The Joe Rogan Experience - #496 - Nick Cutter

Episode Date: May 6, 2014

Nick Cutter is a Canadian author of short stories and novels, who has published work under both his own name, Craig Davidson, and another pen name Patrick Lestewka.

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night! All day! So my pal Matt Staggs, he sends me this book. And he's like, dude, you gotta read this book. This book is fucked up. You're gonna love it. Because he knows I love Stephen King and that sort of twisted genre.

So he sends me this book right here. It's in my bag here somewhere. He sends me your book. And I enjoy the fucking shit out of it. Thanks. I want to pull it out because it's so beat up and doggier. It proves that I've actually been reading it. Nothing looks better.

Oh, there we go. The Troop. And I guess I'm about 200 plus pages into it. It's really getting juicy. I'm really enjoying it, man. Good. It's really good. Good, good.

Thank you. It's really fun. And it's along the lines of Stand By Me or one of those classic old Stephen King books, you know, like The Stand or Pet Sematary where it's just twisted and dark and there's psychological shit going on and there's horrific things happening. There's monsters and it's really fucking cool, man. And when he sent it to me he told me that nick cutter wasn't your real name and i was like well what's what's the deal there yeah what is what's the deal there well um you know i think the the most concerning thing to me would be is that anyone because i mean i grew up like you like stephen king is my idol steve there's no nobody i've read

more than stephen king and beyond that like i grew up as a horror reader. I mean, I have read everything now. I mean, you sort of diversify, but I wouldn't even say diversify. Cause that's sort of like, I love the horror genre. So like Clive Barker, obviously Stephen King, Peter Straub, Robert R. McCammon. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. That was sort of who I cut my teeth on. So, um, so really my agent said, listen, you've been writing these things under your own name and they're kind of there. I wouldn't even classify them as literary, but maybe they would be a little more to that side, uh, rather than, than, than the horror genre. people might be confused or, or people might, you know, let's have some separation basically. And the best way to do this separation is just to give you a new name, put this, put this horror work. Cause when I sent him the troop, I mean, there's no way it's anything other than just like, I wanted to write like an eighties style, hard fireball and sort of horror novel, like not splitting any hairs, not trying to like make, make it meta ironic or anything,

just trying to go straight ahead. the horror that I grew up loving, and try and sort of be an homage to those writers in that time. So there's no doubt it was going to come out as clearly a horror novel. So he said, let's just make up a pseudonym. And I wouldn't say I'm new to this, but you have an agent as well. I mean, I trust my agent. I imagine in most cases you trust your agent, maybe always i don't trust them at all don't you okay no they don't get to talk to me about they don't that type of thing yeah i don't allow them well i think maybe

looking back you know what we did is we settled on this pseudonym and then i quickly went away you know trying to erase any sort of sentiment that I was ashamed of it. Because I think that's, I live in Toronto and I hang out with a lot of people in the horror genre, sort of genre writers. And their question was like, are you ashamed? I'm like, fuck no. That would be the worst thing for me for people to think that, you know, because I'm as proud as what I've done as The Troop as any other writing I've ever done. So when you say literary, like what are your other books? I'm not familiar with your other books.

The other books, I wrote a book called Rust and Bone, which is like a book. Is it fiction? Yeah, short stories. And then I wrote a book called The Fighter, not the same fighter, the Christian Bale movie, and I wrote a book just recently called Cataract City, which is, so it's sort of like, I don't know,

I wouldn't say Chuck Palahniuk. He was an early influence, but sort of like macho, like fighting, boxing, dog fighting, repossession. You know, those were sort of the things really sort of manly endeavors that they were, I was concerned about it, interested in with those books. But they weren't, you know, they certainly weren't literary like Alice Munro or something like that. I don't know who Alice Munro is. Okay, she's a Canadian, you know, a Canadian short story writer like Salman Rushdie or, you know, Philip Roth, those kind of like serious literary writers. All I know about Salman Rushdie is a bunch of Muslims really mad at him. Don't like that dude. And then Cat Stevens was on their side and I was very disappointed.

And he was finally allowed to stick his head up after, I don't know, like they put a fatwa on him, right? Is it over? Is the fatwa over? I think the guy who put it out died. So I think the fatwa died with him. Or maybe they carried it over. I don't really know how that works. But he is showing up at public functions, so I think he's less concerned about being killed. Poor guy. Yeah, you think about like, man, of all the stuff, could you imagine someone puts a fatwa on you

for something that you say during a podcast? Well, it's pretty ridiculous. Yeah. I would find out who ever did it and I'd kill them. You get to them first before, yeah. Yeah, if you can just kill the guy and the fatwa ends, that's, you're fucked. Yeah, exactly.

They shouldn't be putting out too many fatwas because it's like, I'm going to get you. It's the day and age you can't hide behind a fatwa anymore. No, exactly. In today's internet, you know. They can find you, but I can find you too. You could publicly expose them for their fatwa shaming. That's right.

So I don't, I'm not familiar with Salman Rushdie's work. I read a little bit of it and I found it quite boring. To me, honestly, yeah. I think, too, there's somewhat with literary writing. Like I had to read it because you went to school and did an English degree. So I feel like there's like medicine. It's like it's not necessarily – it's good for you. There's a sense of like you should be reading it because it's good for you and it'll make you a better person. But I'm sort of – I'm past all that now. I just like to read what I like to read. And if that happens to be, you know, sort of crunchy literary fiction where it's like dense text, well, fine. But if it's, if it's something like a really good horror novel or a thriller novel, I mean, I'm all over that too.

Yeah. As far as I'm concerned, when it comes to fiction, whether it's a film or whether it's a book, I only want to be entertained. You're not illuminating, elucidating. You're not enriching me with your fiction. You're just not. I agree. But I went, you know, you go to school, right? And you have too much time on your hands, right? You wake up in the morning and what do you have to do? Maybe you go to a class for two hours a day.

And so I think people in that realm feel like they, because they have the time to like invest in like really crunchy mind sort of melting you know fiction that really tests you but and you know and then they sort of look down on someone who just wants to read like like for example i didn't mention at all in my first when i did my english degree you won't talk about stephen king because you get these sort of looks like oh him oh well yeah i used to read him when i was 12 yeah he gets mocked yeah he gets mocked and i was like you know after a while you're just like wait a sec fuck off you know like i love stephen king i love a lot of writers that you guys seem to think are you know base or below your esteem

and who are you in the first place we're just sitting in some writing workshop you haven't published a goddamn thing like not to be an asshole i mean i like some of these people that i'm that i'm talking about but like you know yeah there was there was that certain that hierarchy and unless you're reading at this level but it's like most of people who like to read have like a job that really occupies them and they get home at night maybe and they don't have all that much energy they just want to read being you know for enjoyment you know and why why look down on that yeah and anytime you're concerned about image so much so that you're ignoring great works

like Stephen King. Yeah, exactly. Stephen King wrote some really fun stuff. Absolutely. And deeply psychologically thrilling as well. You can't dismiss The Stand. No. You just can't.

Or It. Yeah, or It. Salem's Lot. And one thing that I noticed too, like trying to write a horror book is i think it's really difficult to scare people in this day and age right like it's it's and so you would probably i don't know maybe you can answer this a little bit in terms of like in comedy like i read stephen king when i was 12 and i just read him first of all he's the writer that got boys to read of our generation. You know, I mean, there's nothing else other than maybe choose your own adventure books that I was

reading back then until I sort of graduated to Stephen King. And, um, and so you first, you read it just cause you love Stephen King. And then second, you know, I went back as a writer myself and you, you sort of treat the book as like an engine, the movie mechanic treats an engine. You're trying to break it down and see what is working. How does this work? How does he scare you? And that's where you realize his genius because it's like, you know,

I'm working on like a Model T Ford and he's got like this, he's working on the DeLorean engine from Back to the Future. That's how much he's above, you know, a lot of us in terms of like, he works at a level, level i think of like conjuring fear that is so difficult to to first of all see how it works break it down and then try and do it yourself um and and so when you have people like looking down on him for for that i just don't

think they've really interacted with his work as closely as i have because first of all if you're saying he sucks i'm like i can't even touch him in some ways. And so what are you saying about me? Well, I just think it's one of those things where it becomes trendy to say he sucks. Yeah. It puts you in this sort of elevated category of intellectual.

I think that's horseshit because fiction, like when you start talking about monsters or vampires, you're automatically a fool or you start talking about monsters or vampires, you're automatically a fool or you're doing foolish work. Yes, yeah. Whereas if you're talking about depression and suicide and, you know, abortion. Stop. I'm done with you.

All right, yeah. Like, when it comes to, like, fictional movies especially, like, if someone says, oh, my God, it was an amazing movie. I cried my eyes out. It was so horrible. Not me. I'm not going to see your piece of shit where you make me cry. I don't want to cry I think it's plenty opportunity to cry you want to want to cry watch the documentary on Rwanda

Okay, don't don't fucking cry because some fake asshole made some stupid movie where some people are pretending terrible things happen Yeah, just not gonna learn from that. You're just not. I like to be elevated by my fiction, or at least thrilled. Yeah, totally. I don't want to cry. No, no. I mean, and I completely agree. And so, and one another thing Stephen King does

really well is childhood. I don't think there's another writer, to my mind really, who writes about childhood as well as Stephen King captures it in like a book like It or the movie The Body that became Stand By Me. You know, he captures that time in a boy's life, especially that is just remarkable. You know what I mean? And so I think now too, I know Patton Oswalt did like, I think it was, I forget where he did it, but he did like a long article based on his admiration for Stephen King.

So I think now there's a renaissance. Finally, Stephen King has got to be close to 70 now, where people are finally like, okay, this guy's pretty good. Well, again, it's just one of those things. People love calling someone out, or they love shaming someone. They love diminishing someone's work. They just enjoy it yeah and it especially if it elevates them yes yeah or it's like a hipstery thing it's like well too many people like this it

can't be good um because too many people like it and i i have to like these sort of off people haven't you read the offbeat peruvian poet uh no i haven't i mean i'm sure he or she is awesome maybe but maybe not maybe not exactly Maybe not. Maybe not, exactly. How many times has someone tried to turn you on to a band, they tell you it's amazing, and it's shit. Yeah, you got to go down to like a basement, you know, somewhere, and they'll be playing to like five people. Or they send you, all the time people send me like a YouTube clip, and it's dog shit.

Dog shit music. And they're like, this is amazing, this band. They're so nuanced. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And if you don't get it, then... You're out. Yeah, I guess that's sort of like your lapse in judgment or ability to really recognize how good this is. And that's what separates them from you. You're just not complex enough. That's right. Yeah. That's right.

A.K.A. Craig Davidson. Yeah, I am lacking in some serious way. You know, Stephen King, it's an interesting comparison that you said that Stephen King captures childhood really well. Because I think that's something you did really well in this book as well. Thank you. You captured this sort of Lord of the Flies type scenario. I don't want to give away too much of the script. Sure.

But when things go awry in the beginning, you sort of see this social hierarchy that's going on. And you see shifts in this social hierarchy based on the events that take place. And it's quite fascinating. I really wish that you did it under your own name. And I hope that, like, Richard Bachman, the Bachman crime. Why did Stephen King do that? You know what? Why did he go with Bachman? Yeah. Why he. Why did Stephen King do that? You know what? Why did he go with Bachman?

Yeah. Why he did it is because he was too prolific. Is that what it was? Yeah. His agent just said, listen, man. First of all, like, I don't get it, man. Because he's probably got, because he's still, to this day, he's still pumping out books at an enormous rate and big, like slobber knocking books.

He's not, you know, little tiny. So I think he probably writes like me on a good day. I can write like maybe 3000 words. That's if like the pistons are firing really well. And I try and write a thousand words every day. You know, that's sort of my, my limit, but he must write like 5,000 words a day consistently. And it's strong, strong stuff. So, so that was why Bachman came to be because his agent was like, listen, we just can't be flooding the market with Stephen King. We got to, let's separate you out.

Let's just put some of these stuff out under a different name. And then, you know, you still have your book out every year, which is still in an astronomical rate. So yeah, it was just, for him, it was a totally a sense of he just had too much to say. Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. And he eventually took those Bachman books and put them under Stephen King. Yeah. Yeah. It became like an open secret, really. And you're right, then he republished them under his own name, basically.

What was the movie that they did where it was... The Dark Half? Yes. Was that a Bachman book? I'm not sure, but it was based on really... It was based... Richard Stark or George Stark was his pseudonym. And that's when his pseudonym started stalking him, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That was definitely based on his experience having written under a pseudonym.

That might have been a Bachman book. But that was another example of his ability to sort of not just be so prolific but also be prolific under like some really established territory with, as far as his work, he was always a writer. Yes. How many times did he do a book about a writer? A writer character. Yeah.

Yeah. I know. I think it's because the narrative is easier to write from that perspective. You know, even the voice that you find, I think it's like, Oh, I'm a writer.

This voice is because I was reading, rereading the body lately made into stand by me. And that's, oh, I'm a writer. This voice is, because I was reading, rereading The Body lately, made into Stand By Me. And that's, again, that's a writer character who's writing that. And you're right. He does have a lot of writer characters, which is something I've avoided up to this point. But, you know, you can have the success.

What's that? A lot of writers in Maine. Yeah, you're right. It's almost all set in Maine. He sort of staked out that territory absolutely. Have you ever been to Maine? Yeah, many times. I've never. I used to live in New Brunswick, which is right, sort're right. It's almost all set in Maine. He sort of staked out that territory absolutely. Have you ever been to Maine? Yeah, many times. I've never. I used to live in New Brunswick, which is sort of right above Maine. But I never crossed the border and went down into Stephen King territory. It's stupid. I should have.

There's some beautiful parts of Maine, but I want to be kind if I can. There's some of the dumbest human beings that live there on the face of the planet. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. I'm being kind when I say that. No one will take disrespect at that. Yeah, if I was being unkind, I would call them a bunch of kid fucking weirdos that live in the woods. Not all of them. Yeah. I mean, there's great parts of Maine.

Bangor's a great city. Yeah. The real problem with Maine is there's some areas where there's nothing. The real problem with Maine is there's some areas where there's nothing. Like there's an area between Portland, Maine, and Bangor when you're driving up from Boston where you go at least an hour without seeing anything, driving 70 miles an hour, and no radio. There's nothing. Oh, you can't even catch a station. You won't get anything.

That is desolate. You hit scan and your fucking radio starts smoking. It just keeps going. There's nothing. I mean, I don't know how it is now. There's no gas stations, man. There's just a straight shot of like 70 miles. Of just arid pine trees or whatever.

If you run out of gas, you're fucksville. Oh, man. And if it's snowing out, you're fucksville. You're really fucked. Yeah. We used to do that drive all the time because we used to do gigs up in Bangor. Oh, okay. If you made fun of Maine even at at all, I mean, even slightly.

The pitchforks were coming out. People would get up and scream at you. You'd call them maniacs. If you called them maniacs, they'd get up and get fucking nutty. Maine, they love it. They love it up there. It's beautiful. I mean, it's absolutely beautiful country.

And, you know, they have everything up there. Deer and moose. Yeah, it's an absolutely beautiful country. And, you know, they have everything up there. Deer and moose. Yeah, it's like great that way. So if you want to get back to nature, I feel like that's probably the place you might start. You want to be a survivalist. Yeah. Maine might be a place to get your crew started. It's probably one of the least populated states in the Union.

Yeah, it's way out there, you know. Because for us too, New Brunswick is pretty, you know, you're well east at that point. But what's odd is Montreal is north of Maine, yet completely cosmopolitan. Totally. Yeah, yeah. Very modern in every respect. The people are fantastic and educated. You've been up there, I guess, for MMA events and comedy events as well. For both.

For both. I've been going to Montreal since the early 90s, probably since 1990 itself is when I first started going up there. I love Montreal. Yeah, well, I do too. We've never had an opportunity to live there. I've lived a lot, you know, well across the country,

but of course there's the Francophone influence there, which I don't, I don't know, I guess you going up there as an American, I don't know how much interaction you have with that necessarily. A lot. Do you really? Yeah. Well, of course.

I mean, a lot of great MMA fighters are at least a couple. Yeah. Frank Fon, GSP, and Patrick Cote, and Loiseau, David Loiseau. David Loiseau. Yeah. Francis Carmon. Yeah. The TriStar Gym from Montreal is one of the best MMA gyms in the world.

Which I don't know how that happened, you know, because MMA, like I used to live in Calgary and that's actually another odd MMA hotbed. There's, there's a lot, there's a lot of interest. I don't know if there's a lot of great fighters yet who have come out of Calgary, but. There's quite a few. Are there now?

Good fighters, very good fighters. Good fighters coming up. And I did a magazine article on, on one guy who, you know, who I just followed him to his first professional fight actually, which was an interesting sort of thing to follow. And he actually, he hurt himself really badly in that fight and that was it. That was his career. Um, but, but I know the gym that he was working out of had, it was, I mean, it was, I've, I've rarely been and felt that level of like camaraderie, but alsoie but also competition sort of in such a tight, small area. That's how you build great fighters.

Yeah, that pressure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I don't know what it is about Canada and producing mixed martial arts fighters but also mixed martial arts fans. I think there's more MMA fans per capita in Canada than anywhere. Yeah, you blow at the Toronto, what is it, the Air Canada Center. We sell that place out, I think. They sold out the Rogers Center, too. Yeah, the Rogers Center, yeah.

That gigantic, huge place that used to be, you used to have a different name, right? What was it? Yeah, Skydome. Skydome. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's amazing. 60,000 people. 60,000 to what, and it was GSP's fight, I think.

Yeah. Versus Jake Shields. Oh, that's right. That's right. Yeah. We are, we're a great sporting, supporting nation. You know, we just had the Raptors just got bounced out of the playoffs, like the basketball team and, you know, selling out. And then they had like people, like 20,000 fans clustered outside of the arena watching.

So yeah. That's amazing.'s amazing yeah yeah it is it's a great it's and it's great that you guys in the UFC come up and I think that I think for a while there it was mostly you guys were down in Las Vegas and a few other places but then you decided to come up uh to Canada and it's it's been good for you guys been great for us too well Canada just has a love of all things manly. Yes, we do have that, I think. They're not embarrassed by it. No. Whereas there's a lot of embarrassment in America about things manly. Or like push it away or like, oh, that's a little too testosterone-y kind of a thing.

Yeah, I have a friend who was talking about a sitcom that he was working on. And he was talking about there's a woman that was one of the leads that was trying to introduce she was also one of the writers and she was trying to introduce these male characters that were like the type of guys that she likes and they were like oh he's too too too jockey he's too much of a meathead like they didn't want anybody who was interested in other women other than the girl that they're with they didn't want that. Like they didn't want anybody who was interested in other women other than the girl that they're with. They didn't want that dilemma.

Yeah. They didn't want anyone who was dominant over the woman in the relationship. They didn't want anybody who was obsessed with their body or working out. They're like, those are like all verboten. We just can't go near those things. You can't have those things. You can't.

And it was the writers themselves because they felt threatened by that, those types of men. So they were rejecting those characters. Girls don't like that. Those guys are jerky. You know, guys who wear scarves and stuff like that. She was getting angry. She was like, this is what I like.

You're telling me that the type of guys I like, women don't like these guys. And whether you like them or not, that's kind of like an element of our society too. Like why why purposely sort of ignore them and oh no, that wouldn't screen test well or we don't want to. It's embarrassing to people. like I remember when Fear Factor came out, there was a sense, you know, there were these hyperbolic newspaper articles like, ah, society's collapsing, you know, it's Fear Factor, like we're, you know what I mean? People are doing things that like, why are we getting people to eat bugs or stuff? And I thought, I love that show.

You know what I mean? And then the UFC comes along and it's the same kind of like, what was one of your politicians had the human cock fight? A bunch of them used that term. Right, yeah. And so you've been, you've been situated along that,

that line, I think. And so you'd be, I'd be sensitized to it if I were you at this point. It's like, come on, screw off. Well,

if I was doing things from a public relations standpoint, I've made nothing but poor choices. Right. If you looked at it that way. Yeah. When I was starting, first starting to work for the UFC was in 1997. And the people that was,

I was on a sitcom, I was on news radio, the sitcom. That's right. Yeah. People were talking to me like I was doing porn to work for the UFC, it was in 1997. And I was on news radio, the sitcom. That's right, yeah. People were talking to me like I was doing porn. They're like, what the fuck are you doing? You're going to ruin your career. Really? You're involved in cage fighting?

What's wrong with you? And I was like, it's martial arts. It takes place in a cage. It could take place in a high school gymnasium. Would that be okay with you? Yeah, would that make it more sanitized for you? If it was in a field, would that be all right? For free, yeah.

What difference does it make where it takes place? It's martial arts. But the rejection of things manly, I mean, it has its roots in some pretty disgusting behavior. You know, when you see like the Steubenville rape case. Sure, yeah. You know, jocks conspired along with people that worked at the school to hide. To sort of, yeah, cover that shit up. And that kind of, you know, misogynistic, supported thinking, the group think, you know, fuck these bitches, you know, all the men together.

But those are just weak humans. Those are pathetic humans. It has nothing to's not representative masculinity yeah no i completely agree but that's the thing it was like masculinity gets tied into all the reprehensible aspects of of male behavior against women not just a celebration of things that men love men love certain things that don't harm other people, men love cars that are loud and fast. Yes. You know, men love a lot of things.

Men love shooting guns. It doesn't mean they want to kill people. No. It's like, there's something fun about shooting a gun. And if you bring that up and you say that, oh, I don't have guns, I don't own guns, I don't believe in guns, they need to take away all the guns.

I mean, I've had these conversations with people, whenever there's a school shooting, they need to take away all the guns. I mean, I've had these conversations with people. Whenever there's a school shooting, they need to take away all the guns. Maybe they need to stop giving people these fucking drugs that make them psychotic. You ever think about that? You're talking sort of the over-medication of some of these kids? 90% of all school shooters, 90-plus, are either on SSRIs or are recovering from SSRIs. They're in withdrawal from antidepressants.

And it doesn't necessarily mean that the antidepressants cause that. But I do believe there's without a doubt an overprescription of medication. Without a doubt. You go to a doctor, the doctor's not going to look at a holistic approach to your life and say, Hey, you know, maybe you were raised by shitty human beings. And maybe you need counseling for a decade. I'll just put this beta blocker, and all the bad thoughts will be walled off.

Yeah, and not only that, all your inhibitions are going to be lessened. Your ability to understand the consequences of your actions will be lessened. Your ability to be depressed and to feel terrible about bad actions has also been removed. There's a lot of things that happen

when you put people on drugs that change your neurochemistry. It doesn't mean that those drugs are bad. I get these fucking tweets from these people that can't understand a complex argument or a nuanced conversation. I have friends personally that have benefited greatly from antidepressants. It's not that I deny them or don't support them. I think there's definitely a place for them. But I think when you look at all these people that have killed mass groups of people and you find this one common denominator over and over and over again, to ignore that but concentrate entirely on the tool itself is ridiculous. Most human beings are absolutely incapable of walking into a school and shooting a bunch

of children. Most human beings. What is it about some human beings that are capable? I don't know, but that's not being discussed. Gun control is being discussed. The raising of children is not being discussed. It's gun control that's being discussed. I find that ridiculous. I really do. And I think that that sort of gets lumped in with this rejection of manliness, this, you know, this support of anything that's anti-male or this denial of these base male instincts that don't necessarily have to be harmful to other people, like competition. other people like competition yeah yeah i mean there's so much about i mean i my career is in a way uh you know again my early stuff was all about about men doing men things which some of it is is silly and self-harming but but also it's like something that i think built into our genome we need to express in in a certain way you know what i mean so but i know that a certain segment of of readers or we just were like they were turned off and immediately in the same way that, in the same way that these TV writers were just like, no.

But they're just the wrong people for your stuff. No, you need to find, you know, you need to find a receptive audience and, and the same, I think your career has been a lot of that is about finding the right. And, and also, I think also for both of us, it's about making people realize that, like, I'm not a meathead. You're not a meathead. You know what I mean? But I feel like people think that. Like, they read this book and they assume that I am a meathead. Right, you wrote a book called The Fighter.

Yeah, yeah. And so you're... You had amateur boxing matches. Right, right. And would be the same... I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but I don't know if you've had the same experience as yourself. And it's sort of like, um, you know, I wasn't raised that way.

I, I don't, I don't consider myself a typical, and whatever, if you're a jock, that's fine. You know what I mean? Uh, not, you know, you're a Steubenville type, you know, if you have that kind of jock mentality. But that's not even a jock. It's not, I wouldn't say that's a jock. Yeah, it's like a, what would you call that?

I'd say a bro, but I, I don't think so. I think bros are more like. It's a rapist. Yeah, it's straight up a rapist you're a piece of shit you're a shit human being and most likely you have a bad relationship with your mother or your sisters or someone in your family who just did a terrible job of expressing to you the responsibility of being the physically stronger sex and the the one that is penetrator, not the penetratee. Yeah. You know, this whole relationship between men and women, I think a huge part of it is how they're raised, how human beings are raised and what kind of a relationship they have

with their family. Yeah. I had a really good relationship with my mother. Me too. I'm really lucky in that respect. Like, I've never had any hate towards women, but I have friends that genuinely don't like women. And that came from their upbringing,

either because of their father, maybe they had a divorce or something, and the father was like, she's awful. Bad moms. Or bad moms straight up. Bad moms, bad relationships with women, and they just don't like women. I mean, I don't have good friends that are like that, but I know people that will say, fucking cunts, they're all

the same. They'll say shit like that around you, and you're like, you're missing out. There's a lot of great chicks out there. Just like there's a lot of dudes that I would, there's some people that if I was alone with them in the woods, I would seriously think about killing them if I get away with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hypothetically, yeah. If you were around, here's a perfect example. If you were around that fucking not joe paterno who was the other guy the guy raped sandusky oh sandusky right if i was around if i was in the woods and it was just me and sandusky and there's sort of a grave maybe just sitting there's no one around and i look to the left and there's just miles and miles of woods fuck yeah i'd kill that guy yeah yeah if i knew he raped kids a hundred percent i'd kill him if i could get away with it yeah why because i don't believe that all lives are created equal i don't

i think that there's there's a yin and a yang to the world there's good and bad there's positive and negative there's give and take and you gotta trim weeds right you gotta you gotta shoot dogs that have rabies you know there's a lot of things that happen in this world that are uncomfortable, that people don't like, they're unfortunate, but that they need to be done. Yeah. And when you find some guy who likes to rape children, you should remove him from the earth.

Yeah, yeah. This is a mess. You can't clean this up. No, and I feel like it's, I don't know, I'm probably getting out of my depth here in terms of what my real understanding of it, but I feel like it's, I don't know, I'm probably getting out of my depth here in terms of what my real understanding of it. But I feel like it's such a built, like it's something deep in your DNA helix, in your genome, like you're not going to root it out. You know what I mean?

The best you can do is hope that you don't, aren't in a situation or you're somehow away from the source of what your, you know, issue is basically. But I mean, if you're out in society, I mean, of course, you're going to be sort of up against it. I don't think you get cured from something like that. I mean, I don't, I, again, I don't know for sure, but I feel like, yeah. Yeah. Well, I think there may be a time in the future where we can understand and get to the root of these behaviors and perhaps access whatever it is that's wrong in a person's mind that makes them either have a desire to victimize children or have the ability to victimize children and not feel remorse for it or be attracted to it do you as a writer um do you because as a comic i watch a lot of things that

i don't agree with and i mean other comedians doing things? No, no, no, no, no. I watch religious programs. I watch conservative right-wing propaganda shows. And just be seething and every muscle tensed when you're watching it sometimes? No, no, no. Oh, no, just easy. I try to get empty when I do those things because I don't want to get angry. What I want to do is try to find the patterns in their thinking. And you see a lot of commonality in these sort of groupthink mindsets, whether it's Republicans or I see it in feminists a lot. I see it in male feminists. I see it in these people like they choose sides and then there's a massive amount of confirmation bias and you see it, you know, you see it both ways. But as a writer, do you like to study like certain mindsets or certain people that are just completely alien to your way of thinking to try to grab pieces of the way they interact? Sort of jump into their head and see if

you could trace a narrative through through their eyes i have tried that i think i think that's you know i know writers and i certainly know comedians who i mean it's sort of like the the the rage-based comedian like you really want to sort of confront these things you know and like really go on a good harangue about it and i think i think a really it's sometimes not even funny with it with a comedian but it's really true and it's really like honest and it's really you're actually getting more of a social commentary at that point like hicks yeah exactly like you're getting a really strong distilled powerful medicine you know um and there's some writers who sort of work in the satirist vein, I guess, who sort of do the same thing over the length of a book.

So I've tried that. I've never found as much success with it, at least not yet. Because the same thing, of course, we have a strong conservative base. Conservative radio always gets on my nerves. It's funny because right now we have Rob Ford, our mayor in Toronto, who's doing all sorts of hilarious things. He is in rehab now. Uh, you know, and he's like, he's no end of, of fun. You know, I was sitting at the bar yesterday when I got in and I was talking to some, he's a defense contractor actually. And he was like, he, you know, he

sounds like, he seems like a pretty good guy. At least he's straight out honest. I'm like, he is a, he was a guy you could probably go out and feel like you'd have a beer with and I don't think he'd look down at you for sure. But he's also the mayor of our city. And he's a bit of a goof and he's a bit of a bully, I find, as well. turn themselves into paroxysms and back twists to try and defend his behavior basically and it gets more and more difficult to kind of defend the behavior of a man who keeps doing more and more interesting kind of uh who's trying to defend him well really once you've planted your well conservatives i feel like i am more liberal so quite liberal uh so once i think once a conservative or liberal but once you plant your stick in the dirt, you just got to keep holding on to that stick even though the wind is blowing you straight back. And one of them was like, well, I mean, he's getting videotaped all the time. You'd think he'd be hanging around.

I can't believe his friends are videotaping. It's like he's hanging around with drug dealers. You can't really expect a drug dealer not to do something that may or may not profit them in some way. So anyways, but you know, and of course, you know, the one talking head says that and the other one, yeah, that's, that's true. I never looked at it that way.

So then suddenly that becomes an arguable point that they can be like, yeah, Rob, he's getting victimized again. That was the argument about Donald Sterling. Oh God, yeah. The owner of the Clippers. Yeah, yeah. That was the argument.

Like, you know, like, hey, the guy's getting illegally wiretapped, you know, we'll give him a, give him a break. Yeah, that's right. He didn't know. He's just an old doddering old man, which yeah, true enough. I feel I heard some argument that he was actually asking her to tape him because he felt like his head was going to tapioca and he couldn't remember anything anymore. So he's like, please tape me so that I remember all the things that i say apparently that's the truth yeah that was actually part of her job wiretapped himself basically yeah and her job was to tape their conversation so that he would remember what they talked about so like there were certain issues that he had to clear up and certain things that he had to do she was apparently employed by him in some sort of a PR sense. In some capacity, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

So it's funny because even discussing it, like does this guy have a right to privacy? People are like, I can't believe you're supporting him. There's so many fucking morons out there that have the ability to comment on anything that gets discussed. Like you can't think of the guys thinking is reprehensible but yet think, hey, why is it okay to just listen to a private conversation that this guy's having because somebody recorded it and then fine him for that private conversation? I don't think it is. I don't think it's fair.

You're right. I mean, I'm, I, these are one of the, you know, you've heard this a lot of times. And of course you have to separate what he said and the reprehensible, clearly the longstanding reprehensible nature of this man has he's you know sort of proven to be over like 20 years span and then of course the question is and it's been asked already why why is he still in that position where everyone knows he was a racist dirtbag but no one was you know doing anything about it and i think at this point they got the players basically pushed it they said listen if you don't get rid of this guy we will not come out and play anymore. And apparently it got to that point.

He also represents a very unsavory aspect of our culture. Yeah, that's right. And so it's important to take a stand and say, hey, this guy's got to go. What I didn't get, the thing that puzzled me the most is that they fined him $2.5 million for a conversation that he had in his house. Yeah. Like, I don't see that standing up in court. Yeah, and he is. He's a litigious dude.

Oh, he's going to sue the fuck out of them. Yeah, he is. They're going to lose so much money. They're going to lose millions of dollars because they tried to fine him $2.5 million to make a point. They're going to lose so much money. And I wondered a conversation, too, you know, because now the value of that team is up in the air. Like, what is it worth? You know, and I think it's going to be worth more because once they, if they make them sell it, you know what I mean?

Because then it's almost like tabula rasa. We can redo it. It's like, we're getting rid of this old troglodyte and we're, you know, who knows? It might be like black ownership who comes in. Magic Johnson. Magic Johnson. I think Oprah Winfrey was sort of in talks. She wasn't.

Oh, she was. That was all just nonsense? Okay. But yeah, Magic Johnson would be the, because he was one of the ones who was actually insulted deeply. Plus he has HIV. It's even better. Right. Everything's good.

He loves Jesus. Get him in there. He's an ex-Laker. Yeah, he's perfect. Great basketball player. Yeah. Yeah. And he was one of the ones that I think she was in trouble for taking photos with.

That's right. And that's what Sterling brought it up. He was like, do we really have to have you taking pictures with Magic Johnson? Fucking shithead. What a dumb shit. But it's an interesting, you know, it is, and it's amazing how quick it blew up to me. Like I just saw it on some website and I thought, well, there's just an old dumb white guy saying old dumb white guy things but it was much clearly much bigger than that well if it was something else like say if he was um say if he was the president of a company a big company general

electric or something like that and he had a little piece on the side and he was like hey stop taking pictures with black eyes it wouldn't get nearly the response as someone who has benefited tremendously from black athletes. That's right. That's right. The amount of money that that guy has made because directly because of the work of black athletes. Yes. It's got that whole slave owner type quality to it. Yeah.

And there were rumors that, you know, back in a couple of years ago, he'd gone into the dressing room and all the, you know, basketball players have been in various stages of undress. And he's like, I like seeing all this, you know, black, black flesh, you know what I mean? Sort of a thing. Well, he said to a woman, he brought a woman backstage to the locker room. Yeah. And he was saying, look at all these beautiful black bodies. That's right. That's the exact quote.

Yeah. Who knows? Who knows? Yeah. I think things like that are going to spiral in all sorts of direction. And you can, you can quote things that he may or may not have actually said but i mean the guy does you know what at certain points like you've opened pandora's box my friend yeah well he didn't even mean to no so dumb and old that's right i can't remember shit no so pandora's box sort of opened

on its own that's right do you think though that as a writer yeah like studying guys like that do you actively do that do you actively like watch how a guy thinks and sort of absorb his stupid thinking i certainly find i've done it more in magazine articles i wrote like profiles you know of people but i've used that to move into into my fictional work too so like um you like if it was a basketball player say that you were following around you would try to climb into their mind yeah and shadow them really like you physically shadow them and and what is your day can i can i follow you and of course that's up to the level of how much they're willing to have you basically dog their heels for as long as

they're there but i mean the more you can do that the better it's the better the actual article is going to be depending on if they want that or not but like the um the mma fighter i followed obviously he was just an amateur his name was ryan styles uh and and he actually only had one fight it was up in red deer so like calgary and then red deer is about two or three hours away and it was like in a civic center sort of a thing and uh but he was really his father it's great story man i find the best stories sometimes are where you don't quite make it. You know what I mean? Like athletically, it's like you put your heart and your guts and your soul into it and you're just not quite good enough. Right.

You know what I mean? There's something about you, you just can't quite get over the hump. You know, I think I find those are the stories that are the most, hit my heart the strongest, you know. And his father is on the Calgary SWAT team now, but he was, uh, had, had played forever in the, in the junior leagues of, of hockey. And he made it up for a cup of coffee with the Leafs for like two games, but he played professional hockey for two games. And his son was like an, an incredible wrestler, sort of had the, you know, had the classic sort of MMA pedigree. And, uh, but he drove a, uh, like a sandwich truck. Do you know those

things that go around to work sites, you know, uh, like a catering truck. And so I followed him for like three or four days on that job. And, um, he actually said that he, he let people take things on credit, you know? And so people would build up like a hundred, couple hundred bucks before they paid it off finally. And one guy, I guess like just, you know, he went to a mechanic shop and he was like, is so-and-so here. He needs to settle his bill. like just, you know, he went to a mechanic shop and he was like, is so-and-so here? He needs to settle his bill. He's like, no, he went up. He's like a wildcatter now up in Fort McMurray, like 10 hours away. He just bailed. He just left in the middle of the night. So Tony, you know, who has a, has a, had a wife and a young kid got in the car, went up and

found him and, uh, and, and got his money back, you know? So, I mean, this is the sort of mentality that this guy had. So, so, and I think I mean, this is the sort of mentality that this guy had. So, and I think I got a pretty strong story out of that just by being able to stay with him long enough. He was really nice to speak to me, talk to me, and you got him burrowed inside of his head. And I think the strongest work comes from as close as you can get to those people, you know?

Yeah, isn't it fascinating that we have this deep, deep connection to, towards people that really are never going to realize their goals. It's a painful, I feel the same way myself. You know what I mean? It's like, I've always felt like the mountain goes up and up and up. You gotta, you're going to hit your point on it at some point. And you got to be happy with that spot where you are in the mountain.

Whenever you, whenever you reach that spot, I think that's the biggest part in really, is just accepting your spot on the mountain, wherever it happens to be. Well, it's also the real issue with putting all of your eggs in one basket in life. And that basket being athletics. Especially athletics. Especially combat athletics. Yeah. Yeah. The idea that you're going to have some sort of a long and successful, fruitful career by throwing your bones and another person trying to separate themselves from their consciousness. That's quite ridiculous. Yeah. Because just the very act of doing it in preparing for that very act, you have to the amount of damage that your body and your brain even endures. that your body and your brain even endures. But we have this idea in our heads that, you know,

a guy has to be an undefeated champion. Yes. And, you know, my son's going to be a champion someday. Like, man, if you're really lucky, your son won't be a champion. Yeah. If you're really lucky, your son will learn the valuable lessons of martial arts as far as, like, character development and as far as your ability to overcome what seemed to be insurmountable obstacles but to become a champion you have to be a crazy person yeah you have to be

a crazy person who's obsessed with nothing but that and that will take over your life yeah and i feel like having worked obviously with people like that you know shadowed them and and recognizing that mindset um uh you know and i find too like there's just some point at which like there's some gifts that are just bestowed by genetics or something and doesn't matter how hard you work you're not going to quite get to that maybe that level that separates the real and you won't know that until you hit it you know what i mean you're not going to know that wall until you run into it. And I feel like for some people, like I was talking to one guy, just a guy at the gym and he said something more or less like

the best that he ever felt in a fight was when he was up against someone he knew was better than him and he knew he was going to lose and if they fought a hundred times, he'd lose a hundred times. But he, that guy, he made that guy see something about himself. He got that close to him that the other guys sort of recognize I'm a frail. I'm made out of the same crumbling stuff that he's made out of. And so, you know, sort of pierce that Teflon armor that, that I think some fighters carry around with themselves.

And he's like, that's, that's all I could do. That for me is the victory. I still lost, but I made that guy discover something about himself that he hadn't discovered up until that point. Cause he'd never been tested to the point that I got to, I wasn't able to test him. And I thought that's another part about just being, recognizing what you're able to do, you know, and it may not be beating them, but it's, you, you find some other measure of success. That's fascinating because to me, if you say that someone can get so close, they could test someone, that close, they could test

someone, that means that they could beat them. They just have to figure out what it is they did wrong and go out again and work harder. That's where the madness lies. Yeah. Maybe that's it, isn't it? The madness lies in the preparation. The madness lies in the trying to like what separates a champion from someone who is just very good? From my personal experience involved in martial arts competition, there's a level that some people are just not willing to push themselves. Is that it really? Yeah, that's a big part of it. And then outside of that, the other variables are genetics, psychology.

Some people have a different psychology. What's really interesting is people that have been bullied, and especially people that have larger brothers that bullied them in the house their whole life, those are the scariest fuckers on the planet. Really? Yeah. That's like GSP, I think, was bullied. And it sounds shocking now, but yeah, he was bullied.

Chris Weidman was bullied. Oh, is that so? John Jones has a good relationship with his brothers, but he has a giant brother who's way bigger than him. His brother Arthur's a beast. He's a pro football player. Oh, okay, okay. And he fucks John up all the time. Whenever they wrestle today, he still fucks John up.

Really? Yeah, he's huge. So because of that, I think that John grew up with this just super athlete brother, and he ain't afraid of shit. Doesn't seem like it, yeah. Because his fucking brother's a monster. And he was sort of imprinted on him at such a young age, too.

I mean, I think that's it too. You get these things impressed on your flesh at a young age and you don't forget those lessons. Yeah. Brothers are a big one, man. And it's usually for whatever reason, the younger brother, that's the real beast because

the younger brother endures the beatings that the older brother gives him. And because of that, he develops this sort of steely determination. It's quite frightening. Yeah. I could, I could totally see that. That's totally makes sense both on a physical level,

but on an emotional kind of, you know, you're getting that adamantium kind of mindset about things and just got to keep prevailing. I've always thought too, like, because I do watch a lot of MMA and I love it both as a sport and boxing as well, but also like the psychological aspect of it really fascinates me.

And I've always felt like how painful it must be to come up. I always think about like Michael Jordan and who were, you know, we would think differently of Dominique Wilson, Wilkins, if Michael Jordan ever existed. And I think we'd think differently of so many fighters if GSP hadn't existed or, or Silva or, you know, John Jones, these sort of long reigning sort of champions um and uh and and you would know better having been been through it but there's you know what i mean there's that next level who can't quite you know they have their one shot they can't quite clear it and some are lucky to have another opportunity to sort of go go back at it and can still make

a good career for themselves but i find that that MMA, especially in the UFC right now, there's some long-reigning champions, and that's what people love. You know, they sort of love, but all the focus is on them and then these people, the guys underneath who could be awesome were it not for a GSP. But that's the whole purpose of being a champion. That's right. To be dominant over other savages.

That's the whole purpose of being a champion. That's right. To be dominant over other savages. That's right. I mean, that's the thing about being the second best guy who could have been a champion in any other era. That's got to be so maddening. Wouldn't it be? Yeah. Junior Dos Santos is a good example of that. People always compare Junior Dos Santos.

Because Junior Dos Santos was the champion. He knocked out Cain Velasquez. That's right. But it was at a knocked out Cain Velasquez. That's right. But it was at a time where Cain Velasquez was injured. He tore a ligament in his knee. His knee was all fucked up. He didn't have good mobility. And Junior caught him with a big punch.

Then they fought two more times and Cain destroyed him. Yeah, it was not pretty. Just beat him from pillar to post. Probably took years off of his life with those beatings. I had friends who were martial artists and fighters and either former pro fighters or guys who had been involved in fighting their whole life who universally texted me and emailed me and said, dude, that fight took years off that guy's life. They just felt it. You can watch it through the TV screen. Especially the second one.

You can watch it through the TV screen. Especially the second one. The third one, rather, the last one, the second rematch. Just unbelievable beating that Kane put on him. And that's sort of Kane's thing. Kane is, he doesn't knock you out. He just mauls you and really just reduces you in some terrible way. Well, he keeps a pace that's almost inhuman. Yeah.

For a heavyweight? For a heavyweight, yeah. For a 240-pound man to keep up with him, good fucking luck. Yeah. luck. It's probably not going to happen. And a lot of that's genetic. Like I talked to Bob Cook, who's his trainer. He said that guy could go a couple of months outside of training, like get injured, be out for a couple of months, then come back in and outwork everybody. Just doesn't get out of shape. And you, wow. Mexicans are kind of known for that. There's a lot of- Yeah, there's some tough fighter boxers too. Like it's, it's a, it seems like a tough culture.

You know what I mean? Fuck yeah. Mexicans, I think, uh, some of the grittiest, toughest fighters of all time. I totally agree. MMA or boxing. And, and their endurance too. Their stamina. Yeah.

It's just shocking. And they just, they don't stop. They don't, you're right. They're sort of just like, you're going to have to hit me with a house. Like Julio Cesar Chavez. Yeah. Remember when that guy used to fight? Yeah.

He would just ding, the bell would ring, and he'd just start moving forward, throwing a barrage of punches that will never end until you drop. Yeah. And he fought, like, didn't he have an enormous record in terms of like, I thought like 100 fights or something? More than that. More than 100 fights. He had 97 fights before he ever suffered a loss. Yeah, that's how it was. Yeah. 97 and 0 before he ever suffered a loss. Yeah, that's how it was. Yeah.

97 and 0 before he ever suffered a loss. And that's like four careers of some other fighters, you know, in terms of overall records. Sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's, I mean, a lot of fighters today in this day and age don't fight nearly as many times as they used to back in the day. No. Like a guy like Floyd Mayweather, who's like 45 and 0, 46 and 0, I think now. 46 and 0 after the last one, yeah. I mean, who's like 45 and 0, 46 and 0, I think. 46 and 0 after the last one.

That's unbelievable. Like, but 97 and 0? I know. That's so insane. Just 97 fights, period. You know, and that's right before he hit a loss. And then I feel like I could be wrong, but I feel the wheels fell off. That's one of the quotes is, you know, like on a long enough timeline, any fighting stories

usually can be a tragic one. And I find that happens less in MMA. I feel like guys know when to retire better in MMA than in boxing. I feel like people hang on to the rope a little too long in boxing. I wish that was true. I wish that was true, but I don't think it is. No. No, Chuck Liddell definitely didn't.

Oh, he didn't? Because I was almost going to mention Chuck Liddell is like, because he did get rocked his last couple of fights and that it's made some. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, not just that. The only reason why he stopped fighting was Dana White. Cause Dana just said, that's it. Yeah. Dana's very close with him and said, I see what's going on here and maybe you don't because you're the fighter and you got to stop. The thing about fighters is they have this belief in themselves and it's just, it's never ending and unflappable, especially the champions. They always think, I know everybody's

counting me out, but I'm going to figure out a way to beat this motherfucker. And they go into that ring with that determination. And that's what made them a champion in the first place. But that's also what,

that fails them when it comes down to like objective thinking and being introspective about your abilities and how much you've diminished. It's that sort of bulletproof belief in themselves that winds up fucking them over. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think it's also too, they're young, right? I mean, comparatively, I know when my dad retired, it was like a trap door opened under his life in a way because he was like used to having this routine to his life and you look forward to it. But I think, you know, the first week you're like, oh, this is great. And then the second week it's like, what the, what the hell am I doing? I feel like my, and then if you're looking down the barrel of that, when you're at 60, 65, well, that's one thing when you're looking down the barrel of that, when you're 32, 33, something like that, it's gotta be a different, this is what I was, this is what I'm good at. This is all I'm good at. I think some of them might think. And, and then it's like, God, I've got a long existence ahead of me doing what, what am I doing

next? And nothing is ever going to match the thrill that fighting. No, we'll never feel that. Or I'll never feel something like that. You know what I mean? I feel like that must be, I don't know if you've talked to fight, do they ever, are they good at describing what that feeling is like? Well, I think the only person that's ever going to truly understand what it's like to say, like, beat Jon Jones and enter into a world championship fight with the whole world watching, the cage door shuts and the Bruce Buffer, it's time. They're the only ones that will ever understand that. I will never understand it.

I've watched and I've done commentary on more than a thousand fights. And you're right in the ring. When're when the endorphins are still there. I don't know what the fuck's going on. I'm completely outside. And I've competed. I've kickboxed. I've fought probably a hundred Taekwondo matches. Doesn't matter. I just, I don't know what's going on when that's happening. I just, I can't imagine. I literally can't imagine. Do you think it's a different level than, cause I mean, I mean, it's a different level in some way in the fan, in the, in the sort of the crowd response and the idea of how many

eyes are on you. But I mean, when you step in or even when I've done fighting, it's still you and another guy. So I wonder how far removed is our experience? You know what I mean? Pretty far. Yeah, I assume it is certainly in terms of, but I mean, I felt like I was amped up to the

point where every one of my synapses was screaming. I'm just not built to do that. You know, maybe I mean, I felt like I was amped up to the point where every one of my synapses was screaming. I'm just not built to do that, you know. Maybe they have, maybe there's a calmness. I feel like sometimes you look and the top fighters are able to kind of establish a certain calmness that I've never really found in those situations in my life, whether it's a playground scuffle or, you know, an amateur boxing match. Well, the calmness, a lot of it comes with the experience itself being something that you recognize and you've been there before and you know how to deal with it. Whereas someone who has never, like if you took a guy who has never competed at all before and you threw him in a UFC fight, they would fucking shit their pants. Especially if they didn't

know how to fight at all. And there's so many things to deal with, it would be overwhelming. They'd probably have a heart attack. Yeah. But if you take a guy like a John Jones, because we keep talking about him, trains his whole life in wrestling, so he's wrestled for many, many years, competed at a very high level in wrestling, then started competing in MMA, trains every day, constantly in the gym, constantly working out with these really high-level guys. It becomes you have a comfort level with just the recognition of what this is. You understand it.

You get in there. You know what you can do. You're very aware of what you're capable of because you have literally pushed yourself to your limits in training. And you get in there, and you're much calmer than a person who's completely alien to the experience so i think for you like doing it a couple of times like you didn't have a chance to get used to it no not there's a lot of guys who do who are probably similarly gifted you know or not gifted yes you know not gifted is the way but this is a lot of not gifted guys go very far just through hard work and determination.

And just determination. Yeah, yeah. What they don't ever do is beat the great ones. No. That's the difference. Yeah. The not gifted guys can have great careers. They can get a lot out of the competition. They can become coaches. They can train fighters. They can become commentators. They can do a lot of things, but they can never figure out a way to beat the great ones.

No, no. I feel like that's, um, in my experience watching as well, there's that kind of, that's, that's a separation level. It's, it's as much as your heart and your talent. And there, there is, you know, heart is something that is one of these ephemeral qualities that no one, but I mean, there is there, I mean, there there are fighters that you know, that's what they have. That's what's getting them through. It's not necessarily their talent. It's their, I think heart is a combination of a lot of things that are kind of impossible to quantify, but you can, you can see it in, in different athletes.

It doesn't have to be a fighter. That seems to be where it's most obvious to notice it, but there's lots of athletes that I like and, and usually it's because they have some quality of heart that distinguishes them in my eyes. And they're not the best. Right. They're just there, but they've taken their skills as far as they can go. Well, that's why everybody loved Arturo Gatti and Mickey Ward. Of course.

That's a classic two heart guys going up against each other. They would just never quit. You could beat them up. You could knock them out. You could stop them. But their will was never what faltered. No, no, absolutely. And had they had more talent, who knows what their limit would have been necessarily. Or had they have trained more intelligently or competed more intelligently. I mean, a lot of that, what is talent?

You know, well, it's the approach that you take. If you look at the way Arturo Gotti moved and punched, he was very talented. Yeah, he was, wasn't he? Most likely that he probably just wasn't trained correctly or to the best of his ability. If you've got a guy like Emmanuel Stewart who gets a hold of a boxer from the time that he first starts and teaches him just incredibly perfect technique, perfect strategy, the mindset,

like a custom model, what he did with Mike Tyson molds his mindset. You know, you can, you can do something that if the guy grows up with some, you know, Midwest boxing club in the middle of nowhere with a guy who doesn't really know how to box. And that's the guy who's teaching him. That's the guy who brings it through his amateur career. And that's the guy who turns him into a pro. That guy might be lacking in just giant chunks of knowledge that a guy like say a freddie roach has yeah yeah you just you you never know what would create a champion out of a contender yeah sometimes it's just the it's the the mentor he runs into yeah i think that i think that's and i i feel like that's true yeah also even mid fight, you know, because Gaddy was someone who used to get himself drawn into

firefights when he didn't need to, you know, and, and, uh, whether he's really listening to his trainer at that point or not, I don't know. Um, but I know for me too, even, even the amateur, uh, things that I did, what I, what I really took away from it and what I really enjoyed was, was the training part of it. You know, I trained, um, I was living in Iowa at the time and, uh, there was a, a boxing club at the bottom of like a really sort of, uh, it was at the bottom of a Gold's gym in Coralville, which is sort of like just outside of Iowa city. And, uh, it was run by a coach and two, two girls, two, uh, female fighters, the Kleinfelter sisters. And they were like 130. One of them was maybe 130.

One of them was like 115. Tough. I mean, tough as nails, fast. And you'd spar. Like I knew I was going to have to get in this amateur boxing match. And so I was like, well, don't, you better not let, be easy on me. And I don't, I'm not going to be able to really punch a girl, I didn't think. You know, and I ultimately, I wasn't able to, but even if I wanted to punch them, I don't think I would

have really been able to lay leather on them because they were fast and they were mean and they were, uh, and even if I did touch them, they'd be like, you know, you, you punch like a softie, like this is weak, weak ass shit. Uh, so, so, but I, what I really took away from it is really enjoying the, the discipline, you know, with nutrition and with the road work. I mean, I could, I did all that stuff. I love doing that. And I felt like that was the only thing that I could actually take into my own hands and that I had some sort of, um, agency in, you know what I mean? I can run as hard and as far and I can, I can hit the bag until my arms feel like noodles.

That's all that I can do. And you can see a direct improvement of your skills. Yes. But also there was a limit, like, I mean, and the one thing that I noticed and I've said it before is like, and I feel like other people have noticed this because I've gotten a lot of fights when I was young, but I don't think I ever won one. And I feel like I must exude this kind of waft of something that like, I just am not a fighter, but every time I've gotten

in a fight, it's been more that someone is, I feel like is taking, trying to take advantage of me, or has been picking on me for a long period of time. And it's the only way that this is going to stop or been, or been picking on someone that I cared about. And, and I always got the sense afterwards that the person who beat me up basically, uh, knew it, knew that they're like, they, I can draw Davidson into a fight and I'll, and, and he'll, he'll willingly go in, he'll go into the bear trap and then I'll just be able to beat him up. And the only good thing about it ultimately is that they, the, the picking on stuff stopped, you know what I mean? But I had to take a beating in order to sort of affect that you know yeah that's a weird psychological sort of a relationship between the bully and the person who gets picked on yeah yeah but i feel like and i feel like the real true fighters wouldn't even

do something like that they would recognize well you know this guy for sure i'm not gonna bother with this guy i mean i have other yeah i mean don't know. Maybe, maybe there's a few fighters who like to beat the shit out of people. Yeah. Yeah. You've, I am, you notice in fights sometimes I feel like that guy looks like he probably might've, would be happy to be beating up someone with far less skill. He'd be taking as much delight in it as he is. Usually they've been abused. Is that so? Yeah. Yeah. I believe that's a big part of a lot of what constitutes a bully is physical abuse. You know, that they've been abused either at home or they've been abused by other kids and they're trying to lash out and get theirs now. Yeah. They've sort of taken on the role

of the bully because they've been bullied so much. That happens a lot. I could see that. I actually, here's the, here's a sort of a story of my, one of my, my worst beatings. I was at the YMCA. Me and my brother were playing basketball. I was probably like, I was 16, 17, 18. I was my, my last year of high school probably. And these two guys come and say, let's,

let's play two on two. So we did. And back then I probably weighed like 240. I was a, I was a big fat dude. You know, I just. 240 in high school? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe, maybe, maybe 230. Like I was enormous, but it was not, uh, it was not a healthy weight obviously. Cause what do you weigh now?

175, 180, something like that. Wow, that's crazy. So that's partly the whole boxing stuff. And we do tree planting a lot up in Canada. That's sort of like what you do at university. You just go up to the woods and plant trees and that, I shed a lot of weight that way, uh, during, during university. But so I was a big beast, you know, and I sort of knew how to use my body. And the guy that I was playing against was maybe one, 160. Um, so we were getting close to beating him and I turn around and I see the ball, it's whipping right at my face. He'd thrown it at me and I turned my head and it

sort of goes by the side of my head and just, you know, gives me a scalp burn basically. And then he's, then he's charging right at me, like to get into a fight. And there was no prior provocation? No, none at all. That's the thing. I mean, this guy. Just a basketball game? Just a basketball game.

And, and, and okay, it's in the Y. So I'm like, okay, well, we're not going to have a fight right in the middle of the Y. I think I'm going to be okay. That's, I mean, I didn't really want to get into a fight, but again, this guy's throwing a basketball at me. It's a pretty shitty move. So anyways, this guy comes out, he's got to be like 80 years old. He's like one of those guys at the Y that was like a retired gym teacher.

And they sort of said, okay, Bill, um, you can just hang out around here and keep order. That's the, be nice of you to do that. So he comes out and he's got a whistle around, like an old P whistle around his neck. And he, he says, take it outside. I'm like, I don't, the last thing I want to do is take this outside. But, and, and, and he says, that's it guys.

You take this outside. So I'm like, oh, I'm sort of like being shoehorned into going out to having a fight with this guy. So I'm going down the hallway and my brother is, it's like out of a, he's massaging my shoulders because I guess he thinks that's what he should be doing. You know, that's how little we know about fighting. You know what I mean?

He's, my brother's like, well, I guess I've seen this in Rocky. I should keep him, keep him limber. And, you know, he's like, you're, you're going to be fine. And if I, but I had a chance to look in his eyes, he'd be like, you are, you are, you are fucked. You know what I mean? And I think I knew that too. So we ended up outside, it's winter in Canada

and there's, you know, ice on the sidewalk. And, you know, I face up in what I assume is somewhat of a fighting posture and he kicks me in the head. It's the first thing he does. Just like kicks me right in the head. And I'm not even sure what the hell happened. I'm still standing, you know, and then he does it again and then i'm like oh god this is not this is not good

so he had martial arts training yeah yeah definitely and then you know there was a bike rack and i remember he like rang my my head off of it and i get him in a you know a sort of a headlock and uh and i remember being like face down and there's like ice melt on the street you know that those blue crystals they put down you know and i'm my face is pressed into it and thankfully it goes on for a while clearly i'm i'm beat and he's like are you are we are we had enough here i'm like yeah i mean i've had enough that's enough so he goes back inside chuckling with his buddy um i'm sitting out there on the street bleeding i don't even want to go back into the why you know what i mean i'm to have the people inside going, what the hell

happened? You need help? And I'm like, I just want to crawl into a hole and, you know, not see humanity for about a month. Uh, so my brother goes inside, gets my clothes. We go, I find out later, this guy, we, lacrosse is a big sport in our, in our country. And he was like the enforcer on the lacrosse team, like the AAA lacrosse team. So he was a tough guy. Like I didn't have a chance, you know, right from the get-go I didn't have a chance. And then, you know, I discover his name because we lived in a small town and you sort of, these things sort of come to you as time goes by. And then my buddy calls me up a couple of years later. He says, did you hear about so-and-so?

I said, no, I was away at university at this point. He's like, they went camping in the woods and him and his dad, and this is where it gets back to your idea of abuse. He stabbed his dad 44 times, killed him, killed him in the woods. And they caught him just walking down the street with the knife in his hand. And, uh, and you know, later on they interview his mom and his mom was like yeah he was uh you know he basically would sit out on the porch saying that he george bush was going to come in air force one anytime pick him up for some top secret mission so he clearly had some some mental instabilities

that didn't present themselves at the age at which at least they were maybe emerging but i thought later use them i mean that part had never been been into i'm not i can't really comment on that but i mean i i don't know but i think i feel like he stabbed the man 44 times it would have to be a really heated argument and if they had no prior sort of history with one another i don't i don't really But first of all, that he stabbed him and then he stabbed him that many times. Holy shit. Yeah. And I sort of thought later, like, man, as bad as I got it,

I mean, I could have got a lot worse. You know what I mean? At least he like let me off at the end. He's like, all right. Well, I always try to explain that someone who gives people the finger in a car, like you never know who you're giving the finger to. Exactly.

My wife has a bad habit of honking the horn. I'm like, baby, I love you, but don't do it. You don't know who the hell is stepping out of that freaking car. Not only that, you never know what state they're in. They could be in the worst state of mind ever. At the moment you lay on that horn, you could have caught them at the breaking point. Yeah, and that's what puts them. Yeah, you fucking people, them at the breaking point. Yeah. And that's what puts them. Yeah.

You pick fucking people, especially in this day and age when you're dealing with cities and traffic and the unnatural stress of slamming 200 fucking million people together like this. You know, they've done these studies on population density just with rats. And they've shown how bizarre rat behavior gets when you get too many rats in a contained environment and it mirrors human beings behavior as far as like human beings when you have a small amount of them you know everybody seems to get along fine when you jam them together you started getting all these mental illnesses well that's what they do with it they get rats if you have a certain amount of rats and you jam them into a a box they're a certain amount of them will just sit in the corner and start

nodding their heads up and down and back and forth and it gets really weird yeah yeah i found the same thing i used to work at a place called marine land in niagara falls which is like a sea world kind of an idea yeah we had a guy um guy on that worked at Marine Land. Oh, is that so? Really? Yeah, yeah. Was involved in this fucking horrible situation with dolphins and he had a... What the fuck is his name? Phil DeMores. Oh, shit.

I interviewed him for an article I did. Phil DeMores. Yeah, okay. Of course. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, and he was explaining us how intelligent... It was Smooshy the Walrus. Yeah, yeah. He was also explaining to us how intelligent. It was Smooshy the walrus. Exactly, the walrus. Yeah, yeah. He was also explaining to us how intelligent these dolphins are. And the dolphins are going on hunger strikes. They have to force feed them.

And they take them away from their mothers. And they buy them from Russians. Yeah. Who are really ruthless the way they capture them. Yeah, yeah. I know it's rough. It's rough stuff. Yeah. So anyway, you got all that already from Phil.

And Phil was an insider. Phil was, Phil was there after I was there. And I think things got, um, I mean, I was never a trainer either, but you know, some of the things that those guys saw, the animal control guys saw was, um, pretty rough, but the same thing is you have so many animals and if you did the same to people, of course, there's going to be like mania, disturbing, you know, depression, all sorts of stuff that we can sort of emote. You know, animals can only sort of just do it through their behavior. You get a sense of like, this is not right. This rat is not in a good state.

Well, the zoo. You ever go to the zoo and watch an animal just pace back and forth in their small little container? Yeah. And you're like, this is nuts. I watched this bear once. And he would just walk to one area, turn around, the other turn around and go back and forth like that animal is going mad they're going mad they're they're animals like bears they roam over miles and miles of countryside and that's how their genes are sort of adopted. They're adapted rather.

Their whole being is adapted to this idea of nature providing them with food. They go out and forage for the food. When they're just stuck in this box and the food comes sliding under the door in a tray every day, all their reward systems are being just ignored or contained in some strange sort of a way and madness no no exactly it's they and they find other way you know when you baffle all of those primal instincts um and i think you know it's true i you know we have a son and will we take him to the toronto zoo i mean we might have to where else can you see all of those creatures you know you can't just go out you, searching the forest until you find a bear. I mean, you could, um, but you, you do it with the understanding that no matter how

nice the bear pen is or the gorilla enclosure, it, you can't, it can't do all the things that, that gorilla, you just have to hope that they have a mind that is a bit more able to embrace their new situation. But, and some animals maybe can, but other animals just, like, I ain't built for this. Same with some men who are imprisoned. Like, I'm not, you know, the cool hand Luke sort of a thing. I'm not built for this. Yeah.

Yeah, it ain't happening. Yeah, I agree. And I have children, and I take them to the zoo, but there is that feeling. Like, I do it just because my kids, I want them to explore everything, see as many things as possible. But there's a part of me that feels like a big

hypocrite because I don't want to support containing these animals. Yeah. It's a fucking penguin and it's 90 degrees out in LA. Like, what's this fucking penguin thinking? Penguin's got to be like, what am I doing here? How did I get here anyways?

Like, the lights went out and suddenly I'm, yeah, who's this guy in this blue suit feeding me fish? Yeah. Yeah. And the fish are dead already? Yeah. Like what the fuck is going on here? Well, even getting them to learn to do that.

Like I think a lot of animals just end up starving because they just won't learn to eat an animal that's not, you know, that they're normally used to catching in some way. So you can't fake their enclosure. They can't embrace that much of a change. They can't embrace that much of a change. Well, also the reality of zoo life is completely alien to the reality of an animal existing in an ecosphere or in an ecosystem. So when an animal is in a zoo, that animal is separated from every other species, which never happens. No, no, absolutely. Just so bizarre. And not only that, there's nothing trying to kill them so they don't learn anything. No, no, absolutely. in the wild. There's no apes that live anywhere where there's not something that might fuck them up,

whether it's a spider or a snake that they should avoid or something. And they have to learn. They have to learn. Keep away from that snake. That snake will fuck you up. Yeah, but that's what keeps them sharp. Exactly.

You know what I mean? That's what gives them their life's purpose, really, even if it's just surviving. Well, it makes sure that the good genes pass on. And in the zoo, it's just dumb monkeys fucking each other. No one learns anything. They get free peanuts that's right they just that's what they're breeding it's the weirdest form of like animal prison ever it's very strange no yeah i mean i i agree but again you got kids you i mean you do

all sorts of weird things for your kids i think think sometimes zoos exist, but for the benevolence of kids or the needs of kids so that parents feel like, well, shit, you're not going to see this any other way. I love you. I want you to see them. I'll gloss over. I'll say, oh, look at the happy monkeys, even though in some part of you knows

these are not happy monkeys. This is not natural either. But you know you're not going to take them to Borneo either and show them natural monkeys. Yeah, exactly. Monkeys will steal your kid. They will eat your kid. Um, there's been stories of chimps stealing

babies. Oh, there was an awful article in Esquire where these two, you know, two, two, uh, people couldn't, couldn't have kids. So they, they get, get a chimp, you know, and the chimp, uh, they raise the chimp like it's their kid. And then they probably had the chimp for like 20 years. One day the chimp goes nuts,

tears her face off basically. Like chimps are incredibly strong, powerful creatures. And, um, you know, basically, I mean, she survives, but just barely sort of a thing. Um, and you don't recognize that those sorts of things. I think when i think of chimps i think of that movie with clint eastwood uh whatever which way an orangutan but and those are probably even even tougher you know i mean they're they're bigger creatures but they're less violent though are they they're more subdued sort of a thing well they'll still fuck you up yeah don't dot your eyes and cross your teeth but they don't actively seek out fucking up other animals. The chimps do.

Chimps have an instinct to go out and kill things. Is that so? Sure. Yeah. Chimps are not, um, they're not herbivores. Like a lot of people have this misconception.

I would. I had that up until this very moment. Chimps are predators. They eat monkeys. They eat monkeys alive. Oh Jesus. Never seen that? Never.

Dude, it's dark. That would be dark. Cause that's like eating a little version of themselves basically. God damn that? Never. Dude, it's dark. That would be dark because that's like eating a little version of themselves basically. God damn. Well, they cannibalize as well. Oh, do they really? Yes. They murder other chimps and they cannibalize other chimps. They cannibalize chimp babies. Chimps are the worst aspects of human beings, like in animal form with intelligence. Yeah. But I think that is what makes people want to adopt them because it's the closest thing to us.

That's not us. You know what I mean? What's weird is that bonobos are close cousins and they don't exhibit any of that behavior, but what they do is they fuck each other like crazy. Oh, really? Everybody fucks. They fuck everybody. The fathers fuck the daughters, the brothers fuck their, their other brother. Right. They fuck their sons. fathers fuck the daughters the brothers fuck their the their

other brother right they fuck their sons everybody fucks really just like a big clan of yeah just uh miss you know sort of uh incest all over the place well so much so that it's kind of clever on their part they've avoided captivity because of it because you can't have them in the zoo because they just fuck oh that's right people are, we can't show our kids these fucking apes here going at it all the time. Which is so weird. It's so ironic that you can have these animals doing everything in the wild except breeding. We can't tolerate that. We can't show our children breeding.

Yeah, exactly. Although like the pandas, they want that. Or what is it? There's one group that they're desperate to find them to have. Pandas they're trying to get them to breed. The only thing that they do, do avoid is the mothers will not have sex with their sons. That's the only one where it's verboten.

Yeah. The bonobos have that one rule. For whatever reason, the mother does not want to have sex with her son. And that's it. But everything else is fair game. Everything else is on the table. And you won't ever see that in a zoo because they just are like,

you guys just exist in the wild. We're okay. We're okay with our chimps and our gorillas. Well, it's how they resolve conflict. By fucking. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. So like sort of a prime, like sort of like that's how they express dominance kind of an idea that way? Or even like, we argued here, but let's have, let's fuck around here. Everything's all right. I don't know. I mean, I would probably have to study it a lot more, but they do do a lot of chimp like things where they pick up branches and smack branches around and they'll pick up a large

branch and they drag it on the ground to show dominance. Chimps do a lot of that. They do a lot of posturing with picking up large things, shaking trees. They'll shake things to show how strong they are. But chimps will engage in like some serious violence. Yeah. I was. Not bonobos.

Not bonobos. Yeah. Well, maybe if you want to, I mean, I guess if you were into adopting it, the one part of that story, like you understand, like you have kids, you know, I have kids. I think if you don't have kids and you've tried to have kids, I think people might feel that

there's a loss in their life and, and something that needs to be filled, you know, and often you fill it with an animal. You get really into dog breeding or 17 cats or something like that. These guys decided a chimp was the way to go. And I guess I would have thought like totally innocently that, yeah, okay, a chimp, whatever, you dress it up in a tuxedo and do whatever. It's a little weird, but I get why you're doing it. I know it's a replacement for the fact that you can't have kids but then when this kid goes uh feral on you basically and and attacks you in a way that um there's a documentary about people that keep scary animals

it's called the elephant in the living room and it's supposed to be really good i got 82 on rotten tomatoes i need to watch it but it's a documentary about the raising of exotic pets in homes and how many knuckleheads in America wind up doing that. Yeah. You know, they have, like there was this thing the other day, I was watching this piece on this guy who has a pet mountain lion. Really? He's bottle fed it since it was a baby.

And is he at least in a sort of a remote area or? I don't know. I didn't pay attention long enough, but he's got this cat. He's had it since it was a baby, and now it's a full-grown 200-pound female cat. And just like, okay. I hope that works out. I think you are juggling dynamite right here, my friend. It might not be.

I mean, I don't know. Some animals are cool with it, as long as you feed them and you're sweet with them. Yeah, yeah. the bottom line is it's always going to have that instinct to chase shit if you roll a bowl of yarn take a ball of yarn and toss it in front of a house cat they fucking dive on that shit they can't help it

or like a laser pointer on the wall they're bananas that's their instinct and we have one who comes home with all manner of like cats are you can't beat cats for their instinct, you know? So, and we have one who comes home with all manner of like cats are, you can't beat cats for like, sort of just like sadism. Oh, they're worse. They came home once, it was night and I was

like, what do you got there in your mouth? And she opens her mouth and it was a baby mouse alive. She just cradled it in her mouth. Like, but I realized if I'd come five, she was just going to play with it until it either died of fright or. Punctual.

Yeah. She chewed it up basically. So I think like a dog, a dog just goes and gets what it wants, eats it. Most animals do, but man, a house cat, especially cause they're all their needs are covered. So it's like, this is all just fun for me. My cat threw up a mouse once.

He had eaten it and then just puked it in the living room. Oh, that's rough. She actually. Yeah. Ours are, ours are females too. I had a male cat too, but it wasn't the male cat that did it. It was the female room. Oh, that's rough. She actually. Yeah, ours are females too. I had a male cat too, but it wasn't the male cat that did it. It was the female.

She just barfed it up. This little mouse wrapped up in cat food. Oh, that's terrible. And puked hair, hair balls and shit. I'm like, oh, you disgusting monster. It's fucking weird because they're looking at you like they're purring and everything. Oh, yeah. Rubbing up against you like they're so sweet.

But you think, man, if I was an inch tall, you would make sport out of me, you would make mincemeat out of me, and you would have not a goddamn care in the world about that. No, no remorse. No, no remorse at all. I enjoy reading, I just got into this last week, reading vegan forums on how to feed their cats. And they almost all reluctantly have to admit that their cats need meat.

Right, right. Because cats have very high protein requirements, much different than human beings and much different even than a dog. You can feed dogs like a certain amount of vegan food and keep them alive. And do vegans do that? Would they say this is a vegan household and that counts on our dogs and cats as well? Yep, they do with their dogs. Wow.

People get away with it with their dogs. They don't get away with it with their cats. Yeah. Cats just. They just wouldn't be healthy. They're really unhealthy. It'd be like mistreatment, animal mistreatment. Cats like this all day.

I need some protein. Mangy looking fur falling out. No, he's fine. He's just going through a stage. Just reading the torment that these people have gone through before they make the decision to feed their cat meat. I know. I can imagine. I can only imagine.

I was trying to do an article on pit bulls, which I thought would have been really interesting. Because one thing I noticed in research was like people in different parts of this country breed pit bulls differently based on where they are from, like Kentucky, Arkansas, they breed like a really lean, it's almost like fighters, like a really lean, fast version of a dog. Whereas in California, or sorry, Florida and Miami area, they breed like really big, bulky kind of, that's sort of what the genes that they want to put together. And yeah, for, for the purposes of, of fighting these, um, creatures. Um, and I mean, I, I, I like pit bulls. I've met, I've met, you know, nice pit bulls, you know? Um, but I do, I do know from what I've researched anyways,

that they're like bred into, they're built to be fighting creatures. That's sort of what they were bred for. Um, and not sort of what, that's exactly what they were bred for. And so that sort of thing is always in there, is, is in their DNA helix. It's sort of, it's sunk in there. And, uh, you know, you go onto these pit bull forums and you experience in the same way with the vegan, like a very strong emotional kind of like, you don't understand, you don't get it. And I wasn't even coming from a perspective of like intolerance or hatred.

I was just coming from a perspective of, I just want to, would like to talk about it. Where do you go to a pit bull fighting forum? I wasn't fighting. This was what they do with this one was, um, they, it's sort of like tractor pulls for dogs. Oh, I see. So they hook them up to sledges and they see

how much, how many bricks they can carry. And, and that's sort of like, I mean, I'd much rather that, right? Just like strength events basically for these dogs. But I, I, I, I sort of had the temerity, I guess to, to say, you know, you guys, I hope I can see why you're doing this.

You're sort of doing this because these dogs have these instincts and it's better to have them pulling a sledge than fighting, you know, fighting one another or fighting other dogs. And, uh, you know, you're, you're just sort of assaulted by these people who than fighting, you know, fighting one another or fighting other dogs. And, uh, you know, you're, you're just sort of assaulted by these people who are like, you don't get it at all. These are the nicest creatures ever. And I wasn't even coming from saying they're, they're not nice creatures. You know, I, I, again, I feel like a lot of it with animal ownership is the owner. It's really not the dog always, you know, a dog when it's born

can go any number of different ways. But when you see a pit bull owned by a guy who's driving around like a jacked up pickup truck and his dog's got like a spike collar on and he's carrying around by a length of, you know, chain, you're like, that dog might potentially have been raised with a certain higher, you know, the aggression might've been brought out of a more than this dog that had grown up with the family with three kids in it, you know? Yeah, they can be good pets, but they're always dangerous around other dogs. Always. Almost always.

Yeah. It's very rare that you get a pit bull that doesn't have animal aggression. Yeah, yeah. Just thousands of years of genetics. Yeah. They've raised them to be aggressive and to fight other dogs. I love pit bulls as pets, but I won't have them just because it's a drag. Like your friend brings their dog

over and your dogs don't play. They go to war. Yeah, exactly. And you're not, it's not exactly, if it's two pit bulls, it's one thing, but if your friend brings over his black lab, it ain't, it ain't a fight. Yeah. It's not a fight. And I went, I did, uh, went into the SPCA and they just busted a ring and they had like 40 fighting. And they were so nice around the SPCA workers, but they ended up having to destroy most of them, or maybe all of them even, because it is. It's like having a stick of dynamite with a fuse of indeterminate link that could blow up at any time, you know?

And they just felt like you had been bred to this sort of utility, and this is what you're good for, and it's not your fault, but you're just not safe it's not your fault but you're just you're not safe out in general population and they also if they're not trained properly can be very dangerous around children because they don't recognize children as adults ah well they'll acquiesce to an adult's demands and requests they look at adults as being the ones that are in control they don't look at children along the same lines they see something their height and they just attack it.

Ah, again. It's fucking really dangerous. It is. It is. And I mean, again, there's going to be people listening to this who are Pitbull fanciers and they're going to. I've had a bunch of them.

Have you? Yeah. Yeah. Who have had words about this or have been. No, I've had Pitbull. Oh, you've had Pitbulls yourself? Yeah. Oh, okay.

Okay. I came home once and my dog had killed my dog in the living room. You're kidding. No, they went to war when I was gone. Two Pitbulls. Yeah. Jesus. Yeah. Believe me, okay. I came home once and my dog had killed my dog in the living room. You're kidding. No, they went to war when I was gone. Two pit bulls. Yeah. Jesus.

Yeah, believe me, man. I love them as animals. I will never have them as pets. Not anymore. Yeah, so you've got kids now too, of course. Even if I didn't have kids, I just would never deal with it. Yeah, they would get out and attack the neighbor's dog or something. That happened to my dog's dad.

Got out of his yard, crawled into the neighbor's yard, attacked the neighbor's dog, and the animal control guys came over and killed it. It's just, it's fucked. It's like, first of all, it's fucked for the neighbor. You know, the dog's barking. Like, dogs bark at each other. They're thinking, you know, hey, I'm stopping shit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the dog's like, oh, for real? We're going to fight to the death? He's like, no, we're not fighting to the death. What the fuck are you talking about, man? I'm already in your yard. It is to the death. That's the only way I know. You with the guy in the the death. No, we're not fighting to the death. What the fuck are you talking about, man? I'm already in your yard. It is to the death. That's the only way I know.

You with the guy in the basketball court. Yeah, exactly. Very similar. You realize you're like, holy shit, I'm up against a different breed of humanity right now. Yeah, the guy's kicking me in the head out of nowhere. And you're just trying to play basketball and your brother's rubbing your shoulders. Neither one of you know what the fuck you're doing. No, we're totally neophytes.

And there was something, you know, this is probably way too like writerly, but there is something about the eyes of a guy like that. You're just like, oh, I'm, you know, you know, you're done before you're done. I've met hundreds of those dudes. Yeah. There's just something clockworking around in their eyes. Like, and you're just like, oh no, no, no, I'm not, I'm not built to this standard. This is not going to work out too well for me.

Yeah. There's guys that enjoy beating the fuck out of people. Like I said, a lot of them have had the fuck beaten out of them, and it becomes, and that's one of the things that they say that's the most horrific thing about sexual abuse is that a lot of the abused become abusers when they get older. Yeah, exactly. It's sort of like a repetitive of the son re-expresses the sins of the father.

So dark. Yeah. It's such a weird thing. It makes you realize, too, just how fortunate. Like, again, I know you spoke about your mom and you have a good relationship with your mom. Good relationship with your father as well? No. No.

Terrible. I don't know him. He was a horrible guy. But my experience up until I was five years old was just him being really violent and scary. To both you and your mother? Mostly to my mother. Not really to me, but enough so that it's just a scary thing to watch. Yeah. Well, so, you know, I mean, I was very fortunate. You realize how luck is based on so many things that just who your parents are, where you're born in the world.

And yeah, I've been very fortunate that way. But I know friends who have parents are, where, where you're born in the world. And, uh, um, and, uh, yeah, I've been, I've been very fortunate that way, but I know friends who have had, you know, different situations. So, but anyways, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just, you get your hand in life, you do what it, what, what, with it, what you can, but some people's hand is just unmanageable. And that is just the reality of being a human being. There are certain people that are just abused to the point of no return before they ever get a chance to try to sort their life out. I wouldn't even begin to know how to manage that. I wouldn't know what to do. And I know people that have adopted abused kids and, you

know, the kid is, they've had the kid since the kid was three and the kid's now uh in kindergarten and fucked the kid's fucked no and my uh my my wife is a child services social worker which i mean it's tough it's tough and she told me this one story i i can repeat it um and she she goes over with this this uh, with a cop actually to apprehend these kids. Opens the door, dirtbag father answers it. My kids aren't here. Kids haven't been here for days.

Uh, she's like, well, we have reports that your, your wife said that they are here because they're certainly not with your, your, your ex. And, you know, basically they had a warrant. They got inside. Room's empty. Apartment's empty. As far as they could tell. Closet's open. Closet's open ajar. So they had a warrant. They got inside. Room's empty. Apartment's empty, as far as they could tell. Closet's open. Closet's open ajar.

So they open it up. Two kids in there, in the closet. And the one thing that my wife noticed was that the wallpaper, I don't know who wallpaper's inside of closet, but whatever, it was ripped in rags. And the kids had been eating it because they had been in there for so long that that was sort of how it, how it came that way.

They got to the point where they were, they were eating the wallpaper. I was listening to this, uh, podcast recently. There's this podcast that I really enjoy called Radio Lab. And, uh, one of the episodes of Radio Lab dealt with this guy. Um, the, the episode's called Escape and it dealt with this guy who had spent his entire life in and out of jail and it was about his uh his childhood and how he was sort of abandoned he was raised by i forget what relative but they didn't feed them and so him and his daughter his sister would eat paper at night just to fill their stomachs because they were in agony from hunger pains.

Yeah. You know, you read about shit like that and this guy goes on this horrific cycle of childhood abuse and becomes this criminal and he winds up meeting this woman and falling in love and actually having a family but still keeps fucking up and can't figure out a way to stop. And you hear it from the woman you know like the woman who married him her point of view of like what could he do the guy grew up like in this horrific state and he just he's broken he's a broken man it's fucked and it's yeah it's like before he even had a chance really to make his own decision about

some of these things um yeah yeah i know i don't mean to be a downer about any of this yeah yeah as a writer i that what i was gonna ask earlier about watching things that you you know watching humans that you don't agree with or watching things studying human behavior how when you do that do you try to put yourself in the mind of the abused or the mind of the abuser? Like, do you try to put yourself into these people's heads to try to see what was good? Like this guy who, you know, they found him and, you know, he's saying like, no, my kids aren't here. And then they find the kids in the closet. Do you try to put yourself in that guy's mind?

No. I mean, in that case, I put myself in the mind of the social worker because my, you know, it was easier to, for me to put myself in the mind of, of my wife rather than put myself in the mind of, of someone like that. You know what I mean? But even in the troop, there's, there's a character, Shelly, who is, uh, you know, has some very serious things wrong with him. Uh, and, um, so, so yeah, I think part of it is trying to put yourself as closely into that mindset as, as you can, um, while recognizing that you can never quite bridge that gap. You know what I mean? Cause, cause I mean, that's just a leap that I can't quite make, you know? So you just have to hope that, that you're getting close

enough that, uh, that the reader is, I've always said as, as a writer, you just need to be one step ahead of your reader. It means you have to have done that little bit more, more, more research, or just spent more time thinking about these things that a reader hopefully is going to read really quickly. And it's going to be like, okay, okay. It's not, nothing is really sticking out that is enough. That's going to make them sort of check up, which all people do in a book or a movie. They're like, okay, you've just, this is too far. You suddenly you've sort of crossed some sort of boundary that I'm no longer quite with you in the way that I was before. Um, and you never know what it is.

Like I was, I was, you know, having dinner yesterday at the hotel bar and I ended up next to this guy, um, talking to him and he was like a big Tom Clancy reader. talking to him and he was like a big Tom Clancy reader. And, and I said, Oh, I've had people, like I had a guy get in touch with me once. Uh, cause I, I wrote some sort of book that had some military stuff in it and he was sort of said, well, you know, um, and not to, not to be a nitpick or anything, but the, the clip capacity of an M 16 is actually 16 rounds and not 17, as you said. And I'm like, I get it. I mean, I get it. I get that's, that's wrong. That's a mistake. and I'm like I get it I mean I get it I get that's that's wrong that's a mistake um but I think probably that's what I'm trying to do is not really having it'd be great if I could have caught that and it was more scrupulous to fact but really you're trying to weave a narrative and fiction but some readers that's what they want they want to take some out of it if you

it does exactly if you don't get the facts right if you don't if you're doing something about medical stuff and and you're not you haven't been scrupulous about it, then, um, then yeah, then you're going to get, but I mean, the guy mentioned, he's like, that's why I can't read Stephen King. Cause he gets apparently too many things wrong. And I'm like, I am so deep into most Stephen King narratives that I don't. I wonder what he gets wrong. I wonder that too. I, I, I sort of asked him and he wasn't able to, he wasn't able to say anything. It was just a generalized sentiment that he gets things wrong.

There can much be a dickhead. He might've been, he was, he was, uh, he was a defense contractor. He sounds like a dickhead. If he can't tell you the exact things that Stephen King got wrong, like any particular examples, he's gotta be a dickhead. Yeah. Well, and sometimes you just find yourself faced up against someone. He said something like, well, you know, fracking,

you know, fracking. Sure. And he's like, well, I've, you know, done research and there's absolutely not a damn thing wrong with fracking. And it's a myth, just like global warming is a myth. And I was like, oh, okay. I think we're probably on different sides of this

and I'm not going to get into an argument with you about it, but that's where you just tune out of a conversation. You're just like, okay, I'm, I'm, I'm out of this. The dangers of going to get into an argument with you about it, but that's where you just tune out of a conversation. You're just like, okay, I'm, I'm, I'm out of this. The dangers of fracking are not a myth. No. I mean, people are light up their, their tap water. I don't know if you've seen that, you know?

Well, they, people have been able to do that. I've looked pretty deeply into it. People have been able to light up their tap water long before there was fracking. It is possible that well water is getting. Is getting. They get contaminated. But the reality of contaminated well water is directly related to fracking is undeniable.

Yeah, because they're blowing out the earth and then it's seeping through into the well. Yeah, and they're getting better at fracking. They're figuring out a way to do it that's more efficient. But the reality is, you know, you got to break some eggs to make an omelet. These guys don't give a fuck. They're trying to get natural resources out of the ground and they're not trying to not pollute. They're just doing their best to conform to conform to whatever regulations that get established that allow them to make money. And those regulations are directly

influenced by the very companies that make fucking trillions of dollars. They own the politicians. They buy all the regulations. They make sure that everything is in place so that they can make money. Totally. I mean, there's definitely some damage that fracking has done. The question becomes, is it okay? Is it okay that this damage is done because there's a plus side? People are employed.

Yeah. There's a lot of natural gases and a lot of natural resources that we could harvest. I don't know. That's a different question. Yeah. But the idea that it's a myth and there's nothing wrong with fracking, that guy's a dick.

Those fucking right-wing chatterboxes. Yeah. Yeah. And it just come right out with it too. We've been with like two minutes of us talking. I'm like, well, now suddenly I'm not getting into this. He's an idiot. Yeah.

He's an idiot. And the idea that global warming is a myth too. He's an idiot. Yeah. I feel like, come on. It's pretty well established. And whether or not it's human influenced, there's, that's a debate that most scientists almost, I think it's some insane number.

It's like 99% now. Think that it's human influenced. And since he's not a fucking scientist, maybe he should shut his dirty hole. Yeah. And I feel, I felt almost like a, fuck, I hate to say it, Joe, but like a bit of a fraud

that I didn't go up against him, you know? I would have walked away. Yeah, you can't fight every battle, but there's a sense of like, cause that's the conservative thing is like to come right at you. And I feel like, well, fuck, if i don't come back and say something i've sort of just like let him believe that his point is valid from my perspective you're a canadian

you're a liberal you wear glasses i know fucking hates you already i was amazed he even spoke to me in the first place he only spoke to you to correct you he wanted to correct you and stephen king and these fucking pussies that are scared of fracking. You're worried about global warming. I'm going to buy land up in your country. Meanwhile, they don't understand that global warming, it changes both the cold and the warm. The cold gets colder. Yeah, that's one of the big arguments is like, well, look at how cold it is now.

We had a hell of a winter. I understand. It's the fluctuations that are the things you need to be looking at. And the argument is like, well, look at how cold it is now. We had a hell of a winter. I understand. It's the fluctuations that are the things you need to be looking at. But whatever, it's a worthless sort of thing to get into, especially with this guy had to be like Donald Sterling's age. It ain't worth fighting it. It ain't worth fighting it at that point. He's an old dickwad.

You should have scared him and see if he could give him a hard time. See if he could get his little fucking shit ticker. Just going, yeah. Enough of you with your defense contracting and your global warming denying. Yeah, I know. You just sort of feel like, well, at least I don't think, I think you're too old to have too much of a sway in this other than your vote still counts as much as mine does. I like talking to guys like that just to find out what makes them draw those conclusions. But what I'm always fascinated by is...

Because you've done that on this show. You've had people who, you know, have contrary positions to what... But you're able to engage with them, I think, in a really interesting way that's not terribly... It's confrontational, but it's not... I don't know how to describe it right, but I've seen you do it, and it's a skill, obviously. Well, I like to talk to people that have strong beliefs and systems, and things rather, to find out how their belief systems are formed.

I want to know, is there a logical, rational sort of basis to their belief systems, or is it just that they've sort of adopted this predetermined pattern? Yeah. Which is very common. Very much so, yeah. I had a conversation with a guy in jiu-jitsu class about global warming where he was talking and he's 24 years old. He's a military kid. And someone else brought up global warming and the kid goes, it's a natural cycle.

It's always happened. It's a natural cycle. I go, you're not a scientist. I go, are you a scientist? You're not a scientist, right? Yeah, are you sure? You can show me your PhD. Are you a scientist?

You're not a scientist, right? I start mocking them. I go, listen, man, you're being silly. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. And where'd you get it? Just tell me where you got that mindset. Where did it come from? It's that no-nonsense right-wing mentality.

Yeah, yeah. Like, don't even question it. It's clearly... What's really fascinating about it is that mindset where did it come from it's that no nonsense right wing mentality yeah yeah like don't even question it it's clearly what's really fascinating about it is that they're always supporting big business but yet no one gets fucked over more than blue collar folks when it comes to big business no one gets fucked over i've always felt that too it's like some sometimes this outlook is actually the one that's most injurious to you in a way of your own life and your own, you know, sort of happiness in a way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you, if you think about it, the people that are less educated for the most part are more likely to work for a company or need a company to employ them. Those are more likely people that are going to get lower paying

jobs. Those are more likely people that are going to need some form of public assistance, or it's possible. But yet, those are the people that have this pull yourself up by your own bootstraps mentality, and these fucking welfare rats. They have all these crazy ideas in their head, whereas the educated people, who are more likely to be able to fend for themselves,

or more likely at least to have the possibility to have a higher paying job because of the fact they're educated, at least in theory, are more likely to support public assistance or more likely to be against some of the environmentally destroying policies of big businesses. It's real weird how people just sort of form these patterns that they lock into. And that, as you said, can be really against their own self-interest and self-benefit going forward. But I don't know about you, but I found like, as I've gotten older, like when I was in school, I was a total like lib, like almost as left as you could go, as PC as you could go.

And as I get older, I feel like I come, I come to some sort of, not the center. I'll always be to the left, but you know what I mean? There's, there's certain things about liberal, you know, that get on my nerves as well. Like, I mean, and that's just, I feel like any fully rounded human being is not going to always be in one camp entirely. Yeah. That's a healthy approach. I think I'm very much a conglomeration of liberal and conservative ideas.

Yeah, I found like more and more. Well, there's an old saying, show me a young man who is not liberal and I'll show you a man with no heart. Show me an old man who's not conservative and I'll show you a man with no brain. And it's that somewhere along the line, you realize that people need a certain amount of difficulty in life they need a certain amount of hardship and they need a certain amount of they they need obstacles and they need to overcome those obstacles and when you set it up so that they never have to overcome obstacles and you give them a consistent series of safety nets they get lazy and that is true And that doesn't mean that all people

on welfare are lazy or that welfare is only for the lazy. That's ridiculous as well. But there's some lazy fucking people out there and not just lazy, lazy thinkers. There's just, there's a lot of weakness. And when you give people the lottery ticket, you know, what happens? They fucking, they lose all their money and they fall apart. It's just, people need to accomplish things. Yeah. It's a part of the whole genetic sequence that has been sort of ingrained in the human species from all of our past behaviors. I mean, all of our human reward systems of accomplishing things and feeling good about

accomplishing things and building up self-confidence and that's real, you know? So the, the pull yourself by your bootstraps in a lot of ways, that's good advice. Yeah. Unfortunately, it gets conglomerated and attached to this hatred towards homosexuals, this weird, you know, fucking pro-war stance. It's just a strong religion, religious kind of, uh, context and flavor to things as well, which kind of has a, you talk about things happening when you're a kid. I've always felt that, you know, that's one of the things that really influences your thinking and the way that you have an outlook on the world. And it's, I think that's a part of what religion does is they want to get you young and they want to get you indoctrinated and they want to sort of have a good soldier for the battle going forward kind of a thing.

And that was, I never grew up that way. I don't know about you, but like I, we're not a very religious household, but I've certainly come across a lot of religion and some of whom are like totally awesome and really nice and really, you know, I, I, my, my wife actually came up really Baptist and there was some point like around when she was 18 or 19, this is like, I can't do this anymore. I, I, I'm tired of feeling bad about myself for X, Y, Z, um, you know, and so she sort of left the fold, but she said that was one of the most difficult things she ever did peeling away from really all of her friends, all of, all of that, you know, because of the entire, it was a nice little safe bubble that she was in. And she still likes a lot of those people to this day. But overall, it was something she felt she had to do

in order to sort of grow, I guess, or make some sort of separation from that time in her life. Well, there's a disconnect. If you subscribe to religion and all of its principles by the book, there's just a massive disconnect you have to have with just reality itself. Yes. You're believing in Adam and Eve and resurrections and miracles and no evidence whatsoever to support any of these things that are completely contrary to anything that you've ever experienced. And then all the evidence that you see of science oh earth is only 6 000 years old according this book oh okay didn't they just find some hundred million year old shit lies propaganda by the

liberal media they were planted down there by you know by barack yeah well you know the homosexuals yeah they're very good diggers i'll have know, and they went down and they buried those bones. And they sort of acidated them somehow so that they seem older than they are. Well, you know, carbon dating is not an exact science. No. Fracking is a myth. Yeah. You know, meanwhile, they'll talk bad about homosexuals while they're eating a shrimp cocktail.

And you're like, yo, dude, you've got to read the whole book. Because there's more shit about not eating shellfish than there is about being gay. Yeah. You're not supposed to eat shrimp. You're not supposed to eat pigs. There's a lot of shit that you're doing wrong. You're not supposed to work on Saturday.

Oh, that's right, yeah. You're not supposed to have religious tattoos, you fuckhead. Oh, is that so? Fuck yeah. You're not supposed to tattoo your body. That's in the Bible. People have religious tattoos. It's like, talk about not reading the whole book. But to obligate their own kind of weird stories that their book presents as well. It's like, yeah, there's a certain, are you not spotting the irony here?

That there's a certain similarity between their weird Thetan run sort of stories and your weird, you know, died and reborn after three days kind of. And all the sort of, you know, stories that we sort of beggar reality as well. Well, I think compartmentalized thinking is very dangerous. And I think once you just sort of make your mind up that your way is the only way, and you stop being objective, and you cease all introspective thought, you get sort of locked into this mindset, and you put these blinders on. They don't allow you to see yourself. It's how ridiculous you are.

And that's how people get caught doing dumb shit. Like Ted Haggerty, the guy who was running this giant religious church, huge stadium filled with people. Yeah, that's right. Super church. Meanwhile, he was smoking crystal meth and banging gay prostitutes. And there's this recent guy who's an anti-gay marriage proponent who turns out he would run a female drag strip show. That's right.

Yeah, yeah. What is homeboy's name, Jamie? This guy. It just came out the other day. He's a North Carolina politician. And he was a fucking, he's a drag queen. It's so obvious that you see that. There was that other one recently where that KKK guy shot like, and then they find out he'd had sex with a black male prostitute dressed as a woman or something like that.

Of course he did. It doesn't take long before you somehow dig into these guys' history, and you're like, it's not even surprising anymore, really. It's like, I knew that little skeleton was in your closet somewhere. No, no, no, no, Craig. See, that's the liberal media. This man is in jail. He can't talk for himself. So the man's in jail.

They planted that information. Just now have the information that he had sex with a gay male prostitute? How about, where were you a year ago? Do you know how easy it is to doctor microfiche so that they could go back and look through it and it would be there? Pretty easy. Pretty easy. The government, they're watching what you're doing right now. Here's homeboy.

That's what he used to look like when he was in draft. Oh, really? His name's Steve Wild. Just a rough number of cocks in his mouth. How many do you say? A thousand lifetime at least? I would say that probably is a- Look at him.

That's a face you just want to fuck. Big, fat, chubby cheeks. He probably knows how to take a dick like a champ. Especially when he's got the earrings on. Those are just handles. Big grips. Big, grippy earrings. Look at him.

Silly bitch. Dummy. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with dressing up like a woman. No, not at all. Nothing wrong with sucking a thousand cocks. No, but it's when you're sort of, when you're, when you espouse a certain viewpoint that's totally against all of that, you know, and is really mean-spirited and hateful towards that kind of a thing that really gets on your nerves. Yeah.

Yeah. It's ridiculous. Yeah. But people love to do that. They love to point the finger. It's like no one loves to criticize women for being promiscuous more than sluts. Sluts love to shit on other sluts. Is that so?

Oh, good googly moogly Nick Cutter, a.k.a. Craig. They do, man. It's like a big thing with girls. Girls who are promiscuous love to shit on other girls who are promiscuous. Oh, is that fucking bitch?

She's a whore. She's a fucking everybody. Meanwhile, you're a fucking everybody. And men do the same thing. Guys who sleep around are constantly shitting on guys who sleep around. Who sleep around too much. Of course. It's a common thing. It's like

people try to throw people off the case. Oh, it's like, yeah. It's like that self-hatred thing almost sometimes that sort of, yeah. There's definitely a lot of that. You know, you used to see that about guys who used to steal jokes would sometimes like accuse other people of stealing their jokes.

To throw them off the case. And other comedians would be like, is this motherfucker serious? Like everybody knows you steal everything you do on stage. And Mencia would constantly accuse people of stealing his material. Because he was the biggest. And everybody would be like, what the fuck is going on here? But when you think about like the most obvious defense, that's the one. If I'm getting accused of something, I'll just, I'll just accuse other people of the same thing that I'm running up into.

I was wondering that too, like for you, you know, I talked about earlier about like when I read Stephen King the second time as an adult, as a writer myself and trying to break it apart. Do you, do you do that with other comedians? Do you like listen to them the first time and just like, fuck, that's so good, and then the second time you sort of try and look at their, just see what they're doing, not to copy it or steal anything, but just see how are they forensically almost putting together these jokes, and how are they?

Sort of. What I really do is I like to go back and listen to really old stuff to try to understand the time period, because I think that a lot of old, comedy is a weird thing. Like a lot of old movies, they still hold up today. Like if you go back and watch The Hustler with Jackie Gleason. Such a good movie. Great movie.

Paul Newman. Holds up completely today. It's still a great movie. But any comedy from 1962, very tough to listen to. Yeah. Comedy changes so fast i think like some like horror or or something like the hustler like the thing is as good now yeah you know the kirk russell one as as it was when it was made but comedy there's a certain shelf life it evolves a lot faster i think and and something that was really edgy at one point becomes

stale dated i think at some point that's that's sort of my feeling about guys like Lenny Bruce Who in my opinion is probably the most important comedian ever and he was the guy who got arrested the most and he was the guy who pushed the boundaries of Understanding language and content and what's the intent of what you're trying to say? And what are you what are we doing when we're suppressing this intent and he was a brilliant brilliant guy and who went ultimately went mad did he really i never followed him towards the end of his oh yeah he died of a heroin overdose he uh he went mad and he would go on stage and just read transcripts of his legal proceedings i mean it was really really boring stuff. Kaufman-esque kind of stuff.

No, no, no, no. Not even like that. Because Kaufman was doing it ironically. Like he would stand on stage and play Mighty Mouse theme song and go, here I come to save the day. And he would just freak people out because they expected him to do comedy. He would just do weird shit.

Yeah. But Lenny was going nuts. And towards the end of his life, he would go on stage and read directly out of the transcripts and try to explain why the judge was wrong. But there was no humor. Oh, really? Just more like he was going crazy. Yeah.

And he was doing heroin all the time. There was a lot going on. Yeah. Yeah. But I will listen to his comedy and try to put myself into this sort of almost innocent mindset of the people that were living in the 1960s, listening to this kind of comedy, trying to wrap my head around what kind of an impact this guy would,

would have had. But I don't necessarily try to deconstruct their, their comedy. Comedy is different in a lot of ways than fiction. And I think in fiction, when you're reading a great novel, like you're reading Moby Dick or something like that, it still holds true, holds the test of time.

When you read that, you can kind of get a feeling for the way the narrative is driven and the way the use of words shapes the environment that you're imagining. And comedy is very different in that. It's just, I guess I certainly did when i was first starting out but i but i don't really do that anymore i whenever if i watch comedy now i watch it just to enjoy it yeah try to watch it as a fan yeah

yeah and i i do i mean i do the same thing with with reading uh and there's some stuff that you realize this is awesome this is outside of what I do. I could possibly do anyways. I imagine you listen to some comedians and it's the same. It's like what they're doing is it's fabulous, but it's so far afield from the stuff and it allows you actually just to enjoy it totally as a fan because there's no worry about, well, this is going to influence me, uh, in some way that, some way that would be problematical. Sure. Because it's just so different. Who's an example like that for you as a writer?

Is just so different? Well, like, yeah, like Margaret Atwood, for example, the Canadian writer. She did like The Handmaid's Tale was made into a movie. I don't remember that. Sounds like vomit. Oh, it's only something. If someone had to say, would you want to do a week in prison? was made into a movie. I don't remember that. Sounds like vomit. Sounds like something, if someone had to say, Well, that's the problem with me.

Sorry, go ahead. Would you want to do a week in prison or read all of the Margaret Atwood books? Oh, no. Read one a week for the rest of your life

and be like, I'll do my week. I'd rather take the prison term. I'll take my prison term. But you don't understand. It's going to enrich you and grow you as a person. Yeah.

Oh, okay. Yeah, come on. Not the kind of person I'll take my prison term. But you don't understand. It's going to enrich you and grow you as a person. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, come on. Not the kind of person I want to grow to be. You know, if you take a fucking pineapple tree and you grow it in the same place where you grow grapes, it's not the same environment, you fuckhead. I don't know if that's a good analogy. You know, I worry about that too because I'm a little bit of a chameleon. So if I start reading too many, say like noir books, suddenly that becomes, or westerns,

you know, I think I want my next book wants to be sort of like a horror western sort of a thing. So first of all, I need to read a lot of those things just to situate myself, I think, in that time and sort of get the feel for it. But you do worry that you're going to be like, you know, you want, don't want to be derivative. I guess that's the thing. Right. And, and that, and that, you know, cause in, in, in comedy, it's joke stealing, but it's all plagiarism. It's the same thing. And there's, there's, there's some writers who probably get

too close to their source material. And then they find out later that like, this is so close that it's almost copying what this this other person is who i really admire i see why i did it but fuck i'm not my own self here i'm more like just this person yeah that's very common in comedy in the beginning yeah where you're looking for your voice right your style like eventually i feel it's like a thumbprint and initially your thumbprint is it's there's nothing on it but slowly the world start developing and you get something that's distinctively your own but it comes with time you don't really know what you're doing yet and you want to be like this guy that you admire so you start doing comedy that's similar

to this guy for me uh in the beginning it was richard jenny do you know richard of course yeah in the mask i remember him in the one one of his one movie appearances stand up was so much better than his movie stuff but i remember uh like being a big admirer of his and then on stage hearing myself going, oh my God, I'm ripping off his cadence. Right, right. There's so many guys who they start out. I mean, this was like I was essentially an open-miker. It was like a year into my comedy career or somewhere around there.

And I realized it, but I see it all the time. There's a lot of like, there's a lot of Dave Attell clones out there. And there was a few Dane Cook clones for a while. And there's probably some Louis C.K. clones. By now, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's just a thing where someone admires a style of comedy and they start to imitate. I've seen my own act on stage in someone else's mouth.

Yeah, it's got to feel weird. It's so weird. And you're parsing it out own act on stage in someone else's mouth. Yeah. It's got to feel weird. Weird. And you're parsing it out. You're sort of like that is. Yeah. And it's not, it's not necessarily the actual, uh,

joke that they've taken, but they've taken more your, you know what I mean? You're sort of the essence of the way that you present yourself on stage. The way you deliver things. Yeah. Also like your subject matter, they'll just twist around your subject matter.

And so it's not like your material that they're taking, but God damn, it's close. It's just like you can see the road that got them there. It's only a couple blocks away from the source. And you can't really claim originality because the real problem with originality is there's no such thing. Oh, fuck. Yeah. And that's, you know, publishers want that. They're like, what is, it's like everything's been done already i hate to say you know unique viewpoints yeah they can be unique but ultimately original boy the whole language

is an original what if you're going to write about murder monsters air water the elements i mean all those things have been covered they've been done and we all understand that any description that you have of any of these various aspects is going to resonate with people because they directly have either literary experience in it some film experience in it of an actual real life experience yeah so there is no real truly original thought anymore no but I found, I don't know about you with, uh, with comedy or with some of the other things you've done, but one of the biggest leaps I made is recognizing that my own life is, um, has value. You know what

I mean? There are interesting moments in my life, interesting scenes, things that I've experienced, and you bring them in, in the service of a character. It's, it's, you know, it's, it's transported and you're telling it through through a character's eyes and i've always felt like there you don't have to make anything up right you're just going back and remembering as deeply as possible and those things are original even if it's within a story that itself might have been told a thousand times the one thing that you can go back and you can stake a claim on is like this comes from some element of my own life and i know it has to be original not i mean even that's not original because other human beings have experienced it

and that's your hope is that you're actually going to be able to reach into their chest and really sort of have some sort of um reckoning between you some sort of like synchronicity that you meet maybe hopefully you know i think the word isn't original the real the real word is derivative and with the real problem that people have is when they're intentionally derivative and that what that does is it stifles creativity yeah because someone like say say if uh someone i mean i don't want to give away the story of your book the troop but if someone read your book and decided you know what i'm going to make my own story about this exact scenario and then they kept going back to your book and they started you know adding elements to it with different dialogue yeah yeah but the same elements and you know and

here's the fucking guy who's i mean that's that's gross and it ups us. When we find out that your originality, what we conceive to be or perceive to be originality, is really just you copying and twisting around the original work of someone else, it's very upsetting. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. And you feel like that's a, why would you get into it in the first place?

You know, but I know in publishing, say when the Da Vinci Code came out, you know, publishers were like, we need the next Da Vinci Code. And there would be, there were a lot of, uh, sort of knockoffs of it with the same kind of ideas. And, and, but they were actually, you know, the writers, whether they wanted to write them or not. Um, sometimes money, you know, has an influence there. You know, if someone's going to offer you a nice amount of money to, to write what you know is sort of a, a bit of a knockoff um you know people

people may be enticed into sort of doing that you know whether that's why they got into writing in the first place you have to assume not you know um but uh uh yeah i found like there's there's some element of that and there's there's some element of um you know original publishers sort of don't want originality sometimes sometimes they're like this is a known commodity this is working really well we would like you to do stuff like like this you know yeah and sometimes they're even scared of original same as like lenny bruce i people who's who are that original they it's not an easy road to hoe whereas if you do sort of do maybe a rip off of a Dane Cook act I think you might initially get a better pop

than you would if you're really charting sort of really original territory Depends, depends on how well you're doing it If you're an idiot and you're ripping off someone like yeah, you might get a little reaction There's a few of those guys out there right now But I think that what we appreciate in someone is we appreciate artistic

expression, meaning that we're all influenced by music and movies and literature and things that we've experienced in life. There's influences that are just undeniable. But what is your intent when you sit down to create something? Is your intent to express yourself in your own unique language your own unique experiences in your own creativity or are you just copying shit yeah when you're just copying shit that makes us angry yeah of course there's like a certain amount of like hate that nickelback gets yes that i'm not sure why they get that hate but i think that some of it has to do with the fact that it seems like they concocted it. Like they went and put together these songs based on... Some algorithm.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if it's fair. I don't get it. I don't know why the hate exists. But boy, if you want to fucking make an audience laugh, just talk about how shitty Nickelback is. And people go, yeah. They do suck.

But there's certain bands that probably suck equally yeah or worse that take get a free pass or suck in a totally different way i think what bothers me mumford and sons yeah they're yeah i said it yeah even i mean i hate to to throw these guys under the bus but arcade fire a little bit you know oh you don't know well they're canadian canadian band and it's like they're you know it's like if you're being like super original that's almost in a way it's a fake originality you know what i mean like i've i've noticed that as well it's like you're not really as original as you think you are but you've convinced other people that you're really original and that's like a double delusion whereas nickelback is what they are well when someone's affected what i get

about mumford and sons i like i like a lot of their songs i Nickelback is what they are. Well, when someone's affected, what I get about Mumford & Sons, I like a lot of their songs. I think some of their songs are very good, especially their early songs. But now I feel like they're in this groove of doing that certain kind of music, and so they dress a certain kind of way. And I'm like, you're wearing a costume. You might as well be dressed up as a fucking clown, okay? Because you're dressed up like a guy.

You look like a pioneer or something. You're out there with a mason jar in your hand. You're playing a fucking homemade fiddle. What are you doing, okay? Because you're dressed up like a guy. You look like a pioneer or something. You're out there with a mason jar in your hand. You're playing a fucking homemade fiddle. What are you doing, dude? Piano in the middle of the field. Yeah, what's that wheat field in the fucking piano? What's going on here? This is an affectation.

And you wonder if they started that way or if they got engineered, like someone, some producer came and said, listen, we need more wheat fields. You guys need the mason jar thing. What the fuck is going on there? Yeah, whether they started that way or whether that's-

What's up with those boots? The big hoedown boots going on. Are you working in the field and then you took some time off to sing or are you a multimillionaire rock star? Because I get confused. What's your fucking, your goofy beard?

Fucking stop. Stop. What's up with the fake trees behind you too? That's even more offensive. We're down home. We're country. We're in a fucking hotel lobby in Beverly Hills doing a photo shoot with makeup on.

Fuck yourself. Well, I think that you also become a prisoner to your success. If you get a certain amount of success doing a certain thing like i was talking about this yesterday but i had a friend who's a fat guy whose agent told him don't lose weight you lose weight you're losing roles yeah like it's like you're losing parts if you if you if you lose weight and like he is just he was trapped in this thing that he had created this overweight yeah yeah exactly well that and that does seem to be like, I'm sure you've talked about it before, but like, it's

not as funny. Like Joe Piscopo, even getting ripped, you know what I mean? You managed to do it, but Joe Piscopo couldn't go from the sort of weedy guy to like the big bulky guy of like dead heat and maintain being as funny as he was. And the same thing with fat. If you lose the weight, suddenly people are just like, oh, you're not as funny. And why is that? I'm not really sure,

but there's the physical comedy of just being a big guy. Yeah, I don't know what happened with Joe Piscopo, but I've heard the comparisons. Have you? Oh, really? Yeah.

And you don't welcome it, I imagine. Well, I don't give a fuck. Oh, good, good. It doesn't bother, I don't, I did, maybe that's why it didn't work because I didn't give a fuck

if I lifted weight. And plus, you came on the scene, you were already big. Yeah. You never understood in some other body position. You know, you were always a big guy back in news radio when I first saw you. I wasn't as big. I didn't really lift as much weights back then. I was just kickboxing.

But I had been a black belt in martial arts since I was 17. So I had come from this physical background from the beginning where I kind of was really self-conscious about it. When I first used to do comedy, I would kind of hide my body a little bit. Oh, really? Yeah, wear like really bulky clothes to sort of hide my shape because I felt like people wouldn't understand. And I had seen guys on stage who were muscular too, and I'd be like, that's really distracting. That's not going over as well. It's not smart.

People don't want to see that. Come up in like sort of a ripped up shirt or whatever really showing yeah they don't people don't want to see that they'd rather see you out of shape but that's kind of funny to have a go on stage with a big beer gut slapping your gut while you're you know telling your punch line that's right it's kind of funny yeah but it doesn't mean that you can't be funny and be fit it's like we have these ideas that we know what's funny and what's not, but you don't know until you see it. And that's one of the reasons why someone can't really teach you how to be funny

because you can never teach Mitch Hedberg. Like you can never have a class in how to be Mitch Hedberg. No. Because it doesn't fit any rules. No. He's his own entity entirely. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. So you can't fit Joey Diaz. There's guys you just can't fit them into a mold. And then you realize somewhere along the line, if it's funny to you, it's about trying to figure out a way to get inside people's heads and get them to relate. Yeah, same as fiction.

Yeah, but it has to be funny to you. And what's a lot of bad comedy is, it's not even funny to them. There's a certain stage of comedy. it's not even funny to them. They're just, there's a certain stage of comedy. There's two stages in the beginning. The one, stage number one is you just do anything that works. You just, they're like, there's like hammers and saws and you're just using tools. Each joke is like a tool.

Once you get a certain amount of proficiency and confidence and a certain amount of stage time, then you start doing things that you think are funny and then that's the shift the shift it goes from doing things that you think will work and then i said and you look around please laugh yeah and they laugh and you're like oh thank god and then two you get a guy who goes on stage with like a half a grin he's like why is this going on because i see that and i'm like who the fuck are you talking and the audience starts laughing yes because they relate to the way this guy's thinking because he actually does see humor in what he's saying it's an honest vision of humor yeah and

those two stages are very distinct and there's a huge difference and that's the thing about joke thieves and people who are derivative is they never get out of that first stage even though as popular as they can get. That's why there's a lot of guys who started out stealing jokes and then they stopped. I could name names. I will not. But they stopped stealing and they started writing original material and their original material is dog shit.

Oh, really? And the reason why is they never really learned how to do comedy. They never really understand the language of comedy because a big part of comedy has to deal with honesty, both honesty with the environment that you live in and honesty with yourself and how you interface with all the people around you. And if you're pretending you're this comedic genius and really you're just a plagiarist,

you're dealing with a lot of demons. You're dealing with a lot of walls you've built up in your psyche. And those walls just trip you up when you try to write original stuff. I would imagine that's the same way with literature as well. Very much, very much. And I think that second stage is right. The first stage is you're sort of, you're almost emulating the people that you love, you know, and the second stage is you want to do something on your own. And that second stage,

I think with you is dealing with the idea that you're confident enough that this joke means a lot to me, whether it's going to go over, I can actually deal with that. Whereas in the first stage, you couldn't possibly deal with a reaction that didn't feed some sort of sense of accomplishment or get them to laugh or that. I think sometimes with, with comedians that I've watched, obviously I don't, I really rarely watch them through the early stages of their career, but they're, they're the comfortability there. And it's the same with writers. They're like, if I fail, that's fine. I want to fail doing something really interesting, really original to me, and that really is an expression of what the hell I got into this in the first place for.

A good example of that is Hunter Thompson in the early days used to take F. Scott Fitzgerald and just retype it. Oh, yeah. He would retype The Great Gatsby over and over and over again. And the idea was that I think he did it with Hemingway as well. OK. And the idea was that he was learning the rhythm of great writing and that there was in writing down the great writing of other people, you sort of develop a sense of the rhythm.

Yeah, I could see that. And in a way that's how i got into comedy because i would like see like an hbo special and then i would tell my friends holy shit did you see sam kinnison last night he had this joke and then i would tell them the joke and they would laugh at me telling them the joke and i would sort of realize through the rhythm of doing sam's material you know in his in his voice, you know, and I was married for two fucking years. Oh, oh, hell would be like club bed.

And your friends are laughing and you kind of get the rhythm of this, this thing, which is very similar to what, what Hunter did. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Did you ever do that? Did you ever try to like picture yourself writing a great piece that someone else had written and just like go over it i did a lot of um not quite like that but similarly like you'd you'd read a

there are some writers probably the same as some comedians whose style seems so easy to imitate who's an example well ray carver the short story writer the american short story writer would be an example of a style that you look at and you're like, I could do this, but you can't. Once you, once you really set your mind to like, I'll try and write a Carver type story. That's what makes the genius there. I think is that it seems easy. It seems that something you can do, but, but the genius is not only in the genius of him, but in the genius of his deceptively simple style. So I tried to write, say a Carver story and it was a total nightmare and a failure. You know, we have things in the writing,

we call them trunk stories, basically stories that you write, you throw them in a trunk, you're never going to see them again. And my trunk is full of stories like that. And I imagine your trunk similarly is full of stuff. And these are all things that you need to go through. I mean, I probably was rejected 200 times at magazines before I finally placed a story.

Like I could literally have filled a shopping bag or a pillowcase with rejection slips. When you have an idea for a story, how many of those ideas actually wind up being stories that you will turn into a book or a short story? Well, it's a pretty small percentage in terms of the ones that, you know, I always think of it's like, you know, the way a pearl gets created. You've got like an oyster and a little bit of sand gets in it. And then if enough like macro, whatever goes around it, then I'm like, okay, that's enough. It feels like the characters are strong enough.

I've got an idea of the plot and where I want to send these characters. Then you sort of harvest that pearl and it becomes a short story, it becomes a novel. But there's several that just are imperfect. You can tell just in their conception, they're imperfect. I don't have it, you know, it's different, right? I get, see, I would write a story. I'd send it out. If it's not working, you don't really know until you get enough rejections that it's clearly, okay, that's this fucking thing ain't working. You guys get up on stage. That's the different,

like, have you ever, how many times do you tell a joke that you really feel strong about or work on a piece of material before you have to say this, this isn't meeting my expectation of what I thought, or do you just keep telling it anyway and just say, fuck it. This is. It depends. Depends on how much I really enjoy it. There's certain ones just fucking never work. And I do them just for me. There's certain ones that I write and I go, I know this has got something, but I can't figure out what it is. And then there's certain ones that I write and I go, I know this has got something, but I can't figure out what it is. And then there's certain, there's certain bits that as I write them, they come out in fully finished form. Yeah.

Oh, that's brilliant when that happens. I got one of my favorite bits that I'm doing right now that is in the moment. I wrote it on a plane and I wrote it. It's like a 10 minute piece and I wrote it in its full form on a plane. And I did it on stage that Monday. And it just destroyed. Really?

It was like it was done. Like from the moment it came out. It came out in joy. And it resonated with me. And I was so angry when I wrote it. It was about a certain particular group of people that are so incredibly hypocritical and ridiculous. And I caught someone lying about something and it was in this group of people and I was like,

I have had enough of this and I just, it came out. Went on a screed. It came out like as a chunk. It was done. Then there's other bits like, I know there's something there

but I don't know what it is. Yeah. And sometimes they, those bits will last for years and I'll throw them in like every third or fourth set when i'm killing in the middle i'll throw it in there and then i'll just the audience be like what the fuck is that i'm like all right you gotta gotta die yeah sometimes it's like you feel the energy of the room and maybe i can slip this in and it's i'd say i mean with me too i think it's

a matter of i've had some stories that constantly got rejected and then you you i think you get a bit of a name for yourself and then those will find acceptance because they're like okay well he's done this and this and this but but i find to me like speed is something like i wrote the troop probably in about six weeks which is the fastest i've ever written anything but it was fun you know i'd come out of wherever the room where i write and my wife would be like you look energized you don't look like all bedraggard and haggard like you do when you stumble out after working on your other books like a vampire's been sucking your blood out for eight hours um and i'm like that's sort of what has told me that i hope i am able to write a lot more books

in the horror genre because i just enjoy the writing of it it's more fun to me it's more it comes it like that and i mean the reason i think that came to you so fast first of all because you're passionate about it but second of all because you've been working at it a long time. And when those things come, you know how to deal with them. And I think now I know better. Okay. If the idea comes to me and it's, I'm, I'm ready to make, make hay with it. Well, I think you should really write a lot more horror, man, but just because of what you said and because of the book being really fun, I love that genre. And I love when a book like that comes out. And so you saying that this is something that thrilled you and energized you as you write, I really hope you keep doing that, man.

Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you. And we're sort of in between contracts right now, so I don't know. I might be selling oranges on the side of the freeway for all that I know when I next when, when I next, when I next see you, I see you come to Massey Hall, right? I will have to come out. I saw you were at Massey Hall once in Toronto. Yeah. I've been a couple of times in the Sony Center recently.

Go and check that out. But anyways, we're sort of in that weird space where I don't really know what's going to happen exactly. So, so hopefully I'll have good news. Listen, man, you could self-publish. This is a new era. It's true. Yeah, there is a lot more of that going on and some huge successful people doing it that way. Unbelievable success.

People have had unknowns that have put out something just through word of mouth. Yeah. Through Amazon and what have you, e-books. It's incredible, isn't it? And there are gaps in publishers who you wonder, like, I read this book, Wool, by a writer called Hugh Howey. And it's sort of sci-fi, really, really damn good. And you're, and you know, you find out his history as he's been rejected by X number of publishers. And you're like, how did that happen? You know what I mean?

But it does, it does happen. And, and it's great that there's that opportunity now that like, okay, well, listen, that that's fine. I get it. You guys have whatever agenda that you're pursuing. This is what I want to write and i i have a way to get it out to my my hopefully readership and build it that way now is this move has this book the troop is it out now uh yeah yeah it is when did it come out because i got a pre yeah you got an arc of it yeah it came out a couple months ago yeah there it is there's a new cover too they totally changed the cover why they changed the color It's just something that they do in publishing from time to time. I'm not sure why either.

But yeah, they made a big change of it. So now it's just an isolated guy on a hilltop or something. Well, I got the best one. I like that one too. That's the UK cover looks that way. Oh, does it? Yeah, with the birds and the lightning flashes. I like it too.

Fucking America. Yeah. God damn it too. Fucking America. Yeah. God damn it, America. I like the American cover, but yeah, it's totally, totally different for sure. Have you started

writing a new one? Yeah, the follow-up is, we did do that one for sure. It's called The Deep, so it takes, I love undersea stuff, man. I love the ocean,

so it takes place at the bottom of the Mariana. You know when James Cameron went down in that, so eight miles below the surface. What a of the Marianas. You know when James Cameron went down in that? So eight miles below the surface. What a crazy fuck he is. I know. He's a nut.

He's out of his mind. He is out of his mind. He's got billions of dollars. Canadian too, yeah. Gets to the bottom of the ocean on a fucking boat. Yeah, and just picks up. There's nothing down there either. Isn't he like the first guy to ever do that too?

Yeah, he is. He is. And I don't know about you, like claustrophobia is one thing that I'm not good with in tight spaces. And if you saw what he went down in, it was basically like he had metal down this side to this side. He basically went down in a coffin. Yeah, I don't have a problem with tight spaces. I do have a problem with tight spaces at the bottom of the fucking ocean though.

How many miles deep is that? Well, Challenger Deep is below the the marianas trench so that's eight miles and the pressure is something like seven jumbo jets per like pressing down on you per square foot so yeah it's it's not i feel like that see i don't know about you what are you scared of that's interesting are you yeah like heights animals well a lot of his animals i find with a kid now i'm afraid of shit shit happening to my son or something. That's a new thing. That's the Marriott.

Look at this image that Jamie just pulled up. There it is. Jesus fucking Christ. So there's Mount Everest. That's the height of Mount Everest compared to the deepness of Challenger Deep. Oh my God. Yeah. That's insane.

It is. Eight miles down. Eight miles down. That's the deepest part of the ocean that we're aware of? Is that what it is? That we're aware of. Yep. There might be a spot somewhere that they haven't charted yet. Oh, down. Eight miles down. That's the deepest part of the ocean that we're aware of? Is that what it is? That we're aware of. Yep. There might be a spot somewhere that they haven't charted yet.

Oh, there could very well be. Yeah, exactly. But that's the deepest known depth. Damn, that's deep. Yeah. That is so ridiculous. But I figured, okay, well, I don't like tight spaces. I don't like that pressure.

I don't like the dark. Like, down there, darkness is, I mean, I don't think think it's like the darkness between the stars it's that dark it's probably a darkness that i don't know if i've ever grappled with so yeah for a horror book it sort of has a lot of potential of things that scare the shit out of me and that's sort of where i got to start with is it like a monster book no not no it's uh ghosts its? Aliens? They're billing it as sort of like the abyss meets the shining. So there is kind of that, you know, the shining being like, it's almost like a haunted, they've set up a research station down there. And it's another crew going down to figure out what the hell happened to the crew beforehand. Ooh, I like it already.

Yeah, yeah. How deep are you in? I'm done. It's all done. When do I get it? It's all done, yeah. I will make sure you get a priority when the the art comes out i'll get one shipped when do you think it'll be done like well i don't know i feel like they probably are going to do a few soon they're put they're

they're put there it's every it's the year after so basically it's january of of next year but you'll the arcs will be out you know but. But do they, when you do something like that, like, do you bring it to the publisher and the publisher gives notes? Yes. Yeah. Um, basically you, I got a two book contract, so I had already written the troop, gave it to my agent. My agent sent it into the publisher.

They accepted it. They say, well, we want another book too. What's your idea? I said, I want something, something to do with down in the ocean. They said, good, sold. So you write that one and then you just send it to your editor and he, in this case, yeah, gave me all sorts of notes. And, uh, you know, you work on that and you go back and forth. And then eventually at some point we say, we're fucking sick of this. Are we done? Yes, we're done. So. That's interesting. Now who's qualified to give

you notes like that? Like how do you, how do you distinguish whether or not someone's qualified to give you notes? And do you often disagree with their notes? Yes. Because you wouldn't, I guess you wouldn't have that really. I mean, you might have trusted people that you would deal with and say, well, what do you think of this bit? I don't even do that. No, no. The audience does it.

Ah, that's right. They're the most serious arbiter of things. Yeah. They're the grand judge. I do myself. The beautiful thing about material is that you get to listen to it. Like on my iPhone or my Note, my Galaxy Note 3 has, I have it for like maybe four or five months and it might have 150 sets on it. Oh, wow. Yeah. And I can listen to all those sets. And then sort of the audience reaction and gauge how it's working.

So that's, yeah, that's a similar idea to, to, to an editor. I mean, an editor relationship with a writer is pretty, pretty important, obviously, because the one thing is you can't go snatch your book off the shelves once it's there. It's there. You got to live with how it is. So you got to work as hard as you can in this stage to make it as, I mean, it's never going to be perfect. There's going to be things about it that you'll look at five years later and just go, why did I do that? But each book, I think each book, probably just like each, maybe one of your comedy CDs is an expression of that time in your

life too. And you got to let it be that. Well, there is that, well, you know, out of the 150 sets, maybe a hundred of them are from like a year ago that I've got stored. Like I take the MP3s and I save them and then maybe 50 of them or so over the last four or five months. Okay. And then what I'll do is never listen to the old ones, but always think that I'm going to like a pack rack, like a hold on to them. Yeah, yeah. But the most recent ones are the really important ones.

Like on this phone, this is a new phone. It only has Santa Barbara. It only has Friday night only has Santa Barbara only has Friday night show in Santa Barbara that's it but eventually you know over the course of a few months it'll have again like a Wednesday night I'm at the ice house I'll have that set on it I'll listen to that Thursday and I'll break out the notebook and I'll listen to it the headphones on and then my next set I'll add the notes and then I'll try to figure out what I did differently,

and then it'll grow. But the beautiful thing about comedy is it has built-in editors, and it's the audience. Yes, and also you can. There's no sense of it being on a shelf. It evolves as you work the act over and you work the act over, and it sort of becomes, and we do that as much as we can. You know, that book probably went through seven or eight edits.

But at some point, you've got to just say, well, that's it, we're on a can. You know, that book probably went through seven or eight edits, but at some point you got to just say, well, that's it. We're on a schedule. You can over edit it too. You can sort of rip sort of the rawness and I'm sure you can probably do that in a comedy act as well. You can rip some of the stuff that is really most important and most the raw, if you take the rawness out of the rough edges and you make it sort of smooth it over and you listen

to too many editors, then you can't please everybody. I think that's another thing too I've recognized. Do you lose it sort of smooth it over and you listen to too many editors then you can't please everybody i think that's another thing too i've recognized it yourself like you lose your vision of what what is good and what's bad because i know as a comic you certainly can yeah you lose you listen to a joke so many times you just like it gets it means like it's just a bunch of gobbledygook to you totally yeah totally and that's i guess that's a danger that we both face in our separate you know but very close closely related kind of careers. So it's about listening to the right. And ultimately it's like listening, because especially with horror, you have someone, you know, I've had plenty of emails and I know you have too, like, what kind of a person are you? What kind of an awful creature, what sort of primordial swamp pit did you crawl out of to, you know, become who you are? To come up with these ideas? Yeah, yeah. Did people get To come up with these ideas? Yeah, yeah.

Do people get mad at you for your ideas? Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, not nearly. I mean, I'm not nearly in the public eye, say, as you are. I wouldn't have to face that level of scrutiny, but certainly in my small way, yeah, of course. I can make a tweet, just a joke.

Oh, and people will be bombarding you. People will be writing blogs about it. Oh, I'm sure, yeah. Deep, long blogs. Searching and. Trying to find psychological cracks in your armor I wrote something I thought it was funny

you didn't think about it for more than like you know what I mean but at the same point also you don't recant and be like oh well geez I better change things because I wrote I watched this woman she was on a date she was talking about how much she hates children.

And I wrote on Twitter that I view women who don't like kids the same way I view dogs that like to eat their own shit. That's going to get a reaction, Joe. It leaves a lot of room for interpretation. But this guy wrote a whole blog about that I only view women as, you know, being there to have children. I'm like, where are you fucking getting this, man? I fucked up. I should have said hate instead of don't like. Yeah.

I was trying to be nice. Right. You should have been more definitive. It was just based on one particular. And just this weird thing that I – women who don't like kids, like, oh, get that kid away. There's something gross about them. It's a weird thing. I find it very, not just distasteful.

It's a weird way. It's disturbing. It repels me. When people, especially for whatever reason, women hate. Well, men too now that I have kids. I see a man who doesn't like kids, who hates kids. And you think about all the abuse that some children suffer a lot of times because of people like that, that hate kids. It becomes very disturbing to you.

Yeah, yeah. Especially when you have kids of your own. I'm totally fine with like, I have friends who just don't want to have kids. That's a different thing entirely. Oh, totally different. They're just like, we want to be able to travel. I encourage that. I mean, yeah, so do I,

I love my son and I know you love your kids too, but, um, you know, there's some points where me and my wife look at each other where, you know, I mean, I don't know if you had good sleepers, but me, it's like our kid's a toddler now and he still doesn't sleep well, but man, there were times like four o'clock in the morning when he hadn't slept. And I feel like I was just like, there was some hellish fourth dimension that had opened up that I was staring straight into. And I just think, I think, but then that's part of the rites of passage of, of you, of you being a parent. But, but if there's someone said, I want anything to do with that. I'm like, I don't, I don't blame you, man. Yeah, sure. Go ahead. Take a pass on this one. We definitely went through periods

where you didn't sleep, but I don't But I just don't think there's anything cool about shaming people that don't want to have children. No, no. There's people that feel like that if they have children, there's something special above and beyond a person who doesn't have children. You're never going to get it.

You didn't even grow up. Yeah, there's that belittling side of it. Like, oh, you really couldn't possibly understand what we're talking about here. So it's oh please this guy said this to me once this guy who was a uh just a crazy man he was a fascinating dude but he had kids they were all grown and uh one of them had been in and out of jail the other one smoked crack and uh he was mocking this guy who was this musician friend of mine who was in his 50s he's like i feel bad for him he's never had children i said why do you feel bad for him he goes because he never figured out

what life is all about life's all procreating i'm like you made criminals one of your kids in that jail the other one smokes crack you have criminals you have two criminals your sons are fucking dangerous they are in the room i leave they haven't contributed anything to the forwarding of of of our our species but in his mind yeah sure he was better he was better because he shot a live round to a woman and she shit out a kid right amazing isn't it no but there's that holier than thou moral high ground that some people take when they have children. You can contribute an amazing amount to society without ever having a child. I think just as much. It's a different sort of contribution.

There's nothing wrong with it. And I have a lot of friends that don't ever want to have kids and they're great people and I love them dearly. And they love my kids. They love your, you know what I mean? They love kids. I think that's your thing. It's like people who just, I hate kids.

I hate the idea of kids. I don't like seeing them on airplanes. I don't like them in my airspace in any way, shape or form. Those people are creeps. First of all, it's like, go live under a rock because I'm not, not taking my kid out into the sunlight because you're, don't like them nearby.

Well, are you a person? Do you like people? Yeah. Well, what do you, how do you think they came from? They come from seeds, you fuck? Somebody make them in a garden? They just sort of pop into existence as 18-year-olds or something?

Yeah. I just, for whatever reason, I just think that there's some people out there that can't make that connection. That like, oh, it's a baby and a baby becomes an adult. I certainly get it a lot more now that I've had kids. Like, I like babies. Like, I see babies. I think they're cute. When I used to see babies before, I had kids. Like, I see babies, I think they're cute. When I used to see babies before,

I had kids, I was like, oh, that fucking thing's going to start screaming, I've got to get out of here. Yeah. But I never hated them. No, no, exactly, yeah.

But people that do hate them, I find them very disturbing. And you've actually had people, I'm wondering if I've ever run into someone who, like, basically has said, point blank, I hate kids.

Oh, yeah. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there was a girl i dated he used to say that just i hate kids i can't stand them i don't like be around them they they always want too much attention i was like wow i mean i didn't date her for a lot yeah sure but she was she was angry about a lot of shit i think her parents were alcoholics too i think it might have been a little bit of that she just i don't know who knows who knows who does know yeah but i but i've i've never heard

it but i've had people who are pretty close to intolerant on that level as well you know um and uh and i don't i don't get it either and i certainly before i had kids yeah i'm more comfortable with them now and i'm more i'm more like sympathetic towards other people who are struggling with their kid out in public i'm like oh fuck it don't you find too that as you're more comfortable just as a human being in life yeah some success under your belt you're not I mean even though there's no ultimate comfort because look we're finite creatures on a finite planet and a finite solar system and all if you don't live in the moment you're a fool because there there really is no tomorrow.

Our crumbling edifice is, you know, it's only as good as it is today and it's not going to be as good tomorrow as it was today. Apollo Creed in Rocky 2 nailed it. Or 3. 3? 4. Which one was, there is no tomorrow. Hmm. I think he's gone by 3.

Yeah. Yeah. No, he dies in 4. Oh, is it 4? The Russian knocks him out and kills him. Remember? Yes, that's the one. Yeah. No, he dies in four. Oh, is it four? The Russian knocks him out and kills him. Remember? Yes, that's the one. And Rocky III doesn't want to train.

He's like, we'll train tomorrow. There is no tomorrow. There is no tomorrow. And he teaches him how to fight like a black guy. Yeah, that's right. I do remember that. That was Rocky III. But he's right.

There is no tomorrow. There's now. And now goes on for a long time, but it doesn't go on forever. Yeah, absolutely. And the only reason why you think it's tomorrow is because the earth is spinning. You can market us tomorrow if you're really into that. Oh, yeah. The winter definitely does come, but there's no tomorrow.

There's just time. I mean, we have a way of measuring it, but it's really ultimately quite fruitless. Yeah, I agree. I agree. But there's something about it where it becomes completely overwhelming for some people. It defines their very existence, you know. The passage of time. I mean, I wrote an article for Esquire and it was about, and you would have some knowledge of this basically because it's in MMA, is hormone replacement therapy or testosterone, TRT.

And there's this study, it's called negligible senescence. So senescence is- Senescence? Senescence, great word. Senescence is what we're talking about. How do you spell that? Negligible senescence? Yeah. S-E-N-E-S-C-E-N-C-E, I think. And it's- There it is. Negligible senescence. And senescence is what you're talking about.

It's like our body is just getting older and things sort of slowly, slowly crumbling. And negligible senescence is the study of creatures who don't age the way that humans do.

Like tortoises. That's exactly right. Negligible senescence. That's right. If you look up negligible senescence, you see a turtle. Yeah, that's right.

But look at the life they live. It's shit. It is quite shit. Yeah. W's right. But look at the life they live. It's shit. It is quite shit. Wander around. Fucking birds pick their babies up and fly off with them. It's perfect for a tortoise. A tortoise doesn't know any different, I guess. They did.

They'd hate it. Yeah, they would probably be committing suicide. So they would be cutting their life strings short that way. But I think whales, certain whales have it. Seagulls of all creatures. Mussels. Mussels. Mussels. Freshwater pearl mussels live to be 250 years old.

And they don't show this. That's the thing. It's like a five-year-old mussel acts the same as a 200-year-old mussel. How about a quahog, a clam? Do you know how old they get? No. 570 years old is the oldest one they found.

They can get that old? Yep. That'd be an enormous. Tortoise, 255 years. Lobsters, 100 plus years, assumably. They don't really know. They can get that old? Yep. That'd be an enormous... Tortoise, 255 years. Lobsters, 100 plus years, assumably. They don't really know. Until they get, yeah,

harvested. How about a hydra? You know what a hydra is? No, it's kind of snake. Biologically immortal. Biologically immortal? Immortal. It's a genus of small,

simple freshwater animals that possess radial symmetry. A hydra, they're predatory animals belonging to the phylum, wow, spell this, CN, I don't know why you'd put a C and then an N together. Yeah, that does not work well.

Did you run out of vowels, you fuck? C-N-I-D-A-R-I-A. Oh, God. Cnidaria, and the class Hydrosa. They can be found in most unpolluted freshwater ponds, lakes, and streams, in the temperate and tropical regions, and can be found gently sweeping a collecting net through weedy areas. They are multicellular organisms which are usually a few meters long

and are best studied with a microscope, but they are immortal. That's amazing. What an interesting phenomenon. I never would have thought that any creature— Because they're live shit. Yeah, exactly. They just squiggle around in the weeds. That's the punishment.

That would actually sort of be like hell, yeah. It's like reconstituted shitty child molesters become hydras in their next life. They just get swooped up by fucking dirty fish. Not immortal if a fish eats you. But that's sort of the idea of TRT is that the proponents say that, you know, you're, you're, you're not going to live forever. Of course, that's not the body that we've been

gifted by, you know, by, by nature. But, you know, most, when you talk to guys and I talk to guys, I use my father as, you know, by, by nature. But, you know, most, when you talk to guys, uh, and I talked to guys, I use my father as, you know, my dad's 65 now, 66. And he's like, I don't want to live forever. Of course. I just want to be able to be, to carry groceries up to my house when I'm 80. I want to have that sort of quality of life for as long as I can. And then when that whole house comes down, let it come down immediately. You know what I mean? Well, that's wishful thinking. It is wishful thinking. Quite honestly.

Yeah. But you certainly can manipulate your hormones to give you a decided advantage over non-manipulated people. It becomes a real issue in mixed martial arts because. Of course. Brendan Schaub, who is on the podcast, The Fighter and the Kid with my friend Brian Callen. He's a fighter in the UFC. And he said it best. and the kid with my friend Brian Callen. He's a fighter in the UFC. And he said it best. And he said, what's wrong with TRT when it comes to competitive sports is that there's an advantage

of youth and there's an advantage of wisdom. And wisdom comes with age and with experience and with years and years of study and practice. And that advantage sort of, in some way, there's sort of a point of diminishing returns where it cancels out youth and experience, whether it's at 35 or whether it's at 37. When does it tip back towards youth again? Well, when you start supplementing the hormones with testosterone, it doesn't. And then you get guys like Vitor Belfort, who are 36, 37 years old, fucking everybody up because they've got muscles in their teeth now. Yeah.

Because he's taking testosterone. What about like Dan Henderson? See, I feel like that's one where he's like forced to go into like wars with guys who are 15, even 20 years younger than him. And I feel like, you know what I mean? But then, you know, people of the people that I grew up watching as boxers didn't, you know, you just had to keep throwing yourself into that fray. And if your body's collapsing around you, that's the choice that you've made. Well, he's not on testosterone anymore. Oh, he was.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. They've abolished it. It's no longer allowed in the UFC. No longer allowed. Okay.

Okay. Okay. And most athletic commissions, even worldwide, have ceased the use of it. Brazil stopped it. So it becomes really fucking interesting, especially in Brazil, because in Brazil you can buy steroids in a lot of it. Brazil stopped it. So it becomes really fucking interesting, especially in Brazil, because in Brazil you can buy steroids in a lot of stores. You can buy them over the counter like you can in Mexico.

You don't have to have prescriptions. I don't know if they've changed that in Brazil. I know they have it in Mexico. In Mexico, people go and buy like fucking Viagra. They go buy Percocets. They go buy all kinds of shit. It's the Wild West down there, for sure. In a lot of ways. But they just have different regulations when it comes to pharmaceutical drugs and steroids. But in the UFC, you cannot have testosterone replacement.

No one can have it anymore. So it's really interesting also because these people that have been taking it for X amount of years, they've depleted their system. Yeah. They've sort of shut their own endogenous production down. I think there's too many negatives to it. There's too many negatives to it as far as for athletic competition. And one of the big ones is I have Dr. Mark Gordon, who's a friend of mine, who is a expert on traumatic brain injury. And he says one of the big issues is you have to find out what is it that's causing

this depletion of their natural source of testosterone. Is it just old age, which is one possibility? Another possibility is traumatic brain injury. And that's cutting their testosterone production. Absolutely. Well, he scared the fuck out of me, man. His take on traumatic brain injury is so studied and he's been involved in assisting football players and athletes of –

Concussion. Yeah, a lot of them who have had, you know, really dramatic changes because of head trauma. And the way he describes it is like you never know what it's going to be that does it. It could be you go jet skiing one day and, you know, just the bouncing on the water and something's wrong in your brain. And then your body shuts down testosterone, your libido drops. And you're not aware of it. You just feel like. You feel depressed.

The bottom dropped out of me. Yeah. And you go to the doctor. I'm depressed. They put you on antidepressants. I mean, it's like. And what he's finding is that the pituitary gland is incredibly sensitive to trauma. And so obviously that when you're dealing with a sport

that one of the big goals is to shut the brain down with impacts, you know, with a strike. Yeah. Like giving them testosterone so that it negates the effects of brain trauma sort of like just masks the real issue that's going on. Yeah. So it's not as simple as their body getting older and they need testosterone to live a

nice quality of life. It's a matter of medication that sort of overrides this issue where, you know, they're getting their brain fucked up. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, and I also think there's too much possibility of cheating. Yeah. I think there's that too. I mean, I interviewed, what there's too much possibility of cheating. Yeah, I think there's that too.

I mean, I interviewed, what's it, Keith Kaiser? Yes. And he basically said the same thing. It's just not. And so, you know, of course, my editor wanted me to look at the sports side of a thing, and I did. And I think there was some really interesting stuff to be found on that side of it. And I come down on your side too. I mean, just like we've been having combat sport events since Greek and Roman times. Um, yeah, I mean, you, of course you don't want to,

some people would say, well, listen, we also fix MCLs and ACLs and we're able to do great things with medicine. So you know what I mean? Like why not take the advancement, these benefits that we have and if TRT is one of them, but I i do think there's there's the fairness to the sport but when i just before i left the hotel i saw a commercial where it's like an underarm now you just go in the morning you swipe it on and you head about your day so like just for not sports taken out of it just generally um for my what i've the research that i've done which was just in service of that article um you know i know, I, I wouldn't, I, like, I more or less said, if my dad wanted to use it, I would be like, listen, if it works, uh, and if

you try it, you know what I mean? Uh, uh, you know, when it makes some benefit to your life, you know, I'd be like, of course I'd be all for it. It's really the tip of the iceberg when it comes to manipulating the human body. It's essentially a low level form of genetic engineering and what you're going to be able to do instead of introducing these synthetic hormones into your system, what you're going to be able to do is they're going to have nanobots that repair tissue. They're going to have your body's ability to recuperate. A lot of people don't understand what hormones do and the various different roles that they play in your body. But a hormone doesn't necessarily make you bigger.

What makes you bigger is it makes you, when you take testosterone, it makes you recover quicker. And one of the ways guys can cheat is that they can work harder and they can put in more time because their recovery is shorter. Because they take these hormones and they can put in these intense and insane sessions in the gym and they'll be fresh as a daisy in the morning yeah whereas the other person has to sort of will themselves to get up and through hard work and determination can really put in the the time and and get better the traditional way yeah um so that that's that's

considered cheating i agree yeah but one day they're going to have fucking mailmen who are on these nanobots. Yeah, that's right. Some form of genetic engineering. It's like the same mailman for 300 years because he just keeps, that's another thing I did. There's a guy, Aubrey de Grey. Yes, I know that guy.

Right, okay, so he basically just says that your whole body can be replaced. Like he says, look at it like a car. Yeah. But I feel like there was some part of me that thought just as a fiction writer, like I don't know if I'd want to see a 2000 year old person. What would they smell like? What would they smell like?

Like, like old papery flesh. What if they were hot as fuck? What if they look like Jenna Jameson in their prime, but they smell like Barbara Walters? So you couldn't get rid of that sensory kind of, uh, would just be too, too weird. Yeah. We're running out of time here. That wouldn't be something that you would really have to think about, man. If we get to a point where people are immortal, there's going to be that thing where they go,

is there a next? Should I just let this die off? And there's going to be people that do decide to just— To just keep going and going. But I feel like you'd lose all your family and friends. Maybe, unless they're on it too. Yeah, you're all 2,000-year-old. You get annoyed with each other for eternity.

Yeah, exactly. Listen, man, this is a fascinating conversation. I really enjoyed it. Thank you very much for having me, Joe. Let me know when your new book comes out. What is it called again? The Deep. The Deep.

It's just like that movie with Nick Nolte. It is, yeah. The title's been used before, but it's a different thing all... Well, not entirely, but there's differences. And when can I get a copy of that? I will make sure you... Wait, what do you mean, a time frame? Let's say six months at the most.

Ah, six months from now. Mark it down. All right, thank you, brother. It was a lot of fun. No, my pleasure. Thank you very much, Joe. And the book is called The Troop, and his name is not really Nick Cutter. His name is Craig Davidson.

So if you like Nick Cutter's work, two Ts. Why'd you go with two Ts? Oh, because my agent. That's the only way. Nick Cutter, yeah. That worked in a different way, yeah. Your agent came up with Nick Cutter? We both came up with it.

He thought like, oh, they need to have like a hard driving kind of like Nick. Nick Cutter. Bob Slasher. That driving kind of like Nick. Nick Cutter. Bob Slasher. That's right. My name's Nick Cutter. Nick Cutter. Smoke Marlboros, no filters. I cut them off and I spit them at liberals.

All right. Thanks, dude. A lot of fun. Thank you very much. Buy the book, folks. I appreciate it. It's available right now on Amazon.com, but you will not get this cover. Yeah, it's actually on sale now.

Do you have an audio book version? Yeah, an audio book version as well. Aha. Beautiful. Go get it, you this cover. Yeah, it's actually on sale now. Do you have an audiobook version? Yeah, an audiobook version as well. Aha. Beautiful. Go get it, you fucks. And thanks to our sponsors. Thanks to Ting. Go to rogan.ting.com.

Get yourself an awesome cell phone and save $25 off of it. Thanks also to 1-800-Flowers.com. Today, only Tuesday, May 6th, you can buy 18 vibrant multicolored roses and get a free glass vase for $29.99. And for just $10 more, two dozen roses, a glass vase, and a delicious box of chocolates. How can you go wrong? You cannot. Go to 1-800-Flowers.com and enter in JRE or call 1-800-Flowers and mention JRE. Thanks also to Onnit.com. That's O-N-N-I-E, or call 1-800-Flowers and mention J-R-E. Thanks also to Onnit.com.

That's O-N-N-I-T. Use the code word ROGAN and save 10% off any and all supplements. Tomorrow, we'll be back with Tim Kennedy, mixed martial arts superstar and fascinating individual. And then we got a lot of podcasts coming up, folks. A lot of good shit. All right. Much love. See you soon.

Big kiss. Mwah.