#2045 - Jimmy Carr
2023-10-07 02:48:22
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
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Hey, look, Jimmy.
Hey, Joe, how are ya?
Good to see you, buddy.
It's very nice to see you. This is, uh, it's a hell of a setup.
Thank you.
Unlike in Austin, Texas, I've been here about 18 hours, and, uh, it's, uh, yeah. Five stars on TripAdvisor so far.
Did you do a set last night?
I didn't do a set, but I went to the club. Yeah? And the club is, it's phenomenal. Thank you, thank you. It's almost like someone with an unlimited budget built a comedy club.
That's what it felt like, Joe. I don't know, I don't know if your business manager has a view on this. Yeah, I don't. I think something along the lines of.
I'm not good at taking advice.
Yeah, but it's, it's so great, it's so set up from the comic's point of view.
Yeah.
It's like, no food.
Yeah, no food.
No, food is a great choice.
Yeah, you can't have food.
Yeah, people can eat afterwards. Yeah, eat afterwards.
There's so many places to eat on 6th Street. There's a nice pizza place right next door.
Your neighbors are going to love you as well. Because it's that thing. if you go, yeah, it creates a bit of a community. And it's full. It's like packed with people, and.
Yeah. It's kind of, yeah, it's phenomenal. Great space.
Well, it's one of those Kevin Costner things. You know, you build it, they will come from the field of dreams.
Yeah. Well, it feels kind of bigger than that as well, in terms of. You know, you've come out here, and what are you giving back? Yeah. And comedy's giving you everything as it has me.
And you go, well, what can you give back? Yeah. What can you do for your community? And it feels like that's a great thing to do.
Well, it also seemed like I kind of had to do it. Because when I moved here, I had this idea that I'd just be able to, like, do whatever local spots I could. And then go on the road. And I kind of could. But one of the things that I've realized is that comics need community.
It's very important. Like, and that's one of the things that we really had at the Comedy Store that made the Comedy Store so special. Is that it wasn't just that it was a great place to work and come up with new material and work on it. But it was also a great place to meet other people that were doing the same thing.
It's interesting comedy as opposed to acting. Yeah. You know that Alan Havey said this great thing to me. He said, comedians, we're out for ourselves, but in it together.
Mmm.
I thought, oh, that's, it's really interesting, that thing of like going, yeah, everyone's doing their own thing. See, comedy is not like acting. It's not a zero sum game. Right. So you doing your thing, no matter how successful you are, has no impact on my thing.
If anything, you pull me up.
Yes.
So comedy becomes like a bigger thing. If someone does fantastically and they're playing hockey arenas, then more people are pulled up through the clubs and the theaters into the arenas. Sure. It feels like, it feels like we're living in a golden age for comedy. It feels to me like this is what it must have felt like to work in music or movies in the 70s.
Yeah.
It's like, it's, it's feels like there's something culturally going on with comedy, where it feels like it's got a value, that people need it. People need to go out and feel like they're part of a community. And I suppose, when you think about what we're doing on stage, it is pretty special. We're letting people into our minds and we go into their bodies. Yeah.
We're possessing them. We change their physical state. It's extraordinary.
It is extraordinary. It really is like a drug. You're giving people a happy drug.
Well, it's too, I mean, it's, it's the endorphin, because you don't quite know when the punch is coming, and then the serotonin of laughter and the live experience as well. It's like the live experience is so incredible for comedy, even as opposed to music, because what do you get when you go out to a comedy club? Well, you'll laugh 30 times more than watching the footage. And props to Netflix. Netflix have been part of the reason comedy is having this golden age.
But you go watching something on screen is like, that's how you find out what you want to go and see live.
Yeah. And live is so much better.
Because physically it gets you in a different way. And you see people kind of coming at, their body language changes their whole and they get into this kind of this state with a performer. They breathe with the performer. They kind of, they roll with it. And it's so immersive.
And you don't remember a word of what the comedian said. You remember how they made you feel.
Yeah. There's also the shared experience of being there with other people. that really feels good for people when you're laughing with a bunch of people.
Especially in a world where the individual has become sacrosanct and the tribe has been left to the side and people want to feel a bit tribal. They want to feel like they're part of something. What if you want to go to music festivals and South by Southwest and Glastonbury and they want to go and see a comedy show. They want to be in a room and a thousand people that all have the same sense of humor.
Yeah.
And feel a bit bonded.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. There's that. And there's also with our art form, it's uniquely coming from one person where it's unless you're a singer, songwriter, there's really not. Or an author.
Those are like probably the only other people. Any other mass form of entertainment that you're seeing, you're seeing a lot of different people collaborating, which is good. Like in a film, you have to have that. But there's something about an individual's perspective and someone going, what the fuck is this?
And it's, I mean, for me, that thing of, you know, stand up is naturally progressive. For me, it's like stand up is about, um, there's an Overton window about what, you know, that theory of the Overton window, what is and what isn't acceptable to talk about publicly. Right. And comedy is always pushing the energy of that. Not just edgy comedy.
I do quite edgy stuff. It's not about being edgy, particularly. Even someone doing observational stuff, Seinfeld saying the world is crazy. Nothing makes any sense. This is ridiculous.
He says the thing and it pushes, or someone talking about their relationships and their kids. It pushes what's acceptable to talk about in everyday life further and it expands that window. And so we have more open, meaningful conversations. like you go and see a comedy show. You have a much more interesting chat.
afterwards. You go to comedy on a date night. It becomes like a more interesting conversation because something the guy said sparked something. It pushes that. It pushes the conversation.
It's naturally progressive.
Yeah, it is. And also in this day and age, it's one of the rare places where you can hear people speak freely about controversial subjects. And in my club, we lock up the phone so people don't, they're not self-conscious and they're also not distracted. And then you don't have to worry about people filling clips.
It is weird, isn't it? The locking up the phones is such an interesting point. Because that's what people want. They want that boundary of going, I'm in a live. There's lots of people that would, you would watch your favorite show.
You'd watch whatever you like, like Game of Thrones or an MMA fight or whatever. And if you have your phone near you, there's a temptation to check the news and refresh and refresh and see what's going on. And to ruin the experience for yourself. But somehow, being out in public, like you're aware, like it's performative, being in a crowd. Like we're not the only ones performing at a comedy club or in a theater.
The audience are performing. People, how are you doing? Like you ask an audience, how are you doing? And they go, yay! No one says that one-on-one.
No one's ever, hey, how are you doing, Joe? Yeah! You sound psychotic. But in an audience, it's entirely acceptable to be that person, to dance and to clap along. You'd look strange listening to a band play live and just standing and listening.
Yeah. And not dancing in the crowd.
Right.
And that thing about going, well, this is, it's performative being in the audience. Don't think you're the only one performing. They're all with you. They're all, the laughter is, you're partly, you're signaling. It doesn't mean that it's fake laughter, but you're signaling to other people that you got it.
And you're applauding when you kind of agree a little bit. There's a rhythm to it. Being in an audience is a performance. And it's so fun to do.
Yeah, it is. It's my favorite thing to watch still. After all these years, I love, I watched Christina Pazitzky last night. It was awesome.
Was it fantastic?
Oh, she's so funny. But it's just, it's fun. It's fun to laugh. It's fun to see someone's writing and see like where they're going with ideas.
And it's also, it's the same and totally different. It's a guy on stage with a mic, girl on stage with a mic. And it just, what's he doing with this? It's a totally different thing. It's, you know, that self-authored thing.
I mean, my, the thing I'm working on at the moment, I'm slightly jealous of the club. I'll be honest. I sort of saw the club last night. And this is quite something to do. To set up a club and to have that community.
And it's great. And I think that, I'm working at the moment on a, I don't know whether it's a book or whether it's a, I think it might be like an online course, but a comedy course.
Because how did you stand up?
How to write jokes, how to be a standup? I think great. I think here's my vision for it. I think we're going through a golden period, but maybe it's just beginning. Comedy is quite a new medium anyway.
Yeah. We get to be the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, or certainly someone in our generation. does, you know, if you think about it, like George Carlin and Richard Pryor were John the Baptist. Well, someone's coming through. It's like that thing of like, it feels like it's, it's getting bigger and bigger.
My vision is it gets taught in schools. So we teach, we teach music and we teach drama and art. And I think standup comedy is an art form. And I think we need to get less, less magical thinking and more. Okay.
Let's put down a language like music. You can write it. Let's come up with the, I mean, I've kind of, I'm working on like 50 joke types, but let's come up with a, a way of analyzing this and teach people how to do it. Because what does it give you? Like?
if your kid does standup comedy. Okay. Well, it's, they have to find their voice. Uh, they have to look at things in a, in a, from a different angle, different perspective. It's about pattern recognition.
These are all transferable skills and it's about finding your voice. The reason every standup is interesting to watch is because it's individual voices. And really, what's growing up about what school about finding your voice, finding out what you're about, finding out who you are. Like, I don't think it's a dumb idea to teach standup comedy and to say, well, everyone should give this a go. Because even people that have done, I've got a couple of people that come and see me live or whatever that tell me, Oh, I did like four or five gigs 10 years ago.
But they enjoy standup comedy more than the average person. It's like someone who's can play a little bit of guitar, goes and sees and goes, well, this is right. They have an inkling of how good it is. Someone that does a little bit of jujitsu, I imagine, goes and sees an MMA fight and goes, he's good.
Yeah.
They've got, they've got like some idea. It's like that. They've gone from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence. Hmm.
Yeah. We've actually talked many times about putting together a course and we've thought about doing it, maybe at the club and, you know, just having professional comics that are on their way up, that are just starting, and having, like a workshop where we could talk to them about material, about the importance of editing, about getting to the point quickly, you know, and how to.
I think it would be great, because how many comics do we know, guys that do this for a living and are doing great, that, that do have magical thinking. Well, it just comes to me, and I need to do this to make it happen. Like understanding how to write music has never damaged anyone's creativity. So I think the idea of like analyzing it and treating it like a job, and how do you sit down and write and some people go, well, I don't sit down and write. It, just, it just occurs to me.
Well, okay. But like, it's like, there's a great quote by Chuck Close. You know, the artist Chuck Close.
No.
Great artists like pointillist. And he said that inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just go to work. Hmm.
Yeah. It's similar to Steven Pressfield's work, you know, the war of art.
Oh, I love that.
Yeah. Fantastic book.
It's really something, isn't it? But I think, I think it's, I'm onto something here because I think a lot of people want to do something creative with their lives. I think a lot of people want to, they like standup comedy. It's becoming a bigger thing. I think more people will want to try it.
And just giving them the, the kind of the, the instruction manual, early on.
Yeah.
Because then what they're having to do is what, what we did. You watch a lot of comedy and then you kind of reverse engineer what you hear people do. So you watch the greats. You watch Stephen Wright and Emo Phillips, and Rita Rudner and Wanda Sykes, and whatever you're looking at. And you go, okay.
So they must have had the punchline first. And then they must have, if they were doing that wordplay, that's how, that, that's probably how they did it. Okay. So you take the, you can take all the structure. You can steal the structure.
And then come up with your own content. It's a great kind of, you know.
Yeah. Well, that's what a lot of people do in the beginning, right? They make jokes that are similar to a joke that someone that they enjoy would write. You know, like say.
It's in their voice. It's in there. They find themselves kind of doing. And then there's different ages in comedy where certain people kind of come through and have a real effect on how everyone's performing.
Like David Tell. Yeah. Patrice O'Neill used to always say, let's talk about how many babies he had. Yeah. Like, in that so many comics copied his voice.
I mean. And David Tell's like probably one of the bigger ones.
Well, I think he's, he's been incredibly influential. It feels like there's, he's got the props later on, but I mean, it, it kind of.
He's the worst at promoting of any. Him. Yeah. There's two brilliant comedians that are fucking terrible at promoting. And because of that, they don't get the credit they deserve.
Colin Quinn and David Tell. Those, those are, in my opinion, those are the two that should be selling out arenas.
Yeah. I mean, Colin Quinn's solo shows, uh, all, I think there's, is that three or four now? The, um.
He just did one at the club a couple of weeks ago and the whole staff, everyone, the comics, the staff, everyone was raving. He said. About how brilliant his writing was, the timing. They said he put on a masterclass.
It's almost like everything he says is in that comedic. Yeah. He's been incredibly influential. He's yeah.
Fabulous. And then, you know, I tell it feels like there's, you haven't put out enough material. I'm kind of almost like, I want to be morbid here, but David Tell's not going to live forever. And at some stage you go, there's not enough. I mean, there's shanks for the memories, which is great.
And there's lots of kind of appearances here and there, but it feel like I want more.
Yes.
Well, I mean, I love bumping mics. I thought bumping mics was like, it's great. I mean, that's another great, like, you know, Netflix hats off, you know, to give Jeff Ross and Dave, like to make it kind of feel like it was in three parts. And it felt like, it felt like a visit to New York. It felt really, and those shows, whenever there's a festival and those guys come and play, it feels like, oh, well, that's the late night hang.
Yeah. It's fun. Yeah. It's, and it's so improvisational, and they're both so good off the cuff, but it's, I think, what Dave enjoys is just the work. I mean, when you talk to him, he gets up in the morning, or whenever he gets up, he goes to the coffee shop, smokes a cigarette, drinks coffee and starts writing, goes over the news, finds out what's going on.
When he goes into a town, like, say, he's in Cleveland, what's going on in Cleveland? Oh, there's a scandal with the mayor. Oh, okay. There's something going on with the roads. Oh, okay.
And then he starts writing things about it. The team sucks. Oh, let's write about that.
This is the life, right? It's the, I don't know. I mean, maybe he's as successful as he needs to be, because really, what's this about? It's quite stoic, I think. I've become quite the stoic on going, well, the world ordered a standup comedian.
I need to honor that.
Yeah.
I'm a standup. So anything that's not writing jokes or performing jokes is not doing the thing. Right. And the thing is all I care about.
I would add to that that it's good to experience life too. And then I think one of the things that accentuates life is accentuating your perspective on things. And that comes from experiences. And there's one problem that some comics have, where they just perform and travel all the time. And a lot of their jokes-.
Airplane material. Yeah.
It revolves around what they know.
It's hard. Work-life balance is very tricky. I've had kids quite late in life. And work-life balance is hard.
It's difficult. Being a comedian, here's the first world problem I have.
Work is more fun than fun.
Yeah.
It's more fun than fun. More fun than any vacation. What are you doing on a night out? Yeah. No, we went and had dinner.
Okay. Did a thousand people clap when you walked in the restaurant? No. No, they didn't. Did you get a standing ovation as you left the restaurant?
Right. Well, no, I didn't. And I thought I did very well at dinner.
I have often thought of how many people live from the cradle to the grave and never kill. And what a sad thing that is to never experience that. Just destroying an audience for an hour.
Here's the depressing thought. Some people live and die and they never hear their own voice.
Mmm.
So, maybe teaching stand-up comedy. I kind of think that might be the next thing. I'm 50 now. I feel like it's- That might be the next thing of like going- And I'm kind of looking for things that will make me feel like an imposter. Mmm.
I want to feel like an imposter. I want imposter syndrome. Mmm. I like it. And I feel very comfortable in a theater stage now, playing to 2,000 people.
Great. I want to play arenas, so I don't feel as comfortable. And I want to kind of become a bit of a teacher, because I think becoming a teacher, I think I'll go, I'm not good enough to teach anymore. I can't wind your neck in. You're being presumptuous.
Mmm. I think that's a good feeling to chase.
Yeah.
Because imposter syndrome is like the most normal thing in the world. As you level up through life, you should always feel like a bit of an imposter.
I've talked to virtually every great comic and they all have that. Yeah. They all have that moment in their life. They're like, when the people are clapping and they're introducing their name and everybody goes crazy, they're like, why are they clapping?
Yeah. What the fuck is this?
I'm a fraud.
I used to open with that a lot in theaters. Let's manage our expectations, people. Let's-. Yeah. It's like, it's a terrible thing when you get like, when the applause is louder when you, when you walk on than when you walk off.
Oh, yes.
Like, and we've all had like, ah, okay. You were excited to see me, but ah, the show wasn't ready yet.
Right. Yeah. Yeah. There's always that. It's.
also, there's an incredible lack of documentation about the process of standup comedy. And it's one of the great things about podcasts is that it has served as an archive where you can, I mean, I've had dozens and dozens of conversations with great comics where I asked them about their process.
It is. I mean, partly that's the thing driving it. I mean, I think the podcast thing has taken off and it turns out talking about comedy in the process is interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think there's breadcrumbs there, like Steve Martin's book, Born Standing Up.
I think that's the, if anyone's interested in the secrets of comedy, they're out there and it's about 10.99 in all good bookshops. But it's that thing of like going, decoding that and making that kind of a, yeah, coming up with a language, coming up with a, with something that you could go give a 14 year old, and they could, you know, write their own jokes. And I mean, they might not do it as a career, but it might be a fun, a fun, a fun hobby to have. At the moment, comedy feels like it's for the professionals and there's no amateur circuit, but like music and sports, you've got professionals. Okay.
You've got the, you've got the, the, the, the greats, and then you've got people that just do it for fun.
Yeah.
Why not have that going on? Why not have more comedians, more comedy clubs?
Yeah. Well, one of the things that we set up at our club is two nights of open mic nights. So we have open mic night on Sunday and open mic night on Monday. And then we have the staff of the club. are the, all the door?
people are all professional comedians who auditioned for that job with their act. So there are people that aspire to be professionals, and this is sort of like an apprenticeship.
I met a couple of them last night. I mean, it kind of great that thing. Yeah. It's just, it's, but the whole vibe of the place, then, is it, it's in, you know, everyone is in service.
Yeah.
Of this night, of this thing.
This thing. Yeah.
A theatrical performance.
But it's the only art form that is consumed all over the world, loved by everyone, cherished by people, but does not have a direct professional path in order to be successful. There's not, it's not. like music. You learn how to play a guitar. You can take, you know, online classes.
You could figure out how to compose music. You can get together with bands and practice and put it together. There's a path. With standup comedy, it's just go up and figure it out. Yeah.
Go up and figure it out. And it's very clunky and it's a lot of wasted time. And I think a lot of that time can be sort of repurposed if we can give people more clear guidelines. There's no way anyone can tell you how to do your style, because your style is going to be different than Tony Hinchcliffe's style, which is going to be different than Dave Chappelle's style. Everybody's style and who they are and what they present, their view of the world.
Comedians leak is always my kind of theory on, like, you can't watch someone for an hour and not know who they are.
Yeah.
Even if, like, I mean, I'm joke to joke. I'm just joke to joke on stage. And yet people know when I'm telling the truth and when I'm bullshitting, and when it's real and when it's not real, people get a real sense of you through your act.
Yeah.
Through watching you. Do you travel around the world much? Do you do much overseas?
Yeah. I haven't been lately, but I did the O2 Arena a few months back. Actually a year ago. I did it in October last year. Yeah.
I did that just for fun.
I mean, I'm like, I think I'm 40 countries in now, ongoing, and you go, what's happened the last 10 years? Like, the English language has become bigger and the English language was big to begin with. But things like YouTube and Netflix has meant because they used to be a thing in certain countries where they would dub every movie and every TV show into the local language and they would get it a little bit later and it wouldn't matter. And the local actors would do the voice and the show would be a hit. Great.
That's all gone now, in the age of kind of global connectivity. People know what Game of Thrones was on last night and the new specials by Joe is out this evening. So they watch it sort of straight away and they watch everything in English. YouTube doesn't bother translating things. So everyone's English has kind of gone up again.
So you can go to quite obscure places and everyone wants to come out and see stand up comedy and they all know who you are and they're all listening. It's kind of, it's an amazing way to see the world.
It is. It is an amazing way to see the world. And it is interesting how comedy translates into these other places and how they, how they absorb comedy. It's very different. Like, I took Tony to Stockholm.
We did Sweden. It was great. It was great. But he was like, dude, I feel like I bombed. I go, you did really well.
Why? He goes, because there was like, they're quiet in between the jokes. I was like, that's interesting.
Yeah. You go to some places, though. And it's like, I remember playing in Finland, Denmark, Sweden.
Stop laughing.
And then, at the end of the show, nuts. Because it's like, it's more like a theatrical performance is the thing that they've seen before.
Yes. Yes. I'm like, they laughed at all your jokes. He's like, yeah, I know. But it, just like, felt like it was disjointed.
I go, you're just used to these rowdy American crowds that like, there's always noise going on.
If you're used to playing the clubs as well, I play mainly theatres. So if I go into a club, I'm very disturbed. They're serving drinks during the set. This is, what's going on? What's happening here?
But, of course, because you're not in that field, there's certain countries where you'll get a standing ovation, like Canada, America, Australia, love a standing ovation. They're getting up to leave anyway. They might as well. The UK, the risen Christ, could come on stage and they'd go, yeah, I don't, I don't think. Well done.
It's like, that's just not the thing.
Why is that? My friends from the UK that have come to America, one of the things that they've all sort of said is that in the UK, they kind of want you to not do well. And whereas in America, they sort of celebrate you succeeding.
I think culturally, if you think about what America is about, it's, you know, it really, I suppose it dares to dream. There's a bit of a tall poppy syndrome in the UK where people do too. well. It's like, well, let's cut him down to size. Whereas America is.
for, you know, dreamers and they're going to do something and they're going to, it's exciting. I mean, Austin's got a real feel at the moment, for, you know, that every city whispers to you. So Los Angeles says, be more famous. And New York says, make more money. And Austin seems to be saying, be creative and weird.
They're happy, we're here too. That's what's really cool. It's like they've embraced it because, you know, a scene moved into a city. There's 15 world-class comedians that live here now. that didn't live here three years ago.
Was Ron White the first?
Yes.
Yeah. Ron White's a guy that means nothing in the UK. Like he's not famous in the UK. I can't see why. He's so good.
And he's retired, except for my club. So he's at the club all the time.
Well, have you got Polaroids of him?
No, he loves me.
That poor man's trying to retire and you keep on driving him back.
He doesn't really want to retire. He just wants to not travel anymore. And I said, Ron, you don't have to travel. You can get a new crowd every night of the week. Anytime you want, you can go up.
And so he'll just text me, you know, hey, you doing a show tonight? I'm like, fuck, yeah. You coming? He's like, fuck, yeah. And then he comes down and he's doing acid, and it's fucking, he's an animal.
He's so fun and he's so good. And it's like for him, it's taken all the negativity out of stand-up comedy, which is the travel and the weariness. He just leaves his house, drives 15 minutes. He's at the club, does a set, hangs out. We all party and laugh and have fun.
And then he leaves. And so he's there three, four nights a week sometimes.
That's fantastic.
Oh, it's so much fun.
I like the travel, I've got to say. I like everything about, I think that thing, when you have a job and you're living your dream, you're doing what you want to do in life. I think it's on you to enjoy all of it. So the airport lounges and the delays and the early mornings or whatever, the flights, the whole thing, you have to embrace it all.
Good for you. I'm glad you take that perspective. That's very healthy. Yeah, that's what everybody should take.
But it's that thing, isn't it? That thing in life. Disposition is more important than position.
Yes.
How you are in your head. We all know billionaires that are miserable and people sweeping the streets very happy.
Yes.
And it's that thing of disposition. And it seems to be, I know it's trite, but it seems to be. the thing is gratitude.
Yes.
Gratitude is the cure for resentment. Yes. And there's so much resentment around.
It's such a maligned word because it gets attached to woo-woo bullshit and people wear wooden beads and it gets attached to posing.
I think gratitude is what it's, like. People imagine it's about the thing and not the environment is the thing we should be grateful for. Yes. That we live in this time. You know that.
Steven Pinker Enlightenment Now book? Mm-hmm. You sort of go, well, now.
Yeah.
Now, I had a hot shower this morning. Before 1930, no one had had one.
Right.
People didn't know what hot showers were. They washed once a week in cold water. Yeah. Good luck, everyone. Everyone smelled disgusting.
The world that we live in now is so fucking great.
Yeah. We just don't appreciate it because we're so accustomed to it.
Well, it's that, what do they call that? It's the hedonic treadmill. You get used to the good things really quickly.
Yes.
And so you're searching for more. You look around. It's an extraordinary, well, the idea that comedy is a thing at the moment. Imagine if we'd been born in the 1940s. Not really.
We don't have that.
I guess we could have gone on before the band and said something, but it wasn't quite. The people that started, who were the first people in America?
Lenny Bruce.
Lenny Bruce.
He was really the first to do our style of comedy. Yeah. Yeah. But it was our style of comedy where he's just talking about life. Everybody before that was like, two Jews walked into a bar.
They buy it. Yeah. It was like set up punchline.
I do old, I mean, it's very old timey really in a sense, because I do jokes. So they stand and fall. It's very high wire. Yes. It's binary.
This is funny or not. There's no story behind it that you can, I mean, sometimes I do longer form, but really it's quite like old school jokes. But yeah, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, like people that started playing theaters and clubs and like to draw a crowd. So you weren't just...
And then Pryor was the first one to really do it well.
I never think Dick Gregory gets enough props.
He doesn't.
People don't talk about it. People don't talk about what he did and part of the struggle, and he's incredible as a figure.
Well, you know, he's also the one that exposed the Kennedy assassination.
No, I didn't know that.
Dick Gregory went on the Geraldo Rivera show 12 years after Kennedy was assassinated.
Who had conspiracy theories 35 minutes in?
I have it fucking every 20 minutes.
Wait a second.
It pops up like magic.
So hang on. So, because I know he was at a big part in the civil rights movement.
Yes.
And was incredibly brave. He's kind of to a great documentary, like a proper Judd Apatow. three hour, Dick Gregory, here's everything you need to know. documentary. I would love that.
Yeah, I would love a documentary on him as well. We've sang his praises many, many times. Showtime put one out two years ago. Oh, they did. Oh, the one, and only Dick Gregory, 2021..
Wait a second. Showtime, have a time machine, and they used it to steal this idea? I think so. Motherfuckers.
He was fantastic during the Vietnam War. He was fantastic during the civil rights movement.
So, get back to the Kennedy thing.
So, he went on the Geraldo Rivera show in 1975, and so this is 12...
How old is Geraldo?
He's old as fuck. Yeah. So, but he looked good back then. He looks pretty fucking good now. So, Dick Gregory went on and he went on with the Zapruder film, and it was the first time the Zapruder film was ever exposed to the public.
So, Geraldo Rivera played the Zapruder film and you see Kennedy grabbing his neck where he got shot from the front.
And Dick Gregory brought it on.
Yes, Dick Gregory brought the film to Geraldo and played it.
And our next guest is a comedian. for a bit of light relief. He's going to show you the Zapruder film.
How many concert gigs did he do? How many appearances did he come on? I don't know exactly what kind of video he talked about, because it's a long, it's a 20 minute video.
Okay. Well, screw ahead. So, he shows the video of Kennedy being shot and then he goes, and I'm going to be at the Laugh Factory in Miami Beach on Thursday. Come see me.
The net effect of that is to make more people watch it. Well, I'm telling you right straight out, that if you are at all sensitive, if you're at all queasy, then don't watch this film. Just put on the late night movie, because this is very heavy. It's the film shot by the Dallas dress manufacturer, Abraham Zapruder, and it's the execution of President Kennedy. And Bob and Dick, would you please narrate what we're seeing as we show this film?
This is commercial footage leading into Dealey Plaza. This is the car on Main Street.
So, this film was taken by actual newsmen. This was spliced together with the Abraham Zapruder film? Yes. All right. So, this is the beginning of the motorcade.
What you're seeing now is in slow motion, so that you can grasp what is happening. This is a film taken by Marie Muchmore that leads into the Zapruder film. It's for time continuity. The President is waving to the crowd here.
And Jacqueline Kennedy, of course, is sitting alongside him in the open car.
Right. This is from Orville Nix's film.
This is originally 8mm footage, and they're heading now toward Elm Street. They're on Houston Street. now. They're going to make a left-hand turn. It's on the corner where they're going to make the turn there that the book depository was.
Now, this is the Zapruder film. Okay. So, the cars are coming along now into Dealey Plaza? Yes. These are the lead motorcycles of the motorcade.
All right. Now, with the President, and Mrs. Kennedy is also Governor Connolly. Right. Now, before he goes behind the sign, the President is waving to the crowd.
When he comes out from behind the sign, he is shot. Then Governor Connolly is shot. He's already been hit? He's already been hit.
And now?
At the bottom of the screen, the head shot. That's the shot that blew off his head?
It's the most horrifying thing I've ever seen in the movie. It is. I mean, it's genuinely shocking watching it now, isn't it?
Yes. It's genuinely shocking. But it was the first time people saw that his head moves back and to the left, indicating a shot from the front. And that fell against the narrative that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. There was a ton of eyewitnesses that said they heard gunshots from the grassy knoll.
And then there was also this ridiculous magic bullet that they had to attribute to Lee Harvey Oswald's gun, because one bullet had hit an underpass and ricocheted and hit a person. So they knew that one of the bullets that got shot missed Kennedy, hit the underpass, hit a curb, and ricocheted and hit this guy, and he got brought to the hospital.
How on earth do we not have an answer to this now?
Well, they keep hiding the data. They won't release it. In 2017, they were due to release it. They wouldn't release it. then.
It was, again, I believe in 2021 they were supposed to release it.
It's very odd. I mean, conspiracy theories are sort of fascinating because they're simple solutions to complex problems. So a lot of them, I kind of go, well, I'm not sure whether there's any validity in that. It just seems like an easy solution to this thing, which is incredibly nuanced and complex. But the Kennedy thing, you go, well, it's the president got shot.
How could they have covered this up?
1963, there was no independent journalism. There was no YouTube. There was no online commentators that weren't captured by a system. They weren't a part of an enormous structure like the New York Times or the Washington Post, or whatever the fuck it was. And the Zapruder film, again, had been archived for 13 years before it was, or 12 years, 12 or 13?.
I didn't realize that. I kind of, I assumed stupidly that he got shot and the film came out the next week.
No, no, it didn't.
12 years.
I believe it was, was it 75 that it came out? I remember reading into this, though, it was like the right frame, like frame 313 or something like that, that hadn't been seen. They did have the Zapruder film and they posted a lot of it in the screenshots and, like Life. In Life Magazine, because Life Magazine owned it. But they left some of it out.
And then somehow or another, Dick Gregory acquired it, and that was around 75.. And that's when he aired it on television. And when he aired it on television, it just opened up everyone's eyes. They're like, well, anyone who'd ever seen anything get shot knows that when you get hit with something from the back, you don't go back towards the shot. The impact throws the head back.
You see the spray of the bullets and it appears he's getting hit multiple times from multiple angles.
What's your, what's your feeling on it? I mean, you've looked into it, you're a big conspiracy guy, but what, who do you think orchestrated JFK's death?
That's a good question. I mean, Tucker Carlson came out on television and said that CIA killed Kennedy. And I think that's probably one of the reasons why he got removed from Fox. I don't know who did it. I really would be, I would be talking out my ass.
A deathbed, confession or something. Because I mean, conspiracies. more broadly, you kind of go, well, it involves sort of cognitive dissonance.
Wasn't there a deathbed? confession from E. Howard Hunt? There was something. Yeah, I think it was E.
Howard Hunt.
Okay.
Who was one of the people that was supposedly on the grassy knoll. There was, Woody Harrelson's father was supposed to be involved in this too. He was apparently a hit man. There was, according to the lore, the last confessions of E. Howard Hunt.
Yeah, the ultimate keeper of secrets regarding who killed JFK. And I think-.
Yeah, that's how you keep a secret. A pipe.
He, I think, on his deathbed, he said that he was involved in the conspiracy to kill the president. I don't know who was involved. I mean, I think it was probably a bunch of people. There was a lot of people that wanted Kennedy out of there. I mean, he wanted some pretty radical changes.
He wanted to disband the intelligence agencies. He thought that secrecy was abhorrent. And he talked about it openly. And this one speech that he gave about secret societies and he-.
Well, it's all that thing for me. I mean, I'm kind of thinking about maybe doing a bit about this. About saying, look, because it involves two thoughts. You've got to believe the government are, there's a deep state that is sort of geniuses and can cover these things up. You know, fake a moon landing.
And also, the government are idiots. They can't organize anything. Well, it's different- What I want to do-.
You can't say the government, right? Because the government is a blanket. That's like saying drugs. Drugs are bad. Well, I'm drinking coffee.
It's not bad. Everybody drinks coffee.
But that thing of like going- What we need is some of those guys from the deep state over here for a week to deal with the regular shit. We need someone on transit duties. We need someone from the deep state to look at hospitals.
Well, in a lot of ways, those are more complex issues than assassinating someone and covering it up. Because back then, again, there's- It's not like information today, where people have like-, Everyone has a cell phone. Like, if you- If the Kennedy assassination happened today, there would be footage from a hundred different angles. Yes. There would be so many people there, and we would- It's amazing how much there is footage.
It is. Amazing. But it was just because he was so important. And back then, you know, there were a few people that were enthusiasts, that had their own personal video camera.
And the thing I guess with conspiracy is some of it's true. Like the biggest conspiracy I think probably of our lifetime was pedophilia in the Catholic Church.
Yeah.
I remember that being talked about when I was a kid. Well, how about in the UK? My mother was crazy.
Jimmy Savile.
Just hiding in plain sight.
How crazy is that? It's really crazy. And that guy looks like a pedophile. Yeah. I mean, he looked like such a fucking creep.
Here's the story I heard on Jimmy Savile, which is interesting. He had a big show on TV called Jim'll Fix It.
Yeah.
Which was him making dreams come true for kids or whatever. You know, they'd write in with a wish. Yeah. And he'd make them come true. But he had that nickname before.
So he was kind of a fixer. You know, he invented the turntable. The two record players together. That turntable.
Oh, like for a DJ? For a DJ.
He invented the dual turntable. Yeah. I mean.
Not all bad.
Pretty much all bad.
99.9%. 99.9% bad.
Real bad. Yeah. What was my joke about him? One good invention. It's a very British joke, but Jimmy Savile, the only man in human history to have fucked more minors than Thatcher.
Oh. That requires quite a lot of information.
About mining.
About mining. Yeah. Margaret Thatcher, what she did to the minors. And also, ah, it's a long way to go.
It's a good joke, though. Yeah.
But the, yeah, no, he was hiding in plain sight and was part of the establishment.
Yeah.
But I think that thing of like going, the story I was told was he was kind of connected very high up because of what he did in terms of fixing things. Like, so the guy that, are you familiar with the perfumer affair? No. So it was the idea that the, the minister for, I think, the ministry of defense was having it. He was, he was having an affair with a lady who was also, Christine Keeler, who was also having an affair with a Russian agent.
Oh. And she had been procured by this other guy who then got assassinated. Oh. Or they think got assassinated. And so I think the story I heard was Jimmy Savile had a similar role for procuring certain things for certain people.
Interesting.
Yeah. So I wonder what he was doing for the police or for the secret service that gave him, what gave him. Right. That, that ability.
That immunity.
Total immunity.
Well, that's, what's. the really scary idea is that there's a ring of people that are pedophiles. That's what terrifies people. that there's a ring of powerful people. that that's the, you know, if you want to go full QAnon tinfoil hat, that's what a lot of people believe.
I presume Jimmy Savile was acting alone. I mean, I presume that's.
But why?
But why? Why do you presume? Why cover it up?
I don't know. I mean, what if other people were also involved? What if other people were also doing the same thing?
Oh, it's a terrifying.
I mean, there's a, there's a, there's a similar case in America with Sandusky, you know, who Jerry Sandusky, he was the, the coach that did a lot of things with kids and work with kids, and everybody had this image that he was this great guy. when it turns out, the entire time he had been molesting kids.
It's pretty horrific.
Yeah. It's horrific, but that's often the role they play. The role they play as.
Well, they have to get themselves into a mission where they're close to.
Yes. Yes. Which is like boy scout, masters and priests.
Which is, you know, it's a terrible thing, because it is something like the scouts, which is very good for kids. go and play together and learn those things and those skills. It's a great organization and yet that's absolutely fucking ruined it. That's the first thing you think of now when you think of the scouts.
Well, the Catholic church is the greatest example of that, right? I mean, you cannot say Catholic priest without someone thinking pedophile. There's no other occupation on earth that has such a connection to pedophilia.
So someone was talking to me about the, the history of the Catholic church and what happened, and the idea of the thing that turned the Catholic church bad was the plague. So the plague hit in the middle ages and before then the priest was the smartest guy you'd ever met. Smartest guy in the town became a priest.
Could read Latin.
This guy could read. This guy can read. There's just shapes on a page to us, but like had access to books, was reading, was, was the most erudite, brilliant guy. The Bishop was even smarter than that. The Pope was a genius.
Great. So the plague happens and the plague wipes out. I think it's a third of the European population, but it might've been more than that. And it wiped out a third of regular people, but it wiped out 90% of priests, because priests had to give last rites. So they were around the plague more than regular people.
I need the last rites. I'm dying. Okay. Then he dies. So the barrier to entry for getting into the priesthood went from, you've got to be great to, ah, you seem to have all your own teeth and you can string a sentence together.
You'll be great. So all of that stuff that comes after downstream of that, like the plenary indulgences, this thing where you could buy your way into heaven in the middle ages. You could sort of pay someone to go, yeah, you can make sure I'm okay. when I get there, though. That kind of nonsense came along afterwards, when the, when the, it had all kind of come.
down. Yeah.
The corruption and the...
Interesting. Yeah. I had heard that it was connected to celibacy and that initially there was no celibacy clause. They weren't...
No, that came in the middle ages. So it was that thing of, they wanted to be more like Christ. So they, they, who was celibate. And so they went, well, I'm going to be, you know, one priest said, well, I'm going to be more like him. Live like Christ.
I'm going to be celibate and not have a wife. And then that kind of took off as an idea.
That's interesting, because what I had heard was that...
Because it didn't happen in England.
They were banging all the women because the priests were rock stars. I mean, if you, if you have a community where the priest is literally connected to God and he's a biological male and he's horny, and these women worship them and came to them for...
Also, it's, it's the original show business. Yes. I mean, if we were, if we were doing, if we were who we are in the 13th century, a hundred percent priests or... Jesters. I can get up in front of these people and talk to them for an hour a week.
Right.
Done.
Right.
Yes. Put me down for one of those.
Right. And they'd seek guidance from you. You'd get all these accolades. And apparently they were allowed to have sex with women and they were fucking everybody. Yeah.
Just like rock stars, because they were probably the most popular people in the town.
The other thing that ties, that's very interesting. The other thing that ties it to, um, like there's, there's often been, and it's a very unpleasant thing, but there's often been a conflation between homosexuality and pedophilia, which is so, it's just fucking nonsense. Right.
It's nonsense.
It's nonsense. But it keeps on kind of rearing its head in a weird way. But there is something with the Catholic church where it's hard to remember how vilified gay guys were a generation ago, let alone two generations ago.
Yeah. So. Well, very recently in the nineties.
It's crazy, but it's true. So there's a weird thing where, okay, so let's say you're a gay guy in, I don't know, 1890.. You knew you were gay when you were 14 or whatever. Like everyone else, is getting married and going off and you go, I'm a gay guy. The priesthood was a smart move because you went, well, I don't have to get married.
And I know I'm not about that. So I'll join the priesthood. So you joined the priesthood. You were a gay guy. There were other gay guys that had the idea.
Great. Right. Now here's the weird thing. Pedophilia was the same level sin in the eyes of the church at that level. So one covered for the other.
It was all, you were all damned and going to hell. It was all terrible, which is obviously some fucking nonsense, but yeah.
Well, there's also, there's a different attitude towards, uh, same sex, uh, minors and adults. That is, with some people in the gay community. In fact, there was a law that they were trying to pass in California where they were saying that the age of consent being 18 was in somehow or another. Uh, anti LBGTQ, because some, yeah, because some young men sought mentors in older gay men, some young men who are gay.
That sounds like.
Wasn't there, there was a, was his Klein. Is that what his name? There's a politician in California that was very controversial because he was promoting this.
Very controversial because he's promoting pedophilia. Yeah. That's going to be controversial.
Well, I think his idea was like 16 and 17 year old boys and that that should be okay, which is, you know, it gets. I think it was very sketchy.
That sounds also.
Let's wind it back. Here's something that we could do, right? Here's something we could start a campaign for those laws about, you know, the age of consent in the UK is 16..
Yeah.
But those laws should be for 17 and 18 year old boys.
Yes.
They shouldn't apply to us.
Right. Shouldn't apply to a 55 year old man.
So Romeo and Juliet law, I think they have it in New York. They have it in certain states where you go, yeah, that's, the age of consent is 16 for her. And that guy who's 17 and it's her boyfriend and they've come up at school together. That makes sense. And then at 18, maybe, okay, go, do whatever you're going to do.
I remember when I was 18 years old, when I turned 18, my girlfriend was a year younger than me and she was 17.. And I was terrified that I was going to go to jail because I was, I was a legal adult and she was still a child. Right. Even though we started dating when I was 16, or I was, I was, yeah, no, I was 17 and she was 16.. And then, when I turned 18, I was like, oh my God, like, can I get in jail for this?
I remember thinking that, like, is this illegal? Because it kind of technically is. I think, if you're dating a girl like that, I mean, this is 1985.. So Gavin Newsom signed a law that could give judges a say on whether to list someone as a sex offender for having oral or anal sex with a minor. The bill would expand discretion currently granted judges in statutory rape charges, as promoted by bringing fairness under the law to LBGTQ defendants.
The current law, in place for decades, permits judges to decide whether a man should be placed on California sex offender registry if he had voluntary intercourse with someone from 14 to 17 years old and was no more than 10 years older than the person.
Right. I don't want to, I don't want to come to your show and be all controversial, but I think, broadly speaking, don't be a pedophile. Right.
I think that's a good thing to say. But that discretion says only apply to a man who had vaginal intercourse. The new law changes permits a change. The new change rather permits judges to use the same discretion when the case involves voluntary oral or anal sex. The measure won't apply when a minor is under 14, when the gap is larger than 10 years or when either party says the sex wasn't consensual.
The law does not change the age of consent in California, which is 18.. Adults caught having sex with minors will still face statutory rape charges. Yeah. Scott Wiener. That's the guy.
San Francisco Democrat.
Great name.
Yeah. Isn't it funny how those Wiener guys keep getting in trouble? Anthony Wiener, Scott Wiener.
Nominative determinism is a thing.
It's like the simulation theory. It's like the universe is playing little jokes on you. Yeah. But this guy, like, there's photos of this guy at gay pride parades, like, wearing a dog collar. Like, you know, he's….
I mean, that's…. But I don't have a problem with that. I got zero problem with that. I got a problem with him saying….
Just quote on it. The article continued. The law ends discrimination by treating LBGTQ young people the exact same way that straight young people have been treated since 1944, Wiener said in a statement, adding, today California took yet another step towards equitable society. So what that seems to me is, like, there was a law already in place giving judges discretion, but it was only for vaginal sex, and he thought that it should apply to oral and anal sex. Yeah.
It seems like the law is the issue, right? Because 10 years older, like, if someone's 26,, another person's 16, or 15 and 25, that's crazy. I mean, there's a reason why it's 18.. Like, 18 is, like, reasonable.
Yeah. And I think you have to give people agency at some point. Yeah. At some point you have to give people agency and go, look, you're allowed to make your own decisions. now.
Do as you, please. Yes.
I mean, you are certainly a young person at 18, but if you're a young man at 18 and you decide to have sex with a man who's 30 years old, like, that's completely reasonable.
I think it's also, you know, try telling an 18-year-old they're not full grown. I mean, so. I wonder in the future, because the mind, your brain, isn't fully developed. I think it's 25..
Well, 25 is the age your frontal cortex is fully formed, I believe, as a male. I think for females, females, like, mentally mature earlier than men, too.
I wonder what age it is.
They're generally smarter than men.
I wonder, in a generation's time, will everyone go, sorry, you were fucking a 21-year-old? I wonder, will it ever go the other way?
That seems silly. That seems silly. Especially men and women. I mean, if it's a 21-year-old man and a 30-year-old woman has sex with you, she's going to be brought up on charges. That's insane.
Yeah. You had that great bit about that.
Yeah. That's a great bit of yours. I said there's no sexual equality. when it comes to child molesting. Yeah.
I said, because a grown man can molest a 16-year-old girl, but a grown woman can't really molest a 16-year-old boy. She can only let him fuck her. Like, what's the worst thing that happened? You found out about something awesome early? Like, poor Billy got his dick sucked by the hot teacher.
Yeah. He's never going to recover.
It's very good. Thank you. And we're not denigrating the suffering of men that have been molested.
No, no, no. But it's always like...
You had a great line on that as well about some guy that fucked his teacher and Dimitri said, yeah, he died. He got high-fived to death.
I think that was Zach Galifianakis.
Was that, Zach?
I think so.
I think it's Dimitri.
You might be right.
I'll double down. I mean, those guys are both phenomenal writers.
I think it might have been Galifianakis. But either way, great joke. But it's high-fived to death. But it's a difference. There's a difference.
And it's also the difference in how we... It's unfortunate. But there's a prejudice about women having sex versus men having sex. That a woman is being taken advantage of by the man. Like they don't have agency.
Whereas the man is the pursuer and the predator. And so there's an aspect of that that goes along with it.
We don't think of a 16-year-old boy having sex with a hot 30-year-old woman as that boy being molested. We just don't.
Yeah. Well, I suppose increasingly we will. I haven't given it a lot of thought. But it does strike me that that thing of agency and being 18 and being a grown-up in society. I suppose the problem is that thing...
What's that book? Is it Jonathan Hayt? The Coddling of the American Mind. The idea of going... If there's no freedom for kids anymore.
Like you're not allowed to go and play on your own. You're not allowed to leave the house and mess around. And the only freedom you have now as a kid is online. So you're not allowed to go and experience that thing of being out in the world.
In danger. Yeah. And knowing what's safe and what's not safe. And having experiences with people that are sketchy.
So then, if you don't get any of that until you're 18.. And then suddenly you get all of that. But you've not been drip-fed it. Right. That thing of like...
I know what your childhood was like. We were pretty... You know, grew up in Slough. Sort of working class. To the west of London.
And we were in a nice little bit. And we would go out on bikes in the morning. And you would come back for your dinner in the evening. You would just be out for the day. I don't think...
Yeah. My childhood was very similar.
I don't know if that exists in America anymore.
No. That's almost like child abuse. It's almost like neglecting your parental duties. Just let your kid just roam out of the house and come back at dinner.
14-year-olds used to be babysitters. Now 14-year-olds need babysitters.
Yes. That's a good point.
And I don't think anything's changed about humanity. So I think the idea that you go... You have agency at 18.. But like we... Like, it goes from 0 to 60..
Yes.
In one day.
Right. That's a good point.
And like the drinking age is 21 here. It's 18 at home. But you go... Well, actually it kind of... Everyone assumes in the UK you can drink a little bit when you're 14 in the park with your friends.
And it's also... The different levels of experience of people that are 16 and 17 years old. Like, when I was in high school, the first girlfriend that I had, she had a single mom. And she was essentially on her own and left to roam around from the time she was very young. And she had been going to concerts when she was 12 and 13 years old.
And she'd already had sex before I had. Like. she was a year younger than me. And when we met, I was a virgin and she wasn't. And so it was...
You know, she was more worldly and mature than I was. Like. she knew how to go to concerts. She knew how to get backstage and meet people.
The idea that we're saying, you know, an age like 18.. Every 18 year, oh, that's just a solid state. Everyone's the same. Everyone's different. Very different.
I mean, everyone comes to it from a very different perspective. Sure. People mature at different speeds. It's very... I mean, there'll be young people listening to this as well.
It's that thing where it seems like such a race when you're young.
Yes.
To connect, to get there, to do everything.
To be grown up.
And you feel like you need to make all the decisions.
Yeah.
When you're 19.. Oh, okay. What's your college degree? What am I going to do? Yes.
What am I going to... It's a panic.
Well, that's what's so predatory about America. Because that's when student loans come in. And you get shackled up with these student loans that you can never get out of debt with. Student loans in America. I don't know how you have it in the UK.
You have free education, right?
No. We used to have free education. So when I went to college, it was free. You had to pay for your bed and board. And it was free.
I went to university. I got a free education. It feels ridiculous that we let that go. It does feel ridiculous. Maybe it's like...
Okay. So if it's too expensive, then I can see an argument to say, well, on academic merit, we cut the number of places until we can afford for it to be free. But it's free for everyone.
Well, it certainly benefits the greater good of society to have more people educated. And what greater thing to spend tax dollars on than to educate the populations? How could you make an argument against it? And with the predatory loans in America, the way it works is, like, say if you start a business and you take out a big loan to start a business and your business fails and you're hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, you can go bankrupt. And then you're absolved of that debt.
If you get a student loan, you are never absolved of that debt. You must pay that debt. And the interest keeps increasing over time.
You know what I'm hearing here. What? We need to get into the student debt business.
Sounds like you can't lose.
You think you're making money in comedy? On a podcast? Please. The real money is in student debt.
And it's pushed on people because everybody feels like they have to go to college or they're going to be a loser. And there's people right now in America that are getting social security money, and their social security money is getting docked because they owe student loans. So you're at the end of your life.
Someone made a point recently about a college degree. now is a luxury good. It's like a Louis Vuitton handbag. So you get the luxury good. But what can you do with it?
What's the benefit?
Well, it really depends on the degree, right? Yeah. Some things, like your medical degree. Yeah, you need a degree.
Engineer, something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if it's just an arts degree.
Gender studies.
Then you go, well, what are you going to do with that degree? Like the map is not the territory. Yeah. Who would you rather employ? Someone with an MBA or someone who's got two failed startups.
Failed startups, please. Someone that's been in the trenches and tried it and done it. So I think that thing of, I don't know what advice you would give an 18-year-old today.
It would really depend upon what they want to do. I mean, I'm the worst person to give that advice. Because of my childhood and the way I grew up, very unstable, divorced parents, stepdad, moved to a new place. all the time. I was terrified of rigidity.
I was terrified of a job. I really felt like a loser because I felt like all these people can keep jobs. Why do I hate them so much?
Because it's interesting. What I see in you, and I don't know you that well personally, but I see your work. And the thing flowing through it is discipline. Discipline and freedom seem to be the two things. And you go, and obviously those things have been separated in our minds.
But discipline and freedom are not the same. They're exactly the same. Discipline gives you freedom.
Yeah, that's Jocko Willink. That's what he says. Discipline equals freedom.
Exactly right. That idea of going, well, it's martial arts. All discipline. It's stand-up, which I know is all discipline. Everyone's got ideas.
Everyone talks a good game. It's in the execution. It's in doing it. So that thing of going couldn't hold down the job. But, I mean, you're pretty good at showing up to stuff.
Well, I realized later that it was just I wasn't interested in those things. And what I was terrified of is being forced to do something that I wasn't interested forever. And I saw so many people that they would just wait until they got home every night and just get drunk. And then do it all over again in the morning. And then their bodies were deteriorating.
And they all wound up getting cancer and getting sick. And they all died young. It was sad and depressing and gloomy.
It's work to live as opposed to live to work. Yes. So your thing is, you know, work is the fun stuff. It's all the stuff that you're passionate about. You can try and make that your career.
That's very good advice for anyone that's young listening to this. Like, what are you interested in? What do you pay attention to? Do that. Do that.
You know, because that 10,000 hours thing, it slightly loses the. what could you stand to do for 10,000 hours. 10,000 hours is the minimum. I don't think there's any mastery in 10,000 hours. Right.
But I think there is.
You become a professional at 10,000 hours. Yeah. Well, with me, I just –. when I got into martial arts, then I realized, like, oh, I'm not lazy. I'm just not interested in those other things.
And then, when I got into martial arts, I was extremely disciplined, like, fanatically. Like, I trained every day. I literally lived at the gym. But you – I taught.
This is – you're preaching to the choir. You can't beat your environment.
No.
And that thing of, like, finding your tribe, finding your thing. So a lot of people that are lost just haven't found their tribe, their thing. It's hard if you haven't found it yet because you kind of go, well, it's easy for you to say you found it.
I was also not around people that were following their passions. Everyone that I was around was working. You know, we lived in a blue-collar community, and it was surrounded by a white-collar community. And there's people that had all worked really hard, got a very good education, and got a respectable job, either as a doctor or a lawyer, an accountant or whatever. And they had a wonderful home, and they worked well.
But I looked at them as, like, these deteriorating vessels of flesh that were barely getting by in the world. And I didn't want to do what they were doing. And I didn't know until I got into martial arts, that there were people that were doing different things and that they were surviving and thriving, teaching something that they loved. And so that was my path. My path was competition and teaching.
It's interesting, the teaching thing, because if I think of your stand-up career, you've done what you've done in stand-up, and now you're building a club. And, you know, you've lowered a rope, and you're pulling people up.
Well, it was also I learned how to talk in front of people, because I was painfully shy and socially awkward. as a kid. Like, I would get anxiety going to a bank teller. I thought I was going to have to talk to the bank teller. I remember that.
Like, what is wrong with me? I remember being, like, 16 years old, having to deposit a check, and just being so nervous getting up to the teller.
Yeah. I don't think that's you. I think that's being 16.. I think being a teenager is about being slightly uncomfortable in your own skin and deciding who you're going to be. Yeah.
I worry for the future generations coming up now because of Facebook. Because something like Facebook connects you to your past in a way that we don't have. So, I reinvented myself a couple of times.
Yes, me too.
Like, I was 16, and I moved schools. And it seems like a trivial thing to move school from one grammar school to another grammar school. Kind of, who cares? But it just allowed me to kind of go, oh, I didn't really behave that well at that school. I kind of messed around.
Yes. I was a ne'er-do-well. And then I got to the new one and went, I think I might go to Cambridge. I think I might be really academic.
Right.
And everyone went, okay. Right. Okay, yeah.
No, that's Jimmy. He's a fucking loser. Yeah. Right, yeah. When I would go back to my town that I grew up in later in life, if I'd visit, I would get nervous.
And when I'd go near my high school, I'd feel terrible. I used to have nightmares that I'd have to go back to school. Like, I didn't really graduate, and I'd have to go back.
Isn't that a lovely feeling in standup? Like I was a couple of years in, and I realized I'm never going to have, I'm never going to need my resume again. It's done. Like no one's ever going to care about my exam results again. No one will ever.
Yeah. It's a very freeing thing to go. That was great, but none of that matters anymore.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I wasn't interested in academic things at all. I just, I read a lot, but everything I read was fiction.
And I would only read because I was on the train getting to the Taekwondo school.
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