Transcript
00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Tim Dillon,
00:00:03 a standup comedian who is fearless
00:00:05 in challenging the norms
00:00:06 of modern day social and political discourse.
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00:00:34 As a side note, let me say that I will continue
00:00:37 talking to scientists, engineers, historians,
00:00:39 mathematicians, and so on.
00:00:41 But I will also talk to the people
00:00:44 who Jack Kerouac called the mad ones
00:00:47 in his book, On The Road.
00:00:48 That is one of my favorite books.
00:00:51 He wrote, the only people for me are the mad ones.
00:00:55 The ones who are mad to live,
00:00:56 mad to talk, mad to be saved,
00:00:59 desirous of everything at the same time.
00:01:02 The ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing,
00:01:05 but burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles
00:01:10 exploding like spiders across the stars.
00:01:13 And in the middle, you see the blue center light pop
00:01:17 and everybody goes, ah.
00:01:19 Some of these conversations will be a bit of a gamble
00:01:23 in that I have no idea how they will turn out.
00:01:26 But I’m willing to risk it for a chance
00:01:29 at a bit of an adventure.
00:01:31 And I’m happy and honored that Tim, this time,
00:01:34 wanted to take a chance as well.
00:01:36 If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
00:01:39 review it on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify,
00:01:42 support it on Patreon, or connect with me
00:01:44 on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
00:01:47 And now, here’s my conversation with Tim Dillon.
00:01:51 What would you like your tombstone to read?
00:01:54 It’s a good way to summarize the essence of a human being.
00:01:58 I would like it to say, this has not been paid for.
00:02:01 Yeah.
00:02:02 And I want my living relatives to struggle to pay for it.
00:02:08 And I think I would like them to be hounded every day.
00:02:11 I would like people to call and go, listen,
00:02:12 we don’t wanna ever excavate a body,
00:02:14 but we will because this has not been paid for.
00:02:18 I love the idea of leaving the, like debt,
00:02:22 leaving the world in lots of debt
00:02:24 that other people have to deal with.
00:02:26 And I know people that have done that.
00:02:29 I know people that have been in families
00:02:30 where that’s happened, where someone has to sit
00:02:34 and just curse the sky
00:02:36 because they don’t have a physical person anymore
00:02:38 to be angry at, but they still have to deal
00:02:42 with the decisions that person made.
00:02:44 And that’s deeply tragic,
00:02:45 but that’s always struck me as very funny.
00:02:47 Well, it’s a kind of immortality, the debt.
00:02:49 Because if the debt lasts for a long time,
00:02:52 the anger lasts for a long time.
00:02:53 And then you’re now immortal in the minds of many.
00:02:57 You arouse emotion in the minds of many.
00:02:59 My mother’s best friend in the town I grew up in,
00:03:01 her husband shot himself in the driveway.
00:03:07 And my mother’s friend never got a chance to just grieve
00:03:10 because he owed so much money.
00:03:12 She would come over and go, I hate him.
00:03:15 I fucking hate him.
00:03:17 And it was just such an interesting thing
00:03:18 to see somebody who, and her kids ended up getting angry
00:03:21 at her for that because they didn’t understand
00:03:24 why she would hate a guy who was clearly suffering.
00:03:28 But she goes, he took the selfish way out.
00:03:30 He fucked us.
00:03:31 And it was always interesting for me to just remember
00:03:34 that you can leave earth and still be a problem.
00:03:39 That’s kind of a special person.
00:03:43 So that’s, I think, what I’d like my tombstone to read.
00:03:45 Yeah, there’s a show called Louis with Louis C.K.
00:03:48 I don’t know if you watched it.
00:03:49 I’m aware of it.
00:03:50 There’s this moment, I think, where an old guy’s talking
00:03:53 to Louis about the best part about love
00:03:56 is after you break up.
00:03:58 And it’s remembering the good times and feeling that loss,
00:04:05 the pain of that loss.
00:04:07 The worst part about love is when you no longer
00:04:09 feel that pain.
00:04:10 So the pain of losing somebody lasts longer,
00:04:15 is more intense and lasts longer than the actual love.
00:04:18 So his argument was like the pain is what love really is.
00:04:23 Wow.
00:04:24 In the same way that anger,
00:04:26 your tombstone would arouse will last longer.
00:04:30 And that’s deeply like a human thing.
00:04:33 Like why do we attach happiness
00:04:36 to the way we should remember others?
00:04:38 It could be just anger.
00:04:40 I know so many people who will have
00:04:43 deeply complicated feelings when…
00:04:45 I did drugs for many years and I spent time
00:04:49 with some wild people.
00:04:50 And their parents were also wild people.
00:04:53 And some of their parents have done crazy things to them.
00:04:58 And have created situations that were not productive
00:05:04 for child rearing.
00:05:06 And so I know that when those people die,
00:05:09 it’s going to be a very mixed bag.
00:05:11 Like there’s going to be a lot of complex emotions.
00:05:13 Like, hey, we loved that guy.
00:05:16 But also when we look back, he was a horrible father,
00:05:21 a horrible husband, but he was fun.
00:05:25 And we don’t put enough stock in that,
00:05:27 but that will be a push and pull.
00:05:29 And I’ll be the one kind of bringing up like,
00:05:30 hey, he was a lot of fun.
00:05:33 He was a lot.
00:05:33 Remember when he stuck us,
00:05:36 one of the things this particular person I’m talking about,
00:05:39 we were at a bar and me and my friend were there,
00:05:41 we’re having dinner.
00:05:42 And his father, who was an alcoholic,
00:05:45 a guy that would go out every night and didn’t work,
00:05:49 refused to work, would lie and say he was going to work
00:05:52 and then go to a bar.
00:05:53 I mean, just a fun person.
00:05:55 And we were sitting at this bar restaurant
00:06:00 and the bartender, we see his father walk up
00:06:02 to the bartender and say, point at us, point at our table
00:06:06 and go and put the thumbs up.
00:06:07 And the bartender nodded.
00:06:08 And then the father walked over to our table and he said,
00:06:10 listen, I just want to let you know I just bought you dinner.
00:06:14 And I looked at his son and I said, he’s a pretty good guy.
00:06:17 And then he climbed over the little fence down to the water
00:06:20 and got in his little boat.
00:06:21 It was a little cigarette boat and he just drove away.
00:06:23 And then about an hour later, we went and we said,
00:06:26 I think that guy took care of the bill.
00:06:28 But she said, well, go talk to the bartender.
00:06:30 So we talked to the bartender and he goes,
00:06:32 he handed us a bill and the bill was for like $1,000.
00:06:36 And we said, wait a minute, what the hell’s going on?
00:06:38 And he goes, the guy that left an hour ago said,
00:06:40 you were going to take care of his bill.
00:06:42 He’s been drinking here all week.
00:06:44 And we go, what are you talking about?
00:06:46 And he goes, remember, he pointed at you.
00:06:47 He put the thumbs up and you guys waved.
00:06:50 You remember that?
00:06:52 And the guy go, and we went, yeah.
00:06:53 And I just looked at my friends, my friend and I went,
00:06:55 you know, your dad is just,
00:06:57 we’re going to remember him for all kinds of reasons.
00:07:00 But to you, he was fun.
00:07:01 He was a lot of fun.
00:07:02 He wasn’t my dad, but I spent a lot of time with him.
00:07:04 I was in two boating accidents with him.
00:07:07 You know, two boating accidents.
00:07:08 Alcohol involved, drugs involved.
00:07:10 Yes, he was, usually alcohol was involved
00:07:11 when he left his house and when he was at home as well.
00:07:15 But I was in two boating accidents.
00:07:17 And do you know how fun someone has to be
00:07:19 to get in a second boating accident?
00:07:22 Do you know what a good time someone has to be
00:07:25 to get in a boat with them
00:07:27 after you’ve already gotten in one wreck?
00:07:30 Never get fooled again.
00:07:31 What was that line?
00:07:32 George Bush, never get fooled again.
00:07:34 Right.
00:07:35 Yeah, so if you’re getting fooled again,
00:07:37 you know, there’s a reason for it,
00:07:38 but he was a fun guy.
00:07:39 He did have a death wish.
00:07:40 The second boating accident, he grabbed me
00:07:42 and said, you can’t hang out with me anymore.
00:07:43 And I said, why?
00:07:44 He goes, I’m trying to kill myself.
00:07:45 And I was like, oh.
00:07:47 And then I understood that like all of the fun
00:07:49 under the fun lived a very destructive person
00:07:52 who not only was destructive, but wanted to die.
00:07:57 So speaking of fun people that want to die,
00:07:59 I don’t know if you’re, we can go Hunter S. Thompson,
00:08:02 but Charles Bukowski.
00:08:05 I don’t know if you’re aware of the guy.
00:08:06 I’m aware of him, sure.
00:08:07 I’ve read some of his stuff.
00:08:08 So his tombstone says,
00:08:10 I just want to ask you a question about it.
00:08:12 His tombstone says, don’t try.
00:08:15 Interesting.
00:08:16 What do you think about that advice
00:08:18 as a way to approach life?
00:08:19 I think for many people, it’s a good advice
00:08:24 because the people that are going to try will do anyway.
00:08:26 And the people that need to be told,
00:08:28 there’s a whole cottage industry now
00:08:30 of motivational speakers and life coaches and gurus
00:08:35 that tell people that they all have to own their own business
00:08:39 and be their own boss and be a disruptor
00:08:42 and get into industries.
00:08:45 That’s incredibly unrealistic for most people.
00:08:47 Most people are not suited for that.
00:08:50 And the Gary Vees of the world that tell everybody
00:08:52 that they should just hustle and grind
00:08:54 and hustle and grind.
00:08:54 They’re very light on the specifics
00:08:56 of what they should actually do.
00:08:58 Yeah, I think a lot of people,
00:08:59 that’s not horrible advice to give to a lot of people.
00:09:02 I think my generation got horrible advice
00:09:05 from our parents, from our teachers.
00:09:07 And that advice was follow your dreams and nobody,
00:09:11 and that was it, by the way.
00:09:12 There was no like, what are your dreams?
00:09:14 Are they realistic?
00:09:15 What happens when they don’t work out?
00:09:17 Will your dreams make you happy?
00:09:18 Are your dreams real?
00:09:20 Do they exist on earth?
00:09:22 Can you follow, anybody follow your dreams?
00:09:25 You can be anything you want to be.
00:09:26 Horrible advice, horrible advice.
00:09:29 Worst advice you could ever give a generation of people.
00:09:31 Really, truly.
00:09:32 I mean, think about it.
00:09:35 If you were talking to somebody
00:09:37 and you were trying to make them succeed,
00:09:39 are there any two worse pieces of advice to give them
00:09:43 than follow your dreams
00:09:46 and you can be anything you want to be?
00:09:48 Those to me are the two most destructive pieces
00:09:51 of information I’ve ever heard.
00:09:53 So let me push back because.
00:09:54 Okay, that’s fair.
00:09:55 This is. Many people do.
00:09:57 So yeah, this is like a rigorous journalistic interview.
00:10:01 Larry King, by the way, passed away today.
00:10:04 So I’m taking over the.
00:10:05 It’s very sad.
00:10:06 I’m carrying the.
00:10:07 It’s very sad.
00:10:08 RIP King.
00:10:09 Yeah, what was I even gonna say?
00:10:11 Oh, let me push back on the follow your dream thing
00:10:14 is I come from an immigrant family
00:10:18 where I was always working extremely hard at stuff,
00:10:23 like in a stupid way.
00:10:24 I would, I love, there’s something about me
00:10:26 that loves hitting my head against the wall
00:10:28 over and over and over until either my head breaks
00:10:31 or the wall breaks.
00:10:32 Just like, I love that dedication
00:10:34 for no purpose whatsoever.
00:10:36 It’s like the mouse that’s stuck in a cage or whatever.
00:10:39 And no, and everybody always told me,
00:10:42 my family, the people around me,
00:10:45 the sort of the epitome of what I could achieve
00:10:48 is to be kind of a stable job.
00:10:52 You know, the old like lawyer doctor,
00:10:54 in my case, it’s like scientists and so on.
00:10:57 But I had these dreams at this fire, you know,
00:11:00 about love robots.
00:11:03 And that nobody ever gave me permission
00:11:06 to pursue those dreams.
00:11:08 I know you’re supposed to grab it yourself.
00:11:10 Nobody’s supposed to give you permission,
00:11:12 but there’s something about just people saying, you know,
00:11:16 fuck what everyone else thinks,
00:11:18 like giving you permission, a parent
00:11:20 or somebody like that saying, do your own thing.
00:11:23 Go become an actor, go become like,
00:11:25 do the crazy thing you’re not supposed to do,
00:11:27 an artist, go build a company, quit school,
00:11:30 all that kind of stuff.
00:11:31 Yes, sure.
00:11:33 That’s the push back against the,
00:11:36 follow your dreams as bad advice.
00:11:38 In mass, if you were to look at,
00:11:40 in mass, if you were to look at statistically
00:11:43 how few people that works out for,
00:11:45 I’m just, no, but let’s be very honest.
00:11:46 That’s very true.
00:11:47 Be very honest.
00:11:48 So I mean like, yeah, if you’re gonna go be an,
00:11:50 hey, I was broke for 10 years before I became a,
00:11:52 before I was making money as a comedian.
00:11:54 I get it.
00:11:55 I didn’t need Gary Vaynerchuk
00:11:57 to tell me to follow my thing, right?
00:11:59 And here’s the other thing.
00:12:00 I was kind of funny and like,
00:12:02 I was kind of, a lot of things were in my favor
00:12:06 of being a comedian, right?
00:12:07 I had this kind of crazy fucked up life.
00:12:09 I had a lot of stories.
00:12:10 I had exhausted, I was willing to fail.
00:12:12 I had failed before.
00:12:14 I was broke.
00:12:15 I didn’t care about being broke.
00:12:16 I knew how to be broke.
00:12:18 I had, I was shameless to a degree.
00:12:21 I was, I would get on a stage night after night
00:12:23 and be laughed at.
00:12:24 I would, I had a high threshold for being embarrassed.
00:12:28 I had a high threshold for people thinking
00:12:29 that I was a scumbag, right?
00:12:31 And showing up at family parties and being like,
00:12:33 yeah, I still really don’t have a job.
00:12:35 And I’m just, I work at comedy clubs kind of,
00:12:38 and I get booked when I can.
00:12:41 And I was, you know, suited for it.
00:12:44 There’s this idea that people can just roam
00:12:48 around the world injecting themselves into other things
00:12:53 they have no aptitude for at all.
00:12:56 And will that to happen?
00:12:58 A small percentage of people might be able to do that,
00:13:01 but the vast majority of people have something
00:13:04 they might key into that they’re meant to do.
00:13:06 Like you loved robots, you love technology,
00:13:09 and you found a place in that world where you thrive.
00:13:12 But I think many people, a lot of people love robots, right?
00:13:16 So a lot of people think everything you do is interesting.
00:13:18 I think your shit is fascinating.
00:13:20 I watch you or podcasts, and I think it’s very interesting.
00:13:23 I have no place in your world.
00:13:26 You know what I mean?
00:13:27 I have no place in that world.
00:13:29 I don’t like remedial math.
00:13:32 I don’t like community college math.
00:13:35 I think it’s a waste of my time.
00:13:37 What do you think about robot?
00:13:38 Would you ever buy a robot for your home?
00:13:40 Yes.
00:13:41 What will it do?
00:13:43 I’d be a companion, a friend.
00:13:44 Oh yeah, I mean, I would like to start replacing friends
00:13:47 and family with robots immediately.
00:13:49 I mean, truly, truly.
00:13:51 I mean, I’m not even kidding.
00:13:52 Like I would like to have a Thanksgiving with four robots.
00:13:57 I’m dead serious.
00:13:58 Are they into QAnon?
00:14:00 Like are the robots, when do the robots start going crazy?
00:14:05 That’s my question is like, how long do the robots
00:14:08 live with me before they are also a problem
00:14:10 and I got to replace them?
00:14:12 You know what I mean?
00:14:13 You’re gonna indoctrinate the robot.
00:14:15 The robot’s gonna call me like my aunt does
00:14:17 and talk about coronavirus for an hour every morning
00:14:19 and tell me everyone in America who’s died of coronavirus.
00:14:22 One of the things I enjoy in life
00:14:25 is how terrified people like you,
00:14:29 I’m a huge fan by the way, get a robot.
00:14:32 Well, I’m concerned about AI
00:14:36 completely getting rid of the need for human beings
00:14:39 because human beings, I mean, usually you go out
00:14:41 in the street and you go,
00:14:43 so few of these people are necessary, even now.
00:14:46 Even now you look at people and you go,
00:14:49 they’re hanging on by a thread, right?
00:14:51 And you can just imagine how many jobs
00:14:52 are gonna get replaced, how many industries
00:14:55 are going to be completely remade with AI
00:14:58 and the pace of change worries me a little bit
00:15:01 because we do a very bad job in this country
00:15:04 of mitigation when we have problems.
00:15:07 We don’t do a great job.
00:15:08 We did not great job with COVID, right?
00:15:11 We don’t do a good job.
00:15:12 It’s just something we don’t do well.
00:15:13 We’re good in booms and busts.
00:15:15 We’re good when it’s good.
00:15:17 And we’re actually, we kind of know how to kind of like,
00:15:19 hey, we’re bottomed out.
00:15:20 We’re like a gambling addict in this country.
00:15:22 We like, we know what it feels like
00:15:24 to be outside of an OTB at 9 a.m.
00:15:26 drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes going,
00:15:28 I’m gonna build it back.
00:15:29 And we know what it’s like to win,
00:15:31 but anything in between, it seems not that great.
00:15:35 So to me, it feels like are we gonna be able
00:15:38 to like help people that are displaced
00:15:41 and that have their jobs taken by,
00:15:43 I mean, do you not fear sort of a world
00:15:47 where you have a lot of artificial intelligence
00:15:50 replacing workers and then what happens?
00:15:53 There’s a lot of fears around artificial intelligence.
00:15:56 One of them is, yes, displacement of jobs, workers.
00:15:59 That’s technology in general.
00:16:01 That’s just any kind of new innovations displace jobs.
00:16:06 I’m less worried about that.
00:16:09 I’m more worried about other impacts
00:16:10 of artificial intelligence.
00:16:11 For example, the nature of our discourse,
00:16:13 like social, the effects of algorithms
00:16:15 on the way we communicate with each other,
00:16:17 the spread of information,
00:16:19 what that information looks like,
00:16:21 the creation of silos, all that kind of stuff.
00:16:23 I think that would just make worse
00:16:27 the effects that the displacement of jobs has.
00:16:32 I think ultimately, I have a hope
00:16:34 that technology creates more opportunities
00:16:36 than it destroys.
00:16:37 I hope so too.
00:16:38 So in that sense, AI to me is an exciting possibility,
00:16:44 but the challenges this world presents
00:16:48 will create divisions, will create chaos and so on.
00:16:52 So I’m more focused on the way we deal
00:16:55 as a society with that chaos,
00:16:56 the way we talk to each other.
00:16:57 That’s huge.
00:16:58 Creating the platform that’s healthy for that.
00:17:00 Now, as a comedian creator,
00:17:03 whatever you want to call it,
00:17:04 people that put out content,
00:17:07 the gatekeepers are now algorithmic, right?
00:17:10 So they are kind of almost AI ready.
00:17:12 So if you are a person that puts out YouTube videos,
00:17:16 podcasts, whatever you’re doing,
00:17:20 it used to be a guy in the back of the room with a cigar
00:17:24 saying, I like you or get him out of here.
00:17:27 Now, it’s an algorithm you barely understand.
00:17:30 I’ve talked to people at YouTube,
00:17:32 but I don’t know if they understand the algorithm.
00:17:34 They don’t.
00:17:35 They don’t.
00:17:36 This is fascinating.
00:17:37 Yeah, it’s fascinating.
00:17:38 Because I speak to people at YouTube and I go,
00:17:39 hey, man, what’s going on here?
00:17:41 One of my episode titles of my podcast
00:17:43 was called Knife Fight in Malibu.
00:17:45 It was about real estate.
00:17:47 And it was because a realtor in Malibu,
00:17:50 I was trying to get a summer rental,
00:17:51 which I can’t really afford,
00:17:52 but I don’t think that’s a huge problem.
00:17:55 I follow my dreams.
00:17:56 So I called a realtor and she said, listen,
00:17:59 she goes, I don’t know what the government’s saying,
00:18:01 but she goes, it’s a real knife fight out here.
00:18:03 You know, an old grizzled woman, real realtor,
00:18:05 tanned skin, sig out the mouth, driving a Porsche.
00:18:08 It’s a real knife fight out here.
00:18:10 Her entire life had become real estate.
00:18:12 Her soul had been hollowed out.
00:18:14 Her kids hate her.
00:18:15 No one’s made her come in years,
00:18:16 but she just loves heated kitchen floors infused.
00:18:20 Fun.
00:18:20 She’s a demon from hell and we need them, truly.
00:18:23 We’re getting rid of them.
00:18:24 It’s not good.
00:18:26 And she goes, it’s a real knife fight out here.
00:18:27 So we put that in the episode title.
00:18:30 And of course, I guess some algorithm thought
00:18:31 that we were showing like people stabbing each other
00:18:34 in a Wendy’s and we got like demonetized.
00:18:37 Did we get demonetized?
00:18:41 We lost a lot of views
00:18:42 because we were kicked out of whatever out,
00:18:43 like we’re just kicked out.
00:18:44 And then I was asking YouTube about it.
00:18:46 They were kind of understanding it.
00:18:47 But even the people that work there
00:18:49 didn’t truly seem to understand the algorithm.
00:18:51 So can you explain to me how that works
00:18:53 where they barely know what’s going on?
00:18:55 No, they do not understand the full dynamics
00:18:58 of the monster or the amazing thing that they’ve created.
00:19:01 It’s the amount of content that’s being created
00:19:04 is larger than anyone understands.
00:19:06 Like this is huge.
00:19:07 They can’t deal with it.
00:19:08 The teams aren’t large enough to deal with it.
00:19:10 There’s like special cases.
00:19:13 So if you fall into the category of special case,
00:19:15 so we can maybe talk about that, like a Donald Trump,
00:19:18 where you like actually have meetings
00:19:20 about what to do with this particular account.
00:19:22 But everything outside of that is all algorithms.
00:19:24 They get reported by people
00:19:27 and they get, like if enough people report
00:19:30 a particular video, a particular tweet,
00:19:32 it rises up to where humans look over it.
00:19:36 But the initial step of the reporting
00:19:40 and the rising up to the human supervision
00:19:45 is done by algorithm.
00:19:46 And they don’t understand the dynamics of that
00:19:48 because we’re talking about billions of tweets.
00:19:50 We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of hours
00:19:55 of video uploaded every day.
00:19:58 Now, the hilarity of it
00:20:00 is that most of the YouTube algorithm
00:20:04 is based on the title.
00:20:08 That’s crazy.
00:20:09 And the description is a small contribution
00:20:11 in terms of filtering,
00:20:12 in terms of the knife fight situation.
00:20:14 And that’s all they can do.
00:20:17 They don’t have algorithms at all
00:20:19 that are able to process the content of the video.
00:20:22 So they try to also infer information
00:20:26 based on if you’re watching all of these QAnon videos
00:20:29 or something like that, or Flat Earth videos,
00:20:32 and you also watch, are really excitedly watching
00:20:35 the whole knife fight in Malibu video,
00:20:39 that says that increases the chance
00:20:42 that the knife fight is a dangerous video for society
00:20:47 or something like that.
00:20:48 Interesting, wow.
00:20:48 Based on their contribution.
00:20:49 So people are watching something,
00:20:52 because I watch QAnon and Flat Earth videos
00:20:54 to ridicule them.
00:20:55 Right.
00:20:56 That, you know what I mean?
00:20:57 I watch these videos and I make fun of them on my show.
00:20:59 But what’s interesting is,
00:21:00 if I then go watch something else,
00:21:03 I’m increasing the likelihood
00:21:04 that that video is gonna get looked at
00:21:06 as potentially subversive or dangerous.
00:21:07 Exactly.
00:21:08 That’s why.
00:21:09 So they make decisions about who you are,
00:21:12 who you are as a human being,
00:21:13 as a watcher, as a visual user,
00:21:15 based on the clusters of videos you’re in.
00:21:17 But those clusters are not manually determined.
00:21:20 They’re automatically clustered.
00:21:23 It’s so weird.
00:21:24 We have titles where they got upset about,
00:21:27 I don’t even understand.
00:21:29 Like we had a title that was so innocuous, in my opinion,
00:21:32 and the title of the episode was called Bomb Disney World.
00:21:36 And I was asking people to consider bombing Disney World.
00:21:41 And YouTube got angry at that.
00:21:43 So you don’t know why.
00:21:45 You can never understand why.
00:21:46 You could have said Disney World is the bombs.
00:21:48 Right, right, right.
00:21:50 It’s just rearranging.
00:21:52 That’s what it probably meant.
00:21:52 I wasn’t saying do it,
00:21:53 but I was saying let’s start thinking about plans to do,
00:21:58 not let’s do it, but let’s get in the mind.
00:22:01 Let’s change the conversation.
00:22:03 I think it’s very interesting because as a comedian,
00:22:05 you don’t wanna live in that world
00:22:06 of worrying about algorithms.
00:22:08 You don’t wanna worry about deplatforming
00:22:09 and shadowbanning.
00:22:10 I mean, all these conversations
00:22:11 that I’ve had with other comedians about shadowbanning,
00:22:13 I mean, it’s hilarious.
00:22:14 We all call each other, I think I’m being shadowbanned.
00:22:16 Are you being shadowbanned?
00:22:18 Nobody knew what that word was a month ago,
00:22:20 I mean, a year ago,
00:22:21 but everyone now is convinced that everything they do
00:22:24 that isn’t succeeding is being shadowbanned.
00:22:26 So it’s this new paranoia,
00:22:30 this algorithmic paranoia now that we all kinda have
00:22:33 because there are genuine instances
00:22:36 of people being taken out of an algorithm,
00:22:39 you know, rightly or wrongly,
00:22:41 however you wanna believe.
00:22:42 But then there are also things that just don’t perform
00:22:44 as well for a myriad of reasons.
00:22:46 And then we’re all saying like, well, they’re against me.
00:22:50 They’re shutting me down.
00:22:51 And you don’t know if that’s true or not, you know?
00:22:54 What do you think about this moment in history,
00:22:57 which was really troubling to me?
00:23:01 We could talk about several troubling aspects,
00:23:03 but one is Amazon removing Parler from AWS.
00:23:09 To me, that was the most clearly troubling.
00:23:13 It felt like it created a more dangerous world
00:23:16 when the infrastructure on which you have competing
00:23:23 medium of communications now puts its finger on the scale,
00:23:26 now influences who wins and who loses.
00:23:30 Absolutely, you’re right.
00:23:32 And what you’re always told is like,
00:23:35 if you don’t like Twitter, create your own service.
00:23:37 Or if you don’t like something, you can do your own thing.
00:23:40 Or if you are, and basically because, you know, tech,
00:23:45 you have to be in business with one of five companies.
00:23:46 And I think it’s like Amazon, Facebook, Google, YouTube,
00:23:50 and Twitter, whatever, they’re like, you know,
00:23:51 I mean, Amazon puts everything on the cloud,
00:23:54 you know, Google and YouTube,
00:23:55 it’s all basically the SEO and the advertising.
00:23:57 And you got to get your name out there.
00:23:58 You don’t wanna be buried in it.
00:23:59 Like, because you have to do business with it,
00:24:01 it’s a cartel of these companies.
00:24:03 You understand it better than anybody
00:24:05 that you are prevented, truly.
00:24:07 And I think whatever you think about Parler,
00:24:10 whatever you think about what people are saying on Parler,
00:24:12 whatever you think about Alex Jones,
00:24:16 whatever you thought about Milianopolis,
00:24:18 the state has an interest in,
00:24:21 and has always had an interest in crushing dissent.
00:24:25 This is what the state has done.
00:24:26 This is how they, you know, retain the power they have
00:24:31 by eliminating dissent where they can.
00:24:34 Now, because you don’t have, you know,
00:24:36 three broadcast networks anymore,
00:24:37 and a handful of newspapers that were all run, by the way,
00:24:41 by people that had been either compromised or happily,
00:24:45 you know, happily going with the program,
00:24:48 and you have this wild west of the internet,
00:24:51 people like me, people that make,
00:24:54 I make funny content that I hope is funny,
00:24:57 but a lot of it is wild and crazy.
00:24:59 I say a lot of wild and crazy things.
00:25:01 They’re very funny.
00:25:02 I say a lot of wild and crazy things about powerful people.
00:25:05 You mock the powerful in there
00:25:07 by bringing them down a notch.
00:25:09 We’ll probably talk about it,
00:25:10 but humor is one of the tools to balance the powers
00:25:16 in society.
00:25:17 Well, sure.
00:25:18 And to make people feel better about things
00:25:19 and to, you know, whatever the case may be, right?
00:25:22 That’s my goal is to kind of like,
00:25:23 hey, people have had a shitty day.
00:25:25 If this video or podcast makes you laugh, that’s great.
00:25:29 I think that it won’t ever,
00:25:31 it was never gonna stop at Alex Jones.
00:25:32 Not that I think he should have been taking off everything
00:25:35 the way he was,
00:25:36 but this keeps going until we have sanitized
00:25:41 all of social media.
00:25:42 And what they really want it to be
00:25:44 is what Instagram is kind of becoming,
00:25:46 which is a marketplace of,
00:25:48 you could just go and buy sneakers, go buy a sweatshirt,
00:25:51 go buy jeans, go buy this, go buy that.
00:25:53 And the idea of the free exchange of information
00:25:56 seems to be the old internet.
00:25:58 And it seems the new internet seems to be, you know,
00:26:01 hyper, and I’m a capitalist,
00:26:03 but this seems to be like hyper capitalist
00:26:05 in the sense of like, they only want you consuming things
00:26:08 and they don’t want you thinking too much.
00:26:12 And that seems to be where it’s heading.
00:26:13 I’ve even seen that with Instagram
00:26:14 where it’s like everything on Instagram is like,
00:26:16 buy a sweatshirt, you know?
00:26:19 And I’m like, all right, man.
00:26:21 Hey man, if I want a sweatshirt, I’ll get it.
00:26:23 Like, relax.
00:26:25 You know, just every ad seems to be encouraging consumption,
00:26:29 but very few things seem geared towards,
00:26:33 hey, let’s have a dialogue or let’s,
00:26:37 and not that Instagram was ever great for that,
00:26:38 but like, if everything’s are geared now
00:26:40 towards content on Instagram,
00:26:42 a lot of it seems geared towards shopping.
00:26:44 See, I don’t know, that’s an interesting point.
00:26:46 I don’t know if the consumerism that capitalism leads to
00:26:50 is necessarily gets in the way of nuanced conversation.
00:26:53 I feel like you could still sell Tim Dillon sweatshirts
00:26:57 and have a difficult nuanced conversation
00:26:59 or mock the current president, the previous president,
00:27:03 mock the powerful, all that kind of stuff.
00:27:05 Yeah, we try.
00:27:06 We try to balance that.
00:27:07 Do you have sweatshirts?
00:27:08 We do.
00:27:09 Are they on sale now, fake business?
00:27:12 We do, fake business sweatshirt
00:27:14 with the Enron logo, fake business,
00:27:15 because I do fake business all the time.
00:27:17 It would be nice if you talk about Alex Jones
00:27:18 if you plug the sweatshirt during that conversation.
00:27:21 Yeah, we’ll do that, absolutely.
00:27:23 But what I tend to worry about with,
00:27:26 I see social media and technology
00:27:29 existing to flatten society.
00:27:32 It makes people very boring.
00:27:34 All of the experiences kids have right now are online.
00:27:38 Many of their closest friendships are online.
00:27:40 Their first relationships are online.
00:27:42 The culture is very homogenous,
00:27:45 and I think it’s eliminating characters.
00:27:47 It’s eliminating interesting people.
00:27:49 It’s making people into AI.
00:27:52 All of their tastes.
00:27:53 Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
00:27:53 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s right.
00:27:54 AI could be Charles Bukowski as well.
00:27:56 Let’s not get crazy.
00:27:57 It’s not there yet, right?
00:27:59 I mean, the $75,000 dog is not doing anything.
00:28:03 So we’re not there yet.
00:28:06 Listen, I hate people.
00:28:07 I get why you like AI so much.
00:28:08 I hate people too, and I’m very amenable to AI,
00:28:11 and I agree with you.
00:28:12 Listen, I think the future,
00:28:14 we gotta get everyone out of here.
00:28:15 I’m with you on that, so don’t think I’m.
00:28:17 I love people.
00:28:18 He’s manipulating my mind and my.
00:28:20 That’s why the flash of light in your eyes
00:28:22 when you talked about that dog
00:28:24 was so much more than any person.
00:28:27 And I get it, by the way.
00:28:28 You’re right.
00:28:28 I hate people, but if we could.
00:28:30 They’re not excited.
00:28:30 If we could just use robots to kill most of them,
00:28:33 I think that would be good for society.
00:28:35 I’m with that too,
00:28:37 but I think that social media flattens people.
00:28:40 Flattening the personalities of characters.
00:28:42 Flatten the personalities of people, man.
00:28:43 And it’s just, you know, when’s the last time?
00:28:45 Like, I like the idea of like, you know,
00:28:47 and I’m, you know, somebody showing up to high school
00:28:51 with like a backpack and taking out an old CD
00:28:53 and being like, hey man, here’s this band
00:28:54 you’ve never heard of that I love
00:28:56 or whatever, you gotta get into this.
00:28:58 And I’m like, you know, when I talk to young,
00:29:00 you know, I have friends that have younger brothers
00:29:01 and everything.
00:29:02 And I know that the dominant culture was always dominant.
00:29:04 I’m not an idiot, but like,
00:29:05 I feel like it’s harder to be unique and original now
00:29:08 because so much of what’s promoted
00:29:12 is just this way to kind of corral people
00:29:15 into believing and thinking a certain set of ideals
00:29:18 that’s constantly shifting and evolving.
00:29:20 And people are just caught up in that.
00:29:23 And to me, it gets very boring very quickly.
00:29:27 I hate being bored and that’s what it is.
00:29:29 I don’t know what to do with that
00:29:30 because at the same time, podcasts are really popular,
00:29:33 long form podcasts are really popular
00:29:34 and people are hungry for those kinds of conversations.
00:29:38 There’s a lot of dangerous ideas, quote unquote,
00:29:41 flowing, being spread around through podcasts,
00:29:44 meaning just like debates.
00:29:46 Correct.
00:29:47 You know, so that’s still popular.
00:29:49 So I don’t know what to.
00:29:50 I agree with you.
00:29:51 That gives me hope, I guess.
00:29:52 I hope so too.
00:29:53 And like I said, I look at the negative a lot
00:29:55 because that’s what I usually make fun of,
00:29:57 but there’s a lot of positive stuff happening too.
00:30:00 Let’s talk a bit about Alex Jones.
00:30:04 So you’ve gotten a chance to talk to him
00:30:06 while you were on the Joe Rogan Experience.
00:30:09 I’ve been on Alex’s show.
00:30:10 I’ve talked, I’ve had Alex on my show.
00:30:12 I’ve talked to Alex for three hours
00:30:15 in front of, I guess it was maybe like 15 million people
00:30:18 right on Joe’s show.
00:30:19 It was a really wild conversation.
00:30:20 I think it was one of the coolest moments in broadcasting
00:30:24 that clearly that I’ve ever been a part of.
00:30:26 But I think it goes in the lexicon of like,
00:30:29 these are big podcasts.
00:30:31 Like I think it’s one of the biggest podcasts.
00:30:33 A week before the election, Alex Jones.
00:30:35 I’m really grateful that Joe gave me the opportunity
00:30:37 to be there.
00:30:38 And it was just an amazing conversation to watch.
00:30:41 What was the shirt you wore?
00:30:43 Fridges Lane.
00:30:44 It was a fun joke that no one in tech got
00:30:46 because we all know how funny they are.
00:30:48 But the tech writers, which is mainly blue haired.
00:30:50 I do not agree with these statements.
00:30:51 It’s mainly blue haired people
00:30:53 whose goal in life is to find things
00:30:55 to give them orgasms with.
00:30:57 If you want to dye your hair blue, it’s your choice.
00:31:00 I respect it.
00:31:01 Yeah, but is it your choice?
00:31:02 But at the end of the day, it’s like,
00:31:04 all the tech writers, like a lot of people just,
00:31:06 and I’m not, I’m just maligning tech unfairly.
00:31:08 But a lot of people that sense there’s a humor
00:31:10 were like, he’s advocating for human trafficking.
00:31:12 I’m like, it’s clearly a joke
00:31:13 because we’re coming off the believe all women.
00:31:16 We’re coming off that.
00:31:17 And it’s very funny to just say Fridges Lane,
00:31:20 hey man, believe all women.
00:31:21 Like, it’s just our politics and our public sphere
00:31:24 is so schizophrenic right now
00:31:26 that when you point that out,
00:31:28 people are going to be angry with you.
00:31:29 But that was a fun shirt to wear.
00:31:31 But on Alex, you know, I was one of the people
00:31:34 that found him really entertaining,
00:31:37 that the same kind of thing as with Bukowski,
00:31:40 these kinds of personalities that are wild,
00:31:44 crazy, full of ideas.
00:31:46 They don’t have to be grounded in truth at all,
00:31:48 or they can be grounded in truth a little bit.
00:31:50 Like, he’s just playing with ideas,
00:31:53 like a jazz musician, screaming sometimes.
00:31:55 Obviously he has some demons.
00:31:57 Sometimes he’s super angry for no reason whatsoever
00:32:01 at some weird thing that he’s constructing in his own head.
00:32:04 Sometimes he’s super loving and peaceful,
00:32:06 especially lately that I’ve heard him,
00:32:08 I don’t know if you’ve seen with him,
00:32:09 with Michael Malice, where he’s doing,
00:32:11 like Malice was doing,
00:32:14 like telling Alex Jones, I love you, Alex.
00:32:17 Just this loving kind of softness and kindness
00:32:20 underneath it all.
00:32:21 I don’t know what to make of any of it.
00:32:22 And then there’s this huge number of people
00:32:24 that tell me that Alex Jones is dangerous for society.
00:32:29 So what do you do with that?
00:32:30 Do you think he’s dangerous for society?
00:32:32 Do you think he is one of the sort of
00:32:35 entertaining personalities of our time
00:32:37 that shouldn’t be suppressed or somewhere in between?
00:32:39 I don’t think that Alex per se is dangerous for society.
00:32:43 I think the greater danger for society comes again
00:32:46 from stifling all dissent, right?
00:32:50 All, like anybody with a voice that uses it,
00:32:53 that critiques the government,
00:32:54 and putting all of those people in a category
00:32:58 and getting rid of them is incredibly dangerous.
00:33:00 To me, more so.
00:33:01 I think the biggest problem that Alex has ever had
00:33:05 was when he questioned the Sandy Hook shooting.
00:33:08 And that really was,
00:33:09 because it really is this identifiable incident
00:33:12 that you can look at where it did get away from him
00:33:15 and a lot of his fans who,
00:33:16 the people that are attracted to conspiracy stuff,
00:33:18 and I have some of those fans,
00:33:20 some of them are really smart people,
00:33:21 some of them are mentally unwell.
00:33:23 A lot of them happen to be mentally unwell.
00:33:25 So when you have a fan base of people
00:33:27 where some of them are mentally unwell,
00:33:28 and you are questioning tragic events, okay?
00:33:33 And Alex was right about Epstein.
00:33:35 He was right about a lot of things,
00:33:36 and he’s got no credit for that.
00:33:38 And I understand that this,
00:33:40 sometimes when you write about 10 things
00:33:42 and you’re wrong about something,
00:33:43 and the thing you’re wrong about is so offensive to people,
00:33:48 you’re never gonna get any credit for being right,
00:33:50 even though you were right more than when you were wrong.
00:33:52 The problem was a lot of his fans who were crazy stalked,
00:33:56 harassed these families and accused them of being actors
00:34:00 and accused them of faking their children’s deaths.
00:34:02 It was just horrific experience.
00:34:06 And Alex is tied to that.
00:34:08 And how much he inspired that by what he did on his show,
00:34:14 I don’t know because I haven’t watched hours and hours
00:34:18 of that particular thing, the whole Sandy Hook thing.
00:34:22 If you listen to him, he says, I really covered it.
00:34:24 I kind of covered it and moved on.
00:34:26 Other people go, no, he spent a long time on it.
00:34:29 But that’s the real danger of going into that territory
00:34:32 over and over again,
00:34:33 going everything’s a false flag or everything’s fake.
00:34:37 I think Alex has actually been kind of reasonable.
00:34:39 He’s resisted a lot of the politics of racial resentment
00:34:43 on the alt right, for example, he’s resisted that.
00:34:46 He’s resisted the antisemitic currents
00:34:49 of a lot of that politics.
00:34:51 He’s resisted a lot of the virulently anti trans
00:34:55 or anti gay stuff.
00:34:56 Now he does dip his toe into the water
00:34:57 of like the culture wars, of course he does.
00:35:00 But I’ve never really seen him,
00:35:03 and I could be wrong about this,
00:35:05 embrace white nationalism or identitarianism.
00:35:08 I’ve never seen him really go antisemitic.
00:35:10 I’ve never seen him take that route.
00:35:12 When I grew up and I would turn him on every now and then,
00:35:15 he was talking about NAFTA, the WTO,
00:35:17 he’s talking about 9 11,
00:35:18 he was talking about the world trade organizations
00:35:22 and a lot of these big conferences,
00:35:24 whether it was the Bilderberg group,
00:35:25 whether it was a Bohemian Grove, which he infiltrated.
00:35:28 And he was talking about,
00:35:29 hey, here are the most powerful people in the world.
00:35:31 Here’s what they’re doing.
00:35:32 And here’s how it affects you.
00:35:34 And that was interesting to me
00:35:35 because no one else was really talking about it
00:35:37 except Alex Jones, occasionally Art Bell on WABC.
00:35:42 You’d listen to him at night, right?
00:35:45 I think Alex became very controversial
00:35:48 when he decided to back Donald Trump.
00:35:50 And then he has a considerable following
00:35:51 and a considerable audience
00:35:53 that he was then able to marshal
00:35:56 in the direction of supporting Donald Trump.
00:35:59 That was when the spotlight,
00:36:02 because then he was talking to Trump, Trump did his show,
00:36:05 Alex Jones just got bigger, right?
00:36:07 And he blew up, that’s the term, right?
00:36:09 He blew off, he put out the Good HBO special,
00:36:13 whatever you wanna call it.
00:36:14 He has a hit song, he blew up.
00:36:16 And then people started looking at the things
00:36:18 that he was associated with.
00:36:20 The Sandy Hook thing is a blemish on his record.
00:36:22 I do believe he regrets it.
00:36:23 But again, I do see the point of the families
00:36:25 who are like, dude, fuck this guy forever.
00:36:27 This is the worst thing I ever went through.
00:36:29 It’s a very tough, I understand the people that say that.
00:36:35 I understand, and I understand the people that go,
00:36:38 when you have tech companies that act
00:36:41 in a coordinated manner to just get rid of someone,
00:36:43 they don’t have any way to defend themselves.
00:36:46 It’s a little terrifying when you think
00:36:49 about that power being abused and how wouldn’t it be?
00:36:53 Do you think he should have not have been banned
00:36:56 from all these platforms?
00:36:57 I don’t think, I do think that
00:36:59 if you are a private company, right?
00:37:01 I do think, and this is where you run into this problem.
00:37:04 I don’t know if these tech companies
00:37:06 were government utilities, would that decrease
00:37:09 people’s likelihood of being banned?
00:37:11 I don’t know, right?
00:37:12 So I understand the benefit of them being treated
00:37:18 like public utilities and people thinking
00:37:19 they have the right to a Twitter.
00:37:21 I’ve never, I don’t know, I have very little confidence.
00:37:25 I mean, the government’s trying to roll out a vaccine
00:37:27 in California and we vaccinated like five people.
00:37:29 I mean, in terms of what we need to do in the state, right?
00:37:32 So maybe if it was a government utility,
00:37:34 I do think someone like Alex,
00:37:37 like there should be some process.
00:37:40 So if you’re gonna get rid of someone,
00:37:42 they should have a way to defend themselves.
00:37:44 There should be more democratic process
00:37:50 that you can go through
00:37:51 than just being unilaterally taken off something.
00:37:54 But like, then you run into the,
00:37:57 you’re like, am I gonna say that everyone deserves?
00:37:58 No, if you’re threatening or harassing people
00:38:00 or threatening to kill them,
00:38:02 publishing their private information,
00:38:03 if you’re committing crimes on these platforms,
00:38:05 obviously the people that own these platforms
00:38:07 are gonna be like, we’re not gonna allow this to happen.
00:38:10 So I understand that there is a line, right?
00:38:14 There is some, like people that say there’s no line
00:38:16 aren’t really thinking, like there is a line.
00:38:19 I just thought that line seems to be moving all the time
00:38:22 and it seems to be a very hard thing to police.
00:38:24 But I don’t think you can remove a guy off everything
00:38:28 and then also bank accounts won’t give him debit cards
00:38:31 or credit cards, I don’t know if you talked to him
00:38:32 about that, but like, you know,
00:38:34 there were financial institutions that were refusing
00:38:36 to let him park his money there.
00:38:38 So, I mean, it really does get pretty terrifying
00:38:42 pretty quickly.
00:38:44 Probably without any transparency from those companies.
00:38:46 So you’re right, it feels like there should be a process
00:38:50 of just having, for him to defend himself.
00:38:54 I think there needs to be a process
00:38:55 for people to defend themselves.
00:38:59 Every day I wake up and I go,
00:39:00 is something I said in a video gonna get taken
00:39:03 out of context, is somebody gonna get angry,
00:39:05 is somebody gonna be, you know, I say wild stuff
00:39:07 because that’s what makes me laugh,
00:39:09 that’s what makes my friends laugh
00:39:10 and that’s what makes my audience laugh.
00:39:12 So I never ever, people, you know, whatever political side
00:39:17 you come down on, I think if you make your living speaking,
00:39:20 it’s always interesting to me if you are pro
00:39:24 the deplatforming, that’s odd.
00:39:27 It’s interesting to consider a kind of a jury context
00:39:32 to where, you know, there’s transparency
00:39:35 about why your video about bombing Disney World
00:39:38 might be taken down, like it gets taken down
00:39:43 and then there is, it’s almost like creating
00:39:45 a little court case, a mini court case
00:39:47 and not in a legal sense, but in the public sphere.
00:39:51 And then people should be able to have, you know,
00:39:53 we pick representatives of our current society
00:39:57 and have a discussion about that and make a real vote.
00:40:00 You know, just have like jury locks himself up
00:40:03 in a discussion, that kind of process might be necessary.
00:40:08 Right now, what happens is Twitter is completely,
00:40:11 first of all, they’re just mostly not aware
00:40:13 of everything they’re doing, there’s too much stuff,
00:40:15 but the stuff they’re aware about,
00:40:18 they make the decision in closed doors meetings
00:40:21 and without any transparency to the rest of the company
00:40:25 actually, but also transparency to the rest of the world.
00:40:29 And so, and then all they say is we’re making decisions
00:40:33 because the people, they use things like violence.
00:40:37 So violence equals bad and if this person is quote unquote,
00:40:41 inciting violence, therefore that gives us enough reason
00:40:44 to ban them without any kind of process.
00:40:48 I mean, it’s interesting, I’m torn in the whole thing.
00:40:51 If it was indeed, there’s no transparency about it,
00:40:54 but if Parler was indeed inciting violence,
00:40:59 like if there was brewing of violence, potential violence
00:41:02 where, you know, thousands of people might die
00:41:06 because of some kind of riot, like this is the scary thing
00:41:10 about mob, about when a lot of people get together.
00:41:15 Who are good people, like legitimately good people
00:41:19 that love this country, that don’t see enemies
00:41:21 yet around them, but if they get excited together
00:41:26 and there’s guns involved and then some cop gets nervous
00:41:30 and shoots one person, another person shoots the cop
00:41:33 and then there’s a lot of shooting involved
00:41:35 and then it goes from five people dying in the Capitol
00:41:38 to thousands of people dying in the Capitol.
00:41:41 Well, in fairness to defend the people at the Capitol,
00:41:44 they didn’t shoot the cop, they bludgeoned him to death
00:41:47 with a fire extinguisher.
00:41:49 Yes.
00:41:50 So I do wanna just kind of put that out
00:41:52 as a defense of them.
00:41:54 Listen, I’m sure there was some wild shit going on
00:41:57 on Parler and I think the problem, here’s the problem,
00:41:59 right, there’s a lot of people that just wanna go on
00:42:03 these sites and say they wanna kill everyone.
00:42:06 And the problem is, you know, at what point
00:42:09 do you shut them all down?
00:42:11 Like I think a lot of people are just living in a world
00:42:14 where they’re powerless, they don’t have any political
00:42:17 power, they don’t have any economic power, right?
00:42:19 They can’t throw their money around.
00:42:22 They don’t have healthcare, their job security isn’t great.
00:42:26 They might be living in a community that doesn’t have
00:42:28 the resources they would like it to have.
00:42:31 They’re not happy and thrilled.
00:42:34 And then they have these sites where they can go on
00:42:36 and just say, man, I’d like to fucking burn it all down.
00:42:39 And distinguishing a guy blowing off steam
00:42:42 and saying wild stuff from a genuine threat
00:42:45 is a very hard thing to do, you know?
00:42:49 Like I’ve threatened to kill, I got banned from Airbnb,
00:42:52 I threatened to kill the people that banned me,
00:42:57 comedically, comedically, this is a joke.
00:43:00 I’m not going to kill you, this is a joke
00:43:02 because I’m blowing off steam and I’m angry.
00:43:05 Do you know how many people that my parents,
00:43:07 like my dad’s like, I’m gonna fucking kill this guy,
00:43:09 my mom’s like, I’m gonna fucking kill.
00:43:11 They were talking about each other.
00:43:13 But none of it ever happened, but we should be,
00:43:17 I think you have to create a space for people
00:43:21 to threaten to overthrow the government
00:43:24 as long as they don’t violently do it.
00:43:26 I mean, does that make any sense?
00:43:28 I mean, as long as they’re not gonna go hurt innocent people,
00:43:32 what are you gonna do?
00:43:33 Like there’s so many people out there that,
00:43:34 that’s why a lot of these things like 4chan, these sites,
00:43:38 a lot of people going on there,
00:43:39 they just wanna say the most fucked up shit
00:43:41 because it’s the thing that gives them,
00:43:44 they can laugh or they can release steam
00:43:46 and it is immature, it is stupid.
00:43:48 It’s not productive, it’s not, you know,
00:43:51 but at the end of the day,
00:43:53 if you’re not gonna give people health insurance,
00:43:56 you gotta give them something.
00:43:57 It’s like when someone in this country dies
00:44:00 that everyone disagrees with, right?
00:44:01 Political figure, media figure,
00:44:03 a lot of people dance on their grave online
00:44:06 and then everyone, people goes,
00:44:07 and the other side will always do it.
00:44:09 Like if a conservative dies and everyone goes, great,
00:44:12 conservatives goes, this is grotesque that you,
00:44:15 and then when RBG dies, they all have parties
00:44:17 and the conservatives go, great.
00:44:20 You have to let people in this country
00:44:22 enjoy the deaths of their enemies.
00:44:26 You do because they don’t have much else.
00:44:29 Again, if you gave them other things,
00:44:31 you might say, guy, you can go get an E operation.
00:44:34 Why don’t you stop?
00:44:36 But if they’re working for shit wages
00:44:40 and you haven’t figured out a way to treat them,
00:44:44 treat their cancer diagnosis, and they don’t like,
00:44:48 I mean, life, you know, you gotta,
00:44:51 you gotta derive pleasure from something, right?
00:44:54 It’s an interesting point that anger is a good valve,
00:44:57 like to, if your life is suffering,
00:45:01 that there’s something very powerful about anger,
00:45:04 but I still have hope that it doesn’t have to be.
00:45:07 I mean, that kind of channeling into anger
00:45:10 that then becomes hate led us
00:45:13 into a lot of troubles in human history.
00:45:15 So you have to be careful empowering people too much
00:45:20 in that anger, especially, I think my,
00:45:24 I think I understand why people are nervous about Parler,
00:45:28 about Twitter and so on.
00:45:30 Because all that shit talking about violence
00:45:35 was now paired with let’s get together at this location.
00:45:40 This was a new thing.
00:45:41 Like it’s not just being on whatever platform talking shit,
00:45:46 it’s saying we’re going to in physical space meet.
00:45:49 And then everybody got, all these platforms got nervous.
00:45:52 Well, what happens when all these shit talkers,
00:45:55 all these angry people that are just steam,
00:45:57 letting off steam meet in a physical space.
00:46:01 And there was probably overreach,
00:46:03 almost definitely overreach,
00:46:05 but I can understand why they were nervous.
00:46:07 I agree.
00:46:08 There doesn’t seem to be,
00:46:08 and this is when Trump got elected
00:46:10 and when you have like, whatever you have, right?
00:46:11 Whether you have riots in Portland and Seattle,
00:46:13 where you have the Antifa people doing crazy things,
00:46:15 you have like the people storming the Capitol.
00:46:18 There never seems to be a ton of an examination
00:46:22 of why these ideas are becoming popular.
00:46:24 Why are people so angry?
00:46:26 What is leading people to this?
00:46:28 Why are we here?
00:46:29 What about their lives is to the point
00:46:32 where they need to show up at these places?
00:46:34 And like, and obviously there’s going to be people
00:46:36 on the fringe.
00:46:37 There’ll always be the mentally unwell.
00:46:38 There’ll always be people that want to destroy society.
00:46:41 But when you look at how popular,
00:46:43 large, long discredited things,
00:46:46 whether it’s fascism, totalitarian communism,
00:46:50 all of these things are like, why are they back?
00:46:53 Why are they back in a big way?
00:46:54 And why are people so fed up with the status quo
00:46:58 that they’re finding solace
00:47:02 in the most extreme discredited theories
00:47:07 of how to run and operate societies,
00:47:10 theories that have led to deaths of a lot of people.
00:47:11 So to me, I’m like, if those people at the Capitol,
00:47:17 yes, if they were going to work,
00:47:20 if they were able to go out and drink at Chili’s,
00:47:24 if they were able to get a fucking checkup, right?
00:47:29 Like if their job paid a little bit better,
00:47:32 and I’m not saying that this is all the reason, right?
00:47:34 I’m sure that there’s a lot of people there
00:47:36 that are doing quite well and they’re still nuts.
00:47:38 But like the anger and the rage
00:47:40 that’s boiling to the surface of this society,
00:47:44 does it come from the fact that across the board
00:47:49 people in very different areas
00:47:51 and with very different political beliefs
00:47:54 feel like they are being fucked over
00:47:56 and there’s nothing they can do about it.
00:47:59 That’s what the baseline to me,
00:48:02 they look at the people that run the country
00:48:05 and run the world, whether they’re tech titans,
00:48:07 the guys that you talked to,
00:48:08 or whether they’re people that run the government,
00:48:11 whether they’re people that run large banks,
00:48:14 large media companies,
00:48:16 the people that have created this kind of infrastructure
00:48:20 that everyone lives in,
00:48:21 these people are incredibly powerless.
00:48:23 And when you push people to that point,
00:48:26 logically, sadly, and unfortunately,
00:48:30 the next thing does seem to be violence.
00:48:33 Yeah, the thing that troubles me a lot
00:48:36 is you said nobody’s asking why these beliefs are out there,
00:48:41 but sometimes it’s not even acknowledged
00:48:44 that people are hurting, people are angry,
00:48:49 just even acknowledging that all the conspiracy theories
00:48:52 that are out there, acknowledging that they’re out there.
00:48:55 And then people are thinking about it and talking about it
00:48:58 just because otherwise,
00:49:00 so it’s not acknowledged in this nuanced way.
00:49:03 What happens is you say,
00:49:04 okay, 70 million people are white supremacists.
00:49:07 It’s just throwing a kind of blanket statement.
00:49:12 And of course that gets them angrier
00:49:16 and makes them feel more powerless.
00:49:19 And that ultimately, that’s what’s been painful for me
00:49:25 to see is that there’s not an acknowledgement
00:49:28 that most people are good.
00:49:31 Right.
00:49:32 There’s circumstances where it’s just you’re pissed off.
00:49:36 Right.
00:49:37 Because you are powerless.
00:49:38 I mean, most of us are powerless.
00:49:39 You could fall in with a bad crowd.
00:49:42 That’s the thing, you can just fall in.
00:49:44 And it doesn’t mean that there’s not blame.
00:49:47 Obviously you have agency, you’re a person.
00:49:51 But the idea that you could be rehabilitated,
00:49:54 you could do something stupid
00:49:55 or you could fall into a group of people that are,
00:49:58 and then in a few years you can go,
00:49:59 what the fuck was I doing?
00:50:02 I’m an ex drug addict.
00:50:03 I know what it’s like to go from being one thing
00:50:05 to being another thing.
00:50:06 I’m still a drug addict.
00:50:07 If I would use drugs right now or drink,
00:50:09 I would still be addicted to them.
00:50:11 I mean, it’s not something that I can ever change
00:50:13 about myself, but I know what it’s like
00:50:14 to go from one thing to another thing.
00:50:16 So when you look at racism or whatever ism,
00:50:19 homophobia, misogyny, whatever you’re looking at,
00:50:22 antisemitism, and you go, that’s a fixed condition
00:50:26 where nobody’s ever going to be able to change.
00:50:28 Nobody’s ever gonna be able to be rehabilitated.
00:50:30 Nobody’s ever going to be able to reimagine themselves
00:50:34 in a different way.
00:50:35 To me, you’re just, you’re throwing away someone
00:50:38 and you’re making them feel helpless and worthless.
00:50:41 And that’s gonna lead to antisocial behavior
00:50:44 that spills out into the violence.
00:50:45 We don’t have a very redemptive society.
00:50:48 That’s a huge factor.
00:50:50 We don’t have a redemptive society.
00:50:52 That’s why I like O.J. Simpson.
00:50:54 Because O.J. Simpson, yes, he did a bad thing supposedly.
00:50:58 But he’s very kind now on Twitter
00:51:01 and he makes very nice points about how we all have
00:51:04 to get involved in the political process
00:51:05 and he’s on golf courses and I like watching people golf.
00:51:07 I don’t do it, but I like watching him do it.
00:51:10 And he’s like an elder statesman
00:51:12 because I remember him from the naked gun.
00:51:13 And I choose to forgive him for whatever happened there,
00:51:19 which I don’t know.
00:51:20 But I choose to forgive him really for,
00:51:23 I mean, obviously, what they say is
00:51:25 he cut his wife’s head off.
00:51:27 But I can look past that and redeem him
00:51:30 because he’s very stable on Twitter and he’s a good,
00:51:35 like I see all these people going crazy on Twitter
00:51:37 and I’m like, O.J.’s lived a full life.
00:51:41 I think there’s a benefit to that.
00:51:43 There’s a benefit to kind of living a full life.
00:51:45 Yeah, how many of us have not at least tried
00:51:48 to murder somebody?
00:51:48 100%, listen, O.J.’s had the highs and the lows,
00:51:53 but he did it on his terms.
00:51:56 And there’s a real.
00:51:57 It’s like a Frank Sinatra song.
00:51:59 Yeah, he did it my way.
00:52:00 I mean, there’s a benefit to that.
00:52:02 And he seems like a very well adjusted person now.
00:52:04 So I mean, I don’t know, how is that a fact?
00:52:07 But it is a fact and that’s an uncomfortable fact.
00:52:09 Well, this is a strong case of forgiveness
00:52:12 in one of the more extreme cases, I suppose.
00:52:16 But yeah, there’s not a process of forgiveness.
00:52:18 It seems like people just take a single event from your,
00:52:21 sometimes a single statement from your past
00:52:23 and use that as a categorical like capture
00:52:29 of the essence of this particular human being.
00:52:31 So murder might be a thing that you should get a time out
00:52:36 for a little while.
00:52:38 Murder is bad.
00:52:39 Murder, and let’s just say that.
00:52:42 Murder is not good.
00:52:44 I’m glad you make this definitive statement.
00:52:46 O.J. is an interesting cat because you’re like,
00:52:50 he’s very stable on Twitter.
00:52:53 He’s very like, he’s like, let’s take a look at it, guys.
00:52:55 Like we need more of his energy.
00:52:57 That’s what I’m trying to say.
00:52:58 I know like, yes, it was bad.
00:53:00 He killed the woman in the waiter.
00:53:03 I was not for that.
00:53:04 I wish he didn’t do that.
00:53:05 But the trial, the O.J. Simpson trial was such a fun thing.
00:53:10 And like you said, we need more fun people in society.
00:53:12 Speaking of fun people,
00:53:14 you’ve, your politics have been all over the place.
00:53:17 I hope so.
00:53:18 I hope so.
00:53:19 I mean, imagine not,
00:53:21 imagine someone whose politics weren’t all over the place.
00:53:24 It would seem odd.
00:53:26 Right.
00:53:26 In the 10 years that I’ve been politically conscious,
00:53:28 just because I’m 35 and 20.
00:53:30 No, I’ve probably been conscious for over two decades,
00:53:32 but like Democrats have become Republicans,
00:53:34 Republicans become Democrats.
00:53:36 I remember when Ann Coulter said,
00:53:37 we need to, he defended George W. Bush when he said,
00:53:40 we need to go out and Christianize
00:53:41 or modernize the Arab world.
00:53:44 We need to democratize the Arab world.
00:53:45 And then Ann Coulter backed Donald Trump.
00:53:48 And all the right wing in America believed
00:53:50 in nation building.
00:53:51 They believed in going out and democratizing areas
00:53:56 that might breed radical terrorists,
00:53:58 whether it was Iraq or wherever you were going,
00:54:01 toppling regimes and instituting
00:54:03 new democratic norms in those countries.
00:54:05 That was the right wing point of view when I grew up.
00:54:07 Then the right wing switched to,
00:54:11 we are going to be isolationist.
00:54:13 We’re going to take care of America.
00:54:15 First and foremost,
00:54:16 we’re not going to go into other countries.
00:54:18 And then the Democrats who, when I grew up,
00:54:20 were doves and the right wing people were more hawkish.
00:54:23 And the Democrats were like,
00:54:24 the military solutions aren’t the way.
00:54:27 We need to have multilateral diplomatic coalitions
00:54:30 to solve all the problems.
00:54:32 Now, Rachel Maddow’s like,
00:54:34 let’s nuke Russia every night on MSNBC.
00:54:37 The Democrats are like,
00:54:38 we need strong presence in Syria.
00:54:41 We need a strong presence.
00:54:43 We need to counter Putin all over the globe.
00:54:45 We need to get, so they’re more hawkish on things.
00:54:48 So literally I have watched two political parties
00:54:52 literally flip and it’s crazy to watch.
00:54:54 And in some sense I’ve watched that as well
00:54:58 because when I first saw Barack Obama,
00:55:01 I admired that he was against the war.
00:55:03 This is whatever, maybe before he was a Senator,
00:55:07 he spoke out against the Iraq war.
00:55:10 And then it doesn’t feel like,
00:55:17 it feels like his administration was more hawkish
00:55:20 than dovish in a sense with all the drone attacks,
00:55:25 with the sort of inability to pull back,
00:55:28 or at least in mass efficiently pull back
00:55:31 from all the military involvement
00:55:33 that we have all over the world.
00:55:34 So, and just the language.
00:55:36 What I think is interesting about that,
00:55:37 what’s interesting about Obama,
00:55:38 cause this is a very interesting study,
00:55:40 is that presidents are controlled in very different ways.
00:55:43 Presidents can be controlled by different factors,
00:55:48 power factions within Washington.
00:55:51 I think one of the reasons that Obama was maybe,
00:55:54 you had a very close relationship with John Brennan,
00:55:56 he was a CIA director.
00:55:58 And Obama was very close with John Brennan,
00:56:00 and Obama was very, I think malleable to the extent
00:56:07 that the CIA, and I’ve had CIA agents on my show,
00:56:09 John Kiriakou, a guy who went to jail for exposing torture,
00:56:13 was saying that like, you get into the Oval Office,
00:56:16 all of a sudden you’re having
00:56:17 that presidential daily briefing every day,
00:56:18 and the intelligence people come in and they go,
00:56:21 listen man, I mean, there’s gonna be a terrorist attack
00:56:23 on your watch if you don’t do X, Y, and Z.
00:56:25 They go, they call it like blue book information,
00:56:28 which is five levels above top secret,
00:56:30 and they go like, hey man, a guy in Iran at a cafe
00:56:35 said he’s blowing everything up next week,
00:56:36 and you know, I mean, it’s the same thing as Parler,
00:56:38 you don’t know if it’s true or not.
00:56:39 But now the president’s making a decision
00:56:41 on usually a lot of uncorroborated intelligence
00:56:44 that goes into a presentation for the president,
00:56:48 where you’re just terrified every day,
00:56:49 and you don’t want a terrorist attack on your watch.
00:56:51 Now, so why are they getting all this information?
00:56:53 Because a lot of the people in Washington
00:56:56 have an interest in perpetual, constant, ongoing warfare,
00:57:00 and there’s a lot of financial gain to be had from that.
00:57:02 So they’re sneaking their information
00:57:04 into the presentations that are going to the president,
00:57:07 and then the president is now behaving and going,
00:57:09 fuck, I don’t want a bomb going off,
00:57:11 we gotta do what we gotta do.
00:57:13 And whatever version of that happens,
00:57:16 that is really kind of what is happening,
00:57:18 whereas the presidents are being controlled
00:57:21 by forces that are outside of the political sphere,
00:57:25 but very much still in it.
00:57:27 And they have a lot of, that’s what the deep state is.
00:57:29 You know, Trump, there’s a lot of ridiculing Trump
00:57:31 of going, the deep state doesn’t exist.
00:57:33 It absolutely exists, there’s been books about it
00:57:35 written by liberal journalists.
00:57:36 The deep state is only a term for unelected, largely,
00:57:42 power factions in Washington, DC,
00:57:44 that outlive any presidential administration.
00:57:47 These are people that might work at the State Department,
00:57:50 they might work at the Defense Department.
00:57:52 These are people that are not always working officially
00:57:56 in any government capacity.
00:57:57 They might be private companies,
00:58:00 they might be military contractors,
00:58:02 they might be people at Boeing or Raytheon
00:58:04 or General Dynamics.
00:58:06 And they constitute a group of people
00:58:10 that Trump kind of called the swamp,
00:58:11 but Trump had really no interest in draining the swamp.
00:58:14 But he articulated these things, and this is what it is.
00:58:18 You have a lot of interested parties that have budgets
00:58:22 that they want, big budgets.
00:58:24 Everybody wants a budget in Washington,
00:58:26 whether you know what it is, they want money.
00:58:29 And these are the people who really control press.
00:58:31 So this idea that the president is the be all end all
00:58:34 has got to be smashed,
00:58:35 which is why the horse race model of politics
00:58:38 and being like, is it right wing?
00:58:39 Is it left wing?
00:58:40 Is it, what team am I on and what color am I wearing?
00:58:43 It’s very simplistic, but the reality is this is an empire.
00:58:47 It’s past its peak.
00:58:49 We’re in trouble.
00:58:50 The United States is an empire past its peak.
00:58:51 Yeah, I mean, that’s just,
00:58:53 you could prove that case in court.
00:58:55 Well, let’s go to court right now.
00:58:57 But I do love the more complex idea
00:59:01 that there’s just human beings who crave power
00:59:04 and seek ways to attain that power through different ways.
00:59:08 If you have Barack Obama or George Bush or Donald Trump,
00:59:13 there’s different attack vectors.
00:59:15 Correct.
00:59:16 There’s different ways to attain that power
00:59:17 and then you can use that to leverage.
00:59:19 And it probably doesn’t have to be just in Washington, DC.
00:59:23 There’s people who crave power all over the world.
00:59:26 Of course, but where we are now in Los Angeles,
00:59:29 these people are all good.
00:59:31 LA.
00:59:32 Studio executives and people that I,
00:59:33 from what I understand, they treat everyone fairly
00:59:36 and they’re nice, but he sees the bad guys,
00:59:40 but out here in LA, everyone’s lovely.
00:59:43 So amidst this fun exploration in your mind
00:59:48 through the political landscape that you’ve done
00:59:50 over the past couple of decades
00:59:54 that you’ve been conscious politically,
00:59:56 where does Donald Trump fit into this picture for you?
01:00:01 Great question.
01:00:02 Well, he didn’t, right?
01:00:04 Cause we didn’t, he wasn’t political
01:00:06 until four years ago, right?
01:00:07 He got political very quickly before.
01:00:10 I mean, he was always firing off crazy tweets
01:00:12 about where Obama was born or whatever,
01:00:14 but he was, he got into politics like very quickly
01:00:17 and then he became the president, right?
01:00:19 So it was like, we didn’t, I knew him as Donald Trump,
01:00:22 this crazy New York city character,
01:00:23 the coast of the apprentice.
01:00:26 I didn’t think much about him.
01:00:27 He was just constant, you know,
01:00:29 like he was just this constant figure.
01:00:31 Like I don’t think much about Warren Buffett.
01:00:33 Like I know like Trump’s like,
01:00:34 he’s married to a new show girl all the time
01:00:37 and he’s always opening another casino and he’s on TV.
01:00:41 Wait, Warren Buffett really?
01:00:41 No, Trump.
01:00:42 Trump, but like Warren Buffett is the opposite, right?
01:00:44 Warren Buffett’s like been married for a billion years,
01:00:47 lives in a little house in Omaha,
01:00:48 but these are the, that’s what I associate Trump.
01:00:50 Like I don’t think about Warren Buffett.
01:00:52 I don’t think about these people.
01:00:53 They’re just guys that I’ve known forever
01:00:55 that have like, you know,
01:01:00 you associate certain things with them, right?
01:01:02 And Trump, we always associated with kind of vulgar,
01:01:04 garish, new money, billionaire, married a lot,
01:01:08 you know, casinos, Miss Universe pageants.
01:01:10 But again, you know, but it makes perfect sense
01:01:13 that he really was able to become president at the moment
01:01:19 where we were about to have Hillary Clinton versus Jeb Bush.
01:01:22 And I think Americans felt like this is,
01:01:24 now the oligarchy is spitting right in our face.
01:01:27 You’re not even making it feel like
01:01:30 there’s an appearance of democracy.
01:01:32 We have two crime families
01:01:34 vowing for control of the country every four years.
01:01:37 And then there was this rogue kind of upstart guy
01:01:40 that was really about himself.
01:01:42 You know, Trump doesn’t really care that much about the,
01:01:44 I mean, really was summarized perfectly when he left
01:01:46 and he just said, hey, have a good life.
01:01:48 That’s what he said
01:01:49 before he got on Andrews Air Force Base.
01:01:51 If you watch his speech, he goes, hey, have a good life.
01:01:53 That’s what he really feel.
01:01:56 Like, hey, have a good life.
01:01:58 I’m gonna get on a plane right now
01:02:00 and fly to a castle I own in Florida.
01:02:05 And really, I’m not gonna think too much about you people
01:02:08 outside of how I can get more attention in the future.
01:02:12 Can I ask you like a therapy question?
01:02:14 What is your favorite
01:02:17 and least favorite quality of Donald Trump?
01:02:21 So my least favorite quality of Donald Trump,
01:02:24 I think because there’s a few of them,
01:02:28 his lack of empathy,
01:02:33 complete and total lack of empathy.
01:02:35 I don’t feel that he cares about human beings on any level.
01:02:39 And I feel like that’s,
01:02:40 maybe it should be a requirement, right?
01:02:43 I mean, I don’t think he cares.
01:02:45 I think it’s obvious that he doesn’t care.
01:02:46 I mean, he sent, you know, basically he’s saying like,
01:02:49 they’re in there, Mike Pence is in there.
01:02:50 He knows that his people are going to get,
01:02:53 try to get into a Capitol.
01:02:54 I mean, those motherfuckers are not gonna have jobs.
01:02:56 They’re gonna go to federal prison and he doesn’t care.
01:03:00 As long as they’re storming the Capitol
01:03:02 to prove the point that he thinks he won the election,
01:03:04 he has no concern for these people, his followers.
01:03:08 He leads them lambs to the slaughter, right?
01:03:11 So that’s not a respectable quality.
01:03:13 My favorite quality of Donald Trump
01:03:16 is his willingness to call bullshit.
01:03:18 So his willingness to call bullshit out.
01:03:20 He doesn’t play the game.
01:03:22 He will, you know, when people say about Putin,
01:03:24 Putin kills people, he goes,
01:03:25 we kill a lot of people here too.
01:03:26 Like he’s willing and able to break the fourth wall
01:03:31 and say things that no politician has ever said.
01:03:33 He’s willing to call out hypocrisy, you know,
01:03:36 of course not his own, but the media,
01:03:40 the members of the political establishment,
01:03:41 that’s a laudable quality.
01:03:43 It’s an entertaining quality, right?
01:03:45 We all like it.
01:03:46 I love, I’m like this guy saying something
01:03:48 that a lot of people want said.
01:03:50 That being said, it’s coupled with no real work or action.
01:03:54 So it’s not coupled with anything behind it
01:03:56 that he just wants to,
01:03:58 we did an episode of my podcast once
01:03:59 where it’s like essentially he’s like criticizing
01:04:01 the deep state, he wants a deeper state.
01:04:03 He wants a deeper state.
01:04:04 Like he hired his daughter and her husband.
01:04:07 I mean, this is not a guy that’s interested
01:04:09 in transparency and openness.
01:04:11 He’s a guy that would just prefer,
01:04:13 he wants to run the mafia state.
01:04:16 But he shakes up the norms of social discourse,
01:04:20 political discourse, and that people
01:04:22 are just hungry for that.
01:04:24 Like he got banned from Twitter,
01:04:26 from all the different platforms.
01:04:29 Do you think, is there an argument to be made
01:04:31 for and against banning Twitter?
01:04:33 There’s always arguments to be made for everything.
01:04:35 A permanent ban seems to be an overreaction to me.
01:04:38 He’s the president of the United States.
01:04:39 It also rearranges the power,
01:04:41 like whether you like him or hate him,
01:04:42 love him or hate him, he was the president.
01:04:45 We’ve elevated Twitter is now more powerful
01:04:47 than the president.
01:04:48 It’s like, do you want that to be longterm the salute,
01:04:51 that the reality, like now Jack at Twitter
01:04:53 is more powerful than the president of the United States.
01:04:56 Is that a good paradigm going forward?
01:05:00 I don’t know.
01:05:01 I’m not, listen, maybe give him a little time out
01:05:03 for a few days.
01:05:05 I think a time out, a little spanking, certainly,
01:05:08 but I don’t know if a permanent ban across the board
01:05:10 on every social media.
01:05:11 I mean, they banned them on Grindr.
01:05:13 I mean, this is how hilarious it is, right?
01:05:14 I mean, they banned them across the board on everything.
01:05:17 I don’t think he could get an Airbnb now, neither can I,
01:05:19 but like, I don’t think he can do anything.
01:05:22 Again, I just, I look back and there’s so many people,
01:05:25 my very smart, intelligent friends that go,
01:05:26 yeah, but who cares?
01:05:27 Yeah, but he’s bad.
01:05:28 Yeah, but blah, blah, blah.
01:05:29 Yeah, but I don’t like Milianopolis.
01:05:31 Yeah, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
01:05:32 And I’m like, you have such faith.
01:05:35 You have such faith that it’s always gonna be the people
01:05:39 you dislike that are banned.
01:05:40 It’s always gonna be the, it’s never gonna be you.
01:05:43 Man, you have so much faith in the government.
01:05:45 You have so much faith in tech oligarchs you’ve never met.
01:05:48 You have so much faith in the security state
01:05:51 that they’re gonna always make the right decisions
01:05:53 and they’re not gonna penalize people
01:05:55 that shouldn’t be penalized.
01:05:56 To me, I’m like, wow, I’ve never had that much faith
01:06:00 in any human being ever, including myself.
01:06:02 I wouldn’t want that power.
01:06:03 I would start deplatforming people that I hate.
01:06:05 I would deplatform my aunt, you know what I mean?
01:06:08 I would deplatform everyone I know.
01:06:10 I mean, so it’s such an insane power to give somebody,
01:06:14 like who gets heard, who gets to speak?
01:06:16 Yeah, I’m worried about the effect it has
01:06:18 on people like you, actually.
01:06:20 I agree.
01:06:20 Of being, like everybody’s a little more nervous
01:06:25 in what they say.
01:06:27 Correct.
01:06:28 And that is a big problem.
01:06:29 Yes.
01:06:30 Because then you’re just like longterm unmasked,
01:06:32 like we’re talking about.
01:06:33 It has an effect where people just become more bland.
01:06:37 Yeah, self censorship, anxiety,
01:06:41 all of these things go into it.
01:06:43 We try to fight it.
01:06:44 I try to fight it.
01:06:44 I think I gotta still do what makes me laugh
01:06:47 and what makes me laugh is often fucked up.
01:06:49 And it’s often, it’s not always fucked up in a way
01:06:52 that it’s gonna get me thrown off something,
01:06:54 but I think pushing certain buttons is funny to me,
01:06:58 so I gotta keep doing that.
01:07:00 Part of the problem is that so many of the lines
01:07:02 are blurred, right?
01:07:03 So you have comedians that are commentators
01:07:05 and commentators that are comedians and politicians.
01:07:08 So it’s harder to get the defense of like,
01:07:10 hey, I’m a comedian, leave me alone.
01:07:11 That defense becomes harder
01:07:13 when all of these lines are blurring.
01:07:15 Everybody’s kind of everything now.
01:07:18 So like people say to me, you should run for office
01:07:21 and they’re serious and I’m like, you’re crazy,
01:07:22 but they’re serious.
01:07:23 Like, so the blurring of everything means
01:07:26 that people aren’t in their lanes as much
01:07:29 and that you go, well, this guy is dangerous
01:07:31 because he’s not just making a joke.
01:07:34 He’s doing something else and he’s using humor.
01:07:38 And I’m like, I’m really not.
01:07:38 I’m really just trying to make a joke.
01:07:40 That’s all, that’s really what I’m trying to do.
01:07:42 But I do think that because of the flattening,
01:07:46 there’s a lot of people out there that go,
01:07:48 they take aim at humor because they go,
01:07:49 humor is where bad ideas can kind of start and flourish.
01:07:54 But don’t you, to put some responsibility on you,
01:07:57 don’t you think humor is a way to,
01:08:01 that you are the modern,
01:08:03 like Jordan Peterson style intellectual,
01:08:05 that humor is actually a tool of.
01:08:08 It can be.
01:08:09 Changing the zeitgeist,
01:08:10 changing the social norms. It absolutely can be,
01:08:11 but it also cannot be.
01:08:12 I don’t think it’s any one thing
01:08:14 and I think there’s a lot of pressure for a comedian.
01:08:17 You can be funny and right.
01:08:18 You can be funny and wrong.
01:08:21 If your goal is to be right,
01:08:22 you might end up being right and not funny.
01:08:25 So the reality is funny has to come first.
01:08:27 There are brilliant people that have been funny
01:08:30 and correct according to people, right?
01:08:33 But at the end of the day,
01:08:35 people that put way too much faith in what comedy is,
01:08:38 most of what comedy is,
01:08:39 is people showing up to strip malls
01:08:41 and telling jokes for an hour
01:08:43 while people eat chicken fingers
01:08:45 and they all get drunk and they laugh
01:08:46 and they feel a little bit better about their lives.
01:08:48 That’s really the majority of comedy.
01:08:50 Then there’s like 10 famous people that are really famous
01:08:53 that do a version of that in an arena.
01:08:55 But the amount of cultural power they have
01:08:57 has always been greatly exaggerated.
01:08:59 My uncles loved George Carlin,
01:09:01 who was anti military industrial complex,
01:09:03 anti this, anti that.
01:09:05 And then they would go vote for Ronald Reagan.
01:09:07 They didn’t care.
01:09:10 It’s not as powerful as you think.
01:09:12 I wish it was.
01:09:13 It feels good.
01:09:15 It feels good for me to say I am the new thing.
01:09:18 It really isn’t.
01:09:19 It truly isn’t.
01:09:20 No one is, comedians are the people that get on stage
01:09:23 and say, we’re fucked up.
01:09:24 We’re drug addicts.
01:09:26 We’re sex addicts.
01:09:27 We’re fat.
01:09:28 We’re gross.
01:09:28 We can’t manage our money.
01:09:29 We can’t stop eating.
01:09:31 We can’t stop fucking doing horrible things.
01:09:33 We’re liars.
01:09:33 We’re narcissists.
01:09:34 We’re scumbags.
01:09:35 We’re the people that get out and say that.
01:09:37 Only a psychopath would look at us and go,
01:09:40 show me the way.
01:09:42 Like it’s not.
01:09:43 I disagree with you because then I’m a psychopath.
01:09:46 Well, and that’s, I mean, I don’t think,
01:09:50 no pushback here.
01:09:51 That’s another issue.
01:09:54 But you know what I’m saying.
01:09:55 Well, and I don’t because, I mean,
01:09:58 I understand you using this as a psychological tool
01:10:01 for yourself to give yourself freedom.
01:10:03 But the reality is you are one of the rare comedians
01:10:06 like a George Carlin who is, besides being funny.
01:10:10 When I hear things like that, I’m like,
01:10:11 okay, you’re being very sweet.
01:10:12 But like, I agree.
01:10:14 I understand what you’re saying.
01:10:14 I do stuff that makes, hopefully makes you think.
01:10:17 I hope that’s what good comedy is.
01:10:18 But I think I try to do that.
01:10:21 But I also would hate to feel shackled to the idea
01:10:25 of that I had to make a point
01:10:28 and that point had to be correct.
01:10:31 I think the best comedy makes fun of everything.
01:10:33 It makes fun of both sides.
01:10:34 And then there’s a deeper truth about humanity revealed.
01:10:38 But then what happens is people take that deeper truth
01:10:40 and go, let’s politicize it.
01:10:42 But what does he mean?
01:10:43 Is it the right or the left?
01:10:44 And I’m like, I’m doing something that I think speaks
01:10:46 to hopefully people on both sides for everybody.
01:10:49 Cause I’m making fun of people on the left and the right
01:10:51 and in the center and people that don’t care
01:10:52 and people that do care.
01:10:53 And I’m trying to figure out a way to do it.
01:10:55 But then immediately anything of value
01:10:57 in this culture right now is like, how do we politicize it?
01:10:59 How do we put it in a box?
01:11:00 So yes, I think comedy can produce a lot
01:11:02 of inherently valuable things, reflective, thoughtful things.
01:11:07 But then immediately, can it be put in this box
01:11:10 where all of those things can be used politically?
01:11:13 No.
01:11:14 And unfortunately, like when they say like,
01:11:15 comedy is a great way to speak truth to power.
01:11:17 It is, but I don’t know how much it changes things.
01:11:23 I don’t know how much a joke can dethrone a king.
01:11:28 I know the idea is nice,
01:11:30 but let’s look at the practical applications.
01:11:34 I mean, we had brilliant comics, Bill Hicks,
01:11:38 George Carlin, Richard Pryor.
01:11:40 We had people talk about so many problems in society,
01:11:44 illustrate them, put a spotlight on them.
01:11:47 And we still have them.
01:11:48 They’re worse now than they’ve ever been.
01:11:50 That’s not true.
01:11:51 I think the society is better.
01:11:52 And so to push back in my perspective,
01:11:55 it’s very possible that those voices
01:11:58 were the exact reason we have the world today,
01:12:00 which I do believe is actually,
01:12:03 I mean, on the boring old measures
01:12:07 of what makes a good world,
01:12:08 which is the amount of violence in the world,
01:12:12 the amount of opportunity that all those kinds of measures,
01:12:15 even happiness, all of those things measured,
01:12:17 things have been improving.
01:12:19 Steven Pinker gets a lot of shit for this,
01:12:21 but he’s really good at articulating
01:12:23 how the data says pretty clearly
01:12:25 that the world is getting better.
01:12:26 And it’s arguable that the freedoms we do enjoy currently
01:12:30 are thanks to the comedic voices or the people who mock.
01:12:34 So to me, it’s possible that humor
01:12:37 is the very thing that saves the world.
01:12:39 Humor is the very thing that keeps,
01:12:41 is the balance of power in the world.
01:12:44 But I think a lot of the things that those guys criticize,
01:12:46 whether it was militarism or the elites,
01:12:50 the lying, the corruption, the bribery,
01:12:52 that’s still going on.
01:12:53 And it’s always gonna go on, right?
01:12:54 Because that’s the nature of human beings.
01:12:56 We call it out, we point it out,
01:12:58 but we don’t have a plan to change.
01:13:01 It’s not really our job.
01:13:02 And I think that too much now is like,
01:13:05 well, comedians should have a,
01:13:07 like, I don’t tell people who to vote for.
01:13:09 Like the idea that comedians
01:13:10 went and told people who to vote for,
01:13:11 it’s like, to me, it’s crazy.
01:13:13 I understand like people have strong opinions,
01:13:15 but like, I believe I have a job.
01:13:17 And my job is to make you laugh or whatever,
01:13:19 maybe make you think,
01:13:20 but like, my job is not to tell you who to vote for.
01:13:23 I mean, it’s absurd.
01:13:24 But see, the thing you do by the comedy,
01:13:27 like on your Twitter,
01:13:29 that people should definitely follow.
01:13:30 I believe that, Jim J. Dillon, I agree with you.
01:13:33 Oh, on this point of,
01:13:35 I agree with you wholeheartedly.
01:13:37 That people should follow you.
01:13:38 Yeah, you give me,
01:13:40 you give me freedom to think on my own.
01:13:45 Meaning like you’re shaking things up
01:13:47 to where I don’t feel constrained
01:13:49 about what I can think about.
01:13:51 And that’s awesome.
01:13:54 Thank you.
01:13:54 So you’re not telling me what to think,
01:13:56 you’re giving me the freedom to think.
01:13:57 And that’s what great comedy does,
01:13:59 is I don’t often agree with George Carlin.
01:14:04 He can get pretty political sometimes.
01:14:06 But just the ability to do that’s so rare.
01:14:10 Podcasts do that too now.
01:14:11 Like there’s certain people
01:14:12 that can really just challenge you to,
01:14:15 even when you disagree with them,
01:14:16 to sort of be like,
01:14:17 oh, it’s okay to think about this kind of stuff.
01:14:19 Yeah, and I appreciate that,
01:14:21 because that’s awesome.
01:14:21 And I mean, that’s great.
01:14:23 And a guy like you, who’s a brilliant guy, that’s great.
01:14:25 If I’m giving you the license to think,
01:14:28 then man, the world is completely fucked.
01:14:30 But I’m happy about that.
01:14:31 Yeah.
01:14:32 No, it’s…
01:14:33 Well, you know.
01:14:35 Speaking about the world being completely fucked,
01:14:38 Alex Jones turned on QAnon.
01:14:40 I know almost nothing…
01:14:41 It’s a very tough match.
01:14:42 They had a rough marriage.
01:14:43 They fought it.
01:14:44 They fought it out for years.
01:14:46 And eventually we just knew
01:14:48 someone was gonna leave someone.
01:14:50 Hewlett tried to leave him a few months ago.
01:14:52 Oh, so…
01:14:53 Yeah, he was staying at someone else’s house.
01:14:55 The car wasn’t in the driveway.
01:14:57 Yeah.
01:14:58 Well, the thing about QAnon that makes it a lot of fun
01:15:01 is it’s kind of a make it up as you go along.
01:15:04 I’m a drug addict, right?
01:15:06 So often my lies aren’t planned.
01:15:09 They’re in the moment.
01:15:10 A lot of what I do on the podcast,
01:15:11 a lot, you know, it’s all in the moment.
01:15:12 I’ll have an idea what I wanna talk about,
01:15:13 and I rant and I go.
01:15:14 And I’ve been like stoned,
01:15:16 and I show up at home,
01:15:17 and my parents are like,
01:15:18 what’s going on?
01:15:19 There was $50 on the mantle.
01:15:21 Now it’s not there.
01:15:22 And I’m like,
01:15:23 well, and I gotta make something up on the spot, right?
01:15:28 I’ve been, you know, are you drinking again?
01:15:31 No, I’m not.
01:15:33 And then you gotta have a,
01:15:34 well, you were gone for two days.
01:15:35 No one knows where you were.
01:15:36 And somebody said you left your car.
01:15:37 Well, I was at, well, this is,
01:15:40 I was at a sales conference and I left my car.
01:15:42 I flew to Phoenix.
01:15:43 Like, I understand what that is.
01:15:45 QAnon is an ever evolving conspiracy theory
01:15:47 where the events are happening in the past,
01:15:50 in the present, and in the future.
01:15:51 It’s kind of hilarious.
01:15:52 Every conspiracy theory is like Kennedy,
01:15:54 something like that,
01:15:55 that there’s a lot of truth in that,
01:15:56 or all truth.
01:15:57 But at the end of the day,
01:15:58 it’s like you’re looking back from 30,000 feet,
01:16:00 analyzing little things that have already happened.
01:16:02 QAnon’s like,
01:16:03 so I think Alex is kind of like got a little tired of
01:16:06 the constant evolving nature of that conspiracy theory.
01:16:11 So he’s not a fan of like the jazz that is QAnon.
01:16:14 So they’re not,
01:16:14 because they’re improvising constantly.
01:16:15 They’re improvising.
01:16:16 Alex is like, hey man,
01:16:17 I was on board a little bit,
01:16:19 but at the end of the day,
01:16:20 it’s getting a little annoying
01:16:21 because it can turn on you.
01:16:22 Eventually you become part of the conspiracy.
01:16:25 Alex is controlled opposition.
01:16:26 That’s what they’ll say.
01:16:27 Eventually you,
01:16:29 because QAnon just eats things.
01:16:31 So it’s a conspiracy that just eats things.
01:16:33 The minute you start to say,
01:16:34 hey man, maybe that’s not,
01:16:35 it just eats you and go,
01:16:36 well, you’re in on it.
01:16:38 Everyone’s in on it.
01:16:39 Everyone’s a satanic pedophile.
01:16:40 Everybody.
01:16:41 Everyone that questions it is eating children.
01:16:43 And you go, wait a minute,
01:16:45 that seems illogical.
01:16:46 But now there’s not enough children.
01:16:48 Now there’s not enough.
01:16:49 And I think QAnon’s over now, unfortunately,
01:16:53 because for these people,
01:16:54 but I think fortunately for them,
01:16:56 they’re gonna have to find a new hobby.
01:16:57 But I think it’s over now
01:16:58 because even the best QAnon people now are starting to go,
01:17:00 hey man, this might not be going down the way we thought.
01:17:03 But they’ve literally gone as far as to say
01:17:05 that like Biden and Trump switched faces.
01:17:07 Trump’s actually still the president except Biden.
01:17:10 You have to be a real moron now.
01:17:13 You gotta be real stupid now.
01:17:16 It’s at the end.
01:17:17 Like it was cool when the Epstein stuff happened,
01:17:19 QAnon was like, it was party at Q.
01:17:22 And then when the Hunter Biden laptop stuff
01:17:24 started to happen, they were like dancing,
01:17:26 like it’s time.
01:17:28 And then Biden wins and they’re like, wait, whoa.
01:17:34 And it’s just like, it’s the day after the party.
01:17:36 QAnon, if you ever went to a party in high school
01:17:38 or college, QAnon right now is the day after the party.
01:17:40 You wake up, it’s 12 noon.
01:17:43 The sun is hitting you in the face.
01:17:44 You’re hung over.
01:17:45 There’s a stench of disgusting beer and cigarettes
01:17:47 all over the house.
01:17:48 You’re like, what the fuck happened here?
01:17:50 I gotta get out of here and get a bacon, egg and cheese.
01:17:53 That’s what QAnon is.
01:17:55 They gotta sober up, get out of that house,
01:17:57 get a bacon, egg and cheese and go, man,
01:17:58 we were fucking whacked.
01:18:00 We were high, dude.
01:18:02 I thought Nancy Pelosi was eating children for four years
01:18:05 and that Donald Trump was gonna put her in Guantanamo Bay.
01:18:08 Wow, that was, cause I mean, it’s interesting.
01:18:12 People had to do that after the sixties.
01:18:14 They were like, yeah, I just did a bunch of acid
01:18:15 and I lived in a ranch in Malibu
01:18:17 and fucked everyone I ever saw.
01:18:19 And they’re like, I thought that was the way
01:18:21 the world was gonna go and I followed some shaman guy,
01:18:25 some guru who just wanted to fuck me
01:18:26 and 10 other people that were living there.
01:18:28 And we did that for three years.
01:18:30 Apparently we never created the utopia
01:18:32 we thought we were gonna have.
01:18:33 And now I’m back working here at Allstate Insurance
01:18:37 and we have great policies and we’d love you
01:18:39 to come in the office so we can break them down for you.
01:18:42 It all ends folks, all the love, all the bullshit ends,
01:18:45 but it’s fun, they have so much fun.
01:18:47 QAnon was hard to get mad at because they were,
01:18:50 this was all they had.
01:18:53 Yeah, and they were quite good at it.
01:18:56 And they were good at it and it was a lot
01:18:59 of desperate people, but they were also rich idiots.
01:19:02 There’s also like dumb rich people
01:19:04 and those are like the saddest people in Q
01:19:08 cause it’s like they should,
01:19:09 they have the resources to do other things,
01:19:11 but they just love Q.
01:19:13 They’re like, I’m just into this.
01:19:14 And I’m like, you’re rich, go do something.
01:19:18 How in curious are you?
01:19:20 Go to the Amazon, go bird walk.
01:19:23 I don’t know, but they’re, you know, so.
01:19:25 Play golf.
01:19:25 It’s sad, but they’re like done now.
01:19:26 I mean, it’s over.
01:19:29 I see you think this is the.
01:19:31 I think everything’s ending.
01:19:31 My whole thing is that Trump’s out, QAnon’s over,
01:19:34 the quarantine is gonna end.
01:19:35 Everything’s gonna go back
01:19:37 to something that’s more recognizable.
01:19:40 I think that.
01:19:42 Are you optimistic about the 2021 and what.
01:19:44 To a degree in certain aspects, I have optimism.
01:19:48 And then I have, I have short term optimism
01:19:50 and longterm pessimism.
01:19:52 Meaning that I think in the short term,
01:19:54 things can get better.
01:19:55 I think longterm, because there’s so many forces
01:19:57 that are out of our control that are evolving
01:19:59 in ways I barely understand that are carving up society.
01:20:02 It’s gonna be very tough longterm
01:20:04 to be completely optimistic.
01:20:07 Like, Hey, it’s gonna be great.
01:20:08 It’s gonna be good forever.
01:20:09 But short term, I think, yeah, this quarantine will end.
01:20:12 Things will get better.
01:20:12 The economy will get a little better.
01:20:14 The constant Trump craziness will die down a little bit.
01:20:18 That’s my hope.
01:20:19 And people can go back to focusing on things that matter,
01:20:22 which is the things that are near you and close to you.
01:20:26 Yeah, the humans around you.
01:20:27 Humans around you, not Nancy Pelosi.
01:20:30 I have uncles that talk about Nancy Pelosi.
01:20:32 I’m like, you’ve never met her.
01:20:33 You’ll never meet her, shut up.
01:20:36 And I have a belief that this kind of local love
01:20:40 and kindness that you naturally can have
01:20:42 for human beings that you actually know
01:20:45 can be expanded at scale through the social networks
01:20:49 that we use, that we build.
01:20:52 Twitter is currently failing at that miserably.
01:20:54 That would be great.
01:20:55 But that’s…
01:20:56 If we were able to increase the love
01:20:58 through the social networks, that would be great.
01:21:00 It feels very hard to.
01:21:03 It’s a worthy challenge.
01:21:04 You’ve tweeted, one of the underreported reasons
01:21:08 conspiracy theories take hold
01:21:10 is because some of them are true.
01:21:13 What conspiracy theories do you believe
01:21:17 that are sort of important for people to think about,
01:21:22 would you say?
01:21:24 Kennedy was not killed by a lone gunman
01:21:27 with no connections to any other situation, government.
01:21:31 I believe that JFK was removed from office
01:21:34 by a group of people that had very different interests.
01:21:40 But…
01:21:41 This is the question of like deep state.
01:21:42 So these are powerful people that are able now
01:21:45 to dictate through basically the threat of violence
01:21:49 what the presidents,
01:21:51 the surface powerful people in our society.
01:21:53 Yeah, I mean, again, I’m not…
01:21:55 I want another investigation into 9 11,
01:21:58 not because I think that George Bush pressed a button
01:22:00 and made 9 11 happen,
01:22:01 but because we invaded the country of Iraq.
01:22:03 And then we, 15 out of 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.
01:22:09 There was tons of stuff in the 9 11 report
01:22:10 that didn’t make sense to anybody.
01:22:12 There’s tons of stuff about that day
01:22:14 that I feel like we just don’t know.
01:22:16 Yeah, that’s…
01:22:17 Sorry to interrupt.
01:22:18 That’s when I, my little aunt life
01:22:21 touched upon conspiracy theory world
01:22:23 and first learned about Alex Jones is when 9 11 happened.
01:22:27 It was very frustrating to me
01:22:30 how poorly the reporting and the transparency
01:22:33 around what exactly happened, who knew what,
01:22:35 all that kind of a basic information
01:22:37 that you would hope the government would release, reveal,
01:22:42 and use as like a lesson for how we prevent this.
01:22:45 Instead, it felt like a lot of stuff was being hidden
01:22:48 in order to manipulate some kind of machine
01:22:51 that leads us to war.
01:22:52 Yeah, that’s fair to say.
01:22:54 Yeah, I mean, I just don’t feel like
01:22:56 we’ve gotten the full story.
01:22:57 I don’t know what the full story is.
01:22:58 I can’t, I don’t know what it is,
01:23:00 but I don’t feel like we’ve gotten the full story.
01:23:02 Yeah, there are groups of powerful pedophiles, right?
01:23:06 Whether they’re in the Catholic church
01:23:07 or they’re in the government or wherever they are,
01:23:08 they are able to cover things up that they do.
01:23:11 They’re able to silence people that try to out them
01:23:13 in terms of like, you know, disrupt their operations.
01:23:16 That’s true.
01:23:16 QAnon has nuggets of truth.
01:23:18 It just went crazy.
01:23:20 Any conspiracy theory that involves the Knights Templar
01:23:23 and also Chrissy Teigen is probably wrong, you know?
01:23:27 What’s the Knights Templar?
01:23:28 Well, it was just this group of Knights back in the day.
01:23:32 You know, it’s that supposedly secret meetings.
01:23:34 And like in every conspiracy, they talk about like,
01:23:36 you know, if you go deep enough,
01:23:37 it’s like the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians,
01:23:40 you know, all of these secret groups throughout history,
01:23:43 the Illuminati, the…
01:23:45 Oh, and there’s a thread that connects all of this.
01:23:46 Oh yes, it connects it all to David Spade.
01:23:49 I mean, it’s a little much.
01:23:50 Well, how do you, if you’re David Spade,
01:23:52 defend yourself, by the way?
01:23:53 You ignore it because it’s hilarious.
01:23:54 And I know David Spade.
01:23:55 It’s like Hollywood’s kind of boring.
01:23:57 Yes, there are sex orgies.
01:23:58 I’m not invited.
01:23:59 I’m sure there’s shit going on.
01:24:00 Kids do get abused, women get abused.
01:24:02 I’ll invite you to one.
01:24:03 Please, we got the $75,000 dog and then we’ll get one.
01:24:08 But, you know, me and David Spade,
01:24:10 we go out to sushi restaurants, like,
01:24:12 and you sit there and you listen to people complain.
01:24:15 That’s what a lot of it is.
01:24:16 What a lot of Hollywood is is deeply sad tragedy
01:24:20 that people don’t understand that some of it is nefarious
01:24:23 and dark and there are problems
01:24:24 and there are real power brokers here.
01:24:26 It’s a dark town, 100%.
01:24:29 But the idea that everybody that lives here
01:24:31 is in some wide ranging vast conspiracy isn’t true.
01:24:34 It ignores how humdrum, boring, deeply sad
01:24:39 most people’s lives are in Hollywood.
01:24:41 And it ignores how sad fame is in general.
01:24:44 Fame’s a sad thing.
01:24:46 Not always, but a lot of times it’s a sad thing.
01:24:49 It’s fleeting, it’s ephemeral, it doesn’t last.
01:24:52 It separates you from other people.
01:24:55 It’s isolating.
01:24:57 It can be traumatic depending on what’s going on.
01:24:59 Obviously it’s better than the alternative.
01:25:01 If you’re trying to be famous,
01:25:03 it’s better to be famous than not famous, right?
01:25:05 I’ll say that.
01:25:06 But it’s a mixed bag to a degree.
01:25:09 There are things about it that aren’t great.
01:25:11 And Hollywood has a deep undercurrent of sadness
01:25:14 of people that have not realized their dreams
01:25:16 and people that have realized them.
01:25:18 Both of those people.
01:25:21 The people that win Olympic gold medals
01:25:23 can sometimes suffer from depression.
01:25:24 Correct.
01:25:25 They’ve lost.
01:25:26 Well, somebody said, and I forget who said it,
01:25:28 it’s a great quote, it’s not mine.
01:25:29 I think it’s from a book, or it might be from a TV show.
01:25:31 Sometimes I quote something and they’re like,
01:25:33 “‘That’s from like, Charlotte’s Web.”
01:25:35 I’m like, oh.
01:25:36 The two worst things are,
01:25:37 oh, I think it’s from the movie Limitless.
01:25:39 I’m like an idiot.
01:25:40 But anyway, thanks for having me on.
01:25:42 Tomorrow you’re gonna make some genius.
01:25:43 I will not publish this.
01:25:46 It’s from the movie, and I think he says,
01:25:48 “‘The two worst things in the world are not good.”
01:25:50 Oh, you know what’s not from Limitless?
01:25:52 I think it’s from the movie
01:25:55 where Nicolas Cage sold weapons.
01:25:58 It was called Lord of War.
01:25:59 It’s a little better than Limitless.
01:26:00 Anyway. That’s a good movie.
01:26:01 It’s a great movie.
01:26:02 He said, the two worst things in the world
01:26:03 are not getting what you want and getting it.
01:26:06 So the undercurrents of sadness
01:26:07 that run through Hollywood are,
01:26:09 there are two rivers that converge,
01:26:10 and there are people that just never had it,
01:26:12 and people that have it and go, now what?
01:26:14 And so it’s a sad place, a tragic place.
01:26:16 And there’s a lot of, it’s boring.
01:26:17 That’s what people don’t realize is like,
01:26:19 it’s actually kind of boring.
01:26:20 Well, life is kind of boring.
01:26:21 Life is kind of boring.
01:26:22 But there’s also like, you know,
01:26:24 so I think QAnon’s this way to make a lot of it seem like
01:26:26 it’s super exciting.
01:26:28 And listen, I don’t want to diminish the experiences
01:26:30 of people who’ve been abused here,
01:26:31 because there is a lot of horror here.
01:26:33 But the whole QAnon thing was like,
01:26:34 everybody in everything is doing, and that’s not true.
01:26:38 Well, see, just to linger on that a little bit is,
01:26:41 Bill Gates, the conspiracy theories around Bill Gates
01:26:45 bother me because, this is me, dumb, naive Lex,
01:26:50 thinks that Bill Gates did a lot of good for this world.
01:26:53 Sure.
01:26:54 First, by creating a company
01:26:56 that empowered personal computers.
01:26:58 And second, by donating a ton of money
01:27:01 for like treating malaria in Africa
01:27:04 and all those kinds of things.
01:27:06 And there’s these huge amounts of conspiracies, I think,
01:27:10 based on like just replies to whenever
01:27:14 Bill Gates does anything.
01:27:15 Like, to me, the top replies should be about
01:27:19 how inspiring that guy is, to donate so much money.
01:27:22 And so sorry to, the thing I’m struggling with is,
01:27:27 if I’m Bill Gates, like, how do you behave differently?
01:27:32 How do you show people that you’re, if you’re not,
01:27:34 I don’t know, doing creepy stuff
01:27:36 that they’re saying he’s doing?
01:27:38 Well, I think part of it is that
01:27:39 he’s done some really good stuff, right?
01:27:42 He’s an innovative guy, he’s on the vanguard
01:27:43 of a lot of things, but he’s also the antichrist.
01:27:47 And I think that that is, you know,
01:27:49 they’re not mutually exclusive.
01:27:51 He is the prince of darkness, as well as some, no.
01:27:54 Here’s my deal with Bill Gates.
01:27:55 He’s a Batman villain billionaire,
01:27:57 meaning that he’s not a villain,
01:27:58 but he’s got all this money, right?
01:27:59 Here’s the thing, and I love Musk and all these guys,
01:28:01 I know you love these guys.
01:28:02 Listen, when you have the kind of money that these guys have
01:28:04 and you have the vision that they have,
01:28:06 and they want society to look a certain way,
01:28:08 and a lot of them are doing great things,
01:28:10 people, they need to get better at the pushback.
01:28:13 They need to get a little better.
01:28:14 When somebody says, hey man, what’s going on over there?
01:28:16 Bill Gates needs to be a little better at going,
01:28:18 here’s what, because, you know, Bill Gates has the money.
01:28:23 You know, I think once he wanted to shoot a missile
01:28:26 of dust at the atmosphere to help global warming,
01:28:28 and a lot of scientists were like,
01:28:29 hey man, that might not be the way to do it.
01:28:31 But no one in history, like so few people in history
01:28:33 have had the resources to even have that thought,
01:28:35 that if you have the resources to have that thought,
01:28:37 and you have designs on the way you want society to look,
01:28:39 whether it’s public health policy or vaccinations,
01:28:41 whatever, you have to get a little better
01:28:44 at dealing with legitimate critiques.
01:28:46 And obviously you’re not defending yourself
01:28:48 against people that say you’re the Antichrist,
01:28:49 but like, you need to get a little better.
01:28:51 And I feel like Bill Gates and some of those people
01:28:53 at that level are like, ugh, PR is kind of like, you know.
01:28:57 They’re terrible at it.
01:28:58 They’re terrible at it.
01:28:59 They’re terrible at it.
01:29:00 Him and Zuckerberg are really bad at it.
01:29:01 Zuckerberg’s horrible at it.
01:29:02 He seems especially bad at public.
01:29:08 Yeah, and it makes me feel so bad
01:29:10 because the problem with being a billionaire
01:29:13 is you lose touch with reality if you’re not careful.
01:29:16 I think Elon is good at, at least so far,
01:29:20 maintaining touch with reality.
01:29:22 No, if you look at the name of his child,
01:29:24 you can clearly see.
01:29:25 Listen, I do like him,
01:29:27 and I do think what he’s done with Tesla,
01:29:29 you know, my producer has a Tesla,
01:29:30 and he never shuts up about it.
01:29:31 Most people that have Teslas never shut up about them,
01:29:34 and they think they’re part of the development team
01:29:36 at SpaceX, and I like that he’s created a world
01:29:39 where people can get excited about a $37,000 car
01:29:43 and never shut the fuck up about it
01:29:44 to the point where I have to threaten people
01:29:46 with physical violence to get them to stop telling me
01:29:49 about that their car drives itself.
01:29:50 Oh, you should get a Tesla.
01:29:51 Maybe have a few less drinks and a few fewer Vicodin,
01:29:54 and you can drive yourself.
01:29:55 Have you thought about getting a Tesla?
01:29:57 I’ve never thought about it.
01:29:57 You should get a Tesla.
01:29:58 I don’t like them, they’re minimalist.
01:29:59 I don’t like, I want more.
01:30:02 I want more.
01:30:03 Get the Cybertruck.
01:30:04 I want a Cybertruck.
01:30:04 I’m just being a, trolling you by being a salesman.
01:30:07 My producer wants a Cybertruck.
01:30:09 I want a stagecoach.
01:30:10 Old school, stagecoach, horse thief shit.
01:30:15 It’s going back to that.
01:30:16 I live in an area with a lot of horses.
01:30:18 It’s going back to like whipping a horse.
01:30:20 I want an animal to shriek while I go by.
01:30:22 You want more suffering in the world, not less.
01:30:27 Oh, I think we need it.
01:30:28 Okay, but I just don’t like that billionaire is a bad word.
01:30:33 And it’s not necessarily,
01:30:35 not every billionaire is a pedophile.
01:30:37 I know, but the problem is a lot of like,
01:30:39 it’s just, you know, Epstein was very smart
01:30:41 at like just getting people at that house
01:30:43 and taking photos of them.
01:30:44 Nobody knew what they were doing,
01:30:46 but it’s like, it was one of those things where it’s like,
01:30:47 Epstein was the most social guy ever.
01:30:49 Like every photo he’s like, hey,
01:30:51 and it’s like everyone that’s ever done anything
01:30:54 in the world has been at that fucking island.
01:30:57 Every human being is like in a photo.
01:30:59 It’s just weird, like I’m in,
01:31:00 like it’s funny me and my friends get together.
01:31:02 We don’t ever take photos, right?
01:31:04 Like last night, a few people,
01:31:05 it was my birthday yesterday, I’m 17.
01:31:07 And my friends came over and we’re just eating dinner, right?
01:31:11 And we had a fun night,
01:31:12 and just four people that are over, nobody, right?
01:31:14 Nobody ever thought like, let’s, hey, I wanna remember it.
01:31:18 Let’s take photos, I’m 36, woo!
01:31:21 But everything Epstein did,
01:31:23 there’s just photos of everybody, it’s interesting.
01:31:26 Do you think Jeffrey Epstein killed himself?
01:31:29 No, I think he was killed by that guy,
01:31:32 that guy that they put in his cell, that lunatic,
01:31:37 who was that big muscled guy.
01:31:38 I think he was just, he did it for money,
01:31:40 kept his mouth shut.
01:31:41 That’s it.
01:31:42 Money from whom do you think?
01:31:43 Mossad, MI6, CIA, all three.
01:31:47 So there’s a lot of pressure
01:31:48 from a lot of different powerful people.
01:31:49 Probably Mossad, CIA more.
01:31:52 I mean, it seems very clear that he was working
01:31:55 inside of a honeypot intelligence operation.
01:31:57 Ghislaine Maxwell’s father was an Israeli super spy.
01:32:01 Ghislaine Maxwell’s working for Israeli intelligence.
01:32:03 It would be odd to think,
01:32:04 and of course the CIA knows about everything
01:32:06 that Israeli intelligence is doing with Americans.
01:32:08 So I would think that it’s a very cozy relationship
01:32:12 with those two intelligence agencies.
01:32:13 And I think if you ran it by anyone,
01:32:15 I think if you ran it by French intelligence,
01:32:17 they’d go, yeah, no, get him.
01:32:19 I don’t think there was any intelligence service
01:32:21 in the world whose job is to protect the powerful people
01:32:23 that live in their countries
01:32:24 that was against him getting whacked.
01:32:27 But do you think it’s possible that he’s just an evil person
01:32:30 who is after manipulating people and also was a pedophile?
01:32:33 So that there’s a bigger thing.
01:32:36 It’s not factual that there’s a bigger thing.
01:32:37 Evil people don’t get handed.
01:32:39 Those are your facts, Tim Dillon.
01:32:40 No, there’s the facts of the case.
01:32:42 You don’t get handed a 65.
01:32:44 Show me another evil guy
01:32:45 who was handed a $65 million place by Les Wexner.
01:32:50 Show me another evil guy
01:32:51 that got that type of a handshake deal
01:32:55 where he was basically let off without anything
01:32:58 after a judge had made a very sweetheart deal for him
01:33:02 after he was accused of molesting a 14 year old.
01:33:06 Show me another evil guy
01:33:07 that doesn’t have that kind of backing
01:33:10 that has those types of friends, those connections,
01:33:12 those types of properties.
01:33:13 Show me multiple passports all over the world.
01:33:16 So show me a guy without anyone backing him that’s doing it.
01:33:20 Why did they, so you think he’s just an evil guy
01:33:23 who is doing this for whom is his own just shits and giggles.
01:33:26 He’s just getting off on it.
01:33:28 Human nature, yeah.
01:33:29 Human nature, huh?
01:33:30 It’s human nature.
01:33:31 $70 million limestone mansion.
01:33:33 I’m being visibly mocked.
01:33:34 Yeah, is it human nature?
01:33:36 And it’s like poetry.
01:33:37 I don’t think it’s human nature.
01:33:38 I think they manipulated human nature,
01:33:41 but I think they did it.
01:33:43 I think JustLane,
01:33:44 I think Epstein was really just a functionary
01:33:46 and I think JustLane was kind of a pimp
01:33:48 and Epstein was kind of a guy that made the money okay
01:33:52 and hid money and things like that
01:33:54 and worked for a lot of powerful people.
01:33:56 I don’t believe in lone pedophiles anymore.
01:34:00 I don’t even believe that.
01:34:01 If you’re a pedophile, you’re like in a group.
01:34:03 You know what I mean?
01:34:07 Well, I’m not even going there,
01:34:09 but staying on JustLane,
01:34:11 so you believe there’s some power in her.
01:34:13 What do you think happens to her now?
01:34:15 Like what are the differences?
01:34:16 Great question.
01:34:17 I mean, I don’t know what’ll happen to her,
01:34:19 but I imagine she’ll get some type of deal,
01:34:22 closed door thing years from now
01:34:24 when people don’t really care about the case
01:34:26 and she’ll serve some time in a very lax thing
01:34:30 or she’ll be killed.
01:34:31 I mean, again, it’s like if she was doing
01:34:33 what she was doing, which is I believe a fact
01:34:36 that she was compromising powerful people
01:34:38 so that they could be blackmailed
01:34:40 by the intelligence services of the US and Israel,
01:34:47 probably, I don’t see how she wasn’t doing that.
01:34:51 Someone’s black, someone’s using the photos
01:34:53 and the tapes, right?
01:34:55 Someone’s using that against these people.
01:34:57 Someone wants to control these people.
01:34:59 Well, who and why?
01:35:00 That’s the real question.
01:35:02 And I think the real question is you wanna exert control
01:35:05 over congressmen and senators and presidents
01:35:09 because they have the power to make decisions
01:35:11 to affect the, but the CIA just works
01:35:13 for a lot of very wealthy people.
01:35:15 That’s what the CIA, so how the CIA started, right?
01:35:18 It was lawyers, bankers.
01:35:19 They’re protecting financial interests
01:35:22 of multinational corporations all over the world,
01:35:25 overthrowing democratically elected governments,
01:35:27 going in and doing subterfuge campaigns,
01:35:29 encouraging terror.
01:35:30 They were doing all kinds of crazy stuff.
01:35:31 I don’t see why that would change.
01:35:33 I think that’s who they still represent.
01:35:34 And I think those people want certain policies
01:35:38 and certain people pushed forward.
01:35:40 And I think those people are controlled.
01:35:42 And I think one of the ways to control people
01:35:44 is their sexual problems.
01:35:46 And that’s the way they did it.
01:35:49 I wish there was a way to,
01:35:51 because everything you just said now is.
01:35:54 It makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?
01:35:56 I’m being indoctrinated on air.
01:35:59 No.
01:36:00 You think there’s just a,
01:36:01 Jeff Ramsey is just a fun, random guy
01:36:03 who just wanted to make home movies of presidents?
01:36:08 Well, you think I’m just some random guy.
01:36:09 I’m just trying to sell myself as somebody
01:36:11 who’s friendly with the American audience.
01:36:14 I believe you are backed by people
01:36:16 that want people to be more comfortable with robot dogs.
01:36:20 I believe that.
01:36:21 I believe you’re pushed to be the happy face of AI.
01:36:23 Which is why I will edit this part.
01:36:24 They shouldn’t pick the happier face.
01:36:26 Wow.
01:36:28 No editing.
01:36:28 Joe Rogan’s rule, no editing.
01:36:30 This is live.
01:36:31 No, I mean, I wish there was a way to,
01:36:33 for some of the conspiracy theories,
01:36:35 to prove that that’s not the case.
01:36:37 Like what the CIA is.
01:36:39 There is some possibility in my mind
01:36:42 that institutions like the CIA
01:36:45 and different kinds of organizations
01:36:47 are driven less by organized malevolence
01:36:52 and more by just incompetence.
01:36:54 Just bureaucracy, being incompetent.
01:36:56 I think that argument gets less and less persuasive
01:37:00 when you look at all the things they’ve been able to do.
01:37:03 It’s very certain, just like you said,
01:37:06 that there’s a bunch of them that have done,
01:37:08 because there’s some conspiracy theories
01:37:11 that are dramatic and true.
01:37:14 The question is, I wish there was a way to prove
01:37:17 that some of them are not.
01:37:19 And it’s very difficult,
01:37:20 because so much is shrouded in mystery.
01:37:22 Like one of the things I’m bothered by
01:37:24 is when people accuse other athletes
01:37:26 of using steroids, for example.
01:37:28 And it’s just, yes, a lot of people use steroids,
01:37:31 but it sucks that people just don’t believe you.
01:37:35 There’s some incredible athletes that look shredded,
01:37:37 that look just incredible performers,
01:37:40 and everybody just says that they’re on steroids.
01:37:43 They kind of assume.
01:37:44 Yeah, I mean, and people accuse me all the time
01:37:47 of being on performance enhancing drugs and steroids.
01:37:50 And it is hard, but what I remind them is,
01:37:53 it’s what my appearance is a result of dedication.
01:37:58 But no, it’s hard work, diet, exercise, dedication.
01:38:02 Are you on keto?
01:38:04 I’m on, I’m on keto.
01:38:05 I’m doing a version of, you’re keto, right?
01:38:07 Yeah.
01:38:08 So I’m doing a version of keto right now with Brad.
01:38:11 And it’s, do you see what I mean?
01:38:13 You carb up in order to be able.
01:38:15 So it’s keto with sugar.
01:38:16 It’s called keto plus sugar.
01:38:18 And it’s a good diet for,
01:38:21 I grew up in the 90s when nobody ever lost weight sadly,
01:38:23 because every diet was like,
01:38:25 you can eat what you want, just be accountable.
01:38:28 No one even knew what that meant.
01:38:30 So it would be like my mother being like,
01:38:31 if you have chocolate chip pancakes, have a glass of water.
01:38:35 Just take a walk around the block.
01:38:37 You can go to McDonald’s three times a day.
01:38:40 Just walk around the block.
01:38:41 It’s what my parents used to say.
01:38:42 My mother would be like, just walk around the block.
01:38:44 You’re fine.
01:38:46 Gonna have a cigarette?
01:38:47 Walk 20 steps, walk 20 steps back.
01:38:50 It’s exercise.
01:38:51 So, you know, there’s too many conspiracies out there.
01:38:54 A lot of them aren’t true.
01:38:55 A lot of them are bitter, angry people
01:38:56 trying to justify their own impotence,
01:38:59 not being able to do anything in life.
01:39:01 And they’re like the people
01:39:02 that have done something in life, they’re all nefarious.
01:39:04 It’s all, the car just attacked against me.
01:39:05 That’s 100% true, 100%.
01:39:08 It attracts usually people
01:39:11 that have not figured out a way to succeed
01:39:14 or haven’t succeeded on the level that they want to.
01:39:17 But that also being true,
01:39:21 there is a fair amount of fuckery going on and provable.
01:39:25 And, you know, we just have to, I think, separate,
01:39:30 know that these things are often inflated or not true,
01:39:34 but know that sometimes they are true.
01:39:36 Otherwise it wouldn’t exist.
01:39:37 If there was no, if there was nothing to JFK,
01:39:41 there was nothing to 9 11,
01:39:42 if people felt like they were being dealt with honestly,
01:39:46 this wouldn’t exist.
01:39:47 I mean, this exists because there are real questions
01:39:50 that people have that don’t get answered for whatever reason.
01:39:53 And then the vacuum of the refusal to answer those questions,
01:39:57 that information vacuum is filled with people
01:40:00 like Alex Jones, who are curious
01:40:02 and sometimes they’re right
01:40:03 and sometimes they’re horribly wrong.
01:40:05 And sometimes they’re all over the place.
01:40:07 And they’re good storytellers and people love stories.
01:40:09 And then when there’s an absence of actual.
01:40:11 Alex is a uniquely American person,
01:40:13 like a very interesting, I don’t know how many countries,
01:40:15 like how many people make a living as a conspiracy theorist,
01:40:18 a good living in other countries, right?
01:40:20 It’s very rare, right?
01:40:21 I mean, it’s very interesting.
01:40:22 And he became like, I know people that knew him
01:40:24 when he was a kid,
01:40:25 because I’d go to Austin and perform a lot.
01:40:27 And he was a guy that would take a bullhorn and yell at cops
01:40:29 because he thought DEI checkpoints were unconstitutional.
01:40:32 That’s what he was doing in college.
01:40:33 And he’s just went through, he was hated by the right.
01:40:35 He was hated by the Bush people.
01:40:37 He was hated by them.
01:40:38 And he went from being this guy
01:40:41 that was considered like a leftist even,
01:40:44 like even though he was never a leftist,
01:40:45 he was considered this like enemy
01:40:48 of mainstream conservatism.
01:40:50 Like he was not considered a guy that wasn’t a patriot,
01:40:53 wasn’t this, wasn’t that.
01:40:55 And he just, wow, like he whines and whines
01:40:58 and ends up just being this confidant
01:41:01 of a Republican president,
01:41:02 very divisive Republican president.
01:41:04 And he becomes this populist and everything like that.
01:41:06 It’s really wild to watch that.
01:41:08 But I mean, I do think he should retire eventually
01:41:10 just so we could get some, I don’t know,
01:41:12 it seems like it’s a lot to keep doing.
01:41:14 Well, I hope this world allows for Alex Jones
01:41:17 to continue having a voice because just like you said,
01:41:20 he’s a, use the word fun,
01:41:24 but really he shakes up the norms of our discourse.
01:41:28 I do too.
01:41:29 I do think we need to put more value.
01:41:30 I think entertainment, we do need to say
01:41:33 that like there are people that should be allowed
01:41:35 to have a voice for entertainment purposes.
01:41:37 Right.
01:41:38 And that’s part of what Donald Trump,
01:41:40 now that he’s not the president,
01:41:42 come on, let the guy, let him talk.
01:41:46 Who do you think is the best comedian of all time?
01:41:49 Oh, that’s a great question.
01:41:50 Greatest of all time.
01:41:53 You mentioned Carlin, your uncle’s liking Carlin.
01:41:58 Well, Carlin is great.
01:42:00 Carlin is really hard to argue with,
01:42:04 but Chappelle is also really great.
01:42:08 Louis C.K. is really great.
01:42:11 I don’t know that there’s what Joan Rivers is great.
01:42:15 I don’t know.
01:42:15 You smile at that.
01:42:16 Well, she’s a beast of a comic.
01:42:18 I’m not aware of her standup actually.
01:42:19 She’s a beast of a comic.
01:42:20 Ask Rogue and ask any of them.
01:42:23 Kennison’s great.
01:42:24 So what makes a great comic do you think
01:42:26 in the history of comedy?
01:42:29 Just like that.
01:42:29 Said something at the moment in a way,
01:42:33 found a way to communicate with people
01:42:35 in the funniest possible way at that moment
01:42:38 and illustrated larger truths about life in what they did.
01:42:44 And I think that guys like Louis and Chappelle
01:42:46 and Pryor and Kennison and Hicks,
01:42:50 people like Joan Rivers have done that.
01:42:53 And even modern people,
01:42:55 people like Maria Bamford’s an amazing comedian.
01:42:57 It’s just a different style of comedy per se,
01:43:00 but she’s an amazing comedian.
01:43:03 Cat Williams is an amazing comedian.
01:43:05 He really is.
01:43:06 Does he have any, was he the one of the things
01:43:09 you kind of mentioned, the communities you mentioned,
01:43:11 they were kind of fearless in saying
01:43:12 the difficult things that needs to be said.
01:43:15 Cat Williams is more, I don’t remember his comedy,
01:43:17 but I think it’s just more wild out there.
01:43:20 Well, to an extent that you can watch it.
01:43:21 He’s got stuff.
01:43:22 He talks about stuff.
01:43:23 He talks about race brilliantly.
01:43:24 He talks about America brilliantly.
01:43:26 No, I think there’s a lot of stuff there.
01:43:28 Of course, Chris Rock.
01:43:29 Of Chris Rock, of course.
01:43:30 It’s so hard.
01:43:31 You can’t really pick one.
01:43:32 You just gotta, there’s a class of people
01:43:35 that throughout this history of this business,
01:43:36 which is not that long of a history.
01:43:38 It’s pretty much within the last century,
01:43:41 that have been really influential.
01:43:44 Sometimes it’s style, the way they deliver things.
01:43:47 Sometimes it’s substance of how they, what they’re saying,
01:43:50 or sometimes it’s just a style of what they’re saying.
01:43:52 And we’re only talking about standup comedians, right?
01:43:55 So there’s a million great comedians.
01:43:56 If we’re gonna talk about Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler
01:43:59 and Chris Farley, these are brilliant.
01:44:01 And those guys are bigger influences on comedy,
01:44:03 I think, than standups, really, truly.
01:44:06 So there’s so many brilliant people in the business.
01:44:09 Who was, for you, influential, just early on?
01:44:12 Hicks was influential, because I’d watch Bill Hicks,
01:44:14 and I’d be like, this guy’s saying crazy shit on stage,
01:44:17 and this is the only way he can get away with it,
01:44:18 is because it’s so funny.
01:44:20 And he was calling out the military industrial complex,
01:44:23 and he was talking about the first Gulf War.
01:44:25 I remember he said a joke that I heard.
01:44:27 It made me sit up straight, and he goes,
01:44:29 he was in Canada, and he said, we had a war in the States.
01:44:31 He was talking about the first Gulf War.
01:44:33 And he said, I was in the unenviable position
01:44:35 of being for the war, but against the troops.
01:44:38 And to me, I love that joke.
01:44:40 It was so funny to me, and I was like,
01:44:41 oh, you can’t get away with that anywhere
01:44:44 other than standing on a stage.
01:44:46 You couldn’t ever say that in an office, really.
01:44:48 And this was before, like, it was like PC,
01:44:50 and they said, the other thing,
01:44:51 I always knew that comedians had to say shit
01:44:55 and have it be funny enough
01:44:56 that you couldn’t get away with it in polite society.
01:44:58 That was the whole point.
01:44:59 That was why it was a dark theater or a dark nightclub.
01:45:02 That’s when people had a few drinks.
01:45:03 That’s what the art form was, and that’s why.
01:45:06 So a guy like that was influential
01:45:08 because I started watching him.
01:45:09 And then, of course, I loved SNL when I was a kid,
01:45:12 and I would watch Chris Farley,
01:45:13 and I would watch people like even John Belushi
01:45:17 going back in the day, but I’d watch Adam Sandler
01:45:19 and Will Ferrell and all these guys.
01:45:20 I mean, there’s so many funny people,
01:45:23 but Bill Hicks was kind of funny.
01:45:24 And then Patrice O Neill was probably my favorite comedian
01:45:27 who’s made me laugh more than anybody else.
01:45:29 So I think it was you, actually,
01:45:32 that maybe on your podcast,
01:45:34 we’re talking about Patrice O Neill
01:45:36 and that he was actually vicious to others.
01:45:40 I think he was a little mean to other people,
01:45:42 but he was very good to people that he liked, I guess.
01:45:44 I think he was like not, I mean, he wasn’t,
01:45:46 and I’ve never met him.
01:45:47 I have no inside info, but from what I’ve heard,
01:45:49 he was like no nonsense guy, right?
01:45:51 He just said what he wanted to say.
01:45:53 But I think in terms of comedians,
01:45:55 I don’t know of anyone funnier than Patrice O Neill
01:45:58 who said, in modern times,
01:46:01 that said more about our society than him.
01:46:03 I mean, he was just a brilliantly funny guy.
01:46:05 On the radio, he was funny.
01:46:06 On his specials, he was funny.
01:46:08 Everywhere, he was funny.
01:46:10 And there’s something else to be said
01:46:11 about the whole medium of comedians doing podcasts.
01:46:15 Because it unlocks a weird, special, new thing
01:46:19 that changed everything.
01:46:20 I mean, Rogan started with that.
01:46:22 You’re doing that.
01:46:25 I think that’s a whole nother form
01:46:27 of like standups, the ones that have a lot to say.
01:46:31 Almost like we get to witness the process
01:46:36 of the creation of the jokes in a way, or the mind.
01:46:39 The sort of the evolution of the mind behind the jokes.
01:46:43 It’s just.
01:46:45 Comedians relate to social media.
01:46:47 Comedians, comedy’s, it’s a performance based medium.
01:46:52 So it’s about getting up and doing it,
01:46:53 getting up in a club, getting up in a theater,
01:46:55 getting up in a bar, getting up wherever you can get up.
01:46:58 And comedy for years was about performance.
01:47:03 And then on the higher end,
01:47:04 it was about movies and TV shows.
01:47:06 But we were very slow to get on YouTube.
01:47:09 We’re very slow to adapt to technology.
01:47:11 We’re very slow to monetize anything we did on the internet.
01:47:16 So podcasting was a way for comics and funny people
01:47:19 to kind of get into that space, start earning money.
01:47:23 And now because of the pandemic,
01:47:25 it’s really become essential.
01:47:27 And it helps you, and even without the pandemic,
01:47:29 it was how you were building a fan base.
01:47:32 And that’s like, but comics were very reticent
01:47:35 to embrace social media at all
01:47:36 because they thought it was cheap and they didn’t like it.
01:47:39 And they thought the people on it were idiots
01:47:41 and were unfunny and it was just a blatant,
01:47:43 whatever it was, whether it was a money grab
01:47:45 or it was just too commercial in a sense
01:47:48 where they’re like, hey, look at me.
01:47:49 Like it was just goofy, right?
01:47:51 And then comics, I think got displaced
01:47:56 because all the YouTubers came in
01:47:58 and all the social media stars came in
01:48:00 and they really knocked comics off
01:48:03 because now people are much more,
01:48:04 like if you ask anyone under 30
01:48:06 who their favorite comedian is, they say David Dobrik.
01:48:08 And there’s nothing wrong with that.
01:48:09 David’s a funny guy, but like what you,
01:48:15 not especially to me a ton, but that’s okay.
01:48:17 I don’t, but he makes people laugh, so he’s funny.
01:48:21 But he’s what people, that’s a comedian now.
01:48:24 So comics got beat by other people coming
01:48:28 into a digital space before they did laying the groundwork
01:48:33 and taking it over.
01:48:34 And now comics are just trying to stay alive.
01:48:38 Like even my podcast, which is people really like it,
01:48:41 thank God, and I love doing it.
01:48:43 The Tim Dillon Show.
01:48:44 Well, thank you.
01:48:45 I was late, you know, I mean, I was, I just, you know,
01:48:50 I’ve been podcasting for a long time,
01:48:52 but really dedicating myself
01:48:53 and putting the resources behind it, I was late to it.
01:48:55 Like, I was like, hey, I’m telling jokes on stage,
01:48:58 which is great, but I should have been allocating more time
01:49:00 to building an infrastructure online.
01:49:02 And I wasn’t doing it and a lot of comics weren’t doing it.
01:49:04 Funny comics weren’t doing it.
01:49:06 Comics should be doing it.
01:49:08 And I think when the pandemic ends,
01:49:09 a lot of comics will just keep doing live standup,
01:49:12 but I will keep, obviously I’m gonna go back on the road
01:49:14 and do live standup, but I will keep doing this podcast
01:49:16 and building digitally too.
01:49:17 But you’re also exploring ideas.
01:49:19 You’re doing like short videos and so on.
01:49:21 You’re trying to look for different mediums of how to be funny.
01:49:26 I wanna be funny everywhere.
01:49:27 I wanna be funny everywhere.
01:49:28 I love making things too.
01:49:29 My producer, Ben Avery, is like a brilliant editor
01:49:33 and comedic mind, even though he’s not a standup.
01:49:36 He’s able to, he understands funny,
01:49:38 he understands what makes me funny.
01:49:39 We’re able to make these really, I mean,
01:49:41 some of those videos, they’re just brilliant little videos,
01:49:44 even though they’re tiny little videos,
01:49:45 they’re fucking as funny as anything.
01:49:47 And it’s not me.
01:49:48 It’s me working with somebody else
01:49:50 to make something really great.
01:49:52 And it’s that relationship that’s very important.
01:49:56 In some sense, the medium of a short video is a challenge,
01:50:00 just like the medium of a short tweet.
01:50:02 Of course.
01:50:03 How to say something.
01:50:04 I mean, whatever the flavor is of what’s in your heart,
01:50:08 what’s in your mind, how to say it,
01:50:10 whether it’s the goal is funny or something,
01:50:13 or just an expressing idea.
01:50:15 I think the whole thing that’s important to us
01:50:18 is that it’s an extension of,
01:50:20 really like an extension of your friendship in a way.
01:50:22 Like, are you guys laughing at it?
01:50:24 Are you guys making each other laugh about this idea?
01:50:27 And if that’s the case,
01:50:29 other people are going to laugh at it.
01:50:31 I think so much of the old medium was like,
01:50:34 everything was top down.
01:50:35 Okay, pitch me this idea.
01:50:37 I pitch it to the showrunner.
01:50:38 They pitch it to the network.
01:50:39 They pitch it to this, to that, to that.
01:50:42 Standards and practices, sales,
01:50:43 and we got to go through everything.
01:50:45 Now it’s just like, are me and a few buddies
01:50:48 or even just one buddy laughing at this idea?
01:50:51 Does it captivate us?
01:50:52 And do we see it visually?
01:50:55 And also a great line from Roseanne,
01:50:58 a guy, not Roseanne, but a guy that worked on Roseanne,
01:51:01 the old Roseanne, the great one.
01:51:03 He said, is it funny with the sound off?
01:51:06 Right.
01:51:07 That’s what we try to do.
01:51:08 That’s brilliant.
01:51:09 Is it funny with the sound off?
01:51:10 When you see me in the dumb things,
01:51:11 or me in the Meghan McCain, or me in the thing,
01:51:15 is it funny with the sound off?
01:51:15 And if it’s funny with the sound off,
01:51:17 you have a good starting point.
01:51:18 That’s hilarious, because you,
01:51:20 I would say you’re one of the people,
01:51:22 because most people are not funny with the sound off,
01:51:25 most comedians.
01:51:26 Like you, Will Ferrell’s another example of that.
01:51:28 There’s something about when I click on one of your videos,
01:51:32 it’s funny, just like the first thing I see, just your face.
01:51:36 We, well, thank you.
01:51:37 That’s very sweet.
01:51:38 But I mean, thank God.
01:51:40 I mean, that’s what we try to do, right?
01:51:41 We’re trying to be funny.
01:51:42 Yeah.
01:51:43 So we’re trying to be funny.
01:51:45 Can we talk about love a little bit?
01:51:46 Sure.
01:51:48 So you came out of the closet as being gay
01:51:52 when you were 25.
01:51:53 Yeah, it was late, very late.
01:51:55 Very late.
01:51:56 Before then.
01:51:57 By today’s standards.
01:51:58 During and after, how has your view on love evolved?
01:52:04 Interesting.
01:52:05 It’s so hard to say, because like I would,
01:52:08 I’d like to make a very like Disneyfied statement
01:52:12 about like that you can’t be in love secretively.
01:52:15 You should be honest.
01:52:16 Love should all be about honesty, but that’s not true.
01:52:18 Right?
01:52:19 There’s people that are in love
01:52:21 that are lying to everyone else,
01:52:23 but they’re deeply in love.
01:52:24 Yeah.
01:52:25 I would love to say something like,
01:52:27 honesty is an ingredient for love, you know?
01:52:30 But I don’t know, maybe honesty with each other.
01:52:33 But I mean, I think there’s a lot of people in the world
01:52:35 that aren’t honest.
01:52:36 My view on love is super important.
01:52:39 I think that it’s, a lot of society in America
01:52:43 is all about love.
01:52:44 We don’t tend to focus on other things
01:52:49 in terms of like, you know, friendship
01:52:51 or sustainability of that.
01:52:54 Cause I think that a lot,
01:52:55 I know a lot of people in relationships where it’s like,
01:52:58 I don’t know, they’re not, they are, they love each other,
01:53:01 but like, it’s also a rock solid couple
01:53:03 because they are, they’re very compatible
01:53:07 in many other ways.
01:53:09 Right.
01:53:09 So I think that like,
01:53:10 They’re friends.
01:53:11 They have, right.
01:53:12 I see friendship and love as the same thing.
01:53:13 There’s just parts of it that are, right?
01:53:15 So it’s like, I look at it as like,
01:53:18 there is, there needs to be more than just like that,
01:53:21 like amazing, like chemistry or physical attraction
01:53:25 that is this chemical thing that happens.
01:53:28 There should be like some underlying,
01:53:30 I mean, again, that’s from what I,
01:53:32 that’s what I’ve observed as really long lasting,
01:53:36 successful relationships.
01:53:37 Well, is there something about coming out that,
01:53:42 that was, that you took away,
01:53:45 that you remember as profound,
01:53:47 Yes.
01:53:48 That it was my, that I, it wasn’t society, it was me.
01:53:52 So there were kids that were out in my high school
01:53:55 that I waited years later to do it.
01:53:58 That was no one’s fault but my own.
01:54:00 So I was taking a cowardly way out
01:54:02 and a lot of people.
01:54:03 So I could blame society or like,
01:54:06 oh, I lived in a conservative area
01:54:07 and I grew up in that.
01:54:09 You should take responsibility for your own decisions.
01:54:11 And if you’re being cowardly,
01:54:12 admit that you’re being cowardly.
01:54:14 So that’s what I took out of it is that
01:54:16 it’s not society’s fault that you chose to be a coward.
01:54:19 Society will never be perfect.
01:54:21 You have to be honest when you’re ready to be honest
01:54:23 or however you want to be honest,
01:54:25 but it’s not somebody, too much now
01:54:26 is it’s everyone else’s fault that you didn’t take,
01:54:29 make a hard choice or a hard decision.
01:54:31 So that’s kind of what I took out of it.
01:54:33 So now in retrospect, you see yourself as,
01:54:36 were being afraid.
01:54:38 Do you think at the time?
01:54:40 Well, I wanted people to like me,
01:54:42 which is the disease of humanity, right?
01:54:45 Is that we want to be liked.
01:54:46 And what happens is if you want people to like you
01:54:48 and love you even,
01:54:49 you want people to feel comfortable with you.
01:54:52 And those were people like your family?
01:54:53 Friends more.
01:54:55 My family I would always,
01:54:56 could always throw in the street,
01:54:57 but I’m kidding.
01:54:59 I mean, but I am not,
01:55:01 but my friends, my circle of friends,
01:55:03 which I were my family at the time when you’re a senior,
01:55:06 when you’re 10th, 11th grade in high school,
01:55:08 your friends are your family.
01:55:09 You know what I mean?
01:55:10 Like that’s your,
01:55:11 so you don’t want to do anything
01:55:12 that puts you on the outside of the circle.
01:55:15 It’s just thinking back to that fear.
01:55:16 Is there things you’re afraid of now?
01:55:19 That you’re not doing, you’re afraid to do?
01:55:21 I’m afraid of all kinds of things.
01:55:23 I’m afraid of not being good at my job,
01:55:26 not being funny, letting people down,
01:55:29 not putting out products that are good,
01:55:33 whether it’s the podcast every week or stand up
01:55:36 or the videos,
01:55:36 like I’m afraid of like,
01:55:37 there’s a ton of people that really enjoy what we do.
01:55:40 So when you’re in that position,
01:55:41 you’re nervous that you’re going to start doing things
01:55:44 that they don’t like.
01:55:45 So the new things you want to do,
01:55:46 the evolution you want to do,
01:55:48 you want to make sure you’re evolving in the right way.
01:55:51 You want to make sure that you’re doing things
01:55:52 that are consistent with why people liked you,
01:55:54 but also you don’t want to put yourself in a box
01:55:56 and limit what you can be going forward.
01:55:59 So like, I had a talk with the CEO of NBC Universal once.
01:56:02 I was doing some internal sketch for them.
01:56:05 And I was playing like a cab driver and he was a,
01:56:08 and he’s not the current CEO, but he’s a former CEO.
01:56:10 And I said to him, what’s the hardest part of running
01:56:12 a corporation of this size?
01:56:14 And he said something very interesting.
01:56:17 He said, the hardest part is maximizing
01:56:18 the current profit model of what you have
01:56:22 at the same time, getting ready, getting ready,
01:56:25 getting the company ready
01:56:26 for where it’s going to be in five years.
01:56:27 He said, those are often at odds.
01:56:29 And that’s the toughest thing.
01:56:30 He goes, cause I could just bang out
01:56:32 everything I got to do right now.
01:56:34 And we’re going to make a lot of money doing this,
01:56:35 but am I devoting enough resources into digital
01:56:37 so that in five years, when that’s where everything lives,
01:56:39 are we competitive in that space?
01:56:42 So as funny as I am now, hopefully to people
01:56:44 and a lot of the things that I want to do now,
01:56:46 I’m going, what am I, what groundwork am I not laying
01:56:49 for three to five years down the road
01:56:52 so that I can be adapting to the trends
01:56:55 that are important then in terms of not so much
01:56:58 comedic trends, but like the technological trends,
01:57:01 like what is the, what is the, you know,
01:57:04 I should have done podcasting earlier.
01:57:06 What should I, should I have a bigger presence on TikTok?
01:57:09 Should I have a bigger presence here?
01:57:10 Should I have a business, or should I be on Twitch?
01:57:12 Should I be doing this?
01:57:12 Should I be doing that?
01:57:13 What am I not doing that I should be doing
01:57:15 that I’ll regret not doing?
01:57:17 And those are, those are the conversations
01:57:19 I think I have in my own head all the time.
01:57:21 And I guess there’s parallels to coming out as gay
01:57:23 or just parallels in like a career path
01:57:26 so you’re taking all that, that’s ultimately just fear.
01:57:29 It’s fear. Yeah.
01:57:31 It’s the fear of, you know, the best thing that happened
01:57:34 in my career was that I came to LA.
01:57:37 I didn’t have an idea of what was going to happen.
01:57:41 I met somebody who was really committed
01:57:45 to making funny things that we just wanted to be funny.
01:57:50 No one would let us be funny.
01:57:51 We didn’t have Comedy Central letting us be funny.
01:57:53 We didn’t have HBO, we didn’t have Netflix.
01:57:55 We just had a garage and a phone in the beginning
01:57:58 and then a camera and then a thing.
01:58:00 And we just wanted to be funny.
01:58:01 And that was the greatest risk really I took
01:58:03 because I was like, well, I don’t know what else
01:58:06 is going to happen right now, but I just want to be funny.
01:58:08 And funny saved my life, right?
01:58:10 I mean, funny got me out of drugs.
01:58:11 Funny probably got me out of the closet.
01:58:12 Funny was the thing that I was able to do
01:58:14 that made everything okay in my own head.
01:58:16 So I was like, as long as I’m being funny,
01:58:18 something good will happen.
01:58:19 So we did that and then something really cool happened
01:58:21 that we were able to do a lot of cool things,
01:58:23 but that’s what it is.
01:58:25 It’s fear that keeps you from being
01:58:27 the better version of yourself.
01:58:29 Your mom, I mean, you have so many complicated,
01:58:33 fascinating parts of your story.
01:58:34 Oh, thank you.
01:58:35 Your mom, as you were growing up, suffered.
01:58:39 Schizophrenic, yeah.
01:58:40 Well, from mental illness, yeah, schizophrenia.
01:58:43 Can you tell her story and how that relationship
01:58:45 has changed over the years?
01:58:46 Yeah, well, she was always eccentric and always,
01:58:49 you know, the terms for schizophrenia
01:58:51 in an Irish Catholic household
01:58:52 where we didn’t talk about anything were eccentric, fun.
01:58:56 She’s fun.
01:58:57 There’s a theme to this conversation.
01:58:58 She’s unpredictable.
01:58:59 She’s a wire, she was a live wire.
01:59:04 Any of the words you would use to describe somebody
01:59:06 who was a fucking lunatic, but you wouldn’t say that.
01:59:11 Pop that spin.
01:59:12 Right, she started experiencing symptoms
01:59:17 probably early on in her life,
01:59:18 but she also, I think, started really manifesting them
01:59:22 when I was in my mid teens, so like 14, 13, 14 area.
01:59:29 And she got really, really bad.
01:59:30 And then I think she was institutionalized
01:59:33 about 10 years ago, a little over 10 years ago.
01:59:35 And she could really no longer live on her own.
01:59:37 She was unable to go to work.
01:59:39 She was unable to function.
01:59:40 So I visit her when I can.
01:59:42 Obviously, I’m not in New York.
01:59:42 Whenever I go to New York, I visit her.
01:59:44 She’s aware of what I do, my career and everything like that.
01:59:47 She has good days and bad days,
01:59:48 but mental illness is a thing that’s very tough.
01:59:51 We don’t talk about it as a society.
01:59:53 People with mental problems don’t get that much attention.
01:59:57 We tend to think that they did something wrong
02:00:00 or that they deserve it or that they are to be ignored.
02:00:04 And we don’t devote a lot of resources into it,
02:00:06 which is unfortunate because then you have the junk gurus
02:00:09 come in and go like,
02:00:10 let’s diagnose your mental illness off Instagram.
02:00:12 And it’s like, that’s not the move.
02:00:15 Yeah.
02:00:15 Do you love her?
02:00:17 I do, I do.
02:00:19 I love her, but I also remember her that isn’t her now.
02:00:24 And when someone has mental illness that’s severe,
02:00:28 you make peace with their death before they die.
02:00:31 Wow, yeah.
02:00:32 Because the part of them that you love and remember
02:00:36 a lot of cases is not evident or obvious.
02:00:41 Now, my mother’s still a loving person that I love,
02:00:44 but the fun, her ability to be present in the moment
02:00:49 and to not, that is lost with the progression of realness
02:00:54 so that you still love her.
02:00:56 And I mean, again, your parents,
02:00:59 the time horizons you have with your parents are unknown.
02:01:01 People don’t know.
02:01:02 I have friends that their parents were in their lives
02:01:04 for their entire life.
02:01:06 And I have friends whose parents were in their life,
02:01:07 but my mother was a very, she knew what I was.
02:01:10 When I was a little kid, I was an actor.
02:01:11 When I was like six to 12,
02:01:12 my mother knew that I was a performer.
02:01:14 She knew what I was and what I’d ultimately do.
02:01:16 She recognized that in me.
02:01:17 And when I said to her, I want to audition for shows,
02:01:19 I want to be on stage, I want to be on this,
02:01:20 I want to do this, she let me do it
02:01:22 because she knew who I was
02:01:24 and she didn’t want to get in the way
02:01:25 of me being a human being, a fully realized person at six.
02:01:30 So that’s probably the best thing a parent can do for a kid
02:01:33 is let them be who they are.
02:01:35 And my mother did that.
02:01:37 So that, I mean, that’s good.
02:01:40 We ate too much fast food.
02:01:42 There were negatives, but she did let me be who I was.
02:01:44 That’s why you want to throw them out into the street.
02:01:46 Yeah, sometimes.
02:01:50 But coming to accept the mortality of her,
02:01:57 I guess, identity as you remember it from childhood,
02:02:00 do you ponder your own mortality?
02:02:04 Are you afraid of death?
02:02:06 I’m afraid of death.
02:02:06 I don’t like the idea of death, but I know it’s happening.
02:02:10 I know it’s going to happen eventually.
02:02:12 I don’t love it.
02:02:13 Do you think about it?
02:02:14 I think about, I want to do some good stuff
02:02:15 that people can look back at.
02:02:16 And I think I’m proud of the show
02:02:18 where if people look back at the show,
02:02:19 I don’t know how comedy ages or whatever,
02:02:21 but I think I put out a lot of stuff
02:02:23 and I want to continue to put out stuff
02:02:24 and I want to put out a few specials
02:02:26 that people can look back at and go,
02:02:27 oh, this guy was really funny in this really crazy,
02:02:30 he lived in the latter part of this century
02:02:32 when all this shit was going on.
02:02:33 And he kind of made fun of it.
02:02:35 And he did something to make people’s lives a little better
02:02:40 just by having a few laughs.
02:02:43 What do you think about,
02:02:45 this is something like in the podcast context,
02:02:48 do you think you’ll have just one or two or three shows
02:02:53 out of thousands maybe that are like the truly special ones?
02:02:56 That’s probably the case.
02:02:57 Or do you think it’s an entirety of the body of work?
02:03:00 I think people will take 10 minute clips
02:03:02 from all different shows and put them together.
02:03:05 And there’s a highlight.
02:03:06 Yeah, like a highlight reel of just like,
02:03:08 these are like the best things that he’s ever done
02:03:10 or the best rants he’s ever had,
02:03:12 the best things, whatever.
02:03:13 So the legacy would be that this was an important voice
02:03:16 in a very weird time.
02:03:18 I would hope that that’s part of it.
02:03:21 And I hope that I continue to be,
02:03:24 you say important, I say funny,
02:03:25 but hopefully I continue to be a voice.
02:03:28 And that’s what I think when I think about death,
02:03:30 I think about like, what do people come on earth to do?
02:03:33 And I think I came,
02:03:34 I think my main purpose on this planet
02:03:37 other than to experience whatever love
02:03:39 or worthiness or whatever is to entertain people.
02:03:44 And there’s a lot of people in comedy right now
02:03:46 that are not entertainers, and that’s really the problem.
02:03:49 But, and they got into comedy sort of the way
02:03:51 that you can walk into the wrong store in a mall
02:03:55 and then not realize you’re in the wrong store
02:03:57 and try on a bunch of clothes and then go,
02:03:58 fuck, I wasted my whole afternoon.
02:04:00 But I think I’ve always kind of been an entertainer
02:04:02 and that’s what I wanna do.
02:04:04 There’s a, unfortunately, sadly,
02:04:07 a lot of people that look up to you.
02:04:08 That is a horrible thing, but life is a nightmare.
02:04:12 Yeah.
02:04:14 If you were to give them advice,
02:04:16 young folks, people in college, maybe even high school,
02:04:20 but people in their 20s about what to do with their life,
02:04:24 whether it’s career, whether it’s just life in general,
02:04:27 what would you say?
02:04:27 Ignore everyone.
02:04:29 Make a few good friends.
02:04:32 Truly have honest conversations with yourself about your,
02:04:39 when do you feel the most alive?
02:04:42 Figure that out.
02:04:44 When and how do you feel the most alive?
02:04:47 Yeah.
02:04:48 Figure that out.
02:04:50 Try to figure out a job or a career
02:04:52 that can replicate that feeling.
02:04:56 Don’t listen to anyone.
02:04:57 Don’t listen to your parents.
02:04:58 Don’t listen to the gurus on the internet.
02:05:01 Don’t listen to me.
02:05:02 Don’t listen to anyone.
02:05:03 Figure out where you feel the most alive.
02:05:07 Where do you feel excited?
02:05:09 Where does your pulse quicken?
02:05:11 What do you feel matters?
02:05:13 When you’re in a situation, do you feel like it matters?
02:05:17 What situation was that?
02:05:18 What got you excited?
02:05:20 What thing did you walk into where you looked around
02:05:24 and were taken back and you’re like,
02:05:25 wow, this is amazing?
02:05:27 And I’m filled with awe.
02:05:28 If you can figure out a life where you can excite yourself,
02:05:34 you might not use drugs or alcohol or a sex addiction
02:05:37 or gambling or irresponsibility.
02:05:41 You might not have to get your fucking kicks
02:05:44 in very destructive places
02:05:46 if you can get them in a productive place.
02:05:48 Well, you had a pretty weaving life
02:05:53 that’s full of mistakes and so on.
02:05:56 Many mistakes.
02:05:59 Is that, are mistakes a bug or a feature?
02:06:02 Like, do you recommend embrace the mistakes,
02:06:05 make a bunch of them?
02:06:06 Depends what they are, right?
02:06:07 So.
02:06:08 Well, you’ve had the full spectrum.
02:06:09 I’ve had a lot, but a lot of mine could have sunk me.
02:06:12 Right.
02:06:13 Like, they sound like fun when I talk about them,
02:06:15 but they actually could have sunk me.
02:06:17 And they were all part of what made me funny,
02:06:21 but I don’t know.
02:06:22 I would never tell anyone else
02:06:25 to just light their life on fire
02:06:26 and hope it all works out on the other end.
02:06:28 It would be pretty irresponsible.
02:06:30 But hey, at the end of the day, it’s like,
02:06:34 you’re gonna, we get, there’s, you know,
02:06:39 I think one of my themes is that there’s too much.
02:06:41 We give the power.
02:06:42 We think we have too, the power of choice
02:06:46 has been elevated on our society to an unhealthy degree.
02:06:50 I think people are, I think you could get really good
02:06:53 at something, but you’re born with a certain aptitude.
02:06:55 It might be to be a deal maker,
02:06:57 might be to be an athlete.
02:06:58 It might be to be an artist.
02:06:59 It might be to be a romantic,
02:07:01 just fall in and out of love, in and out of love,
02:07:03 in and out of love.
02:07:04 It might be to be like a world traveler.
02:07:05 Like, but whatever you are, I think you are.
02:07:08 I think that there’s something about you
02:07:10 that makes you something.
02:07:11 And if you can figure it out and then refine,
02:07:13 you’re not gonna be good at it per se.
02:07:15 But if you’re an athlete,
02:07:17 it might not mean that you’re going to be a great athlete
02:07:20 in the history, but it might mean you’re the best coach
02:07:22 anyone’s ever had, or you’re the person that, you know,
02:07:24 builds a local scene for young athletes or whatever.
02:07:27 If you are a really good deal maker,
02:07:30 it doesn’t mean you’re gonna be Warren Buffett,
02:07:31 but it might mean you’re somebody who enjoys
02:07:33 making deals all the time and things like that.
02:07:36 Like if you’re an entertainer,
02:07:38 it might mean that you are an entertainer.
02:07:40 It might mean that you are in the world of entertainment
02:07:43 because you love it so much that if you lack the skillset
02:07:46 to really pursue it on a degree,
02:07:49 you just want to be like, there’s a thing
02:07:51 inside of you that makes you what you are.
02:07:55 I think, I look at certain people and I go,
02:07:56 you were born to be that thing.
02:07:59 You know?
02:08:00 The whole purpose is to find it.
02:08:01 I was a juror on that murder trial in Long Island
02:08:03 and the woman who’s the DA, I’m like,
02:08:05 you were born to do this.
02:08:07 You were born to put murderers away
02:08:10 and this guy killed the mother of his children.
02:08:12 I mean, he’s a bad guy, but like, I was like,
02:08:13 you are really good at what you do.
02:08:15 She has a strong belief in whatever her moral code is
02:08:18 and what her justice and ethics are.
02:08:20 And she wants to communicate that to people.
02:08:22 She was very good at doing what she did.
02:08:25 I don’t know the facts of the case.
02:08:26 I didn’t really listen.
02:08:27 He seemed guilty, so I just voted guilty.
02:08:29 But I didn’t really listen to her,
02:08:31 but I heard the shape of her mouth was very bovine,
02:08:34 like a cow, and it conferred a certain level
02:08:36 of expertise that I enjoyed.
02:08:39 Well, it’s funny.
02:08:39 I mean, you could see, you’re half joking.
02:08:42 Yes, but I’m serious.
02:08:43 You can often see that people just,
02:08:46 they found their place.
02:08:47 They found their role.
02:08:48 They found their thing.
02:08:49 They found their thing,
02:08:50 and that’s kind of the purpose of life.
02:08:52 And once you are in a place that seems sticky,
02:08:55 like the place that seems right,
02:08:59 that’s one of the problems with the generation
02:09:01 that you’re speaking to, is there’s always a feeling
02:09:03 like I should keep exploring, keep exploring.
02:09:05 But it’s okay to stay in a place that you found that works.
02:09:08 Yeah, and listen, sometimes the best place you’ll find
02:09:12 is like when people are like,
02:09:13 when did you feel really excited and alive?
02:09:15 It’s like doing nothing.
02:09:18 Right, yeah.
02:09:19 You know, like that’s the other thing.
02:09:20 It’s like some people are gonna be like,
02:09:22 I feel really excited and alive,
02:09:23 and I’m laying in my backyard in a hammock.
02:09:25 And I just wanted the simplest life
02:09:27 and not have to do much, and I don’t like doing anything.
02:09:30 And I love laying around and going,
02:09:31 wow, the sky looks good today.
02:09:33 Bill Gates goes, the sky looks good today.
02:09:34 Let’s shoot a missile into it.
02:09:36 He wants to do shit, right?
02:09:37 So it’s like in between that and nothing
02:09:40 is you can find something.
02:09:42 But in that process, for you personally,
02:09:45 I mean, for me and for others, I think there’s a struggle.
02:09:49 When you look in the,
02:09:50 when Tim and Dylan looks in the mirror,
02:09:52 do you love yourself or do you hate yourself?
02:09:54 Well, a lot of times I think I’m Amy Schumer,
02:09:56 so I’m confused.
02:09:59 I’m a detente to myself all the time.
02:10:01 I don’t love myself or hate myself.
02:10:03 Addicts have a very bad problem
02:10:06 where you can’t just fall in love with yourself
02:10:09 and you can’t hate yourself.
02:10:10 Both of them lead you to a negative place.
02:10:12 You try to stay kind of even keel.
02:10:14 I don’t go like, hey man, you put out a video,
02:10:17 get all these views, things are great.
02:10:18 You sold a bunch of tickets.
02:10:19 Let’s fucking go out and like, maybe let’s,
02:10:21 hey man, let’s have that drink
02:10:23 that you’ve been waiting for for 11 years.
02:10:24 And I don’t look at myself and go,
02:10:26 you ate a burger yesterday.
02:10:27 You’re a piece of shit.
02:10:28 You’re horrible.
02:10:29 You’ll never get into the shape you want.
02:10:33 I try not to get too low or too high.
02:10:35 Both of them are not good for my particular mind.
02:10:38 Okay, I gotta ask, we kind of spoke about 2021
02:10:42 and you being potentially hopeful,
02:10:45 hopeful short term, cynical long term.
02:10:48 Yeah.
02:10:49 So let me ask, I forgot to ask, are you moving to Austin?
02:10:54 I don’t know.
02:10:55 I mean, I don’t think so immediately.
02:10:57 I love Joe.
02:10:58 I love what he’s trying to do down there.
02:10:59 I’m appreciative of everything that he’s done
02:11:02 for not only me, but for comedy in general.
02:11:04 And I think as things happen in Austin
02:11:06 and unfold is such a political answer,
02:11:08 but as things unfold, I will consider it more and more.
02:11:11 But I mean, I think I got another year in LA.
02:11:14 So you’ve spoken so nicely about this magical place
02:11:18 that is Los Angeles.
02:11:20 LA is very funny.
02:11:22 You think there’s a place for comedy in LA?
02:11:24 Oh yeah.
02:11:25 There will always be a place for comedy in LA.
02:11:27 So it’s gonna be a place for comedy in New York.
02:11:29 I mean, the question is how thriving of a comedy scene
02:11:32 is Austin gonna be?
02:11:33 And Joe can probably make it one,
02:11:36 but as of right now, it isn’t.
02:11:38 So that would be him doing that.
02:11:39 But the question, there’s a lot of people escaping
02:11:42 Los Angeles, but I know better about New York.
02:11:44 There’s a lot of really brilliant people.
02:11:46 Let them go.
02:11:47 There’s other people.
02:11:48 This is the thing.
02:11:49 It’s like, this is the fear thing.
02:11:50 It’s like, no, but all the brilliant people are leaving.
02:11:53 There’ll be other people and they’ll fill their shoes
02:11:55 the way that they’ve done throughout history.
02:11:57 And I think that New York and LA,
02:11:59 listen, maybe in five to 10 years,
02:12:00 they’re not the two cities.
02:12:02 It would be real rough in five years
02:12:05 when this pandemic’s over for people in Australia to go,
02:12:08 dude, you gotta go to America
02:12:10 and you gotta visit Charleston and Austin.
02:12:13 Stop.
02:12:14 Let’s be adults here.
02:12:15 Let’s be adults.
02:12:16 It’s still gonna be New York and LA for a while.
02:12:18 LA is an absolute hellscape,
02:12:21 but I don’t think you’re gonna replace California
02:12:26 with another place.
02:12:28 And also, everyone’s making decisions now
02:12:30 because we’re literally in the midst of a pandemic
02:12:32 we’ve never had before.
02:12:34 We’ve never had this before.
02:12:35 Joe loved California up until the pandemic.
02:12:37 He had problems with it.
02:12:39 Like, we all have problems with it.
02:12:40 There’s a lot of benefits to being here.
02:12:42 I think a lot of us made pretty bad decisions in 2020
02:12:45 because we were all locked up
02:12:46 and stuck with our own thoughts.
02:12:48 But, so it’s funny, there’s parallels
02:12:52 because I don’t necessarily,
02:12:54 you know, I’m obviously a fan of comedy,
02:12:55 but I don’t care where comics move.
02:12:59 But there’s a parallel move that’s happening,
02:13:01 set of decisions which do influence my decision making,
02:13:04 which is where to start a business that’s tech centered.
02:13:07 And that’s more about the San Francisco, Silicon Valley.
02:13:12 And there is a lot of people leaving there.
02:13:15 That’s already.
02:13:16 And they’re going to Austin.
02:13:16 Well, Austin, there’s a, I think,
02:13:19 there’s a bunch of different places.
02:13:21 Phoenix, there’s Denver.
02:13:23 Austin will probably be a massive tech hub.
02:13:26 Elon’s there.
02:13:27 It seems like it’s all, everything about Austin says
02:13:30 that it’s going to be a massive tech hub.
02:13:33 I just don’t know if that means
02:13:34 it’ll be a massive comedy hub.
02:13:35 It might.
02:13:36 I don’t know if those two can actually coexist.
02:13:38 It’s interesting because.
02:13:39 Yeah, I don’t, I think, you know,
02:13:41 comedy suffered in New York and LA
02:13:43 when everyone got super rich.
02:13:45 Like, you know, it just wasn’t as cool.
02:13:47 It’s still much more fun on the road.
02:13:48 It’s still more fun to perform for people
02:13:50 that want and need to laugh in strip malls
02:13:53 than it is to perform for hedge fund managers
02:13:55 and with their dates and, you know, Instagram models in LA.
02:13:59 It’s just what it is.
02:14:00 Comedy on the road is much more fun.
02:14:01 So maybe in the spirit of that, Austin becomes,
02:14:04 but you know, you know, if Austin is just colonized
02:14:06 by tech bros and stuff like, yeah, I mean,
02:14:08 sure, sure it’ll be fun and it’ll be great.
02:14:10 I think Joe’s made LA a scene.
02:14:13 So if anyone’s going to make Austin a scene, it’s Joe.
02:14:17 Yeah, and I like the, on the Elon side,
02:14:20 which is what I’m much more familiar with,
02:14:22 the promise of the possibility of what that could become
02:14:25 because there’s a lot of problems in Silicon Valley.
02:14:27 And of course it might be naive to think that
02:14:30 just because it’s like the grass is greener thing,
02:14:33 which is just because the place where you come from
02:14:36 has a lot of problems,
02:14:37 doesn’t mean you can just create a new place
02:14:39 that’s not going to have those problems.
02:14:39 Yeah, there’s homelessness in Austin.
02:14:41 There are problems in Austin.
02:14:42 I mean, I think that with, by the way,
02:14:44 with the influx of very rich people to an area,
02:14:48 sometimes that helps things,
02:14:49 but sometimes it just makes things more polarizing
02:14:51 and it puts a spotlight on those problems
02:14:53 and makes those problems even bigger, right?
02:14:55 So, I mean, I don’t know that it’s necessarily,
02:14:58 it’s hard to predict.
02:14:59 I just know that LA right now is funny.
02:15:01 It’s funny that there’s 15 year old TikTokers
02:15:03 making millions of dollars dancing in a house
02:15:05 while the world burns.
02:15:06 That is very funny.
02:15:07 Well, it’s for your style of humor, yes.
02:15:11 The absurdity of the world is that it’s…
02:15:13 No one cares about Hollywood starlets
02:15:15 and actresses and actors and everyone goes,
02:15:16 hey, fuck you.
02:15:17 Even though they’ve won three Academy Awards,
02:15:19 they’re all being replaced
02:15:20 by just mediocre dancer 15 year olds.
02:15:23 I mean, it’s like there’s something hilarious
02:15:25 about this city and it will burn in hell,
02:15:28 but so will everything.
02:15:29 So what are we talking about?
02:15:31 Eventually the sun will die out
02:15:34 and we will all be gone unless we colonize
02:15:37 outside of our solar system.
02:15:38 But I just sit here,
02:15:42 I’m struggling with this
02:15:43 because Boston, I’m currently at MIT,
02:15:46 Boston doesn’t feel like the right place
02:15:48 to start a business in the tech sector.
02:15:52 And so I’m choosing,
02:15:53 I’m looking at San Francisco the way it is
02:15:55 and I’m looking at Austin.
02:15:56 Oh, Austin, clearly.
02:15:58 So it seems clear, but it’s such a difficult thing
02:16:02 to predict what a place will look like in 10 years
02:16:07 and 15 years and 20 years.
02:16:08 And it’s so hard to predict if you’ll like it or not
02:16:10 until you’re there.
02:16:12 And this is speaking to risk,
02:16:15 there’s not really a good reason for me to move anywhere.
02:16:18 There’s not a good reason to do anything in life.
02:16:21 Part of me wants to just fucking do it
02:16:25 and whatever and see what happens.
02:16:26 Do you like Boston, do you like other things about Boston
02:16:28 besides the tech thing?
02:16:30 You like MIT.
02:16:31 MIT, that’s the problem.
02:16:33 Do you like the food in Boston?
02:16:35 Do you eat food?
02:16:36 I haven’t eaten food or been outside for years.
02:16:39 And I mean, that’s probably the better version.
02:16:42 But you’re keto forever.
02:16:44 You’ve been keto for a long time.
02:16:45 Yeah, keto, fasting for a long time.
02:16:49 15 years fasting, eating once or twice a day.
02:16:54 But no sugar ever, no like and no pasta ever, no bread ever.
02:17:00 No pasta, no bread, no, except like, so my source of…
02:17:05 You could kind of live anywhere
02:17:06 because like going out is such a big part
02:17:09 of what city you live in.
02:17:10 And like, do you like the food there?
02:17:11 Do you like the restaurants?
02:17:12 Can you meet people?
02:17:13 Whatever, but it’s like, you really can just kind of…
02:17:15 Yeah, so not married, no kids.
02:17:17 Right, you have freedom.
02:17:18 Me too, I have freedom.
02:17:20 And that’s, we have the curse of being vegan.
02:17:23 We have too many choices.
02:17:25 Right.
02:17:26 That’s the thing.
02:17:27 We have too many choices.
02:17:28 We don’t have somebody else going, what about like,
02:17:29 we don’t have to justify our decisions to anyone.
02:17:31 So we can just kind of like let our minds go run wild.
02:17:34 So you just got to hone the instinct
02:17:37 of just what feels right and just fucking do it.
02:17:40 And that’s it.
02:17:41 I think Austin with Joe down there and Elon down there,
02:17:42 Austin seems like a real no brainer move for you.
02:17:46 To try, you know, why the hell not?
02:17:48 Why not?
02:17:49 And then I think I should go to MIT.
02:17:51 Like, I mean, I think I should give those nerds
02:17:56 a piece of my mind that you should go to.
02:17:59 I was in an Uber pool once with a kid from MIT
02:18:02 and I was eating this thing from Bova’s Bakery.
02:18:05 I forget what it was.
02:18:06 It was like a, it’s so good.
02:18:08 I don’t know.
02:18:09 You don’t know Bova’s Bakery, right?
02:18:10 Yeah, it’s in Boston, it’s famous.
02:18:12 I was eating a thing and I was like covered in chocolate.
02:18:14 This kid, like this little nerd, like this little like,
02:18:16 you know, USB drive with feet was just staring at me
02:18:19 and they just dropped him off at MIT.
02:18:21 And he like scurried away.
02:18:22 But that’s a big school that,
02:18:23 doesn’t the NSA recruit out of their heavy,
02:18:25 like MIT, places like that?
02:18:27 I can’t, I can’t speak to that.
02:18:30 But what, this is a ridiculous question
02:18:34 I sometimes ask myself when I’m alone.
02:18:36 What is the meaning of life?
02:18:38 Do you think about the big existential kind of,
02:18:41 why the hell we’re here?
02:18:43 It’s a cosmic kind of joke kind of in a weird way, right?
02:18:46 I mean, Joe said it the other day on,
02:18:49 maybe it was you saying that like,
02:18:51 he was just like, you know,
02:18:52 by the time you figure out what it is, you’re out of here.
02:18:55 You know, it’s kind of interesting.
02:18:56 Or you even start to figure out what it is,
02:18:58 you’re out of here.
02:18:59 It’s like, that’s kind of funny.
02:19:00 It’s like, you don’t get enough time to truly,
02:19:04 I think the meaning of life is just like,
02:19:08 at the end of the day, do you feel it was time well spent?
02:19:11 Was it time well spent?
02:19:14 That’s really what it is.
02:19:16 If you look back, do you go,
02:19:17 hey, it was time well spent.
02:19:20 Pretty good ride.
02:19:21 It was a pretty good ride.
02:19:22 I did a lot of things.
02:19:27 Doing what you say is a part of it, I think.
02:19:30 If you say you’re going to do something, maybe doing it.
02:19:34 That seems to be extrapolating the meaning of life question
02:19:38 to like, you know, what did you come here to do?
02:19:40 I think it goes down deep of like, who are you
02:19:43 and what do you want and you know,
02:19:44 what are you suited to do and what?
02:19:47 It does seem that like, the people who are most enlightened
02:19:51 that I’ve ever met or read books by,
02:19:54 they ultimately land on humor.
02:19:56 Like, they don’t take shit seriously.
02:19:58 They embrace the absurdity of it all
02:20:01 and just kind of laugh at it in this kind of simple way.
02:20:04 So it does seem that humor is like,
02:20:08 one of the fundamental truths of this universe we’re in.
02:20:12 And somehow.
02:20:13 It’s love, it’s love.
02:20:14 Humor can be love, right?
02:20:16 People laughing, that that sound is kind of like,
02:20:20 Carolyn Knapp, who wrote a book called,
02:20:22 Drinking a Love Story, which is a really good book
02:20:25 about not drinking.
02:20:27 Drinking and then not drinking.
02:20:29 And she said, you could understand things as love.
02:20:34 I think one of the last lines of the thing is like,
02:20:36 people talking about their experiences in life,
02:20:39 that could be love.
02:20:40 Like, you know, laughter is love.
02:20:41 Like, I feel like love and finding it
02:20:43 wherever you could find it is why we’re here.
02:20:46 That’s that connection.
02:20:47 And laughter can be love.
02:20:49 And, you know, figuring out, you know,
02:20:53 something that makes life better
02:20:56 for a lot of people can be love.
02:20:57 You know, whether it’s a vaccine
02:20:59 or a technological advancement or whatever.
02:21:02 Like, you know, all of those things,
02:21:04 I think, can be that feeling.
02:21:06 And I think that’s what’s important.
02:21:07 It connects you to a larger frequency, you know?
02:21:11 I don’t think there’s a better way to end it, Tim.
02:21:13 I hope you’re one of the voices.
02:21:15 I truly believe that your legacy
02:21:17 would be one of the most important voices of our time,
02:21:20 because you’re fearless and challenging all the absurdity
02:21:22 of the nonsense of our social and political discourse.
02:21:28 So I hope you keep doing it.
02:21:30 I’m a fan.
02:21:31 I’m still a bit starstruck, so.
02:21:33 I’ll stop it.
02:21:33 Listen, I was your intellectual capacity.
02:21:38 Enjoying anything I do only underscores
02:21:41 how truly fucked we are.
02:21:43 But thank you very much.
02:21:46 Yeah, thank you for talking today.
02:21:49 Thank you, brother.
02:21:50 Thanks for listening to this conversation with Tim Dillon,
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02:22:19 And now, let me leave you some words from George Carlin.
02:22:23 Scratch any cynic, and you will find a disappointed idealist.
02:22:28 Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.