The Joe Rogan Experience - #1237 - Sebastian Maniscalco

Episode Date: February 4, 2019

Sebastian Maniscalco is a stand up comedian and he also hosts his own podcast with Pete Correale called “The Pete and Sebastian Show" available on Spotify. His new special "Stay Hungry" is now streaming on Netflix.

here we go four three two one and we're live you fucking handsome bastard look at you oh yeah what's going on man what's going on um well i've done this once before and i've watched you throughout the years. And when I come in here, I get a little nervous. Why? You're a guy who knows a lot about everything, and I don't know a lot of... I don't know a lot about everything. I know enough to make it seem like i know a lot about everything whatever you're doing it's you know more than i do right like

like we were on your treadmill out there right and you go it's 13 percent what did you say 13 percent more difficult than regular running okay like i forgot the fact what you just said from the time we walked in i i lost it so i don't i don't have the retention that i wish i had i gotta get you some alpha brain i need something do we have any here is that what i'm missing in my my diet alpha brain i mean uh it's uh what's interesting though is that people will come up to me with shit that happened just a few years ago. And I'm like, I don't remember that at all. Like, I think you have a certain amount of room in your brain. And my brain is always deleting stuff that it doesn't think it needs anymore.

And then shoving in new things. Like, sometimes someone will tell me about something. I'm like, what are you talking about? And they're like, you don't remember? There was the guy with no arms who drove us around i went what and then i have to go oh yeah it's like i find the folder in my head and like oh there it is yeah yeah yeah yeah and then we went to the pool hall and then i'll remember gotcha but if yeah it's just uh for whatever reason this uh can only, I only keep things that I'm interested in. Gotcha.

Yeah. I just wish I could retain a lot of the things I either see or hear to then recall it in a conversation. You can, but you got to write things down and you got to like want to recall things. Yeah, that's a problem. I don't do a lot of writing as far as like a notepad or anything to just take notes do when you write your act do you write it in your head or do you write it on paper or it's audio just audio go to the comedy store i record it and i listen to it on the way home and then i'll i go maybe i'll do this next time maybe i'll do that i'll take that

out this out and then uh so there's no writing. My act is more recalling stories than sitting in a room going, oh, I think this is funny. Right, right. So that's kind of how I work. But yeah, the reason I say that to start off is just like, I see you go down a lot of different paths on the podcast. And I often go, man, if I was sitting in that chair could i add to the conversation and a lot of times it's no i can't just because for whatever the reason i uh i just feel like i

need to be a little bit more um well read how often you read uh Like I read the Goggins book. Yeah, great fucking book. Yeah. Sad life that dude had, huh? It's sad life, but then on the flip side, inspiring to a guy like myself where I'm running, say I'm working out, and I thought of this guy, I go, you know what, let's put another mile into this. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I'm just now starting to get into a little bit more books than I have in the past. Because in the past, to be honest with you, I haven't really read much. I try to read one new thing a week.

And the way I try to do it is I use a lot of audio books, but I also read books. I go back and forth in between them between reading and audiobooks but i find for whatever reason i retain more with audiobooks than i do with reading maybe it's my add or something like that because when i'm reading i kind of have to back up sometimes like i'll go through a whole paragraph where i'm thinking about some other shit while i'm reading yeah and then i gotta go okay asshole back up reread that go over it again you know that's what i find my mind wanders like you know like you're saying uh the audiobook definitely is better option yeah i think all stand-up comedians uh have

scattered brains at least in some in some way yeah all of us are a little fucked up i think we have to be i think i think that the mind works in a weird way in a comedian's head uh i think it has to be a little bit fragmented and uh thinking a lot of different things at once in order to operate uh i mean you're doing it on stage i think you know you're doing you're doing your comedy and i'm self-evaluating going is this working right now should i go off into another bit should i talk about my family? I see they're liking family stuff. So I think that's what we're doing when we're performing.

And then sometimes I think that bleeds to everyday life. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, when you're doing a bit, are you thinking about what you're, are you like, do you have a bit on deck? Like while you're in the middle of the bit, do you like go from there? I'm going to talk about you know the gym or the you know the this or that uh it's funny uh and i don't know if you go through this do you ever go through um well first of all when you're doing comedy do you have a beginning middle and end and do you know where you're going throughout that whole set or do you

in the moment go you know what i'm gonna do the bit about that that or is it set it's not it's both it depends when like right now uh i don't have a lot of material because uh my netflix special came out in uh october so november december january i've basically three months worth a new shit which is about 40 minutes of all told material. And then I have 20 other minutes that are in the baking stage. Like I'm not ready to take them out of the oven. I fuck around with them. I'll shove them in the middle a bit sometimes.

But they're not 100% legit. They need to be fleshed out. But one of those became like one of my best bits now it's weird how that works like sometimes you'll just find this one part of it that makes it work and boom all of a sudden the bits turbocharged um so because of that i usually i decide that day usually what i'm going to open with and then um i leave the middle part up to my imagination and then i decide what i'm going to close with but when i'm ready to do a netflix special i basically have it all mapped out i basically have a starting point and i have an end point yeah but even like when

i'm filming i still fuck around and ad lib because i don't think because every show i do i don't i don't have like i'm going to say it verbatim this way every time i always fuck lib because i don't think because every show i do i don't i don't have like i'm gonna say it verbatim this way every time i always fuck around because i always feel like i could find a new way that's better if i just stay loose and so even when i'm filming i do it that way because i figure i want this to be like a real show if it's a real show and i always film four shows so i'm like if it's a real show i'll fuck around and and i've been filming before i fuck around i go down a dark road and there's no one there i'm like all right turn around thank god for editing yeah i think i think that's the way to do it though to be kind of in the

moment and go with how you're feeling when you're filming something just because that's the way you would be anyway yeah right but sometimes i've i've learned in the past when i'm filming something i feel like man i'd like to get everything that i want out on this special and i don't want to forget anything because there'll be nights where i'm out performing and i i i forgot a bit i'm like i'll be searching in my head for the bit and i'm like i know there's another something that goes along this but then i i just jump off it and go into a another routine so for me i don't know i like to keep it different every night just try and play around and uh it's weird now that a netflix special

i just uh one came out and i don't really subscribe to, if I have a Netflix special out and you come to a live show, you're going to see some of those bits that I did in the Netflix special. I don't like retire the act. I know some guys go, okay, it's out there. I'm not doing this on my live show. Myself, I still like to do some of that material because I enjoy doing it. And I also have some new stuff. So I kind of, and I don't know how long that lasts. I don't know. I know some people were like, oh, I saw that on Netflix. Why am I going to pay to see it live if I could see it at home?

But there's something about going out, I believe, to a live show and seeing a live performance. There's different nuances that you might see in a bit or an add-on. Sometimes I add on to the joke. My jokes are sometimes never finished, so I keep adding on. So that's the way i've kind of worked at my entire career yeah um gaffigan does it that way um uh a lot of brian regan does it that way where guys will call out bits like they will they like if you go to see gaffigan he doesn't do hot pockets you're gonna get fucking mad that's this a lot of people like that i retire my material but i have

brought stuff out before if people asked like someone asked me to bring up uh explaining kim kardashians to the aliens the other night and i i was amazed that i could remember it but i remembered it uh but for the most part i retire shit because i feel like in my mind if i don't retire things i'm not going to work on new things as much and limit myself. And then I always feel like my newest bits are better than my older bits because even though I've been doing stand-up for 30 years, I still think I get better at it. I think it's a constant state of self-evaluation and self-analysis and going over the material

and then realize, you know, you have enough good sets and bad sets and great sets. You have enough that you kind of recognize the characteristics of each one and where they go wrong. And then you get better at having less bad sets and even less good sets and more great sets. And I think that, for me, one big part of that is constantly writing. I write right. I sit down and I write right.

And I write one hour every night after shows. That's one big one. I write during the day. But the big one for me seems to be at night when I come home from the store and I'm jazzed up. And also it's great, too, because everyone's asleep. It's just me and the dog and i just fucking sit at that desk and i'll just work until my eyes start blinking and i start getting really tired and some of my best shit i've ever come up with is that way wow

after shows because i'm all i'm juiced up and then i also have a process of listening to the show um in the car because you know that's one of the coolest things about um bluetooth audio that you get your phone you record it on your phone and then in the car home you can listen and then go i fucked that up or oh i should have done it this way or maybe if i do that or you have an idea like i'll pause it i'll go oh i got another idea and then i'll make a new voice note and then i'll go home and I'll listen to it again. I'll listen to my set again and I'll pause it and then start working on stuff. And that's how I've been able to expand all these bits pretty quickly.

That's interesting. I find my best bits come out of just living my life. And I have a daughter. We went to the zoo and the nuances at the zoo that I picked up on. And I'll call my mother, and I'll tell her a story. And that's kind of my barometer of whether or not this thing is going to work on stage. And then I'll go to the comedy store and kind of flush it out there. But yeah, I mean, I've just never been the guy who writes.

I just, I don't know. Well, you don't have to. No, I, yeah. Obviously, it's working for you. There's a lot of guys who don't do it that way. Bill Burr doesn't do it that way. He's one of the best ever. Yeah.

A lot of guys who just don't write. For me, I feel like it's all about how much time and energy I put on things. And if I put more time and energy just working on my act because I'm writing, then it's going to be better. That's just how I look at it. Yeah. Yeah, everybody's got their own process. And I'm fascinated to hear guys like yourself. Seinfeld's another guy that every word is planned out.

And you can hear it with him, too. You really hear it. His act is like a scalpel. He's slicing the perfect slice, and he knows exactly how to say it. He's got perfect timing. His use of words, whether or not you – any comic can appreciate that. Any comic can appreciate the way he does that. There's a lot of guys who are like that, who just have that.

Did you ever watch Jenny at all? I have. His timing, I think, was... I think timing in comedy is something, a bit of a lost art. I don't think a lot of comedians are really taking to timing like they have in the past. And I don't know if they're scared of the silence because because a lot of timing is silent and a lot of guys and women tend to not relish in those moments of silence where sometimes it's it's comedy gold a lot of people run through the material

and for me as an audience member i like someone who kind of gives you as an audience member a little little beat or maybe maybe some time to kind of marinate in the joke a little bit opposed to kind of blowing through the material don't you feel that like when you're in a large audience that's even more critical because you have like there's thousands of people and it seems like a big pause like in between punch lines or you give a person a chance give this whole group of people a chance to think about how ridiculous what you just said was yeah it enhances it oh absolutely i mean especially like you said in a large audience which is even more fearful for a comedian to let the joke breathe. Yeah. Because God knows, you know, if you got 1,000 people and then you got 20,000 people, I mean, you know,

19 more thousand people could yell or scream or say something. Anything can go wrong. Yeah, but man, to stop and just let that joke breathe a little bit and then maybe have it percolate. There's times where I'm on stage and I'll go a little bit longer than I thought I was going to go without talking, but maybe give it like a facial expression or whatnot just to see if I could eke out another crescendo of laughter. Yeah. And those are the moments I really relish in because sometimes the silence is even better

than saying anything. Yeah. And you also realize that you're not like rushing anything. Yeah. You got a hold of it. Yeah. At least for myself, my act is more like a, it needs to kind of sit. I don't really do well on like five minute talk shows doing like you know the

doing a four and a half minute set on fallon i need to like go out there it takes me two minutes to to get warm you know what i'm saying like uh to get into a joke right away and to me i just i need time i need i need to let it breathe yeah no i feel the same way i've always felt those late night talk show sets are so strange not only that but you're basically opening for yourself i mean because there's no one's done stand-up yet except a monologue which is kind of stand-up but kind of not because it's all like what's happening today and everybody knows that it's been written. It's weird. Yeah. And then you go out and do a stand-up set,

and oftentimes you see guys go out and they'll do a stand-up set and they don't even have a microphone. They're doing a stand-up set and they don't know what the fuck to do with their hands. It's odd. The first time I did a stand-up set on TV, I said, I need the microphone. Yeah. I can't go out there. I've been doing comedy for, what, 12 years it had been,

and then I got like a Leno. I go, I need a physical microphone. Yeah, I'm used to this. I'm not going to go out there all of a sudden now, and like you said, what am I going to do with my hands? So every time I do a late night set, I need a microphone. Do you still do those? No, not anymore.

I like to do, it's like comedy on the couch you know you know it's like you go on fallon or what have you and it's all premeditated burr's the master at that oh he's so he's the master he's the best at sitting down there and saying something fucked up and they're just like you know you know what i'm saying he's good he's just got a great way of handling the couch. Yeah, he makes it sound like just two guys talking and then there's cameras filming it. Sometimes it could look like, okay, you asked the question, I give the answer. But for whatever reason, it's so natural for him. It's like, this guy looks like he's talking at a diner.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, he's mastered the art of not giving a fuck. Yeah. He's very comfortable. And if you, you know, like, but that's who he is all day. You know, he just ramps it up a couple extra clicks when he goes on stage. Yeah.

When you're hanging out with him, that's burr. Yeah, it's not a far departure from what we're seeing. He's got one thing down, too. That guy does not fuck with social media he's not doing nothing oh he's not even on it i mean he like kind of i guess he posts stuff well you know i i follow him on instagram and every once in a while i'll see something yeah um which you know for me i've kind of weaned off the social media a little bit um i know a lot of guys live on it and they take you into their lives.

And here's, you know, like here, I follow Bert Kreischer. I knew you were going to say Bert Kreischer. So everybody, I'm wondering if the people around Bert Kreischer are, are,

are going to him. All right, Bert, you want to lose the phone? You know, like we're all, we're having dinner here. Oh yeah.

Because man, he really gives you a bird's eye view into not only his family life, but he's on a ski lift and he's got skis and this and that, which I appreciate. It's just for me, I don't know, is there some little sense of privacy every once in a while? Well, in Bert's defense, what bert did was he had a legit tv gig he was doing bert the conqueror and what was the the other one the other one where he was traveling around trip flip trip flip and uh you know he's doing really well but he was gone for long stretches of time away from his family and he wasn't getting to do much stand-up and he and i had a conversation about it and i said stew i go you're too funny to be just working for a television show anybody can

do a television show but not everybody could do stand-up the way you did stand-up and um he somewhere along the line decided all right fuck this tv shit and uh i'm just gonna just gonna concentrate on stand-up and a big part of that was social media so a big part of it for him was you know every year we have this sober October crew it's Ari Tom Segura me and Bert and we do a one-month challenge yeah like it was last year was a fitness challenge and before that it was a hot yoga challenge and before that they had to lose weight so that's when we've only done it twice but it's a hot yoga challenge and before that um they had to lose weight so that's when we've only done it twice but it's a big thing social media wise a bunch of people hop on board with it

a bunch of people join in and they they take a month off booze and two and and for bert that's fucking hard that guy goes hard in the paint with the booze yeah so for him that that the sober october stuff and the weight loss stuff propelled his career i mean everything started taking off the netflix special started taking off stand-up shows are sold out everywhere people know him they know he takes off his shirt when he goes on stage now it's a totally different thing so i get it with him because that's what brought him to the dance social media absolutely and that guy's figured it out i'm just using burt as an example of a guy who's on social media a ton and has figured out a way to weave that into his kind of

aura and what he does professionally but for me i feel i get a little I feel like everything I do on social media has to be funny. Like if I do a post, I feel like it has to be funny. I feel a little bit intimidated to put something out that's just me doing X, Y, and Z. And that's where I feel I fail at social media and I feel like I've kind of weaned off it. And sometimes I look at my instagram or my twitter it looks like a um i'm gonna be here i'm gonna be here here's my shows there's no real kind of substance to it at all yeah that bothers some people but the good thing is i mean i get what people go all you do is promote your shows yeah but i'm promoting my shows you know this is where

i am if you like my shows that's where i'm gonna be i get it but i see what you're saying as a comic because ari shafir said that too like he doesn't want to put anything on instagram or twitter unless it's funny now that's what he concentrates on and he tries he was off even saying that he was going to mock people that are comedians that say things that aren't funny i'm like well then you're going to be mocking me i say a lot of shit that's not funny he's like yeah but you do other. Which is weird because I do do other things, whether it's podcasting all the time or doing the UFC commentary. Like, you know, if I watch some fights and I start posting about MMA, I'm not trying to be funny. It's just what it is. Yeah.

Well, yeah, you're living in a lot of different worlds. And I look at your Instagram, you're cooking meat, right? Yeah. And I look at your Instagram, you're cooking meat, right? But for me, I'm thinking, how the hell does he get the meat from top to bottom, like medium rare throughout? For me, that's more of a learn. I can teach you, Sebastian. I can teach you.

You know what the key is? Cooking it slowly. That's the key. So you got like this grill or whatever. It's a Traeger. Yes. It's a pellet grill. Pellet grill.

I'll get you one. You want one? If it gets my meat the way it gets your meat, I would love one. I'll have them send you one, 100%. Perfect. But yeah. Do you know what one of those are? Do you know how they work? No.

Oh, it's fucking fantastic. Say if someone Wants to make a desk like this Out of hardwood Like this oak The sawdust They take the sawdust From sawmills

And they compress it And they make these Little tiny pellets And so there's no Chemicals No nothing It's just wood And then

The way A pellet grill works There's a bunch of Really good companies That make them I use a Traeger But I've used a Yoder That's a great one too And Green Mountain Grills there's a bunch of really good companies that make them. I use a Traeger, but I've used a Yoder. That's a great one too. And Green Mountain Grills, that's a great one. They all work the same way. They have a heating element and a worm drive. So you have

this big bucket of these pellets. And then the worm drive feeds the pellets into this heating element. And the heating element makes the pellets catch fire. So they catch fire it's a matter of how much pellets and how much fan to keep the that's what it looks like up there so then see look at this joe yeah no i'm looking at this and i'm like that looks like a that looks like a lot of work it's not first of all you got to get a a side pellet the catch-all but it's there comes with the whole thing yeah but then you gotta go buy the pellets. Listen, I'll have it delivered to you. I'll have it delivered.

I'm trying to get more people to cook like this because it's just wood and fire. It's the best. There's no chemicals. There's no bullshit. No lighter fluid. No gas. No nothing. So your entire meat process is on this grill.

Except the end. At the end, this is a different grill than I have because this one has a thing on the side. If you see that thing on the right-hand side, that looks like a direct flame thing. It looks like it's got gas as well, right? The one that I have doesn't have that. But at the end, I sear it at the very end on a cast iron frying pan. So I cook it from between 225 to 275 degrees, which is pretty low. And I'll cook it until it hits an internal temperature,

depending upon what I'm cooking, somewhere around 120 to the maximum, like 130-ish. Then I take it out, and I have a cast iron frying pan as hot as a motherfucker. And I use either beef tallow or grass-fed butter. And then I sear the shit out of that with some garlic, and I throw some thyme in there and fucking flip it over and get that good sear, and then I let it sit for a minimum of 10 minutes. And then you slice that motherfucker.

Okay, so your meat is unbelievable. I've seen it on the Instagram. Thank you. Be careful when you say that. So I do something similar, I've seen it on the Instagram. Thank you. Be careful when you say that. The Instagram. So I do something similar, but I do it in the oven. I don't do it in the grill. That'll work.

I do a slow cook in the oven, and then I take it out. I let it rest for, I think, 15 minutes, and then I do a sear jab. Oh, okay. But I'm always looking for better ways to cook meat. And if you're saying that this pellet thing, does it add any flavor? Yes, that's what's good about it because it's smoky hardwood. Gotcha. So it's all smoke. You lift the thing up, smoke's coming out of it and everything.

It's a nice aromatic smoke. All right, that's what I need. It's like cherry smoke or oak or hickory or maple, all these different hardwoods. You could choose a bunch of different kinds. Oh, perfect. Okay, so you're not getting that in the oven. No, no, no, no. It's different.

And there's also a setting on a Traeger called super smoke, where you hit it, it goes to, it can't be over 225, but that's what I like anyway. And you put it on 225, and it just constantly fans hard and pushes all this smoke, so it just gets this deep, deep rich smoky flavor in the meat nice but uh i like if you're not into that too i like a regular weber grill like one of those little fucking weber uh that you know the little hibachi yeah what are those things called that

you get what would you call them they're like a drum looks like a half a drum like a barrel fucking thing yeah but what are those the way it looks like it looks like Like a drum Looks like a half a drum Yeah Like a barrel Fucking thing Yeah but what are those The way it looks like It looks like a cup It's like a black Yeah the black ones Yeah

They're like steel Those What I like Those with Just lump charcoal That puts a nice flavor on it too The key is Don't fuck around with

Chemicals When you start using Lighter fluid and shit That That adds weird taste to your food it does yeah and even if you buy that lump charcoal those charcoal briquettes rather the charcoal briquettes there's there's something in them that makes them that shape they have to and then they they you know oh they they light fast yeah because there's fucking gasoline in

them yeah like But lump charcoal Meaning they just take hardwood And then they burn that shit down To You know That clunky looking Lump charcoal Just get that stuff

And then take some newspaper And roll the newspaper up And one of those You ever use one of those Little Those chimneys Do you know what those things are No

It's a barbecue chimney It's like You pour the charcoal In this tube And at the bottom of the tube, you take pieces of paper, and you crumple them up in balls. And then you light the balls on fire, and the fire rises up from the paper to the charcoal, and it lights the charcoal on fire. And then you dump the charcoal out into the grill. And that puts a nice flavor on it, too. But it's, again, the same kind of feeling. feeling it's like wood just this wood flavor on the meat that's nice i'm sold yeah yeah yeah i'm a big fan of cooking i love it i went to this uh restaurant the other night to

apl yeah i saw that on your instagram good meat i ate a 380 day dry aged steak this guy I'm gonna get him on here uh he's a chef his name's Adam Perry Lang and he's the guy who runs the place and uh I've never even heard of someone doing something like that like you you hear like dry aged steak is like 30 days right he's he's taken it to some weird crazy place where he's got these these steaks in his gigantic like walk-in freezer area where everything is dry aging they have certain microbes they put in the air and then they have fans so it's like it's a certain type of bacteria that they want that covers over the meat a certain type of mold oh wow so it delivers this very strange taste it's not like any steak that i've ever had in my life it's very weird it's delicious

that's what it looks like oh wow yeah that's 380 day dry aged steak it's see it's he says it smells like foie gras it does it smells very strange it's very different yeah and i've heard about this place um phenomenal and i haven't been there yet is this in hollywood i'll take you we'll go together come on after a show i'm ready to go man it's uh it's on vine in hollywood all right yeah it's phenomenal but it's it's not for everybody like that like my wife is not into it she likes regular steak she's not it's like she's like ah yeah she's it's it's it's strong flavor all right it's a different flavor like it doesn't taste like anything you've ever had before like it doesn't taste like venison doesn't taste

like bison it doesn't take a taste like a rib eye that you get from fleming's or something like that it tastes very very different oh i love foie gras if it tastes like that then i'm in it sort of does but not really it smells like foie gras it's it tastes like itself it doesn't taste like anything i've ever had but it's uh you know that's when you're you're fucking geeking out hard there's a show that i binge watch on youtube it's called the meat show um i think the youtube channel is called eater and then the show is called the meat show and this guy just travels around going to all these different super high-end restaurants that serve steak and trying to see what their preparation is and what they do differently and you could fucking lose your mind

with that stuff yeah you could go down a deep dark hole with me yeah but hey man i'm i'm willing to try anything i'm more like uh experimental as far as when it comes to food my wife not so much she's very picky do you use recipes use cookbooks um i have used cookbooks in the past um but i do a majority of the cooking in in my house uh i come from you know my mom used to cook a lot and uh and my father used to do a lot of fish. So I don't do a lot of recipes. It's more like, Dad, how do you make the muscle for the muscle sauce? And then he'll, you know, take me through it.

So nothing's written down. It's just like your act. A lot of improvising. Yeah. Yeah. What do you do? Like, what do you do? You like linguine with clams? Like, what kind of stuff do you do like what what do you do you like like linguine with clams like what kind of stuff you cook you know what i i like i like a lot of pasta um i like a

nice bolognese sauce however i'm trying to stay away from those types of meals because in the past i ballooned up to you know 205 207 not giving a crap about my my health or or anything and recently i've lost some weight due to the fact that i've been watching um my diet because you know i mean i don't know i mean you're you're in shape so you you seem a lot more disciplined than a lot of comedians when it comes to health but uh for myself i have you have taken on a regimen of not drinking wine. I used to have a little wine after the meal or during the meal. So I've eliminated that. And I've been doing some Pilates.

Pilates. Yeah. Nice. Which has helped my balance and my core. Underrated exercise. Very underrated. I got to tell you, Joe, this Pilates has really changed the way I look at physical fitness. You know who's really into Pilates?

Sergey Kovalev. Really? Yeah. He just regained the WBC or WB, I forget which light heavyweight championship on Saturday night. He's the crusher. He's this badass Russian motherfucker. And he just, I mean, at 35, I think he is, just regained his title. And his routine is very unusual.

And one of the things that he does for his exercise is Pilates. And, you know, people make fun of it. But the guy has got strength in all these weird places yeah full range of motion and flexibility and well that's what i have i'm 45 so my range of motion my my shoulders screwed up my legs my knee and this has given me an exercise where i could uh not only improve my flexibility but man i mean you walk out i'm drenched yeah and uh so yeah i'm getting back on the physical fitness thing because i've been on the road so so much that uh i kind of let that slip a little but i want to get the i want to

get back yeah you know some guys are real good about working out on the road like brian callen goes everywhere he goes he'll go to a gym and he's real good at that like he'll go and uh go work out with kickboxers work out with jujitsu guys brian does a lot of boxing so he'll find like a local boxing gym and have a guy hold the pads for him maybe do even a little light sparring he gets really into it on the road but i think that's the key is like to force yourself to not stay in your hotel and wait until the show goes. You just got to force yourself to get out and go do something. Yeah, I wish I was a self-motivated guy, but I need help. So I've taken my buddy John Petrelli. He's a personal trainer.

So he comes on the road with me and motivates me to get up and go. We do swimming. We do a lot of different things. This guy, I liken him to you because he's into mixed martial arts. He's into hunting. He's one of these guys that is a great motivator and really helped me get my life back together when it comes to physical fitness. Because, again, I was lifting weights. Everything was falling apart.

And I was lifting weights. Everything was falling apart. And now with the swimming and Pilates, I feel like I have something to look forward to when it comes to working out. Because to go to the gym for me wasn't fun anymore. It's like, what am I going to do? Biceps and chest. It's over. I ain't doing 225 ever again. That was my workout since I was like 18.

I'd go in, nothing changed. It was 225s and then let's do some curls and neglect the abs and go home. Yeah, neglect the legs. Yeah, no legs. Although I did have, I played soccer growing up, so I did have those soccer legs. I got like Earl Campbell thighs. Yeah, soccer is one of the best exercises ever. I mean, it's also a great way to blow your ACL out.

Totally. Yeah, everybody's shifting left and right and all that. There's a fucking picture. You know Big Boy, the DJ? His fucking son, there's a video. He he retweeted it his son is a football player and there's uh there's a video of his son where you know someone's trying to tackle him and he moves like a fucking ghost it's incredible you watch him do like it was one one of those rare things where you see something and you're legitimately impressed. Like, holy shit.

I watched it like five times in a row. This kid's footwork is incredible. Really? Yeah, but footwork. Who's in better shape than soccer players? They're constantly sprinting. Yeah, up and down. The whole game is like, and you have to maintain that stamina.

You're constantly sprinting. Yeah, there's a lot of mileage you're putting on in a soccer game. Although, you know what gives me, and you are probably going to laugh as well as your listeners, believe me, pickleball. You ever play that? Pickleball? What is that? Pickleball. Pickleball?

It's like tennis and ping pong, and you play it in a gymnasium. and ping pong, and you play it in a gymnasium. So it's like a net, and you've got paddles, and talk about moving side to side. It's fun, and you burn a ton of calories. And you do it in a gym? You do it in a gym, like a basketball court. So it's like racquetball, but there's a net.

There's a net. You're not bouncing it off the wall. You're playing it like tennis? Yeah, it's a court. Small net a net there's a net you're not bouncing it off the wall you're you playing it like tennis yeah it's a court small net and you have uh jamie's got this is this what's on that like in venice those little small courts is it a lot of old look at these kids hello my name is fred this is my wife wendy listen you're gonna laugh all right there's a lot of old people that play this but i'm telling telling you, this is embarrassing. And so you each have your four people? Yeah, you could do doubles, but me and my buddy play just one-on-one.

And I'm telling you, it's not only fun, but you burn a lot of calories, and you don't even know you're doing it because I'm diving. burn a lot of calories and you don't even know you're doing it because i'm diving and right it's uh it's one of the exercises that we uh we really enjoy what's that so listen what he's got you doing he's got you doing pilates and pickleball what's next uh i have no idea he's working his way you know what he's working towards i don't have to tell you i'm telling you i know a lot of 68 year old people play this but uh if you're looking for a low uh kind of impact fun activity it looks good if you're looking at it no it does oh yeah look i know tennis is fucking hard tennis man it's another thing this is like this is like tennis reduced to a smaller court, basically. Probably healthier

for you. Not as hard on the ankles and the knees. It's not as hard. Yeah. We'll have to go. After we have our steak, we'll go for a game. Where would one go? They have courts in Venice Beach. That's what I thought it was. I've always seen these small tennis

courts there, and I didn't know really what people were playing on. So they're calling it paddle tennis. Yeah, maybe this. But this is what it is. These guys look ridiculous. They should just go home. This is outrageous. What are you doing, sir?

I'm telling you, put a little English. Listen, I grew up playing ping pong. I'm really good at ping pong. Are you really? Yeah. So this is like a larger version of ping pong. Yeah. It looks like it's fun.

All bullshit aside, that looks like a good time. It's fun. Believe me. I know your listeners are dying laughing right now. But I'm telling you, it's good. That's what I'm doing, Joe. So you take your trainer with you on the road. That's the move.

Where did you meet this guy? I've known him for 20 years. I met him on the set of Days of Our Lives doing extra work. Holy shit. Days of Our Lives. When I first came out to LA in 1998, I was the type of guy I would do these weird mailings to get work. So for days of our lives. No, it was general hospital.

General hospital. Take a headshot. And then take a Post-it note. And I would write on the Post-it note, ready to operate. I stuck it to the headshot and I sent it out. So I would do these weird little mailings where, oh, maybe the person opening the mail would go oh i get a little chuckle and whatnot so i met him doing extra work this is what i used to do uh for for some extra cash and uh we became fast friends he's an italian kid and uh we similar upbringing uh middle class he's from new york i'm from chicago

and uh just a great, great guy. He set me up with my wife. I mean, that's how I know my wife through him. And he's been a huge, huge help for me. That's awesome, man. If you can find a guy who actually knows what he's doing and that is so huge because they also know what you need. They're like, hey, we need to concentrate more on your rear delts and the issues you're having with your shoulders or your mobility. So we're going to work on some band work first and warm you up. And you could fuck yourself up just doing it by yourself. I did.

You really could. I did. And you're right. He knows what to work on, what to loosen up. Let's not jump right into the exercise. Let's warm it up a little bit. So, yeah, I credit him to kind of get me back on the on the health and fitness and plus we're taking our own meals that's another thing uh we were

we pack our own meals we get like a service and we bring uh breakfast lunch and dinner on the road and that's our meals whoa you're taking it to another level yeah well it's another well listen i was going out having a dry aged at midnight. I was eating a full blown steak, asparagus, and baked potato. After your show. And then I would go to bed. Yeah. Sounds good.

It's delicious. I like it. But you wake up and your blood ain't moving right. That is true. You know, sometimes I will come home from the store and i'm hungry and i'll eat late night and then i'll wake up almost hungover i'm like what i didn't even drink i ate i ate like a thousand calories at 2 30 in the morning yeah yeah well last night my wife and i had sushi i woke up and i don't the sodium was unbelievable i was was like, jeez. From one thing as sushi?

I look like I need to go sweat in your sauna. Is it sodium and sushi? Like what's it from the salt? It's the soy sauce. And that's where at least I'm picking it up from. Who are all these guys showing up at our door? I'll check. Okay.

What about it? But sodium is not, what would it be in? The soy sauce? The soy sauce, right? They have that green soy sauce that's like the low, you know, they always have the low one and the high one. They have the two different kinds of soy sauce. Yeah, low sodium and high sodium.

I think last night I had the high sodium and and I woke up, and it wasn't good. How much soy sauce are you using? You know what I like? What do you like? I like the soy sauce, and then I like the wasabi. Yeah. I put a clump of that in. In the soy sauce, and then you mix it up?

And I mix it up. Make like a slurry? Yeah. It gets thick. Yeah. So when I eat the sushi, it burns my nose. That's how I like it. I like it that way, too. Sometimes sushi chefs don it just it burns my nose that's that's how i like it i like it that way too sometimes uh sushi chefs don't like it when you do that they they get offended what

disrespecting the fish yeah yeah it should stand alone did you ever see that movie jiro dreams of sushi oh is that the guy that's got that uh sushi joint at the uh in the train station yeah in japan yeah yeah have you seen that I've seen half of it. It's really weird because it changed my idea of what sushi is. I used to think, oh, they're cutting fish up. They slap it on a piece of rice. It's great. It's good.

Tastes good. Clean. Easy for you. Now I realize this guy, it's his life's dedication to putting together the perfect tastes. Yeah. Yeah. There was one guy that's been working on this egg plate for a year trying to perfect it trying to get it right it's similar

to like a joke you know they're trying to make the joke so perfect this guy's trying to get the dish so perfect um yeah but i would never thought that with sushi with i thought like if someone said a sushi chef i'd be like oh yeah right okay like he's not said a sushi chef, I'd be like, oh, yeah, right, okay. Like, he's not really a chef. He's just cutting up fish. Yeah, but there's something about the way they're preparing these. I mean, yeah, it's one thing if you're getting, like, sashimi and just salmon. But if they're putting it together with rice and, you know, it's like a science.

Yeah, no, it's definitely a science. It's also a science because they age the fish, which I didn't know. I didn't know that. Yeah, I was watching this YouTube thing where these guys were going to this sushi place, and they were saying that tuna, they will have their tuna in the refrigerator for as long as two weeks in preparation for sushi. And just like dry-aged steak, the aging of the tuna breaks the the the bacteria break down some of the tissue and make it softer and more delicate and change the flavor profile yeah no i had no idea i thought they caught it they don't you freeze fish for it to be sashimi grade is is that the deal i don't

know is that the case i don't know let's that the case? I don't know. Let's find out. What makes something shishimi great? I saw there was a guy who caught a big-ass fucking tuna, and they sold it for $3 million. That's what I had queued up until you made me. Yeah, but go back to that. What in the fuck is that? $5,000 a pound. Japan's king of tuna. Is that racist?

Is that racist? The way I said it, it seemed racist. The first tuna auction of the year at Tokyo's new fish market set a record price, more than $3 million for a giant bluefin tuna, a critically endangered species. Wow. Yeah, see, that's where you got to go, man. Is it critically endangered? And if it is so, should you really be cutting that fucker up?

Yeah. I don't know about that. When I was in Hawaii, we caught some yellowtail. My youngest daughter loves fishing. So I went out with her and we went on this boat and we were actually jigging. There's like this shelf and this big drop off and these yellowtails hang out there. We caught a gang of them. And these yellowtails hang out there.

We caught a gang of them. And one of the things they were saying was that the Big Island had a farm where they were farming yellowtail. Like they had this gigantic like sort of netted in area where the fish couldn't leave. And they were trapped in this area. But then this storm came and broke down all the nets and the fish escaped. And now they're everywhere. and you're catching them we caught like i don't like six or seven of them and they're fucking big like 10 pounds and you're fighting them on like a light uh spinning rods like like really awesome awesome time but they were unbelievably delicious but these are non-native they brought them over there and released them like they better start doing that with other fish right like they really should set up these fish farms and just

release these motherfuckers out into the ocean because they're just taking nets and pulling them across the bottom of the floor it's not even it's like such a there's something to be said about going out and catching the fish like you're saying rather than taking a net and just scooping everything up in its path. Everything, turtles, dolphins, whatever the fuck is there, everything gets jacked. And the problem is, who knows how many countries have boats that are doing that, and they're all operating in international water. And I don't know what the fucking laws are, but they're just pulling what – and you know the other thing they do that's fucked up? When they're done, a lot of times they cut the net loose and they just leave it in the ocean

they just drop the net to the bottom of the ocean it's funny they have the regulations for like hunting yeah they don't have it like in the ocean you know it's because nobody owns it you only own like a certain amount of your shore like off like say from malibu out i don't know how much they the united states owns but we only own a certain amount and then it becomes international waters international waters it's like kind of anybody could be out there it's weird i mean it makes sense but there's no i don't think there's any, I think if you have a boat, you can just kind of go anywhere that's international water. Just no regulations. Here, what is, what parts of the ocean are considered international water?

Territorial waters or territorial seas defined by a 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. It's a belt of coastal waters extending at most 12 nautical miles from the baseline, usually the mean low water mark of the coastal state. So 12 miles. So 12 miles out. Or 13.8 miles? Yeah, nautical miles. Oh, nautical miles is different, huh?

Hmm. Interesting. Why is it different? How weird is that? Nautical miles is different than regular miles? The fuck? Get it together. Don't call it a mile then, you fucks. Imagine, hey, buddy, I'll meet you at 12 miles. All right, 12 nautical miles is different than regular miles? The fuck? Get it together. Don't call it a mile then, you fucks.

Imagine, hey buddy, I'll meet you at 12 miles. Alright, 12 nautical miles. And the guy's a mile and a.8 away from you. Although stores use the label sushi grade fish, there is no official standards for using this label. The only regulation is that parasitic fish, such as salmon, should

be frozen to kill any parasites before being consumed raw. The best ones are assigned grade 1, which is usually what would be sold as sushi grade. But what about sashimi grade is what he said. It's the same thing? That's why I looked up and that's what popped up. You're not supposed to eat salmon raw, apparently. Salmon is a freshwater fish. Salmon, it can fuck you up.

But you could pull a tuna out of the water. Right out of the ocean. Yeah, I have a buddy of mine who went tuna fishing off of San Diego. They caught a tuna, and they sliced it up and ate it right there on the boat, right after they pulled it out of the water. That I haven't done, but that to me would be the best eating, right out of the water. I mean, I just hope they don't wait until there's nothing left

before they start doing something to save them. It just doesn't it doesn't seem like i mean if you're taking a fish and you're buying it for three million dollars that's almost like a scene in a movie right that's like the end this was one of the last tuna look they bought it for three million everybody's smiling and they're cutting it up it's like hunting regulations are critical but you could you know what the population is. The fish and wildlife departments have all these different methods they use, whether it's using reports from hunters, whether it's they fly over with airplanes and helicopters and things along those lines.

Whatever they use, they have a bunch of different ways that they can determine what the population is, and then they determine the population of predators, how many animals are lost, how many animals are shot during any hunting season. And then they determine how many tags can be divvied out. So like say if you live in an area, there might be 500 tags available, but there might be like 2,000 hunters that are applying for those tags.

So most people are not going to get it. It's a very smart way they've they've really got it down to a science because of that there's more white-tailed deer in this country than than even when columbus landed yeah it's uh they've got a really good system yeah if they could figure something out for the ocean the problem is you'd have to get everybody to cooperate and some like they can't even get japan to stop killing whales like there's there's certain japanese folks who uh they have this really sneaky thing they do and there's this there's this um um conservation group called the sea shepherds and they catch these fucking people all the time

but what they basically do is they say we're a research boat and they use a research boat and go slaughter whales and then sell the whales but they pretend it's that it's research but if they kill a whale certain countries still value parts of whales they make things with it yeah what the fuck do they make with whales i think they make some perfumes like what but people are still killing whales it gets it gets weird when things are smart that's when it gets weird yeah you know something as smart as a fucking whale yeah i mean uh yeah in these in these countries that they're using like you said parts of the fish for you know they put it on their mantle they got like a uh i don't know a a tooth or what have you from a whale or a shark or whatever it is. Well, that's the big thing with rhinos.

These guys cut the rhino horns off and they drink it like in a tea and it's supposed to make your dick hard. See, this is what I'm talking about. You know these things. I mean, I don't know how the hell You remember all this stuff I'm gonna I've just forgot the mileage Off the coast 13.8 nautical miles

13.8 miles 12 nautical miles 1.8 difference Oh my god 1.8 difference at 12 miles Which is Who knows how long We get to 500 miles out

You gotta do the math That's crazy it's stupid yeah um yeah i don't know how i remember these things i gotta it's a fucking screwy brain i wish i had your memory joe that's what i'm saying it's not the best i'm telling you it's like there's a lot of shit that i don't remember i just remember things that are interesting you know i have a it's it's an odd it's an odd sense of memory but the uh the rhino horn thing is kind of sad because it doesn't even work you know especially in this day and age where people can get viagra it works yeah but there's something about it i think in some asian cultures where it's considered like a sign of wealth you drive a

rolls royce you drink rhino tea this guy's a baller you know he doesn't give a fuck he drinks wine or tea you know like oh man the guy's drinking rhino tea what a guy yeah this but there's something about that like you know yeah i want to eat an extinct animal i want to bring a woolly mammoth back to life and shoot it in the head. There's some people that are like that. They want to be the ultimate conqueror. I want to eat a whale dick. You know what I mean? There's people that are like that.

I'm just looking for a nice steak, Joe. A nice steak or a good linguine with clam sauce. That place that I saw you at when I was with my kids, Madeo's, that's a sensational Italian restaurant. That place is legit. Well, that place moved. Yeah. Have you been to the new place

in Beverly Hills? Where did they move? Beverly Hills somewhere, yeah. So that place is excellent. What's in the old spot? They're redoing the whole building. That's why they had to move.

So I mean, I think that's one of the last times I've eaten there when I saw you and your kids having a meal there. Yeah, that place is good.

The pastas are fantastic. As good as it gets. It's delicious. They make the perfect linguine with clams. They do. It's like perfect. It is. It's just not too soupy.

Some people get crazy with the liquid, and you get it. It's almost like bathing in a soup. But they have it. It's nice. It's almost like bathing in a soup and but they have it's nice it's al dente it's got some chew to it and the place is authentic too i mean they got like guys walking around there from like sicily yes and italy and the owner is a little old man that kind of walks around and makes sure everything's okay and he's speaking italian and uh yeah you feel like you're in Italy when you're there. I saw Al Pacino there, so you know it's legit.

Yes, I did. Wow. Yes, I did. That's crazy. You know who I also saw there? Shannon Doherty. Remember her? Oh, by 90210?

She was like the original bad girl. Yeah, there's a lot of celebrities that pop in. I saw Jay-Z and Beyonce come in one night. Oh, shit. Oh, yeah. Shit. They so coming through the back door yeah there's like a trap there's a back there's a tunnel under the ground let's put the celebrities in pop them up through yeah oh man so i um what was it like doing madison square garden you did four shows in madison square garden You did it in the round.

Yeah. How many shows have you done in the round before? Leading up to then, I'd say probably 15, 16. Oh, so you've done quite a few in the round. Yeah. Do you like it? It's a different animal. My act is very physical and expressive, so it kind of works for that type of environment.

Although you have to, listen, there's a screen above you, so people are watching screens when they go to shows anyway. But the challenge to do it in the round is to hit those people within the first five rows that maybe can't see the screen. Because once you go to the other side of the stage, you got your to them and it's it's kind of difficult to look at you there yeah wow that's so crazy that's 18 000 people yeah that's fucking bananas dude so yeah it's been for new york new york for me has been really really good to me over the years um obviously i'm italian and there's a lot of italians in the new york city area but what i think has happened is i'm talking about like family and i'm talking about like the immigrant experience my father being an immigrant from sicily

and what i'm seeing at my shows is not only an 88 year old-old grandmother, but a 12-year-old kid and kind of everybody in between. Wow. So it's very broad. It's comedy, and I'm not tooting my own horn here. I'm just saying it's comedy that you could come and not cringe because the material might be a little blue or what have you. Joey Diaz. Imagine if you had Joey Diaz over for you at madison square garden

this is how you eat that muffler what what yeah they'd be a little shocked oh my god so yeah i mean that's why i think i was able to do four shows at madison square garden just because my audience is a large swath of multi-generational. It's multi-generational. It's just a lot of different people at the shows. And to do Madison Square Garden, for me, as we were talking prior to getting on here, I was saying that I think I took a little too much on my plate. And what I mean by that is coming up in comedy,

I used to say yes to everything. The phone used to ring, and it was my agent. You want to do? Yeah. Put me down. I'm in. Well, you're trying to work. Yeah. Trying to work. And what has happened once you get too busy, I think, uh, you need to learn to press the brakes a little bit. So, uh, I did a ton of press when I was in New York, and I had family there. I had friends there. And I think I spread myself a little too thin, so when the shows came, I don't feel like I was operating at an optimal level to perform. Yeah, it was fun.

I still had a good time. But, you know, the more and more I do stand-up, the more and more I feel like you really got to be clear-headed in the moment, and you can't overwork yourself. It's just who I am. I've always been a worker. I mean, when I wasn't going to college and I had time off in the summer, I was working. I wasn't going to college and I had time off in the summer. I was working. When I – I used to work summers as a janitor during high school.

So all the time was always occupied with work. And I feel if I'm not working, I feel like – or I'm not doing press or I'm not doing anything. I feel like – You're slacking. Yeah. anything. I feel like... You're slacking. Yeah. I feel like,

because my father has always put in my head, you know, what are you doing? Like, he'd come home and go, what'd you do today? You know, I'm like,

I don't know. All that angry face. Yeah, it was like, all right, you know, you're going to paint the fence this weekend. I'm going to paint the fence. So there was always

something to do. Right. And that work ethic has bled into my career. And now that I've had weekend i'm gonna paint the fence so there's always something to do and that work ethic has bled into my career and now that i've had some success in my career i i think i have to kind of pull it back a little bit and not say yes to an interview that maybe you know it's not going to help but it's going to take up a lot of your time yes yeah exactly yeah no i'm in the same boat and uh i mean i think sometimes even i do too many podcasts i think um but there's a lot of your time yes yeah exactly yeah no i'm in the same boat and uh i mean i think sometimes even

i do too many podcasts i think um but there's a lot of fucking people i want to talk to so it's hard but i think um i've definitely stopped doing interviews and all those different things for that reason it's just there's only certain amount of time you have and you know like you i have a family like you i exercise and i have a lot of man, between archery and martial arts and reading and just watching documentaries. And is it going to help? I don't want to be any more famous. We were talking about this earlier. It's good.

I'm working. That's all I want to do. What I want to do now is do my best work. Yeah. That's my number one objective, whether it's stand-up, whether it's UFC commentary, whether it's doing a podcast. I want to do my best work. And I don't think that I can do my best work if I'm scattered. And I often am. I think you hit the nail on the head, doing your best work, whatever you're doing. you put the hit the nail on the head doing your best work whatever you're doing so yeah if you're going to come in here today and do a podcast whatever you did prior to this cannot really

take away from the energy that you need to do this same thing with the mma and then the announcing and the same thing with the stand-up comedy i feel that sometimes i jeopardize myself and i take on too much and i've realized that and i'm going to kind of, because I got another baby coming. Congratulations. Thank you. Family's growing. And, you know, I come home and I'm looking at my daughter. She's 20 months.

And, I mean, those moments for me are like, do I want to like take my daughter out for lunch or do I want to do an interview in Idaho? Right, right. I know you got to sell tickets. That's part of the game. But I think I need to kind of just choose my roads a little careful. Well, that's one of the good things about social media is that it allows you these paths to distribute flyers and you put little posters of where you're going to be and stuff like that and it can reach your actual fans as opposed to just you know

random person who's listening to the radio or random person who picks up the newspaper well that's that's what i think that but but i like to reach the person that doesn't know who i am it's fun to go to your fan base but you know i'm sure a lot of the person that doesn't know who I am. It's fun to go to your fan base, but, you know, I'm sure a lot of the people that listen to your podcast, maybe not know who I am. And it's a joy for me to, to get someone who is this guy, maybe check them out and to get a new fan opposed to maybe feeding the fan base I currently have. I'm always looking for new people to come on board with what I'm doing. When I do a radio show in Peoria at 7 o'clock in the morning, I'm hoping someone's in their car going,

check them out. And even if it was two people that bought the ticket, for me, I would think that it was worth it getting up to get two more fans. Right. That makes sense. Sometimes, though, it hurts the end product, and the reason why I'm here is the stand-up comedy. Right. If that starts to slack, then everything else falls apart.

Yeah, I feel the same way, and I've learned over the years what the what the mistakes are like where i can screw it up like podcasts for instance i don't do like uh i used to do like a hot yoga class at 10 30 it gets out at noon i do a podcast at one i can't i don't do that anymore because i found i was just too fucking worn out yeah because i do a 90 minute yoga class and i'm i come in here and i'm still like oh yeah what what are we talking about like i'm still spacey i need two hours i need two hours and i need to drink a shitload of water and then i'm good to go but i need that extra hour so now i'll do like an 8 30 class or something like that or maybe even a six in the morning class and so when i have a 1 p.m podcast

i'm fucking completely acclimated yeah but i had to do that by trial and error. Absolutely. And that's where I'm at. I think I'm trying to figure out what the balance is of creating a life outside of stand-up and then giving all I can to stand-up. And even I do a podcast with Pete Correale that we did a live podcast for the first time. And I don't know if you've seen this. The podcast listener is a different audience than what's arriving at my shows. Two different audiences. There's a definite podcast listener out there. I mean, people that listen and consume podcasts. And it crosses over, don't get me wrong.

But I went to do the podcast in Orlando and totally different vibe. It's nice to see who the hell is listening to this stuff. And we did it. I don't know if you've ever done a live cast, but I'm sure you're like an anomaly. You got fans from all different walks of life. I mean, you're in the stand-up world. You're in different walks of life i mean you're in the stand-up world you're in the mixed martial arts world you're in the podcast world so it must be a lot of different people coming to your shows yeah there's a lot of weirdos yeah

if you see a dude with shaved head and tattoos and he's kind of jacked he probably knows who i am but it's like a lot of people that are into the science podcasts or the podcasts with interesting intellectuals. There's a lot of – yeah. But there's just people that don't like the mixed martial arts stuff and they like me for other things. It's hard. You can't please everybody. No, you can't. It's not really possible.

And then along the way you find that out and you know you can't it's not really possible and then along the way you find that out and you piss a bunch of people off you know they're like you know i don't like that part of you like okay i don't know what to tell you yeah you can't make everybody happy no but especially if you do a lot of shit you know but uh i'm lucky with the job with the ufc that they don't really care about the other things that I do. Because if I was working for a more sensitive organization, you know, obviously it's a fucking cage fighting promotion. It's like, how sensitive can you get? But with some social issues, you know, it's like if I was working for the NBA, I'd probably

have been fired a decade ago. You know? Yeah. Easily. The MMA is definitely a, or the UFC is definitely an animal in itself. How did you get into that position? Did you know Dana White and you started, for you, I always wanted to ask you this at the comedy store, how did you become kind of the voice of the UFC?

Well, I started in 1997. I was the post-fight interviewer. It was just a position that was available, and the UFC was very small back then. Very few people knew what it was. It was off a cable. You couldn't get it on cable. You could only get it on satellite. And they needed someone to do post-fight interviews. But you were in that world to begin with? I was in the martial arts world. I used to teach martial arts for a living before I became a comedian. I used to fight, fought in a lot of Taekwondo tournaments and had some kickboxing fights. And I'd always been a martial artist

since I was a kid. And so I just was interested in watching the UFC. And then I started training in jujitsu. And when I was training in jujitsu, I was just a white belt. I was just starting out. That's when I got hired by the UFC to be a post-fight interviewer but i only did that for two years and then i quit it was just too much and it was actually like it was i was losing money i would make more money uh doing a weekend at a comedy club than i would doing it doing the ufc and it just got to a point was just it was too much of a pain in the ass. And so I still remained a fan, but I backed away. And then the UFC was purchased by this company called Zufa in 2001. And when that happened, they started putting on shows in Vegas,

and I would go there with my friends. They got me free tickets. They reached out, and they would try to get celebrities to go sit there because they were very small at the time. They were hemorrhaging money, and they would try to get celebrities to go sit there because they were very small at the time. They were hemorrhaging money, and they were trying to build it up. And in talking to Dana White one day, I was talking to him about fights going on in Japan. I'm like, have you ever seen Sato fight? Do you know Sakurai?

Do you know this guy? And I was bringing all these names, and he was like, do you want to do commentary? I'm like, I don't want to do commentary, man. I'm here to get drunk and watch people kick the shit out of each other i'm not here to work and he talked me into it for one show ufc 37 and a half it was a show that was on um one of those uh fox sports networks was smaller networks and um i think it was the best damn sports show period was a part of it i did that and the rest was history wow and then i did like 12 of them for free like the ufc didn't have any

money like well they were hemorrhaging money i mean they had they were rich people that owned it but it was not a profitable venture yeah and i said look just get me there get me my friends tickets and i'll do it and so that's how i operated for like over a year. And then I just became the commentator. It's just weird. That's crazy. It's just Dana White. He's a crazy man. And he's got a weird way of looking at things that's very effective.

And in his crazy mind, he's like, let's take this guy who's never even thought about being a commentator and make him our commentator. I mean, I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. I really didn't i didn't have any training at all in sports commentary i just would see what was happening and start talking about it you know which is really like the wrong i was more even play by play and color it was like doing both of them at the same time it was really weird and as far as you doing that, do you get any notes from anybody going, hey, Joe, try this, try that, or you just develop that whole, that voice all on your own?

100% of my own. The only thing that I had was, there's like Mark De La Grata, who's a good friend of mine. He's one of the top trainers in the world. He's in the truck, and I can communicate with him. There's a one of the top trainers in the world he's in the truck and uh i can communicate with him there's a button where i can communicate with him and we talk about stuff like i can say uh does he look like he's limping to you and he's like yeah there's something wrong

with his leg i go the left leg right he's like yeah yeah and then i'll start talking about it like i'll be able to bounce it back and forth with him or sometimes i just it's obvious and i'll say it myself then i'll i'll, like, am I wrong? Is he dropping his hand? Or is this – it's a nice thing to have someone to bounce things off. It used to be Eddie Bravo. Eddie Bravo used to do it as well where I would be able to talk to him about certain positions because he would be in the truck. And I'd be able to ask him, like, his left leg's in jeopardy right now, right?

Or he needs to step over with his right leg's in jeopardy right now, right? Or he needs to step over with his right leg. We'd be able to go over, because there's some aspects of martial arts that are extremely technical, especially jujitsu, when things go to the ground. And you're trying to do commentary, and I have to decipher which is his left leg, which is his right leg,

where is he tied up, where is he tangled, and I'm doing it in real time while I'm trying to be entertaining and talking. It's very complicated. But nobody taught me how to do it. I just figured out how to do it. And you're not looking at like a Jim Lampley or anybody in the broadcasting world

when it comes to fights or this is something that you developed on your own? Like sometimes you look as a comedian, you look at other comedians, say the Friars or the Carlins or whatnot. You didn't have kind of like a mentor? No, not necessarily because there wasn't one – there wasn't a lot of guys that did it for martial arts commentary. There was John Peretti, who was excellent. He was one of the very best, who was actually thec matchmaker and a commentator when i first started he was very good uh there's a guy named jeff armstrong he was very good too he was there

when i first started too he actually ran a promotion called hook and shoot he's excellent he really knows what he's doing and then there's a few other guys you know that also did it but there's like what i do as far as like stand uh doing um uh commentary for mma there's might maybe 10 guys in the world to do it yeah you know they really do it on a high level maybe 10 guys wow i mean between one fc uh between um you know uh brave and then the ufc bellator pfl there's maybe maybe 10 guys on the planet that are doing it which is not a lot of people and there's a lot in the ufc now where fighters are now transitioning to become commentators and oftentimes they're the best at it like michael bisping just did this past weekend he was the

ufc middleweight champion and he's awesome at it already did one one show they know more obviously because they've been in there you know they've they have that added element of actually having fought in the ufc which is gigantic yeah i could see uh i think paulie malinaggi yeah he came he seems to be very very fantastic he's very good he's very good very technical but also very aware and fighters can see things that maybe the average person can't see like they see when someone's slowing down they see when someone's laying back they see when someone got hurt to the body they see like little things that maybe a person who's never fought before doesn't see yeah the knowledge is key and plus the the excitement level too i mean when when someone gets hit for the announcer to like

react to that in a real way yeah yeah for for an audience member it's like you know you it's it's exciting yeah no that's what's up yeah like when so if someone's boring and bland and they don't really care what's going on like the audience feels it and they feel it when you're faking it too yeah if you try to pump it up and fake it do you have any other hobbies outside of uh comedy and um i'm not a big hobby guy but growing up my parents always used to say what are you interested in do you do anything so they gotta be happy now right yeah like holy shit look it worked out my hobby is uh stand-up comedy really i mean um i like to cook don't get me wrong i like to travel um my wife and i really really enjoy going to different places and uh i love hotels it's uh

i mean and these aren't really hobbies it's just uh i like hospitality so that's my that's my passion uh i like having uh people over at the house and uh making them feel good that's that's what i like to do. I like to entertain. If I find out you like a specific drink or you like something that's, you know, I take notice of what people like. So when you come to my house, I got what you like there. That's very Italian. It's very, very Italian. And I've always had, you know, I work for the Four Se seasons hotel and uh that chain taught me to anticipate people's needs so anytime i have anything at my house whether it be a birthday

party a get together if it's going to be a fight i make sure when you come over you are taking care of not only with your alcohol needs here's one one. I ain't a pot guy, right? I don't smoke pot. You want to start? Listen. But I got pot at the house just in case you want some. Really? So I thought, you know, you have alcohol.

You have beer. Right. You have scotch. You have wine. Right. You have alcohol. You have beer. You have scotch. You have wine. So what if someone doesn't have a taste for alcohol and they want a joint? Wow. I got a couple of joints.

What do you get it from? PDC from the comedy store? I think I got it from- Gino from LXBD? No, I think it's- What's the- Med Men? Yeah, Med Men. Yeah, I went in there.

You went in there specifically just for hospitality. Hospitality. I mean, come on. If you came over and I go, Joe, you want a joint? And you're like, yeah, you want to smoke it? No, I don't smoke, but, you know, there. Have at it. Just to have.

Right. Even a cigar. I got a cigar. I don't smoke cigars. You want one? I got it. I don a cigar. I don't smoke cigars. You want one? I got it. I don't know. I get joy in making others happy.

So when you looked at your house, did you look at your house and go, this is a good house to entertain in? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because I always see that when you see a YouTube video on a home and they're showing the home. So a wonderful entertainer's home, like an entertain's home that's what i what does that mean a singer guys playing the piano what does that mean i like i like a living room that bleeds into the kitchen all right that's that's i like that uh right right there's not really a uh a wall in between the two it's got to be and then i like like indoor, outdoor. You live in California. I like to go outside.

Maybe you want to have a drink outside and bring it back in. Yeah. I just like the different, that's what they're talking about when it's entertaining. I like a fire outside. Oh, yeah.

A little fire pit. Fire pit. Do you try to bring people, like if you have a party, do you try to bring people over that you think would have interesting conversations? Yes. Although, bring people like if you have a party you try to bring people over that you think would have interesting conversations yes um although we have a problem at this particular point we're in a transition period um we have a child so i don't know if you went through this but a lot of uh

sometimes when you're coming from a single couple but a couple with no kids and now you have kids now you're you're finding other people who have kids yeah right so that's where we're in we're uh we're not yet into the preschool uh so we're kind of in limbo we're looking uh for new friends not that our old friends are are bad it's just now we have other obligations we have a child we can't we maybe can't go out at the dinner at eight o'clock at night when we like we used to now we're now we're looking to bring it to the house yeah no i know exactly what you're saying we went through that exact same transition and a lot of times you pick up some dead weight along the way running these people and the only thing they have in common is the kids are the same age and then

you have to talk to some fucking guy oh and they give you ear beatings about their job yeah just like you just some people just not interesting it's unfortunate yeah i mean you do run into that where you meet a guy like i went to a toddler group uh last week now some sometimes i do this obviously because i want to hang out with my daughter but sometimes the material that comes out of going to something like that is gold yeah now it's me 15 women and a gay guy at this toddler group right so I mean it's just like it's almost writing it's like writes itself yeah although i'm in a in a circle sitting indian style hell i mean it's it's strange but man it's that's the things i want to do because i feel if i live more of my life i could draw so much more humor from it and Sure, yeah. It's two-pronged.

I want to hang out with my family, and I want to talk to people who are living these life experiences because what I've noticed is I want to keep the same kind of lifestyle I've had when I wasn't successful because I feel when you start detaching yourself from the daily routine, let's say even going to Target. If you have somebody go to Target for you, you miss out on what happens on a day-to-day. And I want to still keep that rich and available to me. That's very wise of you.

That's very true. That is something that happens when people become more and more famous, especially. They become more reluctant to go places like they just they don't want to just go to the mall you know like sometimes you just got to go to the mall yeah it's good it's good to be around weirdos it's good it is well i think it was you yeah it was you saying that like if you were out at a restaurant and somebody comes up to you and asks for a picture because everybody wants a picture nowadays yeah to prove they met joe rogan and and what what have you and sometimes it's a little intrusive when you're having dinner with your daughters or your family and then it's like you know i've had people ask me for pictures when my daughter's

on my lap and i'm feeding her yeah i had like you can't. You got to get the fuck out of here. The problem is you take that picture with that guy and then someone says, oh, I want a picture too. And then you get 10 people to get up. And it sounds braggy, but it's not. It's just a weird thing that happens with people with phones. Half those people don't even give a fuck about you. They really just want to take a picture with someone

that they saw on Fear Factor or whatever. And they just, oh, there he is. Let me take a picture with him that they saw you know on fear factor or whatever and they just oh there he is let me take a picture with him and they come over to your table and they seem to think that it's part of the job that you have to be every time you're in public you have to be available to them it's very weird like rule that people have decided some fairly ignorant people have decided so that's why they would think that even with my daughter on my lap and i'm literally this is i was literally putting food into her mouth and a guy was like hey man can i get a picture like this is this is not a good time it's not a good this is not a smart thing to ask and it's why people

certain people are reluctant to go out in the first place why they're reluctant to go out in public but do you feel an obligation to at all uh to your fan base to make yourself available to them if if i'm not with my kids yeah yeah so do you do you generally turn down any photos or autographs it has to be an extenuating circumstance for me to say no there has to be something wrong like if someone you know if someone is somewhere where they're not supposed to be you know like like i had a guy uh come backstage at the comedy store we made made it backstage all the way to the back and uh he's he's talking and and and i'm like i was asked the other comments you know this guy do you know this guy who's guy i go who are you man and uh he's

like oh i'm friends with uh this guy go, so you just walked back here? I'm like, you got to get the fuck out of here. Like, get out of here, man. And then the security comes and kicks the guy out. I'm like, what is happening here? Like, there's no security here? Like, that guy didn't ask for a photo. But if he did, I'd probably take a picture with that motherfucker. But I'd probably take a picture with him out there.

You know, if you're in a rush, if you're trying to go somewhere and you're literally running and someone wants to pull their phone out like sometimes you can't but most of the time if i'm by myself i'm very approachable yeah it's just family stuff it's just like my kids don't like it like especially my youngest daughter she does not like it she gets angry she squeezes my hand because people ignore her and they just start talking to me and she's just standing there and eight-year-olds have zero patience she's sitting there going boring she doesn't give a fuck if they know me like to her i'm just dad yeah you know like it doesn't matter if i'm famous it doesn't mean anything to her what it means to her is like when she's with me she likes attention she wants me to talk to her about stuff we have a nice little relationship

yeah i love having little people it's fun it's like it's it's uh it's for people that are single and i think it all depends on where you are in life and you know how reflective you are about it for people that are single they look at it and i know i did they look at it as a potential burden because when i was a kid i thought of myself as a burden So I think of other children as a burden. But then you have them yourself, and the love that you have for them is indescribable. It's this crazy feeling that you didn't even know was in the menu before. And then all of a sudden you have this crazy feeling to this little person. It's your favorite thing to do.

Yeah, it is amazing. And to echo those thoughts uh i wasn't a big kid guy i was like i don't really need kids and this but then you have them and you're like man what a missing this would be if you go through life and you don't have a child and and i'm just i'm not saying you you need to have a child to be complete. But for me, man, it's been fantastic. And having a baby boy now coming on the way is great. I mean, it's not a burden. It just adds to your life.

Yeah, it's responsibility. It's overwhelming responsibility. Yeah, I mean, it's not about you. It's about them. It's overwhelming responsibility. Yeah, I mean, it's not about you. It's about them. And, you know, you have to have a sense of, I don't know,

you've got to give them the time they need in order for them to succeed in life. And, you know, my parents gave me a lot of attention. I mean, my dad was the type of guy that was not really around because he was working and my mom was kind of managing the house. But over the course of time, my father and I become best friends. I mean, he's a huge critic of what I do for a living. I don't know if you have parents that are heavily involved in your career, but man, my father, he's you know he comes to the he comes to the to the he's taking notes at the show so he's one of these guys he'll tell me if i suck i mean uh it's good it keeps me level headed you know i have i have a family that is very very honest and they don't pull any punches. You know, people confuse that with being cruel. What, honesty?

Yeah. Yeah, listen. My father and my relationship with my father has been, and I had to tell him, I said, Dad, could you come to just be a fan and not like a father? Just enjoy the show. You don't have to critique it, which he has backed off,

but I know deep down he's dying to tell me something. Dying. I mean, I know when I do something on TV, and if you don't say nothing about it, he don't like it. Let's say if you listen to this interview, and then we talk, and he doesn't bring it up i know he's gonna say you sucked it's no good boring boring why shut it off why people want to listen to you you know like yeah he'll he'll give it to me but

that's also why you're so funny because you grew up with that that's part of the whole program totally totally i mean i think that's a huge reason why i am the way i am because i'm kind of honest uh when i'm talking about comedy on stage the honesty is to me the the the funny the funniest stuff i got is the truth and if you don't speak the truth then i don't think it's particularly funny at least in my life but uh yeah to to come from that um yeah my sister my my wife you know they'll tell me yeah yeah my wife will tell me too my wife's fucking funny she's hilarious she says ridiculous shit all the time and she's getting good at it like she she likes to make me laugh so like she'll point at something she'll look at this motherfucker and

like then we'll both start cracking up that's huge too and she'll tell me like if you seemed a little off tonight like yes new shits especially when i have new material man it's slippery you know new materials like i can't quite try to grab a hold of it i know something's there but and the only thing that makes it better is trial and error that's the only thing that makes it better it's the only thing just fucking constantly doing sets you know i know you're at the store all the time are you working other clubs as well around town no i just like the motherland just that stage in the original original room for whatever reason i feel the most comfortable and the most creative yeah i'm not saying I won't do the ice house or stuff like that, but it's easy.

It's kind of near where I live. I bounce in, I bounce out, and I like doing it there. And I used to bring my wife there when we didn't have a baby. And my wife, I think, and I don't know if your wife has, do you think your humor has bled into your wife's? Because my wife's looking at the world completely different. Like a comic. Yeah.

My wife's like a comic. Yeah. She thinks like a comic. Yeah. So definitely my wife. It's natural. If you're around comics all the time, you think like comics. Like when comics come over the house, she's always fucking with them.

It's hilarious. She'll start poking fun at them. She gets a kick out of it. And when she's with her friends, she's absolutely the one who's always talking shit and making people laugh. That's funny. Yeah. It's the most fun group of people to be around. When we're all at the store, when we all see each other, I mean, that's one of the things that makes me feel so fortunate is that I have so

many friends that are hilarious. Like when I go there, I see these guys and I know that we're going to, we're going to have some fun. We're going to, we're going to do sets, but we're also going to hang out in that back bar and talk shit and laugh a lot.

It just, it's a, it's a great friendly environment, you know? And I like to laugh. I love to laugh. So when i go to the comedy store i don't really if i'm around comedians i don't say much because i i i'd rather sit back and enjoy what's happening in front of me than actually be a part of it because for me you know i make

people laugh all the time and to be around five or six comedians in the parking lot of the comedy store and watch whatever. You go off on a tangent or Callan start doing his thing, I just sit back and enjoy it. I don't like to speak around comedians. I like to go when I'm in the main room. I like to go into the OR and sit in the back and watch the show sometimes, too. When I know I'm not going up at all that night in that room, I like to do that. I like to be an audience member.

I still really enjoy that. I still really enjoy just sitting in the back with a drink and just laughing. It's great. It's a great thing to be a part of. You know who's fucking murdering it these days? Neil Brennan. Neil Brennan's on fire right now. He's on fire.

He's doing really, really well. I think that's special on netflix the three mics has really opened himself up to performing in front of large audiences and he's always been a real funny cat you know yes i mean uh always been real funny but he's in a new zone right now i was watching him the other night in the or i was sitting in the back i'm like god damn this new stuff is good really here that's just such a fucking it's such a great hot spot there's so much good comedy going on in that place whether it's santino santino's been murdering lately hinchcliffe's been killing it there's just so many good comics there it's like uh just you feel like

you it's it's fuel it's inspirational yeah you walk in and see some guy going up, and you're like, man, that's some funny stuff. And you feel inspired to go and go, yeah, I'm going to write something new or what have you. It's nice. It's a nice community to be a part of, that comedy store. It's really helped me over the last 20 years. Yeah. It's very unique. And I showed you that painting that Taylor uh taylor made i posted up on

instagram that's the painting of mitzi i think i'm gonna put that motherfucker right there that's nice have mitzi watch over us yeah this this whole thing you got going on here and i don't know if you talk about it much i don't know if you're private about it but even even being here in this studio is inspiring when i when you were showing me what you have and whatnot, I'm like, man, see, I don't, I don't, I've always looked at people who have things or whether it be if you have a nice home or a nice car or whatever it is, a nice family. I always inspire to do that.

I don't begrudge anybody that has a lot. I've always looked at it as I want to be where that person is opposed to, you know, being bitter. Yeah. That's very healthy. Yeah. I mean, man, just having a treadmill, whatever it is, the treadmill you showed me, man, that's not, I want to get something like that. I mean, I just always looked, I want to be around people who, you know, are inspiring. Yeah, me too. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the best things about this podcast.

I get a chance to talk to really interesting people in all walks of life. And, you know, it's weird, all the worlds mixed together. But all those interesting, inspirational people, it's definitely made me more aware and smarter 100% made me more aware of things made me reconsider my positions on things made me uh like like we're talking about david goggins i mean i just think about that guy and i want to work out harder i do there's a part in the book i think he went to support his either mother or sister in a race and then in las vegas and then i think he just took off and left like he went he was there for them isn't isn't there a part where he just like he was in dress

shoes and he he just started running that's that's him man he's a fucking savage he's a legit and what's great about him one of my favorite parts about david goggins is that he's real honest about who he used to be that he was like 300 pounds and fat and lazy he's drinking milkshakes and he just was depressed and couldn't get his shit together and then he hardened himself up through some strange force of will yeah and became that guy decided he wanted to become that guy who was as he puts it uncommon amongst uncommon men you know that he just decided i'm going to be the motherfucker of motherfuckers and then he's so much like that when people around him like oh jesus because he's so fucking intense it's like you got to ramp it up too like i'm not ready for

goggins right now i was going to do 20 sit-ups and 20 chin-ups and 20 push-ups and i was going to go home this motherfucker wants to run till we die yeah you know but that's those people i don't know how many people goggins has inspired that listen to this podcast and all of a sudden they're out there hustling and they're out there doing things on a level that they never did before and they're putting in that work and exerting themselves in that way you know and he rubs some people the wrong way because of that because he's so aggressive and intense some people are just reluctant to to be inspired by a guy like that yeah they're almost like it's too much well he's been there he's been he's been there you know he's been in the in the basement of life you know i mean 300 pounds didn't really come from uh you know the father was uh and he

willed himself out of it so i mean if he could, you know, why can't I run another mile and a half? Yeah. There's a video that I listened to from my friend Jocko, Jocko Willink, who was a Navy SEAL commander, and he's got this video. And it just says, it's just, I think it's called good because it's how he looks at everything. Oh, you hurt your ankle. Good. More time to work on other things. You know, you didn't get to promotion. Good. Good. Like, everything's good. Everything. Good. That's like how he looks at everything. Oh, you hurt your ankle. Good. More time to work on other things. You know, you didn't get to promotion.

Good. Good. Like, everything's good. Everything. Good. That's like how he looks at things. Wow. And I've been, like, running hills, halfway fucking dead, exhausted, can't breathe.

It's like, oh, your lungs are on fire? Good. You got an opportunity to get in better shape. Like, good. Keep pushing. This is what it's all about. Good. This is an opportunity to face the intensity of this moment.

You got to play that. Play that video. Play that video just to freak Sebastian out. Because this is something I listen to this like every three or four months. He would call me up or pull me aside with some major problem, some issue that was going on. And he'd say, boss, we got this and that and the other thing. And I'd look at him and I'd say, good. and he'd say boss we got this and that and the other thing and i'd look at him and i'd say good and finally one day he was telling me about some issue that he was having some problem and

he said i already know what you're gonna say i said well what am i gonna say he said you're gonna say good he said that's what you always say. When something is wrong and going bad, you always just look at me and say, good. And I said, well, yeah. When things are going bad, there's going to be some good that's going to come from it. Didn't get the new high-speed gear we wanted? Good. Didn't get promoted? Good.

More time to get better. Oh, mission got canceled? Good. Didn't get promoted. Good. More time to get better. Oh, mission got canceled? Good. We can focus on another one. Didn't get funded. Didn't get the job you wanted. Got injured. Sprained my ankle. Got tapped out? Good. Got beat? Good. You learned. The Good Alert. Unexpected problems? Good. We have the opportunity to figure out a solution. That's it.

When things are going bad, don't get all bummed out, don't get startled, don't get frustrated. If you can say the word good, guess what? It means you're still alive. It means you're still breathing. And if you're still breathing, well, now you still got some fight left in you. So get up. Dust off. Reload.

Recalibrate. Reengage. Reengage. And go out on the attack. Come on. Don't you want to just go run through a fucking wall right now? Hey. Joe. Good. Good. Come on Don't you want to just go run through a fucking wall right now? Hey Joe

Good Good Good I think of that all the time That's a legit thing that bounces around in my head When I'm tired When something's wrong in my life I think good

Good Don't be a bitch Look at this the right way Look at this the right way You're gonna Things are gonna go wrong Yeah They always do If they don't You're not trying anything unusual Look at this the right way. Things are going to go wrong. Yeah, totally.

They always do. If they don't, you're not trying anything unusual. You're not doing anything difficult. You're not stretching yourself out. Yeah, I like looking at videos like that and being introduced to guys like that. I mean, that's how I got introduced to Goggins. Someone played a video of him. Dr. Eric Thomas is a motivational speaker who I love listening to.

I love listening to people who get me motivated. I need that. Jocko's got a great podcast, too. That guy's a Navy SEAL? Yeah. He's a motherfucker. He's a very interesting cat. Extremely intelligent. But just as manly as they come, you know, and just fucking owns it.

And, you know, you see that guy talk. One of the reasons why that's so inspirational is because that's really him. You go to his Instagram every day, there's a photograph of his watch at 4.30 in the morning because that's when he gets up to train. He trains by himself, and then he'll take a photo of the puddle that's on the ground after he's done and then he earns the sunrise so he gets up and he goes to the fucking beach and he sees the sun come up after he's done training he's a savage that's a real savage there's these guys that get up at 4 4 30 in the morning and i'm like what happened to taking a nap he'll take a nap later but the point is he makes himself like it's nothing wrong with taking a nap no i know but this is dedication look at his

whole fucking instagram was pictures of his watch he's a fucking animal but he's really doing it too he's a brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt like a very high level black belt he's tapped some world-class competitors and uh fucking great guy too cool yeah i'll definitely he was a guest on tim ferris's podcast that's how i heard about him then i had him on mine and uh me and tim both convinced him to do his own podcast now it's hugely popular he's got a great book out uh what is it uh extreme ownership yeah he's he's fantastic. I'll definitely look at him. Yeah.

People like that are so important because they give you just that little push. They change the frequency of your brain and make you, gets you fired up. You can accomplish a lot of things because of people like that. There's extra gears to be had, extra horsepower to be put to things. Totally. Good. things. Totally. Good. Good. Good.

So now that you've done four sold-out shows in Madison Square Garden, I mean, this is the fucking pinnacle of any stand-up comics career. There's only a handful of comics that have ever been able to do that. There's like Dice, Louis C.K., there's a few others. I mean, you're in a rare place. Do you have other goals, or are you just working on maintaining and continuing to put on good shows for your fans? That's been the goal. I'm not a goal guy.

I don't say, hey, this is my goals this year. I never planned on doing Madison Square Garden. My only goal when I got into this business was to do it for a living. I want to do stand-up comedy for a living. And now wherever it takes me, it takes me. It took me to the garden. I'm not looking at my vision board and going, doing the Vatican next. You don't believe in the secret? it's uh you don't believe in the secret wherever this takes me it it takes me um i you know to do the madison square garden was was fabulous it was a great experience nothing nothing quite like the rush of going out in front of 18 000 people in the round and and you know having your family

witness it my mother when she walked into the arena, started crying. She was there when I was doing it. Can you imagine being her? You gave birth to this little tiny baby. Yeah. And this little tiny baby got four sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden. It hit her. It hit her hard. Oh, my God.

It must have hit you, too, to see it hit her. Oh, man. Listen, I'm an emotional guy. So to see my – I brought my little baby and Lana on stage for a photo at the end of it. I brought my father on stage. I brought my mother and my sister on stage to kind of share in that moment. So yeah, when my mother walked in an empty arena and saw it, she had flashbacks to in 1998 when I did Zanies,

and we had to get friends and family there to fill the audience. And then now she walks in and her son's doing four of these. It was great. I'm so glad my parents were alive to see that. It would have been a shame if they weren't there because they've been on this journey from the beginning. These are parents who, when I told them in 1996 that I was going to go out to Los Angeles to pursue a standup career, didn't look at me and go, are you nuts? They looked at me and go, hey, you know what? If you think you got what it takes, get the hell out there. Don't

put yourself a time limit. Some people people say if i don't do it in five years i'm gonna quit or whatever so when i came out here it was all in you know if i said five years i wouldn't have been here i would have been back in chicago working at motorola who knows yeah uh so i family's always been really really key to my success. Having people who are very supportive, and my wife, who's a huge, huge reason I am doing what I'm doing. I mean, you know, to have a wife to deal with the life of a comedian on the road, away from home a lot, you've got to have a strong, strong woman to be in your corner

and to put up with that. Also, just to deal with the weirdo of fucking comics, a weird person. Yeah. I mean, just the mentality of a comedian is tough to be around. Not tough. It's just, you know, we're always in our own head sometimes. So, yeah. So, to answer your question, where do I go from here?

I don't know. I'm enjoying doing some movies. I just started dipping my toe into different muscle when it comes to acting, but not comedic acting. I like the dramas. How come? I'm a serious guy, generally speaking. I'm not a goofball. I'm not the guy always the center of attention. That's just not who I am. So I like kind of being serious and acting in a drama kind of place

to kind of who I am. It's kind of being serious and acting in a drama kind of place to kind of who I am. It's kind of a serious guy. And I like it. I get my fix from doing the stand-up on stage. I don't need to do it in a movie. So I like the challenge, number one. And number two, I just like to do different things, a little bit outside the box. So I like doing, I mean, did this gangster movie coming out with Scorsese.

No shit. Yeah. What is that? It's called. You got to work with Scorsese? Yeah. So it's called The Irishman. Holy shit.

The Irishman. What is it about? It's about basically Jimmy Hoffa and how they killed him. This guy, De Niro, plays the Irishman. Jimmy Hoffa's played by Pacino. Pesci's in the movie. And I played Crazy Joe Gallo. And my first day on the set was with De Niro and Pesci.

What the fuck was that like? Look at that. Yeah. So I was shitting i mean there's no who is that on the left pacino get the fuck out of here wow that's incredible yeah i mean maybe it's just that photograph but it that barely looks like i know i know that uh this is coming out on netflix that's crazy yeah how different he looks I know. I know. This is coming out on Netflix. That's crazy. Yeah. How different he looks.

Wow. That's a Netflix movie, huh? Yeah. Fucking Netflix, huh? Yeah. It's like a $145 million project. Jesus. It's coming out in October.

Dude, what is it like to just be around Scorsese on a movie set and realize you're a fucking actor in a Scorsese movie? That's gotta be, I mean, that is about as high level as it's like either Francis Ford Coppola, Scorsese. There's like a few people that if you're on a set with them, you know, Kubrick when he was alive, it's like, holy shit. That was a holy shit moment for me. I was, listen, I am by no stretch of the

imagination a seasoned actor and then to get thrown into this group of people uh and and working with them i mean i gotta tell you there was a sense of doubt like you know sometimes like should i be here you know is this is this happening and then you know to do the scene with the nero and pesci it was almost like after the first scene i'm like oh yeah i should be here it's all the anticipation of leading up to the moment that is unfamiliar to you then once you do it you feel like man, that was all in my head. And I made it sound like it was going to be, you know, because I was thinking the negative too.

I always think, oh, I'm going to screw this up. And that's what motivates me. I never look in the positive. I always come from a negative place. But once I did that first scene with them, and these guys were more than helpful working with them. I mean, Scorsese, when he came out, it was friendly, nice. You know, it was encouraging to be around that kind of positive energy.

Did you have a hard time sleeping the night before? Oh, yeah. I didn't sleep, I don't think, for the first week leading up to the scene because I knew it was going to be with De Niro and Pesci. They took Gotham Comedy Club in New York City and they made it the Copacabana, which I thought was fitting because Gotham Comedy Club is kind of where I did all my stand-up in New York. I didn't really do any other club but Gotham. It's a great club. Great club. Mazzilli Brothers, who who run it are fantastic guys.

And they transformed the Gotham Comedy Club into the Copacabana. And Don Rickles is played by Jim Norton. No shit. So I'm watching him on stage with. It's just crazy. Norton's a perfect Rickles. I'm just thinking about that. He's perfect for that.

He really did a fantastic job. Really, really did a great job. I mean, even his smile is almost like Rickles-esque. Yeah, they gave him one of those. Look at him. Oh, that's fantastic. Great casting, i mean come on who the fuck else would be better you gotta get them fat did they fatten them up yeah they fatten them up did they give makeup to fatten up or they make them eat uh they made them i think they made them bald and they gave them a fat suit no shit wow so that's amazing i mean the jim norton's a guy i've known for what over 20 years and now

i'm sitting there watching him as don rickles in a movie it was just blowing my mind just blowing my mind but uh this thing is going to be i can't wait to see it i didn't see any of the movie even when i was doing it i didn't even look at what i was doing, yeah, I'm really excited to see what this thing looks like. God damn. That's phenomenal. What a milestone. A movie with De Niro, Al Pacino,

Joe Pesci, a fucking Scorsese film. Harvey Keitel's in it. Holy shit. Bobby, Bobby kind of always in it. It's Harvey Keitel. A lot of people never saw the bad Lieutenant. Have you ever seen the bad Lieutenant? I've never seen my god look harvey kytel's been amazing and virtually

everything he's ever done but the bad lieutenant is one of those movies that's so fucked up and so crazy that it was about a bad cop like a fucking really bad cop okay and uh like completely totally out of control but it is one of those movies where after it's over, you know, the credits roll, and you're just sitting there trying to catch your breath, just going, Jesus Christ, what the fuck did I just watch? There's a... 80s?

I don't remember. Look how jacked he was. Wow. It says 93, but they remade it with Nicolas Cage a couple years ago, too. Get the fuck out of here with that one. It's not bad. No!

It's not the same, but it's not bad. No! I love Nicolas Cage, but no. you stick to driving that eleanor mustang and gone in 60 seconds you can't be bad lieutenant you son of a bitch not that you're not a great actor but look it's just there's certain guys that take over a role and to do that again like here's one like say if they offered you taxi driver they say Totally. They say, hey, we're going to do Taxi Driver again. You'd have to be like, yeah, good luck casting somebody else. Get the fuck away from me with that. You can't be De Niro in Taxi Driver unless you're De Niro.

It's impossible. That movie. Cape Fear, another one. He nailed it. By the way, Cape Fear was, I think, someone else was that character before. I think Robert Mitchum, I think, played the same role that De Niro played. But I didn't know that when I saw it. When I saw it, I just thought, it's fucking De Niro.

1962. There it is, yeah. But if they tried to do it today, like, get the fuck out of here. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't, especially Taxi Driver. No, you can't recreate that role with another actor. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't, especially Taxi Driver. No, you can't recreate that role with another actor. No, no, Bad Lieutenant. Nobody's seen that.

Nicolas Cage, Bad Lieutenant. Even Nicolas Cage probably didn't watch it. It might have been like a sequel. I don't know if it was a remake because it's called Port of Call. It's got an extension on the end of it. Port of Call, New Orleans. It's called Bad Lieutenant, Port of Call, New Orleans. Oh, yeah, I heard about that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the Nicolas Cage one? Yeah, 2009. So they tried to piggyback on her or some shit like that. Yeah. But whatever. That Harvey Keitel version is holy shit. But he's great in everything.

He's great in Pulp Fiction. He's great in everything. Yeah. No, he's a fantastic actor. And they really, I mean, the people in this movie are. What's it like hanging out with those guys? Listen, Joe. When I went in there, I told myself, I ain't talking to nobody.

I'm going to speak. Once spoken to. Once spoken to. Yeah. There was a part when they were kind of lighting De Niro and I, and we're standing face to face, and he's looking at me, and I'm looking right at him, and I wasn't going to say nothing. And then he comes in on my my tie and he needs to be tightened a little bit and he cinched my tie oh wow he straightened out my tie so yeah i had a wig they put me in a wig what kind of wig would it look like actually there's there's that if you if you type

up sebastian mascalco irishman it it should pop up oh yeah there it is what is the difference between that and your hair it's i'm so confused why'd they give you a wig it's got side burns i mean if you if you see it in person you'll understand maybe why i have it but uh yeah it's not that much of a departure from my real hair. Did they give you the option to grow inside Burns, and you're like, get the fuck out of here? No, they just said, again, I didn't say nothing. They said, you're going to wear a wig?

No problem, whatever you want me to do. Scorsese was like, okay, there's a part where I'm going to go through a window. And he's like, okay, when you go through the window, and I'm like, oh, I'm going through a window? Because I knew there was a stunt guy involved. But he's telling me that I'm going to go through the window, and I wasn't going to say, I don't do windows. Right.

You want me to go through a window? I'll go through a window. I'm not going to tell Martin Scorsese, I'm sorry, I need a stunt guy. Right. But then they said, hey, Marty, I need a stunt guy Right But then they said Hey Marty There is a stunt guy here And he goes

Oh okay So I was ready to go through the window I went through a window On news radio Nick DiPaolo threw me Through a window Is that right?

Yeah It's easy They're made out of sugar glass You just go right through it Alright It's weird It feels like nothing Like a tissue paper or

something it's very strange i was like whatever whatever it whatever it takes scorsese wants me to go through i mean the guy went through the stunt double went through and he cut his hand oh did he really so i don't know what what it was oh if i would have went through the window joe i would have been dead so scorsese's such a. He might have made the guy go through real glass. You know, he might have been like, this is just not realistic enough. I'll give you 500 extra dollars. The sugar glass, whatever it is, is not going to work. I guess you could probably cut yourself on that sugar glass shit if you landed wrong.

I mean, if it was sticking up wrong, you placed your hand funny. It makes sense. You probably could cut yourself a little. But yeah, it was exciting. It's been really exciting for me the last three or four years to have these opportunities to do these things. And yeah, it's great. Listen, man, it's been awesome to see because I remember you first starting out at the comedy store. I really do.

I remember you from the late 90s just trying to get your shit together. We did a lot of shows together, man. And then you really came into your own during the time that I was away. And I was hearing from so many – you know, comics always talk. I was hearing from so many people how hard you were killing. So many people were saying you were doing great and you've always been like a real easy guy real easy guy to hang out with real easy guy to talk to so to see you blow up like this has been just fucking awesome well i think i appreciate that joe and uh we've known each other for a while

and uh you're right at the time that you were away from the comedy store i think i kind of you know found my voice in the beginning there was it was really tough for me to you know to you know find where i mean i i think i talked talked about this the last time i was on the cast i was trying like different shirts that come through to come with it's my nipples hanging out and like a leopard shirt i thought it was cool you know it's one of those things as as a young comedian, you're trying all these different things out. Well, you were trying it out in the lion's den, too. You know?

I mean, you were in the fucking belly of the beast trying out stand-up. It's very hard to do. Yeah. But, no. But I appreciate you, the support you've given me over the years and having me on the... I don't take this lightly, you know, I mean, when you had this podcast and it became so huge and still is huge to have me on here, you know, I appreciate it because, you know, I don't take anything for granted.

Well, I don't take you for granted either, brother. I really appreciate it, man. You got it, bro. Thank you very much. Thank you. Sebastian Manasalco, ladies and gentlemen. That's it. Goodbye. Thank you. Sebastian Manasalco, ladies and gentlemen. That's it. Goodbye.

See ya. Thanks.