The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Getting to know Comic Adam Muller

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

Adam Muller is a New York based, MIT-educated, former finance professional turned comedian. His comedy specials, "According to Plan" and "Funny to You" are available on YouTube.

The Comedy Cellar live from the table is brought to you by Sheath Underwear. If you want to support the show and get 20% off your order, head over to sheathunderwear.com slash cellar. Code cellar for 20% off your first order. That's sheathunderwear.com slash cellar. Code cellar. We love them and we know you're going to love them too. This is Live from the Table, the official podcast of the world-famous comedy seller coming at you from SiriusXM 99 Rock Comedy.

And wherever you get your podcasts, this is Dan Matterman. Noam is on vacation. He's not with us. We are on Zoom, so theoretically he could be with us, but he's elected not to be with us because he has a lobster dinner that awaits him. I'm here with Periel Ashenbrand, and Adam Muller is with us. Hello, thanks for having me. Yes, if you noticed, my intro was less enthusiastic than normal. It's because we're all doing this by Zoom because the studio wasn't available. Is that the problem, Perrielle? It's a long story. Hi, Adam.

Hi. Let me finish my thought. So we have to do this by Zoom. So I'm in my apartment, which is very echoey, number one. Number two, I'm self-conscious about my neighbor's hearing. I'm very against podcasts by Zoom on principle, but here we are. I'll try to make the best. What do you think neighbors are going to hear?

I don't want them hearing my podcast. I just I'm self-conscious. Because I when I'm in the hall, I can hear every fucking thing that they're saying. Every fucking thing I can hear. Is anybody else? Is that just my building? Adam, you say what? Well, I mean, they can always listen to it after, right? When it comes out. So what's, how is it that different? Yeah, but then they're listening to it

because they want to, not because they happen to be waiting for the elevator. Oh, I see, I see. That's the nature of living in an apartment in New York City. Is my building unusual or when you're in the hallway? Oh, it's New York City. That's every building is like that, more or less.

Can you read? I don't need them banging on my door and saying, hey, get some better guests. They would definitely, if they hear this one, they definitely will. But I happen to think Adam's a great guest. That's just, that was just a joke. Why don't you read a little bit of his bio?

Adam, I'm sorry. I was distracted. Yes, Adam Muller is a New York City-based comedian, former finance professional, turned stand-up. He comes to us by way of Toronto, Canada, yet another Canadian that's making inroads in the New York comedy scene. And he was vice president at Goldman Sachs.

Am I reading that correctly? Yep. That is correct. OK, we have a bit of a delay. Is that it seems to be. What's that? So I don't know what kind of money a vice president makes at Goldman Sachs, but I know Goldman Sachs is a very big deal in the world of finance. Yeah, I mean, not as much as people think would be how I would answer that. Not enough to keep somebody away from their dreams, apparently. No, no, that's.

Or perhaps so much that they don't need to do it anymore and they can just... What's that? Well, I'm certainly not retired. I made enough that I could, for the first few years of comedy, I could just do comedy. But not enough that I could never, that I never needed a real income stream.

Now, are they hiring at Goldman Sachs? Because I'm looking to make the opposite move from comedy. I've had enough of this they might they might be i'm not really connected anymore there's a position you know i remember years ago i went to wharton i don't know if you knew that undergraduate my grades were very very bad for certain reasons and nobody would hire me but i recall calling up goldman sachs and saying hey i'm in the neighborhood you know i i try to i try to i like i try to sell them like i was selling them like a used car i'm like i'm in the neighborhood you know i uh yeah i thought i could stop by and shake your hand and you know about job

he's over there that's not how they operate. But, you know, you have to have a good grade from a good grade from a good school, which I didn't. So, but in any case, welcome, Adam has recently passed the Comedy Cellar and it was me that recommended him. No, thank you. But thank you for the, thank you very much.

Yeah, I owe you a a debt okay well uh i i take venmo okay and zel gift cards do those work no i'd rather just have cash okay or you just give me me like a visa gift card, I guess. Oh, sure. You don't owe me anything, obviously. I'm happy to do it. When people ask me to recommend them, I typically say yes, because it's very awkward to say no. My level of enthusiasm when I recommend somebody will vary. So you got my highest enthusiasm. Not that it matters, because Noam will look at the tape and will decide for himself. But how has your experience been thus far?

Well, it's only been it's only been a couple of weeks, but it's been it's been a blast so far. I mean, it's it's it's so much fun. the rooms all i mean i've done i've only well i guess if you include the audition i've done three of the four rooms and uh they're they're all great the crowds are great the energy's great so um you know i'm just thrilled to to have the opportunity well as i was saying to you last night you know you're not out of the woods uh i was telling you but now i'll tell the listeners uh just because you were passed to work at the club doesn't mean you're not under scrutiny you'll still be under scrutiny um pretty much forever um you know if you start not killing uh then then you'll be bounced out of there. I mean, I still feel that way.

And I think if I stop doing well, then they'll stop using me. So that's the thing about the seller. That's why it's not a great club to do new stuff at. You do do new stuff, do maybe one new joke. Unless you're Chris Rock you're chris rock or dave chappelle obviously you can do whatever you want but for everybody else you know maybe slip one new joke in but you know it's not a place i enjoy doing new stuff at yeah no it's look it seems like the first the audition is is step one

and then you know then you've got and and the audition doesn't end with the audition it continues that's that's how i've thought about it and wanted i'm trying to treat each set like it's just an extension of the audition um and the goal now is to try to stick yeah and then just do your new shit somewhere else yeah you know yeah look there are new joke shows at several clubs around i mean i know the seller has one but also that's that's that's a great you know when it's a new joke night that's the make if you make use of it because if something doesn't work it's okay you know i'm i'm a pretty risk averse person when it comes to a paying crowd where you're expected to do well. I don't want to try something that doesn't have a high probability

of success. Is that because you're concerned about the crowd not getting their money's worth, or you're concerned about not working at that club again? Well, I mean, I've always kind of had the attitude that to be aware of the crowd. So wherever I'm at, if if, you know, I probably know roughly what the tickets cost and if there's a two item or two drink minimum, I know what that's going to cost. And if someone's spending upwards of 50 bucks on a Friday or Saturday night to go out and see comedy, even if it's a showcase show and I'm only, you know, one sixth of the comedy they're going to see. I feel like there's there's an element of there's a job to do, which is to try to be as funny as you can. Yeah, I think. But, you know, as obvious as that sounds to you and me, I don't think every comic feels that way. Oh, no, I definitely don't think I mean, you know, every once in a while

on a primetime weekend show, I see someone pull out notes on stage and I just think, oh gosh, you know, you might be, you might be funny enough and far enough along in your career to get away with that. But I feel like it, it. Well, there's two categories of people that do that. I mean, if you're Chris Rock, you're going there, they're happy just to see you. And, and I think they enjoy taking part in the, in the, the in the in the process wherein you're trying out new jokes but but that's chris rock i don't know if that's yeah i'm sorry i mean i'm talking about people far less uh established or well known than chris rock but yeah there's also people that believe that i'm going to say my truth and profound truth and if you don't go along for the ride, that's your problem. You know, I get that's there too, because some people, I mean, one of the, one of the things I

guess, I guess I kind of love this about standup, but it's this weird sort of Venn diagram of, you know, like art and craft versus a business and, and how you live within those circles is, you know, every comic makes different choices on different shows. But there are some people that I get, you know, if you just don't enjoy my art, that's on you. And then there's the other element, which is if they're not laughing,

then I haven't done my job. And it's just trying to navigate those two things. I'm in the latter category. Not only do I have an, I done my job, but I'm worthless as a person. Well, yeah, then it sticks with you after it. Yeah, for sure. I've been all week long. I've been just struggling to come up, you know, cause we're only as we're only as satisfied many of us as our new, as our newest joke that worked. So all week, the past couple of weeks, I've just been fiddling around

with this premise and it hasn't worked and I'm infuriated every time I leave the stage. Do you want to workshop it right now? I don't want to workshop it right now because I don't do that. Because this is too small of sample size. You never know. And if it doesn't work, it's going to get in my head.

And if it does work, it doesn't mean anything anyway because it's only two people. So I can't. Can we get a little bit more of Adam's story, backstory? Because I think this is... Well, Adam was born the son of sharecroppers.

I'm serious. This is such a unique. Well, for the Adams to Adams Canadian, as I mentioned earlier, that's not the part that I was trying to really dig into. Fascinating is that I'm building up to that. OK. With from Toronto. Yeah, I guess I'd say from two places because I was in high school. I was born in Toronto and then I was in Toronto for high school.

But between being born in high school, I lived in Western Canada in Alberta. So kind of half my childhood was Calgary and half was Toronto. And are you an American citizen now? Yeah, I'm a dual citizen now. Okay. And how do you feel about that?

Well, it's funny. Without being overly political, I got my green card in like 2007 and sort of thought that's all I would do because that allows me to be a permanent resident. They can't get kicked out. And then in 2016, there was a change at the top. And I suddenly got concerned. Like what if some crazy law gets proposed that says we're not green card doesn't necessarily get deported. Can't they? Well, you're a permanent resident, but it's still got tossed out if you do something really bad. Yeah, that's a good question.

I think if you did something really bad, Yeah, that's a good question. I think if you did something really bad, you'd just go to an American prison. But in any event, I also wanted, you know, I'd lived here long enough that I also felt like I wanted to be part of the system and be able to vote, which was really why I, and, you know, once you've had your green card for, I think, six years, you're eligible to apply for citizenship. And I'd had it way longer than that. So I just applied. And it took a couple of years to go through the process

and then became a dual citizen. The only negative consequences are tax issues. But other than that, it's fine. I don't know if I mentioned that my parents are both kids. Yeah. But they're citizens as well. They were just permanent residents for years and then they're citizens as well. They were just permanent residents for years and then they were citizens.

Okay. Anyway, but apparently I was less interested in your Canadian background and more interested in the fact that you worked at Goldman Sachs for a number of years. How long did you work there? I was at Goldman for about eight years

and then I was at a small hedge fund for about three years. And this whole time, were you like, what the fuck am I doing? I want to be a comic. No, for most of this, there was there wasn't comedy wasn't on the radar, really. At all. At all. You weren't like a funny kid or you weren't like, you didn't grow up.

I was very good. Like, I was very good at Goldman in retrospect. I don't think I thought of this at the time, but I was very good at, you know, it's three in the morning.

You're preparing a board presentation to get approval for a hundred and twelve billion dollar acquisition. And and someone's freaking out because there might be a mistake in the numbers and you haven't slept in three days. So it's almost like being drunk in terms of your ability

to think. I was very good at breaking the tension. Did you hate working there or you didn't mind it, but you would rather have been doing something else. I definitely didn't hate it. I didn't mind. I didn't mind it. But also, like, at some weird sort of sadistic level, I enjoyed it. Mm-hmm. You know, it's sort of, it becomes your entire life. But you sort of, if you buy into it, there's a thrill and an excitement to what you're doing. Like it may seems a little ridiculous to me now,

but you get, you get pretty excited when you're doing something that the next morning is going to be on the front page of the wall street journal kind of a thing. That's I did a show at a guy's me and Bill Burr. I was opening for Bill Burr. Oh wow. At somebody's house. We're doing this, the wife's this Goldman Sachs guy's wife's 40th birthday party. So she wanted to have a comedy

show at their house. Now their house was in Manhattan. It was like a five-story townhouse. This thing was ungodly. Apparently Woody Allen had lived there prior. And this, so his wife was 40. He was probably in his early fortiess like what the hell are these guys doing that they have a house this in adam just said 120 billion dollar deals yeah but adam doesn't live in a house like that no i do not um you know have you been to his house i haven't been to his house well maybe he's downplaying his his one one uh i can remember my first year at Goldman. I was friends with... There's classes of associates that all come in together.

So I'd become friendly with some people in my class and one of them was getting married. And so I went to his bachelor party in Vegas and he'd gone to Harvard Business School. And we're at the bachelor party and there's a nice dinner at some fancy restaurant and the dinner didn't end until 1.30 in the morning. And we're walking across the casino floor and his father, his soon-to-be father-in-law,

says, all right, guys, have a great weekend. I'm going to fly back to New York. And I had sat beside his father-in-law at dinner. We talked for hours, but I had no idea who he was. And then I just kind of blurted out what kind of flight leaves at like two thirty in the morning. And he gave me this look like he just goes, my jet and then walked off. And he was the golden guy. No, he was the founder of Blackstone. So he's he's probably worth fifty billion dollars or something crazy. And I had no idea who he was.

And then I felt very, very dumb because I guess you're supposed to know those people but i was i wasn't savvy at the time so what what what caused you then uh to decide to to uh leave that life for us to handle well um so it was a couple things happened happened. So I've been at Goldman and like the one thing about the, the one of the biggest values of working at Goldman is, is leaving because you, because it opens a lot of other doors for a lot of people. It's a stepping stone. Like obviously there's a group of people that stick around and,

you know, move up the pyramid, but it is a system that, that sort of fires at the bottom 10% every year. There's always new people coming in. And as you get more senior, the job changes and you're less sort of doing the deal analysis and you're less in the weeds and you're more of a snake oil salesman a little bit and and i didn't find that as um as rewarding and i wanted to it wasn't comedy at first i wanted to switch to the other side of the table and be the investor instead of the banker and i looked around internally and they offered me an opportunity internally but i i didn't take it because i felt like I wanted to leave. I felt like once you flip that switch, like when you're working 100 hours a week for eight years,

once you decide you might not want to be there anymore, it's very hard to work that hard. And so you kind of met that mental switch got flipped and I kind of had to leave. No one forced me. What does that mean? You felt like a snake oil salesman a little bit. What do you mean by that?

Well, you're going around to companies trying to convince them to buy other companies or trying to convince them to sell their company. You're a salesman or salesperson. It may or may not be snake oil, but you're a salesperson. You're a salesman. You're a real estate agent in a sense. And then you've got these other people that are a couple of years out of business school that are staying until four in the morning to run the numbers for you. And I, I was great at being the guy that stayed and made the Excel spreadsheet, but I hated ruining someone else's weekend. I found that very,

like it, it bugged me when I had to say, no, no, you gotta, this has to be done. I need to see this Sunday afternoon. And I know like,

they're going to be in the, they're going to be what I, they're gonna have to do what I used to do, but I didn't like doing that to other people so it's like I'm not sure you don't necessarily hate doing it when you were doing it as you as you had mentioned no I mean I you know I missed a lot of life events for a long time but I I kind of enjoyed the process I guess but so so you said initially you just wanted to move to the other side of the table so again the comedy thing coming yeah so so when I but but when I left Goldman and I had a little time, I had for the first time

I had, not only did I have a little bit of time before I kind of the hedge fund got off the ground, but also I had a little more control over when I was going to work. I was going to work just as hard, but I had a little bit more control over the hours because it's a lot of reading and research type of stuff. And I don't know, I don't remember why I did it, but I took a comedy class and it was, you know, standard class, you know, once a week for six weeks. It's basically a feedback open mic with your classmates. And at the end, it's kind of a bringer show.

And at the time, the class I took the shows at Caroline's was a a lot of fun and then i and then i did one bringer after that and then you know work at the at the hedge fund took off and i didn't think about comedy for like another six years that was it wow and then uh i was at the hedge i'll try to make this quick because it's i don't know how interesting it is but i was at the hedge fund. I'll try to make this quick because I don't know how interesting it is. But I was at the hedge fund for three years. I'll see if my neighbor across the hall. See what your neighbor thinks. She's decided not to take the elevator down to listen to your story about hedge funds.

I kind of got recruited away a little bit to go. There's a large investment manager called PIMCO, which stands for Pacific Investment Management Company, which is a big fixed income manager. So bonds and stuff. One of the biggest in the world. It's an odd name. It sounds like PIMCO.

It does a little bit. But I mean, at the time I was there, they had something like $1.5 trillion they were managing. Just an absurd amount of money. It's hard to even conceive of. And they were trying to build an equity investing business. And a guy I'd worked with at Goldman had ended up there. And he was coming through New York because they're based in Southern California.

And he's like, why don't you come work with us? And so I did. I got to move to Newport Beach, California for four years. And then they decided they didn't want the business that we'd started. So they closed it down. We got severance. And I moved back to New York because that's where all the finance jobs are. And, um, I didn't know in a weird, I don't, I was kind of like trying to, I was in a weird, it was a weird point. Cause like I'd never had anything career-wise kind of go bad

before. And, uh, I ended up doing a couple of phone calls with a life coach. And the one thing she said, which stuck to me was was like if you have a little time right now do something that you wouldn't otherwise have time to do and i thought back to that comedy class i'd taken years before and um and the same class still existed so i just took it again because you can't look for a job for 15 hours a day but that was her point it's like you can't there's only so many hours a day you can spend looking for a new job so do something you can't look for a job for 15 hours a day, but that was her point. It's like, you can't, there's only so many hours a day you can spend looking for a new job. So do something you wouldn't. So I actually took a screenwriting class and a comedy class.

And then I started just doing open mics. And before I knew it without even consciously thinking about it, I'd stopped looking for a job. And once I realized I'd done that, I kind of made a budget for myself and was like, okay, here's three years of living expenses. Just do as many open mics as you can and see what happens. Wow.

And here we are. And how long ago is that? That was 2016, 2017 in there. I think you're a rarity as most comics, I think are people that dreamed of it from their, from their childhood. That's, that's my case. So I think you're a rarer person that sort of came, not rare that you started late, but rare that you never even kind of as a, I mean, as a kid, did you have any aspirations?

You know, baseball players or they want to be rock stars or you have as a kid, all I cared about was hockey. I was a hockey player in Canada. I was in that actually what I think is sort of a tough spot to be in where you're pretty good, but not good enough. So you're just good enough to have the dream, but not good enough to actually get anywhere. But I really enjoyed it and it's all I really thought about. Um, so I didn't even

really consume that much standup, but once I had tried it like that first few years, especially like I, I basically treated my first few years of standup the way I treated investment banking. Like I had a schedule, I got up, I was writing, I would, I was watching stuff. I was transcribing late night sets and looking at what the jokes looked like on paper, going out to as many open mics a day as I could. And then, you know, get some sleep and do it again the next day.

And I absolutely loved it. Did you ever have any ambitions like before you got into finance? Were you like one of those kids that read the Wall Street Journal or was really fascinated by the world of finance or it's just, it's a way to make money. And, you know, I'm Why this vague notion that I would go into business. Like if you'd asked me in high school,

what are you going to do with your life? I would have probably said business, but I was also the kind of kid that would have said the least words possible to get you to leave me alone. I just didn't like sharing, um, like things that seemed, you you know that i didn't really know so there was an i had a bit of an aimlessness to me i suppose i also feel like i'm one of those people where i focus i like to focus on one thing at a time and put everything into it so even like that's what banking maybe or maybe that's what investment banking did to me that's all you really do just to jump really quickly over to the whole hedge fund thing i don't't know if people know precisely what, I mean, it's a term that everybody's heard, but it's a hedge fund is basically, it's just, if you have a lot of money, you give the hedge

fund some of your money and they invest it for you. And hopefully they make, they keep a fee, whether they make money or lose money, they get to keep a certain fee and then hopefully they make money or lose money, they get to keep a certain fee and then hopefully they make money for it. Yeah, I mean, the typical structure, or at least, and I assume it's probably still like this, is structured as a limited partnership, which I think can have a maximum of like 99 partners,

and typically, which is an investor. So investor is a limited partner and they put the money in and you invest it. And typically, which is an investor. So investor is a limited partner. And they put the money in and you invest it. And you take a small fee on all the money you have, like one and a half, two percent. But then the real fun is you take a huge fee on the money you make. So on the return you make, you take like 20 percent or 15 percent. These hedge funds work. I mean, can they be like just a standard index fund,

which just, you know, consistently? No. I mean, some do, you know, some, but over longer periods of time, you know, it's hard to find data to support that it really works consistently. But there are some people that are very, very good at it. What's an index fund? Well, like an index fund is just like,

I have some money in Vanguard. They just put it in a sort of a diversified portfolio of stock. And they don't take a fee. Maybe they take a fee. They take a small fee. It's usually very small. It's probably like a 10th of a percent or something. They also don't give they don't take a fee maybe they take a fee they take a small fee it's usually very small it's probably like like a tenth of a percent or something they also don't give you any advice they just it's just right usually it represents like a stock market index like if the dow jones

index you could buy a a fund that is just that is just the dow jones for a very very small fee and then you just sort of own quote unquote the market we could start a podcast which is just adam giving financial advice to comics a lot of them need i get some weird questions you ever have a guy named greg lipman by the way greg lipman there's a comic no no he was a he's a head finder i went to school with him oh okay i don't know he worked for deutsche bank and uh one of the characters in the big short apparently is based on him. And then now he has. Oh, OK. Whatever.

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or were you still? When did he get in trouble? I feel like he wasn't a hedge fund guy was he? Well he wasn't running. I don't think I don't know if it was structured as a hedge fund. It was in some sort of investment management company but it was in hindsight

it was so obvious that there was shenanigans going on. Yeah, no, I was still I was still in finance at that point. Yeah. So what are your what are your goals as a as a comedian? I mean, are you happy just to make a living at it? And or do you have a desire to be famous or? I don't have any like the I don't have any specific goal of fame. If that's a byproduct of something else, I guess that would be interesting. And I think there's a cost

benefit to that. Fame is unfortunately the only way to make any money in this, Any real money. If you're famous, you have to be able to put people. In the old days when I started, the dream was to get a sitcom. That was what the 90s and the 80s wanted to get a sitcom. And then you get a big paycheck and then you become famous and you can do stand up or not. But you're going to make money from the sitcom.

But I don't know that the traditional sitcom even exists anymore and they're not giving comedians sitcoms like that so now the goal is to get 80 billion followers on instagram and tiktok and sell out theaters so that's that's the new thing but i don't and i think there's i mean there are people and we could we probably we know them who you know got successful on social media and got enough of a following that they can go on the road and sell tickets, whether it's theaters or whether it's, you know, club weekends. And that that that that's real money that can add up. That's a good living. And I wouldn't call them famous. I mean, I think they have they have a fan base, but they're not.

You know, fame isn't what it used to be like. You could be you could have a million followers on Instagram, which is a lot of people, but it's not the same kind of fame that Seinfeld had or that even Roseanne Barr had or Drew Carey, where everybody on planet earth, or at least in the United States knew who they were, no matter what age, you know, like a guy like, I don't know,

Chris DiStefano or Andrew Schultz, they have a huge fan base, but my mother doesn't know who they are. But my mother did know who Drew Carey was and who Roseanne Barr was and, you know, and they were on the cover. So it's a little bit more segmented. Yes, become sort of scattered, but in their worlds, they're sort of famous in their own in their world. But because of that, they're able to make a very, very good living. Right. They can still make tons of money. It's just it doesn't have they don't have the kind of fame that Seinfeld had. Yeah. And also Seinfeld is a billionaire, but they don't have the kind of fame that you had.

You saw with sitcom stars and things. I try to think of more short-term goals rather than long-term goals because it's easier to sleep at night that way, if that makes sense. It does make sense. It also seems like you're very well-suited. Like the way that you think about things seems very pragmatic and practical.

And so you make these measurable goals and then you put like everything into them. I mean, I suppose if you're accustomed to working a hundred hours a week, this is you can be successful in anything. Right. I'm wondering if it's, if, if you're going to bounce out of comedy at some point when you decide to make another shift with another, another life coach gets a whole.

I hope not. Yeah, I yeah i know right that's always that's probably my one thing that i should avoid just in case um but i i don't think so i think i think i enjoy it too much um yeah i can't imagine never say never right like i'm sure a lot of the i'm sure there's a lot of people that i'm sure if you, I'm sure when Eddie Murphy was 23, he said he'd never leave comedy and look what happened kind of thing. But, or never leave standup

because obviously he still does comedy, but I can't imagine that happening. It's too much fun. You're about to be a father. I believe you've mentioned. Yeah. Early next year. Wow.

Mazel tov. Yeah, thanks. year. Wow, Mazel Tov. Yeah, thanks. It's a relatively latent life. I don't know how old you are, but. Oh, yeah, no, it's it's. I'll qualify as an old dad, I think, by any metric for sure. It'll be interesting. But the good news is, is you'll get another at least half hour of jokes.

Oh, you know, even the process of getting to this point is ripe for material um because at this at this age it doesn't just happen by accident it's a science experiment you had to do ivf or whatever yeah yeah is your wife very much younger than you no no like a few years but you're, not, you know, we're, we're both old and both of our joints make noises in the morning kind of thing. So what are the risks? I mean, did the doctor kind of go over the risks with you in terms of, uh, you know, genetic defects or whatever that, that can happen? One of the, one of the benefits of IVF is,

is because you create the embryos in a lab, you can also genetic test them all and throw out ones that aren't pristine. So there's a little bit that solves for that a little bit. And it's like Frankenstein where they're like, just like mix it up and just like have at it. Now there's a lot of, there's a lot of, a lot that goes into it. And she, and she very smartly froze her eggs

over a decade ago. So, so it's, they're, they're much younger, they're much younger eggs. So you used her frozen eggs. Yeah.

And my current. And your 2023 sperm. Yes. And, and then they, can they freeze these embryos indefinitely? So theoretically, you know, you got born in the year 2300. I mean, I don't think, I don't think there's, I mean, once they're in the freezer, however that works. Yes, they can freeze them indefinitely. And that's kind of, that's kind of interesting. The trick is

trying to freeze them where you're going to be because she actually froze them in California and when they transported them to New York, they destroyed half of them. Do they transport them in just a Haagen-Dazs truck? There's some there's like two companies that specialize in transporting frozen frozen eggs. And I guess they didn't do a good job. And Haagen-Dazs is one of them. That's how they make most of their money.

That's really what mint chocolate chocolate chip is. But don't tell anyone. Yeah, well, you know, I've had no idea. You were so interested in the process of in vitro fertilization. Are you talking to me? Yes. Well, I mean, I'm interested in all things science and all things, you know, my interests are varied and wide. That's true.

It's very wild that the science allows them to do what they can do. So they do they parse out all of the um bad ones and then you're left with the best there's only so much they can do like the obvious um defects like uh down syndrome which i hesitate to call a defect yeah i was about down children are lovely people, but that is something that they do look for. Yeah, but I don't think that that's handled the way that it used to be handled anymore,

specifically with Down syndrome. But that's something that they can test for. They can't test for autism, for example. No. Which I've read can be more likely with older people. I don't know if that's true. We'll find out.

I hate to bring everybody down. So did your wife meet you when you were a high-flying finance person? What does she have to say about this? She's told me that if she met me when I was still at Goldman, she wouldn't have wanted anything to do with me. So she met you? She met me after, yeah. She Goldman, she wouldn't have wanted anything to do with me. Okay. So she met you. She met me after.

Yeah. She met you as a comedian, not as a hedge fund guy. Sort of at the very, a little bit before comedian, but, so I was still in finance, but I was on the,

it's not your life coach, by the way, you didn't marry. No, no, no. That would, that would be in,

that'd be in the act if that happened. Well, it can be in the act if i married my life coach she would have told me to stay in finance and keep making money probably but um no i was still i was still i was when i was working the tail end of the hedge fund i think so we've met we've known each other for a long time but i wasn't a banker which was very important apparently but but you were in the head first he does she doesn't mind the income hit that you've taken no she's been very she's very supportive of it which is which is uh i'm very lucky in that sense because not a lot of people would would like that yeah i've heard stories of comedians that uh you know they they

they married before becoming comedians and then then their spouse was just like, no, you're not doing that. Yeah. It ended the marriage. Really? She's very I mean, I know one one one example in particular, but I'm not going to say who, but it's a fairly well-known comedian. What's a tough I mean, it's a tough life, but

it wasn't well known when his wife told him, hey, cut this comedy shit. Wait, and then she left and then he became very successful? Pretty successful, yeah. And did she try to come back? I don't know that part of it.

That's like the best part. Well, I don't think so. I think she had moved on. But where did you meet your wife at? We met the old fashioned way at just at a bar in new york but that's not i guess that's the old it wasn't old-fashioned back then i guess it'd be old-fashioned now but no in real life yeah um well that's yeah well you have more balls than i do because i was never good. Well, I don't because she came up and started hitting on me.

I was just standing in a corner wanting to leave. And she came up to me and she was a little bit inebriated at the time. Yeah, the only time I've ever hooked up and or met somebody at a bar was when they came up, they came up. Yeah. I would say, in fact, she was drunk enough that it was actually kind of annoying. And I, she asked, I gave her my number so she would leave. That is so funny. And then, you know, and then she texted me and,

you know, the rest is history, I guess. But well, Perry out back in your I don't I don't like to use the term slut. It's not a term that I use. Apparently it is. But back in days when you were saying... About town? How's that? Had a certain, you know... Je ne sais quoi?

A certain... You were coming into your own sexual. Let's just say that. And experimenting with your sexual powers that were substantial at that time i guess did you ever or oftentimes uh make the first move at a bar um yeah sure is that and that's where you met um what's his name i don't know who's him philip roth no i know philip roth i was introduced to by i've told you this story and every time i tell it you call me pretentious

i do no i don't think so no i just i just i don't call you pretentious at all i just wish you had slept with him so the story would have a better end i was trying to sleep with him i tried to sleep with him um but it didn't it didn't work out um believe me you didn't you didn't try hard enough i guess i mean i don't know how hard a person can try like at a certain certain point. But I forgot this. So you made out with something. You can, it's in my second book. I encourage you to, it's available on Amazon, on my knees by Perry L. Ashenbrand, published by Harper Collins.

You can get the book and read it. And there is a chapter in there all about my sexual escapades with Phil Brock. Okay. That's a great plug right there. Thank you. I feel like that was all set up in advance to plug the book. But I did.

I just texted Dan. I said, ask me about Philip Roth. So you also have a book that's available on. I do have a book. It's called iris hero before covid adam oh great yeah it's um it's available on amazon but i mean published by me yeah that's great and adam you have two two specials i read yes both on YouTube. So available for free. And see, that's something I really admire and I like about when I was reading your bio is also what I was saying before is that you probably made that happen by yourself, right?

Yeah, I mean, I just decided like if you were to ask me, like, did I tape a special too early? I would say yes, but I would do it again. Nobody asked you that, though. Nobody asked me for it. But I also felt like there's sort of a proof of concept that you can do an hour. and having that you know having that link in an email to a booker that says you know here's here's just an hour of material you can go to any point of this and watch how much you can watch it all you can watch any any two minutes of it whatever you want and um and i'm well when you when you do the road i'm in club i i don't do too many clubs and i did ask you recently i asked adam send me some some clubs because uh just trying to just get a little bit more into the clubs but but a lot of them they don't see a hundred thousand followers on instagram they're not interested so they don't care how funny you uh there's there's a there's a small subset of clubs that have sort of uh have have cultivated their own audience that trusts

them to bring in funny people and that people or people just go because they want to laugh and for someone like me where i don't have i'm not i'm not gonna i don't sell tickets on the road at this point so those are the clubs i have to try to find in terms of headlining in terms of featuring for someone else well then they have to worry about being the draw. But that's the best business model for a club. I mean, the club should all aspire to that business model. Why? Because otherwise they're going to pay the comp.

If you're looking for somebody that's going to fill your room, they're going to take all the money. They're going to take all the, yeah. And they deserve it. If they're filling the room because of their following, they deserve the door. Sure. But if a club owner, I would want to bring in funny people and eventually get a reputation

what wouldn't happen overnight you'd probably lose money a year or two however long it took you'd be in the black or in the red um until you develop the reputation but then then all the money is yours because you don't have to pay the comic that much you know because they're not filling the room you're filling right and and that's i mean that's why the seller gets sells out every show you know i mean part of it is perhaps people think that chappelle's going to stop by uh you know that's a part of it but a lot of it is just they just know they're going to get a good show no matter what. Yeah, I mean, I don't think people would keep coming the way that they come with the idea that Chappelle might stop by if it wasn't like at 100 percent, even if he didn't stop.

Right. I think maybe they're thinking maybe, you know, that's a potential added bonus. Yeah, totally. Why do you think there's also there's also just something cool about being in the room where if he did want to stop by, this is where he would come, even if he doesn't come, if that makes any sense. Yeah. Like if there's a there's a magic to it because. Right. The Chappelle's and Chris rocks and that's where they that's where they would go. And maybe you get lucky and they drop in while you're there.

But but even if they don't, like you're in the place where they would and that And maybe you get lucky and they drop in while you're there. But even if they don't, you're in the place where they would. And there's something very cool about that. But I also like this idea of doing things yourself, like making things happen and not waiting for somebody to come to you or having to follow this prescribed road of like, this is how it works. You know, I think that the idea that you can create it yourself is really empowering. Yeah.

Look, there's an element of as much as we all complain about social media and the algorithms and all this other stuff and people that get tick tock famous, but aren't, you know, that funny, but can sell tickets, blah, blah, blah. It does. It's, it's the reason this Avenue exists. So there is, there is a huge upside to it. Even for someone say like me, that doesn't have a huge following where, you know, when I, when I get sick of being brought out into stage as like, you know, you've seen them around town. I can I can go.

OK, I go film my own special and be brought up with with the special. You can always just called the first one is called According to Plan. And the second one is called Funny to You. Available on YouTube. Available on YouTube. By the way, you can always just make up a bullshit credit you know if you don't want to if you don't want to be introduced as as but the credits don't really matter i mean i um you know when people ask me my credits at the clubs in the city i just say

just say he's a regular here i i mean they don't give a shit if i mean if i were famous then you wouldn't need to you know tell give a credit and if i'm not famous they don't care anyway but people say if you quiz the audience after every set and said what was the person's credit before they wouldn't get it wrong most of the time but and then and then and then the standard formulation of giving a credit is you've seen him on no they haven't you've seen him on the tonight show well no they haven't first of all all, I've never done The Tonight Show. Actually, I did do it with Conan. Conan had The Tonight Show for like six months in Los Angeles.

Right, right. But they haven't seen me on The Tonight Show. Maybe they have. Maybe a couple have seen me on America's Got Talent, but even then. Is that the semantics from the host, though? Because they could also say he's been on The Tonight Show. Yeah, but that's just the common formulation. Yeah, yeah.

You may have seen him on the insert thing. I love when they get it wrong. They say you've seen him. Well, my favorite is when they ask you for the credit, you say SiriusXM, and then they say, you've seen him on SiriusXM. And you're like, huh? You may have heard him, but you haven't seen him. By the way, speaking of Sirius XM and then they say you've seen him on Sirius XM and you're like huh you may have heard him but you haven't seen him by the way speaking of Sirius XM I mean uh they uh they rejected my uh I did a tape for them at the cellar and and they rejected it they didn't

take any of the clips and I'm kind of mad at them but I was told it's because the audience wasn't laughing hard. So I don't know if that's a bullshit excuse or not. Well, why don't you just retape it? Well, all right. But I'd like to know if they just don't like the jokes. I don't really feel like doing another taping. But they just told you why.

No, no, no. They didn't tell me. One guy at Sirius says he thinks that's why. Okay. But they may have only had one person actually listen to it. Because I think from what I understand, they only have like four or five people.

Right. They only have a few people that actually listen to everything, right? I don't know. I don't know. So I don't know if that's the real reason or not. You know, I guess it matters how big I mean, I, you know, but that's the question is like, to what extent does it not, does somebody in their car listening to a bit need to hear laughs or to what extent does an executive need to hear laughs to to verify their own mind that

it's funny well you've there's there are rules about that in stand-up like isn't there supposed to be a laugh like every like six that's another question well there's no rule that i mean yeah there should be laughs at a fairly regular interval there's no particular why wouldn't it be the same why wouldn't it because they're laughing It's just that they're not laughing as vociferously as they could be if it's a small crowd or whatever. Which could also just be how the sound was captured, right?

It's very hard to capture sound properly. But I'd say re-tape it and try to get a hotter room. Yeah, I'll do that. But because I'm doing these cartoons there's a friend of mine that that does animation and i'm animating my uh some some of my jokes i'm animating them like shorty's watching shorty's back in the old days on comedy central but there's no laughs it's

just me it's just um you know it's just if it's animated anyway why not just put in a laugh track yeah why don't you put in a laugh track yeah i guess you could but i'm wondering to what extent on instagram and tiktok not having the laughs or having the laughs would influence how people perceive the joke how funny the joke is to them you know the simpsons doesn't have a laugh track i don't think i haven't i kind of gave up on the simpsons like 10 years ago but they didn't have a laugh track do they i don't i'd have to watch one i don't think so yeah no they don't they don't okay hey max you decided to chime in how are you i'm good max how are you enjoying the discussion i look to you because you're like an everyman.

You're like a run-of-the-mill Joe. Yeah. No, it's good. It's interesting. I've known Adam for years, but I didn't know so much about him. I knew he was in finance, but I didn't know the details. So, yeah, it's been interesting. I think that it's important to have a laugh track, Dan.

I think it adds um it adds a little bit of like a sparkle to it yeah it might you know um try it try it put put a back in one and see and do a test i mean laughter is contagious so it does make a difference. But like I said, I mean, the Simpsons never had it. And I don't think Family Guy or anything. So I think the Flintstones, I think, did have a laugh track. Family Guy, by the way. Max, do you have anything to say about the Flintstones? No, I don't know about the Flintstones as well.

That's an old reference. Before his time? Before my time, too, I still watched it in syndication. No. The shows are timeless. The Flintstones weren't, no. Yeah, they used a laugh track. Okay, thank you, Max, for your research.

Have you watched Family Guy? Have you seen Family Guy? Yeah, I've seen. I mean, I'm not like a devoted, but I've seen a lot of it. Okay, well, I just started seeing it in the past like six months or whatever because my son watches it and that show is first of all so wildly inappropriate and so smart yeah i mean it's it's it's it's i don't think it's smarter than the simpsons i think it's at that at that level i think they're both roughly i never really watched the same level you never

watched them max what are the kids your age well how old are you in your 20s oh yeah i'm 29 so did did you watch like in in syndication uh older shows growing up like uh the cheers for example or uh i watched some cheers on when it got put on streaming but I watched Family Guy and The Simpsons and all those shows growing up what about Seinfeld? yeah I watched a lot of Seinfeld and that would have been in syndication I think streaming brought a lot of those

old shows streaming decided who was going to get to see what old shows there's a whole generation of people that would never have even seen friends if it hadn't ended up streaming. I never saw Seinfeld. Yeah. Somebody was just telling me that, that, that's actually that, um, who's the boss is big now among like, Oh, wow. I don't know if that's true.

That was a great show. I loved that show. I mean, when you were a kid. That's the Tony Danza show? Oh, wow. Alyssa Milano and Judith Light. Yeah, yeah. I never watched Friends. I found it totally unwatchable. I couldn't even get

through one full episode of it. I've never seen a full episode of Friends. Not because it's unwatchable. I just never watched it. I just never watched it i never watched it but but um degrassi junior high adam any any thoughts it's funny as a canadian i feel like i should have watched all of those and i know what it is and i've seen a few here and there but i was never really like into it i'd be so infuriated i'd go to my grandmother's house in montreal and she had like three channels or four channels whatever it was and half of them were in french

of course and i'd be so fear infuriated because i would like i would be all the flints because flintstones i was saying was that was one of my favorite and i would be turning the channel and i would see i would see the fl Flintstones and then Fred would start talking French. And then I just, I'd be just be so infuriated. Well, that might, is that why you decided to teach yourself French? No, I decided to teach myself French because at the time I was spending a lot of time at the bookstore to avoid my roommate um not because i didn't like my roommate but when you live in a small apartment with a roommate like you just you need to be away so i would just spend a lot of time in the bookstore and i just saw a book said french the fast and fun way or whatever it was called and and i picked it up and i in in high school i never was interested in languages and i took Spanish, but I hated it.

And then for some reason, as an adult, I really enjoyed studying it. I don't know why. I don't know what changed. And I just kept studying. And then 20 years later, I'm still studying. And you're like fluent in it. Well, I, yeah, I mean, fluent is a word, by the way, that has no meaning. It literally has no meaning. What do you mean it has no meaning? Of course it has a meaning. It really doesn't. What is fluency?

Is it native fluency? No. No, that's native fluency is native fluency. Well, fluency, then what is fluency? I mean, define the word fluent. i can't because it has no definition okay listen to me carefully what you're saying people just use the word fluent in in in different ways and in different contexts but there's no standard definition of what that really is no that's ridiculous to dictionary definition oxford, fluent to be able to express oneself easily and articulately. That's not the same as native fluency. So it sounds like there's a lot of

Americans that only speak English that aren't fluent in English. That's probably the articulately part, really. Yeah, the articulately part is tricky. I mean, you're fluent in French. You can sustain a high level. I can say what I need to say with reasonable articulateness and express. And perform stand up. Well, I don't, I can, I have performed stand up in French. It's quite, it's quite chill. That's very impressive.

It is very impressive. But it's quite, but I, but the words don't. But the words don't just spill out of my mouth. That's not part of the definition. Well, in any case. And you could also be fluent in certain topics. But if I talk about sports, I might find there's a lot of vocabulary that I don't know how exactly to define my level of French, but I can express most of the things I need to express. You could say I'm fairly fluent.

Yeah, but I wouldn't use the word fluent. God help me. Okay. Because, again, it doesn't get us anywhere. But also, what's fair, you know? You had to take French in school because you're from Canada. So yeah, I took French. It's all through high school. And then I took a couple of years in college.

I was never, I was never very good at languages. More of a numbers guy. I think that the idea of being good at languages. Oh really? I think it all depends how bad you want to learn the language if i've been studying french for 20 years and going at it pretty i don't think i'm good at languages i think that i'm a smart guy you know i mean i remember vocabulary better than average the average person i think but i i don't i don't

know anybody's really there might be some like there's this one guy daniel tam and he's like autistic he's a high functioning autistic guy and like he memorized pi to like 10 000 places wow and he liked that you know and so he might be you know and they challenged him to like learn ic Icelandic in two weeks for an interview and he did it so you know he might thought it's good at language well it's just you just didn't want to learn it that you didn't like it no of course there are people who are good at languages and people who are less good at language yeah yeah they're smarter people than less smart people and smart people are better at learning vocabulary and grammar because i'm much better at language than i am at math like i'm i can learn like i've learned other languages or like i've lived in other countries and become conversational in other

languages and i'm you know like i score much much higher in language based tests as a kid and a teenager. And he has this general intelligence. I don't think there's any special language intelligence. It's an interesting idea. I never thought about it before, but there is an interesting idea that there's an element of aptitude inside, which is just desire. If you really want to know something here you might have more aptitude in it than if you just don't care i think i think it's mostly desire and exposure i mean if you if you're uh immersed that's obviously pretty much if i had to move to some small town in france where they only spoke french and lived there the rest of my life i'm sure i would pick it up over time because you'd have to. You'd have to. A hundred percent would. I lived in Thailand for a year and became

conversational in my basic Thai. OK, yeah. Word of it when. But you you had to learn it to. OK, let's say goodbye. I need to actually sign off. OK, thank you, Adam. You can find him on YouTube. You've got two specials, not one, but two. It's funny to you and there was another one. According to plan. According to plan. And you seem like the kind of guy

that plans. Well, the idea of the first one is, you know, my life has not gone according to plan. But that's okay. You revised your plan and it's going to know, my life has not gone according to plan. That's the, but that's okay. It's more interesting. You revised your plan and it's going to the revised plan. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're on plan B. Yeah, but this implies that it's a lesser plan. It's something that you did because plan A didn't work out, but that's not the case with you. Okay, you did work out. You were at Goldman Sachs. You were at a hedge fund. And then you decided to do something else. So it's plan a prime how's that okay fine um thank you adam muller perry l dan thank you

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