The Joe Rogan Experience - #663 - Dominic Monaghan

Episode Date: June 22, 2015

Dominic Monaghan is an English actor, known for his role in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and on the tv show "LOST" He also has a wildlife documentary series called "Wild Things with Dominic Monaghan" which airs on the Travel Channel.

Good? Oh shit, we're live. Hey, fella, what's going on? Boom, what's up? Thanks for doing this, man, appreciate it. I'm stoked. We both came in here, we had a meal together, unprepared. We both were a little bit late, we both had food, had a little food, talked a little shit, relaxed, settled in. I got a little nervous, like I was in the right area for the podcast, but when I rolled up here, I was like, this doesn't look anything like a podcast, and I was nervous you're gonna be like where the are you but well the next place i get

is gonna be even less like this place it's gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna try to make it as discreet as possible i'm gonna hide it i'm gonna pretend it's a preschool i'm gonna put like a preschool sign on the outside so that just that's like young single dudes just avoid preschools at all costs. That's the way to keep stalkers away Push this sucker right up to your face. Okay, so lining a little bit So dude you talk about a guy who's done a lot of fucking cool shit You were on one of my favorite shows lost up until the end. I gotta be honest. Yes the lot the end It was we can talk about fucking Jack. He's phoning it in that guy he's driving me crazy standing around that fucking pawn that brings people back to life like he's waiting for his

line to come up um and then you know you you're part of the lord of the rings man i mean dude i know those are two amazing historical things that you're a part of yeah yeah and when you when you're doing it as an actor as a jobbing actor when you're doing it you're a part of. Yeah, yeah. And when you when you're doing it as an actor, as a jobbing actor, when you're doing it, you're stoked. I mean, I was super stoked to do those shows. You don't realize at the time the real gravity of what you're doing until years later. Me and Orlando and Elijah and Billy went out for dinner a couple of weeks ago and we sat around saying the further away we get from Lord of the Rings, the more important it feels in our life. So when we're grandfathers and stuff, I'm sure we'd be like,

yeah, we were involved in a piece of movie history. But at the time, you're just like, great job, having fun. And that was kind of the same with Lost. Although to be fair, with Lost, because we were isolated on an island in the show, but also in person, you know, we're all on a Wahoo together. We weren't, or certainly I wasn't as exposed to the size of the show

as much as when I went on hiatus and then people were following me around and, you know, causing hassle and stuff. But when you're in Hawaii, there's like three restaurants to go to. I avoid those three restaurants. If anyone follows me, I go to the library and then sit there for a couple of hours. So I wasn't really aware that it became this pop culture phenomenon, you know.

And then the end, oh, man, the end is like, you know, I'm on Twitter and stuff, and a lot of people on Twitter ask me, how do you feel about the end? And in all honesty, I didn't watch it, and I've not watched it. You know, I left at the end of season three, came back in, peppered in season four, five and six, but wasn't in the show when it ended. I mean, I was in the finale, but, you know,

at that point, I'd ejected myself from that world. And I was doing a movie in New York, in the Lower East Side, playing a completely different character, a grave robber that was working at night. I didn't want to expose myself to this Charlie character who I'd played, because I felt like I was going to bring the Charlie character onto set the next day.

Oh, yeah. So people are always very, very jazzed to talk to me about the ending. How did you feel about it? How did it make you feel? Were you disappointed? Did you love it? And I always really fucking piss people off

by going, yeah, I didn't see it. You didn't see it? You know, I just didn't see it. I felt like I was getting fucked towards the end. I was like, they're just, I'm not doing this. And I walked away. And I actually had an argument about it with my wife. She's like, you gotta watch the last episode. I'm like, I'm not watching it no I'm not watching it I'm done I'm done I

don't feel can same thing with Dexter I walked away with Dexter I was like completely committed in the beginning but you you walked away or your your character died during the golden time of the show the show was flawless at that time it was was so goddamn good. It was so good. Yeah, I left end of season three, which I really felt like it was kind of peaking at that point. It was the show that every late-night talk show host was talking about or daytime, and it was in magazines, and BuzzFeed loved it and all that kind of stuff.

And then I felt like it was cresting. And then I think the real bummer for the fans was that for the six years that it was on TV, the creators had said, it's not what you think it is. It's something else. But ultimately, it kind of was what a lot of people thought it was. Yeah. Well, I think they say that because they don't know what the fuck they're doing. I mean, they have a giant storyboard, and they're moving pieces around.

They did a phenomenal job, though. I mean, given the constraints, first of all, of network television, of knowing that you're going to have commercial breaks and knowing that you can't have certain language, certain things you're not going to be able to show. They did a fantastic job. I mean, it's just one of the all time great shows, for sure. Totally a great show. Loved it. Love being involved in it. I think it will be, you know, something that people will talk about with me for the rest of my life. A lot of times, I'm sure you experience this as well, sometimes the things that you are personally close to

that you're working in and is a huge part of your life, it takes on a different aspect than just the simple look from a fan's point of view. Like for me Lost was it was Hawaii, it was surfing, it was being in love, it was chameleons, it was having a shitty day at work, it was having a great day at work, it was being hungover, it was making new friends, it was everything. It was my life you know. For a lot of fans it's like oh that's the TV show that I watched Wednesday night at 8 and it was always my friend. But Lost for me was sometimes not my friend sometimes my enemy sometimes it was incredible

sometimes you know so when people come over to me and say what do you think about the show how do I make sense that it's it's so much of me do you know me yeah your point of view is completely singular I mean no one is gonna have that point of view other than the actors on the show and even their point of of view is going to be kind of different than yours. People watching and they watch the finished product. And so their association with it is totally different than yours. Polished, beautiful. There's no agenda. They just want you to be entertained. You know, no politics. There's a lot of politics on Lost. I mean, fuck, I got in trouble for saying this when Lost was on TV, but fuck it, I don't care about that shit.

I watched certain cast members go from making the pilot, which was a six-week pilot, where everyone was hanging out with each other, we're all partying at night, we're all spending time with each other. I watched certain actors be like, this is the greatest job I have ever done. I mean, Hawaii is a tropical island,

getting paid well. The cast are amazing. We're going on this journey together to shoot in like episode three or four of the first season and hearing people saying, I can't believe I'm not on Letterman. Why am I not on Letterman?

You're like, two months ago, this is the greatest thing you've ever done and now you're like, why can't I fly to New York? Why can't I be on a 12 o'clock flight to New York? Why do I have to be on a 9 a.m. flight to New York? What the fuck is wrong with you?

You're missing it. You're missing it. That's so common, though. That's very common with actors. Yeah, yeah. Actors are a strange breed. When I was on news radio, we once had this discussion about Thursday night. The Thursday night lineup on NBC was where you wanted to be.

That was Seinfeld that was friends That was the spot and it was fucking sex in the city and the single guy And he's what Paul Sims the creator of news radio called the shit sandwich spot Said like you have your two good shows and in between your show you would put dog shit and Everybody was complaining. Why can't we be on Thursday? and I'm like guys last time I checked we're on television like we're on a sitcom on actual television and it's funny like these are the golden years like we're gonna look back when we're old we're gonna say fuck we were so lucky but while it's happening everybody's like why am I not in the Hollywood Reporter

why am I not getting a development deal why can't I star in my own movie? Why did he get it and I didn't get it? I did that in my teens and early twenties. But how come he's got it? My agent, my English agent who I'm not with anymore, at one point, you know, we went for dinner and he sat me down and he was like, the reason why he's getting it and you're not is because you are not him. He has a completely different journey in his life. He looks different. He acts different. You're not the same. He won't get the roles that you're going to get. He won't get the opportunities that you'll get and you won't get his. But quit that bullshit because that's not going to get you anywhere.

That's a great perspective. So true. It's hard to find someone to lay it down like that though. Yeah, my agent was gnarly. That's great. You had a good guy. Yeah, he was. He was really good. And then you have to absorb it. Right. You have to take it in and you have to separate it from your ego and all your preconceived notions and assumptions and actually absorb it. Right. And also swallow that very bitter pill of regardless of however unfair

you think it is and how it should change and be justified and one day it will all be okay. Maybe it won't. And that's really, I mean, we're talking about one very specific endeavor, but it's analogous to life itself because people will look at people that are doing other things in life and they'll be upset that they're not doing those things, even though they've taken very little or no effort to try to do any of those things. It's just they become haters.

It's crazy that even a successful person like on a huge show like Lost can become a hater. Oh yeah, yeah. Isn't that adorable? I mean it's kind of funny. I mean it's a human characteristic, right? We're always gonna compare ourselves to other people. I went for a walk yesterday around Griffith Park

and I was talking with my friend about the whole comparison thing And I was saying like you know that Bill Gates gets up some days, and he's like what the fuck You know Jesus Christ. I can't fucking catch a break. You know it's just having a shit day all your problems are relative You know and it's okay to have them. We're all gonna have them It's just you got to navigate your way through them with a little bit of grace it seems like those pitfalls in life are just a part of being a human being in this weird world because this world is not like any world that was ever that ever existed there was never a million different people that you could compare yourself to that were on television or singing songs or on the internet or

like there's all these different people that you can look at and then you look at yourself and make these comparisons it used to just be the people that were around you right and that's what it used to be for the entire history of the human race it was only the people you could see with your eyes and come in contact with right other than you didn't have this weird perspective yeah and i think it's part of what a human being is. We're constantly striving to improve. It's why we stay alive. It's why we build homes. It's why we try to get good at a career.

It's like this desire to get better at things also leads you to compare your own progress against the progress of others. And that's where the pitfall comes in. Right. And obviously a lot of people in this new society that we've created with social media and instant information, a lot of those people that have become successful and famous are in those places because they are the fucking elite. So now we're comparing ourselves to the elite. Like you could be a great basketball player, have an amazing game, come home, start watching YouTube feeds of Dwayne Wade or, you know, LeBron. And you're like, oh, I'm fucking terrible. No, you could be a great basketball player, have an amazing game, come home, start watching YouTube feeds of Dwayne Wade or, you know, LeBron, and you're like, oh, I'm fucking terrible. No, you're not terrible.

These are the exception. And we're exposing ourselves to the exception almost all the time now. Everyone on Twitter is brilliant. In that sense, those comparisons are great and beneficial because they force you to try to achieve a higher standard. Right. As long as you can keep yourself from going mad. What about the fact that you'll never get there like i'm never going to slam dunk i'm never

i don't have the athletic body ability to slam dunk right so if my whole ambition was like i want to slam down i know boykins can slam donkey smaller than me i can't do it i just can't do it you know i've tried i don't get anywhere near i don't have the ability to do it how much have you tried well you know i mean like if you went to a strength and conditioning coach you said listen i'm dominic monahan i got a lot of fucking money come on bitch you're gonna get me in fucking top notch shape we're gonna do deadlifts you're gonna get me pumped up with steroids i'm dunking dude i'm fucking dunking what is it the vertical leap get my vertical leap down yeah maybe i've not tried to the extent that you know some people have but i don't I don't know. I think there's something potentially harmful.

You know, it's like the whole thing with beautiful women, you know. I mean, a lot of people, a lot of ladies and maybe men feel that pressure to be that perfect thing. But that perfect thing isn't necessarily real. Well, you know what's really frustrating? When you meet a girl who doesn't like her body and you love her body. who doesn't like her body and you love her body and she's comparing herself to stick figures that are like in models that are wearing these weird outfits that weigh 18 pounds.

Your body is a woman's body. Like the fat, the stuff that you don't like, we like that. We like a fat ass. Sure, sure. Yeah, I mean, it's a part of being sexy. It's actually attractive to men. Right.

But women are comparing to the way fashion models look and the way other women perceive. Like, there's certain women, like, I know this lady who she doesn't think that women look good unless they look like sticks. Right. Like, she has this weird thing in her head. And, like, her friends will try to talk to her about it. Like, that's not true. But after a while, you just get tired of talking about it. Yeah, yeah.

Like, you're crazy. Like, you look great. You look great. Right look great right like don't this ain't about that you could be born in Ethiopia with no feet you know you could you could have been fucked you could have been one of those kids that's born in Iraq that has to deal with the aftermath of all the fucking hazardous waste it's in that area that's causing all these kids to be born with massive deformities like you're lucky as shit. Right. You can't go on about the fact that you're not skinny enough. Yeah, I mean, obviously a lot of that is the societal thing.

I mean, I make a big distinction between, like, a girl's body and a woman's body. You know, I mean, there is a difference. Most of the fashion lines want to put their models in the clothes when they have a girl's body because they're a coat hanger, right? Yeah, a coat hanger. That's the way to look at it because that's body because they're a they're a co-hanger right yeah a coat hanger That's the way to look at it because that's what they really are their clothes hangers like your clothes look best When they're not being stuffed in like Jennifer Lopez's body It's fuck but to a man like that's what men like you see that fucking ass the waist Jesus

Beyonce yeah exactly that's a fucking woman. Yes. But you know those women It's we were talking about this the other day like that didn't used to be Hot like just a few years like if you go back and look at the Playboys from like these 70s and the 80s They didn't even concentrate on asses like it wasn't for whatever reason that wasn't a focus I don't know what happened. Or do we think it's the hip-hop community? Do we think it's the rap community? Probably. Brian? I mean, I remember being 12 and seeing a cover of an Ice-T album that had, like, girls in

onesie bikinis with big asses. Yeah. And I was like, oh, damn. That's true, right? That one where Ice-T had a machine gun behind his back and the girl was in a bikini and she had, like, yeah, she had a thong on. He may have ended up marrying her, maybe. I think he did.

I think that was his wife for a while, before he got rid of her and got the cocoa. Right, and that was the first time I was exposed to that. Because for me, it was like Princess Leia growing up was my thing, my jam. We didn't even know what her body looked like. We had no idea until, there it is. But even then, look at her ass. In comparison to today. It's not quite there, but at the time that was kind of revolutionary

Look, I'm not hating it, it's not terrible But that's nothing compared to, you know, what is her name? The fucking Nicki Minaj Look at the girl right here on Power Sonora, just to the right there Yeah, click on that one, Jamie Jesus Christ, what is that? That's much more rapper. But what's interesting is it seems,

the attraction to that seems fundamental. So why wasn't it there in the 70s and the 80s? It seems genetic. Right. Was it seen to be, I don't know, obscene? Oh, God, that photo kills me. Her ass is retarded. Nicki Minaj, that anaconda picture.

What is that? Is that real? I think so. No. Wow. A little extra brushing. Yeah, maybe. But whatever.

That's insane. Phenomenal. Yeah. What genetics. But again, obviously, a lot of it is girls doing squats and girls concentrating on that area and developing their butt. But it's weird to me that that wasn't a big deal in the 70s and the 80s and whatever. And then somewhere along the line, the hip hop community sort of ignited what seems to

be a fundamental attraction that men have. Right. Also, like, you know, when I started to get interested in girls and being able to actually make out with girls and spend time with girls, those girls were girls. That was 11, 12, 13 year old girls. There was no concept of any of those girls having a badonkadonk like that.

So maybe for me it was the thing that I was reaching for. I'm never gonna get there. I'm never gonna get this womanly thing. I'm gonna be with these little waifish girls because I was a little kid at the time. And then later on, I don't know, there's a fantasy element to it, right? Right. But for girls, though, the look of a man being like a big, muscular, like The Rock or something like that, that's always existed.

Like Conan the Barbarian, you know, that's always been around. You go back to the Robert E. Howard illustrations that Frank Fazzetta did, like, way back in the 70s. It's fucking yoked out, giant barbarian. It's universal. Well, like Roman or Greek gods, you know. I mean, there's sculptures that have been around forever. They're all cut and ripped and stuff. But the women back then were all fat and Rubenesque, you know, right?

They didn't have those bodies that the bodies have today. There's, like, a weird change. And it doesn't exist in males. It exists in women. Very interesting. Yeah, that is interesting. I mean, I, you know, I appreciate a lady that kind of takes care of herself simply because I feel as if I need to, you know, I, I'm not the biggest dude in the world, but I go to the gym when I'm free because it gets me out of the house. And also I like to try and go to the gym Monday to Friday so that my Saturday, Sunday I can do whatever I want. And I eat relatively correctly so that on the weekend, if I want to chow down some food that's a little naughty, it's not going to make a huge difference.

If I'm doing that, I would like to be with someone who has the same common sense about their body and the way that they look. Like, it's a bit of an issue for me because like, I love pizza and I like buffalo wings and I could easily eat all that stuff and get much bigger. But I'm aware of the fact that it's not healthy for you. You shouldn't necessarily be doing that to your body putting it under that much stress but also i want to feel and look and present myself good because i want to feel good about myself and the issue with people just kind of abusing themselves in that way excuse me says something a little sinister about how they personally feel about themselves it's self-abuse right i mean I mean, if you know that food is making you more unhealthy and you're eating it on a daily basis, that is a form of self-abuse. And I don't

necessarily feel attracted to people who are abusing themselves on a consistent basis. Yeah, I mean, that's natural. But it's also weirdly natural for people to abuse themselves, to get caught in that cycle of overeating and then feeling shitty because you're overeating. And that's a very common cycle for people to get trapped in. And I really wonder what the mechanism of that is. Like, what's the evolutionary advantage to having that in the human species? Because it's so common. I mean, everywhere you look, especially in America, you just see overweight people everywhere.

They know. They have to know. It's not like this is some secret that's locked up in the fucking vaults in Qumran, you have to crack the code to find out that you shouldn't eat pizza at 3 o'clock in the morning. Right. And they don't suddenly wake up and go, oh my God, what is this? What is this? Like they've seen it occur, you know?

I don't think that's the evolution of our species. I think that's those moments where we do want to abuse ourselves. We do want to feel badly. It doesn't extend us as a species to do that. It's the way that we feel bad. But you eat relatively healthy. You work out and stuff. What's your food kryptonite?

What's the thing where you're like, oh my God, I love it. I got to have it. I do love pizza. I do love shitty pastas and pizzas and things that I know that I shouldn't eat. That's pretty much it. But I'm pretty good because I enjoy healthy food. Like I was eating vegan food when you came in here because I want to. It's because I just did yoga, and I'm like, that's a good thing to eat.

It feels good to eat clean. Do you give yourself like a free pass? You're like, every Sunday I can have a slice of pizza. You know, I don't though. I do, but I kind of would if I was more inclined to eat shitty. Like if it was like more of a thing that I had to separate myself from. But it's not that hard for me. I eat relatively clean because I like to eat relatively clean.

And when I say relatively clean, I should say overwhelmingly clean. Most of the food I eat is really healthy. It's just I know too much. At this point in time, I'd be upset at myself if I didn't. I just know too much about the actual effects. So in the mornings, generally in the mornings, I either eat fruit or I drink a kale shake, one of those blended up shakes with kale and celery and cucumber and garlic and all that jazz. And then in the afternoon, it depends.

But if I feel like having a cheeseburger, I'll have a fucking cheeseburger too. Yeah, yeah. Well, you've earned it, you know. We were talking about this off air. Like, I'm lucky enough to travel nine months of my year pretty intensively, you know, a week in a place, 10 days in a place, a week in a place,

10 days in a place. Because of that, lots of long-distance flying. I have no semblance of a schedule in terms of food. So I lose weight based on those factors and also the fact that my metabolism is very high-running. I need very little sleep to function. My mom used to tell me this all the time when I was a kid. If there was something more interesting for me to do, I would fore eating so she'd be like dinner's on the table i'd be like wait can i just finish this thing she's like okay fine and she said you would just not have dinner

and then she would have to remind me you didn't eat dinner and i'm like okay let me eat it and then i'll go back to that thing so you would eat just like out of like like a necessity like a pleasurable thing you just got to get in your mouth just get it down because my mom and dad told me i mean i would i was obsessed by football soccerurable thing. You just got to get it in your mouth. Just get it down because my mom and dad told me. I mean, I was obsessed by football, soccer, when I was a kid. I would get up in the morning, run out of my house when I would go to school, run out of my house before breakfast, no breakfast, get to school, play football for an hour before 9 o'clock.

So from 8 till 9, I'd play football with my friends. Break time was 10.15 till 11.15. Most people ate at that point. Most people had a snack, chips, fruit, sandwich. I would play football. Lunchtime was an hour. All my friends would eat. I would play football.

First thing that I would put in my mouth, pretty much all the time, certainly more than average in school, like I would say 65% of the time, would be candy on the way home. So I'd walk into the convenience store, buy one pound pounds worth of candy. You must have been starving. Dude, I was emaciated when I was a kid. And I was burning,

what? I don't know, 10,000 calories a day and just putting sugar in me, you know? So I was super skinny. And that has transferred over into my adult life where my trainer has always said to me, it's consistency, Dom. Like you need to be in the gym five days a week so I'm like okay Ryan I'm here for a month let's do five days a week and get it poppin and he's like okay cool and then like three weeks in I'm like I'm not like I put on a little bit but I'm not feeling it and he's and he says let's talk about what you're eating I'm like a couple of mouthfuls of oatmeal breakfast some pineapple and some grapes for lunch he's like no no no you need tuna steak, you need salmon,

you need chicken, you need tofu, you need fat, you need almonds, you need avocados. And he would show me what I'm supposed to eat. I'm like, I can't either. I can't get it in my system. I'm going to puke. But, you know, everyone's got their own thing that they're dealing with. But I'm never going to be as big as you.

Your frame is bigger and you're a naturally big guy. What my trainer said is, like, you can get caught. You can get Bruce Lee-ish, but you're never going to get Jean-Claude Van Damme-ish. But the way to do that is to still eat, feed that fire. Well, if you did want to pack weight on, you would have to do these big compound exercises like deadlifts. You'd have to do squats. You'd have to do things where your body literally has to change. Your body, your bone structure has to change.

Your bone structure will change. I mean, it will densify. The density of your bone structure definitely alters when you do heavy, heavy lifting. Because your body realizes, like, hey, this dumb motherfucker is going to pick up big, heavy shit all day. We have to get thicker. So it literally will make your bones thicker and denser. I want that. The biggest I ever asked, can you pull up the poster for the pilot of Lost?

Like the first ever poster for Lost is all of us on a beach. It's the biggest I ever was. I was probably like 158 pounds, something like that, which is big on me. I put on like 12, 14 pounds of muscle. And my fucking biceps are like this. And I never got that big ever again. And at the time... What were you doing?

No, it's like more of an iconic silhouette on a beach. Hang on. Oh, Jesus. I'll pull it up. I'll find it. Okay. What was I doing? I was... I had food delivery.

Ah, that's good. Yeah, and the food delivery was like I'm going to the gym, give me clean food, give me lots of clean food. I was in the gym once a day, and then I did a little bit of running around my local area, and it was consistency. Yeah, that's the thing, right? Consistent. It's about getting a good groove going, right? It's about just getting a good habit going where this is what you do. They say that if you could do something every day for 90 days,

then it'll become like a part of you. They say that that's like one of the best ways to quit smoking is if you can get addicted to something else and get used to doing that every day. There you go, but you need a slightly high-res version. You can't really see it, But I am huge there for me. I mean, I don't look huge because I'm not the biggest guy in the world. But like you can, well, I can see at least like my fucking.

I can see some muscle there. Yeah, my biceps are going off right there. Was there any hesitation at all being sequestered on this island like that and being a part of this crazy show where you had to change your whole life? I mean, you had to move. this crazy show where you had to change your whole life. I mean, you had to move. Yeah, I met J.J. Abrams,

and he just solved all of those conundrums for me. Really? How so? He's just a brilliant guy. You know, you meet brilliant guys every so often, and I think any time you're around someone who's brilliant, you have to sit up and take notes, you know? And I just was aware that I was around someone with a very fast-moving, smart mind. And I went in for a general audition

and sat down with JJ and his partner, Brian Burke, and we just talked about English comedy for, like, 45 minutes. Talked about Monty Python and Eddie Izzard and the Goons and the Goodies and Derek and Clive and we did this whole thing. We were doing impressions for each other. No audition and I left. I called my agent and he was like, how did it go?

And I was like, it went well, but we didn't talk about the show. We just talked about comedy and goofed around and stuff. He was like, all right, cool. Then they got back in touch with him and said, we loved him. They had this character of Charlie who at the time was this 55-year-old rocker, like a Robert Plant guy at the time, that had been through all of it and was in the tail end of his career and got stuck on the island.

And they reworked it. And when JJ and I sat down, I was like, what is more frustrating for that artist to have the barest glimpse of fame you've had this one hit and it all almost worked out his entire life it almost did it for him and then he's on this fucking island and he can't get back to the place where he could make it all happen you know and I think you know JJ Love responded to that kind of frustration level and I was just aware that it was going to be a big deal he directed the pilot he co-wrote the pilot it felt like something

that was going to be you know big and impressive and i trusted him um and there wasn't a huge amount when it's when it's a when it's a no-brainer job like that it doesn't take a huge amount of thought you're just like well yeah of course i'm gonna do it there's no-brainer job like that, it doesn't take a huge amount of thought. You're just like, well, yeah, of course I'm going to do it. There's no... Living in Hawaii would be a really tough decision to make because I wouldn't mind one day living in Hawaii, but I would have to be really done with cities. Just done.

I need something different in my life. But a job that wants you to move to Hawaii, I'd be like, ooh, boy, I don't know. Did you get island fever at all? You know, I actually didn't. A lot of people on the cast did. I'm into jungles and forests and animals and stuff. So for me, I was kind of buzzing off that. I had said to them before I moved out there, because they were putting us in houses, I was like, can you put me in the jungle? Can you put me straight up in the jungle in a house that's surrounded by trees and animals? And because they didn't know me, the producers were like you put me straight up in the jungle in a house that's surrounded by trees and animals?

And because they didn't know me, the producer's like, you don't want to do that. You're going to be isolated. You're going to be on your own. There's going to be nothing around you. That's exactly what I wanted to do. So I ended up moving, living in Kailua for a little bit on the island of Oahu, then moved to Lanakai for a little bit. What's Lanakai? Lanakai is this loop.

It's a little half a mile loop very exclusive little part of the island southeast part of the island Michelle Pfeiffer has a house there so I was able to watch her go on a Daily run every day, which is pretty fantastic. She lives there, huh? I think she has like a summery place around there She's still on huh? Oh my gosh, she's so cute So little as well. How old is she? Well, at the time, she was probably in her mid-forties, mid-fifties now, maybe. At least.

Yeah, maybe even fifties. Still hot. So hot. She'd wear little, you know, cycling shorts and a little like running thing, and I was like, oh. Did she say hi to you ever? No. I never said hi to her either. I made sure that I was just watching out the window with my binoculars. With your fucking sighting scope.

Right. But Hawaii was, you know, it was cool. I liked it. I learned to surf in New Zealand, which is a gnarly place to surf. Very cold waves, relatively dumpy waves. There's no curl on that wave. It just picks you up and drops you, which if it's the first time you've ever surfed it, you assume that all waves are like that.

You have to be in a wetsuit. Lots of times you have to be in booties. There were times when it was so cold I would come out of the water that I'd have to use two hands to unlock my car door because I couldn't use one hand. It had frozen, you know, so I'd have to go. Wow. Meanwhile, you move to Hawaii, board shorts, don't have to wear a t-shirt. Bathwater.

Bathwater. It's amazing. Turtles everywhere, dolphins. So I was big on surfing. And in the first month or so that I was in Hawaii, I went to the Apple store in Honolulu. And I met one of my favorite surfers of all time, a guy called Kalani Robb. And when I was playing Kelly Slater's pro surfer game, I would always pick Kalani because he did the most radical moves, you know? So I'm in the Apple store. He's there with his boys. I was like, shit, that's Kalani Robb. And then he comes over to me. He's like, dude,

you're that guy in Lord of the Rings. I was like, oh shit, it's on now. So I was like, you're Kalani Robb. I was like, I'm here for like nine months. Can you help me out surfing? He was like, yeah, we're going to go to to the north shore now so i came with him whoa hung out uh and we became really tight so a huge story for hawaii for me was getting to know kalani i mean he took me into waves i had no business being involved in there's a place called goat island on the north shore which is a heavy wave and you have to paddle out to an island walk across the island because then you're going to miss the break, and then paddle out past the break. There's no concept of you paddling out through the break, because it's so big. So I was with Kalani and a few of his mates, and we were all getting ready, and he came over to me. He was like, okay, this is the most hectic wave I'm ever going to take you into.

Stay close to me. If you need help, let me know. Don't fuck around, because it can kill you. And don't go left. Go right. No, no, don't go right. Go left, because it's kill you and don't go left go right no no don't go right go left because it's going to peel left but if you go right you're in the breaking zone and you're fucked i was like all right cool so i sense a fucking terrible story coming up so we so we paddle out and i'm having fun and i'm watching everyone in the lineup i'm about 10 feet away from the drop zone so i'm able to like sit there on the wave and watch people like get spat out the other side. I'm like, all right, cool. I got this. It's fast. I'm going to, I'm going to take it. So I paddle, I paddle, I paddle. Wave picks me up. It's big. I'm like, oh shit. Super powerful. Drops me. And I really try and go left. I like

cut the board and I try and go left, but it's so powerful because it's breaking here on my left that it spits me to the right. I'm fully aware that it spat me to the right. So I'm like, okay, shit. I'm just going to wipe out, take a big breath, and paddle out. So I wipe out. I go under. Come up. And as is usually the case with if you're surfing anything above overhead,

when you come up, that wave's coming for you again. So what you have to do is take a huge breath, go under, and it's the next time you come up that you can make progress because you're out of breath, you're disoriented. I do that and I, Joe, I just can't, I can never catch a break. So I go under, thrown around by the washing machine, come up, I think, okay, get on your board, start paddling, look, waves right there. I'm like, go under again, hold my breath, come up again. And I'm trying to time it so that I can get it. I'm just getting pounded, pounded, pounded, pounded. And at one point I see Kalani paddling over to me. I'm just getting pounded, pounded, pounded, pounded. And

at one point I see Kalani paddling over to me. I'm like, all right, cool. We're going to be okay. So Kalani comes over to me and he's like mad. Like I've never really heard him be mad before. He's like, dude, get on your board and go that way. I'm like, okay, that's what I've been trying to do for like 10 minutes. But so now he's behind me. He's paddling. I'm paddling. He's pushing me, paddling, pushing me, paddling like fucking Superman. And we eventually get out past the break. So he's behind me. He's paddling. I'm paddling. He's pushing me, paddling, pushing me, paddling, like fucking Superman. And we eventually get out past the break. So he's like, all right, you're going to sit here for 20 minutes,

and then when I'm done, you're going to paddle in with me safe. And I was like, okay, fine, I got it. So when we come in, he's like, the reason why I came in to get you was not only were you in the drop zone, but you were, like, completely lacking of any color on your face. And he was like, people in the lineup were saying, dude, go get your boy because he's in trouble. And I was like, I was handling it.

I was definitely out of breath and a little fucked up, but he's a water man. So he was like, no, eight more waves on your head like that, you wouldn't have had the strength to fight past the wave and get up. Yeah, because you get these little gasps of air. Oh, dude. It's so heavy. And here's a really good trick. Kalani taught me this one.

He's like, if you're under the water and you're rolling around and you're fucked and you need to take a breath, drink the tiniest amount of seawater. Tiny. A sip. Just go like that. Tricks your body into thinking you took a breath.

And it'll give you an extra five seconds or so because you've just taken an in, well, not an inhalation, but you've put something in your body. So your lungs are like, okay, we can chill. The panic goes for a little bit. Really? Yeah, and I've done that a few times.

I've been under, and I'm like, take a little swallow, come back up. Wow, how weird. Yeah, yeah. Isn't it funny? You're fighting for five-second increments too. Oh, dude, it's so hectic. Surfing seems crazy. You've never done it?

No, never done it. You look like someone that can handle it. I mean, you need a big-ish boy, but you're an athlete. You can handle it. No, never done it. You look like someone that can handle it. I mean, you need a big-ish boy, but you're an athlete. You can handle it. Yeah, it seems like a lot of work. It also seems like something you get addicted to. I'm scared of things that you get addicted to.

Really? Yeah. You're not addicted to working out and fighting and stuff? Oh, yeah, exactly. I just don't have any more time. I'm just afraid of some new thing in my life that I get addicted to, and then I just think about it all the time.

I go through different obsessions and stuff with certain things. So's so what's like you're doing this thing right now on Instagram with the rock where he's fucking lifting up kettlebells and you're lifting up kettlebells mm-hmm are you guys tight do you know each other you know I know I'm online we're e pals right okay you know and we we share you know we have friends and he's gonna do the podcast eventually we're working on because his company one of his the companies that he's involved with is roots of fight this company that

does all these old fight poster t-shirts really cool shit excuse me and he's always wearing their stuff and he's coming in town to do something with them so I know someone with him on San Andreas and said he was a lovely dude I supposed to be the best guy super friendly knew everyone, knew everyone's name, really accommodating. Well, he's the real deal. Like, he really does get up at 5 o'clock in the morning and work out before the set. You know, he takes all these Instagram photos.

He's, like, the most inspirational guy when it comes to, like, getting shit done. Yeah. Because he just gets shit done, you know? Yeah, he's a beast as well. Yeah, he's a fucking animal. He's making it happen. There he is. Samoan, right?

I mean, he has some genetic stuff that helps him out. Oh, he's definitely got some genetics. I's a giant dude yeah yeah he's a animal man but he's very motivated see that shirt that he's wearing that's a roots of fight shirt that's a muay thai that's a tight yeah yeah they have a lot of really cool uh old school different like fight posters from like muhammad ali versus joe, Thriller, Manila, that kind of shit. If I would see a guy that big on the street like that, it would be kind of freakish. But for some reason, The Rock pulls it off.

He's very proportionate, huh? Yeah, he knows what he's doing. If you scroll down lower, that's another Roots of Fight shirt. Scroll down lower, that John Van Gunk, that's a Bruce Lee shirt. He's got a bunch of these. He's an animal. Yeah, he is.

Yeah, look at this. Yeah, he is. AM cardio. Yeah. He's a fucking animal. Good for him. Yeah. I mean, look, there are people like that.

Like, you know who Kevin Hart is? Stand-up comedian? Yeah, I know Kevin Hart. He's another one. Very inspirational. What, for working out? That fucking guy's always doing something. He's up at 5 o'clock in the morning.

Yeah, he makes these little videos of him doing work. He's in very good shape. He works out every fucking day. Wow. And he puts Instagram photos of it. And he's a comedian. Yeah. He's constantly getting things done.

I don't think they've found the right vehicle for him yet. No. Well, his stand-up is the right vehicle for him. Right, right. All those other things, the movies and everything, it's great. It's just making him more famous and bigger. But his stand-up is where it's at. Yeah, he's got to find it.

I'm friends with Kimmel. Kimmel's always impressed me just in terms of knowing what his day's like, but also the fact that he'll reply to me pretty quickly. I'm like, dude, aren't you doing 15 things at a time? He's like, well, yeah, I am, but you're the 16th thing that i can do you know i'm just really impressed by his work ethic and it's very often the same the routine of going into the studio and going in the writer's room and breaking jokes and doing the monologue and all that kind of stuff it's the same every day but he's still motivated to do it and he's brilliant and he knows what's funny and he knows what a joke is. And I don't know, all the late-night TV,

all the late-night talk show hosts that I've had the opportunity to meet, I've always thought there's something brilliant about you, you know? There's something brilliant about working in that medium, you know? It's current and edgy and, you know, what they're doing at times can be a little risky and dangerous and stuff, but they're willing to get up the next day and do it again and get up the next day and not get pounded down in the same way that other people might. Yeah, that's their thing, you know.

I mean, that's what Jimmy Kimmel is best at. He's got, obviously, he's got fantastic work ethic and he's obviously a brilliant guy, but that's, like, what he wants to do. That's his thing. Yeah, yeah. You know, like, it works for him. It's a beautiful gig, too, because you can never rest on your laurels,

because it doesn't matter. Tomorrow, there's another show. Right. That show has to be good as well. Right. Like, and you need new jokes, and you need new sketches, and you need new gags to pull off, and you have new guests to review

and to go over what they're talking about. Yeah. And he's done a lot of jumping up,immy in a way that i really respect like i did a show a long time ago maybe 12 years ago and at that point you know his hair's different he's a little bigger they're not quite got his suits to fit yet the whole facade of the show you know was was being worked on but jimmy i think his drive and maybe the drive of the people that he surrounds himself with, you know, he jumped up

when he did the Matt Damon thing. He jumped up when he interviewed Obama. He jumped up when he, you know, sorted out his hair and, you know, kind of dropped a few pounds and sorted out his suit. Like he has a drive. There's no sense of complacency with Jimmy.

And I find that seems to be relatively concurrent with talk show hosts. Conan's like that. He's always reaching. Do you know what I mean? He's never like, okay, we're done. This is the show. Let's just dial it in. He's reaching. I appreciate watching people reach. It's why I'm a huge fan of athletes in general. I always feel like athletes are always trying for that next thing. Yeah. It's finding comfort and happiness in that struggle, enjoying that process. It's very difficult for people.

And for some people, the monotony of showing up and doing it all over again that wears on them, it's really just about finding whatever the fuck it is for you. For some people, it's not that. For some people, they've got to go to, like, Anthony Bourdain is an interesting cat. You had him on the show? Yeah, a while ago.

But I've talked to him a gang of times at UFCs. He's a huge UFC fan. Yeah, his wife's a fighter, right? Well, his wife trains. I don't think she's competed in jiu-jitsu tournaments, but she's a madman, madwoman, rather. And he's doing it now as well. He's doing jiu-jitsu now. But the point being that he's a guy that doesn't feel like if he's home for a week or two,

he's like, I got to get the fuck out of here. He just constantly wants to go to Libya or Africa or China. He just wants to experience it at all. His work is going to places and experiencing these completely different worlds. That's where it's at for him. Right. So he's got a totally unique way of being ambitious. Yeah.

Very different than like a talk show host would show up in the same writer's room and drink the coffee and bang up the jokes. And he's just as ambitious, but his ambition is to go to Moscow and try their food and talk to their people. Yeah. And he also, I don't know him at all. I think he's fantastic I read kitchen confidential years ago when it first came out and I thought wow this guy's insane and then obviously blew up on TV He also has a through line of an addict in his work. He was an ex addict He holds his hands up and says that I think when you meet a lot of ex addicts or even addicts they have

that thing that they're doing which completely takes hold of their life which is stopping them from doing the drug that they're addicted to and they can't if they chill and relax then that that demon's going to come in and hang out with them so i think borden's like well if i spend 10 days at home maybe that monster's going to come out, so he has to keep moving. I don't know I'm well enough to know if that's true or not, but I know enough addicts that say, I have to be on the new thing. I have to be moving to the new place. Your character was an addict. Right.

Did you do a lot of research about that? They didn't ask me to, but I've had my've had my own, you know, fun, positive, great journey with drugs in my life. It's like that great Bill Hicks joke where he's like, I had a great time on drugs. Not to, you know, tell people to do drugs. I think it's a very, very personal thing. I was lucky enough to come from a family background that was very consistent and there you know my parents have been married for 42 years i always came back to a household where dinner was on the table regardless if i ate it or not um you know a foundation of of something that that i think made me feel secure uh got interested was always interested in music got interested

in the beatles when i was about 12 13. started reading up about them and read the rubber soul and sergeant peppers and the white album were very much influenced by drugs and thought oh that's interesting because i feel artistic and i'd like to see if I can make that artistic flower bloom a little bit and at that point me and three other Beatles fans at my school side started to seek out marijuana which we ended up getting hold of and did that a typical thing when your kids were you know you all smoke a joint in two and a half minutes and everyone feels lightheaded and one of them pukes and then you get nervous and paranoid and you run off and you think you're never going to do it again and uh and then you do it again and then you do it again and then at one point you're

like oh it hit you know and um i so i did that i mean fuck i remember i was i'm a very dedicated worker i you know obviously i never do drugs when i'm working but in my downtime at my weekends i might do that and i flew my brother out to new zealand to come check us all out making lord the rings at the time i was heavily into marijuana probably the most i was into it in my life and i would roll like 20 joints and put them in a cigarette box i never smoked cigarettes put them in a cigarette box that someone had given to me and i would roll like 20 joints and put them in a cigarette box. I never smoked cigarettes. Put them in a cigarette box that someone had given to me and I would just walk around the house just smoking joints

like I'm smoking cigarettes. And my brother, who's only 16 months older than me, sat me down at one point in that trip and he was like, I've never seen anyone smoke as much weed as you and how are you functioning and maybe you should consider not doing it. And I was a highly functioning stoner. I was like, I'm fine, come on, let's go. And that's gone in different journeys in my life so I think when I met JJ I had spent

hello I had spent um 18 months in LA having not worked exposing myself to LA for the first time and not necessarily on the biggest party scene but certainly on a bit of a party scene hanging out with the wrong people the wrong women and I think JJ's perceptive enough to probably see when I came into a meeting like ah he's a bit rough around the edges he didn't shave he knows what it means to have a hangover he's you know he knows what it means when we say certain buzzwords so he could have danced in these arenas you know so yeah it's a cautionary tale I think drugs and I'm really careful about it like I you know I'm aware that there are young people who might follow me on

Twitter or might follow me on Instagram that would think, oh well if he's done it it's okay and I don't subscribe to that at all. I think you have to have your own journey and you have to have your own experiences but the abuse of drugs has never been something that's been in my life. The usage of drugs has been something that I've done. More often than not if I'm partaking in some sort of drug I have a notebook and a pen close enough by me so that if I feel like I'm inventing the future, I can write it down, and in the morning when I wake up,

I can be like, oh, there's a positive element of that thing that I took. I like searching for stuff, and I think searching for stuff in that world can be quite significant. Well, that's a very honest interpretation or a very honest expression of what drugs or some drugs can be. I think one of the problems with someone seeing you on social media or some young kid saying well if he takes them I could take them they're okay and the only reason why they would have that thought at all is because they've been lied to so much

there's so much bullshit on TV. There's so much Nancy Grace and nonsense and, you know, marijuana is more dangerous today than at any time in the past. Still marijuana. At the end of the day, it's just pot. Nobody's dying. Nothing happens. You get paranoid. You wake up.

You're fine. No hangover. Your bones don't ache. You're really okay. No one died under an overdose of marijuana in the history of the planet. Yeah. You saying that like you used to abuse it. It's like even your abuse.

Look, you're functioning. You're running around. You're not throwing up in your own bed. No. You know. No. And I've had several moments in my life where I've said, okay, go flush that. Like you did it last night. You don't need to do it tonight. You don't need to do it tomorrow night. Really? Yeah. It's Thursday night. You're

moving into Friday night. You're not doing anything tonight. You know, that little monster is going to be in that drawer. Flush it. But it's only been pot. No, no, it's been everything. Oh, okay. Okay. No, it's been everything. I was like, that's a weird one to taunt you. No. Because it doesn't usually taunt people. I mean, I find the friends that I have that I believe, you know, I would classify as addicted to marijuana. They do it because, like, that's what they think they do. They get up and they do it because it's almost like it certainly can be an escape.

But it's also a comfort in a lot of ways. It's like that thing that you do, like like coffee i have friends that can't get coffee you know they're like fuck i get up in the morning i need that cup of coffee like it's like a ritualistic comforting sort of a thing that they do i mean another way to describe it would be a crutch right and that is a negative connotation you don't necessarily want something in your life that is a crutch whether that is marijuana or cocaine or having to call your mom every day or needing to have the new Levi's, whatever that is. If it's a crutch, it's not good. The best, if we're just talking about weed,

the best times for me on weed have been ingesting it. I don't tend to smoke it anymore. I put it in brownies. Ingesting it in a way that makes the next experience that I'm going to have much more colorful. Surfing on weed is a beautiful experience. You're in that flow. You're in that rhythm, you know. Watching a movie that you really like, listening to a new album.

I mean, dude, like, I still am in love with the band Sigur Rós. You know Sigur Rós? No. Icelandic band. They're kind of referred to as the Icelandic Radiohead. S-I-G-U-R-R-O-S, separate word. Yeah, Sigur Rós. Wait, S-I-G-U-R and then a separate word, R-O-S.

So it's Sigur Rós. U-R, separate word, R-O-S. Their first album has an alien fetus on the front cover. Oh, standard shit. Yeah. I'm an atheist, and I've always, you know, explored and struggled with the idea of God concepts.

But I've always thought if there is a heaven, they're playing cigaros. It is the most truly, like, captivating, beautiful. There you go. There's the album you want, Joe. Wow. Okay. So cool. I'll listen to it on the way home. Oh, so radical. I just love that I could do that. captivating beautiful there you go there's the album you want Joe wow okay so cool

I'll listen to it on the way home oh so radical I just love that I could do that I could just order that shit up on my phone and listen to it

on the way home I don't even have to do it now and download it I could sit in my car look at it on iTunes plug it into the dash and then it'll start playing

yeah that's very cool the society that we live in for that so beautiful but I have an issue with the cloud. I don't like this cloud thing. There's a lot of weirdness. There's definitely a lot of weirdness in the whole idea of the cloud.

You know, that fappening that happened, and all these poor folks that had their porn up there got exposed. I think that's a tiny tremor that will lead to the ultimate earthquake that evades or erases privacy, rather. Yeah, it killed the cloud in a lot of different ways, that fappening thing. But also, like— Not for the dudes who jerked off like wild monkeys. True, true.

It was awesome. Yeah, that's true. As I look over at Jamie, Jamie's got a fat hard drive filled with fappening content. Jamie's got a fat hard drive filled with fappening content. But, like, if I really like a film and I watch it, if it's streaming, if I'm watching it on Netflix, if I really like that film, guaranteed I'm going to buy it. I'm going to go buy it on DVD because I want the actual article.

I want it in my house, and the same with music. If I like an album, I'm going to go buy that CD. And I don't want that medium to die, you know? I want it. I don't think it's going to die. I was at the bookstore the other day with my mother-in-law, and she was talking about Zeppelin, Houses of the Holy was there. And they're selling these new vinyl versions of Houses of the Holy, and Barnes & Noble, and Thousand Oaks.

They have all these fucking albums. And it's wild. These are 1960s, 1970s albums. And people are buying records and turntables. And they're getting into the actual physical medium again. Opening it up. And it's cool. Yeah, I mean, I think the vinyl culture is really fantastic.

And that is great that the vinyl thing kind of came back around again. I do think that those select artists that make their that the vinyl thing kind of came back around again. I do think that those select artists that make their way onto vinyl, your Jimi Hendrix's, your Elvis's, your Led Zeppelin's, your Beatles, they'll always be around. But the smaller ones, they're going to be like, well, he's not big enough to go on vinyl,

so let's just put him on digital. Someone's going to want him, we'll put him on digital and that's it. It makes me sad that there are albums that I own that if I break that CD, it's going to be very difficult for me to get it unless I pay $69.99 on eBay and then I get a copy that's been previously used. Yeah, some comic.

Bill Burr released a Carnegie Hall special that he did on album as a vinyl thing. I think that's kind of cool. So when I was a kid, that was a big thing, was listening to Cheech and Chong and Bill Cosby, unfortunately. Rest in peace. Still funny. I say rest in peace because the real Bill Cosby's dead. Sure.

Still funny, though. Still funny. Oh, yeah. He was very funny. I mean, that to me is one of the most fascinating, I say, you could say scandals, tragedies, horrific crimes, whatever it is, whatever you want to call it. But that that guy turned out to be a rapist and not just a just a rapist, but a guy who drug people and fuck them while they're unconscious. Like that guy was that.

Right. That still bends my brain, man. It's it's a profound fall from grace. It's not just a fall from grace. It's just it's horrific. It. It's just, it's horrific. It's, it's, it's, it's, it like twists the world. The world's not the same world anymore. Bill Cosby's a rapist.

Right. Right. Right. That's not, the world's not the same anymore. Bill Cosby was the fucking, he was the Huxtable dad. He was, he was this guy that was telling everybody to not swear. Right. Right.

He was a jello pudding guy. He was the family guy. He's the guy that you want to pick you up and sit you on your knee and give you a life lesson. Now you don't want him to sit you on his knee. Yeah. Or if you do, you fucking don't drink anything he hands you. When I was a kid, we used to listen to that album where he would talk about Noah and the Ark. Like, you know, Noah having that conversation with God where God will say Noah it's God right you know like it was a great pit man it

was a great bit with Noah not believing that God really wanted him to go out and build this ark right it's just that was that was how we listened to comedy we would all sit around and we'd put the headphones on and we would all sit around and listen to this you know whether it's Cheech and Chong or we got a hold of some old George Carlin back then Yeah, oh my god, so dangerous so edgy so brave that guy and wasn't in the beginning You know and then it was an interesting lesson if you go see George Carlin's the early early early stuff It was like straight-up tonight, TV friendly comedy. Yeah. And somewhere along the line he just got kind of twisted.

Well, I never knew him, never met him. I get the feeling that he got angry about something and stopped giving a shit and that's where

his real voice came from. He was just like, fuck this world, man. I'm not going to get famous. I'm not going to have my own late night talk show. Let's do it. I don't know if that's

what his goal was or who knows. Whatever it was was like bill hicks was a little bit like that right i mean he was great his material was fantastic but there was a point where he was like fuck this like i see the fucking rip in the universe i see it and now i'm gonna point out to all you guys he didn't have a chance unfortunately you knew him yeah he died so young i met him a couple like hi like but like, hung out and talked to him. Same with Carlin. I met him, like, hi, at the store, passing by.

He was very friendly. Hello, hello, hello. So epic. Bill Hicks, so epic. I got to see Hicks live when I was an open mic-er, which was great. Great, great chance to see, like, one of the all-time greats in the beginning, a beginning of my career. And I got to see him bomb. Oh, wow. I got to see him bomb. Oh, wow.

I got to see him bomb and not give a fuck. It was me and Greg Fitzsimmons and a few other comics in the back of the room. There was maybe 250, 300 people in the room when he started. And by the time he was done, there was 50. Why? And we were all howling. Was he just screaming at the moon?

He was bombing, you know? He wasn't going. But the comics were laughing hard. We were laughing't going, but the comics were laughing hard. We were laughing hard, and a few people were laughing hard. And then there's a few people in the audience that was trying to figure out what everybody was laughing at that stuck around to try to see if, like, am I missing out on something cool here? Yes, you are. Yeah, he went on after a guy who was, like, really hacky.

The guy who went on before him was, like, he was doing impressions of cartoon characters if they smoke marijuana You know it was a look real standard like I mean like straight across the board like cop donut jokes I've never flown on an airplane yeah, and they the audience was you know fairly Demoited right and they were enjoying this really stupid comedy and then Hicks came out and just did all this really radical Crazy shit that just they just weren't hearing it. They just got up. Sometimes it's difficult to be in the presence of genius, right? I mean, in terms of his stand-up, I think he was genius.

There's an absolutely phenomenal Rolling Stone interview with John Lennon, with the guy who invented Rolling Stone, Jan Wenner. It's like, well, the edited version is about 40 minutes. I've got about three hours of it, and Lennon gets angry about the fact that he's a genius and he's having to perform like a clown in front of these retards that don't get it and he resents it he's like i resent the fact that they're not receiving it

and they're also telling me that my art is x y and z you don't get to tell me what my art is i'm the artist right you just sit there and fucking listen to it. Or not. Right. I appreciate that you're never going to get it. I think the Hicks thing, what was going on was that he hadn't found those people yet.

This was all pre-internet. So no one knew what he was doing. So they were going to go see a guy who was a funny comedian. And they had seen him on the Rodney Dangerfield

comic special on HBO and he only did like seven minutes on that or whatever the hell it was, whatever they would do. It was a very small, short, funny set, but it was funny, a bunch of jokes. And so people went to see him a lot based on that, and they went to see him. They're like, what the fuck is all this? He was an angry dude.

He hadn't really found that audience yet, and then he died, unfortunately. Huge in England. Biggest stand-up Huge in England. Yes. Biggest stand-up comedian in England for probably four years running. He won the Perrier Award, which is at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. And he was huge.

He was, by the time he died, he was the Jim Morrison of stand-up comedy for us. Well, he did Relentless. He filmed it live in England, you know, and a very risky thing to do. It wasn't his best special. He was very tight. And one of the reasons is because it was all one take.

It was one show, one take. And, you know, it's an HBO special. So it's, but again, he was a guy that if he found his audience, if like they knew where to go, you know, like today, if he was alive today, my God, he would have just a fucking monster following. He'd be the king. Yeah. He'd be the king of the lightning. Or one of the kings, you know like today if he was alive today my god he would have just a fucking monster following he'd be the king yeah or one of the kings you know i mean it's like it's just uh finding then we'd find out that he's drugging jerks yeah yeah true no probably not but i mean i love what lucy k is doing right now i mean he, he's an exceptional writer. He's very artistic. He's very on the edge, you know.

I mean, he comes up with the joke and then he retires it and that's it. You know, I mean, he's coming up with new stuff. I think he's fantastic. And the fact that he edits and writes and directs and produces and stars in his show, brilliant. He's obviously a phenomenal artist. and producing stars in his show. Brilliant. He's obviously a phenomenal artist.

I'm okay with darkness, and I know what the darkness is for me. There are moments where I'm watching a show where I'm like, oh, it's too dark. Oh, his TV show? Yeah. It's too dark. Yeah, the TV show. I'm not a big fan of depressing shit.

I don't want to watch that kind. He's getting frustrated. He's fixing his kid's doll. You know, it's like, and I was like, and you know, the overlying themes of like, you're, this is never going to get any better. Yeah. You're fucked. You're never going to find someone who loves you again. I don't buy into that. You're a bad father. It's dark. It's heavy. Yeah. But, but he minds that, you know, and comes up with great, hilarious shit from that. It's just, it's one of those things. Like everybody's got their own little fucking thing. Have you ever seen Joey Diaz?

No, but I heard him on your show. Fuck. Yeah, he's funny as hell. You gotta see that guy live. What's his vibe, stand-up wise? He's a monster. He's the funniest guy that's ever lived. I heard you say that on the show.

Never seen anybody funnier. I've never seen anybody who kills so hard. So what's his, I mean, is he- He's just an animal. He's a funniest guy that's ever lived. I heard you say that on the show. I've never seen anybody funnier. I've never seen anybody who kills so hard. So what's his... He's just an animal. He's a 350 pound... Is he a joke animal? Is he a story animal? Yeah, he's got great jokes, great stories.

He's just a wild fucker who's been through everything. He's been to jail for armed kidnapping, was a cocaine addict for most of his life. He's just a fucking bonafide gangster. Do you think that's where he comes from? That he doesn't give a fuck? 100%. Doesn't give any fucks. He has zero fucks in his tank.

That's cool. I mean, for real. There's a lot of people who tell you they don't give a fuck. Yeah, yeah. But they do. He really doesn't give a fuck. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean?

He gives a fuck about his friends and his family and what he's doing. But he's free. You know? Because he's got his own podcast. He sells out everywhere he goes doing stand-up. He doesn't give a fuck. He doesn't want to do anything other than that. Good for him. You know? And that's got his own podcast. He sells out everywhere he goes doing stand-up. He doesn't give a fuck. He doesn't want to do anything other than that. Good for him.

You know, and that's just what he does. But before he goes, before he leaves this earth, you got to see him. Yeah, for sure. He plays L.A. often? All the time, yeah. I'll let you know. I'll find out when he's going to be around. Cool.

You got to come see him. I love stand-up. I mean, you know, I just love that medium. I think it's really it's super brave and i think a lot of people don't necessarily know the mechanics of how a comedian found themselves being on stage with a microphone and if anyone did know that people would shut the fuck up and laugh or just politely leave because like the Disrespect shown by hecklers to stand-up comedians where you're like Do you have any idea how ballsy is to get up on stage and show your ass like that all the time?

But you know what that is man. That's just it's the same thing It's like people that are haters on Twitter or Facebook. It's just too easy to do so it's too easy to speak up It's too easy to tit. It's too easy to to just have an opinion that's not nuanced and not objective. It's too easy. You're shit. Yeah, exactly. It's so easy to do that. It's so easy to be that dummy.

I mean, there was that guy the other day at the comedy store. Were you there? Those fucking guys were drunk in the back of the parking lot and gave everybody a hard time. There's just so many of them, and they're just dim-witted, dumb people that they shouldn't have that ability to speak to you, but they do. So there they are. They're not smart. They're not sensitive. They're not thinking.

But they're like, fuck you, fuck you. How do you deal with hecklers? I mean, you're a little imposing, so I would imagine people heckle you a little less, right? No, you get heckled. You get heckled all the time. Everybody gets heckled. People get drunk. They're not thinking straight.

They're not thinking like, maybe this guy could kill me. Maybe I should shut the fuck up. They don't think like that. Do you call them out? Do you have fun with them? Depends. It's like there's no, like some heckling is funny. You know?

You've got to respect it. Like there was, like sometime, one time I was on stage in New York and I said, do you know who the most famous woman in the world is? It was a bit about Kim Kardashian meeting the aliens. Like if aliens came down and they met Kim Kardashian and they had to like, they had to explain like Kim Kardashian's existence and her fame. Like, why is this girl famous? If anybody had to explain it, how the aliens would feel.

And I said, think about who is the most famous woman in the world? And some guy goes, your mom. And I just started laughing because it was in that moment. It was a ridiculous, smart ass, funny thing to say. And it wasn't a guy who was heckling the whole show. It was just like he said that one thing. Just found a joke. And then I started laughing and everybody else was laughing.

I'm like, we'll just let that slide. That was very funny. Sometimes it's funny. It's like, you know, I don't encourage it. You shouldn't do it. But occasionally it works. Right, right. And that's not a mean-spirited thing.

No. It's like sometimes people, they just want to be a part of it. They get a little drunk. They want to say something. It's all different. And then sometimes you just get morons. Right, right. Sometimes you can just get people that just really they don't they don't deserve to be there

They just they can't handle the experience. I've seen that as an audience member I've seen that where people are yelling out and you just want to grab them and drag them out of there like that guy on stage You just you should not be talking that you're fucking it up for the other 399 people in this fucking room right you're so Egocentric that you're concentrating on yourself and your own, what you like and don't like. They had a couple too many drinks at the restaurant. They got talked into coming to the comedy club. They don't know what it is.

And they get there and they're like, shit, dark room and I'm supposed to shut up? I was in the middle of talking at dinner. I'm going to keep talking. There's that. There's alcohol, which really fucks with judgment. And there's also, a lot of people have this really bizarre entitled thing where they're entitled to their opinions. And they feel like this is something that they're allowed to, you know, they're allowed to voice their disproval about and you should stop. I had a woman yell out next subject once to me.

Wow. Which is hilarious. Like, no, I'm holding the microphone. Well, there was this bit I was doing for a while about there was a thing called the Second Coming Project. This bit I was doing for a while about, there was a thing called the Second Coming Project. It was before genetics. When they first started mapping out the human genome, there was just people that wanted to get DNA from the Shroud of Turin, and they wanted to try to clone Jesus.

And they thought that if they cloned Jesus, they'd bring him back, and that would be how Jesus would return. And so my take on it was like, what if they brought Jesus back and he was retarded? Like, what if, because cloning doesn't work. Like, you have to do it a lot of times in order to find an effective clone. So the first one that you do, like, what if it comes out wacky? Like, what if he has Down syndrome?

Do you kill him? Like, do you start? And she's just like, next subject, next. And she was sitting in the front row looking at like, if that's it like you're just gonna say that and that Just ends no now you're the subject Right, you know and of magical fictional Jewish zombie can't come back retarded. Is that what you're saying? Right right fuck off. She's in the God squad She can't handle it lost people in the God squad can't handle that stuff

It might not even be the God Squad. It might just be in her very narrow view of the world, like down syndrome is an unacceptable subject, or religious, anything religious. Like, I've heard people say, well, hey, man, as long as you don't talk about politics or religion, like, that's ridiculous. Those are two things you

should absolutely fucking talk about every chance you get, because one of the reasons why both of those dumb, retarded fucking things are still around in the same state they've always been around is because dummies like you don't talk about it because you've locked it in this ideology box and tucked it away somewhere where you just talk about the lakers and the fucking lawn and how long you think this drought's gonna last right you don't want to talk about the fact that you're getting fucked and then you're being surrounded by children who believe in magic Yeah surface stuff. I mean people are people are a little scared about that

I mean, I feel like in comedy nothing's off the table, right? Nothing's off the table. It's all it might not be funny Right, it might not be funny But even like Patrice O'Neill the late great Patrice O'Neill had a really good point once Where he's like if someone goes on stage and offends you they say something offend you or if someone goes on stage and and makes you laugh both of those things come from the same place like they're both trying to make you laugh but it doesn't always work you know like the ideas that eventually become great bits there's been nights I had I had some bits that i they eventually became like

closing bits like bits that i had to close on because i couldn't follow them they were just too good for me they were like all my other bits weren't as strong as them but at one point in time they would bomb and like when i was first developing them i was like how the fuck am i gonna get this to work it's just too weird it's too fucked up it's too controversial it's too does it's not connecting with people whatever the reason was and almost every bit sort of starts out in an embryonic stage of what it eventually becomes when it's a finished product and if that isn't if it's a bit that's controversial and it starts out in this embryonic stage like next subject stop don't you're missing the whole entire point

of stand-up and you can't be here because you're a part as an audience member every audience member is not just there you're not just seeing a show when you see stand-up you're in part of the creative process because the bits come alive in front of the crowd they evolve and change in front of the crowd and that's how they become something that eventually gets on television and becomes a special. Until that, until it happens, you're in as much as the comic is. Sure.

You're in on it. We need you. Right. Like, if it wasn't for the audience, no jokes would ever come out right. They just, you wouldn't really exactly know the best way to do any of them. You have to do them in front of people.

Yeah. How do you feel about Seinfeld? How do you feel about Jerryerry seinfeld's stand-up he's a very funny stand-up i mean he's a very good comic he's not he's not my kind of stand-up you know i prefer stand-ups who don't have any restrictions i i don't like stand-ups that you know only you they don't use any swear words they don't talk about sex they don't use any swear words. They don't talk about sex. They don't talk about anything profound. Everything is like real simple, straight across, like losing socks in the dryer type shit. I think he's a brilliant. It's just not, you know, I would, I prefer like a Bill Burr or a Louis CK or Joey Diaz.

Like that's my, cause I, I go see Joey Diaz. I'd see, there's nothing that's off the table. I'm seeing chaos. And at the end of the show, you're fucking holding your body laughing. And you're like, I can't believe. He does this bit about eating a girl's pussy from behind and sticking your nose in her ass like a pigeon. You got to do the pigeon. And he does this thing.

I'm not doing it any justice. I'm totally fucking up You're like That's not even funny This is the funniest guy ever You gotta see it Yeah yeah But

And in his body And with his voice It's funny Everything And it has to do with You know what was set up Before that And where it got to

He has this bit about The fucking Liberace HBO movie Yeah Loved it The one with Matt Damon And Kirk Douglas Or Michael Douglas.

Yeah. It's one of the funniest bits I've ever seen in my life to a point where I'm holding my body to keep everything from breaking, from laughing too hard. Yeah. I like, so I mean, I like all strains of standup. The thing, I totally hear you in terms of the limitations that Seinfeld gives himself that no profanity doesn't necessarily tell you a huge amount about himself.

It's all kind of abstract stuff. I love words. I'm a huge fan of words. I love etymology. I like studying words, the origin of words, all that kind of stuff. He is a fantastic wordsmith. And also, he's very, very specific.

Like, he will omit the word the if he doesn't need it because he examines the entire sentence I love the dedication to that I also love the freeform element of you know what Hicks was doing just anger coming at you or Eddie Izzard is very kind of like just school of thought coming all over the place the thing that I love about Seinfeld might be the limitations that he gives himself but but also that idea of the choices that I'm making, I've made specifically for this joke

to work as correctly as I think. And he's a professor of comedy, right? I mean, he knows comedy, he knows the history of comedy, he knows what's funny, he knows what's not funny. And there is something very safe about him. And I could bring my parents to see him. And he is old school. But for me, the fact that Seinfeld lives in this world of Joey Diaz's and Bill Burr's and Louis C.K.'s makes him almost like the last of a dying breed.

And I do have a lot of respect for that. Well, Gaffigan is very clean, although he's not the kind of wordsmith that the Seinfeld is yeah yeah Brian Regan is also very clean and very very funny you know but I hear you I mean he's a master at economy of words that's for sure he there's there's definitely a rhythm to learning like when you know when to leave words in when to add more words when to have a pause when to have no pause and they're just there's an art to that sort of creation of the bits he's definitely a master at that i love sarah silverman as well she she knows words too sure it's very specific words and you know she can be a little a little frisky and a little naughty

but obviously that's very disarming when you're kind of an attractive lady to get up and do that stuff. I think she's brilliant. And unfortunately, it is a very male, as a lot of societies, a very male-dominated job in the sense that I feel like if Sarah was a guy,

there's a chance she could be a little bigger than what she is now. Some would argue the opposite. Some would argue that female comics are judged on a curve and that the best comics, if you look at the best female comics that are alive today and compare them just bit for bit for the best male comics, you wouldn't really have them in the same category.

Yeah. You think she can throw down with Louis C.K.? I feel like Sarah could. Sarah's brilliant. I mean, it's weird like i don't like seeing you know i even though i said joey diaz is the best in the world because i think he just makes me laugh the hardest because that's like my style of comedy i love that crazy chaotic style but i don't take joey out of the equation i don't think there's a best but i've seen sarah sarah was uh at the store two weeks ago and she was fucking fantastic

just smashing just fantastic but I've seen I've seen Bird do that if you do you know Duncan Trussell Duncan Trussell I've seen Duncan Trussell just fucking Doug stand up destroy it's all about you know if they're in their groove if they're

you know and they're always recycling material so you catch them two years from now It's gonna be a totally different set a totally different point of view totally different place in their life totally different perspective And I think you know as far as personal taste it kind of ebbs and flows depending on where that person is at Yeah, any point in their life Yeah, I saw Doug stand up once at the other comedy store, and I was fucking bent over double laughing so hard at him and then There's a guy I've only seen once. I don't even know if he's on the circuit anymore.

He's called Dove Davidoff. Yeah, Dove Davidoff is around still. That guy killed me one night. And he was just cool as fuck. Fucked up leather jacket, shaved his head, looked kind of like a little bit of a G. And his material was just excellent. So like you said, it's on any given night.

I think also coming from England and having, excuse me, having that backdrop of Monty Python and Derek and Clive and stuff, the playfulness of words is something that I appreciate. Like, do you know Monty Python came out with a vinyl record that has a double groove in it? It's for the Stoners. So you put on, let's say, Side B,

but it hits on the second groove. So you hear the exact same record, but then the last sketch is different. Whoa. So then you're like, fuck, I love that sketch. Not heard that before. I must've been too stoned or too fucked up. You put it on again, but it doesn't hit the second groove.

It hits the first groove. So you get to the end of the record, the sketch is gone. You're like, wait a minute. How much have I smoked? Then you put it on again, and it's back. And Monty Python put that in for the 1960s audience that are listening. Like, that shit, I love. Wow. Love that stuff.

Yeah, Monty Python, they were definitely groundbreaking. Insane. Yeah. Insane. They did some pretty incredible shit. Yeah. And a lot of it still holds up, you know? Totally. groundbreaking insane yeah, they did some pretty pretty incredible shit yeah, and It's still a lot of it still holds up. You know totally I mean You know everyone talks about the parrot sketch parrot sketch is fine, but for me like the argument sketch is one of my favorites There's one called travel agent, which is insane. There's you know the there's the fish dance. You know the fish dance no two people

I think it's definitely Michael Palin Could be Graham Chapman, stood on the end of a pretty high canal. One guy has two little fish, like kind of big sardines, they're about that big. And he skips over to Michael Palin, slaps him in the face a couple of times, skips back, skips over to Michael Palin, slaps him in the face a couple of times with these fish, skips back. And then the other guy, and then he's finished and he stands still the other guy

pulls out a huge trout and just takes him out and throws him in the canal it's like completely silenced done to music i've seen that hilarious i've seen that they're so anarchic and stupid you know how long have you been living in america i moved to l. in 2003, so a while. First moved to the back of my manager's garden. She had like a granny flat, not with her anymore. So there was no toilet in there. There was no TV. No toilet? No toilet. Where'd you go to the toilet? So what she would do, so she worked out of her house, which was also her office. She would leave the back door open, but she would lock the bathroom from the inside. So at nighttime, I could go open the back door, go use the bathroom, but I couldn't enter the house because it had been locked from the inside. I had no phone and no car.

So the first 18 months in L.A. just a joke you know what i mean just trapped yeah and she would come and knock on my door and go hey you have an audition at 11 15. it'd be like 10. and i go okay someone gave me a ride she go no i go okay we're gonna have to cancel that audition because i don't have a car and i can't get to santa monica and that went on for a while and then eventually eventually she was like maybe buy a car and get a phone I was like yeah okay I'll do that and then it started to kind of shift around a little bit so when you came over you were just known as an actor yeah I had done a couple of tv shows in England a little bit of theater in England started to do some English films, and was doing a TV show in France for England

when I got the role on Lord of the Rings, when I did Lord of the Rings. And as we're coming towards the end of principal photography, which is almost two years, the on-set publicist, there's a lady called Claire Raskind, I think she's married now, so she has a different name. She said to me, what are you gonna do after this? What are you gonna do when we wrap in December?

I was like, I don't know, go back to Manchester, wait for it to come out a year later. And she said, if I was you, I'd go to LA, get a jump on this, like go take some meetings, get a manager, get an agent. I was like, okay, cool, good advice. Went back to Manchester for a little bit. Manchester's an amazing city.

Manchester's, you know, if L.A. is London, Manchester is New York. It's industrial, it's a bit rough. Or been, been a bunch of times. Yeah, it's a cool city. I like it there. Big football town. Fun place to do stand-up.

Yeah, they're raucous and they drink and they like to fight. A lot of fights. I saw a lot of fights there. You've got to have your shit together, you know. So went back to Manchester, was bored. I mean, Manchester has a lot of great elements to it. There's not a huge amount of work for an actor there. You can do some soap operas like Coronation Street or something shit.

What's Coronation Street? Coronation Street is the longest running soap opera in England. I think it's been running for 40 years. Whoa. Yeah. Is there any original cast members that are still on the show? There's a guy called Bill Roach who was in the first ever episode, and he's been in it for ages. It's called Ken Barlow in the show.

And it's a very boring, very pedestrian slice of northern life. And the way that you the way that they combat that in England is to have a show called EastEnders which is about London life and EastEnders is like drugs and crack and fine and markets and you know everyone gets their hands dirty and snatch yeah like snatch surrealized snatch and then Coronation Street is about, you know, have you seen me budgie? You've lost me budgie.

What's a budgie? Like a budgery guy, like a canary. Or, you know, the cat's gone up the tree and can't get the cat down. And then they call the fire brigade and the fire brigade turn up. And one of the people who's in the fire brigade happens to be the ex-lover of the person

who's got the cat and they get together and they go have a pint together. And it's very... Just like a low hum. It's very northern, but it's a little, I think, derogatory towards London people because it paints them to be two-dimensional. You know, they all wear flat caps and,

oh, I love football, me, and a bit simple and, you know, I don't really know what I'm talking about. Ooh, that newspaper, ooh, a bit scary. All that news, you know. So I was always a little offended by Coronation Street. But that was the option when you're in Manchester, if you're an actor, be in Coronation Street. It wasn't really my vibe. So I came to LA and was, still am,

really good friends with Elijah Wood. So hung out with Elijah for probably a month or so, just hanging out, go to Disneyland, go to Magic Mountain, do another thing. Men's Chinese Theater, huge deal for me, huge. Like when i was growing up the whole put your hands in the clark gable hen thing or yeah see how small betty grable's feet were that's a huge deal for me that's old school hollywood so i did all that

and then moved to my manager's place uh and you know just kind of got up for a year and then got my together and started going to the gym and started feeling a little bit better about stuff and had a couple of auditions that i got close on and then ended up getting an audition for lost and then you know kind of that's all she wrote yeah i think you kind of have to the thing about the the enormity of rings was like it was such a big job to do and coming down the other side of it you have to have a little bit of time to kind of take a breath and i think that was different for a lot of other people you know vigo went off and rode horses for a year and you know orlando started working very quickly and

billy got he went out and rolled road hoists like no acting just rode horses i think i think for the like the first year after lord of the rings he was very much into just being on his own riding horses. He's like one of those Daniel Day-Lewis characters, isn't he? Oh, yeah, he was so good in the fucking that the the apocalypse movie. What is that movie road the road? I couldn't even watch it Oh, I got to the point where he's teaching his son how to shoot himself in the mouth I was like that we're good. Yeah, I take it. Have you seen good in promises where he plays the guy with? Fantastic has the night fight in the steam room. He's ballsy.

He's a very ballsy actor. He's a great guy. Did you guys live in New Zealand when you were doing that? Yeah, two years. For two years? Yeah, well, like just under two years. What is that like? New Zealand, I was dumb enough to assume that New Zealand would have the weather that Australia has

because it's close to it on the map, but it's actually not close to it geographically. It's a long way away and certainly much more southern geographically than Australia. So it kind of has an English weather. Sunny days, but generally, you know, showers and wind. They call it windy Wellington because, you know, every year some old woman will get blown down on the street and, you know, it'll be a huge issue.

It's a very safe country in terms of going out and doing your thing. They have a great respect for art. You know, everyone's inked, everyone's covered in ink. I've never seen so many tattoos on young people in my life, which they call mokus over there, more of a tribal thing. But certainly it's a rite of passage when you reach 18 or 20 or 21, you'll get a tattoo. They love art.

Everyone's a painter, everyone's a sculptor, big surfing community. Girls are cute. They like to drink like English people which didn't necessarily do me any favours The countryside is so beautiful That's why they filmed it there right? Yeah, well Peter Jackson's also a Kiwi. So he's from there

He's from there so he wants to keep all of his movies on the island of New Zealand, on the islands of New Zealand because it brings a lot of industry in there I don't think he would have done it if he knew it was outside of his wheel on the island of New Zealand, on the islands of New Zealand, because it brings a lot of industry in there. I don't think he would have done it if he knew it was outside of his wheelhouse, but you can, there's nowhere else to make The Lord of the Rings.

God, the fucking scenery is so spectacular. The Shire exists. You can go to the Shire. Green, rolling hills, sheep everywhere, cows, beautiful, you know. Yeah, it's a strange place, New Zealand, because it's covered with all these animals, too. It's like so many wild animals that were brought in there

Like apparently there was no mammals there like in the 1600s or whatever the fuck it was that people started arriving Yeah, and they have a huge issue with that They have a huge issue with you know animals being brought into the very strict in customs also, you know millions of years ago You had birds flying over New Zealand going. Well, that place looks rad. Like, there's trees everywhere and there's no humans. I'm going to land, which they did. And then over the course of a few more million years, they then lost the ability to fly because they didn't need it because they're natural predators. So you have all these flightless birds walking around doing their thing.

Then they accidentally bring in things like possums and rats and stuff and cats. And these animals can't believe their luck. They're like, there's all these flightless birds. They can't even climb a tree. What are these birds? Kakapos, keas, believe their luck. They're like, there's all these flightless birds, they can't even climb a tree. What are these birds? Kakapos, kias, kiwis, they're all flightless. They all, I mean, the kakapo is a parrot, it's one of the largest parrots in the world.

The male will build a little depression in a U-shaped valley, so he'll build, he'll have an amplifier, which will be a U-shaped valley. In that U-shaped valley, he'll build a depression and he'll sit in that depression and make a deep, guttural, bass-like noise for his female to hear him. And the female will walk over,

but it takes place over the course of a few days. And any animal can hear that, so the rats and the cats and the possums would just follow the sound, and the male won't move. It'll just sit there. And they just kill him? They just kill him and eat him. So they're now being protected in certain parts of New Zealand. Oh my God. would just follow the sound and the male won't move. It'll just sit there. And they just kill them? They just kill them and eat them.

So they're now being protected in certain parts of New Zealand. Because these poor little animals have been fucked over by other ones. Well, Australia's had similar issues and one of the things that Australia's had an issue with was the proliferation of rabbits. Rabbits had gotten to Australia and they just bred like a motherfucker and spread across the entire country and along the way they had to figure out how to mitigate the issue rabbits had gotten to Australia and they just bred like a motherfucker and spread across the entire country. And along the way, they had to figure out how to mitigate the issue of these rabbits and the overpopulation. So they brought in foxes and then the foxes got out of control.

And then they brought in feral cats. So feral cats and foxes are like one of the biggest issues in all of Australia. They just have an overwhelming amount of them. Right. And they still haven't put a dent in the rabbit population. No. I mean, anytime human beings try and get involved with the nature of things, they make a huge mess out of it. I mean, there's a classic story in Hawaii where I can't remember what the animal was.

I used to know. But they brought in an animal to bring down the populations of another animal But that animal is diurnal the other animals nocturnal so they never fucking meet each other. They just smell each other They're like I know he's around here somewhere. He's in his burrow, you know, so that's hilarious. It's scary. I mean, you know, I I Think humans. Well, I don't think humans are easily my least favorite animal on the planet I don't have a huge amount of hope for them as a species. I'm pretty ashamed to represent.

Really? Are you kidding me? We're done, dude. But you're nice. I'm nice. We're humans. When we're talking about the individual, that's fine. But potential.

I mean, as a species, we are a mess and we're breeding out of control, and for some reason we place a huge amount of importance on human life because our brains are developed to the point where we think that we're special. But if you were to take humans off this planet and have a look at it in 200 years, it would be a vibrantly green, blue planet living in balance with itself. Right, but you wouldn't want to live there. Well, yeah. You wouldn't be able to talk to anybody.

There'd be no restaurants. No movies would ever get made. You would have never worked. I would have never worked. There'd be no computers. No planes. Couldn't get anywhere. Garden.

I mean, I want to live... Garden. You'd get eaten. You'd get eaten within an hour. True. They'd find you and they'd fucking cut you down. But you still live in... But you live in balance with that world. You you know if you would take worms or ants or

spiders or beetles off the planet we would be dead in 100 years you know i'm lucky enough to do this show and and every so often we find ourself in the real wilderness where you've taken a car to a river and a river to a boat and then walked to someone else and then taken another boat for three hours downriver and you're heading to this forest, jungle-like location and I'll see humans on the river's edge fishing or playing. Kids, little six-, seven-, eight-year-old kids.

And I think, those fuckers know so much that we'll never know. They know when the rains come in. They know when the predator's nearby. They have incredible night vision. They have hearing that we'll never know. They know when the rains come in. They know when the predator's nearby. They have incredible night vision. They have hearing that we can only imagine. They have the ability to climb a tree like we can't or heal themselves with a fruit or with a plant. And I admire that much more than whoever the,

whatever the fuck Kanye does or anyone. Not just Kanye, I'm not picking on Kanye, but like LeBron's incredible. He's an incredible athlete. I have a lot of respect for him, and Steph Curry is an amazing basketball player. They can't contend with the ability that these children have, you know, these, like, indigo children.

Right, but much like your agent told you back in the day, they live different lives. You can't compare LeBron to them, and if you put Kobe Bryant on that island, make it some snot, if you put Kobe Bryant on that island, make it some snot if you put Kobe Bryant on that island he would probably starve to death but if you put them on the court with them they wouldn't score a single point well yes it's like we're all on these different paths yes horses

for courses but my my retort to that would be you know the the correct way to live on this planet would be the way that they're doing it not the way Kobe's doing it who knows how Kobe lives his life he is an extraordinary athlete but in terms of excess and I'm part of this in would be the way that they're doing it and not the way Kobe's doing it. Who knows how Kobe lives his life? He is an extraordinary athlete, but in terms of excess, and I'm part of this, in terms of the excess of, let's say, Los Angeles, the waste, the portion size, the pollution, the traffic, we're not getting it right. We've got it wrong.

We don't seem inclined necessarily to fix it in the Western world because we're like, well, yeah, but we can all eat. We live in warm houses. We get direct TV. Like I'm just chilling. Like until it really hits the fan and the tsunami comes in, we're good. The other people, those Africans, they've kind of fucked it up. And the people in Southeast Asia, they've fucked it up. South America's a mess. But in LA, you're like sitting pretty. We did it. We succeeded. We've not succeeded. We're not living in balance with our planet.

We are killing our planet. It is on its way. And it might not happen in our lifetime. And I know certain people have said this for generations. You have all these scientists saying, it might not happen in my lifetime, but it will certainly happen in the next. And I'm part of that person,

those people representing that comment as well. But I do believe that we're at that tipping point of like, what are we doing? Why are we here? Like, we're not here to make cash we can't be because i mean it's it's about moving from being a human species that made some mistakes and realized the limitations of our planet to living as a human species that has the potential to go forward into our future and at the moment there is no future for human beings. It's a ticking clock. We need to take that clock out of the scenario to be a successful species because ants did

it, bees did it, worms did it. Ants, which are my favorite animal, by the way, live in extremely condensed societies. There's no murder. There's no rape. They look after their kids. They make their forest healthier. They leave no their kids. They make their forest healthier. They leave no carbon footprint. They make the planet better by existing. They can't talk.

They don't make movies. Their music is bullshit. They may make music. Have a conversation with them. You want to beat your head up against a rock. If you wanted to fuck one, there'd be something wrong with you. People are way better than ants. I think that what we're doing is definitely tragic. If you look at the consequences that human society has on the environment itself. But if you look at the potential that human minds

and human creativity and ingenuity have, and you look at what we've been able to accomplish with raw materials and what we've been able to build in this incredible world, just the ability to do this kind of a show where you're broadcasting something. Right now it's flying through the air into people's phones. There's people in their car that are listening to this in real time. I just think that what we need to do is put some of that ingenuity on figuring out how to be more renewable and figure out how to way to be more sustainable. But I don't think that's outside of the realm of possibility by any stretch of the imagination. I just think it's hard because people live in the moment and they don't feel the consequences of their actions until they're too late. And I think that's an issue that people have to recognize the consequences globally of

the human race and what this thirst for innovation and expansion and overpopulation, what is the impact on it? But there's been a lot of talk and a lot of thought and a lot of planning and preparing for an eventual world where we don't have waste. I think even the concept of waste is just about not thinking things all the way through. not thinking things all the way through. And that a lot of what is waste is really just an alternate source of energy that needs to figure out how to be used. Or we need to figure out how to use it. I'm a huge fan of people.

They're my favorite animal, unlike you. No way. Least favorite animal on the planet. Well, you're allowed to have your opinion and I have mine. I'm on team people. You're totally entitled to that opinion. People are all my favorite people. Yes.

You know, there are some very, very smart minds out there, and obviously the most impressive thing... Would you rather hang out with them or a panda? I would rather hang out with a panda. Are you kidding me? Really? The hottest chick in the world who's super smart, would you rather hang out with her or a squirrel?

I mean, I've hung out with hot chicks before. I feel like I've got... You've got it down, but you don't know the squirrel. You really need to get to know that squirrel. Yeah, I've got... Feed him a nut and figure out what is't know the squirrel. You really need to get to know that squirrel. Feed him a nut and figure out what is it. Do you shit? Do you eat nuts?

What else? Do you ponder the universe? Do you realize that we're alone in infinity? There is a mystery about those animals that I don't feel the mystery as much with human beings. Really? Yeah, and I don't. And, you know, there have been some incredibly profound leaps in technology with some very, very smart people on this planet, and we are doing the best that we can do.

I would argue that all of those technological breakthroughs and all of those concepts that we have and all of those ways that we can talk about being impressive as a species, because we can't avoid it, comes from a very human angle. We're looking at it in a human conundrum, because we're in our brain. We're saying, well, that's fine. You know, humans can be dicks, but think about what we've done. We went to the fucking moon and, you know, we know what the dark side of Mars looks like and we put robots on Mars and we can create music that was made in an orchestra based on scratches in a record groove like that. That shit is insane. It doesn't matter. None

of that stuff matters. It's not why we're here, and it doesn't it doesn't do anything for the larger concept of This universe and this planet it does something for us as a species selfishly. We're amazing look what we did We create this thing and you know we went to the moon and don't care that you went to the moon Well the universe doesn't care if ants exist. I mean, the universe doesn't have any feeling for this planet. This planet will disappear. This star will eventually run out of gas and burn out and supernova. And all the planets in orbit will be unsustainable for any kind of life that we understand.

And the universe won't give a fuck. You know why? Because it's infinite. And somewhere out there, there's a billion fucking Earths and a billion solar systems that are absolutely exactly the same as ours. Sure. And it doesn't care. So it doesn't matter whether you're an ant or a person. But to say that it doesn't matter that someone put those grooves

after spending all this time talking about how great Monty Python are. That's for me, though. But it's not just for you. It's for all the people that experience that. And what humans can do that these animals can't do is spread these experiences, this art, whether it's Louis C.K.'s stand-up or Sarah Silverman's stand-up or Monty Python's jokes or Janis Joplin's music. You can't say that that's nothing because what that has done is elevate the emotions of every single human being that's

experienced that and you could say that human beings aren't important but then in that case and nothing is important life is not important the ocean's not important not really in the greater spectrum of the universe this infinite thing that we exist in none of that is statistically important but to us for for an entity that experiences that you're way more important to me than a squirrel I'll just tell you right now way more thank you an ant if I had an enemy and if I crushed that ant if I could get a giggle out of you I'd smash that and I would cry for the cry for an ant well I wouldn't necessarily cry but if you had an ant on you and you were like I'm

gonna crush this how do you feel about it? I would go into a long dash. But you ate chicken. You were eating chicken here. Yes, I was eating chicken. I mean, it happens. It does happen. It doesn't happen.

You have to kill them. That's true. I go out of my way to try and live in balance and be nice to the universe as best as I can, because it makes me feel better. It makes me feel like my life is in more balance if I do that. I'm actually working in flow with the universe better. And I agree, I don't necessarily think that the universe has a bias one way or the other. If we were to play around with the idea of the universe sitting down with a pad and a piece of paper and they drew a line down it and they went ants on one side humans on the other side and they

work they weighed up the pros and cons ants win every time they win every time Joe what do you mean by the pros and cons to who to ants no the universe is having a conversation with Jimi Hendrix and Jimi Hendrix says okay you tell me which is the most impressive animal to you, if you were to compare humans with ants. I believe that the universe would say there's no contest. These animals live in complete balance with the planet that they're on. They do all the right things.

They take care of their kids. They don't fuck with other animals unless they need to. They eat the right amount of food. They create almost no waste. Meanwhile, you've got this bloated, over-intelligent ape that is running around going, we invented the world. We can do whatever we want with it.

We're abusive towards the planet that we live on. You don't think the universe would slap us around a little bit? I don't know. I mean, ultimately, I don't know if the universe is an entity that really contemplates these issues. But if it was,

I mean, if you really were examining the life of human beings in comparison to the life of everything else on this planet, you would have to assume, first of all, that there's just so much inspiring potential for creativity that comes out of this one weird monkey that makes mouth noises and expresses itself through facial expressions and written language. It's a very, very bizarre creature that human beings are. And I would say if I was completely objective and had no connection whatsoever to human beings,

I would say that fucking thing is way more impressive than ants. That thing is flying through the air in metal tubes on a daily basis all across the world. through the air in metal tubes on a daily basis all across the world. That thing is sending video through the sky into a fucking phone that slips into its pockets. That thing is driving on this hard surface that it's laid out all over the world. These internal combustion engines are powering these metal boxes. They pulled the metal out of the ground and forged it into the form of metal boxes. Then they've covered these wheels with rubber. And a fucking explosion, a controlled explosion inside this iron, cast iron block is forcing this car around. They stop in these places where they pull out this fuel that they've taken, fossil fuel from around the fucking world and tankers and pipelines,

and they've processed it into this gasoline that they can then pump into this car. They pay for it with a credit card. Money is numbers that are on a computer somewhere. They have paper that represents this money. No one understands. It's a fucking insanely complex world. Very, very. Insanely complex.

If you're looking at the universe in terms if the universe is looking you know at life on earth in terms of what's more impressive jesus fucking christ no there's nothing more impressive than people i disagree and also that also that fuel by the way is killing the planet and the universe potentially my my concept of the universe is the universe yeah my concept how's the gas well it's, potentially. My concept of the universe is probably... The universe? Yeah, my concept... How's the gas killing the universe? Well, it's having to cough up some of that shit that is being created on Earth, right?

Cough up? It's like, oh, don't get too close to that. You know, I mean, it's not good for us, and eventually... But I think if you look at it in perspective of, like, how long human beings have been here, yeah, we've met a mess of things, like, really quickly. But also the amount of innovation that has occurred in our lifetimes, in the industrialized

world's lifetime over the course of X amount of hundreds of years, it's fucking staggering. It's no wonder they haven't caught up to what they're doing and figured out how to mitigate all the issues that they've created by making internal combustion engines and airplanes. Which creates pollution. Well, airplanes create so much pollution, and that's the real global warming is fucking airplanes. The world actually, it changes the temperature of the Earth. When September 11th rolled around,

they stopped flying over the United States. It altered the temperature of the Earth in a significant, statistically measurable way. I mean, cows farting causes a huge amount of problem for greenhouse gases. But in my mind, as an atheist, my idea of the universe is probably a little closer to our little statue that we have here, something living in complete balance with the universe, which I think the universe would respect a little bit more in an ant than they would in a human.

But if you're talking about something impressive, which all those things are impressive, that certainly comes from a human bias. How do we equate things that impress us? Oh, the fact that we can drive cars. That is impressive for humans. Elephants' watches go by and they don't think that's impressive. A jaguar, let's say, can hunt completely silently in the dark, make not one noise,

and catch the creature that it's looking for with complete and utter economy and sit down, eat that creature and then sleep for two or three days. That for me is more impressive than Hawking's mind or than some theory that Einstein came up with. They're living in balance and flow with their universe and they're doing it in such a way that this creature right here, that is also about balance and flow goes, you're fucking radical. Well, I don't know if Buddha says you're fucking radical to a jaguar, but I think jaguars are obviously

incredibly impressive and spectacular. And I'm not arguing against jaguars, but someone with a night vision goggle can lead some food out for that stupid jaguar and shoot it in the head and turn it into a jockstrap if they wanted to. Living out flow with their planet. Well, what's in flow with this poor little antelope getting killed by this jaguar when

he jumps out and, well, so you decide. So you decide. You decide that some gal in a jaguar thong isn't hot. You know, she's sitting out there on her porch with her headphones on so she doesn't blow her ear off while she shoots that 300 wind mag at a jaguar who's going after a piece of meat. It bums me out so hard when you see these beautiful women on Twitter that are posing blow her ear off while she shoots that 300 wind mag at a jaguar who's going after a piece of meat. It bums me out so hard when you see these beautiful women on Twitter that are posing with dead lions and dead rhinos and dead elephants. It's just like, what are you doing?

This is a very weird thing. It's a very weird thing that people want to fly over and shoot like giraffes and all these different things. But then when you get into the conservation aspect of it, it gets very cloudy. It's not as simple as people are doing cruel things and killing these animals, then posing them and taking pictures. The amount of money that's generated by these people doing that is substantially more than any other conservation effort that's out there. It gets real weird. Because like this rhino thing, I had the guy on, Corey Knowlton, that killed thatino and you know I wanted to find out like what why did he do it where's his head at well you know what first of all that Rhino fed you know who knows how many villagers it mean they they had all the images of them cutting up that Rhino and feeding all its villagers that Rhino was also they

needed to kill that Rhino because the population is very small of the rhinos and that Rhino is killing other male rhinos. It was a non-breeding older male, and it was very aggressive. It killed females, killed males. And in order to keep the population healthy, they had to eliminate that rhino. They were trying to figure out how to do it. And this guy paying all that money to fly over there and kill that rhino is actually better, counterintuitively better, for the overall population of those rhinos.

Also, the $350,000 pays for rangers. It stops poaching. One of the interesting things they're doing now to stop poaching is they've come out with 3D printing of rhino horns. They're going to make artificial rhino horns and flood the market in Asia. Apparently, these are virtually indistinguishable from wild rhino horns. They actually share rhino DNA. They make them with keratin, and they're going to 3D print these rhino horns and just flood the market in Asia. It is brilliant, but it's crazy that they need to do this. I mean, poaching is way more of an issue for rhino death and any of these exotic animals than hunting is. Yeah.

I mean, a lot of the places that we go, they discolor the horn, which doesn't cause any grief to the rhino itself. They'll color the horn orange or red or yellow so that it loses the value for the medicinal market. Like you said, it's made of keratose, which is the same material that makes up fingernails. Fingernails and hairs. So just bite your fingernails. If you think you're going to cure cancer, bite your fingernails.

Well, you're speaking logically about things that are just totally based in superstitious. I mean, you get Viagra, you fuck. You don't have to eat a rhino horn to get your dick hard. This is nonsense. It doesn't work either. That doesn't work. I mean, it's not like you eat... I mean, it's crazy that these things are going extinct because it would be one thing if you

ate rhino horns and it really did make your dick hard as a rock and you could fuck all night for days. But it doesn doesn't it doesn't even work, but yes people are still killing them Yeah For that very reason and I've had this conversation with people a lot where I say let's say like like you were just saying Let's say for the sake of argument. It does work Mm-hmm Let's say it does work that does not give us the right to kill that animal to the point of extinction No, well, it doesn't make any sense because there's other things that it does

It's one thing that if if you if rhino horns made people super geniuses and cured cancer, then you'd be like, okay, we have to figure out a way to breed more rhinos. We don't want to make rhinos go extinct because they're essentially the fountain of wisdom. And if you kill them off, then you lose this one opportunity to figure out how this one animal developed this property that so greatly aids us. It would be pretty ironic if rhino horns made people the ultimate human being, but yet we're killing them off to try to become the ultimate human being and robbing ourselves of this one source. But again, you know, that's a very, very strong human angle. That's a very, very strong human angle. The rhino, all the animals that exist on our planet are fair game to be explored and had a look at to see how they benefit us.

But how about how they benefit the world? I mean, the majesty of an elephant's horn is based around the fact that it's attached to an elephant, not the fact that you can cut it off and put it on your mantelpiece. It loses all value then. We look at things from this human angle as opposed to this planetary universe type angle. Well, some of us do. But, I mean, again, with the rhino thing, the conservationists that are trying to protect the rhinos, they all agree that you have to kill the aggressive non-breeding older males in order to keep the population healthy.

Yes. So, like this guy going over there and killing this rhino, the whole thing's very cloudy because it's very counterintuitive. Right, right. Have you seen Louis Thoreau's documentary on African safaris? Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah, he's amazing. Because all of these animals that he,

when he went to those South African hunting camps, all those animals were on the verge of extinction just 20 years ago, and now they're flourishing. Yeah, yeah. But they're flourishing in these camps where you can hunt them right canned hunting right it's so weird it's there's a lot of places that he's not allowed to go because of that because of a few things that louie's done like he's you know he's obviously quite a controversial documentarian he shouldn't be he's he's amazing he's fantastic nothing controversial about what he does in my opinion

he's just honest and thorough and brilliant. I think what he did with that hunting camp, it really exposed how bizarre that whole world is. Isn't his show called The Bizarre World or something like that? Louis CK's Bizarre Adventures or Bizarre World or something like that? It's not Louis CK, it's Louis Thoreau. Oh, Louis Thoreau. I forget what it's called, what the name of it is.

I don't think he can go to South Africa at the moment because of upsaying some people in South Africa about something, you know. Was it because of that or a different thing? I think he's superb, Louis Theroux. Well, I know Scientology is doing a documentary on him. Oh, wow. Yeah, because he's doing a documentary on them, so they decided to do a documentary on him. I know which one I'd rather watch. Yeah.

Well, I want to watch both of them, actually. Well, yeah. I want to watch what kind of crazy shit they have to say about him, like what nutty thing have they concocted. They do free, I think it's free brunch or free lunch on a Saturday near where I live, and you see people going in there for you know, from 11 personality tests, 11.30 to 1 o'clock and people come over and be like, are you enjoying the chicken? Yeah, you want to come into this little tiny room with me and answer a few questions?

Like, fuck that, wouldn't that be crazy? I hope all the homeless people go in and just get free food off them but shit like that gives me the willies. I mean, organized religion in general gives me the willies. Well, they're one of the most bizarre ones because they were founded by the most prolific science fiction author the world has ever known. You know, the idea that, well, he lied and made up a bunch of shit except this. This is all true.

Well, there's statements where he said, my next mission was to try and come up with a religion. And that's what I set out to do. And he did it. Oh, yeah. I mean, not just statement. His ex-wife spoke in great detail about his plans in order to create some sort of religion, really profit off of it. I mean, he spent a good deal of his life living in a boat hiding from the IRS. Because before they were tax-exempt or tax-free status, before they had that status,

he owed money because they were a cult and they were taking money from their members and the whole thing's fucking madness. Yeah, it is. It's crazy. But the Louis Theroux thing, um, is, uh, it's for anybody who has like a hard line stance on this whole African hunting thing. Just take a look at that and you'll, it's probably not going to change your opinion, but it'll give you an idea of the complexities and the weirdness involved in this whole thing. These animals literally were on the verge of extinction. You've seen the documentary with the old guy at the end when Louis is badgering him. He gets pissed off.

And he goes, you don't understand. Africa is fucked. It's fucked. The only way these fucking animals are going to survive is if you've got to give them value. You've got to make them wear something. It's fucked. The only way these fucking animals are going to survive is if you've got to give them value. You've got to make them wear something. That's bizarre. Yeah, give them a monetary value to protect them, yeah.

It's very strange. Your show is Wild Things. Wild Things with Dominic Monaghan. What do you do on the show? This is a BBC show? It was at BBC America for a while. It's now a travel channel. I go around the world,

try to change people's ideas about animals that most people are scared of and try and evoke a little bit of curiosity and kill fear in whatever scares you, whether you're scared of travel or weird food you've never eaten or animals or people of different color or people of different color or people of different you know ideas about life i uh i get a lot out of travel and i love animals so what happened with me was whenever i had like two or three weeks off uh i would always take a trip on my own unless i was hanging out with my girl and the trip on my own would usually be pick an animal around the world and go and find that animal. But to make the two or three weeks spread out a little bit,

instead of going directly to the source, I would land in the capital city and spend two or three days in the capital city going to restaurants, hanging out in human communities and just asking them, like, hey, where would I go and see a whale shark? Do you guys know about a whale shark? Have you seen it around here? Where would I go? How would I take transport?

Do I take a train? All that kind of stuff. And then gradually make my way down there and for the last week try and do that thing. So my agents knew about this and they were constantly seeing photos of my adventures and stuff. And my non-acting agent kind of said to me,

you know, this is a show, Dom. Like this is a show, what this is a show what you do no one does that thing that you do like you should meet some producers so i was like all right i'll meet some producers so i sat down with different people ended up sitting down with a guy from uh canada runs a production company called cream and he said what's the show and i pitched him a trip that i took to find orangutans a trip that i took to find the whale shark a trip that I took to find orangutans, a trip that I took to find the whale shark, a trip that I took to find the king cobra. And he was like, cool, do you have eight ideas? And I was like, I have 808 ideas.

And he went, all right, come up with eight ideas and we'll come back in two weeks' time and write the show. And it came down. First episode's about ants because it's my favorite animal. And we went to Ecuador to find the army ant. My plan was to lie down in a carpet of army ants in what they call a drove of army ants and know what it feels like to have this 20 million ants walking around on top of you and will they go into your ears and

your eyes and your mouth and your nostrils and can they kill a grown human being and all that kind of stuff? They can and do. They can, but you'd have to be tethered. As an able-bodied human being, no, you just run away. Well, it depends on the type of ant, right? Not really. Bullet ants can kill you. No, they can't. They can't? You get a bunch of them? No. I'm the authority

on ants. If a bunch of them climb on top of you, you wouldn't get killed? Well, are you talking about a hundred of them? It's very difficult. Bullet ants are extremely toxic, right? Bullet ants have the highest pain threshold of any insect sting in the world. It's right at number six. Number one is called a sweat bee, which is the equivalent of tasting white wine vinegar. The bullet ant is described as

walking on hot coals with a nail in your foot. So it's extremely painful. Bullet ants live in relatively small communities for ants, maybe 20, 40 bullet ants in a huge group. If you were to piss off a community of bullet ants, the most amount that would be on you would probably be, let's say for the sake of argument, 50, which is outside the realms of possibility, but let's say 50. 50 wouldn't kill you.

50 would be a- So it's painful, but it's not like- It's debilitatingly painful you would probably Want to go to hospital to have them give you morphine so that you could get over the next three days But it's not like 50 rattlesnake bites. I'm gonna kill you So so we did the end we did the end episode in Ecuador They ended up not allowing me to lie down in a carpet of ants because they said it was too dangerous But I ended up putting my naked hand down.

It was too dangerous. How so? Well, they just said, yeah, how are we going to get them all off you? How are we going to get on with the rest of the day? You're going to have 300,000 ants on you. Like, we're never going to be able to get the stings out of you for you to be on TV.

My friend Brian Callen, he stayed in Bolivia for a while. He was going to be some sort of a bug scientist, whatever the fuck you would call that. What's the... Entomologist. Entomologist. And he was studying for it and was staying in these, they had these huts where they were elevated off the floor of the jungle and they would put turpentine on the posts of the huts to keep the ants from crawling up into your, because once they find you, once they decide that you're a target, like, you're fucked. Yeah.

Especially if you can't move. Like I said, if you had two broken legs, you're in trouble with bullet ants. The great thing about bullet ants, and you'll see this in these communities, in the local indigenous communities, when the ants move through that village, they'll just go off for a day. They'll let the ants clear out all the scorpions, all the spiders, all the centipedes, all the bullshit. Spring clean my house for me. On you go.

Wow, that's interesting. So that's the balance, yeah. It's a beautiful thing. That is pretty fascinating. So I'm kind of interested in the concept of fear, you know, just as a rule. I think that word is divisive and negative potentially and doesn't do us any favor doesn't move us forward as a as an animal and I kind of reject it as a concept I think things are dangerous but the idea of fear makes you clumsy makes

you make the wrong decisions makes you do things incorrectly so what some of the more archetypal fears on the planet are heights and snakes and spiders and planes and we try to show people those things in a slightly more positive light so you can sit comfortably at home and start to change the way your brain chemistry works with those animals i mean obviously you you know that like let's say for the sake of argument you are scared of spiders if you hear the word spider spider will take you to 10 negative things that happened in your life associated with spiders in a circle that you can't get out of and it's feeding that negativity but if you now put a positive story in there where you saw a spider

with a friend that you were in love with and then you went off and had food that you really liked you're starting to change that pathway and if you just replace the negative with the positive you'll then feel differently about spiders and that's what I'm attempting to do with the show. So your motivation is not to celebrate these animals, it's rather to mitigate fear? Well, it's a bit of both. I mean, obviously we show the animals in the light that I like to show them, which is positive, beautiful.

Fascinating. Profoundly, yeah, fascinating. What's the word I was looking for? Where they're able to... I'll find the word in a second. But I feel like certain animals are able to actually move out of a description. You can't define them. They're otherworldly. They're magical in some way.

So we do do that. But I like to show people that at first a wild animal, the first thing a wild animal is going to do is going to try and get away from you. They're not initially going to bite you. The vast majority of wild animals out there, as soon as they see a human, bounce. So then you or I have to then juggle that idea of a wild animal saying, I'm not into this, I'm going to get away. And me trying to impose on them, if you hang out for a little bit,

not gonna hurt you, not gonna do anything, just give me two minutes of your time, I can achieve what I want to achieve, you can be on your way. And you can see that palpably with a change in the animal's body language. I can see when a spider's okay with it, I can see when a scorpion's okay with it,

a snake, any animal that I'm with. I'm like, oh, it's okay now. You can come closer, you can sit down, you can chill. Because this animal gets it now. But at first, a wild animal's like, rah, rah, I'm wild, I'm gonna kill you. What are you saying? Like a wild animal gets it when they see you?

What are you saying? Yeah, they work out the, they pick up on, it's energy, right? They pick up on the change in that energy. Let's say, we just did an episode in Sri Lanka with the Indian Cobra, monocled Cobra, one of the most iconic Cobras, if not snakes in the world with those two little glasses on the back of his hood, the one that the snake charmers work with. So I pull like a six foot Indian Cobra out of a stack of wood in the back of someone's house. And the first thing

that Cobra wants to do is get away. So I'm on to it by its tail and it's trying to get away and it's trying to get away and it's trying to get away and it intellectualizes in its snaky brain oh i can't get away why can't i get away so it turns around and looks at my hand oh the reason why i can't get away is this guy's hand so now i'm going to deal with this hand so it tries to bite me tries to bite me tries to bite me can't bite me because i know how to hold on to a snake and let it bite me. If I ride out that storm, which usually takes about two to three minutes, the snake, again, in its snaky brain, thinks, this isn't working. All the normal ways that this works for me, an animal's got a hold of me, I try and bite it, let's go, I'm free. That's not working. And now I'm getting exhausted because

I'm biting and not getting anything for it. Maybe I'll just relax. As soon as that animal relaxes, I then chill. I then release a little bit of tension on its tail, move a little closer, sit down with it. Again, in its snaky brain, it's like, oh, I'm being fed something positive now. There's no tension on my tail. I can move a little freer. And there's an exchange of energy where the snake now thinks, all right, I'm not going to be aggressive because that's not working for me or this animal that's in front of me. We chill for a little bit, talk about how beautiful it is, talk about all the amazing things about it, and then I let it go.

And the snake won't remember that. The snake's not going to then see a human a few days later and go, positive experience, this is cool, because their brain doesn't work like that. It doesn't benefit a snake to have those memories to hang on to because they don't generally run into humans. But I'll remember it, and maybe the audience will remember it. Maybe they'll feel differently about that animal now. So this show really kind of came out of, it came about in sort of an organic manner.

Like this is something that you were doing anyway for no reason other than because you enjoy being around these animals and you have the freedom to travel and see things that intrigue you. Right. That's pretty fucking cool. Yeah. You know, I'm obsessed.

It could have been a show about a few different things. I'm obsessed by a bunch of different things. I love Manchester United. This could have very easily been a show about me going around the world, watching major soccer rivalries around the world, and eating street food, and meeting people, and every so often seeing animals. I could have done that.

It could have been about street food. I love street food. We could have done a whole episode about street food with a little bit of football and a little bit of animals it just so happens that you know with if you create a tv show the backdrop of animals it's an evergreen show right i mean people want to watch shows about animals in 10 years time they're still going to want to watch an episode about vietnam those animals are still going to exist and they're still going to be like, oh, I'll watch this. It's 10 years old, but he's still doing all the universal things that we're doing.

He's interested in the world. He's interested in Vietnam. He goes to see the capital city. He hangs out with animals. So it was an easier sell to build it around animals. But ultimately, I mean, you know, I'm getting paid to go on holiday, really. That sounds amazing. It's cool, man.

It's really cool. You love animals. You obviously have this deep go on holiday, really. That sounds amazing. It's cool, man. It's really cool. You love animals. You obviously have this deep affection for them, but yet you eat them. I do eat some. I've been vegetarian for the most part this year, and every so often I'll eat a piece of fish. And when I was in South Africa, I felt kind of weak with needing protein, so I ate a steak.

I ate this big hunk chicken today because I felt like I was kind of low on energy. I didn't want to come in here and be like, hey, what's happening? So I ate something to give me a little bit of fuel. But I would say, I don't know, I probably eat meat once every two or three months, something like that.

Like I'm not the biggest dude in the world. So for me to get, for me to feel full on vegetables and fruit is fine for the most part. But every so often, my system is like, I need flesh. And today I was like, I need flesh. But you like animals as much, if not more, than you like people. Undoubtedly. But imagine if you talk to someone and they say, well, I only kill people like once every couple weeks. Every couple weeks I feel like I need to murder.

No, I hear you. That's a valid point, and I am working on it. I made a New Year's resolution at the end of last year where I said to my family, like, I think I'm going to go vegetarian. And they all laughed at me because they were like, you eat meat and fish and you like duck and you eat goose and all this kind of stuff. And I was like, oh, I think I'll be okay.

And I've struggled a little bit at times this year with not eating meat because I need the energy. And the show that I do is very sapping of your energy. You're in very hot countries. We're up at sunrise. We finish at sunset chasing after animals, putting myself in harm's way with dangerous animals and just every so often i'm like i gotta i feel it i feel like i need some

well vegetarians will call bullshit on that you know they'll say like that's ridiculous you're just not doing a good job of monitoring the amount of protein that you your diet takes in quinoa hemp seeds whatever you need tofu yeah. Tofu. Yeah. I mean, I believe as animals... Tofu's tricky because it's processed. Right. You know, when you're dealing with tofu, you're dealing with very much a human-created thing. Right.

I mean, I believe as animals, we're omnivores, right? We're grazers of certain things. So I think there's times where your body might need a little bit of it, but I'm open to the idea of someone saying, I can organize you a diet that has no meat and you can maintain your weight. We were talking about this before we started the show. I usually coast around about 150. If I drop five pounds, I look like I'm suffering from some disease.

Well, you have very unique dietary requirements, it seems like, because your metabolism seems bananas. And your history of doing this from the time you were a child. You know what the warrior diet is? You ever heard of that? Yeah. It's the idea that you have one huge meal a day because that's how people ate a long time ago. They would try to find food.

They would get it. And then they would feast at night. Right. And so there's a lot of people that believe that that's a really good way to manage your weight, to not eat anything at all during the day and then you eat at night. Right. I's a lot of people that believe that that's a really good way to manage your weight, to not eat anything at all during the day. And then you eat at night. I tried it for a little while just to see, I didn't try it because I was serious about it. Just like, is that even something that makes sense? And you can get used to it. You can get used to not eating all day, but I don't think you have the same amount of energy you have. But that was the other thing they used to say, that breakfast is the most important meal.

They've totally abandoned that. What is the most important? There's no, they're just meals. You know, there's no most important meal. The idea was that if you don't have a healthy breakfast, you won't, you know, you won't feel good throughout the day. But I oftentimes don't have breakfast. I oftentimes do what I call earning my breakfast, where I don't eat until I work out. And then, you know, it's also because I like to put my body in situations where it has to work hard, where it doesn't want to. You know, like if I don't have food in my body, like you don't, you can't, it's harder to push as much energy out.

It's harder to have the amount of, but then you have to focus more and then you have to force yourself into it. So I put myself in weird situations like that just to make my body function. Right. You like that battle a little bit. I like that battle too. I think it's why every year or so I stop myself from having certain things. My New Year's resolution is usually stop that.

It's never start that. It's like you can't have added sugar. You can't have added salt. You can't have bread. You can't have alcohol. You can't have meat this year, although I've been cheating. But, I mean, you obviously don't suffer from the same thing that i suffer from my thing is putting on muscle you know like i'll go to the gym and train as hard as i can for you know the size that i'm at uh and then you know i don't get as big as I would like unless I'm pounding food.

And it's pretty stressful on my system. Yeah, it sounds you're in a very unique situation when it comes to that. But you could have eggs. And eggs, if you get them free range from healthy chickens, there's no negative impact. They make an egg every day. I have 22 chickens at home, so I eat a lot of eggs. And my chickens are like my pets, so I'm having food that's created by pets. I feed them healthy food, and the eggs are dark orange, and they're filled with choline and all sorts of healthy protein, and they're really good for you.

You can get around killing an animal to eat them. Right. You can get around killing an animal to eat them, but the thing about being a vegetarian or being a vegan is animals don't play by that rule themselves. They're constantly killing each other. Like you were talking about the jaguar killing the antelope and that that's natural. Well, the reason why human beings are here is 100% because of hunting.

If we'd never figured out hunting, if we'd never figured out killing, how to eat animals, we probably, our brain size would have never doubled over a period of 2 million years. We've never figured out agriculture. We would never figure out civilizations and we wouldn't just wouldn't be in this position to debate veganism if it wasn't for hunting in the first place. It's one of the more ironic things. I mean, we are omn, we are omnivores. We do eat meat, and we always have eaten meat. And it's a beautiful moral choice to try to leave the smallest carbon footprint, to try to leave the smallest footprint

as far as animal suffering. But the reality is the wild itself is fucking vicious and mean. And they don't give a fuck about each other. No, it is fascinating that we are so hell bent on saving animals that don't save each other. Sure. I mean, I'm lucky enough to go into the jungle a lot and a lot of people that I talk to is like, oh man, you go into the jungle and that must be incredible.

It's so blossoming with life and all these new things and eggs and creatures everywhere. And I'm like, well, there is an element of that to the jungle. But ultimately, the jungle is a place of death. It's a place of dark, swollen, water-sodden death. Well, it's a cycle, right? It's a constant, continuing, reviving cycle. It's like things are eating things which are eating things which are getting eaten by things. and it's just constant swirling and one of my favorite documentaries

is a documentary on the harpy eagle and it's these harpy eagles oh they're fantastic these fucking flying dinosaurs that are swooping sloths and monkeys off of these trees it's just an amazing amazing documentary and just the idea that the different things in different parts of the world have evolved to find their niche. They've evolved to find the way that they survive the best. And this giant, crazy, flying raptor that just swoops in. I believe it's the biggest eagle in the world. Yeah, I think the hoppy is, yeah. They swoop down and just snatch monkeys out of trees and kill them and eat them.

It's just, what a bizarre niche. Like, what a bizarre specialty. Think what those monkey communities think about that eagle. They must be getting their kids together and they're like, right, there is a monster that lives in the sky. And this thing will end you. So if you see something like a big shadow that comes towards you, that is the dragon. That is the monster. Get away from it.

We don't have that as much in our world. I mean, we watch Game of Thrones, so we think that certain dragons exist and stuff. But in other animal communities, like the insect world, insects are my favorite animal, that is fucking brutal gladiatorial daily life for these creatures. It's really fucking heavy. Yeah, the life of the

wild is very heavy it's very strange i was um moose hunting in british columbia uh this last fall and when we were up there we came across a calf that had been recently killed by wolves i took some pictures of it and put it on my instagram feed and it was uh because it was just stripped down to the bone, but it was bizarre. It was like, if you have never seen something like that before, it's like being there, like, well, this just happened.

Like this happened hours ago. Like there was blood and there was hair everywhere and most of the meat had been eaten. And we're like, this is the real world that these things live in. This is its baby. The moose that we're like this this is the real world that these things live in this is its baby the moose that we're out there hunting some of its babies got captured by a pack of wolves and they tore

it apart yeah and we're we're i mean it's it's it's contradictory that you would find something appalling and beautiful at the same time but it is. It's both of those things. For sure, for sure. Because we're so conditioned by streets and phones and electricity and houses and buildings that when you're exposed to this totally different lifestyle, this totally different environment, like the wild, the actual real wild, it's like this jolt of, oh, yeah, this jolt of, wow, there's just a totally, this is a completely different variable.

A series of variables that you're dealing with here. So simplistically beautiful. Like, I was in Kenya probably eight or nine years ago, and I saw a zebra foal, zebra foal, that was being hounded by two hyenas. The mom had gone. You saw it live? Yeah, I saw it. It was trying to navigate its way around a big tree while these hyenas were just fucking with it.

And they had broken, or it had broken, one of its back legs. Compound fracture, like this. So it was hopping around on three legs and there was two hyenas. So it would go to the left hyena, go to the right hyena. And the hyenas, which knew at some point they were going to chow down on this thing, were really just fucking with it. It would come over, they would bat it, it would fall over, it would get up again, they'd chase it, they'd hit its other leg, they'd try and bite the broken leg off. They were like fucking with it. They weren't trying to eat it for a good half an hour or so.

And I was in mixed company. I was taking a lot of pictures of this thing thinking, this is fucked up. This is how unfair the last few moments of this creature's life is going to be. The car that I was in, the people were like, okay, can we go now? Like, I don't want to see that.

And we left, and I was talking that night with the people that I was with, and they were like, oh, it's so disgusting that we see this. And I was like, this is what's real. This is nature. This is life, you know. A few weeks ago, me and my friends, in the middle of the night, went walking around Griffith Park, and we saw an owl,

and we saw some coyotes running along the track and stuff. And then we went home, and I have a few snakes at home and I started passing around snakes for people. Hey, check this one out, check this one out. I got my scorpion out, tarantula. One of my friends was like, oh, this is a normal Saturday night. We're sat here with all Dom's creatures and stuff.

And I stopped her and I was like, Fleur, this is actually normal. The shit that we were doing earlier on where we're all showing each other photos on our iPhone and watching TV and putting a DVD on and playing FIFA on our PlayStation, that's a construct that's been created to make us feel okay about life

and keep us stupid so that the bosses can do what they want. This is real. We're supposed to know the name of every snake. We're supposed to know the name of every tree in the forest. We've lost that ability, and that's what I'm trying to get back to. Is it normal? I mean, I think that PlayStations are about as normal as beehives.

It's something that people create. People create things and they create things, construction, buildings, cars, they create things all over the world. I think all behavior is natural. I really do. And I think even the most bizarre fucked up human behavior is natural. We are as- Because we're natural. Well, yeah, of course behavior is natural. We are. Because we're natural. Well, yeah.

Of course we're natural. We're part of the animal kingdom. We are, as a creature, a natural creator. The natural thing created by bees would be a wild hive and honey. The natural thing created by humans would be a child. A painting is a slightly abstract version of creation. It's still a creation, but it's much more abstract than a wild beehive and a baby. So there's nothing natural about buildings,

but yet human beings naturally construct them without any interaction with each other all over the world. Yeah, maybe like a shelter to keep the rain off you is natural, but like... That's where it starts. A trade center? And then they figure out solar power, and then they figure out electricity,

and then they figure out Wi-Fi, and then they figure out solar power. And then they figure out electricity. And then they figure out Wi-Fi. And then they figure out. It seems natural to me. It doesn't seem like it should be because it's not wild. Because independent of human beings, it doesn't exist. But independent of bees, beehives don't exist. I think as bizarre as our antics and our creations are, I think ultimately everything that happens is natural. Yes. I would agree with that.

The difference being that we can debate whether or not we should be doing it or whether or not the consequences are worth the effort, the detoxifying of the oceans, the skies, the pollution, that picture that I showed you of Mexico City, how fucked up the pollution is in Mexico. There are creatures out there that debate. Yeah. There are. We just don't, we're not tuned into that vibration.

There are creatures that, as far as we're concerned when we watch them, silently communicate with each other. But it's not silent for them. There is something, whether it's audible or something that they sense or something that they understand, that they do. We're just not in tune with that idea, you know? And these things that we create naturally, let's say for the sake of argument, a skyscraper or a jumbo jet or something like that. Yes, I agree. That is natural

because we exist and we create it. That's a natural process. But those things that we're now creating are large, expanded, huge versions of what is natural. The Trade Center isn't a natural building. A natural building might house 10 people. I don't know how many people worked in the Trade Center. Thousands, right? Two and a half thousand, 3,000 people worked in there. That to me feels slightly unnatural. A jumbo jet that can take 500 people

from one place to the other feels a little unnatural. Maybe a plane that can take eight people feels a little bit more natural to me. Do you know what I mean? I don't know. We've swollen. Everything's been good. Yeah, but that's natural. That's what people do. I mean, there's a reason why Mexico City exists at the same time that Los Angeles exists at the same time that New York City exists.

It's because if you leave people alone, you don't kill them off. You don't kill them off with disease or war. They overpopulate and they develop these nationally intrusive cities. Yes, it's natural for us. It's natural for us as a species to look around and go, yes, Delhi is completely swollen with people, but that's the natural journey that the country of India is going to go on and create this city.

I don't necessarily think, if you take out this human bias, that that is natural for our species to do that. We're not supposed to breed rampantly out of control. We're supposed to, you know, take care of the air and the planet and the food and do that in balance and naturally with our species. Well, the reason why human beings are overpopulating is because we figured out how to get the fuck away

from predators, and the reason why we wanted to fuck and make as many people as possible is because naturally we got eaten. I mean, the jaguar that kills the fuck and make as many people as possible is because naturally we got eaten. I mean, the jaguar that kills the antelope also kills people. True. That was a big part of the problem. It absolutely was. We live in a jungle in a grass hut.

It's really hard to fight those fuckers off. It absolutely was. It's the reason why we left the forest. We're not in that. We're not in that scenario anymore. So we're developing this new style of living, and we have to figure out a way to deal with the consequences of all this waste that we produce and also deal with the fact that people have this very bizarre diffusion of responsibility thing going on when there's a thousand people that are

doing something and that something is fucking everything up it feels different than if one person is doing something and something is fucking things up then you feel responsible but if you're part of a city that's polluting the world, it doesn't seem like it's your fault. It seems like somebody else out there has got to be fixing it. Yeah. And also the very, I mean, I think apathy is one of the most dangerous words on the planet.

The very apathetic idea of, well, what difference can I make? Right. It's a plastic bottle. I mean, just forget about it. You're like, well, obviously if everyone thought that way, it would be a major issue. Well, I have a lot of friends who smoke unfortunately because I know a lot of comedians cigarettes yeah and I see them

throw them on the ground all the time they throw them on the ground step on them two of my friends the other day did it I don't want to just be that guy who corrects people every time that happens so I just avoid it but fuck it's so depressing the fact that people are just so comfortable with throwing a cigarette on the ground stepping on it and then it's so depressing the fact that people are just so comfortable with throwing a cigarette on the ground

stepping on it and then it's out of their mind yeah I'm gonna step away from the mic for a second that's trash yeah it's trash like that's what I want to say when that happens yeah it is trash there's a complete disconnect and I think it comes and this is another you know poor comment on

cigarette smokers I think it comes from the fact that they smoke they smoke they smoke They get to the end of it, and they're like They're done with it, so it's not that problem anymore I said they're abusing their own body so they don't mind abusing the the environment right and also You see a lot of times people driving on roads or freeways and the idea behind that is I know this is bad for me I know it's dirty i don't want to stub it out and leave it in my car i'm just going to throw it into the planet

dudes i've seen eight different priuses throw cigarettes out the window it's one of my favorite things yeah i'm trying to keep a keep a running tab of priuses throwing cigarettes out the window don't you think it feels don't you think it looks bizarre now when people smoke cigarettes? Like I was born in 76 until the probably early 2000s. Seeing people smoking cigarettes didn't really matter to me. I'd been so exposed to it that I didn't even have a comment about it. I was just like, oh, there it is. Now when I see someone pull out a box, pull out a cigarette, put it in their mouth and light it, I watch them like, what are you doing?

What's going on? Do you not know what's happening with this thing that you're just about to inhale into this is going to slowly poison you but the thrill of it or the fun of it or the james dean thing where they just want to be cool yeah the danger of it i mean i grew up thinking about all that stuff it looks cool for you know james dean to smoke it and the beatles grew up smoking and in in the second world war they gave them out as part of your rations. So you can understand how soldiers came back being addicted to cigarettes because they're scared of death, they're around death, they're bored out of their mind. They get 10 cigarettes a week, they're all going to smoke cigarettes.

But I mean, you know, the level of education certainly in most of Western Europe and in this country is to such an extent that when I see a smoker, I'm just like, what are you doing? Yeah. Well, it's one of those weird contradictions I know I know very intelligent people smoke too which is very shocking like when you know someone and they're brilliant and then they can't stop smoking cigarettes like wow if you could figure out a way to balance

this whole thing out better you'd be a hell it's so much healthier yeah but they don't know for selfabuse, you know? The self-abuse thing is an interesting thing, but, I mean, everyone's on their own journey, so you just kind of got to let them do it. I guess. And I think everyone has a vice. But sometimes you say that to someone,

just let them know how you feel about it. It'll maybe shift their perspective, and they'll have this newfound way of, oh, yeah, Dom's right, you know? It is fucking weird. Like, I just do it. I don't think about doing it. Yeah. I was a lot more oh, yeah, Dom's right. You know, it is fucking weird. Like, I just do it. I don't think about doing it. Yeah.

I was a lot more fucking, you know, opinionated. Not that I don't have strong opinions now, but I kind of keep them a little bit more to myself. In my 20s, I thought that it was just a human thing to be able to kind of spit venom at people when you felt like doing it. And now I've grown up a little bit, I don't do it as much. But unless I was dating someone who I was in love with

and they were smoking, which I would never do, I find that really unattractive, then I feel like I'm in a position, or my family, but like a friend, I just feel like they'd be like, "'Well, fuck you, Don." Yeah, well. You drink tequila, go fuck yourself. Who are you, you're not God.

It's true, but you don't drink tequila all day, every day. And the thing about those cigarette smokers is, man, they wake up in the morning, it's a cup of coffee and a cigarette, they light that fucker, and that's how everything gets started. That eight hours of downtime with no cigarette is fucking with them when they wake up in the morning. Yeah, yeah. The whole system throughout the night going,

okay, let's get this toxin out, let's send all these messages to the brain that this is bad and we'll deal with it, and then wake up in the morning they're like oh i feel so bad i need a cigarette to make me feel good i read this book that said that the craving for a cigarette is not necessarily the craving for the cigarette it's the craving to stop the bad feeling of the cigarette by replacing it with the adrenaline that your body creates by putting the poison inside you again so you feel shitty because you smoke the cigarette and what you need to make that shitty replacing it with the adrenaline that your body creates by putting the poison inside you again. So you feel shitty because you smoke the cigarette and what you need to make that shitty feeling go away is to expose yourself to another jolt of the poison.

So your system goes, okay, let's deal with this adrenaline, throw all those painkillers in there. And then 20 minutes later you get it again. And then 20 minutes later you get it again. Where the fuck did you read this? It's a book called something like How to Quit quit smoking or five steps to quit smoking my trainer played around with smoking cigarettes raw and i was like dude you're my trainer you can't smoke cigarettes right and he called him i had him i didn't change his his language as to how he referred to them he called them smoky treats i was like you can't

call cigarettes smoking it sounds like something you give a dog yeah and you know like he's he's adding little positive affirmations. I'm just going to have a little smoky treat. I'm going to give myself a smoky treat. I was like, no, you're killing yourself. And then he read this book and it was the reason why he quit. And I was like, let me read it. I don't smoke, but I want to read it.

And that was the thing that I took home with me. It was this idea that it's not the fact that the cigarette makes you feel good or you love the feeling or it's five minutes of downtime. It's the fact that that concentrated inhalation of poison is taking away from the shitty feeling that you're getting from the long-term effects of that poison. I don't know about all that, man. I don't know exactly. The way it's been explained to me by addiction experts are that when you have an addiction,

like everyone talks about cigarettes calm them down. And the way it was explained to me, it was like cigarettes don't calm you down. What they do is they feed your addiction. So you have this addiction, you're stressed out because your body is craving this thing that it's attached to. You have some sort of at a molecular level,

you have this bizarre attachment to this substance you've been pumping into your body. So your anxiety ramps up, your body needs it. And then when you get it, ah. So you're like, cigarettes relax me. No, no, no, no, you're addicted to cigarettes, and that feeding that addiction calms the craving, calms the screaming of the addiction

for a brief amount of time, and then it asks for it again. So the idea that cigarettes calm you, no, they don't, really. You're extra amped up because of the fact that you're addicted to cigarettes I was very lucky I grew up with a mom who's a nurse so my mom my mom exposed me to two things

which stopped me from ever smoking cigarettes I mean that's not to say that when I was 17, 18 and one of my best friends walked outside to smoke a cigarette I didn't go oh let me try it and I coughed it up and was like yeah that, that's okay. You know, I've danced with that devil. But my mom did two things for me.

The first one was she told me about people in the hospitals that she was working at that had to have legs amputated, hands amputated, arms amputated due to complications with smoking cigarettes. So I was like, okay, that's fucking heavy. And then the other one was she printed out a list of, which we've all seen by now, the ingredients of a processed cigarette, which is like, you know, fucking cyanide and horse piss. Hundreds and hundreds of different things. Vampire tears.

I was like, holy shit. You know, yeah, like you said, hundreds if not thousands of things that are a direct fight against health and your system. And I was like, I don't want to do that. Did you see the Russell Crowe movie, The Insider? Yeah. The one that was all about the scientist that worked with the tobacco companies to make cigarettes more toxic or more addictive, rather. Fascinating. Fascinating.

Apparently based on reality, too. Right, right. Yeah. I watched Inside Out over the weekend. You know this new text I made? Great. I watched it with my kids. I watched so I did a review I do this thing on Twitter called at the flicks which is like if I if I watch a film that has had a effect on me I do a little like blurb about

about what I like about on a wordpress wordpress account and I thought it was a really interesting movie for a lot of different reasons. One of the major ones is that the way that it's being touted and sold in L.A. is to deal with these very cartoony-like characters that live in this girl's brain. You know, Louis Black as Anger, and he's all red, and... And then Amy Poehler as Joy, and she's sweet. And then Sadness, who's, like, overweight and has, you know, blue hair and needs her adenoids taken out.

But it's, from where I was sitting, it is a comment on the first time a human being has exposed themselves to depression and what it can do at a molecular level to that person and the journey you have to go on. So, like, the B story is all their little relationships with these emotions and stuff. But the A story was this really dark story of a girl moving from, where was she moving from? Minnesota to San Francisco. She lost her friends. She wasn't in the hockey team anymore.

She had a slightly different relationship with her parents. School wasn't going away. She ended up trying to be a runaway. And I thought it was brilliant, first and foremost, but it did not feel like a kid's movie to me. And if it was, it was a bitter pill to swallow because when I was a kid, up until the age of 15, I really had no concept of depression. I didn't know it existed. I was just a happy-go-lucky kid that was sad when I got less sweets than my brother, but happier when I did, and for the

most part, I was just coasting on this happy-go-lucky kid. Until you started dating chicks. Someone just slammed me. Is that what happened? Yeah, yeah. What do you mean you want to kiss my best mate more than me? Oh, fuck! You know?

I was like, holy shit, I didn't realize it could envelop you. That's when they bring it home. You wear it like a cloak, you know? Yeah. My whole thing with sadness was just like that. I fell down the stairs, I scraped my knee. I'm sad. Oh, I feel better. I'm going to bed, wake up in the morning. My default setting was happiness. And then with girls and stuff, it became like, oh man, I'm like,

I've been sad for a week and it was depression. And that thing in that Inside Out movie I mean I cried like a fucking baby do you remember the short film before it lava with the two volcanoes great I was in bits we really I was crying I went on a day I was on a day I was so embarrassed you're crying on a date yeah Jesus Christ she didn't she didn't really know I mean she's yeah she did know she knew you're crying I wasn't weeping how long had you been dating her? We've been dating for a few weeks. So it's pretty recent.

It's recent. She's probably ready to bail. Yeah. I would bail. She was crying, but she's a girl. That's fine. She was crying at the lava thing, too? Yeah.

You're both broken. Yeah, I know. Jesus Christ. We're broken and fucked up. What did you think? I thought it was great. Did your kids respond to the stuff in her head and did they respond to the other stuff? Oh yeah, they responded to the whole thing.

They loved it. We even went to the bookstore afterwards and we bought some books on it because they have books inside out books where they kind of like go into depth about all the different things and the impacts of emotions and how you need the sadness and how the sadness can help you change your mind and make decisions. Yes. Interesting. There was one thing which they changed at the very last,

that they put into the script, not put into the script at the last minute, but involved in the story at the last minute, that I was going to write a scathing review about that particular thing. Because you know the whole thing about core memories? Mm-hmm. All the core memories were happy. Mm-hmm. And my my thing was going to be not all your core memories are happy some of your core memories are

dark and heavy and they define who you are as a person to the positive but they did that at the end because sadness took hold of those core memories and and they kind of found the balance of like some are good some are bad one of the only things that i wasn't crazy about and i thought it was potentially a little darkness a little dark was that when the emotions were navigating their way back to the kind of brain area they walked through the subconscious and the subconscious was scary and dark and mysterious and black and potentially things would jump out at you and my subconscious isn't all like that some of my subconscious are tigers drinking cups of tea with saucers and asking me how I am. And I'm in different galaxies, you know, spinning around having fun.

So I do have dark elements to my subconscious. But I thought it was a little dangerous to tell little kids anything that lives in the catacombs of your mind is potentially dangerous. I was like, well, some of that could be a poem that's amazing or a song that you wrote or a painting, which is beautiful. Like that was my only issue. Right. I thought the 3D abstract thing was fantastic. Oh, fuck.

When they sort of lost their shape and it was really bizarre. And they just ended up becoming shapes. One was like a big star rolling around. So, so well done. Such a well done movie. And really, like you said, a movie that, even though it was a child's movie, really, adults could appreciate it.

I felt like it worked. Maybe more. Yeah, I felt like it worked on a lot of adult levels that I wrote in this review. I was like, say thank you for the fact that your kids under the age of 10 might not necessarily pick up on some of the heavier themes of this movie you will at some point reach a point in your life where sadness will smack you in the

mouth and you have to deal with it like maybe a 10 year old isn't ready for that yet but your 12 year old might be okay with it because they're going through some changes too I thought it was brilliant I've spent a lot of time wondering what those things are there for like is there a reason why depression exists is there a reason why sadness or joy or euphoria do they serve some sort of a evolutionary i mean is is there some is there a reason why they exist that we just have to sort of manage but i mean is it really the reason why people have gotten so far because we're not just totally content with everything the way it is and There's always going to be jealousy

There's always going to be like we were talking about the actors looking at other people going Why is this because they've reached some point of success and it's never enough and there's always some new thing that eludes them some new thing That they wishes if they could have, then thing would be better. And why is thing fucked up? And I don't, I don't know what's wrong. It's almost like these are motivating energies. These are motivating elements, motivating. I mean, and the depression thing, when you get, when you first start dating, it's like,

it's, it's almost like burning your hand on a hot stove, like letting you know, like you're dealing with something really fucking powerful here. And this horrible feeling that you have right now when it's not working out, understand this and understand the consequences of getting involved in a relationship now. Because it's not so easy as just jumping in with someone. It's not so easy. And you learn so much from those fucking early relationships. I had a manipulative girlfriend in high school.

Not her fault. Bitch. She's a nice girl. Yeah, she is lovely, actually. She was a very nice girl. But she had a single parent. Her mom was quite large and didn't like men. And there was a lot of education going on that was probably not so beneficial.

And you were trying to get in her panties, so she didn't like that. Yeah. I got in there. But she got in mine, too. Good for her. She's a dirty little girl. But the point being was that that manipulation that I experienced from her very early on, it made me realize, like, oh, okay, this can happen, too.

Like, shit that doesn't happen with my friends can happen with a girl. And then all of a sudden, they'll take your— So I developed this intense zero bullshit policy so when I got older and I became a man when when a woman would try to manipulate me in any way I'd start laughing I'd go that's adorable but that's not gonna happen fortunately I have other options and so uh this is not gonna work out anymore so take care but if I hadn't gone through that I mean I have friends that are fucking perpetual victims, and they get manipulated by women over and over and over again because they're weak.

And I think there's a certain amount of women, whether they appreciate it or whether they're honest about it or not, almost can't help manipulating men who are easy to manipulate. It's like you can play them. Like fucking let me play it. Ding, ding, ding. Yeah, yeah. You just want to hit the tunes. And I think there's something natural in that. There's a natural predatory response to weakness in certain ways.

And I kind of feel like that's all, why all that shit's in place like that. It's almost like to ensure momentum, to ensure entropy, to ensure that energy keeps moving and there's no stagnant. I mean, if you stay stagnant, you will get depressed. If you don't evolve and don't succeed, you'll feel like shit. If you get dumped, you're going to feel horrible.

You better figure out how to not get dumped. Right. Or just, like you said, handle it. get dumped, you know? Right. Or just, like you said, to handle it. I mean, if a girl's grown up with a mom who she admires, who is also manipulative to her dad, who she also admires, then she may potentially fall into that pitfall trap of doing that to other guys.

I mean, you know, as a creature, as a species, biologically, like you said earlier on, we have taken ourselves out of the equation of how do we solve the conundrum of staying warm at night, being protected from predators, where we get our food from. We've solved all that as a creature. So our brain is now giving itself the opportunity to expand more than the physical. You know, most people don't necessarily go to the gym and hit the weights. A lot of people, you know, read and get an education and stuff. So from an evolutionary point of view, the thing that is expanding more than anything else is our brain. Now's positive and to our detriment i feel because we do overthink things and we do got ourselves into a situation is this right should this be happening to me i think that in this you have to look at it as the same

coin just flipped over in a different way if you have a great birthday and you get all the gifts that you want and you got the great piece of birthday cake and all your friends showed up that's beautiful and you experienced it and you loved it and you told all your friends about it and you relive it with your friends and it was one of those days that you always think about when you go to sleep at night because it will help you go to sleep you need to understand that the day when none of your friends showed up for your birthday party and you and your parents got your gift that you didn't really want it's the same thing you're just viewing it in a different way you didn't really want. It's the same thing. You're just viewing it in a different way. You're just viewing that thing as like, oh, this thing is bad. This thing is good. It's just your life. Those things just happen, you know, and you have to have

the balance of those two things. So what I tried to do when I was younger, I would suffer from it a lot. And I am prone to depression. So I try and keep myself in a positive headspace but a great way for me to attack depression when I see it coming is to say this is natural this is normal peaks and troughs are a way for you to understand the journey that you're in and you can't if you if you're getting overly high about something that's as dangerous as getting overly low about something it's the bit in the middle that is the balance that makes sense. So if you get overly high, there's a price to pay at the end of this ride. There has to be.

Yeah. If you get too drunk, you're going to get hangover. Right. Right. But that hungover is almost worth it to experience the great buzz, those great moments. It's like those great moments that you have when you're drunk, boy, you fucking pay for them for a couple of days, but they're almost worth it that is almost at the time that is the balance I've been in time I've been in situations in

my life where I've thought I've sat around on my own and thought I think the worst is gonna happen in this situation that I'm in with this girl or this business scenario or this day that i'm gonna have tomorrow i think the worst is gonna happen my ultimate nightmare that i can envisage is gonna happen and it's happened and i have to be okay with the fact that it's happened and it's never quite as crushingly bad as you make it in your mind. You know, I've been in situations with a girl where I'm like, I know we're breaking up. I just don't want her to fuck that guy.

And she fucks that guy. And I'm like, okay, it happened. And you survive it, you know? And that's one of the lessons is like you'll get through it. Well, that's a real problem for people who don't ever get through that and they don't realize that it's not gonna be the end of The world I got lucky

Not that the girl that I talked about but another girl that I did in high school was I don't like to say slut But there's no other word for okay. She just would fuck anybody she was a maniac She was just poor girl. She went to Catholic school. They made her they fucked her head up they fucked her head up they made they made her you know just the the forbidden fruit right right right well and also i think she was hormonally very advanced she uh she was very womanlike at a at a age of like 17 everybody was like jesus christ she was a mess but she fucked everybody i knew so like you know and i was in love with her at one point in time, I'm sure, whatever you would call in love with. So I got used to that at an early age,

used to the disappointment. It's brutal. Yeah, it can be. But it's fascinating to me that you say that you didn't experience any depression at all until you're 15, but then you say that depression is something that you're prone to.

Yeah. I think I am prone to it. But you never experienced it until you started dating. Didn't know what it was, didn't really know the concept of it. Like I said, sadness for me was like scraping my knee and then I got that. Right, but it was very temporary.

So it's not like you had this sort of existential angst that was dragging you down, what is the point? I think because I didn't know that it existed, when it hit me for the first time, I had absolutely no defense against it because I'd never seen it before. I suddenly walked around a corner and there's a saber-toothed tiger in front of me. And I was like, holy shit, that's terrifying. And it just enveloped me. And then my defenses had not been built through my formative child years to go through elements of sadness like I said my foundation of my family my parents were together they never fought they get on well I had a

good relationship with my brother I was I did okay at school I never had those real major challenges apart from the fact that I knew I was an actor and I was like what the fuck am I doing trying to be an actor in Manchester it's never gonna happen I'm never gonna be an actor I had that angst actor and I was like, what the fuck am I doing trying to be an actor in Manchester? It's never gonna happen. I'm never gonna be an actor. I had that angst, but it wasn't like a painful physical or mental angst. It was just something that I was dealing with. So I don't think I had the fortitude

to deal with it the first time. And I'm a huge fan of women. And I also probably punched a little bit above my weight when I was younger, because I was the smallest kid at school, but I was super mouthy and no one could ever tell me to shut up so I was always trying to go for the ultimate girl and every so often the ultimate girl would be like alright I'll entertain you for a week and I'd be like I found her and then

she'd be like fuck you I'm going for the jock like oh fuck I can't even compete with the jock you know so right I think I didn't give myself pitfalls until the point where my parents had kind of said, it's all you now, you know, 15, 16. They were like, OK, go, go find out who you're going to be. And at that point, I got a little, you know, exposed to some sadness and stuff. But I also I just think it's part of life. You know, I have this, you know, on Twitter, I'm constantly not constantly. But if anyone ever says to me, hey, you know, I've been struggling with this or, you know, this is getting me down or I had a rough day or I've had a rough week or I just, you know, I'm sick with this or whatever. and you will get to a point where you're able to look back and say,

oh, that was a dark period in my life. Otherwise, it's going to all be dark, and then you're going to die, which is a horrible way to live your life. And sometimes it does happen, but you've got to be hopeful about it. But, you know, the way that you make sense, like I said earlier on, of your life is to know, oh, here's a dark place, here's a light place, here's a dark place, here's a light place, and the sweet spot is in the middle, you know? It's, there's a great line in The Office,

the Ricky Gervais show, I think he ends the entire show by saying, life is a series of peaks and troughs and you don't know you're in a trough until you're heading up to a peak, and you don't know you're in a peak until you're coming down the hill. And that is true of life, right? Like, I don't want my life to be incredibly,

hectically happy all the time. I think I would burn out. And obviously, you don't want your life to be incredibly, darkly, heavily sad because that's going to kill you too. I want it to just be cruising. I just want to cruise with it. Balance.

Balance. It's a huge word for me. I don't usually appreciate L. for me i don't usually appreciate la i don't usually appreciate the sun because i'm used to it i don't usually appreciate civilization and traffic because i'm used to it because it's become what it is but i spent a week on prince of wales island in alaska and it rained every day constantly all day and we were camping so we're in these tents and we were soaking wet and it was so we had these helmets or rather headlights on you know those you strap on and you turn the light on so you could walk around at night and not fall and I turned it on inside my tent and it was just it was it was like

it was raining inside the tent because it was just mist it was water mist everywhere it was just it was so wet and just it's just weird you're just constantly drenched i had a great time it wasn't a terrible thing but my point is when i came back to la and it was sunny and it was just beautiful and just driving around i called my friend up i go dude i fucking feel fantastic that's good and it was nothing unusual going on it was i mean it was great stuff i was doing a podcast i was going to do stand-up at night everything was normal but the the contrast to being in that miserable fucking rain-soaked island for five days like all of a sudden now i appreciated it and i was like oh i needed that i needed that balance like sometimes you need to camp to appreciate a house sure the perspective

of the whole thing i i have my own issues with la i I mean, first of all, it's way too hot for me. It's way too hot. I mean, born in Germany, brought up in Manchester until I was 18. A hot, sunny day in either one of those countries is probably 83, 84. That's a big one. Oh, dude, that's a day when people take days off work and they go pie and get drunk in England. Do you know what I mean? That's a day off work.

That's January here. Yeah, but like, you know what I mean? That's a day off work. That's January here. Yeah, but like, you know, 91, 92 degrees. I can't handle that in L.A. Oh, that's nothing. It's 100 right now, I'm sure. At least, right? It's probably 100.

It gets to 110 on a bad day. Yeah. That's nothing compared to Vegas. Yeah, I know. Yeah, Vegas is brutal. So there's that, but also the major issue that I have in L.A., which is something that I'm constantly exploring with my friends is unfortunately the culture for the most part is a little jaded you know a lot of people come into la take as much money as they can out of it and then leave and it's been depleted

spiritually and of its soul you know of its community you go to places like barcelona or berlin or wellington or sydney where people are feeding that city i get the impression that la for and of its soul, you know, of its community. You go to places like Barcelona or Berlin or Wellington or Sydney where people are feeding that city. I get the impression that L.A., for the most part, has things being ripped out of it, taken out of it, like the foundations are being taken out of it. Isn't that a perspective issue, though, the way you're viewing it? It could very well be.

But I also think that one of the archetypal characters of L.A., the socialite walking down Sunset Boulevard or the cool guy that wears a white dress shirt and a cowboy hat on a Friday night, their reaction to seeing- Who the fuck is that archetype? I don't know. The guys that are in the Standard, you know? Dicks.

The guys in the rooftop bars and shit. The Standard. We go there after the comedy store sometimes. Oh, nice. Great diner. Damn it. Yeah, it's good food. And I like the people in the tanks and stuff.

That's bizarre. Yeah, the standard. Explain that. And you go to check in at the reservations or the desk. There's a woman that is in her underwear that is in, like, a fish tank. Yeah, an aquarium, yeah. It's essentially she's reading a book, and she's not allowed to interact with you, so she doesn't look at you.

She just lies around this aquarium and like reads her book and is in her underwear and it's so fucking L.A. Invariably aesthetically beautiful. Yes, invariably. Which is teaching the people checking into that hotel something very weird about the hotel. But anyway, so those archetypes,

their reaction to seeing something genuinely impressive, let's say for the sake of argument, it's an animal that we've never seen before crossing Sunset Boulevard. And when it gets to the junction of traffic going one way and traffic going another way, it sits in a yogic position and creates this fucking eclipse of bright, hot sunlight. and creates this fucking eclipse of bright, hot sunlight. Their reaction to that, if you're doing the cool LA thing, is to go, cool. Not to be like, holy fucking shit, my life just ended. That is the most awesome thing I've seen in my life. The required reaction in LA is to go, awesome. Those are just the people that are trying to fit in.

Honestly, I think that LA has so many people and so many people that are trying to fit in. Honestly, I think that L.A. has so many people and so many people that are trying to make it. And that's a part of the problem is that so many people are not doing what they want to do here and they're trying to. And so there's a giant population of trying, you know. But there's also a lot of great artists here. There's a lot of great painters here. There's a lot of great artists here. There's a lot of great painters here. There's a lot of great musicians here. There's a lot of great comics here. I think as far as standup comedy goes, this is the greatest spot on the planet earth.

I don't think there's anything even close. New York is probably a second place, but man, it's tough to fuck with LA. And I think like, as far as architecture and as far as art, there's a lot of contributions. Restaurants, there's a lot of great shit in LA. Street art in downtown. But there's so many people that want to be one of those musicians, that want to be one of those artists, that want to be one of those comedians, that want to be one of those actors, that want to be one of those anything that's important. And so they're trying to be that person. And you're around them all the time.

They're the ones that are going to go, cool. Yeah. They're the fakers. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of fakers. You also move in what I would assume to be, for you at least, quite a healthy community of comics that all know each other, that have known each other for 20 years, that hang out on those clubs on Sunset.

And you have a nice little percolating community of people traveling in, traveling out, everyone says hello. I don't have that, I'm a recluse, you know? So I don't hang out with actors. I don't have- Come on with us, we'll hook you up, come on buddy. I don't have any actor friends. Well that's good. I mean, I'm friends with people that I've worked with before

but in terms of hanging out, like Elijah and I are super tight. I don't necessarily hang out with him that much apart from little moments. Orlando and I are the same, Billy and I are the same. But they're kind of recluses too. And it's, you know, me going out on Sunset, and certainly, certainly me going out on Sunset

with Elijah or Orlando or Billy is a fucking- Who's Billy again? Billy Boyd, who I was in Lord of the Rings with. Okay. He played the other hobbit, the Scottish hobbit. Right, okay, yeah. That is a fucking zoo. Right, I'm sure.

I have no interest in being a hobbit. Well, that's why those guys are recluses, is because when you get to an Elijah Wood status in life, it's impossible to be normal. It's very hard to go to a restaurant without being this sideshow. Everywhere he goes, people must stare at him. So that's why a guy like that becomes a recluse. Right, you're the animal in the zoo.

And what I love about being at home, for me, is I can control the music. I don't have to listen to shit music. I don't have to pay for the alcohol, apart from the thing that I bought in the zoo. And what I love about being at home for me is I can control the music. I don't have to listen to shit music. I don't have to pay for the alcohol apart from the thing that I bought in the liquor store. I don't have to upscale the payment of the alcohol. I can watch any movie that I want. I can bring in anyone that I want.

But when I'm in a bar scenario, as I'm sure you've experienced over years, people feel like they can come over to you a little bit. And if you add alcohol into that equation, I mean, I've had people in bars where i'm with my buds someone will come over with a shot of whatever let's say a shot of jack daniels they'll come over and be like dude and they'll point at me and i'll go yeah and they'll go i got your shot i'm like oh i'm okay i'm drinking vodka or i'm drinking tequila i don't want it dude i got your shot you're gonna turn down a shot yeah yeah i don't drink jack daniels if you want to give me a shot of tequila, I'll drink that. Or maybe I'm just not gonna drink anyway.

I'm with my friends, I'm just gonna do my thing. They'll get pissy and moany because I'm not drinking their shot. First of all, I didn't ask you to come over to me. Secondly, I didn't ask you to buy me a drink. Thirdly, you're interrupting friends who all know each other and you're a complete stranger. I've had people put their hands on me in bars,

like put their arms around me and try and walk me over to their friends without asking my permission. That happens all the time. Dude, get your their hands on me in bars, like put their arms around me and try and walk me over to their friends without asking my permission. That happens all the time. Dude, get your fucking hands off me. I don't come from where you come from. Well, people that know you from television or know you from the movies,

they think they know you. And so they also think in some weird way that you owe them something. Totally. You're Charlie from Lost. No, come on. Come over to our table. I want my friends to meet you.

I loved your show. Okay, that's great. I was in Vegas table. I want my friends to meet you. I loved your show. Okay, that's great. I was in Vegas once, and I had a mouthful of food. I'm cutting the steak, and I'm putting it in my mouth, and this woman goes, I'm from Canada. Come over to our table. We have friends from Canada that want to meet you. I go, you fucking crazy bitch.

Yeah, I'm good. Do you not see me eating with 20 other people? Yeah. I'm just going to come over to your group of fucking friends. Yeah, and put on a clown hat and give you hands and then when I said I'm meeting right now I said when I'm leaving if I leave and I've run into you guys I'd be happy to say hi But right now I'm eating dinner with some friends and she looked at me like I was the biggest piece of shit

I wasn't mean to her it wasn't but it's that same thing, but I've also had great experiences in bars So I've run into great people. And I feel like when you put yourself in those positions where you could be uncomfortable, sometimes those uncomfortable positions, I'll have fantastic conversations with some random dude who makes cabinets or some shit like that. Or some guy who, you know, whatever. I'm making my own vodka. You want to try it? Oh, okay. How'd you get into that?

And then you have these conversations with people as long as the people are cool? But it's like you can't get queered off of people there. It goes again with that fucking statement I keep saying I don't know where I got that from but it's way to pop it in on my head It doesn't have anything to do with homosexuals ladies and gentlemen. Please don't hate to get angry It's it's more the exact definition of the word which means yeah, yeah, okay? Lee enough when you get People put you off like that you can get put off to people. But I don't want to be that guy.

So I don't hide. I go out. I go to bars. And I will occasionally run into drunk retards. But for the most part, I feel like if you put that out there, that you're just a normal person. You might know who I am, but I'm fucking, I swear to God I'm normal. Most of the time, you run into people who kind of accept that vibe. Same thing like you were talking about the Cobra,

kind of recognizing exactly what you are and figuring it out after a while. If you put out that vibe like you can't be fucked with or everybody's annoying to you, then people find you annoying. And I don't, you know, look, for me it's just a bar scenario. Walking around on the streets and stuff, I would say 90% of the interactions that I have, maybe even 95% of the interactions that I have are positive. In a bar, because it adds alcohol,

that is a completely different scenario. And I don't come into bars with my backup. I'm usually having fun with my friends. One of the phrases that I use a lot in terms of animals and humans is come at me correctly. You have to come at me correctly. You have to come at me correctly. If you're coming at me aggressively, dude, I bought you tequila. Let's go, dude.

I'm going to be like, dude, go away. You're going to run into that. It just happens all the time. You must get insulated because, you know, you're associated with cage fighting and you're a big dude. I don't though. Really? Sometimes the opposite.

Because of that, people want to fuck with me or people want to talk to me weird or they, you know, they want to hold on to me. They don't feel my body. They grab my neck they grab my shoulder Oh, you're a big dude. You're a big dude people get weird It's just you it's a certain amount of weird people that you're gonna run into and they probably don't even know why they're acting the Way they're acting when they do they probably feel like what the fuck is wrong with me I'm gonna be so retarded. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It was almost like an out-of-body experience. They're all floopy around you. It's fucking Charlie.

Charlie, you're right here. Drink my booze. Charlie, let me hang out with you. Let's say they met their auntie randomly or their uncle randomly on the street. They would do stuff they would never do with their uncle or auntie. I've had people scream at me in airports, Charlie!

I'm just like, fucking. You would never do that. It'd be like, Uncle Derek be like you go over and say hello to yes you know it's true but do you find that with fires obviously I mean I don't know how many fires you know obviously with oh yeah I've seen it yeah I've seen them get fucked with it's ridiculous you know just some people are just drunk and they also they don't like the idea That they feel intimidated By this guy being around them

And they want to like Put that guy in his place You know I don't And there's also people That are just completely delusional Right right Like I've run into so many guys

Who want to tell me How if they fought in the UFC They would kill everybody Right But they can't do it right now Because they're busy With some other shit Right

I could take Don Jones dude I could take I've had so many fucking people Tell me that Yeah Bro my mentality They all have the same thing like i don't quit man yeah you have to kill me yeah and you're not gonna you know like there's like there's so many dummies out there it's just there's a certain amount of people out there that have nine volt brains yeah and there's not a goddamn thing not enough books they can read not enough life experiences they just have shit genetics.

And that's real. We've been taught that everyone is born on an even playing field. It's about you to find yourself. No, there's some people that are ditch diggers. And there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it. It sucks. It sucks if you're one of them. Survival of the fittest.

Yeah, and sometimes ditch diggers have smart kids, but sometimes they don't. Yeah, yeah. My best friend, who's a smart guy, he's a firefighter in Manchester, he and I went backwards and forwards for a long time on the fact that he thought that he could take Ronda Rousey. And I was like, she will break both your arms. How big is he? Oh, he's like your size.

Does he know how to fight? He was a tough guy at school, and like those dickheads that you see in the street, he's like, yeah, but I'm going to let a girl punch me in the face and it's over i'm like no ronda rousey's not gonna punch you in the face she's gonna put you in a chokehold or she's gonna put you in a submission where she breaks both your arms and then she stands on your face she can tap grown men who are professional fighters i've seen it yeah you know if you just you just don't know there's a level of talent and ability that some people have that it's sort of it supersedes the sexual totally the the ideas that we have the

classifications of you know man can't beat up a woman or a woman can't beat up a man rather yeah they know they can there's just there's other girls Chris cyborg she'd beat the fuck out of most men you know and and do it in a very manly way yeah and and Rousey's technique is so strong. Like, you can't fuck with that. Her judo's spectacular. And her arm bars are amongst the best I've ever seen in any weight class with men, women, anybody.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she's phenomenal. One of the scariest dudes for me, I think he's been injured for a little bit, but I saw him, you commentated on this fight, and it was truly terrifying to watch, was Rory McDonald. Oh, Rory's a beast. Rory McDonald owned some English guy where he broke his cheek and broke his nose. Yeah. And I watched it.

Chain mails. Yeah. I watched it. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, and I rewound it. And the reason why he went off like that is he got caught. Rory McDonald got caught by something. And you said it. You were like, oh, he got caught there.

And just as he got caught, he tied the guy up, put him on the floor, and was like, fuck this nonsense, and destroyed his face. Yeah. And he's got like a Terminator vibe going on with him, right? He's just like cold. He knows. Yeah, he goes dead. He gets dead behind the eyes.

Isn't he one of George St. Pierre's boys? Yes. Yeah, he trains under Firas Ahabi in Montreal. He was phenomenal. Is he injured? Is that- No, he's fighting for the title. Oh, good for him.

July 11th. Good for him. In Vegas. Woo-hoo! That's the undercard of the Jose Aldo, Conor McGregor fight. He's fighting Robbie Lawler, who's the champion right now. Yeah, fuck. It's a wild fight.

Good luck to him. Yeah, it's a great fight. What about GSP? Is he done? Hopefully. You know, me, I have a different stance than the rest of the UFC, I think. They want him to come back because he's worth a lot of money. I think he's had enough. Yeah.

I think he's in his 30s, and he took a tremendous amount of punishment in his career and did the greatest thing you could ever do. He won the title, defended it a bunch of times. In my opinion, he's the greatest welterweight in history. Yeah. And it's not going to get any better from here. I agree. He's taken over 800 shots to the head in competition in the UFC I think it was like 880 something they counted

and that's just in training I mean that's just in fighting not training I mean one of the saddest things that I've ever seen in UFC is when you spoke to him I think after his fight and he was like a little rattled, and he was like, I'm going to take a break for a little bit,

and you were like, are you retiring? And he was like, I don't know, I need to step back. And I looked at this guy that was caught like a Greek god, and I thought, he's about to cry right there. Like, he's done. And the pressure on him to come back, I think he's really unfair, because, like, the most precious thing for

him to hang on to now is his mind and he looks like he was just about to lose it well you know he's had some memory issues you know we had him on the podcast he was talking about he didn't know whether or not he's been had been abducted by aliens because he would have these moments in his life where all the sudden he was at home and he didn't know how he got there and i was like whoa that's not aliens like these are these are probably issues that you're developing from trauma you guys bell wrong yeah it's just but in his mind there it's almost aliens like something's wrong like something you know that when you start talking like that yeah and you i mean it's not like he's talking like that and he has no history whatsoever of being hit, no history whatsoever of any sort of brain injury.

You know, you're talking about a guy whose fucking job is to break people's brains, you know, and he's training with other trained killers and they're hitting each other on a regular basis. You can't, there's a point of no return in fighting, and you've got to realize where that point is, and it's very hard for fighters to recognize it. They need someone to help them and talk to them about it. But George is one of the rare few that did it on his own terms while he was on top as a champion retired. I applaud him for that. I think he's amazing. Yeah, I think he's fantastic,

and he seems to have come from a foundation of support and obviously doesn't come from this country, and it feels like he has a nice kind of backbone but he's got plenty of money too he made a lot of made millions and millions of dollars you need more money than anybody so hopefully he'll be fine you know one of the things that happens in the football community in the soccer community in England is that these very talented very elite sports stars that have no idea how to do their own washing or do their own groceries or write a check, get taken care of for probably 15 years and get spat out the

other side when they're 35. Huge amount of depression in retired football players because they're on the scrap heap at 35 and they look around and go, I have this incredible talent, which is now no longer needed. And I can't function in society in the way that most people do. So they're in no man's land, you know, do you find that with fighters? Oh yeah. It's even worse because they're brain damaged. A lot of them. I mean, there's a certain amount of brain damage. Almost every fighter has by the time they reach 35. And, uh, I mean, we get, we experienced that with all sorts of athletes in America,

whether it's football players, basketball players. It's a crazy thing because most people, they have the highest earning potential when they're older. As they get older, they make more and more money, they become more and more successful, and then they retire. With athletes, you make the bulk of your money when you're young and wild and irresponsible and impulsive, and then you're supposed to try to hold on to that gold dust as you get older.

I think we're out of time. The Rock's new show on HBO is about this. Yeah. Oh, is that right? Yeah, yeah. It's a little funny, but. We just ran out of time. We just hit the three-hour mark.

Love it. Thank you, Dom. That was awesome, man. Yeah, man. I really, really appreciate it. It was a really fun conversation. You should do this more often. You're around here, right?

Yeah, man, I'm here. All right, let's do it. All right. All right, Dominic Monaghan, ladies and gentlemen. Dom's Wild Things on Twitter. Tweet him. Tell him you love him. Peace.

See you. Are we off air now? Yeah.