#1985 - Steven Wright
2023-05-13 02:30:21
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
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It was fun hanging out with you last night.
Yeah, it was.
You know, when you're in one of those rooms backstage, it's the same.
Yeah, it's the same vibe, it's the same fun, even if you don't know the actual people, it's a connection.
Yeah, in a good room, yeah, yeah, we're all having fun telling jokes. The setup is so nice, too, because where the green room is, it's in between the two rooms. So you can go to one room and watch, and then you can go to the other room. Because we have the balcony set up.
I didn't notice that.
Yeah, it's very nice, it's very, very convenient. And that actually was the projector room for the theater, so we converted the projector room for the theater into a green room. So it's perfect, it's a perfect position because it's in between the two rooms.
So you got people going, leaving, coming back from the set, and then you can see them doing it on the monitor.
You can see them on the monitor, or you could just step off into the balcony because we have that comics balcony. So you could watch. Like, if you're on stage, I could just sit up there and watch. I don't have to go downstairs, it's very nice, it's a fun vibe, right?
Absolutely.
It's great for me to watch someone like you, appreciate it, like, go and check it out and go, wow.
Yeah, it's like, you know, right from the beginning, the same, no matter where you go, I mean, if it's a good place.
I would have stayed longer, but I didn't want to. Is this going now?
Yeah, we're going, you don't hear yourself.
No, maybe because I'm not listening.
Is that good? Do you hear it now?
No.
Not at all. No, might have to get on the headsets and go with real ones.
Oh, there it is.
You got it, okay?
Real ones, I made these.
In your wood shop.
Metal shop.
When you started out, was it the Ding-ho days? was that like the first place where you started? What was it like? What year did you start out first of all?
July 79.
Oh, wow.
What was the scene like?
Well, it was the comedy connection.
The little one downstairs.
No, it was on Warrington Street, it was street level, that was the first one.
Before Nick's.
Before Nick's.
So it was the same one, that was the Charles Playhouse, right?
Yeah, you got straight in and it was right in there.
It was an amazing room.
Yeah.
150 people, probably.
I don't even think that many, maybe 100, maybe 90..
That was the first.
Yeah, low, that's where I went to see an open mic there, and then I thought.
What I was doing is I was into comedy from watching the Tonight show. That's when I really got like, Oh, these comedians, Carl and Robert Kline, all these guys. I had to watch the Tonight show because my brother was older than me and we had to watch what he wanted.
So I started watching and then I started to like it. Then I heard that there was a club in town and I thought I should go out. I was 16 when I really was into it, but then when I was about 23, I heard of the club. And I thought, Well, maybe I got to go try it out. I wouldn't have to move to Los Angeles or New York, my character, then I couldn't have 23 and not going to move to Los Angeles.
That was too much for me. So I went to the comedy Connection and I watched a show, and then I learned that the open mic nights was every Wednesday. So then I thought, I'm going to go back in two weeks.
Do you remember your first act?
I don't remember, I remember the first joke was, but I don't remember the rest it was. I said I went into a bookstore and I started talking to this very French-looking girl. She was a bilingual illiterate, she couldn't read in two different languages.
And then it.
And that's how you started.
Yeah, I had about three minutes.
So did you always write in that style, like the sort of non-sequitur absurdist?
No, see, I didn't even write anything until I went to the open mic, watched the show. And when I knew I was going back in two weeks, during that two weeks, I wrote things, but I had never written comedy at all.
But when you first started writing comedy, it was always that style.
It was about 70 like that, it was more like normal-ish. I don't know why it came out like that, I mean,....
I was influenced by Carl and talking about everyday little things, and that's what I. I said, Oh, I'm going to do that. And then the structure of a joke was from listening to Woody Allen's stand-up albums, but I had no....
That's just how it came out, with those two influences plus my own mind.
Well, that's where it gets interesting, right? Because in your own mind, because you have a totally different style than anybody else. In Boston, well, really, anybody else in the country, but in Boston at that time, there was a lot of guys like Lenny Clark and Steve Sweeney and Don Gavin.
There was all these very, very funny comics.
Great, great, every guy you mentioned is hilarious.
Top of the food chain.
Yeah.
I tell everybody to this day that those days in the 1980s, when I lived in Boston, those were some of the best comics that have ever lived. Those guys were murderers.
I totally agree with you.
They were so good, you would go there at any given night and you'd watch Sweeney just destroy Nick's comedy stuff. And he was so fucking good, his timing was so good.
So much energy, you know, and there was so much stuff about Boston and Boston, people fucking loved that shit.
Every one of those guys is different than the other guy. Mike Donovan, Kenny Rogerson, Kenny Rogerson's so prolific. Mike Donovan. Unbelievably hilarious.
Yeah, so many good guys. Lenny Lenny Clark is so funny. God damn he's funny. just great guys too.
It was a very unusual group of artists because they're these wild kind of partying guys. But they had real rigid rules about don't be a hack and don't be a thief, and don't be this and do good comedy. They all just wanted to kill, and there was no real showbiz, sort of like pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It was really just being a headliner, just killing, that's all they did.
And there was no show business there, there were no agents, no producers, no one to say, Oh, you should do it. Why are you doing it like that? It was like being on an island.
That's how I've described it. When we all started, like the club started in 79, so everyone started maybe one year before. One year. Everyone just started at once and we were all learning how to do it. It was weird how it lined up, it wasn't like that.
Club was there for 10 years, the club opens and everyone you just said comes and it just begins.
Like, where was it before?
It wasn't anywhere like Jay Leno was there before. But he would play the Playboy Club, and it wasn't actually a comedy club before this comedy connection.
Yeah, Fran Solomita did a great job of capturing it in that documentary when Stand Up stood out.
Yeah, brilliant.
Great, great documentary.
I agree.
But about what a strange scene it was, and it was arguably the best scene in the country. It might not have been the best scene. In terms of, like, everybody getting to know those comedians worldwide, but in terms of, like, the quality of the comedy, it was as good as anywhere in the world.
I agree, it's one of those fluke things that just happens. Probably like the music thing in the 60s, in the village with the folk musicians and all that, or in London. Yeah, like, it's.
Just all of a sudden these things come together, and then it's just things happen. I'm so grateful to have started there.
Me too. When did you start? I started in 88..
88.
I started after the wave, so I started. You know, there was all the evening at the Improvs then, and stand up specials on like MTV at the half-hour comedy hour. So I started, you know, like George McDonald was the host of open mic nights.
Loved George.
Yeah, and you'd see Teddy Bergeron would stop in, Who is, just to this day, one of the best comedians I've ever seen.
Tremendous.
So good. So I started when the wave of like television comedy was just starting to sort of subside. I kind of caught the last wave, you know of that kind of. Like. The comedy boom was starting to settle down, you know, and it was a lot of mediocre comedy out there. There was a lot of people that were doing what sounded like an impression of what a comedian should sound like, you know, and they were working all over the place.
Now, were you living in Massachusetts?
Yeah, I was living in Newton.
And where did you get it in your head? why did it go into your head? Like I told you, for me, it was watching the Tonight show. How did the Germs start?
Well, definitely watching Stand Up on TV, I used to love watching Richard Jenney on the Tonight show.
Oh, he was me.
So good, he's incredible. I was driving home one night fairly recently, a few years back. And you know how, sometimes, like a Bluetooth on your phone just randomly plays a song when you plug it in, it just randomly played. This Jenney bit and I was laughing so hard driving home. And while I was driving, I downloaded the whole album. And I just listened to the album coming home from Orange County, and it was like, I just forgot.
I kind of forgot how good he was, I forgot how funny he was and all the tags and bang bang, bang, bang bang. He just never stopped.
He did several stand-up specials, I saw him live in California. He's one of those guys where you laugh out loud. Sometimes you can watch a guy and you can think that's really funny, but you're not really laughing out loud. It's not a judgment.
But then there's other guys where both lines up, like Jenney and Kevin Meaney. It's just like, Oh my God, but Jenney, I mean, so prolific.
He was so prolific.
Top guy.
He worked at East Side Comedy Club in Long Island. And I got there on Sunday and the host and a couple other comics were sitting there. They looked depressed and I'm like, what's going on? And they're like, Jenney did four different hours. He did two different hours, two different shows Friday night, he did one hour for the first show, totally different hour for the second show.
Then he does a totally different hour for the first show, Saturday, and another totally different hour for the second. I never heard of such a thing, they said. He never repeated a joke, He said. He did four totally different hours and just murdered, and they all wanted to kill themselves.
Yeah, I would, too, kill myself, not them. It's crazy.
It's crazy how good he was. So I saw him and I saw Kennison. I was actually introduced to Kennison by a girl I worked with. It was a very funny story. She had seen Kennison on HBO. And then she went and acted out. The bit about the homosexual necrophiliacs paying money to have sex with the freshest male corpse.
So this girl, who's a friend of mine, is lying on her stomach in the parking lot, acting it out. She's going, Oh, life keeps fucking in the ass, even after you're dead. It never ends, it never ends, so she's acting this out in the parking lot.
I'm laughing at her acting it out. I couldn't even see the bit.
Yeah, this is your introduction to Sam Kennison.
That's my introduction to Sam Kennison. Is my friend pretending she's getting fucked in the ass as she's dead?
Oh my god, that's touching.
It was touching. I think about her all the time, I really do think about her all the time because she was a girl I worked with. At the Boston Athletic Club in South Boston, I was a trainer there and she was like this, she was very funny.
She was like this big volleyball player girl, she was like a big athlete, strong girl. So seeing her lying on the ground going, Oh, life keeps fucking in the ass, even after you're dead, it never ends.
Was there anyone walking by?
No, luckily, no. She wouldn't give a fuck, though she could have been a comic. She was very funny. She was very funny.
There's a lot of people like that that you meet. They're like, Ah, that guy could have been a comic, you know, a few of those people. So that girl introduced me to Kennison, arguably.
I mean, believe it or not. And then I just saw Kennison for the first time and I was like, Oh, that's comedy too. And that was like, one of the first times I thought I could do comedy. I was like, maybe I got this wrong? I thought comedy was like, Jerry Seinfeld. Richard Pryor polished It's all done and like, you can't do that.
You don't know what you're doing.
I see a little Kennison in you, yeah, a little.
Oh, definitely.
Like a sprinkle.
Kennison, Hicks, Pryor, all of them Lenny Bruce. So I saw an open mic night and once I saw an open mic night, that gave me the confidence. Because I was like, Oh, okay, everybody sucks in the beginning, because, you know, you see someone on my open mic night. The first time I went when I did my show afterwards, Teddy did a set, so Teddy Bergeron went up and just like, showed everybody how it's done.
And for people who don't know Teddy Bergeron, he was so smooth.
Yes, so relaxed, yeah.
And he had this command of the audience and the stage, with his presence and his performance. I just been thinking, I can never do that, how am I going to do that? The guy's so advanced, he's so good.
So that's how I got started, and I got started by friends, friends talking me into doing it.
Oh, they said, why don't you try it? Yeah, like, they pushed you, like, got you to go like.
Yeah, it was my friend Steve, who I'm still one of my best friends to this day. We were hanging out and he was just like, I think you should be a comedian. It was like when I was teaching martial arts, actually, so it was like making them laugh. I'd make my friends laugh when we'd go fight in tournaments.
I'd make everybody laugh before we were about to spar because it was like everybody was real nervous. So for me, it was a nice opportunity to get attention and cut the tension, you know?
That's how it got started.
Yeah, that's how it got started.
But I think a lot of, you know, just because someone's funny hanging out doesn't mean they could do that. I mean, you obviously have done it. But the big difference is like, if you're in a bar with someone hanging and the TV's on, there's a lot happening. Going by, the waitress goes by, someone drops something.
Someone says something about that, something's on the TV, something goes by, truck goes by, there's all these things.
But when you go on the stage, there's nothing happening. So just because you can do that with your friends doesn't really mean. Then you could go do that, because when you walk out, there's nothing right.
It doesn't mean that you can do it, but if you can't, do that with your friends.
You probably wouldn't have it if you don't have that, no?
You're either funny or you're not funny, and if you can be funny with your friends, it's just a matter of. Like, how can I figure out how to be funny in front of everybody else? Yeah, that's where it's tricky. And to me, the most interesting thing about the art form is that no one can tell you how to do it.
You do it very different than I do it, and we both do it very different than Seinfeld does it, and Seinfeld does it different than Louis Anderson did it. It's like everybody's got their own little weird way to do stand-up, and you kind of have to figure that out on your own.
It's like a fingerprint, everyone's mind is like a fingerprint.
Yeah.
You have your own fingerprint and then you've got to figure it out.
And also if you look at art forms that are very popular, like stand-up is obviously a very popular art form. People love to go see it. There's no real courses on how to do it, there's no real structure of it. Like everything else, whether it's music, songwriting, literature, fiction, nonfiction, there's all teaching.
People teach people how to do it, people who've done it already, they teach you how to set up your stories and how to. You know, there's ways to learn almost every other art form, but even acting, they teach acting. you can't really teach stand-up.
You've got to practice it in front of people. You can kind of take classes, the classes. the best thing the classes do is they get you on stage.
Yeah, I've always. Years after I was doing it, I thought back that you are your own teacher and student at the same time. You're standing on the stage, you don't think of it like that because you're just trying to do it. But in hindsight, you can only learn from doing it over and over, and over and over.
Your mind is soaking up like even mistakes that work. oh, oh oh, soak like everything you need every second that works. Oh, that doesn't.
Oh, oh, oh, and we tape them, audio tape them beginning sets, because it's happened so fast, it's like a car accident. The next thing, you know, the thing is, oh, what? And then you can like, Oh, because some of it went better than you thought.
Some of it didn't go as good.
Your writing process must be you have a very difficult style to write for, I would imagine, because your style is. It's non sequiturs. And like, a lot of, it's very absurd, like, is it hard to like? When you write? Do you sit in front of a computer? Do you just come up with ideas as you're walking around, like, what's your process?
In the beginning, I would sit down and look at the paper, like, look for a word to jazz my mind, or look for something. And I would try to find jokes on purpose. In the first six months and then after that, like, I had this thing once. I was looking through the paper and it was an advertisement for electrolysis, and I thought, What an interesting word. Just the sound of the word, what it means, both things at once, what the hell?
So I made a note of that and then I don't know my mind. Because your subconscious is like a factory, it's working when you don't even know that it is. You're minding your own business, you're in line, doing something this just in.
Yeah.
And what my mind did with that was I came up. I had this thing about living in an apartment building where they allowed pets, and I had a pony. I had a Shetland pony named Nicky. And he was once involved in a bizarre electrolysis accident. All the hair was removed, except for the tail. Now I rent him out to Hare Krishna family picnics.
And that whole thing came because I saw the word electrolysis, so I would try to find things on purpose, but then after a while, I didn't. My mind was I would just notice things. Because I think comedy, all art, is based on noticing what's around you. And I would my mind like, I drew a lot, I know that you used to draw too, I would draw realistically in high school and stuff.
Like, if you were going to draw this cup and this two shapes and then you noticed. If you're trying to draw it real, this shape, this shape. And then there's the shape that's in between. That's also a shape which helps you get it accurate, so you don't really notice that shape unless you were trying to draw it. So I think that exercised my mind of noticing, then later on doing the comedy, I was already noticing, I think, was noticing.
Just some people are very aware of what's around. And you know, like in the tower, at the airport, where the radar goes like this, it goes like this. And then there's the little beeps of the planes, like those are the planes. So I think my mind got, like, scanning, like that subconscious, like I'm not going out. I don't walk down the street, thinking I need another joke.
I'm going to go walk down that street, I'm just going around my day, just doing it. But the thing is going. And then it'll see, it'll see a word. It's like, Oh, oh, maybe that. oh, okay.
And then, oh, and then, like, write it down, and I think of the joke, the wording comes pretty fast, like in a minute. It's like, because in my mind, it can only be one way it can be written. And then I just would write it down and then go on with what I was doing. But the noticing never stops.
Don't you think what you do is you're reacting, right? You're talking about the world, but you have to really see the world?
Yeah, you have to really see the world, and I do a real similar thing. Where? Like, if there's a certain subject that I'm working on, like all throughout the day, I'm thinking about that subject. Like, if there's a new bit, it's like, it's just bouncing around in my head, like, what is going on with that? Why do we accept that? Why is that so weird?
And then it's just always playing in the background. Like my mind is trying to sort it out, my mind is trying to figure out what my angle is. And then sometimes I'll just take it on stage and just roll it out and go. Let's see where this goes.
Without it all figured out.
Without it all figured out, I'll just do it in between bits that are real. So I'll do a bit that's good, like it's a solid bit. And then I'll work in that thing. And I'll just say, let's see where this goes. Under pressure. After a bit that kills, you get stuck in this spot, like there's something in there.
Like, where is it? You know? I have like little destinations that I'd like to get to. I'd like to talk about this part of it, I'd like to talk about that part of it, but let me just see.
I think because you're in front of the audience, everything's heightened, so there's a pressure there. So your mind is kicked into another intensity than if you were just, you know, at a red light. So you're trying to survive, meaning get the laugh. You don't want a minute of nothing.
So your brain like turning up the knobs, like we got to figure, let's figure this out.
Right, with all those eyes on you, like, there's something in there, I know it's in there, let me fucking find it, you know? But people kind of know the process now, so people enjoy seeing that.
I've talked to people like guests that have come back and they said, you know, that bit, I saw that bit six months ago and now it's like, totally different. It's amazing, like you figured out this and that, and yeah, yeah, it's like a process. So that the fact that fans can come and check out the process and they'll see a bit. And then they'll come back and see it. Six months later is like a totally different thing. And so it's this like living, breathing thing that you kind of take on stage to water.
Yeah, where's this going? Yeah, and then I sit with it and I'll I'll stare at my notes when I get home.
I'm just trying to think, like, am I missing something? There's another angles or another way I could? How would another person approach this? A person who didn't have this structure already set up for this bit? Maybe someone will look at it differently, maybe the ending should be the beginning.
Maybe the beginning should be the ending. You know, you triggered things. Amazing. No, thank you.
Like, just like just you can't see anything coming, and the connect, the connections, it's like it's all completely logical. Oh yes, oh, you know, and it's so intense, too.
You're like, at this intense presence of like a force.
It's like going on a mental ride, mental roller coaster, you know? Yeah, really amazing, I think.
Thank you.
It just.
So, oh, he had a thing, oh, when you're talking to those female comedians the other day.
No, Kim and Sarah.
Yeah, but no, it was in your act, I think it was about the guy.
Oh, shit.
The oil guy, the guys with the money in Texas, and they started Truck World.
Buc-ees, Buc-ees is like the craziest gas station ever.
Is that a real place? It's a real place you should go, It's amazing.
It's on a chain.
Oh, it's a chain.
And it's called buc-ees.
Yeah, b-u-c-c-e-e-s, buc-ees, that's buc-ees. It's the biggest gas station you've ever seen. It literally doesn't even make sense.
That's not even the biggest one.
Yeah, that's only like half of it.
That's not even the building, that's a small one, that's a little buc-ees, because that's the Buc-ees car wash, and then there's like, this Buc-ees gigantic store.
Is it only in Texas? I don't know.
I don't know, it's definitely a big Texas thing. It's like a Walmart, like a huge Walmart attached to a gas station, they sell everything in there. It's fucking nuts.
It's amazing. Look at that thing.
Look at the size of it.
It's like an airport with no planes like the planes would be at, you know, the gates are gone.
Yeah, they're nuts, and they're like that, everywhere you go, everywhere you find a buc-ees, they're fucking gigantic.
A chain of buc-ees, one in Florida. Oh, there you go. I thought, for certain, you would say, no, it's not a chain. it doesn't sound like a chain.
It sounds like some guy's at night going, let's call it buc-ees. We can't do that.
Yeah, some guys have got high on cocaine and built the ultimate gas station. It's the nuttiest place ever, but it's a very Texas place, because Texas is a strange place.
How so?
Well, people here are very friendly, they're very nice, but they're also very tough, and they're very progressive in Austin. But not crazy, like they are in California, or they are in New York, like where they're like cult members of this, like rabid liberal tribe.
So it's an interesting balance. The people coming from the country and the people stopped on the East coast, and other people went the whole way. And the other people said, Oh, just stay here, we're staying here.
We're going to stay here and fuck.
Yeah, well, that was the other thing in my act. About Texas, and it's a true story, it's a true fact. There's more tigers in captivity in Texas.
That's what it was. Tiger World, Tiger World. Yeah, that's it a big oil guy, right?
He wanted more tigers than the other guy.
Yes, that's it. Yeah, yeah, because there's more tigers in people's yards in Texas than in the entire wild of the world.
More tigers in private collections, in people's yards.
And it's true, and that's true.
Oh, it's 100 true. I've been to some of these places, I've been to some of these crazy ranches that they have. Like, Texas wildlife laws are very different than anywhere else I've ever been to, and the people who own the property own all the animals.
It's different than like wildlife in any other. Like, say, if you live in Montana and you own a ranch in Montana, you can get landowner tags for that ranch. That means, like, so, you say, if you own like 6,000 acres in Montana, you and your friends and some family members. You could get a license to hunt on that property, but you're only allowed to hunt a certain amount of animals.
There's a certain season, it's like, very specific, it starts at one time, it ends at one time. And you know, you go to jail if you violate those things.
In Texas, as long as the animal's not from Texas, you own it. So, like zebras, lions, tigers, there's fucking stray kangaroos, like kangaroos. Get out. My wife saw a fucking zebra, she was driving, and she's like, I saw a zebra.
There was a zebra on the side of the road.
So he had a zebra and it just got out.
What if it's a zebra from Texas?
I don't think it is, I think it's probably born in Texas.
Not that zebra, I mean, in general, you're saying you can own the land and then you own the animals.
As long as the animal's from another country.
Why, though, it doesn't make any sense.
It's not even just it's so crazy, it's so crazy that it doesn't even make sense. Because they're not even exotic animals, like for instance, elk. Like elk, hunting in most of the country is like a very difficult tag to acquire.
It's a very prized hunt because it's delicious meat and, you know, so it's very specific with the regulations in Texas, you can hunt elk 365 days a year, and you own the elk. Because the elk were brought into Texas, even though they used to be in Texas. So they were in Texas. And then the 1800s, they wiped them out, and then when they reintroduced them, they said, Well, you ain't from around here. Oh my God.
So we own you.
That's a loophole, it's a loophole. a giant elk loophole in Texas. Giant elk loophole.
You can do that with some animals, you can't do it with eagles. You know? If you started hunting American eagles here in Texas, then people would crack down, like, Hey, enough.
Enough, Texas.
Settle down, we own these fucking Eagles, we own these eagles. there's no historical record of eagles in these parts.
It's a weird place, so because of that, there really is more tigers in people's yards than anywhere else in the world.
That's just mind-boggling to me, like it's something I wonder how the Tigers feel about that. They're not happy, they must be like, this is wrong.
Unless there's some wild tycoon out there. That's got like a crazy setup where he lets a goat loose and the tiger gets to chase the goat and eat it and kill it, you know?
Just for the hell of it.
Well, because that's what tigers do. Yes, because otherwise you're going to either that. Or you kill the meat and then you bring it to the tiger, which is not as fun for him, and then you'd really rather kill it himself. That's what they like to do.
If you bring the animals here, then you can own them. Yes, like, you could bring, like, I mean, how small can you go? can you go like crickets? can you bring crickets?
Bring worms in. I think I own these worms because they're from Spain.
Yeah, you could, but I think that would be an invasive animal, like you wouldn't be able to control it. There is problems with like bugs and things that come from other, and even plants that come from other parts of the world that don't have natural predators. And they just run over everybody else and take over an ecosystem.
Do you have any animals that you own that you've brought in from other countries? No, because I'm really here, I'm representing the authorities.
No, I only have a golden retriever.
Is he from the United States?
He appears to be.
He appears to be.
Well, I cannot confirm nor deny, but I did get him in California when he was six weeks old, so I'm pretty sure he's from here.
But, you know, that's literally like the opposite of a tiger golden retriever. They just like, love sponges. Yeah, but it's very interesting, like the laws here when it comes to wildlife. Also, most of the land here is private, which is interesting too.
Like, you know, California has a lot of public land, and there's public land that people go hiking on and hunting on and fishing on. And same thing with, like, New York State and a lot of states, not Texas. Texas is very little public land, but a tiny swath of it where you can go hunting on.
So what brought you? why did you decide to move to Austin?
It was during the pandemic and everything in California was just really going sideways. There was a lot of riots, there was a lot of smash and grabs, and there was a lot of really incompetent government. Where they were telling people that you have to stay low, we couldn't even do outside shows, you couldn't do outside shows.
They wouldn't let the comedy store do shows in the parking lot like this doesn't make any sense. These incompetent bureaucrats were telling people what to do over public health decisions. They had massive control over your life all of a sudden.
The mayor never had any fucking control over who worked and who didn't work. Now all of a sudden he does, and he's a moron. I was like, I got to get out of here.
But why Texas?
Well, I came to Texas with some friends because we were all disgruntled with California, and you've been to Texas before? Oh yeah, many, many, many, many times.
So, you have a feeling for Texas?
I love it here, I've always loved it here and really, what I wanted to do? I wanted to move to Utah or Montana, I wanted to move to somewhere where it was beautiful mountains and woods. I'm like, I travel so much.
I want to go somewhere that's nice and peaceful, I don't want to be in cities anymore. I was like, This city shit is bullshit, it's just too much.
That's what I think.
Yeah, I mean, we were talking about it last night. I think you're on the right track. It overloads your senses. I don't think it's healthy for you. So there was that.
And then it was also, this is a great town, I mean, it's an amazing place. There's only a million people there and then a million on the outskirts. So it's like, really mild traffic, very friendly people, like great restaurants, a great artist community.
There's a lot of great musicians here.
Yeah, absolutely. You didn't even notice in the airport. I've never seen this. There's singers in the airport, like at different gates.
Yep, yep.
That was wild.
And legit barbecue. They got a salt lick at the airport.
They do, yeah, it's very good.
We were excited when Salt Lick was open. Yeah, the food here is incredible. But the big thing was freedom. freedom was number one. Because when we came here, everybody was like restaurants were open, people were just walking around doing things.
We went out onto Lake Austin, this friend of mine, she became a friend of mine, she was a real estate agent, and she took us on a tour on a boat. And my young daughters were like, Oh my God, we want to live here.
They're like, we want to live on the lake, let's go. And my wife was very hesitant at first, but she took to it like a duck to water when she moved here.
Why was she hesitant? It's a big change.
All of our friends are in L.
A It's hard, it's hard just packing up your shit and moving.
Was there a second runner-up to move to, or was this just me?
Yeah, I liked. Park City, Utah Park City, Utah is a room that's real quiet. But it's also like it's a resort town mostly, so how many people even live there in the summertime? Maybe that would be too weird.
But I really do love it up there, it's so beautiful and again, like, I really love Montana and I really love Colorado. I just was like, L..A. is too much.
And the thing about the government, that was the big one for me. It's like, you guys are morons, you can't tell me what to do and what not to do. Especially when it comes to health choices. And you're fat and disgusting, and you look like you don't take care of yourself at all. And you guys are giving out mandates on health. Fuck out of here.
I was like, this is just I got to get out of here, and that's when I realized how valuable freedom is. And to not be suppressed by these people that are supposedly acting in the guise of your best interest.
I get like that with parking tickets. seriously, parking tickets infuriate me for years. What do you mean? You own? You decided you own this piece of the earth and you're going to charge me?
Everything you said, I boiled down to parking tickets.
That drives me crazy, and you know, what drives me crazy? Tolls.
Oh yeah.
I go to New York. Every time I go over those stupid fucking bridges, I get angry. I'm like, you're making me pay again to drive over the bridge, you paid for this bridge a thousand times over, you cunts. Because, like, the whole idea in the beginning was we got to fund this bridge, so we need to charge people money to go across the bridge.
But then after a while, the funding's done, you paid for it, you fucks, but now you're just addicted to charging people. So you have this massive bottleneck where all these cars just stop dead because everybody's got to go to these stupid fucking booths. And you're just raking in money and just staying incompetent, staying with your terrible money management.
So everybody's angry at you and they still just keep paying it every day because there's no way around it. You got to go on the bridge, you got to pay. Wear that fucking, put that stupid thing over your rearview mirror so it clocks you every time and dings your credit card, fuck.
It's theft.
They're a bunch of creeps. The whole idea behind it has already been passed. Like you were supposed to pay for the bridge, you paid for the bridge, now you're just stealing.
Parking spots.
Fuck you.
I overreact to parking spots.
I don't think you overreact.
To the ticket.
Do you know Brian Holtzman? Did you see Brian Holtzman last night? Very, very funny guy? and he just got here. He was a really funny guy from L..A.
But Brian used to be a meter maid, that's what he used to do. He was a comic and he did parking enforcement, really, yeah.
We were just talking about it last night that I ran into him. One night I was at the comedy and magical, Oh, he's got great stories, he's funny.
You should see him, he's very funny, you would enjoy him, he's so crazy.
He does the late night spots like he likes to close off the show. He was on stage last night until 145 in the morning.
Wow, yeah, he must have gone on after I was gone.
Yeah, he went on late, he went on real late, he likes to go on at the very end of the show.
He was on until 145.
Killing, killing. He's so funny, but it's like that Kinesin spot, you know, like at the store.
They used to have late night kinesin spots, and that's kind of what Holtzman does now. He used to be back in L..A. It was Brody Stevens, too, before he died, he did the same kind of thing.
He would do those late spots, it would be so much fun.
Did he ever tell you some conflicts he had when enforcing the parking thing?
No, I never talked to him about it.
I mean.
I'm sure he had a few.
Absolutely.
I'm sure he had a few.
Those poor people because they're getting the whole thing taken out on them, they're just trying to do their job.
Yeah, they get attacked, parking meter people, they get attacked. Yeah, it's just. It's another creepy way that the city makes money off you, it really is.
You're dead, right? It's like, why are you charging money for this little spot? And if it's like the meter is a dollar or whatever it is, but if I don't pay it, it's like 50 bucks, like, what is that?
That doesn't make any sense. You should charge me a dollar, you piece of shit. It's like, a dollar. is it a dollar? Like, what's with the penalties?
What's with all these like crazy 50 times over penalties? Like, you just get to say that you get to take my money if I'm going to pay for the parking thing, and you know, you're going to make me pay. Because you give me a ticket, how about giving me a ticket for what I should actually be paying? That's what it should be.
Well, they're charging you on time and space fuck off.
They're stealing money, they're stealing money. Because it's never going to be worth $50. Like, how is it worth $50 to just park in a spot? But you can hit me with a $50 ticket if I don't pay, like, that's crazy.
Like, Oh, it's a penalty.
Oh, all right, imagine that in the wild West, imagine like 1860..
That's how people got shot.
What was that? Your horse is in the wrong spot.
I wonder when they started doing that. That's interesting.
Yeah, it had to have started, it had to have started the first guy, imagine that meeting.
Let's find out when was the first parking meter?
When Jaywalking started, it was like you could do it for a long time, until there was too many cars. And the cars were like, hey, hey, hey, get these people out of our way.
That makes sense, because if you look at those old videos of New York City at the turn of the century. When people were first having cars and there were cars mixed in with horses, everyone was just kind of always walking across the street everywhere.
I got a ticket once jaywalking in Los Angeles in the 80s and it caused me. The penalty was, I couldn't, it was with my car, even though I was walking, the penalty went to my car somehow, like, even though the crime was walking across the street. And then the ticket went onto my registration, which had nothing to do with what I had done.
Oklahoma City First parking meters in the United States went to Oklahoma City in 1935.
The city grew rapidly in the early 20th century. In 1913, the city had only 3,000 drivers, but as people traded in their horses and wagons and bought cars, the numbers grew. By 1930, 5,000 cars were registered within the county, 500,000..
Oh, 500,000.
Oh, Jesus, oh my God, that's insane. How did I miss that? 100? Oklahomans who worked downtown arrived early and took the most convenient street parking for themselves, leaving their cars in one spot all day.
As a result, shoppers had difficulty finding places to park. Like other towns. Addressing the problem, Oklahoma City tried to control this by marking tires with chalk. Now that's gross. Cars that were left in the same space for too long were ticketed, but that was time-intensive and took policemen off their regular beats.
A better solution was needed, so they came up with a parking meter. Interesting, huh? I guess you got to kind of do something because people are gross and they will just park their car and leave it there forever.
Oklahoma City Who would have?
You could have never known that. Thank you sir. Ha ha ha, yeah.
It's, uh.
Have you ever fucked around with autonomous cars? I don't even know you ever drive a Tesla?
If it drives itself, you mean, yeah, I wouldn't do that.
No.
I mean, sit there and let it.
I drive, I love it, I love, I love...
I love it, it's one of my favorite things.
What do you drive?
I drive a Toyota Highlander oh nice, and I drive a 1986 Jeep CJ7 Nice. I love going from Point A to point B.
There's something about the moving that's good for you, at least in my mind, too. Yeah, it's like there's something unwinding just by moving forward.
I used to come up with a lot of my best ideas, driving with no radio on.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you've got to shut it off sometimes because you've always got radio or a phone or something. And sometimes you have to have nothing. Because nothing isn't really nothing you've got to like. It took me years to realize that doing nothing was really good, it was really doing something, because your mind thinks differently when something's not going in.
You really think more sure. For a long time, I thought, Well, I'm not doing anything and I like it, and I think of things sometimes. But part of me thought, because of society, it's like, Well, what do you mean, you're doing nothing?
It has a negative.
You know what I mean, it has a negative thing. And then it took me years to think that, no, this is really something, and then I started looking up nothing that sounds like a George Carlin.
I started looking it up and it showed the benefit of silence and just.
Yeah, yeah.
So you would drive with no radio and you just.
Yeah, especially early in my beginning days of stand-up. I drove a lot because I delivered newspapers, so I'd drive in the mornings and deliver my newspapers and I'd do it with no radio on. A lot of the time. And some of the best ideas that I had came from just doing this manual labor, chucking these newspapers out the window and just driving around. And your mind is free to think about other stuff instead of constantly having entertainment and bombarding it. I'd listen to Charles Lacudera, The Morning Radio, but if I just shut it off and listened to nothing, then I got some of my best ideas.
Plus, you're doing this mundane thing with the paper, which is almost like, so the gears in your head, it's doing something. But that allows another part of your brain to go on its own because you're distracting enough.
I don't know. It's fascinating how it works, it's focused, but you're not. You're focused on this boring thing and your mind is playing, because creativity, to me, is playing. It's like a child with finger paints.
It's always been a very playful thing to me. I've never thought, Oh my God, I need more, I need five more minutes.
Because creating is thinking, you can't stop thinking. If someone said to you, you can't think of any more comedy right now, you'll be arrested.
They wouldn't know if you didn't say it, but you can't stop. It's like a machine going down a hill.
It's how you look at things, you're always going to look at something stupid and go, What is that? How is that real?
How are we accepting that? Because the world is so chaotic, it's chaos, people have come up civilization. On the one hand, it's good they have certain rules to guide it, but this stuff spilling over the edges is like tornadoes.
The comedians are pointing out, Well, I know you're trying to get it so the world doesn't just blow up. But that rule is insane. And then you can comment about the stuff that's spilling over, look, what's spilling over. Why didn't you do anything? Because we're just trying to go from point A to point B in the day and our entire lives and just get to the end.
And it's like a puzzle, it's completely out of control, you're just trying to survive.
It's interesting you talk about your process, too, that you had this process in Boston and in Boston. Out of all the places that I've ever lived is the most, they appreciate hard work and work ethic more than any place I've ever lived. And there's something about they discourage lazy people, they do not like lazy people.
It is a thing growing up there, where people work hard. You've got to shovel your fucking driveway to go to work. The shoveling the driveway thing is big because there's so much goddamn snow. You have to get up in the morning, you've got to do the work.
So if you're some guy just sitting on the couch, I'm just waiting for ideas. They'd be like, Fuck you, Steven.
Go to work? No, that wasn't growing up.
No, no, no, he's not as a successful comic. They're like, he doesn't. Even his wand is around the yard.
Talking to himself.
Get a job.
What are you doing, Steven?
Get a fucking job, you lazy slob. What are you doing? talking to yourself? you're convincing yourself? you're working hard?
Get the fuck out of here.
But that's another thing there is, that there is that physical, physical, physical. It took me years to realize that thinking is doing something, too, because what you just described is so burned into you.
It's like, Well, wait a minute, I'm doing this, it's not. I mean, it'd be one thing if you were not shoveling the driveway and not thinking of anything.
Because of that ethic that you described, thinking is not like.
It's so thinking is almost abstract, even though it isn't. You can't see someone thinking. But you can see the guy shoveling the driveway. So that guy looks like he's doing something, and that guy doesn't look like he's doing anything.
But that guy just wrote two pages of something.
Wandering around in his yard, staring at the trees.
Talking to himself.
I think it's only people who do creative stuff kind of appreciate that. You really do have to have that time just thinking, because ideas they're out there and if you don't go looking for them, they don't come into your head. So if you spend time just too involved in stuff where you've got to be very aware and paying attention. And doing this and doing that, you don't have any boredom, you don't have any, just flat...
Yes, boredom has a negative thing, or a ton of totion to it, too, because boredom, that's where the stuff comes. Like, sometimes if I have to, everyone in there every day, I have to go here. I've got to buy this, I've got to do this, I've got to call this guy, I've got to do this email. Then I have to go there because the car needs this and all of that. And then it's like, I can't wait to just sit there without doing these tasks.
Because if you're doing all these tasks, you can't think of anything other than the tasks, you're caught in a loop. And people, you know, I just like to think, but you have to do that stuff. If you didn't do any of it, it would just pile up and your house is on fire.
I'll put it out next week.
I've got to write a joke.
I'm thinking about walnuts right now.
A lot of guys, like writers, authors in particular, they like to write and then they go for walks and so they have all the writing of the day done. Like, say, if they commit to a certain amount of pages or a certain amount of letters that they write, so they write all those words. And then they go for a walk. And then you think about what you wrote, and then ideas will come to you as you're walking around, just thinking about what you wrote.
Like a lot of guys, either they talk into their phone or they have like a little tape recorder, and they just talk into it every now and again while they're walking.
Or even Einstein, when he couldn't figure something out, he'd play his violin, or he'd go for a walk. Imagine seeing Einstein walk. What the hell get back in the office, and then he figures out this giant thing because he went for a walk.
He knew.
It's just we have to separate the difference between lazy and a different, effective strategy for engaging your mind, because we think of walking and just hanging out as being lazy. But for a creative person, one of the things that I think is really important for comics, and I guess probably for anybody creative, is to do things you can't just do shows.
No, you have to have real experiences, yes.
You have to go out and live life, go out and go visit museums, go travel places, go hang out with friends in other states, go do stuff.
You gotta do stuff, because if you don't do stuff, your field of references becomes very small.
Yes, you'd just be doing stuff about clubs and your house, all your material, air travel. I have several museum jokes by accident.
By accident?
I went to the museum, I didn't go to get some jokes. I see the name for the ladies, that must be an exhibit.
Or where they have the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums, a museum with all the heads and arms. That's because I went to a museum or I exercise, I'm a bike rider.
An hour a day in the spring and summer, on a stationary bike, in the winter, every day, 30 minutes. I'm addicted to that.
That's like a weird drug. That makes you more relaxed and energetic at the same time, and that affects your thinking too. Somehow, I do it to feel good, but I like how it affects my mind also.
Then you add coffee and then you're out of your mind.
I love cardio before shows.
I do, too.
If I could do an hour of cardio before a show that night, I'm always so loose and relaxed.
Everything's fine. Big smile on my face I was out to dinner with my wife once, and I had a giant smile on my face. What the fuck are you doing? What's so funny?
I did cardio today, I feel great. It's like it rings out all the tension in your body, it just leaves you free.
I have to do it, I love doing it, some people look at it as a task, I look forward to doing it.
That's good, if you look forward to it, it's way better. Because when you think of it as a task, then you put off doing it and you procrastinate, or you dread it. Instead of just saying, This is what I love to do.
I'm going to go do this thing I love to do. It's just hard for some people to think of exertion as being something they enjoy. For most people, exertion is work.
And I'm tired of working, I want to just relax.
Mostly they're doing work they don't like to do too, so they have an association in their head.
But people who don't like exercising are people who don't exercise because they see it as move those rocks. But people who do it know how positive it is.
Yeah, that's everything. Were you doing it when you first started?
No, I started doing it about in the early 90s. I lived in Santa Monica and I had a bike, just for no reason, I had a bike.
You know the bike path along the ocean there? One day I went down, I lived three blocks from there. I went down and rode my bike on the bike path. Just to ride like a kid rides. And then I would do it a couple times a week.
And then one time I went down and I must have gone longer than before. And I got that rush thing, that endorphin thing. Because I must have spent more time on the bike. And I thought, Oh my god, this is what I've been hearing about my whole life.
I didn't go to get it, I didn't do it, I was like a kid riding a bike around the neighborhood. But when I got that, I thought I want to get that again, so then I went on purpose to get it again.
And then now it's been like, since 32 years, it's like a drug, like a strike. And it was all from that couple first bike rides.
If you could get.
Runner's high put it on a tablet.
Do you know how?
Many people would buy it. Yeah, it's amazing.
You feel so good, you feel so relaxed, the world's fine, the world's gonna be great, the sun's out.
Yay.
Then I would go in the hotel and I would do 30 minutes before I would go on stage. For years, I did that because of the reason you said you walk out, because for me, the stage is very intense.
For me, I mean, I might look like I'm walking around and saying this stuff, but it's like a tight rope. And then when you do the exercise, it's just different. Then I switch to walks, now I go for a walk.
I'll be walking around in the back of the theater and going all around, people might see me, they're going into the show. They must be so nervous. I'm not nervous, though.
I'm trying to, like, get that floaty thing and then you walk out and it's like, it's not as intense. Do you think it's intense? How do you feel about being out there?
It's intense, yeah.
It's dangerous, don't you think?
It certainly is people paid money. They don't want you to suck.
To me, it's like you're running across a lake of thin ice and it takes you 85 minutes to get to the other side. You're trying not to, you hear it cracking behind you.
You're trying to get to the other side.
And if you care about what you do, it's intense, especially that live performance in front of many, many people that come to see you. There's a lot going on there, it's a very complicated issue and it's a lot of fun.
A lot of fucking fun. I've done a lot of different things. I love doing stand-up. It's one of the most fun things I've ever done. I agree.
I love doing it in clubs, I do a lot of big shows too.
The fun I'm having at the club, it's like the most fun. We were all talking about it last night. We're all sitting around after the show because we've all done, like a lot of the guys that come with me on the road. We've done arenas, we've done big theaters, but there's nothing like clubs.
It's the most fun thing ever, It's like everyone's just sharing a moment, We're all just having a good time together. I've got all these things to talk about, I've prepared.
I've been doing a lot of sets, so it's going to be smooth. Have a cocktail, let's have a laugh, and it's fun, it's the most fun thing to do.
Out of all the shit I do, that's the one thing that I don't think I'd ever stop doing that. It's just too much fun.
The audience is a weird thing, weird and positive. It's like they're your friends, but you don't really know their names.
You're hanging out with them, you're hanging out with them.
Yeah, you don't know their names, but they know you and they know you inside and out, especially because of podcasts, they really know you.
They know, you know you, they listen to you, talk for hours and hours and hours, they know who you are. They can't fake it, and so they're excited about that, too.
It's a weird extra connection that people have to comics now because of podcasts.
Yeah, they're really thinking not on stage, because before it was just what the show would be.
Yeah, they also like the fact that sometimes we'll bring up stuff in a podcast and then I'll write it down. And then that'll become a bit. Something will pop into my head. Ah, I remember when you first talked about that.
And now it's like your closing bit because you figured out how to turn it into this five minute chunk.
You know, how long have you been doing the podcast?
Um.
14 years is it almost 14 years, 13 and a half years?
Wow.
Amazing, it must be one of the first ones that you have here.
The first one was Adam Curry, he was number one, he's the potfather.
And then Corolla had one when he left radio, and Mark Maron had one. And there was a couple other that I had heard about. But it was Kevin Smith. Kevin Smith had one real early on.
But it was a fairly.
Yeah, a fairly small amount of people.
What drew you to it?
Just having fun. What drew me to it was like I used to like to do radio. I used to like to do like Opie and Anthony, because it was a bunch of comics.
And, you know, it was like Jim Norton and Rich Voss. We would just hang out and talk shit and just laugh, and it was so much fun. I would look forward to doing it.
Every time I went to New York, I couldn't wait to do the Morning Radio because I get to hang with these comedians.
And just laugh. Jim Norton's hilarious, he's the best, I love him.
It's like it was a camaraderie thing, it was a fun thing. We just would always leave there. Ari Shaffir and I would do it together all the time, and we would leave and we'd just be laughing.
It was just so much fun.
And then the idea came. I'd seen Anthony Cumia from Opie and Anthony. He had his own show that he was doing in his basement online, and Tom Green had his own show online. So I was watching a few other people do things.
And I was like, why don't I just try something, just have a webcam show, just do it for the fucking fun of it. Let's see what happens. We started doing that.
You were doing it with your friend.
Yeah, my friend Brian. And then I would bring in comedians like Tom Segura and Joey Diaz and Duncan Trussell and Ari Shaffir. And then it just became all of a sudden I have guests, all of a sudden I have scientists, and all of a sudden I have authors and psychologists and physicians.
And it was weird, it just like, slowly became this thing that it is now.
It started in Los Angeles.
Yeah, it started in my I just had a spare bedroom that I just like.
Set up like, How did you? I mean, you had the comedians and stuff, but then how did it go to, like scientists, how did that happen?
I started, yeah, the podcast became fairly popular in podcasts, I mean by fairly popular, I mean, you know, thousands of downloads, nothing like it is now.
But it was enough so that I could convince people, Hey, here's this episode. Would you like to do my podcast? Like, check it out? This is what we do.
And they would do it like, Oh, you guys are silly, like, What are you doing? You're sitting around smoking pot and talking shit about things like, Yeah, do you want to come?
And a lot of people said, yes, like Anthony Bourdain, he was an early one. He said, Yes. Graham Hancock.
Graham Hancock was like the first real one, because Graham Hancock is a journalist and he specializes in ancient civilizations and the demise of ancient civilizations. And that there's evidence that shows that there is likely some sort of a natural catastrophe that took place around 11,800 to 12,000 years ago. That wiped out civilization and all the civilization that we think about, like Babylonia and Mesopotamia. Again, those were probably reboots of an old civilization that was destroyed by asteroid impacts. There's like all this physical evidence called the younger Dryas impact theory.
There's core samples they do, where they find iridium at around 11,800 years, which is like very common in space, very rare on Earth. But there's a large layer of it and micro diamonds which indicate impacts from the asteroid. So we probably went through an asteroid shower and it probably destroyed civilization. Somewhere around 11,800 years ago, ended the Ice Age. So Graham Hancock, he has Ancient Catastrophe, which is on Netflix, this whole series on that. Where you can follow the evidence, the physical evidence and the archaeological evidence of these ancient civilizations and these ancient construction methods. That to this day, we still don't understand how they moved these enormous stones, how they placed them, how they even cut them.
We don't know what tools they were using, we don't know anything.
How did you get him to come on?
I was a giant fan of his and I would always like sing his praises. When I would do radio shows and stuff, I'd tell people about. This book, he wrote, called Fingerprints of the Gods, an amazing book. It just shows all this evidence of these ancient cultures that just don't exist anymore. Including, like sunken cities off the coast of Japan that, like, there wasn't water there, or there was ground there at one point in time, thousands and thousands of years ago. And they think that there was actually a city there, and now it's covered by the ocean, there's a bunch of those that they find out there in the water.
There's a lot of indications that there was like, really advanced civilization, like 12,000 20,000 years ago. So that guy was like one of the first guests.
And you have Neo and Degrasse.
Yeah, I've met him multiple times, he's a very nice guy.
Yeah, he's a very nice guy, he's a sweetheart because that stuff fascinates me. I can only take so much. I mean, I like to watch the shows and then my mind, like, you know, my Burlington, Massachusetts, mind.
Okay, okay, and then no, no, no, but I'll watch, I'll hear the words, I'll listen.
But I love it, I love that stuff.
Well, we had Michio Kaku on the other day. he's brilliant and he was talking about quantum computing. He's really interesting. He wrote a book on quantum computing.
And what a game changer that's going to be when something can compute. Not at a level of like 10 times more than we can do now, but like millions and millions of times more. And that it happens simultaneously in different universes, and that they're calculating not just in this universe, but they're calculating simultaneously in multiple universes. And he's telling me this.
I'm like, What did you just say the fuck? Does that even mean?
I have to get going.
I'm like.
What are you saying, Michio? That guy is so goddamn smart talking to him, you just realize what an ape you are. He was building a particle collider in his garage when he was in high school. With miles, and what did he say? Like 20 miles of copper pipe, I think he said, 60..
Something crazy like that.
Is he from the United States? What town was he building?
Where was he, do you remember?
I don't know.
Was it New York?
Genius, genius. But that's like he was like that as a kid. When I was 17, I was picking my nose, I was an idiot.
You're right. 22 miles of copper wire, I think. San Jose, California.
Oh, that's right, that's right because, he said, the heart of Silicon Valley, which is now Silicon Valley. So just to be able to talk to a guy like that, yeah, what a pleasure.
A gift, a pleasure just to be in the same room with that guy.
I've had the most unexpected education talking to these people. Yeah, amazing, yeah, it's been. It's very, very. I feel super, super fortunate for that aspect of it because I've learned so much, talking to so many different people. And you get all these different perspectives.
Heterodox perspectives and alternative perspectives, and people that are like very rigid and their ideologies, and then people that are like very open-minded. And they're just like trying to find the truth. And they're all like, mixed in together in this world. And if you can bring them together and have conversations with them, it expands your understanding of how the mind works. So much like I was only exposed to a certain kind of people before.
You know, exposed to us, like comics and my martial arts friends. And then, you know, other people that I knew from various walks of life, like whoever I ran into. But I never got a chance to, like, how would you get a chance to sit down with a John?
CARMACK And it's because you took that.
Webcam podcast Let me try this. Yeah, then you cut to Neil DeGrasse, he's standing here, and the guy with the what? was the other guy, Michio Kaku, you're saying, let me try this.
And then, dang, it's like you have just people, the top people, you're sitting across from them. That doesn't happen in real life.
It doesn't happen in real life. And then Elon Musk was a big one, that was a huge.
One, Yeah, him in here, too.
I got him to smoke weed in here. Yeah, because we were drinking, it was like we were having a couple of whiskeys. I wanted to loosen him up.
He's very intense, I mean, his brain is like, you can tell when you're talking to him. His brain is working on like five different things while he's talking, it's like a different kind of thinking. So we were drinking a little bit, loosening him up, and then I sparked up a joint and it became a giant issue because he took a hit.
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