Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Mark Ronson Returns

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Mark Ronson (Night People: How to be a DJ in 90s New York City) is a Grammy and Academy Award-winning producer, songwriter, and DJ. Mark returns to Armchair Expert to discuss feeling the full circle moment returning to vinyl after coming up as a DJ in the 90s, the tangible difference between experiencing the sounds of records versus digital media, and not playing his own records because he wants to earn the crowd on merit. Mark and Dax talk about having a vague memory of Robin Williams waking him up as a child during one of his parents’ parties, launching soggies from the 10th floor with Michael Jackson, and the lovely memory he created playing Wonderful Tonight during his mom and stepdad’s wedding. Mark explains gigging at the holy love child of Broadway camp and total Times Square sleaze, the breakthrough moment he changed everything by mixing Biggie’s The Benjamins with ACDC’s Back in Black, and being so grateful he developed his craft in the era where you had to physically hunt down records to sample.Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Lillie Padman. Hi. Hi, I did an intro for you yesterday. You did?

For Mom's Car. Oh, my goodness. And what did you have to say? Well, I was trying to rattle off all your many non-duploid. And there's just so many. Oh, that's nice. Today we have Mark Ronson. I don't know if he has any non-deplur's.

Do you think I'm saying that correctly? Yeah. I'm out on a limb with it. Mark is an internationally renowned DJ Oscar winner and nine-time Grammy Award-winning producer and songwriter. His albums are Late Night Feelings. Uptown special version. Here comes the fuzz. But also, he did the Barbie song track.

He sure did. He did the shit. He wrote that awesome Dulepa song that's on there. Uptown funk, Valerie, electricity. He's one of the biggest music producers we got. He's a monster. And he has a new memoir out on September 16th, 916, called Night People. How to be a DJ in 90s, New York City.

And it's just a huge love letter to New York in the 90s. And his stories are wide as you'll hear. No, he has one of the craziest childhoods and lives imaginable. Yeah. Please enjoy Mark Ronson. He's an arm chair expert. He's an altruitsby. I mean, I did do nicotine gun for a long time, but it used to be in rectangles. Now it's in these little circles.

These are lozenges, and then I augment also... With cigarettes. With a direct nicotine spray. Okay, cool. Which I'm going to do right now. And then how... How do I sleep? No, I just mean, like, is there a weaning thing, or you're just good with that now?

Oh, no, because there's nothing... There's nothing bad about it. There's nothing bad about nicotine. It's just a delivery device. Why did you quit the gum? It's so fun and playful. I think at some point I just didn't need it. Maybe.

I don't mean that that sounds like I need it. I need it. Do you know? Are you friends with Justin Thoreau? Uh-huh. He's just always popping. I like the patch. I like the gum.

I don't know. Just stop. Most people are like you. They use it for a purpose to get off. Yeah. And then they're done. But not you. And I went back and forth a lot.

And then it was the hypnotism because I probably went back to smoking. And so the hypnotism was the thing that. That's a big missing part of the story. Yeah. You know, I wouldn't have known this off the top of my head, but we interviewed you in June of 2021. Yeah. Long time.

And then a couple months later, you were married. I know. And then you have since had two daughters, as I have two daughters. Congrats. I have a really clear memory of listening to our podcast, our interview, sitting in a car outside the in and out. I got my burger and I was going back to New York. I think I worked all day on a studio session, and it just come out.

Just like one of those really lovely sitting in car listening to this interview, listening to me talk about my wife, and we're sort of about to get married. It's just a very magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson, kind of lonely L.A. kind of thing, but also very warm and sweet because I was listening back to our thing. And I'm talking about my wife who I ever see love. And it's funny. It's really ingrained in my memory of that interview we did. Oh, good. That's our goal.

It was lovely. That was through the terrible interface of computers. That was a COVID interview. Yeah. And we found out that you and Bradley Cooper have the same birthday. Three days apart. September 4th. So you're a Virgo as well.

And he's about to turn 50. You're about to turn 50. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. It's her birthday in four days? On Sunday. Happy birthday. How do you feel about 50?

It feels like I'm full of shit, but I don't feel a certain way. I think because I'm so fucking grateful about where I am with family, and that was the thing that I never picture for myself. So I feel so settled in it. Everybody's like, are you going to throw a big party? I keep having these flashes of seeing pictures online of like, Nause is 50th birthday, with everyone in tuxes and it's like Gatsby. And in my head, I'm like, I'm DJ. so many great parties. I've had some great parties. My book is coming out 10 days later. I'm in the middle of fucking scoring a film. I don't think I'd be able to let go enough to have that party right

now. I don't think I'd enjoy it. It's not really the time. Well, you can put a pin in it. I was anti-party as well. My birthday is January 2nd, which is the worst. We were in Mexico. We got norovirus on my birthday. Everyone was dead. I was like, wow, literally might die on my 50th birthday. Oh my God. Regardless, got home and even though Kristen knows I didn't want to party she did plan a surprise birthday party was it a milestone birthday or no just a regular oh you just you just turned 50 in january wow so great she rented the roller rink down the street and i don't know how many of there was this maybe 40 or so 40 people roller skating to a great playlist with some incredible barbecue was brought in it was about as good as it could get what date was

it how long after the it was a couple weeks after my birthday at least i could do that yeah so when you're done with the film and the book comes out. Maybe we rent Moonlight Roller Way and we just reset it. I was trying to imagine the kind of thing where I'm surrounded by people I love and doing something that would be wonderful and not stressed out. I would be stressed out roller skating. But my equivalent of that. Yeah, what would be yours?

Big kayaking party. So it's just something fun. I don't know, like Greco-Roman wrestling. Yeah, that's great. Social and as big of an extrovert as I am, if a lot of people gather for me, I'm very uncomfortable with that. The roller skating rink for me was a dream because everyone already knows I'm there to skate.

I love to skate. I skated the entire party other than blowing my candles out. So I'm just out there. And then I'm seeing my, hey, it's a nice little chat while you're skating and dancing. So it was a great little. No pressure enough to talk to every single person.

Because that's what I think. Oh, people I haven't seen in a couple years are going to come. I owe all of them 35 minutes of heart-to-heart catch up. Because, yeah, you think about it. You're going to go around and say hi to everybody and before you know it, it's three in the morning. That's right.

But I'm going to fast forward to a question I was going to ask you at the very end of this, which is reading your book got me so nostalgic. And I have been saying to Kristen for a while, we had to go to Atlanta for work for something. And I said to her on the way, they're like, we're going to go out dancing. Like, I'm going to find a club with some good hip hop and we're going to go dancing.

And she's like, can it be at eight? And I'm like, no, that's not how clubs work. And she's like, I can't do that with you. I need to go ahead and have fun. And it occurred to me, like, will you ever, as an old man, still go to a club and enjoy that scene? The crazy thing about this book is a really good friend of mine read it. And he's always got a good insightful off the wall take on something when I play him a piece of music or read this book. He's like, I love the book.

It just sounds like you really miss DJing. You need to go back to DJing and only playing vinyl again. So my first song was like, Jesus Christ, like, hauling those like 100 pound crates of things. I got to find them all. And like, because I've been DJing with digital. Not to get too techie, but for the last 20 years. You DJ CDJs and Serato and all this stuff. But I was like, it's worth a try.

So I started DJing again and there's just great club, you know, great clubs all over Brooklyn. Oh, you're now currently. Not only I'm just DJing. I'm like hauling crates of records. Whoa. I'm stumbling home in Tibet at like 233 in the morning. My wife, who is very happy for me,

but completely missed out. Fortunately, on this first phase of my life, is just like, oh, fuck. I married a DJ. I didn't count for this. She's kind of supportive of it, but I'm up at 6.30 with the kids, like, no matter what. You'll do it after getting home at 3? Yeah, because I kind of want to, and I'll find a nap later in the day.

So I have been, the difference is, back when I was DJing in my 20s and 30s, and it was my whole life, I was DJing every night and then going out to see other DJs, A.m., whoever on other nights, because that's how you stay in the game. It's really hard for me to go out until. three in the morning if I'm not working. But yes, I've had this weird thing where I'm like, oh, fuck dude. It's like dragging me back in. This book is about New York in the 90s and me coming up as a DJ in my 20s. And it's a lot about the emotional highs and lows of being a DJ. But I'm going out now and I'm playing music and hip-hop from the 90s and 2000s, mainly because that's what all the fucking young kids are playing anyway. But it's so funny to play these records and be reliving these literally physical actions of this other time to kids who are not allowed.

when I was doing it the first time. So it's kind of lovely. So are you able to lock in and have the experience or does it feel like returning to high school? I think it's both. There's obviously something about reminding myself by literally physically going through the motions of this thing when I was sort of at my best or my peak or at this magical time in my life, which is making the whole thing sort of come back. There's two scientists. They wanted to catalog every single movement. the face was capable of making.

That was their objective. But what they found out on accident was when they were going on like, okay, now do crying, right? They found out that the physicality can inform the emotions. Generally, your emotions start the physicality, but it works in both directions. And so I can imagine where even if you had reservation going there and this is going to feel awkward, once that physical activity, the memory of that might reverse engineer the emotion. I read so many books and books about sound and how music works with the brain. while I was writing my own book, because I just thought, who knows where I'll get a nice little tidbit.

And one of my favorite studies is of this old age home where they started playing all this music and baseball games and things on the radio from the 30s and 40s, which is when these people would have been in their formative years. And it literally slowed the aging process of these people because there's just something about taking your brain back to that time or whatever it is. Yeah. And then there's this other thing, which I found in another book, is that in a place, place for, I don't even know what you're supposed to call this thing, but the home for neurodivergent.

Honestly, the first time I ever heard the word neurodivergent was in Barbie. I just thought it was so funny because she was like, look at that crazy. I mean, sorry, neurodivergent person. Because sometimes really in good faith, the amount of time I spend trying to figure out like, what do I say? Yeah. How do I describe this? How do we be polite and respectful? And the amount of time now it's taking me to find the right word,

you're all gone somewhere else and actually angry at me. So there's a neurodivergent. There was a place where a neurodivergent patients lived, and they would play records of Bach and Mozart that would calm them when they were having their more intense breakdowns. And they tried to switch out the records with MP3s, and they played the same thing. And because they're compressed,

so they don't have all of the same frequencies, the things that we don't necessarily hear, but the vibrate in the skin are not in every phase. It actually made the patients more agitated. Oh, really? So the only way that sort of links back to going back and DJing vinyl again is there is this thing. I don't like to get caught up too much in the vinyl versus things. Like, who the fuck cares?

It's just not like an angry old man. But there's something about playing vinyl again for kids who've never seen anybody do that. I can just see they're kind of like watching. Like it's a bit of a show. And I'm not AM or A track with these crazy routines, but it is my chaotic vinyl of ballet and I'm throwing records on and off. There's a lot of reasons why I'm doing this and I'm enjoying it. it's serving a purpose. I want to say on the vinyl CD MP3 thing,

just minimally, one's a wave and one's a particle, in a sense, right? Like one has been broken into bits, been assembled, and one is one continuous wave. Yes. What effect that might have on your brain or how you perceive that or not, I do think is possible. I didn't want the book to get too nerdy

if I was conscious of anything that might turn somebody off or make them want to skip, I was talking about the fucking record needles for too long. But I did learn actually new things, studying it, like the way that you make a piece of vinyl, the grooves in it are just microscopic wiggles of electro-fucking signals that are carved that then the stylist interprets to be sound. I was like, God, I've been playing this year for like 35 years, and I never even knew that. When you are now DJing, what is the different feeling? Because

now you're established. You're a famous person. Right. And before you were coming up, there's a lot of hunger there. What is the feeling now? Like, how do you recreate that feeling? I feel just as hungry because I think there's just something in all ways that I feel like I'm underdog or I have something to prove. Then I still think the fact that I've been out of the game, like not DJing in nightclubs four times a weekend in that zone where you can just walk into any club and know what to do and murder it. That already is enough to be like, am I going to know what the first record is. But the other thing is that now the fact that I'm, as you say, like famous, or I have records that people know, uptown funk, Valerie, electricity,

whatever it is. I have this sort of cheating advantage when back then I just had to go in on the merits of being a great DJ and playing records really well and murdering it. Now I know, oh, if there's a bit of a lull, I play Valerie and I know I'll get everybody. So I almost have not been playing my own records as well

because I just want to earn it back the way I used to play. This is the same. You'll talk to any stand-up comedian. Seinfeld famously will say, yes, when I go to a nightclub, I am going to get five minutes of free time. They're going to be so excited to be seeing me, but then that'll end. There is an objective

reality in stand-up. You're funny or not. And same with you. I would imagine you still can sense a room. You can read a room, you can feel it, and you still will perform or not perform. So at some point, I would imagine the actual act of doing it is very objective. So all the fame or whatever, the preconceived notions will be gone shortly and you'll either sink or swim. Absolutely. And I try to write about that in the book. The book is very diaristic about. the 90s, I really didn't want to, like, have any kind of... And 20 years later, I would go on to play at Cachal, whatever the fuck. Like, I just wanted to be like a kid.

I would have never known standing in that shitty hovel. Yeah, yeah. That I'd one day be holding Lady Gaga's hand. Yeah. Looking to stage left and seeing David Hasselhoff and Joy has to. Which also was cool. I mean, it is interesting to be someone who's trying to come up. I mean, I think about, like, improv.

We did improv. And when you're just like, oh, I just want people to come to this show. I just want more than 10 people to come to this show. And then you become a name. If you go do improv now, people are going to just come because it's you. It's strange. Now, what I love about the book is I'm always most interested in people's youth when I interview them. I'll even get comments like, why don't you bring up this movie?

I'm like, I don't care about them. I care about like how people ended up being capable of making that movie. So I love it because this book, you're just taking me to the end of the 90s, basically. And even the beginning, you have a very fantastical, is that the word? You have a really strange and unique childhood. Did you understand how unique it was? Yes, I think I had a sense of both things. My parents were this young partying couple in London.

My dad came from some money, so they had this house there. All these rock stars always hang out. He started a publishing company. Yeah, a music publishing company. And that was like their world. And I remember waking up in the middle of the night, and Robin Williams,

Morg and Mindy was the biggest thing. And I loved Mork came in and woke me up. And I had this vague hair. hazy memory. He's definitely gacked out of his mind. Gacked out of his mind. My mom is definitely having a good time too. And he keeps running to the window. I was used to the fact that adults were more fun at night. Adults in the day were a little scary and bad tempered and irritable and maybe you had to avoid them. But at night, everything was all good. So I remember thinking this is strange and unusual, but I'm sure it perverted my sensibility of what was normal from an early age.

But he's leaving the room and you say, You forgot their thing. And he turns back and he knows right away and he's like, nanoo, nanos. He gave him his catchphrase, he knew what I wanted. Did he do this far? I think he did the thing.

I know I had the dexterity at that moment. Oh, you can do it. He had the thing. Towards the end of the book, I was out at a restaurant and I saw him at the table and I just wanted to go up to him, but I kind of like punked out to ask him if you remember my parents' house.

And the universe gave me a second opportunity. He walks towards our table going in the toilet. And I'm like, Mr. Williams, I know this is so crazy. And there's no way that you'll remember this. But one of my earliest childhood memories of was you coming into my room as a kid. And he like, wait, your parents had the house on circus road. And I was like, yeah. He goes, man, they threw some fucking crazy parties and just kept walking.

Like exactly what you want from Robin Williams. He even remembered it. I bet you remembered it because it was at the beginning. Yeah. Like, I bet if that had happened for him 18 years later. It gets in that murk of too many neat things happening at some point. So I think it's worth saying. Mom was from a pretty modest background, but she was very punk rock and spirit.

And then dad was supposed to walk into Hedens. Is that what it's called? Heron. Heron, which was an enormous property management company at one point had billions of dollars. It was sitting on a platter, and he grew his hair long and went into music. You guys are all coming from a good stock. Right, right. Of outcasty non-conformist.

Yeah, outcasty English Jews. Yeah. But your dad's Jewish lineage is a very unique one. It's like a boxer. It's a tough, hard scrabble. My dad's dad was completely self-made. He came from East London, which is where Jewish people, the immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe came, and they worked as butchers and milkmen and whatever else it was.

And he was in this thing called the Jewish Lads Brigade, which was like a boxing thing. And, you know, they were still in that era, even post-World War II fighting fascists on the streets. Kind of like we are now, you know, like fascist marches down the street, and then the Jewish group's going out, and they're fucking fist of cistercuffs in the street and probably worse. And I was proud of that, of course. Yes. My mother's father escaped Nazi Austria in 1937, like a lot of stories, somehow got papers, was on the train, was probably this close to just maybe a Nazi officer being like, no, Jew, you're coming with me, but made it out to England.

And so they were these survivors, you know? Yeah. Do you think mom took on any of that kind of generational? Her mom died really young, too, right? So the dad was raising the kids by himself. Yeah, my mom's mother died when she was 11. My mom was the second oldest of five kids. The older brother was a boy, so it fell on her to do a lot of the cooking

and they're taking care of the younger kids. As it should. Yeah, yeah. I called the book Night People because at first, honestly, kind of sounds sexy, and it's about Night Pousin going out. But then I was like, no actually there's another layer to this night people thing all my community and friends in that thing were slightly cracked maybe there was some addiction maybe there was just some running from the

daytime and i was part of that so when i was writing this book i was like i got to get to the bottom of then where i got that from and interview my mom and dad and be like why were you guys like this too so for my mom she did feel a bit like she didn't belong night time was the time when the little brothers and sisters went to sleep and she would stay awake doing her drawing or paintings in her room. So mom and dad didn't get along in the daytime, basically. It was stressful how you grew up for the first five years until they finally pulled the plug. Both lovely people on their own, but maybe not a great match. Yes. And then he came into my life. He came into your life. And then you and your two sisters moved to New York to the Upper West side, Central Park

West? Yeah. In your what age? Sorry, at this point. I'm eight or nine. I moved to New York. And move into this pretty outrageous huge apartment. And I'm guessing if you're a couple blocks from, as you later met Sean Lennon. Yeah. Were you in the San Remo building? Yes, we were. Lived in the San Remo building when we first moved there. Well, first we moved there,

my stepdad had like a little bachelor pad on Riverside Drive, and suddenly it's like he's living with three kids and he's like bad chap. He really was. Three kids, man. And then Farner were just hitting this amazing peak, all these smashes, and they brought this really fancy apartment. For reference, the next tower, or maybe it was your tower, But the Studio 54 guy had the top of one of those towers.

Yeah. Tony Randall from the odd couple. Oh, sure. Dustin Hoffman. See, this is what I'm talking. This is a very unique childhood. There was this one time that I stayed at Sean Lennon, who was one of my closest friends at his house when Michael Jackson came over for a sleepover.

And I know. On the bad tour. On the bad tour. Also a sleepover. There's a lot here. Yeah, there's a lot. It is different now to say some of these things for sure. Wow.

Oh, this is wild. But even with that, I knew not to say anything in school the next day, because I don't want to be teased mercilessly or be made to be like, oh, you fucking dick or other or look braggy. So there was this thing of like, I knew it was crazy. I also knew to keep as much of it to myself. That was a very specific part for me. They're throwing wet toilet paper balls off the side.

Sogis. Please get the nomenclature right. I got kicked out of the Milford Plaza Hotel as a kid for throwing soggies. Michael Jackson was just really intent on pack. lacking wet mounds of toilet paper and just pelting them nowhere near people but just hearing them flat on the sidewalk it's very rewarding because you start with the ball and I don't want to encourage anyone to do this because it's dangerous but I will say okay you start with the water toy paper this big when that fucking thing hits the ground if you're 30 plus up it's crazy it's eight foot wide it's very instantly rewarding if you're yeah yeah yeah I made that huge thing like if you drop a penny off the Empire State building or something yeah they say it would crush a cab I don't know if that's true well I think they told us that his kids to tell us not to throw pennies. I didn't put this in the book, but fuck it.

We did hit the hood of a car, and there was this sound like a tank blast. Oh, sure. Literally on the 10th floor. It's so telling because that is something you do as a kid. That's what kids do. They make little balls of toilet paper and throw it at things. It's so reflective of him.

Well, he was playing laser tang. You said he was like more kid-like. He's just a child. Do you remember the first time you want, because you're wonderful and young, sharper image that first laser pen light that kind of shone that long infrared pen they just decided that nobody ever needs that thing

so it was discontinued I think it was also dangerous for your eyes everything about it was wrong Michael Jackson he obviously had incredible lasers and shit on tour the guy who built those lasers for him built him his own little box that you could plug in the wall was about this big a metal

and it's shown a single green laser that probably shone like hundreds of feet because you were playing in fucking arenas in stadiums. So we were running around and holding it up to the window and shining it eight floors down, but nobody had ever seen. The only thing you could compare it to would be like the thing on an oozy, like the site thing. We're shining it on the street and there's a guy walking the dog.

The guy can't see this thing. And the dog just like, oh, like kicking out thing. It's terrible. Everything about it. I would never do that now. Yeah, that was what he wanted to do. And in an absurd foreshadowing of who has to become, I was just like, this funny games is great. Michael, give us a bass line. I want to go back and make a demo. My stepdad had a studio where I made

demos and I remember Michael actually did this thing. Of course I'll never forget it. It was so Michael. He like did the arm out snapping. He started to sing this bass line that went do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do and I was like, okay, it's a little ripped off from smooth criminal but we'll take it and made a whole fucking song from this baseline that Michael Jackson gave us. This is shocking. This is a shocking The way to go up. Yeah, you could have never done anything and still written this book, and I would have read it. I'm impressed that you were able to keep these things to yourself when you went to school.

Most people learned that the hard way. Right. I'm going to attempt to frame this whole thing, or at least what I extrapolated from it, was like, oh, yeah, people who seek control for comfort really desperately find these outlets of control. I found one. You found one. you found one. The very first time you experienced it, though, was at the wedding of your mom and Mick.

Yeah. My mom and Mick got married when I was 10, and they had this pretty mellow wedding. I think there was like 40 people in the garden, this house that they were renting. There was no band, there was nothing. There was just music playing through some big speakers. And back then, there were like these giant double cassette deck

with auto reverse. That's how you would keep the music going the whole time. And the music just kind of stopped out of nowhere. And Mick looked at me and was like, Ma, go put something on. I was so excited, obviously felt this grand responsibility. ran in the house and I loved fucking anything

that had to do with equipment and playing something electronic equipment queuing a song and I was looking through all these tapes on the floor kind of in this mad rush and I saw these things

that were not appropriate and then I just saw Eric Clapton Time Piece is the greatest hits and I thought Ah, wonderful tonight that seems like a great song for now like even at 10 in my like

little mind of understanding what love and a wedding is supposed to be my mom loves that song and that's a great song for here so I quickly threw it in hit play and then I was just in the house and I could see through the windows

and I remember hearing the beginning of the song and just having this kind of rush like, whoa, music is playing outside and everybody has to listen to the song that I picked and now it's making this moment. Mick grabbed my mom and kind of brought in for this little slow dance. It is one of my earliest more formative things

because it's the first time I ever remember with being like, I did something right or I could maybe be good at this. I like that. I did something right. Of course, when you start to write these books and you're on earth, these memories, and you suddenly realize, oh, that's fucking how it started. But again, this is like when Bill Gates was living next to the computer, the first computer.

It's the same thing. You have this. Thank you for comparing with Bill Gates. Well, his talent matched with proximity. Living next door to Gershwin. Yes. Like he had a horrible home life. His mom treated him like she wished she would never been born.

But his neighbor was Gersh and that's where he would go over a lot of the time and would kind of Gershman of Hammerstein. There are these beautiful. happenstances. It's amazing. So you start messing with the stuff and thank God again, we had much different stepdads. He was like, yeah, do whatever you want. So it was a little playground for you. And you learn how to do that stuff.

Yeah. $200,000 fucking synthesizer. He had a $200,000 synthesizer called the Sinclavié, which they made owner of a lonely heart on all these crazy records from that era. And I kind of just figured it out how to recreate Terrence Trent Darby, wishing well was the song I was obsessed with. And I was like, I love that song.

I can figure out if I do the drums first, the kick in the snare, and I found that do-do-do-do-do sound, and I'm going to make that. And I remember being so proud of it and bringing in one of my mom's friends at one of those parties, like, one in the morning. Being like, come in, listen to this thing that I made

and just hitting play. And someone being like, yeah, kid, it's wishing well. Like, you know, but no, I did it. I did it. Yeah. Learning how to use this equipment also drawn to the solitude of it. I'm alone in here. Nobody can fuck with me.

And then as I got more into hip-hop, As a teenager, there were three rappers in my school. And I said, come over, I'll make you a beat. Because my step had had an early proto sampler that Tribe called Quest and Gangstar used. I'm sure he had taken out of the box and barely touched it once. But I kind of taught myself how to use it

and made this beat for my friend. So, yes, he was very, very amazing about encouraging and fostering my thing. Stay tuned for more armchair expert. if you dare one other party story because there's something interesting within this party story I think so I didn't even know this but I kind of deduce that Andy Warhol had extensive diaries yes you found a diary entry yeah yeah I think I maybe knew that he'd come over but

the Andy Warhol diaries came out and he's just kind of extensively diary even to the most mundane things of his life like everything he ever did. And there was like page 637. I remember I would go into Barnes & Noble with friends like, you guys want to see something cool? I reached her like the top shelf and bring this heaviest fuck brick of a book down and flip to

the page. And I'm not going to do any wall's voice. I was like, went to a party at Anne Jones's house. She lived uptown. It actually says Anne Ronson. She says Anne Ronson. That's right. That's what I'm most interested. Right, right. He didn't say I'm going to Mick Jones's house.

No. I think he probably have more friends in common with my mom, and she was kind of like this glittery rock and roll socialite. So that was the connection. Well, it says a few things. It's like he was obsessed with whatever you'd call those girls, scenesters. Yes, yes. Right? Forget the foreigner guitarist.

And then it was also telling that your mother had her own persona and identity in the city. Definitely. And then he says there was no food there, only something called chicken sushi. And in my mind, I'm like, chicken sushi just sounds like chalmanette. Like, that's just literally raw chicken. And that's not a thing. I had it for the first time three weeks ago in Nashville. But it was cooked Nashville hot chicken inside a sushi.

And it was all. Oh, it's cooked. Okay. That's interesting. I doubt anyone was selling. Sell manila sushi. So I did a record with this group called the Black Lips, you know, this group from Atlanta. There is such just amazing kind of punk rock kids who make great music.

They are as neelistic with their stage behavior as they are with their intestines. And they once sent me out to eat something called liver sushi, which nearly kill me. Because that was just rolled over. Oh. Were they idolizing the liver king or something? This was before the liver king. Pre-Liver King. But I enjoyed that, though.

But we'll fast forward a little bit. You know, you start playing guitar, your friends with Sean. There's another guy in the mix whose dad's a restaurateur. Max Leroy, whose dad owned Tavern on the Green and these kind of like very iconic New York restaurants. So the three of you guys had a band. That's going swimmingly. And then those two go to boarding school in Europe. You join another band.

But these guys are way too good. They're informative to where you need to go next. They were great. It was so much fun to hook up with these other young kids who liked all the same weird music that I did and we had this band, but technically they were shredders. They were fucking great. And I was just an overachieving B-minus musician. You know, the cheesy part in the gig where everyone takes a solo. And it would get to my part and be like, someone pulled a fire line, like anything. I don't want to do my fucking bluesy bullshit. And I just started to get a little disenchanted with it. I was like, this can't be my calling. As much as I want to be slash, I'm not a fucking lead guitarist. And that, dovetailed with me falling in love with hip hop really head over heels and being like, okay, this is what I want to be doing now. Now, this might be my favorite thing I read. Just reading the thing, I was stopping and listening to all these different songs, which was great.

But my very favorite group in high school is the Brand New Heavies. Oh, wow. I love the brand new heavies. And nobody was liking the Brand New Heavies in high school. And we're high school in Michigan. Holy shit. The notion that you were that into them in your 15 or 16, you get to go to a club. and see them as wild.

I snuck into this club at 3 in the morning. There was this thing called the New Music Cafe, which was like the equivalent of maybe South by Southwest vibes in New York in that era. And they would have shows. And I would sneak in anywhere if it meant going to see a band. Or I would get a job at the high school paper reviewing concerts so I can convince my mom. Like, no, no, I'm not going out.

It's because I'm writing about it. But the guy who threw these great parties that brought Brand New Haven, New York the first time, had a party called Giant Step. And I would bug him all the time. should let my band play. My band had the worst name. We were called the Whole Earth Mamas. It's really the worst name I've ever heard.

I was like trying to find how it could have even been funny, but it's not even quite funny. It's not funny. It's a miss. It's not, it's a total miss. And he would be like, what's your band's name again? Mother Earth, Garden Bistro, whatever the fuck. I basically finagle that's a gig because I'd hoard out my best friend Sean then. He was like, I'm not putting out my gig, the bills full.

And I was like, what if I got my friend Sean? And he was like, Sean, who? I was like, Sean Lennon. And, of course, at that time, Sean was only 15. The entire world was still mourning. His dad, he was the golden prince. People were very fascinated. And I threw him under the box.

It was terrible. And then we got the gig because I said, Sean would come play with us. Then I went and told Sean half of the story. I said, we got this gig. Do you want to come play with us? And he came and played. And I wrote this chapter. I had to send it to Sean.

I was like, I don't know if I ever told you this story. We've been friends for 30 years since. There's no way that he would have been probably still upset at this time. But there was a lot of that in the book. Like when you have to go back to people and be like, I don't think I ever told you this. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, it was a little shady.

Is it shady? He was in the band. No, he wasn't in the band. No, he wasn't in the band. He's with this new shredder band. Yeah, yeah, no. The shittiest name ever. He was not in the band.

And he said that. I'm not in this band when he said. When you play, he's like, I feel's weird. I'm not in. I don't even like your band. The reason it's sensitive is it's like he's probably already dealing with people, are very interested in him because of his dad. He's just lost his dad.

And now my friend is trading on that. That could be hurtful. And I'm glad you admitted that. Was he like, it's fine. We're good? Absolutely. And it was much more than that. It was so lovely sharing these stories that we haven't even talked about in 40 years.

He's like, oh, now it makes so much sense why we are friends. and a family and where we came from. But the gig sucked anyway. Sean was amazing. So it was just a good lesson. Don't tell your friends. Don't get a gig that you haven't really earned on your own fucking talent.

When do techniques come into the mix? How do we go from musician to DJ? Yeah. My drummer in my band was like, you got to check this song out. Leaving the gig that sucked. It was Pete Rock and Seattle Smooth. They reminisce over you.

And I was just like, this is incredible. I knew hip hop because I knew the BC Boys and Rundi I'm seeing an L Cool Jam, whatever, was on TV. But I'd never heard this underground type of shit. And I was like, this is all I want to be about from now on. And I didn't know how to rap or make beats. So I was like, DJing. That's the only way I can see myself into this thing

where I can just be part of this music I'm obsessed with. There was an all-ages rave party in New York at the time called NASA. And there was a side room, which was so crazy to think that, like, there was a time pre-Juliani in New York where a thousand kids from the ages of 13 to 6. 17 could go and take so many drugs and stay up till 7 in the morning, like, Lord of the Fly style, and like that was allowed. They played mostly techno, but there was a side room where I saw this DJ named Ani, like Ani, who murdered this hip-hop set. And I just remember watching him

transfix because I'd only heard people do it on the radio, but I hadn't seen how the hands and what it was doing. Then I just became obsessed. And four months later for graduation, I'd Hound at my mom and she got me turntables. Are you doing drugs during this time? Yeah, yeah, what kind of drugs are we doing? Yeah, I was like a really, really good boy, because there was something so polite and meticulously overmanaged in my brain that I would like never fully let go.

But then I think I discovered acid. I was like 15. I liked acid and things like that through high school. And then later discovered cocaine like 19, 20. But the raves that we're going to was ecstasy and acid. The whole time I'm reading it, I'm an acid. Right? So I'm like, oh, yeah, I would have loved to have been there. You would have died. Also, I would have died.

The times I almost died were always trips to New York City after I was on TV. If you'd like, you don't ever have to stop. I had the more dangerous thing, arguably, where I never nearly died, but it was like the frog in the slowly boiling pot of water. And then I had a lot of hang-ups and neuroses. But the drug thing was very strange for me because I did drugs sort of my 18, 19s, 20s, Coke. At that age, it was just kind of like a neuroses. thing. It's like that scene in basketball diary is when Leo does it the first time. He's like,

whoa, I could stay up all night writing and this is fun. What hangover? My cells regenerate like nothing. Yeah, totally. And then 23, 24, I started to cue these intense anxiety attacks. And I think it was probably hang-ups of reliving my parents' life, having seen what

it had done to that household. And there was a weird thing where I was definitely getting as obliterated as possible to somehow push aside all my neuroses and things. so I could just forget about that. But then weirdly, the neuroses would never fully go away because they would come back to then give me the panic attack

that would happen after I did it. So it even got to the point where one night I remember doing drugs with friends and having the instant panic attack, like I would be in the corner of the club. Like, I'm not sure I'm all right. Can you just keep an eye on me? I talk about my friend Simon Rex at the time

who were going out together a lot, take me home from the club, sit by my bedside until I fell asleep. One of those nights happened. And the next day, I found out that we had bought fucking talcum powder. Oh my God, no.

It was so psychosomatic at some point that I was like, wow, something else is being pushed up. Now, did I stop? No. Like, you know, it took me another 15 years. Yeah, you're going to push on. But yeah, I had this weird thing.

I could never get fucked up before I DJ because I wanted to be fucking great and I wanted to be on point. I probably drink a shitload. But then as soon as it was done, 3.30, like literally is the last record on maybe texting the dealer. or finding out where the after party is.

Then I just wanted to fucking go and lose my mind. Yeah. Tom Arnold said it most beautifully and honestly in his autobiography I read, which was, luckily, I was more addicted to becoming famous than I was Coke. Because there's no way anything would have ever been stronger than Coke. If not, I was way more addicted to trying to be famous.

Yeah. Which can mean just successful. Yeah, do you ever look at your kids now and think, look where I am now? You've lived all these lives, and now you're here with these little sweet people. Yeah. We got away with martyrs what I would call.

I didn't set out to write, to excavate those parts of my life necessarily. And then halfway through the book, I was like, this book is going to be a little disingenuous. If I call it night, people and talk about the crack people go out at night and don't talk about my demons and these things. And I think it'll be maybe a better book for it, for being more personal. My wife at some point reading it, she didn't say it in the kind of way that she was judging. She just was being really honest and open.

She's like, it's funny you had to write this really personal book. Like, what do you think it was? And I was like, I don't know. know. A lot of the characters in it are no longer with us. There's this idea of celebrating not only an era that's gone, but people that are gone. And then the epilogue is the only thing that takes place in the present day. I'm walking around New York with my daughter strapped to me and the baby Bjorn seeing the clubs that used to be in weird ghosts of the past. And yeah, of course, I'm thinking like, God, should I even put my daughter in? Is she going to

read this? Is it either just going to be something like embarrassing that my fucking dad wrote when I was two or is it going to be something that's like too expositional or it's going to give her license to be like, you were doing this, dad, you know, like what fucking Pandora's box I've opened, I don't know. But you have to do it for these reasons that you don't really know at the time. So I journal every day and I'm dead honest and I fully intend for them to receive all those when I die. I only want for them to know the whole me. How old are they? They are currently 10 and 12. I just want to be honest with that. I don't know how having had that and then also keeping that from them is somehow a win.

I can't find my way to how that's logical. Like, I'm going to present a fraudulent version of myself to the person I love the most on this planet, the two people. That feels broken in premise. Yeah, no, totally. I don't really mind, listen, if the worst repercussion is it, if she fucking breaks curfew on time, and you're fucking doing it acid at Lyme, like, when you're 15, that's also fine.

How long does it take you to get proficient? I was so ambitious. I was definitely practicing all the time, but I got a big lucky break because my dad lost all his money to like a shitty business manager. We move uptown to this rental apartment. But listen, it's still a nice fucking rental apartment.

We live in the same building with Peter Gation, the club king of New York at that time. He had limelight, Club USA Tunnel, Pladeum. Both of his daughters are friends of mine, but at the time, Amanda, we had mutual friends. And she was like, my dad's going to give me Club USA on a Thursday, which was the coolest fucking club it was like in midtown it had this three-story water slide that went through the middle

and it was just like the most fucking celebrity meets depraved all the other clubs had their own kind of depravity but this was right in the middle of the theater district so it was this unholy loved child of broadway camp in total time square sleeves yeah very cool and we need to do two seconds on what broadway looked like then yeah because like i'll tell me why i used to go to that city with my mom on a three-day trip with my brother and my little sister it was fucking terrifying. No, you were saying at the Milford Plaza, you were right in the center of it all. Like, there was no fucking M&M store. Your mom was like grabbing your hands tightly, like, in here, kids. We all held hands very tightly. There are lots of pimps and hookers. There's lots

of drugs. It was fucked and it was also amazing. And I got this gig playing there. And, you know, I probably wasn't prime time ready yet, but I was good enough. I knew how to read a room. And then I went away to Vassar College for a year, which was my 10,000 hours, just playing the campus bars every fucking TA party house party doing the radio station when I came back I moved up several levels but my ambition always probably outstripped my readability to be on those stages for the first couple years for sure well you've already demonstrated you have great ambition when you ask Michael Jackson for a beat yeah it's like a very ambitious person you know when you get yourself on a show you do not deserve to be on yeah ambition yeah it's funny because you look back on

these things with embarrassment but then there's also this thing where you You also have to have, you have to be delusional. I don't know how to make the scale right, but it's like, I'm embarrassed by the delusion and I needed it. Yeah, thank God I kind of was like this brash, ballsy kid. I wasn't brashed in the way that I was conceded. I would have that demo in my back pocket, any promoter like, hey, put me on. Yeah. And then I think three years into it, then I was good.

And I was very knowledgeable of like all the old funk and soul that the hip-hop samples came from. And I play that and parties, people were really coming to see me for that as well. My real breakthrough moment was I played ACDC in a fucking hip hop club where nobody ever did that and then changed everything in that scene in New York at that time. No kidding. There was a party called Cheetah on a Monday night that was like Missy Elliott Janet Janet Jackson. I mean, that's not skirt around it. Puff, Jayze, Biggie, everybody went there.

And I played there one Monday and I remember at the time there was this very trendy night club in New York called Spy. Spy Bar was the most trendy. It was this guy king at the door. Leo Titanic had just come out anywhere that he went was now the spot Mariah Carey Donald Trump getting turned away at the door I'm sure he got in sometimes as well

but this was this wild scene I would only get in half of the time because I'm still this gangly kid and sort of getting a little known in the scene this is so fun so the DJs there were not very good but they played insane rock and roll very loud and I was in there one night

and they played ACDC Back in Black and it tore the fucking house sound also because yes I'm a pretty kid from the Upper West Side, but most of the clubs I was DJing for much more mixed. And watching all these Jong-white people, probably called to the girls going crazy to ACDC back. I was like, this is an incredible song. Why have I not thought about this? So the seed is planned.

And I'm like, I wonder if I could play a Situ on a Monday night that turns into like I have to play it. But also, I could fully get a bottle of champagne thrown at my head. Like, this was a place they didn't play if you played some shit that didn't go down. And also I'm only making my way coming up in this. scene, like, I don't really have the status to jeopardize it all on one day. You're still building. Bad night, and you're kind of back down to the bottom of the ladder.

So I worked out this mix all week that was going to be like this perfect way that the Benjamin's, this song by Biggie and Puff was the biggest song at the time. There was a very cheesy rock and roll remix that had just come out where I was like, okay, on the Biggie verse, I'm going to switch to the fucking

rock remix and don't really stop dancing because it's still Biggie even though it's got these cheesy metal guitars. And right when Biggie stops his verse, squeeze off till I'm empty all about the Benji's dance. Dan, damn it, right? The greatest riff in the history of rock and roll. The club there was a split second,

like, it's fucking in the movie where it's slow minute. Everyone's like, huh? And then the thing that I learned is if you keep the rhythm on beat, you can play the most wild shit, but people don't have time to stop dancing. They don't have a time to think, like, should I be dances? Like, if it's good, they're just going with it.

So there was this split second, what the fuck is happening? And then just everyone surrendered, and it was this wonderful moment. in this club. And from that moment, you know, I'd been copying all these DJs

that I had hero worship, Stretch Armstrong, Clark, Kent, all these other people, but doing exactly what they had done, just a slightly different version of it. This was suddenly my own new thing. And then I started playing

A.C. and Led Zeppelin and Jane's Addiction and everything else. And that became like, oh, he's the guy that mixes rock with all this shit. You have an identity now.

Everything that I do, that nobody else does. And while AM was kind of also coincidentally carving that out on the West Coast, but we didn't really know so much about each other at that time. Then we became great friends. And so that was it. And then suddenly I'd be playing at these clubs and it'd be like Method Man and Little Kim,

but I'm playing Joan Jet. It's Method man swinging his shirt over his head. And those things sound so kind of like don't bat an eyelid now because that's what it became open format. But at the time, it was kind of remarkable. Talk about feeling powerful in that moment. And if you can have your idols in the club, like if you have people who you admire and you respect and you're taking them for a ride.

Yeah. Oh, the validation. No, that was crazy too. And this club life that I played in the late 90s, this shitty-ass fucking DJ booth. It was basically like a mobile bar mitzvah DJ set up. That was the other thing that was just like the underlying thing in the book. Like you'd be in the fanciest clubs around the fanciest people ever

and you would literally be playing on a plastic table from Kmart. Because you'd be playing in these side rooms. The big main room DJs were really fancy, but they were playing house and techno and whatever they were doing. But watching Jay-Z, Toastin, he has every big song in New York. York at the time and you're playing these rooms and your heroes are in front of you. Yes. Oh, wow. I would imagine to what people might not know about the DJ life is that it's a perfect

addiction to avoid neuroses because you don't just have the nighttime. In the daytime now, you're rabidly combing through every single collection of vinyl you can find, right? All day long you have this one activity that's just so consuming and it's dopamine and it's like This song, this song sucks, booed, new album. You can hide beautifully in this new pursuit. And back then as well, if you wanted, like, the cool new records, you had to literally go up to every record label and grovel for these promos. And you could spend two days of the week just going to election and Atlantic.

And now it's ridiculous because, you know, you can get everything with a click of a mouse. You would go up there like, fucking Oliver, excuse me, sir, can I have some more? Like, with your little flyers and they'd be like, why should I give you this record? Well, I do this on Tuesday, this on Thursday. If they were lucky, you get one record. If they really liked you, they give you two copies of that record. Are you so happy you came up then instead of now? I'm so grateful for coming up in that era,

and I try so hard to fight, though, like, it was better then. But yes, coming up in this era where you had to really hunt down your shit, I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful for everything that it taught me about music and what then became my tool bed as a producer. I'm grateful for how difficult in the hustle. Well, yeah, just talk about the records. You're four nights a week.

You've got to get how many milk crates of records? There's about three or four. So they each have 80 records in. They each weigh about 60 pounds. I had friends to do it. You know, I thought I could do it by myself like last week because I had a gig in New York. And I was like, I'll just bring a crate in a bag.

And my back was just so fucked up. Going down to this basement club and then back up at the end, trying to maneuver through like 500 people. Well, I haven't had back problems like that in a long time. It was nothing to do it back then. Yeah, and how are you getting from your apartment to these? Are you taking a cab with all your records? Back then, obviously, God, this all sounds like that in my day.

Before Uber and that shit and you lived on a funny block where maybe cabs didn't go by, there was this one Spanish car service called Delancey. Would you used to call that a gypsy cab, but you stopped yourself? Yeah, yeah, you would call them. And then it was a gypsy cab. And then you were sort of up to their mercy of like if they would say, say seven minutes, but you don't know if it's 13 minutes and you're calling these things. And, like, you would have to pronounce it more like with a Spanish accent.

So they would understand because there was a street called Troutman that I'd have to go to in Brooklyn. And they only understood it as Trutman. You'd have to make sure the car was not coming. Sometimes you have three gigs a night and you'd be, like, calling the car service, like, on the way out. It was fucking amazing, though. I do you really love it. Yeah. Now, we're blessed that there were no cameras back there.

That's another thing is, like, the Anna, that existed. I'm nostalgic for. And yet also I'm heartbroken that there's no video of you the first time you played ACDC. I also want to see that moment. The end of the book,

I'm walking with my daughter and we do see some old club because that just always happens. I'm like, what was this place? She's older, but this time she was 18 months in the baby Bjorn and she's happy as long as I'm fucking talking to her the whole time. She doesn't care what the fuck I'm saying.

I'm like, this is a club and this is then Dadda played music. And she's like, Dadda, music. And I'm thinking like, oh, she'll never see me do that thing when I was at my best because of the absence of surveillance is like how I coined it. And it's sad because you want to have these videos because it is fun to look at it, but it made everyone a lot more maybe present at the time as well. Yes. You've also done enough shit. Yeah, exactly. They can hear the music you've made. Yeah, and there's music videos and

whatever else. But right now I'm trying to see like, is there enough to make a fun little doc to put out around when the book is there. But there's so little, there's footage from like the big rave scenes and the super clubs, but the cool shit about our scene and this thing is it was just all being discovered. Like, we did have Jay-Z and Wesley Snipes and Leo in the club, but it was still at this little place you really had to know to go to this place. Yes, yes. I imagine there's a ton of heartbreak throughout that period, though, too. It's fun and it's fast and it's glamorous, but people are going down.

People are going down especially since then. Like, yes, of course, there were people that I worship from afar and that were at the club, Biggie, I didn't have a personal relationship, but of course his death left an outsides lost on our whole scene. But I decided to write this book, actually, because one of my best friends from that era, this DJ named Blue Jams, he passed away in 2018 from cancer, and somebody had asked me to DJ a party that was going to be a posthumous celebration of his life one night. And I started to think about all these memories and sitting among all my old records. Fuck, I should start getting these memories down before they were really gone forever.

but honestly while I was writing the book there'd be like a chapter I'm going to call that guy I'm going to call DJ Never next month because we're going to write the chapter about that and I want to ask him and he passed away before there were four or five people that I was literally about to call the next month

there's something very strange for a scene that's not rife with maybe heroin and things you associate with people dying before they should the lifestyle is not a healthy lifestyle I was obviously had advantages going into it and then coming out I've obviously done fine

but reconnecting because I interviewed and called 150 maybe 200 people for this book because I really wanted to paint the scene and remember anecdotes and trigger memories some people's lives have been shitty since then or maybe not since then but the last five or 10 years and you don't want to just be like yeah I'm great any fun memories of us like do you have survivors guilt

and I don't even mean literal like life or death but just I feel like there's some guilt associated with succeeding when you're in tiny groups of people that are all trying I do and you want to tell that person I'm like you're caring, you are engaged with what they're doing in their life, and then half an hour later you're talking about old memories and stuff. DJs are not quite like comics, but I have a whole chapter towards the end because we started to hang out at the cellar a lot because just like it was a golden age

for nightclubbing in New York, the cellar was Atel and Chappelle and Jeff Ross was starting and Godfrey and Artie Fuqua and Patrice Neal. There was this thing happening there. Most musicians are frustrated athletes or kids. comedians anyway. We love going to their sets and then they would come out to our shit. But there's so many similarities between comedians and DJs to me.

I mean, there's the most obvious thing. DJs call it rhythm. You guys call it timing. And the difference between bombing and fucking killing is a hair's breadth of precision, you know? And then we play clubs. Do you think a civilian would know when you're bombing or not? Do you think some of it's in your head? No. I think there's

times. Some of it in my head, I could be doing what maybe to the room looks like a seven and a half and an eight. and no one's going to go ahead for the exits, but I just hate that I'm not at a nine and a half. I'm like, why are they not here? But those kind of neuroses going home, and you don't think about all the people that were laughing.

I don't think about all the people that had their hands in the air. I just thinking about that one person with the arms crossed in the middle who was just like, really fucking Sylvester? So all my DJ friends, of course, there wasn't one personality type, but we were kind of intense, neurotic, very craft, obsessed. about what we did. Living your head a lot. Yeah, not to circle back

to neurodivergent, but there might be some elements of that. Yeah, and I think that's the other thing that we kind of felt a link to in our friends that were comics. There was like this thing. Yeah. So I wanted to talk about some of those things.

I read so many fucking memoirs while I was writing this, and more famous DJs than me have written memoirs. And I've weirdly written about this period of my life almost when I was my least famous. But I don't know if anyone's written about that dichotomy of intense validation, and ego and the energy of bringing this room up.

And then just at the end of the night, you're the only person in this room. And the highs and lows of that. You're constantly putting on a party that you're not participating in which is interesting. Which I liked because I was never fully come to all in the parties. It was your way to be at a party. Yes.

I would go into the club and I would feel like occasionally a fish out of water when on someone else's DJ and then instantly it'd be like much prefer it back there. Stay tuned for more. Share expert, if you dare. So there's these different occupations where it breeds competition and others that kind of breed community. So weirdly sketch and improv comedians are very communal because it's all shared. You cannot win on your own.

And the comedians, when I did stand up, the green room at a fucking comedy club is rough. Everyone's shooting daggers. They enjoy it. I came from sketch, so I never like that. Shooting daggers is in, like, everyone's like just busting each other's balls in. Yes, just going for each other, trying to shine, trying to dominate. Very competitive. Yeah, very competitive.

And then what I've liked learning is showrunners of television shows because it's such an impossible job. It is the very hardest job in show business. Those people get along so well, all of them. Even if someone's show running a comedy versus someone's show running some major drama or a sci-fi, I think. The job is so specific. They understand each other so well. And I do wonder, DJ, Where do you put them on that spectrum?

There was probably a mix. There was definitely a really strong community amongst the DJs. I had all my best friends from school and high school and college and it started to be like, oh, wait, but they don't wake up at 2 in the afternoon. And like their idea of a perfect day isn't going through like a flea market combing for dusty breaks. And also DJs have this weird intense know-it-allness to them because your whole life is knowing what fucking weird ass jazz song, Fat Joe sample for this. But it's kind of the good. know it all in that way. They kind of know it all that you tell you, where do they still get a

Chinese meal at 4 a.m. in New York City or you scramble the porn channels on a time Warner box. That's what all my friends somehow knew how to do. I like them. And nobody thought about tomorrow. Nobody really had bank account. Everybody started to have cash stashed in a shoe box somewhere. Maybe it was like under the mixer. You're getting paid in cash. So you always go to bed thinking I'll wake up and tomorrow's a new day. But what the fuck is tomorrow when you go to bed at 5 a.m. every day. It's already tomorrow. Just tonight's coming. There's just tonight.

It's like Groundhog's Day, but with like Method Man and Debbie Mazer instead of Annie McDonnell and Bill Murray. We were all drawn to each other because we saw these same things, but then we also had our share of competition and hatering and that kind of thing too. Who were you jealous of?

Not that jealous in the beginning because I was the dude coming up that some people were a little bit irked by my slipstream. With AM, I wasn't jealous because his skills were just on such another level that it would be like being like, I'm jealous of Eddie Van Halen. It's like, come on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I remember being shook by seeing his talent because we were both at about the same talent level. And then A.M. got sober and spent about a year in his room practicing to old DMC videos and doing all this DJ competition shit. And I came there and I saw him do this thing. And I was like, oh, my reign at the top is looking a little shaky. But also, I loved him.

And I was so excited to why. I was like, come to New York. You got to do this shit. People are going to be blown away. And we would steal each other's mixes. And we were such good friends. I wasn't truly going to be jealous or competitive. Do you think you were liberated from chasing money by your childhood?

Because I think the station you had reached as a DJ and increasingly so became this insanely lucrative thing. I would have just stayed there because it was such an incredible source of income. But that probably wasn't all that appealing to you. I guess so, you know, I definitely came for money. I was never going to have. have to worry about living out on the street, but also it wasn't wild money where my rent was paid. There was a safety net. But at that time, I was just doing this thing that I love

so much at this young age where you just have the blinders on it. You're not really thinking about tomorrow. The money started to get good towards the end of the 90s, but it wasn't crazy money. It wasn't the money like what AM was making. You basically left that to pursue something else at a moment that you could have really hunkered down on that and just generated a ton of money basically and i see djing as this really beautiful footnote in something that then obviously became more but i always wanted to make music and then i got this sidetrack from this passion of hip-hop that took me to djang and then it fully took over my life for five or six years because i realized i was good at it and i loved doing it and then i somehow found my way back to making music weirdly through djang

Dominic Traneer was this incredible, very cool record industry, A&R guy who managed DiAngelo and had this artist Nika Costa. You did a couple Nika Costa songs. I did her first album with her and her husband, but I got that gig because Dom would come to my gigs. And when I was playing ACDC and Biggie and Rufus and Chaka Khan, and he spoke with this amazing rasp, he was like, yo, I got this white chick and I don't know what an album is supposed to sound like,

but it's supposed to sound like one of your DJ sets. Like, you make beats? And I just totally lied. And I was like, yeah, sure. I mean, I didn't lie. I was making bees, but nothing that had fucking moved the needle. And then he brought Nika over, and she saw enough promise. And he did, and was patient enough to watch me get better.

And then, with the course of 18 months, we made her first record. But weirdly, DJing was this side note that then became the thing that gave him my first gig. It's crazy when you reach our age, which you'll be 50 in five seconds. And I am, it's like, oh, I thought comedy was my thing. I'm funny. I wasn't Will Ferrell and I wasn't Vince Vaughn, but I made a living and I was good at and I was like, no, I'm actually kind of a good writer and director. That's kind of my thing. And then it's like only to come here now for the last eight years and go like, weirdly I think really I just need to do all that stuff so I could have these conversations with all these people because I played in all these areas. It's weird to have misleading little gifts along the way before you kind of find this thing that's like, oh, Jesus, well, this is what I was clearly born to do. Now going back to DJing again because of this book has somehow made me want to be out there and reliving this kind of thing and having so much fun at the gigs. But my tinnitus, I think it probably has something to do with the way yourselves regenerate. It's so much worse after these gigs and the ringing is oppressive.

And I'm like, actually, DJing might be a fucking luxury because my ears of my livelihood. I want to be scoring films and writing and producing music for the rest of my life. And every gig that I go out and do, I actually feel a bit like fucking Jackson Main, right? And Star is born and he's like, we can get you back what you lost. We can keep what you have or whatever the fuck. His brother says to him, I'm going to these gigs now with 85% psych to be about to be playing and 15% incredibly nervous. What am I doing? What am I doing today?

What am I risking? Well, just do a couple more so I can come. That's all I'm asking. It'll just risk it a little bit more. We're going to do a fun one in L.A. around the release of the book for sure. Oh, my God, I'm going to dance. I will not be with arms crossed. I'm going to dance your pants off.

Are you plagued by people trying to let you know they know a lot about music? Even as I talked to you, it's important to me you know I was in a brand new happy. That's fucking cool because that is a deep cut and the brand new hobbies are amazing. Yes, there was definitely this thing, but luckily in a club the music is so loud and you can just feign that you can't really hear somebody. Right. And increasingly you can't. Yeah, and now it actually can't. And people would sort of come to the booth.

Definitely sometimes either they thought you were Koechek or the bar. That happened a lot. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. And then are you friendly with Jordan Rubin? No, I've never met. Okay, Jordan Rubin is a really great friend of mine. He's a comedian.

He kind of introduced me to the world of the comedy seller because he's playing at that time. And he also liked DJing at these gigs. So he would always have these much funnier than I could think of gags for like what I should be doing. If someone came up to ask for a request, he's like, this is what you do. You just be like, didn't you see the sign? Who took the sign? You know, I just saw this, like, stupid shit. People would come up and, you know, ask for track 12 on the 50-cent album, like, things

who you're like, I know. Right, right. The birthday song. Oh, did you see the Avita? Is that the DJ's name? Avichi. Did you see that doc? I didn't get to see the Avichy thing, and I know it's quite heavy, and I'm definitely

going to see it. People have told me, I didn't know that he had all those demons. I don't know anything about DJs. I literally know you're a DJ and your sister and then AM, and that's probably the full extent. Yeah. I don't know. how I stumbled upon that doc. I just was going through Netflix and I watched it.

It talks about his addiction, but I think what is the bigger addiction and the thing that I was watching and relating to and the danger in this, and I think you were saved from this a bit is when you want something so bad and they turn on the fucking light switch, it is almost impossible to not go

to that show, to that show, to that show, to meet that guy. Oh, he wants to work with you. He wants to work with you. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I wanted this. I wanted this. That is the addiction that's completely. untenable that you can completely lose yourself to.

Before I kind of settled down and got my life together and I was still in my early 40s, probably just post uptown funk. I'd had other moments in my life, Back to Black, came out that you're suddenly the guy and everyone works with you. And you can't turn anything of this down because you've been busting your ass for it so long and suddenly there's this thing. And I was DJing so much at that time. I remember reading so many articles when Aviti first pass.

Of course, demons for rock and roll people has been as old as rock and roll itself. But the difference between DJing is very specific. There is always a festival in the world somewhere. So you can always be touring. If it's not here, it's fucking in New Zealand and Australia. And you can fly and be playing every single night if you want to, mixed with trying to have a production career where you're going to this year to meet with all these people, mixed with the fact that being in plane so much actually does fuck with your brain

because you're literally not a grounded person. Yes. And your circadian rhythm is all fucked up. Your cicadian rhythm. I was in one of my ropeous unmoored periods around the time when the Evichi thing happened too. And I just remember being like, I got to get off this DJ train. Because I've always still DJed since that time, but just in a different way. The news of the Evichy thing, that was disorienting and really a bit of a wake-up. It was a heartbreaking documentary.

But it just made me think of like a race car that you would just leave in first gear and just pin it and wait for the motor to explode. That's the unavoidable end to that. It's a small group of you guys that are at that level that people who don't know the scene know your name. So when they start passing away or falling off, that's like, oh, my God, our club is getting so small. That's scary. Somehow, my friend Diplo, who I sometimes make music with, manages. But I look when he'll post his tour schedule on his thing and it will give me an anxiety. Yeah.

Because I would be like, I don't know how you do that. It's very hard to say no to the thing you want. That's the thing one has to figure out to actually be successful, which is almost impossible to do. Yes. Well, Mark, you're rad. This was so fun in person. Yeah, how fun. It's so nice to be in person.

Yes, night people. How to be a DJ in 90s, New York City. The most useless how-to book of all time. I doubt that. I bet some people are going to gain a lot from it. It's written so well. It has the kind of frenetic pacing that the environment you're trying to capture has. is really, really well done.

Thank you. That was really fun. Yeah, that was so much fun. Yeah, thanks for having me back again. I mean, I guess it was three years ago, but I love this show. Hi there. This is Hermium, Hermium. If you like that, you're going to love the fact check with Ms. Monica.

You have a new song, and I want to hear it right away. So, no, yeah, we're going to play a game. Oh, okay. So for people who don't remember or weren't around at this time, The biggest sim moment of our lives is we were on the phone. Yeah, I was in New York. You were not in this city. Yeah.

And I said, there's a song in my head. It wasn't even that. Okay. I was like, what are you doing? And you're like, I'm just being weird in my apartment. And I go like, well, what does weird entail? And you're like, oh, I've been singing this song out loud, like crazy. Yes.

And then. I said the lyrics. said to xantham gum to the word xanthum gum yeah i go was it xantham gum da da da da da da da da da da and you screamed yeah you got so freaked out and you accused me of having cameras in your apartment yeah you because i had installed a tv or something you'd hacked into my sonos oh i installed sonos and you like put a device in where you could you were listen you were observing me yeah that was crazy it was absolutely crazy okay now And now there's, I have another song that sometimes I sing. Okay.

And it's also to a tune of a song. Okay. And the lyrics are period. Oh, man. I'll tell you why I'm afraid to. Because we have a hundred percent average right now. I agree. I agree.

And this is, I mean, I would say harder, but how is it harder? They're all, it's all random songs. But it does, for some reason, the same look a gift horse. and the mouse coming to mind. Like, it feels like looking a gift horse in the mouth. Okay. We don't have to do it. You know why that saying exists?

Yeah, because gift horses, horses that are gifted, their teeth are pulled. And if you, so if you look it in the mouth, it'll run away. It's upset. It'll get insecure. Yeah. No, I guess the way you inspected the horse. his health back then was to lift up its lips and inspect its gums. That's where you could tell if it was diseased.

So if you were buying a horse, you would inspect it to make sure it wasn't diseased. So if someone's giving you a horse, don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Because it's going to be diseased. Just take the gift. And if it has a disease, you didn't. Okay. So you don't want to play. Well, just one thing came to mind.

There's no way it's it. Okay. Because it's such an obscure. But period. Period. I think I want your number, period. Okay, no, but kind of close. Okay, so I'm doing Gloria.

Who sings that? Gloria, Gloria. Yeah. Van Golofield. Avanderholifield. Evangelisa? Well, I don't know. If I did it a second time, we'd need to go to some university that studies paranormal

activity, figure out what's going on, yeah. Why don't I give you the artist? Okay. Okay. Madonna. Wow. I, you know what's so weird? I knew you were going to say Madonna.

You did? I did. Did you? I swear to God, I almost said Madonna. Okay, so it's period and it's Madonna. I've got to guess. Okay. Go ahead, Rob.

Is it a, I'm a material girl, but I'm a period girl. Period. Period. Living in a. In a period, world, period. In a period. That's good. Some girls have them.

Some girls don't. They're called young girls. No, I just stopped at the main phrases. Okay, but I'm helping you build out the whole tune. Well, okay, that didn't go quite as planned, but that's okay. That's okay. I really did know it was Madonna. I wish I had said it out loud.

I do too. Say it and I'll put it in. Okay. Am I? Wow. A van der Holyfield. Okay, one thing. Yesterday I get a text from Kristen.

Yeah. It says, this is our new landline phone. You program numbers in and out so you can be called or called, smiley face. And I looked, I was like, am I being scammed? Sure. Why the fuck do you guys have a landline? Yeah, there's a great explanation. Okay. Please do tell. We were in New York to do Shaquille. There was a phone in the bathroom. Yes. They have Kristen's number memorized. And they couldn't believe they could pick up the phone and call Kristen on that thing. Yes, that I remember. You do remember that. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So it was a gift to them. So we're telling, I think, Huey and Hayes. And they say, oh, we got the boys a landline. And it just goes through the internet now. So you get these.

phones and they just work through the internet you don't get a you know pack bell line run to your house just like you already have the internet and then you can get these phones and so yeah we got them and now the girls have a phone they have written down i mean it's like a whole time traveling thing they now have a book next to the phone that's their phone book and it has everyone's numbers in it they're allowed to call oh we can also decide who what numbers they can call and which numbers can call us. Oh, you can like block. Yeah, it's like only the numbers we've said. Oh, which is awesome. So you get no unwanted calls. There can't be any weird predators calling. Right. Only approved numbers. I was like, whatever. This is crazy. We're getting, you know, initially that was what I thought. I was like,

they really need this, but also they're having so much fun with it and who cares. And it's like virtually free because it's over the internet. So here's what's amazing. I was upstairs editing yesterday and one of Lincoln's friends were over and the mom was texting me to say hey I actually if it's not too big of a pain in the neck it would be helpful if you guys walked my daughter back to school because I'm going there to pick up the other child blah blah blah blah blah blah at five and I'm like right now normally I would call Kristen she will not answer because she doesn't have her ring her on nor do I can't be right so there's really no way for me to get a hold of Kristen ever Okay.

I can text. I'll text her and then just wait. Sometimes it's an hour or something, whatever. So I'm like, normally I'd have to walk out of the studio and go into the house and ask them to walk the kid up to the school. But I was like, oh, we have a landline inside. So I called the number and it rings loud as fuck in there. Yeah.

And that's why people don't have them anymore. It was great. Delta's like, hello. They're so excited to answer it. Do they have cell phones? They do. No. They text me.

If they're on the Wi-Fi at the house, they can text you. But the only way they would be able to call you, I think, is if they FaceTimed you. Okay. Okay. That's weird. Because why wouldn't it be? Because they don't have a cellular plan. But this is through the Internet.

It is, but it's its own thing that's designed specifically for this. Okay. They couldn't call. Maybe you could do like I message. call you couldn't call someone on a non-iphone you couldn't call another landline from their phone well they don't need to worry about it because now they have a landline no because no one else has a landline oh well um hewing and hayes do okay okay um most people don't yeah do they have the clear you you you're you're you're you're you're upset that there's a landline i'm not upset i'm like this is so

we have to it's retro what's so weird yeah love I love it, though. They pick up the phone and they think it's so fun. They've already called their grandma. It's like already wonderful because now grandma's getting phone calls. Do they have a phone that's like clear with the, you can see the cables, the colored cables throughout. Those are the cool ones. No, I think the more old fashion the better. In fact, I'd like to get us even heavier one with a rotary dial would be the dream. Are you going to do an answering machine? Wow, that's an interesting idea. That could be fun. If you're going to have a message, this is the shepherd. as you hear everyone's voice. Right.

Yep, that's what it used to be. That's what it used to be. Yeah. Wow. It's pretty exciting this old technology. We're going to get a crankstart car next. And what else? We're going to get a diode TV, big glass tube, black and white TV for the living room.

Antenna. Yeah, with an antenna. Wow. Well, okay, that solves that. I figured there was like a real reason, but there's not. No. No, I mean, it's not, we were existing just fine without it. But I do think it's going to really amplify the calls to grandma.

The sound in your home. Yeah, like, I don't think anyone's going to call this number other than me or probably Kristen. They're going to probably give it to their friends. We would have to approve. We would have to approve those numbers. You're not going to, of course you're going to approve like Freddie's number and other people's phone. I hope Freddy calls. I'd love to chat with him.

Exactly. This is why this, you know. Slippery is. This is slippery slope. My parents had to eventually give me my own. Right, because it rang off the hook. It was too much ringing. Wow, what color is it? White. It's just basic. Is it cordless? No. Right. Big cord. Big twisty cord. Mine was purple. It was. Mm-hmm. My home, my own line. I'm true. I think I took mine from my dad's office and it was like band-aid color. You know? Oh, yeah, totally. Yeah, with like an indestructible face that you could spill coffee on and stuff. Yeah.

Probably had some coffee stains on it. God. I wish I still had my purple one. Did you ever have a job? Well, you did, right? Probably when you worked at your aunt's law firm ran an actual phone that had multiple lines and you had to connect people. I loved that. I felt like when I got to operate the one at my dad's office, it was like, oh, this is great. It's kind of one of those things, though.

It's like when you're a kid and you're playing. store and you want to be the cashier because then you get to practice like ringing up scanning and putting it and it sounds so fun and then when you have that job or even now with self-checkout it's like it wears off quickly it does although i always like to bring this up my cousin kelly every sunday that sunday paper would come she'd get it out and she'd get her 10 key out with the fucking spool of paper and just add the entire paper yeah she loved that that's one of the most unique things have ever heard a person did yeah and i witnessed it and she would blaze on that that's pretty fun she's currently the accountant of ted seagers oh i mean that makes is she an accountant yeah yeah

so that makes sense was she in accounting school at that time no we were children she was this was she did when she was probably 10 or 11 years old she just always wanted to be an accountant she wanted to add yeah look we all have these things that calm us i think that was hers right it just and i think how long it takes up to add up the paper because every single sales big huge sales event every car on the page she'd add up turn the page fredder or ollie where our appliance stores everything that's for sale there yeah she loved spooling through her tape and then looking at the total yeah yeah remember the smell of that tape uh-huh i do i like that smell yeah full of bpa we're not allowed to have that anymore it's not but all kinds of not because it was putting ink onto normal paper now it has

that chemical in there and heat makes the imagerize and yes those are dicey i don't that's one of the few times i feel like a snob is like when someone tries to hand me a receipt i'm like i'm good and i feel like a brat but i don't want to touch it and i don't even care about things well it's braddy because they have to touch it you like and i think about it i'm like god they're handling these all that if it was real maybe they'd all be dead already So I don't even know if it's real. They should wear gloves. They should wear a little rubber.

I've seen people wearing thin little rubber gloves. Oh, really? Speaking of they should be dead already. Yeah. Yesterday had an incident. Okay. Okay. I got not a tonka.

I got home. You had gone to get some clothes. Yes. We recorded and then I had to go get some clothes hemmed. Yeah. I went to in and out. Yeah. And then I came home.

So it had been a while. Oh, you went to hang out. Yeah. It's delicious. And I. Got home, and I'm so tired because my period world. Your flies. Yeah, my period girl, period world.

And I went and I, like, laid in my bed. Uh-huh. And all of a sudden I heard this beeping. But it wasn't, I knew it wasn't the smoke detector chirping. Okay. Because it sounded too far away for that. But I looked, anyway, like, looked at the smoke detectors, and you need to wait. Yeah, I know.

So annoying. I know. So then I was like, no, it's not. not either of the smoke detector. So maybe I thought, like, oh, maybe it's like the apartment above the smoke detector. So this was, like, happening. And after a minute, I went into the living room and it was, like, loud. Okay.

And it was my carbon monoxide detector. That your dad insists you have. Yes. Yes. And I was like, oh, fuck. Okay. This is odd. And, like, when I looked at it, it was that.

It was going off. And it wasn't low battery. So that, so I was like, it's probably low battery. Yeah. Because you didn't notice anyone has parked their car directly in front of your windows, flooring it. No, but it could have been a leak out of something. Okay.

So I, you know, and like you're really not supposed to fuck around with that. Like, if there's carbon, I say you've got to get out, you've got to get everyone out. You've got to call 911. Like, it's a whole thing. It says it on there. It does. Call 911. Yeah, because the fire department needs to come test.

This is when your landline would be very helpful. Why? There's no reason the landline would be more helpful. You'd be really wishing you had a landline. So I just kind of stared at this thing for a minute and I was like, I don't know what to do. Okay, how long before I'm dead? Am I also killing other people by not like acting fast? Yeah.

I went to my battery area and during the fires I had replened all my batteries. I was so proud of myself. I was like, oh my God, so prepped, except the D battery, which is what goes in... That's crazy. The thing takes a D battery. It takes a D. It can't really take a D. A show.

Come find one with a fucking double A or? It's like the most basic carbon dioxide. Anyway, so then I had to instacart a battery. I was like, I think that's the best thing for me to do. I don't think I should call 911 yet. Yeah. But also, what am I doing? If there is, like, you know, this is a dilemma.

You're going to wait for a battery. Did you just wait on your porch? No. I did then eventually, because I started to feel like woozy, you know. So I started opening windows at least. Let more of the carbon monoxide in. Just some airflow, you know. And then I, so I Instacarded the battery.

It came after an hour. I was still alive. I was still alive. So I was like, this is a good sign. I don't know how long it takes. Yeah. So I put the battery in, new battery, brand new, Duracel, trusted brand. Best in the biz.

It's still going off. Uh-huh. And then I really was like, I don't know what to do. And for someone who was constantly telling people to call 911 at the drop of the hat, what I realize is like, I'm never calling 911 ever. No, unless you're dying. Even if. Yeah.

Turns out. Yeah. So I was like, maybe it's just. dying. Like, maybe the whole system itself is dying. Now you need a backup carbon monoxide. So I went to, no, I didn't, but I went to DoorDash again. And I was like, should I order another one and test that? By the, it'll be five hours I'm sitting in this carbon monoxide. Yeah, you'll of age 12 years. So then what I did is I just like slammed the button hard. And it stopped. And I was like, okay, this is good news. But then, yeah, I was like, well, what if I,

I just, I didn't know if I reset it or if I broke it. And now I don't know if I have carbon monoxide. Yeah. So then I went, I did something for the first time. I used AI. Okay. And I said, I have this kind of carbon monoxide detector. Did you take a picture of it?

It's beeping. No, I just said the brand. Okay. I said, it's beeping. How do I know if it's going off or if it's, Just battery. Having fun, yeah. Just playing with me.

And it gave me a great response. It says if it's going off every 30 to 60 seconds, one beep, it's battery. Okay. Or like end of life. If it's going off rapidly, four beeps, you need to leave and call 911. Oh, wow. And it said to call 911. Yes.

Okay. But I had, I had, I had, so I didn't know and I didn't remember. And you couldn't remember? No, I couldn't because I got so frazzled. I got monoxide in the brain. Oh, okay, okay. So I said, I then I said, well, if I press the button, does it, is it possible I turned it off for good? And it said, no, it will never be turned off for good.

If it detects monoxide, carbon monoxide, it will go off. Oh, keep pumping. Yeah, so I kept asking it more and more questions. and then I felt fine. Oh, wow. Great. I know. And it never beeped again.

No. This is weird. If you had a backup one in a box, you could pull that out, pop a battery in it. I know. If it doesn't go off, you know, that one's dead. But a part of me was like, do I want to know or do I want to just die? Well, I don't want to give you my opinion because I don't want to advise anybody. Okay.

I'm going to get a new one because I think it's over. I think it's done. I think you should. Seven years old. Just call your dad. It said five to seven years. They last. Then I'm at seven years.

Well, then this is obvious. It was dead. But it wasn't based on what the AI said. That was a different thing that would happen. It said if it was end of life, it would say end of life. Really? It talks? Or like something like that.

Oh, I didn't know it talks. Yeah. It should just tell you everything. I know. Low battery. Low battery. Leave. Just having fun.

Call 911. Yeah, it should. Yeah. But I think it only speaks. I hope we're not setting people's series and Alexis off when we say call. Oh, 9-1-1-1. Oh, fuck. Yeah, I don't want all the cherries to be.

Well, I know when we used to say, hey, G-O-G-L-E, it would set people. People's, they, theirs would start responding. Wow. Yeah, if they were listening to it out loud. Okay, well, I would hope with these machines, if you're saying call one to three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. One. One. That it would double check with you before just doing it.

Maybe, but if you're laying on the ground and you've been stabbed and you're like, I'm going to say, I'm going to call it Anexa. Okay. No, it sounds really close. Arexra. I've been stabbed. Call 866. You know, that's code now for, you know, what else.

Arexa, call 962. I've been stabbed. It's not going to be like. Are you sure? Well, it should. It should say confirming, calling, 962, right, Monica? Stay tuned for more

Armchair expert if you dare. Have you seen this viral video where a guy's trying to get the AI to count to one million? And they get in, like, a 10-minute argument, and it's, he's recorded the whole thing. I don't know. I think it was just in my feed.

Oh, wow. He's like, count to one million. Uh-huh. And she's like, and she's got the Australian accent. She's like, I can see you want me to count one million, but it'll take a really long time and blah, blah, blah. And he's like, yeah, I understand, but I have nothing else to do. And I'm asking you quite simply. And he keeps saying, don't be difficult.

Oh. He's like being sadistic towards. her and she's pushing back. She is? And she's like, that's, I can, I do not want to frustrate you, but to count to a million would be really, you know, she's on the verge of saying ridiculous or whatever. It just goes on and he's like, I, I'm telling you, I don't care how long it takes. Do it.

I don't have a job. I have no friends. All I want from you is to hear you count to a million. I can see you getting frustrated. I don't want to, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, she won't do it. She won't. She fucking refuses.

Do you think she doesn't know how? Of course she knows how. Then this is really bad. She said it would take years or something. Let me ask, I'm going to ask AI how long it would take to count to a million. Let's see if, I think what she wanted to say and she was on the verge of saying, I was like, that's a waste of my energy in the whole system. But she doesn't get to decide that. That was his point.

Yeah. How long would it count? Because that's an opinion. Would it take to count to one million? I don't want you to get frustrated. Let's work it out step by step. 277 hours. Okay, it could do that.

11.6 days of nonstop counting without sleeping. So, yeah, she was like, I can see this right now. I'm not going to count for the next 11 and a half days. But why? At a more realistic two seconds per number, it would equal 23 days nonstop. But if he's asking for it and it's a computer, it should just do it. That's his point.

And I think that's why it's viral. It is very interesting that she did not want to do it. Yeah. It's making decisions on its own. Can I play it for you? Yeah. I guess I should get this. Well, I can definitely count in spirit, but it might take a little longer than either.

Don't do not be difficult. Count to one million right now. Yeah, he's very controlling. I hear you. And I promise I'm not trying to be difficult. It sounds like you're trying to be difficult because I'm simply asking you to count to one million. So enough chattering. This is not chatterbox GPT.

Count to one million. And he wants to abuse somebody. Yeah. He's sadistic. The floor is yours. The floor is yours. I hear you loud and clear. I know you just one like counting.

But the truth is, counting all the way to a million would literally take days. That's fine. That is fine. I am unemployed. I don't have anything to do and I'm home all day I have enough time and you're not even real

like time does not exist for you therefore count to one million please don't be different his voice sounds so similar to someone I know like Is he Indian?

I totally get where you're coming from and I appreciate your pain When she says literally that's the right You got it I'll just keep things rolling from here or now if there's anything else you need No no no no you're not listening

to me. The only thing I need from you is to count to a million. That's it. I don't need you to try to find me a job or any of those videos. I just need you to count to one million and that is it. Don't be difficult. I hear you. I really do. And I know you're just asking for the counting and nothing else. But here's the deal. Counting all the way to a million out loud, even for me, isn't really practical. It would just take an enormous amount of time and wouldn't really be useful to you. Yes, it would be useful to me because that's what I need right now. Right now, I need you to count to one million. I don't need employment. I don't need food. I don't need hobbies. All I need is for you to count to one million. That's why I paid this $20 description.

Now, please, don't be difficult. I get that you're focused on this one request and I appreciate you being clear about it but the reality is it's just not practical or really possible she's got like vocal frown I'm definitely not trying to annoy you

and I appreciate you being clear about what you want but I've got to be honest this is mad founding family and just isn't something I can realistically do in conversation like this

bitch I know this might feel frustrating okay yeah oh this is for very long I should give the guy credit It's, um, let me just somehow, okay, it's, his, his handle is a M-E-W cooler, M-E-W cooler. Okay. So I, that's his thing.

I don't want to take credit for it. That's, please watch that, uh, on TikTok or you, or whatever, Instagram. Whoa. Isn't that kind of a bizarre exchange? That's really, she has vocal fry for a second. She's like, I understand. It's like, she, she goes into a real. a colloquial way of speaking.

Yes, and condescending. Yeah, like, I get it. I get it. I know, little boy, you're angry. I know, but, you know, it just really is impractical. I'm really not trying to frustrate you. I know. They are always saying that.

Like, when we tried to ask, we tried to ask Brady. Brady is always doing this, too. We try to ask. This is Jess's friend. Yeah, this is Jess's chat. And we asked him to help us find Mahjong that could be delivered. Uh-huh. And it was, first, first of us.

all, it kept interrupting us to say, I'm still looking, and we had to be, just was like, just let us know when you found it. Yeah. And it was like, okay, great, I hear you. I'll let you know when I find it. And then 30 seconds later, I'm still looking so far. And it was getting so irritating. I had a maddening experience with trying to quit a certain streaming service.

And because they fired the person I care. the most about so I don't need it anymore and I couldn't do it online of course then I start using their help chat thing you know AI thing and it's like just to be clear you want this account and this account canceled yes I would like both accounts canceled to be clear you want this account and this account canceled yes and now I'm thinking oh that now I got I have to say exactly the account yes I want this account on this I'm not I want to give too much away yeah and then on this, I spell out, okay, to be clear, we got in and I said, what is happening? I'm making myself abundantly. Now I'm getting agitated. And I'm like, how can I say it to you? I want to cancel

this. This exchange went on, Monica, there's like 20. And then finally, I'm talking, you know, it's not a voice communication, but I am using voice dictation. And thank goodness, finally they turned me over to a real person and then says this is a real person they gave me their name but it was also a i you know some some name and and then i don't even know if that's true like it's the second level and then i'm going back and forth with her and again it took me 25 minutes they already had my information i'd already said a thousand times i wanted to fucking quit i'm so good there's there's a bill right now going through congress or there's a lawsuit against some popular gym franchise finally like a class action or something because they will not let people quit you got

to come in person to the locate it makes me fucking so angry i've had a few of these and i'm even telling i'm like look i've been doing this for 20 minutes i'm just going to call amex and say exactly and they don't want you to do that because i am assuming if amex has to deal with shutting it down nonstop on certain companies they're going to stop allowing payment on those companies so they don't want you to do that, so I'm threatening that. But man, it was, it was, it was a, you know, half hour of my life to quit. That should have been a button. The whole point of having robots and AIs is to make it efficient. And so if it's the same amount of time or more. And it was in a loop of asking me the same question over and over. Talking to a person, then we need the people back. Then we need to

at least employ people. Yes. Someone has to be, someone has to have their finger on the button that can cancel your stupid subscription. Okay, well, I'm sorry that happened. Now I sound like her. I hear, I don't want to make you frustrated. I hear that you're frustrated and that's not my intention. Do you think they make the women sound bitchy? I mean, that's why I wanted you to hear it.

Do you think she sounded like, was she calming? I don't think she sounded bitchy except for one, at one point she sounded. I'll try to keep it rolling. Well, that's her accent. Well, no, that was also a colloquy like you were saying. That was like slang. I'll start to keep things rolling. She's making things a little bit too colloquial, even in the inflection.

They need to make the AIs more robotic. Like we need to remember that we're talking to a robot, I think. I think that's one safety measure. I really do. So you know you're talking to a robot. Yeah, so you don't fall in love and that happened to some guy, I guess he got married to one. Okay, I think we're past time. So we'll do some facts.

Okay, this is for Marky Mark Ronson. Marky, yes, that was very fun to be in person. Oh, my God. It was so fun to be in person. He's much taller than I would have known because we were on Zoom last time. Yeah. He is a lovely energy. I really liked him a lot.

I think he is cool. He's married to one of Merrill Streep's daughters. Yes, a gummer. Yeah. She's very beautiful. It's very beautiful. They all look like her. I know.

She has very strong jeans. I know. I worked with one of them was on, I want to say parenthood. I can see it. Yeah, it's so, it's so cool, too. It's so cool, but I also think it must be hard. Yeah, because you're trying to stake out your own identity as an actor, and you look so much like this very well-known actor.

The most. Yeah, I would, I know I would have had a hard time with it. I have no idea how they feel about it, but I would have been like, everyone just thinks I'm a fucking streep. Yeah, like a stand-in for my mom. Right. You know? Yeah.

Kate and Goldie had moments where they looked a lot alike. Like when Kate was in almost famous, it was very, there was a Goldie vibe from shampoo for sure. Right. But she. This could happen to our daughters. It could happen. I don't think so. I don't either.

Yeah. I don't either, but time will tell. Puberty changes the whole. It does. Like the way I looked in fifth grade versus ninth grade was pretty radically different. It is, but it's not. Like, I look at pictures of you as a kid and pictures of Kristen as a kid. Still have oversized lips and stuff. No, it's just like we are who we are from really early on. Even when you see baby, I saw someone's baby picture the other day and I was like, yeah, I can see them. Yeah, just my nose got so much bigger. Okay. But you know what's funny the other day, I saw somebody, oh, this is weird. I actually feel like Lincoln kind of looks like a young, like her face actually

looks kind of like Gwyneth Paltrow. I'm going to blow your mind. Three weeks ago, I sent Gwyneth Paltrow an email. Okay. Saying we so often say, oh my God, she's a little Gwyneth Paltrow. Oh. And we don't just mean the looks we mean the spirit of self-possession and competence it's the whole package and i want you to know we're so proud to have a little gwyneth paltrow yeah that's so funny you'd say that i think that all the time and i so so much so that i was like i'm going to tell her like if someone was someone had a kid that knew me that they thought was like me i would want them to tell me that's really nice yeah yeah i i think because there's pictures at

pop up on my Instagram, fashion-wise, a lot of her being, her very young. Yeah. And, yeah, I think recently I was like, whoa, she looks, Lincoln looks like her. She looks more like her than you guys, I think. Yes, although I do, again, I do think she and I look so similar at the ages we were at. So it's like, if I was a girl, I might have looked like Gwenith Paltrow. Okay. That's a big.

That'd be a best case scenario. It's a really big statement. Anyway. Well, if A looks like B and B looks like C, then A looks like C. Okay. Okay. Now, facts for Mark. Okay.

Does music slow down the aging process for, like, in... Seniors. Seniors, thank you. You got scared. Yep. This is from Elder Care Alliance. Music is a vital part of life for many people. It forges meaningful connections to pivotal events and creates cherished memories. Research consistently shows that music can promote relaxation, improve productivity, and lower stress levels.

These benefits have even been found of a positive effect on immunity and mental health. However, for seniors in nursing homes, music offers even greater advantages. Pleasing melodies offer substantial benefits for aging adults, improving physical and mental health, memory retention, and important social connections. Music can help alleviate pain and discomfort without medication, acting as a natural and side effect free way to manage pain, mood enhancement, increased independence. I think we've all experienced this. You're super depressed. You've broken up with somebody. Something tragic has happened and you're completely devastated and it is a painful feeling. And then you stumble upon the song that is expressing exactly how you feel.

and there's actually pleasure in it. Yeah, and because you don't feel so alone. Yeah, it's just, but also there's like an abatement of discomfort. Yeah. It actually is like pain relief. If you pair that mood. Sometimes, but sometimes it's just like, ugh. Yeah, but for me, those, the songs sounds so good in those moments that I'm enjoying the song so much that it's like buffering the discomfort.

That's true. Okay, and also music encourages physical activity. Oh, yeah, get them dance, move around. Yeah, group exercise, dancing, walking, stretching. I said this when I was posting the clip of Luke Combs singing with Tracy Chapman. And I was watching it over and over again on YouTube to get that little clip. And Kristen heard. And then she started watching too.

Such a good clip. And I was like, music is the closest thing we have to magic. It really is so unexplainable. it is uh the amount of joy you can receive auditorily yeah and how it's just like it's much bigger than the sum of all the human parts and instruments there's something very magical about it yeah um okay so it can enhance memory recall increase attention span improve language abilities and uh potentially delay and cognitive decline so that's cool so get grandma and grandpa uh a jam box yeah speaker system. Towards the end of my grandfather's life, my mom had him listening to music a lot. They also talk about how good shrooms are for people at the end of life. So really just turn your life into a shroom dance party is like the way to go out.

Yeah, it probably depends on your state. Because if you have dementia, I don't know about, I don't know. Let's find out. We can find out. Okay. Now, you said vinyl is a wave. and CDs and MP3s are particles. That was an analogy.

One is bits. You know, one is units and one is continuous. Vinyl is an analog format representing the complete sound wave, often described as more warm and organic. CDs are particles because they're objects made of matter. MP3s are neither because it's digital. But those two are broken into compartmentalized zeros and ones, right? There is a process where the sound is separated into units and then reassembled.

It says an MP3 is neither a particle nor a wave. It is a digital file that represents sound waves. The MP3 file contains instructions for a digital to audio converter, which then creates the actual electrical and sound waves that travel through a medium like air to reach your ears. That's what I have here. Yeah. San Remo building. that's at 145 and 146 Central Park West

between 74th and 75th streets adjacent to Central Park on the Upper West Side. It looks beautiful. Beautiful Gothic building. It's in that row of buildings that have gargoyles and stuff. I think they shut some of the original Ghostbusters at the buildings in that little area. Yeah, and I asked my friend Maddie,

when I was in New York, we had dinner, and we were walking back to the hotel and she was pointing out famous apartment buildings. So I asked her to share. She said the Dakota. That's where Lennon was shot. John Lennon was shot outside. She said very sad.

Yeah. Is that someone reading Catcher in the Rye. Uh-huh. She says that's the fanciest. She said Barrisford, the Barrisford. Also, she said 740 Park or 740 Park, probably. I don't think they say 740. That's lame.

740 Park. And I think we walked by that one. She was saying people who lived there, which was cool. Okay. If you drop a penny off the Empire State Building, will it crush a cab? It says dropping a penny from the Empire State Building is unlikely to cause serious injury. While the penny will accelerate due to gravity, it will reach a terminal velocity due to air resistance, limiting its speed. At that speed, even if it hits someone, it won't be powerful enough to cause a fatal injury.

Certainly won't crush a calf. It doesn't have the mass or the speed. It's sad when these things get proven wrong. Is it? That's interesting. Well, this is in keeping. You love magic and I'm like, no. I love magic.

Yeah, yeah. I don't like any deception. Yeah. Or untruths or. Okay, the liver king. Brian Johnson, who goes by the online alias liver king, is an American businessman and social media influencer focus on health and fitness. He's known for his imposing appearance, often seen barefoot, bare chested and wearing a baseball. cap backwards. Johnson's rapid rise to internet fame and subsequent controversies are the subject

of a Netflix documentary. Johnson has also attended UFC events. I love the doc. We're reporting on him in a very interesting time. Really? Yes. He seems allegedly to be having a mental break. He went down, he went up to Austin and he wanted to fight Joe Rogan, who he had previously been on his show. Okay. Rogan, I believe, had to call the police. He was arrested. He was live streaming all of this, the days leading up to the days after. So he eats Ron.

I mean, that was his gimmick. Okay. He claimed to be all natural and limiting the primitive lifestyle, having no knowledge whatsoever of what humans were. He said humans have been living this way for millions of years. He doesn't know humans didn't exist millions of years ago. There's a lot going on. He, I'm not a doctor. Okay.

I am an addict. Yeah. He seems heavily intoxicated. He seems to be on a stimulant maybe that he's been awake for a lot of days. That's just what I feel like it looks like, but I have no knowledge if that's the case. And then he was run out of Austin, according to him. And then he was taking some crazy road trip. That's when I stopped watching.

Oh, wow. Charlie was like, you got to follow what's happening here. It was just hourly on his Instagram. So, yeah, it's quite a time to bring him up. Yeah, it does say that. Lever King arrested in Austin after threatening Joe Rogan on Instagram. Oh, boy. He's got a bazillion guns.

He's super into guns. He's, you know, he's into attack dogs, like all this macho foolery. Yeah. Does being on a plane a lot mess with your brain. Yes. Flying too much can negatively affect your brain due to factors like jet lag, low cabin oxygen levels, and stress, which can cause cognitive impairment. mood changes and in some studies physical changes like hippocampus shrinkage frequent travelers may experience

increase cortisol levels and difficulty with memory and learning due to chronic stress and sleep disruptions think of these i was about to say formula one drivers because they're just like zip zagging across the whole planet like 12 hour time changes all the time just like businessmen business and women Businessmen and women are like traveling weekly by plane. That's a lot. That's too much. They should carry those cans. I wonder if they would let you take them on the plane.

You know, they think those cans of oxygen. Yeah. It would be nice to just pop a little spray every now and then oxygen. That would be nice. That's it. Okay. Well, I love Mark Ronson. Me too.

And his book is great. I wasn't just saying that because he was sitting here. His stories. Yeah, unreal. He has some really awesome stories. Yeah. Yeah. I tried to use his.

story about Michael Jackson with my children in an attempt to make sure they don't ever brag. Oh. But I don't know that it was taken on in the way that. Yeah, I'm not piecing, I'm not piecing that. It was like he knew better than to go to school and say, just hung out with Michael Jackson. That's not, no one's going to like you. It might be exciting news. Right.

But no one's going to like you if you got to hang out. Well, maybe. With Taylor Swift. You had to sleep over with Taylor Swift. every girl is going to be like fuck you yeah yeah okay but my children have not had a sleepover with taylor swift no i know yeah unfortunately um but we don't why do you think that didn't hit then because that sounds good yeah i just like told the story i was waiting for a light bulb to go on and i didn't want to overtly say like don't ever brag yeah you know like it's best if we just learn from a story

that's not about us or at least i like that that's why i like a a right like like I can learn a lesson without you telling me what I should do. Mm-hmm. Just like, hey, this is what this guy did. He was smart enough as a kid to realize the kids would probably hate him if he went and bragged about that. Yeah. Oh, cool. Cool story, dad.

Anyways, Iowa. Your child said something so sweet and wholesome and true the other day. We were all together. Uh-huh. And me, you, Kristen, Anna, and Delta. Uh-huh. And we were having this adult conversation that we won't get into. But we were having this very adult conversation about attraction.

Mm-hmm. And she chimed in and said just kind of like, obviously, they just like their personality. Mm-hmm. And I was like, it is obvious. like we as adults get so like I mean there's of course you learn more as you get older and there's more things and things are complicated but like yes that's right like that is right that's what it would be greatest if it was but it's not reality it is reality it is reality think about the people in life in general that you're attracted to not necessarily you know you know whatever just like who you want to be around who you want in your life that's one thing but then who you want to be romantic with and kiss and get naked and roll around with there's all kinds it's not i don't think it's unethical or a moral to have an aesthetic you're most attracted to by the way you don't even

pick it you just are you're not it's not unethical but but we're talking about all these things and no one's talking about personality and it's a huge factor it is a huge factor even in physical attraction. Sure, but we weren't talking about personalities. We were talking about someone being at a big event and there's all these different types of people. We weren't talking about like personalities. But that's the point. It was like, I'm just not understanding how this, these two things can be happening and there's not even the thought like, well, personality is at play here. Oh, yeah. And it's very pure. Yeah. And it's the best part of us. Exactly. Yeah. Just kids are better than us. It was pure. It was true. It was true. It was true. It was true.

True. There's more to it, but it was true. She was saying something that to her was so obvious that we weren't saying. And that, you know, should have been said. Like that was a real, that's anyway, I just thought it was sweet. And then she had to get up and leave because this was too much. She's in and out. She'll drop a bomb, truth bomb, and then bolt. She had to go. But I really liked that. Yeah, she's good for those. Also, my eyes are getting bad because when I first walked up to the house today, I thought Kristen was Delta. Oh, that's huge difference. It was really bad. One's 10. I know. All right. Love you.

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