#2285 - Andrew Schulz
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Oprah's doing an episode on psychedelics. How about that? God bless. Yeah, you don't do a fucking... Are we rolling yet?

Are we rolling? Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, you don't do an episode on psychedelics unless you fucking visited the Maya. Unless you dabbled. Unless you got in there. You think it's ayahuasca or mushrooms? Most of those fancy people like to do the ayahuasca. Yeah. You know, because then you can claim spirituality above all other people.

Oh, you think there's like a pretentiousness? Oh, 100%. There's a... I've done it. I've done it. I've experienced the mother god. Yeah. The god. Yeah. I've experienced Gaia. Yeah, yeah. It's like, I think...

I think people do really do experience that, but also there's a certain type of personality that wants to let you know that they're enlightened. Yeah. They're further down the road than you, Andrew. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And like one way to get like instant street cred in the psychedelics world is to say you do ayahuasca. Yeah. And if you do mushrooms, you might just be some asshole at a party. Yeah. You know, you and your friends are just fucking giggling nonstop on the couch. It could be that. There's no points in mushrooms. Right. You don't get points for that. You can say, you say you took a heroic dose. You'll get points amongst the learned. Yeah. Like, oh. Yeah, but the casuals don't give a fuck.

The casuals don't get a lot. You do ayahuasca, we're going to pay attention a little bit. Yeah, the casuals are going to go, why did you eat eight grams? Yeah. That seems crazy. But the other people are going to go, whoa, what was that like? Yeah. Oprah's out here. Oprah's out here pushing it. I wonder if it's like a...

I mean, this is on my friend Mark Bell's page, Mark Smelly Bell. And he said, what fucking year are we living in? Like, what is happening here? What's going on? Yeah. I wonder if the ayahuasca thing is for some like a quick fix thing.

They're looking for immediate life change. Oh, yeah, for sure. And also, sometimes your life has been such a colossal series of failures that you want some symbolic reset. And probably there's a lot of value in a real...

like a, like set and setting like a ritual. Yeah. Like I'm emerged, I'm a new person. Yeah. At least maybe that bullshit will give you some momentum. For real. To kind of get on the right track. I was talking to Neil about this. Neil Brennan, you know, he, he, he did it. He's done it.

He's done a lot of different things. Yeah, because he was trying. He was really battling with stuff. He needs to get off that vegan diet. Yeah, maybe that's it. What if it's just chicken is all he needs? What if it's a ribeye? He's down in Costa Rica licking toads. For real. If I had that dude over my house and cooked him some elk steak, I'd change his fucking life. If you make an agreement, just eat this with me. He takes one bite and he's like, I am worthy. Yeah!

But I think he was talking about it and he was, you know, one of his superpowers is his cynicism, right? And it's really debilitating. And I tell him this all the time, but it's also amazing because he's hyper aware of what the most negative thing could be. Right. So for joke writing, it's amazing. It's like he's constantly wondering, what would his biggest hater think? I actually think it was one of the reasons why Chappelle's show was so successful because it's like,

To create things, you need to be super confident. You need to not worry about who's going to criticize you. Yeah. So if you can outsource your criticism...

So if Dave can like think about these things and be like, okay, this is awesome. And then Neil can be like, yeah, but this would be said if we do this. And then together you have this like perfect combination of like Uber confidence and then this insecurity. And then you make these things that are just masterpieces. And hyper analytical insecurity. Yes. You know, like intelligent. When you're smart and insecure, it's even worse. Dumb and insecure, you can manage. But then he said he did the ayahuasca and he was like, um,

Yet gave me this like a feeling of connectedness or whatever people experience through it. And he's like, it was really liberating. I think I did my best work afterwards because I wasn't constantly beating myself up. Like I was able to create. So I think there is value in it. But I do think sometimes people are looking for like the quick. OK, my life has changed now and now I connect with the world and we're perfect. You can always tell the guys who beat themselves up because they beat other people up, too.

What is it? Hurt people hurt people. Yeah, the guys who beat themselves up, they're always like super critical of other people. Look at him. Look at this fucking bullshit. Did you ever go through a stage like that? Not really. Never? No. I figured it out when I was 21. Real lucky. I talked about this the other day. There was one time, it was an open mic night, and the guy went on after me. I was hoping that he would bomb.

And I remember thinking that, like, what a bitch-ass way to think that is. Yeah. Ugh. Yeah. Like, that's such a bitch-ass way to think. And I completely shifted my perspective.

Because, like, you don't think like that with martial arts. Like, you can't think like that. You know, you can't think like that. Yeah. You can't think like that ever. That's, like, a weak-ass thought. Yes. And then I realized, like, oh, this is, like, your brain trying to occupy itself with, you know, this time that's going to be between you and your goal of getting

doing something in comedy and it's so far away you suck you're 21 years old and you suck so everybody else gotta suck so you want people to fail and you wanna do better yeah it's like it's just a total scrambly I don't know what I'm doing with my life thought yeah and I realized I was like oh that's a bitch ass thought but

But that is very normal for human beings. Oh, yeah. There's a lot of bitches out there. Yeah, like we're kind of bitch made in general. Like it takes more effort to not be a bitch actually. Especially if you have a job. So if you have a regular job job, like an office job, you will pretend to be a whole different person for eight hours a fucking day every day of your life that you're there. Yeah. That is a lot of time bullshitting. Yeah. And when you get out of all that bullshitting, there's not much you left. Right.

Whatever could have been you never grew because whatever could have been you was stifled by fluorescent lights and a fucking monitor. You're watching Severance, right? Oh, yeah.

I mean, clearly it's a metaphor for... I don't know. There's a lot of things that go on to it. There's a lot going on with that show. And also, shout out Ben Stiller. I didn't even know Ben had this level to him. Right. I've always respected Ben. I thought he was hilarious making great comedy movies. But I didn't know he was like an avant-garde storyteller. Right. Right. It's also the way it's shot is brilliant. The first episode...

Every shot, I don't know who the DP is, like we should find out who that guy is, but every shot has like perfect symmetry. Did you notice that? I didn't notice it. You could cut the screen in half every single shot. Really? It is a masterpiece. But I think about that, like this idea of like severing yourself, a lot of people are doing that at work anyway. 100%. It's what you were describing. They're this other person at work for eight hours a day. Yeah. They aren't their self. There's a different identity. They make up these little terms. Like, oh, this is my work wife. It's like...

Yeah, that's why it's so easy to push like crazy woke nonsense into an office space because people are already bullshitting Oh, so if we're already pretending here, what else are we gonna put? What else I have to do to keep this job? Yeah, what do I have to do to get a promotion? What do I have to do? Do I have to pretend that trans kids? What is it? Drab queen shows? Okay, I'm in I'm in Healthcare? Yeah, I'm my dick. Whatever you want to call it

And it's gender affirming. Was that what we're calling it? Okay. And it's interesting to see how little pushback there is from the workers now that all these programs are being wiped away. Well, the people that are losing their job are complaining hard. And then the senators are complaining hard. But everybody else is happy. Yeah. The people who have been faking it at work that are still working there are not like, damn it. You know what I mean? They're just going, all right, I get to be a little closer version to myself.

Well, they're probably going to get fired. At Disney? You're saying at Disney? What do you mean? I'm saying all these programs have come out. Maybe not Disney, but it was like Zuckerberg comes out and goes, yeah, Meta, we're not going to do the DEI shit. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think Amazon even came out and said it. I thought you were meaning government jobs were cut by USAID. No, I'm talking about corporate jobs, people who have corporate jobs. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. My team deserves a lot of credit.

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ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash R-O-G-A-N. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Oh, you mean corporate DEI jobs? Could be DEI. It could just be anybody working there in general. There's a bunch of people that got jobs and their whole job was to make sure that the company was diverse. Right. And it's like, do you remember the Rainbow Coalition? You remember Jesse Jackson back in the day?

Jesse Jackson used to – I mean I know Jesse but I would not – He had this thing where he would go to businesses like if they had some sort of a dispute. Like say if there's some sort of an issue like maybe some black executive got fired and maybe shouldn't have or someone put something on the wall in the bathroom, something. Jesse Jackson would come in for a nominal fee.

For a nominal fee. Yeah. He will come in and straighten your business out. And so. What does straighten your business out mean? Well, make sure that you guys are on the right track. Give a little speech, collect a little check. And then what would happen. So basically say you're not racist.

Absolutely. You can't be racist if you're hiring Jesse Jackson. We're on the right track. So he comes along, gives you the rubber stamp. Legend. What a legend. And he's like balling, like balling out of control, just giving the rubber stamps to these companies. And then on top of that, what they do is then they would have –

Jobs for people to oversee this activity in a large corporation. So it's basically like no-show jobs the mob used to give out at the Javits Center. Right. I had a buddy of mine who had one of those. Do people know what the Javits Center is here? It's a big convention center in New York City. In New York City, this is where Comic-Con would be and all these different things. Big stuff. And it was mobbed up, right? Mobbed.

So they would have all these fake jobs that you could give to the guys around the block. Yeah. Everybody's getting paid. And it's probably supported by the city in some way, right? Yeah, I don't want to say his name because he's still around. Okay. But he was an actor. And I was working with him. And he was explaining he's got a no-show job. I know.

Do I know who you're talking about? Probably not, but I'll tell you afterwards. Fucking great guy. But afterwards, everybody was like, that guy's so mobbed up. He's got a fucking no-show job. You know what's funny? You get like 200 grand a year. You don't even have to work.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of construction jobs and stuff, but this is kind of how things work. Well, this is what USAID is finding. USAID found this place in San Antonio that they spent billions of dollars on. You thought it was only Ukraine getting money for nothing? And it's fucking no one was there? Completely empty? To me, this is not shocking, but- Bro, the numbers are shocking. No, the numbers can get shocking, but it's funny the Jesse Jackson thing is an actual job because-

I remember like I had a joke that it could never work out, but the idea was was based on it was it was Black Lives Matter when when Ukraine started popping. Right. So everybody had the Black Lives Matter posters in their windows in New York. And when Black Lives Matter kind of.

- Well, it's once those ladies got caught buying houses. - Of course, of course. - That put a dent in it. - It wasn't great. So now there's all these white people in New York that have Black Lives Matter in their window, but they're like, "I gotta get this out of my window." So I had this idea for a joke where it's like, if I was a black dude, I would set up a business where we will take down your Black Lives Matter poster for you and then replace it with a Ukraine flag, you know what I mean? So you're still a good person.

Jesse was doing it in the fucking 70s. I had no clue the Rainbow Coalition already worked. That is what it's called, right? Yeah, it was the Rainbow Coalition. He had a bunch of other things he would call it under, but the whole idea was just to make sure that people weren't

Doing the wrong thing. Yeah. Do the right thing. Yeah, you got to do the right thing. You got to do the right thing. You always got to do the right thing. Yeah, but the problem with that is it gets hijacked. Obviously, there should be no racism. There should be zero racism. Yes. There should be zero discrimination. Yes. Everything should be merit-based. Yeah. But the problem with that is, and this is a real problem, the country's not merit.

based in terms of like where you're born. Like you didn't earn your birth spot. You didn't earn your family. It's a roll the dice and you get real lucky or really fucking unlucky. And as a community, as a country, we pay zero attention to the completely downtrodden. I think this is the biggest mistake that the Democrat party has made is not making it a class issue.

Like the most successful people in the party, like Bernie, and you like her politics or not, but like AOC, they make it a class issue every single time. I think I think AOC pulled the same as Trump in her district. Why is that?

Because people think that she wants to help. And Bernie has just been taking shots the entire time. He's like, look at all these billionaires. They got a lot of money. You don't have enough money. Campaign finance is fucked up. We need to stop that. There's too much influence with people with money. And it resonates with people. Oh, yeah, man. We feel like you want to help. I mean, you, I feel like you were like a big Bernie dude. Dude, that was the first time I really got canceled was over Bernie.

Because they didn't want Bernie to win. And so they started calling me racist and homophobic. And I was like, where is this coming from? When Bernie started popping, what did they say? Right. They had to. I don't know who they is. You could call whoever the fuck they want. But like.

There was this idea that they had to like thwart his success. And these articles started coming out where it was like the Bernie bros. Yeah. Bernie's got a problem. His fans or supporters are sexist. They're racist. And they're these bros that are fucked up and they're radioactive and they're bad people. And he's got a real problem. So they're trying to make him radioactive. And I remember seeing the reaction to Trump coming on the pods.

And it was the exact same playbook. It was like, the Manosphere pods. They're sexist. They're racist. Look how fucked it is. Like, you're doing the same thing. You're making it about identity politics.

Think Americans are kind of simple in that like we want abundance, but we want access So if eggs are expensive, I can't care about your bathrooms, right? Like and you need to tap into that feeling right there So from the Democrats, I'm just this is a class issue But I feel unfortunately a lot of them are in the pockets of these wealthy people. Yeah, it's this It's all a hustle if we had a

The entire time. If we had brilliant people working for the betterment of the United States, it'd be a far better place to live in. We've had a bunch of people that are capitalizing off of the fact they get in this position of extreme influence and wealth. Yeah. And they make insane amounts of money for people with $170,000 a year salary. Yeah. And they keep it rolling. So how do you do that? Like, how do you find... Okay, so...

How do you find someone who wants power but is also benevolent? You've got to get rare human beings. That's the thing. Most people who want power don't exactly want to give back. It's a bottomless pit. Bro, have you ever seen people get a little bit of power and lose their fucking marbles? Like who? I can't say. I can't tell a story because it would be real obvious who I'm talking about. But it's not one of our friends. Got it. I just don't want to say it publicly. You don't even know him. Okay.

But I've seen people with just like you get a job where you're the boss now and you just become a cunt and a half. Like what happened? Do you think it exposes who they always were or do you think it actually changes their character? It's probably both.

It's probably both. They probably had weak character to begin with, but they could get away with it if they were not in situations that, you know, caused a lot of anxiety or stress. But then as soon as they do get in a situation causing like if you're the boss of some workplace somewhere. Yeah. I've just seen people just completely lose their shit when people rely on them and depend on them. They just become tyrants. Do you think that they resent the dependents?

I don't know what it is, man. I don't know what it is. You have a lot of people that depend is, yeah, I would say depend is tricky because they have the autonomy to not do that. But there are a lot of people that definitely rely on you. And yeah, do you feel pressure from that? Yeah. No. Really? No. I feel like you took care, like before you opened the comedy club, you were taking care of these people that you asked to come out here and work for you. Yeah.

So you must have felt this concern for them. Yeah. Didn't you hire them? Weren't you paying them even before the club was open? Yeah. Well, they were all unemployed out of L.A. So I said, listen, we're going to open up a club. We're going to find a spot. But you could start immediately. So you just get paid, enjoy Austin, kick back, relax. We'll call you in about a year and a half. It was around two years. But you felt a responsibility. Yes. But it didn't burden me. Got it. It wasn't like...

this is a heavy responsibility. It's like, this is smart. We could do this. This is the right thing to do this way. We already have the best people that, you know, got fired from the comedy store. Cause comedy store couldn't open. Yeah. LA's retarded. Yeah. And so we got them all to come out here and it's like, look, the right thing to do is to like pay him now. And we'll figure that out. We just had to figure out where the spot was. And then,

obviously once we got the spots like this is gonna be a long we're gonna have to put some construction on this bitch and do a lot of shit so take some months so you knew it's gonna take time you're like okay I'm gonna take care of them in the interim but again it's so you're not burdened by people feeling like they rely on you or anything doesn't bother me no if it burdened me like if it was something where I was worried I was gonna run out of money like if I was like stretched real thin yeah I like fuck there's so many people working for me this is a problem like I gotta I gotta like

figure something out. Yeah. But I'm not, so it's okay. It's just, it's like decide what you think about in this life. What do you mean by that? Decide what you think about in this life. If you...

Are you gonna do something that's going to change the way you feel about? Having a bunch of employees or you or you not are you just gonna freak out about it like decide what you think about things what were those two philosophies like a Determinism and yeah, we will yes. Are you a huge free will guide? Do you believe in determinism at all will is real, okay?

Okay, I know it's real because it exists in me. The idea, though, is that it's fleeting and it's dependent upon a multitude of factors. Your will is really dependent upon your hormone levels, your genetics, how much sleep you've had, what positive or negative experiences have shaped you in your life. There's a lot going on that...

that like forces you into this position where you have to decide whether or not will is real. Yeah. But will's real. I believe it's real. It's a hundred percent real. Yeah. Like,

Like, I know it's not determinism that makes David Goggins run harder than anybody else. It's will. Yeah. It's 100% will. His knees are destroyed. Yeah. It's only will that just gets you up off the couch if your knees are destroyed and you run a tidy 30 miles that day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not determinism. Yeah. That's bullshit. If it was determinism, there'd be tons of those guys out there. Yeah. There's only a small,

Cameron Haynes small little fucking handful of these like psychotic people who have incredible will world champion fighters you know Gordon Ryan and jiu-jitsu like there's a like Gordon Ryan works out every fucking day of the week 365 days a year it's a huge sacrifice if you want to be really great at something you kind of have to be out of your fucking mind but you also have to have an iron will yeah

You don't want to work out every day. There's gonna be days. You just want to eat cake and sleep Yeah, but if you want to get past the guy who eats cake and sleeps, you don't eat cake and you don't sleep Yeah

That's Will, dude. That's Will. Your determinism can suck my dick because it's never, there's no just like accidental amazing people. It's like a lot of similar stories. Single mom started doing this and started doing that. Invented something when he was 18. Do they all come from trauma, you think? I think a lot of people that are hyper-ambitious come from a shitty environment. And what is that connection to?

Think it's probably wanting something better than you're experiencing and knowing that it's possible that it's out there and knowing the pain of living in the ghetto or the pain of being on food stamps the pain of Poverty and then the fact that like when you're poor and you're young you wonder whether or not you're going to have food You know, that's a scary thought for a child. That's motivating. Yeah, it was a kind of fire in you like a

You don't get a Mike Tyson if he grows up in Brentwood. Yeah. You know, you get them when they grow up in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Yeah. You know, you don't get them when they have an awesome dad and an awesome mom who was there for their baseball games. He tells them what a great job they did and consoles them when they get hurt. And like, no, no, no. You have like a life of pain and then you got some pain to dish out after that. I also but I feel like it's not completely dependent on that.

You know, like I wouldn't say that I had this like life of pain. Like I've, you know, dealt with my shit, you know, but I feel incredibly competitive and ambitious. Well, you're an artist. It's a different thing, right? Yeah. The reason why it's a different thing is you're an artist in a very specific way.

Which is talking shit. You're a shit-talking artist, right? Like shit talking. I'm a distiller to that. It is what it is. It is what it is. It's beautiful. Professional shit-talkers. It's my favorite art form. Yeah. And shit-talking artists, they want to be around a bunch of people and have a good time. Yeah. Right? So you don't need to come from trauma to be ambitious and be a shit-talking artist. Yeah.

All you have to do is like be someone who admires success and who wants to progress and keep getting better at this thing that they love that has given them so much. Yeah, but you also have to sacrifice and you have to commit to things. Right. You know, I do feel like it takes, like, I mean, I didn't,

I mean, in the beginning, like, I don't think I celebrated a birthday for like a decade. Like, I don't think I ever considered like taking a vacation or anything. Like, I was just so hungry to get after it, to get good, to be like undeniable. That was like this goal. It's like, how can I be undeniable? I would see these guys go up like fucking Greer Barnes or Mike DiStefano. And I would just be like, they're just undeniable. And I,

Yeah, I don't know. I didn't even fucking drink, I think, for like a decade. I was like, I got to get better at this. I got to just kind of work. And maybe that comes from watching my parents work hard or something. I'm sure that helps. Yeah, they were really hard workers. Yeah. And that's like the expectation of work.

Well, also you have a lot of gratitude. And I think if you have gratitude, you realize how fortunate you are to have the ability to work hard. Yeah. Because that's a real thing. Oh, dude. Especially working hard at something that you're actually successful at. Like once you're actually successful, keep that foot on the gas, motherfucker. It is. Keep that foot on the gas. Let's go. That's like the balance. Like you just put something out. So I imagine you took a little time off afterwards. Yeah, I did. I got like 25 minutes right now.

Okay, so you're building back. And I find in order for the next thing I do to be different, I have to take time away. Because I have to reflect on the changes in my life. And if I keep going earlier in my career, I would just go, go, go, go. And I found I was writing different versions of the same jokes. Right. They were different jokes, but it was...

Same topic, same kind of reaction. And I think it was, I just wasn't. You're trying to fill time. I'm on the road. I'm like, I got to go back to Albany next year. You got to do another hour. I'm making $1,500 a weekend. And then you get connected to that material because you've been doing it for a while. Yeah. And then it doesn't really resonate with you. Yeah. And then, yeah, so it's like. I think Louis took a whole year off. I think I really respect that. Yeah. I think it's wise. Yeah.

Yeah. I think taking time and thinking about it is really wise. And thinking about, like, what are the things that are on your mind? Like, what is... How do you really feel about this world that we're living? This world that seems more and more like it's not real. More and more like it's a fucking simulation. Yeah. I'm kind of convinced now. What, it is a simulation? Yeah, there's something going on. There's something more to...

Reality than what meets the eye there's more to it than what you could put on a scale or what you could put a ruler to This is more to this thing. This thing's made out of like some very bizarre energy that's attached to consciousness That's what I think. What do you mean by this? I think that like I think it's really possible that

First of all, it's inevitable that one day they will achieve a simulation that is indiscernible from reality. Okay. No doubt about it. They've gotten real close, you know, where you could put on haptic feedback suits and you can see things and you feel like you're in a room. You know, it's crude, but it's like, you know, Nintendo from 20 years ago versus, you know,

Some modern warfare game now, right? They're going to get to a point where it's indiscernible Yeah, so if it's if it does happen, how do you know? How do you know when that takes place now? Here's the question is that the ultimate progression of technology is the ultimate progression of technology transcending physical reality and becoming completely digital life and

So if that is possible, how do we know if it hasn't already happened? How can we know if it hasn't already happened? Well, one thing I would say that if this world was scripted, it would be filled with a lot of shit that's exactly like what happened. Trump would get shot in the ear and say, fight, fight, fight. You would have Elon Musk as...

At the inauguration, looking like he's on another planet. Now, Joe, I just want to make the point here. You're making the argument for determinism. No, I'm not. I'm making the argument that there's a conscious interface. There's consciousness, and it's interfacing with something that's not entirely real. And that is the life that we're living in. And we think it's way realer than it actually is. So is somebody in control of it, or they're allowing us to...

have some semblance of control. I feel like it might be controlled by the actual things that are inside of it. So I think our destiny is truly in our hands. I really believe that. I like that. And then if that is the case, how is that not real?

Well, it is real in a sense, but I think that the actual way that things happen and work is dependent entirely on the level of consciousness that people have that are experiencing it.

This sounds like very hippy-dippy and wooey, and it all comes from a lot of different things, but one of it comes from Tom Campbell, who wrote this very fucking bizarre book that I've listened to on audiobook twice now, where he's talking about essentially what we think of as reality is just a simulation.

Okay. The whole entire thing is our consciousness interpreting everything as we experience it throughout the day. But when we are not here, that is not the same thing. What do you mean when we're not here? When we die, you're saying? If you're not on Mars, is Mars real? Or is Mars something that we agree is real? We agree it's in a certain space and it'll only be there when we get there?

Like if the universe is a true simulation, imagine what a mind fuck. You have a simulation where it's perfect in that it has all of these galaxies and supernovas. The moon aligns perfectly with the earth to cause eclipses. And without the moon being there, our entire atmosphere would fall apart. We would never be able to survive. So it's like this perfect little thing that's set right there. And we spin around.

and worry which bathroom should we let the guy in a dress go to. Okay. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. If you're looking to start an online business, you need to check out Squarespace. We even use it for JoeRogan.com. You can effortlessly take payments for whatever you want to sell thanks to Squarespace payments, giving you options like Apple Pay, Klarna, and Blitz.

Plus, with integrated SEO tools, your customer base will always be able to find you. Try it for free at squarespace.com. Use squarespace.com slash rogan to save 10% on your first purchase. But meanwhile, it's just a show that's being put on for our consciousness. Okay, so it's a show being put on for our consciousness, right? And somebody's put on the show. And then we get the ability to go to the moon. And then they got to scramble and make a moon?

No, there's a moon. I mean, it doesn't matter. Wherever you go, there is a place. Because that is kind of funny. It's like, if our technology gets so good and they're just going, fuck, we've got to make this thing real. They're on the way. I'm well aware if you're criticizing me, this is a dopey way to describe it. But if the tree falls in the forest and there's no one there, does it make a sound? Yes. I don't even know if the tree falls if there's no one there. Oh, God. No.

I'm not convinced. I'm not convinced. Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh. I'm not convinced. So the tree, okay, okay. I think if you take a trip to the Pacific Northwest, you will find trees. Yes, yes. I just don't know if they're there all the time.

So they're only there in reference to us looking at them. Oh, I get what you're saying. I think that's... Wait, wait, wait. So you're playing a video game. Uh-huh. And as you move throughout the map of the video game, it presents itself. It has to render new levels. Yeah. But you're saying without us accessing it, it isn't presenting itself. It might be the whole universe. They're saving on data. That might be the whole universe. The whole universe might be us interacting with something. But they exist. But it doesn't exist without us.

Yeah, and this is one of those things, like, what does it matter either way? But exists with us in this moment. Like, if you jump off a cliff, you will die. Yeah. Like, gravity's real. Yeah. You'll get pulverized. Yeah. No doubt. But...

It's because you jumped. It's also like your consciousness is the reason why all this is here. Yeah, that's- Because you're interacting with it. That's the manifestation of everything, though. So I get what you're saying. The structure- Existentially, does it exist if we're not touching it, feeling it? It's what they say about the Native Americans when they first saw the ships, they didn't know what they were. Yeah, that's bullshit. That's not real. Exactly. But I wouldn't-

I wouldn't say that it's not real in that they didn't understand what it was. In the distance, they think there were like mountains moving closer. They probably just saw these giant pieces of wood and was trying to figure out. They had structures. They might not know it's wood. But didn't they have structures? I don't know if they're fishing at that time. I'm not sure. But if you see them in the distance, you see them moving forward. Right, right. I get the idea like your brain can't map

what that is yet. Right, you'd be freaked out. So it's mapping to whatever you know. So it's like, oh shit, is it low tide and there's some sandbars out there that are slowly approaching? What the fuck is that? That's kind of what you're saying. I can't understand what a glacier is without knowing what it is. When I see a glacier for the first time, I can recognize glaciers everywhere. But if I take someone who's never seen a glacier to it... I think this guy's going further than that. I think he's saying the glaciers aren't real unless you're there. But if someone is there at every point in time...

throughout the world, then everything is. Yes. And we have enough people where there's some people in Antarctica. All right. So Antarctica is always there. There's some people in Alaska. Okay. So that's always there. If we have enough people throughout the world, the world is this congealed substance that we can look at, feel, touch and experience. Yeah. And it might be like the map of the game is like those NASA satellite photos of Earth.

That's the map of the game. If you wanted to go through a game, a video game, and before you go through the game, it shows you these are the arenas in which you're playing. And you can choose one of them? Yeah, you can choose one or you know which level you're going to. That's those NASA 3D photos of the Earth. That's what the Earth is. Earth is the place where we play this consciousness game. When you're sitting at home and you're like,

thinking about these things. Yeah. Do you like talk to your kids about it? No, that's too weird to talk to kids about. What about your wife? Are you like just going, hey? She would go, what? You know my wife. She'd be like, what the fuck are you talking about? Okay, so you get out of the sauna. You have a nice sweat. You're walking around your house. You're looking at the stars. You see fucking Saturn or whatever in the sky. If she wants to talk about something like that, she'll bring it up.

Like if she wants to talk about something heavy, it's not like I wouldn't talk about something heavy with her. Yeah. But generally, like I come home from work. She's been with the kids. She's doing this and that. She don't need all that. We eat dinner. We have fun. How was school? Have a good time. Maybe we watch a little Severance together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if she's like, did you ever think that maybe this all isn't real? I'd be like, I'm so glad you brought this up. Let's go.

Okay, so do you struggle battling with the... Because some people, when they think about this stuff, they feel their own insignificance, and it's very depressing for them. Oh, it doesn't matter. So you're unaffected entirely that your existence in this lifetime...

over the grand scheme of things could not be important. It can't be important. But it is. But it is to you and it is to the people around you. And if that makes up our reality, then it's important. Sure. But why think about that? Why think about whether or not you're important?

I just don't waste any time thinking about whether or not I'm important. Maybe important is like a pretentious word. Not important. Don't think about the end of the game. Play the game. Don't go, oh my God, it's going to end. Yes. My quarter's going to run out. Just play the game. But some people won't play the game if they know there's no game at all or they know it is a completed game. I think that there's this urgency that is applied. Like, okay-

I have to create the art that I want to create in this time in my life. Time is something I've been thinking about nonstop since I had a kid. It's like time, how do I spend time? It maybe is cliche, but it is the thing that I value the most and everything gets broken up into these little quadrants of time. Okay, I'm out here, I'm doing some pods, okay, I'm away from my daughter, I'm away from my wife.

How do I get back that time? How can I like create these events? Like, I don't even buy expensive shit. I like to take a vacation with my friends. I want us all to stay in the villa together. Cause when we're in different hotel rooms, we miss out on those little moments in between time, time, time. And to me, it's like, I'm putting an importance on this. I guess the game you say you're playing, I want to experience the most of this game as I possibly can while I'm here. And I have all these examples of people like finishing the game. You know, my dad's

you know, he's got dimension and all this stuff. It's like you're seeing your ability to, I guess, manifest that reality. You're at the kind of end of your game, you know, knock on wood. But like, yeah, the idea of like me being important, I don't care about like that in terms of how people see it. But in this time I have here, I want to believe it's really important and I want to soak as much of it up as I can.

And I think sometimes when you're like, oh, it's pointless, it's nothing. I felt like Jim Carrey was going through that moment. There are these times where I'd see Jim talking about the insignificance of the world. And I feel like that can kind of lead people to sadness and depression. I feel like sometimes you need the battery in your back of importance. Not you being important to other people, but the time you spend here being valuable. Yeah. Well, that's part of gratitude, too. That's one of your best traits. Yeah.

Having gratitude is you would recognize that you this time is precious, you know Yeah, use it to the best of your ability and then really like you enjoy it like so get up Did you see everything everywhere all at once? Yeah, I did. Like I thought that was a beautiful Beautiful way of showcasing how people look at like the nothingness of life. Yeah, this girl sees it as potentially nothing and

And falls into her own kind of, I guess you would call it just depression. Why is it worth it? What the fuck is going on? Right. And she kind of sees her father as this like weak guy that's getting like walked over. And then comes to realize that like he chooses to deal with the nothingness with kindness and love with everybody. And in reality, he's like a hero. Like his perspective on the world is the best thing.

When confronted with the nothingness of life, he chooses to be compassionate and loving. And it's actually the most heroic stand you can take. I think it's very easy to just submit to nothingness. Your determinism is maybe the wrong word, but you like hard shit. The day you're no longer here is when you can no longer do hard shit.

I feel like your day is full of it. And it's just constant. Like, wake up, I'm getting in the fucking ice bath. Like, everything I see you do is hard. You know what I mean? Like, you could shoot a fucking thing with a gun if you want. You could shoot animals with a gun. I'm surprised you don't run on them with a fucking knife. Like, literally, like, I feel like one day I'm going to see you go, I'm going knife hunting. I'm going bear knife hunting. Just because it's a difficult thing to do. And I don't know, maybe that's how you process the...

Process existence. Well, I think if you are a person who enjoys challenges and finds a reward in like working hard and overcoming that

resistance inside of you as a Pressfield talks about that that thing that wants you to be lazy if you if you have value in that you find value in that and it helps you live like a more enriched more fulfilling life you tend to just keep doing that because this is like if I I know for a fact me as much as I work out and take care of myself if I take like three days off

You'll start to get used to it? I start getting depressed. I start getting anxious. I start feeling weird. Like, I don't feel level. Like, a couple of days off, you're just like, ugh, I just feel gross. I'm just like, why is the world so weird? And then I'll have one good hard workout, and then I'm like, oh.

Everything's fine, and I'm like how many people need that and don't get what is that? It's just a human body has certain requirements because it's designed to run from Tigers The human body is designed to constantly be it yeah, you have to feed it you have to deal with these difficult things because for millions of years That's how our brains and bodies have been processed to work efficiently and if you don't put in those situations What is the is the messaging like?

You're wasting this time here. What is that internal messaging? You can have both, right? You can have people that have brilliant minds and shit bodies. They exist. There's people that don't take care of their body at all. Yeah, Stephen Hawking. But he had a disease. But it wasn't like an Adonis before. Right, that's true too. Yeah. People act like it's a big difference.

Yeah, but the best way for your brain to work well is if your body is healthy and has energy.

It doesn't mean you have to be a weightlifter. It doesn't mean you have to be, you don't have to do any specific thing. If you like running, run. If you like tennis, play tennis. If you like yoga, do yoga. But you should 100% do something. Find a thing you enjoy doing. That's why golf or rather tennis is such a great thing because it's cardio and it's fun. Yeah. Right? You're doing a fun thing. You're playing with your friends. Also community. Yeah.

Community. Huge. Yeah, but you're active. If you don't do that, I don't think your body is in sync. And I think there's a whole lot of people running out there taking care of things with pills that you could fix way better and feel and look better. More importantly, it would help in every aspect of your life. It would help you think clearer. You'd have less stress. You'd be more reasonable. Yeah.

Like go fucking do something with your goddamn body. And if you don't do that, I really believe if you don't do that, you have less potential. You can have a genius mind that allows you to overcome that potential with just pure intelligence, just a pure insight on the world that's extraordinary. You could overcome bullshit hormone levels and bullshit body fat levels. You could, but you shouldn't.

Yeah. You're so fucking smart and you got a terrible body? Yeah. What's wrong with you? Yeah. You have one of these goddamn things. Yeah. You can make that thing awesome. Yeah. You don't even do anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have one of these. Yeah. You get one fucking body and yours is a dumpster. Yeah. Yours is a dumpster for potato chips. That's crazy. What do you like...

When you're talking to these high-functioning dudes, you're talking to like an Elon, did they value exercise and stuff like that at all? Can he even put that in his day? Elon's a different animal. There's no other human I've ever met like him. No, I don't think he exercises much. I think maybe a little bit. I know he was thinking about fighting Zuckerberg, so he did some training. He trained with Lex and who else? Was it Georges St-Pierre?

They put up a photo of it. It was George, right? So he trains with one of the greatest UFC fighters of all time. Yeah. Lex Friedman, our boy, who is also a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt. Yeah. And I think he just did a little bit of that. It was like, fuck this. Shout out Lex, man. Yeah, there it is. Look at Lex. And John Donahue, the great John Donahue, the greatest jiu-jitsu coach of all time. So he was like learning some stuff. I'll never forget Lex coming to my wedding uninvited and blacking out. Yeah.

I'll never forget that. I'll never forget that. Thank you, Lex. We really appreciate that. In all fairness, it was my fault that he blacked out. You forced him to drink. I kind of got him a drink and didn't realize the Russian in him had a mind of its own.

That Russian mixed with that fucking American bourbon. The motherfucker was off to the races. It was so funny. Whitney was like, yeah, I'm going to take Lex. I was like, oh, okay, cool. Yeah, I like that guy. And then I remember seeing him on like a beach chair just pass the fuck out. Oh, dude, we had an adventure. Yeah. You guys went to Vegas later that night, right? We go to Vegas that night because Whitney had a wedding. She had a wedding. She did a wedding at someone's house. It was a corporate gig. Oh, it was a gig, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was a wedding at someone's house. Yeah. I think it was a wedding or a birthday, whatever it was. Yeah. Party, private party at someone's house.

Must have been a birthday. So we fly from your wedding. Yeah. Congratulations. Yeah. We hang out and then hop on a jet. You know, it's only 30 minutes to Vegas. We get to Vegas. By the time we land, Lex is lit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Lex is lit. He was lit at the party. Lit, lit, lit. Yeah. Yeah. So Whitney performs at this lady's house. Yeah.

Didn't you go on? I introduce her. Oh, I thought you did like five minutes. No, I was drunk too. I went up and said happy birthday, whatever, to the lady. I forget what it was. I'm pretty sure it was a birthday. And then I bring up my good friend, one of the most hilarious comics in the world. Where did he come? And then we get on the plane or we get in the car to go to the plane to head back. And there's no plane. They never booked a return flight. So we try...

So we try to get a return flight because they had her got her a little shitty private jet to get there. So then we try to get a return flight. We cannot. I call my service. They can't. The quickest they could do is in the morning. Yeah. Like, what do you guys want to do? So we decide that we're going to get a limo and so have a car service drive us back to L.A. Love it. So it's a four hour drive or whatever the fuck it is. It's me, my wife, Whitney and Lex. I remember you just sending me videos of Lex passed out at different parts of the casino. Yeah.

That's at the airport. That's at the airport. This is...

But he's like that for the last 12 hours. He was like that at the wedding. He was obliterated. I mean, he went hard. That boy goes hard. Yeah. He goes hard. It makes you want to not drink. Yeah. There's certain people I'm around, I'm like, I think I'm done. Yeah. I think I'm done. I feel like less people are drinking. Well, it's really a good idea. That might be your influence. It's a good idea to not drink so much. I wonder if the alcohol companies are concerned. They're trying to find something. Yeah.

There's always gonna be drunks. I see it like beard consumption way down. The problem is it's poison. Poison. Yeah. But everything's poison. It's wonderful, lovely poison. Yeah. My favorite poison is wine. It's a great poison. I love a great glass of wine. Do we have a nice little red going on here? Do we have any red wine here? I want to know what you're drinking. First.

There's something. Yeah, there's at least some out there for sure. Okay. Do you want some? I mean, if you're going to have a glass, I'll have a glass. I'll have a little sip with it. Just a little sip. I've got to cut way back on my alcohol consumption. Oh, really? Yeah, way, way back. I would go, every time I'd go out to dinner, I'd have a drink or two. Yeah. Every time I'd go to the club, I'd have a drink or two. And then one day I sat down, I was like, that's like four days a week, five days a week. That's like-

A drink or two five days a week. Like, how would you feel if you didn't have a drink or two five days a week? So I didn't have any drinks for like two weeks and I feel a lot better. Really? So am I breaking your like streak right now? Yeah, you would be breaking my streak. I don't want to fucking streak up. Well, we don't have to drink it then. Actually, let's break it. It'll be really fun. I don't mind. Yeah. I think the key is, like all things, it's all about moderation. But the reality of alcohol is it's basically poison. Yeah, but it's got great social utility. Oh.

I feel like people undermine the value of alcohol and how... It ain't around for all these years because it sucks. And, like, if you travel, you don't get to experience certain cultures...

in their truest form without them consuming alcohol. - Right. - Like if you've gone to like Ireland, you go to Dublin, like during the day there are very different people and they seem kind of like tight and dour and then at night at the pub after like a few Guinness, it seems almost cliche but everybody's singing and dancing and there's so much like love and connectivity and you see why all this great like literature, music and poetry just comes from this tiny little island.

And you're like, oh, wow, you really need that. Like, it is a tough place to live, and you've got to stuff everything down, and you need a release valve. Same thing with Russia. Like, when I was in Russia, seeing them on the drink, they're waiting. On the drink. On the drink. They're warmer. There's warmth in the culture. That's a great way to explain it, though, on the drink. For real. We have fancy glasses. Okay. What are you thinking, Joe? Well, what is...

Which one was the one that you just touched? 97. Grab that one. It's where your hand is. Yeah. That's what we're going to decide. 97 is a long time ago. How do you find that balance where you kind of need it? That's old-ass wine, huh? Yeah, I don't know who brought it to me.

How do you find what balance? Just like it allows people to access this part of themselves that they might feel is like pushed down or. The problem is if you use it too much, right? Yeah. And it's also the problem is like I notice if I drink three or four nights in a week, I don't feel as good. Yeah. And when I don't drink at all for two weeks and I feel like really good all the time, like what am I doing?

Why am I drinking? Why would I drink? Yeah. Like, I don't need to drink to have a good time. Yeah. But, you know, when you're at the bar or at the club, rather, and everyone's being social and Tony's like, who wants a drink? Anybody want a drink? And they're like, hey, cheers. Yeah. It's just about discipline. It's just about, like, if you feel like you're going off the rails, hit the brakes. Yeah. Settle down. Yeah. What are you doing? Yeah. But a lot of folks don't have any of that, unfortunately. And, you know, they...

They'll be sober for a long time, and then one glass of Chardonnay later, they're doing cocaine and headed to Vegas. It's not even the alcohol. Who is Lex Friedman? Blowing rails on a brother. Who does coke and passes out? That's not true.

Oh, there's something so funny about people passed out. It's the funniest shit ever. Yeah, they've become children. They're babies. They're like infants. You know, they're just completely out of control of their body. Yeah, you're not even there. Hello. Look at you, how cold. It's just a weird aspect to people that we have to shut off. Yeah. That's so weird.

I was just watching this video about this guy who he did a radio broadcast in Times Square where he stayed up for eight days.

Okay. And this guy started having crazy hallucinations. He was having his REM sleep. His REM cycles in his brain were going off while he was awake. Interesting. So he's living inside nightmares. Yeah. I'll send it to Jamie. It was crazy. I think Duncan sent it to me. It's really wild. They say that can induce insanity faster than anything, right? Oh, for sure, dude. I mean-

I mean, that, without a doubt. The sleep deprivation. Yeah, sleep deprivation is really bad for you. How many hours do you get a night? I try to get at least seven. Oh, wow. But on good nights, I get more. But what if you come home late from the club? You're just... When I do, if it's...

School days, especially. I get up in the morning, I say goodbye, and then I'll maybe go back to sleep for an hour. So, like, I'll get up with them, you know, see them off, and then I'll go back to sleep for, like, one more hour. Yeah. Because I can sleep on the ground, dude. I can go to sleep on rocks. I just, I know how to pass out. So.

So, like, I could go right back to sleep and I'm good. But I like seven. But I can function on six. I had six last night. Yeah. I had to get up in the morning for a dentist appointment. But generally speaking, I'm looking for eight. Yeah. I like eight. Yeah. Eight's where it's at. I don't think I've had eight hours. I don't think I've had eight hours since I had a kid. Oh, yeah. I didn't either for a while. It takes a long time. And it's also, like, your day is way more occupied. Oh.

It's a completely different, like, you really realize how much your actual time working on something is precious when you have children because, like, they just go to bed. You're like, okay, I got an hour to get some shit done. You know, you got one hour. You don't have an hour to flip through your phone, check out TikTok. Uh-uh.

You got an hour to get something done. Yeah. And then you got to go to bed. Yeah. And then you got to get up in the morning. You got to get up early. You got to help with this, help with that. We're doing this. We're doing that. We're packing our stuff in here. And okay, let's go there. And there's a thing after school. Remember, it's at 430. Don't be late. Okay. 430. And then you got to zoom over from here and go to the... It's like your day is so occupied, but it makes you more disciplined. It makes you more disciplined and it makes you feel more productive. Like...

It's weird. Even going out and having some drinks or whatever and waking up and feeling kind of shitty, without the kid, I kind of feel guilty by halfway through the day. I'm like, what was I doing? I don't know. Fuck that. I'm partying. But when I'm up at seven and I'm fucking tired, I'm hungover, and I'm with my wife taking care of the baby, by 12, I'm like...

I'm a good fucking parent. Like, I feel like there's... I feel like a positive sensation in the place of this, like, guilt-ridden one that I used to feel, maybe. And I think it's that immediate productivity, that purpose. There's this human being you love more than anything that is, like, deeply relying on you. Yeah. And, um... Yeah, I feel... I don't know. It's also the kind of love you have with them is just indescribable. How old were you when you had your first... 40? Yeah, so I'm 41, so I was... Yeah, it's the same thing. It's...

Yeah, it's every cliche. It's amazing you spend all this time as a comedian thinking of unique or different angles, and then you're presented with your child, and every feeling you have is the most...

feeling that everybody has ever described in having a child. Yeah, and then you don't mind when babies are crying on airplanes anymore. Dude, it completely... Changes everything. It is adorable when they're crying on the airplane. Yeah. You almost want to help the mom. Isn't that crazy how when you're a young man, you're like, oh my God, a baby's crying. You look for something to cover your ears with. That's also a big city thing.

I feel like places that... Like country places where they're so used to... Where there's family dynamics and that's rewarded. And I grew up in the city where it just wasn't that rewarded. It's like a rare thing to even be a kid in the city. Especially, you're a kid in the city and then you go from that to being a stand-up comedian. So you're a nighttime, nightclub guy. The whole baby crying, like, oh, Jesus. It's like, whoo.

Some bad decision making going on over there. Yeah. Yeah. But it is. I wish that. I would like us to change that.

I think that's the thing that's kind of missing in this masculinity movement is fatherhood. I hear a lot of guys talking about- Is there a masculinity movement going on? Apparently on these pods that we do. Is that what it is? We're the manosphere, dude. This is where fucking men hang out. I don't think they consider us the manosphere, honestly. I think the manosphere is like those pickup artist type dudes. But that's the thing. None of those guys have kids or they talk about what it is to be a man and it's like

buddy, like you're missing out on the most important part of the entire process. Yeah. Like I want to hear the guys who have a bunch of kids telling me what it is to be a man. Right. Like to me, that's way more valuable. And I feel like they're missing out on like the defining moment in a man's life. Even bitches have alpha bitches. There's like a leader of the bitches. Oh, that's fire. Yeah.

You know, so they're a leader of a movement. But what kind of movement are you leading, bro? Yeah. What kind of movement are you leading? Yeah. It is. Yeah. You go to an island full of bitches and you could become the king. There's going to be somebody there. Just find out who that head bitch is and say, yeah, time's up. Those bitches are probably easier to lead.

Oh yeah, for sure. That bitch has been leading them. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, I saw once CNN after the election, they were talking about us in specific, and they were talking about how there is this network of podcasts that are interconnected that has been financed by

Like this huge corporate finance network. It's called Black Rifle Coffee. It's like, it's so stupid. No, it's actually just a bunch of friends, you fucking idiots. We just happen to do each other's podcast. But they're like trying to sort it out. Bro, it's so funny when they try to solve the problem. They support each other. They go on each other's shows.

They're all in this together. Well, we need that on the left like good luck Yeah, that's cancel each other if you're fucking Ukraine flag is too small. Yeah Six by six. Yeah, you fucking talk shit about each other for not having trans kids. Yeah, you guys are out of your mind You're not gonna you're not gonna sync up together. You're you're in a suicide cult. Yeah, I think that was

The results of the election, I don't think that they would like to believe this, but it was a rejection of what was happening. I think the assumption is everybody just loves Trump and he's just this populist and every person that voted for him is like, I just love everything about this guy.

But I actually think that a lot of people were just like, I don't like what's happening now. Right. And this current administration is saying that they don't want to change much that's happening now. Right. So I'm voting against that lack of change. Right. And I think it's important for them to realize that. I talk about this a lot.

Especially with Charlotte on the pod and it's just like you have to be reflective like what the people are telling you like when that The Mangione thing happened and the reaction by the people was to laugh at it Yeah, they were kind of pumped but you got to look at that and you got to pay very close attention To what people are feeling don't tell them what they should feel and you know better and oh we have to you know Lead them to the water cuz they're too stupid to know how to find it. No. No, they are disillusioned by the medical system and

And if you don't meet them there, you're never going to win ever. Yeah. And I feel like that's at least from talking to Trump. That was something that I got from him is like it doesn't seem like it when you see him on the news and shit. But he's like an acute listener. Like he listens to what people are saying and he listens, more importantly, what they're feeling.

And he can tap into those feelings. And I think that that's what people who've had a lot of success in politics were able to do. Barack did it. Bill Clinton did it. Probably maybe the best. Bill might have been the best. His ability to communicate to people what they were feeling. I know you feel pain. I do feel pain, Bill. I'm here for you. You are? I would love that. You know, it was... I'm going to be your leader. Yeah, it was... Yeah, it's... You need to listen.

What I think what Trump's done that's really brilliant is bringing people like Tulsi Gabbard Robert F Kennedy jr. Yeah tell like bring in those people and like you you kind of really do get a chance to change things like legitimately change the think about that decision, right? It's like Those people are all echoing sentiments that the majority of Americans feel there We do not trust the food

here's the guy who says the food is bad. Right. Maybe we should put him in control of the food. Kind of like a simple thing. Yeah. Instead of going, well, this guy is the food doctor and we're going to hire the food doctor because he knows what food is good for you and you guys should just shut up and listen. And I feel like there's a lot of this like top-down stuff

On the left. And I'm not trying to just like bag on the left. I don't care really about that. Like, I don't even care about the politics. I care more about like where the cultural liquidity is. It's like you can't talk down to people. There's this like Ivy League pretentiousness in the Democratic Party, I feel, where they're like, we know better. And just you must be stupid if you don't agree with us. All right. Well, I'm stupid. I'm dumb. I'm dumb then.

So why doesn't somebody meet me where I'm stupid and start at least making me feel like I'm not an asshole for the way that I, you know, for my, I guess you could say political leanings now. Yeah, I feel like they need to meet. And it's a very simple thing. Make it a class issue. And I think they win. And say what you want about America. But I think it's better if we have two president or two people running for president that we're stoked about. And it's a really hard decision. Oh, yeah. That would be wonderful.

Yeah, that's not what we had. We had one group of people that legitimately wanted to change things, and then we're going to see what happens if they do. But you're seeing weird stuff today that you never see before, which is like a real adjustment to the age of the internet. One of the things you're seeing is, I don't know if you saw the 22 different Congress people who were all saying the exact same line with the word shit in it. What was the line? So it's like...

it's this speech. They're reading it verbatim. They're all reading it and doing it to a microphone as if it's a rant. Mmm.

But they're all doing from the same script and the shit ain't right. So this is the shit ain't right is the beginning of it. How much, when in the history of the United States has a politician said shit and not just one, but 22 of them in tape recording. Can you pull it up just so we can see it? Because it's so nuts. This is think tank politics. When you see them all together, it's just a blast.

Like they have it on screens as tiles and they're all saying the same words. They all have their own little flair they put on it. Look at this. Put your headphones on. This is fucking bananas. It's okay. You won't be able to, you can't really tell. It's like a crowd. But when they had three of them, when it was the first three, it was Chuck Schumer and someone else. Yeah.

They're saying the exact... Oh, Elizabeth Warren and someone else. Yeah. They're saying the exact same words. Yeah. In the exact same subjects, in the exact same order. You guys are all reading off a script, and you're trying, by putting the word shit in there, to be authentic. Well... Shit ain't right. To be specifically authentic. They're like, we need to speak to working class people, to the kids. Yeah. And it's...

It is kind of like bigoted in a weird way where it feels like they're almost in a think tank. Like, hey, listen, these poor dummies, they like it when you curse. So if you use a few curse words in your speech, they're going to really relate to you. And it's like, no, no, no, we actually need somebody disruptive. We need somebody on the left that is...

that might speak like that, but authentically speaks like that and is willing to disrupt even what's happening in the left. Because if you look at like what happened with the Trump and the movement, like he disrupted the right. The right looks very different now than it did five, 10 years ago. Right. Definitely. So I want like, like a MAGA Democrat. Yeah. Like for real. Like, and what is that? Like, what do we at the, at our baseline want? Right. We like abundance. Tell me how great America is going to be in your version of it. You want to build Clinton. Talk that shit.

Like, come out talking shit. Bernie was talking shit. And I want you to come out. And if Trump can say we're going to take Greenland, there can be some den that goes $1 eggs and straight up says we're going to subsidize it. How would you do that? Subsidize it. Subsidize corn. You subsidize dairy. You subsidize everything. Like, why can we not subsidize it? But say something that's actually going to impact people. Now, Trump's not going to take Greenland. So maybe you don't get the $1 eggs, but you get this messaging across that you're actually trying to help people. Mm-hmm.

And you're gonna have to deal with those lobbies that are bankrolling you, and that might piss them the fuck off. But that's the disruption we need for us to trust you. - You know what they really should do? - What's that? - They really should have a strategic plan. If we're spending, what is it, $350 billion went to Ukraine? What was the number? What are they saying it was? I don't know what the number is. Some insane, let's just be conservative and say 200 billion. Imagine if we spent $200 billion in the United States in all of the crime-ridden cities of the country.

Just completely overhauling them. All right. So here's my concern about that. How much did they spend in California on homelessness? $24 billion. And then nothing changed, right? No, they got worse. They did a good job. Awesome. They did a good job. So maybe we could spend $36 billion. So there's also this idea that the current administration in these places, even with an abundance of money, is not going to make change. So you need somebody from inside, from the left, to go, hey, this...

These people are corrupt on my team. We're gonna root out that corruption, but we are gonna take care of homelessness We are gonna make eggs cheaper We are gonna build fucking 10,000 affordable housing housing units so that the price of you know Your rent can go way down there has to be something disruptive instead of hey, let's just go back to normal Let's not ruffle any feathers like let's see what you're saying. I reject the idea though that progress

can't be had just because people have been corrupt and they've abused money before. I feel like you could farm it off to private corporations the same way we did with Halliburton during the Iraq war. What did they do with Halliburton? Halliburton got no bid contracts to rebuild Iraq. And they did it. They actually built all the power plants they didn't need. There was a lot of waste and weird shit that went on over there. You could do that with the inner cities. You're saying Halliburton did a good job? No.

I'm just saying, like, they actually did get paid to rebuild cities so you can get a private sector that would actually make money. It would become an industry. Instead of it being bureaucracy. So you see what I'm saying? Like, instead of it being something where it's like California, they're taking the homelessness, where nothing gets done but money keeps pumping into it. No, the only way you get paid is based on results.

So you have a contract with incentives based on results. Yes, and that is the problem. You have to lower crime. You have to lower crime. You have to lower juvenile detention rates. You have to improve education scores. You have to...

make food healthy food far more accessible it would be very easy to open up enormous food pantries in the inner city and finance it in comparison the amount of money we spend on other countries doing transgender monkey studies you know or whatever the fuck we do you know the stuff they do is nuts like 20 million dollars to sesame street in iraq it's bananas yeah so

If you've got enough money for that, you've got enough money to set up food banks in every fucking city where poor people can get nutritious food. Just sign on, have a driver's license, whatever the fuck you need to get your food. And what are the downstream effects of that? You have way less health issues, which takes down the cost of health care. Also, people aren't desperate because you can actually always eat, which is a real problem with some people in this country, right? What's this about, Jamie? What are you pulling this up for? They didn't do a very good job, apparently.

Oh, well, I'm sure they probably... I said they did do corruption and there was some waste, right? Because I was talking about these power plants they built that didn't matter. But the point is...

It was a business. So you got businesses involved and they went in and they got contracts to do things. If you got contracts to re-engineer these communities slowly over time, you'd have to do it where it didn't shock the community, but slowly over time, unfortunately you would have to ramp up the law enforcement because there's going to be resistance. If you're going to go to the south side of Chicago and try to clean it up, you got...

Gangs in there shooting each other every weekend. You got real fucking problem. Have you have you um, but what's the alternative? Let that keep going on forever. You can't so you have to rip the band-aid off. Have you heard of the guy? He's the president I think of El Salvador

Oh, the guy who made all those, the camps for those people? Yeah. I'm sure there's tons of, I'm sure there's tons of criticism, right? 100%. But I think El Salvador has become like the safest country in Central and South America. Yeah, there's no criminals. They're all in jail. They're all in jail. And I'm sure it's some like, there might even be like a little North Korea shit where it's like, yeah, you're not in the gang, but like your cousin is and you hang out with him and now you're in his prison. Sure. Of course. But what they've done is completely like revolutionized the country. And if you ask the other people that are not gang affiliated at all-

there's this undying support. I think he has a 91% support rating or whatever that is. And it's like, these people feel like they got their lives back. Now, I'm sure, as I'm saying, there's going to be people going like, oh, these are civil rights violations. Yeah, yeah. You know what else is also a civil rights violation? When your city is completely run by a gang and you're terrified to let your kid leave the house. So there is a version where having...

more punitive measures for people that are breaking the law will increase safety and the prosperity of the people in that region. Like, in order to get investment into the south side of Chicago, you need to make it safer. Starbucks is an opening if it's getting broken into every fucking week. 100%. So, yeah, it's, yeah, I like that. I think one of the first things you would finance is community centers.

You finance like a real great community rec center where kids, if their mom's working, no one's there to take care of them. They got real good coaches there. They got people that can set them up maybe for potential athletic scholarships. They're talented. Maybe you have people that teach you how to play music. That's where I went when I was a kid.

You know, I went to the Carmine Street Recreation Center. That's where I played basketball. And it was this beautiful place, this amazing oasis where, like, not only are you getting to meet friends and stuff like that, but I'm getting to compete. I'm getting to play against guys way better than me. Yeah. And there are these, I mean, even as I say this right now, I'm like, I got to, like, donate money. Like, they created this place where there was a lot of kids in those programs. They might have ended up doing some fucked up shit, man.

And they had a place where they could go. There was like a safe haven. Yeah. And look at us talking like some libs on this pot, man. Well, I think we are liberal. Of course we are. That's the biggest misconception of all of this is that we don't want this place to be better, but there have to be certain changes that we make. Dude, I'm socially about as liberal as it gets. Yeah. And I'm a firm believer in a social safety net, too. I'm a firm believer in welfare and food stamps. I just think there's a way...

There's a way to address the root of the problem, which is people with no hope. And the way to do that is you've got to give them hope. You have to make it safer for them to live where they live. You have to make it healthier for them to live where they live. And then I don't think it would cost that much to provide guidance for a bunch of kids that want guidance. And if you have good, solid role models that know how to do that kind of stuff, and they can all work together and build a program, what if those kids wind up being really talented musicians or really talented...

athletes or whatever the fuck it is. What's happening at the mothership? Have jujitsu classes.

Like like what's what's happening there? Like I feel like you've created environment where it's like these guys can make enough money to survive Which is a very hard thing to do as a fledgling comedian, right? And some of these guys were door guys They're starting to get spots around even like some of my guys, you know, like obviously Derek Poston is like making real money Yeah, right and learning how to flourish as a comedian instead of working 60 hours at a job and then doing comedy when he potentially can write and

You hopefully get to see this artistry grow. Like I've watched Derek explode as a fucking comedian. Like this guy's so fucking funny. He's so lovable. He's so lovable. He's got a Don't Tell coming out April 16th. Nice. And I've watched it. It's fucking amazing. So everybody go check that out. Nice. But that's the type of environment that I imagine that you can curate. Now, you're very benevolent, right? But you would hope that the government can create that same level of benevolence.

without leaking too much money. Yeah, it just, it has to be done for the right reasons, the right way, with the right people. And that was what we pulled off with the mothership because I was able to get everybody from California. But also I knew that that was the formula because it was kind of like the heart and soul of the store. It was like the people that were the coolest people that were running things over there, bring them over here. And it was just,

The whole thing was so nuts, dude. It was like the universe wanted it to happen. Every light turned green right when we got to it. Every light turned... It just... None of it makes sense on paper. If you thought about, like, the idea behind dumping a ton of money in a club and your ultimate goal is to break even, like, who the fuck... Who the fuck does that? And then it also... You have to...

But that's government. Government shouldn't make money. So the ultimate goal should be to break even. Well, your ultimate goal shouldn't be everything is a money venture. Right. So the club is not a money venture. Right. The club is an artistic – it's like I want it to be like a camp.

Yeah. Like camp for comics. Yeah. Like you go there, all your buddies are there, everybody's having a good time, we're all trading. We were all last night, me and Shane Gillis were breaking down, me and Shane Gillis did Bottom of the Barrel last night for an hour. Oh shit. We were on stage for an hour. It was the most fun I've ever had doing it. We were crazy.

Good. Like tears rolling down my face, crying, laughing. And then we're hanging out in the green room. We're breaking down this bit and we're coming up with new lines. This is like a laboratory. It's a hangout. We got, you know, fucking Gary Clark Jr.'s playing on the stereo. Everybody's vibing. We're all laughing. Woody Harrelson's hanging out with us. We're all having such a good fucking time, man. It's like that's what I wanted to build. I didn't want to build a business.

I wasn't like, well, if I do, if I sell drinks for X amount of money and then I charge this amount for a ticket and fuck the comedians over, I do the opposite. I pay the comedians way more than everybody else pays. And look what happens. But that's, that's just to try to facilitate this artist colony. I just want it to be a place where this is like the mothership even has a name. Like we came up with the mothership because the first one was the asylum because, uh,

Mitzi Shore, God bless her, she always used to say, "Oh, the inmates are running the asylum." That was her thing whenever she would come to the store. She loved it that we were crazy. She loved like, you know, Dom Barris like jumping around backstage and everybody's laughing and Joey Diaz telling some crazy story and then Mitzi would pull up. She'd get out of her car, "Oh, the inmates are running the asylum." And I was like, if we're gonna branch out, we should just call it the asylum.

You know? I like Mothership. The Mothership was better because, first of all, asylum was already taken. There's like a couple of different asylums, so we couldn't have asylum. And then it was like, I'm so fascinated with UFOs. I'm so obsessed with that shit anyway. Mothership is like the place where we all launch from. So when we go all throughout the rest of the country, you always come back to the Mothership. Yeah, there's a...

Creating environments where art flourishes. So I did Kill Tony the other day. And it's been a while since I've done the whole show. I came out for MSG. That was fun. That was incredible. We had such a good time. Oh, dude, it was great. Oh, we had such a good time. Your stupid jacket. Oh, my God. Oh, my God, that jacket. I had to have it. I knew I wanted to wear a fur jacket. Yeah. I was like, I told Tony. I'm like, I'm getting a fur coat. I have to get a fur coat. I think I talked to you the day before. You're like, are you getting a fur coat? Yeah.

I got it the day of the show. You texted me something. You're like, yeah, I think I'm wearing this. Yeah. My boy Phil found this dude who's a private shopper and he found the spot to go. He's like one of them celebrity shopper dudes. Yeah. And he found me the spot. So, and I was on it and so, and I'm watching the, like in the interviews, the interviews are really fun. Like a lot of these comics are really green and they're going in there and trying to find something. But like the interview portion, it's,

And I'm probably saying something that everybody already knows, but when I watch Kill 10, I'm watching it in clip form, right? So I'm seeing like these like 60 second versions. Right. But what I thought was really interesting about the interviews is there's a real generosity with Tony, right? He's, I don't know if even the comics realize this, like he's trying to get you to write your first good joke. He's asking you questions where you don't have to be funny.

but they are funny because you're just speaking truthfully. Right. And it is generous. It's easy to just like, you could bang on every single one of the people that go up there. Right. But it's, that's not exactly what's happening. Sometimes of course people are going to get jokes, but there's this moment where like you get to watch some of these guys and

Like, hopefully they're realizing, they're like, oh, I am, oh, that is a kind of funny thing about me. And that's like the first kernel of like where they'll write their first good joke. Yeah. And it's a really cool thing to witness. And yeah, there's a couple guys that went up and like, there's one guy like his joke sucked, but he had something.

Like, I just kept watching him. Yeah. And I was like, you're going to be good. Like, I hope you keep doing this because you're going to be good. And, like, we started asking him questions. And there's this Mexican guy from San Antonio. And he works at, like, Office Depot. And there was something funny about, like, hold on. So, like, there was, like, something about, like, you know, he's selling, like, papers. And I was like, hold on. So, there's, like, a Mexican guy. Like, people are asking for paper. Like, there's just, like, there's all these, like, you know. Like, it seems like a setup, you know what I mean? So, but...

It was just really cool to see it happen. And like, it reminded me of these early stages of comedy where you're putting together these things that you think are funny and funny is kind of already existing in you, you know? And yeah, it was just like, it was a cool aspect of the show that I'm sure the people that watch it and this is a massively successful show. So they're familiar, but maybe the people that don't watch it aren't, don't know about the show. They just think Tony's just roasting people. And it's, he's, he's not, it's a very generous thing to do. Yeah, it is.

Well, Tony loves comedy. Yeah. And loves comedy to the point where he's always writing lines for people backstage. He's always, like, giving people tags. Yeah. And he's always talking about, did you do that bit? Like, oh, I love that bit. Like, he's super supportive. Yeah. With comedy. And he loves when the guys who do his show, like William Montgomery,

When they start to flourish. They start killing it on the road. He loves that. He fucking, he's actually put together a tour now, The Killers of Kill Tony. I've seen it, and they're doing like fucking theaters, man. Yeah, and they're killing, these guys are good, man. Ari Matty is fucking good, man. I was talking to him yesterday, man. He's fucking smart. He's funny. He's super ambitious. He writes, he wants to be an American so bad. He's a fun hang. He's got great perspective on stuff also. He's a great hang.

Yeah, he had some- You know he's an MMA fighter. I remember seeing- Fought three times. Wow, wow, wow. Yeah, he's a big guy too. Yeah. Yeah. But like, yeah, I remember, like he even had a joke yesterday. I mean, whatever, it will come out. But like, it was funny, like he tapped into something at the end of the bit that he did when he does the minute. And then in the interview, it really became the thing. Oh.

Right, right, right. Because what you get to watch is like, he's like, he's a veteran comic. Like he's probably been doing it 10 or 12 years. Right. So like you get into real comedian mode around 10. Right. Yeah. And,

You got to witness live what we do backstage, which is like, yo, I like that idea. Why did you do this? And he said a line at the end of when we're just doing the interview that I think is going to be what this joke builds out into. I don't want to give it away. Obviously people are going to watch it. But to me, like that part of the process is so fun. Oh, yeah. And it is. I don't know if people know this about us. Like it is really fun to like work on someone else's bit.

Like, there's almost like more freedom because you're less attached to it. Right. You know, like if you have something and you're like telling me the idea, like I'm not, you're attached like a direction for it. And I'm just coming from all these other places. And what if my tag bombs? It doesn't matter. You're the one going to do it. But it is this exciting thing when you have a colonel. And yeah, this moment happened with it. And you can even see him go, oh shit, that's. Oh, yeah, yeah.

That's the next level of it. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. They emerge, right? Yeah. The new chapters in your bits, your new paragraphs, they emerge. It's the best. And for me, it's like, I need to talk to get it out. I'm not like a sit at home and like I write the ideas. Like I need to, I need to be like, yo, I got this idea and what do you think about this? And then you have to like give me pushback on it. And then confronting that pushback is like-

Where the bit develops for me right right right? That's the beauty of like the audience not laughing well That's why you like New York City when you get to Miami you were like it's too nice It was like life was beautiful everybody was caring about family and everything and it was just so comfortable and I think I didn't have any like Resistance I need so funny like I'm you say okay. I need the opposite. What do you mean your whole life is resistance? With people

I don't want to deal with people's bullshit. I got my own bullshit to deal with. That's my ice bath. Yeah, there it is. You just want to get out there and grind it out. I do 30 minutes on the sixth grade. Right. Bro, we better have a bulletproof vest. Yeah. Anyway, to what you were saying about like hope, it is interesting and I see like,

See that for comics, especially here. There's this idea of like getting on the show and seeing a pathway to success It's a real pathway. It's a real pathway to a career and you've seen many many many people go through it like Cam Patterson Yeah, David Lucas these guys all have careers now and

Yeah, he had a funny bit too. Cam's funny. Yeah. He's funny. I think there's a little bit of a hindrance in that one minute a week because it's like you spend so much time working on that one minute that maybe you don't spend enough time tightening up your hour, whatever you have when you're on the road. I was like...

What you give this minute out and it goes out to the whole comedy world. Mm-hmm and I asked that's what I was asking Ari I was like, can you still do those bits like because some of these aren't finished They're just the fucking beginning of it, right? Right don't let those go like right build on them as long as you're building on them as long as you got more to it And it's better now. I think people want it I think it also there's this understanding that those guys are on the come up and yeah, they're putting it all together and

And I think there's a certain amount of times you do it where you got to eventually leave. I say that, but then there's William Montgomery who does it every fucking week. Yeah. William's got this style that even if his jokes suck. It's funny because they suck. Because he gets angry. Yeah. He gets angry at himself. He gets angry at the crowd. And then it gets funny. Bro, have you been seeing Brian Holtzman lately? No, no, no. Oh my God.

He's the sweetest guy by the way. He's so different than his onstage monster the onstage Brian Holtzman He needs a name in a different thing. It's like there's a different human that comes out when he's on stage You would think that he's a complete psychopath in real life. And he's just the kindest sweetest guy Wonderful, I love him to death. He's all hugs and joy and smiles and he's always helping people into a detriment

Like one of the things about his show is we've had to like stop some of the people that he allows open for him because it's people that haven't done comedy in forever and still know him. Like you think I could do a set? Sure, come on by. And then they eat dick for 10 minutes and the crowd gets tortured. So Adam had to put the brakes on that. But he himself is on fire.

Yeah. Shane and I were crying laughing watching his set last night. I mean crying laughing. Shane's so funny. He had the aux cord last night at Bitsy's. And like I didn't know who was putting on the music because it was just this like random collection of music. And then this Fetty Wap song comes on, right? And I want you to be mine again.

get him, baby? And I look over at the bar and I just see him kind of mouthing it. I don't want you to pick my heart. This motherfucker got the

That's hilarious. He was locked in, bro. Yeah, we all have good Green Room soundtracks. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a big thing. I don't think anybody would guess your Green Room music. Like, if they walked into your Green Room and they heard the music playing, there's nobody that would go, oh, yeah, Joe picked this song. Nobody. It might be one or two songs that pop up. 90s, like, deep cut rap. Yeah. Like, deep...

Like KRS-One or something. Right, right, right. Cool G rap in the brand new heavies. Yeah. I remember the first time I came down here and it was like blasting and I was like, yo, who the fuck? Like I'm looking around like nobody's old enough to even know Cool G rap in this green room and I just see you like bopping your head, getting ready to fucking go on to just... Yeah, man.

Death Threat with Brand New Heavies is my favorite before I go on stage song. That's interesting. I don't know. Oh, man. You don't know that song? No, I don't think so. Oh, my God. So the Brand New Heavies. And I found out about this song. I teared up when I was talking about Mitzi earlier. Oh, wow. I'm still a little teary. What were you thinking? Oh, just her. What was it? Just her saying, you know, all the inmates running the asylum. It just makes me cry. Why? Because that lady was...

Like all the shit that I do at the club, like I learned how to do it from her. Yeah. Like you learn how to like facilitate comedy, like to help comedy grow. I learned it all from her. Yeah. All of it. It's kind of cool how people exist through us.

You know, like, obviously she's passed, but... Well, that's why the bar's named Mitzi. Yeah, but the effects live on. I would've named the whole club Mitzi's if I didn't want to get sued by the family. They would've? I don't think they would've sued me. But, no, they let me actually use the name for the bar. Yeah. But, and we have a picture of Mitzi in the bar, too. What was your guy's relationship like? Well, I mean, she was still lucid when I met her, you know? I met her in 94, and she was, like, super supportive. Yeah.

She's just like, you know, she just knew what to do, man. Like, she knew how to set you up. And if she liked you, she would put you on after murderers. Yeah. I had to follow Martin Lawrence in the main room for a while.

Like fucking weeks and weeks at a time. If Martin Lawrence was going to headline, I was going to go on after him. What is the year? 94, 95. Okay, so. You got to understand, Martin Lawrence, people forgot Martin Lawrence. Let me tell you right now, go watch You So Crazy. Martin Lawrence is. Go watch Def Comedy Jam. The greatest host of Def Comedy Jam ever. Yes, yes.

His timing, but his performances when it's his hour, his timing, his energy. Infectious. Oh, he was so good. He was so good. And I used to eat shit going on after him every night. And Mitzi, no matter who was there, Dice Clay, Rogan, you're on after Dice. It's like whoever the fuck it is, I'm going on after him.

She just knew how to throw you to the wolves, man. She knew how to show you that your act is bullshit. There's a couple guys like... Attell did that for me in New York. I would close the late show at the Cellar and Attell would go up and then I would go up after him. And that shit will turn you...

Into a man. Yeah humble you it'll humble you you just realize when somebody's operating on like every single cylinder firing and You get up after it. You're like oh wow I'm missing something he has something that I don't have and I need to find that shit when you're going up in like the cushy spot second or third and you're killing you think you're the funniest in the world and then when you follow somebody that like levels the room and the whole room is kind of unsure if he's just like inventing these things in the moment if these are bits like they just get caught up in this like tornado of creativity and

And you've got to follow it in that shit, following him, following Mike Britt, following Greer, like following these guys that are just like masters of

Yeah, it just turns you into a man. That's why I started taking Joey on the road with me because I couldn't follow him. Really? Yeah. Yeah, you love hard shit. You fucking love making your life difficult. It's not even making your life difficult. It's realizing you're not as good as you're ever going to get at this. You have to get better. How do you get better? You have to be challenged. How do you get challenged? Know that you're going to follow Joey Diaz every night, three nights in a row, two shows on Friday, two shows on Saturday. This is... I feel like this is something that...

There's a lot of importance this I don't know if if comedians are doing this all the time but like Your openers that you take on the road with you like they should really be pressing you they should set the tone of the show and They're gonna set the expectation the show. I think sometimes people want to save the day. That's weak. I

That's that same bitch-ass feeling like I hope the guy after me bombs. Yeah, same bitch-ass feeling Yeah, I want the audience to have a great fucking time. Yeah, so I want everybody to kill I love when I get the message like or like tagged in a post on Instagram It was like all three of them were fucking great. Yes and also like I understand what it means probably for them because I've been in maybe that situation we're like holy shit like yeah, they're bringing me up with the show and

Right. And they're in a tougher spot than me. You know, Derek going up hosting, people are walking into an arena. Yep. So to kill that route, to like command attention while people are walking down an aisle. Derek's a perfect guy for something like that. He's got so much energy and he's so good at fucking around. He's so good at like- Creating an energy of fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Mark too is just fucking like crushing and like-

seeing them go up there and like really lay in. Yeah. Like hearing it before I go up. Yeah. Like that's, that's a fun thing. Like I'll be locked in my room, but then when I come out like a few minutes before and just hearing them light up. Yeah. Yeah. You got to take strong guys, man. Yeah. And it's, the people have the weird fear of being eclipsed.

That's the thing. It's fear being eclipsed by your opening act. You'll get better. Get better. You're good. Just get better. You're headlining. You're clearly good at this, and it's going to make you better when these guys bust your fucking ass sometimes. Yeah, maybe you're not working as hard as you should be working. Maybe.

Maybe you're not at your best. And nothing will make you work hard than being embarrassed. Right. Also, I don't know how you operate, but for me, I'm funnier if I'm having fun. So if I'm hanging out with Ari and Duncan and Joey and we're all doing a show together, we are laughing our fucking ass off. And that comes out on stage

and you're loose and you're ready to get goofy. And I'm laughing at Joey before I even go on stage. I'm sitting there laughing at his act before I get up there. So I go up there, I'm already in a great fucking mood. And the audience feels like they didn't get robbed.

You know, you didn't like throw some scrub up there for 20 minutes just to fill time. So you go look at a superhero. That's it. Yeah. It's like they're paying money, man. I keep thinking about that. Like all these people that come out to a show, it's not just the ticket price, right? It's the babysitter. It's everything. It's the Uber. It's the dinner. Like this is an expensive fucking night for them. And they're looking forward to it. You might only get one date night a week.

Especially if you have family. Bro, I was in, not Seattle, like what's the other one in Washington? It's not Tacoma. Something more inland. I forget there's a comedy club out there. Spokane? Spokane. This was years ago and I did a show and like a couple came up afterwards and they were like, this is our first night out in eight years. Whoa. And I think about that every single time before I go on stage.

That's a good thing to think about. That's a good thing to think about. Yeah. Like those people that are like really. But you don't take things for granted anyway. You know, some some people get a little sloppy. You get a little loose and you take things for granted. No, man. We were talking about that on stage or in the green room the other night. Woody was backstage like, you guys get nervous. I get nervous for every show. If I don't get nervous, I don't do as good.

I get nervous. I get nervous for everything important. Yeah. And every show's important. Yeah. Like, it's not important, like, my life depends on it, but it's important to me. Yeah. It's important to the audience. Like, I want to do it right. Yeah. So I want to figure out what I'm working on. I want to sit up. I'm like, I got to be loose with this because this thing's still in development. Yeah. So let's fuck around with that a little bit, but we're going to bring it back with this. And I'm going over my phone. I'm sitting back there before I go up there. I'm ready. Yeah, you can. If you don't do that, I don't think you achieve what you're trying to achieve. Yeah.

Yeah, I feel like sometimes people, like, I don't know if they pretend to not care or maybe, like, they think not caring is cool. Yeah, that's what it is. Caring is cool. Like, I really care and I work really hard and I think that you should work really hard. I want to make really great stuff I'm proud of and I don't want to just be like, oh, it's fucking gay to care. It's like, no, it's not gay to care. It's not gay to, like, have people come out and spend a lot of money and then you just fucking flop on stage and don't give a fuck. Right. It's cool to, like, try to give them the best possible show. Yeah. Yeah.

you know, that's cool. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. It's just, this is a thing because you do care. So you try to pretend you don't because the cooler people don't care. The cooler people could just bomb. I remember I watched Bill Hicks bomb once and I was so goddamn impressed. I was so, I was so impressed. First of all, he was very funny, but the stuff that he was talking about was so out there. He went on, there was this comedian, very nice guy, um, who went on before Bill Hicks. Yeah. Uh,

His thing was comic on a Harley that was his name like his thing Larry something comic on a Harley nice guy funny guy Yeah But he did like a lot of stuff about like Bugs Bunny smoking weed like real simple stuff like but it was like made people laugh cops and Donuts like like cliche shit, but good like and killed and like just good enough for this blue-collar crowd at Nick's comedy stop yeah, and then Bill Hicks goes on stage and I

He's smoking a cigarette and he's talking about, I came here to fill you up with ideas you couldn't possibly imagine on your own.

And then... How did the Boston crowd take that? Oh, they didn't take it good at all. He didn't just bomb. He cleared the room. Yeah. And he was doing this bit where Satan has sex with John Davidson, who is the host of That's Incredible. Like, Satan is fucking John Davidson. Okay. And then impregnates him, and then he shits out... I forget who he shits out. Like, different people at different times. But he's like...

sitting on a toilet on stage, pretending he's sitting on a toilet, grunting. Like, and then he looks up in the middle. People are getting up in droves. This generally clears a room. And he cuts right back to it.

But, I mean, never lost his timing, never lost his composure. And it wasn't that it wasn't funny. It was me and Fitzsimmons were in the back of the room. Me and Fitzsimmons were— You knew Greg from back in Boston? Greg and I started a week apart from each other. Get out of here. We've been friends since we were like—I was 21. I think he was 22 or 23. Yeah. Yeah, we've been friends from the very, very beginning. Wow. So Greg and I were both open micers at the time.

We just knew that Hicks was coming. We wanted to watch and we sat in the back room. We were fucking Crying crying laughing so there was like 50 people left 10 comics 40 savages I just thought this guy was genius yeah, and then the other 200 plus people they all left they all left 200 is crazy to leave bro It was a it was a bloodbath like half the crowd more than half the crowd left. Yeah Yeah, it was like three-quarters of the crowd probably

That's a large percentage. It was a large percentage. There wasn't much left. But Fitzsimmons and I fondly talk about that day. Like he never lost his cool. He almost like he I don't know when he knew he had pancreatic cancer because he died a few years later. But he kind of seemed like a guy that.

Whatever the fear of bombing and whatever this thing of failure that wasn't on his mind. It didn't bother him. Yeah, when you have limited time. I wonder if that's what it was. I don't know if he knew already. Yeah. But he was so calm up there. Yeah.

But funny. Very funny. But just he changed the way people wanted to do comedy because everybody after that wanted to be profound. Nobody wanted to be profound before that. They just wanted to get big laughs. Then all of a sudden everybody wanted to be profound. It was interesting. He became like this poet. You see trends like that pop up. Oh, yeah. Stylistically people are so influential that it changes the way people do their comedy. And it's tricky because like

You can only be great at the thing you do.

That's how I feel at least about it. If you are profound, then profound comedy is popular, then you will be really good at it. But if you're a silly goose, it's not worth trying to be profound. Right, right, right. Because you being silly is going to be the best version of you and the people will appreciate that the most. Also, you can't trick people. They know. Even if they're not aware of it, they know. They know something's off. Yeah. Something's off. That's the honesty in it. Yeah. There's brutal honesty in it.

Sometimes they'll even laugh, but they know that you're lying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? They know that it's not real. It exists for maybe 10, 15 minutes, but I think it kind of gets exposed once you get into those hour-long sets. It can, for sure. You got to be who you are. Right, yeah.

Yeah, and it has to gel together with you. You have to be into what you're doing. If you're not into what you're doing, you can't say the same words with the same inflection without the same mindset. Like if your mindset is off, they fucking know, man. It doesn't matter what your timing is.

They know. They know you're not locked in. So they're not locked in. Like, how come you didn't bring me in? You know? Yeah. Like, when someone's killing... Like, last night when Holtzman was killing and me and Shane were laughing, we were locked into whatever this psychopath was talking about. He was talking about drowning people. I was like... He's so out of his fucking mind. It was so funny. Yeah. It was so funny. But you give them that... You let them take your mind for a ride. If it's real to them. I think that's the thing about Joey that I've always admired is like...

It's pure. It's authentic. You can kind of get away with whatever you want if it's pure. Yeah. And when we know you're faking and you're doing something that makes me feel uncomfortable, now I'm double uncomfortable. Right. I can be uncomfortable if it's real to you. Yeah. I can sustain that. You might be talking about some shit that makes me feel a little weird, but it's real to you, so I go, okay, I'm going to rock with you on this. This is a pure version of your art. But yeah, you don't want to lie to people, man.

Yeah, also if you do it then you're stuck now. That's how you do art. You lie to people. Yeah, you're always trying to like concoct some new fucking weird version of yourself

What's what's what's gonna sell more you're a pop music star now good. Yeah, like what he's yeah That's what you're like you like doing pop music comedy, but there are there are people that like get attached to what works Yeah, they can't run away They're like scared to run away with it and I kind of empathy for it cuz it's like you probably struggle for so long you find something that works and you're like, okay, finally I'm able to make some money finally. I'm able to have some security but

You've got to keep growing past it. I think generally those people are self-obsessed to in a bad way where they thinking about themselves and success rather than the thing they're doing. Like what is the thing I'm doing? Yeah, the thing I'm doing is I'm trying to create something that's good that works I'm trying to make it the best version of whatever fuck it is. Yeah, so how do I do that? You can't be thinking about yourself and do that.

That's why thieves can't write. Because the mentality of being a thief is, I want that idea for myself. It's not like, how does it? I want to create. You're not addictive to creating, which is the coolest part about this. We get to create whatever the fuck we want. And if you get to a point, like luckily, where you get a couple bucks in the bank,

those creations should be even more specific to you. - Yeah. - Right, 'cause you're not doing it so you can buy another house, right? - Right. - You're doing it 'cause you truly spent 20 years of your life trying to get good at something, and then you can create whatever the fuck you want. - And also those new things, those new things that pop out, they feel like gifts from the universe.

Like a new bit that's a banger. It's like, where did this come from? This came from the universe. That shit exists before you. That's what I always try to say. Like comedy is there and then we stumble. You gotta find it. Yes. You gotta find it. You're not making it. And when you're making it, it feels too contrived. But the comedy exists. Bro, I gotta pee so bad. Let's do a little pee. Let's pause. Pause real quick. Yeah. Right back and pee. Are we back in? Yeah, we're back, dog. We're back. Yeah. Comedy's great. Comedy's the best job on earth for us. It really is. For us.

I was trying to talk Woody into doing it last night. I mean... Because he was thinking about it. Because apparently he had... I said, I will 100% help you. He goes, would you really? I go, 100%. I go, if you want to do comedy, I'll get you time. I'll work with you on material. I'll get guys to help you. I'll work with you. You could totally do it. If you could do that monologue on SNL, you could do stand-up. Yeah. You could do stand-up. Brave for that monologue. Yeah. Brave guy. Yeah. Because he has a lot to lose. Yeah.

perception wise like maybe he doesn't care but that's where like bravery comes in like when you got nothing to lose it's like yeah you can kind of say whatever the fuck you want it doesn't really matter he's kind of grandfathered in oh really he's Woody Harrelson but you don't think it could affect him at all yeah it could but I don't think anymore I think the world's kind of woken up the fact that first of all

He's accurate. Like, you really can't attack what he's saying. Yeah, yeah. You know? So, like, you don't think he should be saying it? Yeah. Okay, well, that's kind of debatable. Yeah. And that's on you. Yeah. I think you can say whatever the fuck he wants in that regard. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Because it's like, at this point, it's like, who doesn't think he's accurate?

accurate. Yeah. Like you're in denial if you don't think he's accurate. This is a problem that Democrats have right now. What's that? Is that the Trump administration, what they're uncovering with Doge, like all this waste and fraud and abuse, whatever, whatever you want to categorize it as. And I'm sure there's a bunch of things that fall into different categories. Yeah. But the Democrats aren't acknowledging that it's a problem at all.

They're not saying when you find this building in San Antonio that they spent $2 billion on and it's completely empty and it's getting, you know, a million dollars a month or whatever the fuck it's getting. And where's that money going? Yeah. The tricky thing about this Doge thing is like-

I don't think there's any American out there that is supportive of waste, fraud, and corruption. It should be a bipartisan issue, right? Right. It's a very easy thing to get on board with. Right. And this is where I feel like...

I feel like Elon's being a little antagonistic. I have a lot of respect for Elon, don't get me wrong, but it's becoming easier to be a bipartisan issue in the way that it's communicated. Whereas having that political decorum

Like having that ability to pull everybody into this thing might be a little bit more effective on an issue that we can all get behind. There is no American that wants waste, fraud and corruption. I hate that this is becoming bipartisan. It drives me fucking crazy because on the surface, nobody wants the waste anymore.

Right. Like both Democrats should be. This shouldn't be. They shouldn't be booing or whatever the fuck was happening at that like hearing last night, even hearing he was like addressing the Senate. Right. This shouldn't be union. It should be everybody going, hey, we agree this is fucked up. This is happening in some of our regions or whatever it is like where you're responsible for those constituents. What's that called? Your if you're a congressman, your your district.

We need to be better about this. We need to fix this. We got to take this on the chin and we agree. And it could be this great revolution in America that could really support everybody. And it's become this fucking bipartisan issue. And I understand there's like a lot of currency and like making the opposition look radioactive. I get that.

But this is where you wish that there was like this, uh, some sort of masterful communication version of this instead of a little bit more of like this, like putting the knife in and twisting a little. Yeah, no, I agree. I agree on both sides. I think, um,

People are really foolish spending all their time just attacking the ideas of the other party instead of promoting really good ideas of your own. Amen. And the thing about this whole Doge thing is it's such a lightning rod. And one of the reasons why it's such a lightning rod is because these politicians are being pressured to try to keep a lot of the spending because a lot of the spending is...

It's all shenanigans. It's moving around to thousands of different NGOs. And you're talking about billions and billions and billions of dollars that were going somewhere. So people were profiting. People had jobs. And they want to keep all those jobs. They want to keep that money flowing, even the bullshit money, as much as they can. So there's fucking court orders and there's lawsuits. And the Supreme Court just stopped a $1.9 billion freeze on something. There's something that just came up. It was today. Hmm.

So there's like legal battles about all this stuff. You're going to have a lot of confusion in that regard. But I think it's important. One of the things they're doing is they're highlighting the ridiculous things. Like they're highlighting the $250 million on transgender animal studies. Yeah. $4.7 trillion that they can't account for. The way that he was saying it. Did you watch it? I mean, it's hilarious. I did.

Oh, you got to watch him talk about it. I'm sure it's amazing and I will. I will watch. I just didn't have, I was busy last night, but it's like, there's, there's also a way to, um, to,

to really clearly express to people that there's legitimate use for aid. And this isn't really USAID, it's United States Agency for International Development. If you're worried about foreign aid, I fully, completely agree we should spend money in third world countries building wells. We should spend money trying to get food to poor people. And that's not what this program is designed to do. Right, that's not what this is about. And if it's about like,

This is exercising self-power. Healthcare for people and providing free clinics for people in impoverished areas. Yeah, we should spend on that. But also, that's not where this money's going. A lot of this is regime overthrowing money. This is regime change money. A lot of this is like money that's being propped up. They're sending money to the Taliban every fucking week. Like, this is crazy. Like, you have to understand what this really is. So what we have to do, I think, as Americans is...

Look, you got a president. He's your president, whether you like it or not. That's your president for four years. Let's hope he does a great job. Yeah. Wouldn't you want him to do the great job? He's the captain of the ship. I don't want to hit the rocks. Yeah. Let's hope he gets us into a beautiful harbor. Absolutely. So together, that doesn't mean the Democrats can't win in four years, but you can't win doing this. You can't win all saying this shit ain't right. And then all of you say the exact same thing. Well, now I know who's on the take side.

Now I know who's got the script. Now I know who doesn't have a fucking mind of their own. You have to read the script that whatever corporate daddy filed onto your desk. It's think tank politics. They need a real leader. And those real leaders are all pussy hounds. And they're all going to, that's the problem. They all got skeletons. Yeah, it's got to come from outside.

Yeah, I wonder like... Or they got to be a guy like Trump who could take the hits. That's... And keep on trucking. You need to have like a very strong constitution to do that. I don't understand his constitution. What do you mean? You go through the same shit. Yeah, but his is beyond... They shot him, dude. Yeah, they haven't shot you yet. Not only did they shoot him... Yet. You perform inside. That's the problem. That's part of the problem. Yeah. But not only did they shoot him...

But people forgot about it in two weeks. Yeah, and to this day. He didn't get shot enough. To this day. Like people were talking about his ear. They're like, oh, but it doesn't look that shot. And it's like. There's so many people that think that he rigged it, that he did it on purpose, that he staged it. Yeah, he staged a bullet coming. Nicking his ear. Like they don't understand accuracy. Come on. Especially with iron sights. You know, he didn't even have a scope on the rifle.

Do you know what iron sights are? Okay. So, like, say if you have a pistol. Yeah. And the back of the pistol, where the handle is, there's these... Oh, the little thing that you're supposed to look through, yeah. And then there's a little post at the front, and you line the two of them up like that. Yeah. And he's shooting 140 yards with iron sights. Yeah.

You can't just nick someone's ear. You'll hit their fucking head. You'll blow their brains out accidentally. How much do you have to account for gravity at that distance? You don't. That's really short. That's a short distance. That's why you can put the post on it. If you wanted to go long distance, then you would want a scope. You want a high-powered scope, and you would also use ballistic software.

So ballistic software is like you would apply like there's like a watch that has it built in actually the Garmin tactics X tactics 8 rather so you You would take this ballistic software you calculate the distance So there's a you would use a rangefinder the rate which he had by the way he had a fucking rate He was walking around with a rangefinder before the they saw him with a rangefinder. They didn't even arrest him and

Somebody let him on that roof. They fucking gave him that gun. That's what I think. The range finder would say, oh, 500 yards. So then you would set your sight for 500 yards. And then it adjusts accordingly when you're looking. So your application with some scopes, you can actually sync up your scope with your app. So it'll put the reticle. It'll put the crosshairs exactly where you need to aim.

For the bullet to drop. Exactly. Exactly. That makes sense. So the reticle, the X would move up and down. Accordingly, yeah. Exactly. But at that distance, you're saying that there isn't too much drop. No, there's no. And he's also elevated. It's a straight shot. I mean, maybe a very slight drop because it's only like a millisecond before it hits him.

It's a very slight drop at that. But when you get to like significant distances, like 400 yards, 500 yards, it's a factor. Yeah. Like you hold high. What does that mean, hold high? So if you're zeroed, say if I'm shooting a deer and my rifle's zeroed at 100 yards, that means at 100 yards it shoots exactly where that crosshairs is. But the deer is 300 yards, I'll hold it at the top of his back.

because you know it's going to come down. I know it's going to drop. This is with bows or this is with bows? No, this is with a rifle. And then with bows, I imagine it's even more. With bows, you have to be very, very sure because there's so much drop. There's so much drop. Yeah. Yeah, there's so much drop. I have a...

range finder. It's not just a range finder. It's called a full draw. It's a loophole full draw five. And what it does is it doesn't just put the reticle and tell me the exact distance. It says I'm not aiming with this. This is just giving me the distance. But it also shows me a line where the peak of the arrow height is.

because the arrow arcs, right? So what I'm doing is I'm shooting through trees sometimes. Like I'm trying to shoot an animal, and I'm shooting through a gap in the trees. So you have to make sure that on the drop it passes through that gap in the tree. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

Exactly. Like, there's a video of me hunting with Cam. We were hunting in Utah. Okay. And it was for Under Armour, back when he was with Under Armour. Yeah. And I had to shoot this elk through trees. I shot it through, like, it's a video. You can see the arrow go...

Right through this hole. It's probably one of the most beautiful shots I've ever made. And I made it on camera because I was kind of freaking out. I got to have a hunt on camera? Like hunting is a big thing for a celebrity to be doing. You're hunting, but you're also going to hunt on camera, and you're going to hunt on camera with a bow and arrow. So I was like super locked in. And it was just perfect. It was just magical how that arrow went right through this gap, just thread the needle, and whop.

Right in the heart. It was perfect. It was a perfect shot. Like exactly where you're wrong. Right behind the shoulder, right up here. It was like double lungs and the top of the heart. And then you got to carry that bitch.

Yeah, well, you got to chop it up first. You're not carrying it. It's too big. That's the thing that I never accounted for. I was watching, I don't know if it was some video you posted or maybe it was Cam, but I always thought about the hunting part. Like, okay, let's find it. Let's track it. Let's shoot it. But I never thought about getting home with all the meat. Oh, yeah, man. That seems so...

It's very hard. And what we do is way easier than what some guys do. Some guys do public land, solo, backpack elk hunting. So they're throwing the shit in the backpack. They have a pack. So they'll take like a pack like...

Great Pack is like XO Mountain Gear. It's a great company that makes packs. And they have different frames based on your height. It's all made so you can carry a lot of weight on your body. A lot of it sits on your hips. And it's all engineered. Oh, it displaces the weight so you're not just getting dragged down. It's genius. Pull up XO Mountain Gear backpacks. They have specific packs that are designed so you can carry 100 pounds on your back. Right. As comfortably as you can.

But it's fucking brutal. So these guys might hike in. No bullshit. Miles, right? So that's what it looks like. So see all these packs? Get the picture of those guys when they have it on their back, Jamie, the one above that? Yeah, that one right there. So that's what it would look like for two dudes who are carrying their whole camp on their back. So they probably have their tent in there. They have their sleeping bag in there. They have food in there for a week.

Like you got freeze dried food, generally speaking. Guys bring like, there's a bunch of different meals, like Mountain Ops, not Mountain Ops. There's a bunch of different companies. So like this is a guy like carrying an elk quarter on his back. That motherfucker probably has 100 pounds on his back right now because he has his bag and his pack, which is probably 50 pounds. And then he has a giant ass elk leg on his back. All right. So is there ever like a distance that they deem too far because walking back with the elk, it wouldn't be worth it?

So, like, I imagine you're tracking for a while. It's not like you just walk in and there are all the elks, right? You have to find them. Yeah, but you can get lucky and find them a couple of miles in, and that's pretty nice. But is there a point where you go, I'm not going more than five because five back carrying the elk would be too difficult? Yeah, some guys do that. But some guys are hard fucking core. They'll kill an elk 25 miles in and spend three days bringing it back. So—

And now you have elk carcass. You have all the other animals that also like to dine on elk. You string it up in a tree. Got it. So getting it, it's like, what is that, Old Man and the Sea? Is that the book? Where he finally hunts and gets this big fish, but he's got to bring it back. And by the time he brings it back, it's just like a skeleton. Nobody believes he got this amazing big fish. You don't ever think about the journey back. That seems almost more stressful.

Well, the best way to do it, the backcountry, if you have the money, is horses.

They have horses take you back there. And the horses will pack, or mules. Yeah, so you can pack them up. Yeah, they'll keep your camp on their back. And you'll have like several, like a train of them. And then you could load them up with like elk quarters and take them back. And for them it ain't shit. It's thousands of pounds, right? Well, it's not really. How much is an elk? It's about 400 pounds of meat.

Oh, because you're leaving the bones and everything. You're leaving a lot. So you skin it, you cut it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you've got to take some of the bones. You want a rib, right? You could have the ribs. Most guys cut the rib meat out.

Out of the ribs, and you grind it and make hamburger or chili out of it or things like that. Yeah. Cam, he makes strips, and then he chops those strips up. There's a lot of different things you could do with rib meat. It's pretty tender. It's good. It's real good when you cook them slow over a fire, though. It's not the most tender meat.

Like, when you cook them over a fire, it can get pretty tough unless you do it, like, real low and slow, like smoking it almost like they would do a barbecue. Yeah. But it makes great hamburger. But, like, the real – what everybody really loves is, like, the back strap. That's that. That's, like, essentially that would be, like, the filet mignon. The filet, right. The tenderloin. And then the quarters. You make great steaks and you can make – What do these guys do when they age out of this? Yeah.

Oh, like hunting? Yeah. You try not to. Keep working out. But, like, an NBA player eventually reaches the end of his professional playing ability. He might play in a gym. But, like, what does a Cam do at, like, 75? He'll still be bow hunting at 75. Hunt a different thing? No. No.

No, he'll be doing the same thing. There's physical limitations, I imagine. There are, but not as much anymore. Not with hormone replacement and weightlifting. Got it, got it. Guys like me didn't exist 30 years ago. Like 57-year-old jack dudes, they didn't exist. By the time you get 57, all that shit's gone. And all that shit goes away. Yeah.

I still have 30-year-old arms. They're still legit. They work real good. Everything works real good. But you have to maintain yourself, take care of yourself. And if there's something like that that you care about...

I have a friend, Brendan Burns, he runs Kuyu. It's like a huge outdoor clothing company. He's a hardcore bow hunter. One of the best bow hunters in the world. Was a big time college wrestler, like a great athlete. Won't even try jujitsu because he doesn't want to hurt himself for hunting. Hunting is so important to him. He's like, I'm not skiing, I'm not fucking around, fuck that. I feel like that's my whole workout regimen is just so I could play this sport called paddle.

It's not pickleball. It's called paddle. What is this? It's a racket sport that I'm absolutely obsessed with. I swear to God. It started in Acapulco, Mexico, and then it goes to Spain, and it gets blown up there. And it's essentially like squash and tennis mixed together. So there's...

There's walls. There's this glass wall in the back and these fences on the side. Have you heard of this, Jamie? Yeah, I've played with them. Yeah, we played. I've dragged them out. Bro, it is the most obsessed. It's the fastest growing sport in the world right now. It will take over tennis. Are you a spokesperson for paddle? Is that what's going on here? I probably am the only person that is talking about it at this level. Look at you. This is me. This is shout out Paddle House in New York. They got one in Williamsburg and one in Brooklyn. Amazing. And this is the game? This is the game. I'm so bad. It's unbelievable. So you play with a deflated tennis ball.

So essentially what it is, you've got to show highlights because I'm so fucking horrible that it's not going to do it justice. But the idea behind it is, at least for me, is there's always hope. So the ball gets past you in tennis, you're cooked. The ball gets past you in paddle, it bounces off that back wall, and you're playing it off the back wall. So you're never fully out of the game. And you're constantly, it is the only thing outside of like surfing and boxing and then comedy where I'm not, look at this.

What? It is... That guy went out the door. Oh, you're allowed to leave and go get it. Yeah, I mean, it's just... Dude, I was down in Miami. There's a thing called the Reserve Cup. Shout out Reserve. How do I not know about this? This is the... I'm telling you, this will extend my life by, God bless, 10, 20 years. Really? Also, you've got to watch the chicks play because they don't have the power to smack it out, so it's just pure skill and...

And cleverness? Yeah, exactly. And placement? Everything is placement. It's delicate placement. So what they're trying to do is, I'm telling you, it's unbelievable. And everybody that's playing tennis and squash and all these other racquet sports is starting to convert to this. Really? Tennis? Everybody from tennis is coming over. Now I'm talking about professionals. I'm talking about people that played in college or whatever. Really? And now they're starting to come over to this. Miami, they're obsessed. In Europe, they're completely obsessed. You go to Sweden, there's thousands of people.

Like all, like Cristiano Ronaldo and all the soccer guys are all playing it. They own the facilities. How the fuck am I just finding out about this for the first time? You guys got one here. What's it called? They just built one. Paddled Club, Austin or something. Something like that. But it's just, it is...

I'm upset. Oh, it's just never ending. Dude, I take lessons. This guy just ran outside the arena. Yeah. That is crazy. But the fact that there's hope, the fact is like, it's not just brute strength. There's that little guy that was playing on the right, right there, Chingoto. This guy's like five foot three. And he's so skilled. And since it's not...

He's not in this court. But that guy Tapia is the best in the world. You know all the players? I'm obsessed with this in the way that you're obsessed with jujitsu. I can't believe I'm just finding out about this right now. Bro, I play with the... I got to play with some of these guys. Really? And they toy with me. Like, they'll just bring me up to the net on drop shots and then bring me back to the end. And I'm just running around like a little bitch. But it's like...

These guys to me are like Michael Jordan or like LeBron James. Like I get like giddy around them. I'm so excited. And like, I'm telling you, I, I, I'm taking lessons once a week. Shout out my boy Lucho in New York, the best fucking instructor on the planet right now. He works at paddle house is incredible. Wow. You're taking lessons. I'm playing three or four times a week. It's like everything. Yeah. It's just my whole workout regimen is built around making sure that my shoulder is okay so I can play. Yeah.

Tired dedication to this. The only thing I've been obsessed with this about is stand-up comedy. Wow. It's the only thing. And I have no racquet sport background. I never played tennis growing up. I grew up in the city. I went to public school. It does look fun. Dude, it's... I just can't believe you can run outside. It's just...

That's so crazy that you run outside. The point isn't over. You know what I mean? There's always hope. And that's the beauty of, like, you're, like, a really competitive person. When you play against someone who's got more strength than you, even, like, when I would, like, box and shit like that, like, somebody who was just bad, like, he was... Eventually, if they can connect, it's over. And, like, even in this, in power, you can mitigate their power. You can move them around the court. There are guys that are way better than me at tennis, squash, and all these other things. But strategically, in this game...

If you don't hit it out, I got a chance. Wow. And it just... You should do commentary. Dude, I was telling the guys... You should do what I do for the UFC. I literally told the guys... Dude, I was telling Wayne, who owns Reserve, man. Shout out to Wayne. And I was like, I know you have your guys doing it, but like, dude...

I am obsessed with this, like Joe is with the UFC and MMA. You don't need to pay me. I just want to talk about the sport. I want to build this fucking thing up. How do we build this thing up? Wow. I literally thought about you. I've never seen you like this before. Bro, I get excited. Dude, it drives my wife crazy. I go to fucking brunch on a Sunday, and me and my boy Jason are just talking about our paddle games this week. Oh, no.

Dude, my boy Jason just hit me up and he's like, listen, I know you got the special and everything going out, but my calf is feeling better, so we got a game Wednesday. And I'm like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm ready. That's crazy. It's just the coolest thing. Wow. I know you don't fuck with team sports, but this is... It looks fun. It definitely looks fun. It's great. It's great. Yeah. Jamie's a little sneaky athlete. Oh, Jamie's a good basketball player. But even tennis, too. You see Jamie sink threes. Yeah, he's sneaky.

We had a little fun. You see him play golf. He's a motherfucker with the drive. He's got that simulator in the back. Oh, in your house? What's the furthest? Right here. Right here. We have it in the garage. What's the furthest you ever whacked one of those on that? I don't know. Far. 300 yards. Whatever. Oh, wow. You're like a legit. Dude, his swing is legit. You should have seen Brian Callen trying to swing after Jamie. It was comical because I'm behind him talking mad shit. Yeah.

I just know how much. You ain't going to beat Jamie, bitch. Bro, the joy that must have come to you watching Jamie smoke Callen. Oh, it was so much fun. It was so much fun.

Anyway, yeah, I'm so obsessed with it. That's incredible. Even now, just the idea that Paddle has spoken about on the Rogan podcast is just crazy. How about you told me about it? I never even knew it was a thing. If someone brought it up to me, I'd be like, that's bullshit. That's not real. Dude, it is real. And these guys are starting to make money now. The top guys are starting to make a decent amount of money. That looks like ESPN for sure. Oh, look, I had Kamaru there. Oh! Doesn't Kamaru have really fucked up knees? Don't ruin his knees, bro.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, but he played pickleball because he's down there in Miami. His knees are so fucked up. Yeah, it's tricky. I hope that if stem cell technology advances, if the FDA finally allows people to have the same kind of stem cells in America that they do in Colombia and Mexico. Norway or Sweden? Where's the other place that they do it? I don't know. If you want to get some bougies, if you want the white stem cells.

I mean, it's like Norway that they're harvesting them. Well, the places that I know of are the big one is the CPI in Tijuana. That's one of the best in the world. And that place is they have a partnership with the UFC. They send a lot of the athletes. Oh, really? And there's another place in Columbia, Bio Accelerator. There's an island in the Caribbean that they do it to that. They like bring a they bring the they like fly in the medical office essentially for the week or two week periods.

Oh, okay. Yeah, and then they have like stem cells that have been harvested in some place and my neighbor my neighbor did that So I forget which island it is, but well, there's Panama to Neil Reed Reardon. Dr Neil Reardon who's really he's written so many books and papers on And what is the like immediate impact I

Oh, it heals soft tissue way better than anything else that I've ever used before. So like what, for example, what injury did you have that you felt? The biggest one I've talked about before, I apologize if you've heard this before, people. I had a rotator cuff tear, a full length rotator cuff tear. And I went to a doctor, went to the UFC's doctor.

They sent me to orthopedic surgeon. He looks at my MRI. He can't believe I can do anything. He says, "I can't believe you can do anything with this shoulder. You have a full length rotator cuff tear." But he does all the stuff with me, like push down, push up, and he goes, "You're pretty functional." He goes, "I think it's probably because you have a lot of muscle around the joint, but you're going to need surgery." He goes, "You could try to rehab it, but you're going to need surgery." I go, "Really going to need surgery?" He goes, "Yeah." I go, "Am I ruining my shoulder by not having surgery?" He's like, "Potentially."

He's like, you know, try your best rehab, put it off as much as you want, but you're going to need surgery. So then I go to Dr. Roddy McGee in Vegas. And this was years ago. He's doing stem cells with the UFC athletes. He's a bunch of different people. He's like, well, we could try it. And I think the stem cells I got them actually aren't even available anymore because they were too good. So they injected in my shoulder. And then after a couple of weeks, it feels pretty fucking good. And then I rehab it. I'm doing like bands and all sorts of different stuff.

I get it to the point where it starts feeling good. I start light, like light kettlebells, feeling pretty good. I go back to him six months later. He does an MRI. He says, this is the most astounding thing I've ever seen in all my years of being an orthopedic surgeon. He goes, that tear is gone. Like he just wrote this full length rotator cuff tear that was going to need surgery doesn't exist anymore. Like when I say like my shoulder is better, I mean, it doesn't bother me at all. Like at all.

I do everything. I hit the bag. I do kettlebells with 70 pounds. I do swings and curls and cleans and presses. Zero pain. Not a one thing like, man, maybe I shouldn't be doing this. It feels 100% normal. And all stem cells.

Like I could have got cut with a sling. And then you're done. Didn't do any of that. I have a shoulder, a little bit of a shoulder issue actually. I'm curious if the stem cells. 100%. I'll bring you to Ways to Well that's in Austin. Listen, man, they've healed so many people that I'm friends with. So many guys that I know. Like minimal scapular movement, I think that was the issue. So I was making up for the fact that my scapula doesn't move that much with just stretching out the muscles around it.

Does that make sense? So I guess the scapula is this bone here? The scapula is the one that kind of like hangs off. Yeah, and that's supposed to move up with your arm when you extend it. And it was staying there, but I was still moving my arm. So I'm stretching all, I guess, the muscles or tendons or whatever. What had happened to your scapula that made it freeze like that? I don't know. I was told that I might have a small tear in the rotator cuff. Do you hang? Do you ever hang from your hands? I mean, I do like...

Pull-ups is part of my exercise routine when I'm doing any other body. Pull-ups are great exercise, but hanging is great for shoulder health. So what I do every day for at least a minute, usually more. I usually do a couple of sets of hangs before I do anything. I'll do my warm-ups with push-ups and bodyweight squats. And then what I do is I chalk up my hands and I grab a hold of the bar and I just hang.

And I just try, and I feel my back popping, like it decompresses your back because your spine, like the weight of your hips and your legs is pulling on your spine for the first time. Normally, life is pushing down on you. Gravity, the weight of your body is pushing down. Wow, and now you're using gravity to pull it all out. Yes. So I do that. I hang that way. And then I also do that.

Dex, we have a machine out there. Teeter, the company that makes those things where you hang by your ankles. Yeah, I've seen it. They have a great one where you, it's called the Dex. I like it better than the ankle one where you hinge at the hips and you fall forward and then you just, it's basically like your lower body and your hips are carrying, like locking your weight in place and you're leaning forward. So the full weight of your upper body is decompressing your back and I'll feel it going like pop,

pop, pop, I'll feel like little pops in my back and I stretch it and I move on that thing and it's all just about keeping the spine pliable and keeping the range of motion in your spine but also in your shoulder joints. It's one of the best things for shoulder joints is

is to just hang. And I'll hang with one arm sometimes. I'll hang with both arms. But I'm just like letting it all stretch out. So it stretches all the mobility of your shoulders and creates space in there. It allows everything to move freer. And then I'll do my chin-ups. So I do my sets of chin-ups, dips, pull-ups. So that's your stretch, essentially. Yes.

Okay, maybe I have to add that in. Yeah. I also stretch on a bar where I grab the bar and I turn like this and I get it like that and I get like a deep stretch that way and I get a deep stretch the other way. I'll do that on my back on the ground. You should also do these things called – it's called crossover symmetry. Okay.

These bands and they have varying Resistance like different colors or different strength resistance. You don't even need a lot of resistance the whole idea is just you're working the tendons and all the connective tissue and it's just doing all these like different shoulder exercises and so they cross like one is attached to a post over here and the other ones here it's all doing these I'm doing these and I'm doing I'm pinning them against my arm and I'm doing it like that where I'm just working the rotator cuff muscles and just

Just to keep everything. You're creating the torque on the joint. Yeah. Whereas like when you're lifting weights, you can kind of manipulate what part of your body is lifting. You can. And that's how you get injured sometimes too. Yeah. I got to do the, because that's my biggest concern right now is, I mean, you know, to bring it back to your friend. How do I play?

That's so crazy. Like everything I do, like I do PT twice a week. Shout out my boy Mike Helgeson. He's fucking great. You do PT twice a week? Yeah. It's like I'm lifting, but I'm with a guy who is a PT. So if there is an issue, we can- Oh, I see. I see. I see. But he'll just take me through weightlifting if I'm feeling good. And if I'm not, then we're doing some work and- Have you been able to increase the mobility of your scapula? Yes. And my shoulder was fucked before and he brought it back.

Him and this guy Kyle were like, don't do surgery. They were like, once you do surgery, you're fucked. And so let's try to work this thing out by building muscle around it, getting mobility into the joint. And they brought the shoulder back. This was before I ever played battle. Let me say one thing real quick. That's not always true. I know a lot of people that have had successful shoulder surgery. And in some cases-

that's the only thing you can do. To save yourself. Yeah. There's like Yuri Prohaska, the UFC former light heavyweight champion. His shoulder was blown apart. They had to put it back together again. They had to. And incredibly effective. Yeah. Damn. That Jamal Hill fight? Unbelievable. Holy.

Unbelievable. Holy shit. Yeah. So for a situation like that, shoulder surgery was necessary. This shit was torn apart. Yeah. You can't just heal that with stem cells, but there are things you can heal with stem cells and it definitely helps soft tissue injuries in a way like nothing else I've ever used. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's legit.

And Brigham Bueller, who's the CEO of Waste Well, he's worked so hard on edge. He's been on this podcast a bunch of times and Tucker's podcast, a bunch of podcasts, just talking about all these different methods that are available that are being stifled by the FDA. And that's the thing is like once you get something that you're addicted to, longevity exercise or regimens or whatever it is, are very easy to do.

Because you're not really doing them so you can live to 100. You're like, how do I play this thing next week? Right. And all the motivation comes from it. It's really simple. Like, I actually can't wait to go do the PT, whatever it is, because I'm like, okay, I have a game Wednesday and I want to be good to play. It sounds ridiculous. I'm 41. I'm not going pro at this thing. But I love it so much.

that I would literally, I'm looking up the fucking BPC 157. I'm like, do I need to put, yeah, the Wolverine shit that they say, right? And it's like, do I get that so I can recover faster? Yeah, get that. Is it, have you tried that? It's legit. Super legit. I recommended it to a buddy with no research. I was like, you should do this. And then a couple of weeks later, he's like, I'm on it. And I was like,

Did you look up it? I'm not a doctor or anything. But he said he did it for his, he got an ACL surgery and his doctor, he asked about it and his doctor goes, I take it.

Well, that's a good doctor because I've had friends where I tell them about their doctors is all you shouldn't do that. There's no studies. That's the thing. I feel like there's like old guard guys. They're a little bit hesitant to use some of the maybe newer technology. And I'm sure they have their reasons. I don't know more than them about the science, but there are these new technologies that can maybe extend our knowledge.

Playing age. Again, I don't need to be a pro, but I love this thing and I want to do it as much as I can. I want to get as good as I possibly can. Yeah. It feels good to be getting better at something at this age. Well, let me tell you something. There's a reason why USADA didn't let people use it in the UFC and now drug-free sport also doesn't let people use it in the UFC. It's because it works.

Wait a minute. Why would they not? Wouldn't it be advantageous for the athletes to go to recover? Exactly. It's really stupid. But the idea is that it's performance enhancing because it lets you heal quicker. So heal from injuries quicker, potentially heal from recovering from training quicker.

And what would their argument? I mean, the only argument I've heard is like it increases. Well, the idea is like keep everybody on a completely level playing field. How do you do that? No one's able to take anything. You can't take any performance enhancing or make it accessible to all athletes. Well, I think that's the right way to do it. But the problem is that.

okay, what peptides are we talking about? What about things like HCG, which radically increased testosterone production? Are you allowed to do that? Okay, because if you're allowed to do that, like what level is that steroids? Only recovery. I think any recovery drug.

Like, obviously there's risk to all this. Like, you increase cell growth and if you have cancer, God forbid, in your body, those cells are going to grow as well, right? There's an argument for that, but I think the real argument is like what's causing cancer, right? The real argument is like eliminating environmental toxins and the issues. Also, there's people that have genetic predispositions to cancer, unfortunately. But the real reality about cancer is, unfortunately, what you take into your body has a significant effect.

Your diet has a significant effect. Exercise has a significant effect. And also, do you participate in any recovery activities like sauna, which is huge. They did a study out of Finland. Again, I apologize if you've heard this before. It was a 20-year study. They found people who use sauna for four days a week had a 40% decrease in all-cause mortality. All-cause, meaning heart attack, stroke, cancer, you name it.

40% decrease just because of the effects of sauna. How do they test that? What is the term? The something group? Well, this is what they did. They did this study. Randomized control trial, right? So they did this study where they took these people and sauna use in Finland is everywhere. Everybody uses a sauna. And so they...

did it based on these questionnaires. Do you do the sauna once a week? Do you sauna twice a week? What temperature do you do the sauna and how long do you do it for? And they determined that the people that did the sauna four times a week for 20 minutes at 175 degrees had a 40% decrease in all-cause mortality. Now, when you drop the number of sessions, you also drop the all-cause mortality survival.

- Got it. - So like, it's like 20% at once a week, you know, 30% at, so it's like that. Like measurable differences in the amount of people that were healthy and robust who did it four times a week. - Yeah, I mean, that's interesting because the easiest way to discredit would be like, well yeah, the people that do saunas want to increase their life, but what you're saying is there's an increased amount of assistance if you do it more. - Right.

The benefits are legitimate, real, measurable. It's hermetic stress. It's heat shock proteins your body produces to deal with the fact that you're essentially dying. Like you can't stay. Like I do it at 196. You can't stay there very long. I do 25 minutes at 196. Have you ever passed out in it? No. Okay.

Is that a thing people do? I don't pass out. Get out the smelling salts. I stay awake. No, you could, though. Yeah, I mean, if you are the type of person who passes out, if you've got issues. Yeah. Some people pass out just from stress. Yeah. I watched a kid black out the other night at one of these school things that my kid had to go to. Really? Some boy fainted on stage. Wow. Yeah, sometimes people just...

Sometimes they just your brain goes too much check, please I've seen like I've not passed out but like I was having like breathing issues I didn't understand what the fuck it was and like my wife and I were trying to get pregnant it was like really difficult because my sperm sucks and I would I would have like I guess it was stress-related I didn't know what the fuck it was like I went to a doctor and I was like I feel like I can't catch my breath and

And I started doing these like a Navy SEAL breathing technique or whatever. Box breathing? Box breathing, yeah. And I would try to do that. I mean, it was so weird. It wouldn't affect me on stage because once I'm on stage, I'm like locked into the performance. And that's how I knew it was all psychological. But like when I was off stage, there were times where I'd be at the cellar and I'd have to leave the cellar and there's this little park on 6th Avenue that's like...

not even really a park, but there's like benches and I would just sit there and I would just fucking box breathe by myself trying to get a full breath. And I go to this doctor and I was like, what the fuck is it? And it was a stress-induced asphyxiation or something like that. Wow.

And I was just so like... What was so stressful to you at that moment? We couldn't get pregnant. Like, I found out my sperm sucked. Oh, so it was that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, that's where HCG comes in, actually, because that's one of those peptides that actually increases your sperm production. Yeah, well, my sperm wasn't swimming. That was the issue. Got to get those bitches in the pool. Right.

Cold flush. That helps, too. That's supposed to be good for your nuts. Bro, I hit up Huberman. Heat's the worst, apparently. Well, they said heat and cold. I hit up Huberman, and I was like, yo, what should I do? And he's like, all right, take these pills. And then the doctors even tell me they're like...

They're like, take these pills. And then also, uh, you got lazy jizz, bro. I got the laziest. It's not, you just wait for it. I go, I got to take the pills. They're like, don't drink. I'm like, okay, I'm not gonna drink. Don't smoke. Okay. I'm not going to smoke. They go, uh, wear baggy underwear and they're like, ice your balls once a day. So I do that for a month. I go get, or two months, I go get my sperm tested again. It got worse. Really? Yeah. And they're like, we haven't even fucking seen this. And, um,

And yeah, so like we had to do IVF and everything. That's what the special is about. Like it's just the story of us trying to get pregnant. There was a study, I think it was out of Japan. And what they were doing was they're getting people to cold plunge before exercise.

So you cold plunge for three minutes and then you exercise and you force your body to heat up while you're working out. Massive increase in testosterone. Interesting. To the point where this one guy, he got his prostate levels checked and his doctor was like, this is...

This is concerning. Yeah. Like, we want to do this. We want to do that. We want to put you on this and put you on that. And the guy says, you know, this article is available online. This one guy tried this. He goes, okay, well, let me find out what's available online. Yeah. So he finds out cold plunging, does it. Yeah. And then-

So here, this is the thing. Japanese cold-plunge study often referenced, discussed about cold... Immersing the wrist in cold water before exercise significantly increased testosterone levels in young Japanese men compared to immersing it after exercise, which suppressed testosterone levels, highlighting the importance of timing when using cold stimulation for potential hormonal benefits. So what this guy did was he plunged, not just the wrist, and then went to the doctor months later, and the doctor thought he was on hormones.

The doctor's like, you have 1,100 testosterone. This is crazy. Like, what's going on? And he tells them, I've been cold plunging before I lift weights. And the doctor's like, well, keep fucking doing that. Doing that, yeah. And so I know a lot. I do that now. Really? Yeah, I know a lot of people that do that now. This is how they start their workout. My workout starts with a cold plunge. So my issue wasn't even the T. They were like, yeah, your T levels are good.

It's just the swimmers. It was the swimmers. And then they were like shaped weird. Like, I mean, it's just like... Yeah, it was... No, dude, it was... I mean, it was too funny. I told the guy... I mean, this is... I don't even do this in the special anything, but like I...

They're like they're the shape is a little off or whatever and I was you're so defensive I go well, maybe when they hit the cup so hard I got an ego about it. I'm like bro. You should have seen the way they It's coming in 400 PSI, but it was it was crazy once once we got pregnant it went away and it was like immediately went away and

I could breathe again. And it wasn't this feeling that I couldn't breathe. It was about catching a full breath. You know when you're like running and at the end of your... Yeah. You're doing like a hard cardio intensive exercise, this idea like you can't get to 100% in your lungs. And I never had experienced in my life like...

I can work pretty hard. Like, I feel like maybe that's a competitive advantage of mine. Like, I might not be the most skilled in certain things, but, like, I can go. I have a good motor. I can fucking push it. And it was the first time in my life where, like, a psychological issue affected my body physically. I didn't even know that that was possible. Mm-hmm.

I know that's happened to a lot of people I know that got canceled. People that got canceled where they were just overwhelmed, where they couldn't breathe, and they didn't think that they could make it. They were like, I can't do this. Oh, because they were going through that. Yeah, they were going through it, like in the heart of it. And they're like, you got to call up, check up on them.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I'm like, fuck, man. And it was like, that was the moment where I was like, please don't kill yourself. Oh, wow. You're going to get better. You're going to be fine. Do not. I didn't say that. But that's what you're thinking. That's what I was thinking. I remember being in my car.

Going, ooh. Like hearing him on the phone. We were on speakerphone. I was like, fuck, man. Well, yeah, you dedicate your entire life to one thing. But it's also, it's just like feeling like it's over. Everything's over. Your career's over. Your life is over, as you know. One stupid thing and now it's over forever. And just the...

You can't breathe. Yeah. You can't breathe. Yeah. I get it. And, you know, Tony's tough. He's resilient. Yeah. He got through it pretty quick and he was back. And then, you know, a couple of weeks later he was laughing about it. Yeah. But some people, you know, they get wrecked and they're not the same ever again. I think that does happen to people. And then there's a different version of them afterwards because they don't want to experience that again. Yeah.

It is weird. I'm not as affected by that kind of stuff. Now, maybe I haven't gone through on that level. And I also think there's something about having a kid. I just care less about... There are very few people I care what they think about me. It's really liberating in a lot of ways. But yeah, there was something about like, are we not going to be able to get pregnant? And then feeling...

You feel horrible. Also, you start going, why would God not want me to have a kid? Did I do something bad? You start thinking if there's some sort of karmic reason for that shit. Also, before, I knew it was me. I don't want to share it with anybody. It's really isolating because I thought it was my wife. Everybody always thinks it's the woman who's got a fucking problem with her eggs or whatever. That's such a bitch-ass dude thing. That's what we think because we don't know it could be us.

When did you ever like every time I looked at my fucking jizz I'm killing it right like literally so and then and then you think about it and I will say this though like like finding out that it was me and Being able to I felt more comfortable talking about on stage because now I'm not talking about this incredibly embarrassing thing to this woman who does not want to be an entertainment at all like the most private person and

Net about me I was like oh I can talk about this a little bit and being able to talk about on stage And I would talk about on stage and like there be these dudes that would come up to me after shows and they wouldn't admit They were going through it, but they'd be like yo, that was really funny, bro like yeah You should keep talking about that shit And then I I would like talk about on tour and I get these fucking DMS and like all these people would start telling me that they're going through IVF and like Even close friends start to make yo actually that's how we got pregnant and I didn't realize it was this

There's like almost like last taboo thing where there's this incredible isolation because you don't want to feel the judgment. There's all this pressure and obviously have a family. You don't feel like you're the person that's like stopping that. But I didn't realize and I'm 40. So a lot of older people are probably going through this. Maybe young people are not. But like everybody in my immediate circle going through this shit. Let me ask you this. Like, first of all, when did IVF become common?

available to people? And how many people a year do you think use IVF? And if they didn't, how many less people would there be on earth? Brother, brother, brother. There were three things when I talked to Trump that I wanted to ask him about specifically. And one of them was securing IVF.

Because I know a lot of people who are against abortion also look at IVF and like, OK, you're throwing out embryos, you're killing people or potential people, and they want to use the anti-abortion argument to get rid of IVF. Really? Is that a thing? Yeah, of course. It's happening now. And what Trump said on the pod— Who's trying to ban that?

I guess we could look that up. I think that it was in... There's a few states that it was happening in. That seems insane. Yeah. Why would you not want more people? Well, they look at it as killing people because life starts at conception and the embryo is essentially conception, which I understand your logic. I don't disagree with the logic behind that. But at the same time, that is the way that... The only way some people can get pregnant and...

I will give it a Senate Republicans block IVF bill as Democrats elevate issue ahead of November election But what I'll say is Trump said that they're gonna back it with the full power of the Republican Party and that anybody that goes against it that they would campaign against and then he even signed that executive order to expand it he wants to expand access to it oh that's great which is fucking yes incredible for people that want to be parents man I know quite a people few people like yourself

They want to be parents so bad and that gave them the ability and now they're so happy. And it's the most incredible thing in the world. Yeah, and if they don't do that, guess what? There's no babies. No babies. It's like more life will occur if you allow this. Also, we got to deal with the downstream. Like, I'm sure some of this shit is probably, it might, me, it just might be genetic. I don't fucking know. But maybe it's microplastics all in my balls. Maybe it's my phone. Like,

There's a lot of things that are not in our control that are negatively impacting us. And then to restrict our ability to have a family. Sure. I feel like it's kind of unfair. Uh-huh. You like bestowed this thing upon me. It has affected our ability or some woman's ability. I wonder if it's like more prevalent the issue or the necessity of it with people that live in cities. Oh, dude. Every time a car breaks. Yeah.

The amount of microplastics that go into the world are way more than using like a plastic bottle to drink out of. Yeah, brake dust. Yeah. Yeah, it's particulates. Absolutely. That's the shit that you wipe off your wheels when you clean your car? No, never. That stuff's in the air. You never wash your car? Nope. Jesus Christ.

Yeah. I mean, I didn't have a car until like a year ago. What do you got now? Got anything good? No, nothing. Well, I got a fun one. I got a Suzuki Samurai. Ooh. It's the coolest fucking car on the planet. Those are fun. They're so cool. It was, yeah, it was sick. That's a good car to park in the city, too. You don't give a fuck what happens to that thing. Well, I got it out in the Hamptons, but yeah. What year is it? It's 87? 87?

That's such a piece of shit. Oh, it's a piece of shit, but it is like, it's also just so fun. I'm not trying to compete with you on having a fancy car or whatever like that. I just love how fucking rugged, I don't care. You got some dough. I'm going to turn you on to some fucking fun rides. You know the good shit. Yeah, you got to learn the appreciation of car.

I got my... Yeah, there it is. Oh, there are the boys. Look at that thing. Look at the boys. That thing's fun. Oh, yeah. Look at these guys. What a cute little car. Isn't it adorable? I wouldn't take that thing around the block. But wait, you're saying you wouldn't get in that car with... Trust it. I'd go with you guys. With six guys? Yeah, I'd go with you guys. Shouldn't that be on the cover of every gay magazine? It should be. I've been...

Like if you take this pill, this is what you have you'll have fun with your friends. Oh, it's a good Suzuki Samurai It's so much fun and they're reliable as fuck. That's the thing about them. Every Japanese cars. Yes. They're the best That's the thing about Japanese culture. Is that like it's refinement culture? So like I feel like they're anytime so there's this Japanese DJ I saw his name is a Yosuke Yuki Matsu

Okay. He had like brain cancer and then like he thought he was going to die. So he's like, fucking I'm going to be a DJ with the time I got left and it went into remission. But he basically quit his construction job. He just did this boiler room set. And it is just like I could be like putting this energy on it because I want to believe it or whatever. But the intensity of it is this is my shot and I'm going to be unrelenting.

Right. And the second I saw that he's Japanese, maybe this is my like, this is the guy. Look at him go. But can you like, can you look at this motherfucker? A Japanese person being a DJ before I even listened to the set, I was like, oh, this is going to be the best set I've ever heard because they would never put themselves out there.

And do it half-assed. Like every 30-year-old model in America is like, I'll be a DJ now. But in Japan, the culture is so like don't bring shame upon your family. Don't bring attention to yourself unless you are the greatest. Do you know the term kaizen? Do you know what that means? No, what is that? Kaizen is a Japanese term for taking a thing and continuing to refine it until it reaches perfection. Yeah, yeah.

So Japanese, first of all, like supercars were always Italian. It was always, you know, German, Porsche, Ferrari, that kind of shit.

And then Nissan created a car that destroyed everybody. What was it? The GT-R. So the Nissan GT-R, they've essentially been making the same exact car, just refining it for like 20 years. I have a 2024 Nissan GT-R Nismo, which is their race package one, which is the most refined version of the GT-R they've ever...

And it's a fucking marvel of engineering and refinement. Yeah. That fucking car is magical. Yeah. It's just glued to the road. You ever seen one? No, show me. Pull up a black Nissan 2024 GTR Nismo. But culturally they can't put out shit. It's shameful to put out shit. Right. And I feel like they're almost like done refining their culture and now they're tapping into other things. That's what it looks like.

Oh, wow. It looks like a... It's a spaceship. What's the... That's not... That's a Nismo 300. That's mine. That's my car right there. What is that? Nissan Z... Was it a Z300 or something like that? This came out when I was in college. Yeah, 340Z. There's a bunch of those. But that's the GT-R. Yeah. That thing...

It's just, you're on a ride. You're riding a ride everywhere. Whirs and clinks and clunks and . It's so fun. That's a different one. That's a 300Z, a 370Z.

That's pretty sick too though. That looks good But there's like a whole culture of taking these things like there's guys that make these things They jack them up to 2,000 horsepower and they spit fire out of the back of them But they do that with pizza like the best pizza I've ever had and I'm from New York City is in Tokyo really The best pizza you've ever has in Tokyo. I forget the name of the place but it my wife and I were in Tokyo and

But it was the best steak I've ever had is in Tokyo. Really? And it's something about, like, doing something half-assed, I think, is shameful. And there's this great honor in, like, this refinement process. Now, there is a social cost to that. There's a rigidity, meaning, like,

It's very, here's a perfect example. Like the oldest hotel in the world, I think is this hotel in Japan. It's like starting in 703, the year 703. Whoa. Oh, I've seen that. Yeah. Yeah. And it's been owned by the same family for 52 generations. Right. Which is like an unbelievable feat when you think about like American families or British families that like have gotten rich and then three generations they've squandered it all. Like really successful families. It's all been destroyed. Yeah.

And there is this thing in, I think, Japanese culture, which is like, there's this great honor in taking on the tradition of your family. The cost of that is there was probably a comedian or a chef or somebody in that line that didn't do the thing that they really were passionate about to honor their family. But the societal benefit is probably the majority of people don't have those dreams. And having purpose in this job is probably better for them. And I...

i think there's a middle ground where you can still go dream and do these things but also we have some respect for being a cobbler when your dad was a cobbler and his dad was a cobbler i feel like we've lost that a little bit in like american dream culture where it's like if you don't go out and achieve your craziest dream well some people don't have that dream but taking over their dad's business is something that they can feel good about and honor instead of like

Oh, yeah. So I just took over the family business. Well, doing a good job at anything, there's a lot of value in that for everybody. If you love making shoes and you become a cobbler and you make awesome shoes and you got like Andrew shows up, bro, those shoes are sick. I love them. I want another pair. Could you make them in garage?

Yeah, oh, let's go. Yeah. Yeah, it's exciting like making things and having relationships the people you sell them to that's super rewarding We do chase that big dream over in America and make it seem like everybody has to have it But the dream of making cabinets that are awesome is a pretty fucking cool beautiful Yeah, the dream of being a painter is a pretty cool dream Like there's there's a lot of dreams that don't get the value added to them because of fame. I

Like we have this weird thing about fame above all in this country.

Fame above all. Like, moms. Being a mom isn't really valued. Oh, yeah. It's a real... I think it's a real problem. I think that... And it's not all places. Like, I'm sure there are places that are more, like, family-oriented where, like, being a mom is an honored, respected thing. A lot out here, man. I love that. Yeah. Like, in New York, it's not that. Right. Nor is it in L.A. In L.A., a lot of the moms have jobs, too. They have careers. They don't want to abandon their career. They might shame those moms that decide to stay home and take care of their kids. Oh, yeah? When...

Yeah, I don't think that that's... It would be great if there was less rigidity and there was a lot of honor in that. And it was something we really respected. Because I know in New York, even my wife, like, my wife is like, you know, she got her fucking MBA. She was working for Apple on AI projects. And then she goes, that's my dream to be a mom. And I feel societal scrutiny about it, but I don't fucking care because I want to be a mom. You know who really gets the scrutiny? Stay-at-home dads. That shit's gay. LAUGHTER

You trying to lip pull me, Joe. What the fuck? I wanted to see where you were going with it. I fed you one of them little racquetball balls. The paddle. It's paddle. Paddle ball. Yeah, yeah. I fed you one of those half-filled tennis balls and you fucking shoved it down my throat.

But yeah, that is the weird thing. It's like... I know. As well as a male, you feel a real strong pull to be a provider. We do. It feels very important. Yeah. And it really, like, as you become a father and you raise children, it really gets instilled on you. Like, I always had a really good work ethic, but becoming a father made me have a much stronger work ethic. Like, there's... I...

If I was a single man with no responsibilities, who knows if I would work as hard? Who knows if I would take days off? I would fuck off. My friends are like, hey, let's go bow hunting in Argentina. I'm like, yeah, I'll take the day off. Fuck it. The biggest lie about having kids is that you won't be able to provide for them. I think a lot of people go, oh, I just need to get my life ready to do it. It's like, oh, no, no, no.

That's going to put a battery in your back like you wouldn't fucking believe. Hopefully. It's very sad when it doesn't. Those people shouldn't have kids. Yeah. I've met men where they just keep doing the same thing even after they have children. And you're like, oh my God, dude, you can't do this. Do they want to have them?

Who knows you know who knows what if people want or if they think they want and then they have and then they don't change You know Louis CK said something really cool once to me. He's like when you have children He's like you just kind of let it change you. Mm-hmm. Just let it change you yeah Yeah, don't hold on to who you think you are and what you think your identity is just let it It's let it transform you

adjust because everybody adjusts the mom adjusts you now it's not your girlfriend anymore it's not your wife anymore now it's a mother she has a child she made a human being in her body it's very vulnerable and she loves it more than anything in this world anything and it's this crazy experience that if you don't have and you're on the outside you look at it as like oh that responsibility oh fuck that oh you're tied down oh you got kids now but it's uh it's

It's another level of understanding what life really is because it's this constant cycle of new people entering into the world and eventually you will leave this world. Yep. And hopefully you will leave this world better because you were here. Amen. Yeah. That's true. Yeah, it's the coolest thing that's ever happened to me and absolutely has transformed me. I was super excited when you would become a dad. Man.

Because I knew you were all in on everything you do. So you'd be all in on being a dad too, which is so important. It's just so important.

It's so weird that you're making a life, a human being comes into this world that didn't exist before you and your wife had sex. And now there's a human being that's talking to you and you're teaching them stuff. They learn things. You get to see them laugh and giggle. You get to see them open up Christmas presents and screech in excitement. Oh, my God. It's...

All the happiness that you get from other things just doesn't compare. Pales in comparison. Yeah, it's a different happiness. It's a totally different happiness. And it's also, it's like an understanding of life itself. I've talked about this before, but I changed the way I think about people. You told me this. I think about everybody as a baby now.

Everybody's a baby that became a 60-year-old man with a big old wino nose, you know, when they get those big crazy fucking gin blossom faces. Yeah. Like priests. Yep. And, you know, I realized, like, oh, this is just, this is this entity at this stage of its journey. But it used to be a baby. They used to be someone's cute little baby boy with a little bow tie on. Everybody thought it was so cute, took a picture of him. Now here he is, bad breath and farting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Big old pot belly, hating life, smoking Paul Malls. Yeah, he had a lot of hope at one point. That was a baby, yeah. And, you know, what is, you have a lot of hope, but like what is the impediment to you achieving a fulfilled life? And so many people don't even know where to start or where to begin or what to do or what, what, what.

which way to go. And if you haven't been trusting your instincts in your life and you haven't been taking chances, then all of a sudden you have to take one at like 35. Yeah. It's hard, man. It's hard. Yeah. That's a muscle you build like endurance. You know, you build the muscle of being able to take chances and do difficult things. You build that like all other muscles, all other strengths and virtues that you have. Yeah. It's reinforced with use. Yeah. Every risk you take that is successful is

you get a little bit more confidence in taking those risks. Also, you understand what's required to make this venture successful. You'd have to look at it correctly. You can't be delusional. You have to be objective and you have to do what actually needs to be done. Yeah. And some people don't like that responsibility. The responsibility of like, yeah,

Yeah. And so they've sabotaged themselves. They sabotage their life because it's easier to fail because you're used to it. Yeah. So you fall right back into it. I'll pick myself back up again. But right now I'm on the heroin again for a little bit. That is the cool thing about, well, yeah, I mean, failure is not an option once you have a kid. No. You have to figure it out. Yeah, you have to figure it out. Also, you want the world to be a safer place because you have very vulnerable little people. Yeah, you relate. It's a...

You just become like a real human being. It's interesting when I hear people that don't have kids kind of complain about the world. And I'm like, oh, you actually don't really understand how high the stakes get. Right. The way that I relate to every bit of stimulus has completely changed. It's heightened and reduced. The little frivolous shit, I do not give a flying fuck about. Yeah. Like, I really don't care. And then the big ticket things, I care deeply about.

You know, how could they impact my kid? Like, it's very easy for people to even with like the vaccine shit. It's very easy for people who don't have kids to tell you, oh, just trust the doctors, whatever. The second you have a kid, it is probably the most terrifying thing you'll ever do in your entire life is injecting something into the most perfect thing you've ever created.

And then every single day wondering and seeing if she's still smiling and seeing if she's still okay. And feeling responsible if anything negative happens. And then if you don't do it, feeling responsible if she got fucking the measles or mumps or whatever the fuck it is. I have so much more empathy. And it's something that people just can't understand because they're not put in that position. And every new parent that I talk to is concerned about this shit.

Every single one. So it's like you have to have a little empathy. Like you've created the most perfect thing you've ever could ever imagine. Like nothing comes as close to that. And every decision you make could greatly impact that person's life. So, yeah, we're going to be scared if we watch a fucking video on the Internet that says this thing is bad for them. Right. And don't call us some fucking quacks. Just call us like parents who care for our fucking kids. Well, the reason there's a lot of people that want to cover up for their own.

Like what they've done. The people that want to say, like, all this is exaggerated. There are no vaccine injuries. This could have happened to my child. It probably was going to happen anyway. It was going to happen anyway. And you want to really believe that, too. Of course you do, because you don't want to feel like it's your responsibility. Also, you don't want to believe that pharmaceutical drug companies are willing to sell you things that are going to harm your child. And they are.

They are. They always have been. They always will be. They're publicly traded companies have responsibility to their shareholders to make as much money as possible. And the money people are going to push a bunch of shit through that probably shouldn't go through. And they'll tell you you need it. Like like when they were vaccinating kids with covid, there is no reason to do that. They knew there was no reason to do that, but they wanted everybody to take it because that's where the money is. And that's a scary thought that we live in a world that there's people out there that would literally sacrifice the health of children for profit.

But ultimately, that's what they do. I mean, that's a thing that's been done. It will continue to be done unless something happens. Who are the people that do that? Why are they not named? Look at the Sackler family. Look at those people. So it's like we know one name. We know the Sacklers. And we don't even know their first name. Well, you might, but the average person doesn't. I think that it would be a lot different if these people's names were public record. It would be a lot different if they went to jail. That's the thing. They just get fined. They'll get manjonied.

Yeah. That would happen. Right. That would happen immediately. That's a new thing. That's a verb. They're going to get that Luigi treatment immediately. It will be that way. People don't fuck around with their kids, man. It's a different- Luigi was wearing loafers with his ankle handcuffs and he was in a trial and he looked so beautiful. He's a handsome guy.

My wife and my daughters are like, he's adorable. Look at him here. He's so beautiful. He's so handsome. Like a supermodel. I think he did porn or maybe that was just a headline that I saw. But whatever.

Isn't it crazy, though, that the assassin is a good-looking guy and becomes a hero? Like, if he was an ugly fat guy with a MAGA hat on, everybody would want him dead. Look at him. Wow, look at those brows. Beautiful. Well, he's wearing a bulletproof vest, too. Isn't that wild? Yeah.

But he's got like a mental health problem. Yeah. Apparently. And someone said that he took acid and cracked. Yeah. I heard that. But who knows how much of that. We'll find out when the trial happens what the lore is. But, you know. A broken clock is right two times a day, though. It was real weird when people were like, yeah, more of that, please. To me, that's just desperation. And you get to see it manifested. It's like.

If you're like a really, really, really, really, really rich person with power, you want to make sure the poorest people have enough to survive. The second they don't feel like they have hope and they don't feel like they have enough to survive, they start storming your estate. Well, especially when you talk about health care, because there's people whose job is to deny people health care that deserve it. Because that's how they save money, which is that's crazy to think of. But that's.

I mean, what is the alternative? Socialized medicine? The problem with that is it doesn't incentivize doctors to be the best. I want my doctor to drive a fucking Porsche. I want my doctor to have a 911 Turbo and a nice watch. No, you're right, because you want the smartest people to be the doctors. You don't want them running hedge funds. Right. Like, there's a lot of probably really smart people running hedge funds. I don't want them doing that shit. Right. Like, I want them fixing diseases. Right. And if there's not enough money in it, yeah, they're going to go to the hedge fund shit, which is meaningless. Yeah. So it's like...

It is a tricky problem. How do you create a system that incentivizes the most brilliant people to be in positions where they help us all? But how do you make sure that the nefarious actors are not finding ways to squeeze probably the most vulnerable? How do we eliminate nefarious actors from the world, or do we ever? You can't. You can't. They're there, and they will pop into these positions and...

And I think they're there also to help you appreciate non-nefarious people. Yeah, like we wouldn't know good unless there is bad. Yeah, that's real. That's a good perspective to have on bad. That's the good and evil struggle forever. That's the yin and the yang. That's it all. It's like that's how the world moves forward. That's how it advances. It protects itself against evil. And then evil tries to find ways through the fucking cracks. They develop better antivirus software. Yeah.

It's a simulation. A little bit, man. It might be. It's going to be, so maybe it already is. And maybe it always was. Maybe it always was. And if it's a simulation once, it can be a simulation twice. So if we can create the simulation and we were created as a simulation, that means that

We could be like the 20th version of it. And we're probably about to create a way better one with AI. That's probably what AI is. AI is probably the god of the simulation. We probably lock that motherfucker in, turn it on, then it figures out how to do everything. Do you have any concern about AI? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Elon says there's a 20% chance everything goes sideways, but an 80% chance it's an overall net good for humanity.

But 20% chance, like, we're fucked. That's a high number. That's not a good number. That's a high number. I don't like that if I'm playing Russian roulette and I got Ted Chambers to spin that bitch. I don't like there's two bullets in there. Yeah. I don't like that. That makes me nervous. But I also think you've got a lot of, like, really good, smart people trying to make sure that, at the very least, the people here invent it before the people in China, which I think is probably important. Like, whoever...

Whoever launches the god first is going to be in charge of a lot of stuff. Yeah. It's going to get fucking very strange, Andrew Schultz. It's already very strange, but it's going to get even stranger.

We'll be here to enjoy it. Yes, sir. We'll be making fun of it. My brother, it's always a good time to sit with you. I love you, dog. Thank you. I love you to death. You're the best. You are. Tell everybody what's going on. Oh, Life is on Netflix right now. Right now. So go check it out, man. Yeah, go check it out. Also go check out Derek Poston's- Look at that stash, son. Yeah.

So I think we're, I think we're, today we're number two. You know, maybe after this we beat Kate Hudson. Kate Hudson got me, man. What day does Darius come out? April 19th? April, I think 16th. 16th. Yeah. Yeah. So make sure you check that out. I gotta get him in here. Oh yeah. He's just the fuck. Bro, he was killing us last night. He said that the greatest art ever created is Harry Potter.

And we go like better than he's like, he was, yes, if it's the most consumed, it's the best. And we're like, what about the Bible? He goes, ain't nobody read that shit. Yeah.

He goes, he goes, he goes, ain't nobody read that shit. He goes, he goes, you might have read like part of it, but you didn't read the whole Bible. He goes, nobody's stopping at book three. Bro, he was cooking last night. But yo, go check out his Don't Tell comedy. He's very funny and a great person. Absolutely. All right. I love you, brother. Love you, dog. Peace. Bye, everybody.