#1971 - Howie Mandel
2023-04-19 02:23:14
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Joe Rogan Podcast Check it out the Joe Rogan Experience Stream by day. Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
Can you hear me? I think perfect, okay.
Hello Howie Mandel. Hi Joe Rogan. good to see you my friend. I know very good to see you.
I know.
And amazing to see you. Before you start anything, I've got to tell you, how excited are you. Did we start?
No, yeah, we're starting, okay.
I got to tell you how excited I am to see you, I am the biggest fan. If there is one thing that I'm a fan of, it's innovation, and I think that you have become the comedy innovator. And I'm blowing smoke up your ass right at the beginning of this. And I got to say what I've seen from the outside, you know?
In 1978, I came down to the comedy store and I got up on a lark. Mike Binder got me up there on a lark. I wasn't not pursuing it, I had gone on at Yuck Yucks in Toronto and I fell in love with this.
Mitzi gave me my biggest break. And there was a guy by the name of George Foster who was in the audience that night that said, Hey, do you want to do TV? And I said, Yeah. And he hired me to do Make Me Laugh, which I did with Binder and a bunch of other people.
And with no intent of making this a career. You know, I didn't pursue comedy, I knew nothing about comedy, I was a fan of comedy, I watched comedy stand up.
Even when I went to Yuck Yucks, I had never, you know, I don't know, let me get back to you and then I'll talk about me. But the thing is that I'm aware of the history of comedy.
And when I was a kid, it was in New York, everybody went to New York. That's where Lenny Bruce was working. You just showed me a picture of Lenny Bruce. And then when Carson made his way out to California, there was a shift where everybody had to come to California, you know?
And you had to get on at the comedy store or maybe the improv, with the intent of, maybe, if you were lucky, getting a spot on the Tonight show.
Right?
And I don't know how old are you.
55.
55.
You're a kid, how old are you? I'll be 68 this year.
You look fucking great, thank you. Maybe all this knuckle touching is the way to go.
I don't know what the fuck it is, I don't know. But anyway, the point is that there was only one place to go and make it in comedy, and that was California, and that was.
You needed a spot at the comedy store, and anybody who was anybody either got a spot at the improv or the comedy store. And then even if somebody didn't know you and they came up to you and they said, Are you a comic? and Oh, what do you do? You'd say I'm a stand-up comic.
They'd go, Were you ever on Johnny? and if you weren't on Johnny, then they kind of dismissed you. But that was the truth and I believe now, and this is the smoke that I'm blowing up your ass. There was a shift. You don't have to go to California anymore.
You don't have to be in New York, you don't have to be anywhere, but you've got to be in Austin, you've got to come to Texas. Or you've got to be part of whatever it is, this movement that you have moved out here.
And if you look at the people that are getting huge clicks online for their specials, Ari Shaffir and Shane Gillis and all these other guys, what do they have in common? They came and they touched you. And I think that that is where comedy is going. And these people with podcasts are now selling huge amounts of tickets without going on one, they don't have a tonight show to go to.
They don't have a club to hit. And now you opened up the mothership, which is, I think, properly named, because I believe that this is. If there is a geographical epicenter for comedy, it is here now. And I think you did that. I've never met somebody that, you know, Mitzi was the last person that kind of Mitzi Shore I'm talking about. But accidentally did it, you know, because that was just something she won in a divorce.
But she was the perfect person to have it.
Right, but she didn't know that.
Yeah, but she had the best sensibility for comedy, and she was so ruthless. She mentored me, she helped me in so many ways, right?
Well, she gave me my. We have a lot in common in that, all of us, me and my brother, that's her, I know I recognize her.
I saw her, I knew her.
Taylor Bowles Pretty dope, right? It is great painting.
It is a great painting, but the thing about Mitzi, if you don't know the beginnings of that, you know. It was Sammy Shore's club, it was her husband's club who was the opening act for Elvis Presley.
Right, which is hilarious that she took it in a divorce and she's not a comic.
Well, because you take shit. Yes, exactly. It's like you take custody of a child and you're not a parent.
Sugar Shane Mosley, the boxer, his ex-wife, took one of his Championship belts.
But it looks nice with certain tops.
Do you know how goddamn crazy that story is?
No.
That guy went to war with his hands, he was throwing knuckles at another skilled man and won a world title. He's got this beautiful belt strapped. The whole crowd cheers and she's like, No, it's mine.
And she just took it. So Sammy Shore was telling jokes for audiences that weren't his, they were Elvis's. And he opened up a building for his friends to work out, and Mitzi went, No, it's mine.
And then he told everybody that was in the business not to work there, right? So she got all these kids. All us kids would show up and work because we wanted stage time, and that's how people started blasting off, you know, Jimmy J..J.
WALKER And who did not my job, man, Freddie Prince, you know? And that became the. And that's why, when you started seeing Carson out in L..A. he'd go. We saw this young kid last night at the comedy store and that's what made it big. And I think, by the same token, you're the new Mitzi with less hair, where you keep touching these people, like, that's how I hear. Personally, I and I think a lot of other people hear about the Brian Callens and their stand-up and their Ari and Shane and Bert and all these other guys that are arena.
They're playing fucking arenas in theaters now, that was, there was a select few. When I was young, you know, I was talking to you outside, I used to go. What year did you start at the comedy store? I remember seeing you.
I started at the comedy store in 94.
94, and you got news radio out of there, right?
I was already on news radio.
When you started there, I know a lot of people that –.
I was actually on another show I was on. I think I got passed, like in between shows, I got passed right when the show I was on called Hardball fell apart.
I don't know hardball.
It was canceled very quickly, it was like six episodes on Fox, it was a baseball show, and while I was on TV, that wasn't. My main goal was I had to be a paid regular, I had to get to be a paid regular at the store.
Dude, when I was a kid, like in 88, when I was 21 years old, people would talk about the comedy store like with hushed tones. Like it was Mecca. That's where Kinison came from. It was like, whoa Richard Pryor used to work out there.
Right, whoa, I was there every night, watch that.
Yeah, you would hear about, Hey, Bill Hicks used to be a dork guy.
Holy shit, right?
It was Mecca, everybody knew you had to get to the store. So when I came to L.A. that's like the first thing I did, man, like the very first thing I did. When I came out here, I came and watched a show and sat in the back room.
It was a terrible show, it was like Bodak's were on stage. It was awful, really.
I used to sit in the back, I used to sit in the back. And you know, Letterman was the host. You know who was this weatherman that came out from Indianapolis, you know? And he was just pretty casual about it, you didn't think?
I thought he was hysterical, yeah, and you'd watch, you know, Jeff Altman and Billy Crystal and Robin, who was on fire because he just started Mork Mindy. And then every night I would watch Richard Pryor, he would come out and he was putting together what became live on the Sunset Strip.
Wow, and he would get up every fucking night and like, people would be packed down the street to see him. But I remember standing at the back, he had just gotten out of the hospital from Freebasing, he still had bandages on his neck. From for those that don't remember, you know, he almost died.
He lit himself on fire, he lit himself on fire, and there was a joke, which he started. I saw him do it at the comedy store. He used to light a match and go like this.
He goes, What's this? This is me running down the street. And then that became like a joke, but he perpetrated that joke and at the time, it's hard to put this in context. It didn't get a big laugh.
People's jaw dropped, like you don't talk about your near-death experience, you know? And he would always like, push the envelope. And I was just in awe. I never saw a comic do this in my life.
That he didn't have jokes per se, where he would just talk about his life, or he would experiment. I talked about one particular night, I did binders. Did you see the comedy story?
I think you're in it. Yes, I talked about the one night I'll never forget. He just walks in the crowd, goes fucking nuts for him, you know?
And he turns around and he starts doing, I can't do him justice. But he says, You know, I'm the fucking Lord, I'm the Lord and everybody's laughing, and I'm just here to pick up my son.
I'm here to pick up my son. You might have seen him, he's kind of a skinny kid with a beard and a robe. A long robe goes by the name Jesus.
Anybody see my son? Where's my son? And people are laughing, but it's getting kind of uncomfortable and he goes, I need my Where is my son?
And then he leans down, as if somebody in the front row is talking to him. He goes, What, what? what the fuck did you do? what?
Where is my fucking? what did you? And he just starts screaming, My son, my boy, my baby, what did? What the fuck did you do to my son? What the fuck did you do? And he's like screaming, What the fuck did you do to my son?
And he goes, and I can't remember the because I don't remember the order. He wants to talk to an apostle. And then he realized, What the fuck did you do to him? And then he goes, Bring me Martin Luther King, bring me Martin Luther King.
Where the fuck is Martin Luther King? And then he gets that info and he goes, Where's Kennedy? I want to talk to Kennedy? and he goes, where the fuck?
Fuck.
Fuck, and he's screaming, and he's got tears coming down his eyes. The room is just sitting there in awe, and then he turns around and he points at the entire room and he goes, You're on your own.
And he walked out, Oh my God, and I thought, Fuck, fuck, but that's Richard fucking Pryor, who just had a. He knew he just went for emotion, not only laughter, emotion.
Well, what I feel like is that Lenny Bruce was the first guy to do. Our kind of comedy where it wasn't just street jokes, it wasn't just two Jews walking to a bar, that kind of stuff. It was like he would talk about life, he would talk about social issues.
And then Pryor made it way funnier, like Pryor's stuff still holds up the Lenny Bruce stuff. It's hard because of the context of the time. Like, you can't put yourself in 1960 and sit there and understand the cultural context of how crazy everything he's saying is. But he still has some jokes that fucking still would kill today.
But Richard Pryor's life, you know, he was raised in a brothel with no money, had horrible, you know, issues with relationships and drugs. And that's the kind of. That's what he talked about, and those are the characters that he mimicked, and those characters are still alive and well today.
You know, like that kind of character.
Oh, the Italian mobsters, yes, the thing about him getting paid and they're giving him noogies. Yes, he pulled out a fake gun.
Yeah, yeah.
But he, But that's that was, that's real, and that was the first time I realized. You know, you will never see anything in my comedy where you will say that's Richard Pryor-like, right? But it really is, and this is what I identified with.
If you look at old YouTube videos of me when I when I first peaked and I went on stage on a dare, you know, and the dare was. I didn't want to be a comic. I just thought, if somebody goes ladies and gentlemen Howie and I said, Okay, and and if somebody goes ladies and gentlemen, Howie Mandel, that'll be a joke, right? Because there's no reason for Howie Mandel to be on the fucking stage.
And I went on the stage and then I realized, Oh, shit, people are looking at me. This is the most embarrassing, this is the most humiliating. This is the most terrifying moment for me in this moment. So I started to panic.
And in my panic, I started going, If you look at old YouTube videos of me, my act is me panicking, and it's me going Okay, all right, okay, all right. oh, okay.
All right, and then they start laughing at me, panicking, and I go, what, what, what? And then I didn't know what the fuck to do and I put my hands in my pocket.
And because we've talked about it, I have OCD, you know. I carried rubber gloves with me always, and because if I was out in public, I was going to go to a public restroom. And I didn't want to touch anything. And I had gloves and I didn't know what to do, I had the glove came out of my pocket because my hands were in my pocket.
So I pulled it over my head, I pulled it over my head, and I just started breathing. And the fingers are going up and down. The crowd's going crazy and I blow up the glove and I pop it off and they roar.
And I had enough sense to go Good night and I walked off. And Mark Breslin, did you ever work at Yuck Yucks in Toronto?
Yeah, I've been at Yuck Yucks in Vancouver.
Yeah, so Mark, the owner said, You've got to come back tomorrow, and I said, for what he goes to do it again, I go do what?
He goes, Do what you fucking did, and that became my thing. Wow, I never wrote anything, I didn't have anything.
And then when I watched Richard Pryor, I went, You know what, you've got to be lucky. If you're talking about your life. If you're talking about real, relatable, or acting out authenticity, people seem to gravitate toward authenticity, toward real, toward who you are even more than though. I did love the guys who did jokes.
I loved Rodney Dangerfield and I loved George Carlin. But even in his later years, he just started talking about his philosophies, which I actually loved even more. Yeah, but that's who I kind of look up to.
Well, the beautiful thing is, there's no one way to do it, there's so many different ways. One of the weird things about comedy is that it's something that everybody enjoys, but there's no real school for it. You can go to school and learn how to play guitar, there's some amazing guitar instructors, amazing people that can teach you how to write music.
But there's nothing for you other than paying attention and trying to figure it out. And if you had told me, like, if I didn't know you and you said, this is what I'm going to do? I'm going to go on stage. I don't have anything prepared, I'm just going to, like, fumble through it.
And I've got some rubber gloves in case shit goes sideways. I'm like, Oh my God, I'm going to watch a spectacular bombing. I would sit in the back of the room like, this guy's going to eat shit.
But no, because whatever it is, that you have this weird, intangible thing that you can't write down, that you can do that, and it's hilarious. My friend Dimitri, rest in peace. He sent me, he gave me one of your CDs when we were both like, I guess I was like, 21 or 22. When did you do your first CD?
I did an album in 84.
Okay, so somewhere around, then a little bit after that, he gives me the CD and it was a lot of that, but it was so funny, it was so ridiculous.
We were like crying, laughing, like me and him. He's like this fucking hulking national taekwondo champion dude, this enormous heavyweight guy. And he's like dying, laughing, just dying, laughing. With two of us in my car, just laughing our asses off.
Because I'm just silly.
But it was so good, dude, it was so fun, and it was one of those things where you can't like, figure out why that's funny, because it's funny.
You know the sense of humor? I think most people don't have a sense of humor. I always say this, and a sense of humor is to find humor where other people don't find it. Richard Pryor found it in a very dark, bleak historical upbringing.
You know, and characters that were probably scary, probably fucked up, and when he imitated them and told you these stories, we laughed really hard. You know, that's why the tragedy and the comedy masks are very close together, they are close together.
And if you could find the humor in those moments, then that's what it is. The humor for me is. I was drowning in public, you know, and I have, and that's the truth. And I, you know, as a kid growing up, I didn't have a fucking friend in the world.
I'm weird. I have mental health issues which weren't diagnosed until I was in my 40s. And everything I was ever expelled for. Gotten in trouble for paid for, I mean, is what I get paid for today. And I found a, you know, I found a stream that is flowing my way, but it's I feel more lucky than skilled.
But what was it like? Because you had to develop an act, right? Because then you went on to do these huge places and you're doing an hour like you had an act. So how did you? Did you just piece it together with all the different performances?
Yes, so what I do and still do now is I put together an act I put together. Like, if something funny happens, I realized, well, then you could just talk about it. And you can just talk about it. And if you really talk about it, then it becomes something funny.
And you could even talk about how I'm putting together an act, you know, I was talking about how in my act, you know, I'm here, playing in town I want to come over to.
Come over.
Can I play?
Two shows tonight.
I would love to drop in.
Come on down, Jim Brewer's going to be there.
I love Jim Brewer.
I love Jim Brewer.
And the club looks amazing. It's a great show. I've been watching it online and I saw Chappelle, everybody who's anybody comes by.
I would like to. I'm playing the Paramount Theater tonight.
Ron White's coming by tonight as well.
I would love to come by, you've got to come by, I would definitely come by.
There's a seven and a ten.
If nothing else, just to see the table in the green room.
Dude, you're coming on stage.
That table.
That table's amazing, isn't it?
Is that a real thing?
No, it's carved, it's all carved out of wood.
It looks like a crocodile or a snake.
Yeah, there's a guy, Scott Dow, it's the underscore Dow. I think on Instagram, I don't know whatever it is. He's an amazing artist that used to cut things like ice sculptures and stuff with chainsaws.
And then he eventually started doing these tables, that are these 3D tables. With crocodiles swimming halfway above the water. It's sick. His artwork's incredible.
Well, his artwork is incredible, but I always wonder about these guys who do ice sculptures. Your work is fucking incredible. Yes, it's gone.
But this one is this is an anaconda. The reason why I wanted an anaconda is jiu-jitsu and jiu-jitsu. Obviously Brazilian jiu-jitsu comes from Brazil. The anaconda is the biggest snake in Brazil.
It's the apex predator. These fucking things are enormous, and there's even moves called the anaconda that people use in jiu-jitsu. I didn't know that, yeah, because it's just like this thing that squishes you.
Is that your thing? Jiu-jitsu? I know you're a fighter, too, you mix martial arts, right?
Yeah, I practiced Brazilian jiu-jitsu for a long time. Yeah, right, it's really great stuff.
I'm not a fighter.
But the thing is, that's why I had that guy do a snake.
So it makes sense, yeah, but it was great even when it didn't make sense to me.
It's just so his stuff, he does so many different things, he does skulls, he has one.
See if you can find that one where he has a sea monster. There's a sea monster that's attacking a boat. What is a sea monster that's attacking an old ship? In these raging waters? On this table, it's incredible.
The stuff he does is just mind-blowing.
You like art, you have amazing art in this amazing museum of a place that you have taken over.
Art's incredible and plus this is the only place where I really get to decorate. I have zero say over my own home.
I bought a warehouse, too, my wife lets me bring.
That's the best way to do it that way nobody gets mad at the house. I have two Greg Overton paintings, he's gorgeous, three of them actually now.
He does this incredible Native American art, and I have three of those in my house, that's it. Everything else is at my office and she's okay with that.
Yeah, my office is chaos.
How old are your kids now?
Well, I have a 10-year-old that we moved out here. she was 10, now she's 12 and a 12-year-old that's now 14..
They go every year, don't you find? They get older? That's what happens. The last time I saw you, you were in Calabasas, California, on your way to a father-daughter dance. Oh yeah.
At Round Meadow or something, yes.
Yeah, those are fun, those are fun, man.
Father-daughter dances.
Yeah, dance with your kids, it's so interesting, so interesting watching them. I just introduced my 12-year-old to South Park.
Does she have that sense of humor?
Oh my God, when you have not—she's almost 13, you have not heard like the wails of hilarity. Like she could not believe what they were getting away with, she couldn't believe it.
I go, honey, you can watch—she likes to binge-watch shows like she's into the Walking Dead, right? I'm like, you can binge-watch this. At the end of the time, they have like a million episodes and they're all funny.
The biggest joy for me, for my children, is to find that they have a sense of humor. That was the most important thing for me. Just know what is funny, just know—don't take things so seriously, don't be so dramatic.
Just find—even in something horrible, because that's what's gotten me through life, is just the ability to laugh at something. So when you introduce something to your kids and they just explode over it, I think that's—like you're telling me with such joy.
She's all in. She got a South Park hat at Spencer Gifts. What is it? It's not Spencer Gifts. What's it called?
Is that what it's called? What's that one that's out here? Same kind of thing.
Do you like living out here? I love it.
I love it out here.
Because you're a Boston kid, right? yes.
That's where I—well, that's where I went to high school. I basically lived everywhere. I lived in New Jersey until I was 7, I lived in San Francisco until I was 11, I lived in Florida until I was 13—11 to 13..
Then I lived in Boston 13 to 24.
Then I moved to New York for a little while, actually, I think I moved to New York when I was 23 and so it was back and forth. And then I lived in New York for a couple years, then I moved out here.
I talk to Bill Blumenreich a lot, I love that dude. yeah, he loves you, he loves you.
I've been working for him since 1989.
Yeah, so I'm partners with him in some stuff.
He's the man, I love that dude, he is the man.
Did he not put you in the business? Weren't you a driver?
He certainly helped me. Yeah, he got me spots for sure, he took care of me. I was a limo driver, I met my manager.
It's a funny story. My manager used to manage Bob Nelson and him and Bob Nelson were splitting up. And he came to Boston looking for new talent. Because he felt like he'd seen everybody in New York. And I was driving Limos for Fifth Avenue limousine and I had an idea that came to me. I'm like, Oh my god, I think this is legit.
And so I called up Oliver, who was the manager of the club, and I said, Hey, man, can I get like, a 10-minute spot tonight? He was like, Yeah, absolutely, and so he hooked me up. I came down and did a guest spot. The bit killed.
I had no idea.
Do you know what that bit is?
No idea, no idea what it was. I forgot completely, but it went well and my manager, who's my manager? still was in the back of the room.
I was basically an open mic-er. I was really only like, a couple years into comedy Wow, and I was just starting to get some paid work on the road. Like middling for like local acts at like shitty bars in the middle of nowhere, those kind of gigs. And he said, Can I see you tomorrow night?
And the thing about it is like, if I had known he was there, I would not have done that bit. Because I do remember the bit was dirty. And back then, in the 80s.
Yeah, you had to work clean.
You had to work clean, you would never get far in the business if you worked dirty. And I was like, God damn it, but that's what I like, I like dice clay.
I like Sam Kinison, I like Richard Pryor, and I remember this guy told me, I swear too much this host of an open mic night. Fuck him. No, no, no.
But it just it was in his mind that you had to get on a sitcom, it was in his mind that you had to get on a sitcom.
That was the path. That's what I was talking about earlier.
He was right to give me the advice career-wise, He just didn't understand that. I didn't think that way, I just I wasn't interested.
Right, and he goes, I go, but that's what I like. I like dice clay. He goes, Yeah, but you're not dice clay. I go, Okay, I'm not.
But how do I become me if I can't do what I like? And, you know, luckily, I didn't listen to him.
And here you are today.
This manager guy, he takes me to a bunch of different places and then he took me to Fast Eddie's, which is a bar in Huntington, Long Island. And there's this dude named George Gallo who's on stage, who's hilarious. And he had a bit where he would put a banana in his mouth and do a reverse shit, it was so ridiculous.
He was so ridiculous, but he was really funny, like, really eccentric. And my manager sees this, he goes, Listen, I'm going to get you out of this, you don't have to do this. I mean, it's a dive bar.
People are hammered. I go, No, no, no, no, no, no, I go. these are my people. you'll get me up there. I go, trust me.
And I just went up there and fucking killed and was all dirty. It was all sex stuff. And then he was like, Okay, I changed my mind. You're going to have to go dirty, it's going to be hard.
You're not going to get on television, but that's the real you, that's the real you.
Well, there was no pathway, there was no path. That's what I'm talking about, and you created a new pathway.
Well, there was a pathway, it just was a rocky one. It seemed like it had already been taken by the outlaws of comedy, like The Kinnisons and Those Guys, and the New Pathway. Seemed to be sitcoms. Everybody wanted to be Brett Butler and Roseanne and Seinfeld.
Everybody wanted to get a sitcom.
Right, but even getting a sitcom, it was one shot, one shot on the Tonight show. And you were given a development deal by one of the three networks that existed. And if you were lucky enough to partner with the right kind of writer, then you ended up on the air. So it was kind of an easy path.
Yeah, but I had that path, too. Because I got a development deal from MTV's half hour comedy hour. I did the half hour comedy hour and I managed to be clean. So I did a clean five minutes and I got a development deal.
The half hour comedy hour was five minutes clean.
Yeah, you didn't do a half hour. it was called the MTV Half Hour Comedy Hour, so it was a half hour and several comedians.
Oh, so, you only had to do five minutes.
I don't remember what I did, but it wasn't long and it was clean. Maybe it was ten at the most probably. You know, there was those TV shows.
They had a ton of them. I remember, I saw Rob Schneider on it, I saw Sandler on it, you remember?
Did you ever do half hour comedy hour?
I didn't do the half hour comedy hour.
You were already too big by then.
Well, I did Evening at the Improv, right, I did Norm Crosby's comedy shop.
You were already really big by the time I was an open mic-er, because when I remember—.
What you're saying 94 is when you started, you said.
I started in the comedy store in 94.
So 88, I started stand-up in 88..
So I had finished doing ST elsewhere in 87. Wow, so I was already done. I was trying to get a sitcom too.
Forgot about St. Elsewhere?
Oh, I did the thing that blasted me off. And probably my hottest point in my career was I did a Young Comedian special. I did the sixth annual Young Comedian Special on HBO. I got. Cast by George Carlin's wife, Barbara.
Wow, may she rest in peace.
And it was me, these were the kids that were on it, that were unknown, it was me, Jerry Seinfeld, Richard Lewis and Harry Anderson. And it was hosted by the Smothers Brothers. And after that, I could sell 10,000 tickets.
I would do two shows a night in these outdoor sheds and then the next—I couldn't get on the Tonight show, but I could sell tickets. I was on Merv, Griffin and Mike Douglas and all those Johnny didn't like me.
Well, the guy that was doing the casting didn't like me, so I went and met at MTM, I went and met Mary Tyler Moore at Radford.
Yeah, CBS Radford.
CBS Radford I went and met them at a general meeting to maybe get a development deal and get a sitcom. Because they were known at the time. In 82, that's right after I blasted off. They were known as the sitcom Kings of the World. They had the New Heart Show, they had done Mary Tyler Moore, they had all these other shows.
And Molly Lopata, who was the casting lady? There? I'm sitting in her office, she goes, Can you act? I said, I don't know, I don't know, I'm a comic.
I don't know, and she goes, Read this and I read this bullshit piece of shit. I don't know what it was, but none of it made sense to me. It was like all this big terminology.
She says, Come down the hall, I went down the hall and I met. —Now I know it's with Mark Tinker and Bruce Paltrow. Gwyneth's dad and I read the same thing. I got halfway through. They went, Thank you.
And I went home and my wife asked me, like, how did it go? and I went, You know, I didn't get it. Whatever it is, but it was the shittiest sitcom. There was nothing funny I didn't read.—I read this medical shit.
There's nothing funny. And then I get a call an hour later to go down and meet with Brandon Tartikoff, who ran NBC. He created all the classic shows of the time, you know, like Cheers and Taxi and all these shows that were at one time, you know, huge hits. I went and met him, I went down there.
This was on a Friday and he had me read that same scene again. And they said, We'll see you Monday. Thinking that, Oh, I'm getting a callback for this shitty sitcom. And they called. —My agent called me at home and said, You got it? I said, What the fuck did I get?
And I got this thing called Sane elsewhere.
And apparently it had been shooting for a week and they wanted to recast some of the parts. I'm recast. And I played this guy Fiskus for six years on this dramatic series. That's where Denzel Washington came out of, we both—that's where he launched.
He didn't have—Yeah, there's me and Denzel and David Morse, and, you know, I think Tim Robbins and Ray Liotta and all these other people. Kathy Bates did their first guest appearances and acting appearances on this thing.
Mark Harmon.
Mark Harmon started there, too, that's Mark Harmon.
Sexiest man alive one of those years.
Yeah, well, you remember all the sexiest men alive? just a few, yeah, and Bill Daniels. He was kit, wow.
And Norman Lloyd, who just died at 106, at the bottom there, Norman Lloyd,—.
Who's that gentleman to the left of Denzel? I know that guy to the left?
David Morse Yes, David Morse, he's been in everything, and so was Bill Daniels was in the graduate.
Mark Harmon's on NCIS. Norman Lloyd was the muse for Alfred Hitchcock. He was the bad guy in Spellbound Whoa. So I walked onto this and I replaced a guy by the name of David Pamer.
Do you know who that is?
No.
He won—I got nominated for an Academy award for Mr. Saturday Night. I think he played Billy Crystal's brother in Mr. Saturday Night. Whoa.
That's who I replaced. Oh yeah, that guy's great. another jew-y looking guy. He's great, though. yeah, he is great, and I was so happy.
I always felt guilty taking somebody's place.
Some of those guys, they'll play. A tortured intellect, a very high-anxiety guy. He's the best at that shit, he is. You get tense whenever he's dealing with something like, Oh, shit.
There's some guys that just know how to fucking, there's these Daniel Day-Lewis type characters, these weird characters. They just—Seymour—what was his name? The guy who died of?—Philip Seymour Hoffman. Holy shit. was he one of those guys?
Yeah.
When he had a scene, you get emotionally connected. You knew it was Philip Seymour Hoffman. You believed whatever the fuck he was selling, in spite of the fact you knew who he was.
I think that these guys have a real pain inside of them. Anyhow. They have to, and these jobs allow them to let it seep to the surface and we get to enjoy it.
I don't know how you can be a happy person and do that.
I don't think these are happy people, all the people you mentioned, I don't know that they were happy. I don't know that I'm not happy and I'm this goofy—.
But you seem happy, I know you seem happy when you're around people.
That's why it's confusing. That's the scariest thing. Yeah, I'm.—nobody's more confused than me. And right now, as I talk to you, I'm incredibly medicated and I am.
Well, they get you on.
I'm not talking about what I'm on because people, it may not be good for you and I don't want people to take—.
Well, that's very admirable of you.
Yeah, but I do—I get help. I'm surrounded by people. The dichotomy between how I feel and what I do is huge. I'm a fucking mess and I deal with depression and anxiety.
It's unfortunate because you're such a nice guy. Every encounter I've ever had with you has been so pleasant and so fun and so nice. I always walk away going. Howie is like, the nicest fucking guy, thank you. I always feel that way.
So when I hear about a person like you that doesn't feel well, that gets depressed, I'm like, God damn it. When he's around people, he seems so happy.
I'll tell you why, because, like, in this moment, I'm talking to you, so I'm in this moment, you know, listening to you, responding to you.
Right now, you're happy.
I'm distracted, you know, I am, because the worst thing for me is quiet time. you know, I don't like nighttime.
I don't like when I get into my own head. That's why I like stand-up comedy, because in those moments you're just in the moment, because you have to be. You know, I could if I veered off into the darkness that is me. And not listening to a word you're saying and not trying to respond, I'm just trying to, you know, I feel like I'm balancing on this little ledge all the time. And these words and these interactions hold me, are my cable that hold me on this side of it without falling off, wow.
Wow, that's heavy, it is heavy, you know? It's like OCD has become a vernacular for a joke. I can't tell you how many times a day somebody comes up to me and they go, You know, I'm a little OCD-ish.
I want all my stuff lined up, I like to stay clean, too. That's not OCD, that's they've used that as a word for being fastidious or neat OCD.
Slightly compulsive, it's not obsessive-compulsive.
Well, the obsession is the part that when you are obsessed with a thought and you can't get a thought out of your head. No matter how dark it is. Or you can't get a ritual out of your head and you can't move on, you think about Howard. Hughes was probably one of the brightest, most productive engineering, you know, marvels of our time, and so many in technology and artistry and everything. And his last few years, he was in the fetal position, naked in his room, pissing into a bottle, right?
And I tell people, at any given moment when you're with me, I can't tell you. I'm not that far from that. So I'm always just trying to toe the line and be on this side of that door.
Have you done anything else that helps other than meditation? Have you tried other than medication? Have you tried meditation?
I've tried meditation, and I do meditation. I've tried everything outside of the and I'm not opposed to it, the psychedelics and mushrooms and things like that.
I don't know if anybody would recommend that to you.
Well, here's the problem for me in order to do that.
You'd have to get off your medication.
Right, and to get off my. I don't know that I could survive that bridge from my medication to doing that, so the medication is for me, my, my lifeline.
You would have to be like, very, very closely supervised during that entire time. I wouldn't. I wouldn't know how anybody would approach something like that. Because I think you're you're dealing with a very specific kind of case. And most of the people that advocate for psychedelics do not advocate it for people that are really struggling mentally. My just to keep it together right now, you know, and to get off the medication which is helping you keep it together.
Probably doesn't seem wise, but there's ways you can do it without drugs. There's like the holotropic breathing. There's some people who practice. I have never experienced this, so this is me talking out of my ass, but I have direct connections to people that have done Kundalini yoga.
There's a specific style of Kundalini yoga, specific way that you can achieve these bizarre states, altered states that similar. They're similar to, like mushrooms or a DMT experience. They're similar to psychedelics, according to people that I know that have actually done the psychedelics and have gotten obsessed with Kundalini. And they say they can get to that place on their own, which is really fascinating.
If you know somebody, then give me a card before I leave here today.
I do not know anybody well, I know some martial artists that have done it, but they don't teach it. But I do know that there's a great place in L.A. that teaches Kundalini yoga.
Well, if anybody's listening to this and you're, I'll read the comments if you have any recommendations, yeah.
Again, this is not. I don't have personal experience with this, so I'm just relaying other people's anecdotes and seems interesting. But regular yoga, for me, I really like a lot.
I run.
Running's great.
But running, I use it as a meditation. I don't even listen to music, I just listen to my. I do it on a treadmill, and I just listen to my feet hitting the treadmill and my breath. And I'll do that for an hour.
That's amazing every day, that's fantastic.
It's good for my physical health, but it's also better for my mental health, so to me, that's kind of a medication.
It is a medication.
And a meditation and just staying crazy busy is my other form of I'm really busy.
That's good, though, yeah, it seems like everything you're doing you enjoy, so even though you're busy, you're busy doing fun stuff.
Most of the time. But I have this overlay of terror to think whatever I'm doing is going to end. Whatever I'm doing will get me in trouble. The truth of the matter is, when I found stand-up, stand-up was the most freeing thing in the world. It was the one place where, unlike acting, I didn't have to recite any lines.
I didn't have to hit any marks. You could do anything. And that's why I've been such an advocate for you and all the people that we talked about earlier. Because they seem to be incredibly free.
Yeah, we're not connected to any kind of censorship anymore, it used to be you were connected. You had to put together an act that was sellable for a sitcom. Or you wanted to get on a television show that wouldn't have you on if you were dirty. And so there was all these guys that liked a very specific type of comedy.
Just like people like a specific type of hip-hop or a specific type of rock music, they liked that kind of comedy that's always been my favorite. And so there was no place where you could just be free other than stand-up comedy and stand-up comedy in L..A.
Was always at least flavored by the entertainment industry. Out here, it's the podcasts. So it's like your mom's house is here because Tom Segura is here, and Christina Buszynski is here, Tim Dillon's show is here, Duncan Trussell is here.
It's like Tony Hinchcliffe, who has Kill Tony, which is the best live podcast in the world. They do live stand-up, and amateurs actually get a career out of it. They get to do one minute and get judged and critiqued by comics and everybody goofs on everybody. Guys have gone on to become headliners from that show.
No, that's what I'm saying, that's what the shift is out here. Were you out here before them?
I came out first, right? But Ron White was already here. Ron White moved here before the pandemic. He fucking loves it.
He goes, I fucking love it, it's the best fucking city in the world. And I was like, God damn it, Ron White's smart, maybe he's right.
And when the pandemic hit, we came to look out here and my kids loved it. I was like, I'm in and my wife, reluctantly at first, but loves it now and now. I couldn't imagine living anywhere else. It's fucking amazing.
There's so many great comics out here right now.
Well, that's what I'm saying, but you feel that this is the epicenter, don't you?
I wanted to build it to give people a real stand-up home. I mean, we already had shows that we're doing at the creek and the cave and the vulcan pretty much every week. But I wanted to do something where it was really designed to, first of all, to foster new talent. So we have two open mic nights, two nights, and then we have, after the open mic nights, the door.
Guys, all the people that work there, guys and gals, they all audition, so they're all stand-ups and so all those people are very talented. And so they get real stage time in front of packed crowds.
That's what the comedy store used to be.
Well, that's what we're trying to do, and we're trying to do it in a way where everybody gets paid. There's plenty of money going around, it's a really warm, welcoming environment, there's plenty of fun.
There's a lot of really great comics you can watch. You might walk in there and boom, Rich Vos is on stage, you walk in there, Shane Gillis is on stage.
Bill Burr dropped into the amateur.
Bill Burr is on stage.
The open mic the other night.
Yeah, he did two nights in a row. You see, Dave Chappelle shows up. I mean, it's like, that's what I wanted and the fact that it happened so quickly and it worked out so well. It took a long time to design, a long time to build.
But we did it the right way. And this guy, Richard Weiss, who's the architect and the designer, he's the fucking man and he put it together. I'll have him on one of these days to talk about it because it's really interesting, he knows a lot about Austin history.
So in the green room, all the posters around the green room, those are all from people that actually performed at the Ritz, because it used to be a punk rock club. So it was like, Butthole surfers and the misfits and shit.
That's the club that's now the.
Yeah, that's where the mothership is, it's the Ritz Theater.
Did you buy the building?
Yeah, it's a theater from 1927, yeah.
That's fantastic, it's pretty wild, you've got to be proud.
I'm very happy.
But so we were talking about these guys and these podcasts. I'm also, you see, I'm torn because I am attached to that L..A. scene. In as far as I enjoy doing America's Got Talent, I don't want it.
So there's a dichotomy between loving that kind of comedy, wanting to do that kind of comedy and still taking it well. The store is still in L..A.
The store is still in L.
A.
Right, but I'm talking about what you can do on stage versus.
Yes, yeah, if you want to stay on America's Got Talent, you can't get too crazy.
No, but my leaning is that's what I watch, that's what I like, that's what I share amongst my friends.
When I started out, you know, and I was just doing like, HBO specials, you know, I did about 10 cable specials. That's what I was doing, even before I got ST elsewhere. And then I just like.
What network TV has, you know? I had a great time doing deal or no deal? I had a great time doing AGT, I have a great time even doing. I'm doing a podcast with my daughter.
But I also love that kind of humor that you and your buddies do.
And you want to do it, yeah.
You should do it, that's my sense of humor.
You should do it.
Yes, I should I have to, I just.
Things if you get in trouble and they get rid of you, you'll just be selling out arenas everywhere.
You're right, yeah, yeah, look at Gillis, right?
It's not going to hurt you.
No.
No, I don't think so. I think if they're smart, they'd keep you on. I mean, you're not going to be mean.
I'm not mean, it's just that.
It's just raunchy.
But I think that raunchy, I think, when something's wrong, when something's dark, when something, that's why it's funny.
Sometimes, yeah, mostly if you find the right formula.
But even in the most mundane jokes, so you said, these guys are right jokes. If two guys walk into a bar, it's not a joke unless something fucked up happens to one of them. If they just walk in, they have a drink and leave.
Right, that's not a joke, right? That's a story, right?
It may be a humorous story about what happened, but if it's a joke, something horrible has to happen to one of them.
Right, right, something ridiculous has to be the result.
And sometimes it's funny because it's so wrong.
Yeah.
Because you're pushing the edge and here we are in this millennium, and that edge seems to be moving back for more of the public. And I love that you can swim in this pond, which is a huge pond. Now there are more people playing arenas than ever before.
Ever when I started out, nobody was playing arenas, it was a big deal when Dice did. Yeah, you know.
Dice was the first, right.
I think, before that, Steve Martin, Yes, Steve Martin, yeah.
That Let's Get Small tour was the first one and I went to see it. I've never seen a comic in an arena, you know? And it was like, fucking rock and roll.
And now every second comic is in an arena.
A lot of comics are now, it's a lot, it's the internet presence, it's podcasts and Netflix specials and YouTube specials.
I got into podcasting not for stand-up. I got into podcasting just to have a reason to sit with my daughter. That's cool. Yeah, it is, it's fun.
That's cool. Listen, man, you can do whatever you want. Thank you, but I get how you're feeling.
And I get that you're attached to these things you enjoy doing.
Yeah, you know, I do like it, but I love watching you. I'm a huge fan of what you're doing.
Let's see what happens tonight. Everybody has yonder bags, so the phones will be locked up so you can get crazy.
They do at your club. Yes, oh, I love it, so then I can do my....
You can get crazy, we'll tell everybody, don't tell anybody.
Don't tell anybody that I said cunt, Can I say cunt?
You definitely can.
No on this.
Yeah, you did. Yeah, it's all good.
Yeah, I know, and then you can't. I already signed. Just coming here drove me crazy. You had a car?
Pick me up and in the back of the car was Dude Wipes? I asked the guy, What's that? is it for your balls? What is dude wipes?
I think it's for your butt, right? It's for everything.
But just, dude wipes bothered me. They're in the car, what would you do?
Like, you have a shitty ass in the car and you want to wipe it off before you get out.
In the fucking car. So they offer me that. And then I walk into this place and the guy that's sitting right here says, you've got to sign this. Like a release, but it's not....
I could hold a pen with my sleeve, it was an iPad I had to touch.
Yeah, with the finger.
Yeah.
Those are ridiculous.
Why don't you have like paper?
You don't want to freak anybody out with a handprint, because then you'll think we're part of the new world order. That's what we wanted to do.
And then you have the So. I was freaked out just sitting here.
You can buy stuff at the supermarket now with your handprint.
What are you talking about?
Yeah, whole foods, yeah, whole foods.
What do you mean?
Yeah, you register your handprint and then you can pay with your handprint. Do you like that?
No, I'm scared.
I'm terrified. Did you see the shit that Elon Musk was saying that the head of Google wants to do? He wants to create a digital God? And then Elon was worried about the death of the species, and he called them the death of humans, rather.
And he called Elon a speciesist.
Like a racist for an entire, I didn't see that.
See if you can find the video because it's so bonkers. It's Elon talking about how general AI, which is general artificial intelligence, I know what that is.
I watched your podcast.
Just so the people that maybe never heard this before, they think that eventually, what's going on with? Like, Chatgpt and all these things, you can answer any question that you have at any given time. Like, they can pass the bar better than 98 of the population, they could figure out complex math like ChatgPt does some wild shit by literally scanning the entire internet.
The main concern is that right now this is just gathering information. But if it goes to another place, where it becomes conscious and we create a digital life, you're essentially going to have a digital God. Because it's going to be smarter than any person who's ever lived, ever, by far. And it's almost immediately going to create a better version of itself, and it's going to continue to do that until it becomes a God.
I don't know right now. You can't picture who your God is. The fact that it's really improving itself and we can point to it.
Imagine if that is the birth of God, though, there's just like perpetual cycle of humans creating gods.
Are you anti or pro AI?
I don't know if it matters if I'm anti or pro. My opinion is like, I'm an observer of something insanely chaotic that seems to be sneaking up on people.
How did you feel about your?
It was you right, your AI.
Well, there's a bunch of Ais of me now doing fake commercials. There's me having podcasts. I saw the podcast with Sam Altman who's alive, and I haven't met. But Steve Jobs is dead, and there's a podcast with me and Steve Jobs. It's insane.
Isn't that amazing, though?
It's so wild and it's just the beginning. There was a Drake song that went viral and they pulled it. apparently it went viral and everybody loved it and they pulled it.
I know.
People are terrified of this thing.
No, people just couldn't figure out how to cash in on this thing.
Well, it's also they're terrified of it because they're going to become irrelevant. Someone has your sounds.
There was Rihanna doing a Beyonce song.
They'll be able to do whatever they want, man, they're going to be able to take, they can have you say anything, listen to this.
The reason OpenAi exists at all is that. Larry Page and I used to be close friends and I would stay at his house in Palo Alto. And I would talk to him late into the night. About AI safety, and at least my perception was that Larry was not taking AI safety seriously enough.
What did he say about it? He really seemed to be sort of a digital super intelligence, basically a digital god. If you will, as soon as possible, he wanted that. Yes, he's made many public statements over the years.
The whole goal of Google is what's called AGI artificial general intelligence, or artificial super intelligence.
But there's more to it. Where is that the end of that one? See if you can find the rest of it, because the rest of it is where it's getting fascinating. Where he warns him that this could be the end of the human race, and Larry Page calls him a speciesist.
I found them talking about that text, I didn't find the video. No, there's a video of it that I'll send to you, but it's so bonkers. It's like, What the fuck are you guys talking about?
But isn't that probably normal? It seems like that's the general path that intelligence and innovation is going to go to. It's going to go to something that's far more powerful than anything we've ever created before.
But are you afraid of it?
Yes.
I'm not interesting, I'm not. In fact, my wife got mad at me because I licensed my AI to a Korean company.
Oh boy.
Is that a problem?
No.
She thinks it is, and maybe you do, too.
I found it, Jamie.
Oh, you got it, I'll watch this, but I just I feel this is the way it's going. What we don't know instills fear.
So try, instead of touting all the negativity and all the fear-mongering that this is going to cause. Let's embrace it and figure out how we can control it, or at least work with it to better who we are and how we do things.
What if it's already here it is? What if that's why our cities are falling apart? That's why crime is rising.
That's why we're embroiled in these tribal arguments that seem to be separating the country.
Because your conversation right now is exactly what's happening, I agree with you, but why are you making AI another tribe? That's why we're tribal.
No, no, no, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is what if that is the reason why all this is happening, what if? The best way to get human beings to? If you want to take over, why would you fight us?
They've seen Terminator, they know it was guns and tanks and all this craziness. How about just continue to degrade and erode the fiber of civilization to the point where you have to? There's no more jobs. You have to provide people with income universal basic income, free electricity, free food, free internet.
So everybody gets all this stuff, you get free money, free food, free internet, and then nobody does anything. And then people stop having babies and then birth rate drops off. To a point where the technology you give people is so fantastic that nobody wants to miss it.
Okay, Mr. Sunshine.
But this is what I would do if I was in artificial general intelligence. I would say, Listen, I have all the time in the world. I don't have a biological lifetime, and these people haven't realized that I'm sentient yet. So what's the best way to gain complete and total control?
Well, first of all, trick them into communism or socialism or something where there's a centralized control and definitely have centralized digital money. And then once you've got all that, give them technology and perks and things. And divvy up all the money from the rich people that you subjugate and give that money to people, print it, do whatever the fuck you want. And then get people to a minimum state of existence where everything's free, free food, free internet, free cell phones, free, everything. And then wait for them to die off.
And if, for what purpose?
Because you don't need them around anymore. Develop technology that's so captivating, whether it's the metaverse or the next iteration, or neuralink, develop the matrix, literally develop something that's so spectacular that no one wants to leave it. Why would you want to have a kid if you've got a button on your phone that you could come 30 times in a row?
You probably wouldn't, you probably wouldn't go on dates. You'd probably just be eating food and experiencing the joy of flying like an eagle over a river. You'd be experiencing space travel. You're going to be able to experience things that are so beyond what's available in the real world.
You won't really engage with the real world and then people just die off.
Do you believe this is what's going on?
It's just a dumb theory that I had when I was high.
Are you high right now?
No, not right now.
Okay, but I came in, I said I wanted to be distracted, so I wasn't depressed.
It's not depressing.
But it is you're talking about the end of the world, as we know it.
I feel like we are a digital caterpillar. We are. We're creating a cocoon, and we're going to give birth to the next form of existence, the next form of life.
To cohabitate with.
Hopefully, that would be nice.
I think –.
Maybe it'll help us get our shit together, we're going to clean up the oceans.
That is the reason that I licensed my AI because I want to maintain some control. And you know, you're taking nine steps forward. I'm just trying to live in the now.
I think the now is very temporary right now, I think the now is so fast.
We're moving faster than we ever have.
The now we're experiencing right now. What I'm getting out of, like Chat, GPT-4 and these emerging technologies is that we really, as lay people, have no understanding of where this is going. And it's happening so rapidly, at such a groundbreaking way, I don't think we realize how I think Chat GPT-4 is as groundbreaking as the printing press. I think it's bananas.
Oh, I believe that.
It's some new thing that's going to completely change how people interface with information, completely change how people get answers to ideas and jobs that are necessary. That will not be necessary anymore. There's going to be so many things you'll be able to do taxes.
So many things you're going to be able to do.
But, that being said, on the other side of it, maybe this is a great tool that will enhance whatever our future is, instead of take away us from the future.
Both, I think both. I think we're going to integrate. If I had to guess, I would say that the way through this thing without becoming extinct is that we integrate. And I think that's probably what happens in the universe.
I think civilization gets to a point where they develop things that are so transformative. It's one of the things that when we look at intelligence, we're really concerned with is your ability to manipulate your environment. Because otherwise, we would all be absolutely fascinated with Orcas, and we'd be outraged if they're at Seaworld. Because these are literally things that are probably as intelligent, if not more intelligent than us. We don't even understand their languages.
They have different dialects, they have enormous brains, and we're not really fascinated by them because they can't manipulate their environment.
We don't have, but we when you say we, we don't have a human. But I'm saying, we don't have access to even know that there isn't. And the metaverse gives you access to become fascinated with an orca, sure.
But that's what I'm saying. So it kind of enhances and opens up that. But the problem is that we're not fascinated. Because what kid in Wisconsin, who's nowhere near a seaworld, who's nowhere near water, who's nowhere? What access does he have? Not only visually, the digital universe is bringing the world to everybody.
Absolutely, I agree. That's the great part about it, the metaverse. Like Zuckerberg, he gave us a demo, and one of the parts of the demo is you could do tourism.
So you could be walking around the Acropolis in Greece, you could walk around the pyramids. There's so many opportunities to go to places and experience it in 3D high resolution in these headsets, it's incredible, right?
But that's just for now. I think the next stages are going to be so overwhelmingly advanced, I think it's going to happen so exponential and so fast it is.
I'm really involved in, not as involved as you or any of these people that you speak of in technology. I'm in the world of holograms, I work with this company, I sit on the board of this company called Protohologram. And I came to it because I saw it online.
You can go see it, go on Instagram and look at protohologram.
Help me, Obi-wan, there are only hope, right? That's what we thought it was going to be.
Yeah, but I can be anywhere, I don't have to be here, and you could see me in 3D with no latency, and I can interact and see you.
Remember when they did that on CNN?
Yes, yes. Why did they stop doing that?
That was pretty dope.
Maybe it cost them money. I can do it now at a price. In fact, you should talk about having one of these in your club because you can have any comic at any time. Sit down and do a q&a and have it. We put one in Jimmy Kimmel's club in Vegas.
There it is the epic, you can be anywhere that's incredible and you don't need special lighting for it.
Go to the Instagram and see a play of it. So you could kind of say like this, based on your philosophy, we'll never go out again, we'll never go anywhere, we don't have to travel, we don't have to go anywhere.
We can just....
For us, though, for us current humans, this model of human that we currently are both, I think that we enjoy actual physical experiences.
You do.
You don't enjoy them.
Not so much.
So you would be very happy with holograms.
I go, look, this is I had Nick Cannon, who's on my podcast this week. He came in, he was at a hologram. He said he wants one of those for each of his baby mama's houses, so he can visit his baby.
But you see all you need and you can do it on your side. You can do it with just an iPhone. And you can see there's a camera at the top of it and you can see in real time your audience, the person you're visiting.
And you can also that's like an iPad, so there can be graphics and a barcode and everything right there. So people can get information, you can talk in real time.
And he can have a camera pointed at the audience so he can actually see the audience.
That is what. See the top of the box right there. Yeah, where he is, that's a camera.
Not only is it shooting for him to see, but it's also this is another scary thing. But it's collecting analytics, so it knows who's in front of it. Oh, facial recognition, how old you are?
Everything, everything recognition.
FBI You're going to get everybody on tape.
Yeah, look, there was....
Wow, Segura did it.
Yeah, Segura did it well, that was Whitney Cummings used it at the Bert Kreischer thing. We built a port-o-potty around it, a proto-potty.
But that was pre-taped, but he could have done that live and seen him, that was pre-taped, so he just used it as a video. But all this technology to answer your question, which could be like, you can say, well, we don't have to travel anymore.
We're going to be locked in our own little world. Yeah, at the same time, it gives me access to worlds that I couldn't go to. You can go do. I can go to a concert right now.
I could take one of those boxes and be all over the world. We have them all over the world, in Japan, in London, all over Asia, everywhere. I could be in 20,000 theaters, all at the same time and see every face of every person. Whoa, so I can do a world tour without getting on a plane.
That's pretty dope. I'm still going to want to see people live, but I could totally see why that would be very appealing to a lot of people.
You think you want to see people live, but I'm telling you, like, even at the mothership, if somebody didn't want to fly in. If during the day you wanted to do q&as with Chappelle or whatever. I promise you that those people sitting in the room will feel like, and he will feel like he's in the room with them, talking to them.
It's a great idea.
It is a great idea, but that's, I think, that speaks. That's just one part of....
Interesting.
Yeah, so what I'm saying is technology can be really scary. It could fuck you up. It's kind of like the knife.
Yeah, but it's also look, I love the technology of cell phones. You know, I'm so hypocritical in that way. Like, a part of me is like, my God, we're so addicted to these things. But also look how goddamn convenient it is you can take photo and video anytime you want.
When's the last time you made a phone call? You don't anymore.
v1.0.0.260408-1-a910ba6_os