Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 404: Tom Papa

Episode Date: October 10, 2020

Tom Papa, comedic genius, joins the DTFH! You can listen to Tom's podcast, Breaking Bread, check out Tom's Netflix Special, You're Doing Great, or listen to him alongside Fortune Feimster on Netflix is a Joke Radio on SiriusXM! Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. Shudder - Use promo code DUNCAN for a FREE 30 Day Trial. Tru Niagen - Visit truniagen.com/duncan and use promo code DUNCAN at checkout for $20 off your first order!

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I am ecstatic right now, my friends, for the nerdiest reason of all time. I've found a new office, number one, which doesn't sound that exciting, but compared to the other office I was in, which was a wonderful place. It's got way better sound quality. It doesn't echo.

The other place I was in was the mausoleum and a cemetery, so everything was echoing off the marble walls, and it would disrupt nests, birds, and bees, and would swarm around me and sting me. I was swollen and puffed every day, coming home to my sweet family. But this place is in an actual music studio, in Asheville, North Carolina.

I don't know how I got this lucky, but I'm here, and it's wonderful, and here's the nerdy ecstatic part. I got my modular synths out of storage, and hooked them up, and they worked. I don't, look, it's a weird thing to be so attached to something that is just a machine, but I don't know if they're a machine. I love them, and it just, I can't even explain to you

how great it feels to have made the weird transit from LA to Asheville and to find myself in a beautiful music studio and a beautiful office with my sweet modular synthesizers singing. I don't wanna be attached to the world. I'd like to be some kind of Beacoo St. Robed being happily wandering through the national forests,

not a care in the world, except for putting the bird's egg that I found on the ground back into the nest it came from. But it's just not my karma, I like stuff. I like gear and electronics, and I like watching lights burble and flash, and I like distorting my voice and just listening to electricity turned into sound.

I can't help it, I just love it. It's like, if there was a clitoris somewhere inside of my psychic makeup, this combination of stuff would be vibrating it until my entire soul squirted. I keep thinking, like, God, you know, I'm gonna regret leaving LA, it's gonna, another shoe's gonna drop,

I'm gonna feel some like aching horror, like what have I done? But nothing like that has happened yet. Only happiness and joy and just excitement and I feel inspired, the air isn't filled with smoke. You know, it's, what the fuck? Why didn't I leave sooner? I just, I guess it's just easy to think to yourself

that you're above it all or something or that, you know, where you're at is where you're supposed to be, and you just stay there. I got all weird and spiritual bypassed the entire reality of what my wonderful meditation teacher, David Nicktern, calls relative reality, you know? We live in a world, you've got a body.

If you're me, you've got a muscular, beautiful tan body, a body that many people, when they see it at the beach, they marvel and they tell them that I'm 46 years old and they say, you have the body of a 22 year old athlete. It's happened many a time, people will come up to me and by the, I don't mind that, you know, I understand the power of my body is probably akin to that of like a nuclear power plant

in the future. And so when people see it, they're just blown away by, I am too, you know, I get fixated. I don't wanna think of myself as a narcissist, but there's nothing I love more than standing in front of the mirror pouring oil on my nips and my rippling pecs and abs and just rubbing oil. And that's what I'm doing right now, right now,

actually, is just rubbing oil into my body as I listen to my modular synths. We have got a great podcast for you today. A comedic genius was kind enough to appear on the DTFH for the first time. Tom Papa is here with us and we get deep. We're gonna jump right into that, but first, this. The reason that your nipples bleed,

the reason that your breath smells like pee, the reason that you don't feel right is because you don't have a motherfucking website. Squarespace, you can sell your socks online. Squarespace, you could put up a blog about vintage wine, but then when we need Squarespace, it's the place. A heartfelt thank you to the folks at Squarespace. They're one of my longest running sponsors.

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of a website or a domain. Again, that's squarespace.com forward slash dunkin'. Use offer code dunkin' to get 10% off your first order of a website or a domain. Thank you, Squarespace. Dear Dunkin', ever since I joined your Patreon, the dreams in which I was being assaulted by masked bandits on a post-apocalyptic highway,

bandits that would take me and my family and crucify us, hanging us on telephone poles while sickening their trained predatory falcons on my wife and child. In these terrible dreams, I would watch my family slowly be consumed by falcons while I died a very painful death by suffocation and grief. But ever since I joined your Patreon,

those dreams have stopped. I feel as though a curse or lifted from my life thanks to joining your Patreon. And now every dream I have involves a class A high-powered Dr. Ruth level orgasm. Thank you so much for creating the Patreon community that I can now enjoy. And most importantly, thank you for lifting

the horrible dreams that you had cursed me with for not joining your Patreon and replacing them with sex dreams. Sincerely, Derek V. Derek, it's my pleasure. I'm glad to have relieved you of your horror dreams and replaced them with sex dreams. And for those of you who have yet to join the Patreon,

who still find yourself in a variety of horrible nightmare scenarios every night, some people are being eaten by hyperintelligent, reptilian alligator creatures wearing robes and holding dark hypnotic lanterns over their heads while they drip acidic drool into their eyeballs and other people are feeling what it's like to be trapped in a slit in the side of a massive cliff

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I don't wanna put dreams out there like that that make people not sleep well at night, but that being said, I've got a family now. And we, you know, we gotta do what we got to do. So if you join the Patreon, not only will these horrible dreams go away, but you will have instant access to hours and hours and hours of extra DTFH content.

If you subscribe to the video, tears my dear loves. You can join us every Tuesday for our group meditation journey into boredom or on Wednesday for our legendary book club, which the New Yorker called an assembly of some of the most literate literary geniuses that have ever roamed the surface of this planet we call Earth.

And then on Fridays, it's our family gathering where we all just hang out and yep. And of course, you'll be able to join the growing, thriving DTFH Discord community. We want you come home to your family, stop the terrible dreams. Go to patreon.com forward slash DTFH and subscribe. Unless you're a time traveler from far in the past

or you just stumbled out of your Nietzschean cave up in the mountains where you had some grand revelation that you're gonna bother all of us with while we try to enjoy our fucking coffee. We get it. You're an enlightened nihilist. Leave us alone. We like it down here.

We like being worldlings. Regardless, unless you're some kind of monastic freak who's been holed up in some magic palace with all your monastic friends chanting, unless you've been up in the Himalayas holding space for us so that we could experience peace and not be sucked into some vortex of destruction. Unless you're some dimension hopping bard

who plays flutes for hominid hummingbird creatures in some paradise realm. Unless you're a classic old mean warlock who has been hanging out in the cremation gotts of our Nasi stealing skulls and gnawing on half baked femurs. Unless you're some kind of little baby who doesn't understand English yet,

just a little tiny baby who can't understand words because you're just a pure being of love. Unless you're the wind from the past. Unless you're drifting echo in some canyon somewhere. You know who Tom Papa is. He is a brilliant comedian. He's also a great writer. I'm listening.

I like to listen to books, okay? I'll admit it. I can't read. I never learned how. But he's got a great book out called You're Doing Great. Also, I was on his podcast, Breaking Bread. Not only that, he's got a show. On Netflix is a joke radio

with fortune themester called What A Joke. Check out his Netflix special live in New York City or you're doing great or you can go see him. Go see him. November 6th in Omaha. November 12th in Cleveland. Omaha's The Waiting Room. Cleveland is Hilarities.

All the links you need to find Mr. Papa are gonna be at DuncanTrussell.com. Now everybody please welcome to the DTFH Tom Papa. Papa. Welcome, welcome on you. That you are with us. Shake hands, no need to be blue. Welcome to you.

Wow, wow, wow. It's been DuncanTrussell.com. Tom, welcome to the DTFH. Thank you so much. I know you just got off the road. Thanks for being on the show. That was my pleasure. You know, I love you and I love being.

I love you. Anywhere in your orbit. And I know, what a cool thing to hear. You just got off the road. Oh, when's the last time you heard that? That's why I just wanna start off talking about that. Can you tell me what doing standup comedy in the era of COVID is like?

Because I haven't heard any reports from anybody so far. Yeah, it's amazing. First of all, the short answer is it's amazing. I've only been going out, since we all got shut in, I've gone to four different clubs. I went to Salt Lake City, Portland, Connecticut, and this last one was in Denver. And I only go to places where I know the people

that run the clubs know that they're gonna do it right. Social distance, half the capacity, testing everybody. And if the city is cool, you know, there was like, I was gonna go to Arizona and it was not cool. The numbers were rising and I just got a vibe from the place that hired me that they weren't on top of it. So they weren't gonna protect me or the audience.

So I just bailed. But if I can just get a little semblance of like, this is going to be okay. I just, you know, I can't not do it. I just have, it's just too much a part of me and I just realized, let's do a calculated risk and go and do the shows. And man, you really realize how important it is,

you know, for the audience and for yourself to be working through it. I mean, that's what comedy is, right? It's like working through whatever you're going through and that we're all going through the same thing, despite being different places around the country, we're all gone through the same stresses and worries and anxieties and euphoria.

And there's this common thing and a comedy show where you actually get to talk it out and laugh about it and feel okay about it and enjoy yourself. Oh my God, it's just been, it's better than any of the shows you were doing like up to the end. Oh God, you're making me ache hearing about it, man. It's just an ache.

Oh my God, I miss it so much. I, you know, it just, it becomes a part of you. It becomes a way that you exist in the world. And then it just, it all got taken away from us. You're brave to do it. And also it's really very generous of you in the sense that, you know, you're, whatever you are making is going to be cut in half.

You know? It's definitely not about the money for sure. But you go into these places and these, you know, they're trying to stay open. They're trying to survive. And the wait staff is trying to survive. And you know, I went into Portland and, you know, the wait staff was like,

they were a week and a half away from losing their apartments because they had no work. And just that they're, everybody's able to come back in some form, it just felt like, you know, when you care about these places, I've been to these places for a long time. I mean, just, you know, in Denver is the comedy works. And I know Wendy who, who owns

one of my favorite clubs of all time. It's a, it's an amazing place. Amazing. And you don't want, you want them to survive. You want them to, you know, and there's not a lot of people that can sell tickets that are willing to go. So I just figured, well, let's just be, try and be safe about it and smart about it and go

and give them a, you know, a good weekend and see if it's good for them. It's good for me and see how we survive. You know, I was listening to your excellent audio book. You're doing great. And thinking, this is a very spiritual book. Like this is a deep spiritual book. And it's also very funny.

And I was so impressed that you figured out a way to do that because, you know, whenever I'm thinking about stuff, especially writing a book, I always get too up in my head about it. And I always think I want to make it, I want to write a book that makes people feel great, but I don't want to write a spiritual book

or a correctional book or a self-help book or anything like that. And so it always just dies on the vine. But can you talk a little bit about the process of writing that book and how you managed to broadcast something so sweet and positive and real without sounding like stuffy? Yeah.

Well, it kind of came off of what I was talking about on stage at the same time. And I just had this, just this feeling that, you know, I was just doing my stand up and just being as funny as I could about, you know, my stand up is mostly about like life and everyday life kind of stuff. And I just got this feeling that we,

over the last several years, like there was this real anxiety that people were feeling. And I felt like we were, I was feeling it too, like through social media and spending all our time concentrating on things that were just making us feel kind of shitty. And I just took a step back and was like, you know, this is it.

Like this is the prime time for us. Like, you know, we're going to get old and shitty something at a certain point. You're young and, you know, living someone else's life for a long time. This is it. This is all you get. This little chunk in the middle.

Why would I spend all this time, you know, reading about politics or being fed stuff by cable news or like what am I wasting my time on? And you know what? And as I started looking at it, I was like, you know what? I shouldn't be racing so hard. What am I racing for? Like this is it.

You're actually doing great right now, right here. This is what great is. It's not about what's coming. It's not about trying to get more. It's not about trying to get on a jet or all this other stuff. It's like, no, this is it. This is us doing great.

And I just started recalibrating in my head what the purpose of all of this is. And I realized, no, a cup of coffee is great. Just hanging is great. Being with your friends is great. And I just started saying to the audience in my stand-up, you're doing great. Just I was trying to impart this kind of thing.

I'm like, no, you're doing great in the not too far distant future. People are going to ask you to go somewhere. And your one question is going to be, are there stairs? And if there are, you're not going. So you are doing great right now. I don't care what your problem is. This is it.

And people started coming up to me after the shows and thanking me. And that's when I kind of knew I was on to something. Because I wasn't just feeling it. They were feeling it. And they were thanking me for saying that they were doing great. Because they think they're trying to do all the best.

They're trying to work hard. They're taking care of their family. They're doing whatever. But no one ever tells you as an adult, like, hey, good job. Hey, you're there. You're doing great. So when people started coming up and thanking me, I just started diving deeper into that.

I used that as kind of the launching point for everything that I was doing the act and then for the book. And in the book, you can go deeper. But I was that thing. Like you're saying, I wasn't going to turn into some self-help guy. I just found a funny realization that this is what life is all about.

So all my comedy should just come from that. And I just wanted to be kick-ass funny. And what was weird, Duncan, is that when I started giving interviews about it, people wanted to talk about that part of it. And it was like this weird balance between being really funny and also having a message that was pretty poignant. This episode of the DTFH has been brought to you by AMC

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It's so good because, but when they're not together, God, it's so easy to not be funny. It's so easy to be didactic, correctional. You know, oh, it's so easy to go on and on about some kind of arcane spiritual shit, but to like make it funny, to bring it into the world in a way people can connect to. Wow, that is a talent, man.

And what a lot of, what I've listened to so far in the book, and by the way, great job doing an audio book, it reminds me of Ramdas. It reminds me of Be Here Now. That's why I loved about him was he wasn't trying to fix you. There wasn't a thing of like, hey, yeah, we gotta get you meditating, get you on a vegan diet, get you to drink more water, get you to this retreat,

get you in a fasting situation. It was, this is where, this is exactly where you're supposed to be. It's the perfect place. You're exactly where you need to be right now as you are. You can give up the war against yourself. Right, right. And I love those moments where I can pull that off.

I don't pull it off all the time, but that's what I would, do you think we're in heaven? That was a curveball question at the end. No, I don't think we are. I don't think we are, because there's so much, I don't know, there's so much pain, but I don't know, I don't know, that's a hard question. What is heaven?

The sneaky thing about it is I'm really into TM. I've been doing TM for a long time. Cool. And that kind of is like the slow way. It's kind of like aspirin. You're not really sure how it works, but it just seems to work. And it just kind of opens up your consciousness in a way,

slowly. I was just doing it to have more energy to get through the day, but there seems to be this a little more keen awareness that this is where you're supposed to be. So I don't know, is there a little glimpse of heaven in that? I don't know, but there is this kind of more accepting feeling that all this noise up here,

while it's dominant and you have to participate in it, just knowing that you're also existing down here in this other more peaceful place, it does give you this kind of kind of happy feeling that this is okay, that knowing that below this noise there's something more important going on has been kind of like the end result of the TM thing.

So I think it's kind of bled without even thinking about it. It wasn't a hippie-dippy trying to figure out all the stuff about TM, but I can tell that it has informed my view. Yeah, it did something. It does do something. A lot of my friends do it, and I've never heard anyone say it didn't work for me.

I've never heard someone be like, TM sucked. It was bullshit. I've heard people who haven't done it complain about having to pay for it. They're like, it should be given away. I don't understand why people think like that, but anyone I know who's done it really appreciates it. But what I meant by the Heaven question is,

just sometimes what I'm thinking about, when I'm able to get into the groove of just me, and instead of how I wish I were, so anything that's happening, I'm like, yeah, this is how you're supposed to feel. And even if the feeling is like, God, I'm fucking sweaty and hungover right now and just feel kind of dizzy,

it's like, that's right. That's good, that is it. It's what's in your book. And then I start thinking like, holy shit, is this paradise? And the genius of paradise is that you find out that you're in paradise. You know, I mean, if you're just born into paradise,

that's not fucking paradise, but it's this slow boil as you start realizing, wait a minute, oh wow, this is actually heaven, but not heaven like in the, whatever your religion may be, streets of gold, all that bullshit, but heaven in a more fundamental, primal way, which is just sentience, existence itself

has some kind of quality in it of goodness, even when it hurts. Yeah, and back to what you were saying before, how like you can't do it all the time, I don't think we can do it all the time and exist in this world. Like I feel like, and I think that's what TM does, I think that just whatever people do to give you,

I feel like you can, if you can just dip into it, just for a glimpse once a day, it's like the stop and smell the roses thing. It's like, you don't need some big practice to just be grateful when you're eating the strawberry to really think, to stop and actually really appreciate all the aspects of the juiciness of the whatever, like just those little, just allowing yourself

one moment of that in a day, seems to me to be super valuable. And I think that's kind of, in some other world, if I was in a robe and I could just live in a monastery, I could work on getting that blissful state all the time, but I've got kids, I've got a comedy, I've got a show tonight,

I've got, you know what I mean, you've got stuff to do. Well, that's the, so this is what I love is I've been taught in Hinduism, whatever that word means, there's these different ashrams, like ways of living, and there's the Brahmachari ashram, that's what you're talking about, the robes, the shaved head, that shit, we didn't get that.

Then there's what's called the Grihasta ashram, that's what you're in, it's called the Householder ashram, and that's considered as valid a path to liberation as shaving your head and wearing robes, actually, there's no difference in the two, and they're both considered a form of living in a temple, it's just, isn't that cool, it doesn't exclude anything, it's all, some people's karma is you just get lucky

and you're born here and you don't get all glued into the system like we are, and that's a really good karma, and it's great if you could, but I would never wanna ever wanna be a monk, I would be, I fucking hate that. I know, I'd be a horrible monk. I'd be the worst monk of all time.

Trying to make jokes, storing that tension, how could you resist? And it sucks, you know, I've heard it really sucks, like I've heard like, it's not, like our idea of the monastic life is imaginary, like in my image, in it is just a tranquility piece, you sit in flowers, it's mud, chant and shit, but the real version of it is,

you're like in this stinky place with like all these farting dudes from eating all the vegetarian and they get in fights, you're like, you used to have the same like dormitory tensions and stuff, and no health insurance, so that's a big problem with monks is they get really sick because they don't have health insurance,

and so it depends on the monk or the monastery, but yeah, they're like, it's not fun to be a monk. No, no way, I couldn't do it. I mean, and that seems to be like the thing, it's like you're always balancing and you're always doing something, you always forget because you got this stuff to do and you have other people to think about,

but I just think it's kind of like, it's kind of like your diet, like sometimes when I'm just, whenever I get like heavier or just kind of like, go on like, you know, a couple months of eating poorly, it's because I'm just not thoughtful about it, I'm just not thinking about it, and as soon as you kind of just pay attention to it,

it all kind of gets corrected, like there's something, there's such a real value to just paying attention and being more thoughtful towards anything, you know, your work, your diet, your family, just not just doing it, but just giving yourself a minute to actually think about what you're doing,

that kind of makes all the difference. Yeah, I learned from my dogs because they don't think about anything and they just eat shit, they'll literally just like decide to eat shit. Like one of my friends dogs was over at the house once and years ago when we had a cat and like we're, you know,

the dog comes bounding onto the couch, sweet dog and suddenly the stink of like cat litter and cat shit just starts rising up from this dog's mouth because it is gone, gone indeed. And then you can buy a pet store stuff, you feed your cat that makes their shit not taste good to dogs. Oh, that's great, I need that actually.

Do your dogs eat your cat shit? Yeah, I have a new, we have a new pug who is like, it's like living with a goat. He just, he just eats everything. It takes things out of the garbage and awful because the cat litter, everything. That's the, that, and to me, like anytime I go unconscious, like what you're saying,

there's no difference between me and that fucking dog. I mean, I'm not eating cat shit, but you know what I mean? I'm not thinking about what I'm putting in my body. I'm not thinking about how I'm sleeping or if I'm drinking enough water, you just go into this like, I don't know, zombified state. Yeah, yeah.

And then you wonder why, and then it's a cycle because then you're wondering why are you feeling headachey and lethargic and depressed. And it's like, well, if I had just thought about what I was putting in my body to begin with, maybe everything would have kind of unfolded a different way. And it's like, you know, we always get these,

I know I do, I get these like, I go on these Jags where I start like, well, I gotta really start something like it's a huge project. It's too much. I'm busy. It's too much to fit giant projects. And just how about just, oh, when you open the refrigerator,

just think for a second. That's all. Just be more thoughtful. See, no, this is what I secretly think that there is a deep attachment to misery that humans have. And the reason what you're saying, ideas like that get rejected.

In other words, like, if I can imagine, like if I, I'm trying to think of like bullshit, crazy ideas I've had regarding getting in shape, you know, like I might suddenly start thinking like, you know what, I'm gonna do Rogan's sober October thing, but I'm not just gonna do that. I'm gonna fast for five days. And get some kettle bells.

Yeah, you know, just insanity that I'll never do. But yeah, just that little tiny shift is so easy, but somehow that simplicity is very difficult for people. Why do we like misery, you think? Well, it's, you know, I think it's, we like familiarity. So, you know, depending on your life, if you're born into certain circumstances, you just get used to disarray.

You get used to madness. You get used to chaos and you just, that's what you're used to. So, if you start suddenly living in a clean environment, you can get homesick for that chaos, you know? Right. Is that what, do you think that's what it is? Or what do you think?

Yeah, no, I mean, that's kind of like when, if you ever date a girl who really likes to fight, it's like, cause she grew up in a fighting environment and they just like, they're comfortable there. And you end up fighting, whether if you're not a fighter, you're like a wreck and they're like happy. It's like that kind of thing. They just, you know, they don't wear,

they're not aware that it's good or bad for them. They just, that's just what they learned. Yeah. And that, you know, that once you realize that, you just stop feeding them. And then, well, I, sometimes that really helps. Like sometimes just not giving them the fight or just not like playing the role of the, like person in the fight that they just,

No, you should break up with them immediately and get out of there. Do you think so? Don't stick, yeah, don't stick around. Well, you're, you're a big enough project. Yeah, right. And trying to, but no, but I think some people can't get out. That's the thing.

Like sometimes people find themselves in a situation, you know, not necessarily the relationship, but sometimes with parents, sometimes they're in a living situation that's just like, they're stuck. There's, they're in the fucking monastery. You know, they're, they can't get it. They're literally trapped.

And so in that, in that circumstance, I think it's worth experimenting with other, you know, with a project of like, well, at the very least, I don't have to play this weird fucking game. I mean, I don't know what your relationship with your parents is like, but when you start uncovering the script, you know what I mean?

Some people are living by a script. It's like they write, they're constantly writing this tragic play and they're giving you a part to play in it. Yeah. And if you're, if you're not careful, you just start playing the part. I know. I know you fall into those roles

that you're supposed to play. Like that's why going home is always so difficult for people like with the holidays and stuff. Cause they go out in their life and they're living as this free person who's doing all this stuff. And then you go home with your brothers and sisters and you're sitting and all of a sudden you're back

into that role that you've been playing between the ages of five and 18. Yeah. And all of a sudden you're not that person, you're not that new person anymore. Do you do that? No, a little bit. Not too much.

Not too much. I was, everything was pretty, pretty cool. Like I was the oldest. So I just dominated and was just the leader. So I continue to do that everywhere I go. But no, but like little things, like more like with my parents probably, you know, like not so much with my siblings,

but with my parents, like the way that you talk to your father or, you know, that kind of stuff, that probably is closer to playing the character in the script, you know? Cause they, especially when they're older, that, you know, they're not gonna, they're not rewriting the script, you know what I mean? Like this is pretty much set.

They don't have the, you know, your siblings are still like coming up with new roles. Parents are kind of locked in. So there, you've heard of this, I'm sure. There's this like an idea that the observation of things at a quantum level seems to have an effect on them, just observing them, just the very act of taking them in can change them for some reason.

The field of awareness seems to produce some effect on things at the quantum level. And sometimes when I was around my dad in the earlier phases of my life with him, coming home when I'm failing at everything, I would look at myself in the mirror and be like, God, why do I look fatter in the mirror around my dad? Why do I have to be, you know what I mean?

And I honestly, I think some people, I think the reason you need to be very careful with your association, and if you can leave, leave, is because it's not just that you're around someone who's starting fights with you, or it's that they have decided you're a certain way and they believe it so firmly that it's literally sucking you in

to that their subjective universe. Like they're, and they're very active appraising you as in whatever stupid way they've appraised you, you start becoming it. You know? Do you know what I mean? Like you start, you get in this weird quantum field, but if you're around someone who loves you,

like my kid, and you get into that thing, it's like suddenly you're free, you feel lighter, you feel powerful, you feel like you could do anything. Yeah, you know, that's a kind of a, it's kind of a, not to take too much of a pivot, but like when you think about it with your kids, you know, I have kids also, and I'm always kind of aware of that,

of like, don't just, just because they were messy before, it doesn't mean they're messy this year. And so you don't have to like keep telling them pick up their shit because that's the way that it's been for the last couple years. They're growing, they're changing, so I should, my views on them should be open and changing. But to go one step deeper with it,

whenever I see like grandparents with their kids, it's nothing but pure love, right? It's nothing but, oh my God, like the kid could do no wrong in the eyes of the grandparent. They're just, it's just purely celebrating, oh my God, love, love, love, love, love, love, love. And I'm always like, why not parent that way?

Why not try and be that for the direct thing? But I always kind of run up, or parents always throw up in front of me, there's the disciplinary part of it that you need to teach them lessons, so you can't go all grandparent in when you're the parent. No way. Right? No way.

You can't. It's abuse. It's abuse. Like these kids, you know, a kid does not need to worry about being the boss. You know, a kid doesn't need to worry about, you know, what the boundaries are. That stresses them out, it freaks them out.

That's my kid. That's what I love. It's so fun to watch because like, for example, he likes to stand up on the couch, but he's too little to stand up on the couch. He's definitely gonna fall and hit his head on the hardwood floor, so you just can't do it. You can't stand on the couch in our house.

So what he does is he figures out exactly the amount of kind of standing he could do. You know, like he's, he finds the exact limit, and then once he knows what that is, I don't know. Like, that's the, it's frustrating to have to be consistent with an adorable thing. You know what I mean? It's frustrating.

You wanna be like, stand on the couch, party dance, but they'll die. They'll kill themselves. Yeah, there's a responsibility in it. It actually, it actually, maybe it would help, help me to think of it as, you're actually showing the more love by being restrictive in teaching and, you know, saying no once in a while.

Then if you were the goofy grandparent who just said yes all the time, that's actually less loving. Yeah, it's less loving. It's like, it gets you into all kinds of trouble. You know, I had Tim Leary's kid on my podcast once, and he told me this story of how Tim Leary and Ramdoss got him stoned when he was in high school. It was a special thing.

They were like, let's, we'll smoke this joint and like talk. And he felt like a grown up. You know, I think he was like a 10th grade or 11th grade or whatever. And so then to, I guess, reward them for giving him any kind of liberty. When he left for school that day, he took the roach to school and smoked it in the playground with his friend.

And the principal had to call Timothy Leary, you know, the great LSD guru to come to get his kid. And Tim Leary's in there, he's like, hey, this might be legal one day, but it's not legal right now. You can't smoke weed here. But that's, you know, that's to me, it's like good parenting. It's like not, even though you would like to get stoned

with your kid, don't. Because it's not, you can't, you gotta be a dad. That's the rule temporarily, that's what they want. That's what you signed up for. You could do that with your nieces and nephews. When you, when, how old were you when you had your first kid? I was like, oh man, I guess I was like 32. 32?

Okay, so you were like, you were like doing comedy and parent, did you have a, were you worried that you would like maybe lose your ability to be funny or lose your edge or that becoming a parent would in some way disrupt your ability to do stand up? Not as far as what I was going to talk about. Like not as far as, like my stuff had always been, I've always really been interested in like human behavior

and families and the dynamic of people and like all of that. I knew it was probably going to inform that, you know. I was a little worried that I just don't want to come out with a whole act of kids stuff. Because I thought that would be, it can devour your act. Yes. So I was worried about that a little bit. But then I kind of found that the one cool thing

is if you're not hacking and you're telling good jokes about all that stuff, we've all, every single person is in a family. So as long as you're just not doing tread stuff, that retread stuff that's like, you know, lame parent to the kid or wife, you know. As long as you're creative and funny with it, it would be okay. But that took a little while to get comfortable with.

But the one thing that I was worried about was just the energy, like the amount of energy that would be split mentally and physically with being in a house with kids, having a family. And then as opposed to being just purely living in my apartment with nothing but comedy on my mind. Like that, that I was worried about. And I did the Tonight Show once with Leno.

And it was the first time I had done it. And I did the set and then sat down on the couch with him. And off air, they went to commercial. And the first question Jay asked me was, are you married? You married? I said, yeah, I'm married, yeah, I'm married. And I said it like kind of like, like proud of it.

Like, yeah, I'm married and I've got a new daughter. And he was like, oh. And I just saw his eyes just kind of like avert. Like, almost like he was like, yeah, too bad. Isn't that crazy? I know, because he didn't do that. He got married, but no children. And I really took it as a, it felt like a judgment,

like, well, this is going to be harder for you. It is, well, I mean, I think in the world of comedy, in the same way there's like the Brahmacharis and the Grihastas, their same thing replicates itself in comedy, which is like, you get the loner, I don't know, Hunter S. Thompson style, like Gonzo comic, and they really don't look kindly

upon the breeders. They consider it to be almost a failure, a sort of like, you know, you fucked up, you got, you know, you got married, you had kids, come on. Every single breath you take, every moment of your life should be comedy until you die. That's it. And I've always found that to be

the craziest, fascist form of like thinking when it comes to art. It's like, how the fuck are you, to me, having had a child and being married, I feel like now I really can connect with audiences. You know, now I kind of do know more about the human experience and what some of these people are going through.

Whereas before it was like, what the, what do I, how do I even understand the world if my entire life is like snorting rails of catamine and playing, playing God of war and like making noises on my synthesizers. You know, like what? It's true. When we were thinking about it,

and we were like, are we gonna do it? We didn't really, we weren't like, oh, we're definitely gonna make a family. My wife and I were kind of analyzing it and thinking about it. And it's like, okay, so we're artists. She's a comedian too. And it was like, okay, so we're artists.

Why would we pass up the single greatest experience or biggest experience that you can have as a human being? Like to bring life onto the planet. And like, as an artist, you'd be denying yourself this window into this whole other part. And that really was like, okay, yeah, let's not be silly about this. Let's dive in.

Now, is it more difficult? Like, does Bobby Lee have a lot more energy when he rolls up to the club after playing video games till three in the morning and then sleeping until three in the afternoon and rolling in just for a sec? Sure, he probably is a little more of a twinkle in his eye. You know, I've been up at six AM, banging out, driving kids to school,

like just dealing with whatever. And, you know, yeah, it's a little more energy you have to, but then you have to get a little more serious in just how you treat it. And you have to do whatever you can. Like we're saying, like eating or whatever it is that gives you the ability to do it. You gotta be more responsible, I think, to your art.

It's, you can't just kind of like think it's going to happen like it did when you were 25 and alone. Right. No, I love that, man. That's it. And I think that's all it takes, really. Have you ever thought about your cellular health? No, me neither.

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Thank you, true nitrogen. I think the whole idea of like, here's how you do it is so nuts anytime anyone tells you like, this is the only, this is the way. It's so fucking crazy and so limiting. And I love being a dad. I love the, I love every bit of it, including the existential horror,

including, you know what I mean, the moment for like, what have I done to worry? And my heart's gonna be broken forever. I will never have like a day now until I breathe my last breath where there isn't some peace in me thinking about my kid and missing him. And like, you know, but I love all of that,

even though God, Jesus, we did sacrifice so much autonomy, so much freedom and more than anything, we really sacrificed the ability to be self-destructive, to be happily self-destructive. Yeah, right, exactly. And it's just like, you know, people are built different ways, but you know, when I see the guys

that decided not to go down that path, I don't know, they don't seem like, they don't seem complete, they don't seem content, you know, there's like, and I'm sure there's, you know, people who famously like rail against it and like, oh, I never would, they all seem a little unhappy. They all seem like a little, there's something,

and you know, I knew we were just kind of on this path right before it where I was so obsessed with myself, like thinking about how I felt, I always thought like, am I getting sick or do I have this thing, it was just me, me, me, me. I was like, I remember consciously thinking right before she was born, like, it's gonna be so nice to think about somebody else.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Get out of this, because you're not that important and it's not good to be that self obsessed. Oh God, it's to, that, you know, that's the, I like that it puts you in this mode of thinking where it's like, right now, my thinking is like, all right, we wanna buy a house

and the reason I wanna buy a house is, look, I'm, you know, the lifespan thing people do, where they're like, I'm gonna live to the end of the human lifespan, it's like, well, you're crazy if you think that, you know what I mean? That's wild that you think you're gonna get to live to be 70 or 80 or whatever, why would you even think that? That's just an average, that's a tendency,

but you know what I mean, you don't know that. So I think now that I have a kid, my thinking is more long lines of, all right, get them some land, get them a place where they can live and then you can pass a house down to your kids and that feels so much better than the other thing that you can slip into if you don't have other people you're taking care of, which is like weird shit, weird shit,

like I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get a really nice, fast car and you know, that kind of weird, where like you get all this weird shit around you that's expensive and you're, I don't know, but then on the other hand, I don't, I think we accidentally become tribalistic when we have a family and suddenly the non-breeders seem like exactly what you're saying,

you look at them and you think- Yeah, you judge them, yeah. And they judge you, we judge each other, like my non-breeder friends, some of them have gotten really harsh with me in passive aggressive ways, you know, and I know I used to think when I was a non-breeder, God, Jesus man, I thought I was like Nietzsche or some bullshit,

like I thought I had really figured it out, like, you know, I discovered the truth of like, the failure of humanity and the idea that you're gonna just make a thing or like, you listen to Jack Kerouac and he's like, do you ever listen to Jack Kerouac, ever read Jack Kerouac? I've read it, yeah.

I'm on a bit of a Jack Kerouac jag right now, one thing that's funny about him is the motherfucker loves to write poetry about people working, but he never is fucking working, he's always like the steelman, the other funny thing about him is he's like completely, like, completely absorbed into the role of like the free poet and one of the things he said is,

beautiful women make graves and you know what I mean, cause you get them pregnant and they have a kid and to have a child is the sentence of being to death, is another famous thing he said, he's the ultimate example of the non-breeder, but do you ever have moments though where you're like, fuck, did I fuck up? Do you ever wonder, where do you think you'd be

if you had not a family? Where do you think you'd be if you didn't have a kid? What do you think you'd be like? Yeah, I think so, I think, you know, it's always, I mean, that's kind of what we're built for is to second guess it. Your brain is always figuring out, is always going to work on something.

So it's always like, yeah, what if we had done this or had done that and I think ultimately there's no question that it was more rewarding and better and especially now, you just have more perspective on what life is and what it's about and it's like, you know, how many movies can you go see? How many times are we gonna sit and discuss philosophy with this guy smoking a cigarette

who thinks he knows what he's talking about? It's just like, oh, you're just spinning around and around and around and everyone's done it before us. Kerouac did it before us and Abby Hoffman did it before us and all these people have done it before us and where did it get them? The same spot. They got them all to the same spot at the end

and you know, you spent your time doing it and it's like, okay, that's fine. If he really enjoyed it and wanted to go that way, good, God bless him, good for him. But I know you probably feel the same way that I do that it's pretty good knowing that we're absolutely right. I love feeling that right. That's all I wanna do is be right, completely righteous.

I wanna be the most right person on the planet. Yeah, look, I don't think there's any one way to live or anything like that, but damn, I would never, if I, you know, I think back like, Jesus, I got so lucky that I got lucky that I have a kid. Like I get scared, you know that thing where people say, if you could travel back a time and tell yourself anything, what would you tell, it's like,

I don't wanna fuck up my timeline. Like if I would be afraid if I, do you ever think like, it really freaks me out to imagine like, what if I had jerked off the night before I had sex with my wife when we conceived forest. I would have come his DNA and he would never exist in the world. You ever think about that?

Right, he'd be a stain on a pillow. Yeah, that thing, do you ever just like, it kind of makes me just like, it gives me this weird vertigo when you consider that you almost didn't get to meet these beings that are in your life because you came at the wrong time or you came on her stomach or back.

I know, yeah, no, it's, yeah, that's a whole nother thing. I mean, to think of like every little decision in the past that would have been, I used to think about that in New York all the time. Like if I had just left the apartment one minute earlier, it would have changed the whole thing of when I got down the subway steps into the train, saw those people, got popped out through the,

just those like tiny incremental things that could change everything. But I do feel like, I do feel like it's kind of, it's not that it's out of our hands because I have not come down on whether this is all supposed to happen for a reason or whether I even have control over it. I can't, I haven't been able to figure out

where I land on all of that. But I do kind of feel like this is kind of the part of the free way of concerns up here and that the whole thing of like who you're with and all of these bigger things just kind of, it's just part of the flow that's just deeper than all of these decisions up here. So like when Leno says, do you have a family?

It didn't really, it doesn't really matter. It didn't matter what answer I gave him. It was, that's not important. Like this stuff down here is important and that'll manifest itself into all these other things regardless of what decisions we kind of made. Man, that was a confusing answer. It's a beautiful answer actually.

That's been my approximation of it too is I'm just not really, you do, I think the older you get, the more you start wondering just how much, who's actually, like I think the way Romulus put it was who's minding the store here really? Like who's doing this? But let me, I got a little Leno's story.

When I was dating Natasha Legerro, she was on Leno. And man, I was dead broke. I was driving this shitty car. I was going to see her on my very successful comedian girlfriend, beyond Leno. I almost didn't make it because my muffler fell off the car in the parking lot of the studio and I had to like, I came in all greasy and shit

and he came into the green room and he said the most mortifying thing I've ever heard. I still, it echoes in my head and especially at that moment in my life, it really hurt. He said, and I can't do a Leno impression, but he said, if you're not on TV, you're losing. And it was the most, it was like, it was just a dab. It was like he just for no reason,

psychically knew the worst thing to say to me. It hurt so bad. But God, what an archaic, shitty, stupid way to think about existence. Like who the fuck's on TV? Like one minute, like a tenth of a tenth of the human population is on network television. Like you feel like the whole planet is failing.

But is there something, and I go through this a lot with guys of our generation too, does it take that kind of drive, that kind of insane, ego-driven single thought? You know what I mean? You see it with, there's some people we know who are like crazy, crazy successful, and they just kind of carry this other level of ego

that regardless of how talented they are, everyone has a little something, but the fame almost, it doesn't equate to the talent, but it does equate to the amount of ego, I am the greatest drive that they have. Yeah. You know what I mean? Oh yeah.

There's like, and I think at that time with him, like he got to the top of that TV mountaintop because he did believe that, right? Like that was all he was focused on. He wasn't thinking about having kids and doing all this other, it was purely, he couldn't allow himself to think otherwise. Right.

I'm not saying it's healthy, but don't you think that there is something to those people? You know what I mean? Well, what am I going to say? Jay Leno fucked up. It's like, he really screwed up his life as a comic. He made a lot of bad decisions to end up posting the fucking tonight.

Okay, I guess this is my question then. Do they need, do you need to have that in order to get there? Well, I mean, the problem is that there, I don't even know if that there is there anymore. Like that, I think in that time period, when I first came to the comedy store, that was it, man. And that, you know, people still have pagers. They get paged for their commercial auditions,

stop at a pay phone. Hey, I had Thomas Guides to get to the, you know what I mean? There was no fucking internet. Yeah, there was no way to do what we're doing now. Back then, technologically, if you wanted to do that, you would need a lot of money and we didn't have any money to do that.

So back then, he was right. Now, it's not the case. It's, I think it's a whole different landscape now. And what's really confusing about it is you're not gonna get any kind of affirmation from the old guard regarding this new way of being a comedian because it's an existential threat. It's like, they're not gonna tell you, you know,

I was so, I got lucky, got this cartoon on Netflix. And I was like, thank you friend. But, you know, that was my first, you've been on a bunch of things. That was my first thing. And it was really exciting, but I was talking to some very successful podcasters, like very successful.

And they jokingly, they were like, I would like it. I feel weird that I don't have that. That I don't have the show thing. And it was so weird because it's like, you do have a show. It just didn't happen. And their show, I'm sure more people have listened to them, way more people have listened to them than saw my show. But because it's not a massive corporation

nighting you by giving you a series for some reason, it's still in its comics to think, oh, I haven't reached the top. But it's like the new version of things is actually, you don't need a network anymore. Do you agree? What do you think about that? No, 100%.

I think there's so many more opportunities. And it's kind of, I always play around with, OK, so if I'm not selling out Madison Square Garden, is it because it's not really that important to me to sell Madison Square Garden? Like, we all kind of think like, whoever the biggest has to be, that's the ultimate. And I remember talking with Maria Bamford.

And we were talking about the same thing. And she was talking about a Kevin Hart. I don't think it was Kevin. But that kind of a guy who is just so good at being a corporation himself. Like, he's building an empire, right? He's building this giant thing. He is selling out Madison Square Garden.

And he also has production companies and TV shows. And he has a vitamin water and his own boner pills. And I mean, whatever he wants to do, he's creating the thing. He has his own boner pills. And he's seen as like the biggest thing of comedy. And Maria, just simply, who's so brilliant, she just was like, who would want that? I just wanted to tell some jokes and come home

and make dinner with my pugs. And it was like, she was like, I just want to open a little bookshop. I don't want to be a corporation with people asking me questions. Oh my god. That is so genius. You know what I mean?

I am so glad you said that. Because I was right as you were saying that, I was just getting an anxiety attack. Imagine what it would be like to be backstage at Madison Square Garden's about to step out for the first time on stage. Oh god, I don't know if I could survive the green room situation there. All the people coming in, security.

The sounds of the large crowd out there. Jay-Z and Beyonce just wanting to say hello before the show. You're annoyed with Beyonce because you're trying to get your. That's so weird to think there's people who are annoyed with Beyonce. That's so weird. Yeah, I don't know, man. That's what I love about what your book is putting out there,

is just that you're just where you're at. Like, yeah, you might not be like a Kevin Hart style person. But here's something I meant. I meant to ask you up front. I forgot. Are you getting any? Saying that things are OK, that you're OK the way you are, and that you're OK, that this is fine.

It's actually a political statement these days. If you put out there that I'm doing great, I feel great. A lot of times people are going to respond with, yeah, of course you're doing great. You're white. You're a comic. You're doing great because you're fine. You are doing great.

You are actually doing great because literally you have a career. But I'm not doing fucking great. I'm like, we're all fucked. I love that you had the guts to say, all of it is fine. But has anyone come at you? That's crazy. I've been attacked for saying, I feel good. I enjoy my life, for that this is great.

People are like, well, that's your privilege talking. You know that's here. What do you think of that? No, I think that that's being aware and thoughtful and grateful. And I think that all these people that you try and study and learn from, they were all different colors, all different genders, all different races. This isn't about the parameters and the social rules

and things of the culture and all of this noise. This isn't about being great because I got a house somewhere and had this much money or that. We're talking about something deeper. You're talking about looking in the eyes of your child and appreciating that you're having this meal together. That's you doing great. And that is available to everybody every moment.

Mm. Not when you're on fire. When they put it out, can't burn forever. That's what I never want to hear. I never want to hear someone say, you can't burn forever, kids. Roll around a little. Tom, I'm so I'm so lucky you decided to do my podcast. I really appreciate it.

This is so cheesy, please. But I got to tell you when I saw you were on B movie, I wanted to ask you. Do you have a second for one more question? Yeah, I got nowhere to go. OK, great. I wasn't sure. OK, so how many times have you seen B movie? Well, I wrote on it, too. So you wrote on B movie.

Yeah, I got this. OK, so my wife prohibited me from showing TV to Forrest, because apparently I'm supposed to show TV to young kids. And so she I don't remember where she was, but I'm sitting on the couch. I'm like, I'm going to just show him. I got to show him a cartoon. He reacts. So because he hadn't seen I hadn't seen it.

So I put a B movie on just because that was what popped up. Oh, he was transfixed. Of course. And let me tell you, I have paid dearly for that, because now I have seen B movie. Fifty times, 30. I don't know. It's always on. He'll you know, he'll just like be be be. Or like, you want to see B movie?

Yeah, because they don't get tired of it. They they but OK, so I got to ask you, you wrote on B movie. That's crazy is B movie or critique of socialism? Also, it's important to know it's a courtroom drama. That's what I realized. This is a courtroom drama that appears to be a critique of socialism. What do you think? No, I would say no. I just because it comes from the mind of Jerry Seinfeld.

Who I know for a fact does not care about socialism. He doesn't care about capitalism. He doesn't care about social movements. He doesn't care about things being meaningful or driven. He only cares about is this funny. He's it's purely where he lives and what he conjures up. I think the audiences can draw metaphors and stuff, you know, and maybe subconsciously some of it trickled in.

But I know that consciously, at least, it had nothing to do with anything other than how funny is it that that this B is functioning in the in the in the human world. And then that was it. That's so good to hear. See, this is great. This is, you know, I love conspiracy theories. I hang out on Reddit conspiracy. Highly advise it for anyone listening and for you to. But I do it as a form of, you know, I view it as a kind of like modern folk stories.

I don't think it's real. Yeah. And one of the things that they are really it's the most. I don't know what happened because the conspiracy community goes through phases. So it's the most bizarre fucking thing because people will write these essays on some crazy theory. And in the essay, they will just all of a sudden be like in the B movie when as as though it were real or as though, you know what I mean? They don't differentiate.

They don't write, but but. And I haven't seen any conspiracy on B movie. But other movies, you know, essentially, there's this idea of something called I think it's called predictive programming. And so it's a whole genre of conspiracy theory, which is that movies come out and they, you know, foretell what's about to come. They get people ready for what's coming. The Simpsons predicting this and that.

Right. Like big movies about disasters will come out. And then there's a disaster. And so people feel the Illuminati are making these movies to condition people to get ready. And so, yeah, as I get, you know, what it is, it's just being stoned and watching B movie for like the 28th time. You need something else to think about. I start thinking like, wait a minute, the bees have unionized.

And because they are or also there's this sinister thing that one of the lines in the B movie. And again, this is just from having watched this fucking movie too many times. And I'm sorry to do this to you. But literally one of the lines, one of the bees is like, yeah, you work until you die. That's what you do. And I'm like, oh, my God, that's hypnotic.

They're trying to get people to just like not question like their identity as workers. And it's so funny to hear you. But now Jerry Seinfeld just wanted to guarantee you. I guarantee you in the writer's room, somebody said, said, put that line out. Yeah, you work until you die. That's what you do.

And then Jerry fell out laughing and it got in the movie. So how many people are in the writer's room for B movie? It was kind of rotating. It was there was it was small. It was like like five. And then we had, oh, there's here. So here's something that I'll give you for your conspiracies. The one night we were at DreamWorks working on it.

And we showed it to Sasha Baron Cohen and Gary Shanling. And they came into the room with us afterwards, just to kind of get their opinions and and and any notes or whatever. And, you know, two genius minds there, right? Sasha Baron Cohen and Gary Shanling. And it turned into this such a bizarre. You couldn't even wrangle all the thoughts because it was and Shanling was really going off the rails.

And it was like, none of this is going to be usable. But what a moment. What a cool hour to have like in the writer's room. But I do remember Shanling saying something about, you know, the the beehive with the guy with the smoker, you know, like, and they're all like all the bees are kept in the in those. What is what's it called? Like, I don't know, a man, my man made hive or whatever that thing is.

And and that the guy comes in with the smoker and he was equating that to Nazi Germany that all of the that all of the bees were stuck in these things and they had no idea that they just had to work and they were stuck in this thing. And it was like, what are you talking? I remember I remember literally everybody going, what? Wait, what? I love it.

It's true, though. Listen, what? Just I don't I mean, watch it again. But from the perspective of the B movie is a critique of socialism and an invitation for people to just succumb to the machine and you will see it in there. It's it's accidentally in there. Yeah, but but isn't that just what bees are? Isn't that just how bees work?

And then just because we are adapting it, putting it in a cartoon and digesting it as a human being doesn't change that. Yeah, bees. All right, I'll go with you. Bees are communists. They are. They are bees are a communist. For sure. They're the board. They're like communists. They. They really don't care about their identity at all.

They're no, it's all the collective. Yeah, I mean, that is kind of like what what the main bee is doing, right? He's breaking out of that. He's going the opposite way in the in the in the prison, right? He's he's walking in the direction. Yeah, but hey, don't let me burst your bubble. You did. I'm glad I love every time my bubble gets burst. I'm so I like because my mind just everything is

it will immediately go to the most ridiculous. I just think it's important for people to hear that too, because a lot of people really do when you don't have all the information. It's very easy to project onto the world, complete insanity. I mean, look at what's happening with QAnon right now. Like, yeah, that's the most wild, emergent religion I've ever seen. Well, well, I mean, that's kind of the thing about the moment that we're in, is that you have this way to communicate it with each other, you know,

and like during Hitler, they said that that was such a rise because it was also the rise of radio and nobody was able to communicate in that way to people. And it became like the technology was grabbed by this movement and was so effective. And we're kind of in that similar moment now where social media is this new way of people digesting all of this and thinking that it's all real and it's able to manipulate that technology and use the propaganda

for whatever reason you have. So when things catch fire, like the Q thing, it's like it is catching fire. But it's really almost the way that that information is being dispersed more than even the validity of the information that it's carrying. Do you know what you should do if you want to do a cool experiment? Just tweet anything moderately pro-Biden anything. Just tweet like Biden, I'm going to vote for Biden. And I'm with Joe, I'm with Joe tweet that and then watch what happens.

It's the damnedest thing because all of a sudden really bots will come into your timeline and they they're really I heard that I heard this on NPR. I was like, whoa, but so just using a keyword, a bot will appear in your timeline and will say something that vaguely looks like it could fit in. I got one after the debates last night and somebody just wrote, I don't know why people are saying such bad things about Trump. He's really done a lot of great things like and listen to things he did. And you look at it and you're like, wait a minute, click on the click on that profile.

And you scroll down and all it is is retweets of Trump. There's no person there. It's like so it's bots that have been trained to swarm threads and inject they're like whatever whatever their particular message is. And but there's some intelligence to it, too, because there's like, I don't know, there's like a weird they make them seem they may it seems like they're kind of punk rock. You know what I mean?

They're status bootlickers, but they have like sort of disguised themselves as these like anarchist chaos magicians, these brilliant minds. We've seen the truth, but it's like you're just you just like the fucking president. There's nothing more vanilla and square and there's nothing interesting about it. You're just somebody who likes the president. We've an old 75 year old guy. Yeah. It's so weird. No. Wow, I'm going to try that. That's amazing.

It yeah. And like you said, there's not even a human being behind it. So it's like, holy cow. I mean, I remember I remember like, you know, people thinking there was messages and Pink Floyd's the animals and like all this different stuff. But it was just so small because it could only catch fire in my dorm room. You know what I mean? Like us five guys might talk about it. Maybe the girl from upstairs will be into it.

But now you just go into the net and it's like globally there's people that believe in that and start adding to it. And, you know, it's a it's a world of make believe. Yeah, it really it is like, I think people are going to look, you know, they used to put fucking radium in watches. You know, that used to be a thing, right? But they're going to look back on this and be like, holy shit, that was when the entire planet got contaminated by this psychic

malady that was being like a swoven together by fucking bots. Like, yeah, that's what's weird. Like in the old days, you go to the town hall meeting. People like, you know, stand up and yell at the mayor. Yeah, I imagine being in a town hall meeting, someone stands up and yells at the mayor and then like starts malfunctioning because it's an Android. Yeah. That's literally what's happening is like androids have infiltrated

our town hall, which is the Internet and are like not. We who the fuck are they? Where and even and even if it is a human being, it's it's so easy and small and lazy to be able to complain and send something out, send a message about canceling somebody like it's so small. Like it if I were running like a giant network and you wanted me to take someone off of the air because of something that they said, I will only accept it in a handwritten form

in a letter that was written out, folded, put a stamp on the envelope, walked to the mailbox and put in because that if there's a millions of those, then I'll I'll listen to it. But just for people to pop off just as they're sitting there, you know, vaping at the same time just because everyone else is like there's no there's no weight to that. No, it's all air. It's all ones and zeros. It's like there's nothing really behind it for real.

Well, man, I'm going to this is the last point I want to make. But this is I want to share with you my newest paranoid fantasy. All right. This is pretty fucked up. This was thinking it's like how what if all your friends had been digitized? Like, in other words, like what if all your friends have been turned into AI bots? Uh-huh. And every text you were getting from your friends, it was just an AI bot.

You know, like some people so people are so absorbed into their phones. Like the phone is so much their universe. Yeah, that they could you could have like a fake Twitter, fake Facebook, fake whatever, and you would believe it was real. Do you know what I mean? I'm fake, fake mom, fake dad, fake friend from high school. Exactly. Like how many of the people if you're not regularly seeing people that you're texting with Instagram, just that's like a like

complete replica of humans. It's not even real, but you're looking at it and you believe it's real. And so this is like one of the creepy ideas about AI and the future of humanity is that once it can replicate perfectly the sound of someone's voice, yeah, the way someone looks, if your contact with humanity is solely through your phone or through Zoom, it wouldn't be that hard to just hijack your entire universe and replace your whole universe with an AI that was pretending to be your friends.

I like it. I like I'll go. I'll slow it down just a hair just just for the movie just for the script idea. Yeah. That we're not there yet, but someone's developed the the ability to do it. So when like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, when say your friend dies, then you have the option to keep him alive digitally in your life. So your friend in real time dies, but you're able to keep him alive and you get text messages from him.

He's still interacting, still posting things about his vacation. Yeah. And that slowly starts to happen with everybody. And we all as as everybody dies and that's what's left is all of the digital versions. Oh, fucking, that's what we're in right now is the replica. We're just in a replica. We're not we're the thing. We've already been digitized. No, I don't think so because I I I'm hungry. But are you really? Are you really?

Look, man, I could go on talking with you forever. I feel like I have I just am so lucky that we I get to chat with you, man. It's really, really cool to get to be friends with you. And thanks for coming on the show, Tom. Oh, I feel the same way. Whenever I'm sitting around thinking like who's what's the what other guests should I get for my podcast? I think I should just call Duncan again.

Any time you should be you should be like every other week. Whenever you whenever you want to talk, man, I just I love these conversations so much. I'm disappointed to hear that B movie isn't predictive programming to try to condition us. It's just Jerry Seinfeld being funny. But you know what? It's better, I guess that way. Yeah, you got some shows coming up on in November. Yeah, I'm going to Omaha and in Hilarity's in Cleveland.

Awesome. All right, cool, man. And where you're Tom Papa on Twitter. What's your at Tom Papa's all the stuff at Tom Papa on Instagram and and Twitter, which is not as active and the breaking bread with Tom Papa podcast that you've been a guest on. Go see Tom live. It's worth the risk. And God bless you for being on the show, man.

I don't know when I see your body, but in real life. And unless you come up to the mountains, but I will, I will for sure. Thanks, man. Thanks, man. That was Tom Papa, everybody. A big thank you to him and a giant thank you to all of our sponsors. And of course, thank you to you for continuing to listen to and support the DTFH. It's the only podcast that has won two Huffington Tramp Awards. And we're up for another one this year.

Please vote on that. I love you all so much. I'm going to see you next week until then. Hare Krishna. You were never short on options at JCP.com, all dressed up everywhere to go. JCPenney.