E569 Andrew Schulz
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I have some tour dates to tell you about. We'll be coming to College Station, Texas, Belton, Texas, Oxford, Mississippi, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Chicago, and Miami. All tickets at theovon.com slash T-O-U-R. Make sure to not go to any secondhand site.

Just go through the links at theovon.com slash T-O-U-R. Today's guest is a stand-up comedian. He's a podcaster. He has a new special called Life on Netflix. It is miraculously done. I'm very thankful to have him return to the podcast. Today's guest is Mr. Andrew Schultz. ♪ Shine and I will ♪

I've been singing about the stars. Good to see you, man. Good to see you, too. Congratulations on the child. Thank you, bro. Appreciate that. Congratulations on all your success. Thanks, man. Yeah, I appreciate it, dude. I'm like 17 minutes into your special right now. Oh, cool, cool, cool, cool. Dude, the control you have on stage, that's something I really admire. Like this, like...

it's almost like a sharpshooter up there. Kind of like there's something, I don't know, but you're the way you have this control on stage is something, uh, it's great. Thank you, man. I appreciate that, brother. Yeah, it's cool, man. How many times you guys shoot twice? We did four shows. Yeah. Two a night. That venue is so beautiful. It's shot so well. Who shot it? Thank you. Uh, so I have my guys do it, uh, like shifty, shifty edited. I mess, I forget the guys who's the DP. And then Troy Miller was the director. And, uh,

Yeah, it's tricky. Like filming, filming standup is so tricky, especially when you do these, you know, we're used to just kind of doing it all ourselves. So then you go do a special and you kind of realize that like each department is fighting against one another. Like the video department wants to make it look beautiful, but making it look beautiful might make the audio sound bad. The audio department wants to make it sound beautiful.

What makes it sound beautiful might mean your mic is really low in the room. So now the show could be shitty for the audience. You know what I mean? So there's like all these, like we had speakers. I don't know if you know, it's like in the front, like usually a lot of times. Yeah. So you want to, you had your foot up on it. Yeah. And like most people don't do that because the shot is more beautiful if you just have like raw stage.

But I was like, I think that the special would be better if the audience enjoys it the most. - Yeah. - You know what I mean? - That's how I agree with that. 'Cause if they have fun, you have fun. - Exactly. There was one, I think it was like show one, and there was like miscommunication or something. The camera guy was a really sweet guy, but he thought it was his job to just keep walking down the aisle and back up the aisle with the camera. And I'm like, bro, they gotta believe that this is kind of just happening. And when you walk in front of them with a camera,

the illusion kind of falls apart, right? They feel like they're part of a filming instead of like just part of this show. So yeah, that's the tricky thing. I wish I didn't even have to tell them we were filming. You know what I mean? Like I- - Right, just make it be a regular show. - This is just a show. So if you guys yell out or do something, this is as natural as it could possibly be. - Wonder if he probably could have done that in hindsight. - Yeah, I mean earlier ones I was able to do that, but I think this one,

I don't know. This one, maybe I was like nervous. I was like, fuck, I really want to make sure that we could, you know, fill that place four times. And, you know, I don't know. It's a huge venue. It's beautiful. What is that? Yeah, it's the Beacon in New York. Wow. Yeah, it's pretty.

Yeah, dude, this looks, I mean, I thought I was like, this is unbelievable looking. Oh, thanks, man. Yeah, you guys crushed it. Even the font that they chose for Andrew Schultz's life I thought was perfect. There was just a lot of great choices, I thought. Yeah, the first Netflix special, you know, the first thing that comes up on the black screen, that's actually my wife's handwriting.

Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. She wasn't aware that that's what it was, but it was a... Because I don't know how far you are in the special yet, but most of it is this like journey of us trying to get pregnant. Yeah, yeah. That's where I'm at. I'm at to like, let me think. Oh, after you saw the baby, but...

You haven't gone through the journey about getting pregnant. It's just the actual seeing the child, I guess. The C-section, the story, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dude, it's incredible. Congrats, man. Thanks, man. Thank you. Yeah, good to see you, man. Great to see you, man. It's unbelievable, bro. Unbelievable. It's freaking been a while, dude. You've been caught up in some beef. You were in the fucking rat beef. I was like, this dude, I thought you were going to pop out at Super Bowl. You know, I was supposed to go to the Super Bowl. I was supposed to be part of the show. Well,

I was like, how wild is this shit going to get? No, we were going to go, actually. You were there, right? No, I didn't go, man. Me and David Spade started making that movie, and so we had to shoot that. How's that going? It's interesting, man. It's done. Do you like...

Because I remember years ago when we were doing the pod, there was a... Hopefully you don't feel bad about me sharing, but you had some frustration with not being able to create these projects. Do you remember us having these conversations where you really wanted to make a TV show and didn't feel like those doors were open? And now you're making this movie. You're on top of the world. It must feel pretty cool. Well, I think we just did it ourselves. Nobody wanted to make it. We took it out. We took it to the streamers and we... Oh, you created your own movie? Yeah. You filmed it before even...

No, no, no. We pitched it first. Okay. Right. So we pitched it and nobody, no way. Oh dude, we couldn't get, and it was Spade, you know, I'm like, even with you and Spade at this point in your career, there was still hesitation. I just felt like it

It would have been nice to feel some support there, you know? Like it just would have been like, Hey, look, just even as a good faith thing, we'll do that. You know something. Also, you probably got PTSD too, from like years of wanting to do these things and not really feeling it. And then like, now you're at this point where you're on top of the world. You're like, all right, now everybody's going to give me the opportunity. And then to still feel that, Oh, that sucks.

Yeah, but then I realized it's just life. Yeah, I think I didn't feel like I don't know if I felt on top. I felt like this was a brave thing we're trying to do. Yeah. It was a new thing I was learning. But I felt like with Spade, it kind of was going to be okay because he- Kind of a no-brainer. Right. He knows what he's doing. That's the other thing is like giving us money to make a movie, like we're kind of knuckleheads. Yeah.

It's kind of a bad idea. Yeah, it is. Like, to us, it's a great idea. We're like, we'll figure it out. And they're like, have you done this before? And I'm like, nah, but it's just, it's a movie, right? It can't be that hard, right? But a guy like Spade, he's done it before. Yeah, he'll fucking know. He'll have the camera in his trunk of his car. Everything will be fine. He'll figure it out. Yeah, why do we have that attitude? Like, we want to make a movie and it costs $30 million and we're like,

These fucking assholes. How dare they not give us $30 million even though we've proven we can do nothing. What is that about? That's a great point. That's kind of on us a little bit. Oh, totally. Is that narcissism? Is it ego?

Well, I think I would never think, give me dirt. I wouldn't like, if they even try to do something like that, I'd be like, this is insane. But I think what I realized then it was, I just want to do something. If I can do it by myself, whether it's win or lose, it's like, yes, I'd rather make it something small. And then, and even if some like was like, let, Hey, come do it with us or some studio. I don't want to do that. It's like, I just want to do something that it's like, okay, will people like this? Yeah. Will they believe that I tried my best? Like, even if it's not that good, it's like,

that's okay. I can just tell people that go to see it in advance. Hey, I'm not going to be that great in it, but it'll be a cool movie. Yeah. You know, like I just don't want to lie to it. It's just like, as long as there's this transparency, then I think it's fine. I think people admire those that take risks.

I think that's almost like an American thing in general. We like risk takers. We like people who are brave. And I wonder if it's baked in our DNA a little bit, like our family members that left their families around the world to never see them again for like maybe an opportunity here. Like I think that we're probably, we have like the DNA of the biggest risk takers on the planet. Yeah, like Christopher Columbus, dude, like what about his sister or whatever? Boring bitch. Yeah, she just got left and fucking wherever. Okay.

probably lived a way better life. She's not learning Native American. She's just chilling. She's not over here lying to Indians for lunch. Just shows up. What do you mean there's no gold? But dude, imagine taking off in a boat. People are like, where are you headed? You're like, I don't fucking know. You're trying to be cool, right? Because it's like your last day on the docks or whatever. You're like, I don't know. We'll figure it out when we get out there. You've got to be selling the dream, though. You're like, no, no, no. Trust me. Trust me. It's crazy over there.

Yeah, they got everything. Women, you get out there. I heard you get a couple miles out there. There's just a lot of women out there. They got them on the way. You don't even have to make it the whole way. They got stops. Yeah, it is. So anyway, so I think...

Like, naturally, you know, you get a lot of success. There are going to be people that enjoy seeing you fail or whatever it is. But unfortunately, I guess human beings, we got that in us a little bit. But I do also feel like the people that ride for you appreciate the risk that you'd be taking. Yeah. I do think all of us as comedians, I think they do. I think that's one of the reasons why comedians and podcasts maybe does well is because, well, for one, I think we try to –

I don't know. This sounds fucking egomaniacal. I have no idea. Say it, say it, say it. But no, I heard somebody say that like a lot of podcasters, they're just trying to figure out the truth. They just, they're not like, we don't work for anybody. So it's like,

If you ask somebody a question, it's just because you want to know. It's not because there's a producer saying, let's get this answer. Curiosity is kind of punished in a way. But maybe it's because they'll put us on such a pedestal. They're like, you should know the answer to these things. It's like, well, I don't. And that's why this guy's here, because I'm trying to figure out the answer to it. And I just want to know their take on it.

Right. I might not even be able to communicate that well a rebuttal or grill them that well, but I just want to like. I want to grill them. Right. I want to know what they think. And then I'll bring somebody else who thinks something different and I'll ask him that. And, but yeah, that is, I guess maybe some criticism is like, well, why'd you ask, why didn't you ask this question? Or why didn't you rebuke, rebuke that? And it's like, bro, I don't know. I don't know anything.

just yet. Yeah, I'm not a doctor. I'm not a politician. Like, I got in this own trap of just because the last year we got to have some political people on the podcast and I was like, dude, there was like a month ago I started thinking like, oh, I'm a political guy, right? For like...

Did you feel like you had to be informed? Were you like reading Wall Street Journal and shit? I just like, I thought like, cause here was the crazy thing. People started coming up to me. A political guy. Yeah, dude. Well, people would come up to me and ask me about political shit. I was like. Like asking your take? Yeah, dude. I was like, I don't fucking know.

I don't know, dude. Like, you know, or like, so, but then I started to realize, wow, people's perceptions are affected, like how they see people, where they see them at and stuff. And then I was like, well, I do have some political thoughts. Like most of them are just kind of regular people's kind of thoughts and ideas. Like they're not super in depth. Um, but yeah, I think for like a week I started smoking my own nuts and thinking I was like fucking,

J Edgar Hoover or somebody, you know, I actually think that like whatever your perception of your feelings are about something that's actually more valuable than what the like factual truth is. Oh yeah. Because most people aren't reading up on the factual truth and,

Right. Like you got to meet people where they are emotionally. That's a good point. And the people are trusting their gut. So I think, yeah, when, when you, when you do just talk to somebody and you don't let the people that people decide, well, do I, do I think like I believe that guy? Do I, you know, and then they get to decide. And you might hate what that person says, but don't dismiss him because there might be a lot of people that feel that same way. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like there's a lot of people, like I've heard people say this a lot. They go, uh,

You know, the economy actually wasn't that bad, you know, under Biden or whatever it is. And it's like, bro, bro, bro, bro, bro. You can't tell somebody who feels the economy is bad that it's not bad. That's a good point. Right? Like if they feel like the eggs are expensive, that's what they feel. It's like I would say this. Like if I get into an argument with my wife, like I do something to piss her off. And like she doesn't want me to explain to her why she shouldn't be upset.

Right? Like, that never works. Right? Like, I know you're upset, but you shouldn't be because of these reasons. She's like, fuck you. She just wants me to be like, hey, my bad. I'm sorry I made you feel that way. And I feel like our whole political discourse, and I don't know anything about politics, but I feel like the whole political discourse is just like, you're wrong because. And then the other side going, you're wrong because. And then it's just...

shows set up to dunk on one another. Like there's no good faith conversation. And the second we're out here having like a good faith conversation, like we bring somebody on and we're just like, all right, so what do you feel about the world? People go to us like, like you fucking asshole. How dare you not dunk on that guy? How dare you not humiliate him on your podcast so I can feel good at home.

It's crazy, right? Yeah, yeah. And you can't win. Like, we had, like, Candace Owens and Hasan Piker. They're, like, different sides of the aisle last week, right? You had, like, Brogan had Ian Carroll, and you had Candace on, like, I think the same day. It was a tough week for Israel. Jews stayed inside. Jews went to the tunnels. They're like, we have everybody into the tunnels. Put the mattresses back in, son.

We got to figure, we got to regroup. But dude, I didn't fucking know. I thought, well, somebody from the left and somebody from the right, right? Yeah. But I didn't. Oh, bro. Sorry to go. Yeah, I had no, I was just like, okay, let's hear some different thoughts and different opinions or whatever. That's the other thing I realized. Like, I think it was after the last special, right? I was like, okay, you know what? I'm going to kind of chill. Like, I want to spend time with my family, my friends. Like, I'm not going to go out and do as many like pods and stuff like that. You know, I got a lot of work that I'm doing at home.

And I don't know. I'm not saying I'm famous, but I don't know what the fuck it is to be famous. I never wanted to be famous. I knew that that might have been a byproduct of having success in comedy, but it wasn't like...

I never like studied being famous. Like I didn't give a fuck about like how to be a famous person. Does that make sense? Like we, I mean, well, who knew that podcasts would have such would be, uh, and clips of podcasts would get out. So it'd be huge. Right. Yeah. So like, I remember I was like, okay, I'm not, I'm just going to chill. I'm like, I'm not going to be doing as many pods, et cetera. And, uh, that's the thing that I realized, like having different voices on your pod doesn't really do anything for your, for the people's perception of you that aren't your fans. Right.

Wait, say it one more time so I hear it. So we probably, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but we probably think, I'm going to have different voices on my podcast. And one, I'm curious and I want to know what they think. But two, I want to also let the people out there in the world know I care about hearing from different people. And I care about having diversity of thought on my podcast. The people that don't know you, the casuals, are just judging you by the worst thing you've ever had on your podcast. And the worst thing you've ever said. Yeah.

I didn't realize this until recently, the best way to like thwart those perceptions of you is not by having people on your show, 'cause the casuals don't watch your show. It's by going to your biggest critic's show and sitting down with them. Or not even your biggest critic, but like going to somebody who might have a very different worldview than you, and then you guys sit down and realize, oh shit, we actually don't have that different a worldview. That was all a perception. Anyway.

I think a lot of times we go, okay, we're really busy. It's like hard for us to go around and do different shows and that kind of stuff because I think our perception is not going like, how can I be the most famous person? Like, I don't give a fuck. I want to make the coolest standup that I possibly can. I want to hang out with my friends and I want to talk some shit on podcasts. Like that's enough for me. Yeah.

But I've realized the importance now of going to other people's homes and having those conversations. You know, like we had Hassan on our pod. It probably would have been more beneficial for me to also go on his stream and talk to him and let him bring up shit that I said and like tell me and have him tell me like why I'm missing this like nuance point and be like, oh, that's interesting.

Like that might actually be better for the people that barely understand me or don't even know me. To have like a more holistic view of me and like understand who I am. Right. To actually go into their world a little bit more. Yeah. Because then you find things about me that might not come up on the pot. Yeah. Like you start asking me things about like how I feel about, you know, how I feel about

I don't know, whatever it is. I don't know if it's fucking like Marxism or some shit like that. And I go, oh yeah, maybe that, actually that kind of sounds good on paper. I don't know. It'd be nice if there was a little bit more equality for people and people who had nothing, had the ability to come up. That'd be pretty cool. - Yeah, a little light Marxism, yeah. - Just light.

You know what I mean? Hey, you got to cut it with something. You need majority capitalism. You know, it's like a cappuccino. You know what I mean? You can't have – we're not taking espresso shots of Marxism. You know what I mean? It's just – we like capitalism. Yeah, just a fucking latte. Just, yeah, half-calf. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Damn, dude. Yeah, I don't know. It's all – it's definitely been –

mainstream media just got so like, I don't know. The whole thing has been bizarre, man. Being a part of podcasting,

You know, all the strange little connections that are out there. I mean, like you were saying, Gavin Newsom just started a podcast where he's having people who kind of disagree with him when he had Charlie Kirk on. I think it's a really smart thing. Which is pretty wild, you know? I think it's a really smart thing. We're talking about that at the beginning. And Dove, your producer, said that he felt like this was kind of Newsom's last hope, too. It's like he's probably on the way out. So unless he could do something to salvage...

That. 100%. But having a podcast and having people you don't agree with hang out with you for a while is pretty brave. It's also like, that's the exact word I was going to, it's like brave. You want to show bravery. And I think like, not to be political or whatever, but I think in the last, and again, I don't care about politics, but like culture is interesting to me. But I think in the last, you know, election with the podcast run,

And I just want to say personally, I don't think that we changed the election at all. I have no ego about that. That was decided way before us. Yeah. Like it made me made people feel more comfortable voicing how they were already going to vote. But I don't think people are watching like I'm completely flipped on this. Yeah, that's insane also. Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, I think that the lack of representation of Kamala and even like her constituents on the podcast run, I think it showed a lack of bravery. The feeling was like, oh, they're scared to go have potentially tough conversations. It wasn't even going to be tough with us. I know. What are we going to grill her on? I couldn't even think of a thing. I mean, I heard that she roller skated a lot and I wouldn't be curious about that, but it's like.

Other than that, it's like, I don't know what I would have talked about. But her people are going, we can't go on feel. I mean, he's just going to come with the hard-hitting questions. Like, what? Right, like something like that is insane. Yeah, but don't you appreciate that? Like, as much as Gavin Newsom just seems like a plastic bag in the wind, I'm also like...

I'm brave. You're willing to sit down on something recorded. I wouldn't talk to Charlie Kirk. That motherfucker is a good arguer. I know, dude. Candace, too. Candace, I always say, Rogan said Candace is John Wick. You do not get in her fucking way.

Uh-uh. Oh, she, yeah, she's definitely, yeah. When you said her kid looked like Anthony Smith, I was like, you better. I was like, you a crazy motherfucker right here, bro. That daughter, and look, a beautiful kid. Beautiful kid. You just stop at beautiful. That's what you do. You stop at beautiful. Because you do not want Candace to get fixated, okay? You do not want her to get fixated. The second she comes up with a Theo video, you got to hope something happens in Israel, pal. Shift the attention.

Gaza Untight. I need a bucket. Bro, that was layered because you made it German as well. I brought that in. I can't believe that happened. Thank you, dude. Gaza Untight is good. I did not believe that was going to come up. I just started with Gaza and then I was like, this won't be funny. I hope people get how layered that is. That is good. That was teamwork though.

I don't know about that. I think you went one-on-one right there. I said that her daughter looks a little bit like... She's beautiful. Oh, the daughter is beautiful. I think what we got to say is that Anthony Smith is a beautiful little girl. I think that's the better way of describing it. He's a savage fighter. He's the fisty Charlemagne, baby. That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying.

No, he does look mixed a little bit. Is he mixed? Anthony, yeah, he is. Mixed with what? I don't know. I think he's latte or whatever they call it. He is. But Anthony's incredible. And the daughter looks incredible. Oh, she's beautiful. I know. Yeah, she's beautiful. But shout out to Candice. It's so funny how like... And shout out to Charlemagne, too. I just made a joke one time about him. I said he was handsome. Oh, he's handsome? Yeah, he's handsome. He loved that one. And...

I don't remember what happened with it, but I just thought it was. I think he brought it up. He was like, this is a deal. I'm handsome. He doesn't age, though. Oh, dude. No, he's killing it. He's killing it. Yeah. I would like to get to meet him. I've never, I don't know if I've ever met him. I got to connect you guys, man. Yeah. You guys would have a great talk. I bet we probably would. Of course. Yeah. I saw that they just had, who did they have on there that I love? Who on Breakfast Club? Yeah. I can't remember.

The Candace Baldoni stuff, I don't know if you were following that at all. I didn't get into that. I don't get into a lot of the celebrity lore. The only reason why it's interesting to me is that Candace has been positioned in a way on the internet, right? And she existed there and people had her opinions on her and everybody was stuck. They're like, that's this girl and bad. No, no, no, no, no. We don't listen to her at all. And she started talking about that Baldoni Blake Lively thing.

And even my wife was hitting me like, have you heard this Candace Owens girl talking about? I mean, she just exposed the whole thing. Like, it's crazy how like, like social utility frames how people see you. So you could be a bad guy and then you start talking in depth about something that people care about. And then all of a sudden, while you're talking about that, you're a good guy. You're a hero. That's interesting. Like, what does that say about us? Is it...

What's the same with the politic thing? It's like people see you talking to a politician and now like at your Christmas and family stuff people are coming up and talking about asking about politics and shit and foreign protocol or whatever. You're like, what should we do in Syria, Theo? You're like, man, let me make a call or two. I don't know.

Yeah, people are asking if I was going to be an ambassador to do something or whatever. Why would you be an ambassador to? I don't know. You got to ask for Louisiana. Yeah, maybe. And they're like, we don't need one of them. Yeah, but we should make a special position. Yeah, but we need. Hey, look. I don't know if you've heard some of the slang down there. We need someone who can communicate. We need an interpreter between the White House and Boosie, okay?

Because we're fucking, we're losing information. Theo Vaughn for ambassador of Louisiana. The greatest thing the Trump administration has ever done. Shake it like a dog, baby. Do what you do. I'll just be fucking, I'll be, I'll be breaking down rap lyrics for him. Dude, that is creepy. Is that Robert Greene's face on the 48 Laws of Power?

Oh my God. That is one of the most terrifying things I keep looking at over your shoulder. That's crazy. I thought it was Dexter. He looks like Vigo from Ghostbusters 2. Remember the dude in the painting? Bring him up. Vigo. Did you see Ghostbusters 2? No, no. I didn't see it. My mom wouldn't let us watch that kind of stuff. Oh, wow. He does. And so do I a little bit. And so does Alan Dershowitz. Yeah.

See, you are involved in politics. You know all these names. You're plugged in, bro. But aren't we plugged in? Here's the... The funny thing about Candace is they were like, you're an anti-Semite. And she's like, fucking call me whatever you want. I'm a fucking... I have one of the top 10 podcasts in the world. She really don't care. She doesn't give a fuck. She does not... And the amount of people that listen to her. It's like... It's true. And she changes public sentiment. Like, she flipped that whole Blake Lively, Baldoni thing. That flipped. Like...

he was a, I don't want to say pariah, but people were like, this guy's a fucking douchebag. Another one of these, like I'm a male feminist guys. And then you're really a creep on set. She completely 180 the internet on that. Baldoni got to give her a check. That's a good point. And she don't even want it. I bet she got to be so rich because there you need to be, you need to have some money to be that brave and have kids. That's a good point, huh? Right? Like once you have kids, you gotta be, you know, you gotta make sure you can protect those kids. The dad must be like a,

a rifleman or something or like a the dad of the babies right the dad yeah somebody has to be they're gonna hire Anthony Smith now to actually help protect his family that'd be pretty great actually Denzel Washington man on fire yeah yeah

That'd be pretty great. Dude, that'd be so great. They show up to their next someplace with the whole family and Anthony Smith is their fucking bodyguard. That would be pretty sick, dude. Bro, she could be in the bodyguard. That's the new bodyguard starring Candace Owens and Anthony Smith. Whose baby is it?

Actually, you don't want to do that. No, she'll get pissed, dude. You don't want to do that. And what if she breaks the story down and she finds out that it's – that's the whole story. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. You have a deep dive on her. She does it. And she's surprised by her own results. Yes.

You would never see that coming. No, but that sounds like a cool... It actually sounds like a cool movie or something. But we're just joking, Candace. Candace, by the way, we want no problems at all. We want zero problems. Are we all looking into the cams when we say this? We want zero problems. Okay? Zero problems. Our wine scene didn't do it. Wait, wait, wait. That's what she's on... That's right. That's what she's saying now. That's what she's saying. But I will say this. You can't predict her at all. No. She's brave and she's thorough. Yeah. And she's never lost a lawsuit. So...

She is. But it is kind of crazy how like the mainstream media had just been this machine. And then now you're starting to see like, Oh, well, what about these stories you never heard about? What about the fact that, um, some information might not even be true because it was all just kind of like part of a plan. Like that shit's kind of wild. Yeah. And that makes podcasting and like freelance communication or whatever it's called. Yeah. Uh,

even more interesting. Well, yeah. I don't even know what to believe now. You see clips and I start, but I'm like, oh, this is what I... And you're like, dude, I haven't...

there's no real place to get completely factual truth. Well, maybe because your instinct. Yeah. But maybe because like there is no completely factual truth. I could be it too. I think that's the thing. And I think it was probably easier when there's like a few different news channels to disseminate information. Like kind of, we all agree on more. Hey, this is what happened during the civil war. Right. This is what happened during the revolutionary war. This is what happened during World War II. I didn't even know Russia did anything during World War II until like a few years ago. Yeah.

I found out like 25 million Russians died in World War II. Nuh-uh. Yeah. Are you serious? Yeah. Pull that up. How many Russians died in World War II? That's unbelievable. You don't ever hear about that. Never hear about it. But why would we teach that? Right. You know? But it gives you a different concept of who did what. 27 million. Wow. Oh my God. Yeah. 19 million civilian deaths, 8.7 million military deaths. Wow.

That's the thing with Russia. It's tricky. It's like – So they were an allied force, right? Yeah, and then immediately afterwards, we started beefing in the Cold War and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, we had a united cause at one point in time because I think Hitler invaded Russia. Oh, wow. Yeah, but the problem with invading Russia is like they have a cultural –

acceptance of misery. Right. So they kind of like it in the beginning. Is that what you're saying? Of war, you're saying? They're like, oh, finally, this is our, we're back to homeostasis. Be our guest. Be our guest. Yeah, like,

I don't know. Yeah, exactly. So I don't know. I just feel like Americans, we like it. We like nice shit. We like being comfortable. We're brave. That's what I will say. I don't have concerns about us losing a war because I do think that we value freedom. I don't think we would ever accept being controlled by another country. I think that the majority of us would rather die before that happened.

Or we just don't know that it's happening. Here you go again. Theo, Theo, here you go. Theo, Theo, what country are you talking about? Theo, Theo, Candace, see what you started, Candace. Theo, what are you talking about right now, Theo? Theo? Look, I'm Whoopi Goldberg. We're going to go to commercial break right now, guys. Are you ready to win real money this March mania tourney?

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That's the problem with having people talk to us with really compelling arguments. It's like, I will believe the last YouTube video I saw. Whoever put this shit up this quickly, this has got to be AI, right? This has got to be AI. There is no way. There is no way. Hey, you're asking for it. Whoever's doing this is asking for it. You need to stop right now.

Listen to this hot face. Whoever's doing this. Candace looks great. Oh my God, she's stunning. Beautiful woman. Wow. I look like, oh, that's Anthony Smith. I thought that was my face. That's not you, motherfucker. No. I thought it was my face. Theo. Theo cast himself in a movie. I cast myself as Anthony Smith.

Does it look... I'm fucking... My nose is a little bigger than his, though. Lip is the same. That's crazy. I looked at that two times. I was like, I wonder how they did that, but let's go, huh? Wow, yeah. It's not going to age well. It'll be fine. Candice, it's... We're joking. It's all jokes.

But yeah, I mean, but the worst, if you see a Charleston White video before you go to see it, that's the last one you see? That's a wild dude, Charleston. Have you had him on your show? No, have you? Uh-uh. That's a wild dude, man. He is just so unpredictable. The next sentence he says is also one of these things where it's like, people who say wild shit can also be hilarious.

Let's stop acting like both of those can't be true. You know what I mean? Like him, Dr. Umar. I love Dr. Umar. I've been trying to get Dr. Umar on my show forever. Really? Well, he thinks I want to debate him. Oh yeah. And I don't think he understands that. Like, I'm just a fan. Like, I just think he's a hilarious communicator. Does the culture, does black culture fuck with Dr. Umar or no? As the spokesman for black culture, I would say yes. Yeah. I would say yes. That's fair. Yeah. Yeah.

That's fair. Yeah, because I know sometimes people are iffy on Charleston White in the black culture, you know? Yeah, yeah, because I feel like maybe it's like his position is more critical. Right. Whereas like maybe Dr. Umar also has the same critiques of certain things, but he is like, hey, we're black first and we got to stay united. We got to lock this down. We got to do what's best for the community. But he is a like magnificently gifted speaker. Yeah.

Like he just talks in soundbites. He has this like pastoral repetition. Like remember like early Chris Rocca, who would like repeat the premise over and over again. And it kind of like just emblazoned into your head. But yeah, man. Have you ever talked to him? Charles White? No, no. Dr. Umar? Yeah. You're familiar with him, right? I just heard about him, no joking, one week ago. No way. Somebody mentioned, have you seen Dr. Umar?

I think my buddy Zita told me about him and showed me him. Oh, dude. I thought this, oh, I thought that was fucking Kendrick Perkins or whatever. I just saw this guy.

So you thought Dr. Umar was moonlighting on TNT? And now everybody's just trusting. Everything he says. I was like, how did he fucking change? You're like, why is Drewski going to him for dating advice? Why is Kendrick Perkins... They got Drew, bro. They came after Drewski. Yeah, that bullshit ass claim against Odell, too. That's the thing. And then, like, whatever girl did that shit, like, we'll never hear from her again. So you can just say these stupid shit. It's just...

You should have to go to jail for that. You should have to go to jail for that shit. Yeah. Because he has to go out and say, I didn't do it. Like, that's a crazy thing to have to say as a human. Jay-Z had to say that shit. And then they just dropped the lawsuit. Did you see that? Against Jay-Z? Yeah. And then, again, nobody even notices when the lawsuit is dropped. It's like, you got to scream it from the rooftops or else nobody will pay attention. I know. And that goes to that, like, hater shit with the successful. It's like...

That story was so popular because there was probably a lot of people that were like, man, fuck Jay-Z for having a perfect wife and an amazing family and a child and billions of dollars. Yeah, he probably did that shit. Damn. And so then they're the ones tweeting it, sharing it, everything. And there's bots now. I mean, it's just, it's definitely bizarre. You got to trust your own gut. But yeah, you could see an article. It's the last thing you saw. And then you're like, people are like, damn, wasn't that guy addicted to drugs? You're like, that guy is just crazy.

won an Oscar. It's just like, you know what I'm saying? If you didn't tap in and what's been going on, you know, it's all crazy, man. You'll see stories about yourself that are crazy. I saw a story that I was like a, all a jar cheese child or something from the third generation or something. And I was like, like a billionaire stepchild or whatever. And I was like, what are you fucking? I was like, if my dad, if we had any money, they'd never, no one ever had it. But yo, here's the thing with that story is like, that story is just to discredit you.

Right. Like if you come from crazy money, everybody gets to go, ah, see, it's not real. And he actually didn't have to experience this kind of traumatic childhood. And like, this is all bullshit. It's like the story is specifically designed to cut your legs out from under you. It's like, why, why do people want to do that? Why is that? And maybe it's in all human beings. Maybe it's just something that we have to, to grapple with. But, uh, I imagine like the more confident you are in yourself, the more happy you could be for people who get success. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a good point, man. I think realizing that, I think for a while you come from like a scarcity mentality, you know, where you're like, man, shit's not gonna, like, fuck, somebody's, something bad's gonna, you know, this ain't gonna be okay. This is gonna go away. Right. This starts to change or like the government's just gonna come and take everything from you. You can't believe that it's happened after so many years of trying. Yeah, and then also you like, you don't know how to have like things and so you're like, well, dude, I remember being ashamed of myself when I didn't have anything and being ashamed of myself when I did have something.

But it was really crazy. It was like I tried to hide, always mask my life because I didn't want people thinking that, seeing that I didn't have anything or that I didn't feel like I was anything. And then even when I got a house in Nashville, it's a nice home. It's not like, you know, some crazy – it's a nice home, but it's not like a billion-dollar home or anything. But I didn't want to show people my living. I just didn't want them to see like –

You know, I don't know. It's just fucking crazy. It was like, so in the end, there was some part of me that just didn't want to be, that either only cared about what you thought or just didn't want to be happy for myself no matter what. And then you can never feel comfortable no matter where you are.

In this journey, man, it's – and that's – I guess what is – what would they say? That comes down to like self-acceptance. It's like once you accept it, like you should be entitled to your success and you work hard for it. Then you're not as dependent on like the validation of others. I know. But – It's hard to get away from that, I think. I don't know if it's hard. Some things like doing ayahuasca, that kind of stuff has helped a lot of that stuff go away though. Yeah. That kind of stuff has been a – You've done that a few times? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I like it, dude. Really? Yeah, you do it enough times they give you this jacket. Oh, yeah, definitely. Some guy walks out of the jungle in Costa Rica. Jaqueta para ti. You get a punch card. Before that, I was going to get an Eagles letterman jacket. That is so ridiculous, dude. That is cool. You know who told me? Neil told me that. Oh, yeah. Neil Brennan became the, he became like this.

Connector. Go on. But no, I think that's kind of what it is. Like, you know, Neil is one of his superpowers is his cynicism. You know, like he's constantly consumed. I hope he doesn't mind me saying this, but he's constantly consumed of like what the worst case scenario of something would be or what the worst possible

what the worst person would think about the thing he's doing. And what's good about that is like when you're creating stuff, there's an advantage in that you're always thinking about what your biggest critic could say. So maybe you really try to sharpen every premise and sharpen every joke and make sure there's no fat and it's like infallible. And the negative aspect about that is that like if you're just creating for them, it's hard to create something authentically. And then he said – he was like, listen, after I did that, like that voice started to dim a bit.

And like, I didn't have, I wasn't constantly consumed with the critic and I was able to make, I think my best shit. I think that's true. It's like, it's hard to create authentically when you're worried about what critics would say. Like you just making shit for them, you know, like. Or for somebody, especially when your whole life, you've only tried to,

you've gained a lot of your acceptance from other people. Yeah. You know, I think that's probably been a lot of my life, but I didn't even know who I was. There wasn't a me. So the only thing there was, was your reaction. Yeah. So I didn't fucking. Do you think you found yourself? I think it's gotten better as I've gotten older. I think some of it is getting older. You just kind of like, I can't even fucking, whoever you are, motherfucker. Come out. We ain't got a lot of time left, bro. You know, I did for 40 years. My boy, like enjoy some of this shit. We got a new jacket. Yeah.

Hey, man, come on out, man. We got to figure this shit out, Tom. You just getting tired of it? That's funny. That's great, dude. Yeah, so I don't know, but I think also you just get older and you're like, there's just no, whatever part of you that still cares about that shit starts to go away. I think it's just exhausted, too. Well, I,

I think chasing its tail kind of, maybe that's the, maybe that's the release for you with something like ayahuasca where instead of like constantly searching for what it is and who you are, you do feel connected to whatever this greater existence is. And you just get to go, okay, I'm not going to fucking worry all day about what exactly I am and what I don't have. And just be this, you know, bottomless pit that a lot of us in entertainment can be like there is. And maybe that's what you need. Maybe you need that reminder.

Yeah. Maybe you need that reminder you're part of something bigger. Yeah, I think that that's a good point because once you feel like you're part of something bigger, there's some connection, then you kind of don't just think about yourself. You're not as isolated. Yeah, you're not. There's something liberating about knowing things are way bigger than you. Yeah. When it's not bigger than you, it's very easy to get caught in your own head. It's fuck, it's a lot of pressure, I imagine. Yeah.

If you're just thinking about you and like how you're being perceived and if you're becoming the man you thought you would be and, you know, if you feel comfortable with the success you've had, how other people will react to that success. Oh, yeah. That's crippling. That shit. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff that's kind of like scary. I think as you get older.

I think, yeah, popularity is kind of scary. Watching your own ego and being conscious of like, what is your ego and what is just you trying to have some self-confidence in yourself, especially if some of those things are kind of like, you're like kind of a late bloomer and some of that shit's happening, you know, can be, happens simultaneously. It's all, yeah. What's an example of that? I mean, even some of the like thinking about, I knew something about politics. It was like, just the fact that it took me a couple of weeks to realize, dude, you don't know about fucking politics. Like,

Yeah, you got to talk to some political people, but do and how much do they really know? And but it's like, don't that's a trap, right? What do you know about, you know, about like being curious, you know, about like wanting to talk to different people, you know, about trying to be funny. You know, I think I think politics is always a reflection of culture. Like politics is downstream from cultural needs and necessities.

and I think that one of the things that's made you so successful is I think you're deeply connected to culture. Like you, you're aware of what people are feeling. You're aware of what they're frustrated by. And, um, you know, regardless if there's like data analysis to back up every single one of those claims, like to me, that doesn't mean anything. Like you can list out all the facts you fucking want, but like you're aware of people's frustrations. And, um,

politicians have to react to that. So you don't need to know like what fucking Senator is pushing what bill. Cause they're all reacting to the thing that you're more acutely aware of probably than even them.

Yeah, yeah. I guess like you can't be a comedian or at least a high performing comedian if you're not in touch with like what people are feeling. Yeah. Like at its core, I think that's really what makes somebody a good comic. Yeah. And how to stay like just how to like stay and stay connected to that type of thing. Yes. You know, and sometimes with success is harder to connect to it.

And it's also harder for them to connect to you. That's probably why you want to hide the house in Nashville. You're like, fuck, well, they feel like they can't relate to me because of this new life I live. That's something that like...

So I grew up in New York City, right? In the city you grew up? Yeah, I grew up in Manhattan. And one of the things about growing up in Manhattan, it's incredibly humbling. Like you never feel... You weren't in the Newsies. You were not in the Newsies. I was in Newsies. Were you really? No. I was in Newsies.

Have people asked you that before? No, no. You're the first person. Oh, I'm sorry, dude. I can't remember when that was, but I love that movie. Good little movie. I think Christian Bale was in that shit, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Crutchie, that little guy. Like, give me the paint. Fucking. That was my childhood. I'm just saying, fucking bullshit. You got a fucking kid on one crutch. Hiking through fucking. Sacking, selling newspapers. Hiking up the LIC with a fucking sack of newspapers, dude. LIE. LIE. The LIE with a sack of newspapers, dude.

But anyway, like you just humble constantly. You never feel like you got money. There's always somebody way richer. There's always somebody with a way better job. There's always someone with a better career. Like because you're in the city where the most successful of all the people have. So you never feel like...

You never feel this concern that you were talking about, which is like, oh, if I show this nice thing I have, people will think that I consider myself better than them or something. If you grew up in New York, you never feel that way because there's always someone so much higher than you. You know what I mean? There's always someone so much more wealthy. So it's just this, there's like a hustle mentality, which is like, I'm going to work really fucking hard. Yeah.

for as long as I possibly can, and I'm going to try to get some nice shit, but I'm going to earn it. I'm not going to just have it handed to me. I'm going to fucking bust my ass. But when I do get it, I don't feel guilty about it because it ain't even as close as nice as the guy who lives three blocks that way. But I understand, like, my mom's from Scotland, like, fucking, you know, comes from nothing. There's that sentiment of, like, you getting something nice, the community could feel like, oh, do you think you're –

You think you're better than us now because you got this fancy house? Oh, yeah. When I was a kid, like if somebody could read, people would call them a f***ing way. You know? Like if you got a – if somebody brought home a B on our bus, dude, it fucking – you were just a fucking sick homosexual. Yes. You know? Yeah. You fucking – yeah, they would beat you up. I mean they would let people ride home on our bus with no shirts on and I'm like – and yeah, I'm like, well, why don't people have to have shirts on or whatever? But it was just like –

Yeah, just, yeah, I don't know. It's tough. You want to kind of stay like...

I don't know, as your life changes and as you get older, things change, your life gets bigger and you kind of sometimes want to just stay the same. Like, I think there's parts of moments in my life that I really miss where I was real comfortable. And I think as your life changes, sometimes it probably is like a new space. What's it been like for you having a child since I know a lot of your special was about it. Like the greatest, was that something that took away a lot of that? Just worrying about yourself type of thing. I mean, did it really, or you just, or was that something that people to say? I'm glad that you asked that second question, but,

the weird thing about having a kid is it is literally every cliche that anybody has ever said. All right, that's a little Shiloh. Dang, huh? Little cutie. Wow, at the beach, rich, huh? What UFC fighter does she look like? Oh, no, hold on. Don't do it. Huh? Don't do it. I think we got to do it. But for your wife, you have to say that. She, she, she. She, and this is, Nick, you know who it is. He's got a fight coming up. Michael Chandler. A little.

But he's fighting Volkanovski. Oh, Diego Lopez? A little bit. Oh, my God. He's a pretty motherfucker. I'll take that one. That's a compliment. That was acceptable. That's got to be a new segment on the Theo Paul podcast. Yo, yo, yo, he's good. He's good. He's good. Oh. That's pretty cute. Oh, little cutie. I don't want him to hear me say that.

But there's something very charming about him. She's a beautiful young lady. That's going to be a great fight. Shout out Volk, too, man. I think that is an exciting fight, huh? Yeah. Seeing Volkanovski sing the other night about that was so fun. You got a little voice, bro. I know. He's got a good voice. And it's just fun to see his – like, it's so great, I think, if fighters are around long enough where you get to see their personalities. Of course. Like, they used to only have to just be so tough.

And now they can do that but also like have a bit of showmanship. Yeah, we want to connect to them. Yeah. But I will – back to the kid. Back to the kid. Yeah, man. It's every cliche you've ever heard times a thousand. And it's – there's a reason why that exists I imagine. It's like we all should have this reaction towards children, right? Like their smile is the best smile. Their laugh is the best laugh. It's the most incredible experience you've ever had in your life. And there's a little part of you as like a comedian that goes –

oh, I'm going to have these unique takes on being a father. And it is, your takes are so similar to every other person who's ever been a dad, which is now I see as a beautiful thing. But yeah, your life gets really small. I can only speak for myself, but like, I just don't care as much about other things. You know, like I want to spend time with her. I want to spend time with my wife. And as long as they're proud of me and happy with me, that's enough. Anything else is...

It's icing on the cake. It feels really good. Like the response to the special feels really good. It's like amazing. Like all these people who went through IVF and had a similar journey as us to like get pregnant, like they, they, they talking about it like feels really good. Yeah. But, but I'll tell you one thing, as long as like my wife and baby are, are, are happy with me, like that's,

It is an amazing, I hope you experience it, man. If that's something that you'd like to experience, but it's transformative. I'd like to have that, man. It's cool to hear a parent say that too. You know, I think that like, it's nice to hear a parent say those things about their family. It's so cool, man. It is. Also, you'll watch her like, it's very, very rare in life. You get to see somebody give a hundred percent, like really a hundred percent.

And like when you watch them in labor, it's 100%. Really? It's just they're giving everything they possibly can give. What happens if they just do 80% or whatever, 60% or... That baby stays in there, bro. Like we had to do a C-section. We, my wife had to do a C-section. Obviously, it was like, I didn't do anything. I just sat there like an asshole. And, but it was...

But yeah, it's just amazing what they're willing to do. Like my wife lost a lot of blood and like, uh, like 50 cent almost literally it was like, yeah, if, if,

Yeah. It's very similar, actually, to what 50 went through. I got to talk to 50 about that. I was like, dude, you basically got a C-section out there in Jamaica, Queens, bro. Can we talk about that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. 50 C. 50 C is good. It's fucking good. No, but bro, it was like she had no energy left. She had no blood in her system left. And they ask her, they're like, can you do a little breastfeeding for the baby because she needs to eat right now? And then they're like, if you don't have energy, that's fine.

She breastfeeds the baby. The second the baby pulls off, this is like after I don't know how long it is. She goes, my wife's like, is she good? And the doctor's, yeah, she's good. And the second the doctor takes her off, she just closes her eyes and passes out. But it's like there's this like primal urge to do anything for that. They'll do anything for that baby. And it is like, yeah, it's a beautiful human experience to watch somebody love something so

like other worldly love. And, uh, yeah, I think it's a really important part of if you, if you're lucky enough to be able to do it, it's a really important part of like the life experience. It just makes everything, it makes everything small and, and, uh, and worthwhile. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, dude. That's yes. Thanks for sharing that, man. Sure. What's it like to see your parents interact with your, with your, with your child?

So my dad has dementia. I know he's sick, right? Yeah, he's had dementia for a while now. So it's hard for him. He did the intro to your special. Yeah, that was pretty cool. That was cool, dude. I was wondering, was that tough for you guys to get him to pull it off or it was okay? You know, what's interesting is like we filmed that actually at the early part of the tour.

I loved how your special started off with the joke because it, or it may be, it just like, Oh, I'm already having a nice time. Boom. I thought it was a great choice. Y'all made it. I thought it was one of the best. Um, I thought it was one of the best I'd seen in a while. Thanks man. Yeah. It was cool to, yeah. The first one we were thinking about, we're like, should we just start the joke? And then like the first thing is, I think I go, uh, you guys want to hear my favorite New York joke. And we could have just cut that line, but there was part of me that went like,

If I'm just hanging out with friends and I go, yo, I got a good joke. You guys...

My friends or anybody else in that group will go, yeah, I like hearing a good joke. Like, this is why I'm tuning into a special. Like, sometimes I feel like the first joke you tell on stage is the most inauthentic because it's like, hey, we're going to do this thing where I talk and you guys just listen. And once we get into it, it will all make sense. But the first 30 seconds or a minute of it is inauthentic in a way. Yeah. Unless I honestly tell you, hey, you guys ready? Yeah. I'm going to tell you a joke. Yeah.

Does that make sense while I'm trying to communicate? I've never thought about that before. Yeah. There's this kind of moment where everybody pretends like they don't know you're about to tell it. Like they kind of like, there's this weird moment in the beginning. We have to suspend disbelief or whatever it is. What's he going to do? We know what we're going to do. Juggle or yeah. Remodel the building. So I don't know. I was like, how do I just make it feel like authentic or natural or whatever? And, um,

But yeah, but having my dad do it, the intro is just the coolest fucking thing. And how many takes do you have to do with dimension? How many, how, what is that? So that we did a, I mean, he was able to, he was able to knock it out, but we tell him the line right before every single time. Yeah. You know, just give it up for my son, Andrew Schultz. Like, and it's, he goes and says it and you could really feel him. It was like really beautiful. I'll probably get emotional, but he was like, he really wanted to do it, you know? Yeah. And like, he was, he's been a great father. So it's like, and he's like trying to remember it, you know? And like,

Yeah, it was just really, yeah, it was cool.

That's awesome, man. It makes me sad. Not sad, but it makes me... No, it's beautiful. Yeah, it's something that's real. Yeah, it's beautiful. Give it up for my son. Yeah. You know what I mean? Oh, dude. Right when I saw that, because I remember seeing the video that you shared about him when you were going to play Madison Square Garden. Yeah, yeah. And it was like, that was like something that everybody could relate to. And yeah, when I saw that, it was like... Because yeah, I don't know. He was... I keep saying was, which is fucked up, but he had a really shitty dad that wasn't there for him at all.

And he didn't have me until like late, but he like, he never said this, but like he made a decision that he was not going to let that happen again. And he was just like, he was just there for everything. Like every, I don't know what it's like to not have a dad there for everything, which is an amazing privilege. Don't get me wrong. But like,

It was just so important to him to like, "Oh, let's go throw a base. Let's play some basketball." Like whatever you want. I need help with homework, like whatever it is. And he has his dimension. I feel like every time I see him, I just hope he knows that he was incredible and that I'm nowhere close to where I am without that. - Right. - Like all my confidence comes from him.

- Wow. - You know, like every bit of like self belief, like anything is just, there's this guy who's believed in me always. - Yeah, is there a part of you, like, so as dementia, I guess someone's like,

So who someone is starts to kind of disappear a little bit. Yeah. Is that a fair way to say it or not? I would say like your short-term memory goes away. So I guess memory is broken up into long-term memory and short-term. And for someone to get into long-term, it just needs to be repeated. So he has his long-term memory. He like knows the map of New York. He can like go around the city, but he might forget like what he's going to do. Right. But he knows how to get home. Yeah. But if we took him to Florida, he wouldn't really know how to get around. Right. And then short-term, it's like he doesn't really know –

You know, he'll have a conversation with you and then he'll kind of forget. He'll bring it back up. He has like a few things that he'll like talk about. But I will say that like, you know, the concern is when this happens is that like something underneath is bitter and angry and like he just becomes this like resentful human being. But he's pure, man. Like he's just a pure like loving good soul. So...

He gets to find out every time I see him that he has a granddaughter. And like, that's pretty awesome. Like, you know, like, like, so there is a, like, if there's a little positive perspective that you can, all you can do is change perspective on shit. So like, I could tell him every single time. It's like, yeah, I got to talk. He's like, what? Oh my God. What's that like? You know? And like, so that's cool to tell him. Yeah. Yeah. That's gotta be super cool. Yeah, it is. Is there, is there any fear that like, as a part of him, like,

That the part of him inside that will forget that you care about him? Does that make any sense? The fear is that I haven't communicated to him enough how incredible a job he did. And I don't even know if that's important to him. Right. But it's important for you to know it. Yeah. It's important to me that he knows that he's the GOAT. And he might not know that. And it's so interesting. Yeah.

Yeah, like it's, yeah, it's just so interesting. Yeah, yeah, it's like you just want them to know. But then I realize now after having a kid-

Like before I had a kid, I thought he was doing everything just for me. Like he was doing things that he might not actually want to do, but he's like, I'm going to be there for my kid. And now that I have a kid, you get so much joy. Oh, you realize, oh, he was. Bro, it's this beautiful relationship where like you can selfishly be a good dad. Like taking my kid to the Museum of Natural History the other day was more fun for me than her. Yeah. Watching her look at a woolly mammoth.

You know, like, and just have her fucking mind blown. She just she's looking at she's looking back at me. She's like, what the fuck is this? And it was just and I'm like, we got to go to the museum every week, like whatever. There is this beautiful where like your selfishness benefits your kid. Maybe if you have a healthy relationship. I know there is like unhealthy shit. Right. Right. Right.

I think I see what you're saying. So then it's like now it's like there's no way he couldn't ever know how much I care about him because it almost doesn't even matter because he cares about me so much. As a dad, you care about your kids so much that as long as they're okay, then everything else is it. You would hope. Is that kind of what you're saying a little bit? Yeah, you would hope. I mean, again – Right. I know there's a lot of instances it's not the case. Yeah, but I mean, yeah. I would just –

Yeah, I would hope. I hope that's the case. He battled with depression a lot. My family's got a lot of mental illness in it. Oh, yeah. So he battled with depression a lot. And so it's just like, you don't know what to do when you're a kid about that. I used to take him to the comedy cellar before I ever did comedy. I was like, I thought that if you laugh, you're not depressed. That's how I thought it worked. So I'd take my depressed-ass dad to the comedy cellar. Little did I know, he's just listening to depressed comedians. He's probably getting more depressed. Yeah.

He's struggling with his life. He's got to listen to these sad-ass comedians on stage talking about how shitty their lives are. He's like, this kid is going to kill me. But hey, if it makes his son happy, he's saying it. He's doing it for me. He's doing it for me.

Damn near almost killed himself. Half the comedians. You're doing it for him and he's doing it for you. That's fucking hilarious, dude. Yeah. He's like, he's fucking sitting there. He's fucking just rubbing over. Shrinking a Poland spring, just looking for the vein. So,

But yeah, it's just, you don't know. Dude, what a fascinating thing that he's doing it. What a unique way to think of a crossroads of a father and son that he's doing it for me and I'm doing it for him. That's kind of fascinating. You don't know. Like-

You just don't know how it works when you're younger. You don't even know the effects of depression or these types of things. Especially in his era, like 20 years ago. He had no idea, even 30 years ago. He had no idea. He was like, oh, Rodney likes to fucking sit in the car by himself. My dad would go sit in the car by himself for a couple hours. I love it. I love it.

And my mom would just be like, well, if you get out of your fucking car. Like, he wants to be out there sitting out there by himself. The men in our town used to park their trucks behind the Winn-Dixie and cry back there sometimes. Yeah. And you'd see him just fucking, you know, you'd see a guy open his car doors to let a bunch of tears fall out and close it back. Like, it was fucking... Yo, there is bravery to that, though. That's the thing that, like...

I think we look back at that generation who was really trying to figure out how to deal with their mental health, and they stiff upper-lipped it. And I think a lot of times we go, oh, they just ignored the problems. It's like, no, no, you can't ignore depression. It's not something you could ignore. You know what I mean? It's there. And what they did is they said, you know what?

I'm going to go to my fucking car, and I'm going to cry, and I'm going to get back, and I'm going to be a dad, and I'm going to be a husband, and I'm going to take care of this family. And it's like... And I'm going to get my fucking son a Pistons jersey. Exactly. And you're not even a Pistons fan. That's depressing, too. You want it so badly for this kid to be a Knicks fan. This motherfucker likes the team in Detroit. And a lame beard jersey. Yeah. Yeah, it's...

I'm glad you're getting to have all that, too. That's super cool. Yeah, it is. It is really cool, man. It's really cool. What do a mechanic and an auto shop owner in Georgia, a taco restaurant operator in Arizona, and a life-saving medical innovator in Tennessee have in common? They're all small business owners, and they're all thriving on TikTok. Across the U.S., over 7.5 million businesses, from family-owned shops to entrepreneurs, have

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Yeah. Just to add another universe to your life. Does it make you look at your wife different? Does a wife, does a girlfriend, but our wife become different once they're a mother? Does something like, or what's that kind of like? A hundred percent. Yeah. You also like, you realize like, here's something I realized is, uh, I would, I would always call my wife when I know that the baby's waking up from a nap. Let's say I'm at the studio or something like that.

And I call and, you know, and she knows I'm calling to see Shiloh, right? And I don't know, I called my wife and then she was coming back from like a workout class or something. And she was like, oh, I'm not home yet. So I'm not with Shiloh. And my heart sunk because I was like, oh, fuck. Like, you don't even think I call for you anymore. So in my effort, you know, to just like connect with my daughter in every possible way I can, I am...

forgetting about my connecting with my wife sometimes and your wife doesn't want to be angry at you for that because she's like thank God I have a dad who's so committed and just in love with their kid but you can't forget about them right so it's like this constant adjustment you go okay all right I gotta put like hey Shiloh is your mom home that kind of thing yeah I gotta call Shiloh yeah I gotta I gotta go on the nan it yeah I gotta call I got two phones yeah you gotta put some Kevin Gates in the freaking when they're nursing dude

The other most interesting man in America, he's spitting Kevin Cates bars. Shia LaBeouf has a little phone. She's like, hey, mom's right here. Oh, you don't want to talk to me? She gives me the attitude. No, you can't win. You just want to talk to this old bitch. So, yeah, you got to do that, man. Oh, damn, dude. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, it's wild. Wow, dude, what a neat journey. And I was just impressed in your special. Like, you're just going, it's like,

You know, when I first watched you were such a power. Some of the first time I ever saw you at the black baby or what's it called? The one that's next door to the comedy store. Fat black pussycat. Fat black pussycat. Right. And underground maybe. Maybe. Maybe that one. Yeah. It was one that kind of has the tears in it.

A little bit. Yeah, yeah. Village on the ground. Yeah, yeah. But dude, I was like, I'd never seen, I was like, oh my God. And I had to go up after you, dude. And it was so fucking scary. And I was like, I'm sure you killed that shit. I did. Okay. But dude, then this is so, and that was great. I mean, but that was just like, I mean, that was probably 10 years ago too. Yeah, yeah. But then, yeah, this was just so like taking me through this story and the journey. And it was, I don't know, it was cool to see. It felt like,

grown up a little bit. Yeah, it's just different. Like, I've never been personal in my comedy. I didn't even think my life was interesting. So I was like... Yeah, I was like, I thought my opinions on shit were more interesting than my life. So I was like, I don't need to tell you about what's going on in my life. And then...

And then this thing happened where, you know, we couldn't get pregnant and it was because of me. My sperm sucked. No way. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my sperm. What happened? So you take them under the. I'm the face of shitty sperm, bro. Oh. Damn, dude. You felt bad for a second. You're like, hold on. Yeah. Well, it's just crazy because you have that like spice trader energy. You know what I'm saying? Yo, you want to know some crazy shit?

My boy is a spice trader. This guy I play paddle with, all right? This is my boy. We call him Spice Man. We legit thought he was a drug dealer for so long because he says, like, I'm a spice trader. Like, he makes little jokes about it that he's not joking. He'll show up late to a game and he'll be like, man, Sesame was down crazy today. I couldn't find a place to store it.

And then he'll say coriander options. Yes. Yes. It's literally like a stock market. Like he's back and forth from India. So we're like, there's no way this is his real life. Like he sells fentanyl or cocaine or some shit. Right. And he's just saying it's turmeric. Right. So, but turns out this motherfucker is a legit 2025 spice trader. This is like the oldest job ever. We ride here. Yeah, that's it bro.

We ain't going anywhere. From the past, baby. How crazy is that? Shout out to Pete, man. Spicy P. We call him Spicy P. Yeah, dude. Spicy P. That's great. That's a be a dope ass job.

just hitting the streets you what you want and you got some fucking he'll just hit me with random spice facts i'm cumin yeah he's he was like bro you can't store the cumin with the turmeric right because one goes old and i'm like oh yeah of course bro that's a huge storage shit is crazy out there you know yeah 10 our fathers right now that's crazy you can't be doing that yeah what does that mean it's like you confessed in a confessional you get a punishment or whatever

Oh, dude, you did the wrestling thing. Was that interesting? Oh, that was so cool, man. It's cool. You did a good job. Thanks, bro. It looked, was it scary? I thought you were going to get slammed. Yeah, like, yeah. Was that an option? He was about to, I didn't even know it was going to happen. You didn't? No, I didn't know anything was going to happen. I'm just there hanging out. Then Logan starts to, you know, get me to try to lie in front of all my people in Madison Square Garden. Let's go, bro.

Does it look like I'm prepared for that? And his, what's his finishing move? The tax evasion?

That's the next move. We got to move to Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rican W9. That's his fucking finishing move. Oh, my God. Dude, does he sling? Maybe I didn't see this. No. Oh, Styles coming in. Thank God AJ Styles comes in to save my ass. He didn't come in a couple seconds. I'd be toast.

In front of my wife. Did part of you want a little more smoke after that? Like, was there a little bit inside of you that's like, I need justice, bro. Yeah. I need justice. You can't come do that shit to me in Madison Square Garden. I agree. My home. Talk crazy to me. You know, I need it. I need some. I need some paper, bro. I need my get back. You know who Aaron the plumber is?

Aaron the plumber. I think we had him on the podcast actually. Did you have Aaron on the pod? I think so. Like 20 years ago. Or like four, like yeah, like three years ago I think. No, no, no, no. Who is that we had in it? This is a different Aaron the plumber. We had Joe the plumber. Joe. Joe the plumber. You need Aaron the plumber, bro. This guy's an absolute internet sensation. Joe found a baby in one of the pipes. Joe found an offspring.

In one of the pipes. What is that? Horrible time to say that. No, that's a Patrice joke. It is? He said, I jerk off so much in the shower, I'm surprised the drain ain't pregnant. Joe is like, it was. I think I'm working at your place.

No, who's Aaron the Plumber? Oh, dude, this guy's a cool guy. Oh, my God. He was on this Zeus Network show. Do you know what the Zeus Network is? Uh-uh. Is it like that Stars or whatever, like Ghostbook, Phantom, whatever, Seven or whatever? Nah, this is more Ratchet, bro. But Aaron the Plumber, you're not qualified. This guy is a certified, hilarious dude. He's an actual certified plumber.

But he's hilarious on this dating show. And he was just, you know, he would get in a fight with anybody who popped shit. He's like, all right, let's go. We fight right now. But he's also hysterical. And so, yeah, he's just an internet sensation. Love this guy. Dang, I haven't seen him. I got to check him out. Who did I see recently? Gunno Lavish. Have you seen him? No, who's that? Young kid. He like, he makes me laugh. Yeah.

He's out of Mississippi, man. Gonna lavish. You can see the text went out of him. If you just go to shorts right there, it'll start it over. If you're wondering if everything's going to be okay, it will be okay if you just stay strong. Stay strong, boy, nigga. If you're wondering if everything's going to be okay, it will be okay if you just stay strong. Okay, get me one more. Oh, stop being humble. FN over there. Try that one.

How do you even...

He just made me laugh, man. He's out of Mississippi, man. I just like his thing. He's just somebody I started watching. There's people you see and they come up. And then once you watch them a couple times and you keep having to watch them. I'm obsessed with it. It's crazy, dude. I'm obsessed with Temptation Island, Spain.

Really? Yeah. I could see that. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah? This is the craziest reality show I've ever seen in my entire life. This guy Montoya, have you not heard of the Montoya guy? Mm-mm. Oh, my God, it's crazy. So basically, Temptation Island, the idea is you and your girlfriend go to this island, and you split up, and then they send people to try to fuck you and try to fuck your girlfriend. Oh.

To see if you'll cheat. And were the people from the mainland or whatever? I think they're all from Spain, pretty much. Some of them may be from other Spanish-speaking countries, but everybody speaks Spanish. So this one couple, she, that girl right there, Anita, Anita gets just banged out, I think, five days in by this other dude, and he's got to watch. So...

So there's this other watch as part of the show, bro. So they just cucking my man Montoya. But Montoya is so charming that you actually don't look at him like a cuck. You're like, oh, this is he's like a flamenco singer. He's the man. So he gets really emotional about watching the guy just beat cheeks on his girl. Oh, yeah. And this seems like modern day Shakespeare almost, you know. Yeah.

You know what I'm talking about, kind of? Yeah. There's very much a thing where like- Yeah, yeah. It's Othello, really. Yeah. When the figure would be like, it would open up a portal in your head where you thought this, your wife was cheating and you would take your own life or something. Wow. So there it is. So he's got to watch this security cam footage and you could hear pelvis hit cheeks. No. Like this. Ugh. Yeah. It's brutal, but it's also fantastic TV.

God, I've never seen that. It's amazing. Like, and I haven't watched the whole episode. I just watched like whatever highlights get clipped and put on like TikTok or Instagram. I think that's how I consume everything. But I, yeah, everything I possibly can, I consume. Yeah.

Well, it's funny because you start to want to have like an information diet. So there's things you can talk about with different guests or whatever. That's what I heard Mr. B say. Like he hires people to have an information diet for him. So they all absorb stuff. Then they filter it down. And then he gets like this stuff from them. It's like fine tuned to exactly what he would want to know the most. Oh, wow. And that's crazy. He's like a human version of chat GPT. Yeah. So he has intelligence, intelligence.

Yeah, like real intelligence. He has like an algorithm that's – yeah, he's like a human kind of algorithm, you know? Sort of, I guess. So he's outsourcing his like interests. How do you run it back against those Paul guys, I wonder? How do I run it back against Logan or Jake as well? Get Jake involved as well? Dude, I would fucking – if I saw those people in my dreams, I would beat the shit out of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good caveat right there. That's a very good caveat. Now, Logan needs to get it back. Logan needs to get –

Logan needs to get some get back. That's the reality. You can't come into my place and do that, obviously. But, you know, Jake, I don't even know if Jake's going to be involved in wrestling. You know? He's doing his boxing thing. Yeah. But...

But let's see what happens. I don't know. You never know. You never know with these things. What about you? Are you going to get involved in some wrestling? I don't know, dude. I thought about trying to wrestle one of those guys. I would have to really stretch and focus on fitness. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. I would have to really stretch and focus on it. Or you could just get dragged through the ring like I did and then not work in fitness at all. You know, this is the craziest part of that. You didn't even see the end of it.

I got dragged over the banister, ragdolled on the ground, rolled into the ring, bent over and put into a suplex. This other dude, AJ, saves me.

After Logan leaves, I jumped on a top rope. Like I did something. I think I'm the first person in history to just get my ass kicked and still go on the top rope and celebrate. But it really goes back to exactly what we were saying earlier. If all people see is that clip of you on the top rope, they're like, this guy won. So I'm like, I might never do this again. When am I going to knock someone on the top rope? Come on. I got to tell my daughter something.

That's classic, man. Yeah. Have you thought about over the years of moving out of New York? I know we were talking about the taxes and stuff in there. Yeah, I don't know. It's pricey. Have you ever thought about going down to Austin? Did you ever think about that? Not living there. No, no. I mean, like, look, it's fucking incredible what Joe's done down there. Like, it's incredible. It's crazy.

It's kind of crazy that it almost feels sometimes like another center. It definitely feels like another new center of comedy, which they didn't have five years ago. I can't believe I'm going to say what I'm saying right now. Because obviously, you know, New York guys were incredibly biased about stand-up. We're like, the best stand-ups are in New York, and this is where you come. You got to make your bones. This is what you got to do. And then the idea was, okay, but if you want to become famous, you can go to LA because that's where the industry is. Somebody's going to pop into the comedy store. They're going to see you. You'll be famous. That's at least the hope or the dreams or whatever, right? Yeah.

But as of right now, if you're a young comic, right? What is your pathway to success in LA? If you're a young comic, what's your pathway to success in LA? Perception. Doesn't mean that it can't happen, but like in LA or New York, like what shows can you get on that eventually you become famous?

Because I know if I'm a young comic, I can manage to get on Kill Tony and become a regular. I'm selling out theaters around the country. These guys are selling real tickets. If I get into Joe's world and I'm able to go on the podcast a bunch and maybe even go on the road, like I'm getting a career. I mean, if...

To me, it's like we need to start building some infrastructure in New York so these guys feel like there's a pathway to selling tickets. And that's not just New York. That's L.A. too. Those days of just like getting a role in a movie and then you sell tickets are done. You doing a TV show one-off and then you sell – you don't just sell tickets. You need to be like ingratiating yourself to the people through stand-up comedy if you want to sell stand-up comedy tickets.

So I don't blame, I don't begrudge any comic who's like, I want to go to move to Austin. Cause I feel like that's where the thing is happening. Especially if you just moved to New York or LA to make it, I'm from New York, like born and raised in New York. So like moving to another city, uh,

is like leaving my whole family, my friend group. It's everything I know. - Right, you're leaving your world. Oh, there you go. That's what I was thinking, I guess. - Yo, my God, I do kind of look like that motherfucker. - Diego Pena, what's his name? - Man. - Diego Garcia? - He looks ugly next to Christian Bale, bro. And he's not even that ugly, bro. I'm saying he looks like me. So I can't be insulting him that much, but Christian Bale is one fucking handsome guy. - Well, then imagine, the safe is another even less. - Wait a minute, did he AI my face onto that? - I did, this is face swap. - Goddamn!

bro. So that's like ugly next to Christian. Yeah.

That motherfucker is handsome. Look at Bruce Wayne right there, dude. God. Nah, he's a stud. Ugh. He's a stud. Yeah. And I'm worse looking than you, so the tough part is it only goes another step downhill. Yo, how fucked up is that me insulting him before I knew it was me? Like, isn't that, that's insanity right there. It is. I mean, it's the- Where's my self-esteem at, dude? I don't know. Don't come here for it. I don't know.

I built this railroad on low self-esteem, dude. Have you ever heard of the low self-esteem engine? No, I haven't. That's the only thing that's run on these tracks for years, dude. I mean, we're picking up, we're picking up steam, but it's been slow. Oh, God. What are we talking about? Oh, there's the scene. So it's just like, I imagine every... Oh, yeah, the scene. I mean, think about it.

Obviously, we're in different positions, right? Like we're in a different part of our career where we can live however we want. Right, we're not coming out. It's not the beginning of our career. Exactly. But if you were young and you're like my pathway to success, like what – if you go to L.A., what shows do you get on to eventually make it? Like what is your – Right. Well, there's a couple things. One, you can get a lot of – there's a lot of like influencers and stuff out here. So there's a lot of like social media influencers there.

That stuff is real out here. There's movie stars that live out here and there's television shows. But I don't know if a lot of stuff still shoots in L.A., which is kind of crazy. Like even whenever we shot this little movie with Spade there, we're like they're like, thank you. People are like, thank you guys so much working here. We haven't had work in months. And I'm like, what do you mean?

Cause I don't know who shoots what, you know, they're like, yeah, I'm like in Hollywood, you haven't had work in months. And then, yeah, I guess there's just nothing shooting here, which seems crazy that you would build an industry where then nothing even shoots within it. You know, like at a certain point you can't cut every corner, like, okay, we're going to shoot out of state to get a tax break.

But the tax incentives are really big. You can shoot up in Canada. You can shoot up over in Atlanta. Like the tax incentives are huge to go shoot in these places. The one when California matched them, it seems like. I think like it's just like we were saying, like politics is always downriver from culture. So they're going to have to learn the hard way. They're going to have to see the industry actually start to be negatively impacted like for a while. Yeah.

And then they're going to have to vote out whoever is in power with that kind of influence. But L.A. thrives on Hollywood. Like there isn't L.A. without Hollywood.

Like, that's the industry. That's true. I guess then it's kind of like Barcelona or something in a way. You know, some cool museums and it's beautiful. We don't even know you guys have museums out here. I'm being honest with you. Like, somebody told me that. They're like, oh, yeah, we were spending some time in museums. I was like, you got museums out here? Like, I thought you had that observatory shit that's up on the hill and that's it. Yeah. We don't know that you have, like, the theater. Like, do you have plays that come out in L.A.? I have no idea. Like, can you watch...

in L.A. ever? I don't know. It's a good question. Well, we don't really have that district like the theater district that New York has. I mean, Danny McBride was saying this the other day. He goes, you know, I've always been kind of amazed that L.A. doesn't...

like historicize itself better as a structure. He's like, when you go down the street here, you should be, every other building should be, this is where, this was films. This is where Sidney Poitier lived the first three years that he lived here in this apartment. Like,

And these buildings, we've kept them because they're – and some of it is still the same because you don't have as much wear and tear from the elements here outside of like the fires recently. But you don't have just like the constant salt in the air like you do in a lot of places. But overall, he's like, yeah, I'm just kind of amazed that you don't go down the street and every other building is historical for some reason. Bro, I think that's a fantastic point because that is the coolest thing ever.

about L.A. Hollywood is like old Hollywood culture. Like there's that hotel, the Sunset Tower or whatever, and like it has this cool restaurant that feels like old Hollywood. Oh yeah, it's cool in there. It's some fancy bougie shit, but it still feels like, oh, I can imagine directors in like the 60s. Yeah, what do you say, huh? You know, what is that fucking girl with the air blowing her dress up? Oh, Shirley Temple or whatever? No, my bro. Marilyn Monroe. Oh, sorry. Yeah.

Well, okay. Yeah, exactly. I'd like to have that stricken record. You're talking unbelievable. Well, dude, I'll tell you something funny. Here's the number one place, and I'm sorry. Who's the girl where her dress was blown up? Shirley Temple. I don't know why it's L.A.

He's right. Weinstein's innocent. Weinstein is innocent. I didn't think if they're blowing anybody's dress up, it's going to be a child, obviously. When people come to visit me, the one place that I take them every time, literally as a tourist stop, is a cemetery that's near my apartment in Westwood that has Marilyn Monroe's grave in it, Hugh Hefner, Errol Flynn, Carol O'Connor, the guy from...

Bad Gramp or whatever. Walter Matthau. Walter Matthau was in there. It's just like, you just show them like this, you know, that's kind of the neatest thing, I think. I think that's, I think it's a great point because there is cool historical shit about LA, but you got to embrace it and then protect it. And I think that,

Maybe it's just such a new city they don't see the value in it. Like you and I are from very kind of like old places in terms like American history, not world history, but like there's a lot of history in – I'm going to give you New Orleans. I know you're not from New Orleans, but like just this idea of – Oh, yeah. There's like – and it's important to us.

to maintain that. We actually like the way that the buildings look. When a new fancy building goes up in New York, there's always this immediate rejection. We're like, ah, these fucking glasses, there goes the neighborhood or whatever it is. So we, we, we try to protect. And I feel like LA is so transient. Like,

everybody that comes here is coming from Maine or coming from, you know, Montana or some shit like that to go make it. So they don't really care that much about the history. They're like, what's going on now? Right. But the people from here, like Dove, like the people who actually grew up here and like, that is the industry. Yeah.

Yeah, I would like to see that protected. That's a great point. And then there's another version of you coming out here that's not like a TMZ tour bus tour, whatever that stupid shit is. We're like, this is The Rock's house. It's like, no, go see where fucking Sidney Poitier lived or go see where these historic actors –

Like, what's-his-face's first apartment? Jack Nicholson's first apartment. It'd be so cool if they had that and still had it under... They had it, like, really locked in. Dude, the guy, the founder of Canes, this guy Todd Graves, he still has his college apartment that was right next door to the first Canes that's in Baton Rouge. And you go in there, dude, and it is crazy. It's like...

It's from 30 years ago, you know, or 20, 22 years ago or something. And it's just like old TV. He's maintained everything. Maintained it all. Pictures from back then and shit. His life got busy. And so he just wasn't there for like eight years. And then he came back and it's just like magazines like Jordan and Shaq. He's a beast, that guy. Yeah, he stays so busy. He works really hard. I think he owns all of the Canes still, right? This is not a franchise restaurant. I think he owns...

It's kind of – it's unbelievably impressive. And maybe because I'm from New York, we just got one. There's one that just popped up in these village. But like I was talking to a buddy of mine who's actually like one of his lawyers. And he was kind of explaining it to him. It's like this guy is like a real ambitious like kind of genius lawyer.

To put that together, it's very hard to not sell off your company as it becomes successful. To have that vision, like, I don't know if you're like this, but if I'm building something that's successful and then someone offers me $300 million for it, I'm like, okay.

Some people are crazy enough to go, no, this shit is really worth $2 billion. I'm like, what is $2 billion even? What is that money even? You know what I mean? There are people that say no to $1 billion because they know it could be worth $5. Isn't that crazy? What do you need that for? You can tap out of whatever you're doing.

Maybe they really love what they're doing. Maybe that's it. But then you just sell it and get locked in as a consultant or whatever. Yeah, yeah, I guess you could, but maybe they would hate that. Maybe they're like, it's my genius that drives this.

this this this this car it's like that rigor mortis whatever the frank whoever made frankenstein or the doctor or whatever he wanted to die with frankenstein he's like you know i think that's what happened what happened with frankenstein i fucking don't even know what happened it was dr frankenstein and then it was the creature yeah that's isn't that crazy that we think that frankenstein is the uh that's crazy is the lifeless animal

You know, but it was actually the doctor. Imagine how he feels. He's like, what are you? Hey, my name is Rick. You know, it's like nobody fucking. I'm fucking Rick Hopkins, you know, out of fucking bad frontal lobe surgery. Give me some. God damn.

That's so true. It still goes back to, you see a clip of something. And you just believe it. You just believe it. Yeah. That motherfucker's name is not even Frankenstein. Yo, it's called Creature, which is way more adept, right? Like that feels like the name for it, but nah. Yeah.

But at least that's his name. God, dude. Yeah, shout out Frankenstein. Yeah, dude. Oh, how's the Trump thing going over in New York, dude? You know what's so interesting? It was crazy how right after the election was over, everybody just kind of went on about regular life, kind of. Bro, it's... And now I'm almost annoyed, but I thought we weren't going to have to go through this again. I don't know how it is here, where you're living, but...

we're back to like the bipartisan bickering, you know, like,

Like this Doge is a big deal, right? Even though there's no American that wants like waste, there's no American that wants like government bloat. There's no American that wants like inefficiency. I don't think any of us are like voting for those three things. So this should be like unilateral support. Like we should all get behind it. And maybe the way that they're doing, I think Trump even came out and be like, yo, we're going to use a scalpel, not a hatchet. Like I think we're being a little bit too forceful with the firings or whatever. But this is one of those things where like, it's so annoying to,

And I think you can blame Elon for this as well. Like on Twitter, he's a little bit antagonistic about shit. Yeah, I noticed that recently. Some of the stuff he says, like, do you have to say that? Like, what are you doing right there? You're in power now. Like, I think you have to have a little bit different energy when you're in power. I think when you're not in power, you're trying to get to power. Maybe that antagonism is helpful, right? Yeah. It can like,

emboldened the base but you're you're the leader now leaders don't need to poke a finger like twist a knife or whatever like well I think what he's doing I believe that what Elon is doing is by creating all that commotion on Twitter it's only helping his own business right so it creates now that everybody's everyone wants to see what he's gonna say but he's saying so many things it's hard to even juggle but so many people are engaging and interacting I feel like it's probably the number one news app I don't know if it's always been the number one news app has to be

It has to be. Yeah. I mean, don't you learn everything? But he's just stirring his own business. It's like, so the more he does that, it just, then it's more impressions, the more ads that he can sell. Right. I don't know if that's true, but.

But you're basically creating a place for people to go consume content in general. And if he's the biggest creator on that platform, then it makes sense that he continues to create. So you're saying that he's not doing this just to get out information, but he's also doing this to like uplift the app. It's like a hype machine. Yeah. Oh, wow. I don't know if that's true, but that's what the feeling you get from it. I'm at least cause otherwise it's kind of in some of the shit's kind of insane. It's like, what is this? Like, how is he doing all of these things? And if he's,

not doing all these things because who could have time to do all of this? To do all these things, yeah. Then who is doing it? And it's kind of annoying because he's a genius. Yeah.

You want him on your side. Like I want the guy who makes the rockets on America's side if we go to World War III. Right. Like I think that's a pretty good idea that we get the guy who's going to send a ship to Mars on our side if we're going to have like drone warfare throughout the world. Like let's keep him in our good graces. I do think – and I'm a little bit more optimistic about this administration. That's what I've realized with most people, like sane people, is that if you don't –

If you didn't vote for Trump, but you're not like a complete lunatic extremist on both sides, by the way, if you're just kind of like a normal, regular guy, but you feel like you lean left a little bit more, you go, you just are pessimistic about the administration. And if you lean maybe right a little bit more, but you're not some insane like right wing quack, you're optimistic about the administration. Yeah.

We both kind of want the same thing. We want the best thing for American people. We might disagree about where we get there, but we do want the most opportunity, wealth, ease of living for American people. So...

When it comes to administration, I'm like a little bit more optimistic about it. Like, I'm like, okay, let's just see how this works. Right. That's how I feel. Give him a – people are going, oh, he's doing all these tariffs. It's like, my man, I don't – I'm not an economist. I know you aren't an economist. Yeah. I don't know if this is a negotiation. Like, if you go to buy a car and the car is like 100 grand and you go in, you go, all right, I'm going to offer 80 grand, right, knowing that they're going to settle around 90, right? Yeah.

The problem is when you do that, you do that in privacy with the car dealer. Trump got to do it publicly. And now he's got people in his own country going, how dare you offer 80? That's so disrespectful. And he can't come out and go, dumbass, we're going to settle at 90. I just got to start at 80. So could you give me fucking two weeks?

Yeah, they don't give them any – nobody gives them a beat to see what the long-term plan is. Like if you want manufacturing jobs back in America, then you have to make it so that it makes more sense for people to make cars in America. Maybe. That's just business. Yeah.

I agree with you. I would, I never was against Biden. I've never been against anybody that's been in office. I've always just wanted the best. It's like, I want the best. I'm never going to depend on the government for my life. Like I don't wake up every day and see what the fucking government's doing. I get out of bed and I try and take care of myself or, you know, you know, take care of your family. Like you're doing. It's like, that's probably what most people think. Yeah. Anybody that has time to argue online all day is also insane. Right? Like,

Not saying that we don't all put our beliefs out there sometimes, but... I hear what you're saying. But it's like... But you have to... That's one thing. Somebody said the other night, oh, Trump said it during that whole state of the whatever, the... Yeah. Delegacy address. Yeah, yeah. It was like the state of the two parties are addressing. If you got to watch the hour and a half of that, I don't care what side of it. This shit was hilarious. It was like somebody who wrote like noises off or something. It was just...

fascinating joint congressional committees address or whatever. Yeah, there was like fucking they kept cutting this white dude that was asleep. They threw Al Green out. People thought he was Jimmy Snuka. They fucking threw him out, dude. They kept people like Democrats that only had their feelings on little signs that said like not good or gazoom tight or whatever. I bumped into Al Green at the breakfast corner.

glove he was going on after me and someone's like hey who wants to Al Green wants to say hello and I was like yeah sure that'd be cool and this guy just got chucked out of the fucking Senate and I went and I go and his handle or something like that is like waiting there with a camera like tucked here for the handshake

And I was like, did I just get set up in a photo op to make me look sympathetic to what happened? I'm like, what exactly is going on? That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's also scary when everybody has cameras everywhere now. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people thought that was Jimmy Stunker, which makes total sense as well. Yeah. I think it still think it was. What a body, huh? Let's get it on. Was that, that was Al Green. Let's get it on. Let's get it on.

Yeah, I think so. But yeah, so it's a tricky time now politically. But I just don't like it. You kind of hope, like hopefully there's some long-term strategy here. It's like, because if you just look at the little bits, it's kind of fucking scary. Also, if the, and I'm not trying to just like bag on the last administration, but like if people are uncomfortable-

And the last administration was running on this platform of, hey, we're going to keep doing the same thing that we've been doing. That was a bad plan. You can't really blame Americans for going, well, that's not working for me right now. I got to try something different. Yeah.

And then giving the new thing a little bit of leeway. It's not like, again, I might be more optimistic. And if it goes bad, I will be the first person to criticize it. Right? I have no problem criticizing whoever's in power. Yeah. Okay? This is the easiest thing in the fucking world for me. But I am hoping...

I'm at least going to give a little bit of grace and hoping that this is going to work out for all of us. And I'm going to give it more than a fucking few months. I'm going to give it a little bit to see where it goes. And if it does go, I'm not going to be the guy to go, told you so, you fucking idiot. Because that's not the joy that it brings me. The joy that brings me is like, hey, shit, we're actually making some cool change. Right, America's going to be doing better. We got an opportunity to start here and get up here. Imagine if you brought some industries back where people have pride in their homes and in their towns. Dude, I'll tell you this. We've gone on this tour. I've been on. We've gone to probably 200 places.

The top 200 cities so far, size-wise, right? We've gone fucking everywhere. And a lot of the places, man, it's the same. It's like there's no – there's not a lot of businesses there. There's some cities that have kind of changed and had some turnaround, and it's been uplifting. But there's been a lot of places that it hasn't. And it's sad. It's like, oh, all this place needs is one good, like –

influx of people and a purpose. When people have jobs, they have purpose. Yeah, and so it's like, I'm just gonna, I'm for surely gonna stay hopeful. I hope that if there's some tariff stuff and then we start making our own fucking cars here. Dude, there's a guy who just made a show, a t-shirt, I think it's called American Giant. Can you look that up? There's a guy, he wanted to make, find a t-shirt that was made in America, American Giant clothing. Hmm.

He couldn't even get a t-shirt that was completely made here. He couldn't get a, he couldn't get a, a, whatever this is called a template or a blank in America. He couldn't, they didn't have it right. They didn't, we don't make a fucking t-shirt in this company. Right. Country. Yeah. So, uh, don't they make Tesla's here?

Yes. So Teslas are an American-made car. So bare minimum – and I'm not trying to knock any of the other American cars, right? But I don't think Ford is entirely made here. Right. I might be wrong. I don't think they are. You drive a Ford, somebody said to me. I'm like, that's when I knew –

I'm like, hold on. How's this guy know how to pronounce it? Swedish guy? That's a great question. Let's look that up. Yeah, what cars are made here? What percentage of Teslas are made in America? What percentage of Fords are made in America? That's a great question, man. And I guess that you could be putting together the full car here, but maybe there's certain factors that are doing other stuff. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with outsourcing to different countries. I think it gives them opportunities as well. That's a cool thing. But Tesla claims that nearly 100%...

of the vehicles that sells in the United States are manufactured domestically. Exceeding the industry average of 52%. Wow. Now, that doesn't mean they don't make cars in other countries as well. Right. But the ones that are sold here are made here. Regardless, okay.

If we want to attack a car company, right? And again, I don't know if they're attacking Tesla because they don't like the product. They're attacking Tesla because they don't like the CEO of the company. And that is the risk of being a celebrity CEO. By the way, there's like CEOs of, and you talk about this all the time, but like some of these like pharmaceutical companies, we don't know who the fuck they are. Right. And there's a reason because if we did. People would execute them. Something could happen. Something could happen. We don't know. Something could happen. Somebody could throw them a surprise party. Yeah.

Bro, if you have a billion dollar business and nobody knows who you are, you're doing some fucked up shit, my boy. Yeah, you're doing some fucked shit, man. Right? Some fucked shit, homie, yeah. For real. So this is like a kind of shitty situation where like, yes, I understand that he's antagonizing people. He's like rubbing people the wrong way. You don't like the guy. You don't like the beliefs. You don't like what he's doing. And there are things to criticize. I'm not saying there aren't things to criticize. Like everybody is, nobody's above criticism. But-

To punish that car company that is 100% made in America, made by people living in America, Americans rely on those jobs.

Like maybe we criticize another thing. Right. Like what is your goal that we shut down those factories and those Americans lose those jobs? That makes you feel better about your gripe with Elon. That's the thing. Some people, they, they just want to win an argument. It feels like, you know, there's people that rely on those fucking jobs. Oh, for sure. They got kids, bro. Oh yeah. Oh dude, there's no doubt about it. But here's one thing that I think is sad about the, about Doge is that the fact that we have to out,

We now have to have someone audit our own government. Our government is supposed to be the thing that we can trust. Like it will never end now. And people are like, why is this guy having a team that audits? It's like, I agree, but I'll let anybody audit. If you bring on another company, they audit and they find –

I give them 10 percent of the bloat that they find if they you know, I'm saying the simple fact that we now have to audit our own government. Yeah. I mean, I just you know, I don't people I think will gravitate towards corruption naturally. And I think it's something you constantly have to fight every single second. Yeah, you definitely have to. You said something interesting, though, like this idea, like you wake up every morning. You're like, I don't expect the government to do something for me. I think that's a more like southern and frontier belief.

You know, I think that like when you grow up in like New York, there is this relationship with the government where you're like, if the roads are fucked up, you start going, yo, why are the roads fucked up? Like we're spending all this money in taxes or like the government you're supposed to do. You're giving me all these rules I got to live by. So you might as well do some shit. But that's interesting that you have this perspective, which is like, I don't expect anything from you guys.

And I wonder if when they encroach on your freedoms, it's that much more annoying because you're like, I don't rely on you for anything and you're going to tell me what to do. Whereas we might be more accepting of the laws and the encroachment of freedoms because we are more reliant on.

on them for certain things. So, and I wonder if that's why like some of the COVID stuff was way easier to accept in big cities because we're already had this symbiotic relationship with government. Right. Whereas in places like Florida or even, you know, more other like Southern, maybe I guess some red states, not all. Yeah, a lot of rural areas. And more rural areas. It's like, yo, listen, don't mess with me because I don't ask you for shit. Right.

And now you're getting into my house and telling me what to do when I already don't ask you for anything. Right. We have one road. We keep it clean. It's fine. I drive a truck. So you don't have to pave it. Yeah. That's it. Right. We're doing. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good, but it is interesting how like different areas could affect your perception. And yeah, like I think a lot of like,

One other thing is I think a lot of people just worry about our tradition starting to disappear. And I think that's where a lot of pushback comes from. What do you mean by that? Just like, you know, like tearing down a statues and saying that everything is racist and stuff and not honoring our history, whether it is racist or not, like not did not like, you know, if you take it away completely in three generations, no, you know. This is the tricky thing where it's like, I, okay.

I try to meet people at their intentions because I often want people to judge me on my intentions. When I say some like crazy fucked up joke that's not even fully fleshed out on a podcast and I want people to go, oh, he just wanted it to be funny. Not, oh, this guy is an evil asshole. So when I see people doing the taking like the progressive measures that might feel like they're going too far.

I at least have some empathy. I go, all right, I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to make this world that we live in, this country we live in, a more comfortable place for everybody. And you're thinking about these oppressed or ostracized groups and you're like, how can they not see certain imagery that might remind them of these horrible things that their ancestors went through? So like I go, OK, I get that maybe you have some really good intentions here.

And then we can meet at that where we go, I get your contentious. And then we start to have – then let's have the conversation of, OK, how much of that are we going to remove before we start removing like the history of our country? And some of the history is ugly and that's – it's unfortunate. But it is the history. Like removing it doesn't remove the history. Right.

But at least not looking at them like they're assholes that want to destroy America. Maybe some of them are. But I think some of them also just kind of want to make life better for people. I don't think everybody's bad. I think there are bad actors on both sides. But I think there's some people who like – maybe they were bullied a lot as a kid and they're like, man, I don't want anybody to go through that shit. Like, yeah, I don't – I want to look out for some people and create some more protections. And sometimes those protections might go like a little bit too far. And then sometimes instead of creating protections, people will –

like hurt people, hurt people, they'll do the opposite. They'll be like, oh, white people are horrible. It's like, okay, okay, you're going too far. You might've experienced some really fucked up people in your childhood and maybe you have that way of looking at it, but it's not gonna help if that's your way of communicating. Yeah, I think the truth is usually kind of in the middle. I think you're right, you know?

And the fact that, yeah, it's like, it's, it's so funny. It's like, you get so stuck in your own perspective of what your own perspective is and you need to be in your own perspective because it's a survival thing too. It's like, of course, if I'm sitting here daydreaming or something and I get attacked by an animal or something, then that's on me. Right. But it's like, but to actually put yourself in somebody else's shoes and be like, well, what is it? What is it really like? Yeah. You know, or what is like going through like certain classes or history class or things like that? Like,

If you're a different ethnicity or different sex or something, what's that shit really like? They're supposed to have VR goggles that were supposed to be able to do that. We could just see what it was like being Native American back in the day. Hey! They're all Italians.

Look, the goggles kind of like they set it up to make it sound like who really killed the Native Americans was Italian. Christopher Columbus said, look at these guys. Hey, fucking red horse, get over here. Fuck out of here. How many necklaces we going to wear, huh? You called it night. How about some blankets?

Hey, hey, hey, yeah. That would be cool, though. But you could set it to any way, you know? Oh, that's... Because he was Italian, right? Wasn't Columbus Italian? They said he was. Who the fucking knows, dude? I'm sure he was probably Italian via Israel, according to a lot of Reddit feeds this week. So Twitter, they just blame everything on the Jews, bro. Like, it's not even... Shit that you didn't even imagine is the Jews' fault, right? Yeah.

They got nothing to do with it. Soon they're going to blame Christmas on the Jews. Oh, that was kind of...

The Jews are impressed, but also not cool at the same time. They're like, well, what if they're like, yo, can you blame some good shit too? Like, we did some good shit, right? Like, y'all like Christianity? Like you like watching Family Man, don't you? That's one of your favorite Christmas movies, isn't it? Gangs in New York, who do you think fucking put that together? All them Christmas carols. They're probably written by Jews. A lot of them are, man. See? It's so funny. Yeah, what are we going to do? What, um...

I'm trying to think of what else is going on, dude, that I was thinking about. What's up in your life, man? Everything's fine, man. I've just been working a lot, you know? Like, last year, we really focused on if we had some time off to go and...

Just worry, like go travel to a place to get guests and stuff, you know? Yeah. So it was like a big focus last year to do that. And, uh, have you taken like a vacation? No, not in a while. I was supposed to get one over the holidays and it just didn't happen. Do you like, do you like taking time off? Does that feed you at all? Yeah, I need it. I need more of it. And do you enjoy it? Like, is your time off just hanging at a beach or do you like going to like a city that you're really interested in? Like learning about the history? Like what is, what is your version of a vacation?

It's just been the beach, really. I think I just kind of got...

I just put so much work on the calendar that I didn't start to schedule. I would love to take two weeks off and go to like a country or something. That'd be awesome. You know? Yeah. So, but then I start to think about that. Like, well, I should probably get a girlfriend or like a fiance first, because if you go by your, who are you going to, unless you get a buddy to go with or something, that could be fun. But it's like two weeks. You can't really go by yourself really, you know? And so then it's like, what are you going to do exactly? I imagine you with like a small Asian tour guide and that's it. No.

Just you guys motorcycling around Vietnam or Cambodia. Just say shit to them all the time? Knock, knock. Yeah, that would be ideal. But no, traveling alone is cool too. Cutting him a little, feeding him a little piece of yam or whatever. Yeah, I mean, you don't have to feed them. They might feed themselves out there. The first struggle, Bayard went through, the first struggle was finding all the components, the cotton, the buttons, the zippers, the rivets. Once Bayard did all that, he ended up with his first product, a plain hooded sweatshirt. Um...

We already know all this stuff. I was looking at what some of the price issues were and stuff that he faced, but it was a nightmare for this guy to do it. And he couldn't get it done at like, you know, it came down like $37 or something, which is, you know, which, but to do it on a regular basis. And then Walmart decided we're going to support him. We're going to give him like a big order.

That's fire. That's kind of where he's at right now. And if you can make a big order, you can obviously reduce the pricing. Right. Then you can go ahead to the place and say, look, now I'm going to order this many. Can you give me a better rate? Can you get the material from – does the material also have to come from here? I imagine we have to get all of our material from other countries. That's a good question. Are we creating textiles here? That's a good question.

It's crazy because you don't know. It's like a lot of this stuff we don't even know. And then you look around and you're like, but if you find out that you can't even get a t-shirt here, then you're like, well, fuck. If we're not even making one t-shirt, then what are we making here? I mean, yeah, we're completely reliant. It's a little scary, I guess. That's the thing. It starts to get scary. Because, yeah, I mean, because t-shirts are the...

the least necessary product that we are completely reliant on other countries for. So if we're relying on T-shirts, what else are we relying on? Are we relying on technology in some ways? Like what are the things that become –

like at risk topics for us. Yeah. That we're relying on other countries because it's nice to know that you're not reliant or that the entire world is reliant on each other. And if everybody's relying on each other, okay, then there's like a mutually assured destruction. Right. Maybe that's good.

Right, just tell us the truth. If we know everything, I would just love it if I hears the exact facts. Yo, when do you think, all right, you know how like conspiracies are incredibly popular right now and like now everybody kind of knows the conspiracies. So that immediate hit of dopamine you get when you like share like the real truth with somebody who doesn't know it. Yeah. And when they look at you, they're like, oh my God, you're so smart or whatever. Yeah. Now that everybody knows the conspiracies. Yeah.

- Do you think that we start, the pendulum starts to shift back to like kind of what really happened? 'Cause the conspiracy is like the most exaggerated version

of what happened. And what really happened is probably pretty boring. Like the truth of most things is probably pretty fucking boring. Yeah, for sure. It's not what the media has told us. That's for certain. Those are lies, 100%. But it's not what like the Reddit historians have said. And it's probably in here and then we all go...

All right. Yeah. Like that is, I wonder if like there's something like that even to the Epstein list. Like everybody's waiting for this Epstein list and they're waiting for it to be like direct logs where it's like Bill Gates paid for anal from a 16 year old at da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Yeah. 430 or whatever. And then it's like name, picture, fucking whatever it is. And then every time they hand out like the binder or whatever it is, nothing that crazy comes out.

Now, don't get me wrong. I believe he's like a prolific pedophile. Like if he's if he is still alive, find him and fucking kill him. The girl took off. Anybody who's involved in it defended it. Anybody who's on the fucking flight logs put him in prison. Like, let's we need some justice here.

But have we created an idea of what this is, which is so far removed from what it actually is? Right. And that's why they haven't really like, this is going to be so upsetting. There's seven people. They don't think we're liars anyway. Right. Like, cause imagine they gave us lists and there was like, there was like 25 people on it. Right. We'd be like, man, you fucking pieces of shit lying to us again. Like the only thing we would believe if, if literally every single world leader, uh,

went in there. Right. They, yeah, they, this list better be. So that's why I think there's still work. They're probably working with like top producers, Eli Roth, like guys who really can put on a good show. Todd Phillips, you know, until we sell this story. He was on here like he's off, but yeah, I think, yeah. How do we, what do we, this has to be good. Why don't we just get, this is the way I was thinking. We, we solved it. The guy who gave, who let, uh,

Epstein manages money is this guy named Les Wexner or something like that. He's this guy who started Victoria's Secret. And like, I don't even think Epstein went to college or something. So like, how the fuck do you end up managing this billionaire's money? This guy's like 90 years old. Give him immunity. Just go, yeah, this guy right here. Les Wexner. Okay. He's a billionaire. He's 87 years old. You just go listen. You're about to fucking die. Can you just tell us what happened? Right. Tell us what happened. We'll give you immunity.

You don't get to die a hero at all. You're a piece of shit that probably funded this whole fucking thing or connected different people to different stuff. We don't know what the fuck you're actually doing. You're involved.

But you don't get to die a – well, you're still a diabolical piece of shit. But maybe you do one good thing in your life before you fucking die. And then the American people get some satisfaction. The victims get some satisfaction. But you get to actually know what's happening. Because I don't even know if we – I don't know if we actually will get to know what's happening unless somebody who was involved says it specifically. And I don't believe Ghislaine because I think her pops was – he was part of Mossad, right? So I don't believe anything she's going to say. So –

Yeah, nobody's going to tell the truth. Right? I'm just amazed that that many people wanted to be pedophiles or whatever. So here's the thing. I don't know. That's part of me that doesn't believe that. I'm like, you're telling me. I don't think they wanted to. I think he was like, yo, I got some young bitches on an island. We're all going to fuck. But I don't think that he said, I have underage women to incriminate you on an island. Right. I think he's like, yo, I got some 20-year-old fucking Russian bitches. They're on an island. And all these dudes were like, oh, we can go party with Russian bitches? Yeah.

I wonder if it's as simple as like some club promoter going, I got a table full of girls at towel tonight. You want to party? And people go, well, that sounds like a great idea. Nobody's idea in those girls. Right. And they for sure on IDM. Cause why would they go? Yeah, this guy's going to make me a pedophile this weekend. Yeah. Right. Like, so, and then maybe afterwards they go, by the way, that girl was this old. So I'm going to need you on a certain day to do a favor. Yeah.

That's how I would imagine it would be most effective. And what if some of the girls were not even underage or anything? You don't even know if you got... You could have somebody say that. You're so scared. You're already like... There's some favor in the wind. That alone, the mirage of that...

That's the biggest thing. You have no fucking idea. That's a great point, too. They don't even have to be. But you're going to be so scared. Like, well, first of all, I don't want to see – I'm so bad at sex, I don't want anybody to see a video of it. Fucking a hooker on an island still is bad if you're like a political figure that has a family and you have children. Right. Like, you could be – it could be old – they could be old enough, and it's still like you don't want that out because it ruins your career. Yeah. So, yeah, there are many ways to do it.

That, yeah. I mean, it's definitely... And then it's like, how do you doctor all that up to present it to the American? Because it's a fucking... You have to find... You have to serve a Mona Lisa to the American people. There's... Because there's no... But then they're like, we have to make sure all these people that information that's released. But maybe some of that's true. If like you put information and has a name in it that you're not sure. And then you get sued by that person. Or you got to protect these girls who are underage and they were raped by these famous people. And like they have...

moved on with their lives. They got families. Do they want their information out there in the world? Probably not. They're like, I don't want to relive that shit. So redact me or whatever that term is. Yeah.

But yeah, I just feel like we're at this point where like if we're going through this phase in America where we are, we're an all time low trust in all of our institutions. And what happens from here? There's two ways we go. Talk to me. It gets better somehow. Or. Or it starts to devolve even more. And crazier. See, it gets deeper and deeper. It's so funny because I've had both feelings yesterday. I had the feeling like, holy shit, dude.

Nobody's going to know where to trust anything anymore. It's going to get really interesting. Or you start being honest. Like that's kind of, that's, that's why. Right. Or you start being honest. And like, yo, we're Americans. We can deal with shit. Like we've dealt with horrible things before in our past. Even as humans, we can. That's it. So it's like, and I think there's a version where like accepting these things and moving on allows us to have even more pride in

Where right now we're in this like age of like ambiguity where like we want to be really proud, but we're like, but is some of this shit true? Like we're just unsure. Yeah. Let us accept it. Let's accept these, the stains on our history and,

And then let's move on and make greater history. Let's make greater things to be proud of. I think it's a moment in history to be proud of where your administration comes in. They go, listen, we unfortunately, the government let these food companies poison you. You know, and a lot of people are negatively impacted like that. A lot of people got cancer probably because of food that they were eating. And that's that's fucked up. That's horrible. And we're going to either punish some of those food organizations or bare minimum, we're going to make it illegal for them to do that.

shit. Hey, some of these pharmaceutical companies, they were jabbing you up with shit that you didn't need to be jabbed up with. And they were doing that so they could profit. We're going to either punish them or we're going to stop allowing them to do it. So the next generation of Americans doesn't have to go through what you guys went through. And then you go,

You know what's fire about America? We realize when we fucked up and we have the energy and excitement and the confidence, the self-esteem to go, all right, we're changing it and we're going to live up to the expectations that we have for ourselves. And that's why I like, you could say whatever you want about RFK. It seems to me what he wants to do is make a positive change for people. Let's see if he's able to do it. But in terms of

making America healthy or whatever the slogan is, why would you not want America to be more healthy? Like, give the guy a second to fucking try it. Like, every minute they're like, this is the problem today. And then that becomes a story every day. It's just like how fucked up it is. And I have friends now that are addicted to the news and I'm just like, dude, just live your life. See, everything's going to probably be fine. It's already been fine. We're already damaged. We all have cancer or whatever. Everything, you know, we're doing our best and shit. And like, um,

You know, how drastically bad do you expect things to get, you know? Wouldn't it be cool, like...

This is all I said. Like obviously I have a daughter, so I'm like – and she's of the age we're going through vaccines and stuff and it's terrifying. I was talking to Joe about this. It was like it's the most terrifying thing you ever experienced in your life is you have the most perfect thing you've ever created and you have to put something in them and you've watched a video on YouTube that says that it could do something horrible to her. But if you don't do it, she could get some disease that could do something horrible to her. So you're like what – how do I protect my kid? There's a fork in the road and both potentially lead to horrible outcomes.

How do I protect my kid? I would love nothing more than to do like an intense, like, and I'm sure they've already done this. So if you have and call me an idiot, that's fine. I'm an idiot, whatever. But like intense, like research into, you know, the vaccinations. And I would love nothing more if we found out, hey, you know what it, it looks like they are safe for them. And there's very low chance cause of anything negative for your kid. How much nicer would that feel than right now? What all of us new parents are feeling, which are like,

Do I have to delay it? Like which ones, how do I protect my child? Like, like just like we want the research. We want it. It's yeah. We want to know. And I think if you gave Bobby an out where, you know, if even if it was 20 minutes a week where he gave a speech or something and maybe that he should start doing that to update people.

Robert Kennedy Jr. to say, hey, this is where things are at and we're going to try our best and this is what we're going to try to do. Maybe that would be great to have some sort of an address. Love it. You know, Trump's addresses, sometimes they're so, you know, they're Trumpian, you know, they're just like kind of the bare facts and like, you know, we're going to win type shit. So maybe if you had Vance give something that was a little bit more elongated and a little bit more, had a little bit more personal, you know,

notation and feeling to it like a... Didn't FDR do that? I think they were called the Fireside Chats. Oh, yeah. Where he was talking to people. I think you're right. We might need something like that. Dude, because there's so much muck out there. There's so much bullshit information. And, like, we're guilty of that, too. We just spout whatever on the fucking mic, and who knows if it's true or not. But...

It'd be nice if we had information disseminated from the people in power. It might be wrong or it might be right, but they are the people in power, so we can at least hold them to that standard. If they say that they're doing this specific thing and we disagree with it, we can be like, I disagree with that. But if Bobby's coming out and he's going, listen, we're getting the red dye out of here. It doesn't benefit anybody. There are other ways to create, I don't know, sugar coloring substitutes that are less harmful to you. Does anybody disagree with this? Everybody goes, no. Okay, fine.

Done. Right. Thanks. Yeah, there's still so many people that just want somebody to be wrong all the time, you know? So maybe that'll start to go away. I don't know. But yeah, I think if I wake up each day and I looked at everything as politics and stuff, it just starts to wear on you. And then that algorithm learns you. And then you're a fucking puppet. You become a puppet. What else is going on? Let's think of something entertaining. I'm trying to think of something. Was there a job that you had when you were young that you miss ever? Hmm.

That you were like, I'm fucking good at this shit. It wasn't that I was good at it, but I liked mowing lawns. Like, I felt, like, accomplished afterwards. Like, I'd look at it, and I'd go, wow, I did that. That was kind of annoying. It was hard. But there, here's this thing that I did, and it looks better now, and I felt proud of it. And, uh...

I think there's a version of that in creating stuff in general. But I think very early, I like to work on something and then see the thing I created. And so, yeah, there was something really nice about that. Now I get to do a job where I like the actual work part and I like seeing the end product. I didn't enjoy the work part of it. But, yeah, I think that – I'm trying to think. I mean I just worked in like restaurants before.

Oh, yeah, you definitely did. I can see you for sure. For sure. What restaurants was that working at? Oh, obviously, Macaroni Grill, dude.

Dude, you wore a cape at Macaroni Grill. I'm sure. There's no way you didn't. We didn't have a Macaroni Grill in the city, man. Hey, look. We needed a Macaroni Grill. That's your origin story. I work in a pizza shop. I do look like I could pull off pizza shop, right? I look like I was arguing with Spike Lee. I'm trying to think of whatever. What about you?

I worked at a pizza shop, man. I love that shit, dude. What was the first time, do you remember the first time as a kid that you made money and like the feeling of that? Oh, yeah. We had, they'd pay you to clean up. We had like wishing wells in our town or whatever and they'd pay you to clean them out like the city. It's like take the coins out of it. Yeah, get in there. Like you had to take a ladder down and get all the shit out and stuff. And there's like, people throw fucking, like a lot of used, like to-go orders and shit in that bitch. A lot of Popeyes in that bitch.

Decent amount of money. Not as much as you would think. It's mostly garbage. We found a fucking sword that had blood on it one time or like a pretty scalibert or whatever. But yeah, cleaning out those one summer. That was probably the first job I ever had really. But get you a little bit of money. Hide my money too. Really? I used to put my money in a Crown Royal bag, hide it in the yard. How old were you? Dig a hole and hide it. Probably 11, maybe 12.

That's a nice bag. That bitch was nice, boy. You keep that bag. Isn't that weird? Yep. It had some doubloons in it that I caught at some of the parades and like the Mardi Gras parades. There's just these little medallions kind of like they're not worth any money, but they're

They had pictures of like different historical figures from Louisiana on them because you catch them at Mardi Gras. Yeah. And I put them in a bag and hide them in a yard. And why do you think you were hiding your... Didn't trust anybody in the house. I knew everybody in that bitch. Yeah. Really? My three siblings and my mom, I was burying that shit. Do you still talk to your siblings? Oh yeah, we talk now. Things are good now. But at the time, I didn't trust anybody in that bastard, dude. Because I was sneaking in their room and stealing shit. So that was the thing.

That's where it comes from. When you ain't shit, you assume other people ain't shit. It starts here, though. Oh, bro. It starts here, though. I don't trust me so much that I don't trust you.

That's crazy, dude. What else, man? What's up with the culture? How's black stuff going over there? I know they have that new rapper, Gin Lee. Have you seen him? Yeah, I thought it was Gin Lee. Is it gin? Like gin for ginger. Well, first of all... He's a black dude that says the... Sorry, he's a white dude that says the N-word, right? He put two N's in it, so he misspelled it. So he could be either one. That's all I'm saying, but... But yeah, he's a...

It's interesting. Yeah, he is. And he's like, he's confident saying it. He seems really like he's from that culture. Yeah. So now are we witnessing that word become more of a cultural thing and not a specific race thing?

That's what I wonder because I'm just wondering, like, say you're so much a part of the culture and it seems like he is like he has black friends. He says the word around them. If you're so much a part of it, but then you can't say that. Are you then is that feel like the culture isn't saying, well, you're you're you're here, but you're not. You're not. So I have no idea. But it's just it's interesting. It is interesting. It is interesting because it is like.

So I guess when I was growing up in New York, it was a thing that white people, we would never say and you could not say. But like Puerto Ricans that were kind of like white presenting would say it and that was fine. I think even like Mexicans were kind of saying it. Sometimes even Asians would say it. But it felt really like a word white people were not allowed to say, obviously, because of the historical context. Yeah. Right.

But that situation right there is quite interesting. Like if he did grow up in this culture, maybe it's his friend's way of saying, we don't see you as different, bro. Right. Like we actually see you as one of us and we don't feel any negative sentiment when you say it. And this is our way of saying we accept you and you're not different. Maybe. Again, I don't know. I'd have to ask them. Whereas like if somebody else said it who is not from the culture at all,

They'd be like, yeah, you can't say that. And that's their way of saying you're not from the culture, bro. Right. Like you are not. You're a visitor here and you're not allowed to say that thing. Right. Yeah, that's kind of how I think I'm going to say it. I just think it's interesting. It's kind of interesting because you have people defending him online. You have people calling him out online. Yeah. And some of his music is great, man. I mean, it's catchy. I'm curious to see. Yeah, it's like in some of the lines he's saying like, you know,

don't get in trouble because of my shit. Like, you know, I'm not saying this cause I'm, I'm just saying this cause this is who I am. Right. He even expresses in like that stand on its own. Like don't, don't get in it. Don't repeat my shit just to get in. Now you get in trouble. Right. Which I think is, yeah, that's empathetic. It's at least given his story. Right. Cause he probably is aware that, oh shit, white kids might see me doing this and then they think it's okay for them to do it. And now they're getting fucked up. And so he's like, listen, your life might not be my life. Like,

Like, right. At least you put a safety precaution on this. A lot of people. That's like better than the parental advisory. It's just there's a there's a white disclaimer. Yeah. You are not me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a ginger advisory right there, dude. That's a ginger advisory, dude. But this could potentially open up gateways for some gingers to say the N-word and some spicy, some – because they've long been looming on the edge of the culture. The ring around Saturn, they call them. And it would be interesting to see what happens, dude. Yeah, do we – that's something – like we got to ask ourselves, like are we fully accepting of gingers? Like are white people fully accepting of the gingers? Yeah.

I mean, look, I don't... You're like part something, right? My father's from Nicaragua and my mother's just white. Yeah. But I don't, you know, I've thought, you know, yeah, I'm not an M1 guy. You're not dropping it. I'm not that. Fuck no. What am I fucking trying to prove to somebody? But I do remember they had like this cool band. I went to a black fraternity and we'll get you out of here in a second. Which one? I was an M1. It was like Snoop or something. Snoop.

Theta Noop or something. Bring up a couple of black fraternities over there. Southern... Alpha... What is it? University. Alpha Kappa Psi? Alpha... Beta... Phi Beta... Kappa Alpha Psi. That might have been it. The Kappas are... Have you seen the Kappas before? Kappas are cool. They got like a cane and they do like these cool dances with the cane. Mm-hmm.

My boy was a captain in college. That could have been it. They were like swagged out. And then the, what is the Omegas? Those are like the athlete. That's like the athlete frat. Oh, really? Omega Psi Phi. Oh, Shaq has that. The Q-Dogs. Oh, that thing, Q-Dogs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it was Q-Dog shit, right? They invited, they had like a, it was like,

It was Nickelback, but it was black guys doing it, right? Don't even say it. Don't even say it. I'll tell you what it was. Don't even say the name of that cover band. Don't even say the name of the Nickelback black cover band, Theo. We've almost done the whole pod, okay? We did a good job. We did a good job.

I know you're trying to bait me with this, Gin Lee. We did a good job today, okay? We did a good job today. Hear me out. Here we go. Light it on fire. Light it on fire. It was just a great... I was like, this is a crazy cover band. Don't do it. And then one of their songs was like, oh, this is how you remind me? It's not...

Okay, so they're doing like hip-hop renditions of Nickelback. And just make sure you say it right. We don't even have to go into it. That's so crazy how we all know exactly how it was spelled. But yeah, look, I just spelled welcome to be in the building. So that's all I'm saying, dude.

This is how you remind me. You're not mean.

Never made it as a wise man. Spit that whole song right now. Spit that whole shit right now, Theo. I don't want to have it, dude. Couldn't cut it as a whole man's belief. We got to stop. It's only going to get worse. Congratulations on life. The new special's out now. Congratulations on being a dad, man. Thank you, Bill.

Yeah, thanks for being just somebody. Yeah, it's good to have, like, that there's different podcasters in different parts of the country and different parts of, like, the world, you know? And it's just we're lucky to be able to do this and to be able to spend these conversations. I got to come up there and get on your pod this summer, man. Oh, please, man. I want you on Flagrant, and I want you on Brilliant Idiots, man.

I'll be up there in April, I think, for a week. You and Charlotte got to kick it, man. We got to get together, I know. Even if we just go grab a drink, I think you guys would hit it off, bro. Oh, I'm sure we would. You guys have great vibes. He's incredible, man. He's incredible. I've only heard good things, man. It would be an honor. But thank you so much for your time, dude. I know it's very valuable and it means a lot, and I just appreciate it. Congrats on everything, man. You too, man. Super stoked for you, bro.

Congratulations. You with this jacket? Zach Bryan gave me this jacket. It's very hot in here. I saw. I saw in the back. I was trying to fit in a little, so this is black as I get today, brother. The Zach Bryan tour jacket. It kind of shows you where I'm at, you know? Thanks, brother. All right, you bet, man. Peace. Oh, that was great. Now I'm just floating on the breeze And I feel I'm falling like these leaves I must be on a stone

But when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found. I can feel it in my bones, but it's gonna take...