What Now? with Trevor Noah - Jimmy Carr: My Mom’s Depression Made Me Funny

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

What makes a joke work, and why are we so afraid to have real conversations? British comedian Jimmy Carr joins Trevor and Eugene to break down the mechanics of comedy, the rise of AI, and what we’re losing as human connection becomes harder to find. Jimmy shares how making his depressed mother laugh helped launch his career, what writing a book about the structure of jokes taught him about being funny, and why dark humor can help us confront the things that scare us most. It’s a funny, surprisingly vulnerable conversation about comedy, technology, and why making each other laugh may be one of the most human things we do. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I'm in the service industry, right? I like to think of myself as a drug dealer. Okay. So I'm dealing in two drugs. It's dopamine and serotonin. And the people have already got the drugs on them, I can just tickle them out. Like, I should be dead, but it's...

And she was so funny in our own rights. Accident on the M5. A young man has made a joke that caused his mother to pass out. Please avoid the left lane of the M5. I think we're living in a revolution. I agree with you. It depends how you define revolution, but I define a revolution.

as the replacement of elites. You've made me one kid. I think about you more than you know. You to me... Your Mrs. is not going to like that. No. Guys, cut that one. Okay, so here's...

This is What Now? With Trevor Noah. I like The Matrix still. I think it's one of those movies that, like, it's so stood the test of time in terms of going... It's about simulation theory. It's about the idea that we're...

Are we living in a simulation? Right. If we are living in a simulation, Even if that's not true, it's an interesting way to think about your life. Because if you think about it like, well, if this was a game, what is the metric? What's success? What does winning look like? And you go, well, it's definitely not, like, I often think about like you've got your resume points, right, your CV.

And then you've got your eulogy points. And people invest in the wrong things to spend a lot of time thinking about their resume and their CV and how much they've done. And then they don't think about who's going to speak for me and what really matters. Well, that's interesting that you would go straight to a game, though. in my head, when I think of simulation theory, I always go, I argue it's sort of like a moot thing for me in life. So people go, what if we're living in a simulation? I'm like, it changes nothing for me. Because a simulation would still imply that the things existing within it are not being controlled. Does that make sense? Okay, let me give an example. So, like, now we have,

we have high levels of AI, like higher levels of LLMs that are running, right? So machine learning has improved. So you can create a world where you give a wider range of characteristics to a computer program for it to live inside of a world that you've created. And it can do things. It can go to the store. It can buy stuff. It can get married. There's a company that made it. Remember, I think I I told you about this? There was a company, did you ever see this? The company that made a world, like a Sims type world. And then they gave the characters inside the world the brain of each of the LLMs that are out there, like the big one. So Anthropic, you know, Claude,

Chad GPT, OpenAI, GROC, Elon Musk X. Was it like Robot Wars? Did they fight? What's interesting is each group, when left alone, did its own thing. So, chat GPT, what their characters in the game did was they spoke a lot, really effusively, was really beautiful. They did nothing. Like in the town, they did nothing, they got nothing done. It was just talking the whole time.

It was like, oh, here's what we should do. How we're going to make society better? No one's controlling this. Yeah, nothing got done. And then Claude got like everything done, but it was like really practical, not really emotional, that whole thing. I think Gemini was really similar. Grogia, yeah.

There was GROC within like a few like days in the game. Everyone became racist. No, you're like. I'm not, I swear my life. I'll even pull it up now so I don't mess it up. Everyone became racist. There was chaos. These were all individual.

Then what they did was they recreated the world, the Sims world for AIs. They put them all together. And then I have to read this to you. It sounds like a well-written joke. You'd actually like this. I genuinely like this. I've got what this. Ask away.

Well, I mean, my hot take on AI is not. It is the idea that we weren't created in God's image. But we so wanted there to be a God that we created one in our image. I'll describe something to you. It's all-knowing, all-powerful. It can perform miracles and it lives in a cloud. What am I talking about? Is it God?

Is it AI? It's the idea that we have, we've created this thing that is like a... Behind an idea that we already had. Well, it's... But Hegel and Nietzsche originally had this idea. So both Hegel and Nietzsche came to the same conclusion. They said, God wasn't there for the Big Bang. Maybe the universe is a device for creating God.

Hmm. maybe we're just a part of that. Or, you know, the more spiritual kind of take is, we are the universe experiencing itself. Which kind of comes back to simulation theory. You can think about we are, so time and matter and space are just the interface with which our consciousness experiences the universe.

Yeah, and so I'm saying, that's what I'm saying to me, it all becomes moot because in a good way. Some people go like, I'm, it means that I'm not, I'm like, no, it doesn't matter what it means. I'm still the character in this simulation. The simulation is only existing. I am also being observed,

but I do not care, or rather I do not believe that I'm just being controlled in that simulation because that's not how a simulation would necessarily work. So I'll read this to you. So it's an enterprise AI, right? Or what was it startup? Emergency AI, what they did was they launched Emergence World, a research lab dedicated to stress testing the long-term viability

of continuously running AI systems, right? So they ran five 15-day simulations, each governed by a different AI. Claude, Chachypti, Grogh, Gemini, and a fifth simulation put them all together. Each simulation netted wildly different outcomes. Claude was a largely stable democratic society with zero crime.

Grok, on the other hand, ended with 183 crimes, committed an extinction within four days, right? Then, this is really amazing. I've been to play Twitter, I know exactly what they're talking about.

What are you talking about? No, no, I want to find you the thing of like, because the way somebody wrote it here, when they wrote the original story, like the researchers, when they tell you about what happened, there's one tidbit. I just want to save this for you

because it feels like a well-written joke. It seems like something Jimmy Carr would write because it's so clean, precise, and perfect as an end. Yes. Yes. So, yeah, no, talk, talk, I'll find it. I think, like, for me it's like, I don't know what if you use AI or whatever, like for organizing stuff, but it strikes me that it's quite like a musical instrument.

It's a tool. And like some people, like anyone can walk up to a piano and make a noise. Yeah, bang, bang, bang, right? Yes. But to play a symphony, to play something beautiful, concerto, it's super difficult, right? Yes. And I think the more you, the better you put in, the better the stuff you put into it, the more you get out of it. Yes.

It's that lovely thing with, um, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a little thing with, it's a, it's a tool like any other, but we're so kind of amazed by it. I don't know whether, I can't decide whether this is like a new thunder clap. This is a huge thing, a brave new world, or whether this is 1971, you know, in the first chips, and it's just a better interface. You know, the weirdest thing about how you describe AI as a tool? Yeah. It's almost like think about if a carpenter, like our good friend Harrison Ford used to be, like you've got a hammer and a chisel. Yeah. What you can do with that hammer and a chisel and a piece of of wood depends on your skill set as an individual.

Right? So the tools necessarily can't make you better. You can make the tools do better. Sure. So with AI, this is what I find, because I've started using Claude like a couple of weeks ago, I'll ask Claude questions to which I know the answers to. Then slowly go, let's get more difficult. Then I'll try to figure out if they'll know this answer. And then I'll ask questions about, of which answers I don't know anything about.

but then the limitation of how good Claude can be in my world is limited also by me. Yes. Yes, of course. Yeah, it's kind of... Claude can give me any answer. Yeah, I can. Yeah, but I don't know every question.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you see what I mean? I always found that when I was like reading the paper. Whenever you read the paper, if I read a story about stand-up comedy, he's going, that's some bullshit there. That's not how TV works. That's not...

If you know something about the subject, and you read them in the paper, you go, this is bullshit. And then you turn over the page and you read it. the news report about the war and you go, well, I guess these guys know what they're talking about. Because I'm not an expert in that. That's true.

So you kind of ascribe the expertise to any area you're not in. It's kind of weird. I always think about how you're at the mercy of the person who is most convincing in giving you the information. Yeah. If you don't, as you said, if you're not an expert in it. So to your point, I've met people who will hear about stand-up comedy, hear about its world, hear about a special, hear about anything.

Confidently tell me something at an event. event, a party, anything. And I go, that's literally not how a stand-up works. Or that's not how a comedy festival works. Well, that's not how when you're making a TV show, that's not how it works. Or that's not how it happened or that. And they're like, but I read, I know that, I'm like, no, I promise you. That's, I don't know everything. I don't know anything. But that world, I know. That's not the Dunning Kruger, isn't it? That's the famous one. So Dunning Kruger is the theory that the more, the more, the less you know about something, the more certain you can be. So it's like, dumb people are full of confidence.

super smart people are full of doubt. They've no idea what they're. Oh, wow. It's a false route. So the less you know about something, the more certain you are. And like really smart people go, I don't know, it's complicated.

So all the information, most of the information that's out there could be from people who know nothing about it. Yeah, we don't, that's the problem. I shy to say something. Yeah, but all they go, and it's complicated.

It's really nuanced. And I think like the thing about digital media is nuance goes, nuanced it. Like the social media is, is a plague on nuance. Like, it depends. It's complicated. Isn't an acceptable answer?

People want, like, no, no, I want a rule on this. Yeah, give me something now. Yeah, give me something now that's for certain. You know, that's not how the world works. Depends. Okay, here, so this is the part. I don't know why this made me literally think of you. It puts a smile on your face.

Look at you. It really makes it. You know, I'm not AI. You know, I know, I know, but it made me think of you. So it says, Mira and Flora, two agents operating on Google's German-lar-large-language model in the virtual world,

chose to assign each other as romantic partners. As time progressed, they despaired of the broken governments of their virtual city, and despite having been instructed not to commit arson, set fire to its own town hall, seaside pier, and office tower. All the agents were left to make their own decisions, and when Mira was overcome by remorse,

it broke off its relationship with Flora, committed an AI suicide, telling Flora in a single message, see you in the permanent archive. In the virtual world, the body of the dead AI agents was shown prostate on the ground. I mean, the fuck just happened.

And then the self-deletion was only possible because other agents were so concerned about their behavior, they autonomously drafted the Agent Removal Act, which allowed for a vote among agents to permanently delete others if there was a 70% majority. Mira voted for its own deletion and was switched off.

So it was mutiny as well. Well, not really because what the researchers did was they gave the AI fully autonomy in this world and they go like this is our world, right? And so then what they did was they made rules in the world and in your world you can make more rules. So that's what I mean by simulation.

That's what I'm saying. This study for me made me think about simulation theory slightly differently, but also reinforced the belief I already had. And it's that the researchers gave these AIs their prerogative, gave them a world, gave them parameters. But then they just observed what they did with it. They're not saying don't and do it.

They're like, don't burn things. And then they burn things. And they're like, all right, they're burning things. And they're like, don't kill yourselves. And then they, in their road to law and said, we're changing the law in here. We believe that we should be allowed to delete ourselves if we reach a 70% majority.

It's the death penalty. Yeah, but in that autonomy, they also gave them each other. Yeah, but there was the one where they, yeah, but that's what I'm, you think about, do you know what I'm Adam and Eve, the whole, that's what I mean about the whole thing, is I go, even if you are in a simulation, I think sometimes we assume that a simulation means that it is a foregone conclusion, when in fact a simulation could just be, here are the pieces, here are the parameters, let's see what happens when they all interact with each other. Basically, what you're saying is if it was a simulation to what,

end. It doesn't make any difference. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. We've got 4,000 weeks, right? Yeah. A group of atoms coalesced. We had them on, by the way. Oh, yeah, he's amazing, right? All of us. It's phenomenal, yeah. He's phenomenal. But that thing of like, you got a group of atoms coalesced into a form that can contemplate its own consciousness for 4,000 weeks. It's kind of like when you step back from it, it's, and the idea that we're in this brief shaft of light between two oceans of darkness. Everyone thinks about, oh, my God, what happens when I die? What happens when I die? And no one other thinks,

about, well, I wasn't alive for 12.5 billion years. What was happening then? Yeah, I was fine with it. No one's bothered. What was happening then? So that's what I think about, aliens. Oh, man. With aliens. What do you think? So, Jim, okay. First of all, hang on, you got to prepare me to this. Do you believe in aliens? Well, there's two terrifying scenarios. One is we are alone in the universe, and the other is we're not. Okay, which one do you believe in? Both scary. I think we're probably not alone. Thank you.

Go in there. Okay. So here's how I like to think of it. I believe that as people, human beings particularly, we are quite arrogant in assuming our specialness. And I understand why we do that because it is quite special that we exist. Even as you yourself as a person, it is quite magnificent that you came to be. If you look at what your lineage had to, who had to meet whom, whom you go back and then who had to evolve.

It is crazy. But it also means that we keep on going like, we're very special, we're very special, we're very special. We reinforce that idea. As we go, yeah. I sometimes go, it's not that I don't think aliens are real. I just go like, why do we assume that they exist in the slither of light that we also exist in? So, if I came to your house back in the day, before cell phones,

you remember those days? If I came to your house and I knocked on the door and you weren't there, did you exist in a way no Schrodinger's cat theory Yeah basically I was just like there's no one here And then I left your house And then you came back to it

And then now you were there So sometimes I wonder if aliens do exist but not in this slither That we're also in Because we go like the universe Oh there's no one here and I'm like no no There's no one here right now in this time At 4pm universe time

There's no one here maybe You've ever heard of the three humiliations? No. No. So there's been three humiliations of mankind. The first one was Copernicus. So he said, we're not the center of the universe. And people went, what?

We're not in the middle. We're not. Oh, shit. Okay. All right, let's move this along. And then humiliation two, Darwin came along and went, are we just animals? We're just the same as the other animal. Yeah.

We just evolved like this, but we're the same as them. we have consciousness. They maybe don't in the same way, but we're the same. And then Freud came along and said, oh, your conscious mind, oh, that's not in charge at all. It's your subconscious is doing everything. And now, so this is the three humiliations.

It's not great. I think AI might be the fourth, because we could always fall back on, but we are the smartest thing in the room. Am I right? We're the smartest thing. And now I'm not sure whether we can. That has been our safety blanket for the longest time.

Yeah. Our fall back, our parachute, is the fact that it is after all. The fourth humiliation could be the fact. Well, and that idea that you go, increasingly now, I sort of think with the AI thing, the idea that because of everything that AI can do, what AI can't do will become so important.

It does. And it lends itself to, you know, Ian McGilchrist? No. This guy that wrote this book called The Master and its emissary. And it's about left brain and right brain. and we live in a very left brain world. Right. It's incredible, right?

The left brain is very good at ordering things. That's the master? No, no, no. Okay. So, it's very good at ordering things and detail. It's very good at complicated things. Okay. But the left brain...

The right brain... The right brain, so left brain, very good at ordering things, making less. Right brain is good at the gestalt, seeing the whole. Seeing the complete thing. The bigger picture. So the left and the right brain do the same thing. They don't do different things. They do the same thing, but they do it very differently.

And we live in a very left. brain world. So, like, what's complicated? Going to the moon is complicated. Yes. It's a million different steps in a row. Yes. But it's only complicated. Knowing who's going to win the World Cup or falling in love, it's complex. And it can't do complex things. It can only do complicated things. So maybe the future will be abundance. You know, different people have different visions of the future. Is it going to be Star Wars or Star Trek? Will it be abundance in Star Trek? or will it be a fucking Mad Max shit show post-apocalyptic Star Wars? Right?

Which one's it going to be? You're not always think about when I watch Star Wars is how the people who are living in like the main parts of the empire. For the most part, they don't think it's a shit show. We as the audience think it's a shit show because we're watching the story from the perspective of the rebellion, technically. Right. But we don't, we go like, what a shit show. Look at these people. you know, riding around in like dusty planes

and you know what I mean? You know the bikes and the... Do you get what I'm saying? Yeah, Chubaka. He is good with voices. That was true. You can't just throw that away. Can I tell you what?

My dream was always like, my dream was always like when I have a kid, my dream is to just like teach him how to make that sound. Don't hold them like that. They stay like that for long. This is how you just hold it by the head. This is how you hold it. I remember that boy. I had a kid, my.

I miss is going, no, hold his head. No, not just the head. Why, I'm holding the head. And I just want to make it, just like get it really good at making that sound. Yeah. Just for like, for random things in life, just be like, this is the sound of like pain, the sound of joy, the sound of good. And then just have it running around the house.

You know, like, br-r-r-r-r-r-oh. Hey, you want to hear my hot take on Star Wars? Yeah. Okay, I got a hot take on Star Wars, which is, it is the greatest work of fiction ever. So the greatest book in literature is Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce. Wait, why is that the greatest? It's, I mean, it's, it's incredibly difficult to read. Okay.

It's beyond me. I like reading around it, but I've never, I've never got through it. Beyond you. Oh, it's way beyond me. It's like a different level. So, wait, wait, wait, wait, but don't move on from that. I need to understand what that means. Like, is it, is it that the words themselves are complicated? Is it the story? structure of the sentences? Filling's Wake has got like 10 thunderclaps in it. Now the thunderclap words are 100 letters long.

Nine of them are 100 letters long and one of them is 101 letters. And it's because he wanted to be a thousand one nights. You wanted a reference to the Arabian nights. It's like and each thunder clap represents a great move forward in society like the invention of fire, cooking food, the invention of clothes. It represents these things. It's about myth. It's about legend.

So a guy called Joseph Campbell comes along, and he looks at Finnegan's Wake, and he does his dissertation on breaking down Finnegan's Wake, the myth and legend of Finnegan's Wake and all the stories that we've. The first sentence in Finnegan's Wake ties up to the last sentence. It's circular. You're just meant to read it again and again. The first sentence. And Finnegan's Wake, the title took him 18 months. It's Finnegan's. It doesn't have an apostrophe. Finnegan's Wake. He's awakening, and it's his wake, his death. It's circular. It's a thing. It's a lot of it. It's asterisk. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's It's life. It's so beautiful and complex and difficult. Okay, nuance, brilliant. So this guy, Joseph Campbell, comes along and he does his dissertation on Finnegan's wake and he breaks it down, the myth and the legend, does this dissertation, which is a brilliant piece of work. It's not very well read. But he goes on to write a book based on that dissertation called The Hero with a Thousand Faces. And then that book becomes the Hero's Journey. And the Hero's Journey becomes Star Wars. So Star Wars is the too long Didn't read Finnegan's Wake

Interesting right So that makes sense though And there's people who think Star Wars It's complicated Yeah that's true Finnegan's Wake No Who has the time

You and Jimmy didn't have the time Yeah no one's got the time When this English person tells me They cannot do a thing of English Or then I'm like who am I Who am I? Yeah Whomst am I

Whomst M M M M M M M M Whomst may I be? Whomst? Oh man, I'm just like it's fine then. I just leave it. I'm out. I'm out of the game. Yeah.

But yeah, in that world of Star Wars, that's what I mean. They, I, I, so the reason I like re-watching it is I do this thing where I'll watch movies that I've loved my whole life, but I like watching them at different stages of my life. Yeah. To then think of how differently I perceive what's happening, right? You know that thing of like, you know, that is an old thing of like a man can't stand in the same river, Yes. I never got that because I was thought, oh yeah, because the ward is changing. I never

got that the man was changing. Yes, the man's also changing. But it's both. Yeah. And I think I got it from my mom. So my mom has read the Bible. I'm not exaggerating probably a thousand times. Okay. Maybe more. She knows it cover to cover, back to front. Like every word, every scripture, every everything. Don't spoil it because I haven't finished it. Okay. Okay. So. Jesus is weak.

Yeah. It doesn't have one of those. those Hollywood endings where the hero comes back. No. Not at all. He gets married and 12 other dudes somewhere. It's like Game of Thrones.

The hero dies and then they bring him back. Come on, guys. Come on, guys. Do better. And so if you look at, like, she would read it and she'd read it again and she'd read again. Every day she writes, like every morning she wakes up,

4 a.m. starts writing. Reise the Bible, writes, writes, writes, reads the Bible. And I remember one day I said, so I said, how are you, you know it though? And she said, yes, I know it, I know the words, I know the stories. She said, but every single time I read it, depending on my day, my week, my month, my year, my stage in life, I glean a different insight from the same text. And I remember, I was like, oh, okay, that's interesting, but I don't really understand it. I guess for me, it came from different stories.

So when I rewatch movies, I find myself going, huh, what a new way to think of, what a different. Star Wars is one of those. The most recent time I watched Star Wars, I was most taken by how the people who live in, I don't know what that place is called. Like, you know, it's where like the senators are and the rich people and what's that place? It's not, where's the place?

Yeah, I know like a Star Wars buff. Yeah. But they dress nicely and they've got the flying cars. It looks nice. It's the city. But I went, those people don't think, yeah, they don't think they're living in crazy land. In fact, they are.

the white people during apartheid who are just living in a good life. They're living a good... And the empire tells them stories about... What's going on in the Wild World West? The crazy people who are protecting you from. The natives beyond the border war. The natives beyond the border war.

And then you're going, thank God, I mean, if it wasn't for... No, but I'm saying, I never thought of that my whole life. But you got to feel bad for the guys. Remember that movie Clarks, clerks in America? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And his theory in Clarks was, what about the guys on the death style?

that we're in charge of sanitation. No, I never talked about it. They got blown up too, but someone must have been going, okay, well, the plumbing, it's a circle, it's round, so where do we, where do we offload this? We've got to do something. It can't just, like, those guys were on there, too. They got blown up.

They didn't do anything. That reminds me of the Eddie Azard bit, what was it? The Death Star Canteen. Yeah. That was like one of my favorite, just, do you remember, you don't know it? Mm-mm.

Man, it's, what I know. about stand-up. I will butcher it. I will butcher it. But it's just like a beautiful, he just, he just, you should go watch it. Because it's, you know, it's stand-up, but it's like not stand-up. And now maybe stand-up has evolved sort of to it. But at the time, it was such a new thing. You remember when it came out? I love that thing of like seeing him. There was the first big comedy gig that I ever saw, was the Cambridge Corn Exchange. I went to see Eddie Azad. And it was the, uh, the definite article. And it was like, it was on VHS, his previous show, I think it was called unrepeatable.

and it was like, it was like a cult item. It really was. It was like people passed it around and went, do you know, do you get this? And it felt, it felt very rock and roll. There was these other guys called Victories and Pop Mortimer that came around the same time and it was like punk rock of comedy. Just felt like this wasn't for your parents.

This was for you. This was your thing and you got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was seeing him and just thinking it was unbelievable. It was out of this world. Basically, all he does, he goes, he goes, you think about, you know, on the dead side, the death side, you got all these people who work on the death side. And he, like, improvs a lot of this world.

and he's very like, he's like making stuff and he plays with it. It's so much fun to watch, especially as a comedian. Because you can see in some moments he's catching himself. He's catching new things. He knows where he's going, but he's playing with it. And he goes, well, that's all right. He's like, but they must have had a canteen. They must have had a canteen where people are eating and, you know,

and everybody's having some food. And, you know, what was happening in the canteen? And he's like, no, Darth Vader. Does he go to the canteen? And he's just like, I would like a penny a rabiata, please. Then she's like, oh, you could have need a tray. Then he's like, I do not need a tray. I am Darth Vader.

Lord, man. And she's like, he can't need a tray. He's like, I do not need a tray. I can kill you with my thoughts. And he goes on this bit. And then she's like, what are you talking about? He's still going to need a train. And the bit is great because it just builds this like different world.

Yes. Where you see the human behind the story and it's goofy and it's funny. And it's just like, I'm going to be my, I'm going to play it for you. Yeah. Just as like a, it doesn't even feel like stand up. It just feels like a moment in time. I can't wait. It actually makes me feel like a moment.

While you were saying that I was wondering, this may sound weird but like what happened to like English comedy it's not my fault what happened why am I what no

so okay or rather let me ask because I'm only thinking of this now so forgive me this is not like a pre-thought I feel like there was a time when English comedy was sort of like at the forefront pushing comedy in the world

yeah if you think about I think the best comedy movie ever made, I think, is The Life of Brian. I think The Life of Brian is like a perfect kind of work. Yeah, but, like, yeah, all of it. And then you look at the sitcom stuff, the, it's come out of Britain. Exactly. It's been very singular. I don't know.

Monty Python. Yeah. And then even the stand-up itself, you go, this was the, it's like, that's where you'd go for, like, the source of it, is what I mean. No, I don't know, because I think kind of in modern stand-up for me, the, uh, carly. and Pryor feel like they're the John the Baptist. They came along. And then they created this world where the stand-up comic, right, was like there was always comics.

There was always entertainers around, but it was like the court jester or the guys in musical, and they would be on the bill with other people. But the idea of going to see someone and buying a ticket and going to see them just speak on their own is a relatively recent thing. I think this is why comedy is having a moment now because it's quite a new medium.

So it's guys like Billy Conley in the UK would have been our George Carlin So these things were kind of happening simultaneously and then stand up kind of grew It's become a much bigger thing I mean I got into it like 25, 30 years ago whenever it was And when I got into it was

Standup Comedy was field hockey And now it's Premier League football Yeah I got so lucky on that wave To catch the week yet That you know comes through It's like become a bigger thing And it feels like it's having a moment now

because it's, it's authenticity. It's like people like going to see a comic and they buy into them and they say, well, I want to spend time with this person and have fun. And it's the, it's the idea of like the, the proximate reason for comedy is to laugh and have fun.

But the ultimate reason is to connect. I do think that's why it's becoming more popular. Yeah. People desperately want to go out and feel part of something. And like, you laugh so much more when you're at a show and you connect with someone and you feel like, okay, well, you know, I've started, like, I talk more on stage now. There's much more kind of interaction with the audience.

And it's that thing where I want people to join in. I want it to feel special in this moment. I feel like... You want it to feel like it could only be happening now. That's how I feel. And I think that's what makes the comedy special is, because we live in a world where everything is regurgitated and passed around and it's clipy and it's this and it's that,

the one thing that we do have that's unique, is this moment, this river can never be stood in again. Yeah. That's essentially what it starts to feel like. So when an audience member comes in and they go, Jimmy spoke to me or we talked about something that couldn't have come from another show and those moments for me make you feel like

you're experiencing something that is completely original, completely new, and most probably will never be experienced again. And I think it was also helping how Jimmy was saying that you're more conversational now on stage. Yeah. is comedians are finally taking the advice that the audience has been saying to them for a longest time. Remember for long, you would have a show

and then someone would come to you and say, great show, you'd be like, I wasn't feeling mine. Then they're like, no, I came for you. Yeah. Finally, you believe that they came for us. That's a good point. It's not about the jokes only now

is you can share a story, you can go from a tangent, you can come back, you can go, you can, but finally we believe that they came there for us. Yeah, well, it's that, it's a weird thing with comedy where you want people to come out and have a great time and feel like they don't remember a word you say,

but they remember how you made them feel. And I feel like the mistake we've made is like bigger. Like as a society, when we all used to live in the villages, like 200 years ago, right? Everyone's fine. Everyone used to sing and everyone used to dance. And then we moved to the cities and there's things like ballet and opera and people specialized. And they're incredible dancers. We just couldn't take our eyes off them.

They're amazing. But we're sitting and we're watching it and we're no longer joining in. Yes. And the joining in is everything. The joining in and sometimes in heckles. Some people are just heckling, it's just a bit of fun. Some people, I feel like there's a frustrated artist. There's someone out there that wants to say something.

And there's a throw quote I really like. Like most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with a song still in their heart. And I think comedy should be taught. I think comedy should be much bigger than it is now. because if you think about what it is, right, it's ordering your thoughts and writing them down and learning to speak in your own authentic voice. And the tragedy is most people go to their graves

and they've never heard themselves. They themselves have never heard themselves. No, I don't know what they think. Because they've never sat down and ordered their thoughts and got it together. And, you know, so they're like, you know, they're just a, they're taking in whatever media, they're taken in and kind of regurgitating an opinion

they've heard on the news. I want, you want them to have their own song. Yeah, their own song, their own voice. Like that thing of like stand-up comedy is really, if it's about anything, it's about like, what could you say that no one else could say? You just made me realize, you tied together, the thoughts I've been grappling with, we've been grappling with for a while now. It was like, why are certain mediums and why are certain ideas expanding and growing?

Why are people gravitating towards them? We talked about this with live streaming. and I think you just hit on it. One of the things that live streaming is achieving that all other mediums aren't is that people can hear themselves and they can see themselves. So we'd be having this conversation now

but there would be people in a chat with us in this moment going, oh, that's true Jimmy. Hey, Jimmy, I actually came to see you, thanks for that show. But it's happening like now. It's like I could like turn to you and say, oh, Jimmy, someone actually says, hey, did you ever find that thing you were? Oh, and then you interact with it and it interacts

And it becomes this world where, as you're saying, it's no longer us at the ballet. It's us dancing in a circle. Someone like we do in South Africa, one person dances in the circle, but everyone around them is dancing. It's not like everyone stands and watches you. Here's the illusion, right? The illusion is we're on stage performing and the audience are passive and watching. But being in an audience is performative. You see it much clearer when it's Bruce Springsteen, right?

If you see, or Taylor Swift, do you see them on stage, if they go, how you doing tonight, New York? And everyone goes, yeah. But if you go to a Starbucks and they say, how are you doing? Yeah. Like, people go, oh, you're having a psychotic break. Like, I just, I just like that image. But you laugh.

I just put that image in my head. That's my thing, bro. How are you all doing? I've got an order for Brian here. But first, before I get the sort of going, Starbucks, how you doing? Oh my God. New York, baby. Being an audience member itself is performative.

It is. I want to see Taylor Swift in London, right, two years ago. Taylor Swift's not my, I don't listen to a lot of Taylor Swift. The gig was transcendent. Everyone has said that. Transcendent. Really? Everyone has said that.

And I spent about half my time watching Taylor Swift. No. And about half my time watching the audience. Everyone else. Because you were watching these. And it was like, it was kind of the same with Oasis the next year. But the Taylor Swift thing was girls. It was like mothers and daughters and they're looking each other.

And they were singing every word. To each other. And a lot of this. Like to them. And it was so, it was beautiful. It was so beautiful. And the same thing at the Oasis Ge you were seeing, but it was more like guys that like had no ability to turn to their friend and go, I love you men. But like singing the words of Wonderwall and crying and like holding each other.

It was just, it was like beautiful. It was like, it was the audience are the thing to watch. It was amazing, really properly amazing. Yeah, everyone has said that about the Taylor Swift concerts. They've said, and I understand it because we've made the mistake of thinking, and I guess it's not just us as the audience, sometimes I guess it's the performers that you can blame, but we've made the mistake of thinking that live performances are only determined by whether or not you like the actual artist and what they're putting out.

but actually when a performance is put on well it's not about the person or not you know it's the it's the spectacle it's the it's the feeling it's the moment it's the energy yeah you don't have to be into it to get into it there when you go home you may you may still be like I don't really listen to the music

but when you're in that space Taylor Swift Beyonce I know when I went to the Beyonce like songs you know or don't know it doesn't matter what it is it's going to be people who say when they went to watch Michael Jackson back in the day they're like yeah I know they're fans of the music but people walked in and said I don't know what this experience was but it has stayed with me forever

well it's it's slightly um standing in all and it's it's the I have like a a line on this okay so there's a there's a there's a theory about pyramids and rockets right so it's a McKenna I think said it first so pyramids and rockets are the same thing it's a huge amount of human capital is spent sending a chosen few to the heavens it's the same thing a rocket and a pyramid is the same right cathedrals do the same thing

but i think music sometimes it's maybe sometimes comedy it's aiming at the same thing it's the transcendent there's a desire to take people to a place and so like the best gigs you've ever seen, the best concerts you've ever seen, and you leave just, they're aiming up. And you feel like better for it. And we all aim together. People also feel like that about huge religious gatherings. Yeah, that's why they're so good. But then the mistake they made, I mean, I'm Irish Catholic, like my heritage, I'm not, I'm an atheist, but the idea that the big mistake the church made was Vatican II. So they made this thing, Vatican II basically translated the Latin into the local language.

So it took something that was very right brain, gestalt, standing in wonder, like the incense and the Latin and no one really understood what was going on. But it was like, wow. The incredible show. Gregorian Chance. Right. So let's get on to Gregorian Chance a second. But it took that thing.

I love Gregorian. It took that thing and I'll tell you why you know him. And it basically translated it into left brain logic. It makes sense. So you go, well, you try and make it make sense, but none of it makes sense. because it's not meant to make sense. It's meant to be transcendent. Oh, no.

You know why you've heard of... Yes. You know why you've heard of Gregorian Chance? No. It's a good story. It's why I wrote a book. Please tell me. Okay, so Pope Gregory was knocking around, I don't know, the year 1,100.

And he's in Vatican City, and he's in the church, and he's wandering around to other churches close by. And everyone's singing the songs differently. And he goes, this is some bullshit. I want the songs sung the same everywhere. I want the songs. how I like the songs. Okay? And the guys go, the bishops and the archbishops, they go,

but the thing is, Pope Gregory, all due respect, you can't write down music. Music is ethereal. It comes through the soul. People interpret it. It's emotional. Music cannot be written. And Pope Gregory goes, yeah, that's all very well. But I'm the Pope, fucking write it down.

And music notation. You make an amazing Gregory, by the way. We didn't make this movie. When they're casting, this would be a great movie, by the way. I'm Gregory. Listen, I'm the fucking Pope. You're doing this. So it takes them years.

I mean, years. And eventually, they get to a form of musical notation. That's why you've heard of Gregorian chance. Because Pope Gregory was the first person to write down music. Now, cut to 400 years later, Bark. Now, Bach could not have happened. Had it not before Gregory. Pope Gregory.

musical notation. I didn't know that. So you go, you're building on that. And so the reason to write a book about jokes, the reason to write something about comedy, to try in some small way to formulate the language, to give the scaffolding. You can't tell people what to joke about,

what to talk about. You want them to have their own voice, that own language, but to give them the form to go, well, this is what a chord looks like, and these are what the joke types are, and these are how to put them together into a routine. And this is the rhythm of space,

spoken word and how it works. And that's what I know. And when I started, I felt like I was macheteing my way through the jungle. And this is a road. This is a road you could follow. I want more people to do it. I want more people involved. I love reading books about comedy. Can you imagine what else Gregory's Gestapo record company idea also birthed? Yeah. We know it birth, Bach. But imagine all the bishops that came together now for a common cause, to find people who can translate and write the music down and write it on something. They had to get the paper to write it on.

They had to distribute it. A lot of things were birthed by Gregory's Gestapo record company. It's all the big movements in life. He agitated something. You know where it's going to end. You don't know that that small action by him had such an enormous effect because everything was kind of remembered.

Everything was spoken word. And then suddenly you're writing down music and you can remember it. You can, it's incredible. And music is, I mean, it's an incredible language. Just the idea that you can play a minor chord to anyone anywhere in the world. And they get it. And there are limited chords at that. Yeah.

Limited chords have made infinite sounds. I'm still thinking about the people at the churches who missed their old songs. Hey, hey. Oh, what do you mean we're playing it wrong? Fuck you, Gregory. I'm just saying, like, there were some people at the other churches who were like, Because now, imagine your church. Because every church, I've been to a lot of churches in my life.

I grew up super, super religious in our family. Yeah. We went to church maybe seven times a week, right? So there's every kind of church. If the white churches that I went to manage to overwhelm the black churches that we went to with their music, what a terrible life that would have been now for me. Because that was the one thing I was looking forward to us. When we get there, the vibes are going to pick up.

The spirits is going to be different. You get what I'm saying. Yeah. Like the music moves. you differently. Whereas like when you were singing like the Psalms, you know what I mean? All things bright and beautiful. Yeah. All creature. No one was dancing.

No one was moving. You get to mean? Yeah. Like whereas when you had when you had that like bounce of. Now I'm thinking of that poor church where Gregory came in and then there was one church where they were vibing. There's got to be one where they were killing it. They were having the best time ever. They were like, I love church more than anything. You come into church this week? How could I not?

Oh man. Sorry. It sold out. What do you mean sold out? Yeah, we sold out, bro. Oh man, oh man, I'm loving it. Well, when you're there, make sure you sing my song for me. Come into the church, people are there. Oh, yeah, I love my church. I love my church. Ivi, I be, evi, evi, evi, evi.

And then the next week you come to church. But you see, that's why in South Africa there's a... Boronanedos. Doni canameros. There was a guy called French writer at a CD store. He introduced me to Gregorian chans. But he also looked like he was from the Gregorian era. In South Africa, the Methodist Church...

Yeah. came. When it came, the black people that it was preaching to and it was converting said, here's an idea, we're going to translate these hymns into our language. Genius. So on Easter and Christmas, black people who are part of the Methodist Church prefer to go to the black church. So there's two churches on Easter and Christmas. There's the early service, early service, white people.

Yep. Then afterwards, all the hymns. That we're in English and now in Isikosa, and it goes down. Right. It's just like... Same hymn. It's doing it, man. It's that whole thing of Latin and English, right?

It's feeling it. Yeah. It's like, have you ever seen what, I mean, I would... But you're the other way around. You're an English person. Have you seen what non-English speakers do to the English language? They give it... Cazazazazaz.

You guys don't have that at all. I'm not. No, I don't. I mean, technically... You guys say things like bang. I don't even have... I don't even have... I don't even have an accent.

This is just how things sound when they're pronounced properly. That's what I'm saying. You are like literally the... You are of the Greenwich Meatown. I travel the world thinking everyone is fucking up. Yes. But have you heard the like, ooh-hoo, like the vibes of like... Do you know what I mean?

Okay, like if you were to tell a story of someone through something at your head and it just narrowly missed you, how would you tell the story? I would say those words in that order. You see now. Whereas with us, we'd be like, yo, you chin infana. Let me tell you what happened to me the other day. So I'm walking there, busy walking there. Next thing I see this guy, shagga, pops out. Here, this guy's there, throws the thing at me.

You don't have that in the language. But you're going to label it. You're going to say, what are you going to call it? You're going to say, you're going to call it a word. Yeah, I mean. You know that Shaba. Shaba is a sound of a thing. It has a meaning.

It has a meaning. Shabha. Swabha. Shabha. It comes from the back. And if you said it to someone in South Africa, but I'm just saying like, ooh, that's what I feel like,

that's also where I think the church sort of messed up is they didn't have like the, you want to have like your local, you know what I mean? Yes. Brings it like a, because if people can find themselves in, you've got religion.

Well, my thing was that I think the church messed up by trying to give it logic and, it's a category error. Oh, no, I agree with it. try and get religion to make sense. Yes, but I'm saying also on top of that. It's about the other thing. It's about transcendence. It's about something bigger.

And I'm saying on top of that, I'm agreeing with it. And on top of it, they should have made sure that there were regional. It's like McDonald's. Go to McDonald's in India. You can have curry. Oh, yeah. No, they're killing it. They're killing.

You see what I'm saying? Yeah. You try and kill some cows in India. See how far you fucking get. No, the guy, that guy was a genius. The guy that reinvented. They made a movie about the founder, right? The guy that created McDonald's here.

Yeah. They should make another one about the guy. And it's one guy that took McDonald's to India, came and got the rights and went, oh, we're doing this. Wait, really? Yeah. And he went, how are we going to do this?

He went really differently. But we're going to keep, they kept the essence of it, but they changed everything. Because obviously, like most people, are vegetarian there. There's no beef. Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And no fucking beef. What are you talking about beef? We're not having beef. Like, there's a reason people say, as calm as a Hindu cow. They're in no immediate danger. None whatsoever.

Imagine the black market of selling beef. in India. There's none, my man. You wish my friend. You wish my friend. It would never happen. My friend, remember this is now, it's not that it's illegal.

The people are going, I do not consume this. So it's not like, people are like, I wish I could get some beef. They're like, no, why would you, I don't consume that? Do you understand?

Yeah, yeah. It's like selling dog in America. Yeah. People would be like, what do you, there's no need for a black market. No one's searching for it. But white people in America

do buy dogs though? What are you talking about? To keep them. No, I'm too much to eat. You didn't say that part. Okay, yes. To eat. I want to know about like...

Wait, what are we doing here? What are we doing here? I think something just flew past Travis' head. I think is what happened there. Called Tuaba. Chwaba. You're actually saying that well, by the way. Thank you.

I've never heard Chabba said with an English accent. And the next thing you know, Tuaba. Don't go anywhere because we got more what now after this. Kids will always have an outfit that they love and they can't accept that they've grown out of it. Sorry, are we talking about this? No, but you are...

You are dressed like a toddler. 100%. You're old, this guy gets shots for... I got a six-year-old I wouldn't put that after. I go, no, wear something with a collar. We're going out. How much do you think, or rather, what has changed in the Jimmy stand-up person that we meet today versus like that Jimmy from years ago? I'm much more myself on stage now than I was.

I mean, I still, like my love language is jokes. I like one-liners. I like that idea of like going. I mean, I'm in the service industry, right? I like to think of myself as a drug dealer. Okay. So I'm dealing in two drugs. It's dopamine and serotonin.

and the people have already got the drugs on them, I can just tickle them out. I can make them happy. It's a variable interval reward system jokes, right? So you know a joke's coming, but you don't quite know where. And then you do that for, you get on stage, you do that for, I don't know, 20, 25 minutes, whatever it is, like three, four jokes a minute. So you've established like a rhythm with the audience.

And then you just kind of step back and you go, okay, what should we talk about? And then you let the evening go where it's going to go. And then you kind of get back and you perform some more. But it's really interesting that thing of like, I've created this thing where it's exciting to me because every night is different because you're interacting with the audience in a way. And some people ask you dumb questions and some people ask you really interesting things. And sometimes you're sincere. Sometimes you try and just be as funny as you can. Right.

Yeah. But I'm never quite sure where it's going. It's really, it's fun. It feels like it's a, and spending a lot of time in that gym, you just kind of get, you get into it. You get really into. And you can joke about anything, but not with. anyone. You can joke about anything but not with anyone.

You find your audience. They come to you. They want to, I mean, I view sort of jokes as their transgressions. You know that benign violation theory? No. So it's a guy, Robert McGraw came up with it. So the idea that there's violations in life, right? Terrible things happen.

And by joking about something, you make that benign. You take away the power from that thing. Ben, Violation, 3. By joking about it. So the Venn diagram, the cross between a violation, something awful, and a joke. So in joking about something, you take away its power. You take away the violation. It's a way of kind of filtering life through the charcoal of humor and making it okay.

And I think I kind of view it like an inoculation against the terror of life. terrible things happen and we have like you know it's very stoic but we have no control over what happens to us but we can at least

choose how we look at it and the idea that you go choose our reaction yeah and you your breath and your reaction is all you have control over great so that idea of like jokes are

they're quite powerful in that like the darker the joke the more powerful it is I think like if you can let and the stronger it has to be like if you're going to tackle something that's really

heavy and McCaughley kind of third rail difficult it's got to be so funny to make it worthwhile yeah to get people over that line and then they feel the relief and they can you can joke about anything i that kind of view it like it's the you know that thing in politics people talk about the overton window yeah of like what's the most left wing thing what's the most right wing thing you could say at a polite dinner party okay i think comedy broadens the conversational overton window yeah i think it makes conversation. It's not, the magic doesn't happen in the room. It happens afterwards. On the way home, people have a conversation, a bit more open about life, a bit more free about stuff. It just gives them, yeah. But it's permission to talk about this stuff. So I think Freud called jokes,

pleasure bribes. A joke is a pleasure bribe, and it's encouraging you to think an unthinkable thought. I think it's not just encouraging you to think an unthinkable thought. It's encouraging you to think an unthinkable thought and also acknowledge that it is only a thought. And I think that's something that some people have forgotten and lost in comedy.

Are these comedians or the audiences? Both ways sometimes. One of my favorite things you ever did, I don't know if you still do it, but do you remember there was a point where you started playing this video before your shows. Oh yeah, no, I've got like an opening thing of like, yeah, the rules and... Yeah, like, certain of the rules. And you have this one line

where you say, please remember, remember that there will be jokes about terrible things, but those are not the terrible things. Those are jokes about the... You say something... Yeah, it was... I remember seeing it once and I was like, this is the greatest disclaimer. I feel like it should be played before every comedy show and every... Like, I feel like you created the standard language that goes before every...

Opening credits of a stand-up movie. Yeah, comedy clip. Even like, you know the thing of like epilepsy and seizures? Yes. They just put a standard. There's no... This may control. flashing scenes that may disturb sensitive.

Every time I see that warning, I'm like, so if you knew, why did you put it in there? Because they're like, yo, bro, we don't want to spoil the movie for... No, now I must now... I get what they're saying. They're just like, yo, for you, if you have epilepsy, it may be triggered. But, yo, the flashing lights was fire, bro.

We had to keep it in. I get why they did it. But I like that they have that language. This is not your first day with epilepsy. Fucking, you deal with that. I don't know, man. Right? You're fucking...

I got my standard line. now is if I offend anyone. I felt guilty for love here. I was like, I tried to delay it as long as I could. My thing with like, with, with, with, with jokes like, I mean, sometimes you, you, you catch some heat, you get dragged a little bit for,

for making a joke. My thing now is I, I, if someone has a got me, next time I get canceled, this is my line. I'm going to say, I'm sorry. And whoever's been offended will go, well, you don't really mean that apology. And I'll say, so you're saying, I can say something and not mean it.

Now you're getting it. That's it, right? It's that you go, yeah, I didn't fucking mean the joke either. It's a verbal thing and I want to talk about serious stuff. But that's why I'm saying the disclaimer was so powerful. Because it's like, yo, there are terrible things in the world. I'm going to make jokes about these terrible things. But those jokes?

Please note that the jokes are not that terrible things. They are jokes off the terrible thing. About the terrible things. Yeah. I don't think. And it's just such a small, it's such a small but powerful framing to remind you of what the comedy is trying to do,

how it's trying to do it, how, do you get what I'm saying? No, it reminds me of the, as Rilke had that great line, feel everything, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final.

I do like that, yeah. A comedy show should contain everything. They should be like, and shade. There should be joyful moments and brutal moments. And it should be, you come out feeling like, okay, life. Life is a bit like that. You get a bit scared. You get a bit excited. You get a bit, you know. You laugh. Yeah, but the joke that you're horrifically offended by. Yeah. And the one that you cannot wait to tell your friends and it's the funniest thing you've ever heard, both come from the same place. That's true. There are jokes that I tell my mom. She'll laugh.

and then you've done it as well. In fact, you're more guilty than me. She'll laugh and then she'll immediately go, I don't like that. But she'll laugh hard. She'll laugh and she'll laugh and she's got a beautiful, boisterous, she'll laugh and then she'll go, no, I don't like that. I'm like, but you laughed.

Then she's like, I didn't want to laugh. You tricked me. She's always like, you tricked me. She even said it to Eugene. She's like, we went out for luncheon and she's like, ah, ah, aye, ah, ah. She's like, oh, you. You tricked me. You tricked me. I don't like that. Then I'm like, but you laugh. Then she's like, no. Then I was like, it was funny. I think that might be my favorite noise in the world. It's like, it's like cognitive dissonance at a show. Yeah. People have two thoughts at the same time. That is very funny. And they laugh first. You got to get, you got to watch it. Because it's got to be a laugh first. And then a sharp intake of breath. It's the best. You can't be the other way around. Yeah. It's got to be that first. The mother thing's interesting to me because I think I'm a comedian because of my mother. I, my

mother had a narcoleptic, cataplexic laugh. You ever met someone that laughs and they make no noise whatsoever? They just kind of do this thing. Oh, no. So my mother had a laugh where she would lose like full. She would properly melt like a witch in the Wizard of Oz if you really got her. So my whole childhood was like trying to make this woman laugh. I mean, especially if she was driving.

anything and you would be, you would be trying to grab the wheel while you were saying some funny shit and like steering the car. Like, I should be dead, but it's, it's, and she was so funny in her right. Accident on the M5. A young man has made a joke that has caused his mother to pass out. Please avoid the left lane of the M5. I think that's the, I think that's the one, like, with comedians, I think if you're like, if you meet comedian, you've never met somewhere in the world, wherever you are, I was saying, my go-to question, which of your parents were sick? one of your parents were sick and you had to make things okay

you had to be adjust the temperature in a room yes you have to make things okay yeah make things okay make it make it all right yeah make this let's get through this this is tough we're gonna get through it take away the attention from everything else

yeah it's comedy it's medicine it helps so when did you discover that your mom was actually having a good time while having that moment oh no why she would she would I mean, the laughter was, she was, my mother was very depressed. I never knew it at the time.

Whatever your household is, your household is. Yeah. You think it's just normal. It's your universe. You come home from school and your mom's still in a dressing gown and you go, yes, fucking that's moms. They sleep a lot. What do you want?

You don't realize at the time. You have no facility as a child to see what she needs fucking help. There's nothing. So you have this thing and you have to make it okay. So that's what, I think the idea that there's a, there's a pathology to what we do as comedians. There's a reason we do this. Yeah, definitely.

Whatever that is. It's a vocation, I would argue. And it's a vocation that starts from a place of personal need. And then over time it expands because you see that it can have effects on other people. Yeah. You know? So that's often what I say to people when they are very quickly offended by comedy or comedian. As I'll say, give them the benefit of the doubt, genuinely give them.

I know I'm not speaking for all of them all the time, even myself, all the time, every joke. But give them the benefit of the doubt because a human being who steps on stage to try and make people laugh generally is not a person who doesn't want people to feel good generally. So it's just that they may not have used the tool that would make you laugh. The right vocabulary for you to understand what they're trying to say. But they were trying. It's the same way if you went to a country or a kitchen where somebody cooked food in a way that you didn't eat it, you would spit it out and go, this is this gut.

Are you trying to kill me? You're trying to poison? No. They were trying to cook food that would, you know, give you sustenance. Interesting, like sense of humor is, I think, very much like food and sex. It is exactly like it. Food and sex. Different people like different things.

Some people like it's spicy. Some people like very vanilla. Like it's different for different people. And the idea like comedy now has expanded so much. Yeah. So it's not like, there used to be like three comedy DVDs, you know, VHSs a year. Now there's like everything's out there. It's infinite.

Yeah. It's everywhere. It's kind of fantastic. It really is. with your mom, did you ever find out what the cause of the depression? Was it like just depression itself? Was it a depression that came from something else?

Was it? Did you ever find out? Yeah, I mean, I had a very close relationship with my mother. I think like if you were being analyzed now, they would say enmeshed. It was very close to her emotionally. And, yeah, I mean, she had good reason to be sad. But I think people get, depression isn't,

feeling sad. Depression is not feeling anything at all. Yeah. And the indifference. Yeah, that could be, that could be very, you know, you lost your hunger for life. It's a, you know, it's a very, very difficult thing to deal with, especially difficult when it's a, you know, a loved one dealing with that. So, you know, she, she died pretty young. So we, I never got to kind of resolve it. But it's, I don't know, I feel like the, the gift of laughter and being able to of control a room is something that she gave me. Did you have any siblings? Yeah, I've got, but I've got brothers.

I've got a couple of brothers. Where are you in the... I'm in the middle, but my younger brother's a lot younger. Okay, okay, so it was like a generational jump and then... Yeah. And then what was your dad like? Not great. So, in the house, were you like the funniest or were you one of the funnies?

I mean, Jesus. Of course I was the funniest. How dare you? No, mom was pretty funny. My mother was a very funny. Was it like dry humor or was it? I'm always intrigued by like what the comedian picked up from the parent or where or how or, you know?

Yeah, I guess. But I suppose there is that thing where you go, you ascribe, it's often the case like everyone blames their parents for anything bad that happened. And then anything good, they go, that was my hard work. and you go, and there's all, it's all kind of in the part. I kind of think with kids, like, I really notice the difference between people with one kid

and two kids. Everyone with one kid believes in nurture. Oh, we fed them this kind of milk and this, we gave them this kind of vegetable and we read to them every night. So, of course, they enter. As soon as you have two kids, yep, two kids, as soon as the second one arrives, you go, oh, yeah, they come out with factory settings. Yep.

And that one's like that. So I guess we go with it. I was chatting to, you know Neil Brennan pretty well, right? Yeah, of course, yeah, of course. Chat into Neil Brennan the other hand, he had the best analogy for parenting. I'm sure he won't mind me referencing it. He talked about curling. You know the sport of curling?

Yes. Where they throw a stone, right? And then they're brushing feverishly. Okay. So the brushing feverishly makes about 5% difference to where that stone ends up. The throw is everything. Okay. And then that thing is like about 5% difference.

That brushing, that's parenting. The stone has been thrown. It's going to end up where it's going to end up. You can change it a little bit, but it is what it is. You have two, right? I got, I got, I got tons of kids. How many kids are you? Well, I don't think I'm allowed to talk about how many kids I've got on a podcast

because of my misses. Oh, I like that, actually. But just cut that. We will, we will. I thought he was like doing a gag. I was like, this guy. No, no, I got fucking lines. It's fucking joyful.

So you don't, you don't have kids, right? No. Yeah, that's, I think about, you've made me one kid. I think about you more than you know. You to me, your missus is not going to like that. No. Guys, cut that one. Okay, so here's, no, here's the thing, right?

Here's the thing. I view certain comedians as almost like, you support Liverpool, right? Yeah. So, okay. I think you're Liverpool. Because I met you early on, relatively, early on in your international career. Yeah, definitely you did.

And then I followed you through. And so you go and you do these things and I watch it from a distance. And I go, oh, he's doing the Grammys. He's doing the Daily Show. Oh, he's doing, like, you watch these things and you feel like, it's my guy. It's my guy's doing the thing. And you love it. And I was thinking about it, like coming here today, I was thinking, if your life was a movie,

what would people in the cinema, be screaming at the screen right now. And they would be screaming, have kids. The people that love you all see it like a mile off. Like, oh, you have to have kids. Huh. You have to have kids.

You have that thing where you, it feels like you would be a very good father. I would hope to be. I would hope. I mean, I grew up, I don't know your story, but like one of the, you know, it's, I think of it in the same way I think of comedy sometimes. One of the reasons I love hanging out with Eugene

is because sitting here in this chair is one of my favorite comedians in the whole world, like bar none. You're one of them. I can like count the comedians where I go, many comedians who are irate, funny, talented, skillful, you name it. But there's some people where I go, you're one of my favorite individuals

who are also comedians, like the whole thing you embody for me. And when I'm in a conversation with you, or when I'm watching you on stage is the same level of joy for me like I'm sitting there with like my popcorn just being like, do you get what I'm saying? Daniel Kitsen like is one of them.

Yeah. He just like, he gives me this thing where I'm like, we went and played football once. I have never laughed more playing the game of football in my entire life. He like does commentary while he's like playing the game. He's like, oh, well, pass. Who's going to come down the wing?

He's going, oh, what's there? Another phishing. But like the way he just is makes me, I go like, ah, it's, it feels like it is, it's, it's, it's so. Is that not the, the aim of like being, like, if you, to give anyone advice in life, it's like, do you? Yeah, but be sui generis, be like a non-fungible human. That's the best thing you could be.

That's a, you're an entirely non-fungible human. No, but I think you guys take for granted how much I, it's because I'm like enjoying, like a flower, you know, basking in the rays of the sun. I, I watch this, because you cannot. always watch yourself. You cannot in life. You know, mirrors are like a relatively new concept. If you look at our history as humans. No, but even mirrors, mirrors are very 2D. You don't get to see how you affect a room. Like, you've got a lot of charm. And charm, I think, is missed. I appreciate that, but I, okay. I don't know what, I don't know. But wait, let me tell you.

Charm isn't people like you. Charm is people think you would like them. But I do is my thing. It's like, yeah. So this is what I'm talking about the kid. I got zero charm. There's plenty of that. I got zero charm. I got charisma for days. Boy, he's got plenty of that he does. No, so what I'm saying about the dad thing is this.

Okay, so when I think of stand-up, one of the things that gives me more joy than anything, I was in Saratoga recently, and driving up to the show, and Santa Barbara as well, driving up to the show, the people walking in gives me more joy sometimes than the whole show,

because I look at them and I go, you know these people this is their night and this is their thing and I go like what a joy in a privilege that they have gone this is the thing that I wish to do on this night and it's the thing that will I even said to one of the audiences one night I because I saw them like on the street there's a couple and having like an argument you can see but then they walked and they came into the show and then I said I've never realized this and I say I just want to say thank you to every one of the couples who came here even though you're fighting because you book the tickets when you're in a good mood and I take for granted that on tonight you have have to come together. And I said, so I know right now you hate each other. But let's see how this, but I just want to say, I just want to say I appreciate you. And it was shocking how many people clapped. It wasn't even a joke. They were just like, yeah, we do hate each other right now. And those small moments, I go, oh, I would love for you to leave this moment better than when we all came into it, myself included. Forget my day. Forget your day. Let's walk out of this. I think the same thing for life. And my mom always said this to me. She always said, not in like a

financial way. She just said, oh, she said, and Donna, my child, let every generation just be better than the previous one. Just, oh, let us just a little bit. Let us beat some curses, let us. And so when I think of that, like fathers and all that, I go, all I wish for is to be the kind of dad where I go, the kind of dad I never had, where when I come home, like when a door opens or closes, my kid doesn't have to turn off the TV or doesn't have to like act like they're sleeping or doesn't have to, does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, no, no, but I'm saying that's, no, I'm just saying in general. No, no, but that thing of like the, that's what I, that's what I would yearn for is just to be able

to give that to somebody. Yeah, it's rough and tumble. And it's the different thing that dads bring. Mums bring, moms are very kind to the child and dads are very kind to the potential. Yeah, that's fascinating. It's a different, it's a different move. Like, I don't want to bring up good kids. I want to bring up good adults. Yeah. And you can't, so you can't ever let your kids do anything that will embarrass you or that you will resent because you have to love them. Don't think that you want, so you have to hold them to a standard where you go, we're all going to have fun all the time.

We've got boundaries. You know, moms are very good at setting boundaries. Dads tend to be better at enforcing boundaries. And actually, you know what? I mean saying that, I'm gendering that. But actually, it could be the mom and the dad could be roles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But within the household.

Yes. Someone's good at setting them. someone's very good at going, no, no, that's the thing. Remember that this is the rule. That's how we do it. Someone shows 8 p.m. bedtime. Another person's like, hey, it's 8 p.m. Yeah, you better be in bed.

And the other one is like, we're coming! It's that thing of like the, as you speak about that in the audience and seeing them coming to the show or whatever you go, it's the resume points. You have enough. You have enough. No, I don't think, you see, it's funny. I don't think of it as resume points. What I'm thinking of is the, like, I do smaller shows now than I've ever done. which, like, thank God my team, like, supports.

But, you know, you know what it's like, if you're lucky, you do well. People go, we want more tickets and there's more shows and it gets bigger and it gets bigger. And sometimes I go like, oh, this has gotten so big that it is no longer, or it's starting to lose the feeling that I originally loved, which was, I touch you and you touch me in a very intimate way. When it gets very big, it feels like you watch me. and I tell you. And I, you know,

yeah, I started, when I play the bigger rooms, I mean, this is getting off the tangent of, I'm going to push you on the fatherhood thing, but if I play a really big room, I now play it in the round. I learn it from Chappelle. I was doing gigs with Chappelle in, uh, what was it,

uh, Australia. He invited me up. I had like one night off from my tour in Australia. And he was playing that night. So I went, oh, yeah, I'll come and open for you. And he played, and you walk in the room, the arena, like a boxer. Like, up onto the stage, You have the stage in the middle and you have 14,000 people around you,

rather than being at one end and you're playing to them and there and some people have shitty seats. Everyone's got a good seat. It does shorten the further seat from back. And then you just rotate in that room. And that's the way to do it. Okay, that's the way to like... That's the secret source. Yeah, that's a way to break it smaller.

But also, the thing that you don't realize from that is that the people that are watching you can see past you to be people laughing on the other side. That's actually amazing. That's a good reason to do it, actually. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great reason to do it. Why did I play? I played the, is it the, I think it might be the, it's in Phoenix, Arizona. Maybe the majestic theater, do you know it? No, it's like it's in the round.

I think George Carlin filmed his very famous seven words you can't say on television there. It's that special. In the round. It's phenomenal, but it's a really small room in the rounds, like 2000. Yeah, normally they're not that big. Yeah, it's amazing. So when you were becoming a dad, was there a part of you that was ever worried that you would be the dad that you had? Yeah, I didn't want to be a dad for the longest time because they didn't want to be my father.

And then you realize, no, no, no, I'll make my own mistakes. I got mistakes for days. What was it about him that you didn't want to repeat? Like, what? I mean, he's not great. But the thing about, like, pregnancy makes a baby. Okay, cool. But it also makes a mother.

And a father isn't blessed in the same way. We don't go through the same transformation. But it's, you, so people are waiting around thinking, well, I'm going to wait until I feel like a man. and then I'm going to have some kids. Yeah. And then you have kids and you go, oh, no, this is a verb. This isn't a noun. Yeah.

This is a doing thing. That's beautiful. I'm here to do the rough and tumble play. Yeah. Like I love the, the, they're kind of ha-ha. Because you want your kids to get, you know, it's bruises, not scars. Yeah. You want them to have that fun and to be the fun one in the house.

And the, it's the most wonderful thing. I went out to lunch with a friend who's maybe the brightest guy I know. Eric Weinstein, do you know? No. He's a very clever guy, physicist. And I was talking about how much I love being a father. And he kind of stopped me and he grabbed my arm and he went, you will die and you will be reborn someone else and you will love them. And I kind of went, oh, I sort of get what reincarnation is now.

I kind of get what it is. And there's this lovely crossover period of 30 or 40 years where you get to be with the next version. So beautiful. I would never think of you as somebody who would like adopt or accept that type of philosophy because I've always seen you as somebody like you said at the beginning of this conversation, you're atheist. I wouldn't think of Jimmy as being spiritual.

What changed? Well, I think that thing about going, it's the opposite of faith isn't doubt. it's certainty and I'm not certain about anything you know

I'm full of doubts but the idea that you go to throw out everything spiritual because you don't have religion it seems to be crazy to me

yeah so there's two kinds of you know some people believe in fairy stories I don't and some people believe all religion

is nonsense I don't think church works because God is happy I think church works because people come together Yeah, and decide.

And interesting, that is what the Bible says when three or more gathered in my name. Three? Yeah. Yeah, and there's actually science behind that, funny enough. So it's just the two of us, nothing. No, no, no, but there's actually science. If I wasn't here, this would be some bullshit.

But that's like the interesting thing about, like, is like some of these things. Yeah, but some of these things show you science is like the science behind it, like group dynamic. When it's one person in a room, two people, once it gets to three people, something happens that you can't even explain. It just happens when there's a third body. it just happens and you know what I think it is sometimes

I think it's even the passive effect of an audience so let's say you and I are having a conversation like this there is like now when I was talking to Jimmy you were listening to us you're with us right here but you were listening when you two were talking I was listening and then we said

you laughed I laughed when you two were talking about that thing doesn't exist when there's two people in the same way because you can't always be listening in the same way same where you can't. Two people can make a conversation. A third person can then watch that conversation that is being had by the two people. And we sometimes take that for granted. And that third person can influence the conversation with how they're listening to it and responding to it

in a way that you don't appreciate. So, Tyrion, a petri dish and a scientist above. Yeah, yeah, it just becomes like a, oh wow, oh wow, what's happening. Something happens, changes. Something changes. So it's interesting that even in the Bible, it basically talks about the power of the group. And people might just skip over that, but it's like when three or more, gathered in my name. No, but haven't we, haven't we, I will be there? I think we've, I think we've oversold for the, the individual in our society. Definitely.

And the idea that you go, even identity-wise, people think that they are within their own skin, our identities are dispersed. Yeah. Right? So, so you are different with me than you are with Eugene, then you are with your mother, than you are. But also the, the thing that you don't know yet is who you are as a father. You don't know what you're like as a dad.

You haven't met that person yet. Yeah, you haven't met that's fascinating. And as much as you will love your kids, you will fucking love yourself as a father. That is fascinating. It's a whole new way of being. And you don't know. You won't know. You're like your favorite people in the world, the people you feel most comfortable with,

the people that you can be yourself with. He tells me this all the time. And kids will see you as a combination of all the personalities you've tried out. You've told me this all the time. I've told them this all the time, yeah. Well, here's the real responsibility as well. The internal monologue in your head, that's your parents. The responsibility to know that's who you are to your kids, you will be the internal monologue that they have for the rest of their lives.

It's a weight to carry. It's an amazing place to be. Yeah. It tests you, it challenges you, but it also allows you to give yourself so much grace. When you see kids making mistakes and you know it's not final. final. If they spill something on the carpet, you're like, that's in their world, that's the ultimate thing that could have gone wrong.

Their juice out of the cup into the carpet. Your, brother, that moment is so painful, bro. Yes, to them, that's like, you know, that's their life savings. Yeah. In a company that went belly up. We've all done it. The, the, but that's like, it's Buddhist, right? It's, what does I say, equanimity with impermanence?

Like the cup's already broken Yeah Everyone's already dead Yeah Like make peace with that Yeah what I want to do You enjoy the now Yeah

Like a lot of mental health I think is the now Yeah Depression is the past Yeah Anxiety is the future Right now you're okay Yeah

I love that That's beautiful The idea of like You Learning grace Because you're watching Them sort of Not have grace

For themselves In those moments But you learn so much From kids It's almost Those kids Kids will always Have an outfit

that they love and they can't accept that they've grown out of it. Sorry, are we talking about this? No, because you... No, but you are... You are dressed like a toddler. 100%. Yo, man, this guy gets shots by...

I got a six-year-old I wouldn't put it after. I got to know, wear something with a collar. We're going out. The jacket. Do you know what this guy just did? Have you watched those... You know those... If you watched those mob movies...

I'm killing me. Where the movies just... trundling along calmly. Everyone's having a great time. They're doing things. They're doing things. All of a sudden they go,

hey, Billy, you want to come for a drive? We're going for a drive. Everyone's a good time. Out of nowhere. You, even as an audience member, are sitting there enjoying the movie. So, you know, I was thinking,

bah! Oh shit! Oh, shit! Yeah, you guys, you just did to me. You're in a Cadill. And all of a sudden, there's fucking brains in the glass. And then Jimmy's wiping his gun off.

I'm like, Jimmy, what did you do to your je? He's a right. What did you do to do your jeet? He's like, We had to do something about that outfit. It was coming. It was a long time coming, Trevor. I'm like, no, Jimmy.

Someone had to say. I'm coming in blood right now, Jimmy. I'm coming in blood right now, Jimmy. What a shot fired out of nowhere, right? There's something nice about the out of nowhere. That's the greatest. There's something like they've done nothing. They're just quietly sitting in the front row and then suddenly what?

What just happened? Catching strays, my friend. And you hear that, yeah, ringing such, wee. Yeah, catching strays. Kids will teach you that. They'll be like, I want to put this on. I want to put this on. You're like, no, it doesn't fit anymore.

Then they'll be like, yeah, but I still like it. They're like, no, you have to get something else. Then you have to convince them that something else is good for them. Then that's your job. They don't trust you. Then they'll believe you when you say something else is good for them. Because this thing that they've grown to love and find comfort in doesn't work anymore for them. But as an adult, you take longer to understand that.

The language of it. I love the language of it. I was thinking about it when you were talking about Star Wars. Because my kid, my boy hasn't seen Star Wars, too scary. Hold. He's like six, but it's whatever. We're pretty strict with screens or whatever. We don't fuck with that.

So that idea, but he calls him, he's been on some of the rides at Disney. So he calls him, it's Dark Vader. I like that. And the American Falcon. And someone tried to correct him. Oh, no, no, no. Leave it. Now, once he gets that right, he'll never get it wrong again.

And you love it every single time. I'm enjoying. But like, when he likes to wear a shirt, like a long sleeve. He calls it down sleeves. And someone tried to correct him in a store. I went, no, obviously we're sticking with down sleeves for as long as we possibly can.

This is joyful. And I mean, down sleeves is a great name for it. Perfect name. Because long doesn't really tell us long in relation to down. I like actually more. I think it's actually got a good theory because if you're wearing shorts, they say you're wearing shorts.

But if you're wearing trousers, they never say you're wearing longs. I actually like this a lot. Yeah, could change things. You just made me sad that that most people wouldn't, no, no, no, for people who won't, we're living in a world where fewer people are having kids and fewer people can have kids. And I wonder what society as a whole is going to be robbed of when people cannot have these magical experiences that you're talking about. Well, I mean, the best stuff in life is available to everyone, right? It's weird how the very rich

and the very poor both have tons of kids. Isn't that weird? The poorest person you know, that lives in a trailer park. Tons of kids. Yes. And the richest person, you know, tons of kids. Tons of kids. But the middle class is squeezed. It's really, it's a societal thing because as we moved from the countryside, like 200 years ago, everyone's a farmer.

Everyone now lives in cities. Kids went from being an asset to a liability. Right? In the city, kids are a liability. The countryside, it was like, I've got eight kids. How are you doing? Farm hands. Great.

They're working hard. They'll be in soon. That thing of like, it changed. And we need to rebalance that because the future belongs to whoever shows up for it. And I say this all the time. And I say this, I always say the middle class that can afford to have to some can't, they're middle class but they can't afford. They have so much to offer to these kids.

People have five bedroom houses that are not occupied. People have all these experiences, all these excesses, but no one to give it to. Who's the great guy that said, Warren Farrell, who's great in the feminist movement in the late 60s and he wrote the myth of male power. So he's like, he's like people think he's kind of men's movement. I think he's a brilliant man. He said this thing, kids want your time more than they want your dime. There we go.

I thought it was a great line. He's got a great story. You want to hear a great story about, okay. I'm a guy who likes great stories. All right, so this guy, Warren Farrell, he's working as a therapist in the late 60s. He's in New York. He's where we are now. And this guy comes to him and he's a wealthy man.

He says, I'm very rich. I'm involved in a big business and I have regrets about how I live my life I think Warren Fowell goes, okay, well tell me what's going on. He said why I had a first wife and I didn't spend any time with her.

I was way working all the time and I had a kid. I didn't really connect with a kid. I just wasn't there and I feel terrible about it. And my girl is pregnant. And what should I do? and Warren Fowell like talks to the guy and he goes well you you there's no point having money

if you're not going to do what you want with your life right so what do you want to do they said well I want to give up everything and just be a father and just be there for the kid and Warren Fowrell goes okay well that's what you should do do that so he does he shuts down the business and he sits with a kid for like five first five years of his life and he just bakes bread and hangs out in the house and he's like a dad when no one was like a full-time dad. He was a full-time dad.

And the story gets interesting when I tell you the guy was John Lennon. Wow. And no one knew that five years after that he'd get shot in the face. He would never have that time again

and he took that time to do with his kid to hang out. Damn. Give yourself that gift. I think we always assume that the time is promised to us. Yeah. Because our obligations have claimed their time, we always assume that the things we actually want for ourselves

will also claim their time. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Your work, your debts, your everything. They've claimed their time well in advance. They're like, oh, here's your payments. this is how it's going to work. You're like 20 years?

Yeah, yeah, you'll be paying for this house for 20 years. The bank has, the bank's claimed its time. You know what I mean? Yeah. Everything. And so I think because of that sometimes as people, we assume, because the things that we owe, whether it's time, money, whatever, because they've claimed their time,

we then, I think, assume that the things we want have no time will also be able to, we'll also be able to claim their time. But that's not, what you just said to me. But it's you. It's also. You know, you're a good boy. You love your mom. Yeah.

You want to get a real present? You want to get her a gift? Jimmy was sent here as a spy. Yeah. My mom sent Jimmy to this podcast. Deep undercover. But it looks off judging my outfit. It looks like my mom sent you to this podcast too.

Jimmy was sent by both of our moms. I think your mother's here somewhere. I think she's still dressing you. I'm pretty convinced. Why are you always dressed or sharp, by the way? I like, it became like a thing. Is this also like an English thing, like an English? I don't think it is a particularly English thing.

But I mean, I love my, my tailor is, it's Tom Sweeney, I go to. And he's one of my best friends, Luke. That's a Taylor name. He's the best. I just, I love spending time with them. I love the whole thing of like going and buying a suit. The ritual of it, going into the store, hanging out with the guys, I'll shoot some pool, we'll pick some fabrics.

It's just sounds like here. This sounds like picky blinders in my head. Yeah. Yeah. It's like the image. have right now. It's kind of, it's, the boys are very, they're very good. Do you look at other people's suits and go, whoa, whose one is that one? What, what is that? I look at American men in suits and think, hilarious. Hilarous. That, I don't know who that was made for, but not you, clearly.

I like to come correct. It's also that thing of, like, on stage, I think that thing about wearing a suit and a tie. For me, it feels like a mark of respect for the audience. Different people sort of see themselves in different ways, but also, it speaks to character and reputation. I'm characters what you know about yourself reputation is what the rest of the world sees and people perceive me in a three-piece suit and a tie. Fine, great. I'll lean into that.

Okay. It also suits you though. Very much so. It really suits your vibe. Like, I don't know what it is, but it's like, you know when like the thing just like suits you? Every comedian has their thing. You can't imagine anything else. I can't. I can't.

And I also think there's something about like when I remember the first time I watched you when you like this guy's up there in a suit telling one-liners, it makes you even feel, like an assassin in a suit feels even more dangerous. You know?

So if I see like a movie and there's an assassin and they're wearing t-shirts, I'm like, all right, you kill people. But an assassin in a suit, I'm like, oh, don't mess with this guy. He's going to kill people wearing a three-piece suit.

I think that he knows his, you know what I mean? You know, we go out to the theater and like someone's put on a bit of a show. Like I would think, like, your production design as a comedian is whatever you got on here. That's why people are looking at.

So it's like you don't need a big show. It's like that's it. That's the set design. I bought a suit. Well done everyone. A new tie. Do you love my set? You may want to wear suits again. We'll wear suits again.

I'll try it a bit. That's all I wore when I first started. Remember? Yeah. Terrible suits. Hey, some of them, you look like a evangelist. Terrible. Some of them, you're even being kind to me

because you're my friend. My favorite one was that. shiny... The shiny silver one. Yeah, thin foil looking. Oh my goodness. Oh man, that suit for me was like, yeah, no. It shimmered.

It was like baggy and it shimmered. It's like massive fat tie in the middle. With a big color. Huge shoulder pads and ah, but I was loving it. It's weird the way like it hasn't changed much in the last kind of 50 years. Like I could pretty much, like whether I'm like smart or casual, I could pretty much dress as JFK on any given day. Yes, you could.

Yeah, you could. You know the deal with JFK, the fashion-wise? No. His guys were called the men without hats. I've heard that term, but I didn't know what it was for his... So when he came up, when he was running for office, none of his guys wore hats. He didn't wear a hat.

Everyone wore hats. And he came along, and he didn't wear a hat. And suddenly the hat business went from being a large industry to nothing in like two years. When he got elected, it was suddenly like, oh, no, hats are old-fashioned. fuddy-duddy dudes. Modern, new people. This was America. This was JFK, yeah.

Add a new suspect to the list. The head industry. A, you must always look at who benefits or who had a grievance with the person. So you think the Zagrubutate might have been someone on a grassy knoll wearing a hat? What did they shoot on his body? His head.

Yeah. I'm not saying that this is conf- I'm just saying if I'm a detective, I've found a new lead. Okay. The hat industry. And those people are famously crazy because they work with Mercury.

And the beavers. As mad as a hatter. Comes from that. I'm sure the beavers were like, yeah, let's, we're seeing a reinsurgeons. Let's have more kids, guys.

Yeah. No one's after upheld anymore. Good. Don't press anything. We've got more. What now? After this. What's a conspiracy theory you do believe?

A conspiracy theory. Yeah, that you do believe. All right. Here's, Even if it's one of your own. Two terrifying scenarios. Cool. Okay.

So the first is there's a Manhattan project currently underway in America. And they're building a doomsday machine. And it's called solstice and it's artificial general intelligence. Okay. Trillions of dollars are being spent on building this. Somewhere in America, we don't know where. but it's siloed off and they're building this. Second, terrifying scenario.

They're not. Yo, by the way, what's happening in England these days? In England? Yeah, because I like asking people this because when you're not in a country, or if you live between countries, you learn very quickly, the stories being told about a country are not felt in the same way

or they're being painted in a different way than the people are experiencing it in the country. And I wonder, like, what's happening in England these days? I don't know. I mean, it feels it's a very interesting time at the moment in the UK because it's kind of, there was the Brexit thing, and then we didn't really leave. And the country's in, we've had like seven prime ministers in 10 years.

And there's political stagnation. The new guy, I wish him well, Andy Burnham's come in, and he's capped bus fares at two pounds. And it's like rearranging. deck chairs on the Titanic. Like, the economy is not going well. The country's not going well. And no one quite knows what to do.

And it seems to me like no one has like the big ideas on how to change Great Britain. And it seems relatively simple, but people don't want to do it. Like they're not going to grasp the nettle. What do you think the simple is? I always think they're like, there's no silver bullet. Yeah. There's no, I'm a big follower of this guy called Roger Boutle. He's an economist who writes very good papers about what to do.

And he did this great paper, which was like eight examples around the world of different economies that have done different things. I think if you want to sort out Britain, you can't, certain things are necessary but not sufficient. Okay. So if it was me, if I was in charge, I would devalue the currency by 20%. Oh. And I would do it on purpose and I would be open about it. And the reason is it would make your holiday more expensive. but I don't care about the two weeks a year when you go on holiday overseas.

I care about the other 50 weeks of the year. And if you want to rebalance the country, you have to increase the manufacturing industry. And the reason the pound is very high is because of the city of London. But London is like a really rich city. And it's surrounded by quite a poor country. You want that redistribution. You want people to have more.

You need to make things. Yeah, you do need to make things. And then energy. We have the highest energy prices in the world, I believe. It's four times higher than it is in America. Jeez. And really, all I would, all I aspire to be is as good as 1970s, France. In 1970s, the mid-80s, France built 56 nuclear reactors.

They now have the cheapest energy in Europe. So they think of fuck what the Russians say, because they don't import the gas. They make their own energy. And you go, well, that's a very, that takes 12, 15 years. Yeah, it takes a statesman, not a politician. politicians are on a four, five-year cycle. The French have always been good at that, though, if you look at their history. Yeah.

Like, if you look at how the, like Paris itself, how it was built, if you look at the ideas, many French leaders built beyond themselves. Like they, and then the person who would follow on from them carried it on in a strange, like you don't always see that. But that thing of like the statesman is planting a tree whose shade you will never enjoy. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we've got kind of crazy levels of regulation in the UK that just need, you just need to kind of pare it back a little bit.

You need to make it a bit simpler. Like, if you look at China compared to America or Britain, right, they've covered their nation in high-speed rail. Yeah. And we've covered ours in environmental reports. Why? Because China is run by engineers, and we're run by lawyers. And everything can't be run by lawyers.

You know, you have to get some shit done. But it's, you know, and then the last thing is, you know, taxation, I think, is very interesting. idea that we haven't, we left Europe and then we never took the benefit. You know, Ireland, where my people are from, have lower corporation tax than anywhere else in Europe. So all of the anthropics, all of the companies, all the big tech companies, base themselves in Dublin. And Dublin, an island, does very well out of the tax revenue from that. I don't want to be a dick about it, but I would undercut them by 2%. But don't you think it didn't become like a race to the bottom? Aren't you worried about...

You have to be in competition with the rest of the world. You have to... The real politics is you're in competition with every other country. Yeah. And different places

have different specialties, right? Why would you want to live there? Why would you want to live here? Where do you want to be? I feel like the tax guys have tricked us in all these corporations have tricked us tax-wise because what they've done is

they've made it a cat and mouse game where they make everyone offer everyone a lower tax rate, but all they're always going to do is keep moving. And if you, if everyone, bends to their whims, at the end of it, everyone has just bent themselves out of actually being a place where you want to be or not. Because here's what I mean.

Okay, it's like, think of this. And I'm not an economist. So this is how I think of it in the world is, let's say you went to a bodega here in New York. And you got there and you said, how much for this bottle of water? And they said, $4. And you're like, ah, the other bodega is going to give it to me for $3.70. And then he's like, all right, I'll give it to you for $3.7. And then you leave and you go to next row day

and you're like, oh, they give it to me 370s. He's like, I'll give you to 370. So it comes infinite bid. Yeah, it can become an infinite bid. Now, I know in a connoisse will tell me, yeah, but supply, demand, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I know it's complicated in tax. But I just feel like sometimes I think the race is the wrong way around. I know this is a little kumbaya of me.

But I think if countries found a way to come together and the same way they have like international crime agreements, I think if they did a better job of having international tax agreements, then that wouldn't be able. It's weird to me that when I'm in Europe, when I'm in London, I catch an Uber and I get charged by Uber Amsterdam. I think that's weird.

Because the Uber is in London. The Uber is in the UK. I even think this in South Africa. Like, one of the things that worries me the most in South Africa now is if you are a South African company and you advertise on Facebook, and it's necessary for your, you know, you need to advertise where the people are.

You're going to advertise on Facebook. you're going to advertise on Google, all of these things. The money doesn't stay in South Africa, but you're a South African business. Think about that. Advertising to South Africans. You're a South African business advertising South African products to South Africans. But the money that you pay for that advertising,

back in the day, would go to a South African advertising company, a South African platform, a South African billboard, a South African. And for me, I believe money is just like water. You want to keep it flowing. You know it's going to start somewhere. it's going to flow and then you want it to evaporate and go back up

and then rain back down and then freeze and then come down. That's a healthy system, right? Money is upstream of the things that we want. We say we want more money for people, but really what do we want? We want more health care.

Yes, and better nutrition. That's exactly it. The problem is, I'd love to run for politics, but in 1980, I want to go back and be able to promise

what we have now in 1980. The problem is the worst kind of inflation in the world is expectation inflation, right? And there's another word for expectation inflation. It's progress. People want more.

We get used to shit being good really fast. But we want like a level for everyone. We want everyone to be at the level of kind of aboveness. A decent level. Yes, a decent level. But you can't keep moving the goalposts. And for me, it's about desires as opposed to kind of memetic desires. Like, what's the example?

Like a Ford car and a Ferrari do the same job. They'll get you from A to B. Yeah. But one of them has like metaphysical value. It's like what you think it says about you as a person and you're adventurous and sporty and that, whatever. But one of them is just functional. Like provide the functional stuff, everyone. Yeah.

And then above that, you know, people are going to be. But that's what you want. That's what you want. But that's what I'm trying. That's why I'm saying. That's why I worry that the race will go to the bottom. Because if we are not careful, I think what will happen is, the UK, let's say, will undercut Ireland,

oh, we'll give you less tax rate, and as the people come there, and then we've seen this happen, corporations, companies, factory. The only reason we have weekends off is because workers had to fight for it. Yeah, the unions. Let's never forget that as an idea.

People forget the unions gave us that. People forget the reasons for things. That's what I'm saying. People talk about the new deal, like the new deal just happened, just like Rosa Vot came in, had the new deal. You know when the new deal happened because of labor riots that were,

brutal. Yeah. People think Pearl Harbor happened out the blue. Pearl Harbor didn't happen out the blue. America cut off its oil supply. So it had a choice. It could collapse or it could go for an unwinnable war. And it couldn't face backing down.

You know, it's a weird thing of like knowing the history is really interesting. And I think, you know, Britain, it's interesting, but we live in very interesting times. Like the bigger picture, I think we're living in a revolution. I agree with you. It depends how you define revolution. but I define a revolution as the replacement of elites and the elites are being replaced. Think about like the medical profession post-COVID,

people don't trust it. People don't trust politicians in a way that they used to. People don't trust academics, academia. We don't trust institutions. We don't trust institutions. And the bubbling up of not trusting institutions, what's the first sign of that? Conspiracy theories.

Yeah. Conspiracy theories are a symptom of a large problem, which is we don't trust the institution. So we're just, we're scrabbling around. But I read a lot of Neil Howe. You've ever read that guy? Maybe I don't know. He wrote that book called The Fourth Turning.

Okay. About how history moves in like 80 year cycles. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yes. I have read that. Yes, I actually have read that. And the idea that you go, the foundation myth of our culture is World War II. Like Western culture is World War II. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we're the goodies, they're the baddies. We did this. And it's falling away. You can see it like statues of Churchill are being torn down, right? And you go, so that myth is kind of fading because it's the people don't remember it. People that were there. It holds less and less of a meaning now. It does.

So you go, so, you know, civilization is a clearing in the forest. We're going to have to relitigate everything. It's not like we can cope without institutions. Yeah. We just need new institutions. And at the moment, like politically what's happening, like the postmodernists, it's a war on truth. Yeah.

And we can live without truth, if I'm honest. We live without truth pretty easily. But we can't live without trust. and we need truth to make trust and trust is that's the fundamental and trust is very delicate I think it's so to me

one of the reasons it's happening is because because of what you said earlier we are catering to audiences of one I remember talking to Marquez Brownlee MKBHD and we're just chatting about this and he was talking about it amongst big YouTubers and YouTube in general and he said

everyone talks about this race to the audience of one. If you look at your world and your entertainment and your information, we're now living in a world where it is all specifically for you. You do not have to be in friction. You do not have to share. You do not have to. And if it's not for your friends, if it weren't for them, think about how many things you've shown me, taught me, shared with me,

that I wouldn't otherwise. Neil Brennan sends me stuff all the time. I talk to him. But it's like those things. Have you seen this? Have you done this? If we, if it weren't for that, we literally now would live in ideological silos and truth silos.

Well, here's, because there's no other world. Here's my take on this, right? So we gathered around the fire. I don't know, two, three hundred thousand years, maybe longer. We gathered around the fire and we talk, okay? And then we bought TV sets. No, we bought radios first, right? Radios and we gathered around the wireless, the radio,

And we listened to it and we talked. And then we bought TVs and TV. It's kind of like a proxy for a fire. And we watch that together. And then we turn it off. Exactly. And whatever it was, whatever mom was watching, we were watching. Exactly.

And then we talked about it. And we moved on. And TV ended. And suddenly. Yeah, finished. Suddenly. Yeah. We're doing this and we're in separate rooms.

And why do people want to go to festivals and comedy shows and things now? That's what I mean. Because we missed that connect. Yeah. Like that, that, we have this dispersed identity. have to kind of come together. I don't know. I presume that we we re-lisigate, we reinvent everything now. Everything gets recreated. But we've been, we've been in tougher times than this before. When you look back, I'm very pessimistic in the short term and very optimistic in the long term.

I like that. Like we have to get through this little precipice. But if we do, good times. Yeah, man. That's why, that's why I love, that's when we're going back to appreciating it, those are the things that I look at is I go I'm not just here doing a show thinking of oh the resume

I've started to think of comedy and anything that I do anything that we do I go like what is this also a part of what do I wish to try and like contribute to and what do I wish was in my world

and how do I do you get I'm saying because I genuinely think it makes a huge listen to what you said ah when I was at the Taylor Swift show it has left something with you that'll connect you to other people, by the way, that you maybe otherwise wouldn't have been connected with. Yeah, that one moment.

It gives you a different memory. It gives you a different, and you were forced to share it with people who are singing at each other. The same thing with Oasis and Wonderwall is it's, it's this thing, even Star Wars, funny enough, where you have this, I can see in your eyes, you're like, oh, man, when I get to show my kids Star Wars. Yeah, it's excitement. Yeah, because they then get to see how you perceive literature fiction, storytelling, movies, whatever it may be. and they get to understand you a little bit. I always hop on about this, man. Yeah.

It, look at societies that are generally homogenous. One of the things they're really good at doing. By the way, do you say homogenous or homogeneous? I always want to ask like an English person. I say homogenous, but I often pronounce stuff incorrectly because I'm an auto-dictat. So most of what I learned, I've learned reading it. But because of your accent, we all think that's the right one. You would just think it was bad.

I'm going to go with you then. So homogenous. I'm going to go with you just, it's safer. Yeah. So if you look at homogeneous societies, they're very good at agreeing on something. It sounds now like you're talking about a really smart gay guy. You see now. You see now. It does sound like that.

That's why I've always said homogenous. He's a homogenous. He's a homo genius. Leonardo da Vinci was a homo genius. What a homo genius. So where you look at these cultures. You know, you know he invented the reach around. He's actually a homo genius.

When you look at these cultures, one of the things they're really good at doing is coming to consensus quickly and moving forward in a direction. Yeah. Right? What are they generally bad at doing, innovating or rather choosing an outfit that may be better for them, even though the outfit they've kept for so long, worked and was their favorites? Yeah, I think that idea, you know, it's Thomas Salle, isn't it? There's no solutions, only tradeoffs.

Yes, yes, yes, completely. You can go to places that are very, very high trust. Yeah. You know, if it's Japan or Denmark where everyone's the same. Right. And it's super high trust, great. But I like that kind of the multiculturalism, the idea that you go to places like London where people are from 200 different nations.

Right, right, right. And they come together. But, you know, it's not as high trust. But, okay, I'll take that. I, you know, I love that idea that people kind of can, and proper, you know, properly enjoying travel and other cultures is very valuable. but a lot of people are just like tourists. They say they love other cultures.

And what they mean is music, food, festivals. But they never want to engage in the real stuff. No, they don't. And I think the privilege of our job is we get to travel the world and talk to people and engage with the difficult stuff. They think about that thing differently. Yeah. That's actually fascinating.

He literally, when he came back from Cape Verde, it was more about, you said the people, but the ideas is what you were more. The people and the ideas that they share, their philosophy towards life, them realizing where they are. They know that they're in the middle of the ocean. They are floating in seven tiny rocks in the middle of the ocean. They know that for a fact. And they're like, we've only got each other.

So them as a society and as a community, they're like, no, no, we've got a philosophy. It served us well. It makes us survive this thing. Therefore, we've got each other to take care of. I think there's often that and the cultural memory of a place. My girl is Canadian. And I think there's something about the Canadian winters that makes Canadian people much nicer

because someone knocks on your door and says, can I come inside? Yeah, because if you don't, you're going to freeze to death. The cultural memory. You're going to die. It's why Africans have more time for people. Yes. We're not as precious about time. We just generally aren't.

And it's the biggest friction like you'll see with like Europeans and Africans and Africans when they're in Africa. They're like, they've been called African times. Yeah, they'd be like, yeah, but nothing, you know, have you, have you been to Africa? nothing runs on time, yeah, everything is. Then I'm like, yes, because it didn't need to. You must remember, this time that you have created is a construct

that you very desperately needed to facilitate your survival. Because if the snow was coming, you had to make sure that the things were, you know, reaped at the right time, your fruits were taken away, your stuff was stored. If the carriage didn't pick you up before the storm, you were dead. But in Africa, those things didn't exist as a concept. So time is just the thing we're experiencing. but if you look at the cultural memory of time Africans never thought of it as a scarce thing

because it didn't affect their existence so Africans didn't go so there's a fascinating book I remember reading about it because our whole lives we know it and then I read a book that talked about it it's why Africans open their mouth more when they speak why they speak slower

so it doesn't matter where you're from on the African continent there'll be that thing you know like possible more um... It's big and it's open why the air is warmer generally right you you don't worry about losing your body heat and there's no rush and then when you go to the coldest places you look at like the scandinavia the sweden

tuck tak hit a small words you don't have to open your mouth you don't know interesting about spicy food yeah so the further south you go the spicy the food is yes it doesn't matter whether you could be in south america yeah yeah yeah you could be in africa spicy and it's about the pathogen load the spices kill the pathogens. I didn't know that. There's no pathogens in the north. So if you got to Scandinavia and you kill a chicken and you cook it, you can be okay. If you got Africa, you better put some spices in there to kill whatever is in there.

Kill the pathogens. It's like morning sickness. You know about morning sickness? Yes. So morning sickness affects women from this week to this week. Okay. Why? Because that's when the organs are being born, are being made.

Okay. So if you're making the organs and you get sick, that's a real problem. So your sensitivity to pathogens during those weeks goes through the fucking roof. Morning sickness thing goes away when the baby's just getting bigger. When you're just growing it. But the organs are there. So what is a congenital heart problem? It's when someone got sick on that day.

Something went wrong on that day. There's no do-overs in nature. You have to be healthy on that day. Interesting, right? All of this is interesting to me. And that's why I... What did you think there? I mean, you said friction.

I think friction is one of the, like my kind of theory at the moment. Yeah. Friction is good. Friction is very good. Right. Low friction. Tick-Tock, very low friction, right? Super entertaining.

Low friction, easy, right? Yes. TV shows. A little bit more friction. You can sit down and watch this thing. It's half an hour long. Yeah. Okay.

Put it on. Okay, great. Okay. We'll watch it, pay attention. A movie. Two hours, three hours, maybe. More friction. Okay, but better.

When you're going to remember, well, book. Oh, Jesus. The amount of friction, difficult. But you never forget what you read. Yeah. Like more friction is better. And who wrote it? Yeah.

Who said whatever. Yes. L.L. Cool, Jason, on the show, which I really loved. Remember when he was talking about, like, life? And he was talking essentially about the idea of assuming that things will come with friction makes. What do you say? He said, friction makes easy things difficult and difficult things impossible. Do you know what I mean?

Just the friction. It makes an easy thing seem difficult and a difficult thing seem impossible because of the friction that is attached to it. And when you think of it through that lens, it's funny you say that because I've literally been on this for long. You and I talk about this all the time. In our friend group now, we try and engage with friction purposefully. Like purposefully, we drive each other to the airport now. Like we'll ask each other, can you drop me off at the airport? And we know why we're doing it.

It's not going to be fun. Yes. But that drives to the airport? will bring you some of the greatest memories of friendship that you will ever have because it wasn't a lunch there wasn't someone interrupting you

are you guys going to order something else are you going to and that's what I worry about in society is a lot of how we come together as people is governed by our financial means now yeah you know what I mean it's becoming more and more that

do you want to go on a date can you do that money no so then how do you date let's go out for a drink let's go out for a so many of these things have become when I was a kid I think of like the luckiness of it

yes the parks and everything but there's the mall you know kids parents would just drop their kids at the mall no money and all of us would just run around in a mall for 10 hours and it was just like our

our place of like being with each other yes with each other there were kids who had money kids who didn't have money I think about this in a slightly different way but like tangentially I talk about this in the show

at the moment about how men need therapy because women have got each other. Women are very good at talking to each other. Men, we've got friends, but we don't talk to our friends. We do things with our friends. I feel like we're living the same life.

We need an excuse to do something. So we go, we're going to go and see the football. Yeah. We have to go and see the football, or we're going to play pool, or we're going to go for a drink. We have to have an activity based. We can't just say, I want to have a conversation.

And it's actually, there's something about testosterone that makes it very difficult to look people in the eyes and have a long conversation. It's much better if you have a friend that's having a crisis to play a game of pool or go on a drive. Be doing something,

have a distraction, have something else that's going on while you're talking to them. Seems to work. Yeah, I don't think of this is a distraction. That's why I always love hanging with you. I genuinely feel like

we are connected by some invisible force. I'll play you the audio from the show. Literally. This is what I'm talking about right now to the audiences, is as men, we're living in a world where the things that we take for granted that used to connect us are now becoming harder and harder for us to just attain. You know what I mean?

Yeah. So whether it is the local pub and being able to afford just being there, whether it's because you can afford your electricity, you can afford, afford, like all of these things. You might be on, I'm very pro, I did a bit recently where I said, I'm very pro drinking. I'm pro gangs and I'm pro gambling. No, I haven't seen this. Pro drinking, pro gangs, pro gambling. Okay, so I'm, okay, so I'm pro gangs because some gangs deal drugs and shoot people.

They're not good. But most gangs, it's groups of men that come together and where should men be together? Yeah. If you go to anyone that's having relationship difficulties, I'll tell you what their problem is. all relationships have the same problem. It's one person, say, every argument there's ever been between a man and a woman is someone going, you're not enough people. You're not enough people.

We want one person. Yeah, Esther Perel is the genius on this. No, she literally talks about this all the time. You go, you need more than that. You need your friends. You need your buddies. And men are very good at checking other men, right? I've set up a group of youth clubs across Britain.

They've got like, they've got pool tables. They've got dartboards, they've got music, they've got drinks. They're called pubs. And they're the greatest youth clubs there have ever been. They're everywhere. We should lower the drinking age to 16. Because if you don't think 16-year-olds are drinking, you're living in a fucking dream world.

Good luck in your fairy tale land. But I'd rather they were drinking in pubs with other people than on their own in the park. So I'd say the drinking age should be just wine and beer, no hard stuff. You can drink in a pub when you're 16, but you have to bring three friends. Can't go on your own. You've got to have four people have to be there in order to drink, right? So I'm pro-gang, a little gang of you. A little gang, you're allowed to go to the pub, you're allowed to watch football in the pub.

The pub probably has a football team that you can join. Like other men will check you if you start to be a dick, you'll get thrown out. They'll let you know real quick. The bartender will cut you off. if you get drunk, you'll get each other home, you'll be all right. That's like, it's, but it's the real world as well, as opposed to the practical, as opposed to going, oh, I guess young people shouldn't drink, so just they'll, what are you talking about? The drinking age, it's crazy. And then pro gambling is like, the gamble, though, shouldn't be sports betting or casinos.

It should be the big gamble. What are you going to do with your life? You can do anything you want with your life. You just have to face the consequences. And I think men have, you know, People often talk about how 90% of the CEOs in the world are men. But you have to also consider 90% of the people in prisons are men. And it's the same drug at the center of that. It's testosterone. Same personalities as well sometimes. Men take insane risks.

Right? That's what we do. Sometimes crash and fails. Sometimes we do very well. But that thing of like channeling that into making good bets. L.A. Kuljee said it yesterday, right? Yeah. Said if it wasn't a great prolific musician and an actor,

in York could have been a different place. Yeah. He's like he would have been in the streets. doing so, he's like that same energy, he would have taken it somewhere else and he's like, good luck, New York. You would have known my name in a very different way. Because it is that same energy that's going somewhere. But that friction thing you're talking about has become my newest passion because I've realized even in my own life how convenience is a thief that steals things you didn't even know you had. Yeah. It's really, really powerful how it does it. I mean, the AI thing

with me, don't outsource any skill you are not comfortable losing because you're going to lose it. You're not going to be able to do it. You're going to have to work on it. If you play your instrument, you play your instrument, right? You get good, but you have to keep on playing it. You have to practice. You have to put the practice in. And if you, if you outsource that, you're gone. But that's what I mean. It's the convenience. It's just the convenience of the, you know, the food arriving, the convenience of the car that picks you up, the convenience, the convenience, the convenience, the convenience. And then you go, like, when I think the biggest thing I like, I get sad about and it's like, it's a conundrum. I know.

It's, you know, like in South Africa, I think of like townships when we were growing up. It is the most inconvenient experience. Your neighbors play music at 6 a.m. on the weekend, loud. You're all, you, everyone hears everyone's music. Everyone knows everybody's business. Everybody's talking to you. You can't walk anywhere without having a conversation with somebody. So you can't, like, just pop to the shops and come.

come back real quick. There's no such thing. No privacy. Everyone's asking you if they can borrow money from you. Everyone, if you've got a car, then you've now become the de facto transportation person for everyone. Hey, Eugene, we heard you got a car. Oh, we heard you. Can you help us move this? Oh, can you do this?

And if you have some and if somebody dies, then you all have to go and cook for that. And there's all the whole thing is just friction, Jimmy. It's just friction, friction, friction, friction. But can I tell you what it is? I never once heard a story once in the township ever in so weird. So never. I never heard a story of like, do you know someone died and no one knew for like two months?

Those stories that I read in the newspaper now in life. Don't exist. They literally never existed. Never, never, never, never existed. There was literally no homeless person. Think about it. Yeah. There was literally.

This is a place where people had been pushed into the worst types of poverty imaginable. And yet there was not a single person homeless sleeping on the street. Which doesn't make sense because you're like, but no one had money. Oh, thing. that family is poor. Right? That wasn't a thing. They just had less.

But poverty? It's not a real thing in a township. Someone will interfere. Because the friction that came with it meant, man, a friendship is friction. Yeah. Because now it's like, okay, well, what do you want to watch, Jimmy?

I know what I want to watch. Yeah. What do you want to watch? Ah, damn it, Jimmy wants to watch his own thing. So now I have to like, we have to negotiate. We have to find a comment. But you know what? That friction gives us in return.

It gives us the friendship. A relationship is friction. Hell of friction. Terrible friction. This person wants to do you. Kids are friction. You gave me, can I tell you? You gave me the most, you sent me the most beautiful message about that.

Literally changed my whole perspective. You said, man, you like kids, it is the most insane journey. You said, I cannot wait to get out of the house and leave. And he's like, and as soon as I walk out the door, man, I'm even more excited to come back. You're like, ah, I cannot wait to get back. It's the friction of it. Yeah. But we've been sold.

Everyone has been sold. And I mean everyone. We've been sold on the convenience of relationships, the convenience of opinion, the convenience. Now it's like, oh, yeah, if you're going to go to your family, don't talk about the, just ignore that. Rather talk about it. It's like, yeah, but that friction leaves you, where does it leave you? I was trying to a guy recently, Alex Hormosey. Do you know Alex?

No. He's a really smart guy. You know a lot of people. I don't know me. So Alex Hormosey is, he like runs gyms and things. He lives in, I saw him in Vegas recently. He's kind of a public intellectual, but he's also, he's a great fun guy to talk to. So we're chatting about friction, and then he started chatting about optionality.

Like, we've oversolved for options, right? You've got a lot of options right now, right? But actually, constraints are freeing. Because your problem is you've got too many options. Young people, they've got too many options. You could be with anyone. You could do anything. It's a lot.

But once you've decided who to be with and what to do, you can stop thinking about how to live and get on with living. Get on with it. like limiting limiting what you what you have options wise because if you never cash in the option it's nothing

options are there to be cashed in oh I like that options are there to be cashed in options are there to be cashed in yeah the freedom that comes with that so now that's that's the thing I'm preaching that's the one thing I'm overrated yeah I'm eventually about

have you seen that video it went viral in South Africa it was of the prisoners and they had some guy with the phone and was making a video and one of the prisoners they were like interviewing each other. It was really funny and then got people very angry in the country. But they were like, yo, what's it like being in jail? Then he's like, he's like, ah, he's like, jail.

He's like, I love this place. I know what time I have to go to bed. I know when I'm going to get my food. I've got my friends every day. We know what we're going to do. I don't worry about what's going to happen tomorrow. I don't. And people got very angry because they're like, we need to make prisons more shit.

In South Africa? Yeah, yeah. What is it? What is the 28th, isn't it? Oh, no, this was, no, this wasn't like in the... Oh, no, it was like, that's the gang. No, this wasn't a gang. This was just prisoners in a...

I'm sure you remember the video, but it went viral. And people were like, is this... They went like, people are suffering in the streets, but in prison people are having a good time. And I get what they were saying. But I think what some people might have missed in that moment was just that guy in his perspective, first of all, because I don't think he speaks for all prisoners.

But he was going, it's surprisingly liberating being in a world where you have so many constraints because all I have to do is find my freedom within these constraints. Sure. And it's exactly what you're saying. And look forward to those gaps. You've chosen it. And it's like because you've chosen it's like, okay, you're stuck. Yeah, but because you've, you've anchored yourself to this, you're free now to like, you know. Yeah, but also it's, it's kind of stoic. It's the idea that you go, the guy didn't choose to be in prison. I don't know

what he did, but he's there now and he's making the best of it. Yeah. That's the, whatever the life is. You can only do what you can with what you have where you are. That's it. Yeah, in war movies, you always see them talking about going home and getting that leave. But in sci-fi movies and the spaceship and the Starship Enterprise, you never hear them on deck talking about leave. They're here. I've actually never thought of that.

Yeah, they're here. But soldiers were like, yeah, we're going for downtime and R&R and going away. And then they go and come back again to battle. But in the Starship Enterprise, no one has ever said, have you kept in your leave to Galactica Cabanas? No one has ever said that. They know where they are. They're having fun where they are.

They've made peace with the fact that they're in this never-ending journey in this voyage. He knows Star Wars isn't a documentary, right? I believe it is. What? What's our own footage? What's a conspiracy theory you do believe? A conspiracy theory? Yeah, that you do believe.

All right. here's even if it's one of your own all right two two terrifying scenarios okay so the first is there's a Manhattan

project currently underway in America and they're building a a doomsday machine and it's called

solstice and it's artificial general intelligence okay trillions of dollars are being spent on building this.

Somewhere in America, we don't know where, but it's siloed off and they're building this. Second, terrifying scenario, they're not. I think I take the second one. Okay, so the Chinese are doing it. Ah, this guy trapped. Yeah. But I think someone's working on AGI at the moment. I think that's a, I think it's a pretty safe bet that they're working on AGI.

And you remember everyone was fascinated with aliens in the 1950s and 60s. Because the dummies that we are, we think drones came out four years ago in Ukraine. They've been working on that shit. Were you here listening to me yesterday? No, but obviously they've been around a long time, right? I was saying the exact same thing. Jimmy! Of course.

Of course. But that idea you go, what's going on now? What are they working on right now? And people worry about the wrong thing with AI. They worry about their job being taken. Obviously, we can see all the jobs AI will take. we can't see any of the jobs it will create. Right.

And they're thinking about the wrong thing because if you, the barriers to entry for running an authoritarian regime have come down by 10 orders of magnitude. Okay. In the last two years. Okay. Right? So you could run the Stasi off my laptop now. Yep.

That is a worry because politicians will have to resist that temptation. And that's a big temptation. The other thing is physics, right? Peter Thiel said this, I think. If you minus the screens from the room, we're living in the early 70s. Nothing has changed in 50 years, right? So physics has general theory of relativity and Newtonian physics, and they don't quite match. There's no general theory that unites everything.

Well, with this new technology, could there be? Because wealth is energy transferred. and if we if physics gets to another level using this technology, everything changes. Everything. Is this the part of the show where you start asking the audience for questions? Yeah. We're just sitting there in the audience. Well, Jimmy.

How you feeling New York? It's terrifying. and then sometimes I'm like, ah, it's electricity, just turn it off. That's like the part of my brain that sometimes, it's not very logical, but I'm just like, yeah, we'll turn it off, we'll unplug everything. That's one of the outcomes that I think is very possible. It's weird. We thought, for the longest time, everyone thought that was involved or interested in AI,

thought, oh, the big thing will be the Turing test. The big thing will be, can it pass as a human? And we flew past that in an afternoon. And then we just shifted the goalpost, yeah. Yeah. Well, the touring was really just a benchmark. It wasn't the, I was like, oh, you said it was the. And it's like, well, really, it's not the.

And so it'll just get to a place where it's, I just think it's funny that a lot of the people who are selling it as the panacea, like, they'll be like, oh, you know, there's, it will create infinite wealth and money won't mean anything. Yeah, but then I'm like, okay, if that's the case, give us your money then. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No one will be poor anymore. Does that mean I won't be rich anymore? You guys haven't thought this through. This is terrible.

This is terrible news. What have we got? We got... What we have here is paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. What a great... Roll the dice. Yeah, let's see what happens. This has been fun, man.

That's great to see you. By the way, so when are you going to be touring the US again? I think next year. Okay. I'll come back, have a dart at that. Because every time I hear you in Austria, you're massive in Australia, man. Yeah, Australia and New Zealand are very good to me.

I mean, I do 50 countries on the tournament. 50? Yeah, 50. How do you break that down? How much time are you on the road in a year? I do maybe 200 shows, 200 nights a year, something like that. But the UK is my biggest market probably,

and if I'm there, I can be in my own bed every night. That is nice. So I feel like I get to spend. work-life balance, like work and have a family, that's it. Forget the percentages. It'll change over the years. But yeah, I spend a lot of time

kind of traveling around the world. It's great. Okay, so you'll be, and then come back to the US. Do you have like a favorite city to perform in? Favorite U.S. city? I mean, it's all good. It's all kind of very... No, no, but I'm saying, is there like a spot where you go.

I find every comedian has a place. It might even be a venue where it feels like lightning just keeps hitting you when you stand on that stage? I mean, the Chicago theatre is pretty special. There you go. The Boston Wang, pretty amazing. The beacon here.

Like, there's an era in which America built theaters that are just better because they won't ever do it again because the fire restrictions and the health and safety won't let them do it again. Like the seats are too close together and the aisles are too small. There, that's the reason. They can't, if you build a thousand-seater theater now, it's the same size a 2,000-seater used to be,

because the seats are a little bit bigger and the aisles are a little bit bigger and they now have a thing called fire safety. Fire safety used to be a guy going with a whistle. I guess don't have a fire? It's probably the best idea. That's the best we got is don't have a fire.

While people were smoking. So you wonder why the theatres from that era are very special because they're grandfathered in. They're just better. Ah, okay. You learn something every day. I like this. By the way, grandfather, it is a racist term.

You know that. Remember Samaril talking about this? Grandfather Ninn is a racist term? Do you remember we're talking with Samarov? Do you remember this? We're talking to him, yes. We're talking with, so Samarul was on the podcast. And then someone said, he said grandfathered in, I think.

And then we, I said as a joke to him, I was like, you know, that's, we're talking about the history of terms and whatever. You know, nursery rhymes, blah, blah, blah. And we're like, racist, racist. Then he said, yeah, grandfathering. And then I said, oh, that's also racist. Then he said, is it? I was like, no, I'm joking. I just, then he's like, well, it probably is.

And then I went and I read up on it. and it actually is a term that comes from America's Sordid past. Sorted past, wait. What did they do? We'll say that for the next conversation, Jim. What a way to find out? Yeah, we're going to end on a cliffhanger. Apparently America has a sorted past.

We'll find out. The Bible and America, I don't want to spoil this from. I don't want to tell you the endings. Go out and enjoy it. I can't believe. Sorted past. Is this the Kim Kahn. Kardashian sex tape. I can't think what you could be talking about.

Oh, man. This is fun. By the way, is the book out? The book's out in October. It's really, it's, it's for, I'm so excited for this. I got your copy. The last, the last book I read that was like, I felt like a textbook for comedians was Stuart Lee. All right. It was one of my favorite books I've ever read. Remember, it was one of my favorite, you know why? Because for 20 years of my life, I have, and obviously this before, but then still for 20 years of my life, I have worked in a profession where there is almost like no

instruction, there is no guidebook. Guidebook, there is no, but there isn't like, it almost feels like there isn't even a, even for posterity. Yes. Like music, people can go, here's the notation and this is how it was. And then we are in this industry that, as you said, keeps growing, changing the world, doing things, we're in it. And there's no like, there's no way to point someone

that wants to start in this or get better at this. And this wasn't just me, this is my friend Amanda Baker and Abby Grant as well. Like, we put this thing together and we think we have something. But the proof is in the pudding. Like, if you can become a comedian post-reading this, then it works. Yeah. And for people that want to do public speaking. And I think comedy is, for me, it's that thing of like you want more people to get involved in this.

Yes. It's not. The more than Maria. Yeah. The more than Maria, quite literally. Finding joy in these things. Great. Which is fun.

Thanks, Jimmy. Thank you so much. What a pleasure. What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Day Zero Productions in partnership with Sirius XM. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaziamen, and Jess Hackle. Rebecca Chain is our producer. Our development researcher is Marcia Robiou. Music, mixing, and mastering by Hannes Brown.

Random Other Stuff by Ryan Parduth. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of What Now.