00:01:07.000But that's, you know, that's the emotion of real music.
00:01:12.000It's like you sent me a text message about AI, you know, because you sent me one of your songs and you're like, AI is never going to recreate this.
00:01:37.000But there's always going to be, and I completely agree with you, there's always going to be a thing.
00:01:42.000We know a person wrote it, that they sat down and they wrote it, and there's this connection with their spirit and their creativity that comes out.
00:01:54.000And that's what people love about music, other than stuff that sounds.
00:01:58.000I like AI music because it sounds cool, but I know what it is.
00:08:07.000And so we started touring around the Midwest and played a lot of really random venues like elementary schools, libraries, women's health conventions.
00:08:23.000I think one of the biggest shows I ever did was actually a Boy Scouts thing.
00:13:37.000But you get older and you realize, like, there's a lot of people that are teaching.
00:13:40.000They're just teaching because they need a teacher.
00:13:42.000It's not because, like, we found this magical person who's really good at educating children, really good at, like, shaping their minds and their futures.
00:14:21.000Like, if we really cared about the future of Earth, we would spend a ton of money making sure that these teachers are really well educated and that they really understand psychology, they really understand how to motivate children.
00:14:37.000You would think that would make a lot of sense.
00:15:23.000I mean, you know, there wasn't really formal schooling like we have now where children go at an early age and show up and, you know, and leave their parents all day.
00:15:35.000That's a fairly recent thing in human history.
00:15:38.000And the reason why they got people really early.
00:15:41.000Is because that's how you can brainwash them.
00:16:58.000Like, I could stay up for days if something is really interesting, if I get focused, which is why I have to stay away from video games and stuff like that.
00:17:39.000Like, there's something wrong with me.
00:17:41.000Like, I'm not, I'm just going to be one of those people that's just kind of a fringe person that's never, you know, never fits in anywhere.
00:20:20.000I mean, there's a lot of people like that, even in the music industry.
00:20:23.000I feel like a lot of the experts in the game are just people who were artists and didn't make it, and now they're bitter, and then they try to tell you how everything should go or how you should do everything.
00:21:28.000Yeah, you came out on the other end good, though.
00:21:30.000But isn't it true, though, that like those kind of experiences, like experiencing like oddity and uncertainty and just like the weirdness of like moving to a place like LA when you're 17, like when you get through it on the other end, you're a different person.
00:24:26.000It's Michael Moore, and it's all about the collapse of the Detroit automotive industry and how they moved all the plants to Mexico.
00:24:36.000And when they did that, the entire economy of Detroit and Flint, Michigan, and all these areas just collapsed like tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people out of work.
00:24:53.000And it's a horrific depiction of what can happen when greedy people decide that they'll completely sabotage an entire city so they can make X amount more dollars and move all the factories to places where you can pay people a dollar a day or whatever the fuck they pay them.
00:25:16.000And I had seen that, but I was like, Oh, that was, you know, 1980s or 1960s, whenever, when the place was booming.
00:25:27.000Like, Detroit was, at one point in time, I think the third richest city in the world.
00:25:52.000You know, and when I visited Detroit to work, I'd be like, wow, this is crazy.
00:25:56.000You see trees growing through the middle of houses, the houses are collapsed, and like literally nobody took care of the house, it was abandoned.
00:26:04.000So, trees grow through the roofs, and they're reclaiming these homes.
00:26:09.000You see, you go by these gigantic, like, buildings, like industrial buildings, and all the windows are broken.
00:26:18.000No reliable historical source shows Detroit as the third richest city in the world.
00:26:23.000The common claim is actually that Detroit was the richest city in the world, or at least the U.S. was one of the highest living standards around the 1950s, not third.
00:26:39.000Very high medium household income, around 20% above U.S. average, and it's all because of the automotive industry.
00:26:44.000One of the highest homeownership rates in the country.
00:26:47.000Because of this, many commentators and locals' histories describe Detroit as the wealthiest city in the U.S. and, by some accounts, having the highest standard of living in the world in that era.
00:26:59.000Articles and tours about Detroit repeatedly refer to it as the wealthiest city in the world in the 1950s, not as the third wealthiest.
00:27:08.000So, is that true then that it was the wealthiest city in the world?
00:30:31.000You just get that money and then figure it out on your own.
00:30:35.000And then you buy a Ford car and you think it's made in America.
00:30:41.000Commonly repeated claim the annual income about $34,000 US puts you in the top 1% of the world.
00:30:47.000But this comes from rough, older, viral estimates.
00:30:50.000It's not based on current, rigorous, global data.
00:30:53.000More careful tools and data sets now suggest that $34,000 places you well above the global median, but likely closer to roughly the top 5% to 10% worldwide rather than the top 1%.
00:33:29.000No politician's like, we need to really find the best teachers and pay them the most amount of money that we can afford to make sure that we get the best and the brightest.1.00
00:37:22.000So when you take chickens, when they're brooding, you have to take them away from the other chickens and you put them in a smaller coop and they have to perch.
00:37:30.000So if they perch, then they don't think that they're sitting on an egg and then they get over it after a while.
00:38:49.000And so then he realized that, um, Chickens are to be killed.
00:38:54.000So, someone left the gate open again and he decided to just go right through the big chicken coop and he killed nine of them before one of my daughters was screaming, Johnny's in the chicken coop.
00:41:05.000Because we need the cows because we have a biodynamic vineyard.
00:41:10.000And so we use the cows in the vineyard, um, like for a few months out of the year just because it creates like a great ecosystem and also like their footprints make little puddles and the water gathers because we're also dry farmed.
00:42:03.000So, we don't make the wine, we sell the grapes to, um, I think we have five different winemakers now.
00:42:09.000They're all doing single estate, uh, wines from our property.
00:42:13.000Um, So, they're not blending it with anything.
00:42:17.000So, you can drink the wine from our property, but it's not our label because I don't want to go out there and sell wine and make people taste my wine.
00:42:24.000And I don't want to go down that whole marketing.
00:43:11.000It's all Cabernet, but we're taking like an old world approach to it because Napa cabs are like super powerful, tons of alcohol, and that's not really my style.
00:43:21.000I like like French and Italian wines usually.
00:43:25.000And so all the winemakers we're working with are taking that approach.
00:43:29.000So we're picking a little bit earlier, lower sugars, lower alcohol.
00:46:25.000But we're very all about organic and everything.
00:46:28.000That's great too because one of the things that we were reading the other day was about glyphosate in California wines and that they had tested a bunch of California wines and all of them had glyphosate in it.
00:47:34.000That life of being on a piece of land and growing something there and living with animals, that is the romantic life that everybody thinks about.
00:48:29.000Being in the industry, I'm in going out and like touring and just being in big cities and then coming home to this like peaceful, serene ranch life.
00:49:09.000I think a lot of it was like I have a tendency to give everybody too much power.
00:49:17.000So, all these so called experts, listening to their opinions about what I was doing, just got in my head.
00:49:24.000And so, removing myself, being able to remove myself from those characters and personalities telling me what they thought I should be doing, like, Writing about singing about dressing whatever I just I need to like have open spaces to really hear my own inner voice and like my gut,
00:49:45.000you know mm-hmm so I left LA when I was 23 and I moved up to Oregon for a while lived in a cabin by yourself.
00:52:12.000And it was like, it wasn't editing feature films.
00:52:16.000It was taking like a feature film and then cutting out all the highlights so that I could make like basically reels or like, you know, it wasn't Instagram, but up.
00:52:26.000Basically, like these little clips that people would search and find, like a cum shot or like a cream pie or whatever search term they would use to find this specific little clip.
00:52:37.000And so I would put together these little clips and then tag it with all the search terms somebody would use to find it.
00:53:43.000But I, with the Tetris effect thing happening to me, there was like a light socket over my bed that I had taken the light bulb out of because it was too bright.0.88
00:53:58.000And every night when I fell asleep, I would like, Stare at that and see a gaping butthole.
00:54:02.000I was just like, this is not healthy.0.88
00:54:09.000Like, this can't be good for me to continue doing, you know?
00:54:33.000So, I went on tour with him for a while.
00:54:35.000I don't know if it was like a year or two, but the whole time I was just like, I wish I was making my own music and singing my own music.
00:54:45.000You know, it started really eating at me being like the backup musician.
00:54:50.000And so I was like journaling a lot on tour and I wrote, I just want a cabin in the woods where I can set up my studio and be away from all these people.
00:54:59.000And basically, I manifested the cabin because.
00:55:05.000Like six months after I wrote that in my journal, my mom called me and she was like, My friend has this property in Oregon and she has a cabin and she's willing to let you live there for free.
00:55:15.000You just have to work in her art gallery selling art like twice a week.
00:55:37.000It's a really famous golf course, but it was kind of near there.
00:55:41.000And I lived there for like six months.
00:55:48.000Set up my studio, kind of like had to rediscover my love for music and fall back in love with it because I had like writer's block and was really depressed.
00:55:57.000I had also just before that broke up with my boyfriend at the time and was my heart was broken and it was just like I was a mess.
00:56:08.000But my cabin was this really small one room cabin with one light bulb and there was no bathroom.
00:56:19.000In it, there was a bathroom outside, and so I had to like walk in the middle of the night if I had to pee.
00:56:25.000I had to walk to the bathroom, and I was like, Terrified.
00:56:29.000No, it had a flushing toilet and a shower, but it was like a standalone, but it was separate from the cabin and like down a path by itself, yeah, just a bathroom, yeah.
00:56:41.000Well, because the cabin was like an old fire lookout that they turned into a cabin, so it didn't have like plumbing or something, so they like added, I don't know, but.
00:57:15.000But I was terrified of mountain lions the whole time.
00:57:18.000And so I would like, you know, walking up that hill at night if I came home from whatever.
00:57:24.000I had my flashlight and was like looking all directions.
00:57:26.000Like, and I actually made a mask to wear on the back of my head because apparently, like, eye contact with a mountain lion, like, they won't attack.
00:57:37.000And so they'll because they attack you from behind.
00:57:40.000So, like, wear a mask on the back of my head.
00:59:09.000Historical reports suggest Sunderbann tigers regularly killed 50 to 60 people per year, with some estimates over 100, especially including unreported cases.
00:59:21.000Most recent expert estimates put the average about 22 to 23 human deaths per year in the Sunderbanns far lower than the popular perception.
00:59:30.000Well, there's like clusters of attacks.
00:59:34.000Local news has reported clusters of attacks, multiple fishermen and crab catchers killed within a month, showing that risk can spike in certain areas or seasons.0.99
00:59:42.000I had a bit in my 2009 comedy special about this attack that happened in the Cinderbands where there were four guys in a boat and this tiger swam out to the boat, killed a guy, dragged him to shore, dropped his body off, jumped back in the water, swam to the boat, killed another guy, jumped back in the water, did it with three guys before he got tired, and the last guy just fucking shit in his pants on the boat by himself.0.98
01:03:21.000But that one wasn't even that big, that was like 70 pounds.
01:03:24.000And then a couple of years ago, I was in Utah with my friend Colton, and we were driving around this corner, and he goes, dude, look under that tree.
01:08:34.000That next morning, I take my coffee out onto the front porch like I always did, look down at the sheep pen, and I see this mom sheep laying with her baby that's not moving.0.99
01:08:45.000And I was like, something's not right.
01:08:48.000And I go down there, and sure enough, there's like the fang marks, you know, the deep fang marks in its throat, and it's like stomach eaten out.
01:09:11.000And so we called Fish and Wildlife and they came out and confirmed that it was a mountain lion kill.
01:09:18.000And so they set up, they were, they put traps in our sheep pen and, you know, to see if we could like trap it and relocate it.
01:09:28.000And so they stayed on property that night and, I can't even remember all the details, but basically, in the middle of the night, we heard this big bang and we thought, oh, the trap closed.
01:09:43.000And we opened the door, and it wasn't that.
01:09:45.000It was like one of our sheep had busted through the fence trying to escape the lion and was standing in our driveway, like right in front of the house.1.00
01:10:24.000And basically, for the next week, tried to get this lion and couldn't.
01:10:32.000Like, the dogs were getting all mixed up.
01:10:35.000They were like wandering off one direction and then going another direction, and they're like, and the trackers were like, This has never happened.
01:10:45.000They were, the dogs were just getting all confused.
01:10:48.000And we basically, oh, and then another night, Elliot was out there thinking that he heard the guys whistling, but I guess it was the cats whistling.
01:13:32.000Like, I was fighting for that, but they were just like, no, we got to keep everything as is because if you move them and change what's going on, it'll, like, the cat'll just, like, maybe not come back.
01:13:45.000For a while, but then it'll come back, you know?
01:13:49.000And so they're like, if we're going to get this thing, we got to leave everything as is.
01:13:54.000But anyway, so they finally got the cat one night.
01:14:02.000I actually had to leave town and do a show.
01:14:05.000And Elliot called me and he actually was the one that shot it.
01:14:12.000But they got the cat and I felt like this huge sense of relief.
01:14:17.000And I came home and I thought everything was fine and we weren't going to lose any more lambs.
01:14:23.000And then, like, a few days later, I woke up and took my coffee outside, and there was a mom sheep dead now, and she was dragged under the fence.0.99
01:14:33.000And I was like, what the absolute fuck?0.98
01:14:36.000So, turns out there were two cats hunting together, and that's why the dogs were getting confused and couldn't follow the trail.0.99
01:14:45.000And I guess, like, in the spring, A lot of times the moms will teach their children how to hunt.
01:14:53.000And so they weren't even eating the lambs.0.91
01:21:51.000Most, I think most of the elk that they serve in restaurants in America is coming from New Zealand.
01:21:57.000Because New Zealand's a similar situation, no predators.
01:22:01.000And they brought in all these animals, and then they're just infested.
01:22:04.000And most of it's probably not even really elk.
01:22:06.000It's probably stag, which is super similar anyway.
01:22:09.000But when you get like farm raised elk, that's.
01:22:13.000You're probably getting it from somewhere else.
01:22:15.000I mean, they probably have some places that are allowed to sell farm raised elk in America.
01:22:21.000I don't know which one that would be, but wild game that you hunt, you cannot sell because that's how they almost went extinct in this country.
01:23:25.000Because you can't, first of all, you're in paradise and you're going to see them.
01:23:29.000It's not like if you go on an elk hunt, you could be in the mountains for days before you find any elk because you've got to find out where they are.
01:24:17.000And you could like literally get a year's supply of your meat in like a few days if you wanted to do that and just eat venison for the rest of the year.
01:25:40.000If you're good with a rifle, if you're accurate and you practice, like it's dead, like that.
01:25:45.000And it's not like getting its guts eaten out by a mountain lion, you know, or anything else that's going to eat it, or old age or winter, all the horrible ways that animals die.
01:26:21.000Well, I figured out that I needed to find a way to make a living in music.
01:26:29.000And so I reached out to the only person I had left in my corner musically because, at that point, I had lost my record deal.
01:26:36.000My lawyer dropped me, my manager dropped me.
01:26:41.000But I was still technically signed to UMPG Publishing.
01:26:45.000And, um, So, I reached out to my point person there who I hadn't spoken to in years, and I said, Help me figure out how to make a living in music.
01:27:20.000Like 13 when I'd first heard Stan by Eminem, I'd always been like, I love that combination of like a pretty, you know, female vocal with hip hop.
01:27:35.000And so I'd always wanted to do something like that.
01:27:40.000And so I said, I think I could write hooks for hip hop songs.
01:27:44.000Like that was kind of like my, what I told her I wanted to do.
01:27:49.000And she was like, well, we just signed this producer named Alex the Kid and, uh, That's kind of like his wheelhouse, so you guys should meet.
01:27:59.000And so I flew back to Oregon and she connected us on email.
01:28:07.000And I would go down to the little cafe to get internet.
01:28:10.000And so I would just, I emailed him and he emailed me back some beats that he had just made.
01:28:18.000And I would just sit there with my headphones in the cafe and like hum little melodies into my computer and send them back.
01:28:28.000But the first one I did was called Love the Way You Lie.
01:28:32.000And a month after I sent Alex that hook, it was a number one song.
01:33:37.000Because some people do have that where they feel like they deserve this.0.97
01:33:41.000But I feel like, at least, most genuinely creative people that I've talked to, when something big happens to them, they're like, this is fucking crazy.
01:33:50.000Like, all of my comedian friends, when they start to hit, like, when something happens, When they get like a viral clip and then they do a Netflix special or something like that, in the beginning, they're like, bro, I'm kind of freaking out.
01:34:43.000Because everybody, like, sees people either on television or, you know, in the media and you think, that's a different kind of thing than me.
01:37:08.000This new album I'm putting out, there's a song called Motivation.
01:37:11.000And I remember it came to me when I was standing outside the vet's office when my dog was getting surgery on her ACL or whatever they call it in dog world.
01:37:22.000I was just like pacing outside during her surgery, and this song started coming to me.
01:37:26.000Did she have to do that thing where they cut the bone?0.96
01:39:05.000And instead of thinking of the muse as being, you know, instead of thinking of creativity as being this sort of abstract thing, he thought of it as a thing that you summon.
01:39:15.000Like, legitimately show up every day at the same time in front of your computer or your notebook or whatever, however you do it, and literally say, I am here to summon the muse.
01:39:28.000Like, I'm here respectfully to call upon you for your gifts.
01:39:33.000And if you just show up every day and treat it like that, it will work.
01:40:38.000I write on a subject, like a thing.0.87
01:40:40.000And then I'll let it, like, if I'm writing about whatever fucking global change, global warming, fucking earthquakes, whatever I'm writing about, I'll let it shift to what I don't try to stay on subjects.0.61
01:42:53.000A lot of rappers, I just love doing that, but I think they feed off of each other, you know, and like a lot of what rappers they tell me that like.
01:43:02.000Like they're doing it for their boys, so like as they're like hitting like new lines and coming up with new rhymes and new raps, it's like they're fucking around with their friends and like having a good time, like impressing them with like strong lines and great bars.
01:43:19.000I mean, I've definitely had some moments like that, especially like you can find people you have really good chemistry with, then it can work, right?
01:43:28.000But generally speaking, just going into a room with strangers, it doesn't work for me, but yeah.
01:43:36.000There are some people that I feel super connected to creatively, and I can do that with them.
01:43:42.000Well, I'd imagine everybody's got their own different little process, but it's just a matter of like doing something, like making the time for it.
01:43:50.000And I would imagine also it's like as you get really busy and successful and there's a lot of obligations, it's harder and harder to find that still time.
01:45:37.000And so is it like one of those things where in the back of your mind, you're like, eventually this will come to an end and I'm going to get back to it.
01:45:45.000And then it starts to like itch at you.
01:45:56.000Well, I would imagine that being in a place like Napa, where you're like around, like, peaceful, you know, beautiful background and, you know, nature, and it's probably like way easier to get in touch with your mind than to be trapped in Manhattan.
01:47:12.000I think it's just like how sunlight gives you vitamin D.
01:47:15.000I think there's something about being in wilderness where you're in tune with all those life forms because it's not as simple as, oh, there's a bird, there's a squirrel.0.98
01:48:12.000Yeah, because I think, like, in this room, we have Wi Fi, we both have phones.
01:48:16.000Like, I think there's signals that are just out there that we can't, you know, you can't tune it in and go, oh, that's a video my friend's sending me.
01:48:26.000But there's something about whatever the fuck that stuff is that I think your body recognizes as a, like, they say it fucks with bees, like cell phone signals in particular.1.00
01:48:37.000Really fucks with bees and like okay, well, fucks with bees.1.00
01:48:43.000Oh, I'm sure, yeah, yeah, because it feels like when if you're in a place with no cell phone service, the world feels different, and it's not just because you can't check your phone, it's the world, the actual air around you feels different.0.86
01:49:11.000In a lot of ways, you know, because it's how we meet each other, how we talk to each other, you know, how we find out about new things.0.99
01:49:17.000It's a good balance of it all, you know?
01:50:14.000Musically, and then move on to the next one.
01:50:16.000Like, it doesn't all have to be cohesive.
01:50:19.000I used to just be like, put so much pressure on it being cohesive and having like a certain sound or whatever.
01:50:27.000But now I'm just like, okay, right, like right now, this album, I'm calling the genre bubble grunge because it's like inspired by the 90s pop and grunge kind of like combined together.
01:50:43.000But then the next album, I might totally flip it and do something totally different.
01:51:10.000But I don't want to look back and just wish I would have released more because I have so much music sitting on hard drives and on a Dropbox folder that's never come out because I would like to make a bunch of music and then second guess it and.
01:53:29.000It's a beautiful thing that comes with age the not giving a fuck, or not, you know, like one of the funniest things is to see an old person doesn't give a fuck.0.99
01:54:06.000But it's an album where I'm telling the story of my, like, Upbringing in small town Wisconsin, discovering my sexuality, and just like it's like a coming of age story.
01:54:21.000And it's a part of my story I don't think a lot of people know.
01:54:25.000They mostly know me from working with Eminem and all the things I did after that.
01:55:11.000And so it was important for me to get it off my chest and be at a point now where I feel like I can accept that I'm 40 and actually enjoy it.
01:55:22.000And so that was the whole gist of the album.
01:55:27.000Do you really think that you have wasted potential?
01:55:34.000Well, when I made music for my mom growing up, it was a completely different lifestyle to now making music in, you know, LA and the big world of music.
01:55:47.000I didn't realize how much work it would be.
01:55:52.000And I think when I first got into it, I was kind of lazy about it because I was like, oh, honestly, I probably should have been a Gen Z. Because I was just like, fuck this.0.99
01:56:04.000I don't want to do this, you know?0.99
01:56:06.000And so a lot of decisions I made in my career, I feel like, you know, it was all my fault, basically.
01:56:16.000All the failures that I've had, I realized were my fault for being, you know, lazy or not putting in the effort and the grind.
01:57:27.000Do you think that that self critical mindset, though, is just one of those things that's just like, it's actually inherent to anybody that's creative and ambitious?