Blurry Creatures - EP: 417 We're Having a Good Time with Dusty Slay

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

Comedian Dusty Slay pulls up a chair in the basement to talk Bigfoot, shadow people, and what it looks like to follow Jesus when you used to pray drunk. From his days selling pesticides and working at Office Depot to headlining theaters and doing the Tonight Show, Dusty opens up about how quitting drinking, leaning into faith, and questioning everything changed the trajectory of his life and his comedy. The guys get into ghost stories, haunted rental houses, the plagues of Egypt as divine trolling, and why Jesus quoting Psalm 22 on the cross might be the greatest callback in history. Dusty also talks about the craft of standup, why comedians became the truth tellers of our generation, why AI can't write jokes, and what it means to be funny in a world that forgot how to laugh. This Episode is Sponsored By: https://preborn.com/blurry — Visit the PreBorn! website or dial #250 and use keyword BABY to donate today. https://homechef.com/blurry — Get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box & free dessert for life! https://livemomentous.com — Get up to 35% off your first order with promo code BLURRY at checkout! - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Quins.com slash blurry. Luke so often, people email us and they have this story. They're out in their woods. looking in the bushes and they go, what's that? And when you are pouring your dog food and your dog's bowl, that's the last thing you want to say. What is that? What is the stuff coming out of this bag? You know, I don't think a lot of us think about maybe what we feed our dogs. And that's why we partner with rough greens. Most of us would love to have our dogs, you know, live as long as possible. I mean, I just lost my dog in December. And I would have just, I would have loved

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dogs, Nate, as I said. And so, you know, since they've been getting rough greens with their with their food. I've noticed they have more energy. Their joints hurt less. They're older. I mean, they were talking 12 and 13 years old. And Rough Greens really made a difference in their energy levels and and the pep in their step. So if you want to do what we did, you can get a free jumpstart trial bag for your dog today. Just cover the shipping. Go to roughgreens.com and use discount code blurry. That's RUFFF greens.com discount code blurry. Rough Greens makes any dog food better. I had a comic say something to me one time back in the day. He was not religious at all, but he said something that really struck me.

I was doing comedy one night and I had people from my church coming. And I was saying, I go, I can't do this joke or this joke tonight. I got people from my church coming. And he goes, it's interesting that you care about what people from your church says, but you don't mind doing those jokes in front of God. And I go, oh, that really hit me in a weird way. Yeah. The history of our Earth is so different from what we can imagine.

The Smithsonian, that if they found out about a large skeleton somewhere, was to go get it. I'm going to assume at least one person is right, because if one person's right, it bust the paradigm. It all goes back to the fallen chair. And the problem with the modern day church, they have a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop that's just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this. of Mount Herman event. And this guy defacts from the kingdom. That's a big deal.

Welcome back to blurry creatures. We're excited. We're back in the basement. And we've got Dusty Slay, comedian Dusty Slay in the house. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thanks for coming.

You're a podcaster, comedian, obviously. And you're going to be an author, or is the book out? Oh, the book's not out. You know what? I should have brought a book to think. Maybe I can send you a graphic and you can post it. There we are. I have a book called We're Having a Good Time. It's out in November. I think the, you know, I don't think people are reading as much as they used to. And I think the idea is to try to get those pre-sale numbers. Exactly. We're having a good time. We're going to be having a real good time in November, obviously. But yeah, we talk about all the weird stuff here. And thank you for coming in our basement. I know it's, you're probably like, what are these guys want to talk about? But we ask everybody off the top of the hour. What do you, what's your thoughts on Bigfoot? That's kind of how we kick it off here.

Well, I think, you know, I think that we always feel like as that we've discovered everything, right? We're always like, ah, there's no animal we haven't seen. And I think it's, there's so much forest. There's so much cold area that nobody. I think Bigfoot and the Yeti could be out there. And I, I don't know. I don't watch any Bigfoot shows where they're finding Bigfoot because I know they're not going to find Bigfoot. That's true. You know, so it's like, that's not fun to me. But, you know, I've read stories and stuff where people talk about having, like, encounters where their cabin is all clawed up and stuff like that.

And, you know, I think it's, I think it could be out there. No, is it? I think, you know, there's a whole, you know, you ever hear like Ananaki things? Yeah. They call these Bigfoot's like hominoids or something like that. And they say the Ananaki wanted something from our planet. And they couldn't. they couldn't survive here on the planet,

but I don't believe this, but I love to talk about this. But the hominoids, the bigfoots, lived here. So that Ananaki mated with the bigfoots and that's who we are, the kids of the Ananaki

and the Bigfuts. How much body hair do you have, Luke? Enough. We'll see. Enough for this theory to sound interesting, but not true. I see a couple of dudes that look like they could have been

part squash, you know, out there. Yeah, there's some guys that are wearing sweaters underneath their sweaters. It definitely gets weird here. I mean, the theories grow. I mean, you married a Canadian, you said. So there's no stories in your... The Canadians have some Bigfoot stories up there. That's where he is.

That's what I'm saying. When you get so far north and it gets so cold that it's like you can't be exploring that all the time. Yeah. I think... You're just trying to stay alive. Yeah. Well, plus, it's really interesting. If you ever looked at where the people live in Canada, it's like they live like right along

the border of the United States, right? Yeah. So there's just all these northern territories and northern territory and all those places that sort of just no one lives except for like the Inuit and maybe some like old fur trappers and stuff. Yeah.

And my wife is from Peterborough, which is, you know, it's not way out there but it's north of Toronto. And if you drive up like at night, once you get out of Toronto, it's dark. The interstate is dark. Yeah, it's creepy up there.

It's not like America where it's, you know, there's giant, signs for McDonald's and it's, it's, it's, there's no flying jays. There's a lot of Timmy Hose, a lot of Tim Horton's up there. We should ask you, we should have just jumped the fence and said, how do you think Bigfoot's doing out there, Dusty? How do you think he's doing? I think just great, right? It's got to be. Right. I mean, just live, like, I don't know, you know, it's like, what kind of creature is Bigfoot? Is Bigfoot a, a conscious, like, does he have consciousness

like us? Or is he just an animal? Does he know we're looking for him? Well, that's when I think that we started the podcast because if you go into those stories for too long, Bigfoot starts talking to you and your mind. They have sort of this telepathic thing that they do with a lot of encounters. And there's the whole animal camp that won't accept the weird and the woo of Bigfoot. So it's funny. You have to have an open mind with that with the Sasquatch. But there's a lot of people who just are Puritans, I guess, with this idea that it's just a... an ape of some kind.

And I don't, it doesn't last very long if you get into it. Wasn't like just the early 1900s when we discovered gorillas? Yeah. Isn't something like that? In the Congo,

yeah. That was a mystery, right? Yeah. It was like, and then they made a movie called Gorillas in the mist. I mean, we didn't really jump the shark.

Oh, man. No, that was a whole thing. Like, there were legends of the, of these giant apes out in the Congo. Yeah, they didn't discover the giant panda

until like the forest. Which is amazing because those things don't really do a whole lot. to roll around and eat bamboo. But all the locals knew it was a thing. So they'd go out and they would come back and like, oh, I saw a giant panda and it was like everyone knew they existed. But science didn't say it existed.

I think some people think pandas are fake. There's a theory probably. This is a new theory. Yeah, that they don't exist, that they're not real, that it's all like like costumes and animatronics. Yeah. Who thinks that? Well, people have seen.

I never like to talk about the people that I want. or the podcast I listen to of videos that I watch because nowadays, if you're like, oh, I was watching this guy and he was talking about this, people go and they find that guy saying something else that I don't believe. Yeah. And then they go, oh, you believe this too. Yeah. And I go, I don't believe any of it.

I was just watching it. Guilty by association. Yeah, it's like, I feel like, you know, certain people are able to watch and comprehend things without being like, yeah, I believe this. I just am open to the possibility. Well, we deal with that. You bring on someone on your show. You're trying to talk to him about pyramids or Bigfoot or something or UFOs or something.

And then everything they say you're an accomplice to that. Oh, yeah. Or someone has like a view on scripture or eschatology, you know, and they go, well, that's what you guys believe. And we're like, no, we just had a discussion about what somebody else has believed. And that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you have a podcast.

You just, it's about having conversations. Yeah. I mean, I was thinking about this the other day. It's like, you know, if I do a podcast every week for an hour, I'm sitting in a room by myself talking for an hour. That means I've talked for 52 hours. And it's like at some point I'm going to say something that's stupid. And I go, I'm just talking, guys.

People go, oh, you complain about so much. And I go, I just need content, you know? Am I really that upset about this thing that happened at the airport? Not that upset, but I wrote it down. because I need to talk about something. I got to have some conversation. Do you like to interview people at all or no? I do a little bit.

I had Tara Lee Cobol of the Bible recap podcast. She's my only interview in a long time. Did you guys recap the Bible? Well, a little bit. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, I just was like, she listens to my podcast and was interested in being a guest. And I was like, oh, that's great.

I love that. Like, we don't have guests. We'll do it, though. Well, people probably also assume you can't have, you can't be serious either. If you're a comedian, you tell jokes, you can't actually have, like, serious thoughts about anything. Yeah, I just got a comment the other day in this guy, go, he was commenting on my podcast. And he goes, this wasn't really that funny. And I go, well, this is my podcast.

You want real funny. Come to my stand-up comedy show. My podcast, it's like, I think it's funny. But, you know, I'm also, if I could do an hour-long podcast, that's as funny as my stand-up every week, I'd be the greatest comic in the world. Oh, 100%. Yeah, you'd have that much material?

Yeah, it'd be unbelievable. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's, like, a lot of prep goes into your material and presenting the jokes. It's a craft. I think it's the hardest thing you can do as a creative. Because you bomb forever, right? You just come out, you tank,

and then you have to tell yourself, this is part of the process. I'm going to suck for a long time. or maybe not, maybe some people just come out and they're just funny. Yeah, how do you get into that? Well, even now, after all this time, I'll write a joke and I'll go, oh, this is good. And you go out and tell it and it's not good. You're like, I still don't know.

Yeah. Sometimes it is, you know, but you still have to work it. But yeah, you just, yeah, I mean, I don't know that I completely bombed for a long time, but, you know, for a long time, you're like, you're figuring it out all the time. Like if I go out now, say I'm doing a 10-minute set somewhere and a joke's not working, I can just switch gears and go into some other material. Or if I'm trying new stuff, I just switch to the old stuff. But when you're new, it's all new stuff.

Yeah. Right. One of the coolest parts about this podcast is we get to work with cool companies and pre-born is one of them. And people matter, life matters. Every mother out there who's just found out that there is a baby that is real and moving, We hope that she chooses life. And that's why we partnered with preborn to help them. You know, recently, Nate, we heard from a listener out in Colorado who serves at a pregnancy center that's been deeply impacted by preborn's support.

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An ultrasound machine doesn't just show a picture and introduces a mother to her child. And many clinics don't have one, nor can they. afford one. So Pre-Borne's goal is simple and urgent. Place an ultrasound machine in every clinic across America that needs one. If you have the means, would you consider a tax-deductible gift of $15,000 to save countless lives? To donate, dial pound at 250 and say the keyword baby, that's pound 250, baby, or go to pre-born.com slash blurry. That's pre-born.com slash blurry. Dusty, when do you decide, like, that you want to be, you want to be a comic? I mean, how does that, how does that even work? For me, it's like, I have nothing else going on in my life. There is no prospect that I will be successful in life. I am, I'm living in Charleston, South Carolina. I move there. I don't know anyone. I'm working at Office Depot. Everyone I work with is old, and my life is not looking good. And I go, I got to do something. And so you just, I took some improv classes, and I go, okay, I'm around.

some young people. This is fun. And then I meet some people talking about stand-up. And I go, this is a good way for me to meet people. And then I go, oh, I'm pretty good at this. Yeah. And then I start drinking after. And then I go, I start really tanking at all. But, okay. You know, that's what I was doing for a long time, was just doing comedy and then getting drunk after and going life is a party. Yeah. And then when I quit drinking, I got like real serious about comedy. Yeah. And then I also got into YouTube. And I started, you know, a lot of my world narrative started to fall apart. Is it like sports world?

You're studying films, getting better, seeing where you could get better at your comedy? Yeah, I think so. You know, you're watching stand-up comedy. And then, you know, in Charleston, we didn't have a lot of professional comics coming. And then when I moved to Nashville, I started working Zanis. And then I start to see all these professional comics. And you really, you're like, you know, you're just really studying them and seeing, oh, this is good. How much of the body language makes something funny you think versus the actual stuff you say?

Is it like a big part of it? Because I think that... I don't know because I see people, sometimes I see people and I go, I'll watch a comic. Maybe I don't know this comic, but I see them take the stage and I go, well, these guys are going to be good. Because you see they're like very confident. And then they're so bad. And I think if you watch my comedy on mute, you would say,

this guy's really bad at comedy. And, you know, because I look uncomfortable all the time. Are you uncomfortable? Yeah, probably. Probably, I don't know. You know, I'm pretty comfortable on stage, but it's not a natural thing to just be standing there in front of people that are basically saying,

make me laugh. Yeah, we're here to laugh. Yeah. Do people always want you to be funny now, everywhere you go? Is that like the thing? I think so. Yeah. But I, you know, that's what people want to hang out sometimes after the show.

And I go, you've just seen the most fun version of me. There's really, even like conspiracy stuff, I think sometimes people want to talk to me about that. Because on what used to be Nate Land, now the public figures podcast, people, you know, I talk about it. And so they want to talk to me about it. And then I think it stops being funny because it stops being a bit. Yeah. And I'm really now talking to you about it. Yeah, we're into this.

Yeah. We're actually getting into it. What about, we were talking pre-roll. You said you quit drinking in 2012. Yeah. What about your faith? Where's your faith at with in this journey? Because I know we talk pre-roll and people that are listening now,

I didn't get privy to that. But you're talking about your podcast and what you do. And you're like, man, it's just about people, you know, encountering Jesus. Yeah, there's not many people. meetings have read Dr. Michael Heiser. Yeah, dude. Yeah. So, I mean, how does that?

Well, I've, you know, I said this one time and people said, well, that can't be true. But I'm, I've always been Christian. And they say, well, you can't always be Christian, I guess. But I'm like, yeah, I mean, my parents were divorced and not necessarily, we weren't necessarily going to church every week, but it's just kind of always been my belief. But I would, you know, I'd always, I would read this book here and there. You know, but I would read some religious book and I'd be going to church. I went to church hungover a lot.

Yeah. You know, because I don't know, it just like, it seemed like drinking was socially acceptable and I was Christian. And so I was like, I don't know, I was just doing both. Yeah. Even though that's not okay. In my eyes now, it's like not okay to be as drunk as I was all the time. But I would, you know, I would go home and I would pray drunk.

And I was kind of always trying to escape this drinking lifestyle that I was in. Yeah. even though I don't know if it was dark, like that sounds dark. Like if you're drinking and then you're like praying to get out of it. I don't think it was dark like that. I was just like, I don't want to stay on this path.

Do you feel like creative people struggle with that darkness a lot? Like, seems like there's a lot of, there has to be something in you to get crazy enough to put something in the world. I think so. Yeah, I mean, I think people are,

you know, it's like, I don't know. I feel like if you're living a totally normal lifestyle, like everything in your life, is perfect. There's less chance that you're going to be super creative. Right? It's like, I feel like I used to, when I was growing up, I'd go to my grandmother's house and she had no, you know, back then there was no internet. My grandmother didn't have any games. There was no TV,

really. She had TV, but there was a little chance I was going to get to watch it. She didn't have an air conditioner. This is in Alabama. My grandmother just sat there crocheting. There was nothing to do. So I would draw pictures. I would. I would draw pictures. I would. would just draw all the time. And it forced me to be creative. Yeah. Yeah. Kids these days, they don't know how to be bored. Right. If I had an iPad back then, would I even be doing comedy now? That's such interesting, you know, ideas. As parents, right? We're parents. We're both parents of younger kids. Nate's got, you know, a little bit older than ours. But yeah, you wonder about that. Like, we grew up in the 80s, right? You're 80, you're 82 just like

I am, right? I mean, it was such a different time. There were, you know, I remember I played Nintendo the first time in kindergarten, the original NES. And that was fun, but we used to, we ride bikes everywhere. Like, we used to, those games were hard. You turned sticks into swords and I mean, we just, we did dumb

things because we play outside and be bored. I remember my parents would throw us out, out in the yard until, like, go play until it's dark, right? Yeah. Go entertain yourselves out there. Some of those Nintendo games, you couldn't get past the first level. Oh, it was so frustrating. So you couldn't play for very long. Yeah, and also, they're basic enough to

where you're like, you do get bored. And you're like, let's go outside. Like, I, it used to be like, if I'm in my hotel at night and I'm on my phone, I'll never go to sleep. But if I put my laptop on and watch a video, I'll fall asleep to the video. Yeah, yeah. But now I feel like the latest laptop I bought, I feel like even it keeps me awake. It's like a drone. There's something in the screen that, like, forces you to keep paying attention to it.

Weird. When this journey you started, you said you found YouTube, but when did you really start to get into, you know, because like you talked about, you know, you're a, the podcast formerly that was Nate Land with Nate Bargazzi and some other comics that come through there. You're the conspiracy theory guy that in some ways. That's what you, you talk about. But when did that really become like a thing you became interested in? Well, even when I was like a little kid, we kind of talked about this on Instagram,

but I found like these books and they were kind of these unsolved mysteries books. It was, that wasn't what it was, but it was like this volume of books and it had the Bermuda Triangle in it. It had Bigfoot, Lockness sponsor. Yeah. All sort of stuff like that. And I remember being like, oh, this is really cool. Yeah. And we would talk about the Bermuda Triangle, whether we knew anything or not, I remember other kids in the trailer park being like, yeah, ships can't fly over or planes can't fly over and ships go around it because they'll sink.

And I don't know if any of that's true. But I just remember being like, whoa, this is crazy, this little area. And then you start, I started watching Unsolved Mysteries and I started seeing ghost stuff and alien stuff. I was terrified for most of my childhood because I was afraid that aliens were coming or go. I remember one Unsolved Mysteries. In this episode, a ghost saved these people's life, right? Like the house was on fire and they said their bedroom door was open and a ghost came to the doorway and woke them up. up and save their life. But I was so terrified of ghost that I would never sleep with the bedroom

door open because I didn't want a ghost to come into the doorway. And I, I, you know, remember, what is it, three men and a baby? Yeah. That scene where everybody said there was a ghost in the curtain. Oh, dude, yes. I just, I, I would rewind that VHS over and over again to that spot. even though it was scaring me to death, I kept watching it. And there's like a gun lane against the wall. There's a whole thing on, that's a whole thing.

Yeah. In that scene where there's supposedly the girls in the window that was killed in the home they're filming it. Now, there is an explanation. I don't know if, you know, but if you want me to... Yeah, debunk it for us. Well, what they say is, man, I don't even remember the movie, but Ted Danson is apparently like fairly famous in the movie.

and there's these cardboard cutouts of him from a book signing or something. And so that's what's in the curtain kind of leaned up against the wall was like Ted dancing cutout. But I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. We actually did our last episode with Dr. Michael Heiser on ghosts particularly. And it's like the guys in the Bible see ghosts all the time.

Well, they think Jesus is a ghost. We're walking across the Greek is fantastic. And they knew, they kind of knew the difference between, oh, that's a ghost. and that's a demon and that's a- Or wasn't Peter getting out of jail when they were to knock on the door they think it's his ghost? Oh, yeah.

And like that's such an interesting worldview that people just like skip over. But you had. Yeah, I mean, they have angel encounters and people are, you know, they're terrified of angels. You know, they always bow to them and the angels say, don't, you know, don't bow to me. Back in the 80s, we used to love a show called McGiver.

He could walk into the fridge like an archaeologist entering a sealed tomb. And he could be like, oh, there's some sauce, half an onion, just some shredded cheese. And McGiver could, could, fashion into dinner. But for the rest of us, Luke, dinner cannot come from those ingredients. And that's why we need Home Chef. Yeah, and Home Chef is helping us reset with simple recipes, fresh ingredients, and meals that feel balanced and achievable. Solving the mystery of what's for dinner tonight

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That's homechef.com slash blurry for 50% off your first box and free dessert for life. Homechef.com slash blurry must be an active subscriber to receive for free. dessert. You alluded to your own ghost story. I don't know if you want to tell it. Well, yeah. I mean, I saw this thing later where people talked about shadow people. And it's not a thing that I had ever heard of at this time. And it, the moment I heard it, like, it's like seeing a silhouette of something. The moment I heard it, I got really freaked out because I used to live in this old house when I was first living in Nashville, then an old house. It was built in like the 1800s. But it had six-bed reds.

rooms and I was living there with five other dudes. And then when I met my wife, you know, we were dating and we rented another room. These are details you don't need. But it's, you know, it was the two of us living with four other dudes. And a lot of rats in the house. Other than the dudes. Yeah. Yeah. That's quite experienced. Like, hey, hey, honey. We're going to live with four other dudes. So many rats. One time I set out glue traps in this closet, I called seven rats in one night. It's insane what's going on in this house. You could have made a lot. You could have made a hard right until like the pest business. Well, I used to sell pesticides before I started comedy.

That's how I knew I could take care of the problem. Paranormal pest control. Yeah. Dusty. But this, you know, this door, you know, this house was old, had a lot of sounds and, you know, you could hear all the doors closed. Nothing was quiet. And one night, me and my wife were in bed and I hear this kind of click of the door.

And it was, and I thought, And then I see something, and I think it's one of my roommates coming to tell me something, which they've never done. No one's ever coming to my room at night to tell me something. But it was all so real that I felt like I felt a presence of another person like somebody was coming to tell me something. And I look up and it looks like the silhouette of a person at the foot of my bed. And I was kind of like half asleep, half awake. but I remember like jumping back in a way in the bed that enough that it kind of freaked my wife out and then it disappeared

and it was just really weird like at the foot of my bed like a like a person was there and then was gone what's the difference between a shadow person and a ghost you think like I would think a ghost is like almost like this translucent person glowing yeah but like this shadowed The shadow person was like, you know, as I'm telling the story, you have like, looks like a bear rug in the corner. But it's like a silhouette of a person, like a, like a, like almost like, it's a dark figure. It's there. Yeah, like Lord of the Rings like these people there. Or like a Peter Pan where he tries to catch a shadow and it's cruising around.

Well, people say like the women in white, a lot of people encounter, you know, that ghost or the, or that era of ghosts. I don't even know it doesn't, it's really confusing as you get into it. but they can tell it's a woman, she's confused, and it's like a hologram. It's not a shadow. And that seems to be mostly what people would describe as a ghost. It's like someone just took the opacity down to like 15%. Yeah, exactly.

Like, I've always been freaked out by ghost. I used to pray all the time as a kid that I would not see ghost, that I would not see aliens. I used to pray all the time because it was like, you know, and the Bible talks about kind of a veil to the spiritual realm. Yeah. And I didn't know it at the time, but it was like I was praying, don't let me see into the spiritual realm. Yeah. And I don't know why, but I was so freaked out.

Now, this is. This is real. My dad has never talked about this, and I'm sure it's not true. But my, the house my dad lives in, his dad built. and his dad, you know, had a heart attack in the house, didn't die in the house, but had a heart attack in the house and died on the way to the hospital. And my sister, who's, we have the, we have different dads. And my sister, who used to try to freak me out all the time, would tell me that in that house, after my granddad passed away, he would wake my dad up

in the morning by calling his name. And I don't know if that's true. I never talk about that with my dad? Probably not true. But I used to stay in that. house and it freaked me out all the time. It's weird. That is weird. I hope it's true. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean, he still lives in the house. So it freaks me out. Yeah. I feel like as you do, like these, having more conversations about these things, things just get a little more nuanced. And I think that's hard for a lot of people. Obviously, Civil War people see those guys here all the time in Franklin and the ghosts of the Civil War soldiers. And I don't want to make heads or tails

of that but um yeah it's like it's so weird it's almost like a time thing it's like well i mean and and it's very divided amongst christians like kirk cameron came on like last week told a story about his sister she had twins one of them passed and then the other twin is growing up without her sister has passed in the womb right and then the child asked the mom hey i have a sister and she's like you wouldn't have known that you have no idea and it's like oh well she's interacting with, you know. This kind of stuff, they always gives me chills. But people say

immediately the reaction is it's demonic or I can't believe it, that's amazing. It's not like, whoa, that's weird. It's one or the other. It's just we as Christians have a hard time believing. Anything is spooky and weird and we just, we slap demon demonic on it

and we move on. It's like a reaction. But then there's other people who are like, man, that's an incredible encouragement for I'm like, I don't understand. Well, they talk about, like, the Bible talks about, like, necromancy, like, trying to communicate with the dead. And that's what, that's where I get, like, I think it's, like, they say, like, if a house where, like, a lot of pain and torture and stuff went on, that demons will be attracted to that. And so they'll, they like that sort of thing. So they'll live in those sort of, like, like, my dad has a couple of rental houses that he owns, and they're all really old houses.

and the one that my dad says, I will inherit, is one that. It's the creepiest one? Yeah. Which I've said to my dad and my wife that if I inherit that house, I'll bulldoze it to the ground and we'll never step foot inside there. But I've been in there. And it used to have an attic. Before my dad bought it, there was a closet that you could go in and open the door. and that's where the stairway to the second floor was at, was inside the closet.

And he said before he owned it, there was a family that lived there. And they had a kid that was like special needs, like, I guess had Down syndrome. And he said, this was during a time where people like would hide those people away. And I don't, yeah, I don't know. These are just stories they're telling me. And so this kid stayed in the attic and where it was very hot up there and eventually the kid died. and now they say that kid like haunts that house. And my dad said many people that have rented the house will come to him later and go,

you know that house is haunted, right? And my dad will go, yeah, right? And I'm like, this is why you want a bulldozer. But people say that, you know, they, one person that lived there said they were sitting on the bed and then next to them like an imprint of a person sitting there like popped up next to them And they swiped it away and said it came back. And they said the fans will cut on out of nowhere. The sinks will drip and they'll go turn it off and then it will drip again.

And it's like, I'm like, yeah, I mean, I will never occupy. I mean, I'll go in just to show the, you know, construction workers where to bulldoze or whatever. But it turns out it's on a cemetery. It's always like the real fascinating stories does here about are in this space because as Nate was saying, And this is what we talked to Mike Heiser about. These last podcast they every day was with us. And it was about this idea of ghosts and spirits and how we sort of delineate, biblically speaking, between the two. And I mentioned beforehand, there's like the disciples think Jesus is a ghost walking across the water.

They think Peter, when he breaks out of prison or broken out of prison, it's his ghost. So there's this reality within the scriptures of this other that's not, they don't think it's a demon pretending to be Peter. I don't think it's a demon pretend to be Jesus. it's another thing, right? Yeah, the Ghost of Samuel too. And it's hard. That actually was our Bible study last week was that the ghost of Indoor. And this.

But the Ghost of Samuel is like, what are you doing? Don't you do this. Yeah. Why are you waking me up? I already told you. But she knew it was actually him. That's why she freaked out. Yeah.

Because she was like, oh, man, it's actually you. The witch who, yeah, she's like, oh, I did it. Yeah. But this is what I didn't want. Didn't want this to happen. Yeah. But also ghosts have their own personality of. of almost like they don't know what they don't know why they're there.

It's like the demonic stuff is creepy and evil and it's scary. And when people encounter that in a haunted house, like sleep paralysis and all the stuff they see or these creatures. But then sometimes it's like a ghost is like, it doesn't know. It's scary because you're seeing something, but it's not trying to scare you. Did that make sense?

Yeah. It's not trying to make you afraid of it. It's like a loop or something. Like it goes and looks out the window and then it's gone. You know, you have this whole thing like, what? That doesn't fit into the demon box in my mind because it's like it's not intentionally try and frighten you. It doesn't.

Like a poltergeist is like scratching you or lifting you out of bed or anything crazy. Like the woman in white stories. These girls told on her show was like they were walking home from one farmhouse to the other when they were kids. And there was just this woman standing there like looking almost like she's calling somebody. And they see her and she's like glowing. And it's like illuminating the ground around her. But they don't, she doesn't notice the kids. And I'm like, well, if it's a demonic entity, she's going to be like,

Come here, little kid. You know, freaking them out. She's like, they're like watching like a time. Like she's having, she's living like 75 years in the past, having a moment. So what do you do with that? Where do you put that? Where do you file that, Dusty? Yeah, it's like, you know, like I think there can be things like.

Ghost expert, Dusty Slay. With like VHS, right? You record something. You record over something or somehow it bleeds in the old recording. Somehow bleeds into the new recording. Like we're. in some sort of simulation or like in the sense of like to us there's this time we're living time but to God everything exists all at the same time right it's like there's if you if there's no

beginning there's no end to God as as God is explained to us everything is born and dies to God everything has always been so I don't know maybe you know maybe all these things are existing at the same time, but somehow they bleed into a single moment. Yeah, and sometimes in life, your number one needs to be going number two. Easy way to do that? How? More fiber. And how do you get more fiber? Well, for us, one of our partnerships here has been Momentus, and they've got a brand new product called Fiber Plus. Fiber isn't just about staying regular. I think that's one of the big misnomer's here. It plays a major role in energy, recovery, focus, and overall performance. And Momentus Fiber Plus just isn't another supplement. It's foundational. It's a three and one formula with soluble fiber,

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Head to live momentous.com. Use promo code blurry for up to 35% off your first order. That's live momentous.com. promo code blurry. Yeah, it's kind of like when we talk about the transfiguration. There's a bunch of really cool theories about transfiguration about, you know, Jesus transfigures and there's, you know, Moses and Elijah, right? Which is, of course, the typical responses to the law and prophets.

Of course it is. It's Jesus being the fulfillment of the laws and the law and the problem. the law and the prophets, right? But there's some fun theories that because of the place on the mountain that you're looking at a space and time where it's, you know, Jesus, Yahweh, meeting with Moses on top of the mountain

at the same time, Elijah meeting. What you're seeing is this thing happening in space time, which is, we don't know, but it's... I have heard that, though. So like when Moses is in the mountain, when Elijah's in the mountain, and then when Jesus, like, they're all happening at different times.

But when Jesus is there, they're all there at the same time. If God is outside of space and time, which he is. I love that. But it's interesting to think, like, to your point, like, there's this, you know, God is outside of space and time. So we experience, and we talk about this with Troy, time in a linear fashion, right? It's right now, it's playing out in front of us, right? Yeah.

God is the alpha and the mega. He's at the beginning and in the end. He sort of sees it all as it is and where his experience of time is different. The Bible says that, like, to the Lord of days. A thousand years. Like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day. just like a day. Yeah.

What do you do with that? You're like... And the sense that they're all afraid, right? It's like even like when people see these things, like when they see angels, everybody's afraid, like we are when we see a ghost. And then like, you know, when the Hebrew people are like when Moses is with them and God speaks to them, reveals himself to them on the mountain, they all go, hey, next time, Moses, maybe you just talk to him.

We're afraid. You just do this, okay? Yeah. Do you feel like that stuff helps your faith grow? Because I know for me, once, you know, the typical church setting and going to church and being a part of Christianity,

it was like, it allowed me to kind of click into autopilot, just kind of cruise. But then when the weirder stuff, I started, I'm like, okay, this is real. Like all the things that I've heard my whole life. Is that, were you always into the paranormal and the strange and the fun stories? Or were you later and later,

life, you kind of get into that, and then it helps your, it seems like there was a point when when you got more serious about your faith. Yeah, I mean, I've always been into it, but yeah, I mean, when, you know, when you start to read stuff like the, the Hebrew's verse that it's pretty popular amongst conspiracy theorists where it's like, or, you know, where it's like, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but have been spiritualities and principalities and principalities where it's like Ephesians, Paul. Oh, it's Ephesians. Okay, yeah. But it's like where you start to go, oh, there's something outside of our reality that's happening. Yeah.

And almost like, like there's like things above our world leaders that are happening, that are, you know, that like we're supposed to be praying against those sort of things to, to, you know, help for the good.

You know, I don't know. I don't have the right way to explain it. But yeah, to answer your question, I do think it strengthens my faith to go, oh, there is stuff beyond this life. You know what I mean?

We're living in this reality. And I feel like even talking about this stuff, I'm like, I feel like I'm in some kind of weirder space now. Not that your space is weird. Thank you. Like a weirder headspace? Yeah. When I used to talk about ghost stories when I was a kid with my friends.

And then it would freak me out to the point where I was like, I don't want to talk ghost stories anymore. Yeah, they do get a little scary. They look creepy. and you can freak yourself. I didn't like him either. I didn't like watching those movies as a kid either. No, me neither.

I don't watch any horror movies now at all. Me neither. None. I don't, yeah. I don't like that stuff. I mean, we've actually talked to, like we talked to Chad Hayes, who wrote The Conjuring, right?

Yeah. And he's a believer. And it's an interesting conversation, but doesn't make you want to watch the movie. How does your faith, like, play into your comedy? Obviously, I don't think a lot of, I don't know. I feel like when people, like, listen to comedy

or go to a show, they just kind of want to be, They don't want to think about anything for an hour. They don't want to actually have to like process themselves. Yeah. And that's kind of a hard combination to put those two things together, I would say. Well, on my podcast, I go, I don't even advertise my podcast a lot. So I go, if you found it, you've searched for it and now you're, I'm going to talk about other stuff. But for my comedy, I'm like, I'm just going to make you laugh.

I'm just going to do comedy. I'm not going to bring you here and then try to have some ulterior motive. where I, you know, I'm just going to do comedy. But for my podcast, that's where I talk about the Bible. I talk about more serious things. But I still try to be joking and fun. Yeah. But I, for my comedy, you know, I won't make, I don't make jokes about the Bible.

I don't make jokes about Christianity. I really, you know, I don't really joke about any religion for that matter. You don't go after everything. Right. Right. But I, you know, even if something might be funny in the Bible that I read, I'm not going to joke about it. Yeah. You know, because I, you know, maybe I just don't understand it.

But I don't make jokes about the Bible. I don't joke about God. You know what I mean? Like, even when I was younger and I was like, you know, I used to live in this trailer when I was doing, you know, doing drugs and whatnot in the trailer. And I still had a picture, which I'm not into putting pictures of Jesus up because I, I now I'm like, well, we don't know what Jesus looks like. So I don't know who this is I'm putting on my wall calling them Jesus.

But I had the picture up. I wouldn't, you know, I had all these wild people coming in and out of my house. And me and my friends would never let people say GD, you know, because we're like, hey, let's have some respect here. You know what I mean? Let's don't mess around. Because I'm like, no matter what you're doing, I'm like, you got to have respect for God. Yeah.

What's it? Yeah, what is it like doing like clean comedy, right? Because this is, yeah. I think this was a very interesting space. And like, you know, guys like your friend, Nate Bargazzi, like, is blue. a biggest comic in the, really in the world right now. In fact, his tour will do maybe the biggest tour ever. Rock band doesn't matter what it is.

And he's committed to doing, he's also a believer in committed to doing clean comedy. What's that like? I mean, because it had a whole stigma, right? You had to be like this Christian comic and you had to perform a Spirit West Coast back when we were like, you know, in the tent. And it wasn't like a... First off, his work ethic is incredible. If I do one tour like that and make that money, you may never see it again.

Dust is gone. He's on YouTube, watching YouTube. But yeah, I mean, I think there was a bit of a stigma about it, and which is why I don't necessarily advertise my comedy as clean. Right, right. Because I say relatively clean, because I also don't want people to complain if they go. I thought he was clean. Sure, sure, sure.

He talked about need for 15 minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I, yeah, I think there is kind of a turnaround. I think that, you know, probably a real. Originally, comedy was clean, and then things started to get edgy. And then it was the edgy stuff was cool because it was like, oh, this is not something I can hear anywhere else. And then it went so far to where it's like, oh, there is no edge anymore. You've already said everything in the world.

And I think there was a hunger for people like, well, I want something that's not so crazy. I want a podcast I can listen to in the car with my kids and not. Like, I realized I was so desensitized to this sort of stuff when I started listening to my normal podcast in the car with my kids. And I go, oh, I can't listen to this. I didn't know they dropped 50 F bombs in this, you know. So I think there was a hunger for like, can I listen to this around my kids? Can I, even my shows, I say, I don't want your little kids to come because I do talk about weed a lot. But you could bring your adult kids to my show.

Yeah. And not be embarrassed that you brought them. Yeah. People tell me all the time, yeah, I can finally watch something with my kids or I can finally watch something with my parents, you know. I feel like too, like when I, my experience with, you know, with comedy is that like, I feel like there's, it takes more effort and, and talent and skill to like not to, to be funny without it being. Yeah. Because that was, I remember, man, I remember at when I was in college, into my college career. Chico State in Northern California

and I was real excited because I loved him on SNL like Brian Fellows and all the stuff he did and he came out and it was so obscenely vulgar that I even just laughed I was like it was so disappointing

because I felt like the stick was let's just be so shocking that that it wasn't I didn't even feel like man that feels a little easier to me well I agree and I think that about a lot of podcasts too

even that joke I made about myself earlier someone saying my podcast is not that funny and I go well, you're probably listening to a lot of super filthy podcasts where these guys just say anything that they want to say there's no shame about them at all. And then you think this is hilarious. And so that when you listen to a guy not doing that, you think, oh, this is boring or this is not as funny. And it's like, well, you've ruined your palate.

You know what I mean? When you hear the worst things in the world, hearing somebody be clean, that might be boring to you. But you need a palate cleanser. You need to fast from comedy for a bit. Yeah, but I also think that like they're, like when you're not in it to shock people, like you have to actually be funny. Yeah. Because you got to be like, well, I got to create, I have to tell jokes of situations that are actually funny.

It's not just like. Yeah, and that's what I'm, I try to create a whole show, right? Where I want, I want bits. And I'm now talking about, you know, I got a lot of neighborhood jokes that I'm doing. So I'm bringing you in. Now I'm talking about the neighborhood. And then I got callbacks to where it's like, if you listen to the, the jokes earlier. Now you get these jokes on a deeper level because now I got I got layers of jokes.

It's like an orchestra. It's like an orchestra. Yeah, I'm trying to create like when I was growing up, I liked music albums where I could listen to the whole album. I really liked Pink Floyd because I would listen to this and it feel like the album would like almost call back to an earlier. And I love that. I like the complete album. So that's what I like. That's hard to do. I mean, I feel like a lot of time. you know, pastors kind of get into sermon mode and they just, they preach, but I think comedy is such a feeling oriented. There's a lot of moments of silence. You have to put that in there. It's, it's, it's very hard. I think I'm just, I'm impressed. And we joke a lot about how blurry creatures might have been a Mitch Headberg joke of, you know, his bit on Bigfoot. And that's a focus

monster. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like, so we're going to, we're going to tell you, we want a little, we want some Bigfoot bits out there. Give us some... You got the hat. Give us some paranormal. Halfway there. Well, I thought this was, you know, this is, you know, as you know, this is the... You could be the conspiracy truck, Bigfoot.

Of course. Oh, dude, yeah. But I was like, this is perfect. I love this hat anyway, but I was like, this is a perfect hat for this project. What was it like being a comic in 2020? Because this is one of the times when, you know, this is what broke a lot of people's paradigms was what happened with the shutdowns and all those, and everything that kind of went.

But there was this massive, like, you know, you know, de-platforming and censorship that was going on. And it felt like... They shut down your industry. Yeah. Yeah. Well, my, you know, my old worldview and paradigm was broken long before, right? So COVID coming in was, wasn't, I mean, it's like, it's shocking in the sense that the, the world actually shut down.

Yeah. Because I was, you know, out doing shows and I was hearing people talk about this COVID coming. I go, I'm not worried about it. It's going to be fine. I was in March. I was in March of 2020. I was in Florida, Sarasota, Florida doing shows. And I was talking to my wife.

I remember saying to my wife, I go, as long as nothing crazy. Because this was like, that was the first year that my, I had a, my year was really set. I had a ton of shows. And I told my wife, I go, long as nothing crazy happens, we're all set. And then I flew home and she was wearing a mask and rubber gloves when she picked me up from the airport. I made fun of her, and then I didn't leave the house for two weeks. Yeah. And I was a little freaked out at the beginning of COVID, but I got over that pretty fast

because I didn't know what was happening. Nobody knew what was happening. But I got over it pretty fast. And to me, it was a pretty great time. I learned to edit videos. I had an hour-long comedy set that I had filmed that I learned to edit. I blew up on TikTok for me blowing up. And still my largest following on a platform as TikTok.

and in May of 2020, I got invited to Dallas to do comedy at the Addison Improv, and I was like, yeah, let's do it. I mean, I've been stuck in the house for two months. And a lot of comics were definitely not doing comedy during that time. May of 2020, I might have been the only headliner in the country doing comedy. Biggest show in the country. Yeah, and we were 25% capacity, and it was fantastic because people were so excited to be. out of the house.

Yeah, yeah. That I really, I mean, that time, in a lot of ways, I loved. So the fear didn't get you. No, I mean, there were times where I got, I was like, oh, no, I'm sick. But then I never, you know, I wasn't. But I was flying in May. People didn't really care about mask in May. You know, I know that came about a little later.

Yeah, because I told everybody that they wouldn't do anything until they told them that it would. There was the whole reversal of. Yeah, it wasn't a big deal. In early May, we were flying without mask. were not yelling at us. Now, we had them with us, but I had a bandana, and people were not freaking out. The plane was mostly empty. They were very excited that we were flying. The hotel was mostly empty. The hotel was very welcoming. All the restaurants I went to were so happy. So happy. It was showed up. It was just like a beautiful time where it felt like everybody appreciated

your business. Everybody appreciated comedy. And it was like, I was wonderful. And then there came of time when I started, I was sitting in the airport and I go, ah, the world is coming back. And it was a little disappointing because I was like, yeah, here's all the people that were afraid to leave their house. And now they're back. Yeah. Now they're back. And they're being loud and they're in my way. You were like a pioneer.

You're like, all the real ones are out right now. You had an I am legend moment. You're just like living, living large. No one's around. Yeah. I feel like conspiracy theories prepped a lot of people. in the creative space. They knew what this was.

Yeah. They're like, maybe not all the details behind the curtain, but we know there's a curtain. Yeah. And whoever's behind it, pulling the strings. And so it wasn't as,

I think we, most of us spent about two or three weeks where we were like, is this real? Oh, I know what's going on here. Yeah, I had already not trusted Bill Gates eight years prior to coming. Yeah, Microsoft Office.

Office is sketchy. But it's just like every, all the creatives are like, okay, I got to, now I have to really get creative. How am I going, like, keep going? If I can't go out and get people in a room, what do I do? I'm going to turn to TikTok or I'm going to make a YouTube channel or I'm going to try to get my comedy out some way, right? Yeah, I mean, it was depressing in some ways because I thought, I thought, oh, things are not going to come back. Yeah. I thought things are not going to ever come back the way they were.

when I started seeing plexiglass go up everywhere, I thought, oh, this is a permanent situation. Like when they were going up at the grocery stores. And when TSA started putting up Plexiglass, I go, we'll never go back. Thank God we did, man. And I even told people that we're never going to go back. And I've never been more happy to be wrong about something. Because there is that thing of like, I was a little disappointed when everybody started to come back. And I was like, oh, this moment of everybody appreciating my business.

is gone. But on the other hand, I love my life. I love being able to travel anywhere I want to go, do comedy, and have a blast. I was just in a cigar shop in Poughkeepsie, New York on Friday with way too many people. I'm sure we were breaking. I invited my show out and not as many people came as I hoped, but in the end I was glad they didn't. But we packed this little cigar shop out and it was too many people, but during COVID, nobody would have did that. No. Yeah. My Florida moment for COVID was the same. We were to a wedding.

Shout out to Carrie and Vanessa Spear. We were down there and they actually told them they couldn't get married to the spot. We were already in Florida and everything started getting weird. They had to move the wedding last minute. I remember the craziest thing was we had at the hotel and had a walk out to the pool to go to the pool bar and it was closed. This is closed due to COVID-19. I'm like, when we were there, I was like, what is happening here? Yeah.

Move a wedding. Shut down the pool. Bull Bar at the Hilton. Like in the same way, I remember I went to a show, Dan and Shea. Like Shea Mooney's been a great friend forever and Dan as well. But like I remember they started their first, reminds me of you said. Their first arena tour, first show was at Bridgetown, went to the show and then everything got canceled. So this whole arena tour, that was there was one show and done.

Wow. Like. And I think for a lot of people, the reason I brought that up is that like there was, they became the red pill moment for people being like, wait a minute. So if they can, if they, you know, quotes can do this, then what else is possible? What else have I heard that is true? And the comedians, though, to your, you became the truth tellers, right? Like, because they couldn't, you can't cancel.

Comedians should have carte blanche to talk about everything, right? And they were trying to cancel everybody. Well, that's a big part. That's a big thing going on. Yeah. Cancel culture and you guys. Like, yeah, I mean, you know, and which is why, you know, I don't really talk about a lot of stuff. But on podcasts and stuff, I try to, in a jokey way, get some of these things out there.

But I find that I feel like if I believed in conspiracies, like I do, and I wasn't Christian, it would be the most depressing thing. But I just find that Christianity, I go, all right, well. Why do you think that is? Well, I feel like the Bible kind of tells us a lot of these things are going to be happening. People are going to be trying to do bad things to us. Yeah. So you don't necessarily expect, because some people think, like there's that Luke Bryant song, I believe most people are good.

Yeah. And I go, oh, I don't know why you believe that. Most people are terrible. And there are some good people. But I feel like the Bible lets us know, everyone's bad. And we, you know, we strive to be good through Jesus, but everyone's bad in some way. Well, there's a spiritual realm, and it really affects. our realm, you know, there's a, or at least there's another, people call it a dimension or spiritual

realm, unseen realm, all the, all the, and we, we don't really understand it, but we know that, oh, there is something above, like you were saying earlier, that's kind of affecting us. And I was thinking about, like, a writing comedy, do you visualize a set? Do you visualize how it goes? And how do you deal with, like, negative self-talk? Because if you don't, if a joke, if a joke, jokes don't perform or people say negative things to you. How do you process that? How do comedians, like, work through that? So, like, comedians support groups that, like, you guys meet secretly places?

Well, you know, you, uh, we do talk. I mean, green rooms are those secret spots, you know, if you do a showcase. I think, you know, if you're in New York or L.A., you have, you know, you have more of these showcases. So you, you will be on more shows with, you know, colleagues and. Yeah. Because it's like, you know, in Nashville, we actually have a pretty good scene. We have a lot of headliners that live here.

Yeah. And that's nice because we're, you know, we're out dealing with our own things on the road. We're not together on the road, but we come back and we go to Zanis and we're in a green room together. We get to talk. But I find that online, as long as there's more positive talk than negative talk, I'm fine. Right. But, you know, it's like you could read a million positive comments and one negative comment can really get you. This one guy goes, he goes about me, he goes, yeah, I saw this guy in Phoenix and he was just a

regular boring comic or something like that. And I just thought, oh, so boring that you had to come watch another video. Yeah. Yeah. But it stuck with me. It stuck with me that like, am I boring? But I'm like, I think I'm boring if you're stupid. I think if you're a stupid person who doesn't know how to get the jokes, it might be boring to you. Yeah. But I mean... Because I'm not jumping around on stage. I'm not humping the stool. You know, so... Yeah, I mean, I think it's just an interesting thing to put yourself out in the world, but actually have...

You almost have to have two people. You have to have this guy that's like, I'll just, I don't care. I'm going to just do me. But then there's this real person that kind of comes back and goes, that hurt. Yeah. Things you say. And then it's like you need that to, to hone your craft, to get better at what you do, you do need some negative, right? So how does that? For sure. Yeah. And I think for me, I like to comment people in the comments.

When they comment, I like to go out of them, but I like to try to do it in a way that I don't embarrass myself. I like to try to still be jokey with them. Yeah. You know, but some people can't do it. And then I just block them. But like some people get, they try to get real personal with you. And it makes me think, are you a person that I know in my life?

and you're like, you're like trying to come and do personal attacks. Like people try to, some people try to attack me about, somebody was trying to attack me about being religious and they go, oh, it's weird because I pretty sure used to be a druggie and an alky. And I go, do you not know religious people? I mean, this is what a lot of religious people are. They were alcoholics or they were drug addicts, and then they found the Lord and changed their life.

And Christ transforms your life. That's the whole story for everybody. Yeah, I mean. I think every single person God uses struggle with, like, what I would categorize is sins of the flesh. Yeah. Like when he runs up to people with sins of the spirit, when they're super prideful that they won't listen to anything he has to say, it seems like those aren't the people that get used in the story. But like, you know, David and Moses, these guys were drinkers and they liked women and blah, blah, blah. They were normal people who struggled with things, right?

But they didn't have so much pride to where they couldn't go, maybe. I shouldn't do that. But they did. And then they self-regulated, they figured out, and then they come back, humbled, and they try again. And I think that you're not allowed to be a human in the church, for the most part. Oh, yeah. You're not allowed to be real. I feel like, yeah, I mean, as much as I talk about Christianity, I feel like a lot of religious people are who come at me the most about stuff.

Yeah. Like I say, geez, a lot of go, geez. And some people talk to me about saying that's short for Jesus. And that's what you're saying. I go, well, I'm not really saying his name. But I started to get convicted about it. And I talked about that on my podcast. And somebody goes, oh, you're convicted about Jesus,

but yet you still smoke cigars. And I'm just like, buddy. But you realize you can't win with those people. Because it'll be the next thing, the next thing, and the next thing. It's fascinating. And we've talked a few times on the show about just how sometimes, unfortunately, Christians are the worst people to other Christians. Yeah.

And it's sad, man, because, because, you know what, like, everybody's on their own journey. And as you said, like, no one shows up, you know, and clean, you know, on a white robe. This been, I've always been this way, except for Christ. We all need, we all need that transformation, right? And even if people think they are. That's the problem. Yeah, you're not, you know, it's like you, you got something going on. Yeah.

People say truth is stranger than fiction. And I feel like what we talk, we're truth seekers, right? Looking for the truth. But comedy, it's like when you tell the truth, it's the most funny. It's super funny. And how do you, why do you think that is? Why do you think like when some of the best comedians, they can just say something that we all know? But for some reason, that guy put it into words.

And it's hilarious because it's like, yeah, we all do that, right? Well, I think that's why, right? Because we all relate to it. Yeah. And we all go, ooh, I wish I had thought of that. Yeah. know, and I feel like, you're telling the truth. Yeah. I feel like some of that's gone because we're all on our own algorithms now, right? We're on, we're on, on the internet. The internet

is our shared experience, but now there's like something for everyone to find your own little niche to where it's like, used to be, we all watch the same TV shows. We all read the same magazines. We all watch, like we knew the same actors and the same movies. It's like, who would we even do impressions of if we, if we were doing them now? Yeah. Like, who's the. Wrestlers. Yeah.

Days. Yeah. It was a moment. Yeah. That's interesting though, because to the point, like, people, when you do these impressions, it has to be something older because it's a shared, it'd be a shared cultural experience, people that went through it, right? Like, I love watching, like, macho man impressions, right?

Because I just think they're so funny. Oh, yeah. But, like, it's this, it's a shared culture of people that grew up. and I wasn't telling Nate on the way into the studio this morning. I was like, I think that like 80s and 90s wrestling has like hacked my out, ticking of algorithms. It's all I get is like macho man promos. But somewhere along like the truth became offensive.

Like South Park used to be able to like make fun of everybody. Oh yeah. That's like the one thing. And I could think that they take digs at everybody. And then it started to change where like you say maybe the algorithm. And all of a sudden like you can't tell that joke. Well the people, it feels like. the people who tell you what you can and can't say, like, somehow got power. Yeah. And they're like,

you can't, you can't do that. And then you like, and like, that's why if we look back at the 80s and 90s and you didn't grow up in that, like people go, oh, the 80s and 90s was wild, huh? It's like, no, it wasn't wild. It was just regular. Yeah. And we got real sensitive. Yeah. Back then, you could have a husband and wife and she could be a Democrat and he could be a Republican. And they could stay married. Yeah. And now you can't have that. Oh yeah. Or even think of movies that were made even more recent than that. We always joke about like the hangover or tropic thunder. Yeah. Never greenlit. That would never get made in 2026. Yeah. It's just a different time. And that's why most comedy movies aren't funny. They're not good. Yeah. That's a great point. I haven't seen a good comedy in a long

time like a new one. I'm trying to think. I don't watch a lot of movies. Me neither. But it's like. It used to be half of the movies would come out or be like, you know, the Tommy boys. Oh, gosh. Wedding Crash or something. That's like 20 years ago. Or even SNL. I watched Saturday Live and it's like,

it used to be when I was a kid, it was like hilarious. Yeah. And it was clean. Right. For the most part. And the best skits were the most creative were very clean and hilarious. Now you watch it and you're like,

this is just not funny. Yeah. Yeah, because it's like our shared, like our politicians are now our most, most famous people. They're our influencers. They're all over the internet. And I always think when

somebody from CNN or Fox News gets fired, I feel like they're just like, no, we're going to move you to YouTube, but we're going to fire you to make it seem like you're edgy now. And then they just become influencers,

and then that's who we all know. Like what I think about that Mitch Headberg joke, I think it's just, he's making fun of how people take a picture, right? And it's universal. It's like, yeah, we all, and it's, but it's hilarious.

Everyone's laughing. And I feel like some of those, the innocent PG jokes. Like this is a picture of me when I was younger. Yeah. Every picture was a picture of you. Exactly. Here's a picture of me when I was older. How do you, like, would you, when you create comedy, when you create a, like, all the bits?

Yeah, the set. I'm trying to think of the word. When do you know, when do you feel like, oh, it's all working together? It's good. I'm done with this. this is ready for the public, whereas you, instead of tinkering in the shop for longer, trying to figure it out, when do you, what does that happen? Well, for me, I go right to the public with it. I mean, for me, it's the only way that I know

if something's going to be good or not is if I can get some laughs off of them. So you don't, you don't know, you just, you try that. I have an idea and I go, oh, this is funny. This is going to be funny. And then, you know, and then as you start to tell it, if I, if I have a longer bit, if I can find just a little bit of funny in there, I go, okay, now I can run with this and I can keep working it until it's better. But, you know, I don't know until I say it. Like, I found something the other day that I thought was really funny. I thought it was like a moon landing, like it was like a NASA thing.

It was like NASA seems like, like, NASA's like, oh, like, oh, we can't, you know, they seem like they're like peaked in high school sort of thing. They're like, oh, we can't land on the moon now, but you should have seen us back in the 60s, man. Back then, we could do it. We can't, we can't do it now. And I thought that was hilarious, but, you know, I got the reaction that you gave to the audience. I never thought about that that, like, you know, we used to be more unified. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. As a, like, as a group of people, we used to, like, comedy used to be funny because we had a more shared experience. Yeah. So I feel like maybe the comedy now has to be kind of dumb down, right? So that, well, we all take our trash to the curb so I can make jokes about that, but I can't do anything in the political space

because I know this is divisive. Right. You'll lose half your audience right away. And it's like, to me, sometimes it's like it feels like even if you make that joke in the room, it may get divided, but people may take it so personal that now they don't like you at all. Yeah. Because you made this joke. Yeah. Now you've offended them. Which is crazy because you're like, it's comedy. This is the whole point is, is to be funny and maybe slightly offensive. Like, it's supposed to make you a little uncomfortable. It's why you laugh. That's the point.

You know, I think. I mean, I made a joke on the public figures podcast about Helen Keller, right? And it wasn't even so much of a joke. Already laughing. Yeah. I was like, I'm just because I'm like, where to go, buddy. That's bold.

I've like cried laughing about Helen Keller jokes. There was a lot of jokes when we were kids about how. Well, mine wasn't even so much of a joke. But, you know, apparently Helen Keller wrote books. And my thought was, if you can't see and you can't hear, what are you writing about? Do you know what I mean? And it's a genuine question. People are offended right now.

But a lady was go, said, commented on the video and said that I was a waste of humanity. And it's like, why? Like, you've never wondered that. You never, like, even how you would communicate it. And then what it is that you're writing about. writing about how things smell. And it seems like I'm making fun of her, but it's a genuine question.

Yeah, but it's funny. It is funny. You know, you let Helen Keller, do you know, we just got a lot of planes? We just,

we just did. This is what the whole joke was. I was in Montana, a picture with a bunch of guys and we started talking about, these are all movie producers, and we were kind of making a joke about, like,

what if they recasted Helen Keller or something in like a hero film? But then they were like, do you know they actually let her fly a plane back in the day? Did they? You know, like,

who's making that call? Yeah. I mean. Well, I remember plenty of Helen Keller jokes. Can't see kid here. You're like, hey, Helen, why fly this plane? So you can feel it. Yeah.

But I had one. Now, I'm not going to say it. But I had one back in the day. That was really funny. But it's like these days, you know, like you can't. It's a tough time. I mean, even, I mean, just like the last seven episodes we did, I was telling Luke. I'm like, people were offended about this.

Every episode, people were offended. And we get more and more people if we just have a discussion getting offended by our content. or saying whatever. So it's kind of like you're forced into creating your own little echo chamber and you can't ever step out. But comedy's supposed to get outside of the echo chamber. It's supposed to make us all feel like,

okay, we're all a little bit ridiculous. And we all can't take ourselves so serious. Yeah. I mean, I just watched an hour of Norm MacDonald jokes on YouTube the other day and I go, he's so great. Norm is so great. And, you know, people would not be able to handle

a lot of those jokes. Yeah. I just watched one with him when he was making a joke about it was the longest one. I think it was to, gosh, it was a, it was a tonight show or something. And all the whole cast was on there was Sandler. And the end was him making fun of Rob Schneider, when Rob Schneider was sitting next to him. But it was the longest joke of all time. Like, Norm was just, he was ahead of his time. You have to be an interesting person to do it. Yeah. You got to have like this part of you that just doesn't care. It's like, this,

I'm going to go out there, right? Yeah. And it feels like even then, it's like you could really not care. And I guess there are some people that manage to pull it off. I guess you just have to, but it's like, it feels like then you could not care, and it'd be funny and go, man, that guy's wild. And then now if you don't care, they go. That guy should never be on TV again. At least they're not banning people off apps like they were.

But, I mean, people would get banned from Twitter. Yeah. A lot of people in our show would get banned. You too. Just because they talked about some theory about the pyramids. You're like, what is, this is ridiculous. The people go, that's dangerous. It's dangerous what you're saying.

People say, I talk about space not being real, and people go, this is dangerous. And it's like, guys, there's nothing dangerous about it. Okay, if people believe space is not real and some people do, nobody's hurt. Yeah. Unless, you know, you're trying to fly a spaceship into space and you hit, you know, you hit the dome. And that's dangerous. That sounds dangerous. It sounds dangerous to believe in space.

Yeah. Well, people thought they would sail off the end of the world if they got in a boat back in the day. Yeah. Because they thought the earth was flat and they would sail over the edge of it. And then they realized they were just going in a circle, you know? I mean, yeah. It's definitely, it's interesting. They got to Antarctica and the government was like, you can't be here.

Yeah, you can't be here. And the aliens regarding it. You just posted about that. Yeah. There is just a fine line in all of that. But I do think comedians are brave individuals these days to get out there. And I mean, in some ways, when there's a group of,

like a band, that's where I come from. It's where I kind of cut my teeth being on a stage. But I had all these dudes with me. And we were out there. Not by yourself, too. And if we bombed, we bombed together. If, like, the speaker blew or someone's guitar, like, cut out, there's somebody else to help you kind of keep the song going.

It's just you in a microphone and a bunch of, of people who kind of want you to fail. Dance monkey dance. They want you to fail because they're not going to get up there and do it. And that is some pressure. Yeah, I mean, I feel like now as I'm doing my own shows, I'm doing a lot of theaters and, you know, it's my audience. And I feel like they are rooting for me to succeed.

Because they spent money on hotels and babysitters and tickets. So they want this to be a funny show. Yeah. But I also want it to be funny because it's funny, not because they're my fans and already know who I am. You want to be good at it, right? You want to be good at what you do. Yeah.

Yeah, that's why it is, I think it is important to go get in front of audiences that don't know who you are or maybe are not fans of you and go, can I make these people laugh? Yeah. How do you come up with material? How does it happen for you? Is this like moments of brilliance, just living life? I, yeah, I mean, I guess there would be no, I wouldn't, I wouldn't call it moments of brilliance, but I, yeah, it's just things happening where I write.

something down and then I, and maybe it doesn't work now, but I keep it written down. I always have a list of jokes that I'm like, these are ones that I've attempted and I think they're still funny, but they've not been funny for me yet. And I will write them down and keep them. And then as I start creating new sets and new things are happening, I may go, oh, I bet that would work with this. So you storyboard it. And yeah, and then I'll bring it back and I'll put it, you know, I may put it in amongst a joke. Like there was a joke I told about my dad on my working man special about him, a home videos.

And then I go, oh, I remember a home video that I had that, a home video joke that I liked where I said, well, I don't even know if I remembered the joke. But it was a short joke. Oh, it was about my, I finding a home video that said, Christmas and court. And it's like it was, you know, basically about one of my dad's divorces. but it was, I was like, this is a short joke that by itself is hilarious, dude. But in amongst the home video joke, now it's even better.

Yeah. But by itself, it was like just some kind of weird out-of-place joke. Yeah. You know? So you had to fit that into a series of jokes that kind of together. And then, so I just try to do that and try to keep the old jokes and maybe, you know, it's like this idea is funny, but I don't know how to write it yet. So in a couple of years, I'll be a better writer as long as I keep writing.

That's what I think is good about the modern day age of comedy is that you have to keep churning out material. So it keeps you writing. Whereas back in the day, you could get an hour and just travel around the country doing your hour all the time. And you never necessarily get better. You just get really good at doing that hour. But you've kind of forgot how to write jokes. Is it like transitions are the hard parts? Like one joke to the next?

I feel like that can be hard, but I think if you're good, you can just move into the next joke. Yeah. Without really, without seeming like you're even doing jokes. You just go on to the next thing and maybe that just seems like it just came to you. Yeah, because it feels like, you know, being a chef, like you don't think these things are going to go together, but you need all these pieces of, you know, different types of food. order to make this a good dish, you know. I feel like comedy just to me is like you got to have all these different parts to make it to make it all one presented. Like I got some neighborhood jokes now

and part of the neighbor, how I start the neighborhood joke is a, uh, the jokes is a guy like coming to my backyard and being shocked that it wasn't more trailer park like, you know. So I go, I used to live in a trailer park. But in order to get into that, I, I tell some kind of gross joke about myself or I don't have good manners. And then when that joke's over, I say, I grew up in a trailer park, you know? So the idea is like, that I'm like making fun of how I don't have any manners because I grew up in a trailer park without saying it. But then that gets me, I grew up in a trailer park, but I live in a neighborhood now and that surprises a lot of people. So that way you're kind of, that's kind of the transition without a direct transition.

You still get nervous or? It depends on the show. show. I did kill Tony, and that made me nervous. I didn't do, I did a panel. That made me nervous because that's a different type of show than what I normally do. So I got a little nervous there took a walk around 6th Street in Austin, which is insane. So that can calm your nerves. Do you try that jokes out on your wife or she gets tired of the comedy? Well, my wife used to do comedy. Okay. And I feel like she's more critical than most, so I don't really try them out on her. I'll tell them to her later when I go,

hey, I got a new joke I've been doing and I'll tell her. But if I tell it to her first, I feel like there's a chance that my confidence will be rude. Just shoot you down. She's like, not good, Dusty.

It's like the code of ethics between comics stealing each other's content and having original. Isn't there like an unspoken rule somewhere? I feel, yeah, I feel like you don't do it. But just like we talked about now, I feel like there's almost like less, like,

common, like there's less shared stuff. In a way that the shared stuff that we have is so small that if you're talking about kind of current event stuff, it's likely that you're going to have the same idea as somebody else. I had a joke about how I hate how new cars, how the engine shuts off every time we stop in a red light. And the reason I hate it is because I've had a joke about how I hate it. is because I've had too many cars that don't do that on purpose, right?

And it's traumatic. Yeah, and I did that joke on The Tonight Show, and then another comic accused me of stealing that joke from him. And I go, buddy, listen, it's a pretty basic idea. If you grew up poor, you're going to hate that feature. Yeah. You know, and it's like, and I found his joke and I watched it. And I go, yeah, we're talking about the same thing, but our joke is not the same.

Yeah. And I think that's the line. It's like if, because there's plenty of comics out there that have jokes like mine, but it's not word for word the same joke. So I feel like that's where it's kind of at these days. Yeah. And now we have AI. Yeah.

Yeah. What are you thinking about that? Well, so far, I'm skeptical of AI, but so far there's, I'm not seeing any good AI jokes. The machines aren't funny. Yeah. Right, exactly. So so far I feel pretty good. They're not bad on music.

The music feels soulless, but it can pull something together. But with comedy, I've not heard a good AI joke yet. But I'm sure there's many comics out there. Dusty, this is the most important question maybe I've asked on this podcast. Tell us about God's sense of humor. And when you're a Christian, like, does God have a sense of humor and do you see it when you read the Bible? Well, I think he's got to have a sense of humor, right? I mean, look at some of the animals that are out there.

that he's created. Some of them are like the, I feel like other people have talked about us, but like the duck bill platypus, like what a weird animal. Easy target. Yeah. Right?

And so God's got to have a sense of humor. I don't, that's like we talked about earlier where I like, I don't make jokes about the Bible. But you got to read it and see it. You got to be like, that is funny. Yeah. And I don't know what I could point to right away. But yeah, I mean, I think God does have a sense.

sense of humor. Because we hear that phrase, like, God has a sense of humor. God has a sense of humor. You hear it all the time. Well, even, I mean, maybe this, maybe this would not be funny to people, but even Moses in Egypt, when he was, when God was sending the plagues on people in Egypt, he was plaguing them by, by things of their own gods of that time, right? Like, you know, like the frogs and they had a, They had kind of a reptile thing that they worshipped. And apparently the locust were a lot like they had a god that they worshipped that was like a dung beetle. And that was kind of what they were being plagued with, was their own gods. And that's pretty funny.

Yeah. And in the Nile, they versus the Nile and they said, I'm going to turn a red. There's no cancel culture in the Bible. So that leads me to believe that it's funny. Yeah. Because it doesn't placate to like, it doesn't say that's, we're not allowed to write this story the way that it happened. We have to change it in the editing room so that it's more palatable. So it has to be funny.

I mean, Noah's hilarious, right? Like, dude spends 40 days with his family and a bunch of animals on a boat. First thing he doesn't get off of plants a vineyard. He's like, man, I need a drink. You know, and you're like, this is funny. And I think that's why Bibles are selling at record amount right now because people are like, they just want it to be told how it is. Yeah. Don't shape it.

Don't re-and-write it. Well, even Moses with the staff, he turned the staff into a snake. And then the magicians were like, ah, we can do that. So they turned their staffs into snakes. And then Moses's snake ate theirs. That's pretty funny. Yeah. It is funny.

Yeah. Yeah. I talk about the same joke. Like, we got this joke, too. He's like, no, it's not as good. It's not as good. Yeah. Yeah.

You know the disciples were hanging out with Jesus and they were ribbing each other. A bunch of dudes, right? Yeah. And even like, you know, when Jesus, went, we talked about transcending on the mountain and he comes back and the disciples are asleep. He's like, he can't even stay awake. Or even there's a storm going on and Jesus is asleep. Yeah.

That's funny. That's a great one because the disciples are terrified and Jesus wakes up and goes, guys, he settles the storm. And he's like, hey. He's just taking a nap. He's just laughing. They're like, these guys. So why are you waking me up, dude?

Yeah. Yeah, I just think it's funny because you don't think God, you don't think humor, you don't think I can relate to God at all. Like, he's the mad dad. I'm in trouble. I did something. I told the bad joke. I mean, as a red-headed kid in school, I was always in trouble. So I've always equated that to whatever authority is over me doesn't like what I'm doing.

I'm not paying attention. I have too much ADHD. I forgot to turn in something. You know, I've always sort of associated all of that with. my relationship with God, like, maybe not consciously, just like in my heart kind of, you know, like something's wrong. I did something wrong always. But the humor part of the scriptures kind of makes me like come back to it and just like, that is, that is so layered. And that's what comedy is. There's so many layers. And that's what makes it like, that's a really good. That was a

great show. Yeah. That's how I feel. Well, yeah. I mean, the layers, to me, yeah, I mean, That's what makes a show funny. That's what makes it a complete show. That's what takes it from just being a hour of jokes to this was a show. Yeah. Like a story. Where there's some connection and things weave in and out. And you know thought was put into it because a joke you heard earlier comes back now.

Yeah. And that's a scripture, man. I mean, all these old events are like prophecy. They're playing out in the future. All the time. Even like a pretty deep. I don't remember what. Psalm it is, but somebody, this was TikTok, and TikTok is great. But they were talking about,

you're the only one who will say that. How Jesus on the cross says, why, how have you forsaken me, you know? And they said during that time, the Bible wasn't numbered. So people would know scripture by the first couple of lines of that, of that thing. And it was so that was a reference to Psalms where it prophesies the crucifixion of Jesus. And so Jesus is basically just saying to the people around him, this has been prophesied. It's a callback to it. And it's like, it's like super deep and amazing. How does your like faith play into like how you, like you said you don't like write jokes about the Bible and stuff, but are you trying to communicate a message, a deeper message, a hidden, a layered message. Or are you just trying to help people kind of cut loose from reality?

Yeah, I'm really just trying to help people cut loose. And I think that, you know, I think a lot of that, like people email me a lot and they go, I really, I really liked your comedy and I connected with your comedy. And then I found your podcast and I saw that you're a Christian and I realized, you know, why I connected with you so deeply, you know. And I, you know, I just want, you know, obviously I want people to find Jesus because I think the world is kind of unhappy right now. And I think that Jesus is great. And Jesus is the religion for everyone. There is no, you know, it's like you don't have to be anything to have Jesus. Right. It's the religion for everyone. And all races, all countries, everybody. And I think it's beautiful. And I think it makes people

happier right away to have Jesus. I love it. A lot of comedians. And, you know, know, like, know who's the funny guy, and they can kind of spot it from, you know, from a crowd. Like, that guy's funny. Who do you think of the Bible was funny? Who do you think would have been a comedian, like all the characters in the scripture? Like, that guy was probably a funny dude, hang out. I don't know. I mean, I guess maybe Peter was maybe funny. He did some funny things, I guess. Peter on the, he's praying on the rooftop and, you know, I don't know. I don't know. I'm just thinking, like, there's some characters, you know, and I think that we just, we sort of strip away all their humanity and they're kind of boring just followers and they don't they're just

like machines and I think that God loves a personality clearly there's certain people he says that guy's got a lot of faith yeah that's an interesting guy he likes Elijah he likes Enoch these guys have something else that the old regulars don't have I just feel like there's a lot of characters I mean Job might have been pretty funny I mean in the end Job went through a lot and you got to think when he finally got his new family, he's probably laughing a pretty good bit about it. Maybe, maybe. What God put him through. But John would be pretty funny too, if you think about it, because John reminds us that he's the one that Jesus loved the most. And then he reminds us he's faster than the other disciples. He said he ran, he made in the race of disciples, race with the empty tomb. He

was number one. Oh, yeah. So it kind of had to be either that or he was, he was very needed to remind everybody. I think, I think Noah was the funniest. I think Noah was out there year 85, building his boat and being like, you're all morons, you know, just making jokes because they're heckling that dude all day long. So he had to have some bits. Yeah. He had to be. I always think my sister tells me that he wouldn't do this because it would be prideful. But I always like to think of the image of Noah coming out after the flood has come and he comes out on the deck of his boat with a cup of coffee and just goes. In his underwear.

Yeah, he goes, I did it. I made the right move. Yeah. People called me crazy for years. Yeah. And I did it. He's got to be the best. He's the most hardened to the criticism.

He would be out there in his whitey tides with his fresh brew of mushrooms or whatever he had for coffee and just. Probably coffee, dude. Just like, yeah. He took a hundred and twenty years of negative. comments in the comments section. Yeah. And he just plowed through that.

What a guy. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, you got to think even God is like, don't save him. Yeah. I mean, if they don't want to get on this boat with you before, don't do it now. I mean, his heart was broken, but at that point, he's like, they're not going to listen. Yeah. What about, what about, you know, he could have gave up along the way.

In your career, did you ever feel like, I mean, I'm not funny. Maybe this isn't going to worry. I'm going to quit. I don't want, I don't know I'm building this comedy boat here. I don't know that I ever had that kind, but when I was, you know, I did comedy from 2008 to 2012 and I was drinking that whole time. Yeah. And then when I quit drinking in 2012, I considered not doing comedy anymore. I just, because quitting drinking coincided with me digging deeper into the Bible, discovering some new things. And I just thought maybe I'm on a different path now. Maybe this comedy is not my path. I quit my job. I did, I made a lot of chance. changes. I just thought maybe I'm on a new path, but I had already entered a comedy contest,

just a small contest prior to quitting drinking. So I just was like, I'm going to do it. Yeah. And then I won. And it just, I don't know, it gave me, you know, who knows? Maybe shot a confidence. Yeah. And I go, all right, maybe I am into this. And so what I did was, though, I just basically threw away every joke that I had and started writing new jokes, a clean path. And I, you know, I just became, you know, a cleaner comic. And that is something I focus on. Actually, I had a comic say something to me one time back in the day. He was not religious at all, but he said something that really struck me. I was doing comedy one night and I had people from my church coming. And I was saying, I go, I can't do this joke or this joke

tonight. I got people from my church coming. And he goes, it's interesting that you care about what people from your church says, but you don't mind doing those jokes in front of God. and I go, oh, that really hit me in a weird way. Yeah. And so I try to, you know, I'm sure I have some jokes that are not pleasing to God necessarily, but I try to, you know, just be funny and not be that kind of crude, crass joking person. Well, your book's coming out in November, right? Yes.

How do you write that? Is that like comedy or is it just like a personal, like your journey? What's the... It is a little of both. Because I was trying to write a more serious book and the editor really got involved and was like, we need, this needs to, we need punch things. Too serious, Dusty. Yeah, because I wanted to get into some stuff.

But yeah, I mean, it's a walk through my childhood, a brief, you know, there's a chapter here, chapter here. And then I get into some couple of wilder stories that I've never really shared about myself. And then, you know, going through comedy and how I got where I'm at and in a deeper way because I you know so many stories I've already told there are a few hidden stories that I saved for the book but a lot of this stuff you know I've already told but the the book gets a gives a deeper dive any moments where you met your heroes and you were like whoa I made it like I never thought that this would be happening well yeah I mean in a lot of ways I mean that's what

my whole life is now I mean I get to do comedy at the grand old opera and I'm like as a lifelong music fan. I never thought I'd be hanging out backstage with Clint Black. You know what I mean? And I'm like, it's wild to me. Like hanging out, but not even in a, like I am a fan, but not even in a fan kind of way. Like we're both on the show. It's like a meet and greet. You're like, we're both performing. Yeah. And it's, it's so wild to me. Because I feel like musicians respect, because I feel like if you visualize it, the most naked you could be, you know, and you like is a microphone. At least those guys have a guitar and a voice and they have a, they know what they're going to do. They're not free. They're not writing a song as they're going up there. Yeah. I mean, comedians are the

most exposed, I would say. You have just blackness and you got the light shining and a microphone and then your head and you just have to pull it out. There's no. Yeah, I feel like you reach a place though where you got you got enough material and you've had enough wins. What you don't want as a comic, like I could bomb a time and then be fine because I'm like, oh, I got, you know, I got a hundred good shows more than a hundred behind me before I hit this one. Well, what you don't want is too many of those in a row. Like sometimes you do a corporate gig and it goes great. Other times it's not good. Because, you know, it's people at work. They don't care about it. They don't the comedy. The boss likes you. Yeah. And they hired you for themselves. And the employees are like,

we're just, we've been listening to people talk all day. We don't care about another guy talking. Sure. And so you go, all right, well, at least I got one of my own shows tomorrow. Yeah. But if you were doing corporates every week, I mean, I'm sure if I were doing corporates every week, I would figure out how to do it. And I would go, I'm about to start nailing these corporates. But they're few and far between. A lot of Office Depot jokes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's getting with that they know, yeah. But it's like, I know how to do corporate. Like, I'm not bombing corporate gigs, but they don't all make you feel good.

Is that the end of, like, when you haven't made it? Like, you're doing bar mitzvahs and you're doing, in the music world, you're doing the fair circuit. You know, you start going to play in the fairs. What happens to the comedians has been there? They bomb too far. I feel like, if you bomb too hard, I think you're out. You're just out. You're out.

But I think, you know, and I got friends that do cruise ships, but I, I think cruise ships is kind of one of those where you're like, all right, I'm not going to make it in the way that I wanted to make it, but I can still make money. I can take my wife with me on these cruises. I can see parts of the world. I can be on a boat all day, have drinks and do shows. That's not what I want to do, but if I, you know, if something happened and it all dried up, I could go, yeah, I'll just ride the cruise ships and tell you. Dasty. on the, so we're here in Nashville.

So when you get off the airport, are you going to the airport, you get off an airplane, you walk past like Tutsis and you see like the guys trying to make it. Yeah. What about comedians?

Do people like hit you up? Like how do I make it? How do I make it dust? How do I, what am I doing wrong? Give me some advice. Or do you have like, open mic at Zanis, right? Yeah.

Well, I did, you know, I did on my podcast that we're having a good time podcast. I did season two, the first 10 episodes are my how to become a comic. series that I did. But I, you know, if you want to do comedy, the first thing you got to do is find the open mics in your, in your town, and go do it and just see how it goes. Don't be too hard

on yourself, but be honest with yourself. Did I do good? But don't be too hard on yourself, because chances are you're not going to do good. But did you get any laughs? Because if you got a couple of laughs, you're like, all right, there's something here. But if you're, you know, because if you're just funny for your friends, that doesn't mean you're going to be funny for the audience. But if you've never been funny for your friends, you're probably not going to be funny and stand up. I've seen comics on stage where I go, have you ever made anyone laugh in your life? What made you think this was the math? You know what I mean? People are just suckers for pain, dude. Yeah. But it's like, go try. And don't just try it once.

Yeah. Try it 20 times. Yeah. And then if you can't do it, just, I've seen people, I know they're successful in their lives. They have good day jobs. They're making money. And they try this open mic thing for a while. And then you start to see like, they feel like they're not successful as people.

And I go, just get out of here. Just go back to being successful in everyday life. And forget about this comedy thing. You're making more money than everybody in this room. Just go live your life. Forget that you ever did this. Because they start to, like, it's like their self-worth is crumbling. I go, don't let comedy do this to you.

Let comedy be for the people like me who had no other success in life. And I'm just going to, that's why I think there's less women in comedy than men. It's because women go do comedy. and then they're like, they go, I'm sitting in a room with all these dudes talking about jerking it and why do I need to be here? People like me in other places

of the world. Whereas us dudes, we go, we got nothing else going on. We're just going to hang out with these dudes and this is fun to us. Yeah. The text thread is like, is set out loud now.

These guys get kind of ridiculous in a group. We just, everyone's got the group chats. Well, I've never, you know, you never see a group of men more deflated than when you're at an open mic, you know, a bunch of single guys in an open mic room and an attractive girl shows up and does comedy. We're all like, oh, yeah, you know, and then she goes, yeah, my boyfriend. And then you're all like, ah, I've seen it a million times. Yeah. It is interesting. It is more of a, it's more dominated by men than it is. And also because I think if you're more of an emotional creature, it's hard to bomb.

It's hard to like have all the hecklers and people say you suck all the time. And you can only handle it for so long. And the comment threads are harder on women. I mean, my wife did comedy. I know a lot of women in comedy. And I read the comment threads. And I go, geez, just let them tell a joke, you know. The comment threads are, well, they are sometimes about my appearance.

But it's mainly about, it's honestly, my comment threads, thankfully, mainly positive. Let's go. But, you know, when I do the Tonight Show, I've learned after several Tonight Show appearances to not look at the comments until a couple of days later. It seems like there are people that are waiting to go, oh, they never book anybody funny. Oh, they get the ugliest people in the world. Who dresses this guy? You know, I got to let my people start to run.

roll in. Yeah. I love it. It's a Walmart Kid Rock out here, you know? You use those in your material?

I do have some jokes about my appearance. Yeah, I get a lot of, I used to get a lot of dollar store Billy Race Iris and, you know,

I get a lot of that. Because self deprecation is a big, it's a really, dollar store Billy Race. It's a good on-ramp to having a great career. Just make it funny yourself.

I was like, this guy looks like, J. and Silent Bob. Oh gosh. You put yourself on the internet these days, you're a brave individual. It's always funny.

Sometimes it just comes down to like, there's some people out there. They're 400 pounds. They know they're working on how they're looking, but they pick up a guitar and they just don't care. I'm going to put this video on TikTok of me doing this cover song. I know half the comments are going to be

about how I look and how much I weigh, but I'm going to sing my heart out and put it out there. And those videos will blow up and I'm like, good for that person. Yeah. Yeah. Like that's hard to freaking do. Yeah. And there's something about those people that are like, I don't care. I'm going to go up against, because we grew up, there wasn't an army of internet trolls that attacked you for everything you tried to do.

They have to say to you in person. Yeah. It was a way different ball game. Yeah. I do remember, though, being in high school at the homecoming game, someone else is on the free throw line, I got to shoot a shot. Someone yelled at Doyle Rules. And the whole gym starts laughing.

Was it you shooting? I was shooting. Oh, yeah. And I was like... Did you hit it? I don't know. I can't remember. Probably a no.

I got to say it. That's a no. If you don't remember. The worst part about that, the game... Because if you hit it, you go, a Doyle rule. That's right. 100%. Well, I was, I think I was crushing.

So they were like, man, this guy's like a Doyle out there. Okay. But the worst part about that game is someone, the nerdiest guy on the other opponent team hit him. a half court buzzer shot. Oh, no. And I was like, Adoyle rules and we lost.

We almost be. Yeah, old carpet league basketball. No, it wasn't. It was actually faith Christian in, uh, you didn't, when they said Adoyle rules, you didn't feel bad.

That felt good. I know, I was like, oh yeah, of course, pick on the redheaded guy. Danger jokes. Yeah. Those never get old. The white pasty guy.

That's what I do on this show. This is my life though. Yeah. It's like always the guy that was in trouble getting picked on in the corner. Even the Bible. Esau, the red-headed guy, turns on his brother. You can't trust him.

This is really true, it's really true, dusty. Actually, Esau, I mean, I got to think there was some underlying bad stuff about Esau that we don't see because if you just read it, he really got screwed over in a way. That's probably more of that story. I think that's what I'm saying. There's got to be more to it. I did think of a funny story in the Bible and we can maybe close out with this. Was it Elisha when he was walking and they called him Baldi? They called him Baldi.

Remember the bears came out of the woods? and the guys that made fun of him for having. Oh, he was a pretty funny guy. I remember when he went up with the prophets of bail? And he's like, where's your God is that? Where's your God? Is he in the bathroom? Basically more or less the transition is he off taking and relieving him, taking a dump?

You know, where's he at? Oh, it is funny when he's like bringing down fire. But he's basically trolling the prophets of bail. But I'm just saying that like you can't make a bad joke. Those guys made a bad joke. They tried to take them, they try to, you know, talk about his. recession on his dome, you know, is going bald. They messed up.

And God's like, that's not a funny joke. Yeah. Send the bears. You can't test a man's lettuce. You should read that stuff. That's a fun. That's a confusing one. You're like, okay, I don't get it.

It's just called the guy bald, but apparently that's enough to do it. A man's hair must have been sacred back then. Bro, it still is. Still is, dusty. Dusty, your hair is sacred to you. It's great letters, bro. People think my hair's attached, but I like people to know. This is the real deal.

I mean, you know, I feel. I feel, yeah, I feel very blessed. I have the hair. I mean, it's a good, it's a solid hair line. I have friends that I went to high school with, and I'll meet, I'll meet up with them sometimes. And I go, oh, man, I don't bring it up, but I think, oh, you guys are losing it. That's a W there, yeah. And, you know, I don't feel bad for them because their lives are good.

But I do think, I don't know. Everybody had those buddies, too, in high school, sort of losing their hair in high school. I mean, you imagine just holding it on tour for like 17 years and you're like, it's already going. I know. It just moved from here to here. It just... It migrates. Then they got a little Esau and then going.

Yeah. Man, this has been great. Thank you for... Thank you. Hey, I know you guys said earlier, you have a big following in Texas. Yeah. And I just wanted to say,

I don't know when this comes out, but I have May 1st. I'm in Dallas, Texas. May 2nd, I'm in Houston. Tell us, tell our fans where you are, how they can follow you. Where's the book? All things Dusty.

Well, dustyslay.com has all my stuff. All my day. all my social media is at Dusty Sleigh. And I post a lot. I got a lot of stuff going on, try to keep it funny. It's all good and fun. My book is called We're Having a Good Time. You probably just go to Amazon or I bet I have a link on my website or even on my socials for that.

And yeah, Dallas May 1st. That show is basically sold out, I think. I do very well in Dallas. I've not been to Houston as much. So that show is not sold out. So get some tickets. Come on, Houston. Yeah.

And then, but I love Texas. I've been going there a long time. Honestly, I love the whole country. There's a NASA joke in there somewhere with Houston. Oh, yeah. Ticket sales. Yeah. Somewhere.

Yeah. Maybe they are mad that I say space is not real. A private show in Arkansas? Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to do that. But yeah, you know, I'm all over. I do love the whole country.

As I travel this country, I go, it's great. I grew up in the South. I thought everything above the country. the Mason-Dixon line was all cities and everybody was rich and they, uh, and it was violent crime in all the cities and everything was crazy. And as I travel, I go, it's great out here. I love the country. Yeah. What's in the future? Like, what's some bigger visions ideas and then what do you want to do? Well, the book has been one that I've had to sit on for a while that I've, uh, you know, but, uh, I don't know. I'd like doing comedy. Comedy is what I like. I got two podcasts, my podcast

that we're having a good time podcast. I do the public figures podcast. All great and funny. Yeah. You know. I love it. If you ever want to tell us some Bigfoot jokes at a conference, we love to have it. I'm going to work on some.

I'm going to get some Bigfoot. You got the hat, man. You're almost there. You know, we're almost there. Yeah. I think there's a lane there. You can have like a couple funny Bible bits making fun of some of the... And then you just go, man, you know, Bigfoot, all I got was this monster truck from the 90s.

Yeah. Bigfoot. Got slapped by John Lithgow and Harry and the Henderson. That's one of that. Yeah, those were the days. Well, thank you so much. I know you're busy. I know you're on tour.

I know you got a lot of people pulling you in a lot of places. It means a lot that you. Yeah, thanks for a good. Well, I appreciate you guys. This is great. Hopefully it was fun. I had a great time. You can roast us.

Well, that's your thing, too, once we turn the candy. You had a good time? We're having a good time. I've had a good time. I like that the background here that I had on my laptop for a long time. It feels big foot like. Yeah. He's there.

It feels like home. Yeah.