The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Eagle Witt & Legalese

Episode Date: February 6, 2021

Noam Dworman, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand with comic Eagle Witt and esteemed Law Professor and author Richard Epstein. Noam connects with Epstein, after admiring his work from afar for decades, Dan considers self publishing and Periel goes on a tear about Marilyn Manson. 

This is Live from the Table, the official podcast of New York's world-famous comedy cellar. Coming at you on Sirius XM 99, Raw Dog, and on the Left Button Podcast Network. This is Dan Natterman. I'm with Noam Dwarman, the owner of the world-famous comedy cellar. Here, Alashen Brand is here, our producer. We also have with us, joining us, Eagle Witt, a comedy seller regular, at least when the comedy seller is not shut down for pandemics. He performs all over the USA and has won prestigious comedy competitions. His credits include Comedy Central, MTV, Amazon Prime, and Kevin Hart's LOL Network.

Find him on Instagram and Twitter at Eagle Witt, officially. Eagle W-I-T-T, official. Welcome, Eagle. How y'all doing? That was an introduction. Would you agree? I mean, only Dan Adam can give it. That's correct.

He's won introduction competitions, though. Very prestigious ones. Eagle, it's been a while. Of course, I miss you. Well, I did see you over the summer when the olive tree cafe was open for outdoor dining i believe i i believe we crossed paths briefly but the summer is but a distant memory as snow has fallen upon new york and blanketed us in its white splendor for sure we don't say white splendor anymore dan i'm sorry but go ahead you may be right uh i was not

thinking but um how have you been ego since last i saw you having any any eagle news uh i'm single now i was in a relationship i'm single that's the one adams of the list of comedians who were apparently in a relationship where we never knew. This has been my – I don't know if Eagle was public about it. You just don't pay attention to Facebook, but I don't believe Eagle was keeping it a secret at all. Well, in the olive tree, I never noticed.

In fact, I saw her at the olive tree, a very attractive woman. We expect nothing less. But that was no surprise, right? I agree. Eagle certainly – Oh. We expect nothing less But that was no surprise, right? I agree Eagle's certainly A A Eligible Bachelor And once again, eligible

I assume that it was your idea to break up Since you brought it up I normally wouldn't pry I did, I called Pardon? Yeah, I broke up I broke up with her Why?

It was You know what? I look at things like, like I don't move off my feelings. Like I love her, but I was just like, oh, this isn't sustainable. I like looked at it like we were arguing and we got into an argument and I looked at her and I was like, oh, maybe we get married one day,

but we ended up getting divorced. Like this isn't sustainable. I can't do this forever. Yeah. It's sustainable because you, Eagle, are young, attractive, and a comedian. Is that why it's not sustainable? Because you have too many options?

I think I definitely messed up a few times, for sure. Did you guys fight a lot? No, not really. We got along pretty well, but when we did fight, it was really nasty, and that's where I felt like it was too toxic. Who got nasty? You got nasty nasty she got nasty um i'm like verbally nasty and she was like physical and i felt like that was a slippery slope you know she's like swinging on me and stuff i was

like this is no good i can't do this yeah you know you know this is a serious topic, but I know about this, that guys who never ever would be, you know, abusive physically have, if somebody hits them, they will find themselves hitting back, you know, because that triggers a whole nother behavior pattern. And that's a very risky situation. So I think you're right. You don't, you don't want to get in a situation where you're being hit because that's it. You find yourself locked up somewhere. Are you open to the idea of being married?

You mentioned marriage. Are you open to that? Especially, I mean, you're still like 32 or something, which is young for a comic. Yeah, I'm 26. Good Lord. I mean, it's a little, you know, don't you want to play around a little bit more? No. Yeah, I'm not in a comic. Yeah, I'm 26. I, uh... Good Lord. I mean, it's a little, you know, don't you want to play around

a little bit more? Um, no. Yeah, I'm not in a rush. I'm not in a rush at all. I just, I just always think ahead. Like, when I'm with someone, I'm like, am I, is this a waste of time?

Like, you know what I mean? Like, if it's a waste of time, let's just end it now, you know? My father, if he were alive, would have thought it was very cute that Dan thought there was a trade-off

between playing around and being in a relationship at 26. Go ahead. I said, does he envision getting married? And usually if you get married, the playing around is diminished severely. Yeah, my father would have thought that was cute too. But go ahead.

Go ahead. I love that. I love the idea of it's diminished severely. It's not done. Well, it's not done if you don't want it to be done. But, you know, I mean, what he meant to say is marriage in a pandemic and it's really done.

So, Noam, last time we discussed Comedy Cellar reopening, we kind of discussed it all the time. And you were basically completely blind in terms of, you know, knowing when that's going to happen. Are you still, is that still the case? Well, indoor dining is opening again on February 14th, I think.

Wow, really? 25% capacity, which is a worst case scenario for us, really, because I'd rather just be closed. But the truth is if we have to open at 25% capacity, I don't think I can stay closed because we got to keep the comedians. We got to give the comedians someplace to hang out. We don't want them, you know, hanging out elsewhere. So we're going to open and we'll do, you know, we'll have that mic and stuff in the olive tree, which I think was pretty fun, you know.

Loved it. So this was a mic behind plexiglass yeah just to let the audience know what we're talking about to keep people safe and comedians would drop by and just sort of uh yeah if they want i mean or just bullshit but we definitely need to have a place for the comedians to come and hang out and and go up there if they want when I don't think we're allowed to do actual shows, but hopefully now with the vaccine, this is all part of the movement towards opening more. Now, at the same time, I just read today that restaurant workers are now going to be eligible for the vaccine. Restaurant workers of which I am one. And then I would like to deputize all of you to be restaurant workers if you'd like to come work.

No, I'm kidding. I'm sure that would be a no-no, but I'm sure that's what's going to happen. Everybody's going to be hiring everybody, right? To be a restaurant worker. It's a big- Do I qualify as a restaurant worker? Do we qualify as, are we restaurant workers?

I want this vaccine. I don't know, but I mean, what's the harm? You say you are because you work in a restaurant and what they can do is say no, but I don't, you know. Well, again, we could be, you know, we could be like flirting with taking vaccines from people who really need them because we say we're restaurant workers and I want to avoid that.

Well, but I, since I genuinely am a restaurant worker, but the rest of us, but we are not. I am. Well, how so? You don't even cook at home. Who's to say we're not Dan, Dan, we're, we're restaurants all the time, Dan. You were night, we're night, we're nightlife people.

And I don't know that that's, you know,'re night we're night we're nightlife people and i don't know that that's you know uh on the list right now can we backtrack for one second when you guys are ready to go ahead what to eagle no i just feel like glossing over you know what eagle was talking about is you know women hitting men i feel like is just as dangerous and damaging and abusive as the other way around. I mean, I feel like it's not something that gets a whole lot of attention, but it's a, it's a real thing and it's fucked up. So. Yeah, but it's not the same unless the woman has a weapon and then it can be

the same. As physically damaging at all no right well just because the strength is different but there are there are certainly like a lot of accounts of you know that escalating very quickly to you know objects um yeah but there's a classic thing um i've that I'm not proud to say, but I've been on the end of it, where a woman gets mad and slaps a man. And that slap is a way of acting out an emotional point, as it were. And although I don't think it's fine, but I never took it as abuse. I took it as a message. But if a strong man slaps a woman across the face, he can really hurt her.

He can put her lights out. You know, it's just different. Let's be honest. You know, now a woman certainly can't haul off. And if she's trained, she can hurt a man. Yeah. And in that case, I would agree with you. It is physical abuse.

But there is this kind of, you see it in the movies where a woman gets mad and says, fuck you and slaps, you know, which I'm not going to pretend I take as a physical abuse. I'm not saying it's okay. I'm just saying I don't take it as abuse. You're saying that you've been slapped across the face by a woman. Yeah, almost every guy has, you know. Right? Right, Eagle?

And if it's a slap, I mean, no, correct me if I'm wrong, it's not a beat down. It would be a one and done or maybe, you know, I mean. Yeah, it's not a beat down. But the thing is that, I mean, this is just real life. I think that most women know, like kids in a way, they understand that their strength is so out of proportion with the man that when they approach him physically, their intention is not really to hurt him. You know? I mean, I don't think, of course, you're very clear. There are women who can pack a wallop. I'm just saying that in general,

that hasn't been my experience. I don't know. I mean, I, I I've never slapped anybody across the face. I mean, I can't, I can only imagine that you would expect to get hit back, right? Like if you hit somebody, you. I've never hit, I would never hit. I mean, but the thing is, if she, the thing is.

You probably deserved it. Listen, there's risky ground. Because if a woman with a closed fist punches a man in the nose, he might trigger something where she gets hit back. And then it becomes very, very ugly. It's very dangerous. Yeah, no, but I'm not talking about slapping somebody across the face. I'm talking about being physically violent.

Yeah. I just think that it's a bad line to cross, physical violence, because you start dealing with reflexes. And reflexes can happen so fast, especially if you have no experience with this sort of thing or you know you've done something that you truly regret but in general this is just in general when a woman gets mad and like fuck you and slaps a man i think most men don't take that as a real fight but yeah go ahead you know i agree i, I think a slap is like one thing.

I think closed fist, even if it's like, it doesn't even have to be face. It could be like body shots. It's like, that becomes more abuse. Yeah. And then also like the reflex thing is very real. Like she was like, when I was breaking up with her, she was like punching me in my body.

And I kind of like blacked out and just grabbed her by the arms and like flung her on the bed and then i realized like oh that could have been a punch what if i blacked out and punched her yeah i was like this thing is just no good we got to throw this whole thing out were you were you drinking no i was i was i don't drink now imagine if you had been drinking how how it can turn bad exactly yeah yeah it's bad people really need to steer clear of that stuff i mean it's the whole life from that kind of i mean my you know you did the right thing is the point

oh thanks man thanks for the research no really it's up i mean it's but i mean if what perriel's saying is that we should rewire ourselves to view a woman hitting a man or even slapping a man the same way as a man hitting a woman, I just can't, I'm not able to see it that way. Although, you know, that would be the logic of everything. Periel also made the argument, I think, some months ago, that female sexual harassment and male sexual harassment is similar. Something like that. Like that if a woman says to a guy, hey, nice ass, or grabs his ass, it's equivalent to a man grabbing a woman's ass. And I think we know, you and I believe that it was not the same. Well, what I'm saying is, I don't remember what I said about that.

I don't know if you did or didn't, but I think we had that conversation. What I'm saying is, I think that when you cross the line into physical, into being physical, like you're crossing a very clear line. I think maybe we had the discussion that like a woman, like a 20-year-old woman that like has sex with a 15-year-old boy is, and I think you argued Perry, I was the same as a, as, as a 20 year old man having sex with a 15 year old girl. Yes.

There is one, there is one problem here that I mean, maybe just because of my age or, or maybe because we're just PC means you're not allowed to talk about the world as most people experience it. But I'm going to tell you that if my professor told me, listen, you're not getting an A in this class. If my female professor, you're not getting an A in this class unless you sleep with me, you know, I would not carry that trauma with me.

No, because you don't know that. But I do know that. But if a male professor were to say that to a female student, I think you should go to jail. I mean, I just don't see it as the same thing. I do know that. But if a male professor were to say that to a female student, I think he should go to jail. I mean, I just don't see it as the same thing. I know that's wrong. Send your letters.

I don't approve of either. I'm just saying that if my attractive professor, on top of wanting to give me an A, intended to give me sex, from a male point of view, in general, I don't think I'd be having nightmares about it. The key word, Norman, she has to be attractive. Even if she was not attractive, I mean, you know, I'd grin and bear it. Listen, if you're a 15-year-old or a 14-year-old boy.

I'm not talking about 15-year-olds. I'm not talking about 15-year-olds. Oh, okay. That's what we were talking about. We were talking about 15-year-olds. He's a professor. He's over at college age. What if you're a 15-year-old high school student, Norman,

you're smoking hot, 22-year-old, and I mean smoking. Dan, you know what? Dan, you're disgusting, you know that? We were talking about this when Dov Davidoff was telling us that he had sex with, I believe, a prostitute. Oh, yeah. He was like 13 and he had sex with a prostitute in Mexico. And I was saying that that was, you know, horrible. And I think you guys were telling me that I was a moron.

I wasn't on that show. I wasn't on that show. No, that was our bonus show. There was an SNL sketch about that where Pete Davidson's like, he's, he's, he had, you know, his teacher had sex with him and he's, you know, he's in court and everybody's like, the judge is like high-fiving him and stuff.

You know, so, I mean, that's, that's the stuff of comedy. Eagle, you say what? No, no. I mean, oh, that's what I was asking. I was asking, was Dove scarred by this event or was Dove like, that say what? No, no. I mean, oh, that's what I was asking. I was asking, was Dove scarred by this event, or was Dove like, that was cool? I don't believe he was scarred by it.

I think it's actually part of his bio. In his bio, he says, Dove lost. Dove Davidoff, a comedian, you know, been on this, that, and the other thing, and also lost his virginity to a prostitute in Mexico when he was 12. He thinks it's funny, and I agree that it is funny. I think so, too.

Whether he was traumatized by it, I think, is very unlikely. I think he absolutely was damaged by it, and I said that to him. He was damaged, but not by that. A 12-year-old child, male male or female does not have the mental capacity to make that kind of a decision like that will fuck you up and a 32 year old woman has no business having sex with a 15 year old boy like i realize you think it's funny, but it's actually not.

It is funny, number one. Number two, I agree with you that she shouldn't, I mean, she was a prostitute. So I mean, that's like, forget about her. But as a general matter, you're correct. A grown woman shouldn't have sex with a young boy. But if she does, it's not the end of the world. It's not a tragedy in most cases, I don't believe.

And I don't think... Go ahead. Sorry, go ahead. I don't think the kid's going to be traumatized, overly traumatized by it. Yeah, I don't think the victim will be as traumatized as much as it's just like, we should shun the grown woman that did that.

That's weird that she would do that. But the kid, I mean, guys, we don't care. We're excited about... I saw on Twitter the other day Lil Wayne. Somebody pulled up an old Lil Wayne video because he's been a famous rapper since he was 15. So when he was 12, he was around famous rappers, but they just didn't spotlight him yet.

And he said he was in the studio when he was 12, and there was a video of a rap girl there, and she was giving everybody a head, and they were like, you got a video of a rap girl there and she was like giving everybody a head and they were like, you gotta suck Lil Wayne's dick and he was like, what? And then like she gave him a head and he said like she was a grown woman and he joked about it in the video.

He goes, so I got raped. And he like laughs and like that's the end of the video and he's like, oh shit. But to him it's a joke. He's like, yeah, whatever. It's not. What was her name? Asia? what's the name of the actress listen i can tell you for fucking shit sure that i have a son who is seven years old and when he's 12 or 15 if some grown fucking woman tried to have sex with him that would be the last thing she ever did in her life.

Because you should. You should be mad at the lady who does it. But he's going to be like, that was dope. Great. Well, so, I mean, and I don't know how to pronounce her name. Asia Argento, is that her name? Asia Argento. She used to play with Anthony Bourdain.

Asia? Yeah, so she got a cute, she was, no, she, I think she acknowledged she was having sex with like a younger co-star and he came out years later and tried to tar her with it. And she admitted to it. And there was this kind of like this finger wagging at her, but she's not considered as this kind of radioactive person now. I just, I like, nobody really sees it the same way,

although it could be the same way in a particular circumstance. I'm not denying that. You can, people can be traumatized. I don't mean to treat the whole thing with a blanket rule, but in general, if Miss Olsen, my hot English teacher in the 11th grade, had wanted to have sex with me, I don't think it would have traumatized me.

I don't. Sorry, that's funny. You know, that's what can I tell you? Maybe I'm damaged. You are. you are look i i um a boy took me into the bathroom in i believe it was third grade and took out his penis and asked me to suck on it which i declined to do and i've not been traumatized by it but um but it was a boy my age if you know but if he forced you you'd be traumatized. Yeah, it's likely would be. Absolutely. You know, that's different. Well, we'll slide from this right into one of the most, I don't know, prestigious law professors in the country is about to come on. Okay, let's switch now because we're talking about serious

stuff. Let's bring in our guest and I'll give him an introduction as only I can do it. Of course, you've seen my work. So, you know, I'm not joking when I say that I give good intro. So, yes, invite our guest. He's coming. I'm inviting. I've invited. I mean, we could ask him what he thinks about all this. No, no, no, no, no.

He is a lawyer and this is a legal issue. No, no, no, no. Noam apparently is afraid of ratings and listeners and good ratings. Ask him later on if you get the feeling. I don't want to get the feeling. You're right.

Bring him on. He's joining. It's taking him. If everybody's with me, I would love at some point to discuss this Marilyn Manson thing because it's got me incensed. What happened with Marilyn? I would love at some point to discuss this Marilyn Manson thing because it's got me incensed. What happened with Marilyn? I have no idea.

Peril knows more than I do. He has been accused of being abusive toward Evan Rachel Wood. And many other people, too. I don't know. Richard Epstein just disappeared and came back. Hold on. Well, you guys, wait. I think he's having technical problems did he

hightail it out of here when you heard about lawyers are not known for their technical skills law is the furthest thing you can get from technical stuff but i see my other podcast i'm just saying a general matter law is the opposite of anything technical and mathematical it's funny you say that because i remember my lawyer was negotiating a lease for me and it was a complicated a mathematical formula for the rent that required fractions or whatever. And to my dismay, he just couldn't do it at all. I'm like, really? You went to law school and you can't do it. Well, law's all about words, you know, and, um,

let's face it law is really not that hard, you know, compared to math. There's a logic to math and, um, there's a logic to, there's a logic to math, which is different than computational ability, actually, in my opinion. So somebody can be bad at arithmetic, but the logic of math, understanding what the formula should be, I think would correlate with legal. You may be right, but when you're faced with a, what's the word I'm looking, differential equation staring you in the face, you know you ain't in the presence of some legal interpretation. Well, where's Richard Epstein? He's here. He's having a...

Richard Epstein. He's not, you know, he's having a little bit of some technical problems. I don't know. Are you sure he didn't get scared away? What, from watching you guys talk about how it's okay to have sex with young boys? Don't talk now because I don't want him to hear it. We didn't quite say that. We said that we're going to talk about-

It's not okay, but it's probably not traumatizing in most cases. I think he told me his cousin is Paul Reiser. Ah. So while he's coming on, Perrie Perry L become addicted to the game clue has anybody here play it as a kid but I haven't seen a clue set in a long time it's so much fun and what happened is like a fresh rookie who closes his eyes and swings and hits a home run. She won one of the early games we played.

And now she thinks she actually has deductive ability here. She's been playing again and again and again and again and keeps missing, trying to capture the magic of that first home run. That's not fucking true. I won several times. I beat you. I meant in the games with the adults. Shut up. There we go. Famous Richard Epstein.

Richard Epstein, ladies and gentlemen, is joining us. He is the author of numerous books, including his most recent book, The Dubious Morality of the Modern Administrative State. I guess that's the, I guess that's the whole title. There's no subtitle. No, I mean, dubious is enough of a

subtitle. I think that's a, that's like a subtitle in and of itself. It should have a title is really what it's missing. It's designed to basically create the enigmatic nature. Dubious doesn't mean clearly wrong because that would require it was completely wrong. It should have a one-word title like Flummoxed, the Dignity of the Modern Administrative State. I guess my most famous book, to some extent, has got a one-word title called Takings. And that has a subtitle. Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain. Exactly. That's usually how it's done in nonfiction.

I'm getting bogged down. He is the inaugural Lawrence H. Tisch. Isn't he still alive? Do you have a professor of law? Professor Tisch died. Mr. Tisch died some years ago. It was endowed by his son, Tommy Tisch. And I started to hold the KHA in about 2010

when I first came to NYU as a full-time person. Now, the one thing I'm worried about is I'm on my cell phone. It is trying to charge. I hope I don't blow out of power doing this thing. So anyhow. How much do you have? I don't know because I've been trying to check this thing. Now, it's going down at an incredible rate.

I'm down to 35% and I'm plugging it in. And somehow or other, the charge has not been taken. So if Ariel, if Ariel can kind of get me a bonafide, a link that works on my computer, but anyhow, let's just keep talking. I will do as we can, you know. So Mr. Epstein, you've been a kind of hero of mine for a long time. I read, I can't say that I read the entire book, but I read chunks of your book on the Constitution. Oh, the Classical Civil Constitution? Yeah, and I was so impressed with that.

And I actually recommended it to somebody who you mentioned that book, Jonathan Haidt, you know, Jonathan Haidt. Yeah, I know him well. We actually worked together about 15 years ago. He wrote a very famous paper in 2000 about the tail and the dog. And essentially the thesis of that paper, which is very consistent with a lot of the natural law philosophy that I've done, is people have built in hardwired inconditions about large numbers of issues.

And then what they do is they develop verbal rationalizations to support them. And the three basic intuitions that Haidt referred to are reciprocity, i.e. the law of contract, essentially integrity, the law against aggression, that's tort law. And then he had a category called morals, and the morals head of the police power essentially deals with consensual behavior, which is regarded in some senses unhealthy, prostitution, gambling, and things like that. And it was a fairly accurate map of the way in which the 19th century law started to work. What typically happens is these moral rules tend to work very well in one-on-one interactions, but they do not work nearly as well when you have very large and complicated social relationships

dealing with the origins of property dealing with the imposition of taxation uh dealing with the control of common pool resources at which point you have to develop much more systematic analytical frameworks to deal with them and the great problem about human morality is that if the cognitive stuff has to take over because the intuitive stuff doesn't work you're very much more prone to error than you are in areas that deal with one-on-one transactions. So let's get, in case the battery runs out, let's get to the issues which are really hot today where the libertarian point of view

is under stress in some way. Let's start at the most recent thing. What are we going to do and what's your take on the tremendous power that private actors now have in a way that was never contemplated by the authors of the First Amendment to censor and control the public square? Well, in this particular piece, I basically said the situation is there's three categories in private law and you have to know them all. One of them has to do with the general issue of aggression. Another one has to do with normal

contracts. And the third one, which is in many cases for these purposes, the most important is to try to deal with the situation where in fact, what you do is you have monopoly power on the part of various kinds of government agencies. And trying to figure out exactly which that game plays out is in fact the great challenge. Mr. Epstein, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I fear we're going to go over the heads of our listeners. I think you will. But essentially what it is, is if you are a single monopolist and you control something, you don't have freedom in whom you admit and you don't have freedom in what you charge. So is Twitter a monopoly? Well, the answer is maybe. And that's the problem. The original definition of a monopoly assumed that there was

a single supplier in a market and no close substitute. If you take the more modern definitions, what you do is you tend to talk about levels of monopoly power. And there's something known as the Herfindahl Index that measures this. And essentially, if you've got two or three firms in an industry, you treat them as if they were a monopoly, even though they don't have a full set of monopoly powers. And so Twitter is in that position. What makes it worse is that we're not quite sure, though we kind of have a suspicion, that there's a kind of a singling and peaking and booing around there, such that Twitter can do what Facebook can do, what Apple can do, or what Google can do. And so you never quite know whether there's a kind of

an implied agreement amongst these guys. That immediately boosts your market share way up from, say, about 15% or 18% to 60% or 70%, and the case becomes easy. Well, they're going to argue that they do this independently., they're going to argue that they do this independently. And we're going to argue that they don't do it independently. What they do is they keep signaling one another. And if each of them says, well, I'm going to take a really tough stand on misinformation, broadly conceived, and the others do it, what you do is you've got an antitrust situation rather than a common carrier situation. So what happens is all the moral questions and the legal questions,

they get tied up in these very difficult questions of fact. And so what happens is you see two extreme positions, one being so strong as to say, oh, these guys are always monopolistic, just like the government, perfect substitution, don't you worry, just regulate the hell out of them. And other people say, wait a second, these are private parties,

the government doesn't do anything for them. And then people start saying, but they do protect them under Section 230 and so forth. And so what you do is you will get a large amount of difficulty. My own view about this is it's gotten serious enough. And the definition of what's misleading information is generally general propositions that I believe, but I'm not allowed to do so. And so I become more and more angry at the way in which they behave. And the key for the situation is I don't regard myself as a conservative, I'm a libertarian. And so what you do is you find yourself in this position where people who are much more conservative, Paul or whatever it is, Gab and so forth,

they're Trump type people, which I am not, they find that they can't even get their apps into the situation. And so what they do is they're moving the control upstream, and that gets one even angrier. So what you really want to do is these companies have to basically let go. An encouraging development, but by no means a conclusive one, is the idea at Facebook where they try to set up an independent panel of outside experts to say whether or not their bans on various kinds of people are or are not justified. It's not a perfect solution, but at least in some cases they've been overturned. And the thought that anybody who disagrees with the World Health Organization or disagrees with Anthony Fauci on the question of how you treat COVID and other diseases is in fact some kind of a purveyor

of false information is too grotesque for words. I mean, these are opinions. You can't literally falsify facts. You can't go up there and say, you know, everybody who's ever taken HCQ has died, that's hydroxychloroquine, or is recovered. But if in fact you give a data set and draw an inference from it, generally speaking, what the other guy has to do is to answer you rather than to shut you down. And that should apply to Twitter as well. So I do think in effect that there's going to be a kind of a bipartisan outrage on this stuff. The difficult, as we know, is that every one of these people is in some sense a political liberal. Everybody who's shut down is in some sense a political conservative. And so viewpoint discrimination seems to be a very important issue

in defining what is or is not, right? A case of misinformation. And the term is just spread far beyond this ordinary meaning. This is a systematic difficulty that we have in these modern circumstances. And it's extremely difficult to know at present as to whether or not you're going to be able to find a way to counter it. So it's open season on these guys. But a lot of it they brought on themselves. Why is not clear.

One explanation I heard about Twitter, and it may be true of Google, perhaps even Facebook, is their programmers and their technical experts. I'm about to die on this battery and I can't seem to get it started again. That's okay. That's okay. If it doesn't work out, we'll invite you back. Go ahead. Doesn't it make matters worse that whether they're a monopoly or not, they're dealing with the issue of expression and freedom of expression, which is sort of sacrosanct in the United States. So that just makes it even more controversial. What it does is you don't know whose speech you're protecting. Is it the carrier or is it the person whose stuff is carried? And so what you do is you, exactly what you want to say about all of this is that it turns out everybody's speech

rights turned out to be in conflict with everybody else. So the fact that speech is sank or sank doesn't tell you whose seat turns out to be most sank or sank under these particular kinds of circumstances. And that's a very, very serious problem. Nobody should ever want to do this. This is a real tappy pole. And the harder you get on the dogmatic side,

the stronger the counter arguments start to get. And dogmatic side, the stronger the counter-arguments start to get. And in the end, the whole kind of system starts to break down. I mean, this is a true tragedy. Generally speaking, when you have legal rules that are hard-edged and a little bit indeterminate in some cases, both at the same time, what you like people to do is to back off a little bit so that you don't get these conflicts. And that's not what you've seen happen in this particular case. Far from backing off, people seem to be doubling down on just about everything they said.

And we don't get particularly good debate over these kinds of things. Look, one of the things that's so frightening about all of these things is people literally talk past one another. You cannot, at this particular point, find a situation where Mr. A, who takes one side, and Ms. B, who takes the other side, sit down and they debate it. It just doesn't

happen. So, you know, take this question about fraud in the presidential election. Is it or isn't it? I mean, what you do is every newspaper story that comes out in the New York Times, the word baseless is always put before the Trump allegations. There's some people who believe they're very powerful, and they give you quite specific things that they think were wrong, including erroneous judicial decisions, mysterious closures of various places, evidence that certain kinds of ballots were not folded in the way that they would have to be, or rightly singled. You never get these two sides on the same place.

So one guy sort of shrieks in the dark, and the other guy indignantly denies him. And I would really like to see the following thing, a panel as when we're doing COVID, I have never seen two of the worst governors in the United States, Cuomo and whatever it is, Newsom in California, they've just issued decrees. They never explain them. They never let critics talk about them. They don't put their public health experts up to some kind of a situation. So what we do is we get unilateralism instead of dialogue. And on issues of this importance going on for this long, you really expect better out of these. It's funny you say that. I just reminded me that years ago,

like 15 years ago, I had fantasized that if I were president, I would sponsor debates. The issue that occurred to me at that time was global warming. I couldn't make heads or tails out of the global warming debate for exactly the reason you said.

And I said, if I were president, I would get the best experts on both sides and I would televise a nationally sponsored debate, you know? That's right. You say there's in the global warming area, actually, there are a number of people mainly on the skeptical side say we need blue team, red team stuff on this, just the way they do military exercises in the same way. And the dominant party refuses to engage in that kind of a discourse. I think it turns out to be something of a very serious debate. So you just don't see it. And you don't want these debates to be done by political people who don't know pretty much anything about anything. You want the debates to be done by

individuals who are experts in the area. You know, I tend to be on the skeptical side of global warming, and I listen to things on the other side, and I'm just aghast. The problem is there's no forum in which you can have a debate on that, except occasionally, and then there are always, they're not national television debates. You go to before a chapter of the Federalist Society, and there are 110 people in the room, and there'll be 10,000 people, if you're lucky,

who will see it on YouTube as some other kind of vehicle. But yes, we really do need that. And that particular art has become completely lost in the United States, at least in terms of a large scale. In fact, one of the things that's so striking, you know, take something like the real doubts that people have about how it was that George Floyd died. There is an excellent video by a man named George Perry, who works with the American Spectator, who puts it up and basically tries to give you the whole story as being a case of fentanyl poisoning. He's got 66,000 viewers. On the other hand, if you look at the films about the nine minutes that Derek Chauvin was sitting on the back of the head of Floyd, that probably gets 100 million viewers. And the question is, is the short version an accurate summary of the long version?

And if you read Chauvin, you're convinced it's a much closer case than is commonly supposed. But these things are all done conclusively. And the basic rule in a criminal case is basically a replication of what you suggested should be done here, namely, Audi Alter Impartum, which stands in Latin for hear the other side. And if you just listen to the Rush for Judgment by Keith Ellison or the New York Times or the Washington Post, and you don't hear the other side first, then it's really wrong. You should never issue an indictment in a case that is as complicated as that one on the basis of watching

a film that lasts for 10 minutes. You really want to do a much more thorough investigation. And you don't want to commit yourself to the crime because then what will happen is you're encouraging all sorts of people to mass on the streets in order to stop various kinds of insurrection and what they regard as disruption by various kinds of power structures. So, I mean, these are really very, very important issues. So let me ask you a question, and I don't know, and I have some legal background, by the way, but I still struggle with this. You've described the issue in certain ways

which you could kind of be on the side of the person who's discriminating. I want to have more blacks here. I want more representation. I want diversity. But what happens when the university essentially says, we don't want too many Asians here? We go. Yeah, I mean, look, I'll tell you what my reaction to that is. I'm very uncomfortable with it because what's happening, at least in the current situation, the amount of hypocrisy that comes out of the Harvard administration on the way in which they do this, they know there's an anti-discrimination law. They're duty-bound like

everybody else to comply with it. So what they do is they say, oh, we just don't look at grades. We look at the soft stuff. Well, what's the soft stuff? Tends to be interviews. Well, generally speaking, if you've done admissions work for years, as I have, what you discover is that people who are strong on paper are people who are strong in the interviews. There are very few surprise cases where somebody has a perfect score and can barely open his mouth, and very few people with weak scores who speak poetry every time they walk into an interview. So when somebody comes and says, well, we're doing this, it doesn't work. So at Harvard, what happens is that they have these interviews. Many Asian students get extremely high scores and the central administration unilaterally lowers them

without doing any interview at all. And so what happens is in the current situation, there's just a huge amount of hypocrisy and that would not exist if you didn't have it. So now let's just get rid of these laws. Is Harvard still gonna do this? It might at some sense, but this is at the college level.

This is not high school. Harvard says they're not going to take you. Boy, oh boy, I'm running Boston University. I march a beeline over to these people and say, they want to take weaker black students, we'll take stronger Asian students, and we'll see who will survive. And so there'll be a natural kind of corrective.

The moment you have a public statute on there, which requires everybody to kind of behave in the same fashion, those a public statute on there, which requires everybody to kind of behave in the same fashion, those market checks are very, very much weakened. And I mean, let me give you a study that was done many, many years ago about Penn and Penn State. Penn is an Ivy League school on the rise. Penn State is a very good public school. Essentially what happens is you would assume that if people get into Penn and Penn State, if money's not a key issue, they'll all go to Penn. So somebody did a study and said, take the same quality of student at Penn State as you have at Penn, that is high grades,

high boards, and so on. How do they do? Basically, they do as well as the Penn students. Now, why is that? Because the professors say, hey, these guys would be in the middle of the packet Penn, but they're in the top 5% of our thing. So we'll make them our teacher's assistants. We'll give them sexual stuff. And all of these compensations go. And so what I try to tell people who are coming to things, life does not end if you did not get into Harvard. I'm very proud of the fact that I did not get into Harvard when I applied to college. I mean, I did very well. I had a very nice interview with a man named Eric Cutler. I walked out of there and said, gee, I did pretty well. And then I said, oh my God, I've got two of my classmates with perfect scores. They're both going to be at

Harvard. I'm not going to get in. That's exactly what happened. And so I went to Columbia. But you know what? If you do well at Columbia, it's not the end of the world. It's so strange. I could recall my father when I was in law school. And I said, you know, how do you do in class? I said, well, I think I was third or fourth in the class. And he said, not first. I said, no. I said, Dad, you know what happened to the guy who was second in the class? And he just looks at me. And I told him, he stopped. And so I had this, he had this image that only one person out of a class of 170 would get a job. What is the most common thing in the world is that people who finish first in school often do not finish first in life.

And I had an old friend who one day when I was interim dean, he took me in his Porsche around town. And he says, you know, you are a really smart guy. And let me tell you why you're not going to be a great entrepreneur. I put your kind of intelligence about 11th on a list. And he says, imagination, perseverance, interactions, and skills. He just rattled one thing off after another. Now, I may or may not have had them, but his point was very clear. If you're an academic, you have what we call a single-pointed distribution. So if you look at all these attributes, the one that really matters that you can't fake is being just plain smart. But in the world, a lot of that extra smartness is wasted. And all these other skills start to come in.

And so what happens is you have to know the way your mind works and what you pick. And, you know, I was an academic essentially from the time I was nine. I knew exactly how my mind worked. It's strange, but, you know, when I was nine or 10 years old, I kind of figured out what I'd want to do. And I've never deviated from that. I know it sounds very weird. Most people don't do it. And if I had to do other things like be a clerk or a kinds of work, I just could never get the job done. And so there's no obvious domination because there's so many different skills that come

into thing. And the single most important thing to anybody who's worrying about college age, what to do is to get something that fits your unique set of skills. And don't worry about somebody else who's got a flashy career and a set of attributes that you don't have. And indeed, there's a real danger of being at the top of the pops in some of these cases because you get somebody who's been first everywhere and you have the problem of great expectations. What are you supposed to do? So you have to write your first article, do your first job, and it's okay, but it's not great. Everybody's going to

say X is now a failure. I never had that problem. I was always in the lead pack in the Peloton, right? But I was never the guy out in front, so I didn't get all the wind in the face. And the key feature is, well, I've been teaching for 53 years, and I'm still active. The question is not can you reach a peak. The question is how you can develop a sustainable agenda, whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you're a technician, or whether you're a professor. And if it turns out the first week you work so hard that the second week you can't get out of bed, you're finished, so you have to be able to pace yourself. Right. Well, Professor, I'm a big admirer of yours and I love

to hear your opinion on everything as a matter of fact, but I think we're out of time and maybe you'll agree to do it with us again if you didn't have a bad experience. Oh, I mean, I've just been savaged by this conversation. I like talking to people. I mean, I have to tell you, and my wife says to me, I'm a teacher. And so I get on my soapbox perhaps more than I ought to do. Because at this particular stage in my life, you know, I've been okay as an academic, better than I expected, lasted longer than I expected. So what my father used to tell me, and you think about this, he said, you remember,

I said, the people who helped you get where you are, and they're all dead now. And you can't help them. But you should do the same thing for the next generation. And I mean, that's the continuity of tradition. And remember, we started with unilateralism at the beginning. This is essentially is a social norm,

which says you just have to make sure that you perpetuate those people and those values that you think are important and that you can only do that by taking an interest in those people who are younger than you and the fondest dream that you have is that they will exceed you in their own life's achievements. That's a great great word to live by and to end with. Anything else want to ask the professor a question before we go? Or before the sound breaks out on this computer. First of all, that is some, you said you were losing power, but yet you held on.

I know that. I plugged it in and I just hope that the plug is in. It's like a dance with death, right? I do know what I wanted to say you said you wrote a book on takings yes when i went to law school the one that was there was an opinion i'm sure you remember what the opinion is i haven't thought about it in years there was an opinion i just did not agree with which said that uh giving a building landmark status when the city imposed landmark status on a building was not a taking. Go ahead.

Penn Central against the Transportation Company. And it came out, it was decided by Justice Brennan in January of 1978. So just to let you know. It's a terrible opinion. It is, right? Because I knew from experience that the building across the street from us, now it's owned by NYU, had once, Elizabeth Barrett Browning or something, had once lived in this building. And it was landmarked. And the landlord lost millions of dollars for this.

And I said, well, how could this not be a taking? Well, I could tell you what Justice Brennan said in an opinion, which he must have spent at least, you know, he spent a couple of hours writing, but never thought. He said, we're not occupying the building. We're just merely restricting your use. And so at that point, we have to balance the public claim against the private claim. And amazingly, Elizabeth Barrett Browning is more important. The correct answer in all of these cases is take and pay. So I'll just give you one other story. A couple of years later, I had a debate with a man named Frank Michaelman, still alive, a very eminent professor. And he was asked a bunch of takings questions. And he gave the most convoluted answers that you could possibly have, like me talking about common carriers. And so they said to me, what do you think, Professor Epstein?

And I don't remember the question. I said, question number one, take and pay. Question number two, take and pay. Question number three, take and pay. We then had a student show about three months later. And the feature song that won the contest, the talent show, was a song called Take and Pay, right? So it turns out that the influence that i had managed to go from the legal relief into the social regime so for those who do not don't know what taking pay is i professor means that if if the state is going to take the property in some way including by

limiting the use so it no longer has the value it has anymore they should just pay the landlord for it and be done with it yeah what they could do is buy the building and then sell it off subject to the lease. There are many ways to do it. And so the song was done to the tune of Tit Willow, Tit Willow, Tit Willow. But yes, I mean, and I write about this case more often than I care to possibly remember. I can still remember the day that it came out. I was at Stanford at at the time and i simply could not believe what they had done but there was an earlier case called you could against ambler which you may remember from your law school days that was a 1926 case where they are you you the euclidean zoning is what it's called in which they said if the state and you won't like this either takes a plot

of land which could be used for a factory and and it's worth $100,000, and they chop it up into five little bits that are totally worth $15,000. You don't get the $85,000 for the loss of the value of the land. So that's the earlier version of Penn Central. And those two cases are still pillars in the law. You watch Justice Roberts in some recent cases trying to defend it. And it's just hopeless. One of the things you have to understand about judges is if you change Penn Central, a whole system of regulations

is subject to constitutional scrutiny. They don't want that to happen. So what they do is they tie themselves into intellectual knots in order to avoid it. I can remember years ago, I got into a debate with the late Justice Scalia, who was a judicial restraint man who supported, actually, the Penn Central case. And he listened to me describe my position. And exactly the same reaction that Donald has. You obviously think theories will go nowhere on the face of this, Bob. I said, my theory is very simple. It's take and pay, take and pay, take and pay.

And by the way, what's the value of this quote. I said, my theory is very simple. It's take and pay, take and pay, take and pay. And by the way, what's the value of this? Probably, if you're trying to figure out the total value of land in urban settings when this thing is done, this whole system of restrictions probably reduces the net worth of all properties by 10 or 15%. This is not a small deal. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah, I'm so happy to know you agree with that. It's been burning at me for 30 years now. Go look at the Takings book. I've written a bunch of articles on Penn Central.

I did a movie about that with Liam Neeson, I believe. What? Taken. Based on your book. Very much so. This is a book that begins with a diagram of two pies the world without social organization and the world with it and the question is when you expand the pod you keep the size of the slices comps it's constant um just the thing that you

really want to do for a public show no i mean i i would there have been a couple movies about taking it was actually a movie about the kilo case if you remember which was a different issue it was a dreadful movie and all my friends were portrayed in there in ways that i could not recognize and they had this most improbable romance story built on top of the actual land use case and it turned out after i said how this be? But it turned out it was true. So, I mean, the little pink house goes in history. That's not a take and pay question. That's a question of don't take it all. And that's what's called the public use limitation, as opposed to the just compensation limitation. And I could see you're starting to,

your eyes are starting to well over. No, it's not. It's not that it's just we're over time. And I'm thinking if we go over time, then we have to, because this is going to be on Sirius Radio. We have a lot of time, so I have to wrap it up. Okay, I do. I'm owning me, all right?

And same time next year or whatever it is. Please, please, please again. And we'll get you on earlier because I have a million questions I'd like to ask you, really. That's fine. And I highly recommend the professor's book on the Constitution. The Classical Liberal Constitution. The Classical Liberal Constitution.

I learned a lot from that book. Okay, good night, everybody. Eagle, do you have any comments on takings? No. All right. So long, everybody. Thank you again. Okay, goodbye.

We managed to do it. Okay. Goodbye, everybody. Bye, thank you so much. Okay, and next time, send me a link that doesn't blow up do it. Okay. Goodbye, everybody. Bye. Thank you so much. Okay. And next time, send me a link that doesn't blow up my computer. Okay. Bye-bye. Did Noam, yeah, I thought Noam was going to stick around just so we could add a little time at the end.

He kind of hightailed it off. I guess he had, maybe he had to, you know, he's always got with his kids, always have some, do you have any thoughts about Marilyn Mans Manson I know you wanted to talk about Marilyn Manson I have a lot of thoughts about Marilyn Manson I'm I'm interested in talking about it because we talk so much about cancel culture and how as people who do what we do how against cancel culture we are um which I think I'm one of. I don't like that. But then I, you know, his label, I think, dropped him. He lost his job. He was on some TV show. And...

This is all out of the Evan Rachel Wood accusations? The accusations? I haven't heard about it at all. Well, Evan Rachel Wood, you know who that is, right? That was his fiancée. Okay. They never got married. Yeah, so

when she was 19 and they were 38, I think they were engaged for a while and she said that he started grooming her when she was a teenager and was incredibly abusive and then his old assistant came out and said that you know he'd seen like he he bore witness to that and horrible and like a few other people came forward with accounts too um i don't know what is what does he what does she mean abusive yeah yeah i was gonna ask that what did she because abusive can mean so many different things like

like physically abusive like he was like you know like chris brown like what was he doing you doing hold on i i just because i don't want to um artist love bailey accuses manson of holding a gun to her head um let's see hold on sexual assault um former Manson guitarist Wes Borland says accusations against Manson are all true I mean there are all sorts of just like horrific abuse allegations I don't know the specifics I mean

um well I'm just I don't know if this is true or not these accusations obviously they should be taken seriously i just want to underline that marilyn manson is not jewish which is uh always good news when somebody's accused of sexual impropriety english german and irish descent and even though what i'm talking about is a black man you don't like to see black people in the spotlight for bad shit.

I'm going to throw it out there. Marilyn Manson is not black. You think Eagle's also half Jewish. Aren't you half Jewish? You know what's crazy? Hearing this story is just so like, well, I mean, when you look at Marilyn Manson,

what did you, like, I'm not saying it's okay what he did, but I'm saying like it's, I expect terrible things from Marilyn Manson. He looks like a monster. Like, I expect terrible things. He looks like a weirdo. I mean, a monster. He looks like a weirdo. He looks like somebody that could, certainly, you're not shocked.

Yeah, I'm not shocked. If indeed these accusations are true, we don't know. But you look at Marilyn Manson, yeah, okay, that's not the craziest thing i've ever heard yeah um i mean that's that's a good point you know but uh but but we don't know you know he's an odd odd sort of a fellow well ali colbert who you guys know sure ali posted um i'm absolutely shocked to learn that this man who looks like a penis in drag is a creep. Yeah. That sums it up, I guess.

That more articulately states what we've been saying. So I don't like this cancel culture shit, but I also feel like and I could be wrong and if he didn't do any of these things I also feel like and I could be wrong you know and if he didn't do any of these things

I would feel terrible but I also feel like I don't know what else are you supposed to do like so many people are coming out and saying this like it almost feels like yeah he should not be able

to fucking do whatever he wants and we go through this every time somebody is accused i know of something horrible this is always the same discussion it's like at what level of certitude do you need to it for it to be justifiable to start canceling somebody. I think it's weird that people treat fame like it's a privilege, when I don't think it is. I don't think success is a privilege. You know, you can take away a privilege from someone, but if you take away something that's not a privilege, like you earn it.

You earn riches and fame and all that stuff. So it's not a privilege. So if you take it away from him, right, and it doesn't have to do with ratings. Like I can understand if a network, let's say he's not a privilege. So if you take it away from him, right. And it doesn't have to do with ratings. Like I can understand if a network, let's say he's on a TV show and the network's like, if we keep Marilyn Manson on, the ratings are going to drop and people are going to hate us. So let's fire him. I get that. But if it's just like, this isn't prosecutable in court right now. So let's, as a society, cancel him and take away his career. I disagree with that. I'm like, I mean.

Yeah, I do too. I mean, most of the time. People also have the right to individually decide I'm not going to buy his records anymore. And people have a right to say to encourage others to do like, well, it's like, I, I, I'm a little bit torn. I think at a certain point when we're, when, when guilt has been, here's the issue to me is, is guilt has to be established with some level of certitude, you know?

I don't know what that level would be and how a court of law is the best place, not a perfect place. Cause the court of law doesn't guarantee, guarantee perfect justice, but the court of law is the best place to decide guilt or innocence. But one can get a reasonable idea of guilt or innocence even without a court of law. It's also interesting when people get in these situations

and like, you know, stuff comes out about people post-prime. Because it's like, I mean, what is Marilyn Manson really going to lose at this point? Like he's past his prime. He's way past his prime. So it's like if this was-

I don't need his name. I mean, nobody wants to go through life being thought of as a sexual predator or as an abuser. like he's past his prime he's way past his prime so it's like if this was his name i mean nobody wants to go through life being thought of as a sexual predator as an abuser but career-wise like cancel wise it's like you can cancel them but i don't know because i don't along with these people i don't know much about marilyn manson either i couldn't i feel like you feel like that because you're in your 20s but when you're you know you know, 50-something or however long he is, I mean, he's not thinking about, he's not like, oh, well, I've done everything I'm going to do.

What's the state of his career? It's either he has a robust career or he's finished. No, I mean, I think he's doing shit. Well, I don't know anything about Marilyn Manson as an artist. I only know him about him because of his makeup and the sex abuse allegations that have been for the, uh, I was really scared of him.

And then when I got older and I could get past the way he looked, I actually thought, Oh wow, this guy's very talented. Like his music was like really, you know, uh, good for that type. I don't listen to that type of music per se, but when I would hear that music, I'd be like, Oh, you could tell he's better than a lot of his contemporaries. And now I'm hearing this, I'm just like, oh, wow, he matches the makeup. Is his name Manson?

Is that his real name? I'm looking that up right now. No, it's not. Did he choose it because of Charles Manson? Oh, his name is Warner. Yeah. He chose the name Manson. And in and of itself,

that's a little bit creepy, don't you think? Right there. I think Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson yeah who's the name manson and in and of itself that's a little bit creepy don't you think right there i think marilyn monroe and charles manson was the idea right so naming yourself after charles manson's i mean you know it could be an interesting artistic choice but it does give one pause and a little bit uh a little bit creepy me but i think he could have success while doing that well he could be like okay let's name myself A little bit, a little bit creepy to me, but. I think he could have success while doing that. While he could be like, okay, let's name myself Manson. And then somehow that works in the industry.

That's like amazing to me. Okay. So you're right. Like there does. I mean, I don't know. I guess I felt like it seems like there is some degree of certitude here. Like, you know like look hitler was never i mean no one brought this example we always comes back to hitler right uh

hitler was never tried hitler was never tried in the court of law but we're all pretty sure he's guilty right and we condemn him and if he and if he was still alive you wouldn't want him in your restaurant so at some level by hitler's art today you wouldn't do that you wouldn't say we got to separate the art from the artist. At some point, you'd be like, okay, we don't, you know, he's guilty. I mean, OJ, most people assume that he's guilty, even though the court of law said otherwise. And if you didn't want him in your restaurant, I would understand that.

If you didn't want to patronize him by his book or whatever, you know, people do that. And I couldn't find fault with that, even though in a court... So the legal system is our best um it's our best bet but it you know i don't think it's the only recourse allowable oj's book what was it called i didn't do it but if i had but if i did it this is how i would have done it and then he goes and says like exactly how they were killed is that the one yeah I think so you know but

I just but the main concern to me is trial by Twitter is and trial by social media is very inexact and prone to error right that's the issue if guilt is established with reasonable certainty then people have the right

to to um not see his concerts or did not hire him and that sort of thing speaking of social media eagle does this thing which maybe you've seen which seems to be quite popular on instagram where he asks his um robust following to you know, what is it, to tell you something or to ask you a question? I, uh, I just, a confessional. A confessional. And then he gets the most fucking, I mean, people tell you the most insane, sexually inappropriate, like, I mean, Dan, have you seen this no i haven't seen

what i'm doing right now is i'm actually on instagram trying to find eagle are you eagle wit on instagram are you l gay i'm uh eagle wit official but it's usually it's not gonna be on there now it's usually like in my insta story and i do it like I don't know once every couple months maybe and uh people make some crazy stuff will you share some of the stuff with us because I read those and I'm like what why are people telling you this I mean I've had you know I'm trying to think of some good ones I I had one that was like my husband left and I fucked the gardener. Like it'll be like, it'll, you know, like my cousin and me slept together. Like it'll be weird, like things that no one would ever tell anyone

for some reason they think they can tell me. And I mean, I've also had ones where it's like, basically I'm basically now an accomplice. Like I've had ones where I'm like, I'm pretty sure that's like murder or something. Why are you telling me this? But do you see, you can see who's telling you, right why are you telling me this but do you see you can see who's telling you right and you just make it anonymous yeah i could see who's telling me

and i post it anonymous but i could see who's telling me well i think a lot of it is that that if people are fans of yours you know people they get nutty when they're in the presence of somebody that they're a fan of and they figure well if eagle's going to pay attention to me if i admit this shit then that's worth it to them that's my guess is to this with the just just you know knowing how people are around celebrities now now you know you're not a household name but you're you're you're a lot of people are fans of yours and um you know maybe if eagle if i can tell eagle something crazy he'll pay attention to me and i'll get to be closer to him i didn't even think about it like that i just thought these people were out

of there that's just my theory as to why people are are uh confessing shit to you yeah they confess them they confess some really weird stuff i mean do you have anything cooking career-wise in this pandemic i mean even though we're in a pandemic people are doing shit for example we had on dean edwards last week and he's on the netflix special with tiffany haydish called uh're Ready? They Ready. They Ready. They Ready. Okay. People are doing shit. So are you doing shit

is the question. Yeah, I had some comedy sensuals that come out. We filmed it during the pandemic. We filmed it outdoors. And it came out a couple weeks ago, like three weeks ago.

And it was cool. You know, it was just one stand up set. But that was like all you know? It was just one stand-up set. But that was, like, all the productivity I had during 2020 when it comes to, like, progress career-wise. But it was cool. We filmed it outdoors, and it was socially distanced. It was weird. It was really weird.

Well, you're so young that it's like, you know, it's not as crude. The fact that you just lost a year of your life, even if it goes into two years, it's not quite as critical as somebody that might be older that might be you know in a different position

so it's good what I'm saying is that this happened to you when you were 26 is I think a positive thing I'm trying to say it as a positive man I'm like do we count this year as a year that we've done stand-up? Like, people will ask me, like, how long have you been doing stand-up?

That's a good question. I want to say, I mean, technically, if you count this year, right, six years, if you count 2020. But I want to say five because I'm like, I barely did stand-up in 2020. Well, for me, first of all, I don't count it anyway because I'm like, my number is so high at this point that I just I don't I lie anyways but um that's what I always tell you you're the OG what's the OG original gangster man you've been that's true but um be that as it may uh I I just say I've been doing it 20 years and leave it at that but I will count this year in my own personal calculation because I did write some jokes this year um then i performed uh

you know i i performed central park over the summer and i've done some zoom shows and i've managed to write some jokes so i've made progress uh as a stand-up so i will count you also wrote a book i did but that's not stand-up but yes i did oh wow that's not stand-up and and uh and i'm i i i included that on the topics, possible topics for discussion tonight, because I'm wondering about self-publishing. I wonder if Periel has any thoughts about that. Assuming nobody, I can't get an actual publisher, publisher. Well, I think that you can get an actual publisher, publisher.

I think that, you know, publishing, writing a book and publishing a book are two very different beasts, right? I mean, maybe it's like being like a brilliant, or maybe it's not like this. I don't know. You'd probably be able to speak to this better than I would is that, you know, one of the things that I've always loved about stand up is that my impression has been is that like if you're really funny you're gonna probably succeed right like i think if you're really funny to stand up you'll make a living okay i don't guarantee uh stardom but i do think you can guarantee or nearly guarantee making a living and a decent living if you're really funny yeah it's amazing but i think most art forms aren't like that correct that's so that's incredible just who am i saying that to like just literally last week i think do we have a new newer comic i was telling somebody this i

said comedy i think it was a younger comic that was on our show recently and i said you know if your if your relatives give you shit about being a comic, let them know. We're all making a living. It's not like being an actor where nobody's making a living except for five people. We're all making a fucking living at this. Anybody that's- That's incredible.

I mean, you can be like a phenomenal painter and, you know, starve to death. Do you have a day job right now? No. Eagle is 26. How do you been doing that long? And he's making a living. Eagle, as I understood it, had one day job.

You have a joke. You have a very funny joke about this, right? I worked at Foot Locker. I did work at Foot Locker before I started doing standup. And then I just did open mics, broke broke eating dollar slices and living with my dad and then i started making money i don't know stand-up has this way of like if you're funny i don't know the money comes now i don't want to encourage people under false pretenses eagle is is is toward the extreme in terms of he he made he started making money quicker than most

but the point is is everybody eventually if they are good and can make it, we'll make money. Now you may have to go on the road and do shitty clubs and it's not necessarily glamorous, okay? But there's money to be made. You know, again, you're not necessarily gonna be a big star and it may not even be fun because if you don't like traveling to Buffalo or whatever, you know, but,

but there's money to be made if you, if you are good enough to make an audience laugh for 45 minutes. It's amazing. It's really amazing. Cause yeah, like you said, a painter, you know, rappers, whatever you are, it's, you can be so good and just be broke and not make a living doing it. Yeah. It's incredible. So, so writing books is a little bit different than that, I think, because you can write,

be an incredible writer, but in the same way that you have to have like pretty thick skin to make it in comedy or in the entertainment industry, I think you have to have that same thick skin when you're a writer, for sure. I mean, I have like boxes full of rejection letters, right? But it's, so there's the writing of the book and I think the book has to be great, which

Dan's, I mean, I'll say yours is, and I know that you, everybody always accuses me of being hyperbolic, but you are brilliant and you are hysterical and the book is amazing. Enough to be able to say that, but then there's the whole other world of actually getting it published, right? And so you have to put the writing of it aside and turn your brain off and then go and figure out how to publish it and i mean listen 50 shades of gray or whatever that fuck that book was she self-published that you know that right yeah i know that was originally suppose yeah it was my um my my dad is an author i don't know i don't know if is, I don't know if I ever have ever said this. I don't think you did, no.

Yeah, he has two books, two published books. I don't know, Dan, if you want, I don't know if he knows something. You know what I mean? I could like hook you guys up to talk. He knows something, I'm sure. Yeah.

I mean, what books? Were they novels or some other nonfiction? No, they're fiction. They're novels they're novels oh wow what's his name uh stephen witt stephen witt nice jewish guy nice jewish guy um but so the thing is is that i don't think you need to self-publish it is the thing i think you just need to find um you're fortunate enough because you are who you are and you've accomplished what you've accomplished i mean publishers are looking for they want to make sure they're going to sell your book like that that's what they care about and so there's like a whole marketing thing about him. Yeah, I think you're giving him a name, bro.

You can get him. It says he was born in New Hampshire in 1979. Is that your father? No, that's not him. It's Stephen with a PH. Yeah, it says about the author, Stephen Witt was born in New Hampshire in 1979. Is that him or is it another person? No, it's another person.

Another person, okay, good. Because I don't want your father to be that much younger than me or younger than me. Or younger than me at all, quite frankly. But that's the only speaking author I could find. Voice, did you write a book called Voices? It says Steve, no, that's with a V. Anyway, I can't find him.

Is there's, so basically, this guy, the guy that you're looking at, they have an ongoing thing where they email each other because people will reach out to the wrong Stephen Witt. I don't think you should self-publish the book. I think you have to get on the fucking horse and deal with getting it published. And like, that's a thing in and of itself. But like, you have to be willing to deal with it. Yeah, it's just, it's like, you know, annoying, obviously. Well, I...

To try to... Yeah, I know, I've done it, you know, I've, not to uh not to brag but um i i i am familiar perry i gave me the name of a her friend who's a literary agent i sent him the book and i haven't heard back and i'm too scared to contact him because i don't want him to say yeah i don't want to like that conversation like so did you read my book yeah yeah yeah yeah i read it yep but you i mean that might be what happened immediately you know immediately that he's like uh he didn't like it you know but that might be what happens and that's fine you just need one agent who does like it it's then you know how it is like when we're doing stand-up and you like

you're killing but you look at the one person in the crowd who's not laughing and for some reason... I know that everybody else is laughing, but right now I'm not confident. In other words, if I had five agents that loved it, I wouldn't care about this particular agent not liking it. I don't have any agents that like it. But you haven't sent it to anybody else.

I have, and I haven't heard... I haven't gotten... I got two rejections, and then the others didn't respond. Well, you better develop some thick fucking skin, my friend. I'm developing calluses because I'm playing guitar, but you mean like figuratively speaking, thick skin. Okay. Eagle, where can people watch your Comedy Central set?

Comedy Central, I mean. It's on Comedy Central. It's also on their YouTube. It's on Comedy Central. It's also on their YouTube. It's on their YouTube account. So you can just type in Eaglewick Comedy Central. It'll pop up. It'll pop up on YouTube.

And, you know, at Dan Natterman for all your Twitter and Instagram needs. And at Live From The Table. and you can also email us at com podcast comedyseller.com for questions comments suggestions and constructive criticism with regard to the podcast we'll see you next time bye everybody stay safe