The Bill Simmons Podcast - Marc Maron on Pioneering Podcasting, Performing Comedy in Boston, and Interviewing Celebrities (Ep. 269)

Episode Date: October 6, 2017

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by fellow podcaster Marc Maron to discuss his origins in the podcasting industry (5:00), the great generation of comedians (15:00), comedy clubs in Boston (21:00), his role in 'Almost Famous' (28:00), the generation of cord cutters (33:00), the process of interviewing famous people (38:00), Kurt Russell's podcasting chops (45:00), Bruce Springsteen's persona (51:00), David Letterman in the mid-eighties (56:00), Richard Pryor and Chevy Chase skits (1:02:00), and the work behind writing a book (1:13:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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going to be up. If you're listening to this on a Friday, it's either up or it's about to go up, theringer.com. Coming up, Mark Maron, first time we have ever done a podcast on either his pod or mine. We're going to talk about that and a whole bunch more. But first, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers. New documentary out, by the way. We're going to talk about that next week. Pearl Jam and then Mark Maron. All right, here we go. Mark Maron is in my office. We've been circling each other. Not really, but for years. We were like two of the pioneers.

Right. Neither one of us would ever go on each other's podcast. I don't think it was, nobody ever turned down. It was more like nobody asked the other. No, it didn't. We never ran into each other. Never came up. Always compared and like brought up in the same articles, but never came up.

Different worlds. It is, it is odd though, isn't it? We were like two seventies rock bands that just, we would tour the same stadiums, see each other, like maybe in passing on a bus. Not really in competition with each other, but the other one was out there and they did their thing. And we, we did our thing. Yeah. Well, I remember, so my, mine started May, 2007 and yours started two years after.

Right. You were definitely ahead of the game, but it was because of yours. Like my, my producer, Brendan was a fan of yours and he was listening to yours like a year before we started. So when we had the opportunity, when it became an idea to do one, you know, you were in his head, the talent, he knew we could do it. I didn't even know that. Yeah.

The only reason I brought up the dates was it took me like two years to even figure out what the hell to do with it. Cause initially I would come on and I would just talk NBA with Mark Stein. And then I had Carolla on a couple of times. And then after about a year and a half it was like this is cool yeah and as in 2009 was really when i started tapping the potential of having weird celebrity guests and breaking down the jfk assassination all this stuff you came on carola came on and then all of a sudden all of us started getting great guests. Well, didn't Corolla come? And that's when I got competitive a little bit. Oh yeah.

Didn't Corolla come? Well, it's just like, oh shit, Maren got that guy. Damn it. I guess I did that too. Yeah. And then when, and then you sort of accept it and then you realize like, well, we're going to have some of the same guests. And then you sort of like, well, how'd it go with him?

But the thing is our approaches were so different. I know. Exactly. And I, you didn't listen to me, did you? I didn't listen to you. No, I listened to a couple. I listened to maybe two or three. I listened to the famous CK one. Oh yeah. But like, so I interviewed Louie a couple of times and it was, it was great. But my interview was completely different than yours. You're coming at it from

like, you were a peer and you had all this history. And mine was just, I'm a comedy nerd trying to find out. You were actually a comic. You grew up with a lot of these guys. That's right. I knew a lot of the people. Yeah. But now I do more interviews like that. Yeah. Where I have, you know, like I get pitched people and I'm like, well, that'd be interesting or else I think like, I would love to talk to Randy Newman.

Like Randy Newman, like, cause I'm a fan and I don't know how old are you? I think I'm older than you. I'm only four. I'm 48. Yeah. I'm 54. I'd say only 48. Right. But so we probably like some of'd like to say only 48. Right.

So we probably like some of the same music and stuff. Oh, yeah. So when I get an opportunity to interview some of these old guys, I'm like, yeah, let's do that. Those are the best ones. I like the ones. I've done that sometimes with basketball too. I nerd out, have some old school basketball dude

who's just started talking about the 70s. I'm not even sure anyone cares. I interviewed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and I don't know nothing about basketball. So I was jealous of that one. Cause he doesn't like me. He doesn't? No.

He seems like kind of a, a bit of a, I'm a Celtics fan. I may have taken some shots at him. Yeah. I may, I may have made some jokes. Well,

it's funny. I didn't talk about basketball at all. He's a very thoughtful guy. He's one of the smartest athletes we've ever had. That's why I, when you had him on, I saw that.

I was like, ah, that was a good one. It sounds like you brought brought that on yourself i know it's my fault well you probably had a couple people won't come on yours right is there uh i not that i not that i know of because of personal reasons right do you know i think there are people that won't come on mine because they don't want they don't want, there was a while there after the Louis episodes where people were like, do I have to cry? I don't want to have to cry.

And that was never the case, but I think some people began to be afraid to come on because they didn't want to get that personal. And I'll roll with the punches. I don't need it to be that personal at all. But it just, there were people who were nervous about the hour long personal interview. Well, sometimes you'll, I'm sure you've,

you've tried to do those and the guest just wasn't ready to go there. But you can feel that. Like I'm, I'm sort of, I'm always going to be curious about certain things. Right. So if it gets there, it gets there. Like if there's a moment where I'm like, okay, I'll follow that up and see if that gets us somewhere.

It's not, it's not a plan in my head, but you could just could just feel like well that seems like there's some heat there or some juice there yeah yeah you know and i'm not looking to sandbag anybody but sometimes people just they they don't know they want to talk and they surprise themselves when they do yeah you know i had we must have rap report on here right oh my god i mean rap port's like a jukebox you just put a six he's just off he's gone those are the best guests he's always a guy they'll start telling he's like a jukebox. You just put it, A6, he's just off, he's gone. Those are the best guests. You don't have to do the work. But he's always a guy, they'll start telling you, he's like, I don't know why I'm saying this. Yeah, that's always good.

Yeah. I've found, you know, it took a while. Originally, I was doing a lot of them on the phone, which is a totally different vibe. Never did it. Yeah, and then when we built the Grantland studio, like 2012, they started coming in. Yeah.

And I just felt like the whole format was different. You can read off people. You're not worried about interrupting them. You can read the eye contact, the body language. Yeah. It's much better. Never did any phone. Never did any long form phoners.

I won't do them anymore. Like we'll get offered people and it's like, they gotta, they have to come here now. Yeah. I'll do like short ones sometimes if they're friends who need a plug. Occasionally I'll get on the phone for that. But no, never the big ones. How long did it take you to figure out what the actual format of the pod was? Because, I mean, we should give a little background.

I don't know who doesn't know this story at this point, but you're on Air America, which was an idea that may be 12 years before its time. Sure, maybe. I mean, now in 2017, I think Air America is- It could have worked now. Maybe. We thought it would work during Bush though. You know, who knows? I mean, there's definitely a lot more outlets now and people, and people doing, you know, both sides of the political spectrum fairly effectively with podcasts and whatnot. Were you in radio because

your comedy career wasn't going the way you thought it would go or you were just fascinated by the medium? I'd never done it. And I was, I just moved to LA and I just had been in a deal with Fox TV to write a show. It didn't get picked up. So I'm sort of sitting out here in a new house with a woman I was with at the time.

And I got asked to do this thing. And I, you know, and I was angry enough, though. And I got asked to do this thing. And I was angry enough, though not really that educated about politics, but enough of a angry guy and certainly to the left of things to want to be involved in something. And they were putting together this radio network. And I don't know, at that time there was money there.

It was more money than I'd ever made in television or any other place. And there was an opportunity to do something new. I remember when Corolla got fired. I've been buddies. I worked with Corolla on Jimmy's show and we've been friends all the time. And, you know, I was, he was coming on my podcast and I could see his wheels turning with it. He was like, Oh, so all we do is talk for an hour and then it goes out in the world and people hear it. And really the moment he got fired, he was like, I think, I think I can do this podcast thing. And I think I can get paid for it and it could be my career.

I'm sure. When did you hit that point? Well, we, well, that was because he had the radio behind him. All those years of radio. Like I was coming off of, I'd done a bit of radio. And then by the time when I was, when we started this, it was like the last version of Air America. They had very few shows on the air. There was kind of a ragtag bunch of people involved. And we were doing a streaming video show there,

me and Sam Seder. Wow. Yeah, we pitched it and I needed money. I was in the middle of a divorce and I was not in a good place. So they stepped up with the money. They gave me enough money up front to shut the divorce down. And it lasted about a year. Nobody watched it. We couldn't get people to watch us on streaming video. That idea was five years too early. Yeah. It's still a little early. Five years early right

now. Yeah. And, and then we were just, we were fired and they didn't kick us out of the building. And I said, well, what are these podcasts? I know Crowell is doing one. I know Kevin Smith's doing one. I know, uh, guys, I know like, uh, like, uh, Jimmy door and a couple of comedians. Yeah. And Jim, uh, Pardo. And I didn't know what they were or anything, but I'm like, why can't we do that? Did you envision a world where you were going to get paid no no brendan and i he had been working with him since he was like 24 at the original air america yeah he came back in the fold after he'd been at series for years a real radio production whiz one he's really the the brightest guy i know and and him and i i said can you figure out how to put this stuff up and the only thing we knew is we were going to put them up Monday and Thursday consistently

because we knew we needed it to be consistent to build. So when did the ad thing start happening for you? Well, we carried over- Because I remember the ESPN, I was going crazy about them not being able to monetize the pod at all. No one knew how to do it. Yeah. And there was only a couple of options.

You could either have a closed off like put a paywall up. Yeah. But then you can't build your audience. And your audience is going backwards. Yeah. You can't do nothing. And then we didn't really have any concept. And for the first year or so, the shows were different.

The first few we did in the hijacked studio at Air America after hours. Yeah. And there were segments. There was the general idea of WTF was that that would be a theme of the show. You had more segments back then. Sure. There was like some segments were evolving. There were multiple guests.

There were sometimes people would hang out with me in the studio. The first 12 or 15, there's me and this guy, Matthew. Like it was like radio radio a little closer to radio and then once i got to la the interview started happening and we had a third segment we had a part you know there was a last guest that was usually a improv actor pretending to be somebody who's like a kaufman-esque kind of like is it real is it not oh interesting yeah we did a lot of those and then it kind of just became this single person interview. This Playboy interview, yeah.

But the monetization, we carried over this coffee company that sponsored our streaming video show for free coffee. And they were the first sponsor we had. And they would send me coffee and like a few hundred bucks a month. But then like when I started using them, I blew their business up. Like, you know, it became clear to us, me and like, you know, a few hundred bucks a month. But then like when I started using them, I blew their business up. Like, you know, it became clear to us, me and Brendan, that we could make money

with advertising if somebody could, you know, if we could figure out how to do it. Yeah. Because I started plugging this coffee company with the pow, I just shit my pants. I made up this slogan. Yeah. They didn't like it,

but it changed their entire business. Wow. Like their, their, their online business just blew up. What was the coffee company? Just coffee.coop. It's in Madison.

Okay. They're roasters kind of organic or free trade roasters. And we did it on air America. When we did the streaming show, we did it for coffee. We didn't even do it for money. They'd send us coffee and we were like, great.

I remember. So I signed a new deal with ESPN in the beginning of 07 and I started doing the pod like four months later. Yeah. And they were like, yeah, it's cool. It's going well. But I didn't know if it was going well

and I had no idea it was monetizable in any way. And then I remember about a year and a half in, maybe even a year in. Yeah. They sold the podcast, this ESPN channel they'd done on Sirius. And all of a sudden my podcast was part of that channel and they're promoting it in the press release.

And I'm like- On Sirius? Yeah, this is way, we're talking 2009. And I'm like, wait a second, you guys, now you're promoting this podcast. So I was like, I want to get paid for this. So then we started that and then it eventually evolved. I remember I had a presenting sponsor,

but the whole mid-roll, like, you know, doing mid-rolls, pre-rolls, that really wasn't until 12, 13. That's when you started doing them, right? Well, we started doing, well, we had sponsors that we would get. We were using some, you know, Brendan knows better than me, but we were using some terrestrial agencies. Yeah. And we were getting like Adam and Eve, Audible.

Yeah. I remember Corolla had a couple yeah i remember carola had a couple sure carol had a couple shaky ones yeah we tried to vet as possible we didn't get into much trouble we got in just we got out just under the wire of that draft king thing that you know yeah and also it was funny it was that you know we we did our last ad for Chipotle right before the disease. Yeah. And the tagline was like, food without question. Yeah.

I think there's some questions. I think we have some now. But just coincidentally on both of those, we were done with the run. We haven't gotten into any real trouble with bad advertisers. There have been times back in the day where like they wanted us to man, the man great. Remember that thing? No.

I think that's what it was called. Man great? Something like that. It was like, it was this piece you put on a grill that on the top to make better steaks. Okay. And you know, Corolla had it and you know, some of the dude shows had it and they were like, you got to do it. And I'm like, I told Brennan, I don't think we can sell this i don't think this is my my people my guys are not

grillers necessarily you know i mean i'm sure there's a few but i don't think we can move it and the guy was like insistent you know he's like just do it here's the money and we ran like one ad and the guy freaked out like i didn't sell anything and we were like take the money back dude but now you know with with mid-roll and with but we were using like i said some of the people that were still dealing with terrestrial and now i think the whole business must have shifted yeah the last three four years mid-roll now we are from the beginning yeah uh that was the way to go yeah yeah uh whatever when did people start inviting themselves on the podcast? Like about a year in?

People like, what do you mean? I don't know, guests. Or you get PR people like, hey, so-and-so's got a new movie coming up. They'd love to come on. It was still pretty much, you know, people pitching to us and to me directly. You know, PR started coming around, I guess.

I don't know what year that was, but it felt like it was still friends of friends for a good few years. And then we started working with Booker's so that, you know, just to, yeah, just because then we could reach out easier and then we could get pitch people easier. Cause I sort of tap out. I mean, I don't, I don't know everybody, you know, a friend of a friend, three way, three friends away. It's harder to get people. You had everyone from your generation, right? That's right. And the older generation, your generation was a great generation. It was about comedians. I mean, it was really all types of, yeah. And because I didn't make it with all those guys, uh, you know, I knew the younger generation. Yeah. I was still trying to

cut my teeth with, with the one behind us. So I knew all those guys. Yeah. I was still trying to cut my teeth with the one behind us. So I knew all those guys. So let's talk about those generations. Yeah. So you're the generation. You're like- It's me, Louie. Coming into it late 80s, early 90s.

A tell, Silverman. Stewart's in there? Stewart, yeah. But yeah, he was- Was he a little earlier? Maybe, not much earlier, but he was very successful pretty quickly. Right, he did a few years.

But then he was always on TV with MTV. And then he went to, you know, he had his own show on, what was it? Where was it before? It was Arsenio, where he took that slot, where they tried him in that slot. He had the MTV show. Then he had the network show on Fox,

I guess it was maybe. Yeah. And then he went to The Daily Show. Colin Quinn's in that generation? Oh, he's a little older. Little older? Yeah, Colin Quinn's like the Dennis Leary, Colin Quinn. Bill Maher?

Bill Maher. Is he in that one? He might be a little older than them. It gets a little foggy with the Seinfeld. I need a family tree that just explains all these branches. I think that Colin and Bill, they would probably be in the tail end of the Seinfeld era of those guys. And Larry too, because they're probably about six years older than me. Louie's a little younger than me.

It tells around my age. Your era was basically do stand up for four or five years. You're going to hit and they're going to offer you a sitcom. Were you in that era or that was still too early? It was never four or five years. You'd get deals back in the day. Like I started doing standup in 88 and then professionally. Like I did about a year before that kicking around.

Then I started doing one-nighters in 88. Yeah. You know, just running around doing, you know, one-night gigs in New England. Cause that's where I started in Boston, really. That's where I started working. That's where I'm from. Sure, man.

Yeah. I used to do all those clubs. A lot of people. That was like where they made their bones. Yeah. Back in the day, I went to College of Boston. I went to LA. Got screwed up on drugs.

Came back to Boston. Was in the WBCN comedy riot. Oh, wow. In 1988. Came in second. Who beat you? Sue McGinnis. And then I started working, though. Barry Katz had a booking agency. 88 came in second. Who beat you? Sue McGinnis. And,

and then I started working though. Barry Katz had a booking agency, Boston comedy company. Yeah. And there were three, three or four companies that had one nighters all over new England. So that was the deal. You take,

you know, you get it. If you had a half hour, you could open. If you had 45 minutes, they'd close you. But he's usually you and another guy driving anywhere from a half hour to five hours, you know, to do a two-man show at a bar or a bowling alley or a hotel. In deep Massachusetts.

Oh, deep Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island. They'll give you their opinion in Massachusetts. They'll give you their opinion in Massachusetts. They'll offer it. Oh, yeah. Are you kidding? Oh, yeah. You suck! Hey! You suck!

The fact that I, me of all people, this neurotic, aggravated Jewish kid was running around New England opening, going up cold. Oh, my God. It was like the bowling alley. We used to do do as a place i remember him i remember the gigs there was there was all the nicks right you remember nicks oh yeah nicks down comedy club yeah that was a big disco in the early 80s by the way late 70s early 80s

right and then i think it might be a disco again i think it came back yeah no it's a nicks comedy stop downtown then they got one in saugus what was the one in faneuil hall that's the comedy connection but that came later you know the original connection was right down the street downtown. Then they got one in Saugus. What was the one in Faneuil Hall? That's the Comedy Connection. But that came later. The original Connection was right down the street from Nick's. And then there was the one on Route 1. Saugus. But there's also

the Tower of Pizza. There's a Giggles Comedy Club that Mike Clark books. Lenny Clark's brother, Mike, has got Giggles on Route 1 in Saugus at the Tower of Pizza. Lenny's at the, Mike, has got giggles on Route 1 in Saugus at the Tower of Pizza. Lenny's in the Marathon movie and has like 10 scenes and like 30 lines. He's good.

Yeah, he's good in it. Does he play a cop? No, he plays like a father-in-law. Oh, really? Or like an uncle. Yeah, he's in the family. Well, you know, he's good. You know, we need a guy who sounds like he's from Boston.

Yeah, he's like the go-to guy. He's a good actor. His brother's a nice guy. It's so funny, Mike Clark. You want me's like the go-to guy. He's a good actor. His brother's a nice guy. It's so funny. Mike Quack. You want me to do the reads with you or do them after? What do you got? I got Casper.

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Those are easy to remember. Where'd you live when you lived in Boston? I lived a lot of places. I went to BU. Sponsored like downtown? I lived on Carlton Street in Brookline, just over the Boston border, like right past Park Drive off of Beacon.

And then I lived for a couple of years in Somerville, Davis Square in an attic for a while. Yeah, before it was anything, it was still pretty filthy. I was living in Boston in the 90s when Davis square was starting to become a thing i was there when they opened red bones but that was all red bones it was like but hey barbecue whoa really where karen i knew karen and what was her husband or the boyfriend's name bob that i remember when they opened that place but that was it it was still like just

dunkin donuts and the weird cafeteria and that strange restaurant that opened at two in the morning they you know denny what was it called denny and chips or something weird but you what Donuts and the weird cafeteria and that strange restaurant that opened at two in the morning. They, you know, Denny, what is it called? Denny and chips or something weird. But you must've been back to Boston last couple of years, right? It's totally different. There's a million restaurants. I play at the Connection.

I play at the Wilbur. Yeah. There's all kinds of good stuff there. When did you, so when you're doing standup, you'll disappear for a while. Then you'll start doing again. Like what's your schedule? No, I'm always doing standup. Always yeah it's it's what i am really because you started acting the last four years you had your own show then right this netflix show which was excellent by the way i really like glow you like it yeah it's really good i think you know what

wrestling fans like it which is like the best we can hope for if it passes their test we're good and the lead is fantastic she who allison, Allison? Yeah. I love her. I don't, I think that's a really hard part. It's really hard, dude. You almost have to strip yourself of the way somebody would normally think, well, I got to look good. And she just doesn't care. She's all in.

To be ambitious, earnest, and desperate and still be charming. Right. It's hard, dude. Yeah. It's not supposed to be a likable character. No, it, very close. Yeah. And, and she is, and it's great. I love working with her. I No, very close. Yeah. And she is.

And it's great. I love working with her. I like working with all of them. So that one's coming back, right? Yeah, we start shooting in a couple of weeks on the 16th, I think. The guy you played in that, based on a real guy?

Not really. You just kind of made him up? Because like when they told me, you know, I got the part, it was sort of, I was surprised. I wasn't really, I was not half-assing the audition, but I didn't think it yeah i didn't care one way or the other but i knew i could play that guy yeah and i sent in a like a we did a video on my phone and i got cast off a video we

did on my phone um but i was told that the that my character didn't know anything about wrestling so i did not watch the documentary on the original glow. And I didn't do any real research on wrestling. I just, you know, I chose what I wore or how I was gonna, you know, I got to get up and knew what I wanted to smoke, how I wanted to smoke, how I wanted to do Coke, you know? Cause the guy's got Coke problem. And I told him it was funny.

Cause I told the show runners, Carly mentioned Liz Flahive, Flahive. coke problem and i told it was funny because i told the showrunners uh carly mansion liz fly hive fly hive i call his her name is why is it so difficult but i went up to them i'm like look i know how this guy does coke he doesn't use vials he does it strictly out of a bindle that he's made out of the corner of a magazine like uh he does it with a key or a pen top there's no artifice man this guy is just a user. It's part of his life. It's like food. Yeah. Just that's how I want to do it. And they both just sit there. They looked at me for a second. They went, we're so glad you're here. Cause I knew I did coke like that. So I'm like,

I know how this guy does it. Jesus. So I didn't know. I didn't, I didn't know it wasn't based on a guy. I did recently watch the Glow documentary. So I know there's a guy, it's sort of amalgamation of a couple of guys, but I just made it my own. And people always say like, he's doing this guy or he's doing that. I didn't do anybody.

I didn't study anybody. Did you, other than that, like that stuff, were you thinking this is a type of character I've never played before. I want to create this type of person or are you just kind of meandered? Well, I knew he was of character I've never played before. I want to create this type of person. Or you just kind of meandered. Well, I knew he was like, I'm no genius actor. So I knew he was somebody within my wheelhouse of experience.

But he's also like a scumbag though. He's a scumbag, but like, you know, I knew that, but he's also a loser. Yeah. So if somebody is a loser, uh, they're, they're the intensity of their scumbaggery is, is sort of undermined a bit. Like, you know, he may be a scumbag, but the thing is he's his own worst enemy. You know, he, you know, he's got problems, you know, he's not, you know, he's not really a hater. Yeah. Right. So. So I just saw him as sort of this kind of this guy

that almost had something and it's always right out of his reach. And he's a little, he's not necessarily bitter because he's not that self-aware. He thinks he's just on the cusp of doing the next genius thing. But he's unbelievably blunt, which

actually most of the time is not endearing but for some reason with this particular guy it actually makes him kind of endearing he's just like here's what i think right with the women yeah yeah and i think that because of the time period you know i would not say he's not sexist oh he's but yeah he's in the 1980s like of course he's gonna be that way but but like i think he he tends to instinctively show up for the women. Calls it like it is. Calls it like it is and is a little mean and a little off, has no self-awareness. But I would say he's a lot mean.

Maybe my barometer screwed up, you know, like I just like I used to do a joke about that. That my, I don't remember which girlfriend or wife it was about yelling. Yeah. And I would say like, I don't yell. I think she has tonal issues. She can't hear. Yeah, yeah. It's a problem.

I always say that to my wife. I'm like, you just have small ears. You can't, you can't. Yeah, I'm not yelling. I'm not mumbling. Yeah. So wait, so you're doing that show? Yeah.

But I was doing stand-up. I do stand-up at- Why did you stop doing the IFC show? Because it just, I didn't know where else we could go. You know, it was like, we had a lot of creative freedom there, but because no one really watches the network and there's not a lot of ratings or ad dollars, you know, in the balance,

that they were more than willing to keep making the show. But if you can't even get a nice bump, even for production, I'm not even talking about me. Like if by the fourth season, we don't know if we can get a song we want because we don't have the money. Right. It's sort of, it becomes sort of like, well, what do you know? So that idea, if you'd waited like two years and then the whole Netflix, Amazon era had come, that's a different show with a different budget. Oh yeah, definitely. But I don't really think about it like that.

I think we did like a great four seasons. Yeah, but you know what I mean. Yeah. It was like all of a sudden an idea like that, that's what everybody seems to be searching for. Yeah, but I don't know if they would have bought it. You know, I don't know where I would have been. You know, these things all hinge on the timing.

True. You know, it's like, you know, that thing was a hard, not an easy sell. We took it to a lot of different places, my life at that time. Yeah. And, you know, and IFC was like, yeah, great. This sounds great. And like I said, they got out of the way, but once we made it at, you know, a very reasonable budget, their, their whole business model is like, oh good, we'll keep doing that. It's like, yeah, but we have to cut scenes because we can't go two blocks. Yeah.

It's too much money. We wanted to do a scene at a bus station. Now it's like, can't you do it in the front yard? I guess. You know, like we can rework it. You know, it just, at the very least, you should be awarded enough money to increase your production value.

I agree. And that didn't seem like that was going to happen. Your favorite credit of mine is Almost Famous, which you noticed when you walked in. I have this fake album that you also have. I do. I have some of the- One of the many things we've shared in life.

The swag. But yeah, you play, for people who don't know out there, you play the angry- Angry promoter. You're angry promoter. I don't even think you have a name, right? You're just angry promoter.

Another stretch. Another stretch. It's the who wants to buy a gate scene after Russell Hammond gets electrocuted. That's right. But I was saying to you- Lock the gates! I was saying to you,

that's like one of my five, we have a podcast actually that I'm one of the hosts of called the rewatchables that we spun off where we just kind of movies that are on all the time, just kind of dive in. So we'd like speed those type of movies, scream, but then the almost famous types and,

and almost famous is just one of those for whatever reason, you can jump in at the 20 minute mark at the hour mark. Sure. If you love the movie, it doesn't matter. It's relieving, you know, you're sort of those, for whatever reason, you can jump in at the 20 minute mark, at the hour mark. Sure, if you love the movie. Even the last 30 minutes. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't matter. It's relieving. You know, you're sort of like, oh, this is going to be nice.

I know, I already know what happened. Yeah. This is the sweet part. This part. Yeah, Goodfellas is another one. Goodfellas is one of the all timers for that. But that's what I was, you know, that's what I was saying before we got on the mics was like,

that's why I don't, like, I still flip around cable for that reason. I do too. A lot of times you're slim pickings, but the mics was like, that's why I don't, like I still flip around cable for that reason. I do too. A lot of times you're swim pickings, but sometimes you're like, oh, watch that. Where's it at? I have every movie channel. I love scrolling through the movie channels

and being like, oh, Silent Rage with Chuck Norris. Okay. Yeah. You're like a movie DJ. Yeah. You know, you're just doing a mix. I like going,

I don't, this new generation, like my kids, I have a 12 year old, a nine year old and they're, you know, they don't even have a concept of channels. Yeah. They're just on Amazon and YouTube. And a lot of people my age and your age are doing that. They're, they're, what do you call it? Cutting the cord.

The cord cutters. Yeah. Yeah. That's what's killing, uh, what? Eventually going to kill the ESPNs of the world. You think so? Yeah. Unless they figure out how to change their model.

What do you mean? Where do they get the sports when they cut the cord? So ESPN pays, like, do you watch ESPN? Uh-uh. So you're paying $7 for it anyway, because you have cable.

Right. That's how they have billions and billions of dollars, because people are paying for ESPN, even if they don't watch it. I don't think I need to take a stand. No, I don't think you're fine. But they have this awesome business model where just everybody paid for ESPN, whether you paid for it or not, or whether you watched it or not. And now this new model is like my nephew Kyle over here.

Yeah. He's just like, hey, I pay for Netflix. Right. And I pay for HBO and I get that. And he just picks his three things. He doesn't have cable. On computer. Yeah, he's on his computer or his iPad or whatever.

What about the Apple TV? Do the Apple TV? Apple TV, Roku. That makes it easier. Yeah, the Xbox or the PlayStation. Right. Then he can just watch. But like I watch MSNBC, you know, for news.

So that's, the question is, where does this go? And is our generation holding onto this model that we really liked, but this, as his generation gets older, they're just going to move that model out. I still like, I have this weird comfort thing in my brain that like, if I go home and I turn on my TV and you know, things are on,

like there's some part of me that thinks, well, somebody's operating something out there. The world hasn't blown up yet. Right. There's a guy, you know, making a decision in a booth. Yeah. He's putting this on. Thanks for running this film, pal.

We went to Hawaii. My family went to Hawaii in August. Yeah. And they had an Apple TV in the hotel. And I hooked up like my MLB package to it. I was watching the Red Sox games. I was able to watch like HBO. So I got to see the game of Thrones. It was basically like my show at the Mayweather fight. There was a

Showtime app. I was able to get that. And it was like, my life didn't really change. And I was in Hawaii, like six hours behind everybody. And that's, it just made me think like, God damn, I don't know where all this is going. My wife can listen to not only my podcast, but yours in the car. And I've, I've gone and she has a Tesla and I've gone in there and your podcast has been, I'm like, what the fuck? She's like, Oh, I let, he just, you should get better guests. He has good guests sometimes. And it turns into that. You've been in the, Kyle's been in there for that. Like what the fuck? Where's my podcast? Doesn't she hear you enough? Well, that's, that was part of her

argument. But then i stepped it up with the guests the last six months so now i've kind of won won her back from you a little bit so now you might have to make a move i gotta do something i've got to book a big guest i mean i had jake gyllenhaal two weeks ago it was like the most impressed i think she's ever been by me how is that how was he i gotta say i would i would it's funny now we're recommending guests i would i would recommend jake gyllenhaal yeah he was great he was ready to say, I would, I would, it's funny. Now we're recommending guests. I would, I would recommend Jake Gyllenhaal. He was, he was great.

He was ready to go. Love talking about it. I like the ones where they, they just go all in on like here, the here's why I made this choice. Here's, here's what I learned from this movie. Yeah.

I, you know, I'm always fascinated by that. Cause I always approach it like, yeah, this person's a resource. Right. What can I learn from this person while they're here?

I thought we had him booked and then it went away. But now I'm going to pretend. I told him, I was like, you do Marin, I'm out. I used to do that with Nerdist. You did? Sure. You did the Jay Leno on them? Not really the Jay Leno, but we just would space them out.

Like, you know, it wouldn't be, you know, his or me to do one or the other. Right. But it was like, well, if he got him first, then, you know, we'd have to space it out. It feels a little sloppy seconds-y. Yeah. But not really, because like, I don't know how many listeners we share. That ultimately became it. Right.

It's like, and then the ones that we do share, they liked hearing, you know, both of our experience with them. We do different interviews. Have you been rattled by a guest ever? Sure. Yeah. I'm rattled in the sense that, that like, I don't know how it's going to go, or it might not be going well to begin with, or, you know, like I didn't, you make assumptions about how something's going to go and they, you know, you trust they're, they either trust you or they don't. And you sort of trust that they know why they're there. But a lot of times that doesn't equal flowing conversation. Right.

It's almost like improv. Yeah. I never did improv, but I can imagine if the trust isn't there, you're screwed. Well, like Neil Young comes in and like, I knew from when he came into the house that he liked me. He told me he brought his little 70 plus year old posse, you know, and he was looking around my house and he's like, I like this guy. I'm like, well, that's good.

But I didn't know he was notoriously hard on interviewers and I didn't do that kind of research. I thought we were going to talk about amps and stuff. And I got an amp that like he, like he uses and I bring him out there and I'm like, you probably recognize that amp. He's like, nah, I don't think so. And I'm like, oh no. Oh no, here we go.

So like, you know, like he wasn't being mean. He was just sort of going to make me work for it. Whatever was going to happen there. And I don't know, we got going. You know, I got him laughing and got him talking about bullshit and it was fine. It was great. I don't know, like a lot of my interviews,

they're not really interviews. I don't like calling them interviews because sometimes they're like- Yeah. Well, it's just sort of like, I don't know what, you know, we ended up talking about stuff, but he also was talking about how he's doing pilates and you know yeah whatever and you must know like if the guest doesn't give him much then you kind of go into comedy mode a little bit more well yeah yeah you know sometimes i'll

over compensate yeah yeah they become an audience it's not that they're not giving much because they're being you know cagey or something. Some people just don't talk that much. Like, you know, they're not used to doing an hour. You know, it's not a common thing. I don't feel like the guests have a better sense now that they know what they're in for. They do, yeah.

I feel like the last two years, that's changed for me. Sure, but- 2009 through 12, the people that, oh, wow, we're going for more than 15 minutes. And I'd be like, yeah, it's a podcast. Yeah. That's what we do.

And now like, do they come like, I know a lot of people may not listen to mine regularly, but I know that some publicists say like, you should listen to a couple. So they'll come in and be like,

oh yeah, I listen. I listen to you. Yeah, yeah. And then they'll tell me, they'll mention two and I know that like, that's the only two that they listen to.

Or they listen to like two just to scout you. Sure. Almost like in sports to make sure they had a sense of where it was going. And a lot of them are like, no, listen to the Obama. Yeah, Obama here. Yeah. That definitely was, that's, that's gotten me a few guests, I think. If Obama did it, yeah, I could go do it. Yeah. And you caught him at a nice time too when he was still president I had him in 08 and ESPN blocked it which almost caused me to quit spring of 08 because it was past the point of equal time

and all that stuff and you know I took it really personally because I'd only had the podcast for a year but podcasts were just this nothing format for years and had no real equity at all. And then it was like,

this guy might be president. He wants to come do a podcast. So I ended up getting him in 2012 for like 20 minutes and we taped it. Right. The one you did with him, you had him for like an hour. You talked about basketball and stuff, right?

I did. Cause that was the thing. He just wanted to talk sports because I come in, I'm sports guy and he gets to talk cause he loves sports and it's a side of him. Be loose and have fun. Yeah. Any decision he makes with an interview is, is going to be for a reason, right? He comes on yours. He's like, I'm going to, I'm going to go deep. Yeah. He went pretty deep and he said he did it to get people involved.

Right. Just in politics in general. Right. That was like, that was his drive. It was good. It was exciting. He probably should have started making that move a couple of years earlier. Well, I think there's only so much you can do.

It's a hard sell. I mean, I think that ultimately this administration is going to activate more people. True. And I don't know whether to blame him or not for that, that the future of the democratic party is something he probably should have cared about more in retrospect. You know, I think if he had known the possibilities, maybe around 14,

he probably would have started grooming people and pushing people and trying to get people some reps. I bet he would have done that differently. If it's, if it's his job to do that, is it, I mean, you know, he is a standard bearer, but I mean, I don't know If it's his job to do that. I mean, you know, he is a standard bearer, but I mean, I don't know that it's his job to get a bench going.

I mean, that's sort of the DNC's job and somebody should, and also it's relative to desire. I don't know, is it his job though? His job is to worry about the future of the country, right? Future of the country, the future of the party, sure. But like, I think he's, you know, when he's in the presidency, you would think that the machine in place was supposed to sort of, you know, find,

you know, the field and like, I don't know what the field is. But he must've known that DNC was a disaster. He must've dealt with them and gone, oh man, what's going on over there. I think that there does seem to be a disconnect sometimes between, you know, the president and the apparatus. Yeah. Yeah. What was the most rattled you've been by a guest's fame? Cause I have a story for this, but I'm interested to hear what your story is. It's all personal, you know, like my heroes, you know, like Keith Richards, I was pretty rattled. Oh, wow. You know, and I did it in New York and I was, you know, it was a road one and I, you know like keith richards i was pretty rattled oh wow you know and i did it in new york and i was you know it was a road one and i you know i'm a huge fan and i was completely beside myself and you know how coherent was he he's very coherent he's a little loopy his book was

excellent oh dude he's really smart yeah when i read that book of my boy we've all been fooled yeah this guy is like uh you know, intelligent, deep, thoughtful, intellectual guy. Yeah. By the time I got him, it was funny because we were at NPR studios in New York City and we were just picking up. We're going to, I was there. This is my only window to do it. Yeah.

And he was doing morning edition. Then they were going to let me piggyback in the studio on the, after that. So we go to NPR and it was just funny. We're waiting, we're in the room, the waiting room. And I meet Keith's people and they show me like, you know, he, he has a green room request even for daytime, you know, radio interview. Well, it's just like, it's just orange soda, like orange crush and vodka, little vodkas and blood. Can I have some blood? Do you have any blood back there? He must have done that before he left the house.

But it was just, it was orange soda and vodka. And so I knew that's what he's going, that's what he's up to. And- That should be called the Keith Richards now. It should be. The orange soda and vodka. That should be.

It's called the Keith. You're absolutely right. He should have a drink named after him. Definitely, yeah. But so we're in there we're waiting to until he's done in there and some woman's running around the office going he's smoking a cigarette he's smoking a cigarette what do we do oh god there's nothing you can do just let him do it richards yeah but it was cool man because like i went in there and he you know he

was kind of juiced and he was uh he was he was he was funny it was funny i had him laughing uh and i smoked my first cigarette in 10 years with him. Oh, you came out of a smoking retirement? Yeah, because he threw a cigarette at me because I was playing with one. I told him, let me have one, just play with it. I knew I wasn't going to start again because I was doing the lozenges. So I didn't feel like I was going to start smoking it. But I thought if I'm going to smoke a cigarette, it should be with Keith.

How many cigarettes? What was your cigarette stretch? Age 15? Yeah, 14, 15 to... All the way to when? To like with intermittent periods of quitting, I think I really quit for

good like 99, 63, 73, 93, 93, you know, 36. And then I was on lozenges for like a decade. And I just got off of those. Never stumble at like a wedding after eight drinks? No, I had one when my divorce was finalized.

But again, like my second divorce, I had one then. But no, you know, I was doing those nicotine lozenges for years and I love them. And I just gave them up about six weeks ago. So I got nothing. I have a story about feeling my feelings. It's horrible. I have a story about, I guess, making me nervous, but speaking of divorce, both of us have been married for a while to stamps.com. We've done a lot of first, one of the first, geez, convenient, easy, reliable, flexible. Do it right here in the, in the, in the bungalow. I mean, can you remember I separated my life before and after? Before and after stamps?

I stopped going to the post office. Because why would you go to the post office? No reason to. There's no reason. You have stamps.com. It's the best. You get all the deals. You get deals you can't get at the post office.

Yeah, you hand your packages to the mailman or the woman. The U.S. Postal Service is ready at your fingertips. Any letter, package, class of mail. Stamps.com will even send you, I don't know if you know this. Digital scale? Yeah. Oh, you knew that. I did know that.

Yeah, they'll send you digital scale. It calculates exact postage, helps you decide the best class of mail. Print out your labels. We have a variety of codes you can use for this special offer. You can use the BS. Is there WTF? Sure. WTF code's good.

A four-week trial plus postage plus a digital scale without long-term commitments. All you have to do is go to stamps.com. What do you do when you're at the top of the homepage? Do you remember? Yeah, you click on the microphone at the top of the homepage. That's what you do. Type in your offer code. You type in BS.

You can type in WTF, whatever you want. That's stamps.com. Enter BS or WTF. They don't care. Yeah,. That's stamps.com, enter BS or WTF. They don't care. Yeah, they don't care. They're just happier there. Stamps.com, never go to the post office again. So I had Charlize Theron, oh my God, here two months ago, sitting right there.

And it was the only time I've ever been nervous at the start of a podcast. Cause she was so, she's so cool. And she's just so stunning and like we had a couple people in the office all of us were just like zombies and then I had to start the podcast and she just sits crosses her legs sits back and she's just kind of sizing

everyone up and I'm like so and I just had nervous energy and I hadn't had that in like eight years because it was like I'm sure she does that. She's so used to seeing men just turn all gooey in front of her. Every day. Another nervous man trying

to talk to me. But she was but she was awesome though. Yeah. I would recommend. She seems sharp. I would recommend her as a guest. Yeah. I don't who have I had lately that made me nervous? I always get nervous to be honest with you. Really? Unless I know the dude, you know, or the woman. I do generally, like, I'm like, I don't know.

Do you do an hour? I usually go like an hour, 15, hour, 20. Because the best part of the pot is usually the last 30 minutes. Because for some reason, they loosen up. They get a little punchy. You break them down. Yeah. They lose the will to live.

Well, they forget that they're on mic. Yeah. Yeah. That's where you want them. Yeah. That's when they start saying stuff. No, definitely. Yeah.

The last third. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I always get a little nervous because sometimes you're like, does this person even talk? Right. You don't know? No.

If they're going to talk for an hour and a half, who knows how that's going to go? I'm pretty careful with who we book. No, it's more like, I got to say, like a gut feeling. I remember they offered us a couple of Fast and Furious eight people. Oh, yeah. And they sent us a list. Who are those people? Well, it was like basically everybody.

And I was like. Actors can be tricky. Well, I saw Kurt Russell and I was like, yes. Sure. Absolutely. There's history there. Kurt Russell, of course. That'd be tricky. Well, I saw Kurt Russell and I was like, yes. Sure. Absolutely. There's history there. Kurt Russell, of course. That'd be great.

So we taped to them. It was like 10 a.m. And he comes in. He's Kurt Russell, famous movie star. Smelled like he just had a smoke. He's holding a coffee. It was like everything I wanted from Kurt Russell. I was like, yeah, this is it.

Comes in. Big hang. Talked about his career. We went through his IMDB. Went through his movies. And he was just fucking Kurt Russell. It was great. Oh, I'm sure he was thrilled. Yeah, he loved it.

Yeah. We talk about Escape from New York. Oh yeah. All these old movies. Talking about Tequila Sunrise. Oh, of course. I love that movie. Yeah.

Yeah. He loved it. It was great. But sometimes you just kind of know. It was like, of course, Kurt Russell is going to be good at a podcast. Well, yeah, especially if they're there's there's a whole generation of artists that don't get the respect that they used to or that they deserve so like if you give it to them

they're like yeah yeah it's like you know and then there's other people like i've had musicians though primarily were like i had roger uh waters right oh yeah but he comes in he and he's like i want to talk about the past okay because a lot of people talk about right a lot of them think they're doing their best work now and that's like well that's great but you don't want to talk about pink floyd yeah guy in pink floyd and uh then you got to figure out how to get them there. So that becomes sort of this challenge where you kind of like, okay, and talk a bit.

And you're like, but that sounds a little bit like that other record. Like you try to sneak it in so you go down the rabbit hole, you know, and they don't know they're down there. It's good.

The only one you've done that I was genuinely jealous and enraged about was Springsteen. Because I'm Springsteen generation. Yeah, yeah. And I am Springsteen generation. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh,

I am too. I think that was, I think the second concert I ever went to, and I've just been with him the whole time. And, uh, and you caught him at a really cool point of his career when he was starting to talk about stuff and be honest about stuff and revealing

things that we didn't really know about. I'm very happy. How long did you go with that one? We had tight hour. So, uh, cause that could I'm very happy. How long did you go with that one? We had a tight hour. So. Ugh. Because that could have been. It was okay though.

You would have been like, Bruce, you play for three and a half hours. You can't go. Right. You can't go an hour and a half. The good thing about him, that thing was, it's like,

I respect the guy, but I'm not a lunatic. Do you know what I mean? Like I'm a lunatic for Keith Richards and you can hear it in that podcast. Yeah. I'm just this, like a fan boy.

But with Bruce, it was like, I respect the guy, but like, you know, I'm not, you know, I don't go, you know, he didn't define my adolescence. Yeah. So, and I read most of the book before I got there, which was helpful. And I didn't like, the thing about Bruce is that his public persona is pretty cool.

Like it seems real. He's managed it incredibly over the years. It does seem 100% genuine. Right. He's like, hey man, you know, everything's good. And then just, you know, sticking his jaw. Yeah, that looks pretty good. You're a good guy.

But underneath that, there's just this teeming darkness and anger and everything else, which I relate to. So I didn't know if I was going to get there but we got there and it was it was great and i'm the only thing i'm happy about well i'm happy i i look back that is a great experience yeah and it would have been different if i was a big fan in the sense of being fanatic no i you're a respectful fan but not a maniac exactly but like i've talked to several old timey Bruce Springsteen fans. They're like, that's the best interview. We love that interview.

Oh, so it helped that you were a little detached. Definitely. Because with me, I would have gone too deep. I would have been like. You would have got hung up in the music. I would have gotten hung up in the music and also the stories that he used to tell in the 70s about, you know, I got in a motorcycle accident. Right. And my dad, you know, I got in a motorcycle accident. Right. And my dad, you know, and he had such a compliment.

Yeah. When they released the three CD live album in like 85. Yeah. And they kept a couple of the stories in and it became clear this was like a guy, this was this damaged guy whose dad had really fucked him up, you know. Really fucked him up. And hated his guitar and hated his long hair and was disappointed that he

didn't go to Vietnam, but then kind of was happy that he didn't go to Vietnam. A little bit of a drunk. Yeah. It might have been a lot of bit of a drunk. We don't know. Well, in the book, he's pretty, yeah, he's definitely sauce in it. Yeah. And then they left him and his sister and just moved to California.

And then he started playing music and his whole life fell into fell into place he's so hard on himself that's the one regret i have about that interview is that i really didn't identify that yeah that yeah he's depressed yeah he's you know he's got this chip on the shoulder yeah and he feels most comfortable on stage and he's able you know and and all this other stuff but he's like i think he's insanely hard on himself like he's a real I think he's insanely hard on himself. Like he's a real perfectionist. He's just like, cause I just didn't put it together that that's part of that.

That's part of that. You know what? Bad dad shit. Right. But you know what nailed that really well was the Defiant Ones documentary. Definitely. The Iovine part about Bruce.

Did you read that book? Did you read Bruce's book? Yeah. Yes. The one from, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the new one. Yeah.

Yeah. But the Iovine part and the thing about how he would just make them play the same thing over and over and over give it to me again give it to me again give it to me again and uh i don't know that was cool because i don't think bruce gets enough respect for being just a maniac with how he put out his music too much maybe now he's not too much yeah do you know because then like if you think about it the way that born to run comes together is that obsessiveness yeah and it paid off but like at some point you know he just it just became him and his guitar for a few years there yeah or i'm just sorry i'm just gonna do folk music like nebraska was like he must have exhausted himself yeah of

doing songs about serial killers. Right. But like, but there's no layers of sound that, you know, he's managing these mixes. Yeah. With all those dudes. He may,

he must've need a little bit of a break. He knew, but he kept it dark. He kept it a little, you know, dense, but maybe he just needed a little break from the board. You haven't dipped into the whole like hip hop world with interviews.

Not much. I listen to hip hop, but I've tried, I've reached out, I think kind of half reached out or tried to get Kendrick. And I, you know, and there's people that I like.

Kendrick's on my list too. Maybe let's just interview them together. Kendrick, if you're listening, we'll do, we'll do an interesting thing. Do a three, a three man. Two white guys arguing over it.

You have to ask the next question. It'll be awesome. It'd be great. How can you turn this down, Kendrick? We'll put a beat behind two white guys arguing over who has to ask the next question. It'll be awesome. It'd be great. How can you turn this down, Kendrick? We'll put a beat behind two white guys clamoring to ask you a question. Well, Kendrick's like, he's such a unique guy. He probably would be like, oh yeah, okay. That sounds interesting.

I think he just kind of floats to whatever's cool. My current girlfriend is very hip hop oriented. And there are guys that I've listened to and I like, you know, Kanye, Jay-Z, but they're pretty mainstream cats, you know?

And, and I, I definitely listened to a lot of the records thoroughly at different points in my life. I've been listening to a lot more jazz now. And I, and I was able to interview a Kamasi Washington, which is who works with Kendrick a bit.

He's a big jazz guy, a sax guy. And I, and I got, I got, I've been sort of getting into that lately. I like talking about jazz. Have you had Kimmel on? Kimmel?

Yeah. Yeah, a long time ago. I went to and interviewed him. I'm doing his show next week, I think. Oh, good. Yeah, on next Wednesday. He's had an unexpected career, kind of has gone in this direction.

I don't think anyone would have expected. Well, I think it's because it's coming from his gut. I don't think it's a career decision. I think he's- It's 100% that. I think he had this thing happen to him. With his kid? Yeah.

And then this thing with Vegas. Yeah. Yeah, this personal stuff. And that, you know, just kind of, he's trying to be a common sense guy. Right. And applying that to people's needs and what politics is supposed to do. Which the cool thing about it is this was,

this was always why Letterman was indispensable, even after he had lost interest in his day-to-day show, which really was the last 20 years of the show. But every once in a while you needed him. Yeah. And I'm happy that Jimmy filled the void. Letterman's like one of my all-time dudes. Oh, me too, man.

But he just, you know, he checked out after, once Leno passed him, that was it. I guess so. I felt like after the heart surgery, he kind of, you know, became a different guy. Yeah, I agree. Like he became softer and less give a shit. Like there's a fine line between, you know,

there was the checking out, but then there was a little later, there was the, I don't give a shit. Like there's a fine line between, you know, there was the checking out, but then there was a little later, there was the, I don't give a fuck anymore. Yeah. And that was good. Yes. You know, so there was a sort of renaissance of Letterman not giving a shit. Right.

You know, which is better than checking out. Yeah. Nothing was like that show in the 80s though. I mean, when you were an up and coming comic, that must've been your dream, right? Letterman? I did it. Yeah. I did it five, when you were an up and coming comic, that must've been your dream, right? Letterman? I did it. Yeah.

I did it five, four or five times. Was that the, cause if it had been 10 years earlier, it would have been Carson, but I think it shifted to Letterman probably by mid 80s, I would guess. Oh yeah, no, I was, you know, I wasn't going to get Carson.

And I don't know, I watched Letterman from the beginning and when I was in college, I loved him. And yeah, that was the grill. I didn't know if it was going to happen for me, but my first Letterman, that was a very exciting day. Me and my shiny suit. Bought a new suit that I look at.

I've made some bad clothing decisions over the years. Especially in the 80s. Oh man. It was a Calvin Klein suit, but it was shiny. And my hair was all short. And I was like time traveling. My set was so tight. That first set, you watch it.

It's like a great set, but you don't get a sense of who I am, but I deliver everything perfectly. I'm like, I don't need a mic because you look at old days, you don't need mics in a TV studio. Anyone's holding a mic, they're doing it because it makes them comfortable.

If you ever see a mic stand on one of those shows, it's just because that guy is used to it. You just go out with your hands. Right. And I, I, that was so great. You're waiting with Biff behind the curtain and he'd go out there.

Every one of those appearances. I think I did three standups and one panel. The panel was like, and I got in the panel under the wire before he retired. And, and it was, it was a, it was greatest experience of my life as a comic.

Cause yeah, he was a, did you do the dangerfield special or no? No. No. Because that was another one that became a thing in the late 80s. That was like the Young Comedian special. Yeah, the Young Comedian.

Yeah, no, that was before my time. I didn't really start. I started doing TV pretty soon after I started, like a couple years in. But it was those basic cable shows. Evening at the Improv, Caroline's Comedy Hour. MTV did a few. MTV Half Hour Comedy or something. I did a half hour HBO special in 95, but there was always a lot of those.

I remember that. I used to love those. Yeah. They were cranking those out for a couple of years. They're always a half hour. I remember that was my favorite Janine Garofalo ever. I'd shot with her that week. That was like the best half hour she ever did. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. We did it the same week. It was like the best half hour she ever did. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, we did it the same week. It was weird. It was me, Dana Gould, Garofalo, Mencia, Dana, I already said Dana Gould,

Bobcat on sort of his revival, you know, short haired Bobcat, not too weird Bobcat. Yeah, not too weird Bobcat. Where do you see standup comedy going? It's great right now. Where does it always go? I don't know.

It's one of those things that it's like stand-up comedy and roasts are just like cruise ships sailing through the ocean. They never really get affected. There's a lot of people claiming to be comics now. There's a lot of outlets. Yeah. There's a lot of comic produced shows. There's a lot of alternative venues.

But ultimately, the people that put in the work and put in the time and pay their dues, there's a lot of great comics out there. And, you know, there, you know, sometimes there's something that never changes, but there's something that always changes about standup. You know, there, there, there's certain archetypes that kind of fall into place every generation, but yet, and there's, you know, there's certain oddballs. But to do the job and to do it well, it's a rare thing. And there's a lot of good fucking comics out there. So in sports, we always talk about who's the GOAT,

who's the best ever. Oh, yeah? Compare this guy to that guy. In each sport? In each sport. Definitely like football quarterbacks, basketball players just in general, running backs. Isn't that quantifiably determinable though? It is and it isn't.

Cause you're comparing like Michael Jordan to Bill Russell to LeBron James. And there are three different eras. LeBron, the science and technology. Now he can play 20 years. Jordan played basically 13. Russell was gone in 13. And so it's tough. And there's stylistic elements. The styles are different. There's also like people who invented things. True. And now like everybody shoots three pointers. Back in like Bill Russell's day,

it was very center driven stuff like that. Who do you think is there? Do you think there's a goat of standup? Like the best ever? That's the Michael Jordan of standup? Because it doesn't seem like there is. I would think that you could probably get consensus around Richard Pryor.

Wow, okay. I really think that, you know, most comics would put it there, you know, I would think. And, but, you know, it's still like, you can go further back. Like the guys that I loved to watch when I was a kid were guys like Buddy Hackett and Don Rickles and Jackie Vernon.

Yeah. You know, I liked watching those old roasts. Yeah. And then, you know, when I was in high school, I went to see the first,

you know, Richard Pryor movie live in concert. And it was like, what? Yeah. There was so much humanity to it. There was so much real heart in it. You know,

that was like, that was something that, you know, not only, you know, not only, you know, the voices, the jokes and the stories, but he had his heart on the line and you could feel it. And that was a new thing. You know, I think it was a rare thing. But, you know, I liked Woody Allen. I liked, I liked, I had all the Carlin records, teaching Sean records, Steve Martin records. But I think that people would probably really,

if you pulled them of a certain generation that it would probably be Carlin. It seems like, uh, prior, like if there's championship belts being passed, yeah. Most of the people have held that belt would always point to prior either influencing them or he influenced the person. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's true. Yeah. I always thought when, when prior was on SNL, which I think was like the 10th episode,

maybe it was the fourth. No, it was the 10th. And he goes on and that show is becoming a phenomenon. And he's almost like the network doesn't even want to have him on. No. Yeah. And then he's on there.

He does the head to head sketch with Chevy chase. Yeah. Yeah. Racial. Yeah. It's worse and worse. Yeah. And I always thought that that had to be one of the most that, yeah, he does samurai. He does the exercise-to-head sketch with Chevy Chase with the racial sort of it's worse and worse. And the samurai sketch.

That had to be one of the most, yeah, he does samurai, he does the exorcist. I always thought that has to be considered one of the most exciting hour and a half in the history of television. He catches Pryor literally at the perfect point of his career in life on this show that is about to become this institution,

but hasn't yet. And it's just like they cross paths. Yeah. And then he was never on again. Yeah. We both interviewed Lorne. I mean, your interview was a lot different than mine. It was.

Well, cause you were more, you had some stuff to resolve. I had to get some closure for the first 15 minutes. Did you get it? I did. He indulged me completely. Can you give the 15 second story for people who don't know that story?

I auditioned for SNL. God, it was the same time Tracy Morgan did. I was put through the whatever, what is that saying? Put through the- Put through the ringer? No, I jumped through the hoops. I auditioned at a standup club. Then I auditioned in the studio.

And the rumor was that they were looking for someone to replace Norm. It was 95 or something, whatever. And that maybe I'd get to update or like update guests or whatever. And then I got the meeting with Lorne, right? And I was probably a little buzzed and I waited for a couple hours.

It was me and Tracy Morgan, where I remember his hair was very shiny. His hair was like perfect fro, Tracy's was. He looked so clean. And I go in and, you know, there's this weird, kind of like Lorne's looking at me. I'm a little cocky. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing there.

And Steve Higgins is there, the head head writer and there's a bowl of candy there that i remembered to be jolly ranchers and uh and uh you know lauren does this thing where it's like um like look me in the eyes you can tell a lot from someone's eyes you know like just weird shit like that he's like you know then he goes off on this saying like uh people go to the zoo you know the lions are scary the bears are intense but the the monkeys are the comedians everyone likes the monkeys because they're funny and i said like yeah i guess that's what they're not throwing their shit at you you know something like that trying to be clever or whatever you didn't like that i don't remember really but i remember taking a candy and then like he shot a look at higgins and i thought like i'd fail the candy test like that in my mind if i hadn't taken the candy

like i i put a lot of of paranoia so you thought about that jolly rancher ever since right so that and and then like when i met lauren he said it would never have been a jolly rancher you know it was a tootsie roll it's always a tootsie roll and i'm like okay and then like he said it had nothing to do with the candy he said like i've only got a certain number of spots you didn't fit well you know he just gave me all the closure i could want and then we talked about him for a while and and he was very it was nice i i ended he ended up inviting me back. Like I talked to him for an hour. He hadn't engaged me.

He said, if you're still in town, come back tomorrow. If you didn't get what you need. So I went back and did more with him. So it was pretty thorough. And I got the feeling that, you know, this is a guy, he said, he produces a television show. He's been in that building for almost 40 years and he does it every week and he loves it. And that's his job. Like no matter how powerful

or rich he is he's still that guy wandering around those halls engaged in that job it's a television producer and he's not god right and an incredible judge of talent which i think the producer part but then also seems to have this uncanny ability to be oh yeah you see this person's gonna go this way yeah i'm gonna attach attach myself now. Yeah, all that stuff. Yeah. And, you know, I told him I was still available if the job opened up. Could you have written for a TV show like that?

No, I didn't want to be a writer. You never would have done that, right? No, I never wanted to be a writer. Would you have done it as like try to get in the door and then eventually try to be on? I didn't know how it worked. I just thought I would be on television. I thought I would be on SNL somehow. You know, I thought that I would maybe have a shot at update or at least one of those sidekicks.

I didn't know how any of it worked. I didn't know how anything worked, Bill. Could you pull it off update? At that time? 96? 95, 96. I don't know if I would have had it together. Yeah.

I probably could have pulled it off. I probably would have done it. I probably wouldn't have been my best self. What kind of demons were you fighting in 1996? It wasn't so much demons. It was like just this constant sense of insecurity. Like, you know, am I funny enough? Am I good enough?

Does my hair look right? Am I wearing the right pants? You know, whatever it was, it wasn't, I wasn't out of control drug wise or booze wise, but I was, you know, angry and defensive. And, you know, I had thought that that was my style that like, this is how I am. And I think it was all defense mechanism. It was all insecurity. You know, what else makes people insecure when they don't have the right website? No kidding. Do you, do you, what do you, what do you recommend Squarespace?

Yeah. How'd you know? I don't know. Just took a shot in the dark. Just completely randomly. We've had three of the OG sponsors, or the sponsor of this one. Whether you're planning to start a business, change careers, or launch a creative project, you should absolutely be tackling your next move with Squarespace, widely used by all kinds of people and businesses. Squarespace gives you the ability to create an online platform with which you can make your latest goals into a reality.

I'm sure you've done this years ago. Sure, we are. If you want to see a great Squarespace site, you can go to wtfpod.com and they have done our entire site. And it's very easy to make all of your own adjustments and update your sites. It's just, you just drag and drop.

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Glad you brought that up. What's your biggest career regret? My biggest career regret? Yeah, if you had one do over, I'm giving you one do over right now. Press reset button, you go back and do something over. What would you do? That's a good question.

Thank you. Like I've gotten so much into the brain of not thinking about that stuff. You know what I mean? Because you're, you're going forwards, not backwards. Well, there's nothing you can do about that. You know what I mean? And I like in, in, in retrospect, I don't know that I was like, I was driven by a certain amount of righteous spite, you know, cause I was watching my peers succeed and I never understood the

business. Yeah. You know, I never understood, you know, like, you know, making friends, you know, being diplomatic politician in the business world. I just knew I wanted to be a standup and I knew that guy just got something. Why didn't I get it? Yeah. And I fought for a lot of stuff and I got a lot of opportunities, but I don just got something. Why didn't I get it? Yeah. And I fought for a lot of stuff and I got a lot of opportunities, but I don't think I was really

ready for any of it. Righteous spite would have been a good name for the podcast. If WTF was taken, I don't think that's welcome to righteous spite with Mark Barrett. I feel that's not appealing to anybody. Righteous spite, bitterness, I would say the internet is full of righteous spite right now yeah the righteous spite era it's not it doesn't feel good dude doesn't feel good no it doesn't feel good to be at the at the uh the spite end of it and ultimately it doesn't feel good to to to be that guy i'm trying to think you know what what did i really blow like i can't really blame the snl thing on myself yeah you know um maybe there's some girl you screwed up with i don't know oh you mean like I can't really blame the SNL thing on myself. Yeah. You know, um, maybe there's some girl you screwed up with.

I don't know. Oh, you mean I'm giving you a do over on anything. I do over on anything. You don't have to take it. It's a big question. I don't know why I thought of it. I just came out of the square space and.

Oh my God. Like, I really, I really wonder like what, cause I, I feel like in my heart, there's things that I just kind of like blew. See, you seem like a much more at peace guy

than I expected. Oh yeah? Yeah. Took a while. Yeah. I think the lack of nicotine and the lack of coffee is helping me in this area. You gave up coffee?

I did because they went together. They always go together. So I've been drinking tea, black tea. So I have some caffeine in me, but I'm not jammed. Interesting. Yeah, I just wrote a new joke about like, I had to quit drinking coffee because it made my girlfriend cry.

There's a couple of steps in between. It did exacerbate my emotions a bit. When you're writing jokes, where do you go? It's a comedy store. You don't go to like a weird coffee place or like? I don't really write like that. Like usually that came up on stage. I don't even, I do almost all my writing in the moment.

Like I write ideas down, like my notebooks in the car. But you know what unfolds on stage? It's very rarely, you know, like structured jokes. Like I just keep chipping away at an idea and then I kind of hone it. And then I figure out where the timing is. Like I just keep chipping away at an idea and then I kind of hone it. And then I figure out where the timing is. Like I just did that special for Netflix. Yeah.

And I must be good at this, you know, because that's the weird thing about doing the podcast is a lot of people got to know me from that. Yeah. And they didn't know my standup. So now they, you know, like, and I've been doing standup a long time and it's pretty solid right now.

Like that thing I did for Netflix, a new one, too real. It's really the best thing i've ever done stand-up wise but i'm heading into that you know the week of taping they want 70 minutes they think that's the best amount of time and i'm still at like an hour and a half so i'm still at 90 minutes 95 minutes. And like two shows before I got to tape it, I just cut it. And I figured out where things connected, where the callbacks were, how I wanted to end it. Kinda like I, that was the thing about that is that like, I used to go real loose to protect myself from failing. Like, you know, like just like, uh, you know, just keep it loose, you know? And that way you just give them a lot. You know what I mean? But these last few specials have been very tight.

And I was just amazed that I could trim it down in two days. And I had that moment like, I know how to do this. To trim down a half hour out of a 90-minute set. Yeah. And then like to get it in your head and not, you know, and to get it, you know, as a conversation. So that's how I do my writing. I didn't know how I was going to end that special to the day of. I changed the ending the day of.

Wow. Yeah. That makes it exciting. So I don't write at a coffee shop. I generally write on stage and I write impulsively. Do you think there's a right age for a standup to kind of peak with how they understand the tools of it? Or is it different for everybody?

I know some people have a gimmick, you know, some people like, you know, get a, get a hang of it, you know, very quickly early on. And then it evolves, you know, I mean, once you learn how to make people laugh, however you do it, you know, then you kind of got that out of the way. Then you can go back and make them not laugh again. Yeah. And you know, you can make them laugh. You can grow however you can make them laugh. You can grow however you're going to grow. I mean, I didn't really come into myself. It took like 20 years for it to really work out.

I don't think I really let go of the fear until like five or six years ago. Just like totally trusted the process. Trust the process. Not afraid. Feel at home on stage. You know, writing, writing, writing columns and stuff. It's the same thing where at some point you hit a point where you go this is due i haven't written it yet i'm good at this yeah i'm gonna trust the process i'm gonna go to my place i'm gonna look at the blank microsoft

word screen or whatever you're using and just it's gonna come it's right it's brutal it takes forever i mean some for some people sometimes if you don't it's like i come. It's going to happen. Writing's brutal. It takes forever. I mean, for some people, sometimes if you don't, it's like. I know I can get on stage and even if I've got nothing to say and I just dick off, I can be pretty entertaining. Yeah, you can, you trust it. Yeah. I always thought it's like writing and I'm sure doing standup too. It's almost like playing golf where you had to keep going out there.

You can't. You have to. You can't. I can to. You can't. I can't. You can't disappear from standup for a year and a half and then just come back and turn it off. I can barely do two weeks. Yeah.

Yeah, that's about the most I do. Like I'll go out tonight. I go on the weekends. It's like going to the gym, go to the comedy store. And now that I've just finished that hour and a half, I've been doing about an hour a year, hour plus a year for the last forever. Got four or five CDs

three hour specials one half hour special I mean you know then it's but I don't I don't want to pressure myself anymore like I like I don't know how I got that I never know where they come from but they come I was always amazed when when Sarah was dating Jimmy yeah and you'd be at

Jimmy's house and Sarah would just get up and she'd leave at like 930. Like, where's she going? She's going to do a 10 minute set and then she'd be back an hour later. Yeah. Like you just went and did, yeah. Entertained a whole bunch of people. That's what we did.

It was, but it was like, I'll be right back. I was like, she's going to get gas. I'll see you guys in a little bit. What, did he live by the improv? Or where did he? No. Yeah. He lived, well, this was when he was living like in

a kind of hollywood hills like right so it was like 10 minutes down wherever she needed to go yeah just hop in the car and go so a little bit of a drive for me but i'd go just part of the job do you think is it fair to say all stand-up comics have to be slightly damaged in some way i don't know i used to think, but after talking to almost all of them, I don't know if they're like necessarily damaged any more than other people. I do think they have a sensitivity or something. There is like, I don't know what compels somebody to,

like, I never thought I had a choice. I wanted to be a comic and that's what I was going to do. And then I was a comic. I didn't have a plan B. I didn't think of anything else. That's what I was going to do. Yeah. Like what causes that stupidity? But I don't know that they have to be damaged. I don't think that's necessarily true. One of the most famous pods you did was, was Robin Williams. Yeah. Cause he had this whole side that people, people just knew him as go on Letterman and he's just this ball of energy the whole time.

And then you actually went deep with him. Yeah. And people are like, whoa, that was in there? Like it was almost like they didn't know. Yeah. But you should have known because some of them, yeah. But some of the movie choices he made, he was clearly, you know, like Garp,

people hunting. Like he would make certain movies where he scaled it all the way back. Yeah. Show. Yeah. It was kind of interesting that last bit of that interview the well he had had some struggle with booze and drugs yeah and

then he had relapsed and then he yeah and then he had this other problem you know with the he had some sort of degenerative illness yeah he was looking down the barrel at but yeah i that that conversation it seems to be one of the only ones with him of that ilk. Right. Uh, cause it got a lot of play. I think it might be the only one. Yeah.

If there's another one out there, I haven't seen. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it was a very odd day. It was interesting. Like he,

um, and you confronted him on the joke stealing stuff. Yeah. Stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And he, he owned up to everything and it was,

it was just, I think the only reason it happened the way it did was I was in his home and there was no one there. Like, I mean, like the thing is like if I was Robin Williams and it was me, you, but he saw that guy sitting there,

he would need to make that guy laugh. What's his name? Nephew Kyle. What? Nephew Kyle. Like Robin would be talking to you but he'd be thinking about making nephew kyle laugh and that that would consume him it would just be what he'd be doing yeah you know and and so because there was no one else there he didn't

need to do that i'm an easy audience but he wasn't gonna just you know you know jump up and down for me for an hour it's when we built the Grantland studio in 2012, which was basically a converted electrical closet. And I just had the people, we had to close the door. Like even if they brought people, they couldn't go in. There just wasn't enough room. Yeah. It was just the two of us.

I always felt like that was a huge advantage. Oh yeah. Where it's just, it's me and you. They just kind of would let the guard down and go. Have you done real radio? No, I don't think so. Well, no, no. oh real radio yeah yeah well you know like i thought you were yeah i thought you'd created some new station oh no no like when you like if you got like if you're doing a morning show behind the glass you're gonna go for it yeah you can get those guys you

gotta and that's you gotta get real laughs from people behind glass because you can't hear them you gotta see them buckle right with laughter yeah when i did morning radio that was i was always looking behind that glass because you needed to like if you couldn't hear it so you guys can go over start laughing tell me about your book yeah you have it no you looked over there no nobody mailed it to me no i just looked at the time oh what time is it 30. The book is pretty amazing, really. And we had no idea it would be so amazing. It's a really smart idea. I was jealous of it.

You went through all your conversations. You're more jealous of me than I am of you. I like it. I like it. I was told, just keep telling him you're jealous. It'll make the interview go great. No, no. You had a couple of great ideas.

A book of interviews. Jealousy, then he qualifies it. Not a lot. It's a couple of things i didn't want you to be in the power seat um no i love that i mean apatow did a book where he just went randomly and just interviewed all these people i thought it was fantastic so i'm excited yeah yours too the way the book came together is just you know the idea was we have this resource of these, you know, eight, 900 interviews. So it evolved into, we created a bunch of themes that we talk about a lot on the show. Yeah.

Like, you know, relationship, success, failure, addiction, spirituality, sexuality, you know, there's like a dozen or so. And we broke it into themes and Brendan McDonald, who's, you know, a wizard, who's like, you know, like, uh, he's more than half of why the show is great and why the book is certainly great is that he's got this steel trap of a mind. And he was able to kind of remember much better than me. Any of those conversations. That's amazing. I wish I had a Brendan McDonald.

You need a Brendan. I'm jealous again. Yeah. You should be jealous of that one. No, I mean, that's great. You've had that guy since day one. Dude. And when he's, it was so funny because he, you should be jealous of that one. No, I mean, that's great. You've had that guy since day one. Dude, and when he's, it was so funny because, you know, he, for the first four or five years of the podcast, he was doing it on the side. You know, he was producing television.

He was a news producer at MSNBC. Like, and then like, even when we started the video thing, like I always request Brendan. I'm like, need Brendan, can't do without Brendan. So when we brought him back to air america he was he had a big job at sirius he was moving up the chain and i brought him back in to produce this video show and then we when that hit the wall i'm like we gotta do something else but he had to work and he's got family and stuff but like a few years ago

when he said to me he said i'm gonna go full-time with wtf i'm like dude you don't have to do that i don't want to what if it doesn't work out you can do and but he knew he wasn'm going to go full time with WTF. I'm like, dude, you don't have to do that. I don't want to, what if it doesn't work out? You can do it. And, but he knew he wasn't going to do anything. He didn't know it was going to work out and it certainly worked out. But anyways. So he organized, you have these 12 themes, just grab different pieces of different interviews. That's basically it, you know, is that they're, they're all pieces from different interviews, about 150, 160 people in there. And I wrote short chapters, you know, for the head of each team. John Oliver wrote the forward, the intro to the book.

And I read it and I was like, I couldn't believe I had these conversations. Like I, you know, cause when you're in one, what do you really remember? If you're engaged, you're like, and I'm hyper engaged. Yeah, I don't know where you're at right now, but you seem halfway here. I'm engaged. I'm always engaged. Yeah. I don't know where you're at right now, but you seem halfway. I'm engaged.

I'm always engaged. I love doing this. Yeah. But, uh, but like, I don't remember him. Do you remember your conversation? I'll go, I'll go further. Cause I had a two year stretch when I worked at ESPN where I had five jobs and I was working so hard that there's like this nine years, nine months stretch of podcast that I looked through because I was like, have I had this problem going through?

There's some Wikipedia page. And I'm like, I don't remember doing that. It's like, I don't remember that stretch of my life almost because I was so embedded. But yeah, it's almost like PTSD. Yeah. It's like, oh, oh, I guess I did have. I don't remember talking to that guy. Yeah.

Yeah. I was like, what happened to me yesterday? Yeah. Like I'm talking, who was I guess I did have it. I don't remember talking to that guy. Yeah. Yeah. That's happened to me yesterday. Yeah. Like, who was I talking to? Rob Hubel. And, you know, he's bringing up people. And I'm like, oh, I think I talked to him. You admit that?

Yeah, I talked to him. I talked to Jason Wallner. But yeah, so, but what's really interesting about it is I think that people talk differently, obviously, than they write. So when you read transcriptions that are mildly cleaned up from O's and O's and whatever, is that the intensity of it is immediate. So you read these things that people say, as opposed to writing, which you form, it goes in differently, I think. It has a very visceral feeling. For years and years, I resisted doing transcripts of the pods because I always felt like to just grab a snippet of it, you lose whether somebody was joking, you lose the tone,

you lose the context of it. It always made me nervous. But then we started doing it the last two years. It's fine. Oh, yeah. It does read differently than it sounds, especially if you pull out the wrong piece. But for the most part, it's cool.

And I think it adds to it. There's emotional immediacy to it. Yeah. And it just really came together as a book. And it's a nice big book and there's a lot of things discussed. There's a lot of people represented in it. I think there's going to be like four of these. I think it'll be like volume four. We scraped the barrel with 12 more themes. Sodomy. Yeah. Who knew? So many people. Oh my God. 10 sodomy yeah who knew so many people oh my god 10 sodomy quotes

yeah Conan O'Brien on sodomy that was not in the first book no I think I mean 900 interviews about at least an hour

each one yeah so much stuff you definitely have a lot of it too yeah well yeah I wish you transcribe everything nah we

we usually we'll tell somebody after, um, well, one of the great people that works for us, like, Hey, grab this one section and write that part out. Oh, not the whole, not the whole interview. Like in retrospect, one of the things I regret, you know, not the big one, not the, not the biggest one, but like, it's like so many things are talked about, you know, and if, if, you know, if, if I was able to be create, create a bigger operation, all the things like it would be nice. And I think Brendan's sort of on top of it, but a lot of times people are like, what was that book you talked about? Cause like, I'll talk about books and movies and it would have been so easy just to have an index of shit for each show. You know, what was covered with your Amazon offer

code. Yeah. But we never did that. Yeah. Do you do that now? No. We don't do it either. But it was like free money, wasn't it? Yeah, it seems like it. Corolla's been doing it forever. He's the only one that does it. Who else does it? Will Corolla do anything? He really will.

That was always a selling point. 13 different podcasts. Corolla can't be the role model. No, we never did that. And it seemed like it was an easy thing to do. But not just for Kroll has 13 different podcasts. Yeah. Kroll can't be the role model. No, we never did that. And it seemed like it was an easy thing to do, but not just for the Amazon thing, just so as a resource. Yeah.

Like, you know, like if people want to listen to things as an index, like what do you talk to that guy about? Gladwell does it with revisionist history. He has each page for the pod has a bunch of resource material. But now at this point to go back and do it would be an insane job. You'd have to hire someone to listen in 850, whatever.

Listen, do not underestimate the young millennial workforce out there. The millennials get a bad rap, but I guarantee there's a couple of millennials. I'd be like, I want to work with Mark Barron. I'll go through. I just hire like five millennials and break it up to like,

you know, 120 a piece. Pay them in nicotine lozenges. I'll go through every interview you've done. I could just hire like five millennials and break it up to like 120 a piece. Pay them in nicotine lozenges. They'll do it. Mark Barron, this was a lot of fun. I'm glad we did this. It was good. Now we have to do Home and Home.

I have to come on yours at some point. Okay, that'd be good. And also I have to, now I got to think about like, what would that pass be? You can finish it on the WTF pod. When you did WTF, did you expect that it would become also this acronym that's just constantly

being texted back and forth with LOL and a couple of the other greats? Yeah, it was out there. Yeah, it probably was out there. I mean, I certainly didn't invent that. No, I'm not saying you did, but it's a ubiquitous acronym and you got in early on.

It's a great name. Well, my concept was that like, it seems to be the most important question. That the philosophical question, you know. Yeah. That's it. Norm MacDonald had the, wait, what? That I always thought was a really good one.

What is that? That's from his podcast? No, when he did the, I think he'd always done it in general, but then when he had his sports show on Comedy Central, they had a whole section called Wait What? Oh, that's funny. And the way he did it always made me laugh.

Because I just did a joke on my special where I think that I want my, if I'm going to die, I want it to be quick and painless. And I kind of like my last words to be like, wait, what? And then it's over. Yeah.

I think I'm with you. Mark Barrett. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much to Callaway Golf, callawaygolf.com slash auctions. Don't forget, you can bid on a slew of fantastic golf stuff. All proceeds go into a great charity called Golf Fights Cancer. You can bid on custom-made, sandblasted, hand-painted, limited edition wedges for the Ringer, the Bill Simmons Podcast, and Shack House. Go to CallawayGolf.com slash auctions. Right now, it ends next Wednesday. Thanks to Stamps.com.

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Click on the microphone at the top of the home, stamps.com. Homepage, type in BS. Thanks to SeatGeek. For $20 off your first SeatGeek purchase on NFL tickets, use promo code BSNFL. We have a bunch of good podcasts coming up the next two weeks. Keep listening. Coming back Monday,

guess the lines with cousin Sal and then a whole bunch of other good stuff next week. Until then. I don't have a few years with him on the wayside I'm a bruised son of a I don't have