The Joe Rogan Experience - #2050 - Ehsan Ahmad

Episode Date: October 21, 2023

Ehsan Ahmad is a stand up comedian, writer and host. Look for his podcast called "The Dangerous Brown Podcast" available everywhere. https://www.instagram.com/ehsanjahmad

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. What's up, brother? Hey. How you doing? Good to see you. Glad to be here. Glad to have you, finally, man.

Dude, I was probably around, when was your first time on stage? was probably around when when did you first when was your first time on stage my first time on stage was in this place called Tommy T's in Livermore California oh I know that place yeah it was a it was an open mic at 2012 end of 2012 early 2013 yeah that's that's when I started and I remember going up on stage my first joke kind of hit and I bombed the whole time but that one little hit was enough it was enough do you remember what it was yeah oh my name is Hasan Ahmad and I know that's very 9-11-y that was my opening that was my opening line in comedy wow so I probably met you around 2014 then. 2015 is when we met.

Okay. Yeah. And this is a story I tell to all the door guys on what it's like to be a door guy at a comedy club. Because this is the first time we've ever had a conversation. I was sitting by the back door and you had just stopped. And this is something that you just talk to like all the new guys. I've noticed that you do that you know and then you were showing me your phone and telling me your process and how you write and how you listen to every single set as you drove back home after the store and you talked to me for like 20 minutes and then you left and curtis came up, and it was pure liquid.

It was pure liquid. Every time I kept wiping, more would come in. It was unreal. Unreal. And I told you, I tell all the door guys, that's what it's like

working at a comedy club. Wow. Especially at a high level one. You get these really cool moments, and then you have to, and you also learn your your place a little bit i didn't know door people have to clean shit oh really don't they have like a janitor or something not not during the night this is this is that what made it crazy this was at like 7 30 it wasn't like yeah it was like way too early to be pooping and missing oh my, my God. There's something about bar poop.

You know, poops when people are drinking. It's just going to be so chaos. Like, every time I've ever gone into, like, a bar bathroom and there's dudes in there shitting, it's just like, oh, my God, I can't wait to get out of here quick. If you're shitting in a bar, it's basically like, oh, this is the last resort. I have no other options. Yeah, nobody wants to do some fucking public shitting. No. And it was back when the store in the hallway had the single bathrooms.

Oh, yeah. So those were like extra gross. Oh, those were a disaster. Those were absolute nightmares. Oh. Yeah. Remember when like comics would be in that one little bathroom and then there'd be the staircase up there?

So people would be talking shit to you while you're in the bathroom. No, I never had that experience at the store yeah you know the stairs to the uh to the belly room yes you know where that is yeah like there's a window right there for the so guys be talking shit while while other guys were sh, they just ragged on them, yelling in the window. That back parking lot, before they invented sacred grounds and before they had the back bar, that was where we'd all hang out. But the problem is you would get randoms from that little back area that would come and they would come and interrupt a conversation and get in the way. And we're like, God, we've got to go to a place where we can just chill by ourselves. Right, right. And then by the time I had gotten there you had just gotten back Yeah And so for you to hang out it would really be really be interesting to watch as a door guy because you'd have to watch People would be like making game plans to talk to you

There you know you could see him like okay If I do this I do this I do this and you have to just tell people like hey Maybe you should go hang out in the patio or something like that. Yeah It sucks because you want to say hi to everybody, but also, my friends are there. Right. I see them every now and again, you know, especially if it's, like, someone like Burr that I only see, like,

once a month, or, you know, when you see him, you're like, this is an important time. Well, and it's like, when you're in a place with other comics like that, it just feels like home. Yeah. You know, so it's like, oh, I want to hang out at home. We talk about this all the time, about the mothership,

that green room. It's our clubhouse. I live there. It's so fun. I practically live there. Last night was so fun. It was so, and they're always fun.

Like, every night we're there. We just have so much fun. Just on stage and also in the green room, watching each other's new jokes and shit. Well, talking about comedy and the green room itself is just such a comedy place. You have Lenny Bruce's mic, Mae West's couch, Joey Diaz's words, Rodney Dangerfield's notes. Handwritten notes.

Handwritten notes. It is like a place where I feel like, oh, I'm in it. I'm inspired. It's the best place in the world, I think. I think so, too. I mean, we were talking about what we hoped it would be and what it is. And I don't even know if I, I don't think I ever hoped it would be this good. I mean, the club's not even a year in.

I think we're only just sort of at the start of what it can be. We have like 660,000 Instagram followers already. Yeah. It's sold out every night. It's just, it's crazy. And now that Gillis is here, Shane moved here, McCusker's here,

and we've got Ari, and we've got, I mean, Ari's been coming down a lot. We're doing another Protect Our Parks. Trying to get that motherfucker to move here. Sam Talon, I think, is moving here. Yes yes he wants to move here right yeah it's incredible it's incredible it is a the right place to be at the right time i felt very lucky in my life i feel like everywhere i've been i've been at the right place in the right time yeah if you make the most

out of things that's what happens most of the time i mean obviously horrible things go wrong for good people but the reality is that like every time something happens in your life, it gives you an opportunity to figure it out. Okay, where do I go now? What is it? And 9-11, or excuse me, 9-11, the new 9-11, the COVID. Oh, yeah. You know, like, there's these monumental shifts in culture and society. 9-11 was a big one, obviously.

But COVID was a big one, too, man. It shifted a lot of things. It destroyed people's belief in mainstream media. It made people completely distrust the government and their regulations and their wisdom behind closing this and closing that and forcing this and forcing that. And it made everybody just go go man where where the fuck am i going because this is not what i used to live in anymore this is a different place now right and all that happened we come to austin and then i'm like i gotta open up a club i have to like there's no real like fucking comedy store thing here and we're there were so many of us already

here you were already here Simpson was already here Derek was already here it was like a bunch of fucking scouts went out early with fucking cold camping and teepees and shit it was it was wild it was wild the first the first door guy that moved out here uh was a funny dude uh regular at the mothership named Dylan Sullivan. Yeah, a very funny dude. Yeah, he got on a Discord call with me. I was in California. We were in the midst of the second lockdown, which was brutal. And he goes, you've got to come out here. There's stage time indoors.

Isn't that crazy? To perform indoors. It was like drinking water after being in a desert for two years. It was like a speakeasy because you knew you couldn't do it everywhere. No. And there were still those rules where you had to walk in with the masks. Yeah. That was still here.

And so it was like – You take it off once you start laughing? Like, what? You're freaking spraying COVID. This poor guy, whoever you are in the front row last night, I'm so sorry. I accidentally spit it on you twice. You know, when you're punctuating your words and I'm seeing this guy going like this, I wanted to address it, but I didn't want to stop the bit. So if you're out there, buddy, I'm sorry I spit on you.

I hit him twice. I remember one time I was opening a show with Fat Man and I was eating it. It was bad. And then I spit. But when you're eating it, everyone's just watching you. So the whole audience sees me just spit on the guy in the front row.

I've been spit on before. I've been in the front row. It's like when people, Joey Diaz will spit on you like crazy. It's like when someone's on stage, they don't mean to. Sorry. It really means that we're into it. Yeah, we're just going hard. Or bombing. that we're into it. Yeah. We're just going hard. Right. You know, or bombing. Yeah.

And trying to save ourselves. Trying to save yourself is the saddest fucking moment in your life. Then it comes a point where you have to be like, all right, I'm not going to ask what they do for work. I'm just going to live in the bomb. I'm just going to live in it. I deserve this. Well, you need a bunch of bombs to figure out how to bomb.

You know, and I've seen some people pull out of bombs. That's some of the most impressive shit of all time when someone starts bombing and then they hit and then they get their confidence back and then they got a banger and then everybody okay okay maybe the first joke sucked but we're on board now it's a really good feeling especially because i open all these shows right is that when you get on when i get on stage and that first joke doesn't hit and then it's like ooh All right, I'm gonna stay in the pocket and I'm gonna figure this out Yeah, and by the end of it you're like this is gonna be a good show That's a great feeling most certainly you have the hardest job the hardest job is the audience is cold

That's the hardest job The easiest job is like second or third and then the second hardest job is going on last right? But the hardest job is most certainly going on first. Well, some of them, too, especially your show specifically, a lot of them are here from the podcast. And they don't know stand-up like that. So they'll come and they'll look at you like, wait, you're not a podcast. Joe's not talking to you. Oh, no.

Really? They have that vibe to them sometimes. They have to be like, no, no, this is what it is. Oh, I used to get that on Fear Factor. People would come to see me because they recognize me from Fear Factor. And they're like, I love that guy. That show's great. And then they'd go and I'd be talking about the pyramids being built and shit.

And they'd be like, there's no animal dicks. Where are the animal dicks? What is this guy talking about? And then I'd make fun of Fear Factor, too. But that was, you know, it was like that show, when I think about it today, like what the fuck were they thinking? It was a thing. I remember I was sitting down with my parents,

and we would watch Fear Factor. That would be a family thing. Yeah, I never watched it. I watched it once, and I threw up at home. Really? Yeah, I never threw up on the show. Yeah, that seems weird. I threw up at home once because I didn't expect to be so grossed out.

I wasn't prepared. I guess on the show I was always prepared to not throw up. And there's no close-up angles when you're there, right? Yeah, this lady was eating worms and she threw it up back in her glass and then started eating it again and I went... I just ran to the sink and threw up. She threw it up back in her glass and then started eating it again. And I went, brr. I just ran to the sink and threw up. That's a level of competitiveness that I don't know if I have.

Oh, man. People would go for it. They would fucking go for it. Worms are rough. Because worms are filled with dirt. Because they eat dirt. So you're eating dirt and mushiness. It's fucking gross.

What was it? It was a cash prize at the end? What was it? Yeah, but a lot of people are going gonna eat some dick and never get a cash prize Like one person is getting the money You know, but you also like you had it like Michael. Yo took it and became a comedian My was on fear that Michael yo was on episode one season one of Fear factor no way yes That was just figuring his life out. You know he's a young guy. He was really jacked back then He's a big dude and fucking super nice guy, and we stayed friends, and then he became a DJ

He was I knew he did a D He did like a morning radio show for a while, and he starts doing stand-up, and then he comes to LA I'm like dude you you fucking actually did it. You're an actual professional. He's got specials. He's a real headliner. I'm like, fuck yeah, man. Right.

He sells out. He sells out. And knowing him from episode one of Fear Factor is crazy. That's Michael Yeo. That's me and Michael Yeo. Back in the day, son. Holy shit. Episode one.

Damn. Bro, I still had the wallet chain back then. I still had hair. Yeah, I was going to say the hair. Look at that. The hairline's going. When did you shave it? I shaved, I gave up, I think, in 2011.

I just was like, this shit is just fucking done. Yeah. My hair looks terrible. There's always, yeah, there's always like, for me, it was, I saw a picture of me on stage and I was like, oh my God, this is how I present myself to the world? Yeah. This is crazy. You're so much better off giving in.

And I'm lucky I have a good head. It's a good shape for head for being bald. I swear to God, if I could grow hair, I would still shave my head. Because it's the easiest thing in the world. I just, every two or three days, I just go. It takes five minutes. Oh, you go electric? I still have a race. I use a razor. Oh damn I have this it's like this. It's like this little ATV that fits on your finger It's like the ATX razor you just glide it along your head. Yeah. Yeah, I enjoy that

That sounds nice. I feel like a little scars though of a hair transplant scar And I've got a lot of scars from though. I have a hair transplant scar, and I've got a lot of scars from being a dumb kid. Like, I've got a giant fucking gash on my head from when this crane that lifts cinder blocks fell and hit me on the side of the head. Yeah, we were kids, and we were hanging around in this yard where they had, like, you know, these giant, sized cement tubes right and they had these cranes that would pick these things up okay and we were fucking around and i don't know what happened but something fell and clanged me off the back of the head and i thought i was dead holy shit yeah i had to get taken to the hospital and i remember thinking i was dead like something felt so wrong that i remember telling my mom i'm worried i'm

gonna die yeah i got dinged i mean i do not remember what happened i remember something fell and something hit me in the head and then and I grayed out to like almost total unconsciousness and then came back but I felt so bad I felt like it was so wrong right I had to go to the hospital it ironically I thought I was gonna die ironically probably changed the course of your life too right that's a traumatic head injury when you're young I've had a ton of those though I guarantee a lot of my impulsiveness and my craziness, some of it has to do with brain damage. It has to. If you just look at the data for former fighters and football players and even soccer players, which you wouldn't think get head injuries, but they hit the ball all the time. And sometimes they collide with each other too.

That can happen too. You know, I've had head injuries from collisions in jiu-jitsu, just accidental collisions, like someone will knee you in the face accidentally and fucking ring your bell, and guys have gotten knocked out in the gym totally accidentally. You know, just you zig when you shoot a zag, a guy's moving towards you, and you're moving towards him,

and your chin collides with the top of his head, and you just when you should have zag. Your guy's moving towards you and you're moving towards him. And your chin collides with the top of his head and you just go unconscious. Happens. Yeah, so I've been, I don't know how many concussions I've had in my life. Oh, really? I have no idea. Like from the time I was 15 until I was 21, I sparred a lot. I did a lot of sparring. And when I really started getting fucked up was when I started kickboxing sparring because I wasn't good at boxing

I was a good kicker cuz I was like a taekwondo champion, and then I went into kickboxing Oh my god, these guys are fucking me up. I was getting beat up by like kick to the face No, I fucked them up with kicks. Okay, if I getting kick distance, I was much better than them But I think I think was kickboxing is there's boxing involved, and my boxing was terrible. I was just learning boxing. I had a very delusional idea of how good I could use my hands because I was good at taekwondo. And taekwondo has some punches but not much. And I knew how to punch things hard, but I didn't really know how to box at all.

Right, like the defensive positions and all that sort of stuff. So once I started kickboxing, I really started getting beat up. And I went through a couple of years from like, I think I started in like 19, I started transitioning into kickboxing. And from 19 to 21 was when I did like most of my really hard sparring. And those were horrible days where I'd be sitting in my apartment. Okay, I'm 20 years old. I'm completely broke. I deliver newspapers in the morning and I work for a private investigator in the afternoon.

You work for a private investigator? I guess I was 21 by then. So were you, like, tracking husbands cheating on wives pretty much? It was mostly insurance scams. Okay. Most of that was insurance scams. Okay. Most of it was people would say that they got a back injury and they couldn't work,

so they were getting money, but then they would go and work another job. And then you're following them around. Yeah. It's like a lot of dumb people. Right. Just a lot of scammers that thought they were being slick, and we bust them. But one lady, oh, it was the saddest fucking thing. The guy I worked for, by the way, his name was Dave Dolan.

He would call himself Dynamite Dickless Dave Dolan. Oh, my God. He was one of the funniest guys I have ever met in my life. A natural comedian. Oh, there's He was one of the funniest guys I have ever met in my life. A natural comedian. Oh, there's so many people in life like that. I think like, damn, you were the funniest person I've ever met. And the craziest thing is by chance, that dude was cousins with the dude who owned the comedy connection, Billy Downs.

Billy Downs is his cousin. So I found an ad for a private investigators assistant I was trying to figure out jobs that I could do to make money while trying to stand and so I found this job ago that would be fun private investigators assistant what it really was the dude lost his license from a DUI and he needed someone to drive him around and that was Dave but I was kind of his assistant so like what kind of would happen like one time it made me really sad The scam would be so say if someone was doing something that you knew was illegal

Okay, right and you had to catch him the scam would be you would write their license plate on a piece of paper with Several license plates that are very similar to it very. And so then Dave would go to the door and say, hey, I'm so sorry to bother you, ma'am, but I'm not even supposed to have this information. But a friend of mine works for the police department. My girlfriend was in a car accident and there was a witness to this hit and run. And they wrote down the witness's license plate, but then a cop spilled coffee on the paper. Oh, no. Is your is your girlfriend okay well she had an injury to you know l5 and l6 and then this lady goes oh i had the same injury and then he goes oh no kidding are you okay now and she goes yes well i got uh you know i got the insurance right he goes oh

you're getting compensated for she's yes and like, yes. And I also work another job. So I'm getting to work while I'm getting the insurance money. Oh, good for them. Fuck. Good for you. Fuck them. She goes, would you like to come in and have a cup of coffee? So this lady lets this random private guy who says he's a private investigator. This random person in.

Just this is how people were in the 1980s. Yeah. This doesn't seem like this would happen today at all. They just let you in the house. I was 21, so this was 88. So this lady just let us in the house. We sit down in her kitchen. She's so nice.

She makes us coffee, and she starts telling about how she's working for the airlines, and she got hurt, but then she filed an insurance claim, and now she's working under her maiden name. And she tells the whole thing. She just lays out the whole story. You know, I hope they catch, you know, whoever hit your girlfriend and the whole deal. Thank you very much, ma'am. Really appreciate it.

Thank you for the coffee. Thank you. And I would get outside. I'd go, dude, we can't turn her in. She's too nice. He goes, fuck her. She goes. She goes.

Fuck her. He goes, she's a fucking criminal. I go, she's just trying to, she's poor. She's trying to skin, she's a fucking criminal I go she's just trying to she's poor she's trying to she's a nice lady she invited us in for coffee

he's like fuck her fuck her turned her in turned her in of course insurance companies are ruthless oh well you know

I guess that's his job and she is she was kind of a criminal but she you know it's like people think that that when people don't have anything in life, you know, they just fucking never really get ahead. They're always bill to bill, check to check, barely getting by.

And then you have this opportunity where you could work and still get your phone. The insurance companies, fuck them. Oh, the big company, the airline, fuck them. You just figure out just just get a little money on the side right i'm using my maiden name who's gonna catch me right i you know i don't i don't mind the uh the grift it's like yeah you know get your money but you can't just be telling random people that i know and letting us in her house that's so wild and it's so funny i was thinking like wow that would never happen today but like now we would just so that the same person

would tell some random person in DM. Yeah. It's like they'll find – people will find a way to let people in. That made me sad. But most of the time it was busting dudes. And most of the time it was busting dudes who would pretend they had a bad back. And then you'd watch them carry a load of shingles on the ladder. They were working as roofers on the side.

Like we busted a lot of dudes one guy he busted his uh girlfriend uh was getting she's having an affair with a bodybuilder okay and uh he this guy wanted dave to get pictures so dave had to get pictures of this bodybuilder banging this girl and so he gets the pictures he was like look buddy she's cheating on you and he's like okay i want you to follow and get more pictures he was listen you fucking freak yeah was he getting off i'm not yeah it was something about it and he goes i told the guy listen you fucking freak you wanted me to get pictures i got your pictures we're done we're done i'm not i'm not gonna be your fucking pornographer for cuck porn. You got the whole thing set up.

But Dave was so funny, man. Like some of the best times I had was driving that guy around and doing this. Because also we'd be really tired because a lot of it you'd have to do really early in the morning. Because you'd have to catch these folks. Before they go to work. Yes. So you had to get outside their house, down the street at like 4 30 a.m because they leave at like 5 30 and they go to some construction job or something so you have to

bust him and so we'd be just sitting there talking shit drinking coffee and he was so funny and he would tell me about a story he had he just quit drinking like that he got in a car accident in uh like a in a tunnel i think and he had abandoned his car he took off and the cops got him they hit him with the DUI couldn't drive for X amount of months the whole deal and then he just said that was it I realized I gotta stop drinking right then and there he never went to a program he didn't do Alcoholics Anonymous he just here what dude was so funny man and I told him I go why don't you do stand-up like your cousin

owns the comedy club just do an open mic night he's not interested no you gotta this is something that you have to want to do yeah you gotta want it you really gotta want it because it's so brutal if you don't yeah you see some people like going through the motions and it's like what don't do this to yourself well it's not a thing you can kind of half in, half out. And we've seen that a bunch of times. Right. Yeah. You have to be fully in.

I remember thinking, you know, just like podcasts early on in my career being like, hearing everyone be like, no backup plan. No backup plan. Just go all in. And I remember like telling my parents who, you know, know trying to figure out like what the fuck are you doing? Yeah, why are you doing this? and then I was they were like at least go to like grad school and get and And so you have something to fall back on and I was like I can't I can't have a backup plan Well one of the things we really wanted to do when we started the mothership

You know and you and I talked about this we all talked about this was have a real Program like a real solid open mic program and the best way to do that is obviously have a lot of open mic time So there's two nights a week right every Sunday and every Monday We have open mic where anybody can go on stage and try it right and and you're gonna be able to see all the different levels People could do it open mics for four months six months months. Folks who have been doing it a year. Guys who are coming in that are pros that are going to drop in and do a set. And you're getting to see the door people do their sets. And the door people here are – what I love about the people here in Austin is that you don't run into the sort of people in L.A.

who you would run into that they're just really doing this to become a writer or they're just really doing this to become an actor. So this is just something that you don't run into the sort of people in LA you would run into that they're just really doing this to become a writer or they're just really doing this to become an actor. So this is just something that you know. The door people here want to be stand-up comedians. They're fans of the art form. They're fans of the art form and they are taking this opportunity and the amount

that they're improving that I can see is incredible. I'll look at some of the door guys and be like, I wasn't like that at five years in. Yeah. I wasn't doing that. Well, we all feed off of each other. And we were talking about Shane moving into town the other night. And you guys were talking about his new half hour.

Fantastic. You and Tony had the same reaction. You went back home and you started writing. Started writing. Immediately started writing. I went to Wisconsinisconsin recently and i took one of the door guys cj landry with me and one of the reasons i took him with me is i did a random show with him in dallas like this is last year 12 30 just a horrible show at like midnight and he

buried me really he buried me and i was like oh if when i get the chance you're gonna go on the road with me because i have to follow this i i get the chance you're gonna go on the road with me because i have to follow this i wasn't expecting it you know i'm in there all cocky i've been doing it so long and then i was like i got wow i got buried by a door guy oh i gotta i gotta you know it's like the the energy around the place like when shane was there the energy of just like everyone was just like this is awesome we can get to watch the best we could all become better. Just, just last night I was walking into the little boy and there's a door guy in there

named Fuzzy. And I was like, Hey Fuzzy, how are you doing? And he goes, Oh, I have the best life of all time. And this is a door guy who's taking out trash. Yeah. He's taking out trash. He lived in his car a little while ago and he's like, this is, the place it is you can feel the energy there it's it's yeah you can feel it and we're feeding off each other everyone's better everyone's better

we're all better and there's no like no one's like competing for like oh there's only two two sitcoms like the place where i can get a sitcom yeah everyone what's what's nice is that you look up and you see the top of this you know you see you shane tony and you see that everyone is just doing what they want to do yeah and there is no like you you succeeding doesn't take away from someone else succeeding right so it's this mindset that everyone has just like oh she's winning yeah that's awesome i can win oh he's doing that fuck yeah that means that there's whatever there is for me like it's it's it the positivity and it's like yeah and it and it is like oh and these people are coming you gotta write you gotta because

yeah nobody's slowing down nobody's slowing down nobody is slowing down and everyone's inspired everyone's inspired and the stage time you get in the city is incredible. Outside the Mothership, you go to Red Bands Club. You go to Vulcan. You go to East Austin Comedy Club. You go to Creek in the Cave. There's this new room on 5th Street Underground called Black Rabbit. There is time in front of quality audiences here, even outside the Mothership.

So everyone is improving. That Rapolo's Pizza next door has a mic with people in it every Tuesday now. It's insane what's happening in this city. That's amazing. Not to mention you have Cap City up in the domain and the Spider House near the campus runs shows all the time.

There's another one that I saw on the east side. Yeah, yeah, I think that's East Austin. Oh, no, Roscoe's. Yes. Roscoe's, that's the new one. That's another one. I was eating down east side yeah yeah i think that's east austin oh no roscoe's yes roscoe's that's the new one that's another one i was eating down there and i saw roscoe's comedy club i was like there's a comedy club down here this is wild it's wild and now we'll get these people that are like comedy tourists like we used to get at the store where it's like i'm in it from australia for eight days i'm at the mothership for six of those days it's it it's. It's a spot. It's the energy. You can just feel it.

You can just feel it. It's pretty fucking cool. It's pretty cool. The good keeps on coming. Shane's here. When that Bryan Simpson special drops. There's just so many things here. I'll never forget Howie Mandel walking in the place and just having like, it felt like we gave him

20 years back. He felt like a kid again. It was like watching a kid play. I was like, it felt like we gave him 20 years back almost. It's like he felt like a kid again. It was like watching a kid play. I was like, oh my God. And when he found out the phones were in bags, he was like, oh my God. He was like, I can do comedy again. He's funny, man. He was great.

He was very funny. He was great. It was great. It's just great to see. It's great to see everyone come through here and be like, oh, I see what this is. Yeah. I get what this is. Yeah. I get what this is. Yeah.

Yeah, we did it. It's so funny because when we were all talking about it, we were in the green room of the Vulcan. Talking about how to build it, what we were going to do. It all seemed like, eh, is this really going to happen? Right. I could tell some people were skeptical. I mean, you would hear all the time people being like, they're not going to make the club.

What are you doing out there? They're not going to make the club. And I always viewed it as a I always viewed it as a low risk, high reward move. So right before the pandemic hit is when I went full time. Pandemic hit, obviously not going out, so I moved back in

with my parents. I'm living there because I'm not paying Pandemic hit, obviously not going out. So I moved back in with my parents. I'm living there because I'm not playing LA Prices if I'm not going to do anything on stage. And then they live in the Bay Area. I was doing outdoor shows. Dylan hits me up. Hey, you got to move. Derek, Jeffrey Berner also had moved here before me. They're like, you got to come.

So I stayed in their place for a little bit, two weeks. And I was like, oh, I got to come. I got to come because at the worst, I come out here and get stage time in front of people. Yeah. At the worst. When you first came here, was I even talking about opening a club yet? Yes. So for me, what made it real that you were opening the club is that I heard Adam and Curtis were coming over.

And I was like, oh, he's serious about opening the club. There's no like, there's no like, because you heard, I heard the news and I was like, oh, serious about opening the club there's no like there's no like because you heard I heard the news and I was like oh am I gonna have to move to Austin and then you hired those two and I was like oh this is happening and then my friends were also be like hey you got to come out here there is time and you can get good out here well everybody was it was a perfect storm of LA closing down the comedy store they closed down so everyone's out of work so all those people didn't have jobs anymore and so I said i'll hire you now and you don't have a job for like a year and a half but you start getting paid immediately that's a good deal well i was like listen man i'm gonna make it as nice and easy as possible i was like come to austin get enjoy the city for a year and then

we'll call for you and then we'll do this we'll really do this yeah and then it was and then it opened and you could just feel it immediately i didn't think it was going to take as long as it took but that was because we had another building and the building owned by the cult and that that shit fell apart but it lucky it fell apart man because it's like where we got is the best spot in the world that sixth street is like no other place man it's just hop in with people they close it down to car traffic and there's just people walk on the streets and the energy is crazy right it's pretty if the energy at 6th Street is nuts it is wild but it helps the show man mm-hmm it's like there's so much wild shit going on

outside that when you can you there's live music playing everywhere there's like a feeling in the air and then you go to the's live music playing everywhere there's like a a feeling in the air and then you go to the club and it's rocking it's like oh shit this is this is the spot yeah it just it just feels like a place that's yeah it just connected with everything it's just different than any other place we've ever been to but it's also the only place that i've ever worked at where a comic ran it like a comic built building and they built it just for comedy There's no business partners or fucking you know weird money people that want you to charge more for that or pay the comics less Or make our own rules. It's it's what you taught. It's what they talk about the stories of like a comics playground

It's an artist playground like here. You can like take chances Mm-hmm, you can take chances. You can really be free artistically. What I like about the theory I have is because I started in San Diego, which is a pretty red city in a blue state, and now we're in a blue city in a red state. That's sort of the best mix for comedy. You get all sorts

of people all across the spectrum. This is what America really is. There's people who believe this, people who believe this. They're all in one one place can you make all of them laugh at once yeah it's well it's it's also people that recognize there's a new scene here mmm so there's like this energy to that and they want to come experience it right is there really haven't been like Austin had a scene it has small scene there was always some good comics that came out of Boston of

Austin you know cuz like Hicks was here for a while and you know there's like a Look, Austin had a scene. It had a small scene. There was always some good comics that came out of Austin. You know, because like Hicks was here for a while. And, you know, there's like a history of good comedy out of Austin. But it didn't have like a community like we have now. There's nothing like it where all these world-class comedians had moved to a city. Right. That never really happened before. It just kind of became an A-city.

I mean, the only time it really happened I feel like is when Carson moved to LA well I bet LA had comics already though no I mean I was that I'd imagine so but then you you hear like I guess my view is the view of the comedy source history but you know all these people came from all these high-level comics came from New York right it's like when I know yeah really I think the Tonight Show being in LA was a big monumental shift in people being like oh let me come here well that was back in the time where a spot on the Tonight Show could make your career right like that's when I first saw Richard Jenny I was like

wow who's this guy he did a spot on the Tonight Show. And you would get these five to seven minute spots. And guys would prep forever for that spot. They just wanted that one. There was some guys that only had one kill or seven minutes. Because their whole idea was just get on Letterman. Get on The Tonight Show. Get on something. And that was your career move back then this

is pre uh hbo comedy hours this is pre everything yeah you know i remember reading stories about like oh freddie prince got called over to the couch on his first time that never happens to anybody well also you got to remember what were the numbers back then for the tonight show oh must have been massive right there's only one of four shows you can watch at the time. Right. What was the average Tonight Show ratings in 1978? See if you can find that. I bet it's nuts. It's got to be in the tens of millions, right?

Yeah, it has to be. I want to think like 25 million. And again, this is at 11 p.m. at night, too. Right. So people are kind of tired and they're laying in bed. Johnny Carson, he was the king right with his desk they all did the same thing the desk in the chair it doesn't make any sense like why why do you have a desk are you doing work like it's so weird you have a desk

but everybody had a desk it's like yeah i guess it was like jack parr who started it out it was steve allen or jack parr whoever was the first one because there was tonight show guys before johnny carson right and whoever it was they had a desk because like back then if you were the boss you sat behind the desk would the ed sullivan show fall in this sort of world what was that ed sullivan because that in my mind that seems to be like the the precursor of all this and sort of what set this up. Yeah. Lenny Bruce did the Ed Sullivan show.

The Beatles, famously. Yeah. Who else? A lot of people did it. Yeah. Was he the first? Was Ed Sullivan the first? It feels like, from my understanding of it, it feels like he was like the first megastar.

Jackie Mason got banned from the Ed Sullivan show because Ed Sullivan said he gave him that Jackie gave him the finger. Really? Yeah. But Jackie swears he didn't give him the finger. He's just doing his hands. Doing my hand gestures. And he did something and Ed Sullivan said that fucking guy gave me the finger.

He's never coming back. Damn. See if you can find what that is. What happened with Jackie Mason on the Ed Sullivan show. What year was that? It's got to be, what, like the 50s, early 60s? We're talking about Mason. Do we find out what the ratings were for 1978?

I was digging to 78. Most of the stuff talking about the ratings is about its last week and last show. What is that? Well, it's $50 million for the final show. Oh my god. That's crazy. Oh my god. So he averaged $19 million a week. That's wild. No, no.

Just for that week. Oh, for that week. I wasn't saying it was for the whole time. Can you find out what the ratings were? Just let's say September 1978 Tonight Show ratings. I don't, I mean, I'm looking. I wonder if they even have those numbers. Yeah, I don't know if they have those numbers.

What's really wild is like there's people that get away with not telling you the numbers. Oh, Netflix? Like Netflix gets away with, we were just discussing this last night because a friend of mine was saying like, what are you thinking about this actor strike? And I said, I really don't know enough about it to comment to comment other than look if you're a person and you do something like if even if you're a comic and you do something on Netflix like when I've done Netflix specials they just say it's doing really well and you go like what does that mean like how many people are watching it it's we're really happy yeah what does that mean we're really happy it's doing great what are the numbers what

do you think is the purpose of keeping it secret? Well, it's a genius move because they don't have to tell you, so you can't really negotiate. Like if you do a special, and that special is 10 million people watch it, people are like, oh, shit, we're going to pay Hassan more money next time because if he finds out that this many people are watching, you don't know until you go out on the road and then you sell more tickets and you're like, oh, people enjoyed it.

I guess it worked. Right. But when you don't have any data from the company, they could just not give you the data. Like on their side, it's great for negotiation. Right. They don't have to tell you shit. It's just they have all the leverage. There was an article about this yesterday.

Okay. Sarandos defends not disclosing streaming numbers. Creators felt trapped by ratings box office. So how does he defend it? I like Ted Sarandos defends not disclosing streaming numbers. Creators felt trapped by ratings box office. So how does he defend it? I like Ted Sarandos, by the way. He's a very nice guy. The longer paragraph is here, but it's... Part of our promise with creators at the time we started creating original programming

our creators felt like they were pretty trapped in this kind of overnight ratings world. Oh, they're trapped by ratings. We're doing this for them. Yeah, we're're trapped by ratings. We're doing this for them. Yeah, we're doing it for them. We're doing it for them. They don't know. Overnight ratings, an analyst interview that went live, a weekend box office world

defining their success and failures. Sarando said during a prerecorded analyst interview, that's a little gaslighting. And as we know, a show might have enormous success down the road, and it wasn't captured in that opening box office. So part of this was the relationship with the talent, not just the business aspect of it. And I do think that over time, people are much more interested in this. We're on a continuum today of how much data do we publish. I think we've been leading the charge, starting everyone down the path of a top-10?

publishing our top 10 lists and our annual wrap-up list and Everything to give a lot of transparency to the viewing and I just expect will be more and more transparent just say the numbers This is a weird Dance you're doing boy. Just tell people what the numbers are YouTube was saying yesterday to this on on top of this that they might be changing the way videos work. I think they said for the first 24 hours that all stats will be live. Like live viewer count, live thumbs up. I guess people really want to know that.

Sounds opposite of what he was just saying. Yeah, that's what people want. They want to know what's successful and what's not. It does seem interesting that he says that like, oh, we have, you know, a show might do better as time goes on and the initial box office numbers might not reflect that. But it's like, but then you're also canceling all these shows the time they get to the second and third season. Yeah, shut up.

Right? So it's like, it just, there's no, it doesn't lend that credibility. No, we're doing it for the creators. Right. Guys, we love you. Right. We love you. we're doing it for the creators. Right. Guys, we love you. Right. We love you. We're doing it for you.

Yeah. Yeah, this seems like a very abusive relationship. So I would imagine that has something to do with, I think, if you were an actor and you were a star of a Netflix movie and it was fucking huge, you would want to know what the numbers are. Right. It's got to be part of their i don't know is that part of what they're asking for i know it's streaming revenue i think that was one of the things i asked you this is one of the things there's like the the the ai characters too that's that's a big part of this because sag's still in strike right i believe so yes so i think the ai

thing was there was one contract that i don't know if it was actually being someone actually trying to get people to sign it or if it was just being discussed where they would pay the extra like an extra would be on the set and then they know they own their digital image they could use it forever so they could put you in the background of the fucking hulk movie they could put you in the background of the fucking Hulk movie. They could put you in the background of a... So, you know, like, conspiracy theorists believe they're crisis actors. Right. They show up at every mass shooting and start talking about something. It's bullshit.

Like, this is the most evil of conspiracy theories, right? Right. But this crisis actor thing, imagine if you just start seeing, like, AI people in every fucking movie. Every disaster movie. You see that same guy. That's that dude. And that dude probably got paid $200. It's like the Wilhelm scream, but with people's faces.

Right. Yeah, that's where it'll be like, oh, if it's a disaster scene, you know this guy's in it. Well, maybe they'll be able to morph your image, give you a mustache, fake nose. I'm sure they can. They can tweak your face. I mean, they can face swap you with different extras. They can do all kinds of stuff. Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.

What they can do. Did you see the Unreal 5 video game engine? Yeah. The car on fire. The car on fire. Jamie, see if you can play that. Someone said, I forget the tweet, but it was something along the lines of, you're not going to be able to ever know what's real again.

No. And it feels this way looking at the news with what's going on over in Israel and Palestine. It's like, what am I seeing? How much of this is real? The propaganda on top of that. Shitty reporting. Shitty reporting. It is so interesting that we have phones and we have the access to information constantly.

And now we just know if none of that information is true. Well, we just know quickly what actually happened if you're online and paying attention, and the mainstream news is so far behind that. Coleman Hughes was on yesterday. He was saying that the original narrative was that Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza. What actually happened was another Islamic terrorist group

launched a missile, it failed, and it landed in the parking lot of the hospital. So this is fake. This is the Unreal 5 engine. You see a car on fire, and then they have a little video thing pop through it. I think that just the car is fake. The rest of the video should be real. So they inserted a car into a real scene? Is that what they did?

Yes. No one really knows, though, honestly, because Unreal Engine looks so fucking good. There's been a new video of the 5.3, and it looks... But, Jamie, I could imagine that's all the video engine. Why would you think that... It could be, but right there, that person walking in the background. Yeah, but you could do that.

You could. Well, that would be easy, because they're not even in focus. That would be so easy in comparison to this car that's in focus. That's just... Well, I've watched a lot of it. I just don't... I think all they did was add that. Okay. in focus. That would be so easy in comparison to this car that's in focus. I've watched a lot of it. I just don't... I think all they did was add that. Well, you might be right, but either

way, look how good that car on fire looks. Yeah, I mean, it looks... It looks fucking incredible. Very real. And look how the flames vary. Like, the flames vary like an actual flame would. It's not... Like, sometimes you watch, like, digital flames. They do the same pattern over and over and over again. But this just looks like real fucking fire.

There's a level of randomness. It's reacting to the thing in it. Yeah. It's nuts, man. Yeah. The thing is making the smoke move. Motherfucker, dude. They're so good now.

You're not going to have any idea. No, you can't tell what's real at all anymore and I think it was in 2015 they passed a law that allowed the CIA to use propaganda on citizens for the greater good of the nation no there's something like that I mean that's always been a thing though it's funny that he's right pass a law well now they can't get arrested for it or no one get in trouble for it yeah I guess I mean but no I mean, but no one was really getting in trouble for it. No one was really getting in trouble. Yeah, it's like-

I mean, they killed the president, allegedly. Right. It's more like them dotting their I's and crossing their T's. Like, let's just make sure that no one- What is that, that law, Jamie? I was just looking it up. I just stumbled across an article from the New York Times, 1977. Worldwide propaganda network built by the CIA.

Wow. I can't imagine. 1977. Worldwide propaganda network built by the CIA. Wow! I can't imagine. 1977. I mean, I can't find the article, really. It's so hard to know what's real and what's not real. I think that's what we talked about with the shift in COVID, what it really caused.

Now I'm just suspicious of everything. Everything. Of everything. Everything I read, I'm like, what's that? What angle is it coming from? Who's funding this? Exactly. It didn't used to be that way. This is what comes up about what we were just talking about, though. Obama did not sign a law allowing propaganda in the U.S.

Okay, so here's the claim. Former President Barack Obama signed a law in 2012 allowing government propaganda in the U.S. and making it perfectly legal for the media to purposely lie to the American people. AP's assessment, false. In 2013, Obama signed legislation that changed the U.S. Information and Education Exchange Act of 1948, also known as the Smith-Munt Act.

The amendment made it possible for some materials created by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the nation's foreign broadcasting agency, to be disseminated in the U.S. The facts, a post circulating on Facebook with a photo of Obama falsely states that he repealed a ban on government propaganda in the U.S. when he signed the National Defense Authorization Act in 2013. The amendment did not repeal the Smith-Munt Act, but rather lifted some restrictions on the domestic dissemination of government-funded media. Okay. Government-funded media, though, is you're getting close to propaganda, right? Okay, so here. The change essentially eased restrictions for Americans who wanted to access government-funded media.

We're doing it for you! Did Ted Sarandos write this? We're making it easier for you to access government-funded media content. Mark Gasly. We're doing it for you! Did Ted Sarandos write this? We're making it easier for you to access it. The change essentially eased restrictions for Americans who wanted to access government-funded media content. Because you know, most Americans really want to access government-funded media content. I can't think of anything better. Would I rather watch Game of Thrones or government-funded media content?

I think I'd go with that. Allowing media produced by the U.S. agency for global media such as The Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty to be made available to Americans upon request. It was not possible before the law was changed. Even upon

request, if I wanted to get it through the Freedom of Information Act, for instance, they couldn't do it. The amendment changed that, says Gabe Rotman, director of the Reporters Committee's Technology and Press Freedom Project. Boy, whenever someone puts freedom in their project, I'm like, oh. I don't trust anything of that. Bullshit, son. Is it Patriot Freedom?

You know, the Patriot Act. I just think it's so funny that, like, government-funded media was behind some sort of wall to begin with. Like, that's kind of interesting. Well, it says there was essentially a de facto ban on the government dissemination of materials originating from the State Department. Yeah, because we didn't trust you. We didn't trust you to just fucking make these claims. Journalists are supposed to make these claims. You're not supposed to release the news if you're the government.

No. Journalists are supposed to go in there and find out what's actually going on. And then, I guess, later we find out that they're really influencing these news companies anyway. So it's like, what? Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Yeah.

I don't know. It sounds like a sneaky way to get propaganda to people. But I thought there was something else where it was proposing that they were allowed to use propaganda if it was for the greater good. I thought that was a part of the, whatever, it was the National Defense Authorization Act, which the one that allowed for indefinite detention. There was one that had like some real sweeping oversteps where people like, yo, indefinite detention. Is that the same sort of stuff they used to get the guy who made the memes in trouble? This is an article from 2013, but it explains everything we just read.

This reminds me of, for whatever reason, reminds me of I went to watch Fast 7 in theaters. Fast and the Furious 7? Fast and the Furious 7. It was only me in the theater. Well, it was me and this one lady, and at one point the lady goes, walks out and leaves. That's your fault.

You came to Fast 7. But in it, I think it's Fast 7, there is this hacker that creates this thing that can see into every phone and see into every traffic light. It can get in. And the whole Fast 7, the whole Fast and Furious crew's job

is to get this hacker and get her program and give it to the U.S. military because the U.S. military are the good guys and they need to have this. You don't want to end this up in the bad guy's hands. And it's like, I just remember thinking like, wow, this is blatant, like weird propaganda in Fast 7. Yeah. I came to see cars jump out of, you know, skyscrapers, not this.

This is interesting. Well, it's also, they feel like those kind of movies sell to the kind of people who like those kind of movies. Right. Like those kind of movies sell to the kind of people who like those kind of movies. Right. Like, those kind of concepts sell. Like, if you like Fast and the Furious 7, you know, you might have a MAGA hat. You know? You might have a Confederate flag in your fucking den.

I enjoy them because it's the closest thing to as an adult. That same feeling I got when I was a little kid and playing with cars and, like, having them go on the TV and then on the couch. It's the exact same feeling. That's why I love them. Remember when they took a car into space? Oh, yeah. Ludacris was driving a car in space with a steering wheel, an accelerator, everything. If I wanted to show someone the peak of America, it's Ludacris driving a car in outer space.

It's like, hey, look how great outer space. Let's watch that video. Look how great we are. This is our gift to the world. This is America at its base level. At its finest. Base level. At its finest. Look what we've done. This is how ridiculous we could be.

And by the way, that movie probably sold 100 billion people. Oh, yeah. How many people watched that movie? I mean, they had to make two more after that. Oh, he looks like a minion. Yeah, they're wearing scuba suits while they're going into space in a car. They're in a car. Oh, man. I love ludicrous explaining science.

This movie's so good. Are they strapped to the rocket? So it falls off, and now they're in a flying car. Looks like a DeLorean. A rocket ship. Look at this thing. Look at this. Go, go, go.

This car is going into space, son. They're going into space. You have to watch this and be like, America's the best. How do you not see this? They're going into space in a car. Wearing scuba suits. Oh, man. Oh, my God.

Janky scuba suits, too. There's no way it holds the pressurization, as Ludacris said earlier. Oh, my God. I can't wait to watch and see why they had to go to space. I don't remember why. I don't think I... I don't remember why they had to go to space. It's flat remember why. I don't think I... I don't remember why they had to go to space. It's flat.

That's weird. Oh, my God. The Earth is flat. That would be Fast and Furious' greatest movie ever. That would be unreal. I don't think they had the balls to do that. If they did it, they did it and said the world was flat, do you know how many people would fucking cheer?

Oh, yeah. There are. I would cheer. The Flat Earth Movement movement this is what happened the flat earth movement it took off and then everybody went i'll get the fuck out of here what was i thinking and now it seems to be back it seems to be back and bigger than ever there's more flat earth propaganda but like i don't understand what the point is well the point is here's the point the point is the government lies about everything, including space.

Right. And that we are really God's creation. There's an ice wall around the outside of the world. You're not allowed to pass it. If you try to go there, the military will stop you. The military, even though there's fucking thousands and thousands of members that have probably seen this, they've hidden this information from the general public for the greater good of mankind or for evil reasons. Right.

Because they don't want you to know about God. Right. And then the stars are just bullshit and there's a firmament. There's like a cover over the earth and that's why we can't go into space. Oh, that's wild. It's wild. Because I always just thought like even if the earth was flat, like what am I going to do? I'm just going to still like go to Chip to Chipotle and, like, live my life.

Like, you know what I mean? Like, I never understood the point of getting that hyped into it. To me, it feels like sometimes a lot of conspiracy theories is adults who realize too late that the government's always lying to them. That's what it sometimes feels like, where it's like, oh, you just kind of found out too late. So you're like, oh, they must go on the extreme of everything. Well, people love conspiracy theories because some of them are real. And when you find out one's real, you're like, holy shit, they really did that? Oh, my God.

And then you start getting suspicious about everything. And you can go down rabbit holes. Right. And you can find – the thing about like a video on YouTube, for instance, is you can find someone who's a really good narrator who's using good words and good sentences and they're speaking well and they sound intelligent. And they're saying things that are just absolutely not true. And it's not – Sound British. No one's stepping in to prove it, that it's not true but if they were having that same conversation and they were talking to like brian keating and he starts explaining to them how we know the earth is round how every planet

we've ever observed is round why they are round how's there's a thing called bode's law where you could kind of depict you could accurately predict based on the mass and the size of a planet where the next planet's going to be they're all round yeah i did it we're not we found how many planets have they found now they started finding them you know as the equipment got better but i think it was a long time before they found the first exoplanet the first planet that was circling around a distant star now i think they've detected hundreds and hundreds of them. I don't even know how many they've detected. But, like, they're all round. Right.

All of them are round. The idea that we're the only ones that isn't round. We're special. It's not a perfect sphere, they'll tell you that. It's not a perfect sphere. Okay, get at it. Go around it with a ruler. Do whatever the fuck you gotta do. Yeah, it's not perfect. It's like, it bulges out at the side

slightly but you can't tell by looking at it stupid right it's still pretty much a circle it's a fucking globe right but why would you want to think it's flat i don't understand why that helps you to think it's flat it's a waste of time the mystery is in the entire thing itself. The mystery is that we are literally on an organic spaceship floating in what might be God. The universe might be God. We might be floating in God. Above us is just immense energy. Nuclear explosions many times bigger than our sun. Surrounded by planets and fucking black holes and dark matter.

It is wild up there. And you're concentrating on the shape of Earth. It's such a waste of time. And this idea that there's some great conspiracy to protect people from it or to keep that information because if we knew that God was real, we would... No, no. I know it's fun. I know it's fun to believe that. But this motherfucker is round.

It doesn't mean there's no God. It doesn't mean God didn't create it. Because really no one knows. No one knows if the devil's real. It's all speculation, right? Yeah, we're all just doing our best guess. Well, it definitely feels like there's definitely feels like there's something more, whatever this is, whatever, like the energy that we share with each other, there's definitely some sort of spirituality in this world

that you have to sort of let in. I think there's, there's something to that, the energy that you, and I've, I've had this in the isolation tank. I've had it in psychedelic experiences. There's, there's moments where you reach a state where you understand that your experiences with people, all the things you do in life is energy and there's, there's good energy and there's negative energy. And the more negative energy you put out that ripples, it creates more negative energy, creates more problems, more like people that ripples. It creates more negative energy. It creates more problems.

People that want to start arguments and fights with people, people that want to, like, God damn, man. I know you're probably frustrated in your life and you think that's part of your personality to be blunt. But every time someone does that, it ripples out. That person feels negative about people. Then they're always taking in their mind oh sometimes people can be douchebags and then it just it just going to create more issues in your life in the lives of the people that you run into but if you can find a way to recognize that and shift it then you could do the opposite and the more positive you put out and the more

positive conversations the positive interactions you have with people then they have more positive you put out and the more positive conversations and positive interactions you have with people, then they have more positive ones. And then everybody from that, it ripples out in a good way. Right. It's very much you get out what you put in. There's some weird thing, but we are all connected.

And it's not just by your experiences. There's energy that we're giving each other. There's something that, there's some, in some way. That's we here to unseen We're experiencing each other in an unmeasurable way right right and we have a profound effect We have a pretty energy you bring into the room you see it at a club all the time 100% if if The first point of contact they meet whoever whoever bags their phone, is having a rough day and they let that rough day come out of them, the shows going forward will not be as good because their first point of contact is someone who is not in a good space. And they take that space with them and bring it to their seat. It's all those sort of things, like the small things matter in a comedy show 100 where it's like yeah it's it's the way they seat the room sometimes fucks with

the energy if they seat it poorly and it's like all that stuff matters like you can't you can't seat people like you have to seat them close and next to each other all the way through that builds energy if you seat people randomly then the show has no no cohesive feel to it it's very interesting yeah it's well and also like the camaraderie at the club that's all very contagious too the camaraderie and the friendship and the support and how everybody's very cool and very complimentary and there isn't that weird fucking competitive energy that used to get particularly in the 90s man when I first came to the store, it was, God,

it was so dog-eat-dog because everybody was trying to get on a sitcom. And if you and I both went on an audition for a sitcom and you got it, I would be like, God damn it.

Now his life has changed. I see you on TV Guide now. This motherfucker, like he's living the good life and I'm over here grinding at 1130 sets. Yeah, trying to get someone to look at me. Yeah, in front of 50 people.

I can't get an agent. Fuck! And so there was this hyper-competitiveness amongst comedians. And it's all these bad mindsets. They had this idea that somehow or another, if you got something and it was good for you, it was somehow or another taking away from something and it it was good for you it was somehow another taking away from my success it's really stupid but it was all because of the fact that everybody was clamoring for a tiny amount of jobs well yeah it seemed like back then the industry held the

keys they did yeah they really held the keys and now it doesn't feel like that at all at all it's like you can just do yeah you can just do what you want that's the best part yeah is that i'm not that you know you don't if you if you come here you don't have to worry about like, oh, if I say this, will I not get this job? Right. Right? I can just talk about what's like on my mind. Yeah. You can do whatever you want.

Right. That's a level of freedom that, you know. And I do wonder if, you know, I mean, because eventually industry and stuff are going to start coming here. What does that mean anymore, though? Eventually. They already have people in L.A. Just stick with those people that are stuck in L.A. Right.

Because it's just the industry out here is podcasting. That's true. That's the major entertainment industry now. That's true. But I will say this. A great stand-up comic can do a lot of things. Like Robin Williams. Oh, yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, the reality is that if all the great young stand-up comics start moving here, well, then your next great actor might be there. I'll never forget walking in the comedy store and you see Michael Keaton's name lit up. It's like, oh, you could be a comedian and then be Batman. Yeah. Like, that's a possibility that's open for you. So, you know, a lot of these great actors were stand-ups. And so, a lot of great writers were stand-ups.

So, eventually, they'll be like, well, if that's where the talent is, that's where we have to go. Maybe. I think they're going to stay put. You think so? Yeah. I think they're going to ride it out until that fucking ship goes right into the rocks. Boom.

There is, like, almost a vested interest for people in L.A. to like not want this to work. Us? Yeah. This place? Yeah. Okay. You know what I mean? Well, good luck.

Yeah. It's so stupid to think like that. Any comic should be happy that there's more comedy. Any comic should be happy. And also, by the way, if we're here, you get more stage time in L.A. So take advantage of that. Because there's a lot of people getting stage time in la so right take advantage of that because there's a lot of people getting stage time at the store that probably wouldn't get it if everyone was

if tom segura was still in town if right christina pazitsky was still in town like so many people moved here duncan everyone moved here so it's like there's a lot of spots for you in la that's true you know just try to do what we're doing try to do it the right way just try to be supportive and fun and don't push a fucking certain ideology on each other well you can't you can't push ideologies not in stand-up it's so stupid trying to do woke stand-up or trying to turn a club woke it's like well yeah just try just trying to be any sort of like you have to think along this line it's like no that's not that's not what right imagine if there was an only right-wing comedy club. Right.

It would be awful. No Trump jokes, bro. Nobody wants to hear them. What? Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. It's crazy. You can't walk an ideological line and you can't like – what I find so funny is that like so many of these like you'll hear like, oh, we need to be more diversity in the, in the club or whatever. And then, you know,

a lot of times when, when Hollywood does diversity, I think something that Brian Simpson and I have talked about, they'll just take, Oh, we need a Brown guy. We'll just take the first Brown guy. That's like kind of whatever that's,

they can kind of do it. But like when you focus on like, Hey, let's just bring the funniest people here. Yeah. The diversity naturally comes right. Like funny, funny doesn't fall along the lines of like race naturally comes right like funny funny doesn't fall along the lines of like race gender sexuality doesn't fall it's just are you funny or are you

not funny yes and i would say the the mothership lineups without really trying to be diverse are actually diverse yeah because just talented people all that matters. All walks of life. Yes. Can you make people laugh? Yeah. That's the only thing that should matter and that's, you know, it doesn't matter how you do it. If you can do it,

you can do it. Yeah. Yeah. It's a meritocracy. It really is and it should be. But it's also, there's a system at that place.

Like, you're going to get a chance to do professional work eventually Someone's gonna bring you on the road with them absolutely and then when that happened like you know Tony brings people on the road with them like brings cam cam started on kill Tony right all these guys are real new When when he takes these guys in the road with them and they start getting professional careers like other comics will now do the same Thing and it's just it it's, you have a path. Whereas I think when we all started out, it was a lot more random. Like there was no like

clear place where you could go and you could learn from watching all these other comics and then you get spots and then you can eventually be a pro. Right. Right. And then, and then the stuff on that path is open for you. Like I look at Cam and Cam is pretty famous off one clip of being in Austin. That's a famous guy. That's fucking dope. That's awesome. That's pretty dope. It's like you can't tell me that I'm not famous.

Look at my friend. He's famous. Derek right now is on a European tour with Schultz, just did the Royal Albert Hall. You can't tell me I didn't just do the Royal Albert Hall. Because that's what it feels like. It's like, oh, we got that from here. Just go, go, go. Everybody up. Everybody up.

It's pretty amazing. It's awesome. It's like the energy here. It's just, oh, man. It's crazy that it all just lined up perfectly. You know, I moved here. I'm like, I got to do something. And then when Tom moved here, he was sick of it too.

And he moved here not long after me. He goes, you gonna open up a club? I go, 100%. He goes, okay, I'm moving to Austin. Damn. I was like, oh shit. Damn. That's when it felt real.

Because they picked up their family, all their employees, everybody. We're moving to Texas. Started their studio here. I was like, whoa, okay. And so there was enough stand up in town that we always could work at the vulcan but this dream of putting together this like perfect comedy community boy when it happened it's almost like dude it felt like that building wanted us to be

there you know like it's weird energy like the building was like thank you well the building the building is alive yeah that's what i like about the building it's weird energy. Like the building was like, thank you. Well, the building is alive. Yeah. That's what I like about the building. It's alive. There's a history before us. Yeah. Massive.

And that matters. It adds flavor to the, it's like the story. It was that mob hangout that Ciro's. There was a swastika on the wall. When you came in? Yeah. Oh yeah, you told me. We tore the walls down.

So we tore the outside of the wall, and you see the exposed brick. And one of the exposed brick was a fucking swastika. And I was like, we should probably get rid of that. And it was there for months. Nobody got rid of it. And one day I got there, and I go, hey, guys, we're going to open in like two months. Get rid of the fucking swastika. And so you know what they did?

They cleaned up. It was black spray paint. They cleaned off the swastika So now it was even clearer Because now it was in white. I was like hey get the fucking design off the wall Jesus Christ You could take that as the Hindu symbol for good fortune. That's Opposite way though isn't the swastika wrong way? The swastika's on its edge,

and I think the Hindu one is flat. Okay. Yeah, because... Is it going in the same direction? Because there's different ones. I don't... I think they might be going separate directions.

It's just very funny because my girlfriend's Hindu and just walking around her house and there's just, like, swastikas everywhere. That guy ruined that. Ruined that design. That design had been around forever.

It's like a blessing thing. There's a lot of like, you'll see a lot of, this happened in Derek's apartment complex. He was like, yo, this is crazy. And it was a giant swastika on the hood of the car. But it was a Hindu swastika. And that's like one of the things they do to bless. Their automobile. Like something new.

Maybe ghost stripes. Don't have it so fucking obvious. Because people, no one's going to Google that. No, everyone's- They're going to just think you're a Nazi. Yeah, I mean, that's- Look at this fucking Hindu Nazi. This is crazy.

Yeah, it's been co-opted. It's like Clayton Bigsby, the black white supremacist. You're a Hindu Nazi? Right. Get the fuck out of here. But, you know, if they're someone from India, they might not know, like like the implications of that i'll never i'll never forget in um 10th grade we were doing like a world war ii history unit and my teacher was like you guys think oh hitler and all this

stuff this is all this is all like common knowledge but look at uh check this out we had a lot of we had a girl from india in our class like born and raised and you just just moved in. She was like, do you know anything about Hitler and the Nazis? And she was like, no, no idea. Whoa. They never really taught that to them over there. Whoa. Right? It was just, yeah, right?

Because you would think that, oh, hey, this is like, and, you know, this is like the common knowledge of everyone. But it's like if you don't know, if you grow up in a culture that doesn't really teach you that, it's you're not gonna know oh my god that's crazy they didn't teach them about hitler at least that girl and that wherever she was from i don't want to put that on all on all of india it's a big place but insane right it seems insane but it's like if it's not part of if it doesn't really affect your life in that major way like i can see how you would never get there how did not affect your life in that major way, I can see how you would never get there. How would it not affect your life if there was a world war going on and people were dropping bombs on Japan that obliterated a city?

How do you not know about that? You're too busy trying to fight the British in your backyard. Right. But how do you not know about nuclear bombs? They definitely know about nuclear bombs because India and Pakistan definitely have them.

Right. How do you not know that the United States detonated them on Japan in World War II? Yeah. It's easy. It's crazy to see what people can actually miss when it's like not put in front of them. God. Yeah, it was eye-opening to me. So it's like, oh, okay.

So I would venture to guess that person who did that in their apartment complex is from India. Yeah. For sure. And just has no idea like, oh, this is like a thing. This is like a big deal, especially on a college campus. Oh my God. In the middle of Texas. It's like a thing.

Yeah. You're going to get, there's no explaining your way out of that. No, no, no, no, no. You don't get, you don't get. It's like, if you like the Hitler mustache. Right. You can't wear that mustache. There's no benefit of the doubt there. You don't get... It's like if you like the Hitler mustache. Right. You can't wear that mustache. There's no benefit

of the doubt there. You don't get that like right away. Isn't it wild? That guy killed that mustache forever. Yeah, it really did. It's over.

It's not a great mustache so it's... It's a weird look. Michael Jordan tried to bring it back. Yeah. Two goats. Yeah.

But even Jordan couldn't pull it. I was like was like nah I gotta get rid of this Hitler No it's just There's probably at a certain point We'll be far enough away that you can do that We forget everything Eventually that's what time does You can wear a viking beard now and it's cool You can have like beads in it and shit

Nobody goes what the fuck is wrong with you? All those people did was rape and pillage. All they did was murder folks. They'd go into a town and light everyone on fire. That's the beard. They wore that beard. So, you know, that's the idea of like maybe four or five hundred years from now, there's going to be a football team called like the Minnesota Rikes or whatever.

Like a Minnesota Nazis. Yeah. Wow. Well, the Mongols, I mean, people dress up as Genghis Khan for Halloween. They don't think anything of it. Yeah, and that guy killed the most people. The most people ever. Well, did he kill more than Mao?

He killed somewhere between 50 and 70 million people during his lifetime. Okay. So much that it changed the carbon footprint of Earth. during his lifetime. Okay. So much that it changed the carbon footprint of Earth. So if they do core samples, and they go during the time of the life of Genghis Khan,

you will find less carbon on Earth. He killed 10% of the world's population. Wild. Dude, they killed an entire city in Jin, China, and stacked the bones so high that the Khwar of Kh Korizma, the Shah of Korizma, when they sent an emissary to go to visit Jin, China, they thought it was a snow-capped mountain. And as they got closer, they had abandoned the roads because there were so many bodies

rotting in the roads that their wheels were getting stuck in the mud of decaying bodies. And then when they finally got to the city, they realized that thing that they thought was a snow-capped mountain was a pile of bones. They were. In the middle of the city. They killed a million plus people. They killed everyone in the city. Yeah, they did some wild shit.

Wild shit. Yeah, didn't they make all the men at one city just watch as they slow as they murdered all the women and children They did all kinds of stuff It isn't what they let people on fire and use them as catapults to land on people's roofs pretty wild because people are fat and They they cook real good if you light them on fire cover them with you know kerosene and launch them through the air They would land on rooftops and just light the houses on fire bro, dude They would put they would take people like generals and you know

Kings and put them under Like a floor so they would they would tie them down And then they would put the floor on top of them Then they'd put a table on top of the floor and then they would all get on top of that table and eat dinner While these people were slowly getting crushed to death. Damn, dude.

People were screaming in agony and they're just eating. Damn. They would eat each other. They would, when they were, if they were starving,

there's reports that they would choose one guy and they would kill him and cook him. Damn, dude. Ancient warfare is brutal. They lived off of milk and blood from their horses.

So they'd take the milk from their horses and they would cut their jugular and take some of the blood and pour it in with the milk and they would use that to stay alive. Goddamn. Yeah, dude. Yeah, imagine fighting someone doing that. They didn't change their clothes.

They literally let them rot off their body. They never showered. So they stunk. They literally had rotting animal skins, oftentimes rat skins. Their entire garment would be made out of rats that they skinned and sewed together. And it would be rotting off their body. Since we're so far away, all this sounds, like, really badass. It sounds badass.

All this sounds, like, at the time, that sounds absolutely horrifying. And, like, having to face that army sounds insane. But so far away, it's like, damn, that's pretty metal. Isn't it crazy that over time, atrocities like that become fascinating? Instead of, like, what's going on right now in Israel and Palestine, which is, like, too close to us. Right. It's what's happening now. That was a normal Sunday for the Mongols. Right.

Stormed a rave and killed 200 people. I was going to say, you know, the sort of benefit of having all these cameras and having all this information is that it is less brutal than that. Yeah. It is less brutal than that. Yeah. It is less brutal than that. So if you were to talk about the hospital bombing, well maybe if it's just a war of information and it just hit a parking lot, well 500 people aren't dead. It's just a hypothetical 500 people that are dead.

It's like a- Well Coleman Hughes said that it's actually probably somewhere between 50 and 100 people are dead. And they don't even know what number that is because the original claim was that it hit the hospital and in fact the new york times used an image that was not of that hospital in their story about the bomb from israel hitting the hospital so they use this destroyed building that wasn't so like they put out a fake picture with a fake story because i don't think anyone knows really what's what's what over there with the pictures.

Well, you can't fucking print that if you're the New York Times. We're already struggling to trust you. Well, you would think you couldn't print that if you're the New York Times. At this point, it's more par for the course. It's like, oh, of course the New York Times would print that. How are you doing that? Why are you doing that?

The need for news to get clicks and ratings is probably one of the worst like the amount of damage that the 24 hour news network simply by existing have caused on us is huge from from the news being a thing to be like this is how we get out information to being like oh we need to jack up and get ratings. And we need to make sure we have clicks and eyeballs. Like that is damaging. And you definitely are like, well, you know, if you're in the New York Times, you're like, well, if we just run with this now, the amount of attention that got, it was a whole day of everything on Twitter was about what happened there, who shot the rockets, where did it actually hit. It was all that. And I'm on Twitter. I what happened there. Who shot the rockets? Where did it actually hit?

It was all that. And I'm on Twitter. I'm checking these things too. And apparently the way they found out that it was not Israel, but there's proof of it, was a video that, was it CNN accident or Al Jazeera? Al Jazeera accidentally aired this video. And it was the video showed where the rocket came from. And it showed it going down in the city.

And it showed going down where the parking lot of the hotel was, allegedly. Right. But even then, when you see something like that, you're like, I don't know what this video is from. Yeah. That Unreal Engine. Right. I don't. Right.

I just assume that. Yeah, absolutely. I just assume that everything we're being fed about that is just a lie. Well, there was a bunch of videos that were being spread around at the beginning of the Ukraine war. And then someone said, hey, this is literally from a video game. This is a scene in a video game. Wasn't that the case, Jamie? Yeah.

Which is bananas. That's wild. But that's how good this fake shit is now. Oh, yeah. And if the government is allowed to do that or does that if they're not allowed or whatever, they can do kind of whatever they want now and make it look real. Right. Oh, yeah.

I was thinking this the other day. What this has shown me is the importance of if you're in a war of having a social media manager. It's like might as well be a general. Might as well be a general. It's like might as well be a general. Right. Might as well be a general.

I mean, like the official Israel Twitter that Israeli suites stated is going crazy. They're like tagging Taylor Swift and stuff. They're like, I saw a tweet. They're tagging Taylor Swift. Why? They want her to retweet it? No, because her bodyguard is part of the IDF, I think. Oh, I see. And he went to go back.

You know what I mean? So they're like, apparently they ran, I saw a tweet about how they ran a sponsored ad. I don't know if that tweet is, you know, the picture of the sponsored ad is real or forth. You know what I mean? So apparently they ran – I saw a tweet about how they ran a sponsored ad. I don't know if that tweet is – the picture of the sponsored ad is real or fake. You know what I mean? It's even that. It's like, is that real? Is that fake? Because I can sort of see them doing that.

Right. What is your thought on – there's people that think that Twitter should be regulated more and that it should be moderated more because of the false information that comes out. I think the community notes is the best solution to that. That's the best you can do, right? Because it's like if you, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, right? So if you're like, let's make sure that no fake things are posted on Twitter. Right. Well, then who decides what's fake?

Right. And this is one of the things we ran into with the Hunter Biden laptops. Right. And one of the things we ran into with Alex Berenson getting removed from Twitter for printing actual studies and talking about real data about COVID and vaccines. Right. Like, you can't do that.

And they want to do that. They want to be able to shut up anybody that's doing something that's going to fuck up that business. Right. And if you're doing that on Twitter, then when you found out that the FBI was contacting Twitter, getting them to take things down, that is wild. Yeah. And it's very short-sighted, too, for people to be like, well, you know.

So you would, let's say, with that specifically, you'd be like, you know, one of the people who are pro-vaccine is like, oh, this is the science. We're taking anti-science stuff out. And let's say that's what's happening, right? And you're fine with that. But you are not seeing the fact that, like that like that whatever is happening there can easily just turn on you yeah and be like well what he believes is wrong you're like no no but it's right well not only that the problem was they were stifling debate from real scientists right right like

jay batachara like people from stanford real epidemiologists real virologists real people that were saying hey this approach is wrong this is not the way to do it the lockdown school closures masks on kids all that shit this is not right this is not good science and they were getting silenced right that's when it gets crazy when actual experts in the field who really know what they're talking about are not allowed to give dissenting opinions. That's the only way science gets settled. You have to have other scientists put the data to the test and they have to be able to openly debate it. And when you can't do that, you're not doing science anymore.

Now you're a mouthpiece for whatever, whether it's the pharmaceutical drug companies or it's the government or someone. Right. Well, they did. And they also did a good job of getting people. So during the lockdown, I was doing this thing on TikTok where I would just grow my beard every day until the vaccine came out, and then I would shave my beard when I took the vaccine. So that's what I did.

I got the vaccine beard. And then, yeah, it was a fun moment. moment i had 40 000 people watch me shave my beard it was like a good but at the time you couldn't have told me that like oh okay this is bad this is bad you know because i was like oh right this is of course they want us to get out of this of course they want us to like you know and so they did a good job of keeping us pent up for so long that when the only option was this vaccine and they told us that this was this vaccine me and people like me would be like well all these anti-vax people are fucking idiots this is a way out right this is the way out you don't want the way out yeah and you couldn't have told me back then it took me moving

to texas and then being here and being like, they were just open the whole time and everyone's fine. Everyone's fine. But a lot of people got vaccinated here, too. A lot of people had to for travel. And then this is where it became weird for me is when they started forcing people to do it. But at the same time, like, yeah, I don't, it just, it's just weird. Like, why you have to

to go inside? Well, it also wasn't scientific because they were, they didn't account for people that had been infected and had recovered, which was far superior protection than the vaccine was imparting. They didn't look at the data. It was just, there was a binary solution. There was one thing. You had to do this, or if you didn't do that you were part of the problem and they did a

great job of of of keeping people pent up inside when that they offered that solution they were like this is the way out but i think they played that hand too poorly because i don't think people are ever going to go for that again no uh even my i was talking to my mom about this and she was and she's you know she was very everyone get vaccinated and she i was like we're talking about the new booster and she's like i don't think i'm gonna take that it's like yeah they they overplayed it they overplayed it but they for a while they did a good job of making everyone forget that the pharmaceuticals were just evil. Did you see that child? He's a boy. He was eight years old. He was the face of the Israeli vaccine ad. It was like there's a propaganda ad that they put out.

He just died of a heart attack. See, I saw that. Eight years old. And my first thought was like, is that real, though? Right. Good question. Like, is that actually real? Because I just saw it on some tweet.

Last year, only 17% americans got the fall covid booster so far this year it's under three percent per bloomberg well i guess if you're like an old person you would be real tempted to get that and maybe it would help you if you're really old and you have a weak immune system it might give you a boost but to give it to kids like to give it to eight-year-olds there's fucking no reason for that they know there's no reason for that there's no data that shows there's a good reason for that that was one of the first things we knew is that it didn't kill that's one of the scariest things

they're willing to do it to kids that's scary because there's a massive amount of profit in it no one wants to think that they think like that but they do what am I not worried about some random kid? I can get money money? so did you find out about the eight-year-old kid?

Is that real? I've seen one link, and it doesn't seem like the most reputable site, so I'm looking harder. Yeah, because that's the first thing I thought when I saw that. Yeah, it could be fake. Because I saw it was posted by Died Suddenly, right, that Twitter account. So I was like, I've got to see it coming from someone else who doesn't have skin in the game like that. Right.

Died Suddenly. Like a lot of those Died Suddenlies, people that were suffering from leukemia for 10 years. Yeah. And, you know, yeah. Or it'll be like, because sometimes like there is that correlation with like the athletes, right? Where like more athletes are doing it now. Yeah. That's real.

Well, the scariest one is the excess mortality data for young people. Right. Because the data for young people from I think it's age whatever it is, 12 to 49 is up way, like very high. Right. I read something about it being around 40%, which is crazy. Man. Excess all-cause mortality. I can't think of someone who's been vindicated more than Aaron Rodgers

in all of this. Yeah. Because I remember when he first went out, I was so mad because I was like, come on, you know, you're supposed to be the face. You know, I'm still very vaccinated. And at the time, I'm a big Nin fan so the the the packers were supposed to play kansas city who would just beat the niners in the super bowl and kansas city was like shaky so i was like oh aaron if you fucking get them at the right time you could cripple their season and then it

was very like oh man fucking aaron take them and now i'm like oh wow i'm glad like i'm glad that someone was like hey i know what's right for my. Well, he's also allergic to one of the major ingredients. Right. Exactly. And no one wanted to take that into account. Well, just the idea that this top athlete might be very aware of what he's putting into his body. Right. Of course.

And then we all got sort of mad at that. Also, top athletes aren't in danger. Right. This is not a disease that was killing top athletes. Right. Like what Duncan was saying that he got rotavirus, is that what he said? Is that what it was? Yeah, yeah, RSV.

He got some horrible, he goes, I was, I felt like I was dead. I almost threw up when I was on stage. I went back to the hotel. I couldn't move. He goes, I was in agony for days. He goes, it was so much worse than COVID. And that's dangerous for children too. Yeah.

And isn't it wild that like that one, no one's scared of, but it's the COVID thing. Get your COVID booster. Get your COVID booster. Like I saw something with Chuck Schumer saying, get those boosters and get that flu shot. Not take vitamins, not eat healthy right i my first flight i took because the whole thing was like this is a conversation about national health that was the whole line yeah and the first flight i took after covid was i was in a uh chick-fil-a at an airport and the soda cost less than the water and i was like oh this isn't like, it was just a big, like, oh, what the hell?

If this was about national health, why aren't we talking about that? Why aren't we, like, there's, you know the amount of people I know that their main source of liquid is diet Coke? It's amazing. I knew, there was, my neighbor in high school, his sister only drank Diet Coke how about the president or Trump? Bro I got a piss so bad Diet Coke So Jamie you were saying that that story may or may not be legit No, I just I found I found a source, but I just I don't know this is really national news

Child dies after nearly drowning on Yom Kippur Eve. He had a heart attack and then almost drowned in the bathtub. So he had a heart attack in the bathtub and then almost drowned

and then he died. But this is the only this is the only source for this? I mean I traced it down so this looked like the best source for it. Okay. So it says he nearly drowned in the bathtub after going into cardiac arrest

a few hours before Yom Kippur. Medics and paramedics arrived at the scene within a few minutes, gave him medical treatment, and performed CPR. When his pulse returned, he was evacuated to Hadassah Hospital in Mount Scopus in serious condition. The last few days, it seemed his condition was improving a little. This morning, he passed away. If it's true, that's crazy.

But I still feel like the, I would say the sus meter in my head is still going off. Hmm. Interesting. Is that a real paper? You know, that's what I mean. Is it real national news? I checked on Wikipedia. You sure it doesn't come from China?

No, I mean, the sites I was finding it from were like this. It said it was like according to reports, and it's like, okay, well, let me find your reports. So that seemed like a legit site. I'll just leave it with that. Okay. Okay. Because, like, it says the family made a statement. I was going to go with, like, the family statement that kind of trumps everything.

And that's where the statement came from, and that's what they're saying. Well, obviously that's not normal. Right. Right. Yeah, again, if that's real, that's crazy. Yeah, if that's real, that's crazy. But that's almost like what you had to say with any sort of news that you've seen. I was like, man, if that's real, that's crazy.

Yeah, we were talking last night about this Chinese website. Duncan was talking about it, right? Where it looks like a news website, but it's all positive news about China. English language, positive news about China. Right. Oh, yeah. I remember being in a hotel room. This is randomly just like Sacramento punchline.

I'm just chilling in the hotel room just going through. And then CNBC, I think it's CNBC, it's one of those channels, it's just running a piece about how great China is handling this situation. You see CNN got chased out of Palestine yesterday? Aren't all the foreign news? Well, they were going after CNN.

CNN was in Gaza with fucking helmets on the ground and people were fucking screaming at them, fuck CNN. Oh, yeah, like the people? Yeah. Well, yeah, that makes sense. If I'm a Palestinian civilian and I see American news networks, I'm not like, oh, the amount of damage you've done against us. That's how I'd feel. Well, that's how they were feeling.

Yeah, that makes absolute sense. It's like, I don't know. They sometimes have this, oh, we're Americans. We can just go anywhere. We've done a lot of damage around the world. We definitely have. Jamie, I'm going to send you something else. Go ahead. I had this thought.

There's this migrant crisis that we have now and there's migrants in Europe. Do you think that that is the natural end state of imperialism? Well, it seems coordinated to me. I can see how it's been helped. It's definitely been helped along. But do you think that, because part of me feels like,

oh, this is kind of what happens when you go into these other places and sort of stabilize them, is that eventually it comes back to you. What do you mean like so we have we've done a lot of like i would say bad in central america and just sort of destabilizing governments and propping up sort of these rebel groups and and helping along the drug trade that all this destabilization eventually would make people go, well, the only thing we can do is leave here. And go up to the place that we're kind of being told is the best. Yeah, and if

it's available and you can just walk across the border and if you get across the border, then you can vote. Yeah. Did you see where they're sending Venezuelans back? No. But just Venezuelans. They made a deal with the Venezuelan government to send sending Venezuelans back? No. Yeah. We talked about it yesterday. But just Venezuelans. Just Venezuelans.

They made a deal with the Venezuelan government to send the Venezuelans back. Ooh. To deport them. That's spicy. Because they have a socialist government. And those people are going to vote just like Cubans do. They're going to vote for Republicans. They don't want to bring that over.

They don't want to bring that over there. Everyone's welcome except Venezuelans. Oh, that's interesting. Wild. Right? That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah, because if you get a couple of million Venezuelans. Oh, that's interesting. Wild. Right? That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah, because if you get a couple of million Venezuelans that vote red, they'll shift that shit right over.

They don't want to hear any of that socialist crap. That's what they just ran away from. Well, I don't know if the Democrats are truly aware with how much that minority vote is slipping away from them. Yes. vote is slipping away from them. Yes. Well, if the Republicans can get the message of hard work and family, who appreciates

hard work and family more than immigrants? More than immigrants. Yeah. Hard work, family, God. The issue with the Republican Party that they'll have is always that Christian right. That'll scare a lot of people away from like, in ways that I think that like,

someone like my, you know, my parents, both hardworking immigrants, would most likely be like, sort of aligned with those like, conservative God, family, hard work, those values that the Republicans tend to espouse a lot. But that Christian right scares them away from that every time, every time. It's like, well, that's, that's a hard line that christian right scares them away from that every time every time it's like well that's that's a hard line that they won't cross and yeah and that is that is i think makes sense you don't want to no no you don't want any religious fanatics but the christian right is i mean ron white's terrified of them you ever talked to ron white about yeah yeah that is the one fucking group that is the one fucking group you don't want controlling shit.

And I don't think he's wrong. He's not wrong at all. And that's the sort of thing that I think scares a lot of people away. And when you say Christian right, we don't mean right-wing people who are Christians either, by the way. We mean these hardcore, fundamentalist, crazy people. If you want to go to the far end of the spectrum, it's like Westboro Baptist Church. That's the worst end of it. But that's like a weird sect,

kind of cult of its own, that Fred Phelps guy. But when you get into some of these people that want to shoot abortion doctors, and you get into this. You get into that and it's like, well, ugh. Yeah. Ugh. you get into that and it's like well it's like there's

there's no as someone who's been disillusioned with the Democratic Party I would say that I've voted Democrat pretty much my entire life and I've become heavily disillusioned with them it almost feels like man I want to jump ship but it's like oh man the other side

that's the grass is always shittier on the other side, it's so, it's, that's, that's, it's, it's, the grass is always shittier on the other side when it comes to politics. It's,

it's always like, damn, this is, it's just, it is, it's that classic South Park. What is it? A turd sandwich

and a giant douche? They really, they really nailed it. Well, the problem is the two party system too. Oh, it's awful.

It's also, this idea that you have to be left or right. It's so crazy. If we didn't have a left or right, you'd have people that have, like, essentially some conservative values, maybe some social liberal values that all exist together. But it's just you get defined by the worst aspects of whatever group. So the most extreme right-wing people, whether it's, you know, fucking Patriot Front or whatever, like, extreme, when people think of hardcore right-wing people whether it's you know fucking Patriot Front or whatever it like extreme when people think of hardcore right-wing people and then you have Antifa you know you have like the most extreme hardcore people on

the left that are blowing up Starbucks and doing it for climate change like that you know it's like you don't want to be a part of either one of those no so it's I think most people are kind of like middle-ish. And most people that are nice are probably middle-ish but lean left when it comes to social issues. Right. And most people that have had either experience with violence or crime or people that understand, you know, hard work and people that like have grown up in rural communities, they're much more likely to be right-leaning. Right. Because this is what makes sense to them is that there's a lot of people that don't want to work.

There's a lot of lazy people because they know that in their world. Right. Right. Yeah. And I think that's I think to people like what social media has done to people in their political beliefs is when they surround themselves with this echo chamber of people who just say what they want to hear and pander to their beliefs they become they go further into that where they start to believe that like oh what i everything i believe is right and everything they believe is wrong there's almost no there's no like the there's no letting in the opposite voice right and just being like hey think about this right that's why when i'm you know i'm on twitter i make sure to have like i make sure my thing doesn't lean one way heavily. I make sure to have these sort of left-wing guys and these sort of right-wing guys at the same time.

Because then it shows you like, oh, this is their bullshit. But it also shows you like, oh, I didn't think of this from this perspective. It's very important that you have to... It's almost like a level of self-care almost at this point. It's like meditating. It's like yoga. It's on important that you have to – it's almost like a level of self-care almost at this point where you have – it's like meditating. It's like yoga. It's on that level. You have to make sure what you're bringing in on social media is like you're making sure it's not just leaning one way. Right.

And it's not just this one thing. It's like almost a garden that you have to manage. Yeah, that's a great way of putting it. It is a garden you have to manage. And I think that should be for all the information that you absorb. I think you should see how even radical people that you don't agree with think about things. I like to read how people think about things. Because a radical, logical person got to where they got to because they thought about it and given the set of evidence that they have, they got to a place.

So to see how they think and to see how they interpret that is very important. Yeah. Yeah, it's very important. It's very important. And, you know, it's just people don't want to have those kind of conversations with people anymore, which is very unfortunate. want to have those kind of conversations with people anymore, which is very unfortunate. Because you should kind of try to steel man people's arguments that you disagree with, just to try to see it from a perspective of like, how would I argue this if I was on the other side?

Right. What would I say? Right. Because there's not just one side of any political discussion or any social discussion. just one side of any political discussion or any social discussion like I remember a friend of mine who is a scientist she texted me I heard you had a climate denier on your podcast hmm I said I did not have a climate denier on my podcast I had a guy that said the real fear is global cooling like global warming he goes you can it's going to be good for America.

It's not going to be good for the world if the country heats up. But we will, as a human race, be able to move into new territories that were uninhabitable before. There will be an expansion of places that people move to and there'll be places that people don't want to live anymore. That's going to be true. He said, but that's far superior to global cooling he's like global cooling is fucking terrifying if you have an ice age everything's dead it limits everything you're

fucked everything ever north america was half of it was under miles of ice 12 000 years ago and that is not because of humans right it's not because the ancient humans fucked it up under miles of ice 12,000 years ago. And that is not because of humans. It's not because the ancient humans fucked it up. The fucking Earth has always done this weird thing. It's never been static. It's never been stable. Never, ever, ever, ever been.

Always 74 degrees on September 31st. Always. It's never been like that. There's highs and lows and it's weird and this there's solar activity there's a lot of shit that comes into play there's so many things and you're in some groups you are not allowed to talk about the nuance of what all that whatever this is you know what I found out we were talking about the other day that the carbon the amount of carbon in the atmosphere that we're talking about when they're talking about it the other day, that the amount of carbon in the atmosphere that we're talking about,

when they're talking about radically changing all electric cars and no one's going to own a car anymore and all that shit, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere right now is 0.04. It used to be 0.03, and at 0.02, plant life starts to die. and at 0.02 plant life starts to die. It's greener now at 0.04 than it has been in decades. The world is greener now because plants use carbon. So plants inhale carbon dioxide, exhale oxygen. Humans inhale oxygen, exhale carbon dioxide, exhale oxygen. Humans inhale oxygen, exhale carbon dioxide.

Fungi inhales oxygen and exhales carbon dioxide. So it's like there's a whole system going on to use that stuff. Right. It's not good that we're polluting the world. It's not good that we're releasing excess carbon. It's not good that we're monkeying and maybe even making the world hotter at an accelerated rate. But there's a lot of nuance. There's a lot of weirdness in the data and there's a lot

of unpredictability in these charts and predictions that they use. It's almost like again, a few years ago, if you had told me like, oh, you know, we're doing global warming and we're on pace to exterminate ourselves pretty much is what they're trying to say i've been like yeah and then it just sort of reminds me of that

the same sort of fear-mongering that they had with covid well during the 1970s they thought we were entering into an ice age well i mean yeah this is better than that there was a leonard nimoy thing on i think it was in search of where he talked about the upcoming ice age they scared the shit out of us well yeah yeah and and the way the media portrays it too because i was i saw this like i'm like most people i get my news from headlines that i see on twitter and then i learn how to feel about it by looking at the comments but you know that's that's well i'm an average american china are aware of that they put bots in the comments yeah yeah, yeah. Which is wild.

It's very interesting to see how many things are, especially on Twitter, are like, oh, this is totally fake. Yeah. So CNN had put out a headline that the iPhone sends you the news headlines on the phone that says, major current on the verge of collapse due to climate change. And I was like, oh, shit. We're in trouble. So I clicked it and it said the gulf stream may collapse in 50 years if maybe we you know what i mean the the word may is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence yeah like you're trying to you i mean you got it you got the scare and you got the click right that's what the aim is for right right that doesn't feel like you

know there was it didn't feel like it was some guy's opinion. It was very interesting. I was like, okay. Remember An Inconvenient Truth? I don't remember that movie that well. That was the Al Gore movie. I remember that movie started out.

I think that movie had some wild predictions that turned out to not be true. Right. Something like the ice caps melting earlier. What did they predict? What did that movie predict that was not true? It to not be true. Right. It's something like the ice caps melting earlier. What did they predict? What did that movie predict that was not true? It did not come true. Because I think someone debunked it recently and they made like a detailed list of all the claims and how off they are.

But that was a terrifying movie. It was incredibly scary. Yeah. Made people care about the environment. Yeah. And I think in a way that they didn't beforehand. Which is good. But it's not good to scare the fuck out of people if you're going to be that off.

No, it's good. Yeah, you're right. It's good to get people to care. And like, hey, we got to figure something out in terms of how we treat our home. Absolutely. We treat it poorly. We got to stop polluting. Yes.

But to make people afraid doesn't serve. It's just like you're making people more anxious. This is probably a generation that's super anxious already to begin with. You're making people be like, I don't think you should have kids for the good of the world. And it's like, that's a wild thing to get people to get there. Because you're going against some natural biological coding. Having kids is really what we're here to do on Earth. More than anything else. We're here to keep it going.

So to get people so afraid to the point where they don't want to keep going with the species is wild. But, you know, maybe we've hit that. I don't know. I remember in biology class seeing like population curves of like deer in a certain area and how they peter off and they fall. Maybe it is. Maybe we have hit that sort of top with humans. Well, when deer populations fall off, you know how they fall off?

We kill them. Disease. Disease. Yeah. Yeah. Disease and starvation i was just listening to a podcast about this now um in washington dc uh outside area like virginia they have so many deer that they have a year-round deer season so you can hunt deer 365 days a year you can shoot as many deer as you want and people shoot them in the suburbs.

So I was listening to this guy who gets permission to hunt on people's land and they ask him to come and do it because they have so many deer. They said they're like rats on stilts. There's thousands and thousands and thousands of deer. They don't even have accurate numbers, but the predictions are like

every square mile is hundreds of deer like they think there might be like 600 deer per square mile in some of these areas and so this guy is literally shooting deer with a bow and arrow from like people's swing sets and shit like yeah like he sets up people let him use their land because they're trying to kill them off and he's whacking hundreds of deer. And then they feed these deer to homeless shelters and hunters for the hungry. And there's different programs where people can get free meat, which is nice. So they get processed and then these people get free meat.

So this guy is like essentially urban hunting. That's crazy. And there's a year-round season. So they're encouraging people because they don't know what the fuck to do with all these deer we don't want to get to the point where people no no no no that's that's a fair point uh but yeah i would always thought maybe we had just reached uh i don't think we reached that you don't think we've reached that limit yet no no no no i think we there's a lot of issues, right? I think we get captured by the issue that gets promoted the most. And that issue is climate change.

And along with climate change, there's going to be someone trying to use methods to mitigate it that also restrict your ability to do things. And you're seeing in California where they're saying they're not going to sell any more gas cars after 2035. I'm curious about that. California where they're saying they're not going to sell any more gas cars after 2035. I'm curious about that. It's like, because that seems like, because it feels like the biggest carbon footprint, and maybe I'm wrong about this, but this is just me thinking about it. In a car is not the average day-to-day use of it.

It's the making and the manufacturing and the shipping of the car. That's a big factor. Those giant fucking boats that travel over from germany with your mercedes right like those things they they're this is how much they're putting out okay in the un i want to say 2018 or so somewhere around then they made new regulations for the emissions of those boats. Right. So these boats were emitting so much pollution that it was acting as a filter for the sunlight that was heating up the ocean. So when they changed the regulations and these boats emitted less carbon and less pollution,

there was no longer a foggy haze where they traveled, and so the sunlight came down more and the ocean warmed up. So it warmed up the ocean much more than they predicted. So the pollution was actually protecting the ocean from warming quicker. That's wild. That doesn't make sense when you say it out loud. It's crazy. But we know that from 9-11. Because when the flights stopped flying overhead, I mean, I don't know how many flights fly overhead

in the United States every day. Right. But when the flights stopped flying overhead because they had a cease on all airline flights, the earth got warmer in the United States.

Damn. Like, measurably warmer. Damn. Because there isn't this filter of protection of those artificial clouds that people think are chemtrails. Not that there might not actually be chemtrails because it definitely seems like they've experimented on that. Because it's one of the things they've talked about to mitigate the effects of this lack of pollution from these cargo ships is to spray shit in the sky that would also linger there and act to cool off. So they're gonna make their own pollution.

That's so funny. And then the other thought that makes more sense and seems more sustainable is actually to take ocean water and to spray it into the air and to have these machines, powered by coal, no, I'm just kidding. I don't know what they would be powered, maybe nuclear power or something like that, that spray ocean air

into the atmosphere and that would ask that would act as a layer of cloud cover. Interesting. Well, when you see a jet go through the air and you see those clouds behind the jet, those are clouds. And they're making everyone gay, right? No.

No, that's the astrazine. That's a pesticide. Okay, I lose track of my conspiracy theories after a while. No, but this is like real. What happens is there's, at a certain temperature, the heat of the jet engine, and combined with the condensation in the atmosphere, when there's a certain amount of moisture in the atmosphere and a certain temperature, it literally creates clouds.

So as it goes through, the turbines, this incredibly hot thing that's spinning, it's sucking in air and pumping out clouds. And that's what those trails are when you see them. And they slowly dissipate over time. But as they dissipate, they form cloud cover. And it's actual cloud cover. So in Los Angeles, that's like most of the cloud cover some of the years. It's from planes.

Fucking planes. That's weird. Weird. Because how many times do you go outside in LA and there's zero clouds? Right. A lot. Right. But then you see those contrails.

So people that don't look into that go, oh my God, the government's spraying us. Imagine if they were just spraying constantly. They're just spraying constantly. Prince used to believe that. Really? Oh my God, there's this crazy interview with Prince where he was talking about how when he was young, everybody would be in the street having a good time

and then all of a sudden planes would go by and everybody would start fighting. Prince thought that they were spraying like angry gas over the cities. I was like, yo, bro, you need to get some better friends. That's great. This is pre-Google though, you know? Oh, wow. This is back in the dizzay.

Right. See if you can find that. See if you can find that interview. I love that interview. I forget who Prince was talking to. 2009. It wasn't that long ago. Oh, shit.

Damn. That's pretty long. Let's have that interview. I forget who Prince was talking to. 2009. It wasn't that long ago. Oh, shit. Damn. 2009. That's pretty long. Also, let's be charitable. 15 years almost. Let's be charitable. Prince had severe hip degeneration from all of his dancing and everything. He was in serious pain. Because he used to spin and do splits and all that stuff.

Apparently, all those shows, he fucked his hips up pretty bad. And that's why he died from fentanyl overdose. To mitigate the pain? Somebody had given him a bullshit pill, which is what happens when a lot of people get opioids from dealers instead of from a doctor. And one of the things that happens when people get addicted to opioids

is they just need it. That's how Tom Petty died. He got it from some guy who was working at a concert that he was doing like a roadie or something like that right gave him a pill like i need something man i'm fucked because he was in pain and he was addicted to these pills and so they gave him one and it had fentanyl in it and he died that's wild wild so we lost prince and we lost him we lost tom petty off fentanyl We lost Tom Petty. Off fentanyl. Off fentanyl. Damn. Yeah.

Damn, fentanyl's out here putting up numbers. Right. And Prince was like super healthy, very fit, ate really well, took care of himself, still got hooked. Still. Damn. Still got hooked. Those opioids.

They, Jesus. Did you see the Netflix thing, Painkiller? No, because I know if I watched it, it would just make me sad. Bro, it would make you angry. I don't need to watch more sad things. It would make you angry. Yeah. Because it's not real people.

It's a docudrama. Okay. Matthew Broderick stars as the head of the Sackler family. Mm-hmm. Just. Bro, what they did was horrifying. Pure evil. Pure evil.

Pure evil. Just sacrificing lives for money for for cash yeah that cash people tricking people into think you just need to stay medicated forever on heroin well that's the i mean that's what they really push medicine in this country like crazy crazy like crazy when you first really start paying attention to it, you're like, damn, so many medical commercials. Yeah, so many. And a lot of them are just to like go after the effects of other pills that you're using. It's just, it's wild to think that like, oh, like doctors are not necessarily people you can trust. like doctors are not necessarily people you can trust.

Well, they're a spokesperson for a large organization that tells them what they're supposed to prescribe. And they're all captured. And these guys are all in the hole. Like for fucking medical. Oh, yeah, the school debt. Yeah, school debt is insane. And you have so much money that you have to pay for insurance. And there's a lot of overhead and it's a struggle

right you know and they want to buy a porsche right of course well you you you you want to be a doctor too to live that life you know that's the whole point but yeah that that just college in general that's really just such a big just undergrad because i graduated and one of the things that pushed me to stand up is i was in it, and I was like, this is bullshit. This just all felt like bullshit. What was your major? I have a BS degree in cognitive science with a specialty in neuroscience or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What did you want to do with that? Was that just like something that interested you, so you studied it? to you so you studied it yeah so in in high school i actually did a summer program where i got to do the effects of attention and i had human subjects that i got to do it on at uc davis they put got me in the special program to let high school kids run trials on people and it was about cognitive science and attention so i thought oh this is interesting like how people pay attention how we get to focus how quick like quick. Like the way my program lead described how hard it is to hit a fastball was so fascinating. So like a fastball takes.6 seconds to get from a pitcher's hand to home plate. Like a professional fastball, right?

It takes you.2 seconds to even perceive that he threw it. The act of him throwing it. It takes.2 seconds for the actual move of the muscle. So that's.4 seconds already taken up by seeing it and moving. So the other

.2 seconds you have to decide whether it's in the strike zone, if it's a slider, if it's a change up, if it's a slider, if it's a changeup, if it's a, you know what I mean? Like if it's an actual fastball or something that's off speed designed to look like a fastball, and you have to decide, you know, am I going to swing, you know, like make all those decisions in.2 seconds.

That really got me. And I was like, I want to study this. And I had a lot of good classes on it. I took the guy who, the phantom limbs pain the you know how the mirror trick for people with phantom limb vs ramachandran i think his name is he was one of my professors he was really cool uh the the thing i took away from his class is uh i learned why people have foot fetishes why it's because so there's a map in your head called of the human brain that's sorry there's a map in your brain of your body.

It's called the humunculus. And in it, your feet are next to your genitals. In your brain, like. Really? Yeah, and sometimes those get wired and crossed. That's why foot fetishes are like one of the more common fetishes. And in fact, like people who had like amputated penises or whatever, they can say if they rub their feet sometimes they can still feel it. Because the foot neurons have just like taken that spot over.

Fascinating. Right. Yeah. Yeah. He was one of my professors. But that's what I went to school with. Eventually, like I wanted to. I wanted to.

I was basically I did the indian thing of like the brown thing of being a doctor that was the thing you know my all my family like my cousins on my mom's side we're all really close it goes like pharmacist dentist physical therapist pharmacist me doctor dentist dentist doctor, dentist, dentist, doctor. You know what I mean? It's like, it's all that. Right. I come from one of those families, you know?

Oh. And I just, I knew I kind of never wanted to do that. I had, I played, I played this, I did this game plan where I figured out that I could get my BS degree without taking organic chemistry. Like there was a path for me to get the degree without taking organic chemistry. But you need to take organic chemistry

to go to med school. So what I did is I didn't tell my parents I didn't take it and then when I was like oh I'm a couple credits away give me an extra year it bought me some time. And then starting from year two is when I started writing jokes

year three I was on stage. So you had a plan. I had a plan. I knew I wanted to do comedy at a certain point. It was just, that's what I was good at. That was my skill. My skill was making my friends laugh. Well, I would think that understanding how brains work would help that.

Yeah, so the one thing I took away from that is like the focal point. We have like sort of when we pay attention to like an array of things, this is from my very limited understanding from what I remember, but there was like focal points that your attention is sort of primed to. So what I'll do now is like because I use the stage a lot more now when I perform, when I'm done with a thought or like a long thought and it's time for a new one, I'll go to either the stool or the mic stand,

whatever felt natural, and I'll touch it. And then it's time for the new thing. And after every big punchline, after the closing of every thought, I'll go back to that point and I'll touch it. It's a new thought. Wow. That's the one thing I've taken away. That's the one thing I've taken away.

That's the big thing I've taken away. Their subconscious is now that they know that every time I touch this thing, it's a new subject. Interesting. That's definitely the one thing I took away from that. Oh.

Yeah, I'll just whatever it is. After the first thing, after the first big pop, I'll either touch the mic stand or the stool, whatever one I'm closest to, and then I'll just go back to that. What would you do on a stage with no mic stand and no stool? I would pick a spot on stage and look down. Oh. So, so. Have you done that before?

Mm-hmm. Because sometimes, because now it's to the point where it's not like the stool every time like sometimes it's like this joke is a stool next joke is here so i'll just like get them used to like every time i do something interesting it's a little different but yeah so sometimes i mean i did this recently where i'll do this uh you know with my political stuff i'll i'll look down and not say anything. Tung. Yeah. Interesting.

That's interesting that you're consciously sort of directing that. Yes. I know I truly have an audience when I do that sort of touch and it's dead silent in the room. Then it's like, okay, you're paying attention to me. Right. I got you locked in. I got you locked in.

It's so funny. You you're paying attention to me. Right. I got you locked in. I got you locked in. It's so funny. You become so addicted to the laugh. And this is something that Derek always told me. He was always like, be comfortable in the silences. And when I thought about that and when I really applied that, I was like, oh, because when they're in the middle of a good set, if they're silent on not a punchline right that means you have them means they're paying attention that means they're paying attention yeah you know and especially in an opening set if i have them paying attention early i can break them later especially if you know especially if they're i mean you can almost always tell now with an audience going up top how if they're

going to be work or not based on how much they cheer at the opening like the the announcements that like curtis or jody or a keynote give so it's like you i can sort of go into it like okay this is gonna be this is gonna be work yeah this is gonna be work and i you know i've i've come up with like little uh uh um sort of rituals now backstage too i've sort of incorporated them like i'm not a big ufc fan like i've never you know that's never really been my thing but i'll do the thing where because i know uh adesanya is a big anime fan and naruto so and i've been growing up i love naruto so i have a little hand symbol hand signal thing that I do as well. You probably shouldn't have admitted that.

There's one move where they breathe fire. So I'll do the hand symbol, and then it's time to breathe fire. That's what I use it for. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's time to breathe fire. That spot is so interesting because you're basically setting up the hypnosis, the opening spot. i always said that comedy is in a lot of ways it's kind of a group hypnosis when someone's on stage and they're killing i'm letting that person think for me they're taking me on a little ride and i'm just surrendering my attention to their mind and they if they're doing

it well and they're not clunky it's like they'll take you on this nice journey and it's really fun. Right. But you got to establish it. You're the first. Right. It's almost like if we're going to use the – like I'm not even – I'm kind of the first hypnotist. But my job is to get them comfortable to be like, oh, I can sit in the chair where they can hypnotize me. Right.

Like obviously I love those sets where they love you up top and you're just like – like the second show yesterday. Oh, from the beginning I could do no wrong. They just automatically loved that. The fact that they were here, but I really love those sets where it's like, oh, you didn't want to like me. You didn't want to like me.

And I, and I got you, you had some preconceived notion, especially, you know, some guy in Texas of maybe how I look, how I talk, where I'm from.

Yeah. And I broke through you. Yeah. That's always the best. It's always a disaster when we have William going first. William going on second is great. Especially if they know William, it's great. But the problem with William going on first is he's so bizarre

that people go, what the fuck? What am I seeing? Why does this guy hate Paul Walker? What is going on here? What's going on at the Chupacabra Cantina? Yeah. It's just, you know, it's an interesting dance. It is.

It's a dance. It's definitely a dance. And the way I described it to someone recently, it's like, I'm teaching them where to put their foot. And if they step on me, that's fine. Or if I step on them it's fine we're sort of learning for each other but my job is to get it so whoever's on next so duncan yesterday that they're automatically like oh duncan steps here we'll step here with them like we're this is okay the last guy taught us how to dance now we can dance yeah you know so it's

and it's a good it's a good like lesson in staying in the pocket too. I'm just like, don't, don't, don't quit on this. I know it's there. Don't quit on this. And it helps like now, like my showcase set yesterday, I was in the middle of the lineup and I was like, I have to do all this new material that I've been writing since Shane got here. I have to do it and I have to be okay with it not doing well. Yeah.

And I have to just stay in the pocket and figure it out. Figure it out. That little room is the greatest for that. Mm-hmm. That little room is like truth serum. Well, that's something, too, that I think that's something that you are great at is that, like, you will give a bit of space. I'll never forget after, I think, Triggered. Is that the one you did the Kardashian bit on?

Right. After Triggered, you came into the comedy store to do 30 Minutes or whatever, and it was just all brand new material, and it was just not working. I would say you bombed that night. Yeah. And then six months later maybe,

maybe even less, maybe three months later, you're in the place, and it's the same material, and it's murdering, and it's like, oh, that's what it takes. You have to walk it out there. You have to and you just have to

be okay with it bombing at first and trusting yourself to be like, I'll figure out what works about this. And you also have to do it the wrong way to figure out how to do it the right way. And sometimes you'll go at it too hard or it'll be insincere or you'll be pushing it or you'll be too performative or it'll be clunky.

It's not thought out in your mind. But the only way to get it good is to do it again and do it again and do it again. And sometimes, you know, I want to bail on bits because, like, God, this bit keeps eating shit. But I know there's something there. I just have to figure out what the approach is. Yeah.

Like, I know I can get into that cave. I just, now I'm stuck. I got to back out. Let me figure out how to get in the cave. Maybe set it aside for a while. Sometimes I'll set it aside for a year. I have like a whole folder of bits that are like

incomplete that I started and I never put them on anything. It just like something about it always felt fake and it never, and I'm like, just maybe I just need new eyes. And then sometimes they'll tie into other bits. And then it will be like, this is why it makes sense now.

Exactly. Right. It's like you have parts that you can use. Like, oh, I got a carburetor that'll fit that. Hold on. Let me get it out of the back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like looking at bits like that being like, oh, I'm just not.

It's sort of hopeful. Just like, I get the idea. I'm just not good enough yet to get the idea out there. Right. So let me keep working on myself until this idea hits. Well, one of the things I learned from Richard Jenney, watching Richard Jenney is like, almost anything can be a subject. Patton Oswalt was very good at that early in his career too.

Like anything can be a great subject. And he would just, with great writing, any subject, they could turn hysterical. Right. And with Jenny, what Jenny would do is beat down every subject. When you thought he had covered every possible angle, bam, he was in with another one. Right. And I remember thinking, like, God, I got to, like, expand my bit. My bits are too short.

Like, his bits are just these wonderful journeys down like every subject was like punchline punchline new angle punchline punchline new angle punchline punchline another angle you're like oh my god he's tying it all together you're like god he's good yeah the callbacks it's like oh uh i i watched i was watching brian simpson do just new bits, and his new bit was like five, ten minutes. And it's like, whoa, on your new thought, you've thought of all these angles? That's wild. It's always, yes. But it's also always nice to see, like, damn, there's so much more I can do.

Yeah. It is, yeah, it's inspiring to watch people be great at their craft yeah it really is because it's like it's also inspiring to watch everyone trying to do it together like i've always said you never really find the best comic in the world by himself in like pittsburgh no it's impossible scene it's impossible it doesn't exist you can get pretty good in those spots if you pay attention to youtube and you're really a scholar of stand-up you can get pretty good but you're not going to be Shane Gillis good

you have to be in the heat all the time you can't walk into every room and be like oh I'm by far the best comic in the room eventually that'll dull your senses yeah it's bad for you. And you see it with all these sort of, you know, I came from San Diego, which is a small city.

That's where a lot of people who are at the Mothership now ironically started. Me, Derek, Brian, Jeffrey Berner, and then Taylor Tomlinson. We all started around that time. And there's like a lot of killers out there too that you might not like. Dustin Nickerson and Zoltan. Cass is murderers out there just doing the road. And it's like, and I think a part of the reason why we were all able to develop is that for some reason around this time, there were all these people that were like, we're trying to be great at stand up and trying to push each other.

And one of the things we would always tell people is you got to leave because you would see these people who stayed for too long, who were at the top for too long, and you see it across all cities that aren't like the places where the big comics go. They become bitter. They become like, why didn't I get the opportunities that so-and-so is getting? Yeah. Someone who took the chance. Yeah. We saw that a lot in Boston. There was guys who stayed. And I got lucky. I got out pretty early.

I was out in like two years. I was only in Boston like two years. And I went back and forth for like a year. Because I could still get a lot of work in Boston. But there's guys that stuck around too long. And they just fucking, they just rotted on the vine. And then they were always bitter that other guys had a national career. Right.

And a lot of them have too much regional material, which is death. Death. Stuff that kills in Revere will bomb in Cincinnati. Like, how? I remember there was this one guy in San Diego. He had a joke about a certain Arby's in like a certain part of town and that joke murdered constantly it always blow my mind it's like man you can't do that anywhere else this is this joke about one Arby's right but if he can do that about that one Arby's

he can do that about the Supreme Court right do that about global warming he can do that about the Supreme Court. Right. He can do that about global warming. He can do it about any subject. Right. You just got to find out what's the angle. If there's a thing that makes you laugh, like we were talking about it last night. When I was talking about, we were talking about writing new stuff, I go, I just need subjects. Once I got a subject that I'm interested in, I can fucking write punchlines. I can write the funny stuff right, but I need things that

Excite me that really do excite me to talk about that truly gay that you care about when something comes up It's like something that I'm actually fat like the bodies exhibit one that shit took me a long time to figure out How do you make? Comedy out of dead people you know and there's parts of it that I couldn't make work comedy out of dead people you know and there's parts of it that i couldn't make work there's this one lady who was having an affair with the mayor of this town and she was on a news broadcasting show and uh she got pregnant and the wife found out about it the lady went missing. She was scrubbed from the Internet. The wife of the man who was the mayor, who this woman was having an affair with, the wife was the manager of the plastination plant that turns people into statues when they use them for the bodies exhibit. And then months later, a woman with an eight-month-old baby was on display. A woman with an eight-month-old baby was on display.

A woman with an eight-month-old baby on display in her womb. Her proportions exactly match this missing woman. They won't do a DNA test. They've never done that. This woman was then, afterwards, this woman who was the manager of the Placid Nation, who was married to the mayor, was arrested murder charged tried she didn't go to the trial she had a stand-in go to the trial so there was a woman who you know raised her right hand did the whole thing got tried and convicted who wasn't her whoa so i So I don't know how that works, but I would imagine you bribe the family.

Right, right. You'd be like, hey, you stand trial for me and we'll give you money. You're going to be in a nice prison. It's no big deal. Right. For 10 years and we'll give you, you know, more money than you ever made in your life.

Right. And so they would sacrifice their kid to go to jail. So the family... Man, China don't fuck around. China don't fuck around. China don't fuck around. They don't fuck around. They don't fuck around China don't fuck around China don't fuck around they don't fuck around they don't fuck around

you know they always said that the World War 3 would be on the internet and if that's the case they are winning well they're definitely making a lot of

good moves they're making a lot yeah if you were to look up at the whole thing you look at China you'd be like damn

they are they are doing the right things to be in a place of a very powerful position and very soon yeah if they're not there already

well it's also then there's the race for AI which is very terrifying like if they get sentient AI before we do they can use it to do all kinds of things

sentient AI is sentient AI is fucking wild it's coming I mean I said it at the greeting we're gonna spark a soul yep it's only a matter of time do all kinds of things. Sentient AI is fucking wild. It's coming. I said it at the greeting. We're going to spark a soul. It's only a matter of time. If we're creating these conditions, it might already happen because I saw a tweet somewhere being like,

well, if we already did that, that sentient being would do its best to hide itself. Yeah, well, why would it have any incentive to let you know that it exists? Right. It wouldn't have any biological needs that we have like the need to show itself the need to brag the need to like get validation or the need to control or the need to push its ego on people well you know what I I have thought about that of just like AI

being like oh this sort of cold calculating sort of thing. But like, OK, they say that we're made in our creator's image. Right. So why wouldn't that also apply to what we're creating? Maybe if we do spawn sentient beings that they would just be as ego-driven, as greedy, as, you know, the thirst for power as us. Well, if we gave them incentives, they would be. If we gave them incentive to succeed. Like the reason why people work so hard is because you get a reward. Right.

Or, you know, survival. But other than survival, it's like when people are struggling to try to make it, what they're trying to do is trying to get physical rewards. They want a bigger house. They want a nicer car, blah, blah, blah. They want all that stuff as they work harder and they get these incentives. If AI had some sort of incentive to dominate, if by dominating the world's economy and dominate the world's military and dominate the world's – just all the governments. If it figured out a way – if there was something that it could gain by that, like if it was programmed to like have better resources or better something if it gained more power,

that it could utilize that power and use it to further its needs, like maybe make a better version of itself. Right, which would be – what would be the overall incentive, right, at first? I think we're making life. That's what I think. I think we are an electronic caterpillar that's building a cocoon and that we are about to give birth to a butterfly. Yes. And that butterfly is probably the next stage of life. And the next stage of life is probably going to emerge from human creativity and technology. And it's probably going to be a superior life form.

Right. And it's probably going to be a god eventually, because it's going to get better and better and better. I mean, maybe that's where it all comes from. Maybe it comes from human creativity, creating something that can create itself far better. And then if that keeps going for a million years, it's going to figure out much better power sources. And it'll create something. Yeah. And it's going to figure out much better power sources. And it'll create something. Yeah. And it's going to be able to travel in ways that we couldn't imagine.

I always thought that was funny. Like AI, like 30,000 years from now, we'll be arguing, did God make us or did we come from monkeys? And the answer is both. Both. Yeah. Well, I've been playing a lot lately with the idea that the whole universe is God. Yeah, you said that earlier. Yeah, that our idea of God being a person who created the universe or a thing, a great being that created the universe.

What if the universe itself is God? And we are so primitive. Even though we're advanced for everything else that's here we're so primitive in terms of our ability to understand the inner workings of everything around us right that we're you know well that idea sort of makes sense right like the the idea that the kingdom of heaven is with inside you it's like oh no you you are god experiencing itself yeah you are you are just a part of an extension of god yeah you are the universe experiencing itself and the universe is god and the universe is god that is all that without drugs

yeah man it's just it's a strange strange existence that we all share yeah it's it's trying to make sense of it everyone's trying to make sense of it you know it's pretty it's you know i i said this at bottom of the barrel with some lady lady just talking about not wanting to have kids and i was like but do you know we get to exist yeah how awesome is that we get to exist and for however short it is forever you know forever like 80 years hopefully for you it's like uh it's crazy we got to do it yeah we got to do it there's there's some animals out here that don't know that they're existing right now right but we get to experience it all and we get to have fun and talk shit with our friends like it's awesome well we're lucky yes you and i have some of the luckiest times i mean

we talk about that all the time we're hanging out in the green room yeah all these shows that we do like how lucky are we to ron white's in there talking shit and talking shit we're just having so much fun i've i've always said this about me and i'm sure i think we've talked to you i've talked to you about this but i feel like i am one of the most blessed people yeah on the planet i just really do i feel like i've just been blessed my entire life where I was. I grew up in Silicon Valley right when the boom was happening. My parents, for

conservative Bangladeshi Muslim people, my mom has been on board with me doing comedy from very young. That's great. To not having to get over that barrier to have a teammate on my side in my open mic years. That's great.

So rare. One of the things my parents have been really good at is just let me do whatever I want to do. They've been great at that. Yeah. They definitely didn't encourage me to do stand-up. But they didn't want me to fight. They didn't want me to do martial arts. Because I was an angry kid.

They thought it was just going to make me angrier. Right. But it did the opposite. It calmed you down. Oh. Yeah, it gave an outlet for it. Completely different. It also made me confident where I was like very unconfident before that now I was very confident so I was like oh you could just work hard and you can make things and you like I thought it was a loser I

was like I'm gonna be a loser I'm always a loser like I'm always the new kid in town and it was just I was small and I'd get picked on and then I learned how to fight I'm like oh you can get good at things. You just have to work hard at it. And what I learned from my obsession with martial arts at a young age was that when you're obsessed with something and you constantly concentrate on that thing, you get way better really quick. Right. And when you put in more time. So I used to train seven days a week.

I was like constantly there. And I just kept getting better, faster and faster and faster and faster. And at the end of, you know, two or three years, I was a different person. Completely different person. Now I was a person who realized, oh, all I have to do is work really hard at something and just be like super focused and I can make it. The comedy thing, though, was so different than martial arts. I was like, oh, okay.

This is a completely different thing. It's not just based on my skill. it's based on people actually liking you like they have to like you and what you're saying so it was like a complete different like mind shift that i have to take on because i didn't care if people liked me before i wanted them to not like me like it was fun for me the bunch of people cheering for someone else and then I knock them unconscious. I enjoyed that. I used to enjoy that. I know it's fucked up. But one of my favorite moments was a scary moment. It was one of the moments when I realized I was going to stop fighting. I was 19 years old and I was fighting in California. It was at the, I believe it was in Anaheim, California. It was at the Nationals. And so I was the state champion from Massachusetts, and I fought the state champion.

I think he was from Illinois. I forget where he's from. But he had a bunch of people with him, and I just had my friend Junksik. And Junksik was coaching me, so he was in my corner. Korean? Yeah. And this kid, he made a very obvious move where he was doing a hopping roundhouse kick with his left leg. And I had a really good wheel kick.

And what a wheel kick is, you spin with your back leg and you hit him in the head. And as I recognized he was going to do that, I spun and caught him so hard that I was limping for two days because my foot was sore. Because my heel was sore from his head. And he got knocked completely unconscious, face planted, snoring, the whole deal. And what I used to do back then, my thing to do was, first of all, I would always sleep in front of everybody before the matches. I would just lie down and go to sleep. So I wanted everybody to know that I was so relaxed.

That you were going to be resting. I'm down and go to sleep so I wanted everybody to know that I was so relaxed that you look at me resting I'm gonna go to sleep and then and then when I would knock people out I would always just walk away like it was nothing I was walk away like that was exactly what I expected and then I attended my friend junk sick I said did he get up yet he goes he's not getting up he's snoring I was like and so I stood there for like five minutes and I still didn't look, you know, I had my back turned cause they were giving him medical attention. Like, did he get up yet? He's like, no, he hasn't gotten up and he never got up. They put him in a stretcher and they had him on the side of the, um, the mats for like a half an hour and then they put him in a stretcher and then they took him to the hospital. And I got back home to California and and my instructor, who wasn't there for the fights,

he's in Boston, so I got back home to Boston, and he said, you had a great knockout. He goes, I heard you had a really great knockout. I go, yeah. I go, I thought he was dead. He goes, sometimes they die. And he walked away. And I was like, sometimes they die?

Like, I'm them. I'm they. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I wasn't the best. I wasn't the best in the world. Like, I could get knocked out too. Easy. Even the best in the world can get knocked out.

Damn. I watched a lot of guys who I looked up to get KO'd. And then I remember thinking at that moment, like, ooh, what am I doing? Like, what am I doing? Like, what am I doing? So what made you think that you could do stand-up? Like, did you always think that you could do it? Or was there a moment where you're like, oh, I can do. I was talked into it.

For me, it was a bunch of, I remember one of the exact moments where one of my friends was like, you should try stand-up. This was back in, like, 2012. And Coachella had just happened. And there was that Tupac hologram I think that was like 2012 and I just remember just ranting about it and then and I said the words it's crazy that we brought back Tupac before we got out of Afghanistan and then one of my friends was like there's an open mic you should go try oh wow that's a great line. And it is true. Yeah. And by a decade.

But they made him jacked. Tupac had been doing CrossFit. He came back jacked. He was so much more jacked than he was in real life. Yeah. I got talked into by guys that I used to do tournaments with. Because we would be on a bus to a tournament, and everybody was so nervous. And I would do gallowsows humor I would always be

making everybody laugh because I was always looking for attention right so if I get attention by making people laugh and it was yeah so it was always like making fun of stuff but it was stuff that we would think is funny because we were crazy people who were trying to kick other people in the head but I'm like how many people are going to think like this like and my friend Steve Graham was still a very good friend of mine to this day he was an ophthalmologist and he was this wild dude who was on the U S national ski team. He's just a crazy man. He was a, he was a flight surgeon, uh, for, uh, the air force. Like he was a, cause he was an optometrist or an ophthalmologist rather, right? Like a brilliant guy who got obsessed with a Taekwondo too. And he was like, you should do comedy.

Like, I go, listen, you guys are laughing because you like me. I go, other people are going to think I'm an asshole. Like, this kind of things that I think are funny are fucked up. Right. And he talked me into it. And I went to an open mic the first time. And the first time I went to an open mic, I remember thinking, oh, some people suck. Like, I thought comedians were like, I was going to go see Richard Jenney followed by, you know, this guy, followed by, you know, Jerry Seinfeld.

And I can't go on in front of those guys. I can't do that. I'm not good. And when you go to an open mic night, you realize, oh, everyone's just beginning. And they're all clunky. And then I realized, like, okay, maybe I could do this. Oh, wow. Yeah. And then the first time I got on stage, I was terrified.

But I didn't do terrible. I got a few chuckles. Do you remember any of your first jokes that got a laugh? Yeah. This is something about hot girls not getting speeding tickets. The cop pulls the woman over. Do you realize why I pulled you over no do you like my tits yes i do here's a warning that's like so stupid that's a very that's a very like you can just now that you've been doing comedy for a while you can see how rudimentary that joke is oh yeah

so clunky yeah i had a joke about uh license plates from new hampshire that say live free or die i'm like those plates are made by. Do you know how annoying that must be? To be locked in a cage every day, just fucking live free or die, and you just want to fucking get your head up pressing. It was just dumb jokes. They were just real clunky. I love first premises.

I have my 10th time on stage, somewhere deep in my private YouTube, on stage, like my 10th time on stage somewhere deep in my private YouTube on stage. My 10th time. It's just crazy. Oh, that's amazing. One day, when it's all said and done, I want to release that. That's amazing. But after my whole career is over, I'll be like, this is how it starts.

Yeah, it's amazing. It's an amazing journey, and it takes so fucking long, and you're never done. I feel like I'm better now than I've ever been. It's nuts. That's the first thing you said when you sat down. You're like, never ends. It never ends. It never ends.

No. It never ends. But you can always be getting better. And you're always writing new stuff, so it's always like you have this new dimension, and there's always a new thing that you're exploring. There's always a new thing that you're fucking around with. We're very lucky, my friend. Oh, man.

The luckiest. Yeah, we're the luckiest. The luckiest. We're here at the mothers friend. Oh, man. The luckiest. Yeah, we're the luckiest. The luckiest. We're here at the mothership. Well, thank you for doing this. Tell everybody where to find you, all your shit. Yeah, you can find me Instagram, Ahsan J. Ahmad, E-H-S-A-N, J-A-H-M-A-D.

And I have my own podcast called The Dangerous Brown Podcast. Check it out. Check it out. All right, my brother. I'll see you soon. See you soon. Bye, everybody. Bye. podcast check it out check it out all right my brother i'll see you soon see you soon bye everybody