WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1460 - Adam Conover

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

Adam Conover felt out of place in a family of scientists, but his decision to pursue a philosophy degree actually played into three major aspects of his adult life: Standup comedy, his educational television shows Adam Ruins Everything and The G Word, and civic engagement. Adam talks with Marc about what led him to comedy, why he made TV shows that helped explain the world, and what it's like on the front lines of the WGA strike as part of union leadership. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney Plus. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing with cannabis legalization. It's a brand new challenging marketing category.

legalization. It's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Lock the gates! and ACAS Creative. What the fuckers, what the fuck buddies, what the fuck nicks, what the fuckaholics. What the fuckaholics.

You know, I'm Mark Maron and this is my podcast, WTF, welcome to it. And I'm going to, trigger warning, I'm going to talk openly and candidly about sobriety. I'm going to mention the program, although I know in some ways, in some circles, in some traditions, that's a no-no, but I find that it's important. I have found that on this show, one of the main reasons people send emails in or reach out, it's about the inspiration they get around thinking that they can live a sober life. Now, there is a tradition in AA that states that you can't be public in press, radio, or films. And I think primarily, and I'll probably get emails about this, that was, so if that person talking about it is not seen as a representative, and if they relapse or speak badly or things don't work out, that it implicates the program.

I am not a representative of AA. I am a member of AA in terms of attributing it with my sobriety. And yesterday, I had 24 years sober. And that's fucking crazy. It's crazy. 24 years sober and that's fucking crazy it's crazy 24 years sober and i look i'm not looking for support or applause or anything else i can't fucking believe it i can't believe it but i got it i am going to talk openly and honestly about sobriety and some of that is going to include the fellowship and uh that's that because i want to share and i think this is as fine a place to share as as anywhere i i feel

this is a uh a safe room so adam conover is on the show he's a comic and writer he's known for his show adam ruins everything which ran for six seasons on TruTV. His recent show is The G Word on Netflix, where he tries to explain the U.S. government. He hosts the podcast Factually with Adam Conover. And importantly, right now at this juncture, he's on the negotiating committee for the Writers Guild of America. He's on the front lines, literally, sitting there at the table when the table is there to be sat at, which does not seem to be often or forthcoming. But outside of his career and his background, we do talk fairly specifically about the strike and, you know, what's at stake, what it means, what the process is for negotiating. And he's one of the guys on that committee. So that's happening.

Shows. Folks, let me make it clear to you that I'm doing some dates at comedy clubs over the next few months, one or two a month. This is all new material, give or take one or two bits that sort of carried over from the stuff that wasn't used on the special. But I would say at least probably an hour of new stuff. And I'm at the Salt Lake City Wise Guys tomorrow and Saturday, August 11th and 12th for four shows. Then five shows at Helium in St. Louis, September 14th through 16th. I'll be at the Las Vegas Wise Guys, which is a nice little room in the Arts District, September 22nd and 23rd for four shows. And in October, I'm at Helium in Portland on October 20th through 22nd.

Those shows are selling out. So go get on that now if you want to go. I think three out of the five shows are already sold out for October 20th and 22nd in Portland. You can go to wtfpod.com for tickets. Something else I'd like to talk about. We lost some people. Obviously, Sinead O'Connor passed away a little while ago. A very sad and tragic life in a lot of ways, but an amazing artist who I never talked to, but it's a great loss. Pee Wee Herman, another great comic artist who I never talked to, died sadly last week. And this week, Robbie Robertson died yesterday from the band. You can go listen to that episode on WTF.

If you're curious, that was like a long, thorough episode. If you're interested in Robbie's take on the history of the band, which he was a member of, that's episode 781. So rest in peace, Robbie, Pee-wee, Sinead. Also Rodriguez, who I never got to talk to, has passed away yesterday, I believe. And William Friedkin. William Friedkin was one of the great directors of the 70s, real ballsy, balls-to-the-wall real ballsy, balls-to-the-wall character, but did some amazing movies, some of them being The French Connection, The Exorcist, Sorcerer, Live and Die in L.A., to name a few. I just watched French Connection again for I don't even know how many times.

Sometimes I just put it on in the background. And look, the conversation I had with William Friedkin was a two and a half hour conversation. And it covered everything. Like just amazing stories about all his movies and his life. A truly epic talk that somehow ends with the Shroud of Turin. Yeah. And everything kind of loops together. There's intrigue, there's craft, there's stories, there's murder.

It's episode 684 from February 2016. And in this clip that I'll play for you now, he explains how his philosophy of not doing a second take extends to life. And you were capturing it like immediately with that documentary style, so you got all that life. No second takes. Yeah. There are no second takes in life, Mark.

Is that true? Try it sometime. Try to do a retake on when you were 15 years old. You know, I feel okay. I don't think there's too many things I need to retake. You? I would if I could, but I can't. So what the hell? What would you change could but i can't so what the hell what would you change you say what the fuck yeah right yeah no what can you do change no but you know the robert frost poem about the road not taken yeah you walking in a forest and there's

a path that breaks left and another that breaks right and the decision you make right there to take that path is what leads you to the rest of your life and why did you make that decision then who in the hell knows you know the great story the lady and the tiger you do no oh when i was a kid i read it you know about some guy in ancient rome who uh falls in love with the daughter of one of the Caesars, one of the kings. And the king says, okay, I'm going to put you into the arena where the Christians are thrown with the lions. And there'll be two doors out of one door will come a man-eating lion if you choose that door and out of the other door will come my daughter and if you choose the right door you'll have my daughter and if you choose the wrong door your memory yeah and the story never

reveals what door this guy took that That captured my imagination, although I read almost nothing when I was in high school. But that story captured my imagination. Every door we take is the lady or the tiger. Yeah. Sometimes both. I guess so. I had to think about that. I hate blank air, but sometimes you hit me with something I had to think about that. I hate blank air,

but you know, sometimes you hit me with something I have to think about. Sometimes both. Yes, indeed. Indeed. Oh yes. Again,

that was episode 684 with William Friedkin. And you can listen to that full episode right now for free on whatever app you're using. And it's a doozy. It was amazing meeting the guy. And it was just one of those times where I was sitting in that old garage, just listening to this amazing, brilliant, historic filmmaker just spin the yarn, man. What a raconteur. And it all kind of folds together and comes around. Crazy, crazy. So go enjoy that if you'd like. Okay, so 24 years sober. Now, what did I do?

I'll tell you what I did, and I'll be honest with you. I tried many times to get sober. The first time I got sober was 1988. 37 years ago was the first time I got sober and went to rehab. It took a while to get the hang of it. I would get a year there, year here, year and a half there. But in 99, it stuck because I was sweaty and kind of in my mind dying, or at least putting myself at risk to be dead one way or the other. And I'd had enough. And someone hit me to the program, which I was familiar with, but I was resistant to. And I was the guy for years, maybe not years, in meetings was like, this is bullshit. You people are losers.

It's a fucking cult. Fuck this shit. And people would just come up to me, old timers, and say, you sound great. Keep coming back. And I used to go at the beginning because I was a relatively younger comic. I wasn't famous in any way. I didn't get a lot of work. I was in New York. I'd go to two or three meetings a day. I found a core group of dudes and ladies and men who were of my class, and we called each other.

We did fellowship. We had coffee. We went to meetings together. I was in love with a woman or so. I believe at that time it was love. It might have just been somewhere on the spectrum of the illness that is the ism. But nonetheless, it was driving me to stay sober. That and just being sober. Day counts mean something. It gets past a certain point where you're like,

I don't want to lose my count. I got too much into this. There's an old saying in AA. I'll lose my count. I got too much into this. There's an old saying in AA. It's not even, it's just something I heard. Don't kill yourself in the first five years of sobriety because you'd be killing the wrong person. But nonetheless, I wired my brain for the program. I wired it. I let my brain be wired. There's another saying I heard when somebody said to an old timer, saying I heard when somebody said to an old timer, I don't want to be, you know, AA is a cult and it brainwashes you. Yeah, well, your brain needs washing. In a lot of ways, AA taught me how not only to be sober, but, you know, how to take responsibility for some of the actions of my life and how to sort of have discipline around not only sobriety, but just my life. It taught me how to see myself clearly. So what did I do? Well, I went to a lot of fucking meetings

over the years, but I'll be honest with you, the last few years during COVID, I didn't like doing Zoom meetings. I didn't go much in person, and I don't go to much. I don't go to many meetings, but I'm always in touch with sober people. I always have the conversations that I need to have around sobriety and around whatever problems I'm having in light of life that could possibly lead to drinking or using with sober people, at least weekly, if not twice a week. Many of my friends are sober. But I'll tell you what I did last week in New York, which really kind of swelled my heart up, swelled my heart up and brought some grateful tears to my eyes. I think gratitude is something that I don't always pay attention to. But I'm fucking grateful for 24 years. I'm grateful to be alive. I'm grateful that I have this time now, these periods of reflection, where now I'm fucking grateful for 24 years. I'm grateful to be alive. I'm grateful that I have this time now, these periods of reflection, where now I'm once again looking back on my life and once again entering another fellowship, hopefully, to sort of assess other things that I have unresolved in my spirit, in my character, in my heart, in my soul to try to, you know, I, at some point,

maybe a few years ago, I just said, well, fuck it. This is the way I am. I'm just going to have to deal with it. And, you know, this has to do with relationships, has to do with intimacy. It has to do with my, you know, my, my life in relationship is not, has not been great. And I just assumed I was just fucked up and that's true, but maybe, maybe there's help for me yet. But that aside, last week I was in New York city and I decided, and it was sort of, you know, out of nowhere, it was interesting. A friend of mine reached out to me and said a friend of hers was struggling with alcohol and maybe there was something I could do. was struggling with alcohol. And maybe there was something I could do. Maybe I could,

you know, reach out to them, say something, say hello, send a text or a recorded message to be supportive. And then I realized in that moment, it's like, well, this is what we do. This is what we do in program. You know, the hand of AA should always be there if somebody is in need or struggling and needs help. So I reached out to this person and I took them to a meeting in New York. I took them to one of the meetings that I got sober at in New York City. I got sober in New York City and there's plenty of fucking meetings in New York City. And there's actually usually plenty of fucking meetings in most cities. You just have to look it up. Google AA and then put your town or city

there and see what comes up. And just, you know, if you feel like you need to go see, all you got to do is sit there. And again, there are some people that don't believe I should talk about this, but I'm talking about it because look, it doesn't work for everybody. There's other ways to get sober. You may not need it, but it's there and it's been there for years. And it might just wake you up to something. You might hear something you might need to hear. You might learn something or you might be in. It might change your fucking life. So I brought this guy to one of the meetings I got sober at.

And I thought it was going to be a big old meeting. But I guess those days are gone for that meeting. And meetings shift and ebb and flow and change. So it was me and him, a guy who's never been to a meeting before and like eight people. And it was great. I heard what I needed to hear. The guy I brought heard what he needed to hear. It kind of landed.

And it was great. It was exactly what the fellowship and what the program is supposed to be. Afterwards, we had some dinner and we talked about all the things that you can talk about with somebody who wants to get sober badly. And also somebody who's within the sort of world of talking about personal stuff with somebody in AA. And it filled me up with what got me sober and it re-engaged me with the program again. And this is at 24 years and that was last week. And I feel sort of born again, AA in a way. And it's a, it's a beautiful thing. And I hope that guy gets it. I hope anyone that needs it gets it.

gets it. I hope anyone that needs it gets it. So anyways, I do talk about this publicly for reason to let people know that I have 24 years sober. I've been through a lot in my sobriety. I've made mistakes in my sobriety. I've acted badly in my sobriety. I have experienced loss. I've been through two marriages in my sobriety. I've lost a partner to death in my sobriety. I've gone broke in my sobriety. But somehow or another, you know, having a drink or doing drugs in light of any of those things was not a solution. Now, granted, I drink a lot of coffee. Right now, I'm on the nicotine lozenges, but neither one of those things are going to make my life unmanageable. It's a little annoying, but it does remind me that I'm a fucking addict, but it doesn't make my life unmanageable,

and that is the deciding factor. If what you're doing, whatever it may be, whether it's food, drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, whatever it is that you're compulsively engaged with, if it's something that you've tried to stop but can't, you might need help. And there's a context out there. There is a context, and that context is the program. There is a context, and that context is the program. And if anything, it may be able to get you a reprieve. It might be able to get you to think about and believe that there is another way.

And that maybe through the idea of accepting powerlessness in the face of your addiction, that that might be a way to go. Again, there's many other ways to go. And everyone's got free will and free choice, even within the program. But just know it's there and know it's possible. I hope this was helpful and I hope it was worth it to me to open myself up to be schooled by old timers about the nature of the program and why it should be kept a big secret. Okay, I'll take that. So Adam Conover, as I mentioned before, is on the negotiating committee for the Writers Guild of America.

He has a podcast called Factually with Adam Conover, and you can get that wherever you get podcasts. Also follow him on social media for daily strike updates. This was recorded on July 27th. Since then, the WGA met with the AMPTP last Friday, but they couldn't come to terms for negotiations to resume, so nothing's really changed. This is my conversation with Adam Conover. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode

where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. How long have you been off the booze?

I quit, let's see, early 2018, so five years. Five years? Mm-hmm. White knuckle or are you doing the thing? I kind of quit it the same way I quit smoking which was i just like i was like i don't need this in my life anymore and i just kind of stopped and i had to get over withdrawal period yeah i've never been to a meeting or anything yeah um uh i i've that was my relationship with addiction i at some point i was like oh i'm addicted to this the way i was addicted to

cigarettes and it's not helping me and i need to so and and now I don't even really think about it anymore well that's good I mean then maybe you're uh maybe you're um dumping all that compulsive energy into good things hopefully and eventually you'll hit the wall and go like Jesus fuck I'm working too much hopefully yeah and then and then you'll be like who am I I mean that honestly that is what I do. I'm now at a compulsive work stage of my life and career. Yeah. And that's like a thing I have to manage now. I've also started, just in the last couple of years, I started smoking weed more regularly.

Oh, that's cheating. I agree with people who feel that way. But now I'm doing that often enough where I'm like, I can feel a little bit of independence and it's not hurting me yet. But I get a little bit of the craving and I'm like, maybe eventually I'm going to have independence and it's not hurting me yet, but I get a little bit of the craving and I'm like, maybe eventually I'm going to have to do the same thing. Oh, so you're not, oh, see, like I know from my addiction that if I do anything addictive,

that my brain very quickly will decide, why aren't we doing this every day? So, and all day long. I mean, what is, what's the holdup? That's basically, I do the same thing, but maybe to a lesser degree. Like as a drinker, I was never a blackout drinker. I was never someone who people would be like,

you have a problem. I was just have two to three, actually four to five drinks a night every night for like 15 years to help me go to sleep kind of thing. Sure, sure. So when you decide to go to sleep, do you clean up the bottles or you just walk away from the table? I would have, you know, sometimes you're like, I need, I just need a little bit of whiskey.

Are you getting off the couch to sleep for the evening? Or are you like, you know what? Fuck it. I'm not going to just sleep on the couch. Well, now I sleep better. It's crazy. The crazy thing about quitting drinking was I thought for years I needed it to help me sleep. And then the day that I quit, I was like, wait, now I'm sleeping through the night.

Yeah, that's the problem. You wake up. Your body's sort of like, why aren't we drinking? Exactly. Yeah. And you're consuming all this like sugar, alcohol, calorie right before sleeping. Yeah. I mean, I was off.

I've been sober a long time without drugs or anything, but I was off. I've been off cigarettes for years, and then I was on these for like a decade, nicotine lozenges. Then I got off everything for a few years, and then I smoked like two or three cigars. And I knew when I was doing it, I'm like, dude, you're going to be on your porch sweating every day, getting nauseous with cigars by yourself. Yeah. And sure enough, then within six months I couldn't breathe

and now I'm back on these fucking things all day long. Well, there's a progression from doing something once going, this is fun.

Why don't I do this all the time? But once you're old and you're an addict, there's no progression. Yeah. It's two days. But you know, it's okay. We're okay. You seem healthy enough. Yeah. There's no progression. Yeah, it's right away. It's two days. But, you know, it's okay.

We're okay. You seem healthy enough. I try to keep an eye on what's serving me and what isn't. And sometimes with weed, I'm like, actually, it's not serving me today. I didn't need to. Yeah. I just now I feel a little anxious and I feel bad. I didn't have fun.

And then sometimes, you know, me and my girlfriend will drink a weed tea or something. Yeah, yeah. And, like, really space out and have a nice time together. See, we didn't have all these variants. Yeah. Back in the day, there wasn't like, you know, a spectrum of impact of particular weeds, which they apparently have. And there's a lot of delivery systems and you can sort of manage it. Yeah.

But I still believe that, you know, most people are just getting fucking high all day long. Yes. I don't believe in microdosing and things like that. I think it's kind of bullshit. I'm doing a bit about it, the whole thing. Oh, yeah? It took a while to get it to land correctly, but it's pretty funny. It's just about the, you know, because I know guys that have, I've been sober almost 24 years,

and there are guys with long-term sobriety who get prescriptions for weed. Uh-huh. But they know what they're doing. Yeah. So the premise of the bit is really just sort of like, but it doesn't mean I don't think about going to one of these doctors. I mean, how does it work? You walk in, and they're like, so what are you, depressed? And I'm like, yeah, I guess a little.

And they say, well, you know, they've done a lot of studies, and they find a very effective treatment for depression is just getting really fucking high. And I kind of build it out from there. Yeah, I actually, my hour I'm working on right now is about my childhood diagnosis with ADD and that whole struggle and Adderall. And, you know, I took Adderall for many years, which is amphetamines. And I took it for 10, 12 years. And then I realized I was just addicted to it. And that was what started me drinking was I needed a drink to go to sleep.

Balance the Adderall? Yep, exactly. It was like up, down, up, down, up, down. So you've been taking Adderall since you were a kid? I took Ritalin when I was in high school. I took Adderall when I was in college. And then I took it through my mid-20s. But you were taking the prescribed dose.

Yeah, but I wasn't always taking it the prescribed way. Right, right. Because you can— Might as well snort this shit. You can snort that shit. And in college, you're experimenting. Well, I got this pill. You're snorting that, and you're giving your friends some.

Come on, everybody. Exactly. Yeah, I get it. Exactly. And now I have friends. The joke is that I have friends who are like, I just diagnosed with add and i tried adderall it makes me feel great i'm like yeah because it's speed like speed makes everybody feel great whether you have add or not i have a lot of friends who really need it and benefit from it but for me at the end of the day i

was like this is making me this is it's just making me feel speedy, right? Yeah, but you know, it does, your brain does get kind of used to the juice. But I think if you have ADHD, aren't you pretty jacked anyways? Jacked in some way. I mean, you can. Or is it ADD? What's the difference? I say ADD because that's what it was called when I was diagnosed. You're old school.

You're old school. I'm an ADD OG.'s what it was called when I was diagnosed. You're old school. You're old school. I'm an ADD OG. So how does that manifest itself? You can't concentrate on something singular for very long? Yeah, it's hard for me to do one thing for long periods of time. I have a lot of trouble writing, and that's my job, and so it's a constant struggle there. There's certain

things I can lock into I can like play a video game for a long period of time but it seems the way you structure the shows that you're doing now and your way of

of kind of staging the explanations of of fairly sometimes basic civics right that

there there does seem to be an ADD element because you do jump around. Like it's a very kind of quick cut staging to create visual metaphors for things so morons can understand it. Especially in the beginning,

it was like on Adam Ruins Everything, when we started as a web series, it was like throw everything at it. There has to be a joke or an image or a move at every moment to hold the audience's attention yeah and i realized eventually i i at some point five years into it i was like oh i was recreating the kids tv that i used to watch when i was a kid right um stuff like beekman's world of bill nye the science guy and i only realized i was doing that once kids started watching the show. Our show came on at 10.30 and I was like, this is a daily show crowd.

That's what I thought I was appealing to. And then people started, you know, Twitter adding me photos of their seven-year-olds watching the show. And I was like, holy, holy shit. Yeah, it's like that thing from the electric company. You know, well, I'm only a bill. Schoolhouse Rock, is that what that was?

That's a big touchstone for what we ended up doing as well. But it's interesting to me is that, you know, like I don't, like I have to assume, and I say this a lot, you know, I didn't get a great education in high school because I wasn't paying attention. I didn't have ADHD. I don't know what I was doing, but I was not paying attention. And I did not have a sense of basic civics until I got a job at Air America. I showed up at my job at Air America as an on-air personality with a Democracy for Dummies book.

For real? For real. Wow. Because I needed to get up to speed. Yeah. But, you know, it's funny about government and about, you know, sort of being in the world of not reporting on government, but in the ebbs and flows of government that you can pick up on it. But there's sort of, you know, the nuts and bolts of it is it can get pretty deep to be wonky about it.

There's a lot of process involved that I don't think everybody knows. But it really took me a long time to just get the basic fucking civics yeah i mean what's funny is that we're my point was adults probably watch your show they they do thankfully i mean the thing that makes me happiest is that people will come to when i do stand up and and like a whole family will come and they'll be like oh we watch your show together like like the kids want to take a photo but not with the parents right the parents come afterwards and they're like, we watched the show together. So these are relatively progressive parents who are concerned that their kids aren't getting an education that they understand to make them practical and responsible citizens. Yeah, sometimes.

But then sometimes I hear from kids who are like, my conservative dad likes your show because he likes that you call out the bullshit. Oh, okay. I get that sometimes. It's not the core of my audience. My conservative dad who's full of bullshit likes that you call out the bullshit. Well, you know, there's people who are- Old school. And maybe if they had grown up in a different city, they would have come out a different

way. But they have the gene to hate being lied to and to look under things. Right. Well, they think, well, it's absolutely a sort of hijacking of a pursuit of truth and justice that is causing a tremendous amount of problems because of the nature of information. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Like, you know, most of those people, they think like, you know, everyone else is a dupe

and they've got the real information and they're talking about QAnon. Yeah. Well, the thing is, everybody loves to have the surface peeled away and to look at the scaffolding underneath. If you tell people this is why things are the way that you're mad about this in your life. Here's why it is this way. Everybody wants to know that. It's like an appealing story. They also often are not educated about how you actually make change and what you can do with

actual power. Like growing power is a hard thing to do. It is possible if you like really study power and how it works and why things are the way they are. And you can find your leverage points to, you know, fucking move the boulder. But a lot of people who are elected to office, they don't even see that as their job. They're just like, hey, yeah, I mean, I'm just here to be part of the system, you know? Or worse to be, you know, to talk about myself and to align my, and to keep getting elected so I can never shut up. Yes. But like, but what gave me hope about sort of what you're trying to do, and I think that on some level, what Jon Stewart's trying to do now is to try to re-engage people in civic responsibility along the lines of what can policy and what can representation do to actually elevate the quality

of life and equality in America, right? The idea of democracy, which is, you know, dramatically threatened. Yeah. Right now. I mean, we're told by everybody that there's only three ways to make change in the country is to vote. It's to talk on social media and it's to do something with money. It's to buy something or donate. And those, in fact, voting is quite good. Everyone should vote. I do all three of those. So I'm doing good.

Though. Or is there one I'm missing? Voting is good. Voting is the minimum, right? Yeah yeah the other two are are bullshit the other two are you know very very little that you can that you can do by doing those things but there are you know the way to actually make changes to participate as to is to build the power yourself is to organize do we got to go downtown and hang out at the meetings? Are you talking like, do I have to go to the Glendale town halls to decide whether or not we can have fences?

I mean, that's its own can of worms because a lot of the meetings that you as the public can go to are specifically structured to almost be honeypots for the public to come and yell at that have no power. So like here in LA, there's these things called neighborhood councils that the city have put together. There's one for, well, you're in Glendale, but I bet Glendale has an equivalent where it's like, you know, there's some elected, very local people, you know, literally just someone from their neighborhood gets, you know, a hundred people vote for them and they sit on this board.

And the whole point of this board is for angry people to go yell at them. And they go, I'm sorry. How could you do this? The boards, the neighborhood councils have no power. Right. They can't even get the attention of people who actually run the city. It's designed to let them blow off steam. Yeah,

exactly. Um, and so, you know, so they're futile and useless. That particular body is right. Um, that,

that particular, because of the way that it's structured. So now all your, your, your sort that it's structured. So now, all your sort of life's work at this point, where did you grow up? Let's start at the beginning and get all the way to life's work.

I grew up on Long Island. Oh, really? What town? Town called Wading River was where I spent most of my life growing up. It's in Suffolk County. It's almost like farm country. It's like, not the city sprawl, but not the rich people yet. There's like a sort of couple hundred miles in between. Okay. Yeah.

And your folks are academics? Yeah. My dad was a marine biologist at SUNY Stony Brook. My mom has a PhD in botany. She ran a museum, a small science museum, and was a teacher. in botany. She ran a museum, a small science museum, and was a teacher. So what is that, you know, what is,

what's the tone of your childhood? I mean, so are you taught to be curious and engaged? Are you going out on boats? Are you learning about flowers? Definitely. I mean, my parents brought me up with a, you know, with a science education upbringing. A lot of PBS in the house.

A lot of NPR in the house. a lot of nonfiction books and magazines lying around and stuff like that. Probably, yeah, a bunch. Nature books. Yep, yep. My sister now is a science journalist, so I'm the only one who's not in the family business. There's you and your sister? Just me and my sister, yeah. But were your parents activists?

Hmm, good question. I mean, look, they they grew up in the 60s. I remember my mom telling me I used to go to protests and stuff like that, but not. Yeah, not not in an intense way, but they were involved. But around like, you know, issues revolving around pollution or or or or eco death. Yeah, they were they were they I was aware of those things from a young age, you know, and they were like involved in their community in a big way, you know. Yeah. They ran like, they used, one of my earliest memories was they used to, have you ever heard

of contra dancing? It's a form of folk dancing that was popular in the, at least in this part of the country in the early eighties. They used to like put on these big, like contra dances people would, it's like a form of dancing where people are constantly swapping partners okay um uh fiddle music banjo guitar stuff like that so this big sort of like almost like 19th century feeling sort of community events okay and so that was the sort of you know some of my earliest memories are like being uh like you know being at these uh events when my mom's like calling out dance moves my dad's playing the guitar and they're like leading a band yeah very folky this is my point that they're my point that i'm making they're they were folky but it's

funny even that like you know when i think about it when i think about the lack of sort of uh you know real community bonding you know when i think of you know a group dancing a group dancing, like, I mean, you can go to a club or you can go to a concert, but this idea that everyone's engaging in a very specific type of dancing. Yep, and I talk about dancing with called steps where you- Like square dancing almost.

It's square dancing, that type of dance. Yeah. And it's very athletic. People move very quickly. There's a lot of like social rules for not being too rude to other people who you're doing it with. You know, you. There's a lot of social rules for not being too rude to other people who you're doing it with. You'll often have a partner, but then switch partners

periodically throughout the dance. And the sort of point is to engage in this mass synchronized activity, but you're learning it as you go, because they'll call a dance, right? It's like, and now do-si-do, and now Alleman left, Alleman right, swing your partner, etc. And you're responding to that, so you're learning the first round, and then the second and third round? It's like, and now do-si-do, and now Alleman left, Alleman right, swing your partner, et cetera,

and you're responding to that. So you're learning the first round, and then the second and third round, you're like doing it faster and faster until suddenly you're all doing this synchronized movement together that you've all, everyone has to participate and learn at once.

It's a proactive mass synchronized movement. This is a pretty, I was wondering why I brought this up, and then it actually matches very closely with the conversation about civics and how we make change and organizing. Because it's a form of self-organizing. So what drove you away from science? I think it might have been the ADD.

In retrospect? You lean on that? I used to think that. And then I have recently thought that maybe my mom and dad both had undiagnosed ADD. And I thought that about my mom for a while. But now I kind of think of my dad in that he was like always very type A focused guy. Yeah. And he was like the kind of dad where if you said something to him and he was thinking about work, he wouldn't answer you for like 45 seconds until he finished processing. And then it would come out of his mouth.

It was like whatever you said went into a queue and it had to get all the way through. Now I relate to it. Now that I'm in my 40s, around the age that he was then, there have been times that I've been so stressed out about whatever show I'm making or whatever. Sure. That like, I literally cannot be present

in the moment. My girlfriend will say something to me and it doesn't, it doesn't go in. Right, right. And so I think maybe, I haven't even talked to him about this, but maybe he was pushing himself,

he was overcompensating for that, right? I think of it as, Is he still around? He is, yeah. And he's still working or no? No, he retired and it's been the most wonderful thing because he was so just you know so focused on work and so stressed out all the time and when he retired it was like this gigantic weight came off his shoulders yeah he became a different person he became so much easier to talk to like now we have conversations that we never had.

Now we enjoy each other's company. A lot of people my age have this experience where I was like, oh, now I'm like friends with my dad where I wasn't before. That's nice. What did he say about that submarine? About the, oh, the Titan submarine? He was, well, he was a marine biologist. So I don't know if he knew. But I mean, but still like they'd go down in cans occasionally, wouldn't they?

Not the kind of, he studied they? Not the kind of... He studied fish populations off the coast of Long Island. So he was more of a fisherman type of... He was on the boat kind of guy. I didn't ask him about the Titan sub, although I think he... I'm sure he was sad about it. He was probably bummed out.

But he wasn't a deep marine biologist. No, no, no, no. People are always like, oh, dolphins? No, no, it's a fish called the Atlantic silverside, a small silverfish in Long Island. That's what his wife's work was? He was on the cover of this magazine called Nature, which is one of the most significant. I remember that. Yeah.

From waiting rooms and stuff. Yeah. One of the most important scientific journals. He was on the cover of it, had a study on the cover when he was in his probably late 20s, early 30s, like right out of like his Ph.D. thesis was on it. And so he had this like for a marine biologist rocket to fame moment. Then he became a college professor at a university. He was on a tenure track very young. Yeah.

And he was like overwhelmed by the amount of work and the expectation of a professorship. That's what I now realize. Oh yeah. And, and that's what I relate to. Cause I went from being, uh, you know,

I was a staff writer at a website making, which website college humor was the one. I remember, um, making, making videos. And then I went from that to show running a television show, you know,

uh, that was starring me. Now your mom is, uh, still a botanist. Uh, uh, noanist no she was a well she's retired as well

she has a PhD in botany and then she became she ran a small science museum in the town that we grew up

that's nice for the kids for the kids and there were exhibits educators and I would run around it yeah she was an educator so where does this

like so what do you go to school for? How do you push back and say, fuck you, I'm doing this? I got a BA in philosophy. That's what I studied. I went to a liberal arts college. Which one? Bard College.

I've heard of that. Is that fancy? What's the reputation of that place? Expensive, hippie school. Oh, that's right. But pretty. So it's like the East Coast read. It is literally the East Coast read. Yeah. That's what it is. And it's a very good education, hippie school. Oh, that's right. But pretty. So it's like the East Coast read. It is literally the East Coast read.

Yeah. That's what it is. And it's a very good education, very serious education. But you kind of choose your thing. You can choose your thing. Yeah, yeah. It was the perfect spot for me. It was like the first time I felt like seen as a person was when I went to that school.

And philosophy, what do you remember about that? What was your big breakthrough with philosophy? Which one? Who was your guy where you were like, this dude dude there was a guy named uh he's still alive his name is daniel dennett he's a cognitive philosopher um who wrote a lot about the the mind and the nature of consciousness i was one of the nature of consciousness like what the basic philosophical question like what is this right yeah sure other things aren't conscious. I am. Why? What does it mean to be a conscious thing?

Right, right. And so he was a philosopher who wrote a lot about that from a perspective of cognitive psychology. That's interesting. He believed consciousness was— So you didn't fuck with the are we exist or do we not exist or existentialism. You went with a more practical thing. Existentialism was a little too—those guys are a little too poetic for me for the most part. But I was into Descartes and everything. I mean, the fun thing about philosophy is it's just the stuff that you get to actually try to answer the questions that keep you up at night when you're 13 years old.

Of like, why is my awareness in this body as opposed to any other? Like, what is the explanation? If there's many minds, why am I this mind and not another mind? Right. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I think about that all the time because of the nature of, you know, random DMs. It's sort of like, oh my God,

there's a billion people on this planet and everyone's got their own sense of what they think is, you know, right or who they are. Like, it's crazy. And now because everything is so decentralized, it's like everyone's their own little bubble of self. Yeah. And it's just like, it's overwhelming and terrifying.

Do you ever have this experience? Like I sometimes look at my girlfriend, we'll be like hanging out and I'll look at her and I'll go like, are you like a person in there? Like you have a mind? And she's like, yeah you and i'm like uh-huh and then we just like trip out on the we're not high when we do this yeah we like trip out on the consciousness the the like weird you know yeah i get that all right durability of consciousness well right it's sort of like you know is my personality just a template over something vague? Yeah.

You know, what is self? Right? Talk about Joe Rogan. Is this where we're going? Is this turning into that kind of podcast? Does he do that? I mean, it's mostly about like, I don't know, mushrooms and great apes and things. Sure.

And meat, right? Yeah. And meat. And why libertarianism, as best they can understand it, is not right wing. Yeah. And meat. And and why why libertarianism is as best they can understand it is not right wing. Yeah. Yeah. But no, but like I what's the guy's name? Tenet? Denet. Daniel Denet. Yeah. So he's the one that kind of blew your mind. He he did blow my mind. Yeah. I mean, he had this idea that like anything that operates the same way a human brain does is conscious in a lesser way. So he's so his one of his arguments is that like your thermostat is in some sense conscious.

So this brings us right to what the writers are demanding. No wonder it's full circle. You're like, we're running out of time. And fuck the Segway. No, you're describing AI. You are describing it. Oh, of course, of course. The highest.

Yes, yes, yes. This is the highest level of this has evolved consciousness to as much as it can be on technological basis. And it is what you're confronting. So you were kind of primed for this by your guy, Dennis. This is, wow, you're drawing connections I never even thought to make about my own life.

Oh, good. That sort of happens here sometimes. We don't have to get there just yet, but like, where does stand-up come into it? So I was, when I was in college, I was like,

I was like, I wanted to go to grad school and nobody was like, you should. You know what I mean? Like, I just, I had a sense that it wasn't going to be my path at around the same time a friend of mine started a comedy group yeah

we had a sketch comedy group for a number of years and i had a sense that uh you know oh i can sort of do philosophy via comedy in some way i can do some of the same stuff that i'm interested in philosophy through comedy um i was in a sketch group for a couple years that we had a bunch of success on the early internet. Sketch group eventually broke up. Yeah. And I realized that I just loved the feeling of getting the laughs more than the other guys

in the group had. I was like, I want to keep doing the monthly show we did at UCB and get laughs from people, you know, in a basement. Yeah, in New York. Yep, in New York. And the group had broken up, and I was like, the only way to do that is to do stand-up.

The only way to get more of this feeling is to go through what I knew would be the hell of trying to get good at stand-up or trying to do it at all. And so I just started going to open mics, you know, and I just. In New York. In New York, yep. And how did that go for you? It went, I mean, it went as well as it can.

I am now able to make a living as a stand-up comedian, so I'm happy about that. But the primary living is through doing these shows, right? Well, what's funny is that I did the shows after working at College Humor, and we sold the first show. I did that for a number of years. Which was Adam Ruins Everything. That was Adam Ruins Everything, yep. Did that for about five years. Was lucky enough to sell another show after that to Netflix

called The G Word that you alluded to about the government. And I was always doing stand-up during that time but my living was coming from the shows. After the Netflix show ended and, you know, we the last two years have been the first time that i have made a living

purely as a comic also making youtube videos and a podcast yeah but that's been like incredibly rewarding to me because i'm like okay i find i i actually for the first time i'm like i i am a i i am a making a living as a stand-up well it's like you came around the side like you know i'm sort of this lifer that comes from another generation. So because of the nature of the platforms that evolved after I started, people know you when they come,

and they don't know you from stand-up necessarily. Yeah. They know you, and they understand your point of view. Yep. So there's probably a certain amount of people that are like, I didn't know he did stand-up. Exactly. People come to my shows, and they say that are like, I didn't know he did stand-up. People come to my shows and they say that.

And I'm gratified that people are starting to know me more that way and I'm hopefully going to tape an hour later this year and self-release it most likely just so that people can see that and can see that that's something that I do. Because for me, it's just always been my kind of first love in comedy and

the thing that I I don't know, there's something that draws you back to it. You just want to make people laugh that way, even though it's not it's not the easiest way to make people laugh. It's not the way to make the most money making people laugh, but it's somehow the most rewarding. Well, yeah, because it's happening now. Yes. Yes. That's it. It's good for ADD. Yeah. This is happening now. That's it. Yeah. It's good for ADD. Yeah. This is happening now.

That's what I like. I also took improv classes. I could never get very good at improv. Why? I hated being, I hated having to think on my feet as another person. Oh, a character? A character, yeah. Because, yeah, well, not unlike myself, most of your energy just goes on to holding on to you.

Yes. So why risk it? Yes. So what I like is in stand-up going like, isn't this a weird room? Yes. That's my favorite way to open a set is like, where the fuck are we? What is this place? Oh, interesting.

The audience laughs just because you're having a common experience in that moment that no one in that room could even understand. But you don't take it to sort of like a structural analysis of the actual sometimes sometimes i happen to have the plans the architectural plans i like to do the thing where i i break down stand-up comedy a little bit and talk about isn't it weird that like my job is to make you make a sound yeah a sound you could make anytime you want if you just but instead you want to come here you want to make me make you want to be surprised by the sound yeah exactly i mean that's the whole trick it's like yeah sure we can make that sound but if is it happening for real it's the difference between masturbation and sex right masturbation

feels good but for some reason yeah when you're like it's that tension of someone else is doing it to you yeah yeah you don't know when the when it's gonna, it's that tension of someone else is doing it to you. Yeah. Yeah. You don't know when the, when it's going to finally happen. Sure. Sure. That makes it feel much better. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

Someone said to me, when you masturbate, your primary sexual partner is you. Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. And you know all your own tricks. Sure. And you can, you have a lot of control. There's no reason you can't go for hours if you're that kind of person. Sure.

A porn addict. Sure. But yeah, I think that's an okay analogy. So what did I watch on YouTube? Were you in Canada? Oh, in Canada. I don't know. Oh, of stand-up?

Yeah. That was something that I recorded probably at Just for Laughs the first time I went. And I think they told me they weren't going to upload it. And then they did it. And I'm like, this set's okay. Yeah. Oh, it's just a set, a short set? I think so.

Am I wearing a green suit? Yeah. So is this your first hour that you're working on? Now I am, yeah. Well, actually, I've done hours before. I've done two other hours before. But they were a lot more like Adam ruins everything. I would use PowerPoint,

you know, or a key Apple keynote and I have slides and I would sort of write it like an episode of Adam ruins everything and be like, here's my thesis statement. I'm going to back it up with jokes, you know, that sort of writing and audiences liked it. It was good,

but I was somehow dissatisfied by it always. Cause I was just like, it's just not as fucking funny as i want it to be and it's not it's not exactly stand-up it's yeah and what i realized i it took me years to figure it out but i wanted to strip all that other shit away that i was sort of i realized i was using it to kind of protect myself you know like oh well if i'm not that funny just as me i've i've have all this other edifice that I've built and brought in. And also most of what you're talking about

is outside of you. Exactly right. Right. So, you know, stand-up, if it's the kind of stand-up you want to do, is self-revelatory. Yes. Or at least a good mix.

Yeah. Whereas you're just sort of doing a presentation about a thing. Exactly. Yeah. And it's okay to give a presentation about a thing. Maybe I'll do stand-up about other topics

like that in the future. I mean, people like, you know, Eddie Izzard, right? Incredibly funny stuff about history and et cetera. Not for me. Oh, yeah. I mean, I was being charitable.

Also not my favorite thing in the world. But people enjoy it, right? It's fine. I think so. Like, yeah, if you can kind of do one of those riffs

that compartmentalize a couple thousand years, why not? There's plenty. There's a lot of observations to make. But no, I think you're right that I think one of the riffs that compartmentalize a couple thousand years? Why not? There's plenty. There's a lot of observations to make. But no, I think you're right that I think one of the things I like about stand-up that I've only realized in the last couple years, I've only consciously realized, is when you're watching a comic on stage, you see them, right? Like they can try to put on a persona or a mask or a face or try to put on something. But I can watch a comic.

I know exactly how long they've been doing stand-up. I know if they're nervous. I know if they're confident. I know if they're original. I think so. If you're looking at someone, you fucking see them. I think you should feel that. I don't think that's always the case.

I think some people do comedy to avoid themselves, but once they get good at it, you're right. You can see what's in there somehow. I think that's the better of them. I think we, but I think there's some people that really just hide the whole time. Yeah. Yeah.

But can you, do you don't feel you can tell when they're hiding when you're looking at them? Well, I think that, you know, uh, that being funny is innately some sort of defense,

whether it's preemptive or self-protecting. But I think the guys who really figure it out that learn to, I think what you're saying is true that once a guy learns that there's a part of him that lives on stage, that that is effectively a part of him. But, you know, a lot of times you're not really seeing the sadness or the fury or the anger or their childhood, but you do get a sense of their heart if they're good. I think my feeling is just there's something about the medium that strips people bare. It's just you're being perceived. You're just being looked at, which is something that attracts me to that.

I've always wanted the attention, but I'm also terrified of it. And rather than try to build a defense against it sure i was finally better served when i said you know what it's just going to be me trying to make people laugh at the rate that i want you know yeah there you go and there's something so i don't know stand up stand up writing is the hardest kind of writing to do because they have to laugh so often you know that's what you want to do sure you want to be a joke machine yeah you figure it out well there's an x there's a certain level of expectation, you know, that the audience has. I think, though, that, you know, you have control of that.

It's more like masturbating than sex. That's fair, if you're really in your element. Yeah. But, you know, I was watching the show Hacks, which I love. Have you seen the show? Sure. And, you know, Jean Smart's wonderful on the show, but they have her doing stand-up on it. And I was like, why

does it still not quite feel like stand-up? Because she's acting like a stand-up. Because she's acting like a stand-up, but it's also because no matter how good the writing... I know the writers of that show. They're wonderful writers. And they probably feel, oh, we wrote something that sounds like stand-up. But until you've done it in front

of an audience and tested... Can't, and you're reshooting things and you know, it has to go through the fire and the flame. It's a very interesting thing about someone acting, uh, uh, the role is a standup, you know, it's, it's, it never really works. I'm not, I think they, they captured the life of the standup very well. And I think she does as good a job as it has ever been done. Totally agree. But it's hard. I've seen Hanks do it. And then, of course, there's Dustin Hoffman as Lenny. But you're not going to, you can't capture that. There's something I've noticed about old stand-ups

recently in watching Rickles and Rodney a lot is that stand-ups are flailing from the get-go. You know, and it's just like, you know, you're at the edge of some sort of abyss. Yeah. And you've got to stay out of it. Yeah. And you look at Rickles and you look at Rodney, they're drowning within seconds.

You know, so I don't know how you act that. Yeah. Because I think it is somewhere in the core of stand-ups. Yeah. Like, you know, as soon as you enter that stage in the core of stand-up like you know as soon as you enter that stage it's like you're falling yeah and everything else is artifice you pretend not to be afraid eventually you get a certain amount of confidence that you're funny yeah but but you know i i think it's hard to act yeah and that's why my dream scenario and no one would

ever do this but like would be to take someone like Gene Smart, who's a wonderful actor, who's playing a stand-up, and say, you actually have to go on the road and make people laugh with these jokes. I think she probably did. You think so? Yeah, I think they did that. And, you know, but it's still like one of those things, like, it's a craft unto itself. So, you know, you've been doing stand-up 20 years. Yeah. Like, there's, again, there's part of you that lives up there.

Yeah. And you can't fake that. Yeah. So, like, that's what's going to be missing yeah it's true but uh was there always something that bothered you about people's engagement with uh um the society and government and things like that there was something that needed to shift i think it came out of the i think it for me it came directly out of doing comedy. Because, you know, for me a lot of comedy is you notice something that's like wrong about the world. Yeah. And that's where the comedy starts.

Yes. And then I started just having success on stage when I would tell those stories, tell something I had learned about why the world is wrong. And then like, hey, guess what? There's a better fucking way. Right. And we could do it. Right. And like, holy shit.

And then I made a bunch of TV shows around that premise. Right. And then I started going, well, okay, if we know the better way, why aren't we doing it? And like trying to figure out then. Right. So one of the big first ones for me was we did an episode about homelessness, about housing. Yeah. And the end of it is pretty straightforward.

This was like six or seven years ago. But it was, hey, if you want to help homeless people, give them fucking homes. It's called permanent supportive housing. It's cheaper than letting people die on the street or go to the emergency room over and over again. Cheaper to just put them in an apartment and give them the support they need and help them get off of drugs or whatever they need to do once they're in the apartment. But that's the cheaper way. Every study shows this. It's been tried in other countries. Great. And then I made the episode of television about it and I was

kind of like, great, case closed. We did it. And then a couple months later, I was like, why is nobody doing this yet? You know what I mean? And so then I met a candidate for city council here in Los Angeles who was introduced to me by a friend of mine. She was like, uh, you know, I met a candidate for city council here in Los Angeles who was introduced to me by a friend of mine. She was like, yeah, I want to do that in LA. And I was like, oh, okay. Are you think you're going to win? And she was like, yeah, here's how I think I can win if I, if you help out.

And I was like, oh, all right, then I'll fucking help out. And I started getting involved in city politics and you know, et cetera. On the housing level? Uh, housing. I've, I've been, um, you know, I, I volunteered for many years with a wonderful organization called SELA. On the housing level? realized were kind of a honeypot for assholes to yell at. Yeah. You know, I do what I, I try to find, you know, the opportunities I think have the highest leverage. And do you find that you're seeing progress? Yeah, I do.

I mean, I can't say that I'm seeing like societal progress, but I've seen progress on the things that I've worked on. Yeah. You know, it's, it's incredibly rewarding if you see a problem, see a way that you can make some progress on it. If we do X, Y, Z, we can actually make this happen. We could get this person elected. We could get this policy in place.

And then you work your ass off and it actually happens. You feel it's enormously rewarding because you're like- And that's the way the system works. Not always, but it's the way it can work. If you want to get involved, you have to sacrifice, you have to engage a certain selflessness to believe in what you're working towards with this policy, with this candidate, with people, with outreach. And it's sort of thankless work in a way. And even if it succeeds and the policy passes or the candidate gets in place, then the real work begins. So I'm just sort of trying to wrap my brain around just the incredible lack of engagement and lack of a bench

of decent people who want to be involved in civic responsibility. Well, it's incredibly hard, you know, and there's a lot of forces arrayed against you doing it. So look, the city council candidate I'm talking about is this wonderful woman, Nithya Raman. She ran in CD4 where I live. And the whole city council in LA was based around the idea of nobody knows we exist, you know, like nobody knew the name of the city council person there and he didn't do shit. Right. Because he was one of the people who, as you said, was in it for himself.

And, uh, you know, they sort of ran this sort of administration based on obscurity. Yeah. And she looked around and went, hold on a second. If I instead go to people and say, this is what there's, there's something called the city council person. This is what they there's something called the city council person. This is what they do. This is the power that they have. Aren't you dissatisfied that she could get elected and ran this campaign based on educating people around, like, actually there is something you can do, right, about homelessness, about all these other issues.

And so I worked really hard to get her elected. She won. elected she won and now when there's uh an unhoused person on my block like i can you know email her office and i know that what they do they don't ignore them or send the cops she has like a street team that she assembled of like a couple dozen people and they will go send someone out to that corner and personally find not temporary housing for that person but permanent housing for that person and there's not enough housing in the country, or sorry, in the county. And so, you know, it's making a little dent,

but I'm like, that wouldn't be happening if it weren't for this person being in office. And that's like incredibly- And most people just sort of go like, well, just call the cops. Yeah, exactly. And you know, there's nothing we can do. It's out of control.

Yeah, that's the approach that the LA City has been taking forever. Fucking Dems. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, there's nothing we can do. It's out of control. Yeah. That's the approach that the L.A. City has been taking forever. Fucking Dems. Yeah. Exactly. Oh, California's a shithole or whatever. All that kind of thing. Yeah, that's the approach that most people take. And is this what sort of compels you into being active in the union, the writers' union?

WTA? Yeah. being active in the union, the writers union, WTA? Yeah. I mean, I got sucked in step by step because... This guy talks good. That's pretty much what it is. He's not like one of these weird closet, weird nerdy writers. Look, I mean, we've got...

Here's what ended up happening. We had a couple years ago, we had a big dispute with our agents because our agents were being paid by the people who we want a big dispute with our agents because our agents were being paid by the people who we want them to negotiate with us for. By the streamers.

By, they had, I don't want to get too deep into the contractual details, but the agents had worked out this system where they got

a percentage of the show budget rather than our commission. Through packaging. Through packaging, right. So they're being paid by, basically, the agents are the people that we bring on to negotiate our salary but they're being paid by our bosses not by us clear conflict of interest we're trying to eliminate that and so because they're corporate entities too depending on the agency exactly right and

they're bigger and bigger they're buying each other they're merging they've got private equity money yeah you know they're because and and so they're you know no longer treating us like their clients they're treating us like their clients. They're treating us like we work for them, like we're in their warehouse and they're selling us. Yeah, yeah. So the Writers Guild had a plan to renegotiate our contract with the agencies. It was going to take a lot of work and a lot of organization. I was in favor of it. It was a little bit controversial in the union. We had these big meetings about it. We had these big union-wide meetings you have a thousand writers in a room and i realized if i went to

the meeting and i there the the people give a presentation and they would say now there's an open mic anyone can get up and ask a question right and i was like oh if i just sit near the microphone and stand up first and give my own little speech I can speak to like a third of the membership at once, right? If I say, here's why I think we should do this. And it felt extremely powerful to do it. I did that at every single meeting I could. And then eventually people started coming, hey, why don't you come to like the,

why don't you run for something? You know what I mean? And then here I am now, like my full-time job, you know, five years later, my full-time job is basically currently being a part of this, this strike that we're undergoing. Yeah.

For some reason, when you said a thousand writers in a room, I kept thinking of that joke about the thousand monkeys with typewriters. That's about right. But eventually create the work. Except all the monkeys think that they're smarter than all the other monkeys. Yeah. And they already read Shakespeare. Yeah.

So your job is what? So I'm now on the Writers Guild of America West Board of Directors and I'm on our negotiating committee. So I've been. So you're at the front line. I'm in the middle of it. Yeah. I was in the room with the AMPTP and now I'm on the picket line almost every day. And I'm a leader. People come to me when they need stuff. I talk to the press. I'm a leader. People come to me when they need stuff. I talk to the press. I'm just always talking to the other folks in the leadership group and helping make the thing happen. So let's break it down a little bit because before the actors got involved, because once the actors got involved, there's a different type of momentum here.

They are really sort of hobbling the industry now. There is this feeling of real kind of union power, but we're still up against these monolithic fucks. Yeah. So what was the initial issues when the writers began to strike? Because my sense of it after doing some reading is that the model that the studios took on or they weren't studios that once the streamers got into the business of studios. Yeah. That they used a sort of a tech model for growth.

Yep. uh for growth yep and uh and that it in in and of itself relied on lying about numbers or not disclosing numbers which shut us out writers and actors from any sort of residual protection or back-end deal or anything and then those contracts began to be negotiated like that they like here's your pay you know maybe if it ends up, you know, on something other than our streamer or in another place, you'll get a few bucks. And so where does, and that was the issue that you were talking about originally,

the renegotiation with the agents, right? Or is that still the issue now? Well, the agent negotiation is something that we waged for like 18 months. We won, we kicked their asses. We forced the agencies to sell their production arms. They were all getting into producing. We forced them to do that. We forced them to sign new contracts

that eliminated the conflict of interest. And now we're on to the studios. So what I'm talking about is where we're at now, is that in this tech model where bullshit is at a premium, they want to pay the writers as just day workers.

Yeah. That's basically right. I mean, there's a lot of hay being made about the transition to streaming. I think a little bit, there's a little bit too much emphasis on that. The fundamental thing is that the companies have a strategy of trying to put, keep money in their pockets by not giving it to workers. And they've come up with 10,000 different ways to do that. And so I could list 10 different ways they've done it to writers and 10 different ways they've done it to actors. And some of them are the same and some of them are different. But that's the, that's the

fundamental story. So yeah, one of those is by, you know, trying to keep, keep a lid on the data from streaming and make it impossible for not just actors and writers, you know, trying to, uh, keep, keep a lid on the data from streaming and make it impossible for not just actors and writers, but also like producers to ever get any backend participation used to be. If you had a, this used to be an entrepreneurial town, right? Used to be, if you had an idea for a show, whether you're a writer and actor or just some fucking producer, just some like, you know, asshole in a suit, right? You could, you could, uh could go sell it to some other company

and then you would get a piece of it forever, right? And you could, if you had- And if it got a high share, you were the guy. Exactly, right. And you would participate in the profit, you know, show like Friends, right? The people who created Friends, they have, you know,

they have God knows how much amount of money. Everyone involved in that, right? Yeah. Is profiting on it forever. And that was also when syndication was part of the equation. Exactly right. But right now, I mean, we still have syndication, right? Yeah. Is profiting on it forever. And that was also when syndication was part of the equation. Exactly right. But right now,

I mean, we still have syndication. Yeah. People are watching Friends every night of the week. Sure. On Netflix,

it was for a while. Exactly. Now, I forget which streamer it's on now, but these are, in fact, the most valuable shows,

shows like Friends. Sure. Except that the contract that we have doesn't, you know, provide us nearly the same upside in residuals.

Literally, we're talking like 1%. When it was on network. Or a network. Network or cable. So part of this is that, yes, there's a transition to streaming. We have to update all our contracts for streaming. Because the way they're all written is, you know, they only apply to the media that currently exists. So first, the Writers Guild

covered movies. Then television was invented. We gotta get coverage of television then cable was invented okay now we got to get coverage of cable right that's always the fight for a union and and unfortunately that puts us at a disadvantage and and and the big problem then like on a basic level is that these are publicly traded companies e-streamers and they are buying up other networks and whatnot. And now all these old time studios have streaming arms. But the bigger streamers, you know, the reason they protect their data is because they're publicly held companies. And, you know, if the truth were to come out about how many people are really watching or what's really happening, that it would be much smaller than their... I'm not convinced of that.

That's a theory some have that it's going to like, they're going to be exposed that no one is actually watching the shows. I think it's just these companies, because they're tech companies, they see data as a resource. They see it as oil. It's an oil field. Sure. They want to be the only ones who pump

it. If you're in control of the information, you have all the power. And so they don't want to release the data for that simple reason. Now, I think they're bringing advertising back in. They're going to have to release data soon. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Because advertisers demand are going to need to know it. They're going to need to have it. So tell me where we're at with the negotiations and what are we specifically negotiating for? me like where we're at with the negotiations and what are we specifically negotiating for let's talk about uh ai for a second yeah i keep getting hung up on this idea isn't there like for has the idea of these sort of uh uh these images or with writers it's it's the idea that ai can generate scripts yeah for anything but you know there's also this idea of owning someone's identity in perpetuity with just

a flat rate. You know, here's a one shot payment. Yeah. Is there any way to negotiate that stuff as animation? I mean, I think you're not wrong because my view is that AI is a marketing term that the tech industry came up with to make us think this technology could do more than it can to frighten people, to make us do what they say, right? Yeah. People like Sam Altman from OpenAI are going around going, oh, AI could become super powerful. And so you need to put in place the laws that I say.

Yeah. So that China doesn't beat us and all this bullshit. Yeah. What they have is they have a loosely connected bunch of technologies, some of which are kind of cool, right? But they haven't invented a new wheel or something. This is just like, what do they have? Large language models.

This is a piece of software. You put text in one end, you can get text out the other end. That resembles an answer to the question you ask, right? Then they also now have the ability to reproduce people's likenesses. I don't, like, are we calling that AI? Two years ago, that was just called VFX. It was just called CGI. They already did that to the guy in the Star Wars movie,

the guy who played, whatever, Grand Moff Tarkin or whatever. They reproduced this guy after he was dead. They didn't need to call it AI. So these are two completely different technologies. But the fear is not of the technology itself. The fear is what the motherfuckers running the companies are going to do with it. The problem isn't learning. We learned to split the atom.

The problem is building the bomb. Right. And so writers and actors have very different concerns about what those things are. For actors, it's control over their likenesses. It's the AMPTP literally proposed that you could pay an actor one day's work and then they own your likeness and they can puppet you around in perpetuity. That's clearly not something that the actors union can accept. For writers, it's slightly different because the point that I want to draw is that large language models cannot do the work of a writer because doing the work of a writer is not outputting a script doing the work of a writer is yes typing but then also talking to the network executive to get their notes talking to the director talking to the actor right and integrating

all of that and talking to other writers talking to other writers right um working in a group then it's going to set listening to the read going oh that line actually doesn't work when i hear you say it we got to rewrite it then going to the going to the edit and going, oh, that line actually doesn't work when I hear you say it. We got to rewrite it. Then going to the edit and saying, we got to cut that scene. Right, but isn't the fear that they can cut out all of that up to reading it? The fear is that they are going to say, hey, here's a great script that ChatGPT wrote. Now we just need you to punch it up, talk to the writer, talk to the actor, talk to the director, take all of our notes, go to set, go to post. Oh, but you're not a writer.

Chat GPT wrote it. You're just an associate fucking producer or whatever. You're making minimum wage. You're not making, you're doing the same work you were five years ago, but now you're making a fraction of it. And so, you know, we have proposals that say, basically say they can't do that. That, you know, first of all, someone needs of all, we need writers to be there through production.

We need writers to be there in post because that is where writing happens. And you can't pass off the work of AI as our work product, et cetera. And they stonewalled us on those proposals. They're pretty simple proposals. Most of them don't even cost them anything. Are they banking on the idea that they'll put a bunch of us, you know, I'll put myself into the writer position, even though it's not my bread and butter, but I am a guild member. Is part of their game to starve out as many as possible, get them to move on, and then just believe that audiences will adapt to the garbage

that's left over? That's absolutely what the model is. I mean, what they want to do is destroy a healthy industry that people love. They want to cut the corners off of it. They want to make it cheaper, and they don't care how much worse it makes the product. And they frankly don't even care if it shrinks the entire industry, if it means they get to keep a larger portion of it. So what they're trying to do to writers is put us on a freelance model. They're trying to end the writer's room entirely.

They're trying to say, instead of, hey, let's get a bunch of writers, get some minds together, have them really beat this thing out, come up with a great show like The Bear or any other show you want to, that was the product of a writer's room. And instead they want to say,

hey, we're going to hire one person. You get some money, but you got to write the whole season yourself. Here's 10 grand. You can farm out some scripts to freelancers if you like. And then all those other writers who are maybe getting a script farmed out, they're going to be lucky to work on that script Saturday and Sunday. And then on Monday, they go back to their day job. And that'll hurt the product. There's no way that that won't make it worse. But it'll kill the industry.

It'll kill the industry. A really good example of this, I think, is VFX because, you know, CGI, all that. When that came about in the 90s, right? You remember it was like, oh my God, we're going to wow the audience with it. Look, here's the Terminator. He's turned into silver. Here's Jurassic Park, right? Toy Story. Look how amazing it is. Now they use it to cut costs. Now they say, instead of going to the location, what if we just shoot it on a green screen, send the footage to a bunch of people who are paid sub-minimum wage in Korea, they crank it out, we don't care that it looks like shit. Now people go to see a movie

that's done with VFX, they're like, that looked awful. It did not look good to me. People are sick of the product. And even when they make the Flash movie, everybody hated, nobody watched it, they only take that as an excuse, we just gotta pump harder. We just gotta shove this shit in people's

faces even more. Until they placated. Exactly. Hypnotized. And, you know, we're fighting back against that. And hopefully, you know, the fact that, look at just this last weekend, that, you know, Barbie and Oppenheimer, two movies made by auteur directors

starring a great cast that had original ideas, right, were the biggest sellers and all the shit like nobody has been watching for the last year. Maybe they'll take a note from that. Probably not. But what we're doing instead is rather than hoping, we're forcing them. And that is to circle back to talking about making change, right? Yeah. about making change, right?

Yeah. The thing that inspires me so much about a union that I love about a union is instead of just like, you know, signal boosting and asking and donating and stuff like that, a union is a mechanism by which a group of people can force change to happen. We know what our power is.

They cannot make anything without us. Without scripts, they have nothing to make. And so we're going to, and we are literally on the picket line to force them to reckon with that. They've forgotten. Ted Sarandos doesn't know that, you know, and we are here to remind them, no, you actually fucking need the unions. And we are not going to let the industry proceed unless you agree to our demands. And it's interesting that, you know, I think some people forget, you know, especially in this town,

you know, I went on the picket line last Friday, is that the idea of the picket line is to stop people from working. Yeah. Not going in. Just shaming scabs. And, you know, and I brought up the other day, I don't know who I was talking to, but it's like, if this were another industry, you know, the company would send stooges out, you know, to start beating up the guys out in front of netflix as they did for many years but they i don't think they figured out how to do that with

cgi you know they maybe netflix could just beam some uh tough guy with clubs i mean they try to intimidate us you know they've they've said uh in the press that their plan is to starve us out until we've all lost our homes and apartments and have become homeless. That's a thing like studio executives actually said to a reporter. And, you know, I think what they didn't count on is that a, the internet exists now and that people saw that outside of Hollywood and were

horrified by it. We had an outpouring of public support, but also, you know, folks, the fundamental fact is people cannot make a living in the, in the entertainment industry anymore. The middle class nature of this industry, the bottom has fallen out of it.

And in the Writers Guild, we listen to our members all year long and we fight for them all year long and we heard those stories and we fought. SAG-AFTRA is a union that has a little bit less of that history. They don't have that fighting spirit or that fighting muscle quite as developed. But they heard it from their own members enough. They're actors saying, I can't make a living anymore. That union stepped up too and went out on strike as well. And we can't be intimidated because everybody knows if we don't win this fight, we're not going to have jobs to go back to. No one's going to say, oh, God, let's just take a deal.

I need to pay my rent because people couldn't pay their rent before. So, uh, we're going to stay out there and that's why we're going to win. Where is it now? Anywhere? So SAG after going out, uh, and going on strike was for the studio executives, that was their version of Trump getting elected. That was the thing they never saw. They never thought could happen in a million years. Right? So that happened a week and a half ago. SAG-AFTRA called the strike. They spent the first week just shitting themselves, going like, wait, what the fuck is canceled? What can I not have now? How much money am I losing?

They've got to be hemorrhaging money. They're hemorrhaging money. They're getting it. Wall Street is starting to scream at them. They're starting to realize that they need to get involved because the the way that the they normally do it is the ceos have outsourced this organization called the ampdp yeah the point of the ampdp is to be the no machine they just say no no no no no what's that stand for american motion picture television producers yeah and and so the whole point is that people like david zoslav and ted sarandos don't even have to think

about negotiations because carol at the amp AMPTP is handling it for them. Carol at the AMPTP fucking failed. We're on strike now. And so now the motherfuckers at the top have to start going, oh, God, I got to get involved. OK, I got to I got to call David. You know, like, David, what are we fucking? OK, we got to go talk to these guys. But normally these companies hate each other's guts.

Right. Ted Sarandos and David Zaslav are enemies most of the time. companies hate each other's guts, right? Ted Sarandos and David Zaslav are enemies most of the time. So they have to somehow figure out a way to come back to the table with us and give us a deal that we are going to be satisfied by. And that's just going to take them a little bit of time, you know, to get their logistics in order. But that's the part of the process we're in now. They're not waiting us out. They are shitting their pants, taking a shower, putting their underwear on like having to get cleaned up and come to the table and that's going to take a couple weeks maybe months but um you know once they've done it then you know we're we're going to be back to work are

you finding that there is any is there a scab problem oh god i i don't think so yeah see that's what's amazing yeah i mean because there's, they can't, there's no like secret, there's no like, it's not farm work. Yeah. Like there's not these people that's like, fuck it, let's just bring in these other guys. Yeah. To write. I mean, people think that there it is because, you know, in their darker moments, writers

will be like, oh, so many people would like to have this job. Can't they replace this easily? It's fucking hard to be a TV writer. Like it's, it takes a lot of expertise. Yeah. You can't take a guy that just got out of college and make him a showrunner. Yeah, or an actor or anything else.

I mean, even fucking being a reality star who are not union, that is not easy either. They need to find just the right person. So, yeah, there's not... That's not happening. That's not happening. There's extremely high participation. I mean, both the writers, Golden Stagg,

after I had votes of like 98% to go on strike it's total unanimity out there and you know even sometimes people get worried about like a counter example or two a big show runner who doesn't see themselves as a guild member even that is like so much the exception to the rule

you know when we've got folks like the Duffer Brothers who make Stranger Things they shut down production Ted doesn't get any make Stranger Things, they shut down production. We're no more, Ted doesn't get any more Stranger Things, right? That's his Super Bowl. That's when he gets all of his new subscribers every year. So he doesn't get any until he comes to the table. And that's the sort of participation we've had.

I guess like what you were saying before is that this has to happen with the evolution of technology and the evolution of how people take in this product and how it's delivered. But so given these hidden numbers and given the nature of, of, of tech secrecy and the idea that this oil they have is really data and, and, and ultimately that's connected to subscribers and people. Do you think that some sort of residual system or profit sharing system is possible and what you're sort of hoping to get? Yeah, I do. And so the last time writers and actors went on strike together was 1960.

That was when residuals were invented the first time. Also when our pension and health plans were founded. And so that's the amount of power that we have again now uh it's that kind of year it's a historic year this hasn't happened in 63 years um that's one thing yeah the the main reason i think it's going to happen is because they need us like they have convinced themselves that they don't that oh we're the masters of the universe but in fact uh the the work done by holly done by Hollywood writers and Hollywood actors is the most valuable media property in the world. Has been for a hundred years.

It'll continue to be. People watch reality shows. People watch, you know, Korean dramas. I like Korean dramas. Those aren't what drives the subscribers for them. It is American television and media. And they actually will not get any until they actually come to the table. And we actually will not leave the picket line until we have those

residuals in place. And that's the only way that it can end. And also what ultimately happens is somewhat a leveling of the playing field again, because what they stand to lose are CEO salaries and shareholders. Yeah. So somehow or another, it's going to have to be communicated that if they want to stay in business, this is the structure it's going to have to be

and maybe their NASDAQ value will go down a little bit and maybe Ted will have to get rid of one of the houses. Yeah. But ultimately, if you guys succeed, it will increase competition and increase opportunity. Well, first of all, if we succeed, because you said you're a member, and we're all in it together.

But yeah, absolutely it will. I mean, the fact that, you know, David Zaslav taking $250 million in one year in his own compensation is not good for the economy. It's not good for the stock market. It's not good for the industry. It's good for David. It's good for David, right? And so, but a system in which the people who make the product are well compensated is better for the overall economy. I mean, the reason that L.A. is a great city to any extent

is because for 100 years, writers, actors, directors, artists have come here because this is the one place you can fucking get paid, right? And also everyone behind the camera, all the other unions. And you have support from all the other unions, I would imagine. We absolutely do. And it's a really historic thing this year as well. Teamsters giving you information. unions and you have support from all the other unions i would imagine we absolutely do um and that's that it's a really historic thing this year as well teamsters giving you information correct yeah and uh iotsy members crew members not crossing our picket lines yeah at expense

to themselves right because they are turning down work when they do that but they are doing it because they believe in our fight and because they know that next year when they have a negotiation we'll be on their side as well and you better fucking believe we will be because we're so grateful to them um we've got pas on our picket line people who aren't even in a union and it's because a future who want a future and a part of it is this is the national spirit of the time right like what the last time the writers guild went on strike in 2007 it was for coverage of the internet it was a great fight we won thank god we did but the whole country was against us. People were like, why are the writers going on strike right now? Now everybody is on our side. Fucking President Obama, right? Who has a deal with

Netflix and normally wouldn't take a stance on this came out on our side, right? And it's because everybody is getting fucked this way. Everybody and every job in America. Has he gone to the picket line? You know, not yet. And if he's still listening to the show, we'd love to have him come down. I'm on Netflix every day from 9 to 12. Come on down. But everybody is going through this. Everybody is working for a job where, you know, the fruits of your labor are being concentrated in the hands of the people at the top.

We've got record low unemployment, like 3% unemployment, and people can't afford rent or to send their kids to college. In the country. In the entire country. But it's interesting, too. There has to be a reframing of the conversation with what is the right-wing perception of Hollywood. It's like there's still a lot of people out there that don't think we work. Yeah. still a lot of people out there that don't think we work.

Yeah. And, you know, it's a real short-sighted, dumb, shallow interpretation of what goes into making entertainment and into this level of, and I hate using the term, storytelling and also spectacle. I'd love those people to come down and spend one day on a TV set, you know? No shit. Because it's a factory floor. It's crazy, dude. It is hard.

Even as an actor, right? Being an actor, athletic, physical work. You're dehydrated. You're like, you do not move from the spot you're supposed to be in for 12 hours. Or you're in a trailer for 12 hours waiting for lighting. There's a lot of waiting.

But it's like, you know. It's a big business. And it's a big American business. It is sort of historical in terms of union activity across the board. Absolutely. Because post-COVID and employment in the service industry, in show business, in the transportation industry. I mean, shit is happening. Yeah.

I mean, the UPS Teamsters, just one of the largest union in the country. They had a democratic revolution at their union. New militant leadership came in. They leveled a big ass strike threat and they got a big ass contract. Thankfully they didn't have to go on strike cause you know, they didn't have to make that sacrifice, but they were showed they were willing to do it. Yeah.

And they changed, you know, they changed reality for 300,000 teamsters across the country. And you know, the, the really fucking, the thing that really gets me jazzed about the labor movement is everybody has this opportunity, you know, the, the really fucking, the thing that really gets me jazzed about the labor movement is everybody has this opportunity, you know, like, like you have a

federally protected right to form a union at your workplace. And it starts by having just like daily conversations with your coworkers. Not unlike we were talking about public school early on in the conversation in terms of the sort of business-driven, business-owned Republican agenda, you know, dumbing the people down on purpose to meet their own greed ends. They've also characterized somehow unions as being negative over the last 30 or 40 years. Exactly right. And people say, oh, all a union does is to protect the lazy workers, et cetera, et cetera. People are not educated about their rights under labor law. And why unions were put together.

Exactly. Was to protect workers. You know, the mindfuck of, and the amazing kind of precision over 30 or 40 years that they were able to make voters vote actively and verbally against their self-interest is kind of another conversation that has to do with psychology, consciousness, propaganda, and late-stage capitalism.

It's a concerted effort, you know, to convince people of this. On behalf of business and those who represent business. Yeah. To make people think that they don't have those rights, to think that if they use the rights, they'll come out worse than they were. That happened in our industry. There were not strikes for decades because the industry convinced

even the union members that strikes were bad and that you couldn't win and that we're finally disproving that. The studios did that. The studios did that. It was a literal propaganda. I could walk you through how they did it,

but they literally convinced a generation of actors, writers, directors that don't use your power. Just cut a nice, friendly deal. We'll take care of you. We'll take care of you. Don't worry about it. And guess what?

Some unions did that for many years. SAG-AFTRA was one of those unions. The Writers Guild was at one point, too. And then eventually their workers got so fucked after decades of that, they started going like, what the – we can't make a living. Hold on a second. There's this thing called a union. Yeah, yeah. What if we actually did it? Right. And people are having that realization

across America, or they're saying, wait, what if we started a union, which is much harder, but like the Starbucks workers, the Starbucks workers are doing heroic work, um, doing that. It's like so inspirational. They're going store by store. Um, because so many, so many of the, uh, greed driven corporate entities and, and privatized social services have a lot invested in people not unionizing. Yeah. Well, thanks for your service. Thank you. And it was great talking to you.

It was wonderful being here. Thanks so much, Mark. Well, there you go. That should get you up to speed. Well, there you go. That should get you up to speed. Again, his podcast called Factually. You can get wherever you get podcasts and follow him on social media for regular strike updates.

Hang out for a minute. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So, no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs and mozzarella balls, yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats, get almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs and mozzarella balls, yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats, get almost, almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details.

It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5pm in Rock City at torontorock.com.

All right, people. On the latest Full Marin bonus episode, I watched Dario Argento's Suspiria with Kit, and then we talked about it. Okay, so we enter this thing, and right away there's this jacked color. Yes. I don't know what you call that type of color. They actually decided that they wanted to have the palette for this film be primary colors. The reason for that was the inspiration

was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the Walt Disney movie. Yeah. The cartoon. Mm-hmm. The super amped up red and blue and yellow colors in that cartoon. And so they found one of the last studios in the world

that was still printing on like three color Technicolor to, to make this movie. Cause yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so wild because like you notice it right away, but I also, for some reason it reminded me of Brian De Palma movies.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Like I can see that. Dressed to kill. And some of the earlier Brian De Palma movies. It just seemed to happen. Even the ending scene in Scarface. Yeah, like it's jacked.

The colors are jacked. You can listen to all the recent Mark on Movies bonus episodes where I learn about some new genres from Kit. You can sign up using the link in the episode description or go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF Plus. Next week, we have Jessica Chastain on Monday and comedian Nimesh Patel on Thursday. And this might be the last time I play guitar without a click track. I figured out I can do a click track if I just use the little timer thing that I have a thing on my phone that gives you a click.

And if I put my earbuds in with a click, maybe I can keep time better. But so this is the last messy one. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Boomer lives. Monkey and La Fonda. Cat angels everywhere. Could you hear that?