Soul Boom - Ronny Chieng: Can Cultural Identity Survive Globalization?

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

Comedian Ronny Chieng (The Daily Show) joins Rainn Wilson on Soul Boom to delve into the complexities of cultural identity in a globalized world. They explore the intersection of humor and identity, discussing how comedy can act as a bridge between different cultures. Ronny shares personal experiences and insights on belonging, self-discovery, and the modern challenges of maintaining cultural roots. Thank you to our sponsors! Pique Tea (15% OFF!): https://piquelife.com/SOUL HOKA: https://bit.ly/HokaSoulBoom Squarespace: https://squarespace.com/soulboom Waking Up app (1st month FREE!): https://wakingup.com/soulboom Fetzer Institute: https://fetzer.org/ Sign up for our newsletter! https://soulboom.substack.com SUBSCRIBE to Soul Boom!! https://bit.ly/Subscribe2SoulBoom Watch our Clips: https://bit.ly/SoulBoomCLIPS Watch WISDOM DUMP: https://bit.ly/WISDOMDUMP Follow us! Instagram: http://instagram.com/soulboom TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@soulboom Sponsor Soul Boom: [e-mail] Work with Soul Boom: [e-mail] Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: [e-mail] Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Spring Green Films Production Supervisor: Mike O'Brien Voicing Change Media Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Thank you. You're listening to Soul. You have a quote that says, podcasts are the deaths of civilization. Podcasts are the death of civilization. I was like, will you do my podcast? He's like, I hate podcasts. I will do podcast if it's with someone more famous than me.

That's crazy. No, I just don't. You're way more famous than me anyway. No, that's totally not true. I'm on more coffee mugs at Target than you are, but you're more famous than me. You're not true. This is different, okay, because you're accomplished and to honest. You're not allowed to look at this camera again.

You're an accomplished actor. And I didn't move to America to do podcasts. I moved America to meet my comedy heroes to do. stand-up comedy to do sound-up comedy to 50 people in a room for 20 bucks. You're still looking at the camera. What is... Yeah, it's just nine years of...

Nine years of training. Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy.

Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. One of the things I love about your comedy and your work. And, you know, obviously, we know your work from The Daily Show, which is a big, giant kind of forum for a cultural criticism of America, certain segments of American culture. But you do that throughout your comedy,

you know, growing up in Malaysia and Singapore, and then Australia, you're such a citizen of the world. Are you American citizen? No, no, I'm not. Okay. I'm not, yeah. Why do they let you stay here? Don't let them live.

No, I'm still here. But you are uniquely positioned to have a certain perspective on the United States that shows through in your comedy. Bottom line, give me your best American cultural criticism from your international standpoint. I mean, I don't think I'm an expert in anything. I don't think just because I lived in multiple countries means that I know better than anybody. My perspective on America was that I really wanted to come here. I've been trying to come here for a long time

Come back here for a long time I'm to do comedy You love Seinfeld, you love American Yeah I love Bill Burr Comedy, love the office I love these you know meeting you in here Right now is actually kind of like a low-key Dream Come True right now

This is pretty crazy That's nuts everyone everyone You've been in a Marvel movie They won't even auditioned me for Marvel movies Yeah I got a very small role And it helps if you have no minimum like yeah no quote no quote yeah you can you can get home you'd be amazed how many things you get into if no no quote um because my perspective was I always wanted to come here and when

I'm here I always feel like I'm a guest and I'm grateful for all the things that happen so when when I'm here I'm less I'm you know my criticism is never like like fuck this place is awful my criticism is always comes from like oh I I came here because because I thought America was this and I can see it. I can see it and it's not there sometimes. And I'm like, it could be that. Like, but this is an interesting argument because if you criticize America, people are like,

well, no, I also criticize my wife. And it doesn't mean I wanna get a divorce. It's just like, I want our marriage to be better and I wanna urge her to be better and she wants to urge me to be a better person. So can we criticize in a way to kind of like culturally urge, things to evolve and move forward.

I mean, the United States is based on e pluribus unum. We've never really known e pluribus unum out of many one. But that is an ideal to strive for. I think in a lot of ways, we're getting a lot better. And so let's try and make even more epluribus unums. Yeah, no, I agree. How do we take the best things from around the world and do them here? It's really the bottom line.

That's really what it is, you know, Because I grew up in Singapore and I grew up in, I went to law school in Australia. I lived there for 10 years. I've seen this, they don't even call it socialism over there. They just call it, that's just how the government should work.

Okay. Which is where education is free, healthcare is free. In Singapore, it's a very capitalist country by, I think, any measure, but their healthcare system works.

They kind of force you to save for your own health care by making you, um, save your own salary, a portion of your salary every month goes to your own Medicare savings and then the government. Kind of like ours does for Social Security. Yeah, right.

And so you see, yeah. And then you go to like Japan and there bullet trains. And then you're all just like, well, why. Why can we have bullet trains? Yeah, why can we have bullet trains? Why can we have better health care? And why can we have? But isn't that part of our toxic political system?

I always come back to our partisan because trains are like a lefty thing. Because they're good for the environment and it's public infrastructure. So then the political right is like, fuck trains. We want more trucks and high. and oil. And then the left is like, fuck trucks and highways and oil. We want trains. It's like, can't we all get along and have trucks and oil and highways and really fast,

effective trains? Yeah. But the oil lobby is also very powerful in the right wing. And they will actively work to subvert any large mass transit projects. And it's really sad. And I do wish people could see that. I think sometimes America does a lot of things right. innovation here is very strong.

Show business is very strong here. And so combining those two ideas, if they could sell some innovation better to the whole country, that would probably be a better thing. But I think sometimes Americans don't look enough to, or know enough to look at other countries and see these good ideas. Because if you've never been on a bullet train,

you wouldn't even know what the hell that is. You've never even seen it. You never know how easy that could make life for people. You're like, I don't care about that. You know, if you've never been able to go to a hospital and not worry about becoming bankrupt. You don't know what that feels like. Well, I remember years ago, 10 or 12 years ago,

eating dinner in Canada. And I was like, can I get the check? And they're like, and they took care of it at the table with a little like remote charge thing. And I was like at the 10. And I didn't have to go up and stand in line and wait at the cashier. Right.

And I was like-paper work that you have to do it. Yeah. And it blew my mind. I just went like this. And like, and I was like, why don't we have this in the United States? Finally it came. Yeah. The Canadians were on to this good 10, 15 years.

years before us. Australia was on to that before. Yeah, I'm sure. So it's interesting sometimes. Well, Michael Moore had a documentary called What Country Should We Invade Next? That was literally, I'm not kidding you. This was about this exact thing. He went around the world looking at health care, education, other kinds of social innovations and said, you know, what can we take from other countries? What can we learn from other countries? But again, that takes humility. And because it was Michael Moore, who's a leftist, then everyone was like, oh, fuck him. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think Because sometimes we Americans are like, America's the best, America's the best.

And when you have that mindset, sometimes you refuse to look outside, right? Because if you're the best, why would you look outside? But one of the superpowers of America is the immigration. Because imagine having such good marketing for your country, America, that the best of every other country wants to come here. Once to come here, yeah. You know, and that's a good superpower.

And I know that sounds super, wokey, left, whatever. But I just mean that as a fact, like all the innovation in America, it's all immigrants coming here who had a chip on their shoulder or they had adverse circumstances. So when they come to America, it's like, this is almost like on easy mode.

Life on easy mode and they just innovate, you know? And you talk about, you know, entrepreneurship and innovation. And I do think that that's true in the United States. There is kind of a thing of like, hey, you can change the world and you can come up with an invention and you can do anything you set your mind to.

A lot of hubris, but yes. Yeah, a lot of arrogance. But yeah, but, and I, I, I had a friend from Australia and he talked about this thing called a tall poppy syndrome. Maybe you know this where in some places in the world, like if you stick out and say, I want to start this business and I also want to do that. Yes, I trained as a doctor,

but they're like, hey, hey, slow down now. Stay in your lane. Just like settle down. Just do your thing that you were trained for and don't do anything extra and sort of societal pressure to limit stifle innovation. Did you feel that in Australia? A little bit in Australia. Yeah.

I mean, that's the perfect, you just kind of perfectly described it. I mean, thank you. One is... That's why I have a podcast. What in Australia, it's,

um, they love people who win without trying in Australia. You got to win, but you can't look like you try too hard. So I'm not sure if you remember, I can't remember his name, but there was this Australia now winter ice skater, Olympic ice skater.

Okay. And he won the Olympic gold medal for speed skating. Because of the other people fell down. Everyone else fell down. He was like last. Everyone else fell out and then he won. And that dude was Australia. Like he was like the Australian champion.

This dude is like the best. Even Crocodile Dundee. This dude, what was his name again? Paul Hogan. Paul Hogan. Yeah. Yeah. He was a guy working on a knife.

Yeah. This is a knife. One of the all-time legendary comedians in Australia all-time. Not stand-up, but comedic, you know, great comedic force as an actor, most popular movie of all-time, probably Australia. Handsome good. Handsome, handsome,

tiny and handsome. He was just some dude working on a bridge in Sydney. He was hammering the bridge. One day a newspaper, a newscaster interviewed him about the bridge

and he was just really funny on camera. He was like, oh yeah, this guy's so funny, you know, we're trying to build it. And they were like,

this guy's so funny, we got to put him in movies. And he was like, okay, well, you know, and the whole time he was like, okay, well,

I'm not really a actor, but I'll do this movie. And he just kept killing it all the way up. Yeah. He just kept like not trying and winning. And in Australia, conversely, if you're like, hey, I want to like, I'm like,

if you show your ambition, if you have raw ambition. They're like, shut the fuck. I'm going to get, you know, they hate it. You can swear on this. Yeah. They hate it. Whereas in America, it's the, I think the best way I can show is the difference in networking. I don't know how you feel how true this is.

So maybe I'm wrong. But I feel like in America, if you meet someone for coffee, let's say I ask you out for coffee, can you please, I need some guidance on this. I love it. I appreciate so much you can meet for coffee. We met for coffee. And if in this coffee session, if at the end of it, I don't ask you for anything, like, I don't ask you, there's no ask.

I just wanted to meet you and get some advice and all that. And I don't ask you for anything concrete. In America, it's almost like, well, why did you fucking ask me a meetup? Like, why are you wasting my time? Like, if you don't want anything for me, what are we doing? Like, what can I do? Do you want me a reference letter for you? Don't me an email someone?

Okay. All right. But if you ask me for nothing, it's like, why did you waste my fucking that? Whereas in like Australia and and I think fair to say Asia, it's like if we meet up for coffee and I ask you for something like, can you please introduce me to this producer? That's like rude. That's rude to forward. Yeah, it's very forward because it's like we don't even know each other. I'm already asking.

This is a big ask for you to put your neck on the line for me. But in America it's like, well, if you don't want me, then you're wasting my time right now. Like, hurry up. Can you introduce me to Marvel? Yeah. I don't think you need me to do that. But they ain't calling. My phone's pretty silent.

Where did your funny bones come from? Because people don't think Singapore, Malaysia, funny. But not that I would know. I know noodles. You know, because I've been in the Singapore airport and they have all these noodle stands everywhere. That's all I know about Singapore. I think you would like Singapore.

It's almost like Wakanda. Singapore is like First World Country. You know, like everything's super advanced. Everything is efficient. It makes sense. It's super hot. there. I can agree with you.

Not necessarily a hotbed for comedy. Western style comedy, although there's some really great Singaporean stand-up comics. Please check them out. Jason Leong, ETC. But I don't know where it came from. I don't even know if I have funny bones, to be honest.

I'm still part of the reason I started doing stand-up was to test whether I had any funny bones. Oh, come on. No, I truly don't even... Sometimes I'm with you guys. I'm with like... You do. You do.

For real. I mean, come. on. Part of it is like in your stand-up, too, like, you're un-fraid of looking ridiculous. Like, you do a lot of silly physical. People don't give you enough, you know, props for the physical stuff that you do. Thanks. You know, and you make yourself look ridiculous.

I feel like that comes from my dad a bit. He was very physical. He's always like the life of the party in family reunions. He would be making jokes and, like, roasting people and all that. But how do you get the funny, but you didn't come from that same Petri Dish? because you were a fucking lawyer. You're like a straight A student and you were a lawyer in...

You have a law degree. You have a law degree. Yeah. Which does you no good in the United States. But in Australia, you could totally... Yeah. In Australia, I could be a high court judge. But here,

no, I really don't know. I wasn't a good student, to be clear. I wasn't straight A at all. I scraped into law school. And then in law school, I was a bad student. My wife will attest. She was a much better student than me.

I met her in law school in Australia. I don't know. I really don't know where. I don't even know if I had, I got, I don't know if I have funny bones. Like I said, I was just trying to. When did people start telling you that you were funny?

No one never told me that. I told them I was doing stand-up. My friends were like, you better not. It's going to be terrible. They were like, you better not do it. It's going to suck. I was in my housemaid. I was like, hey, I'm thinking of joining this comedy competition.

He was like, you better not do that, man. I would. If I were you, I wouldn't. So you didn't have the people going like, you should do it. You're so funny at a party. You should go do it in front of a microphone. No, opposite. You better not do it.

It's going to be so embarrassing for you. So what drove you to do it? If everyone is telling you you're not funny. I can't imagine you got a lot of support from your parents to be like. I didn't tell them. I didn't tell them. I didn't tell them. All right.

So you deceived your parents. One of my superpowers, I think is really not caring. I'm going to go do what I want to do. And I'm okay being a loner. That's something, you know, I don't know. Okay. I was okay. Was it a certain kind of like, I don't give a fuck kind of attitude in a way?

Maybe. I mean, so the reason I started doing it was because there was, I was watching stand-up comedy and I was loving it. And I was like, how come no one's talking about this, you know, for like. Right. So it's like what something to like to write, to write about like you could write about. Yeah. Like I was like, no one's talking about this experience, whether it was Asian or not Asian, right? It didn't have to be racial. But whether it was like, hey, no one's talking about.

this like this perspective or this perspective no one's doing it maybe I'll go do it you know and I want to confirm whether this makes me laugh I wonder other people that's really what it was that's really what it was was just that it wasn't any and I was in Australia you know I didn't even know there was no hope of going on the tonight show that wasn't even a goal you know I mean it was just like

hey I wonder if this will make people laugh it was really just there was something very pure and very artsy about it that again I which also contrasts to the incredibly corporate world I was in, you know, that very kind of hierarchy, money-driven, get an interview, this is a successful, you get into a law firm, this is what success means, versus this weird gypsy world that the circus, it was the circus. And coming from Singapore, that's so foreign.

So what's your first, what's your first joke? My first joke. What's your first routine? What's your first area of topic? Like, here's one area of topic, like I always wanted to talk about. I'm not a stand-up. but Native American dream catchers hanging from people's rearview windows. Rearview mirrors.

Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. If you drive around, especially the Southwest, this, they're called dream catchers. They're a sacred object from Navajo and Hopi and stuff like that. And people will have them hanging from their rearview mirrors. And like the thought process of like some white, 60-year-old white dude to like, I'm going to hang a dream catcher from my car. I don't know how I would make jokes about it But to me, it's so ludicrous

And I've never heard a stand-up talk about dream catchers Yeah, I wonder if that's like What's the goal here that if you fall asleep at the wheel? Yeah, is it going to catch your dream? Is it going to catch a nightmares in case you? Yeah, I know that that is really funny By the way, Native American culture underrated. We need more of that.

We could use more Native American culture in all aspects. Agreed. Here, here. Yeah. The topics I was talking about were kind of being an Asian guy in a Western society, Australia. I was making some dirty sex jokes

about my sister. Wait, what? Yeah. I'm sorry. That came out worse than it sounded. I think it was a misdirect. I think my first joke was something like I met my sister.

We accidentally played footsie under the table and I won. Or something like that. Whatever about that. Okay. Yeah. I met my sister for dinner and then we were playing footsie and I won or something. And then it was some joke about.

That's a terrible joke. Okay. I'm sorry. It was my first job. Yeah. Yeah. You really shouldn't do comedy. I'm butchering my own set.

You know what's weird? I actually have a video of my very, very first. You're very, very first one? Yeah. I got a video of it. Yeah. And it went a lot better than what I just did. I actually won the competition.

And that's what kept me going. Oh, okay. So you went in and you won. Yeah, I was pretty decent at that first gig. And then I, that was in a very controlled environment at my college. But granted, it was still strangers, but it was my own college. It felt kind of safe. And then that made me go and do it to strangers.

And the whole time I was like, I actually don't want my friends to see this. Because I don't want me to be, I don't want be a comic who can only perform to family and friends. So did you sneak out to like local Chuckles Comedy Club and Melbourne or something? In Australia, in Melbourne, it was comedy rooms. So we only had like one comedy club that was pretty hard to get into. So I was doing like bar shows, you know, and loving it. It was like, it was so, like I said, Singapore is very straight and narrow and there's certain career paths you take.

Especially I was in Australia to go to law school, presumably to go back to Singapore to become a lawyer, you know. And so for me to experience this world where people didn't care about money or at least they seem like they didn't care about money. And, you know, it's like artists. It was pure artists. And I that was a very foreign artist, but yeah, yeah, drunk artists and it was very It was very bohemian and you know, I was meeting these Australians and it's a world which I

Despite living in Australia, I never really got to because I never got to experience that world because I was in that International student university when I met Australians they were the Type A personality Trying to become investment banker Australians. I didn't meet the The smoking just people getting drinking I didn't get to make friends with those people until I started doing comedy. And yeah, it was... The fun-loving alcoholic said.

Yeah. And I don't know. I don't know. I just, it was, I'm always trying to like get away from the main culture. So I think maybe that was my way of rebelling against what I was the world I was in. Why were you trying to rebel against the main culture? I don't know. I just something in me.

I was always trying to like, I didn't want, I didn't need or want to be part of whatever everyone else was doing, you know, I could just go do my own thing and pray happily. I was always like that. So maybe it was me trying to be cool, you know, I was trying to be cooler than everyone else and so I went to go do this. But I didn't make a big deal about it because I, again, I didn't want friends to come watch me because I wanted to perform to strangers. I wanted a pure test of whether or not I could make strangers laugh.

Yeah. And I didn't tell my parents and I just kept doing it. I didn't make a big deal about it. When did your parents find out? Like, oh my God, my son has... I'm hoping they don't watch this podcast Honestly they found out like when I was I was doing theaters in Australia

It made the news in in in Singapore when I was Yeah so long along the way Yeah so so it was a year or two in Yeah me three or four years How long were you deceiving and lying to your poor parents About your comedy? Your secret comedy career To be fair I did a lie I never told them

I didn't say what's a lie of admission A lot of a mission was, yeah. But as a lawyer, a lot of missions are not like. And I didn't tell them and they found out. And, you know, they weren't as brutal as I thought they would be. They want, you know, my mom actually wasn't discouraging. My dad said that no white person would ever buy a ticket to watch you. Yeah, he said that.

Yeah, he said it to me. But, you know, I get where he was coming from. How, where was he coming from with saying that? He was worried. He was worried. Yeah. He was worried. He was worried that you would get your hopes up and they'd get dashed.

Yeah. The ultimate kind of racism of white people that didn't want to watch a, yeah, a Malaysian stand-up comic? Yeah. I won't put, I won't put racism onto that. Well, you know, I think because my dad went to college in America and he left. He graduated and he went back to Malaysia because he knew that was a cultural ceiling for him. And he was worried that I would hit the same cultural ceiling. That they would never let you.

They would never listen to you. They would never want to listen to you. They would never want to support you. They would never think you were good. They would never give you. Yeah. So and yeah, I think he came around. He passed away a couple years ago.

But I think he was, I think he silently came around. Yeah. So we, in doing research for this, we lost our fathers around the same time. Oh, eh? Yeah, mine was early 2020 years of 2019. Is that right? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, my 2018.

Oh, so I thought you meant same time in life, but same time in calendar time, yes. Yeah, yeah. Around the same year, we both lost our fathers. Yeah, yeah. What was that like for you? What kind of role did he play in his life? What was that? He was a very, pretty strict guy, pretty tough dude.

Could be tough to get along with. What was his career? career he became like a corporate guy but he was always a businessman and went like a self-made business entrepreneur guy but he was like the smartest guy in his family academically but he didn't go to college he just started his own business in Malaysia and it was going pretty well and then it went it went under and then he reinvented himself by getting his college education in america then he went back and became a corporate executive so he he He restarted his life out of circumstances.

Like, he wasn't like, he didn't gamble. He didn't drink. He wasn't like, he had no vices, really. He just had a bad temper. That's where his biggest vice. But he remade his life a few times due to, you know, when you're doing business, sometimes it just doesn't work out.

It's not because you are bad at business. It doesn't matter you, doesn't mean that you were dishonest or in any way. It just didn't work out. But he was so self. made her restart his life every single time. And when he passed away, at his funeral,

like family members would come. So his nephews and nieces, my cousins and my aunts and uncles, everyone would have these stories. I didn't even know that he was so respected because he was the guy who, in his village in Malaysia, he would see his nephews and nieces

whom he wasn't even particularly close to. They were just by blood related. He would see them graduate from high school and he could already see that they would be stuck in this village and never leave due to just laziness or whatever, inertia, lack of inertia. He would grab them by the hand and bring them to the big city and say,

okay, go study accounting, go become an accountant. And they would tell me these stories. And it sounded like him. I just never knew that. I never knew specifically. But when they told me these stories, oh, that sounds like him. He would take you by the hand

and you literally put them in a car to go to Kuala Lumpur, go study a country, and become an accountant so that you would have a better life. And so he was that dude. So pretty generous but strong will. Yes, very generous and very caring in that really weird, strict way. Like, you know, super caring guy.

But in that, in that, like, yell at you to make you better. And, you know, he was right. Most of the time he was right. So how did he die? He was on his farm. He was farming and then he passed away on his farm. Just very unexpectedly. Very unexpectedly.

Very unexpectedly. I know warning. He just left. I talk about this in the... And how, how was... I'm just trying to get people watch this special. Yeah. Let's promote what's the name of your special? No, no, it's not out.

You're developing material for a new special. Yeah, yeah. I'm on tour right now. What's it called? It's the love to hate it tour. Love to hate it. Love to hate it. Yeah, come watch it.

But what was that like? What was that like for you when you lost him? Oh, it was so sudden. It was horrible. It was so sudden. Were you close or... Yeah, I mean, we want... Yeah, we want...

Yeah, we want best friends, but we want enemies. And we were talking, you know, and a lot of mutual respect. We were kind of very different people. I think everyone says, well, the same person. But I feel we're different, but maybe we were, we couldn't be best friends because we were too similar, maybe. I don't know. Okay.

And when, yeah, he left, it was so, it was so sudden. It truly was, I got a phone call for my brother-in-law, and he was like, oh, he left, he's gone. And it was like, I was going to see him the next day. Wow. Yeah. And my last text message to him was like, He was asking him about drones.

He was going to buy a drone for his farm. And he was like, what did you think about buying this drone? And I was like, I don't know. It just seems like it takes skill to pilot those drones. And then you had to go back home and like, I had to go back and like handle his estate, you know, which is always weird. Because when people pass away unexpectedly,

they, their estate is up to other people to handle. Yeah. You know, and so you have to go through their life. You're forced to kind of go through our life to handle that. You know, so that was intense. Wow. Yeah, that was really intense. So I luckily, my wife was with me, my sister, my brother-in-law, we all, my mom, you know,

we're all like going through the stuff and trying to figure out. And he left, the universe is very weird. He, when we got to his, the house in Malaysia, he had left like stacks of paper on his kitchen table. And it was all his business event. There's just stacks of paper right there, you know. And I mean, part of it is because he's an old school guy. He printed out everything. So it wasn't like he didn't expect to leave.

But it's part of it was like, man, it's kind of weird that all this stuff. Was it a heart or a stroke thing or what? It was a farming accident. Farming. Yeah. It was rough. I'm so sorry. Yeah, it was rough.

And he also, before he left, for some reason, he wrapped up all his bank debt. You know? Like, it's very bizarre. My mom can't explain it. Yeah. Yeah. Again, I'm not implying at all that he knew he was going to go. It was just, it's just so, the universe is weird, you know?

He kind of wrap everything up. And I went through his, I went through his laptop. I talk about this in the show, me having to hack into his laptop and go through his emails and his messages to me. Any weird porn there or anything like that talk about this in the show. Are you terrified of like, oh, please don't have like a foot fetish dad? Yeah, that's exactly what it was. I had to go through his stuff to see. And no porn.

I couldn't believe it. That's great. What a stand-up guy. Yeah. Turn on auto-delete on your history. Yeah. Everyone listening. So yeah, that was rough.

I mean, I don't know. Did you expect your father? No, he was getting quadruple bypass surgery, my dad. But that has like a 95% success rate, 97 success rate. Yeah. It's rough. So 12 hours on the operating table and they couldn't find enough decent artery anywhere in his body to put into his heart.

Right. Because it all decayed. He had such bad arterial sclerosis and decay. No donors, no donor arteries. I didn't know if that was even an option. But it was, so it was, you know, it was a scary time because we knew he was going under the, but I remember him having surgery and I went around.

I went to Target and I bought some stuff that I needed. And I was like, I went to like this looking for a, thing. I have this dental appliance I wear when I sleep and I was looking for a piece of rubber that would work in it that would fix it. And I was in Wenatchi, Washington, blah, blah, blah. And then we went and played pickleball. He's getting surgery. We played pickleball because we're like, we're going to get the call. He's going to come out of post-op. We're going to go see him. And then it's like, we got to call like complications. We've got to call. It's not looking good. And then we're just by the afternoon. We were just like, oh, my God. Oh, man. Yeah, that's rough. But, you know, part of

part of soul boom, you know, I have a chapter called death and how to live it. Yeah. And there's a big section there about what preparing my father's body for death kind of felt like where I realized on a kind of a deep aha moment that his body was simply a vessel for his life force that carried him. and that when we kind of washed and prepared his body for burial, it was this profound kind of realization of like, oh, he's not dead.

This vessel that was carrying him is lying here. But whatever his spirit, consciousness is soul, whatever you want to call it, is somewhere else. I didn't feel like, oh, it's up in heaven or something like that, but it just, there's some other, kind of journey that it's taken. And that was, and it would really kind of rung this bell of like, and I talk about it a lot on the show

and I talk a lot about it in the book, but that we are spiritual beings. We have a limited amount of time in these meat suits. And then we continue the journey. Now are you, did you have anything along those lines or are you kind of like, it's when we die, lights out, we're worm food? I tried to suppress spirituality as a man of science,

but man, some weird stuff was happening for sure. Like when he left, I had to, you know, and I had shows in Boston about two months later at the Wilbur. And I went to go do these shows in Boston. And the backstory is that when I was a kid, we born in Malaysia and my, like I said, my dad went to,

America for college, but he went late in life when he had two kids. When he went to college, he brought me and my sister, my mom, and we were in Manchester, New Hampshire, and we would go to Boston. That was our local Chinatown. And so I went to Boston to perform at Wilbur, and it was kind of like a homecoming a little bit in Boston. And I was feeling a certain way, you know, because I was feeling sad because, as Boston's my first show after my dad passed away, I'm performing in Boston. You know, Universe, that's pretty weird.

And I was doing the show. And I did the show. And I talked about it a little bit. about how Boston was my hometown China town my dad just passed away everyone was like oh you know and then the show went well and then I I go home and then the next two days later my mom sends me a message from my uncle so my mom's brother not my dad's brother my mom's brother he he he said out of nowhere no one knows I didn't really I didn't tell them I was doing a show my my mom my mom's brother had a dream that my dad came to him in the dream and he said hey um

let's go, let's go to Boston. Ronnie's performing. Ronnie's there, not performing. Ronnie's in Boston. Let's go Boston and go to Chinatown and let's go eat. And so they brought my, he, in the dream, my dad brought my uncle to Boston. And they went to a restaurant, Chinese restaurant. And my dad was like, hey, let's order the lobster.

Let's have lobster. And then my uncle told my dad that it just the price is very expensive. And my dad was like, okay, let's not eat here then. And I was like, that's my dad. And then in the dream, my dad went to the market. He said, okay, let's buy lobster and bring it home to cook, which is so my dad. And then my uncle in the dream was like, yeah, okay, let's do that. And so my dad bought a lobster.

And then he turned to my uncle's like, oh, I don't know how to go home. You know how to go home? And then my uncle was like, oh, yeah, it's what you do. He drew him on that. And then my dad was like, in the dream, was like, okay, thanks. Now I know how to go home. That was like what was that you know what I mean and my my uncle didn't know I was performing in Boston He didn't know no one knew I was in Boston

So he did yeah he didn't know in his dream my dad came to him and said like oh we let's go to Boston Ronnie's in Boston He didn't say performing he said I still have the voice message Yeah, and then like another week later after that my mom had a dream about my dad and that was like it was almost like my uncle like give him a map to come and Visit and then you know so he could just say bye is your mom's dream my mom's dream my mom's dream my mom's dream my mom's dream was that he was standing outside the house. And my mom was so mad at him for dying. She was yelling at him. Like, why did you go?

What are you doing here? How did you like this happen? He said in the dream. My dad was to stay outside. Like, it left. And then my uncle said like, well, maybe if you don't yell at him, he'll come visit you more. And then my mom was like, if he visits me, I'm going to yell at him again for dying.

Now, you said earlier, I'm a man of science. I stay away from spirituality. Why would you say that science and spirituality are at odds? Oh, no. Here we go. Here comes the big fight now. No, I don't know. There's no big fight. As Arthur Brooks says, we have to learn how to disagree better.

Yeah, I agree. But do you see those two things at odds? Because I don't see there being a discrepancy there necessarily. I mean, if you believe in like weird miracles. like God is shaped like an elephant or, you know, Jesus's body floated out of the crypt up into the sky or something like that. Then maybe you could say, like, well, that defies science. But, you know, I've been reading a ton about and listening to a ton on going down a YouTube wormhole

about near-death experiences. And it's fascinating all over the globe by the thousands, by the millions of like all of these things, like tunnel of light, dead relatives. Relatives greeting them, seeing your life below, looking down in your body, seeing things that are actually happening to your body that you would have no way of knowing.

And science has no, when you talk to like, when you listen to the sciences, tried to describe, it's like, well, it's a hallucination caused by the blah, blah, they don't know. But the fact is it, you know, whether you're in Argentina or whether you're in Thailand, these near-death experiences happen, And why, you know, why can't that be within the bounds of science?

But tell me, what are your thoughts? I prefer to be a rational humanist, you know? Okay. And I like that approach. I think that has the best benefit for most people. Yep. I think trying to get into spirituality, like, I think some people can. Are you saying I'm not a rational humanist?

No, no, not at all. I just think that there's some people who can't handle it and they take it to a very negative place. So and and because of that, I prefer to just, let's just keep it to what we can. Do you think, so people that are spiritual, but you're really talking about people that are religious, get very combative. Yes. Yes. Yes. And judgmental. Yes. Yes. Of other people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to go to hell if you don't believe in. Yeah. Yeah. So I just don't like that vibe. I don't like that vibe. I don't like, but, but are you sidestepping the whole metaphysical question of like, do we have a soul? Is your dad's journey? Yeah. Yeah.

continuing or did it end when consciousness ended? Yeah, I think, yeah, I don't know. I really don't know. I think the universe is weird. That's for sure. I've seen enough kind of weird energy, you know, coincidences happen. And all that stuff was stuff that made me happy, you know, all the weird energy in the universe I've ever seen.

Yeah. You know, I was in, so to answer a question, I don't know. I don't know. I prefer, I fall back on logic and reason. And, you know, and that's, I like that to be my default position. If you can't prove it, you know, I just, that's my default position on stuff. At the same time, yeah, I've experienced very positive, weird coincidences.

And I'm very happy I did. And in the moment when I'm there, I don't try to rationalize it. You know, I try to be like, oh, this is something very cool. I was in Hawaii filming a season, two seasons of a TV show. Man, I had such weird, you know, spiritual things happen on Hawaii. that helped me personally. It was very bizarre. I got two.

One was there's an actor who I respect very much who was calling me and he was asking me to be at the time part of his project. And I love this guy a lot. And senior Asian actor to me, I was in Hawaii at the time. And he just as making small talk, he was like, oh yeah, I was also in Hawaii. And he said like when I was filming in Hawaii back 20 years ago,

I wish, I had a great time. I love Hawaii, but I wish I went with the flow more because I tried to bring mainland LA Hollywood energy to a Hawaii film set and it just clashed. And in hindsight,

I should have just been more with the locals in that environment. And I'm in Hawaii, be like Hawaii and go with that kind of energy. Whatever that means, slower pace. Don't be so like get things done. So he was in like, he thought he was in professional work

but really he was just bumping up against the energy of that place. And he told me that. And I said, island time kind of thing. Sure, especially with film industry. Yeah, film industry in Hawaii. And so he told me that before my first day on set.

And so I go to set and I have like a 5 a.m. call time. I get to set. I'm in the car park for like 40 minutes because they haven't figured out the trailer situation yet. I tell the producer like, hey, I don't mind call times early. but like this was pretty like this was a very solvable situation. They didn't even have the trailer set up and you were already called before dawn. Right, right.

And I was there early and and I didn't, I was irritated at that, but I'm not just saying this to make myself sound good. I'm not someone who carries that stuff to set anyway because I'm on set. I think I, for me, I believe I'm not, the set isn't here for me. I'm here for the set. So I didn't take that anger on set anyway. But then I remember what that guy. said, you know. And so meaning he told me something that was directly applicable, something happened the next day to me where I was like, oh yeah, just go with a flow. And what was weird

about that, not just that coincidence was that, that day I was in makeup, taking off my makeup with the makeup chair. And I happened to tell the story to her. And I don't mention the names. And she goes, oh, yeah, it's this guy. And I was like, how did you know? How do you know who I was talking about? And she was like, oh, I worked on that project. And I could see why he would say that. And she wasn't talking shit about him. She just said, oh, I could see why he would tell you that. And I'm like, wow, that is very weird. And that's only one of the weird things

that happened in Hawaii. I don't know that's spiritual, but that was like... Well, coincidence, synchronicity, some people would call that spiritual. But I just want to push back on the idea that because religion creates a lot of a judgment and maybe some vitriol

and is very like embedded with American partisan politics, that you would... then jettison spirituality. I say, you know, we've thrown the spiritual baby out with the religious bathwater. So we threw the religion out. Like, oh, religion, ugh. But then we've also thrown maybe what's beautiful

and pure about so much of the religious teachings. Sure, yeah. Like, and I think not to argue against myself, but I'm not saying I'm not even a crazy jiu-jitsu proponent, but I think some of what people get from that is the spirituality that they're missing. Sometimes when you're doing that physical activity, it's the spirituality that you can't explain with science.

It's just you're doing it, you learn something, you realize that stuff you don't know, there's hidden things in between the lines that feel good. Yeah, I'm down, you know, I'm down with meditation. I'm down with, you know, life lessons coming at an appropriate time, you know, coincidences. Yeah, where are you out with God? Where am I with God?

Probably not that, like I'm, you know, I'm like Buddhist, I'm not like a bad Buddhist. Okay. Because love Buddha, love the teachings. That'd be a good movie, bad Buddhists. We've had like bad teacher and, you know. Bad Buddhist, yeah. Love Alan Watts.

You know, he's my guy. Yeah. Love all that stuff. If someone said, hey, we would get rid of all religion, but we also have to get rid of Buddhism, I'd be like, go for it. That's how I feel about religion. Yeah. I feel like, no qualms.

That's fine. Because religion has been such a cause of disunity. Sure, yeah. and judgment and chaos in the world. Yeah, I think so. Totally understanding. Yeah. And sometimes they come, you know, they'll come and immediately walk off on the wrong foot because they'll start giving me premises.

I just can't help but roll my eyes at, you know, whatever they're religious, you know, like, this happened, this happened, this happened. And I'm more like, damn, this, you know, I can't, but I don't want to argue because it's, I just like, I just have to let it go with religion. Right. I just it's just not I don't know I just don't I don't like that vibe I don't like that vibe people coming and telling you stuff that happened that it sounds you know ridiculous and you have to like you have right but Ronnie there are a whole series of questions that have nothing to do with that okay right so there is like I said judgment there's like crazy weird beliefs like Jesus's body floated into heaven or or God comes in the shape of Ganesh

you know, there's like beliefs that are obviously, like how does that work in the world of science? Yeah. And I'm just picking those two. There could be beliefs like that from all kinds of different religions. And people coming at you, telling you what to think and here's, so that's a lot of like religious trauma

that maybe you've had in your family and your culture. That's also like religious trauma that we have culturally, we have cultural religious trauma. But do we have a soul? Is there a God? you know, what is the meaning of life? These are questions that can still be excavated if you put all that bullshit aside.

Yeah, no, I'm down. I'm just worried that when you go okay to spiritualism, then people start using it as an excuse to justify all this other stuff, you know. But I think that's a really good concern. Yeah. I think that's a very valid concern. And I don't know, I'm at a place where you're in a place of life

where I feel, I don't know you that well, but I feel. Calling me old? advanced stage of life where you're like in you know every time i hear you talk now about your personal stuff it's always in a good place you know you you kind of with neil brennan you're like i could i could go and farm potatoes yeah yeah and i feel like you're in a place where you're also trying to share that happiness you want other people to have that too okay right and i'm in a place where i i just i'm trying to just be happy myself yet so i don't need to try to get other people on, you know, I don't want to tell people I have the answers to this.

And I guess that's why I kind of avoid the spirituality talk. Because I, I'm with you, by the way. I feel it. I feel sometimes in, you know, there's stuff in the universe where it happened and I'm very grateful for it, you know, a lot of gratitude. But I don't need to convince other people for it, you know, whereas I feel like you're in a place where you're trying to share it, this positive. Right.

I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. I just think that these conversations are valuable because they can help our lives individually. and they can help our lives collectively. So I'm just trying to be, I'm a conversation starter. I'm the guy at the party. I'm the guy at the party saying like, so do you believe in God?

The worst guy at the party. Everyone runs in the other direction. Here's another thing that's weird about universe. So you sent me a message very nice in LA. You sent me a message about your, you just sent the top of your head. Sometimes Rain will just send me the top of his head then whatever is it behind him. And you sent me that out of nowhere.

We won't even really talk about anything. You sent to me. And when I received that message, I was in Chelsea, right where you told me you used to live. Yeah. And I look up. So I'm in the spot where we already,

what kind of physical can look up. Some woman walks past wearing a Dwight shirt, some office t-shirt is you on it. You got the message of me in that spot. Yeah. You were in that spot, looked at the message and a woman wearing a Dwight T-shirt walked up.

Yeah. Yeah. The universe is weird. Is that spirituality? I don't know. What does that tell us about? A lot of people think that these kind of little signs, like those dreams that you're talking about with your dad, like these, you know, feelings, synchronicity is part of, or some kind of keys or some kind of pathway to some kind of reality that's greater than the mirror material. Sure.

So maybe. Yeah. All I know is that maybe. It's not really my bag, but some people, a lot of people feel that way. It made me feel very happy. It made me feel very happy. So I thought that was really cool. I'm going to keep sending you weird pictures of half my face and various landmarks.

The odds of that happening. The odds of that happening. I'll give you something more, can I say something more spiritual? Yeah. I get offered a movie role in Hawaii again. I keep getting connected to Hawaii, which is cool. Pavis because I'm Asian. There's a coincidence.

Sure. Anyway. So I turned down the role because I'm filming my pilot. And I really wanted this role, but I couldn't do it just of scheduling. I filmed my pilot. Last day of filming my pilot, I get a phone call from production, movie production.

They're like, hey, this, something happened to the actor. Can you come and film this weekend? And it's the same role. But, and I'm like, yeah, of course. I love to do that. So I go to Hawaii. And my friend, Chris Lee in Hawaii, he's opening a new University of Hawaii

center for students to come and learn multimedia and film TV and computer. like media. Basically preparing them for the future of show business. And his opening is in West Oahu and it's at 11 a.m. And he says, can you come? It'll be great if you could just come to a grand opening.

And I'm like, well, I'm filming. I'm not sure. I look at the schedule. I'm filming on that day at 2 p.m. in West Oahu so I could make it. So I go there. I'm at the opening of the thing. Just in the back, just watching them open.

The governor of Hawaii comes and he's like, hey, thank you everyone for coming. This facility was a dream in our heads three years ago and we made it happen. Hawaii has always been a place where people film movies. But the local Hawaii kids and the locals, if they wanted to learn the film industry,

they had to leave Hawaii to learn it. And now they don't have to anymore because we have the stay-of-the-out facility and I want to welcome everyone here. When he says, I want to welcome everyone here, the pneumatic doors just open. It's not electric. They are sealed doors.

that just blow open from the wind behind him. He doesn't even see it. He's just talking. I want to welcome everyone. He says, I want to welcome everyone and go, the doors open. Everyone watching this is like this. Whoa.

And then he doesn't even know that happened. Governor finishes his speech shortly after, gets off. A Hawaiian priest comes on. And he goes, well, everybody. I think the mana is very strong here. I think we all saw the spirits seem to really like what we're doing here. I think the ancestors appreciate it.

When he said, governor welcome to this the doors just open with the wind literally the wind blew these heavy pneumatic doors not electric doors open and um my my point were the doors electric no they want they were the ceiling yeah and and my my my my point to all this long backstory was that for me to attend that some i had to get off of the movie in hawaii some guy had to drop out i had to get hired the last moment i had to be there i had to have a free date in the same thing schedule. I was filming in the same area.

I have my call time was 2 p.m. The thing was, to all that happen for me to sit there and watch that. And afterwards, I'm telling everybody like,

hey, there were like eight cameras focused on this event. Can someone please get me the footage? I want to share this because this is pretty crazy in Hawaii.

This is the kind of stuff that happens here. No one has footage. No one. There was eight cameras pointed at this goddamn door. No one has footage about what happened.

It was just there for us. It was just us there. We saw it. That's wacky. We know what it means. And that stuff like that, you know, I can't really explain. It made me feel good. It made me feel like I was, you know, part of something that was good.

That, that people before me and probably would be like, okay, you guys are doing a good thing here. That's beautiful. Yeah, the vibes were good. So I didn't want to ask about, dude, you were in like Galaxy Quest. Yeah. Which is like an all-time great. One of the all-time great comedies. That was my very first movie.

My very first movie. And in some ways, Galaxy Quartz underrated. In my opinion, as a comedy movie, you know, when I watch it again, it holds up super funny. Perfect film, yeah. Perfect. The acting is insane. I know. Ensemble is crazy.

Yeah, including yourself. Sam Rockwell. And I just had a small part. I had a bigger part, but they had to cut it down because I had done this TV pilot and I was on the contract stuff. But anyways, it was super. And my main scene was cut out. You can find it on YouTube. My cut scene that I had.

with Tony Shalhub. I had a really funny, so it was my very first movie, and I'm doing this scene with Tony Shalhub, and I had all this techno jargon. Yes. And where he says, you know, how does this engine work?

And I'm like, well, the bivalve catheter within the context of the urethium sphere has a blah, blah, blah, and how do you think the blah, blah, blah. And the joke was that it's this. And like, I looked over it, and I thought I knew it, and I went over it in my car on my way there. And then we had a rehearsal.

soul and I was like, holy shit, I can't, I can't remember, I can't remember this techno jargon. I had never had to memorize techno jargon before. On the set, uh, I kept going up. I kept forgetting my line. It's my first data set. Alan Rickman, Sigourney Weaver, Tim Allen, Sam Rockwell, Tony Shalhoub, like all of this like who's who stars. And I can't remember my fucking line.

And I keep like, within. the bivalve of the cat. But sorry, sorry, what is it? And it was so humiliating. I was, we're in those, in those silver suits. And I was sweating so much. I remember moisture building up at the bottom of my suit in my feet.

And if you look at the deleted scene, you can kind of see the panic in my face as I'm trying to remember the techno jargon line. But was it, it was okay, right? Was it worse in your head than, you know what I mean? Like in hindsight or... It was worse in my head than it was in reality. And everyone who does monologues,

whether it's playing a lawyer and you have to say, Your Honor, within the Henderson versus Logan section 25B, like anytime you have to do that, it's super... Because there's no way to get those lines except to drill them. Yes. So, but it was, I was really humiliated, but it was still a really amazing experience. That was my first...

And then my director wasn't giving you shit, right? No, no, no. Everyone was like, oh, cool. No. Yeah, people. It was worse in your own mind. People got it. Yeah, right.

People got it. And I wanted to ask you about that because your comedic timings, like, you know, all time great. But you're like classically trained masters of fine arts, you know. Whose podcast is this? This is the, this is why I agree to do it. Just to get to speak to you and to get. Oh, stop. Yeah.

Yeah. I went to acting school. I just love theater. I loved making theater. Part of it is like, you know, there is a kind of like left wing, right wing about like stand-up comedy can be like right-wing because it's like every man for himself.

It's individualistic and like what you make of yourself. But theater is all about like, we're together and we're the theater and we're diverse and we're gay and we're black and we're all different stripes and we're wonderful and we're singing and we're telling stories. And I just loved being a part of that. So I just wanted to be a part of that.

But I did a lot of comedy in theater. I did clowning. And I would always do a lot of comedy scenes. And I obviously had a real affinity improvisation. I did and stuff like that. So it sounds like you're always a comedic comedian who happened to be who got the classical training. There's many times I was, I could have gone down the improvisation.

Yes, I can see that. And gone to like a second city improv. And then I was like, no, I'd rather do theater. This answers a lot. This answers a lot for me. Because I was, sometimes, I feel like there's funny bones that you just gotta have, you know, like no matter how great an actor you are, you know, trained and accomplished actors, if they don't have the funny bones inside, it's kind of like, yeah. So I believe that my funny bones came from the fact that I was such a fucking misfit as a kid. I never fit in. Me and my friend John Valadez were best friends. I was like

six foot tall when I was in seventh grade and he's like five foot one and Latino and but we loved comedy and we would watch Monty Python and we watched Saturday Night Live we'd watch all the sitcoms. Steve Martin? You would recite Steve Martin. I know. I could every album of Steve Martin's

from top to end. And so we would walk home from school and we would take an hour, two hours and we would just be doing comedy routines all the time. Then we would go play Dungeons and Dragons or friends and we'd all be just watching comedy and doing comedy routines. And Richard Pryor, we'd be listening to Bill Cosby albums

and, you know, George Carlin albums. And so this kind of weird little petri dish of these little misfits that didn't fit in anywhere. And we really had this kind of like inner tortured comedy nerd going on. So I really feel like maybe there's a genetic component, but for me it really was this kind of social experiment

where, you know, you take that and then you put them in theater school and they're able to just, they don't care what they look. look like a, maybe funny voices. You're the result of this experiment. Yeah. I am the result of this weird suburban Seattle social experiment.

You have a quote that says, podcasts are the deaths of civilization. Podcasts are the death of civilization. We've sat here for the last hour and a half. What, what's going on? Podcasts without production value, the death of civilization. That's not what you meant.

Okay, I amend the comment when it's, the freaking... No, come on. You keep looking at the camera, too. I know. Who is that? I'm too used to going down the barrel with a teleprompter. Who is that?

But why? Why do you hate podcasts? You even told me on the text. You're like, I was like, will you do my podcast? You're like, I hate podcasts. Like, but you're like, but yes, I will. Yeah. For you.

Yeah. I will do podcasts if it's just someone more famous than me. That's crazy. No, I just don't. way more famous than me anyway. No, that's totally not true. I'm on more coffee mugs at Target than you are, but you're more famous than me.

No, that is completely not true. You're not true. You're just, nobody can't let's up. You are the legendary, you brought so much happiness to some of my people. All my friends love it. They can't believe I'm doing this. All the Australian law school friends are like, why are you? I studied hard in law school.

How come you get to meet? Oh, that's hysterical. Dwight shoot. But I just didn't like that vibe of people who, just think that that's content now. This is different, okay? Because you're accomplished and an artist. You're not allowed to look at this camera again.

You're an accomplished actor. You have a point. You prepared. We have a focus here. We're talking about, you know, we're trying to. There are a lot of stand-up comics

that will just get people in a room and talk for three hours. But people love it. And it'll get millions of views and they're just jibber-jabbering about, you know, what their farts sound like. Sure.

And I just don't, you know, I just don't appreciate it. I just think it's like, it just feels lazy compared to the effort that we put into craft. You know, that's my perspective on it. And I just, and I didn't move to America to do podcasts. I moved to America to meet my comedy heroes, to do stand-up comedy, to do stand-up comedy, to do sound-comity to 50 people in a room for 20 bucks. You're still looking at the camera. What is? Yeah, it's just nine years of, nine.

Nine years of training of, uh, is that a daily show thing? Yeah, he's just going on the show. Yeah. Um, I just feel like I'm no one special to who cares about my backstory. I'm only as valuable as the next joke I can do on stage. If it's bad, people are going to. That's interesting. You know, that's how I do.

There might need to be some therapeutic unpacking of, uh, of that way of thinking. Yeah. Because I'm just fascinated by the mind that can come up with some of your comedy sequences. because some of your... Oh, that's very good. And I think you're a fantastic actor, but some of the stuff that you come up with, I'm just like, how does a mind do that?

I'm absolutely in awe. But I want to know the story behind the story. Oh, yeah. See, that's very kind of you, and I do appreciate it. But I just... And there's not many Malaysians, Malaysians who get an Australian law degree and then have Netflix specials.

No, yeah, I just, I... I'm always like, who cares about, me just here's the you know here's here's the here's the product here's the jokes just yeah we care about you america cares about you thank you the world cares about you ronnie chang well now you're doing it to the camera thanks for coming on soul boom rani all right thank you thanks for having me right yeah you're the best thanks so much the soul boom podcast subscribe now on youtube spotify apple podcasts and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts