Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Tom Rhodes

Episode Date: July 28, 2016

Recorded at the lavish estate of world traveller and mind-bending comedian Tom Rhodes.

Hello, friends. It's me, Duncan, and you're listening to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast. And if you notice that my voice sounds even more wretched than usual, it's because I came down with a case of what is known as Nerd Flue, or Comic-Rud. I went to Comic-Con and experienced an Old Testament style striking down from the universe. I did all these panels, and then my voice was ripped from me by God. And I totally lost my voice, got really sick. I'm at the tail end of the thing now, but it was Comic-Con's amazing, but the fucking sickness that comes from all those cosplayers grinding together in that massive hall, the sickness that comes is similar to the same kinds of sickness that run rampant

in the refugee camps of the world, where plague dogs maul the corpses of rotting children, and piss sprays from the statues, and the rivers and waterways run with the pungent feces of a million dying men. It's the same kind of sickness, and I had no idea. I woke up one morning and I just couldn't talk, and I thought, oh, I guess I just blew my voice out from screaming at a party. But no, it was the Comic-Rud, the Comic-Flu, the Nerd Flu, Doom Flu, and it sucks. But it was definitely worth it. Comic-Con is one of the greatest events that I've ever attended in my entire life. I'd like to talk about it more, but I imagine my voice sounds like the cracked fingernails of a vampire scraping against

some granite tomb. I don't want to wreck your ears with this awfulness, and only because I don't fully understand what Nerd Flu really is, I'm afraid that it could be transmitted sonically. We don't know what this shit is, we don't know what happens when hundreds of thousands of lovers of art and freaks and creative people gather together, maybe it opens some mini portal into a universe of disease, maybe to balance out such glory that the universe has to inject some percentage of the attendees with this foulness, and perhaps it can be transmitted through sound alone, and I don't want to sicken you, my dear listeners. So I won't go on much longer, but so much I want to yapp about. I got an HTC Vive, I've been

living in the world of virtual reality, sneezing and coughing as I exist in alternate liminal universes now accessible to anyone who has a fast computer and the dough to buy one of these things, and my god, it's even better than I thought it was. It's the most incredible thing ever, prepare yourself for many rants about this new technology. All I can say is if you have the ability to get an HTC Vive, do it, it's worth it. Even in its early phases, it's worth it. Don't let the naysayers detract you from experiencing this glorious, glorious thing. I will no longer continue this intro. I'm just going to do a quick commercial and jump right into this podcast with Tom Rhodes. Next week, we're going to attempt live streaming,

so keep your eye on my Twitter feed because I'll be tweeting when we're going to do it. So hopefully that'll work, and hopefully by then I will have recovered from whatever this foulness is. This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by Audible.com. If you go to AudibleTrial.com forward slash family hour, that's AudibleTrial.com forward slash family hour and sign up for a trial membership. You will get one free audio book and you don't even have to continue the membership. You could just get essentially get a free audio book if you don't want to subscribe eternally to their service. I don't know why you wouldn't. It's one of my favorite things. It extends your cleaning sessions. When you're listening to an audio book, you actually want to do

the dishes. Long drives become slightly more pleasurable if you've got an awesome audio book that you're getting sucked into. Currently, I have an upcoming podcast planned with the brilliant actor Daniel Gillies. I met him on Hormontown and we basically started a book club and the book that we are both reading right now is Moby Dick. Well, I'm listening to it and there's an amazing edition of it on Audible narrated by the great Frank Mueller who is also the narrator of my favorite series, the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, which is currently being made into a movie. And if it sucks, then there's going to be trouble, man. There's going to be trouble. Anyway, if you sign up for, if you go to audible trial,

audible trial dot com, forward slash family hour, you can download the Frank Mueller edition of Moby Dick and prepare yourself for this upcoming podcast with a great Daniel Gillies who, based on the conversations that we've been having so far about it, understands the novel with far more clarity and at a much greater depth than I currently do. So I'm trying to keep up with him. When we agreed to do this, I didn't realize I was dealing with a super genius, but it's going to be a great podcast. I'm looking forward to it. And if you want to support this podcast, why not sign up for a trial membership? You don't have to get Moby Dick if you've already read it, or if you're not interested in it. There

are zillions of great audio books on there, including Terrence McKenna's Archaic Revival, which is unfortunately narrated by, the narrator sounds like an alien robot, which I guess is suitable for McKenna's work, but it does get annoying, but the information in there is incredible. There's a million great books on Audible. Go to audibletrial.com forward slash family hour and sign up for membership. Won't you? We also are sponsored by Amazon. You can go through our Amazon portal located in the comment section of any of these episodes and anything you buy on Amazon, they will give us a very small percentage of said thing. If you really want to go nuts, why not order a bad ass gaming computer through Amazon and join me

in the alternate universe that is currently forming around us in the form of virtual reality. We also have a shop located at dunkintrustle.com with a lot of awesome shirts and posters and some mugs. So if you want to get some DTFH swag, it's all there for you. And thank you to all of you who continue to donate to the podcast. May your orgasms increase in number and intensity. All right, friends, let's jump right into this episode. Today's guest is a brilliant comedian and is the host of a wonderful podcast called the Tom Rhodes Radio Smart Camp. If you're listening to this episode on the week of July 27th and happen to be at the Montreal Comedy Festival, then go check out one of Tom's shows and witness what standup comedy is supposed to look like.

I'm going to have all the links that you need to find Tom Rhodes located in the comment section of this episode. So let's get into it. Everybody please dig those astral fingers into your closed down heart chakra and rip it open like some magical clam laying on the shore of a mystical island. A clam containing within it the captured spirit of some love blasting genie and let that genie fly through the invisible conduits that connect all of us in the direction of our wonderful guest, the mystical Tom Rhodes. Tom, welcome back to the Dugga Trust Family Hour podcast. Thank you so much for having us over your place. I'm at your house now and it's beautiful. You're our first dinner guest, man. That's

quite an honor. It is. I feel very honored for a lot of reasons because you, the last time we spoke, you were still living the life of the hunter-gatherer, right? Well, yeah, like the Bohemian Vagabond living anywhere. That's right. No address. Yeah. Living in hotels and now you have settled down, so to speak. Your books have come out of storage. So this is what I had in storage. What do you think? It's incredible. So yeah, it's incredible because you have this beautiful collection of books and not only that, but a beautiful collection, an amazing record collection, but then a lot of souvenirs from your travels. And one thing that really stands out to me is how organized you are. How do you keep all this stuff? How have you managed to

maintain all of this stuff and not lose it to time? Well, I mean, that's what I kept in storage, you know? So the thing that meant the most to me was the books in my music collection. So the first time I moved to Europe in 2000, when I moved to Amsterdam, I had furniture. I put everything in a storage and then so I was over there for five years and then I moved back to Los Angeles and then, you know, some of the furniture I had was kind of ratty and I had an apartment in Koreatown. This is my third time living in Los Angeles. 20 years ago, I had a sitcom. I lived on top of the Hollywood Hills. What was the sitcom? Mr. Rhodes had long hair, played a school teacher. They gave all the jokes to the kids.

I was the straight man on my own show. And you wrote the show? I had a show dropped on top of me. Who dropped it on you? I mean, NBC gave me the opportunity, but it was made at Universal. So you got a development deal? Yeah. And so from the development deal, you sat around with some writers. You must have helped in the creative process somewhat. Well, I wanted to be a public defender. That was the idea that I had come up with and, you know, the voice of the voiceless. And then I thought, there's not too many sitcoms that I was a fan of, but I always loved Barney Miller because it was kind of gritty and people are getting arrested and coming in. So I thought like a public defender court show like that would be cool. So

somebody at NBC, the word I got was that they had had a lawyer show fail. And they said, could you make Tom a teacher? Okay. So, but this is, what year was this? It was on 96 to 97. So 96. So this is, I don't know if people are aware of the fact that there was a time in comedy where there are these things called development deals. And I guess they still happen to some degree, but there was a time where if you were, if you got noticed by the industry and they would give you this amazing thing called the development deal, which is a big check. They just basically, they sort of buy you in a way. Like you begin to work for the studio and you are, you have to create a show for yourself or they create a show for you, but it's a collaboration,

so to speak. How did you get the development deal? What precipitated that moment? Well, I was, I moved to San Francisco in 1990. That's where I got good as a comedian. Yeah. And then I did Comedy Central's To Drink Minimum. And Comedy Central was a brand new network. And I was young and skinny and I had long hair. It was kind of sexy. And they, Comedy Central gave me a development deal first. Right. So I actually was the first development deal in the history of the Comedy Central network. How much money were development deals back then? Like that, I forget what the Comedy Central one was. I think maybe 40,000, 50,000. Okay. And then the NBC development deal was like 75,000. Wow. And that's, but that's for what, a year or six months? Yeah, to hold you for

like a year or two. A year. Yeah. But Comedy Central made me the face of the network. I was like their boy. I did commercials for them. I did these, they filmed my jokes like rock videos and played them. Sliced in with the commercial breaks. They sent me to cover all these different events. The Super Bowl, the Dream Team. I went on tour with the Horde Festival with the Black Crows and Cheryl Crow and Ziggy Marley and Blues Traveler. I got to do all these really cool things for Comedy Central. And then that led up to this hour special that I did called Viva Vietnam. In 1994, Bill Clinton lifted the travel ban on Vietnam, the way Obama just lifted it on Cuba. And because my father had flown helicopters in Vietnam and was shot down during the war,

he survived. It was like a topic that was kind of dear to me and my family. And I love my dad. So I thought, hey, that's funny. And I went there and made this travel log where I traveled all over Vietnam. It's called Viva Vietnam. It's on, I put it on, on YouTube. This is, but this is not a, that's a comedy special or just a, it was like a special where I went to go have a good time for the boys who didn't get to go there and have a good time. Wow. I called it Viva Vietnam, a white trash adventure tour. That is cool. So we did some funny things like I, we set up a slip and slide on China Beach, called it the world's most dangerous place to set up a slip and slide. Wow. I brought

Rockham Sockham robots with me and fought people wherever I went. That's cool. It was kind of like the rematch. And then in Hanoi, we, and then in 1994 technology, we had to, these women, old women in Hanoi in the park do Tai Chi every morning. Yeah. So we set up a television and a VCR. And so 94 technology, we had to run like a half a mile extension cords stuck together so we could play the Jane Fonda workout tape on a VCR on a television in the park. And these old Vietnamese women loved it. And then they did it with us. Wow. How many? How many? About 30, 40. Wow. And you know, you might, you're probably too young to remember, but you're a smart guy. You probably do know this, but at the height of the Vietnam war, Jane Fonda went to Hanoi.

That's right. Yeah. To protest the war. Turncoat. And to this day, Vietnam veterans, hater guts. Yeah. My dad does. They, a lot of Vietnam veterans, they have these Jane Fonda urinal targets. And they still call her Hanoi Jane to this day. So for me, that was like the, I think the highlight of the Viva Vietnam was to set up this, you know, because the Jane Fonda workout tape was very popular at the time. So I was like the face of Comedy Central. And then I did, oh, so that came on, we filmed it September 94. And then it came on April 95 to coincide with the 20 year anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war, the fall of Saigon. So I had had kind of a big profile from Comedy Central, even though it was a cable network,

but they didn't, they didn't have any signature shows yet. They were still a, you know, starting out network. But also very important to note, this is before the explosion of the internet and all the content out there. So having anything on Comedy Central was a really big deal. Not that it isn't now, but it was much more of a big deal back then. This is not a little thing that was going on. Yeah. So I did the Montreal Comedy Festival in 1995. And that's where NBC discovered me. Okay. And then that's where they gave me the development deal. But you didn't do new faces, did you? Was it new? It couldn't be. You were already on Comedy Central. So it must have been some kind of gala show or something like that. I mean, I did a lot of shows. Right. I mean, I might have been

on a new faces show. I don't remember. That's fascinating. I don't remember. But by the time you got to Montreal, you were a big deal. Like you were already on Comedy Central. So it wasn't necessarily a discovery that NBC made. They just sort of scooped you up or they just picked the tree that Comedy Central had been growing. And that was still, I mean, it kind of died a few years later. Maybe I had something to do with it. But back then, these networks would go to Montreal, see an act they loved, and then cut a big check. That's right. And then they, you had, they held you for whatever a year or two for the development process. This was the dream. When I started doing comedy, it was the tail end of that dream. And you would hear people just talk about these

development deals. It was the Garden of Eden. It was the fountain of youth. It was the ultimate of ultimates for a up and coming comedian. The path is you go to Montreal, you do new faces, you do a good job. And sometime after the show, someone from a network approaches you, you have a meeting and the next thing you know, you've got one of these sweet development deals. And all of your sorrows and trouble as far as money goes evaporates. And now you're set for the rest of your life. You will never have to work again and all be well. That's the fantasy of it, man, which is why Montreal became this high powered, like the Olympics of comedy. Montreal became this incredible, super inflated thing at that time, because there was so much opportunity

there. And there still is, but not to the degree that it was when it happened for you. So how did it work? You do these shows at Montreal, and then did someone come and talk to you? Yeah, I met Shelley McCrory after the show. Actually, there was a bidding war after the Montreal festival. A bidding war. That's right. That's the other part of the bidding war between Fox, NBC and HBO. Fox actually offered more money. But to me, NBC was American comedy. I had grown up watching the Tonight Show, David Letterman, Saturday Night Live. All these classic American comedies were done on NBC. Taxi, I mean, I'm blanking, but I just thought that was the place. And then Fox was, they were only, I don't know, five years old

then, but they were like American Gladiator and some real kind of lowest common denominator shows and stuff. It was a lot of tits and ass. Okay, yeah, sure. Oh, yeah, that's right. I remember that. Sure. I remember that. Now, you know, like Fox News is known as the right wing network, but back then it was just known as just tits and ass. That's right. Yeah, sure. But so who was your agent at the time? Well, Dave Becky was my manager, and William Morris was my... Dave Becky, three yards. Yeah. So you, how did it, I'm just trying to imagine what I would be doing if I found myself at the center of a bidding war. I'm trying to think about what would be going through my mind, like my ego, what would be happening with my ego? How are you keeping yourself in check? Were you, how are you? I thought

it was all destiny. I thought it was bound to happen. You know, I didn't doubt for a second. I thought that was, I mean, I never wanted to sit come. I just wanted to be a comedian. So I knew so many comedians, especially like in the late 80s, when I was a young guy, everybody wanted to sit come. So everybody was trying to be clean, and they all wanted to be Jerry Seinfeld. It was this really bland observational humor, very white heterosexual suburban, just white bread bland shit. Yeah. And, you know, I grew my hair long. I moved to San Francisco because I wasn't interested in doing television. Right. I just wanted to become a great comedian. Yeah. That was all I was interested in. So I thought, oh, well, of course I would be the one offered his own sit come because I was the

one guy who wasn't chasing it. Right. So it just seemed like, oh, wow, that's the alchemy. But it's kind of like the outsider comic who turns his back on the whole thing and of course gets drawn in because of that. Did you feel any reservations about being on TV? Did you feel a little dirty? It slipped out of control. I mean, I thought, oh, a teacher, okay, you know, I could kind of, you know, do my monologues in front of the class or whatever. But somebody knew that that year, five different teacher shows came on when they said, can you make Tom a teacher? And I just say someone from NBC said that because that's what I was told by one of the people within my management, not David Becky. And I just thought that was the way it was. I mean,

you can't always trust your own people. And I thought, yeah, what the hell? I thought I'd be slapping God in the face if I didn't go for it. The first couple episodes started out good. So what you mean, the note from NBC may not have been put him in a teacher show. I've been saying that forever. Okay. But you know what? I never actually heard someone from NBC that one of my people told me that. So like, that's the thing. I've been saying NBC said that forever. And then after that came out of my mouth for the 50,000th time, I thought, wait a minute, I have no proof that anyone from NBC said that, right? Because my guy told me you're a guy. And that's the thing. So you have the way that the system used to work is there was this cellular

membrane around the entertainer and the cellular membrane, your liaison. That's right. It's your representation. And there's a kind of weird immune system set up in that membrane. And what that means is they, they have an eye, they have a lot of different, they have a lot of different intentions going on that aren't just wanting you to have success. They have a lot of different, they have maybe he's, maybe he thinks he knows how the, the blackjack table works. Or maybe he has another client who for some reason was going to do a public defender show and he didn't want to compete against himself or maybe there's all kinds of things that you'll never know because of that system. It's really

kind of terrifying in a lot of ways. It's just after it's all over, then you've got the rest of your life to think back on moments where and put it, put it together. Because they use you, because they not, they don't always do this, but you do hear again and again and again, how entertainers are kind of used as pawns and some bigger game being played by these agencies and corporations. And it's very game of thrones and very creepy. So who knows? Maybe they wanted you to be in the role of a teacher. Maybe they didn't, but you decided to do it. And it started going south somehow. I mean, it started out good. The pilot was, was great. Everybody loved the pilot because they put four of my jokes in the pilot.

That's cool. Right. And then I, they never, I never got another joke in ever again. So you had a team of writers, but they, they, they were, I would walk in the writer's room and they would all be quiet like I was the enemy. And I would bring them jokes and the executive producer would say, we've got that taken care of. And he'd be pushed the jokes back across the table to me. So what, so like episode number two or three, you know, I'm a guy who wrote a book and now I come back to this stuffy prep school to be the English teacher. So I bring my hero, Charles Bukowski to the school to speak to the kids. The character's name was Buck Pulaski. Right. Played by Brian Doyle Murray. Cool. But it's supposed to be Charles Bukowski.

So he shows up drunk. He's flirting with the female students. He vomits in the waste basket. You know what I mean? So it started out. This was the pilot. No, no, no. This is like episode two or three. Okay. And then after that, then it kind of became a kid's show and the focus became on the kids. And then I became the second banana on my own show. That's what, that's, and then there was never another adult theme. Yeah. You know, bringing a famous drunk writer to the school that has an adult theme. And then also, if you studied that sitcom over the course of the season, I had no adult friends. I only hung out with the kids. Anyone like that in real life, I think should be closely watched. That's for sure. Absolutely. Really weird. Really weird.

One season. Yeah. One season. So this is a, so you experienced the arm wrestling match that so many people inevitably end up experiencing when they finally get a show made. Because, my God, just to get a show made, I don't know how accurate the statistic is. I don't remember where I read it, but something like 98% of all pilots never make it to air. Never get made. It's almost an impossibility to get your pilot made. An impossibility. And then to have a show actually named after you. Insane. Is the number of people that have had a television show named after them are I think less than 100. So this thing happens where you finally push through a million different roadblocks, a million different gates, a million different micro negotiations that you've done

subconsciously or consciously with so many different people. Here you have your own show and that is when the real war starts, which is you get into this arm wrestling match with a cobble of people, your agents included, and your own comedic instincts. And those two things start battling against each other and it must be the most tiring thing ever. You eventually, most people will get worn down from it. Well, the interesting thing that happened about halfway through the season, because, you know, the filming schedule for a sitcom is pretty grueling. Yes. You know, you're rehearsing all day, every day. So you do two weeks on and then one week off. So on my off weeks, I would go around the country and do stand-up because I'm a stand-up.

Wow. That's what I do. And my audience kind of changed, where when I was the dude on Comedy Central, I had cool underground people. Right. Tattooed punk rockers. Yeah. Lesbians. Yes. You know, just really cool subversive people. The principal people. The people. The people you want to be reaching. Yes. You know, intellectual lesbians and angry punk rockers. Yeah. Tattooed weirdo people, you know. Then suburban couples in their mid-thirties started to come see me, thinking that they wanted to see this nice guy that was on television. The devil. I'm like, where's my, where's my lesbian crowd? That's the devil. So the devil started coming to your show. And so, and that's kind of the, you know, obviously there's no real devil, but these

development deals are really funny because, you know, in the archetype, of course, is this is a deal with the devil. You're getting into a deal with Satan. And then the end result of it is that you have this, I remember, man, when I was touring with Joe, thank God for the internet. But when I was touring with Joe, when he was on Fear Factor, he started taking me on the road with him to feature. And he'd already been doing stand-up for a while. And he's been doing stand-up for years. Very edgy. I met Joe when I had my sitcom. So his comedy book, because he was on, he was on News Radio. Your book, brilliant, edgy comedians that aren't your material, you wouldn't say, is for the mainstream. No one's going to say this is for couples from the suburbs. No one's ever

going to say that. So I remember it was so funny because he would have this mix in the room where there were the hardcore fans, the people with tattoos, the freaks, and then there were these people who just liked Fear Factor. They just liked to sit down for a nice night of watching Fear Factor. I told Joe when Fear Factor ended, the maggot industry in this country collapsed. Right, no shit. They were like maggot growers. People were making money off that show. Though the horse semen industry. But yeah, I remember when he was on stage, I would go into the audience to watch because it was so funny to see the look of dismay in the faces of some of the crowd who were just squares, you know, just horrified by what he was saying. So it's interesting

to hear that you began to experience the dilution of your audience because of your exposure on television and how that's a real heavy, that's a price to pay man. That's an expensive price. You don't, I mean, you don't realize it till you're in that situation, you know. I mean, I remember meeting Joe. NBC had flown out all the stars of their shows for this new season announcement at Lincoln Center in New York. Wait, what do they call that? The up fronts? Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, I don't know. I thought it was like whatever, new season announcement. So this is the up front. So this is what they call the up front. So if you get on a series, you go to the up front. So Joe and I saw each other and I knew he was a stand-up.

He came up to me and he's like, hey, you know, we introduced ourselves to each other and it was almost like we were clinging to each other because we were like the only comedians there. Everybody else was actors, you know. Right. Or like you're from the same tribe as me. From the front. So two versions of comedy, right? One idea of comedy is you should appeal to everyone. If you're a true comedian, your stand-up should appeal to the masses because that's what a comedian is, a person who just, that is, people really think that, man. Well then they need a time machine to go back into the late 80s and then almost every comedy club in America was built for those people. That's what it was, right? That's what it used to be. But you know, clearly comedy

isn't like that at all. Like if you're caught. Thank God. Thank God. If something would be wrong with you. No, it's more diversity now. I think comedy has never been better. You got great female comedians. There's more female comedians. You got, you know, openly gay comedians. You got every ethnicity of comedian and then comedy has taken hold all over the world. So you know, I think it's the true mark of civilization if your country has comedy. You know, if you're not, people aren't allowed to get up and speak freely. Right. Then your country's, you know, oppressive and you don't really have freedom. What do you think about the phenomena of the Vine star, the YouTube star, this new kind of internet comedian personality that, that has emerged? I can't, I mean, Vine is

six seconds. So I mean, I've seen some really great creativity with that, but it doesn't hold my interest. The YouTube star thing, the YouTube platform is great because, you know, I myself have, you know, put past work, travel videos, you know, we're sitting in my, this is my television studio where we're sitting. Right. Have you seen these Knowledge Nugget videos I've been putting out? I've seen you tweet them, haven't watched one yet. So they're just things that I know. And I film them here. What do you use to film them? Ashna films it on her canon. What is it? A Mach 3, baby? Give me an example of a Knowledge Nugget that you've done. Okay. So one of the best ones is William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare, when he was putting on these

classics of English literature that still is, is loved the world over to this day, when he was first presenting these classics at the Globe Theatre in London, his primary competition from the theaters around the Globe Theatre were shows where live animals fought to the death. Wow. And the most popular one, the one that always was a hit, they would take a monkey, put him on top of a horse, and then they would take five dogs that had not eaten in a week, let them loose into the theater, they would claw the horse to death, trying to get to the monkey, and the show was not done until the monkey was dead. Jesus Christ. So they were bloody, they were noisy. And this, so this is Shakespeare's writing like, you know,

long soliloquies for Hamlet. And in the back of his mind, this is what he knows, you know, the audience, you know, and imagine you're like a ticket buyer back then. Should we see that fucking great dog show again? Or should we give this Hamlet guy a shot? Well, we know at the Shakespeare show, we're not going to get monkey, brain, or blood on our 15th century English ruffles, you know. So like those are, so like little knowledge nuggets like that. Just there are things I know from these, you know, many books I've read and, and just my dad was like that too. My dad, my dad was like my encyclopedia. He was, he was full of, of knowledge, you know. How much time do you spend reading a day? I mean, I'm constantly devouring information, you know.

Do you have a problem with the internet though? Do you find it? No, and I, I, I, but do you find it like, I mean, when I say problem, do you find it like distracting you from? No, books, I like books. I like the tactile turn in the page. I like the, I like the highlight books. I like to flip that last page is a great accomplishment. Many people have tried to, you know, tell me about Kindle and all that. I don't give a shit. Different part of the brain. Do you know they did a study and they actually found that the part of your brain that absorbs digital information is different from the part of the brain that absorbs analog information when you're reading. So if you're reading from a Kindle, you're using a different part of the brain to

absorb that information. And so, you know, you've just given me a knowledge. Ah, cool. There you go. Make sure you verify it. I, I like, I, I like reading my news on the internet. I, you know, I love the multiple news sources, you know. The Guardian is my home page. I, I like, you know, just reading stuff everywhere. Salon, Vice, BBC, NPR. Right. But you, so you have, you, you have a really interesting perspective because most of us, we, we're not travelers. You're a traveler. You've been all over. You have a map in your office that's just covered in pens of all the places, not just that you've traveled, but that you've performed at, which is a big difference. Like traveling to a place, that's great. But to go to a place and then to have to

make a show. Wow. That is so impressive. But you, from the combination of this global exploration mixed in with your voracious appetite for books and information, it feels like you must have some kind of honed perspective on what's going on in the world right now when it comes to Trump, when it comes to, you've been to all, you've been to so many different countries with all the varying political systems that have shifted instantaneously. What's your perspective on what's happening right now politically in the United States? Oh, well, I don't know. I guess it's not that surprising. I mean, everyone acts shocked, but that's our talent show system. That's our, you know, America's got talent, idols, the voice,

it's everything. Our culture is our entertainment is our government. I wrote in the 90s when about whatever presidential election, I saw this in an old notebook. I flipped. I've got all my old comedy notebooks, like 60 of them that are from 20 years onward, which is nuts. By the way, the fact that you keep those to me is just, I want to bury mine. I want to bury mine using like an old medieval ritual, like put them down so they don't come back. That's incredible. Don't you cringe when you look at your old gym? Yeah, some of the old stuff, but then there's little gems in there too. But I wrote this observation in the 90s, whatever presidential election was happening at the time that I had commented on how slick the commercials looked and that in the

future, they're going to be rock videos and that the candidates are all going to be on motorcycles with big titty girls and all that. Now, I mean, that was an observation on the world of the 90s. Now, like I said, it's the idols, America's Got Talent, the brash asshole Trump. It's so funny how people are like, well, he says what's on his mind. Everything's forgivable with that one sentence. He says what's on his mind. Oh, so it's just okay to be an asshole and racist and misogynistic. The guy openly mocked a handicap journalist. He misogynistically dismissed this female reporter from Fox News, who that's the Republican, that's within his tribe, dismissed her as being on the rag. He called Ted Cruz a pussy. He said, that guy's a pussy. I've never in my life seen

another candidate call another guy pussy. And then last week at the debate with Rubio, he's saying, look how big my hands are. He's saying, I got a big gap. And then Romney comes out and speaks against him. And he goes, he goes, four years ago, I could have snapped my fingers and Romney would have been on his knees, meaning that Romney would suck his dick. Yeah. All he had to do four years ago was snap his fingers and Romney would have sucked his dick. This is this guy going to be our next leader? I don't think so. I don't see it happening. I think this is, it's the stirring up of the white fear of how this is not a white world anymore. And that angry redneck in the middle of America, and my family included, my brother just listens to Rush Limbaugh every day. Yeah.

And every day, Rush Limbaugh tells the listeners, it's not your fault. You're not rich. It's Obama's fault. It's that black president. It's these Mexicans coming into our country illegally. That's why you're not rich. It's not the decisions you made in your life, you precious white angel. It's these fucking foreigners and ethnic people and all these outside forces. But you know, hey man, we got gay marriage. We got healthcare. Temporarily. The world, the Republicans are using an outdated game plan that anti-gay, pro-God, pro-gun platform that worked for 100 years. It doesn't work anymore. Right. I grew up a Washington Redskins fan. And the thing about the Washington Redskins, every fucking play, they ran the ball up the middle. Even in the 80s and 90s, as the game of

football was developing and people were developing all these intricate, fabulous, tricky past plays, the fucking Redskins ran the ball up the middle every fucking play. That's what the Republicans remind me of now. They're using this. They just say, hey, let's try it one more time to run it up the middle. Right. And it just doesn't work. No, we live in a gay, multi-ethnic, different American. They seem insane, don't they? They see every single one of them. Look at those white guys that took over that nature preserve in Oregon. Had they been black armed people taken over a building, we'd have fucking dropped bombs on it. Drone attack. Incinerated. Incinerated the place. Set it on fire. They gunned down the burning people crawling out of there. They've been Muslims. Can you imagine?

Can you imagine what would have happened? But these white guys take it over and they can have a food drive. Hey, we need some vanilla creamers for our coffee. I thought that was really odd, man. I really didn't understand that. It was very strange to me how ignored they were. And I thought that was actually a pretty smart tactic because to fulfill their fantasy of being destroyed by some monstrous government would only give power to the fringe people out there who want to affirm that idea that there is an anaconda-like freedom-sucking entity that has invaded our country and is very slowly tightening its grasp on us. That's a paradigm a lot of people subscribe to. And they say the end result is some kind of global one-world government where I guess that

their white people are essentially shoved it outside or something like that. But the terrifying thing about Trump to me, not terrifying, I'm not terrified by anything really, but the thing that is important to note, I think, is he's waking this thing up or he's reinvigorating this thing. And even if he doesn't become president, he's still put a lot of juice into a thing that hasn't had juice in a while. And I don't know that it goes back to sleep. White rage. Yeah, man. I don't think it goes back to sleep. I think it's to think that, okay, Trump doesn't get elected, Hillary gets elected, and all those people at the rallies with their red faces and the confused angry expression, where do they go? What happens to them? Do they just go to sleep? Yeah, probably

gonna be a lot more public shootings and things like that. Who knows? It's a problem, right? Because you're dealing with this like, you're dealing with the effect of the internet. I think it's just the effect of the technology, ultimately, at all points. But why is the Democrat party so much smarter? I mean, look at the debates with Hillary and Bernie. It got heated a few times, but they're discussing actual issues that have to do with the country. They're not saying, hey, man, look at my hands. My dick is really big. And oh, and he's made fun of Rubio's big ears a couple weeks ago at one of the other debates. It's like, this is eighth grade bully fucking maneuvers. Well, the reason that they're winning is they don't even talk about solid shit. The Republicans

right now are forced to attempt to appeal to the darkest sectors of our society. So they have to be vehemently opposed to abortion. They have to... They're never gonna repeal the abortion act. That's never gonna happen. They have all these... And so that really fanatical Christian base that was the Republican... And why did the Republicans become the party of the Christians? Because Trump wants to combat terrorism by banning all Muslims from entering the country. He wants to combat illegal immigration by building this wall at the border. They're against universal health care. They're against anything for the common working person. And everything about the Republicans and Trump, his platform specifically, is in my mind as anti-Christian as you can get.

I mean, to be a true Christian, you should be a benevolent, open-minded person who is tolerant of different ethnicities, different people of different faiths. And it just... It mystifies me how the Republicans swindled regular working people into thinking that they were their party, because they don't benefit from a rich guy system that gives tax breaks to the big corporations and the rich people. So all they gotta do is bring up a few hot button issues, terrorism, abortion. We'll take back gay marriage and health care. Yeah, for sure. But that's... All these fucking poor white people being against health care is just unbelievable, because Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and... But that's why they're doomed, you see, because the

Democrats don't have to appeal to those people. They're the only ones who have to appeal to those people. They don't believe that. Most of them running, they don't believe a lot of that shit, but they know if they say the wrong thing. It's like there's a series, there's a few sentences that they have to say. They have to be against gay marriage. They won't say that, but they have to say the statement. Yeah, because if you don't go with the party topics, you don't get the funding for your election. You're done. Whereas the Democrats... You can't have an independent, minded person within either of these parties. The core of what the Republicans are doing is wrong. And so the Democrats don't have to do anything except let them keep doing what they're

doing, and they know they'll rip themselves to shreds. You stand back and watch it fall apart. But the really scary thing is you saw what happened in Iran when the Ayatollah Khomeini took power. That does happen. Like that happens all the time, and it can happen here. I think people are naive to think that couldn't happen here. It could happen here. It could happen. It could happen really quick too. All that's missing. This is the part that's unnerving to me. I don't want to send the bad juju out there, but here's the part that's unnerving to me. When my parents were getting a divorce, it benefited me if they fought. Like it benefited me in some weird way if they fought, because if I was being a little shithead and did something wrong and my parents

gotten in a fight, then I would not get in trouble, because my parents were fighting, and so I wouldn't get in trouble. So it benefited me. So weirdly, it benefits right now. If there was some kind of dirty bomb that got exploded in New York, Trump would become the president, and it benefits him for this kind of disaster to happen. It benefits him for this to happen. So to me, it's really... We'd have a lot of San Bernardino shootings very often, I think, if Trump becomes the president. Well, but what I'm saying is, for the Republicans, it helps their cause if a massive disaster happens over the next six months or eight months. So what I mean is, we like to believe these people playing this game are ethical,

honorable, non-murderous, good people. But if you just zoom back a little bit and look at the history of empires, it was standard practice, if you wanted to take over an empire, to do acts of violence. It wasn't if you would assassinate people. You would do anything that it took. Yeah, the ship that was sunk in Havana Harbor in Cuba started the Spanish-American War. Apparently, we torpedoed our own boats. Standard practice. The Gulf of Tonkin incident that started the Vietnam War. Standard practice. Apparently, never happened. The Kennedy assassination that preceded all of that bullshit. It's all standard practice. So if you look at the United States as an empire that has an imaginary system that maybe used to not be imaginary, but now it's kind of imaginary,

where there's an organized revolution every four years, where the people bring a new person into power, then it's a very, very, very, very, very attractive thing to take control of that country. It's going to benefit you. It's going to benefit you to be in control of the largest military on earth, which means that you're going to do extreme shit. Doing extreme shit to take over the United States, such as manifesting a terrorist attack over the next few months to create a climate. I wouldn't put it past them. That's what I'm saying. That's what's scary to me is it's like, not only do we have... Like they're spending fucking 80 million dollars on a commercial ad that doesn't work. That's it. They could probably save 40 million by doing some

terrorist attacks. Just find some... All you need is the ingredients for a dirty bomb. And certainly Trump. Trump is like a New York businessman. Do you think that guy is like played by the rules? Yeah. No, of course not. He probably has ties to organized crime. He must. So if you think that that guy in casinos in Vegas and Atlantic City, if he becomes president, that means Biff from Back to the Future is our president. That's right, man. So anyway, when my mind analyzes all that stuff, I always just think... Well, that's interesting. Well, I hope there's not a major terrorist thing, but it's the only way they can save the party. Right. Because what I was about to say before you said that was I've always

lamented and I dislike the fact that we only have a two-party system. The population is diverse as ours. And my family are all hardcore right-wing Christian Republicans. And I'm Tommy the Kami. I'm a liberal left-wing person. And you know, Tommy the Kami is what they call me in the family. How long have they caused you that? Since my early 20s. Okay. Yeah. Who started it? My brother John. All right. Yeah. You get along with your brother? No. Pinko Kami Faggot is another cute nickname he has for me. Older younger. Older. How much older? Three years. Big football jocks. So he tortured you. He beat the living shit out of me. He beat me up last year while punching me in the chest saying you voted for Obama. Obama's ruining this country. Where were you? Visiting family.

And he just started punching you. Well, we got into a political argument. So it's best not to bring these things up. Okay. You just can't talk politics with certain people. They turn violent. So what I was going to say was I lived in Amsterdam. And you know, my wife, Ashna, is from Holland. Holland has like 16 different political parties. Great. And the thing I've tried to explain to my family is there's three different Christian parties. Imagine there's more than one flavor of Christian. You've got the Christian right party, which would be the closest to our Republican party. And then you got the Christian left party. These are open-minded liberal Christians. And then you've got the Christian green left party. These are Christian environmentalists who are so left

wing and liberal and open-minded. They think the Christian left party is too right wing and conservative for them. Cool. I think that would be, you know, my party if I voted there. Me too. Sounds great. They're fantastic. Yeah. So that's just something that a lot of Republican people or I shouldn't say that. That's something my family can't grasp that there's more than one flavor of Christian. And to be a Christian doesn't mean you have to be some staunch, blockheaded Republican guy who's against everything that Christ stood for. So I think we are witnessing the implosion of the Republican party. I think it's amazing this is the party of Lincoln who freed the slaves. They're all, you know, kind of bigoted white people who wouldn't fucking help anyone. Well, they got

infiltrated. I mean, that's what happened. They got infiltrated. And that is what happens. I mean, that's the thing is eventually, you know, if you were the, the term evolution evolves, you ever heard that before, even evolution evolves, like everything on this planet gets better. And what, what has happened is that there's a very old thing that wants to take control, that wants to be in power. It's a very old motivation, be in power of the most powerful thing, gain control of the most powerful thing, conquer the world, right? That's an old thing. And there are parties in the world who want to control the United States. And they've snuck in, man, they've gotten in there. They're in, they've somehow infiltrated the Republican system.

And I don't think it's the Republicans who did it. I think it's an intentional thing. It's like, what you're talking about, if you look at Hillary Clinton, if you look at the Clintons, if you look at that dynasty, or Obama or any of them, these are brilliant people, man. They're, they're like you said, career politicians, house of cards is based on loosely on the Clintons, a marriage of convenience to gain political power. Right. Apparently. And when they sit down and talk about how do we take out the Republicans, they don't, they come up with every single possible way. It's not like the most intelligent people on earth are going to sit down and be like, okay, let's ignore the idea that we seed them with right wing super religious

fundamentalists. Let's ignore that we can very easily infiltrate them in a million different ways. We can push them, we can push people in their direction and eventually completely make them seem like a party of lunatics. That's all intentional. It's war, man. Yeah. That stuff doesn't happen accidentally. I think the Republican party was manipulated by outside forces that we don't know who they are. And now you're looking at the whole thing cracking and falling apart is the final result of some long term plan by some group that maybe we don't know. Maybe it's a Clintons, maybe it's other people. But I think it would be naive to think that that shit's happening accidentally. I don't think it's happening accidentally. It's just a better fighter.

It's a smarter fighter. Somebody some brilliant chess moves. Yeah. Wow. Well, they do in football. Yeah, they do it in every other. They do it in business. When you're in football, you analyze the moves, the people you're up against, you figure out the best way to go against them. They do an every other thing. Every other if you're playing chess, you're going to study the moves of the person you're playing against. Whoever it is, whatever it is, this is normal. It's not crazy or conspiratorial. So when you see a time, a timeless, not timeless, but a very old, respected party, the Republicans, not always evil, haven't always been evil, haven't always been bad, falling apart, who benefits? You know, if you ever, you know, the term follow the money. Right.

Who benefits? It's clear to see who benefits. It's the Democrats and it's all the corporations and the banks that the Democrats are bought by. So this all to me seems just like we're getting to witness. Well, instead of a two-party dictatorship, we're about to have a one-party dictatorship. Exactly. And that's not an accident. Well, and I really like Bernie Sanders. I think as cool as it would be to have the first female president, I think to have a socialist Jewish president would be pretty cool. It's not going to happen. I think it'd be cool to have a unicorn president. But the thing about Hillary is Hillary Clinton's like Madonna. She could get any world leader on the phone. Yeah. And Trump, you know, there's a, you know, he could get Putin on the

phone, but I had an interesting, I flew from Seattle to LA yesterday and I fly so much on Delta Airlines. Periodically, I get bumped up to first class. Right. So I'm bumped up to first class and this guy next to me is really friendly. He's this money manager guy. Yeah. And he tells me we're, you know, we're, I tell him I'm a comedian. So he's asking me, it goes into interview mode, asking me all these, and I'm being, you know, polite because, you know, he was a nice guy. And then I wanted to get off the topic of how I became a comedian and how I write jokes. And so I say, you know, ask him about the election and who he's voting for. And he says, as a business guy, I'm gonna have to vote for Trump. And he was saying that, you know, he couldn't stand Hillary and

the dynasty of the Clinton family. So we have this big long conversation and I tell him a lot of the things that I just said to you. And then at one point in the conversation, he reveals the fact to me that he's Jewish. And I took a beat and I asked him, I said, as a Jewish person, could you really vote for somebody who blanketly demonizes an entire race of people or an entire people based on their faith? Yeah, you would actually vote for that kind of person. And I could see the fucking light go on over this, just his, just the, the, the, the pores in his face changed, you know, and like his, the, the look in his eye, it just, the realization that, that of, of what he, and he, I, he was like, at the end of the fight, he was like, wow, he goes, this, this had a big

impact on me. Wow. Thanks. I think I might have, you know, persuaded the guy. That's cool. Yeah, well, that's cool. At least you, you've shifted one person. It is crazy, isn't it? That's, it takes so of Delta keeps bumping me up. I could be the turn if we have 50,000 flights. Yeah, or not even, well, you know, man, I don't know. I mean, it's, I guess it's boring to talk about politics, but it's the most important thing in the world and it affects the world. And we are lucky enough to be the people who gets to vote for it. When I'm on stage, I got some great, you know, jokes about Trump. I didn't lay them on you here because, you know, I'm not a hack and this isn't morning radio. Right. I'll ask the audience, you know, are you guys excited about

the election? And every night, all over the country, wherever I've asked that question, nobody's excited. Nobody, like you should be excited. This is a fucking honor that you get to vote in this decider. You get to be one of the deciders in something that affects probably every life on the planet. I just don't think people believe it anymore. I think what you end up with this kind of professional wrestling tournament, everybody just seems like a character in some garish, idiotic game. Nobody seems like anyone you'd want to lead the country. They all seem like just character actors that are bought and sold, including Trump, even though he might be bought and sold by himself or his ego or whatever. So

you want to look at that to pay for four years? Yeah, I think I do. I do in a weird way. I mean, that's the, you know, Louis C. K wrote that letter. He's like, don't vote for Trump. It's suicide to vote for Trump. But I think we're all just kind of like, to me, it's like, if you look at the civilian casualty rate from the last few wars that we've gotten into, the number of people that we've blown up, that Obama's killed, the bombs that we dropped on doctors without borders, the- Wow, he blew up that hospital, killed loads of doctors. Yeah, he killed so many doctors. And at that point, I stopped caring about the political system because if a person like Obama, who seems very intelligent, beautiful, empathetic, compassionate, amazing, somehow is also complicit

in blowing up doctors or just trying to help people in other parts of the country, I think most of us have just stopped believing in the finger puppets that we're seeing on some bigger hand. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's as long as lobbyists and corporations can influence these elections and, you know, pay for these candidates to get elected. Yeah. It's, you know, normal people don't hold these offices anymore. It's all corporate run and corporate owned and lobbyist influenced. But you have to vote for a Democrat now. Like, you have no choice, whether it's Sanders or Clinton or whoever it may be, you have to vote for a Democrat because they're going to choose the Supreme Court nominees. They're going to nominate the next Supreme Court people. And

that's what makes all the changes. So you have no choice. So I was in Arcada, California. It's a great place. Wayne, it's in Humboldt County. It's where Humboldt State is. I've done some gigs up there the last few years. In the main square is a statue of William McKinley. William McKinley, I forget what year he was president, but he was assassinated by this Italian radical guy named Giuseppe something. So I asked the people there when I was there last year, why do you have a statue of William McKinley? Because he's not from there. And they were like, Oh, I don't know. So like, I Googled William McKinley and I read about his presidency. And William McKinley, specifically him, it was his policies that started the policy of America

being the police of the world, going around the world and getting involved in other people's fights and us being the police of the world. And he also is the one who started giving big corporations big breaks and more power to do whatever they wanted and, you know, profits over people and that kind of thing. So when I went to Arcada this year, and I was on stage and I explained to them what William McKinley had done in his presidency, I told them, you should have a statue of the guy who killed that motherfucker. That's great. That's all we need comedians, you know, but that is, I don't want to close on an ominous thing here, but you heard what Trump said. He said that he's going to change it if

people talk shit about the president. You're not going to be able to do that anymore. Really? You're going to take away our freedom of speech? Yes. He said that. That's how quickly it can happen. It just can happen just like that, but, you know, so then what happens to comedians, then now it happens, you know, there's comedians who get arrested all the time, bloggers who get arrested all over the country or all over the world, rather, who get hacked apart by machetes. Anyway, God, what a terrible, dark way to end. My wife has picked out some very lovely expensive cheeses for you. We have several types of bread. I'm not afraid of it.

We have a cavalcade of flavors that are about to be presented to your palates. I don't care. You are a first house guest. I'm so grateful to be here. You and your lovely bride. Let me just say very quickly, guys, I'm not afraid of what's happening. I am, I think that we're bigger than the political system. And, Tom, can you please end on some uplifting fact, some beautiful thing that the listeners can take some warmth and joy from since I corrupted the thing by yapping about politics? You know, freedom of speech and being able to make fun of our leaders.

You know, in Spain under Franco, he had a comedian dragged to his death through the streets of Madrid, and they dragged his corpse through the streets until it was disintegrated. You know, the greatest things about this country is freedom of speech. That's what comedy is all about, laughing at these assholes. That's our only power. You know, I mean, comedy was invented when we were in the caves. And once the fear had passed of danger of the dinosaurs killing us, once they had moved on to other animals and we survived, we laughed out of relief. It was a survival mechanism. I mean, separation of church and state, that's the greatest thing this country ever decided to do.

My podcast in it that I'm putting out today is about Voltaire. Voltaire was this French philosopher, and he was, so I just boned up on Voltaire too for my episode this week. His thing, the Catholic Church ran everything. So, and then rich people, you know, if you made fun of me and I was a rich guy, I could have your ass thrown into the Bastille. That's right. And Voltaire was a smart ass, and he couldn't control his tongue, and he wrote these, you know, malicious papers and just was always making fun of the kings and the, especially the leaders of the Catholic Church that controlled everything. So, he had to go into exile several times in his life. He's the father of the Enlightenment.

That's beautiful. And his whole thing was, he was vehemently against war, and he thought it was the most, and he called them on the hypocrisy of it, of being a Christian country fighting wars with other, of against people of different beliefs. And it was Catholics versus Protestants, and they were just constantly killing each other, and that Christians are tolerant, loving people, and to make war due violence is living the opposite of your purpose as a human being, not just as a Christian, but he was against religion completely. And they branded him a heretic, they burned his books, he said, better to burn the book than to burn the author. That's cool. He was funny. The guy he believed in humor was his religion. His, his slogan was to,

to laugh and make laugh. And Voltaire said that God is a comedian playing in front of an audience too afraid to laugh. Wow. So, he was a bad motherfucker, and, and, and so he was all about tolerance was, was his big issue, and he was against hypocrisy of power and churches. He was, have you ever heard the term discordianism? It's basically the idea is it's like Satan manifests the, the demonic aspect of the universe manifests in the form of authority, and it is your holy duty as much as possible to do everything you can to subvert and upset that structure, and they do it as a kind of like religious practice. Cool. How about we end this podcast with the sentence that I end my podcast with this week also on Voltaire.

Let's do it. Voltaire wrote in every literary, literary genre imaginable. When he was in his twenties, he wrote plays and he's in Paris and some actress in one of his plays at that time said to him, Voltaire, to say your lines properly, an actor would have to have the devil in him. And Voltaire said, to succeed in the arts, one always must have the devil in him. Hail Satan! Beautiful. Thank you so much, Tom. Thanks for being on the show. How can people find you? TomRoads.net at underscore TomRoads. Yeah, TomRoads Radio is my podcast. Great. Hey, check out my Knowledge Nuggets on YouTube. Subscribe to my YouTube channel. Every Friday, I put out a Knowledge Nugget video. All my, all the links will be at DuncanTrussell.com.

Thank you very much, Tom. Thanks, brother. Let's have a lovely dinner now. Yeah, let's do it. Thanks for listening, everybody. Big thanks to Tom Rhodes for being on the podcast. And remember, if you want a free audiobook, go to AudibleTrial.com, forward slash family hour and check out Moby Dick. I'm telling you, you won't be disappointed. Thanks for listening, you guys. I will see you next week with hopefully some live video streams of the podcast and some great podcasts. We have some wonderful guests coming up. I hope you have a wonderful weekend, a wonderful infinity, and a wonderful transcendence of that infinity, which you are currently experiencing. Don't forget to use our Amazon portal. Give us a

nice rating on iTunes and love yourself. I'll see you next time. Hare Krishna.