#2050 - Ehsan Ahmad

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Good to see you. Glad to be here.

Glad to have you, finally, man. Dude, I was probably around, when was your first time on stage?

My first time on stage was in this place called Tommy T's in Livermore, California.

Oh, I know that place.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was an open mic at 2012,, end of 2012,, early 2013.. Yeah, that's when I started. And I remember going up on stage, my first joke kind of hit, and I bombed the whole time. But that one little hit was enough.

Wow. So I probably met you around 2014, then.

2015 is when we met. Okay. Yeah, and this is a story I tell to all the door guys on what it's like to be a door guy at a comedy club, because this is the first time we've ever had a conversation. I was sitting by the back door, and you had just stopped, and you just talked to all the new guys. I've noticed that you do that.

It was pure liquid.

Every time I kept wiping, more would come in. It was unreal, unreal. And I told you, I tell all the door. guys, that's what it's like working at a comedy club.

Wow.

Especially at a high-level one. You get these really cool moments, and you also learn your place a little bit.

I didn't know door. people have to clean shit.

Oh, yeah.

Don't they have like a janitor or something?

Not during the night. Oh, wow. We made it crazy. This was at like 7.30.. It was like way too early to be pooping and missing.

Oh, my God. There's something about bar poop. Poops when people are drinking. It's just so chaotic. Every time I've ever gone into a bar bathroom, there's dudes in there shitting.

If you're shitting in a bar, it's basically like, oh, this is the last resort. I had no other option.

Yeah, nobody wants to do some fucking public shitting.

No. And it was back when the store in the hallway had the single bathrooms.

Oh, yeah.

So those were like extra gross.

Oh, those were a disaster.

Those were absolute nightmares.

Remember when, like comics, would be in that one little bathroom and then there'd be the staircase up there? So people would be talking shit to you while you're in the bathroom.

No, I never had that experience at the store.

Yeah, you know the stairs to the belly room? Yes. You know where that is?

Yeah.

Like, there's a window right there for the bathroom. Oh, there is. So guys would be talking shit while other guys were shitting. Ragging on them, yelling in the window. That back parking lot, before they invented Sacred Grounds and before they had the back bar, that was where we'd all hang out.

Right, right. And then, by the time I had gotten there, you had just gotten back. Yeah. And so for you to hang out, it would really be interesting to watch as a door guy, because you'd have to watch people would be making game plans to talk to you. You know, you could see them like, okay, if I do this and I do this and I do this, and you'd have to just tell people like, hey, maybe you should go hang out in the patio or something like that.

It sucks because you want to say hi to everybody, but also my friends are there.

Right.

I see them every now and again, especially if it's someone like Burr that I only see once a month. You know, when you see them, you're like, this is an important time.

Well, and it's like when you're in a place with other comics like that, it just feels like home. Yeah. You know, so it's like, oh, I want to hang out at home.

We talk about this all the time, about the Mothership. That green room is our clubhouse.

I live there.

It's so fun. I practically live there. Last night was so fun. And they're always fun. Like every night we're there, we just have so much fun.

Well, talking about comedy, and the green room itself is just such a comedy place. You have Lenny Bruce's mic, Mae West's couch, Joey Diaz's words, Rodney Dangerfield's notes. Handwritten notes. Handwritten notes. It is like a place where I feel like, oh, I'm in it.

I think so, too. I mean, we were talking about what we hoped it would be and what it is, and I don't even know if I – I don't think I ever hoped it would be this good.

I mean, the club's not even a year in. I think we're only just sort of at the start of what it can be.

We have like 660,000 Instagram followers already. Yeah.

Sam Talon, I think, is moving here.

Yes. He wants to move here. Right. It is – It's incredible. It's incredible.

It is the right place to be at the right time. I felt very lucky in my life. I feel like everywhere I've been, I've been at the right place at the right time.

Yeah, if you make the most out of things, that's what happens most of the time. I mean, obviously, horrible things go wrong for good people. But the reality is that, like, every time something happens in your life, it gives you an opportunity to figure it out. Okay, where do I go now? What is – and 9-11 – or, excuse me, 9-11, the new 9-11, the COVID.

It was wild. The first door guy that moved out here was a funny dude, regular at the Mothership, named Dylan Sullivan.

Yeah, very funny dude.

Yeah, he got on a Discord call with me. I was in California. We were in the midst of the second lockdown, which was brutal. And he goes, you've got to come out here. There's stage time indoors.

Isn't it crazy?

To perform indoors. It was like drinking water after being in a desert for two years.

It was like a speakeasy, because you knew you couldn't do it everywhere.

No. And there were still those rules where you had to walk in with the masks. Yeah. And I was still here.

And so it was like you take it off once you start laughing. Like what? You're fucking spraying COVID. This poor guy, whoever you are in the front row last night, I'm so sorry. I accidentally spit it on you twice.

I remember one time I was opening a show with Fat Man and I was eating it. Like it was bad. And then I spit. But when you're eating it, everyone's just watching you. So the whole audience sees me just spit on the guy in the front row.

I've been spit on before. I've been in the front row. It's like when people, Joey Diaz, will spit on you like crazy. This is like when someone's on stage. They don't mean to.

Right. It really means that we're into it. Yeah.

We're just going hard.

Right.

You know, or bombing.

And trying to save ourselves.

Trying to save yourself is the saddest fucking moment in your life.

Then it comes a point where you have to be like, all right. I'm not going to ask what they do for work. I'm just going to live in the bomb. I'm just going to live in it. I deserve this.

Well, you need a bunch of bombs to figure out how to bomb.

You know?

And I've seen some people pull out of bombs. That's some of the most impressive shit of all time. When someone starts bombing and then they hit and then they get their confidence back. And then they got a banger. And then everybody, okay.

It's a really good feeling, especially because I open all these shows, right? When I get on stage and that first joke doesn't hit. And then it's like, ooh. All right. I'm going to stay in the pocket and I'm going to figure this out.

Most certainly you have the hardest job. The hardest job is when the audience is cold. That's the hardest job. The easiest job is like second or third. And then the second hardest job is going on last.

Right.

But the hardest job is most certainly going on first.

Well, some of them too, especially your show specifically. A lot of them are here from the podcast and they don't know. stand up like that.

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So they'll come and they'll look at you like, wait, you're not a podcast. Joe's not talking to you.

Oh, no, really?

They have that vibe to them. sometimes. They have to be like, no, no, this is what it is.

I used to get that on Fear Factor. People would come to see me because they recognized me from Fear Factor. I'd be like, I love that guy. That show's great. And then they'd go, and I'd be talking about the pyramids being built.

And they'd be like, there's no animal dicks.

Where are the animal dicks? What is this guy talking about?

It was a thing. I remember. I was sitting down with my parents, and we would watch Fear Factor. That would be a family thing.

Yeah, I never watched it. I watched it once when I threw up at home. Really? Yeah, I never threw up on the show.

Yeah, that seems weird.

I threw up at home once because I didn't expect to be so grossed out. I wasn't prepared. I guess, like, on the show, I was always prepared to not throw up.

And there's no close-up angles when you're there, right?

This lady was eating worms, and she threw it up back in her glass and then started eating it again, and I went,

I just ran to the sink and threw up. That's a level of competitiveness that I don't know if I have. Oh, man.

People would go for it. They would fucking go for it. Worms are rough. Because worms are filled with dirt, because they eat dirt. So you're eating dirt and mushiness.

What was it? again? It was a cash prize at the end? What was it?

Yeah, but you had a lot of people were going to eat some dick and never get a cash prize. That's the problem. It's like one person is getting the money. But you also, like, Michael Yeo, took it and became a comedian.

He was on Fear Factor?

Michael Yeo was on episode one, season one of Fear Factor.

No way.

Yes.

That's crazy.

He was just figuring his life out. He was a young guy. He was really jacked. back then. He was a big dude.

He sells out.

And knowing him from, like, episode one of Fear Factor is crazy. That's me and Michael Yeo back in the day, son. Episode one. Damn. Bro, I still had the wallet chain.

Yeah, I was going to say the hair. Look at that. The hairline's going. When did you shave it?

I shaved. I gave up, I think, in 2011..

Yeah. For me, I saw a picture of me on stage, and I was like, oh, my God. This is how I present myself to the world? Yeah.

This is crazy. You're so much better off giving in. And I'm lucky. I have a good head. It's a good shape for a head.

Oh, you go electric? I still have a razor. I use a razor. Oh, damn. It's like this little ATV that fits on your finger.

That does sound nice.

I feel like a little kid sometimes.

I got a lot of scars, though. I have a hair transplant scar, and I've got a lot of scars from being a dumb kid. I got a giant fucking gash on my head from when this crane that lifts cinder blocks fell and hit me in the side of the head. Yeah, we were kids, and we were hanging around in this yard where they had these giant sewer-sized cement tubes. And they had these cranes that would pick these things up.

Holy shit.

Yeah, I had to get taken to the hospital. And I remember thinking I was dead. Like, something felt so wrong that I remember telling my mom I'm worried, I'm going to die. Yeah, I got dinged. I mean, I do not remember what happened.

Ironically, it probably changed the course of your life, too, right? That's a traumatic head injury when you're young.

I've had a ton of those.

They're hitting that ball.

They hit the ball all the time, and sometimes they collide with each other, too. That can happen, too. I've had head injuries from collisions in jujitsu, just accidental collisions. Like, someone will knee you in the face accidentally and fucking ring your bell. Right.

Oh, really?

I have no idea. Like, from the time I was 15 until I was 21,, I sparred a lot. I did a lot of sparring. And when I really started getting fucked up was when I started kickboxing sparring because I wasn't good at boxing. I was a good kicker because I was, like, a Taekwondo champion, and then I went into kickboxing.

Are you taking, like, kicks to the face?

No. I'd fuck them up with kicks. Okay. If I could get in kick distance, I was much better than them. But the thing with kickboxing is there's boxing involved, and my boxing was terrible.

Right, like the defensive positions, and all that sort of stuff.

So once I started kickboxing, I really started getting beat up. And I went through a couple of years from, like, I think I started in, like, 19.. I started transitioning into kickboxing. And from 19 to 21 was when I did, like, most of my really hard sparring. And those were horrible days where I'd be sitting in my apartment.

You work for a private investigator?

I guess I was 21 by then.

So were you, like, tracking, like, puzzles? Like, husbands cheating on wives pretty much?

It was mostly insurance scams.

Okay.

Most of that was insurance scams. Okay. Most of it was. people would say that they got a back injury and they couldn't work, so they were getting money. But then they would go and work another job.

And then you're following them around.

Yeah. It was, like, a lot of dumb people.

Right.

Just a lot of scammers that thought they were being slick, and we'd bust them. But one lady, oh, it was the saddest fucking thing. The guy I worked for, by the way, his name was Dave Dolan. He would call himself Dynamite Dickless, Dave Dolan.

Oh, my God.

He was one of the funniest guys I have ever met in my life, a natural comedian.

Oh, there's so many people in life like that. Yeah. They're like, damn, you are the funniest person I've ever met.

And the craziest thing is, by chance, that dude was cousins with the dude who owned the Comedy Connection, Billy Downs. Billy Downs was his cousin. So I found an ad for a private investigator's assistant. I was trying to figure out jobs that I could do to make money while I was trying to do stand-up. And so I found this job.

And she goes, yes.

Well, I got, you know, I got the insurance. Right? And he goes, oh, you're getting compensated for it? She goes, yes. And I also work another job.

This random person.

Just this is how people were in the 1980s.

Yeah, this doesn't seem like this would happen today at all. They just let you in the house.

So this was, I was 21,, so this was 88.. So this lady just let us in the house. And we sit down in her kitchen. She's so nice. She makes us coffee.

Fuck her.

He goes, she's a fucking criminal. I go, she's just trying to, she's poor. She's a nice lady. She invited us in for coffee. He's like, fuck her.

Turned her in, of course. Insurance companies are ruthless.

Oh, well, you know, I guess that's his job. And she was kind of a criminal. But you know, it's like people think that when people don't have anything in life, you know, they just fucking, never really get ahead. They're always bill to bill, check to check, barely getting by. And then you have this opportunity where you could work and still get you from the insurance companies.

You just figure out, just get a little money on the side. I'm using my maiden name.

Who's going to catch me?

Right. You know, I don't mind the grift. It's like, you know, get your money. But you can't just be telling random people that.

I know. And letting us in her house.

That's so wild. And it's so funny. I was thinking like, wow, that would never happen today. But like now, we would, just, the same person would tell some random person in DM. It's like, they'll find, people will find a way to let people in.

That made me sad. But most of the time it was busting dudes. And most of the time it was busting dudes who were pretending they had a bad back. And then you'd watch them carry a load of shingles on the ladder. They were working as roofers on the side.

Yeah, was he getting off on the pictures?

I'm not.

Yeah, it was something about it.

And he goes, I told the guy, listen, you fucking freak. You wanted me to get pictures. I got your pictures. We're done. We're done.

You got the whole thing set up.

But Dave was so funny, man. Like, some of the best times I had, was driving that guy around and doing this. Because also we'd be really tired. Because a lot of it you'd have to do really early in the morning. Because you'd have to catch these folks.

Before they got to work. Yes.

So you had to get outside their house, down the street at like 4.30 a.m. Because they leave at like 5.30 and they go to some construction job or something. So you have to bust them. Damn. And so we'd be just sitting there talking shit, drinking coffee.

He just quit.

Dude was so funny, man. And I told him, I go, why don't you do stand-up? Like your cousin owns the comedy club. Just do an open mic night. He was not interested.

No, you got to. This is something that you have to want to do.

Yeah, you got to want it.

You really got to want it. Because it's so brutal. if you don't. Yeah. You see some people going through the motions.

Well, it's not a thing you can kind of half in, half out. And we've seen that a bunch of times.

Right. Yeah, you have to be fully in. I remember thinking, just like podcasts early on in my career.

Well, one of the things we really wanted to do when we started the mothership. You know, and you and I talked about this. We all talked about this. Was have a real program. Like a real solid open mic program.

And the door people here are. What I love about the people here in Austin. Is that you don't run into the sort of people in L.A. Who you would run into, that they're just really doing this to become a writer. Or they're just really doing this to become an actor.

They're fans of the art form.

They're fans of the art form. And they are taking this opportunity. And the amount that they're improving that I can see is incredible. I'll look at some of the door, guys, and be like. I wasn't like that at five years in.

Well, we all feed off of each other. And we were talking about Shane moving into town the other night. And you guys were talking about his new half hour. And you both. Fantastic.

Started writing. Immediately started writing. I went to Wisconsin recently. And I took one of the door, guys, C.J. Landrieu, with me.

Yeah.

Just last night I was walking into the little boy. And there's a door guy in there named Fuzzy. And I was like, hey, Fuzzy, how are you doing? And he goes, oh, I have the best life of all time. And this is a door guy who's taking out trash.

Yeah, you can feel it. And we're feeding off each other. Everyone's better. Everyone's better. We're all better.

And there's no like, no one's like competing for like, oh, there's only two sitcoms. Like the place where I can get a sitcom. What's nice is that you look up and you see the top of this, you know, you see you, Shane, Tony. And you see that everyone is just doing what they want to do. And there is no, like you.

Yeah.

That's awesome. I can win. Oh, he's doing that. Fuck. Yeah.

Nobody's slowing down.

Nobody is slowing down.

Nobody's slowing down. And everyone's inspired.

Everyone's inspired. And the stage time you get in the city is incredible.

Yeah.

Outside the mothership. You go to Red Bands Club. You go to Vulcan. You go to East Austin Comedy Club. You go to Creek.

There's another one that I saw on the east side.

Yeah, yeah. I think that's East Austin. Oh, no. Roscoe's.

Yes.

Roscoe's. That's the new one. Yeah, yeah.

That's another one. I was eating down there and I saw Roscoe's Comedy Club. I was like, there's a comedy club down here? This is wild. It's wild.

And now we'll get these people that are comedy tourists, like we used to get at the store. Where it's like, I'm in it, from Australia for eight days. I'm at the mothership for six of those days. Wow.

It's pretty, fucking cool.

It's pretty cool. And just the good keeps on coming. Shane's, here. When that Brian Simpson special dropped. Yes.

And when he found out the phones were in bags, he was like, oh, my God. He was like, I can do comedy again. He's funny, man.

He was great.

He was very funny.

He was great. It was great. It's just great to see. It's great to see everyone come through here and be like, oh, I see what this is.

Yeah.

I get what this is.

Yeah. Yeah, we did it.

You would hear all the time people being like, they're not going to make the club. What are you doing out there? They're not going to make the club. I always viewed it as a low-risk, high-reward move.

Yeah.

At the worst.

When you first came here, was I even talking about opening a club, yet?

Yes. For me, what made it real that you were opening the club is that I heard Adam and Curtis were coming over. I was like, oh, he's serious about opening the club.

Well, it was a perfect storm of L.A. closing down. The Comedy Store, they closed down, so everyone's out of work. All those people didn't have jobs anymore. I said, I'll hire you.

That's a good deal.

I was like, listen, man, I'm going to make it as nice and easy as possible. I was like, come to Austin, enjoy the city for a year, and then we'll call for you, and then we'll do this. We'll really do this.

Yeah, and then it opened, and you could just feel it immediately.

I didn't think it was going to take as long as it took, but that was because we had another building, and the building owned by the cult, and that shit fell apart. But lucky it fell apart, man, because it's like where we got is the best spot in the world. That 6th Street is like no other place, man. It's just hopping with people. They close it down to car traffic, and there's just people walking on the streets, and the energy is crazy.

The energy at 6th Street is nuts. It is wild.

But it helps the show, man. It's like there's so much wild shit going on outside that when you can use, there's live music playing everywhere. There's like a feeling in the air, and then you go to the club, and it's rocking. It's like, oh, shit, this is the spot.

Yeah, it just feels like a place that's just connected with everything.

It's just different than any other place we've ever been to. But it's also the only place that I've ever worked at where a comic ran it, like a comic, built it, and they built it just for comedy. There's no business partners or fucking weird money people that want you to charge more for that. or pay the comics less or make our own rules.

It's what they talk about at the stores, like a comics playground. It's an artist's playground. Here you can take chances. You can really be free artistically. What I like about this sort of theory I have is because I started in San Diego, which is a pretty red city in a blue state, and now we're in a blue city in a red state.

It's also people that recognize there's a new scene here, so there's this energy to that, and they want to come experience it because there really haven't been. Look, Austin had a scene. It had a small scene. There was always some good comics that came out of Austin because Hicks was here for a while. There's a history of good comedy out of Austin, but it didn't have a community like we have now.

It just kind of became an A city. I mean the only time it really happened, I feel like, is when Carson moved to L.A.

Well, I bet L.A. had comics already, though, no?

I mean I'd imagine so, but then you hear like, I guess my view is the view of the comedy source history, but all these people came from, all these high-level comics came from New York, right? It's like when Carson moved to L.A. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really? I think The Tonight Show being in L.A.

Well, that was back in the time where a spot on The Tonight Show could make your career. Right. That's when I first saw Richard Jenney. I was like, wow, who's this guy? He did a spot on The Tonight Show, and you would get these five to seven-minute spots, and guys would prep forever for that spot.

Yeah, I remember reading stories about like, oh, Freddie Prinze got called over to the couch on his first time. That never happens to anybody.

Well, also, you've got to remember, what were the numbers back then for The Tonight Show?

Oh, that must have been massive, right? There's only one of four shows you can watch at the time.

Right. What was the average Tonight Show ratings in 1978?? See if you can find that. I bet it's nuts.

It's got to be in the tens of millions, right?

Yeah, it has to be. I want to think like 25 million. Again, this is at 11 p.m. at night, too. Right.

Everyone had a desk, yeah.

I guess it was like Jack Parr who started it out. It was Steve Allen or Jack Parr, whoever was the first one. Because there was Tonight Show guys before Johnny Carson. And whoever it was, they had a desk. Because back then, if you were the boss, you sat behind the desk.

Would The Ed Sullivan Show fall in this sort of world? What was that?

Ed Sullivan.

Because, in my mind, that seems to be the precursor of all this and sort of what set this up. Yeah.

Lenny Bruce did The Ed Sullivan Show.

The Beatles, famously.

Yeah. Who else? A lot of people did it. Yeah. Was he the first?

It feels like, from my understanding of it, it feels like he was the first megastar.

Jackie Mason got banned from The Ed Sullivan Show because Ed Sullivan said that Jackie gave him the finger.

Really? Yeah.

But Jackie swears. he didn't give him the finger. He's just doing his hands. Doing my hand gestures. And he did something.

It's got to be, what, like the 50s? Early 60s? We're talking about Mason?

Do we find out what the ratings were for 1978?. I was digging to 78.. Most of the stuff, talking about the ratings, it's about its last week and last show. What is that? Well, 50 million for the final show.

Crazy.

Oh my. So he averaged 19 million a week.

That's wild. No, no.

Just for that. Just for that week. Oh, for that week. I wasn't saying it was for the whole time. Can you find out what the ratings were?

I wonder if they even have those numbers. Yeah, they probably don't.

What's really wild is there's people that get away with not telling you the numbers.

Oh, Netflix?

Netflix gets away with it. We were just discussing this last night because a friend of mine was saying, what are you thinking about this actor strike? And I said, I really don't know enough about it to comment other than, look, if you're a person and you do something, even if you're a comic and you do something on Netflix, like when I've done Netflix specials, they just say, it's doing really well. And you go, what does that mean? How many people are watching it?

What do you think is the purpose of keeping it secret?

Well, it's a genius move, because they don't have to tell you, so you can't really negotiate. If you do a special and that special is 10 million people watch it, people go, oh, shit. We're going to pay Hassan more money next time. Because if he finds out that this many people are watching, you don't know until you go out on the road and then you sell more tickets and you're like, oh, people enjoyed it. I guess it worked.

Right.

But when you don't have any data from the company, they could just not give you the data. Like on their side, it's great for negotiation. They don't have to tell you shit.

It's just, they have all the leverage.

There was an article about this yesterday. Okay.

We're doing this for them.

Yeah, we're doing it for them.

We're doing it for them. They don't know.

Overnight ratings, an analyst interview that went live, a weekend box office world, defining their success and failures. Sarandos said during a prerecorded analyst interview, that's a little gas, lady. And as we know, a show might have enormous success down the road, and it wasn't captured in that opening box office. So part of this was the relationship with the talent, not just the business aspect of it. And I do think that over time, people are much more interested in this.

Yeah, that's what people want.

They want to know what's successful and what's not.

It does seem interesting that he says that like, oh, we have a show might do better as time goes on, and the initial box office numbers might not reflect that. But then you're also canceling all these shows by the time they get to the second and third season. Yeah, shut up. Right?

No, we're doing it for the creators. Guys, we love you.

Right. We love you.

We're doing it for you. Yeah.

Yeah, this seems like a very abusive relationship.

So I would imagine that has something to do with, I think if you were an actor and you were a star of a Netflix movie and it was fucking huge, you would want to know what the numbers are. Right. It's got to be part of their, I don't know. Is that part of what they're asking for? I know it's streaming revenue.

That's one of the things. There's, like the AI characters too. Yes. That's a big part of this. Because SAG's still in strike, right?

I believe. so, yes. So I think the AI thing was. there was one contract that, I don't know if it was actually being someone actually trying to get people to sign up or if it was just being discussed, where they would pay the extra, like an extra would be on the set. And then they own their digital image.

Right.

But this crisis actor thing, imagine if you just start seeing like AI people in every fucking movie, every disaster movie. You see that same guy. Like that's that dude. Yeah. And that dude probably got paid 200 bucks.

It's like the Wilhelm scream, but with like people's faces. Right. Yeah. That's what it'd be like. Oh, if it's a disaster scene, you know, this guy's in it.

Well, maybe they'll be able to morph your image, give you a mustache, fake nose. I'm sure they can. You can tweak your face. I mean, they could face, swap you with different extras. They can do all kinds of stuff.

Oh yeah, for sure.

What they can do. Did you see the unreal five video game engine?

Yeah. Car on fire. Car on fire.

Jamie, see if you could play that. Someone said, I forget the tweet, but it was something along the lines of. you're not going to be able to ever know what's real again.

No. And if it feels this way, looking at the news, with what's going on over, you know, over in Israel and Palestine, it's like, what am I seeing? How much of this is real? How much like the propaganda on top of that, the like.

Shitty reporting.

Shitty reporting. It's like, it is like, it's so interesting that we have phones and we have the access to information constantly. And now we just know none of that information is true.

Well, we just know quickly what actually happened. if you're online and paying attention. And the mainstream news is so far behind that. Right. Coleman Hughes was on yesterday.

Right.

What actually happened was another Islamic terrorist group launched a missile. It failed and it landed in the parking lot of the hospital. So this is fake. This is the unreal five engine. You see a car on fire and then they have a little video thing, pop through it.

Yeah. I mean, it looks, it looks incredible.

Very real. And look how the flames vary. Like. the flames vary like an actual flame would. It's not like sometimes you watch like digital flames.

There's a level of randomness. It's reacting to the thing in it.

It's nuts, man. Yeah. The thing is making the smoke move. Motherfucker, dude. They're so good now.

No, you can't tell. You can't tell what's real at all anymore.

And I think it was in 2015. they passed a law that allowed the CIA to use propaganda on citizens for the greater good of the nation.

Yeah.

No, there was something like that.

I mean, that's always been a thing, though. It's funny that they didn't pass a law.

Well, now they can't get arrested for it. Or no one can get in trouble for it.

Yeah, I guess. I mean, but no one was really getting in trouble for it. No one was really getting in trouble. Yeah.

It's like- They killed the president, allegedly. Right.

It's more like them dotting their I's and crossing their T's. Like, let's just make sure that no one-.

What was that law, Jamie? I was just looking it up. I just stumbled across an article from the New York Times, 1977.. Worldwide propaganda network built by the CIA. I can't even imagine.

Yeah. I think that's like when we talked about the shift in COVID, what it really caused. It's like now. I'm just suspicious of everything. Of everything.

Exactly. It didn't used to be, though. This is what comes up about what we were just talking about, though. Obama did not sign a law allowing propaganda in the U.S. Okay, so, here's the claim.

We're doing it for you!

Did Ted Sarandos write this? We're making it easier for you to access it. The change essentially eased restrictions for Americans who wanted to access government-funded media content. Because, you know, most Americans really want to access government-funded media content.

I can't think of anything better. Would I rather watch Game of Thrones or government-funded media content?

Allowing media produced by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, such as The Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, to be made available to Americans upon request. It was not possible before the law was changed. Even upon request, if I wanted to get it through the Freedom of Information Act, for instance, they couldn't do it. The amendment changed that, says Gabe Rotman, Director of the Reporters, Committees, Technology, and Press Freedom Project.

I don't trust anything in that.

Is it Patriot Freedom? You know, the Patriot Act.

I just think it's so funny that, like, government-funded media, was behind some sort of wall to begin with. Like, that's kind of interesting.

Well, it says there was essentially a de facto ban on the government dissemination of materials originating from the State Department. Yeah, because we didn't trust you. We didn't trust you to just fucking make these claims. Journalists are supposed to make these claims. Right.

Right. And then, you know, I guess later we find out that they're really influencing these news companies anyway. So it's like, what?

It's so funny. Oh boy. Oh boy.

Yeah. I don't know.

It sounds like a sneaky way to get propaganda to people. But I thought there was something else. It was proposing that they were allowed to use propaganda if it was for the greater good. I thought that was a part of the, whatever, it was the National Defense Authorization Act, which is the one that allowed for indefinite detention. There was one that had, like some real sweeping oversteps for people like, yo, indefinite detention.

Is that the same sort of stuff they used to get the guy who made the memes?

This is an article from 2013.. But it explains everything we just read.

This reminds me of, for whatever reason, reminds me of, I went to watch Fast 7 in the theater.

Fast and the Furious 7?.

Fast and the Furious 7.. It was only me in the theater. Well, it was me and this one lady. And at one point, the lady goes, ah, walks out and leaves. That's your fault.

Well, it's also, they feel like those kind of movies sell to the kind of people who like those kind of movies. Right. Those kind of concepts sell. If you like Fast and the Furious 7, you might have a MAGA hat.

I enjoy them because it's the closest thing to, as an adult, that same feeling I got when I was a little kid, and playing with cars and having them go on the TV and then on the couch. It's the exact same feeling. Yeah. That's why I love them.

Remember when they took a car into space? Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, you mean. Ludacris was driving a car in space with a steering wheel, an accelerator, everything.

If I wanted to show someone the peak of America, it's Ludacris driving a car in outer space. It's like, hey, look how great we are.

Let's watch that video.

Look how great we are. It's Ludacris.

This is our gift to the world. This is America at its base level.

At its finest. Base level.

At its finest.

Look what we've done.

This is how ridiculous we could be. And, by the way, that movie probably sold 100 billion people. Oh, yeah. How many people watched that movie?

I mean, they had to make two more after that.

What are we supposed to be doing? Oh, that's so cool.

Oh, he looks like a minion.

Yeah, they're wearing scuba suits while they're going into space in a car.

They're in a car.

Oh, man. There's science in this.

I love Ludacris explaining science.

This movie is so good.

Let's see how invincible your black ass is after this.

So it falls off, and now they're in a flying car. that is a rocket ship. Look at this thing.

Look at this.

His car is going into space, son. They're going into space.

You have to watch this and be like, America's the best. How do you not see this?

Look at this. They're going into space in a car.

Wearing scuba suits. Oh, man.

Oh, my God.

Janky scuba suits, too. There's no way it holds the pressurization, as Ludacris said earlier.

Oh, my God.

I don't remember why. I don't think I – I don't remember why they had to go to space. Oh, it's flat. That's weird. Oh, my God, the Earth is flat.

That would be Fast and Furious' greatest movie ever.

That would be unreal. I don't think they had the balls to do that.

If they did it, they did it and said the world was flat, do you know how many people would fucking cheer? Oh, yeah. There are. I would cheer. The Flat Earth Movement.

But, like, I don't understand what the point is.

Well, the point is – here's the point. The point is the government lies about everything, including space.

Right.

And that we are really God's creation. There's an ice wall around the outside of the world. You're not allowed to pass it. If you try to go there, the military will stop you. The military, even though there's fucking thousands and thousands of members that have probably seen this, they've hidden this information for the general public, for the greater good of mankind or for evil reasons.

Right.

Because they don't want you to know about God. Right. And then the stars are just bullshit, and there's a firmament. There's, like, a cover over the Earth, and that's why we can't go into space. That's wild.

Because I always just thought, like, even if the Earth was flat, like, what am I going to do? I'm just going to still, like, go to Chipotle and, like, live my life. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I never understood the point of getting that hyped into it. To me it feels like sometimes a lot of conspiracy theories is adults who realize too late that the government's always lying to them.

Well, people love conspiracy theories because some of them are real, you know, and when you find out one's real, you're like, holy shit, they really did that? Mm-hmm. Oh, my God. And then you start getting suspicious about everything, you know, and you can go down rabbit holes. Right.