The Joe Rogan Experience - #437 - Scott Sigler

Episode Date: January 7, 2014

Scott Sigler is an American author known for science fiction and horror books, such as Nocturnal, Ancestor, Infected and Contagious. Before being published, Scott built an online audience by giving away his self-recorded audiobooks for free as podcasts.

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Oh yeah, and before we get started, when are your shows in Texas? You got three this week? Yeah, we got Houston Thursday. Tony Hinchcliffe and Tiffany Haddish. Tiffany's going to be with only our Austin and Dallas shows. So it's Houston, it's going to be John Toll. Oh, funny guy. Very funny guy.

Me and Tony Hinchcliffe, and we're doing a podcast before our show. And then the following day, we're going to be in Austin and then Dallas. Are you doing a live podcast? Live podcast, yeah. Which one are you going to do? Are you going to do Kill Tony, or are you going to let local comics go up and shit? It's going to be, we have some local girls that work for Playboy, and we're just going to make it a mess.

Oh, perfect. Bring in alcohol. Don't try to do it sober now. Yeah, exactly. Be careful. It's in Houston. You're in Texas. It's in Houston. They don it a mess. Oh, perfect. Bring in alcohol. Don't try to do it sober now. Yeah, exactly. Be careful. You're in Texas. It's in Houston. They don't play games.

They party hard. Texas parties hard. Might do a blackout podcast before the show. I feel like you will, whether you want to or not. Why are you pretending like you're planting this out of some piece of art? It's just going to be what it is. Don't be silly, son. So where are these dates?

Where are the actual clubs? It's January or this Thursday it's going to be in Houston. It's going to be at Fitzgerald's. And then the following day it's going to be in Austin with Tiffany Haddish at the Spider House Ballroom. And then Saturday it's going to be at the Curtain Club in Dallas, Texas. And Desquad.tv for all the info on all Brian's stuff. And that's where you can also buy those t-shirts, all the Kitty Cat Death Squad t-shirts. I'm in Houston this weekend.

No, I'm not in Houston. I'm in Phoenix this weekend. Jesus Christ, you're in Houston? I'm in Phoenix. Where am I? I'm in the Valley. I'm in the Phoenix Stand Up Live, which is a fucking awesome venue. I love that place.

And I'm there with the lovely and talented Tom Segura, who's one of the most fucking hilarious dudes on the planet. So I'm really psyched. I love Phoenix. Phoenix is a fun town. They don't take themselves too seriously. They like to party. They like to drink. They're close enough to LA.

They're not retarded. They get, they get the vibe. It's a fun place. I'll be there this weekend with Tommy Cigar. And then January 24th, I'll be at the Chicago Theater with the super Jew, Ari Shafir. Slinging dick. He's moving back, right? He's definitely moving back.

He's going to be here for the winter. Look, it's minus 10 in New York right now. Coldest ever, right? Yeah. I don't know. Coldest I've ever heard about it. I never heard about minus 10. Min York right now. Coldest ever, right? Yeah. I don't know. Coldest I've ever heard about it. I never heard about minus 10. Minus 10 is ridiculous, Scott Sigler.

It is. It's not necessary, right? I moved away from Michigan specifically because I don't like minus 10. Yeah. Or 20 or 30. Michigan's rough, dude. You lived there your whole life? Yeah, I lived there right up to about early 30s or so.

Where'd you escaped to after that went san francisco uh that's a good place the goal was to you know traipse about the country three months here six months there never made it out of san francisco it's a big difference between the there's the general mentality of michigan versus san francisco it's very unusual when you go to two places that are so completely different you go oh look this can happen too like a bunch of people can just act like this. Or, you know, you can go to like Vancouver or something where everybody's nice and friendly.

And you're like, okay, you could just be in this weird town where everybody's nice and friendly. Or you could go to Boston and they want to beat the fuck out of you. Like, oh, you know, this could happen too. Yeah, there really is a cultural signature to every place. And the difference between Michigan and San Francisco was pretty dramatic. What did that feel like when you made that transition?

All of a sudden you're around all these like, I mean, San Francisco is super liberal and really like open-minded about, I mean, I always feel like as far as like socially, when you look at the entire country, like as far as as the most progressive parts of the country, you have the coasts always. They're the most progressive, but out of all of them, San Francisco seems to be the most extreme. The first to be super accepting of gays, the first, I mean, the whole

Berkeley psychedelic movement, all that shit from the 60s, the echoes of that still feel like they're hanging around that place. It's really, and it's even changing again now with all of the dot coms, you know, this version of dot com, the tech people and rents are rising and real estate's never really slow. I mean, it leveled out at a couple of places, but it's never dropped and it's, it's come

back up. And, um, you know, the inability for people working a regular job to even be able to afford to live in the city is even getting worse now. So it's the, the whole, I think the whole liberal gestalt of the places is changing again and now it's just becoming about money you're totally right yeah the the real estate prices there are fucking crazy yep there was uh there's one neighborhood that i was looking at i was just uh i was there visiting a friend i was like wow this place is beautiful it's like near san jose these houses were like a regular it was like, wow, this place is beautiful. It's like near San Jose. These houses were like a regular, it was like a regular house. And it was $9 million.

Yeah. And I was like, what the fuck is that? That's a regular house. It's not even a crazy mansion. It's a beautiful house, but it's just a house. It's a house house. The biggest shock we had was we came to San Francisco and start looking around. And one of the place found was literally a converted, it's a oneroom apartment that is now a tenancy in common or a condo.

And it's a one-bedroom, about 750 square feet. It was $800,000. And I had worked in Michigan for a company that built homes. And basically for 800 grand in Michigan, you own everything you see. Yeah, my God. You have like one of those Ted Nugent compounds. Yeah, you've got your own herd of elk on campus. It's just nuts.

And that's a one bedroom, and it really hasn't changed all that much since then. God. But you have to live in Michigan to ignore it, to enjoy it rather. Yeah. To ignore it. Well, yeah. You have to like 10 Below, and there's no comparison for the cultural broadness of San Francisco. There's a ton of crap to do there and a ton of things to experience.

I don't know that it's worth $800,000 for a 750 square foot apartment, but it's pretty sweet. Yeah. That's a bizarre thing when the amount of wealth in an area becomes so concentrated that regular people just can't live there. They just literally can't afford to. And it's getting crazier and crazier because there's so many people that have made a lot of money in technology and they're centered around that area. I mean, the amount of wealth, the concentrated amount of wealth in San Francisco, just tech wealth, is staggering. And a lot of stuff's coming up from Silicon Valley now back into San Francisco.

It's all close enough that I feel like it's the same thing. It's pretty similar. Now there's even protesters blocking the Google bus, the Google buses that pick up all the the 20-something ivy league graduates who are just you know these wicked wicked smart hard-working people right who go to work for google and they get on their bus with their wi-fi you know and it's so it's perfect little limo bus and then you've got regular working-class joes parking in front of it with a picket sign and you know sometimes rattling the bus or throwing stuff at the bus why what it's even gotten a little bit scary. They're really, people are blaming

the Silicon Valley tech companies for the rents rising to the point where if you just want to work at like a bookstore, if that's what your calling is, you want to do that, you can't afford to live in the city at all anymore. So people are, are super mad that they can't live where they want to live. It's a, it's a strange situation. That's very strange. I don't think I can recall any place where that's happened before that I know about. I can't think of it. I can't think of it either. But to be one of these people on the bus and all of a sudden the populace is rising up against you and burning torches and banging signs against the bus, that's got to be pretty scary. Yeah. And all you're there is working. You're there trying to do what you've gone to school for and what you're practicing. People are so fucking strange. It's hard. It's

super hard for the people working for these companies to relate, I think, because I've had the opportunity to go do a couple of things on the Google campus with a company I used to work for. And they are super hardworking people, super nice, really creative and clever. I mean, all of these cultures are very open in letting people pursue what they want to pursue. And they just bust their ass. They work really hard. So they can't really relate.

I have a good friend who works for Google. She loves it there. I think that what you're dealing with when you see a situation like this is this insane new wealth, this insane tech wealth, this industry that's over the last couple of decades become so gigantic. The amount of money that it generates is just freakish.

When you think about cell phones, think about any other product that you sell. You might have one, and this guy might have one. Say if you make vacuum sealers for food. I like to keep my vegetables fresh. How many of those are you going to sell? Yeah. You sell cell phones, though. You're going to sell a fuckload.

They catch on, yeah. There's billions of people on the planet. The amount of money you can make if you sell cell phones is fucking beyond comprehension. Right. Think about one of these, how many of these they sold.

They're the lumber barons and the steel barons and the oil barons, all those different times in history. But even bigger. The Vanderbilts came out and just had

crazy amounts of money and all the steel and everything else. It's exactly the same thing. It's this brand new thing that all of the world needs and it's controlled by a limited amount of people.

But the people are smart as fuck. Yeah. It's really a good amount of people. You know, if you're going to be controlled by a limited amount of people. But the people are smart as fuck. Yeah, they're pretty smart. It's really a good amount of people. If you're going to be controlled by the right amount of people or the right kind of people. The Google people, not bad. But now they have killer robots, though. Now they've got a shit ton of killer robots.

They're preparing because, seriously, man, if other people get killer robots first, we've got a real problem. It's the Oppenheimer dilemma. Do you make the atomic bomb knowing it's going to kill millions of people, or do you let the Russians make it first and kill millions of people over here? Or the Germans, rather. It's the same dilemma. Well, Google's cutting out the middleman of the government.

Just like, we're going to be able to protect our own stuff. It'll be fine. What do you think? Yeah, Google's going to start buying arms companies next. Probably. Or making their own. The robotics people are like, look, I know a couple of people. I make a robot dog, but I also know Mike, my neighbor, he makes missiles.

What do you guys want to do? You know, you could fucking hiring the greatest engineers of our day to build missiles for Google. Come over. We'll have a kegger. We'll put all this stuff together. And one day, in like 2024, Google just shows up at the federal reserve and goes stop it's over get get out everybody get out we run things now yeah you know we don't we don't want your money anymore it doesn't mean anything and that's not incredibly i mean it's not conspiracy

theory to say it's not all that far-fetched if they buy up the weapons making technology and have all this stuff their ability to influence policy could get pretty significant. Well, also our ability to, first of all, as citizens, to recognize that we're getting screwed over on a daily basis and also recognize that the government is invading our privacy on a daily basis. When people start recognizing those kind of things and you look at some of the lawsuits that have been brought up against people some of uh some of the the people that have lost like giant chunks of their time and their life fighting off the government whether it's because of taxes or because of regulations

or whatever the fuck it is if you stopped and thought about like engineering that and making it the way it is you would never you would never design it this way the way it is is so gross and the irs can go after people and that you know if you don't pay your taxes they just throw you in prison they want you to be so scared that you have to pay them their money if you don't pay them their money they treat you as if you're a dangerous criminal that you have to take out of society and lock into you are a dangerous criminal that you have to take out of society and lock into a cage. You are a dangerous criminal to them. They're an organization and a company just like anybody else. And if the information gets out there that, yeah, there's really no repercussions for

you not giving us our revenue, then they're screwed. Then enough people say, yeah, we're not paying you and you've lost your income and your company goes under. Did you hear about the Beanie Babies thing? No. The guy who created Beanie Babies paid a billion dollars in taxes. And they're like, not enough. What?

They're like, we need like a billion, five million. He hid some money somewhere. He had some money. This motherfucker, if he paid a billion dollars in taxes, he's probably on coke all day and has no idea how much money he has. Probably had nothing to do with this thing. You know, like hiding money. Like, what are you talking about? He's fucking made Beanie Babies.

He's not like, you know, he's not a nuclear engineer. He's a crazy fuck that made something that for some reason made him so much money that he paid a billion dollars in taxes. But they're like, you need to pay some more. That's a lot of money in taxes. You think a billion dollars in taxes would be for frigging Beanie Babies would be good. It's ridiculous. It's completely ridiculous. So when Google takes over

and Skynet goes live, that guy will get his money back. Dissolve the Federal Reserve. Pay him in cold hands. I'm not sure Google's the Robin Hood of Beanie Baby founders, but maybe. I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that our government

and not just our government, but our military is run through technology in just a few years to the point where it's going to get real gray, whether or not, like, who has power? Is it going to be country? Is it going to remain countries? Is it going to eventually shift into corporations or corporate entities? We were talking about, like, how much money there is in technology and creating things, at a certain point in time, the technology is going to reach the point where people can essentially do whatever the fuck they want. Well, there's the ongoing question, are the corporations actually running things now already?

Has the government become a relatively puppet structure based on who's pumping the most campaign money in, et cetera? And now you're talking about artificial intelligence coming into the play, is that what you're saying? Yes, yes, yes. And I think it's absolutely the case that the corporations have gotten to an insanely influential place,

an insanely powerful ability to control the results of elections and the way the world works. I mean, it's really incredible. But what's most incredible is that it's a bunch of people. The corporation is just a bunch of people. A bunch of people are doing some things that's, like, really bad for humanity. They're making fuckloads of money. But it's good for the corporation.

It's good for the corporation. You look at it from, you know, the artificial organism structure of a corporation. You know, the Coca-Cola company has been alive longer than any human being on the planet. Right. You know, now you've got whatever these, and it's a lot like the memes of religion or, or national nationalism, these structures, the self-replicating and self-supporting structures have been built up and they live longer than we do. So now corporations, yeah, well, they're not people, but at the same time, that's a successful organism right there.

And it's fighting to stay alive and dominate how it wants to dominate. Yeah, that's the real skinny on it, right? It's a thing. It's a system. It's an operating entity. And it's made out of people, but it really likes money more than it likes people. I mean, it's really amazing that people have created something that's not entirely self-serving and it protects itself as a weird structure of ones and zeros and buildings and paper. To me, it's really a borderline organism because as a collective organism, all of the people working within it, there's a certain pattern of behaviors that have led to those corporations being successful and living for 100 years or longer. And only people who are following those patterns of behaviors mostly are going

to be successful in there. So it's self-perpetuating. So you've got this certain type of behavior, which has always put the company first, screw the rules, screw people, go out and make things profitable. That works. So these companies grow and continue to live and spawn off other companies. And it just keeps on going. So, I mean, to me, they're not living organisms only by a technicality of definition. That's a fascinating way of looking at it. Now, as an author, when you see something like this, that you see perhaps like a good majority of the people have probably overlooked, when you look at it like that, I mean, that's, it's, it's gotta seem like almost like a work of fiction. I mean,

if, if the system in and of itself, like the way it's constructed now, and just the idea of sending people to go kill people, they don't even know on the other side of the world, like all of it, it's just so bizarre. If,

if it didn't exist in this form and someone brought it to you as a script, you'd be like, whoa, the fucking corporation. It's crazy. It's alive. It's's alive and it's eating people look at how many people the corporation kills oh my god it's eating people yeah well you know even going back to the skynet concept of you know that's science fiction 25 years ago and you are

now getting to the point with the globe you know the global nature of the internet and everything else if you were able to get some kind of powerful online entity or artificial intelligence, that's not at all far-fetched anymore. Not even a little. That somebody could control everything. Not even a little. It seems inevitable, right? I don't know about inevitable. It's definitely, definitely possible.

The leap from having a system that can communicate everywhere all over the world at one time and then jumping to something that can actually make its own decisions and decide its own destiny. I think that's, and I know very little about it, but that's way bigger than people think. It's not just, oh, we're going to make this smart robot, and it will go through and make decisions. Self-determination is a whole different ballgame that they haven't been able to tackle yet. So it's definitely possible. It doesn't seem inevitable to me. To me, it seems inevitable. It seems inevitable just based on the exponential growth of technology, meaning that 1 equals over and just started raping people and eating them, it would probably start out a lot like what we're seeing on the news. We'd have quick flashes of a new robot technology. And then six months later, Sony releases another one.

And then five months after that, they create some sort of an artificial brain cell that actually works better than a real brain cell. They start inserting them into people's bodies. And then you cut to 50 years later, apocalyptic nightmare scenario, robots eating cinder blocks, you know, running down the street, finding the last vestiges of humanity, hiding under sewer pipes. Well, my hope is if it ever does come down to that there's still you know people are really good at doing labor and figuring things out and they also breed and make more copies of themselves so if you're a robot artificial intelligence killing all the people's a complete and utter waste of time why would you do that here's this relatively free labor pool that makes

more copies of itself and continues to do what you want, which goes back to the concept of the Coca-Cola brand or IBM or British companies that are five and 600 years old. You know, that's sort of already happening. There are self-determined human beings who are serving the greater purpose of the overlord organization. So your artificial intelligence could easily be like that. So I'm hoping that when we get taken over, they'll just want to give us jobs and they'll want us to be happy workers. I think they'll find us so inefficient over, they'll just want to give us jobs. And they'll want us to be happy workers.

I think they'll find us so inefficient and stupid, they'll want to eat us. I mean, I think they'll treat us the same way we treat chimps. They're like, shut the fuck up and get in the cage. I think if they use us at all, they'll have like a show that amuses them. These are actual real people. The last of the real people. We keep them in this cage, make them fuck,

we treat them like killer whales. Here's a museum. Here's a museum to show you the way things once were. A long time ago, people needed food. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Everybody would laugh.

They'll think it's hilarious. They'll think natural people are just ridiculous. The idea of a natural person. It could easily become redundant and this is a trope that's played on science fiction all the time. And I have it in some of my books too,

which is once you get your artificial race or artificial intelligence to the point where it can reproduce on its own, when robots can make other versions of itself, that's when we're no longer necessary. When something can breed and make copies of itself, and I'm not necessarily talking a big factory to crank things out, although that works, when robots can basically make baby robots that harvest energy

and resources from the environment and get bigger and become an adult and fully functional and capable of carrying on work, then we're screwed. There's no need for us anymore. We're just competition at that point. Yeah, as soon as they figure out how to make better robots, they're like, you guys made a fucking terrible design with us. Let's just fix all of that.

I mean, I wonder if we're arrogant in thinking that our special abilities as people, whether it's our emotions, our creativity, or whatever, that they're actually really special and that they're not replicable. But what if robots are like, oh, dummy, it's so easy to make something like you. You're not even that complex. You guys are based on really pretty obvious emotions, very predictable behavior patterns under stress. You guys are fucking simple.

You like to think you're super complicated because it makes you happy. Well, there's all the stuff we've always thought was complicated or impossible that now we do all the time. And, yes, somebody at some point could crack the chemical code of our behavior. Be like, oh, you just mix a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Boom, next thing you know, this robot's crying because he got his heart broken at the prom code of our behavior. Be like, oh, he just mixed a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Boom, next thing you know, he's crying. This robot's crying because he got his heart broken at the prom, and then boom.

Blade Runner. Yeah, Blade Runner. Those scenes with Rutger Hauer, where Rutger Hauer's dying, and he doesn't want to kill Harrison Ford, but he was thinking about killing him, but he loves and respects life so much that he winds up ultimately not killing him.

That's a fucking powerful movie man and not far off from what would actually happen if you had something and you engineered emotions into it and if you didn't then what do you got you got a fucking city filled with robot psychos that have no emotions you would want to engineer all the same flaws that people have if you wanted to create artificial people but in fact if you did, wouldn't they be a person? Yeah. Wouldn't they be subject to jealousy and poor decision-making and everything outside of drugs because they would be robotic? I'm sure they'd have their own robotic drugs of some kind. Drugs. You know, various viruses and reprogramming and anything you want.

They'd probably like to eat batteries. At some point, well, when they put their tongue to the battery, it's whole different experience at some point it would become indiscernible you couldn't tell the difference um gosh i'm forgetting it but there's that uh something test where you put a blindfold or put a blind between people and if you can't tell the person on the other end of that computer is a robot or a person as a human being you can't tell am i talking to robot or am i talking to human being text form in text? It'll warn voice or text for words, but this is if you get to that point. That's one of the Definitions of we have gotten closer achieved artificial intelligence when you as a human can't tell the difference

That's when you're really close to that and emotions would be a big part of that in the movie It'll show people talking into their phones asking Siri questions googling things on them while they're driving So it'll show those Googling things while they're driving. So it'll show those sort of things. Like they willingly accepted to wait into the robot fold. We're letting them in. Yeah, there's no question. Yeah, we're completely symbiotic now.

Completely. You leave your phone at home, it's like you left your dick behind. Yeah. Like, what do I do now? Do not leave home without my dick. So I'm going back for that phone. It's not good. Yes.

Keep my phone screwed on. And before long, they're going to come up with some solution. It runs on your own body's energy, no longer needing to charge itself in the wall. You could always get it surgically removed. Like, hey, honey, I can always get it surgically removed. Next thing you know, you've got some robot patch on your arm that you're dialing

and it goes straight into your ear. It's coming. Implants are the next, that's the next big wave of all of these things that we carry around all the time we're gonna have little usp ports on our forearms and stick it in that little wireless man everything will be wireless we'll have ocular we'll have ocular either contact lenses or inserts below the iris i would suggest you see everything you turn your wi-fi off because people are going to hack you. You don't want that. Wireless is not good.

It's going to have to be hardwired. We're going to need ports. We're going to need matrix ports. We're too lazy. That's like you want the matrix port. Everybody else is going to be like, man, I've got to reach this from here to there and plug it in. Screw that. Just give me the wireless option.

Do you really think that people are that lazy? Oh, God, yes. There's plenty of people. We're incredibly lazy. There's plenty of people that would plug their headset in that i think there are vastly more who would totally go people were a lazy lazy bunch as a species but you think they got to that point where they're not willing to like plug something into their head that's gonna let them do you know anybody's ever complained they can't find like the remote control and have to get up

and change the channel or something like that? There's a few, but I think there's less people like that than we would like to think. See, this is seditious talk you're having now. You're one of the people who wants to plug in. You don't want the wireless. Google will be watching you, sir. No, I don't mind the wireless. Look, ultimately, it's all going to be probably Tesla-fied.

You know, like Tesla wanted to have electricity in the atmosphere. He wanted to broadcast electricity. And Westinghouse found out what he was trying to do. And like, get the fuck out of here. And they shut his program down. His idea was to wirelessly transmit electricity the same way people wire. You know, they transmit radio waves or transmit Wi-Fi signals. He was going to wirelessly have electricity fucking floating around us in some strange way. I mean, I don't even understand the technology behind it, but I assume that if it was Nikola Tesla that came up with it, this was legit stuff that's never been picked up since.

Well, he wanted to give it away was the other big thing. And that's, you know, the corporations, going back to that talk, the self-defense mechanism of the corporations kicks in. Yeah. If there's a resource that's being given away for free, any corporation providing that resource is in danger of being diminished or being destroyed. So the natural reaction of the group mind of the people in the company is, we got to shut that shit down right now. This is some Alex Jones talk. Yeah. What are you doing? You're for on us but we you know we've seen it with the the edison

company and their reaction to tesla and trying to find ways to stop this technology from coming out because if the technology comes out they no longer have that giant cash cow and that's that's worth fighting for what was the downside was there any downside proposed downside to projecting electricity in the air do you have any idea i don't know that much about it i'm not sure that he had proven it in a large scale like can it really transfer over long distances and still be economically viable and then there's just the general shock of people seeing bolts of lightning flashing across the countryside they're not very comforted by it even though it's exactly the same thing happening you just can't see it because it's in a wire

is that what it would be? You would see the electricity? I'm pretty sure that's what it was. It was just blasting things through the air. You'd probably have to get refilled. A lightning bolt hits your house every time you need more electricity. It's scary. What about a bird? What if a fucking bird was flying by right when you hit the power switch?

I don't know. Would birds be just exploding all through the sky, all throughout cities? Birds are the collateral damage of the power industry. They're getting killed by windmills right now. But could you imagine if people were just turning on their light switches and birds would just explode in the sky? Because the pulse of electricity would come out of your house

and connect you to the tree, the big metal lightning tree. Some poor bird would just be in that path. It'd be boom. It'd be tough living for the birds. You'd be walking down the street, birds exploding over your head. Birds would just start walking, and they'd become one of us,

like a dog or an animal. They'd give up on flying. They would eventually, it's a good point, they would eventually realize through evolution. The robots team up with the birds, and then we're really screwed. Sort of like how a butterfly develops that fake eyeball on his wings to make,

listen, bitch, I'm looking at you. But they're not really looking. They're stupid. Camouflage. They're butterflies. Yeah, nature developed that. It became good for that design to exist. What a bizarre thing that is.

You just have to think about it. How do you explain that? They develop eyeballs on their wings. They just happen. Pull up some of those pictures. There's some mutation where they have a pattern on their wing that makes them, that reacts with the predator. The predator looks at it and goes, that either looks like something I've eaten that tastes horrible, or that looks like something bigger than me and it's dangerous.

And then that butterfly continues on and it happens again and again and again. That's the scientific explanation. But I think there's something nefarious afoot. I think something is afoot. Something mysterious. I don't trust them fucking butterflies. I don't trust them. They're up to something.

They made eyeballs on their wings. I just, I have a hard time believing that was just some sort of a random thing. I think the one that's more disturbing is the caterpillar with eyeballs on its butt. It like lifts its ass up and it's got two big eyes on there. I don't like butts looking back at me. Yeah, I'm not buying it. No, find ones that have eyeballs. There's some incredible

ones where they look like it looks like cat's eyes. Oh, that's so weird. It's so weird. It seems like someone's trolling us. It seems like more evidence that the world is made out of magic. That somehow or another some insect is able to develop these camouflage eyeballs on its wings that are just fantastic. The robots already took over.

We're already experimenting. Now they're like, we're going to keep giving them something and sooner or later they're going to figure this out. And then they give you the eyeballs like, they've got to figure it out now. They've got to know it. Yeah, we just make the world so preposterous that everybody just stops and goes, wait a minute, what the fuck is going on? And then da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, the music starts playing, the curtain draws, and the aliens come out clapping.

Well, we didn't think it was going to take you this long, but here's your prize. There you go. There's no people. Look at that. There's the owl eyes. Oh, yeah. That's nuts. We're all in the Matrix.

I've never seen that one before. We're all in the Matrix. Look at that. There's the owl eyes. Oh, yeah. That's nuts. We're all in the Matrix. I've never seen that one before. We're all in the Matrix. Look at those eyeballs. The first reaction I have looking at that, that's got to be Photoshopped. That's for real? There's a whole series of them. There's a bunch of different kinds of moths, or butterflies rather, that develop these eyeballs on the back of their wings.

So fantastic. I just love the beauty. Yeah, amazing. Like a cat. Those are cat's eyes. That looks like a tiger. That looks like a baby tiger just love the beauty. Yeah. Amazing. Like a cat. Those are cat's eyes. That looks like a tiger. It looks like a baby tiger hiding in the woods, ready to jack you. So you better step, birdie.

Yeah. Don't be eating me. I'm a fucking tiger. That's a tiger. That's frigging amazing. It's incredible. I mean, look, it has eyeballs. Yeah.

If you look in the eye, it looks like, like if you had that tattooed on you and it was an eye, you'd be like, oh, that artist is good. Yeah. That's a good, look at that. Get the fuck out of here. Just get the fuck out of here. That's crazy. It's a cartoon fairy. Totally.

That's so weird. And that's real. I don't buy that that's, I mean, I know that's the answer. I know science would tell you that's the answer, but they didn't see it happen. They weren't there. There's no actual documentation of that particular change. There's magic in the world, my friend. As an author, I'm sure you must agree with me.

I mean, you create fantastic works of fiction. You create entire worlds in your own mind. Well, you get into, you know, the definition of magic can be so broad. And the fact that any one of us being alive at this particular moment is such an astro... The odds against you being here and living this long are so astronomical you can't even calculate them but yet here you are if we were just here a couple hundred years ago yeah and in the fact that we've really only come into our modern day culture in the past two centuries or so so there a lot of things i look at as an author are just staggering

and even looking at something like the butterflies of of course, my first reaction is always, what can I do with that? How can I work that into a story? Because that's real and that's cool and we can do something with it. But yeah, there's a lot of things I look at and even having a decent knowledge of science and evolution and those things you look at and you go, how the fuck did that happen? There's a lot of times I find myself arguing myself like, no, yeah. The myself arguing myself like no yeah the one that gets me is like the the crabs that put crap on their shell have you ever seen these things they put crap on these yeah these crabs will grab whatever happens to be around them and then use the their saliva and glue it to their claws like a boxer crab and it'll glue it'll glue

anemones which are deadly to it, onto its claws. So if another predator comes up, they're like, they put up, they're dukes, they put up two anemones. Look up boxer crab if you guys want to show this. And it wards off predators. And now you can see that anything with that behavior, of course, has a survival advantage. That makes sense.

But at what point does some crazy crab eat a bad piece of fish and get so high that it's like i'm gonna come on cut this off here and put this on my claws and wave it around for a little while so i see stuff like that that's one that always throws me for a loop like how did that first actually happen that and and you know when i talk to my science consultants they break it down into finer finer detail what you say makes perfect sense however however he's got freaking sea anemones on his claws. Yeah. I'm not buying it, bitch. Somebody taught him how to do that.

Or the pom-pom crab. That's a live anemone on his claws and anybody who screws with him is going to get a mouthful of nematocysts. That's what he's up to. That is crazy. Yeah. The ocean itself might as well be an alien world. I mean, it really might as well be on another planet. Yeah. Just stopping, oh, that's one thing, it really might as well be on another planet. Yeah.

Just stopping, oh, that's one thing that I really wanted to talk about with the ocean. This is a crazy fucking thing that I just discovered. You know Sea Shepherd? You know those companies that go out and fight those whalers? They caught this Japanese whaling ship. And the Japanese whaling ship, they have this really sneaky thing they're doing where you're allowed to, under some provision, some unilateral agreement,

you're allowed to whale hunt. You could take a whale if it's for scientific research. So they left in some weird loophole for scientific research. So what these guys do is they go out and they slaughter these whales and then they say it's for scientific research and they what these guys do is they go out and they slaughter these whales, and then they say it's for scientific research, and they just sell the meat. Like, they're whaling.

They're just killing these whales. But the way they're doing it is under this weird loophole in the law. So they're selling some part of the whale maybe for science and then selling... No, they're just selling the meat for food. Huh. They're selling it as...

I mean, they're selling it commercially. But you can see the photos. Did you see the images, Brian? If you go to like Sea Shepherd, one of the more recent stories about it, they got a helicopter and they flew over the boat and took photos of these dead whales. There it is. Just sitting. Yeah, it's dark, man.

Oh, my God. It's really dark. And if you look as they pull back and they show you, there's a website address. And if you go to that website address, there's an English version and a Japanese version. But the images are pretty shocking if you go and look at it online. They even have video of them slaughtering one of the whales. video of them slaughtering one of the whales but to me when i look at that that to me is just like us going to another planet and killing some alien being we would never stand for that if we showed up on mars and mars had whales on it and we just started gutting whales and using them for scientific

research people would go fucking crazy like what are you doing we found this intelligent life form that communicates it has a a voice. It has language. They have some sort of a weird differentiation between different sections of the world, and they have different accents. Yeah, but at the same time, if there's a resource there that we need or someone can make money from, and the propaganda machine kicks in, and we find this alien intelligence, and then your president is on the radio saying this is a significant danger to the human race and we have to act right now because they do all of these horrible things we've watched it on our planet dozen times in our own lifetime where somebody comes out with a propaganda machine and we're so manipulatable that we'd be like oh well

if we don't bomb them first they're gonna bomb us we are scared people get scared especially when they have kids they get kids they get real scared they want to just fucking bomb them first, they're going to bomb us. We are scared. People get scared, especially when they have kids. When they have kids, they get real scared. They want to just fucking bomb them. They're dangerous out there. The Martians have weapons of mass destruction. We got to take them bitches out. But imagine if we went to Mars, we found some intelligent life forms that communicate with language, and we decided to start eating them. Imagine the protests.

Imagine how bad people would freak out. But we don't have any problem with SeaWorld. The whales pretty much aren't hurting anybody. We've established that they aren't hurting anybody. Not hurting anybody and smart. We know that. We know those two things for sure. But you know what?

The thing is nature is so evil herself. Like nature sets whales up, makes it so whales can't defend themselves against killer whales. You know, that's why they call them killer whales. A lot of folks don't know that. They kill whales. They're not whales. They're dolphins. folks don't know that they kill whales they're not whales they're dolphins but they kill whales they're in the the videos of them killing whales are fucked up man they're crazy because they don't it doesn't they don't do it quick you know like they just start eating yeah just chewing off a hunk the one i saw when

i was a little kid it was a national geographic and the first time anybody had ever documented uh an orca pack taking out a whale and it could have been i can't remember what kind of whale it was gray whale or sperm whale and they literally chew on it until it opens its mouth like in pain and then one swims inside the mouth and starts gnawing down the tongue oh god because that's and as far as they could tell like that's the good stuff that's what they actually want is the tongue tastes the best. So somebody gets to go in there and start chewing on that tongue and then they just kill it. It's hard to take

their side. That's a cunty fish. Obviously. It's hard to take the killer whale's side. I mean, I would like to take their side, but the way they treat whales is fucked. And then you realize, well, you know, that's just nature. Nature's just like that. There's going to be

horrific crimes. That's just nature. Nature's just like that. There's going to be horrific crimes. That's what nature's all about. Nature's an endless fight for survival. And if you aren't killing, then you're going to get killed. And that's the way it goes. And if you have no way of recognizing your culture, if you have no way of objectively assessing your situation, if you're stuck in a world where you need constant movement even to

breathe you're constantly i mean they're they're carrying a lot of body mass you need to get fish and they need to feed all the time so they're constantly in movement they don't have any time for self-reflection they don't have a fucking couch where they can kick back with their pipe and watch masterpiece theater and ponder and write poetry and then that poetry can be read by others and if we existed in a world like that, we were just flying around in a three-dimensional space, I don't think we'd be very much different than dogs. Well, we weren't.

And it's the development of agriculture and society and cities and getting that safety that comes with a large number of people working together. That's the only thing that's allowed us to do those things as well. You go back 40, 50,000 years with it was there was no different we'll kill anything that moves kill any kill and eat anything that moves and if you don't do it something's going to kill you and it was only the development of society that allowed people to start writing poetry and making art and doing all those other things yeah the development of a place where you could hang out and not get eaten yeah and. And where you had food stockpiled,

and you're like, okay, I got all that covered. I got a wall, I got a gun, I got a steak. Okay, I'm good. I got nothing to do for at least the next week. Next thing you know, you're drinking wine and writing things down. And then people read that shit and go, dude, I thought that too, but I just never put it to words.

And then the whole culture expands from there. Yeah. That's never going to happen with dolphins. They got to keep moving. Yeah, yeah. You're never going to learn shit. Not going to happen with dolphins. They got to keep moving. Yeah. You're never going to learn shit. Not going to happen with dolphins. I don't think they're very much different than us.

I know that's a very hippie thing to say, but I had an experience once on a boat with dolphins playing, wild dolphins in Hawaii. It changed me for life. Changed me for life. Just looking in their eyes, experiencing, laughing with them and yelling at them and them doing tricks for you. I mean, they were with us and yelling at them and them doing tricks for you i mean they was they were with us for over an hour and i was high as fuck god damn i was high i was so high i definitely shouldn't have been on a boat but there i was and when you're that high

you're very vulnerable and very sensitive and very very introspective and almost painfully so sometimes so me looking in the eyes of that dolphin had me absolutely convinced, just watching these things play, that I'm probably being extremely prejudiced in how highly I value human cognition and our ability to change our environment being the ultimate measure of intelligence. Well, they couldn't change their environment,

but they have absolutely no need to because they're perfectly adapted to their environment. They're perfect. They don't have to worry about sharks. They don't have to worry about shit. All they have to worry about is those cunty killer whales. Killer whales eat them. That's what's interesting about dolphins.

They're one of the few species on the planet that kill for fun because they've got so much brain power. They're like, I'm just going to go kill that. They'll kill other dolphins. Sharks. They'll infanticide. If there are baby dolphins that aren't produced by them, they'll kill them. Dolphins rape, which is messed up. One of the few species that goes out and rapes.

So with big brains comes big problems, I guess. I thought all species kind of raped. I don't know. I don't think so. Really? No, it's not a very common thing. You heard about the puffer fish, right? Yeah, the dolphins.

They're getting high with puffer fish. But like chimps, do chimps rape? Chimps do too, yeah. They will, yeah. And what about cats can't? Because the female cats are too badass. That's a dangerous move. I don't think you want to go there, yeah.

Fuck that. You get cut up. The bitches will fucking hurt you. Imagine trying to rape a lion. In pack animals, you'll get driving out the alpha male of the pack. And then the new guy's the alpha male and he gets the spoils of war, so to speak. But I don't think there's an enormous amount of straight up rape in the animal kingdom outside of the more intelligent animals. Well, it's also, there's probably no social stigma to fucking.

And probably the female tigers want to have sex as well. So there's not as much of a need to fuck or to rape each other. Doesn't that make sense? Like if wild animals, if it just became real rapey, like wild animals just rape each other, they would never eat anything. They wouldn't get any work done.

Well, it could be, you know, speaking out of my ass here, but the dolphin thing could be part of that free time thing. Dude, that's our whole show, speaking out of our ass. They don't have any... 436 episodes. No significant predators other than humans. They don't even really- 436 episodes. No significant predators other than humans.

They don't even really, they're not even really all that afraid of sharks. And they don't have to worry about their environment. They're perfectly adapted. And they are smart, so they got time to think about stuff. Like, you know, look at the dorsal fin on that girl. You know, like, maybe they think too much. Well, the killer whales don't give a fuck if they think. They'll eat them.

Yeah. They go around eating dolphins. Oh, they kill everything. Yeah. They're the best. They don't care. They know they think they'll eat them. Yeah. They go around eating dolphins. Oh, they kill everything. Yeah. They're the best. They don't care. They know they're smart. Like, so what?

Yeah. So you're smart too. Fuck you. So you're not a fish. Oh, so you breathe air? Yeah. It seems like everything smart breathes air. Isn't that interesting?

Nothing smart figured out gills. No. It's all mammalians. It's all marine mammals. Nothing really smart. There's some people who think that the octopus and squids are really wicked smart, like being able to be tool users and figure out puzzles significantly. But yeah, that's the only aquatic breathing animal that I can think of.

Here's the problem with that argument. They don't have any houses and they get eaten by fish. Yeah. That's ridiculous. They're not that fucking smart. They're not that smart. So they know how to open a jar. I can teach a dog to open a jar.

Get in that jar and close the lid behind you and you're home free. That is not hard. A three-year-old can open a fucking jar. That's so stupid to think that they're super intelligent. They have also the ability to communicate with their skin, which I find incredibly fascinating. It's amazing to watch. That's just nuts.

The visual communication. They used to think at one time that it was just camouflage, that they were just adapting to their environment, which they're also capable of doing. But they also somehow or another communicate with each other by their skin, by the way they look. And they think that that squid ink may serve two purposes. It may, one, try to ward off predators in some way, create confusion, allow it to escape. But also it might be like eraser fluid. Like, forget what I just said.

That's all bullshit. Let's just wipe that out. Yeah. There's some interesting work done on octopus and octopi communication. I don't know if you've ever seen videos of cuttlefish hunting, but using the patterns on their body to hypnotize their prey but i i've got a book called earth core fiction book and the whole race in that book is based on the cuttlefish so all of their

communication is almost non there's almost no verbal it's all visual and it's the patterns changing on their skin which is how they talk to each other and how they hunt as a pack wow yeah it's pretty pretty sweet it's pretty sweet that's their skin, which is how they talk to each other and how they hunt as a pack. Wow. Yeah. It's pretty sweet. It's pretty sweet. That's so wild. I wonder how wolves communicate. Like when wolves decide they're going to sneak up on somebody. Like if they do something, like if they have a situation, like wolves, like they'll corner an animal.

Like they'll have like some will go this way and others will wait for them on the other end. Like they somehow or another communicate with each other. I wonder what they're doing. That's probably evolved. We did this and it worked so but they are they are smart as shit and they are capable of remembering okay you guys got you guys got the rounder roll make sure they don't blank out they don't flank out to the side here's the guys pushing and then yeah these things have cascading color on their body what do you think they do it with though i mean are they doing it with when they're I mean, are they doing it with, when you're talking about wolves, are they doing it with smells or using pheromones?

Like, how are they communicating? They, from what I know about it, they're actually, they teach the puppies and the young ones how to do it. Like, teaching them, like, you're going to go here or they will follow the adult. And they, it's a learned skill. It's just like a pack of humans hunting. And they just know. Because these are, they're brought up brought up like your role is this. And then as they become more dominant in the pack, they change their role in the hunting pack. You've seen, I'm sure you've

seen the video of the chimpanzees organizing an armed party to go after monkeys. No, I don't think I've seen this. It's so crazy. so crazy. It's one of the weirdest videos. And it was one of the first instances where they were completely sure the chimpanzees were not just vegetarians. Where they knew the chimpanzees were not just carnivorous, but they were eating primates. And have you seen that, Brian? Have we ever showed that video? I think so. Show the video of the chimpanzee eating a monkey because it's fucked.

This one, right? The team up to... Yes, BBC, from the BBC. Yeah. So they have all these monkeys in the trees. chimpanzee eating a monkey because it's it's fucked this one right the team up yes bbc from the bbc yeah so they um they have all these uh monkeys in the trees and what they do is they send chimps after them to chase them and they start you know like swinging on the trees and then on the other end they have chimps waiting as the monkeys try to escape so they've herded them into this area where these dominant chimps will be waiting and the chimps will

attack the monkeys in the trees. But they corner them. They trap them. They get them on the sides and they get them in the front and they corral them into an area where other chimps are waiting and then they grab them. But it's, they figure that out. Like, how do they organize that? Do they talk about it? How do they know?

How do I know there's going to be people on the other end or chimps on the other end waiting when I chase these monkeys down? That's pretty advanced. That's super advanced. They've somehow or another figured out a way to talk to each other and say, look, man, I want to eat a monkey. You guys want to eat some monkeys? This is how we do it. They hide in the trees.

What we got to do is chase them down there and Mike and Bob, you guys will stand on the corners, chase them this way, and then Tommy at the end is just going to gather them all up and we're going to eat. That's a killer question. How do they communicate that? That would take people, like if a bunch of random people were stranded on a deserted island and they had to figure out how to hunt, it would take them until they were on the brink of starvation until they figured that out. They'd be like, well, let's go try to get some food. But it would take a long fucking time to provide strategies.

The trippy thought with that to me is not knowing how long they've been exhibiting this behavior, that's exactly how they catch monkeys and orangutans and chimpanzees. So was somebody watching the humans do this and go, that shit works great. I don't think so, but it might. Because it's not like we have a lot of evidence of them killing chimpanzees before.

They might literally have developed that from watching how we do it to them, which is fucked. That's crazy. Most likely, though, that they're just smart and they figured it out. They're smart. Do you get that video? Yeah. Jamie told me that that's the video that every time we play that they yank us off YouTube, though.

Oh, really? But we could show great vape and a monkey. Oh, that's very realistic. They yank us off YouTube just for that? Yeah, that one. Is it a BBC one? Fucking BBC. It's the internet, bitch.

You're never going to win. You're never going to win. You're never going to beat the internet. But the way they treat monkeys and the way we treat whales, the way we treat killer whales, it really is a perplexing question. Like, what will the next thing, how will that treat us?

If there is an artificially intelligent, super genius robot that becomes some sort of a synthetic organic thing that's almost indistinguishable from humans, but infinitely smarter, how is it going to deal with us? Is it going to deal with us the way we deal with the chimps or the way the chimps deal with the monkeys or the way we deal with the dolphins or the way the killer whales deal with the dolphins? How's it going to deal with us? We're not setting a very good precedent basically why would you want to keep us around and make us be lazy shitty unproductive workers that are really angry that our robot overlords have taken over right or there's just the the basic problem we're we're too smart would you want to keep

some if the if we had monkeys in the la area and they walked around with switchblades and guns and every now and then would start killing people you'd be be like, we got to get rid of those monkeys. And you know, this is a funny conversation. Because whenever you have this conversation about artificial intelligence, you're going to get a lot of naysayers. And a lot of people that claim that they know what's going to happen. Like, listen, that's not going to happen. We would never allow it. We would never engineer that.

We would never. I get you. I get you. However, it might. You would never. That guy would never allow it. That guy would never engineer it. There's always somebody out there who's just either for the money or is like, God, I wonder if I can do that.

That's the driving force behind discovery is I wonder if I can make that happen. And this insatiable need to push technology, just insatiable. The drive that people have to continue to innovate is spectacular. Every day there's some new goddamn 110-inch TV that's 44K. Michael Bay. Yeah, what happened with that? Michael Bay was

doing a presentation and the prompter failed and he locked up up there. He couldn't even just wing it. All he had to do was talk about what he does as a director. Like, I make movies. And he tried to do it but then he couldn't even just wing it like he couldn't like all he had to do is talk about what he does as a director like I make movies and he tried to do it but then he stopped and then the guys like you know you want we just talked about these new TVs you know these curved TVs and he could have just said yeah they look beautiful or something but instead he starts mumbling

and then just walk and goes excuse me and walks off the stage oh so he bombed yeah he got panicky it happens happens to the best of us. You should watch it. I don't want to watch it. It's really creepy. That's not good to see. It's like watching a really bad comedian right before you go on stage. If someone's up there just bombing and then you have to go on stage, you don't think anything could be funny. It's dangerous for you.

If you get a sniff of his craziness, some guy is petrified, you might think of that. That might enter into your head. It's like a single cell and then start dividing like a little virus, a little mental virus. Very dangerous. And that can take your performance down. Most likely, no. But I don't like the feeling.

I don't like watching people bomb. It feels gross. I know what it feels like. I got to get out of there. It's very hard to go on after. This is why I think it might actually be affecting people. This is also why I think people enjoy inspiration. I think when you see someone who's really bad,

you really don't think that anything's good. You think this is what life is. Life is really terrible. Life is terrible comedy. Someone's bombing on stage. On the opposite, when you see something really spectacular it raises your standards for things that you could accomplish things that you could be excited to see it raises your standards if you go to see avatar or some spectacular movie it's

you leave there and you would you would think it would be the inverse of that oh i want to follow the guy who bombed because even if i phone it in, I'm going to do well. And I don't want to follow Avatar because it's spectacular and I'm going to look poor. Ha. Well, some people do have that mindset. Some people have this really ultra-competitive mindset. And a lot of comics like to bring terrible comedians with them on the road. They bring guys who just really shouldn't even be going on stage.

And the comic is really pretty good. So it'll be like this death show for 20 minutes. And then the comic comes in like a hero and everybody's super excited to see him. I've seen that happen on numerous occasions, but that's famine mentality, that famine mentality that there's not enough for everybody, that the famine mentality that, you know, you have to get all the accolades and anybody that's threatening whatsoever to your, you know, You have to get all the accolades, and anybody that's threatening whatsoever to your talent, to your abilities, it should be just minimalized. That's a dangerous mindset to have, especially in the world of comedy. But I think if you instead choose to be inspired by good performances, then everything becomes inspirational.

It's not like everything's competitive. Instead of it being competitive, you get all the same juice that you would get from the competitive aspect of it, but you get it in a positive form. Instead, you're inspired and happy for people's success, happy for great movies, happy for great music, happy for great comedy. When you see great things, inspired by them. So everywhere around you, you see inspiration. Instead of everywhere around you, you're seeing competition, people doing better than you, something that diminishes your idea of who you are as a person because you don't measure up on paper to Michael Bay or this guy or that guy. Instead of that, it's the opposite. Instead, the mentality is you're constantly being inspired. It's a matter of engineering your thoughts. That's all it really is. Yeah, and I've got significant,

I've had, it's better now, but I've had significant issues with other authors. You know, people start out the same time I did roughly and have similar career arcs moving up and then they just catch lightning by the tail for something and the next thing you know, they're huge. And I'm like, we're basically working equally everybody's working their fingers to the bone like every other profession anybody who succeeds

anywhere is probably working their ass off and then you just watch something blow up and you're like that's that's difficult to overcome you're like oh that guy got all the goodies that guy got there first um and you know this goodies for you oh yeah yeah and it's like you say it's a lot a lot of it has been adjusting the perspective you have have to step back and say, I'm still doing really well. And I'm making a lot of people really happy with my stories and my books. And I can now aspire to get to that level. So I have to write something better and market it better and connect better and finally get that out there. Well, I think sometimes it's just a matter of people finding out about it. It's really that simple. It's like the product is there for a long time, but there's so much product. You walk into a Barnes

and Noble and start roaming through the fiction section and find a bunch of authors you don't know. And you read the back of the book and you see a few recommendations that you probably respect. So you're like, fuck it, I'll take a chance. But for the most part, the choices are endless and new books are coming out constantly. It's difficult to get seen. It's difficult to get discovered. And the exposure is the biggest thing. And people hearing about what you do and then maybe hearing two or three times for their familiarity. Like, this is my second time on the show. And the first time, we got a ton of new readers.

People were like, God, that guy sounds pretty cool. Let me check out his books. And we've got all these fans now. Now, on the second time, maybe you get more. And all of that effort, the next book's out. It's called Pandemic. It's out January 21st. And just trying to get people exposed to it

so that they can say, that sounds like my cup of tea. Or yeah, I don't think I'd be interested in that. That's the real game. It's not getting people to read or forcing people to read it. It's just a matter of if nobody's ever heard of me, they don't get the opportunity to make that decision if my stuff is in their alley or not. getting people to read or forcing people to read it. It's just a matter of if nobody's ever heard of me, they don't get the opportunity to make that decision if my stuff is in their alley or not. Does that get in the way at all of the creative process for you?

Is it like an unwanted annoyance, like this extra thing of trying to promote and trying to figure out how to promote? And then would it be easier for you if you could get past that and get to this Stephen King point where all you have to do is just write shit? Sure. Anybody getting to the Anne Rice, Stephen King, Dean Kuntz, any of those levels where they just flat out, he doesn't have to worry about it anymore. Stephen King could give a crap about marketing because that's all going to get taken care of for him.

He's earned that and he's totally fine. So we do, yeah, I put a lot of time into marketing and trying different things to get the word out. And all of that, every minute I spend doing that is a minute I'm not creating or refining a story. Like one of the things we did today was for all of the listeners, remember that book I told you about last time, Title Fight, which was the science fiction MMA? We decided we're just going to give that away to all your listeners through January. If they go to our website, scottsigler.com. Oh, it's up on the screen right there. Who is that?

That is not a fighter. No, that's the one you said. You asked me if I was writing gay porn last time. That's right. That's right. That looks like Husamal or Parhares. There's a couple of guys that look like that. The biggest lift ever.

Mark Coleman used to look like that to some extent. No? He wasn't even that big. Yeah, he was huge. But if anybody goes to that store and puts that in their cart and then uses the code DEATHSQUAD, they get that e-book for free. Oh, that's beautiful. They can read it on their computer. They can read it on their tablet, on their Kindle, et cetera.

Awesome. So these are the kind of things that, and it's not like, you know, the Stephen Kings and the Joe Hills don't still do, or their people do that marketing stuff for them. But yeah, we have to do things like that to be like, just like, I know if you read my shit, I'm going to own you. It's just that simple. Pull up Mark Kerr. Mark Kerr was the only MMA fighter that really looked like that. They actually did a fascinating documentary on Mark Kerr. Did you ever see that? No, I the smashing machine it's called the smashing machine it is fucking dark yeah it's deep because mark was like super super open with them and like

while he was filming this documentary they were doing this documentary on this unstoppable mma fighter this guy was his wrestler who was just destroying people he's built like a fucking superhero super athlete taking people down and smashing them. No, that's when he's fat. You've got to get him when he's young. You've got to get him when he's young. Mark Kerr, huge. Just find an image of him when he was just unbelievably huge.

So anyway, this documentary, they start doing this documentary, and along the lines, it exposes his drug use. And he's open when he shoots up right in front of these people. And they capture this guy Completely spiraling out of control. They just come in at the right moment as they're filming this documentary and catch this guy It was like one of the best fighters in the world Completely spiraling on camera shooting up. You got to just get a picture of him when he was in his prime There's a you know, there's some photos of him like fighting in the ufc yeah that's that's him holy cat yeah get it oh that doesn't work look at the size of that motherfucker that i mean that

was that was when they were calling him the smashing machine uh-huh he was 265 pounds of american muscle uh-huh and mexican supplements and he was smashing people. But along the way, he developed an addiction to, I believe it was opiates. I think he was shooting up. Look how fucking big he was, dude. Are you shitting me? And did he just kind of take himself out or did he get beat and go down a...

He started going down. He started getting beat. Well, he was doing drugs. He was having a real drug problem and he was fighting while he was addicted to drugs. Okay. And I think he eventually went and became a car salesman but the um i think it's an important documentary it's an important not just from the point of view of someone who um is uh having a

serious problem with drugs but it's also steroids he had a you know he's absolutely on massive amounts of steroids and he was also fighting in MMA, which is the thing about traumatic brain injuries and punches and kicks that you take. It's like sometimes the cumulative damage can lead these guys to be like really depressed and suicidal and crazy. If they sustain too much damage, if they're not really careful about it,

if they don't give themselves enough time to recover, they can get really depressed. So here's this guy taking shots to the head all the time Taking morphine or heroin or whatever the fuck is taking you know and they caught him in this dog perfect perfect timing for right when it All fell apart they came in thinking he was the baddest motherfucker on earth And they left with this really in-depth piece on a guy whose life is being absorbed by drugs Drugs are just stealing his life just taking it in little pieces you know and he wanted to check that out he wound up fighting

later in his career like no steroids no drugs a completely different body looked like a guy just stepped out of a bar it was really strange how'd he do at the end is he still terrible getting destroyed oh geez um pull up a picture of Mark Kerr fat. I like the guy. I'm not teasing him. I mean, this is just the reality of who he was at the end. Right. Look at him. That's what he looked like at the end.

Wow. Yeah. Quite a difference. Yeah. Oh, the before and after. Oh, my God. It was incredible. And I saw him fight a couple times live when he was in that state,

and I saw him fight live when he was the destroyer. It was shocking, really shocking stuff. But that world is shocking. That's a crazy world, the world of fighting with your body. Do you think eventually they're going to get to the point where, because usually guys are losing three of their last four or their last three, and then they retire. Is it going to get to a point where UFC is going to step in and be like, yeah, we're just going to go ahead and make a decision for you?

Oh, they certainly have. They've done that to many fighters. Yeah. Yeah. They've retired quite a few fighters. Chuck Liddell is the most obvious example. Right. Because he was like one of the greatest champions ever.

And Dana and him are very good friends. And at the end of Chuck's career, Chuck asked for one more fight. He wanted to fight Rich Franklin. He lost that fight. And he's like, that's it. We're good. That's it. I asked for one more fight. He wanted to fight Rich Franklin. He lost that fight. And he's like, that's it. We're good. That's it. I got to step away.

So he realized it was time. The Arnold. Arnold's 60. What's a brother going to do? He also doesn't look like that now. He also is training for the Conan movie. Oh, thank goodness. Is he doing a King Conan finally?

Yes. God, thank goodness. King Conan. That's right. You're a Robert E. Howard fan. Yeah. Yeah. Did we talk about Robert E. Howard last time?

I don't think so, but that was my goal. After watching the first two Conan movies and even read Sonya back in the day, I'm like, I want to write King Conan. Never got to the point where I could talk to anybody, have any contacts. I'm like, that movie's got to get made because it's perfect now. It's the perfect age for it. It could be spectacular. Yeah, folks don't know that Robert E. Howard made Conan in many different eras. It wasn't just a young, virile, powerful Conan. He also made King Conan when Conan was the king of Samaria. I think so. Conan the Samarian. Yeah. Well, he was a Samarian, but I don't think he was a king of that. I think he took over some new

place. I don't remember. I don't remember either. They were great fucking books though. Those, those books sort of in my mind, like kind of defined my childhood when I really got fascinated with fantasy and that kind of shit. It was the Robert E. Howard books. Crawl, was it Call the Conqueror? Call the Conqueror? Yeah. That was so good. Yeah.

The Cyclops in that movie. Well, the movie was just a shit version of the books, really. Yeah, the movie was fun, but it's probably dated now. If you probably watch it now, you'd hate it. Well, yeah, I don't go back and watch the movies. The sci-fi movies I loved when I was a kid, with the exception of Predator and Aliens, just don't watch them anymore.

You can't. It ruins everything. You really can't. But Robert E. Howard created some amazing Conan books that never really have been captured correctly. They did a little bit better with the new Conan, the new guy. I think the new guy is

first of all, way more realistic, way more like the actual Conan. He's an enormous guy. He's not like a bodybuilder. Go to the new Conan guy, Jason Momoa. I met him at a UFC too. Very nice guy. And he's fucking huge. This kid

is like six foot six. Just this perfect specimen of manhood. He's never going to make it out alive. He's going to fuck so much that he's going to die. There's no way he can avoid it. If I was a woman. Here lie Jason Momoa. He fucked himself to death. He fucked himself to death. He's six foot six and he's a beautiful man.

And he's a movie star. There's no way. He doesn't have, there's no six foot six and he's a beautiful man. And he's a movie star. There's no way. He doesn't have, there's no way he gets it together. Look at that. Get the fuck out of here. Just get the fuck out of here. Come on. I didn't watch the new one.

I didn't watch the new one because I just didn't want the old one to be, I didn't want them to sully the original Conan because I'm a giant fan of that movie. They only sullied it in like half the movie. Okay. If you could just cut out half the movie and have that movie have no ending and like, it was a good effort. It was a good attempt. I think ultimately what Conan needs and deserves is that guy is the perfect Conan.

He's a good actor. He looks like a savage. Keep that. Keep him as the Conan. And just get a real writer who's a real fucking crazy person who can come up with something badass and follow the Robert E. Howard script. Follow what that guy, and then do it through the eyes of like a real visionary.

Get a real James Cameron type dude or how about Martin Scorsese does Conan? How about you have a movie where it's like a really dark fantasy movie that plays out like a real film instead of plays out like some bullshit comic book. That's always the thing that's confused the crap out of me, the crappy Marvel movies they made when I was a kid. Like, why, or the old Spider-Man TV show when I was a little kid. I'm like, when is he going to fight a supervillain?

I don't give a shit if he's stopping bank robbers. And it never made any sense to me that, like, comic books tell these stories that are massively popular. Why don't you just tell that story? Why do you think you have to reinvent everything? And the Conan books would be a similar thing. Like, this already entertained a large percentage of the planet at one time. It's not dated because there's no, you know, 19th century technology.

Just tell the same friggin' story. Yeah, tell the story. And now with the new technology, the fuckin' monsters can be insane. Did you see The Hobbit? No, I haven't seen The Hobbit yet. Schmarg. Oh, that dragon is worth seeing the whole movie

just to see that dragon. That reminds me. That's what I wanted to... I haven't seen it, but one of the funniest things ever is when news reporters have to talk about that movie because that smog sounds... They always go, smog.

Up next, the distillations of smeg. And they always shake. Smog. Smeg. I am fire. Speaking of monsters, because we're closing in on the option for Nocturnal, one of my books, that's going to be done by Lloyd Levin as a TV show. And he's the guy who did Hellboy and Hellboy 2. Fucking A, man.

Dude knows his monsters like nobody's business. who did Hellboy and Hellboy 2. Fucking A, man. Dude knows his monsters like nobody's business. That's amazing. Congratulations. Thank you. But this happened because of your show. We had one of your listeners'

name is Nikki Monta... Gosh darn it. Montazaman? Is that right, A? Yeah. Nikki Montazaman. She works for a woman named Lucy Steele,

who's an agent at the Paradigm Agency in New York. So I was on your show. Nikki heard it and said, wow, that nocturnal sounds really cool and reads it. And then it goes to her boss and says, I think this is significant. You need to read it. Her boss reads it.

Lucy reads it, contacts my print agent. We were done with our current film agent at the time. We'd worked together five years. Great guy, but we didn't make anything happen. So time to change something. So we talked to Lucy. Lucy takes over. And now we're almost, not only almost closed on Nocturnal, but then the guys, the people who make Justified and Elementary are closing in an option for the Infected series, of which Pandemic is the last book.

That's incredible. So this lady's kicking ass, and it came because of Nikki is the last book. That's incredible. So this lady's kicking ass, and it came because of Nikki listening to your show. That's incredible. Cut to three years from now, Scott's on coke, laying in his mansion in his underwear, doing a new Red Sonja remake with Miley Cyrus.

Yes. Smashing the champagne bottle on the ground because there's nothing left. Fuck! Where's my fucking drink? So just a quick thank you out to Nikki if she's listening to this. That's amazing. Because just one person listening to it running up the tree has changed a lot of things for us.

Well, that's all it takes, right? Yeah. I mean, like I said, your product is amazing. I've gotten nothing but positive responses from people that read your book after you came on the podcast the first time. People need to find out about it. So now they will. Good. That's going to find out about it. So now they will. Good, good.

That's going to be crazy, man. Well, if we get, you know, and of course either one of the TV shows could not happen, which is how things work in Hollywood. But if you get super rich, you're going to buy a baller spot in San Francisco? Oh, yeah. Are you kidding?

Well, I don't know. A whole block. I don't know about San Francisco, but if you get super rich, you could buy basically your own small country in Michigan and call it Detroit because it's already named. You could buy the whole thing. But again, you'd have to be in Detroit. Be cold as hell.

You could get one of those baller castles built in the middle of San Francisco. Pretty sweet. You know, like you've ever been to Stephen King's place in Maine? Nope. When I used to work in Maine, when I used to stand up, I used to do a gig in Bangor. And you couldn't go to Bangor without driving by Stephen King's house. You had to just to know that's where Stephen King lives, man. Right, right.

Because like he had this giant cast iron. Isn't that old Mark Twain's old house? Didn't without driving by Stephen King's house. You had to, just to know that's where Stephen King lives, man. Right, right. Because he had this giant cast iron. Isn't that old Mark Twain's old house? Didn't he buy Mark Twain's house? Did he? I think that's Mark Twain's house. I'm not sure about that. Mark Twain lived in Maine? I could be wrong.

It's what I've heard. But continue, continue. Well, he has, you could tell it's his house. He has this wrought iron fence outside of his house, and it has gargoyles and shit on it. Oh, sweet. It's pretty obvious to anybody who comes by. Well, it's a big house too.

It's, you know, but it's not ridiculous. Like he doesn't, it doesn't have like a castle. He lives in a nice big house. He doesn't have 27 rooms or something like that. Not really. I mean, it's a very nice house, but it's nothing crazy. Like, I guess that's how he fits in up there. Cause you know, Bangor is a fairly modest environment a fairly modest city

that's his house yeah nice so you drive by and you see this metal fence with the gargoyles on it see if you can get a photo of the the thing you wonder about that is he's got some crazy fans and that's 20 feet from the sidewalk to the front door yeah so you wonder if steve some of stephen king's money goes to there's a couple of dudes lurking around that property at all times. If you jump that fence, that's your ass. I would have, for sure, evil dogs everywhere. He has poison everywhere. I would hire ninjas to just practice on people who come over the fence.

Dudes with swords. I wouldn't fuck around. Guys on the roof, see the roof? Crossbows. Nice and silent. Just put a friggin samurai in the front porch just announce that this is what's going to happen to you that's what the fuck i'm talking about yeah but a devil zombie samurai is what he would have that'd be actually

that's the name of my next book is devil zombie samurai hooker yeah by scott sigler because you need that heart of gold in there to sell the book right yeah you can't just have a devil zombie samurai who am i reading for they're all cunts yeah you have a cunty cunty cunt yeah if you have it you know hard gold x x hooker yeah now you're now you're talking there's a good story there she did it because her dad had cancer how about that that's why she did it she needed money her dad how do you root against that can't root against plus samurai zombie plus what's really wrong with hookers let's stop let's leave them alone. Yes. I have no problem with this issue.

Well, there it is. So that's how the Scott Sigler legend was launched. Yes. And apparently we already know how it's going to end with the zombie samurai hooker in a smashed champagne bottle in a baller pad in San Francisco. It could end like that or the artificially intelligent robots could take over first and we have... If I get

rich, the first thing I'm doing is investing in Google, so they don't kill me. Yeah, and concrete, because the robots are going to eat concrete, remember? Okay. They eat buildings. A lot of concrete around. Here you go, boys. I'll be over here. I wonder if it would be...

I mean, Google, by all... If you look at what they've done, they don't seem to have done anything evil. They seem to be very conscientious. Very rich and wealthy, but also very conscientious. You always hear about how great their campus is and how people who work there really enjoy the environment. Like this is a guy who works at Google who's a guy, but in the daytime, he decided he wants to be a woman. So he shows up at work, dresses as a woman, and then changes at the end of the day and goes home and he's a man again. And so they changed his name at work.

They totally accepted it. The guy's married and has kids and he's a wife. He has a wife and when he gets home he becomes a man again. But while he's at work he decided that he wants to be a woman. They're like, okay. From what I know of Google, that doesn't surprise me. Do you still get your work done? We could give a shit.

I like it. I think it's good. As long as he doesn't fucking dwell on it. It's weird. Secret world a shit. I like it. We don't care. I think it's good. As long as he's not crazy. He doesn't need to fucking dwell on it. It's weird. Secret world of men who dress like dolls. I don't think that's the same story. That's creepy. Equally creepy. That one, Google might be, yeah, we're going to have to have a meeting about this.

He's wearing a robot mask. Dressing up like the doll is distracting, so let's have a meeting. Yeah, that's way creepier. Yeah. Dressing up like a woman is like, okay, I guess you wanted to know, you know? Have you ever had the fantasy? What would you do if you could be a woman for a day? Apparently work at Google.

Yeah, work at Google and put a mask on. Or be a fake robot. People are fucking weird, man. The things that people enjoy, you know. Yeah, whatever floats the boat. Whatever, yeah. As long as nobody's getting hurt. Exactly.

As long as you're not being an asshole. When you start writing a book, do you, like, sit down and, like, say, okay, I want to figure out something to write about, or do you just have, like, a flash of inspiration and then, you know, record it, write it down, and then take off with it like how do you how do you start a book i mine is much is more structured so the the ones i write for random house um they're thrillers with a lot of horror and sci-fi in them but the thriller structure is you know things are planned out to get to this really crazy over the top ending

so a lot of times i'll have the concept then I'll try and work through a loose structure to come up with an ending that's gonna be just balls-out spectacular, and then sort of work backwards from there. So if I do that correctly, if I reverse outline it correctly, by the time and go from, this is insane, I would never buy into this,

to this is a guy having a cup of coffee at his kitchen table in the morning, it feels like a seamless transition. You never notice that I'm gradually upping the level of madness till you get to that crazy end and you're just fully hooked and believing every moment of it.

So it's mostly structured. I don't think I have it in me to just write and then let it go and see where the story goes because I need to have 30 or 40 threads that all funnel towards that last ending even pandemic which is the third book in a series it goes infected then contagious then pandemic um each of those three books has a relatively calm beginning and a earth-shattering end but

they're a complete story unto themselves simply because i don't i don't believe in extorting fans out of their money you get a full story for this book if you don't want to read the next book. You don't have to buy that to see what happens at the end of the first book. I don't just cut them in half. So for Pandemic, it's largely the end of Pandemic is just apeshit crazy. It's the whole world screwed. And you had to come up with how do I do this much damage and then work it back from there so it all feels like it flows together naturally.

When you talk to other authors, is there like several different schools of thought as far as creating a story because i know stephen king which i found really fascinating his book on writing did you read it yep really it's like a bible it's great really really good book what i found fascinating is that he doesn't have a structure at all nope he just starts writing i heard an interview with um uh a writer named joe aberccrombie interviewed George R. R. Martin, the Game of Thrones author. And Joe Abercrombie's stuff, if you like fantasies, ridiculously good. And of course, George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones. And George R. R. Martin described it. I don't know if he came up with this, but this is where I heard it. He said, there's two kinds

of writers. There's the gardener and there's the architect. And he's a gardener and Stephen King are a gardener, where they put the seed in the ground and they cultivate it, then they just let it grow wherever it grows. I like this vine, I'm going to follow this vine. I like this flower, I'm going to follow this flower. Whereas the architect, which is more like Tom Clancy or my stories, you blueprint and then you build the foundation, then you build the framework, and then gradually,

okay, now we're going to put in electrical, now we're going to put in plumbing, now we're going to put in drywall, now we're going to finish it, now we're going to paint it. You. Now we're going to put in plumbing. Now we're going to put in drywall. Now we're going to finish it. Now we're going to paint it. You know what it's going to look like before it's done, but there's all the work to make it complete. So those are the two kinds of writers and King's definitely in the, in the garden of variety. He just lets that shit roll. That's fascinating. Um, have you, have you ever tried to do it that way or do you enjoy the structure aspect of it? Like, have you thought about doing

it different ways? I mostly enjoy the Tetris game of getting it all to come out. And it's really a love-hate relationship because if you're as anal retentive about like, this has to, you have to feel closure at the end of this book and I have to tie up all the threads. When you do that, as you're working through, some of the characters change who they are. And all of a sudden you're like, okay, now this guy would never do this thing. He would never go into the haunted house alone. He just wouldn't do it. And then you have to say, all right, how do I get around that? And usually break stuff. So you have to tear the building down and go back and build it up all over again. And when I do that with the book Nocturnal, I was just talking about my business

partner, A. Kovacs had to deal with me. I was, I was miserable for like six months. Cause I wrote three full drafts. And at the end of every full draft, like this, just, this doesn't work. This is not believable. I could not get through this book and go, that's what, that's what would happen. So I'd rip it all down and start over and move all the parts around again. And I never thought I would get it. I was like, I'll never get this right. This will never work out with this concept that I have. And I finally got it to work with some great help from Julian Pavia, who's my editor at Random House. We finally got it figured out, but I was frigging miserable.

So I would like, eventually I want to get to the Gardner phase. I just, whee, wherever it goes, it doesn't matter. Let's just have fun. Do you get mad when you read a book that's kind of piss poor from an author that you really respect? Totally, yeah. There's so many authors and so many books right now. This is why I work so hard to make my stuff so tight and so refined. It's very admirable. I like, I like how you approach it. Well, it's, I look at it from the customer's

point of view. If you drop 24 bucks on my book and you can tell I phoned it in, you're not coming back. Cause I'm not coming back. If I read your book and I'm like, this is the lazy, you are being so lazy and you took my money and you didn't work for it. I'll never read that author again. Period. Well, you've completed the work. It's not that anybody's being lazy, but sometimes there's a puzzle that people just don't have the effort to solve. Yeah. But it's not that they're not working hard.

They just didn't complete it. Or they're under deadline. And now I understand more. Like when I was younger, I was much more adamant. Like, fuck you for taking my money, you lazy bastard. Now I understand, like, yeah, there's an ax at the back of your neck saying, we've got to get this book to press right now. Yeah, if you want to get it out by December, you know, for Christmas, you have to, yeah.

So that's what people go through a lot. When you think you've read a shoddy work, a lot of times they just ran out of time. They didn't have time to do it. I think it's very cool, though, that you think like that. I think it's very cool that you think about the audience and the people buying it. I think that's super important. It adds an element of, uh, you have a connection with them. You're not above them. You're not beyond them. You're part of them. They, they, you need them, you appreciate them. And then you respect them as you're writing. You consider them.

I think that's big. It in this, maybe this is from being a big reader before the ebook set, but it wasn't that long ago, you know, to, to buy the new Stephen King book for $7.95 in paperback. $7.95 was a chunk of money. You're like, okay, I want this. I'm buying this. It better be good. And then not Stephen King, but somebody else, you buy a book and you're like, I didn't get my money's worth. And I worked hard for that money. I've never forgot what that feels like. And even though I still give all my stuff away, everything you can get on my website, it's sctsigler.com, serialized books for free, or at patiobooks.com. And everything I've published

we give away for free as a serialized audiobook. We run advertising against it, but you listen to the ad at the beginning of the show, just like your show. Then you get 30 or 40 minutes of the episode. You don't have to pay for anything. You can listen to it all you want. It's brilliant. It's beautiful. A lot of people can't afford, they flat out can't afford books, but they want their story. So that's how they get it.

So we do it that way. And then if you actually buy the book, my goal is always you would have paid twice what you paid for it and you're still happy. That's beautiful, man. That's a great way of looking at things. I love the fact that you give everything away for free too. Put some ads on it. Who gives a shit? As long as it doesn't interrupt the flow of the book.

Just like this podcast, we never do an ad inside the podcast. We don't want to interrupt the flow of the book. Right, right. Just like this podcast. We never do an ad inside the podcast. We don't want to interrupt the flow of the conversation. But I think giving people something for free is important because it's nice. It's nice to do. It's nice. It makes people feel good that they can get your good stuff for free. They can go to scottsigler.com. They can start downloading your audio books, get hooked, have many, many, many more hours of entertainment right for fucking free and then when your new stuff comes out they want to support you

yep and exactly it's organic and a lot a lot of times what happens is people have a lot of people have money to spend on entertainment and they don't mind spending that money entertainment they know they're going to get something good what pisses people off is to spend their money and then on something and then find out that they don't actually like the product. So if I give these stories away, that's my competitive advantage over Stephen King. If you go into a bookstore and you see Scott Ziegler and Stephen King, you've never heard of me, you're going to buy Stephen King because he's a proven brand, he's a proven storyteller. But if you go into a bookstore and Stephen King's $24.95 and Scott Ziegler's free, maybe I'll try this first, then go get the Stephen King. Now I've got a chance for

people to try out my stuff. And if they listen to a couple of books and they know what they're getting from then on, then they buy everything that comes out the day it comes out. Yeah. And you miss the viral aspect when you charge people for things. Like, do you know, LA has a radio team. It used to be Frosty, Heidi and frank and now it's uh just heidi and frank really nice folks very very fun people i've done their show a couple times and they were on the radio and they went from the radio to doing a podcast but they they were making their money by charging for the podcast and so they had a good piece of change it was coming in every month but they couldn't grow they couldn't grow because no one can find out about them because it just

doesn't people don't when you go hey there's this team, Mike and fucking Pissface, and they have an awesome podcast, but it costs two bucks. Trust me, it's worth it. How good could it be? I can go download Adam Carolla. I'll go download Joey Diaz. Why would I bother spending two bucks for something that I can get for free? That's where it gets weird.

When there's just too much, the internet, it's gotta be free. Everything's gotta be free. If it's not free, it's not gonna work. It's just, there's too much that is free. There's too many options. Like you gotta find another way to monetize things. You can't do it the simple, like knucklehead way of charging for it.

That really hasn't, I don't know anybody who's still doing that or anybody who succeeded at charging for their podcast content. Well, they do. No, they do very well. Do they? What they do is, yeah, yeah, yeah. dan carlin makes a good um chunk of change he'll he'll get angry at me and yeah well i barely make his podcast should his podcast is very different

because uh like your audiobooks it's more like audiobooks on history but okay very dramatic and amazing flair to i mean really gets you excited about learning about history, but he charges for like the, he gives you the first 50 for free to get you hooked. And then if you want to get into the databases, once you really get addicted and you've been nothing but Dan Carlin for two months, you run out and then you're like,

what the fuck? And then you start paying money. Well, that's, that's perfectly good, you know? Yeah. But then people know what they're paying for.

At that point, people are like, ah, that's totally worth a dollar an episode. I know I'm going to get my money's worth. And then they don't give a shit. That's the same thing that happens with my stuff. Like, once they know what they're going to get, they are perfectly fine paying whatever comes out. Well, you know what will change it? If everything became like Amazon OneClick, where it's just like your computer has all

your credit card information in it, and if you want something, you just click on it, and you go Amazon OneClick, where it's just like your computer has all your credit card information in it, and if you want something, you just click on it, and you go Amazon OneClick. Because the Amazon OneClick would only be slightly more difficult than just clicking on it and downloading it. Slightly more difficult because you've got to pay a dollar. Is this worth a dollar? Okay, let's see if it's worth a dollar. Click. It'd be pretty fucking easy to do.

But if you want to actually buy it, you've got to go and enter in credit card information get a paypal account like there's a lot of fucking steps that you're just not going to do right you're just going to change the tab and go to another website and you know go download the nerdist or something like that because it's free it's hard it's hard to sell people on buying something but that just means that people are like people looking at it from the wrong lens. You know, there's a way to monetize it. And I think your way is the smartest. Give them as much free content as possible.

Then they go, wow, this guy's fucking talented. And then they want to support you. Yeah. And there's a lot of, you know, it's, I, it's putting the decision in their hands. You, the customer, know what you want to spend your money on. And we honestly don't give a shit. If they just keep downloading all of our books for free and never pay for anything, that's fine.

Because at the very least, they're going to go to work or they're going to talk to their friends and go, oh, my God, you should have this crazy, gross story I heard called Infected. It's nuts. This guy's stabbing himself with a fork for like five pages. It's nuts. And then eventually somebody they're talking to is going to go check it out or just go buy the book. So it's not, you know, it's one where our goal is we entertain people. That's what we do. We take you out of your world, bring you into ours,

get rid of all your stress for a little while. That's what we do for a living. Some people want to do that for free. Some people will pay for it. And even the people who get it for free are going to go out. If we're good enough at our jobs, they're going to go out and talk to their friends about it, and we're going to wind up getting that word of mouth exposure, but we're big on, we've got a giant chip on our shoulder.

We're like, uh, that's, I work so hard to make my stuff so good that I can give it to you for free. You're still going to give me money for it. That's a great way of looking at it too. You know, what's, it's cool about that. It's just, it's, it's cool to think that you're also getting by giving it away for free. You're, you're getting that word of mouth exposure, which you would be willing to pay a lot of money for that. Yeah.

I can't compete against a Stephen King. No one's put that kind of marketing money behind me. And we know that. This is a way for us to go out and get new fans and get people to try us out. Yeah. He's like royalty at this point. He's like godlike, I'd say more at this point. And super fucking prolific.

Yep. Jesus Christ. It makes you feel like such a lazy fuck when you see that guy just churning badass book after badass book yeah it would be one thing if he was totally phoning it in but he's not no like people love these new books and the new books that he's been coming out with they're still bad i just read doctor sleep you know the sequel to the shining and uh yeah sweet really yeah you haven't heard of this no it's fucking excellent it's really good whoa and how long ago did you put that oh it's only i'm gonna say it's hard honestly it's hard to tell them he's already got two 800

page novels coming down the pipe but i'm gonna guess it was about three or four months ago and it is the danny torrence the little kid from the shining who's now chronologically this like the same amount of years. So now he's in his 40s, early 40s, I think. And then he gets into a whole new perplexing situation. But the book opens up with him hitting rock bottom as an alcoholic. It's rough. It's a rough read.

Spoiler alert. Yeah. There you go. But it goes to some pretty nutty areas. So yeah, but he's prolific and he's got what he does down to a science. Did you read it? Yeah. Did you enjoy it as much as the original shining?

No, I didn't. No, I didn't. And that's partially because now that he's at such a royalty level, if he doesn't want to edit something, he doesn't have to. And it's the same thing.

It's the same place George R. Martin is. I'm not at that area. I can go up my publisher and say, yep, 800 page novel. They'll say, great, bring, come back when it's 500 pages. And there's no way around it. You know, you've got to go through and refine that. And my editor's helping me make the story better and better. Stephen King, why is he going to listen to anybody, honestly,

at this point? If people come back and there's some, you know, 25 year old interns like, yeah, I know, I think this movement too, and he's too long and he's a short nut, he's like, I'm Stephen King. I think I know what I'm doing. And he's just shorting up. He's like, I'm Stephen King. I think I know what I'm doing. So the books now have, they don't move quite as fast as they used to move. That's interesting. So you credit the editors with helping you tighten things up. With me, absolutely. I'm a long-winded motherfucker.

If you gave me my druthers, every book would be 1,500 pages. You would need a wheelbarrow to carry that thing around. If it wasn't for the editors and the people I work with, like my business partner and everybody else, the books would be just astronomically long. So what kind of relationship is that? That's an interesting relationship. I hate them. I hate them. I'm bitching about one to the other and the other to the other one all the time.

But you need them both? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I stomp around the office a lot uh you know i've got some kettlebells in the office like goddamn sons of bitches you know just and get mad and uh but it's it's worked in a good relationship and um i hate to admit it but i i bitch a lot during this process because i get so frustrated because i

want it to be good i so badly want it to be perfect and i want people to read it and walk away like holy crap that's the best book i ever read that's what i'm after every time so when the editor's coming back going yeah this isn't working i'm like i've put eight months of work into that thing that you just want to get rid of you just want to beat the shit out of them i just want to beat the shit out of them but they're right ultimately they they wind up being right well Well, when you stop listening, your fiction becomes something else. Like the M. Night Shyamalan process where everything he puts out makes $250 million. At some point, he stops listening to the people around him.

Like, yeah, I don't think the village is working out. Maybe we should tweak this. And he's like, I'm M. Night Shyamalan. They don't ever see planes. He doesn't have to listen anymore. Exactly. So I still listen, and it's not easy because I got a bit of an ego with the fiction, but eventually these people break me down and we make a more refined, better story.

That's very honest of you. It's very honest in that approach. And I think that's one of the reasons why you're so prolific and successful with your writing is that you have that ability to look at yourself and the entire situation objectively. It's very difficult to do for a creative person. A lot of creative people are really bad at taking criticism. I'm not good at it, but the three primary people involved in the process, my business partner, my agent, and my editor,

it's, you know, I trust these people. They're successful at what they do. And at some point when they're telling you something that is directly opposite of what you think, you still have to sit down and be like, I'm going to evaluate what you're saying on its own merits. And it's not like every time I change it, there's stuff I'll be like, fine, don't fucking publish the book if you don't want that in there. I don't give a shit. Yeah. Like if that doesn't go in the book, you don't get the book. So there's debate. It's not as simple as you just bring it to them and then they say,

this is too long and you shorten it up. You sometimes go, no, it's not. So you stand your ground occasionally. How do you know when to stand your ground? But you know, in your subconscious kind of, you know that structurally it's going to impact this point, this point, this point, and then the ending. And that if you don't have this moment that the editor doesn't really, he's like, who cares what he had for breakfast, for example? It doesn't matter. Like, yes, but that, when they get to the end and see that breakfast food again at the end of the book, it's going to tie everything together. And it's going to give the reader this sense of completeness and his or her whole soul. And like, there'll be more satisfied with the book. So there are things that I can't really explain or I'll try to explain and

they're not listening. But eventually I'm just like, I know this works and that's got to go in there. And that's just the end of the story. But then part of the give and take is, you know, it's, there's some quid pro quo and I've had my editor come back.

Okay. You can keep that. But if you keep that, you got to there's some quid pro quo. And I've had my editor come back. Okay, you can keep that. But if you keep that, you've got to give up this. And he'll set it up in that, like, and then I'll, you know, and then I'll just, I get furious as shit. Do you think you'll ever get rid of them? Well, there. Do you think you'll ever be like, listen, bitch, I got this.

With the technology of e-books, couldn't you just take, like, those chunks, like those huge chunks that they tell you to take out and make it kind of like a director's cut? Like, hey, you buy the e-book, and I'm also giving you this whole thing I worked on, this storyline that they told me to cut out. Well, we did that with my book, Ancestor. We had the final book from Crown, which is Random House,

and then there was like 50 pages they cut out of the beginning. Like, you don't need all that. The story starts here. And the general rule of thumb is you want to start as far into the story as you possibly can. But then I took those 50 pages and record them as a podcast and give them away. So it's kind of, kind of the same thing, but this is the last, uh, pandemic's the last book I'm doing with Random House and my agent's taking a new book out called Flyer, uh, as of like today, literally

today's starting to pitch it. So we wind up with Random House again. I may have the same guy or I may wind up with somebody else. I've been super lucky in that I've had the same hardworking editor for all five books, which from what I've told is almost never happens to anybody. So I've been the same guy. So now he knows what I'm going for and he knows my style and he knows how to manage me to some regard. And he knows when to ignore me when I'm calling him names and stuff like that. So it's been an awesome, awesome experience with him. So you have an editor, you have an agent that also reads it as well. How many different people read it before you? Basically three, basically three. My business partner tends to read everything

first and take her feedback. She has less feedback than the editor, but the feedback she brings back is more significant. So I'll pay attention to that. And then the agent usually only manages the first 80 pages. He's got crazy ADD. And I'm like, you have to read the whole book. If you want to be part of the process, you got to read the whole book.

I promise I'm going to read the whole book. Then like the last five drafts, first 80 pages, that's all he gets through. Well, if you want to be one of those wheeler dealer type agents, you got to have that sort of mentality. He's very

good at what he does. Let's make a deal, Scott Sigler! But all he cares about is he knows if I get this much of the book set up, he knows the sales process. If you buy into the first 50 pages, he can sell the book. Then your editors can fix the rest of it. So he's not that invested in the full length of the book. And then the

real work is done with Julian, the guy over at Crown Random House, who reads, not only does he read it all the way through, he's reading it all the way through five times and having to pay close attention. We're talking like 500 page books. And he has to pay super close attention every time. And I could not do his job at all. Now, when you structure your stories, do you use a software program? Do you use index cards on a bulletin board? Like how do you set up where you're moving all your pieces in your Tetris game? I use two things. We do use, I got a magnetic whiteboard in the office and write on the index cards and put them all up with that. And sometimes, you know, strings between the cards,

that kind of thing. That's the general getting it all down the flow. And then I use a program called Scrivener, which people can use for Mac or PC. And it's basically the same thing. It's little index cards in the computer. And there's an index card that represents a document. Each document is a chapter, but it's great. It's better than Microsoft um because microsoft word once you get a bit past 100 pages 200 pages you're copying big chunks and moving around and it becomes a nightmare because you're going to screw something up um but scrivener you just grab this icon and drag it before this icon it rearranges everything so i've gotten pretty adept at using that i highly recommend it it's great for scatterbrain to keep everything flowing and then a lot of times it'll just be

you know i get overwhelmed with the screen and everything going on and I'll just pull out the three by five index cards and start writing everything down again, bullet points on those, put them up on the board and go through it that way. So you like to do it digitally. You like to do it manually. You like to just mix it up and constantly keep doing it in a different way that keeps your brain moving. Yeah. What I find is when you get stuck, there's a couple of different things. Number one, if you're just staring at that screen and you're stuck, just getting your hands involved in a pen and just an ink pen and paper is a tactile experience. It's a different experience. It activates different parts of your brain. Sometimes you're like, oh, now I get it. Now I see what I was stuck on. So that's part of it. And other

parts of it is there's only so much screen real estate. So you can only see so many things at one time. If you're really stuck, you pull back, write all these index cards, you put it up in this, you know, four foot by five foot whiteboard, and you kind of look at everything that can spring your brain free at times too. So it's largely it's grabbing whatever, if I get stuck in one area, I'll start going to other areas. And I get really overwhelmed and frustrated I am more comfortable Slipping back into you know The eight-year-old version of me which is a little piece of paper and some notes or an index card and go back and just write It out till it all kind of flows out of the page So as long as the process is just continuing over and over and over again. Yeah, that's a Scrivener. Yep

Yeah, I use that for jokes. I use oh dear. Really? Yeah, Yep. Yeah, I use that for jokes. Oh, do you really? Yeah. Do you really? Yeah. I use it. I use a couple different things. One, I use a real chalkboard or real corkboard, rather. Okay. And I have index cards, and I put them up with pins, and I have bits. I have one star, two star, and three star. One star is a completely new bit. Two star is a bit that's still improving.

Three stars is a bit that's pretty close to being done. Okay. They always grow and change and get weird and there's always like new directions they take on in certain shows and because I mix them up to I'll mix up the order of like the different pieces inside the bit try to figure out which way works and I like Scrivener because I could take those cards and just move them around and sometimes when I'm just studying just thinking about my act maybe I'll listen to uh recordings it's one of the most uncomfortable parts of stand-up but i think

one of the most important you got to listen and see yourself um and and listen to like oh i don't like how i did that like there's too much too much bullshit in that joke and that this joke is kind of clunky and the wording's not good or the inflection is too fake or what have you, you know? So, uh, that process is, uh, aided by that. And one of the things that I really love, I was going to ask you about is right room. You ever use right room? I've used it just to look on the phone. No, right room is the one that takes your entire screen and makes it black and gives you that green. Well, Scrivener will do that to you. Oh, does it really? Scrivener's got a whiteout or a blackout feature. Oh, nice. And it gets rid of everything on the screen except what you're reading.

So kind of the same thing. Oh, okay, cool. Yeah. Well, that's, uh, right room doesn't give you access to anything. You can't go to the toolbar. You can't see what time it is. You don't get shit. Yeah.

That's right room. That's what it looks like. I really, really like it. It's my favorite. It's something I probably need to start using more in Scrivener because I get distracted trying to stay in touch with social media and everything else. And if you're on the computer and a fan is asking a question, the natural impulse is to go answer that question. So, you know, getting to a point where I can just ignore all that.

But I was just in Vegas for the New Media Expo. And when I really get into it and I was under deadline, so I started writing at noon and we're staying at the Rio. Don't have the seafood buffet at the Rio. I will tell you that. How dare you? god do that oh my god i've it's about the top the best vomit of my whole life there's been a lot of vomiting in my life clams in a musket oh i don't even know i don't know what it was but it was it was linda blair shit it was pretty crazy but i'm i'm writing and it's like noon out and like there's the window and the window's open and by the time i got finished it looked out and it was pitch black outside so sometimes i can't imagine it's the same thing when you're writing more of the short form jokes and moving around from the jokes but for this long form

thing is like 50 page story i my own screen came up and i did that's all i was working on didn't look at anything else just wrote the whole thing through yeah you can get in those zones uh i don't write jokes like joke jokes what i do is i write about subjects and I find the jokes in what I write about it. What I find is that when I'm writing about things, it takes longer for me to write the word history than for me to think of it or know it exists. If I'm thinking about history, I can think about it, but I have to say, H-I-S-T-R-O. I mean, I have to actually individually type all the letters. to say, H-I-S-T-R-O. I mean, I have to actually individually type all the letters.

And in that, you have much more consideration to every sentence that you write, every chapter, every concept, because you're thinking a lot quicker than you're writing. So as you're writing it down, you're considering deeply each individual. It's like it forces you to pause and consider each individual word, consider the concept you're actually talking about far more than if you were just having a conversation.

If you're having a conversation, it's much quicker to get the words out. Right. I think in that slowing you down, it makes you consider things more, and then sometimes you'll just miss like really obvious shit. You would have missed it if you were talking. But when you're writing like, and what about this? And then you'll go off in some other direction. So you give your brain like a different rhythm, the rhythm of writing.

No talking, no distractions, no fucking music. Stop all the nonsense. Lock the door. Hit the right room and just go. Yeah. Do you find you have to go for a certain amount of time before all of a sudden shit starts to take off? I'm useless for the first half hour.

Yeah, yeah, same thing. Unless I'm high as fuck. Sometimes I don't even take credit for the things I write because it's not me writing them. It's your inner muse. Weed wrote it. Weed wrote that one. No, I don't have that one in me.

I'm like the first 30 minutes are usually just trash, absolute trash work. And then at some point, something just takes over and you're making really good stuff. It's interesting, isn't it? That weird switch that goes off where you find yourself really zen in what you're doing. For me, it is probably around the same time, about 30 minutes in. 20, 30 minutes, the first 20 minutes, I don't even think, I'm just trying to smash keys and write things down and just thinking

but kind of getting into it and then somewhere along the line you catch traction. My ADD is so bad now I've got a technique, like I'll just set the alarm on the phone. Set it for 30 minutes and then I'm like, okay, I'm just not going to look at anything else. I can do this for 30 minutes. It's just 30 minutes. You're that bad? That's crazy. Force yourself to write for 30 minutes. Doesn i'm like okay i'm just not going to look at anything else i can do this for 30 minutes it's just 30 minutes you're that bad yeah it's bad force yourself to write

for 30 minutes doesn't matter what you write and then almost invariably by the time the buzzer goes off you just like turn it off and you're just like because you're you're rolling at that point but you have to force yourself to be like i have to get into the groove my groove is usually also to move around the house i like to pick up my laptop and go sit somewhere else. Go sit in my living room. Go sit upstairs. Go sit in front of the TV. Don't even watch TV.

Just sit on the couch. I think that when I do that, instead of just being in my office and staring at the screen, sometimes just being in a different space, sitting in a different place, just go, oh, we're here now. And just that changing of your routine, just a little variation on it sometimes can spark the mind in interesting new directions yeah you get you get down these wormholes and just getting any other kind of sensory input which goes back to now i'm going to write things down instead of type them out anything like that can because it's all in there all that stuff you want to come up with is in there it's not like you're you know it's not like you have a factory where you have to

make all this crap it's all already in there you're just not like you're, you know, it's not like you have a factory where you have to make all this crap. It's all already in there. You're just kind of getting, figuring out how to mine it out of your own brain and put it onto the page. You know what I also find super beneficial? A walk. A walk? Yeah, a walk, you know, and I used to bring a recorder, but now with these new cell phones, you don't have to. Your phone can record amazing notes. And I just go for a walk, walk my dogs or something like that, go down the street. And just when I'm thinking about something and I've got something in my head and I'm done writing, and then I'm reviewing the things that I wrote and like, how would I, how would I view this if I was a person who was reading it? Like, how would I, how would I take this? Like I'll take it into consideration as I'm walking. It's like the fact, you know, there's something about forcing yourself

to do a mundane, very obvious task, left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. And then you can get into that groove of introspective thought. Yeah. Some of that to me is like, I've got this little tiny office, but there's like a loop. There's like four rooms and you actually go from kitchen to this room, to the entryway, to the writing room. And I just start doing laps. So I just start doing laps. And it usually doesn't take very long because you're turning right all the time, every two steps. And there's something about, your brain has to put some level of attention on

and not walking into things. And that usually comes from the part that's blocking you, the part that stopped me. You're convincing yourself you can't get this shit out. And now, okay, oh, all right, boom. Now run back to the desk and start writing things down really quick. Have you ever tried using speech recognition software for writing?

It wouldn't work for me only because I'm, by the time I block a sentence down, it's probably already been rewritten three times. Start the sentence, go back, start sentence, go back. And I'm fortunately a pretty fast typer. I learned that a long time ago because I knew I wanted to write. And yeah, I just changed things so fast. It's all muscle memory now. It's like copy this, paste this, move this around.

I cannot imagine speech recognition would ever work for me. The Mavis Bacon teaches typing. That's the one. I owe that Mavis Bacon. She hooked me up. Yeah, that was for me, man. I was the poker guy. Yeah.

Just looking right at them. It took a long time. That's a genius product. Like, no, just play video games, bitch. It's great. I'm like, what? I'm just playing video games? And all of a sudden I can type. It was amazing. guy you know this looking right at them it took a long time that's a genius product like no just play video games bitch here goes and like what i'm just playing video games and all of a sudden i can type it was amazing it was amazing and it's they're fun games like you're racing and shit you're doing all kinds of different stuff and figuring out where the little keys are that's that's so important man i used to have one of those goofy keyboards it was like separated the

split ones yeah and your hands rest on it. Yep. Yep. Those died off. What happened? They're ergonomic. They're supposed to be ergonomic. I don't think they work for shit. I don't think they work for crap. They were supposed to be good for you. I had the one that actually was like a transformer. It actually had a hinge and it split out to the side. Oh, yeah. That thing was badass. Did you ever get the one where you sink in? You sink your

fingers in? No. There was a weird one like this where your fingers sit in a cradle. I still have to look like every now and then i'm still glancing down to get some kind of tracking going on which i don't need to do anymore but i can't break myself with a habit like i can i can close and i do this sometimes when i'm overwhelmed with an idea i'll just close my eyes and just start typing so i don't need to do it anymore but i'm still i can't break that habit of looking down at the screen that's interesting that's the thing look at that yeah. I had one of those.

Yeah. There was those, and then there was the Microsoft ones. They were a little bit more curly, and they had, like, an actual space in between. It didn't separate. They were just, it's more, like, lumpy. They called them ergonomic keyboards. Yeah, nobody makes those things anymore, I don't think. I don't know.

You know what the problem is? You get used to those, and then you go to a laptop, and it feels weird. Yeah. You know, a lot of people are typing their stuff on laptops now. Mm-hmm. So, like, the way you learn how to type on a laptop is you want your fingers to be right in that position

of J and F, the fingers across the board, and then from there you go. If you go back and forth from laptop to keyboard, there's, like, a thinking part. It's like a quarterback changing your throwing motion. It's just going to change everything around. Yeah, it fucks with you. Yeah.

But the speech recognition software is fascinating to me because I wonder if that'll ever be something that I'm interested in. For the walks, I have to imagine, you know, right? You're walking, you speak everything down? No, I just record it. Right, and go back and listen to it. Yeah, I go back and listen to it. I really find that there's a completely different state of mind,

the actual writing state of mind. And I find that I'm way more creative when I can just sit in total silence, not hear my voice or anybody's voice and write. I'll allow my brain to go in all sorts of weird directions when they're not, it's not attached to flowing, moving language. Ideas can sort of emerge instantaneously. And I just try to follow them and capture them in writing. to weird directions when they're not, it's not attached to flowing, moving language. Ideas can sort of emerge instantaneously. And I just try to follow them and capture them in writing. I think I limit myself when I'm actually talking. Yeah. You know, it comes to writing things. Yeah. It's for me, but at this point it's just down to, it's a process. Now I got the process going and getting more and more comfort with the process so hopefully i'm growing towards that you know stephen king's process is just so fast but your

process is also very creative i mean you have to have this idea you have to have the story you have to create this story that that part's never before people some people talk about writer's block i've never had that i've had the opposite which is just this onslaught of cool ideas Like this would be a good book and this would be a good book and trying to, trying to keep track of everything. So the, the creative part, um, being a scatterbrained little kid, fortunately just has never been an issue for me. It's all with me. It's always been the discipline of being able to write it down and trying to fight the ADD and, you know, and like,

I have to keep working on this to make it the best it can be when after the first draft, I'm kind of already done with it. I'm like, oh, I want to go do something else, but you can't. You got to go back and keep hammering on that sword and make it a good weapon. Yeah, that's really interesting.

The different types of creative processes that all try to achieve the same thing, whether it's a song or a movie or a book or a joke, it's completely fascinating to me the different thing, whether it's a song or a movie or a book or, or a joke. It's, it's completely fascinating to me, the different ways that people approach it and different, the different mindsets they have in, in approaching it too. You know, there's, there's no one pattern, which is what's fascinating about the human brain. Everybody's got a different way of doing it and just keep working at it till you get to

that end product where you can hopefully look at what you finished with. And I think all creative people kind of have the same thing. You probably have it too. Like that's a pretty good joke. That's not the best it could possibly be, but I think that's pretty good. That's going to go in the arsenal for the next standup. And with me, it's like, that book is pretty good. I would work on that book for the next 10 years every day to try and make everything perfect. But you know, at least for me, there, there is no perfection. Like you hear some authors go, I keep working on it till I have absolutely the perfect, the perfect phrase and the perfect sentence and the perfect paragraph and the perfect page. That's great. But you know, we got to put a book out and sell some books. So I can't work on a book for 10 years. Yeah. It's never perfect either. Cause your perceptions of it change

radically from day. I mean, like there's stuff that I enjoyed, um, that I did just a couple of years ago that if i have to watch now i don't want to have anything to do with it i don't want to watch it i want to listen to it run i mean just 24 months ago i'm like i don't want to i don't i've gotten to the point now where unless it's for research i don't go back and reread the old books and i heard an interview with brian cranston on nerdist that really helped a ton with that which you know he's just kicking everybody's ass at Breaking Bad. And he's like the baddest actor ever at this moment. He was really focused on, he puts everything he has into that performance. And then the second he walks off the set, he's done.

He's like, I'm not paying attention to that anymore. I'm moving on to the next thing. I did it as best I can. So with my books, because I get worked, every time I reread a book and find a mistake or some kind of goof up or something, the character motivation motivation isn't right I get super angry and super worked up So now I just don't read that stuff like it's got to go. Well, I think that you sort of When when you're done with a project you've internalized everything that you're gonna learn from that everything you've you know I feel like as an artist as a craftsperson whether it's a writer or anything a musician, I think you're getting better all the time or you're not getting better.

It's one of the two. Either you're getting better all the time and you're constantly working on improving things or you're not. And there's only a certain amount of time that you should consider the past. Certain amount of time you consider past work. Because if you consider it, you're really robbing yourself of present work. You're really robbing yourself of the focus that you could be using on working on the shit that you're thinking about right now. So in that mindset, I just start getting repulsed by my old stuff. Like, I don't want to talk.

I don't want to see it. If I find myself on TV, I go, flip the channels. The other day I was in my car two times in a row and Raw Dog was playing my comedy. I'm like, shut up. I don't want to fucking hear me. I don't want to hear me. I don't want to even think that I was a different person 10 years ago. I'm concentrating on it right now.

I had experience recently with stand-up. I'm not doing stand-up, but listening to stand-up that show me how much I have changed as a person. And I'm on Pandora. All I listen to is comedy on Pandora. That's like when I'm not writing, okay, I got to pick up the office, I got to clean up, let's put on some comedy on Pandora

and just let that cycle through and hear new stuff. And I started a new channel for the Andrew Dice Clay channel. And like when I was in college, we were all crazy for Dice. Like there was like, we'd gather in the room

and watch the VHS. It'd be like eight guys watching, like, ah, Dice Clay, you're the best. And then I'm listening to it now and I'm remembering these, hearing him do all these old bits and I'm like, Clay, you're the best. And then I'm listening to it now and I'm remembering these, hearing him do all these old bits and I'm like, oh, I love this bit. And then I'm listening to it. I'm like, yeah, this isn't really all that funny to me anymore.

This is so racist and so misogynist and not like, you know, like somebody who's really good at racist humor right now is, is Daniel Tosh, like can do it in a way that doesn't make you uncomfortable. Like he's, I don't know how he does it, but listen to Andrew Day-Sklair. He's like, this, I don't, this isn't for me anymore. It's very aggressive. Yeah. What's in the bowl, bitch?

Oh! And I realized, like, I was, what we were all laughing at was that amazing, the delivery. His delivery and his timing were great, but the actual subject matter was, and I'm like, I cannot believe how much I have changed that I don't find this funny anymore. See, I've gotten more immature and I find it funnier. Is that right? Because what I know he's doing is he's doing an act. Yeah.

He's doing a character. You know, he makes things up. Like his character is this preposterously, ridiculously oversexed asshole, you know, and you know what to expect. So I enjoy it from this completely non-politically correct approach that he's doing. Like as a, you know, that's his act. That's what he's chosen to do. Right. I mean, he could easily start doing clean jokes and concentrate on that.

No, he's gotten dirtier. He wears weightlifting gloves. He's got his hair slicked back. He's wearing a fanny pack and he's talking about sucking dick. Oh, and it's fun. Big glasses. It's he's got giant old lady, old Jewish lady glasses that he wears. Yeah. I haven't seen his new stuff in a while. He's hilarious. We saw him in Vegas. It was me, Brian, um, uh, Anthony from Opie and Anthony, Jim Norton and Bobby Kelly, a bunch of comedians. And we fucking cried laughing.

Yeah. It was so, because it was, for us, first of all, we know it's an act. We know it's comedy. We know, I mean, we've been aware of it. I was a huge fan before I ever got into comedy. So to be there, like, in Vegas, having a couple of cocktails, and be able to watch, just sit there and watch,

it was fucking hilarious. I bet live it'd, just sit there. It was fucking hilarious. I bet live it'd still be pretty impressive. It was so ridiculous. He's talking about how to catch fag, how you make a gay kid. It was so ridiculous. It was so ridiculous. Talking about how,

that's how you catch fag. He's trying to get more and more preposterous. There's all of us on There's all of us There's all of us After the show Oh there he is It was really fucking funny I mean me and Jimmy Norton

And Brian And we were crying laughing It was really funny But it's ridiculous There's an art form In saying ridiculous shit You don't really mean Right

And that's what I think Dice does Right But if you Yeah if you were alone In your car Or if you're If you're in your home

and you're completely sober and you're listening to some of the horrible things he said like what the fuck man yeah i'm uncomfortable laughing at this now i don't know what this says about me it's fiction it's it's you know well in that and from the character perspective i catch a ton of shit for my books do you yeah i get people like people are so caught up in their own this is who i am you can make fun of everybody else outside of this area but the second you touch on my area you're a dick so i get in in like like me talking about dice clay right now i get people like i can't believe you're that misogynist like no that's this asshole character that's not me that's the character and people can, some people can't differentiate that.

But nobody has a problem with it until it's their particular area. Yes. Yeah. If you're picking on vegans or transsexuals or Republicans. SpaghettiOs. You see that Natasha Leggero thing that happened over the weekend? No. Yeah.

She made a joke. She was doing Carson Daly had a New Year's show in Times Square, and she made a joke about old folks and World War II and Pearl Harbor, and she got more fucking hate. Like unbelievable amounts of people were angry at her. So she made a non-apology and put it on her website, and she's like, fuck you. It's beautiful to do that in

the face her apology was like brilliantly written too what she said was she was called a cunt so many times she thought she was in a british pub rooting for the wrong soccer team and her original joke wasn't even a pearl harbor joke it was just a denture joke about old people eating spaghettios because spaghettios got so much shit for having that image of a SpaghettiO holding an American flag that they put up on Pearl Harbor day just to kind of show respect that, you know, and then they were like,

what, how dare you? You know, so what, it was the actual joke. Do you have, yeah, I'll pull it up,

but it was, uh, uh, yeah, there's a lot of people out there that fucking love to be offended. Oh, yeah. They love it. I live in San Francisco, for crying out loud.

Yes, there's a lot in there. And they love to talk about being offended. And they love to get angry at you because they're offended. Well, you are big on the internet. I'm sure you deal with that on a daily basis. Look at that. Natasha, hold on.

Scroll up. I just started to get into her, too. The most popular comedian living today.'s cool i love her pandora just introduced me to her like a couple weeks ago she's great very funny she's very nice too she's a nice person she dated two of my friends too now three because i like motion too um yeah she but uh she wrote on her uh thing she's not apologizing for shit i love it. Cool. Yeah, because there's always people out there that are going to want you to apologize for something that's fucking ridiculous to apologize for. They're always going to exist.

I got the most recent one that came up, and you don't think it's bad until somebody actually kind of calls you on it. In the book Nocturnal, there's a character who has Tourette syndrome and also has a voice box has lost his voice voice box due to throat cancer so it's kind of preposterous and then he's always talking to the main character trying to make the main character from like fucker pricker sicker dicker sucker and like it's this crazy combination of things which is actually a true story that a friend of mine who got arrested was in the drunk tank and there was a there was a guy with the you know the voice box and he had Tourette's and he's telling me the story of bar I'm like that's so going in a book you kidding me that's fucking awesome and then one of my longtime fans finally listens to this book and we do the audiobooks and it's really

over the top when we do it in the audiobooks it sounds like the guy from South Park basically and uh she's like that's not. I have Tourette's. And I'm like, you're like, okay. So now you have to write, because it directly impacts her, and it looks like we're mocking her. But you have to write an apology. You're like, yeah, I'm not going to apologize for the story, because it's a character. But, you know, it's unfortunate that that hits you in your personal soft spot, so to speak. And I didn't mean to marginalize you, but I'm not changing the story.

It's great. Isn't it funny, though, that if it's, like, someone can say that's not funny, and then you're not allowed to talk about it. But if it wasn't funny at all, if it was, like, a tragic situation where a person had Tourette's and it was out of control and it was in a story,

then that would be different, because that's not mocking. That's not putting into a comedy. You know, know like you could depict it you can depict Tourette's and depict Tourette's being an issue that maybe you know the people that actually have it can say oh that's very similar to what I have to deal with and they would be fine with it but it's making the laughs out of it yeah that and that's what ticked off this fan and funny though it's weird even being able to explain like well the point

of the joke is that you never know whether he has it or not or he's just using it as an excuse to be an asshole to everybody um but you know that that that one person that's what every character that i create goes through something to that effect where somebody calls out and goes yeah that's not funny dude yeah but they're fucking assholes those people they really are they're really assholes and they're self-serving cunts because you really have to look at the big picture I mean, you're telling What are we saying? Are we saying that Tourette's doesn't exist?

Are we saying that people aren't crazy And that dudes don't have voice boxes? Like, what combination of these things is unrealistic? Yeah And it's also a story about cannibalistic monsters Living under the streets of San Francisco Yeah, what the fuck? This is fictional fun

You know People are cunts, man If you pick on lesbians, they will come after you with fucking great anger. They are very quick to raise their defense. Vegetarians also, furious.

Vegans are mean. Armenians. Go after Armenians. Watch what happens. They'll fucking kill you. Here's the joke. They'll kill you. They'll beat you in the streets.

If you want to listen to this joke, it's pretty much just a Jay Leno joke. Okay, let's hear it. On Pearl Harbor Day, they sent out a tweet featuring their mascot holding an American flag, asking people to, quote, take a moment to remember hashtag Pearl Harbor with us. It offended a lot of people, corporations, sentimental American historic traditions seemingly looking for people and business.

It wasn't good, but you were offended for another reason. I'm offended because they're referring to SpaghettiOs as pasta. I mean it sucks that the only survivors of Pearl Harbor are being mocked by the only food they can still chew. That's it. That's actually a good joke. Yeah. That's a good joke.

Fuck everybody. He's stoned as fuck wherever that one dude is. That's, I forgot that dude's name. Anthony Anderson. Yeah, Anthony Anderson. That didn't seem all that bad to me That wasn't bad at all But if I was a survivor of Pearl Harbor That'd be a different ballgame

But her response was so perfect She was one of the few people that didn't Bow down and take it And just say I'm sorry even though she didn't mean it And her response is so great Because she's a real comic Steve Martin's not a comic anymore. Steve Martin apologized

for like one of the lamest jokes ever. Some silly tweet where he's talking about lasagna, like spelling it differently if you're African American. Like spelling it, like the pronunciation. Like they would say lasagna

or something like that. I don't remember what it was. It was just a joke. And people would bit his fucking head off and he pulled the tweet and apologized. Like, oh, Steve. Listen to who you're listening to. Things have changed for Steve. joke and people would bit his fucking head off and he pulled the tweet and apologized like oh steve listen to who you're listening to things have changed for steve silly bitch you're you're listening to dummies just because they can talk to you doesn't mean they're smart just because

they can reach you doesn't mean they're smart and it's so hard to keep a perspective sometimes too you get two or three tweets and i i some i've seen some of the tweet hazing that you've got or the tweet conflicts whatever and like all of a sudden you have this large audience but these 50 people are focused on it and like you got to pay attention to it right you at least have to have some kind of response to it but block them fuck them all scott just hit that block button you don't want to like me, unfollow me. Oh! Suck on my dick. Enjoy my block. Oh! Yeah.

No, don't engage them, man. Yeah. Because you can engage them or you can engage the people that are being nice. Sometimes I'll engage people in a mocking way if I'm giggling at them. But to get actually angry at them, for what? It's one thing if you did something wrong or if there's like some sort of uh remorse that you have for your actions and maybe someone's reacting to that something real not like this natasha thing that was you know it's possible you could fuck up and say something you didn't really mean or you said it too quickly didn't realize how ridiculous it

was until after you said it yeah but if there if there's none of that, and then you're getting hate, like, what are you doing? Are you going to just pay attention to people who just look to hate people for no fucking reason? Are they living in the past? There can be times, too, where somebody says something like, geez, I never thought about it from that particular perspective, and that's a logical perspective. So, yeah, I'll rethink what I said there, but that's pretty rare. Well, I have one thing that I really do enjoy

and it's, uh, a lot of people are very uncomfortable with when they get hyper criticized, when someone like attacks them and attacks them in a way that actually makes sense. But I think those people that do that, um, whether they like it or not, they're helping you because even if they're wrong, they're forcing you to consider whether or not there's any or not, they're helping you. Because even if they're wrong, they're forcing you to consider whether or not there's any merit in what they're saying. And if you can't find any merit in what they're saying, then you're relieved of any future attacks like that.

It's like, oh, you're another one. No, you're another crazy person that has a distorted view of reality. And the reason why you have this distorted view of reality could be many, many many many many many different reasons you could be fucking jealous you could be crazy you could be psychotic you could just do that I've gone to people's

twitters like they'll say something hateful to you and you think about responding and then you go to their twitter feed and it's just them attacking everyone fucking Demi Moore Kobe Bryant fucking anybody can find that's what some people do they just they throw out a bunch of to fucking Demi Moore to Kobe Bryant to fucking anybody you can find. Yeah. That's what some people do.

They just, they throw out a bunch of different lures and hope somebody bites and they're not even a real person. I, unfortunately, I pretty much wean myself from looking at Amazon reviews

anymore because there's just some asshole-ishness that goes on there like nobody's business. YouTube is the center of that. Oh, I can't, I don't even try

not to even look at those. YouTube comments. On Amazon, I'll go and once in a while I'll see a one star review And you know like I worked my ass off for two years You son of a bitch what do you got to say about it And once in a while they're like they take the book apart And like from your perspective I can see that's a Crappy book the way you see it no problem But most of them are just they didn't actually read the book

Like you can tell from the review Like they read 20 pages and stopped and gave you a one star review And you get all super pissed off and then you go and you click on that and you read through their other reviews and it's just like endless stars one star reviews and like five stars for twilight and you're like okay that's not really my audience you know what i found really fascinating about people like that the people who are really harsh on like writers or movies or what have you and you read their criticisms and there's often a lot of work put into that stuff. A lot of work put into the criticisms. Like I've gone to people's Yelp pages. You'd read like a really evil Yelp and you're like, okay, let's go to this guy's Yelp page and see what he, you know, he hates this restaurant so much. Let's see what

he says about everything. And everything is like really well-written destruction of various restaurants or various things. you go oh i see what that guy's doing he's he's distracting himself from his own failures he's attacking everything as being mediocre and in do so yeah not even realizing how ironic it is he's put all of his energy into criticizing other people's work because he's avoiding doing his own that's a big thing with a lot of these like bloggers and critics and people that are writing. What are they actually doing here? You're writing a bunch

of evil, evil shit but what are you actually contributing other than your opinion? That's exactly right. You're contributing dog shit. What do you make? What do you create?

What do you put up? What do you put out in the world? Like the people whose whole world is nothing but I'm going to rip on Kobe Bryant.

I'm now going to come out and rip on LeBron James for underachieving. And you're like, what the fuck do you do? What do you want this guy to do for Christ's sake? It's like that thing and then the Yelp and people ripping on everything. You're like, if you don't like the way they do it,

go do something great yourself. I very rarely attack journalists, but I have gone after a few MMA journalists who have written evil shit about fighters, just really nasty, stupid, fucking hurtful, snarky shit. Right. And the only reason why they're doing it is just they're cunts, you know, and you've got to expose them for what they are.

I mean, just because someone falls short, just because someone tries and gets beat up by someone who's better than them, you know, have some respect for that process of development, of understanding, of exploration, of adventure that these fighters go on for your entertainment. And the sacrifice they have to make just to be able to get in that ring. If you show up in a UFC cage, you've already done an enormous amount of shit. Stunning, stunning sacrifice. Even when they make horrible excuses for why things went wrong, in my opinion, that has

to be treated with an objective sense of respect. You have to understand that psychologically their defeat is unbelievably brutal. Right. That a fighter going through a defeat, like they're looking for some reason to stay alive when they're telling you they're, oh, I had staph and then I got the flu. And then maybe those things are true. But the reason why they have to tell you about those things is they're fucking falling apart.

They put their life into it. They're clawing and looking for something to gain some sort of a victory. Like, you might have kicked my ass, but I was in a car accident six weeks ago, man. I had to deal with insurance. And they find some reason to give them some reason that they're worth something.

And you'd like those journalists once in a while to say something to the effect of, yeah, that was a bad UFC fight. It's still better than any UFC fight I've ever been in because I've never gotten in the ring in my frigging life. I don't think they have to say that. I think they just have to treat the situation with respect. And they have to treat what a fighter is actually doing,

and they have to treat it differently than playing basketball because it's not the fucking same thing. When a basketball game is lost, if you go home crying and freaking out you're probably a baby okay but when you get your ass kicked in there that guy stole a little piece of your life he stole some happiness from you and if you don't if you don't respect that it's because nobody ever beat you up if somebody if you ever fought and someone kicked your ass you would realize oh this is not a good feeling at all right and well let's just analyze what happened in the fight itself you know if you want to psychologically break down what what's

wrong with the guy and where it goes wrong to do it with respect it can be done with respect but you we have as a bunch of really shitty writers who only get attention by being negative that's but that's been the sports writing that's's why I got out of sports writing. I used to be a sports writer. It's also sports radio. It's sports radio. It's sports writing. And I've been really disrespectful to those guys because I don't think that has any place in martial arts.

I believe if you want to get shitty about a football player, if that's your tradition, that's fine. But if you want to add that same sports guy bullshit talk to martial arts, I say fuck you. You don't know what you're talking about. You don't know what you're talking about right you don't know what you're some fucking dummy some dumb dumb football guy he does amateur football was talking about anderson silva breaking his leg and saying this is why i would never cover mma and i don't watch it never will you know and like dummy you're a part of the number one sport for traumatic

brain injuries the number one football And you're also amateur football, which means you don't even get paid. So the universities pimp these kids out. They make fucking billions of dollars on college football. That's what you cover. And you make your living off of it while the players make none

and they're getting fucking brain damage left and right. And you're complaining about MMA. Right. Just fuck you, dummy. You sports dummy. Yeah yeah there's a bunch of these sports done it's just it in being a former small-time sports writer and a former like small-time college athlete like being able to see both of those sides of the coin and anybody competing at that level just the amount of work and talent just to get to

be sucky at something is astronomical. And most of these writers have never done, they've never done anything even close to what they're talking about. And their whole career is based on how much of a dick can I be? How much attention? And that's how they got attention for the longest time. I don't think that that's of, that was fine when everything was being distributed by media networks, when everything that, you couldn't really comment on it. If you were a fan of Jim Rome, the radio show, 10 years ago or so, I mean, what kind of feedback could you ever give him? You know, there was no feedback.

And when he did something controversial, people listened and they watched. It was an adequate way of gathering up attention. But I think that these wannabe guys and these guys that are coming along now that are trying to do that they're really fucking themselves by playing this act of being this you know really shitty you know sports guy talk because i think ultimately that's going to be exposed as being a really ineffective way of communicating negative and not really fun to listen to either yeah yeah it's the judgmental level i i don't know that that'll ever go away because i think unfortunately a lot of people watching this stuff want a way to feel better about themselves and bitching about players is still huge it has no place in martial arts it will never work in martial arts well that's good

that's it could be an oasis of logic than in a world of assholery well the stakes are higher than any other sport the stakes are the emotional stakes. As proven by Anderson Silva's break. That was pretty tough. Well, that happens in football. That happens in basketball. There have been catastrophic injuries in almost every kind of really physical explosive sport. It's unavoidable.

But what Anderson, the break that he had was very unusual. I've only seen two of those ever live in person. And I've called well over a thousand fights. It's probably close to 1500 fights in my career doing commentary. I've only seen it twice. So it's pretty rare. So for someone to point that out, that's why I don't watch MMA or never work. It's ridiculous. Fuck every sport. Cheerleading has catastrophic. Paralyzing death. It's crazy crazy high school cheerleading is really fucking dangerous they're flipping each other oh my niece just started that crap and i'm very nervous about it gymnastics is very scary too let me ask a question can you guys play my pandemic trailer for the book

fuck yeah so that i can hit the bathroom yeah yeah yeah is that coffee when how long oh yeah please it's uh two minutes we're very rude in asking people to sit here for three hours i don't give a shit this is is awesome. Anytime. Just feel free. Just go to YouTube and look for Scott Ziegler Pandemic. I'm just going to talk shit about you soon as you know. I know. I know. Because you haven't accomplished anything, Joe, so you've got to drag me down.

How rude. Go pee-pee, sir. You've got to drag me down. I'm going to take a list. Where is your trailer at? He's looking at it for you. Is there a specific website? It's foul mouth, though.

It's got swearing in it. We like that. Yes. Is there a way that folks at home can mouth, though. It's got swearing in it. We like that. Is there a way that folks at home can go and listen to what's the URL? They can all find it at scottsigler.com slash pandemic. That's got the YouTube embedded right there, or just go to YouTube and search

for Scott Sigler Pandemic. I like that authors are doing this now, making YouTube clips. Sweet. Here we go. I saw this. Holy shit. It's me. They come around me, and they die. It takes maybe like 12 hours or so, but

they die. They die. Dude. They die! Dude... Just look at this. How fucked up is this? You see that? Fucker's dying. Ooh. Part Stephen King, part Chuck.

Try to pronounce that last name. I'm a nookie guy. I'm hollow nook and a dead dead dead They're all dead because of me Someone come get me please come and get me I make these assholes die. It's me. You want to save the world?

You better fucking save me. That looks very exciting what is it like to see your words come to life in a visual form like that it's awesome it's awesome because you got uh you know you've got to give that over to somebody who's creative in a different area than you and like i you know we we picked out parts of the book like an actual scene from the book we could turn into that trailer and then gave it over these guys the company's name aureus grex and they're here in la a u r e s g r e x i think the guy who directed its name's adrian picardi and he already shot a couple a thing earlier for ancestor but said do this and then have to watch how he does the whole thing and they shot that in the same warehouse where they filmed uh inception and so that was pretty fucking sweet you know you get to go there like holy shit this is where they shot that one movie and it was pretty

fun but it's uh it's thrilling to watch what other people do with your work because you know you i don't do that so i have to see how they bring it to life it's got to be weird it's totally weird you made that there it is it's when they make a movie about your books man is that going to trip you out it's completely going to trip you out it's completely going to trip me out because you as the author you see everything in your head you know how it's exactly supposed to look but when the director gets a hold of it and the producer gets a hold of it they're seeing something else and they're the ones who make the pictures move so you got to kind of go with what they go with i mean what we're trying to do as we work toward getting

infected to be a tv series and nocturnal I mean, what we're trying to do as we work toward getting Infected to be a TV series and Nocturnal to be a TV series is just trying to make myself indispensable to these guys. Like, I'm always here. I'm always ready to answer questions. I'm ready to go to work for you anytime you want. So that if it comes to one of those points where, like, I think what you want to show might not, you know, exactly be what the fans want to see, maybe you can influence that. But that's all you can hope for is to influence things a little bit because that's not your job.

Their job is to make the movie. I remember when Stephen King first saw The Shining, he was very upset. Yep. He was very upset with even Jack Nicholson's performance because Jack Nicholson was crazy from the jump and he didn't want that. He wanted there to be an arc

where you see this normal guy slowly start to fall apart whereas he felt like Jack Nicholson was so borderline unhinged from the beginning of the of the movie it was just a completely different movie than the book and then they did that one with the dude from wings yep they did the uh the full version of it steven king but it was like it was too late you know it's it's really hard to do well they're competing against one of the icons of american film you know the the shining film is

you know like it or hate it that's that's an every top top 100 out there because he's just so dramatic kubrick is such a bad motherfucker yeah i mean his movies were so incredible he was so weird too like he did shit in that movie like where the guy was getting blown by the stuffed animal yeah like what the fuck for he's going to yeah what the fuck like his movie was so weird yeah so strong and but yeah stephen king apparently just just hated the crap out of that thing but you never really got i've never really got the impression just being a fan that he's all of that interested in his movie adaptations he know he direct he did maximum overdrive which he was very involved in, and a couple other things, but for the most part,

he's largely not part of what goes on in his films, it seems like. So you wonder if that movie was like, all right, screw this, I gotta pay more attention to what's going on. Well, I think he had some huge, like Carrie, the original Carrie, which still to this day,

like they tried to do a new Carrie, and it just wasn't happening. They do it every three years now. They do a new Carrie every three friggin years. It just wasn't happening the new Carrie shoot first of all. She was too cute The girl this the girl from kick-ass. She's adorable. She's cute. She doesn't really an outsider Chloe more Yeah, she moved into a town. What's that? Yeah, she's supposed to be plain looking not just playing Different yeah, the girls got gotta be outsider different that you know which sissy spacek was killed it fucking perfect you just believed her you believed her in every way yeah you know and the scene when they the fucking pig's blood scene in that movie she realized that everybody was fucking with her

and she went crazy yeah i watched that recently it still holds up stands up real well that's yeah who directed that god i don't know find that guy i don't know but that stands up and i think they've i think there have been three carrie remakes really yeah i've never i just saw this one this more recent one i didn't even see it i just saw of it i'm like get the fuck out of here yeah but i'm pumped for the Godzilla one. Oh, fuck it. Are you kidding? Brian De Palma did Carrie? Yeah. Yeah, the new Godzilla.

The last Godzilla was such a frigging disappointment to me. I was so upset with that one. The new one looks pretty good so far. Well, Matthew Broderick was dreamy. The rest of it was a mess. The rest of it was a big fat mess. Pacific Rim was a mess, man. Pacific Rim was way more of a mess than Godzilla.

I was disappointed in Pacific Rim. Oh, it was so bad. Horrible. Everybody was telling me it was good Pacific Rim was a mess, man. Pacific Rim was way more of a mess than Godzilla. I was disappointed in Pacific Rim. Oh, it was so bad. Horrible. Everybody was telling me it was good, too. That was really weird. Real great action, man. You're really going to enjoy it. You can't vote.

You can't vote anymore. No. You saw Pacific Rim and you liked it. That was the worst script ever. And then that one part where the alien was pregnant at the end. I didn't get that far. You know where I got? I got with the guy and his ex-girlfriend were arguing

and I was like, cut. This is so bad. I feel like I'm watching a soap opera. Yeah. Soap opera made on Mars. When I was bashing it

on my Twitter, there's so many people got pissed off at me. Like a lot of people. Like, dude, that's a good fucking movie, bro. Well, it's like we were talking about.

I don't know what other people see. I don't know what their perception of reality is. I have a feeling that there's a bunch of different perceptions of reality is i have a feeling that there's a bunch of different perceptions of reality it's just like people have different

ear sizes and different brain power and people are born with different vision i think some people's perception of reality is fucking weird and i think that's why they like shitty music and they shitty movies i think the filter that they're seeing the world through is very different than the filter that you or I. Right. Maybe that filter is shaped by culture or life experience or the lack of neurochemicals. They don't have enough shit firing and they don't eat cholesterol. Whatever they're missing, they're missing something and they see the world in a weird.

It's always shocking. That's always shocking. When you watch a movie and you're like, I get this all the time. I watch time i watch a movie i'm like oh my god that's the worst stinking pile of crusty dog poo i've ever seen and then you go to rotten tomatoes it's like 89 90 from the critics you're like why are you fucking people what did you just fucking watch not that not that i thought that it was that bad but with the pacific rim the thing that just drove me nuts was i paid good money to see a giant monster and a giant robot beat the living shit out of each other. Can you turn off the frigging rainstorm so I can see a little bit of detail on what's going on here?

Everything was all grayed out. I'm like, that's not why I paid to see this. I think they wanted to do that, though, so they could hide the CGI. I don't think it was that bad, though. I don't think the CGI was that bad. CGI has got that weird quality to it. Like when the Hulk smashed that alien ship, you didn't really think the Hulk was smashing that alien ship in Avengers. Like you kind of know it's CGI. Yeah.

It doesn't seem real. Right. But if you're watching, like, did you see Rush? The race car movie? No. When they get in a fucking crash, that's a fucking crash. You know, I mean, the race scenes are very realistic and you feel like you're actually watching a real crash whereas i feel like you know there's some cgi that it's

just like i can't it looks great don't get me wrong i saw the new thor looks great but i know that's not really happening right no it's not happening it looks it's fake it's is it fake enough to take you out of the story yes yes it is and it isn't you know it never allows me to get really deep into the story because i know it's horse shit right you know well the shit that took me out of thor was like knowing exactly what's going to happen exactly what's going to happen next kind of a thing you're like it's just hard to get into that that particular movie well that's one of the things that i really loved about the new hobbit movie is that the special effects they did were just enough. I mean, there was a bunch

of craziness. I don't give any spoiler alerts, but up until the time they get to the dragon, there's a few silly scenes and there was a lot of fun involved and everything, but the dragon itself is so well done and the scenes are so well lit. Everything about it is so badass that you

go, okay, they did it right they did this one right they nailed it they really did nail it okay but it's hard to do with cgi it was desolation of shemagh better than the first one yes yes it was definitely better than the first one it can't be the whole movie and maybe that's part of the problem with pacific rim is you know you didn't really i didn't really care about any of those characters i was just like let's get out there and see giant things beat the shit out of each other. Dude, I was rooting for the dragon for the last half hour of the movie. Totally rooting for the dragon.

He's my favorite person in the movie. He's clever. He's got a lot of gold. And that's what pisses me off is that Rotten Tomatoes was 72% on that movie, or 71% Pacific Rim. What? And I just thought I lost my mind because that acting was horrible.

The script was horrible. The fact, like you said, they didn't even use the sword until like halfway through the movie. And that's like the best weapon that robot had or whatever. Right. It's so dumb. Yeah, I want to find out Rotten Tomatoes for The Hobbit. It'll probably be through the roof. Four stars.

76%. 76%. Just a little bit better than Pacific Rim. Well, it was way better. To me, at least. But that's my kind of movie. I saw on the Rogan board, there's a lot of people on Pacific Rim. Well, it was way better, to me at least. But that's my kind of movie. I saw on the Rogan board, there was a lot of people on the message board that fucking hated it.

They said it was a piece of shit. They walked out in the middle of it. Angry little cunts. Angry. Angry little cunts. Anchorman? They weren't high enough. Anchorman 2? I loved it.

I loved the trailer. The trailer looks amazing. It's not. There's two things. It's not as good as the first one, but the first one has so much headroom in it, you enjoy it anyways. And the second one, like, take the goddamn camera off Steve Carell. I'm like, I'm not.

I know. This doesn't do anything for the movie. He's good in little bits, but he had like 15 minutes of solo screen time. Someone's a Carell hater. Both of you, maybe. No, no. Not a Carell hater. It's just that character was good.

He's a punchline. He's not the whole joke. Other than that, there's some funny shit in that movie. Well, I am a huge Will Ferrell fan. He could do no wrong. I love fucking the Step Brothers movie. What was that movie? Step Brothers.

It was called Step Brothers. I'm a huge Talladega Nights fan. Talladega Nights is fucking hilarious. God damn, he's funny. He's just so stupid and silly. You know, just really knows how to nail that silly character. Yeah. I've not seen anything of his I don't like.

Have you seen Casa de Mi Padre? Is that his serious movie? It's like a Mexican movie. The whole thing, he talks Spanish in it. There's no English in the whole entire movie. And it's like an old Mexican movie. How old is, he talks Spanish in it. There's no English in the whole entire movie. And it's like an old Mexican movie. How old is it? Last year, yeah.

Oh, no shit. So it's a new movie. Yeah. I haven't heard a peep about this. This is a comedy? Yeah, it's trying to be. Didn't work, huh? Well, I mean, it's very lower budget because it's actually, I mean, I only got 5.5 on IMDb,

so it's not that good of a movie. But it was just interesting to see him actually play, you know, not using any English through the whole movie. He should have just remade The Three Amigos. That's what he should have done. That'd be great. Talladega Nights is one of my all-time favorites. It's just so stupid.

It was so silly and stupid. Those movies also are good. They seem to cross generational lines. Like when I go see my brother, they want to watch Step Brothers. My nephews want to watch Step Brothers. I think it's hysterical. I'm like, I know you're not getting all this humor, but that's a funny movie. Well, you'd be surprised.

I think any kid over 10 is probably good to go with that movie. Today, with the internet, they're probably good to go. They got 10. They're showing each other's dicks and exchanging emails. At the at the same time you know making someone eat a pile of poop off the lawn that's just funny no matter how old you are that's a good flick yeah that's good for three-year-olds that'll work that'll work on everyone in the family everyone except people are uptight joe have you noticed like i'm sure you have noticed the last ufc jam band showed me this and now i can't stop looking at it,

is how many people wear headphones now around their necks after every fight or before a fight? They're sponsored. Well, no, there's the new Beats ones that are wireless. Have you seen those? Beats Studio Wireless. But, yeah, a lot of people are wearing monster ones with no cords. It's just they're getting paid. Yeah, that's interesting.

Well, you used to see them with those energy drinks. You'd hold up the energy drink. Well, you know, I felt the fire really turned around for me in a second. I actually looked. I was watching that UFC with my wife, and we actually looked at the headphones. She's like, oh, look, they got all the beats. I'm like, I don't think those are beats. And then we actually looked up the logo because it was a different logo for the monster headphones.

And all of a sudden, I'm like, wow, somebody else is getting in on that action this is because ariani does not want to listen to britney talk that's why she's got these on they don't have any they don't have any chords in them britney's talking some shit and ariana's like bitch i can't even hear you she's so pretty they're both so pretty such pretty pretty girls oh so pretty but they're monster beats they're even more pretty they're like they're techno they're monster beats. They're even more pretty. They're techno. They make their little heads look like anime dolls. This is a good commercial for those monsters, the wireless ones,

where there's a dude who's on a team bus. He's apparently going somewhere to play against. Kevin Garnett. They throw eggs at the bus, and then he puts those on, and the music plays, and they're all saying, Go home, go home, and he's smiling and just walking past everybody. That's Kevin Garnett. Who does he do?

He's a basketball player. I don't know. He used to play for Boston Celtics. And I can't think who he's playing for now. But I believe the bus is going back to Boston and people are booing him. He puts those things out. It's a great commercial. It's excellent.

They should all be mouthing nigger. I don't think so. I don't think so. Because it was Boston. If you really want to show what could happen. I don't think so. Because if it was Boston, if you really want to show what could happen, I don't think that... Really want to sell some fucking soundproof... He also brought

them... He helped bring them a championship, so I don't know. Yeah, but if they're really angry Boston people, trust me, they'll say... I'm uncomfortable with this conversation, Joe. Extremely uncomfortable with all of this now. You're an author. Come on, I'm making fiction. I'm putting words into people's mouths. I'm making characters. The asshole racist with all of this now. You're an author. Come on. I'm making fiction, putting words into people's mouths. I'm making characters, the asshole racist character from Boston. Yes. And that could someday go in a book and that's the bad guy. Well, do you,

here's a question. When you are confronted with scenarios like that, like say, uh, if you have a racist character in your film or in your, your, uh, book rather, and you're constructing him, do you hold back on certain things you think other people would find offensive? Or do you try to paint him in as vile a way as possible, which would include someone yelling out racist things like that? It, um, there's, there's, there's self, my own self checking on that. And a lot of times I kind of have to get over myself. this is this is language that i don't like and can't stand and but this character is not me and have to get to the point where the character would actually use it yeah because that's those people are out there and that's

largely what i have to explain with my fiction a ton like why would you put that in your book that's not funny or that's not cool like yes but there are people out there who do that this is reality there's really people like this so to make the story feel real we put these real assholes we that's not funny or that's not cool. Like, yes, but there are people out there who do that. This is reality. There's really people like this. So to make the story feel real, we put these real assholes we have to deal with every day, put them in the book. So I'll use them.

What's fascinating to me is the amount of pushback I get from over on the publisher side. The publisher side, you come out with that language of the character. Like, we're going to have to dial that down. I'm like, he's a clan member. No, we're not going to dial that down. He's burning a cross. He's a clan member. And they'll be like, no, we're gonna have to dial that down i'm like he's a clan member no we're not gonna dial that down he's burning across he's a clan member and they'll be like no we can't have that and like those are one of the things like i mentioned earlier that's one of the things i had

to put my foot down like that's going in the book because that's real life and people actually say that and so that that can get tricky but um if you're doing horror right or any kind of writing right i think there's a lot of stuff you cross that makes you feel super icky. Like I, you know, am I influencing someone to perform these kind of acts by putting it in the book? And the most of the crazy violent shit that's always in the back of your head, because my books are ridiculously violent and always in the back of your head, like, okay, but what if someday some messed up kid reads my book and then says, I'm going to go reenact

this torture scene on somebody. And am I eventually going to be responsible for that? So that's always a thought. And the racist stuff is a thought, too. But largely just you let it roll. Like if you think that's what a real person would do and talk like and act like, then that goes in the book. That was the argument when American Psycho came out. I read it in the 80s when it first came out, Brett Easton Ellis's book,

which is really fucking dark. If you think the movie's dark with Christian Bale, it is literally nothing compared to that book. That book is fucking dark. And I remember some people that I knew that had read it who were really offended. They were really angry and offended, and they were saying, like, this isn't good writing. He just is describing really fucked up things that make you uncomfortable, and then he goes on to the next fucked up thing, and the guy just keeps getting away with shit. I didn't see that.

What I saw was this intense view into a potentially real person. I mean, there are fucking serial killers. They do exist. They have murdered people and tortured people in horrific ways, very similar to this character. Right. So what he's done is drag us into this really stomach-wrenching, uncomfortable world of this one intense psycho.

Right. And it's a fucking masterpiece, I think. I think it's fucking masterpiece i think i think it's a masterpiece well going go you know that the the process of writing in any creative realm where you're doing film or you're doing comics you're doing books and going into the bad guy's head and making that bad guy live and breathe and feel like a real person part of that process is the bad guy doesn't think he's a bad guy right the super villain doesn't think she's a bad guy. The supervillain doesn't think she's a supervillain. You know, these people are always morally justified in everything they do.

They don't go out and commit evil. They're committing acts that are logical to them and they're being just and they're committing, you know, getting revenge or getting fair desserts on someone. So being able to write from the perspective of someone who's doing awful, horrible shit, but they don't think it's horrible,

that's one of the tricks to doing it that's what he did in that book is you know the the main character doesn't you don't really catch him going i'm going to commit acts of evil he's just doing what he thinks is what should be done what he wants to do what he what he wants to what he needs to do or what he as we all do in human beings those things we need to do we find a way to morally justify them whatever it is that you do that you may know is a bit squishy in the eyes of society, there's another part of your head that checks and balances the system that goes, it's okay if you do it and here's why. It's even a good thing that you do it and here's why. And that's what he did in that book. And that's

part of the screwed up part of writing. And if you're just not writing superficial, good guy, bad guy, Dudley Do-Right saves the day against Snidely Whiplash, and those stories are perfectly fine and people love them. But if you're actually trying to get into the point where you make that bad guy, where you feel for the bad guy and empathize with the bad guy, that's tricky stuff. And my goal at the end of my books is if there's a showdown between the main, the bad guy and the good, the good guy and the bad guy is you're not really sure who you're rooting for. If you've done it right, the reader's not really sure who they want to win that fight,

even though one is morally reprehensible and the other one is supposedly good. Well, you don't want to set up obvious paradigms and obvious characters that seem to have been repeated over and over again throughout time and more complex and weird and Tony Soprano-like. You can get the—I mean, that was like— Sopranos was one of my favorite shows ever and one of the things I really liked about it was that Tony Soprano was a fucking murderer he was an evil scumbag murderer that you were rooting for yep I mean it was a very very fascinating way that they they danced with that and um I think what Bretttt easton ellis did in in that book was

completely unapologetic and that's why i found it so fascinating because the way he described the horrific sickening way he described these crimes was uh you know i mean it was so clinical that it almost was like done in the mind of a psychopath. Like I didn't necessarily even enjoy it. I just think it was really good. There was parts of that book. They're like the part where he shows up to clean up some bodies that he left behind and the entire apartment had been cleaned. And he's,

he locks eyes with the real estate agent and the real estate agent is this woman who's like selling the place. And she's like, I know what you did get the fuck out of here. And they exchanged this look. It's a really fascinating scene of two monsters running into each other. One of them a murderer,

the other one a psychopath or sociopath. And that was one of my favorite parts of that book. And both of them, I don't remember that part, but both of them think that they did the right thing. They did the right thing. She's going to sell that apartment for fucking five million bucks or whatever the hell it was, and he was going in there to clean up the bodies

that he left in the tub covered in acid or whatever the fuck he did. I forget what it was. But yeah, those really evil characters that you create, that's an interesting thing for me because like this description of the guy coming down with those headphones on you know the guy's walking down and people yelling shit they're obviously saying

angry things like what would they say would they say fuck you is that okay if you see would you mouth that right would you mouth you know you're gonna die with maybe maybe we'll go with you we're gonna kill you you're gonna die you're gonna see him out that but you can't say nigger right don't do that well you that. Well, you make an evil people. You make an evil people. That's fascinating. Like we can threaten your life. Right.

We can get away with like, we're going to kill you. They can mouth that in a commercial and that's probably okay. But the other side, that's totally done. No one's going to put that on. Well, it's just this fascinating thing about creating fiction.

The fascinating thing about fiction is, you know, when you're creating an evil person, like what you're saying about, will a person duplicate your acts? Will they, you know, create copycat crimes? Will they, will they start like looking into your way of describing things and recreating it in a horrific way in a real world that you'll feel responsible for? Whether it's a racist thing, whether it's a violent thing or whether it's a, whatever it is, you know, that's a fascinating thing to have to

think about when you're creating fiction is that you, you may be reinforcing or even perhaps inspiring an idea that's ultimately very evil. I think that in the instances where art has influenced people to go do something, you know, those people are looking for that moral justification, even though they don't know they're doing it. Right. When the Night Stalker killer was out, you know, if, if ACDC hadn't wrote the song Night Stalker, that guy would have found something else. That guy would have found something else to, to, to validate his need to go out and kill. So. That's easy for you to say, but if he did what you wrote in your book. If he did, yeah, that, that would be super difficult to deal with, but I'm, you know, kind of thought this through several times because I write some fucked up shit.

deal with but i'm you know kind of thought this through several times because i write some fucked up shit is is you know if it happens how am i going to feel about that and i've already kind of you know like because i'm not a bad guy either i'm just like the people i'm talking about i don't think i'm a bad guy i pre-justified that with that guy or that girl would have found something to latch on to and would have gone out and killed based on you know an ann rice story instead of my story yeah i'm i'm very fascinated by the influence of, of something creative like that, whether it's a film that inspires like Taxi Driver, which inspired John Hinckley, you know, there's, I'm fascinated by that strange link between a creation, a creative creation that's turned into a movie or a book and how it influences people and how you can catch someone

who's got the wrong fucking chemicals floating around in their brain and they read any one of your books and decide to enact a scene. There was a guy who was arrested in Vancouver for enacting a Dexter scene. Oh. Yeah, he was...

Oh, I heard that. Yeah, he fucking killed somebody. He Dexter'd him. The guy was a huge Dexter fan and he wound up killing somebody. I'm a huge Dexter fan. Hmm. I was a huge Dexter fan, and he wound up killing somebody. I'm a huge Dexter fan. Hmm. I was a huge Dexter fan of season one.

Yeah. You didn't like the best season, though. John Lithgow, shut up. Did you not watch that season? I couldn't watch it. He had a bad rear naked choke. It was a terrible technique. Listen, I'm a jujitsu practitioner.

I know what it looks like when you choke somebody. It doesn't look like that. That was terrible. If I was on that set, I'd be like, come here, bitch. Let me choke you. I'm going to show you what it feels like to be choked. You can't act like that. You can't act like that when you're choking her,

when you're not even squeezing. I'll tell you something interesting. I'm sure this is old hat. You've been on dozens of TV sets. We did our first TV set visit ever for Justified. We got to go there they're shooting episode number seven because the people making justified are interested in making effective new series so we get to go watch you know timothy oliphant do his thing uh which

one's that guy he's the he's the marshal ones wears the hat okay justified and he was in what was he in before deadwood deadwood he was another guy who wore a hat and shot people and there's the other guy that's from The Shield, a really good actor from The Shield that's in that as well. I don't know which. The guy who played, like, he was one of the cops, one of the dirty cops. Oh, no, no, no.

That's Walter Goggins. Yeah, he plays a bad guy. Yeah. Yeah, he's freaking phenomenal. If you've never watched Justify, the two of them together are lights out. The best acting duo on TV, in my opinion, hands down. Is that a really good show? Oh, it's amazing.

How come I don't hear about it? Is it catching hype? It's starting to catch on. It's heading to season five, which starts tonight, actually. Season five premieres on tonight. Season five? So I can start now and I can get four seasons? You can get four seasons. Is this an advertisement for Justified? No! Have we snuck in

an advertisement? That's John Lethko choking. We got to go. Here's why you'd like it. Here's why you'd like it. It's basically the character is a total psychopath who's wearing a badge and functions perfectly normal in society. But when it comes point to arrest a guy, instead of him just pulling the gun and going, okay, put your hands up. I got you.

He leaves the gun in the holster and he's always like, I can take you, and you're going to serve life in jail. Or you can draw that gun, and if you shoot me down, you get to walk away. Don't tell me anymore. Don't tell me anymore. I don't want to know this.

How dare you? I'm sorry. Spoiler alert, guy. I'm sorry. Son of a B. But we got to go on the set, and Tim DeOlafant's reading the script, and his very fanboy is super cool.

And then he turns over, he talks to the real Marshall who's been the consultant on the show for all four years and Timothy asks him a question like would my guy do this? and you can see the Marshall sweating in a little bit because he knows what he's going to say

it's going to screw up a lot of work and basically he says yeah you wouldn't go from point A, B, C, D and E to F if you were me you would have just gone straight to F and been done with it. And then you can tell they're now going to go back and do rewrites, much like the John Lithgow thing with the bad rear naked choke. They're so hoping it's going to be as realistic as possible, they're going to have to go change a bunch of crap.

Yeah, when I saw that rear naked choke, I thought I was watching a TV show from the 80s. I thought I was watching Charlie's Angels. Might as well be a Vulcan nerve pinch. Vulcan nerve pinch is more believable. Because at least he's an alien. John Lithgow's an old man with shitty biceps. Killing some lady in a bathtub.

She's not even fighting back. People fight like wild animals when you're trying to kill them. It's crazy. That's an unrealistic portrayal of death. Well, that took you out of the story. That's a good season, though. I agree. That's a really good season. How dare you?

And it starts terrible. It starts with the worst rear naked choke scene in the history of TV. I'm a stickler for technique when it comes to shows. Is that the girl he's choking on? Let me tell you something.

It ain't that easy, bitch. Her whole right side is wide open. She can breathe there. He doesn't have the hand over the top of the head. He doesn't have jack shit. Yeah, curl that up. Not only that, she's not fighting hard enough.

Her face isn't red. Like, you got to, I would, you know. Well, they're both naked. She might be enjoying it a little bit. This is a rear naked choke, though, for real. Because they are in a bathtub. There's no way, by the way, you get into that bathtub without anybody getting totally wet. Everybody would be soaking wet.

She'd be fighting for her life and flopping around. You wouldn't get behind her naked and be able to do this. This is ridiculous. It's a ridiculous position. This is terrible. Season sucks. I changed my mind. Screw that show.

Fucking bullshit. Yeah, I think that Dexter just went, started just getting weird. Started getting weird and not believable after like the first season. It was awful. I feel, look, from a creative perspective, once they got through season two and three, maybe to season four, it's really hard to keep that shtick going.

Yeah. He's the serial killer who kills serial killers. There's only so much. The challenges to that writing team were significant. How do we keep this going

because we're making money and make the best show we can? It had to be really hard. Well, the problem is also the dude stopped looking scary. If you look at Dexter in season one, he was yoked.

Yeah. They were talking about him being like a martial arts expert. He had this thick neck and traps and everything, and he looked creepy and scary. You know, he looked like a guy who could fuck somebody up. Yeah. But you look at him after he got sick, unfortunately, he got, what did he have, like leukemia or something like that? He had cancer. He had to go through chemo, and he was really fucking skinny for a long time.

And then like, well now I'm not buying him ragdolling all these people. Before, I bought him as this really crazy, super strong guy who was also a serial killer and was just using his sickness

to get rid of bad people. Right. I was like, this is a fascinating concept. Yep. But after a while, I was like, bitch.

Scott Sutherland, holding back the cough. Yeah, try it. Listen, I was like, bitch. Scott Saylor, holding back the cough. Yeah, try it. Listen, man, congratulations on everything. That is huge, huge news that you've got these two things in the works,

and I wish you all the best, man, and let me know when your new stuff comes out. I'd be happy to tweet it for you. We'd be happy to talk about it on the podcast. Sweet. We really appreciate it, man.

It's really fun talking to you. Really insightful, too. I love digging into someone's creative process. Yeah, it's fun. Why are you showing that gay guy again? He's a gay guy, but he's badass. That guy probably has three cocks. Just remind people, go to the website,

find that book, put in the code DEATHSQUAD, get that e-book for free. Yes, Tidal Fight. And Scott Sigler, they can get you on Twitter at Scott Sigler and online at scott sigler and uh online at scott sigler.com oh and sorry uh pandemic tour uh i'm on book tour starting january 18th oh beautiful people can go to the home page scott sigler.com it's right on the right sidebar and we will be in la uh what what's the date of laa we'll be in la in the 27th so anybody in la come

out january 27 january 27th la at anybody in LA, come out. January 27th? January 27th, LA. At Mysterious Galaxy. Mysterious Galaxy. What the fuck is that? That is a sci-fi bookstore. That sounds awesome. I love that place.

It's pretty sweet. All right. Let us know. We'll tweet it. We'll let people know. Great. Thank you very much, man. Really appreciate it.

Thank you for having me again. Much love. We've got so many new fans out of the show, and I'm so excited to be on here again. You're going to get more, I guarantee you, man.

Sweet. You do great stuff, and congratulations. I love watching someone work hard and watching it pay off. I think it's very inspirational. Thank you. Thanks to our sponsors. Thanks to Stamps.com.

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back tomorrow with uh my good friend dr mark gordon a specialist in traumatic brain injury and hormones and and he's going to teach you how to protect your liver when you drink too much booze and all kinds of cool shit. He's a fascinating, just fucking torrential downpour of information, this guy. So tomorrow will be very fun. All right, until then, go fuck yourself and keep it real. Keep it real, y'all. Thank you.