Joy, a Podcast. Hosted by Craig Ferguson - Adam Savage

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Meet Adam Savage, American special effects designer, actor, educator, television personality, and producer. You probably know him from the legendary show Mythbusters or his YouTube channel Tested. We have a great chat, I hope you enJOY!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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conversations we've had so far. I mean, we talked to A. Marie, Johnny Marr, E. Jonathan Schechter, Billy Porter, and so many more. Look, if Marr, E. Jonathan Shecter, Billy Porter and so many more. Look, if you haven't heard these episodes yet, hey, now's your chance. You gotta check them out. Listen to Questlove Supreme on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. The Craig Ferguson Pants on Fire Tour is on sale now. It's a new show, it's new material, but I'm afraid it's still only me, Craig Ferguson, on my own, standing on a stage, telling comedy words. Come and see me, buy tickets, bring your loved ones, or don't come and see me. Don't buy tickets and don't bring your loved ones. Or don't come and see me. Don't buy tickets.

And don't bring your loved ones. I'm not your dad. You come or don't come, but you should at least know it's happening. And it is. The tour kicks off late September and goes through the end of the year and beyond. Tickets are available at thecraigfergersonshow.com slash tour. They're available at thecraigfer dot com slash tour or at your local outlet in your region. My name is Craig Ferguson.

The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to interesting people about what brings them happiness. On the podcast today, we have a show business slash science member of the royal family. Now that's not fair because he's much smarter than any member of the royal family. He's a very old friend of mine and he used to be a ginger but he's alright now. Please welcome the fantastic Adam Savage. Adam Savage, look at you. You look exactly the same, if anything, a little younger.

I was going to say, have you been moisturizing? What's happening? It's all turned gray, but yeah, no, the clean living is the secret to my face. Well, you know, here's the thing though. You were a ginger at one point. Gingers do go gray. We go white. We go like sheet white.

Yeah. No, I think it's kind of impressed. I think it's the compensation for having been a ginger that you then go completely white. I've seemed to be developing some kind of weird, um, kind of fluffy thing that's going on. It's very bad. I've noticed that my hair has dried out completely. If you're just joining us, by the way, this is a hair, the hair care podcast with Adam

Sauvage and, and Craig Ferguson. What? Um, what? It isn't, it isn't't French your name is it? It is French. I was just going to say that's the correct pronunciation. But we came over to Scotland around the 14th century. Right. And from what I understand the savages or the Sauvages were mercenaries settling near the Antrim Peninsula around the 14th century.

Oh, right. That's been near Ireland then, right? I think there are a bunch of savages in Ireland as well. Oh, there certainly are. I wonder if it was your family that brought the ginger to Scotland or if the ginger was already there. It's a good question. It is a good question.

And I know what I I think you know it would be an excellent Mythbusters. Red Hair was bought to Scotland or it was already there. What's going on with that franchise now? Are you guys making Mythbusters Junior? No, dude I haven't made television in years. I'm a YouTuber now. It's definitely the way to go. Yeah. Are you back in building? Are you back in your day job?

No, over COVID, we leaned in 100% to my YouTube channel. Oh, yeah. We have almost seven million subscribers now. Shut the fuck up. Seven million? We put up a video almost every day. We put up a video. Oh my God.

Do you, you must be an influencer. Are you going to fight Mike Tyson or something? What's happening? You know, the secret to having a YouTube channel is that you basically have to be your own ad agency and that is what we do. Oh, right. That's a lot though. I, I like, I think I've got a YouTube channel.

I know that Tomas messes around with something and I know these podcasts go up and about. I think I've got like a hundred subscribers or something. It's not anything that anyone's going to be excited about. It's definitely the way to go for sure. Does it feel more comfortable being your own kind of executive? Can I tell you, it's so nice because, you know, the TV executives, they ride you so hard on a pitch, they want everything buttoned down. And then the moment they award the show, they don't care about the show at all.

They just want to know that the last five minutes will bring all of the world to watching what you're making. Yeah. And and also the television executives, God bless them. I used to, I used to hate them, but now I feel bad for them because there's no work for those guys. No. Can I tell you, when I pitched a book in 2016 in New York, I spent a whole day pitching all the publishers and it was remarkable because

I realized halfway through the day I'm repeatedly in rooms pitching to people who love what I'm pitching. They love the industry that they're in. They love books and that's not what I experienced in television. I don't experience television executives being like, I love television. I'm a television person. No, it's a very rare thing. I met one or two of them, but most of them are just awful.

They're just I think for many of them, it's kind of a realtor job. You know, it's like, well, it's not what I wanted, but, you know, it's decent money and, you know, I'll I'll do it for now. Well, and the networks nickel and dime them until they have no compunction left. I know. But it's quite interesting though, because I know that I'm hurtling into my dotage. Whenever I talk to them, I'm like, what do you want son? It's exactly that. You're like, what the fuck you want? We're very excited about it. Are you really excited? Fuck you. You're not

excited about it. Shut up. Exactly. But do people have to pitch you for your YouTube channel now? Do they have to like say, well, we have this idea, we'd like to blow up a hat. You know, that does happen from time to time. I just had a company ask me, could you send our product to space experimentally? And I came back with a totally different idea. Yeah, I am unwilling to do testing on behalf of people's products. I never was willing and I still don't want to do it. Well, I mean, doesn't that would leave you open to some kind of legal ramifications,

wouldn't it as well? If you test something and then somebody hurts themselves or something. Completely. But also it's like the first time I make a test and adjudicate someone's product as being one way or the other, no one will trust me ever again. That's the way I feel. That's right. That's right.

Now, so what, what do you do on your YouTube channel? Because of course, obviously I subscribe to it, but for the people that don't know about that. It is, it's a fever dream of making, and so I'm in here five days a week, 40 hours a week in general, kind of making whatever I'm interested in. Right now I'm currently working on, this is sitting on my bench here.

This is part of an elevator panel. I'm working on Okay, there's a scene in the movie elf where uh, Where will ferrell walks into an elevator and he hits a button and it's really pretty and so he hits all the buttons at once So i'm making that a christmas decoration in my house this year Oh, that's a lovely idea and then then as you make that, you will film yourself making it. It'll go on the YouTube and then hey Presto cash. Absolutely. Yeah. Wow. And so we do that. And then we also like, uh, I made a Raptor costume, a Utah Raptor costume, 16 feet long, a few years ago. And just a few weeks ago, I brought in a couple of friends and we spend

a week painting it. Uh, and just a magnificent collaboration of three dudes walking around this dinosaur for three full days, just adding and subtracting color and turning it into a real character. That's really interesting. So you kind of like, you freed yourself. You become like you're doing exactly what you want exactly on your own terms and becoming a patrillionaire at the same time.

A thousand there. It is, it's so like the team is really small. It's just six of us making this YouTube channel. Everyone's having a really good time and we don't have to answer it. Anyone. I bought out all my business partners a couple of years ago. That's really interesting, because that's kind of, I kind of did the same thing.

When television started to turn into this weird kind of corporate homogenized fucking shit show, where you say one thing wrong and suddenly, there's lawyers saying, we don't encourage Greg Ferguson and all that kind of stuff. That I thought, no, I got to strip this down to analog right back down to me speaking into a microphone, uh, in a dark room with a bunch of people pointed in my direction.

That, that's it, you know, just like doing standup. And it was only recently, I like in the last, I don't know, I don't know how long I've been doing this podcast, like 18 months or something. And you know, the I Heart people who run it, I'm like, God, these guys are just the same fucking assholes as everybody else. So I'll probably won't keep doing it,

but maybe I should buy them out. And... Well, you know, one of the things that people who watch the channel tell me that they do is they take my videos and some of them might be eight minutes long and some of them might be 80 minutes of me like wiring something up and they put their laptop on their workbench with me working and then they work alongside. They do their own project while I'm working on mine. I think that's that's very good. And I I think that MythBusters is quite an interesting thing. I think MythBusters was kind of like, the equivalent is if you do a vampire movie, like

no matter what you do in your career from that point on, the vampire crowd will always consider you one of their people. And I think MythBusters has like, because I'm that, I'm like, MythBusters is such a thing. Like I still see Carrie quite often. I haven't seen you in ages, but you've been over in Scotland a couple of times. And I mean, I haven't seen you over in a while, unless you've been there and you haven't told me.

I have not been there and haven't told you. I promise you that. All right, good. Cause during the lockdown, we were stuck in Scotland all the time. We moved back to America though. We're in New England though. Oh wow.

Okay. Upper East coast. Yeah. Well, you know, that's where Megan's people are from. Those icy blue blood Yankees who, you know that Megan can trace her ancestry back to the Mayflower. Oh, so can I actually. We have some relatives that were on that boat together.

Oh my God. Cause my theory is that only the crazy people made it through that first winter. Only the angry crazy, that genetic code through that first winter. That was like you, your law and Megan law. I wonder if you're related to Megan. I didn't get COVID for the longest time for the first two and a half, almost three years. And there was this period of time I thought I was immune because my grandmother who was a Monroe

who could trace her ancestry back to the Mayflower had survived the 1917 influenza. Oh, wow. So I was thinking like I'm an X-Men, I've got that in my blood, but then I caught COVID and it's still... Well, COVID's kind of... I don't know, look, I'm not a scientist, but I feel like it's new. I feel like it's a slightly newer thing.

I didn't get it for a while. I didn't get it at all. We had a party at our house afterwards. I still didn't get it. You were invited to that party and didn't come. I was. I couldn't get it for a while. I didn't get it at all. We had a party at our house afterwards. I still didn't get it. You were invited to that party and didn't come. I was, I couldn't make it, I'm so sorry. Carrie was at the, Carrie Byron was at the party. She told me, I was so jealous.

I think she got COVID, like 50 people got COVID at that party. But you didn't. I didn't. And then Megan, we went to, I was doing, named that celebrity, named that tune in Dublin, for some reason. And Megan came with me and she made me go and see the book of Kells, which I was, I couldn't give a shit about the book of Kells. And while I was in there,

it was all American tourists and I got the Irish Leprechaun, that's when I got it from the book of Kells. I got the original ancient Irish, the old Hyde-Idley-Covid. Did you get a wish? Yeah. Yeah. I wish that hadn't gone to see the fucking book of Kells is what I wish. So listen, talk to me about your origins because I haven't really

talked to you ever really about that. You're from, uh, sleepy hollow, right? Is that where you're from? I was born in Manhattan. My parents were lovely Bohemians in the, uh, in the West village in the late sixties. Wow. That sounds like a lot of body hair. Yeah, it was.

They had a 10-room duplex on 8th Street and McDougal Street. That'd be worth like a billion dollars now. They sold it to the Robert Joffrey Foundation in 1970. Wow. To move their family up to Terrytown, to Sleepy Hollow, New York, and where I grew up, that's where I spent my whole childhood about a block from the Hudson in a lovely house. That's a lovely part of the world.

It's gorgeous there. But isn't it like there's a lot of ghost stories and creepy stuff and all there. And I always think of you being someone who debunks all of that kind of stuff. Is that is, do you think that's what started there? Was it to protect yourself from scary stories? No, I never believed, you're reminding me that there's this one moment in Mythbusters when Guillermo del Toro called us up and he was like, why don't we go spend three days in the most haunted place in the United States?

An insane asylum in the Carolinas. And Jamie was like, why would we do this? And I was like, we would do this because it's Guillermo. Guillermo called you, you got to go. I haven't been in his crazy house of mad things. Have you been in it? I've been to, I've been to Bleak House and now apparently there is a second Bleak House. But yeah, he's...

Oh my God. No, it's an amazing collection. It's a pathology. I mean, look, what are we if not a collection of pathologies in our own spaces? I was going to say you're kind of a bit of a hoarder. High functioning hoarder, but yes. High functioning hoarder, but yes. High functioning hoarder, I think. But the kind of the whole ethos of like MythBusters and you personally as well, even right down

to the, I don't know if you're still an atheist, but like you're kind of, you really do like to get to the science of just about everything, right? I do like to get to the science of just about everything, but it's funny that you say, I wonder if you're still an atheist, because I stopped saying that, and it happened in your kitchen in Gervan. Oh, really? Because we had come back from a thing

back when we were hanging, back when I was visiting you there, and you said it's pretty it's pretty, uh, you said it's pretty fundamentalist to say atheist because I still believe that. Yeah. And, and I couldn't, I couldn't disagree with that. And so I, I now call myself a new Testament agnostic. I can't know.

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AT&T connecting changes everything. It's very interesting because I wrestled with it over and over and over again. It's like a constant refrain for me. I always kind of go back to, I don't want to not believe things, but I can't believe in a kind of angry man on a cloud with a thunderbolts and stuff. I can't believe in that. But then I'm interested in mystics that have become fascinated recently by Gore Vidal. Have you read Gore Vidal's stuff? I have read a bunch of Gore Vidal. Have you read Gore Vidal's stuff? I have read a bunch of Gore Vidal. He's the only historical fiction writer who I like to read.

Oh my god, it's great! So right now I'm in the middle of creation, when he's got that guy from Persia who meets Buddha and Confucius and Socrates and all that. So I'm like, wow, man, this is fucking pot boiler is fabulous. I always feel, I always felt with him, the one I read and loved the most was Burr, which is a fever dream. And also with Vidal, like, I feel like I'm absolutely getting a whole bunch of editorializing and opinion,

but it's informed by the point of view he got in his research, not by a bias. Yeah, I feel it's quite what's quite interesting about Gore Vidal as well is that I don't really know where he stands in the belief system. And I've read it extensively. And I think what it is is, I think he bounces around. I think he... But I think that is almost a defining feature of real faith. Martin Luther King absolutely grappled with it

in his personal diaries. I mean, John Donnell spells, was totally grappling with this the whole time. Yeah, I think it is an essential component of faith that it has to have doubt. If it doesn't have doubt, it's not really faith. It's certainty, and certainty is a very different thing. But there's a weird interview with Carl Jung.

I don't know if you've ever seen it. No. Where somebody asks him if he, it's a televised thing. I don't know if you've ever seen it. Where somebody asked him if he... It's a televised thing. I can't remember where it was, but it's towards the end of his life where someone said, do you believe in God? And he said, it's different for me now. I know. I know there's a God.

I was like, oh man, Jung freaks me out. I think he's so amazing. But I always, I think of you, it's interesting to hear you say that because I didn't know you were into those Vidal historical novels because they seem quite mystical to me. And I feel that you aren't that, but I guess you are. I mean, the science thing is a search for truth, isn't it? It is in its way a spiritual hunger, I think, science. It's absolutely, and we're grappling

with the same questions. I had, this seems germane to this. I had this epiphany about four years ago. I was researching measuring things. Okay. I was researching, which is the field of metrology. And within the field of metrology, actually, I happen to have, I did not plan this prop, but I have this right here within the field of metrology, if you want to measure something, you pass a certain point, you don't measure it.

You actually compare it to something. And this is called a gauge block. And this is the most accurate comparison system there is. This is a one inch block, and I can tell you that this block is one inch to within a few nanometers. That's how accurate this block is. And I was showing my, I was doing a video about how to measure gauge blocks and how

accurate they are. And then I had this idea and I put the gauge block in my hand and held it for 12 seconds and put it back under my measuring device and I was able to show that in 12 seconds, the heat from my body had made the gauge block one micron thicker because of heat expansion. And when I realized that and I was looking at the spec sheet for these,

which is every one of these has been measured and certified, I realized that at of these has been measured and certified, I realized that at the bottom of the certification it says this is only accurate at 68 degrees Fahrenheit. That's amazing. Which told me that measurement is, the faith I get in numbers is misplaced because they aren't real. The measurement of these blocks only exists under circumstances that we agree upon, which

means just like politics, just like culture, just like society, it's all based on us being measurement of these blocks only exists under circumstances that we agree upon, which means just like politics, just like culture, just like society, it's all based on us being polite and trying to work together. That's how it works. Yeah. It's funny. I had a similar experience when I was getting my pilot's license, when I was learning to fly because I kept asking people about airspeeds and altitudes and airspeeds and altitudes, which are extremely

important if you're flying a fucking airplane. Well altitude, there's kind of like five different types because there's altitude above the ground, but there's also sea level altitude, which we all kind of agree on. Then there's density altitude because that's how the plane's going to perform at certain temperatures and moisture in the atmosphere. So it's like radar altitude as well. I mean, it's like, no, we need to have one altitude, but there's not. The same thing about the speed of sound, like how fast is sound? Well, it depends on the temperature and depends on the thickness of the air.

And it's so fascinating to me. And I think you're right. I think, I think that it is, it is very, very confusing to try and agree on one thing, to make things black and white. That's why I'm, I'm against fundamentalism of all kinds. And that's, that's where you turned me around in your kitchen table was I realized, yeah, no, I can't know. So all I can do is keep gathering data.

And I feel like performers, like because we both spend a lot of time in front of audiences, we know that audiences can take on a character that is different than the people that compose that audience. Unbelievable, unbelievable. I mean, right to the extent of the one night, and you'll know this because you did those live shows and you've done so many live shows, you can go out in front of an audience in a roughly the same size theater at the same room temperature at the same time of day in a town that's a similar demographic makeup, and do exactly the same thing and have a wildly different experience. And that's people, collective personalities. I'm like, what is it?

It's that Jungian thing, isn't it? The collective unconscious. Right. The collective unconscious. I, do you know what? I once had interviewed Stephen King on the late night show and I said, have you, I, he was talking about bringing stories down. He said, I bring the stories down from somewhere. I was like, Oh, that's fascinating.

And I said to him, so about the, it's kind of like the, the young, the collective unconscious. And he said, what is that? And we didn't know what I was talking about. Oh, so great. I was like, what the f I mean, I'm, you might have been fucking with me, you Stephen King, but it was still fascinating. But there is also that, um, Arlo Guthrie, I saw him perform once and he said, I don't write songs, I stand at the side of a river and I wait for one to come by and I scoop it out. Yeah.

And then he said, he said, I don't think anyone downstream of Bob Dylan has ever even seen a song. But I think that what's kind of interesting is though that that's a kind of, that's a kind of weird, unmeasurable thing. You've been in front of an audience where something came out of the ether into your head. Yes. And dropped like a bomb in the room. Yes. And it happened last night. I actually I was doing a show last night in Chicago and it is why I'm in the hotel in Chicago now.

And about halfway through the show, I had this idea and I went with it and I was making myself laugh and the audience seemed to be enjoying it too, but I was having a great time with it. It's very strange. I view that as that's, that's the other to me, right? That creative thing that happens late when you do all the practice and you do all the rigor that you do to get yourself to this point and then you open yourself up and some creative thing comes in you don't know where it came from but it informs the whole thing you're building. Yeah it's very interesting because it

it leads me as I you know again as I get older I start thinking about the inevitability of the, you know, corporeal decline and, you know, and mortality and all that. And I can't get my head to a place where I can endorse the idea of the continuation of consciousness. I'm quite happy to remain open to the idea of a God, a, a, a prime mover or a, or an unexplainable deity, but I can't get my head around the idea that it keeps going. I just don't see that. Here's, here's one that I'm always thinking about when this conversation comes around is in Africa, they took some termite mounds and poured

concrete into them and then excavated to see the shape of a termite city. And when they do this, the cities are 15 feet tall and 20 feet wide and they include waste management and they include air conditioning and convection, breathable air, they include temperature control. And I coupled that with the fact that 99% of the cells in my body right now are non-human in origin, right? I'm mostly a colony of other bacterium and other types of organisms. So I find myself wondering if consciousness isn't just a level set for different groups of organisms and that maybe it's not that our consciousness continues, but we're just brought back into the continuum.

That's fascinating idea. I think also if you get the idea of infinity, of infinite time, infinite space, then it would seem to me that anything that can happen will happen. And so anything that you can think of can... Imagine the object is going to... I wonder if that's even possible, but it's... This is one of the reasons why I don't take marijuana. I feel like, I feel like it would be bad.

Do you take recreational drugs? I wonder if that's a thing for you. I, I, I did do a lot of psychedelics back in my twenties. Really? Yeah, absolutely. And it was a couple of mushroom. It was a couple of mushroom trips during which I really absolutely connected and still firmly believe that our consciousness is eternal and that

we don't, that this is not a deterministic universe. That is we have free will here, but I'm not sure where we come from that we do. And so I make this leap that we come here onto this corporal plane because eternity is exhausting and we come here to enjoy some beginnings and endings, beginnings and endings, beginnings and endings. Oh, that's a lovely idea. I think you might be on the edge of a new religion. I think I could get behind that as an idea. That's fascinating. I think that the idea though, for me that the struggle I have with spiritual hunger or spiritual spiritual searching is it's so littered with organized religion, which is, um, not for

me, you know, I can't make it work. Have you, have you got any organizational, uh, structure for that for yourself? Only that it seems to me that the, that the Buddhists have been right all along. Maybe maybe that conscious that look, I mean, you know, at this age too, what turns out to be most important to me is the collaborations I get to do with people that I love. It's taking a couple of minds and intersecting them on the same problem and enjoying doing that and learning from other people's point of view. The more curious I get about other people and their process, the more I get a reward from that, that interaction. That's interesting. So you, you become fascinated by the way other people approach a

problem, which either you have looked at yourself or are trying to, or invest again. You just need that. One of the primary things we do on the channel is we go to movie sets. And on movie sets, the main thing that we do at a level that most people don't do it is we'll talk to all of the artisans about how, you look, a movie crew is nothing

but an army of storytellers all the way down. And when you're talking to the painter painting the prop, he's thinking that she's thinking about the narrative of that piece and I love talking about that problem. You get this thing, how do you make it fit within that narrative go? And that's one of the great challenges of my creative life is making things to do that. And I love talking to other people about how they do it. It's funny you should mention that that when we were in Scotland, we wanted to paint an old part of the house and we didn't know how to do it and we didn't know how to do it and then I thought,

you know what, let's call, I had a buddy who was a set painter on movies. Yes. I said, let's have him come and look at it and he looked at it and I said, I want it to look like it was painted 300 years ago, but it's got damp, but then it got dry again and it's okay now. It had woodworm, but it doesn't have woodworm anymore. He's like, got it. And he did it in two days. Right. Cause he's a sad day.

Yeah, right. He's like, I got it. I know what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. Probably bought a bunch of Hudson sprayers to add some dirt coming down the walls, right? It was amazing though. I mean, the idea of it, I'm fascinated by the idea that, and you're right, everybody is a storyteller and like I was always interested, I haven't made a

movie in forever, but the wardrobe the, the wardrobe people always fascinated me because the investigation that they do and the work that he do is amazing. And the stuff they don't even tell you, like, uh, I was talking to Danny Glicker, who's Jason Reitman's costumer. And he was like, the thing you don't realize is all old clothes have shoulder burn because they've been sitting on a hanger for decades. They're always a little lighter right here on this line. And if you don't do that, you'll know that it's not quite old.

That's amazing. It's amazing. It's a real detective thing almost. Totally. Were you ever drawn to that? Were you ever drawn to like forensics or police work? Absolutely. I love knowing how things work.

So I love peeling behind the curtain and having, you know, Mythbusters has just put me in contact with tons and tons of cops all over the world. And I mean, I could not do that job. It is a view on humanity that is really intense and difficult. And a, and look, I have huge problems with the, with the American police, but that's not what I'm talking about here.

I'm just talking about the general job of being a police person sounds both completely intriguing and I could never do it. It's funny. I got a, I got a tattoo once in New Orleans and it was late at night as often tattoos are. And the guy was doing it. You know, you get to talk and he's working away and we were talking and he told me that he had been a cop.

He had been a homicide cop. And then during Katrina, he was looking at three unsolved deaths a day. And he said, I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't do it anymore. I had to go and do what I really wanted to do. I couldn't do that. I always wanted to be a tattoo artist

and now I'm gonna do that. And he's good and I've got some good ink from him. And it was, it's a fascinating story. He said that weird thing. He said, uh, civilization is, and it was a quote from some fancy French writer, I don't know what it was. Civilization is three meals away from chaos. That's beautiful.

Wow. That's completely true. Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's like, I always think as well, you know, when, when people say, you know, there might be riots and I went, well, what's the weather like? Because people never riot in the snow. It's temperature based. It's all it's affected.

It affects the amount of rioting you're going to get. Totally right. And I was thinking whoever said that quote I feel like they had to be French because the French Revolution is where you learn that lesson Yeah, I think it probably was it was probably with some you know Somebody that was up to no good during all that do you know that apparently during the French Revolution as well that the Revolutionary panflits were all hidden inside pornography. Oh my God. Because the fancy pants aristocracy wouldn't look at the pornography because it was for

poor people. And all the poor people would look at the pornography and they're like, oh yeah. And apparently that I feel like I might be making this up, but I think there's some truth in it. The marquee decide that's why he was so involved in all he was writing these crazy pornographic stories but also he was a revolutionary as well. There's a Doris Lessing has a group of books that are field reports on planets around the universe and science fiction. And the first one is a field report on Earth from about 20,000 BC till 300 years in the

future when the world holds the white man on trial for crimes against humanity. And in this arc, at one point, one of the benevolent aliens that sort of oversees the universe falls, he falls into the sickness of rhetoric. All right. And to cure him of his addiction to rhetoric, they send him to live a short, brutal life as a peasant during the French Revolution. Oh man. I mean, it's kind of an interesting thing.

I mean, you're still in San Francisco, right? Yeah. And San Francisco is, I've always found that very complicated rhetorical environment because on the one hand, there's this very liberal idea, but we are very didactic and very hard line liberal idea of life, which is hard to navigate. I find it hard to navigate if I'm talking a lot there. Do you know what I mean? I feel like it's quite easy to annoy people and audiences. I mean, you know, San Francisco exists in this tension between that very open,

open ended philosophy that everyone should try what they want and let their this tension between that very open, open-ended philosophy that everyone should try what they want and let their freak flag fly and we're all cool with it. But it's also one of the most beautiful physical places on earth, which means there's a tremendous amount of money here. And the tension between the money and that hippie philosophy is, I think, one of the things that defines San Francisco.

Well, and also then you get into that weird hypocrisy of Silicon Valley where they pretend to be flying a freak flag, but they are like Andrew Carnegie or William Randolph. They're all happy the Trump won. Yeah. I always think that it fascinates me. Did you read the Vidal book? I think it was Hollywood, maybe Hollywood or maybe the one before that.

It's a historical novel. When he talks about the feud between William Randolph Hearst and Teddy Roosevelt. And Hearst comes off like proto Elon Musk. It's very interesting. I was like, wow, that's a fascinating idea. And you know, Teddy Roosevelt doesn't come out a bit too great either. Slashes everybody, trashes them all. I mean, at that level, it's all life among the narcissists, right?

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Hey I'm Jay Shetty and my latest interview is with Wiz Khalifa. The craziest part of my life, I can go from performing in front of 40,000 people to either being in a dressing room, being in a plane, or being back in a bed all by myself. He is a multi-platinum selling recording artist, mini mogul, and an actor. Which among the one, the only, Chris Caligula.

Did you feel like a big break was coming? I didn't know what that big break looked or felt like, but I knew that what I was doing was working. The gang banging and the drug selling, that's not really for me. But the looking cool, the having girls, and making music, I'm like, I like that part of it. How was that experience for you?

Losing someone so close to you that you love? I am grateful that I was able to have the last moments that I had, and to be able to prepare for it, and it was something that I'm still dealing with. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Yo, what up? It's your girl Jess Hilarious. And I think it's time to acknowledge that I'm not just a comedian. It's time to add uncertified therapists to my credentials because each and every Wednesday, I'm fixing your mess on carefully reckless on the Black Effect Podcast Network. Got problems in your relationship?

Come to me. Your best friend acting shady? Come to me. Thinking about cursing that one stank auntie out at the next family gathering? Do it. But come to me before you do, because I cussed all mine out before.

You want to fight your coworkers? Come to me. Baby daddy mad because you got a boyfriend? Come to me. Thought you was the father, co-workers? Come to me. Baby daddy mad because you got a boyfriend? Come to me. Thought you was the father but you not? Come to me. I can't promise I won't judge you, but I can guarantee that I will help you. As a daughter, a sister, a mother, and an entrepreneur, I've learned a lot in life. So I'm using my own perspective and experiences to help you fix your mess. Send me your situation and let's fix it as a family. Listen to Carefully Reckless on the Black Effect Podcast Network,

iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. When's the first time you went and did that tour of Washington? Have you done that? Like you go to the Senate and somebody takes you around the Capitol building and all that? I have never done that.

Oh man. They used to, when I was doing Late Night, I thought it was a thing that everybody on TV did at some point that they would take you around. And I got introduced to all these different people at the Senate. The Senate and Congress and all these different people at the Senate, the Senate and Congress and all these different offices. And it was a whole day of just like, you know, shaking hands and schmoozing people. And at the end of the day, I was with Megan and we were sitting at the end of the day

and I thought, Jesus Christ, you know what really surprised me? It's how fucking stupid most of these people are. They're, they're stu... They're like not that smart. They're just like, they just kind of honk. They're like geese. Like, her, her, her, her, her, her. Unbelievable. But it's, it's, it's annoying thing, but they've got a very nice museum there.

We've got a couple of nice museums there, but that Air and Space Museum, the Smithsonian, you've been in it? Oh, God. I sit on the board actually now. Oh, stop it. Of course you do. And right now, actually over at the airport at the Udvar-Hazy Center, John Glenn's Friendship 7 capsule, the first American in space,

is sitting about 30 feet from a space shuttle. And to see these two things, this like one millimeter thick aluminum container versus this 120 foot long thing. And that compression of human ingenuity is a really beautiful thing to stand in the middle of. Yeah, I'll bet. I mean, that was the thing that first fascinated me

about America when I was, I think I was seven years old. Yeah, seven when the moon landing happened. And I remember seeing it, I was allowed to old. Yeah, seven when the moon landing happened. And I remember seeing it. I was allowed to stay up and watch on television. And that's when I, like, you start seeing all that American stuff. And I was like, well, I'd like to hang out with those guys. What are they doing?

I want to go there. Because there wasn't any, I didn't see any Scottish people doing it, but I thought, what's going on here? What are these people up to? I find out later there's all Scottish people coming over to America and you know, but it's a fascinating thing because I think the science is part of America's, not only just the rise of America as this global, omnipresent superpower, but, but the kind of spiritual soul of America is that

technology and that strive and that, you know, it's, it's kind of like, when I hear people talk about global warming, which is kind of like, it is the number one issue, I guess, or climate change. And I tend to think I would be interested to hear your take on it because I tend to think at this point, we've gone so far, it's no longer an emotive problem, it's an engineering problem. We got to, we got to fix it a different way. It can't be, we have to stop grandma putting her, you know, hot pocket thing in the correct bin. That's not going to do anything anymore. It has to be. And have you been keeping track of anything with that stuff?

Are you? It's I agree with you. It's it's clear now that it's not a behavioral. There's not a behavioral solution to this problem. Right. Humans have been given the chance. We have the knowledge. We have the data and we aren't willing to make the sacrifices.

And so the response is, is, we'll have to be reactionary. It'll be, you know, at each stage that things get more difficult. What do we do to deal with that difficulty? And it's not a great plan. It's a terrible way to attack a problem. Yeah. But I mean, I feel like it's the only one. I mean, the, the idea of, you know, you know, this is, I live in a hope that someone develops a bacteria

that eats plastic in the ocean and shits out tiny little sea creatures or, you know, they seed the clouds that bring the temperature down or even it out. And there is talk about all of these different things, right? Yeah. I feel like philosophically to me, the problem is around the framing weirdly of late stage capitalism, which is, which is that like late stage capitalism posits that life is a zero sum game that my, my, if I gain, if you gain, it's because I lose.

And I think that's why global warming or behavioral solutions to climate change aren't going to work because everyone has this frame of like, well, if I'm going to suffer, who's benefiting? Instead of what can we do to benefit all of us? Right. Yeah. That sounds, that does not sound politically attractive to a lot of people right now. Yes, I know. And honestly, the most amazing things that have ever happened to me in my life are because of collective action of me and a group of people.

Well, I think, I think that also that, I mean, we are the sum of the people that came before us, we all are. And it's funny, I'm in Chicago right now and Chicago always makes me feel like this because it's a town that I always associate, I don don't know why with the 19th century and early 20th century I guess like Prohibition and Al Capone and you know and the World's Fair 1897 or the Columbia Exposition in 1895 yeah right and so I think of all of that when I walk down went to walk down on the lake today and I look at it and just looking at the buildings and you know, I'm 62, you know, and I'm thinking

it's you're a fucking mayfly man. You're a fucking mayfly. And, and, but all of these buildings, all of this stuff, all of this, the, this temple of mammon that is Chicago, it's all built by people who have gone. Yeah. Have you, Chicago has this, I love Chicago. It's one of my favorite cities. Oh, it's a great city. Great city.

And Chicago has an architectural boat tour up the river that is one of the great three hour tourist trips to do. A three hour tour. A three hour tour on a boat of Chicago's architecture. Everything from why there's little buildings on the sides of every bridge to talking about the Sears Tower. It's a really, really fun afternoon. That sounds like I've got the day off today, actually.

I might try to figure that out. Oh, it's a good one. That's a really good one. I don't have a good three hours to spare. But maybe I do. Maybe I do have three hours to spare. I noticed that, I don't know if you have this, how are you with your phone addiction? Everyone's addicted to their phone, I think. Are you okay with it? Are you strict with yourself? No, I go easy on myself about it.

Oh, that's probably a good idea. I have a funny thing here in the shop, which is that I can't I can't pick up my phone and look at web pages while I'm standing in my shop. Okay. The ethos of this place, that doesn't feel good. I have to sit in my shop chair, which is in the corner, if I want to pause and surf a couple of websites. So I almost never look at my phone while I'm working here in the cave. But at home, yeah, it's, it's, it's fucked up my reading. My reading is terrible. I used to read all the time and now I have to really push myself to, to put

books through my brain because I am a better person when I am reading. I feel like my, my feeling now is that I, I pushed myself hard into analog experiences. So I don't like driving cars that have a lot of tech in them. I don't like, you know, I don't like, I like to go to a theater and talk to an audience who don't have their phones with them, you know, or they're not allowed to use them. Or a comedy club or watch a theater show. But it's hard because those...

I used to think it was my addictive personality because I clearly have one, but I don't think it. I think everyone has a fuck. I look at everyone seems to be kind of drawn into this mess. It's weird. Neil Stevenson wrote a book a few years ago called Seven Eves and I'm going to spoil it right now, but it's been out for years, so I don't think that's a problem. And in it, the moon blows up and starts to break into chunks that are going to make earth

uninhabitable and the book spans people leaving the Earth in order to survive and then going back to it several thousand years later. Wow. And when they go back to it, they have access to all the technology that existed on Earth. And one of the things they do is, yeah, we're not going to do smartphones this time. That didn't work out for everybody. That's great. Isn't that beautiful?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a book by, uh, I think I can't remember the author's name. He's great. I've read everything he's done. Richard Harris, maybe is that a guy who wrote, uh, the trilogy about Cicero? Um, oh, he's great, but he wrote, book called Second Sleep, which is set in 1483.

So the second middle ages after the apocalypse. And as a guy starts finding old technology and starts to realize what happened because you know, it's exactly like the middle ages where in fact you're a couple of chapters into the book before you know he picks up something and he sees the little apple logo on it and you go what the fuck? Because you think you're in the middle ages and then suddenly you're not you're in the middle ages again. It's a fascinating, fascinating book. I was just reading a thought experiment from some researchers that were like, okay, if it's possible that there was an intelligent civilization of some kind of creature before

human beings on earth that existed, you know, pre-Pangea, because there's actually been, there's another Pangea that predates Pangea. Right. And so all of the surfaces of all the land masses on Earth have turned over and, you know, sedimentary layers have built up. What would you look for to look for a civilization that existed that long ago? What sort of non-random things would give you a hint that intelligence had yielded some sort of effect on Earth's atmosphere, on its land masses?

And what would you look for? Well, this is the thing. They were just opening up the thought experiment, but there's a lovely guy, Lee Cronin, he's over in Scotland or Ireland. And we were at a dinner party talking about what is a reasonable definition of life. And he said, I've got it. I've got the simplest definition of life. Life, he said, makes non-random shit at scale. Yeah, all right.

That's pretty good. Isn't that beautiful? Yeah. I read something recently about, you know, the, I can't remember the name of it. It's passed in the dotage, but it was about the idea of the most successful forms of life on earth. And there was postulate in the idea that wheat is the most successful form of life because you know, it takes up the most ground and everybody needs it.

It's, you know, it's, and I was thinking, I also try that with Louis CK had a bet, which I loved about humans are the most successful because we're not in the food chain anymore. And wheat most certainly fucking is. And I think there's just, it's a different perspective on this, on the same thing. I once saw biologists give a talk from the frame of sheep and cows were really smart when they traded sexual selection for protection from humans.

Oh yeah. for protection from humans. Oh yeah. But. But. Yeah. It's just, I love an alternate frame of who was the mover. I think that ultimately where I come back to, or where I am at the moment anyway,

is that I kind of feel like I'm with the stoics, which is the only thing you really can control is your attitude to what's happening. Everything else is outside your control. You can look at it, you can see it, you can absorb it, but there's so few things can actually be altered by anything other than the way you think about it. Well, this is like,

this is one of my favorite, um, Buddhist prayers actually, or, uh, slogans is, and it's actually, it's important enough that Julia, my wife wrote this down for me and put it in my wallet. And it's germane to what you just said. And it's about the fact that, you know, we come here and we leave here and we're not here for very long. And we don't have much that we can get done in the time we're here. But the last part of this is, my actions are my only true belongings.

I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand. That seems like a great place to tie it all up. Well done. It's lovely to catch up with you, Adam. It's been way too long. I'll be in San Francisco. I've got to be there soon. I'm on tour. It's got to be in the future. Will, can you and Julie and I please have dinner? Please. Absolutely. We'd love that. It's been way too long. She sends her love. I told her I was doing this. And in fact, Megan sends hers to you and to her so it's all good. We're back in the game buddy. I love it. I love you my friend. It's good to see you. All right. Take it easy.

Join iHeartMedia chairman and CEO Bob Pittman for a special episode of the hit podcast, Math & Magic, Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing, as he interviews the iconic and prolific Martha Stewart in front of a live audience in celebration of her 100th book. Did you ever think you were gonna wind up writing 100 books? Yeah. You did? Yeah, it's just a minor goal. Listen to Math and Magic on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Perdenti.

And I'm Jeme Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart podcasts. If you're early in your career, you probably have a lot of money questions. So we're talking to finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it down. Looking at the numbers is one of the most honest reflections of what your financial picture actually is. The numbers won't lie to you.

Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. People, my people, what's up? This is Quetzalove. Man, I cannot believe we're already wrapping up another season of Quetzalove Supreme. Man, we've got some amazing guests lined up to close out the season, but I don't want any of you guys to miss all the incredible conversations we've had so far. I mean we talked to A. Marie, Johnny Marr, Eve, Jonathan Schechter, Billy Porter and so many more. Look if you haven't heard these episodes

yet, hey now's your chance. You gotta check them out. Listen to Quest Love Supreme on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.