the van.
02:27:51.000I got the van, and I'm out in the remote desert, and I'm loving it out there.
02:27:55.000And I was, you know, I was my bug-out van.
02:27:58.000I mean, I probably could have survived in that van with a solar power battery system and my food.
02:28:06.000I had freeze-dried, you know, meals ready to eat, you know, camping food, boil water and pour it in the bag.
02:28:27.000Well, I would drive out to a cool place for three or four days, and then I'd go to another location, and then- So you'd go and hang with people?
02:32:18.000That's what made it weird was I didn't...
02:32:20.000I could imagine if I had a girlfriend at the time, we'd just say, okay, we're going to isolate together.
02:32:24.000Now you're just with your significant other.
02:32:27.000Here I was, okay, I'm going to isolate and I don't have a significant other at the time.
02:32:31.000So it was like actually the first time where I've ever had this sort of self-imposed or whatever maybe was imposed on us, you know, or I took the...
02:32:41.000I took it as an opportunity to be by myself and go out and make videos in the desert and go to these really crazy remote places.
02:32:47.000And I would seek out places where there wasn't going to be other vans and other people.
02:32:51.000But when you were out in the desert, a lot of times you'd go to somewhere and there'd be other people out in their vans and you'd hang out and have beers with people out in the desert and hang out and then you'd go think of a more remote place.
02:32:59.000And I started discovering some amazing places like that, you know, the rabbit hole you go down when you, you know, COVID aside, isolation aside, just going out into the American Southwest in a camper van that's self-sufficient is pretty wild,
02:33:19.000I mean, I think I probably talked about Chaco Canyon the last time I was here because I think I'd just gone there in New Mexico, which is Pueblo Native American ruins.
02:33:29.000It's essentially like a stone ruins of a city that was built in the year 875, 875, and it's like Machu Picchu-level type city that they didn't even discover until the 1950s because it was buried,
02:33:44.000and it's in this beautiful—it's on the Navajo Nation Reserve, on the Navajo land, and you feel this sort of I felt sort of somewhat shocked,
02:34:05.000I guess, that there's all this stuff out there that you don't really hear talked about constantly.
02:35:47.000So that was a five-story building at one point.
02:35:50.000And you can go walking through there, and there's wood that they've used as beams that's still like within the – it's petrified wood or whatever.
02:36:21.000So, and this area, they've done all these studies of this area, so they know, like, they found macaw feathers, speaking of my old pal Rex, they found macaw feathers there.
02:36:30.000Now, macaws are from, the furthest north is Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, so they knew that people were coming from Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, up here to trade with them, and they found, you know, evidence of all these different things that sort of indicated that People were coming from as far north as Canada,
02:36:54.000as far south as South America to come to this area.
02:36:58.000And that whole Chaco Canyon area, once you get in there, is like this...
02:37:08.000Not to get all voodoo about it, but when people talk about Sedona and there's the energy there, you feel this sort of...
02:37:15.000And it may be just because it's so beautiful and it's so quiet and it's this natural kind of amphitheater where it's silent and the wind is deadened and you're just all alone and you're walking through this structure...
02:37:29.000I share the fascination that you have for the pyramids.
02:37:39.000So here's me walking through it with my camera.
02:37:41.000And so you're walking through this by yourself.
02:37:46.000And you're just going like, wow, there was all this stuff going on here.
02:37:50.000And apparently they've determined this was like a meeting place for people from all over North America that would kind of come here and share information.
02:38:02.000They actually believed that there was sort of almost like a festival type atmosphere that would happen there where people would come and trade and share information and all this stuff.
02:38:13.000Are there similar Native American construction sites like this?
02:38:25.000There's up in – there's these ones called the Cliff Dwellings, which are – that one there is actually – this one here is actually later.
02:39:49.000And the stories you pick up when you go to these places, because then you go down the rabbit hole, you start reading about it, and you go, wow, I never knew about this.
02:39:56.000No American had ever been there until the mid-1800s.
02:40:04.000Because it was Apache territory, and if you went there, the Apache would kill you before 18-whatever it was.
02:40:12.000I forget the date, but it was like in the 1700s, early 1800s.
02:40:55.000I just kind of – I just honestly just started looking on the internet, you know, just like looking at real estate listings and I started looking for a farm near my hometown and I just kept looking and searching every day and I was – Lucky that it just kind of fell on my lap right at the right place,
02:41:35.000He's kind of living in the woods by himself.
02:41:37.000It's like, there's a lot to do that is...
02:41:42.000Stuff that falls outside of anything that would fall under the category of what I would consider to be work, right?
02:41:51.000But it is work, but it's different work.
02:41:52.000It's like, I've got to feed the chickens or we built a fence this year for the mule and the donkey.
02:42:01.000So it's this patent rail fence that is made out of cedar that is literally these 100-year-old cedar rail fences that are on the property that have fallen down in the woods and, you know, have gone by the not used anymore.
02:42:15.000And we went back with a fence builder, you know, and everybody out there is, you know, in the country is a guy whose family is traditional fence builders whose grandfather built these fences.
02:42:27.000We went and salvaged all this wood and then built new fences out of them.
02:43:29.000Yeah, on my YouTube channel- Do you have a video tour of the house?
02:43:34.000I haven't really – there's not a full tour, but I think if you can see some of the logs on the YouTube channel, I did a couple little sort of sample podcasts where you can see the wood in the background.
02:43:52.000And yeah, so it's like, and it's interesting, so, you know, you start to realize, you know, I'm doomsday prepping in the van, you know, like, oh, I could be self-sufficient in this van.
02:44:01.000Well, I also, you know, and again, it's fun, but it's also kind of very functional.
02:44:08.000Like, I have unlimited fuel, okay, because there's wood falling in the forest forever, and every summer you can go out and I've got a wood splitter, right?
02:44:19.000It's a gas-powered wood splitter and you chainsaw up the logs, you drop them in, the wood splitter splits them and it's sort of an efficient way of getting firewood basically.
02:44:30.000So they'll never run out of wood out there.
02:44:32.000The house has actually got propane sort of a furnace as well.
02:44:36.000So it runs on propane and the propane truck comes every – there's no natural gas or anything running into the house to heat it.
02:44:42.000So you have a propane truck comes every – A couple of months and fills up this propane tank in the winter.
02:44:47.000But if shit hits the fan and the propane truck doesn't show up, I can still heat the house fully with wood.
02:45:02.000There's a solar system that was there actually, but it's not actually connected to the house, but it's connected to the grid, and it's actually selling energy back to the power company.
02:46:13.000I have a trailer that I have solar panels on that butterfly out that I can take anywhere on the property which has these Battle Born batteries in it.
02:47:49.000You can charge your phone indefinitely.
02:47:54.000And, you know, spending, you know, so many years of my life running around making goofy videos, you know, when we were doing the Tom Green show and stuff, you know, you'd go on the road and then you have to go back to the hotel at night to charge your camera batteries, right?
02:48:05.000The idea that you can go into the middle of the desert and just film indefinitely and charge your camera batteries because the sun is recharging these batteries constantly.
02:48:15.000I was making, you know, music and beats out there and just kind of...
02:48:20.000How long did it take before you felt comfortable around people again?
02:48:34.000After I came on the show last time, and we talked about this, like, there's a general perception in the world all of a sudden that I was living in my van, okay, which I wasn't actually living in my van.
02:48:50.000I might have been responsible for that perception.
02:49:23.000So it was kind of like the Chris Farley sketch.
02:49:26.000I'm living in the van down by the river.
02:49:28.000And it was funny how – I mean, again, the power of social media and the size of your audience, you know, it permeated out there pretty big that like pretty much – Everybody I meet thinks I'm living in a van down by the river now.
02:49:45.000Well, that's like how we describe Hans Kim.
02:50:49.000Because there are certain things that have – like Machu Picchu is a great publicist.
02:50:53.000I think it forces people to confront the idea that what happened to the Native Americans in this country too and in North America and Canada.
02:51:00.000We weren't that nice to them, were we?
02:51:02.000So it makes us have to think about what happened.
02:51:05.000But you were just saying that that place was abandoned in the 1100s.
02:51:08.000So that has nothing to do with Europeans.
02:51:10.000Sure, but just in general, just talking about pre-European – Not now, right?
02:51:16.000But, you know, I think there was probably a period of time when, you know, they were settling Europeans, not just America, Canada too, right?
02:51:26.000Settling North America where they didn't really want to acknowledge that there was civilization here before.
02:51:33.000You know, it was more like they were, you know...
02:52:40.000See, and it's like- Because there's some small ones too that they find, just find little tiny ones they might have used for like small game birds and things like that, but that's a big fucker.
02:52:49.000See, I personally, the second I touched this, I felt sort of a sense of kind of, you know, shivers.
02:52:56.000I feel like, and maybe it's my mind just thinking about the history of it, but there's, you know, people talk about energy and I was like, is it- I used to hear people say when they go to Sedona, the energy there is amazing.
02:53:08.000And I'm like, what are you talking about the energy, right?
02:53:10.000But then when you go to these places, is it because you're just alone and you're relaxed and you're thinking about it so much?
02:53:16.000But it's like you touch this and you go, well, you think somebody actually like carved this, right?
02:54:32.000I don't know if they were wacky people, but your mind starts telling you that you got to be careful.
02:54:36.000You know, like there was a moment, you know, there was a moment out in the desert where I, you know, was all alone out there in a truck on the Mexican border, actually.
02:54:47.000And trucks coming from Mexico towards me.
02:54:52.000You know, there's signs out in the desert when you get to this.
02:54:54.000This was actually in the Arizona-Mexico border.
02:54:57.000It's this place called the Cabeza Prieta Wilderness Area, which is a decommissioned section of the former Barry F. Goldwater Air Force Base test range where they would test bombs in World War II, right?
02:55:09.000And it's like really beautiful, like the cactuses and the… You want a cigar?
02:57:25.000So I did get in the van and I locked the door and I'm in the van and I'm looking out of the van and they pulled up by the van and they're looking at my van and I see the guns in the van and I'm like, okay.
02:57:50.000But there's this sort of five minutes of watching the truck get closer.
02:57:56.000And so you go to the Cabeza Prieta Wilderness Area and it's along the Arizona-Mexico border and you know what the border is like.
02:58:02.000So there's a lot of human trafficking and drug smuggling going on there as well as immigration going on there and people coming across the border illegally and all this stuff.
02:58:13.000And so there was actually a sign when you drive in there.
02:58:17.000That says, danger, human smuggling, drug smuggling, do not travel alone, okay?
02:58:22.000So I still go because I'm with Charlie, right?
02:58:47.000So I, of course, stupidly go out there and I'm camping out there for a week.
02:58:50.000But then you haven't seen anybody for five days, you know, and you're out there making videos and making, you know, ambient music, you know, drinking beer.
03:00:53.000So I went back to Burbank, went down to Guns Plus and picked up a.357 Magnum and a Benelli Montefeltro silver shotgun and got my hunting license and went quail hunting.
03:01:30.000And I also thought, honestly, though, I actually have another answer to you because I was going to lots of places with bears.
03:01:36.000And so I figured it would be good protection for bears, too, because I was going up into, like, the, you know, places in New Mexico where there's bears.
03:01:43.000And I would go hiking by myself and, you know, you don't want to lug a shotgun around with you all the time.
03:01:47.000So, you know, I'd sometimes bring that, you know, in Arizona and stuff.
03:06:18.000And so I basically started with them and then I went off on my own and...
03:06:22.000Well, listen, I'm glad you're going to do another one, because you're a very compelling and interesting person, and you always have a really good perspective, and you've led a fucking wild-ass life.
03:07:20.000Well, I'm going to shoot it in Ottawa, but I'm also doing a tour in April.
03:07:25.000So I'm going to be in Cleveland, I'm going to be in Lexington, Kentucky, Louisville, Detroit, all over Michigan, Helium in Philly, and a lot of the spots.
03:07:36.000So you can go check out my tour, and I'm going to film the whole tour too, and I'm going to kind of cut it together into a bunch of stand-up little montage.