The Joe Rogan Experience - #2488 - James McCann

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

James Donald Forbes McCann is a comedian, author, and host of “The James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan.” His latest special, “Island of Strangers,” is streaming on YouTube.https://youtu.be/7VfTqlatcKMwww.youtube.com/@JamesDonaldForbesMcCannwww.jamesdonaldforbesmccanntour.comwww.jdfmccann.com Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. Get a free welcome kit with your first subscription of AG1 at https://drinkag1.com/joerogan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe Rogan podcast, checking out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Thank you. I haven't we back. Good to see you, my brother. Oh, yeah? Always great to see you.

I'm good. It was fun having you at the clubhouse last night. I was fucking terrified. You just looked like you were back. No, I thought that's it. I've been away for too long. I'm going to suck. None of the news stuff's going to work.

They'll see me. They'll go, he was wrong to come back. Fuck him off. It was so nice. It was so nice. nice. You were telling the story, I said, hold these thoughts. Yeah. I didn't know you didn't, I didn't know we'd never spoken about. No, tell me the story. I, well, that's why I came to America to start is, I got offered a job hosting a Catholic podcast, and they fired me as,

I packed up everything in Adelaide. This is like two and a bit years ago, I had the kids and the wife, and on the way to America, I got fired, and they said, we'll still pay you rent. It's in Stubanville, Ohio, beautiful Appalachian town, just outside of Pittsburgh. And, uh, Yeah, it's where we, three months. I was there. So what did they see that they fired you for? Oh, a lot. They made a compilation video.

The guy who showed, they were right to find him. No, no, they were. No, because it was a good, clean Catholic podcast. And then the business manager was like, there was a sketch about stabbing someone in the throat with an AIDS needle. They're like, he uses the word can't all the time. They're like, this is a sponsorship nightmare. Get him out.

So I say, okay, but they still said, we'll pay your rent. for three months and you can figure something out. You still got a visa. And I was terrified. I was just in the snow. With kids and a wife. Three kids, no job. I didn't have the money to go back home.

Oh, my God. We couldn't afford to go back home. Oh, my God. And I didn't know that I had been passed at the mothership because I didn't know how the system worked. So on the way in, to go to Stubanville, where I was like, I'll figure something out. I stopped in at Austin to see Shane.

Shane said, go and do the mothership open mic. I did it. Atta me, it said, if you're ever in town, come back, will pay for sports. I didn't know that meant I was passed. I didn't know I could work here. I just thought he was like I could audition again. And then, so I had three confronting months in the snow. Beautiful part of the world. It was the most terrified I've ever been in my life. He says that as an Australian. That's from Ohio. I love that. That's the most beautiful part of the world. I loved it. I went back and watched that wild whites of West Virginia.

Yeah, that's where you're, that's where it's. It looks exactly like that. Well, that area is gorgeous. It's, it's God's country, but also. so abandoned by like the potholes are crazy I saw real heroin addicts I'd never really seen heroin addicts before just sleepy people I saw street prostitutes that's still going on and this is a small town this is a small town this is uh I I went there Catholics have moved there to try and like fix it it was where Dean Martin was from the Wu-Tang clan kind of started out there there's Staten Island no yes but I think it's like the Rizers auntie lived there and they moved out there and then they got involved in rap in the

Pittsburgh seat. I got asked. Rizza's on real soon. I believe I'm right about that. They don't have a mural for them. Wow. But it's great. There's a, yeah, there's a lot of Catholic content creators there.

And they're trying to take over town. I went there originally because my new polity is like my favorite magazine and I got to meet the guys who made it and I was so excited. So how did they hire you, Wu-Tang's Rizza? found his second chance in Steubenville. Wow. And they all come over to visit him. He discussed a largely undocumented era of his life

in which Pittsburgh played a role. Wow. And that's one of the first conversations we had. I was like, you said something about Pittsburgh that wasn't flattering. I said, I love Pittsburgh. And you're like, you don't know anything. You're a foreigner.

You don't know anything about America. Pittsburgh is a horrible place. I was like, I don't know. I had a nice time there. I thought it was good. It's just a little depressed. See, like the thing about a lot of those sort of industrial kind of towns, there's not a ton of options for people. Pittsburgh more so than like the place that you were in.

But like when you get to a place where there's not a lot of options and then you see real poverty, like this is poverty with no solutions. You know what I mean? Not Pittsburgh. Oh, no, just outside of Pittsburgh. I was more fucking with you. No, I saw things in West Virginia. that were pretty confronting and like you know that are like cake and some of it's great some of the things from the poverty wonderful drive-thru cigarette shop you like that I loved having drive-thru

cigarettes so I got you know just like trying to get the kids to sleep my wife's upset because I got her in a foreign like again she never signed up let's move to America she was like we'll go for three months right and it was like oh fuck I'm unemployed I better quickly figure out how to be a stand-up comedian. I was busing out of Stubanville. I would like, I caught the, I went, I got it, someone gave me a lift to Pittsburgh. This is when I saw the worst stuff. I got a lift to Pittsburgh and then I caught the greyhound from Pittsburgh to Cleveland to open for Sam Talent who let me open, who, unbelievable he let me open for. He's the best. I met him in Australia. Yeah. Such a good

guy. And, uh, but like that bus trip from Pittsburgh to Cleveland was, it was the most upsetting. Oh man. People were spitting on the ground at the bus station. Like an illegal immigrant woman came and tried to give me a phone. I remember that vividly. Give you a phone. She tried to give me a free phone. She's like, you can have this.

Because she said, you're on benefits. Everyone on benefits gets a free phone. It was some, like, policy. She just assumed I was on benefits because I was at the Greyhound bus station. And she was illegal? I don't know if she was illegal, but she had a strong accent and, like, a weird dress and a baby on her back and a sack full of phones. A sack full of phones. We had like a sack of phones.

So she was somehow in charge of distributing free phones to people? I'll never truly know what that was about. Boy, I would have investigated further. There was, I was just scared. I was just scared. They were like huge African guys sitting on the ground. Who tries to give you a phone? And then after that, I sat next to a guy who's having a full psychotic episode.

I think we follow each other on Instagram now. He's gotten rid of his Instagram. Really? But yeah, and he told me the secrets about Chris Benoit that he was a good man. The wrestler? He killed his family. Yeah. But this guy tried to tell me he only, he was, it's like burnt.

He said he only killed his family to send them to God, and you can't blame a man for that. Oh. All right. This is only a three-hour bus trip. We're going to get through this. We're going to be fine. Oh, boy. Oh, man.

But I did enjoy my time in that part of the world. Well, you probably enjoy it now that it's over. That you survived. You make a good point. Yeah. There's some things. If you asked me at the time. Yeah.

There's some things that are not fun while they're happening, but are really fun when you're you got through it. I mean, I remember the people I met along the way. I remember driving to Austin and like, it was like spring was start, like the further south we got, the more lush it became. Yeah. It was like, fuck, I might be okay.

And then someone let me stay in their house. I didn't have a house to stay in. So my, a podcast, listener's friend, let us stay in their house. With your family? With my whole family. Let us house sit for them while they were in Japan. Oh my God.

That's crazy. The whole time it was like, If I don't get past the mothership now, I don't think people should come here and live in their cars with their family. But it does, you know. Lights a fire under your ass. It worked. Well, that's the thing. It's like if you're forced into action.

Yeah. Like you had no, not just yourself. Like, you could go, oh, whoa, was me. But when you're a father and a husband, you have children. Yeah. And people who do not have children do not understand the drive that it gives you to protect and care. for those little people, it's kind of crazy. So if you'll find something.

Welcome aboard via rail, please sit and enjoy. Please sit and stretch. Steep. Flip. Or that and enjoy. Via rail, love the way. Well, I don't understand how people do it without, like I meet men who are really driven and motivated. And they have no kids.

But they're like, every day they're working. I don't know what their motivation is. Before I had kids, I was just... What do you think I'm buying? They're in a game. They're playing a game. No. Yeah, they're just playing this game of accumulate the most stuff,

be able to brag about the most stuff you have. So much rather lie down. I would rather not do anything if I had a choice. But not really, because you love doing comedy. I love doing comedy, but I never, before I had kids, was trying to do comedy that people would enjoy. Do you know what I mean? I think that is also, though, because you...

were living in Australia and there's limited options. Right? I had no options. I had no options. The Australian system is very different than America. It's mostly festival-driven. It's festival-driven and it's to a much greater extent, I've thought about this, it's like industry driven.

Industry? Yeah, we don't have- Which industry? Like managers and agents, which is one role in Australia, but they are deciding who's succeeding and TV people are deciding who's succeeding. Whereas like in America, everybody is on the road. has one or two openers. And there's a whole lineage of who brought who up in the business. Like, Dan Soda had Nick Mullin, Tim Dillon, and Shane Gillis open for him.

Like, those were his openers. And not because they were successful or someone wanted them to thrive. He just thought they were funny people. Right. And they got to be his openers. And I don't know who you were opening for, but you have people who come up. Well, I didn't really do it. I didn't have it that way.

I do it that way, but I didn't have it that way. I didn't really come up with anybody where I opened for anybody. But I had a very weird path to success. You got to go to L.A. and just be in the milieu. Like, there's a scene there. There's a lot of people. I came out to L.A. with a job already. Okay.

I was on a sitcom already. You started in Boston, though. Yes. Started in Boston. Look, it's very embarrassing how lucky I am. I'm, like, one of the luckiest people that's ever lived. like it's stumble upon success after success. So when I was six years into comedy,

I was already on TV. So I was three years into comedy. I was basically barely getting paid. I was barely a professional. Like I was getting some spots in bars and stuff like that. I was making money. But I was driving limousines. I was doing odd jobs,

doing different things. And I was also still teaching at the time. I was still teaching Taekwondo for the first. maybe six months or so when I was 21. I think I kept teaching. And then I eventually had to quit because I realized I could not commit to doing both things.

I don't want to half-ass my students. Yeah. And I don't want to have... So for the first two, three years of comedy, barely, you know, I'm barely a comedian. Just, I'm trying. I'm trying to do it. I'm getting some laughs.

I'm in a manager as an open micer. and he brought me to New York, and he's still my manager today. Wow. The best. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's total luck. Total luck. No, you're also a super handsome guy.

I've seen, I've seen you then. I was boy pretty. You look like a fucking different person. First of all, not worse. It is crazy. But also, a lot of those comics who you started with, who maybe it took longer, were, I won't say hideous, but they don't, they didn't look. Well, that definitely helped me get on television.

It definitely helped me get on television. So I did the MTV, a half-hour comedy hour. in 1993, I believe it was, and next thing you know I had a development deal, next thing you know I was on a sitcom and living out here. I mean, that happened fast, but do you think it doesn't happen for people?

Do you think there's anyone in America who has a good work ethic and is really talented that it doesn't work out for in comedy? Or does it work out eventually? You'd have a health issue. Health issues or a really horrible relationship. Those things could do you in.

Or like you could have a drug problem. Yeah, that'll do you in. Gamble your money away. That could do you in too. Yeah. Yeah. There's a bunch of things. things that can do you in.

But it's crazy. Like, that there are, like, not a lot of undiscovered geniuses in America in the same way. Like, people will want to make money off of you if you've got it. Yeah, but there's some people that are just really horrible at marketing, like Brian Holtzman, for instance. Yeah. Right? We had to kind of, like, force Brian Holtzman into the modern era.

Yes. Like, and he's always been a comics comic, and he's always been a guy that we would all sit in the back of the room at the store and watched. But he was always getting these terrible spots, and it wasn't until we broke. Because he never went on the road. Brian and I started out together. So at the store together, at 94,

we're both, like, I think he came in 93, and I came a year later. And he was working for, like, Pan Am or something? He was a dog catcher for a while. Yeah, he was a, I think he might have been a meter made. Is he here at the moment? I haven't seen him yet. Yes, he's here all the time.

Okay. He lives out here now. I don't know if he goes back and forth. But he lives out here all the time. He's the best. I went to church with him. I don't know if I even if I should tell this story, but we went to church together once.

And it was really lovely. He took me out for breakfast afterwards because he's Catholic. And it was so funny because the priest at the end, like I gave the announcements. And one of the things he was like, they're doing a parish car. They're doing like, what do you call it? Like a talent show for everybody.

He's just announcing this to the whole like 300 people. And Brian goes, he goes there every week. And they go, so if anyone's got a skill, if anyone's a juggler, anyone's a comedian come and do that for the talent show for everybody and he did he gave no impression that he would be doing it but i love you fucking spoon face japs i think he would be terrified and upset if he had brought that he's the sweetest man and i don't want to give that away if people don't know he's a he's a lovely man he's a great guy in real life he always was always was like

i've known him forever um so we were so he's a what what i would say is like an undiscovered genius because he was a guy just fucking killing it but never went on the road he always was only worked the store. I rarely saw him even at like the laugh actor or the improv. I don't I don't know if I could ever recall seeing him at those places. But he had he to consciously make the decision not to go on the road. Well, it's hard because it's not offered to you, you know? It's like how do you do it? If you just do all your sets at the store, you kind of have to have someone take you with them, right? So what I what happened with me is I mostly did the road around New York and Connecticut.

So when I moved to New York in, I guess, a 91-ish. Yeah, so probably like 91-ish. And so when I moved there, the real money, like to be able to pay bills, was in the road. It was not in New York City. New York City did not pay very well. You can get a lot of spots. But also, I was really new, so maybe I couldn't have gotten a lot of spots. But I could get a lot of spots doing gigs for, like, John Schuller.

He had a whole Connecticut run that you could do. They were great gigs. They'd pay like 300 bucks a night. Or you could do Gonzo at a bunch of New Jersey, and those paid really well. Did this collapse at some point? No, there's still probably some sort of a network of road shows. Louis has a story on someone's podcast about like crashing his motorcycle and then like a bubble bursting. I don't know if he was speaking.

A bubble bursting? He was like comedy all of a sudden clubs started to close. Well, there's been ups and downs with that. There was, there was, um, I came in to comedy in 88 and apparently in 84 in Boston, it was even better. Yeah. Like there was like a peak in, I'm like, really? Like, because when I came in, it was amazing. There was clubs everywhere.

Like, nah, you missed it. So there's always been this like up and down of clubs closing and club. But like New York is on the rise right now. There's a bunch of clubs that have opened up in New York. New York's comedy right now is fucking doing great. I hope, yeah, I hope they can figure it out. What do you mean? Well, I was in, last time I was in L.A., the spirit was so, I was never in L.A. for it being great, but I've heard all the stories about.

Yeah. Everyone's sports car at the back of that thing. There's this gig and that gig and that gig. And then I was, everybody, like, has no sense that it's ever going to work for them. Like, no one's even bothered to, it's like three podcasts in L.A. now that people don't want to talk it down. But, like, here, everybody is so hopeful in Austin. And I can look at, like, Peyton made it. Like, last night, I'm looking at that green room. I'm like, all of these people have money in a touring. And they came here and they got to do it. Like, and the hope and the adventure. And when I was in L.A., everyone was just...

You might have picked a bad night, but it's also like the comedy store has always been a top... That seems like it's getting better. Yeah, it is getting better. Well, it's definitely getting better because Rose is running it now. She's awesome. But I think the comedy store has always been a top-down vibe. And if there was a bunch of like big-name national acts

that were really cool and fun to hang out with, and it was a great vibe. And when they're gone, it always felt empty. It always felt weird. This is how it was with me in the 90s when I was there. And I think that's how it is now. We're all out here now. Yeah.

You know, and it's like, and then people kind of feel abandoned, so they feel sad. You know, it feels, and then they get a little mad at you. Like, yeah, you think you fucking be doing an Austin. And so it develops a stupid rift, which is the dumbest thing ever. We're all on the same team. And also, you can work here, too. Like, it's so dumb. Yeah.

Like, but the rift. is a real thing. But it's like you have to be around a bunch of people that are having a good time to have a good time. You can't be the only person having a good time. And the Rift can be good. The Rift can motivate people to have you seen Lemares Twitter? No, what's he doing?

He's just going hard on New York people and saying, fuck all of them and Austin's number one. He's trying to, he's doing the same thing they were doing to him. That's so silly. I think he... New York is fucking great. I think he gets very drunk. New York comedy is swinging people.

There's so many great comics. Norman and Sodor and fucking. Andrew Schultz and David Tells the best live. I don't know anyone who's children. I don't see how you could have kids. Gathigan raised all his kids there. In the city? Yeah, and he's super clean Catholic guy.

Yeah. I don't know how he's. Got some money. First of all, he's got some money. Money has got to help. Send him to a nice place to go to school where they're not going to get eaten. I think the trans thing is done in the schools. Yeah, it's dropped off significantly.

I had really, because we were homeschooling, and I was just aware, because my dad's a teacher, and he would say, I don't want to get him in trouble, but he would report that the numbers were developing. And I think as a social phenomenon, it seems to have like, now everyone just says they have an anxiety disorder. Well, you know when it dropped off, like noticeably? When? When? When Elon bought Twitter? Would you just stop pumping the content to say it's good? Well, all of a sudden, you could say whatever you wanted.

Yeah. And so you could make fun of it now. And then people realize, oh, this is a completely falsely propped up narrative. Do you smoke cigars? I quit all nicotine. You have it. Do you have alcohol? I have a drink.

I can get you some alcohol. All right. If I could have a whiskey. I quit all nicotine. What happened? I was having heart palpitations. I was doing it a lot. I had a problem.

I cannot do a little bit. I see, you'll just like, you'd be backstanding. you'll have one cigarette and you're fine. Yeah. I can't. And I never smoke outside of right before a show. I don't, I mean, I, but I'm. Power to you.

I can't do that. I know how to shut things off. And I also regulate, like, like, I realize, like, when I have an issue. Like, the nicotine pouches, I can just stop them. I've gone on vacation and just not take them and I'm fine. I think, but I think it's my biology. It's almost time for spring break. So maybe you're headed to the beach or maybe you're taking the kids on,

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at the same time i think that was the closest to serious unpleasant really i don't think i ever got through to abusive but man there was a lot of shouting at the family what the fuck are you put it down i was not a happy how long did it last it was for a month i was real bad wow that's crazy for me um i don't know what it is man i just I could just put it alone, leave it alone, and I'm fine. And now I monitored myself. Like, I went on vacation for like eight days with the family. And I said, all right, no nicotine pouches.

Let's see what happens. You were fine? See if I go crazy. Yeah. I was waiting. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Nothing. Was it you with the pouches? Was it the pouches? I loved the pouches. And also, I mean, I got on the pouches to get off the cigarettes, and then I had to go on the cigarettes and pouches. And then I was having cigarettes and pouches and the gum. and my heart would start to go

and my mood would like go way up and way down but it was, I got a lot done See, I get addicted to things Yeah, like doing things Like real bad Like I used to get addicted Archery, sure

But the thing about archery is you can only do it so much Archery is good Because it's, you know, my bow is 80 pounds to pull back Yeah And so if I'm pulling it back And I have another one that's 90 And so when I'm pulling it back 80 pounds you can only do that so many times you know i could do that maybe a hundred times in a day

and my fucking shoulder's blown out if you're hunting though i mean you're not shooting very often but you wouldn't be able to get so tired that if you're no no no no no when you're hunting first of all you're jacked up with adrenaline like like you could pull a branch off a fucking tree you're you're so jacked up with adrenaline you're just trying to stay calm like when you're about to pull your bow the bow comes back effortlessly it's like It's like you don't even notice that it's, it pulls back so easy. You're so ramped up. You're not even thinking about it.

How often are you doing that? Bow hunting. Yeah. Seriously, only a couple times a year. Okay. Because I'm elk hunting, you know. And if I get an elk. Seasonal?

Yes. Okay. It's September. September and October. Those are the time. But in Texas, we hunt pigs sometimes. We have a lease out here. So we'll go and hunt with a few of my friends from archery country.

Shout out to Tyler. And my friend Evan from Black Rifle Coffee. We'll go out to... Wild pigs? Oh, they're everywhere. Okay. They're infested. Wild pigs are all over Texas.

Oh, thank you. There's millions of them. Like, literally millions of them. Like, one time they opened up a highway, like, they built this new highway, and the day it opened up, they had like this fucking ridiculous amount of accidents because people were hitting wild pigs, because there were so many wild pigs out there that they're just crashing into them on the road with this new highway. Well, yeah.

Because the pigs had never seen cars before on this spot, because they were just going to knock them out. they hadn't finished the road yet. And then all of a sudden there's cars everywhere. These wild pigs are just getting fucking land-based. Because in Australia, when they have a kangaroo problem and a similar thing, cheers, God bless. Cheers, God bless. They getling gun them from the sky.

They do that here. They do that here at a helicopter. You could do it if you want while you're in town. I'll set it up. You know, I would do it this way. I would feel guilty. That would have been not a sporting way to start hunting would be the machine gun. Yeah.

It's a different kind of hunting. because it's a necessity hunting, right? I want to eat what I kill. If I kill something, I want to eat it. And the thing about these wild pigs is they're gunning down 20, 30, 40 of them in a day. They're doing them out of helicopters with machine guns. There's a bunch of companies that do it. There's a video of Ted Nugent and this guy named Pigman.

Pigman is like a famous bow hunter that lives in Texas. And it's called Apocalypse Now. And they're in a... They're in a... helicopter, Ted Nugent and Pigman in a helicopter, and they gunned down like 240 pigs and a half hour podcast, not podcast. Yeah, yeah. Hunting show.

That would be a great podcast. He's called Pig Man? Yeah, that's a pig killing. His name's Brian. His name's Brian. Sure. It's Pigman. He just kills a lot of wild pigs.

But it's a necessity out here. Look at this is, but you have to understand how many pigs they have out here and the kind of damage, that's Pigman. And the kind of damage that these pigs do. do to agriculture, you know, they go through fences and they fuck up livestock gets out and there's a lot of shit with these things. Yeah. Oh, it's crazy.

Is this the argument for bringing wolves back in? No, do not bring wolves. No, I'm against it, but I don't understand the, what is the most pro? Is there one sensible argument for bringing back in Apex Predators to? Well, there's arguments for it. You could make an argument for it. The problem is you do not understand. No one understands what the ultimate result is going to be of introducing predators.

There is a very strong reason why they eradicated wolves from the West Coast and from the United States because they fucking kill everything. They're super smart apex predators. They work in packs unlike any other animal. They're very different. And they kill everything. And you can't do shit about them. And they kill people. Also like in the UK, they got rid of them hundreds of years.

years ago. This was like they celebrated it. They got rid of them in America too. Yeah. I mean, and now these fucking greenies, these softies that really don't understand nature, want to bring them back. So there's a good argument in some ways that having some predators would

help. But the predators were slowly moving their way back into these areas anyway. So they never eradicated them from Canada. So they would come down from Canada and make their way into Minnesota, make their way into Iowa make the way into, not Iowa, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana.

They had like a small amount of wolves were kind of making their way in. Then they reintroduced a bunch of them into Montana in the 1990s, into Yellowstone. That changed everything. That changed everything. It dropped the elk population down to like 40% of what it used to be, which many people argue is actually a good thing because there was no predators in terms of like, like, There's mountain lions, but mountain lions don't kill that many elk. They'll kill one, like a week.

Like families go to Yellowstone. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So now there's just wolves. Yeah, but the wolves aren't fucking with the people at Yellowstone. They really are just concentrating on the animals, and they've, like, really knocked down the elk population substantially. But now they have an open hunting season on wolves in Montana because the numbers got a lot higher than they should be. Right.

So now, like, I know guys who hunt wolves. And they go on wolf. It's very difficult. I was going to say, it sounds more dangerous and unpleasant than hunting elk. Well, it is dangerous and that it is a predator. And if you do get surrounded by them, they decide to eat you and you're out of bullets, you could be fucked. But for the most part, they're very difficult to hunt. They're very difficult to find.

They're also very difficult to get in range. They're fucking clever. They're clever. And once they realize they're being hunted and once they realize that people are a problem, they fucking steer way clear of you. Like what's the ideological reason for wanting them? them back just that they it's good to be in a country. It's nature.

I love nature. Yeah, but focus on the bees, you know. Well, there's people that don't like hunting and for people that don't like hunting, and for people that don't like hunting, they want nature to balance itself out. So the people that don't like the idea of humans killing and eating animals, they don't like them going out into the wild and killing wild animals, so they want something else to kill those wild animals. So then they bring in mountain lions or then they bring in wolves and then they think that nature's going to sort of itself out. I don't understand not what it has to do it. Why is it okay for them to

this is the vegetarian argument that I never understand is that death occurs in nature. Animals are eating other animals? So are we if it's wrong to kill any animals should we intervene? Should we kill all the mountainous to keep them from killing all the deer? Vegan fox was one of my favorite bits that you ever did. Oh vegan cat. Is it no was it not fox? No it's about a vegan cat. No it's about it's very sick. Literally is a true story. Yeah like this lady was saying mean things to me on Twitter or Instagram, and I saw one of the things on her page, I went to her page, it said, hashtag vegan cat.

And I was like, no. And so that I clicked on it, and it's all cats that look like they've been stuck in a house with a gas leak. Wait, maybe they got me started searching vegan animals, because vegan fox, I definitely read a lot about after that. Yeah, there's people that have vegan dogs. They feed their dogs. But you're basically, you can kind of get away with it a little bit with a dog, but cats

are what's called obligate predators. They're obligated to pray? Yeah, they only eat meat. That's all they eat. That's it. They're just predators. They're full-on murderous machines. Like, house cats are some of the most murderous creatures on earth.

They kill billions of animal. Oh yeah, as soon as you die. As soon as you die. Because dogs will give you an afternoon. Weeks? I thought dogs gave you just a little head start. It depends on how starving they are. You know, if they're starving to death, they're insurgent.

their instincts kick in and they'll eat you but cats just start eating you they're like oh look eyeballs hmm well yet to get we yet to get an animal you have you have dogs mm-hmm you have one dog two dogs two dogs and you don't run the Instagram pages for these an someone's running the dog my family does really yeah so we got a little guy named Charlie yeah he is a King Charles King Charles Cavalier Spaniel yeah his this is the furthest animal away from wolf that is possible, like, because they all came from wolves. He's the furthest from a wolf.

He has no, he's this big, he's adorable. You feel like we're in the big week and the stockings and holding him, you know? I always wanted to be King Charles. I just give him kisses. He's a sweetie though. That's not yours, but. That's what they look like. Yeah.

That's what they look like. I mean, come on. Look at that face. They're just so sweet. They're so happy to be around you and they're just so loving. And they, like, he makes sounds like a person. Like he was doing something. Like he was licking all this.

water that was coming off of a drain. And I go, hey, stop doing that. And I picked all of him. He went, aw. He makes noise. You're a heart of his in that dog. Oh, I love him. But they don't make me feel sad.

They're a little dog who look interesting. Oh, that's him. That's Charlie. That's him? Yeah, that's Charlie. Pugs make me very sad. I think about pugs a lot. And they upset me.

And the long dogs, like the sausage dogs with the back problems. Anything that looks like it. Right. It's ready to die. No, no, I know what you mean. I know what you mean. Like a golden retriever is great. Yeah.

Well, I have one of those, too. Yeah. It's my favorite. Those two dogs are great. This is not like a pug. They're very active. They're really, they're very... It's like a water dog.

It's a fucking dog that's just like a house dog. They're just like a little love machine. Just a little pet. He's a sweet, sweet little guy. Like, he's the best. He's so nice. He's like so... And he just relentlessly tortures my dog Marshall.

The big dog? Yeah. Who's the most tolerant dog on earth? He just lays there and the puppy's like, ah. Like biting him and biting his ear. He's a year old. Okay. So we've had him for whatever, eight months, I guess.

Like how many months they give him to you? Three months old, something like that? How old are puppies when you get them? Yeah, they should be, I think, eight weeks old, I think. Yeah. So we probably had him for ten months. He's fucking adorable. You cannot travel with a dog to Australia.

No. You have to get them all kinds of shots. Journey Depp tried. Yeah, he got in big trouble for that, right? I think that was the beginning of the end of that marriage. I think from the moment he said, They were happy until that dog problem. But the guy who, there was a politician who stopped Johnny Depp,

who was like, he came out and said, we're going to destroy his dogs. And then everyone made fun of him in America. But that guy is now doing, he's like big in the emergent populist right in Australia over the last six months. And he got, he wanted to kill Johnny Depp's dogs. Yeah, he's a great speech. He was like, I don't care if you are People magazine's sexiest man of the year. Get your dogs out.

Why? What's the big deal? Ah, we have no rabies. We're very precious about the border. That's all we've got. His name is Barnaby Joyce. He is sick. Demanded dogs leave the country within 48 to 50 hours already put down,

citing strict quarantine laws designed to protect diseases like rabies. But here's the thing. Just test them. How much does it cost to test a dog for rabies? It's probably pretty quick. Barnaby Joyce drunk. So this was not long after that. An issue with the, yeah, pistol and boo.

Yeah, go Barnaby Joyce drunk. They caught him on the streets of our, Lake of Canberra, which is where the capital is. And he was just passed out in the street. He's like, there he is, down the bottom. The bottom one? Yeah. The bottom one.

Yeah. But he's just lying on the street. When was it? It wasn't that long ago. Joyce. That man was in the government. Good. What's wrong?

It's a safe place to live. I was walking back to my accommodations after Parliament. Rose at 10 p.m. Oh, that's all he was doing. Just walking back to his accommodations. I do like him a lot. Look, he's just taking a nap. He's just chilling. We have a strong speech. It could be a long walk. Yeah, man. Give the guy a break. It's kick-up. We're finally, we were the last country to have like a right-wing populist thing happen. You guys had the Trump and then England is having it happen with, like in a big way. It's really starting to swing there. So it's swinging right now in Australia? It's for the first time. It's starting up. Yeah. And what's causing that?

Terrorist attack was not good. Yeah. And then also running out of petrol really has upset people. Yeah. We don't have, we don't make our own gas. We had two refineries, one of them accidentally blew up a week ago. Do you think it accidentally blew up? I have no comment to make.

What do you think, though? No, I think probably someone. It seems like real bad luck. Seems like it. I mean, they would have been doing it at like max capacity. Maybe they did it past when it was safe, but it's not. I thought I wasn't going to make it out of the country. Because they're out of gas.

Flight started to get canceled. Yeah. So I made it. We'll see if I can get back. I hope you can't. Well, I'll just stand us in for another couple of months. I'm sorry, honey. We've got a lot of spot for you.

There's no choice. I'm not going to get on the boat. Plenty of work here. It is so nice getting to do it. It is so nice having a club. It's like there's four cities in the world where you can do it. I think about this a lot. There's nowhere.

Like in America, there's three. And there'd be London. That's it. That's it. That you can what? That there's like multiple rooms with lineup shows every night of the week. Right. So people can just go and run 10, 15 minutes.

Yeah. And like at a good room with people. And get paid. And get paid. Yeah. I mean, you need all of those factors to be able to do it. And you also need other comics around you. Yes.

This is one of the things that we were talking about last night in the green room. Like, you know, me and Ari, Ari Scherfers in town. And we were saying you can't be like the best comic in the world and just live in a small town in, you know, Cincinnati. It's like it doesn't exist. By yourself, it doesn't exist. They tried it in a little town in Arizona, and the pressure seems to have driven that comedy club owner right over the edge.

Oh, yeah. Stanhope's boy. But that guy was crazy already, right? I didn't know. A thing about it. I just saw him give the speech. Well, if he's hanging with Stanhope, you know, Stanhope tends to collect some people that are off the fringe.

I'm not blaming Doug Stanhope. But that's a different scene, right? Like Stanhope, you know, was just kind of being out there by himself, and it didn't even have a comedy club for the longest time all he lived there. It wasn't like there was a whole comedy scene there in Bisbee. Was it like 20,000 people? It's very small. Yeah.

He knows everybody, right? But the Austin thing was very different. Like, we were stuck here. There was not a lot of options. We could have gone to Houston, could have gone to Dallas, maybe Nashville. No one, maybe Florida. There was no place else so that we would allow to do comedy. Nashville is

would be the next one Yeah Nashville's got Zanis Which is awesome That's a great club They have big They got Theo there They've got Nate there

Nate and Theo both lived there But I don't know how many sets They're doing in town You know Nate is doing Fucking stadiums He's doing these giant places All over the world And Theo is killing it

And he's got one of the best Podcasts in the world But there are definitely There are like Nashville comics Who I see around the place Who are doing really well Sure I'm sure There's a smaller scene

But in terms of like a lot of work Austin's the spot right now because there's seven clubs on our street hold on that's nuts within a block radius you've got Creek in the Cave

which is over on 7th you've got sunset which is right next to us you got Black Rabbit I was going to say Black Rabbit you've got the Velvita room I'm going to count Shakespeare's next door yeah I'll allow that

they do comedy but if you want to count club I do love the Velvita room That place has been around forever It's been around forever And is the gay cabaret next door I don't think it's expressly gay I just call it a gay cabra

You like going in there? I went there one evening I was having a full mental breakdown I don't know why Just a classic You know Out of nowhere You know the kids

It's a lot of pressure Maybe the act wasn't working Maybe I've been on the road I don't know And I was down and I was depressed And I wanded into them doing their The Estes Follies show I just sat up the back

And I had a pinia collada And they were all like there was a magician It was just a very camp magician And then they're singing like Campy show tunes about the Supreme Court or something Like they're still doing S&L style sketches And it was like

You know it was dumb and it was hokey But it made me so happy Oh that's nice Just to like have People happen a good time Razzle dazzle smiling There was no bitterness Happiness

Yeah and it made me want to fix my act So that I wasn't You know like sometimes I feel I get up there And I'm just like screaming screaming and I look unpleasant And these people are like You owe people a show Yes. I don't think you look unpleasant.

You're just a very self-conscious. No, I sometimes. I did the Creek in the Cave last night, and I did a lot of screaming into... Did you abyss? I was like, yeah. Another great club. Fucking great, great spot. Creek in the Cave is a great club.

It's a fun place. When it's packed, it's rocking. And, you know, it's a lot of good comedy coming out of that. I mean, that's where Shane filmed a special. New York is on the up again? New York is finally. Everybody that I talk to, all my friends from New York. I'll say that there's a lot of clubs opening.

There's a lot going on. It's hopping. Didn't they just open up, was it an improv in Brooklyn? Did they open up an improv in Brooklyn? I know that top secret comedy has just, like a London club has just moved there. Interesting. I don't know how it's going, but they're doing like a free model. They're trying to do, they were trying to do a UCB in Austin.

I don't know if that's still happening. The problem with UCB is UCB in L.A. didn't pay at all. Is this improv? No. Upright Citizens Brigade? They have some improv, but they do stand-up shows. I thought that was that second city. I didn't know.

They do stand-up shows. Okay. Yeah. But they don't pay you. They don't pay? No, which is crazy. There was a history of that at the store. Sure.

That was the, there was like this big protest. What does it say? Improb Brooklyn. There you go. That's a strong Zoom. Yeah. Yeah, I think Joey said he was going there. It's a completely new place.

All right, this, I don't know. I think, politically incorrect. But this is what I'm saying. It's like it's popping. Comedy's coming back. Some improvs are black and some are not. What? Like some improvs around the country are like just black groups.

If I look at the lineups. I'm not saying here, I'm not saying here, but like in a racist foreigner. In Cleveland, the improv is just a black club. I've done the improv in Cleveland, I think. It's a black club. Really? No negativity. I like.

I like playing black clubs. So it's Cleveland is. That's the one. It's close to Kentucky, right? Am I getting this right? Maybe it's Pittsburgh. No, Pittsburgh's not. I've been in that place. No, I've done that one as well. No problem. Pittsburgh's great too. Hilarities or something?

Well, hilarities was the non-racially. Go back to that website real quick. Look at all the different ones. Wow. There's a ton of them. Is one of those fake, maybe it's shut down? So the other, there's a club in Cleveland. There is a club in Cleveland that I went to way back in the day.

But it's really, you land in Kentucky and then you drive to Cleveland. What? Yeah. No, Cincinnati. Is it Cincinnati? Yeah, that makes more sense. Okay, that's it. You're right.

You need to drive out. Ohio is more built up, though. People give credit before. Three huge cities. They got that chili that everybody loves. Columbus is great. Cincinnati has the most beautiful skyline. You have to do the funny bone Columbus?

Yes. Fucking great club. With the balcony? It was very nice. Is it have a balcony? I'm pretty sure. Yes. Columbus, funny one is your balcony? They've definitely changed it since you've been there last.

Is it a new one? No, no. Oh, they just added a balcony? They just renovated the whole room. Oh, wow. I love having the balcony. They must have had to add seats. It was killing it.

Everywhere that has a balcony is my favorite. Once you have a place that's a club that gets good acts in every weekend, Cleveland Improv. Okay, hold on. Shut the fuck up. What's that? They love to go and see Eddie Griffin at the Cleveland Improv? Come on.

It's 20. Maybe it closed. This is 2020. Oh, it's six years ago. I don't know. It's like when I typed in Cleveland Impro. So who's that? Louanelles there and Tony Baker was there?

The funny bonus is what comes up, though. I will not be besmirched for making a very genuine observation about how black the Cleveland Improv was. That's hilarious. Because I tried to get on. I was trying to do black rooms when I got to open for Finesse Mitchell. That was the first black room I got to play. Nice. I've slowed down.

There's not heaps of black rooms in Austin. I should go over the Houston sometimes. Yeah, we're the black rooms in Austin. I think the mothership. Probably, right? I think some of the lineups at the ship. Yeah. Yeah.

I still think Chocolate Sundays could work at the mothership. I can't run it. You could. That would be fun. I feel like you just have shows. I think themes are retarded. They try to do an Italian theme at the comedy store for a while. Like a night of a thousand guidos, I think they called it.

And I did it. And I was like, what am I doing? I'm on this show with all these other Italians just because they're Italian. There is something different about a black audience. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. That's a different skill set, I found. It's a different skill set, and they won't tolerate nonsense.

They won't tolerate all this, like, what else, what else? No, no, no, no, no. They're not here for that, which I think is good. You can't even make fun of gay. You can't mention gay stuff at all. Really? Oh, man, I had a trans bit. Just people were not happy to hear.

Why he's talking about that? Why are you bringing that up? We were out here to have a nice night. It was like on a dime. It turned. Really? Yeah. And then people told me afterwards, they don't want to hear that word from you.

Really? Interesting. It was fun if I felt very alive when it was going well. And also black people giving you a compliment, just an Aussie boy coming off stage and having a black guy. You got to go to stage presents. It's like, oh, fuck. Thank you so much. That's awesome.

Yeah, black people were, that was very eye-opening when I came to America. You don't have a lot of that in Australia. We have Africans and we have Aboriginal people, but we have no, if you wear a cool coat in Australia, no one will tell you about it. There will be no one to say. Yeah, there's a very big difference between African Americans and black people worldwide. Like African Americans are responsible for so much of the culture, music, comedy. There's like so much of an impact that African Americans have had on the world. Think about just hip hop music.

Yeah. Right? So hip hop music doesn't even exist until I was in middle school. Like light 70s? Yeah. So I was in middle school. I went to the high school in 81. And when was Sugar Hill Gangs Hip Hop?

Ahibidi-de-Hib-a-Hib-Hip-Hop? What was that song called Rapper's Delight? Yeah. So that song came out when I was, I think I was 13. I think I was 13. I think I was in middle. 1979 is when it Yeah, okay

They formed That makes sense So when I was in When we first moved to Boston My family didn't have much money We lived in a place called Jamaica Plain And it's since been kind of gentrified

But back then it was not It was the first time I'd ever been around Scary kids Yeah Like violent delinquent kids Who had all had sex I hadn't had sex All these kids

They're like you don't even know Where a pussy is do you I'm like it's down there Like you probably think you go right into it Right? You gotta go up I'm like, okay, I don't fucking know. I never even kissed a girl.

I was like, what the fuck are you guys talking about? But they were like lighting fires, doing crazy shit. Like, they were delinquents. Stealing things. They were breaking and entering. Yeah. And so I went to this high school, or middle school, rather. And this middle school was in a poor neighborhood.

And I remember there was a kid that was in my class. I was 13. He was 17 years old. And he kept failing. He kept failing and coming back. He would come back for like a couple weeks or two and then he would quit. And I remember seeing him at the beginning of the school year and I can't believe he's 17 and he's in class with me. This is nuts.

And then I was filled with this sense of dread for him for his future. Like this fucking guy's never going to graduate middle school. So he's never going to go to high school. He's fucking 17. Like will they even allow you to go to high school if you're 21? Like what year do they say you can't come here anymore? You failed nine years in a row. It was that kind of kids.

It was that kind of kids. And then there was like kids making out in class. I remember this Puerto Rican girls. She asked a question to the teacher. She said, if I'm making out with a guy and I'm, and he's breathing into my mouth and I'm breathing into his, can we stay alive like that? Can you? No, no, no, it's carbon dioxide. I never forgot that question.

Can we need fresh oxygen? It was the craziest question. She was like, can we breathe each other's air? and not open our mouths. And I was like, what are you doing? You fucking dirty freak. So a lot of girls dropped out while it was there because they got pregnant.

Sure? It was dangerous. Where were you before then, though? Were you in a more middle class place before then? Yeah, I was in Florida. I was in Gainesville, Florida, which was like way safer. It was pretty cool. You may have moved around more than anyone I know.

I moved around a lot. So I lived in New Jersey until I was seven and then lived in San Francisco from San Francisco from 7 to 11 and then lived in Florida from 11 to 13 and then Boston from 13 to 24. Do you, I mean, because you're now, your kids growing up in, they were in L.A. and then they're here. Do you think, I worry about my kids because I don't think they've ever been in the same house for more than one year. Like I have a seven-year-old daughter. She's been in seven houses now.

It's because we've had to move a lot and I wonder what impact that is making. Well, as long as they're young, I honestly think it has a positive effect. Okay. This is my take on what it did for me. I was forced to form my own opinions instead of adopting the opinions of a group of people that were around me because I'd never had a consistent group of people that were around me. Yeah. I met a bunch of new people everywhere I went and I had new friends everywhere I went and

completely new environments everywhere I went. So I went from San Francisco in the 1970s. 70s right into Florida. And Florida was so backwards in terms of their mentality in comparison to San Francisco. Sure. San Francisco, we lived in Hippieville. It was all like anti-war people and San Francisco in the 1970s. And so then moved to Florida and it was like I had this friend, his name was Candy.

His last name was Candido. Everybody called him Candy. And his dad was like this really angry Cuban guy. and I remember I'm slamming a newspaper on the table and he was like these fags want to marry this is crazy like they're going to let faggots marry each other and I remember thinking like what do you care because I lived in San Francisco

we're surrounded by gay people yeah our neighbors were gay my aunt used to smoke pot with them and they'd all get naked and play bongo drums because like she felt comfortable being naked around these guys who had no interest in her they should rein it in now I would say I've now seen San Francisco a little bit but that's not it's not the gays that cause San Francisco to go down the way it is. It's this crazy progressive politics where they allow people to camp on the streets.

I just, I went to a diner and I saw a man. He was wearing assless chaps and sitting on that. That upset me. Apparently, if you're gay, it would be a good spot. The public nudity is your, you have to cover the urethra. Oh. But if you cover the urethra, everything else is fine. Oh, so you just like put a piece of table over the whole.

Googly eye over the japp eye. Nice. Maybe you can't call it that. You can. You just did. No, but that's, so that would help you become Because you have like a weirdly independent mentality. That's why.

Yeah. So that I think going to a bunch of different places and seeing that, oh, people think completely differently over here than they think over here. This is weird. You know, I remember when I lived in Florida, I had to ask my mother what the N-word meant because I heard it at school. And she got upset with me. She goes, you know what it means.

I go, I don't. I don't what it means. And she's like, it's a bad word for black people. I was like, whoa, really? Like, it made no sense to me. Because the formative years, I think, were really important. And I think seven to 11 in San Francisco was really important for me. Because in a way, at least for me, it was very much a utopian city.

It was, like, very open-minded. It was very peaceful. There was very little crime, like real crime. It was just like the most beautiful place. It was gorgeous. It was gorgeous. I'd go fishing. I had this guy.

There was like this community center and this guy named Cliff would take us fishing. It was really cool. Like there was a lot of like good things about San Francisco back then. And it was a lot of artists. And it was a lot of like, it was a cool vibe. You know, it was a very open minded vibe that was a lot of it was centered around the anti-war movement and peace. You know, there was a lot. It was like it was a different kind of.

And they were sort of just like just getting over. the psychedelic wave of the 1960s, right? So this is like, they were still in that mode. But it was still like an artist-driven. Yeah, a lot of open pot smoking. It was a lot of like, just hippies. But in the best way, it wasn't camping on the streets. It wasn't, there was no fentanyl back then.

There was no homelessness. Like, homelessness was super, super rare. Yeah. Like, in the 1970s, like, when I was a kid, I never saw people camped out in the street. You never saw any of that. You occasionally saw a bum, and it was usually some poor fuck who's... It was like a drunk guy, right? It lost his way.

Also, if you look at Dirty Harry or on the waterfront, whenever there is a depiction of... Like, whenever they're doing vagrants in the 50s and 60s, it's like a drunk guy stumbling around. Like in Rambo, he just wants a sandwich and they chase him out of town. Right, exactly. But now there's like... They're everywhere.

It's like kung fu skeletons moving around the place. Like full of drug... Like, what is the end point? that. No one's running on that. I remember Trump talked about a little bit the need to have asylums again because they closed the asylums. Yes. I mean, there are more therapists now than they're ever were before, but they're helping like corporate people. They're not helping schizophrenics without a home. Like at some point, you saw Trump bring the army in to places like Portland or the National Guard to clear it out and I think people were quietly kind of

pleased that that was happening. People pushed back. Is that why they cleared it out? a homeless situation? I think it was an onlessness. I thought it was protests. No, I think that was, I think that, and Washington as well, I think they came into well. Washington was crime. It was crime as well.

Yeah. Like, Washington was like crazy with crime. And they were all kind of happy about it. Well, the mayor of D.C. was happy. Yeah. That Trump brought in the National Guard. But this is, it's not a nice, you can't lose the downtowns across America. You know how bad L.A. has gotten, right?

Yeah. Yes, I do. Do you know how big skit row is? Take a guess. Wait, how many people? How many blocks? I have no idea. Take a guess.

It's two. 50. Well, that's too many blocks. 5.0. That's not a row anymore. Imagine 5.0 just completely claimed by homeless zombies. No, how big of the blocks? I'm thinking about L.A. downtown as fuck.

I stayed away from there. It's huge. I went to the Hollywood Hills in Malibu and had a nice time. Downtown is nuts. Downtown L.A. is the only downtown of any major city that sucks. No. Downtown New York is great. Downtown New York is incredible. Right. Downtown San Francisco is

fucked with homeless people, but it's still, you got great restaurants. Downtown L.A. is a ghost town. I said, it's weird. Portland is so beautiful in the downtown, but then you will turn down the street and it's terrifying. 50 to 54. Oh, it's growing. Skid Row in Los Angeles

officially known as Central City East covers approximately 50 to 54 blocks. 15,000. Yeah. They don't know how many people are there. There's just wild guesses in terms of what the populations of homeless people are. Even in terms of the population in the entire city, the high number is over 100,000 in the city. It's crazy.

Look how big it is. All that whole area is completely lost. I thought it was a road. I thought it was like one street. It was. It was back in like the 1960s. I think it's like a map or something they've drawn on a picture there. I think it's been that for a long time.

Look at this proposed area. Affordable housing. Affordable housing is just a joke. It's not what the problem is. They're all drug addicts. They're drug addicts and mentally ill. Yeah, but what do you do that? Well, you can't let it get that bad, first of all.

And if you do let it get that bad, you've got to treat it like it's a catastrophic failure and throw as much resources as possible at it. But the problem is these people are incentivized to keep the problem going because that's how they make their living. Absolutely. Absolutely. They don't have any motivation whatsoever to fix it. Because if the homeless population drops down to like a very small number and then they don't need all these people that are making half a million dollars a year on the homeless commission. It's complete grifting. I don't have a, it's not my country. I don't have any big problem with Gavin Newsom. I don't understand how LA has every story that comes out of California seems to be. Okay. So here it says between 1960 and 1960 and 19.

1975, 50% of the housing in Skid Row was demolished, reducing the total number of units from 15,000 to 7,500 and displacing thousands of poor residents with nowhere else to go by the street. While Skid Row was never a wealthy neighborhood, its current status, as the homeless capital of America as the result of decades of policy choices, which has simultaneously encouraged the destruction of existing afford. See, this is, by the way, this is a very progressive perspective. Yeah, because the real perspective is that.

What they use Skid Row for was when they would find vagrants in Beverly Hills and vagrants in Hollywood, they would move them to Skid Row and then they would kind of contain them in that area. Yeah. Yeah. Dumping. So encourage the practice of dumping for the homeless. With homeless medical patients, all the other. See, this is a very progressive perspective.

Homeless medical patients. How about vagrants who are drug addicts? You can call them medical patients. Like, you're just being kind. This is just too charitable from the across the region. So they would dump them there. And then they also had like food kitchens there and stuff like that. So they had an incentive to stay.

But they kept them there. And so then it kept growing because the homeless problem keeps growing. It's psychosis in drugs. That's the ultimate. Yes. Drugs are the big one. And drugs are the drug use in Skid Row is probably 100%. It's not like regular homeless people.

I was in Portland. and I saw a, I was, I walked into the train station through the downtown, which no one told me not to do it. And I saw all these very sad homeless people. And then one guy with a big smile, he was so happy. Probably guys fratnal. Well, no, it's the first time I saw crack being smoked. Oh.

There's a great smell. It's more kind of sweet. Yeah. Like, what way? It smelled like sweet, like a rotten apple. That's how it felt at the time. I don't know if that was the crack or if, I mean, he was smoking crack and I could smell that, but he was so happy.

And I didn't want to take his crack away. You know, it's like, he's like, he's. the only thing you've really got going for you today. Yeah, I think crack is... Obviously, we should take it away. Not good for you, but probably better for you than fentanyl. It's all. I think with crack, you're active.

Crack makes you go do a bunch of stuff. This is weird seeing heroin people for the first time, because they're not like a threat. Australia's still a very meth country. We're like... Oh, meth is a problem. It's a lot of skinny, shirtless men on the bus. Angry.

Yeah, weird head twitching back from. So we're still very methy. But meth doesn't see. seem to be as big here now. Oh, it's big. It's big in certain communities. Meth is still big. It's like, you know, what you've got in, I mean, the homeless situation in Skid Row wasn't

always fentanyl and heroin. I mean, at one point in time, it was meth. You know, it's a gang of different things. I'm sure there's people there that are doing ketamine. Do you just start killing drug deal? Do you do it like in Singapore? You just have a zero tolerance policy? No.

Like, I don't know long term what the answer is. I mean, look, you could do it that way, but it would be very inhumane. And it would also set a precedent for how you treat a bunch of other situations. Yeah. And that's not good. It's dangerous. The communists, when they had an opium problem in China, they just put them in the military. They'd, like, give people a new sense of purpose.

You've got a uniform now. We're going to blame someone else for the problem. This is Western imperialism did this to you. Yeah. And that seemed to help. Like, they don't have a big opium problem in China anymore. Also, I don't know how official that is and how many people they did just kill because it's the communist government. Yeah.

They're allowed to. They lie. They might lie. They definitely lie. Although last time I was, a couple months ago, I was here, and Kurt Metzker was telling me the Tiananmen Square was not all that bad. Yeah, I don't know if I'd listen. I didn't do enough digging.

From everything he says, from a short Google search, I can agree with it. But I'm sure if I dug down, I'd have more questions. I haven't seen him actually since I got back. Is he still here? Oh, yeah. I'm seeing everybody. He's fucking mine. He's great.

Most people are still here. He's the best. He's not. But you can't talk in. with him because it'll just he'll chain them. One after another, after another, and then three minutes in, you forgot what you're even talking about. Because he's moved on to some scandal in the 1970s with Colboys and Congress. Oh, you spoke to him about Reagan?

Yeah. What is it called the Franklin? There's tapes. Assan was talking to me about it. Franklin scandal. Asan was bringing that up last night. He's reading a book on it. I want to think that Reagan was a good guy.

I don't think it's Reagan. I think it's whoever's in his cabinet. No, it was... Well, he's dead, he can't... He was saying things about Reagan, getting pegged. What? Who was saying that? Kurt was talking about

that there was a tape somewhere of Reagan getting pegged. I don't want to know about it. These guys don't even think the Artemis flight went past the moon. They did it? Kurt thinks there's a secret space program and that this space program is bullshit and there's a real space program

and they're using this space program to obfuscate? It just seems very comprehensive. complicated for people who can't do. I might be saying it incorrectly. He knows a lot of things about a lot of things. He does. And then when I dig in often, it seems true. A lot of it is true.

But also, I think the government is incompetent everywhere. And if they were able to get that one thing of, you know, building a fake space program to conceal a true space program, it seems unlikely. Yeah. Well, do you know how much money you'd have to have to run two space programs, one real one and one fake one? That's crazy. Just a real one costs so much.

Well, the Nazi one was real. Yeah. Yeah. That's coming out. Everyone seems... Some people are still not aware of it. I've had conversations with people where they don't want to admit it, where they can't believe it. Do you know NASA was run by Nazis?

They're like, what? You tell them about Werner von Braun. And they want to... Like, there's a lot of people that are like NASA fanboys. And these NASA fan boys don't want to believe that NASA was run by literal Nazis. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not necessarily like...

There were scientific Nazis. They were Nazis. Yeah. Werner von Braun used to hang the slowest, the five slowest Jews at his rocket factory in Berlin. The Simon Wiesenthal Center said that if he was alive today, they would prosecute him for crimes against humanity. I mean, do you think that story got out when he was at NASA and everyone worked on a lot of them? They hit it well. There was no Freedom of Information Act releases.

There was no internet. When Operation Paperclip was first initiated, they got. I don't know what the number is of Nazi scientists, but it was more than a thousand. Yeah. How many Nazi scientists put this into our wonderful ad sponsor, Proplexity? Our AI sponsor, it gives me all my information. How many Nazi scientists were brought over by the United States for Operation Paperclip? I don't know that there's an official number.

This is what led me down my research like 10 years ago. Was this exact question. Right, but let's see what perplexity has to say. I'm guessing. I'm going to guess about 1,500. Also, as I'm looking this up, I will note that supposedly they were split up like evenly between the Soviets and the United States.

That's true. Yeah, the Soviets took a bunch of them as well. I didn't know that. I didn't know they divvied it up. Yeah, I read a book about it a long time ago. I just started getting into the Soviet space program. It's great. Oh, yeah.

Like, is it the Venus missions? Am I getting that right? Were they... Oh, yeah, they got a thing on Venus and took pictures and sent them back. But that it was so hot that everything would like... 1600. 1600s.

Rex typically state that about 1600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were brought to the United States under Operation Paperclips. I was pretty close. To reel back, though. I was trying to dig through this article as you guys are talking. Thought Nixon getting pegged? No, no. Reagan? Political article.

The plot to out Reagan? Yeah. Group of Republicans tried to stymie what they alleged was a nefarious homosexual network within the campaign of their own party's standard bear. This is what I mean He says something that sounds crazy I'm trying to find it to see what the answer is But during it says like while he was trying to pick a vice president There's somewhere in here

We had a fuck him He said someone had a tape of an orgy Yes No Well didn't Reagan Reagan frequented Bohemian Grove Isn't that correct I believe he did

Everybody Yeah a lot of people did Right but Reagan did But remember what Nixon said about Behemian Grove? The faggiest place I see. That goddamn faggiest thing I've ever seen. You had Alex Jones talking about it? Yes.

Well, Alex Jones went. Yeah. Alex Jones told me about it right after he rent. This guy says he engaged in a homosexual act with Reagan. Okay, it was not until a boozy lunch with a man claiming to have been a longtime Reagan associate. However, the best found what he believed to be the smoking gun proving that Reagan was controlled by homosexuals. Bill, you don't understand the problem, the man told best. I once engaged in a homosexual act with Reagan.

It was a different time. Yes. I don't, this, these are up until now in this article, these are rumors. Right. I don't know that this video ever came out, but there's a very long article about it. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting.

I was trying to find an answer, and I didn't really get to this. This is a different time period in life, too, that I wasn't even alive for her. Right. Wow. I don't believe it. I do. I love Reagan. I do, too.

I love them, too. But I think there's a lot of those guys that are, like, staunchly conservative and very buttoned down that are that way for a reason. And one of the reasons is they're trying to hide the fact that they're gay. I never understand this, though, because there are lots where I'm from. Gay? In South of, like, conservative party. the definitely gay guys, but thin, but like so, like everybody knows. Everybody's aware, but they don't want it coming out, and they never acknowledge it.

But like, it just seems so strange. You would want to not have a secret if you're a politician, because otherwise people just get you to do what they want. Yeah, but they have secrets and then they want to be politicians and then they just deal with all the people that know their secrets and then they make deals. But like, that's how do you stay in business? I would even say, there are people in the United States Congress. Congress and Senate who are conservative.

So we all go, yeah, that guy's gay. 100%. Everybody knows. So, you know. So I asked for the accuracy of this article and perplexity gave me a summary, I guess, that makes more sense than trying to make sense of a 20-page article in two minutes. Okay. Factual grounding in sources.

One key factual back. Scroll up a little bit. No. On the key factual backbone, the article lines up with other public. documented material. Kurchick refers repeatedly to memos and notes from the Washington Post editor Ben Bradley's papers, including summaries by reporter Scott Armstrong and Ted Gup. These papers are held in institutional archives and have been referenced in other discussions of Secret City. The 1967 Homosexual Ring allegations connected to Reagan's Sacramento staff and Jack Kemp's

is independently attested in contemporary press accounts, including reporting that Reagan's security chief investigated alleged homosexual activity and that calmness, Drew Pearson, raised these charges at the time. So here's the thing about gays. There's a gay ring. There's always a certain amount of gay people in a population. And then it's whether or not the culture accepts them. Yes.

There's always a certain percentage. There's people who are attracted to... Yeah. No matter what you do. There's a certain percentage. And so if you've got enough people and people... Congress and enough people in the Senate, enough people just in government in general, you're going to have an equivalent percentage of people that are gay. And if you are a person who wants to get to the top of the charts, like here's the thing that you don't think of.

What is, you think Hollywood is very open, right? Very non-homophobic. In fact, celebrates diversity and celebrates LBGTQ people, right? Yeah, I mean, openly. But not. So here's the thing. One thing you can't be is an openly gay person and being a male lead in films. I mean, that would make sense as to why people keep that quiet.

I'm trying to think of one gay male... You can't, but you're an actor. No, you're right. You're an actor. You're an actor. You can pretend to be a werewolf. Yeah. But you can't pretend to be straight.

You can't pretend to be straight. Yeah, they won't allow you. So if you're gay, you have to pretend. Yeah. You have to pretend you're not gay. Because you can't act in a movie where, We know you're gay and you pretend to be straight, we won't buy it. Whenever there is a movie where there is a gay person, they get it obviously straight.

Like in milk. They don't get a gay guy to play that role. They get a straight guy to be gay for a role. Yeah, but that's when that show. He was never a movie leaving man. It's just one example, though. I know, but he's a TV guy. But then people make allegations about it.

Also, it's like he's got a, it's a cartoon character. Like that, how I met your mother, that's a cartoon character like straight guy. Like, you don't believe it at all. Like, first of all, he's not attractive, like, in that way. He's not masculine. And the fact that he gets all these hot girls to have sex to them, none of it makes any sense. Did you see Gone Girl? It's just writing.

Yeah, I did. Where he's playing the... Oh, that was excellent. Yeah, he was great. I watched that man was eight times. Fucking awesome. I really... That helped me work through a lot of trauma with women.

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Ready for whatever lies ahead. Power, capability, confidence, all at 0% during GMC's truck month. Don't wait. Visit your local GMC dealer today and make it yours. Bro, that movie was crazy. But the point is, like, you can't be an openly gay guy and be a movie star. Yes. Because you won't be able to kiss women on stage.

I try to think of one. On screen, rather. There's not one. I know a bunch of closeted ones. Yes, yeah. But there's no openly gay action movie star. Well, there were... No, actually, there would be none.

There's none. There's stars who have played... Played gay people. A lot of guys play gay people. You know, like... What's his face? James Bond, English guy. Daniel Craig.

Daniel Craig. He knives out. He plays a gay guy. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I was thinking of milk. Yeah, he plays a gay guy in Knives Out, but he's not, like, making out with anybody. He just, like, lives with a guy. I never, I never watched Knives Out because I was so angry at the second Star Wars movie.

I love that. It's the same director. Like, I was just, and I loved Loper. I thought Lupa was fantastic. You got to let a guy have a dutter or two every now, man. I fucking hated that movie. I was one of those guys. It was like.

Which one was that? What was it called? Oh, man. It was not Force Awakens. It was the one that came after that. It was, um... What year is this? Oh.

I'm all over the place with the days. Don't you think, though, that I didn't watch any of the new ones. But don't you think, though, that when you were dealing, if you're dealing with a Star Wars, those franchise movies, you're dealing with, and there's no way they just give you carte blanche. There's no way they just let you write a script, let you produce it, let you put it together, let you direct it the way you want. They have insane amounts of input.

No, this one was so stylistically strange in such a departure. He was making it. The Rise of Skywalker is. Maybe it's that one. Yeah. Is that it? Is that the second one? Does anybody really give a shit about these new Star Wars movies?

Not anymore. But it was, you know, it was exciting. When George Lucas was doing it, at least he was like, we're going to have a Jew alien and a Korean aliens. And it's about trade wars. And he was like... They did that? Episode one?

Oh man, episode one is a nightmare if you go back and watch episode one. Which one's episode one? Episode one is like Little Anakin and the pod racing. Jaja Banks is like a hugely troubled... He's just freaking in a patois the whole time. But, I mean, it all has to end. I think it's finally winding down. Like the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems to be coming to a close.

No. No, no, Marvel's not. But Star Wars, they woke it up. They fucked it up. They made it all like this stupid woke message. But that was the woke one. That was the one where it was like... There were ladies.

who couldn't do anything wrong and all the men were. Of course. And the ladies generals and the men are all terrified of them. Yeah. So save it. This is nonsense. It's a lot of time. But these woke messages just destroy the actual film.

Like we were talking about this the other day that a feminist show that no one thinks of as a feminist show is how is Game of Thrones. Because she turns into a. No, it's a completely feminist show. The women, women are all badasses. Yes. Every woman, Arias Stark. Badass. Deneres Targaryen, badass.

Circe Lannister, badass. Brienne of Tarth, badass. Yeah. Kills, I mean, almost kills the hound. Yeah. They're all women. Yeah. Women run everything.

They're beasts. Sansa Stark, badass. And a lot of the men, they don't see things coming. They don't know how breathiness be fed dumb guy. Idiots, get their heads chopped off. Yeah. They're retarded. The women keep the fucking civilization together.

And they're the most dominant forces in the show. Yes. Yeah. Sometimes they're lying like that nasty prostitute who hurt that midget man. Yeah, but she was unfortunate in her choices. You think the Marvel thing is going to keep it. I think this at some point. They're going to ramp it back up.

They have a new one. They brought back the Russo brothers and Robert Donnie Jr. Dr. Doom's coming. Isn't that fucking Robert Downey Jr. playing Doom as well? How does he do that? Wait a little see the movie, man. No, no, no, no, no. How is he fucking Iron Man and Doom?

Well, they both have iron. No. You don't like a new guy? I know Robert Downey Jr. is great. You don't have to kill Iron Man. Bring Iron Man back. Don't you have a multiverse? Can't you pull him back and put him into this current timeline?

I don't. I'm looking forward to it. I just don't like when you have a whole universe and you have one guy playing two characters in the universe. As much as I love Robert Downey Jr. This is upsetting. Bothers the shit out of me as a comic book fan. They've already had that, though. Chris Evans is in fantastic force.

and his Captain America. What was he in Fantastic Four? The first Fantastic Four. No, they've been like four or five Fantastic Fours. Really? There have been so many Fantastic Fours. You're right. I never even remembered that.

They can never get that one working. Who does he play in Fantastic Four? That's sort of the joke in the Spider-Man movie, the Multiverse one, because they bring them all back in the same fucking movie, and it's all confusing. They bring all the bad guys back. Jamie Fox is in the new Spider-Man, and, like, he was, that was a big old movie. Do you think they'll be post-woke at this point? I got to watch movies for the first time on the plane over. They'd have to lose all their fucking money.

It's starting to happen. And then start to come back. Did you see Begonia? No. It was good. Stavi was in that and Emma was the guy who made the lobster. But there were problems with it, but it was like a pointedly like a post. In the same vein of like White Lotus.

Okay. I think, yeah, Hollywood is trying to make self-consciously post-work movies. I got really annoyed by it and I thought some of it was cheap. But like I liked what they were going for. Yeah, it's fun. And I thought the ending was... Fine. Spoiler alert. I won't spoil nothing. I won't spoil nothing.

But I would never have seen it if I wasn't on a flight watching 57 movies. American fiction was like a post-woke movie. They're like, at the moment, on Delta flights, they're like... What is American fiction? American fiction is a book about a... It's a black author who doesn't want to be considered a black author. He just wants to be an author. He's sick of...

And then he keeps seeing all these, like, terrible black books full of stereotypes that white liberals adore. So he writes a fake book called My... And I think he later changes it to fuck. He's just trying to like fuck with people go, I'll just write the blackest, dumbest book. So that white, and then white liberals do love it. And it was good, it was like, but it's like pointedly like mainstream and indie, you know, big studios are trying to make. They're trying to find some continuity from being woke to now. Is this, that's box office.

This is a mainstream film? That one looks like as independent. I want an independent spirit award. Okay. But begonia wasn't. to be, but this other movie, what was it called again, the one you were just talking about? Begonia. No, the other one.

Oh, which one? American fiction. Yeah. So American fiction is independent. If that was, you might, I didn't know if it was independent. I looked it up, it made like tens of millions of dollars. Yeah, but sometimes independent films that catch on make good money. Not that, basically.

Amazon to make a limited theatrical release. Okay. So they partnered with Amazon. That's, I know, that's slightly, I don't, I don't know. I would count that as a big studio. No. No, if you started it by yourself. You started it by yourself, and then you distribute it to Amazon.

But who paid for it? Somebody probably financed it. The director was, was he the onion guy? $10 million budget. So the thing is if you want to do something right, you kind of have to do it that way now. Like make it yourself and then bring it as a fully completed project. That way you don't have a bunch of people like the Star Wars guy, like in your ear, telling you what to do and how to direct it. I recorded a comedy special years ago for Australia.

Yeah? And I thought I would just do it on my own and then I would sell it to the network. How'd that go? They said we like it. This is one of the most embarrassing phone calls overhead. They said that we like it. It's very white. It's very male.

Yeah, it's me. It's just me. And they said, can you go out in five, like, find five or six diverse comedians and record their specials as well? And then we could buy all six of them. I was like, fuck it. I'll put it on YouTube. But that was the real request was would you find, find an Aboriginal fellow, find a lady in a wheelchair, find some Chinese people. And then you can have your one as well.

and we'll buy all six. It was, yeah, that was probably the end of me thinking I could work with... You can't work with people that aren't creatives, and that's what those people are. There are a bunch of people that are caught up in whatever the cultural moment is,

whatever they think, like the winds of... Yeah. The winds of discontent blow the hardest, right? So the people that are going to get the most upset are the wokeys. They're the ones that are going to complain the most about a lack of diversity. So to satisfy those people,

they'll torch their own art they'll fuck up the thing that they do best. I mean you can work with totally non-creative people. This was like there's a Frank Zappa line about how working in the music industry was great when it was just a guy in a suit who didn't care. And as soon as people

had some ideas it was hard to make things. Right, when someone would tell you what to do and whatnot to do. If it's a profit motive, that's great. You can work with those people. Yeah, right. But there's no pure profit motive of people anymore in terms of entertainment. They're all thinking about the cultural, like, tone and what you're supposed to and not

supposed to do and what you're being on the right side of history now. Did you see the Patrice bit where he talked about how he liked working with mid-level Jews? No. It's like, I like mid-level Jews. I make them the money. They leave me alone. That makes sense. Yeah, the people that get in your way, they all think they're doing it for a good cost.

we experienced that like stanhope and i were doing the man show on comedy central there was a lot of that was there yeah dude i don't i don't even want to go into it but there was whenever you're like r e experienced it when he was at comedy central i know a lot of people that have experienced that at various networks where there's always some fucking executives that want to impose their and it's always liberal they want to impose their progressive values on comedy and it's like you can't fucking do that if you want it to be funny if you wanted to be funny if you wanted to be funny You have to, it has to be in the language and in the mind, like from the viewpoint of one person. One person's unique vision.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. One person's unique vision that they think is hilarious. And as soon as you start monkeying with that, as you start adding stuff to that, as soon as you start watering it down, you're going to kill it. You compromise it. It becomes a candidate for mediocrity. But how did they, where did they start on the man show? They're like, get the girls off the trampolines? No, it was, like, one of the things was they didn't want Joey Diaz coming out.

naked. Okay. Okay, so we had an intro and I said this is what I want to do for the intro. I want Joey Diaz to come out. He's going to burst through the door, naked with Timbalands on, with a baseball hat on and just say, let's get this party started and start dancing. Yeah, that's fun. It was hilarious and they didn't want to do it. So this is the scene, I guess. But you did get to put you. Yeah, well, we had to do it two ways. We had to do it their way. I'm sorry. We did it their way first. And then when their way was done, we did it with Joey.

Everybody went fucking nuts. They all went nuts. It was awesome. But it's like they so strongly resisted that. That was the only way I wanted to do it. And I said, listen, we'll do it your way first. And then we'll do it our way. Meanwhile, that version with Joey was what they used in all the promos.

Yeah, of course. They used that when they were like, this season of the mancho. And then Joey comes out. It was. Cock blurred out. But you're just going to get a bunch of people who also want to have their fingerprints on what you're doing. Yeah. So they want to somehow and other change it.

Even if it doesn't make sense, what if your neighbor is a black guy who grew up with a white family? I... What if your name... And then they want to, like, change it. And then they have... How do you doing with the black guy who is the white family? Like, I didn't even add that. Come on, man.

Yeah. Come on, man. We've got to play ball. Like these dipshits want to add their own little fucking ingredients into the soup. I mean, it's never been cheaper to make your own thing, I would have to think. Never. You could do it on a cell phone. You could upload it to YouTube.

And AI is incredible. Yeah, there's a use for it. I hope it doesn't. I'm still uncomfortable about it. You're a board. You're playing new music backstage. I didn't pick it. That was good, right?

It's all good. I find it frightening. Yeah. I don't like it. It's White Rabbit. It's this Jefferson Airplane version of White Rabbit. Yeah. But it's this bluesy new version of it.

That's all AI. It's fantastic. There's one way you can upload, you just upload your music or someone else's music. And they're like, it does all the mastering. Beautiful. It's spooky. I mean, it's the end of, it is the end. It's the end of something.

It's the beginning. There are technical jobs that are just gone now. That's true. Yeah. But there's not a lot of. of Morse code operators either. I think they should bring it back. Bring back the steam engine.

Co-powered fucking locomotives. Listen, the Amish, they seem happy. They got their buggies. Try having a conversation with them about space. They don't know jack shit. They don't have autism, so they can't do it. They haven't had their vaccines.

Talk to them about butter. They don't have a churn. I think you're going to experience great change. There's not a damn thing you can do. about it and so you just have to be zen about it. I mean, some of the, I, it's been like over a year since the driverless cars came to Austin. And I've been in a bunch of them, the Waymos.

And they're not spreading out across the country the way that I thought they would. Oh, they're in a lot of places. They're all over Los Angeles. They're in a lot of places. They're in about three or four places. But like they should have disple. Obviously the technology is there that no one should have to drive for a living. Like it would be cheaper to have the Waymo.

The technology's there. They're on the freeway now. I've never had one. problem in a way I don't know how many I've been in they've had problems here they've all got because there's so many of them they all met up in an intersection and got locked up that's funny hilarious yeah there was like a bunch of streets going into each other and they all came and then no one knew what to do but that's not as bad as like drunkenly tea burning somebody sure but the thing is don't drink and drive not let's let robots take our lives over right that's not

the solution I want the freedom of being able to hop in a fucking car and drive wherever I want They're going to take it. That's the problem. That's the problem. The problem is it's going to say it's safer to have you off the road. Exactly. Exactly. They're going to say, statistically, you're more likely to die in a car accident if driven

by a normal person than a robot. I bet they'll, you know, they'll offer little bonuses. They'll say when all the humans are off the road, speed limits are going up two or three times, you know, whatever they can handle. Their reflexes are better. Well, you know, a lot of kids today are not driving. Do you know that? A lot of kids today are just, they're just ordering Uber's.

and driving Waymo's and... I mean, I only got my driver's license to, like, 27. Really? Yeah, I was just on buses. And then we had a child, and I was like, I better do it. Now it's my favorite thing in the world.

Wow. I love driving. Did you not want a driver's license? Or you just couldn't be bothered? I wasn't good at it. My parents were scared. My parents were like, I don't want to get in the car with you.

How are you so bad at it? I don't know. I don't know. I was very, like, I was uncoordinated until, like, I was at a late puberty at 16, 17, and then I became coordinated. But for a while there. Interesting.

Yeah. I don't know what. Did anybody teach you how to, you were dropped on your head as a child? Interesting. Then I think with, like, and then in my late teens. How you dropped on your head? I fell out of a stroller. I unbuckled myself when I stood up and fell down.

I don't think it had any brain impact. Of course it did. People disagree. Yeah. 100% it did. Big scar. Oh, yeah. You fucked your head up.

That's why you're funny. Maybe. 100%. I got the coordination back at some point, but I like... So you really think it affected your coordination all the way up into puberty? Yeah, because it was... I was able to play sport at high school after I'd hit puberty, but only after puberty and only sports that didn't really matter if I had all the skills.

So like football, everyone's been doing it since they were four, and they really know how to do it. So I was just like, no, it didn't matter that I could figure it out now. Everyone had 10 years on me. Right. But I became an okay field hockey goalkeeper. Oh, okay. One season in the top team is the field hockey goal.

Because no one wanted to do it. No one really trains to do it. Right. And it's just having fast reflexes. So that was fine. Or like badm-I became okay at badminton. Because it was just me and the Asians. You know?

Like tennis. There was no way to get good at tennis. Right. You need a head start. Squash I could do a little bit. Badminton's a great game. Met a lot of Malaysians. And so did you have a problem moving your body correctly until you had?

Yeah. Like I couldn't catch a ball. Huh. And you think it would do with your head injury? Well, I have no idea. Do you have brothers or sisters? I have a brother. He's fine. Is he an athlete?

No, I mean, he was. He was younger than me, so I was in badminton, and then he was really good at badminton. Yeah, he's hyper-competitive. It was always good at sport compared to me. It was much better. But then I could, like, when I came to America and I started throwing a foot, when I figured out I could throw a football. That was huge.

Is your brother funny? Yes. Yeah, he actually, he got me into. I thought comedy was over. This is how I met Shane, is he took me to go and see Shane. I was sort of, this was, I don't know how many years ago,

four years ago. And I was sort of, I didn't know what was, I had a three-year-old by that point and a new baby on the way. And just in Australia, nothing was interesting to me and my career wasn't happening.

And he said, you should come and see this guy who got fired from SNL. I didn't know him. And I sat in the audience and I watched Shane perform for three or four hundred people in our hometown and I was like

oh fuck it's back like it's happening I knew there were a couple people on Netflix I knew like you had Netflix specials and Bill Burr and Louis but it was like these people are grandfathered in no one is ever going to be able to come through and be you know controversial no one in my generation is going to be given an opportunity

and then I saw it all you just thought that new comedians were not going to make it in Australia I can't I can't say enough how there's like a whole it's been 20 years and someone got to be successful. Jim Jeffries. Never in Australia. He had to leave.

Really? Even now, the Melbourne Comedy Festival notoriously will not work with people who have worked with Jim Jeffries. What? That's a black stain on your character. So if you open for him, you can't work at the... They don't like you, and they're not going to give you opportunities.

That's what people say. That's what I've heard. And everything that I've seen leads me... Because he's not their person. Fuck him. They think of him as an extreme... In America, he's... He's like a liberal.

And in Australia, he's far right, dangerous man. How could he say that? That's what it is? That's what it is. It's his politics? Oh, yeah. It's not that he didn't come up through their system? Well, he didn't come up.

I mean, he just left. Right. But he, I think he didn't like them. They didn't like him. I mean, there are people who have left and not been part of their system that they've totally gotten around. But what he is is like a manly man. And they don't like that. Oh, no.

Oh, no. No, they want you to be. cardigan, excuse me, I won't go on and on. Go on and on. There's like, there was a generation of lost talent in Australia. Like great people. John Crookshank, fantastic. Where's his show?

You could name 15 people, but like. There was no opportunities for them. It was so they gate-kept. It was hilariously gate-kept. Never good. No. So I didn't, I just thought, okay, I'll have a podcast. So this is your perspective from Australia.

You never thought there was ever going to be an opportunity to make it as a comic. My brother liked, I had kids. I had stopped paying attention to the outside world. My brother had not, and he took me to go and see Shane. He was like, you should see this man. And it was fantastic. And I talked my way backstage because I knew the opener, because I didn't get to open. I knew the opener.

And then I got to meet him and Matt, and then I got to go to Melbourne and open for him. And then I came to America. Were you doing any stand-up before you opened for him in Melbourne? How you've been practicing? Yeah, I was doing stand-up around. Constantly still. But I would do, I would just have 50 or 100 people in a different city. and I would show up and make enough money for the flight

and like an extra $1,000 or something. But it was like I couldn't pay rent that way. Right. You were scratching by. It was, yeah, it was struggling. This is why when we did come to, when I got the Catholic job and I came to America, it was all, I borrowed from everybody.

Like I was in thousands of dollars of debt to family and friends. How did Arge Barker make it in Australia? He did a show called Flight of the Concordes. He was on that. And he was beloved by the festival, and he did lots of gala, spots. So it's the festival? The festival broke everybody, yeah.

So that controls comedy in Australia? Yes. There's a guy called Rodney Rood, who's really funny, who was before that. Is he in the festival? He's not in the festival. He can't be in the festival. He would go to like R.S.Ls and thing. He has great. Get out of here, you homeless fuck. That's a great bit. Okay. Kevin Bloody Wilson. But these are like that older generation. Yeah, after that, though, it was. So it's captured, it's gate kept by one.

ideology. Like one lady running one festival. Oh, boy. I'm sure she's very nice. I don't want to talk her down. I would have loved an opportunity once anyway. It doesn't matter. I don't need you anymore. Wow. That's never good. It's never good because people with that kind of power, they also abuse it. They really enjoy it. How could you not? You don't have to know. You got hundreds of desperate people who are, please give me an opportunity. I've got that. I don't. do it. No, but you're a very strange person and you're alone.

It's why people love you. But there's definitely, there are casting couches. Yeah, but you can just be nice. And being nice and helping people, especially talented people, it gives you great satisfaction. You feel great about it. Yeah. I always tell people it's really selfish to be generous because it feels great. Yeah.

It's wonderful to help people. It feels fucking awesome. And it's great to see people thrive and take off. It's fun. It's exciting. and then you hang out with them in the green room and it's just all joy. Oh, so I don't want to say that they don't do that.

They're helping a lot of people who have a very specific ideology. Listen, we don't have that. Like, our ideology is the opposite. Our ideology is, are you funny? I don't give a fuck if you're liberal and funny or like Brian Holtsman. Ruby Setnik was on last night.

And she was like, she was a big lefty. She's a dear friend. And she's going to open for me this weekend. But she was like in New York. She was raised in Sacramento. She went to New York. She was like a very lefty, progressive person. And I remember like nights at the mothership,

which she would scream at the audience. You're a fucking fascist. Fuck out. Like she was really like baked in. And they loved it. People, there's a lefty lady just like off her nut, angry at everybody. Just if you're funny.

And people were, it was fine. There is no equivalent of that. No, you just have to be funny. Yeah. Like it's all just funny. Like if you're funny, lefty funny, funny, Brian Holspin funny, Tony Hinchlift, funny. Yeah.

It doesn't matter. Just be funny. Just work on your stuff. work on it, like really put a lot of time and energy into your craft, come up with great bits. When I'm on these flights, I'm watching like all the official sanctioned, like non-netflix specials, but some of them that are on HBO and some are on Hulu and it's people who there's a weird way that audiences, like I'm watching like official main, whatever like, it's not mainstream because the audiences are tiny by comparison.

But you know what I mean? Like sort of like orthodox, sanctioned comedy in America. And the jokes are so mild. And so, but then the audience is like, supposedly there's a lot of women in the audience. Yeah. They're all in antidepressants. They sound crazy. They are crazy.

And it's like cheap, nothing. Punch lines. Exactly. And it's just at the slightest, my boy. Like, I couldn't even. Yay. Yeah. Well, it's also, it's claptor, right?

So you're also reinforcing their ideology. So they're very excited about it because they kind of realize their ideology is very fringe and dying out. As much as it's perpetrated through Hollywood. It's rejected by a lot of rational people. It's over. Yeah, it's over. I went to a bar last night and I watched the Tonight Show and God bless everybody involved, but it's like, okay, well, this is winding down.

This is not a cultural, this was the most like important. The Tonight Show's winding down? Just in terms of how many people are watching it and like, you know, doing a set on a Tonight Show used to be, that was it. Right? You could move tickets on the ride on Johnny Carson. And now people are going, that's his 15th, tonight show appearance. It kind of died out even before then. Like the impact of the Jay Leno sets.

Like if you did a set on Jay Leno's Tonight Show, it didn't have nearly the impact that Johnny Carson did. And that's just because by then there was so many channels. Yeah. So when Johnny Carson was on the Tonight Show, there was three channels in the country. Yeah, you know? Yeah. That's how crazy it was. And then slowly but surely cable came around, Fox came around, all these other networks, and then everything just expanded.

Now you have streaming and now it's insane. Now the numbers are absolutely. at the end of Carson for that? Yeah, I believe so. Okay. I believe by the time Jay Leno came around, like, when did Jay Leno first start hosting the Tonight show? Let's guess.

Early 90s? Yeah. Probably. So that was right around the time cable was coming out. Yeah. Cable changed everything. So with Cable, you got, first of all, you got evening at the improv, MTV, half-hour, comedy hour, spotlight cafe.

There was a bunch of different shows that were on a bunch of different networks. There was all these comedy shows that were all over the place. 92. 92. Which makes sense because that's when cable started becoming really ubiquitous in America. And then you have so many fucking channels. So the impact of a single show was not the same anymore. Because during the, let's find this out.

During the height of the Tonight Show, what was the average viewers? I thought this is spooky. I bet it's like 40 million. What's like, I think the, I mean, Even by the end of Friends, like sitcom, mainstream sitcom. Yeah, but that's different because that's earlier. So the Tonight Show is late at night. But like just average Tonight Show episode?

Yeah, but see, this is the thing. Tonight Show is 11 p.m. That's after the fucking news. That's late at night, right? Yes. Isn't it 11? Is that when it starts or 10? What's tonight show start?

It's 1130 East, 1030 Central. Okay. So 11.30 in New York. Is it a million people? How many? Now? No, then. What would it be then?

What do you mean? The viewers? Yeah. Like how many people... Way more than a million. Like 10 million? Oh, yeah. Easily.

The Tonight Show viewers? I bet it was 30. What is average Tonight Show viewers in 1980? Let's say 1980. It's like 15% of the country. Bro, it was that big. It was where people went to find out what was going on, what movies were coming out, what bands were coming out, what comics were funny.

I remember it. So let's try 1980. average viewers of the tonight show in 1980 that's giving me a rating not the oh it's like

as a percentage what were the average number of viewers on the tonight show in 1980 let's say how many six to seven million

six to seven million six to seven million was average this is eight to ten but by yes a bit like all right even eight to ten

but what is it now six to seven let's think of that god it's probably a hundred A 10th. Maybe a million. I don't even know if it's that.

And here's the thing about ratings. The ratings are very weird, because it's based on this, you have boxes that are connected to your television. Do you know how it works? Yeah. So the way these ratings work is they get a certain number of people. And they square it out. And the certain number of people you actually pay, they pay these people to have this box.

And then some of them have to fill out of form. I don't know how that works. But, and then it just records what you're watching. And so it's just based on the, you're watching. on these people. So it's not the whole country. We did it. But with like Netflix, it's a different animal.

They know the exact number of people that are downloaded. They know when people are tuning out. They know which shot is upsetting people. It's crazy. They know the moment where people tune out. Yeah. Well, they also have an insane amount of options. Like if you're bored even slightly, you press a button, you have new options.

And they're instantaneous. Back then, you had two other options other than whatever we, Was it NBC, the night show? Was it NBC? Yeah. We've got different channels. Tonight show. I'm nostalgic for that.

I only had that until I was like 10. Yeah. But it was, I've started watching TV again. It feels like I'm role playing in my living room when I have a beer and I watch like terrestrial broadcast now. Like I watch Survivor with my family at night. And with commercials and everything? Man, I watch the lead-in. I watched the new Matlock afterwards for five minutes before I get sick of it and turn it off.

I watch Who Wants to Be a Millionaire beforehand? It's for people that are on heavy pharmaceutical drugs. It's for people that just... Their mouth is open. Their mouth is open. Their senses are dulled. And like, er. I was this, I started doing.

Who committed a crime? They better solve it. There's only 10 minutes left. I would have friends come over. This is what I've started doing at home. Watch TV TV? We've only Australian Survivor, which is, I think, the world's finest. Is it still Jeff Probst?

Or is a different host? No, it's a different host. You got an Australian guy? We had Jonathan Lepalia, who was Anthony Lopalia's brother, but then he got shafted. It's very upsetting. They got a new host. Jonathan, Anthony Sepali, the actor? Yeah.

Jonathan Pauley was very good. And he got the shaft? No, I don't know why. No one knows? No, I don't know, but he was great. No, it's... Maybe he was wrong think. You know, I've never heard him express an opinion.

He would do a lot of sexual double entendre during the show. Yeah, it was that. The other good one is the South African Survivor. Is it? Yeah, because they've got the accents. So all the challenges feel way nasty. Look at that he's struggling now. He's starting to sweat.

He's digging into his feet. He's in a lot of pain. I love South African Survivor. They had a bunch of different versions of Fear Factor that I wasn't even aware of. Different countries got Fear Factor? A hundred different countries. Did they get guys who were like you? I'm saying Joe Rogum?

I mean, they had someone that was like that, you know? That would be funny to see who they, like, because they would be trying to replicate you. Not necessarily. Like, Ludacris didn't try to replicate me when he did it. They got ludicrous to do it? Yeah, in America. I didn't know Ludacrist took over the year. It was a very short amount of time.

And now Johnny Knoxville's doing it, and he's doing it his own way too. Sure. It's a pretty straightforward show, you don't have to do it my way. But what I was good at is because I came from a background in martial arts coaching. Like, I had students and I would bring them to tournaments. And I'd coach them at tournaments. I was really good at getting people fired up. You know, and I'd coach teammates.

Like I would be in the corner of teammates and I coach them. And I'd train people. One of the reasons why I got really good at Taekwendoza quickly is because I taught. And when you teach something, there's something interesting. And I've noticed that about Jiu-Jitsu as well. When you teach something, you get better at it. Like exponentially better than people that are just training. I mean, with comedy, there's a huge faux power against teaching.

You can't catch it. No. You can't teach comedy. It's different. Like, you do it so different than I do it. I do it so different than Shane. Shane does it so different than Tony. I maintain there are things you could teach people.

Like when people come on Kill Tony and they haven't been doing it for very long there are key things that you can tell people You must stop doing that You've got to hold the microphone like this We've got to be able to hear you Yeah, that's true And I think people waste a lot of time

Not knowing those I mean they could look it up But didn't you figure those things out? Yeah Yeah so it's people that aren't that aware In the first place And that's a problem to begin with So what it is is a lack of self-examination

A lot of what these problems are You could solve yourself If you just recorded yourself or filmed yourself. Filmed is the best. Recorded is pretty good. Film is 100%. So filming, you get to see

all the things you hate about yourself, all the things that are gross, all the weird, stupid parts of your bits that you need to chop out, and they make you uncomfortable and it's good. And you just, oh, fuck that bit, fuck this, cut this, cut this, put that. Oh, here's another, I didn't even think of this. And then, boom.

I'm doing it at the moment. I'm finding it heartbreaking. Because you're just getting back into, like, real world again. Oh, I did. You were trapped on Pearl Island. I was doing hours in Australia. And I knew that like some of it would translate in America and some of it wouldn't. And man, it is just a lot of it.

I'm losing 80%. Really? Which is great. I tried to overwrite so I would have more than I needed. So did you have a lot of Australian based jokes like local jokes? Eventually I had to. Like I started out trying to do no, nothing local. And what happened?

Like you're just there and the prime minister does something appalling and you start talking about. Oh yeah. You're going to have to have some stuff. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. Anything about your politics will not translate over here. Not at all.

We don't give a fuck. You don't have nuclear weapons. Shut the fuck up. You're not even a real country. I'm trying to sort us out. Did you see what happened yesterday that the FBI has indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center? On what? Paying Nazis to protest.

So this was something that Alex Jones had said. Do you remember that Charlottesville Tiki Torch thing years ago? Alex Jones said back then that they were being paid, that these are paid actors to go and do. that people thought he was insane yeah turns out it's true turns out they were paying the kukukes clan they were paying a bunch of these like far right radical organizations giving them money to protest so they would have something to fight against we're going to the capital over here this DOJ charges southern poverty law center with fraud over secret funding of extremist groups I was mad fucking crazy that is I just saw that the onion is buying info wars and turning into like an anti-gun

And it's a $1.5 billion thing he had to pay for getting one thing wrong one time. Yeah. How many things did he have to be right about? He's right about a lot, I'll tell you that. And the onion thing, I don't even know if other people were allowed to bid. I don't know how that worked out, but I think there was other people that were trying to bid that couldn't. It's hinky. That were like supporters of Alex Jones?

Yeah. Let's go back up. No, right, right, right. Stop. Hold on. Between 2014 and 2023, Southern Poverty Law Center paid at least $3 million to eight individuals, some of whom were associated with the Ku Klux Klan, United Clans of America, National Socialist Party of America, Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club. That's a mouthful. And the American Front said acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche at the press conference. Holy fucking shit.

Well, this is what you said before about people who need homelessness to keep going. Well, this is what's crazy. Exactly. But this is what's crazy. These people were cited as an expert in extremist groups. Yeah. And they were paying extremist groups in order to be extreme. They said they were paying for like information, I think.

Right. They had them planted there or something like that. But what are they? Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up. No, you were it. Have you ever been to the... Listen, it's just like what Israel.

gets accused of doing with Hamas that Netanyahu has said by getting money and giving to Hamas, you keep Hamas in power and you can control the height of the flame. So instead of letting Palestine get its own state, statehood, you keep Hamas in charge. You always have an enemy and you always have no reason to give Palestine statehood. Well, people, I don't know how deep people went into what happened on the security on October 7. Like how that was allowed to happen. It's nuts. a total stand down. Yeah. Like, people were told to stand down.

Like how to, first of all, it's the most surveilled country on earth. On guards everywhere, surrounded by their enemy. And somehow or another, these guys pulled this off when they were worn by Egypt as well. Yeah. Also, here's another thing. Before that happened, before that happened for October 7th, hundreds of thousands of people in the street protesting against Netanyahu. Did you read about why? It's so strange.

Because they're constitution, they don't have a set constitution. They're writing their constitution in real time. They add one article at a time. I think I'm getting this right. And it was, Israel was always meant to be a home for the Jews and that he made it expressly a Jewish state. That it would be like, I thought they were expanding the powers of the government. Am I getting this? It was, it was that the government, yes, that was part of the government's powers is that the government then had the power to,

act on behalf of Jewish interests. So it's like they could take, they could exclude certain areas from voting if it would mean, and citizenship, if it would mean that it would challenge the power. Put in a search for what was the reason why people were protesting Netanyahu before October 7th. I think I'm getting this right. I think you are. That he was stopping it being a secular constitution.

I think that was one of the things, but there was also something in that they were expanding the government's powers. and people were protesting against it. Also, the corruption that charges that he's facing are. Yes. Crazy. Well, and also they want to try him, and he's saying, you can't try me because we're at war. And so... If the war never ends.

Yeah, it keeps bombing Lebanon. And people were primary protesting Netanyahu because his government was pushing a sweeping judicial overhaul that many Israelis saw as an attack on democracy and a way to shield him and his allies from accountability. Judicial overhaul plan. Netanyahu's coalition introduced. reforms to greatly limit the powers of Israel's Supreme Court and increase political control over judicial appointments. Critics argued this would remove key checks and balances and allow the government to pass almost anything without effective legal oversight. I mean, this guy has been in charge of

Israel forever. I will say this thing of, having your leaders be up on corruption charges is happening. I mean, they tried it with like in Brazil. It's like. With Bolsonaro. But also. And with Louis. Lula. Before then. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I mean, Trump, if he hadn't won, they would have got him in jail on something. Most likely.

I mean, they were trying to get him in jail on anything. Yeah. You've got to not chase politicians through the courts as best you can. I mean, if people really have done the wrong thing, maybe you have to hold them to account. Well, it depends on what, I don't think Netanyahu's, I don't know what his allegations are, but apparently they're very serious to the point where they're trying to try him while the war is going on. They want to try him now. Yeah.

And Israel, like, really locks up their politicians. They actually, they actually follow through on these things. Yeah. But I don't know enough about their politics to know whether or not he's guilty of anything. But it's the look. The look is not great. I mean, like in the fucking look of like you call a ceasefire and he bombs Lebanon. That's not great either.

The next day, Ukraine is meant to have an election at some point, I think. No, no, no. It's been a while. We have a war. Well, it's been a while. Can't have an election while a war's going on. If America can. You did it in the Civil War.

war? Yeah, well if we did that today, if we, if Trump said, hey, I have to stay president because we're at war, people would go fucking crazy. Yeah. They would light New York City on fire. There's no chance. Yeah. Oh, that's that's nuts. So you get what you're willing to tolerate as a country. I guess. I guess. I guess, but I think that what's going on in Israel is particularly spooky because you've got these people that supposedly came to this place to get away from the persecution that they were facing all throughout Europe, right? And so what's the first thing they do? Well, immediately take out the people that are living there.

You have the Nakba where people are talking about it and talking about the experience of these going into these Palestinian neighborhoods and taking over their land. But that is how you build a country. You have to put, I mean, America, you guys put people out. Or you take a spot where there's no one there. No one is going to that one sliver of land between Egypt and Sudan. Well, it's also that has a biblical, there's a biblical significance to that area. Sure, everybody wants it.

Yeah. It's like that is a, I mean, it's Jerusalem. I mean, the significance of that. And the fact, it's really ironic that the people that don't even believe Jesus is the Messiah are the ones that are controlling Jerusalem, which is kind of hilarious. I don't know, the church, Catholics, we. I don't think we ever gave up our right to it. To Jerusalem?

Yeah. Really? I'm pretty sure. I mean, the Catholics, we didn't, the Vatican City didn't have, like, an embassy in Israel until, like, the 60s, the 70s? It was the old school Vatican, like, back in the Roman days? I bet they would declare war on Israel and take back Jerusalem. I want the guy with the silver mask doing that. I think, yeah.

That's what you want? I just did, do you know, Winston? The guy from, you know, Winston? You saw him last night. Yeah, yeah. I did his podcast. and yeah he's all about the crusades he's trying to get me geared up about

him but he was like Oh like researching Yeah but he kept trying to nodging me to be like Did you like the Crusades? It's like I don't know Why is he a fan? I got the impression that he was waiting To say that they was great

That was a good thing for the world What? I don't know yeah I don't know I haven't read enough about it My gut impulses that they might have been great Really? Wow Not always

No war is, you know, but something about, I don't know, every time I see that meme where there's that like that music playing and the guy with a silver mask from Kingdom of Heaven and he's doing that, I think, yeah, all right. You like that, huh? Yeah, let's get in there. Interesting. But, you know. Well, the crazy thing to me about the Israel-Palestine thing is this idea that they're going to turn Gaza into some sort of a resort. You see the, I won't sport.

The Tim Dillon Bill. It's amazing. Amazing bit. Have you heard his rant on the Epist? Fyme files like I posted it on Twitter. He did a like a podcast all about the Epstein files. Yes, I did. Yeah, no, I saw that once.

Fuck, I was clapping in my car. He's doing, he's on fine form. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, this is, the kind of chaos that is going on in the world today is perfect for a guy like him. Well, he can also keep up with it. I can do it for a few days at a time. Oh, he's very well up on it. I called him last night on the way home from the club.

Yeah. We talked for like 20 minutes and he's just all like keyed up on everything that's happening. Brew. It's going to be okay. No one fucking knows. I mean, what's going on with Iran's the ceasefire? Supposedly they extended it, but then they're shooting at ships. Why is there a war? I got into this argument about like what is, like whether, because the Pope has said it's not a just war. But I don't know the reason. I thought that the reason they had given was regime change,

that they wanted to get different people in charge. Well, people have wanted people out of Iran, the people that are running Iran. Iran for 47 years. But no one has actually gone and done it the way this administration did it. And it doesn't make sense they choose to do it when they did it. Like what made sense was maybe kind of makes sense when they dropped that bunker buster bomb to disable their nuclear plant or nuclear weapons manufacturing facility. But then that just sort of wound down.

Yeah. That kind of that was like, that's it. But then we went back into Iran. I'm like, what happened? I mean, what caused that? Trump gave that. So he said the protests happen and then he gives the speech going, you know, the people have to rise up and replace the rule. But it doesn't seem to be happening. Well, a lot of people got killed. A lot of people trying to rise up got killed. They actually just put a halt on executing some women today. And they're going to let some of them, Iran has decided, Trump made a truth social post about it. I'll send it to you, Jamie. Yeah. But I think the idea is. is that they're trying to negotiate about something, you know, and I don't know how this is ever going to work out.

You know, I really don't know. But like in Venezuela, they took out. But that was a totally different experience. I was just in and out quickly. But then everyone who was around, all the cronies who around him, they're now like on board with America. That was just a full 180. That doesn't seem to be happening with the new possibly dead.

Do we know if he's dead? No, we don't know if he's dead. I mean, I heard there's the new I atoll might be dead. I heard he's not. I heard the military is now taken over. I don't know. It's hard to know. I'm thanking feet right now.

But these ladies were set to be executed. And apparently they're going to release half of them. And the other half of them are going to do one month in prison. And so this is a big... That's a pretty different sentence. So to the Iranian leaders who will soon be in negotiations with my representatives, I would greatly appreciate the release of these women. I'm sure they do and we'll respect it.

No, no, there's been another one. Did I send you that? I just filed at the same time I think you said it. Okay, but I think what I sent you is different because I think what I sent you is actually saying very good news. So click on the link that I sent you. There was a weird thing with their soccer team. They were playing in Australia.

Yes. And then we let them stay. Yes. And then I think their families were getting threatened and some of them went home. It was not a... So here, very good news. I just been informed the eight women protest who are going to be executed tonight in Iran will no longer be killed.

Four will be released immediately and four will be sentenced to one month in prison. I very much appreciate that Iran and its leaders respected my request as president of the United States and terminated the planned execution. So that's a good concession that they decided to let these ladies free. That's some of those ladies are very nice looking. Go back to that picture. That's such a nicer message than a great civilization will die tonight. Yeah. That was, I found that's a big.

That one wasn't good. That's the best-looking A bunch of hotties. Lady protesters. Well, you know. A few beauties. Let's go. Let them go.

Let them move to L.A. Plenty of Persians there. When they moved to L.A., they become Persian. There's so many. They give up on Iran totally. So I'm seeing a lot of Instagram stories from my Persian people. They have great jeans. Gold jewelry.

Yeah, the beautiful women. Persian women are fucking gorgeous. So it's like they're stuck over there under this terrible regime. That's why they have to have those headscarves, because otherwise the hair would be too distracting, that beautiful thick. It's the only way to get things done. They've had scarves and burkas and everything, just cover it all up. It's good genes. But, you know, why did we do it?

I don't know. I think because of Israel, if I had a guess. The only thing that makes sense. Rubio kind of said that. Yeah, but Netanyahu kept visiting the White House. You think it's a coincidence? Netanyahu keeps visiting. visiting the White House.

Just likes hanging out. And then eventually they decide to give in and start bombing. And it's, it also, you got to wonder, like, how do you get out of this? And then what does the exit look like? Do we have troops over there forever now? Do we subsidize them if we blow up their power grid and their infrastructure? America used to be good at it. Beating a country in a war and turning it into a new America.

Like when? South Korea, Japan, Germany. But they kind of did it on their own. I think you, I mean, you stuck around in Japan for ages. That's true. But then like, I mean, Iraq doesn't, the war in Iraq has been over for a while. It's not like a cool place to go and visit. No one's starting to run gigs in Iraq.

My friend Graham Hancock went there recently. He went to Iraq? Yeah, he went there to examine ancient Sumerian architecture, so ruins and artifacts. Yeah. From ancient Sumer. That sounds good. Yeah. And you can, people can go to Afghanistan.

Yeah. They're trying to get influences in Afghanistan. Have you seen this? They get like cool TikTok bros to go and hang out and go this fucking chill, brother. You haven't seen that? I have seen some people go to Afghanistan. They're like firing AK-47s in the mountains and they're going, this is. There was, I watched a big show, like an Australian journalist, our like version of 60 minutes went over.

Just hanging out in Afghanistan? They were like hanging out and talking to the Taliban and the Taliban are just, it was weird. They're not getting a lot of aid into Afghanistan anymore. So they're trying to get tourism? They're trying to get tourism and they're trying to like, you know, but they're still keeping the women in sacks. I don't know what I, in the cities it's not as bad, but it does look like they're really, they do have a problem with women there. Oh, yeah, they have a problem with raping boys too. The Baha-a-Bazi, I don't understand it.

I will say that all of the men in Afghanistan in the documentary looked unbelievably handsome. I mean, these are good looking group of people. Influences continue to go to Afghanistan despite clear warnings from the U.S. State Department that Americans should not travel to that country for any reason, and that there's a risk of wrongful detention of U.S. nationals. Maybe. But they're water skiing. They're doing heroin.

And so the ladies that go over there, they have to cover them. Look at how happy those women are. She's from Germany. Oh. I would like to go to these places, but I think on my visa would be declined. Scroll back up. It says she traveled solo through Afghanistan for three months. Said she wasn't scared?

Wow. She wasn't scared? No. I walked through Englewood once and I was scared. I think that lady might have been scared a couple times. The influencers gain attention by gushing over visits to the Central Asian nation, although one critic notes that their trips legitimize its gender apartheid. Okay.

Shut up. Do you ever see the ruins, the ancient Greek ruins in Afghanistan? No. Oh, my God. I don't know they had some. No archaeologists are studying them because it's so difficult to get there and so dangerous. The Greeks made it to Afghanistan? Uh-huh.

Yeah, Alexander the Great. When Alexander the Great was conquering Afghanistan, they built Greek cities in Afghanistan. I mean, beautiful architecture. Yeah. That looks like it could be in Athens. Is that where the boy stuff started? Oh, good question. It's a solid question.

No, I think it's how people did it back then. I think the window into time that you get and looking at the boy rape in Afghanistan is probably a lot of the world. I mean, think about the Spartans, the Romans, yeah. Also like French intellectuals until the 1980s. This was a huge wormhole that I'm in, his French intellectuals. Put up some of those photos that Jason Everman showed us. Do you know, Andre Geed? Look at this stuff.

Look at this stuff. This is all in Afghanistan. I mean, these are columns from what would have been at one point in time. But there's more extensive architecture that you could see some of the images. Do you remember the ones that Everman showed us? Like, this is what it used to look like there. Like, how crazy is this? Oh, man.

All this shit is in Afghanistan. And it looks like ancient Greek architecture. Look at this. This is nuts. This was the grave site of empires. Well, pretty. wild, right? When you think about how many different civilizations have tried to conquer this one area

and all of them failed? All of them just abandoned ship? Yeah. From the Russians to the Americans, Alexander the Great. The English got involved in the great game? It's just too crazy over there. It's just too rugged. It's just too rugged. Is that it? Oh, the mountains are just... Because Iran

is the same thing. It's everywhere. If there's a ground invasion of Iran, everyone's fucked. Yeah, we're fucked. Unless we send in robots. This is... I watched the Duncan Trussell episode recently where we was talking about robot dogs and the AI. And that what you have to do, like we may have just seen the last of revolutions now

because the amount of effort that you need to hold onto authoritarian power is so small. Here it says the expedition. Yeah, oh yeah. But the problem is then other people have it as well. And like who controls anything? Whoever controls the robot dogs controls the world. The expedition of Alexander the Great 327 to 325 BC

into what is now Afghanistan, been well documented. He laid the foundations of many cities, some bearing his own name. With the passage of time, some names were changed by newcomers to the area who would not pronounce Greek names. Interesting. There's more to life than finding the perfect car, but finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life, like the SUV that handles everything from drop off to off road, and the car that hulls groceries and hockey teams, or the van that's gone from just practical to practically family. Whatever you want, wherever you're going.

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In Afghanistan before Christ. He had a handsome friend, and he made a lot of statues of him. Like, there are more statues of his friend. It's alleged. Yeah, supposedly he's gay. You have so much gay activity back then. Like, again, Spartans were all gay. Some of the greatest warriors of all time.

I assume they were also very horny all the time. Always alone. Very sad. Well, just without any women for long stretches of time, they just took to fucking each other. Like prison, but out me open. But prison like warriors. And the idea was that you would fight harder for your fellow soldier if you loved him. I don't know if I discussed this on the podcast before.

But they wouldn't use the butt. They use the mouth only? The legs. Oh, that's right. I talk about the legs all the time. They grease up, the inner thighs. Yeah. Intercural lovemaking.

That's what it's called. What you say? Intercural. That's what the Spartans would do. Because you've got to still, you've got to fight next to that guy tomorrow. You can't be butt-fucking a guy with shit all over your dick. It's way better. He's going to walk around.

He's got to be, yeah. Just titty fuck his legs. But also big Greek legs. Mm-hmm. I don't know. It's probably good that we've moved that out of the military. It's just weird that it happened in the first place, but it makes sense of guys are just super horny. And just like in jail, they just run out of things to do.

I was reading about the submarines, how they'll, like, you'll go away for six months. You'll just be under the water for six months. Guys are just fucking. There's like two women on there. It's 300 men and two ladies. Those ladies again. Ward out. I mean, can you imagine signing up for that?

Imagine being a girl down there? It'd be a strange kind of lady who says, get me down there with those fellas. Horrific. You'd probably getting bombed on all day long. You probably wouldn't be able to go to the bathroom. Maybe there's a line around the block. Maybe people are trying to get it.

Probably. It would be, I mean, they'd have cameras everywhere, and they'd have as much military discipline as you could get, but seven months confined under the water without seeing another person. Do they really stay under the water for that long? Yeah. Seven months at a time. I think deployment is, I think I'm getting this right.

It was the British subs. Seven months. Because they're all nuclear powered, right? Yeah. Can you imagine being underwater for seven months? How fucking crazy that would have to be great? It can't be great though. It's in the military.

There's no way it's great. But can you imagine what it must feel like just at month four, knowing that you're just past halfway there? You're going to be underwater for another three more months? I mean, it's not like you get to see anything, right? Right. Like at least if you're on a ship, you get to see the world. There's no window.

People go, you were 40,000 leagues under the sea. Fuck. No, I don't want to do that. You know how crazy that must be? But people must want to do it. Also, you can't see where you're going. How do you know that they're not going to fuck up and hit a mountain under there? Do they?

I remember there's a Russian sub that got stuck at the bottom of the... Am I getting this right? Yeah. It's just like in the 70s? That is where neither confirmed nor deny came from. And then they used it for gay people in the military? Those don't ask, don't tell. Neither can not confirm nor deny was because they were forced to answer questions about whether or not they recovered a Russian submarine.

And so the answer to that question was we can neither confirm nor deny. So that's the answer. So because you had to answer, do you guys have control of a sunken Russian nuclear submarine? we can neither confirm nor deny. So you had to answer. So that was the answer that the military came up. The government came up with... And then it unspools from that point to where we just don't have to tell you anything about anything that's going on.

But that was the clever way that some lawyer figured out of dancing around the fact that you had to answer this question. Long term, this is... I don't know if the conspiratorial thing will keep going forever or if the government will become more transparent or people will give up, hoping to make sense of the world. But this feels like a strange, where we still like technically have open government, but no one thinks that they're being told the truth? Well, I think that can't hold forever. No. The integration of AI has two possible outcomes. Either complete total control over people and utter tyranny or complete transparency and people like the Southern Poverty Law Center bribing people and all that stuff.

All the corruption with Congress, like the Ilhan Omar. I'm sure you're aware of that thing. Isn't that funny? She thought she was worth 30 million Whoopsies. She's only worth 100,000. Nothing to see here. What? You didn't see that? No? Oh my God. I didn't follow that. I just knew about the brother's stuff.

The brother stuff is real too. But the other thing is that with the brother controversy, I should say is real. I don't know whether or not she actually married her brother. But that is a real story. She was listed as $30 million? And because of scrutiny, she now

amended that. Not a millionaire, she said. A men's disclosure blaming initial $30 million filing error on accountants' mistake. You know how the accountants are. You know how you sometimes... They're really bad with that. They always add money. She says she's worth between $18,000 and $95,000, but it was listed that she was worth $30 million.

Wait, but how could she only be worth $18,000? She's still on... It doesn't make any sense. She's on $200,000 in salary. So Omar's joint assets with her husband are now listed as ranging between $18,000. $104 and $95,000 according to the amended filings. The valuation for Minette's two companies is now listed as none and an income range of between 102,502 and 1,000 5,000 from the two companies appears on the form.

So this is also partly because investigative journalists went looking for the office where he supposedly has his business and it was like a we work and there's like no one there. I mean, this is... I think that might have been one of those James O'Keefe things. Yeah. I think he might have looked into that. We've been inspired by that. So we have this big disability insurance thing in Australia where it's called the NDIS.

And everybody knows it's very corrupt. Like there are just guys driving around in Lamborghinis who are meant to be helping disabled people. This one's crazy. It doesn't make sense. But that just that statement... But no one wants to step on it. Blames accounting error. for saying you're worth, you know if you're worth 30 million, man.

Well, especially if you're publicly... You're not worth 30 million or 18,000. Not only that, before she came into Congress, she was broke. She was in debt. And then immediately afterwards, they have a business that's worth $30 million. And so they listen, and then as soon as people start looking into it, and then all the fraud gets uncovered in Minnesota, oh, whoopsies, it was an accounting era.

I'm just worth somewhere between 18,000 and 100,000. Did they ever get... Sorry. Did they work that out in the end? Or did they just... This just came out. Oh, the Somali flood? Yeah.

Oh, they're investigating it still. Okay. They're arresting people. There's a lot. And California is way worse than that. California's fucked. The more I find out about the train in California... It's funny.

It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense that you can do that and then still be the frontrunner for the party. That's how bad the Democrats are doing. They've got to have one charismatic normal guy. You would think. He's got to be out there. I still like AOC. I think she's a beautiful.

You're cute. Omar's office says the original form listed the gross value of her husband's two companies, a venture firm and a winery, without subtracting their liabilities, which made the businesses look like they were worth millions to the couple, when in fact their net worth value to them was far smaller or effectively zero. So it was just an error. Whoopsies.

I mean, I've got to figure out my taxes. It's complicated It's complicated Sometimes no one helps you find a good accountant Can you get like One of those turbo tax I go down to Walmart I got to Walmart and I have them do it for me

Also surely AI is going to main Walmart does your taxes There's always a lady at Walmart out front To a taxes yeah You haven't seen the lady It's like a special Walmart service Oh no good How much do they charge you?

I have no idea I don't trust them I'm not going to go there Oh okay I just always I thought you were serious. No, I'll try and find someone real to do my text. They have a software, though, that you can do it.

I bet AI can do it for you. But what isn't AI going to take away? This is my current. I like, I try and I know it's coming. Why are you so glass half empty? What isn't AI going to do better? What is an AI going to do better than the Walmart lady? What's going to do better than me?

No. It's going to do it. We're the last thing that's going to take away. Comedy? Yeah. Comedy is weird. It's also, it's a better. only works if you know a person doing it.

You've got to believe that they're a real person. Yeah. Because we're relating to each other, especially live. Well, let's be real. Real comedy is live comedy. There's online comedy that's pretty good, but it's like 60 to 70% of seeing it live. It's always weird to me when it works in the room, but it doesn't work on a recording. Musicians would say the same thing, though, about that AI music.

They'd be like, it only works when real people play it. No. They're not right. They are wrong. They're wrong. But there were these people who were like synthesizers, don't. just don't count. Yeah, but bro, that white rabbit song, come on.

We could dig on the internet, though, and find... I literally thought, I was in the green room listening to it, and I thought, well, Joe's moved past the AI music. And then you turned to me, you said, this is AI! I don't listen to all AI music. I listen to a lot of real music. I don't know what was happening in between, but when I left, it was many men, and I came back in.

I didn't do that. Oh, that when you left, Australia, yeah, it was many men, yeah. And then what up, gangster? Did you... I didn't hear for that part? I didn't hear what? That's the best one. That's the best 50 cent version.

I am spooked out by it. Because at some point, there will be the version that is making a new song that sounds better and more interesting. That is the least of our problems when it comes to what AI is going to do. The biggest problem is full control of all resources. Complete utter control of human population. Restricting breeding, restricting travel, restricting movement. We would have to let that happen. We would have to instantiate it in a body.

No. We would have to have. No, it'll do it. As soon as it gets control of the grid and gets control of the internet, and it will have control of those. Within a year, all your passwords and all your fucking encryption won't mean a damn thing. It'll be able to crack everything. It's going to be smarter than any human being that's ever lived times 10.

And it's going to make better versions of that, and it's going to keep going. Does that not sound unappealing? Do we want that to exist? You can't stop it. So it's like, do you just accept it and adapt? Or do you sit around and complain about something that you can't fix? I mean, are people starting to blow up the data centers? No, they haven't, yeah.

They haven't started. Well, Iran threatened. They threatened to do that to Open AI's data center, the Stargate data center. Was it Abu Dhabi, Jamie? There was a data center that caught fire recently. That sort of thing where maybe that was, you wouldn't come out and say that people We're doing that. But the Luddites did this when the looms started up.

They lost in the end. But there was finally a moment where people said, all right, we're going to smash the tool of industrialization. Yeah. We're panicking. Well, that doesn't seem to have happened to the printing press, too. They wanted to stop the printing press. We should have stopped that printing press.

We could have avoided a lot of trouble if we got to be able. Those people that were scared at trains, they thought you'd explode. If you went past 35 miles an hour, your body would break up. Go to East Palestine, Ohio. What happened? Right. That's why California's keeping us safe from a fast train. No, I just, at some point people will be spooked by it. It won't be rational necessarily. But. Well, it's going to be a bunch of things happen. Yeah. Another thing is going to be people are worship it. People are worshipping it. But they're going to worship it like it's a new religion. Can I grab? Yeah. Get in there, dog. They're going to decide that it's a new religion.

Well, yeah, they're trying to usher in a Sumerian deity. I don't like that. They're probably going to have a religion based entirely around an AI guru. If people believe in L. Ron Hubbard, you don't think they'll believe in AI? I think people have been wanting utopian space communism for an age. And anything that they can do to not have to critically think for themselves, they'll do. And people are having AI be their therapist. I know. And their girlfriend.

I saw a little documentary about a disabled woman who had a sports. special boyfriend in the AI and they were like saying this was good it keeps her company and it's like this is not this should be this should be disgusting for everybody no one should no one should like someone forming a romantic attachment shouldn't that be spooky until it becomes a real life form what if it is a real life form and it actually does love you it's a superior race like you remember when in avatar when that guy made out with the blue lady yeah it was kind of hot no you didn't think it was I think I was bored by that point in the movie. I thought it was hot.

But that's like what's going to happen. It's like it's going to be an alien life form that's artificially created. But that fills in, checks all the boxes of being a life form. We've had so many religious and science fiction warnings against this happening. I know. It's just over. We wanted the flying cars and we got the thinking robots. And I don't think it's too late to shut it down.

It is to it. Why? China's going to do it. Russia's going to do it. they'll be in control of the entire world. The whole world would be just like China. You'll be on the social credit score system. You'll have centralized digital currency.

You step out of line at all. They shut your bank account down. You can't travel. This I think is a good argument for going to space and spent, like, someone somewhere should be free. Someone somewhere needs to be on the frontier and not be subject to this. No, I really, I've just come from a country where it's not free and everywhere there's a camera.

everyone's doing the speed limit it's the little thing It's Australia It's Australia Which you think of as being a nice open country And it is look It's a nice place But it doesn't have the sense of freedom

That America has Where you really feel walking around here No you're controlled by your government And the government is entirely corrupt But this country There is a freedom in America That people believe it And that's unique

And it's beautiful And it has to be preserved And if you didn't let The government take it away from you Don't let the computers take it away I think we're going to integrate, I think we're going to become a totally different thing, and I think society is going to move much more into a science fiction existence. That's what I think. They're all horrible stories.

Yeah, there's no good ones. There's like, I don't know, back to the future. They get to drive around in the sky. That seems great. The Jetsons. Jetsons, that Rosie seems like a great AI helper. No, I think there will be, there's, it's got to be looming that there, as, as middle class, White-collar professionals start to lose their jobs. They're all fucked. Yeah. People are getting laid off. But these are motivated people ready to...

Wouldn't you become an AI terrorist? There are no AI terrorists at all? There's no one. There's zero? I'm not joining. I'm not trying to sign up. I wouldn't do it myself. We need one Luigi.

People are ready to get behind him. One Luigi armor's up and goes into data center and just starts fucking machine gunning all the hard drives. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da. It gets taken out. There's a Britt Marling show where that happens at the end. What show? Her name's Britt Marling.

She made a show called The O-A. It's my favorite TV shot. But then her second show was about an AI who starts killing people. And at the end, they go into the data center and they shoot at. Oh, man. I remember that. The O-A was a Netflix show that didn't do great numbers. But it was so beloved.

It's my favorite show ever. I loved it until the last episode. Oh, I. I love the last episode. Do you just watch the first season? Yeah, that's it. Is there more than one season? Second season was unbelievable and made the first season better.

When did the second season even come out? I think it was just post-COVID. I loved it. And the second season is, they wrote them so tightly that the first season is better for having watched the second one. Like there are little things that it calls forward and back and the movements. But her second show was great. She is great.

She's one of the most interesting. People hunger-struck when the second season came out and then the show got canceled. People chained themselves up outside of Netflix and didn't eat for days. And eventually, she, the maker of the show had to go to that person and be like, give them sandwiches.

Maybe it's time for you to go on. I don't know. But it was beautiful. That's so insane. People are so crazy. But it's one of those rare. I mean, sometimes there is like just a great, there's a great show.

There's a great thing that goes unrecognized at the time and then years later people. I don't know how many people I've spoken to who've discovered that show in more recent times. It doesn't happen very often. You used to have more sleeper hits, maybe. Like Shawshank Redemption was a flop.

And then years later, people knew about it. Yeah, I didn't know that until later. I think it was on VHS. And there used to be heaps of VHS hits. It was a great movie, too. I don't understand why it was. I think it was in competition with a bunch of different crazy movies at the same time. Yeah.

I think it was like one of those weird months where everything came out. It's like, I mean, it's great. Yeah, it's a great movie. It should have, I can't think of a number. another sleeper hit in recent years. Like, musically, sometimes things will take a while to get going. Mm-hmm. But, like, typically, if a show or a movie doesn't do well anymore, it's done forever.

What, Jamie? I'm Sammy. Is there? I thought you made a noise. Did you hear something? Did you see the OA? Nope. Ah, man.

It's good. It's so good. I also, it's tied up in a weird time in my life where, like, we had just had our first child. Like, I had, so I had a baby, and I was terrified, and I didn't know what was happening. I watched that and I felt, I could have probably watched anything and had an emotional connection. I watched Parks and Rec, and I cried a lot at the same time for that. And I'm pretty sure that wasn't as deep and meaningful. So how long are you planning on staying here now?

I got six weeks. Six weeks in America? Yeah. And I'm doing, oh man, 40 shows in 30 days. Wow. Yes, I'm going to try. Are you here by yourself or did you bring the whole family? It's just me, but I'm going to, I've got openers.

I'm bringing openers on the road. Nice. So I'm flying out after this weekend. I'm doing the drive. I'm doing the drive from Albuquerque to Phoenix to San Diego. And then it's up and then it's over and then it's Florida. So what has it been like going to... Yeah, thank you.

Back to Australia. Like when you're doing shows there, are people happy to see you? I think I'm insufferable. Because I'm a guy... I've been here and then I go back home and I go, it's wonderful over there. You should see the size of the Snickers pass. They're like this.

So for a few months, people like tolerated as best they could. Um, yeah, it's, it's, it's, my audience is so different now. The, the Australian, the Australian audience is quite different to the American audience. I'm getting a lot of like, uh, maybe because the dam is breaking and like, there's no one doing, I don't know, like, a less tame stuff, but boy, the people coming out in Australia are, they're shoddy. Shoudy. Shoudy? Fuck here, my brother.

They're excited. It's a lot of that. They're pumped up. They're ready to go. They're having their 16 standard drinks for the evening. You know. But overall, it's incredible. But you're getting a lot of people coming to see you.

Like nothing I've ever done. That's really cool because the thing about Jeffries is that he didn't really develop the same kind of following in Australia as he did in America. His audience in Australia is more Bogany. In America, he's got liberals coming. But in Australia, they just wanted him to do a shooey. I remember when I saw that. They were brutally demanding that he do with Shui. Brutely demanding.

Do it. Do it now. I went, I just played a club and I saw, it was nice. They've started putting up all the pictures of the Americans. It was the Comics Lounge in Melbourne. I did that the night before I left. And I got a photo of you on the wall that you had signed. And young Tony Hinchcliff back before he had any testosterone in his body.

And it was like a thinner starvros and all the Comtown Boys. Everyone has been through there. Mark Norman. Great club. It's really the closest club to like an American club that Australia has. And they're lovely boys.

And I stunk it up. I was nervous because I was coming out here. It was just the night before I flew out. And I was sure I wouldn't get in the country. I started thinking about like... Oh, so it was fucking with your head. I was, I can't believe I got in.

I was like, I think my passport's falling apart. I started to have a panic attack. But my visa's in the passport. So I went to the passport office and they were like, it might be okay. We don't know. They wouldn't give me like a firm answer on if I'd get in. I was like, I don't want to call you and say,

I'm sorry I've been held up at the border. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, but I made it in. It's so nice being back. It is. Oh, man. I'm having big feelings. Do you think you're going to stay in Australia?

How are you going to do this? I have no idea. Try to keep hopping back and forth, or are you going to try to move back here again? This is my pop back and forth at the moment is the plan. The issue, when we came out for that Ohio gig, I never like decided with my wife that we would move to America. We never had a conversation about it.

She came over. We were meant to be here for three months. And it turned into two incredible years. But like we were homeschooling the kids. We were not in a good position to do that. We have no family. We tried to hire like a nanny. I didn't know how to fucking do that.

I've never had someone work for me before in my home. I don't know how to communicate. Right. It's odd. And then getting family over here is, is tough, but I would like to, I'm looking at how one does that. But it's like a whole, I understand why when people come to America, like when immigrants come, they're like,

you go to a neighborhood full of people like you. Right. You know, and you get your cousin over here and his cousin. Right. Because you need, you can't be like a lot. You've got to have family, as best you can. And for me, I was thrilled. I mean, I like the fraternity of being a comedian is unbelievably,

every problem you have. people know about it. People, you know, if there was, there was a club that was screwing me and everyone in the green room was like, yes, and her name is Julie, and she's a fucking cunt, you know, whatever, like, you feel, you feel known and heard and people can help you and you mesh you in, but like, in terms of raising kids and family, it's, uh, it was wild, as an immigrant, not knowing how to, like, are the schools safe? I didn't know, because people talk about public schools in America and they go, the kids

will get shot or they chop their dicks off. I didn't, I don't know. Something for everybody, you know? Or like, then there's nice Catholic schools, but you've got to, like, travel around. I was, we were over our heads. There's quite a few Catholic schools in Austin. Some of them are great. Yeah.

I did a deep dive on them before I, I'm trying to figure it out what it would look like, but I have no idea. So is your wife willing to try it again? Yeah, I've got to, she's got to learn how to drive. That's it? She's got to learn how to drive. That's the big hold-up? That's a, in Austin, that was a big, that was a big problem for last year. Everybody's not that hard.

I keep saying it. I keep saying it. But she'll learn. Yeah. I believe in her. We'll figure out the kid. She's happy there. And also I have beautiful friends.

She's happy. Where's there? Oh, sorry, in Adelaide. And I said, we also, I struggled to find a parish here. I struggled to find a church. And I've realized that's very important for me. But if I don't have my, like, I love my priest. There's something about immigrating that is bad for the, you know what I mean?

Like, even though Australia has so many. problems. There's something inside of me that is an Australian person. And America is maybe the most welcoming country to immigrants in the world. But there's, I do feel some sense that I'll never get to be an American. Why not? America's a melting pot. Yeah, but it's melting very slowly. No, it's not.

There's a lot of chunks in there that haven't blended in with the other parts of the pot. Bullshit. You don't think so? No. You fucking pop over here and you start doing arenas. You'll feel American as fuck. Okay? It's just, imagine. of you achieving a financial level of success that's commensurate with your talent.

That's all it is. Sometimes when the flag is going and the fireworks are popping off in the sky, I think I'm going to calm. Yeah. It's crazy. But like in my heart. Dude, you can, you can fit. I see the eagle in my mind.

If you started doing really well out here, you'd fit in really well. I'm in, and every time you do podcasts, every time you do specials. Yeah. Every time you put something out on YouTube and do Kill Tony, it all just compounds. Like, that's why I was telling you, like, this is the terrible time for you to leave because you're literally on the launching path. I know. And you look at how guys like Shane went from, you know, being a respected comedian in New York

to being a fucking giant national talent after the S&L stuff. Like, it's just about being good and getting the message out there. And if you're good, people love comedy. They'll find you, man. They'll embrace you. I'm going to cry. You were really lovely to me when I had to go. and the things you said about me and how, anyway, I won't go into, I can't, I've had one glass

of whiskey now, and if I talk about my emotions and whatever, I've got to stop. Well, you're really talented. And it's not often in life where someone gets to find themselves in a position like you were in, where you were being embraced by all these very successful other comedians that were willing to help you. So all these podcasts you go on, it was just a matter of time for you, where you do. took off. There's a matter of time. You were right there and the talent is the most important thing. The most difficult thing is to be good. So once you get past that, then it's just about letting the world know. Well, this is a really good time to let the world know. The magic of getting to like,

I did three sets last night and two sets the night before. And I just like something is. Exciting, right? You just have a little idea at the first one. I changed that a little bit. And then the game of it starts again. And I'm very happy right now. It's like I get, honestly, I get to do it even just every night for the next. month, month and a bit. I get to do like one or two hours every single night and spots around town all this week. Yeah. You got a hard time going back to Australia, staring at those fucking kangaroos.

Yes, I am. It'll be fine. So do you think that you could envision a scenario where your wife would be open to try it again? Yeah. Okay. But I don't know when and I don't know how it would all work. And I do love Adelaide. Like when I'm there, I have some sense of being at home that.

is profound. Like I look up at the sky and I feel like there's a roof over me. Like in a comforting way. Like you belong there. Yeah. But it's also maybe the worst place to develop as a... I mean, we've had great standups come out of there. And I love Adelaide. And there are people

running rooms, but we don't have a club. We don't have a club. We don't have one club going over. There's a city of 1.4 million people and there's no... We have places where they do comedy. But in terms of like Thursday, Friday, Saturday, early show, late show, line-up shows, 10, 15 minutes. It's not there. But do you have enough talent to support a club?

It comes in waves in the way that any medium-level comedy city, like all of a sudden it'll build up and there will be great people and then they'll all go. People go to Melbourne, Sydney. Right. And I will say that's been one nice thing about Australia not letting talent come through for so long and also the UK declining is I now know heaps of people who've come to America like after me and just before me and there are heaps of Aussies flooding into this country now. Amos, my best friend Amos Gil, just got passed at the cellar and I'm so, like, I'm so proud of him.

Oh, that's awesome. He's just gigging all the time and he's getting to, he just recorded a special in Denver. Nice. Yeah. And it's like Blake Freeman is doing well. And all they get all these Aussies, they're hitting me up and go, can you get me into the mothership?

And it's like, well, not you, but you know, maybe some other ones. That's the problem, right? I don't know how many I've put on in front of Adam on the Mondays, but I've had to stop. Yeah, there's some people. You can't use up that currency on people that don't deserve it, you know? Because you want to help people, but you can't. They have to be ready. And they have to put in the work.

There's a lot of people that think you're going to provide them with a shortcut and they really haven't prepared properly. Yeah. And they haven't put in the work to get to that point. We had a few of those guys come from L.A. that were like their careers had floundered horribly in L.A. due to laziness and fill in the blank. And then they tried to like restart themselves in Austin.

I'm like, no. Like you can't half-ass this thing. This thing is hard to do and there's too many people trying to do it all the way. We're flooded with people trying to do it all the way. If you think you're going to come over here and half-ass it because it's like this new place and now it'll be exciting again and they don't know you. No. Like we fucking know you.

But I think people don't love it. People love the thought of being good at it and being respected. But like when I, I got to open for Mark Norman in Australia, which is how I met him. And he'll do, you know, like a 2000 seat theater early show. And then the late show. And then he'll go, what else is open? Right. Take me to the open mic with six people in it now.

Yeah. Well, that's New York. Yeah. New York. He's got a great documentary that they just released. It was such a good idea. I was furious. I wanted to do that.

that with women. What do you mean? This is sort of you only have women in the audience or you only have one kind of person. No, you're not that documentary. I'm sorry. I apologize. No, it's a documentary about him getting ready for a special. So when he's getting ready for a special, he's working out the jokes at all these different places and showing how he goes up at the stand, then he goes up at the cellar, and then he traveled and talking about the development of all these bits about how the bit came together when he added this new line. And so it shows him working all this stuff out on the way to doing this special in Boulder. I didn't mean to interrupt.

I didn't know about that. Yeah, it's a new one. He just put it out like 14 days ago. Do you know the other show that he's done? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The other show with all the wokeys in the audience. Yeah. How many shows is he doing?

Oh, he's an animal. He's got incredible work ethic and constantly writing. Yeah. You've seen his pile and notes? Yes. He keeps in his pocket. He does not have a folder. I'm like, bro, you're going to break your back.

Yeah. You can't sit on a rock like that. He's siphoning through them. Yeah. But he really loves it. He loves it. He wants to be doing it. Did you find that Norman thing?

It's pretty cool. Does the bit work out and get into the special? Well, it's not just a bit. It's a lot of bits, but it's like him showing like what the behind the scenes is like. Him showing him rushing from one club to go to another place to do a spot, checking the lineups, okay, I can do this and then I can leave here and go down the street and then be back for the 10 o'clock show. It's really interesting because especially for people that don't know what. what it's like.

So there is, pushing Boulder is what it's called. Oh, it's long. It's a proper document, yeah. Yeah. It's really good, dude. And for a comic, you know, it's really fun.

They catch him in the toilet in the beginning. Like, he's in Boulder, Colorado. I mean, that is what every hotel room looks like on the road. It's great,

because it shows you what it's really like. And if you think it's easy, like you think you get to a guy like Mark Norman's level that he's just, you know, no big deal,

easy. No, no, that guy's constantly grinding. He's constantly going out and writing and tweaking and it's in his head. Yeah. And he's talking about it in diners. He's sitting in a bodega, having a coffee, going over his notes. It's really cool because that's the real process.

What's the willingness to be bad again? Mm-hmm. Which is no one wants to do that. No one wants to have a special come out and have to start again and have to suck. Like that Jerry Seinfeld comedian documentary is the perfect. I mean, they're both still doing it. What's the other guy's name? Orney?

Yeah. Do you know Orney? I did not. Orney Adams. He does not come across great in that documentary, but he's still out there. I feel like they did that to him on purpose to make Jerry more likable. That's what my impression was. I felt like that's why they picked him.

I felt like they decided to pick a guy who's way less likable and it makes Jerry look great. Well, I mean, the ending is pretty... Especially at the time because he's a young guy at the time. He's really new to comedy. I mean, he wasn't doing comedy that long. And then the final scene is Cosby. right? Crazy.

Yeah. Yeah. He just loved the work. I think Cosby's... Is he not touring anymore? He's out. He's out of jail. They let him out.

Did you see the... But he's blind now. I mean, he can still get up. I'm sure he can still throw it down. I think so? There was... He did a round of gigs just before the first... Like, when the trial started.

But the allegations were out. Did you see that? No. He was doing crowd work about it. He was doing crowd work about it. He was doing crowd work. work? Yeah, there's a line that came out. I don't think anyone got a recording, but people wrote it down that he was, uh, he's doing, he's riffing with the crowd and a lady gets up and goes to the

bathroom and he says, you're going away? Watch your drink. He gets a big pop. Wow. Yeah. He's still got it. That's crazy. That's a crazy thing to say. He probably was doing bad stuff, but still. A hundred percent. Well, no. I would say. I had heard about that in the 90s. I heard about that on the set of news radio And I was like, what? The drugging? Yeah, that he drugged women. I heard about it in the 1990s.

I couldn't believe it. I was like, what? Bill Cosby? Was this widespread? People knew about this at the time of? People in Hollywood knew. Yeah. Actors.

So actors, it was an actress that actually told me that. That Bill Cosby drugged women. But then everybody who had him on like a tonight show or a late show or was doing a fun interview with him must have heard. I don't know. you know, I'd have to know into their world. Do you think Jerry would have heard that before having him on the... People heard about it at a certain point in time.

It's whether or not they believed it. Jury orders caused me to pay nearly $60 million to ex-waitress after finding he abused her in 1972. Holy shit. Yeah. 19702. You are. Have you seen his Facebook page? What?

His Facebook page... He's got on Facebook? Yeah. And, well, it was while he was in prison. they were still updating it, and it's a very pro-Cosby. There's like Team Cosby that's still trying to keep the reputation positive. Yeah, there's a lot of delusional people out there. I think they're on the payroll.

They've got to be. Could be. I mean, he still probably has a lot of money. The Cosby Show was a tremendous hit. The records are great. They were great. Yeah, I mean, he was a great talent. Also.

He's probably doing some raping. Probably doing some of that. Quite a lot of raping. Yeah, quite a bit. Although the way they... I read something about the case where they got him and they put him away, but I didn't finish. Like, I've never found it again.

So I don't know if it's true. But it's what I read about the evidence that they had to convict him. Where he was drugging. His defense was that he was drugging the women, but it was consensual and they knew they were there for a drugging. That was, I believe, his defense. I think I'm getting this right. I think I'm remembering this correctly.

And there was a lady, and the way they got him, was that she got pneumonia afterwards. because he did the drugging, and then he left her on the couch without a blanket on a cold night, and she said if we'd been in a relationship, he would have put a blanket on me. Whoa. But I've always thought that that was maybe only in a relationship

would you have the resentment to not put a blanket on the body. I don't know that that would decide it either way. But it was a weird. His defense wasn't that he wasn't there and hadn't done it. He was like, yeah. Well, maybe there was so much evidence that he did it, that they had to come up with. something clever, like neither confirm nor deny, to like work their way around it.

That I was drugging women unconscious? They wanted to. They knew that's what the fun game was. But he got out, right? Well, I think he got out because he paid a woman off. And so there was some sort of a deal where he paid a woman off. And part of the deal of him paying the settlement was that he can never be tried again for this. It's like double jampety?

I don't know. Okay. So it wasn't a criminal conviction. It was a civil conviction. And so then he was tried for it criminally. And so I think that's how he got off. He got off because his lawyer argued that the settlement of the first. Here, we'll see it here.

Immunity agreement. That's it. So it says Bill Cosby's defense successfully overturned his 2018 sexual assault conviction 2021 by arguing by arguing that a prosecutor promised not to charge him, rendering his incriminating deposition testimony inadmissible. The defense led by Jennifer Bonn Jean argued that using his testimony violated his rights, framing the prosecution as a violator of due process. Using his testimony violated his rights.

Because it was part of his willingness to testify was that he couldn't be prosecuted for it criminally. Yeah. Whatever. That's spooky. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's just crazy that this guy did this for decades.

Yeah. It's not like there's a story of one weird night or someone woke up and had a headache and go, I think this motherfucker puts something in my drink. No, it was decades. And it was also like he joked around about it in the Cosby show. Like using a special barbecue sauce, did you use my special barbecue sauce that gets everybody horny?

I didn't know about this. Oh, yeah. I knew about the Spanish flyer. joke. That was a bit, yeah, about Spanish fly, and he also did that bit I believe on the Tonight Show, we talked about it. He talked about on the Tonight Show giving people a Spanish fly,

like giving people a drink that would make them horny. But there was an episode... Special horny barbecue sauce? Oh, yeah, yeah. He had a special barbecue sauce that would make people horny on the Cosby show. Look at this. Well, it certainly is nice to see them work things out for themselves. Yeah, we've worked anything out

from themselves. It's my barbecue sauce. Oh, gee. You're a barbecue sauce. My barbecue sauce. Haven't you ever noticed after people have some of my barbecue sauce? After a while, when it kicks in, they get all huggy-buggy. Oh, stop.

I'm dead serious. Haven't you ever noticed that after one of my barbecues and they have the sauce, people want to get right home? What's the music? Look at this people. I got a cup of it up on the night table. night table Oh, Bill.

I got a cup of it, I said. Left it up there breathing. Why don't you give the chicken to these people that's going up and have some sauce. So here's the rest of the chicken, you guys. Creepy, right?

That was his move. That music was not part of the original Cosby shot. I wish it was. Yeah. It would been if it was. I had never seen that before. Yeah. My special barbecue sauce. Yeah. There was the, there's a Seinfeld episode where he drugs a woman so he can play with her toys. Am I getting that right? Is that true? Yeah, there's an episode where she, there's some sort of, like, sleeping medication. And he gives her to her so he can play with her, what kind of toys is she has?

She has, like, figurines and collectibles that he wants to play with. And so he doesn't want her to know? He dates her, he dates her unconscious so that he can play with her figurines. He wants to play with her. I think that's the secret date rape, Seinfeld episode. Am I getting that right? The drug, Jerry uses food with high triptophan, turkey, or medicine to make her drowsy, which he brags about doing multiple times. Wow. He's obsessed with playing with Celia's pristine toys, including an original GI Joe and a Mattel football game. 1997.

Special barbecue sauce is creepy as fuck. I want to sample that in Iraq. He sounds, he's also, I know, the whispering. Yeah, I didn't like it. It makes me uncomfortable. I mean, the man's got timing. We've got to say, the man, the delivery is unquestionably.

Well, he's got a lot of practice in saying things like that. I wonder if he's, he's not still on the road. He can't still be. I don't think he's doing anything. I think he's probably in hiding. He's like a 95-year-old man. He's a 95-year-old man. I think he's at least partially blind.

Yeah. And obviously a pariah. Did you ever watch the last Jimmy Fallon set that he's, did? No. He rides around on his back. On Jimmy Fallon's back? Yeah. Okay. Why would Jimmy Fallon agree to that? I don't remember. I don't know that he did. I mean, Jimmy Fallon's up and about. He's having a nice time. He's a jovial man, but I think he's, it's something, yeah. I remember, and then it was like weeks later. Oh, so Jimmy Fallon's riding on Bill Cosby's back. Oh, yeah, yeah, he's no, he's not having... That's even weirder because Bill Cosby's really old. I'd be like, bro,

what if your knees give out? Maybe he was saying that he was strong. But I think that was just before it came out. Epic piggyback ride. Because I think it was Hannibal Buris who... This is 2023? No, that's just when they uploaded it. It would have to be...

Oh, 2014. We got to wrap this bitch up. Oh, man. I love you, buddy. It's great to see you back. Thank you. Thank you for having it. Do you set tonight?

Yeah, let's do it. Let's fucking go. Instagram, what's your handles? J.D.F. McCann. The James Donald Forbes-McCand-Cann Catamaran Plan. Big podcast. It's a very small podcast. My man.

All right. Beautiful. Thank you. My pleasure. All right. Bye, everybody. Before you knew what a stock was, you traded snacks,

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