TRIGGERnometry - Doug Stanhope on Drugs, Drink & Comedy

Episode Date: November 3, 2022

SPONSORED BY: easyDNS - domain name registrar provider and web host. Use special code: TRIGGERED for 50% off when you visit https://easydns.com/triggered/ Doug Stanhope is an American stand-up comedian, author and podcast host. See Doug's NYE Show in Las Vegas, and catch him in Australia next year! https://www.dougstanhope.com/tour-dates Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ | Channel ID: UCo_8zzSxKeL3arKWVuP8wdQ Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod​​​ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. 00:00 Intro 02:29 Doug’s Entrance into Comedy 07:54 Taking a Break from Stand-up 10:07 The Anti-Authoritarian Bend in Doug’s Show 16:41 Have Audiences Become More Entitled? 24:36 Why Doug Likes to Cover Controversial Topics  32:54 Performing while Intoxicated 43:28 Doug’s Influences as a Comic 46:21 Thoughts on Social Media 49:23 What's the One Thing We’re Not Talking About? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. Everyone in the States is angry at everyone and there's sides.

But when you go out in the world, you don't meet those people. I have to realize that my audience isn't on fucking Twitter all day. The actual asses and seats, the warm bodies have fucking lives. It's the best feeling when you have a bit that you know the audience is going to laugh at and then think, oh, that was wrong, but it's too late because you laughed because I'm right. And so like I write as a defense attorney. Okay, I'm going to take something that would go against the grain of the audience find a fucking loophole that makes perfect sense

like a defense attorney. Yeah. And then you can't handle the truth. I accidentally ate a bunch of gummies when I was cleaning out the fucking bar before football Sunday. And I thought, oh, this is a, must be a special bag of gummies.

You ate a bag of wheat gummies? I ate four. You ate four? 10 milligrams. What kind of state were you in? Well, it was weird because it was during when I was trying to do sober October. And that's why I was out cleaning on a Saturday night

because I was sober and I didn't know what to do with myself. I hate myself. I'm watching my podcast in my head. I'm watching what you're watching. And I'm like, just shut the fuck up, dude. Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constance of Kissing.

And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is a comedy great. Doug Stanhope himself, as you can probably tell, we are in the world's smallest hotel conference room. Doug Stanhope is about to join us in a second when we give him the green light. This episode is not for the claustrophobic. Doug Stanhope, welcome to Trichonometry.

Hi, sorry that we're in this fucking access room of the executive lounge. No, you're the superstar. How did you score this? How did you score this? How did you score the room at the last minute when you realized. We paid for it in advance.

We knew the fuck-up was going to happen that your hotel room wasn't going to be big enough. So we got a backup. But Doug, you're one of our favorite comics. It's great to have you on the show. Tell everybody how you got into comedy. Like, what was it that drew a tour? Nobody really cares.

Absolutely, nobody cares about how you can go to comedy. And no one has a good story about how I thought I was funny and I couldn't do karaoke and I couldn't do other things. No fucked up childhood, none of that? No, most comics had one of them. No, not really. My pretty tame childhood. I mean, I was the problem in my childhood.

Other people had a bad time because of me. I was a problem child, but not because of any kind of outside influence. I can't blame the parents. It just didn't, yeah. Because you've got like a unique style of comedy. You've forged your own path in many ways. How did you get about doing that? How did you start to create what we know is like Doug Stanhope style comedy?

I have no idea. It's been 32 years. So, yeah, I didn't start doing this. I wasn't some prodigy where I had opinions or something before my time. I was 23 and did masturbation jokes. whatever, titty bars and pornography. And we were talking about this, me and Hennigan. I'm very high, by the way,

and I've been doing this for the entire tour. So the show you saw last night, that's where it kind of went, all right, maybe too high last night. Like, I could not read the room. People were yelling at me to make jokes about the Queen. Well, yesterday, for people who were watching us back, It was the day the queen of the queens.

It's the day of her funeral pyre. Yeah. The funeral pie, that's not how we do things in England. Oh, really? You're fucking advanced. How progressive would be. To not just burn the body at the end of the tour. Imagine we just stuck the queen on a pie.

Just went all Viking and shit on it. The idea of a queen is as fucking antiquated as a funeral pyre. That's a good point. You might as well burn her in the town of the square. On the day of her funeral. Well, no, that's what a fucking funeral is for most people, is being burned alive, but they're dead. Yeah. They're burned dead.

They're burned dead, absolutely. Yeah. But anyway, so you ended in the North Sea. You ended your show with a joke that didn't cause silence, and you said, I thought we'd have a moment's silence for the queen and walked off stage. Did I say that last night? Yeah. Yeah, you did. Oh, shit.

That is funny. That's a great bit of ad lit. I mean, I don't remember the end of that show. That's the problem because I'm not a high guy. I've never been a pot guy and I started playing with it during the quarantine, just edibles. And then I did it on stage just as a tester coming into the UK in Detroit where I took it on stage when I started to go,

okay, if it goes poorly, I'll be at the end anyway. I'll just bail a little early. And it went great. And then we ran into edibles on the beginning of this tour. I'm like, so I did like full high day. It's the day we did the Have a Word podcast and that was fun. Like the whole day I was, and so I was high on stage.

I'm like, I'm getting high on stage every fucking night, which I never did in my whole career. So last night was the only time I went, eh, maybe too big of a room. Are you enjoying the whole edibles experience? Because I'll be honest, we all love an edible here. Yeah, I fucking enjoy writing. I actually enjoyed the process of writing

where when I had to come back after 18 months off I was writing a set by myself high and I just started writing like longhand like everything I'm saying and then I got like a heckler I'm writing a heckler heckling me and then I'm trashing the heckler and I'm laughing my balls off

like this is worth nothing this is just an imaginary show that I just wrote out long and yeah, I like the creativity and... It's like doing drugs and then doing an art form, which I think stand-up is, like, it's so much fun. The only problem is, like you alluded to before, is when it tips too far.

Like, I remember once... Well, it takes away some of your skills that you're... Like, I'm watching my brain react to a heckler, to someone shouting out, to me, bluffing a segue and I'm watching my brain watch itself almost like 3D imaging

and I'm just having a completely different experience on stage where but then you lose a skill like all right I heard that guy just scream again make vote of the queen how loud is that

do I need to address that and I'm watching my brain process all the things that are usually on airplane mode in your comic brain, you know what's happening, but I'm watching that happen. It was fucking great. Probably not so much for the audience. And Doug, you mentioned not doing stand-up for 18 months. What was that like?

Bliss. That's when I realized what I want to do with my life is absolutely nothing. You didn't miss it. You didn't miss the buzz. Not at all. Not at all. No. No.

I missed none of it. That's incredible because I stopped doing stand-up after the pandemic. I was like, this isn't good for me. That, like, the lifestyle is killing me, you know, traveling around and doing the show, I've got another thing that I really enjoy doing. So you really, but I always thought, I imagined you would, like, it would be the thing. You'd miss it. Like, crazy.

You've been doing this for 30 years, man. I know. At some point you go, hey, I think I've said everything that I need to say. I don't know how else to repackage this. But I did have a, I thrived during, but I bought that house. At that point, it was 15 years I'd lived there. And I didn't know where my shit was. Really?

And I just had a year and a half to go, okay, I'm going to fucking organize the Tupperware drawer. Like you just has 32 years of traveling. So you get home, maybe you have a couple months off at best. But you're just like dumping your bags, repack. packing your bags to go out again. That gave me a sense of home. That makes a lot of sense, man.

And listen, let's talk about your show a little bit because one of the things that you talk about in your current show is... How did you come up with trigonometry? It wasn't hard, man. Because when he said the name, I'm like, there's going to be a play on words. Is it trick, trick, trick, trick-triggerometry?

I go, that's fucking brilliant. And if you have a brilliant title, the album will follow. Yeah. And they're triggernometry. Well, we were trying to sort of say to people, we might have controversial conversations with different people. We wanted to be free, basically, to have whatever conversation we wanted.

So it's kind of a trigger warning in a way. Like we're saying, this might be offensive to something. Yeah, that's why I was wondering why you're asking me how I started comedy. I was a fuck about it. All right, what do you think about the Jews, though? No, but listen, like, I was going to ask you because in your show, you've got a very strong anti-authoritarian bent to the stuff you talk about. And I'm trying to downplay that now.

Why? Why? Because everyone's got a fucking opinion and like you have to balance what's going on with, like I used to be very anti-government until anti-government. Like, okay, you're doing it wrong. Like I'm trying to soft touch how to be anti-government. And I'm working on things that, again, the edibles fucking help create. Like, oh, I'm actually thinking creatively without forcing it because I have a tour coming up.

Yeah. But then you go, okay, now I have too much information and I don't fucking know. So I'm going with what I know right now, which is not shit. But everyone's got a fucking opinion, like overnight. And does that make comedy more? difficult the fact that everyone's got an opinion. Whereas before, like you'd go out and do some stuff and whatever it may be, most people would be like, okay, I'm going to listen. Whereas now they're like... I riffed on that last night above the whole... There was a construct of what's really

going on. If they said there's a... We're at war with Afghanistan. Everyone's on the same page that we're actually at war with Afghanistan. Now it's split into every news is fake news and And that's manipulated and that's slanted and you have no idea what the fuck. And then you realize, I don't care. None of this affects me. There's no truth anymore is what you're saying. That's, yeah. And I quote Roseanne Barr.

She said that to me where she, I was doing her podcast and she's got fucking cueing on Benson. And she knows she's mentally ill. And she goes, yeah, how do we do comedy anymore? there's no such thing as truth left. And that was the most important thing I heard during quarantine. So what is the path for a comedian now? How do you do jokes when everyone's got their own different version of reality? Well, talk about the shit that matters to you.

Talk about your life. If you're just talking about your opinion of what you hear, on mainstream media or not mainstream media because you're cooler than that and you still get someone else's opinion yeah maybe you should do something with your life

yeah well coming back to my anti-authoritarian question the reason I was asking you is that like the comics I grew up watching the Carlins and the Hickses they were pushing back against the authoritarianism that was coming from the Christian right in particular right they were pushing back against that

And the political landscape has changed so much now. It's kind of, you know, in America, you've got the Democrats there in power now. How does that affect all of the stuff? By your care. Yeah. Well, the problem is I've reached a saturation point where I've lived through almost everything. Like, I've never, none of us grew up in a day where everything's fine now. True.

It's always been the end of times on some level. and it just comes from more sources now. You can't get away from that. The world is fucking dying feed. I grew up with four channels, but they were of four channels of this is the most important election ever. Which one wasn't in hindsight?

Tell me which election you were wrong about that wasn't the most censorship, feminism, the 70s, with this sensitive man and pronouns. It was like, we don't want to be called miss or misses.

We want to be called Ms. Yeah, I lived through the 70s of fucking pronoun changes and yeah, they get fucking lippy and then it trails off. All right,

no one's really going to do that. It always blows me away. Like, every time I go to America, and I love America, I think it's a fucking great country. I think part of the reason we shit on it in this country is because we're jealous if I'm being honest.

But like, The fear porn that comes from American news broadcasters, it's another level. Yeah. And that whole Roseanne quote where I go, like, I don't even know, like, everyone in the States is angry at everyone and there's sides. But when you go out in the world, you don't meet those people. I mean, occasionally you'll see a maga hat or something or someone with a Prius with too many bumper stickers. But no, you're making me think that those people hate me. Like, the fear itself is constructed or it's not.

I don't know. Like, I have no way to base an opinion on. So I just talk about shit. And I know. Yeah. When we were in Nashville, we were getting some chicken. And there was a guy who heard that we had a foreign accent. And he said, how are you enjoying America, blah, blah, blah.

And we said, oh, we're actually quite enjoying. And he got so pissed. You have no idea. How can you like this fucking country's gun? That's what he was like. You know what I mean? That's weird. That's weird like people here expecting me to shit on the queen.

Disappointed customers. And this lady on fucking Twitter, I should have never looked at Twitter last night when I was really fucking high. And she's like, because the guy kept yelling out, talk about the queen. And she goes, in that guy. defense, he should have just talked about the queen, and that would have shut the guy up. And he's had a whole week to write material about the queen. The queen is not, she said, she should address the elephant in the room, which it's not my room. A queen doesn't fucking matter to me on any level in any part of my life.

When I did shit on monarchy, it was a special 10 years ago, I have nothing to say. just the fact that you're angry and expect like I had a deadline to write queen jokes like who the fuck does the audience think they are anymore Do you think audiences have become more entitled

Yeah You do Not mine generally Because I do have a very niche chunk of the pie And no one comes in and fucks with me But yeah Audiences

Since comedy begins became, like, since they could take down comics, I don't know when that started. And we don't have a lot of crossover comics here. I don't know how much your social media. How many comics do you know American comics that you only know because of a Me Too or a canceled culture or said the wrong thing?

Like, how many American comics do you know that you wouldn't have known if they hadn't got in trouble, which means sold more? tickets and got more famous. Not a lot probably, is the truth. Bill Burr, Joe Rogan, a few, you know.

If I didn't know Sattowitz, I'd know him now. I mean, I've never met him, but I'm aware of his legend. But I know him now just because of getting fucking canceled in Edinburgh at the fringe. Have you ever seen the shows? No.

He's fucking brilliant. He's an incredible comic, man. Life. His stuff cannot be on TV. Yeah. He just can't. Yeah. Life is incredible.

And I've heard about the backstory and his personality. I know guys like that. Yeah, definitely bucket list to see Jerry Saddle. Oh, that's incredible. Another thing that asshole kept yelling out between talk about the queen and then you just yell, Jerry Sadowitz. And I'm fucking high, like blind and one eye high. I can hear and you can't see shit and it's the hammersmith. So if you're going to take fucking high chances and ramble,

Don, do it at the biggest place that you ever play ever. Hey, Francis. If you were a member of the public, would you like the opportunity to ask incredible guests like Bill Burr, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Adam Carolla, Brett Weinstein, John Barnes, Douglas Murray, Nigel Farage and Lionel Shriver, your own questions? You bet I would. And what do you think the best way to do that would be? Uh, probably stalking, mate.

You'd have to corner the... in the supermarket, probably run near like the sort of frozen food aisles, and then just bark questions at them before they can escape. Not the American ones, as they have guns. And you'd have to be extra careful with the females, as that's how I got in trouble last time. Do you really imagine you're going to get Douglas Murray near the frozen food aisle? If you want to ask our incredible guest questions

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Only $7 a month for all that incredible content. Trigonometry. Dot locals.com. See you there, guys. It's interesting that you say that, that people, their audiences have become more demanding, because pre-pandemic, I started comedy in 2009, and I gradually noticed audiences change. And a part of it was like, is it just me? Like people, not everyone, the vast majority were always the same. But there was always that little pocket that just got more and more and more vocal when they were like upset about something or they were demanding something. Yeah, again, we don't really have that problem in my audiences.

Because at a certain ticket price, people aren't. just shuffling in. Yeah. Oh, what's going on here? Oh, yeah, a private party, basically. Yeah. I'm not accepting new fans for a while. You're going to have to start filling out fucking applications. Because people

know at this point what they're going to see. That's like an underground garage. But I do know social media is so fucked that yeah, you will get people

but that's where I have to realize that my audience isn't on fucking Twitter all day the actual asses and seats the warm bodies have fucking lives and they don't sit around

fighting these fake fights which most of them are so I don't know how much my act has changed because of oh yeah guide me somewhere that was me

No, no, no, it's fine. I guess you're insulated from all this bullshit to some extent by virtue of where you are. Do you feel, and do you feel like you've had to change your act in any way? Are you just doing you and that's it? No, I look back in stuff I have filmed over the years and there's a lot of it where I go, oh, shit. I, there's a word or whatever that it's completely away from the point of what I was saying. the point I was making that they'd never hear the point because they heard the word

right so yeah you look back and go I've got I hate that that whole thought is lost because I demanded to save a word but that's the problem isn't it Doug it's like when somebody looks at material that was done 15 or 20 years ago and they're like well in 2022 this is unacceptable and you say to yeah but it's not 22 for when that bit was filmed whenever it was. Yeah, again, I am just scraddling where I am never going to be famous enough to be cancelled. Because nobody knows you'd have to,

if you have to explain who the person is, then they're not cancelled. Right. So you think people getting, when they're getting cancelled, you mentioned Jerry Sadowitz or whatever. It's quite often, whatever the intention. literally got canceled. Remember, canceled culture is this

all enveloping term that doesn't quite make sense with every situation. I wish I had a better fucking phrase to re-coin it. But what was the question? This show was canceled. Oh, literally.

Yes, it was literally canceled where he was doing a run at the Fringe Festival and evidently someone said, I don't fucking know. But I did do know I read it and went, oh, Jerry Saddo's tickets just went up in price. And rightfully so. Yeah.

Yeah. Do you ever find yourself, like, because I love you as a comic. You're brilliant. And you tend to go for the topics that are more controversial, the hot button topic. Is there an attraction to you for wanting to hit that, or is it you just think, fuck it. Well, that's what's interesting to us. And I'm guessing rules still apply that in a green room, comics who are tired of fucking Pavlam.

Yeah, the first shit we talk about is awful things in a green room. Right. Yeah. The same way cops are, you know, firefighters, gallows humor is what they call it. Yeah, we have gallows humor naturally because we've seen every other lighter form of comedy and let's go down to the kick fucking part.

Whatever. And is it the challenge of making something like that funny because it's more challenging? Or is it just that? Well, you have to be interested first, I guess. You have to have a point of view. I mean, you can make up a point of view. And I know a million comedians are doing it now because it sells tickets. But, yeah, if I don't have a belief in what I'm saying.

And there's bits that I've tried to do. I know this is coming up. Prison, just the whole prison institution I've never had a strong bit about. And if there is one cause, I would be behind. It's A, the unjustly incarcerated. And just the prison system, the justice system itself. But then I just get too angry and I don't have jokes.

And you can't make it funny. Yeah, I've never seen the end. and that's why we have to trip tonight. Do you have any ketamine? That's interesting. But you talked at the beginning about how you started out and you were doing all the usual stuff that everybody does, particularly 30 years ago, all the masturbation jokes and all of that.

When and how was the shift for you, when actually I'm going to go in a different... Did that just evolve or was there... Yeah, it just evolved with... Like when you see character acts and you go, oh, this is really funny, but where do you go from that? If you're talking about your life anyway. And when I was doing jerk-off jokes when I was 23, that's my life. Jerking off and chasing pussy.

That's all you knew. So I was honest to myself. Yeah, it's when I started growing up and reading things and stuff. me, oh, hey, wait, world's kind of fucked up more than that girl wouldn't blow me at karaoke. What do you read? What do you read about? Now, though, pretty much, except for Sam Talent's book, Running the Light, which I know is coming over here, because a few people, Bobby Mayer said, oh, my roommate got that and I'm going to fucking read it next. It's fiction, but it's about comedy specifically.

parts of comedy that you know oh my god it's it's as good as fear and loathing in Las Vegas and that good of those that well written and it came out as the same time as my book and I spent more time promoting that book because I read it I never read fiction it's mostly nonfiction anything that reading another prison book hoping I'm gonna strike a chord of something funny in the most depressing shit ever And is that the challenge for you to get, to make the most depressing shit ever, which is, you know, the taboos subjects, which is a really tough, difficult subject and make it funny? I don't have a challenge anymore, but it's the best feeling when you have a bit that you know the audience is going to laugh at and then think, oh, that was wrong. but it's too late because you laughed because I'm right.

And so like I write as a defense attorney. That's what I would do in a perfect world if there was no comedy. I would be a defense attorney and find all the fucking holes in your argument. So that's really interesting. So what do you mean by that? You write like a defense attorney.

It's what you just said finding the holes. Yeah, so find out the holes. Find the loopholes in, okay, follow the mob. Yeah. And then go, why is the mob wrong here? And then deconstruct that. If I had any material about the queen, there was the reverence for dead people.

Like, why? So let's write your queen material now. But so it's so interesting. So you go with the mob, you see what the mob believe, or the group of people, with the general consensus. and then you pick the holes in it in order to create the comedy.

My favorite bits have been where, okay, I'm going to take something that would go against the grain of the audience, find a fucking loophole that makes perfect sense, like a defense attorney. Yeah. And then you can't handle the truth. Yeah. That's what I used to enjoy doing as well.

It's a great feeling. It's also that, you know, when I think of it that way, the audience is also in a place where if they do laugh at the wrong thing, how much did the, we should interview the audience sometime. How much pressure are you under to not laugh at a specific joke because you feel outside pressure, oh, if I laugh at that, I could be canceled as well as a human being? I wonder, because cancel culture, me too, has only affected the famous people. Well, I used to remember, I used to watch people in the audience, and sometimes people would laugh at a joke that was of that time, and then they'd look around. You could literally watch them checking,

and then suddenly there was, oh, I'm one of the few people laughing, and then they won't laugh at the next one anymore. But there was a slow burn as you age when you've been my age, We're okay, yeah, we slowly didn't say that anymore. Like, we just kind of over the years. Now it's in a fucking week. Wait, I said what? And now it's the worst thing.

I can't keep up with their kids. Yeah, it's speeded up. It is speeding up. And it's certain words. It just feels like certain words, like, largely it was fine to say this word. And now you're like, it's like bame. I don't know if.

But I feel like it. Like, I'm so old that I remember when f*** meant a bundle of sticks. But it did. It was a different day at age. There's the nagroney. All right. There we go. So, but you don't feel under any kind of pressure at all because you've got your own audience.

Or is there still that kind of, do you ever get that kind of nagging sensation of like, is this going to be the one time where they're going to get? me or someone's going to get out right? Oh, no, last night. I go, this might be the time I shouldn't have been high on this tour. And I love the fact that I'm making progress by trying to adapt from a liquor place of intoxicant to a plant-based intoxicant. You're evolving.

Right now, yeah, but they're overlapping right. Right now, it's your high and drunk. And, yeah, last night, probably then I should have probably dialed it back a little. But you're not cancel. You're still going to do your stuff. Yeah. And that's interesting. So you're starting to prefer the plant-based intoxication

because I used to love it. It's just literally in the last week, every night, I go, no, I did one time high on stage. I loved it, and I've been high on stage every night. And last night's the first time I went, yeah, I probably didn't remember to finish a lot of the, Stories I started. I might have fucked that gig up.

But it was just one blemish in otherwise stellar week. So here's the big question. What are you going to do next time? I guess I'm going to have to find me a weed guy to follow me around because it's still illegal here in the UK. What do you think about that? What do I think about it? I just started getting high as an old man because it's legal, because they're everywhere.

That's how I did start literally is I accidentally ate a bunch of gummies when I was cleaning out the fucking bar before football Sunday and I thought, oh, this is a must be a special bag of gummies because you ate a bag of weed gummies. I ate four.

You ate four of 10 milligrams. What kind of state were you in? Well, it was weird because it was during when I was trying to do sober October and that's why I was out cleaning on a Saturday night because I was sober and I didn't know what to do with my job.

So I'm out there cleaning up the fucking bar for football Sunday when people come over and there was a small bag of gummies. I thought they were someone brought and I just ate them and then my friend comes and go you didn't notice like this the Jamaican writing on the bag and the pot leaves. No, I just saw there's four gummies left. So I ate him because I'm trying to fucking. Yeah, that's how it started. And you had a good football Sunday then. Yeah.

And I've really enjoyed this, I forget what we were talking about. We were talking about weed. Which is kind of appropriate. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's good to see it's having the effect, though. No, it's really been good.

I don't know, we're talking about last night, but fuck last night. But you know what I actually really enjoy about weed? It doesn't have the edge that alcohol has. You know, alcohol? Like, I don't know if you get this. but it's got the darkness to it. You know what I mean? Yeah.

The next day with the bleakness and the darkness, and sometimes you wake up and you... I have not been hung over except for today, and that was more a weed fucking, almost like a k-hole of weed today. And on a day off, thank God. But I have not been hung over this whole tour. I have not gotten into that place where you're like,

oh, fuck, I can't get that sleep back. Every day is going to suck because this is going to be on my back. So, yeah, I haven't had that. That's great. Next thing, you're going to be joining the gym. Don't see that happening. That's not a side effect of weed as I want to do crunches. But no, I just find that.

And I'd love to get your opinion on this as someone who is a drinker and enjoys drink. To me, it's the worst drug. It's the worst drug, surely. Yeah, but I got good at it. It's kind of, if you were an Olympian and at some point, right before you turned into fucking Caitlin instead of Bruce, you thought, ah, shit, I should have done luge. Yeah. I get a name for myself by doing fucking discus and decathlon or whatever fucking Bruce Jenner did. What if he decided I want to be a woman and I should have done luge?

What's luge? The point is, I'm a drunk, but I should have done different drugs with my life. But this is the one I get good at, and it's the one I'm known for, and I'm going to stick with the broad that brought me. So you're not going to use this as an opportunity, you know, your 50s in order to explore the other drugs. You're not going to try mushroom. We're not going to see Doug Stah. Oh, no, I did my very fair share of hallucinogens early on in life when it was. easy to do because he didn't have a bunch of baggage now.

And did that have an effect on your comedy, hallucinians? Absolutely. What was it? It's just the freedom of mind where you're just following thoughts to the... Hanigate and I drove we did... This is your manager. Yeah. The Scotsman.

He... I thought he was Irish. Irish. That did not go that well. Oh, no, he hates the Irish, he hates the English, and he hates the Scots. Don't we all? I mean, that just sounds like a... He hates himself as much as he hates everyone, and he hates everyone from this country,

but he has different reasons. Anyway, we drove five hours. One of the days we didn't take a train. We took a five-hour car service, and he said up front, because he knows I hate music. asked the guy who's about to drive us five hours if he could do this without his fucking stupid music on because I like to think and I really enjoy we didn't talk for five hours

not the driver not me and Brian for five hours on a day trip because I like thinking that much my fucking head is always a source of entertainment for me or a problem whatever it is but it's always on it And I fucking hate music because it interrupts my thoughts, which are, what the fuck am I talking about? Don't you have power to shut this down? I asked you about hallucinogens and how they change the comedy because I've never taken hallucinogens. But my understanding is it kind of opens your mind a lot, right?

Yeah. Why don't you just make a part two? And then you guys, we shut this down. You go fucking trip. I would demand if I had kids that at some point before graduation, they trip. Because you don't fucking know anything about life. No. There is that magical experience when you trip that you suddenly look around at nature and you go,

oh, this is fucking beautiful. And you just don't have that or maybe not. Doug didn't have that. Well, no, as I've gotten older where you go, okay, being high and I, I, I gave high lots of chances when I was a teenager. And now that I'm old high, and I go, oh, this makes music sound even better. But now I know that I know that music sucks.

So I feel like I'm being tricked by the drug. Okay. The Marrakesh Express. This song sucks and I'm singing it out loud. And I'm embarrassing myself because I'm new to the drug. I had that experience with ecstasy. I'm like, I used to listen to the electronic music, you know, like the whole raves scene dance,

and you're like, this music sounds shit when you're sober. If you need to take a pill to make the music sound good, that's a problem. Yeah, then just shut off the fucking music. And if you can't entertain yourself. That is a good point. So what do you think, like, when you go on those car journeys, you talk about your thoughts?

What do you think about? Is it the comedy that you're trying to write? Is it a bit? Is it questions? Could we're trying to? to recreate a dream you had last night, another benefit to the weed, sleep so good. And my fucking dreams are the best highs. And I try to manipulate my dreams.

And they're boring to talk about it. You really have to be an insular person to enjoy your dreams. I hate myself. I'm watching my podcast in my head. I'm watching what you're watching. And I'm like, just shut the fuck up, dude. What would you ask you if you were doing this podcast right now? I don't know.

The troll me? Every time someone trolls you, like, I would, if you could get paid to be a troll, I was way better at trolling, upsetting, pranking people than I was ever as a comedian. And if there was a way to do it. I know it's awful and wrong. and that's why school shootings happen. Everything about it is wrong, but I was so fucking good at it.

And now you go, why would I do that to someone? Yeah. Or you could do it. I mean, if you want to monetize trolling, you start a YouTube show called Trigonometry. Yeah, you guys get to teach me about monetizing. Who's your sponsors?

Well, we don't know who's going to be in this episode. Yeah, no. The Manscape. Yeah. VPNs and people like that. Yeah. So use promo code Stanhope. All of their...

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Dice Clay was the one that got me to actually do stand-up. I would repeat his first album. Everyone my age knew every word of that. Fucking this. But don't you suck a good dick. I don't. It was perfect at the time. And we're kind of at that time again.

Everything being cyclical. Dice Clay, Sam Kinnis and all the outlaws of comedy, fucking bitch. They came off the heels of 10 years of Jerry Seinfeld and Paul Reiser and Ellen DeGeneres and watch up with airplane food. And this was the refreshing break from was Dice Clay, fuck you and Sam Kinnis shit. Oh, oh, yeah, it's because you had fucking 10 years of really boring fucking benign comedy. And that spurred that. So when you bitch about cancel culture, just think of it as a business deal like oh, okay now we can maybe have maybe genres of comedy rather than comedy club. They don't have music club. They have different subgenres and maybe okay I'm a woke comedy night and it's a safe space. There's nothing wrong with that.

Like the fucking simpletons that yell out, talk about the queen, that try to give you comedy advice. Well, this is bullshit, woke comedy. Comedy should be about everything. No, comedy should be fucking put in a, so you don't walk into comedy that you hate. It shouldn't be just labeled comedy.

Well, we have that. There's a, there is a woke comedy night in the UK. We also have comedy unleashed in London, which is like, say, whatever you want, make whatever the jokes you want.

It's pretty limiting when you look at the genres of music, which is symphony and mumble rap and EDM and fuck this and that. There's a million. And we have woke

and fuck you. Yeah. Which is splitting people into fucking sides yet again and party lines and it all. I agree with you because I was never a fan

of the woke stuff. I was, by the way, never a fan of the overly offensive stuff either. I was sort of leaning towards that but not really doing that. But I never thought woke comedy should be like banned

or whatever. I just, I don't enjoy it. Other people enjoy, let them go and see them. That's what, again, when the audience thinks they're part of the fucking conversation, like they know what you do. That lady on Twitter that I should have never looked at Twitter.

He should have just What do you make of social media? Sorry. I can't even remember if I said this on the podcast or before when we were talking. But the lady that was... You did. Yeah, you did, you did.

You mentioned social media a lot and you talked about how people are divided online, but actually when you go out into the real world, most people aren't. So do you think that is a product of social media? Social media has made it that way, that people are screaming and... It's made me that way, because, again, it's all your... your own perception of the world and how you craft that. Yeah, if you sit on social media and you're not even aware that, oh, this is not real life. I at least am aware enough. Okay, that's not real life. But it still sucks in. Maybe people,

I have no idea. You'd have to ask everybody their goddamn opinion. And that's it, isn't it, that we just go on this device, we get sucked in, and then we go, go, oh, this is someone's opinion. And you're like, probably isn't, they probably just wrote that. They didn't even think about it. But at the same time, I go to a bar and I see a bunch of people talking that probably work together in an office, a situation I've never really been in in my life. And they're communicating. You go, all right, every one of those people's lives is different than my perception of even my own life. And there's no consensus. This is the problem with the high part is you just start breaking shit down like you're just thinking and you go,

oh, I'm on a four cameras shoot right now. And I'm just sitting here doing what I'd be doing in my head. Don't we have questions from the audience? No, we do, actually. Why don't we go to the... Shit. Doug, I am feeling high just sitting next to you right now. I was sober when I walked in there.

Well, you guys almost killed your waters. Yeah, we did almost. kill the waters. Absolutely. There's one question, so you had the dice clay. Were you a Hicks fan, Bill Hicks? Not till later on. I had to be hipped to someone who knew Hicks. Yeah. So, yeah, later on and, yeah, enjoyed Hicks. Yeah. But it was not, yeah, it was this stupid shit that got me in a comedy. And go ahead. Do you watch comedy? Who's your favorite? No, you don't. Fuck no. Yeah. of all time is David Tell.

Hands down. And it's weird to be at an age where you can pull a superlative when someone says, what's your favorite movie or a song? I don't know. I'm fucking old. I had a million favorite songs and best friends, but best comic. Yeah. Hands down.

Attel, Mitch Headberg, second place. Well, you're going to enjoy Jerry Satterwoods whenever you see him in that case. Yeah. But anyway, man, we do have much. questions from the audience, but before we do, we always end with the same question, which is complete free hit, which is what is the one thing that we're not talking about

that you think would really should be. Well, I think I addressed that earlier. The prison system. Tell us more about that. Why do you feel so strongly about it? It hurts everyone. It's one of those things I know this fucking comedy brain, I know if I could

attack that bit from a conservative angle that makes conservatives, mega people feel a little bit emasculated for, like why would you allow this, go like pro-anti-government, why would we, because prison just makes communities worse. It makes everything worse. There's nothing rehabilitative in it.

There's everything about it sucks. That's the problem. It's like if I say, tell me one song you want me, to play right now and you go well I'm fucking an adult I've heard a million songs like what's the problem with prison

fucking everything and it makes society worse and you're proud to pay for it do you think we shouldn't have prisons at all there's going to be a better idea there's fucking writers out of work that are comedy writers I don't know

if I had the idea I'd quit comedy If I could go full bore on this is a better idea. But almost everything. And I don't know if I grew up thinking eventually I'm going to go to jail and get diabetes because those were threats. You're going to keep eating candy. You're going to fucking get diabetes. You're like the Polish prison just in case you one day end up in it.

Yeah, with diabetes. Yeah. You keep in class of trouble. You're going to wind up in jail. You keep eating candy, you're going to fucking wind up with diabetes. Yeah. Now I'm terrified of the fucking wrongly accused. Innocence Project.

If I die on this tour, which every time I'm in the UK, I know I'm going to die on this loneliest fucking planet, horrible place. But Innocence Project, that's where you send your donations. All right. Well, you've just had an introduction to the wonderful mind of Doug Stanhope. Doug, you're on tour at the moment. You're going to be doing stuff in Las Vegas, I think. Yeah, it's...

It's on your website. It's all on your website. Thanks so much for joining us. We're going to ask you a couple of questions from our supporters. Thanks for watching. Oh, we're going to Patreon? Yeah. Good.

I save some fucking good shit. Hey, non-Patriot people. I saved the good shit for... Go ahead. Donate. Donate now. No other guest has done that. Yeah. No other guest has done that.

Yeah, absolutely. Join our local. We'll see you there with a couple of your questions for Doug. See you there. Thanks for watching and we'll see you very soon. We normally end it on a more professional note. Oh my God, this fuck, no, but what's going to happen next? Exactly.

No one knows. It's going to be your locals. Fucking check it out. This is a question from Icky Ike, who says, how hard is it for you to perform sober?