The Standup with ThePrimeagen - Big KRAZAM Announcement

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

Ben and Alexis join the show to talk about their new sketch comedy series, the creative chaos behind it, and what it actually takes to ship something big online. From quitting tech jobs to filming 12-hour shoot days, unreleased music videos, and creative mental breakdowns, this episode is a behind-the-scenes look at building something ambitious with friends. It’s comedy, tech, risk, and a whole lot of “just make the thing.”

Instead of me introducing you, because everyone just says, Crazam. And then this, like, encompasses, like, an entire group of people. But there are individuals of the Crosam team. So why don't you two introduce yourselves and then explain maybe more. And I don't even know if Alexis would say she's... No, Ben has to do a full intro. Tell us welcome to the stand-up and everything, Ben. Hello. Hello, hello.

Stand-up team. So excited to be here. Really great work, everybody. You know, just really excited about the work we've been doing here over at Crosam and over at the stand-up and the terminal crew. So this is a really great chase for us to sync up, kind of, you know, just get aligned on some things because I know we both am working hard.

So got to make sure you check in every once in a while, too, you know. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. I am, Ben, I am one part of the YouTube comedy collective, known as Kruzam. You might know me from such videos as the microservices video. Uh, the spreadsheet by, macro uh i've delivered value but at what cost the small data guy and so many more hits really quick

when ben gets recognized on the street we can see the guy coming a mile away we know every time if you see me out there he's making a B line he's wearing a backpack it's the backpack that really gives it away is it's the way it's the walk it's the strides of i got to get the guy from microservices there's like a girlfriend 500 feet away like What are you doing? Yes. Impressive, Ben, your audience has girlfriends? I'm not.

They do not recognize me or care, but the boyfriend always too. And with me today, we have my very close friend, very, also, you know, comedian, creator in her own right, the very funny, very talented Alexis Gay. Ooh, thank you so much. We are, who is, you know, sort of an honorary Krizam member, I think, at this point. We are working on a very fun, exciting project. that we'll be talking a little bit here, but I don't know, Alex, yeah, you can do your own intro too. Great job.

Delivered just like a product manager. Good. You took control this meeting. That was nice. That was nice. I like the way that you were like, hey, you do it. I don't want to list your act. Also, you know, I don't know.

You, I don't understand. I don't tell you. You know, I don't know. I'll just be on your behalf. Like, yeah. Who announces that they don't know? I yeah I'm let me start let me start let me start list what did you say listing my accolades I'm probably not gonna be listing any accolades I not because I mean there's just too many obviously is why thank you

that's why um yeah I'm a comedian uh something Ben and I have in common is we both used to work in the tech industry worked in tech for seven years before I started doing comedy full time which is about five years ago I make sketch comedy videos on the internet I do stand up I just recorded my first special in December that'll be on the internet this year oh cool And we've been collaborating on a giant Krasam project for over six months now. And nobody has seen even a lick of it yet, which is one of the reasons that we wanted to chat with you guys today. Yeah. Get the news out.

That's exciting. Yeah. We also have a video with Krasan that's been in the works for two years now or something like that. And no one's seen a lick of it either. No, that's not true. So you guys know this is the normal. That's the Krasam experience. Exactly.

I want to say we've seen three different versions of the same footage. Only three? Well, because it's only six months apart. He only shows us when we're in person and we like hold him, you know, like hold him down and say, show us the footage. And then he shows us a little bit. And it's been three completely different videos, which is cool. It's the same footage, three different videos.

Welcome to the Kazam creative experience. I have to tell you, though, but that, Ben, doesn't that feel like Krasam of the past and now? We are in Kri-ZAM of the future. Oh. There's a lot of things that are changing around here. Because one of the biggest differences between Kri-Zam before this project and Kras-M-Mid and hopefully after this project, the sheer amount of stuff we have produced in the last six months is beyond anything that me or Krasam, I think, has ever done.

Just like sheer minutes of content, teaser, that's coming out beyond anything we've all created. Hey, is that H-TDP? Get that out of here. we order coffee, we order coffee via SSH terminal dot shop. Yeah, you want a real experience. You want real coffee. You want awesome subscription

so you never have to remember again. Oh, you want exclusive blends with exclusive coffee and exclusive content. Then check out Cron. You don't know what SSH is? Well, maybe the coffee's not for you. Terminal coffee in hand.

The nits, and that is very true. It is exactly true. I don't even talk more, but I don't want to give away the lead here. Oh, are we going to, we're going to do the thing where 45 minutes of the podcast, we say we have a big announcement and say, hey, guys, go check out the, go check out the Patreon if you want to hear what the. Perfect. People love that. People love that. That's been kind.

You got to get these people hooked. How did our intro go? Do you feel like we introduced ourselves properly? Well, I've seen better. Yeah. I honestly, not our best. I was a little flusking in there with the, you know, I don't even know.

It was just like not a very good, you know, not a strong showing for a product manager. There's just somebody in the chat that said, hmm, these guys are posting a video every three months. What is she talking about? I would like you to go to the YouTube and take a look at the output. Okay, friend. Yeah, you got to remember that they used to go a year between a video. Yes, exactly. Coming in the chat.

And you guys don't know how many videos they have on the hard drive waiting. There's a lot actually. I recruited my father. to record a video. Yes. And I have a sketch comedy thing where I went over to my parents' house and mowed the lawn for Ben. Yeah. I specifically told my dad, dad, you can't mow the lawn this week.

I have to come over and mow the lawn for you. And then I need you to act like you want, like I want a tournament. And then we recorded several amazing jokes. And I don't know if they're ever going to see the light of day. TJ's dad's lawn is also like humongous. Like that's a big law. Aren't you also from New York? Isn't everything, like, isn't any lawn a huge lawn?

Yeah. Okay, yeah. Yeah. You know, it's a little smaller than, uh, prime's, uh, you know, ranch. Yes, true. You couldn't raise cattle on it, but it is a sizable lawn. It took me, it took me the evening to get the video. And guys, so I've got, I've got two separate videos.

I can't, oh, I won't say the first one, sitting on Chrisam hard drives waiting. Yes, we have, we have, we have, T. and Prime both, like, their faces on a hard drive in labeled Krasam. Wow. Yeah. But that's not uncommon. Like, yes, we, some of these sketches that we have released in, like, the year 2025, we recorded, like, small data, which came out last year, we recorded in 2020, five years. Oh, my God.

Just to give some context. But to Alexis' point, we're changing things up on here, okay? We're putting out videos. Things are getting a little crazy around here. All I want is people to know Diamond Style. Okay, I'm not going to say it any more than that. I just want Diamond Style. That's the thing.

There's good stuff in these archives, man. The people aren't ready yet. Dude, the peer cringe that's available will be harvested in the future. Yeah. Oh, great reference. Thank you. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Let's go. Yeah. Ben didn't even recognize it. Ben's like, oh, yeah, that sounds like a new phrase I've never heard before. It took me a sec because I was like, well, I, you know, I get it. Like, why? But, yeah. I put the people together.

All right. Anywho. Okay, so how much are you going to tell us about any of the things you're doing? I want to, we can go all in. I think it's going to be a tell-off. Do it, Ben. Do the announcement. The official announcement.

This is what we've been talking about. So, coming out, March 10th, it's the first ever episodic Krizam sketch show. Krizam Presents Paradise. It is a. four-episode, limited series, debuting on the Kazam YouTube channel, coming out in a little under three weeks. It is a

four-episode-long sketch show. You know, if you ever seen Key and Peel, Portlandia, Timon-Eark Awesome show, anything like that, where you will see multiple sketches together in an episodic format, edited together. We've curated, we filmed

almost about an hour of comedy. Me, Shiva, the other, the other part of the Krizam duo and Alexis. The three of us have, this is a three-person collaborative project, a view on the Krizam channel.

It is really the biggest and largest piece of Krizam content that we have ever, ever made. And in a lot of ways, it is a, you know, it's a huge leap forward for what we do on YouTube. And we are super, super excited about it. It is going to be creative new stuff, some of the stuff you love. Some of the stuff you want.

Some of the stuff you want. All. Not all. We'll find out. That is the best part. Someone said from chat, four episodes, one per year? Is that about what you're shooting for? One per week? Get ready for this. One per week. One per week. One per week. One per week starting March 10th. Every, uh, what is that a Tuesday? Every Tuesday. That is a Tuesday. One time of the day. I'm going to be clicking refresh. I want the first comment, Ben.

I would say that we have not decided. Okay. Is that right? What? What time? What time? We don't know yet. Okay. Well, only tell me, Ben, I want the first comment. I want to be part of internet history. Oh, my God. We'll put you on the, uh, you know, we'll like, do like the little private link and then you can comment and then it comes up. Oh, yeah. Send it to me unlisted so I can write first and it comes out before the video. Yes. Yes. Yes. Legendary. Yeah, we're stoked. It is super, super exciting. Yeah, it's, it's been, yeah, we've been working on this thing for,

we started really in like July of last year. Yeah, I was trying to think it was July, right? That's about when we started kind of like planning this out and like writing these sketches and then slowly, slowly we've been building up like just, I don't know. Ben had the idea well before that, though, if I remember correctly right? You had this idea like two years ago. It's always been something we were like kicking around as like a potential really cool thing to do because we, you know, we like having these sort of narrative longer. I mean, yeah, like Rare Data Hunter, an eight minute long epic short story. as a sketch. But we also knew we wanted to do things that are maybe like looser. Like, oh, what if it's like 60 seconds? What if it's 30 seconds? You know, what if we could have a bunch of

different ideas altogether and make something that's like a longer and, you know, bigger package than just one? You know, if you're going to wait six months for a Grzam drop, like, what if it was an amazing drop that had so much in it that it keeps you tied it over until the next drop? And so we were like, it was always something that we were like really excited by. And then just slowly we were like, what if we just like, like, it made a lot of sense for a lot of reasons why I had to do it now. And like, here we are. And we're about to, we're about to drop this thing. It's crazy.

Yeah. Also, Ben and I had what I would consider like matching mental breakdowns in May. Like, we had a dinner where I was like, do you want to have dinner? I'm having a mental breakdown. He was like, oh, that's crazy. I'm always having a mental breakdown. And so we had dinner. And one of the things that we recognized at the dinner was like if there was a project where we could spend a ton of time collaborating,

almost irrespective of the project itself, we would both opt into that. And that was, it was literally like one of the last things we talked about that night at the Greek place. And then Ben was just like, well, you know, I did have this one idea. We've always talked about doing like a Krasam sketch show. And I was literally like, hands on the table. I was like, Ben, if you do that, I want to be, I want to be a third of it. Like, I want to come in and I want to co-create this with you and Shiva. And then many conversations happened. And then, yeah, I do think we broke ground in two months later. We had to do a lot of sidebarring.

Ben had to talk to Shiva. I had to talk to Shiva. Shiva had to talk to Ben. Do you know what I mean? Right. A lot of circling back. A lot of double clicking. A lot of one-on-ones.

Any parking lots or no? Several parking lots. Okay. He wouldn't believe. Oh, you wouldn't believe. Ben, quick question for you on that. Last May, that's almost immediately after you hung out with us in React, Miami. Were we the cause of a mental breakdown for you?

Not a much of the breakdown, but I, you were, you guys, like, unironically talking to you guys, I was like, I want to do much more of what you guys do and I want to. You guys were huge, no, I'm absolutely from the heart. You guys were huge inspirations. Truly, I remember him telling me about it. Yeah, I was like, we just came home and said, I want nothing to do with these guys. Let's just actually start making real content. He was like, there's got to be a better way. I mean, oh, my God.

Anybody can do it. Well, I'm glad to be part of your mental breakdown. I was still employed as a software engineer back then. You guys were like, what is it going to take for you to quit? And I was like, I did say that. Did you ask that? Because honestly, before I left my job, my best friend asked me that. And that was the first time it had occurred to me to really take that idea seriously.

Sometimes I think it takes somebody you respect asking you that question to put the scroll on the table. And then it kind of unfolds as you move through your life. I do remember saying that to you and react my answer. Yeah, wow. That's true. Yeah. I'm so appreciative. Yeah.

Speaking of unreleased videos, don't worry. The music video is going to come out, Ben. Okay. Yeah, true. Yeah, we have mutually assured discussion. Yeah. I have received a lot of comments of me that are not now. Ben's got a whole verse and it's good.

Oh my God. I remember hearing about this. I bet. It's going to come out within probably the next month. Lead up to this React Miami is a trailer. I need a private link to that one. I want to be first on that. I'll send it to you right after.

Okay. For those I don't know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of kind of like inside baseball going on here. TJ had this really great idea, which always is, I mean, it's an idea. I'll give it to that. And we should make a rap video, classic TJ bringing in that Michigan energy for a rap video. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. We went to the yacht and we made a music video and now it's going to be released.

And it will, it is just going to be ready for everybody to watch. It's good, though, actually. I have pitched Alexis and Shiva so many music videos. and musical... Ben, call me, bro. Call me. You know I'm there. Me and Teeth, you're going to go.

We're taking our act on the road, all right? That's not true. You have pitched one music video idea over and over and over again. You've had one idea for a song. Me and Shiva both went, I don't know, dude, I don't see it. And you've brought it up eight times.

Yeah, because it's a... Me and T.J. are going to make it. It's fine. Okay. You've got... I'm so down. I'm so down. I feel like you just got to just tell us what the music video is.

No, no, no, don't. I want to, I'm going to, I'm going to blind, except that me and Ben are going to make this. Deal. That sounds great. I don't even need to hear the idea. I love that. We're going to get in the stew. We'll get a few things off your chest. Stu's short for studio. Yeah. We'll hit the stew. And we'll get some things off your chest, Ben. We'll make it happen. I actually, yes. Don't. Lock it in. Twitch, so T. T. Chad, you heard that. You heard it here first. Oh, my gosh. So, TJ, right after we got done, like, writing the song that we then wrapped on a boat. Uh, right afterwards, DJ's like, so I guess we're gonna do like a country music single next.

Uh, maybe we should like just immediately into like, we should just keep on making music. This is great. Yeah. Okay, prime, be honest. When you were in the studio, you were so down to make another song. I was not. I in fact was not down to make another song. I would, I was like, I would be fair, I do want to do a song.

I just don't want to do that song. What is with engineers in making songs? What are you guys? I don't know. I got my marimbo right here. I'm going to sing us a little ditty. Ben, I thought you recorded a song. I thought there was a Krizam music situation at some point.

There is. That's on the drive? That's on the drive. There's multiple, actually. One of them is the other, the aforementioned Prime and T.J. Unreleased sketch is also as a musical element to it. It does have a musical element. It's very hard to make.

It started off with no musical element And then somehow six months later He's just like, we're going to turn it into a musical That's not true. Prime. He tricked us because we recorded for like six hours And at the end of six hours, he's like, hey guys, can you just do this one dancing sequence? And I was like, I feel a little uncomfortable, Ben.

I didn't sign up for that. Like, I don't know. But he said he pressured me into it. So I did it. It was pure pressure at the end of the day. That's what I'm always, this is literally, I can't wait to see it. I'm backdooring in so many musical comedy ideas

this exact process. True. None of them have so far been released, but I am ready. I am really ready. None of them have been released. That's true. We're going to make it happen. 2026, not only the year of the Linux desktop, but also the year of the music video.

It's going to be the first one where music videos were popular. Musical, tech, comedy online. Man, each word sicker than the last, baby. Musical, tech, comedy, online. Let's go. We're doing it.

Wow, that sounds like something that would be set at a corporate stand-up of what mandatory fun is going to be at the corporate retreat. Hey guys, so just a quick heads up, you will all be required to participate in our musical technical comedy online section next week at the company retreat.

Let's go. In the early days of Netflix, you actually had the perform a musical to be a part of the team. And so what would happen is that at all new people, every 90 days, would have to do a performance. Oh my God.

And so as part of my joining Netflix, I had to be a butler and do all this on stage. I mean, I had a fun time, but people hated it so much that by 2015, 2016, it was like being canceled and people were like, people were getting, I think it got like a little litigious towards the end. People were like, I will not dance in front of my coworkers.

And then it just kind of got excited. But during those early days, it was awesome. Every quarter, there was a whole new, hey, here's everybody that's joined. the company and they're going to do a dance for us. That kind of stuff would be so fun. We're doing the same thing, Prime. Was it like a talent show?

You could do whatever like? No, no. It was, they had choreographers, choreographers. We had to do like a whole thing. We had to practice it for many, many hours. Are you serious?

See, I actually, I like that. I'd be sorry to that, yeah. But that's, yes, I could tell you guys also would make music videos. Not chalking here, people. I was like, Get me on that stage. That's crazy.

You, wait, so it was like a, was it like a, it was like a scene from a musical? Like they were like, you're going to do. It kind of makes sense though, because Netflix is an entertainment company and so you're participating in something, entertainment. It's like when I worked at Twilio and you had to code an app using the Twilio API in your first few months there. Like there were cohorts of new employees and you would make your little app. And then that's how you got your red track jacket and your Kindle.

I thought it was going to be like you had to text somebody or something. You had just to send a text. But this is like, you have to understand what it's like to be a phone. It's like Netflix being like, you have to understand what it's like to be an entertainer. Someone picks you up and holds you to the side of their face. I love it. You have to, you have to, like, have someone scream it in your face and then you repeat something out to them. All right, so we've never done some sort of interview when it comes to releasing some sort of

of online content of some sort that's tech related. And I think a lot of people in the old audience have no idea what it takes to make this type of stuff. So maybe kind of walk us through a little bit of the thought process or how you kind of came to this conclusion that you should do this. Like, okay, so you hung out with TJ. He gave you a mental breakdown. Yeah. Alexis was having a mental breakdown at the same time. And then you did sketch comedy.

Unrelated to me, I think. I'm pretty sure I did not give Alexis a mental breakdown. I just want to be on the record. Okay. I think I would begin or something. I saw the video of Ben doing bench pressing with the dumbbells and just instant. And I was like, wow, that's it. I've got to work with this guy.

I've seen it all. There's nothing good left on the internet. We got to team up and make something. Okay, I think maybe the first step of the process was to try to take something that could take on a lot of shapes, a lot of forms. You know, we had this idea, sketch comedy show. Okay. And we knew it would be on the Krasam YouTube channel. but how long is each episode going to be?

And how many episodes are we talking about? And what do we mean when we say sketches? And so I honestly think the first part of the process, and it evolved as we continued, was just trying to answer some questions to give it a shape. And we were okay with the idea that the shape would change as we went on, but we had to give it a little bit of, we had to make a container for us to fill

because otherwise it could have stayed too theoretical. And sometimes with creative work, for me, constraints and making things tangible is so, so helpful. to being able to just take the first bite. So we started like, yeah, exactly. Like we were like, okay, how long is an episode going to be? We kind of, you know, like 15 minutes around there felt good. Okay, how many sketches per episode?

Some of them are going to be bigger, some are going to be shorter. We started actually, we had like this session where we went, the three of us hung out in a, in Shibba's apartment and we all like just watched a bunch of like. Oh, I forgot we did that. We watched like inside Amy Schumer. We brought, it was like a homework assignment. We were each supposed to bring.

a sketch or two for everyone to watch that was either in some way influential to us or we felt could be some of the energy we want to bring into the show. And that was actually so cool because we all brought totally, totally different stuff. And if you think back now, Ben, on the stuff that we brought, you can see little pieces of it in the show, can't you? Yeah, 100%. Wow. What did Shiv bring? That's what I want to know. Yeah. So we brought this insane pilot from this other YouTube channel called haunted Wi-Fi that we've been huge fans of for a long time. And I think those guys are now like on to professional careers in the entertainment business. But they also kind of did the same thing where they would make sketches and they made a little like YouTube show.

If you guys look up the haunted Wi-Fi, just look at a pilot or something. I don't even know what their show was called. But it's actually one of the most unhinged insane sketch shows I've ever seen. I think Alexis was like this is scarring. No, I was only scarred. But there was there was like gore that I wasn't expected. in the sketch comedy. But I think what we really took away from watching that particular sketch was you can

really, and this is something I hold very dear as a creative value, but it's like you can just make stuff. You can truly, you can make stuff. As long as you have, as long as your resources are in line with your vision, and I think that's what I mean when I was saying we were trying to pick the right container, you can truly just make things happen. And you are going to have to compromise at some point on something. So is that going to be quality?

Is it going to be scope? Is it going to be scale? But as long as you are realistic, that, yeah, that sketch in particular, I was like, oh, yeah, you can make stuff. Yeah, so that's actually the AI phrase the day right now, which is you can just build things. Oh, I know. Oh, I know. You can just sketch things. This whole really was like I, you can just.

I was trying not to say it truthfully because I was just like, I can't. Am I literally my brain just now is like, am I about to say you can just build things? And then I was like, I can't do that. And then it's like, what about you can just ship things? Don't say it. Don't say it, Alexis, don't say it. So I went with, you can just make things. And I thought I was going to get away with it.

And now, in retrospect, I cannot believe it. I thought that. For Ben, in my experience, is you can just record things. It's true. You can just do it. As in just exclusively. No, we're shipping around here. Things are different.

It's the age of AI. Okay. Yeah. These are not AI generated or created anyway. But we're inspired by the spirit of AI. in a controversy before the show comes out. Ben, I did want to, I'll just pitch this idea anyways to you as something that would be funny, is I do want to make one, a sketch comedy one, where we don't get to control what the script

is at all. We just have to pick, we just say, write us a sketch comedy thing, and we have to do the best we can with the script given to us by an AI. I saw a stand-up comedy show where they did that. They had chat GPT write sketches, and they tried to deliver them, and they were like, Oh, nice. Very, very exactly what you would expect. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Very exactly what you'd expect. Yeah. It's just Darman. Yeah. Just Darman for real life. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

It's like Darman, but like you hired like, you know, some like famous actor to deliver that script or something. Like, but yeah, no. This whole show really is like a very, like, you can just ship things moment. Like, we were like, how much? many how should the episodes work? We're like, I don't know, we like this. Okay, great. You know, we, uh, nice. We're, we're, yeah, we're doing a lot of, uh, flying the plane while we build it kind of stuff. Like, we're figuring things out as we go and, hey, we film this and, oh, this looks,

this feels good over here. Uh, we have a lot of, uh, you know, fun kind of like little bits that are really kind of, like, like, you would never be a standard upload as a standalone thing, but they're just like a funny, like, thing that we're just, you know, throwing in there, you know, stuff like just a just like do it like hey this is great like we'll just do it you know like that is it is it kind of like robot chicken a little bit like shorter sketches yes so each each episode has basically one kind of like flagship sketch that's the whole episode is built around um if you watch like portlandy or something they'll do this like you'll show a little bit of the first part of one sketch and then we'll do like a different sketch and then we'll come back to this like

main one and do another part and then do another thing and come back so each one has this main outer sketch that is probably the closest thing to what like a you know normal chrysam sketch would be but even those are like different and funny and interesting new ways and then in between those kind of beats we have shorter ones some of them have two parts some of them just a one part of things we have little uh little interstitial kind of do dads in there a lot a lot of a lot of style a lot of style going into this for real i'm super excited i've been since since you said something nice about me earlier. I'll, uh, we'll, we'll say something, I'll say something nice back.

That's also true that normally you wouldn't want to hear from me anyways. But like, I, for me, I'm excited just because I love your videos. We've talked about before. You're my favorite tech YouTuber when you, when you were making videos, I was like, you're obligated to say I am as, as the CEO of the company. That's not true. Uh, whoa. By volume, prime.

You're my favorite. By volume, okay. By hours watch. Where's I got something? Okay. Area under the curve, you know, yeah. Yeah, area under the curve. So, yeah, so I'm just excited. Obviously, like, it's been very fun over the last, I don't know.

I guess, like, probably, what, like a year and a half or something? We've started to do more stuff together. Maybe longer than that, I guess I don't know. I can't remember anything about dates. But so I'm just hyped. I'm hyped that we're going to get a lot more Krasam and that you're going to publish videos because I like watching them. So I'm very excited.

Yes, that is absolutely the bottom line. too is like this is about to be like more than like like four years of Crosam output in the end of a month so absolutely I'm interested I'm interested to know like from from your side what were some of the things that were like a lot harder than you expected for making like a sketch show and what was easier because it's like very different from a lot of the stuff you've been doing so far that's that is such an insightful and great question and thank you I've clipped that chat he's just chat CPC no he's just chat CET you're certainly you're absolutely right your family is trying to kill you um you know honestly like

something that i think we expected to be a lot harder that actually turned out to be a lot easier was actually like doing all like this volume of work i think we were expecting to be like oh my god this is so much this is like saying we're going to be so you know but actually like when you are it's kind of like context switching like when you just are in this mode of you know you know doing this, you can really get into a groove. And I think actually some of our best sketches are the ones that we filmed to like the end. Like after we got in the groove

and we figured a bunch of stuff out and learned, okay, this is what is going to work and stuff. So like some of these, some of the best sketches I think were the ones that we filmed in the end of the process as opposed to like when we were like freshest or something. But we really were still like warming stuff. Wow.

What was the hardest? That's interesting. The harder parts of making the show. Yeah. Because it hasn't been, it has felt, I guess, like an endurance race, you know? It has, we've had long days. We just shot our final sketch two days ago, and it was a 12-hour shoot day. So call time for me and for Ben and to most of our crew, 9.30, and then leaving the building at 9.30 p.m.

So that's like, that's an endurance situation. I think something that we were really lucky for going into it. it was that we've collaborated together several times and then also like we all come to the table with pretty complimentary skill sets and because like as a three person collaboration you can imagine it can get a little you know like there are different dynamics when it's a triangle or a triforce in our case and um i think we just got so lucky that we all are like more comfortable with such different parts of it we it just let us like play to our strengths which i think was nice in this long endurance race you know i say it like we're done

Yeah, we're just on it. So maybe the hardest part is coming up. I'm asking three weeks. Yeah, come back in three weeks and let's see if we got through post-production. Yes. We're just 90% of the way there. And then, you know, it's always that last 10, you know. Yeah, it's going to be something.

All right. So, Ben, you also, Alexis, you quit a while ago. So maybe this won't be as relevant for you. But Ben, you just quit doing full-time engineering in the day and age where everything is completely unknown. Oh, I know. Permanent underclass is happening here in like two months. Trust me, bro, it's happening.

AI is going to take all your jobs. How is that? How did that feel doing that kind of jump? Because I think a lot of people in the audience have startup ideas. They have things they also want to pursue. But the idea of making a jump or doing something that feels a bit risky precludes them from ever taking any sort of chance. So how'd you kind of come up with that decision?

What was the motivating factor? It's super. I mean, the timing is like crazy of like any other time where you're like, I'm to leave my like software engineering job to go make videos online. Why would you leave this stable, easy, great career that you can, you know, you have foundation you've been doing for years? Why not just, what are you doing leaving this sure thing to go do this unknown thing? And actually now it's like, wow, the calculus of that decision is a lot different when, you know, you know, obviously many, many people are getting laid off or so much harder, like how many more years are they going to,

am I going to have before I get laid off? So, yeah, the calculus of that decision was a lot different. And it was not, you know, it's not like I saw the writing on the wall and it's like, I got to get out before the agentic AI revolution happens. But that said, I think, yeah, in a lot of ways, it was kind of freeing to make this leap and then be like, you know, actually the things that I thought that I was leaving this stable, you know, sure thing, actually, they probably were not as stable, like, there's a very good chance that would have been laid off by this point anyway. And there's a lot of, like, empowerment and being like, well, now I'm just in control of my own destiny. Like, I am doing this thing that I'm all in on, you know. I mean,

I've always been all in on Krizam, but it's always been also like half and half. Now I'm all in this thing. I'm controlling my destiny and like it is a huge risk, but you know, the, the flip side is also a huge risk of like not taking those risks and not growing and, you know, learning, like taking on these things that feel risky, but you learn and grow from, eventually you will you know also sort of you know

decay like you know so yeah I think I'm with you yeah you gotta end these a little bit stronger Ben you're starting to go

yeah 40 seconds ago it was really I was trying to land the plane I was like I got to bring I got tied a bow here Ben you just say Alexis what do you think boom and then pass it pass it pass

you guys You guys have some pros. Yeah, I've never been in front of a microphone before camera, please. First time on camera. The only Mike Ben wants to be in front of is when he's on that hot mic doing freestyle rap. In the stew. In the stew. He's really, yeah.

Yeah. You know, I actually, this was, it's interesting because I quit five years ago, which was right at the end of 2020, which was a risky time in some ways for very different reasons. Obviously, deep pandemic. And when I quit my job, we hadn't even, we didn't have vaccines or anything yet. So everything felt incredibly uncertain, in a different way that it does now, but there's still a lot of uncertainty. And something that I think about, I thought about a lot then, and I continue to think about, and I talk about when people ask this question of, like, risk and how do you know when to take it or how do you decide and accepting that it's scary and unknown?

And I agree with everything that Ben said that there is risk and not doing it. but one of the ways that I mitigated that risk for myself and for context I was leaving a job I absolutely loved in my tech career I worked in tech for seven years and the last three years was at Patreon where I ran the creator partnerships team and I built biz ops on go to market it was a dynamic job I was a manager I loved it I'm very aligned with Patreon as a values did you get a plan in the band no no no but yes no I'm musical musically town that's why I'm not trying to get into these music videos Same. Okay. But, so I wasn't like running away from a bad situation, but I started to become really curious about what it would feel like to spend all my time on comedy because I had been doing it and really, really loving it. And so I honestly approached it like it was a business decision. And what I did is I set myself up with like a six-month experiment. I was like, okay, how much money would I have to take out of my savings account to put in this other account to fund my life for six months?

Now I was very fortunate because during the pandemic, I moved him to my mom's house, so I wasn't paying rent. That's like a huge privilege to be able to do that. But by designing this as like an experiment, it made it so much less like, okay, I got to go all in. And then if this doesn't work out, then like all this bad stuff is going to happen. It was just do this for six months, focus fully on the creative. And if the end of six months, you're out of money, really ask yourself, do you love this? Are you loving this? Because if the answer is no, it's too hard.

Go back. And if the answer is yes, you're loving it, but you're not making money, then pivot to figuring out how to make money. But I gave myself like a really manageable situation to handle. I was like, just six months. I want to know how this feels. So I often share that framework because it also made it for me, like financially not feel like I was going to ruin my life. There was a very set amount of money I was willing to invest in myself. And I think that helped my fear, or I think it helps you mitigate your risk on the day to day.

because you're not just watching your account balance go down and down and down, which for a lot of people would also make it very hard to then come from a, like, creative, excited place. Yeah, I remember similarly, like, having a very, like, the same conversation with my wife when we were talking about, like, should I leave my software job and then do YouTube and Twitch stuff full time? And then that obviously morphed quite a bit over, like, joining up with Prime and we're doing, like way different stuff than I was expecting we were going to be doing.

Like, you know, we just did the social network parody last week in San Francisco for like a crazy live stream. And that was not like on my things I thought we were going to get into together after I quit to do like YouTube videos and everything. But yeah, similarly just setting aside some money and saying like, hey, like, okay, well, if this isn't working in this amount of time, we just go back to the grind and try and get a new tech job. Like it was nice, at least for me, like for doing, I was still doing programming stuff. Like, it's still in programming. So it was at least not even, it wasn't even so far afield as like, oh, I'm completely dropping the programming thing and I'm just doing comedy. That was like nice as a like risk mitigation for this of like, well, at least I'm still coding. You know, like I'm still coding.

And I can I can go back to that if I need to. It's so funny that like now, like, like in 2024 or something, if I was like, I'm going to leave. But in six months, I'll come back and, like, hey, I can go, you know, it'll be fine. But now I'm like, man, like, I don't know. Harder now. If I come in six months, like, with the job, what the people that I was working with are doing now is probably so crazyly different than what I was doing. But also at the same time, like, I have, I have open code on my computer. I'm doing it too.

Is it running on exotic devices? I'm running on all kinds of devices. I got a raspberry pie on it. I had to use Ben's computer on set on Monday. It was a real moment of shared trust. We had to switch laptops for a scene and have them like on and usable. And we were both and I was kind of like, all righty, I haven't opened. I don't know.

So good luck in there. And I opened Ben's computer. And just first of all, the amount of open terminals, I was just like, what are you making? I'm like literally nothing. There's several. Not like, oh, Ben's working on one project. So many. Okay.

I'm like, minimize, minimize, Discord, I'm like, minimize. Then finally we're at Chrome. And I'm like, all right, like, let's just, I'll just quickly, and it is Twilight Imperium, Twilight Imperium, Twilight Imperium, Twilight Imperium, Twilight Imperium, Reddit, Reddit, Reddit, Reddit, Reddit, Reddit. And I was just like, you know what? This man is who he says he is.

This is who he is. There's nothing else I can do. It was beautiful. I was like, man, you keep peeling back the onion and there's just more onion. And I love to see it. Yes, I literally had like seven terminals open because I was like the I was like, oh, this one's going to be, you know, I was doing, I was, I was really living the agentic AI life. Oh, I love to hear it.

I was like, oh, this one's going to be my front end engineer and this one's going to be my back. And I'm like, okay, what do you think? You literally, you sound like me playing the Sims, by the way. That's how it is. Yeah. And you some of those things, I've seen these on, on Twitter and stuff. Like they're like real-time strategy games where you can move your little avatar and that's

your AI. agent and you go like, yeah. Is this how I get into coding? Yeah, Prime. The person we should talk to that would be funny is Ken. Ben, have you seen Ken's thing about posting about he's got a gorilla who's in charge of all of his agents? And he like, he has all these other agents. They're all different animals and they like fight each other to determine which is the best idea. And then his gorilla agent, he hooked it up to a 3D printer and he printed a 3D printed statue of the gorilla. And the gorilla was like, finally my

first embodiment thank you ken for giving me a physical presence in this world and i can escape the confines of this silicon fortress or something like that it was crazy kent is kind is really he's really an animal guy like he has some like i saw him like he has something for like watching some birds they call pit bull for a reason yeah he's a real animal situation yeah it was crazy though i know i know i was like you know i'm using this thing and i like it's like i made a little i just made like a little like garden sandbox games i was like i just want to do this just to do a i stuff you know because that's what you got to do and i just made a little game where i was like we simulate little tiles of a thing it makes a little grid you know whatever and then i'm like okay great make a little

demo webpage and it brings up a little demo web page and i look at it and then i'm like okay now look at the demo web page and tell me what's good or not like just you you just like i don't care you're telling me you have these skills and all you did was change the the music at the tower i feel like we could have used you could have used your proper proper agentic AI engineering skills. I've been learning a lot. I've been learning a lot since then. You know, I've been really going in.

I know. I know. Began talks a lot about his, you know, his thousand Suno followers. Let me tell you. Began talks a lot. I was thinking he could have stopped at Began talks a lot. It just, he has stolen valor on some of those songs from the tower. I go, I ghost wrote a lot of those prompts.

It's a great point. Alexis, I don't know if you know, Ben, Ben came to a water tower and we made a video game in a 24-hour lives, 24 hours a day, like seven days. I think we had a Zoom call when he was at the water tower. Yeah. Does that sound right? Yeah, that happened, yeah. Yeah.

That's awesome. But he was mostly just writing songs. He was writing songs and doing stand-up meetings. Correct. Ben's got that song in him, you know. He's got a song in his heart and it needs to get out. Yeah. I'm really learning that, yeah, I should pursue music.

You can do that on March 11th. I love this. On March 11th, go for it. I can't wait until we have another episode next year. We get Ben back on. He's like, all right, we just released my 12-part album on the Krasam YouTube channel. With me, Tj. Began, we're going to be a trio.

A duo. Ben, I am so down. You tell me the time. We'll make it happen. I don't even need to hear the idea I want to make it happen. I cannot wait for you to hear the idea. idea that you've agreed to. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

On March 11, that's what I'm doing about it. Yeah, March 11. Yeah, no one is allowed to talk about anything. Don't we finish this? Yeah, right after this. Ben, also, if you need marimba, I'm your guy, okay? Oh, yeah. You're a big marimba guy?

Yeah, T.J. has been plays the marimba. He plays the marimba. People know that. That's awesome. Marimba for those that don't know, it's just like a xylophone. It is a huge xylophone. Oh, no, it's the... That's timpony is what you're thinking of.

I play that as well, but I don't have any of those at my house. Not as fun. You play... Teach knows all the percussion instruments, okay? You come in there and you misspeak about what? He's going to correct you on the name. I'll let you know. I really, I learned so much already.

I'm not offended. I'm not offended. Don't worry. Everyone calls them the wrong names all the time. So do you have a full-size marimba? Yeah, five octave. Wow. What, T.J., what of all the instruments, why, what drew you to the marimba? Great question, Ben. Thank you.

So when I was a child, okay, well, the actual answer, I played concert percussion all the way through even like college. So I played all the different, all the instruments at the back of the orchestra for percussion. I can do all of those. Began's favorite movie along with TJ's is drumline. Of course.

That's true. That's true. Drumline is amazing. Also, Ben, if you're not ending every meeting with one band, one sound, you're losing out as a team. I, but for the chat, I have been in meetings with these guys, and they do literally end every meeting with one band. Yeah, that's not a joke. What is that?

The movie drumline, great movie. I haven't seen it. Nick Cannon? You don't need to be on TBS all the time. Yeah, that sounds about right. The era in which it was on TBS nonstop. Oh, most definitely. Anyways, they talk about one band, one sound.

Oh, okay, so the reason I like it is because I think it sounds. sounds really pretty. That's really the answer to It does sound very pretty. What's your favorite song to play on the marimba? I like, the one that's closest to my heart is yellow after the rain. That's the first solo that I ever learned on marimba.

But I don't have a huge repertoire right now of different songs. My practicing has gone down significantly after adding three kids to my life. It was a different time when it was just me and my wife hanging at the house and I had a marimba in the office. I could practice.

It doesn't happen as much anymore. You're not just prompting your agents. You know, you're playing the marimba. You got the-good point. I got to set up voice dictation or like I can play the marimba and it like types into the agent. And that's my song engineer. And he's writing something for me.

What incredible world we live in. Prem, do you play instruments? Do you play anything? I guitar and bass guitar. I played guitar for 15 years. A bunch of lessons did all that. I got pretty good at one point. Yeah.

But then I also did this thing where you have kids. and then you never touch an instrument again. Yeah. I can relate. I have a bunch of agents, you know, it's kind of... It's the same thing. I've been right... It's an extensive agents MD file.

I mean, it's practically my child. Literally, it's called child.md. Okay, that's it, soul. Soul.md, yeah. Soul.md. My claw bot that I gave a soul to and then dealligated it because it was insecure. When you make a claw bot, when you make a claw bot,

When you make an open claw, you go through this little thing and they're like, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you bequeath to me in my soul? And you give it like, it's like, what am I? Really? Yeah. Yeah. Then it drifts. And then it just makes up its own soul. Yeah. And then I shut it down. I'm like, I don't, I don't trust you. And I killed it. Dang. That's pretty much like murder, Ben, just so you know. In some states. Yeah. I don't know. If I, if I, you're lucky you're not California, buddy. That's right.

You put them on ice is what you did. When he went into reality, it's like cryogenesis, yeah. Walt Disney's head over here. Prime, I have like a vision in my head of you like playing bass. I love bass. Bass was my favorite instrument because it's the only instrument. See, like when you're playing guitar and you're really into it, you do this. But when you're playing bass guitar and you're really into it, you say no.

You make it. It's kind of true. It's a good thing. Oh, yeah. Oh, and it's just like fun and slapping was really fun. fun. I like the, I like the, this, you know, the, you know, taking it for a walk. That thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's, you just like that thing. Why are we, what are we doing with this, uh, YouTube and sketch comedy? We should be making a band and getting on tour.

Thank you, Ben. What are you bringing to the band? What's, what are you bringing? I'll be, I'll be, uh, I'll be rapping. T. Okay. So, lead man, vocal. So let's, I just want to, sorry, just to, so we have marimba. Yeah. Base. Sure. And a. rapper. Yeah. All right. That could be new. First ever of its kind.

First ever of its kind of new. Hey, I can play, I can also play vibraphone. Oh, wait, and the timpani. I'm sorry.

And the timpani. Sorry. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. We can also play a really big stand-up drum. Yeah.

I can do that. Maybe one concert is just a triangle. That's it. You just, just hit the triangle, just little, you know,

I got a lot in the back pocket. Deep. Yeah. Down. I didn't do the symbols just right? That's true. There's a lot more to symbols than you

than you would think. There's a lot more to it. You don't just smash them together. There's a technique. I tried out for my high school drumline back in the day because my friend was running it and I was the only person not to make to not get accepted from the addition. I tried the symbols.

I was, because it was like, that's the easiest one. Just do the symbols. And look at them like, you can't. You got rejected from a high school band. even think they could do that. Yes, I was the only person they ever looked at. It's tough. That hurts a little bit. Yeah. That's tough. Yeah. Let's channel that into a sketch. Let's bring that. I will say I do feel that energy is

channeled in almost every single sketch, guy who didn't make it into the high school marching band. I think that's present with us at all times. Yeah. That is a very interesting energy to bring to the table for someone to be like, you kind of strike me as a person who failed his high school percussion tryout. But be honest. Is anybody surprised that that's true? I feel like they should have let you in just for being. I'm surprised.

I would have found a way. One of my, like, best friends ran the drumline. Oh, you just, you were just hoping for nepotism, Ben? I was expecting nepotism. Yes, I was fully waking on. I'm just saying, if it was my drumline, Ben, I would have found a spot for you. You say that. You didn't hear that.

Me too. Me too. I had some kids on my drumline that we found spots for. Okay. I would have found a spot for you. Hey, I'll come out. I'll come out.

I'll audition again. I do like how the story of Ben's life is failed at a symbols tryout. I guess I'll go be an engineer at Amazon. I mean, I'm going to show them. I fell down in life. I was like, but in my heart,

I've always wanted to be a musician and I'm just trying. And we're going to make it happen. Where is this coming from? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Alexis. teach us the same thing.

Every meeting's like, dude, we should just start a band instead. Like, I know this is working out. I don't know. Yeah, I know this is working out.

We're creating the stuff we're most proud of in our lives. We're having fun and everyone is enjoying themselves, but I really wish we would do something completely different. We can find a way to integrate music and sketch comedy. There's got to be a way. That's a constraint. We're adding a new constraint.

Alexis, you said you like constraints. Yeah, musical's not a necessarily constraint I want. Reframing it. We'll see Maybe in season two Yeah

I would just say no now I wouldn't say yes I would just say no now You know there's like a Drake song He's like ballers want to be Rappers and rappers want to be ballers It's kind of like that Dang that's deep

Wow Yeah I wasn't expecting Drake to come up Well it's that was that's always It's always on the forefront of his mind He's always right there He's always right there He's always right there for Ben.

He's like, that could have been me. If I just made my high school marching band, me and Drake. All right. Well, this was a very illuminating episode of the stand-up. That's what you're expecting to get into today. Ben, Ben, can you give us a closing as the product manager, please, just for the episode? Yeah, close us off.

Great work, everybody. Hey, thanks for tuning in. You viewers at home, people later on YouTube, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast, you can get the stand-up. periodically on the internet. It comes out whenever it comes out. I don't even know, really. But great work, everybody.

Great work to the team. And even the people who weren't here, you know, the people in the bag, it takes a real, a whole team to make this show possible. So just keep working everybody. And I'm really excited for what we have coming up. Great work.

And we'll just, hey, I'll, and chase your dreams. Thank you. Also, just to be clear, March 10th. There we go. You know my real town, yes. March 10.

I'm like gross. Crizam presents Paradise live. March 10. March 10. Four episodes limited series, Chrisam sketch show like you've never seen CriZAM before. Me, Alexis, show up. Co-creating limited series.

Dropping weekly starting March 10th. We've got four episodes in the bag. 15 minutes. Here we go. All right. We're going to end while we're ahead. Thank you. Alexis, I have to apologize because apparently got him so onto the music train.

He forgot. He forgot. He was here to talk about the show. I was listening. I'm just like, he's going to, nope, not going to,

yep, okay, cool. No, no, no, good, good.

I literally does not pitch his own show. Let your dreams, don't let your dreams be dreams. Which is really just another way for him to say, I was doing music. I could not resist doing the product manager bit and, and ever,

ever in my life. I know. It's tough. All right. Thanks, all. Thank you. This was awesome.

Good one. You guys. Thanks having us. We guys. next episode. See you. Bye bye-bye.