The Checkup with Doctor Mike - Kal Penn: From White Castle To White House

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

Buy Kal's book here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/You-Cant-Be-Serious/Kal-Penn/9781982171391 Kal Penn has one of the strangest resumes in Hollywood. You most likely remember Kal as half of the stoner comedy duo “Harold and Kumar”, or if you’ve watched a lot of medical dramas like I have you may have enjoyed his 2 season arc on House MD where he lit a patient on fire instead of doing chest compressions. But if your name is “Barack Obama” (hey Prez, check your DMs, come on the show?) you may instead remember Kal as a full time staff member at the White House. Huh? President Obama hired the White Castle guy, after he was already famous? That’s right. Your tax dollars paid his salary for years as a full time staff member of the White House Office of Public Engagement. Turns out the roller coaster ride of Kal’s life didn’t end with him sitting at the movie premiere for Van Wilder, next to his strict Indian immigrant parents, watching his oiled body slide off a naked woman while playing a character literally named “Taj Mahal” (yikes). In Kal’s new book, You Can’t Be Serious, he not only details some of the stunning racism he’s faced throughout his 20+ years in Hollywood, but also stories of those late nights in Washington DC working alongside President Obama navigating some of America’s most highly controversial political issues, such as the hurdles they had to clear to remove the army’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which barred openly queer people from serving in the armed forces. I asked Kal about all of these big picture stories, as well as some smaller ones, like how it’s possible he walks around every day with a tattoo on his left arm that has a typo. Executive Producer and Host: Dr. Mike Varshavski Produced by Dan Owens and Sam Bowers Art by Caroline Weigum CONTACT: [e-mail]

Cal Penn has had a unique career. Many of you will know him from his comedies like Harold and Kumar go to White Castle or Van Wilder. Or if you're a fan of medical dramas, like I sort of am. You might know him from his multiple season stint on House MD, where he may or may not have lit a person's chest on fire.

But he also actually took time from acting and went to work for Barack Obama at the way. White House. This is a true story in a part of his life that I actually was unaware of, but is incredibly interesting. Throughout this podcast, we're going to talk about all things Hollywood, including some of his most racist experiences that he had. We talk about the late nights in Washington, D.C., trying to overturn the don't ask, don't tell Bill that actually prevented armed service members from serving if they were openly gay. Truly, this is an enlightening conversation and one that I definitely enjoyed. I hope you do too. Let's get

started. My first question is here. Dude, are you hung over? Am I what? Are you hung over? No, why? I was at your show last night. Oh, okay.

We all were actually. Thank you for coming. Yeah, we were supporting. Oh, awesome. I didn't know that. You should have said hello. Well, I was gonna, but then like it went long and you guys seemed like you were in a rush to get out, a little tipsy.

I literally was like, I mean, I was a little buzzed on stage. Obviously, it was a lot of fun. I got to give you props. But, and I never do, by the way. This was the other thing is, I mean, Cody has been a friend for like he said, what, 13 years, 14 years, something like that. And so, and he's a huge whiskey bourbon guy. So I was like, yeah, I'll have one with you.

And I was like, you know what? This could be fun because it's whatever. It's a fun. Like, I would be really self-conscious if I was actually promoting something that wasn't mine, like a show that I was on or a movie that I made. And I'm like, oh, there's a modicum of professionalism. I'm like, it's Bell House. They usually do stand-up shows.

Yep. It's light. Well, like, congrats on the book. Thank you. November lunch. Thank you. Paperback launch now. Yeah. Yeah. I learned so much about you.

Well, because you came yesterday, yeah. Well, I came yesterday, but, you know, as a doctor, I have to do my research. Sure, yeah. So I've researched your life thoroughly. And obviously, being a big fan growing up, watching your stuff. Thank you. Dude, so much excitement in your life. Thank you, thank you.

And you're bouncing around between being a pro actor, crushing it in Hollywood, then jumping into the land of D.C. Sure. Are you, like, running in politics? No, absolutely not. No? No. There's no reality.

There was a quote in your book I remember was like, I like something, but I hate politics. I like public service. Public service. Yeah, I like public service. Yeah, I mean, that's not the reason I don't think I'd run for anything. It's more of just, you know, the sacrifice.

I have a lot of respect for people who do and who do it the right way. But, you know, you get a little taste as an actor, a musician, athlete, whatever, of the fact that your life isn't totally private, right? And you know what you're signing up for. But when you're out at dinner with your parents or something, you know, you have a reasonable expectation that somebody comes over and says something. You can be like, I'm sorry. I'm just here with my parents. And people get that. If you're an elected office, you have no reasonable expectation of that kind of privacy, nor should you necessarily. I'm not saying somebody should be disrespectful. I'm just saying, like, that's your job all the time. Which is not to say that I wouldn't want to work for somebody again. I would love to, I mean, this is not a big secret. We didn't talk about it last night. But one of my dream jobs is I'd love to be. an ambassador at some point. I sort of viewed that as a retirement thing, but, you know, the opportunity to use

a private sector arts experience for cultural diplomacy and things like that is literally what most of those jobs entails. Would it be India? Like you... Oh, I don't know. I thought about that. It's funny. I don't think...

I didn't... Obviously, I'd be honored to do it because my grandparents are from there. My parents were born and raised there. And your dad's very politically involved, or was political involved? No, my grandparents were. Oh, my grandparents were.

But my nerdy side, you know, my grad school thesis was on North Korea, with whom we don't have diplomatic relations, right? So that's out. You might be the first. I don't think it's going to get, I don't think things are going to thaw by the time. Well, look, we had Dennis Rodman, Cal Penn. This is working out. Dennis Rodman is a whole different conversation.

But so like the stuff I'm actually interested in policy wise, certainly some of it is South Asia, and then there are just other places that you also, like, I mean, this is almost a version of the question that I get asked often, which is totally fair. Like, if you only know me from stoner movies, and then you're like, how the hell did you go and work for a president? The sort of half-joking answer is, you know, what are you going to say, no, Mr. President, I have another stoner movie to make. I'm not going to serve.

But you were in house when you were doing it. I was, yeah, yeah. So you were a doctor. I was a doctor. But that's what I'm saying. It's a similar thing as if I was ever fortunate enough to serve or to be an ambassador, I don't think I would say, oh. Greenland, nah, I'm not really.

Oh, so you're saying you won't be picky. I don't think so. I think if you like the gig, I mean, to me, what attracts me to things like cultural diplomacy or the idea that something exists outside of just military might, which is, of course, necessary on its own. But like, you know, the thing that I like about that is the fact that it brings people together, period. It's also what I love about being an actor and what I liked about being on a house.

Yeah, I mean, I have a medical question. for you. Sure. I probably don't know it. Well, tell me, what are some symptoms of pancreatitis? Do you get this a lot? Yeah, well, that's not from house. That's from, that's from the beginning of Harold McFararre. Yeah. Do you get that? Is that like a thing? I know, most, most of the, most of the doctor jokes are about why it was never lupus. Oh, okay. Yeah. That's a house. Yeah. Do you still remember, though? I got to ask us a doctor. What, the, the symptoms of pancreatitis. I don't. Oh, man. Tell me, what are they?

I remember your line. You were like epigastric tenderness, generalized abdominal tenderness, and massive discharge, also known as diarrhea. Oh, right on, okay. But I don't know if that's horribly accurate. It's not discharged.

It doesn't matter. It's more than I remember. This is the challenge with having done, and John Cho and I are so thankful to the fans of those movies because that movie came out and tanked at the box office. Nobody remembers this.

It did not do well. It's like a Scarface movie. Right, it only did well because fans found it on DVD and bought it and had watch parties and all of that. So because of that, you know, that movie was almost 20 years ago, right? And so you'll be walking down the street and somebody will yell something so profane.

And I just in my head, I'm like, oh, it's New York. And they're like, no, idiot. They're yelling at you. That was your line from some movie. And so, you know, and then I'm like, oh, yeah, that was one of my lines. Wow, all right. And that happened with you, right? When you were in the White House, some of George H.W. staff came up to you.

and told you they were fans of Guantanamo Bay? It was, yes, so what was really interesting, and I told part of this last night, yeah, it was not inside the White House. It was, I had, I was visiting D.C. This was, I think, before I was actually in government there, ran into someone who said, hey, you're really funny.

And I said, thank you. And then they said where they worked and said, you know, we really like Helminkmar escape from Guantanamo Bay. it's really funny and I was I mean you know the part of me was like whoa I've brought happiness to your life I mean that's literally what we love to do though yeah and then he could tell the look on my face was was a little quizzical and goes uh was was it meant to be political like are we not supposed to find that funny I'm like no actually the exact opposite it's a satire and we went

to such great lengths in the hopes that everyone would be able to find it funny because it's just funny and it shouldn't have a political bent and it shouldn't be you know it shouldn't be trying to make somebody those movies are never about making fun of anybody in that sense they're always you know laugh with me as opposed to laugh at yeah that's the whole genre of of of that franchise so so yeah i mean but that was that was wild to us that was like okay we did it properly if we made a bunch of bush staffers laugh at that movie aside from our own personal feelings right that's irrelevant it's if you're a good artist or good comedian you should be able to make everybody laugh how do you separate that working for Sanders, as you said yesterday, Obama, and then coming into a world where you do work with

everybody or want to please everybody. Is there like difficulties in that? No, I think, you know, I remember having when I was working on the Obama campaign, which was almost a year, maybe a little over a year, I spent a lot of time, well, where was this? Yeah, with Howard Dean in like New Mexico, a bunch of the Western states. And one conversation we had is he goes, what does defines, how do studios or networks define success of a TV show? And all I was talking about with him was like dial group testing. And when you focus group a film, like, you know, if, if 80% of people love it, you're, that's pretty good. You know, 90% is like, all right, that's awesome. 90 in your demo is like, you know, your characters test really well. And he, he's like, are you fucking kidding me? 90? Like,

like 90%? Like, yeah, why? What defines success? in politics. 60. 51%. It's like all I need is 51% to win an election. And that floored me.

So to your question, I mean, as an artist, yeah, of course, like, you know, there's that weird thing of, you'll always remember the one person who didn't like something.

And you shouldn't, right? By nature of what we do, you're like, all right, the 99 other people loved it, man. It's, you know, it's art. It's always going to be subjective. So no, I think what you're talking about with having volunteered

for Bernie Sanders and then Hillary Clinton was this idea that in politics or in public service, you never get 100% of what you want in a thriving democracy. That's ultimately a good thing for the health of a democracy. Also really frustrating if there's something that you want. So when I was volunteering for Bernie Sanders, I did not expect him to win the nomination. I don't think that was the point. The point was I'm like, Hillary Clinton is going to be an incredible president, and I would

love to help push on things that I know that young people really wanted based on my experience working for Obama, things that we couldn't. deliver on, right? Which in the case of Bernie was universal college. And so a lot of cynics on the right, or even fellow Democrats would be like, it's not free. Somebody's got to pay for it. Like, well, yeah, obviously, dipshit. Nobody's saying that it's like magic money. Of course. I'm not giving you a talking point. I'm just saying it is free for the student. You know, and they pay for it later through taxes or their parents pay for it, whatever. That's just the nature of how a lot of things are funded. So wanted to sort of try and get that on the, the Democratic

Democratic Party platform. And so when Bernie lost the primary and Secretary Clinton won, one of the first things she did was take on that issue. And she was, I think, in her original policy stance, there was no universal college. And she said, you know what? I agree that this is a good idea. I'm going to do this to universal college, right? Because she's the nominee. And the amount of cynical folks who had been working, you know, who I had met working on the Bernie campaign or just other folks out there who said, oh, she's just doing that to get our vote. She doesn't actually care. Like, that is literally what a democracy is. You won that. You won Hillary Clinton absorbing this plan and saying, you know what, I hear you. You want this. You think it's a good

idea. Vote for me and help me get this thing accomplished. That's how it's supposed to work, right? So at some point, I think our cynicism creeps in and there's a lot of mistrust and, you know, a healthy amount of skepticism is never a bad thing. But I think the idea that you're only satisfied if you get 100% of what you want from the person you want it from is really toxic and it gets in the way of a lot of the progress that we wish we had. This is a hyper-specific political question, but one I think you'll enjoy. Not a politicized question, but a political question. You know, I understand why someone runs on an independent platform. Well, Bernie doesn't run an independent platform, but it's borderline independent platform. So because he runs on the

Democratic ticket, it doesn't affect Hillary's vote count in the main election. Now, you have someone like Andrew Yang who wants to run on his own ticket now. He has this, I believe it's called the Forward Party. And he went on, I think it was Jake Tapper the other day. And it was a rough segment if you watched it. For who? For Yang. I figured Tapper's a genius. So it's like, you've been on Tapper too before. Yeah, yeah. He's very smart. Very nice guy. And he asked them, he's like, aren't you just going to help Republicans elect Trump again or whoever runs on the Republican ticket by taking away votes? Yeah. And Yang is infirm. stance against this? What's your take on adding a third party?

So look, I didn't see the Yang interview in particular, but I can tell you broadly, I think that's a real concern, right? I think we live in a viably two-party system right now when it comes to a presidential election. A lot of us don't necessarily like that. Both parties now are fairly large tents, but especially Democrats. You know, you have conservative Democrats all the way through people who are farther to the left than a Bernie Sanders. I think the danger there is not coming. back around, right? So getting so caught up. And I don't want to say so caught up. I don't mean to be disrespectful to people whose views are just not going to change at all. But if you know

that you sort of have a marginal view, right, in the case of somebody like a Bernie, a lot of his policies are just, they're not practically going to get done because their votes don't exist in the Senate to get those things done. That doesn't mean you don't aim high and aim for, you know, a thousand percent, but that means that when you get, you know, 200 percent of that thousand, that's a phenomenal victory, right? But if your person isn't the nominee, you got to still vote for the person who gives you the most of what you want, who represents you the most. And I do worry that if there's, you know, if folks are taking sort of votes away from

that, I'll give you, I'll give you a more clear cut example for real third parties. So, you know, someone like a Jill Stein or folks who, really that margin in specific places. We've pay a lot of attention to presidential elections. I would love to see viable third party candidates, meaning people who have won local city council races, house races even, governorships, you know, prove a party generally needs to prove that they're viable at a particular level.

You shouldn't, in my view, people will disagree with me. I'm not really ready to vote for someone who just rolls up and it's like, third party, I should be president. Like, why? You have not built any coalitions. You haven't shown any leadership on any level of public service before this point. It's a nice idea and certainly contributes wonderfully to dialogue about what people want and why they're frustrated with two big parties.

But I'm not quite ready to jump in and be like, you know, let's do third party for president right away. That's very fair. And you actually hit on some of the points that Yang hit on, which is that they're not focused on the presidential election. No, no, he said that. He said they're not focused on the presidential election. they're focused on the smaller races for now, and then they'll see how it goes, which we kind of know where it goes, but it's an interesting point to think about.

And the reason, even though I'm a primary care doctor, family med doc, and I actually work where you grew up. I work in summer. Oh, okay. That's my hospital where I did my residency training, and I currently work there now between Summit and Chatham, the two offices. You commute every day? No, two to three times a week right now, and then the other two times are playing doctor

on television. Or I guess this would be like mini television. Sure. In your eyes especially. Yesterday when you were giving your talk, you were mentioning streamers. And I was like, yes, he was like kind of acknowledging what we do. Oh, yeah. And then you're like, oh yeah, Netflix is a streamer. Amazon problem. YouTube, obviously, no, any of the

even, I mean, short form content, we were talking about TikTok on the way up here. Like, if I was 13 or 14 and had TikTok on my phone, like the opportunity to create fresh original content. Anyway, yes, I'm a fan of digital i should have said digital media right digital and streaming i'm not i didn't take offense i was just excited that you were involving us in that conversation because i think the barrier has changed into entry for super startup like you share in your book and on stage last night all the

struggles that you've had getting started i mean you were in drama club in middle school you wanted to explore that you went to a high school or college predominantly for the arts yeah both both yeah and now that would take a very different shape because you would have the opportunity to reach a massive audience on your own. Would you be the biggest TikToker in the world right now? No, hardly. I mean, I was half joking that like

when I've had different TV shows and projects come out, you know, inevitably some marketing person at the studio will be like, hey, we really need you to set up a TikTok and here's the dance you're going to do. Like, in what reality do you think that that's a good idea? I'm like, well, you know, our data says, it's like your data set is not meant for individuals. What in the branding of me tells you that I should inorganically do this

TikTok trend dance? So I finally- But that cringe is nice. Like that could work. I mean if it's okay, but if that's the purpose of doing the dance. So I ended up getting it, you know, maybe six months ago and have really enjoyed it not. I haven't done any of the like dance kind of things. But I like the short form storytelling options that it has for something as short as like, you know, a 20-second thing of something cool that you saw. I had the chance to go visit the Tesla Gigafactory a couple weeks ago in Reno for a show that I'm doing. And they have these robot trains that basically bring the batteries from the Panasonic factory. They're all in the same building, but from the Panasonic side to the Tesla side, and they play Super

Mario Bros. Like the music from Super Mario Bros. They're unmanned. They're, you know, these autonomous vehicles and I was immediately like I'm a giant man child so I was like yo are they how how who programmed them to do this like oh Elon Musk came in one day and was like they should play that and somebody made it happen it's like oh that's really cool so I just first I asked if I could do a little video and they're like oh we have to get approval from all these people really uh and then someone was like no you can do it it's fine it's there are videos out there so that was like a just a short TikTok so I feel like there are other giant man children out there yeah who would just Did it do well?

Yeah, it did really well. So I was like, it's that kind of stuff. When it's organically happy to you, it's like that saying when you're in a classroom, if you have a question, don't be afraid to ask it because odds are everyone else. So if you enjoyed something, share it. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's why I wish social media was more of that.

And less of the superficial show-offy side. It can be. I mean, filters and blocking certain keywords are like the move. Do you have filters on here? Oh, yeah, especially in my Twitter. The last, like, Twitter is not where you should get your news, you know what I mean, no matter what you believe. Okay. So it's just not, it's, it's mostly opinion and it's mostly rage.

Okay. So it's, which is not to say that tweeting angry things doesn't make you feel better. We all have had that experience. But it doesn't necessarily change anything, nor are you getting any nuance to what's happening in the world from, you know, sort of my view of it. So I think especially for political news. So the last presidential election, I remember muting every, candidate running on either party. And so all of a sudden, my Twitter was like people's dogs.

I was like, this is wonderful. I can get the news from actual articles if I want. I'm just, I don't need to see it every second that I open my Twitter. Anyway, so I'm a big fan of those. You might be surprised to know that I actually prescribe my patients exactly that, not filters, but stop watching the news even. I cannot begin to tell you the amount of anxiety my patients come in with from watching the news because it sounds like the world is exploding every day if you watch it.

That's a good prescription, especially with the Zanis, too. Well, no, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm sorry, I know, I know. No, no, it's serious, though. A lot of doctors are free, meaning loose with their prescription pad. I'm very tight with it.

Probably because in the age of where I was trained, we saw so much addiction, opioids, benzodiazepines, like Xanax. So, like, I really try to avoid prescribing those because we've seen the downward effect of those. So, yeah. Sorry. No, that's what I was going to say. You really hit the nail on the head on sort of how a lot of this stuff works. So I obviously don't usually work in news,

but as a content creator period, right, anytime you had an ad-driven model, talked about this a little bit yesterday, anytime you have an advertising-driven model, it's basically networks will view it, let's say you have a 30-minute show. Most 30-minute shows are 22 minutes of a show and then eight minutes of commercials interspersed.

But the way networks view it is, we have eight minutes of ad space to sell. So what do we put in those 22 minutes that make people watch the ads, right? so that our ads perform, our advertisers are happy, we can demand more money for that because the ratings are high. So when you're talking about for-profit news, that's why they make you feel anxious. That's why they make you feel like the world's going to end. It's why they make you feel like nothing works. Nobody agrees with each other. Oh my God, if I don't see what's going to happen

after the commercial, the shit's going to go down, the world's going to fall apart, and my kids are going to just die in front of my eyes. So I have to see what's happening. So no wonder they're coming with incredible amounts of anxiety. That's by design. These shows are literally set up for that purpose so that they can sell ad space. It's one of the other reasons I don't really watch news, or at least, you know, I'll watch BBC, PBS, things like that, but CBS Sunday morning, like that is an ad-driven model, but it's long form. There are ways to get the news that are not that.

So it doesn't surprise me that it causes anxiety in your patients. It's created to cause anxiety. That's the structure of those shows. It's their hero hacking that they're trying to do. or like any episode of any trash reality show that ends on Netflix, the last scene gets me so excited that I need to watch the second episode. It's binge watching it. Yeah, but for news, I just find it so laughable.

Like, you're watching a reality show. You know what you're watching, right? You're watching the news. Why is there like action movie music on Ukraine war segments? That music's not there on the battlefield, you know? Like that doesn't exist. It's there for us. for our like to suck us into the segment that's about to come around come on yeah i mean that's what that's

what they get paid to do yeah so like i get it and that's why we started the youtube channel five years ago was because i was seeing and honestly everyone that was in media at the time i hated the way that they were running their stuff it was all like miracle cures potions for this uh here's the next biohacking thing and i was like man like i'm practicing on the front lines and all this is bullshit yeah and all my patients are coming in and are saying why are you telling me to to sleep, go to therapy, and do these things when, like, I could just do with that guy set on TV. And I was like, man, someone's got to stand up to these guys. So we started doing that and trying to be as responsible as possible. But, man, it's a hard force to fight against.

Yeah. Oh, for sure. Like, I got an offer probably two years ago to have my own TV show syndicated network. I was so excited. We're about to sign where we get the final contract and they changed one word. Instead of meaningful consideration for sponsorships, they changed it to reasonable. Like one word like that changed. And my lawyer explained to me that that meant they can overrule my objection to a sponsor.

So I got on the phone with them, I said, well, what sponsors do you have lined up? Dude, this shit. Run faster, stronger. Take this thing and you'll poop better. And I'm like, you hired me for the things that I do well, which is poo-pooing this stuff. It was bad.

Yeah, I'm sure. So I don't know how to, I don't know how to function in traditional media space. It's hard. Yeah, I mean, but it's, it sounds like you found the, the right platform, right?

It's, if it's, I mean, not that YouTube is also ad-driven, but it's not ad-driven in the way that traditional networks are. And I'm not trying to shit on traditional networks either. But there's a reason that, even outside of sort of news

or outside of anxiety-provoking things, the reason that, you know, the big traditional networks are always behind the curve on things like diversity or interesting storytelling or pushing the envelope on comedy is because by virtue of being ad driven, you have to always look backwards. So, you know, let's say you're a network executive. Okay, what worked last season? What worked the season before? Let's do more of that. And so essentially, it's always backward looking. It's always a bit more archaic. But then you have streamers and they get to decide based on their subscribers or based on who's actually.

willing to pay money for that content, and all of a sudden it's more diverse, it's funnier, it's more interesting, it's cutting edge. So it sounds like you're in the right place, obviously, for what you want to do. Yeah, for sure. And we're lucky that we've made it to the level that we have, but I want to see more of that because we need to push back against all of it. Actually, you know, you worked at the Office of Public Engagement. I don't technically work for the Office of Public Engagement because we then would have to file reports to Congress. So I am on the health care leadership roundtable series for the Office of Public Engagement. So it's interesting that we have so much overlap in that sense.

But I feel like the lack of communication, not necessarily from that office, but from our leaders in politics, our leaders at the CDC and FDA, have really caused people to mistrust government. Yes. And thereby mistrusting physicians, health care, all of this stuff. And where I noticed it the most is when last night you were telling a story of how when you were trying to get the don't ask, don't tell policy changed. And everyone wanted you to change that when Obama came into office, that was the first thing you were going to do, but you didn't want to do it through the executive powers. You wanted to do it through Congress.

And people didn't understand that. And you were trying to explain to them why that that was happening. I actually side with the public over you on that. Sure. And I'll explain why. Yeah. And by the way, when you say me, just to be clear, that what you're talking about is the president's decision that those of us who worked for him had to carry out.

I should clarify what I mean when I say you. I wish I had that kind of power, was my point. Yeah, it wasn't your call to make that decision. But where you're saying that the audience, I wish they knew this. Yeah. And I think they do. Yep. But here's the problem.

A lot of politicians use those scenarios to give them outs on things. Absolutely. So we never know what the hell is true. So you guys could have been honestly saying it. Yes. But we're like, we don't know if that's true. Why do you wish that Obama had done it by executive order instead of? Oh, no, no, I don't wish that.

Oh, okay. Yeah. No, of course, I understand the lack of trust. I sympathize with the people who are like, that's great that you're saying that. We're still going to go to the White House law and protest. And they have ever going to do that. Here's the part of the story that I probably should have, the nice little cherry on top, which is, it's going to sound maybe a little too precious. But after Don't Ask Don't Tell got repealed, I should probably set up the story a little bit for folks listening. So I had a very, because I worked in the public engagement office and I was the president's point person for youth outreach, that meant that everything that affected young people somehow touched my desk. In the case of the repeal of Don't As Don't Tell, that was largely the military outreach folks, the LGBT outreach coordinator, a guy named Brian Bond, senior staff who worked on it.

A very tiny piece of that outreach fell on my desk because it also disproportionately affected young people, right? And the advocates, the people who had been discharged from the military because of who they love, you know, obviously want the president to do something right away. Don't Ask Don't Tell was a law passed by Congress during the Clinton administration. And so if it's repealed by an act of Congress, then it's sort of considered, that's done. We've done it and it can't come back. Or it's very hard rather to bring it back. If the president signs a piece of paper called an executive order that says, okay, that's it, it's done.

No more don't ask, don't tell. That means that in the future, another president can undo it and bring back don't ask, don't tell, with the stroke of a pen, which is very easy for that person to do. So the advocates, to your point, rightfully, you know, who are we to tell them that they shouldn't get something right away? They took different tactics, including a large group of people that every, I think it was every Friday, would chain themselves to the White House gate, get arrested. It would end up in the news. And so when this thing was finally repealed legislatively, meaning Congress did it, it took about two years, when it was finally done, part of what the Office of Public Engagement does is puts together lists of advocates who have worked on particular issues so that they can be invited to the signing ceremony when the law changes, for example, a very small part of our thing. And we had excluded the people

who had chained themselves to the front gate because we just, in the view of many of my co-workers in that office, and I probably agreed with this at the time as well, they made it harder to actually get the very thing done that they wanted us to get done. They just made it tougher, which didn't mean we didn't agree with them. It just made it tougher. So their names were all absent from the list that we turned into the president for approval. And he handwrote each of their names and sent it back to us. And he said, we might disagree with their tactics on wanting to get this done,

but they absolutely deserve to be in the room when this is signed into law. And so I just was very floored at how at that type of leadership, and the idea that, you know, here we are in the trenches as junior-level staffers are like, oh, yeah, fuck you, yeah, well, fuck you then. Fuck me, fuck you. You know, all of that. And then it's like, hey, guys, how about thinking about the bigger picture, which is that you could disagree on tactics but understand that the goals are the same and somebody

should be rewarded for the role that they played in that conversation? And I was just like, wow. I mean, even strategically as a leader, that's awesome. That's what I'm saying. When you think outside of the box like that and surprise people, that's where you get really good outcomes. So that's awesome that that happened behind the scenes. I didn't know that. I apologize for my language, by the way. I will... I know. I love it. I love the passion. That's great. This is different. This is the podcast now. We're allowed to curse. There's no need. As my mom would

say, there's no, what have you achieved? There's no need by doing it. I read a study, and I don't know if this is misinformation or not, but higher intelligence folks tend to curse. Oh, really? I actually feel the opposite. I feel like, not in this case, because it was, it was descriptive of a character, but generally, things like, um, and profanity and the word like, I feel, I feel like, that's the correct use of like, I feel as though it's a substitute for not coming up with the adjective you really need. That's fair, but in passion, in moments of passion, of which you exhibited. Right, right, thank you. Ruthlessly. Thank you. Thank you. This is the thing with, you were asking about the book earlier, the, the storytelling when you're an actor, whenever you,

like, it's impossible to tell a story without living the story. And so sometimes you'll get like, all of a sudden, you know, I'll be like having a drink with a friend recounting a story, and I'm in it. I'm in the story. It's the most animated story I've ever told. They're like, buddy, I was just asking you how your day was made.

Do you have friends get on you for that? It depends on who, but also like you should keep, you got to keep your actor friends in check. You know what I mean? But that's fun, man. You're bringing joy to people's lives. I hope so. I hope so.

Yeah. And like putting acting aside for a moment, you also, you know, I work with Senator Schumer's office quite often, and one of my friends that works there mentioned that you're friends with Eric Schultz. Oh, yeah. And he said that you guys are consultants for designated Survivor. Yes, we were. What's that about it? Eric is awesome. I didn't know you knew Eric. So we have a small world. Really good guy. That was a lot of fun. So when I first got the script for designated survivor, actually, I got a phone call saying, hey, we're sending you this script. It's an

offer, basically. You don't even have to audition. They really like you for this White House drama. It's the part of a communications director. And I just said, no, I'm good. You know, I don't want the impression to be that I spent two and a half years working at the real White House just so that I could do the TV version of it. That is the longest, most tedious way to get a job. This was, and then I'm like, I know what people are going to think. They're going to think that that's, that's why I did it. And also, I just can't imagine that it would be challenging. It's, I I like playing characters that are very different from me. If I play characters that are similar, it's like, okay, I mean, not the most challenging, right?

So then they go, well, it's a conspiracy drama with Kiefer Sutherland. I was like, super in, send me the script. So I'm reading the script, and I realized this is, you know, not at all the experience that I had. I would liken it to, okay, I worked in the public engagement office, right? And then I played a press secretary on a show based in the White House. that's similar to if I was an actual airline mechanic and then went and played a flight attendant on an off-Broadway play.

Like, you kind of know about the world, but you have not had that specific job. So in part of the negotiations for that show, you know, it was clear that they were looking for consultants and they were going to hire somebody on the outside. And I'm like, well, I'm happy to do it if I'm already reading the script, some of I'm already on the show.

And that show had a, there was a little bit of turmoil, I think we went through like four showrunners in three seasons. Showrunner is the, for listeners who don't know, showrunner is the boss, basically, the person in charge of the creative vision for a season. And it's very uncommon for a showrunner to switch between seasons. Not unheard of, but not common. You usually keep a showrunner through the run of the whole series.

And in this case, we had four of them. And I learned very quickly that my job as a consultant was not necessarily to make sure that what they did was accurate. It was to tell them what was and wasn't accurate. And they would make a choice based on that assessment. So some showrunners, I would send in a sheet when I read an early draft of the script. This wouldn't happen. This would happen. Here's the nuance on these four things. And they would go, so this wouldn't happen ever in real life? I'm like, never. And here's why. They would go, great. We're going to do it twice as much. Because. Wait, they did that on purpose?

Yes, because depending on the showrunner, because for some of them, their view was we want it to be far-fetched because it's TV. It's fake. But then our third, our, sorry, our fourth, our final showrunner, Neil Bear, who's wonderful, had the opposite view. This is where Eric came in as well. So Eric was added to the third, third and final season of designated survivor as a consultant for people listening who don't know. Eric Schultz and I worked at the White House together. He was one of the deputy press secretaries for the president, and I think still works for the Obama Foundation. and he came on for season three when we had the showrunner

who did want to know exactly what was real and wanted us to stick to what was real because for him the drama was based on reality is reality and then we take it up a notch from there but it was a really fun experience to see that you know your job and I assume as a doctor

I assume like how often do you watch medical shows do you know how mad I am at house do you know how I'm mad at you at your scenes why usually nurses are mad at us You shocked a patient and you lit them on fire. It was really fun. How often do you think that happened? It was very fun.

Oh, no, I'm not saying it happens all the time. The letters we got, and I never saw them in fairness. This was just what I had heard from the producing team. The nurses were furious at house because. They're written off the show, basically. Well, yeah, all the procedures that we do are things that nurses do in real life. And so understandably, they would send very, very, very, very, very, very, nasty letters. Well, the way that my channel had its moment of popularity, because initially

for the first year, we struggled in gaining an audience, was doing medical drama reviews. So I would watch, like with my audience, Gray's Anatomy, house, good doctor, and do critiques. So essentially, I would do the same consulting job that you did for a designated survivor, but for free. Right, right, yeah. Well, for free, except you get, you get your, yeah. You get rewarded. But I'm curious, does it pay well? What? Being a consultant. Consultants? It's, you know, it wasn't divorced from the overall acting thing enough to.

Actually, that's not true. If it was divorced from that, does it pay well? You couldn't pay your rent from it. But I assume if you're a full-time consultant, you're not just working on one show, right? Or if you are, then you're, a lot of times the consultants are also writers. So on House, for example, a guy named David Foster, Dr. Foster was, I think he was practicing at Harvard and. on the screenwriting team at the same time. Got it.

And so he was the one who put the glossaries in the back of each script about what the procedures all mean, and we'd all go to YouTube and watch the real ones and all that. So a lot of times there's overlap that way where you're not just being paid as a consultant. You're being paid as a writer as well, in which case, obviously, yes, that's a nice salary. I got to figure that out. I got to figure out how to get into those. Because I already do it. Do you have an agent?

Yeah. So your agent should be able to help you with that. I've tried my hand at acting, and when I say tried my hand in acting, I've I read for an extra on blacklist or something. It was the most embarrassing, terrible thing that any human... I felt like I was giving a speech as myself, not the evil FBI origin I was trying out to me. I quickly knew that my talents and acting were left behind in my drama club days in fifth grade, sixth grade. So that's not for me, but consulting is pretty cool.

What was it like working on house? Did you have to study vocabulary and understand how to pronounce words? So I was not a consultant on house, but... I mean, not a consultant and actor on. But I loved it. I mean, the, um, yes. So you, okay, you mentioned Harold and Kumar when we first started our conversation. Uh, I want to say that that was the first med student slash doctor that I, that I played.

And, uh, for fans of the movie, which it sounds like you are, this is a very ridiculous story that I'm very proud of. But, um, after I got the part before we left to go shoot it, I was living in Los Angeles at the time and we were shooting the film in Toronto. And before I left, I realized there's a whole scene where I perform surgery on a gunshot victim. And I know exactly what I'm doing. I'm supposed to, I mean, that character, he knows, yeah. He, when I said, yeah, Kumar knows exactly what he's doing, right? And so I need to learn how to perform surgery on a gunshot victim because when you're shooting a comedy, usually it's very quick.

I assume we'd have a consultant for the day, but who knows how much that person knows for real. So aside from all the YouTube online research I could find, I spent two days at the UCLA Med School Library researching reading articles, like very dense articles about gunshot surgery and basic things that I'm sure you and really any gun owner even knows is like, oh, and you know, when a bullet enters, it sears a certain amount of muscle because of the heat and just all of the shit that a doctor would know that I would have no idea. and it helped a lot when we shot this completely ridiculous scene with Ryan Reynolds

where I'm just taking bullets out of a patient and looking for marijuana. But is that because you're comfortable in that scene, imagining yourself as that person? Like, it's like a method acting type thing? I don't think it's method acting. In fact, I'm more of a, there's a technique of acting called Meisner. But if you haven't researched the thing that you're doing, like in that scene, what motivates that scene in that character is not the surgery he's

performing. It's the search of marijuana, right? So, but he's doing it second nature. So I kind of had to know what I was doing. Yeah, you can edit around it, but physically, what are your hands doing when you're concentrating on something else? That's how good that character is at what he was doing. So I had to be, I had to be at least familiar enough to believably live in that moment of being a person who knew what they were doing. House was obviously different. It's a drama. But my view of a lot of that was knowing, wanting to know what the procedures were, meeting with people, you know, I half jokingly say, like, I feel like I could still perform a spinal tap if I had to. Really?

Just because you... This is a weird question. Do you think you prepared more for being a doctor on Harold and Kumar or on House? Well, House was longer. Kumar was really just the two scenes, the opening monologue that you mentioned, where I had to learn about pancreatitis, which I've clearly forgotten. And then the gunshot thing, which I very well remember. remember house was all the different things and it was to your point like all of those cases would

never end up at a single hospital obviously that's the fiction of it but then when you get into it I loved I loved physics biology not so much chemistry but in college even high school for sure but I was never good at it I was never good at at the sciences in large part because I'm not a good multiple choice test taker I'm great at being able to explain something either written or or verbal. And so those early science classes, it's a lot of rope memorization. It's a lot of like,

you can't connect the dots until you're in the advanced stage. So doing a show like this, I didn't have to go through that early stage of stuff. I got to dive right into, I can understand these procedures. I have, you know,

these world class Harvard trained doctors in the writer's room who are more than happy to talk my ear off on the actual procedure, excuse me, the actual procedure and how it happens. And I was loving it, man. It was like,

it was the best, yeah. Wow, that's so cool. I can't imagine what it's like. Well, for us, we actually got to go on set of the resident, which is another medical drama and see what that was like. But I feel like House was a different budget, different level. Like, it was more intense. It has to be.

I haven't been on the sets of those shows. It was, it's a procedural, right? So I guess it depends. Like the early episodes that we were in, we were playing fellows, so it was a lot of like DDX scenes. It wasn't proceed. We weren't in there with procedures. Except when you were shocking. Right, except we were making mistakes.

And then the later, so to your point, a lot of that was like, how do you pronounce this word? What does this mean? I've clearly, when you, I'm meaning the character when you're reading the script, like he's clearly said it 150 times before if that's just something that pops into his head during a diagnostic. So you need to know that. You can't just like be like, how do you pronounce that word on the day of? But see, that's funny because in medicine, we mispronounce shit all the time. Yeah, but you're not at the house caliber. Are you kidding?

I've been to Harvard. I've done MIT stuff. I've seen them. I'm just kidding. They're like, oh, what's that thing? So that happens. But I get it for the show. You guys need to look cool.

But wow, that's really cool. Yeah. How does it change doing a comedy versus a drama like that where it's a, a lot more serious. Do you prefer one or the other? I don't have a preference. In the process, I don't have a preference. I kind of treat them both the same. To me, comedy works when as the character, you're believing what you're doing and obviously the same with drama. So it's rare that things are funny because the audience is aware that you're aware that it's funny. It's because, like, in fact, so take Harold and

Cargo to White Castle. One of the biggest, so think about that movie. We, um, We actually only smoke weed once, I think, in the movie, maybe twice. I can't remember. But it's not, like, for a weed movie, there's not a lot of weed in it. There's not a lot of weed, but I think weed is for, yeah, but there, but there isn't a whole lot of marijuana, number one. Number two, we do everything from, like, you know, we get attacked by a raccoon, there's a, you ride a cheetah, there's a hang glider, like, you know, there's all this nonsense for

a road trip movie. The biggest criticism we get for that film is that apparently in real life in New Jersey, there's a White Castle restaurant, like a mile from where the movie starts. And people who know that are like, the hell, guys, you could have just gone there. Why in the movie, did you feel like you needed to go to Cherry Hill, New Jersey? You know, there's a White Castle, like, right, like a mile from where the movie starts. Now, let me tell you something. To me, there is no greater sign that you have succeeded than somebody who believed the hang gliding,

believed that you got attacked by a raccoon, believed that you wrote a fucking cheetah and had an issue with the geography of New Jersey. I'm like, this is wonderful. So to answer your question, I approached them in that same way because to me, you have to be grounded in what you're doing in order for it to work. Do you see the irony in the fact that you started your big fame from the White Castle? And then you ended up working out the White Castle? A couple of people have mentioned it. There's a on my, I think it's probably still on my, for those who didn't catch the, yeah. One of the, um, is this clip still up? Yeah, it must be. Uh, I keep like a lot of news, as much as I don't watch news, you know, sometimes you have to do like a news hit

to promote something. And, uh, journalist's favorite phrase is, uh, our next guest went from White Castle to the White House. And over and over again. And my buddies are always like, is she going to do it? Is she going to do it? Oh, she didn't do it. Okay. Well, what about her. She's going to do it. Oh, she did it. She did the thing. You're like doing a satellite media tour laughing at the same joke. Exactly. Exactly. It's almost like a drinking game at this point amongst my friends. But no, I mean, I am the son of immigrants. I never in a million years thought that this unlikely story of having the chance to be an actor and a profession that I love and then serve my country at the highest

level would be in the realm of possibility. And it makes me so thankful. And humbled and so yeah what do you think your family would have predicted least for you for you to end up in the white house or to become an actor you know i think i i would have i would have said uh probably both because you got to figure i remember one of my first real movies was van wilder with also with ryan reynolds uh and like i'm naked in that movie i'm sliding off a naked woman in the sex scene and i just remember sitting at the premiere which my parents and family came to I'm just sitting there in the theater thinking to myself, this is not why your parents moved to America to watch you do this.

But it is not at all. No, of course it is. I know, but the joky side is like, you know, it's that. And sorry, there was one thing I was going to say about the comedy versus drama thing. There is a special place that comedy has in my heart for the following reason. The world that we live in is so polarized and can be so toxic and so negative. I love being able to make people laugh. It feels like there are only a handful of things.

things left that can bring people together, right? Food sometimes, comedy, sports, music. And I love that a movie, you know, a movie like Guantanamo Bay, the idea that somebody who I disagree with politically at the highest level can enjoy that movie for the same reason that someone who I agree with. Or, you know, Thanksgiving, some absurd crazy comedy that you can watch with your crazy uncle. It's like, you don't agree with that guy on anything. You wish he would stop sending you crazy email forwards, and yet you can laugh together and watch something for an hour and a half. I love that that magic exists in comedy. It makes me happy. No, that's awesome. Do your parents see it that way?

What, comedy or? Hollywood. Because just to give you a little background, I did a seven-year medical program right out of high school. It was in Long Island. I was the token white guy. I was the only white guy in the class. Mike is the white guy. Everyone laughed at him. I got picked on all this stuff in the funny unique way and a lot of my friends I would say like 70% of the class was Indian yeah and I got to know their families yeah yeah yeah yeah how they work what they find acceptable and it like if you would say you want to be an actor they would think they misheard you oh absolutely doctor of course yeah yeah yes 100% so are they just uh I'm glad you asked that the the you touched on a couple things that I didn't fully appreciate

when I was a kid. So, you know, and I think this is pretty universal for any child of immigrants, really, is, you know, you're born and raised as an American kid, or you move when you're, when you're young, you're raised as American kid. How old were you when you came? I was born in the States, yeah. And I wanted to be an actor because I liked it. I liked that form of storytelling from the time I was a kid.

There's a longer version of that story, which is in my audiobook and book available now. But my parents, obviously, and they're friends, to your point, were like, what do you mean you want to be an actor? That's not, the phrase I would hear often was something like, that's not what we do. We don't do that. And I'm like, who's we? Right? They're like, we're Indian. We don't do that.

It's a nice hobby. It's a nice hobby that you can have on the side. There's a, how are we on time? There's a story. Yeah, we're fine. There's a story in the book that I tell that's, I had an, I had an auntie. So your parents' friends are uncles and aunties.

It doesn't mean they're necessarily related by blood. But there was one auntie in particular who, her name is Pushpa. And she very sweet, very docile, had like, you know, still a long, long, thin braid of hair, always very kind, very sweet. Because of that, the nickname that her friends gave her was pushy, because she's obviously not a pushy person. And in the Gadrothi language, just like many other languages, there are multiple sounds for S. There are multiple S sounds. And so something like some people would pronounce the word station as stason instead of the S.H. And so Pushianti's name sometimes became Pussyante.

And so here I am, this child who's like, hey, kids, come downstairs. Pussy aunties here. And we all thought this shit was hilarious. that Pussy Auntie was showing up. But Pussy Auntie was very fierce in terms of asking the kids what they wanted to do with their lives. So she would sit us all down like all the other aunties and uncles kids and she would go around the room.

Like, what do you want to do when you grow up? And one kid would be like, I want to do premed at Princeton. Very good. What about you? Well, Pussy Auntie, I want to go to BU. And then she'd be like, be you. Why? Oh, no. Boston University. And then this one, you know, the girl would be like, for their seven-year combined medical program, don't worry.

And then posseandi would be like, okay, well, that's great. Then they, you know, everyone would look at me and she'd go, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I'm like, I want to be an actor and a filmmaker. And I would love to go to UCLA or USC or NYU or something. And the room would go silent. At least this is how it felt, right? The room would go silent. I have these, these memories of like other aunties going up to my mom to be like, it's okay.

We'll have our son talk to him, you know, that kind of thing. And, and it wasn't until later. life that I realized why this was sort of happening, where this connection was. So my parents were allowed to immigrate to the U.S. post-1965, the same way that a lot of other Asian-American people could, because there was a shortage of certain professions. So in America, we didn't have enough engineers, doctors, a few other pharmacists, people like that. And so the Asian Exclusion Act, if I'm getting this right, was lifted. And so people from these certain countries could now come, not anybody, but only specifically people from those countries who

were pursuing these careers in which we needed humans. So my dad was going to grad school for engineering. That's why he was allowed to come to the U.S. My mom has a master's in chemistry. A lot of the people you presumably went to med school with, their parents are probably doctors or work in the sciences. So it's not that somehow in our DNA we don't do that, meaning we don't become artists because we're inherently doctors. It's because of the circumstance of immigration. that obviously most parents, whatever they know as stability or whatever they know as success, they try to, yeah, pass it on to their kids. That's why there's so many brown and yellow doctors disproportionate to other professions.

It's also why it was tough growing up being like, I want to be a doctor and having people go, what? No, we don't do that. You're not allowed to do that. That's funny. You know, I also, I came to the United States and I was five from Russia. My father was a doctor in Russia, so ironically, this is a passed down. And then he came here and went to medical school all over again. So I got to witness the journey. Oh, wow. Most kids are too young to remember their parents being in med school.

So I got to witness it. He was doing it for a second time in another language. So that essentially didn't give me a chance to complain when I did it. Yeah. Because I came back, oh, dad, it's hard. He's going to make, are you kidding? I crushed this. I did it twice in two languages.

Yeah. At 40. So like you have a lot of energy, you're good. Yeah, yeah. So I understand that if I were to come to him and say, I don't want to do it, he would probably been pretty pissed. Although he wasn't pushing me into medicine. he more so recommended that I do business

or something else that will give me more surefire financial success but if I would have said I want to be an actor it would have been a problem totally and I understand as an adult mindset yeah yeah like you you know you sacrifice everything to come to this country to have a better life for yourself and your kids

and you know you know I almost I even had a guidance counselor who was not Indian who would say when I would say I want to be I want to pursue film or theater and at some point in my life I'd love to do something in public service. Every time I brought that up, she would say,

you can't have your cake and eat it too. You need to be realistic. And I was really bothered by this, right? I'm like, why in a school district, public school district that was actually quite good? Why did I have this guidance counselor who was like, what kind of, that's your encouragement for a 10th grader? Is the world is not your oyster?

It's like the exact opposite. Like literally the exact opposite. I'm like, did she not watch Sesame Street growing up? What's the deal? And as an adult now, I wish that she had said what I think she probably meant. which was if you choose that life, it's going to be harder than if you choose a path that's a little well, you know, more well worn. And I probably would have still chosen that path. I'm not somebody who thinks that you're owed something, especially if you're choosing to enter a field that's that

competitive. Every artist, every actor goes through the endless rejection for years and years. And that's something that you have to be prepared for. I wish she had articulated it that way. my acting teacher in high school had articulated it that way. So I was prepared in that sense. But yeah, I get it. I mean, you know, our parents will worry. Yeah. And not to ruin the end of the book, but I checked in with my parents a lot through the process of writing this because I just wanted to make sure that the stories I was telling about my grandparents and about their upbringing was correct. And at one point, I called, I called both of them. And I said, hey, I just needed a number. So I'm writing this chapter

about how, you know, what it was like in middle school and high school, like on a scale of one to ten, how embarrassed were you when I used to tell the other aunties and uncles that I wanted to be an actor? Like, I don't need the editorialization. I just need the one to ten. What number would you put on that? And they paused and they said, we don't know how you got it into your head that we were embarrassed. We were never embarrassed that you said you wanted to be an actor. We were scared because we just didn't think that someone from our community or our son or the kid of immigrants at that particular time could have that as a career. And we didn't even know that the arts were a viable career for anyone. And I was like, why did it take me to be an adult before I

recognized the universality of every immigrant fear, you know, that fear sometimes drives, or to say it's an immigrant thing is also unfair. Any parent, really. So I was like, wow, okay, well, that makes a lot of sense. I, you know, yeah. I'm sure it's multifactorial. Yeah. I'm sure there was, like, rose-colored glasses probably to some degree, right? Yeah. And I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll I'll take it now. I'll take it. But the reason I tell those stories in the book is that I wanted to write this for the 25-year-old version of me, or even younger than that, right? I didn't have something like that growing up.

So if that context is helpful for anyone to be able to point to that and say, maybe this actually means that. Or maybe it's a little revisionist because I knock on wood have stability. My goal also was never, I'm not a fan of, and this comes up, I do a lot of college lectures. And a question I get all the time is it's couched as. like something about being famous, right? And I will always say the same thing. It's like, that's not a profession. You know, that's a, there's no tax code when you do your taxes that they do. It's like, oh, famous. Okay. Here's your tax code. Well, but it's still, there's a, there's a code that's connected to it. Influencer is a, is a different thing that I don't even

fully understand. But, but the craft of acting. My goal initially was, can I pay my rent and all my bills from acting? I never envisioned it as anything more than, you know, paying for a studio apartment somewhere, being able to pay gas to get to your auditions or your metro card or whatever. And so I think for a lot of people who start out, and especially music and film or TV or acting in general, that's the goal that you have. So anything above that is like, oh, wow, okay, it's its own business in addition to it being an art. So I think you're right. You go back and you talk to the family later. I'm willing to say, you know, I'm willing to take it though. Of course, of course you don't necessarily think that certain things

are possible. Yeah. Yeah, that's a very logical stance on it. Looking back at all of the successes you've had, I know you joke around, and I don't know if it's the book or somewhere else I read that your master chef win is something you're most proud of. But what are you most proud of legitimately? Legitimately? All right. I mean, the master chef thing, I just think is funny because I'm obviously not a chef. But when you win, and I won one challenge of celebrity master chef, let's be clear. That's a win. But yo, it, it, it, then all of a sudden people are like, Oh, he's also a chef. Like, oh, yeah, all right, I'll take it.

You're a doctor, chef? I do have an honorary doctorate. By the way, tell me what you think of this. And I will answer your question, but tell me what you think of this. So I think, because I have an honorary doctorate from Quinnipeak University in Connecticut, that I can put doctor on my driver's license. Should I do it? Yeah.

You can't put it on your plate, but you can put it on your plate. Correct. Well, because I'm not a medical doctor. I can't put it on my plate. And I also can't press the call button. when they're asking for a doctor on a flight. Yeah, don't do that. That would be amazing.

Like, yes? Like, yes, I am a doctor. She's having a heart attack. Great. I see that, and I will write a thesis on it that we can publish, and I'll do some stand-up. You said you were a doctor. I have an honorary doctorate from Quinnipiac University. Thank you for wasting everyone's time.

For that reason, you should put it on your license. I should. For that reason, so you can just whip out your license. Yeah. I just say yes. Anyway, your question was, well, what am I most proud of? Is it the doctorate now? No, no, no.

Honestly, this goes back to what we just talked about. I am so thankful that I get to do what I love, which is my first love is always acting. It's that form of storytelling. I think even in my wildest teenage imagination didn't necessarily think that that would be something that I could do. And I'm very grateful for it. And you are representing your community. very well. That's something you're passionate about. You shared so many stories, not just in the book, but last night about the ridiculous things you had to face at castings. Can you share some of that?

Yeah. And look, I'll preface this by saying every actor, I talked about this last night too. Every actor is typecast. That's just the nature of what it is. So you can't enter a profession like that and not expect that that'll be your reality. The way my acting teacher had explained it, you know, before I sort of went out into the world. It's like, look, you have to be prepared. You might be the best person for the job, but you won't get it because they already know two of the other people they're going to cast, and they think you're too tall or you're too short, you won't look right on stage. Maybe you're too fat next to somebody. You're too skinny. Whatever physicality, they think that, you know, you're not right. You're just not going to get the part. There are way too many talented

actors, and so you can't take it personally. You have to learn that. So I was prepared for that. What I was not prepared for was that, and this is still true today, although thankfully things have changed phenomenally since the time that I started. I was not prepared that if you're a performer of color, you're just too ethnic, period, and they throw you out before the stage of deciding whether you're too fat, too short, too tall, too skinny, whatever. So I was like, oh, you don't have the luxury of those, that other physicality. That's like the next step. The first step is that you're just not allowed to do this because you're brown. So I wasn't prepared for that. And one of the things that were, that was frustrating was a lot of the reductionism that went

into some auditions. So you'd show up to an audition and, you know, think, okay, wow, I have a, I have a shot at this. And you walk in the room, the casting director inevitably would say, um, can you do this again, but with an accent? And I would, I would be the asshole who was like, sure, what kind of accent would you like? I can do Brooklyn, Scottish, Irish, Southern. And they never found that funny. Obviously, they never found that funny. Like, why don't we just stick to Indian? And nobody's, you know, nobody's forcing you to do this, right? So the decision point was usually, I need a credit on my resume, and there's something in the book that I call the Brown Catch-22, which was you're not really allowed to audition for things until you have credits

on your resume. Understandable, that goes with every job. You're not allowed to interview for a job if you're not qualified for it. But the only way that you could get jobs in the first place as a performer of color was by taking some of these more stereotypical roles. So it was a bit of a catch-22. You kind of have to take it to build up your resume. And so in a lot of those auditions, And some of them, you know, I left and said, no, I'm not comfortable doing that. And then others, I made the calculus of like, okay, my rent's, you know, 575 bucks a month. This job pays $700. I should do it.

One job, I'll, you know, I can take a few less waitering shifts or a few less messenger shifts and work my way up from there. So there were a lot of those types of stories. And what I welcomed about that conversation is a couple things. One, the misnomer that an accent itself is a stereotype. It's not. Plenty of people have accents. And it also kind of, you know, you'll hear, oh, he had to do an accent or, oh, he had to play a cab driver. As if being a cab driver inherently is somehow shameful.

Like, it's not. Those guys work so hard. I think what most people are saying is that when profession, race, and ethnicity kind of merge with racial signifiers, oftentimes, and I've experienced this, it's to cover up subpar writing, number one, where the jokes aren't funny. producers know the jokes aren't funny. Let's look, you know, what worked 10 years ago on TV. Let's do that. Let's slap an accent on it and hope that people think it's funny because they recognize that as comedy.

So it's that. So there's a reductionism, right, where you're not, there's no agency to those characters. Those characters almost never, and I'm talking back in the day, almost never advanced the plot of the story. There's nothing that contributes to anything that happens in there. So that was one of the frustrations was like, yo, I just want to play the guy. And even, I'm not saying I don't want to work my way up, but I didn't realize that working your way up as a performer of color at that particular time, late 90s, early 2000s, meant that

you were just playing these reductionist stereotypical roles that were infuriating and frustrating because you knew they were a stereotype, but also, to be honest, infuriating and frustrating because they were boring. Yeah. Because you've just seen it done before. Like, yeah, we've seen the white dude in brown face. We've seen the Apu voice. We've like, they would have been funny at a particular time.

And the time that this was all happening, I was also mindful that some of the shows that I loved watching, you know, Seinfeld, hilarious. Friends was a big show in the late 90s, early 2000s. Those are two shows that took place in New York City, a city that I know and love and grew up right outside of. There are also shows,

those shows are almost exclusively white by design. And so the showrunners and the producers and the people who created those shows decided to exclude a large majority of the population that would have existed in those cities. So it was a tough thing to say that, wow, I love that show, you know, and you'd be emailing with your friends back home,

like, yo, you should audition for Seinfeld. Like, oh, I'm not allowed to audition for, yeah, they won't let me audition for Seinfeld. So when I, part of the reason that I talk about so much in the book, and you heard some of the stories last night, is today we live in a world where thanks in large part to the streaming platforms and digital, it's not just for the sake of racial or ethnic diversity, but the diversity of the types of characters and stories that we get to see and we get to watch, that exists now in a way that didn't exist when I was starting out as an actor. I think it's obviously, I'm biased. It makes it better for performers who look like me, but also makes it better for any sort of audience, period. Like, Harold and

Camargo to White Castle did well in Middle America and the South in places that a movie studio thought it would never do well. Studio executives thought that nobody between the coasts would want to see two Asian American men in a comedy or any movie, period, and they were proven wrong, thanks to the fans. So my view of all this stuff ultimately is don't underestimate anybody in an audience. We all just want to laugh, cry, love, you know, experience new funny content. And that's one of the big arcs of the book, aside from wanting to write it for the 25-year-old version of me, is A, I want you to be able to, like, read this on vacation at the pool or listen to the audiobook when you're stuck in traffic and laugh, like feel like we're actually

have a conversation. But number two, it highlights how systems can and do change over time and how that's a really wonderful thing. So many of these stories, you probably noticed, are like, you know, I changed the names of the evil culprit character, right? Like the racist producer, director, whatever. Reason for that is it would be a shame to me if someone, like, could you go on IMDB and figure out who I was talking about?

Of course, that's easy. But it would be a shame to me if that's the only takeaway somebody got from these stories. The takeaway should be, wow, that was codified and sustained. systemic and here's how it's changing and why that's a great thing. How do you balance that thing you mentioned earlier where you like taking on challenges and acting outside of your comfort zone with this push in Hollywood, I guess it's also a push for diversity of not having straight actors play gay roles or a person without a disability playing a person with disability. What's your

take on that? Yeah, look, I mean, on the gay question for that, I was joking. I mean, it wasn't even joking. I was half joking with a friend of mine on text a couple of weeks ago. He's also gay and was asking for my opinion on some casting thing that came out. And I was like, bro, I'm brown. I don't know. Like, I'm still dealing with the brown shit. Like, what a luxury. What a luxury to have to worry about the gay aspect of it too. I don't know, man. Ask me in another 30 years when all the gays have decided to be less racist in Hollywood. Then maybe we can. So you're balancing. So I mean, but it's, which is not to minimize the question. Of course, it's a valid question. I think it kind of depends on the case. You know,

it's a, it's tough to, I think, have that broad conversation. To me, that conversation also often comes up in the context of, you know, there are a lot of older school comedians or comedy directors even who feel limited by the world that we live in today. They feel like, and I get this question a lot, you know, sometimes it's in the form of, um, do you think you could ever make Harold and Kumar go to White Castle today in the same way you made it? I'm like, well, no, of course not like doesn't that suck like no isn't that awesome like isn't that awesome that as a as a comedy guy as a content creator i get to adapt to changing sentiments of what's funny so if i'm doing my job and if i'm good at my job i should be able to make a comedy today that also appeals to a

large group of people um so on the contrary i don't feel like my hands are tied or as a man i shouldn't make certain jokes that we were quote unquote allowed to make in the past i think that's missing the point. The point is audience sentiments have changed and how what a wonderful opportunity to continue to push the envelope of what's funny and acceptable. I think that's great. You view it as growth as opposed to a challenge. Well, it can be a challenge. Sometimes if you're, I mean, especially if you're a man, the types of, of, uh, the structure of a lot of, you know, look at the late 90s, early 2000s team comedies. A lot of them are based on a particular story arc, you know, and that was what worked for that time period,

but it doesn't work today. And I think that's a really welcome, awesome challenge that you can make things that are funny in a different and new way. That's such a great mindset, because that applies not just in this case, but also for my patients who are struggling with a cancer diagnosis

and show post-traumatic growth where they're like, yeah, this is a challenge. But I'm going to overcome it. I'm going to get better from it and view it in a positive light. So it's awesome that you see it in that way. Thank you. I hope everyone starts to see it. I hope so, yeah. I know the immediate reaction is to maybe feel a little aggrieved, right, about something. That's also the world we live in. Like, everyone feels that way about something or other. But no, my view of that is on the growth piece of it for sure. Did you feel, was it difficult for you? I mean, there's a lot of gay jokes in Harold and Kumar. Yeah. How did you feel as a gay man making the jokes? Were you like, this is funny, not funny, time-wise funny? Probably a hard question to answer.

No, I honestly don't, I don't remember how I felt at the time to be perfectly honest with you. It's a script I'm reading it. Yeah, kind of. Because you battled with Van Wilder's role being Taj and you called. Yeah, the difference there was, so Todd, the role of Taj was when it first started out. I mean, the agent called, the character is literally named Taj Mahal, okay? So let's, we don't have to sugarcoat it. He is named Taj Mahal.

the piece of it that I thought was really interesting was unlike some of the other things that I described where an accent is used to mask bad writing and those characters never advance the plot of the story. In the case of Van Wilder, though that character was obviously deeply problematic, he also advances the plot of the story. So he, if you take that character out, the plot doesn't advance. The character of Van Wilder doesn't get from point A to point B through the arc of the story. So it was a whole more complex, more complex, that we, you know, I described in the audio book, obviously, um, all of the nuance, including the final round audition where, uh, I thought, I, I knew it was between me and another guy and I didn't know who the other guy was. And I walk into the waiting room and it's a white dude and brown face. And I was not expecting that. So I was like, oh shit. Okay. Now my beef is rarely with another actor. I understand the desperation of wanting a job. Um, but I was super intrigued. I'm like, where did this dude put his makeup on? Who told him to do it? You know,

of that. But the other thing in my head was, this guy's not allowed to have this job. I'm going to get this job. I'm going to put it on my, on my resume. I get the credit. He can play Braden from Idaho 10 times over and I'm not allowed. I'm not allowed to be on Seinfeld. I'm not allowed to be on Friends. He is. So I'm taking this part. I'm getting it. And I was very competitive and ended up playing the part. I think in the case of Harold and Comergo to White Castle, I was so floored at the fact that this was a movie featuring two Asian American men who were leads in a comedy. that I probably just had blinders on for any of that other stuff. With a 20-22 lens, a lot of folks have, I think, rightfully brought up some of the misogyny in that film. That is the type of movie that it was. It's not something I even recognized at the time, probably, because I was so compartmentalized into my experience,

which was dealing with race or ethnicity, that when I saw that script, I'm like, funniest script I've ever read. And I think both of those things are great examples of if you were to make a movie like that today. And by the way, I hope we get to do a fourth movie. And the jokes would be elevated, right? They would be, they would, I don't think they would be any less funny.

I just think they would, they would just be, they'd be more elevated. Yeah, I think that's why it's so important that we look at cultural lenses at the time. Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, the things that we found funny back then changed. And, you know, when we look at people like, oh, this person said this in the 50s and I'm like, look, totally wrong that this person said this. Yeah, yeah. But the person said it then. Right.

That's the reality. They grew up with a childhood with a different mindset. Yeah, not saying that it was right or wrong, but just it's crazy how times change in a good way. Yeah. I look at it with like a positive lens in that we recognize that it's universally almost recognized that it's problematic. Especially when it was wrong. You know, there are plenty of instances where we know something was wrong. And I'm generally not a fan of erasing that because then we pretend that systemic things don't matter.

Yeah. Right? That we're not living with the consequence of things like that. If you erase it, I mean, this is very broad, right? Obviously, some people are, so you think we should keep those statues up? So you think we should? Like, I'm not talking about all of that. I'm just speaking specifically with regard to a lot of imagery.

It's like, yeah, I agree with you. We should remember so that we don't make those mistakes. Yeah, agreed. All right, so I know you have to go. I have six rapid-fire questions for your lightning round. Great. Okay. All right, here we go.

All right. I'll do my best. What's a weird thing that your body does, that not everybody else's body does. Oh, wow. Wow. Wow. Is this the hardest interview question you have?

No, I love this because now I, this is like, oh, this is, when, when you have, oh, man, this is such an interesting question, mostly because I'm thinking like I would love to see what people answer. I'm double jointed in my thumbs. Okay. You can bring it all the way, all the way to your, okay. Can you bring it all the way down to your forearm? No.

Can you? No. That's like, typically that's what I say. when someone's double-draxed? Fine, I don't know. No, fine, so not that. Sorry, I had to do the doctor thing, fact check. God.

You have really cool tattoos. Thank you. Most of them are astronomy. Okay. And then a couple of my dog. And we don't have time for this story, but there's, actually, I guess we, my first tattoo was a mistake.

Okay. Whose isn't, though? I feel like that's a common... Well, I waited for many, many years to get my first tattoo. Sorry, then we can go back to the rapid fire. I'll be quick with this. It's a long story, but I'm going to... I've never done the abridged.

After yesterday, this is a short interview. Fair, fair, okay. Also, we don't have bourbon, so it's... Well, we do. I don't need any more. I don't need any more. So I did that show Finding Your Roots on PBS. Do you know this show?

It sounds familiar. Yeah, they basically, they hire a genealogist, and they do a DNA sample through one of the, like, the, The Biggest Samples, Yeah, 23 and Me, one of those places. And then they put a book together of, they trace your lineage back as far as they can, and they show you this book,

and they go through the whole history of everything. So they reached out and said, would you like to be on an episode? I'm like, yes, I don't have, I mean, who has the kind of money to hire a, personal genealogist, you know, this would be amazing. So, and when I've watched that show, um, people always find really interesting things about their ancestry, right? And, um, I knew I wanted some tattoos. And so my hope was, you know, somewhere along the line, someone slept with someone and

maybe we have a family crest. And family crest, like brown people don't have family crest. That's like Irish Scottish thing. I was like, maybe there's like some family crest tattoo that I could get. That would be awesome. So I do this thing, six months after submitting the sample and giving them all the family information, you meet with them and they show you all your stuff. So returning the pages, they're not showing me anything. Like all the pictures they're showing me are pictures that we gave them of the family. So it's like, and I'm feigning. No crests so far. I'm feigning surprise. Like, oh, what do you think? Have you ever seen this picture of your grandfather? And I'm like, I feel like I'm supposed to pretend that I haven't. So I'm like, oh, this is so touching. Oh, my gosh.

You're acting skills. Totally acting, right? Then they're like, are you ready for your DNA? And in my head, I'm like, great. At least this part, I'll find out what I actually am, and then we can find a cool tattoo. So they turn the page and they go, you are 99.97% South Asian. How does that make you feel? And I said, disappointed.

What was the other point? I don't know. Was it something cool? No, it's just noise. They were like, your dust. The rest is, yes. So they're like, what do you mean disappointed? We don't know if we can use that on the show.

And I was like, no, hold on. I'm obviously not disappointed that I am Indian. Yeah. I'm just saying, I was hoping that it'd be like somebody boned somebody 500 years ago and we figured something out. Like, no, no such. No, Australia. No, nothing. So then they're like, but you're still in luck.

Turn the page. And like, this is your DNA haplow group, your maternal DNA haplogroup group, which goes back, you know, however many millions of years, they show me this map that starts in Africa, goes through the caucuses, ends up in South Asia. And it's this number, R1A. M-147. I was like, dope. Can I take a picture of this? This will be my first tattoo. Take a picture of it. We wrap up the show. I leave. I go home and I email them and I was like, hey, can I get the login for whatever system you used? I just want to poke around and see what other numbers are there to like develop a tattoo. And they said, no, it's our intellectual property. I was like, no, it's my DNA. Like, yeah, but it's RIP because it's for the show.

I'm like, you understand that I can pay the $200 for the DNA test, get the kit, and then the system will think I have a twin. You get that, right? Like, I'm happy to do that. Like, yeah, sorry, it's RIP. You can't have access. So, uh, this will tell you a lot about always being this. Once the son of immigrants, always a son of immigrants. I waited till Christmas for the kit to be on sale for $99 so that I wouldn't have to pay the 200. And I get the kit. I, uh, I submit it. Uh, and in the meantime, I get the R1A dash M147 tattoo. A few weeks later, the thing comes back. I'm poking around online. And I was like, oh, maternal haplogroup, let me start there and then see what else is there. And under maternal haplow group, it says R1A dash M417. And I'm looking

at my arm and it says R1A dash M147. So I was like, I have M147. The computer says M417. What's the deal? So I email PBS. I email the producers of this thing. I was like, hey, anything you want to tell me about my maternal haplo group? And they go, no. Why? And then, I just was so shocked and then 10 minutes later she goes, oh, if you're talking about the M417 or 147, yeah, our production assistant made an error when he was typing it up, but don't worry, we fixed it in post.

So when your episode airs, it'll have the correct thing and the map was right as well, don't worry. So then I said, so I guess I shouldn't have trusted you enough to get a tattoo, huh? And she goes, are you kidding? And I just wrote back, no. She shows her picture. and then I sent a picture

and there was silence for I think like six hours six hours later there's an email with 30 lawyers ced from like PBS and the production company and they're like we just want to apologize we are so sorry obviously we will pay to get the tattoo fixed I'm like obviously you're going to pay

I'm not going to that was never a question in my mind my whole thing was like you showed me no new information you use the pictures my family gave you you've been on the air for 12 years and I have a mistake tattoo because you couldn't even hire a production assistant who knew how to type numbers properly.

What's the deal, guys? Anyway, it's such a good story that I kept the tattoo. It's still wrong. I kept the wrong tattoo. I'm always worried about that information being out in the ether. What? Like your...

Well, the haplogroup. No, not that. The other stuff that you set yourself. Yeah, yeah. That was a big. Right. I mean, well, yes, and I checked all the boxes to say, like destroy and all that.

Oh, you did? Yeah, of course. I don't know if I said that. I mean, of course, who knows. You know what I did? What? I gave myself a nickname in mine. Oh, nice.

It's not under my name. Oh, very nice. So now there's people out there that, like, think they have Ricky Bobby's as their brother. Right. Right. Because my brother's looking for me or something. Yeah. Yeah. And now he thinks Ricky Bobby's his brother.

That's smart. So I don't know if that's smart. Well, now when they, I'm like, I'm sure they can figure it out if they have your actual DNA. Sorry, what were the other rapid fires? But no, but that's terrible. I'm sorry that that happened. It's a fun story now. I mean, the tattoo is a fun story.

But the fact that they did that to you and like, I don't feel. I mean, it was, to me, it's funny. There are, there's still a great show. That sounds like a more than Jerry Springer, Dr. Phil situation. Mine was a straightforward case. There were no missing relatives. There was no drama. Yeah, but they couldn't give you a cool, like picture.

Like if I was that, I would have given at least a fake picture. Find something. Oh, I know. Right. Like, if you're going to strip the DNA, I would never know. They don't care. In that sense, I guess I'm thankful that they didn't do that. Yeah.

They were honestly bad at their jobs. Okay, so you're semi-double-jointed. Yeah, I guess. I guess. What's one thing you would do if that I, as a doctor, could guarantee you wouldn't suffer any medical consequences? Oh, man. I mean, probably something like skydiving, honestly.

Okay. You've never done? No. What stopped you? I watched too many YouTube videos about things going wrong. Oh, okay. Is that, you choose to spend your time? Skydiving accidents.

Literally after. a 90 minute conversation about mental health and muting words on Twitter and getting anxiety. I'm like, by the way, I actually just watch terrible videos online. Okay, we're learning a lot more in the lightning. No, in all honestly, probably, I mean,

I'd have to have the money to do this too, but probably going in one of those like space tourism caps on SpaceX or something like that, being able to go up and come down. That's less medical than you being able to guarantee that like the thing wouldn't blow up, but I could still guarantee it. Essentially, you know. I would put you in a suit.

Okay. By the way, do you have, what's your answer to something like this? Both of those, I'm super curious. One thing that my weird, my body does, my angles crack, just walking. Okay. Oh, yeah. So, like, I walk, people are like, are you 90? I'm like, yes.

So that's weird. What would I do? It would probably be skydiving. Last year for the channel, actually, I flew an F-16. No way. Yeah, with the U.S. Thunderbirds. Wow. So, like, these guys do the little tricks and all that.

And I went on a ride along and he did all the tricks. And then after he's like, all right, now you go. And I'm like, top gone, okay. And I got to fly it through the whole shabang. So, like, I recommend you try that. If you're not ready to pass that. We could actually pass along your name to the U.S. Underboards and you're the right size.

Awesome. Because I was one inch short enough to do it. They said if my legs were one inch longer, my legs would be not decapitated, amputated. Okay. if I was to eject based on the length. So you'd be all set. Okay, thank you.

Great. What's one silly thing you wish you could change about your body? Something not serious. Oh, gosh. The tattoo. You would change it if you could? Like if I was like, oh, I have a good piece of technology. Um, yeah, I'd probably want the real one.

Yeah, sure. That means something to you. That's fair enough. What's one food you don't like that you wish you did? That I wish I did. So I'm allergic to tree nuts And like almonds, cashews Anything that's not a legume

So legumes grow under the ground Peanuts grow under the ground So they're legumes Tree nuts are almonds cashews Mecadamia, all that stuff The idea of it grosses me out So I have, it's an anaphytic Allergy so that means

Do you carry an epipal? Yeah That means that when I see When I see someone eating almonds For example To me there's no difference seeing that than seeing somebody eating shit from a bowl. No.

Yes. Like if they were eating pieces of actual shit out of a bowl, it's the same as when I see somebody eating almonds. You gag? Yes. It's so disgusting to me, the idea that you're... You just titled our video. Eating pieces of shit.

No, Calpen gags. Oh, right, right. But because of that, it's whatever that is in my brain is, I recognize that's not real, but whatever it is that my body and brain do, It's just, it's so gross to me. So it's not that I would love to taste an almond. It's just that like if they accidentally end up in something, it'd be nice to not have to go to the hospital.

Okay. Wow. Did you ever have an anaphylactic attack? Oh yeah. Yeah. It usually happened, pre-pandemic, it would happen once every year and a half roughly. Usually because, I mean, usually either people don't actually check what's in food or they confuse. use a food preference with an allergy.

People who have celiac deal with this all the time, there's like gluten-free by choice, which is phenomenally irritating to somebody who actually has celiac because there's a big difference between the two. So it's that kind of thing where like someone might think it's a preference. I mean, there's almond flour in there,

but he's never going to know. It's made in an almond factory. Yeah, right. Right, right. So it would happen, you know, it would happen a lot. But there's also like foods that I know to avoid, like don't go to an Indian restaurant that you haven't been to before.

Bit of a catch-22 there, but, because culturally also, they don't fully understand what a food allergy is. I don't know why, but that's been my experience. It's probably because you were born here. I don't even have a medical reason as to why, but I thought. It's why people have allergies? It's smart to say. No, why you develop the allergy for food? I always had it since I was a kid. Oh. Yeah. So you developed it? No, no, I had it. I had it since I was a always had it. I thought you meant you always had all this. What's the food thing? I hope you don't mind me asking these back. There's just such a good question. This is good. And these are the first times I'm using these so this is exciting okay so what's one food I don't like that I wish I

did I wish I liked ice cream dude I hate ice cream what I hate ice cream oh no my teeth are sensitive oh okay okay okay and like I love milkshakes all right but ice cream like it would be so nice just be like okay or watching like how people like eat ice cubes or something yeah I can't that makes but a milkshake gets past your teeth past the teeth exactly yeah so and plus I like let it warm up a little. I let it melt. Okay, fine. I've always been weird like that. Have you ever almost died? Oh, gosh. Well, yeah, because people put nuts and shit all the time. Okay. I thought you were going to go with you being on fire in Van Wilder. Oh, in Van Wilder? No, thankfully they, the, so for anyone who's seen that movie, there's a, there's a scene where my character

catches on fire and I actually did that stunt where they put a prosthetic back. Tom Cruise isn't the only one. Exactly. Put a prosthetic back on, lit it on fire. That was me. Thankfully, the people around were trained in what they do, so I did not catch on fire. What about you? Almost died? I don't think I've ever, I got into a pretty bad car. I avoided a terrible car accident. Oh, wow, good. Okay. So, like, I was driving and it was raining, and I hit the brakes, and my car started hydroplaining, and it was out of turn. And I had to split second decision. It was like playing a video game, where it was. was like, keep trying to make the turn or pull into someone's front yard. And I was like, you know what? Pulling in someone's front yard. Thank God I did because if I didn't, a pole would have just split my car and had. So I went into their lawn, drifted on their lawn, came off, damaged my tire, that's it. Whereas like death was imminent. Yeah, yeah. So that was scary.

But I try and drive responsibly as an adult. Yeah. You were also very drunk at the time. No. I was young, I was like 17, 18. Oh, man. Yeah. So that's like when you're you first get your license, you're like, oh, yeah, my car can handle rain. I don't know physics at the time. All right. Which character of yours do you think would live the longest and which character of yours would lead the shortest life? Basically, which one was the healthiest and unhealthy? Yeah. Oh, in that sense, I was going to say I had a very tiny part in Superman Returns, which we talked by yesterday. And I like to think that there's a version of that movie where I don't die. so when you see Stanford get crushed by rocks there was this is like the the brainiac conversation that we had was there was some chatter about whether my character was actually a comic book character called brainiac and whether when he died he didn't actually die because you don't see him get squashed by a boulder it just looks like he could have been but he could have escaped before the boulder hit the way that it was shot and so um i like to think that he would have

lived the longest and that he was brainiac and that none of that is true no but i like to think this is the type of misinformation we allow to thrive yeah great great uh and then shortest that's one shortest um i played a caveman in an episode of buffy the vampire and he would have been very unhealthy why is that well it's just the time he was born the diet you know they barely had fire yeah okay so you went medical that one scientific. Yeah, yeah. I like it. Yeah. All right. You crushed the checkup. Right on. Thank you for being my first guest. I appreciate you. Thank you. This was really fun. Yeah, I really, I sincerely hope that you do find your way somehow into politics because

you're very passionate about it. And unlike most politicians are very straightforward about what you want to achieve. So we need people like you. Thank you. Thank you. So thank you for your work. Yeah. Well, likewise, thank you. And thanks for having me. Could we get Cal to say stay happy and healthy? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Can you say to that camera? Yeah, I always sign off my videos as always stay happy and healthy as always as always do i say as always do i say as always no because it's first i'm saying it yeah as always stay happy and healthy