The Startup Ideas Podcast - Creativity Unlocks with Tom Green

Episode Date: August 4, 2022

Is your content holding you back? In today's episode, we explain why authenticity is critical to the future of content creation, share how to overcome burnout, and divulge the secret to being the G.O.A.T at everything you do! Sahil Bloom and Greg Isenberg are joined by guest Tom Green, host of the first real podcast and a world-class comedian. Tom explains how to take your audience on a journey, shares the future of podcasting, and offers insight from his personal experience for the next generation of creators. ►► Want more community? Learn more here: http://trwih.comSHOW NOTES00:53 Welcoming the Canadian Legend: Tom Green02:34 Embrace Your Authenticity (& Weirdness)06:52 Media has Changed the Way People Create08:39 Create Where You Can Be the Best15:00 Taking Your Audience on a Journey21:40 Being The Future of Digital Creation29:32 Talking TO your Audience; not At the Audience31:54 How Covid Changed Hollywood35:37 Create in Your Own Pond39:38 Talking Fishing40:54 Tom’s Secret to Overcoming Burnout: Nature45:46 Being Overwhelmed by City Life48:26 Silence is Scary (But Necessary)51: 07 Tom’s Creative Future: His Past?53:30 Tom Green’s Life in Reverse55:30 Where to Find Tom Green58:19 Thanks for Listening THIS EPISODETom Green: https://twitter.com/tomgreenliveSahil Bloom: https://twitter.com/SahilBloomGreg Isenberg: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergProduction & Marketing Team: https://penname.co/FIND US ONLINETwitter: https://twitter.com/_trwihInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/_trwihTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@_trwihWeb: https://trwih.comSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6aB0v6amo3a8hgTCjlTlvhApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/where-it-happens/id1593424985

You know, when you're younger, certainly in my case, when I was younger, I was under a lot of pressure because, you know, I didn't know what I would possibly do in my life if this, there didn't work out. You know, I do. I wasn't cut out to work in an office or a boss and all of this stuff because I was just really, you know, had a tough time with the idea of like doing repetitive tasks and being, you know, yelled at by somebody, right? So I just knew that that was not going to work for me. So it was kind of like a life and death kind of thing. You know, like I've got to make this comedy thing work for like, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do for the rest of my life, right? Welcome, welcome to the show. Thank you.

Thank you for having me. We've got a comedic legend, a Canadian legend on with us, Mr. Tom Green. and we're excited to happen. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me on the show. I appreciate it. This is awesome. Very cool.

This is a real treat, Tom. I mentioned this to you via email very briefly when we were connecting in advance of doing this. But I mean, I grew up and I know Greg is probably in the same boat. But I grew up a huge, huge fan of all of your different work. And, you know, I felt like it kind of hit me at the right time in my life. And I don't know whether you've heard this from a lot of people over the course of your career. But like, you know, I was sort of a kid that I didn't quite fit in, you know, one bucket or another for most of my life. Like I just, I kind of came from different backgrounds and mixed race household and didn't really know like where I fit in perfectly growing up.

And I always just felt like laughing in comedy was an escape and like a way that I was able to connect with people. And a lot of your early work, like your songs, some of your movies, your show, it really brought together. a cool community of friends when I was growing up and young. And so I feel personally very grateful to you for a lot of what you put out into the world during your career. Awesome. Awesome. Well, it was a weird show. You were a weird kid.

I'm a weird guy. We celebrate weirdness. The pleasure is all mine. It's a treat for me to be here as well, too. This is a real treat as well for me. I'm enjoying this. This is fun. It's cool to meet you guys.

We met through a mutual friend, and I appreciate you have me on the show to talk about you know, stuff. What are we talking about? Yeah. What is it that we're talking about? Well, it's an extra treat for us to have you because, you know, we've got thousands of listeners who are entrepreneurs, who are builders, investors. And we don't often have, you know, I call you a person from the arts.

Because I think you do more than comedy. And, you know, we've been following your career. And one thing that's, I mean, here's what I want to cover. There's two things I want to cover today. The first thing I want to cover is authenticity and how it seems to be that you've just kind of done your own thing and been really authentic and attracted people who've like Sahel and myself who've connected with that. And the second thing I want to dive into is your move from Hollywood to Canada and why you did it. Sure. Yeah, sure.

Yeah. Absolutely. So maybe we can start with... I mean... Yeah, maybe we can start with... Ask me like a specific question. Yeah. Yeah, let's start with...

What do you think? Have you always been weird, Tom? Yeah, I think so. I think so. I mean, I think everybody's weird. Everybody's weird in their own way. And, you know, you've got to channel that into... You know, when we're young, we're figuring out who we are. I was always kind of a class clown, I guess, you would call it, a goofy kid.

but, you know, I think like when you talk about authenticity, I presume you're talking about with the Tom Green Show and the internet and the way we sort of present ourselves on social media. I think, you know, I was growing up in a time where, you know, before video cameras, there really wasn't a lot of pure authenticity on television. It was hard to get that because, you know, to make television, there's so many cameras involved and lights and budgets and, huge crews. So, you know, when you're making Gilligan's Island, right, it's hard for it to be

completely authentic. People are playing characters and are really playing themselves, you know. And so when video cameras came along and all of a sudden you could go film your actual life and do real stuff and do it with a small crew or no crew and do it with zero budget and no outside corporate influences or rules, that's when I think that, you know, TV stuff. started to change. And that was beginning of reality TV. What my show was doing was running into my parents' house with a video camera and went Franks on them before anyone had done that kind of thing.

And now we've got social media on the internet where everybody's got a camera in their pocket and people are, you know, it's just normal to be authentic, I think, on camera now. But it's still not an instant thing. You know, as soon as you put a camera on yourself and start talking to an audience, you do take on certain expectations. You do take on certain, you know, a certain persona. And so, you know, trying to figure out exactly how you want to present yourself is still kind of a tricky thing, I think. It did, you know, it strikes me that like over time, the way you laid that out makes a lot of sense to me. That, like, over time, authenticity of creation has sort of expanded.

Like in the early days of television and movie, it was like everything was perfect. You had these like perfect lives, beautiful people. You know, like you'd create a fake storyline around some conflict so that it could get solved and everything would be bright and perfect again. And, you know, if your life didn't feel that way in your own life, you didn't, it didn't click, right? Like you didn't feel this sort of connection or community around that type of work. And then, you know, I think you, I think like jackass, I think some of the other like early days of almost this like kind of feeling. of like misfits coming together. You know, you called it being weird,

but like whatever it was, you know, you felt this level of connection because it felt authentic and it was real and it wasn't perfect. It wasn't this like perfectly filmed, beautiful settings, etc. It felt very raw and real. And now over time, I think that has continued to expand to now like, you know, TikTokers, Instagram, YouTubers

who present something very authentic and real and are able to, you know, amass these big followings and build these really neat communities around that. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, the audience is much more media literate now than they were 20 years ago. So, you know, it's harder for people to suspend disbelief when they're watching, you know, imperfectly executed acting and imperfectly executed scripted shows. Now, there's so much great scripted stuff on TV now, and there's such incredibly brilliant scripted stuff out there that that's good enough for people today.

but, you know, I don't think that you can kind of get away with sort of a half-ass scripted show anymore and expect people to watch because everyone's making their own videos now or has a friend who is or has even tried to do it themselves and they kind of understand a little bit more of the technology and what's involved. So, you know, you think about like the early days of film when they would, you know, they would film a train coming towards the camera and everyone in the movie theater would get up and run because they thought. there was a train going to hit them, you know? Like, that's how people just didn't know how to, to process what they were looking at, whereas, you know, now, you know, now, now it's like we've seen, you know, the real housewives of Beverly Hills

screaming at each other on TV. We've seen so much real drama, real, or whether that's real or not, you may think your own mind about, real people without a script, you know, expressing themselves, you know sometimes it's a little bit harder to believe some of the some of the traditional ways of when we make cheating in a traditional way it comes off a little forced sometimes right and people are hip to that they're savvy to that so so it's a really exciting time actually i think it continues to be an exciting time one of the things i've observed is there's a certain amount of pressure for creators entertainers or frankly anyone on the internet to

mimic how other people are creating content. And one of the things I noticed about you is it, it never feels like you're kind of looking at other folks and being like, hey, this is what's working on TikTok. This is what's working on TV. This is what's working in comedy. This is what's working on music.

I'm going to go do that. Is that something that you consciously think about? Yeah. Yeah. I do for sure. I mean, I get bored easily. I don't really like when I watch television or when I watch the internet and I see these new formats and these new things happen, right? It is funny to see how it becomes very sort of formulaic and then everybody copies and repeats and copies and repeats.

And it goes in cycles. and I usually attribute a lot of my thought process creatively to the changing technology. When a new technology comes out, I like to be the first person to use it. So then maybe I'll be doing something creatively with a new piece of technology that nobody's really started using yet. And then therefore I'll create something different and maybe stand out from the pack of things that are out there with people using. maybe just a slightly older piece of technology, you know. And then sometimes that catches on, and then everybody starts doing that, and then that becomes more of the standard, and then a new technology comes up.

Like when I started, my first foray into show business outside of stand-up comedy, I started doing stand-up comedy when I was 16 years old in Canada, and, you know, most traditional form of comedy, you know, vaude billion type of comedy. get to get up on stage. I have a microphone. This was the technology, the microphone, right? But then rap music started becoming popular. I really got into rap music, the Beastie Boys, Run DMC, Public Enemy, all of these incredible, you know, 80s rap groups.

And I was really early on excited about that, interested in that. And I think you'll find this interesting, actually, because it's a computer thing. You guys are computer guys, right? You're computer guys. Oh, yeah. Yes, sir. So I grew up in Ottawa, Canada, and my dad was in the military, but when he stopped working in active service in the military, he continued working for the Canadian Department of National Defense doing COBOL programming, computer programming. And so he would take me down to the office there, and, you know, you'd see the giant computers with the tapes wheeling, and he was explaining out, and putting the cards in, the cobal cards.

And this is like early days, you know, no one had a computer at home yet. I'm looking at these computers. And then Ottawa got a thing called, we had the internet, basically, in Ottawa in the early 1980s before anybody had the internet. It wasn't called the internet. It was called the Naboo Network. Google the Naboo Network, N-A-B-U. It was a local company in Ottawa, and they would deliver video games and chats and all the stuff through your cable. through your cable television.

You got a box and you plugged it in. Ottawa's actually kind of fairly high-tech town because it's the capital of Canada. There's a lot of government's sort of contract. Big companies like Correll were here and Gandalf and Cognos and all these companies doing all sorts of high-tech stuff. So, you know, I was a little kid and we were on the internet. It wasn't called the internet.

It was called the Naboo Network. But, you know, I think like a couple thousand people in the city had it. but we were doing this stuff, you know, on the internet, and it kind of really made me start really finding an interest in technology. And then my friends were also really interested in this kind of technology. So when rap music started, the first thing I thought was, well, how are they making these beats? They sound really, you know, fresh and where's this electronic music coming from?

So I started going down to the music store, and I'd get a summer job, and I'd start, I'd buy drum machines and keyboards and samplers with my, like part earned, you know, landscaping job cash that I saved up and started making rap beats when I was at 15 years old, 16 years old, my parents' basement. And like, they weren't the best rap beats in the world, but I was the only kid in Ottawa basically making rap beats. Maybe there was one other guy actually was pretty good too. But not many people were doing this. So that's when I kind of, and we ended up getting a record deal.

We sort of started going out and performing. My friend and I from school, we got a record deal with A&M Records. It became a big thing in Canada, and it was a big success. And here I was at 18 years old, and I had a record deal and performing with all sorts of, you know, concerts. And it was we were on the radio. And I realized that the reason that happened was because, like, this new technology of sampling was new. Nobody was doing it yet. I was doing it before anyone else.

And so that's when I kind of learned, like, if you're the only one doing something, you're going to be the best at it. And that's why I like to kind of find the latest camera or the latest microphone or the latest way of shooting video or reporting video or streaming podcasts or distributing podcasts and try to do it before anyone else.

And then if it works and you're the only one doing it, then you're like the best at something, you know, till everybody else comes along and starts doing it and then some people adapt and find ways to do it better than you ever could have done it. But if you were the best for a minute. What do you characterize yourself as like highly curious? Like what was pulling you into these different areas? because like even, I mean, when I watch your YouTube channel, which by the way, I find, I don't know if the right word is like, I find it meditative a lot of your videos, like very relaxing. A lot of people compare to that ASMR and a lot of people compared to the ASMR stuff. Yeah.

And like one of your videos. So that's like that's like sort of an example like of something that I'm doing last year I went out in a van. I traveled around the desert at the beginning of COVID. And, you know, you can't really see, really when you watch the videos, you can't really instantly see what's different about it. But what is truly different about that, which I think is not completely unlike what other bloggers are doing and things like that. But what's slightly different about it is I have this van that has this incredible battery system, high-tech battery system. It's called Battleborne Batteries. They're made by this really great company, Dragon Flight.

energy and they power this entire recording studio that I built in the van. So I had, you know, this microphone and all this great audio equipment, keyboards and drum machines and all this stuff. I was scoring the soundtrack out there in the desert for the videos. So the soundtracks, when you say meditative, you know, those soundtracks were made in the exact location that the video that you're watching was shot. And so when you're out in the desert by yourself, in, you know,

BLM Bureau of Land Management land in, you know, Utah, in Valley of the Gods, Utah, all alone, and you feel like you're in a John Ford movie. You get up in the morning and you make a cup of coffee and you're there with your dog, Charlie,

your trustee sidekick Charlie, and who's named after Travels with Charlie, John Steinbex travels with Charlie. And then you, start shooting drone videos over these landscapes and start shooting videos with your you know Sony A7 S3 camera and you're swapping out lenses and getting all these cinematic shots and then you know you fire up the recording studio and you make the soundtrack to the video you've just made and if you're really viven right it does kind of become sort of an experience really is

what I was trying to do with that. You know, the videos aren't really funny. You know, they're not most hilarious videos that you've ever seen. They're not funny at all, really. They're just kind of more like an experience. But what's fun about it is I brought my audience along with me on this sort of adventure last year that was really kind of a beautiful thing where I was, you know, bonding with my new puppy who is two years old

and got during this pandemic and we're out there all alone. and, you know, straight up, editing the video then in the van, you know, on Adobe Premiere on my laptop, leaving the camp area, which is in the middle of nowhere, and once you get out to the highway, uploading it to YouTube from my phone through a hot spot. So the whole thing's all happening in real time, and it does become a completely different way of making television or making video where usually, you know, there's no cameraman there. I'm doing my own audio. I'm plugging everything in myself.

So that was kind of a special thing. And I think those videos are really kind of a special thing. Like I said, you've got to have like, it's not for short attention span. It's almost like the kind of thing that you want to, you know, if you're somebody that smokes marijuana, I don't know if you've ever done that before. But you know, you sit back and you might want to smoke a joint watch it. Maybe it might be more fun to watch that way or have a beer or something. relax. It's a journey. It's a journey for the viewers more so than like a transaction, which I think a lot of content, you know, today feels really transactional. This is much more

of like you're taking people on a journey, which I love. I also just found like there's a video you have on there of like talking to strangers on the street. And I think about that a lot because I love talking to random people. It's like probably what I get the most energy from in life is just talking to people and it doesn't matter who it is. Like you can learn something from anybody. And what struck me about that video, and I would encourage you. people to watch it because I thought it was awesome. It's, you know, it has humor infused in it because it's like you have some funny conversations with people.

But you have this way of kind of digging into someone's life and with like very simple and not, you know, not like prying questions, but you like follow up very interestingly and quickly on things. And it's clear that like your curiosity kind of comes out as you're just talking to people on the street. So I was, that was why I asked the question of like, do you consider yourself a highly curious person and that's what's driving you to these things or are you just interested in the world around you?

Like what is it that kind of motivates you around that? Yeah, well, I mean, interaction with people was always the funniest part of the Tom Green show on MTV and my early public access show. And I mean, I just find people, you know, bring it. When you're talking to a person that you've never met before on camera, there's a spontaneity there that is, lens itself to humor. People are naturally funny. And then there's sort of an energy, too,

when people are being interviewed on camera, certainly when they're being caught off guard or weren't planning on doing an interview that day and they're walking down the street and all of a sudden they're being interviewed by somebody. There's a nervous energy that is fun there that you can capitalize on, I guess. And it's a lot like stand-up comedy.

You know, it's like when you do stand-up comedy and you do crowd work and you're talking to the crowd, there's a nervous energy in the room and it creates tension, it creates drama. So that's what I love about interacting with people on the street. And, you know, I think I probably will be doing a lot more of that in the future. Stuff out in the van last year was me by myself with the dog. But, you know, that was also me just kind of really learning and experimenting with the new cameras

and some cinematic techniques with these new cameras that are just incredible. and just sort of figuring out technically how to film everything. But, yeah, I know I love talking to people on the street. I love hearing what you're going to do next, because to me that's kind of where things are going. And there's a famous tech saying in our world, which is the technology is already here. It's just not evenly distributed.

So I think a lot of what you're saying, which is like meditating, sort of longer form video that's going to take off. More interactions with people that's going to take off. I remember watching you in the 2004 or 2005 time frame when you were recording a live podcast from your house in Los Angeles. And this was before podcasting was a thing. And I actually remember hearing Joe Rogan.

admitting that one of the reasons he got into podcasting is he saw that you were doing it and you were curious about it. So could you talk a little bit about your experience in Hollywood, in Los Angeles, starting an internet TV show when there were basically no internet TV shows? Yeah, well, it was, you know, it was 2002 or 2003, 2003 probably when I sort of got the idea to do it because I had stopped doing the show on MTV. and I just thought, you know, well, I remember asking some people, is this technically possible? That's just to get a switcher, cut multiple cameras live and stream live video on the internet and just started again basically asking technical people that I knew what was possible. And it was just possible to start streaming. We actually worked with this company out of my... My friend Barrett Lyon, who is from San Francisco at a company called Bit Gravity that he had created a streaming platform.

And we were now, because this was before YouTube, so we were, you know, there wasn't live on YouTube. There wasn't even YouTube yet. I don't think it had quite just, maybe it just started or hadn't quite started yet. So we were streaming live to the front page of my website, Tongreen.com, switching cameras on this thing called a video toaster, which later became a tricaster, which is a company called New Tech, made this tricaster. My friend Phil Nelson from there showed me that.

So I started meeting all these people that are kind of working there. Barrett was this tip of the sphere of streaming video, CDNs, content delivery networks, right? And then and then, you know, Tricaster was this company out of Austin, Texas, or San Antonio, Texas, and they're making these really great switchers that you could run a bunch of video cameras into and cut them live while you're streaming onto the internet.

So, you know, it was possible to do it. So we did it, and it was really fun, and it was really crazy because it was the only live talk show on the internet, and people were, we could, people could phone in. And I had a phone on the desk that would just ring, and I would answer it. And, you know, we would take calls. Then we hook up Skype. We hook up three Skype computers. We ran them into the TriCaster, so we were taking video calls. And it was just like nobody had ever seen anything like it.

It was really, really fun, really, really crazy. We had a lot of viewers, a lot of viewers, millions and millions of people were watching. It's totally not monetized. It's trying to figure out how to get an advertiser. Nobody knew anything about buying an advertiser on an internet show. you know and it was interesting

but the thing that was really kind of cool about it was you know I was in Los Angeles in the comedy community I invited all my friends and also all people that I was fans up up to my house and like

almost everybody came you know so all of a sudden I'm hanging out with Norman McDonald and Joe Rogan and and you know Bob Sagat rest of peace Norman Rob Norman Bob

who became good friends of mine and yeah, we sadly both passed away this year, but I meant we had hours and hours of shows with both of them and so many others, I mean, literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people would come do the show. And, you know, I'm not saying that's where they got the idea to do a podcast, but it was interesting that, like, pretty much most of my regular guests sort of would come up. You'd see it every time.

They'd walk in, they'd see the lights on the ceiling, you'd see the cameras and you'd see them go oh shit I don't need to deal with all this bullshit anymore you know I'm trying to sell my TV show to somebody and they're not going to let me do what I actually want to do and all I need to do is get like

a few cameras and a couple microphones and just do my own show right and sure enough like so many of them are still currently doing their own show podcasts and things like this so it was pretty cool I think that was kind of what that show, in many ways, more than the technology is really where it may have influenced podcasting because everybody who would ever want to do a podcast in the comedy community all at once, all got to see a whole setup, you know. And it was pretty cool. It was first of its kind.

And like I remember watching, you know, seeing some of these folks come to your house and being like. I'm not to like, by the way, I'm not by any ways saying, about the idea from me or whatever. I'm saying it's interesting because, I mean, you know, Adam Carolla, he's got one of the biggest podcasts in the world. He came up all the time. Steve O, right? Got a great podcast now in his van.

You know, Dr. Drew came all the time, podcasting all the time, you know, all these people that were, Norm went on to do an incredible internet show. And so, but it was kind of like, You know, it was just, it was all happening at once, right? But this just happened to be a place that people could actually go and touch it and feel it and taste it and actually do it. So then, and then it became sort of an obvious next step.

If somebody wanted to do that, they would go set up their own studio at home. Totally. Yeah. It felt, I remember, you know, watching and just being like, wow, like you can do this with the internet. You can have high quality guests and interview people and you can have people call in. I remember, you know, once, you know. I think the thing that was I'm sorry, I think the thing that was

the thing that I thought was even more than the technology that I thought was really maybe the thing that people hadn't done before was two comedians just talking to each other as opposed to you know, it being sort of

one guy is the television host and then they have guests coming all the time. Instead it's just two comedians talking to each other. And that's sort of what the show was, you know, and doing irreverent things, like taking phone calls. And we also had the internet running through so we could watch the internet and fuck around and talk about the internet, have beers and all of this stuff. Two comedians talking to people, we're putting

on a performance in the sort of in the guise of it being an interview. Like, we're playing talk show here, but it's not really a talk show. It's just me talking to Steveo or me talking to Dr. Drew or me talking to Norm MacDonald. And we're sitting at a talk show desk, sure. But really we're just goofing around. Yeah, it felt like a lot of shows you watch, it feels very much like the people on the show are you know, talking,

you know, to you or at you you versus two, you know, two people talking with each other and you're just kind of a fly on the wall. It felt, it felt very much like we were just hanging out, you know, the viewer at least, we were just kind of hanging out with, you know, you guys. You know, it felt like it was,

me, Norm MacDonald, and Tom Green kind of all hanging out, even though I was just behind a computer screen. I think sometimes, like, I don't really think it gets credited as being the first podcast because we didn't call it a podcast because that name hadn't really been invented yet. But the other thing is, you know, podcasting really became more like radio streaming to the internet. And I was trying to stream television to the internet. So one of the subtle differences, which I still, to this day, I'm somewhat kind of a little bit baffled that this didn't stick or that people are still doing this. Everyone's wearing headphones doing these podcasts

and talking into radio microphones that are on stands, right? This is a radio thing we're doing right now, which doesn't really lend itself to the visual medium, you know, because this is blocking your head, this is blocking your face, right? So, you know, we, but it's a little extra technical statement. involved in order to do television. You know, you have to have wireless microphones. You know, so it's like about as complicated or less complicated than plugging this in, but it seems more complicated. But it's interesting you can really see how things do get replicated.

People see, you know, like everyone's doing the microphone, the headphone thing now. So it sort of becomes the format. But, you know, I think WebOVision, which is what we called it. We didn't call it podcast. We called it WebOVision, but it was a podcast. Was me trying to make a guerrilla sort of version of David Letterman show in the house. So we were thinking visually. We didn't want, we didn't want to have headsets on. We wanted to be able to get up and move. We didn't, we wanted to have wireless mics. We didn't want to be

stuck sitting in front of a mic, you know. We'd get up and go, you know, have a drink in the kitchen or in the camera would follow us, you know, there was a little bit more of a TV visual element to it. Did you find it fun? Like, did you find the Hollywood, you know, the kind of hustle and bustle of like,

you know, big entertainment business? Did you find it fun and fulfilling at the time? I mean, yeah, yeah, I did. Yeah, I mean, I did. I feel like I feel like, like I just left Los Angeles after 20 years. I've moved to the country,

so I'm living out on a farm here. you know, in the wilderness. I've got wolves up here. It's incredible change, right? And I think we're living in a new world now where you can be anywhere physically and not have to actually live in Los Angeles. You know, if I want to try to sell a TV show or an idea,

I don't have to get in my car and drive in rush hour from Santa Monica to have a meeting in a boardroom with, you know, five television executives. You know, we could just have a Zoom call from wherever we are in the world. That's a lot of that's really changed during COVID. That's when it's sort of a light bulb went off for me. Sort of a huge confluence of things happened for me,

like convergence of things happened at once, which I don't know if confluence is the right word. I'm not sure if that's the right word. I'll give it to you. A bunch of things happened at once. A bunch of things happened at once that made me think, you know, I don't think I have to live in Los Angeles anymore, you know, and my family's up here, my parents are getting older.

I want to spend time with them. I want to spend time with my brother and my friends up here. I was, COVID happened, and all of a sudden I didn't leave my house for a year, but I was still doing business and meetings on Zoom calls every day. I'm like, wait, I could be anywhere right now. I don't have to be in Los Angeles right now. And then when you talk about authenticity, And I started to think, you know, I think it's probably better if I'm going to be doing videos and television and social media and shows and things like that that that I continue to do here.

I probably be better off to be where you actually want to live, right, where you authentically want to be. I'm not in Los Angeles because I have to be and this is where the business is, but I actually would rather be living out in the woods, you know, and working on the farm. and I like to take photography, doing photography of, you know, animals and nature and just being close to my family and stuff. So I feel so much better here. So that's kind of, I think that's kind of honestly, I think is really where things will probably go next as people are going to realize, okay, do what you want to do in life. build a life that you really authentically love and want to do. And if you want to be somebody that's making television or making comedy, you know, document it in a funny way or do it in a funny way,

but do it from an authentic place. You don't have to be in Los Angeles just because that's where they shot, you know, Gilligan's Island and Seinfeld and I Love Lucy. You know, we don't have to be there anymore. You know, go where you are, where you really from. That's what people want to see. People want to see people doing real stuff. They don't want to see people trying to do it.

be something else that they're not. I'm not a Hollywood guy. I lived there for 20 years. I had fun there. I learned so much there. I got to go do stand-up comedy every night down at the comedy store and theme pub and the laugh factory and all these great comedy clubs and surround myself with so many amazing, you know, brilliant people. And so I got to do that for 20 years. And I learned so much doing that. But I just kind of, I just don't think I want to spend the next 20 years there, you know. Do you think, I want to enjoy my old age. Do you think, uh, I want to enjoy my old age. Do you think if you're, you know, an up-and-coming comic, do you think it makes sense to almost do like a college degree,

you know, three, four years in Los Angeles to sort of learn as much as you can and then go back to wherever it makes you happy? Or would you, yeah, what are your thoughts there? Well, see, I think you can move there too early, too. Like, I didn't move there as a struggling comic. I started the Tom Green Show on Public Access, in Canada and developed here in the comfort of being in a small town without the intimidation.

Let's say it's small town. There's a million people in Ottawa, but it's not a show business town, right? So I wasn't surrounded by all these other people trying to do it, which gives you a certain amount of confidence, right? Because you feel like you can experiment a little bit more. So I always tell people when they ask me questions like this, I'd say, I don't think you should just move to Los Angeles. I think you should try to do, especially today, you know, try to develop your craft, whatever it is, where you are, where you got your support system around you. And, you know, you may never have to go there anymore, you know, you may never have to go there. This is kind of similar to the, you know, you know, Mr. Beast.

Yeah, I assume everyone kind of knows him at this point. You know, very famous, I was 23-year-old. Yeah, yeah, unbelievable. But he, I only really found out about him late in the game, but I watched his Joe Rogan episode and was very, very amazed by him. But he kind of has a similar, you know, story. Like, I think he still lives in Greenville, North Carolina, where he's from. And he, like, bought a warehouse that he basically does all of his stuff out of, you know, in Greenville. Like, he's kind of turned down the idea of, like, being in L.A. and being in the scene.

He's like, I'm a small town kid. I'm going to stay here. and, you know, hire friends and, like, work with people I like and sort of be in that atmosphere. And if I need to go to L.A. for some, like, reason, then I can do that. But he's kind of opted out in the same way that I think, you know, you did in those early years. I mean, that speaks to the savviness of our audience now, especially in these, you know, not to open up a can of worms here, but in these very politically divided times, you know, where people maybe, you know, have started to voice their displeasure with the, you know, the inauthenticity of Hollywood and of

celebrities. And there is a little bit of a divide now, especially in the United States. So, so, you know, people can, you know, can tell when somebody is, you know, making their videos in LA, even as, even as like a, you know, watching social media, you watch on TikTok. They've got TikTok Hoc Houses, you know, kids from all over the country move to L.A. so they can make videos in L.A. so it looks like they're in L.A., right? But at the end of the day, that's going to have diminishing returns because, you know, how many times do you need to see a palm tree before you stop being impressed by it, right? You know, maybe it's more impressive to see somebody doing something very unique to their part of the world. It's very real, very honest, you know.

There's so many unique things here to this part of the world that I can go out and film right now I could go and catch a large mouth bass you know you're not going to catch a large mouth bass on on uh on uh on uh on uh on uh on uh on the wacienega boulevard yeah yeah yeah yeah so it's kind of you know and that's unique to me i grew up catching large mouth bass I know I know yeah I want to use a you know a you know a rippala or a jitter plug floating lure you know you got to get them under that log yeah just just under the log and just just after sunset or just before sunset

you know you know and there's all these little details no little details are the things that make up the story that people find interesting to watch and they learn something from. So, so that, you know, that was my favorite part of your most recent video, by the way, on the, uh, the, uh, the, you know, like the farm life where you were, um, you were naming off all the different types of fish that could have been in that pond. And your knowledge of the different types of fish, like I grew up fishing on a lake as well, actually in Connecticut. And, um, a lot of freshwater fish. Yeah, that was pretty amazing. Uh, It kind of reminded me.

It had a little bit of like Bubba Gump vibes from the Forest Gump movie where he names all the different types of shrimp that he can make. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, I can name like largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, perch, sunfish, northern pike, walleye, some say pickerel, lake trout, speckled trout, you know, go on and on. There's crappy. There's mud pout.

There's all sorts of fish. I love it. Did you ever experience burnout? This is like something I'm just fascinated by with, you know, high performers and people who have kind of like gone from fast-paced culture and kind of adapted to like slower living. Did you ever feel burnout and did you, did you wrestle with it? Yeah, for sure. I mean, like, honestly, like, I think that happens like internally in your head as opposed to. That doesn't really, I mean, I pushed myself. now, even though I'm living in the country, I get up in the morning and I got stuff I'm trying to do, you know. You know, I'm trying to actually still create things. And as I've gotten older, I've learned how to manage that anxiety and that kind of pressure, right? And I think, you know, when you're younger, certainly in my case, when I was younger, I was under a lot of pressure because, you know, I did. didn't know what I would possibly do in my life if this didn't work out. You know, I do. I wasn't

cut out to work in an office or the boss and all of this stuff because I was just really, you know, had a tough time with the idea of like doing repetitive tasks and being, you know, yelled at by somebody, right? So I just knew that that was not going to work for me. So it was kind of like a lights and death kind of thing, you know, like I got to make this comedy thing. And work or like, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do for the rest of my life, right? So when you're in your 20s, that's a really scary, terrifying thing, especially before you've had anything happen. And then once you get some success, then you want to make sure that you are able to manage it

so that you don't screw it up, you know, which, you know, I've had, you know, various degrees of success at that, you know, but at least, you know, keep it going, right? And, but now that I'm older, you know, it's not as, there's not as much pressure. because, you know, I'm 51 years, I turned 51 years old in January 30th, I think 51, 50 years old now. And I realized, like, there's just really so much less of my life left to ruin, you know? Like, I can't really, I basically, I'm basically, like, if I really screwed it all up right now, like, I could still probably kind of coast to, you know, and have a pretty comfortable death, you know, it would be, you know, well, maybe I got 20. 25 years if I'm lucky, I'll be fine, you know. But when you're 20, you know, the law to live and you've got to do ahead of you,

that you've got to be careful, let you don't screw up. So I do feel that it's easier to kind of like kind of calm the nerves a little bit as you get older. You also kind of learn how to understand your own personal self more as you get older so that I know when I get anxious, if I take a walk or if I feel depressed, you know, maybe I drank a few too many beers last night. You know, maybe I'm going to not have a drink for a few days. I get some exercise. I know living out in nature has been hugely helpful for me in that department too because I find personally when you walk in nature, if you walk in a forest, I can't explain it scientifically.

I've not really researched this. I've read little bits about it. I can't not enough to remember it and repeat it, but I do feel that you pick into sort of a natural sort of, you know, animalistic kind of place where, you know, your senses go into a different place and you become very more focused on the moment. You know, when you're walking through nature and you hear this. sounds of nature, smell the smells of nature, walking through the forest, looking,

you know, you're even on a little heightened state of alert, you know, there's bears out there. You know, so you're kind of in a survival mode, right? And that takes you out of the anxiety of worrying about the future or the sadness and of regretting and thinking about things in the past. You know, you're not thinking about the future of the past. You're thinking about what's going on right now at this moment, you know, the trees, the wind, the smells, you know. The beauty of it, right?

The beauty of it is all around you. Really, it's a distraction, right? So I find it so much easier to stay positive and also continue to work and do things when I live in a place like this where I can step out my front door and not the, you know, when you walk down the street and the city, sometimes you kind of just kind of still want to ignore all that noise and the cars and stuff. And you're still in your head thinking about all the things you've got to do that day or all the things you didn't get done yesterday. Yeah, I think, you know, I'm out in nature right now. And I was talking to a 92-year-old man yesterday who lives down the street. Greg loves talking to old men, by the way. This is one of Greg's hobbies.

In all seriousness, this is one of Greg's big things. Is that what you're talking to me? You're not quite 90. And by the way, you're going to live way longer than 20, 25 years, especially being out in the country. Yeah, laughing makes you live longer, man. I like to think so. I do like to think that the relaxed lifestyle will be helpful. 100%.

Yeah. So I was chatting with this man and he was like, we were talking about being overwhelmed. And he was, I told him that I used to, you know, briefly lived in New York City. And he was like, people in New York City are overwhelmed by the city. I'm overwhelmed by nature. And I thought that was a really beautiful way of putting it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's a much more beautiful, positive thing to be overwhelmed by.

It's your minds, like I said, all your senses are firing, but they're focused on something that's beautiful and not something that's stressful, like, you know, jackhammers and ambulance sirens and smells of, you know, burning garbage. And it's weird, right? It's weird. Like, sorry, I saw this morning that the average rent price in New York City for the first time past $5,000 a month. And it's kind of weird how it's $5,000 a month to live in New York City.

Meanwhile, like, you know, a kilometer away from where I am, it's $500 a month to get a beautiful spot in nature, Canadian. By the way, $5,000 a month to live in New York City, I just found out this fun fact. Guess how much it costs to be buried in New York City? So how much does it cost to die in New York City? Give me a guess. I don't know, 20 grand. I'm what? My question.

Higher. $55,000 is the average amount that it costs to be buried in New York City. So, I mean, it's completely insane. Why would you want to be buried in New York City? Just an honestly serious question. I don't know. It's like if you were, I don't know if you were from there.

It's like maybe like premium burial spots. I don't know. There's just not enough space. Like not enough cemeteries and stuff there. I do think it's just like figuring out which baseline setting creates energy for your life. Because I know people who are like, I feel like they can't handle solitude. Right.

Like I personally, I think I buy into that quote that's like, you know, all of man's problems would be solved by like, being able to actually handle solitude. I need to go look up what the exact quote is. But it's something to that effect where like we have lost as society the ability to experience and to embrace solitude and silence.

And so a lot of people, you fill that void by just having chaos around you. And that there's just loudness in your mind all the time. And that's comforting for a lot of people because the silence is scary. And I think once you learn to embrace solitude, I think people very rarely go back. At that point, then it's like, you know, I live in the suburbs, right, Greg, like you know this. I live outside New York City. I love having silence six days a week. And when I want a little chaos, I can go get in a car and in 25 or 30 minutes have chaos and like, you know, refresh my like chaos engines and whatever way that I want to and then come back to the silence.

But that ability to actually experience and like flex your solitude muscle more regularly, I think is such a massive unlock for your happiness and fulfillment in life. Yeah, for sure, for sure, absolutely. And I think it's also like when you're alone, your mind has time to think of ideas that you might not have thought of otherwise, because you've got some, you've got a vacuum of time to fill, right? So you're not distracted by all of these, just sort of day-to-day sort of necessities of just getting, from point A to point B, you know, maybe if you're alone and you are just have a little bit

of space to breathe you, you might start to think. I mean, that's kind of the intention. I continue to do stand-up comedy and I stopped for a year or so during COVID by starting up again, my touring. So, you know, I'm going to, I go off to this. I'm going to be going off to the cities and doing stand-up and I'll be going to, I'll be going to, I'll be going to, I'm going to You see you do a stand up in New York for sure. I'll go, I'll be going everywhere next year and the year after that and the year after that. And I'll go out, you know, maybe I'll go out for two or three weekends a month. Maybe I will take a month off now and then, but I'll go out when I feel like doing it.

And but then when I come back home, I'll be in this sort of nice, quiet place where I can think and write and breathe and relax and enjoy. What's your, what's your vision for yourself and the farm, call it, five years. So, you know, it's January 1st, you know, 2027. Where do you want to be? well it's funny because like there is a version of what I want to do here which sounds sort of a lot like what I was doing in 2003 to be honest with you know it's like and it also sounds a lot like what I was doing in 1994 you know I I do uh you know I do have a podcast it's called the Tom Green podcast uh you know it's the name we came up came up with but um and I haven't I've been doing it I was doing it earlier last year I took a little time off and I'm going to be rejoining the studio out here. I actually have a barn here, two barns here, 200-year-old barns that are really, really cool, you know, structures, and I'm going to be setting up a little hangout spot in there to, in the loft of one of the barns to do some podcasting and some streaming and sort of enjoying interviewing some of my friends here in the area

who are outdoors enthusiasts and farmers and fishermen and hunters and gardeners and and computer experts and videographers and actors and all sorts of people up here in Canada interesting people who will be popping by and so I'm going to be continuing to sort of enjoy living here and making it my creative hub I guess and doing my my films and my television shows and my podcasts and and enjoy and enjoying the nature. I'm excited for your podcast, man. I'm looking forward to seeing you kind of come back into that world and

we'll personally be watching to see how you're innovating because as Greg said earlier on, I do feel like you've consistently been out in front of you know, and really creating and crafting what the future of creative work looks like. So I'm super excited to see that. I'm also going to have to buy tickets for your time. your New York show. Yeah, for sure, absolutely. Yeah, if you go on my YouTube channel, like,

you can switch, if anyone watching, you know, if you're, if you're inclined to go check it out, you can watch those band videos we talked about. As you scroll back, you know, depending how deep of a dive you want to take, you're basically seeing my life basically in reverse,

unfolding before your eyes. And so, you know, it's, you know, and, you know, my podcast is on there. It's funny, at the beginning of the pandemic, I built a studio in the house in Los Angeles. I was doing my podcast there and people were calling in similar to how we're

doing now. And, you know, I had all sorts of great interviews with friends of mine and and, you know, it was sort of just in, right at that time when I decided that I was going to move, but, you know, it's kind of been, then all of a sudden it was in a van. No, no, now I'm up here.

It's kind of a neat little rewind you can do on there. And you can see all these different sort of experimental sort of things that I've been doing. So it's YouTube.com slash Tom Green, I think, right? Yeah, yeah. You also, I would recommend people. I would recommend people Google you as well. And there's just like a lot of cool stuff in your background. The other thing that's hilarious about Googling you, Tom, by the way,

which I mentioned to Greg when I was doing research, you know, in advance of chatting. When you search Tom Green on Google, the first one is you. It's a Wikipedia page, your Wikipedia page. The second one is Tom Green polygamist, and it is an American Mormon fundamentalist from Utah, who was a practitioner of plural marriage. So I got a real kick out of that when I was going through. But anyway, man, I mean, seriously, thank you so much for taking the time.

I'm super excited to continue to follow along and see all the cool stuff you're going to be up to in the coming years and excited to bring my wife out for your comedy show too, because we're both big fans. Yeah, that's awesome, man. I appreciate it. No, thanks for having me on. I can't wait to tweet this out to everybody. And I'm on Twitter. I'm on TikTok, too.

Go follow me there, everybody. Instagram, you know, I'm on all the spots. Yeah, your latest Instagram post, I think, was a brick of cheese. I think that was basically just some cheese. Is that correct? I posted one since then about, Right before we went on the air, I posted, I was out with my chainsaw this morning, cutting some lumber up.

So if you want some cheese and some chainsaw images, meditative stuff, you need to follow Tom Green on YouTube, on Instagram, on Twitter, on TikTok. He's a refreshing, refreshing content in your feed, I promise that. Yeah, that cheese, by the way, was an AI, was an AI, a drawing that was created by when I wrote the word of cheese into that, what's it called? Dally. Dally, yeah, yeah. I wrote the word cheese into Daly and then I posted it and then I said cheese.

You know what's the BS thing about Dally? And we were actually, Sahill and I were just talking about this before, which is when you put something into Daly, Daly owns the rights to that content. Yeah, that is BS. Because a lot of times you would think that the, you know, word choice is really the creative because I wrote

I wrote comedy yesterday and into Dolly and it's a post right before the cheese and it drew this Picasso like drawing of a face in front of a microphone it looks like this beautiful

artistic thing right but I feel like it might have done that because it was confused by the word comedy and it didn't know how to draw comedy If you write cheese, it's going to draw cheese, right? That's pretty easy assumption to make. But comedy, how do you draw comedy?

And it did this really interesting, sort of almost like impressionistic Picasso-type painting of a, it looks like a figure or a microphone. And then I posted it on Instagram and said, comedy. And then of course, everybody's saying, wow, that's such a great art. You're such a great artist. And of course, I did not tell anybody that it was an AI computer. I did it, but I'm telling them now. So it's fine.

I had this idea that I thought it would be funny to go on and do an AI post every day for a week. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, show everybody that. Hold that up. Here's the picture. If you're on YouTube and you're watching this, this is the picture, the Picasso. And here's the, that's what it wrote. The brick of cheese.

There's the brick of cheese. Absolutely, yeah. Delicious cheese. The internet. We love it. Tom Green. We love you. Thanks for coming on.

We appreciate you. You're the man. Thanks, guys. Thank you, man. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you have any questions that you want featured in a future episode, email us at high at t-R-W-I-H.com. Leave us a review at Apple or Spotify to help us grow the reach of this podcast.

Until next time, we will see you soon.