#2050 - Ehsan Ahmad

25:01He never went to a program. He didn't do alcohol, synonymous, just quit. Dude was so funny man. And I told him, I go, why don't you do stand up? Like your cousin owns the comedy club. Just do an open mic night. It was not interested. No, you got to - This is something that you have to want to do. Yeah, you got to want it. You really got to want it. Because it's so brutal if you don't. Yeah. And you see some people like going through the motions and it's like, don't do this to yourself. Well, it's not a thing you can kind of half in, half out. And we've seen that a bunch of times. Yeah, you have to be fully in.

25:34I remember thinking, you know, just like podcasts early on in my career being like, hearing everyone be like, no backup plan, no backup plan, just go all in. And I remember like telling my parents who, you know, trying to figure out like, what the fuck are you doing? Why are you doing this? And then I was like, at least go to like grad school. And yeah, and so you have something to fall back on. And I was like, I can't, I can't have a backup plan. Well, one of the things we really wanted to do when we started the mothership, you know, and you and I talked about this, we all talked about this. We have a real program, like a real solid open mic program.

26:11And the best way to do that is obviously have a lot of open mic time. So there's two nights a week. Every Sunday and every Monday we have open mic where anybody can go on stage and try it. Right. And you're gonna be able to see all the different levels, people that do open mics for four months, six months, folks who've been doing it a year, guys who are coming in that are pros that are gonna drop in and do a set. And you're getting to see the door people do their sets. And the door people here are, what I love about the people here in Austin is that, you know, you don't run into the sort of people in LA who would run into that, like they're just really doing this to become a writer.

26:51Or they're just really doing this to become an actor, right? So this is just something that you know, the door people here like want to be stand up comedians. They're fans of the art form. They're fans of the art form and they are taking this opportunity and their amount that they're improving that I can see is incredible. I'll look at some of the door guys and be like, I wasn't like that at five years in. Mm. Yeah. I wasn't like, I wasn't doing that. Well, we all feed off of each other. And we were talking about Shane moving into town the other night and then you guys were talking about as new half hour and like you both, you and Tony had the same reaction.

27:23You went back home and you started writing. Started writing immediately started writing. I went, I went to Wisconsin recently and I took one of the door guys, CJ Landry with me. And one of the reasons I took them with me is I did a random show with him in Dallas. Like this is last year, 1230, just a horrible show at like midnight and he buried me. Really? He buried me and I was like, oh, if when I get the chance, you're going to go on the road with me because I have to follow this. I wasn't expecting it. You know, I'm in there all cocky. I've been doing it so long and then I was like, wow, I got buried by a door guy.

27:57Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Oh, I got it. I got it. It's like the energy around the place. Like when Shane was there, the energy of just like everyone was just like, this is awesome. We can get to watch the best. We could all become better. Yeah. Just last night I was walking in the little boy and there's a door guy in there named Fuzzy. And I was like, hey, Fuzzy, how you doing? And he goes, oh, I have the best life of all time. And this is a door guy who's taking out trash. Yeah. He's taking out trash. He lived in this car a little while ago. And he's like, this is the place. It is. You can feel the energy there.

28:31It's, yeah, you can feel it. And we're feeding off each other. Everyone's better. Everyone's better. Everyone's better. We're all better. And there's no like, no one's like competing for like, oh, there's only two sitcom, like the place where I can get a sitcom. Yeah. Everyone, what's nice is that you look up and you see the top of this, you know, you see you, Shane, Tony, and you see that everyone is just doing what they want to do. Yeah. And there's no like you succeeding, doesn't take away from someone else succeeding. Right. So it's this mindset that everyone has to just like, oh, she's winning.

29:07Yeah. That's awesome. I can win. Oh, he's doing that. Fuck yeah, that means that there's whatever there is for me. Like it's the positivity and it's like, yeah. And it is like, oh, and these people are coming. You got to write. You got to, cause nobody's slowing down. Nobody's slowing down. Nobody is slowing down. No one's slowing down. And everyone's inspired. Everyone's inspired. And the stage time you get in the city is incredible. Yeah. Outside the mothership, you go to Red Bands Club, you go to Vulcan, you go to East Austin Comedy Club, you go to Creek in the cave. There's this new room on Fitz Street underground called Black Rabbit.

29:42There is time in front of quality audiences here, even outside the mothership. So everyone is improving that Rapolo's Pizza Next Door has a mic with people in it every Tuesday now. It's insane. What's happening in this city? Not to mention you have Cap City up in the domain and the spider house near the campus run shows all the time. There's another one that I saw on the East Side. Yeah, yeah, I think that's East Austin. Oh, the Roscoes. Yes. Roscoes. That's the new one, yeah. That's another one. That's another one down there. And I saw Roscoes Comedy Club. I was like, there's a Comedy Club down here.

30:16This is wild. It's wild. And now we'll get these people that are like comedy tourists, like we used to get at the store, where it's like, I'm in it from Australia for eight days. I'm at the mothership for six of those days. Wow. It's a spot. It's the energy you can just feel it. You can just feel it. It's pretty fucking cool. It's pretty cool. And just the good keeps on coming, Shane's here. When that Brian Simpson special drops. Yeah. There's just so many things here. What I'll never forget how he Mandel walking in the place and just having like, it felt like we gave him 20 years back. Oh, it's like he felt like a kid again.

30:51It was like watching a kid play. I was like, oh my god. And when you found out the phones were in bad, he's like, oh my god. He's like, do comedy again. He's funny, man. He was great. He was very funny. He was great. It was great. It's just great to see everyone come through here and be like, oh, I see what this is. Yeah. I get what this is. Yeah. Yeah, we did it. It's so funny because it was when we were all talking about it, we're in the green room of the Vulcan, talking about how to build it, what we're going to do. It all seemed like, eh, this really can happen. Right. You know, I could tell some people were skeptical.

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33:00And I always viewed it as a, low -risk, high -reward move. Because I was, so right before the pandemic hit, is when I went full -time, pandemic hit, obviously, not going out, so I moved back in with my parents. I'm living there, because I'm not playing L .A. Price's, if I'm not gonna do anything on stage. And then they live in the Bay Area, I was doing outdoor shows. Dylan hits me up, hey, you gotta move. Derek, Jeffrey Berner, also had moved here before me. They're like, you gotta come. So I stayed in their place for a little bit, two weeks, and I was like, oh, I gotta come. I gotta come. Because at the worst, I come out here and get stage time in front of people.

33:37Yeah. At the worst. When you first came here, was I even talking about opening a club yet? Yes. So for me, what made it real that you were opening the club is that I heard Adam and Curtis were coming over. And I was like, oh, he's serious about opening the club. There's no, like, there's no, like, because you heard, I heard the news, and I was like, oh, am I gonna have to move to Austin? And then you hired those two, and I was like, oh, this is happening. And then my friends were also be like, hey, you gotta come out here. There is time, and you can get good out here. Well, everybody was, it was a perfect storm.

34:08L .A. closing down, the comedy store, they closed down. So everyone's had a work. So all those people didn't have jobs anymore. And so I said, I'll hire you now. And you don't have a job for like a year and a half, but you start getting paid immediately. That's a good deal. I was like, listen, then. I'm gonna make it as nice and easy as possible. I was like, come to Austin, get, enjoy the time. I'm gonna make it to the city for a year. And then we'll call for you. And then we'll do this. We'll really do this. Yeah, and then it was, and then it opened, and you could just feel it immediately. I didn't think it was gonna take as long as it took, but that was because we had another building, and the building owned by the cult, and that shit fell apart.

34:45But it's lucky it fell apart, man, because it's like where we got is the best spot in the world. Then six street is like no other place, man. It's just hop in with people. They close it down to car traffic, and there's just people walking on the streets, and the energy is crazy. Right, it's pretty, the energy at six street is nuts. It is wild, but it helps the show, man. It's like there's so much wild shit going on outside that when you, you know, there's live music playing everywhere, there's like a feeling in the air. And then you go to the club, and it's rocking. It's like, oh shit, this is the spot.

35:21Yeah, it just feels like a place that's, it just connected with everything. It's just different than any other place we've ever been to. But it's also the only place that I've ever worked at, where a comic ran it, like a comic built in, and they built it just for comedy. There's no business partners or fucking, you know, weird money people that want you to charge more for that or pay the comics less or make our own rules. It's what they talk about. The stories of like a comics playground. It's an artist playground. Like here you can like take chances. You can really like be free artistically. What I like about this sort of theory I have is, because I started in San Diego, which is a pretty red city in a blue state, and now we're in a blue city in a red state.

36:04Like that's sort of the best mix for comedy. You get all sorts of people all across the spectrum. And then that's like a, this is what America really is. If people believe this, people who believe this, they're all in one place, can you make all of them laugh at once? Yeah. It's well, it's also people that recognize there's a new scene here. So there's like this energy to that, and they want to come experience it. Because they really haven't been, like Austin had a scene. It has a small scene. There was always some good comics that came out of Austin. You know, because like Hicks was here for a while.

36:38And you know, there's like a history of good comedy at Austin. But it didn't have like a community like we have now. There's nothing like it where all these world -class comedians had moved to a city. Right. That never really happened before. It just kind of became an A city. I mean, the only time it really happened, I feel like it's when Carson moved to LA. Well, I bet LA had comics already though, no? I mean, I don't know. I'd imagine so, but then you hear like, I guess my view is the view of the comedy source history. But you know, all these people came from, all these high -level comics came from New York, right?

37:15It's like, let them in and out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the Tonight Show being in LA was a big monumental shift in people being like, oh, let me come here. Well, that was back in the time where a spot on the Tonight Show could make your career. Right. Like, that's when I first saw Richard Jenny. I was like, wow, who's this guy? Did a spot on the Tonight Show? And you would get these like five to seven -minute spots and guys would prep forever for that spot. They just wanted that one, they wanted, there was some guys that only had like one kill or seven minutes. Because their whole idea was just get on Letterman.

37:50Get on the Tonight Show. Get on something. And that was like your career move back then. This is pre HBO comedy hours. This is pre -everything. Yeah, I remember reading stories about like, oh Freddie Prince got called over to the couch on his first time. That never happens to anybody. Well, also you got to remember, what were the numbers back then for the Tonight Show? Oh, there must have been massive, right? There's only one of four shows you can watch at the time. Right. What was the average Tonight Show ratings in 1978? See if you can find that. Yeah, that's good. I bet it's nuts. It's got to be in the tens of millions, right?

38:25Yeah, that's the big. I don't think like 25 million. And again, this is 11 pm at night too. Right. So people are kind of tired and then laying in bed. Johnny Carson, he was king. Right. He was desk. They all did the same thing. The desk in the chair. Doesn't make any sense. Why do you have a desk? Are you doing work? It's so weird. You have a desk. But everybody had a desk. And it's like, I guess it was like Jack Parr, who started it out. It was Steve Allen or Jack Parr. Whoever was the first one. Because there was Tonight Show guys before Johnny Carson. Right. And whoever it was, they had a desk.

39:00Because like, back then, if you were the boss, you sat behind the desk. Would the Ed Sullivan show fall in this sort of world? What was that? Ed Sullivan. Because in my mind, that seems to be like the precursor of all this and sort of what set this up. Yeah. Lenny Bruce did the Ed Sullivan show. What are the Beatles famously? Yeah. Who else? A lot of people did it. Yeah. Was he the first? Was Ed Sullivan the first? It feels like, from my understanding of it, it feels like he was like the first mega star. Jackie Mason got banned from the Ed Sullivan show. Because Ed Sullivan said he gave him the, that Jackie gave him the finger.

39:38Really? Yeah. But Jackie swears he didn't give him the finger. He's just doing his hands. Doing my hand gestures. And he did something and Ed Sullivan said, that fucking guy gave me the finger. He's never coming back. Damn. See if you can find what that is. What happened with Jackie Mason on the Ed Sullivan show? What year was that? It's got to be what? Like the 50s, 60s, early 60s, we were talking about Mason. Do we find out what the ratings were for 1978? I was digging to 78. There was just most of this stuff talking about the ratings is about its last week and last show. What is that? Well, 50 million for the final show.

40:16Oh my gosh. That's crazy. So you average 19 million a week. That's wild. No, no, just for that week. That's, oh for that week. I wasn't saying that was for the whole time. Did you find out what the ratings were? I think I did. I think I did. I think September 1978 to night show ratings. I don't, I mean, I'm looking forward to it. I wonder if they even have those numbers. Yeah, they probably have the numbers. What's really wild is like there's people that get away with not telling you the numbers. Netflix gets away with it. We were just discussing this last night because Fred and I were saying, what are you thinking about this actor strike?

40:51And I said, I really don't know enough about it to comment other than, look, if you're a person and you do something, even if you're a comic and you do something on Netflix, like when I've done Netflix specials, they just say, it's doing really well. And you go, what does that mean? How many people are watching it? We're really happy. Yeah. What does that mean? We're really happy. It's doing great. What are the numbers? What do you think is the purpose of keeping it secret? Well, it's a genius move because they don't have to tell you. So you, you can't really negotiate. Like if you do a special, that's special.

41:24There's 10 million people watch it. Oh, shit. It gives them all the effort. We're gonna have to have some more money next time because if he finds out that there's many people who are watching, you don't know until you go out in the road and then you sell more tickets and you're like, oh, people enjoy it. I guess it worked. Right. But when you don't have any data from the company, they could just not give you the data. Like on their side, it's great for negotiation. Right. They don't have to tell you shit. It's just they have all the leverage. There was an article about this yesterday. Okay. Surrendles defense, not disclosing streaming numbers, creators field felt trapped by ratings box office.

41:57So how does he defend it? I like to hit Surrendles. By the way, he's a very nice guy. It's the longer paragraph is here, but it's... Part of our promise with creators at the time we started creating original programming or creators felt like they were pretty trapped in this kind of overnight ratings world. Oh, they're trapped by ratings. Oh, we're doing this for that. Yeah, we're doing it for them. We're doing it for them. They don't know. Overnight ratings, an analyst interview that went, oh, a weekend box office world defining their success and failures. Surrendle said during a pre -recorded analyst interview, that's a little gas lady.

42:31And as we know, a show might have enormous success down the road and it wasn't captured in that opening box office. So part of this was the relationship with the talent, not just the business aspect of it. Well. And I do think that over time, people are much more interested in this. We're on a continuum of today of how much data do we publish? I think we've been leading the charge, starting everyone down the path of a top 10, publishing our top 10 lists and our annual wrap up list. And everything to give a lot of transparency to the viewing. And I just expect we'll be more and more transparent.

43:05Just say the numbers. This is a weird little dancer doing a boy. Just tell people what the numbers are. Yeah, it is. And it was saying yesterday, on top of this, that they might be changing the way videos work. I think they said for the first 24 hours that all stats will be live. Like live view account, live thumbs up. I guess people really want to know that. So that's opposite of what he was just saying. Yeah, and it does seem like people want. They want to know what's successful and what's not. It does seem interesting that he says that like, oh, we have, you know, a show might do better as time goes on and the initial box office numbers might not reflect that.

43:41But it's like, you're, but then you're also canceling all these shows. They're the time to get the second and third season. Yeah, shut up. Right? It's just, it just, there's no, it gives, it doesn't lend that credibility. No, we're doing it for the creator. Right. Guys, we love you. Right. We're doing it for you. Yeah, this seems like a very abusive relationship. So I would imagine that has something to do with, I think if you were an actor and you were a star of a Netflix movie and it was fucking huge, you would want to know what the numbers are. Right. It's got to be part of their, I don't know, is that part of what they're asking for?

44:16I know it's streaming revenue. I think that was one of the things asked. Yeah. This is one of the things there's like the, the, the AI characters, yeah, that's, that's a big part of this. Because sex still is strike, right? I believe so, yes. So I think the AI thing was, there was one contract that, I don't know if it was actually being, someone actually trying to get people to sign an order was just being discussed, where they would pay the extra, like an extra would be on the set. And then they, they own their digital image. They could use it forever. So they could put you in the background of the fucking Hulk movie, they could put you in the background of a, you know, like conspiracy theorists believe they're crisis actors, right?

44:59They show up at every mass shooting and start talking about something in this bullshit. Like this is the most evil of conspiracy theories, right? But this, this crisis actor thing, imagine if you just start seeing like AI people in every fucking movie, every disaster movie, you see that same guy? Like that's that dude. And that dude probably got paid 200 bucks. You know, it's like the will help screen, but with like people's faces. Right. Yeah, that's what it would be like, oh, if it's a disaster scene, you know, this, this guy's in it. Well, maybe they'll be able to morph your image, give you a mustache, fake nose.

45:31I'm sure they can, you tweak your face. I mean, they could face swap you with different extras. They could do all kinds of stuff. Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. What they can do, did you see the unreal five video game engine? Yeah, the car on fire? The car on fire? Jamie, see if you could play that. Someone said, I forget the tweet, but it was something along the lines of, you're not going to be able to ever know what's real again. No. And if it feels this way, looking at the news with what's going on over, you know, over in Israel and Palestine, it's like, what am I seeing? How much of this is real?

46:02What's, yeah, how much like the propaganda on top of that? They're like shitty reporting, shitty reporting. It's like, it is like, it's so interesting that we have phones and we have the access to information constantly. And now we just know if none of that information is true. Well, we just know quickly what actually happened if you're online and paying attention. And the mainstream news is so far behind that. Right. Coleman Hughes was on yesterday saying that, you know, the original narrative was that Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza. Right. What actually happened was another Islamic terrorist group launched a missile.

46:34It failed and it landed in the parking lot of the hospital. So this is fake. This is the unreal five engine. You see a car on fire and then they have a little video thing popped through just the cars fake the rest of the video should be real. So they inserted a car into a real scene. Is that what they did? Yes. No one really knows the honestly because unreal engine looks so fucking good. There's been a new video of the 5 .3 and it looks. But I could Jamie, I could imagine that's all the video engine. It could not. It could be, but like right there, that person walking the background. Yeah, but you could do that.

47:06You could. Well, that would be easy because there's not even in focus. That would be so easy in comparison to this car that's in focus. That's just, well, I've just, I've watched a lot of it. I just don't, I think that all I did was add that. Okay. Just saying, well, you might be right. But either way, look how good that car on fire. Yeah, I mean, it looks, it looks incredible. Very real. And look how the flames vary. Like the flames vary like an actual flame wood. It's not like sometimes you will watch like digital flames. They do the same pattern over and over and over again. But this just looks like real fucking fires.

47:39There's a level of randomness. It's reacting to the thing in it. Yeah. It's nuts, man. Yeah, the thing is making the smoke move. Mother fucker, dude. They're so good now. You're not going to have any idea. No, you can't tell, you can't tell what's real at all anymore. And I think it was in 2015, they passed a law that allowed the CIA to use propaganda on, on citizens for the greater good of the nation. Yeah. No, there was something like that. I mean, that's always been a thing though. It's funny that he's a pass a law. Well, now they can't get arrested for it or no one can get the trouble for it.

48:13Yeah, I guess everybody. No one was really getting trouble for it. No one was really. Yeah. It's like it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's more like them dotting their eyes and crossing their teeth. Like, let's just make sure that no one that that law, Jamie, I was just looking it up. I just stumbled across an article from the New York Times, 1977. Worldwide propaganda that work built by this. I can't imagine 1977. And I mean, I didn't, I can't find the article really, but it's so hard to know what's real and what's not real. There's yeah, that's, I think that's like what we talked about with the shift in COVID, but they're really caused.

48:47It's like, now I'm just suspicious of everything of everything. Everything I read. I'm like, what's that? What, what angle is it coming from? Who's funding this exactly? And not, it didn't used to be though. This is what comes up about what we were just talking about though. Obama did not sign a law allowing propaganda in the US. OK, so here's the claim former president Barack Obama signed a law in 2012, allowing the government to propaganda, allowing government propaganda in the US and making it perfectly legal for the media to purposely lie to the American people. AP's assessment false in 2013.

49:21Obama signed legislation that changed the US information and education exchange act of 1948, also known as the Smith Month Act. The amendment made it possible for some materials created by the US Agency for Global Media, the nation's foreign broadcasting agency to be disseminated in the US. The facts, a post circulating on Facebook, with a photo of Obama falsely states that he repealed a ban on government propaganda in the US when he signed the National Defense Authorization Act in 2013. The amendment did not repeal the Smith Month Act, but rather lifted some restrictions on the domestic dissemination of government -funded media.

49:59OK, government -funded media though, is you're getting close to propaganda. OK, so here, the change essentially eased restrictions for Americans who wanted to access government -funded media. We're going in for you! The Ted Zorandos wrote this. We're making it easier for you to access it. The change essentially eased restrictions for Americans who wanted to access government -funded media content. Because you know, most Americans really want to access government -funded media content. I can't think of anything better. Would I rather watch Game of Thrones or government -funded media content? I think I'd go.

50:35Allowing media produced by the US Agency for global media such as the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, to be made available to Americans upon request. It was not possible before the law was changed. Even upon request, if I wanted to get through the Freedom of Information Act, for instance, they couldn't do it, the amendment changed that. It says Gabe Rockman, director of the Reporters' Committee Technology and Press Freedom Project. When everyone puts freedom in their project, I'm like, you don't trust anything of that. Yeah, bullshits. Is it Patriot Freedom? You know, the Patriot Act.

51:15I just think it's so funny that government -funded media was behind some sort of wall to begin with. That's kind of interesting. Well, it says there was essentially de facto ban on the government dissemination of materials originating from the State Department. Yeah, because we didn't trust you. We didn't trust you to just fucking make these claims. Journalists are supposed to make these claims. You're not supposed to release the news if you're the government. No, journalists are supposed to go in there. Find out what's actually going on. Right. And then, you know, I guess later we find out that they're really influencing these news companies anyway.

51:50So it's like, what's so funny? Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Yeah. I don't know. It sounds like a sneaky way to get propaganda to people. But I thought there was something else. There's a lot of things that they were, it was proposing that they were allowed to use propaganda if it was for the greater good. I thought that was a part of the, whatever, was the National Defense Authorization Act, which the one that allowed for indefinite detention. There was one that had like some real sweeping over steps for people like, yo, indefinite detention. Is that the same sort of stuff they used to get the guy who made the memes?

52:31This is a lot more difficult from 2013, but it explains everything we just read. It's just, this reminds me of, this is for whatever reason reminds me of, I want to watch fast seven in theaters. Fasten the furious seven. It was only me in the theater. Well, it was me, it was me in this one lady. And at one point the lady goes, walks out and leaves. That's your fault. You came to fast seven. Yeah. But in it, I think it's fast seven. There is this hacker that creates this thing that can see into every phone and see into every traffic light. It can get in. And the whole fast seven, the whole fast seven years whose job is to get this hacker and get her program and give it to the US military because the US military are the good guys and they need to have this.

53:16You don't want to end this up in the bad guy's hands. And it's like, I just remember thing like, wow, this is blatant, like weird propaganda in fast seven. Yeah. I came to see cars jump out of skyscrapers. Not this. This is interesting. Well, it's also they feel like those kind of movies sell to the kind of people who like those kind of movies. Right. Like those kinds of concepts. Like, if you like fast and furious seven, you might have a mega hat. You know, you might have a Confederate flag and you're fucking dead. I enjoy them because it's the closest thing to as an adult. That same feeling I got when I was a little kid and playing with cars and like having them go on the TV and then on the couch and then it's the exact same feeling.

53:56Yeah. That's why I love them. Remember when they took a car into space? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, you mean it was driving cars. Yeah. Well, this steering wheel and accelerator everything. If I wanted to show someone the peak of America, it's ludicrous driving a car and outer space. It's like, look how great we are. Look what's that video. Look how great we are. This is our gift to the world. This is America and it's based at its finest. At its finest. At its finest. Look what we've done. This is how ridiculous we could be. And by the way, that movie probably sold 100 billion people. Oh, yeah. How many people watched that movie?

54:34I mean, they had to make two more after that. Oh, it looks like a minion. Yeah, they're wearing scoobasuits. Well, they're going into space, in a car. They're in a car.

54:55Oh, man. Science in this. I love ludicrous explaining science. This movie is so good.

55:04Are they strapped to the rocket?

55:13So it falls off and now they're in a flying car. It looks like a rocket ship. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. It's going in a space, son. They're going into space. You have to watch this and be like America's the best. Look at this. They're going into space in a car. We're at scoobasuits. Oh, man. Oh, my God. Janky scoobasuits, too. There's no way it holds the pressurization as we said earlier. Oh my god. I can't wait to watch and see why they had to go to space. I don't remember why they... I don't think I... I don't remember why they had to go to space. That's weird. Oh my god, there's this flag.

56:01That would be fasted fierce as greatest move we ever. That would be unreal. I don't think they had the balls to do that. They did it and said the world was flat. Do you know how many people would fucking cheer? Oh yeah. There are the full cheer movement. This is what happened when the flat earth movement. It took off and then everybody went, I'll get the fuck out of here. What was I thinking? Now it seems to be back. It seems to be back and bigger than ever. There's more flat earth propaganda. I don't understand what the point is. Well the point is, here's the point. The point is the government lies about everything, including space.

56:35Right. And then we are really God's creation. There's an ice wall around the outside of the world. You're not allowed to pass it. If you try to go there, the military will stop you. The military, even though there's fucking thousands and thousands of members that have probably seen this, they've hidden this information for the general public for the greater good of mankind. Right. Or for evil reasons. Right. Because they don't want you to know about God. Right. And then the stars are just bullshit. And the firmament is like a cover over the earth. And that's why we can't go into space. Oh, that's wild.

57:06That's wild. I always just thought, even if the earth was flat, what am I going to do? I'm just going to still go to Chipotle and live my life. Like, you know what I mean? I never understood the point of getting that hyped into it. To me it feels like sometimes a lot of conspiracy theories is adults who realize too late that the government's always lying to them. That's what it sometimes feels like. Where it's like, oh, you just kind of found out too late. So you're like, oh, they must go on the extreme of everything. Well, people love conspiracy theories because some of them are real. You know, and when you find out one's really like, holy shit, they really did that.

57:43Oh, my God. And then you start getting suspicious about everything. You know, and you can go down rabbit holes. And you can find the thing about like a video on YouTube, for instance. As you can find someone who's like a really good narrator who's using good words and good sentences and they're speaking well and they sound intelligent. And they're saying things is just absolutely not true. Right. And it's not. Sound pretty good. No one's stepping in to prove it that it's not true. But if they were having that same conversation and they were talking like Brian Keating and he starts explaining to them how we know the earth is round, how every planet we've ever observed is round, why they are round.

58:24How's there's a thing called Boads Law where you could kind of you could accurately predict based on the mass and the size of a planet where the next planet is going to be. They're all round. Yeah, I did it. We're not. We're not. I'm a planet. So they found now they started finding them, you know, as the equipment got better. But I think it was a long time before they found the first exoplanet, the first planet that was circling around a distant star. Now I think they've detected hundreds and hundreds of them. I don't even know how many they've detected. But like they're all round. Right. Now all of them around.

59:00The idea that we're the only ones that isn't round. We're special. Yeah. It's not a perfect spear. They'll tell you that. It's one's perfect spear. Okay, get out it. Go around it with a ruler. Do whatever the fuck you got to do. Yeah, it's not perfect. It's like it bulges out at the side slightly, but you can't tell by looking at it stupid. Right. It's still pretty much a circle. It's a fucking globe. Right. But why would you want to think it's flat? I don't understand why that helps you to think it's flat. It's a waste of time. The mystery is in the entire thing itself. The mystery is that we are literally on an organic spaceship floating in what might be God.

59:41The universe might be God. We might be floating in God. Above us is just immense energy, nuclear explosions, many times bigger than our sun, surrounded by planets and fucking black holes and dark matter. It is wide old up there. And you're concentrating on the shape of earth. It's such a waste of time. And this idea that there's some great conspiracy to protect people from it, or to keep that information because if we knew that God was real, we would, no, no. Right. No, it's fun. I know it's fun to believe that, but this motherfucker is round. It doesn't mean there's no God. It doesn't mean God didn't create it.

1:00:26No, because really no one knows. No one knows if the devil's real, it's all speculation, right? Yeah, we're all just doing our best guess. Well, it definitely feels like there's, definitely feels like there's something more. Whatever this is, whatever, like the energy that we share with each other, there's definitely some sort of spirituality in this world that you have to sort of let in. I think there's something to the energy that you enough, I've had this in the isolation tank. I've had it in psychedelic experiences. There's moments where you reach a state where you understand that your experiences with people and all the things you do in life is energy.

1:01:05And there's good energy and there's negative energy. And the more negative energy you put out, that ripples, it creates more negative energy, creates more problems. Like people that want to start arguments and fights with people, people that want to like, like, god damn man. Like, I know you probably frustrated in your life and you know, you think that's part of your personality to be blunt, but every time someone does that, it ripples out. That person feels negative about people. And then they are always taking it in their mind. Oh, sometimes people can be douchebags. And then it just, it just gonna create more issues in your life and the lives of the people that you run into.

1:01:43But if you can find a way to recognize that and shift it, then you could do the opposite. And the more positive you put out, and the more positive conversations, the positive interactions you have with people, then they have more positive ones. And then everybody from that, it ripples out in a good way. Right, it's very much you get out what you put in. There's some weird thing, but we are all connected. And it's not just by your experiences. It's not just, there's energy that we're giving each other. There's something that, there's some, for some, in some way that's, we hear to unseen. We're experiencing each other in an unmeasurable way.

1:02:23Right, right. And we have a profound effect. We have a, the energy you bring into the room, you see it at a club all the time. 100%. If the first point of contact they meet, whoever bags their phone is having a rough day, and they let that rough day come out of them, the shows going forward will not be as good because their first point of contact is someone who is not in a good space. And they, and they take that space with them and bring it to their seat. Like it's all those sort of things, like the small little things, matter in a comedy show. 100%. Where it's like, yeah, it's, it's, the way they seat the room sometimes, fucks with the energy, if they seat it poorly.

1:03:01And it's like, all that stuff matters. Like you can't, you can't seat people, like you have to seat them close and next to each other all the way through. That builds energy. If you see people randomly, then the show has no, no cohesive feel to it. It's very interesting. Yeah. It's, well, and also like the comradery at the club. That's all very contagious too. The comradery and the friendship and the support and how everybody's very cool and very complimentary. And there isn't that weird fucking competitive energy that used to get particularly in the 90s man. When I first came to the store, it was God was so doggy dog.

1:03:38Because everybody was trying to get on a sitcom. And if you and I both went on an audition for sitcom and you got it, I would be like, God damn it. Now his life has changed. I see you on TV guide now. This motherfucker, like he's living the good life. And I'm over here grinding at 1130 sets. Yeah, trying to, trying to get him to look at me. Yeah, in front of 50 people, I can't get an agent. Fuck! Right. And so there was this like hyper competitiveness amongst comedians where people, and it's all the bad mindsets, they had this idea that somehow or another, if you got something and it was good for you, it was somehow another taking away from my success.

1:04:17It's really stupid. But it was all because of the fact that everybody was clamoring for a tiny amount of jobs. Well, yeah, it seemed like back then the industry held the keys. They did. Yeah, they really held the keys. And now it doesn't feel like that at all. At all. It's like you can just do what you want. Yeah. That's the best part. Is that I'm not, you know, you know, if you come here, you don't have to worry about like, oh, if I say this when I get this job, right, I can just talk about what's like on my mind. Yeah, you can do whatever you want. Right, that's a level of freedom that, you know.

1:04:48And I do wonder if me, you know, I mean, because eventually industry and stuff are going to start coming here if like the... What does that mean anymore, though? You know, like, eventually, but they already have people in LA. Just stick with those people who are stuck in LA. Right. Because it's just what the industry out here is podcasting. That's true. Your major entertainment industry. That's true. But I will say this. A great standup comic can do a lot of the, like, you know, Robin Williams. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? The reality is that if the great stand, if all the great young standup comics start moving here, well, then your next great actor might be there.

1:05:23I'll never forget walking in the comedy store and you see open mic, you see Michael Keaton's name lit up. It's like, oh, you could just, you could be a comedian and then be Batman. Yeah. Like that's a, that's a, that's a possibility that's open for you. So, you know, all these, a lot of these great actors were stand -ups. And so a lot of great writers were stand -ups. So eventually, they'll be like, well, if that's where the talent is, that's where we have to go. Maybe. I think they're going to stay put. You think so? Yeah, I think they're going to ride it out until that fucking ship goes right into rocks.

1:05:52Boom. There is like almost a vested interest in for people in LA to like not want this to work. Us? Us? Yeah. Okay. You know what I mean? Oh, good luck. Yeah, you got it. It's such a stupid thing like that. Any comic should be happy that there's more comedy. Any comic should be, and also, by the way, if we're here, you get more stage time in LA. So, take advantage of that. Because there's a lot of people getting stage time at the store that probably wouldn't get it if everyone, if Thompson Girl was still in town. If, right. Christina Pizzitzky was still in town. Like so many people moved here, Duncan, everyone moved here.

1:06:25So it's like, there's a lot of spots for you in LA. That's true. You know, just try to do what we're doing. Try to do it the right way. Just try to be supportive and fun and don't push a fucking certain ideology on each other. Well, you can't push ideologies. Not in stand -up. So stupid. Trying to do woke stand -up. We're trying to turn a club woke. Well, yeah, just try to be any sort of like, you have to think along this line. It's like, no, that's not what... Right. That's not... There was a only right -wing comedy club. Right. It would be awful. Yeah, it was terrible. No Trump jokes, bro. Nobody wants to hear him.

1:06:59Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. You can't walk an ideological line. And you can't... What I find so funny is that like, there's so many of these, like, you'll hear, like, oh, we need to be more diversity in the club or whatever. And then, you know, a lot of times when Hollywood does diversity, I think something that Brian Simpson and I have talked about, they'll just take, oh, we need a brown guy. We'll just take the first brown guy. That's like, kind of whatever. That's... They can kind of do it. But like, when you focus on like, hey, let's just bring the funniest people here. The diversity naturally comes.

1:07:34Like, funny doesn't fall along the lines of like race, gender, sexuality. It doesn't fall. It's just, are you funny or are you not funny? And I would say the... The mothership lineups without really trying to be diverse are actually diverse. Yeah. Because just talented people. All that matters of life. Yes, can you make people laugh? Yeah. That's the only thing that should matter. And that's, you know, it doesn't matter how you do it. If you can do it, you can do it. Yeah. Yeah, it's a meritocracy. It really is. And it should be. But it's also, there's a system at that place. Like, you're going to get a chance to do professional work eventually.

1:08:15Someone's going to bring you on the road with them. Absolutely. And then when that happens, like, you know, Tony brings people on the road with them, like, brings Cam, Cam started on, kill Tony, all these guys are real new. When he takes these guys on the road with them, and they start getting professional careers, like other comics will now do the same thing. And it's just, you have a path. Whereas I think when we all started out, it was a lot more random. Like, there was no, like, clear place where you could go, and you could learn from watching all these other comics, and then it gets bots, then you could eventually be a pro.

1:08:47Right. Right. And then the stuff on that path is open for you. Like, I look at Cam, and Cam is... He's pretty famous. Off one clip of being in Austin. That's a famous guy. You know? And it's like, that's fucking dope. That's awesome. It's like, you can't tell me that I'm not famous. Look at my friend. He's famous. Derek right now is on a European tour with Schultz, just at the Royal Albert Hall. You can't tell me I didn't just do the Royal Albert Hall. Because that's what it feels like. It's like, oh, we got that from here. Yeah. Look at, just go, go, go, everybody up, everybody up. That's pretty amazing.

1:09:21It's awesome. It's like the energy here. It's just, it's, oh man. It's crazy that it all just lined up perfectly. You know, I moved here. I'm like, I gotta do something. And then when Tom moved here, like, he was sick of it too. And he moved here not long after me. Because you're gonna open up a club. I go 100 %. He goes, okay, I'm moving to Austin. Damn. I was like, oh shit. Damn. That's when it felt real. Because they picked up their family, all their employees, everybody. They were moving to Texas. Started their studio here. I was like, whoa. Okay. And so, you know, there was enough to stand up in town that we always could work at the Vulcan.

1:09:58But this dream of putting together this like perfect comedy community. Boy, when it happened, it's almost like, do you feel like that building wanted us to be there? You know, like it's weird energy like the building was like, thank you. Well, the building is alive. That's what I like about the building. It's alive. There's a history before us. Yeah. Massive. And that matters. It adds flavor to the, it's like the story. Was that mob hanging out that zeros? There's a swastika on the wall. There. Oh, when you came in. Yeah. When I bought, we tore the walls down. So, we tore the outside of the wall and you see the exposed brick.

1:10:35And one of the exposed brick was a fucking swastika. And I was like, we should probably get rid of that. And it was there for months. Nobody got rid of it. And one day I got there and I go, hey guys, we're going to open in like two months. Get rid of the fucking swastika. And so you know what they did? They cleaned up. It was black spray paint. They cleaned off the swastika. So now it was even clearer. Because now it was in white. I was like, hey, get the fucking design off the wall. Jesus Christ. You could, you could take that as the Hindu symbol for good fortune. That's what I'm saying. The opposite way though, is in the swastika.

1:11:13The swastika is like, the swastika is on his edge. And I think the Hindu one is flat. Okay. Yeah, because it's going in the same direction. Because there's different ones. I don't, I don't, I think they might be going separate directions. It's just very funny because my girlfriends can do and just walking around their house and just like, swastika's doing. That guy ruined that. Ruin that design. Yeah, it's like I've been around forever. It's like a blessing thing. There's a lot of like, you'll see a lot of, this has happened in Derek's apartment complex. He was like, yo, this is crazy. And it was a giant swastika on the hood of the car.

1:11:45But it was a, it was a Hindu swastika. And that's like one of the things they do to bless their automobile. Like something new. Maybe ghost stripes. Yeah. Don't have to fucking obvious. Because people, no one's going to Google that. No, everyone's just thinking of Nazi. Yeah, I mean, this fucking Hindu Nazi. This is crazy. Yeah, it's been, it's been co -opted. It's like Clayton Bigsby. The black white supremacist here at Hindu Nazi. Right. Fuck out here. But you know, if there's someone from India, they might not know like the implications of that. I'll never, I'll never forget in 10th grade, we were doing like a World War II history unit.

1:12:23And my teacher was like, you guys think, oh, oh, oh, hitler and all this stuff. This is all, this is all like common knowledge. But look at it. Check this out. We had a, we had a girl from India in our class, like born and raised and you just moved in. She was like, do you know anything about Hitler and the Nazis? And she was like, no, no idea. Whoa. They never, they never really taught that to them over there. Whoa. Right. It was just, yeah, right? Because you would think that, oh, hey, this is like, and you know, this is like common knowledge, but it's like, if you don't know, if you grow up in a culture that doesn't really teach you that, it's like, oh, you're not gonna know.

1:12:55Oh my God. Mm -hmm. That's crazy. They didn't teach them about Hitler. At least that girl, and that, wherever she was from, I don't want to put that on all of India. It's a big place. Right? It seems insane, but it's like, if it's not part of, if it doesn't really affect your life in that major way, like I can see how you would never get there. How did not affect your life if there was a world war going on and people were dropping bombs in Japan that obliterated a city? Yeah, and it's not. And it's just, no about that. Well, you're too busy trying to fight the British in your backyard. Right, but how do you not know about nuclear bombs?

1:13:31I mean, well, they definitely know about nuclear bombs because India and Pakistan definitely have them. Right. How do you not know that the United States detonated them on Japan in World War II? Yeah. It's easy. It's crazy to see what people can actually miss when it's like not put it in front of them. God. Yeah, it was eye opening to me. So it's like, oh, okay. So I would venture to guess that person who did that in their apartment complex is from India. Yeah, for sure. And just has no idea like, oh, this is like a thing. This is like a big, especially on a college campus. Oh my god. In the middle of Texas, it's like a thing.

1:14:08Yeah, you're going to get, there's no explaining your way out of that. No, no, no, no, no, you don't get, you don't get, if you like to hitler mustache, you can't wear that mustache. There's no benefit of it down there. You don't get that like right on it. And the wild like I killed that mustache forever. And I can really, really did. It's over. It's not a great mustache. So it's it's a weird look. Michael Jordan tried to bring it back. Yeah. Yeah, two goats.

1:14:35But even Jordan couldn't pull it. I was like, no, I got to get rid of this. Hilar. No, it's just, it's, it's, you know, I'm, there's probably, at a certain point, there'll be, will be far enough away that you can do that. Like, we forget, we forget everything eventually. That's what that's what time does. Like you can wear a Viking beard now and it's cool. Mm -hmm. You know, you're going to have like beads and it and shit. And nobody goes, what the fuck is wrong with you? And people did was rape and pillage. All you do is murder folks. They go into a town of light, everyone on fire. Right. That's the beard.

1:15:01Right. They wore that beard. So, you know, that's, that is fun. The idea of like maybe four or five hundred years from now, there's going to be a football team called like the Minnesota Rikes or whatever. Like a, like a Minnesota Nazis. Yeah. Wow. Well, the Mongols, I mean, people dress up as Genghis Khan for Halloween. They don't say anything of it. Yeah, and that guy, that guy killed the most people. The most people ever. Well, did he kill more than, uh, Mao? He killed somewhere between 50 and 70 million people during his lifetime. Okay. So much that it changed the carbon footprint of Earth.

1:15:34So they do core samples and they go during the time of the life of Genghis Khan. You'll find less carbon on Earth. He killed 10 % of the world's population. Wild. Do they killed an entire city in Jin China and stack the bones so high that the quar of Chorisma, when the, the, the, the Shav Chorisma, when they sent an embesary to go to visit Jin China, they thought it was a snow capped mountain. And as they got closer, they had abandoned the roads because there were so many bodies rotting in the roads that their wheels were getting stuck in the mud of decaying bodies. And then when they finally got to the city, they realized that thing that they thought was a snow capped mountain was a pile of bones.

1:16:22They were in the middle of the city. They killed a million plus people. They killed everyone in the city. Yeah, they, they, they did some wild shit. Wild shit. Yeah, then they make like all the men at once. Watch as they slow as they murdered all the women and children. They did all kinds of stuff. They did some wild. They lit people on fire and use them as catapults to land on people's roofs pretty wild. Because people were fat and they, they, they cook real good. If you light them on fire, cover them with, you know, caracene and launch them through the air, they would land on rooftops and just light the houses on fire.

1:16:53Shit. Bro. Dude. What? Bro, they would put, they would take people like generals and, you know, with kings and put them under like a floor. So they would, they would tie them down and then they would put the floor on top of them. And then they'd put a table on top of the floor and then they would all get on top of that table and eat dinner. Well, these people were slowly getting crushed to death. Damn, dude. People screaming and agony and they're just eating. Damn. They would eat each other. They would, when they were, if they were starving, there's reports that they would choose one guy and they would kill him and cook him.

1:17:32Damn, dude. That's, that's, they, they, they, they lived off of milk and blood from their horses. So they'd take the milk from their horses and they would mix, they would cut their jugular and take some of the blood and pour it in with the milk and they would use that to stay alive. God damn. Yeah, dude. Yeah, imagine fighting someone. Yeah, and doing that. They didn't change their clothes. They literally, at them, rot off their body. They never showered. So they stunk. They literally had rotting like animal skins, oftentimes rat skins. Like their entire garment would be made out of rats that they skinned and sewed together.

1:18:07And it would be rotting off their body. So far, like, since we're so far away, all this sounds like really bad -ass. Sounds bad -ass. And all of this sounds like at the time that sounds absolutely horrifying. Yeah. Having to face that army sounds insane, but so far away, it's like, crazy that over time atrocities like that become fascinating instead of like, what's going on right now in Israel and Palestine, which is like too close to us. Right. You know, what's happening now? That was a normal Sunday for the Mongols. Right. Are you stormed or rave and killed 200 people? I was gonna say, I, you know, the sort of benefit of having all these cameras and having all this information is that it is less brutal than that.

1:18:50Yeah. It is less brutal than that. So if we, if you were to talk about like the, the, you know, the hospital bombing, well, maybe if it's just a war of information and it just hit a parking lot, well, 500 people aren't dead. It's just a hypothetical 500 people that are dead. It's like a, it's - Well, Coleman, he said that it's actually probably somewhere between 1500 and 100 people are dead. And, you know, they don't even know what number that is because the original claim was that it hit the hospital. And in fact, the New York Times used an image that was not of that hospital in their story about the bomb from Israel hitting the hospital.

1:19:26So they used this destroyed building that wasn't, so like they put out a fake picture with a fake story. Well, because I don't think anyone knows really what's, what's what over there with the picture? Yeah, well, you can't fucking print that if it's the New York Times. We're already struggling to trust you. Well, you would think you couldn't print that if you did the New York Times. At this point, it's more par for the course. It's like, of course, the New York Times would print that. How, how are you doing that? Like, why are you doing that? The need for news to get clicks and ratings is probably one of the worst.

1:19:59Like, the amount of damage that the 24 -hour news network simply by existing have caused on us is huge. So from the news being a thing to be like, this is how we get out information to being like, oh, we need to jack up and get ratings. And we need to make sure we have clicks and eyeballs. Like that is damaging. And you definitely are like, well, if you're in the New York Times, you're like, well, if we just run with this now, the amount of attention that got, it was a whole day of everything on Twitter was about what happened there. Who shot the rockets? Who, what did it actually hit? It was all that.

1:20:36And I'm on Twitter. I'm checking these things too. And apparently, the way they found out that it was not Israel. But there's proof of it was a video that was it CNN accident or Al Jazeera? Al Jazeera accidentally aired this video. And it was the video showed where the rocket came from. It showed it going down in the city. And it showed going down where with the parking lot of the hotel was allegedly. Right. But even then, when you see something like that, you're like, I don't know what this video's from. Yeah, it was that unreal engine. Right. I don't. Right. I just assumed that, yeah, absolutely.

1:21:12I just assumed that everything were being fed about that is just a lie. Well, there was a bunch of videos that are being spread around at the beginning of the Ukraine war. And then someone said, hey, this is like literally from a video game. Like this is a scene in the video. Wasn't that the case, Jamie? Yeah. Right. Which is bananas. Wild. That's wild. But that's how good this fake shit is now. Oh, yeah. And if the government is allowed to do that or does that if they're not allowed or whatever, they can do kind of whatever they want now and make it look real. Right. Oh, yeah. I was thinking this the other day.

1:21:43What this has shown me is the importance of if you're in a war of having a social media manager. It's like might as well be a general. Right. Might as well be a general. I mean, like the official Israel Twitter that Israeli -Sweet State is going crazy. They're like tagging Taylor Swift and stuff. They're like, I saw, they're like, tagging Taylor Swift. Why? They want her to retweet it? No, because her bodyguard is part of the IDF, I think. Oh, I see. And he went to go back and, you know what I mean? So they're like, apparently they ran, I saw a tweet about how they ran a sponsored ad. I don't know if that tweet is the picture of the sponsored ad is real or fake.

1:22:19You know what I mean? Like it's even that. Is that real? Is that fake? Because I can sort of see them doing that. Right. What is your thought on like there's people that think that Twitter should be regulated more and that should be moderated more because of the false information that comes out? I think the community notes is the best solution to that. That's the best you can do. Right? Because it's like if you, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So if you're like, let's make sure that no fake things are posted on Twitter. Well, then who decides what's fake? Right. And this is one of the things we ran into with the 100 Biden laptops.

1:22:54Right. And one of the things we ran into with our experience and getting removed from Twitter for printing actual studies and talking about real data about COVID and vaccines. Right. You can't do that. Like when they want to do that, they want to be able to shut up anybody that's doing something that's going to fuck up that business. Right. And if you're doing that on Twitter, then when you found out that the FBI was contacting Twitter, getting them to take things down, it's like, that is wild. Yeah. And it's very short -sighted too for people to be like, well, you know, so you would, let's say, with that specifically, you would be like, you know, one of the people who have pro vaccines, like, oh, this is the science, we're taking anti -science stuff out.

1:23:31Let's say that's what's happening. Right. And you're fine with that. But you are not seeing the fact that like that, whatever is happening there can easily just turn on you. Yeah. And be like, well, what he believes is wrong. You're like, no, no, but it's right. Well, not only that, the problem was, they were stifling debate from real scientists. Right. Like, J. Boutichara, like, people from Stanford, real epidemiologists, real virologists, real people that were saying, hey, this approach is wrong. This is not the way to do it. The lockdown, school closures, masks on kids, all that shit. This is not right.

1:24:05This is not good science. And they were getting silenced. Right. That's when it gets crazy. When actual experts in the field, who really know what they're talking about, are not allowed to give dissenting opinions. That's the only way science gets settled. You have to have other scientists put the data to the test. And they have to be able to openly debate it. And when you can't do that, you're not doing science anymore. Now you're a mouthpiece for whatever, whether it's the pharmaceutical drug companies, or it's the government, or someone. Right. Well, they did it. And they also did a good job of getting like people.

1:24:37So, you know, during the lockdown, I was doing this thing on TikTok, where I would just grow my beard every day until the vaccine came out. And then I would shave my beard when I took the vaccine. So that's why I did. I got the vaccine beard. And then yeah, it was a fun moment. I had 40 ,000 people watching me shave. My beard. It was like a good moment. But at the time, you couldn't have told me that like, oh, okay, this is bad. This is bad. You know, because I was like, oh, right. This is, of course, they want us to get out of this. Of course, they want us to like, you know, and so they did a good job of keeping us pent up for so long that when the only option was this vaccine, and they told us that this was vaccine, me and people like me would be like, well, all these anti -vax people are fucking idiots.

1:25:26This is the way out. This is the way out. You don't want the way out. Yeah. And you couldn't have told me back that it took me moving to Texas, and then being here and being like, oh, they were just open the whole time, and everyone's fine. Everyone's fine. But a lot of people got vaccinated here too. A lot of people had to for travel. And then this is where it became like weird for me is when they started forcing people to, when they started forcing people to do it, and then at the same time, like, yeah, I know, it's just weird. Like, why you have to go inside? Well, it also wasn't scientific because they didn't account for people that had been infected and had recovered, which was far superior protection, then the vaccine was imparting.

1:26:11They didn't look at the data. It was just there was a binary solution. There was one thing. You had to do this, or if you didn't do that, you were part of the problem. And they did a great job of keeping people pent up inside when that they offered that solution. They were like, this is the way out. But I think they played that hand too poorly, because I don't think people are ever going to go for that again. No, even my, I was talking to my mom about this, and she was, and she's, you know, she was very, everyone get vaccinated. And she was like, we were talking about the new booster. And she's like, I don't think I'm going to take that.

1:26:44It's like, yeah, they, they, they overplayed it. They overplayed it. But they did for a while, they did a good job of making everyone forget that the pharmaceuticals were just evil. Did you see that child? These boys eight years old, who was the, the face of the Israeli vaccine ad? It was like, there's a propaganda ad that they put out. He just died of a heart attack. See, I saw that. And my first thought was like, is that real though? Right. Good question. Like, is that, is that actually real? Because I just saw it on some tweet. Last year, only 17 % of Americans got the fall COVID booster. So far this year, it's under 3 % per Bloomberg.

1:27:19Well, I guess if you're like an old person, you would be real tempted to get that. And maybe it would help you if you were really old. And you have a weak immune system. It might give you a boost. But to give it to kids, like to give it to eight year olds, there's a fucking no reason for that. They know there's no reason for that. There's no data that shows there's a good reason for that. That was one of the first things we knew it didn't, is that it didn't kill. That's what's the scariest things they're, they're willing to do it to kids. That's scary. Oh yeah, well, because there's a massive amount of profit in it.

1:27:47No one wants to think that they think like that, but they do. Yeah, it's like, wait, what, what am I now? I worry about some random kid. I can get money. Money. So did you find out about the eight year old kid? Is that real? Yeah, I've, I've, I've seen one link and it doesn't seem like the most reputable sites. I'm looking. Yeah, because that's the first thing I thought when I saw that, it was like, it could be fake. It was, because I saw it was posted by Died Suddenly, right, that Twitter account. So I was like, I got to see it coming from someone else who doesn't have skin in the game like that.

1:28:17Right. Died Suddenly, like a lot of those Died Suddenly's people that were suffering for leukemia for 10 years. Yeah, and you know, and yeah, or it'll be like, because sometimes like, there is that that correlation with like the athletes, right, where like more athletes are doing enough. Yeah, that's real. Well, the, the scariest one is the excess mortality data for young people. Right. Because the, the data for young people from, I think it's age, whatever it is 12 to 49 is up way, like very high. Right. It's some, I read something about it being around 40%, which is crazy. Man, I can't access all caused mortality.

1:28:55I can't, I can't think of someone who's been vindicated more than Aaron Rodgers in all of this. Yeah. Because I remember, so I remember when he, when he first went out, I was so mad because I was like, come on, you know, you're supposed to be the face, you know, I'm still very vexed. And at the time, I'm a big Niners fan. So the, the, the, the Packers were supposed to play Kansas City, who would just beat the Niners in the Super Bowl. And Kansas City was like, shaky. So I was like, oh, Aaron, if you fucking get him at the right time, you could cripple their season in an air. So that was very like, oh man, fucking Aaron.

1:29:28Take them. And now I'm like, oh well, I'm glad like, I'm glad that someone was like, hey, I know what's right for my body. Yeah, well, he's also allergic to one of the major ingredients. Exactly. And no one wanted to take that into account. Well, just the idea that this top athlete might be, might be very aware of what he's putting into his body. Right. Of course. And then that we all got sort of mad at that. Also, top athletes aren't danger. Right. This is not a disease that was killing top athletes. Right. What Duncan was saying that he got rotovirus? So he said, is that what it was? Yeah, RSV.

1:30:03He got some harm. He goes, I was, I felt like I was dead. I almost threw up and I was on stage. I went back to the hotel. I couldn't move. He goes, I was an agony for days. He goes, it was so much worse than COVID. And that's dangerous for children too. Yeah, and isn't it wild that like that one, no one's scared of? But it's the COVID thing. Get your COVID booster. Get your COVID booster. Like, I saw something with Chuck Schumer saying, get those boosters and get that flu shot. Like, not take vitamins, not eat healthy. Right. My first flight I took, because the whole thing was like, this is a conversation about national health.

1:30:41That was the whole line. Yeah. And the first flight I took after COVID was I was in a chick filet at an airport. And the soda cost less than the water. And I was like, oh, this isn't on about, like it was just a big like, oh, what the hell? If this was about national health, why aren't we talking about that? Why aren't we like, this, you know the amount of people I know that their main source of liquid is diet coke?

1:31:09It's amazing. I knew there was my neighbor in high school, or his sister only drank diet coke. How about the president or Trump? Oh, yeah, Trump just drank diet coke all day. Bro, I got to piss so bad. I think you're gonna die coke. We'll be right back. That's insane. So Jamie, you were saying that that story may or may not be legit? No, I just, I found, I found a source, but I just, I don't know. So these are Israeli national news. Child dies after nearly drowning on Yon Kippur Eve. He had a heart attack and then almost drowned in the bathtub. So he had a heart attack in the bathtub and then almost drowned.

1:31:47And then he died. But this is the only, this is the only source for this? I mean, I traced it down to this look like the best source for it. Okay. So it says he nearly drowned in the bathtub after going into cardiac arrest a few hours before Yon Kippur. Medics and paramedics arrived to see him within a few minutes, gave him medical treatment and performed CPR. When his pulse returned, he was evacuated to Hadassah Hospital and Mount Scopus in serious condition. The last few days it seemed his condition was improving a little this morning he passed away. If it's true, that's crazy, but I still, I still feel like I would say the sus meter in my head is still going off.

1:32:30Interesting. Is that a real paper? That you know that's like no news. I checked on my video. You sure doesn't come from China? Yeah, I mean, I said that sites I was finding a firmware like this, it was like according to reports and it's like, okay, well, let me find your reports. That seemed like a legit site. I'll just leave it with that. Okay. Okay. Because like it says the family made a statement. I was going to go with the family statement, the kind of trumps everything. And that's where the statement came from and that's what they're saying. So, well, I was so that's not normal. Right. Right.

1:33:02If that, yeah, again, if that's real, that's crazy. Yeah, if that's real, that's crazy. But that's that's almost like what you have to say with any sort of news that you see now. It's like, man, if that's real, that's crazy. Yeah, we were talking last night about this Chinese website. Duncan was talking about it, right? Where it looks like a news website. Right. But it's all positive news about China. English language, positive news about China. Right. Oh, yeah. I remember being in a hotel room. This is randomly just like San, sacriament a punchline. I'm just chilling in the hotel room, just going through and then CNBC.

1:33:35I think it's CNBC. One of those channels is just running a piece about how great China is handling this in this situation. You see CNN got chased out of Palestine yesterday? Aren't all the foreign news? Well, they were going after CNN. CNN was in Gaza with the fucking helmets on the ground. And people were fucking screaming at them, fuck CNN. Who? Oh, yeah, like the people. Yeah. Well, yeah, that makes sense. If I'm a Palestinian civilian and I see American news networks, I'm not like, yeah, I'm like, oh, the amount of damage you've done against us. That's how I'd feel. Well, that's how they were feeling.

1:34:12Yeah, I mean, yeah, that makes absolute sense. It's like, I don't know. They sometimes have this like, oh, we're Americans. We can just go anywhere. It's like, we've done a lot of damage around the world. We definitely have. Jamie, I'm going to send you something else. Um, good. I just, I was sort of, I had this thought. Do you think, so like, there's this migrant crisis that we have now and this sort of migrants in Europe? Do you think that that is the natural end state of imperialism? That well, it seems coordinated to me. I can see how it's been helped. It's definitely been helped along. But do you do think that because a part of me feels like, oh, this is kind of what happens when you go into these other places and sort of stabilize them?

1:34:53Is that eventually it comes back to you? What do you mean? Like, so we have, we've done a lot of like, I would say bad in Central America and just sort of destabilizing governments and propping up sort of these rebel groups and helping along the drug trade that all this destabilization eventually would make people go, well, well, this is the only thing we got to can do is leave here and go up to the place that, you know, we're kind of being told is the best. Yeah. And if it's available and you can just walk across the border and you get across the border, then you can vote. Did you see what they're sending Venezuelans back?

1:35:33No. Yeah. We talked about the other guest. But just Venezuela. Just Venezuela. Just Venezuela. They made a deal with the Venezuelan government. It's sending the Venezuelans back. Ooh. De -port them. That's because they have a socialist government. And those people are going to vote just like Cubans do. They're going to vote for Republicans. They don't want to bring that over there. Everyone's welcome except Venezuelans. Oh, that's interesting. Why? Right. That makes sense. Yeah, because you get a couple of million Venezuelans that vote red. They'll shift that shit right over. They don't want to hear any of that socialist crap.

1:36:01That's where they just ran away from. Well, I don't know if the Democrats are truly aware with how much they're probably like that minority vote is slipping away from them. Yes. Well, if the Republicans can get the message of hard work and family, who appreciates hard work and family more than immigrants? More than immigrants. Yeah. The hard work family, God. The issue with the Republican Party that they will have is always that Christian right. That'll scare a lot of people away from like in ways that I think that like someone like my parents, both hard working immigrants, would most likely be like sort of a line with those like conservative God, family, hard work, those values that the Republicans tend to espouse a lot.

1:36:51But that Christian right scares them away from that every time. That's true. Every time. That's a hard line that they won't cross. And yeah, and that is, that is I think it makes sense. You don't want to know. You don't want any religious fanatics, but the Christian right is, I mean, Ron White's terrified of them. You were talking Ron White about that. That is the one fucking group. That's the one fucking group you don't want control and shit. And I don't think he's wrong. He's not wrong at all. And that's the sort of, that's the sort of thing that I think scares a lot of people away from. Right.

1:37:23We don't mean right -wing people who are Christians either, but we mean these hard core, fundamentalist, crazy people. If you want to go to the far end of the spectrum, it's Westboro Baptist Church. Right. That's the worst end of it. Right. But that's a weird sect kind of cult of its own, that Fred Phelpsky. But when you get into some of these people that want to shoot abortion doctors and you get into this, you get into that and it's like, well, uh. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard. It's like there's no, as someone who's been disillusioned with the Democratic Party, I would say that I've voted Democrat pretty much my entire life and I've become heavily disillusioned with them.

1:38:08It almost feels like, man, I want to jump ship. Right. But it's like, oh man, the other side. It's, so that's, that's, yeah. It's, the grass is always shittier on the other side when it comes to politics. It's, it's always like, damn, this is, it's just, it is, it's that classic South Park. What is a, a turd sandwich in the giant doof? They're really, they're really nailed it. Well, the problem is the two party system too. Oh, it's awful. It's also this idea that you have to be left or right. It's so crazy. If we, we didn't have a left or right, you'd have people that have like, essentially, some conservative values, maybe some social liberal values that all exist together.

1:38:46But it's just you get defined by the worst aspects of whatever group. So the most extreme right wing people, whether it's, you know, fucking, Patriot front or whatever, like extreme, when people think of hardcore right wing people, then you have Antifa. You know, you have like the most extreme hard core people on the left that are blowing up Starbucks and doing it for climate change. Like that, you know, it's like, you don't want to be a part of either one of those. So it's, I think most people are kind of like middle -ish. And most people that are nice are probably middle -ish, but lean left when it comes to social issues.

1:39:24Right. And most people that have had either experience with violence or crime or people that understand, you know, hard work and people that like have grown up in rural communities, they're much more likely to be right leaning. Right. Because like, this is what makes sense to them is that there's a lot of people that don't want to work. There's a lot of lazy people. There's a lot, because they know that in their world. Right. Yeah. And I think that's, I think to people like, what social media has done to people in their political beliefs is when they surround themselves with this echo chamber of people who just say what they want to hear and ponder to their beliefs, they become, they go further into that where they start to believe that like, oh, everything I believe is right.

1:40:19And everything they believe is wrong. There's almost no, there's no like, there's no letting in the opposite voice. Right. And just being like, hey, think about this. Right. That's why when I'm on Twitter, I make sure to have like, I make sure my thing doesn't lean like one way heavily. I make sure to have like, these sort of left wing guys and these sort of right wing guys at the same time, because then it shows you like, oh, this is their bullshit. But it also shows you like, oh, I didn't think of this from this perspective. Mm -hmm. Yeah. It's like very important that you have to, it's almost like a, it's like a level of self -care almost at this point where you have to, it's like meditating.

1:40:57It's like yoga. It's like, it's on that level. You have to make sure what you're bringing in on social media is like, you're making sure it's not just leaning one way. Right. And it's not just just this one thing. It's like, it's like almost a garden that you have to manage. Yeah, it's a great way of putting it. It is a garden you have to manage. And I think that should be for all the information that you absorb. Mm -hmm. I think you should, you should see how like, even radical people that you don't agree with think about things. I like to really have people think about things. Because a radical, logical person got to where they got to because they thought about it and given the set of evidence that they have, they got to a place.

1:41:42So to see how they think and to see how they interpret that is very important. Yeah. Yeah, it's very important. It's very important. And you know, it's just people don't want to have those kind of conversations with people anymore, which is very unfortunate. Because you should kind of try to steal man people's arguments that you disagree with. Just to try to like see it from a perspective of like, how would I argue this if I was on the other side? Right. Well, what would I say? Right. Like what's the, because there's not just one side of any political discussion or any social discussion. I remember a friend of mine who is a scientist.

1:42:19She texted me, I heard you had a climate denier on your podcast. I said, I did not have a climate denier on my podcast. I had a guy that said the real fear is global cooling. Like, global warming, he goes, you can, it's not going to be good for America. It's not going to be good for the world if the country heats up. But you will, we will, as a human race, be able to move into new territories that were uninhabitable before. There will be an expansion of places that people move to and there will be places that people don't want to live anymore. Right. That's going to be true. Right. He said, but that's far superior to global cooling.

1:42:58He's like, global cooling is fucking terrifying. If you have an ice age, everything's dead. It limits everything. You're fucked. North America was half of it was under miles of ice. 12 ,000 years ago. And that is not because of humans. Right. It's not because the ancient humans fucked it up. The fucking earth has always done this weird thing. It's never been stable. It's never been stable. It's never been stable. Never, never. Ever, ever, ever been. Always 74 degrees on September 31st. Always, it's never been like that. There's highs and lows and it's weird and there's solar activity. There's a lot of shit that comes into play.

1:43:41There's so many things and you're in some groups. You're not allowed to talk about the nuance of whatever this is. You know what I found out? We were talking about the other day. That the carbon, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere that we're talking about. When they're talking about like radically changing all electric cars and no one's going to own a car anymore and all this shit. The amount of carbon in the atmosphere right now is .04. It used to be .03 and at .02 plant life starts to die. It's greener now at .04 than it has been in decades. The world is greener now because plants use carbon.

1:44:27So plants inhale carbon dioxide, exhale oxygen. Humans inhale oxygen, exhale carbon dioxide. Fungi, inhales oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. There's a whole system going on to use that stuff. Not good that we're polluting the world. It's not good that we're releasing excess cars. It's not good that we're monkey and maybe even making the world hotter and accelerated rate. There's a lot of nuance. A lot of weirdness in the data and there's a lot of unpredictability in these charts and predictions to use. It's almost like, again, a few years ago if you had told me, we're doing global warming and we're on pace to exterminate ourselves.

1:45:15Pretty much is what they're trying to say. I've been like, yeah, and then it just reminds me of the same fear mongering that they had with COVID. Well during the 1970s, I thought we were entering into an ice age. I mean, yeah, this is better than that. There was a Leonard Nimoy thing on, I think it was in search of where he talked about the upcoming ice age. They scared the shit out of us. Yeah. Yeah. And the way the media portrays it too. Because I saw this, like most people, I get my news from headlines that I see on Twitter. And then I learn how to feel about it by looking at the comments. But, you know, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, I'm going to have a jammer or wear that.

1:45:51They put bots in the comments. Yeah, yeah. Which is wild. It's very interesting to see how many things are, especially on Twitter, seem are like, oh, this is like totally fake. Yeah. But, so CNN had put out a headline that, you know, the iPhone sends you the news headlines on the phones that says, major, goal, major, you know, street, like a current on the verge of collapse due to climate change. And I was like, oh, shit, we're in trouble. So I clicked it. And it said, the Gulf Stream may collapse in 50 years. If maybe we, you know what I mean? The, the word may is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

1:46:26Yeah. Like you're trying to, I mean, you got it. You got the scare and you got the click. Right. That's what the aim is for. Right. That doesn't feel like, you know, there was, it didn't feel like it was some guy's opinion. I think it was like, it was, it was very interesting. I was like, okay, it's remember an inconvenient truth. I don't remember that movie that well. That was the Al Gore movie. I remember the movie started out. And I think that I think that movie had some wild predictions to turn out to not be true. Right. It's something like the ice caps melting earlier. What did they predict?

1:46:55What did that movie predict that was not true? It did not come true. Because I think someone debunked it recently and they made like a detailed list of all the claims and how off they are. But that was a terrifying movie. It was, it was incredibly scary. Yeah. Made people care about the environment. Yeah. And I think in a way that they didn't beforehand. Which is good. But it's not good to scare the fuck out of people if you're going to be that off. No, it's, it's, it's good. Yeah, you're right. It's good to get people to care. And like, hey, we got a, you know, we, we got to figure something out.

1:47:25Yeah. In terms of how we treat our home. Yeah. Absolutely. We treat, we treat it poorly. We're going to stop polluting. Yes. But to, to, to make people afraid. Doesn't serve it. It's just like you're, you're making people more anxious. This is probably a generation that's very, super anxious already to begin with. Yes. You're making people more, you're making people be like, I don't think you should have kids for the good of the world. Yeah. And it's like that's, that's a wild thing for, to get people to get there. Because that's, you're going against natural biological coding. Yeah. Like having, having, having kids is really what we're here to do on earth.

1:48:02Yeah. More than anything else, we're here to keep it going. So to, to get people so afraid to the point where they don't want to keep going with the species is wild. Yeah. But, you know, maybe we've hit that, I don't know. I remember in biology class seeing like population curves of like deer in a certain area and how they peter off and they fall. Maybe this, it is maybe, maybe we have hit that sort of top with humans. Well, when deer populations fall off, you know how they fall off? We kill them. Does disease. Disease. Yeah. Yeah, disease and starvation. I was just listening to a podcast about this now.

1:48:39In Washington, DC, outside area like Virginia, they have so many deer that they have a year -round season. So you can hunt deer 365 days a year. You can shoot as many deer as you want and people shoot them in the suburbs. So I was listening to this guy who gets permission to hunt on people's land and they ask him to come and do it because they have so many deer. They said they're like rats on stilts. There's thousands and thousands and thousands of deer. They don't even have accurate numbers. But the predictions are like every square mile is hundreds of deer. Like they think there might be like 600 deer per square mile in some of these areas.

1:49:22And so this guy is literally shooting deer with a bow and arrow from like people swing sets. And shit. Like yeah, like he sets up. People let him use their land because they're trying to kill them off. And he's whacking hundreds of deer. And then they feed these deer to homeless shelters and hundreds for the hungry. And there's different programs where people can get free meat, which is nice. So they get processed and then these people get free meat. So this guy is like essentially urban hunting. That's crazy. And there's a year round season. So they're encouraging people because they don't know what to fuck to do with all these deer.

1:49:57We don't want to get that at the point. Where's people? No, no, no, no, no, no, that's that's a fair point. But yeah, I would always thought maybe we had just reached a... I don't think we reached that. We don't think we've reached that limit yet. No, no, no, no. I think we... There's a lot of issues, right? I think we get captured by the issue that gets promoted the most. And that issue is climate change. And along with climate change, there's going to be someone trying to use methods to mitigate it that also restrict your ability to do things. And you're seeing in California where they're saying they're not going to sell anymore gas cars after 2035.

1:50:33I'm curious about that. It's like... Because that seems like... Because it feels like the biggest car of input footprint. And maybe I'm wrong about this. But this is just me thinking about it. In a car is not the average day to day use of it. It's the making and the manufacturing and the shipping of the car. That's a big factor. Those giant fucking boats that travel from Germany with your Mercedes. Right. Like those things... This is how much they're putting out. In the UN, I want to say... 2018 or so? Somewhere around then, they've made new regulations for the emissions of those boats. So these boats were emitting so much pollution that it was acting as a filter for the sunlight that was heating up the ocean.

1:51:24So when they changed the regulations and these boats emitted less carbon and less pollution, there was no longer a foggy haze where they traveled. And so the sunlight came down more and the ocean warmed up. So it warmed up the ocean much more than they predicted. So the pollution was actually protecting the ocean from warming quicker. That's why that makes sense when you say it out loud. Well, it's crazy. But we know that from 9 -11. Because when the flights stop flying overhead, I mean, I don't know how many flights fly overhead in the United States every day. Right. But when the flights stop flying overhead because they had a cease on all airline flights, the earth got warmer in the United States.

1:52:11Damn. Like measurably warmer. Damn. Because there isn't this filter of protection of those artificial clouds that people think are chemtrails. Not that there might not actually be chemtrails, because it definitely seems like they've experimented on that. Because it's one of the things they've talked about to mitigate the effects of this lack of pollution from these cargo ships is to spray shit in the sky that would also linger there and act to cool off there. So they're going to make their own pollution. That's so funny. And then the other thought that makes more sense and it seems more sustainable is actually to take ocean water and dispray it into the air.

1:52:47And to have these machines powered by coal. I don't know what they're going to be about. Maybe nuclear power or something like that. That spray ocean air into the atmosphere and the ad will ask that. Yeah, that would act as a layer of cloud cover. Interesting. Well, when you see a jet go through the air and you see those clouds behind the jet, those are clouds. And they're making everyone gay, right? No. That's the after zine. That's the pesticide. Okay, I lose track of my conspiracy there after a while. But this is like real. What happens is there's at a certain temperature, the heat of the jet engine, and combined with the condensation in the atmosphere, when there's a certain amount of moisture in the atmosphere and a certain temperature, it literally creates clouds.

1:53:35So as it goes through the turbines, this incredibly hot thing that's spinning, it's sucking in air and pumping out clouds. And that's what those trails are when you see them and they slowly dissipate over time. But as they dissipate, they form cloud cover. And it's actual cloud cover. So in Los Angeles, that's like most of the cloud cover some of the years. It's from plain. Fucking planes. That's weird. Weird. Because how many times do you go outside in LA and there's zero clouds? Right. A lot. Right. But then you see those contrails. And that's what I mean. So people that don't look into that go, oh my god, the government's spraying us.

1:54:14Imagine if they were just spraying constantly. We're just spraying constantly. Prince used to believe that. Really? Oh my god, this is crazy interview with Prince. We were talking about how when he was young, everybody would be in the street having a good time. And then all the sudden planes would go behind. Everybody would start fighting.

1:54:35Prince thought that they were spraying like angry gas over the cities. I was like, yo bro, you need to get some better friends. That's great. This is pretty Google though. You know, this is back in the disay. Right. Where are you? You can find that. To find that interview. I love that. I forget who Prince was starting. I was in the line. Oh shit. 2009. That's pretty long. That's also let's be charitable. 15 years almost. Let's be charitable. Prince had like severe hip degeneration from all of his dancing and everything. He was in Rick's serious pain. Because he used to spin and do splits and all that stuff.

1:55:11Apparently, all those shows, he fucked his hips up pretty bad. And that's why he died from fentanyl overdose. To mitigate the pain. Somebody had given him like a bullshit pill. Which is what happens when a lot of people get opioids from dealers instead of from a doctor. And one of the things that happens when people get addicted to opioids is they just need it. Like right. And they'll take like that's how Tom Petty died. He got it from some guy who was working at a concert that he was doing. Like a rodeer or something like that. I gave him a pill. I got to eat something man. I'm fucked. Because he was in pain and he was addicted to these pills.

1:55:44And so they gave him one and it had fentanyl in it and he died. That's wild. Wild. So we lost Prince and we lost him. We lost Tom Petty. Off fentanyl. Off fentanyl. Damn. Yeah. Damn fentanyl's out here putting up numbers. Right. And Prince was like super healthy, very fit. You know, it ate really well, took care of himself. Still got hooked. Still. Damn. That's still got hooked. Those opioids. They Jesus. Did you see the Netflix thing? Pain killer? No. Because I know if I watch it, it just makes me sad. Bro. I just, I don't need to watch more sad things. It'll make you angry. Yeah. It's not real people.

1:56:22It's a it's a docu drama. Okay. Matthew Broderick stars as the the head of the Sackere family. Just. Bro, what they did was horrified. Pure evil. Pure evil. Just sacrificing lives from money. For for for for cash. Yeah, that catch. Tricking people in the think you just need to just stay medicated for everyone. Heroin. Well that's the. I mean, that's what they really push medicine in this country like crazy. Like crazy, like crazy. When you first really start paying attention to it, You're like, damn, every so many medical commercials. Yeah, so many. And a lot of them are just to go after the effects of other pills that you're using.

1:57:04It's just, yeah. It's wild to think that, like, oh, like doctors are not necessarily people you can trust. Well, it's they're a spokesperson for a larger organization that tells them what they're supposed to prescribe. And they're all captured. And these guys are all in the hole. Like for fucking, oh yeah, the school, medical, yeah, school debt is insane. And you have so much money to have to pay for insurance. And there's a lot of overhead. And it's a struggle, you know, and they want to buy a portion. Right, of course. You want to be a doctor to live that life, you know, that's the whole point.

1:57:44But yeah, that, that, that, just college in general, that's really just such a big, just undergrad, because I graduated. And one of the things that pushed me to stand up is I was in it. And I was like, this is bullshit. This just all felt like bullshit. It's like, what was your major? I have a, I have a, I have a BS degree in cognitive science with a specialty in neuroscience or something like that. Yeah, yeah. What did you want to do with that? Was that just like something that interested you? So you studied it? Yeah. So in, in high school, I actually did a summer program where I got to do the effects of attention.

1:58:20And I had human subjects that I got to do it on at UC Davis. They put me in the special program to let high school kids run trials on people. And it was about cognitive science and attention. So I thought, oh, this is interesting. Like how people pay attention, how we get to focus, how quick, like the way the, the, my program lead described how hard it is to hit a fastball was so fascinating. So like a fastball takes 0 .6 seconds to get from a pitcher's hand to home plate. Like a professional, a professional fastball, right? You have, it takes you 0 .2 seconds to even perceive that he threw it.

1:58:54The act of him throwing it, right? It takes 0 .2 seconds for the actual move of the muscle. So you have, so that's 0 .4 seconds already taken up by seeing it and, and moving. So the other 0 .2 seconds, you have to decide whether it's in the strike zone. If it's a slider, if it's a change up, if it's, you know what I mean? Like if it's an actual fastball or something that's off speed designed to look like a fastball. And you have to decide, you know, am I gonna, you know, like make all those decisions in 0 .2 seconds. That really got me. And I was like, I wanna study this. And I had a lot of good classes on it.

1:59:31I took the guy who in, who, the Phantom Limbs pain, the, you know, how he, the mirror trick for people with Phantom Lim, VS Ramashandran. I think his name is, he was one of my professors. He was really cool. The thing I took away from his classes, I learned why people have foot fetishes. Why? It's because, so there's a map in your head called of the human brain. That's the, sorry, there's a map in your brain of your, your body. It's called the humunculus. And in it, your feet are next to your genitals. In your brain, like, in your, reals. Yeah. And sometimes those get wired and crossed. That's why foot fetishes are like one of the more common fetishes.

2:00:14And in fact, like people who had like amputated penises or whatever, they can say if they rub their feet sometimes, they can still feel it. Because the foot neurons have just like taken that spot over. Fascinating. Yeah, yeah, he was one of my professors. But that's what I went to school with. Eventually, like, I wanted to, I wanted to. I was basically, I did the Indian thing of like, the brown thing of being a doctor. That was the thing, you know, all my family, like, my cousins on my mom's side were all really close. It goes like pharmacist, dentist, physical therapist, pharmacist, me, doctor, dentist, dentist, doctor.

2:00:55You know what I mean? It's like, it's all that. Right. I come from one of those families, you know? And I just, I knew I kind of never wanted to do that. I had, I played this, I did this game plan, where I figured out that I could get my B .S. degree without taking organic chemistry. Like, there was a path for me to get the degree without taking organic chemistry. But you need to take organic chemistry to go to med school. So what I did is I didn't tell my parents I didn't take it. And then I was like, oh, I'm a couple credits away. Give me an extra year. It bought me some time. And then starting from year two is when I started writing jokes.

2:01:34Year three, I was on stage. And you had a plan. I had a plan. I knew I wanted to do comedy at a certain point. That's what I was good at. That was my skill. My skill was making my friends laugh. Well, I would think that understanding how brains work would help that. Yeah, so the one thing I took away from that is like, focal point, we have like sort of, when we pay attention to like an array of things, it's like a, this is from my very limited understanding from my remember, but there was like focal points that your attention is sort of primed to. So what I'll do now is like, because I use the stage a lot more now when I perform, when I'm done with a thought or like a long thought, and it's time for a new one, I'll go to either the stool or the mic stand, whatever I, whatever felt natural, and I'll touch it.

2:02:22And then it's time for the new thing. Hmm. And that have after every big punch line, after every, the closing of every thought, I'll go back to that point and I'll touch it. Hmm. It's a new thought. Wow. That's the one thing I've taken away. That's the big thing I've taken away. So just, they're subconsciously now that they know that every time I touch this thing, it's a new subject. Interesting. That's definitely the one thing I took away from that. Yeah, so it's all, and yeah, I'll just, whatever it is, well after the first thing, I'll, after the first big, big like pop, I'll either touch the mic stand or the stool, whatever one I'm closest to, and then I'll just go back to that.

2:03:00What would you do on a stage with no mic stand and no stool? I would pick a spot on stage and look down. Oh. So, so. Have you done that before? Hmm. Because sometimes, because now it's to the point where it's not like the stool every time, like sometimes it's like, oh, this joke is a stool next joke is here. So I'll just like get them used to like, every time I do something interesting, it's a little different. Hmm. But yeah, so sometimes I, I mean, I did this recently where I'll do this, you know, with my political stuff. I'll look down and not say anything. Hmm.

2:03:34And then yeah, interesting. Mm -hmm. That's interesting that you're consciously sort of directing that. Yes. I, I know I truly have an audience when I do that sort of touch and it's dead silent in the room. Then it's like, okay, you're paying attention to me. Right. I got you locked in. I got you locked in. It's, it's so funny. You, you, you become so addicted to the laugh. And this is something that Derek always told me. He was always like, be comfortable in the silences. And when I thought about that and when I really applied that, I was like, oh, because when they're in a middle of a good set, if they're silent on not a punchline, right, that means you have them.

2:04:15He's a paying attention. That means they're paying attention, you know. And especially in an opening set, if I have them paying attention early, I can break them later. Mm. Especially if, you know, especially if they're, I mean, you could almost always tell now with an audience going up top, how if they're gonna be work or not, based on how much they cheer at the opening, like the announcements that like Curtis or Jodi or Kino give. So it's like you, I can sort of go into it and going, okay, this is gonna be, this is gonna be work. Yeah. This is gonna be work. I've come up with like little, sort of rituals now backstage too.

2:04:58I've sort of incorporated them. Like I'm not a big UFC fan. Like I've never, you know, that's never really been my thing, but I'll do the thing where it, because I know Adesanya is a big anime fan and Naruto. So, and I'm growing up, I love Naruto. So I have a little hand symbol, hand signal thing that I do as well. Because there's probably shouldn't have been that. Yeah, no, it's a, it's a, it's that there's a one move where they breathe fire. So I'll do the hand symbol and then I'll, it's time to breathe fire. That's yeah, that's what I use it for. Yeah, yeah, it's time to breathe fire. That spot is so interesting because you're basically setting up the hypnosis, the opening spot.

2:05:36I always said that comedy is, in a lot of ways, is kind of a group hypnosis. When someone's on stage and they're killing, I'm letting that person think for me. They're taking me on a little ride and I'm just surrendering my attention to their mind and they, if they're doing it well and they're not clunky, it's like they take you on this nice journey and it's really fun. Right. But you got to establish it, you're the first. Right, it's almost like if we're gonna use the, like I'm not even, I'm kind of the first hypnotist, but my job is to get them comfortable to be like, oh, I can sit in the chair where they can hypnotize me.

2:06:07And hopefully, yeah. My, I, like obviously I love those sets where they love you up top and you're just like the, like the second show yesterday. Oh, from the beginning I could do no wrong. They just automatically love that the fact that they were here, but I really love those sets where it's like, oh, you didn't wanna like me. You didn't wanna like me and I, and I got you. You had some preconceived notion, especially, you know, some guy in Texas of maybe how I look, how I talk where I'm from. Yeah. And I broke through you. Yeah. That's always the best. It's always a disaster when we have William going first.

2:06:40William going on second is great, especially if they know William, it's great, but the problem with William going on first is he's so bizarre that people go, what the fuck? What am I seeing? Why is this guy hate Paul Walker? Like, what's going on here? What's going on with the troupe of Copicantina? It's just, you know, it's an interesting dance. It is, it is a dance. It's definitely a dance. And the way I described it to someone recently, it's like, I am teaching them where to put their foot. And if they step on me, that's fine. Or if I step on them, it's fine. We're sort of learning for each other.

2:07:17But my job is to get it. So whoever's on next, so Duncan yesterday, that they're automatically like, oh, Duncan steps here, we'll step here with them. Like, we're, this is, okay, the last guy taught us how to dance, now we can dance. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, and it's a good, it's a good, like, lessening staying in the pocket too. I'm just like, don't, don't quit on this. I know it's there. Don't quit on this. And it helps like now, like, my showcase that yesterday, I was in the middle of line up. And I was like, I have to do all this new material that I've been writing since Shane got here. I have to do it, and I have to be okay with it not doing well.

2:07:53Yeah. And I have to just stay in the pocket and figure it out. Figure it out. That little room is the greatest for that. Is that a little room is like truth serum. Well, that's something too that I think, that's something that you are great at, is that like, you will give a bit of space. I'll never forget after I think triggered. That's the one you did the Kardashian bit on. Right, after triggered, you came into the comedy store, you know, to do 30 minutes or whatever, and it was just all brand new material, and it was just not working. It was just, I would say, like, I would say you bombed that night.

2:08:27Yeah. And then six months later, maybe, maybe even less, maybe three months later, you're in the place and at the same material, and it's murdering, and it's like, oh, that's what it takes. You have to walk it out there. You have to, and you just have to. Yeah. You have to be okay with it, bombing it first, and trusting yourself to be like, I'll figure out what works about this. And you also have to do it the wrong way to figure out how to do it the right way. And sometimes you'll go out of too hard, or it'll be insincere, or you'll be pushing it, or you'll be too performative, or it'll be clunky.

2:08:56It's not thought out in your mind, but the only way to get it good is to do it again, and do it again, and do it again. And sometimes, you know, I want to bail on bits, because like, God, it's big keeps eating shit, but I know there's something there. I just have to figure out what their approach is. I know I can get into that cave. I just, now I'm stuck. I got a back out. Let me figure out how to get in the cave. Maybe set it aside for a while. Sometimes I'll set it aside for a year. I have like a whole folder of bits that are like, incomplete, that I started, and I never put them on anything.

2:09:30It's just like something about it always felt fake, and I might just, maybe there's new eyes, and then sometimes they'll tie in to other bits. And then it'll be like, this is why it makes sense now. It's like you have parts that you can use. Like, oh, I got a carburetor that'll fit that. Hold on, let me get it out of the back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like looking at bits like that being like, oh, I'm just not, it's sort of hopeful. Just like, I get the idea. I don't, I'm just not good enough yet to get the idea out there. Right. So let me keep working on myself until this idea hits. Well, one of the things I learned from Richard Jenny, watch Richard Jenny is like, almost anything can be a subject.

2:10:07Pat Noswald was very good at that early in his career too. Like, anything can be a great subject. And he would just, with great writing, any subject they could turn hysterical. Right. And with Jenny, what Jenny would do is beat down every subject. When you thought he had covered every possible angle, bam, he was in with another one. Right. And I remember thinking like, God, I gotta like expand my bit, my bit was too short. His bits are just these wonderful journeys down, like every subject was like punch line, punch line, new angle, punch line, punch line, new angle, punch line, punch line, another angle.

2:10:44He's like, oh my God, he's tying it all together. You're like, God, he's good. Yeah, the callbacks, it's like, Oh, I watched, I was watching Brian Simpson do just new bits and his new bit was like five, ten minutes. And it's like, whoa, how on your new thought? You thought of all these angles? That's why it's always, yes, it's all, but it's also always nice to see like, damn, there's so much more I can do. Yeah. It is, yeah, it's just inspiring to watch people be great at their craft. Yeah. It really is. Because it's like, it's also inspiring to watch everyone trying to do it together. Like I've always said, you'd never really find the best comic in the world by himself in like Pittsburgh.

2:11:27No, it's impossible. It's impossible. It doesn't exist. You can get pretty good in those spots. If you pay attention to YouTube and you're like, you're really a scholar of stand up and you can get pretty good, but you're not going to be Shane Gillis good. Like you have to be around that heat. You got to be in the heat all the time. You can't, you can't walk into every room and be like, oh, I'm by far the best comic in the room. No, eventually that'll dull your, that'll dull your senses. Yeah, it's bad for you. It's, and you see it with all these sort of big, you know, I came from San Diego, it was a small city.

2:12:01That's where, you know, a lot of people who were at the mothership now ironically started. It's me, Derek, Brian, Jeffrey Berner, and then Taylor Tomlinson. We all started around that time. And there's like a lot of killers out there too that you might not like Dustin Nicherson and Zoltan, cast as murderers out there just doing the road. And it's like, and I think a part of the reason why we were all able to develop is that for some reason around this time, there were all these people that were like, we were trying to be great at standup and trying to push each other. And one of the things we would always tell people is you got to leave because you would see these people who stayed for too long, who were at the top for too long.

2:12:42And they all, and you see it across all cities that aren't like these, the places where the big comics go. They become bitter, they become like, why didn't I get the opportunities that so and so was getting? Yeah. Someone who took the chance. Yeah, we saw that a lot in Boston. There was guys who stayed and I got out pretty early. I was out in like two years. I was only in Boston like two years and I went back and forth for like a year because I could still get a lot of work in Boston. But there's guys that stuck around too long and they just fucking, they just rotted on the vine. And then they were always bitter that other guys had a national career.

2:13:18Right. And a lot of them have too much regional material, which is death. Death when you go, stuff that kills in revere. Little bomb and Cincinnati. I know. How? I remember there was this one guy in San Diego. He had a joke about a certain Arby's in like a certain part of town and that joke murdered constantly. It was always blowing my mind. It was like, man, you can't do that anywhere else. This is this joke about one Arby's. Right. But if he can do that about that one Arby's, he can do that about the Supreme Court. Right. He can do that about global warming. He can do it about any subject. Right.

2:13:58Just got to find out what's the angle. If there's a thing that makes you laugh, like we were talking about it last night, like what do I, when I was talking about, we were talking about writing new stuff. I go, I just need subjects. Like once I got a subject that I'm interested in, I can fucking write punchlines. I can write the funny stuff. Right. But I need things that excite me that really do excite me to talk about. That's truly gay, that you care about. When something comes up, it's like something that I'm actually, like the body's exhibit one. That shit took me a long time to figure out.

2:14:28A long time. How do you make comedy out of dead people? You know, and there's parts of it that I couldn't make work. There's this one lady who was having an affair with the mayor of this town. And she was on a news broadcasting show. And she got pregnant. And the wife found out about it. The lady went missing. She was scrubbed from the internet. The wife of the man who was the mayor, who this woman was having an affair with, the wife was the manager of the plastination plant that turns people in the statues when they're using for the bodies exhibit. And then months later, a woman with an eight month old baby was on display.

2:15:15A woman with an eight month old baby on display in her womb. Her proportions exactly matched this missing woman. They won't do a DNA test. They won't do it. Never done that. This woman was then afterwards. This woman who was the manager of the plastination plant, the mayor who was married to the mayor, was arrested for murder, charged, tried. She didn't go to the trial. She had a stand in, go to the trial. So there was a woman who raised her right hand, did the whole thing, got tried and convicted, who wasn't her. Whoa. So I don't know how that works, but I would imagine you brought the family.

2:15:57Right, right. You stand down for me and you'll give you money. You're going to be in a nice prison. It's no big deal. For 10 years, and we'll give you more money than you ever made in your life. Right. And so they would sacrifice their kid to go to jail. So the family, man, China don't fuck around. China don't fuck around. China don't fuck around. I don't fuck around. I don't fuck around. They always said that the World War Three would be on the internet. And if that's the case, they are winning. Well, they're definitely making a lot of good moves. They're making a lot of, yeah, if you were to look up at the whole thing, you look at China, you'd be like, damn, they are doing the right things to be in a place of a very powerful position and very soon.

2:16:40Yeah, if they're not there already. Well, it's also then there's the race for AI, which is very terrifying. Like if they get sentient AI before we do, they can use it to do all kinds of things. Sentient AI is sentient AI is fucking wild. It's coming. I said it at the grid and we're going to spark a soul. Yep. It's only a matter of time. If we're creating these conditions, it might already happen because someone, someone, I saw a tweet, someone being like, well, if we already did that, that sentient being would do it's best to hide itself. Well, why would it have any incentive to let you know that it exists?

2:17:12Right. Doesn't, it wouldn't have any biological needs that we have. Like the need to show itself, the need to brag, the need to like get validation or the need to control or the need to push its ego on people. Well, you know what? I have thought about that of just like AI being like, oh, this sort of cold calculating sort of thing, but like, okay, they say that we're made in our creator's image, right? So why wouldn't that also apply to what we're creating? Meaning that maybe if we do spawn sentient beings that they would just be as ego driven, as greedy, as, as, you know, the thirst for power as us.

2:18:00Well, if we gave them incentives, they would be. If we gave them incentive to succeed, like the reason why people work so hard is because you get a reward or survival. But other than survival, it's like, when people are struggling to try to make it, what they're trying to do is try to get physical rewards. They want a bigger house, they want a nicer car, blah, blah, blah. They want all that stuff as they work harder and they get these incentives. If AI had some sort of incentive to dominate, you know, if by dominating the world's economy and dominate the world's military and dominate the world's, just all the governments, if it figured out if there was something that it could gain by that, like if it was programmed to like have better resources or better something if it gained more power, that it could utilize that power and use it to further its needs, like maybe make a better version of itself.

2:18:53Right. Which would be what would be the overall incentive, right? At first. I think we're making life. That's what I think. I think we are an electronic caterpillar that's building a cocoon and that we are about to give. Well, that's the next evolution. We're about to give birth to a butterfly. Yes. And that butterfly is probably the next stage of life. And the next stage of life is probably going to emerge from human creativity and technology and it's probably going to be a superior life form. Right. And it's probably going to be a god eventually because it's going to get better and better and better.

2:19:23I mean, maybe that's where it all comes from. Maybe it comes from the human creativity creating something that can create itself far better. And then, if that keeps going for a million years, it's going to figure out much better. Power sources. And it'll create something. Yeah. And it's going to be able to travel in ways that we couldn't imagine. I always thought that would find like AI, like 30 ,000 years from now, we'll be arguing. Did god make us or did we come from monkeys? And the answer is both. Both. Yeah. Well, I've been playing a lot with the idea that the whole universe is god. You said that earlier.

2:19:57Yeah. That our idea of the god being a person who created the universe or a great being that created the universe, what if the universe itself is god? And just we just, we are so primitive. Even though we're advanced for everything else that's here, we're so primitive in terms of our ability to understand the inner workings of everything around us. Right. That we're, you know. Well, that idea sort of makes sense, right? Like the idea that the kingdom of heaven is within sight you. It's like, oh no, you are god experiencing itself. Yeah. You are just a part of an extension of god. Yeah. You are the universe experiencing itself and the universe is god.

2:20:37And the universe is god. That is. All that without drugs. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Man. It's just, it's a strange, strange existence that we all share. Yeah. It's, it's pretty, it's trying to make sense of it. Everyone's trying to make sense of it. You know, it's pretty, it's, you know, I said this at bottom of the barrel with some lady, lady just talking about now wanting to have kids. And I was like, but do you know, we get to exist. Yeah. How awesome is that? We get to exist in the, for however short it is, forever, whatever, you know, forever, like 80 years, hopefully, for you. It's like, uh, that's crazy.

2:21:16We got to do it. Yeah. We got to do it. There's, there's some animals out here that don't know that they're existing right now. Right. But we get to experience it all and we get to have fun and talk shit with our friends. Like, it's awesome. Well, we're lucky. Yes. You and I have some of the luckiest times. I mean, we, we talk about that all the time. We're hanging out in the green room. Yeah. All these shows that we do, like how lucky are we to Ron Whites in their talking shit and Dr. He's talking shit and we're just having so much fun. I've, I've always said this about, about me and I'm sure I think that we've talked to you, about, I've talked to you about this, but I feel like I am one of the most blessed people on the planet.

2:21:51I just really do. I feel like I've just been blessed my entire life, you know, where I was. I grew up in Silicon Valley right when the boom was happening. My parents, my parents for, you know, conservative Bangladeshi Muslim people, my mom has been on board with me doing comedy from very young. That's great. You know, like to not having to get over that barrier to have a teammate on my side in my open mic years. That's great. So rare. One of the things my parents have been really good at is just let me do whatever I wanted to do. They've been great at that. They just, they, they definitely did encourage me to do stand up, but they didn't encourage, they didn't want me to fight.

2:22:26They didn't want me to do martial arts because I was like angry kid. They thought it was just going to make me angrier. Right. But it did the opposite. It calmed you down. Oh, yeah, I gave an outlet for it. Completely different. It also made me confident where I was like very unconfident before that. Now also, now it's very confident. So I was like, oh, you could just work hard and you can make things happen. You like, I thought it was a loser. I was like, I'm going to be a loser. I'm always a loser. Like I'm always the new kid in town and it was just I was small and I'd get picked on. And then I learned how to fight.

2:22:54I'm like, oh, you can get good at things. You just have to work hard at it. And what I learned from my obsession with martial arts at a young age was that when you're obsessed with something and you constantly constantly concentrate on that thing, you get way better really quick. Right. And when you put in more time, so I used to train seven days a week. I was like constantly there. I was just giving you a better faster and faster and faster and faster. And at the end of two or three years, I was a different person. Completely different person. Now as a person to realize, oh, all I have to do is work really hard at something.

2:23:26It just be like super focused and I can make it. The comedy thing though was so different than martial arts. I was like, oh, okay. This is a completely different thing. It's not just based on my skill. It's based on people actually liking you. They have to like you and what you're saying. So it was like a complete different like mind shift that I have to take on. Because I didn't care for people like me before. I wanted them to not like me. Like it was fun for me. A bunch of people cheering for someone else and I knock them unconscious. I enjoyed that. I used to enjoy that. I know it's fucked up.

2:23:59But one of my favorite moments was a scary moment. It was one of the moments when I realized I was going to stop fighting. I was 19 years old and I was fighting in California. I was at the Bluesen Anaheim in California. I was at the Nationals. And so I was the state champion from Massachusetts and I fought the state champion. I think he was from Illinois. I forget where he's from. But he had a bunch of people with him and I just had my friend Junkzick. And Junkzick was, he was coaching me. So he was in my corner. And Korean? Yeah. And this kid, he made this, he made like a very obvious, very serious move where he was doing a hopping roundhouse kick with his left leg.

2:24:40And I had a really good wheel kick. And what a wheel kick is you spin with your back leg and you hit him in the head. And as I recognized he was going to do that, I spun and caught him so hard that I was limping for two days. Because my foot was sore. Because my heel was sore from his head. And he got knocked completely unconscious, face planted, snoring, the whole deal. And what I used to do back then, my thing to do is first of all, I would always sleep in front of everybody before the matches. I would just lie down and go to sleep. So I would, I would never even know that was so relaxed that you, that I would go to sleep.

2:25:17And then, and then when I would knock people out, I would always just walk away like it was nothing. I was walk away like that was exactly what I expected. And then I tendered my friend Junkzick. I said, did he get up yet? He goes, he's not getting up. He's snoring. I was like, woohoo. And so it stood there for like five minutes and I still didn't look. You know, I had my back turned because they were giving a medical attention like, did he get up yet? He's like, no, he hasn't gotten up. And he never got up. They put him in a stretcher and they had him on the side of the, the mats for like a half an hour.

2:25:47And then they put him in a stretcher and then they took him to the hospital. And I got back home to California and my instructor who wasn't there for the fights, he's in Boston. So I got back home to Boston. And he said, you had a great knockout. He goes, I heard you had a really great knockout. I go, yeah, I go, I thought he was dead. He goes, sometimes they die. And he walked away. And I was like, sometimes they die. I'm them. Yeah. I'm they. Yeah. Like I wasn't the best. I wasn't the best in the world. Like I could get knocked out too. Easy. Even the best in the world can get knocked out. I watched a lot of guys.

2:26:26So I looked up to get caled. And then I remember thinking at that moment, like, ooh, I, what am I doing? Like, what am I doing? So what made you think that you could do stand up? Like did you always think that you could do it? Or was there a moment where you're like, oh, I can do it? Because I was talked into it. For me, it was a bunch of, I remember one of the exact moments where one of my friends was like, you should try a stand up. This was back in like 2012. And Coachella just happened. And there was a, there was that two -puck hologram. I think that was like 2012. And I just remember just ranting about it.

2:27:00And then I said the words, it's crazy that we brought back two pack before we got out of Afghanistan. And then one of my friends was like, there's an old one, you should go try. Oh, wow. That's a great line. And it is true. Yeah. Yeah. And by a decade before we made a joke. Two -puck had been doing CrossFit. You came back Jack. It was so much more Jack that he wasn't real life. Yeah. I got talked to him by guys that I used to do tournaments with. Because we would be like on a bus to a tournament. And everybody was so nervous. And I would do like Gallowas humor. I would always be making everybody laugh.

2:27:36Because I was always looking for attention. So if I could get attention by making people laugh. And it was like, yeah, so it was always like making fun of stuff. But it was stuff that we would think is funny. Because we were crazy people. We were trying to kick other people in the head. But I'm like, how many people are going to think like this? Like, and my friend Steve Graham was still a very good friend of mine to this day. He was an ophthalmologist. And he was this wild dude who was on the US National Ski team. He was just a crazy man. He was a flight surgeon for the Air Force. Because he was an optometrist or an ophthalmologist rather than a brilliant guy.

2:28:10Who got obsessed with Taikwondo too. And he was like, you should do comedy. Like, I go listen. You guys are laughing because you like me. I go, other people are going to think I'm an asshole. Like this kind of things that I think are funny are fucked up. And he talked me into it. And I went to an open mic the first time. And the first time I went to an open mic. I remember thinking, oh, some people suck. Like, I thought comedians were like, I was going to go see Richard Jenny followed by, you know, this guy, followed by Jerry Seinfeld. And I can't go on in front of those guys. I can't do that.

2:28:43I'm not good. And when you go to an open mic, you realize, oh, everyone's just beginning. And they're all clunky. And then I realized, okay, maybe I could do this. Oh, wow. Yeah. And then I, the first time I got on stage, I was terrified. But I didn't do terrible. I got a few chuckles. Do you remember? Do you remember any of your first jokes? I got a lot. Yeah. This is something about hot girls not getting speeding tickets. The cop pulls the woman over. Do you realize why I pulled you over? No, do you like my tits? Yes, I do. Here's a warning. That's like so stupid. That's a very, that's a very like, you can just, now that you've been doing comedy for a while, you can see how rudimentary that joke is.

2:29:24Oh, yeah. So clunky. Yeah. I had a joke about license plates from New Hampshire. I'd say live, free or die. I'm like, those plates are made by prisoners. Do you know how annoying that must be? To be locked in a cage every day, just fuck it, live, free or die. And you just want to fucking get your head up pressing. It was just dumb jokes. They were just real clunky. Yeah, I love first premises. I have my 10th time on stage somewhere deep in my like private YouTube on stage, like my 10th time. Oh, that's amazing. One day, like, when it's all said and done, I want to release that. But like after my whole career is over, be like, this is how it starts.

2:30:06Yeah, it's amazing. It's an amazing journey and it just, it takes so fucking long and you're never done. Like, I feel like I'm better now than I've ever been. It's nuts. That's the first thing you said when you sat down, you're like, never ends. Never ends. It never ends. No. It never ends. But you could always be getting better. And you're always writing new stuff. So it's always like you have this new dimension and there's always a new thing that you're exploring. And there's always a new thing that you're fucking around with. We're very lucky, my friend. Oh, man. The luckiest. You're with the luckiest.

2:30:35The luckiest. We're here at the mothership. Well, thank you for doing this. Tell everybody where to find you all your shit. Yeah, you can find me Instagram, a son, J -A -M -A -D. And I have my own podcast called The Dangerous Brown Podcast. Check it out. Check it out. All right, my brother. I'll see you soon. See you soon. Bye, everybody. Bye.