Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 388: Eddie Pepitone

Episode Date: June 20, 2020

Eddie Pepitone, brilliantly funny comedian, joins the DTFH! You can find links to Eddie's new special, For the Masses, on his site. You can also check out his podcast, PepTalks. This episode is brought to you by: ExpressVPN - Visit expressVPN.com/duncan and get an extra 3 months FREE when you buy a 1 year package. BLUECHEW - Use offer code: DUNCAN at checkout and get your first shipment FREE with just $5 shipping.

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our podcast. This powerful voice that you're hearing, this deep, masculine voice that many people have compared to the clenching buttocks of Patrick Swayze and Dirty Dancing is at this very moment spinning down your ear canals into the pulsating canyons of your beautiful brain, where I hope it will flow like some kind of mystical river

into the ocean of your mind, and hopefully give room for new fish and aquatic mammals to swim around in your subconscious, producing some kind of cool dream where you've got wings and thousands of dicks and vaginas and a million boobs that are all being simultaneously suckled by every person living on planet Earth.

We're in strange times, it's true. I have been going through different moments of pretty profound catastrophic despair mixed in with joy and then mixed in with guilt for feeling any kind of joy and then mixed in with a kind of numb confusion. This is usually followed by eating too much pasta, gaining some weight and staring at my unmanned peloton,

which we ordered early on in the pandemic, imagining that once that thing came, I would be galloping through peloton land. My pandemic fat melting away and being transformed into hard, powerful, beautiful muscles. So far, I've climbed on that peloton exactly one time. I've ridden for 20 minutes, it felt good, but every day that passes that I don't ride

on that embarrassing exercise bike is a mark of shame. It's just they sit there, they mock you. They mock you like the albatross. So many of us wear our embarrassing pelotons like an albatross. We carry them around our necks and think to ourselves, my God, not only are we pigs, but we've chosen the vehicle of pigs

and we're not even riding it. It just sits there like a shrine to our laziness, but I'm telling you this, I'm gonna be climbing on the peloton very soon. Within the next few weeks, I will climb on that thing and it will happen, I will ride the peloton like some kind of powerful, very expensive mechanical stallion into those sweet,

sweet forests of health that I have always longed for. I wanna stand in front of the mirror and look at my 46-year-old body, not in its current form, which I'm trying to love using many of the techniques I've been taught by my teachers, but as some kind of rigid, rock-hard, beautiful, oily thing. I want people to gasp at the beach.

I want people to think I'm on hormone replacement therapy. I want people to think that I've been bathing in testosterone. I want all the hair on my bald spot to grow back and to reverse age until I become some kind of powerful form. I wanna be worshiped. I wanna grow bigger than planet Earth and all the planets to start worshiping me and kissing my feet, and I wanna get even bigger than that

until black holes are running away from me, and I finally break through some kind of soil that I didn't even know space was made of into the garden of some powerful wizard that plucks me up, throws me in a stew, annihilates me and sends me back into my human incarnation, where I find myself riding my peloton yet again and restarting the cycle of life as illustrated

in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. We've got a great podcast for you. My friends, Eddie Pepitone is here with us. We're gonna jump right into that, but first, some quick business. The porn I look at would make the hair fall off of Bigfoot, and I know that incognito mode doesn't really work. It doesn't matter what mode you use

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Visit the exclusive link, expressvpn.com slash Duncan, and you can get an extra three months free on a one-year package. That's expressvpn.com slash Duncan. Expressvpn.com slash Duncan to learn more. A tremendous thank you to those of you who subscribe over at patreon.com forward slash DTFH.

Not only will you get commercial free episodes of the DTFH, but you'll also get lots of extra content, and if you subscribe to one of the video tiers, you can join us throughout the week for various family gatherings. Every Friday we've been meeting for a DTFH family gathering. My apologies to those of you who came at the very end. My toddler disconnected the internet,

and my entire computer froze up. We've been doing weekly meditations. I think we're going to do some kind of, I don't know, YouTube thing on Monday that I'm not really sure what it is. Regardless, come to us. Come home to your family at patreon.com forward slash DTFH. We also have beautiful, beautiful new clothes

at the DTFH shop, which is located at DuncanTrussell.com. You want face masks? We got them. We also have t-shirts. We also have tank tops. We also have mouse pads, and just about anything you might want to decorate your house or body with. It's there at DuncanTrussell.com.

Why am I talking like this all of a sudden? Hello, normal me's back. I've been drinking a lot of chameleon cold brew today. I'm sorry about that. I went enough full-on sales dialect. Now I'm being too quiet, because I've become too self-aware. Fuck it! Today's guest is brilliantly funny. He's got an awesome new special,

which is out on Amazon that you should watch as soon as you can. It's called For the Masses. He also has a fantastic Instagram podcast live show called Live from the Bunker. And now everybody, strap in, rip open your astral rib cages and tear out the pulsating, phosphorescent bits of your glorious,

spiritually broken yet powerfully enlightened heart so that they flutter down upon Eddie Pepitone's astral soul like flower petals from some mystical tree. Welcome to the DuncanTrussell Family Hour podcast, the brilliant Eddie Pepitone. Music playing Welcome, welcome to you That you are with us

Shake and glory to be blue Welcome to you Welcome, welcome to you Eddie, welcome to the DTFH. It's great to see you, man. I remember I went to see your one-person show. The one about the apocalypse. Do you remember that one?

You did it at the UCB theater. It was so good. You remember that one? Oh, that was a bunch of years ago, right? Yeah, that was a bunch of years ago. But it was, you know, when you see a good show, it's like it sticks in your head forever. And that show is just so great.

Really? You liked it a lot. Oh, I'm so happy. That makes me happy. But I think it's funny that now we're in your show. Yeah. I mean, this would, this easily, even though I don't even know back then

if people even knew what Zoom was, but this could easily have been a sketch in your show, which is like to, this is where we're at now with stand-up comedy. I mean, it's, you can't do stand-up anymore. Do you think stand-up, what do you think the future of stand-up comedy looks like? I think it's going to take a while

before it is back to what it was. You know, I think the benefit of this time is that it's showing us, and I think you've been ahead of the curve with this, but it's like showing us that we can use technology too, you know, a lot, and like bypass the suits in the studios, you know what I mean?

Yeah. And put out stuff. And I think that's great. It's kind of what you did, huh? To like go to the point where now you're a Netflix sensation. Well, yeah, kind of. I mean, I, yeah, I had no, I had no choice because I, I couldn't do it any other way, man.

I tried. Yeah. You know. So many people, yeah, yeah. It's great that you did it, man. Well, thank you. Yeah. Well, I, I agree with you as far as the,

the pressure it's putting on creative people who used to, their life was performing in front of audiences. It has caused a lot of people to figure out what works and what doesn't work. And you know, even though I understand, because if you're a comedian, you're going to make fun of stuff that, you know,

everyone's just bashing zoom standup comedy shows and who can blame them, you know, they're as depressing as depressed it could be. But still I like it because what it's doing is, is it's exploring how can we make it work? I agree with that, man. I agree with that. It's, it is at least an attempt to see, you know,

what's going on, you know, it's, you know, what it feels like. It feels like with the zoom technology, it feels like we're all like game show hosts. Like our world has turned into, have you, have you noticed how this incredible self-consciousness in, in Western civilization, right, of cameras everywhere, cameras everywhere.

I'm not even talking about the surveillance state. The surveillance state, of course, is massive. They want, you know, they, they're into everything, you know, our emails, our, our texts, everything. That's why Snowden is in Russia, right? Yes. But look at how self-conscious, you know, the cameras have made us like totally voyeuristic.

You know what I mean? Like, like it's like we're obsessed with self. And that's the, that is the period I think we're coming out of. Like you want to talk about growth and like, I was talking about this with the comedian yesterday that people don't want to change and they don't want to grow. It's kind of the same thing. So the whole Zoom technology thing is about growth

and we are growing from narcissistic, I think, into like realizing that we're all part of a whole. We're all part of a whole. We can't live without the ocean. You know, we can't live without the Amazon. We have to see nature as an, as an extension of us. We are nature. Right.

Right. But yeah, I mean, this is, there was a time where I guess if you wanted to, you could imagine you were some kind of singular disconnected thing if you were rich enough or whatever, but isn't this the horror of the most wealthy people on the planet right now? Is it doesn't matter? It doesn't matter because you have to have a planet to enjoy your wealth.

You have to have, there's no way you can enjoy being rich without some system which is bringing you food, some system which is making it so your employees don't die of a fire on the moon. They will be the last to die because of their wealth because they will be able to get the food that we will be able to get, you know? I mean, I want to say now that I hope by then I'm dead. I don't want to be part of these intense wars for food, you know, like I don't want to be part of a world that waits to ambush a Ralph's truck.

You know? Yeah, right. Yeah, no. I mean, this, I think this thing that is happening to us right now, the reason... The pandemic? Well, not just the pandemic. I mean, the pandemic is part of it.

The pandemic turned into a revolution against racism. Oh, right. I think the pandemic, by the way, is so part of what I was talking about as far as, you know, us being part of nature, you know, we're way overpopulated. Nobody talks about overpopulation. I don't know why, but there are no resources to go around anymore. And what I mean by that as far as the pandemic is that we keep knocking down nature's habitat. Right.

You know, what is it? A hundred species of fucking day go extinct. Right. That's not hyperbole. Look that up. Right. You know? Yeah.

Yeah, this is... Matter of fact, look that up the first thing when you get up in the morning. You just start your day. Honey, it's 125 species are gone. How about a nice coffee that we got? Because, you know, by the way, palm oil, don't buy palm oil. Really? You have to...

Palm oil, man, they've gotten rid of the orangutans. Are you fucking kidding me? It's orangutans, right? Yes. Yes, orangutans now don't have a habitat. You know, land is being raised for plantations of palm oil, which is just hard. And it's in everything. It's in fucking cooking.

I'm vegan, right? Yes. This stuff is in vegan cookies. You've got to look for palm oil and just know the palm oil because orangutans are basically now... I don't know. There's not that many left. Yeah, and also...

It's a shame, man. They're gorgeous. Gorgeous. They are. They're such mystical creatures. Oh, yeah. And the pandemic, you know, this thing started either in a laboratory or it started just because animals were being treated with, you know, so horrifically that the...

Right, the Chinese, you know, in this case, the Chinese, they, you know, they get these wild animals, right, that should not be making contact with us. They should have their own world to live in, but we keep knocking things down for consumption and overpopulation. So I just wish that there'd be some way to, you know, get the population down. I don't know how that would be. I guess things like the pandemic. I'm laughing.

Well, I mean, it's so, no, but listen, what the thing, the thing that you're laughing at, first of all, I mean, come on, George Carlin's done many jokes on this sort of thing and a brilliant... And it's a true thing, though. I mean, you have to, one of the really, I think one of the things that people haven't been talking about too much, usually the way they say it is things like, look, the dolphins have come back or whatever. The dolphins are swimming in Venice now, but what they don't add to that is wherever humans

can't go outside becomes incredibly beautiful. Wherever humans aren't, they don't say that because, you know, this is, because the problem is the moment you start saying things like that, then guess who you sound like? Charles Manson, because that was his, one of his main tenants. Like, you know, his religion continued, of course, if flourished, there was like a... By the way, you could play him. I mean, I think I'm going to write something for you, a Manson thing, because you have all of his qualities, except you're about love instead of hate, but you do command

like a charismatic type of vibe. I take that as a compliment, man. I mean, look, Manson, let's face it, he's like, could have been a great performer if he hadn't. It's like, just like, isn't that crazy? It's true. It's like the same with, same with fucking Hitler. It's like, here you've got an artist, didn't, didn't get to be an artist, ended up doing.

Manson was like, I mean, if Manson had had any kind of power, you know, he would have done something like a genocide. This is one of the things he talked about. He said, you know, the best thing you could do for the planet, if you really, really love the planet, the best thing you can do is kill yourself because I was like one of his final man, Manson, that was one of the things he said from prison is just like, if you really love it, just stop living because humanity itself is killing it and, and you know, this is true.

It's so true. Yeah. It is so true. But then we're, you know where it gets very paradoxical is this. Here we are on this planet. We're loving our palm oil, vegan cookies. We're loving our plastic fucking bags. We're loving our cars.

Right. And we made all that shit and the shit that we're making is destroying the planet. Similarly, the planet made humans. We came from the planet. The planet creates humans. Like Alan Watts says, the earth creates humans in the way an apple tree creates apples. The earth is peopeling. Right.

So the earth, if you really want to point the finger, let's point the finger. At the fucking earth, because it's making us your honor, your honor, I call to the stand Gaia. Yeah, I who know Gaia, the entire earth. I call I call the entire earth to the stand. So what's it? How's it? How do you like being a planet? It's OK.

You. So you as a plane, can I have a glass of water? Get the earth some water, the earth's water, particularly Southern California, Bob. So as the earth, would you say that everything living on you comes from you? Um. Yes, no comment. It's a simple answer. Well, yeah, no, I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll Yeah, yeah.

But you know what? The earth is too articulate. He's like a mook from Brooklyn. Yeah. Well, but that is what you kind of run into is it's like, well, the earth made the people that killed the orangutans. So the earth made the people. So it made. Yeah. So the earth killed the orangutans in the sense that it allowed us to.

Now, this is assigning intelligence to the planet, you know, which I actually kind of feels like it does. But you know what? I mean, it's just a it's a curious thing. You know, it's so it's so spooky. You know anything about like drakes? I think it's drakes. It's one of those astrophysics laws about why we haven't got contacted any aliens yet.

What is that law? Well, the creepy law is that civilizations that get to where we're at. They either go dark because they see something in space and they realize like, holy shit, do not broadcast anything. They're going to kill us. What's out there will kill you. In other words, like an animal in the in the in the in the forest, it suddenly realizes there's a bear nearby it freezes.

So it's either they get to a point where they are radars, pick up some fleet of carnivorous insect aliens that will just eat a planet or or probably more likely what happens is they get to where we're at right around this amount of time and they just kill themselves. By the way, that's kind of chilling. And it's also kind of mind blowing if this is indeed almost like a reincarnation thing where people keep, you know, life forms keep reincarnating and then go extinct when they reach this level of consumption.

You know what I mean? I mean, yeah, yeah, I could see that. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's all of the but all of these analyses are so dismal. Do you do you see any what is the way? I mean, we're not going to do population. The only way the only way Duncan and Duncan's listeners is is what has been going on lately with the protests.

And, you know, the protests have already led to some changes. And, you know, I go by the I go by the old adage if electoral politics worked, they wouldn't be legal. So the only way to change things is to do what is being done now, which is people really standing up against the quote unquote machine. That this, you know what I mean? And saying, no, we want this, you know, right? You have always they're going to have to do

that. This is this is one of the I'm sure people who are familiar with you and people are watching your awesome Instagram show, which by the way, man, I'm so impressed with your discipline when it comes to doing that. You're doing that every day. I know. But you know, it's been good for me. It's it's like it's kind of given me something to do during the day. You know, you're a kid, right? You have a kid. Yeah, that which takes up a lot of time.

But still, holy shit, man, congrats on the fact that you've been doing that. And it's really good when you're using Instagram, which is really cool, because it's like that a lot of people aren't doing that. So that's in the way you're doing it. You're innovating something with that show, which is pretty awesome, man. But but you you've always struck me as kind of like a revolutionary person. You've always struck me as somebody who would be one of the people out in the streets fighting. Yeah.

With that I have been I have been, you know, I've been I went on many protests where I live in New York. Now, I don't want to go out. I'm 61. So I have to be careful, man, as far as like mingling with a lot of people. But I did go down to a protest right where I live. And I just walked down to it. And it was really great.

Have you been to one? It was really great because people were just fucking communicating. Right. And and it wasn't nasty. It was like, this is what we want. This is what we deserve. You know, blah, blah, blah. Well, yeah, you know, I started. There is a great YouTube channel called Unicorn Riot.

I don't know if you watch them, but really, they're so good. They just have really good like journalists who go to the end of the protest. Like when they were burning the police station down, they were inside the police station. Unicorn Riot was filming people. Yes, they were. Yeah. And that's insane. Well, we're unicorn by the way, when you tune into Unicorn Riot,

you get the most in depth coverage. You do. There is a fire. We will be in it. Yeah, they were literally helping people climb over Rubble who were going in and out of the police station. Filming and also the the the journalist, they're really, really good. And the difference between them and like Fox News

is they will they hand the mic to people. So they just will be in the middle of the protest and say, do you have anything you want to say? By the way, that has been really powerful to see. Yeah, just people speaking their hearts and minds. That's been amazing. Yeah. And I that that is my new gauge of journalism is are they giving the mic to other people or are they just

are they interpreting? If you watch the major news networks, you know, the cable shit from Fox, MSNBC, CNN, they have the same people all the time, the experts, you know, and that edits all the fucking kind of same point of view. You know, sometimes there'll be some truth there. You know, it's an it's interpretation. It's an it's an interpretation with the intent to control.

So yeah, they so you'll you know, when you hand the microphone to someone, it's so beautiful. You know, fireworks are going off next to this police station that is now burning to the ground that's, you know, within which these three murderous fucks were, you know, that was where they would go and drink coffee and take shits. And now there's like, you know what I mean? There's like fireworks going off. This thing is now smoldering.

And and you you see them just hand the mic to people who are who are either many of the people were so overcome with emotion that they're just crying. Like they can't talk. They're so upset about what happened. You know, many people, you know, some people will try to talk and they would just start crying. You will not see that on Tucker Carlson. What you'll see on Fox News is an interpretation that these people are looting, villainous, monstrous.

It's like it's like they are the bad guy. Yeah, they are the bad guys. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I think what's great is that this is show me that and it's younger. It's younger people, which I really love because then it's like, OK, there is some hope, right? You know, because the computer world can be so isolating. And you know, even, you know, even though, you know,

it's great to talk to people online or whatever, isn't the fucking same thing as being in person and and really communicating. So that's been really good to see. You know, they don't want they that this is to me. This is the sinister aspect of it, which is if you show people what's really happening when people get together in general, if you show them what's really happening like this jazz or whatever the fuck it is, the autonomous, it's apparently it's like a music

festival out there right now. But if you show people that's what's happening, you know, you've got people playing music, you've got free food being handed out. You've got people giving speeches. You see you see people in their natural form. And it's almost like they don't want us to see that. What they want us to think is that those people have, you know, Fox actually Photoshopped this guy holding an assault rifle

in front of a roadblock there as though like folks were getting militant there. When the truth is they took that one picture and added it to another to give the impression this is what's happening. Well, yeah, they're saying a warlord is running. Right. A warlord. No, I haven't heard it yet. But but I mean, you know, which is really funny that they would say

a warlord is running it when the fucking president who is literally a warlord, he literally is. They need to say a different warlord or a new. A a wannabe warlord, unelected warlord. There is an unelected warlord running the the autonomous zone. The elected warlord doesn't want to give up his power. Yeah, man. I mean, that's have you ever seen in your whole life? Did you have you ever seen anything like this, man?

Can you think of anything like this? No, no, because. Because things have gotten worse. Things have escalated to and here's my basic cannon is all of this stuff. Yes, racism, so intense, right? I think so much of it comes from economic injustice. And right now, the economic injustice going on in the United States,

the fact that there, you know, you know, a few families own so much of the wealth and the rest of us are like, oh, my God, I'd better do Trussell's podcast today. You know, so I could keep promoting my brand or I'm going to be out in the streets. Right, right. You know, yeah, yeah. So we need to we need to fight for, you know, equality economically, you know, just start funding.

You know, this whole call to defund the police is really a call to fund the people and in the L.A. They have a thing called the People's Budget. You can go to people'sbudgetla.com or something and, you know, see what they want to do. We want to redirect funds to people's needs, needs, you know, health care, mental health care, you know, education. And our education system is in shambles. Yep. It's a fucking shambles.

You know, if you don't have all this money to go to a private school, you know, you're going into, you know, teachers have so many kids in the class and they don't get paid well. And also, what about like the thing that is really fascinating to me is that right now the government is doing a form of universal basic income. They're just giving money to people and people are able to live off this money. The implication being they could do this and they can do that. They have that much money that they can do it.

You bet they can do it. And, you know, the first so-called stimulus where we got a $1,200 check, you know, they got a few trillion to their cronies, to their, you know, to this industry and that industry, IEO. You know what they've done before when they've gotten these huge stimulus, meaning giveaways is they've done things like buy back their own stock to raise their stock prices, you know.

And they just get super rich. Right. And the super rich have basically turned the rest of the planet into serfs. We are serfs with Zoom. Which is dangerous. But that's dangerous. That's right. That's true because look at all the people coming out.

I did it. We're exactly like this is the problem. This is the problem for anyone. Anyone. It's a horrible time to be horrible because you used to be able to freely be horrible. I mean, it wasn't that, you know, to the point where they had to talk about God, they had to say, listen, yeah, sure, no one's going to see you do that thing because you live in the middle of a forest.

Oh, right. You know, but God is watching. But now it's a literal, what do they call it? There's a panopticon. We are. What's that? It's a name for constantly being monitored. So yeah, we're constantly being monitored.

And unless, you know, on my Patreon, there is a wonderful person who does, she does, she protects computer security. And she was explaining to me how much they know about you. How you, if unless you're using not just a VPN, but unless you're using just a mini smart tactics, it is not that hard to gather from where you're going on the internet. Even if you're just a number, who you are, they know who you are and then where you're going. They could track you with cookies and they know what you like. So that means that somewhere in a file somewhere, if you haven't been protecting yourself on the

internet is more than likely the data points necessary to show what kind of porn you like to look at, what kind of drugs you like to take, how you like to do, how you like to take care of your bodies when you dissolve them or whatever. Every single thing, it's all there waiting to be uncovered and it will be uncovered. And then when all that gets uncovered, we're all going to have to deal with like, oh, fuck, we all, that's the porn you. Oh my God, you're going to see the, what Trump looks at. You're going to see the sexual preferences of Lindsey Graham and Sean Hannity.

It's all going to be out there, all going to be out there for better or for worse. And we're just seeing the very beginning of that right now, which is like, you know, the very beginning of it. And this is why surfs with cameras are really dangerous, you know, surfs with their devices that record all movement. You know, part of me really does worry about the future, man. Like it, it could be really, really dystopian. Like when, especially when I hear stuff like that, like,

you know, the hacking of the internet, you know, I'm just waiting, you know, I don't know about you, but every day I go into my bank account, I'm just waiting for it to say zero because someone has gone in there and siphoned it. Yeah, or just, or just there's a run on the banks. I mean, I, you know, I, when, now I, what happens to me is like, I'm on the news, I'm on the news too much. So I get stoned. I go on the news.

I'll go into a paranoid episode. That's bad, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so I was like, fuck, you know what? I'm going to take a bunch of money out of the bank. I'm going to take like a bunch of cash out of the bank. Yeah.

Yeah, I sure did. I went and I took thousands and thousands of dollars out of the bank in cash. Now, what happened is I just went to the bank to get some cash out, not that much, but the person in front of me, all the ATMs in front of the bank, it stopped working. They were saying there was no more. Because the person in front of you took everything out? Just the ATM stopped working. It was actually a malfunction at the bank, but for a second,

it looked exactly like every movie where there's a run on the banks. And this guy in front of me is saying to the teller, you know, all the ATMs say they're out of money, right? You know that, right? He's getting, he's intense with her. She's like, oh, well, one of them's working. He's like, no, actually, none of them are working. You know that, right?

You know, none of them are working, right? She doesn't answer. So he's like, you know, I want to take a lot. I want to take all my cash out right now. And she's like acting weird, but they give it to him. And then I'm like, fuck, is this the beginning of a run on the banks? Then I got some money out way too much, way too much, way too much. But, you know, this is the thing.

Like, you're never going to hear about when that's going to happen. But it can happen at any time. Anytime people, the serfs can just decide they want to take the money out of the bank. Anytime. There's not that much cash. They don't have it. You can't. It's not if we all go and try to take all our money out of the bank simultaneously.

It fucks the economy severely. And you know, so that's one of the things I think about. I don't mean to be negative here, though. I think there's the potential for a dystopian future in the sense that we're all monitoring ourselves, George Orwell style, and where this becomes apocalyptic, is that you will notice how quickly morals, ethics, standards change. Like, look at the 80s. Any fucking romantic comedy in the 80s that dude is grappling with women.

That was like just a common thing you'd see in the 80s. Stripes, I think, or, you know, Bill Murray grabbing some woman he wants to hump. She's like, no, tries to kiss her again. She's like, no, tries to kiss her. Yeah, I've been watching that. I've been watching stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah.

And if that's what shit was like on movies in the 80s, god damn it, what was it like in the dating scene, right? And then boom, it changes, you know, over the course of what? 20 years, suddenly it's like everything changes. Why? Because of the cameras, because of the ability to record this shit. But this is the problem. In 20 more years, what are we doing right now?

That in 20 more years is going to look like some fucked up shit. Eat, maybe eating meat. Maybe, you know, who knows what it could be. Maybe we just don't know. You know, maybe, I don't know, man, but that's where it could get really interesting. And then if the morals or ethics shift, what happens if they shift in six months? What if I know, you know, that what is so quickly and all the shit you did before is recorded? Here's my thing, you know, the need to need to movement is definitely something,

you know, that comes out in reaction to too much abuse, right? Yes. And nobody ever fucking connects the military to this shit. I don't know why people aren't talking about that. What do you mean? The military, you know, mindset that kind of rules our country. You know, this whole, like, super macho, militaristic way of viewing the world. I don't know if you've ever seen a movie called Do Not Resist.

And it's a doc about how police are trained. And it's amazing. You know, they train them as like, instead of looking at people as the people, you know, that you're actually serving and protecting their, the enemy, you know, and such a military state of mind. And the fact that we spend more than 50% of our gross domestic product on weapons of war, people, the planet with weapons. And I know this is kind of convoluted, but what I'm saying is that it's about domination.

And it's a very hyper masculine thing that this whole military mindset transfers on to women, transfers on to the popular culture, you know, it's all about domination and, you know, not, not love, you know, fuck yet. I mean, just think the president tweeted something along the lines of the anarchists and punks that were getting in my way as I was going to that church. We cut through them like a knife through butter. It was easy. He, he, I mean, it's so, by the way, he makes me laugh.

I don't know if that's a good thing to say, but it's fine to say that. He is hilarious to me when I'm when I'm not so fucking pissed at whatever it is. Yeah, I just find this guy to be, he is seriously good. He is such a buffoon. It is like, what is this? Think about this. You're talking about, you know, the deterioration and morals. What kind of country Alex, you know, bozo the clown, you know, what the fuck?

Well, you know what, this is the thing I was thinking about the other day. It's like, okay, in sports, in sports, if somebody does too many fouls or breaks his leg or she like, you know, gets hurt, they put, they put them on the bench and that's just normal. You're like, okay, you got to go on the bench. You don't just have one person. You've got a bunch of people to replace that person. So the team does well.

But the way we have this shit structured is one president and then a fake president called the vice president, but not like we should have five equally potent humans as the president. And then when one starts going crazy, which ours clearly has, you just put them on the bench. It should be known that this is, this is one thing that for some reason people want to acknowledge presidents, they go fucking crazy, man, not just Trump, but in general, they're going to go, you're going to go a little crazy if you have to be the symbolic representation of an entire nation of people.

You see what happens to them. They all go gray and they get all withered and shit and they get like a weird look in their eye and they're all fucked up and they're all very concerned about their legacy. Yeah. Like, oh, I hope I remember. You know, it was a great documentary because I love documentaries like everybody, but the fog of war and McNamara, the former head of, I think it was department of the state department, you know, but it was, you know, all the military, it was the military stuff.

And, you know, that is an incredible character study of a guy who's been involved in, you know, major decisions of life and death and he does not look good. He didn't look like he aged well. He's trying to do like a mea culpa, you know. Yeah. You look like if you're going to be president by the end of that run, you look like shit. You are fucking, there's just no other way. You just do.

You see him. Oh, look at George. Look at George W. Now, like this guy, he's like a look at Clinton. Bill Clinton is like, he's like someone who's stared into an evil crystal. He's like, can't talk. He's all stammering shit, flying around with fucking Epstein. They're all like, addled from it.

Oh my God. They're like, how about that pedophilia of like Jeffrey Epstein and what do you think about that? What do you think about that? All these powerful guys, you know, oh, I think they're just that's, that's the deterioration of morals. That's when society breaks down is when you don't respect kids. You don't respect women.

You know what I mean? Yeah. You use them with your power. I mean, and animals too. That's a big thing that people don't talk about too. I mean, there's more of a vegan consciousness, but animals are, you know, the most powerless things and they need to be protected too. Man, I had the, there's a conversation that sticks in my head.

I was in Hawaii having a conversation with just some random surfer guy at this bar and like he started bringing that up. He's like talking about like, and this is way before Epstein is honestly before I'd even become aware of this like institutionalized pedophilia thing among power structures. So like he started just saying that he's like, yeah, these, you know, these rich, these rich people, they're fucking kids and stuff, man. I'm like, what, like, what, why would, why would it, like if you were wealthy, would you ever want to fuck a kid?

I mean, why would you want to, his response was, well, well, because they're innocent, because they're, they're pure and they want to hurt. They want to hurt pure things. They, they want to hurt the earth. They want to hurt the, and that was, that's the part that nobody wants to think about. All right. Well, you're, you're not, you're not the kind of hippie I am, but I would think of you as something of a hippie and not in the way, not in the like, negging us way, but in just

in the sense of like, we do think about love. We throw around the word love a lot and we, we, I think, I don't know about you, but I, in fact, it's a good question. I have the idea that humans are fundamentally good underneath all the ego shit that underneath it all. I think so too. Okay. That's, that's what I'm saying.

Both of us agree there. Well, this guy's premise, it's fucked up because his premise is like, oh no, actually no, there's, there are people who believe that, but they're wrong because some people, they, it's not just like they accidentally spill oil in the ocean or it's not like they accidentally bring an oil line across the Appalachian trail or across sacred Indian ground because that's the only place to run the oil line. It's that they run the oil line there because they want it to break. They want it to kill the earth.

Oh my God. It's so, it sounds crazy. Man, it's called flying. Flying talked about the destructive impulse. She said, man, he said, man has the creative and the destructive impulse. You know, and yeah, I mean, a guy I read Chris Hedges, he was saying that this, what we're doing to the earth, you know, what we're doing to our water, you know, what we, what we do in this fucking capitalist system where people are basically just put into

a machine and ground out. When you read about, you know, how they work, Amazon workers in these warehouses, they're policed by these robots. Do you know that? No. But anyway, he, wait, no, wait, I'm sorry. Tell me about these robots. I haven't heard this.

Hey, hey, listen, I am not legally allowed to talk about the Amazon robot. I signed a non-disclamer. Leak it. Yeah. No, what I've read is that they have, like they monitor you. First of all, like you have to work a certain amount of time without going to the bathroom and shit like that. I mean, it's crazy.

And, and these robots come and they kind of, if they see someone wandering around, they will like guide their movements. It's something like that. I don't want to, I don't want to say things that aren't true, but that is they do police Amazon work. Hello, Larry. I noticed you were, hi, Larry. I noticed you're 30 feet away from your department.

Do you need help getting back? Let me guide you. I'm going to attach a tether to your neck. No, no, no. I just want to walk. I just, I need to walk. I have a muscle strain and the robot goes, Larry, don't make me say it again. And then a laser, a red laser goes on Larry's forehead.

Larry, you have, you have vitamins to pack and deliver. Larry. Larry, you're part of the Amazon team now, Larry. Yeah. We need to send these vitamins. Larry, I want to show you something. This is live, this is a live feed from the nanny cam in your child's room. Oh, look, look how peacefully your daughter sleeping would be a shame if a siren went off.

And there, you know, that is, that is crazy to imagine that that's what's happening. But yeah, that is what's happening in the Amazon warehouses. Fucking Bezos is like, essentially, like he's, he's running the show at this point, right? Like he is the emperor that no one calls the emperor. And by the way, Amazon didn't pay taxes last year. I don't understand that. How did, how is that possible? I don't even, I can't wrap my head around that.

How do you do that? And, and, and that's why people should always be in the streets until that shit changes. But what I, the other thought I wanted to finish was that we, we live in a culture of death, you know, talking about that destructive and creative impulse. And, and it's too much about death, you know, the death merchants, the death merchants are winning like the amount of money that we put into weapons. Again, nobody talks about the militaristic, about the, about the military point of view,

you know, the Pentagon and, you know, the control of resources and the weaponry that that takes. And also, you know, when we bomb Iraq, when we bomb Afghanistan, when we make the weapons for the Soviets to bomb Yemen and create all this, you know, despair, when we bomb, then we're policing the poor. So then we overseas and we're going to police them the same way here. And that's what's happening. That's what's happening. You know, the brute force is militaristic, you know.

Right. And then that's what happens. Hyper masculinity. Hyper masculinity. Well, you know, actually, this is stuff that I've thought about regarding that idea of hyper. I don't think you talk about that because that's something a lot of people don't want to talk about, I think it's like kind of taboo, you know, because everybody else supports the troops. And I want, you know, I support.

Yeah, I think the troops are, you know, should be supported, but not in support of these. Well, my dad was a troop. My dad had PTSD. My dad had PTSD. His back was fucked up for his whole life. He didn't get any help from the VA. What was it? What war?

Vietnam. Two tours. Wow. Yeah. Two tours in Vietnam in the Navy. And so I like I. Some of the most radical guys come out of the war, veterans. They're the best.

Those guys, you know, the left veterans who were against war because they fucking went through it. Yeah, that's exactly right. Most anyone who hasn't completely lost their mind, who's been there, they're usually are. So if you support the troops, you should support no war. And also you should support the VA. Like we, we kick the. So what happens with that is you, so you get these kids who are super poor. I know my dad was.

They want to get the fuck out of their little town. And, and, you know, this, of course, there's like 48% of the military or African American people. And a lot of those people come from the inner cities and stuff because they advertise this shit as like, this is a way that you can get a college education. And so you, you're out of options. You go and talk to some recruiters. You end up getting your fucking head shape. And my dad, that's one of the creepiest things he said is like,

the first night he was in Vietnam laying in his tent, wet. It's raining. He's in the jungle. You can hear bullets. You can hear bombs. And he's shaking and just thinking, what the fuck have I done? What the fuck have I done? What the fuck have I done?

And like, you know, because by the time you're there, you're, you're fucked, right? So then they come back after all that time. Yeah. Not to mention like all the other shit that happens. I had a friend who was in the Navy. They just give you pills, man. Like on the ship, he was on this aircraft carrier. They just give you medicine to take and some of that shit is expired.

Yeah. Yeah. You, they own you. They own your body. So you're taking like weird medications and shit and like, yeah, man. I mean, it's like just look at some of the people coming back from Desert Storm. They had that, I can't remember what the name it was, a syndrome, where they were like shaking and they were all fucked up from the nerve agents and stuff.

But it went into happening is they don't get taken care of. So they come back here. They have got PTSD because they saw their friend or they, they chain gun somebody or a bunch of people or they killed kids or they're part of an operation that's incinerated kids. They come back here. They're living in a nightmarish hell and then they give them benzos. So they start taking these benzos or they start taking these weird sedatives.

And then, but, but, but basically to get to your hyper masculinity point, I don't know that masculinity is the right word for it. I think our culture is so fucked up that masculinity and the symptoms of PTSD have become synonymous because the country's been at war for 93% of its history. So if you look at John Wayne, that is how a person with PTSD acts. They don't tell you when they're hurting. They don't tell you when they feel the real, you know, the real soldiers hated John Wayne. He used to come visit soldiers in hospitals and Wayne never fought.

You know, John Wayne never fought the war. And, you know, these guys would come back with, yeah, major injuries and they'd be like, come on, spare me the fucking, you know, the Hollywood bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. But that is that. But what do you say? What are you saying about people have PTSD?

Some of the symptoms are, they're not going to tell you that they hurt. One of the symptoms is they don't report that they're feeling bad like normal people do. They think it's weak to express pain. They don't. Yeah. Yeah. So you get this like in the real, the reason they don't want to do that is because they're trying to like avoid the trauma.

They're trying to avoid triggering themselves as much as possible. So you end up with this hyper isolated person who's having suicidal ideations and trying to mitigate the anxiety with booze and cigarettes. Now, all of a sudden you have the what is that like sort of like the callous hero figure, but that's not a callous hero. That's a person who has fucking like a horrible mental disorder and is doing everything they can to not scream, which comes across as this kind of like tough. And then we say, oh, all I see what you say is then we say, oh, that's masculinity.

That's not masculinity is like cutting off your fucking humanity. That's not masculinity. Even though I do get very masculine when I work out, I'm very, I start to work out in a gym and I and I start to say to myself, maybe I can conquer a country. Maybe if I get together a few of the guys, we can go into Peru. Let's do it. Let's take it. Let's take it.

But my new special, my new special is coming out and it deals with a lot of this stuff. You talk about hypermasculine. What's the name of your specialty? It's called for the masses for the mass coming out. Yeah, it's coming out June 23rd on Amazon and iTunes and Google Play and a couple of the platforms. When did you shoot it? I shot it February of 2019. It's taken a year and a half to finally launch.

Oh, cool. When you when you saw all this shit going down and you realize like all this crazy shit has happened. Do you feel do you feel like you covered in your special just accidentally like you addressed? I wish I would have covered pandemics. I didn't see the I mean I knew about I knew about you know pandemics for sure. But I didn't you know like I think most people I didn't see it coming. Well, yeah, I know man. I mean, I think this is kind of the red flag, by the way, big red flag.

He didn't know about it. He didn't predict the pandemic. I don't trust him. But here's the thing. This is what I think so is one of the telling aspects of the time we're in. Forget a special a year ago. I recorded a podcast four weeks ago that I haven't put out yet. It's really good.

I really like it. But I haven't put it out yet. But in that month period, five week period, look what's fucking happened. So when I put that podcast out, it's going to seem weird that I wasn't addressing what's happening. I'm going to have to say in the beginning this came out five weeks ago. But shit is changing so fast now. Do you know what I'm saying? That things are becoming like you you you're special.

I think that what's the reason it's going to seem relevant is because you you might not have predicted the pandemic, but you were at the UCB. Like I said in the beginning of this conversation, doing a one person show about the apocalypse. You you were in a people were wondering why I was being a downer. Yeah, exactly. So I feel like you're, by the way, yeah, people don't get me who think I'm, you know, depressed and negative.

Like underneath all my like scathing criticism of what's going on, I'm just trying to get a better world out of it. You know what I mean? It's like, and I feel like you need to put this shit in front of people's noses because most people are dead asleep, just consuming, you know, just kind of living in fantasy. Yeah, numb, numb down. They're in fantasy.

Yeah, that's right. And then people in fantasy is an annoying thing. If you're enjoying some wonderful fantasy, even if the fantasy is one that's going to end when someone comes around saying, listen, I'm telling you, you've got to fucking listen to me. There's the fire is coming. You're going to run. It's just where you're living right now.

This is one of the things Terrence McKinnon said. He's like, many people, they say it's not the end of the world, but actually it's just that the apocalypse hasn't gotten to where you're at yet. It's happening. It's all over the planet. This shit has been the end of the world in Syria for a long time. It's been the end of the world in Iraq for a long time. It's been the end of the world in Afghanistan for a long time.

People in Afghanistan, they're probably looking at Americans right now like, well, yeah, oh, is this rough on you? I'm sure they're happy about it. I'm sure they're like, oh, good, you know, your fuckers are suffering, you know. When you, so how, when you shoot your specials, Eddie, how, what, what does the process look like after the fact? Like, did you shoot more than one night? How did it work shooting this thing for Amazon?

And also, did you like work a deal out with them after you made the special or before? After. Wow, cool. That's powerful. After the special was produced by a company for me called 800 pound, pound gorilla, Steve Fine Arts directed it. And yeah, we shot it. We shot two shows in one night.

That's what we did. Cool. My last special in ruins, that was a necklace thing. That was shot two days, like two consecutive nights. Like I did one on Friday, one on Saturday. But this, I just did two shows in one night. And I think I like to do the two shows in one night better. How did you, how did you, I mean, what did, I'm just, this is probably the,

quite a boring thing to talk about a comedy special. But as a comic, I'm always curious about this. Like, how did you manage the crowds? How did you, did like, who took the production company took care of all that shit? You didn't really have to worry about it or? Oh, you mean, what? You mean getting people for the show?

Yeah, you know, like, yeah, you did, I don't remember seeing any announcement of it or anything like that that you were doing a special. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I was, I think I did, you know, put it all over social media and then I'm sure they did as well. Did you have any moments? It was great crowd. When you were shooting it, did you have moments where you had to stop?

Because of tech stuff or you realized you'd fucked up? Only, I, no, no, not really. I just went and, and, you know, Steve knows that that's when I'm at my best, when I'm just kind of going, going, going, and after the two shows, we did some pick-ups at the end. There were just a couple of stupid little things. I got you. You know, nothing major.

So when you are editing, editing this thing, this is something I always wonder about and you do cut to a crowd reaction. Do you have any? I don't do the editing. You didn't edit it at all. No, no, no, no. So you just let them do it. I don't get involved.

Wow. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, I trust Steve to do it. That's so fucking cool, man. This is, I mean. Because I don't know, dude. I don't, I think you need someone who's not that close. You know, I'm too close to it. Like I looked at it and for the first couple of times I look at it, I go,

God, I'm bold. Yeah, yeah, I would. Dude, that's, I'm telling you, there's, I'm not saying this is the reason, isn't the reason I haven't done this special. There's lots of reasons. But one reason when I think about doing a special that I cringe is that, is my fantasy is you sit in the fucking editing bay for months watching your, your set over and over.

And I would, that sounds like hell on earth. You think that's necessary? I don't know. No, this is just in my head. You know, one of those things you just assume that's what comics do. That's so cool that you, I know what you're saying is beautiful, man. I think you're right. That is the way to do it.

Like of all the people who shouldn't be in charge of that edit, it's the comedian, if you ask me. I don't know. I mean, I guess some comedians would agree with you for sure to, that they want to do the editing, but I know I'm saying no at it. Because I feel like it's all, you know, and this has kind of been something I think that has probably fucked up my career a little, is that I think it's all about the moment. I think, I think performing is all about, I mean, the live performing is all about the moment.

And that's magical. And then, you know, so to me, you know, reliving it over and over again on film or whatever is not, is not what it's about for me. Fuck yeah, man. And you, I'll tell you, man, there's a lot of comics that I'm, I love. But sometimes when I think about the comics I love, and then I try to really recall their work, I can't. But you, man, I remember your stuff.

I remember, yeah, yeah, because you, because you, because it's not, it's like, you really put on a show, Eddie, like, and by that, I mean like. So do you, by the way. Yeah, thank you, man. But I remember when like, you know, I remember when I was a kid and my stepdad took me to see Les Miserables. And I remember sitting there and you don't, in a good show, you don't just remember the performance. You remember the whole fucking thing.

The room. That was a great show, right? What, Les Miserables? Yeah. Master of the House. Master of the House. I just got into, I have never watched Les Miserables in my life. It's stupid.

Me, my wife, just got into it. Master of the House. Les Miserables is like, on one level, it's great. And I don't mean to offend anybody. And for people who are fucking Les Miserables fans, they're going to get mad when I say this. I bet I could out sing, I know every song by heart. But if you really look at that story, it's the stupidest. Jean Valjean.

Oh my God. It's such a dumb story, Eddie. It's like, think about it. It's like, do you know the story? The story is she falls in love with this dude overnight. And then all of a sudden they get married the next day. And then the guy's carrying him out of the, the whole thing is ridiculous. Well, you know, that's the musical.

The musical world is, is pretty much like that, right? Like, I want to do a musical that's horrifically tragic. Yes. You know, like, and people have to sing about it in an upbeat way. You know, like, there's no more water. There's no more birds. But I got you. Eddie Pepitone.

God bless you, man. Tell people where they can find you and tell people where they can find your special. What last time? Yes. Go to eddiepepitone.com. And I'm going to have all the information up about this special there. And, and from eddiepepitone.com as well, you can go to Facebook and Twitter. You know, I have the links to my Facebook, my Instagram, my Twitter,

so you could find everything there. And thank you, Duncan. You're the best, man. You're the best, man. I really appreciate this time, Eddie. And all the links you need to find Eddie and his special are going to be at DuncanTrussell.com. Thank you, man. I'll see you out there.

See you, man. See you, man. Thank you, Eddie. That was awesome. That was Eddie Pepitone. Everybody, all the links you need to find Eddie will be at DuncanTrussell.com. Definitely check out his special. Much thanks to ExpressVPN for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH.

And thank you for listening. I will see you next week. Until then, Hare Krishna. Oh, and thereabouts for kids. Super cute and extra affordable. Check out the latest in store. And we're never short on options at jcp.com. All dressed up.

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